SPI 416: Before Your First (or Next) Presentation DO THIS, with Grant Baldwin

SPI 416: Before Your First (or Next) Presentation DO THIS, with Grant Baldwin

Pat Flynn:
All right. If you’re listening to this right now, that probably means one of two things. Somebody has asked you recently to speak in front of another group of people. You’ve gotten your first public speaking gig or maybe you’ve done one of those before and it didn’t go so well and you want to go back, start over if you will, and try again; and you want to get the right information, the right mindset, the right to-do so that you can actually do a good job when you’re up there in front of those people, whether it’s a small audience or a big audience.

Pat:
Or, perhaps in the future you want to do that and make speaking a part of your thing, whatever your thing is. I’ve been speaking for a very long time now, about eight years, and today I have a very special guest on, Grant Baldwin, long time friend of mine. We’ve been on the speaking circuit together for quite a while. We’ve spoken at the same events. You can find him over at thespeakerlab.com. He also has a new book that came out recently with his good friend, Jeff Goins, another former guest on the show, called The Successful Speaker.

Pat:
Today, we’re going to take the position of… Grant and I are going to work together to help you, the first time speaker, leading into your first talk. It’s like you’ve just gotten booked, you’ve just gotten signed, whether you’re getting paid or not. This is the thing to listen to, to put you in the right mindset. We got a lot of great goodies for you so that you can have the confidence to crush it when you get on that stage and have it be a successful part of your business too. Listen in, this is going to be a good one.

Announcer:
Welcome to The Smart Passive Income podcast where it’s all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he once grow a beard, but then scared himself in the mirror, Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What’s up everybody? Welcome to session 416 of The Smart Passive Income podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Pat Flynn. I’m here to help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too. One way to help people is on stages and we got Grant Baldwin on the show today and I’m not going to make you wait any longer. We’re just going to dive right in.

Pat:
Again, you’re coming up on stage, you’re going to have confidence after listening to this show, so stick around. Hey, Grant, welcome to the SPI podcast. Thanks for being here, man.

Grant Baldwin:
Pat it’s a huge, huge honor to be here, man. I’ve been listening to the show for a long time and you’ve been a big influence. I know you hear a lot of people say that, but I genuinely appreciate you letting me hang out with you.

Pat:
Yeah, we’re going to hang out for sure, but we’re also going to help everybody listening because you may be listening to this because I told you, “Go listen because you’re about to speak on stage and you want to know how to approach it. How to approach the talk, how to approach the presentation, how to make the best of your time when you get invited on stage.” I think we all know that getting on stage is great for your business and for authority.

Pat:
Before we get into that, Grant, why are you in love with the stage? What has it done for you and why do you recommend people go on the stage?

Grant:
Yes. Speaking is one of those things that can be kind of polarizing because people either love it or hate it. You and I both geek out on it and it’s a lot of fun. One of the things that’s really unique about speaking that I think is different than other forms of content, whether that’s a blog or a podcast or a video or whatever, is you get the real time feedback from the audience. For example, right now, at this very moment in time, Pat, there may be thousands of people who are listening to this, but we don’t get to see them. We have no idea what’s happening in their world at this moment as they are digesting all of this, right? Versus whenever you are on stage, whether you’re in front of ten people or a hundred people or a thousand people, you get the immediate real time feedback of what’s happening with the audience.

Grant:
You can see as they’re nodding, you can see as they’re smiling, you can see as they’re laughing, you can see as they’re taking notes, you can see as they’re totally confused and lost, and so it gives you that real time feedback that you can use to make your presentation and your content better. Not only just from a speaking standpoint, but taking what you speak on and getting that feedback and applying it to some of those other forms of content that you can use.

Grant:
Speaking is just an… it’s an incredible, incredible way to make a difference, to make an impact, and to share your message with others.

Pat:
Yeah, hundred percent agree with that. I also believe it’s an amazing way to build your authority. I also love speaking for the benefit of connecting with the other speakers, the room that all of the speakers kind of get access to backstage. I’ve met some amazing high level people in those rooms. When you’re in that room too, you immediately have some authority and it’s just kind of insane the kind of connections that happen there too. There’s so many benefits of speaking, which we could talk about for days, but I want to help everybody out who’s listening because I want to assume that everybody listening to this is either about to speak on stage for the first time or they’ve done it before and maybe it didn’t go as well as they wanted.

Pat:
Let’s just say we got booked for our talk. Grant, what’s the first thing we should be thinking about to maximize this effort and make the best of it?

Grant:
Well, for the talk itself, whenever you’re putting together that presentation, you want to do as much research and homework about the client and that audience as possible. Whenever you’re putting together the talk, one of the things that you want to do is you really want to begin with the end in mind. What is the point of the talk? Where is the place that you are trying to take that audience to? You want to imagine that… Think of it like a road trip or think of it like you’re going to the airport. You want to pick everybody up at the same spot. You want to take them on some type of journey. You want to drop them off at the same spot.

Grant:
Another way to think about this is as you’re creating your talk, as you’re delivering your talk, the audience is always asking themselves two questions. So what, and now what? So what, and now what? An audience wants to know, so what? That’s great that that happened to you. That’s great that you’ve built a successful business. That’s great that you’ve accomplished this thing. That’s great that you won a gold medal. That’s great that you’re a war hero. That’s great that you overcame cancer. But what does that have to do with me? How does that apply to my life? So, what?

Grant:
The other question is, now what? What am I supposed to do as a result of this? Pat, you and I maybe have… I’m sure many others have listened to speakers or we’ve seen speakers before and we leave the room going like, “It was good. I don’t really know what to do with it now. Am I supposed to think different? Am I supposed to act different? Am I supposed to feel different? What am I supposed to do as a result of that?”

Grant:
You want to be really, really clear as you’re creating the talk and presenting the talk is, what do I want the audience to do? What do I want them to think? What do I want them to feel? What do I want to happen as a result of the talk? Those two questions as you’re creating the talk, always, always, always keep those questions in mind. So what? Why does this matter to the audience? Why should they care? Now, what do I want them to do as a result of it?

Pat:
But obviously it matters who that audience is. You had mentioned a very, very important piece of advice in the beginning, which is research that audience. How do you go about researching that audience? Where would you start?

Grant:
Yeah, so you can do this in a couple different ways. First of all, most events are going to be booked anywhere from three to six months out. Now, the bigger the event, the further out they’re going to book a speaker. Bigger events may be booked over a year in advance. I’ve had some that are booked well over a year in advance and some that are booked no more than a couple of weeks in advance. Whenever you are first talking with that potential client, that’s the time where you’re starting to gather some initial information and get clear on who is this client, what are they looking for?

