893 – Speak Right Make Moolah: Tom talks Speech Prep for Maximum Money

Episode 893 – Speech Prep for Maximum Money
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute, the entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 893 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about your favorite subject. Preparing for a speech or presentation. I know a lot of you hate it out there, but I got to tell you, if you can overcome that problem of being nervous about it and everything, oh my goodness, it can open up worlds of money for you and prestige and travel and oh, I mean just all kinds of great stuff. So that's going to talk about how professionals, top professionals would prepare for speeches. All right. I hope you didn't miss episode 892. That is Google is watching you. These are all the things that Google looks at on your website. And so you don't have to hire a big SEO person to fix this stuff for you if you just knew about it. So episode 892 make sure you, um. Till. Well, let me tell you how to listen to a back episode is screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. That was Google was watching his 892 today is 893. And make sure you grab a copy of our automation book. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.

[00:01:43] All right. So first of all, let me there's a lot of new listeners here all the time and may not know my history or past. So just a few credentials to say, well, maybe I should listen to this guy when it comes to professional level speaking.

[00:02:02] Well, first of all, I claim that I've trained more professional speakers than anybody living. I trained over 100 times at the prestigious National Speakers Association, and I think 11 countries or something like that. I don't know if I can't remember. I've done over 3000 speeches in 12 countries and I don't think I've been beaten. I'm pretty well, I know I haven't been beaten at the venues that I've been at in back of the room sales in the past 20 years. And speaking of that, I'm I pretty much sure I'm in the top 1% of speaker income, especially when it comes to income per speech, because in the past 20 years, I don't think on a when I've had a regular speech of 300 people or more that I've done less than $100,000 in sales at back of the room, and the high is like 275,000. So so I might know a little bit about this, folks. So you might want to listen to this. And there's a lot of details to being a top pro because especially when there's a lot of money involved, you can't afford to bomb or even be mediocre. You have to hit a grand slam every single time. Uh, if you if you want the big money from speaking. And what cracks me up is these people are telling you how to make money speaking, you know, and probably they haven't made I've made one speech, uh, which was more money they made in their entire career, maybe times ten.

[00:03:36] Some of them, you know, so you got to be careful who you're listening to and what they've actually done. They might be eloquent. I'll tell you a story about one. I was doing a big speech. I think there was 1100 people in Los Angeles, and there was a guy on in front of me before me. And I'm. I'm not easily impressed. This guy was slick. He was funny. He was charismatic. He was good looking. Uh, audience was going crazy over him. And I'm thinking, man, this this guy is good. And then, um, he went for a big standing ovation at the end, and he got it, including me. It was wonderful. But I'm sitting there thinking, man, he didn't make any money. And because we all go to these big events for free and hope to sell at the back of the room or something, and, and he went for the standing ovation. And then all the speakers were having a dinner or something afterwards, and he was complaining how lousy the crowd was. And, and I think I pulled 150, $200,000. It was a free event. So a lot of the people weren't really qualified that were in the audience, but there was a lot of people there, and he's complained and he didn't make a nickel in sales. And I'm thinking you didn't try to make a nickel.

[00:04:55] You tried to stroke your ego with a giant standing ovation. All right. So so you can be very, very glib and good looking and dressed well and not make money. Okay. So I go up there. I mean, it's a joke. I even joke about it. I couldn't get dressed if if it wasn't for eBay and buying George Foreman stretch waist pants. So. But but I always beat everybody to death because of a lot of things I'm going to talk to you about today. It's even more than that. I go early and I stay late and I talk to people. I don't act like a diva. And then I wow them during the presentation and and all that stuff. And I have a big program to teach you all this stuff at. Screwthecommute.com/prospeaking. It's a mentor program where I can accelerate your success in this. I mean, one speech, one good speech, or even if you sell it to back of the room could pay for the whole mentor program. Let's get into how I prepare. Uh, so first of all, as I gather information and I use, uh, a sheet of paper or a whole couple sheets of paper to gather all this information, I want to know the location in the world. It is. Okay. I want to know the location at the venue. One time I was speaking in Vegas, my sleeping room. Was a mile walk to the, uh, to the meeting room, my sleeping room.

