Ep 228: Create Funnier Presentations with David Glickman
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:55):
Well, my journey to become a speaker has been a, a fun one through lots of different twists and turns. And one of those things was having to learn how to be funny because I was not funny. And one of the people that I learned from in that journey is the man that you’re about to meet his name is David Glickman. I first attended one of his trainings. Oh gosh, I was in my twenties. And it was one of the most transformative pieces of my entire career. David and I now are kind of colleagues and we’ve known each other for years. He’s in the professional speaking hall of fame and he is kind of known for corporate customized comedy. But before he was in the speaking business, he was in show business and he worked with Steve Martin, Ellen degenerate. He appeared on evening at the improv.
RV (01:47):
He owned a chain of comedy clubs. And he’s just a funny dude and I’ve learned so much from him. And I actually recently we hired him because one of the things that he does is he owns a company that helps people write funnier speeches. And so I had a new bit that I was working on for a new audience. So it was a brand new piece of material and I wanted to get David’s eyes on it in his input. So he is continues even to this day to be one of my personal speech coaches, specifically in the realm of comedy. So I figured you got to meet David, we got to have him on, so welcome to the show.
DG (02:24):
Well, Rory, thanks so much. It’s oh, and again, you and I have known each other for probably close to two decades here, but but it’s great to see you evolve and you know, your humor has grown. I watch you now and I just go, ah, you got it. You, you know, you understand how important humor is to, to what we do for success here.
RV (02:44):
Totally. And, and it’s amazing. I, I I’ll say like, I, sometimes I’m genuinely amazed at how much of a skill this is and looking back at where I started to go, you know, if someone hires me do a speech, now they’re laughing their butts off. And I go, man, that is not who I was like, I did not know how to do that. And I think that’s, you know, the first thing I wanted to talk about is you really believe that humor can be learned to some extent, right? I mean, do you, do you, do you still feel that way? Do you feel more that way than you did 15 years ago? Or do you
DG (03:23):
No, I, I, no, I, I truly believe it’s a skill that can be learned. It can be refined. And it’s funny when we talk about humor, it, it, it’s almost like a dissecting a frog while they still alive. It’s just, you know, it’s, it’s people will listen and say, oh, well, that sounds very, very cut and dry. Well, the science of humor is cut and dry. It is, but yes, absolutely. You can learn it. And and as you’ve experienced, as you learn some of these tricks and techniques, you’ve just learned how to think. Funny.
RV (03:58):
Yeah. So w what does that mean? All right. So let’s, let’s dive into that for a second. So what does it mean to think funny? Like, why do we laugh? Or, or like, what are there’s different techniques here that apply, but like fundamentally, what do you, what are you trying to do that causes someone to laugh?
DG (04:21):
You’re trying to do something. That’s a surprise, something they’re not expecting. I’ll give you an example here. So I’m going to go back about 10 years, Rory that’s when you wrote your New York times bestselling book which was take the stairs. Everybody remembers
DG (04:38):
Copying seven steps to a trading, true success, but, okay. So let’s fast forward 10 years. You’ve learned through many of your clients. Not everybody has the same work ethic as Rory Vaden. So your new book for 2021 would be take the escalator seven less steps to achieving true success. Now, those who are just listening to the podcast on the video version of this, we’re actually showing a book. That’s a parody of Rory’s original book. So what we’ve done is just we’ve taken something that was already existing, and we’ve tweaked a word we’ve tweaked something by tweaking the original of something just a little bit, whether it’s a rhyme, whether it’s a letter I once spoke at a conference where the theme was together we’re better, but it was for the American wastewater association. And I said, oh, the original theme was supposed to be together. We’re wetter. You know, I just changed one word and it became funny. So to, to your question, it’s looking at words, looking at themes and how can we adjust, adapt them?
RV (05:51):
Hmm. Yeah, the surprise. I mean, I guess in one word you could say surprised that you’ll hear misdirection or, you know, you’re saying tweak, but like take the stairs, you know, as established as a theme. And then, you know, you kind of do that, that play and you’re it. And you think that’s basically what all of, all of humor comes down to is sort of this like element of surprise.
DG (06:13):
Right. But there there’s surprises. Step two, step one is observation. It’s looking it’s, it’s, it’s seeing. And again, I know this sounds kind of cut and dry, but the research that’s involved in any kind of, of, of making something funny is, is important. You have to kind of know the bigger picture, if that makes sense to, to be able to switch and adapt and adjust. Now, again, we’re talking primarily on customized humor, Rory for evergreen humor, you don’t need as much research. What I worked on for you was evergreen. That story will work anywhere anytime, hopefully for the next 10 years. Do you know what I’m saying? So there’s two types of humor, evergreen humor, and customized humor.
RV (07:04):
What’s the difference? What are,
DG (07:07):
Yeah. Evergreen should work all the time. There are comedians out there who have an act who they haven’t changed one word of it in 20 years. That’s evergreen. That means that humor. And again, for most speakers, professional speakers or professional business folks, if they create a presentation, they don’t have to necessarily change it. The humor that’s in there that’s crafted will work forever, but the customized humor is often funnier. If, if that makes sense, because it’s of the moment people are hearing it just about them in that moment. And it’s like, we’re all in on the secret together. We’re all in on this because only we know what that particular joke.
RV (07:55):
It’s like a inside. It’s like a big inside joke basically,
DG (07:58):
Right? Exactly.
RV (08:00):
A whole audience. Well, and I think what what’s super powerful is going so like for most of our clients and most not all of our clients are trying to be professional speakers. In fact, I would say even most of our members and clients, they’re just speaking as a marketing vehicle to like, to, you know, to, for people to find out about their service or their product or whatever it is that they offer. And it’s wonderful when you can have evergreen humor, because you have like signature stories about your life and your, whatever that you tell all the time. And once you have that down, then you kind of have like this sort of baseline of entertainment. And then the customized stuff is kind of like where you can have more fun and you can experiment. And I do think that’s part of what your magic like your secret sauce is customized. So talk, let’s dive in on the customized humor a bit. How do you even approach this? Because writing a joke is frigging scary by itself, but then going, okay, how do I write a new joke? Like a new thing that I’ve never tried out before. And I may never do again and go, but I’m going to try this because I think it’ll be funny this one time for this one audience, how do you, like, how do you even start with that?
DG (09:24):
And first of all, I want, I want to just, I’m going to back up to one thing you said there were, you saved, try it one time. If it’s a line you can use multiple times, one time is not always enough to get the reaction you want to test its efficacy. If it’s going to be funny now, if it’s the American wastewater association and that’s the only time you’re in front of them, then yeah. The, the water joke might be the only time. But to your, to your question, how do you figure out what’s funny, again, it goes back to the research. I always ask the same exact questions and looking at who the audience are. And again, for your clients, maybe who their prospects are, what are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? What are their frustrations?
DG (10:10):
And then you, you look at that and see, okay, how can I possibly find something about them that twists it? I call it the comment on the comment. If you ever look at a football game, you’ve got, you typically have two people broadcasting the game, the play by play guy and the color commentary guy. The play by play guy is the guy doing the content. The colored commentary is the funny line. In other words, here, I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example. I just wrote this for a client last week, he had a line in his presentation where he said by a show of hands who here is a multi-tasker and people would raise their hand. And then he’d go on to talk about multitasking. Well, the funny comment on the comment that I added was he says, by show of hands who hears a multi-tasker well, a really good multi-tasker could raise both hands and still be texting.
DG (11:08):
So that was the funny line. And it got a big laugh. He said, he told me later, you know, comment on the comment. It again, if your, if your audience Rory goes in, trying to be funny first, they’re going to be frustrated. They need to come up with their content. First, their sales presentation, first, their website. First don’t put the pressure of trying to be funny first, then look at it for how could we tweak this? What could we comment? What’s funny, what word could we change? What word is in our name of our company that could now be a funny acronym?
RV (11:46):
Yeah. Well, and so we, and we would, we would tell them, like, you know, we kind of think of it as baking a cake and you first got to get like the core ingredients in place, which is your content. And then you put the icing on, which is kind of like your stories. And then when you get to like the fancy frosting and the sprinkles, that’s more of like what the, what the, what the humor is. But what’s really cool about what you’re saying is even though, even though it’s kind of scary the idea of writing a joke and then writing a custom joke, that is this one time, what feels pretty safe and predictable to me is the idea of going, yeah, but if they’re frustrated about it, if this annoys them, if they’re angry about this, or if this is the thing, driving everyone nuts, it’s pretty safe.
RV (12:34):
It’s a pretty safe bet to go. Even if I can just find a creative way to bring it up, they’re going to laugh. And even if they don’t laugh, they’re going to feel special. They’re going to be like, oh, look at, look at what you, what you, what, you know, but it’s, it’s just the frustrations. So that’s, that’s weird to me. Like, why is it that things that are frustrating make us laugh? It’s kind of seems almost opposite. Like you go, if, if this is the thing that frustrates us, I wouldn’t want to bring that up.
DG (13:05):
Knowledging it you’re, you’re, you’re talking about what everybody is experiencing and the same thing works for a sales call, or, you know, if there’s a dentist and, and he, or she has prospective patients, you know, you, you, you then make, do you make note of the tooth pain and then you come up with something clever in your marketing materials to that. The way I look at it is, you know, we, we do business with people that we like. We like people that make us laugh. It’s this natural progression. So every opportunity you can have to add, the humor is going to just build your brand that much better.
RV (13:49):
Yeah. And, and the growing, just like to use the dentist example, you know, is to put yourself. So it’s one thing, if I’m a speaker and I am coming to speak at an event, and I’m sending them a pre-program questionnaire, I’m doing, going to their website, or I’m doing interviews, and I’m saying, Hey, what are the things that frustrate you? But if I’m a dentist, I don’t have to ask. I know I already know, because I hear it every day. It’s just kind of thinking, like, I think this is huge. That step one is observation. As you’re going ask yourself, what are they scared of? What are they afraid of? What is annoying to them? And then, and then basically just find it, find a clever way to, to bring it up. Is that, is that
DG (14:33):
Yeah. Okay. So your, your example there of the, of the dentist I did a punch up for a gentleman who consults in the dental industry not too long ago. And I don’t know how we got to it. He had something in his original content that drove my idea because I was thinking of, well, what frustrates your prospects and their eventual clients. And we came up with something where it says on the website the tooth, you can handle the tooth. And we had the picture from a few good not a few good men, the the Jack Nicholson one. So by doing, instead of the truth, the tooth, you know, this becomes now something very funny on the website. You can handle the tooth and tooth is italicized. Again, as you and I sit here, maybe not hilarious, but for the person looking at it, who’s thinking about their tooth. That hurts. Bam. We, you know, we’ve, we’ve hit, we’ve hit a nerve, no pun intended.
RV (15:32):
Well, and yeah, just for everyone to know, like the reason why it’s not funny to hear two people talking about comedy is because there’s no surprise. Surprise is the whole element of laughter. And when you, when you’re sitting here listening to it, that’s what makes comedians so amazing is like, it’s one thing when you’re in a business presentation, like for all of us, we actually don’t have to be that good because no, one’s expecting us to be funny. Like you come in as a, as a speaker, as a financial advisor, as an accountant and attorney as like, like no one expects you to be funny. It’s different. When you tell people you’re a comedian, they they’re sitting there expecting you to make them laugh, which is way harder. So it’s a, we have a little bit of it easier. This is like you know, almost like just a little covert operation for, for most of us. And people will laugh because they’re not expecting it. And so the bar is set a little bit lower. Okay. So you first observed, so I liked that. I get that, that feels doable. And, and by observe and research, I’m just going, like, what are their pains? What are their annoyances? What are their frustrations? And then what’s, and then what’s next.
DG (16:45):
Well, the, and you, you look at it. There, I mean, again, there are certain tricks and techniques the rule of three, I mean, that’s an old comedy route, a rule where you, you list three things in a row, the first two normal. And the third one is the surprise. It’s the, you know, the, the derailment, the, you know, the one you’re not expecting again, most of your listeners are just listening to this. They can’t see I don’t have a lot of hair, so my three might be. I remember when I first started, I had dreams, I had hopes I had hair, you know, boom, boom, switch like that. So that’s a rule of three. Here’s a stupid one, but it works. Odd numbers are funnier than even numbers. Rory, I have no idea why, but I have tested this. I have road tested. This a seven is funnier than a six. I don’t know. I don’t know why planned mispronunciations, if there’s a word in your, you know, your audience’s a vernacular in their, in their industry that is hard to pronounce, perhaps you pretend to mispronounce it twice. And then the third time you give a synonym. So you might say something like, they know there’s an old colloquium, there’s an old colloquium. There’s an old saying that sometimes would it be okay, so you, boom, boom, switch like that.
RV (18:16):
Yep. Well, and even that is kind of, it comes back to that frustration concept is it’s like, it’s this annoyance the of saying the word colloquialism is so difficult, it’s so difficult. And you’re, you’re like commenting on the thing that frustrates them, which is exactly what comedians, that’s, what stand up c’mon comedians do. And it’s nonstop, right? They’re telling jokes about being married. They’re telling jokes about their kids, about going to the airport, about paying their taxes about like, and all they’re doing is commenting on the things that frustrate us somehow, which is it’s amazing how simple that is.
DG (18:53):
It really is. And I have yet to come across an industry. I mean, I I’ve either spoken to or punched up, you know presentations in a myriad of industries. And I’m yet to find one industry that doesn’t have at least top 10 frustrations. I mean, I’m, I’m on a, I’m on a call tonight with a group of pharmacy students to get my research done for a presentation for pharmacy. So I’m gonna you know, just ask them, you know, tell me everything that’s frustrating too. I’ll, I’ll get 40 things and I will then turn those, what we should do is do a part two. I should come in, you know, in another podcast and tell you here’s where the 40 things that were frustrating. And here’s what I found funny in them or how we made it funny.
RV (19:41):
And, but the, the essence of that is going, what is sort of a surprising way I can bring that up or like a natural way to kind of bring it into the presentation? Yeah,
DG (19:51):
Yeah. I mean, and again, it’s hard to explain it without you know, without a concrete examples. So again, if for argument’s sake like going back to the customization, if you’re in a venue, if you’re doing a sales pitch or a speech in a room that is freezing, you know, like you know, there’s just, you know, the, everybody is sweaters and this and that. You’d acknowledge it by saying something like, I’m not sure if the folks at this hotel know, but there is a brand new invention it’s called a thermostat or something like that. Again, you kind of soft and then boom hit. Now. We’re not trying to make people comedians, you know, that’s, that’s not sure that that is not the goal here at all. It is just to find those moments of levity and the way I always look at humor, it’s like an EKG. In other words, you’re talking, you know, normal, normal content laugh, normal, normal content laugh. And that these moments of humor should be as, as much as possible throughout your entire, you know whether it be your website, your pitch, your, your speech, your presentation, whatever that might be.
RV (21:07):
So other than frustration. So I get that one. And, and again, like, even though you’re saying it helps to have a specific example, but it would be like, okay, let’s pretend for a second. If you were a standup comedian and you were going to write a set or a bit on marriage, the very first thing you would do is go, what frustrates people about marriage, right. And it’s like, whatever my wife is telling me, always what to do, or my husband is in spends forever in the bathroom. Or is that the, is that the best place to look or are there, are there other places additionally, that you look or do you kind of focus on frustrations as like that’s the, that’s the, the safe, go-to
DG (21:47):
Easiest thing, because it’s the commonality of everyone. If you were doing something on marriage and you, and again, you just give the example, let’s say of the bathroom. And again, this, this isn’t anything like I would say for a corporate audience necessarily, but and again, I’m just riffing here, but something like you know, my, my wife says you know put the seat down. But you know, she only has to remind me about 117 times per day. You know, it’s exaggerates exaggeration, you know, normally it’s a once or twice, you know, but the, it’s the exaggeration of that watched comics, study comics, all those books, but your, your listeners can’t see it, but there’s hundreds of books behind me. Every single one of them is either a biography or an autobiography of a comic or a textbook on humor. And you learn, you observe, you watch.
RV (22:42):
Yeah. Exaggeration is is is a core part of this, but like, even on social media there you know, th there was one that is like you know, all these mommy blogs, like mommy accounts and stuff. And there was one that I saw that was like this, that said, I birthed a baby and less time than it takes my husband to take a poop. Right. And it’s like, so they’re, they’re taking a frustration, then they’re acknowledging it, and then they’re exaggerating it. And it it’s almost like you observe it, you acknowledge it, and then you exaggerate it.
DG (23:18):
Yeah. That’s, I mean, you, you kind of nailed it on the, on the head there. I mean, that is, that’s really it, but at one word of caution, though, especially for folks who are not used to using humor, you do have to just make sure that your humor is appropriate and relevant. That’s where some newbies get into trouble sometimes. My mantra is when in doubt, leave it out. You know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re the least hesitant, oh, good. This offend somebody, you know, and that, and that, that bar keeps, you know, changing on what, what might be appropriate and what might not be. So I, I wanna make sure we put that in the podcast today that when in doubt do leave it out.
RV (24:04):
Yeah. I mean, that, that’s really huge because that’s the one time it can backfire is, which is one of the reasons why self-deprecating humor is so wonderful because you’re just like, you’re less likely to offend someone you’re less likely to like, run into a I mean, they just, they tend to be a little bit more forgiving when you’re, when you’re talking about yourself, like your hair joke, right. If you call someone else bald, that’s more dangerous than if you you know, use it. You’re like on yourself.
DG (24:36):
And also there’s, there’s a misconception out there that that humor, that tragedy plus time equals humor. People always, oh, you can’t talk about something bad now, you know, in the news, but you can talk about it later tragedy plus time equals humor. That’s not always true. There are certain things that are topical that just you know, I speak a lot in the healthcare world and I’m yet to write one joke about COVID, you know, I’ll write things on the periphery of it, but the disease itself, you, you, you know, you can’t poke fun at it. So again, again, watching your subject matter it just, you know, you just wanted to be very careful.
RV (25:21):
So news topics is another great place to look, right? Cause you know, like when you say observe it, there’s a couple things that jump out to me, you know, the safe one is like self-deprecating stuff, which has also ever evergreen as you describe it. But it’s like if I come out in shorts, which I don’t, but if I did, everybody would notice that I have skinny legs. That’d be like every single person would notice it. And so I could acknowledge it, exaggerate it. Like if I just go, what are people thinking? When they look at me, that’s observe it. Then I come out and acknowledge it. And I say, you may notice that, you know, my legs are, you know, make, make flamingos jealous or something like that. Right. So the, the, so you’ve got that, then you’ve got sort of the customized just frustrations, but then another place to, it seems like to pick up some good humor is in inside of pop culture. Now you you’re talking about COVID is like a bad example, which I would agree, right? Like that’s not a laughing matter and it, you know, it, it, it certainly wouldn’t be for at least a very long while. But, but there’s certain things in pop culture that you can get away with you.
DG (26:32):
Oh, absolutely. Pop culture. I, I subscribed to entertainment weekly, not so much because I want to, you know you know, read, you know, all, all the nuances. I want to go big picture. I want to see what shows are the most popular, what movies, what podcasts. So I can drop in a reference to Ted lasso. And 80% of my audience is going to know if I say, well, I’m not going to go all Ted lasso on you here with some homespun wisdom dropping in just a pop culture, reference, you know, the audience. He said, Ted lasso like that. And to your point earlier, it doesn’t have to be as funny because you’re perceived as in the know. And a lot of times when I would hit a town I would look in the local news. You know, whether it’s online or some, some towns even still have hard copies of newspapers. It’s pretty cool. But I’d look at the local news and see, you know, okay, let’s say there’s a restaurant that’s closing. So let’s say it’s called the spaghetti barn. So everyone knows the spaghetti barn closed in, you know, Cincinnati. So I might open by saying, well, your, your, your meeting planners have been so, so kind to me, they gave me a free dinner for 10 at the spaghetti bar and everybody
RV (28:03):
Goes nuts.
DG (28:04):
Yeah. They gave me something of no value. So again, that little bit of research have you ever had Sam Richter on as a guest on your podcast? I don’t know if you’ve had,
RV (28:14):
Oh man. I don’t know that. I don’t think we have, but I, we should, because he’s a genius. He’s a great speaker, but he’s got some great systems and stuff I’ve learned. I’ve learned some cool stuff from him over the years.
DG (28:25):
Yeah. Cause he’s the master at learning research of research you know finding stuff that you can then, you know, make funny. I use a questionnaire and I’m great at interviewing. I look at my own programs. I do probably 80% of my time is spent researching you know, and, and tweaking and writing and then presenting it’s the easy part.
RV (28:53):
Gosh. Yeah. And when you’re, when you’re back to the pop culture things, you’re really just looking at headlines cause it’s gotta be a big enough, which makes it easier for you research wise, because if it’s not a major headline, not enough of the people in the audience will know it. But if it’s a, if it’s a major headline, it’s pretty safe to think that like everybody’s going to know it. And it almost feels like the more recent something is and the more relevant or like customized it is. The more forgiving the audience will be in terms of how funny it has to be. But it’s like, if you’re talking about the spaghetti barn, if that just happened, you know, last week and everybody knows about it and it’s hyper specific to town, that’s even funnier somehow than what’s going on in the political election that everybody knows about.
DG (29:49):
Absolutely. And, and just, just again, another little caveat there I never do political humor or write political humor. It it’s just become, unfortunately, just too risky. Because in any given audience or any given prospects 50 up potential, 50% of that prospects, you know, or, or audience will not agree with whatever that humor might be. So, you know, the late night talk show guys, you know, th th you know, they certainly show, you know, what their thinking is, but for those of us in business, my opinion is that you can’t show it. For, for the purposes of humor, you, you just
RV (30:35):
It’s a mixed, a mixed audience,
DG (30:38):
Right. So I do look for current things, pop culture things, but I’m very cautious to steer clear of the you know, there’s, and there’s great political humor that you could use, but it’s, it’s risky.
RV (30:52):
Yeah. So I guess you’d say any, anything that’s super controversial or emotionally charged is best to just kind of stay away from it. It’s more, but it’s, but it’s more like the lighthearted things like Ted last was a great, a great example. Our pastor this last Sunday made a reference to Ted lasso. And everybody went nuts just because he said Ted lasso in church.
DG (31:13):
Yeah, exactly. That. Or if you just look at again entertainment weekly or in any kind of pop culture kind of thing, you know, we’ll just give you those high level things. My point on it is you don’t have to necessarily know it, let, let the you know, the, the other, you know, pop culture writers do all the heavy lifting for you. Although I started watching Ted lasso and it is funny and it is,
RV (31:39):
Yeah, it’s great. It’s super, it’s, it’s, it’s super cute. We, we love it because J doesn’t like to watch any shows that have violence or drama or sickness or anything, she only like shows that make her laugh. So we’ve been, we’ve been all into.
DG (31:55):
And, and that’s a great example. So something like the Ted lasso, the dialogue in there, what you’re laughing at most of the time are those comments on the comment, you know, it’s, it’s the storylines being driven. We’ll call that the content, or, you know, in your listeners world, that might be their sales presentation. But what you laugh at are those comments on the common Ted lasso, we’ll make some remark that is hilarious based on what just happened or what just was said, if that makes
RV (32:27):
It’s kind of that, like, that analogy used earlier of like, you’re basically a commentator, like I’m comedian is basically a giant commentator on life. It’s like, here’s everything we all go through and they’re like, just commenting on it. Right.
