Blaze Your Own Trail - Episode 7: Public Speaking Success With Joshua Schulman

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

In this episode, you'll learn about: What Joshua does His impressive schedule Who inspires him How he might be able to help you SCi Website: www.getcoachingfromsci.com Connect with Joshua on Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/schulmanjoshua Connect with Joshua on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SchulmanCommInteractive/ Connect with Joshua on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshuaschulman/ Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, you'll learn about Joshua Shulman, the type of work he does, his super crazy schedule and how he manages it, and a little bit about the people that have inspired him in his life. So I hope you enjoy it, and I'll talk to you here soon. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. This is your host, Jordan Mendoza. And I've got a very special guest with me. His name is Joshua Shulman. And I'm actually going to have him dive in and just give us a quick intro into who. who he is and what he does.

Hey, how are you, Jordan? It's great to see it. Well, you know, it's interesting. I do a lot of very interesting things. I've been doing this for a while. And people always say, Josh, you're like a jack of all trade. You're like this modern jack of all trades. And I said, well, after 30 years, I've been able to aggregate all the interesting things I've been doing over years.

As a sales trainer, sales manager, as a public speaker, as a coach, as an acting coach, as a chess player, as a poker player, all these unique things. and of course teaching business English and combining them in a very interesting way, which actually creates a lot of synergy. So I have these courses. You know, I do these programs. There are eight-week courses, and I also have a 24-track. And even people sign up for a whole year for 48 weeks. Even some people need vacation, right?

So we make it 48 weeks, and it's once a week. But the eight weeks, we go everything about public speaking and presentation skills and entrepreneurship, how to sell yourself, how to understand the selling process, right, from prospecting all the way to close. And then also, of course, business English and not just my engineers and folks that I work with with English as a second language, Chinese, Indian, Russian, Vietnamese, but folks who are native speakers who maybe after fifth grade really wasn't paying attention as much with their idioms and their vocabulary and their prepositions and their definite and different articles and plurals and programs. And so those things are key. And then, of course, the public speaking and presenting, right? Everybody has to do that regularly.

If you're good at what you do, Jordan, you can be able to speak to a large group, I guarantee you. And if you're really good, they're going to ask you, what's your rate, right? Your speaking rate. And so it's very important. So I like to break it down systemically. Eye contact, gestures, vocal variety, delivery, humor. How to implement humor effectively. I was a comedian for yours.

As a comic, you've got to make them laugh every three lines. But as a speaker, you don't. You've got to make them think every three lines. But you do want to make them laugh, right, two or three times in its totality. And then, of course, that's dynamic of extemporaneous. speaking, right? Speaking with no notes, being able to be confident to avoid those ums and us and likes and your nose, those dreaded filler words and such. And so I love, I call it under the hood, U-T-H, really diving under to see what this is to be an effective communicator. Because to me,

Jordan, public speaking is not about being the next Tony Robbins. It's about speaking in public. One person, three, five, maybe a thousand. But everybody has to do these things. And most people are having a lot of challenges with that. And particularly in business today, I work with a lot of startups, a lot of entrepreneurs who've never had formalized sales training, and that is really difficult, right? Not just from networking standpoint, but from getting to the point of cap raise, right?

I coach a lot of contestants on Shark Tank. We do with all kinds of folks who are trying to get, I want them to be prepared for real rounds, right, B.C., getting funding, how you're really going to get that term sheet, and be able to tell the genesis of your company and who your team is. You can't just say they're, well, these are my college roommates, right? And even if it's at the idea stage, how this really builds so you can get that revenue growth that you're looking for in scale optimally. So that's essentially what I do in a nutshell.

Awesome. Yeah. And that has a bunch of different variations that all kind of they see meld together at the end, right? And what I really enjoy about that is you get to take people on a journey, right? You get to take people on a journey of really kind of identifying what their strengths are, right? Because you might have some people that are more extroverted. So it's very easy for them to at least open the lines of communication. But they may not have the framework and structure to know what to actually look for to improve it. That's a good point because I really believe Jordan this is a skill set. This is not a natural ability.

I don't believe people have this gift. When we're born, nobody gives you a microphone. They give you a rattle. You're making noise and you learn how to make noise. And the more effective you are, the things come to you that you want, right? I mean, listen, there was a great book. I talked about it on one of my LinkedIn posts recently on how to, Dale Carnegie, right? How to Win Friends and Influence People, Famous book, business book written in the 1930s.

In fact, it was an amendment a couple years ago, I think about almost 10 years ago now, on how to win friends and influence people in the digital age, how key that is. because this is a challenge that people have in regards to how am I connecting? Am I reading people accurately? And of course, we're a global world now. So we've got to be able to body language and reading people is really important. In fact, speaking in general is important. People put their foot in their mouth today more than ever before.

It takes tremendous courage to be able to speak. Not just to speak well, to speak to even voice their opinion. We see this all the time, right? We see actors getting fired from gigs that are coming up because they said something stupid. And then someone comes up with a microphone to some other actor and said, hey, what do you think about the stupid thing that that guy said? And he says something more stupid and he gets fired or she from their next gig. So people are just deciding, you know, I'm going to clam up, right? They don't want to say anything about anything.

