Lessons for Entrepreneurs and Speakers by Dan Thurmon

Here are some ideas that I got from the talk about being a professional speaker and what it takes to be successful in the business. Dan Thurmon came to speak at the NSA NJ chapter, where I was a guest from the NYC chapter.

Once I got to see his video at the national NSA convention, I was super inspired and decided to travel 90 minutes just to watch his talk in NJ. It was totally worth it!

Here are the key lessons that I learned.

• Think about how you differentiate yourself in the marketplace? Be yourself!
• To be great have "Nothing to prove, only something to give. "
• Speaking is a transfer of ownership. Are you transferring an experience?
• Think about the experience you want the audience to have. Start from there.
• Check to see if the people are you talking to are buying what you are selling.
• Can people see themselves in your story? They need to GET IT!
• What every talk needs to be is Meaningful, Relevant and Different for it to make a difference.
• Can you commit to being able to stick to being a PROFESSIONAL speaker?
• Some people have passion and desire but not sure what they want to give.

Content vs Entertainment

There are people who are full of passion and energy and want to talk about something, they are not sure what they want to talk about but they know they have a message they want to deliver and aren't sure what they want to give or how to give it. They have low content and low entertainment value.

There are people who are funny and super entertaining but don't have much content and don't solve problems outside of entertainment.

There are people who are amazing at delivering super valuable content but are dry and aren't entertaining at all.

They key is to be high on entertainment and deep in content. If you can be in that quadrant, you are a rockstar speaker.

If you add massive value and solve big problems, you will be able to charge big fees and make real change.

Meeting People Where They Are

When you walk into a room, you need to feel the energy of the room. You need to meet people where they are, energy-wise. Then you can take them where you want them to go with audience participation.

Build up the people you are talking to and get them engaged. This works with small groups and big groups alike.

Dan could've started by doing flips and handstands, but the room wasn't ready for it. He had to prime the room and get everyone in sync. Think about how you get people synced up. He did it by getting people to clap and chant together, this way they all synced up and transferred great energy to him.

I personally felt the level of energy in the room change when he did that.

Willingness + Abilities + Capacity = Bandwidth

Think about how much desire you have to be a professional speaker. It takes a lot of work. Much more work than you might think. People who are not driving with a deep desire and willingness to commit to doing what it takes will not make it more than a year or two in this business or in any business.

You also have to learn what your strengths are and capitalize on them. What are your abilities and the skills that you must learn to really be extraordinary and stand out so you can thrive?

Once you are clear that you have the willingness and abilities, you need to identify what your capacity is and how much you can persist to get to the goal. The stronger the commitment the more persistent you will have to make it.

Dan gave an example of a boat he was building with his friends when he was 12. They wanted to sail the sea, so they got wood from his house and started to build a boat. His friends didn't have electronics in 1979, so they brought wood and nails and hammers. They spent the whole summer building this boat and added floatation devices with empty milk cartons to the bottom of the boat so it could float. At the end of the summer, they all went off to school and never sailed the boat.

Are you a boat builder? Are you inspired by the idea of being an entrepreneur and love talking about ideas and building products that never take off? Or are you a sailor that will put that boat in the sea and do what it takes, even if the boat sinks on the first couple of tries.

Don't be a boat builder. Be a sailor. Let's GO!

Patterns are what drive consistency.

If you want to be successful at anything, you need to learn the patterns of success.

It's not about what you do once, it's about what you can do over and over until you learn the pattern.

This is true for Juggling and also true for business and life.

Learn the patterns and teach those patterns to others as well.

When it comes to learning a new skill, it matters more how you do it than what you do.

A teacher once asked Dan, do you want to learn juggling and Dan hear "You can do this too!"

Ask people if they want to learn and if they have the desire then you need to transfer the ownership of the skills, patterns, and knowledge to them.

Speaking to an audience is a transfer of ownership.

Those who want to be successful at juggling need to learn how to throw the ball. When you learn how to throw the ball, you will have many drops, the more you drop and keep picking it back up, the faster you will learn.

It's about how many drops you picked up, not about how many catches you make that matters. You learn from your drops.

When you fail, you need to get back up and try again. There is no loss in life if you are able to learn something from each drop.

If you accomplish a goal and you get to the next level and now the next level is easy, step it up and push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Pick a bigger goal so you can stay motivated to keep moving forward.

When you're juggling the areas of life, you will have many imbalances and drops, but you need to understand each ball.

Work is the ball that represents your career, job or business. This ball is what many people focus on the most. They set goals and push for those goals.

Family and Friends or relationships is a ball that people try to find balance with the other balls, but there is no real work-life balance, you need to have all the balls in the air at the same time and have a pattern that helps you keep going.

Health is the center ball that keeps it all together. It’s the ball you cannot buy and it drops, everything stops.

Spirit is a ball that nourishes you and helps fuel the other balls and finally, there is passion. Passion is a powerful ball that helps you express yourself with your hobbies and interests.

You never reach your full potential in life, the more you understand, the more you realize how much there is to know.

It is impossible to give more than you receive. The more you give, the more you have.

There is a storyboarding concept that allows you to create a narrative that will help you with your talk, your webinar, your message even your articles and books.

You create several categories and put items on a color-coded post-it note. Here are the categories you can choose from to create your content.

• Content
• Stats
• Stories
• Interaction
• Media
• Entertainment

What is content; it's linear information that you can deliver in 123 format. The ideas that you can you want to transfer to other people.

Stats are the ways that you build trust and create proof of what you are saying that will make people believe you.

Stories are the most powerful ways to create connection and to transfer ideas. How do you tell an impactful story? Here is the pattern 1. Once upon a time.. And every day.. Until one day.. And Because of that.. And because of that.. And because of that.. Until finally.. Ever since that day..

Interaction is all about making the people you are talking to feel like they are part of the action. When you bring someone up, you bring the whole audience up with you. Everyone feels they are the people you are speaking to.

Media is about having powerful visuals and videos that tell your story for you. Making your presentation even more powerful and engaging.

Entertainment is having fun, being yourself and giving people an experience they will remember. Using your own talents, skills and abilities to create moments people will be moved by.

The Three Shows

Whenever you are putting on a show or a talk, you are really putting on three shows. 

The first one is the show you plan on putting on. The second is the show you actually perform, which will very often be very different than the one you planned on performing. Finally, there is the show that you tell yourself that you should have done, while you are on the drive home.

When you play music, you learn the notes so that you can transcend them. When you speak, you have a script so you can become one with it and allow your personality to shine through it. Do not read a script, be the script you prepared.

Remember that you have been prepared for your future all your life.

Everyone has a bowling ball they are juggling, think about what your bowling ball is. What is the heaviest weight that you can to carry around? How can you allow that weight to be what inspires you to create?

When you are speaking you are selling your authenticity.

Find out where the gap is, from where your client is to where they want to go.

When you do not have your experience to share with an audience, create a hypothetical situation and ask people what they would do. Create an experience within the audience to demonstrate how things would play out.

Take an acting class or an improv class and you will learn how to trust your inner instinct.

Before your audience arrives, own the room so that you feel like it’s yours, move things around. Create your personal space on the stage.

Meet people where they are and stretch with them. If you do that, you will take your audience on a journey that will have them talking about your performance for a lifetime.