DG (32:42):
And then another thing, if, if your listeners can find something that works in a humor vein and can put it early on in their presentation, there’s a thing called a callback. And I think you you’ve talked about that before in other podcasts, a callback is where you bring back that thing that got the laugh again for you. No more lamps.
RV (33:04):
Yeah. So yeah, we, we haven’t talked, we haven’t we teach callbacks in our in our world-class presentation crafted event, but we actually haven’t talked about it on the podcast. So take a sec. Cause, cause here’s, you know, part of what I’m hoping people see, and this is something that I’ve learned from you and others is like, you don’t have to just like sit down and think of a joke. It’s there’s these places that it comes from and you go, what are self-deprecating things I could bring up? What are frustrations that people have what’s going on in pop culture. And then callbacks is another easy place to look for for humor. And it’s like, it’s a lay-down right.
DG (33:46):
So there there’s a piece I do in my own presentation about I use a funny prop it’s a, it’s a restaurant pager, like where you’re waiting for a table. And again, your listeners won’t see this, but anyone watching the video it’s hard to see because of the lighting there, but I have a little one it’s actually an ad specialty, put my name on it. So early on in the program, I get a huge laugh on my tables, ready, my tables, ready to go. The, the premise is that I carry my own with me, you know, my own restaurant pager. And it gets a huge, huge lamp. Well, what I do Rory is, and then I put the blinking one in my pocket. And then later on, you know, there, there are, I think, three other moments in the speech where I got my tables ready, my tables ready. And again, out of context right now, it’s not that funny in the moment. It’s hilarious. Cause we’ve called back to a laugh again. That they’re all kind of in, on, in, on the secret there.
RV (34:47):
Yeah. All you have to do, what’s amazing about callbacks is it literally doesn’t even have to be a, a setup or a punchline or any, like, all you have to do is say the thing that made people laugh earlier. The other thing that’s really clever for using callbacks is it, it doesn’t have to be a callback to your own stuff. It can be a callback to the speaker who was right before you, or earlier that morning, people go bananas over that.
DG (35:11):
They think you’re so much more clever than you might have snarly.
RV (35:17):
That’s why I’m in it. That’s why I’m interested in. That’s why I like, I like it. We’ll lose her.
DG (35:22):
Those are all tricks and techniques that will work. If I’m, if I’m speaking in a morning program, if there’s a general session speakers before me, I always go in the day before, you know, assuming my schedule can, can make that happen, to watch every other general session speaker. I do a, you know, a wrap-up of every other one who’s gone on before me. And again, it’s just acknowledging certain things they said. And then I comment on their comment, not my comment, like you said, I comment on their comment. So even if you have a business professional who might be following other sales presentations, you know, you, you know what your competitors are selling, what their bullet parts are, bullet points, excuse me, are, you can chew, you can gently make fun of your competitors. You know if I’m working for a T-Mobile and I, and I’m pitching against Verizon, you know, Verizon says they have great coverage, you know? Yeah. In, in zip code 3 7, 9 1 9, you know, again, I mean, again, I’m just riffing here, but you know, poking fun, gentle fun at your competitor and the prospects will laugh. Hmm.
RV (36:33):
Yeah. That’s and hecklers actually I’ve noticed are another place that you can get call backs to. Sometimes someone will say something out funny from the audience, some of the best lines I’ve ever written came from something I said, and a heckler said something and everybody laughed and I wrote it down and I’m like, thanks for that gift. I’ll I’ll add that myself next time. Because if it, if it worked in that moment, it’ll it’ll work again. Well this is awesome, David, and, and, and a couple of things you all, so you can tell by listening there, there’s, there’s, there’s a science to this and an art. There is there’s skill. A lot of this is experience. And I would tell you listening that w if you can have some evergreen content, like, for example, your backstory and almost every presentation you give at some point, you’re going to tell people about who you are, where you came from.
RV (37:31):
I think having your own little mini kind of semi stand-up comedy routine about your backstory. If you could work on that one little bit, you can use it in pretty much every presentation you give for the rest of your life. And it doesn’t have to be Ellen degenerate kind of funny. It can be two or three little chuckles that just give you confidence and break the ice and, and, you know, help you feel comfortable before you move into your speech or your podcast interview, or your sales presentation, or your internal company meeting. And if you struggle with this, David David can help you. So he’s, he’s one of our trusted vendor partners. So if you email us, if you go, Hey, I want some help writing this, just send an email to info at brand builders, group.com and put funnier speeches in the subject line. So email info at brand builders, group.com put funnier speeches in the subject line. And then we’ll connect you with David. Of course you can go find him, you know, on your own, but we’ll, we’ll connect you with him. And you know, he’ll talk with you to see if, if, if you’re someone he can help and hopefully he can help you because if David can’t help, you know, but
DG (38:46):
I think I can, I have worked with, with other business professionals, who’ve dealt with counting law and, and some of the most, you know, you would think dry subject. I believe that every topic, every industry has room for humor. I really do
RV (39:06):
Totally. And I like, I really am taking away. One of the big things from this conversation is don’t, don’t do it in a mean way. Don’t, don’t do it in a risky way. Don’t offend people. You don’t have to there’s enough light, safe, common frustrations that we all have. There’s enough pop culture references. There’s enough callbacks. There’s a there’s enough little quirks of everyday life that you can just observe it, acknowledge it, exaggerate it, and, you know, get a chuckle and have a great day for everybody. So David is thanks so much for coming on the show, man, and as always, thanks for your, for your mentorship and counsel and yeah.
DG (39:46):
Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much. It was a great to be with you today.
Ep 227: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
Holy moly. Jeff goings blew my mind. It blew my mind. Obviously say AJ this where we’re, this was, this was one of my favorite interviews as it relates to content, like your big idea, like how do you find like the kind of idea that can build a career off of? What’s really good, really clean. And anyways, I’m talking to AJ our CEO, my business partner, my woman just we’re here breaking down. We’re about to break down the interview with Jeff Goins and it’s good stuff from Jeff Goins.
AJV (00:45):
Yes, really, because it’s really, really good. I’m guessing that was my transition. You want me,
RV (00:51):
That’s a transition. That was my casual toss over to my cohost. Well, you, but you invited him to do, to come and talk to our members.
AJV (01:00):
So excited about this. I think this is going to be awesome. In terms of like, just like really leaning into what are you creating content about. And, and this is like really about, you know, book content, but you could really take this and apply it to any sort of content that you’re building, which is what I love about interviews like this is there a universal, even if they have a targeted emphasis on the actual interview. But here’s the thing. I love this. I love this because it reminds me of my celebrity crush J-Lo. And so my first takeaway is that good ideas make bad books, reason being, is that a good idea is just that it’s a good idea and that’s not good enough. Good ideas are average. And I love this. And lo if you guys have ever watched the show world of dance, it did not renew.
AJV (01:46):
I don’t know how that happened, but three seasons, four seasons can’t remember, it’s really, really good, but I loved one of the things that Jlo said. I think it was season two and she was like, it’s not good enough just to be good. You have to be different. It has to be unique. It has to be original. There’s just too many people who are good at something, but what is it that is unique and eye catching and scroll stopping what goes, wow. I never thought about it that way, or I’ve never heard it that way, or it’s never been explained that way, or that is a novel idea in terms of how we’re approaching something that maybe we had a construct in our brain that was very set in stone, and then someone comes along and goes, no, it’s not about how you calendar stuff. It’s about how you think about stuff, right. To tee up to my man.
AJV (02:42):
But I think that’s really good. And that’s a really important it’s like, you don’t have to create new stuff. You just have to go, how do you rearrange this and put your spin and your take on it. Right. And I love that because I think so often we think we have to come up with this brand new idea and it’s like, are there any new brand new, new ideas? I don’t think so, but it’s the way that you rearrange it. It’s the way that you, we explain it. It’s your interpretation that makes it so original and unique. And it’s not good enough just to be good. It’s gotta be different. It’s gotta be original. It’s gotta be your take on it. And so I think that’s just a great place for us all to start. The more you can just leave live into your uniqueness in that the better it’s going to be.
RV (03:26):
Hey man. I mean, that was there, there were a couple of lines. That was my, my first takeaway is very much related to this. Like you’ve picked up that one where you said good ideas, make bad books. Another line that he said that was kind of in that same vein was ordinary ideas get forgotten. And that really hit me as like kind of a sobering thing. And then the other thing I loved about the interview, so that was very kind of like alarming and guide, oh, man, it really grabbed me to go, what, what is different? Like what, what are we doing? That’s different and unique. And then he kind of gave two really tactical formulas kind of all throughout. But, but you know, I, as I went back and reflected on the interview, there was sort of like two tactical formulas for how to not be forgotten and for how to not just be, you know, consumed.
RV (04:16):
And the first one was, he said, an interesting idea is something that is 80% the same as what we’ve always heard, but then 20% different. And so that was really powerful to be like, it’s gotta be close enough that it’s familiar to people and we can go, oh, I like that. I get it. That is true. But then 20% different to go, oh, but I’ve never thought of that. I’ve never heard it like that. And so I thought that was a super tactical way to like position the same, but different. And then the other thing he said, which is something actually we’ve, we’ve taught our members about specifically with Ted talks is that you think X, but really why that’s a really great formula for a big idea is you think X, but really why. And it kind of also lends to that sort of like 20%, 20% different rule. And I mean, I could see this 20% different role becoming something that we use a lot. We might have to like coin it after Jeff to be like the goin’s the goins rule of 20% or, well, maybe we’ll have to come up with something. So anyways, I had the same, I had the same takeaway as you, as you have the first one.
AJV (05:28):
Yeah. Well, I would just like tag on one little quote that I would add in there. And I thought he was really good. It says, you, you change the world by changing people’s minds. And that’s like very much like a tag, what you just said. And it’s like, that’s what people fall in love with is like this idea, right? It’s like you change the world by changing people’s minds. So I just thought that I would add that in there. So that’s kind of like a transition it’s I just flew my earphones out of my ear almost. So here’s my second one is that people buy the idea of the book before they buy the book. And I think that’s really important because they’re not buying the words on the pages, that’s what they get after they buy it. They’re buying the idea of the book.
AJV (06:21):
And I think we get consumed with the words on the pages and going then, and then the note, why are people going to buy this? It’s the idea that the book represents, not just the words on the pages, because they’re never going to get there. If they do not pick up that book or put, turn, play on audio to listen to it. And it’s like, how much have you spent going, what is the idea of this book? Like, what am I trying to change someone’s mind about what am I trying to make better or easier, but what is the idea of the book? And I think to me, the reason that’s so important because that’s the sales strategy, right? That’s the marketing strategy. I love one of the things that he said, at some point in this really good interview, he goes, once the book is written, basically your marketing hopes are over, right?
AJV (07:14):
And it’s like, you’ve got to have the hook of why are people going to buy this before you write the book? Right. And I think there’s some real, real power in that I’m going, it’s like, what are people going to buy in terms of the idea? Because I think that that is the sales and marketing strategy of the hopes. Even if the book ends up being a real let down. So I think there’s a lot of power in that is like, what is the idea of it? Because that’s what people are really going to buy into. That’s also a huge part of the sales and marketing concept.
RV (07:47):
Yep. That, that stuck with me too. And I think we, when we teach one of the things we help with our members, a lot of times is helping them come up with titles. And we talk about, you have to learn to separate the truth from the title. The truth is inside the book. Like it’s the thing, that’ll change their life, but the title is the transformation. It’s the promise of what the book provides. And that’s what you’re really selling. It reminds me of a couple of the metaphors that we use where it’s like, you know, if you need to get a dog to take medicine, you put the medicine inside a peanut butter. And so it’s like the title of the book, the marketing of the book is the peanut butter. And then the text, the words on the page is, as you say, J that’s the medicine, but so it’s so difficult for an author to separate those two because we’re so attached to the medicine where we’re so attached to the truth, to the, to the concepts that we’re writing about.
RV (08:45):
It’s hard to kind of separate ourselves and go, okay, this is the thing I’m teaching, but what’s the bigger idea that I’m selling. What’s the, what’s the payoff that I’m promising? What is the destination that I’m, I’m taking people to. And, and so I think you gotta be able to separate those and then even think about, okay, how do I package this idea so that they, people will buy the idea? And that’s really what they’re buying is, is the idea. But if you can’t, if you can’t separate in your mind, those two things, then you’re going to have a hard time. And, and frankly, most of us, like most, most authors don’t separate them because you’re not trained to, and publishers don’t teach you to, cause they’re, they’re focused on the book itself. Unless you really have somebody who understands marketing, who’s coaching you and guiding through the process. You’re, you’re not going to think of it in that way. So that’s yeah, so that’s good. Separate got a separate the, the title from the truth, the cover, the cover from the content and the idea of the book versus what’s in the book. So what was your third one?
AJV (09:57):
Yep. So my third one kind of similar, but just a little bit different and it’s really just how you actually put the book together. So thinking through chapters and the words on the pages. So I kind of thought to like big idea to like the tangible, like, how do you outline a book and how do you get in process? That process started. And I loved what he said on that. That was really, really good. It’s like, front-load the book with the big idea, like the entire front part of the book to be just front-loaded with the idea of the idea. And then the rest of the book should just illustrate that idea. But it’s like, front-load that book with those big ideas that are, I’m not going to say controversial in a negative way, but that are thought provoking that are different. That would go, I thought it was X, but he’s saying it’s Y but not how or why or what. It’s just the idea to get people going. I got to know where this is going to go, then use the rest of the book to illustrate that big idea. And I loved that. It’s like, you’ve got to sell the idea, then you can illustrate the idea. And that’s kind of like a way of outlining the book. I thought it was really good, simple
RV (11:07):
Save, save the best for first that’s one of our mantras around a brand builders group always saved the best for first, push it up front, you know, capture their attention. For me, a part of why I love this interview is because you could just see, Jeff’s like, you could hear, Jeff’s love for the art of writing and not just his love for it in the way that like, oh, he’s good at it. And he really likes it, but he, he places a value on it that, of, of the importance of it. And you, you know, Asia, you actually said this earlier, which was what my third takeaway was, which is that you can change the world by changing people’s minds. And for him, it was like, he really cares about helping people write better ideas, not just to sell more books, but because better ideas make a better world.
RV (11:59):
Like he actually said that like better ideas make a better world. And I really felt aligned with him on that as this kind of like, just like for us, it’s like, we’re not trying to just help people grow their, their reach or their platform for like vanities. Cause we’re, we’re trying to make a difference in the world. And I really felt that heart from him of like, don’t forget, don’t forget to work on the book. And I think, I think so many authors are like, oh, they think about writing the book. And then they come to brown doodlers and we’re like, Hey, you got to build the audience before you build the book. And you know, it’s not New York times bestselling author it’s New York times or not New York times best writing author. It’s New York times bestselling author. And we teach a lot of the authors how to do it.
RV (12:39):
But, but I think this was a good like reminder of like the return to good create good content, like original like create, create great ideas because they’re interesting because they’re fascinating because they’re new, but because they make the world a better place, like put together, put in the energy to come up with ideas that make the world a better place. And so we want to do both. We want to help you create amazing ideas. And then we want to help you tell the whole world that there, there is that you can make a lot of impact and a lot of money doing it. So I just loved it. Great episode, definitely a top one, go back, listen to the Jeff Goins interview and keep coming back here. I mean, th the interviews are just incredible. We learned so much hope. We hope and trust that you are too. Thank you for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 226: How To Find Your Big Idea with Jeff Goins
RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Real artists don’t starve. That is a philosophy that I believe in that is the title of my good friend, Jeff Goins book. One of his books, he’s written five books. I believe he also wrote the art of work and he is a true writer, a pure love, amazing, talented, gifted writer, which I admire because I write because it’s necessary to speak and do the other things we do. But he is he [email protected]. He’s been featured in psychology today, entrepreneur Forbes. He lives here in Nashville, so I’ve known him for years now. At this point, we just kind of like grew up in the, in the business together. And he’s just one of the coolest dudes and he spends a lot of time with manuscripts, ones that he’s writing. He’s helping a lot of other people write their own manuscripts these days. And one of the things that he told me recently was we don’t let people write bad books and I love that. And that’s what we’re talking about. So we have Jeff Goins here, who I brought on for free consulting and writing advice for me. I’m going to take advantage of it. You’re welcome to listen in to the conversation. Jeff, welcome to the show, buddy.
JG (02:11):
Rory, happy to be here. I am looking at your backyard, which looks like a painting. And I’m remembering a time when you had a dinner party when I didn’t know where the door to your house was. And I came through that backdrop. I’m like, is this where we go anyway? Happy to be here. Love that house. Yeah.
RV (02:30):
You been to the real, you’ve been to the real Veda and Villa. You’ve been to the real. You’ve been to the real spot, man. Is that the name? Vaden Villa. Yeah. We call it Vaden Villa and that cause if we ever put it on the market in Nashville, it’s like, I think we could probably sell it for like 10 times over asking price,
JG (02:48):
Right? Yeah. Dave Ramsey’s house is on the market. You could probably get something similar.
RV (02:52):
Yeah. We can sell ours and buy one of Dave’s garage bays. Exactly. Well, buddy. So I want to talk about writing an awesome book. And first of all, like let’s talk about the, the, the, the ideation process. You said, you said something. We were G jibber, John, before we got started here. And you said that good ideas make bad books. Why do you say that? What does that mean?
JG (03:28):
Everybody’s got an idea for a book and they think that idea is pretty good and I wouldn’t disagree with them. And the problem is that a good idea is not good enough. Good ideas are average. They are taken for granted. What most people call a good idea is a somewhat obvious observation about something true in the world. That thing could be your story. This is where a lot of people get stuck. They have something significant happened to them. They beat cancer, they lost 200 pounds. They you know built a business, whatever. And, and they think the story in itself because it’s so significant to them. And they talk to a handful of friends. I go, yeah, like they can see that it’s significant to the person that it happened to. And so their friends often encourage them. Right? If you have friends who are not professional writers, encouraging you to write a book, which is what I hear, 90% of all my friends say, you know, I need to do this.
JG (04:23):
90% of people are saying that they’ve got a good idea and their friends are telling them that’s not enough. And I’m not here to dissuade anybody. I’m here to challenge you to write something that people would pay attention to. And you can go do that. That this is what most people do is they have a good idea. Their friends were not professional writers, right? Who are unqualified. Right. Think about this for a second. Nobody thinks about this, but just because your friends. Yeah. All my friends, I’m pretty good at swimming. So I should become an Olympian Olympians. Do they know what it takes? Writing a book is as you know, Rory Vaden and a limpic act, it’s hard. Lots of people want to do it. Most people who start don’t finish it. And I want to help people finish their books. But I also have a commitment to the book itself, to the world of books, to the Pantheon of literature, that we’re not gonna let more bad books go out into the world because it’s easy to put a book into the world that is relatively easy.
JG (05:17):
I could write something on Microsoft word today, upload it to kdp.amazon.com and it would be published in a day or two. And so the fact that that opportunity exists is one amazing. And two, it should feel, we should feel a burden of responsibility. Any time something becomes dramatically easier. We should take a moment and stop and go. Just because I can do this doesn’t mean I should. And if I’m going to do this, I want to do it well. So everybody starts with a good idea and good ideas are average. They’re ordinary and ordinary ideas get forgotten. The book itself could be great. You know, they often are good books, but that is not enough to get people talking in the way that you so, like what makes that an idea? Yeah.
RV (06:08):
I thought I love this. Like what you just said, ordinary ideas get forgotten. Like that’s very sobering. And you know, like, I mean, you can see that just on any social media posts, right. You post it and it just immediately buried, like buried, gone disappears. So like if good ideas make bad books. Yes. What are the ideas that make great books? How the, how the heck do we find them or make them
JG (06:32):
The idea is not to be better than good it’s to find your interesting edge. So the opposite of good is not great. It’s interesting. Ordinary ideas, good ideas. What I call a good ideas, an ordinary idea, really the sky is blue. People should be nice. You know, littering causes pollution, right? These are obvious ideas. They’re not untrue. They’re not even bad ideas. They’re just boring. And the way that you change people’s minds that you change the world as you change people’s minds. And the way that you change people’s minds is you introduce enough novelty to them that they remember it. So consider a spectrum on one end of the spectrum, you have ordinary, that’s boring, ordinary ideas get forgotten. And the other end of the spectrum, you have absurd, absurd ideas, get rejected somewhere in between ordinary and absurd, as interesting and interesting is always more like towards absurd than you think it should be.
JG (07:33):
Right? And so one of the things that I experienced in my own writing and in working with other people on their book ideas, and we have to start at the idea because as Ryan holiday told me years ago, when I hired him to help me market real artists, don’t starve. He said, as soon he goes, I’ve got to work on the book while you’re writing it. I said, what? No, no, no marketing happens after you write the book. And he talks more about this in perennial seller. If you want, if those listening along what to read more about it, but he said something I never forgot. He said, once the book is written, the marketing is over. And there’s some truth to that. I would imagine in the work that you guys do where, you know, you can’t you can’t put lipstick on a pig, right?
JG (08:12):
There’s that’s Ogilvy quote, good marketing makes a bad product fail faster. You’ve got to be able to innovate the thing. So we want to do stuff that’s interesting and interesting. I define as 80%, same, 20% different, you know, this, this, that Don Miller StoryBrand same but different concepts. You want, you want it to be something that people go, oh yeah, a business book or a memoir. I know how those are, you know, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But here’s the 20% difference. Here’s the thing, because we know it works like books are a 500 plus year old technology and they really haven’t changed that much. They they’re they’re words on a page, that’s it. Right. And instead of using paper, sometimes we use screens, but it’s still the same thing. Or you read it into a microphone, but it’s just words. Right. And so the technology hasn’t really changed that much. So you don’t want to mess with it too much. You know, I remember when people want to do like video books and all kinds of crazy, crazy multimedia things, and it didn’t really work. And here we are 30 plus years into the internet and books still are books. And so 80%, same, 20% different find something that everybody’s saying and then add some novelty to it, make it interesting. Change it up.
RV (09:29):
How do you do that? Right. Cause that’s like a, there’s like a delicate balance that you’re talking about here. There is. If it’s too unfamiliar, I can’t understand it. I can’t get my mind wrapped around it. I don’t know, word that
JG (09:43):
We call that absurd.
RV (09:44):
Okay. If it’s too much the same, it’s like, okay, I’ve already heard it. This is nothing new. This is same old thing, regurgitated. This sounds like this person or that person or whatever. So how do you, you know, I almost kind of visualize this as like, I’m, I’m looking for, I’m looking for the goldmine. Like where do I dig? Like where do I go on? This is the, this is the part where I can nuance it.
