The curse of having a common name is that you can be mistaken for someone else but on the plus side it can be easy to remember. This is something I have in common with my guest Steve Smith. Our names may not be so distinctive but the knowledge and conversation really was.

Steve is a business coach, keynote speaker and podcast host, so we had a few more things in common. In this episode:

• Why the right kind of clout matters
• How speaking in a professional capacity could harm your brand
• Why message matters
• What leaders need to possess
• My own challenge with presentation energy
• Why are your audience checking their devices? (May not be what you think)
• What happens when people think you're inauthentic?

and a few more things besides.

Special thanks to our show sponsors at Brand Face. Find out how they can help you get the right message for your business to connect with the right audience in the right way. Visit LearnAboutBrandFace.com

Did you enjoy the show? Did you learn anything new or useful? If you did, then the best way to show your appreciation is by sharing the show to your online network. Tag me and I'll give you a shout out on an upcoming episode. Leave a review and I'll read it out on the show.

Of course, if you REALLY liked it, you're welcome to support the show financially too using the link below.

Support the show (https://speakinginfluence.supercast.tech/)

Mentioned in this episode:

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Welcome to the show.

My name's Johnny Ball, this is Speaking Influence the show where we dive into the

world of influence and persuasion to help you build ethical influence and become

a powerfully persuasive communicator.

Each week I speak to guests from the world of public speaking, presentation

skills, psychology, neuroscience, marketing, personal branding,

secret service,

influencers and more besides.

The goal of this show is to help you to understand how influence and

persuasion work to be able to build your authority in your industry and to

become a better communicator, to get your message out into the world And to

change them positively affect people's lives and businesses, including your own.

This week, my guest is a very experienced business coach And also an expert speaker.

And we talk about things like developing clout with your business

and what that really means.

A lot about the integrity of authenticity, something that

comes up frequently on the show.

And we explore things in some very interesting ways.

So this is an interesting and fun conversation with Steve

Smith and I hope you will enjoy and check Steve out as well.

For me, this is a well nuanced conversation and also very well

balanced, both of us speaking from our expertise and able to have a really

fun discussion around things that will be relevant to you becoming a

powerfully persuasive communicator.

So all the remains for me to say is enjoy the show

Welcome to Speaking Influence.

The show that helps you to master the psychology and application

of ethical influence and persuasion, in life and business.

With persuasive presentations and podcasting coach, Johnny Ball.

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It's more cost effective than most other similar platforms . Don't

pay for a multitude of services you have to then link up manually.

Get an online solution that does everything you need in one place.

Find the link in the show notes and try New Zenler as the all in one

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Well, I am very pleased today to be joined in the Speaking Influence

studios, by an expert speaker and trainer, someone who is really going to help us

get in touch with understanding how to translate, influence, and persuasion into

our lives and to understand our authentic selves and really get ourselves motivated.

Do the inner work to get the outer results.

His name is Steve Smith.

Welcome to the show.

Johnny.

Thanks for having me.

I'm looking forward to.

I've been looking forward to speaking to you,

Steve for the audience's benefit.

Tell us a little bit more about your background and how you came

to be doing what you do now.

Well, before I started coaching business

executives about 13 years ago.

My entire career was in the consumer products, manufacturing field.

And I worked for a few really large companies who were just set on providing

training and exposure to people that they were trying to move up the ranks.

And I had my share of of moving up the ranks, during that time.

But one of the things I caught onto early on.

Just about every single week you were in some type of presentation mode,

you were either presenting to a team.

You were presenting to a group of people above you that needed to put their

rubber stamp on something you want to do.

You were presenting to a sales meeting or a national company

meeting at the end of the year.

So there were always opportunities to be in front of any number of folks

to convey either your thoughts or information or something you wanted

them to be able to latch onto and leave the meeting thinking about.

And so after doing that for years, I realized that there's ways to actually get

into that in a very clear, confident way, and actually get things done as opposed to

just being up there and, moving your mouth and everybody looking at their watch and

saying, how long is this going to take?

And so for people that learn these techniques, it's a complete game

changer in terms of your confidence about wanting to speak in public.

Yeah.

Now, I know I speak about this on my show a lot.

So people who tune into the show regularly might sort of

think, oh, this old chestnut.

But but I never know when it's somebody's first time listening to the show and

it's always interesting to see people's answers to this, but how important

do you see presentation skills being in the professional world these days?

For me, presentation skills are the equivalent of

building a brand for a company.

many times, if you're presenting to a business group, you know, if you're in

the small business arena, you may have plenty of opportunities to present to

people that you've never met before.

And sometimes that may be the only opportunity that they have

to personally experience you,

prior to going to your website, looking at your products or services, doing other

things that might lead them to being a customer, a client, a partner, something

that would help you with your business.

So learning how to speak publicly and do it very well, it's

worth untold amounts of money.

In fact, I know people who do that as opposed to dumping a

lot of money into marketing and branding and it serves them well.

I mean, it's unbelievable how well.

Yeah.

Could we then aim to define what the cost of not doing that

would look like for people?

Yeah here's the way I tell people anytime they want to get

into some type of public speaking, it works well when you do it.

Well, if you don't do it well, don't do it.

