Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - How Anyone Can Become a Great Public Speaker w/ Keith Ferrazzi | EP #65

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

In this episode, Peter and Keith discuss the art and business of public speaking. Keith Ferrazzi, a renowned executive coach and speaker, shares his insights on building a successful speaking career.�� 15:33 | Transforming Lives Through Speaking 31:11 | Get Good at Speaking Quickly 1:00:26 | Making Money With Speaking Engagements Keith Ferrazzi is an American author, entrepreneur, and recognized global thought leader in the relational and collaborative sciences. He is the founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a Los Angeles-based research and consulting firm. He has written several New York Times bestselling books, including “Never Eat Alone” and “Who’s Got Your Back?”. Ferrazzi has introduced a new transformational operating system he calls co-elevation that leads to exponential change and value Check out Keith’s latest book, Competing in the New World of Work _____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are, please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:  Experience the future of sleep with Eight Sleep. Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/moonshots/ to save $150 on the Pod Cover.  _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now: Tech Blog Get my new Longevity Practices book for free: https://www.diamandis.com/longevity My new book with Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations 2.0: The New Playbook for 10x Growth and Impact, is now available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3P3j54J  _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. One of these days, you're going to be out of your business. You're no longer going to be CEO. You're no longer going to be an executive in're no longer to be an executive in the company. What do you want to do with the last 40 years of your life? I'll tell you what I want to do. I want to go around the world and be asked to share what I know.

I was scared shitless of speaking, public speaking. I really was. It was not my forte. Today, I get on with passion and excitement. I actually enjoy that energy. And I'm looking at this guy, this old guy, and I'm sitting there thinking, it's like, how am I going to help him? Go around the world, meet interesting people,

share what you have to do, but learn and grow and meet cool people for the rest of your fucking life. That's what you're building. You're building something that you'll have available to you for the rest of your fucking life. That's what you're building. You're building something that you'll have available to you for the rest of your life. Keith, welcome back to Moonshots. And we're back.

Yeah. So last time we spoke about writing a New York Times bestselling book, and in particular, writing a book. And one of the things we talked about was people who write a book because they wanna make money don't realize you don't make money on books you make money on speaking today I want to talk to you about something that you gifted me which was advice on how to build a speaking business a keynote

speaking business platform speaking business which has been financially very meaningful to me. It's given me the cash flow to allow me to start my companies, putting me in front of audiences around the world. And so we're going to go deep into that. Anyone who's listening, who's ever thought about being a speaker, has watched people like Tony Robbins on stage and said, wow, he's amazing. How can I do that? So dive into this, dissect it. And like we did with our How to Write a New York Times bestselling book, let's give a 101 on the process. You in for that? I'm excited about it. And I think it's meaningful. What I love about what we're about to do is, you know, I've done a couple of things really well. One of them is I've published and another is I've built a very thriving speaking business. And I love it when I get a chance to be the usher of another person into that realm.

There's a lot of dark twists and turns and things that people don't know and misconceptions. So why don't we give people some light in this process? Yeah, in the same way that you gifted that knowledge and literally opened up your old decks and made introductions and told me what does and does not work. Looking forward to gifting that information to everybody watching here.

Done, let's do it. So, you know, I had just published my book abundance uh the future is better than you think and i had lunch with you and we had just met we probably met at a conference you know speaking at ted and what i when i people ask me about you, besides being an extraordinary executive coach, an extraordinary speaker, an extraordinary thought leader, you're one of the most generous people I know. And I love you for that, truly. And you literally took me under your arm and said, I'm going to teach you everything I know about speaking. And you opened up your phone, and you opened up your phone, you made some introductions, you gave me key advice, and it was an inflection point for me financially. But more than the financials, it was

building my brand in the world. Because when you're on stage, and by the way, people treat you very differently if you're giving them a free keynote versus a paid keynote. Very different. We can talk about that. So let's dive in. Let's open up in the question. Well, what was the takeaway that you, I'm curious if you reflect on that. What was the takeaway that you walked away from that conversation that was the most impactful or the biggest aha?

I remember when I started doing my keynote speaking, we had all these different agencies that wanted me to go exclusive with them. Right. And one of them was, don't go exclusive with any agency. Yeah. Right. You can have them all working on your behalf. Well, and let's explain that to folks.

Okay. Look, there are a few people who do well to have an exclusive bureau, speakers bureau, and they are the people who are looking to maximize the per unit price and minimize their number of speaking days. Right. So back in the day when Jack Welsh was a speaker. Or Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, right? And these people are being deluged with people. And I would imagine people like Simon Sinek and Adam Grant today, et cetera, perhaps, that these individuals have more requests than they have time.

Yeah. And they are trying to get their price up as high as possible, given a very limited number of days. And they say, I'm available these days. Yeah, I'm available 20 days. Although there's 500 people trying to get me on, and as a result, I want to get the highest amount. That's a great use of a bureau.

Of a single bureau, where it's all funneled. They know the kinds of gigs you like and don't like, and they know which days you're available and what your minimum price is. And because it's scarcity, scarcity drives up the price. But let's understand the business model of the bureau to understand why I would make that recommendation. So what a bureau does is they're working for the person booking the engagements. They're working for the booker. So if you're running a conference and you're looking for a great keynote speaker on a particular subject.

Yeah. You go to a bureau. So you're running your sales force yeah and you're running the big dream force yeah you have a bureau or many bureaus perhaps even who are looking to fill the speaking slots and that bureau is looking for long-term revenue they're going to work for salesforce hopefully for five ten years running there are bureau their agents out there who have worked for this event for five to 10 years. Their job is to fill that.

So the fact that you happen to be exclusive to them, they'll put you in whatever they own or they contract with once. But now what you're really trying to do is there's eight other bureaus out there who are booking events for their clients that you want to get on their place. And if you're independent, you have a higher likelihood of lobbying those other agencies and bureaus than if you're wedded to just one. Yeah. Right. And when it comes to the commission, right, with, if you're wedded to just one, a number of the speeches that will come into you that have nothing to do with the bureau, nothing at all.

They saw you speak. They read your book. They just call and it's just. You go to one bureau, 100% of those speeches will be covered by their commission. Commissioned by that, yeah. Whereas there's an entire swath that you can get directly without paying the commission. The commissions can be pretty daunting, right? Yeah, 20% is not unusual for it.

I've seen 25%. I've seen 25% as well, and sometimes even 30%. And by the way, you can negotiate that at the end of the day. So before we dive too much into the weeds here, I'd like to go back to the entrepreneurs watching and say, why do you even start a speaking business? All right. What is it that is the benefit, the why behind it? And there are a few different reasons.

And let me, we can discuss that a little bit. I think one of them is you want to get your message out. You've written of them is you want to get your message out. You've written a book and you want to get your message out and being able to present with your emotion, your energy, and an updated story because the book is static once it's published, at least books in the past have been, being able to update it. So when I gave my abundance speeches in 2012, they're very different from giving that speech in 2023 because the data is so much more compelling. So it's getting the message out. Another reason?

