Ryan Foland speaks with Todd Palmer, a keynote speaker, author, and business coach. He is the founder of Extraordinary Advisors and has more than 25 years of experience in the entrepreneurship world.
In this episode of our podcast series, Ryan and Todd talk about the value of storytelling and being authentic. Todd explains how the audience will be far more engaged if they can find themselves in your story.
One of the key messages in this interview is that people will remember how you make them feel, so when speaking, be mindful of adding value to their lives.
Tune in for an interview full of ideas and advice on how to transition from just improving revenue to improving lives.
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Welcome to the World of Speakers podcast brought to you by SpeakerHub. In this special series, we interview speaking experts on how to navigate the coronavirus as a professional speaker. Here's your host, Ryan Foland.
Ryan Foland: Ahoy everyone. I'm fresh off a boat and my first Zoom after having been offline for two weeks is here, with my new friend, Todd Palmer.
His company is Extraordinary Advisors. If I were to say three things from my cyber-stalking, I'm going to say that he's a speaker, he's an author, and he's a business coach.
Am I correct there?
Todd Palmer: That is totally correct.
Ryan Foland: I like to start with stories as opposed to reading your acclaimed bio. Because anybody who wants to find out about you, they're going to do their own cyber-stalking and they're going to find out all that.
But you probably have a story that maybe you’ve shared, maybe you haven't.
Can you pick a single moment in your past and can you tell me a story around that such that if that was the only story I had, I could basically say,
"Oh my gosh, you've got to meet this guy Todd," and like, "Who's Todd?" I'm like, "This one time—" and then fill in the blank.
And then, you know, we'll kind of go from there.
So tell me about a story in time.
Todd Palmer: I would say, if I could pick one day in my business career, it would be September 9th, 2006. Hopefully, that's specific enough for you?
Ryan Foland: Oh that's great, yeah, what time? Just kidding.
Todd Palmer: It would have been about 9:30 in the morning, and I had been working with my newly hired coach for about 36 hours.
I brought the coach in because I was $600,000 in debt, I was 2 months away from running out of all of my money.
The week prior I had a conversation with my then 11-year-old son about how we may lose our house, we may become homeless. I was a single dad.
And on that day I walked in with his help, recognized the cuts I needed to make to improve my margins and my revenue, and realized that I had a toxic and dysfunctional culture within the organization.
As a leader, I had incurred a lot of debt. So between 9:30 and 10:30 on September 9th, 2006, I fired my entire company and I started over.
And that was the crossroads moment for my business as a CEO.
From there, we pivoted multiple times, grew our business, made the Inc. 5000 6 times, as one of the fastest-growing companies in America.
I paid off all of that debt.
I think I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about how that messiest of days has now become my message as a coach and speaker.
Ryan Foland: Yeah, well you know what, the best message comes from some sort of a mess and it's when you have the courage to share that so that people can be inspired and see themselves in your story, as opposed to you in your story.
So just as a quick relational term, I've had a few of those moments, and I think that whether we want to admit it or not, those are the things that either make us or break us.
And as a profession that you can leverage what has gone wrong to help other people get things right, I think speaking is a powerful medium to do so.
I'm excited to have you share some of your insights on the speaking business, and I'm sure some of the throwing everyone off the ship and then burning your own ship and then building your own ship is maybe a metaphor for your life.
Todd Palmer: It's very much become a metaphor for my life, it has become a metaphor for my coaching business.
I literally told myself I'd lost 6 stages within 2 weeks and I'm thinking, "Well, why am I doing all this?"
And I was so fortunate after I fired my entire company I started going to these entrepreneur enclaves, and I'm at MIT, this program called "The Gathering of Titans."
And I'm sitting there and some guy named Simon Sinek walks out, and he's got his marker and he's got his notepad or his big sticky pad.
He had never spoken to an entrepreneurs group before and he went through and changed my life.
I worked with him for 2 years to find out 2 words, and those 2 words are IMPROVE LIVES.
So everything I do, whether it's speaking, whether it's coaching, whether it's as a CEO, it's all about improving the lives of someone else and if I improve your life, Ryan, my life, Todd, becomes just more enhanced and a much more enjoyable experience.
So I go through the times of COVID and we were able to pivot the stages we lost into virtual platforms, and on those virtual platforms I've spoken from my baseball room here in Detroit, Michigan across the globe.
Sometimes I had to get up at midnight, sometimes I was up till midnight to be able to reach out to entrepreneurs who are stressed, entrepreneurs who were stuck, entrepreneurs who were paralyzed by fear and self-doubt, entrepreneurs who had their itty-bitty-shitty-committee and their, how they didn't see COVID coming, how they didn't know how to do this, how could they allow that to happen.
And I was able to relate it all back to September 9th, 2006, how my itty-bitty-shitty-committee and my imposter syndrome was flaring so much that I couldn't go into work with my company. I couldn't go in and deal with the toxic employees that I have allowed, as a leader, to occur.
So I think to your point, the value of storytelling and the value of being authentic, vulnerable, transparent, ATV in front of an audience or on a podcast like this where people can look behind the curtain and see that,
"Wow, other people have had tough days, other people have gone through those tough times, they've been there, done that, survived that,"
especially in these current times, is a message that I don't think people can hear enough of.