We live in that cancel culture right now and this is very complicated. So I think people have to be a little bit more cognizant of what we say. When I say people should be thoughtful, right, not just about considerate and kind, courteous, it should be thoughtful, full of thought. Like my acting classes, I teach this all the time. Every action has a reaction. If you say this, what do you expect the response would be? Which is why I like the strategy and the tactics, by the way, of chess and poker. Because those things you learn and you really understand if I do this, my opponent will do that.

Well, don't we do that in negotiation and business? Of course we do. Don't we do that in public speaking when I'm trying to anticipate whether my audience will understand this idea or not? Like a good lawyer, they don't ask a question. They don't know the answer to. well, people in business and certainly public speaking should do that too. Absolutely. And, you know, I think it's very, very clear, at least for me, and you can touch on this,

but for me it's very easy to identify somebody that's not only a good speaker, but that can kind of work the room and keep audience engaged. And I know for me, so I do training and development. Sure. That's what I do for a living. So I have to figure out, and this is adult learning, right? So I have to figure out how to get these 15 adults to pay attention for eight hours. And when you're working with that, you know, that type of a group of people,

what I find works for me is asking those open-ended questions to respond. It is that eye contact and paying attention to their body language and noticing when people are getting restless to break to say, hey, hey, it's great time for a break. Let's go ahead and take this break, right? And now I've been to plenty of things where I see the opposite of that. And somebody that is literally talking and looking down and they're not actually paying attention to the, you know what I'm saying? Oh, sure.

In fact, they taught that for years, Jordan, for years. They were saying, look over people's heads. Because if you look at their eyes, you're going to get thrown off and you'll forget. One of the biggest concerns my clients have often is about mind blank. And I teach them a process how we can actually choreograph our presentations into parts. So then when I move across the stage, cross left, I look at someone down in audience right. I have that eye contact. And then I can move and then pivot and look at the rest of the group.

And then boom, right? I could cross the stage and look at someone, right, for part three, essentially, or then four, whatever. And then move back just a little bit. And all in my mind, I knew my presentation. Here's a challenge. Acting students, they have to rehearse. If they don't have their monologue, we can't work on that piece. Presenters and people are winging it every day.

You cannot wing public speaking. You have to be prepared. That means you have to practice. And most people don't. I work with many folks, of course, lawyers, doctors, MBAs. So that tells me in medical school, law school and MBA programs, they're not teaching them how to engage. They're teaching them what to talk about.

That's great. And they're all becoming experts. But then they're losing on the engagement side, right? The doctor has to share his finding on his research, but he better get funding. And this is where I think people lose that idea about how we can be more effective. And it's a real concern from that standpoint. Absolutely. And so what do you think it is for certain people that just maybe they're not an expert speaker,

but they just have that ability to not have those nerves come in, right? because you know and you probably see have these people as clients right sure of course like certain people it's yeah it's like you can easily notice it like okay there's some polishing here and then other people you're like well we got to start at the basics right so what do you think what do you think that is like where do you think that comes from is it like environmental influence is it oh definitely people they come to me i'm an introvert okay well you know i don't know and there's some science on this now about whether this left hemisphere right hemisphere So a little bit of this is debatable, right?

This, I'm an introvert. When we're an introvert, we hide behind this concept of introversion. And same with being an extrovert. The life of the party. That's not necessarily that works. By the way, this idea, there's no mediocrity in public speaking. You're either really good or you're not. And if you're not very good at it, you're going to do it a while and you're going to stop

because it's not very effective for you. When I go speak in an event, I'm not doing it for giggles and claps. I'm not doing it for the applause, right? I'm doing it because six and a lot. 600 people, let's say, over 300 people are going to come up and ask me for my business card. That's effective prospecting. That's solid lead generation.

That's why I do it. And by the way, these are not their business, I mean, my business cards, those they'll get for sure. But they may or may not call me. But in business, I'm not relying on that. It's just like poker. That's luck. I deal with randomity.

I want to deal with the elements. I can control in mitigating error and mistake and bet your bottom dollar, I will get their business card. I will then connect with them on LinkedIn or whatever appropriate social media and I will follow up and move from there. And that's how business gets done. This is what people are not doing. And so this nervousness in the beginning, the anxiety you're referring to, I can dismiss

that immediately. I'd break it down. In fact, I'll tell you audience right now, here's six things you do. Next time you're asked to speak at an event. And by the way, you only have two reasons why you even speak at an event. You are either asked to come and speak, or maybe you're in school and you have to, right? Or you ask for the opportunity. And we should be asking for opportunities.

We're not sitting there waiting for someone to hire us, right, to pay us lots of money for a keynote. In the beginning, you've got to go out there and find those opportunities, and there are a myriad of them. Okay, so here's those six things. Who am I speaking for? Why me? Why did they ask me?

