S. 3 Ep. 32 – Want To Grow Your Business In 2023? Differentiate Yourself.

Intro: You know those moments when you’re doing what you love in your business, maybe it’s standing onstage or creating content, whatever it is, you’re totally immersed, and time just seems to slip by? This is called The Flow State. At Speaker Flow, we’re obsessed with how to get you there more often. Each week we’re joined by a new expert where we share stories, strategies, and systems to help craft a business you love. Welcome to Technically Speaking.

Austin: Boom. All right, we made it. Gents, welcome. Chris, thank you so much for joining us today, it is an honor.

Chris: I’m so excited for the conversation.

Austin: Yeah, it’s been a while. Looking back on things, I think you were episode three or four or something of Technically Speaking, so coming back for round two, I question your sanity, maybe; a little bit for that. But I am grateful. So, yeah. One of the things that I, we love just about everything about Video Narrative, there’s no better business in this space that does what you do. One thing that’s sort of not exactly connected to your services that I really love that you do, though, is your newsletter. I don’t know if you know this, but I read every single one, couple of times sometimes, you do a really good job. It’s not just a promotional thing, you tell a story. 

So, for one, I encourage anybody listening, go sign up for Chris’ newsletter, it’s not ever promotional or salesy, it’s always super valuable. But, for one, why’d you decide to take the angle that you’ve taken with your newsletter, break the status quo a little bit.

Chris: Every one of us has to keep going back to ourselves. And I think what’s going to come up in our conversation, because it’s just on my mind all of the time right now, for every speaker I work with, every person I know, alignment is the secret to your success, right? And one of the biggest challenges in the speaker industry, it is the kryptonite of every speaker I interact with is comparison. You look out into the industry, you see other people doing what you do, every one of your peers is your competitor. And there’s this combination of we help each other and yet, you are my competitor in any given week. 

Even speakers who are masterminds working together, they’re competing against one another, right? They’re in a mastermind group and they’re like, lost a gig to my so-and-so. And we compare ourselves to one another. The secret to a great speaker is personal alignment, right? And when it comes to the newsletter, I looked at myself and I thought, okay, well, what I know to be true is that if you start a newsletter, you should be consistent; every week on a certain day, right? And that really works for certain people. I know for example, knowing the two of you, you guys are extremely consistent people. 

I found that when I do that, I go into this hustle mentality and it’s not true to me. And I found that for me, the best way to be in the newsletter is, when something is a theme, I’m seeing it from one speaker to another to another. It’s like, okay, it’s rising up, there’s a certain energy here, let me speak to that and share a story around it because I think this will make an impact for a lot of people.

And then if I don’t have anything to say, before I used to go like, every Thursday or every Friday, I have to have this thing done. And as a result I became more structured and it wasn’t as life giving. And so, now I literally write when there’s a theme, when there’s an energy, when there’s something to it, and I think there’s a lot more strength to it. And when there’s nothing there, I’ve just given myself permission to not write. And I think that’s, that part of alignment is like, what’s the right brand for you? What’s the right way that you work through the world and move through the world? Let that be your representation online. And I think that’s the side of the newsletters is, sometimes it’s three months before people hear from me, but when they do, it’s usually something that’s really relevant for almost everyone on it.

Taylorr: Yeah. Heck, yeah. I love that message of permission too because there are a lot of shoulds in the world, especially to raise up your point about comparison. You see other people doing things that are in the industry and are like, oh, I should be doing that, I should be doing that. And then you kind of lose alignment with the things that you want to be doing and that can be detrimental to the progress that you want to make. It’s not an easy thing either, to let go of that or feel so convicted and your own personal desires of how you want to run things that you can kind of block out all of that kind of comparison mentality. And since you brought it up, I’m curious, how does one navigate the switch from that comparison mentality to having conviction about the way they want to do things? Is there something that you learned along the way?