Well, let's go back and put the hat on of the person we're speaking to here. An entrepreneur. Right. Well, perhaps. Okay. That's one audience. There's an audience that says there's a group of individuals who just dream of being a speaker sure right and that's what they want to do in fact that's kind of where I was if you don't mind me giving a little bit of backstory

when I was 12 years old. I went to a summer stock equity theater, which is professional theater. My parents let me do this at 12 years of age. I spent the entire summer. My boys are 12 now. I'm trying to think about what I would do. Probably not that. My parents let me at 12 years of age live at a theater company for the entire summer

by myself. Amazing. I had my own apartment and I was playing one of the kids in Sound of Music for the whole summer. And it was Equity. It was a professional theater company. And what I noticed back then was that there were some amazing actors who were poor. And I said to myself, I can't go into a profession where if I'm really good has nothing to do with

my success right now what I didn't know was that what I did know how to do which was to network and build relationships would have probably made me an awesome actor because these folks who were really good and not capable of earning a great living was probably because they weren't playing the game and building the relationships it's building the brand yeah but at my point i was just saying i i can't be an actor because i won't be successful now if you think about what i was able to to do i wanted to be an actor what am i today i'm on stages all over the world sure right i'm in i'm in media all over the world and i've actually found a more fulfilling purpose beyond being an actor in terms of what my mission and my purpose is to transform the way we work, et cetera.

Give me the emotion you feel while you're on stage. That's a great question. You know what? It's different. It's evolved. Back then when I was a kid, an insecure kid who was poor, going to rich schools, didn't think I deserved to be anywhere.

I suspect what I was looking for was significance. I was looking for self-worth. Today, when I'm on stage, I feel effusively generous because what I do in this little trick, and I'm sure you do the same thing. Before I go on stage, I do my research. I understand what I'm intended to do. I always ask myself the question, and then I ask my client the question, what would you like the audience to be doing differently three to four months after I've left because I was there? The question I ask as well is what's the emotional experience you want them to have at the end of this next hour? And you and I, again, my whole brand is about doing and practices. You're about inspiring and potential, similar to what Tony does.

Mine's about doing and practices. I'm very clear. I say, I want to make sure that by the time I'm walking off that stage, I have set a momentum so that your audience, a large portion of them will be doing something different right change order later right now i feel effusively generous and so what i do is and and you are but it's authentic from the heart ton i do i do a ton of research which a lot of speakers don't do yes i'm constantly complimented by the amount of research i do and and i ask them, can I speak to more of your people

in advance of even showing up? I do phone calls talking to leaders of the company. What do they want me to do as a puppet of their vision? How do I be of service? But then what I do is I show up- You're the channel, not the puppet. Well, yeah, exactly. Thank you.

Then what I do is the night before when I land, most speakers are like, oh, I'm just going to go straight to bed. I go down to the bar because that's where everybody is the night before the big speaking event. And I just shoot this shit. I'm like, what's really, by the way, they're drunk. So it's like, what's really going on here, right? Tell me what's really going on. And I tease them out and they give me so much great information. Then I show up the next day and I go into the breakfast and i walk around from table to table i sit down and say hey i'm your speaker today yes you need to tell me what to say i said i'm writing the talk and i have no idea what i'm doing oh my god i was like tell me i'm saying here's my topic tell me

what to say and i swear to god at least 25 of what I'm going to say on stage. Will modify. Is developed the night before and the morning of. Amazing. Based on those conversations. And it's all intended. And then what I do, last thing I do, right before I go on stage, is I sit in the back of the room. And I look at the people in the room. And everyone's quiet. And everyone's looking up at the stage on whoever they're talking to.

And I am starting to get teary-eyed. And I imagine their life wow and i ask myself how can i help him and i'm looking at this guy this old guy you know is like a middle-aged guy middle tier in the company and i'm sitting there thinking it's like how am i gonna help him how in a three months from now wow and then i look at the woman over there and the young kid and young young you know the woman executive and whatever it is i'm looking at these people and i'm like how do i help them and now i'm fucking ready now you're on fire and and and buddy you've been on my stage at abundance 360 uh more and more every year and

people love you i'll just put a plug in here. Guys, if you ever want an incredible keynote speaker, Keith Ferrazzi is the best. And just you move the audience, you bring an emotional connection in a way that's extraordinary. You know, I'm super passionate about longevity and healthspan.

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Now back to the episode. So going back to the why, right? So one is you can make a living. You know, it's good money. You can promote your brand and your personal vision and the other one is you can start investing in your future every one of every one of you is running a company today or um you know running a company today having a team one of these days you're not one of these days you're going to be out of your business, you're no longer going to be CEO, you're no longer to be an executive in the company. And the question is, what do you want to

do? What do you want to do with the last 40 years of your life? I'll tell you what I want to do. I want to go around the world and be asked to share what I know. To teach. And I want to be paid well, and I want to be able to pick the countries yeah that i want to visit by the way if you're in a speak if you're able to make it in the speaking business you will have opportunities around the globe around the globe and and what i want my leaders yourself to be able to do is to say okay we're retired what the hell that is it's nothing what that is is you and your spouse get invited to go to Bhutan or to Egypt or to Seoul South Korea right wherever Dubai and you

get to go around the world meet interesting people share what you have to but learn and grow and meet cool people for the rest of your fucking life. Yeah. And that's what you're building. You're building something that you'll have available to you for the rest of your life. The emotional experience I have when I'm on stage, and it can be an entire spectrum. And I know if I'm not connecting with the audience. Which I'm sure doesn't happen very often. It doesn't happen often, but there have been times.

And on the other end, I know when, I hate to use the term, I have them in the palm of my hand. I can feel. Crushed it. You just feel. They're connected, right? And I've moved them from a state of fear and scarcity to abundance and optimism. fear and scarcity to abundance and optimism i moved them from uh in their mindsets that they have in their self-belief of what they can accomplish you know my mtp is to inspire and guide entrepreneurs create a hopeful compelling and abundant future and when i can do that i feel

this incredible sense of fulfillment yeah right it's it's awesome uh awesome. One of the things that I do, remember I used to, when I started Singularity University, one of the things that Singularity did was it made its faculty amazing keynote speakers because executives would come to Singularity, hear these faculty and then, can you come and talk at my company? right and so we help these individuals become extraordinarily successful in their in their speaking business outside of su and one thing i started doing was giving away all of my powerpoint slides for free i would at the end of the deck i would say i didn't use a qr code back then it was a website now it's a qr code and say if you want these slides

take them share with your kids with your friends and you know and people say aren't you afraid these people are going to like you know steal your content and give talks if they can give a talk better than me fantastic let them do it but it became a way because to get the slides they'd give me their emails maybe they're watching this podcast as a result of that movement your community we talked about this and i have a connection with them and i can keep the conversation alive and i want if i am heartfelt about what i'm sharing on stage i want that information to go beyond the single individual to as many as possible well and let's just talk about that.

Once you're done with your speaking engagement and you ask them if they would like the slides and they give you your email and you create some form of a drip campaign of generosity, just keep giving to them. Yep, always give. If you're on their, what I always say is, if you're on their doorstep in a newsletter or something that just came in at the time when

somebody says do you know a good speaker or do you know a good coach you know a good whatever then you'll have a shot but it's interesting you could have crushed it a year ago yeah but just the day before somebody asked do you know a good? Some schlock walked across this guy's path. Then guess who's gonna get recommended? The schlock. But if you don't have an ongoing touch point with these people. To build a relationship.