Where am I speaking? I want to know the acoustics. When? A date is a big deal, right? Goal setting. I got to know when this is. If I'm going to create an opportunity, tuning for myself next month, I'm going to identify exactly when. And of course, what am I speaking

about? Oh, and the last one, how? And this is kind of an important one, right? Am I using a microphone? Am I using a lapelmike? Am I using a lavelier? Am I using a clicker? I like my own clicker. I'm my own IT guy. I show up with a long USB. I mean, HDMI cable. I have my own computer. I want to do this just right. I don't want to have any issues. Most IT folks who are setting up you as a speaker have no understanding about the process of that. They're just trying to do whatever works on their end, not what works necessarily for an audience. And for me, I'm comfortable with my own clicker. You can imagine the nerves, Jordan, when people come up to go speak or in an event and they didn't anticipate any of these six things we just talked about, of course, there's anxiety

because these are all the things, they're unknowns. We'll figure out the unknowns. And then they show up and they had practiced their speech with gestures, right? They had practiced with a clicker. And then they suddenly say, listen, there's no clicker. We'll just do it for you. And you're like, what? And then they say, oh, by the way, here's a microphone. And you've never held a clunky microphone before. Or they stuck you at a podium, which you expected to maybe perhaps use the stage.

Or vice versa. Maybe you expected to be behind a podium. And then suddenly now they said, yeah, we'd like you to stand in the middle of the stage. I feel like you're a stand-up comic. Enjoy. Right? If you didn't prepare for that, you're going to be nervous on the spot. And that's going to give you a lot of stress.

We as audiences are like little doggies. We're looking for that weakness, right? We're ready to pounce. But the reality is everybody wants you to do well. But there are circumstances where if you are showing and manifesting weakness and stress, playing with your hands, doing this, wiping your brow, telling people, I'm not very good at public speaking. Why do you need to tell them that?

Why would you need to give excuses and apologies? You're already dismissing yourself as an authority in that field. If you're speaking in front of a group, Jordan, you are an authority. You have the credibility. They want to hear what you have to say. And that's one of the challenges because I think people think they just want information. No, we have internet. We can all Google information.

What we want is change. I want to change. I want that information to be the catalyst for me to make different decisions or better decisions and to mitigate error and mistake, which is why, by the way, again, I like chess and poker, because that's what that's about. Not just making errors and mistake, inducing errors and mistake. right and we do that negotiation too if someone's not savvy or sophisticated and they don't understand what the plan is here in regards to this deal well they're going to lose because they

will make a mistake and not realize they could have asked for this or could have asked for that or they're silly things right where it's just the deal is hinging on whether it's like 50 bucks or something like that well you know what can I negotiate based on ego have your 50 dollars if that's what's so important so it's a very interesting idea in regards to dealing with that. But the nerves and the anxiety stresses like that, most of those you could set aside. However, I will say if it's something, let's say deep rooted in an issue, you should speak with a therapist about it. If mom and dad were telling you to shut up all the time, maybe there's some deep rooted issues. Maybe you had a bad experience, public speaking, when you were very

young and you felt this humiliation and you never want to do it again. Well, that's struggling. But most of the time, Jordan, it's skill-based. It's some issue where they just don't know what to do, right? Who do I look at on eye contact? What am I looking for? How long do I look? They don't know what to do with their hands. My gestures. How do I stand?

All of that. So those things become very, very interesting. And I think once we're aware of it, it certainly lessens your stress and your nerves and anxiety. That is awesome. And I think those are some really, really great tips, those six tips for the audience to have. And so, you know, let's jump back to you. as a kid, were you always a super outgoing kid?

Were you always that kid that, you know, people just knew you were going to be up to something, whether it was like maybe you did a lemonade stand or, you know, what kind of kid were you? I was always talking. That's for sure. That's great. And I'll tell you why. I was not just talking. I was running around like crazy.

I have this insane energy, this wonderful energy and enthusiasm. And quite frankly, I'll share with you. I have what they've had a work up on this. They've determined now, I didn't know this as a kid, that I had ADHD and OCD and what's called hyperfocus, which enables me wonderfully to do a lot of different things at once, which is very good for productivity, right? We have 54 sessions a week right now, one-on-one in group classes. It gets very, very crazy.

Plus, we're building right now to scale with virtual reality, teaching public speaking, all that, using that. But as a kid, I just, yeah, I mean, I wanted to be an actor. That's what I was training for. As a young person, I did a lot of commercials and television as I became a young adult. And then I just kind of hated twiddling my thumbs, waiting for my agent to call so I can get five lines on the TV show. As an actor, you're just kind of a commodity to be bought and sold, and you kind of are at the behest of whatever they give you. It's not the wonderful plays and all the stuff that I started in high school and college and the shows you may do in plays.

And I had a Shakespeare company even after college. That's all wonderful, but you don't make any money really from one of those kinds of things. For me, by the way, that whole Shakespeare company was an entrepreneurial effort, which is kind of fun. That's all another conversation. But yeah, but it was always in man-blooded. I think as an actor, I was kind of this, I didn't want to be a commodity to be just bought and sold. I found myself as an entrepreneur. So someone asked me recently, Jordan, they said, be a misacting.

I said, well, you know what? I just did a keynote at Disney Hall for a thousand insurance lawyers and paid pretty well. I said, find me an acting gig that does that. So there is this kind of unique framework of how I'm using it. I am absolutely. I get up there, put me in front of a crowd, and I love it, right? It is a performance piece. That being said, and I won a lot of crazy speech contests, you know, with Toastmasters

over the years. In fact, what's it, 2006? I came in third in the regionals for the World Championship of Public Speaking. All that said, people would say things like, well, you know why he wins all the time. He's an actor. Really? Because in my acting theater company, they would have me come do the curtain speech, get Josh, get Josh, he's a Toastmaster.

