World of Speakers E.55: Darren LaCroix | Storytelling and mindset

Darren LaCroix: I am doing great. Glad to be here.

Ryan Foland: Absolutely.

It's funny, people talk about competitions, and you beat 25,000 people and then literally fell on your face.

If you haven't seen this championship speech I would recommend it. It's easy to find out there.

It was inspiring—and you literally fell on your face, and what is hilarious is you stayed there for a good minute and a half, which I think breaks all conventional rules, and it just goes to show that in order to be at the top of the top, you've got to really rattle the cage and step outside of what people might think is “the comfort zone”.

Darren LaCroix: And it pays to listen to your coach.

Ryan Foland: Absolutely.

You're going to be our pseudo-coach today.

Before we get too much into the nitty-gritty of the coaching, so you can tell us how to fall correctly, I want to know a story from your past.

Imagine that I had an opportunity to introduce you to somebody. You don't know who they are, they don't know who you are, but I tell them one story, I'm like,

"Oh my gosh, this guy Darren, this one time he _________."

And then that story encapsulated something that really represents maybe you as a person, and we'll dissect it and get to know you a little bit.

Does any story come top of mind?

Darren LaCroix: Absolutely.

I have been an entrepreneur since I was in college.

I loved business and I went out and I bought a Subway sandwich shop.

When I did that, it was in about 2000, it had 98% success rate, and I messed up so bad that within a year and a half or so I lost my Subway shop.

I sold it at a loss and I don't blame Subway, it was all me, my ego was in the way, but thank God I was at such a low point.

One of my buddies gave me this motivational tape of a man named Brian Tracy.

He's a great speaker, kind of like Tony Robbins but very logical and very down to earth.

He resonated with me because I was at such a low point.

I was driving down the road, listening to this tape, and he asked this question. He said,

"What would you dare to dream if you knew you wouldn't fail?"

That was such a spot in my life that I was just wide open to anything, and I just answered to myself, I said,

"I would be a comedian. That would be the ultimate!"

But all of a sudden, the little doubting voice in my head said, "But that's not you, Darren, you're not funny."

But that wasn't the question.

The question was "What would you dare to dream if you knew you wouldn't fail."

Thank God I was at the lowest point my life. I was living at home with my parents, I had school loans, business loans—even though I didn't have a business anymore.

I just said, "You know what, I'm going to try this once." It wasn't a big dream, it was I didn't want to live my life with the regret of wondering, "What if?".

"What if that guy was right?"

"Okay if I'm going to do this right, I'm going to ask someone who has been there and done that."

On Friday night, I went to this little in Worcester, Massachusetts near where I lived.

I was a really quiet, shy kid. I had never been funny, I had never been on stage, but I just said,

"I've got to try this."

I go to this and I walk up to the headliner after the show, I muster up all the courage I can, and I said,

"Hi, my name is Darren, I want to try this. What do I need to do?"

And he asked me a question, he said, "Are you funny?"

I said, "No".

And he said, "Good".

I'm like, "What? What do you mean ‘good’?"

And he went on to explain that people who are class clowns, people who are naturally funny, he said,

"That's one thing when you're with your friends and colleagues, people who know you. But if you gave that class clown a microphone, and put them in front of a group of 100 strangers, they couldn't make them laugh."

"That's a different skill set. But that skill set can be learned."

I was like, "What...?!"

I was all in then, he said, "Alright, 2 things. Number one, you need to get the book."

I'm like, "Book? There's a book about stand-up comedy?"

Of course, there is a book about everything, but I wasn't thinking that way.

And he said, "Number 2, you need to go to amateur nights, you need to go to an open mic night and watch other people who are just starting out."

Well, duh...that makes sense.

If you're getting new or starting something brand new, you're starting even to learn Facebook ads or something new, it's like don't compare yourself to all the big testimonials.

When I told my friends and family I wanted to try stand-up, they compared me to Jerry Seinfeld.

Someone just starting out to someone who's top of their profession—that's not fair!

I think that's one challenge we all have.

I went and got the book, and then on Sunday night, he told me about this little open mic night in downtown Boston at this called “Stitches”.

I walked in and I saw people go up for their very first time. You could smell the stale beer, the sticky floor.

These people went up and they were horrible.

I thought, "I could do that. That's within my comfort zone, I can go up and make a fool of myself. I've done that so many times."

On that night I remember going up on stage. I was literally shaking, my voice was quivering, and it was so bad, and I was bombing, and there were these pity laughs here and there.

I said this one joke and it didn't land, and it was about this rocket that took off and went vertically, but I did a horizontal with my arm when I said vertical.

At that instant, I just realized I messed up and I just said, "Ah, shoot!"— that's not the actual word I used—and everybody laughed.

