World of Speakers E.47: Drew Dudley | Creating value and connections with your talks

Drew Dudley: It was a TEDx Talk that ended up on TED.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, that's good.

It was a TEDx and then the X dropped and it became highlighted by the TED Talk. I became, I think, number 3,550,001 or something like that. It's a quick, fun, little six-minute talk.

We were talking about leadership on my radio show and I just jumped on it. Then I found you on Twitter and I cyberstalked you, and then I asked you to come on the show and here we are.

I'm excited to get to know you and share your valuable insights of leadership, one lollipop at a time.

Drew Dudley: That is awesome. Thanks, man.

Ryan Foland: One of the ways I like to get to know people is through their past. I think storytelling is our greatest asset. I'm going to throw you under the bus, the love bus, this is not a big deal here.

Tell me a story from your past. If all that I had was that story to describe you to a friend who had no idea who you were — what would that story be?

Drew Dudley: Alright, I guess it would be that back when I was running the leadership program at the University of Toronto, I was going through a lousy time towards the end of my career there.

Specifically, I was going through a toxic time in my workplace and I was going through a depressive episode, a part of my bipolar disorder — which is a part of my life.

I decided I wanted to take a train trip across Canada and not talk to anybody, just put myself somewhere in a sleeper car, in the lounge car, read that big stack of books and articles that you're supposed to have read but you never got around to, and not communicate with other human beings.

My big problem at that particular point in my life was other human beings.

They were pissing me off, some fierce. That was the plan.

I got on that train and I talk about this in the book, but early on in my time there, a seven-year-old girl really called me out and made me aware of the gap that hat had formed between the man that I envision myself as, and how I was actually behaving.

What happened was I became aware that I was supposed to be this guy who, as a career, was collecting and sharing insights and stories, and here I had gotten on this train all the way across Canada and my plan was to add nothing to my story, learn nothing about other people's.

This train trip went from being an escape from a really dark time of my life and trying to stay away from people, to a constant conversation about life and about leadership with different people on the train from that seven-year-old to the bartender at the bar car to a couple of retired CEOs, to two guys who stormed the beach at Normandy.

I actually eventually took all of these stories, they are a big part of the book that just came out.

I guess if you really wanted to explain me to somebody else, there's the background.

I came from a university background running a leadership program.

I am someone who has mental illness as a part of their life and that drove me into a situation that I learned something from a whole bunch of people who are not the type of leaders that don't fit the mold of the type of leaders that we’re taught about.

I learned a ton about it and I turn around and I share that all around the world. These wonderful insights into how to live life, how to empower people, how to take care of yourself.

It all came about kind of by accident, and it came about because someone else made me realize that I needed to close the gap between the guy I wanted to be and how I was actually behaving.

That to me is entirely what my career is about.

It was pointed out to me that I wasn't living it. I started to try to figure out how to help other people do just that.

Ryan Foland: Nothing like a seven-year-old calling you out on your stuff to make it real, right?

Drew Dudley: Without a doubt.

Hey kids, I think the whole world would be better if every politician had to face a press corp full of five- to seven-year-olds because not only do they ask amazing questions, you cannot BS these kids.

They will keep asking follow-ups until they get an actual answer and if anyone's ever raised a five-year-old, they know that they can catch inconsistencies in your story.

If you want a free leadership tip — spend time with five-year-olds, they will blow your mind.

Ryan Foland: I like it. There's one of, I am sure, many tips here.

My question: on this train, were you the one that was doing more talking or more listening?

Because I know the idea was not to get engaged in conversation, hiding behind a book, which is totally cool, everybody needs that space.

But in these conversations, did you find that the people sort of approached and talked with you and you listened more, or was your inherent gregariousness coming out of you whether you liked it or not?

Drew Dudley: I approached them for the most part.

A couple of them mentioned something to me because they'd overheard the conversations I had with other people.

But one of the things I said to people about leadership is that what sets leaders apart is the questions that they ask.

I think part of the thing that causes people's identities to not connect with leadership in their own minds is that they don't think they have all the answers.

Leadership isn't about having answers. It's about the type of questions you ask.

The great questions are the ones where the person being asked learns more than the person doing the asking.

That is somewhat counterintuitive in that if you ask a question, it's you that's seeking knowledge.

But if you're a leader or if you really want to empower other people, work on crafting these questions where the person you're asking learned something.

For me, part of that came about because of one of these interactions where someone said to me,

"I'd always known this fact, but I wish I told my kids."

That gave birth to the edge-of-the-bed question, which is: If you had a child and they were about to leave home, it was the last night they were spending as someone who lived in your house, they're going off to college or a job or something to that effect.

They called you into their room and you sat down on the edge of their bed, and they said,

"What do I need to know? What insights have most contributed to your happiness?"

What would you tell them?

That question was born out of a conversation I had on that train and I started using that as my icebreaker and trying to pull from people the wisdom that they know but maybe had never actually realized they had inside them.

That's really how it started. Then I just sat back and listened and tried to ask follow-ups. I was trying to think of what kind of questions if I was asked would intrigue me in answering.