So here I am. I'm in this no man's land. And an actor has a fourth wall, as you may know, a dark in theater. You have a script. You just talk to your fellow actors. As a performer, I mean, I'm sorry, as a public speaker, you're presenting to the audience. These are your ideas, your thoughts, your words, your connection, and you're held responsible for everything you say.

So it's a very disparate skill set. The performance value, sure. You know, I teach constructive speech and how to organize your presentation. And there's this idea that. old Navy way. You tell them what you're going to talk about. You tell them and you tell them what you told them. Okay, fine. Well, I say let's be like Quentin Tarantino and take the ending, Jordan, and move it to the beginning, and boom, now you have a fresh approach and it's a very interesting hook and a way to get people's attention. Because I believe that's the way you

should start a speech is with a hook, not with a story, a long story yet, because you don't have that much time to get their attention, right? A long story or a joke even, you're going to get a couple minutes before you get to your twist or your moral or your punchline. But a hook, like a good quote or a statistic or a factoid. Here's a good factoid. Do you know there's more people alive today, Jordan, than have ever lived? Whatever, a word, the etymology of a word, or another one could be a question. You pose a question to the audience. How many of you folks have, right? And you kind of go from there and takes the temperature and gets you started and gets people interested at what you're going to say next. Nothing more palatable and exciting than that first moment when you stand

at the microphone. That anticipation is. It's so exciting. Your audience wants to know what are they going to say next. And you actually have 15 seconds, not as quick as we do when we meet people, to make an impression as a speaker. This is interesting. When you meet people, we heard when we were kids, right? Parents would say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but when you're doing public speaking, you actually have longer 15 seconds because we want to see, what are they going to do? What's going to happen? And so it's a very interesting idea. All of this, by the way, is a systemic skill thing. That's why my engineers love this, right? Silicon Valley, I work with quite a few of these folks.

By the way, in many companies and startups, there's the guy who created everything and coded it and built it and then he's got to get himself a faceman or face woman, right? Wozni, I did that with the Steve Jobs. There's a zillion counts of this and we see it all the time. Two or three people is kind of building a business together. And that's how that kind of grows and develops. And the reality is everybody should be doing it this. And if you're passionate about what you do and you love it, people are going to want to hear it. And that's a key thing.

Well, and I think it really shows. I mean, it sounds like from the moment you stop talking, you haven't. You haven't stopped yet, right? And that energy, right? That energy that you talked about is actually you're taking that, adding that to your skill set, and you're living that passion, right? And, you know, I come across a lot of people and they're unhappy, you know? And the first thing I asked them and I said, you know, why are you unhappy, first of all?

and why aren't you doing something that makes you happy? Right? I think it's such an interesting thing when you have. Well, that's true, Jordan. But people have bills to pay. They have obligations and responsibilities. And yes, many people get caught in a 40-hour workweek behind a cubicle for 40 years. And the fact of the matter is most people have an association with a Sunday and a Monday and a Friday, for instance.

And it's dreadful. It is. We are told if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. Well, you know what? It takes time sometimes to be able to create that. It's not so simple. When we come out of college, we presume we're going to do what we majored in. Well, that's not how life works.

In fact, most people not only have five jobs, they have five careers, they say, in your lifetime. You think someone who have friends who work at Fridays, thank God at Fridays. It's a popular restaurant here in Los Angeles or in the West Coast. You think on a Friday night at 8 o'clock they're thrilled that they're working? No, not necessarily, unless they really enjoy it and they should. By the way, this is a key concept, this passion thing. And Phil Knight talked about it in his book, about Nike. You need those two ingredients to have a successful business.

You have got to have passion. You have got to care about what you're doing and talking about. And then you have to have a niche. Yeah. What is your niche? What is it that you're doing that nobody else is doing right yet? Right? That's kind of exciting stuff.

So from that standpoint, fine. But for a long time in business, Jordan, people have always thought that the elements of success is IQ, how smart people are. Well, we've known in recent years it's not true. EQ is very important, and companies are exhibiting this every day, including, by the way, Nike, this notion of compassion, this notion of the emotional quotient, right? That empathy for your customer.

But there's a third one, which we're talking about right now, and I believe it's LQ, which is not logic, it's not learning, it's not even life, it's love. Do you care about what you're doing? Do you care about what you're talking about? Do you care about how you're doing what you do? Do you care about your product? Do you care about your service? Do you care about yourself?

Now, this is an interesting one because we've got to care about others. We also have to care about ourselves. We have to take better care of ourselves. There was a documentary a few years ago about Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers. I thought it was really sweet. He talked about he was heavy when he was a kid, and then he lost a lot of weight. And he got to a point as an adult and he never changed his weight. it was always 143 pounds.

143. And you know where he came to that? Why he was so important for him to stay on that? And he swam daily. This was a big part of his routine and regiment. Is that he looked at the scale, George. And he saw one, four, three. And he made that a valuable number to him.

