World of Speakers E.53: Kenyon Salo | Your message is your platform

Kenyon Salo: Thanks so much for having me. I am pretty fired up to be here. It's an exciting day, let's do this.

Ryan Foland: Sweet.

Now before we get too deep into your tips and tricks and all the amazing information, I want to go back and really understand who you are as a person and let everybody else get to know you.

What we do here is we give you one story to tell, and this would be the story that if I met somebody and I wanted to introduce them to you and there was no such thing as the internet, they've never heard of you and all I could say was,

"Oh my gosh, you have to meet this guy Kenyon, this one time..."

What would that one time be that kind of wraps up who you are as a person?

Kenyon Salo: Absolutely.

There was this one time, we'll go back 8 years ago. I had just gotten on the Denver Broncos skydive team, it's called Team Thunderstorm.

It was my very first jump into the game itself, 70K people in the stands for the Denver Broncos and we flew the 15 minutes.

We're over the stadium and we're circling the stadium, one circle, another circle, another circle, we're 5,000 feet above the ground.

What happens at this point is we start jumping out of the aircraft, the door opens up, the green light comes on, the first jumper out, second, third, fourth, I am the fifth jumper out of the plane.

As soon as I'm out of the plane, I deploy my parachute, I'm like, "Yay!" because every single time my parachute opens up I'm like, "Yay!".

What happens is now we're flying around in a group of five of us, and the PA announcer down in the stadium looks up and sees five people and he's thinking,

"Wait a minute, I only have four names on the list, but I need the fifth person's name," that's me, but he didn't know.

He radios down to the field and he says, "Who's the fifth jumper?"

The ground crew says, "That's Kenyon."

“Well, Kenyon who?"

"Well, that's Kenyon, that's all we know him at the Dropzone as."

"Well, I need a last name to announce him," and they're like,

"Well sorry buddy, all we got is Kenyon."

So he's figuring that out while we're flying around above the stadium with 70K people.

We're flying around and the thing is there are these cable cam cables, there are these field goal cables, it's like “Mission Impossible”.

We have to dive through them at a high rate of speed to be able to land on the field and it's one of those things where we can't mess up, it's not good for television, and you can't hold up an NFL game.

So, Jimmy, he's the first guy, he goes into the stadium, he goes super fast, the crowd just lights up. [Makes cheering noise]

That gets me fired up and I'm circling around, getting ready to go, and the second person goes in the stadium, third person, fourth person and now it's time for me, so I line up and I make my high performance turn, I'm diving down the stands.

As I'm diving down the stands I see this guy, he's got a beer and a hot dog and he's like, "Yay buddy," and I look at him, I'm like, "Yay!."

I am flying down the stands and I make my right turn and I'm going down the field.

I'm at like the 50, and the 40, and the 30, and the 20, and at the 10-yard line, just as I'm putting my feet down for my very first jump into the stadium, I hear the PA announcer go,

"And our last and final jumper— Ken Yon."

That was my first jump into the stadium and something I will always remember.

I've been to a lot of football games but I've never come through the front gates, I've always come from the air, I'm very, very lucky for that.

Ryan Foland: Wow, that's exciting. It's pretty niche to be the guy that's fallen out of the sky to get the game going, huh?

Kenyon Salo: That's right, we do every single home game. That's 10 games a year, 2 pre-seasons, 8 regular, sometimes they make the playoffs.

This year they are having a little bit of trouble, but that's cool, because they'll come back.

Ryan Foland: Now, is that how you keynote as well? Do you fly onto the stage?

Kenyon Salo: I would love to, absolutely.

Eventually, I want to do a decelerator cable so I come down from the ceiling, from some of those larger events from the light rack, like Mission-Impossible-style, and just stop right before the stage

That's my vision, one day that'll happen.

Ryan Foland: Have you always been someone who wants to throw themselves out of a perfectly good airplane?

Kenyon Salo: Well first off, there's no such thing as a perfectly good airplane.

But the answer to that question is yes, I've always wanted to do that.

For me, 6 years old, it was how far could I jump my bike, what was a thing that I could challenge myself — climbing up on the roof, running around the house, anything to challenge myself.

I, even as a little kid, tied cardboard and star foam. I got the box that the fridge came in and I tied wings to my arms I tried to run down the street and tried to fly — as a kid.

My whole life from that to skateboarding, to pro snowboarding, to eventually becoming a skydiver, a professional skydiver in that sense — my whole life has been in that direction and continues to be.

Ryan Foland: Now, do your parents jump out of planes as well? Is this some sort of gene that you caught?

Kenyon Salo: My mom, she's totally amazing, she has one of those things where she took up skydiving, and I'll say one skydive, 10 years ago and she jumped out of a plane, I got to jump before her, it was amazing.