Chris: This is something I was asked to answer for a client lot yesterday. It’s something I think about all of the time. I think the most important thing for us to recognize is, where do we see anxiousness or anxiety show up in our lives? And I promise you, whenever you’re feeling anxiety it’s because you are out of alignment with your true self. And so, it’s just rather than, ah, I feel anxious, it’s like, let me just see that as a cue, then I’m not being true to myself. So, when you are on the internet and you’re seeing someone else’s new speaker video, you’re seeing someone else’s really cool post that really did well or you’re seeing anything and you find that comparison coming up. 

I know that this sounds so silly, but literally all you do is get up. I just tell people, and I do this faster and faster because I face it myself. Like a rubber band on your wrist, if you’re to snap it, the second I’m comparing myself, I know that after this is going to lead to nowhere good. And I’ve gone down the path so many times that it’s like, I don’t even have to spend 10 more minutes in this. It’s not going to go anywhere good. So, the second you find yourself looking at someone else’s speaker video, looking at someone else’s website, comparing yourself, not saying how can I grow or be strengthened by this but comparing. 

You just get up, walk away, sit somewhere else in your house and, literally for five minutes, breathe in and out for eight breaths and then just come back into the center of, what do I want to do in the world? What’s most important to me? What am I here to say? And then I always say this next question, what’s the next right thing for me? And your body will tell you the answer. Send that email, do that thing, follow-up with that person and you’re onto the next productive thing for you and you’ve left the comparison behind. And that’s where the power grows, right? 

And then I think when you add, and this is your guys’ specialty with the technical side, when you add consistency behind what is in alignment for you, you know what’s aligned, you know where you’re headed with clarity and then you add consistency and especially the systems around it, that’s when I see people just blow up.

Austin: I think that’s an important lesson to learn, man, coming out with a banger in this episode.

Taylorr: That’s right.

Austin: It’s so good. And I, yeah, if you think about the hierarchy of important things, right? Especially like, let’s just think about this from a business growth perspective, which let’s be honest, that’s most people’s concern in business, right? The importance of doing what everybody else is doing is vastly less important than you being authentic, because that’s what the market responds to right now is true authenticity. The noise, the bullshit, it’s out there and everywhere and people are really good at sniffing that out at this point. 

So, I think it’d be better for somebody to be authentic with themselves than it would be to do the things that everybody says they should do, even if technically, probably it’s in their best interest to do those things. If you can’t do that authentically, it would be better to just not; relative, I would say. Nobody talks about that. I don’t think enough people talk about that. So, thank you for being a guiding light.

Chris: It’s the secret, right? Where does all of our personal power lie? It lies from within. There’s nothing externally we can do to gain personal power. And so, if we don’t have that internal awareness, that’s where the anxiousness builds over a given day, I feel like as we get these emails and we get this stuff and it’s just like, there are so many things you should be doing, right? I’ve never been into this kind of stuff, but I’m working with this really cool coach and the coach recommended that there are certain essential wills in the world where if you combine a thought with that as it goes into your body, it actually creates this change. 

And so, one of the things that I do literally every day is I move from should to I am guided, which sounds super woo to people, but your internal awareness is connected to every other person on the planet. We can see this through metaphysics; we can just see it now scientifically. So, you’re already connected to everything and everyone you ever want to experience, right? And everything you ever want to experience. You have to find that from within and then move out. And so, I literally every day do this thing where I feel the sense of I should, I put a little bit of this lemongrass essential oil on the back, most people are listening to it, but the back part of your neck and I say, I’m guided and I shift my brain from I should to I am guided and then I ask, what’s the next right thing for me? 

And it’s usually a book or a podcast like this one or some idea that I had recently inspires the next movement. And I take that next step. It’s not about the things I should do, it’s what am I guided to do? Because each one of our unconscious abilities, we process over 2 million sensory perceptions every second. And we can now process about eight in our brain. So, your unconscious is actually processing far more, and we already know this, right? When you look for something, it starts appearing a lot more. 

It’s because it was always there, your unconscious is filtering it up for you. Your unconscious is so powerful that if you give the unconscious sense of what is the next right thing for me and give it enough space and ask for it, your unconscious will filter up immediately into your mind the next right step for you. And it’s not outside, it might have been in an interview or it might have been a podcast or it might have been something, but at that moment, until you ask for it, your unconscious won’t filter it up for you.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Chris: It’s a lot of new stuff.