One, I, four, one, two, three, four. L-O-V-E, love, and you, three letters, Y-O-U. I love you. I love you. So he loves himself. He's looking and saying, right, we hear about this, people on a plane. If you don't, you put the gas mask on you before your children. And if you can't take care of yourself, if you can't focus on those things that you're trying to do and be the pilot of your own life and not let others control what you want to do or what you think you can do, because there's a lot of supposition. We think, well, this is what I suppose I'm supposed to do. I don't run my business like other people, other coaches and other people, quite frankly. I'm not sure what they do. I do focus on that

old axiom about systemize, optimize scale. I do because I want to have a moving forward movement of my business. And I have trainers and things like that, but that only can scale to a certain level. The VR, we're talking about that. It's a whole other ballgame. I'm very excited about that. But we're on the advent of a new technology that most people haven't used, right? Virtual reality is extraordinary. And we're talking about gaming and we're talking about entertainment. Of course, we're talking about media consumption. There's some beautiful things. I do rock climbing on there. I do boxing every morning. I burn like 300. calories on this magnificent app on there.

On the Oculus Quest, it's fantastic. And then, of course, public speaking and e-learning. I have my programs on there. My clients have access to it already. And we'll be launching this next year to the public, and we're very thrilled about that, using virtual reality to teach all these wonderful things where you're really absorbed in that world.

And I think some of these things are really exciting about where we're going, what we're doing. And I want people to think, I think, about their own business and product, about what's unique, about what they're doing, And what's unique also about themselves, right? Because it was Zig Ziglar back in the day. I used to say that all the time.

I'll do my little impression. Well, you know, Zig Zigler, you are unique. There's nobody else like you. And if you can appreciate that and recognize you will succeed. I'll see you at the top. I always got a kick at him because I used to listen to Zig Ziglar as a young salesman in my early 20s. Right. And it was fascinating that idea.

What actually motivates someone really, really inspires us. Yeah. And, you know, it's very easy to see when people are inspired by what they do. It's almost like they just have this aura about them, right? When you interact with them, when you talk with them. And, you know, that's something that I work on when I do sales training is it's very easy for me to see why someone isn't successful. And I think you hit on it a second ago. you've got to be confident in your product and your service because when you're not it is super easy to see that like people can almost smell it like it's almost like a scent when you're not confident about what you're what you're selling or what you're talking about right when you're not a confident speaker if you're looking at the ground i notice certain people mean even people that are in the C suite i see them sure just the timidness and i'm like man like i think this is something that you should probably

focus on. They're sure and they don't do it. CEOs don't hire me. Their assistants call me and say, will you work with my boss? Because he's struggling. He's deluding our brand or she's, they're not very effective up there. Nobody's coming to speak to him after, right? Because just being successful or wealthy doesn't give us confidence. In fact, it's funny you mention that word, Jordan, because that word is a through line between every single client and every single product and service that I have. They all tell me, Joshua, I want to be more confident. Confidence, if you take it, is really the ability to replicate an experience and build something sustainable. I was talking to one of my realtors the other day, salesperson,

she was struggling to say, oh, I got to go do a listing today. I said, you got to do a listing. If your mindset was, I'm going to do a listing and you know you're going to close it because that's what you do, and you do two, three, four a day, and you're closing four or five houses a month, and you're doing, let's say, averaging 30, you're in Los Angeles, right, $30,000 for that house. Well, guess what?

You're making some bank. Why are you complaining? When I go speak an event, I know I'm going to get business because people will come up and ask me for my business card. That's effective. That will give you the confidence and it has to be real because Jordan, we're living in a very strange world. We've got a lot of young guns here, right?

They're all out there faking it until they're making it. They're acting as if Instagram's giving all kinds of opportunity to stand in front of a Lambo that's not even theirs. It doesn't matter. We're respecting and appreciating all these great success stories of people about what they buy instead of what they do. When a young guy, a gal sells, particularly there was a young guy who asked me, he said, Josh, I want to buy a new car.

I love cars. I said, really cool. What do you want to get? And he was telling me, I said, that's an expensive car. He said, well, it's for the girls. I said, no, it's not. The girl's going to want the car, not for you, not you, man. Why don't you build you?

Build you, she's going to want you. You know, it changes. I think that goes back to the I love you, not what this car represents. And you know this. People do this all the time. They buy a fancy wash. They buy a fancy car. They buy a fancy home to prove to the world and society, I have arrived.

Arrived where? You arrived the day you were born. And you don't need that. And it's not essential to constantly be in proving mode. And this is a big challenge. A lot of the young millennials I'm working with are coming out of college, two months, three months, six months, can't get a job. And I don't want them to just get a job, Jordan.

I want them to get the job. And not just get the job. I want them to get promoted within 10 months. Because when it presents this kind of initiative to that hiring person that this is someone with potential. You're not bringing 30 years of experience to your job. You are bringing that idea that I have as Cheryl Sandberg, lean in. I'm going to start on Monday.

That kind of thing. And this is really key because all of these elements are essential. and people do not know how to sell themselves, let alone a product or service. Yeah, and I think you're touching on some really cool things because to me, what it sounds like you do is you help people build brand equity, right? They're literally building equity and they're the asset that they can now market with all of these new skill sets. Absolutely.

