World of Speakers E.22: Michelle Tillis Lederman | Creating real connections
Ryan Foland speaks with Michelle Tillis Lederman, CEO of Executive Essentials. Michelle provides custom communication and leadership training and coaching programs and has been named one of Forbes Top 25 Networking Experts.
The main focus of this talk is about building connections with your audience, whether you are on stage or networking. Learning how to deeply connect will help you positively impact your audience with your message, make a great impression on event planners, and get more speaking opportunities as a result.
Listen to this podcast to find out:
- How to build relationships with your audience, both on and off stage
- Why you should repeating the same talk over and over, and how to avoid this be speaking authentically
- How to know whether you are being authentic or not. [Spoiler: if you are thinking “I should…” you are probably not being authentic.]
- A perspective switch that will help you change your nervousness into empowerment.
- What to do when stuff goes wrong on stage, and how to handle it like a pro.
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Transcript
RF: Welcome back to another episode. This one is geared to be awesome because I'm here with Michelle Tillis Lederman.
Michelle, welcome to the show of the World of Speakers.
How are you doing today?
MTL: I am good Ryan. I'm happy we finally got our tech working.
RF: It's a reminder of the fact that tech will always go wrong when you don't want it to go wrong.
MTL: What I teach people is to always have a backup plan because so many times the slides went out, it actually just happened to me.
At a presentation, I was doing a conference, I was the keynote in Vegas on a stage and the slide just went out.
All people were scrambling to make it work again, I just had to keep going.
RF: Well, we'll dig into that one when we get your amazing tips.
But before that, let's get to know who you are for the people that don't know about you yet.
I say yet, because I think that people are going to continue to learn more and more about what you're doing,
You're taking the stage, you're on TV, you're doing all these things. Where did all begin? Did you know that you would be doing what you're doing now when it all started?
MTL: Definitely not. I am actually a recovering CPA [Certified Public Accountant].
RF: Oh, one of those.
MTL: I'm one of those.
I started my career in finance and I was the only woman on the bank's trading floor, I was the only woman on a global venture capital team.
I did mergers and acquisitions, I was a heavy finance girl.
I absolutely had no idea that this was my calling until it called.
RF: I'm hearing that from a lot of people and that's inspiring for those people who haven't gotten the call yet, but they maybe are looking for something else.
How did this call come in? Was it a cell phone call, was it a shooting star?
What was the big sign that the universe shared with you?
MTL: It was a trip to Japan.
I was actually still working for the bank and my boss became the CEO of Tokyo's branch. He asked me to go out and help the team out there adjust to his leadership style.
I hired a coach to go with me, and I went out there and we were working with an international team of bankers and traders at the highest level of the bank.
I did everything that coach did, and I said, "Oh my god, this is what I am meant to do."
At the end of the week, with all of my confidence and maybe a little bit of a hangover, I went to the CEO and said, "I can do this."
And he said, "Okay, you still have to do my hedge fund investing, you still have to do my budgets, but if you want to do this, I'll support you."
RF: When you say "this"— elaborate a little bit more, was it just communicating, getting everybody up to speed on the new leadership part of things?
Was it taking the stage, communicating kind of products?
When you say "this", "I can do 'this'" what was the "this"?
MTL: At the time "this" was coaching, but really, it was training. My evolution to the main stage of the speaker started through the training industry.
I started doing training programs for the New York and Tokyo branches of the bank on soft skills, such as how to give effective feedback and how to conduct an interview and presentation skills.
All of those things that we don't come by naturally. I was training in the two branches.
RF: Being a recovering CPA, I'm pretty sure that there's a lack of soft skills because you're just using your fingers to type in hard numbers.
Were you involved in a form of communication earlier on in life that you tapped into, or did you just miraculously find the gift of gab on stage and training and all that?
MTL: That's a great question.
I actually was an accounting major, but I was a writing and communication minor. I flipped my minors and that became my major in life.
I have always had a passion for teaching and I actually had a big fear of public speaking.
I took my first class as a junior in high school and was told that I couldn't be heard past the third row, I spoke a mile a minute and I shook from head to toe.
RF: All the beginner rookie moves, right?
MTL: I did them all, and the idea of speaking in public was absolutely nauseating to me.
This is not something that I had a dream or a vision, but as a teacher, I loved.
I just didn't want the paycheck of a teacher, so I went and took the finance career and ended up with a corner office on Wall Street.
