Humor That Works: The Value Of Humor In The Workplace With Andrew Tarvin
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How do you manage the stress of working 90,000 hours in a lifetime? In this episode, Pitch Whisperer, John Livesay, shares more than a few laughs with Humor That Works author, Humor Engineer, speaker, and facilitator, Andrew Tarvin. Andrew reveals how being forced to join an improv comedy group started it all. He teaches us the value of humor in the workplace to increase satisfaction, engagement, and manage stress. Andrew also lets you in on the secret of humor MAP, how you can be a humor curator, and how you can communicate in a way that people will listen and respond to, and have fun with at work.
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Listen to the podcast here
Humor That Works: The Value Of Humor In The Workplace With Andrew Tarvin
Our guest is Drew Tarvin who is the world’s first humor engineer, teaching people how to get better results while having more fun. As a speaker, he’s delivered more than 500 talks in front of 35,000 plus people with organizations like Procter & Gamble, GE, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and many others. As an author, he’s written three bestselling books, including Humor That Works: The Missing Skill for Success and Happiness at Work. He is also the primary contributor to the Humor That Works blog and has written more than 400 posts on business topics such as humor, leadership and decision-making garnering over one million page views every year. As a thought leader, Drew has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and Forbes best company and had been a guest for more than 40 podcasts. He has a social reach of more than 25,000 followers. The most impressive to me is his TEDx Talk that has been viewed over four million times. Drew, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
[bctt tweet=”Get a humor habit-one smile per hour. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Would you take us back to your childhood? Were you always somebody who is funny or were you more the engineer?
I’ve always been an engineer. I was born in engineers to the standpoint that I was born three weeks early. Even in the womb, I was ready for efficiency. I was like, “We don’t need a full nine months. We can go right now.” I went to my high school reunion not too long ago and people found out that I did comedy and I talked about humor. They’re like, “You’re not funny.” I was not the life of the party or the class clown. In my senior year, in my Senior Superlatives, I was voted the teacher’s pet. I’m much more engineering-minded, academic-minded and socially awkward a little bit. It wasn’t until college that I discovered improv and stand-up.
I’ve seen some of your improvs. It’s hilarious and it’s funny. How did you marry the two? You talk about dating a lot in your improv that I saw.
I talk about all the topics. When you do improv and stand-up a little bit more, you start to develop a persona or a point of view. I’ve realized that my point of view is an engineer’s point of view on the world. Not only think of things like productivity and communication but also things like dating or emotions. For me, as an engineer, emotions are just data, which I have learned is the wrong thing to say when someone is crying. You find that perspective and persona. I went to Ohio State University and got a degree in computer science and engineering. While I was there, my best friend wanted to start an improv comedy group. He needed people and forced me to join. That started my journey of improvisation.
A year later, a bunch of us in the improv group started doing stand-up comedy as well. That began the journey of learning about humor. What was interesting to me is by the time I graduated, I was working at Procter & Gamble as an IT project manager. I was drawing a lot from what I learned from improv and stand-up as a way to be more effective in the workplace. I was communicating in a way that people listen and I was sending emails that people read and responded to. I had fun in my own work. That’s where that discovery started to happen a little bit.
What motivated you to write your book?
People ask me, “How long did it take you to write the Humor That Works?” In some ways, it’s like, “About six months of sitting down and writing,” but the real answer is about ten years. I have been filling in the corporate humor space for the last several years while I was still working at P&G. It was really to say, “How can we provide one cohesive guide for the people that are out there that are like, ‘I do want to enjoy my work a little bit more. I am interested in getting a little bit better results. I want to look forward to going into the workplace or going into this meeting of this pitch that I have. I want to be excited about it instead of dreading it.’” I wanted to create a resource for people to be able to do that.
[bctt tweet=”Be a humor curator versus a humor creator. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
You talk about in your book, Humor That Works, that there are three ways that humor helps. The first one is it helps us beat stress. Can you talk about that?
There are 30 benefits backed by research case studies and real-world examples in terms of how humor helps in the workplace. One of the primary ones is beating stress. As I’m sure many of your readers know and you know that stress by itself isn’t a bad thing. The stress of a pitch coming up or the stress of a meeting that you have with a client that you’ve been working with or the stress of additional roles overall improves your capacity. It forces you to get better as a presenter, as a speaker and as an employee. You’re getting more efficient and all of that. Stress by itself isn’t a bad thing. It’s how we grow. Chronic stress, when we don’t relieve that stress, that’s when we see an increase in muscle tension and blood pressure and a decrease in the immune system, all the negative effects of stress.
It’s much like when you’re working out. When you grow, it’s not when you’re working out, it’s when you rest. It’s when you refuel and recharge your body and that’s something that we don’t do as well when it comes to our work capacity stress. Humor is a great way to relieve stress and all the negative effects of stress. If you start laughing or if you’re smiling and you have the release of endorphins that comes with appreciating humor, you see an increase in blood flow and an increase in the immune system. You see a decrease in blood pressure and muscle tension. Laughter and humor can be a great counterbalance to the stress that we deal with every day.
They’ve done the research that can even help people heal who are dealing with illnesses in the hospital and stuff watching comedies and things like that. You talk about how humor can help engage employees and it unites us in a way. What if the person who’s managing a team says, “I would love to be funny with my team. I’d love to use humor to beat some stress, but I am not funny or I can’t tell a joke to save my life.” How can you help them with your book and your talks?
It’s a great question because a lot of people have this worry. A lot of people think that the ability to use humor is innate. That it’s something that you’re born and able to do. The reality is that it’s much more of a skill. It’s much more of cooking where you grew up in a household where one of your parents cook and you learn from there, you picked it up. You might feel like you have a little bit of natural talent. There are certainly some things that come into play, but you probably got better over time. If you’re like me and you start cooking a little bit later in life, which I’m still not good at, I can at least follow a recipe. I can follow a guideline and I do get better over time. I’m an engineer, so when you’re like, “Add a pinch of salt,” I’m like, “How much is a pinch?” I don’t want to just wing it. I need to know.
Humor is a similar skill that can be learned. It’s something that you can learn some of the general techniques and improve. What we say in our programs is that we can make anyone funnier, not necessarily across the board funny where you’re going to get a Netflix comedy special as soon as you’re done with a workshop. We can take you from wherever you are and improve. That improvement comes from a couple of key things. Maybe one of the most important things for people to recognize listening is to use humor effectively in the workplace. You don’t have to be a humor creator, instead, you can be a humor curator. You can find interesting humor that you like.
If there’s a Ted Talk that you like, you want to share that out. If there is an image that you come across online that you find funny or a gift that you want to respond to in a text, you can share those things. You didn’t have to be the one that created it, but instead, you can curate it and put it into a context that makes sense. Not only does it make people laugh, but it also gets a result that you’re going for. It makes people pay attention because you have an interesting image at the beginning of your presentation that makes people laugh and draws them in a little bit more.
Humor That Works: The Missing Skill for Success and Happiness at Work
I like that because it takes off some of the unknown fear of, “Is this going to land?” If it’s somebody else’s content that’s been proven time and again, a cartoon or whatever it is from the New Yorker, odds are it’s going to get a smile. We’re going to tweak that out as a quote from you, “Be a humor curator, not a humor creator.”
That’s a great starting point for other people or after you get more comfortable with that, you might move to like, “I do want to create some. I want to tell my own story. I want to come up with an image myself.” Do you want to craft a joke? Those are all things that you can learn as well and it takes a little bit of time. It takes practice like any skill but it is something that people can learn for sure.
Besides being a humor curator, is there something else that you were going to give as a tip for getting people funnier?
One key is recognizing, “I can be a humor curator. The other thing to recognize is that the goal of using humor in the workplace is not to be funnier. It’s not to be funny and it’s not to be seen as the class clown or to get people to be like, “You’re hilarious. You should do stand-up comedy.” The goal is to be more effective and to get better results. When you look at the broader definition of humor, it is defined as a comic, absurd or incongruous quality causing amusement. One of the keys is to think less about, “How do I be as funny as possible?” and more about, “How do I make things a little bit more fun?” It goes back to that point that you said that humor can be helpful to engage a team or engage an audience. I’ll ask you a dumb question, but I still want an answer to this dumb question. The dumb question is, “Would you rather do something that is fun or not fun?”
Fun, please.
It’s a dumb question, but that stands to reason that if you were to make your pitch a little bit more fun, do you think people are more likely to pay? If you were to make your own work a little bit more fun, would you be more likely to stay engaged with it longer? If you were to make your commute even a little bit more fun, would you be a little bit less stressed about it happening?
Is there an easy step that someone can make to make something more fun like a commute or just a presentation?
That brings us to the third big tip that helps people. It’s understanding what we call a humor map. Your humor map stands for your medium, your audience and your purpose. Your medium is, “How are you going to execute the humor?” Is it to yourself sitting in a car? Is it to a potential client in a pitch meeting? Who is the audience? Is it just yourself? Is it people that you’ve worked with for years? Is it members on your team that you’re trying to engage more? The final piece is your purpose and this is the most important one. Why do you want to use humor? It’s not about just to be seen as funny. This is why some people were like, “Didn’t Michael Scott in The Office try to use a lot of humor and wasn’t even more of a client?” It’s like, “His reason for using humor was more about seeking validation,” which is not a great reason.” Your reason might be, “I want to use humor. Maybe I’m going to start this presentation with a story that has some humorous moments to it. Not only do I get people paying attention because it’s not a boring presentation, but rather get them interested in the story and that story sets up the thesis of what I’m going to talk about.”