I was in awe.

I am looking around. I’m like, "That's not where they're supposed to laugh", but that's a result, that was the only laugh I got that night.

When I walked offstage, this man put his arm around my shoulder and he said,

"Don't worry man, it's just your first time."

I remember thinking, "Don't worry? It's my first time? Did you see what I did? Dude, I got a laugh. No one told me I could do this."

At that moment, Ryan, I just dove in, I took every class that I could. I found every mentor that I could.

I didn't put any time frame on this, I just said, "I'm going to figure this out."

I was just willing to bomb and willing to fail more than anyone because it was a dream of making people laugh, that thing that I thought you could never learn. Now at least I had a path.

Ryan Foland: Interesting. There's a lot to unpack there. I appreciate your sharing.

I'm a guy of 3's. Everything, I just see them in 3's and so the 3 words that stuck out to me were curiosity, confidence, and timing. I want to just break a little bit down there.

Curiosity — you mentioned that you hadn't won anything and maybe you were more in a traditional business path, but were you a curious child or not?

I don't know, I'm curious about your curiosity?

Darren LaCroix: Well I would say I was a dreamer, but I was not a doer.

I was a dreamer with no self-confidence, with a lot of self-doubts.

As a child I was born with a clubfoot. I had to wear these braces, and I had two different sized shoes then and I used to get teased by my classmates.

I grew up with really low self-esteem because of that.

My whole life I was the quiet kid. I was the shy kid.

I remember being jealous of my cousin and my brother who were those class clowns who could make the audience laugh.

In fact, if I can share like a 30-second story?

Ryan Foland: Go for it.

Darren LaCroix: Later on in life when I went through some self-development seminars I asked myself,

"Why did comedian pop up when I asked that question? Where did that come from?"

I kind of explored my own life.

I realized when I was about 8 years old, I was at a family function, classic Polish family holiday, and we were at the kids' table and my cousin and brother recapping Saturday Night Live skits, and Steve Martin jokes, and everybody's laughing.

I remember I stood up and I tried to make the audience, my family, laugh to keep the laughter rolling and I like hushed the whole audience.

My brother was like, "Yeah, nice going, Big D, figuring out that comedy is not easy."

I slid back in my seat as that 8-year-old kid and I said, "I will never, ever try to be funny again."

Because of the fear of embarrassment. I didn't like that feeling. I hated it and I never wanted to attempt that again.

I think that question, later on, I was 22 years old, went back to that 8-year-old kid who had a dream, who wanted to make people laugh. I think that was the connection.

Growing up, to answer your question a little more directly, I loved sports but I wasn't very good. I wasn't very smart. I never won anything.

I can't really say that curiosity was that thing. It was that love of laughter that was re-awoken.

Ryan Foland: The next one you kind of answered a little bit too, but with this confidence, I'm really interested in the voices inside your head.

It sounds like it took somebody to give you an excuse to sort of beat the voices in your head.

From a childhood where you were picked on — I too went through a period of time where I was bullied, and it really does affect that confidence.

But do you still have — I guess we all have those naysayers in our head, but what was just that moment when the book that you were listening to brought you out, and did it give you permission, or you beat the other naysayers to the punch?

I'm interested in how so many people I feel want to be speakers, they want to be comedians, they want to be these things. There might be some suppressed memory in the back, in their childhood that stopped them.

How do people tap into beating these naysayers?

Was it accident all the time and you sort of tapped into that? I'm curious about that moment.

Darren LaCroix: I love self-development. I think that's why a lot of us gravitate to self-development, because we're affected so much by it. It’s giving us hope.

When we listen to Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, when we listen to them it resonates with us because I think we all have that little kid that was hurt, one way or another, that still lives inside of us.

I thank God now for that naysayer, because it gave me someone to prove wrong.

Ryan Foland: Okay, I like that.

It's not that they go away, it's that they're kind of always there but it gave you a mentality to say, "You are wrong, let me prove you wrong," instead of just being sort of silenced by their voices.

Darren LaCroix: Yeah, and I would also say one of the other pivotal parts of my story was that I used to blame everybody else.

I heard this story from Jim Rohn where his mentor kind of called him out and said,

"Jim, make a list of all the reasons you're not successful."

He wrote out a list and he brought it to his mentor the next day, and his mentor looked it over and said,

"Jim, there is one problem with this list — your name ain't on it".

It resonated with me because when I opened my sub shop, I blamed the landlord who told me they were going to put in a traffic light right in front of the store because it was like high-volume but high-speed so people felt like they were taking their life in their hands to pull into the store.

I blamed him because he told me this could happen, he never said it would. I blamed the lawyer, I blamed Subway, I blamed everybody.

But I chose the franchise, I chose the location, I chose to ignore my lawyer who said what could happen. And it was me.