But that wasn't in my heart, that wasn't my passion. It took some time to bridge from that finance life to my current entrepreneurial state as a trainer and speaker and CEO of the company.
It started with that evolution of trusting my skills and continually educating myself.
That boss that was willing to put some faith in me would send me to training, he was like, "Michelle, I need a training on this; go take a class and then come back and teach us."
RF: How cool. What was the best part of such an opportunity?
MTL: The ability to take that information and know how to bring it back so that somebody else could absorb it and apply it.
RF: I imagine this all helped you with being a writer. I know you have a few books out. How did writing you books tie into the story.
MTL: For putting a timeline together, I was in finance through the 1990's and in the early 2000's is when the transition began.
I landed my first client which was, of course, a finance company, it was JP Morgan. My second client, Deutsche Bank, another finance company big shark, in the early 2000's.
I hadn't even incorporated yet and I actually formed the business in 2004 and left finance in 2005.
My first book didn't come out until 2011. It was always something that I wanted to do and I had so many book ideas.
I was teaching a program for the MoMA, which is the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City.
It was called “A Natural Networker” and I would say half the class came up to me at the end of it and said, "You need to turn this into a book Michelle."
And I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm thinking about it." And they were like, "No, just do it."
And I thought, "Oh, well, this will be an easy book, I already have the class."
MTL: As a fellow writer, you understand that I was completely deluding myself. So it was a long process from idea to the shelf, because I did do the traditional publishing route.
RF: Awesome.
MTL: And now that book has sold every day for the last 6 plus years and is in 9 languages.
RF: That is the networking book?
ML: That's "The Eleven Laws of Likability".
RF: Are you a natural extrovert or did you acquire your exterfert skills over time?
MTL: I am a natural extrovert and I know a lot of people associate extrovert with networking.
What I actually had to do was unlearn some of that extroversion to be more effective in connection.
And what I talk about within networking is relationship networking, not traditional networking.
My entire platform is on the basis of connection, whether it's connecting to your team as a relationship driven leader, or connecting to your message as a speaker, or connecting to your brand, connecting to your network— everything is in the relationship.
And that's what I really had to study to evolve that skill.
RF: And I can see you've just taken that and you're probably a student of your own teaching and you are out there actually implementing it.
Now, you said this is sold day over day, for 6 years. What I like about that is the fact that it's probably just as relevant then if not more relevant now.
MTL: They call it evergreen, and it's true, when I did my book proposal they always ask you for those competitive books and "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie was on my list.
Those philosophies that were put out there in a different format, in a different context, in a different era, are not so dissimilar from what we're putting out today, we just are applying them differently.
We didn't have social media back then, we didn't have certain tools and resources that we can use. It really is a lot of the same philosophies but with a different twist.
RF: Right, I'm actually in the middle of reading Keith Ferrazzi's "Never Eat Alone" for the second or third time.
I usually pick it up just because it's so refreshing to be reminded of that concept of how really it's all about working that network and just everything opens up from there.
MTL: Another one in my comparative books was his book. I actually take a different philosophy than "Never Eat Alone", because I will tell you— you're allowed to eat alone!
RF: Okay, I like that. Tell me the spin on it then, what's the difference there?
MTL: My feeling is that you have to find your productive energy.
If you are forcing yourself to do something that doesn't feel right or feel authentic to you, then the connections that you're going to make in these situations are not going to actually click and they're not going to last.
Because you're not really fully present.
I would rather you eat alone once or skip a conference once so that when you do push yourself the next time and stretch yourself to go, that you are finding the right energy to enable that connection to happen.
RF: It is kind of the concept of "Love yourself before you can love anyone else," or "Understand yourself before you can understand someone else", is that parallel to that?
MTL: I am a big fan of Covey's and "Seek first to understand and then to be understood," is one of my great philosophies of life.
I can see the correlation, and I do believe that you have to be in the right mindset to allow for positive things to happen.
It isn't so much of the "Love yourself first" but, "Get yourself in the right frame of mind."
RF: Is this applicable to someone in their speaking career as well?
I can see this parallel between maybe people going through the motions of being a speaker or reading books and learning, kind of faking it until they make it, and making it stick.
Is this type of advice really applicable to the speaker?
Do you encourage people to really stop before they get on stage and know what they're saying and channel that with the right energy?
MTL: Absolutely.
There are two sides of this question that I want to address. One is the fraud factor, so bring me back to that.