[bctt tweet=”Keep a humor diary creator. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
What you said that I love is that humor is a skill like cooking because often, I give talks on how to be a better storyteller. People often say to me that I’m not a good storyteller and I said, “It’s a skill you can learn.” I want to get into your expertise as a keynote speaker because a lot of people think, “If I had to give a talk, I have to open up with something funny or show a funny cartoon.” I was giving a talk and I was more concerned with telling a story. I was running that story by a friend and I said something that made the friend laugh. I wasn’t consciously trying to be funny. I was just being myself and I thought, “I wonder if I said that in front of a crowd if it would work,” and it did.
Let me tell you what I said and you, as the humor expert, might be able to say why that works. I was opening the talk and I said, “The first thing I do every morning is taking a freezing cold shower. Research has shown that it helps fight depression, burns fat and trains your brain to tolerate discomfort and get out of your comfort zone. The research had me at burns fat,” and that got a laugh. I was saying the three steps of what the research said and then I said it to my friend as an aside because he’s fit. “That’s why we need that thing to get me doing it.” What makes that funny without consciously knowing what I did that made that funny?
There are a couple of things that make it compelling. One, it started a talk with something interesting rather than jumping into content right away, you’re talking about starting this. Immediately upon sharing this story, you’re putting people in their head of taking a cold shower, “Would I do that?” There are some people that are going to be for it and some people that are against it. You’re giving reasons and justifications, which are great. What are the three reasons again?
It fights depression, burns fat and teaches your brain to tolerate discomfort.
[bctt tweet=”Stress by itself isn’t a bad thing. It forces you to get better as a presenter, speaker, or employee. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
You think about like you hear that and you think about, “It burns fat. It’s interesting.” Maybe the more of teaching your brain to go against discomfort or being used to it. That’s the best benefit. That’s the primary one. Burns fat seems like the least important one of those three qualities that it provides. The fact that you then come back to it and say, “You had me at burns fat.” Whether it helps you be more comfortable in discomfort, I don’t care about it, but this applies and there’s this interesting skill that you have. Part of the skill of humor is your ability to create humor. Part of it is your sense of humor. It starts with their sense of humor on what do you find interesting. Part of it is your ability to create and there’s this concept that comes from UCB, which is an improv school in New York and LA that says, “If this is true, what else is true?”
You can even extend that joke a little bit further where you can say, “You had me at burns fat. If this is true, what else is true? If standing and taking a cold shower burns fat, what else could be true?” It could be like, “I have stopped working out. Now I just take three cold showers a day and that’s my workout.” You can extend that, but it can be a surprise. This is where humor is interesting and why I love it as a problem solver and as an engineer is you never know what’s going to work. One, when you make other people laugh as you said, this started in a conversation and you make them laugh, that’s a great thing to take note of. What most comedians would do is they’ll have a humor notebook and the humor notebook is simply a repository where they write down funny things, interesting thoughts or anything that they’re curious about.
You put that in a humor notebook and that way, later when you want to add humor intentionally to something rather than starting from scratch. Rather than be like, “Something funny happened a few weeks ago. What was it that could work?” You just go to the notebook and then copy that down. The fact that that trigger of someone laughing got you to think about it. You could put that in a notebook and then you’re like, “If it made someone laugh in conversation, maybe it will laugh in the stage.” From that, there are things that you can iterate and you could play with like, “Is it funnier for burns fat to be first, second or third in that list?” Maybe it’s funnier for it to be first because it’s a little bit more of a surprise when you bring it back. That way, you don’t care about the two other ones or maybe it’s funnier if that’s the third thing and it creates what we call a comic triple.
There are certain devices within comedy. One of the most common they made that is the simplest explanation is a comic triple where you give a list of something. In that list, the first two things are normal expected things in that list and then the third thing is something that’s a bit unexpected and that will create a laugh. It might be like, “Maybe burns fat and the comment about burns. That’s the most important one to me. Maybe that comes last.” I can’t say for sure, but that’s where the practice and iteration come from of like, “The next time you do it, you might tweak it.”
Humor That Works: The goal of using humor in the workplace is not to be funnier. It is to be more effective and to get better results.
What we’re giving everybody are real-life examples of how they can start to play around with starting a humor map and starting a humor journal. The other reason I was excited to have you on, Drew, is because we’re both speakers. When I was hired by Anthem Insurance to give a keynote to their audience on how to be better storytellers to sell, they said, “In the end, we’re going to have an improv session and the audience is going to shout out objections. Some of the people are going to pretend to be doctors and some are going to pretend to be Anthem people.” I offered to stay, be on stage and whisper in people’s ears if they got stuck. I would say some things from the keynote to keep the conversations going because for those who don’t know, improv is all about “yes, and.” I’m sure you have some stories of how you have taken some of your lessons and expertise in improv and applied it to the business world.
A large part of the way that we train, less so in the keynote setting, although every single one of my keynotes almost always incorporates some applied improv. Applied improv is simply taking concepts, ideas or exercises from the world of improv and applying them to something else like communication skills, leadership skills, problem-solving and innovation. Our workshops are often heavily steeped in applied improv and that’s because it’s an effective way to train. Rather than me talking about communication. If I get you doing an activity about it, you’re going to have the a-ha moment yourself. There’s going to be some team building that goes along with that and you’re going to remember it a little bit longer while you’re practicing this skill. We use a lot of it.
You mentioned the core fundamental principle of improvisation of “yes, and,” even that explains the humor in the workplace because the average person will work 90,000 hours in their lifetime. That’s a long time. That’s longer than everything that’s on Netflix as far as I know. “Yes, and” is a mentality. It is not about being a yes person. It’s not about blindly saying yes to everything and being Pollyanna optimistic about all of that. It’s about seeing a situation and deciding to build on it as opposed to talking about all the things that are wrong. It is about picking one thing that you do like and building on it. The “yes, and” mentality of using humor is, “Yes, I’m going to work 90,000 hours and I might as well enjoy them. I might as well find ways to make the work that I do a little bit more fun.”
Even that mentality is fundamental to how we do things. There are principles to applications from improv that you apply. One of the things that I like about improv is the idea of not present with an apology face. I’m sure you talk about what storytelling you’re with. Pitching is where you present an idea and you discount the idea yourself before you’ve ever even heard it. You’re like, “I’m thinking of this and it’s dumb. It’s probably not good at all.” When you see it, you’re like, “Is this okay maybe?”
[bctt tweet=”Rather than being innate, humor is much more a skill. It can be learned. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
The other thing I work with people on is don’t open your presentation to win a new client with, “I’m excited to be here now.” Nobody cares that you’re excited. It’s not about you. What you are also doing that I have not seen anyone else do and this is valuable is humor reducing turnover. People don’t realize how expensive it is to leave a job open, the time required to interview and check references. I spoke to an executive search firm and they’re constantly talking about, “We don’t even get our commissions if the person doesn’t stay in the job for two years.” If humor can help solve that problem, it’s going to be a huge takeaway for you. I keep thinking to myself, “If I have a job to do and I’m having fun with the people I work with, even if the job may not be exactly glamorous or fun. I get another offer for slightly more money, but no one there looks like you’re having fun, I might just stay where I’m having fun. The time will go faster if nothing else.”
They’ve done studies to show this. Once you get to a certain salary level and I think at least in the US, as of a couple of years ago, it was $75,000. The increase in pay from $75,000 does not move employee satisfaction. If people similar to you and other jobs at other companies are making $500,000 and you’re making $75,000, there might be a difference there. In general terms, money isn’t going to have a huge change in terms of your satisfaction score if it’s somewhat comfortable. An increase of say $5,000 a year may not move the needle, but enjoying your work absolutely will. One of the things that they have found is that 31% of employees leave their company because of their manager. They like what they do, they like the project that they work on and the company, but if they don’t like their manager, it’s not that they’re like, “It’s just a manager. Let me find someone else.” They’re like, “I’m just going to leave.” If you can, as a manager, find ways to not only make work more fun for yourself but make it a little bit more fun for your direct reports, that’s where you see an increase in engagement and retention and a decrease in turnover because it’s a cultural thing.
One of the things that people say about P&G all the time is the reason why they stayed or the thing that they miss the most if they did leave was the caliber of people. It’s partially the culture that exists. I’m one of those people that agree with that although it’s not seen as a funny culture, it’s not like seeing Southwest, Zappos or anything like that, it was a culture of empowerment. I proclaimed myself the corporate humorist at P&G and no one stopped me from doing that. They embraced it and they allow me to be who I was and leverage my own strength. Those types of benefits certainly helped to reduce turnover.
[bctt tweet=”Laughter and humor can be a great counterbalance to the stress that we deal with every day. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
You have many great tips on your website, Humor That Works. One of them is this concept of giving a pirate name to people. Did you do that at P&G?
Yeah. We had all types of fun with our project, simple things. We did prior names early on, but then we switched to one of the things that I liked doing. It was giving personality assessments to my team rather than Myers-Briggs or other ones we would do like, “Which Disney princess are you?” “I am a Pocahontas.” We would have nicknames based on Disney princesses, Star Wars characters and that stuff, any fun thing where you can create camaraderie for sure.
