Start With A Win - The Power of the Spoken Word with Sekou Andrews

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Beginning his adult life as an elementary school teacher, Sekou Andrews got into acting for a while before finding his niche as a spoken word artist focusing on poetic voice and sharing his gift with leaders across industries. He describes his speaking style as “TED Talk meets Hamilton” in the seamless integration of inspirational speaking and spoken word poetry. It is no wonder why his audiences are so captivated by his message.Sekou emphasizes the importance of both what you say and how you say it, stating that there is power to engage your audience through your words as well as the delivery. He coaches people from stage fright to stage might by having them learn from performance artists and apply the concepts they observe to whatever stage they have. His 3 key concepts for this are: (1) humanize yourself and your content, (2) connect with your audience through storytelling, and (3) storytelling really begins with story-listening.When asked how he taps into the passion within himself, he says that it is important for him to see himself as a storyteller before focusing on his technique, being grounded in his purpose and how he can serve the listener. A big part of this is loving what he does and setting his mindset at the beginning of every day on the purpose he is trying to embody.Connect with Sekou:http://sekouandrews.com/http://www.twitter.com/sekouandrewshttp://www.facebook.com/sekouandrewshttp://www.linkedin.com/in/sekouhttps://www.instagram.com/sekouworld/https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/sekou-tha-misfit/id410616272http://www.youtube.com/user/sekouworld Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the Win Nation. And good day to you, Win Nation. Adam Canto, CEO of Remax here on Start With A Wind in our virtual studios, having a lot of fun. We got producer Mark in the virtual studio there. How are you doing, buddy? I am doing so good. I love it. So you're coming to us from Brand Viva headquarters. Well, we're coming from the Brand Viva bunkers via Zoom. That's right. I don't know who came up with this Zoom thing,

but it's really working well for us right now. Yeah, so far, so good, man. Hey, I'm so stoked for today's episode. I know. You and I at R4 earlier, which is Remax's very large convention in Vegas, over 7,000 people showed up. You and I got the pleasure to meet Sekou Andrews, who is a poetic mastermind.

And we connected with him backstage. And I was like, this guy would be great for our podcast. And guess what? We got Sekou on the show today. Sekou, welcome. We'll just bring you right in right now, man. Let's do it. Let's do it.

I'm still grooving off of that intro music. That was some of the best podcast intro music I've heard. Thank you. Credit to producer Mark. Oh, Mark, that's you? I see you at the studio in the background, sir. Okay. Okay. Keep the hits coming. There you go, man. Sekou, let me kind of give a brief overview of, I know we had thousands of our great friends got to see you just a couple months ago in Las Vegas, right before we all kind of parted and went different directions and hid in our houses. I got to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, all the listeners out there, this is one of the coolest stories and one of the most amazing human beings you will ever meet. So just a little bit about Sekou here. So he was a elementary school teacher turned actor, musician,

national poetry slam champion and entrepreneur. And he's the creator of Poetic Voice, which is this cutting edge speaking. It kind of seamlessly fuses inspirational speaking with spoken word poetry to make messages more moving and memorable. I was in tears. I was laughing. I was smiling. It just touches your heart. Renowned keynote speaker, leadership conference speaker, helps Fortune 500 companies with brand messaging, gets CEOs, one right here, gets CEOs to think outside the box. Sekou's performed for Barack Obama in Oprah's backyard, no less. And then in November 19, he made history by becoming the first contemporary spoken word poet to receive the Grammy nomination for best spoken album in 30 years. So Sekou,

we're super glad to have you on the show. Welcome. I'm excited to be here. I'm still riding high off of R4. It was an amazing conference. I got a chance to connect with so many great people and I got a chance to continue to live my mission of inspiring folks. So it was great. Your style is called poetic voice. Can you tell us in your words, what is poetic voice? So the simplest definition of poetic voice is the seamless integration of inspirational speaking and spoken word poetry. So it's a new category of speaking that seamlessly blends the art and the public speaking together. So if you imagine sort of a TED Talk meets Hamilton, right? That's the sort of keynote experience that you're looking at. It's interesting when you start talking, if everybody out there just listen deeply to how

Sekou speaks. I mean, you start to hear this rhythm, this depth and how you deliver, because it just starts to proliferate throughout how you bring your message to the front. Is that, it seems like there's more than just what you say. It's how you say it. Is that correct? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that applies to all speaking, you know, the power of verbal versus nonverbal communication and the ability to, you know, it's like when someone tells me, oh, I can listen to you read a phone book, right? What they're saying is that the content doesn't matter. The delivery is that powerful. And that's why when I'm doing training with people and they get caught up in, well, my content is not as interesting as yours and my content is boring and, you know, it's informational. And I go, look, I'm speaking on cloud computing on Mondays, real estate on Tuesdays, women's shoes on Wednesdays, health care on Thursdays and education on Fridays.