But the other is just the message. I train a lot of people on being on the platform and being in front of an audience.
And we all have this talk, I've literally just had a CEO in my office and she brought me a 5-page speech.
RF: Double spaced or single spaced?
MTL: Probably space and a half, and she wanted to read it to me.
I said, "I just want to understand what your intent is, what do you want me to feel?"
And so she ended up not being able to deliver it, she read it to me, and then I said, "Ah, here's what I hear."
And then, she needed somebody to tell her where her connection was, and it was a health-care talk and she was telling a story about a patient.
I was like, "You have to remember Holly?" And we started to talk about Holly and she felt it.
And so that's what I talk about, the connection to the message and finding that right mindset.
If you are just delivering words you are not delivering the message.
If you don't feel and believe and connect to that message, don't worry about exactly how the words come out all the time, then you will captivate and you will, as I circle back to my original, you will teach.
RF: Right. I'm going to bring it back to the fraud factor real quick because you wanted me to bring you back there.
How does that factor into things? I haven't heard of a fraud factor, I love alliterations, so I'm #SuperExcited about that.
MTL: I love alliteration too, as you could tell from the name of my company and my book.
The fraud factor is something that I think all speakers face at some point in their evolution.
It's that idea of, "I don't belong here I'm not good enough, what do I know, why am I in front of the room." All of that inner self-critic.
I will say it probably does happen to women more than men, but it happens to speakers across the board.
Even somebody like me, even though I have done international keynotes with thousands of people, I still have those moments of, "Oh, I've seen other speakers and they are amazing, and I don't do that."
What I want to say in terms of that connection piece that we've been talking about is to connect to your authentic style. I am not the speaker that says the same thing the same way ever.
I mean, people have heard my talk and they're like, "It was so different this time."
RF: It makes me think of a pinball machine, the multi-millions of different combinations.
It's never the same, but at the surface level it's a 3 x 6 feet box with the same levers and only two input buttons.
But the way in which you hit it and whatever atmosphere there is or how much attention you're paying for it— it dings and pings and pops differently, but everybody is still excited about that game.
MTL: Exactly, I like that analogy.
They might not get the exact same story or the exact same bonus within the ping-pong game, but they get the experience, they get how it feels, and they leave with a mood memory around that experience.
That fraud factor comes up when you sit there and start comparing, "Oh, I don't do that," or, "They do that, and that's good."
There is a lot of different ways to be great on the platform.
What you need to think about is how you connect with your brand and your style, and trust it and embrace it, rather than forcing yourself into a box because somebody else is good too.
RF: Be your own pinball machine, "She's a pinball speaker you have to..."
I think this is important, and what's funny, I oftentimes hear people think about authenticity and you have a slight spin whether you heard or not, it was your authentic style.
I think that's an interesting spin on it, because usually, people talk about being your authentic self and it comes out the same message as far as like be yourself and people connect with you more.
This idea of an authentic style is really like, "What type of pinball machine do you want to look like."
And that I see ties into kind of a personal branding and sort of an overall picture where it's not as much about like, "Here I am as a real person," but, "My real style is this, it's going to be flowing a little bit differently, it might be something over here."
I think that's a unique spin to have the #AuthenticStyle.
MTL: I like that.
Authenticity is law number one of my book, I love that you picked up on that, I don't even think I used the word.
I'll never forget, I went to an NSA event and listening to a fellow speaker who did the main stage at a conference, 4 speakers and he was saying, "Don't go out in the audience if the audience is more than a couple hundred people, you need to stay up on that stage."
And I'm thinking to myself, "No."
I questioned myself and I went up to him and I said, "I just did 1000 people and I got off that stage at least 3 or more times and walked through the audience and threw things at them and got them talking to me and I'm only 4' 10'' [147cm] so nobody could see me. But they were projecting me up on the screen."
And he thought, "No, don't do that. Maybe do it once."
That was his style, his opinion, and his approach. This is kind of circling back to our conversation about fraud factor.
You question yourself, "Should I or shouldn't I", and anytime I say you're going to a "should"— stop. Because that's somebody else.
I love getting off the stage, I love getting close to the people, I love handing them the prize rather than throwing it from the stage because I also don't have a very good arm!
RF: You learn your style, right, you throw to the wrong person enough and you figure you got to go deliver it, so there's an evolution to this process.