But also, my mom got me into scuba diving. So she had been scuba diving for 4 years at the age of 66 and then said,

"Hey, I want you to learn how to go scuba diving."

We learned some more stuff together, but she had already had many, many dives under her belt.

Just this past year, we went to the Maldives on a live-aboard boat and for 10 days I got to dive with my mom and she's 70 now, and it's such a special gift to be able to share that with her.

Ryan Foland: That's awesome, I've spent a lot of time underwater as well.

I've been certified since like 12 or 13. 13 was when you were able to. I think that we knew some inside scoop and I was so just chomping on the bit that like we started the training when I was 12, and as soon as I hit that 13, it was like — bam.

It's just a whole ‘nother world, right?

I could even probably break into the Little Mermaid song about a whole new world, but it's amazing what is above us and below us and most of us are just sort of stuck on land, right?

Kenyon Salo: It's so true.

Even after I'd done my pool time and then when I finally got my open water in the ocean, there was this space.

And what I mean by space is just like there were no walls, the distance that I could see, and at that moment thinking to myself, "How come nobody told me about this?"

Meanwhile they had, but I hadn't said yes yet, and when I finally said yes,  I let the how figure itself out later, like I do in everything in life and boom! — there I was underwater, and now I've got 100 dives and it's a truly special part of who I am.

Ryan Foland: To say yes and figure out the why and how later? Is that what it is?

Kenyon Salo: Yeah, even the how, I say it all the time from the stage — the most important thing we can do in life is to just say yes. The thing that keeps us from doing what we really want to do is we're trying to figure out the how in the moment.

Then we tend to say no, like, "No, I have to figure out the how."

So I say, "Say yes, let the how figure itself out later," and it always does.

Ryan Foland: You say how and it's like now and there's an interesting play on words where if you say yes and don't figure out how now.

Kenyon Salo: Yeah, exactly, it's right there, it's subconscious.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, I'm a big fan and student of confirmation bias.

The last couple of years I've been really on a kick to find how and where that infects us in a positive and negative way.

Your brain's ability and your body's willingness to follow whatever the brain thinks is right or wrong. All you do is look for and find and decode what is essentially validating your initial hypothesis, which could be totally off, based on what you are thinking.

That's a weird, powerful loop that can probably put people in the wrong spots and keep them there.

Kenyon Salo: It can, and at the same time it can teach you lessons.

I always say there are no wrong decisions, there are lessons.

We've heard this before, I'm not the first person to say this, but in general what I always believe is no matter what happens in my life, an amazing story is coming from it.

Some stories I can use in some way, whether it teaches myself, my kids, people from the stage, whatever it is, there are stories that are being created left and right.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, and for me, the story you told about falling out of the sky — I literally was with you as you're looking at the guy with the beer and the hot dog like in that eye contact out of 70K people.

For me, bam — I was there, I lived it, I experienced it, I don't know if I'm going to do it. I'll probably be the guy with a beer and a hot dog watching you do the flying.

Kenyon Salo: That's right, now I visualize you with a beer and hot dog.

Ryan Foland: Excellent.

How did you stumble into, or jump into, or launch into, this idea of sharing your stories with the world from the stage?

Kenyon Salo: For me, it actually started back in ninth grade and may have started earlier than that in general.

The speaking standpoint was ninth grade where I learned from my ninth grade English teacher and the whole semester she taught the fine art of speaking in front of groups or public.

It was so wonderful what she taught about ums, and ahs and body language, coming up with concepts and how to teach this stuff.

[Read next: “Stop “Um-ing” (and using other fillers)”]

And I realized some people can sing, they have that natural ability.

You see a 4-year-old on America's Got Talent, like, "Wow, what a voice."

Or someone can draw and they have the talent.

I don't have that talent, I don't have any of those talents, but when it comes to speaking, and speaking through stories, and training and facilitating, it's a gift that I've had my whole life.

When I said that I used to ride my bike and see how far I could jump it when I was 6 years old, then what I would do is want to teach my friends how to do it.

"Hey, this is what you do, this is how you hold the handlebars, this is how you lift off the ramp, this is how you're going to land so you don't fly off your bike."

I would teach that and that transpired and continued to happen throughout my life and it was this back and forth thing where it was I would learn something and want to teach it; learn something, and want to teach it.

And so the communication was super valuable in this scenario.

And even in 9th grade when I presented this, and this is ninth grade like way back in the late eighties when there was very little access to video and editing and things like that.

But I had actually edited a video about skateboarding to show to the class about skateboarding and then that was my presentation.

I had no idea that 30 years later, 40 years later, all of a sudden I was going to be on stage showing the adventures that I'm doing, using them as metaphors for life through wonderful and amazing and special editing to really capture the audience, and then tell those stories and give them learning lessons through that.