Grant:
A good question to ask them is, what does a win look like? I walk off stage, I see you backstage and you are either thinking, “That was amazing or that was a complete dud.” You want to get as much feedback from that potential client of, what does a win look like, what does a home run look like? Because it’s always going to be slightly different. I can think of some clients who said, “Hey, we really want you to have some really compelling information on this or this or this, whatever the nature of the topic is. We really want them to have some key actionable takeaways.”

Grant:
But I remember a couple of clients who said, “This is more just kind of more for entertainment value.” You can give them a point or two of something to think about and something motivational or whatever. But we really just want you to be funny, just be, tell us jokes, tell us stories, and entertain us, right? It’s two totally different types of audiences in that situation. You want to be really, really clear with the client what it is that they are looking for.

Grant:
Now, as you get closer to the presentation and closer to the talk, usually what you’re going to want to do is do a pre event call, usually a week or two before the event. Let’s kind of think through a timeline here. Let’s imagine, for example, that you booked the event today, but the event doesn’t happen for six months. That’s a lot of time between point A and point B.

Grant:
Again, you’re going to gather some information at point A right now, and then again usually a week or two before the event, you’re going to do one last kind of followup call with the client kind of pre event call is what we call it. Just again, touch base, make sure you’re on the same page and see if anything has changed with the schedule or the details or who’s going to be there or what’s the point of the event or when you go on and all that type of stuff to make sure that it aligns with what it is that you’re planning on speaking about.

Grant:
Now, one thing I would highly recommend is I think a misconception for speakers is that each time you speak, and this is something Pat I know you and I have talked about, each time you speak, you do not need to be creating a brand new presentation. Assuming you are going to be speaking on a regular basis and you’re going to be speaking to different audiences, what you want to be doing is really using either the same talk or versions of the same talk each time you speak versus creating something new each time. You do this for a couple of reasons.

Grant:
One is you want to remember that, again, each time you speak you’re getting that time feedback from the audience of what works. Whenever you’re creating a talk for the first time, you’re typing it out, you’re writing it out, you’re really making an educated guess on what you think will work. I think this will be funny. I think this will resonate. I think this will click. I think this will make sense, but I don’t fully know until I get up on stage.

Grant:
But each time you speak, you get that real time feedback that you can adjust and you can tweak. That way, each time you tell that story, the story becomes better because you’ve gotten that feedback and you know what works and you know what doesn’t work. You’re getting that feedback that helps you to, again, deliver the presentation better each time that you speak.

Grant:
From that, whenever you’re talking to that potential client in that last week or two, ideally you already know what the talk is going to be about based on the conversation you had originally several months ago. But at this point, again, you may be adding in some different case studies or some different stories or examples that are going to maybe specific to their industry or to their audience or something along those lines.

Grant:
I’ll give you a quick example. A few months ago, I was speaking to a group of… This company it’s kind of their end of the year corporate gathering and it was a group of hotel owners, basically. They own and operate a whole bunch of hotels all over the Midwest, and so I was there to speak. I have a bunch of stories that I can pull from, but one of the stories is specifically about hotels and travel. I wanted to make sure that I use that story so it was specific and relevant to them.

Grant:
Now that’s also a story that I could use in other contexts with other types of audiences, but I wanted to make sure that I use that specific one because again, it was specific to their industry. Again, that pre event call is to gather all the information and any last minute tweaks that you want to be making to the talk. Whenever you have that call, what you don’t want to be doing is like, “Okay, the presentation, the gig, the event, is a week or two away. All right. Now, at this moment, now I’m going to start working on my talk.”

Grant:
You should already be really clear on what the talk is, have it largely set and ready to go. But based on that call, you may make a few other tweaks before you actually get ready to present it.

Pat:
Do you recommend diving into the demographics of the audience as well and perhaps level? Sometimes I like to go into presentations knowing, “Well, am I talking to an advanced audience or a beginner audience?” Beyond just asking the client or the conference director or my contact there, like, “Hey, what would make this presentation great for you? It’s, “Well, how helpful would it be for my audience?” I kind of want to know a little bit about where they’re at. How do you go about finding that information out?

Grant:
Yeah, so you can do this in one of two ways. One is that again, you can kind of ask the client to figure out. Let’s say that you’re speaking to a group of restaurant owners for example, right? You’re talking with them, you’re trying to get a sense of like, are these people who are brand new who have owned and operated the restaurant for less than five years? Or are these all veterans who’ve been at it for 30 plus years? Or is it a mix of both?

Grant:
Oftentimes, it’s going to be a mix of all of the above. That’s one thing you could do is just, again, by asking the client and trying to get a sense of, who’s actually going to be in the room? The other thing that you can do is that you can ask the client if you can get the contact info for five or ten attendees who are going to be there and you can either email or call those people ahead of time just to touch base with them. Say, “Hey, is this a conference you come to on an annual basis? Or is this something that you’re required to come to? Or is this something that is optional for you?” Because that alone is a good piece of information.

Grant:
There’s a huge, huge difference between audiences that want to be there and audiences that have to be there. The audiences that have to be there are just like, ” All right. Do your thing, speaker boy, because I don’t want to be here. My boss made me be here, my mom made me be here, someone made me be here. I don’t want to be here. Get along with your dog and pony show. I want to move on with my life.” Versus someone who like really wants to be there. They’re there to learn, they’re excited about it, and they’re really looking forward to your presentation.

Grant:
If you can do some of that research with actual attendees ahead of time and start to hear from them, what are the challenges that you’re running into in your role or in your company or in your marriage? Obviously, this depends on the nature of what it is that you’re speaking about and ultimately what’s the problem that you’re solving for them. But if you can talk with some actual attendees and hear in their words, then it might resonate with what the event planner or client said or it might be something slightly different like the client thought the primary issue that the attendees were having was this. Really, it’s kind of a variation of that. Sometimes you don’t necessarily know that unless you actually talk with those that are going to be sitting in the audience that you’re going to actually be speaking to.

Pat:
You can even do research on social media. A lot of people like to talk about and get excited about the events that are coming up. They’ll use the hashtag. I often do research on the hashtag and you can even, instead of making a phone call, in some cases it might make sense to just do a quick direct message. I’ll tell you, attendees love and appreciate when speakers take a little bit of time to focus on just them as the individual, really cool things happen. Then you meet them at the conference and it’s like, “Hey, I was the one who DMed you.” I mean, you already have a friend when you’re there, I love that.

Grant:
Yeah. Another thing that you could do there is go to the… and some of this depends on the schedule, but let’s say you’re speaking Tuesday afternoon, but there’s a session or two in the morning. I like to go to some of those sessions just to sit in to kind of get a vibe for what’s going on, right? Are people excited to be there? Are they energized to be there? Is this early in the event or the conference or is this the last day and everybody seems exhausted? Or what else is going on there?