MTL: Sometimes it's fun when you don't make it, because it creates energy in the room, and everyone is trying to grab it and get it to the person.
It's those choices that make the mood memory and this is what I would tell people who are sitting there thinking about, "I don't know what my authentic style is" or the "shoulds" are coming into your mind.
RF: Right, because they're starting they are like, "I read this, I should do this, I read this I should do this, I talked to this person, I should do this."
MTL: Think about the mood memory you want to create for your audience.
How do you want them to feel after your talk?
Some people want to be very thoughtful and some people want to create action.
I want to energize. I almost want to create a vibration buzz of activity, of conversation.
If it takes throwing things and tripping, because I've done that too; not on purpose, but I embrace it when those things happen because that's what they're getting with me.
What I would say to everyone out there listening is, "Don't worry about what everyone else is doing, find your feel."
RF: The feel, I like that. "Find your feel".
It's almost like you're driving or something right like you kind of feel within the zone.
You know you should stay in between the lines, but there are people who drive completely differently with the same vehicle, based on their style.
If you're in a passenger seat, sometimes a driver is super stressful, and you find yourself looking for a brake pedal on the floor.
The other times, you're like hanging on to the handle, but excited about it, whether they take the road less traveled and whatnot.
One thing I heard you say and again, my ear is toned to the alliterations, this idea of a mood memory, how you want your audience to feel: that’s so cool.
Tweet up Michelle and myself and I am @ryanfoland and Michelle is @mtlederman, and tweet us up using the #MoodMemory and share with us what you want your mood memory to be.
Because, as you just described, you are like, "I want the buzz, I want the electricity," and it's like making me think of all the inner workings of this pinball machine.
You probably have little drop spots and like the ball drops, and you have the upper which is zing, zing, it zings around, and lights.
If you go to an arcade room, an arcade room is filled with different types of arcades, and they are all sort of illuminating, they have the different noise and sounds that come out and certain people are attracted to the certain ones.
But it is not that one is better than the other. Terminator is pretty good, if you ask me, or Indiana Jones. That is just what I resonate with.
Use the #moodmemory as an indication of what you want people to leave with, the experience you want people to leave with.
Could you first decide what your mood memory is and then reverse engineer what is it that you should do to make it work?
MTL: I like everything you said except the word "should".
RF: Okay, I know, I am poking you with that. Let me rephrase.
MTL: They can. The question you put to me was, can somebody decide their mood memory that they want to create and reverse engineer and you said what they "should" do.
All I wanted to change in that sentence was what they "can" do.
RF: Gotcha. That's easy.
MTL: What the possibilities are. That tiny little tweak because again, I am very sensitive to the word "should", it's something I talk about, it's part of the understanding authenticity is to eliminate your "shoulds".
RF: My mom always used to say, "If shoulds and buts are candies and nuts, oh what a world it would be."
And so every time out of my mouth it would be like, "What if I should do this," or, "But, but", "If, if", and it's like that rings in my brain.
MTL: I have talked about it so much that my husband catches me now too, he is like, "Did you just say should?"
RF: This whole "can", it really makes ownership to it, so you are not doing it because somebody else is doing it, you are doing it because you've decided to and it's an action.
MTL: Yeah, you are testing out some different approaches.
Just remember, mood memory is the idea that people, your audience, will remember more how you made them feel than any particular thing that you said.
Now was a speaker, I know that you might not love that, but trust me, that feeling stays with them longer than the words.
RF: The magic is when you create a message that can be shared through a moment or a story or a mood that elicits this feeling that reinforces what you're trying to drill down right?
That's the magic sauce, that's the double whammy on the thing when you get an extra three balls and it's like the three ball chaos and you're just trying to keep them all in the air.
MTL: I love your analogies.
RF: It's a fun visual thing. I think that with speaking, it's still so intimidating, it's like talking about summer school, no matter what, you're going to think about it as like something that you do because you didn't do something right.
Framing speaking in a way of a pinball machine or a sailboat or a piece of desert, I think it helps people, at least for me helps to make it more accessible to people.
If you think about it, culturally, there's always been someone who's been speaking or an orator or storyteller in the whole history that we know, and it's one of the most fundamental I guess jobs.
Speaking can be super intimidating but if you talk about it like it's a pinball machine, maybe it's not as intimidating to some people.
MTL: It's interesting.
I teach public speaking still, I will coach people on getting in front of the room, I will do training on it.
I don't do keynotes on that, I actually like to do keynotes on my message and my platform of connection.
