Surviving the Side Hustle

E101 - From Teacher to Tycoon: How Stage Speaking Builds Empire

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 101

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What if the fastest path to growing your business isn't spending more on ads or mastering social media algorithms, but rather standing on stages and telling your story in a way that naturally attracts ideal clients? 

Meet Dr. Danny Brassell, known as "Jim Carrey with a PhD," who has spoken to over 3,500 audiences worldwide and authored 19 books. After losing everything in 2005 to a real estate seminar scam, Danny discovered speaking as both his financial lifeline and his passion. During one of America's worst economic downturns, he built a thriving speaking business that attracted coaching clients eager to learn his secrets.

Danny reveals the Well-Crafted Story process he developed with his business partners – a framework that differs radically from typical speaking training. Rather than forcing speakers to share traumatic life stories, he helps entrepreneurs craft presentations that leave audiences feeling uplifted while naturally drawing them toward working together. His "Five C's" approach (Clarity, Connect, Content, Call to Action, Close) transforms speaking from a nerve-wracking experience into a strategic business development tool.

You'll discover why speaking is a trainable skill anyone can master with practice, how to avoid the biggest mistakes most speakers make, and why filming your audience (not yourself) provides the most valuable feedback. Danny shares ninja strategies for keeping audiences engaged, planting your offer naturally throughout your presentation, and creating a powerful close that resonates emotionally.

Whether you're just starting to consider speaking as a marketing strategy or looking to enhance your existing talks, this episode provides actionable insights to help you convert more audiences into clients. Danny generously offers listeners a free Well-Crafted Story Blueprint at freestoryguide.com – a tool that takes the guesswork out of structuring presentations that convert.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back and welcome to another episode of Surviving the Side Hustle. Today's episode, we've got Dr Danny Brassell. I'm excited to introduce him to you guys because he is a highly sought-after speaker, trainer and coach. He's known as Jim Carrey, with a PhD. Dr Danny has spoken to over 3,500 audiences worldwide and he's authored 19 books, including Leadership Begins with Motivation and Misfits and Crackpots. The co-founder of the Well-Crafted Story Workshop, danny helps entrepreneurs, individuals and organizations leverage speaking on stages as a major client lead source that converts. I'm excited to hear about that, about your story and so much more. So, dr Danny Brassell, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thanks so much for that kind introduction, rob, and, more importantly, thanks for spreading some joy in the world. We need a lot more of you, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I appreciate it. I'm excited to have you on, I'm looking forward to kind of diving in and I would love to just kind of kick things off with the Jim Carrey with a PhD Pretty cool name.

Speaker 2:

Somebody who's actually you said you're in Connecticut. It was actually a teacher in Connecticut gave me that moniker he's better than AI. I'll use that moniker.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's pretty awesome Cool. And Connecticut, yeah, awesome, Love, love the locals, local area and everything. And before you were talking you're out in Denver and you travel all over the world for speaking and things like that. Could you share a little bit about, I guess, where you're at currently with all the different adventures that you've got on your plate?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I guess if I was going to write an autobiography, rob, it would be called Pivots, because I feel like I've already lived nine lives. 30 years ago I was a journalist covering President Bush Sr in the 1992 presidential election. I loved my job. I got to meet every editor of every major daily in America and one editor offered me the city beat for $16,500 a year. Meanwhile, a buddy told me they were hiring teachers in South Central Los Angeles for $25,000 a year in the inner city. So I became an educator for the noblest of reasons, rob, for the high pay, and I fell in love with teaching. Actually, I taught all age levels, from preschoolers all the way up to rocket scientist. I can make that claim because I used to teach English as a second language to engineering students at the University of Southern California English as a second language to engineering students at the University of Southern California.

Speaker 2:

And in 2005, my wife and I attended a real estate seminar which turned out to be a scam and we lost everything. And I could give you the woe is me story, but I'm a positive person. I learned a lot from that experience. First of all, my wife is my soulmate. I put her through the ringer and she stood right by me. She's an incredible human being. Second of all, I learned that money's not the end all be all, because you can lose it just like that. Third, I try not to judge other people, because if I was somebody looking at what I had done, I would have said well, you deserve that. But now I realize if you don't know everything about a person, you really don't know anything about a person.

Speaker 2:

Fourth, I became a Christian, which I'm always embarrassed to admit, but the more I read the Bible, I'm not the first screw up to find Jesus. And fifth, I didn't want to file for bankruptcy, and so my accountant told me I had to earn this much more money this year in order to avoid bankruptcy. And so I started speaking on the side and I hit his number right on the number. Well then, the next year, rob, he set me a very much higher number, and I hit that number right on the number. So in year three, I thought, well, maybe I should set a higher number.