Let’s talk about your TEDx Talk. How did you come up with the name? How long did it take you to prepare for that?
I’ve had the fortune of doing two TEDx Talks. The first one, I did at Ohio State and was all about humor in the workplace, the general idea and the concept of it. I was approached by TEDxTAMU because I’ve done some guest lectures there. They were looking for speakers and they reached out. I shared with them a couple of different things that I was working on. I had wrapped up being a nomad and traveling all 50 states in a year, speaking and performing at all 50. I was like, “I can talk about that or I can talk about this other thing.” What I’m realizing is that one of the things holding people back from using humor in the workplace is that they do believe it’s this innate thing. My thing was like, “No, humor is a skill and it can be learned.” They’re like, “That’s new to us. We thought that it was natural. If we weren’t funny, then we were just out of luck.”
That’s where the premise of this skill of humor came. As far as prep goes, as the engineer in me, I wrote up a blog post all about it. I have a personal blog that went into it, but I did a ton of work for it. I knew that it had the opportunity to potentially get in front of a number of eyes and to help a lot of people. I did a ton of stand-up shows to prep for the talk. I did a number of speaking engagements where I rearrange the outline of the talks that I could do the full eighteen minutes of the talk nonstop just to learn because I iterate. That’s how I learn what’s funny, what doesn’t work and what does work. I did a tremendous amount of additional research for it, so I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I have a blog post detailing the whole thing. It was quite a bit of research to get it to that point that I was like, “This is something that I’m proud of.”
It’s important to share that behind the scenes preparation with people because a lot of people will say, “You’re a natural speaker. You’re a naturally funny person.” You don’t realize that it comes across naturally because I prepare. If you try to get up and give a talk, be funny or do anything in your career without the preparation, odds are it’s not going to land the way you think it will. Many people are not a big fan of preparation, but it sounds like you and I are on the same page with that.
Humor That Works: ‘Yes, and’ mentality is not about being a yes person. It’s not about blindly saying yes to everything, but it’s about seeing a situation and deciding to build on it.
There’s something that tends to resonate with a lot of the engineering groups and IT people that I speak with. There is a big difference between being efficient and being effective. It might be more efficient for you to wait until the last minute to plan your presentation to throw into. It might be more efficient to add a bunch of texts to your slides so that you don’t have to memorize what you’re going to say. It might be a little bit more efficient to not memorize it and read from notes, but it’s not going to be long-term more effective. You put in the hours for that rehearsal and that practice. Over time, one, it doesn’t take nearly as long. If you have a Patriot presentation skill and you’re building those skills over time, there might be things that you can reuse. If they talk with you and work on a story, it’s not like that story can only be used once. They can use it multiple times as they go through and every time they answer the question, “What do you do?” Every time they start a presentation by giving the background of why they started and whatever it is that they started. It becomes efficient in the long-term because it is effective in the long-term.
This has been fascinating to learn that humor is a skill that can be learned like cooking and that we can be a humor curator versus just a humor creator. The concept of efficiency and effectiveness is fascinating to me. Are there any last thoughts you want to leave us with including how people can hire you as a speaker, buy your book and all that good stuff?
If people are interested in learning more about humor in the workplace, we have a ton of resources on HumorThatWorks.com. It’s free blog articles and a free newsletter. There’s a link to the book there. There’s information about our workshops and our coaching. If they’re interested more in using humor, that website is a great place to go. If they want to connect with me personally or have specific questions, they can find me at Drew Tarvin on all social media. Whether that’s LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, they’re all under that same handle.
The thing that I would say for the readers if you’re thinking like you’re an engineer, “What do I do differently after having read this?” The one thing that we encourage is simply to start thinking one smile per hour. Think about what’s one thing that you can do each hour of the day that brings a smile to your face or the face of someone else. What that does is it starts to develop a humor habit. You’ll start to notice small, subtle ways, “I’m on this commute. How can I make it a little bit more fun?” I’m saying, “Maybe I’ll bring up John’s podcast and listen to a couple more episodes as I’m driving. Maybe I’ll have a concert and rock out to some Hamilton in the car.” If you start to do that, you’ll develop a humor habit. You can build your skill, whether as a curator or a creator as you go. Hopefully, each day you’ll get a little bit funnier and have a little bit more fun.
Thanks again, Drew.
Thanks for having me.
Important Links
- Drew Tarvin
- Humor That Works: The Missing Skill for Success and Happiness at Work
- Humor That Works blog
- First one – Drew Tarvin’s TEDx Talk
- TEDxTAMU – Drew Tarvin’s TEDx Talk
- Drew Tarvin – LinkedIn
- Instagram – Drew Tarvin
- Twitter – Drew Tarvin
- Facebook – Drew Tarvin
- HumorThatWorks.com
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Ask! : The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny With Mark Victor Hansen and Crystal Dwyer Hansen
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
There is only an answer when there is a question. In life, there are times where we are held back from the things we want because we are just so scared of asking. In this great episode, John Livesay talks to not one but two amazing guests. He is with Mark Victor Hansen—the co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul—and his wife, Crystal Dwyer Hansen—entrepreneur, certified life coach, and wellness nutrition expert. Together, they share about the power that is in asking through their new book called Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny. Mark and Crystal tell us the seven roadblocks we have to overcome before we can start asking ourselves and other people and even God for help. We are literally made to be each other’s resources, and that whoever asks the most questions becomes more likable. They share the essential questions that will make you masters of asking and lead you out of just dreaming into your destiny. Tune in to today’s show!
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Listen to the podcast here
Ask! : The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny With Mark Victor Hansen and Crystal Dwyer Hansen
I have not one, but two amazing guests: Mark Victor Hansen and his wife, Crystal Dwyer Hansen. They are the co-authors of a new book called Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny. Mark, you might know as that Chicken Soup for the Soul guy, which started back in the 1990s. He and his business partner, Jack Canfield, created what Time Magazine called the Publishing Phenomena of the Decade with over 110 million Chicken Soup for the Soul books sold worldwide. Crystal is an entrepreneur and certified life coach and a wellness nutrition expert whose personal coaching, speaking, CD and video programs have helped people all around the world. Her expertise is in the field of human potential. People who have worked with her have a profound and lasting transformation in all areas, relationships, careers, health and wellness. Her book, Skinny Life: The Real Secret to Being Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit is also available. Mark and Crystal, what an honor. Thank you both for coming. Welcome to the show.
It’s our delight. We’re excited because we know the secret that will make everybody infinitely better off if we go through this talk with you.
Let’s know what the secret is and then we’ll get into your own backgrounds a little bit more. You’ve teased us so much. What is the secret? Everyone’s on the edge of their seats.
[bctt tweet=”The most important questions we ask are the ones we ask ourselves. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
What happens is we travel so much that we meet people that are wonderful, fabulous, successful, professional, intelligent, but they don’t quite fulfill their potential. We said, “What would it be that they need to do to fulfill their potential?” What they’ve got to do in our impression is to become masters of asking. You say masters of irresistible storytelling and pitching.
I’m sure the audience is very interested to know a little bit about your own personal stories of origin and then how you two met. Crystal, tell us a little bit about how you became such an expert in all of these areas of nutrition and relationships. Go back as far as you want like childhood, school or whatever.
I was raised in an unusual situation where my mother was way ahead of her time, organic gardening, naturopathic medicine and those types of things. I was raised that way. Later on in life, I was in the business world. I was in real estate and loving what I was doing, but I’ve always found that whatever I was doing, whether it was modeling or selling real estate, I would connect with people very easily and people would open up to me. I seem to find an easy way to help them with their issues. My sister came to visit me. She has been a smoker since she was fifteen years old. My cabinet-maker was there that day. He was redoing one of the cabinets in a house that I was doing and he lost weight. I said, “Tony, you were great. Why do you look so good?” He goes, “I stopped smoking, I lost weight. I got hypnotized. I went to a hypnotherapist in 30 days. I’m back. I’m better than ever.” I was so intrigued. I said, “Stephanie, we need to get this. I’m going to take you over to this hypnotherapist and let’s do this.” I was astounded that she could break this impossible addiction, lifetime habit in that much time.
I became obsessed. I enrolled in the largest holistic college in the country. I became certified in American Board of Hypnotherapy. I became certified in life coaching and I started helping people. I opened a practice in Scottsdale, Arizona. I was almost astounded at the results people were getting. People were coming to me who had been depressed their entire lives. I got a note from a woman one time. She said, “I am so thankful I heard you that day on the radio. You were my last hope. I’ve been depressed my entire life. After five appointments with you, I can honestly say I am entirely free of the crushing depression I’ve experienced my entire life. I can wake up and have a bad day. It’s not the end of my world.” I became addicted to helping people. I love it. I connect with people and that’s the work I was doing.
When Mark and I had met, I had written my first book, Pure Thoughts for Pure Results, and I went to an event he’s speaking at called Author 101. He saw me, I saw him. We ended up in the VIP room together at the reception. A woman spilled a glass of red wine on my white pants and Mark came over to my rescue and said, “I know where the club soda is.” It was that kind of moment because I was talking to a speaking coach and he was surrounded by an entourage. I wasn’t bothering him. He must’ve been looking because he saw this happen. He came scooting over to me, held my hand, pulled me out of the room and said, “I’m sorry this happened. Let me help you find some club soda.” We started talking and we haven’t stopped talking.