So sometimes it's amazing, hot, sexy content and sometimes it's super boring. But it's all about the way that you engage an audience with it. So let's talk about some of that super boring content that you probably get called into different boardrooms and businesses and things like that. And they're like, how do we spice this up a little bit? What are the things that you tell them that maybe would translate to real estate agents or somebody who's out there trying to connect with people? Are there any principles that you begin with, a foundation or framework?

Yeah. Oh, there's so many. So the name of my speaker training program is StageMight, as in stage fright to stage might. And I tag it Rockstar Secrets for Public Speakers because the principle behind it is learning the techniques of master performers in order to be a better public speaker. So it's not learning performance for the sake of being a performer, but it's what can you learn from singers and songwriters and improv artists and dancers and actors and comedians and poets that make you better at being CEO of Remax, better at giving a job interview, better at being a podcast host, better at being CEO of Remax, better at giving a job interview, better at being a podcast, you know, a host, better at rocking the PTA meeting at your kid's school. Like whatever it is,

whatever your stage is, you have a stage and you are a public speaker. And so that's the first sort of mindset shift that people have to understand is that when they think stage might, they think someone that wants to be mighty on some big stage. And I go, no, I want you to be mighty on your stage, whatever your stage is. And one of the ways that you can do that, a couple of things that just come off the top of mind. One is always humanize yourself, right? You're looking for ways to, we live in that era of people want inspiration as much as they want information, right? So you need to find ways to humanize yourself and humanize your content. When you do that, you can humanize a phone book, right? And you can find ways to take that phone book

and make it engaging. And so you want to always look at how you can create a human experience. One of the most powerful ways to do that, second thing is storytelling. You hear so much about storytelling right now. Everybody's talking about storytelling, TED Talks, storytelling trainings.

The reason is because you heard me talk about this at R4. When's talking about storytelling, TED Talks, storytelling trainings. The reason is because you heard me talk about this at R4. When you tell a story, you give someone the opportunity for them to find themselves in you, and you give yourself the opportunity for you to find yourself in that person. And that's what you want in public speaking. In any kind of speaking is to get closer to your audience, to create that point of connection, so that instead of them looking at you as someone, oh, that's just, they're over there and I'm over here. They're different and they're like that and I'm like this. And they find all the differences. The more that they begin to go, I'm just like that. Oh, she's just like me. Oh, we do that too. You begin to get closer and closer to that person so that now when you're giving them that phone book of

information, they're receiving it like, oh, I needed that. I get it. You're just like me. So if this is something that you're telling me I should know, I'm internalizing that. I believe that a lot more. And the last thing I would probably say is remember storytelling begins with story listening. And I think this is really important for agents, but also just for entrepreneurs in general, anyone that's serving clients and customers. Storytelling begins with story listening. The reason why I'm so good at being able to

authentically inspire people about their own industry, whether it's cloud computing, women's shoes, education, whatever, is because I first do a really in-depth listen to understand them. And by them, I mean, I talk to the client. I understand their needs as an organization. I understand their needs as an industry. I understand the needs of their audience members. And then I get to the juicy, delicious part, which is what are their needs as a human being? What do they need as people? And once I get to that part and I understand how to speak to that message, then I can toss back on all the information, but they're receiving it in a very human way. That was a masterclass right there. That was incredible. Mark, I'm going to need to pull this recording and go back and rewind that. You got to stay teaching, baby.