Speaker 2:

And basically, during one of the worst economic downturns in American history, I was able to build up a highly lucrative speaking business which drew the attention of a lot of people who wanted me to coach them, and I always resisted coaching Rob, because I've always had a very high standard as a teacher. I hold my people accountable. I won't let you fail. I'm going to stick to you until you succeed. Well, working with entrepreneurs and C-suite executives and business owners has been just the greatest satisfaction of my life, because the people do the work and I just love showing them different strategies on how to create more compelling talks that attract more clients to whatever it is that they're trying to pitch. So that's the very long answer to your short question.

Speaker 1:

No, I love it and I'm excited to hear a little bit more because you I know you're doing you do different workshops. I'm guessing you do one on one. What is it? What are the different ways of working with you and what does that kind of look like?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so for several years I worked with probably the top company to train people on how to create. So I have two business partners Coach Jimmy, Hayes Nelson and Dave Ward. I call us the professor, the performer and the producer because my background is academia, the performer and the producer because my background is academia. Coach Jimmy was an actor on Broadway and Dave Ward was an attorney, so he's our Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain. And when Coach Jimmy and I were working for this company, the company basically would have about 50 of these executives in a room. They'd pay $15,000 for two days with us and we would help them create what we called well.

Speaker 2:

That company called it a signature talk. We called a well-crafted story. Politicians would call it your stump speech. You can call it peanut butter and jelly, it doesn't matter. What this is is. This is a speech that you're going to deliver again and again to introduce yourself to new audiences, to compel them to want to take the next step with you.

Speaker 2:

And Coach Jimmy and I saw a flaw in the model for this company. I mean, actually a couple of flaws. First of all, there was 50 people in the room and they all came from different industries, and so you can't really give them the specific attention to their industry when you're crafting their presentation. Secondly, I'm not a big fan of these one-shot deals where it's a one and done and you're out the door because we were finding a lot of the clients. They were able to put together the presentations, but when they delivered them they weren't having the results that they wanted. And when they contacted us, we'd ask well, send us a video of the talk and we'd see the problems. Immediately. We're like well, you have the elements, but you just don't have them in the right places. And if you make this adjustment, you'll start seeing results. And they did.

Speaker 2:

And then, third and this is the big thing that really separates us A lot of people are told and taught. You know you need to talk about the most traumatic moment of your life, and there's three reasons why I refuse to do that. First of all, rob, the world just survived a global pandemic. Everybody's had a lot of bad stuff happen to them. I don't think we need more sad stories. I think we need more stories of hope. Second of all, we're teaching you to deliver this talk again and again, and we want you to have fun while you're doing it. Do you really want to talk about the worst day of your life again and again? I mean, I got a friend. His daughter died in a school shooting. He's told that story like a thousand times. You've got to be a lot stronger than me to talk about the worst day of your life again and again. I don't know how he does it.

Speaker 2:

And third and this is where people get angry with me I have one objective when I'm on stage, I want you to leave feeling better than when you came in. I want you laughing, smiling, happy. I think there's something admirable about that as an objective. I believe that these people that tell the same sad story again and again, by the 20th time they're telling that story. Now those are crocodile tears, and now they're being manipulative. And I'm not saying it's not an effective sales strategy. It's actually a very effective sales strategy. But I personally don't want to have to take a shower after I get off stage because I just manipulated my audience.

Speaker 2:

There are ethical ways to get people to want to do business with you. And so what we do? We work with people one-on-one. We work with a lot of companies, with small teams, and we're you know, we're dealing with a lot of people. Most of these people, I mean, yeah, we work with some of the biggest speakers you've ever heard of, but most of the people we work with are people just like you and me, just entrepreneurs that are trying to grow their business, and I believe that speaking is the fastest way to grow your business when you do it the right way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I believe in that too and I'm obviously much less experienced in the speaking realm, but I think it's such an excellent tool, especially if you can get paid to get in front of potential clients. I feel like that's just like a super mega win for you. But I also see like I see exactly what you're saying and about how people going out and just like searching for those crocodile tears and just like it's it weighs a toll on you if you're just so negative all the time and I know because I'm around a lot of new speakers and I'm still considering myself like a relatively new speaker but like what, what kind of advice do you have for those new guys who are jumping out into the world and kind of getting new opportunities? And how often do you like, when you work with somebody new, how many opportunities do you try to get them right off the bat? Or I guess what I'm trying to say is like, yeah, what does it look like once they're kind of working with you and what can they expect to be seen results wise.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, where do I begin? So first of all, I commend you, rob. You're not giving yourself enough credit. I mean, by creating this podcast, you've created an enormous stage. That is great, because you're getting reps.