Dreams to Your Destiny: There are two kinds of people in the world, those of us that ask and those who don’t.
Mark, I know that Chicken Soup for the Soul has been a huge success. You have a lot of other books, The One Minute Millionaire, Cracking the Millionaire Code, How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life. You have had so much success in so many areas. What is it that caused you and Crystal to say, “There’s still something out there that the two of us combined can put out into the world,” which is the secret of ask?
She tells me that I’m the master asker of all time. I’m the ninja of asking, maybe even a triple ninja. My parents were Danish immigrants and didn’t have any money. I started buying my clothes at nine years old and learning how to do stuff. I was a Boy Scout and I read the Boy Scout Life Magazine. You could sell greeting cards on consignment. I looked up in my little dictionary what consignment meant. It means I didn’t have to put up any money so I could afford that. I started learning to ask. I asked more neighbors than anyone else. I sold more greeting cards than anyone else. I became the number one ingredient card salesman in America at nine years old. Forty years later, I’m back with the same company, Gibson greeting cards. We sold 897,000 boxes of Christmas cards a year through grocery stores. It’s an amazing full cycle thing. There are two kinds of people in the world, those of us that ask and those who don’t. Most people are afraid and they get stifled and stop toward asking.
It’s an energetic thing that you talk about, that there are three different channels. Let’s talk about the three channels and then let’s talk about those roadblocks to asking. Because if people can walk away from those three tools that the two of you have given, everyone’s going to be making a mad dash to buy the book because it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Would one of you share with us the three channels through which we can ask?
Each one of these is important in and of itself. The three channels are: ask yourself, ask others and ask God. Some of the most important questions you’ll ever ask are the ones you’ll ask herself. When you’re sitting there depressed or have anxiety that’s shutting you down every day or you’ve through a divorce or you’ve lost your job. All of these places, times where we need to start over and often, we don’t see the way to do it. You start with the question and it’s that question you ask yourself that causes an answer. We did a lot of research for this book. There is research done that it ignites the critical thinking part of your brain. When you ask a question of yourself, your brain has to engage in a different way. All of a sudden, you have a new illumination, you have a new solution, you have a new insight, you have a new breakthrough, a different understanding of something. Those self-questions, asking yourself, that is one of the most important parts of the asking journey.
[bctt tweet=”Ask more questions if you want people to like you. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
One of the things I work with people on is if you’re in sales selling yourself or a product, you have to feel that you’re worthy and believe what you’re doing. I tell people, “Start a question off with, “What if?” I believe it taps into our imagination. Do you have an example or a story of someone of a good question we should all be asking ourselves?
We have a friend who we think the world of, Jim Stovall. He was slated to be an NFL player. He had the size and speed. They’d recruited him, he was ready to go. They send them to the medical and they say, “You’re going to go blind.” He’s going blind and can’t do it what his heart’s desire was, and he is in a little 9×12 room with three things. A radio, a television and a telephone and he’s going stir crazy. He goes to the first blind meeting recommended by his parents and he sits next to a woman and he said, “I watched TV in the old days. I love action movies, thrillers but I can’t see something, and now I can’t see the action. I wish somebody would do something about it.” That’s the pivotal question because the lady next to him, also blind, leaned over and said, “Jim, you and I are somebody. Why don’t we do something about it?” They created a business that you and I wouldn’t know as sighted people, but they have fourteen million people watching narrative TV that shows a guy throw a right hook or whatever it is, tire squealing away.
He’s becoming an enormous business guy and very successful because of one question she asked. “We’re somebody, why don’t we do something about it?” He says, “I now write books,” and he wrote a great book that I did the foreword to. He says, “I know write books that I can’t read and I make movies that I can’t watch because Mark told me to make that book a movie.” He wrote three books entitled The Ultimate Gift, The Ultimate Journey and The Ultimate Life. He’s amazing, but he’s a big football player size, blind. He says, “I write books that I can’t read and I make movies that I can’t see.”
We get the power of asking ourselves these potential questions of what could be possible, and then we have to somehow find the courage to ask others to help us, to brainstorm with us to see the best in us. What do you think, Crystal, would be an example or a story of asking other people and overcoming some fears we have of coming across maybe as too pushy or something?
The research shows that people are more than willing to step up and help you, but they don’t help unless you ask. People are wired to connect. We’re wired to help each other. We’re wired to jump in, but people often feel they’re nosy or they don’t want to intrude unless you ask them.
Dreams to Your Destiny: Couples that stay together pray out loud at night and in the morning before they go and do whatever they can do together.
Do you have a story of a time that somebody asked others for either help or insight or support that they had to overcome their own fears of being rejected or feeling pushy?
One of the stories that we tell is, and it’s one of those amazing lessons, one of our friends, Rita Davenport, she’s a journalist. She was a superstar in the network marketing industry. She had created this amazing concept where it was a cooking show. She had this idea to scale it up and she knew what she needed to do. She had the answer. She knew it was successful at a small level. She went to ask the person who would make the decision ultimately and he said no. She lost out on a $3 billion enterprise by not stepping up because somebody else went forward and did the business.
It’s one of those lessons where she found out later, all she had to do was keep going through the channels and keep asking to get her dream. It was heartbreaking for her because there was no way around it. She went to the gentleman later who ended up taking her idea and running with it. She said, “The very least you could have done was shared this with me.” He admitted that it was her dream and her idea, but she was too polite. She was too worried. She thought she had to take no for an answer. The thing about asking is you have to be a fearless asker and keep asking.
What I’m getting is not take rejection personally or be so afraid of rejection that you can’t even ask.
[bctt tweet=”People are more than willing to step up and help you, but they don’t help unless you ask. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
One of the greatest examples of that is our friend, Bob Proctor. We use him as an example of completely transforming from being a very unworthy person. He was raised in poverty and had nothing. Mark probably knows the story better than I do.
He’s told that he’s not good enough. He comes out of the Navy, goes in and becomes a fireman. As a fireman, he was making $4,000 a month. He was married and had three kids. He owed $6,000 a month. Every night after going to the fire department, they went in sat and drink. He looks around the bar and says, “These guys aren’t going anywhere. I need to ask some new questions.” He goes to the richest guy he knows and asked him, “How do you do that?” He says, “If you wanted to be rich, healthy, and successful, you’ve got to ask yourself better questions because better questions are going to get better results.” Fast forward, Bob Proctor, his wife asked him a question because he is in the self-improvement business and one of the giants. I’ve owned two companies with him and I love this guy. I have no idea how wise Socrates and Plato looked, but Bob looks wise when I look at him and listen to him. His wife said, “Bob, what would you do to make $1 billion?” He said, “I never thought of it. I will start sketching on a yellow pad.” He came up with it and he said, “I think we’re going to do it.” He’s 85 years old young.
We ask ourselves, ask others and then we ask God. Whatever that means to people, I think this concept of asking God, people go, “That’s what a prayer is maybe.” I bet the two of you have an opinion and a belief system that we need to ask God, the universe, whatever you want to call it for assistance, guidance or insights, not just at times of crisis or emergencies. I would love either one of you to give me your insights.
When Crystal and I are commencing our dating, we lived in Newport Beach, California. We’d go to a restaurant called Mother’s Market at Costa Mesa. We’re having this great meal and deep, wonderful conversation because we start everything by asking. We inundate each other with questions. The guy sitting at the next table was a white-haired gentleman of some renown, which we didn’t know at the time. He leans over and says, “You guys look like such a delightful a couple. Can I tell you, if you’re going to get married, which I hear you talking about, how to make sure your marriage works forever?” I said, “Yes. Let me ask you, how do you make a marriage work perfectly?” He says, “My whole life I’ve spent with the Billy Graham Organization and we did all the research. Here’s what we discovered. One thing and one thing only. Couples that stay together pray out loud at night and in the morning before they go and do whatever they can do together. They pray for each other. They pray for their family, they pray for their city, their county, their business and then the world.”
I was like, “I don’t know if I can do that.” It seems crazy because I prayed for my whole life. I prayed alone and I prayed in groups at church, but I thought, “I’ve never prayed with my significant other.” I thought, “Can I do this? It seemed awkward,” but it was amazing when we started doing it because it allowed us to come to the same place and put it on all on the line spiritually together. One of the most beautiful things about our relationship is that we do have a deep spiritual belief and practice that we share. We meditate and pray every day. It’s our morning meeting. We start off the day that way. We asked each other what are the most important things that we think we’re going to do with our day will be. We ask each other if there’s anything that’s bothering either of us, things that we need to work on together and work on with our business. We decide together what’s important to us spiritually. We ask for guidance because you can have all the tools and techniques in the world and they’re all wonderful, but sometimes you get to that place where you feel small and alone.
Ask! The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny
Everyone feels this way. I don’t care how successful you are. You’re stuck, you don’t have another place to go. Doesn’t it make sense to go to the Creator of the universe? Whatever your spiritual belief is, there is a Creator of everything beautiful. The same being the creative eyelids, eyelashes, flowers and every color, trees, plants and all the planets in the universe. There’s so much intelligence and wisdom. When you start tapping into that and asking, you feel things changing in your life. Part of that is believing in your question and believing that you deserve an answer, and that’s the faith part. They talk about faith, but you have to have that belief that I am a part of creation and I deserve to ask this question. I deserve the answer and it’s out there for me. Be open to it.