Ryan Foland: I want to take you back in time before September 9th, 2006, because afterward, we found the two words that really created that, the aha moment, which is IMPACT PEOPLE.
Before that moment, what were the two words that were ruling your life?
Todd Palmer: Oh gosh, before that it was, "How big can I make my company? How can I get to a 20 million dollar company?"
That was the target I had in my mind, it was all about the revenue.
And what I didn't realize was that 20 million dollars of revenue with 1 percent margins is really pretty unimpressive.
And we got into debt, partially the $600,000, because we had two clients that went bankrupt on us and we'd extended improper terms.
I wasn't focused on the margin, I wasn't focused on the days outstanding, I was just focused on sell, sell, sell, sell, revenue, revenue, revenue.
And I really realized that revenue doesn't matter nearly as much as the margins. I went from a revenue model to a margin model literally overnight.
Ryan Foland: Okay, I want to go back to putting you on the spot for these two words, from ‘improve lives’ the prior two words, would it be ‘improve profit’, ‘improve margins’, ‘improve revenue’, ‘improve sales’, or improve insert something else?
Todd Palmer: You know, I think for me it was “grow revenue, improve the revenue of the organization at all costs”.
And it was kind of a ‘damn the torpedoes’ mindset.
When you're competing in the staffing space at the time we were in, we were competing with Kelly Services and Manpower and Adecco and these large, large, large publicly held companies.
And while everybody loves the story of David versus Goliath, there's only one story I know, if it's David and Goliath, usually it's, if you go up against a big competitor with buckets of cash, it's really hard to compete against them unless you find a different way to do it and trying to be all things to all people at all times, which is what we were trying to do in the staffing space.
It was not working.
Just like as a speaker, what is your niche, what do you speak about better than anyone else?
Well, as a recruiting company we needed to figure out what type of candidate do we deliver better than anyone else.
And I totally had to shift my mindset around that because I realized, like in a lot of organizations, the bottleneck was at the top and I was the bottleneck. I had to get out of my own way, with the help of my coach, to figure that out.
Ryan Foland: This is awesome, you literally went from improving revenue to improving lives.
Todd Palmer: Correct.
Ryan Foland: Now, I want to go a step back, because we're here on the World of Speakers podcast, brought to you by SpeakerHub, by the way, which is an awesome platform to house all of your speaking accolades.
But as a kid, did you ever think you would grow up to be a speaker per se, or was this more of a, "I'm going to become a successful business person," and then did the speaking just appear?
And we're going to get into your tips on speaking and the business of speaking, but I just want to get to know you more because you seem like this profit-driven guy who turned into a people-driven guy, but where did the profit-driving come from?
Was it an influence, was it just the way that you were raised, how did that start?
Todd Palmer: I think a lot of it came from the perspective of I was very much single-minded, solo-focused, a lot of it did come from my childhood.
Unfortunately, I lost my father at a very young age. I was 5 years old when my dad passed away, and within 90 days my older brother went away to university, my older sister moved away to Arizona to get married, and my mother, who was my primary caregiver, went to work, so everybody around me that I depended upon as my caregivers were all gone.
And so as a child, what I told myself was that the only person I can depend on is myself. And with that solopreneur mindset, I think it pivoted in the sports I played, I played baseball, it's pitcher against hitter.
Then once that occurs and the team gets into play and so a sport predicated on failure; you fail 7 out of 10 times, you're hitting 300, you'll get 20 million dollars in your contract.
As I've gone through life, being a solo thinker, being a rugged individualist served me well for a long time until it didn't. As I tried to grow and scale a company instead of just building myself a job and building a business, I ran into roadblocks I ran into stubborn blocks. I couldn't be the oracle anymore, I couldn't be the smartest kid in the room.
I was hiring other smart people. And then when I heard my coach he was very clear that you can't do this by yourself.
So what worked well for me for a long time doing it by myself wasn’t transferable into the corporate world.
When I decided I really wanted to become a speaker it was off of the invitation of others to come and speak about my experiences.
And for a long time I really worried about saying it right, saying it perfectly, getting everything down succinctly. Another speaker pulled me aside and said,
"I really like your content but your delivery is, let's just say, not as good as it could be because I think you're all wrapped up in your head."
Well, that was a very safe place for me to be.
When I went on stage and I spoke from my heart, and it was ATV, authentic, transparent, and vulnerable, and I spoke at the essence of what I wanted to communicate, then magical things happened.
I remember I gave a speech about 14 months ago, I did a 5-minute opening for the keynote as a favor to him because he was an important friend of mine, I said, "Hey, I'm happy to do this for you."
And I went out and I just told the story about the impact. This gentleman's name is Dr. Daniel Freedman. He is out of San Diego, California and he literally changed my life, and I told a story about how he helped change my life.
And I looked down in front of me and it was in a room of just CEOs, and there were 3 CEOs who were talking because the person between them was in tears based on my 5-minute story.