Austin: It’s a great activating system, right? There’s biochemistry there, there’s a part of your brain that specifically does that. It chooses what to put your focus on. It’s the same reason why when you buy a car, you see that car everywhere. That’s the exact mechanism in the brain, right? If you train yourself to look for the things that are in alignment with you, to use your language; it makes sense that you’re going to get more of that because that’s what your brain is tuned-in to looking for. So, even if we don’t go down the woo path, I think there’s a strong, or a scientific argument to be made that exactly what you’re saying is accurate.

Taylorr: Yeah, for sure. Well, this is going to be super fun. So, really what we wanted to bring you on the show this second time around for, you get to look into the industry from a very unique perspective, building these narratives for people. And I think over time, how long have you been doing this, 15, 10 years?

Chris: 10 years for speakers. Yeah. Professional speakers.

Taylorr: 10 years for speakers, right? So, I’m sure you’ve seen the ebb and flows of how these narratives form, how the market resonates; obviously, there’s a tremendous amount to learn over those 10 years. And obviously, over the last few years we’ve seen one of the biggest industry of people that the world has ever seen. And so, I’m curious, what have you seen change since the pandemic as far as the narratives people are telling, and do you see that changing again as we start phasing out of that? Has not much changed? Is it dependent on the person? What’s your take on where the industry is heading based on that upheaval?

Chris: It’s such a great question and two answers filter up immediately to that question. And so, I’ll say the two and then explain them. The number one thing is that before things like email marketing seem to work better and with the AI, with bots, with all kinds of stuff, people are so bombarded right now with emails on a daily basis that I’m finding consistently, and this is true because they are showing this now in market research, people now have an adverse reaction to being marketed too, even if it’s something they want. 

So, if someone is looking to hire a speaker for an event and they get an email saying, Hey, I’m a speaker for your event. This used to work in the past, we have whole training modules around, usually we would track it over 12 months and I hired someone full-time on my team to do this for speakers to track it so that I could get correct analytics. It would be 25 consistent, strong engagements to a good fit prospect; it would usually lead to around 10 warm leads at any given moment, which would usually lead to one booked engagement. It’s just not true anymore. It’s just not true. 

What happens now is people want to find their speaker, they want to discover their speaker, they want to be looking for them and not be marketed to but to find them. And so, the number one shift that we’ve had to make with our clients and just in the industry as well, is you actually have to now focus your attention on content and being very, very specific about what you’re best at in the industry, not how robust is your outbound marketing, how much are you going to do? How much can you speak, right? And so, the number one thing that blew my mind and sucks is outbound email marketing is, I’m not saying it’s dead, but it’s not working anymore in the way it was.

And so, the first is just in your outbound, how you do that, we could talk about it. The second is just the specificity is now, and I was talking to a speaker agent yesterday who literally books the top 12 speakers mostly booked in the country. And she said, yeah, what you’re saying is actually correct, people are asking for specific, I want a speaker who speaks on blank. There’s no more generalists. Like, oh, we should bring that person in. It’s like, we need someone who does blank, blank and blank because our problem is blank. Companies are just so focused on what they have to do and what their challenges are and they’re looking for someone specific. 

And so, in everything you do, you have to number one, know your clarity and what you’re going to stand for in the market. And two, be almost polarizing. Where you seriously say, if you’re doing this, it’s going to make blank or it’s going to go wrong, you have to do this instead. And it’s like that strong of you have to do this. And people go, okay. And half the people on LinkedIn say that’s not true. It’s like, good. That’s the kind of engagement you want is half the people saying no and half the people saying yes on your feed. LinkedIn literally puts those all up to the surface. 

And a great example, and I know this sounds so silly, but a great example is that one of my clients who does customer experience did this post which went viral about how you should leave a hotel room. And he works in customer experience and he is like, if you leave a hotel room and you do blank, blank and blank for the people who clean it up, that’s the way you should leave a hotel room. And everyone was like, I paid $300 a night, I don’t have to do that. Right? And it went viral because so many people agreed and disagreed on it, but it’s in customer experience and it’s in a lane and it’s him being clear on something and the post went all over because he was polarizing.