And then there's another Jim Rohn quote that was pivotal, he said,

"You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with."

That was huge for me because I realized if you have that voice of doubt — God help you if you're living with or married to that person — I can't imagine that.

But when we have these people in our lives, and they're around us, and we let them influence, be in our top five, it’s not like we need to get people out of our life, but we need to be conscious of the influence of the people we keep close to us.

We can't tell them our dreams because they won't get it, they won't understand it.

If I put Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins on in my car with me and they became part of my top five, even though I didn't know them, but they kept telling me I could, they kept telling me to listen, learn from them, be around the headliners, listen to the headliners.

In the comedy world, you have opening acts, middle acts, and headliners.

It's easy to access to the opening acts as a wannabe. They want to talk to or listen to anybody, but they have the worst habits, they know the wrong strategies.

What I learned from Brian Tracy in my car was like,

"Go right to the headliners whenever they're around. Whenever they talk, listen. Ask them what books to go for, to read. See who they say to study.

The opening acts, they're going to give you bad advice. It doesn't mean they're not well-meaning, but at the same time if you're listening to the people who are a half-step ahead of you, who make most mistakes, have the worst habits, you're going to develop those same mistakes and those same habits."

I was like a little kid when I was around them, with my fingers in my ears, “La, la, la, la!”.

Ryan Foland: With the people who are opening, you might feel like you have more in common with and you might have more of a bond with, and they might be more approachable.

But as you're saying, they're openers for a reason.

So go right to the source and surround yourself with those who are the headliners.

Darren LaCroix: Yeah, go to the people who are where you want to be.

Ryan Foland: Quick question about time and timing and then I want to transition in our time to some of your speaker tips.

Now, timing. I wrote this down because oftentimes there's talk of luck and there's talk of different factors you don't really have control over.

It sounds like timing was a big part of your past and how you got to where you are.

How important is timing when it comes to success?

Is it something that you just can't put your finger on and just kind of have to patiently wait?

Are you able to influence this timing by surrounding yourself with the right people and getting up there and spending more time on stage?

Do you see the timing as a passive or active attribute to where you are now?

Darren LaCroix: I think it was crucial. If I wasn't at the lowest place in my life with nothing to lose, I probably never would have tried stand-up because my ego would have been in the way. So thank God I had no ego.

I think that timing is an issue with everything, but I think more than that is the mindset that we bring to the timing.

That when we have the right mindset, we're going to see things differently, we're going to see timing differently, we're going to see opportunities that are right there that we might not miss if we have the wrong mindset or limited mindset.

I know it's not exactly your question.

Ryan Foland: It actually is more insightful than the answers that I gave you.

And speaking of timing, one last comment here or maybe more of a question: ask me what the trick is, or what the magic is, for Polish humor. Go ahead and ask me.

Darren LaCroix: What's the magic for Polish….

Ryan Foland: Timing.

Darren LaCroix: Yup….

Ryan Foland: Just thought of this good, funny joke. In that, let's transition to—

Darren LaCroix: My humor bootcamp is coming up if you want to—

Ryan Foland: Hey, this is just audio time, this is just stage time.

I think everybody should have jokes, both good jokes and bad jokes.

When you said, "Any stage time is stage time," there are a lot of opportunities, especially when it comes to joking to fall flat because sometimes your failure can be funny.

Darren LaCroix: Absolutely, that's what most humor is based on.

The humor stems on, or is built on, tragedy, and built on a release of tension.

That's one of the reasons that I shifted over from stand-up to speaking because I realized that I had to be in s 7 nights a week, 5 nights a week, as much as I could to grow, learn to make the connections.

The challenge is that when we're in an environment like the nightclub environment that much, the environment affects us.

So, because the environment affects us, I realized that’s what the difference is in stand-up and humor — comedy cuts down, humor lifts up.

Comedy cuts down. There's a victim. That's what stand-up comedy is.

And it doesn't mean every stand-up comedy joke, but if we kind of look at the difference between the two, being in a nightclub atmosphere was sucking the life out of me.

That's one of the reasons it was the best training ground, and I'm thankful for every moment.

But coming over to speaking was like a whole different world.

I think what we need to do, whatever we want to do, whether it's speaking or business, we've got to be willing to make those mistakes, we've got to surround ourselves with the right people.

But what I'm also saying is, it's not just stage time, stage time, stage time, it's what's the intention you bring to the stage time?

Like the jokes, you say, “Have the jokes”, okay, but what's the intention behind the delivery of that joke? You and I, we're doing an interview here, it's fine, it's fine—

Ryan Foland: I'm really working on my timing with that joke, because it is all about timing for that joke and it's just like, it's so exciting to try to get it right.