That was my BOOM!, light bulb moment from the stage, where I know that by telling stories, speaking from essence, being real and vulnerable it resonates a whole lot more with your audience by opening myself up to allow them in, versus,
"I've got to get it right, I've got to get it perfect, it's got to be staccato, it's got to be lots of facts, lots of data, lots of figures."
When I speak from the heart it just went to the point where this person's life was transformed and she pulls me aside afterward and just said,
"That's the most powerful thing I've ever heard, how can I work with you?"
And then she became a coach or a coaching client.
Ryan Foland: Awesome story.
Now in all transparency, I'm not a baseball fan, I'm not going to pretend that I am. I played hockey growing up.
But there are a lot of elements of that story that I resonate with.
And what's inspiring for our listeners is that you don't have to grow up thinking you're going to become a speaker, you can actually grow up as somebody who thinks that they are their own island. You can become a successful business person who then becomes, on the brink of unsuccess, just turning your ship from profit to people, and then having the ability within a matter of minutes to impact people to their core.
I think I've gotten to know you just based on that September 9th element.
I think you started to tease out some of what makes your speaking unique, which is this authentic and transparent and vulnerable.
The book that I wrote is called, "Ditch the Act". It's all about that. I think that people find value in how they see themselves in your stories.
And for a long time I was like, "Yeah, I'm awesome, I'm awesome," and people are like, "Well, no."
And I was like, "Okay, I'm really not that awesome, this is what I'm having a hard time with."
And they're like, "Okay, cool, I get it."
So I want to transition. Let's get down and dirty about how you personally see translating from the heart, from the stage.
And I know we have some common friends like Josh Linkner. You're part of the 3 Ring Circus, there's just so much great information, and this coach that you mentioned helped you realize you can’t do it by yourself.
I always am one to say, "I can't do it by myself."
So what are some of the things, if you were the proverbial coach here now for the next few minutes, of everyone listening in the world, across the world, no pressure, what are some of the things that you would sell them to shorten their path to being able to impact people?
Todd Palmer: Especially for speakers, I think a couple of things really come to mind, It's be authentic, speak from the heart.
And what I found is that you can be as great a speaker as someone like Josh Linkner, people are no matter how good you are, whether you're Josh Linkner, you're David Rendall, you're Brene Brown, whoever you are on stage, they are only going to have 2 or 3 takeaways. They get pages of notes but there's going to be a couple of things. When I think of David Rendall, he's become a friend of mine, I was thinking it's what makes you weird, makes you wonderful; focus on your strengths; minimize your weaknesses — really simple messages.
It's important to remember also that I am the steward of my own stories, but I am here at the request and as a servant to my audience.
It's not about me standing on the stage and talking about how smart I think I am, or how wonderful I think I am, it's me coming to be a servant leader to my audience.
I always find inspiration in some of the weirdest places, I spend a lot of time watching documentaries about musicians and about filmmakers and actors, and how they talk about how our audience resonates with us and connects with us on a much deeper level when we put it all out there.
And whether you're Dave Grohl, The Foo Fighters, or Al Pacino as an actor, if you show up and give your very best, you're coming prepared but not stale. It is so important.
So for me, I just remember, every time I got the blessing to speak from the stage that 1: it's not work, for me it's not work, it takes work to get there, but if I do the proper prep, just like preparing for sports, proper practice equals proper performance.
But it really does come down to, people will remember how you make them feel, and we can make them feel amazing emotions if we speak to them, and we can speak to them from a clinical perspective or a researcher perspective, and there's nothing wrong with that, there's value in that, that's called being a professor.
I did that. I used to teach college and I really enjoyed that. I can teach, but I get juiced and I get jazzed when I'm in front of an audience and there are those lightbulb moments, there is an aha moment where something I tell them in a story lands and resonates with them.
I remember telling the $600,000 in debt story, a woman comes up to me afterward, she goes,
"I just had to meet you, you were 6 times more screwed up than I am, I'm only $100,000 in debt. Can you tell me more about how you did that?"
And I just had to laugh because that's what she remembered, that's what landed with her, it touched her in some way and I followed up with her recently and she's out of debt, she's bought her dream home in Northern Michigan, she retired once we talked about some different things she could do and I put her in touch with some financial people.
But what landed for her was, like you said, people want to see themselves in our stories.
The reality is when I talk about my journey as a CEO, that was my hero's journey, I took that journey.
When I talk from stage, I share my story, but I also add in other stories to complete the picture so I can be the guide to someone else's hero's journey from the stage, whether it's I'm telling Ryan a story and it brings back the Mister Miyagis of your life, or something else, it's if I can tell the story in such a sincere and authentic way that it lands with somebody and it impacts them, or I share a story, and I have no problem with the woman saying like, "Oh my god, you're 6 times worse off than I was because I am only a $100K in debt. " that's fine, listen: part of being a speaker is I think we have to open ourselves up to being real with the audience.
People can pick up a phony. I love watching bands play live music because I can tell when they're really excited about something and when they're playing one of their greatest hits and going through the motions.
It's the greatest bands who can still get excited that I'm excited hearing their greatest hits, and that exchange of energy from stage is so powerful.
So again, we are of service to our audience and we only exist to serve them, not to serve our own egos.
Ryan Foland: That was a great brain dump, and what I got from it was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 main topics that we can dive into.