I know I quit my job as an elementary school teacher, but I didn't quit the classroom. Golly, that must have been a blast to be in your class as a teacher. Oh, I loved it. The hardest job to do, hardest job to leave. I think a lot of people with all the homeschooling going on right now, all the work from home, the teach from home, things like that. I think a lot of parents are realizing a new appreciation for teachers. I know I am. Oh, yeah. God love those people. It's, it's unbelievable what they do. And I think there's also an appreciation right now for, for learning, you know, like there's, this is sort of the time for us to learn how to be better when we come out of this. And I think we're trying to make sure we're giving that to the children in

our lives, the students in our lives. But I think this is also the time for us to think about what can we be a student of now that we will need to master in the future. Awesome. Hey, I got a question for you. So when you started talking about these principles, the three principles that you just threw at us, you just reached down inside and found this passion inside of you when you started speaking. And I've seen you do it on stage. And people who have not gone to your website need to go to your website and check this out as well. It's, it's SekouAndrews.com. And when they see you speak, like what we're seeing and hearing, they feel you speak. It's just not words. It is this amount

of love of depth. How did you harness that? Because, I mean, as soon as you start turning it on, I'm going, whoa, this guy's unbelievable. Is there a way to start to realize that for a human being? I mean, it takes a ton of practice, I'm guessing. There's a lot of practice that's involved in the technique. Absolutely. I teach storytelling techniques. I teach speaker training techniques. I teach all of that. But the reason why I started my storytelling training called Insist on Story, because none of it mattered. The techniques didn't matter if the person did not see themselves as a storyteller, right? And I had to give them permission to remind themselves that they've been telling stories

their entire life. They'll tell 50 stories this week, but for some reason, they've severed that connection and that access to that power in business. Well, the same is true with what you were just talking about in terms of passion. It's purpose, really, Adam. It's purpose. Like, I approach the stage with the desire to serve. And one of the things I tell people when they're dealing with stage fright, and I help them to get from stage fright to stage might, and they're dealing with nervousness, I remind them that the way to control your nervousness is to think about who you were there to serve,

right? If you hit that stage and you go, I'm scared of the 300 or in the case of R4, like 7,000 eyes that are on me. And I feel like they're judging me. And I feel like they're going to make fun of me. And I feel like I look silly. I sound crazy, and so forth. But if I go on stage and remind myself, I'm here to serve Adam. I'm here to speak to Mark. Mark might desperately need, especially at a time like this, his business might be literally on the verge of crumbling, and this might be the one piece of advice or inspiration that he needs to survive this and to thrive coming out of this. And if I don't serve that, I was irresponsible with this gift that I was given to speak. So when I asked you at the very beginning, how long do I have?

Am I going in deep on stories or are we keeping it quick? The reason is because I know that right now, no matter how tired I am, it's midday. I got a million things going on. I might be exhausted. But the minute you turn on that mic, the minute that you give me a platform for me to serve others, I know that my desire to pour into them and to make it as rich of an experience as possible is going to come out. And that's what I'm going to be trying to contain. And that's what you love and love what you do, or find how to love what you're doing when you're speaking to someone, then that passion and that purpose will come out. And then we can teach you the techniques on how to harness it to be engaging on a live stage or on a digital stage. Oh my gosh. This is amazing. You're like this airplane on the big aircraft

carrier that's already on this launch thing to get shot off of the aircraft carrier into the air right now. I mean, you're all like built up and everything. I want to harness some of this energy that you've just created here. Would you give us an example of your art? A few minutes of just dig into a little deep of this artistry that you've done. I mean, I just, I fall in love with how you speak. And I think our listeners would just absolutely love to see an example of this. Would you mind doing that for us? Sure. I'll tell you what, instead of just doing something, I was going to do something off of my album plug, shameless plug there. The album that I released last week, Sekou Andrews, and this not last week, last year, Sekou Andrews and the String Theory as a spoken word album with a symphony orchestra from Europe.

And that's the one that we got the Grammy nomination for. There's a powerful piece on there called Be Voiceful that I like to share. But I'm actually I'm going to just direct you to my website, to my social media, join my tribe and you'll get that. You can go to the album. I'm going to give you something that is not currently out there, but is about to be. So this is kind of your sneak peek into one of my more popular keynote speeches. This is an excerpt of it, one of the more poetic excerpts that comes from it. I think it's relevant for this time as we think about how to redefine our concept of what failing is and what success is and how to learn to transform failure into success with the community that's around us through collaboration, through collective, through community. So this is a taste of that.

This is what you can be for each other. When you let him borrow your exhale that refills his lungs with breath, she spills her light into your darkness to fill your eyes with wet. We become filling stations of failure that fuel each other's success. My palms pouring into yours, hands outstretched, offering to press your lifeline to my lifeline, handing me a lifetime of wisdom from like minds to remind me in the darkness how to let my light shine, to remind me that your struggles is not unlike mine. Someone here shares the same scars as you and can tell you how long they will take to heal. Someone has been through the same hurricane and can tell you where to stand to stay dry. Someone here shares no DNA with you and yet you will come to know them as family.