Grant:
I’ll give you a couple of examples. I remember speaking at something. This was about a year ago or so in Colorado and there was a huge blizzard that was hitting at the exact same time as the event, and it was just jacking up everyone’s travel plans. Everyone’s head is kind of like half there, half out of it because they’re thinking about these other things, right? I like to sit in the session ahead of time to see, how are people? Are people engaged? Is there anything that they’re saying from stage to talk about this or anything that I need to be aware of or I need to think through? Which I’m sure we’ll get into.

Grant:
But knowing what the environment is, is also a big factor for how a presentation or a talk can go. For example, if right before I’m about to speak, or again, let’s say that I’m speaking in the afternoon and I go to a morning session and the CEO of the company says, “Hey, just a heads up tomorrow we’re going to be laying off 20 percent of the company. But this afternoon we have a great speaker. You’re really going to like them.” It’s like, “Okay, I need to know that going into my presentation and going into my talk because I need to know what’s going on or where people’s heads are at.”

Grant:
Even just sitting in presentations ahead of time, again, gives you a little bit of sense of what the mood is, what the tone is of that event or of that conference.

Pat:
Cool. Thank you for that. Let’s rewind a little bit. We’re at the conference already. I want to talk a little bit about the creation of the talk and your best practices and pieces of advice for creating that, especially for the first time goer who’s literally staring at a blank screen and not even knowing where to start. Where do we start when it comes to this talk that we want to give?

Grant:
Yeah. You definitely want to do this before you get to the event, well before you get to the event. All right? If you’re already at the event and you’re like, “Okay, I’ll speak in an hour, what should I talk about?” All right. You’ve missed the boat.

Pat:
Good luck. Just good luck.

Grant:
You got to go back in time, although you need the Delorean. You really want to be thinking about this again, well, in advance of the presentation and the talk. Going back to a little bit of what we talked about of kind of beginning with the end in mind, what’s the main idea? What’s the main point that you want to leave people with? The nice thing whenever you’re creating a talk is there’s no right or wrong methodology to it. Some people say, “You need to have an introduction, and then you have three points, and then an outro.”

Grant:
Some people say, “You need to tell them what you’re going to tell them and then tell them and tell them what you told them.” Yes, they both work, as well as there are a lot of great TED Talks that are short, tight, fifteen, twenty minutes that really makes one key point and they drill that home and that’s it. When you’re creating your talk, again, you’re kind of creating a roadmap here or kind of the points or the ideas that you want to make.

Grant:
One thing I would say that’s really important for anyone is to use a lot of stories. Stories are incredibly memorable. Stories are incredibly relatable. A fun line that I like to use is, if I’m speaking, I’ll say the line, “Let me tell you a story.” I’ll notice the audience all of a sudden perks up. I notice that they start paying attention because if I say, “Let me tell you a story,” you have no idea right now where this is going, is this going to be funny? Is this going to be sad? Is this going to be depressing? Is this going to be boring? Is this going to be inspirational? No clue. But it’s a story, so I’m in.

Grant:
People remember stories. There are times where you’ll leave a session or you’ll leave listening to a speaker and any type of context and maybe a few hours or a day goes by and you’re like, “I don’t really remember what that talk was about, but I remember the story that they told.” In fact, this happens on a weekly basis with my oldest daughter. I have a teenage daughter, she’s 13, and she goes to our church’s youth group on Wednesday nights.

Grant:
This literally happened at the time this recording, this happened two nights ago. I go pick her up from church. She just walked out of youth group, she gets in the car and I ask her, “How was service? How did it go? What did the youth pastor talk about?” She immediately is like, “Don’t totally remember. But he told this story.” Then she goes in for the next five minutes and verbatim tells me the story, right? That’s the way most humans operate is we remember stories and we relate to stories. We connect with stories.

Grant:
As a speaker, one of your most powerful resources is to use stories, ideally first person story, stories that you experienced, stories that are memorable. Pat, I remember a few years ago, I helped you for a minute with a talk that you were working on and I still remember the cup and the change and I’m trying to remember the details. I think if I remember right, you were on campus.

Pat:
Yeah, on campus at UC Berkeley. I was-

Grant:
This is the guy that you passed on a daily basis, that all students passed on a daily basis, everyone kind of knew that this guy was around.

Pat:
The God bless you man.

Grant:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, am I right on any of the details?

Pat:
Yeah. All those things are right.

Grant:
Okay. Again, this was a couple of years ago?

Pat:
Three years ago.

Grant:
Yeah. We have not talked about that story since we have not talked about that guy. I have not heard you bring up that guy or anything about him. But I remember a few of those details of the story because, again, it’s a story, it’s memorable, it’s relatable. Again, I think the other part is, again, it’s a first person story. It’s something that you experienced versus… I think there’s absolutely like a time and place to say, “Let me tell you this case study about Tesla or Apple.” Or, “Here’s this guy in the 1800s and he did this thing.” And I was like, “That’s cool.”

Grant:
But it’s also interesting when you’re sharing a story that you lived and that you experienced because I think that that, again, that’s going to connect with the audience more. Again, one of the most powerful things that you can do as a speaker is to tell stories. A good example of this is if you look at Steve Jobs commencement address, I believe Stanford several years ago. It’s on YouTube and it’s like a fifteen-minute talk or so, and he tells three stories and that’s basically it.

Grant:
It doesn’t sound like he has to go deep in all these thoughts. I’m going to tell a story and make a point, and tell a story and make a point, and tell a story and make a point. That’s the talk. That works really well as to use a lot of stories.

Pat:
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, a lot of people who know me and have seen me speak on stage know that it’s always story-driven and I start with a story that leads into a point. That’s the best way to keep people on edge versus, “All right guys, I want to make a point about how important using Facebook ads are. Let me tell you, Facebook ads story.” No, I’m going to tell a story about a product that I really wanted to get into people’s hands and I was struggling all day. Then one day I found this thing called Facebook ads and I used it and that’s why this is important. Now you can root for me and now we can all kind of be in the same seat and figure out how this worked. I love storytelling too because for me, I remember my first presentation, and I once spoke about it here on the podcast, and you all might remember that, really embarrassed about the way I approached it.

Pat:
I wrote down every single word I was going to say, word for word, and I memorized it like an actor would memorize their script. I just kind of recalled all that. I later learned that that’s not the way to go because you potentially sound robotic, you don’t allow for those in-the-moment creative things to come out. How do you recommend a person be comfortable with, “I have to deliver this talk, but…” I mean, do you recommend everybody write every single word or how would you approach this sort of preparation?

Grant:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I do like manuscripting it out. Now, the difference becomes is I manuscript it out, I thought it through, but I’m not using it as a script that I have to memorize verbatim.

Pat:
Okay, you’re not glued to it.