So here's a little game we're going to play, I'm just making it up. I'm going to tell you all 8 of these pieces of advice that I pulled from you and you're going to choose just 3 to wax on and wax off.
Todd Palmer: Perfect. Okay Daniel, son, let's go.
Ryan Foland: The number 1 thing I heard was, be authentic.
But again, this is very general so you're going to choose 3 that you want to actually dive in a little bit deeper with and then give us some sort of Mister Miyagi training to apply.
Because gathering information — do you know Vinh Giang?
Todd Palmer: I do!
Ryan Foland: He's Australian.
Todd Palmer: He's awesome, I actually saw him a couple of years ago in California, I've seen him speak, and he's my favorite speaker magician ever.
Ryan Foland: He’s a lovely guy, and I had him on the podcast.
But one of the things that stuck with me is he says, "Gaining new information is satisfaction, but applying that information is actual fulfillment."
So people are going to feel satisfied by getting these 8 tips, which I'm going to do, but we want them to be fulfilled and we're going to dig into 3.
So the number 1 choice you have is, be authentic.
The number 2 is, speak from the heart.
Number 3 is, less is more.
Number 4 is, serve your audience or be a servant speaker.
Number 5 would be, put it all out there, which is different from ‘authenticity’ or ‘from the heart’. The question is how much do you give?
Then, proper planning.
Number 7 was this idea of like you have an impact by affecting people.
And then the 8th one, which I got at the very end, was that there has to be excitement.
So each one of those on their own we could speak on for a long time, but I'd rather speak on 3 of them with a little bit of depth.
So which ones do you want to choose?
It's like a game show.
Todd Palmer: Sure. I think it's important to start with the end in mind.
So for me, I always start with, how can I best serve my audience?
Ryan Foland: Okay, so serving the audience is going to be number 1.
What's number 2?
Todd Palmer: Obviously, put it all out there.
Ryan Foland: Okay, put it all out there is number 2. And what's your final one?
Todd Palmer: For me, it's always about the effect on other people.
Ryan Foland: All right, so using the rule of 3, we've now gone from 8 to 3 and so I'm going to challenge you for each of these to come up with 3 really core nuggets that you personally have experienced, or something that somebody can listen to be like,
"Okay, I'm going to try that."
So when it comes to serving from the stage, what are 3 examples or things that we can do, or actual things we can try, to mirror or train, wax on, wax off.
Todd Palmer: So the first thing would be to get with the event planner, know your audience.
Why are you here?
What do they want to know?
That's what I find works really well, to get with the event planner, know what you're there to talk about, and know who's in the audience.
I'm doing a speech next month in Indianapolis, and it's a bunch of sales professionals who've achieved at the top of their game, and they're kind of asking,
"Now what? Where do I go from here?"
I'm going to build my content around that theme.
Ryan Foland: But I want to know what question, because I've heard this piece of advice a lot, right — get with the planners and organizers, but what questions do you ask?
Todd Palmer: My style is like I get on a phone or a Zoom call with them and I ask them,
"What's the theme of the event? What do your members want to take away? Give me 3 nuggets they want to take away."
And if they don't have those nuggets I say, "Here's a survey, send it out to them and get back to me."
And then the final thing I do is,
"What can I do, as the speaker, to be easy to work with, deliver the most value so you, as the event planner, look like a rock star? Because the hidden nugget is that, if I do that, you're going to hire me again."
My audience really is the event planner who's the conduit for the audience I'm in front of.
Ryan Foland: Right. One thing that I learned from Josh, as well as the fact that event planners, and I love you all, but it's really your job on the line, because if they hire you and you do okay that's fine; if you do awesome, it's fine.
If you just knock it out of the park, home run, like it's okay.
But if you suck, they potentially get fired.
So there's a nice relationship.
Okay, so number one is contacting them to find out, not only what the audience wants, but how you can best make them, as an event planner, look like a rock star.
What's the second level tick mark under serving from the stage?
Todd Palmer: When it comes to serving from the stage, my job is to read the room, read the energy.
So, for example, the last one, excitement.
Ryan Foland: Can we talk about the Zoom room, as well?
Todd Palmer: Oh yeah, for sure.
So what I've figured out for Zoom is, unless I have to, I don't use slides.
Because I need to read your energy in the room, I need to see everybody on my screen as best as I possibly can.
I did something for a group, in Malaysia of all places, they are all on there and I'm probably this hyper crazy American bouncing off the screen and I'm watching their reactions to me, and the more people were laughing or the more they're like getting up in there, the bigger I got.
So I adjusted my persona to fit the room, within a degree of 5 or 10 percent, because I just had this ability, it's just natural god-given luck that I can adjust my energy to fit the room.
So if it's a very somber room I can come down, if the room needs energy then I can bring my energy up, and I do a lot through physicality.
Ryan Foland: Yeah, I know, that's great.
One thing I talk about is, I call it the rising tide, granted I go back to the boat analogy, but I find that you're the tide where all the boats are going to float to your level.
But the nuance is that if you match their level, they're still going to be below.
And so I think that you need to be like 30 to 35 percent above the energy level that they need to be, because it sort of rises those tides up.