JG (10:11):
Yep. It’s like cooking and interesting newness. Novelty is like salt. And, and if you’ve ever cooked, insulted your own food or, or gotten a meal, you know, at a restaurant or that somebody cooked for you and, and, and added a little bit of salt, I was like, this is, this is kind of better. Right. And added a little intro. This is kind of better. And then he had too much in there. Like now, now all I taste is the salt. Novelty is like salt. As soon as you can taste, it there’s too much. Right. So it is like, it is kind of an intuitive feeling thing. It is a thing that as somebody who’s been doing online marketing for 20 plus years, it’s a thing that I have a knack for, which is why people hire me to do it. But anybody can do it.
JG (10:59):
If, if you can become aware enough of what that line is. And the way I do that is I start with category. What is this thing? Right. You have to start with category. If people tell me nobody’s ever written a book like this before I go, well, that’s a problem, right? Nobody, nobody can, we can’t wrap your head around it. Right. And, and so the phrase is, it’s like this, but different like that. Right. Same but different. So take the hunger games. For example, you know, the hunger games is like the running man which was a short story that Stephen King wrote in the eighties. And it was turned into a movie with Arnold Schwartzenegger classic, amazing, terrible eighties movie that you should definitely go watch. And it’s awesome. Yeah. The running man is a story about a bunch of convicts in the future who fight have a battle to the death on public television and people watch them do this.
JG (11:59):
And of course that’s a rehash of the gladiator story, not just the movie, but the actual, the people who lived in fought, you know, 2000 years ago in the, in the Roman Coliseum. Right? And so there’s a historian that says nothing is new will. Duran says nothing is new except arrangement and real artists. Don’t start by talking about the concept of borrowing ideas, stealing like an artist as Austin Kleon would say, how do you, how do you take an idea that’s already been done before and do it better? You take something old and you make it new. So you start with category. That’s 80%. If you’re going to write a business book, 80% of what you do is going to be kind of what everybody has done. It’s probably going to be about 200 to 250 pages. You’re going to have some success quotes in there. It’s going to have like easy approachable language, some illustrations these days that might have some science backed studies. Cause that’s really popular now that’s, that’s the boring, you’ve got to be boring before you can be interesting. Cause you’ve got to meet people’s expectations. Yeah.
RV (13:04):
As you, as you talk this out, like as I just think about myself, cause you know, one of the things that we tell our members all the time is this quote that I love from Larry Winget, which is find your uniqueness and exploited in the service of others. And we really love this concept of find your uniqueness. But then when I tell the story of take the stairs, I say, well, you know, the take the stairs book more or less as a book about hard work, which is like the most unoriginal on unique, it’s normal. I mean, classically right in the 80% now we call it discipline. We call it overcoming procrastination. So we, we, we try to take it through that lens. And then, you know, the metaphor of doing things you don’t want to do is a subtle distinction versus just doing something that’s hard. Is that kind of like what you’re talking about?
JG (13:52):
I was thinking to take the stairs and my my belief, my contention is that before someone buys the book, the idea has to spread people by the idea of the book before they buy the book itself, they have to, because they’re hearing people talk, you can’t read a book, you can’t test drive. You can’t really test drive a book, you read a sample or something, but most people hear enough. People talk about a book that they go, oh, well, I guess I’m going to check out that book everybody’s talking about. Right. and you had it baked into the title. Right? You’ve got the, that, that classic you know, success quote, is that your record? Is that somebody else’s quote, right? Like you know, you’ve got a,
RV (14:39):
About the rent is due every day. Yeah. I popularized it. It’s a, it’s a twist on something I heard in college, but I, I definitely popularized that made it public.
JG (14:51):
What’s the vote against I don’t, but
RV (14:53):
Success is never owned. It’s rented. And the rent is due every
JG (14:56):
Day. Yeah. And then you’ve got the metaphor of like, I’m going to go out of my way to do something hard every day I take the stairs versus the elevator. So the metaphor is baked into the title and that’s the obstacle is the way is another example of that. It doesn’t, it doesn’t always happen that way. But if you can bake the big idea, that’s, that’s an 80, 20 same, but different shifts people go. Wow. That’s amazing. And so you start with a category. So what I would recommend if, if you’re writing, take the stairs today. Okay. Right. Go find at least five best-selling popular business books.
RV (15:32):
Abbott’s yeah. Like just habits. There’s, there’s been, there’s been a bunch. In fact, there’s a bunch that is sell way better than take the stairs. And I’m like, crap. What is different is because they nailed, they nailed it. And somehow we missed
JG (15:47):
And it’s, and it’s basically the same idea, a different approach, right? Like atomic habits, once it’s that’s tiny habits, it’s one small change. A 1% change. Every single day is better than massive change, you know, infrequently. So read five popular business books, see what they all agree with too. What they all say, ah, they all say, you’ve got to work hard. You’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that. Okay, cool. Got it. Say that. Cause that’s, that’s what works. So it’s not like you can say like we’re not going to work hard cause people won’t believe that that’ll seem absurd and then find a 20% difference. That’s your uniqueness, something unique, some flare that you can add to it. Ryan holiday has done this really well with the subject of stoicism. He’s taken something old and made it new again.
JG (16:34):
But he’s using modern stories, not just a bunch of like 2000 year old Roman dead guys. Right. And so that’s, that’s how it works. Category. Start with a category, find out what they all have in common, intentionally break, a rule or two to kind of stand out. Right. There’s a scene in Braveheart where the Nobles finally join William Wallace and, and he goes, all right, let’s go. You know? And he tells the, he tells the Nobles, cause they’re on horses. Nobody else on horses. Cause they have horses. Right. And he says, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go. I want you to go, go hard. Right. Go out and like go into the, the, the, the forest over there. We’re gonna, we’re gonna go this way. And we’re gonna, we’re gonna meet the English and you go that way. And they don’t, they’re confused.
JG (17:20):
And then one of them goes, oh, they think we run away. And he goes, exactly. And then I want you to flank them. Right? Come in on the side, like a flank is when somebody comes out and then you come in on the side, you attack them on the side. Completely takes them off guard. So they do that and they win the battle. That’s what a big idea is. It’s going, you think I’m going here then fly, right? Like I hit your heart and you go, whoa. And the brain loves a little bit of cognitive dissonance, a little bit of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That can’t be true. Is true. That might be true. And there’s 80% safety. There’s like, yeah, it’s packaged in a lot of safety cause too much novelty. A friend of mine is a neuroscientist says, you know, you really throw anything more than a three to 5% daily change in terms of habits, attitudes, et cetera, is too much in your brain. Your soul, your whole nervous system actually shut down. If you try to change too quickly, which is a whole other conversation. But the point is enough change just like enough little change, enough knowledge. It’s like inception, right? Where you inject a little tiny idea that changes everything. That’s a big idea.
RV (18:29):
And then you’re finding that you’re you’re you’re so that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for that 20% twists, novelty change, adaptation, flank, whatever you want to call it, but does it have to be true? And is it making it better or is it just different or can it be
JG (18:58):
It’s different? It doesn’t have to be true. You know, have to be honest, you can lie and get a lot of people to believe you and you will be interesting for awhile and false ideas eventually get found out. So I don’t recommend it, but the truth is that I, that an idea doesn’t have to be true for it to be interesting. It just doesn’t, you know, there, there are plenty of memes and urban tales or been fables that spread that are not true. Right. But they spread for awhile. And, and so we liked them. I think it was that book by the Heath brothers made to stick with the opening story is about that like internet story of the like guy going on a date and waking up in a bathtub full of ice. And his liver has been removed. Remember that story forever ago. And they said, this story is not true, but it spread like crazy Y and they kind of break it down. So I would say it’s like a good idea as a true idea. And most people think like the truth will set you free and it may set you free, but it doesn’t necessarily make for great marketing. You know, if, if people can pardon my saying that what makes for great marketing and let’s just go to Jesus for a second, because Jesus said the truth will set you free is
RV (20:12):
For you to burst into flames right now. Just keep going. Well, Jesus,
JG (20:16):
He’s this, didn’t this and all great political religious and thought leaders do this. They go, everybody thinks X, but what I, but what’s actually true is Y you have heard this. Now I tell you this, you have heard eye for eye tooth for tooth. Now I tell you love your enemy. Those are big ideas. Those are interesting ideas. What does he do starts with the familiar, familiar, and then add some novelty to it. So if you don’t remember anything else, remember the phrase everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is why everybody thinks that success is just something that happens to lucky people or everybody thinks that you know, like once you get to a certain level of success, you don’t have to keep trying. But the truth is it’s a daily battle or, you know, whatever that would be the big idea of take the stairs. And then the last thing that I would add is there are tropes that you can use to do this better. And that’s a trope. There’s a literary trope is like, bring it,
RV (21:18):
Bring it down and not a trope. Definitely.
JG (21:23):
Trope a trope is something that just works. It’s a, it’s a tactic. So for example writers talk about tropes in writing fiction telling stories because, because fiction stories are, are formulaic. You know, if you’ve ever read Robert McKee’s book story or save the cat that’s a trope, save the cat as a trope. And, and the, the trope is if you want people to like your hero, you have to get them to do something noble within the first 20 minutes of the movie. So, you know, Rocky is just kind of this, like, you know kind of dumb, you know, Italian guy in Philadelphia and you see him like doing nice things for his neighbors saying hello to the nice guy, et cetera. This works even with like antihero stories, like you know, the godfather or like breaking bad, Walter White in the first episode you see, he’s this hardworking science teacher, who’s got a disabled son and you like him.
JG (22:29):
Cause he’s, he’s kinda, he’s just trying really hard. And that’s the, that’s the excruciating thing about that show is this guy gets progressively worse and worse. He is a villain and there’s part of you that still rooting for him. So that’s a trope. And when we think about big ideas, things that just work there are, there are just the formulas. Everyone thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y and then some skins that you can put on that would be like old, as new, old is new is stoicism. Old is new, is any like I dunno, church that says Hey, we’re doing things the way they did in the new Testament 2000 years ago. And we assume that just because something’s old, it’s authoritative, right. But you see this all the time. Ah, th this is you know, I paleo, right?
JG (23:18):
Like this is how the caveman ate. Well, like didn’t, they live to like age 40. Why are we doing caveman? Did it? It’s good. Right. We just, it, it doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t need to. It’s interesting. So oldest new, good is bad or bad is good. Would be another one. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books do this, but David and Goliath is about why strength is weakness and weaknesses. Strength. That’s good as bad, bad as good. We think strength is good. Well, sometimes it’s not good. And the ketogenic diet would be an example of that. You know, you and I are roughly the same age, I think. And I remember growing up in the eighties and nineties being told that fat was bad, low fat diet, no fat. Like you were reading the labels, looking for fat, don’t eat fat.
JG (24:00):
Now you have, it’s actually old as new cause it’s, it’s a version of Atkins, right? But a different take on it. And it’s like, Hey, this thing that you were told was bad fat. We want you to eat as much of that as you possibly can. And so the ketogenic diet became popular, not just not because of the science, but because an entire generation of people were told something was bad. And now they’re being told it’s good. And this, the backing of it, this is, this is being predictably. Irrational. People are predictably irrational, the quote, Dan Arielli the, the, the rationale behind it, the science convinces you of something you already emotionally want to be true. So good is bad. Bad is good, biggest, small, smallest, big, anything that appears to be one way and as some. And there’s another way these are, these are tactics and books that work well. Another one would be chaos is organized, right? Chaos disorder. What appears to be frenetic and crazy and chaotic actually has a hidden organizational structure to it. That is the, that is the plot to every mystery movie. Every ocean’s 11 movie you know, like w what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen. There’s the plan that goes completely wrong. And by the end of it, you realize this was George Clooney’s plan all along. And so these are, these are tactics that, that work well. So, you know,
RV (25:20):
That’s how you’re digging in. And that’s what you’re looking for. You’re just kind of going like, okay, where is the, where is the repositioning or the, the re-imagining of the 80%? Yeah. Yeah. It’s almost like a punchline. I mean, in comedy, right? That’s how I teach to teach the psychology of laughter is your, you want to get the audience thinking something, and then you twist. And that’s where the that’s where the laugh happens.
JG (25:46):
That’s this, that’s the same thing. The science of comedy is interesting because it’s about surprising people, but when you delightfully surprised somebody, they laugh. When, when the surprise goes in another direction, they cry, right? So comedy and tragedy are the same thing. The result is just different. Ken Davis, a comedian, I think, you know, Ken told me one time, here’s how you tell a joke. You you get a table and you put a tablecloth on the table and, and you set the table, you put plates and some silverware and a napkin and a glass and another glass. And then you pull the table cloth. Right? That’s I tell a joke. That’s how you get an idea to spread a joke is actually just an idea. That’s, that’s a funny idea. That’s spreading, right? Like a really good joke. You remember, and you tell other people and they laugh too, if you told it. Right. And so a big idea is that you set the table, that’s 80%, and then you pull the tablecloth, you change the game. And so then one of the ways that you changed the game is you just say, what you think is big as actually small, or what you think is small is actually big. That’s the idea of the tipping point. People think that big things lead to big change. No, no, no little things lead to big change. Oh, wow. Right. Good. As bad, bad as good chaos has order orders, chaos and so on.
RV (27:02):
Yeah. Fascinating stuff. Okay. So so now that, so what I hear you saying here is that, you know, writing a great book, much of writing a great book is, is nailing this core premise, this, this big idea, this, this twist. And then after that, like, I guess once you’re clear about that, then you’re just kind of like extrapolating that out into a, like a fairly systematic presentation of that.
JG (27:33):
Yeah. And, and to be fair, I mean, this is probably not all books. It’s a lot of books, I think, but the kind of books that I’m interested in working on the kind of books that I want to write, and I want to work on with other people are big idea. Non-Fiction books that can be memoir, personal, develop business, whatever, but they’re going to change the way people think about something. Because if you change the way people think about a given topic, you, you change the world. I’m not trying to like change the world, but I want to add, you know, something good to it. And this is, this is where we’re trying to do that. So yeah, you would come up with the big idea because without the big idea your book dies, it just does. That’s, that’s, that’s the thing that we’re dealing with these days is nobody’s going to the library or Barnes and noble and pulling your book off of a shelf and buying it out of curiosity.
JG (28:21):
And if, and if they do, that’s like maybe one to 2% of your sales. And so you want it to have some backbone. You want it to have some gravitas and S and some umph to it. And so you’ve got to start with the idea, and then you, front-load the book with the big idea. You don’t, you don’t get to page 204 and go, oh, here’s the thing that I want everybody to remember. And I want you to write a good book, and I want the whole thing to be good, and I don’t want it to be fluff, but you front-load with the big idea. And then the rest of the book should illustrate that idea. And you can illustrate it narratively through an arc format. Meaning every idea is building on itself. And you’re telling a story, or even like a Malcolm Gladwell story.
JG (29:01):
These are or Malcolm Gladwell book. These are, there’s a narrative arc to the book itself. And there’s some big payoff at the end. There’s an initial big idea. Then there’s a bunch of little stories. And then there’s like, it feels like it feels theatrical, or it’s like a movie and you go, oh, wow. That’s, that’s what all this means. Or it’s modular start with the big idea and then module by module by module illustrate it. So if I, if I’m writing the tipping point you know, little things lead to big change and I’m writing it modularly, every chapter is a module in that as if you were almost like teaching a course on it. So, okay. Little thing, number one, looks this little thing. Number two, looks like this little thing. Number three, looks like that. And that’s how you would do that.
RV (29:48):
That’s fascinating. I, this is so cool and interesting. And like the formula that we used for my Ted talk you know, we did this big ordeal about why my second book title sucked. Cause we called it procrastinating on purpose, but we call it the Ted talk, how to multiply time. And my talk went viral. And is this twist that you, you know, you don’t manage time, you multiply that you multiply time.
JG (30:19):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. And can I pick on that idea from it? Yeah. So we’re everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y so everybody thinks you manage time. And the truth is you blank time. This is where most people get stuck, because the way that you come up with an interesting idea is you don’t just come up with the opposite of the thing that you just said. So everybody thinks you manage time, but you don’t. Well that’s what do you mean you don’t? Why not? That’s, that’s an interesting enough. The interesting, the 20% has to sound absurd. Right. But it’s just a little piece of it. So it can sound absurd because it’s been in case in a lot of normalcy, if that makes sense. And so everybody actually managed time, but the truth is like, I’ve heard you manage energy, right? Like, I’ve heard that before, but you took that one step farther into the stratosphere and you go, you multiply time. Well, that’s absurd where you can’t multiply time. Time is time. And that’s what makes it so interesting is it’s absurd.
RV (31:13):
The next part is actually not that you manage time, the X is you think you can’t create time. Oh my God, actually you can multiply time. And the way that we say is that as you go, well, you can’t create time inside of one day, but that’s why the way you multiply time is by spending time on things today that create more time tomorrow. And it is possible to multiply time if you think out into the future. So it fits that for me. But anyways, it’s like
JG (31:40):
And I would say to your credit, cause I read that book you’re not just, it’s not just some vague esoteric idea that you’re trying to get people to agree with you. It’s, it’s a kind of absurd idea, at least in theory. And then you have all these. I remember still, like you said something, he said something like, you know, most people think it takes like, like twice as much time to train somebody to do something for you. And the fact is it takes how much
RV (32:06):
30, 30 X, we call it the third, the 30 eggs. But if you spend, but even if you spend 30 times, the amount of time it took you to do at once is what you should spend training someone to do it. But then even over the course of a year, it’s like a 733% return on that
JG (32:24):
Time. So what I found interesting about the book is you had all these super practical research, like you’ve done all this stuff, research, backed ideas. You’re like, Hey, here’s how this works. That’s how that works. You start with an absurd idea and then it’s in case then a lot of practicality, like you have to prove your idea. And if you can’t prove your idea, then you just have some crazy idea. And what we want is a big idea that has some grounding to it. You go, no, no, no. See, this is how this works. Then you’ve got something that will spread. Hmm.
RV (32:52):
Yeah. well my friend where this is, this is so stimulated Jeff, like it’s so cool. And a fascinating and fun. Where should people go if they want to learn about you? You’re obviously one of our preferred vendors at brand builders group that we recommend for folks. And so if you’re one of our members, you can just go in your portal and request an introduction to Jeff. We’ll make it happen for you. But like in terms of people following you and staying connected, like what’s the best way to do that.
JG (33:23):
Sure. You mentioned my website, [inaudible] dot com. You can go there and find stuff about me if this is stimulating to you. And, and you think you have a big idea for a book feel free to email me and send me your big idea. And it shouldn’t be eight paragraphs long. It should be a sentence or two. And I would challenge you to think, what is the category? Where are you starting? How are you going to add some novelty? And if you’d like feedback on your idea, I do this on every podcast these days. Cause I really do care about better ideas going out into the world because better ideas make a better world. And I want the ideas to be true and good, but I also want them to be interesting because most good ideas die before they have the chance to make the impact that they want.
JG (34:05):
So if you want to share your idea, feel free to email me [email protected] and the formula that I would encourage you to use is everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y and use Rory’s example of you know, everybody thinks that you can’t create time, but the truth is you can multiply it like you want to get like that’s what makes it such a good idea? Such an interesting idea is that the second part is surprising. Wait, like multiply, like you can’t just create time. You can actually multiply it. You can get more of this thing that we all kind of feel is a finite resource. That’s powerful. And I want everybody to have a big idea like that and to not start writing until they do, because otherwise it’s a slog and you need the energy of a powerful idea that you think is going to change the world in order to get, to get through the really difficult parts and process of writing a book. So feel free to email that to me, Jeff, at Goins writer.com, G O I N S writer.com.
RV (35:04):
I love that better ideas make a better world. I’m grateful that there’s people like you, that care about the quality of the ideas and the shaping them. And in a weird way, I feel like the more, no more noise that’s out there and the easier that it is, it’s, it’s starting to get a point where everything looks like noise. That if you have a really sharp idea, people are keen to notice it quickly. And so we appreciate your work. Brother we’ll stay connected. We wish you
JG (35:31):
All the best. Sounds good. Thanks for sharing.
Ep 217: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
And we are here influential, personal brand podcasts, recap. I love it. When AJs here, life is better when wifey is here, she of course is our CEO Xtrordinair. And we are breaking down the interview with Craig Valentine, which was a blast from the past, for me, someone who had a major shaping on my life and career early on. And so anyways, this was a chance to AJ got to listen into our interview. And we’re gonna, we’re going to share with you are our top three takeaways each and bay. Why don’t you go first?
AJV (00:38):
Okay. so formal these podcasts recaps, babe wifey. So formal and professional. Are we so my first one is actually something you said in the very beginning, which I then thought it was hilarious that he then talked about it later on. And he said this comment in the beginning, he said, what I realized really early on, I said, it’s not good enough to get ready. You have to stay ready. And then he used that exact same thing, like five minutes later when talking about creating statements that people don’t just remember that they can repeat. So my first two takeaways are kind of like a combo deal. And the first one is this concept of getting ready versus staying ready. And I think this is really, really important for the audience that we really want to serve. Because when you think about storytelling is not about just telling stories in a keynote, and that’s so much of what people prepare for.
AJV (01:37):
It’s like, I have to think about these stories for a book that I’m writing or a course I’m creating or a keynote. And those were very singular activities. And it’s like, what about the stories that you tell in everyday interviews or your content creation on social media or a podcast or TV or radio or whatever. And I think that’s really important. I’ve just being able to stay ready. So at any minute, if a reporter tweets you at 9:00 PM at night, that you could be ready to go for an interview at 11:00 PM, which is exactly what happened to us just a couple of months ago. And because we were ready, it landed on good morning, America, totally unexpected, but we were ready. Didn’t need to get ready. We were ready. And I think that’s just a really great story is if you get ready and you stay ready, then it’s easy to accept the opportunities as they fly by, because it would have been equally as easy for someone to go. I don’t know what I’m going to say for that and turn down I mega opportunity just because you weren’t ready. And so that was my first big takeaway. And also gave you a teaser to my second one that I’ll share in just a minute.
RV (02:47):
Well, that’s good. I mean, that is just as like being in that mindset of like, I can go at any moment. It reminds me what you said reminded me of our friend Navy seal Joe. And one time I asked him, you know, why don’t, why don’t you drink? And he just said, well, cause at any, any given moment, you know, I might have to defend somebody. I might have to do something
AJV (03:07):
That’s a different
RV (03:08):
Kind of stay ready. Right. But it’s like that when you’re a Navy seal, it’s like, you’re always
AJV (03:14):
Ready,
RV (03:14):
Always ready. So one of the things for me, I mean, Craig is I think one of the masters of teaching storytelling, and I think it’s part of the impact he’s had on my life has helped me tell a great story. And even after all these years, as I was listening to him, I realized I don’t always have a clear conflict in my stories and you need to have a clear conflict. And that was my takeaway, which I’ve, I’ve been reminded of by him before, but somehow still forget. And, and in any story like the story is in the struggle, the story is not what happens at the end. The story is this one step forward, two step back of what the main character is trying to accomplish. And the moment that the conflict gets established is the moment that something gets in the way of your goal.
