Overcoming fear of presentations and public speaking is a challenge so many people in all walks of life and professions face.  With practice, time, and great coaching you can develop strong and confident public speaking and presentation skills. 

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Tim Kubiak 0:05
Hi, thanks for listening to bow ties in business. I’m your host Tim Kubiak. As always, you can find us on our socials at bow ties in business on Facebook and Instagram and bow ties and b i z on Twitter. You can find me at Tim Kubiak just about everywhere, including Tim kubiak.com, Twitter and LinkedIn. Today we’re going to have a couple of conversations. We’re going to talk about entrepreneurial success and building a business. And then we’re going to talk about using presentations as a way to drive revenue. And with that, we’ve got Doug Staneart with us, so please stay tuned. If you haven’t subscribed already do so. Doug is the President and CEO of the leaders Institute. He’s been a speaker and trainer for over 20 years, he’s consulted with over 400 of the Fortune 500 companies, which is an impressive percentage as a sales guy if I had a close right, that would be one to brag about. He’s delivered keynote speeches and coaching services to executive groups all around the world. He’s also the host of two popular podcasts, fearless presentations and high impact leaders. His podcast episodes have received over 1 million downloads. I aspire to be somewhere close to that someday. Doug’s the author of books, fearless presentations, mastering presentations, cultivating customers, and also 20 ways to influence people and gain buy in. Doug, welcome the show. Thanks so much for being here. Well, thanks,

Doug Staneart 1:22
Tim. That’s awesome. Yeah, man, that’s a fantastic introduction is almost as like, I mean, I couldn’t have written one better than that. That’s awesome. Pretty good. You know, that’s,

Tim Kubiak 1:30
you know, it’s good. You’ve got a great pedigree, you know, and one of the things that’s exciting for me on this one is, you know, you’re an entrepreneur yourself, and you’ve been super successful. And you’re going to help us, you know, understand how to use presentations, which is something people are terrified of, in a generation salespeople a little bit less, right. But even business owners are afraid of that. Sure. So can you give us a little more background? How did you get into business? How did you start doing what you’re doing?

Doug Staneart 1:55
Yeah, it’s funny, because a lot of times folks will kind of say, God, Doug, I want to do what you did I want to start a company and build a multimillion dollar company and work with all these fortune 500 companies and stuff like that, they’ll say, they’ll kind of come to me, how did you do? And I’m like, Oh, my God, you would not want to do what I did. Because basically, I mean, I, I, I made every single mistake out there. And it’s one it’s funny, because a lot of times people think that the folks that are the most, you know, quote unquote, successful in business, they think that they’re the ones that just had everything, they figured everything out, and and they, that they they didn’t meet with resistance or anything like that, when in reality, I think one of the things that, that I’ve kind of learned, especially as a business owner, and really, you know, from early days to is that the the folks who are most successful are the ones that make them make more mistakes than anybody else, you make a mistake, and you go, man, okay, that didn’t work. I’m gonna do something totally different next time. And I think the that what a lot of people do, and they kind of sell themselves short, is they go and they try something and it doesn’t work very well. And they go, Oh, man, I’m just not good at that. I’m never gonna do that again. And I think the more successful people are the ones that kind of look at that as a as a learning experience. So like the way that I actually got into being a professional speaker or or kind of helping people overcome public speaking fear, and that’s really what I do is help people reduce public speaking fear is I when I was in college, I had an internship with a with a big fortune 500 company, I was it was arco Atlantic Richfield at the time, I think they were like, number 13, on the fortune 500 list. And I had qualified, I was one of like, 12 people in the entire world that qualified for an internship with this company. And it was, I mean, I figured that my career path was pretty well set, you know, so basically, I would spend that three months as an intern, and then I would do so well as an intern that they would hire me as a, you know, a lower level executive when I graduated from school, right? And then, in 10 years, I’d be the CEO of the company, and then, you know, be a bazillionaire. Right. So that mean, that was it was pretty clear. I mean, it was pretty clear that that was going to be my path. And that summer, though, I did some really cool stuff. I mean, I was like 20 years old, and I sold a gas plant, which was kind of cool. I don’t know, many 20 year old people that have had, you know, were able to do stuff like that at that at that age. But when I at the end of that internship, though, my boss called me into his office and he said, he said, Hey, Doug, his name was Doug, by the way, too. So this is Doug speaking to Doug and said, Hey, Doug, I just got word that they’re going to be reducing the number of interns next year, they’re gonna, they’re they’re typically when, when folks would, somebody would come in as an intern, it was kind of a testing ground. And if they did a good job, they got hired on when they graduated, right. So I was graduating and that was my junior year, so graduating in two years. And he said that that we’re probably out of the 12 people that are going to be in that room that you’re going to be speaking to, I was going to be giving a speech at the at the end The three month turn said out of those 12 people, we’re probably going to ask only going to ask maybe three or four back next year. And so you want to make sure and do a really good job on that speech, right? So I’m thinking, well, up until that point, I wasn’t really nervous. I mean, I, I had given speeches in high school in college, you know, I wasn’t really nervous, but I’m like, holy crap, my whole career could be up ended if I don’t do well on this presentation. And that just made me more nervous. I was already nervous. And that just made me more nervous. And so I ended up when I walked into the room, this was at the Fairmont Hotel, Dallas, Texas. And when I walked into the boardroom, I was already nervous anyway. But I noticed I looked around the room, and I was the only person in the entire room not wearing a jacket. And though and the reason I wasn’t wearing a jacket is because I didn’t own a jacket. I mean, it was like 20 years old, I grew up pretty poor, you know, pay my way through college and everything. And so I’m looking around the room, and I’m already a little underclass in and feeling uncomfortable anyway. And I was the third person to speak, the first person got up, did a pretty good job. The second person got up, she did great, as well. I got up and I was a basket case, I had a 15 minute speech prepared. And I didn’t forget anything. By the way. That’s one of the things that a lot of people do when they when they get up in front of a group and get nervous is they kind of forget what they’re gonna say, I didn’t forget anything, because I’d practiced this thing so much that, that I that I had it down, Pat. I mean, I had had everything that was gonna say down exactly the way I wanted to say it, except for the fact that I speak pretty fast anyway. When I get nervous, I speak really fast. So I gave the entire 15 minute speech and like three and a half minutes, and then I didn’t have a really good ending. So I was out of things to say, so I’m just kind of looking around the room. There’s just awkward silence. And so I just kind of went and sat down, right. So I was mortified. I’m like, okay, so if they’re reducing them, if if I if I’m in a competition with the other people that are in the room, I don’t think I presented myself as well as what I really could have. And at that point, I kind of got angry, I was like, Ah, that helped me but I had an opportunity. And I flubbed that opportunity. And I and I really don’t ever want that to happen again. So I did all the studying I could on public speaking and presentation and leadership. And I started taking classes when I when I graduated from college, I was working for a much smaller oil company and, and I found a lady that was that was a coach, she was a leadership coach, which I didn’t even know those things existed. And she kind of took me under her wing, I went to her class. And it was funny, because when, when she started to train me, when she started teaching me kind of how the real world works. The technique that she was using was quite a bit different than what I had seen in high school and college and high school, especially in in the business world really like so when I when I started working at at the oil company I was working at people would like I would get an assignment, I would do that assignment. And then my boss would check my work and say, okay, we screwed up here, and you screwed up here, and you screwed up here, you know, make sure make those corrections. And then, and then kind of fix it right? Well, what this lady was doing, though, was she was using more of a coaching technique. So basically, she would show me what she wanted me to do, then she could because she would do it. She would let me practice it. And then when I practiced it, if I if I had a successful experience, you would tell me what I did well, so unlike going to, like a toasting club or, or like what most most coaches do, they kind of, they use a critique method to teach people, she was using a totally different technique, a totally different method. And it works so well that like once I’m when I am about halfway through her training session, I quit my job at the oil company and I went into sales. And within like six months, the company that I worked for, I like six months of sales experience. The company that hired me, ended up making me the sales manager, the the guy that owned the company ended up making me the sales manager, I was making more money and my bonus check at the end of the first month and what I’ve been making it the oil company in salary. So I went back to this lady and I said, Hey, this stuff that you’re teaching really, really works, can you teach me how to do it? And that’s how I kind of got into the industry. It was it was a struggle that I had that once I kind of figured out a secret that not many people, not many other people knew I kind of jumped on it and kind of said, Hey, this, this could be a thing that can help other people. And that’s really what I’ve done over the over my career is just kind of help people using that same technique that she used works 100% of the time, by the way, it’s pretty cool. So