To build a relationship and stay on the radar screen. It's really important. You know, a lot of people who wish to be a speaker, they watch amazing speakers on the TED stage or Tony or whomever, and they say, I could never do that. I'm fearful. I want to share something for me. When I was in college in the early days, I was scared shitless of speaking, public speaking. I really was. It was not my forte. I remember I was running an organization called Students for Exploration and Development of

Space, SEDS, which is still around now, many decades later. That's awesome. And MIT has something called the Kresge Auditorium. And it was a massive auditorium, I don't know how many thousands of people it holds. And I was like, my dream when I was there my first year was before the end i'm going to stand on that stage and give a speech and i had a chance to do that yeah uh and face down my fears today honestly there's there's very little anxiety in speaking i get on with passion and excitement i actually when i have any kind of anxiety getting

on the stage i actually enjoy that energy yeah because it's like because a little bit of fear is like okay i gotta change up my game it's like and then we you and i will find stages where like i remember the first time i stepped on tony robbins stage yeah right or radio city musical right just to speak at radio city music. Or a convention center in Ukraine, right? That's, you know, you get those moments where you're like, holy shit, I'm about to go in front of 10,000, 50,000 people. Yes, exactly. But let's spin back a second.

For me, thank God my parents were religious and I'm a spiritual individual myself, Christian. Speaking in the youth group at church was my first experience with speaking. I was invited as the youth pastor because I was in the youth group and I was invited as a youth pastor on Youth Day to be on stage with the minister sharing the pulpit. I then became, as I mentioned to you, I wanted to be an actor. Yeah, sure. Right, so that was huge, to be on stage

and just learn how to project and just learn how to have an audience and to be able to replay with an audience, all of that. And then what I tell you is, if any of you are thinking about this for your children, think early, let your kids, encourage your kids to take acting classes encourage your kids for me it was a thing called NFL National Forensics League which is speech and

debate in high school I that's what got me to Yale I'll tell you my very first speaking engagement ever I was I was 10 years old and I sat my parents down in the living room and I went and gave a presentation to them on the planets. And afterwards, my dad came over and gave me five bucks. Paid speaking engagement. First paid speaking. And it was like, maybe that was the one that influenced it all the way, but it was amazing. Maybe that was the one that influenced it all the way, but it was amazing. So, but the point of, look, there are many of you who didn't have that, like the two of us did,

where I had a lot of early training being on stage in the National Forensics League. I had Lincoln-Douglas debate. Just every Saturday, I was going to different schools, and I was learning how to speak. By debate is an amazing capability. X-Temp is fantastic. you pull a topic out of the hat nice you're given but if you don't have any of that or you didn't have that background but i would recommend for your kids you do then toastmasters um my dad told me early on that he had done toastmasters my father was a steel worker which i love about toastmasters you know

people who want to be professional speakers but people who who just want, I don't know why my dad did it, but my dad was a steel worker. So do tell more. What is Toastmasters? So Toastmasters is a club. You join the club and once a week you go and everybody takes turns getting up and giving little speeches or different types of speeches. I was actually blessed. My dad told me about Toastmasters and Toastmasters honored me as their golden gavel top speaker in the world. Yeah. I recently accepted that award and past speaker, past award winners were Deep October, Tony

Robbins. Amazing. You should actually be up on that for sure. But it was amazing. My father had told me about this when i was a kid beautiful close i remember i was crying on stage when i received the award because i only wished my dad had been in the front row he had passed yeah would you imagine my dad in the front row listening to someone see that but but but i'm saying it's

about practice right it is about practice now there's different forms of speaking i don't know about you but when when cameras and media started to happen um one of the biggest screw-ups i've ever done in my life was my second book i got on the good morning america and i hope it's not out there anywhere but i choked on live television oh my god and i was i am i was petrified of cameras and i was i am i was petrified of cameras being on stage had a forgiveness about it and it was long form i could be on stage for an hour musing and talking and engaging with people but when you put me in front of a little camera i got terrified i started sweating profusely you're doing pretty good right now by the way you know i practiced it was funny my my ex-partner who you know very well now by the way you know i practiced it was fun my my ex-partner who you know very well stan um god bless him oh i feel so bad but because i was so terrified he and i had a thing this is back in

the day when we didn't have iphones we had flip cameras yes and so he would just walk around with me and he would periodically pause hijack me and say flip camera you're like and he asked me a question and it would give me the practice to get comfortable with that medium and we did it all the time and i would get so upset and i would get so angry and i'd be so terrified it took me years to be able to be in front of a camera yeah so this was as an adult my point is if you're terrified of speaking in whatever medium fucking practice yeah it is about all. It's all it is. You know, it's interesting. I started putting myself into situations

where I was speaking. You know, I had started after, well, in the middle of medical school and after medical school, I was running International Space University with two dear friends. And there was the opening ceremonies and the closing ceremonies and in between.

So I was giving speeches all the time. And I'll never forget an experience I had which taught me an amazing lesson. I was in Toulouse, France at the closing ceremonies. And here we are with our 120 graduates and 500 parents and friends there, and I get up on stage to try and give a inspiring closing talk,

and I had a speech right there in front of me. And I started reading it. And I started just choking, because it's like trying to make eye contact and reading it, and like, uh it and like and it was not us yeah and I literally put it down and spoke from my heart and something flipped and I've never ever ever had a teleprompter or speech so my experience I'm curious if it's yours is I would make sure I had like five to ten maximum bullets. Like these are the things I want to hit on.

Let's do that. Let's get into the structure. And I would, that would allow me to pick a subject. And a lot of times, you know, my dear friend and writing partner, Stephen Kotler, talks about being in flow. Yeah. And when you're on stage in an audience and you're in flow and you're speaking from the heart authentically, people know it and you know it. Yeah. So I'll tell you, what I do is, number one, is at the beginning of a speech, you should very quickly get into a personal story.

Yes. Stories are critically important. The biggest mistake I've made is when I was trying to give too much information and I felt that this audience didn't want to hear my stories. They wanted the information because I was intimidated. Maybe they were scientists or they were very senior executives. But the reality is that if you don't capture their heart with authenticity through a powerful story at the beginning, you've lost them.

So that's number one, is to start with some form of a story. The next thing I always do is I always think of my talks as three sections. I don't know what they are, but there's three big sections. Like in a movie. In my talk, yeah. And if I lost my notes, all I would have to have is three sections to memorize, right? Because I could flow through three things. And then within each of the sections, I'll have three or four bullet points, right? That's your point of 10

things. Now, what I will do if I'm giving a talk that I've never given before I will write out in two pages what I want to share then I'll turn it in to three sections with bullet points and between the time that I finalize what I think I'm going to say and the talk I will take what used to be called recipe cards remember those little papers I'll take a recipe card and I will write what used to be called recipe cards. Remember those little papers? I'll take a recipe card and I will write and rewrite my bullet points over and over again without making it the last version. So I'll take a set of bullet points and I'll write them and then I'll say, put it away. Let me do it again. And each time it'll get smaller and smaller.

The number of bullet points that I need to remember get smaller and smaller until I've really mastered the content and I don't need anything on the stage. And no longer. I agree a thousand percent on grabbing them with an opening story. It's beautiful. Right. Um, the thing that I've done recently that works really well for me as well is I have a PowerPoint

deck. Sure. And the PowerPoint deck is mostly all image. Yeah, pictures. And a title across the top. Which is your bullet points, it's your guidance. And so as I'm going through the deck, I use it as a reminder. I'm going to tell some stories around this or some stories around this.