Speaker 2:

I always tell people that there's two ways to get better at speaking. First of all, you should watch lots of speakers. I mean, I watch 10 speakers a day. I watch politicians, I watch comedians, I watch televangelists. I watch them in front of big groups, in front of small groups, in front of men, in front of women. Here I'll give you a ninja strategy I watch a lot of televised award shows, and the reason is because when the person wins the Academy Award, they only have 45 seconds to connect with their audience.

Speaker 2:

Now, most people waste their time. They get up there. They're like I want to thank God, I want to thank the Academy. It's stupid, nobody's paying attention, but every now and then, a person does an incredible job that moves an audience. So I'll give you an example.

Speaker 2:

A few years ago, there was a guy by the name of Joe Walker who won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. Now this is the Academy Awards, rob. Hollywood's most important people are in the front the actors and the camera's scanning the crowd and you can see they're not paying attention. This is film editing. And Joe Walker gets on stage. He's British and he speaks very slowly and deliberately and he says a lot of people don't know this, but when phrased properly, the term Academy Award nominee can be used as an insult. Well, now the camera's scanning the crowd. You see people kind of leaning in like what's he talking about? And he says for example, yesterday I got in an argument with my 17-year-old daughter and she said well, academy Award nominee Joe Walker. All of a sudden you see everybody laughing hysterically. He gets off stage Denzel Washington wants to meet him, sondra Bullock wants to meet him, brad Pitt wants to meet him. Time Magazine said it was one of the highlights of the Academy Awards 45 seconds. Well done, joe Walker.

Speaker 2:

So the first way to get better at speaking is to watch lots of speakers. The second way is I've been blessed with lots of wonderful mentors throughout my career. One of my mentors was a guy by the name of Jim Rohn, and Jim used to say you can't pay other people to do your pushups Translation you got to do the work. You're only going to get better with reps and that's why I commend you for the podcast. I guarantee you, the first time you did your podcast you stunk. And the second time you did your podcast you stunk. And the second time you did your podcast you stunk, but you didn't stink as bad as the first time and now that you're getting used to this you're finally oiled machine, no problem. You know, I encourage people to speak as often as they can.

Speaker 2:

Even the smallest towns have a Lions Club, an Optimist Club, a Rotary Club, a Kiwanis Club. There's schools, there's synagogues, churches, temples, chambers of commerce. I was working with a guy, jason, about three years ago. Jason was 22 and he was a negative Nelly driving me nuts. He's like I don't know anybody, danny, I can't get on stages. I can't stand people like that.

Speaker 2:

I said okay, do you have Facebook, a Facebook account, jason? He's like yeah, I'm like, all right, we're going on right now, facebook Live, right now. And he gets all nervous. I'm like no, no, we put together your 45-minute talk. You're going to deliver it right now, in front of me. He's terrified. He does his 45 minute talk on Facebook live. One woman from Ontario, canada, accidentally watches him and he stunk and I said do it again tomorrow. And I didn't get to watch him the next day, and he said that three people watched him and I'm sure he stunk, but he didn't stink as bad as the first day.

Speaker 2:

Well, here's the reason I give this story Rob Jason has gone on Facebook Live every single day consistently for the last three years, including Christmas. He now has 6,000 people in his Facebook community and last year he sold them almost $1 million worth of products, and that's what he's excited about, the reason I use him as an example. What gets me excited about Jason is he did the work. He's consistent, he's doing it all the time, and that's how you get better. I mean, this is a skill. It's a skill, rob. Most of the people I'm working with they're terrified of speaking on stages, or they just they don't. They're very uncomfortable and I want it to be fun. I'm a fun guy. I like things to be funny and happy and I want you enjoying yourself on stage and the more you do it, the better you get.

Speaker 1:

This is a trainable skill, yeah, yeah. I love that because my mentor, rory Vaden he actually said once that like the he goes, always talks about how, like the number one thing that separates a good speaker from a great speaker is a thousand speeches. So he's like just get out there and start talking, start going. And he challenged myself and a lot of other individuals in the group. It was like August or something at the time. He's like, all right, go out and get 10 speaking gigs before the year's over and speak on 50 podcasts. And I was like what, I don't know how to do any of that.