Last Friday, I taught public speaking and they talked about nerves and I said, "That's good, I still get nervous," and when we talk about intimidation part of it is that fear factor, being judged and being evaluated.
RF: That's a human evolutionary fear to protect yourself, right?
MTL: Absolutely, and it's really funny because one of the reasons I wrote the "Eleven Laws of Likability" was because I don't always feel I was likable in my youth, understanding what drives likability and what drives connection.
I had to learn how to accept that there's always going to be somebody in the audience that doesn't love me, that doesn't like me, that didn't like the talk, that didn't connect with.
Instead of hyper-focusing on the person that I've lost, focus on all the people that are with you. And it becomes a little less scary.
RF: Yeah I love that quote, I do just stick figure drawings and that's one that I've done which is, "Not everyone will like you" and a stick figure on the stage and just one guy in the audience going, "Boooooh".
The students that you have, because this whole anxiety thing is real, what do you share with them?
I mean, you've talked about it's human and you get nervous too, but are there any tactics or skills or rituals that you go through to help you either process it or minimize it?
MTL: There are so many, and I put them in categories of physical, mental, behavioral and I don't really talk about this one, but chemical.
RF: Okay so give me the top brass tacks for each one.
From a physical standpoint, what's the best way to deal with that?
MTL: Physical depends on how that fear manifests for you.
Are you a sweater, are you a blusher, are you a shaker, are you a whatever it is that it physically manifest, where it might be visible to another person.
You have to remember, our fear is not always visible to the other person, and you need to understand what is visible and what is not visible.
What is not visible, like for example for me, it's that heart rate. People can't see it, I still need to manage and control it, but nobody else can see it and so that minimizes it already for us.
The physical things, there are different tactics for each of them, whether it's wearing dark clothing or I know some speakers that sweat in their face, and so they just wipe themselves every once in a while.
If you are comfortable with how you are handling something, you make your audience comfortable with it.
Okay, so the physical depends on the physical, I want to say ailment but I don't.
The physical aspect of the way that you manifest, whether it's a tapping leg or just sweating more often, there are specific skills with it.
First probably identifying the physical traits that are showing whether you're watching yourself or whether you're getting feedback from other people, there's a specific solution or a band-aid for that.
What about the mental?
MTL: I'll combine mental and behavioral a little bit.
Because behavioral is a little bit more of our habits and mental is our mindset.
With the mindset, there's a lot of techniques that we've heard out there, visualization, self-affirmation, a lot of those things are very effective. Seeking your cheerleader is one that might not be as well known.
I will never forget the first time I did an international speech— I actually brought my whole family with me.
My sons were, let's see— my baby was probably about 8 at the time and it was the first time I think they were actually willing to sit through a talk rather than whining in the back of a room.
It was a very large audience, there was probably 1000 people in the room and it was my first international talk.
I was worried that I wouldn't translate to this crowd and my 8-year old came up to me right before and he said, "You're going to be great, mommy."
This was the technique that he gave me was, was "seek your cheerleader" because I believed him. In that moment I trusted him.
I believed him and I felt it in every core of my being that it was going to be great. And it was great, it was great.
RF: You know what he did— he snuck an extra quarter in there for you.
MTL: Yeah, he gave me the bonus round.
Sometimes you just need that person nearby to give you that moment of surety, when you might not have it 100% for yourself.
These are different things that we can do— visualizing the end, visualizing a moment of the talk that you enjoy, things like that, so that you can feel it.
Earlier you referenced "fake it until you make it".
There is a portion of my book where I call "fake it until you make it real."
RF: Nice spin. Ding, ding, ding!
MTL: My thread through the entire book is the concept of authenticity, you cannot apply any of these laws of likability without that foundation and that thread of authenticity.
"Fake it until you make it" sounds really inauthentic.
But if you look at Covey's work and you look at some of the research about the power poses, or that inner critic and all of that, we can influence how we feel and how we think with the words that we tell ourselves.
And if we act as if— what does a great speaker do, what does a great speaker look like, how do they kick something off?
Now, this is not emulating, and this is not the "shoulds" that we talked about earlier, but this is finding that piece that we can infuse into our own bodies and into own approach that gives us that confidence to manage the fear.
It's not emulating throughout the entirety of something, but it might be a little tweak that we do here or there that gives us that boost.
RF: I dig it, now talk about this whole chemical thing.
