Adding Value: From Good To Great Speaker with Bobby Umar

Would you settle at being good, knowing that you have the potential to be great? All it takes is a little push, and you’ll be amazed at how adding a little more value will take you to great lengths. Five-time TED Talk speaker, Bobby Umar, shares his personal experiences on how he became one of the greats, leaving the corporate world behind to be an amazing motivational speaker. Proving to be useful not only on stage, he talks about public speaking as a vital part of any personal brand or business. Bobby gets down to the job of the speaker and then shares some effective ways they can communicate their value. Inspiring those who want to break in the speaking world, he also gives away strategies that he has personally and still continues to use.

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Your Brand Marketing · Bobby Umar February 6th, 2019 The YourLIVINGBrand.live show

Adding Value: From Good To Great Speaker with Bobby Umar

Thank you for joining me. I’m having a blast. We’ve missed the polar vortex. I feel bad for everybody who has been part of this thing. Hopefully everybody is warming up. Hopefully everybody is thawing out and ready for a great show. I have been in absolute remiss and I want to apologize. Rebel is my sound engineer. She is the magic behind my mic. She is the woman that is taking care of me, and I wanted to give her a shout-out, without her magic without her taking care of me, without her taking the time to make sure they sound great. I want to take the time to shout-out to Rebel. She is an integral part of the show and I want to make sure you guys all know about her. She is also the person that feeds your question. When you guys ask questions on the site, she’s the one that feeds them to me. It is great.

Before we go on I want to tell you a bit about our guest. His name is Bobby Umar. Bobby is a five-time TED Talk. He’s given five TED Talks. He speaks around the world and he is incredible to speak to. We are talking about professional speakers. I want to talk about public speaking as a vital part of any personal brand or any business for that matter. Every single person within a company, doesn’t matter what you do is always selling. You’re selling your ideas. You’re always telling your concepts. You’re always getting people to want to understand the value that you bring and the ideas that you’re bringing to the table. It’s important that you can speak in public that you can get rid of the “ums” and the “ahs” and that you can articulate your thoughts cohesively. It’s important.

When you do, people take you seriously. People want to know your ideas. People want to know and they want to listen to you. They want to engage with you. They want to believe in you. It’s something that all of us need to learn about. It’s a skill that I am glad I learned from an early age, I was lucky. Many of you may not be old enough to remember it but in the 80s there was a guy by the name of Tommy Vu. Tommy Vu had a marketing seminar that he taught on real estate. It was phenomenal. They did this across North America. They were ads on TV, etc. One of my dad’s best friends Sam Almond and his brother Sheldon were the pitch men for Tommy Vu. They were the guys who came in your town, sat in front of a room of maybe 500 or 800 people and pitched the seminar. You came in, you got a free half-day seminar or three-hour seminar. Sam gave you all the information, told you why you should be part of this and got you all excited and signed you up for the course.

Tommy or one of his guys came in and gave the workshop or the seminar and it was phenomenal. I learned from Sam the nuances of being on stage, the power of being on stage and how to bring the audience in. One thing I’m going to tell you is this great story about Sam many years ago was probably in his 50s, but he looked like he was in the ‘70s or ‘80s. He had a little bit of a hunch. He had gray in his hair, scruffy beard and big, thick glasses, and it looked on stage like he was wearing a hearing aid. He went on stage and he was magic. He engaged the audience. He talked to them and he brought them up and brought them down and brought them back up again. It was phenomenal how he was able to work a crowd. He would take questions through the entire thing.

One day I said, “Sam, how do you do this? In the middle of your pitch when you’re right in the middle of a fever, somebody asks you a question and you’re able to go right into answering that question, come right back and not even miss a beat?” He says, “Let me tell you a secret. Don’t tell anybody. See this in my pocket, it’s a tape recorder. That’s not a hearing aid in my ear, that’s a microphone. What I’m doing is when somebody asked me a question, I reach into my pocket and I hit the pause. I tell them that they’ve asked a good question. I go off and I answer their question. I put my hands back in my pocket and go, ‘That was a great question. Thank you for asking.’ I hit play again and I’m listening to the talk as I’m giving it.”