Darren LaCroix: Yeah, the way I heard that originally was, "So ask me a question, why am I so funny?"

Ryan Foland: Why are you so funny?

Darren LaCroix: Timing. I didn't get it out quick enough.

I've got to interrupt you. It's practice, but if you're practicing with the intention to get better, to improve it, that's different from the intention of just getting a laugh.

You want to experiment.

That's why I say: you've got to have that mindset of growth, that it's not just this time on stage, it's, "I am going to try something different this time, to help me with all the 652 other audiences I'll be in front of in the next year and a half.”

Ryan Foland: Right, good clarification on that, “stage time” with “intention time”, maybe stage tension time.

I want to pick your brain a little bit, I mean we find you online and you get your 10 tips and you've got your Edge book and you've got all these resources and things that are obvious, not so obvious, and even niche.

If you were to pick a handful from your bag of tricks and you were to say, "These are some of the most crucial, most fundamental things to get you from where you are to where you want to go.''

I think it's applicable to speaking, to comedy, to business even, I think we could make that.

If you were going to make a Subway sandwich for somebody and the Subway sandwich represents success, you being the sandwich artist, even the one who had failed, which is cool, what would that sandwich look like and what would some of these pieces be like?

What would the bread be, what is the spread, what kind of meat are you filling it with.

We're looking at this as the sandwich, this is choosing your bread, choose your bread first.

Darren LaCroix: Go to Subway university first, just like I did, to learn how to build a sandwich and why you need this bread, why you need to raise it so long.

So now let's get to the sandwich.

Number one: People ask me all the time, "How do you connect with the audience?"

The key is you need to connect with yourself first.

You need to be fully connected with you and your stories.

How do you do that? Here's what I teach.

Here are the four questions I ask myself to this day, right before I go on stage.

This works before an interview, before you do a Skype call, before you create a course, before you have an important conversation.

Number one: What is my intent?

Your intent should always be audience focused, not self-focused, not,

"I want to be the best speaker,"

but

"I want them to walk away understanding such and such a principle."

So you got a number one: Set your intention.

This is 5 minutes before you go up on stage, and that's the crucial moment where either you could let your ego step in, and it'll take over and you'll fail, even though you might say the exact right words, they'll sense it.

Audiences are so savvy.

So number one: “What's my intention?”

Number two: Am I present, “Am I right here, right now with these people?”

Forgetting your problems, they're going to be there when you're done.

Question number three: “Will I have fun?”

Sometimes I get so intense that I really want to help others and I forget — this is supposed to be fun!

So I need to remind myself before I go on stage, in fact, that's where I get this whole idea from of the four questions.

Right before I walked on stage for the World Championship, the biggest speech of my life, I had remembered about 2 hours before to write myself a note, because the “2-hour before Darren” wrote a note to “the 5-minute before Darren” and I put it in my pocket.

I was so intense, I was pacing back and forth behind the big image screen and I'm like, "Okay, I've got to do this, I've got to do this, I'm listening to my music" I'm like, "Oh yes, there is something I forgot."

And I pull out the note and all the note said was, "Remember to have fun."

Ryan Foland: I like that.

Darren LaCroix: My whole psychology changed, my body changed.

Ryan Foland: You came out there, you had to try and address the Contest Master from the ground. I think everyone had fun with that.

Darren LaCroix: Yup. And then the fourth question came from Willie Jolley, one of my mentors, great motivational speaker.

He said, "Ask yourself this question: How would I give this presentation if I knew it was my last one ever."

That's powerful. That puts you in a better mindset.

Now that doesn't excuse not preparing.

But wherever you're at, you've got to prepare, number one, but number two, now you've got to prepare for the moment you take the stage.

I'm not excusing not preparing, but then once you get to that five minutes before, okay, now you've got to switch over.

I think it was Sir Laurence Olivier, the great actor who said,

"Rehearsal is the work, performance is the relaxation."

And so when we get up there, when we're in the middle of this interview — let's have fun with it.

So we've got to almost remind ourselves that, "Okay, I did the work” and if you didn't do the work, your self-doubt is going to creep in even more, so do the work.

But then, once it comes to be "showtime," now you've got to just have fun with it.

Don't practice your first two lines over and over again, it's done. You either know it by then or you don't.

Now it's time to show up and connect with that audience, but you can't connect with them if you're not connected to yourself.

Now I know that's not actually a technique or something, but I think above everything, Ryan, it's so important to understand that.

Ryan Foland: I think that that's super valid, especially when you're looking at this from a perspective of not just being on stage, but getting back to that intention.

I know that personally, you don't always ask yourself that question. Sometimes you get in a routine when you're speaking a lot and sometimes you fall into this rhythm, but it's almost like a rhythm-buster to just remind yourself the intention, making sure that you're present, that's a huge, huge thing.