So I like that.
The other thing, and this is a very nuanced question, on your Zoom, if you have more than 100 people on, you have these different sections, right, so you can scroll through the grid format that you're seeing.
Do you just focus as a random sampling on the one group or are you actually clicking through to see multiple patches of people?
Todd Palmer: I've done it both ways and I cheat, I absolutely have no problem saying I cheat.
So I literally have my screen, I have my big area behind me, all my talking points are up there so I'm looking at the screen, I can keep going in case someone distracts me because they're prone to do that.
But what I say I really cheat is if I see somebody who's checking out, not engaged, I'll just go and say, "Hey, Ryan Foland, I see you have some questions," it catches the guy off guard, and then he's like, "No, I'm good."
I'm like, "Yeah, everybody," so we just keep it going because I do a lot of not just speaking from a speech standpoint, but I do a lot of meeting facilitation, leadership facilitation.
So my job is to make sure they keep engaged.
So if it's somebody checking out, I want to bring them in.
And kind of a trick I've learned is I start off every time I speak online, I always ask one or two questions and I have everybody fill in the chat feature before I even get started.
Because then they've got to pay attention.
Psychologically, they're more engaged, so I think so much of what we do and I think Vinh talks a lot about that, it's so much like the Jedi mind trick of getting them involved, bringing them into the room, bringing them where we want them to go.
Because at the end of the day, I know what I'm going to talk about.
They don't know what I am going to talk about, and if I see someone like you're smiling right now, I would call them,
"So Ryan, I see it landed with you, can you tell the audience more about why that landed with you?"
It's not a matter of if you want to talk or not because I really do not care, I want you to get engaged.
And I want everybody kind of like, "Oh, he is going to call me next," kind of a little bit of that.
And because of my audience, I don't worry about bothering or offending someone, because someone who maybe is listening is like,
"Well, if you're going to call somebody they are going to get really irritated."
My rooms are typically entrepreneurs and CEOs are my sweet spot. When I talk about my first book it was about high school kids or college kids, they know why I am there and anybody who researches me, he is going to know that it's going to be an energetic experience, and I want to be respected, I want to add value.
I'm not particularly concerned all the time about initially being liked if there's a little bit of like, "Wake him up, get him going" kind of thing.
Because I always circle back to the person I probably have shocked the most, and I always close and give them something so then they like me.
Ryan Foland: Right, okay. So the 3 subcategories under being a servant leader from stage, whether it's virtual or not, is making sure you're on the same page with the event planner that's going to make them look good, getting the nuggets that they need or sending the survey to some extent.
Number 2 is watching the grid and actually, no slides concept, watching the grid. And number 3 not being afraid to throw people under the love bus.
Todd Palmer: Well, and it is to their benefit.
And so far it's gone pretty well.
So I always do post-survey feedback, so again, kind of closed-loop maybe on how to serve the audience.
I always do a survey.
And in that survey, I want to know if I suck, where do I suck?
I only know, for my style, I'm only going to grow as a speaker, I'm not going to grow as a CEO, I am only going to grow if I get honest feedback.
My job is to create that platform so they can give me honest feedback.
So I ask them what worked and what didn't, what did they like, what could I have done better.
And also I ask the audience, "How did you show up?"
Because we're in this together it's like a Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Spicoli, "This isn't just my time, it's our time Mr. Hand", and I do that with them.
And they are like, "Well, I was checking my email."
"Oh, you were? I had no idea, shock"
But it's our time, so that they understand this really, if done correctly it can be still as much of a human connecting shared experience as possible.
And so I want to know.
So the thing I always get a lot of positive feedback on is my energy.
The downside of my energy is my energy would sometimes get me to speak quickly, especially with foreign audiences, they can't always follow me.
So I've learned, based upon that feedback, I am speaking in Mexico in November, virtually, and they said,
"We're going to get you an interpreter for our Spanish-speaking audience members."
I said, "Perfect, I want to meet the interpreter, I have to talk to them first.
I'm going to speak really quickly when I talk to them and they really have to be able to keep up with me, because when I get excited—"
She was like, "Oh my gosh, I've got the perfect guy for you!"
Ryan Foland: Okay so that's great.
Now to close this out, just very quick questions on your survey: what platform do you use?
Do you use like a Google form or do you use SurveyMonkey, just from a platform technically so somebody can understand?
And then how many questions do you have?
Because I struggle with this myself, like you want to get more information, but you know the more questions is inversely proportional to the fact that people will or won’t fill it out.
So what platform and how many questions on average do you do?
Todd Palmer: Mine is all set up in Google docs and I give it to the event planner ahead of time as part of my contract that they're going to execute this on my behalf.
Ryan Foland: Okay.
Todd Palmer: And I keep it at 5 questions and those 5 questions typically it's a scale of 1 to 10, anything below 7 triggers tell me more about it.
And I tell the audience in the speech that I'm going to ask you and I say,
"I hope you've all gotten value from our conversation and our time together. I've seen lightbulbs from Ryan and from Sue and from John. I want to have my own lightbulb moment,"
I say, "It would be really helpful to me, and what I'd like for all of you to do is take a few minutes to fill out the survey, and for those areas where I can improve, I can only improve if I know they exist."