People are there to be entertained, first and foremost. And if you can educate them on top of the entertainment, that's fantastic. If you just educate them without the entertainment, they don't get it.

I appreciate it. And I feel like that regimentation and the idea that you're just going through reminders and notes is important. Let's talk a little bit about over-rehearsing talks and things. There's an association. I don't want to embarrass them in my belief of what they do. There's an association of speakers that has a very strong belief on how

a speech should be done. And it's a very prominent group out there. And they literally have the professionalism down to a science. You open your first remark here, and then you take two steps to the right, and you have your next remark. And then, and it's this crazy meticulous formula of giving a talk, which I might imagine for somebody who isn't organically good at this, might be a really nice way to start.

But when I watch them them i have lost a humanity yes and what i love about both you and i on stage and certainly tony you know is what comes out is is the raw nature of our passion and the message and the and the other you know there's also a very famous place to give talks that have they squeeze you into a box on how to give a talk there. 20 minutes. And the way, you know, like I remember I was talking to Reid Hoffman, both he and I got coaching to do a talk. A TED talk, right? Yeah.

know we're in a TED talk right yeah and we got our coaching to give a TED talk and we both swore that it felt like we were having the life drained out of us because it was so meticulous and out of game it's gotten worse and you know all of that was like it was like oh my god and I and I look at it and I'm like it was it was excellent but the the a pluses that I could have given if I didn't feel as regimented. But on the other hand, if you think about the average person that gets up to give a TED talk, they need that, right? You know, the way I got pretty good, decent at speaking was modeling others. So I would watch Tony, right? Tony's a friend.

We built companies together, written a book together and so forth. And I would, you know, in the early days, watch him on stage and I would watch him not for the content, but the delivery, his hand motions, huge hands, his voice inflections. And then I went on YouTube and on ted.com and started saying, okay, which talks really stop me and are like amazing speakers? And then why do I think they're amazing? What are they doing? And so I began emulating that. And one of the, you know, some of the lessons learned is for folks listening here is I don't ever get behind a podium, first and foremost, never, right? I'm in front, I'm bare naked. Second thing is I go to 11. What do I mean by that?

Right? If you think about it's when you're speaking at a level of energy that you think is high energy. It's not that high in the audience. Right. And so I need to go higher. But I have one thing. I go to 11 and I go to 2. Yes.

100%. Right? 100%. Right? 100%. The ability to go from there to then pause. Yes. And just land an emotional point. Yes. And silence.

That's the inflection point and silence. Silence is a huge exclamation point. Yeah. And Tony, what I love about, you know, sometimes I find myself after I've done, like sometimes when I'm doing Tony events, they happen to be like three in a row. And for the next month, I find myself using Tony-isms. Like in the middle of the thing, I'm like, say yes. Say yes.

Exactly. Say yes. Say yes. It's like, so to have that, so I find myself going into those things. The thing about emulation is so important. I want to tip my hat to a beautiful man. His name is Len Schlesinger. He was a professor at Harvard Business School.

I was a second year. He was one of the most meaningful people in my life academically. I was a student of his, but I became a mentee of his. He was studying my subject that I was really interested in, which was total quality control and management. But he was doing it in retail and I had come from manufacturing. What he would do, he was one of the best speakers and he was one of the best professor lecturers. He was energized and he was always sweating and he was just fucking amazing. He was fucking amazing.

But I got to the point where he said to me one day, he said, Keith, I can't go to the National Retail Federation to give this talk. Would you give it for me? But I had watched him so many times that I literally would sit back and I would scribe his talk. And I gave his talk. Literally gave his talk. Not just his inflections, his manners. I gave his talk. And I learned how to give his his talk and then I earned the right to change it for myself right and so that was the best way for me it was total mimicry yeah but

then I adapted it for myself and I learned my own style held on to some of his so and I suggest I've got an amazing man that works in our company who, his name is Ronan, and he wants to be better and better at his speaking. He's doing the same thing for me, and I love it. He's giving my talks as him, but then he's modifying. Yeah, and I'm doing that with one of my Strikeforce members, Yanni,

you know, just putting him on stage more and more to give him the experience. Let's put a nail or a stake in the heart of fear one second. So the answer to fear, it's natural, is practice. It is practice, it is practice, it is practice. And it is allowing yourself, what I want to say is allow the emotion to come out fully it's hand motions it's a volume it's it's you know being being confident in yourself people love that confidence and they love the empathy that you have for them in this subject uh at the end of the day uh I'll remember

my first TED talk actually my first TED talk my second TED talk when I gave the abundance talk and I went and was giving it at the home of Linda Norman Lear and she invited me to come and present it just after abundance had come out and I gave it I gave what I was working on for TED and then a common friend Ericic hershberg pulled me aside and goes i think i could make it better for you and we spent the better part of a week re-engineering the talk and me giving it over and over and over again and it was phenomenally better and kudos to eric who is a brilliant creative himself he is, he is. And when I got on stage and I gave that talk, I felt on fire and I was on a mission

to change the people's mindset there. But I was so confident in what I was saying. Because you iterated and iterated. It allowed me... And that's what I was saying earlier. I literally... I remember my TED Talk and getting ready for it and just that over and over and over again. And I think that until you just get such comfort that you can do it in your sleep.

Yeah. I think that's critical. You know, the thinking about speaking, I did want to make sure that we also punctuated the mediums. I did want to make sure that we also punctuated the mediums and I do think that one of the things I learned is there was a little bit of a difference between being on this media and being on stage. And between a small stage and a big stage. I agree. It's like you're talking about being 11 and being big. I used to do that on television and it looked weird. Yeah that's true. It doesn't work for television so i

think it's important to understand your medium um most of the time what we're talking about you just look crazy you do you look you look fucking crazy i actually remember the very first time i i did a cnn cnbc uh show with myself and rich dad poor dad and but there were four guys on speed and swear to god it looked like i've never done cocaine in my life but i look like i just over toast on cocaine at the end of the day i watched myself i was like oh that was so embarrassing right so you do have to recognize it came from nerves well yes and it was a medium i was used to like and again i was used to being on stage and as an actor and i was big and and tv wants an intimate setting yeah and you know it's it's different so i think people

have to be conscious and let me say another thing you and i are giving a disproportionate tilt to charisma and energy etc but let me let me suggest don't let that intimidate you if that's not who you are. And maybe I'm going to take a very antithetical approach to what we just said. There are comedians who are totally different styles and land the joke beautifully. Yep.

There are some comedians that are deadpan and do a beautiful job of it. Now, you don't want to bore people, but I think that all of you could find a way to be a good speaker and honor you you've got to command you've got to modulate i think even if you're not going to 11 to 2 if you go to your volume goes to eight to four that's still going to be important yeah and by the way you might be a scientist or a technologist talking about a really important subject you know some kind of a breakthrough

you've had bill gates doesn't do what you and i do no people listen to him but he is well yeah but so if you've got a really very important meaningful information to deliver um i think you don't have to be the like you you said, the charismatic presenter on stage, but you still need to get a connection with the audience. Yes. Anecdotes, stories. Opening up with story. Humor. I still see dry professors that use humor beautifully. Reagan used to do it, right? He was just such a beautiful or order and he would tell jokes and it worked right so that i just want to make sure that we're not intimidating an entire population that don't think that they can be us everybody peter d amandas here uh i've been asked over and over again what do i

do for my own health well i put it down in this book called peter's longevity practices uh it's very readable in just an hour in the book book, I cover longevity diet, exercise, sleep, my annual found upload, meds and supplements, longevity mindset. It's literally consumable in just an hour's time, hopefully to incentivize you to make a difference in your life, to intercept the technologies coming our way. If you want this, it's free.