What I know you say, Mark, was it’s not just praying together with your significant other about what you two need and what’s going on in your life, but then the community and the world. It keeps zooming out bigger and bigger. Anyone I’ve ever met who’s had any level of success, every time, it’s consistent. They care about more than what’s going on within their world. You certainly do that. You’re both very involved in a lot of charitable organizations, trying to solve world problems with pollution and all kinds of other things. Thank you, Crystal, for sharing your own hesitation to do that because you’re being true and vulnerable. You let other people think, “I’m not alone in my internal thoughts. This is something I do privately. This is a whole other level of intimacy that I hadn’t even realized.” We’ve touched on some of the roadblocks to asking questions and one of them is the fear of rejection is one. You want to quickly go through what some of those roadblocks are that we might not have talked about yet?
One of the most interesting ones that we found is naiveté. Sometimes we don’t ask because we don’t conceive of what is available to us. We don’t know what’s out there for us. That’s why we encourage everybody to be very curious about the environment around them and about everyone you meet. We all make judgments about everything. We do it because of the efficiency of our brain, we’re trying to get through our day sometimes. Sometimes if we stopped doing that and be intentional about being curious, about things we’re not aware of, other things, other people. The real magic happens and opportunities open up for you that otherwise wouldn’t. I tell a little story about mangoes. It seems like a silly thing, but when my children were young, I hired this lovely Filipino woman to help me. She loved cooking these delightful meals for our family and it was so much fun to have her there with us. One day she’d show up with these fun little groceries and she cut it up and it was this juicy fruit and orangey colored. I was like, “What is this?” She said, “It’s a mango.” I tasted it. I thought it was worldly, but I had never tasted a mango.
I was like, “This is amazing.” I probably wouldn’t have tasted that if she hadn’t brought it to our family. That’s such a little thing, but it’s a small example of a greater principle. That is when we get stuck in our own track and we stop looking, being curious about others, what they do, some of their traditions, what’s out there for us? We cut ourselves off from the resources because we are one another’s resources. That’s why asking is important. It’s funny because there are several studies that show that asking makes you more likable. It seems counterintuitive because we think you don’t ask or be nosy.
[bctt tweet=”Whatever your spiritual belief is, there is a creator of everything beautiful. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Some people are afraid to ask because they think they’ll be perceived as stupid, uninformed or that they don’t know enough. That’s the opposite. It shows that you have humility, being able to ask a question. Being willing to ask a question shows that you’re humble enough to do so. The other part of that is people feel like they’re honored. They’re honored sometimes that you’ll ask them. They’re honored you’re even asking them to do a favor. People feel honored that you would want their opinion. Another study showed that by asking, you’re more likely to get asked out on another date in a dating scenario.
I asked her to marry me a lot of times before she did. At our wedding, one of our dear friends, Matt Ferry, wrote a great song for us.
It was called Say Yes Again. It was the funniest thing because when he interviewed us because he wanted to write this song about our wedding and he said, “How did you ask her?” Mark said, “I’ve asked her a whole bunch of times.” He’s like, “Why do you keep asking her if she already said yes?” He said, “I want to hear her say yes again.”
He’s not a famous singer because he does another business. He spontaneously offered it and it was wonderful. When Crystal and I met, she gets done with the wine on her white pants. I said, “Have you eaten yet?” She said, “No.” I said, “Me either.” It’s 9:00, I said, “I can’t stay here because there are 1,000 people that all want two minutes with me at least. That’s not going to work. We’re at a dysfunctional get-together. Can I drive you off the property?” We go to the top restaurant in Hollywood, which you would know, and the line was still long and I thought, “$100 wouldn’t get us in.” We walk up and Crystal is ravishingly beautiful. The guy says, “I give up. Who is she?” Being a good butt-crusher, “You don’t recognize her?” He says, “No. Who is she?” I said, “She’s the queen of Denmark.” He said, “She’s the queen of Denmark? She is. Who are you?” I said, “Who travels with the queen.” That fast, we had the best table in the house.
The book is called Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny, written by two powerful loving people that have put their energy into this book to make an impact in the world. I want to encourage everyone to get it. Thank you both for being a guest.
[bctt tweet=”Sometimes, we don’t ask because we don’t conceive of what is available to us. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Thank you. If they want, we’d like to give them a free gift of an audiotape I did, which is the most listened audiotape in the world. Originally by Earl Nightingale, updated 50 years by me called The Strangest Secret. If they go to MarkVictorHansen.com, it just says, “Click here,” and you’ll have it. We’d like everyone to have it.
What a great generous gift. You keep giving. That’s in MarkVictorHansen.com. Get your free gift right there. Go to Amazon and order, Ask! by Mark and Crystal Hansen.
John, we thank you for asking us to be here.
We appreciate it.
It was a big ask and you said yes. Thank you both.
Important Links
- Ask!: The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny
- Mark Victor Hansen
- Crystal Dwyer Hansen
- Skinny Life: The Real Secret to Being Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit
- Pure Thoughts for Pure Results
- The One Minute Millionaire
- Cracking the Millionaire Code
- How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life
- The Ultimate Gift
- The Ultimate Journey
- The Ultimate Life
- Rita Davenport
- Bob Proctor
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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The Successful Speaker With Grant Baldwin
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
In this increasingly competitive global environment, it is so tempting to become everything to everyone. However, the guest for this episode, Grant Baldwin, begs to disagree. He believes that you should be known for one thing, that you should be a steak house and not the buffet. This is one of the great reasons why Grant is the success that he is. He is the Founder of The Speaker Lab and the author of a new book called The Successful Speaker. Grant takes us inside the contents of his book and shares with us some great tips on how you can become one. Extending that not only to becoming a speaker but to growing your existing business as well, he then highlights the importance of working with what you got and improving as you go.
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Listen to the podcast here
The Successful Speaker With Grant Baldwin
Our guest is Grant Baldwin, who is the Founder of The Speaker Lab, which is a training company that helps public speakers learn how to find and book speaking gigs. Through his popular podcast, The Speaker Lab, and flagship coaching program booked and paid to speak, he has coached and worked with thousands of speakers as a keynote speaker himself. He has delivered nearly 1,000 presentations to over 500,000 people in 47 states. He’s keynoted for events ranging as large as 13,000 people. Grant has also been featured in national media including Forbes, Entrepreneur and has composed his book, which we’re going to be talking about, The Successful Speaker: Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid and Building Your Platform. Grant, welcome to the show.
Thanks, John. I appreciate you letting me hang out with you.
You and I have known each other for a while. I’ve always been impressed with your branding and your messaging. I don’t know if most people will get this right away, but I want to say authenticity. You are somebody that cares about the people that you work with. I would love you to take us back. You can go back to childhood. You could go back to school, wherever you want. Did you grow up with a microphone in your hand saying, “I want to be a speaker?” How did that all start?
I was involved in my local church in high school and my youth pastor had a big impact on my life. He was a great speaker and that resonated with me. That was a path I wanted to pursue. I went to college. In fact, in college, I worked for a guy who was a full-time speaker. I got to see a little bit behind the scenes of travel, booking, logistics, details and contracts helping him. I worked at a local church as a youth pastor. I had a lot of opportunities to speak there. I was speaking on a weekly basis to students, but also I’d speak on the weekends from time to time and had some at-bats, some reps there.
Speaking is one of those things that I felt I was decent at. There was something there I wanted to do more of and ultimately decided I want to pursue a career as a speaker. I found myself in a spot where a lot of people maybe who are reading, who are going like, “I like speaking. I felt like I had the potential, but I needed the plan.” Meaning like I was a decent speaker. I wanted to do more. I have no idea what to do. How do you find gigs? How much do you charge? Who hires speakers? How does that world work?
[bctt tweet=”Be the steakhouse, not the buffet. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
At the time, there weren’t a lot of resources teaching that. I was stalking every possible speaker I could, trying to understand the ins and outs of the speaking world. Eventually, I figured out a few things. I was able to book a few gigs and got to the point where over the next several years, I was doing 60 to 70 gigs per year. I loved it. It was awesome. I had a great experience. I had a lot of people who were asking me, “Grant, I want to be a speaker. I want to do that. How do I do what you have done?”
I felt like we had built some good systems and processes. We’re able to teach what we had known and learned from being out on the road and learning that world. That’s what we started doing more and more. That’s what we do within The Speaker Lab is we teach people how do you find and book speaking gigs. That’s what the book is all about. That’s the core of what we do. We’ve been in the speaking industry for several years. It’s a phenomenal industry, an opportunity to make an income and to make an impact on people.
Income and impact, who doesn’t want that? What is great about what you’re doing and sharing with us is even if you happen to be reading this thinking, “I’d love to be a speaker. This is going to be great,” or “I don’t think I want to be a speaker. Is there something here for me?” I want to let anybody know there is and it’s the systems in place. Whether you’re building a business as a speaker or wanting to figure out a system to help grow your existing business, you’re the man when it comes to dialing in a way to figure out what’s working, what’s not working and how to grow and without stress, frustration. This is for everyone who is in any entrepreneurial business, in my opinion.