Is there going to be the next big scandal, because I heard that there was a doping scandal with dogs and the Iditarod?
Is there a doping scandal for speakers, is this going to be the new thing?
MTL: I don't really ever address the chemical I just let people know that there are chemical options, so I don't promote it, I don't suggest it.
For example with blushing, it's a question I'm asked about a lot. The blushing is really because of the wider capillaries and the blood rushing to them that causes that reddish coloring.
Certain skin types have it, certain people have it, it is just the way your body is made, and you can't change that.
There are chemical things that you can do about it, but the truth is the blushing is mental more than just physical.
RF: It's like gingers, we have freckles you can't get around that fact, so you might as well own it and love it and create a sense of energy through your freckles and your blushing.
MTL: It's owning our unique charms and accepting them and managing what we have to manage, but embracing what we can embrace.
The freckles could be your trademark.
I'm 4'10'', here's a great example.
RF: Okay, yeah.
MTL: I usually say 4' 10'' and a quarter because I'm still growing.
RF: Every inch counts at that stage.
MTL: Instead of trying to hide it or pretend it, I don't let any podiums on my stage because you can't see me behind them.
I embrace it, it's part of the "me" that they get and I love it when somebody comes and I act surprised when they tell me that I'm short, as if I did not know.
RF: I've done something similar, but with me being ginger and having a red beard and my freckles.
Sometimes that word ginger is associated with positivity and high energy and optimism.
I've dubbed myself the Ginger MC for master ceremonies in my control and I do a lot of stage time whether it's events or speaking.
I am the Ginger MC and I recoup that, and I've had so much fun spinning that into everything.
I actually have a business card that just says #GingerMC and I can sort of control that brand message as well.
MTL: That's another perfect example, that's exactly what we're talking about. Not everything that is part of our uniqueness has to be squashed.
RF: I think that's a great crushing blow to the whole stereotype that you either have to be attractive, you have to have a certain physique, that you have to have a certain voice.
I mean, look at you, you couldn't get past three rows and now you're talking to thousands of people.
I think this idea of an authentic style supersedes how you look, how you talk.
There are some very powerful speakers that do not fit that mold and it's only because they take ownership of it and reclaim it. That's cool.
MTL: I think in addition to our authentic style, the only other thing that we really need to be effective is our message.
We need to understand why we're up there and why it matters not just to us, but why it matters to whoever is listening.
And if we have those two things, you're golden.
RF: Okay, so here's a pop quiz question: so that sounds great and it's easy but I still see and I hear people struggling with this concept of having multiple messages.
What are your thoughts towards that as a concept?
Do you help to coach people to be like the super narrow-focused on one particular thing that you just can super own, or be the "Jack of all trades" that has a whole set of pocket speeches for a variety?
What are your thoughts from the people you work with?
MTL: This is such a good question for me, because I have been on both sides of this.
Probably I have been more on the "Jack of all trades" side I would probably say.
I am a tangential brain that is energized by change, and so I love doing different talks. I have a platform of connection but I have 5 different keynotes that I give regularly.
One is called "Relationship driven leader," it is about the connection to your team.
One is called "Relationship networking".
One is called "You, the brand," it's connection to how you want to be known and seen.
One is called "Boost your likability, boost your business." It is still about how we do that through relationships and through the connection.
It took a really long time for me personally to find that common thread.
What I would tell the people out there who feel that they are a bit of a "Jack of all trades", is think about what you love the best; what you are most excited and passionate about.
It still might be half a dozen things and then think about what those things have in common.
RF: I like that.
MTL: It's the umbrella.
On my card right now, I need new cards, on my card I call myself I think the communication— wait, I'm looking at my card.
RF: This is a good pop quiz card, like grab your card tell me what it says right now.
MTL: So it says, among other things, "communication strategist".
My umbrella used to be communication because I think that communication is the foundation of everything.
RF: I agree.
MTL: But that is really, really broad and everyone talks about the riches and niches and narrow, narrow, narrow.
Personally, again, this comes down to who you are, if you're somebody who wants that one talk and that's the only one you do and that's your thing and you've got it, and that's great for you.
That's just not who I am.
That said, I did feel the need to find a way to thread the things that I do regularly together.
RF: I like that, the concept of threading, so that you're still weaving the same garment, it just happens to be one that is a little bit funkier and fresh and artistic because you've got like weird stitch patch over here.
It's all connected essentially is what you're saying.