Unknown Speaker 9:32
that

Doug Staneart 9:32
that’s how I got it. It’s kind of weird. But it’s I didn’t set out to be a motivational speaker by any means. I hated speaking and certainly didn’t set out to I promise. I knew that I wanted to own my business, my own business someday. And so when I when I actually started doing training and starting my own business I that was that was kind of set but I hadn’t there was no way if you didn’t see me it at 10 years old or 12 years old or 18 years old. There’s no way that somebody would have said Oh, that good dude’s gonna be a best selling author and a motivational speaker when he grows up, because I was the exact opposite of that back then anyway.

Tim Kubiak 10:09
You know, that’s the beauty of success when you get into the bigger world, right? When you leave that, you know, whether it’s small town or big city, when you leave the high school, when you leave the university, whether it’s a big state school or small, smaller, private one, right? And you get out in the world, no matter how much people told you, there’s opportunity out there, you really never see it until you get there and you realize that you either can get lost in the crowd, and you’re one of millions, or you can start to make your way up string. Right. Right. And it’s, it’s a beautiful setup for how you got into the business, because so many people would have had that bad experience, and would have chosen a different direction.

Doug Staneart 10:49
Yep. And it’s funny, because, one, one thing that happened to me earlier in my life, and this may be a little off topic, but it’s I think it’s kind of a fun way to kind of see where I got to where I am, was when I was in maybe the fifth grade, I got beat up by a bully. It wasn’t really a bully. I mean, he was just an older, he was one of those kids that got pushed back a grade, you know, but I was the I was the weak buck tooth. Skinny, poor kid, you know, from in the in the school. So I mean, I was I was like, the, the guy that nobody noticed, right? I mean, I was I was the NF I ended, they didn’t notice it was noticed in a bad way, you know, because something wasn’t right. Right. So, but um, I got I got this kid, you know, beat me up on the playground. And it was mortifying, right. And so I kind of figured out that, if I was going to be a small, skinny kid, then people were going to pick on me, and so I convinced my dad to buy a weightlifting set for me at a garage sale. It was like, you know, it’s like 25 bucks, you know, so, and I and it’s weird, because what happened was I, every day, I would just go in and do something with this weight set. And it created a new habit. Well, when I got to be, I don’t know, maybe 15 or so years old, my dad got transferred. He moved to I grew up in a little town in Arkansas. So it was a very rural town, my dad got got a new job working for a company in Texas, when I moved to Texas, because I’ve been kind of working out for five or six years, you know, I got kind of bolt up and I was no longer the skinny buck tooth kid. I was the the hard working, stocky kid. And so I showed up for football practice and, and they made me like the starting linebacker on the JV team, and everything is like they didn’t, I’m shocked. I’m like, wait a minute, I’m the I was like, fourth string when I was in Arkansas. And now I’m starting, it was like that my perception of myself hadn’t yet changed to see what other people were seeing from me. And in the moment that that happened, all of a sudden, my confidence kind of increased. And I would start walking around that, you know, I walked through the school hallways, you know, standing a little taller. And people started seeing me as the confident, strong kid, you know, it was it was it was a total kind of shift. But it was the same thing that happened to me in that in that presentation. It was where, you know, I had that. I mean, when I got beat up, I had the option of saying, Okay, well, I just need to avoid bullies, I just need to avoid situations, that’s going to put me in a in awkward, you know, it put me in that that same negative experience. But instead of doing that, I was like, Okay, I can make a change, I don’t have to be that kid, I can, I can make a change and, and if I spent time changing my habits, and by spending time changing my habits, I turned into a different person. So I mean, and that’s kind of what I’ve seen, that has been so helpful to me. And some of the things that I’m when I’m coaching my my students to do is that, you know, if you if you want to develop a skill of some type, you know, like public speaking or, you know, like what I do, the faster you can develop that skill, the more profitable, it’s gonna be for you, you know, so if it takes you 10 years to get good at doing a skill, you’ve got to miss out on a lot of opportunities. But when you but the more important thing, though, is that once you develop that skill, now you have to also change your habits. And your habits should be changed over a longer period of time. And, and when you do that, I think that leads more to success anyway.

Tim Kubiak 14:27
You know, it’s funny because I look at a lot of things I do in in, in working with sales coaching clients. I looked at everything in sports terms, good, better and different. And I was a weightlifter for a long time. And I got into it much the same reason as you did, right? Because I was the skinny nerd. Right. I played dungeons and dragons and everybody liked American muscle cars and I thought German cars and Italian cars were cool and I I grew up outside of Pittsburgh, and literally the story goes, it was the last town in Appalachia on the map. Right. That’s that’s where Appalachian So, you know, when we moved in there, we weren’t from there. And I was an outsider and got an outsider’s view for the first, you know, nine years of education to, uh, you know, I did go to high school back in the city, you know, that’s a whole nother life changing thing. But like you when you move to Texas, I had been lifting for two or three years. Right. And nobody had the preconceived notion of what I was, right wasn’t dorky little Tim anymore, of course. Right? I walked in, I was five foot 10 and pretty built.

Doug Staneart 15:29
Right? Yeah. Yep. And, and really the application, I mean, that the application in the real world is so important. Because a lot of times, I mean, back in, like, in my parents days, and people kind of went to work for a company, and they stayed with that company forever. And then they got their retirement and that kind of thing, right. But I mean, that’s not the same anymore. So you, you have the ability, at any point in your life, at any point in your career to kind of start over, you can, you got to start over. And when you do the preconceived notions that were with you at the previous company, or at the previous location, or in your previous business, or whatever it is, they’re, they’re no longer there. So you have to decide who you want to be become that person. And then and then kind of make that that clean break. And I’ve kind of seen people do that a lot, especially when they, when they come you probably see this too, in your, in your coaching clients and stuff like that, where folks will? They’re like, yeah, you know, I’ve been I’ve been I’ve been, I started off not doing very well. And now I’ve improved, but my income hasn’t really gotten any better than, you know, what’s the what’s the next step? What do I do? Right? Well, a lot of that has to do with the way that they see themselves, you know, and other people, when other people reinforce the positive in us when when we get into a new group, a new, a new peer group, and the new peer group doesn’t have any of those preconceived notions that we had before, then I think that helps a lot. You see that a lot with the groups on, you know, LinkedIn, and Facebook, I guess, or, you know, some of those where you start to network with people that are at a higher success level than maybe what you are right now. And all of a sudden, a lot of those good habits that they have tend to start to rub off on us. And that kind of thing. So that helps a lot, too. But no, I did, I made a lot of big mistakes when my dad was an entrepreneur. And so that’s how we grew up really poor, because my dad was a house flipper. And in rural Arkansas, you know, I mean, you see all the house flipping shows on TV now. And one of the things that you’ll notice, it’s obvious to me now, but one of the things that you’ll notice every time if you watch any of these shows is that they want to get that open house in like three weeks or four weeks. I mean, they, they want to get, let’s get we bought this house, let’s get this thing flipped. And let’s let’s get this open house. The reason why is because the longer that they have that the more of a money pit, it becomes. And so that was the mistake that my dad made. And I didn’t know it until, you know, like two years into owning my own business. But my dad would go out and he’d buy one of these houses in the ghetto and in Arkansas. And then he would he since he was a good carpenter, he would do all the work himself. And so it might take him a year to remodel this house, and then he would put it on the market. And sometimes it wouldn’t sell for six months or a year. So basically what our only income was when that house that he had been working on for a year sold. And so even if he got a big chunk a big wad of cash when he sold each one of those those houses that might have to last us two years. And so typically that that first that first moment that he saw, like the the day that that the money got funded into our bank account, we would go splurge and the whole family would go to Red Lobster, you know, that was our that was our splurging. And then from then it was back on the rations, you know, because we may have to make that last for a lot longer than we needed to, or that then we should have anyway. And that’s funny, because I made the same mistake. When I started the leaders Institute. I started doing coaching, and I got a few clients and then eventually, but eventually I started doing I was tapping into the latter end of the public