Speaker 1:

And I started trying to create my own stages and like connecting with different places and, uh, like the bars and restaurants nearby and just giving a little toast, a little mini speech. And then I was just kind of building that up and going to. I started going to this barber shop and went all the time. I was like this is a pretty good space for a little venue. They got a bar and everything and I pitched them an idea. I was like, hey, I would love to bring some people in here.

Speaker 2:

The barbershop has a bar. I need to go to your barber. That's great.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it was a perfect opportunity because I could talk a little bit about self-care strategies and such, and I brought the bringing foot traffic in for the barbershop and it was like a win-win for everybody and I got a lot of great content for it and people were like, wow, this looks really cool. And people were like, wow, this has looked really cool. And I was like, yeah, you know what you should show up to the next one. And boom, had more people coming through.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you said so many. You just gave your audience so many gems there. First of all, Mr Baden is a wonderful coach, and so you're very lucky to be able to work with him. Look at all the venues. You just talked about Podcasts. You talked about bars you talked about, you know, speech doesn't always have to be 45 minutes. It can be a toast at a wedding, it can be. You know, just talking at the barber shop, I thought those were so many great venues and great ideas there. That was wonderful, Rob. I'm so glad you're telling your audience all these things.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate that I'm curious to kind of dive back into your story, because you mentioned how you had shifted into the speaking and then people were coming to you for coaching. Where does the workshops kind of fit in? Is that just like group coaching on like a one day kind of thing, or like what does that kind of look like?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we've kind of evolved. We have different formats. We used to do that. So again, coach Jimmy and I, we didn't like those big groups, and so when we first we've had the company now for about three years and when we started, once a month at a bourbon bar in Dallas, we'd have about no more than I think it was 12 people would come in, and I liked 12 people. It would be for two days, but 12 people was good because we could give them the personalized attention that they deserve. But then they also got to watch each other struggle or triumph on stage, and I think that's really powerful. And of course then Jimmy and I continue to work with them after that, which was an element missing from other people. Now it's a little bit different because we found a lot of companies. They weren't feeling great about sending their people to speak in front of a couple of strangers, even if it was just a few strangers. And so now what will happen typically is a company will hire us to come out, or it'll be coach Jimmy, dave and me will all fly out to their venue and we'll work with them for two days on different elements, whatever they're struggling at, and then it's more of an ongoing relationship after that. Coach Jimmy and I also, and Dave, we all work one-on-one with people as well if they prefer that. So it's kind of.

Speaker 2:

I was just listening to an interview with Michael Dell and he always said that the strategic advantage Dell had over his competitors is he would make the computers based on the needs of each customer, and he learned a lot that way, and so we have lots of different formats for people.

Speaker 2:

But I always like the individualized approach because I really want I mean it's important to me that the person succeeds. I mean, yes, it's fulfilling when a person gives you a paycheck Like that's fulfilling when a person gives you a paycheck, that's great. But what's fulfilling to me is I really want all of my people that I work with to just be dominant. I don't care if people know who I am. I mean my job is to be Yoda. I want you to be Luke Skywalker or Mr Miyagi. You get to be Daniel LaRusso and win the trophy at the Karate Kid contest or whatever, and I love that, I absolutely love. I really understand now when I watch like a guy like Coach Krzyzewski and the Olympic team wins the gold medal in men's basketball, he doesn't get a gold medal, but his gold medal was watching the players, that he was able to get them to work together and excel, so that's my satisfaction.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I'm curious because you had the background in teaching before you kind of got in. How helpful was that in transitioning over into becoming like a professional speaker? And because obviously now you're still teaching and coaching is not too differently from teaching students and such, it's essentially the same thing. Can people, do you have a certain advantage? Do people need some sort of a background like that to be considered a good or great speaker one day, or can they all, can everybody kind of build up to that? Because I started in kind of speaking teaching a little bit and then I transitioned into I was a strength and conditioning coach for a long time as my background and in front of crowds, and so it was kind of natural for me to get in front of people to talk. But then once I had that component of like okay, this is what I want to be saying it was like oh, now there's pressure for like performing to what the expectation is in my head.

Speaker 2:

It kind of your question. So you have a lot of questions in there, rob. Yeah, sorry about that, which is fine. I'm going to try and address them all.