To me as a kid, that was magic. To be able to sit there and say, “There are more than one way of delivering a speech,” to be able to make sure that you can be able to give a three-hour seminar and remember all that information, he found a way that worked for him. I’m not saying that that works for everybody. I’m surely not saying that majority of people do it. I don’t do it, but I’m never on stage for more than an hour. It reminded me that it’s the power of being able to be flexible.

To be able to sit there and say, “This person took the time to raise their hand to ask me a question to be involved and be interested. It’s my job and my duty from the stage, to be able to answer that question,” if it’s relevant at that time. If it wasn’t, he would divert that person and say, “That’s a great question. I’m going to get that. I’ll be right with you with that. I’m going to answer your question.” He would do that as well. It’s about being able to engage people and be able to bring people in. Audiences are unique. I don’t care if you’re speaking to 1, 5, 20, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 people. Every audience is unique. Every audience walks in with certain agenda. They believe that they need to know certain things.

When I go to conferences and I speak on stage or I do workshops for different companies, I take the time, a week, a month, two months, three months ahead of time to talk to the organizers and understand who is going to be in the room. Who’s going to be there? What do they want to learn? What are the challenges that they’re facing? What are the things that are going to move the needle for them? What are the things that are making them tear their hair out? Figuring out, how can I adjust? My talk, my workshop, my seminar, to be able to meet the needs of the people that are going to be in the room.

If all I do is create a canned speech and deliver it all over the place and never change one word. Maybe I’m serving 5% of the people that are in the audience. I don’t want to serve 5% of people. I’m never going to get everybody, but I want the majority of people in the audience to know that I’m on their side. That’s what I do, I want to be on your side. I want to answer your questions. I want to know about you. That’s what’s more important. When I’m in front of an audience, I want to know about them. I want to know the things that are important to them. What are the things that are gnawing on their brain? What are the problems they’re trying to solve and how can I solve them?

When I speak on stage, I always make sure there are fifteen or twenty minutes at the end of every talk, to be able to answer questions from the audience. It’s important. If I didn’t cover what they had in mind, if there’s something that came up during the talk and I didn’t answer it, I want to be able to answer. I stick around afterward to answer people’s questions. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for an hour and a half, depending on how many people are there to be able to answer questions. Whoever the organization that I’m working for, I want to know that they are getting value. They are getting somebody that cares about their audience, objectives and the people that are coming to the room. Those people are going to speak about that workshop, keynote address, conference and exhibition, and want to come back year after year because they heard a speaker that spoke to them. It wasn’t something that put them to sleep five minutes into the talk. You need to be able to do this.

Let’s talk about things within speaking itself. The job of a speaker is to teach, to motivate and to inspire, that’s important. If you can’t teach, motivate and inspire, you’re in trouble. It’s a matter of understanding. The majority of speakers that I see out there in the world use PowerPoint. Like it, love it and hate it, learn to use it as a tool. Don’t just use standard slides. Create slides for your own, one point per slide, fewer slides. I’m going for an hour and I might use three slides, and there might be five words on those three slides total.

I use images and I build stories. I use the image behind me to be able to illustrate a point. I don’t sit there and speak to the PowerPoint slide. If all you’re doing is standing up, depending on what your audience is whether you’re in a boardroom, whether you’re in a Chamber of Commerce event or wherever and all you’re doing is speaking to the slides behind you, just send them to people. If all you’re doing is dictating what’s already on the screen, what value and what insight are you providing?

Becoming A Great Speaker: Corporations, as much as they can be a great place to work, only value people to a certain point. No matter what, profitability always come before you.