Because questions that are boring to answer don't teach anybody anything.

That, I think, is what happened, I took these questions where I thought not only am I going to hopefully pull some cool advice out of them, but maybe they'll challenge the people that I was asking and then you just let people's wisdom roll.

Ryan Foland: What I love about this concept is that you're sort of group thinking content and the ability for you to talk with a 7-year-old and somebody who stormed Normandy and asking particular questions that bring about high-value answers with what you said this knowledge.

You brought it out in front of them in this conversation.

Now, these are relatable situations that you can use and you're using in your book and it's redefining leadership and it's convincing people through the act of questioning, essentially, what your whole message is.

It's that leadership needs to be redefined.

Because if you're on the side of the bed answering these questions that are going to change someone's life when they leave, that's essentially leadership, right?

It's interesting how that all ties in together from the train ride.

Drew Dudley: Yeah, and it's 100% leadership.

Anything that you do that sends people away better off, whether it's a two-hour conversation, a five-year working or romantic relationship, or 15 seconds just passing on the street or a smile, whatever the case may be, that is leadership.

Now, it's not the only form of leadership and I'm not saying that everyone on Earth can be a CEO or a senior manager.

I am saying there is a form of leadership to which we all can and should aspire and it's a form of leadership that takes place in daily behaviors that should be celebrated more.

Because if we celebrate it more, people are going to feel better when they do it, and that means those behaviors are going to be repeated.

If we evaluate leadership on a daily basis, people don't get wrapped up in what their education is or what their title is or how much money they make; they can simply focus on how they behave today.

In the case of this particular train ride, or a lot of the things in the book, is that people in a specific moment got to draw on their experiences and share with me, and then I get to share with other people. That's leadership if it makes your life a little bit better.

Those powerful questions that make people think about what it is that they already know, are great.

One of the people asked me, "You work with students, what's one thing you want every student who's a part of your workshops, your classes to take with them?"

I've never considered that.

It's because I think that we become unconscious to the things that surround us the most, particularly our own life and environments.

Marshall McLuhan said, "We don't know who first discovered water, but we're pretty sure it wasn't a fish."

If you could give people the chance to reflect on what they already know instead of sort of try to challenge them with new questions, I think that people really respond to that positively, especially when they get the chance to tell their story.

Ryan Foland: Or instead of just telling them what you think about the situation, you're asking what is relevant to them and their life experience to tap into that, which essentially shines the light on what the water is that they've been swimming in that is a new pool or a new temperature for you, essentially.

Drew Dudley: Yeah, without a doubt.

I think that when we listen intently and make people realize that what they're telling us is benefiting us, that we're taking something out of it, you give people permission to be more confident in doing so.

I think from our own perspective and for leaders out there, I think that we hesitate to tell our stories because we think they're not as important or impressive as other people's.

The story is the basic unit of human understanding, and we're never going to understand ourselves or each other if we don't tell our stories.

One of the things I try to tell my students, younger people, because they often feel their stories aren't important yet, is that we have to let go of this idea, this thing that was ingrained in us that says, "Your job is to impress other people," which means your goal should be to make people say, "Oh, wow, I didn't know that," when they hear you speak.

One of the much bigger gifts that you can give people is not to make them say, "Oh wow, I didn't know that," when you speak.

It's to make them say, "Oh my god, I thought I was the only one."

"I thought I was the only one who was afraid of that," ...or jealous of that or hurt by that.

There's a real freedom that comes when you see somebody else say exactly what you're facing.

As we share our stories, particularly the parts of which we're ashamed of because we think they'll make us look weak, or unemployable, or an embarrassment.

What you're actually doing is you're giving people the opportunity to say, "Oh, wow. I thought I was the only one." That's a really powerful thing.

Everybody should share their stories because there's some piece in there, not because  they're not impressive enough, but because what it does is it actually liberates people to say, "Me too."

That is a really, really powerful thing to do.

Ryan Foland: Meet my buddy, Drew Dudley. He is the guy you want to get stuck on the plane with, sitting next to, right?

Drew Dudley: Maybe. I guess so.

Or the one you don't want to get stuck to on the plane, because you just want to watch a movie.

Ryan Foland: Okay, but you're talking about the power of storytelling.

That's why I love hearing people's stories, and this story is about gathering other people's stories, so it's like “Story Inception.” I like it.

Drew Dudley: I was recently speaking with this brilliant individual who's a great writer but didn't speak regularly.

I sort of laid out a concept to her when we were having coffee and she said,

"Oh my god, that's so perfect for what my speech is supposed to be about. I wish that I could use it."

And it was that moment when I realized, "Well, why not?"

If you get on stage and say, "I was talking to my friend Drew and he said this," it was sort of an eye-opener that that's entirely what a lot of my speaking is, is that I gather these insights from other people and I go on stage because I'm the one who has the broader audience to share them and you attribute them.

I was saying if you want to talk about you're sitting here trying to come up with all of your brilliant ideas around this theme, why don't you think about this?

Think about the stories you've been told and the people who have blown you away with their insights, the type of things that have made your life better.