So for me, it's been my whole life, and that's how I am where I am now.

Ryan Foland: How long did it take you to recognize that?

In 9th grade did you recognize it or is this in hindsight at a certain point, you're like,

"Wow, this has really been a gift of mine for a while."

Because sometimes we don't see our own gifts when it's just our natural ability to do things.

Was it there at that shiny moment then or did it come later on?

Kenyon Salo:  Absolutely later on.

When you say "shiny moment," I was distracted by shiny objects my whole life, like, "Wow, I'm going to try that, I'm going to try that, I'm going to try that."

But interestingly enough, all those things that came together became the amalgamation of what I deliver and that message from the stage.

And so the things that I continued to do in life and then learning about personal development and continuing my adventures, and then finding a mentor who taught me about being authentic from the stage and truly being able to speak in my true authenticity.

Those things came along and I remember that every time that I am in front of groups, but I never said,

"Wait a minute, I want to do that on a regular basis."

I just enjoyed it for what it was. It was groups or trainings within smaller jobs I had.

As I was growing up, I always loved training people.

And then about 3 years ago, in 2015 was the point somebody reached out to me, a bureau reached out to me and said, "Hey, do you know what, your name has come up 3 times in the past week, do you do speaking engagements?"

I was like, "Well yes, I do."

And that's when she offered me a very small job to do an event and I went on stage and I got paid a very small sum of money, and I was like,

"Wow, that's really cool. I like this. Maybe I should look into it some more."

But the key difference between what I knew when I was younger and what I know now, and except for that very first engagement, was that I finally had a platform.

So when she called me I was ready. I had a platform which was my message, and prior to that I never had the platform.

I was something like, "Hey do you want to teach or you want to train from the stage?"

"Yeah, I'll do leadership, what do we talk about?"

"I don't know — leadership?"

And I think that's the fault of a lot of up-and-coming speakers. They don't have the message (the delivery, per se) and that's the thing, that once they learn that, that's when they're able to make that jump into being a more successful speaker and then moving through the ranks.

Ryan Foland: Interesting.

I want to take a time out on this word platform because I hear it used a lot and you seem to be using it in a particular way and that is that the platform is your message.

Is that what I'm hearing, that the platform is not physically as in the stage or physically as in video as a medium, or physically as in a podcast as a medium or a platform — but that you felt like you had something to stand on once you defined that message?

Is that what you're saying?

Kenyon Salo: That is exactly correct. It is the thing because without the platform people can't see you.

It's just a sea of noise or you're getting lost in all that.

But once you have the platform — your message and the way you deliver it because I believe there's nothing new under the sun, there's no new teachings, there are no new “a-ha” moments, it's just how we deliver, and that's what the clients are looking for, is a new way to deliver customer service, sales, leadership, team building, whatever it is.

I had to figure out my platform that I would stand on, that would let me stand out from the crowd and then allow them to see me,

"Wait a minute, that speaker, let's look into him some more,"

Then that's where they go down the rabbit hole, they see the videos, they see the stuff, they go,

"Okay, yes let's put him on stage, and he can deliver his platform/ message.”

Ryan Foland: Interesting.

For people who have not seen you out there, a nice visual that still stands out in my mind as I have my proverbial beer and proverbial hot dog as I'm watching a YouTube video, it's you standing on top of what's got to be like a 20-foot ladder, is that correct?

Kenyon Salo: Well, I love that it looks like a 20-foot ladder, it's only 12 feet.

But if you take the stage, a 4-foot stage, a 12-foot ladder and me being 6 feet, now yeah, my head is above 20 feet, 20-22 feet, it depends on the ceiling in the venue.

I have different level ladders which is crazy, the 4-foot, the 6-foot, the 8-foot, but if some of my events were the huge ballrooms and auditoriums, I'll use the 12-foot and that's something that helps me stand out, no pun intended.

It was completely by accident, meaning that one day I was at an event and I had my platform and then I was walking down the hallway before people were going into their rooms and I saw this step ladder that was just laying in the hallway, and I was like,

"Wait a minute, can I use that. Yeah!"

I've hid it behind stage and then in the middle of my presentation, I had not even practiced this, I pulled it out and I then started to use it as a metaphor of where we want to go in life, and how standing next to it is our environment and I started going up the ladder and coming down, and up and down, giving the audience a great visual.

And then, eventually, before you get up there and it's like, "Do not stand on or above this step, you could die," and then I stood on that step with my nice dress shoes and suit and everything, and I'm now standing on the step ladder above the audience and a woman yells out like,

"Please, get down from there, you're making us feel very uncomfortable."

And I almost fell, it caught me off guard, and then immediately my brain was like, "wait a minute, I should take this out, I should get down from here, I should have never put this in."