seminar industry, right. So pre YouTube, you know, that basically, if you wanted to do training, you know, folks would go to a class, you know, 10 people, 20 people 30 people would go to a hotel and, and and get some type of certificate training. For me it was public speaking and leadership and stuff like that. And so since there weren’t a lot of companies out there doing it at the time, I was able to I went from, you know, my first year I think I did six classes and the next year I did 12 classes, and the next year I did you know, 25 classes the next year I did 300 classes, you know, so it took a while to build up the momentum. But in the first two years, it was just me. So basically I was I was doing all the selling I was doing all the money. Getting I was doing all the follow ups, I was doing all of the the logistics, I was doing all of the travel booking and all that kind of stuff. And there’s only so much I mean, I was working 90 120 hours. It was like, it was a man, I don’t even know how many hours are in a week. But I think I slept maybe two hours a week or something, you know, during that time period, and I was trying to do the exact same thing that my dad did you know, because that’s what I saw. I was trying to do everything myself, because I thought that there would be more profit in it. If I did the work myself. Yep. Because, hey, my work is free. That’s why I was I was considering my smite my time to be free. And it wasn’t until I hired my my first co instructor the guy that that that came on board. And and he was it was funny because I had created this this image that I had. Because I was doing. give you that. Sorry about that. Oh, no worries. So I created this image, especially because I was really good at marketing. Because I’d been a sales guy for so many years, I was really good at marketing too. And I’d created this image that, you know, this was a worldwide international company when it was really just me. And the first guy that that I hired he he he was actually in Florida, and he flew to Los Angeles to watch me teach a class. And it was a two day public speaking class that he was attending as a you know, to see if it would be something that he would want to teach for me. And about at at the at the lunch break on the first day he and I had lunch together. He said Dude, I’m in. He said I he said, I’m watching what you’re doing. This is fantastic. I’ve never said he said, I’ve been teaching for almost 20 years. And I’ve never seen anybody get results the way that you’re getting in such a quick period of time. I said, I want to join your team. And I looked at him. I said, Okay, great. That makes two of us. And he was like, What? Like, he was shocked that he’s like you’re doing like, like, all these classes? Just you and it Yeah, well, no, no, now I’m doing half of them. And you’re doing the other half. And so that’s how we that’s how I kind of started a company before that it was a job, right. But that’s that was how I kind of started the company. And that first guy, you know, basically he and I were almost It was almost as though we were partners, because he and I were doing the exact same things. It’s just I was too busy to do some of the work. And so he was kind of taking the load off and got a third person and then the fourth person and a fifth person. And the more people that kind of came in, the more it turned into a company instead of just a job. And and that’s what, that’s when the wealth really started. It took me I think it took me 37 years to make my first million dollars. And then it took me like six months to make the second.

Tim Kubiak 22:54
Yeah. So you know, if you look at it in investing terms, and I had a guy named rocky lalvani on a few months back that does profit first stuff with business owners. And his whole point was just keep putting it in and keep putting it in and keep putting it in. Because once it’s there, it’s after it’s been there a while and right the business is the same way.

Doug Staneart 23:13
Yep, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it’s the it’s the the structure, the infrastructure that was that was created, that kind of builds the wealth, it’s the and and it’s really simple, you have to provide a product or service that the that the world needs that a market needs, and that that they’ll pay money for. And if you do that really, really well and treat your customers really, really well. And then you surround yourself with people that work for you and work with you that have the same mentality, you’ll you’ll succeed. But it’s not easy anyway. But like I said, I made a ton of mistakes along the way. And I would never, it’s funny, I would never do the same things that I did before. But I’m glad that I did because I learned some of the big mistakes that now if I wanted to go out and create a brand new company bate, create a brand new company from scratch tomorrow, I have no doubt that within six months, it’s going to be a pretty successful company just because of all the things that I know I’m not going to make those same mistakes, it’s not going to take me four or five, six years like I did before, I can do it a whole lot faster because of what I’ve learned. And that’s I think that’s what a lot of entrepreneurs kind of, they really don’t realize is that there’s a lot of people out there that have already been through the the school of hard knocks, they already know a lot of the mistakes and if you kind of listen to them, you get a good coach, get somebody that’s actually done that before they can they can shorten your learning curve exponentially. They can save you a whole lot of time whether that’s in public speaking or sales or business coaching or whatever it is get get a good coach, get somebody that’s actually got fruit on the tree and listen to them. And if and if they give you good advice and it works, then keep going back to them. If they give you good advice and it doesn’t work, find a new coach, right? Pretty simple, right?

Tim Kubiak 24:58
It’s pretty simple. And the thing I find hysterical. Since I’ve gotten into the coaching business, right? Is you the advice is often really simple. It’s the people are so close to the problem, they can’t see it. Right? That’s true, too. You know, I joke, I get paid a lot of money to ask really simple questions and say, Okay, now what does that really mean?

Doug Staneart 25:20
Right? True? Yeah, a lot of times when we’re when we’re really close, I mean, that’s, I, it’s, it’s funny. I mean, this was like, I actually teach this when I when I, when I do my leadership, training and leadership sessions, one of the things that we kind of cover is how to do like a problem solving session, you know, how to how to identify what is the real problem, and what’s causing that problem. A lot of times people kind of skip that step. And it’s really it’s asking those questions like what you’re talking about asking the simple questions. When I first started, one of the one of the, the problems that we were trying to organize or fix internally within my company was that we knew that in our classes, we most of the people that would come to one of my classes, whether it was the public speaking class, or the leadership course, they’d come one at a time. If you think about it in public speaking, that would make sense because most people who would go to a public public speaking class or folks that may, I’m nervous about speaking, I don’t want the people at my office to kind of know it. And so that that was kind of normal. But for the leadership class didn’t make any sense. Because if you wanted to build good leaders within an organization, if you train a group of leaders, you can you can maximize your your results pretty dramatically. But we kept seeing one and two, like companies would actually send their their managers through our through my leadership course, but they’d send them one at a time, and they’d send one every time we did a class, instead of sending, you know, like three or four or five people at a time and getting a higher return on their investment, which would have been a whole lot more successful. So we’re like, why is this happening? And it was funny, we figured out why. And it was so simple. It was because we had this registry, this was back, you know, really, in the early days of computers and stuff like that. So we had our registration form that people would fill out to come to the class was one of those triplicate pieces of paper, you know, like when you push down really hard,