RV (04:09):
And so you have to have a character who wants something who has a block. You know, we, we refer in our a world-class presentation craft. We talk about how you have, you have the main character and then you have the enemy. You, you have to have a main character. Who’s trying to achieve something. Who’s being blocked by an enemy, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a person, but often it is. But if your stories are falling flat, it’s because you don’t have a clear conflict, which means you either don’t you, you don’t have a clear picture of what the main character is trying to accomplish. And there’s not clarity about what is standing in that main characters way. And if you don’t have those two things, you don’t have a story. You’re just, you’re just sharing words. And that is so simple, so simple, but just really hit me as profound. And it’s like, gosh, I should know this. I should know better, but I just don’t. And I, and you just forget that the fundamental, so that you got to have a clear conflict. That was my first big one.
AJV (05:12):
Yeah. Well, on that note Craig talks a lot about this in the interview is the importance of both conflict, but then also character dialogue. And those were equal parts of a great story is like, yeah, the story needs conflict, but there also has to be some character development I E through dialogue. And so it’s helping get to know each point of the characters in the story, even if it’s only one character that conflict and dialogue are of equal importance. And I think that was a really unique part because often sometimes the heart of the story is missed because you only get a one-sided character perspective.
RV (05:52):
Yeah. That was that your second takeaway was dialogue.
AJV (05:57):
That was a side tangent.
RV (06:00):
Since you, since you went there, I’ll just do my second one. Cause that was, that was my second one was that dialogue was my big second takeaway because of exactly what you said is you flesh out the characters, you get to know them by knowing what they’re thinking and what they’re saying to each other, which again, you don’t always think about. So anyways, that was my second one. I did two in a row. Okay. Back to you.
AJV (06:22):
Yeah. So my second one was something that I said at the very beginning, because I thought they were, they were very much connected, but it’s this whole concept of, you know, don’t tell stories just to be remembered, but tell them in a way that can be repeated. So it’s creating statements little taglines but easily remembered, but also easily repeated statements that actually carry through conversations. And that’s a huge part of a brand recognition it’s that people don’t just remember that, you know, you talk about, you know, overcoming self-doubt or you talk about in our case, personal branding, but it’s like, we’ve got these statements that are defining part of our personal brand and it’s easy for people to repeat them because they’re catchy, they’re easy to remember, but they’re also easily repeated. And I thought that was really good. And so it’s like, what are the conversation centerpieces that you have in your personal brand and in your stories, but in your content that allow people to go YAG tweet that I’d retweet that it’s like, I post that on my social.
AJV (07:26):
It’s like, I would, I would talk about this. Like, this is a, this is a good conversation starter. And it even, it doesn’t even have to be all that catchy. Sometimes it just has to be somewhat controversial in terms of like, this is different. Like one of the things that caught my attention when listening to this podcast with Kregg is this whole concept of, you know, in our opinion, that personal branding is the future of marketing and that’s somewhat controversial. I’m going like really like really it’s the future of marketing. And it’s like, that allows someone to go. It’s like, Hey, there’s this firm out there that did this study. And they’re saying that personal branding is the future of marketing. It’s like that personal branding is the way to build trust. And so again, it’s, it doesn’t even have to be like a tagline for it to be catchy, but it’s gotta be interesting enough that people can remember it and repeat it and that they would want to. And I thought that was a really huge part of stories are there to get people engaged. But then what’s the point, what’s the takeaway of the story. And are you giving it and little snippets that people can remember and want to repeat?
RV (08:37):
Yeah. Amen. It’s like, what’s the story, but what’s the, what’s the point? What’s the takeaway? The story is like the entertaining part, but then the point is like the educational part or the inspirational, the part that adds real value to our life. And you know, we call them pillar points internally, obviously like those, those catchy, those catchy phrases, and that kind of points to my third takeaway, which is which was, was actually nothing about the technical stuff of what Craig was teaching related to how to tell a great story. It was his kind of catchy pillar point from his wife. Your dream is not for sale. And I have heard him tell that story so many times about you know, him trying to quit his job to go pursue his dream and, and his, his boss offering him more money and him almost taking it.
RV (09:29):
And then his wife saying your dream is not for sale. And that has stuck with me that has stuck with me for almost 20 years now, from the first time that I heard that. And that is so powerful as a concept that like, you know, if you have a dream and there’s something that you’re dreaming about, like you literally want, and, and it is placed on your heart, that this is the thing that you’re supposed to pursue. Don’t let anything distract you from it. Don’t let anything pull you off of it. Don’t let anything convince you that you’re not worthy of it or that you can’t have it. And certainly don’t go chasing money in as a, as a way of avoiding chasing the thing, you know, that you’re called to. And even though, you know, that wasn’t a technique that he was there to teach, you know, he’s teaching us secrets of storytelling to hear that story risk recounted over and over is just such a powerful reminder for me in my own life to just go, yeah, your dream is there for a reason, your dream is there because you’re supposed to pursue it.
RV (10:33):
You’re supposed to move in that direction. There’s other people that you inspire by doing it. There’s other people that you help by chasing after it just don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked with other stuff.
AJV (10:45):
That’s good. That’s good. All right. Well, I’m at this up my third one. And I find a line and I, again, this wasn’t necessarily new, but it was a great reminder for every single person who is listening to this podcast is that it is not about selling a product it’s about selling results. And the best way you can do that is in storytelling. And it’s like, if all you do is talk about your product. It’s like, people get burned out. It’s like, you can only talk about it so much, but it’s like, what are the results that you will achieve or experience because of your product or your service. And he goes, you know, he gets that great story about when he was buying his first car several decades ago. And the first dealership he went to, they talked all about the car right here are the features of the car.
AJV (11:34):
Here’s the gas mileage. Here’s the rates that it at a desk, second place. He went and said, why are you buying a new car? And he said, oh, you’re going to look good in this car. Just think about all the ladies you’re going to get in this car. But it was, it was the results, but it was also the story. Like when you tell story, you’re able to put yourself in the character, see and experience it. Like when you talk about, oh, in this car, you’re going to look so good. I just want you to imagine, like, for me, it’s like how clean and organized a new car would be with your two toddlers. And if you owed, you had that captain seat, you wouldn’t have to climb over the seat to get in the back, or you’re going to have this extra space.
AJV (12:13):
Like you can tell I’m a mom of two small kids right now, because that’s what appeals to me like that if you put me as the character in the seat of the car, it’s like, oh yeah, I want that. I want clean carpets again. Yeah. I want seats where my kid’s little legs, can’t kick the back of them. That, how do you get me bad versus just telling me about just safety features and just the components of a car, but it’s like, how do you use a story to put your audience as the character in the seat to help them actually experience what your product or service is without making it all about just the facts and features and components of what you do, but it’s, what is it going to give them in peace or happiness or in my case organization. Right? So it was like, what are those things? And how do you use stories to help sell results? Because at the end of the day, people aren’t buying your product, they’re buying what your product or service is going to do for them.
RV (13:13):
So good. So good. And just storytelling. I think it’s, it’s easy to underestimate the power of stories because they’re so simple. It’s easy to forget the fundamental parts of that should be in a story because you just overlook them. And, and, and certainly just easy to forget, to use stories in your selling, your writing, your emails, obviously your presentation. So listen to this episode, go back. If you didn’t and listened to the episode with Craig Valentine, it is fantastic. He is a gifted speaker and also extremely gifted at teaching the art of story, which will help you and make a difference as does every guest. At least that is our hope every week here on the influential personal brand podcast. That’s all for this one comeback soon. We’ll see you then bye-bye.
Ep 216: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine
RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
Well, it is time that you meet one of my legendary mentors. One of my personal coaches up as I kinda came up through the speaking ranks was this man Craig Valentine. He’s one of my favorite people ever as you’re about to learn, he is a wealth of knowledge and just a really, really cool dude. So I met him because he was, he is the 1999 world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters international. That was a contest that I came in second in 2007. He was one of my coaches for that. And it’s a worldwide competition where 25,000 contestants compete from, you know, over a dozen countries to be called world champion. He won that when he was still in his twenties. He also has an MBA from Johns Hopkins university. He’s the author of a book called the nuts and bolts of public speaking and the co-author of a number one, Amazon bestseller called world-class speaking in action. And so he’s built a career largely out of presentation skills coaching, and he’s also a speaker. He speaks on some different things, but in my mind, he was one of my speaker original speaker coaches still to this day, he runs something called the speak and prosper academy and he has a coaching certification program. That’s also called world-class speaking and a piece, just one of my go-to trusted authorities on, on all things presentations. So Craig, my man is so good to see you. It’s been way too long, brother
CV (02:21):
And way too long. It’s great to see you. I remember those days when we were working up to the world championship, you had a lot, I still believe if you had used the Jessica Simpson line, you would have won the world championship, but you took it out, but that’s okay. I thought I saved face for her, but that’s that a lot about you that you were, you were willing to take that out and, and be the type of person that wouldn’t be remembered for that type of thing. So you were a champion in my eyes. Always. I can tell you that when I won the world championship, Rory, I’m telling you like two days later, I realized it was a blessing and a curse, a blessing and a curse. Yeah, because if you have been walking towards me in the Chicago two days after I won the world championship, you would’ve seen my wife on one side of me and me carrying is right there. This gigantic crystal trophy, right. Just walking through the Chicago airport, everybody’s looking at me like, well, who is that? Yeah, right. I thought, Rory, I thought I heard a lady say, is that Denzel Washington? Right? But this is what I realized my life would never be the same. This petite lady in a pink dress runs up to me in the middle of the airport and everybody’s watching. And she starts reading the bottom of my trophy and she says, Hmm, 1999 world champion of public speaking. Wow. Say some things.
CV (03:40):
And Rory, I was speechless, but that’s when I realized no matter where I go in life, people are going to say, would you mind saying some things? Right? So I came to a fundamental understanding about my life as a speaker and really about your life and anybody listening, I can no longer get ready to speak. I have to stay ready to speak. Yeah. That’s my new, my motto is don’t get ready, stay ready. Because then you can take advantage of all the opportunities that exist. And so what I help people do nowadays is stay ready to speak and learn how to craft and deliver and sell their message. So people take the exact next step. They want them to take you know, and also get them to present in such a way that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and makes them glad they came. And speaking of that, I’m very, very glad that I’m here.
RV (04:25):
Well, man, you know, it’s interesting to me because my, my dream originally was like, I wanted to be a speaker. And then I kind of learned, oh, you gotta be, you, you know, it helps if you’re an author and I became an author. And then now it’s like these days, I viewed myself probably more as an entrepreneur business-wise then than anything. But it’s amazing how much, those skills presentation skills, they apply to everything. Podcasts, interviews, webinars speaking in front of an arena or five, 10 people, or you’re at your, your leadership meeting or doing a prayer at the family dinner table. I mean, this stuff is everywhere. And you just, you don’t like, if you, if you didn’t go through Toastmasters, you might’ve had a class in college that teaches this stuff.
CV (05:13):
Exactly. It’s almost like personal financial management. You usually go through college without even knowing that, and you get out there to make this money. You don’t know what to do with it. Right? So to me, it, it’s always interesting because of what happened with you is what happens with a lot of people, including me, which is you get on this road. People say, stay in your lane, but they don’t realize that sometimes the road curves, right? And sometimes the market tells you what to do next. So for an example, for me, I got a call like maybe two months after I won the world championship from a guy who said, Craig, this is Wade Randolph. And I’d like you to coach me on my speaking. And I’m Rory. I’m like, I’m not a speech coach. I’m just a speaker. I wouldn’t even know where to start. And he said, I’ll pay you. I said, that’s a good place to start.
RV (06:01):
As I said, I must be.
CV (06:05):
And I’ll never forget. We met in the Martin Luther king library in Washington, DC. He drove up from Virginia and I started coaching him, but I had no idea what I was doing, but he kept coming back and I kept learning more and more ways to, to help Wade. And then I started getting other clients and other clients. And it wasn’t until Darren LaCroix, a buddy of both of ours said, Craig, once you realize you’re also a speech coach, you’ll be much better off because I was like, no, no, that’s not what I am. Once I embraced it. And I do what I call a jump into what you fall into. It opened up a whole new world of opportunities for me. And I’ve been living in it ever since.
RV (06:41):
So, you know, present on that note presentation skills is one thing that’s universal underneath that, or maybe next to that is another skill, which in my mind, I’ve always thought of you as a master of, and this is something that I’ve always struggled with. And even in this interview, I don’t know, it’s probably been 10 years since we’ve talked, I am reminded of how good you are at storytelling. You are a master. You you’ve already told at least two stories in the first like five minutes here where I’ve just been captivated. Like I got this whole laundry list of questions I was gonna ask you and I am drawn in to your stories. And that was one of the things you helped me with. And I’m also reminded like, man, I still have a lot to learn in this area. And it, because that applies even more universally than speaking does is just the art of storytelling. So what can you talk about what makes a good story? Like why are stories important? And like, you know, just for the average person out there, that’s doing lives on Facebook or running webinars, or maybe they’re speaking and they’re hosting a podcast. Like what should we be thinking of when it comes to how to tell a good story and why do most of our stories suck?
CV (08:06):
Well, I think the first part is the why is not, why do they suck? But why do we tell stories is because you want to be remembered. But not only that worry, I’ll learn this a little bit later in my career, you don’t speak to be remembered. You don’t tell stories to be remembered. You speak to be repeated, right? If you get repeated, then your brand grows and people can talk about, like, for example, people will go around right now and say, Craig, Craig Valentine says, don’t get ready, stay ready. Right. Just from the message I told you earlier. So I think to make a good story, you want to have a story and a foundational phrase. That’s a phrase that’s repeatable. That’s you focused meaning focused on your audience. And that’s fewer than 10 words, right? Give you a quick example. One of my foundational phrases is don’t sell the product, sell the result, never a product sell the result case.
CV (08:57):
In point decades ago, I went to buy my first car ever in life, went to the dealership. Salesperson came up to me. He says, are you looking at that car? I said, yes, sir. He said, great. Let me tell you about it. This car has these types of Mo this type of motor, this type of window, this type of engine, this type, what was he trying to sell them? The car, right? I just said, never sell a product. Always sell the result. So I said, no, thank you. I’m not interested. And Rory, I went to a different dealership on the same day, different salesperson, same car. Now I gotta be honest, bro. He must’ve anticipated where I was mentally and emotionally at my life. In that time, you know, I was, I was young and single and looking to mingle. And so he walks up to me. He says, you looking at that car? I said, yes, sir. He said, you’re going to look good in that one. He said, you’re going to be flying down the road. The winds gonna be blowing through your hair and the girls. Let me tell you, the girls will be all over you, Roy, what do you think I did sign
RV (09:53):
Me up. I said, where do
CV (09:54):
I sign? See he made the sale. Not because he sold me the car, but he sold me the results. And he lied. I was lonely in that car. I’m telling you, but do you see what I’m saying? Or I tell the story, I make the point and then I’ll give them the foundational phrase. So never sell a product. Always sell the result. Now what goes into a good story is having some kind of conflict. What goes into
RV (10:19):
On a positive right there before you do so. So this is kind of age old, you know, national speakers association, classic Toastmasters, tell a story, make a point. And what you’re saying is like nail that point. First we call them pillar points, the foundational phrase, just like that tweetable moment, that, that catch phrase, that like one liner don’t sell the product, sell the result. And then
CV (10:42):
No matter what, no matter when it comes up, it could come up at the beginning. I could come up at the end, but it has to come up at some time so that they can walk away repeating it. And not just remembering, you want to be remembered, repeated, re, posted, retweeted, all of that. That’s going to help build your brand. Okay.
RV (10:57):
And do you come up with the point first and then the back, the story into that? Or do you just go like, okay, here’s a great story. And then I figure out some point to make out of it.
CV (11:08):
The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Both, both. Like, I’ll give you an example. He’s probably over there listening right now, but when it was 2012, the, the summer Olympics, the oldest participant in the summer Olympics was a 74 year old equestrian from Japan. Right? 74 year old, a question from Japan. So my seven year old son and I are watching this on TV and Roy on, unfortunately all the commentators kept harping on was the guy’s age. And they just kept saying, he’s 74. Can you believe he’s 74 by golly, he’s 74. And finally my seven-year-old son looked up and said, well, how old is the horse? Right. And I could not stop laughing. I could not stop laughing. So then at that point, I said, I’ve got to make a point out of this. I got to make a point out of this.
CV (11:51):
And so maybe a couple of months later, I realized, you know what? My son asked questions about everything, about everything, and yet he’s going out there. My son is going out there and winning national championships and track and field missing. How is he doing? And then I realized, never stop asking questions, never stop it. So I turned that into that point, not the most original point, but it’s an a, it’s a point that allows me to slide into questions. I can ask my audience. So I tell that story. I make the point, never stop asking questions, and then we move on to something else. So in that case, the story came first and I said, I got to find a point to make with this. But sometimes it works the other way around.
RV (12:31):
So, all right. Yeah. So it can be either way, right? You can have a great story and go, okay, what’s the point? Let me translate that. But or you go, all right, this is a great point that I need to make. And then let me back it into the story. Yeah. I think a lot of people can’t tell a good story and they don’t understand conflict. So, so talk about what you were just saying. Cause I said, what’s the most important thing and you immediately said conflict.
CV (13:01):
Yeah, I’ll go to conflict. And then I’ll go to dialogue, hearing what the other characters say to each other, hearing what you say to yourself. But conflict is the most important part. I’ll give you just the beginning of this story, Rory. So you can get a sense for what the conflict is. But I mean, let me ask you, cause you’ve been around. What do you think is the number one thing that stands between most people live in their dreams? What do you think that is?
RV (13:23):
Self doubt.
CV (13:24):
Self doubt. Yeah. And a lot of people will say fear and the fear of change and this and that. And those are all great answers. But the number one thing is not what you think. See, I used to work for an internet company and I wanted to go full-time into professional speaking. That was my goal. That was my dream. Right, right. I was asked Molly, raise your hand. If you have a goal, raise your hand. If you want to do anything in life. Right. Me too. So I went to the vice president of this company. His name was Steve John. I said, look, John, I’m going to be leaving because there’s always been my dream to be a full time professional speaker. He said, that’s your dream, Craig? I said, yes. He said, well, that’s great. I really admire you for having one, but you can’t leave. I said, hold on now, what do you mean? I can’t leave? He said, well, Craig, we’ve been thinking about it. And we’re going to raise your salary up to this. Now Rory salary means the same thing in Nashville right
RV (14:13):
Now. We’re talking
CV (14:14):
Now you see my dilemma. I said, John, this is not a financial decision. This is about my dream. In fact, I call this a dream decision. He said, okay, I understand. I really do. How about if we raised a salary up to this? I said, this is not a financial decision. This is a dream decision. You know, he raised it four times. I kid you not. I kept him going to raise the salary up to this. I said, this is not a financial decision. This is a dream decision. He said, okay, Craig, how about if we raised your salary to well above six figures? I said, dreams are overrated. Now that’s a funny line. But let’s look back at the conflict. Let’s look at the conflict. The conflict in that story, the reason had people’s interest is because I set the conflict up for him to say, you can’t leave.
CV (14:57):
Boom. That’s when the conflict was established, that’s when the Titanic hit the iceberg. But Rory, the thing that makes a great story is not just the establishment of the conflict. You got to escalate it. You got to escalate it. Think about the movie, the Titanic, the Titanic hit the iceberg, but how did it escalate? The water started to rise on the Titanic, right? If the water never rose on the Titanic, I’m telling you right now that would have been a terrible movie. So what I’m saying is how do you raise the water on the Titanic in your own story? If you look at mine, it was, he kept offering me more money to stay. I kept getting more frustrated, more flattered, more frustrated, more flattered until something had to give. And so if you get your audience to that point, they’re like, well, what did he do? What did she do? How did they get over it? And the reason why conflict is the hook to your story is because your audience wants to know, did you overcome the conflict? If so, how, what tools did you use? Can I use them? Can I use them? And that’s why conflict is so important. But the other part that’s so important is dialogue. You’ve got to hear what the other characters say to each other.
RV (16:03):
Yeah. So I want to talk about dialogue in a set in a second, by the way, one of the things that I have quoted you for is the rest of this story, which is a dialogue from your wife, which is his amazing line, which is not just as, is a great line, but it’s actually had a meaningful impact in my life personally. But so is conflict. Like what is conflict exactly. Like, like, especially if I’m architecting a story, like to the point of, you know, let’s say, I, you know, like I’m actually working on this right now. I have a presentation. I have a presentation tomorrow. And I’m working on kind of a new story and I’m sitting kind of trying to craft it to make it sharper and more sort of state stage. Ready? What are you doing there? Like what are you looking for? Like, I, that I really love escalate the conflict. I don’t recall you saying that. You probably did say that to me a long time ago, but that’s a new thing for me is just raising the stakes, intensifying it. But when you establish conflict, how do you establish it?
CV (17:02):
Yeah. You have to recognize where, where it’s established and what happened. So when I ask people the question in that story, where is the conflict established? A lot of times they’ll say something like when you wanted to leave or when he was giving you more money. No, the moment the conflict is established is the moment something gets in the way of your dream or your goal. So it’s not when I wanted to leave nothing’s wrong yet. It’s when he said you can’t leave home, that’s it. So what you would look for in your story, Rory is the conflict is the moment where something gets in the way or someone gets in the way of what you’re looking to accomplish. Okay.
RV (17:40):
By definition means you have to have a goal. And that has to be clear. There it is. And then there’s gotta be something that gets in the way in order for there to be conflict.
CV (17:52):
I remember Darren LaCroix used to talk about Charlie Chaplin. He had, he had Charlie Chaplin had broken it down really well. I think he had like a, there was a bench and there was a girl and he was trying to get to the girl. And then it was something that got in the way. And that was in a nutshell what conflict is. Right? And that’s what a good story will do. You will establish the conflict. And here’s the, here’s the other thing about the story, Rory to many people, pre ramble, they pre ramble. What I mean by that is they take too long to get to the story in the first place. And then once they get to the story, they take way too long to get to the conflict. You should get to the conflict as early as possible. Because the earlier you get the conflict, the earlier you have them hooked in right away.
CV (18:34):
And a lot of times I try to get to the conflict in the question like I’ll tap into my audience’s world before I transport them into my story. I’ll tap into their world by saying, what do you think is the number one thing that stands in the way of most people live in their drinks, some already starting to establish some of the conflict in their own life. I learned this from Charlie, tremendous Jones, about a year before he passed away. One of the greatest speakers we had, he said to me, Craig, don’t get people to listen and memorize, get them to think and realize. So that made me become a master of asking questions at the beginning of my story in the middle of my story at the end of my story, to make sure that even though the story is about me, the message is certainly about them, them being the audience.
RV (19:18):
Yeah. I’m just thinking about my story. The problem is I don’t have a goal. The problem is the goal. Isn’t clear in my story. The conflict is the thing I’m struggling with is clear, but what’s clear is not, I don’t have the goal clear.
CV (19:31):
It’s almost like that old saying that, that, that if you, if you don’t, what’s the old saying, you don’t know where you’re going. Any road will take you there. Right. So we need to have,
RV (19:42):
Yeah, you gotta, you gotta know. So, okay. So let’s talk about dialogue and I don’t want to leave our audience with an unanswered question about this brilliant line that your wife delivers that changed my life and clearly changed your life. So let’s get back and talk about, okay. The F the most important part of a story is conflict. The second or a close second is dialogue. Why? And what do you mean?