Grant:
Yeah, exactly.

Pat:
Got it.

Grant:
Think of it this way, if I were to ask you right now, Pat, tell us all about whenever you proposed to April. You could tell us that story right now and it would be fine. But if we said, all right, take twenty minutes, go write down the story of how you proposed to April and then come back and tell us. You’d probably tell the story better because you thought about the details, you thought about the moment, you thought about what the weather was, you thought about where you were, you thought about each other’s reaction and emotion and who you called first and what you did.

Grant:
Thinking it through and really detailing it out is probably going to make a better story. Whenever you’re creating the talk from a manuscript standpoint, I like to write it out word for word, but I don’t want to memorize it in that way. I want to have the essence of it. I want to know where I’m going with the talk. I want to know that this leads to this, leads to this, and I have this transition and that’s going to lead into this story. I’m going to make this point and then it goes to this joke and punchline and I want to know where it’s going, but I’m not trying to memorize it as a script.

Grant:
A way to think about this is, Pat, if we’re at a basketball game and someone’s singing the National Anthem and they butcher the lyrics, everybody there knows that they butchered the lyrics because they know what the lyrics are supposed to be. But if you’re giving a talk and you forget a line or you say something wrong or you tell the points out of order or you forget a story, nobody knows, nobody has it. It’s not like they’re following along with the script.

Pat:
Until you tell them.

Grant:
Yeah, well, and I don’t want to think you have to tell them.

Pat:
Which you shouldn’t do.

Grant:
Yeah. I mean, if you want to you can. But again, I don’t think you have to because I think that’s where again… You described it perfectly. Speakers that are so robotic that they’re so in their own head and they’re just thinking about, “What is my next line? And then I say this and then I walk over here and I hold my hand like this.” It’s just like, yuck, it just feels phony. It feels fake. It feels like over rehearsed. You want to practice and you want to rehearse and you want to know your material, but also, like you said, you want to allow room for that spontaneity.

Grant:
You want to be comfortable on stage. A way to think about this is like you are a human talking to a collection of other humans, so act human. Don’t be a robot. When some moment happens in the room, whenever a cell phone goes off or someone sneezes really loud or a slide doesn’t work, don’t feel like, “Oh dang, I don’t know what to do now because this was not scripted.” You’re comfortable and confident enough to be able to go with the material.

Grant:
For me, I know for you as well, Pat, that we spend hours and hours and hours practicing and going over and rehearsing and practicing our material, so that by the time we get up on stage, we’re really, really comfortable. We’re really, really confident with where we’re going. If something pops up or if something happens or if we forget where we’re going for a minute, it’s not the end of the world because again, we’ve done the work.

Grant:
A way to think about this is like if you think back to high school or middle school or college or university and you remember going in to take a test or a quiz or an exam and if you hadn’t studied, you would go in feeling nervous and feeling panicked and feeling worried and feeling anxious. But if you had really done the work, “I really studied, I really prepared. I did the practice quiz and I did the practice questions and I went over all my notes. I’m ready.” You go in feeling a lot more confident. Like, “I got this.”

Grant:
The best speakers in the planet, they do that. They don’t just scribble down a couple notes and hop up and wing it and hope it all magically works out. It doesn’t work like that. They spend hours and hours and hours and hours going over and over and over their material. By the time they get up on stage, it looks natural. It looks like they’re just making it up on the fly.

Grant:
But they’ve spent the amount of time behind the scenes to get comfortable with the materials so that when they get up it looks like it, but that’s not all the case.

Pat:
I want to highlight something you said that I think is a really important piece of advice. It’s just kind of know where you’re going because if you know where you’re going, well, at least even if you get off track or something happens, you can get right back on, because you know where you’re supposed to go. I think that’s a big piece of advice. I think times where I’ve felt really nervous is where I didn’t know exactly where I was going because number one, I didn’t rehearse enough.

Pat:
But number two, I didn’t understand the purpose of the talk as well. I’m thinking back to pre entrepreneurial days when I had to speak in front of my office and architectural related things and that just… Yeah, it was bad. But I know that although we are hopefully helping people feel a little bit more confident in what they’re about to do, there’s going to be a number of people who are listening right now who are a little bit nervous, still maybe we’ve made them a little bit more nervous. Nerves are going to be a part of this. How do you speak to those who are listening who are downright nervous? Speaking is one of the things that’s the top fear for people. How do we address that?

Grant:
Yeah. I think one thing would be important to know is I think oftentimes nervousness can be confused with excitement. If you think about, again, some of the most important, most significant moments of your life. Again, you think about whenever you proposed to April or when you think about whenever you went in and told your boss that you were quitting or whenever your kids were born or the first time that some significant thing happened for you. You think about the butterflies that are swirling in your stomach and it’s not because you’re necessarily nervous.

Grant:
When you proposed to April, you’re probably pretty confident she was going to say yes. You’re not nervous like, “Oh, this is not going to work, or this is going to be a complete failure.” You’re excited, but the body’s responding the same way. I want you to think of it that way, that whenever you feel those butterflies swarming around, so to speak, it’s your body’s reaction telling you that what you’re about to do matters, that is significant. That is important.

Grant:
I would be more concerned for the speaker who’s like, “I’m never nervous. I get up on stage and I don’t feel anything.” The soulless person up there and I’ve heard some speakers say that and maybe they are just so comfortable and confident that that’s the case. But for a lot of people, they feel those nerves. The big thing I would say is, that’s okay. Again, it’s your body’s way of saying, “What you’re doing matters.”

Grant:
Again, how do you deal with that? How do you overcome that? How do you make sure that it’s not paralyzing to you? I think a big part of it goes back to what we talked about in terms of the preparation standpoint is that if you get up on stage and you’re just like, “I’m just going to scribble some thoughts on a napkin and hop up there and I hope it works.”

Grant:
Honestly, I hope you fail. I hope it’s a complete disaster because the audience deserves better than that. You shouldn’t just wing it. The audience absolutely deserves your best. The more prepared you are, the more you’ve spent, more time you’ve practiced, you’ve rehearsed, you’ve gone over it. Then by the time you get up there, the more comfortable you’re going to be.

Grant:
Now, again, you’re still going to be nervous. You’re still going to have those butterflies and that’s okay. But again, you’re going to feel confident. Again, whenever you proposing to April, you’re really, really, really nervous, but you’re still confident that, “You know what? I think this is going to go well. I know I’m making the right decision. I know I’ve thought this through. I know this is a special moment and it’s all going to be okay.”

Grant:
But again, it comes down to your practice, your preparation there. One other thing I would say to your point where you said, “I kind of worry about forgetting, where I was at or forgetting what I was going to say.” One thing I’ll do sometimes, especially if I’m doing new material that I haven’t done before, is I will take an index card and I will scribble a bunch of keywords on it of where the talk’s going to go. Okay?