And I give the audience there the permission to be honest because when I was a recruiter, going back to when I was a recruiter, people hate to give bad news, people don't like to tell you,
"You have spinach in your teeth and your baby is ugly."
Well, my baby with the spinach in its teeth needs to know that we need a little buff and polish on it.
I only grow if I know, and I challenge them because they want to help, I believe they want to help, they want to give back and they want to make it a great experience for everybody.
And when I speak fast I know what's coming.
Not every singer is going to sound like Mariah Carey, but a lot of singers who don't sound like Mariah Carey do just fine, so it's not a matter of if I speak too quickly I'm going to lose my audience, I just need to be aware of it, and if I can slow down in the moments especially, you know this probably better than most, when I want to make a point, I use my voice as a tool and as an instrument, then that's on me as the speaker, so I've got to pick and choose that as well.
And sometimes speed and cadence can also connect with an audience, or not.
Ryan Foland: Yeah. So we just crushed that section.
Now, number 2 is going to be putting it all out there.
Give me kind of a fire bullet point list of how to determine how much to put out there.
Do you put this out there in the beginning to sort of shock and awe them?
Is this the end, the final reveal?
And then maybe just another warning about putting too much out there.
Todd Palmer: So I've done it both ways. Where I've led it with a shocking moment or I've closed it with a shocking moment, it depends on what the audience is.
For me, I found that I can't ask my audience to be authentic, transparent, and vulnerable with me unless I model it first.
At least currently, the way I'm doing it is I'm telling the 2006 story first. I say,
"My mess has become my message and so what I'm here today to talk to you about is don't focus too much on revenue, if you have any itty-bitty-shitty-committee in your head, let's talk about how we can silence that."
Whatever that the keynote spins off of it all spins off of that same story.
And what I've learned was the reaction from the audience is never the same.
Sometimes people just go like the look of shock and awe, I'm sure there are people my buddy always says like, "Oh my god, what an idiot, what an awful thing to say."
But what I realize that it's my stories, these are my stories, they are my truths. I've got clients, for example, that are CEOs who are in recovery in 12 step programs and they always talk about when they were at their worst, it's when they were lying to themselves the most.
So they always talk about being honest and upfront in their groups.
So I took a lot of value and I was like, "You know what, this is my story, it really did happen and the only way that I found that people will share their authentic self is when I'm authentic first."
So going back to number one to be of best service to my audience I have to show up, I have to be real, the story I first tell is my story, not someone else's story and the great thing about it is it's my story and I've grown from it and people have received value from it, which ties back to,
"I want to improve lives."
Ryan Foland: Yeah, I like that.
One of the things in "Ditch the Act" that I talk about is that we have this fear that people will judge us based on the stories that don't go right.
And an exercise that I do with people and my clients is what's called "expose your resume".
So your resume, being in hiring/staffing you know it's all about the resume, right?
These are all of the things you want people to know.
But if you flip that exercise and you really tease out all the things that you would be absolutely frightened that people would find out about you, then you understand what you've learned and how you're a different person because of it.
Like that's the exciting, interesting stuff.
So for those people who are afraid to share their $600,000 or $800 million moments, what is one message you want to share with them to convince them that this is actually a tool to bring people closer and not push them away?
Todd Palmer: I spent 3 days in a maximum-security prison volunteering for an entrepreneurial program for prisoners who were about to be released.
I had no interest in ever doing that, I had a lot of preconceived notions about what it was like to be in prison and to be a prisoner, and why would I go volunteer my time.
A speaker convinced me of that by sharing the worst day of her life.
Her name is Cat Hoke, Catherine Hoke, she has a program called Hustle 2.0 she's an amazing speaker and her opening line was really simple—
"What if you were only known for the rest of your life by the worst day of your life? Let me tell you a story."
And she told all of us the worst day of her life.
And it's like I couldn't judge her because it takes away the judging because I said the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
And being able to think about being a financial idiot because, again, $600,000 dollars in debt, you know what, you're not the first person. I think that, and I'm the one who did it, so you can think whatever you want, I've got to live with myself.
When Cat shared those stories about the worst day of her life and she has a TED Talk on this, it shifted my perspective, she changed my heart.
We can change a lot of people's heads, we can change a lot of people's minds, but when you can change someone's heart the only way I've ever seen anybody do it is when you speak from one of the most, if not the most, painful days of your life.
That's why I would encourage anybody listening today to put it out there.
Ryan Foland: That's great, I totally agree with that.
And it's once you get those worst days off your chest, then nobody can hold it against you, and then it becomes part of your identity.
I talk a lot about the difference between your expertise and your experience, and I think people hire you for your experience, which is rooted, and all these things went wrong.
So that's a great transition to this final tip about, how do you create impact?
You just gave an example of somebody who you're an audience member and she did this final tip.
So how could you help our listeners find those moments or create that impact?
Is it always just about the worst day stories and you always just have to share the mess?
Todd Palmer: For me, it is really showing up and being real and sharing the mess, Inc. 5000 is one of the fastest-growing companies, the 6 times and I used to get invited to come speak and talk about success.