CV (20:06):
Well, let, let, let’s give an example. Let’s give a reference. I’ll get right back into that story right after I say you dreams are overrated, right. And I’m laughing. And I say, I looked at the John said, look, John, I got to talk to my wife about this before I go, before I say, yeah. So I went home to my wife. I said, honey, I don’t know what to do. What do you think I should do? What should I do? And my wife looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, take the money fool.
CV (20:34):
And then I’ll go into another part of the story. But here’s the thing about dialogue. I always ask people, raise your hand. If you’d like to add humor to a speech. And of course they all raised their hand. I said, add humor to a speech, uncover humor within it. How do you do that? You uncover humor within the story, within the characters, within the characters dialogue, and within the spaces and faces in between the lines. So if you think about my story, you only heard about half of it. Think about the funny lives. Dreams are overrated. Funny line dialogue, take the money, full, funny line dialogue. And then later on in the story, my wife says to me, I don’t care how much they try to compensate you. Your dream is not for sale. Your dream is not presented. So even the poignant lines, it’s dialogue, but guess what?
CV (21:23):
Rory, here’s the secret to storytelling in the story. She said it to me, but in reality, she said it to you, right? Anybody listening in that audience right there will hear it the same way. I heard it feel it the same way I felt it. And she speaking directly into their hearts and minds. And I know this because people have come up to me years later and said, you know, I was looking at leaving this company and doing my own thing. And, and your, your wife’s words popped into my mind. Your dream is not for sale. It made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. So dialogue. Yes.
RV (21:57):
So Nan, so, and you’re saying uncover humor, because humor is one of the things that we teach. I know you talk about it. I’ve learned a ton from Darren on it and other other people, and you go, it’s, you know, adding humor. There’s a, there’s a lot to it. But one of the easiest, fastest ways to add humor is to just uncover humor. And you said, uncover it. What did you, you kind of breezed through that you said uncovered
CV (22:22):
From it. First thing you want to do is look inside of your story because the only thing worse than no humor is forced humor, right? That makes the audience cringe that that’s going to disconnect. You I’d rather have no humor, but you look inside your story. You look at your characters and you look at your characters, dialogue, what they say to each other and what they say to themselves as well. You know, I have a story. I say, raise your hand. If w if you feel like sometimes the reality hurts. Now, be honest. Do you ever step on a scale and been forced to face reality? Not, I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably looking at me like, Craig, what do you know about stepping on a scale? I mean, look at you. You’re obviously built, like, I don’t know some sort of Greek statue.
CV (23:07):
So if we just take it right there, there, there are different types of dialogue, right? In that story. And one of my favorite lines of dialogue or uses of dialogue is what I call projected dialogue. And I know this is a little bit advanced, but it’s when you project dialogue onto somebody based on how they’re looking at you. So my audience didn’t say that, but I can look at my audiences that I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably looking at me like, Craig, what do you know about boom? So I’m projecting dialogue onto them to uncover some humor. So I have usually five different types of dialogue that I like to use. It’s character to character dialogue, what they say to other it’s inner dialogue. What you say to yourself, because that’s very funny. Often it’s projected dialogue. What you project onto them based on how they’re looking at you.
CV (23:56):
Like right now, if I was teaching this in a class, somebody, I would say, John is looking at me like, Craig, I have no idea what, this is, what this means. Right? I’m projecting dialogue onto them. And then of course there’s actual audience dialogue. There are things that will your audience members will say while you’re in a story. Like, even in that story, I’ll say, raise your hand. If you have kids, then you know, the doctor is always going to measure their length and their, and Rory, inevitably, somebody is going to say height, and I’m going to say somebody say hi, let me explain the length. When you turn them, that actually becomes the hot, right. But so I can use actual audience dialogue. And then I can use quotations that are from outside of the story that pertain to the story. Right? For, for a quick example, when I was in prison visiting an inmate came up after one of my presentations, he said, Craig, I’m getting outta here in a few months. I’m feeling good about life. And I’m back on the right track. I said, well, there’s a quote by will Rogers who says you might be on the right track. But if you just stand there, you’ll be run over. So I can bring in quotations like that. That might uncover some humor as well.
RV (25:06):
I heard about it. The internal dot, the inner dialogue is inner dialogue is a gift because you can make up whatever you want. Like, and as long as it’s like exact, you know, it’s an exaggerated, there’s like no rules. They inner dialogue could be anything.
CV (25:24):
And here’s the key, Roy, if I thought it, then I can say it. Now, all I have to do is use a stem, like, and I was thinking, boom. And I thought, boom. And at that moment I thought, boom. And I promise you, the line of dialogue will land just as hard as if you had actually said it. So yeah, it really is a gift. But guess what? So as per the dial, because based on how they’re looking at you, they might not be thinking that it’s like when I went to share the stage with my, with my speaking hero and I said, oh my gosh, I’m Craig Valentine. I get to introduce you today. You’re the man who made me want to get into this business in the first place. Thank you so much for being here. Nothing. He just looked at me as if, to say you don’t belong on the same stage.
CV (26:09):
So it doesn’t have to just be humor. It can be poignant moments like that, but he didn’t say it. He looked at me as if, to say you don’t belong on the same stick and worried. That is the look he gave me, make no mistake about it. And I feel like I interpreted that look correctly, but it still gives me the freedom. And I think that’s what you’re talking about. It’s a gift because it gives you the freedom, freedom to say, now what you thought then, or to say what he looked like he wanted to say. And those are two very important ways to use dialogue. And, and, and there are, I like the way you put that.
RV (26:44):
Yeah. I mean, those are, yeah, that, that, it’s just like, all bets are off. You can, you can do so many things with that.
CV (26:52):
You see how I brought, I was able to bring in quotation from will Rogers to help push that story forward. It’s actually a Patricia Fripp story that I was going to, it’s my story, but it’s about Patricia Fripp. So anyway, that’s, those are the types of quotations types of dialogue that I like to use. And so if I was to really break it down, conflict is the hook dialogue is the heart because dialogue is what really pumps blood and pumps life into your story. If you’re ever watching a story. And I say to you, when did that story really come to life for you? You’re going to say when so-and-so said something to so-and-so right in that story, but dialogue is what makes it breathe and brings it to life. Mm.
RV (27:33):
Yeah. That’s that is interesting and powerful. And you know, to the, to the point of what you were talking about earlier as you, we call pillar points. I think you said you call them foundational phrases. One of the other lines that you, you said, and we quote you on this, like, I believe with a picture of you and as well as your name is you tell an eye focused story with a, you focused message that stuck with me for 15 years, man. Wow. can you talk about what that means?
CV (28:06):
Yeah. It’s kind of like what I was saying when it comes to Charlie, tremendous Jones, that the story is about me. Right? But the point needs to be about you. So even yelling back to the audience, you, the audience, even going back to the story about my son and me watching the Olympics, right? That story is about us. We laughed. We had fun. When I got to bring the point around to be about you never stop asking questions. The moment you stop asking questions is the moment you stop growing. The moment you stop growing we know from nature is the moment you fall, never stop asking questions. But what I also like to do is do what I call you focused. Check-Ins just like you heard me do in, in, in the one story where I, that I started to tell, I said, now raise your hand.
CV (28:52):
If you have kids, boom, that’s another check-in with them. Or now be honest, you ever stepped on a scale and been forced to face that’s another check-in with them. So I like to check in throughout the entire story so that they keep understanding, oh yeah, the stories about Craig. But this point in this message is about, is about me, the audience member, and I can use it. And that’s one of the things I just came out with a product about four months ago with Les brown called legendary speaking course. And that’s one of the things we’ve talked about all, all the time is info bites. He called them info bites. I call them foundational phrases, but they should be three things in my mind, foundational phrases, fewer than 10 words, you focused meaning focused on the audience and rhythmic. Now I don’t mean they need the rhyme.
CV (29:38):
I mean, they need to be easy to say and they need to roll off the tongue. Your dream is not for sale. Don’t get ready, stay ready. What got you here? Won’t get you there. I know that’s Marshall silver, but I had been talking about it for like five years before he wrote that book. But what got you here? Won’t get you there. Never stop asking questions. Average speakers placed blame, average leaders, place, blame, exceptional leaders. Take it. If you make, if you, if you make them visible, they’ll make you valuable. These are all of these foundational phrases that I have. And they’re all you focus. So I focus story message about me. I’m sorry. Stories about me. You focus point where the point in the message and the application is for you.
RV (30:18):
Yeah. You know, and this is so powerful. I mean, you can see why, like, what what’s amazing about this is, you know, when I stepped into speaking in the world championship and started learning from you guys, to me, it was like this very unattainable, almost like mythical skill of how to captivate an audience. And the more I studied this, the more I realized there’s so many techniques like dialogue and conflict that, you know, and using a foundational phrase that exponentially improve the impact in the experience for the audience. And it’s, it’s, it’s not that you’re, it’s not that you’re not amazing and charismatic as an individual, but everyone can be charismatic. But these mechanics, these are, these are practical things you can learn to do. And Craig is one of the masters, as you could tell, just by how these little tweaks make such a huge, huge difference. And Craig, that’s why I was like, I gotta have you on, got to introduce you to everybody. Where do you want people to go? If they, they want to learn more about, you know, this kind of stuff.
CV (31:31):
Remember we talked about never selling the product, always selling the result. This is what I would say to my audiences. I, if I’m in front of an SRO, raise your hand if a year from now, you’d like to be at least three times better than the speaker or presenter you are today. All hands go up. I said, well then great. You can go to one of my websites for free 52 speaking tips.com. That’s five, two speaking tips.com. And every week for a year, you’re going to get an audio lesson for me. And at the end of that year, you will be at least three times better than the speaker presenter you are today. So Roy that’s where I would have them go. But also if we just broke that down for a second, what was the result? Three times better? What was the resource? The website 52.
CV (32:12):
Speaking to which one that I mentioned first in an audience, somebody will say free. They will always say, but it’s the result. And that’s what I like to get across to people never sell the product, always sell the result, but always put the result before the resource, always as a leader, find a way to state the result before the request. Because if I did it the way most people do it, Rory, even people who are marketing people, it would have sounded like this. Raise your hand. If you’d like to receive 52 emails from yeah. And I don’t think my opt-in rate would be as high. So you go to 52 speaking tips.com and you’re going to be three times better than the speaker you are today within one year.
RV (32:50):
Yeah. This is Craig Greg Valentine. This is one of the people who coached me and still coaching me. I mean, this, this conversation is powerful and sharp. There are so many things you can listen to my recap with Aja here in a couple of days, we’ll break it down for you. What our big highlights were in the meantime, go follow Craig. You know, give him some comments, share some social media. Love, let them know that you’re listening. Say hi, check out the 52 speaking tips.com. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, Craig dude, thank you for your impact on my life. I mean you and Darren and ed and mark and Dave, like, you know, David Brooks, I’m referring to like you guys helped shape me in a lot of ways that I can look back and go a lot of, a lot of what we have done in our career and what the people we’ve been able to help points back to. A lot of these things that we’ve learned from you.
CV (33:42):
The Royal, I just want to tell you, you, you were a champion on the day that we met and you still are, and I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing and keep touching lives.
RV (33:51):
Thanks brother.
Ep 213: Moving Past Limiting Beliefs with Celinne DaCosta | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
Well, not every interview on the influential personal brand podcast turns out to be exactly what we thought it was going to be. And I would say this is one of them in a very delightful way. At least for me personally, I thought this interview with Celinne Da Costa was really a treat and different than what I expected. I thought it would be more in the area of sort of like branding and marketing, but it was really a level, a level deeper than that. It was really about the limiting beliefs that we all have, which then show up in our marketing. And so AJ and I are going to break this interview down for you. We’re going to share with you our top three takeaways. AJ is here with me. She is the CEO of brand builders group, my wife, best friend business partner and baby mama all at the same time. So babe, what what did, what did you think of this? Cause you, you haven’t interacted with saline really until this, this episode,
AJV (00:59):
Just through listening to the podcast. So I like all of you, it’s just a listener along with all of you. So I, here’s the first thing that I took away, and I think it’s really important because I think it’s also something that maybe just connects to even what we do at brand builders group. So my number one takeaway is that when it comes to building your brand really first and foremost, you have to know what your uniqueness’s like, what’s your X factor. What’s that one thing what we say is your uniqueness or your super power, like, what is it about you? That is a God-given gift to the world and to those around you and owning that. And one, you have to figure out what it is. And two, you have to figure out how to harness that. And then three it’s like, how do you get it out into the world?
AJV (01:50):
And so that’s kind of like the biggest thing, because I think so many people struggle with this and I can speak for all of our clients. Not all of them. A lot of our clients at brand builders group is I really struggle with owning. What’s already naturally amazing about them is that they downplay their accomplishments. They downplay all of their accolades, they downplay their education or their experience or their client roster, whatever it is, but they downplay it and they just think of, oh, well, that’s just what everyone else does. And it’s like, no, it is not. And sometimes I think for yourself, it’s really hard to even identify sometimes what is your natural super power, because you are so used to it that you don’t see it as all that unique or that powerful even. But it’s like all of us have that one thing, we all have something and many of us just haven’t taken the time to explore and ask the right questions and really try to figure out what is that thing that is really unique to me.
AJV (02:55):
And how do I use it to service the world and service humanity, but you do have it and it is within you somewhere. And so I think the first thing, and I love this because it’s also where we start is just figuring out, like, what is your uniqueness, your super power, that X factor, whatever you want to call it, but what is that about you? And that’s just where you start of telling your story. It’s what is that uniqueness? So I think that just resonated with me off the get go, because that’s a lot of what we talk about at brand builders group.
RV (03:27):
Yeah. Yeah. There’s, there’s, there were some themes there with you know, what we do at brand builders group of kind of that deep dive sort of internal work. And I’d say that was my number one takeaway too. Is there, I don’t know if she said this or this, I wrote this down. I’m not sure if she said it or if it was an adaptation of something she said, but this was one of my takeaways. And it’s, it’s right to what you were talking about, where the big journey here is coming into yourself and revealing and remembering who you already are. And it makes me think about AJ you know, like one of the things that people always get a tremendous amount of value from, from the work that we do. And our team does is when we write their expert bio, we take people through this exercise, right?
RV (04:14):
Of like, we go through this brainstorm of all these things that they’ve accomplished. And almost every one of our clients is like, oh my gosh, you made me sound amazing. You guys are so good at this. Like, this is incredible. This, this one little thing you did is worth the price of the whole program. And yet all we’re doing there is reflecting back to them. Exactly what you said, everything they already are. We’re just packaging it in a way that they wouldn’t package it because they don’t, they don’t see it. And they don’t think about it. And in a way it’s kind of sad that we, you know, we don’t see how, how awesome we are. And so this idea of revealing and remembering who you already are, is, you know, like where the uniqueness lies and that’s good. Yeah. So that was, that was, that was my, my first big takeaway. What was your second?
AJV (05:09):
And it’s kind of similar to that too. I think because I, you know as a mom as you are also a dad, but as a mom of two young boys, like I’m constantly terrified of screwing them up, right? It’s like, I’m constantly terrified of changing them into something that they are not. And all I want to do as a parent is channel their uniqueness, channel their greatness and not try to amend it to what’s convenient to me, but to help them explore, like, what are they naturally gifted at and interested in and how do I channel that into greatness and whatever greatness may mean for them. But it’s like, I don’t want to, you know, cover up or muddy up what is their super power, but I want to help them bring that out. And I think it’s like, if we’re not really intentional about as human beings that you know for yourself.
AJV (06:02):
And I even think about this with my kids, it’s like all this beauty that lives out there just gets muddied up over the years because we, what is truly your gift is seen as an inconvenience or a seen as the opposite of a gift, right. It’s seen as what needs to be fixed or what’s broken. And, and I think it really starts at a really young age. And then we get to adulthood and our, you know, in my case, in my late thirties, and it’s like, oh man, I’m trying to like wash off the mud. I’m like 30 years of trying to really reveal to what you said, what is already so awesome about who you are. And so I just think about my kids and they’re at this like really pure state I’m in existence at two and four. And it’s like, how do I not keep them pure?
AJV (06:50):
But how do I make sure that this, this brightness that is within them, doesn’t get covered with mud. And then it’s, how do we do that for ourselves? Right. And I think in a lot of cases, you can’t, I think you need someone else to come and help you wash that mud off. I don’t think that you’re able to do it all by yourself sometimes. And you, you really do need someone to walk along with you. And rather that is someone like Celinne or someone like brand builders group or somebody else. It’s like, you really need someone sometimes to remind you of who you are, because we can’t do it for ourselves. It’s amazing to me because I often get to help people craft their expert bios to what you were just saying, Rory and I often will, you know, they’ll do a draft and I’ll send it to me and I’ll make a few edits and I make a few suggestions and send it back.
AJV (07:39):
And here’s the number one response that I get when I, what I would say is I just pretty it up a little bit as I go, wow. Like, I feel like an imposter and it’s so interesting to me. And I’m like, okay, well, let me just make sure that I didn’t make anything up in here. You did this, right? Yeah. You were featured in this, right? Yeah. Okay. You worked with this kind of company or person. Yeah. Okay. You were awarded this award, correct. And it’s like, I go through the checklist. Yes, yes, yes. What part of this makes you feel like an imposter and it’s somewhere along the lines. We, we have told ourselves what we do, isn’t good enough, or someone else is better than, and it’s like, then you take a step back and you actually bring all of this amazingness to the surface and you put it on paper and it doesn’t even feel like you, and that’s because we don’t even take the time to celebrate our own greatness.
AJV (08:37):
And that isn’t about being prideful or full of ego. That’s about just acknowledging that you are worthy and good, and there is greatness within you and you were born with it. And those are the things that we forget. And so I just think I’m at my second takeaway was a lot about like, how do we like uncover the layers that we’ve spent so many years or someone else’s spent covering up that bright shining light within us. And how do we get back to what is that X factor or that uniqueness to begin with? And I think a lot of the times, it’s just, you need someone to do it with you, not for you, but you need someone to walk along and help you clean off that mud and remind you that you are worthy and good and special and unique and all the things, right. It’s like sometimes we just need to allow someone to come into our life and, and speak good. And to our ears and into our heart.
RV (09:35):
That’s so powerful. I mean Hey man, who rah like that is that is it. So in my second takeaway, what I wrote down was were we are all still looking for external solutions for internal problems and know
AJV (09:54):
A much more succinct way of saying,
RV (09:58):
Well, I think it, I think it’s really related to what you were saying, right. Is cause we, we, we have like we think we need to hire some perfect vendor to like solve some expert problem like this, this, this external problem, or that there’s like some skill set that we have to acquire. And really it’s this internal struggle of feeling like we’re good enough, that’s the real issue. And I would say that we’re even seeing this in brand builders group a lot right now, because we teach so many, I mean, we have 14 different today experiences like there’s 14 parts of our whole curriculum. We have all of these tactics and strategies and information and people, I think, love that, but more and more it’s becoming about the community and the comradery and the belief that they get from being around our team and each other, because the real thing that’s holding them back is their own limiting beliefs that they’re not good enough or that they haven’t done enough or they don’t deserve it.
RV (11:01):
And then, you know, you sit in a room with other people and you realize, oh my gosh, we all feel this way. And yet we look at each other, like we’re all superheroes, but we don’t look at ourselves. And, and out of that comes tremendous power. I know these application events that, that you you’ve basically invented for brand builders group AGA that you’ve been running where we now have a 15th type of event, which is is we call them application events because we don’t teach anything like our other 14 events are all like we’re teaching stuff. And these new application events are nothing but getting feedback and live coaching and instruction and, and community and networking. And, you know, we just happened to have one. So it’s fresh on my mind. And I think that, that these application events you created, they really speak to the internal struggles that people have and that the real power of brand builders group is moving away from our content and our education. And it’s really becoming the power of the community and the people they’re helping each other believe in themselves.
AJV (12:07):
Yeah. Well, both are needed. This one, one becomes more relevant at a certain time than another. But yes. Okay. So my last takeaway would be is that the vision has to be bigger than the fear, right? And I love this conversation and this isn’t necessarily brand new. I, man, it was a really good reminder of if the vision isn’t big enough, the fear will always win the fear of, well, what if it doesn’t work? Or what if, what the killer is? What if right? That’s just, it just whatever, whatever is after that, that’s the bad part. What if but it’s, it’s truly, it’s like the vision has to be bigger than the fear and whatever comes after. What if this vision this purpose has to be bigger than anything that comes after. What if, and that takes some work and conversation and brainstorming and thought.
AJV (13:07):
And in my case, a lot of prayer it’s like it, but it’s gotta be bigger than that. Otherwise, the, what if is going to be always the thing that holds you back, it will always hold you back. But the vision has got to be bigger than the fear. And that was such a great comment. It’s such a great reminder, no matter where you are in your business or in your personal life, wherever you are in your life journey, your personal brand journey, the purpose and the vision must always be bigger than whatever comes after. What if
RV (13:33):
That’s so powerful? And that points to my, what my third takeaway was, you know, my third takeaway was actually a quote that saline shared from somebody else, which after she said this, I was like, wow, this is so powerful. I cannot believe I’ve never heard anyone say this. Oh my goodness. It was, it was so huge. And so it’s from Carl Young. And he said until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.
AJV (14:08):
Mm that’s so good. Yes. I remember this now. That’s so good.
RV (14:11):
It’s so powerful. Right? Cause it’s like, we, we have these habits, these, these deep rooted beliefs, this, these years of conditioning, like you were talking about earlier age, where of, of things that we tell ourselves of other things that other people have said about us, that we accept as truth. And we allow them to live there in the unconscious. And then we, our life turns out a certain way and we think that’s our fate, ours, it’s our destiny. And it’s really just the by-product of these beliefs. It’s the by-product of these habits that we never questioned that we never challenged that we never see. They just live there in, in the unconscious, the subconscious, and yet they dictate our life. And and then we can transform our life. We can break through, by moving those doubts into the conscious, challenging them, changing them, rewriting them. And then those become the new programming for in a future that is wildly beyond anything that we imagined until you make the unconscious conscious. It will rule your life and you will call it fate. I hit me hard. Hit me hard.
AJV (15:21):
You should print that out, tape it up somewhere and read it every day.
RV (15:26):
Yeah, absolutely. Or you could come back and listen to the influential personal brand podcast on repeat over and over. You could listen to the episode, the interview that we did with saline, you could listen to this recap. You could just keep coming back. If you, if you get value out of these, please share them with your friends. Please tag us on social. Let us know what your favorite parts are of these interviews. And you know, leave comments on AIG’s profile or mine or the company is we want to know what parts are connecting with you and what is landing with you and what you’d like to hear more of, because all of that for us is unconscious. We don’t know what it is that you like unless you tell us. So bring it into our conscious so that we can rule over it and create a bigger future for all of us. Thank you for being here. We’re so grateful for you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 209: How to be Funnier with Darren LaCroix | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast recap edition joined by my wife, my business partner, my beauty, my favorite person in the whole wide world. AJ Vaden also our CEO at brand builders group. Today, we are breaking down the interview that I did with Darren LaCroix, who is the 2001 world champion of public speaking from Toastmasters. One of my OJI mentors. And really, I would say without a shadow of a doubt, Darren has taught me more about being funnier than anyone else. And it’s been a huge part in my career and just just a point of learning. So AJ and I are breaking it down. AJ welcome. Good to see you.