Right? It's literally, it's almost like, you know, personal branding, a personal branding makeover, if you will, right? Because you might have people show up and, you know, now that they have this confidence, now they actually may want to change things about their actual appearance. Now that they have these new skills and abilities. And that even generates more equity into their brand. So what are your thoughts on that? Well, that's interesting. Because I think this notion of brand is beginning a little.

bit strange where it becomes more about the brand about and the essence as opposed to the reality. And the reality, when I'm talking to someone young, I love to see their ambition and their drive and their spirit, but not about because they want to make a lot of money so they could buy things, but because they want to build the business and grow it. And by the way, there used to be an old idea that you build a business to sell a business. Not always, right? I mean, I look at my work is really my, it's not just my livelihood. It's my retirement plan.

Someone said, well, what are you going to do when you're 82? because I'm 52 now. I said, you know what, I'll lean back. And if I need to sit out a little bit while I'm doing my classes, fine. Maybe I won't do 10 or 12 a day. Maybe I'll do a few. Maybe I'll do more seminars or speaking around the world. I don't know.

But I'm not doing it because I want to be the next 20 Robbins. I don't have an aspiration for that. I don't have an ambition for that. Just like when I was an actor, I struggled with, I didn't want to be or care about being a famous actor. And that was struggling, right, for an agent and manager who's trying to figure you, which you are as an actor, a commodity, to be bond sold. They were all pigeonholding me in a certain way.

Hey, this is a Michael J. Fox type. It's a young Michael Douglas type, whatever that might be. Awesome, awesome. And so what I really want to get into next is, you know, we talked about this a little bit off air, is you've got a very, very unique origin story. And, you know, give the audience a little bit of context into, you know, some of the things. things that your ancestors went through because I think it's powerful for people to hear these stories and these types of things aren't talked about to me often enough. So I would love to hear for the audience just a little bit about the story. Okay, sure. Well, I grew up in Hollywood.

I even went to Hollywood High School and all of that and then grew up here in L.A. But my mother had a very interesting experience as a child. And I tell this story when I do presentations. But I don't tell it as my mother. And I'm not going to go through the whole format, how I do it. But it's a very interesting kind of story because my mother was hidden as a child during the war in a Catholic orphanage. And my uncle as well in a boy's school. And that's how they hid during the war.

It's really unbelievable. So it gives you a real sense of kind of intrigue. You know, and they came to the United States in 1949. My mom wanted to be a doctor, not so easy, right, for women in the 1940s and 50s. She went to nursing school. She went to Bellevue, became a nurse. And my uncle wanted to be an engineer. He went to MIT, became an engineer.

And then he worked at IBM for 30 years and illustrious careers in the advent there, the computer. But interestingly, my mother went back to Germany in 1959 as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army nurse corps, as a military officer, really extraordinary. My dad was a, her boyfriend at the time was a, in the JAG Corps. He was a military lawyer. And he waited for a couple of years. She came back. And then she became an emergency room nurse.

And then she became the senior transplant coordinator at UCLA for 20 years. And then the president, the first president of Natco, which is the National Association of Transplant Coordinators. Just unbelievably proud of my mom and this amazing career. And of course, she raised five children. And she had made a pack with her brother when they were young. she had five kids. He had four. So she had four daughters.

He had four daughters. And I was the only boy of all these nine grandkids. So it's kind of an interesting circumstance. And my mom is just amazing still with us today at 82. And just a force, just an incredible inspiration. And my grandmother, too, she used to say to me, Tatula, and Tatala is a term of endearment in Yiddish and sweet boy. She said, with Tatula, they could take everything away from you.

They could take away your home. They could take away your business. but they can never take away your soul and your ability to start again. That's powerful. That meant something to me. So when I go speak and I speak to a lot of audiences that are Chinese audiences in Korean or Hispanic or in the inner city, all different areas, different circumstances, African-American, what have you. And people might make presumption, who's this guy up there, right?

This white, middle-aged straight guy going to tell me about adversity and challenge or whatever the circumstance. And then they hear me and they see my, not only my. empathy, certainly my concern about what's going on in this crazy world, but they appreciate that I'm not what they presumed about things. And I don't think we should be presumption about anyone. But the element of communication, that's why this is so important, because it should be for everyone. I have students who are deaf. I have students with cerebral palsy. I have students, children. I have women, adult, older people, younger people, people who've worked in manufacturing

on the line for 25 years and their language skill is limited because of the Spanish and they were able to get promoted to managerial opportunities and things like that. Or the parent, even my girlfriend who is from Mexico originally, we've been together many, many years, 15 years now. But when her son was young, she wanted to advocate for him, right, at the PTA meeting. So those things are always in my consciousness about how people who don't have all the other wonderful opportunities in life, including a PhD from Yale or Harvard, can succeed in this world by just being able to say how they feel and mean what they say. And I think that's kind of a key thing.

I learned a lot about that from my mother and a lot for my father too in many ways as well. My father passed away about 10 years ago and I think about them every day. He's an extraordinary guy. And so these things affect you. They influence you in a lot of positive ways and strong ways. And then there's things about that that make me, of course, fiercely independent, right? in many ways about things that I do in regards to how I work and do business or how I love or how any of those kinds of things in life. We've had a challenge, I think, in recent years where people have become, I don't like the word codependent, but there's this notion of dependency.