I recently reread, "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle and it's just such a crazy reminder to be present, and it's so important on stage.

The whole having fun with it, I think is under-communicated. Because I believe that the audience is a reflection of you, and so many times I'll hear people make complaints about the audience. It's like,

"Dude, it's not the audience, it's you."

And the rising tide, I think you have to be a little bit more than you want the audience to be because they will come along with you.

But if you're not having fun, there's a good chance they won't, right?

Darren LaCroix: Oh, for sure they won't.

I don't know if you're a Jim Carrey fan, but there is a Netflix special about Jim and Andy when he was preparing to play Andy Kaufman.

Ryan Foland: Yes, I did see that and he gets like so in character, he just wouldn't drop the character.

Darren LaCroix: But there was a brilliant line that he said, I don't know if you picked up on it, I actually didn't pick up on it until the second time and I was like, "Oh my gosh, that is genius."

Jim said that at the beginning of his career he was bound and determined to be the best comedian and he would go to bed at night and he said,

"What does the audience want?”

“What do they really want?”

If you go back it's in the first 15 minutes or so, it's on Netflix for anybody listening, go check it out.

Anyway, he said that he woke up at like 2 in the morning one morning with the answer. And this is brilliant, everyone listens to the speaker, comedian, anybody.

He said, "What the audience wants is freedom from concern for the performer.

What the audience wants to know is that they don't have to worry about you, they don't have to feel bad for you if you bomb”,

and that's why he said, "I knew what they wanted and in the beginning, I was still insecure, and figuring it out as I went”.

But he had to put the mask on that he didn't care if they liked him or they didn't like him that he was going to be okay being himself, and being big, and he said he took the stage differently after that.

And that's when he started his over-the-top-wackiness, but he owned it, and I think that's what we need to do. We need to own it.

Ryan Foland: This is making me think of “the willing suspension of disbelief”.

This is a big part of just theater and being immersed, whether you're watching a movie or even listening to somebody get into their joke, this willingness to sort of suspending everything that could be real and be open-minded.

But this makes me think of the “willing suspension of concern”.

If you can get your audience to not feel for you, then the message is translated through you to them and they can interpret it however they want.

I think that's an interesting spin.I'm going to tweet Jim Carrey after this and just let him know.

Darren LaCroix: To get back to more specifics, because I know that's what people really want, but you’ve got to get that other part first.

I learned a story. So there's this guy named Michael Hague.

Michael Hague is a Hollywood screenwriter. He actually is like a script consultant for Will Smith. He's brilliant and a story is his thing. Ryan, are you familiar with Russell Bronson and click funnels?

Ryan Foland: Yes, I've got a business partner who works pretty closely with him.

Darren LaCroix: In Russell's book The Expert's Secrets he talks about what Russell learned from Michael Hague, there are two chapters about what he calls, "Your epiphany bridge story."

He learns storytelling from Michael Hague, and that's who I'm talking about.

When I connected with Michael, even though I've been a speaker for years, I always thought,

"You've got to tell your story, you've got to tell your story."

And what Michael Hague says, "If you truly want to make audience impact, if you want to be unforgettable, the purpose of the story is to elicit emotion.”

And most people tell stories, and I had several comedy mentors, one of them, his name is Dave Fitzgerald.

He saw that you've got to have stories, you've got to have stories, he saw that I was like lusting to find my "signature story," that story that would launch my career.

This was long before the World Championship when I was still trying to figure out the path of my career and everything like that.

I was like that little creature from Lord Of The Rings……”Gollum".

I was lusting after that story.

I would look for a story, look for another story, try that story, try this story. But I just thought I needed to find the story, and what Dave said to me, which is along the same lines, he said,

"Darren, stop trying to find that story that launches your career, and instead, take the stories you already have and make them so good someone will pay to hear them".

That's huge!

It's not just a story, it's an unforgettable story. It's a story that elicits emotion. So what I wasn't doing was working on my craft.

I had a day job when I was trying to become a professional speaker. I was speaking anywhere and everywhere I could, and I was marketing myself every waking moment.

The one thing I wasn't doing was working on my craft, working on my stories.

He told me this for 2 years and I ignored him, I just kept out there, working, working, working, working.

After he passed I was like, "You know what, I need to make my stories better."

I actually took my keynote speech, I pulled out the best story that I had, the story of my first time on stage, the Stitches story, the one that I told earlier.

I pulled it out and I gave it an open and a close to fit in the Toastmasters speech contest format.

My whole goal was to compete, to focus telling that story and make it unforgettable.

With my reasoning, whether I got a trophy or not, my aim was to put it back in my keynote speech in a much-improved form.