I had all this self-doubt.

And then I realized, and I unpacked it immediately, and I said,

"Wait a minute, this is exactly what I'm talking about: me being on the ladders, doing what I want in life and where I want to go, and really challenging myself, and being the best me I could be."

And her and the audience yelling that out and feeling that way was my environment, and that's what keeps us from doing what we want to do, and I was able to unpack that for the audience and it was a learning lesson, not just for them, but also for me, that that's what we have to do in life.

We have to go outside our comfort zones, we have to challenge ourselves to do new things and go to places that most will not go and do what most will not do to have what most will never have.

They loved it. They got it and now that stays. Every speaking engagement I use a ladder and it's a phenomenal visual reference that when they go back home, they remember that part from the visual standpoint.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, what a great sort of transition into this concept of giving people tips for their speaking career.

I want to take a step back because you said that there is no new information out there.

Yet people are still looking for new ways to sell, to lead, to… whatever it is.

Do you feel that the same is true for speaking advice? Is there no new speaking advice out there?

Is everything under the sun that is possible already out there?

Kenyon Salo: It's out there, but there is some stuff that's new to people.

They haven't heard it, and I guess that's the delivery, right? There's a new delivery.

Maybe it was even delivered before but was when they weren't ready to listen to it and hear it. Then they didn't get it, but when they're ready, then the message appears.

First and foremost you must be authentic, you have to authentically be you.

When I connect with speakers and I help speakers along and train speakers, I'm not the expert in their world, they are, and I'm not the expert in their authenticity — they are.

But then we deliver the new stuff that says,

"Okay, this is how the industry is changing, these are the things that are really helping speakers that are having great success, and these are the things that are keeping the speakers from not having success."

And then we go through those things.

Ryan Foland: This is interesting.

In my mind I am levitating towards technology to where, just for a thought experiment, if right now you had the exact same tools and resources available as you did in say the 1980s, or in another 20 or 30 years, technically there is really all the information under the sun, it's there, but which of this information, which time is the sun shining on that you can see, that you're actually ready for?

I'd love to get some of these unseen tips that are there or classic tips that are maybe just delivered from a ladder or a different perspective that you think would be of high value for people who are excited about taking their story and their message to the stage.

But the challenge is real, and they probably look and smell like every other speaker out there that's trying to do it.

So how do you stand out? How do you step up onto a ladder when you don't see the ladder or when you have environmental changes around you that basically is sort of confusing the message and everybody seems to be saying the same thing —

"Be authentic, tell stories."

Okay, but where is the new line on that? Where is the new spin? How do you tell stories in a new way?

I guess that's the kind of stuff I would like for you to jump out of the plane with and share with us.

Kenyon Salo: Absolutely.

First and foremost, I want everybody to think about what their phone is capable of doing now, and maybe you've seen it before — long ago you had a clock, you had a camera, a video camera, a calculator and spreadsheets on paper etc. — all the things that your phone can do now, and it does these things in something that you can hold in your hand.

That same thing has changed with technology for speaking.

Back in the day, to have a professional like million-dollar stage sound setup and somebody they have sound, they have video, they have the lights person, you can control that now from the stage and your keynote or your powerpoint in such a way, and that's what I started thinking. It was like,

"How is content going to be delivered to the audience?"

First I thought, "What is different about how people are consuming content now?"

It's super hard to get somebody to watch a 15-minute video, just like, "Here's video it's 15 minutes check it out."

But they'll be happy to watch 10 x 3-minute videos, and all of a sudden, that's 30 minutes but that's just how we are, we're starting to consume content differently, so it's got to change and every 3 minutes something new has got to happen.

That was the first thing.

The second thing I realized is that PowerPoints and slides were just destroying the audience.

I spent many, many years just being in audiences, and studying the audiences, and studying speakers on stage and how what they were saying or doing helped or hurt the audience's energy.

Sometimes in the back of the room, sometimes in the middle of the audience, and sometimes in the front of the room, I just wanted to feel and understand how the energy was always changing.

What I realized is how we deliver content is key and now you can do that from the stage and you can put that within your technology or your keynote —

Here's an example like, "Hey what's your walk on song?"

"Oh, it's already embedded in my keynote."

"What about that video?"

"I'll hit play, I got it, it's already in the keynote."

“And what about the lights?”

“Well, I've already sussed the lights...And I know that someone in the back room will be able to handle it”  

I make sure all these little nuances are there, so that they have this experience throughout the keynote, and there's video, and there's audio in my keynote, and there are wonderful visuals.

There is not one bullet point in my keynote, not one.

And there are about 12 words I think total in all my slides added up, 12 words.

From that standpoint, it's about delivering from that angle and really it's about content— how do you deliver your content in a professional way. It can be a $10,000 keynote in front of an audience that's paying you $500, and that can all be done through technology.