[00:06:28] I had to walk a mile through all these hallways and getting lost and everything. Right. So you need to need the location at the venue. And once you're there, you need to scope it out and make sure you can find everything. I want to know the number of attendees, how many people are going to be there. I want to know the male female percentage. I don't ask for anything but male and female, by the way, because I know and you can learn in my Wake 'em Up book, which screwthecommute.com/wakebook, the e-book version is the most readily available to you now that it makes a difference. Male female mix. And I want to know their profession. Are they lawyers or are they blue collar people? Or is there a mix? And one of the hardest speeches I ever did. I was, uh, on Martin Luther King's birthday. I can't believe they hired me to speak to an all black group in Baltimore, social workers. But they had people from janitors all the way to PhDs in the crowd. Well, you better darn know that kind of stuff before you go there, because I had to pop back and forth to information that would keep everybody's attention. And they loved it. But boy, if I'd have just walked in there cold and just did a dog and pony show, I would have alienated the PhDs and the janitors and everybody in between.

[00:07:52] All right, so you got to know this stuff. You should know their income range. You wouldn't want to talk about stock stuff to people that can barely make their car payment. Is it public or private? Do we know. Is it is it a corporation? Is it are they inviting public to attend? Some corporations do for goodwill, you know. So what is it? Is there going to be people that have no idea who you are, everybody going to know who you are? Here's a big one. Time of day I want to know, is it early morning? Is it, uh, mid-afternoon? Is it after lunch? Is it evening? You know, there's, uh, that whole range changes things. I got plenty of stories about how, you know, early morning sucks for humor. So what did I do to make sure I hit a home run? You know, I did, in fact, the meeting planner on that one event I'm thinking about was begging me to stay for another session. You're going to pay me because people were lined up at six in the morning to get into my room, and and everybody else was nobody wanted to go to their sessions because of something I did at the banquet before. All right. These are the kind of things that you would learn with me. The what's the length of the presentation? And you always have to depend at the time is going to get cut because they, you know, they mess up and things run over and all that stuff.

[00:09:17] So what do you do when time gets cut? Who's on before you? Who's on after you? What is, uh, here's another super bigman. What's the seating arrangement? I learned a change in seating arrangement. Sometimes made pieces of content of mine. Get 3 to 5 times higher response from seating arrangement. Of course, all this is outlined in the wake book. And then I hold your hand through it in my mentor program. What audio visual do they have? Who's the introducer going to be? And this goes on and on and on. This is all stuff that I teach in my programs, but if you just did that, you'd be ahead of 99.9% of, you know, so-called professional speakers out there because a lot of them are just looking for the big money, don't care to be great. And I got to tell you, the word spreads fast. If you go up there and suck or say the wrong thing or call them managers. When that company uses the term team leaders, you should know all this stuff. Say okay, so then so I gather information. Now I continue gathering information by researching. So I go to Google. I put in whatever I can find about the organization or the the company. I get their brochures if possible. I check all their social media to see what they're talking about. Now, one really important thing that you can do totally for free that'll make you a super help make you a superstar is Google Alerts now? I used to have to pay for this service way back in CompuServe days, but now it's free.

[00:10:58] And I'll give you an example of how this works. So I was speaking to for Hallmark Cards one time, and I had hallmark cards in my Google alerts for the weeks up until the day of the speech, and in the morning. Before I went down. I checked my Google alerts one more time. In fact, they they email me when this something comes up. Google alerts means you put a term in and anything that comes up in the news, you get an email about it either once a day or immediately. So I had the Google alerts, I checked them in the morning and there was something that just came out about hallmark cards. And so I went downstairs and included it in my speech, and all the executives and everybody there didn't even know about it. I knew about it. Now, how did that make me look in front of these people? I look like the superstar. They thought I was in their own company. All right. Some of them sometimes. Uh, see? So Google Alerts is is great. Now, another thing that I do that most people won't do take the time. I mean, there's so many people so damn lazy. They just want the money and they don't deliver quality. You're willing to work for it.