There's a fellow world champion friend of mine, his name is Craig Valentine. He said, "If you want a masterpiece you have to master the pieces."

And so I finally took Dave's advice and I worked on that story so much. I ran it through a world-class storytelling process when I didn't even know there was such a thing, I just thought,

"Here's a story, tell it better; add this, remove that, boom, that's as good as it gets."

What we need to do is find our stories and tell our stories in a way that transforms the audience. That we transform their thinking, that we thought this way, we heard the story, we now think a different way.

Just like when I heard that Jim Rohn story of his mentor — I was blaming myself, I heard the story, I knew I needed to take responsibility.

See, that's the process of being a great presenter, that we leave differently than before we heard you.

I think that's the goal, that if you can be a speaker, if you really want to be a speaker, whether you want to get paid well or have a message that you're passionate about, do we think differently when you're done?

And that's your goal, to get us to think differently. One of the biggest tools for that is a story.

Now I'll give you a quick storytelling technique that will help with that.

One of the ways is to tell your stories and dialogue versus narration.

When I first brought version 1.0 of my speech to my coach, I had told a story about going home to tell my parents I wanted to be a comedian.

It was a story that became part of my speech, so originally it sounded like this: “So, I went home to tell my parents I wanted to be a comedian.

They didn't know what to say, they were speechless.”

Okay. Kind of boring.

Okay, tough situation, but when Mark, now this is more of a visual, so you'd have to see me deliver this, but anybody can go check out my speech on YouTube, just put in Darren LaCroix winning speech and you'll find it.

Ryan Foland: They're looking for the face drop here which I know is coming.

Darren LaCroix: Exactly, yeah. You know.

So Mark, my coach, taught me to turn it into dialogue.

There's another great coach, his name is Lou Heckler.

He says, ”Take us to the moment so we hear the conversation, don't tell us about the moment in the past."

So it went from telling Mom and Dad that I wanted to be a comedian and they were speechless, and it turned into — now picture, I'm really excited, overly excited, I finally figured out my dream and I walk up to my parents,

"Mom, Dad — I am going to be a comedian."

And then my face drops when they have nothing to say when they don't know what to say.

Ryan Foland: It's more of a cliff jump actually, it's a cliff jump from face job, yeah.

Darren LaCroix: Yeah, and so at that moment, there are several keys to storytelling even in that little 17-second story.

One is, reaction tells a story.

Most speakers when they tell their stories they jump right over the reaction, when the reaction is actually the important part.

The reaction is where the emotional shift occurs. So when my face changes from excited to just deflated or devastated—

Ryan Foland: Destroyed.

Darren LaCroix: Destroyed, yes, well said.

That's where the story is encapsulated in my reaction, but I never even say it. So if there's no emotional shift in one character in the story, there is no story.

Ryan Foland: I dig it. There's a lot to unpack here.

This is a sandwich that when you're making it, the person behind the counter is like,

"I know that you have options of all these different toppings but are you really going to make me put every single topping on here and then ask me afterward for a couple of extra tomatoes, and then see if you can get some side sriracha sauce or whatever?"

This is stacked up.

One thing that reminds me of one of the tips you have online is that it's not about writing, it's about rewriting.

What I'm pulling out of all this sandwich, if I'm going to pull the jalapeno off the top, it's that the story is what creates the emotion which creates the change in thought after someone hears you speak. Which is kind of like a hot pepper that you bite into, leaves a little tang, a little sour in your mouth.

But it's not about finding a better story, it's about telling your stories better.

Darren LaCroix: Exactly.

Ryan Foland: Cool. Boom.

So let's talk about how people can get more stage time knowing that it's not just stage time, but it's stage tension time, stage intention time.

I think I can work on that a bit more there.

But what are some of the ways to accelerate your stage time?

What are some of the non-obvious tips that maybe you've been figuring out that everybody else just doesn't know yet, or is it as simple as how everyone continuously says?

What would be your advice now that we have a sub that's all wrapped up and we're going to go hit the town?

What do we do? How do we get up on stage more?

Darren LaCroix: We've got to give out more subs and see what people think.

Ryan Foland: Gotcha.

Darren LaCroix: Do they like them after?

Are they talking about how good it made them feel, or what a good sandwich artist I am?

See, ego again causes the problem, so we've got to crave feedback, we can't just ask for, if people come up to you and say,

"Wow, that was great." Receive the compliments, say, “Thank you”.

But then here's the difference between that person who's truly going to be a pro and the person who never will — we stop them and we say,

"Thank you. What was most important to you?"

See, then we're actually getting the evidence and the proof of not just, "I was a great speaker," but what hit home with them, and then we're looking for commonalities.