The PowerPoint, the slides, the presentation or whatever you’re doing is an augment and to make a point of what you’re talking about, tell a story. That’s important, tell stories. They’re easier for you to remember. They’re easier for your audience to remember. They give lessons. They provide things that people can grab onto and they can re-tell. If you go from telling one story to the next story, and you tell two or three stories within an hour. You’ve taught three different lessons and people will remember them. Instead of sitting there going, “What was on slide number 42? I don’t remember the details of that. It doesn’t matter.”

People want to know the high-level things. They want to know how is this going to help them make better. If they meet the details that are in the PowerPoint presentation to be able to augment them, great, send the slides afterward. Don’t speak to the slides. Don’t read the slides. All you’re doing is you’re going to lose your audience quickly. One thing that I explain is when they’re standing in front of people, they pace back and forth. You can almost see it on the carpet. You can see the carpet run out of because that’s where people pace back and forth.

Move on purpose. If you’re moving, move because somebody asks you a question and you’re leaning in to talk to them. Move because you’ve talked to the side of the audience and you want to talk to the other side of the audience. Don’t just pace back and forth, create a spot, be comfortable and speak from a spot. Some people use electric. Some people are comfortable with it. I hate them. I don’t like to be behind it. I like nothing between me and the audience. If you can sit there and say, “I’m going to stand here. I’m going to speak.” When it’s important for me to move because I need to talk to somebody specifically, I need to talk to the other side of the room or I need to go and ask somebody a specific question, then you move. Other than that, be firm on where you stand.

The last thing I want to talk about is to prepare for the talk. Take the time to prepare the talk specifically for the people that are going to be in the audience. Change the talk up. Add stories that are relevant. If you’re speaking to insurance people and I do that a lot. I speak a lot to the insurance industry. Talk in stories that are relevant to the insurance industry. If you’re speaking to construction people, speak in a language and with stories and with examples that are relevant to that industry.

Build the things into your talk that are going to be things that your customers or people that you’re speaking to are going to want to sit there and say, “I get that. I can relate to that. I understand that. I can see how this helps me.” If you can do that, if you can take the time to specify each and everyone who you’re talking. I don’t care if it’s a board of directors’ meeting. I don’t care if it’s talking at a Chamber of Commerce. I don’t care if it’s dealing with people one-on-one or at trade shows as well. Talk to the people in a language that speaks to them and the things that are going to make sense to them.

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I have a couple of questions. The first question is, “What businesses take you on many travels?” What gets me on the road, I work best in front of a customer. We do consulting. We do workshops and we do keynote addresses for companies. I’m doing a new series of workshops on branding and branding boot camps. We’re going to be doing a series of bootcamps one on corporate branding and we’re going to be doing one on personal branding. The keynotes that I do are all about influence to trust and your organizations hire me.

You can get in touch with me through YourLIVINGBrand.live Show. You can hire me to come on board and help you guys understand what your brand is. Who you’re valuable to. Why those people should care and how to communicate with them effectively. I do that through consulting workshops and keynote addresses. Bobby is a road warrior. He travels all the time. That was their question. Does Bobby travel often? Bobby is constantly on the road.

God loves his wife, his children and mine as well. Putting up with the Road Warriors is not always a lot of fun because sometimes we’re gone for a while. Bobby talks worldwide and he is all about personal branding. He is all about how do you add value and that’s how Bobby and I met. We met through some good close personal friends. I’m inspired by him. He’s been speaking professionally for years. He’s an incredible speaker and has a lot to say. Bobby, it is great having you on the show. Thanks for making the time.

I’m excited to be here, Ben. Let’s do this.

I love these coast to coast conversations. Get everybody going and get everybody all excited about it. For people who don’t know Bobby, he speaks all over the world. The man is a globetrotter. He has the Road Warrior badge. It’s a great badge to have. You get to see all kinds of fun and funky things, but you don’t spend a lot of time in your own bed. Welcome to the club. I love being in that club. It’s a little crazy. For people who don’t know this show, this is all about adding value. It’s all about how do you add value to your audience. How do you get people to understand what makes you different? What makes you unique? Why don’t you walk me through and talk me about where you’ve been, where you are and where you’re going.