Speaker 2:

So the process that Coach Jimmy and I take our clients through, you have to bear with me, because I'm a former teacher. Everything has to either rhyme or be alliterative, and so we call it the five C's process, and so what you're really talking about is our first C, which is clarity. So there are two questions. Before you ever put together a presentation, you need to be able to answer these questions succinctly. If you can, you're in pretty good shape. If not, you're going to have, you're going to struggle and, believe it or not, 95% of our clients cannot answer one or both of these questions in a succinct manner.

Speaker 2:

The first question is who is your audience? So most of the people we work with they'll say everybody's my audience. I'm like well, if everybody's your audience, nobody's your audience, you're not going to get anywhere. There's an old saying the riches are in the niches, so you want to niche down. So we'll use you as an example, rob. So you have a background. You had taught a little bit, and so maybe you start with teachers because you're used to being around teachers, or you said you had that background in strength and conditioning, so you talk to trainers and strength and conditioning coaches.

Speaker 2:

Me personally, I had started off as a teacher and so and this is what I'm trying to explain to people is you can expand your audience but you really want to niche it down as specific as you can.

Speaker 2:

So I started off with teachers, specifically inner city teachers, and then I was able to expand to other groups of teachers of all ages, since I've worked with all ages. Then I worked with parent groups and then educational administrators, and then I was fortunate. I was in a mastermind and one of the gentlemen in my mastermind is a very successful business owner and he asked me to train his sales team and I said I don't think I'm qualified to motivate your sales team and he looked at me like it was an idiot. He's like Danny if you can motivate inner city teenage boys to read Shakespeare, I'm pretty sure you can motivate my sales team. And he did me a huge favor, rob, because he got me to expand my point of view. And so, first of all, you need to know who your audience is and, second of all, you need to understand what's the problem that you're solving, so we'll use you as an example. So what is the goal of this podcast? You have Rob.

Speaker 1:

It's really connecting with people, getting more attentions, getting in front, creating content for myself and guests. Really, I guess community building.

Speaker 2:

Community building. So that's pretty broad. So, again, we want to get that much more specific. I mean, so maybe we could, we can niche it down to OK. The goal of this podcast is to take like minded entrepreneurs in Connecticut to give them practical strategies that they can use to build their business. That's, that's a problem that we can solve. Community building is a little bit broad, it's not, it's not horrible. I mean Howard Schultz when you ask him what's the what's the problem that Starbucks is solving, he doesn't say giving coffee to people. He always says, well, it's community building, it is good, it's good. I mean, you could even use words like well, I want to build a positive community in a negative world. I want to show practical strategies to people that are overwhelmed by the amount of information out there. That's what we could do and what you want to really think about.

Speaker 2:

This is the problem I see a lot of people have. They don't talk about their audience's problems, they talk about their solutions, and that's a backward way of approaching it, because you have to look at it always from the audience point of view. I'll give you another ninja strategy. Whenever I speak, I never film myself, I film the audience. The audience tells me everything I need to know. If I see them leaning in, I'm doing a good job. If they're on their cell phone, I need to do something better, because they're not paying attention. And so you want to always phrase your you want to talk to your audience based on their problems.

Speaker 2:

So, for example, I was working with, so, let's say, strength and conditioning coaches. I asked strength and conditioning coach, what's the problem that you solve? I was working with some fitness coaches and they said oh, healthy lifestyle. Healthy lifestyle is not a problem. Healthy lifestyle is a good thing. Maybe the problem that you're solving is obesity. And they're like oh, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I see that's a problem. We work with financial planners all the time. What's the problem that you solve? They're like a healthy retirement Healthy retirement's a good thing. Maybe the problem that you're solving is making sure that people have enough money till the day they die. Maybe, oh, yeah, yeah, that's the problem. So if you can answer those two questions clearly, I think you're in pretty good shape. And so that's always where we begin with a client. Here I'll give you. And then we get into the other four Cs, which are connect content, call to action and close, and we can talk about all of those.

Speaker 2:

In terms of connecting, I'll give you, your audience, a strategy Later on. Find a comfortable chair, get a pen and paper libation of choice and for an hour I want you to write down every story that's ever happened to you, and I don't mean the entire story, I just mean triggers, like the time I locked myself out of the car in front of Costco, the time dad spilled mustard on his tie at that fancy restaurant. You'll find in an hour you can come up with about 500 little anecdotes like this. So that's the first part of the exercise. The second part of the exercise is then I want you to think about what's this story really about? Oh, this is a story about never giving up. Oh, this is a story about building trust. Oh, this is a story about love, and so on my computer I have hundreds of files with thousands, if not tens of thousands, of stories. So whenever I need a story based on an emotion, I'm trying to get out of the audience. I know how to create those different types of emotions. What do I want my audience to do? I have those stories at my disposal.