One of the nice things about speaking as you all know is there’s no right or wrong amount to do it. There are speakers who, like me, do 70-some gigs, 100-plus gigs a year, and that’s what they want. 99% of their business is about speaking, which is fine. Other speakers who would say, “I’m a coach. I’m a consultant or I have a full-time job or I have other things happening. I don’t want to speak 100 times a year. That’s crazy. I wouldn’t mind speaking five times a year or ten times a year and I still don’t know. How do you find those gigs? How much do you charge? How does that world work? How does speaking fit into my business?” Whether you want to speak a ton or little, in addition, as entrepreneurs, I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs reading that we’ll talk through the importance of positioning and making sure that you are finding the right people and positioned properly, which isn’t applicable to speakers. It’s true for anybody in any business. I’m sure there will be a lot that we’ll dig into. They’ll be relevant to anybody.
In the book, The Successful Speaker, you open up with my sweet spot, which is figuring out what problem you’re solving, who do you help and what problem do you solve. You have to have that focus and an interest in the industry for people to go, “You’re my go-to speaker on this.” One of the things I say, and I would love your opinion on this, is the better you can describe a problem, the better the potential client that might be hiring you for a speaker’s product or service. You have their solution because you understand their problems. What are your thoughts on that?
That’s true. This is the challenge that a lot of speakers have is that we enjoy speaking. John, for you and I, speaking is fun. We enjoy it. We want to do a lot of it. We are not biased whenever it comes to speaking opportunities. “Who do you speak to?” “I speak to humans. I speak to anybody. Whoever wants me to talk, I’m in. What do you want me to speak about? I can speak about anything. I can speak about teamwork, motivation, leadership, culture, change, marriage, parenting, family or finances.” I was like, “No, you can’t. You cannot do all those things.”
One of the most important things that a speaker can do is be narrow, clear, focused and say, “I do this. I serve this type of audience and I help them in this particular way versus trying to be all things for all people.” One of these we talk about in the book is that you want to be positioned as the steakhouse and not the buffet. What do we mean by that? If we were going to grab a steak, we have a choice. We could go to a buffet where steak is 1 of 100 different things that they offer or we could go to a steak house where they do that one thing well and they are the go-to place for that.
The Successful Speaker: Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid and Building Your Platform
By making a decision, by choosing we do steak, we don’t do tacos, lasagna, pizza. By doing that, by making that decision, it makes it easier for the right customers to find them and also to repel the wrong customers versus trying to be all things for all people. The narrower, the clearer, the more focused you are, we think it’s the opposite. We think that the more things I can talk about, the more audiences I can speak to, the more people I can relate to, the more opportunities I can have. The truth is the narrower, the clearer, the more focused you are, it’s counter-intuitive. The more focused you are, the easier it is to find gigs.
What you’re doing there is breaking through the clutter, be the steak house and not the buffet. When you and I worked together a couple of years ago, you have this background where you’ve had to pitch at agencies, which represent big clients like Lexus to figure out how to get them to put an ad on your website or your magazine. That’s your niche. As I kept thinking and hearing your words in my head, I found out that an architecture firm has a similar situation. It’s a final three. They have to go in and pitch against their competitors.
It’s the same thing for lawyers, executive search firms, real estate, tech, anybody who has to pitch against two final competitors in a face-to-face, you get a chance to pitch your story. That’s my niche, an audience of that. Now that I figured that out, it’s helped so much that storytelling is the new way to win new business when you have to compete against your competitors. They get that. I’m sure you have a story of focus. Before we go into the other chapters, which are valuable, I want to hear a story of another speaker you’ve helped find their niche or your own niche.
I’ll give you an example of a speaker we worked with in a similar spot to you a few years ago. They came to us and said, “I’m later in my career. I’m interested in speaking. I want to do a lot of speaking. I’m trying to figure out who I speak to, what I speak about.” I said, “Let’s talk about your background. Let’s talk about some low-hanging fruit. What’s a world that you already know?” This guy lived in Colorado. He was a successful realtor. He said he’d been a realtor for 30-some years. He had been on the board for the Colorado Realtors Association. He had served in various capacities in that way.
I said, “Here’s an idea. Let’s start with realtors because that’s a world you already know,” versus saying like, “I’m speaking in this world, but I want to speak to some unrelated field that I know nothing about or that I’m not connected to them.” In that space, it makes it easier for him to find gigs because he knows the Colorado Realtors Association. There are 49 other associations in other states with the same group of people. He knows how they work, how they operate, and how decisions are made. He knows how their events are planned. He knows who’s making those decisions on speakers. He already knows that world so start there. You don’t have to stay there forever but start there because that’s the low-hanging fruit. There are a lot of people like that. “I don’t want to limit myself to realtors.” Focusing on limiting yourself does make it easier so that you’re not trying to do all things for all people.
You have the credibility to the audience. You’ve been in their shoes as I like to say. Let’s jump into step two that you have. I want to ask two of the questions in here. What should people do before they step on stage? What should they do after they’re done?
Before you step on stage, you need to make sure you’re prepared. That means that the best speakers on the planet, they don’t scribble a couple of thoughts in a napkin, hop up there and hope it magically works out. They have spent hours and hours practicing, rehearsing, going over their material. By the point that they get on stage, they are ready, set to go, prepared, comfortable and confident. That’s one of the best things you can do. That is low-hanging fruit for any speaker to be able to do is to practice, to go over it over and over. That’s one of the things that you want to make sure you do before you get up on stage.
After you finish a talk, there are a couple of things that you can do. One is to take a deep breath. You did it and you finished. It’s tiring. It can be mentally and emotionally exhausting. You finished, take a deep breath. You also want to make sure that you connect with the event planner, the client and talk to them. Make sure that you tell them, “Thank you.” I always like to write a handwritten thank you card that I give to the client. I have that in my bag that I make sure I give to them right away. I try to connect with them. I asked them how it went, any feedback that they’ve got. I also want to make myself available to talk with other attendees. A lot of times after you get off stage, people want to talk to you.
[bctt tweet=”One of the most important things that a speaker can do is be narrow, clear, and focus. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Either they want to meet you, they want to shake your hand, they want to tell you a quick story. They want to say, “Ask your question.” Any number of things can happen at that moment. You want to make yourself available because one, depending on your business model, that’s also the type of thing that can lead to additional business. People say, “I loved your talk. Can you come to my company? Can you come to my event? I’m a part of a committee that we’re starting to look for speakers on this and I want to talk more about you. Are you available on this date? What do you charge?” It’s good opportunities for you to connect with attendees off the stage. It’s a casual environment. Those are a few ideas of what you would want to do, make sure you do, before and after a talk.
Certainly, I’m a big supporter of everything you said. For example, even if you’ve been hired to speak to one company, we spoke to a law firm back east and afterward, one of the lawyers came up to me. He goes, “Now I realize I don’t have to be a pushy salesperson. I can start telling stories. My wife works at a tech company. They’d love to have you come talk to them.” You never know where the referrals are going to come from.
It’s not like something I say a lot is you have no idea who’s in the audience. I’ll give you two stories about this. One of my first big breaks as a speaker, I was doing any possible gigs I could. A friend of mine referred me a gig and this was something that was a couple of hours away. It was a small little state conference and they had $500. I was like, “Let’s do it.” It’s not bad. I went and I did that. It went fine. I probably broke even financially on it, but there was a lady that was there who was the wife of the national director of that entire association and organization. She came up to me right after and she said, “You are phenomenal. I’m going to tell my husband about you. I’m going to tell him he needs to hire you.”
I had zero clue she was going to be there. I had zero clue until even afterward, she came and introduced herself. Sure enough, the guy followed up with me a week or two later and said, “We want to book you.” He booked me for several events that worked out well. When I got started as a former youth pastor, I did a lot of speaking with high school students and colleges. I was speaking at a high school in North Dakota. It went well. One of the students came up to me afterward and she said, “My grandpa runs this conference. I already texted him and told him during your talk that you are doing a great job and he needs to have you come to speak.” I had zero clue who’s in the audience, zero clue what that will lead to. Those are opportunities where you show up, you do a good job, you connect with the audience and that leads to other opportunities in the marketplace.
The next step is establishing your expertise by developing a speaker brand. That’s my songbook from my years of advertising. Part of having a great brand, whether you’re a speaker or anything, for people to say, “You’re the X, Y, Z person.” For example, people say to me, “Have a tagline.” I help people turn case studies into case stories and that allows them to become revenue rock stars. There are a lot of soundbites that even if they don’t 100% understand it, they’re at least intrigued to want to know more. What are your tips on developing a speaker brand?
I totally agree that this goes back to being clear that I do this one thing well. For example, I heard this analogy, if you went into the kitchen and you had let’s say ten cans of beans, you went to your utensil drawer, what would you be looking for? You’d be looking for a can opener. One thing that solves one specific problem versus, “Here’s a measuring tool. Here’s a spatula,” those things are great, but they serve different purposes. Be known for this one thing. For example, for me within The Speaker Lab, what we do for speakers, a lot of people who come to us who are interested in speakers are also interested in writing a book, publishing, podcasting, coaching or consulting.
The Successful Speaker: Making the decision to narrow down makes it easier for the right customers to find you and also to repel the wrong customers.