Grant:
For example, one of the things on your card, for example, Pat, it may say, “God bless you,” and that’s it. You know, whenever you see that, that triggers your mind that, “I’m going to tell the God bless you story.” Maybe that’s a five minute story, but the only thing on that index card relating to that is those three words, God bless you. But that triggers your mind to know, “Okay, that’s the story I’m going to tell.” You have a series of ten or twenty keywords that it’s not the manuscript that you’ve read.

Grant:
Now you’ve gone over the talk, you know where you’re going, but just a couple of, “I’m going to do this word and then this word and then this word.” I try to remember, not necessarily the whole, “Here’s fifteen pages of manuscript,” but I remember, “Here’s these ten keywords,” and if I just remember the order that these ten keywords go in that God bless you, perfect. That’s enough to get me through the next five, six minutes depending on the story, right? You’re just trying to have a couple of those key things and that’s the type of thing you can also just stick in your back pocket there just to kind of have with you. To that end, if you forget what you’re going to say next, one important point for speakers is remember that the audience takes their cues from you.

Grant:
If you are uncomfortable or if you’re nervous or if you’re uptight, it makes the audience feel nervous and uncomfortable and uptight. The audience is on your side. They want nothing better than for you to do a good job. You and I both sat in a lot of presentations and we don’t want the speaker to suck. We want the speaker to be amazing because-

Pat:
Sure.

Grant:
… I’m going to sit there and listen to it like, “I want you to be great. I want you to do great.” Again, the more human you are on stage, the easier it is to connect with you. If you are going along… This happened to me just a couple of weeks ago speaking at something and I just totally blanked. I just totally lost my train of thought and I’m kind of talking with some people in the front row. I was like, “What was I talking about?” It was a funny moment. I eventually got around to where I was going and we picked back up and it was no big deal.

Grant:
But because it was no big deal to me, it was no big deal to the audience. Because again, I’m a human talking to a collection of other humans. Allow some of those real, authentic moments whenever you’re speaking with people.

Pat:
Yeah. I love that. That’s perfect advice. I was just going to say the same thing, the audience’s on your side and they want you to do well and that was something that was big for me when I first started speaking. By the way, we keep bringing up this April proposing story and you’re going to have to wait till the end of the episode to listen to that. So I’m going to hook you guys up.

Grant:
I have zero clue with the story. I was just using it as an example.

Pat:
I know. It involves her wanting to pee, by the way, just so you know.

Grant:
Okay. All right.

Pat:
One of the things that I love to do in my-

Grant:
Okay, can I interrupt for a second?

Pat:
Oh, go ahead.

Grant:
Okay. From a speaking perspective, what you just did there is also really, really powerfully effective because really what you did is you opened a loop, right?

Pat:
Talk more about that.

Grant:
I’m going to finish this story later, I’m going to tell you about whenever I proposed to my wife and she may have peed a little, right? Immediately we’re like, “Wait, what?” I got another story. Immediately, I have no idea where the story is going. It could be funny, it could be sad, it could be embarrassing, it could be any number of things. But you’ve opened a loop in our minds where now it’s like, “I got to stick around. I don’t know where the story is going, but I need to hear that story.” Opening loops can be really, really effective as well for speakers.

Pat:
How do you do that gracefully in a way where it’s not just click “baity” like, “Hey guys, I’m going to tell you the top secrets here, but I’m going to make you wait till the end.” How do you do that gracefully? Because it is smart to do. I mean, that’s content 101. Let’s keep people on edge that they keep reading the next sentence, so they keep watching the next minute of the video, so they keep looking forward to the next part of the talk. But any tips for loops that are open but not click baity if you will or bait and switchy?

Grant:
Yeah. I mean, sometimes it depends on the nature of what you’re talking about. If it’s, “I’m going to give you the seven top marketing hacks for 2020, but you’re going to have to sit through 30 minutes of stuff first before I get to it.” That feels a little not necessarily like slimy, but it’s just like, I mean, get to it sooner rather than later. If you’re going to open a loop, you want to make sure that you are very clear on when you’re going to close that. That’s not something that the audience is just hanging on and hanging on and hanging on and hanging on.

Grant:
One thing that you can do is you can watch comedians. Comedians do this really, really well where they do what’s called a callback, where they will reference a joke that they told earlier, a punchline that they told earlier. There are some comedians that do an insanely good job at this. Just as a quick side note, comedians in general are really, really good to learn from a speaking standpoint because they’re doing something similar. They’re standing on stage for 45 minutes or 60 minutes. They’re trying to captivate an audience and they’re trying to keep their attention and keep them from looking at their phone and take the audience on a journey, on a story.

Grant:
Comedians can do a really good job of this. But again, put yourself in the position of the audience. As you’re giving the talk, if you are listening to this, are you feeling like, “I mean, come on dude, get to the point, where are you going with this?” Or does it feel like, “No, no, this is genuine. This is part of it. It’s moving the story forward and I’m hanging on for this.”

Grant:
This also goes back to something I mentioned at the very beginning, where each time you give the same talk, you figure out what works and what doesn’t work, right? You’re hearing from the audience or you’re seeing from the audience that I opened this loop and I closed it too quickly, or I opened this loop or maybe I heard some feedback afterwards that, “Man, I was really wondering if you’d forgot about that one part or if you were going to get back to the other part. You said you’re going to give us the seven steps to whatever.”

Pat:
They might go like, “Whatever happened to that guy,” or-

Grant:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You can hear some of that feedback that, again, helps you to make the talk better each time, which is ultimately what again makes you a better speaker is when you get up and speak. It’s not like, “Here’s the first time I’ve given this talk, but it’s actually… I’ve told the story tens or hundreds of times and I’ve got it really dialed in and really refined and polished so that I know exactly where I’m going. I know exactly when and where to open the loops,” that best makes sense for the audience that they… I take them on the journey that I’ve designed for them.

Pat:
Nice. Well, thanks for catching that. I definitely will tell that story or else I’ll leave people hanging and we don’t want to do that. I want to move on to slides. We talked about the content of the talk a little bit, but a lot of people struggle with slides. A lot of people fill them with bullet points. A lot of people do a lot of things with them. I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’d love to share mine after.

Grant:
Okay. I got strong feelings on slides. All right.

Pat:
I know. I know you do.

Grant:
Here’s my two cents, okay? Slides should be an enhancement and not a replacement for your talk. Slides should be an enhancement and not a replacement for your talk. Let me explain what I mean by that. I remember my wife was attending a conference recently and she was sitting in a session. She texted me, she’s like, “Hey, the session was supposed to start several minutes ago.” The presenter was having some trouble with her slides. She told the audience, “The slides aren’t working. I can’t give my talk until we get the slides working,” to which I would reply, “Then you should not be up there.”