Ryan Foland: That's interesting.

I saw a gentleman who called himself a “Mentalist”, have you ever heard of that?

Kenyon Salo: Absolutely, it's a form of magic.

Ryan Foland: Yeah and it was mind-blowing. A lot of it is based on mathematics and just slight nuances that this person sees and nobody else does.

He was definitely a one-man show.

But he had this little thing on his belt and I noticed that he was using it, but he was pretty sleight of hand so you didn't really notice, but it was actually a remote control that he had hooked up to his iPad, which he had patched into the audio system and so he was able to pick and choose songs that were starred, and they'd even be on timers so that he would start the music and then he would talk and then as soon as he's done talking— the music shuts off.

This makes me think of controlling your environment through the technology that is available to everyone, but is everyone using it to the best ability in as nuanced way as possible?

It's interesting.

Kenyon Salo: I love that. Anyway, I can get a smaller remote the better, and I try and get the remote out of my hand as much as possible because I want my hands free, I want to feel like it's seamless.

Some of the best magic tricks are the most simple magic tricks, and so when people think about, "How to be great, how to be amazing," think simplicity.

It's the simple side of things that make it so magical, per se.

Ryan Foland: Why do you think it's so difficult or intimidating to boil things down to the most simplistic form?

Is there something psychologically that convinces us it couldn't be that simple or do you see that people just don't continue to put the work into these fine-nuanced things that could make such a difference, but they just overlook it for importance?

Any insights as to why that whole process is either undervalued or is just intimidating?

Kenyon Salo: The answer is both of those.

First, people generally overcomplicate.

When they go into, "It's going to be this, it's going to be that," or, "Oh, I have to have all this data in there, I have to have all this information, I have to say all these things," and they can't possibly fit it all in.

What I've realized is again, simplifying everything.

The audience doesn't need all that. I was once taught that "It's not what you say, it's how you make the audience feel."

So generally what I'm thinking about is: what is the end result?

What is it when I am done and I leave, how do they feel about what they saw, what they heard and what they felt in those moments?

That's what's most important to me in that process.

Additionally, the only way to get to that success where you make the audience feel amazing once you leave because it's not about you, it's about the audience.

And so when you're able to leave that audience in a great place once you step off stage, the thing is that it's about the constant, never-ending improvement.

Every single engagement that I have, I sit down with my director of photography who films every event that I have, so I bring someone to every event to shoot and he also knows my keynote from front to back. He could probably do it.

And the way it breaks down is we sit there and we debrief it. "What about this joke? That seemed to be new, that was off the cuff, that was a new joke, do we want to keep that joke?"

"Oh, we like that joke."

"Oh we don't like how this happened here, we want to change that."

And then at the end of the year, which is right now, we go back to the entire keynote and we start saying,

"What nuances can we change?"

And we're down to the super, super fine points, but we're just in that micro, but sometimes that micro makes a macro difference in the next year, so we're making our micro changes right now for 2019.

Ryan Foland: Interesting.

I want to talk a little bit about audience technology.

I'm just making this up but I have seen at least in your speaker reel, and a couple of other places, you are engaging the audience in a way that they are standing up, they are dancing, they are screaming.

I think that getting an audience to that point, it really takes a certain amount of skill, technology, you probably even need a parachute and some sort of fireworks to make it happen.

But what are some of the things that you find that you do to get the audience in a spot where that can happen?

Because I personally know, you can't just be like, "Alright, jump up and scream," like you're building a relationship with them, they're becoming part of the story.

How do you engage the audience to a level where they're literally up in arms, arms engaged, swaying back and forth like it almost looks dangerous and that's what's exciting?

Kenyon Salo: Well, that's at the very end of my keynote. To get to that point — I could not put that in the beginning. It would never happen.

We have to work towards it and I say we because it's a team, and it's we, me and the audience working together to get there.

Obviously trust is very, very important. They have to trust. There has to be the rapport. There has to be the connection.

That starts from even the introduction where the person says, "Hey, okay, I've got your whole bio here," and we send it to him.

You can maybe read one or two things from the bio, but really what I want them to say is why did they hire me.

And that's a key point before I even step on stage when I say to the person that's doing the interaction, "Why did you hire me?"

Where I have somebody that is basically on their side, on their team, saying, "This person, we believe, and I personally believe will be of value to you."

So already, right away it's not me stepping on stage saying, "I'm of value."

It's somebody on their team that's saying that I will, as a speaker, be of value to them. So that's how that like super, subconscious level goes in there.

I come on stage, I get them standing up, it's like,

"Just everybody give someone a high five," that kind of thing.

And you can see there's a little bit of trepidation, maybe some people give a high five, they are like,

"I don't know, I don't want to high five this guy next to me."