I had someone literally message me and said, “You run The Speaker Lab. Have you ever thought about creating The Author Lab?” There are plenty of opportunities for other things that we could do. What we’ve done is say, “No, we do this for speakers and that’s it.” We don’t do anything else. By being focused, hopefully when people think of Grant or they think of The Speaker Lab or they’re saying, “I want to be a speaker. You need to talk to Grant. You need to talk to The Speaker Lab because they do this one thing that solves a problem you’re looking for,” versus, “I think they do this. I’m not entirely sure. It’s a flavor of the month thing. They may be on something totally different now.” You don’t want to be positioned like that as a speaker or as an entrepreneur. Be focused on solving one specific problem for one specific person.
You also talk about it’s part of the expertise, getting a great demo video. I’ve heard if you want to get paid $10,000 to speak, you should be investing $10,000 in a demo video. You’ve spoken in front of such large audiences that typically require two cameras and making sure your sound is good. What are your tips on how people can get a great demo video? What do you think a great demo video consists of?
Let’s describe what the demo video is. Think of it as a movie trailer. You think about a movie in general. A movie is let’s say 90 minutes, 2 hours, and they condense it down to 2 or 3 minutes to give someone a taste of what the movie is about. The point of the movie trailer and the point of the demo video is to make people want to see more. When my wife and I go to the movies and we’re watching a movie trailer before the movie starts, immediately we’re turning to each other like, “That looks good. We’ve got to see that,” or within the first 30 seconds we’re like, “That’s not for me.” Not that it’s a bad movie, but it’s not what we’re looking for.
You’re trying to do the same type of thing with your demo video. Most event planners, they don’t need to see your entire talk to determine whether or not you’re a good speaker or whether or not you’re a good fit. They want to see a couple of minutes. Take your talk and boil it down to 2 or 3 minutes. That gives people a sense of what it’s like for you to speak on stage, to interact with the audience of what you talk about. That’s what people want to see before they’re willing to hire you.
The other thing that you want to remember is that event planners are in the risk mitigation business. When they put you on stage, you are representing them. They don’t want to put you on stage if you’re going to do or say something that’s going to be embarrassing or it’s going to be inappropriate or it’s going to be wrong or factually incorrect. You want to make sure that you give them something so that whenever they decide, “Yes, I trust this person. I know this person. They’re going to do a good job. We feel comfortable putting them on stage and paying them money to talk to our audience or people.”
You want to make sure that they have something there that they can go off of. When you’re creating a demo video, if you have amazing footage and high-quality footage from all these events, that’s awesome. A lot of people don’t have that. What I would remind you is to work with what you’ve got and improve as you go. At this point in my career, I’ve had probably 6 or 7 different demo videos. The new version is much better than the first version. I didn’t have that footage initially. You work with what you’ve got. You improve as you go.
[bctt tweet=”The more focused you are in what you do, the easier it is to find gigs. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Remember that and realize that whatever video you’re creating, do it with excellence, but it’s not your permanent video. You may do a gig in a few months and get better footage out of that. You can parlay into a newer demo video that’s more reflective of who you are as a speaker, which you speak about higher quality footage, but you don’t have that footage yet. Don’t worry about that. You’ll get that footage at some point. Work with what you’ve got and improve as you go.
That’s a great line as well as reduce the risk for the people who hire you. I love both of those as great soundbites for people to take away. I talk about the concept of letting go, being a perfectionist and become a progressionist, which is someone who celebrates their progress. If you’re a speaker, you have to have that mindset and you’ll drive yourself crazy if you think everything has to be perfect right off the get-go. I know this is step four that everyone has been waiting, salivating to know about. It’s like, “Grant, I get it, but how do I get a paid speaking gig? What should I charge?”
Let’s talk about both of those. One, let’s make up the point here. You mentioned this is the fourth step in the process that we teach, but this is the core of what people are interested in. It’s like, “I want to know how to book gigs.” It’s important to reiterate that you have to have these other foundational pieces in place first. If someone says, “I want to book gigs. That’s cool. Who do you speak to? What’s the problem that you solve? I can speak whatever. I want to book gigs. Do you have a website or video? No, I don’t need those things. I just want to book gigs.” It’s like you have to have these other pieces in place first before you get there.
There are a couple of ideas anybody can do for booking gigs. One is to make sure you let everyone in your sphere of influence know that you’re a speaker and what it is that you speak about. You may be thinking like, “Nobody in my sphere of influence. My family, friends, colleagues, none of them hire speakers.” That’s fine. That’s not the point. The point is that they may know someone who is looking for a speaker. They may be aware of someone or someone in the next few months may ask, “This is random, but do you know anyone who’s a speaker on this topic?” “I do.” If people don’t know that you’re a speaker, they won’t think to recommend you. You’ll need to get it on top of mind and get it on people’s radars.
Another thing that you can do is that you can spend some time googling and looking for events. When you’re looking for events, most of them are already planning on hiring a speaker. You don’t have to convince them to hire a speaker. Most conferences and events are planning on hiring a speaker, whether it’s you or someone else. You can begin to reach out to them though and show them why you are a good fit. Inside the book, we walk through systematically what you want to do, how you want to go about doing this. Creating a website and a video and saying, “I’m going to put my video up, sit back and wait for the phone to ring or an email to come in.” It doesn’t work like that. Speaking is a momentum business. You have to be proactive in building some of that momentum.
The Successful Speaker: Work with what you’ve got and improve as you go.
Another thing you could do is to build relationships with other speakers. Whenever I went back my first year, full-time as a speaker, I looked up like, “I booked all these gigs. Where do they come from?” I’m trying to reverse engineer so how can I do more of that?” My largest source of gigs came from other speakers. By doing that, when you’re connecting with other speakers, what happens is, let’s say I show up and do a great job at an event. Most of the time they don’t want to have me back for a couple of years. Even if I do a great job, they want some new speakers. They want some new faces.
They want the audience to turn over. If I can say, “I would love to work with you again in a few years. In the meantime, let me introduce you to John. John would be a great fit for your event,” or let’s say that I get an inquiry for an event that I wasn’t interested in. If I’m able to say, “I’m not a good fit for it, let me introduce you to Tom. Tom would be a great fit.” Let’s say I’m not available on a date or the budget isn’t right. If I’m able to say, “Here, you need to talk to this person or this person,” it creates a win both for the client and for the other speakers and for myself.
I recommend that you also network with other speakers. Also, be aware that most other speakers aren’t going to recommend you unless they have seen you or know you personally. Remember, if they recommend you, their reputation is on the line. If you show up and you do a great job, whoever recommended you or referred to you, looks like the hero. If you showed up and sucked, it reflects poorly on them. If someone were to message me and say, “Can you recommend me?” I’d be like, “I’m not going to do that.” If I know you, I know you’re speaking actively, I’ve seen your video and I know you and trust you, I’m going to be a lot more confident and say, “You need to talk to this person. They would be great for that event.”
This concept of letting everyone in your sphere know that you’re a speaker. I have done that and using social media. I have a short little story about people who may not think about using social media as a way to let everybody know they have a speaker. Every time I give a talk or I post it, I post a picture of me speaking. I love doing this. Here’s what I learned or here’s the takeaway. I had a client that was at the Cosmopolitan Hotel when I was selling ads a few years ago and she went to work at The Venetian. We’ve kept in touch on social media, not like a regular basis, but she reached out to me. She said, “We want to hire you to speak to The Venetian sales team. I’ve been watching your transition from selling ads to being a keynote speaker for the last few years. We think you’re the right person for us.” You never know unless you’re getting tons of likes and comments, if anybody even sees your social media posts. I thought what you said there and having an example of getting a booking from that underlines the value of what you’re talking about.
Here’s the way to think about it is if you’re a realtor, for example, you are trying to catch people at a moment when they don’t experience that often. What I mean by that is most people only buy or sell a home a few times in their lifetime. As a realtor, you’re trying to be top of mind when someone’s like, “We’ve been thinking about talking to a realtor. Let’s see what our home would be worth,” or “We’re considering moving. Let’s see if we can get a couple of ideas of what houses are available in that neighborhood.” You’re trying to be top of mind. All of the social proof that you’re showing there like you’re talking about, I’m posting pictures of me speaking, of me traveling to speak, of me on stage, of me interacting with an audience or sitting backstage or working on my talk. Hopefully, when someone decides that one small period of a year where they’re looking for speakers and considering speakers that they think, “This guy, John, he is a friend of mine. I’ve known him for a few years in the past. He seems like he’s doing a lot of speaking.” You’ve planted some seeds there that have kept you top of mind with them whenever they’re ready to look for a speaker.
[bctt tweet=”People do business with people they know, like, and trust. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
The same thing is true for a car. The car companies have to advertise all the time because you’re not in the market for a new car every day. It’s the same thing as a speaker. In the book, The Successful Speaker, you talk about closing the deal. This is a huge takeaway for anyone whether they’re in the speaking business or not. Typically, I’m sure you’ve experienced this, an event planner will say, “We’ve looked at your website. We watched your demo reel. We’ve read your book even. We want to have a conversation with you. It’s between you and two other speakers,” which ironically for me is what I ended up doing to help them win new business. I said to a client, “You realize I had to sell myself to get in front of you. I’m helping you be the one that gets picked.” What are your tips on closing the deal? Let’s start as a speaker.