Then go on stage and tell those stories.

Those people aren't speaking. Those individuals are out there leading in the world and they don't get the chance to stand on a stage in front of other people, or maybe they have no interest in doing it.

One of the things when you're trying to put together a speech, I think people sit back and they're like,

"Oh my gosh, what can I tell? What's my story? What's my expertise?"

Well, instead sit back and think to yourself,

"Who has absolutely blown me away with their stories.”

”What are the most useful things I've ever been taught by somebody else?"

You could make your entire presentation these stories that come from other people.

Don't steal them and act like they're yours, but say, "I want to tell the story about my friend Ryan. My friend Ryan has taught me so much."

Ryan Foland: Essentially, you're curating the content from other people who have that amazing content and you're literally just shining a light on that to bring it out.

And you have the ability to have a halo with that because you've chosen that as an amazing piece and story.

But again, it takes the pressure off to have this completely original idea when some of the best ideas are the water that we all know about. We just don't have the attention to understand what's in front of us.

Drew Dudley: Yeah. It's just a great way of taking the pressure off in thinking, "Okay, it's my job to create all of this amazing content."

No, it's your job to be useful.

If that means that what you do is sit back and say, "I'm going to do 20 minutes and it's going to be 3x6-minutes stories about moments in my life, teachers in my life, leaders of my life who changed me and share these ideas, insights, stories that blew me away," that's a great speech.

Just don't steal other people's stuff, especially other speakers.

But straight up say, "Here are 3 of the best lessons I've ever  learned."

You don't have to cook it up. Your job is to be useful to the people in the audience.

If that's by passing on 3 of the things that have been most useful to you, the bonus is you can also tell the story of how you learned it.

That is a much more interesting way of learning than a lecture.

Ryan Foland: I love it.

Well, we're definitely into the section here where we're talking about tips for speaking.

I think that is an amazing first tip to take the pressure off. Utilize stories of people who have blown you away and who have impacted you from an advice standpoint. Incorporate those in storytelling, giving credit takes the pressure off of you, and the bonus is telling the story of how you got the story.

Drew Dudley: Yeah, sometimes it's not even advice that they've given you. It is simply recognizing that how they live has impressed you.

People really love those stories.

When you're on stage, I think that one of the key pieces as well as talking about sharing other people's ideas is that, at least from my perspective, while you're on stage, any story you tell you should not be the main character in it.

It's your story, and has to be your story, but in my stories, for instance, if you read the book, when I tell the story of that little girl, I'm a character in that story with a little girl who said to me, "Don't all books have stories," she asked me and I said, "No, some just have knowledge."

She said to me, "Well, aren't all stories knowledge?"

I thought to myself, "I've never thought of it that way. I guess they are."

She told me that she used to run every day to remind herself that she was free. Anytime that she felt she was in a room that wasn't big enough for her spirit.

She said, "I run to remind myself that I'm free."

I was feeling really down and I said to her,

"You know what, I think I'm the same way. I think that I've been spending a lot of time in rooms that aren't big enough for my spirit. And I think that that's making me feel sad, and I appreciate you sharing this."

She looked at me and hopped down off of the the chair and looked at me and said,

"You know Drew, I don't mean to be rude but I don't think that anyone whose spirit is too big for the room they're in would ever read a book without a good story."

I started to realize, it was just this like sort of straight up, "Oh you think you're cool, do you? But what you're doing doesn't indicate that's the case," she's the main character in that story.

When I talked to the two guys who stormed the beaches at Normandy, and I love telling the story of what they taught me, they're the main characters in that story.

Any story that you tell, you should not be the main character, and the goal should not be about you. It really shouldn't even be about the people in the story. It should be about the story that the audience is connected to in their own life because of your story.

When I tell a story about a seven-year-old-girl who schooled me, she's the main character, but what I think is really important as well, is that I want the audience thinking about that moment in their life where they learned something from a kid.

That to me, what you're doing is you're connecting to an experience that they have also had, and that ultimately when you're storytelling on stage you're not the main character.

And while it's your story, it has to be about the audience.

I think you have to be really deliberate about, "Okay, how is this story going to connect to the people in the audience?" You shouldn't tell stories that won't trigger something in them.

That, I think, is a really cool thing to bear in mind.

Ryan Foland: It's interesting to look underneath the table when it comes to storytelling because how many times have you been told to use stories in your speeches?

You're saying you've got to be positioning those stories in a way that resonates with the audience, so that the story is something they can relate to.

It's not you, it's not the main character, it's a takeaway where they have had something similar in their life, which probably makes them more apt to actually listening and creating inside and taking from that conversation that you're describing, what you really want to tell them.

Drew Dudley: Yeah, and make sure that you're telling the difference, or you're paying attention to the difference between whether you're telling a story or an anecdote.

An anecdote is something that happened. A story is something that teaches things.

An anecdote is, "I was out one day and I turned around and ran into Emma Stone and dropped a bunch of champagne on her."

Don't ask why I picked that particular anecdote, it just happened to a friend of mine.