Just check out the link below and download it right now. Now, you may be an entrepreneur who's got a company of 10 people or a company of 100 people and being able to stand up in front of that company and give a heartfelt compelling like uh you know drive and purpose and to ignite that company through a difficult time or a a sprint you need to do is equally important we are emotional beings we have this emotional connection let's talk about how we turn this into a business because you and i have and again you gave me a tremendous gift of insight so if someone's written a book and that's but that's so important the day I started getting paid for speaking was the day I wrote a book yes really getting paid for speaking and

it's interesting because if you are a public speaker and you haven't written a book you're probably gonna get a 10 to 20% of the revenue that you would get than if you wrote a book. A book in this matter is a representation that you have a concise body of knowledge, right? That's exactly it. And it's your credential. It's your card. If you don't have a book, the likelihood someone's going to, well, got to remember who's hiring. It's it's I, and I apologize for this. It's a, um, it's a clip laid late clipboard lady or clipboard guy.

I always, it's like, there's somebody five layers down in the organization who's checking boxes, checking boxes, and is working with the bureau to figure out what slate to give the CEO for the event. Of course, it could come down from the CEO, but a lot of the times it's a risk adverse individual looking to qualify who's supposed to be on this stage at this point in time. And so not having a book is almost a disqualify. Now, you could have a very successful company or you could have a very successful life experience that the world knows about.

It's a brand. If you don't have a brand, you need a book. Maybe that's the mantra. If you don't have a brand, you need a book. And by the way, when you're being introduced and someone says so-and-so is the author of so-and-so book, they don't need to mention how many copies were sold or anything. And we talked about it on our other podcast. They will say that it is a best-selling book, even though it's the best-selling in Joe's book list.

So no matter what, you'll be a best-selling author, and you'll be able to have credential. People want to put you on stage if they feel like you've got a credential. So that's so important. The book starts your speaking career. It really does. It was the case for me. I think it's the case for so many, and I don't know many examples that can do it without me.

And again, this added to- Oh, podcasters. Again, you have a brand. If you've got a major podcast that has a great following, again, it's because you have the brand. It's like having your own TV show. And there are a few podcasters I know who haven't gone on and written a book. Right. podcast that has a great following again it's because you have the brand it's like having your own TV and there were a few podcasters I know who haven't gone on and written a book right you know the old saying you don't make money on on book sales you make money on speeches is very true so to now we're into the

business and now into the business so can I talk about the first thing that needs to happen sure what is your topic and you know i i want to use you and me as an example here okay you have found a topic no look you didn't you weren't searching for a topic to get a good speaking business therefore you picked abundance yeah that's not how it happened that way but let's just talk about because my top my topic early on for a good part of my life was space guess guess what kind of a speaking business you would have with a space zippo i don't know but guess what kind of a paid speaking business you would have with space yeah zippo yeah yeah no so

you know jpl would hire you to speak but um and mit would hire you to speak coffee right so but let's let's let's dissect a bit your abundance topic, which I think is really important. Interesting. And I was kind of shocked that it became a successful, viable business topic. Yeah. Well, I think that's just because of the purity of your intent of the message. You weren't engineering it for that. But as I looked at somebody who i helped to craft their speaking business

and then all of a sudden i saw your speaking fee be double mine sorry i was like what no what is about that so i started dissecting and i was like what is it about peter's speaking business that has taken wind and it's and here's my analysis and The first thing is, if you look at who's putting you on stage, there's a CEO putting you on stage saying, I want you to kick the butt of my people to be deeply curious, inspired to be over the edge in terms of what could be next, not sitting on our laurels, but going big and going next because every ceo wants that yeah

the other thing you do is you bring a very positive message when you leave the stage people have walked in saying the world is shit and i you know and it's falling apart and they leave saying oh my god the world is abundant it's amazing right so you've done two extraordinary things and it's not a surprise it's not how you engineered it but it's not a surprise yeah that you've created that now um why do i say that because when you're thinking about the business if you're literally creating a speaking business for the sake of a business then you need to ask yourself is that message going to resonate with which audiences so this is i'm a former marketer.

Yeah. So I would first ask the question, which audiences are hiring? So who hires speakers? Sales organizations hire them for their big sales off-sites every year. Yeah. Leadership off-sites, which is the big company meeting with the top 100,000 people or whatever it is. Customer engagement.

Right. company meeting with the top 100 000 people or whatever it is customer engagement right um and then external customer events big like the big event where you bring all of your customers together like sales force and then associations which are hiring it for their members and that's either a personal message like you're going to get a sports hero that everyone's interested in but you could find something that that general consumers would be interested in. So you really just think about who are the people hiring speaking and ask you what gift are you giving that organization by virtue of you walking on stage. And that's an important alignment.

Where I have gone with my talks is I call my talks challenge talks because, again, my is is partially to inspire I go on stage and I say to an audience and this is what I have sold my speech to where do you want your people's behavior to change over the next six to nine months in order to meet your strategy you know Peter's the guy that'll help your strategy and technology get on path i'm the guy that comes behind and says where are the behaviors of your people and i believe that anybody in that room could be the tipping point of the transformation of the company that's why i wrote leading without authority i'm trying to say that everybody in the room you could take the

manifestation of the strategy the company and you could go out and build the relationships and the vision to make it happen and your career would be on fire fire right and by the way you are a leader of a team that is yet to know that they're following you that team is the people inside of the organization that are going to follow you and your vision on how to meet the strategy of the company so that idea i call it a challenge talk. And it crushes it out there. Yeah. Because, you know, you come on one day, we've done this actually, where you've spoken, then I've spoken. You come on one day and you get the organization to see where its strategy and its technology needs to be. I come in and I see, you know, where is the, how can an individual ignite transformation by changing their behavior and managing teams differently?

Tactically, let's say you've written your book or you've had this life experience or you had something that creates a brand that gives you a message that is super credible and people want to hear. One of the things that you taught me was you said, listen, you introduced me to leading authorities, one of the speaking agencies that still to this day, we have a great relationship with. And you said, go to their office in Washington, DC and meet with their team and give your talk there. I also said, buy them lunch.

Yeah, I'm not sure if I did. Maybe show up, offer to buy them lunch, because there's a lot of people that want to get on their radar. Say, hey, listen, I'd love to buy you all lunch. And all I want you to do is listen to 20 minutes of what I have to share. Yeah. I mean, how many agencies are out there? I think there's, you know, first of all, there's hundreds.

Yes. Because as that world has grown, any individual can be an agency. But let's call it 12 to 15 important agencies. And I'm not suggesting, by the way, that the biggest agencies are the most important. Washington Speakers Bureau is not an agency that you should be. Harry Winston is the other one? It's one in New York, yeah. But some of the biggest ones aren't necessarily where you're going to give me. Those will be the agencies that typically have the, you know.