A few things come to mind. One is typically the initial interactions that are going to happen over email. Either they reach out or you reach out, “Are you available on this date? What do you speak about? I came across your video. It looks cool,” that type of thing. As soon as possible, you want to get someone on the phone. You want to remember that that business happens over the phone and people do business with people they know, like, and trust. You cannot build that in time of rapport and connection than you can over email. I want to get that person on the phone as quickly as possible.
The other thing I want to make sure that I do is I want to give them a precursor of what it’s like to work with me as a speaker and here’s what I mean by that. Whenever they email, I don’t want them to have to wait a couple of days for me to email back. I want to email back immediately. When they have a question, I’m picking up and calling right away. Whenever they are needing something, I’m responding, “Can you send us this?” Right away, I’m sending it to them. One of the things that they are hiring you to do is to stand on stage and deliver a talk.
The other thing that they are hiring you to do is to be good to work with because if you’re great on stage, but you’re a pain in the butt to work with. By pain in the butt, I don’t mean prima donna or diva and, “I need this European imported water at a certain temperature or a jar of red Skittles.” What I mean is you’re unorganized. You’re sloppy, you lack professionalism, you dropped the ball on areas. They ask you to be at a soundcheck at 8:00 AM and you come stumbling in at 8:15, late and unapologetic. You don’t want to be that speaker.
You want to make their life simple. When someone is planning an event or working on an event, a speaker is 1 of 1,000 moving pieces and balls that they are trying to juggle. The easier you can be to work with, the easier you can make their life, the more likely they’re going to want to be to work with you. I’ll give you an example. When I was doing a lot of speaking, I would always ask for these recommendation letters and these testimonials. Oftentimes, we would give these recommendation letters and testimonials from clients and they would say something like, “Grant was awesome to work with on stage. He did a great job. Our audience loved him, but we loved Lisa. Lisa was amazing.” They’d go on and on about Lisa. Who’s Lisa? Lisa was the administrator who helped me behind the scenes.
She was all the details, the contracts, the travel and logistics. They went on and on about Lisa. They never met with Lisa. Lisa wasn’t on stage speaking. Lisa would be answering emails and working with them. Lisa was important to what we did though because it was the experience more than the speaker. That’s one thing that an event planner, all things being equal, if they’re like, “We found that this speaker got back to us quickly. They were easier to work with and quick to respond to things. They were nice, polite, courteous and professional. All things being equal. My hat tips to that speaker because they are on top of things.” I’ll give you another example.
We were updating some insurance. I got three different quotes. As I’m getting quotes, one is you’re comparing the pricing but you’re also comparing like how are each of these people to work with? One of them who had an okay price corresponded through email, they had some generic answers and questions. It didn’t seem like they were that engaged. The other two, they did calls with me. They followed up. They were consistent about it. Those are things on my mind as a buyer that I’m thinking about before I make that decision. One thing I would say is understanding the buying cycle and the sales cycle for speakers. Most event planners aren’t going to reach out and say, “We’re looking for a speaker on this date. Are you available? Yes, you are? Great, let’s book it.”
You said, “A lot of times, it’s a committee.” We’re reviewing other speakers or considering a few things. You always want to figure out what their next step is and follow-up based on that. I never want to say, “When does your committee meet?” “Our committee meets in two weeks and we’ll get back with you.” “I hope you think of me.” Don’t do that. I always ask them, “Do you mind if I follow-up with you two weeks before and after your committee meeting?” “Sure. That’s fine.” They don’t think you’re going to do it. Whenever you do, it gives them another example of this is what it’s like to work with me. I want to figure out if they say we’re going to meet two weeks from this day, I’m going to make a note to follow-up before the committee meeting.
The Successful Speaker: You can do all the things, but you can’t do all the things at once.
“I know that your committee meeting is tomorrow. I want to touch base and make sure you had everything you needed from me.” I want to touch base with them afterward. “I know that your committee met yesterday. I wanted to circle back and see if there’s anything else that you needed or how it went. If you guys were able to make a decision on anything.” I care. I’m prepared. I’m professional, but it’s also like I’m asking them for a decision versus saying like, “I hope you think of me.” Finalizing this insurance thing is important, but it’s not urgent. It’s on my list, but it’s not super important. If the guy that I decided on emailed me, it’d be a lot simpler for me to be like, “Let’s go with you,” versus me like, “I’ve got to find his email. I’ve got to follow-up with him.” Be proactive and follow-up makes a huge difference.
Proactive is my big takeaway. Talk about being easy to work with, sometimes that happens minutes before you go on stage. The event planner can come up to you and say, “John, I know we asked you to speak for an hour, but we’re running far behind. Can you cut your talk down to 45 minutes?” You can’t be a diva and go, “No. Every moment of my talk is precious,” or “I don’t know what I’ll cut.” “No problem,” is the correct answer there. Let’s talk about fees. How does a speaker go from let’s say $10,000 to $15,000 to even higher fees? You talk about scaling. When do you know it’s time to go for a higher fee?
There are a lot of variables that go into this and this is much more of an art than a science. A couple of thoughts, one is a shortcut answer for the speaker. If you’re in that above $10,000 range, this doesn’t work as well. It starts to break down a little bit. We do have a free speaker fee calculator that people can mess around with. If you go to MySpeakerFee.com, you answer 7 or 8 different questions and it will tell you what you should be charging as a speaker. Let me give you a couple of the variables that go into that may help you understand the thought process behind it. One is going to be your industry. You can charge more in some industries versus others.
You can charge more speaking to corporations versus nonprofits. You can charge more speaking to colleges versus elementary schools. Not that one is better or worse than the other. There are different budgets available for different industries. Recognize that there’s going to be ceilings in certain industries. For example, for me, I originally did a lot of speaking to high school students and high school conferences. No matter how much I would want to be a $20,000 speaker in that market, it’s not happening. They don’t pay speakers. They pay speakers well but not $20,000 well.
I have to recognize some industries are going to pay more than others. Another factor in the variable is going to be your experience. If you are a brand-new speaker getting started, you typically won’t be able to charge as much as someone who’s been doing this for a long time because most likely they have more at-bats, they have more reps and they’re a better speaker. Another variable you touched on is your marketing materials, your website and your video. If someone is looking at your stuff versus two other speakers and you’re all charging the same amount, your stuff better looks on par because whether we like it or not, people judge books by their covers. You need to make sure that your stuff looks professional, that it looks sharp, that people look at it and they’re like, “This is a quality speaker based on the website and the video.”
The other variable and factor that you want to consider about when you should raise fees are thinking about supply and demand. What kind of speaker that you want to be? Are you a speaker who says, “I want to do 100 gigs a year,” or someone that says, “I want to do 5 or 10 gigs a year?” A way to think about this is if you were to book a hotel room in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, December 31st, you are going to pay an astronomical amount of money for that because of supply and demand. You can book the exact same room on January 5th and you’re going to pay a fraction of the price because of supply and demand. You have to recognize for yourself if you say, “My goal is to do twenty gigs a year and I’m having a hard time hitting those twenty,” it’s probably not the right time to increase your fees.” Versus if you say, “I’m hitting those twenty and I have to turn down stuff and every time I quote this fee, nobody is budging at all.” Everyone’s like, “Yeah, that’s not a problem at all.” You probably have more room in the market.
Another thing you can do is also to compare notes with other speakers, speakers that I’m consistently speaking with at other events. It’s not uncommon for speakers to compare notes of, “What are you charging now? What are you getting for most events?” To get a sense of like, “I’m way undercharging or way overcharging.” You’re trying to get a feel of the landscape, not just across the board but for your market, for your audience, for your type of event. Those are a couple of variables to go into, but again, most speakers I’d recommend that you start with MySpeakerFee.com. Go to that speaker fee calculator and that’ll help you out.
The last thing I want to ask you about is this concept of diversifying your income stream. A lot of speakers have a book. Sometimes the clients like to buy copies of my book and I sign them after the talk. I’d even come out with an online course based on the book that the more options you give a client to say, “We can buy your book. We can buy the online course,” that keeps it going after your talk. The more value you’re creating for people. I wanted to talk about your ideas for all of that.
The reality is this message that I’m sharing from the stage and helping people, speaking is one methodology for that, but there are certainly others. A lot of people who are interested in speaking are also interested in writing a book, doing a blog, a podcast, a course, coaching, or consulting. One of the things we talk about in the book is you can do all the things, but you can’t do all the things at once. Something is going to come first, something is going to come last. One of the best things that you can do is to be focused and say, “I help people in this way and this way.” That’s it. I look at our business within The Speaker Lab.
There are a lot of things we could do that we don’t do or we leave money on the table. It’s an intentional choice if we’re going to focus on this and this but nothing else versus trying to do all of these shiny objects because other people do them. We don’t do live events. We don’t do much one-on-one coaching. We don’t do any masterminds. There’s nothing wrong with all those things. They are all great. We choose not to do them. We’re intentional about it. The same thing is true for you as a speaker. You have to say, “I’m going to do speaking and I’m also going to do a book maybe and that’s it.” That’s fine, but I’m not trying to do everything for everyone. It’d be clear on this is how I’m going to serve people and this is the best way for me to do that.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge. The book again is called The Successful Speaker. Thanks, Grant.
Thanks, John. I appreciate it.
Important Links
- The Speaker Lab
- The Speaker Lab – Podcast
- The Successful Speaker: Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid and Building Your Platform
- MySpeakerFee.com
- http://GrantBaldwin.com/
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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