But ultimately, a story is: there's a character, there's a conflict, there's a resolution, there's a lesson.

The story of, "Hey, something cool happened. I ran into a famous person and embarrassed myself." Okay, cool, nice anecdote, but what do I as a listener learn from that?

Maybe I've got a similar moment, but there's no point to it really.

I tell a story about a little girl who shared with me a perspective on life that we lose as we get older, a reminder that we are always in control of deciding how we feel about ourselves and our lives, and she challenged me, and it made me realize something different.

Are you telling an anecdote which is just something that happened to you, or are you telling a story which is a relatable piece where there are a conflict and a tension that teaches something that has to be overcome and that ultimately there's a resolution and a moral to it?

Too many people go up and they just tell anecdotes, and ultimately what you need to be asking yourself is: is it an anecdote or is it a story?

Don't tell anecdotes in your speeches, tell stories. I mean, you might want to tell an anecdote off the top.

I guess I should qualify this as I go and this is cool podcast, and I apologize that I think out loud as I go, I guess really the only place for an anecdote in your presentation may be off the top if it's something that relates to the organization or makes you seem a little bit connected,

"One night I was at a speech and the night before someone accidentally knocked on my door in the middle of the night and it felt so terrible that when I woke up in the morning, there was a little chocolate from the vending machine."

I told that as an anecdote off the top just to say, "Hey look how great this audience is. Somebody knocked on my door last night at 3am, and I know you're out there," because then you get the laugh off the top, right.

"But then they left chocolate, which really ties into exactly what I want to talk about, blah, blah, blah."

I like how I just took what I do for a living and summed it up with “blah, blah, blah.”

Ultimately, that might be the place for an anecdote, but pay attention to that when you're on stage.

Stay clear of the anecdotes. Tell stories.

Ryan Foland: Okay, I dig it.

Do you know Park Howell? It's got a company The Business of Story, just such a great guy.

You guys will have tons of fun telling/swapping stories and I'm sure that there would be a nice connection.

He's got a podcast too The Business of Story, and he would just eat this up, even the thinking through what you're thinking because that's a nice behind the scenes. I like it.

Now, as a leader, one thing that you mentioned was that not everybody can be a CEO.  

I started thinking, "Well, what about a DEO, or a DFO, or a DTO, or a DIO, or a DCO?"

I replaced the first letter with a daily, what about a Daily Executive Officer?

A daily financial officer, a Daily Technical Officer, a Daily Information Officer, and a Daily Community Engagement Officer?

Drew Dudley: I'm so stealing this.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, you can steal it.

Drew Dudley: Although in leadership, here's the thing — you never steal any ideas, you benchmark the best practice.

Ryan Foland: There you go.

Drew Dudley: I'm going to benchmark those practices.

Yeah, that completely sums up what I talk about. It's the idea that if we evaluate leadership on a daily basis, it's all that matters.

A big part of it came from the fact that I am a recovering alcoholic, and one of the things you learn in recovery is that if you never want to drink for the rest of your life, you have to choose not to have a drink today and then treat every single day of the rest of your life as if it is the first day of your recovery.

Because “day ones” have an inherent commitment, humility, and forgiveness to them.

If you screw up on day one, which we always do, most of us when we do something for the first time you don't then say,

"Okay, this isn't worth doing, I'm quitting."

What you do is you forgive yourself and you recommit, and the next day is another first day.

That is inherent in first days, but if you've been doing the same thing for 25 years and you were doing it well, none of those days in the past 25 years matter when what is non-negotiable today is not having a drink again.

It doesn't matter how many days in a row.

The first meeting I was ever at when someone expressed, "Wow, 38 years sober." And he looked right at them and said, "Look, son, I have just as much time in today as you do."

This idea of breaking down big challenges in our lives and big goals in our lives into the behaviors that have to be non-negotiable every day.

And for me, that's how we look at leadership.

We all wake up every morning having accomplished the exact same amount of things to earn the title of leader — nothing.

Not a damn thing.

That seven-year-old and I woke up having done the exact same amount of leadership behaviors that day.

If you take a look and you say, “All I'm going to focus on is whether I engaged in specific non-negotiable leadership behaviors today.”

The book is about figuring out what the specific ones for you are, because it's different for everyone. But that's where the focus is, and that means everybody wakes up with the same opportunity and obligation to engage in leadership behaviors each day.

I like the idea of Daily Officers, that you're in charge of these today.

Ryan Foland: Right, I mean the CEO like the Chief Financial Officer, you have a lot of responsibilities, there is a lot of pressure.

But if you're just the Daily Executive Officer and each day you sort of take on that new commitment.

My question about the DEOs when it comes to their speaking and you helping these leaders who maybe before didn't see themselves as leaders, how do you get them to take the jump, the daily jump to be able to share their stories, make their impact and share their leadership with the world?

Because granted a CEO might be more proficient because he's had 25 years of practice, but when you're talking to a seven-year-old DEO, what do you say to her or him to get them up on the stage flexing their talk muscles?