Barack Obama is the Clinton. Yeah, exactly. The ex-politicals. But there are agencies that have either specialization or sub-specializations and going and building a relationship there. That's it. Because at the end of the day when the agent part of that agency is on the phone with a a large marketing event or membership event they say hey let me let me point

you at this individual check out this website and let me know because I've heard them speak and they're amazing yeah right now let's talk about how to do that now this is where my never eat alone hat comes on yeah um you're not building a relationship with the bureau you're building a relationship with three agents yes and the way you do that is you start to connect by doing that first you know outreach you get their email you follow up you ask them questions about it you ask them questions about your talk so they've just heard you give your your your teaser and then you start a relationship. Hey, what advice do you have? What did you think about the messaging?

Where do you think that that messaging is going to play well? And by the way, do you have anybody that you're thinking about that you think would be great for that? Then the first time they put you up for a potential talk, whether you got it or not, I want you to send them flowers, an Amazon card. That's what I used to do. Just say thank you. Thank you so much.

I'd send them cash. I didn't get the talk. Yeah, send them cash, right? And by the way, they're paid by their bosses. This is direct to them, the individual, right? Here, I just want to thank you and remember their birthdays and find out. I mean, I used to have- It's all the stuff that you teach. It's everything. It's all of the relationship component. I had a woman who ran my speaking

business for a while, Jordan. And Jordan was a great leverage for me with those bureaus. And she richly got to know those folks. She was sending birthday presents that were so intimate. Like she would send a baseball card to somebody that she had researched that person's hero was that individual. And they were a baseball fan. And a framed baseball card was sent to

them that kind of intimacy now you and i've gotten to the stage where we're probably not doing those tactics anymore but in the beginning it matters right and so jordan for you connie still words my speaking business and that is important that if you're not going to hire 12 people to if you're not going to go with an agency, to have a right hand, whether that's your administrative assistant, maybe we can talk about that a little bit. What is the role of your admin or yourself

if you've got the time? Well, Connie, who runs my speaking business, used to be my admin. She used to be my executive assistant. And as my speaking business started growing, at one point I got her a second EA, Esther, and I said, Connie, would you just go and run the speaking business alone and I sent her to a negotiation school

and she has and she's done extraordinarily well for me and for herself and then Esther became my EA and I'm my chief of staff. But this person isn't, they could easily just be a booker, a transactional logistics person. But Connie is a relationship person. That's important. She develops relationships with the agents as well. And she's my first line of defense as well. Now I get a lot of inbound emails, people who are members of my communities or my organizations or donors and peter can you speak mostly for free well the requests come in for free i mean everybody is asking and i get hundreds of

requests a year and my way of looking at it is if i do something i'm trading against time with my 12-year-old boys or trading against my companies. And so the answer is no, unless they meet a threshold. And that threshold is either it's extraordinarily meaningful for me or my companies, or I'm going to take a certain number of paid gigs per year, and it's going to be one of the paid gigs. So Connie goes in and will say, I just got a request from a very high level politician to come and speak at an event. And I'm not going to say, listen, here's my speaking rate. And you know, but Connie can go in very respectfully and say, you know, so and

so here's Peter's speaking rates and he could be free on that day is that an option and going through that but it gives me it gives me a separation but I want to I want to level down for the audience for a second but I hope they'll get there yeah but I also want them I want to give them the opportunity if you're an entrepreneur in the healthcare space and you're building a business that sells into hospital systems, there's a lot of really cool places

that you could be developing a speaking business. Now here's the thing, if the association of hospital administrators, if you went to them normally and said i would like to speak on your stage and you have a business that sells into hospital administrators they'll say yes and you can pay us two hundred thousand dollars for a sponsorship right exactly if you write a book and and you and you write some articles and develop a sense of thought leadership, and you have a $30,000 speaking fee associated with your name, you could probably get on that stage at a minimum for free.

Yes. And that's okay. Yeah. No, listen, there's no question. So I want to talk about being on a stage in which it's great for your company or your organization. That little strategy is important for people to understand. Yeah. You went from being a sponsor.

When I was at Deloitte as chief marketing officer, every time I wanted to show up and speak, people wanted me to pay them. And it wasn't long after that when I wrote a book that I started getting paid. And so it's a really important I started getting paid. Yes. And so it's a really important flip to be able to have. And they're not obviously... By the way, if you haven't watched Keith and I talking about how to write a New York Times bestselling book, go watch that podcast next because the two are intimately connected. If you have, please leave comments. We'd love to know what you thought.

Was it useful for you on how to write a book? Or is this podcast useful for you? We'd love to know what you thought. Was it useful for you on how to write a book or is this podcast useful for you? We'd love to know. Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. The company is called Fountain Life and it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists.

Until that day when you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on. And you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time, but because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the US today, and we're building

20 around the world. These centers give you a full body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, a DEXA scan, a grail blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning. When it's solvable, you're going to find out eventually. Might as well find out when you can take action. Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics. We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter. When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller Life Force, we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to

fountainlife.com backslash Peter, we'll put you to the top of the list. Really, it's something that is, for me, one of the most important things I offer my entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans. Go to FountainLife.com backslash Peter. It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode. It's one of the things that for me is important is this work life

integration because a speaking business can, can be a bit addictive, right? If you got to start getting paid to go and speak and if you're flying around the world and it can take you away from the normal course of your business and so there's got to be a balance a lot of times if you get a speaking engagement they'll pay for your travel uh i'm always asking to have a second person go with me yeah right so i don't go to any of these events on my own uh i'll bring one of my force members Yanni because a lot of times a

lot of the business opportunities are occurring just before just after and having someone there and in bulk and you can't get off stage and you're a mob all right and so being able to like say yes and talk to yanni and you know basically it helps a lot yeah can i on this simple little thing called travel expenses what i found and i think you might have found the same thing is it's actually more efficient to have a standardized speaking standardized travel um expense yeah that you say it's a buyout it's like you know my speaking fee is 50k and my domestic travel is 3,750 bucks whatever it is yeah um and you you might say on a private jet whatever you wherever your level is that you can ask for it i'll never forget i

was trying to get a particular well-known tech entrepreneur to come and speak this was years ago and he came back and he said my fee is 100k and a private jet and i was like wtf holy really like who is this person yeah it's actually funny i did something recently i was helping a friend of mine as the ceo trying to get some pretty prominent people to come and speak at his event but it was a small event it was only 30 chros yeah and these people wanted a lot of money and i said i have an idea let's ask people who live in this bed was in santa barbara i said let's ask people who live in san francisco major people live in san francisco let's not pay them let's send a helicopter for them and it was amazing we got them to say yes yeah the idea that they were getting a helicopter sent to bring them down to the event a vvip experience but we didn't have to pay them so we ended up as a lot cheaper

so this idea of travel buyout is something people should know it became easier than just tracking all the expenses it was a chunk of change that you've got to have an international travel buyout number of domestic travel buyout number. So COVID hits. Yeah. And, uh, we're not traveling any place. And our speaking fees for about a month or two went to zero. Yes, they did.