AJV (00:47):
Glad to be here. Ready to give you all my opinions.
RV (00:52):
I like it. I like it. Well I’ll go first with my first takeaway. You know, we’re sharing our top three takeaways each. I think one of the biggest things about humor is just realizing and, and identifying where are there opportunities for natural humor and not trying to force natural jokes, like not, not trying to force unnatural jokes, but just identifying these opportunities. And Darren talks about four ways to identify humorous opportunities, which I thought were so straightforward and clear. And these are, these are F’s, they’re all F’s. So what are your flaws? That’s an opportunity. What are your failures and talking about your failures, people love hearing about your failures. What are your first, like the first time you ever blanked and what are your frustrations? What are your flaws, your failures, your first and your frustrations. And, and I think the only other thing I would add to this is that not only are these great opportunities for humor, even if they’re not funny, these are great opportunities for stories. So AJ that I think is going to stick with me as a, as a big highlight from this episode.
AJV (02:04):
Yeah. And I know in his interview he gave some really great examples of how to do that. And I think one of the things that really stood out to me as he talked about this, and it was similar to this because he was talking about, you know, the frustrations failures first and flaws, but then he said learning how to do it in the moment. So it’s and so one of the things that I wrote down that it, it’s kind of similar to what you said, but I wrote down is that learn how to create humor for specific audiences, locations, industries, or companies. And then from there, it feels really custom and in the moment, and he tells this really funny story about, you know, this example is what I remember is the Hussey and G right? You’re at this big convention, everyone is frustrated about not being able to find this one ballroom HASI ended G so he found the frustration, but then he also did it in the moment and real time, which made it way funnier.
AJV (03:07):
Right. And so I think it’s one it’s figuring out what is the frustration of the moment. And I think that’s really easy because we all have them. I think one of the biggest things that I just kind of jotted down as a great reminders to myself and I used to do this and I haven’t done it in a really long time. I know if you’re listening, you can’t see what I’m doing, but if you’re watching, it’s like I used to have this little notebook and I would carry it around and I would write down stories. Right. It’s like when my kids say the most hilarious thing, it’s like as much as I think I’m going to remember that by that night, when I’m trying to tell, you know, you worry about this story. I’m like, wait, what did he say? And it’s like, really conditioning yourself to like, jot this down and be like, I don’t know where I’m going to use this or where I’m going to tell this, but this is just too good not to include somewhere. So I don’t forget it. And I think the same thing happens in just everyday life and then being able to filter it through those four apps. But then also really focusing on, you know, to me it’s about a location, an industry, a company or even like a specific audience of a type of people. And I just thought that was a really good way to make it super neat. And also relevant to the people that you’re talking to.
RV (04:27):
Yeah, yeah, that actually was, so my second takeaway is very much related to that. I wrote down, convey the emotion of the moment and I think just like what you said, what’s amazing is when you write spontaneous humor like that, it doesn’t have to be nearly as well written. Yeah. cause it just like, it’s just, you know, it’s so in the moment and it’s so special that that people, you know, are just completely unexpecting that. And and so, you know, I think identifying those frustrations and then also just conveying whatever the emotions are of, of any of those moments. So if you’re talking about your flaws, like you have to talk about how did you feel when you made this mistake or like when you had this failure, if you’re talking about your first and you’re telling the story you got to share with the audience, what was your emotion in that moment?
RV (05:26):
And because that’s what we really relate to. That’s the human, the human experience is emotional. And I think one of the, one of the hallmarks of a great presenter is that you can move the audience emotionally. You can take them on this rollercoaster ride of emotions. And part of the way you do that is just by sharing all these stories from these different parts of your life and just sharing the true real emotions that were there. Even if it’s not funnier, it’s more engaging. And it, it just kind of breaks up this monotonous of information that your presentation might otherwise be. So I, that was, that was a big thing for me. That was my second takeaway.
AJV (06:05):
Yeah. So my next one would be, is kind of on the same lines. And I’ll try to make these at congruent points when we can, but it’s that humor is probably more about the delivery than it is the words. And I think that’s a huge part of it. And I loved in the interview, he was sharing that example of some guy who had memorized all of these Robin Williams jokes, but they didn’t land because of the delivery. And it’s like words, aren’t what necessarily engage people when it comes to stories and humor. It’s the emoting, right? It’s the vocal quadrants. It’s the hand motions. It’s the facial expressions is everything that goes into the delivery and something that really isn’t that funny. If you just say it, when you add in the necessary hand gestures or facial expressions or vocal variety, all of a sudden, it’s hilarious. And then, so it’s like, it’s not just about figuring out what to say. It’s how do you deliver this in a way that’s authentic, but it also really creates this light-hearted emotional feel around the entire experience. So I thought that was this important because we talk so much about what to say, but really that’s just a teeny part of it. It’s also how you say it.
RV (07:27):
Yeah, for sure. It’s amazing how adding one little gesture or facial expression, you know, an eyebrow raise or something like that, just like completely enhances the, the whole story and the joke that’s I love that. That’s a good reminder. So on that note, you know, you’re talking about delivery, which is huge. One of the other takeaways for me, which was something that I’ve heard Darren say before, I’ve heard lots of comedians say this before, but it is such a great reminder is that great lines aren’t written they’re rewritten. And so when you do think about the writing, you got to realize like, nobody, like almost nobody, even Jerry Seinfeld or Ellen degenerate, they don’t just sit down and just like write a perfect line. They identify an opportunity for humor. They apply some of the basic kind of principles of the psychology of what causes people to laugh.
RV (08:23):
They write it, then they go deliver it. Like you were saying, they enhance it, they test it, they tweak it, they edit it. And by the time we ever hear it in like a stand-up comedy set in front of an arena full of people or on HBO, or, you know, some nighttime late night television show, they’ve delivered that line hundreds of times, it’s totally polished, totally dialed in. And so, you know, if you think, well, I don’t know how to write jokes. Yeah. Welcome to the club. Even the people who do it as they don’t do it, it’s a craft. It’s a skill. It’s something that can be practiced, just like any sport or artistry, you know, humor is, is a form of artistry. And a lot of it is, you know, there’s certainly some that is talent and gifting and that, but a lot of it is just discipline and practice and regimen, which for someone like me who was not born naturally funny, that’s really, really great news.
AJV (09:22):
Yeah. Well, I think if you just kind of go back to that though, it’s like for the people who are going, I don’t want to have hundreds and thousands of hours to go and practice how to do this. It’s go back to the whole point of it’s about looking around your real life. Real life is the best place to tell humor. And without having to write any jokes, you can be incredibly humorous by just capturing the ridiculousness of life. Right? It’s like we have two young toddlers. There is at least an incident or a shenanigan every single day that it’s like, I cannot believe this just happened. And it’s like, there’s no writing to that. It’s capturing the essence of life in the moments that you remember to do it. So a little hope for all of those who are like, I don’t, I don’t know how I’m going to learn how to write jokes.
AJV (10:12):
It’s like, don’t remember to write down the funny stories that already happened. You don’t have to create anything. You just have to remember the things that actually happened to you that are funny. And my last thing, and I, this is a little quote that he said somewhere, but it really stuck out to me. And it said a comedy cuts down, humor lifts up. And this isn’t about comedy. This is about humor. This is about lifting up. This is about lightening, the mood. This is about giving that mental break to a serious subject or creating that break where the audience needs a little relief from this. Isn’t about making fun. This isn’t about cutting anyone down. This is about lifting up and using the humorous parts of life and situations in order to lighten the mood, not cut anyone down. And I really loved that.
RV (11:03):
Hmm, amen. Just a little levity to the whole conversation. Well fantastic. Always love getting A’s thoughts. Go back. Make sure you listen to the full episode. The interview with Darren, you hear from prince own mouth, what he’s talking about and make sure that you share this recap and both Darren’s episode with anyone out there, you know, who might want to learn how to be funnier,
AJV (11:25):
Basically, anyone, you know, who’s not funny that listen to this, you need help with your stories. That’s who this is for.
RV (11:33):
Yes. And don’t send it to me. I will be personally offended if you do that. So don’t send it back to me, but we’re so glad to have you keep coming back here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 208: How to be Funnier with Darren LaCroix
RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Well, if you go back to the very beginning of Rory Vaden speaking career, one of my mentors told me I needed to join Toastmasters, and that was how I would get stage time. And shortly after I joined Toastmasters, I learned about a contest called the world championship of public speaking. And one of the legends of Toastmasters who I then made my mentor is who you’re about to hear from today. His name’s Darren LaCroix. He was the 2001 world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters, but he was one of my personal mentors early in my career. In fact if you come to our world-class presentation craft event, and then I start talking about humor, I share the story of how I spent my last thousand dollars on buying a ticket to Darren’s class and then buying an airplane flight to go see him in California in a hotel.
RV (01:50):
It was like the last I had in my checking account as I was coming out of graduate school. And it was the best thing that I ever did. Darren’s training on humor, which is not the only thing he talks about. He teaches all sorts of things around presentations, mechanics, and business. And we’ll talk about stage time university and some of the other things that he’s got going on, but, but that commitment to come and spend a few days with him changed my entire career. And the things that I learned from Darren have stuck with me for years and years and years. And we’ve never actually made the time to go back and do an interview. And I saw him last week at the national speakers association. I said, buddy, we got to bring you on to share the secrets. So welcome to the show.
DL (02:32):
Hey, thrilled to be here. Rory and I, as I told you, before we even started, I am so proud of you and what you’ve done and what you’ve created. There’s nothing cooler to a mentor than seeing the students surpass the mentor. You have stolen the pebble from my hand.
RV (02:50):
Well, I really appreciate that, man. I you know, you and ed Tate and you know, Craig Valentine and Mark Brown, I mean, you guys were, I really learned the craft of speaking and specifically with you. And when I often tell your story, I, it most comes up just around humor because that was, that was the thing. Like for me, that seemed the most unrealistic. Like I knew when I said, if I’m going to win the world championship of public speaking, like you have to be funny. And I said, I’m not funny like that. So that was, that was like this big roadblock. And also to be a professional speaker. I was like, this is going to meet my biggest dilemma. Like my biggest barrier is that I’m not funny. And then I met you and you had gone through all of this work and this research of figuring out and making it, making it practical of going, actually, this is a skill it’s not, it’s not just talent. So do you still believe that? I know it’s been 20 years since
DL (03:59):
I believe it more than ever, you know, that’s the one thing you’re either born funny or you’re not, and that’s a, that’s a big myth. I remember when I first was working up the courage to ask a comedian for advice to go through this crazy thing. Cause I just like, you was not funny. I was quiet. I was shy. I had no business being on a stage and I just decided I was at such a low point in my life. I’ve got to just try it because I can’t live with the regret of wondering what if, and I asked this comedian, that was, he was a headliner, never been to a comedy show before. And I said, what do I need to do? And he asked me a question. He said, are you funny? I said, no. And he said, good. And I’m like, good.
DL (04:40):
What do you mean? Good? And he was the one that first explained that people who are the class clown, people are the naturally funny people. He said, that’s one skillset. He said, but if you handed them a microphone and put them in front of a group of 100 strangers, they couldn’t make them laugh. He said, but that skillset can be learned. You know, I turned into Scooby doo. I’m like, what? You know, he just handed me an ounce of hope. And as you know, just like I told you, number one, he said, go get the book. And I’m like book, there’s a book about standup comedy. And so, yeah, of course his books about everything, but I wasn’t thinking that way. And you and I both got the book by Judy Carter, stand up comedy, the book and going through the exercises. I realized comedians don’t want you to know that they actually go through a lot of work to get there. But what I learned was the structure of comedy, the structure of humor and that just like anything can be learned. And eventually I was able to find a way to make it work for me and my style.
RV (05:44):
Yeah. Well, and I, I did read that book as well as every other book that you recommended. Yeah. And then, and then wrote one. And, and I, I actually, after I went through all those, I, one of the reasons that I wrote, and this is, you know, Darren knows, but nobody else does because my very first book, people think take the stairs was my first book. Because we set the world up to be that way. It was my first traditionally published book and our team, you know, we did the huge bestseller launch and all that stuff. But I actually wrote a book called how to be funny, to make more money, which was a self published book before that Darren remembers, that was how I paid my bills in the early days. And I was disappointed with a lot of the books that I read because they weren’t as straightforward and practical.
RV (06:29):
They felt still artsy and not science-y. But when you taught it to me, I felt like, yeah, there’s there’s structure here. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a systematic process to the, to the, to the whole game of, of of comedy. So can you talk about what that is? You know, just like what, what, what is the premise like you even say that because you go, even the class clown, can’t grab a mic and suddenly make everybody laugh. I think that is that’s worth everybody knowing. And so when you dive in or you think about, okay, what is it then that makes an audience laugh and what is the work that comedians are doing that they don’t want us to know about as a part of like, you know, getting to that place.
DL (07:17):
Yeah. I have presenters and speakers come to me like I got to write a funny speech. How do I write a funny speech, especially in Toastmasters, around humorous speech contest time. And they’re like, what’s funny, what’s, what’s a subject. What’s a funny subject. I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know your life. And just like you and I went through the Judy Carter book, she said, what are your flaws? What are your failures? So Craig Valentine. And I say, what are your failures, your flaws, and your first, your failures, your flaws and your first. So again, it’s understanding the process, a class clown. If you force them to go up on stage in front of a hundred strangers, what they would do is they’d go do movie quotes. They’d do characters, they’d rip off Robin Williams or Jerry Seinfeld. And they’d tell other people’s material.
DL (08:03):
Well, that’s, that’s illegal. It’s not right. And you would never get booked as a speaker or a comedian if you’re doing other people’s material. I remember in my early days of standup by Saara, I was studying Robin Williams, so much word for word and writing out his jokes. And I was doing an open mic night. I saw this guy go up for his very first time. And he was literally doing Robin Williams, word for word. And he bombed. And that was a whoa, it’s not just the words. It’s the character, it’s a persona. And it’s also coming from your life. You know, one of my first jokes written out of the Judy Carter book was what’s a failure. Well, my subway sandwich shop, you know, that was a huge failure. And then she walks you through a process and understanding the delivery part of it, the attitude part of it.
DL (08:53):
I think, you know, Rory, when people telling stories, whether they’re funny or not, but it’s that storytelling bringing it to the point of dialogue where we hear thoughts or their internal thoughts, or we hear the conversation. That’s where the vibrant emotion is. So I looked at my $60,000 debt and she said, okay, brag about it. I’m like what brag about it? And that’s not how normal people think. So if you’d agree with this, that funny people think differently than if we want to be funny, or we need to think the way funny people think. And what we’re saying is we’ve got to look at it the way they look at it. And that’s what you discovered. That’s what I discovered was there’s processes that comedians and humorous go through to create the humor. And then there’s still some testing and tweaking and testing and tweaking great jokes.
DL (09:50):
Aren’t written, they’re rewritten, great speeches. Aren’t written, they’re rewritten. But most people, when you see somebody on their own comedy special, or on one of the late night comedy shows or tonight show or something, you’re seeing the culmination of years and years of one little five minute routine, you don’t see the work. And I think that’s the thing. If you’re willing to put in the work, you could make something funny. You know, the fastest way would be to hire a humorous joke writer, but still you’ve got to own the material they’ve got to interview you. They’ve got to dig it out of you. And then you could have somebody quote, unquote, punch it up, but you still have to deliver it. And so the Judy Carter joke, as you know, my Mark Brown story, that wasn’t even in my championship speech. And mark said, Hey, you know, your speech is about failure.
DL (10:40):
We need a failure. And I’m like, oh well, I used to do this joke about my shop. And he said, go ahead and do it. And I delivered it right there in the board room. No one else is around. And I said, you know, I don’t want to brag, but I took a $60,000 debt. And in six short months I doubled that debt. And so, you know, but it’s a bragging about failing and without the structure and understanding from Judy Carter and going through the exercises like, but when you go through the exercises, what you’re doing is training your brain to look for those things. I mean, you know, you probably watch comedy now and after you learned it, you can see the joke coming. You can see the twist, you can see the punchline. Why? Because you’ve trained your brain to think in a funny way.
RV (11:27):
Yeah. And I, I think, you know, you’re, you’ve, you’ve mentioned a couple of components here that I want to draw out for everybody because you know, the way that I’ve kind of even teed up this conversation is the writing of the joke, right? Like, okay, how do you write the joke? But you’ve already touched on that. A huge part of it is the delivery of the joke and the persona. But then there’s this other part, which I P I think people overlook and even I overlooked for a really long time, which is that identifying the opportunity as the first, like the first key step is to identify, oh, there’s something funny here. And I think it’s like, if you could, it’s, if you can capture it, like, if you can set this alarm, like, ah, there’s something around it, and then you can run it through the mechanics of writing it.
RV (12:20):
And then you get enough stage time, which, you know, I’m surprised we’ve made it a few minutes into this conversation. And we haven’t talked about the Darren LaCroix mantra is stage time, stage, time, stage, time. I mean, that was the thing that was just drilled into my head and thousands of Toastmasters over years and years and years just hear Darren say stage time, stage, time, stage, time. Cause that’s the delivery part. Like you can’t learn the delivery part without just practicing, but coming back to identify, because I’d like to talk about writing and then maybe delivery a little bit as well. Now you, you said earlier, you know, your failures, your flaws and your first. That’s awesome. I’ve never heard you say that before. Where was, where was that? 20 years ago when I needed it. So are there any other tips you have around identifying the opportunity? Cause it’s, I think that’s kind of what, what, I didn’t know, which I do now, and you’re alluding to it is that there, nobody just sits down and goes and writes this brilliant line. Right? It’s, it’s a process that we take people through and if we can go, how do we, how do we identify? Is there anything else around like us noticing it? Yeah.
DL (13:32):
And I know your audience, there’s a lot of people who are presenters. There are entrepreneurs, there are coaches here listening. So one of the ways is if you can create some humor for your specific audience and we’re, we, I don’t know if you knew this early on. When I came from a stand-up comedy into keynote speaking, I basically had no speech. It was just, what is the humerus? So what I would do is I took my clean jokes and I turned them into corporate jokes. And then I was just, I didn’t have enough content for 45 minutes. So what I did is I overcompensated and I customized about them because I still had a day job. And I had a lot of time. Cause I wasn’t speaking that much. So what I would do, one of my secrets leading into what your question is, is I would always call up the clients.
DL (14:22):
And I would ask for 10 names of people who are being in the audience, not just the board of directors, I want the people on the ground, whatever that means in that organization or association. And I want to interview them. And what I ask them is what are your pet peeves? And then I’ll ask them, what are your frustrations? It’s pretty much the same question, but it actually kind of like jumps into a little different part of their brain because humor, okay. Different. Let me differentiate bringing comedy and humor. Comedy cuts down, humor, lifts up comedy. It cuts down means there’s a victim means where, you know, we’re making fun of someone. Well, you can’t really do that in the corporate world, unless it’s the competition. That’s, you know the exception then they’ll love you, but humor lifts up. So when we mean lifting up, what are we talking about?
DL (15:12):
Well, we’re talking about a release of tension. So finding the humor is where is the tension? Where is the tension in their lives? So if I’m talking to a bank, okay. At that bank, where is there tension? If I’m talking to entrepreneurs, where is there tension? Okay. So for entrepreneurs, it might be their employees or staff. If I’m talking to employees or staff, it might be the boss. So where is that frustration? So we need to find where the tension is in order to release it, find where it is order to release it. And then one of my favorite principles, I don’t know if I learned this before I worked with you or after, but I call it the registration desk principle. When I go to a convention or conference, when they’re live, I go to the registration desk and when no one’s around, I pull aside the people who are working the desk and I say, why are people complaining about because their complaints are their frustrations.
DL (16:07):
So I’m not looking for one rogue thing I’m looking for. What is that commonality? So just to give you a quick example, one, I was speaking to save international society for the advancement of value. Engineers still don’t know what that is, but that was, and it was in San Antonio, Texas, and you know, every convention and conference, there’s the tension of those people, the engineers, but there’s also the tension of the event. So I was asking them and at first they said, no. And then they said, well, yeah, everybody can’t find a, one of the meeting rooms HASI and the G. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. Cause all the meeting rooms are in one area, but they had one more meeting room and it was way off the beaten path. So when I walked up there on stage, I said, you know, good morning, Hey, if you’re looking for HASI and the G and boom, okay.
DL (16:58):
Because it is the common frustration. It is top of mind, I got them. And then I just tagged it. I said, just go out the back door, go through the kitchen. It gets a laugh, go out to Crockett avenue, go about a mile and a half down. When you get to the Alamo, take a right. And they were just rolling, but I identified their tension and that would work anywhere else or would it I’m speaking at the Rio and I was speaking for contours express. These are owners, entrepreneurs, owners of a workout place that used to be, I don’t even know if they’re still in existence, but they were the, the competition to curves, you know? So a woman’s workout place and they’re all the owners and they’re here in Vegas at the Rio. If you know the Rio if you don’t know the Rio, there’s like one tall of rooms where all the rooms are.
DL (17:52):
And then the convention center, you’re going to walk a mile and a half down a hallway, take a right walk, another mile and a half, take a left, walk another it’s far. And so the cool thing about being a middle-aged bald guy is I blend in and nobody notices me before I go on stage. So I just go in and I’m listening, I’m listening. And I hear women. It was 99% women. I hear women in the hallway. They’re wearing their heels. They’re like, wow, this is a long walk. Oh my gosh, I should’ve wore my sneakers, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so I go up on stage and I say, Hey, welcome to the Rio. Isn’t it beautiful. And everybody claps. And I say, I don’t know if you know this or not, but Rio is actually a native American term, which stands for long flip and hall.
RV (18:40):
And in that moment, boom, boom.
DL (18:43):
He loved it. And you know, it won’t work in anywhere else unless there’s a similar frustration. So
RV (18:51):
Go ahead. Well, how do you, so, so I love this, cause this is, you could add this to your list of apps, right? You’ve got your first, your failures your, your flaws, your failures, your first, the frustrations. So like, so how do you write it now? What is one thing that you know, these are, these are such great examples. And in my experience, this is also true. That anything that is real-time in the moment, it’s like, it doesn’t even have to be funny. Like, all you have to do is mention Hacienda G it doesn’t matter how you get there. You just say HASI and to G you know, couldn’t find it. Like, it, it, it’s hilarious is that basically all there
DL (19:32):
Is it’s about them. Well, that is easy. That’s a first step. And the more you do it, but again, just like you, the more you study it, the more you can identify, but you also have to be careful that you’re not upsetting the event planner. You know, if you’re brought in as a speaker. So I always go and have a conversation with the person who paid me, not the person who works for the person who paid me and I run it by them just to make sure I said, look, they’re already upset. They can’t find Hacienda. G like, if I can relieve that tension, you’re going to get less complaints later on. If you don’t want me to bring that up, that’s fine. It’s your call. So I kind of run it by them. And usually they’re like, oh, please do something. Cause they’re complaining.