Drew Dudley: Well, I think that recognizing that “all the world’s a stage” and seizing the opportunity to share your stories one-on-one.

Because look, if you're a speaker just starting out, one of the tough things to do is facing this audience of eyes. It's intimidating.

One of the things that I recommend to speakers is talking to three people during your first speech.

Pick someone on the left, pick someone in the middle, and pick someone on the right, someone who is smiling someone who just has that vibe to them that they like you.

And sometimes you'll switch like you'll start looking for one person on the left and it won't work but you'll find eventually with that person that when you lock eyes with them, you feel like you're sort of together on this, you're in this together.

Pick one on the left, pick one in the middle, pick one on the right.

Maybe it takes you five minutes to find the one in each section and that slowly rotate from left to middle to right, making eye contact with exactly that person.

Now everybody in the vicinity is going to feel like you're making eye contact with them, but then you're having a one-on-one conversation where you're trying to share something that you feel is important and if you're on stage and you don't feel as important, get off the damn stage.

That's how I start and I think that what I let people know is that you start practicing that by trying to share your stories one on one.

For me, to switch from speaking to what's in the book, what I try to do is I say:

Take the things you want to stand for every day. Figure out what they are. And then tie them to questions that you have to ask every day.

The way I approach the world is that every day is day one, which means I've got a commitment, humility, and forgiveness for myself.

I have these non-negotiable behaviors I've created, so every day is day one and I need to earn every next day on this planet.

At the end of every day, you have to earn and prove that you deserve another day. And what you do is you do it by passing a test.

The bonus is that you were given the test, the questions to the test in the morning, you know what you're going to be asked at the end of the day and each one of those questions is tied to your core values.

At the end of the day, I have six questions tied to six core values I want to live every day and I have to get three of those six questions answered by the end of the day when I go to bed.

They are

• What have I done today to recognize someone else's leadership?

• What have I done today to make it more likely someone would learn something?

• What did I do today that might not work, but I tried it anyway?

• What did I do to move someone else closer to a goal today?

• When did I elevate instead of escalate?

• What did I do today to be good to myself?

I know in the morning that to earn another day on this planet, I need to get three out of those six questions answered.

If I answer those questions, I've lived those values.

You can help people say, "What do you want to stand for?"

They can be five, we've done this with five, six, seven-year-olds.

"Okay. What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of words do you want people to use to say that you stand for?"

And they say, "Kindness."

"Okay, cool. Let's come up with a question that if you answer it today you'll have shown kindness."

So, "Oh, how did I make someone smile today?"

Great. Make sure that sometime today you find an answer to that question.

Now, in the book I talk about the psychological research that shows how powerful a question like that can be, how not answering that question causes psychic discomfort etc.

But, for a seven-year-old it doesn't matter, they know how to answer questions all day long.

They look for them all day long. They look for answers all day long.

That's how we get people doing it. Instead of just saying, "Hey, let's go and do something."

What you do is you embed questions into your life and because unanswered questions cause psychic discomfort, people will look for the opportunity to answer those questions.

When you answer the questions, you've actually turned around and lived these things that are important to you.

What I talk about is when you've lived those things and the process is impacting others positively, that is leadership.

We could do it all day, but don't just accidentally live your values, plan to live your values.

That's what separates good leaders from great ones.

Ryan Foland: Decide to be the DEO of the day.

Drew Dudley: Exactly, but also know what a DEO has to accomplish.

What is your job description?

If you're a DEO my DEO says, "Okay, you better live impact, growth, empowerment, courage, class, and self-respect today."

That's the job of today's DEO. That's the key.

Ryan Foland: And if you want to be a DCO, a Daily Communications Officer and you want to up your speaking game, look at the values and core things you want to be known when it comes to the qualities of a speaker.

Are you going to be inspirational?

Are you going to be educational?

Then formulate questions around those.

Then in your daily outreach, your daily networking or the daily creation of your content, you can take that, your test, your aptitude test of your DM or DC or DE-onus based on those core values, reverse engineering questions that lead you on a daily task of earning your right for another day.

That's some good stuff.

Drew Dudley: You know what's interesting, man? I never thought about this, but I need to cook up the questions that you should pose for every section of your presentation of your speech, because you just made me realize that there are certain questions that need to be answered for every presentation as well.

Like:

How is this section useful?

How did this connect the audience to a story in their own life?

Going through and asking yourself these specific questions, I think, is really important.

Once I'm done with this podcast, I'm going to sit down and see if I can be useful that way.

It's interesting when you ask yourself, "Am I going to be inspirational?"

For what it's worth, I would discourage anyone from going on stage trying to be inspirational.

I think it's a way to crash and burn.

Never go on stage trying to be motivational or inspirational.

Always try to go on stage to be useful.

Because useful, compelling ideas are inherently motivating, if you go on stage and you give people insight processes, tips, tricks, whatever you do that is useful to them, that will make their lives, relationships, or work better, that is inherently motivating.

If you try to go up and say, "I'm going to try to connect with them and make them feel this emotion," you can figure out how to be useful through doing that or use that as a tool to be useful, but your number one goal while you're on stage has to always be, "How am I useful?"