Unknown Speaker 27:12
the old carbonless one because,

Doug Staneart 27:14
right? Yeah, so because one copy went to the person who did the invoices, and one copy the salesperson gap, and one copy went to the to the company, right? So, so so we’re so and we’re sitting there looking at there’s like four or five of us that are in this this problem solving session, we’re going okay, so why is it that we’re only getting one person to come through our class, and we look down at the registration form, and it says, class member. And there’s one blank there, right. And so basically, what I did is, is that this is one of my first real kind of breakthroughs was I went and I basically typed in everything that was on that registration form, into like a Microsoft Word document, which was like new technology at the time. And instead of putting one blank on there, I put five blanks. And within like, the first month, we had increased the number of three person groups that came through, like, like 20,000%, it was like it was this huge increase, or like, that worked. So then we put 10 blanks, and then all sudden, we started to get more groups of five. So we started getting a bunch of groups, if I sat there 10 blanks on the on the registration form, we ended up getting a lot of five person groups. And so it’s, it’s what you just said is one of the things that was that’s been really critical in, in, in kind of improving, you know, my company’s success anyway, over the years is, is, hey, Well, okay, we look at something that’s just not working, right? And we’re kind of close to the problem. But how is the person that that is seeing what we’re doing? How are they, you have to kind of put yourself in that other person’s shoes, and figure out how they’re perceiving you. And it kind of goes back to the, to the, the thing that we were talking about earlier, where, where I may see myself as the skinny, nerdy kid, but everybody else is kind of seeing me as the stocky kid, you know, so, all of a sudden, you got to kind of look and see what other people are seeing. And then if you do that, that kind of helps a lot.

Tim Kubiak 29:07
It helps a huge amount. And so one last question, entrepreneurship before we go into, you know, using presentations generate leads, how, how did you know when it was time to start to let go of some of those things when you were doing it all in the beginning? Because I think that’s a place a lot of business owners struggle.

Doug Staneart 29:24
Yeah, I, you know, it’s what I did. And what I would suggest other people do, or, again, are two totally different things. Because, for me, I mean, I knew that I had, I had wanted to bring somebody in. In fact, I had hired part time people and I had hired folks and because I really wasn’t making a whole lot of money back then. Anyway, it was it was really hard to get a high quality person at the rate that I could pay them. And so as a result, it was a struggle. those first couple years, I was alone. Not because I wanted to be alone, it was I was alone because I couldn’t find somebody else that had the same type of mentality that I did that entrepreneur mentality. And that’s really what I, what I needed. So me trying to go out and hire people just didn’t really work. So when when Rick, when this guy kind of called me, the reason why he called me is because he he saw them, he saw the company saw the leaders Institute, and he said, Wow, that sounds pretty cool. That sounds like what I would would want to do. And so he kind of came to me, and I didn’t sell him, I didn’t say, Hey, man, this is gonna be the best career change of your life or anything like that. I just said, Hey, why don’t you just come see what I’m doing, and see if there’s a good fit. And he actually bought his own plane ticket and flew to LA. So I knew that he was serious at the time. So it wasn’t a conscious decision that I made. to, to, to bring that person on to bring Rick on with the with the company. So knowing what I know, now, though, I would do it in a totally different way. So so like, because for the first, you know, 567 years or so of the company, I because that was so successful, I tried to recreate it and and on occasion, I was able to acquire, you know, four or five different really talented people that came to me the same way that Rick did, but I couldn’t grow the company, I couldn’t strategically grow the company in certain places with doing it that way by by waiting. And so one of the one of the things that that we started doing was we started trying to acquire talent that wasn’t yet developed. So we started an intern program. So basically, what we started doing is we started going to the colleges, universities, high schools, even sign on in some cases, and we’re looking for people that have talent for to be to do well in this specific industry. So that we can nurture that talent and help them grow. And you know, because at that point, we can pay them a much lower fee. And, and I and I haven’t wasted a lot of money training somebody that that just isn’t really a good fit for my company either. Right. So so that’s one of the things that we started doing. So it and I’m not saying that that’s what the folks listening should do. It’s just that it’s one of the things that in this industry and the industry that that I’m in, it’s one of the things that we found is it’s a whole lot easier, a lot of times to help create the talent than to find talent that you can afford to bring. So

Tim Kubiak 32:41
yeah, in working with sales leaders all the time, right? I love the ones that come in. And one of I want people that have a book of business that know every customer, they’re all looking for the unicorn, right? And sometimes unicorn shows up, and a lot of times the unicorn doesn’t and cost you a ton, right? customers don’t move, you don’t have purchasing vehicles in place for the customers they do have. Right? The loyalty goes beyond the sales guy, because it includes the engineers or whatever else, you know, and it’s hysterical, where you can go hire a recent grad person year or two in Yes, the coaching and training programs have to be there inside the company where they have to use external resources, right to develop that talent. But you’re also not getting the bad habits. Yep. And a lot of times you’re getting a lot more motivation and some of those right will stick with you for a really long time.

Doug Staneart 33:30
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cuz you believed in them when they when they didn’t have a whole lot on their on their plate, right. So it’s the loyalty is really there. Hey, well, let me ask you so so you know, since you’re doing with the with the sales background, when, because I know that in my own organization, most of the best salespeople that I’ve ever had, and the ones that I currently have on my staff right now, didn’t start out at salespeople, they started out with a different talent that I train them to be a salesperson because they had that other talent, they became a much better a much better salesperson. So like for instance, on the on the public speaking side, since I do a lot of presentation training. All of my all of my presentation, quote unquote, salespeople, they’re, they’re all instructors. They all teach they they were good at coaching people and in and teaching people how to speak in front of a group. And then I taught them how to sell because now that they have that expertise, they’re more it’s it’s easier now for them to help somebody that has a problem, go in the right direction, give them a strategy than it is if I just hire a salesperson that doesn’t really have that background, good selling skills, and may convince somebody to buy something, but they may and it may end up the person may end up buying something that’s not really going to get them the best result. So do you find that as well? Do you find it’s easier to train a salesperson that’s not necessarily it doesn’t necessarily have the the the Sales background in a lot of the industries that you’re coaching or is it? Or is that just unique to my industry? No, actually,

Tim Kubiak 35:05
what I’ve built teams and some teams I’m building now for clients, I’m looking for those people that have that different perspective. right in, in kind of my, my whole thing is, is I’ll tell you, I’ve never actually sold anybody anything. I’ve just rented out what your problem is. Yeah, I’m giving you not not, you know, you can fix it or not. That’s cool. Right? Right. And I’m not a high pressure guy. And I know, sometimes I get either I get at odds with your hardcore sales leaders. Right? And they’re like this, this, this, this, this. And I also get at odds with your relationship only people. Right? Right. So I actually believe that anyone who’s willing to apply themselves and is just fair and honest with people and looks out for the best interest is always going to be your best salesperson. Right? You know, and there’s a, a woman that works for me, she lives in the greater Dallas area. And she was a CIO for a major health care company before she got into sales. The she salesperson, know if she detail oriented, knows more about the product. And most people, including the end customers, and you know, takes care of her customers like mad. Yeah, there’s a reason she sells twice as much as everybody else. It’s not because she’s glad handing, yeah, right. She’s, she’s got the chops. She’s built the skills.