It's cool because I don't need everybody to participate.

Another thing that I do, and I do this right from the beginning, is I say,

"Look, I need some agreements from you guys."

And so they are like, "Okay," and I say, "First off, I need everybody to play it 100%, is everybody willing to play it 100%?"

And you get, "Yes," and I am like, "No, is everybody willing to play 100%?" They're like, "Yeah!"

And they shout that out.

And then I make a joke, "Okay, some of you think I'm going to take you skydiving," now they all laugh.

Boom, now I'm opening them up and then the next agreement I ask is, I say, "Look, everybody has a cell phone, iPads, computers," and whatever I see in the audience that's open.

I say, "You said you'd play it 100%," they've already agreed, right, and I say, "You're willing to put these away for while I'm on stage?"

And you see them put them away and they don't come back out. The phones don't come out, the computers don't open up.

That's the job of the speaker, to keep that too. It's not just because you made an agreement. You have to be great on stage.

But with those two in tandem, I'm able to create that space.

Then the rest of the keynote happens and I bring them through the journey and by the end of it they'll do it like,

"Okay, everybody stand up. Now put your arm around the person to the right of you. Put your arm to the person to the left of you. Now we're going to do this activity,"

And they are just moving along, they are like, "Okay, whatever."

That's how I get there.

Ryan Foland: I love it.

It is a process and I like the fact that we're talking about simplicity, and that being so important, yet so difficult.

You are literally calling out an opportunity before you're even on stage, in something that is such low hanging fruit.

Most people get the opportunity to have an introduction, but even within that introduction, you're literally changing it just enough to nuance it so that there's a little psychology going into it.

If you talk about somebody and you're like,

"How many different ways can you tweak and improve what you're doing right now?"

It is endless, and I think seeing that opportunity and having little examples like that, really is a chance to know that your pencil is never sharp enough.

Kenyon Salo:  Absolutely correct, absolutely.

Ryan Foland: We're talking about big stages, and we're talking about these large audiences.

I want to ask about some of your advice or some of your stories, or journey to get to that point.

It's a long journey from 9th-grade skateboard video to standing in front of 3,000 people that, at the end of your talk, they are literally at your mercy in doing whatever activity and they love it.

So how did you get to that large stage, and what are the stages of getting there, and what are some of the nuance advice, the things that everybody says you need to do, but what are the tweaks on it? How do you simplify that process to a way that actually works?

Kenyon Salo: A lot of the great speakers out there will say the way to get where they are is that you have to practise.

We know this, and the 10,000 hours and everything else, but that is exactly what happened to me where I was practising whatever job I was in front of, I was practising at home.

I wanted to learn comedy because I knew that was important, so I signed up for Amateur Comedy Night at Denver Comedy Works and I went many, many times, like half a dozen times.

That was super-scary for me but it made me study comedy and it made me learn the art of those two minutes.

Now a huge part of my hour-long or 75-minute presentation is proper comedy, both impulsive or straight from the hip and then properly designed jokes that I use within my presentation.

So it is practice, and I was very fortunate that many careers ago I got into network marketing, and in that process I saw that I was able to train.

As I was brought in as a trainer, I got to do hour-long calls and sometimes 2 a week and I did this for 4 years. I have done over 350 training calls, 350 hours of just practice, practice, practice.

So when a lot of the great speakers say you need to practice at least 100 times — well in a sense that's what I was able to do through telephone conference calls and webinars and things like that.

So that transferred and really helped me through that process, but then when it came time to speak, speaking came from the process of getting my very first stage and those stages are the ones where there are a little projector and a little screen and you're doing your very best and the audience is there, and there might be 50 people and you do a $10K presentation in front of 50 people.

Now the thing is, your first presentation won't be worth $10K

But what I'm saying is you have to feel like it's above, and you've pushed yourself and it's beyond, and you make it as great as possible, and then you repeat, and you fix and you repeat.

And you adjust and you repeat.

And still, to this day, I still do small audiences.

I was just in an event where the ceiling was only 9ft, I had a super small ladder and there were only 50 people in the room and it was a little projector.

But I wanted to give back and it was such a way to give back and I was like, "This is like my roots, this is so amazing," and it was wonderful, I had a great time.

You can have great times in front of any sized audience.

Ryan Foland: Yeah, my mom always would tell me, "Ryan, it only takes one," whether you have a lot of people or not.

Even if there's a lot of people, if you just connect with that one person — and I think we've all had opportunities to speak and maybe our expectations are not clearly met when you show up and it's different than you might think.

And then you have a choice of sort of being like, "Ah, crap," or, "Sweet."

“Is there one person? Yes, let's rock this.”