We are each surrounded by fuel cells who give our dreams energy, who remind us that the only way that we could ever truly fail is if we allowed our dreams to stop at failure. Because failure is not just the answer, no, any more than success is always the answer yes. Sometimes they are both giving us the answer yes, just not yet, which means Webster got it wrong, baby. Failure is not the lack of success. No, failure is the opening act to success. Failure is the winter before we spring back to success. If you take nothing else from me, let this be what you receive. Failure is simply how success RSVPs, how success lets you know, hold on, baby, just breathe. I'll be there soon. I promise you will see. Failure is the prefix to success. Failure is what precedes

success. Failure is pre-success. Failure is pre-success. So the next time you try to own it, tell me how you own your pre. Like my solutions and skills are not insufficient. No, no, no, you got it wrong. They are pre-sufficient in the process of becoming more effective and efficient. And this devastation that we're in is not defeat. No, this is our pre-feat, our required failure cocoon before our flight is achieved. None of us here are unsuccessful. Each of us here is pre-successful because we know how to overcome failure by going through it. We know how to go through failure by being present in it. We know how to be present in failure to learn from it.

And we know how to learn from failure to overcome it. That's just a little tip. Woo! Boom! Wow. Yeah! Ah, that was incredible.

Thank you. Thank you. So that will be coming out. So if you're not a part of my tribe, make sure you go to my mailing list and follow my social media because that is, I'm going to be,

I'm already started, but I'm going to be continuing to send out inspirational messages to just keep people going through this time. Helping business with these messages as well. Where can we find you, Sekou? We're on social media. What's your website address? Website, like you said, is SekouAndrews.com. That's S-E-K-O-U Andrews.com. And Instagram is Sekou World. And everything else is Sekou Andrews. Facebook, YouTube. And just subscribe to the YouTube page.

Subscribe, follow on Instagram. And right now I'm doing a series. There's a lot of things going on. I'm doing a series called April Muse that is all love poems from my history, but it's also love poems about couples and love poems about industries history, but it's also love poems about couples and love poems about industries like healthcare and things like that, because it's also National Couples Appreciation

Month and it's National Poetry Month in April. I don't know if you know that. And so I'm celebrating that. I also just did a series that I released on Instagram that actually was inspired by Remax and some of the things that I talked about during that presentation. And it's basically, if you remember when I was talking about, don't just try to sell your customer a home, try to be home for them. And so I expand on that. And I have one minute videos going out every day that are just sharing how to understand that concept of how to be home for your customers, whether you're a real estate agent, whether you're in cybersecurity, whether you're a shoe salesperson, understanding how to be and embody the purpose of what it is that you are trying to offer to

that person so that you can inspire them and not just inform them. I love it. And it's great to see you again. It's great to see your face, your smile and hear your artwork. I mean, just it's unbelievable. This has been truly an amazing show. And Sekou, I do have one question I ask everybody who's on the show, and we all get some very special, special responses to this. This is my favorite question. Sekou, how do you start with a win? Oh, how do I start with a win? I think it starts with mindset.

I always start with how it is that I am priming my mindset for success and a win. I think it starts with mindset. I always start with how it is that I am priming my mindset for success and a win. That could be how I'm starting my morning. It could be, you know, my morning routine or what I call my PDM, my personal daily maintenance. And that's, you know, what is it that I'm taking in? I also just did an excerpt of a speech that's on LinkedIn right now, if you check it out, where I talk about my morning routine. And I talk about everything that you're taking in is priming your mindset for success. So you want to be careful about taking in the positive stuff instead of the negative stuff so that you create a mindset of positivity and success.

I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for being on Start With A Win, Sekou. It's been an honor to have you again. Again, great to see you, my friend. Thank you so much for what you do. My pleasure, Adam. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate you guys and stay healthy, stay joyful out there and stay sane. Same to you, man. And ladies and gentlemen, please don't forget to check out Sekou online at SekouAndrews.com. Creator of Poetic Voice, an amazing cutting edge speaking platform. So take a look at it. And thank you again, Sekou. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to Start With The Wind. If you'd like to ask Adam a question and potentially be on the next episode, give us a call and leave a message at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go on iTunes and subscribe, write a review and leave a message at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go on iTunes and subscribe, write a review and rate the show. For more great content, head over to StartWithAWin.com. Follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.