When I was practicing "Ouch" when I went around asking people, I was doing it scientifically, I had people tell me everything that made them think and anything that inspired them, and then anything that was confusing."

I was specifically asking for their feedback and the inspiring and thinking part was the mom and dad story, so when I kept hearing that over and over again, I knew that had to stay.

Scientifically, giving it enough, the audience told me what worked.

We've got to crave feedback, that's one of those most important elements of becoming better. It doesn't matter what we think, it matters what they think.

Everyone should write this down: The most important part of a presentation is the thought process in the listener's mind.

The most important part of a presentation is the thought process in the listener's mind.

And it's not your opening, it's how you're opening affects your thoughts.

It's not your slides, it's how your slides affect my thoughts; it's not your closing it's how your closing affects my thoughts.

If everyone is confused, guess what — you are confusing!

So get on stage as often as you can, number one.

Number two, record yourself every single time.

If you truly want to be great at what you do. If you truly want to make audience impact, every time you get on stage is the opportunity to learn.

But it's multiplied when you can record it, and then you can get those comments, and then you can sit down and listen.

Now, it is painful. No one wants to listen to their own recording. But the question is do you want to be great or not?

I'm only here to help serious people who care about their audience impact, not their own ego.

When you record yourself, and you sit and listen, and I know a lot of people think,

"Oh, I don't want to listen, I hate to listen."

Well guess what—

Ryan Foland: Those are little voices in your head, but you've got to beat them to it.

Darren LaCroix: Exactly. You should be duct taped to a chair and forced to listen to your own presentation.

There's a reason you hate it — because it wasn't that good.

But most people aren't willing to do that.

So look, it's not easy. It's a craft that just because someone can stand up there and some people are natural storytellers that's great, but do you want to be world class?

That's the question — do you want to be world class?

And I love this quote by James Clear, he said,

"Everyone wants a gold medal, but no one wants to train like an Olympian."

Ryan Foland: Right.

One of my favorite quotes is that "successful speakers aren't successful because they're doing things that nobody else can do; successful speakers are doing things that everyone can do but not everyone does."

And that's the daily routine, that's the habits, that's getting up early, that's watching yourself going through that misery, putting it on mute and watching your body language, listening to it on just audio and imagining whether you're doing a vertical or horizontal rocket ship with your arm. It does, it gets intense, but it's not easy.

If I were to look at this whole interview, you have on one side, speaking is as easy as not even having a website, not even having a business card. It is as easy as the opportunity to speak your mind in front of people or a person.

But the flip side is that it's counter-intuitive. It's so easy to get on stage, there are so few barriers to entry, like here's my soapbox, but that is why it makes it so difficult and I think so many people are looking for hacks.

Would you agree that you can “hack” your way to being world class or does it really take the hard work, effort, time, dedication, commitment to building sandwiches over and over and over?

Darren LaCroix: Well, there are those always special cases where maybe somebody didn't work as hard but somebody is on a reality show. Well they're a celebrity now, you can't compare yourself to a celebrity, you're a celebrity, people want to see you, you'll get butts in seats even if you suck on stage.

There are exceptions to the rule and that's why I like that there are a lot of celebrity speakers who are horrible or average at best.

Now, it pains me because they have this huge opportunity to influence. If they got a coach or if they got training or they just had somebody who sat down with them and says,

"Okay, do this. Don't do this."

Just get some help, but they keep getting booked at high fees.

Mark Eaton is one of my favorite celebrities because he gets it. He is so coachable, he is an ex-all-star basketball player from Utah and he's a great speaker and always getting better.

He got a coach. He came to a lot of my workshops when he was just getting started, but he is so coachable, he's the exception.

But here's the cool part — start where you're at, start helping people along the way and the better you get, the more people are going to follow you, the more people want to buy your programs if you have programs, the more people are going to rebook you.

It's going to happen naturally.

So that's the cool part, get on stage, but each time you get on stage with the intention of getting good and learning things and pushing yourself, you are going to be better for the next audience.

Even when I have my 2-day boot camps, I sit down with my team and we're like, "Okay, how do we make this better next time?"

I change my slides, I write notes in the workbook as I'm doing a 2-day workshop for the next one.

Because they have thoughts and ideas, and we've got to capture them.

You're never done, but if you go up with the intention of helping people and you help people, the more you help, the more you are going to get rebooked.

We also need, as a speaker, we need to plant those seeds that,

"Hey, this is what I do for a living. If you know any groups who this story would resonate for, please pass along.” You've got to have some self-promotion.

One of my business mentors Alan White said like, "If you don't toot your own horn, there's not going to be any music".

So, we want to do it subtly. I started my business with just having a newsletter and passing a clipboard and asking people if they want to join my newsletter, and now I have tens of thousands of people in my newsletter list. Well they're the ones who buy my product.