Doug Staneart 36:19
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was kind of hoping that you would say that, because that’s, that’s really kind of what I’ve what I’ve seen in the different industries. And you know, and I’ve done, you know, sales coaching in the past, I kind of did that, just because I was a really good salesperson. And since a lot of folks would say, God, man, you’re really good at doing this, can you come teach, so it was, it wasn’t like I created a sales course, or something folks would kind of hire me because they knew that I was, was good at sales. But what I’ve kind of noticed, though, is that a lot of the, the techniques that I learned as a salesperson, most of them were techniques, they weren’t really like what you’re talking about that were, you know, basically the, my philosophy with with sales is just like what you said, if if somebody has a problem that you can help them solve, and you don’t help them solve that problem, you’re hurting them, right. So if I’m a sales guy, I’m not selling you, I’m basically Hey, if you have a fear of speaking in front of a group, that’s probably costing you in your career, it’s probably costing you more customers, it’s probably costing you opportunities. And so if you if I can help you overcome that fear, and I can do it faster and easier than what other people can do, that’s worth paying me a fee to do it, you know, you could try to do it yourself. But it might take a long time, and you’re gonna miss out on more opportunity. So basically, it’s an investment. So I think a lot of purchases anyway. Are the selling process is really helping people make the right investment and making sure and helping them not to make a mistake. I think that’s one of the things that’s kind of missing from, from the business world nowadays is because, you know, everything’s kind of going automated and you don’t have full time salespeople as often as what in a lot of industries, a lot of companies as as what you used to, it’s, it’s real easy for somebody on their own, who doesn’t have the experience that a good salesperson would have to make a mistake and end up buying something that’s not going to be a good fit for them. And if they do that, then now everybody’s lost, the company’s lost and, and the clients lost. And you’re going to end up getting those not so high ratings on the on social media and stuff like that. So I think the sales, the sales side is critical to a person’s success. Nothing ever happens in a company until somebody sells something. It’s so

Unknown Speaker 38:47
that’s exactly right. But nothing, no bad deal is ever worth taking.

Doug Staneart 38:52
No, right. Yeah, true. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

Tim Kubiak 38:56
No, no, please. No,

Doug Staneart 38:57
I was gonna say that’s one of the things that I kind of preached to my team, and they get tired of me saying is that, hey, one of the cool things about being at the level of success that we are in our company is we get to choose the clients we want to work with, right? So if we have clients that just aren’t much fun, and they’re, you know, they’re kind of hard to work with and stuff like that. Okay, great, well, we’ll work with somebody else, there’s plenty of other clients that are out there that that we can help and that are going to appreciate it and they’re not going to tax our team and stuff like that. So there’s a lot of question. I don’t say a lot, but there’s quite a few contracts that we’ve kind of walked away from over the years that that just maybe it would have been a better fit for somebody else to do and we’re we’re always honest with people if they if that comes up. So

Tim Kubiak 39:46
in that that’s a huge key. I think salespeople miss all the time, right is not only don’t take the bad deal, but don’t be afraid to walk away if you don’t have the right solution. Right. Don’t try and make it fit if somebody is an extra small and you get an extra large Solid, right? You know, if somebody has a screwdriver and they need a hammer and all you sell screwdrivers, call you buddy that sells a hammer, get them in there take care of the customer. They’re gonna remember that

Unknown Speaker 40:12
exactly. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Tim Kubiak 40:17
So let’s talk a little bit about some of the things you teach in, in using presentations, frankly, to weather accelerate the sales cycle or get new customers in. Right? I know, you’ve built a business around it. So I’m looking forward to learning from that.

Doug Staneart 40:32
Yeah, okay. One of the one of the things that’s really important about presenting or communicating with the, with the world is that is that you have to make the information that you’re presenting something that the person who’s listening is interested in receiving. And a lot of times people forget that, I mean, I’ll have folks that will come through my classes and or, you know, they’ll call us up, and maybe they haven’t come to a class yet. But they’ll say, hey, I want to be a motivational speaker, I want to be blank, or I want to speak on blank, you know, whatever it is, they’ll just kind of throw a topic out there and say, Okay, great, what kind of experience Have you had doing that? Well, it’s kind of a new thing. It’s like, okay, so nobody’s gonna pay you as a speaker. If you don’t know anything about the topic. No, but I read lots of books. No, no, you don’t have the practical skill, you don’t have the practical the practical experience. And so I always like step number one and, and being able to use your your speaking as a as a good marketing technique is to identify the things that you do in your organization, your company, your your skill set, whatever it is that you’re that you’re that you make your your money off of, on a day in and day out basis, and find the challenges of the problems that people experience related to that thing. And then teach them how to overcome that. It’s really easy. So like, we’ll take like a dentist, let’s say somebody is a dentist, right? Like, for instance, there are people that will, nobody wants to go to the dentist, right? So nobody, and people don’t like it, it’s not it’s not a fun experience. However, if you want whiter teeth, you know, but that’s something that people would want so. So if a dentist gets up and gives a presentation on YouTube, it gives a YouTube video about why it’s important to go to the dentist, nobody’s gonna watch it, it’ll have zero views. But if you have if a dentist is able to put up on YouTube, three easy ways to have whiter teeth in, you know, in a month, you know, in 28 days or whatever. I don’t get 10s of 1000s of views on YouTube for that it’s something that people will actually search for and that kind of thing. So step number one is kind of identifying the content kind of organize your content in a way that that the audience really is, is pulling it from you versus pushing it. So like it’s in my own experience with with fearless presentations. And when we came up with, we didn’t call I didn’t call my public speaking class. Public Speaking one on one, right? Nobody wants to go to a public speaking class. So I called it fearless presentations to identify there is a specific group of people out there that have nervousness about speaking in front of a group. And they want to overcome that nervousness. And so I made, you know, a two words really simple two word title that lets people know that, hey, if you have this problem, we can help you. Right. So that’s kind of that’s kind of the first step anyway. The other thing is to find places where you can very quickly and easily present or give information that helps you build your credibility as the expert on that thing. And in my day, you know, because I’m getting really old now. In my day, when I when people would first start coming to my classes, one of the things I used to teach people how to do is to do like, informational seminar so I’d have like real estate people, insurance salespeople, financial planners, you know, folks like that, that would come in and we kind of show them how to do Do you know, create a quick little seminar that will that will help show people how to buy a house or show people how to save on insurance or, or something like that, right? Well, the cool thing about today’s world is that you don’t have to do any of that stuff anymore. You got you got YouTube, you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got Instagram, you’ve got, you’ve got LinkedIn, you’ve got all kinds of different sources where you can can put your expertise out there and build your credibility on that topic. And the more that you do that, the more people are going to start pulling your services from from you versus you having to go out and push them onto people. Right.

That in my in my own experience, I kind of tell you where this this really hit home was when I first start Doing leadership training. One of the things that I realized when I was pretty successful as a leadership coach still do a lot of leadership training for big fortune 500 companies and that kind of thing about, you know, three or four years into my company, though, we started moving more toward the public speaking classes we started doing in the first year, I think I did like, you know, six leadership classes, and maybe one public speaking class and second year, like 12 leadership classes to public speaking. And then all of a sudden, it flipped flopped. And all of a sudden, when I added those 300 classes that I did, maybe the fourth or fifth year that I was in business, I would say probably 290 of them were all public speaking classes. And the reason why was because they that was what Be it was being pulled from the market, the market was pulling it from me, right? So like, for instance, if somebody happens to be a bad manager or a bad leader, chances are they’re probably not going to go to Google and say, How can I be a better leader or leadership class or, right? However, if somebody gets up and flubs a public speech, you know, they’re in there, they give a presentation that doesn’t go as well as what they want it to, they might go to Google and say how to overcome public speaking fear, or, and so that’s basically we started, we noticed that, that, that was a it was a topic that was easier to sell, right, it was easier for the to, to, for the the, the the market to, it was more inclined with what the market was, was really looking for. And so since we kind of noticed that we just started scheduling more and more and more of these things. And that’s where a lot of the early success came. And that’s kind of what we’re seeing now, with with social media, I think a lot of times we, we think of social media as being that, that, that place where if I post something, if I post an ad on social media, and it gets lots of clicks, or links or shares, or whatever it is, then people are gonna buy stuff from me, when in reality, the what we find is that with social media anyway, it’s a good place to help you build your credibility, so you can build a following. And then when somebody has that specific need, they experienced that problem. When you’re, you know, if you’ve got a if you’re a dentist, and you have that, that, that following Now, if you’ve got, you know, 10s of 1000s, or hundreds of 1000s of people that are on your, that are watching your YouTube videos and stuff like that, and then somebody has a has that need where now they do need to whiten their teeth, and they have a short time to do it. Now all of a sudden, your that your video is the one that people see, like I think so. So that that those are some of the things that we kind of help people do in our, in our classes, we help them kind of organize their thoughts a little bit better figure out what what to market to the, the, the the world and then give them ways that will help them market that in low cost. Low Cost ways, basically, right? So how do you how do you do that without putting out a whole lot of expense.