Speaker 2:

Know that the most important part of your speech is the beginning of your speech, connecting the first five minutes of your speech. Your audience is making a decision Am I going to be present or am I going to be engaged? You want them leaning in as much as possible, and so Coach Jimmy calls them the three gottas. I call it rap because, again, I'm a former teacher. So you got to rap. You got to show that you're relatable. You got to establish your authority. You have to demonstrate your purpose. So relatable is. You need your audience to understand I'm just like you. I've had that problem. But authority is I've had that problem and I've solved it. And then purpose is and now I work with people just like you on helping you solve that problem. So you don't have to go through everything that I went through. If you can do that in the first five minutes, you have a pretty good speech already. You're already getting people paying attention and they've made a decision. Okay, all right, this isn't going to be a waste of my time.

Speaker 2:

And then you get to the content portion of your presentation, which is the longest part of your presentation. And ironically, it's the least important part of your presentation, because research shows and this is why I'm the professor everything I do is based on research, not opinion. If you want an opinion, go to your Aunt Edna, she can give you an opinion. I'm going to give you the research on why you're putting these things in these different parts of your presentation. The research shows a thing called the primacy and recency effect, which means the bun is more important than the burger.

Speaker 2:

People remember the beginning of your talk and the end of the talk. They don't remember anything in between, but what they do remember is are you helpful? So this is kind of a fascinating psychological skill. I'm just fascinated by their psychology here. The psychology basically shows that you can talk about anything as long as you're demonstrating that you're helpful. People are always going to associate you with being helpful.

Speaker 2:

So, for example, one of my mentors was a great guy named Jim Trelease and Jim, he used to train parents how to read aloud to their children and all of a sudden, in the middle of his talk he said oh, I'm going to teach you something that's going to save your life someday, if you ever lock yourself out of your car, as long as you have your cell phone, call your significant other, have your significant other put your car keys next to the phone. You put your phone next to the car door, it'll unlock the car. Rob, I've tried this from 3000 miles away it works. It doesn't work on some of the newer cars like a Tesla wouldn't work, but like on my old Toyota, it works. Some of the newer cars like a Tesla, it wouldn't work, but like my old Toyota, it works. And this has nothing to do with his talk whatsoever, rob, and people would come up to him 20 years later oh my gosh, you're the most helpful speaker I've ever seen in my life. It had nothing to do with his talk, but what was important and this is actually this is a very serious point you have a responsibility when you're on stage, whether your audience decides to continue with you or not, they gave you their most precious asset their time. You have a responsibility to help them as much as possible.

Speaker 2:

I was talking to a gentleman yesterday who was looking for a coach. He cannot afford my services, but what I talked to him about for the next hour we went through his problem and I did as much as I could. Within next hour, we went through his problem and I did as much as I could within that hour to help him with his problem. I gave him referral contact information on people that are much more at his price range that might be able to help him. You know you're working with Coach Baden. I mean he has a certain price range. Not everybody can afford him and I'm sure I've never met him, but he seems like a pretty darn good guy.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I've always told people I have no competition, I just have potential collaborators. I mean you and I could be, you and I could coach the exact same thing, but we don't coach it the same way. So why not become friends? And whenever I have a person's like you know I'm really looking for a white dude in Connecticut to coach me. I know I'm really looking for a white dude in Connecticut to coach me. I know I know Rob, he's a white dude in Connecticut, you know. I mean like we took we coach differently. So I don't. There's plenty of pie for everybody. It's a it's it's too many people have this scarcity mindset. I'm like there's plenty, plenty to go around everybody and so content you're teaching people. The other thing I think, well, I always call it the Home Depot. You can do it, we can help.

Speaker 2:

I think in the content portion of your presentation you need to offer your audience a quick win. What's a quick win? That shows them they can do it. So, for example, of course I don't have a pen on me. Well, all right. So I was working with a clinical psychologist last week and she deals with people that suffer from depression. So she's speaking to audiences that are depressed and I said well, here's a quick one for your audience. Tell them take a pen, bite down on it. Did you know? If you bite down on a pen, it actually tricks your brain into thinking you're smiling and your brain produces the same number of endorphins as if you actually were smiling. So you can actually trick yourself into happiness, people. Well, it's a funny exercise, but she did it and her audience loved it. They're like here's a way to get me to smile. So that's a quick win. So that's the, you can do it. But then the other part of the Home Depot is we can help, you can do it, but you need a guide.