We've heard dependency, interdependency, independence, this idea that we want this or want that, but can we choose to want this and want that as opposed to have to have this and have to have that? It's very interesting, maybe a little existential, but worth understanding and appreciating because people are facing this every single day. And the younger kids that I'm working with, I won't call them kids, millennials, what have you, are facing this where they're comparing and contrasting with other people. Am I where I should be at this point in juncture in my life? It's not relevant, right? So in the long run, it's just not relevant. Yeah. And I love, I love origin stories because I'm really, really big into common.

context, right? When you can have some context into, you know, who somebody is and you can learn not just about them, but about the ones that kind of laid those tracks for them, that means something. You know, that means and that means a lot because vulnerability is a strength, in my opinion. Oh, yeah. Yeah. When you can be vulnerable. I mean, you know, you look, you look at your mom and what an amazing, I mean, she had to literally be locked in a cupboard, like hiding. And then to like have the illustrious career that she did going from serving our country into your transplant coordinator and then, you know, being the, I mean, the president of one. I mean, this, it's just phenomenal. Well, you know what? As a child, it's interesting. She wasn't actually hidden in that way. She was hidden in an open, the open world of the orphanage because she had blonde hair and blue eyes and did not look stereotypically Jewish.

That's what's really. Yes. I mean, it was this whole dynamic. She's right there in plain sight. It's, you know, it's fascinating. By the way, you know, vulnerability is a key thing. I've always been vulnerable. I was the shortest kid growing up, right?

I was getting beaten up in junior high school and all this nonsense, locked into the PE locker rooms in the lockers for periods on it. I'm so crazy, silly things, right? But my father one day when I came up to him and I approached him about this, I said, you know, this is tough because in school the kids have teased me, you know, shrimp french fry, all this nonsense. He says, yeah, he said, who are you? Should I go get the friar like a McDonald's?

You know, you made it, you kind of put a perspective. He said, come here, kiddo. And he showed me, it's like bills and all the things going on in his adult world. And he said, these are problems. So this is what you're going to face in life. You can't control that. What can you control? And it became a very interesting spirit for me.

By the way, and I've had a lot of crazy physical vulnerabilities in my life. I've broken 13 bones in my life, bouncing off the walls as a kid with my ADHD, right? As an adult, in just recent years, I've had cancer. Hodgkin's lymphoma, six and a half years. in remission, which I'm excited about. That was an extraordinary journey. In fact, I did my chemo on Friday so I could be back to work on Monday because I really strongly believe, Jordan, if I don't mind, it doesn't matter.

If it doesn't matter, I don't mind. And that became kind of my mantra, got me through all the way to radiation and the whole process. And then now through my remission. And then not even long after that as I'm speaking around the country at different events and for companies, suddenly then one of my clients is a trampoline company and we're in New York for the big toy fair. I hired these Olympians. We had a great, great showing for this really innovative trampoline,

and I got to get up there and showcase it. Some guy asked me, can I do that? I have bad knees. And, George, I said, sure. Listen, I tore my ACL 10 years ago playing racquetball. I'll show you. I get up there, man. I slip up my shoes.

I start jumping. I land straight leg and obliterate my knee. Now, I had two shows to do a day for four days. For 2,000 people. This is the first day before the first preface. presentation. Oh my God, I'm leading against one of the other trampolines and I even turned to the president. I said, hey, I think I better go to the hospital and get this check because I think it's really blown bad. Well, the Olympians tape me up with K-tap, kinesthetic tape. And he says to me, he said, now I might, you can't leave you straight in the law like this. You can do this. You do that public speaking very well. Come on, Mike, buck up. And I did. And we made it working, boom. And then I had surgery the week after I got back, my first scope. And then I had a series of four surgeries and in the last three and a half years I've had four surgeries five

total now and this is a totally replacement and this is all after my cancer nonsense it's like I never felt like it was catching a break so there's a lot of things that are very interesting that might hold us back or can hold anybody back and I've seen some powerful very fierce role models in my life who are in my own life and then of course there's other people too but sometimes we're putting it too much those role models on just the knowns there's all the unknowns right our family and friends and people we've read about maybe in the history books that are long ago can be extraordinary role models they don't have to be who the current uh celebrity is or current

you know famous person here there or around it might be yeah no and i'm a firm believer in that because you know the the person that inspires me the most is also my mom you know she was she was you know so my grandmother my grandmother in 19 57 was raped in Los Angeles, California. And my mom was born in January of 1958 with one lung. And she lived her life. The doctors said back then in the 50s, they're like, well, you probably won't live to be 18. You definitely won't be able to have any kids.

And she ended up having five boys and lived to 54 years old on one lung. And so, like, when I look at my life, yeah, yeah. And I'm a kid that in fourth grade got stung by 53Bs at night. Oh my gosh. I got in a car accident. We flipped three times at 70 and I had 52 staples in my legs. And I still, to this day, because of all the strength that I saw her have when she was alive, I still don't believe I've faced adversity yet.

I don't because I didn't live 54 years with one lung. I mean, like, I couldn't even imagine. Like sometimes I complain about breathing with two lungs, right? And so when you, and you said it, you said it right, hit it right on the head. Perspective is everything. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's presumed perspective, right?