And people were like 5,000 bucks. You can come and speak at our event virtually. And isn't it interesting? It went back up that our virtual talks are now getting paid what our old speaking fees used to be. Well, I'm not sure it's gotten up to the full one, but a virtual talk at a third the price for an hour, you're in your pajamas and slippers

and giving your keynote. At least under here you are. Yeah, at least in half of it. And that's amazing. And so the ability, and I actually a keynote. At least under here you are. Yeah, at least in half of it. And that's amazing. And so the ability, and I actually enjoy it. It can be as interactive and I can deliver real value. What else do people need to know about?

Setting your rates. So, I mean, listen, in the very beginning, maybe when your books just come out, you might be doing a number of talks for free, right? Ted's never going to pay you if you can get on the Ted stage. It's we'll talk about a little bit more. But otherwise, you know, my speaking fees early on were probably 10, 20 K and that was amazing found money.

And that's still, I think significant that amount of money. If you get to be a $15,000 speaker, that's sort of the first rate. Yeah. I think the first, when you're a real speaker, you're getting paid 15K. The next level is 30, I find. And I think the next level goes to 50 to 60. 50, let's say. And then you're up to 75.

And then you're at 100, which is a very rarefied group of individuals. But if you really think about those, I think those demarcations are about right in the people that I know. What becomes important is to ask yourself, you always want to use the price to set your days, right? So, you know, at 15, you could probably be speaking all the time. If you're really going to hustle, you're going to do all the stuff of marketing we were talking about, get your butt out there, work the bureaus. You can speak a lot at 15K. And one engagement can lead to three. You have an exponential growth.

The one right engagement, particularly if it's associations. You can go and speak at an association. You've got 1,000 people in the audience, each of whom could go back and say, we should hire that person versus speaking at just one company. But the 15K, what I did was I was finding myself speaking too much. And I had to up it to 30. This was back in the mid 2000s. I had to up it to 30 to keep my days down.

Yeah. My ultimate business was the same. I meet with Connie once a year. We set our pricing and I ask her not to tell me about the gigs that come in too low. So I'm not negotiating. You and I both would be like, well, it's 60. Can I rationalize that?

Yeah, it's 60K because 60K. I mean, it's a person's salary for a year. Yeah. It's crazy. It's a house when I grew up. Yeah. So the reality is you need to titrate that. And especially if you have a family or you're an entrepreneur running a company, balancing

that is really important. But if you're at the beginning of your career and you've done something extraordinary, being on the road and being able to share your message and get paid for it is amazing. Amazing. You know, the problem is I'll get, you know, I'll come into Las Vegas for an association meeting and I'll arrive at midnight. I'll have this incredible suite. My talk is at eight o'clock in the morning and then I'll leave. And it's like, what a waste.

What a waste of the glamour and the glitz I agree you know one of the things also is at this point in our lives we get to cherry pick what to speak for you should care about who you're speaking for yeah and I found myself in a few times where I'm like, how did I end up speaking to this audience? I have no connection to them. And yes, it's a great payday, but I should have said no. Right. So I think that being authentic and being able to really feel in your heart that you're going to help these individuals is super important.

What other lessons can we teach here? You know, I wanted to think a little bit about free talks because in one regard, it's easy to say you shouldn't do them. But let's talk about where I have found free talks have really had a return on investment. No question, a TED talk, it has the massive return on investment. You want to talk about ted one second first um sure but i want to come back to other free talks and how one thinks about those but yeah let's talk about so ted's still the it's still the shining star it's the premier hill it's amazing now ted stands for technology entertainment and design right and it is i don't even think they

claim that anymore yeah it's like it's just Ted I mean what Chris has done yeah Chris Anderson the Chris Anderson you and I know each other from Ted before Chris took it over yep and that man and his team that that has created the the TED talks the media business outside of a single conference that by the way is a great example of abundance. By giving away your product for free, you exponentialized the value of that. Well, they did it more than one way, right? So TED.com is where you can go and watch all the talks.

And people say, well, why would you want to go and pay $10,000 or $15,000 or $30,000 if you're a patron and go to TED if you watch the talks for free? One month later, you're going to see them for free. And of course, that's not why you're there. You're there to meet everybody else and to experience it live. Listen, I'm here right now because of TED. You and I are together because of TED. Some of my best, dearest friends and my richest relationships I have in my life

was because of the Ted membership and the Ted community. And I am so grateful for that organization and the community that's created. Getting on that stage, I hope there has become a better mechanism than back in the day. In the back of the day, I think it was pixie dust and day, and the back of the day, I think it was Pixie Dust and who knew and how your name or a book or topic came across the right person at the right time, which couldn't be engineered. It could be a bit, but it was very difficult to, but now they've got an entire feeder system called the TEDx program. And it actually does work. You can be no one and give a local TEDx talk and have that rise up through the

ranks through the likes of the system and the next thing you know, you're on the main TEDx. So, Salim and I talk about TEDx in our EXO 2.0 book, right, as an incredible exponential organization. How do you go from this once a year event which ted used to be for how many people 1500 people in the audience there to all of a sudden reaching hundreds of thousands uh millions of individuals through tedx talks around the world yeah right and they have their podcasting series etc so i would just say if you and i both are super fans. We both have so much to respect.

The quality of what they've done. And I would say the way to go about all of you should be worried about your TED Talk. 100%, that's it. It's as important as a book. Yeah, and your book, how would you present your book in 20 minutes or less or 18 minutes what is it is it 18 minutes well it changes okay anyway my ted talk was 12

minutes back in the day okay um but i think if you can't convey your your your purpose your mission your mtp your essence of what you're in in period of time. Well, there's the Ben Franklin. Sorry, I wish if I had more time, this letter would have been shorter. Yes. So start to work your TED Talk, even though you don't have a place to give it yet. Or throw a TEDx conference. You're going to buy. Then get involved in the TEDx community.

It's sort of the modern day tech version of Toastmasters in one sense. It is at a hyper-dip level. So that's one. Now, the other thing about free talks is, I'll tell you, this is my alumni university. Speaking at the reunion has sometimes been the best feeder for my speaking engagements. Interesting. Because particularly with my alma mater, business school, I was able to give talks to my classmates who were like, wow, that was a great talk.

And you're dealing with an entire group of individuals that are running businesses. Your stages is, I'm sure, an immensely rich opportunity for a bunch of entrepreneurs to see somebody speak on stage and say, wow, I should have them come in. So there are places if, as I was mentioning earlier, associations, if the organization, if the forum is a group where the audience are buyers of speaking engagements, then it could be worth doing free talks. Yeah. And so that's what I want people to consider. Or if you care deeply about the audience. Of course, the audience and the topic.