Why?

Because I write every week, I write an article each week.

So it's like we got to be an expert that speaks. Don't think you're a speaker, you're an expert that speaks. What's your area?

Well if you're an expert, then you're probably going to have some tools.You may or may not have some courses.

If you're an expert, you probably have a book. So you're going to have other streams of speaking income.

Read: Multiple Revenues

But just be where you're at. Your fee will grow as you grow, but if you are a highly paid speaker I love this by Mike Rayburn, one of my mentors, he said,

"If you're not getting paid what you want as often as you want, the problem is your speech”.

Your speech is your number one marketing tool. If people aren't coming up to you after, saying, "Wow, that was great," then the problem is you. The problem is your speech.

So in the beginning, Rotary Clubs, Kewauna's clubs, service clubs, women clubs, associations, schools, like just speak anywhere and everywhere you can with the intention of getting known.

You're building your brand every time you're on stage. I know that branding is one of your things, Ryan. Every time you're on stage, that's your brand.

So, what's the quality of your brand?

As a speaker, my asset, my number one asset is my list of followers, people in my newsletter, people in my online university, that's my asset.

But as a marketing tool, that's my speech.

So I'll speak for free still even though my fee rate now is $10K,

If it's my target audience, I'll speak some places for a fee, target audience or no target audience, but if they are people who present, that's my target audience.

One of the reasons I do interviews like this is to help build my brand, but I'm not coming here with some sleek sales talk, I'm here to give content — that's what's going to build my brand.

Ryan Foland: Excellent. Well, let me help you with a little slick talk— if somebody were to want to attend one of these boot camps or check out one of your courses, where is a good place to point them?

Because I feel like we've gotten just to the tip of the speaking iceberg, or you know when you ask for light mayo and then they give you a lot more? Right?

I feel like we've got extra mayo on this and I kind of want to peel off and put it on to another sandwich, but if people want to build some sandwiches the way that you can teach them to be a sandwich speaking artist, where do you point them, how do they get to you?

Just google your name, or do you want to point them to a certain spot?

Darren LaCroix: Check out StagetimeUniversity.com if you like live events I have StageTimeWorkshops.com.

And we had spoken earlier about the top 10 mistakes, you can go to Top10SpeakingMistakes.com but just Google me, you'll find me.

And I only want to help serious people, like if you're not serious, if it's about your ego, I really don't want to help you.

Ryan Foland: Good. Non-serious people do not apply.

Darren LaCroix: You and I Ryan are going to train people and change the world, so we've got to be careful who we give our expertise to.

Ryan Foland: Very true and I will tell you frankly, Sir, that forever in my future, as I enter into a Subway sandwich shop I will think about it as an analogy to building a speech and being a sandwich artist, but making the person behind the counter feel like it's something that they really want, that they want to pay for, all because it's a story tied in a notion that has your intention behind it and fighting through the little voices in the back of your head the whole time.

Darren LaCroix: Yeah, the sandwich artist. You as the expert, the sandwich artist, we've got to remember that people want different kinds of sandwiches. I might not be the right person for them. You want the leadership talk? I'm not your guy.

I don't have the experience there. It is not my expertise. I don't make meatball subs. You want a leadership meatball sub, that's not me.

No, no, I can talk about how leaders could be better presenters but if you want me to talk about leadership— that's not my thing. I don't do meatball subs.

Look I'm a turkey’n’swiss guy, so I have the inspiration and knowhow to make a better sandwich, like that's my thing and stay in your lane.

Ryan Foland: All right, well next time you open up a franchise I'm sure it's not going to be franchise, it is going to be your own custom sandwich shop where you have people enter into different lanes and specialize sandwich artists so that you're really delivering the right sandwiches to the right target markets.

Darren, this has been a lot of fun, I appreciate that you jumped in with me and I hope to share the stage with you sometime and looking forward to digging more into your tools and staying connected, and I'll definitely tweet up Jim Carrey and I'll include you in that.

Darren LaCroix: Alright, it sounds great.

Ryan Foland: Alright, thank you.

Darren LaCroix: Thanks for having me, Ryan. Good luck with your World of Speakers.

Ryan Foland: Thank you.

All right everybody, tune in next time or find an old episode. Make sure that you like and share the ones that you like, especially this one. Leave us a review and subscribe.

This is Ryan Foland with Mr. Darren LaCroix and we are signing off. Adios.

Darren LaCroix: Amigos!

A bit about World of Speakers

World of Speakers is a bi-monthly podcast that helps people find their own voice, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.

We cover topics like: what works versus what doesn't, ideas on how to give memorable presentations, speaking tips, and ideas on how to build a speaking business.

Connect with Darren LaCroix:

• SpeakerHub profile

• Website

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