MTL: It enables me to customize to my audiences, it enables me to offer them different angles.
There is a lot of content that is in all 5 of the talks. Get known, get connected, get ahead was literally pulling from 2 or 3 other talks because they wanted this piece of that and this piece of that and I created this mishmash of it.
It just gives you a little bit more flexibility in reaching different audiences or if they want to have you come back giving them something different.
But if you ask what is Michelle about, Michelle is about connection.
RF: You can maybe make up a word that has connection and communication and communi-connection. I'm a communi-connection expert.
#communi-connection, I have no idea how to spell that, so the hashtag might not be the best, but #communi-connection.
MTL: Yeah, connect to communicate.
Actually, one of my taglines is communicate to connect.
It's in my speaker packet, the thing that kind of goes across the bottom bar is communicate to connect.
RF: Okay, communi-connection, commun-ection….?
MTL: Okay, so everyone is challenged to come up with a really good one for me.
On my new cards, I think I'm going to put connection instigator. That is going to be my new title.
RF: There's another twitter challenge.
MTL: It's interesting, when you first started asking the question I started going into a lot of technical things that I think people can do and I can share those.
But at the end of your question, here's what came to mind— I thought talk.
And I don't mean talk in front of a room, I mean talk to people.
What is the number one thing I think people out there can do to start to increase their platform, their fee structure, their reach is talk about what you are doing?
Whether it is giving a small pro-bono talk to a group of people, kind of think of the octopus, right.
So for example for me, it's SHRM, The Society for Human Resources Management. Everyone in that room was HR when I was doing training I would do free talks for SHRM at their chapters and those are all potential clients.
Even if there are only 80 people in the room, or 50 people in the room those are 50 potential clients. That's really great mechanism.
Think about the organizations that are with the people who will be hiring you.
I will tell you I got hired last year, actually this calendar year from somebody who saw me at SHRM over 2 years ago and I also got hired this year from somebody to sew me at Brooke college again doing a free panel for students, 5 years later. She was working in a bank for. 5 years.
RF: You obviously made her feel something that she remembered, right.
She's not going to remember the speech but she remembered the way you made her feel when she left a video game with a high score.
MTL: Yeah, and I was amazed, because she was like, "You're not going to remember me but—"
I remembered the talk and I didn't remember her like concretely, but she gave me enough information for me to go, "Oh you were the one who escorted me here, yeah."
And 5 years later, I did a keynote for her bank for her women's group.
RF: Wow.
MTL: It is laying a lot of groundwork, building, again it comes to connection, it comes to the relationship.
It comes to talking about your passion about what you're doing whether it's talking to one person on the playground and you don't know where they work or who they're married to, or who their best friend is.
Don't forget when you're talking about it to look for opportunities to make an ask, and I'm hesitant to say that because I don't want you to ask too early to quickly.
RF: It sounds like it's very much this relationship based, fundamentally being this idea of likability, but staying in your house until you're ready and in the right mind-space to do it.
This idea of grassroots marketing where you're in the arcade and you're sort of going around and scoping things out, but actually talking with people as opposed to just trying to get them to come over and play the game you want them to play, it's like a direct-indirect approach.
MTL: Yeah, I'm struggling with the pinball analogy here, trying to find my landing on it.
I would almost think about it as you're playing the game but nobody is watching you play the game, and you're amazing but nobody knows it. So maybe it's inviting somebody—
RF: Gotcha, there you go. Building a relationship with them before— maybe it's this, maybe you invite them, you build a relationship with them.
And then, you end up at the arcade and then instead of just going, "Hey look at me play this game," you might find out what they're interested in, see what games they want to play.
If that game happens to be something close or similar to what you're playing, after they play first, you can be like, "Hey let me give a spin" and all of a sudden, "She's a pinball wizard", and you're like, "Wow."
They are like, "Wow, you're good at that," and you are like, "Yeah, I really like this, and this is what I do, here's my message, this is what I practice."
That sparks the memory that could be that potential keynote to 5 years later, I guess, right?
MTL: Yeah, it's all of those little moments that build up.
I know that's hard, because relationship networking is a long-term approach and we want the paycheck now, we want the gig now.
Speaking specifically is a much longer ramp up or close. I have things booked in 2018, sometimes I am booked a year out, but with training or smaller talks, maybe it's only 3 months.
Looking for those interim opportunities, for example, I did a breakfast talk for my high school, and I did that talk as a gift back to the school.