Where I’ve been has been several careers. I was an engineer then I was in brand marketing. I did the performing arts and I was teaching. I had four different careers before I finally came of the idea that speaking is what I want to do. One of the things in my life was I felt lost. My career stuck, a couple of jobs and unfulfilled in what my path was. Once I figured that out and dived into my personal brand, figure out what most of my values, my skills, my interests and what aligned with who I was, what kind of impact do I have, I started the speaking career. Over the journey, in the beginning I started off, it was a struggle at first because I didn’t have the right mentors and coaches. I didn’t have the right process. I also became a dad. I was focusing about being a dad and I spoke to my business too much and the recession hit. I launched my business in 2007. Everything hit on first like my kids and the recession.

Every speaker, influencer, and thought leader is going to be trying to help people with information and education. Share on X

It was the perfect storm.

It is certainly better than being in the crap show that I was in corporate. I was glad to be out of that. I learned long ago that corporations as much as they can be a great place to work and they value people, they only valued people to a certain point. No matter what, profitability and the bottom line always comes before you. I remember my last conversation with my company, I said, “I need to take care of my health, my diabetes. I want to take two weeks off. I wanted to get my hours back.” They said, “Here’s a package. See you later. We don’t want to deal with you.” I go, “That’s interesting.”

That’s how they thought they were going to help you take care of your diabetes, by packaging off.

That’s their perspective. For me like, “I need to figure out what I want to do now.” I’ve been speaking professionally for several years. It was hard in the beginning in terms of the journey. At a certain point particularly with the advent of social media, I realized that this is something that I need to leverage because I don’t see it going anywhere. I still think it’s a cool thing. At that point, the most famous people, the best speakers were leveraging social media with follower-ship like, Tony Robbins or sports heroes and things like that.

Let me build this up. Twitter was the first one that took off and within about a year and a half out, I have 100,000 followers. That’s where I still had my first influence as a speaker. From there, things start to fall into place in terms of doing my first TEDx Talk, my second one all the way to the fifth TEDx Talk. I’ve been in five TEDx Talks. For me, getting my agent and starting to do stuff more globally as supposed to in Canada. Things started taking off on 2012, 2013 and I haven’t looked back.

One of the things that I’m learning as I go along as a speaker, how do I scale my business? What kind of brand do I want to have out there? Two big developments for me have been one, creating programs to scale. I have a couple of online programs and coaching programs that I do. The second thing that I’m doing is I started my own startup. I was doing this thing called DYPB, Discover Your Personal Brand which is all about personal branding. It’s a conference but we decided to turn it into a start-up.

We’re doing the startup where I’m spending some of my time with a team of fourteen of us trying to build some momentum and movement around this organization. Doing leadership development stuff around the idea of the personal brand journey which creates more alignment for them to focus and impact. That’s a new thing for me because I’ve been a solopreneur for 30 years. I’m learning, it’s slower which is very frustrating for me, but I get it because you people have different timelines and needs.

You’re not reliant on yourself anymore. You have a team that you have to be working with.

After these questions about, “How long does it take to do this? If I was doing this, it would take me this long.” I’m like, “I’ve got to slow down.” People have lives and I’ve got to be mindful of that. That’s where I was and that’s where I am now. In terms of where I’m going, growing the startup to do stuff across Canada, if not the world, is something that we’re boldly looking after. My Speaker Mastermind program is something I’m trying to do in terms of speaking. I’m trying to help other speakers build public speaker profiles. Build proposition brands around who they are. Helping and continue to do speaking is still my number one thing. My number one thing is to be on stage in front of 500 people and rock it.

It’s a matter of having those goals and understanding what those goals are. No matter what you do, you have to have those goals in life. If you don’t, you’re going to sputter.