[00:12:11] I interview at least 15 people in any speaking engagement I'm going to do now, if it's a public event, and I've been there over and over again and I know it's all entrepreneurs, no, I don't do this. But if I was hired at a corporation or association and I tell them I'm going to interview a bunch of people and all different sections of the company, and I ask them what their problems are, and I, I swear to them, I'm not going to waste their time, and I want to know what I can do best and to to make it a great presentation, because a lot of times people have to go to these things and they think, God, what a waste of time. This guy is just going to give us a dog and pony show. So with me doing these interviews, like I said, minimum of 15. I got 15 people dying to be there and telling their friends, boy, this guy called me and he was really interested and so blah blah blah blah, blah, blah. And so the whole the whole event is better because people are more excited about it. And those 15 people that I took the time to ask their opinions and all this stuff spread the word for me. And they definitely show up because they want to meet me in person, shake hands and all this stuff. So, so those interviews are critical. And I also ask them what funny has happened.

[00:13:36] And I clear this with 4 or 5, six different people because I don't want to have one person, want to want me to get up there and insult somebody else. And it looks like I did it, but they gave me the information. No, I want to make sure that I don't insult anybody or say something that's shouldn't be said from that stage in front of that group. All right. And then part of my research I do industry humor. So I go to Google and I type whatever the industry is, dry cleaning humor. Okay. You can't think of an industry where there's not some kind of jokes about it. And so I gather all that stuff and I decide what I can put into the, the presentation. And if I wake him up book. And in my pro speaking mentor program, I show you 31 ways to use humor without telling jokes. You do not have to be a comedian. Sometimes you don't even have to say a word. You just show a visual and you get a big laugh. And that all reflects on you as being fun and interesting. See, the the audiences nowadays demand an entertainment value even in some of the most dire circumstances. I heard a lady that was talking about rape and incest and overcoming it and stuff. But see, there's a thing called comic relief. Even Shakespeare in his tragedies had it because the mind, you know, the human mind can only stand so much heavy information.

[00:15:10] And that takes skill to put that in, especially when it's a sensitive topic. But anyway, you gather industry humor. All right. Then I create what I call an heirloom handout. Heirloom handout means that in many cases you see handouts just thrown in the garbage or left at the desk when a speech is over, not mine, because I strategically make an interesting, fun cover. And then, like for instance, I was doing this real estate thing and I wasn't a real estate person. There were 16 other speakers that were real estate experts. And and I'm thinking, what am I going to do here? So part of my promotion for my session and also in the handout once they got to my session was in the title. Another thing is the title of my session was How to Make the Sale when You Just Backed Over the mailbox, which I had interviewed a bunch of real estate people and found how frustrating the job is. So they have to use their own car insurance gas. They have to shut the kids up to try to sell the parents. And I mean, so it's frustrating job. So so I did that. And then I mocked up backing over a mailbox, a picture on the cover of the handout. My place was packed again and the other big experts were sparsely attended. See, so this stuff does it now, the reason I call it heirloom is because I make it a point to put some important piece of information on every page so that they don't have to write it down.

[00:16:49] In fact, I tell them that, hey, all the stuff I'm going to talk about today is on your handout there, so you can follow along with it and underline or something the stuff you want to remember. And there's like links to things and all kinds of stuff or checklists and in the handout. And so they don't throw them away because it saves them taking notes and they can take it with them, say so nobody leaves my handouts anywhere. So keep that in mind when you are making handouts. Make them heirloom. And also I use my handout as engagement so frequently I'll say, hey, my memory is terrible. Uh, so Sally, will you help me with this? And I'll give her a free gift or something, and I'll say, all right, what's next on the handout? And she'll tell me something, and then I'll go into a bit or a chunk or series we call it. That's how pros do lots of information without notes. And so Sally kicked me off and I went for a couple of minutes and I say, okay, Joe, what's next on there? And so everybody doesn't want to get picked on and not know where they are. So it really creates a tension gaining. So my whole wake him up system is based on 11 attention gaining devices.