And I wouldn't do it.
Because in my head I knew that all they wanted to hear was kind of the finish line story of how we did this.
And in fact, the university wanted me to come and talk and I said, "I will only come and talk, and I'll come and talk for free, if I can tell you the truth."
Because I am an alumni of this university, and they wanted me to kind of be their poster child for more people to be, "Be like this guy."
Ryan Foland: They wanted the lipstick on the pig, they wanted to sort of like show the success.
Todd Palmer: And there's nothing wrong with talking about success. Success is a wonderful thing.
But there's so much more value gained in learning done by sharing the ups and downs of your hero's journey.
And our journey before we got on the Inc 5000, 6 times was being $600 thousand in debt, moving and changing, and pivoting, and letting people go and trying things and stumbling around and failing forward and all that stuff.
That's what I wanted to talk to kids about and the dean goes,
"You talk about that?"
"I will only talk about that because I'm doing this for free, I'm volunteering my time. So we're not beholden to one another."
Ryan Foland: Right, I'm not on the call to try to find out what the audience wants, and to make you look good, I'm here to sort of bring what I want.
Todd Palmer: Right, and this is like the very first speech I gave and he said, "You would really do that?"
I said, "It's the only way I'll do it."
And here's what he told me, "Most of the world won't talk about that stuff. It would be a blessing and a gift for our students if you would come and share that."
I said, "Done."
And what that taught me was in order for me to make the greatest amount of impact I have to go where other people don't want to go.
Public speaking is what is, I don’t know if it’s still the number 1 fear in the world or not but at one point it was, and so we, people like you and I, we go places where other people don't want to go.
We stand on an elevated stage, not because we think our egos are larger, we're the smartest kids in the room, but one, so you can see us, two, we have to broadcast our message and three, it is a bit of a performance.
But the reality becomes we only get that privilege because it is a privilege to be able to stand in front of an audience, I believe, and it is a privilege to serve them best when we have something worth saying.
And to spit out stats and to spit out facts or half-truths or what have you, versus, listen you can fact check all you want but this was my story, or this was Ryan's story and this was what we'd experienced.
There may be something that lands with you because my only goal in being a servant leader from the stage is I want to impact one person.
Ryan Foland: Okay, I'm laughing, I'm smiling because that is something that my mom has said to me for the history of my life, "Ryan it only takes one person," this was well before I was a professional speaker, and that's something that I completely agree with and we forget, "If you can impact that one person, you can impact everyone else."
But I think sometimes we get caught up on impacting more which sort of works against us, speaking directly to those individual people.
Todd Palmer: Your mom is a wise woman, because when we impact one person, you know, it's the pebble in the ocean, how much of that ripple effect do we create?
I always would say to people,
"I just want to leave a legacy. I want to make the world a better place than what I found it."
I don't really know how to do that some days but if I just keep that intentionality out there— my favorite part about speaking sometimes is the after part, where people come up and want to talk to you.
And I love it when they say, "You know, that little thing that—" literally, for me, it's that kind of a throw off thing, like, "Dude, that changed my life."
I'm like, "Really? Tell me why, I want to be able to duplicate that for others," but the best part of the job of the speakers, we're meeting our audience where they are for this moment in time, this 30 minutes to 60 minutes, this 90 minutes, and after that we have no idea what that ripple through the universe is going to create.
And when I go back to where I was 14 months ago, and I'm speaking from stage and someone's in tears, and to know that I said something that touched someone.
And I didn't do it on purpose, I didn't do it with the intention, but my intention was to speak from the heart to honor someone else.
I wasn't even really talking about me, it was my story about my interaction with someone else, and my gift to him was my time on stage.
And to know that we can do that as speakers and as coaches and as authors, and who we are, and making the world a better place, to me that's just, there is no better job.
Ryan Foland: Yeah, that's the impact.
At the end of the day, your mission, your why, to impact and influence people in a positive direction.
And one thing that might be fun to explore, this is something that I've been playing with and practicing with, is when you know you have a large group that you're speaking to, or maybe it's a company event in order to help facilitate that line of people to shake hands afterward, actually, I've asked for additional time and to let people know that if they want to stick around afterwards and then we're all here in a little group, and people are actually talking and they have those little things, so that's something I've done to duplicate that.
Because you forget how important that moment is.
Todd Palmer: Well it's important for them.
Again, it goes back to we're here for them, and certainly, sometimes it's fun. I mean, I was in Mexico and I gave a speech in Mexico and some kid who bought my first book brought it up and wanted my autograph.
I guess you've made it when your signature becomes an autograph and this kid was just so excited to meet me, and with my partner Jan, and we're talking with this young man and he's just thrilled.
Ryan Foland: You made a difference to that one person, you have no idea how that went.
And just like this podcast and your advice I know has resonated with at least one person.
So my mom would be stoked with it. We said this would be the best podcast ever and, technically, if we influence and affect one person, we will.
Now I want to end on it, maybe we can think of this as like a rapid-fire because I want to respect everybody's time.
Todd Palmer: Sure.
Ryan Foland: But I do want to tap into some of the elements of the profession of speaking that you have found yourself in in this new COVID era.