Speaker 2:

And this is where you're kind of selling yourself is hey, I do this all the time. Why put yourself? Why waste so much time, money, effort, heartache, when you could just work with me and I could help you speed up this process? You're taking the stairs with me, I'm on the express escalator with you, so you do that and what you're doing is you're whispering sweet nothings in their ear while you're teaching content. It's kind of like a first. That's why I call them whispering sweet nothings.

Speaker 2:

When you're on a first date, if you find you're connecting with a person, you don't say I find you really attractive, I think I might want to marry you. How's that sound? You don't blurt it out like that. You say hey, have you seen that new Mission Impossible movie? I heard? It's great. You're planting a little seed like huh. If you're interested in me, there's a movie we can go to. Oh, there's this cool trail by my house. I love hiking. You just planted a seed.

Speaker 2:

So when I'm working with people, I find out exactly what their offer is, and what you do is while you're teaching. It's very important to kind of plant that offer in people's minds. Rob is a person that coaches one-on-one with me, and then you go into your teaching point and this is what's fascinating. This is the psychology. Your audience is sitting there and, even though you're teaching, they're thinking Danny coaches. He coaches people one-on-one. I wonder how long he coaches them. I wonder how much it costs. I've planted a seed.

Speaker 2:

And so by the time you get to your actual offer rather because the human brain is very sophisticated, it knows the difference between teaching and selling. So don't sell. You want to have set, you want to have totally warmed up that audience by the time you actually make your offer your audience is like oh, I was hoping he was going to make that offer. Oh, this is so exciting, that's. That's a totally different reaction than when most people they give a talk and they do one of two things they do their talk and afterwards they're like and so that's, you know, they're like a Forrest Gump, so that's about all I have to teach about that.

Speaker 2:

And hey, right now, if you, if you call me by midnight, I'm gonna give you my coaching program. It's only a hundred thousand dollars. And if you call now before I'll throw in an extra phone call. I mean it's really fake and urgent. Or you get the other type of person's like so I know, I know I don't feel really comfortable, but like, if you're interested in working with me, you know, yeah, I do offer like coaching and stuff. I mean, think about like, about like a date. I'm turned off by either of those people, one's coming off way too hard and the other one, I'm like you're wishy-washy. We need to be clear and so when we get to our call to action this is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make, rob they have multiple calls to action.

Speaker 2:

So, for example, I was on a podcast earlier this morning and the hostess she ended the podcast. She said I hope you enjoyed today's podcast, make sure you like, subscribe and give us a five-star review. We got off the air. I'm like you just told your audience to do three things. They ain't going to do any of them because remember this again, former teacher choices confuse and cause you to lose. There's a reason. There's a reason.

Speaker 2:

Trader Joe's is the number one grocery store in the United States based on sales volume, and the reason is, when you go to a national grocery store chain like, uh like Ralph's or a Publix or a Kroger or King supers or whatever, yeah, when you go to buy mustard, there's 38 different types of mustard. When you go to Trader Joe's to buy mustard, there's 38 different types of mustard. When you go to Trader Joe's to buy mustard, you look and there's one. It's called mustard. I guess I'll get the mustard you made the choice for them. Same thing when you're making your offer make it very clear.

Speaker 2:

I go to academic presentations all the time because I really like to torture myself and these people will say I'll make sure. Here's my Facebook page, here's my LinkedIn, here's my X files. I'm like you're giving all these different. It's confusing people. Just give them one way of communicating with you and then the mistake people make is a lot of people end with their call to action. Well, there's nothing fun about that. I believe in doing a 4th of July ending. When you're watching the 4th of July fireworks, you ever notice that the fireworks stop and you're like, oh, is it over? And there's a beat. And then, all of a sudden, there's this big finale Dun dun dun, dun, dun dun dun. You're like, oh, cool, which is a good, powerful close. And so we teach people different ways to close their talks. One way is to well, I won't go into all of them, but one of the ways that I like to teach people to do this is with giving a story that has nothing to do with what they've been talking about.