Tim Kubiak 48:05
So if I take the, you know, organizing content, and tie it to your third point, which is using terms that people use, how much of a struggle is that when you’re working in a class or with coaching clients, to get them to stop using their words? Right? Like, how not to suck as a manager? Right? versus you know, being a great leader?

Doug Staneart 48:30
Right, it’s it’s one of those things and you probably seen this when you’re with your sales clients as well. It’s it’s one of those things that in the early stages once I once I throw that out there most people are some of the people in a way in the in the class are going to go Okay, sounds like a good idea what the heck does that really mean and then once we start doing the exercises, and people start to try to implement it, it’s it’s tough for them to start to see things differently because what I want to tell the audience and what the audience wants to know a lot of times are two totally different things. But once they see it all of a sudden once they see one or two people in the class get it and all of a sudden the presentation changes it’s it’s something where the folks that are in the audience are like I wasn’t even interested in that thing that topic that that person was speaking on. But by the end of it I’m sitting there applauding because that was done really really well. Then what happens is a lot of times the the other folks in the in the in the class will it’ll start to click and that’s why we tend to we even though we do a lot of one on one coaching with with clients and we tend to find that there’s a there’s a it’s more efficient and it’s more effective. A lot of times for the folks who are kind of going through our training programs that go with multiple people so that if if it doesn’t click right away, when it clicks with somebody else and they see somebody else experiencing that success then it starts to click with them and I’m assuming that you’re probably get the same type of thing in your with your coaching clients. You’re with your sales clients. Because I mean, I know from my own experience salespeople are are, they kind of get stuck in their ways. And then all of a sudden you’re doing a session and somebody tries one of those things that you tell them to do, or that you’re suggesting that they do. And all of a sudden, they make a big, a big sale or something happens and, and it creates a big hubbub. And all of a sudden, everybody else has got, you know, I might try that next time. I might do that. So, and that’s kind of what happens in the class is that it once it kind of clicks, it’s it’s hard to unsee it. It’s it’s one of those things that until it until it clicks, it’s a little confusing. But once once, once it once that clicks, and people start to say, Okay, wait, that’s me. That’s the way I, I want to tell people because I’m the expert on this, but somebody who knows nothing about this thing that I’m presenting, they’re not going to have the background, they’re not going to understand that. So I’ve got to, I’ve got to communicate that in a in a more effective way. And so it does help them.

Tim Kubiak 50:53
Yeah, and what we see in the sales side is a little bit of almost like Muhammad Ali syndrome, right? What I have is the greatest nobody else’s is anywhere near as good as me. And in the hard conversations I find myself having with clients and coaching. And sometimes founders is great, you have a new mousetrap, or a better mousetrap. Nobody else knows that. And by the way, your competitors are out there selling the same thing, right? And a big part of what I do is sit down and say, okay, who are you selling against? Well, wait, there’s nobody else in the market that does what we do. Okay, so either nobody needs it, or you’re lying to yourself, which is,

Unknown Speaker 51:29
right, exactly.

Tim Kubiak 51:31
Right. So yeah, it’s, for me, that’s the interesting thing. The other thing that I see is, and you kind of said it, salespeople get in their silo and how people buy in the pandemic has really shifted that. Oh, yeah. Right. How people buy it. I have I had a prospective clients who had a large, you would know the name of chain as their client for 20 years kept the business up huge piece of their revenue, right? So I call them and say, you know, here’s what we do. We do this mapping, we do this ba ba, ba, ba, ba Ba, here’s what we do with the coaching piece. He’s like, we got this, we’ve had this account for 20 years, there are bread and butter. We know everybody did it that the little while later phone rings, we lost that deal. Right? Somebody was in there selling a nother competitive product that they didn’t even know was being considered. And oh, by the way, their contact get reordered. Right. So they lost that relationship, because they were no longer buying their category of product. Yeah, it happens all the time. Right.

Doug Staneart 52:31
Yeah. So yeah. The cool thing, though, is that the opposite is true. As well, though, because that’s that’s that that when we folks kind of get in their silo but but the moment that somebody gets out of that silo, and they start to experience success, because of the competitive nature of sales, then a lot of times other folks will kind of jump on board, you know, pretty pretty quickly, they go oh, wait a minute, I don’t get left behind man.

Tim Kubiak 52:56
Yeah, it, it pulls all the top players into it. That’s, you know, one of the things we do is we go in and everybody wants to give you their c players like right, give me your A’s give me some B pluses. I don’t want to touch your seating. Yeah. Right. If you want me to work them out of business, we’ll do that that’s a different scope of work for you to bring them up or work them out. Right. But let’s start with the A’s let’s raise the A’s 10 or 20%, above what they’re already going to do. Let’s get the B pluses into a category. And those that don’t follow, then you’ve got some staffing decisions to make right training decisions to make. Yeah. Question you talked about, you know, the informational seminar going away, and it all moving online?

Doug Staneart 53:33
Well, I don’t think I would go that far. But yeah, it is much more difficult to get people to, to come to an in person seminar. But with COVID, that’s they’re gone. You know. So that is one of the things that the folks who adapted to that, in prior years typically did better with the with the pandemic. So, but I’m sorry, go ahead.

Tim Kubiak 53:54
What was the question? Do you see a challenge between the pre recorded stuff that goes out on YouTube versus say, a zoom seminar?

Doug Staneart 54:03
Okay, so I wouldn’t say that it’s a challenge. If you are presenting effectively, you can get similar results from both the live virtual zoom seminars, and the pre recorded. The real advantage of the the live seminars, the live interactive seminars is the interaction is that you can customize it is that that you’re, you’re getting that that interaction with the group. And if you’re really good at it, and that’s one of the other things that we kind of help people do is is make those presentations more interactive. In fact, we tell folks, in fact that I just did a blog post on this like two or three weeks ago, that if you’re doing a virtual seminar, if you’re doing like a zoom meeting or something like that, and somebody could record that and the people that watched the According are going to get the same value out of it as what the people who were there live got, you just screwed up, you missed out on some big opportunities because that interaction is what makes it to where the folks who are on that live session with you can now help you can help them create a behavior change something that’s more specific to the specific thing that they need, right. So you can really make them interactive. And so that’s one of the things that by the way, logistically, one of the things that has been so positive about this incredibly negative year, that just bass was the the the ability of logistically helping folks create a skill and over a virtual method, because we would have never, we’d done prior to COVID hitting, we’ve done quite a bit of one on one sessions through Skype and zoom was still new, but our salespeople were using zoom to kind of coach people into in the selling process, but we weren’t really using that a lot prior to COVID. We weren’t really using that as a lot a lot to help people reduce public speaking fear. Right? Well, then out of necessity, when COVID hit. We had to we had to kind of retool everything that we were doing. And we were doing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of public public speaking classes every year and went to zero. So that’s tough, by the way, I mean, that’s a that’s a tough thing for a company to do to go from hundreds and hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of customers to zero customers. And so we had to retool, and we’re like, okay, so knowing what we know about how to help people reduce public speaking fear, is it even possible to do that through virtual sessions, right, so So we started to do some experimenting, and we started doing some lab classes, and we started getting people to, to come through our virtual sessions and training at a at a really low cost for us. So for those people in March and April, that, that were kind of our guinea pigs, they man they got they got some exceptional training for like next to nothing. So it was kind of a neat deal. But we It was funny, because after the I would say probably about the first week of May or so, one of my my top instructors and I, I finished I just finished the first two day public speaking class that we had done entirely through zoom. And at the end of the I think exactly at the end of the first day, wouldn’t even the second day, at the end of the first day, I called up, you know, my my top instructor, her name’s Amy. And I said, I said, Amy, I may never leave the office again. That that was so valuable. It was one of those things that that was so valuable. And then once we kind of figured out how to do it now we had done something that not many other companies in the world have been able to do we were able to keep people on a zoom meeting for eight hours, and then one, get them to even want to come back the second day. That’s hard, right? So not only were we able to do that, but we were able to make it so entertaining that at the end of the both days, you know, we got people telling us Oh my god, this is I wish I’d have done this 10 years ago, I wish I’d have done this 20 years ago, right? So so all of a sudden, these folks were given us just fantastic feedback. And since I don’t I don’t know how many zoom meetings that your listeners have been on. But I can imagine that most of those zoom meetings at the end don’t don’t end up with Oh my god, that was freaking awesome. Man, I can’t wait to do that again. Right. So because we had now figured out how to do it. Now we were able to train other people to do what we done. So what So basically, because of because of what happened, what’s happened during the pandemic, we’ve kind of created a whole new