Austin: Yeah, if you think about the algorithms that are being used for people to discover content, it’s based off of engagement and it’s hard to get better engagement than a good debate because people feel passionately about their opinions. If you can stoke those opinions that people really hold-on to, then, yeah. And I think that’s kind, it probably has to be scary for some people, right?

Chris: Exactly.

Austin: Do your clients ever come to you and say like, I don’t want to do that, I’m going to make people mad and nobody’s going to want to hire me? Is that the reaction you see?

Chris: That’s exactly it and I’m, on a personal level, I’ll tell you, my biggest fear in the world, if I’m honest, is public shame, right? I always want to look successful in the eyes of others. I don’t want people to not like me. And I think we’re all dealing with that in some regard and some people have an easier time to be like, hell, yeah. I love to say what people off. And I’m not suggesting that, but the key is here is to be strong in what you’re about in the world and then make strong statements in that work that will lead people to the success, so those who then say yes, right? 

And Simon Sinek talks a lot about this and I know he’s a name that people bring up a lot, but one of the things I think is really relevant about him is so much of his work is on research, right? And he says all of the time that the way the human brain works is you put up a big hat and it’s this color and it’s like, you plant that flag and it’s like everybody who loves this color, I’m all about this. You’re going to draw in all of the people who love that color and there are going to be a lot of people who don’t. But that’s the whole idea is like stand for that. And I would say that, that is the number one thing I’m seeing is that email and outbound marketing isn’t the thing anymore. What is, it’s like having great content online that stands for something and you being clear for what you stand for and really doing that in a way that feels really authentic to you.

Austin: So, a question about this that bubbles up for me is, I think most people, and I don’t want to make generalizations, but I think it’s a safe generalization. Most people are inherently pretty broad with their expertise. So, I can understand why you’re saying the specificity matters so much, but how do you get somebody to really pick a lane? This is something I imagine you help your clients with, what is a mechanism or a question that somebody could ask themselves to help them make the distinction about what they do and what they don’t do, even if they can do the other things?

Chris: It’s a great question and, of course, it’s a process, but the easiest way that I find where I’m doing that part of our work, and I always tell people, number one, you have to get your brand story right? What is your brand story? It’s as I work with blank, these kinds of character in the story, right? As I work with and name who you work with, what I consistently see. That’s the challenge you see over and over and over there. Once they, this is where people start saying, once people do blank, blank, and blank differently in their life, we start to see blank, and then it’s the results. 

And it’s such a simple thing, but when you can say as I work with what I consistently see, once they, and the results are, those four primer things start a story that allows people to go, okay, I know who this is about. The second part we’re always focused on is the distinction in your category of one. And to get people to a place where they find those key words. And usually, and this is just consistent with our work, is it’s usually three words. And the reason three is the words is it’s the first time that a brain can recognize a pattern and a really strong distinction statement both defines an outcome and describes the path to get there. 

And so, with the distinction, I’m always asking, what is the greatest challenge you solve? Right? And that’s hard for people to do because every time I ask someone a question, they tell me the solution. So, if I said that and they solve disengagement, what they would tell me is, the greatest problem I solve is engagement. No, that’s the greatest results you create. What is the greatest challenge you solve, right? And so, what I’m doing is I’m trying to get people obsessively clear about the biggest challenge their clients are facing and then we then say the second part is where is your experience lined up with that? And I ask them a series of questions related to that. And as a result, people always usually get to core distinction. 

So, for example, yesterday, and then this happens sometimes in 10 minutes, I was talking to someone and she’s faced adversity through her whole life. She came from Iran; she came here when she was 18. She faced every challenge you could possibly think. She went on to become CEO of a company that then scaled to over 350 million in three years. And so, she speaks on advantage within adversity or advantage through adversity. And adversity is what she’s faced her whole life. What does she help people create? This advantage and stuff. And so, within, I think 15 minutes we had looked up the trademark. The trademark was available, advantage within adversity. 