Speaker 2:

So let's say, you're talking to strength and conditioning coaches and you've made an offer that you know I have an online course that you can purchase for $19.97 that shows how you can grow your strength and conditioning coaching program. So you've made a very clear offer. And so you have to understand there's two types of people in your audience. I call them the Joe Fridays and the Julia Roberts. So we're going to be very stereotypical and say it's the husband and the wife. So the husband is the guy sitting there with his arms crossed like what you trying to sell me? How long is it going to take? What do you need from me? And so you've made a very clear offer okay, I'm giving you a course. It's 1997. It's going to teach you all the marketing strategies you need in order to grow your business. Now he's satisfied. But you got to remember there's also Julia Roberts in the audience. That's the wife. She's like oh, I just want to feel good. Can this make me feel good? Does this strengthen coaching conditioning course Will it make me feel good? And so you have to appeal to that person too, and so one of the ways you do that is coming up with a different story. So I was working with a woman a few weeks ago, a health and fitness instructor, and she's been having difficulty selling her course online and I said well, what's the point? What kind of story do you need? She's like I want people to understand it's going to take too long. If they try to do it themselves, they should get me my course because it'll help them. I'm like you need to hire an expert story. And she's like, yeah, I need to hire an expert story. I'm like okay, so I'll demonstrate one for you. So I'll leave you with this.

Speaker 2:

Many years ago, my wife and I had theater tickets and we were dressed to the nines and as we were driving to the theater we got a flat tire. And my wife said well, I'll call AAA. I'm like you don't have to call AAA, I'm a man, I can fix a flat tire. So I opened up the trunk, I got the spare tire and then I got the pumper thingy and then the big jack thing that takes off the nuts. And I was trying to take the nuts off of the tire and basically, 27 minutes later, I had grease all over me. The tire was not fixed and grease all over me. The tire was not fixed and my wife is shaking her head like I could have done so much better than this guy. Well unbeknownst to me. She'd called AAA and a tow truck shows up and this 17-year-old punk hops out and he fixes the flat tire in three minutes flat.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think there's times in life when all of us think we can do it ourselves. But if you want to save time, you want to save money and you want to save a whole lot of embarrassment and headache, you hire an expert, and so what you've done now is you've taken a story that has nothing to do with buying the course that you're trying to advertise, but you basically subliminally planted the seed in people's head that huh, I probably can do it myself, but I'm going to save time, money and a whole lot of embarrassment if I just get Rob's course that he has online. So that was a huge. I haven't let you talk for about 10 minutes, rob, but I just wanted to show you through the entire process and then any questions you have about that process, because these are things that I can tell you will help your audience.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I loved it. That's why I wasn't trying to cut you off or I didn't want to chime in, because I was just taking it all in. It's like a masterclass for me because this is kind of like my environment nowadays. I'm a lot of younger speakers also and I'm around a lot of other people, so I know a lot of my listeners are going to really listen back to this episode numerous times to kind of take those stories and see how they can kind of adapt them and a lot of the gems that you were dropping too. You were sharing the problems and the mishaps that a lot of beginners kind of make, but then also sharing a lot of secrets that, like even filming the audience is genius too, because getting those insights and stuff so no, I appreciate that. And easy question to follow up that is like where do people go if they are interested in working with you, or how do they get some more information and more up to date tips and tricks and stuff that you're sharing? Oh, I'm bringing you on the road with me.

Speaker 2:

Rob, what a pimp. I love that. Thanks for pimping out my products. Well, as a thank you, I'll give you.

Speaker 2:

As a thank you for you and your listeners for listening to me, I want to give everybody a freebie. So if you go to freestoryguidecom guide like a tour guide, freestoryguidecom, I'm going to give everybody their own complimentary, well-crafted story blueprint. What this is is the actual process that coach Jimmy and I take our clients through on how to create their own well-crafted story. What this does for you is it takes the guesswork out of where do I put this important information and why am I putting it in this positioning of my speech? And what this means for you is the peace of mind that you have a tool that you can use again and again to take your clients excuse me, to take your audiences from interested to engage clients that actually want to do business with you.

Speaker 2:

And I, again, I just want to thank you, rob, for for having me and whenever you need anything. I love what you're about and I love what you're doing and I commend you because most of your friends I guarantee you are sitting there on a street corner like someday I'm going to start a podcast, you know, and they're going to be saying the same thing five years from now. You, you are part of that very rare percentage of people that actually, rather than talking about doing something, you actually did something, and so I commend you for that. You're already a success in my mind.

Speaker 1:

I really appreciate that. I appreciate that free gift that you're giving me, and all the listeners too, and I really appreciate your time and your busy day carving it out, allowing me to listen to your story and your secrets and to becoming a better speaker and everything. Man, wow, I just really appreciate it. Thank you so much, dr Danny. This was awesome. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, rob. Have a blessed day. Take care you as well.