There are different things. There are goals, directions, purpose and there’s vision, the wide statement. For me, I have a clear wide statement in terms of who I serve. I have a clear outline on what I want to do with my goals. For example, I had four key goals I was going to work on. Similarly, I gave a reflection event at an event, which was amazing. After that reflection, I start planning for what I want to do in the New Year. All these things, direction, goals and accountability are important.

What I know you for mostly is as a speaker. I’ve heard you talk. I’ve seen your TED Talks. It’s part and parcel of your overall brand and your brand is as an educator. From what I know of you, where your real passion is, it is being up on stage, absolutely it is. That’s a vehicle for what your passion is. What your brand is, from what I can tell, and you would need to tell me I’m wrong, is the fact that you want to educate people, that you want to help people. Take people to the next level and give them the tools to be able to do things on their own. You’re not looking to give people a handout you’re looking to give people a hand up. Am I seeing it right?

Becoming A Great Speaker: People leverage at power of connection with the self, personal branding connection with others, and connection with the world.

Every speaker, influencer and thought leader is going to be trying to help people with information and education, things like that. The education part of it is empowerment. What I would say for my mobile brand is the power of connection. What I talk about is people leverage at power of connection, which is connection with the self, personal branding connection with others, which is networking and connection with the world, digital storytelling and social media. They can leverage that power of connection to empower themselves to make moves in their life whether it’s personal professionals. That’s what I do and that’s what I’m teaching, and I’m hoping it will create some impact for people

When you’re trying to engage people and you’re engaging a new audience, how do you communicate that value? How do you communicate that sense of purpose? How do you get people to understand that you’re the person that can be delivering that to their audience?

There are two things I do. One is, I spend a lot of time to be intuitive to understand their needs and their pains and how they’re feeling. Sometimes I’ll do that even before I go to an event, or I’ll even talk to the audience and say, “What brings you here?” They’ll pretty much validate what I’m always trying to do anyways. Intuitively I understand how the audience feels. Number two, what I’ll do is I’ll go on stage while I talk about this thing, but I’ll actually deliver one personal story in my own life and what I’ve learned.

Pretty soon we’ll have heads nodding in the audience, “I get that. I’ve been there. I relate to you. I relate to being stuck in my career related to being fulfilled in my career path. I relate to feeling lost on my health journey.” When I do that, that’s how I create that connection. On top of that, once I start talking, except the stories, there are case studies. There’s data and that other stuff that reinforces my intuitive knowledge of their pain points. As well as my own personal story that’s going to drive home the message into force and encourage them to act.

Give them something to hook onto, something to relate to. If you can make it personal, if you can get people to see how your story relates to them and how it helps them grow in their own skin, then they’re going to act on it.

The story is the way for me to relate to the audience, to share my belief, share my values. Also create that connection with like, “You know what this relates to me. I feel that pain. I understand that bliss that you’re going towards and it completely resonates with my life in a certain way.” When I tell that story, particularly about my career path and those pain points, they resonate and it works well. You see it particularly at the end of the speech, one is in Q&A. They’re like, “That resonated with me when you talk about that thing.” The stories are the key part that drives home the message but also quick relatability.

The fact that you’ve done five TED Talks to me is an amazing thing. When somebody is looking to get involved in a TED Talk because there are a lot of people out there that would love to get on the TED stage. Whether it’s a TED stage, a TEDx stage, a TED Educational stage, what’s the thing that you would give them as a personal starting point? How do you start that journey? Many people look at this and they say, “That’s unattainable. I don’t even know where to start.”

The biggest thing that people do wrong when it comes to the TEDx journey getting a TED Talk is they have the wrong idea, the wrong topic. Like, “I’ve got this great talk. I’m going to talk about the importance of sales.” It’s like, “That’s such a not unique idea.” Coming up with the right idea and the right tagline and getting people’s attention and something unique. Coming up with that right idea is the hardest thing. When I work with TEDx people, with clients who want a TEDx Talk, it’s that first idea that they need to figure out and a lot of people struggle with that. They think their one idea would be good, but they haven’t thought it through in terms of the TED culture, the TED audience and what the organizer of the TED talks depending on the theme of the conference they’re looking for. You have to make sure it gets our attention. The last one I did, it was about hugs but I wouldn’t suggest, I talked about hug. I called it the History and Mystery of Hugs and they’re like, “That’s interesting.”