revenue stream, I guess, or a whole new a whole new opportunity in the marketplace, because we’re doing something that very few companies can can do, which is help help folks make zoom meetings more fun and more interesting. And so, in fact, a lot of the a lot of the blog posts and a lot of that if you go back and if any of your listeners are, you know, listen to the fearless presentations, podcasts, a lot of the stuff that I’ve been covering over the last year or so on my podcast is how to make the zoom meetings more fun and stuff like that. So it’s a great opportunity to get good at it. It’s well it’s funny because just in public speaking, one of the things that makes makes investing in public speaking and getting better at speaking in front of a group so beneficial to people is that most people aren’t very good at it. Right so the bar set really low so you don’t if you get up and speak in front of a group you don’t have to be an exceptional speaker you just got to be a little bit better than the lash love that got up to speak and people are gonna think of you as being pretty good. And that’s kind of what we’re seeing with the with the zoom meetings as well. If you can make those zoom sessions interactive, if you can make them fun if you can make them to where people want to attend, you know these meetings and and they They know that they got value out of it when the meeting is over, you’re doing something that very few people in the world have been able to to do. So it’s a pretty, pretty effective skill to develop.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:11
Can you talk a little more about the podcast that you run? Because you have two great podcasts?

Doug Staneart 1:00:15
Yeah. Okay. So fearless presentations was the first one that I did. And it was funny because I always thought of myself as being not always but you know, after after doing public speaking coaching for 20 years, I was like, I would say, probably after about 10 years or so I was like, yeah, you can’t teach me anything about public speaking. I’m not trained. I’ve trained 10s of 1000s of people. I’ve worked with these big companies. Right. And, and what I started the podcast, I think we’re on like, Episode Number 170, something you know, so we’re pushing 200 episodes now. And everything I knew about public speaking, I covered in probably the first 30. And so from then on, it’s after, okay, every week, I’m having to kind of sharpen my saw, I’m trying to get better. So I if, if, if the folks who are listening right now, if you have a skill that you’re really good at, and you want to become exceptional at it, start a podcast, right, you start a podcast, and and, and you It forces you to have to go out and and learn new stuff, I have learned more, in fact, that big success that we’ve that we had during the the pandemic because of the with the with the virtual meetings and stuff. I can I can attribute about 90% of that success to what I had done in the last two years on the podcast, because I would have we would have meet at the company and the folks that are here, we probably would have struggled a whole lot more with that. If If I hadn’t had been doing that. So yeah. So basically everything you’ve ever wanted to know about public speaking and virtual meetings and how to be entertaining and how to reduce fear that’s on the the fearless presentations when. So I figured, okay, since that was so successful, and since you know, I do have like, you know, four minutes a week that I can, that I can prepare another podcast. I’m just joking, it takes hours, right. So we I started the high impact leaders, that was my that was how it started, I started doing leadership training back in the early 2000s, or actually, really, in the late 1990s started the leaders Institute as a leadership training company. And I knew that that even prior to COVID hitting, I knew that because of the way that the marketplace has changed because of the at the time, unemployment was at a record low. And one of the big challenges that occurs when you have a really, really low unemployment rate is that it’s much more difficult to hire, it’s much more costly to hire somebody from the outside. So you have to be able to train the people that you have to be better leaders to be to kind of take the reins and and it’s it’s it’s easier to train from within, right, which is what we started doing here. And I can be as well. So I started the high impact leaders as a way to kind of help business owners or folks who are who are managers, folks who who have people that work for them, help them kind of create that next generation of leaders. And it’s been fun. It’s a it’s a it’s it’s not quite as popular yet as the fearless presentations. But but we’re I mean, we’re we’re getting new subscribers every week. So it’s pretty fun, though.

Tim Kubiak 1:03:31
That’s fantastic. It. I think leadership is one of those things. It’s just gonna continue to evolve and what people expect from their leaders. Mm hmm. Right?

Doug Staneart 1:03:42
Yeah, absolutely. completely different. Yep. And the cool thing about it is that there’s a whole lot more topics to cover on that one. So I think that one will probably be well into the, you know, 2000 range on that one eventually. Because there’s I mean, leadership is such a broad topic that it can can cover a lot of different things.

Tim Kubiak 1:04:03
It sure can. What’s the most interesting challenge you’ve run into in your business? Since you’ve started?

Doug Staneart 1:04:11
Oh, my god interest? Oh, um, well, you know, it’s funny, what one of the things that that is going back to the topic that we were just kind of covering that has been fun to, to kind of tackle has been the logistic challenge, right. So like, for instance, one of the things that when we’re doing leadership training, especially one of the things that we’ve kind of figured out is that if somebody gets information, you know, I’m sure this is exactly the same in sales. By the way, I’m just I’m almost positive, right? If you can get a salesperson or a manager or leader to change one specific thing, just focus on one thing, don’t try to teach them 150 things, one thing and have them get really good At that one thing, and then go away from them for a while, let them practice that one thing get really good at that one thing, then come back maybe a week later, and then teach them something else. And use it as a building process that as far as leadership training and management training goes, that is one of the the most effective ways to train people. What we started finding, though, in the early days, when I was doing the leadership training is that it started out as like a six week class, it was just three hours a week, but it was over a series of six weeks. And a lot of our customers, since we’re working with a lot of the big fortune 500 companies, they would say, you know, all of my team is spread out all over the world, they’re only going to be here, they’re only going to be in the office for a week, can you do it in a day? You know? Or can you do it at a half day? Right? Can you can you do it? And yeah, we can get but it’s not gonna be as valuable, right? We know that, you know, if you the more stuff that you kind of cram into one session, the harder it is for them to implement. So that’s been one of the biggest challenges that that I’ve seen over the over the years, it’s not really relevant to the business, but just in in, in training anyway, is, is being able to get people to to create those new habits, you know, that habits, like I said earlier, are much more effective at changing a habit over a period of time, do a little bit today, and then do a little bit more tomorrow and then do a little bit more the next day and then do a little bit more the next day. And all of a sudden it creates a habit of growth, right. And whereas if you just come and go to through a two day leadership class, or even a two days sales course, then it, it’s going to be much difficult, that’s they’re gonna get great information. But the application in the real world is going to be much tougher. And one of the things that has has, and I’d like to say that God might me and my team were just so brilliant that we figured this out, but it was actually COVID that forced us to do it, where we’re like, holy cow, wait a minute, people are now much more open to coming on to a an hour long or a 30 minute or hour session, once a week now than what they were. And so it’s just easier to sell now. So basically, what we’re what we are finding a huge success with now, which is a really cool challenge to finally kick. And it’s a shame that it took a pandemic to help us get there. But it did is that now we can we can train people much more effectively by giving them a bite sized piece today. And then a week later, come back and give them another bite sized piece. And then the first thing we do when we come back that next week, we say Okay, everybody, give us a report on what you did last week, right? And if they’re really sucky at giving reports, then we sell them ourselves course. I mean, our public speaking course.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:46
That’s good.