But then I was asked to do a full day training and I was paid for it.
Now I'm doing it again, because it was so well received because people who heard the talk wanted to come to the training and they couldn't do that and now they will do it.
So again, it is about kind of that flow and kind of riding the wave and knowing that there's a lot of different platforms.
It's great to think about being on that stage that is 6 feet off the ground and a sea of people in front of you.
I will tell you one of my favorite talks was at a university where I was in a room that should have only had 200 people, but we had probably about 300 people stuffed to the gills 10 deep in the doorway, lining the walls.
I'm still trying to walk through the crowd and at the end of it, somebody said to me, "You made that feel like a graduate seminar," meaning there was only 30 to 40, 50 people in the room because everybody felt included.
Those are some of the most invigorating experiences and I will tell you that I hired people out of that audience, because they reached out to me.
It's about the connections that you make at every little place.
What I would also say is you just don't know who you're talking to. I was on a field trip last year to a beach with our class and another class mom was telling me,
"Oh yeah, I was able to do the field trip because I'm in between jobs," and I was hearing, "Oh, don't you do this? Oh, when I get here, I'm going to be working in the women's group. I'm going to want to talk to you." And this was on a field trip for school!
RF: Wow, you don't know who you're talking to and when that will matter, right?
MTL: So I'm going back to that first piece of advice, and I know it has evolved into multiple pieces of advice.
The first piece of advice was to start talking: tell people what you're excited about, what you're doing, what you're working on.
Not, "Hey this is what I do, I am this and that."
It's rather, "Oh yeah, I'm actually doing the survey right now, because I am trying to understand this," and then you peak some of his curiosity and it evolves a conversation.
RF: Okay, so I have the longest hashtag in the history of the world that I believe is an alliteration that I think wraps up this piece of advice, are you ready for this?
# making_mood_memory_moments_makes_more_money.
MTL: I like that.
RF: I like this idea of a mood memory, right.
But if you're talking with people, you're really sharing with them a feeling, you're creating this environment in a conversation.
If you by making mood memory moments make more money, hashtag.
MTL: I like it.
And for those people who want to dive deeper into mood memory, it's chapter 8.
RF: Awesome.
If somebody were to find you, find your book online, where is the best place for them to go?
What would you like to have a first touch point for them, if they're going to come find you?
MTL: The easiest touch point is my website, which is Michelle Tillis Lederman.com.
From there, you can get everywhere, you can see links to all my books, you can go to my YouTube channel and see my videos.
I do these one-minute success shorties, you can get to my blog, you can get to my LinkedIn, my professional Facebook because you're not going to get to see my hair in the 1980's on my personal page.
RF: Okay, the way you described it, it's just like this is your arcade, you've got all these places and things that you can go and play depending on what you're after and it's probably entertaining and fun at the same time.
I can't get this analogy out of my head but I love it, so go to your website and basically go to your arcade, everybody gets to go play and have fun.
MTL: You can get anywhere from there, and if you go my website/giftpack you can actually download a chapter of the book, you can take a networking assessment.
I have a video series that I will email you, like there's a bunch of free stuff that I give away if you so choose, and that's on the gift pack.
RF: So your website/ what is it again?
MTL: Giftpack. One word.
RF: All right, I'm going to go get that and I hope that it's chapter 8, because I want to make mood memory moments more often to make more money and tap into my Ginger MC authentic style.
Hey, this has been a lot of fun, I mean we had no idea who we were when we started and I think I've got a really good idea of what's going on.
You are the coolest, shortest speaker I know.
And I'll be your ginger speaker friend until we continue to connect the dots and maybe we'll share the stage sometime.
MTL: Well, I just colored my hair a little more ginger than I was yesterday.
RF: Awesome, and I like to tell people that I am a proud ginger, I think that we are very underrepresented minority out there.
The good news is ginger at the end of the day is a state of mind, so we can all be a little more ginger.
All right, well hey, Michelle this is amazing and the show ends as soon as you say "goodbye."
MTL: Goodbye.
RF: All right, we'll see you next time everybody, here at The World of Speakers podcast with Ginger MC, your ginger host.
Goodbye.
A bit about World of Speakers
World of Speakers is a weekly podcast that helps people find their own voice, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.
We cover topics like: what works versus what doesn't, ideas on how to give memorable presentations, speaking tips, and ideas on how to build a speaking business.
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