But I think the positioning almost every time you're on stage as a chance to sharpen your craft is something that fits into that learner mentality that I think is very inherent within the speaking industry.

You don't just all of a sudden get there and then can be kosher, like there's people nipping at your heels constantly.

Kenyon Salo: Absolutely, and we never know who's in the audience. I always say that every audience that we have in front of us is our opportunity to pitch our greatness.

And so you have one hour to pitch your greatness to somebody in the audience that could put you on another stage, that could put you on an equal stage, or a larger stage.

An example was I took an event for less dollars and I went there, and again I gave the best presentation I possibly could for that audience because those are the ones that matter in that moment.

What I didn't know was there was a president, there was a longstanding director there, and he thought it was awesome, "I actually want to bring you to our national event."

And from there it went from 75 people in that audience and put me in front of 3,500 high school kids on a huge day just for their largest event in Colorado.

That's a huge difference.

It was all because I pitched well by making sure I focused on that audience of 75 first.

And that one person in the audience was the game changer for the next big stage.

Ryan Foland: Interesting.

When it comes to going back to this platform, platform in your definition being that it's the message that you are sharing or sending, and when you're talking about your keynote, you're talking about the one keynote.

How important has it been for your success on these stages to lock in that singular message, because when I'm talking with upcoming speakers that's one of their hardest challenges: "What am I going to speak on?"

And there's this inherent fear that if you only have one thing that you speak on, you might be limiting yourself from a supply and demand viewpoint, but it's obviously working for you.

So I'm curious as to your thoughts on the importance of that singular platform as opposed to speaking on a variety of topics?

Or how that sort of meshes in a combination with you?

Kenyon Salo: I've been very lucky where I've been able to design such a keynote that works for many different verticals that people are looking for.

And so when I'm talking to a potential client I say, "Hey, can you talk about leadership? Can you talk about team building? Can you talk about customer service?"

The answer is, "Yes," and the thing is I don't have to have three different keynotes in that regard.

The keynote that I talk about I say to the client very clearly, I say, "Look, 80% of it is set in stone. It's the framework I've designed. It works."

And so I want to bring them through that journey. I say,

"The other 20% is where I'll adjust particular to who you are as a client, the company that you are, the school that you are, and then the vertical that you're looking for."

"Oh, you want me to tie into leadership? I'm going to use a lot of leadership language throughout the keynote."

And then it's a talent that I have, that I can adjust that way.

Also I know those backgrounds because I've learned leadership and team building and customer service and sales and all those things throughout my life.

Now there are some verticals that I wouldn't touch. Like for example, there are some verticals that someone might come to me and they say, "Hey, can you talk about this?"

On the “power of change management”, for example, I’m like, "That's not my skill set."

So “change management” is out, but again, inspiration motivation is one of the top topics that people are looking for.

And then shortly behind is customer service, or sales, or team building, or leadership, so those are some of the main ones right there.

So I figured, "Why not play in the big ponds, in the big pool, where most of the engagements are, and then be able to adjust accordingly there."

And what you said which was, "how do people find that platform?"

Again, it's the authenticity.

My concepts of create more experiences, share more stories, and live more fulfilled by helping others. Those 3 concepts that I teach in my presentation are authentically me, and it's how I live my life on a daily basis.

Anybody can look at any of my social media, or any of my branding, and they'll see that that is true. That the way I show up on stage is the same way I show up in life and that 360 degree transparency is always there.

Ryan Foland: And it sounds like you had quite the... I'm going to say squirrel-past, from like Squirrel! Squirrel! Shiny lights! Squirrel! Squirrel!

But it sounds like you're using that to your advantage because you are pulling from those experiences the stories that fit into the one keynote that can hit 80% of your target only to be polished by the 20% that fits in.

So for people who are just not sure because maybe they've had experience with customer service and they've also had experience with leadership and they are internally torn, is it that you're taking your authentic self and just putting your spin on it, which could be different than his or her spin on it?

Kenyon Salo: That's absolutely what it is.

There are amazing speakers out there and that's the hardest thing for clients. They can't put Speaker A and Speaker B on stage side by side and then make a decision.

They have to make a decision based on what they see online. They have to make a decision based on what they see in social media, or videos, or written content, or testimonials.

And even then, they're hiring speakers and going, "....Oh! I hope this works out, I hope this one is a good one. Last year was such a bomb."

And they're in the hot seat.

And so as a speaker, I know I have to show up to make sure that that person that hired me, that event planner, that meeting planner, that they know within the first 5 minutes, they are like,

"Oh, so glad, okay,  yeah, okay, this is going to be fine. This event will be great."

That's the first step, and then second is making sure that the audience gets that.