Right, your alma mater. You're mission-driven. Yeah, right. So I am whatever I can deliver to entrepreneurs and graduate students and so forth. I mean, the challenge is I think people don't uh there's a lot going on in our lives so being able to pick up you have it's trade you're always trading time right the one thing we all have in common is 24 hours in a day seven days in a week 365 in a year and it's how you use your time which is everything it's our most precious resource right now i've gotten to the stage where

i can probably only do one or two talks a year that are purely, you know, generous and gratis without a motive for doing it, which is, well, this is an audience that could be more speaking engagements or more team coaching or such, et cetera. But I do think it's important. I just, what I say to my team is this is our channel strategy. Yes. And my team is responsible for identifying who are the associations that you should speak in front of for your channel strategy. Now, this is where book helps

because if you've written a book and if you haven't seen it, we've got a really great podcast about booking. About writing books. About writing books. Yeah. If you write a book, it is all of a sudden permission

to speak and so if you think about what free talks you should be given where writing a book for the next six months it's very funny because if i reached out to salesforce and said you know in dreamforce next year i've got a message I really think would be great okay that's interesting here you put we'll put you on the list yeah no urgency but if I reached out to Salesforce and said I've got a book coming out the month the Dreamforce is out or the month after and I could tease out my message which is about to be published before anywhere else on your stage and i'd be happy to sign books all of a sudden there's urgency about having me as a speaker yeah so i know of a guy um who is just a brilliant speaker i don't know if he would want me to say

his name or not because his strategy is so beautiful he writes a book a year because his strategy is so beautiful. He writes a book a year just for his speaking business. And he does it just as a machine. And every year he writes a book, he publishes it, he markets it, and that's his next. And as a result, unlike guys like you and me, who I suspect the amount of time that we get invited back to the same state one year after another is almost never.

Yeah, at best it's every three years. Unless it's like friends, like, you know, A360, et cetera. He gets invited back to the same stage. He's got a different message every year. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Because he's engineered his books around his speaking engagement in that way. You know, other platform stages are YPO chapters and EO chapters and such. If you, here so again, EO, YPO, but the actual chapters don't have a lot of money for speaking

engagements, right? Maybe 5K, 10K. They have an education budget and sometimes they'll group three or four chapters together and create an event. Right. But then the members, you have to ask yourself at YPO certainly the membership has the ability potentially to do speaking engagements for 50k, 15k but as you go down to EO or Vistage or other organizations they may

not have you've got to ask yourself is the audience used to paying my speaking fee? Now one of the other things that i've i've done it's interesting you people think of speakers and they think of themselves as hiring speakers not hiring speakers it's what's the difference between helping them facilitate or helping them in a leadership off-site versus a speaking engagement. I've been able to open up the number of engagements. I still get paid 50K. Right.

I still do the same prep, but I've now sold myself not as, are you hiring a speaker? But when are you giving your next leadership offsite? I'd like to present some of my research. Yes. You know, it's a nuance, but this idea of selling yourself as a speaker, you've actually, by the way, you've usurped the bureaus, you've usurped the clipboard people, and you've gone straight to a leader who might think, you know what? I don't normally have an outside speaker at my team

meeting, but this topic would be interesting. Sure'll free up 15 20 30 whatever it is for my team so you can actually create a speaker slot that didn't exist before by virtue of going direct shall we summarize yeah so inspiring yeah thank you you do this one first okay i'll go first so speaking has a lot of extraordinary benefits for you uh personally i mean if you're an entrepreneur and a leader it's a chance for you to become a thought leader on stages around the world you can make a great living at it it's a way to present your company your ideas and so there's a lot of elements of being, call it a platform or a keynote speaker. Fear often stops people. And there's one solution to fear, and that is practice, practice, practice,

and speak about something that comes from the heart, right? If you're speaking with your mind and your brain, you're going to get caught up. If you're speaking from the heart, for me, a lot of my successes were emulating great speakers on stage who I watched and I'm studying you when you're on my Abundance 360 stage or Tony's on my stage or vice versa. It's like, huh, fascinating the way they did that, how paused even a second longer longer than I would have paused or their their volume or their you know their motions and their hand motions and it becomes like um incredibly it it shocks oh another thing that I do I love doing when I'm on stage is breaking the barrier I will jump off the stage and walk into the audience. Yeah, right it changes the entire

Dynamic the camera people hate that I well I go and check on the first I said I may jump off the stage and they Say we'll stay away from that speaker and that speakers don't get the feedback, but that's fine. And so And you're looking to build a relationship Rather than just you know hit and run. can you give your slides away to that audience and can you in fact keep a relationship going with that audience but it's there to serve you know those are my thoughts off the bat I am yeah well look as a good summary I'm I'm not going to be redundant you've said so many good things in your summary I stole some of yours that's okay good summary, I'm not going to be redundant. You've said so many good things in your summary.

I stole some of yours. That's okay. It's a good summary. That's what we're here for, the inspiring summary. Where I want to go with it is maybe just a little different. And maybe this is just because the way I think about it. I think about my speaking business really as a lifestyle for my future. Interesting, Yeah. The more that I invest in my brand today, I mean, the $2 million that I invested around some research that I did during

the pandemic actually ended up being $5 million at the end of it. You know what I was thinking about? I busted my ass during that two to three year period doing research about the future of work. I invested my own money and other brands' money. What I was thinking about was, this is going to give me the permission when I'm 75 to 80 years old to go around the world and step on stage and my brand legacy will still be there

and I'll be relevant. And my partner and I will be able to travel and have a beautiful life because I will have built a brand and be meaningful to people. And it's the way I want to live my life. Fascinating. And so that's what I was thinking about.

I was thinking about what I consider the nirvana of my retirement. And I think that's what I would encourage any of you if you could start to build your brand and start to get permission to speak in people's stages and and and in their companies it could be a beautiful way to live your life and that's that's that would be my wrap-up statement you know I think a few points you made as well. Remember to tell stories. Yeah. Open with a story.

A personal antidote. Authenticity. Variability. Of your voice level. And the last thing is relationships. What kept coming up throughout this for the both of us is people, whether it's bureaus, it's about relationships. It's about agents. It's not about bureaus. relationships. It's about agents. It's not about bureaus.

Yeah. It's about individuals. It's Sally from XYZ Speakers Bureau who has gone out on a limb and said Peter would be the right person and then was rewarded for it both by your success but also by the flowers and the gratitude. To build that relationship is important. And also I'll give you one last one. Please. Don't be afraid to ask.

My old man used to say, don't ever be afraid to ask. The worst anybody could ever say is no. If you've got a buddy that you know is a big wig in a company, just say to them, hey, who runs the events that you do? I would love someday to get a chance to bring my message to your organization. What's wrong with that? I mean, that kind of just putting yourself out there and asking is a great way to get your speaking business, maybe even just started. You know what we didn't talk about? What's that? By the way, I know this is the wrap up, but what we didn't talk about is your speaker reel.

But what we didn't talk about is your speaker reel. Important idea. And if you've never done any speaking before, asking friends to be able to get on the stage in front of their company, but with a video camera so that you could get it videoed and you could get two or three of them videoed and put it together in a reel, it establishes you. At the beginning of your career when people don't know you, you don't have a reputation, you don't have a bunch of-

You need the reel. Yeah. You need something to demonstrate what's your style, your capacity, capabilities and so forth. Yeah. So Keith Ferrazzi, folks who want to hire you to go speak. Yeah. Ferrazzi Greenlight is the website.

FerrazziGreenlight.com. Two Rs, two Zs. Yeah. Indeed. Awesome. And they can follow you on which social media? speak yeah for Ozzy green light rosie green light calm to ours Tuesday's yeah indeed awesome and they can follow you on which social media LinkedIn's probably best amazing thank you for this gift thank you for the gift you gave me a decade ago that launched I'll never forget where we you know that lunch sitting outside and you were so generous in teaching me these ropes that we've now conveyed on. It changed my life.

And it truly was a rising tide. I hope it is for many others. Yeah. Good pay it forward. Thank you. Cheers.