Grant:
What we mean by that and a way for speakers to think about this as like a litmus test is, let’s imagine five minutes before you’re about ready to speak, the slides go down. The projector breaks, the computer doesn’t work. Something’s not working with the technology, which again is a real thing. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong with technology.

Pat:
It’s happened to me.

Grant:
Yeah. If that happens, which it can and will and does happen. If that happens, your talk still has to stand on its own. You can’t say like, “Well, I’d love to, but I’d love to give my talk. I just can’t because I don’t have slides.” Then you’re not ready, you shouldn’t be up there. Again, all that to say your slide should be an enhancement, not a replacement. This is where I think a lot of speakers have a tough time is they spend more time worrying about the slides or worrying about how it’s going to look or trying to think through what their next slides are and they do it and all of a sudden the talk becomes the secondary thing.

Grant:
The slides again, it should be an enhancement. If it’s a replacement, if you’re just reading off the slides or if you’re just using those as your cue cards, then just show us a video. You don’t need to be up there. I have strong feelings about slides from that standpoint, but I will say that slides are incredibly, incredibly effective if done well and if done right. For example, let’s imagine again, we have no idea where this engagement story is going, but I’ll jump on that train.

Grant:
If you were describing the story to us and telling us about that. It’s one thing for us all of us to be listening to it right now. It’s something totally different if you said, “Hey, let me show you a picture of right after we were engaged, here’s that moment.” That makes it so much more real than what you can describe it as. Pictures especially, can be incredibly, incredibly effective and incredibly powerful. But again, they cannot be a replacement for the talk.

Grant:
One other quick note on slides, is humor is really, really effective tool for speakers. But a lot of people don’t worry about, or a lot of people worry about humor, “And I don’t feel like I’m funny or I don’t know how to deliver good punchline or a joke or a story or anything like that.” Images and videos can work really, really well for humor. Maybe you’re showing a meme or you’re showing a funny picture or you’re playing a short video. Those things can work really, really well where you don’t necessarily have to come up with the humor. You just showed a slide and people associate the humor of the slide with you as the speaker. That’s another, again, just kind of side note there.

Grant:
Again, big thoughts, big picture on it. Slides can work really, really well, but they need to be an enhancement, not a replacement for your talk.

Pat:
Okay. We’re in agreement there, 100 percent. I thought you were going to go, “No slides,” because you’re that adamant about how important the talk is.

Grant:
Well, I personally don’t use slides, but I don’t think they’re necessarily a bad thing because I know a lot of speakers who don’t use slides and all the speakers who use slides and it’s not necessarily one is better or worse than the other. Because like I said, you can do things with slides and show things that you absolutely cannot describe with words. Slides can be really, really, really effective. I just think oftentimes one, they’re used wrong and two, there’s so many technical glitches and issues and things that can go wrong.

Grant:
I remember speaking at something recently, and a buddy of mine and I were standing backstage and he was getting ready to go out there and we’re kind of talking about his talk and the only thing he was talking about was his slides was, “Okay, I’m thinking about this slide and this slide and this slide. I’m worried about this slide.” I was like, “Man, you’re so in your head about the slides, what about the talk? What about the talk you’re getting ready to give?”

Grant:
Again, slides can be really, really effective, but just make sure you’re doing it in addition to not in replacement of the talk.

Pat:
If anybody’s seen me speak on stage before, typically, you’ll see me use slides. But typically, you’ll just see an image with no words to enhance the story, to bring people into the environment that I’m talking about. For example, if I was telling a story about our wedding, our beautiful wedding reception, I might even crack a joke and go, “Oh, and let me show you a picture from the reception.” Then it’s a picture of the fire festival a complete disaster, right? Because then there’s a little humor there, right?

Grant:
Right, right.

Pat:
Then I can, “No, I’m just kidding. Here’s the actual picture,” and then it’s gorgeous. That’s another quick way to use slides that I love within humor. It’s just like people expect one thing and you show them something else. That’s what a comedian does. You could do that with slides really easily. I feel my slides do a lot better job than I do at being funny. I use that to my advantage, but now I’m lost. Where was I going with that?

Grant:
I don’t know. That’s okay. That’s fine. I’ll give you a quick example. I remember a couple of years ago, I was speaking at a conference and a mutual friend of you and I, I won’t tell you who it was, he gave a keynote, he did a phenomenal job. It was amazing. One of the funniest parts of the talk was he showed a video. It was like a one-minute video in the middle of it. It was hysterical. It was very, very good. Right after his session, I was doing a workshop about speaking and so I asked the audience, we’re talking about a variety of different things related to speaking. I said, “How many of you guys enjoyed the previous speaker that we just saw?” Everyone was like, “Oh yeah, they were amazing.” I said, “How many of you thought that that speaker was really, really funny?”

Grant:
Everyone’s like, “Oh yeah, they were very funny.” They are very, very funny speaker, but I asked the audience there in that workshop, I said, “What was the funniest part of their talk?” They all said the video.

Pat:
The video.

Grant:
Again, think about they all assume like, “Oh, that speaker was hilarious.” Again, funny speaker. But the thing that they thought was the funniest was playing a video. All the speaker did was press a button of a video he didn’t even create, but the audience connects the dots and says, “Oh, that speaker’s funny because of the video that they showed.”

Pat:
That’s cool.

Grant:
Again, videos, memes, gifs, pictures like those can work really, really well for humor.

Pat:
Yeah. Stay within your style. I would just say be you and use that stuff to sort of enhance what it is you’re doing like you said. I remember where I was going. The other way that I use slides is typically when I make a point or I’m really driving home a point. I’ll typically have a slide that represents that point and then I actually have the word or the combination of words, no bullet points ever. That’s sort of my style and I have a very popular YouTube video. It’s actually my most popular YouTube video, 1.2 million views at this point, Grant, How To Create an Awesome Slide Deck, which is pretty crazy that it’s not even what I usually create YouTube videos about, but it somehow got picked up in the algorithm.

Grant:
Very cool.

Pat:
I’ll link to that. We’ll also link to The Successful Speaker, which is you and Jeff Goins’ new book. Jeff’s been a guest on here several times. Very stoked about this new book. It’s called The Successful Speaker. Before I get into one final question I want to ask you, I’d love to just have you talk a little bit about the book, who it’s for and where they can get it.

Grant:
Yeah. Like you said, the book is The Successful Speaker: Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid, and Building Your Platform. I’ve been a professional speaker for, well over a decade. I’ve done hundreds of speaking engagements and really learned a lot about the ins and outs of the speaking world, and how do you get gigs, and how do you book gigs, and who hires speakers, and how much do you charge, and what do they pay speakers to talk about, and just the ins and outs of that world.