To know that she speaks on that and now every time she’s talking about stump, she’s talking to people about how you can create advantage within your adversity, whatever you’re facing, you can create advantage there, and I’ll show you how. That’s a very bold, clear statement and it’s been true of her whole life. Right?

Taylorr: What a great example.

Chris: Yeah.

Taylorr: Heck, yeah. So, I would imagine with the hierarchy, these are the problems you solve, but for a lot of speakers, I’m sure you’ve run into this, they’ll kind of distill down and they’ll say, well, I have X number of keynotes or X number of topics, three to five or whatever. So, I would assume then, even though the problem that you’re solving is, let’s say those three words. Let’s go with advantage, with adversity. You can still have separate topics underneath that or keynote subjects that distill more deeply into that thing, am I right? Am I understanding that right?

Chris: Exactly. And that’s the whole idea. That’s where they need brought in, but you have to have a top line that you’re known for.

Taylorr: Right? And it sounds like you’re going deeper in that subject. And I can relate personally to this, it’s almost like, when you’re kind of broad stroking the market, maybe you just classify, oh, I’m just a leadership speaker or something to that effect. It doesn’t create enough focus. And then once you start to get focus, this is the thing I do, then the world of opportunity really opens up about how deep you can really go into that particular subject matter. Is that something you see with your clients as well? Does that world open up for them or does it take a little bit of coaxing to?

Chris: I find that when you are in a lane it gets broader and broader and broader. And I’ll give you an example because it’s so helpful; my background is in therapy, right? And when I was learning to become a counselor, the person who is one of the best professors I’ve ever had, he said basic empathy, basic empathy, basic empathy until you find the one issue. And if you go deep in that one issue, you will get all of the issues of that person’s life. So, he said it’s like when you drill for oil. Lots of companies go out there and they drill a little bit here, no oil, little bit here, no oil, a little bit here. You drill deep enough in the right spot you will get all the oil on the bottom and no matter what, you’ll get all of it in that entire area, right? 

And so, the analogy here is that when you are clear about one area that you’re truly known for and it’s been true of you your whole life, you’ve always wanted to focus in on this area in one way or another and you have a way to define it. When you’re in that market, then you can do blank and blank and blank and blank within that, right? And a great example that most people know is, Dave Ramsey is going to be known for debt, right?

Austin: Yeah.

Chris: And he was just 100% known for debt. Debt, debt, debt, that’s his main thing he focused in on. As soon as he was known everywhere for helping people overcome debt. What did he do? He wrote a bunch of leadership books, culture books, how you shift this, how you do that, family values, all of this stuff because he was so successful in one area. And then everything broad can come on the other side. You have to be able to be really clear about one thing and then as you’re clear about that one thing, everything emerges from within it, right? Isn’t that the case with Speaker Flow? You guys have been known for one thing and then you guys are able to help speakers on almost every aspect of their business because the first thing is there.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: What’s a good analogy?

Austin: It’s true. Yeah. I think this is one of the areas that is the hardest to conceptualize, to some degree, because it’s counterintuitive, it’s like the more restrictive you get, in some ways, the more opportunity you have and that just those things just don’t line up, I think, in a lot of people’s brains, myself included. Because of that missed opportunity, the fear of missed opportunity, it can be a real driver, can be a real motivator, for better or for worse, I guess; depending on the scenario.

Chris: But the clarity makes everything really simple, I think.

Taylorr: It’s true.

Chris: It just makes it so much easier, and an example that I share is, and I think I shared this on our last interview, but I can’t say it enough, is that I was doing videos for people all throughout the country in different genres while I was going through graduate school. And I was like, how do I paint my way through graduate school? I’ll just do freelance video for people. I’m beginning a counseling practice and I’m still doing videos for people and a speaker asked me to do a video and I knew how to make stories. 