Maybe you can give us the down and dirty of the pivots that have worked the best from a financial standpoint?
We all have moments where we talked for free, this is an interesting spot to try to get the honorarium at the levels we're used to, at the 10, 20 grand and now that it just isn't there and we've all been affected.
So from a professional speaking standpoint, what are some of the things that you've learned the most or have found the most valuable here as we've all been making this transition?
Todd Palmer: I think it's a great question, it's a very timely question.
For me, it's been the ability to impact as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
Again, my niche is business leaders, entrepreneurs, and CEOs.
So when COVID hit, there were a lot of people who were in a state of panic, in a state of shock, and I've been through a recession, I went through turning my company around, and I knew that that was going to be out there.
Plus I had a lot of free time because all my stages got canceled.
So I started massively volunteering, that was something I found really valuable.
But I was very targeted with who I volunteered with, I only wanted to talk to entrepreneurs or CEOs, that's all I wanted to talk to.
And I would come in and I would volunteer for like a chamber of commerce, so a lot of volunteer work in the beginning.
The second thing that really helped move the needle from a financial perspective, is I started offering 1-on-1 consultation for 30 minutes.
It was very tight and very timely, and I only asked 3 questions in those 30 minutes, the whole pitch was to help somebody get unstuck. So I spoke for free a lot, I gave 30 minutes time and what I found was I really did well on things like podcasts, and I found I really did well on hosted events where I had a dialogue and rapport like I had with you today, where there are good questions and you're the audience representation.
And I found that was really valuable.
What I found was a bit frustrating, in all honesty, was the expectations that that would last forever and that we would do these things forever.
So now when I speak I charge a fee, maybe not as much as I was charging a year ago, but still, it's worth it to me to do it if it's the right audience.
And if it's not the right audience, I just ask for more, like, "Hey, you want me, this is what it's going to cost."
And either they have the money or they don't.
What I think is going to be really interesting is how this business is going to change. I have no crystal ball on that.
For me it goes back to how many lives can I improve and kind of the hidden byproduct to this, that I think is kind of the preview is, during these COVID times I've had extra time to finish my book, my second book, and that's going to hopefully be the message that came out of the mess.
Ryan Foland: And tell me real quick about that book, and then also where people can find you and latch on to the mess and message which is your existence?
Todd Palmer: The name of the book is "From suck to success, a guide for transformative entrepreneurship", and it should be out by the end of the year.
And it's just kind of my story and the stories of others and how the mindset, combined with the processes and the people, are what we need to do to change all of those, often are what we move our business forward to get unstuck.
If anybody wants to reach out to me I can be reached at [email protected].
Anyone who's heard me today just please mention you heard me on the Ryan show and I'm happy to give you 30 minutes of my time to talk about your speaking business, talk about coaching, talk about what it's like to write a book and it's an opportunity for me by doing that— you're giving me a gift, by helping you, hopefully I'll say one or two things that may improve your life just a little bit.
Worst case scenario, we have a fun conversation and it's an opportunity to still create a community in a space where a lot of us are still distanced.
Ryan Foland: I like that because we are distanced but it's all about community and the best way to build community is to find common grounds and see how you see yourself in other people's stories, and the whole system is a closed loop until you open up and actually share that stuff, that doesn't go right.
And I think that in what goes wrong, that's how we really can connect, because we all are humans and in this experience, we're experiencing here in 2020, especially that we have a lot of commonality and the misery and challenges, but that can only last so long from a crystal ball, however long COVID stays or COVID 20 or COVID 21, or COVID 29 however of them come down the pipe, I think that we are a result of those experiences.
And I think this is a time to revel in the mess and be more connected, authentic, heartfelt, not necessary say more, but the less you say, the more it can happen so that you can be a servant leader, so that you can put it all out there, practice properly and with that you will find impact, and if you do that all correctly you will be excited.
So thanks again for your insight, we got a lot to chew on here but this has been fun, I've enjoyed getting to know you. I'm looking forward to this being a dot in a series of dots that may connect a line sometime and maybe we'll share the virtual stage sometime, who knows.
Todd Palmer: There you go, Ryan, I look forward to it.
Ryan Foland: All right, thanks again. So check out Todd's new book, Todd's new 30-minute offer. Check out Todd. Todd, Todd, Todd this has been great.
So I will let my mom know that my day was impacted positively to tap into your why because it just takes one and worst case I'm the one so we're all good.
Todd Palmer: I'll take it. Thank you so much.
Ryan Foland: All right, and if you have not checked out SpeakerHub, this is a great opportunity to do so, speakerhub.com where you can house all of your speaker experience without having to build your own speaker website. You can get calls for applications, you can get automation applications, if you google all kinds of crazy stuff you can have a little tag in your email that you can do an HTML, you can do a one-pager generated, all kinds of great things like that.
But hey, at the end of the day, wherever you're at now is the time to do more.
So put yourself out there, speak from the heart, ATV — authenticity, transparency and vulnerability.
Thanks, Todd.
Todd Palmer: Thanks, Ryan.
A bit about World of Speakers
World of Speakers is a bi-weekly podcast that helps people find their own voices, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.
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