Doug Staneart 1:07:48
Right? So it’s, I’m just joking about it. Not really. But anyway,

Tim Kubiak 1:07:52
you know, an opportunity when you see it, nothing wrong with that.

Doug Staneart 1:07:55
But yeah, everybody gives a report. And then what happens that first week, by the way, is that when we when folks kind of give it, it’s okay, we covered a couple of things last week was a blank, blank, blank and blank, right? So tell us how you implemented that. And then like, the first person says, Oh, my God, you’re not gonna believe this, I went over and they tell they start telling a story then somebody else does. And then all of a sudden, it gets quiet, right? The first two people, you know, the 10% or 20 person class, you know, the first two people kind of pipe up and then everybody else is like, um, and I know what that means is that they didn’t do anything, right. They were you know, but what happens is the next week, four people say something, and then the next week, eight people, and then so all of a sudden, it becomes like a snowball effect where now that that application of the content is is much more effective. And so that’s, that’s been one of those really interesting challenges that I’ve seen over the years. I mean, that that challenge has been there since. History, you know, it’s so it’s definitely been there since I started my company. It’s one of the main reasons why, in addition to the marketing parts, one of the reasons why we started moving away from the leadership stuff just because listed logistically, it was challenging. So like, when I would do leadership classes early on, since they were since they were weekly sessions, I would have to sometimes schedule a leadership class. I remember God one time, this was like the worst. The most challenging part of my travel schedule is I booked a leadership class in Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, on on Tuesday, and then in Madison, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, and then in Indianapolis, Indiana on Thursday, and I would fly into Chicago drive to Madison, teach the class in Chicago, the next and then at the end of the class, I would drive you know at night to get to Madison so I could teach the class and Madison in the morning, then drive from Madison all the way down to and the reason why I did that was because it was logistically it didn’t make any sense to get six separate plane tickets. It would it was too costly, or I just did it was really difficult. So I had to kind of book things out. And I did that for a couple years before I was I was like, you know what I like these two day public speaking classes

Tim Kubiak 1:10:06
much better, much better.

Doug Staneart 1:10:07
Yeah, that’s one of the things with it with with, with the way that zoom has, I mean, some of the the, the updates that zoom has made, especially in the last year or so got they have just they have it is changed the way that people can communicate, how effectively we can communicate and how we can interact with people. stuff. This is technology that didn’t exist a year ago. And now it’s it’s every day, people are using every every single day. So they are the logistic thing. That’s one of the bigger challenges though. I think one of the one of the things that that from a business perspective that I think your listeners might be interested in, because this is a challenge that and if you guys find a solution to this man, make sure and, you know, text me or email me, or connect with me, because this is one of the challenges that that I’m still I still struggle with is that you get really good at doing something and then you bring a protege, and you kind of train somebody to do to do what you’re doing. And, you know, basically, what you’ve done is you’ve kind of created a competitor. So there’s only so much that we can do as entrepreneurs, you know, eventually we’re going to have to turn the reins over and teach other people to do what we’ve become, and bring other people in that have an expertise that we don’t have as well, which is even more critical. But but but that’s one of the challenges. I think that’s one of the things that that a lot of entrepreneurs kind of struggle with this guy, if I teach somebody how to do what I’m doing, and teach them my secret sauce, you know, this is something that nobody else is doing. And I teach it to somebody else who man that’s how do I protect that right? How do I how do I keep that person and so the the end, like I said, if you’re if your listeners have it, or if you don’t have a strategy for dealing with that, man, I’m all ears. But the the technique that I have employed, and it’s worked for the most part, but I, I have I tried to create an organization, I’m trying really, really hard to create an organization that it’s way more advantageous for somebody to be a part of it, than to go out on their own and do it do their own thing, right. So like, for instance, we were really good at marketing, you know, we’re really good. I mean, if you type in public speaking class or public speaking class in your city, there’s a good chance that the fearless presentations class is going to pop up at the number one spot on on Google, you know, we’re good at that, right. So if if one of if one of the people that comes on board, and I teach them how to teach public speaking classes, if they want to go out and do their own public speaking classes, it’s quite a bit harder for them to go out and find a market because they’re now going to be competing against that top spot on on Google. So as long as we hold on to that, we’ve got a strategic advantage. And as long as we pay people really, really well, which we do. And as long as we’re, we’re, you know, we create that environment that that where it’s it’s really fun. I mean, it’s one of the things I always tell people when they come to work for us is, is I always warn them right up front. I said and just keep in mind that the moment that you start to work for us, even for just a short period of time, you become chronically unemployable. It’s there’s no way after experiencing the type of culture that we have, that you can go back to a nine to five job somewhere, there is no way you can do that. Maybe there’s, it’s once the once the clouds got apart, and you see the world a little differently. It’s like, man, why on earth would I ever do that again? So anyway, it makes it kind of fun. But yeah, those are a few things. I mean, there’s tons of stuff, but you know, those are a few things that kind of come to mind. Anyway.

Tim Kubiak 1:13:46
Yeah, those are unique things. So I know you have fearless presentations.com slash bow ties, you want to tell folks where they can find if they go there?

Doug Staneart 1:13:56
Yeah, so I wanted to Okay, so one of the things that we did, we started doing, especially during the COVID time period was, you know, I basically I have a ton of content and we’ve got a ton of fantastic instructors that are really good at presenting stuff. And so what we started doing was we started creating these these mini courses as a way just to kind of keep our keep ourselves sharp and that kind of thing. And so one of the one of the fun ones that I did, it was a mini course on the 10 the 10 Deadly Sins of public speaking, you know, so basically, it’s it’s a, it’s, it’s pretty quick and easy. It’s a it’s a it’s 10 different videos, 10 different short videos that you can kind of watch to see if you’re creating some of these deadly sins. I’ll give you some tips on how to fix that. So we don’t charge a huge fee for these we charge like 59 bucks to for somebody to go through all 10 of these videos, but for for your listeners, what we’re doing is we’re giving that away for free. So basically if you just go to fearless presentations.com slash bow ties, it’ll take you right to That page and you’ll have to put in the coupon code bow ties who put in the coupon code, and it’ll zero out the the fee for that. But it’s a fun way to kind of get some information in here about some of the cool stuff that we’re creating here as well.

Tim Kubiak 1:15:12
And so if people listening whether they’re individuals and they want to take that next step, or they have a team they can find you and your team and start to interact right on fearless presentations. Calm is that

Doug Staneart 1:15:22
Yeah, exactly. So what while you’re there, you can kind of look and see what what classes we have coming up. I mean, the virtual classes that we’re doing now are phenomenal. They’re they they almost always sell out. So we’re only doing like one a month and there’s only like eight spots and so they they almost always sell out. There’s not that many of them yet so so if you if you’re interested in sharpening your skills on public speaking or do some public speaking fear, getting better at doing zoom meetings and stuff like that, just go to fearless presentations, calm. It could be all kinds of details for that as well.

Tim Kubiak 1:15:51
That’s fantastic. Doug, thank you so much for taking the time today.

Doug Staneart 1:15:54
You bet. All right, thanks, Tim. Glad to be here.