And ultimately let's take TED Talks for example. There are TED talks that people memorize, and there are TED talks where people know their content so well because it's authentically them, that they can go, "Hey, you have 18 minutes — go," and they're like, "Oh, okay," and they walk out on stage and those TED Talks are some of the most-watched TED Talks around the world.

And so that difference between being like, "Oh, I have to memorize every single word… this has to be exactly this movement at this point in time… and this slide."

I'm like, "Let go of all of that. Be you,"

Like you're talking to your best bud about the things that you love. When you do that, the audience will relate to you.

Because it becomes more of a feeling of a conversation as opposed to like some sort of teaching or talking to.

Ryan Foland: I like it, I like it a lot.

Now when it comes to this idea of a 360 transparency on you as this person and your authenticity, do you think that that is essentially having a strong personal brand?

This idea that you are who you are on stage or not?

Tell me about kind of the — I don't know whether I want to say... work.. or stress… or anxiety… or excitement about taking and sharing that transparency all the time, through all these social platforms.

Some people, I think, see that as a lot of pressure, but it sounds like it's almost a necessary evil at this point?

Kenyon Salo: It is. It is one of those things where, again, using the word authenticity, if there's some guy that's at the bar and then he goes across the street and he teaches about leadership and having success in life and then he goes across the street to the bar until 2 in the morning— they're not congruent.

And the thing is that he'll think that on stage he's like, "Oh, I'm teaching the message and I know leadership."

The audience can call him on his bull. They know, they can feel it, they know it and when you lose the audience that way, it's so hard to regain.

And you might not think you're losing them, but I've seen it and I've seen the audience, they just die and they disconnect.

Part of that is just living into yourself and when you're on stage, and even that has progressed over the past 3 years, where my director of photography Kyle would say to me,

"Wow, the way you're showing up on stage now, it just seems more relaxed and flowing."

Because I started to realize that if I just started being more of myself, a little more crazy with a little bit of edge, and always having fun and that was kind of the game changer where I said,

"Let's make this presentation super fun!"

When we started doing that, when I started coming from that place, then the elevation of the result was even better and I always thought that I had kind of gotten it up there but it started to make it even better.

And so I was still stepping into my authentic self even 3 years in, because I always believe, always a teacher, always a student. I'm always teaching — but I'm always learning.

I'm learning about myself, and I'm learning by watching other great speakers and other people.

And that's the process that we have to always be open to.

Ryan Foland: Wow.

Well, I think that's a pretty damn good sum up of you as a person, whether it's your 9th grade self or whether it's jumping out of an airplane and missing all the wires to make physical eye contact with your audience at that time, as I cheers you with my beers, as you land on the field and continue to do that over and over.

I like the idea about there really not being new information in the world.

This idea, of under the sun, and you can get all the speaking advice you want, all over the place at any given point.

But it's finding those nuances the things that connect with who you are as a person so that you're really not just doing what someone else says, but you are saying what it is that you do.

I think that really sort of resonates with me, and whether it's looking for constant opportunity, there is a stepping stool on my way to the stage how can I use that and this idea of ever presently being a learner and a teacher, that is the magic pill that keeps on giving.

Because I think so many people are looking for the magic pill, and the magic pill is knowing that the formulas are always changing and you always have to keep trying.

Kenyon Salo: That's brilliant. In a nutshell, right there.

Ryan Foland: I like it.

All right, well hey, before we just continue down this nutty road and literally geek out for another 5 days without eating or drinking, I think it's a good time to stop because there's a lot to unpack here.

What I like about this advice goes back to one of my favorite concepts, and you said a version of it earlier which I also liked:

It's that successful speakers are not doing things that everybody else cannot do.

Successful speakers are doing what everyone else can do, but not everybody does.

That's what's exciting about this industry. It’s that you can have experience and package it into stories and share it in a way that's new and fresh and getting people inspired, motivated to step up onto the step that says,

"Do not step here, or you will die".

Well hey, this is great.

If somebody wanted to find out more about you, where would you send them online?

Kenyon Salo: Absolutely KenyonSalo.com.

Best place if somebody has got a question then just fill out a contact form, come say, "Hi," of course you can hit me on Instagram or Facebook same place Kenyon Salo, there's not many of me out there, so I am super easy to find out there.

I love connecting, I love helping, so just reach out and we'll go from there.

Ryan Foland: Not to be confused with Ken Yon, on LinkedIn.

Kenyon Salo: Exceptional, I love it.

Ryan Foland: Alright, thanks buddy, this is great.

I'm all fired up and I look forward to your James Bond presentation on the stage, because remember ladies and gentleman, it's how you make them feel.

And we all know what we feel when we watch James Bond, and that's excitement.

Kenyon, you truly sound like you are the James Bond of speaking.

Kenyon Salo: Thanks so much for having me.

Ryan Foland: All right buddy, take care.
 

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 Kenyon Salo:

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