Grant:
We took everything that we’ve learned, we put that into the book to walk people through a step by step process of how they can find and book gigs as well. Some people listening right now have aspirations to be a full-time speaker. They want to do 50, 75, a hundred gigs a year. Some people say, “I don’t want to do that much. I have other things going, but I would love to do two or three or four or five gigs a year. But I just don’t know, how do you find gigs? Again, how much do you charge and how does this world work?”

Grant:
Wherever you are in your speaking journey, however much speaking you want to be doing, the book will give you that playbook, that guide, that step-by-step manual of the step that you need to take in order to find and book gigs. Yeah, the book is The Successful Speaker out in stores everywhere.

Pat:
Amazon and all those good places.

Grant:
All the places, all the things.

Pat:
Cool. Well, congrats to you and congrats to Jeff. Jeff, I know you listen to the show and you’ve been on a while before too. Cool that you guys are collaborating together on that. We’ll put links in the show notes and all that good stuff. The last question I want to ask you is about rookie mistakes. What are some of the most common rookie mistakes? I’ll go over some myself. Maybe we can go back and forth for a little bit and just hopefully help everybody out who’s probably still a little bit nervous, but hopefully a little bit less and hopefully excited about their upcoming gig.

Grant:
Yeah, I’ll take a different angle on this. I’ll take the business hang on this for a second. I think a mistake that a lot of speakers make is they’re not clear on who it is that they want to speak to and what it is the problem that they’re going to solve for an audience. Because for a lot of people who are interested in speaking, we just like speaking. Pat, you and I, we geek out on speaking. It’s just fun, right? We would speak to any audience about anything if we could, but we also both recognize that’s a horrible approach to business.

Grant:
When someone asks a speaker like, “Hey, who do you speak to?” They’re like, “Well, I just speak to people, I speak to humans.” It’s like, “That doesn’t work.” Or if you say, “What do you speak about?” They say, “Well, what do you want me to speak about? I can speak about anything.” That’s not relevant. That doesn’t happen at all. You have to be really, really clear as a speaker of solving a very specific problem for a very specific audience.

Grant:
One way that we talk about this, as we say, you want to be the steakhouse and not the buffet. Be the steakhouse and not the buffet. What we mean by that is Pat, if you and I wanted a good steak… actually, we’ll use tacos as an example.

Pat:
Thank you.

Grant:
I’ve come to San Diego a few times. We’ve had tacos at… I’m drawing a blank on the place.

Pat:
Puesto.

Grant:
Puesto, yeah. We’ve had tacos there a couple times together and they are amazing tacos, right? You know what they don’t do? They don’t serve lasagna and they don’t serve pizza and they don’t serve any number of other things, but they do tacos really, really, really well, right? That’s what you want to do. You want to be like, “I am the steakhouse, I am the taco stand. I’ll do this one specific thing, for this one specific audience.” We assume that actually the more things we can speak about, the more audiences we can talk to, that the more opportunities we have. The more things I can put on the buffet, the more people will come.

Grant:
But the opposite is the case. By being the go-to person, by being the go-to resource or authority on a certain subject rather than trying to be all things for all people, by being very specific, and narrow, and clear, it actually becomes easier to find gigs, which again, is counterintuitive. But the more narrow, the more clear, the more focused you are, the easier it is to find gigs.

Grant:
I think one of the biggest problems that a lot of new speakers make is that we try to speak on anything and everything to everybody and nobody at the same time.

Pat:
I love that.

Grant:
Be narrow, be clear, be focused, solve one specific problem for one specific audience.

Pat:
Cool. I’ll offer a mistake, and then I’ll have you close with one more if that’s cool. The biggest mistake I see a lot of speakers make, especially first time speakers, is they’re so focused on their little moment of time on stage, that they forget there’s a whole conference going on with people that they could talk to, and connect with, and build relationships with. This is also sort of a business thing too.

Pat:
But at the same time, what really impresses a lot of audiences is when a speaker gets in the audience. If you’re able to spend time at the conference, not just kind of jet in, speak, and come out, and leave, but actually get to know who the audience is, shake hands with them. I like to do it in front of where the registration booth is because that welcomes a lot of people. I almost kind of take on the role of, “Hey, I’m going to actually become a part of the show here, and actually welcome people in and make them feel comfortable too.” That also, as a side note, makes me feel comfortable about who I’m speaking with and getting to know them.

Pat:
A lot of people, especially introverts, who are just afraid of meeting people if you can go in and, I’m an introvert as well, but I do this because it means so much to them. Eventually, when the speaker survey comes out, I know that my name comes up a lot, because I’ve already built a connection with people personally throughout the show, and people see me shaking hands, being in the audience, being a part of the crowd, getting involved, not being afraid to put myself out there.

Pat:
As a result, I get asked to speak again the next year, or I get recommended to another talk, any commentary on that?

Grant:
Yeah. I’ll piggyback on that with another kind of business tip is part of what you are hired to do as a speaker is what you do on stage, is the content that you deliver, the way in which you deliver it, and how you captivate and engage with an audience. But the other part of what you are hired to do is who you are and how you are to work with off the stage.

Grant:
What I mean by that is, if you are amazing on stage, if you just absolutely crush it, but you are a pain in the butt to work with off the stage and by pain in the butt, I don’t mean that you’re a prima donna, or that you’re a diva or that you demand a jar of red Skittles before you’ll go on stage. Not that at all. But meaning you’re unorganized or you’re sloppy or you drop the ball on things or they have to follow up multiple times with you on things or they said, “We need you to be here for a soundcheck at this,” and you show up late or, those type of things. Those type of things really, really make a big difference to clients.

Grant:
I’ll give an example, when I was speaking full-time I was doing sixty, seventy gigs a year, and we would get these recommendation letters and these testimonials after events. The letters would say things like, “Grant was great to work with but we loved working with Lisa.” Now Lisa helped me on the backend. She helped me with the travel, and the contract, and logistics, and thank you stuff, and all of that stuff off the stage, right?

Grant:
Basically, it’s like if you and I go to Puesto to get tacos, and the food’s amazing, but the service sucks, and everything’s dirty, and it’s gross in there, it just ruins the whole experience even if the food’s amazing. Even if you’re amazing speaker, but you’re dropping the ball off the stage, then it’s really going to have a negative impact on whether or not people want to work with you. Because you got to remember from an event planner standpoint, you are one of hundreds if not thousands, of moving pieces and balls that they’re trying to juggle.

Grant:
The easier you can be to work with offstage, the more likely that they’re going to want to work with you again, to recommend you, to refer you, to want to have you back in the future. Like you said, Pat, some of it is the details in terms of the ease of working together, but some of it like you said, it’s just being around in the conference. Now, I’m introverted as well, so my natural tendency is, I want to go speak and I want to go to my room or I want to go home. I want to just go back into my clam shell. But I know one of the best things that I can do is to be around, to attend other sessions, to meet people, to talk with people, to talk with other speakers, to be a part of the conference.