It had a great tag and it got you interested.

That’s what I would do, coming up with the right idea. That’s the most important thing. The second most important thing to do is learn how to pitch it. Pitching it is different than pitching a speaking gig or something else. You have to understand how that works and some of the processes. Those are probably the two biggest things.

That information is great because it brings us down to almost anything. If you don’t have the right message for the right people and convey it in the right way, nobody’s going to respond to it.

I have to make a connection and the best way to make a connection is how you express and communicate that. When I look at my first TEDx Talk, which is The 5 Cs of Connection, the first thing I say is, “You have to care and to communicate. Be clear generally and you communicate in an effective way to create a connection.” Ultimately you have to be able to sell it. You have to be able to express it.

People can leverage that power of connection to empower themselves to make moves in their life. Share on X

Every audience is completely different. When I’m speaking to a corporate audience versus when I’m speaking to a bunch of salespeople, the talk has got to be different. It could be the same talk. It could be structured the exact same way. It could be the same slides, but the stories that you tell have to be relevant to the audience that you’re speaking in front of or else it’s not going to resonate. What are the little things that you do to be able to make sure that your talk is relevant to the audience that you’re in front of.

I take a lot of time to work with organizing it to understand their audience that demographic is how they’re feeling. I make sure I have a call or I say, “Explain to me what they love, what they don’t love who spoke before. What was good? What was bad? What would make this a home run for you guys?” I try to understand the audience. Understanding lines is the key to doing everything it says, the key to my prep, to my success, to what I’m trying to do. That to me is the first thing I would do. Oftentimes when I prepare my talks, I make sure it resonates in a way that they will get particularly with the imagery in the stories. One tough topic I ever had was for grades six, seven, eight students. I was super nervous. I’m like, “How do I make this cool? I’m not Justin Bieber. I’m not a famous skateboard guy. I’m not Taylor Swift. What do I do?”

I completely changed how I did my talk. I threw in a ton of references to like Star Wars, Toy Story, Harry Potter and all the stuff. They went well but I was very nervous about that. I do what I could to understand the audience. I talk to organizers, “What do these kids care about?” Tell me about previous speakers who have done well, have done badly. What worked, what didn’t work? By having that understanding, it takes two or three hours to figure that out and to dive in, to have a good understanding. The other thing you do you get nervous about an audience and not when I was. I vetted and I said, “Here’s my structure I’m proposing. I’m vetting this. What do you think?” “This sounds great.” I’m like, “Good,” but there’s, “I don’t know. They might not like it,” then you have to shift.

It’s always important to make sure that you’re on the same page with the organizers. What are the goals? What are we trying to achieve? Who’s the audience? Who’s going to be in the room? Those are all things that a lot of speakers and a lot of people that speak, CEOs and VP’s that go up and speak in front of an audience don’t take the time to think of. They say, “I have my speech. I’m going to give my speech.” They don’t take the time to modify it to make sure that it’s relevant for the audience that they’re putting the speech in front of.

That separates the professional speakers like me from the ones who are like vice president of a bank and they go to speak. There are people who work in corporate who are great speakers because that needs time to think about this. They keep honing their craft to get better.

That’s the thing when you’re working on a speech. I don’t know about you. I tape record a lot of my speeches and listen back to them and sit there and say, “Was the phraseology right?” What did you do right? What did you do wrong? You always got to learn. You’re always learning. You’re always improving. You always sit there going, “That was a dumb way of putting it. Maybe I should do it this way instead.” What are the little tricks that you use when you’re sitting on stage and things are going and you look at down the audience and you go, “This isn’t going as well as it should?” What are the things that you use that could help you, first of all, recognize that and be able to pivot?