DL (20:16):
Anyway. So, but as you know, going through the books like that, what most people don’t know, but comedians do is that there are formulas. There are comedy formulas that we learn that you go through. So Rio is a native American term means long flip and hallway. Well, Robin Williams, believe it or not, even though he’s unbelievable at what he does, nobody was better at improv than him. And he would just, you know, fire things off like that photographic memory, but even used formulas when the formula works. So knowing the formula and then how you can take that frustration and pop it into a formula. So for example, Robin Williams had a joke that was a divorce coming from the Latin term, meaning to rip a man’s genitalia out through his wallet. But it’s the same exact formula. What’s the word. Okay. Rio. They were all in his divorce. And then you take the term and I call this, I didn’t invent the formula. I just noticed it. And I named it redefining the redefining formula. So I redefine a word named that the audience is aware of, but I redefine it tying into the frustration of the audience. Right. So that’s just one example, but knowing the formula, so first step is like, Hey, go and learn all the formulas and then you’ll start noticing patterns. Yeah.
RV (21:48):
Yeah. And, and, you know you teach the formulas, we teach them that we’ve come to. But you know, I think all of them, all of these formulas kind of come back to this one idea, which is around the, like basically predicting the brain predicts what it thinks it’s going to hear. And when you say something different than that, that’s kind of like, that’s kind of like the twist now, the thing that’s cool about the F the frustration part of this is like, you don’t even have to know the formula. You just have to, you just have to say it. Once, you know, once you know, the formulas, it’s super powerful because you can, you can, you can kind of like quickly fill in the blanks for things, but on, on that one, w would you say that half, half the battle, at least half the battle is just identifying, this is what everyone’s talking about. This is what they’re frustrated about it. And you just kind of like, bring it up. Yeah. Yeah.
DL (22:43):
That’s 80% of it. I would say because you’re, what’s top of mind set up and a punchline. So a setup is already in the mind of the audience. So what we’re looking for is what are they thinking about? What’s top of mind. Now, if I go back to a convention or a conference two years ago, of course, COVID, isn’t even on the radar screen now it’s top of mind, but now it’s also over done. You want to puke when you hear the word pivot, you’re like, oh yeah, that’s a brilliant idea. So, anyway, it’s knowing what’s top of mind, but again, asking the question. So frustrations change over time and going back to what you just said, the twist, the best analogy I’ve ever heard was George Carlin. He said, it’s like a train going down, a train track. You can see clearly and exactly where the train is going.
DL (23:31):
You see the tracks, you know, the train is going that way. We laugh when our mind is successfully tricked. We laugh when our mind is successfully tricked. And what that means is we laugh when the train is derailed. When we an expectation, what I say, the way I define it as a setup is creating an expectation. A punchline is changing that expectation. So in my championship speech, I talked about Dr. Goddard’s rocket launch, and I said, the rocket took off and it went vertically and I do a big motion, really enthusiastic. And then I say, landed in Auburn. So I create the expectation the rocket went far, but then I do a very matter of fact delivery that it landed in Auburn,
RV (24:18):
Right. Where it took off. Yeah. And that’s, I mean, there’s, there’s there, there’s so many great moments in that speech, which I think is that it’s on, is that on YouTube? Can you go just Google, Darren LaCroix, 2001 world championship speed is still, is still on there. So not, not all every year is up there, but certain ones are, and yours is one of them
DL (24:37):
For the rights to put it up there. Yeah.
RV (24:39):
It’s just, it’s it’s it is literally just classic. I mean, seeing the, the punchline after a punchline. The, the, the other thing that I wanted to talk about in terms of identifying slash writing is callbacks. So frustrations and callbacks to me have a very similar I guess like characteristic of one another, which is that you don’t really have to know the formula. You pretty much just have to comment on the thing and everybody laughs you know, that you got frustration. So can you, can you talk about what a callback is? Cause I think callbacks are one of the easiest ways to get laughs immediately, if you literally just know what it is and just like, you just gotta like flip the switch in your brain and go, okay, I need to be looking for callbacks. Can you, can you talk, talk us through the concept? Yeah. When
DL (25:34):
I get to a convention or a conference, I try to get there and spend a day with the people at the convention, just sitting there listening and observing. But what I’m looking for is what are those big emotional moment or what are the funny moments? Like if a speaker has a funny line and it’s lampshade, like I want to in my speech, see if I can hide it, but then bring up lampshade because it’s gotta be an automatic trigger. So a callback is literally calling back or referring back to a word or a moment. Now we don’t want to just call back to anything. We want to call back to either big emotion or big laughs. So I always, if I’m not able to be there a day ahead of time, I will literally walk around asking people, Hey, what was the funniest moment? What, what do you remember? And it’s looking for commonality, that’s the key I’m looking for commonality. If one person thought one thing was funny. That is not enough. We’re looking for that commonality. So, eh, I don’t know if you were there, but in 2002 I was speaking, I was doing ouch, my winning at the NSA convention from the main stage and it was in Arizona and they had this big opening pomp and circumstance and a guy’s riding in on a horse. Do you remember this
RV (26:57):
Guys? I don’t know if I was there.
DL (26:59):
Okay. Guys riding in on a horse, playing a banjo and it was a big pomp and circumstance opening. It was great. He was awesome. He was talented and the horse goes right up to the front of the stage and he’s playing his banjo well in the middle of the song, the horse poops, but he’s got, but he’s got a bucket on, but the horse overshoots the bucket. Oh. And now, and so yeah, it was a funny moment. It’s like, Hey, it’s a horse. That’s what horses do. So I got Michael on, I don’t know if you know, Michael on a pass world champion, ed Tate and a couple other people. And I sat down and I was like, okay, tomorrow morning, I’m speaking on this stage. How can I use that? How can I call back to that moment? So I’m looking at the opening of my speech.
DL (27:44):
And if you remember, I CA well, I came out and I follow my face in my winning speech. And I give Potter my speech intentionally from the stage. So I do it the same way. I always do it. And then I just go, is this where the horse did it? And it was an 11 second laugh. It was the biggest laugh I’ve probably ever got then people in NSA, still talk about that moment. I’m like, this was a setup from God, you know, like to be able to do my speech the next day, where I fall on my face and the horse pooped the night before and everybody, sorry, you know, that’s the thing is if everybody didn’t see it, it, wouldn’t be funny, really looking for that universal callback in that situation. So if there’s a speaker who talks about microphones and you know, the microphone fell in the toilet, you know, you want to, okay, how can I use it? How can I call back to that? So you look in the middle of your speech or maybe at the opening, how you can connect. Cause it’s taking that emotionally charged moment and tapping into the goodness, the good energy of that moment. So it’s one of the simplest, most powerful things that anyone can do. The callback.
RV (28:55):
Yeah. That’s and if, if I were to follow you, I would go, oh, Darren LaCroix laid off, fell on his face and was laying on stage. That would be an opportunity potentially for a call back. Like, I wouldn’t know exactly in that moment, just like you didn’t in about the horse, but you go, this is a big moment that everybody saw. Everybody will remember this moment. And so that’s where you identify, I love what you said. I did not know that backs, that backstory that you said, okay, you identified it. And then you grab some of your buddies and said, Hey, this happened, how could I use this? And again, it doesn’t have to be the, the beautiful part about both frustrations and callbacks is they have to be brilliantly written, like 90% of the game is just like mentioning it. And I, I love that. So I want to ask you about delivery too, but before we do that, so I got one last question about delivery. Darren, where should people go? I know we’ve had, this has been an awesome deep dive in, into the world of humor, but you teach storytelling stage mechanics, like all the components of also, you know, creating speeches, getting books for your first speeches. Where, where do you want to send people to, if they want to learn more about what you’re up to? Sure. Thanks for
DL (30:19):
Asking. If you want to know the top 10 mistakes speaking mistakes, I’ve been coaching for two decades all around the world, executives, speakers, coaches, and just go to be a sponge.com and it’s a free download. It’s a PDF and yes, you would get my newsletter. So if you want to just get the PDF and opt off, no worries. Just do it. And also the top 10 virtual mistakes. If you want to know about my [email protected],
RV (30:47):
I love that. So we’ll put a link there to be a sponge.com. You can download that. All right. So we talked about identifying a couple of tips on writing when it comes to delivery, what would you say is the, the, the biggest thing that you have to know or understand about delivering the moment like delivering the punchline? You know, the joke, the set up like just the, you know, standing on stage and saying, saying the bit.
DL (31:16):
Yeah, to me, the biggest thing is understanding the power of dialogue. You know, I had been a Toastmaster for seven years in four clubs work my butt off part-time professional, but it wasn’t until I met my coach, Mark Brown, where he showed me that I was telling my stories in the past tense. What I needed to do is bring the audience into the moment. In the first version of my speech, I told people about telling my parents, I wanted to be a comedian. He said, no, no, no. Bring us to the moment, let us hear it, which is dialogue. And then piggybacking on that, my delivery, like one of the places I stand out, every speaker has their skills as a coach and as a speaker and one of mine is character delivery. But what I do well is I convey the emotion, body language, not gesture.
DL (32:04):
A gesture is a rehearse body movement that has no emotional connection to the moment. So what I teach people to do is go watch a Pixar movie, but keep an eye on the eyes of the two dimensional character on stage, because they, the shape of the eye changes with the emotion of the character. When we’re delivering, we need to say it in dialogue, whether it’s internal or external, but we need to convey the emotion of the moment. And then the third biggest thing is we need to show a shift of emotion. So if the story, if we’re telling a story for business purposes, for entertainment purposes, the heart of the story, there’s a shift in emotion. So I always get people, identify the emotion at the beginning of the story and the emotion at the end of the story. And if there’s no change of emotion, that’s not the story.
DL (32:58):
You have the wrong part. There has to be some shift and at least one character. So to show that, you know, you can record yourself and go back and watch the recording shut off the sound and would, you know the emotion of the character. Now, you don’t, I’m animated, but that’s just me and my style. You’ve got to do it your way in your style. But when I went home to tell my parents, I want to be a comedian on stage. It was. So I was all excited. Imagine, you know, my parents’ reaction after stretching their budget to help me through college. And I go home and I walked in the door, mom, dad, I want to be a comedian.
DL (33:37):
I was met by silence. Ouch. So if you’re listening to the podcast, you couldn’t see my face change, but you probably heard it in my voice. Same thing. They’re connected. So I come in excited. So if I was to break down that story, just break down your story, look at your characters, name, each of the character and that one, there’s three characters, mom, dad, and Darren. And what’s their emotion at the beginning. Okay. Mine’s excited. Okay. Mom and dad, they don’t even talk, but they have a beginning emotion, which is they’re anticipating what their son’s going to say. They’re eager. They want to hear. And then boom, I asked that question and mine goes to shock. There’s Kosta, shocked and dismayed. So in that tiny little 17 second story, there’s a shift in at least one character. So if you you’ll be a better storyteller, if you can identify the beginning emotion, the end emotion and make sure you convey it through dialogue, using body language,
RV (34:34):
Love it. Love it, love it. Y’all this is just the beginning. There’s so much to explore here. Obviously we’ve been students of it, our whole career, myself, a J our team. There’s, there’s so much just in the mechanics of presentations that everybody thinks they’re a great speaker. When they, when they come to work with brand builders group, nobody said like, very few people are like, oh yeah, I need help with my speech. Everybody goes, oh, no, I got that part down. And it’s like, you have no idea. Like you have no idea the level of crafting, and it’s not just what Darren does or what we do. Like you said, it’s Robin Williams. It’s Jerry Seinfeld. It’s it is every like the greatest orators on the planet are that way, because they have worked at this. They’ve had stage time, stage, time, stage, time, they’ve been coached through it.
RV (35:25):
They, they, they work onlines, as Darren said, grade lines, aren’t written they’re rewritten. And anyways, Darren, thanks for giving us a little bit of insight into that today. And some practical things that we can do to, to be funnier. I’m so grateful for you, man. And the impact that you’ve had on my life our life, you know, and then yeah, now the, the hundreds of members inside a brand builders group that we’re trying to help, you know, go make a difference in the world through the stuff that you’ve taught us. And man, we just wish you the best. Thanks buddy.
DL (35:55):
Thanks for having me and congratulations on all your success.
Ep 207: How to be a Better Writer with John David Mann | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
A bit of nostalgia for me on this edition of the influential personal brand podcast recap, because we’re breaking down the interview from John David Mann, who was my very, very, very first media appearance ever. He was the, yes, he was the, he was the first person from the media, whoever interviewed me for an article. And it was a really nice feature article and that was like full, full, full circle. So as you can hear, I’m joined by my partner, a J Vaden, the CEO of brand builders group. We’re talking about how to be a better writer, although as John David Mann says, which I love he’s he, his new ebook is called how to write good or at least good or great. So AIJ why don’t you kick us off, we’ll share our top three takeaways each of, of, of what, what we pulled out and what we learned from John David Mann.
AJV (01:02):
This first one I had, this was so good is that the hero of this story is not a person that the hero of a story is a concept or an idea. I just love the whole idea around not making any one person the hero, because there’s never a hero. There are heroes in every story. And how do you define who is the hero of a story? I think really demotes all of the other contributions to the other characters real life or in fiction. And so removing that fresher away from a person I think just elevates everything that you do and you go, no, the hero is not a person. The hero is a concept or an idea that might be taught by a person, a character, but it is not that person. It’s the idea or the concept itself. I thought it was so good.
RV (01:56):
That’s so good. You, you took it right. You took it right off my list. That was my number one. Takeaway, have the hero be a concept or an idea and not a person and what it made me, what it made me think of. So you know, so one of our events that we have is called bestseller launch plan, and it’s very specific around, we teach the mechanics of how do launches work and how do bestseller lists work and dah, dah, dah. And, you know, we go through this whole thing and this whole system, there’s a ton of stuff to know and learn. It’s just one of my favorite events that we have. But one of the, one of the moments at the, at, towards the very end of the two days is we say there is no such thing as a New York times bestselling author.
RV (02:40):
There is only such a thing as a New York times bestselling team. There, there is only such a thing as a New York times bestselling team. It’s a group of people like that. That that’d be true. I mean you never, nothing great in the world is ever accomplished. Single-Handedly great. So I, yeah, you, you, you nailed it what a cool idea and what a cool way of writing to go. Okay. Even if you have a hero character in the story, the real hero has to be bigger than that, bigger than a character. Cause that’s, that’s the truth of, of, of the real world and the human experience. So yeah, we both have the same first one. Yeah.
AJV (03:26):
And my second one is kind of similar to that along this character idea. And a lot of this conversation right, is around like writing. So writing books, writing articles by writing, but I thought this was really interesting. It’s spend as much time getting to know the character, the voice of whatever. You’re writing a blog and article a, but spend as much time asking yourself who is this character as you do anything else, it’s like a, I think he would have said, is, are you sad? Or he said, I don’t remember, but I know the character better than you know yourself, right? It’s like, ask yourself, like, who is this person? What do they do? What do they love? It’s a find out all the intricacies of this character then start writing. And I think you could do the exact same thing if you’re not writing like fiction, but you’re writing to your audience is you must know your audience that well.
AJV (04:19):
So this is a huge part. And I think what connected to me as we spend a lot of time at brain builders group and our signature content called finding your brain DNA helping you really define who is your core target audience. And we spend a lot of time on this, like, who is your primary audience? Who is your secondary, who is your tertiary? Who is that ideal avatar? And when we get to that ideal avatar, who is in the very core focus, like right here in the middle, like right here you need to know every single thing about this person. And so we have a list of like 30 questions that we go for. It’s like, what are their dreams? What are their hopes? What are their aspirations? What are their fears? What are their limiting beliefs? What questions do they have?
AJV (04:58):
What do they like to eat? Drink? Where did they live? Are they married? Are they single? Are they divorced? Right? It’s like, how many kids do they have? What are their kids’ names are their kids’ ages? Like we really build out a profile and it’s for this reason, right? It’s like, you have to know your audience as well, as you almost said, as good as like, we’ve got good in my brain, as well as you know yourself. So ask yourself, who is my audience, or who is this character? And focus on that before you start worrying about content, because the content is only going to be relevant if you know exactly who it’s for.
RV (05:34):
So once again, you have taken the words out of my mouth on my second, my second takeaway, which is that characters develop through curiosity about who they really are. And w th the so, so amen to everything you just said, that’s exactly what I was thinking. One nuance to add to this conversation is specifically in the area of humor, when you are, when you are trying to add humor to a presentation, a lot of times humor is revealed naturally through stories by just asking yourself who are the characters and how they would interact together, of course are probably number one. Favorite TV show of all time is modern family.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Definitely, definitely.
RV (06:23):
And, and, you know, if you, if you, if you step back and you look at modern family, it’s basically, there’s a bunch of characters who are all very strong. They all have salient features. And then each episode is they just, they just mix and match different characters together in a scene. And I don’t know for sure if this is how they do it, but we’ve watched it so much. I have to think this is what they do is they go, okay, let’s take Jay and Gloria and, you know, Phil and put them at a carnival, what would happen? And so they just, they take these characters and they, they, they never run out of ideas to write because they’re exploring the depth of not only each character, but how would that character interact with another character? And you could just, you know, put, pull these together.
RV (07:15):
And so it’s just, I think really, really brilliant. You can tell that you know, John is an amazing writer. Again, you probably heard this in the interview, but if you don’t know this, he, he was the co-author of the Go-Giver with Bob bird, which is one of the best-selling non-fiction books of all time. And probably in my top five favorite books. I mean, it’s just, it is an amazing book. And so this characters, it’s like, there’s there’s room for humor and entertainment and depth and emotion drama. Yeah. All, all the things. All right. So AIJ why don’t you go ahead and just tell everyone what our third takeaway is, even though you don’t know for sure what mine is there it’s
AJV (07:57):
Possible. There’s often interviews where it’s like, well, we’re probably going to have the same ones which is always fine too. But my third and final one is that I just know so many people who would have what they call writer’s block. And I would really like to say, there is no such thing as writer’s block, there’s only memory block. And this is what I mean by that. It’s like the only reason you’re not writing is because you’re not remembering all the things that you have to write about. Right? It’s like, you know, you have memory block, not writer’s block. Like somehow you have forgotten about all the events that have happened to you or to someone, you know, or to someone that, you know, know someone, you know, right. There are these stories and these events that happen all day long, every day, all around the world in your life and in the lives of those around you.
AJV (08:49):
And then when you sit down to write, you forget about all of them, right. And it’s not my first block, it’s a memory block. It’s like, somehow your memory, just those white. Right. And you don’t remember all the things that have happened to you. Hardships, successes, failures, happy moments, surprise moments. And it’s like, instead of trying to figure out what should I be writing about? It’s this think about all the events, all the stories that you’ve had in your life. And then what was the point or message behind that? What did you learn from that? What did someone else learn from that? But it’s like, I believe that truly every great piece of content that I’ve ever read, book, article, interview, whatever, there is a story behind it. And it’s like the whole message or the point of the story happened because it happened to someone like it was a real life event.
AJV (09:37):
And so it’s like, as you get going into writing, it’s like, just ask yourself, like, what does this look like in real life? So if you are a, you know, in my example an entrepreneur is like, what does entrepreneurship look like in real life? It’s messy. Right? It’s messy. And what does it look like for a working parent then it’s real messy. And what does it look like for a working parent of two toddlers during COVID? Well, it, then it’s just frigging chaotic, right? So it’s like, what does it look like in real life? And let that be the conduit for your content and what you write about and what you talk about. You don’t actually have to come up with much. You just have to remember all of the things that already are happening all around you every single day, and then use those as the template, the outline for your content.
RV (10:28):
Yeah, that’s good. I mean, that’s really good if you just you know, and we always say, if you’re your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, and that happens through what you’re doing, what you’re talking about is telling stories about your life and you never run out of, you never run out of stuff to say you get 24 hours of news stories every day, or maybe not 24 hours, but lots of hours. So that my third one actually was different. And th this was a very technical, technical writing tip, which I, I love because I love the technical tips. He said this, which I thought was super eloquent. He said, suspense is creating questions. And then unwrapping details on the way to an answer. Suspense is creating questions and then unwrapping details on the way to an answer.
RV (11:24):
And there’s, there’s so many parts of this that I love. So one is what is suspense? It’s creating questions. It’s going, what’s going to happen? Why did they do that? Where is this going? You know, what’s the next step. And, and that’s part of what creates engagement is that is suspense. That’s what draws the audience in is it’s, it’s creating these questions. And then this is the part I love unwrapping details. What a illustration and way to think about telling a story. It’s like a story is a gift that you slowly unwrapped for people. And you expose a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more, you know, on the way to the answer on the way to this wonderful destination, where you, where everything comes together. And there’s this, this, you know, this moment where there’s a lesson the, the questions are questions are answered. Problems are solved, lessons, lessons are learned. And I just thought that was super cool. And, and to go, oh, if you want to create more suspense, all you have to do is create more questions. And don’t leave and don’t leave a question, unanswered, answer the answer. You just answer them one at a time and, and make sure you systematically work your way through. So I, I thought that was just delightful.
AJV (12:47):
It’s good. That’s a very good technical dev. I like it. I like
RV (12:50):
It. I think in my you know, it’s funny. Cause I started with like when I was a teenager, my dream was like, I want to be a speaker. And I think as I’ve gotten older, it’s like, I more really loved writing and it’s like, I want to be a really great writer. And you know, this is, this is really cool. So getting a chance to learn from one of the best writers of our time, John David, man, what a tree go back, listen to the episode check out his new e-book how to write good or at least. Yeah. Which I just love was so great. And then share this episode with someone in your life who wants to learn to be a better writer or just a better storyteller in general. Leave us, leave us your comments on social. Come say hi over on Instagram to me or LinkedIn to AIJ. And keep coming back. We’re grateful. You’re here. We’ll keep that. We’ll keep the content coming. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 206: How to be a Better Writer with John David Mann
RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
I would consider my first major media appearance ever to have been in an outlet called networking times magazine. And I got, I want to say I was maybe 22 years old when I got a full, like three page spread story that was written about me. That was huge because it was huge for my confidence. We got some great reach out of the article, and then we included screenshots of that article in the book proposal that we ended up using to get our, our first book deal for take the stairs. Well that the writer of that article is the man that you are about to meet today. His name is John David Mann, and so we had been friends literally since the beginning of my career. And then he Koa, he he’s written about 30 books. They’ve been translated into 35 languages. They’ve sold millions of copies.
RV (01:50):
I still to this day, my, my favorite book and John has written so many since then, but the go giver is my favorite book. He coauthored that with my friend Bob Burg, and that book has just been one of the top five books of all time for me that I’ve ever read. John’s written several fables and just released his first fiction book, which is pretty fascinating. We’ll hear about that. And he also has a new ebook out that’s exclusively only as an ebook called how to write good or at least good, or, and so anyways, my old friend is really great to have you, I can’t wait to pick your brain on some of the writing secrets. Thanks for making time for us.
JDM (02:39):
It’s great. It’s a cliche to say, but it has been too long, but the time is just right. So yeah, good to be here. Good to see you.