Every section of your speech you have to be able to look at and say, "How is this useful?"

One of the tips I was once given is to put together pieces to make your presentation. I suggest never write a whole presentation, put it together in pieces. It's like comedic bits: five to seven minutes little sections that you do.

At each point, in each of those sections that you do, then put together eight to twelve of them to create your 60-minute presentation.

A friend of mine once said, "I want you to imagine me for the rest of your career sitting in the front row of every single speech that you have ever given and every time that you make a point, I want you to imagine that I scream through cupped hands at you, ‘Why do I care?’”

I think that’s one thing that we miss as the speaker sometimes, and I still remember that. I catch myself after a speech if I watch the video saying, "Ah, I just talked for two-and-a-half minutes and at no point answered them that question: Why do I care." That's really important.

Being motivating and inspirational should never be your goal on stage.

Your goal on stage always has to be, "How am I useful."

That changed entirely the way that I construct speeches.

Ryan Foland: I love to see these questions that come up because it's a great point. People might want to be inspirational, but what are the true questions that the audience will be asking themselves to determine whether or not what you say is inspiring.

It's almost like we ask those questions too late as a feedback form, but you could create and invent a pre-back form, which is a pre-feedback for you as a speaker to know the answers to the questions that your audience is going to want before you start talking.

Drew Dudley: Yeah, I think too is that imagine you're watching your speech on television.

This is another trick that I use — imagine you're watching your speech on television like it was a sportscast like public speaking was a competition and it's not, by the way, business-wise. There are lots of gigs out there. We’re not competing with other speakers.

Imagine every sporting event has a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator, and they talk.

One of the things I do as I'm doing my presentation is I try to think how a cynical person who immediately went into that speech being like, "I'm not going to like this person," how they would be thinking, like what kind of commentary they'd have in their head like at a sporting event.

"Well Jim, that's a really good point that he made but he completely ignored this one."

As I go through it, I think, "Okay if this was a cynical person, if this was someone on Twitter," because you know, Twitter and social media are awful,

"What kind of things would they be saying to try to poke holes or diminish what I was saying?"

"Well Jim, that completely ignores this particular point."

Ryan Foland: “There he goes with another anecdote.

I wish he would just stick with the story and stop making himself the first person.”

Drew Dudley: Exactly, and so do that with your speech. It's hard and it makes people scared because that's what we're afraid of on stage, that people are doing that, but lean into it.

I often have changed my presentation because if someone's thinking, "Yeah, but what about," and then you immediately go right into that, they're like, "Oh, wow. This guy's on top of it."

"Yeah, but what about — Hey Drew, are you saying that everyone can be a leader because — come on!"

No, because then what I do is I created — how do I articulate how I'm not saying that. I do a speech on the list that drives people's lives and when I talk to students, which I don't get to do enough anymore, someone said to me, I thought, "Okay, they're going to say Drew's up there saying your grades aren't important."

Which led to me saying or creating the most tweeted and repeated quote that I've ever spoken which is,

"You should work incredibly hard to make your grades extraordinary and then you should work twice as hard to make them the least impressive thing about you."

That was created by trying to recognize what problem people would have with what I was saying.

It's hard because it does intimidate you knowing that people are going to be out there judging you, but don't ignore it, lean into it and make your presentation stronger as a result.

Ryan Foland: That's great. Literally looking at yourself through the lens of a cynical sportscaster.

I think that's a great piece of advice.

Let's step into the zone of how you have found success in spreading your message. It's led you to a book, it's led you to a very successful TEDx talk which is promoted on the TED Channel. You've got some traction here.

What are some of the things you wish on the bedside as someone who is like,

"Okay, I'm going to go out there and start my speaking career. I'm leaving the house.”

And you're on the bedside, and you're like, "All right before you go, I want to tell you these certain things."

What would those things be?

Drew Dudley: This is where I'm not as useful as I'd like to be, because I'm an incredibly privileged guy.

I was born Canadian and a straight, white dude. So, right there I won the lottery.

I also won the speaking lottery in a number of ways in that I didn't plan to be a speaker.

I started speaking as part of workshops to teach young volunteers as part of a charity that I was the national chair of, and it just so happened that that meant that I got to speak in front of 65 school representatives every year at a National Conference.

Which led to many people asking me to do it.

Which led me to run a leadership program at the University of Toronto, which meant I was doing, 50 to 60 hours in front of a classroom regularly.

That leads to more speaking engagements.

I had a chance to hone my craft hours and hours and hours each week, which not everybody has the opportunity to do because not everyone has that kind of stage.

As well, I did a TEDx talk 3 months after I left my job to become a full-time speaker, which went viral.

People are like, "Man, how do you get to do 100 gigs a year?"

I'm like, "Get a TED Talk that goes viral," that's terrible business advice. Like, how do you do that?

I have somebody in the audience of that TED Talk who runs a major speaking bureau.

So bang, I walked out of the gate with speaker bureau representation, 3 weeks after I decided to become a full-time speaker.