A few things one would be, I would effectively take a break and say, “I’m feeling something here. Let me ask you guys a question.” I’m throwing a question to see what they care about. I’ll take even five-minute break to engage people. What do you want most in this? What are you trying to get? Probably one thing I would do. The other thing in terms of when if I’m feeling is not going well. I leverage my strength. I’ll use my energy and I’ll ramp it up an extra 10%, 20%. That’s one thing I’ll do. The second thing I’ll do is I’ll start leveraging my humor. I’ll throw jokes and I’ll get funny and people like jokes. The third thing I’ll do is I’ll tell another story.

I have all the database in my head of like a hundred stories that I can leverage, “Let me take a quick break and tell you a little story.” I’ll say, “Why did I tell you the story?” Get them more engaged. The first one is important because I need to take a quick break and understand what they feel and what they want. If I didn’t do a good job of that, I want to make sure I’ll be able to pivot that on stage. All my training with Second City and improvisation helps me do that. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break because that five-minute break could lead to another 20 to 30 minutes of magic and far more resonate. If only 30% bought in, even take it to 60% would double the impact that you have on the audience.

It’s taking the time to be in tune with your audience, including looking at the crowd. Listen to the crowd. Look at the body movement. It’s easy when there are 30, 40, 50 people in a room. When there are 4,000 or 5,000 people in a room, it’s a lot more difficult. It’s being in tune with what’s going on with when you’re on stage, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a first-time speaker or you’ve done it 500,000 times. We all get to that point where you look out in the audience and you go, “They’re not feeling it. How do we shift this?”

Those are great deals. I love asking a question bringing people back on focus telling stories and bringing the energy up. Those are all things that can help anybody speaking at any level of their career. To be able to get people back on their side because that’s what you want. You want the audience on your side. One last question and this has been great. When you get off stage or you come out of a meeting or you get out of an appointment, you get in your car and you drive away. What’s the one thing you want people to think about you when you’re not in the room?

The thing that I want people to remember about me when I’m out of the room, I want them to remember that Bobby cares. This guy cares about us, about our success, about our challenges. He genuinely cares and he wants to help us, which means that if he does care about then maybe I should listen to what he said. Maybe I should try to take his words and then put them into action in my life. I want them to think that Bobby cares.

Caring is huge. I tell the story of influence of trust and people care if there’s trust. Trust is influence and that’s how you go from success to success. Bobby, I wish you absolute success in your career. I love what you do. I love the passion you bring to the table. I love how you help people. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Becoming A Great Speaker: There’s nothing wrong with taking a break because that five-minute break could lead to another 20 to 30 minutes of magic.

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Bobby is incredible. The number one thing that I took away from that was probably one of the words that he said as he walked out the door is about caring. You need to care about your audience. If you care about them, you’re going to do what you need to do to make sure that they’re successful. You’re going to listen to them. You’re going to make sure that what you’re providing them is a value to them. Those are important things. There are great questions that came in. I want to address these things one at a time.

“This focus-ship as we go through life?” Absolutely. I am not the same person now at almost 50 years old as I was at twenty. At twenty years old I was in university. I was drinking. I was having a good time. These days, I’m a husband. I’ve been married for 22 years. I have a fifteen-year-old son. I have a great business. I have a great life. I travel. My priorities are different. I’m not chasing the dollars as much anymore. I’m chasing the experience. For me it’s about the experiences that I have, the relationships that I formed, the ideas that I’ve come across, the value that I provide to others and others provide to me.

Those are the things that are important to me. It’s not being on the 30 under 30 list or the 40 under 40 list or having that $10 million house or a $150,000 car. It’s being able to take my family to Hawaii for two weeks, unplugging my phone and being present. Those are the things that are important. As we get older, our life shifts and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with it. When you’re young being ambitious and wanting all those things. As you get older and as you achieve more, as you become more successful and got more comfortable in your own skin, those needs change.