I mean, we just just think, well, I guess I'm supposed to look at it this way, you know. One of my deaf students, he's just a brilliant young man who's going to, he's going to be a trainer for me, actually. He's magnificent. And his identity is not being deaf, nor his mind as being cancer boy. But it's interesting because we talk about. those things that it's okay he was talking in one of his Instagram videos recently that it's okay to cry that it's all right to share that because for many particularly my generation before certainly crying was showing his weakness and

I think I think emotion is a very powerful thing and it affects people in different ways and we look for strength and strength is not always that you hold back your emotion or hold back those tears but also that we learn from those right and that we grow from them and we build on those there what's that old thing if it doesn't get it doesn't it makes you stronger and there's truth to that and there's a lot of power in regards to feeling that this is my life these are my choices what do I want to do and not to presume I want this because that person did it people say to me all the time Josh I want to do what you're doing I said great you

should but I'll tell you something this came about after 30 years my friend of layoffs and restructures and acquisitions and struggles and And then of course, years of real difficult financial pain and injuries and health problems or this and the other. And at a certain point, people think when we go work for a company and I get a lot of wonderful opportunities, they say, here's this great salary and health insurance. And you start to feel, and I have in the past, take me to your leader. Instead of, wait a minute, I got a good product.

I got a good service. I think this could really scale. Well, you know what? I'm going to make enough money. I'm going to pay for my own darn health insurance. and I can't go without health insurance. I just can't right now. And I have a lot of friends who don't pay for health insurance

because they're just trying to get through in their lives. And it's very expensive. For one person, it's tremendously expensive. But if I don't pay for my health insurance, which is one of the most important bills I have to pay every month, because if I don't, I'm going to be really in a world of hurt if my cancer came back. And we have people all over this country.

Health care is an extraordinary problem in this world. We have all kinds of problems in the world, right? We have this new coronavirus going on. We have the Brexit issue, how those things affect us too. We have, of course, conflicts going on in Iran and Iraq. We have issues, of course, in the Palestinian air conflict. There's all kinds of things. And yet we do here at home as well in our own internal families, right?

We're seeing this. There's a tremendous divide in this country we're having right now. Even amongst families where people are thinking and looking at the world differently, ideologically, theological, theoretically, philosophically. philosophically and certainly emotionally. And it's causing a lot of challenges. I don't think we've ever faced or seen that before right now, which why things like this make it harder for people to get up and speak and voice their opinions.

And you know what, Jordan, it's really interesting for me. I started at 4.30 in the morning, man. I started with France and Germany with clients. I go across the United States. I have students almost, I mean, almost every area of the United States of America. And then by evening, I'm in Dubai and China and India. So I'm talking to some very diverse groups around the country and around the world. And it's fascinating to hear what people's insight or understanding and how well or not

informed people are about what's going on, what's transpiring, and what they can do. Because if you're working all day and supporting, if you're a single mom supporting two kids, you really don't have a lot of time to be following and watching the news at the end of the day about some of the nonsense that's going on where we feel our leaderships in any regard or almost acting like children. Yeah, and, you know, it is definitely a very interesting time out there. And, you know, it's one of those things. I'll just be honest, I don't actually watch the news.

You know, the news that I see comes on whatever feed that's installed on my phone, right? And so I'll get those updates, but I'm just one of those people that I try to surround myself with positivity. And there's just not a whole lot of things that are positive right now. if you look at it doesn't sell right the headlines you know it doesn't make it interesting as a grab over there on uh on social media absolutely not yeah so listen you know this has been amazing this has been super valuable for the audience and before we actually uh end the in the session here i want you just to give people you know where can they find joshua shulma what are the best places to locate you there's probably people listening that are like you know what i'm in that place in my career

where I want to advance and I need to become a better speaker or I need to be able to lose that fear that we've talked about during this episode. I need to be able to feel more confident. So how can people get a hold of you if maybe, listen, maybe it's just they want to have a virtual coffee with you or maybe it is. They want to actually work. I'm always game for a Zoom chat in between sessions if there's a cancellation session. Certainly, I'm all over the place. My name is Joshua Shulman. There's actually another famous Joshua Shulman who's a CEO of Coach Brands, which is really ironic because I'm a coach.

And many people get us confused all the time. So that's kind of fun. He's a little more famous than I am. But he's doing his thing and I'm doing mine. But you can find me as Joshua Shulman on LinkedIn. I encourage you. That's a great place for us to connect and network. Of course, Instagram.

I'm on Twitter as well. And I have a company Facebook page as well for SCI-Schulman Communications Interactive. You can also find, go to my website at get coaching from sci.com. www. www. Get coaching from SCI.com. Awesome, my friend. Well, hey, I really, really appreciate you taking the time.

I know with the 54 meetings that you have to be able to squeeze me in. It's an honor. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you. And I'm sure we'll definitely be connecting here soon and catching up. Wonderful. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you.

Have an amazing day. Hey, everybody. Thank you. much for listening to that episode with Joshua Shulman. What a work ethic the guy has. I mean, 54 meetings a week globally. If you enjoyed it, please make sure that you rate it, you subscribe, you share it, and you follow it depending on the platform. I really, really appreciate all of your support. And I cannot wait to share the next episode with you soon.