[00:18:01] So people. Never go to the bathroom during my speeches. Put it that way. Okay, so that's heirloom handouts. Now, here's something that I'm pretty sure none of you are going to do, because I've taught hundreds and hundreds of people this speakers, pro speakers, amateurs, and nobody will do it. They're chicken shit. Uh, but the thing is, is I do not use PowerPoint. The only time I use PowerPoint was once when I had a spokesperson job for CBS and they demanded it. I did 30 speeches and I had to use the same exact thing every place, every time. All right. But all the other 2770 speeches, I did not use PowerPoint. So I use my own graphics on my desktop and my own videos that I can play on the screen. And see here, when you use PowerPoint, you're stuck in a situation. Well, first of all, a lot of people will read the PowerPoint instead of talking to the audience. So that's terrible. And then if your time gets cut, you have to, you know, go through a bunch of slides. And what's that make the audience feel, hey, we're getting cheated. See? So this is terrible. So they never know how much material I have. I always have way more than I need, but they don't know it. And so I look like no matter what the time is, if they give me a time at the back of the room, I say boom, boom, boom, I just lay.

[00:19:29] Nobody feels cheated and it's all great. And also it helps sell your own stuff. So I use some of my own materials that I sell in my presentation. And then people say, hey, where do we get those videos that you said? I mean, it was funny, one time I, I was at a place you can't sell normally at a corporation. So I did my speech and I have this $199. It was at the time a CD-ROM. It would be a DVD now, and I showed three videos out of the 50 that are on the DVD during my presentation. And then people keep coming up and say, how do we get the rest of those videos? I said, well, I'm not really allowed to sell. You have to talk to the meeting planner. So they all bugged to death, and then the meeting planner ended up buying, I don't know, 100 of these couple hundred dollar DVDs and pass them out, you know, so it was thousands of extra dollars. Say so. So use your stuff during the presentation. All right. Then I pick, you know, go through my archive of stories and what points that they make. And I pick several that make sense for that group. Then I pick several openings and several closings because if something really, you know, I usually do some funny or, you know, impactful opening. But if something before me happened that was really sad, like they collected money for emaciated children or something, I can't just go in there and chuckle it up.

[00:21:01] Right. You know, next. I mean, you look stupid and you look totally out of touch and you're going to alienate people. So then you have to acknowledge what happened before you and slowly get into your material, and then you can add some humor later as you make a buffer between what happened before. You see, this is what pros think about you can't just go up there and do dog and pony shows. If you don't pay attention to these, or you'll never have consistency and super high levels of response from people. So anyway, pick several openings. Same thing with closings. I pick what humor I found and what humor that I normally use that I know works all the time for anybody. And I make sure that what I promised the group in the promo for the event is in there. I don't want to get out of there and not give them what they promised. And then I might research some quotations. See, quotations are one of my genius techniques I learned this from. I can't remember the guy's name now from National Speakers Association, but if your time gets cut, which it always does, you can have a quotation ready that makes the same point as maybe a 2 or 3 minute story that you had. See? So that's a genius technique. We have a bunch of those that if you knew about them, you would be again, so far ahead of people.

[00:22:23] And then even the night before in my hotel room or at home, if it's local, which is very seldom, I practice my stories because I've had stories going back 20 more years, and maybe I haven't told this one story for three years. Well, I don't want to stumble over it and forget some important points. So I practice, and I didn't learn this from, but I heard that Zig Ziglar did this till the end of his career. But that's what top pros do. So I practice the stories the night before and even the morning of before I go down. And then I told you, I go early and stay late and create rapport with people, shake hands, talk to people, answer questions and all that stuff. And what I gave you today is only a fraction of the things you need to know. I mean, my wake him up professional speaking system, which you get as part of the Pro Speaking Mentor program, has over a thousand. We counted them up years ago with over a thousand things that you need to know so that you can hit grand slams, get the highest fees, the most back of the room sales and all that stuff. If you want to be a pro speaker. All right, so that's how I prepare for a speech. And that's my story like always. And I'm sticking to it. All right. We'll catch you on the next episode. Check out Screwthecommute.com/prospeaking.