The next question was, “You should be your own critic?” Absolutely be your own critic. Don’t beat yourself up but be aware of your shortcomings. We all have them. We all have things that we do well. We all have things that we do poorly. You do not want me painting your house. It’s that simple. If we sit there and say, “These are the things that we do well, these are the things we don’t do well.” We focus on the things that we do well and we find people to help us with the things that we don’t. Our life is going to be a lot simpler.

We’re going to add a lot more value and we’re going to be better suited to helping other people. Be your own critic. Understand what your value is, where you’re not valuable. What you can provide, what you can’t provide. Don’t beat yourself up. Understand it so you can move forward in a positive way. Is that a question we should be asking our self? That’s a question we should always be asking ourselves.

We should always be asking ourselves, how can we be better? What are the things that we can provide to other people that are going to make their lives better? How can we help change people’s lives? How can we make things and communicate in such a way that we move the needle for others? Nothing is better for me when I’m out on stage, when I’m doing workshops, when I’m going consulting and I see the light bulb go on people’s eyes.

They’re going, “You want people to scribble something in their notebook.” They get pumped up and they talk to you about it afterward and maybe they phone you. They send you an email or LinkedIn request. Those things are great because you watch somebody, you’ll be inspired to move forward and if we can help other people do that, life is better. Let me talk about one or two things and about some things that are happening. I’ve got two great boot camps coming up and I have a new mastermind. Let me talk about the mastermind first. This is a small business mastermind. It’s designed for ten people.

It’s going to be twice a month. It’s designed for small businesses to be able to move the needle. It’s to be able to sit there and say, “I am a small business.” I get it. I understand the challenges that everybody faces. I understand how people are struggling and how people want to be better. How they want to communicate more effectively and how they want to be more successful. The challenges they face with staffing issues, payroll, people not paying on time, and all the things that go with it. I get it. I’ve been there, I’ve done it. I want to be part of your lives and help you. This is going to be done over Zoom. It can be anywhere in North America to come and join me take a look at my website.

You’ll you can find me at YourLIVINGBrand.live Show. I love to have you guys part of that. There are two things at boot camps. I’ve got a couple of different boot camps that I’m looking to bring to different cities. If you are members of Chambers of Commerce, board of trades, or professional organizations where you think that you are part of who could see value of this, I’d love to bring this to your organizations in a way. One is the one-day personal branding boot camp. It’s designed to get you to understand who you are, what you do, why you do it, who you do it for, and why people should care about you, articulated in a way.

The other one is a business branding boot camp. This is a two-day event that’s designed to have you walk away with a business and a communication strategy. Be able to have you walk away, sit there and say, “This is my brand. This is what I do. This is what I do it for. These are the people I should be talking to and this is how I should be talking to them.” If this is something that I can help you guys out with, get in touch with me, call me. Get in touch with me via email at YourBrandMarketing.com. I’d love to have you there. This show is a great vehicle. It lets me speak to you and lets you ask me questions. I love the fact that you ask me questions. I love the fact that you’re passionate, you’re curious. You want to know what’s going on and I love this about you.

Keep the questions coming and send me questions. If there’s a topic you want me to talk on, if there’s a guest you’d love me to have on board, let me know and I’ll get the guest on board. I’ll cover a topic that you guys want to talk about. I want to be able to make your lives better. Talk to me. Communicate with me. Let me know what you do. Go through the show through YourLIVINGBrand.live. That is the vehicle. That’s how you’re going to be able to get in touch with me. That’s how you’re going to be able to communicate with me. Hopefully I can add value to you and that’s what’s important. Thank you for being a great audience. Rebel, thank you once again for making me sound awesome. You’re amazing. This show will be rebroadcast on iHeartRadio, on iTunes and SoundCloud, jump on it. You’ll be able to find your favorite rebroadcast. See you next episode.