Grant:
Because again, that’s the type of stuff. You’re exactly right that that feedback gets back to the client that, “You know what? Pat was great on stage, but I had a chance to talk with Pat at lunch, and that was way more valuable than any other session that I heard because I got a chance to connect with him. That was so helpful, that was so meaningful that he did that.” That stuff is really, really, really significant and important. It doesn’t mean, okay, if I’m going to a five-day conference, and I’m speaking for thirty minutes, that I have to be at the five-day conference and be at every possible thing. You don’t have to do that.

Grant:
Again, remember that part of what they’re hiring you to do is onstage and part of what they’re hiring you to do is who you are, or the people that you’re interacting with, and how you’re interacting with them offstage.

Pat:
Love it. Thank you, Grant, and good luck to you. You’re sitting here listening to this, kudos to you for wanting to do better. Hopefully, this has been helpful for you. Grant, where can people learn more from you, and about you, and get more help?

Grant:
Yeah, so everything that we do for speakers is over at thespeakerlab.com, thespeakerlab.com. We have several different podcast episodes over there, one of which you’ve been a guest on, several different blog posts. I also have people ask a lot of times about speaking fees, and how much should I charge as a speaker? The reality is that it depends, which is a horrible answer. We put together a free speaking fee calculator, people can check out over at myspeakerfee.com. Myspeakerfee.com answer a couple questions, takes you less than a minute, will tell you what you should be charging as a speaker. But yeah, all types of resources and free tools over at thespeakerlab.com.

Pat:
Cool. Thanks, Grant. Appreciate it, and good luck to everybody.

Grant:
Thanks, Pat.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Grant Baldwin from thespeakerlab.com. You can check out his and Jeff Goins’ new book, The Successful Speaker anywhere you can get books, including Amazon of course, and all the show notes, the links, all the great resources mentioned in this episode are going to be at smartpassiveincome.com/session416. Again, smartpassiveincome.com/session416.

Pat:
When you get onstage, you know what to do, you just got to do it. Don’t be scared. Don’t let the fear get in the way. You got to get through it and you will. Hopefully, you’ll be much better off now after listening to the show. All right, so in the middle of this episode I had said that I was going to tell you the story about how April, my wife, and I got engaged. While I tell the story, I have a special guest with me. Do you want to say hello?

Keoni Flynn:
Hello.

Pat:
Who are you?

Keoni:
I’m on Keoni Flynn.

Pat:
And who are you?

Keoni:
Your son.

Pat:
There you go. Okay. Welcome back on the show, it’s been a while.

Keoni:
Yeah, thanks.

Pat:
Do you want to hear the story about how your mom and I got engaged?

Keoni:
Sure.

Pat:
Do you know what it means to be engaged?

Keoni:
Sort of.

Pat:
What do you think it means?

Keoni:
It means where you’re not married but you’re in love.

Pat:
You’re in love and you are going to plan to get married. The time that I asked mommy to be engaged with me means like, “Hey, I’d love to spend the rest of my life with you,” kind of thing. Cool?

Keoni:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Pat:
One day you might do that too. Okay. We’ll talk more about that later though. For now, I want to tell a quick story about how April and I, your mom and I, got engaged. Your mom and I had been dating for a while and I loved her lots, right? I wanted to ask her to marry me. I had this big plan. I lived in an apartment, small apartment, and I took all the furniture out of the room, the bed, the desk, my computer, everything was completely empty. I moved it to the other side of the living room and my roommate, at the time, was just like, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’ll tell you later.” An empty room, maybe a 12 by 12 bedroom. I bought a bunch of candles, I bought a lot of white linens, and I got all this stuff. That was really romantic, right?

Pat:
I put all the candles all over the room. In the middle of the room, I put a little heart shape out of the candles. Your mom was supposed to come home from work around 4:00 p.m. That day, and I had lit all the candles because I knew she was going to be coming to the apartment soon because we hung out every day. I lit all the candles and then it was 4:15, 4:30, the candles are getting smaller and smaller. I said, “What the heck is going on? She’s not coming and all the candles are going to be gone by the time that she arrives.”

Pat:
I blow out all the candles and then as soon as I do that, of course, she texts me and says, “Hey, I’m on my way.” I’m like, “Okay.” I reignite the candles and my plan was to have her come in and then I was going to press a button on my remote control to start playing some music, music that I knew she loved from Peter Cetera. Then I would ask her to come into the heart in middle of the room with me and I get down on one knee and I give her her engagement ring, right? Then we’d dance, and celebrate, and then go out to dinner that night. That was the plan.

Pat:
I was really nervous. I was sweating and I had worn really nice clothes and it was like I was starting to get pit stains on my armpits and stuff. When you’re doing something like that, you get really nervous. Well, she eventually came in and I said, “I have a surprise for you.” She was like, “Why are you dressed up? Are we going somewhere?” I said, “Well, let me show you.” I took her into the bedroom and of course there’s like fifty candles lit and it’s gorgeous. It’s romantic and I asked her to come in. All the while, I didn’t realize just how much of a fire hazard this was. I mean, it’s probably something that the building owner would not want to happen.

Pat:
I bring her in and we dance, and we kiss, and we celebrate and then we go out for dinner. It’s really cool. She said yes, and it was very romantic. Years later, I found out that when mommy came in the room, when I brought her in, and she saw the candles there and I got down on one knee, apparently she really had to go to the bathroom. She had to go pee really bad and was torn because she wanted to say, “Hold on, I need to go pee.” But obviously that would have killed the mood, right? She didn’t do that, she muscled through. Then after a few minutes of dancing, she was like, “Okay, I got to go to the bathroom.”

Pat:
I just figured it was because she was really happy and really nervous, but I didn’t realize that she had to pee the whole time. That’s how mommy and daddy got engaged.

Keoni:
Cool.

Pat:
Then we got married and then I also got laid off between that time and I started my business and then we had bought Gizmo, our puppy. Then soon after, mommy was pregnant with you.

Keoni:
Cool.

Pat:
That’s the story. Hope everybody enjoyed that. Most important lesson here, close the loops on the stories that you’re going to tell. Big shout out to my team for reminding me that I had yet to close the loop. Hopefully, it was worth sticking around to the end. If you heard this story, let me know what you think and just let me know that you stuck it out all the way through for me @PatFlynn on Instagram or Twitter.

Pat:
I appreciate you. As always, #TeamFlynnfortheWin. Peace.

Keoni:
Bye.

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Thanks for listening to The Smart Passive Income podcast at www.smartpassiveincome.com.