RV (02:46):
And I feel like, you know, we, we kind of have touched base every couple years for now, like 20 years and it’s like a few, a few years ago by, and then it’s like, you got a new book or we’re doing something and you know, tell me about so I want to hear just about the fiction book quickly. I mean, I wanna, I wanna understand your writing process, or maybe you can merge these together. What I’m really interested in knowing you know, this podcast is all for personal brands. A lot of what we talk about is digital marketing and branding and positioning and messaging. And we actually don’t talk that much about writing, like at its true core, writing a story, creating content, and you’ve done this non-fiction, you’ve done fables now you’ve done fiction. And I, you know, my only goal today is to try to like steal all your secrets about your writing process for F to get, to get those out of you for free. But you, you just did your first fiction book. So I’m curious, how, why did you do that? How is that different from the other stuff that you have done and like, what are some of the lessons that have come out out of that experience? Yeah.
JDM (03:56):
You know, it’s in the course of all these books, you know, as you know, this, there’s been a lot of different kinds of books. I’ve written a handful of memoirs, which is interesting. It’s like basically telling somebody else, tell me your story and I will make it into a book. And so when you read a memoir, your you’re, you’re taking an existing story. That’s reality that really happened to this person. Right. But you’re still trying to find the story in it. So in a sense, you’re taking that person’s story and you’re rewriting it as you’re not making stuff up, but you’re choosing stuff. You’re framing stuff. It’s like making a biopic. If you’re a movie director. Right. And you’re going to write about, you know Freddie mercury are going to write about you know, Gandhi or whoever you’re gonna write about what events do you choose?
JDM (04:42):
How do you string them together? So you’re fashioning a story and you know, about writing in general. My belief is that no matter what you’re writing, whether you’re writing somebody else’s memoir or a straight non-fiction book, like some of the books I’ve done that are sort of business nonfiction, concept books, or a parable, a fable clearly, or a novel like this was, it just came out or Hey, if you’re writing a blog post or you’re writing a Facebook post or a LinkedIn article, or you’re writing a promotional piece, you’re telling a story, you’ve got a beginning, middle and end. You’re, you’re creating an arc, you’re creating some suspense, you’re creating some interests, you’re creating some intrigue and you’re answering some questions or at least you’re posing some questions. It’s all kind of the same thing. I mean, they’re really different, really different forms, but there’s this, there’s this basic sort of storytelling, DNA imprint.
JDM (05:41):
We’ve all got inside us, huddled around a campfire or huddled around, you know, in a cave however long ago hearing about the saber tooth tiger that one of us killed. We’ve all still kind of got this. Tell me what happened next gene in us. And that’s what expresses itself in story in any medium. So yeah, the novel was wild and completely different experience in one sense. You know, as I think it was telling you before we started that, that I feel like I’ve been climbing these lovely little Hills for 15 years. And all of a sudden I’m like with an oxygen mask on the top of Mount Everest, climbing this novel, say, how do I get up here? And how do I get down, especially how do I get down without breaking my neck? Cause 400 plus page novel. That sounds, that’s a thriller on top of it, which means you can’t let up the tension for a moment. You can’t let it dispense for a moment. You can’t let up the pace for him keeping someone’s attention. So they’re turning pages for 460 pages. It’s a whole different challenge and a whole different world than writing the golden giver which has to do the same thing. But in this little tiny form, it’s like the Go-Giver is like a miniature.
RV (07:00):
I know in a lot of your books are so short, like, like the fables there, you can sit down and read them in one sitting like 400 pages is it’s totally different.
JDM (07:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s totally different. By the way, out of all the writing I’ve done, I’ve come to a point where the two things I love to do most are the, are the fables and the novels. So it’s, that’s like, that’s, that’s my, that’s my career, Catherine. I love those parables. I love taking a life message or, or a life principle and spinning that into a story that feels real, that feels compelling, you know, about people that you care come to care about. And if a parable, you know, I say it in the book, how to write good. I say a parables are really easy to write poorly.
RV (07:50):
Yeah. I mean that, like, to me, it freaks me out because you know, I just think the power of a parable, like I think of AIJ. So my wife my business partner, this, our CEO of brand builders group, she, you know, she always makes fun of me for reading boring business books. She calls them boring business books. And, and she loves, she loves fables cause she gets hooked on the story and she, you know, she, she loves to read fiction. And so the, her, her favorite, you know, books, business books are fables and some of mine are too, you know, I think of like the five dysfunctions of a team from pat Lensioni. And then of course you guys did a whole bunch in the, in the Go-Giver series. But like, so can you so here’s my question. Here’s what I don’t think I’m very good at. And I think a lot of people aren’t good at both in writing and speaking is how do you create suspense? Like you just mentioned that for 400 pages, you can’t let off the gas for a second. How do you, like, what is suspense? How do you create it? And then like, how do you know how to write it?
JDM (09:07):
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s a great question. And I think that you know, contact kind of thinking, I’m kind of framing my, my thoughts in the parable space at the moment, because there’s the Go-Giver books. I had the opportunity to write the sequel to who moved my cheese, which was a experience on the other end of the spectrum, right? Cause steal fear. The novel is like 450 page thriller about a serial killer on an aircraft carrier at a wholly different thing who moved my cheese is written at the level of a child it’s Spencer Johnson wrote children’s books. And, and he actually wrote literally children’s books in addition to his adult books. And so to write in the style of Spencer Johnson and write a SQL to who moved my cheese, it’s called out of the maze, was like, I had to, you know, put your brain into that, into that container.
JDM (10:00):
But there’s still suspense in there. And the suspense of the Go-Giver because there’s, you know, in the Go-Giver for those of you who haven’t read it, there’s this character called the connector and you don’t know who he is. And there’s this character called the Friday guests and you don’t know who he is and Joe has got this problem and you can’t imagine how he’s going to solve it. And there, there are these various questions that you don’t really see how they’re going to resolve themselves, but they do the, the, the requirement for the ending of a great mystery or a great suspense novel. Even the book, I would say like the Go-Giver requirement is that when you reach the end, you go, wow, I never saw that coming. And yet the moment you see it, you go, of course, that had to happen. It has to be inevitable, but a complete surprise at the same time, if it’s a surprise and you go, like Yvette came out of left field, I have no idea how that happened.
JDM (10:58):
That’s not fair. You broke the rules of the game. It has to be believable and inevitable and yet I didn’t see it coming. So, you know, actually our lives are like that. I mean, my marriage is like that. I’m, I’m married to my best friend, this amazing woman. And I meeting her was a complete surprise. It’s not something I ever could have planned, you know, writing the Go-Giver with Bob Berg was a complete surprise. It wasn’t something I sought. I’m getting off topic there, but so how do you create suspense? It’s kind of the opposite of giving a lecture or, or lecturing in the worst sense. You’re lecturing in the sense of, of just talking at people. Obviously if you give a great public talk, you don’t do this. You tell stories in a great public talk, but when you’re just lecturing at people, when you’re just telling people something, when you’re just talking at, let’s say you’re mansplaining, I’ll use current terminology.
JDM (11:58):
Like that’s, that’s this awful form of communication where you’re not listening. You’re just talking. Suspense is created by questions. What creates suspenses you pose questions. And not only do you not know the answer, but you can’t even imagine what the answer is. Like, where is this going? Like, where did that come from? What, you know, the classic thriller is kind of a, who done it, you know who somebody’s got dead, it’s murder in there. So who, who killed the person, but you don’t need murder to have mystery. There’s mystery in the seven habits of highly effective people, because the moment you see the title, you go, wow, what are those? How well does Stephen Covey unwrap those, those seven habits? The stories he tells that reveal them. It’s not a super suspenseful book, but he unwraps beautifully. So suspense is about setting up a question and then unwrapping the answer piece by piece in a way that every little morsel is delicious and every little morsel leaves you wanting more. That’s I don’t know if that’s a good way of describing it, but that’s the best way I can think of. I
RV (13:16):
Know. Well, I know it’s, it’s, it’s just hard, you know, I think of storytelling and there’s like so many things, it’s this beautiful blend of both science and art, right? Like there’s structure, there’s a lot of structure to it. And I think you know, a lot of it is artistic even, even to hear you describe it, I mean, to go, okay, I know I need to create an ending that is inevitable, but unpredictable, I’m gonna, that’s how I captured what you were saying. Right. It’s it’s like, of course it had to end that way, but I didn’t see that coming. And then you go, okay, I have to create questions along the way. And so, you know, do you just create questions through characters or like what, what if it is a non-fiction type of writing? I mean, obviously if it’s a parable, which I, which maybe is what you’re saying, like, you you’ve really come around to enjoying payables and novels, because you’ve got, I presume that you’ve got these characters and these kinds of dynamics that can create questions without just kind of posing. Well, I was on a, I was on a mission to understand, you know, the answer to this problem. And so I spent five years researching it and here’s what I found is that, that kind of thing. Yeah.
JDM (14:28):
And if you look at I mean, if you look at great non-fiction writing and I’ll give you an example Malcolm Gladwell, you take a book by blink or, or a book, the tipping point, or, you know, he’s got so many of these that are there along the same lines where they take the hero of the story is not a person. The hero of a story is a concept. It’s like an idea, like the tipping point, it’s how little things make a big impact. That isn’t the exact word, but something like that. Right? So he takes an idea and he unwraps it, using a lot of stories. He does exactly what you do when you’re on stage or what any good speaker does when you’re on stage. You have an idea you want to convey to your audience and you convey it by, by stringing stories together, little vignettes from your life or other, other people’s lives.
JDM (15:19):
Because when you can, you can, you can frame a principle around real people or real characters. It comes to life for people. So Aesop could have said, you know, if you’re slow and steady, if you’re careful what you’re doing, you’re gonna, you’re going to get there sooner, but people will go. Yeah, actually, that’s great. So instead he creates this hair and this tortoise, and now you go, well, who’s going to win the race. I think the hair is going to win. It’s obvious. Right. But it must be not him, but it must be the tortoise because he’s the slow one. But how is that going to work? You know, it’s like, it’s interesting. Suddenly that’s an example of a story at the parables in the Bible, in the new Testament are great examples of teaching tools, teaching stories that are, that, that make principles come to life with characters.
JDM (16:01):
But so back to your question for me, the answer is, yes, you said, do you create these questions through characters? I do. I do. I set up, you know, for me, whether I’m writing a novel or a parable, there’s a basic idea of kind of the setup. Like when Bob and I started working on the Go-Giver, he already had the title. We kind of knew the point of the story. Not kind of, we knew the point of the story. The point of the story was if you put your focus on others, more than yourself, on what you can provide in value, as opposed to what you can get in a value in any situation, your life will be better. That was the point, oh, we could have done the Go-Giver in a sentence and then a sentence. Yeah, that’s it. The point of my novel steal fear is a disgrace Navy seal stocks, a serial killer on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
JDM (17:12):
And obviously you figure the point is going to be, he gets caught. We think, we hope you can kind of tell the story in a sentence. But then you, you create these characters and then you, you just breathe enough life into them so that they feel real. And then you see what happens and you start asking the questions like, well, what happens when he goes here? What happens when he goes there? Joe is beginning of the Go-Giver has a problem. What’s his problem. He’s in a business he’s frustrated. What’s, you’re frustrated about. I don’t know. We didn’t know. So you start asking questions. The beauty of, of doing that in both a parable and a novel is that I, the writer don’t necessarily know the answers. It’s like, I work to figure out what the answers are. I work to follow the story and see where’s this going? And so when, when the reader, when you, the reader start to follow the breadcrumbs from page to page, I was doing the same thing. You were a few months, I didn’t know either when
RV (18:17):
You have the whole arc mapped out, like you kind of know the ultimate destination, like you’re saying like the premise that he will have the book, right? Like you kind of know, okay, this is the very end. And then you kind of go, okay, let’s, here’s a couple of characters. And then, and then you just kind of like day by day, you go, what if this happened? What if that happened? Like how, how would these people interact? That’s right,
JDM (18:38):
Exactly what feels right. What seems, and I’ll give you a great example. There’s, you know, the Go-Giver has several books in the parable series and by the way, there’s a fourth one coming. We’ve got the, give her a leader that Go-Giver influencer, which I want to talk about for a sec. Cause it is an example. And then in the spring, we’re going to have the Go-Giver marriage, which my wife and my wife and I co-wrote this one. So we’re excited about that. But in the Go-Giver influencer, the third book, the basic premise of the book is it’s about seeing other people’s points of view. It’s like we could have called it. The Go-Giver negotiator. It’s about people who see things differently, turning an argument into a resolution, turning an opposition into an Alliance. That’s the basic thesis of the book. And so we start out with two characters who are in a tough negotiation and they’re basically opponents.
JDM (19:30):
And we knew that by the end of the book, there was going to be some really cool resolution that neither of them saw coming, but which would totally work. And the thing of it was neither of, neither of us saw it coming either. Like we didn’t know what that resolution was going to be. So it’s like we set up the situation, is it, I wonder how this is going to resolve. We knew what was going to happen at the end was going to resolve how, you know, we were discovering it in the process. So I think there’s, you mentioned earlier, there’s a balancing act. You have sort of the science and the art. There’s, there’s a structure side to writing and there’s kind of a flow side to writing and you’ll hear writers debate about whether you should use an outline or not. They call them plotters versus pantsers, plotters figure out a plot first.
JDM (20:21):
This is what James Patterson does figure out a plot. And then you kind of write the story. Pantsers like writing by the seat of your pants. Pantsers just start at page one and go, Stephen King says he’s a pantser. And I think this debate is a little specious because I really think that if you look got inside their brains, everyone’s doing a little bit of both or a mix of both. I know for me, I always have an outline, but it isn’t where it starts. This is by the way, true for a novel, a parable, it’s true for a blog post. It’s true for an article I’m going to write, I’ll have an outline, but I don’t, it’s not where I start. I start with just like an idea, a concept, a situation, a character, a piece of dialogue, whatever, from something that just as a spark and it’s always going back and forth between taking just random ideas and spontaneous writing stuff and kind of molding it into a structure and then taking the structure and saying, yeah, but then what happens over here? And then messing up again? So I go back and forth between structure and flow. I even have two different places in my, in my room where I, where I do it. I’m sitting at my structure place in my desk and over there in the corner, I can’t get over there in the corner. I have my overstuffed chair, which is where I sit with a pad of paper and a pen and just make stuff up. And I have no idea what’s coming.
RV (21:55):
So how do you get, how do you, well, maybe talk, talk to us about characters, right? Like how do you develop a character? Cause I, you know, like I’ve started watching I’ve started paying attention to this a lot in recent years because one of the things I realized is like, gosh, I have to become a better storyteller. Like to what you’re saying. I’ve realized if I want to get my points across more effectively, I have to become a better storyteller, which actually for me has been frustrating. Like I love the boring, just give me the information. Like I, and it’s hard because as a consumer, I actually do like that, but it’s, I think it’s very rare. Like people, they have to be engaged and entertained and you know, if you just deliver the punchline, it’s not punchy. If there isn’t that suspense or that conflict along the way, it doesn’t sink in. And then so I’m like, well, crap. I have to like, learn how to do this thing. I’m not naturally good at it. And I don’t really love, or didn’t really, I didn’t really love storytelling. And so, you know, like I think of, I think of one of our favorite shows as modern family. I mean, it is, it is our favorite show. We’ve watched it. Have you ever, have you ever seen the show
JDM (23:01):
Completely? Totally. Yes.
RV (23:03):
So we have seen every single episode in every season, every one of them we have seen at least at least six or seven times every single episode. And you know what I realized finally, after years now of watching the show is going, oh, there is a formula to this, which is basically each episode. They start with these characters who have very salient features. So each character has very distinct features. And then every episode they basically say, okay, what if we put these three characters together in these two characters together and these ones, and then go, what would happen if these extreme personalities got paired up in these different arrangements? And then I, and I kind of feel like, oh, that I think that maybe is how they’re, how they’re writing like a chemistry set. Yeah. Like I’m mixing these things together, but you know, so how do you develop characters? Where do you come up with these, you know, ideas? And if you’re just, you know, if you’re doing it, if you’re a pantser and you’re just kinda like letting it flow, how do you do it to where it doesn’t suck and isn’t boring. Yeah.
JDM (24:09):
So for me, by the way, I’m much more structure oriented than, than, than, you know, flow oriented. It’s kind of a very methodical nature. I come at it like a composer and I S you know, I was a composer before I was a writer and classical music was my training, my upbringing. And so I think like, like, you know, a symphonic composer which is a very structural thing. So a couple things about, about characters. First thing I want to say is the fact that you said you’re naturally suck at this is awesome. Because if, if you, if you come to something from a place of nothing naturally inclined to do it, you can become so great. Like, I’ll give you an example. I, I started doing these military books with Brandon Webb, my Navy seal friend. I know nothing about the military. It’s like writing a book in German when I don’t speak German.
JDM (24:57):
And I have to learn the language just to write the book. But, you know, there’s, there’s no one who loves the English language, like somebody who was brought up somewhere else who learns it as their second language. That was my dad’s case. He came from Germany and he like, no, he loved English, like no native American, whatever love. So that’s the first thing I don’t come up with these characters automatically. I’m not, I don’t consider myself a gifted at this naturally, like Stephen King just kind of shakes his arms and colorful characters, spill out. I’m not like that. So I’ll start out with a character, with a character. And by the way, one of my writing teachers says that before you start a novel, you spend weeks and weeks and weeks writing character profiles, where like you ask all these questions, you answer them all, and you, and you come to know this character, like better than, you know, your brother.
JDM (25:50):
Then you start the novel. I tried and I couldn’t really do it. And interesting when I S when I start a character, when I create a character, he’s kind of a, like a stereotype or a caricature at first. So like, you know, Joe and Pindar Joe is this, you know, struggling young business guy. And Pindar is this wise old mentor or in my novel, there’s this captain, the ship captain who a jerk he’s, he’s, he’s a, he’s an. And it was, it would have been so easy to make him like a cartoon villain.
JDM (26:28):
So then what I do is I do something very much like what you do in real life. I used to run a sales organization, and I had people who were terrified and making cold calls and terrified and making sales calls. And they would say, when I get, and they would say, when I get in the phone, it’s like, you know, I freeze up because I feel like, I don’t know. I I’ve got all this stuff, I want to say, but it feels can, that feels hollow. And so my thing was, when you get on the phone, ask yourself the question, who is this person I’m talking to? Yeah, you got your product or your service. You got your stuff, you got your pad, or you’ve got your, your, you know, all of that. That’s already in your head. So just let that go for a moment, ask the question, who is this person I’m talking to?
JDM (27:16):
Not like, what do they need so I can sell them. But just who are they? I’m just curious, be curious about the person and not, you can’t grill them like third degree. Where did you come from? Where’d you grow up? How many siblings do you have? But just be curious. That’s what it’s like with a character. Curiously, these characters, this guy is, is a jerk of a leader. He’s an aircraft carrier captain that is terrible leader. He doesn’t have any sympathy of risk people. He doesn’t talk to his people. No one really looks up to them. They just do, because they have to go that’s the position, but they don’t naturally because they think all things is a jerk. Okay. What is he most worried about? What concerns him most, when a problem comes up, how does he react? It’s like, I just get curious about asking questions and you see just like popping up little detail tales about somebody, the way they, the way they respond, the way they say certain, like catchphrases will come out or certain ways of talking will come out.
JDM (28:24):
And they start to come to life. It’s I still find it challenging for me. It’s not something I, I I’m, I come to naturally, so I have to work at it, which is good, because that means I have to make it happen. You know, that’s true with, with everything, right? Whether it’s a parable or it’s a novel or, or anything else, or for that matter, if I’m writing a like a principal, like I’m writing a blog post about, you know, leadership. Well, I say to them said, give me an example of that. I try to think of an event that’s happened in my life that somehow reflects that. And I think of the people in that event, I always ask myself questions. What does that look like when it actually happens? So that’s, you know, that’s, that’s kinda where it’s at in the novel.
JDM (29:13):
There are a lot of things that happen. There’s a lot of situations or characters. They were vaguely echoes of real characters and real just because that’s, you know, that’s where I went there. Well, I dipped into to start to make it the life. You’ll hear film actors, talk about how, in order to play this role, they had to excess this memory of their own, his own experience. Like in order to play this greeting father, they had to access when their dog died and how sad they were. And I used to think that’s so pretentious. That’s like actors speaking, Hollywood actors. That’s how they talk. But I, as a writer, I started realizing that’s really true. You know, when you want to write somebody, who’s grieving, you go find a place in your life where you’ve grieved and you remember that, and it kind of opens that door for you. And so I think the, the real skill to answer your question about where characters come from, it’s empathy, it’s all empathy. You tap your empathy. And that’s where I think stories and characters kind of that’s the wellspring that they come out of.
RV (30:23):
Wow. That is so good. That is so, so powerful. I think suspense, plot lines, being curious, characters, you know, coming from empathy really, really great stuff, John, I I just admire so much what you do and, and you’re truly an artist in the way. You’ve been able to apply it across so many different things. Where do you want people to go? Okay, you mentioned this book how to write good or at least good, or which is a, is an ebook that you have, or, you know, where, where do you want people, if they want to connect with you or people who are aspiring writers or just wanting to be better at the craft of writing how can they learn more about you?
JDM (31:06):
Yeah, it’s funny because the book itself grew out of podcasts and interviews, just like this conversations like this, where people would ask questions about writing and I’d come up with an answer and say, oh, I should write that down. I only meant to do a little like 12, 14, 18 page, little sort of ebook article. And it turned into a full fledged book. So I hear it is masquerading as a physical book. I’m doing it right now, as you said, just as an, as an ebook, it’s a free download on my website. I imagine someday I’ll really publish it. And it’ll be, it become a a real boy like Pinocchio, but right now there’s a new book that you can buy. You can get free on my site, which is just my name, John David mann.com. And you go to Johnny batman.com and you’ll see up there, you know, ebook free ebook, whatever that’s, that’s, that’s what this is. I love
RV (31:54):
That. I love that so much. Well, you know, thank you for the work that you put into this because your, your characters are delightful. And they’re everything that you just described there they’re dynamic. They are real, they are multi-dimensional, they, they are people that we have all met in real life, which makes sense, because there, there are people that you have met they’re based on those, and, you know, specifically the way that you weave a tale into you, you can take one simple principle. That is a sentence like it literally could be a tweet. And from that you extrapolate this, this beautiful, wonderful, entertaining, uplifting, curious page, turning, sorry, that’s just such a bit more, it’s just such a more enriching way to get to that destination and a more effective one too, you know? And so we really appreciate your work and we appreciate you very much sharing several of your secrets here with us for free.
JDM (32:56):
I certainly appreciate it too. I love being here. And I have to say, you know, in the balance between telling a story versus teaching a principle, either paranormal, you’re always doing both. It’s a tricky balance because in my mind, the story, the story has to always lead story has to be king because the principal only works with the story as king. I got to the end of steel, fear, the novel, and turned around, looked back and realized that it was teaching a leadership principle. It’s like, it’s a parable, it’s a leadership, parable disguised as a crime novel. My parable, my parable, I have it’s, you know, w we’ll never die, I guess. It’s like they don’t go away.
RV (33:32):
That is awesome. That’s awesome. Well, we wish you the best, my friend. Thanks for being here. And thanks for your support after all these years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll do it again. A couple of years away.