It's hard, and I don't want to be useless to people, but I do recognize that a lot of the stuff that people work many years in their careers to get to, I managed to have happen right away.

Here are some things that I do try to be useful with, however.

There is a huge difference between cash flow and income.

People pay you late sometimes, so that to me is something to always bear in mind.

I wish people had reminded me of the fact that the speaking business goes in cycles that are unpredictable but some cycles are predictable.

Which means you're probably not going to make a whole lot of money in December and January of every year.

Make sure you're putting some money aside from those big fat months, the March, April, Mays, beginning of Junes of the year and mid-September till the end of November.

Don't forget that you're really only working eight months of a year because of holidays, two months of the summer and two months over December-January. You're not going to get on stages.

So bear in mind that difference right there.

I think that any time spent on a personal brand or social media presence before you are absolutely dynamite on stage is wasted time and money.

What I mean by that is that I meet a lot of people who say, "Oh, I'd like to be a speaker. How do I get myself known? How do I create my brand?"

Here's where your brand comes from in my mind:

If you are given an hour of a person’s life, do you lay them flat?

Do you have them walk out of the room saying, "My god, my time was well spent there."

Especially if you're not famous.

You have the opportunity if you're not famous to absolutely surprise people with how much you impact them.

If you don't do that, if when you were given an hour of people's lives, you don't absolutely blow them away, then you shouldn't be putting your time and money into raising brand awareness or getting a social media following. Don't.

All of your time should be going into getting in front of people and making sure that your hour on stage absolutely lays them flat.

How do you become successful as a speaker?

Move people and educate people and be useful to people while you're on stage.

That has to be your primary most important factor in your business.

Anything you do that takes away from you being amazing on stage, that takes your time away from that early on in your career is a waste of time. You should not be promoting yourself until you know that you've got an hour on stage that absolutely lays people flat or half an hour or whatever the case may be.

That is something I really would encourage people to do. They tend to pull their attention off of their craft and get it wrapped up in the business side of things, in the branding side of things, because it's sexy, and there are books written on it, and you think that's part of it.

As a speaker, if you are amazing as a speaker, you are not going to have to worry about marketing.

Your marketing will make you more successful, but ultimately, most of the business that I've seen in this world comes from word of mouth.

Somebody in this audience is going to tell somebody who's booking an event somewhere else. Bear that in mind.

I also think — I'm sorry, I'm just going off of the top of my head as opposed to waiting for your questions.

Ryan Foland: No, just let it flow like some sort of an analogy of something in Canada. I know everything's frozen there, so stuff doesn't flow very well.

Drew Dudley: If you slip on the ice, you're not paying for it.

Ultimately something else to bear in mind is thinking about who your audience is and what you're selling. I love the work that I do and yes, I think it empowers people and when I get on stage, I'm about one-on-ones in the audience.

But you don't get on stage one-on-one. You are allowed on stage by gatekeepers.

Usually, the decision to put you in front of any group of people is made by a very small group of people, sometimes one person.

Think about who you're trying to serve.

They're like, "I'd like to be a speaker," I'm like, "Okay. Well, what is it that you want to say?"

"Well, I think I want to..." "No, you can't think about it, you have to know, it has to be something that you just have to say."

And it has to be one thing. You need your message.

"I want to speak about this and this and this." You need to speak about one thing.

I talk about leaving leadership daily, tie to core values. That's what I talk about.

When I started my career I was like, "Oh you want something on communication? Oh, you want something on leadership styles? I could create that."

Ultimately, no, you need to say, "This is what I'm an expert on, and if you want this, then you hire me and if you don't, you shouldn’t hire me."

Because that's the only way that you really get good at what you're doing.

I think that part of it is when someone says to me, "I want to talk to entrepreneurs or young university graduates."

There's not a whole lot of places where those people are grouped together.

If that makes any sense, like entrepreneurs are relatively individualized groups of people.

There's not a whole lot of groups of 200, 300, 400 entrepreneurs that come together and there aren't a whole lot of gatekeepers that have access to those.

When you're thinking about what your expertise is, you have to then say, "How would I sell this to an organization?"

How can I say to a gatekeeper whose reputation is on the line, who has to answer to a boss, if you hire me as a speaker and you give me an hour with your people, what are those people going to be able to do differently at the end of this presentation?

What are their new skills going to be? What new processes are they going to be able to use?

How are they going to be better as a result of you giving me an hour out of their lives?

I know that we want to be motivational, inspiring and we want to move people, that's why we want to be speakers, but in order to get that opportunity to move an individual, you have to sell a product to a gatekeeper.

That means, "Okay Drew,” I talk about, personal leadership values. “Why on Earth should I give my people an hour with you?"

“All right, because research shows that individual value clarity is tied to employee engagement, happiness, pride, and productivity.

If I teach people how to identify their core values and live them every day, the research shows that people who do that make better employees.

One of the untapped resources in your organization is you probably have not put into place a process that allows people to identify their personal values and lift them through your work. People are going to walk out of that room with a step-by-step process on how to do just that, that's going to benefit you as an organization."