And so, that speaker took it to influence in 2013, it got reviewed as one of the best speaker videos that year, and so people started calling me and the second speaker I ever worked with tells this story, it’s Jerry O’Brien for those, and this is his IP, but at Coors Light, they decided they were going to be the coldest beer in the world. And that’s so stupid. You can’t say you’re the coldest beer. But they said, okay, internally we’re going to have that awareness. We’re going to have the awareness that we’re the coldest beer. If that’s true, what is everything we’re going to do? 

So, it’s like, we’ll make cans that turn blue when they’re cold. When we are on tap, we require people to pour our beer slightly colder than freezing, which is colder than every other tap out there, right? They did all of these things and within one year they grew by 5% and then two years they grew by 10%. And then when microbrews came on the scene and all major beers went into negative numbers, Coors Light was the only beer and it was the only part of MillerCoors that didn’t go into negative numbers because they were so distinct. And even today their brand is around chill, this is 18 years after they came up with the cold idea, right? 

There’s this chill because it’s exactly what the 21 to 25 year old genre is saying, but it’s still within the line of cold, right? And so now they say chill because that’s what kids 21 to 25 year olds say. And so, they’re so clear about that brand that they are consistently one of the best-selling light beers in the entire world, right? And it’s that kind of clarity, when I heard that for the first time, I pushed stop on my computer, I’m listening to this keynote and I decided I’m going to be the coldest beer for speakers, right? I’m going to be literally known for the number one in video production in the entire speaker industry. 

And when I put that on the goal, it made every decision I made so much easier after that, right? And the next day a law firm called me and said, hey, we’d love for you to do the brand work for all seven of our lawyers plus our brand for our law firm. So, it was eight videos, it was going to be a six-figure contract of what I was going to do. I needed the money, I was in graduate school, I was making no money, freshly married, I needed it. And I looked down on the sheet of paper and yesterday I’d put down, I’m going to be doing this and I’m going to make all decisions based on, will I be the coldest for the speaker industry. And I thought, oh, it’s a challenge. Let’s see if this is true. 

So, I told him, yeah, sorry, I only work with professional speakers. And he’s like, your website says you work; you have all of these brand company videos on it. And I’m like, yeah, the website’s being updated. Yeah, I just work with professional speakers, I can make a referral. And he was like, okay. And I turned it down. And I know that, that sounds crazy, but so many speakers literally get calls, and the person says, we really want you to talk about this. And they change who they are in that moment and they’re like, I actually can talk about that. Yes, you technically can, but you’re not the best in the industry for talking about that.

And in those moments you would be so much better if you said, that is such a great question. I actually have a colleague who specializes in that. So, if that’s really what you’re looking for, I’d like to make an introduction for you, because my specialty is helping you in blank. And when you know that level of specialty, that’s what everybody’s going to come to you for. And I will tell you, it took me exactly three and a half years, and I find this to be the case if I’m working with an emerging speaker who’s just starting out, we track it. It usually takes about 14 months before they’re seeing a six-figure return on what they wanted. And then it usually takes about three and a half years until they’re a household name for that topic, right? 

And I will tell you, three and a half years into my business, in exactly three and a half years, in one week I got calls from 10 Hall of Fame speakers in one week. And I only share this to say that it would’ve been a decision three and a half years ago and I struggled for months and times as I was growing the company to just make the revenue. But in one week it was like I couldn’t keep up with the demand. And in that year we went from three people on the team to, at that point there were 11 people on our team because I couldn’t keep up with demand. That’s what happens, right? And when people look at people like Cassandra Worthy in the industry, right? 

With Change Enthusiasm, they forget that when she was starting, she said to me, Chris and again, she did this, there’s nothing I was involved in with this. We helped her build some of it, but this was all Cassandra, but she was like, I’m going to make people enthusiastic about change. That’s what I’m going to do. And she’s like; I guarantee you that within the next few years when people think about change, everybody is going to say Cassandra Worthy. And that kind of clarity and Change Enthusiasm with a TM, people don’t talk about being enthusiastic about change. So, it was not a sexy thing at the beginning, but it just took on like wildfire. That’s the kind of clarity you have to have and you have to drive it home until everybody in the whole world believes as much as you.