Whatever it is you teach, mindfulness, sales, whatever the case may be, you need to be able to identify an audience that has gatekeepers because yeah, you want to speak to young graduates or yes, you want to speak to entrepreneurs. The problem is there's no market for that. Those people aren't together.

Those people don't have audiences of 500 that gather regularly all around the world, you have to be able to say, "Here is what I am selling that is going to benefit the organizations of these people".

Most companies aren't going to hire you to teach their people how to be entrepreneurs.

They will, however, hire you to teach them how the entrepreneurial mindset can be applied in an organizational setting. That's different.

I think what's really important is to bear in mind that this is a business where what you have to do is sell what you're providing, your ideas, your skills to one or two or three people at a time whose reputation is on the line and who need to be able to justify to their boss that,

"We gave this person an hour so that our people will be better at XYZ".

And if you can’t articulate specifically what that audience will be better at when you're done, it's going to be really hard to make a speaking business.

Ryan Foland: Wow, you came into this last section saying you were lucky and didn't have much value to drive.

But I'm pretty sure you are lying because that's all very solid information such as hyperfocus on one topic, hyper-focus on the gatekeeper and the ability to sell what you're doing as a product to answer these questions that your audience will have that the organization wants to have certain outcomes with.

So, Drew, you are full of stuff.

I feel like we've been sitting on a train this entire time, yapping it up and I didn't realize that we're now already almost in San Diego, on the surf line, because I'm having so much fun.

Drew Dudley: I did forget one thing if that's okay.

Just bear this in mind folks, if you're listening.

If you want people to pay attention to what you're saying, talk about things that make them angry or make them scared. Or sex.

People will always pay attention to touch or 3 things— things that make them angry, things that make them scared, or sex. So let's throw sex out.

Now, that may sound like, "Oh, I don't want people to be angry or scared." Well, I didn't say, "Make them angry or scared."

I said, "Talk about things that make them angry or scared." There are two reasons to do that.

One, to make them more angry and more scared, which is what politicians do.

Or to make them less angry and less scared, and that's what leaders do.

But if you are thinking of standing up there on a stage, here is my topic, one of the first questions you ask is, "What are they afraid of? What makes this audience scared?"

Because if you can make clear that you're on stage to address that fear and to alleviate that fear, and if you can convince them that listening to you is going to do that, you've got them.

Very clearly think about as you put together your speech, "What is the audience afraid of and how can I fix this."

That lollipop story, it was because the audience was afraid to call themselves leaders because they thought it would make them arrogant.

I wanted to do a talk on how they didn't need to be afraid of that. So think about that.

That's one thing I always try to share and I had forgotten to do.

What is the audience afraid of, what is the audience angry at. If you can address that, you're going to catch their attention, but then your job is to make sure that you find a way to alleviate those two things.

Always bear that in mind because that really captures people's attention.

If you go on stage and talk about stuff that makes them mad or frightened, and you address that head-on in a useful way, then you're going to have a successful career as a speaker.

Ryan Foland: It's not something you can just ask one time in the world, it's something that you need to do every single day. Because this is day one.

Drew Dudley: I love it.

Ryan Foland: Hey, so Drew, somebody who is going to catch him, we'll have a bunch of stuff in the show notes and all these links and your TED Talk and all that stuff.

But if you were going to point somebody in a certain direction, just to one place, where would you like to send them?

Drew Dudley: DrewDudley.com. is the ideal spot to come and find out anything that you need to know about the book, about the online process that you can go through to identify your values, or what it's like to speak.

And hey, feel free to reach out through any social media channels.

I answer every email I get, sometimes it takes a while, but I love talking about speaking because I learn something.

I've learned something from you today just by chatting about some of these ideas.

So, thank you.

Ryan Foland: Absolutely, and I will attest to that, I literally reached out to you on Twitter, and here we are.

I think that though Twitter can be an evil place with angry trolls, it's also a great place of connectivity and meeting new people. So that's what I enjoy about it.

Drew, this has been a lot of fun. Hopefully, we'll share the stage sometime and I love the work that you're doing because the more leaders we can inspire who don't know that they are leaders and will be better leaders to lead a better everyone.

Drew Dudley: Amazing, my friend. Thanks so much for the opportunity.

Ryan Foland: All right, great.

Anybody listening, this is just a taste.

We have tons of other podcasts with amazing speakers from around the world who you're going to get to know them through their stories.

You're going to get to know their advice from their real-world experience and you're going to get their insights on how they made it to where they are.

You can get an honest look at what it's going to take to emulate that type of success.

Drew, you are a great example of that whether you're lucky or not you are fighting for it every single day.

Because it all starts with today, and that is day one.

So earn your right everybody to get up tomorrow and answer those difficult questions.

Make sure it's all in the line with your values and respect the seven-year-olds.

All right, Drew, we'll see you later, buddy. Take care.

Drew Dudley: Thanks so much, my friend.

 

A bit about World of Speakers

World of Speakers is a bi-monthly 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.

Connect with Drew Dudley:

• SpeakerHub profile

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