It's the equivalent of being on a professional website like LinkedIn,

if you're not going to get on there and go big and be robust and make

yourself look important so that other people are gravitated to you,

it's better that you just stay off.

So public speaking kind of works the same way.

If you're not going to take the time to learn the techniques, to evaluate yourself

cause not everybody looks the same and we all shouldn't, but you know your

personality, you need to do the practice.

You need to do all the basic things to give yourself that, that natural flow that

other people just get, they gravitate to.

If you're not willing to go to the lengths to do that.

Don't just stand up there and just say, gee, over time, I'll get better

because you may not have, you may not get the opportunities to come back.

At what point did the clients you work with, come to

you and say, Steve, I need help?

The clients that I work with that usually need that kind of

help are more on the entrepreneurial, small business side, where they don't

have the luxury of a giant brand and mega budgets to push out the

message of what their company does.

Many times, if they're in a professional service type business,

they are the face of the company.

And at some point after we get through the low-hanging fruit of figuring out

how they're marketing themselves and are all the basics basically put together.

So if somebody actually connects with them, they know what to do from there.

After that, it's like, okay, let's talk about the outreach.

What is it you would like to do?

What have you thought about doing?

There's a lot of different choices.

Not everybody needs to do everything and certainly we should figure

out what works best for you.

But that's usually that conversational usually opens up the idea.

Have you thought about public speaking, because you may have

a very interesting business that not too many people know about.

That's a great way to get that word out to your target audience, to let

them know a little more about what you do and why you might be unique from

the other selections that people have.

Yeah, I will often be heard saying that public speaking and presentation

skills, which are not necessarily the same thing or they very, very, very similar

that they are a critical leadership skill.

Would you agree?

Yes, because I think leadership at its basic core, is

having the clarity about where, what you want as an end result,

where you're going with everything, how best to use your resources.

And do you really understand what your audience is looking for?

when I get calls to present to organizations or industry

associations, my first question is, tell me about the audience.

Tell me what they're expecting and a true leader is interested in the team

in the group, the people that he or she are, they're guiding, they want to

know what are these people expecting?

Where are they coming from?

And if you incorporate that same mentality into your public speaking,

you're going to hit more home runs than not because at the end of the

day, if you're not connecting with that audience, you're going to come off flat.

Doesn't matter how good a present presenter you are or

how well your slides are done.

If you miss the mark on the message, it's not gonna work.

What then in your opinion, are the core important elements that people

need to develop and work on to have that gravitas, that kind of ability to

stand up there and be seen as a leader?

Well, the first one I suggest, and this is probably the hardest

thing for people to get over is get comfortable looking at yourself speaking.

And there's a variety of ways you can do that.

You know, zoom, it's a little tough because most of the time we're

just seeing ourselves from the kind of, from the shoulders up.

But if you have the ability to speak and have somebody film you with a camera,

with a video phone get comfortable seeing how you present yourself now,

because the only way you can get better is to see what you look like currently.

And a lot of people have trouble with that.

I'm sure you've been on meetings before on zoom, where you have some people that

don't want to turn the camera on it's because they don't want to see themselves.

And you have to get over that because you have to know what

everybody else is looking at.

And if there are things you're doing that are distracting from your message

from your presentation, from trying to make that connection with your audience,

you have to figure that out early and figure out how to get rid of it or how

to do something different to override it.

So that's the first thing I would say is get comfortable knowing what you look

like when you're in presentation mode.

The second thing I think, and this is what people that are new to

speaking, tend to trip up on quite quickly how to learn, how to reduce.

What it takes for you to get your message across, the first thing that people

are going to recognize in someone as inexperienced and really nervous is that

they talk excessively they're off track.

They're backtracking.

They're saying they're using a lot of filler and that can be very

aggravating because the average person can hear and process what you say at

three times the speed that you see.

So you really have to choose your words carefully and be confident

enough to deliver your message in as few words as possible.

So I work with people a lot on their diction on their delivery,

so that they're confident getting the message across without a lot

of excess words, which just cause people to just go numb at some point.

Yeah,

And then the third thing is just understand your message.

We, you can't everybody, can't get up on the stage and talk

about any possible topic.

You have to really zone in on what you're known for.

And that's a real good kind of a self selector because what you want, if

organizations or companies call you and want you to come speak to them, you

want them to say, gee, we've watched this video, or we've heard this.

We know that this is something you're good at.

Would you come talk to us about.

And that builds confidence and it keeps you in a narrow field of not

having to worry about, oh my God, I don't know what to say about that.

I'm going to have to go study.

I mean, you don't want to go down.

that road.

So the bottom line is get used to yourself in presentation mode.

So you know what you look like, you learn how to deliver without excessive

words, and then have a really good narrow set of topics, maybe three or

four topics that all blend within your area of expertise that you can talk

about that other people know about.

Yeah, I think that's not just good advice for speaking.

That's pretty good advice for online brand and marketing as well

to have those kinds of things.

I think it applies.

And I guess this is really just a, more of an in person way of

branding and marketing yourself and speaking as a part of that, for sure.

Even if you're speaking in a business capacity,

Well, and so much of last year's speaking, and certainly

I did met much of this money.

Was in virtual mode.

Because people weren't opening up their facilities.

Nobody wanted to meet in the usual conference places or other

types of business facilities.

So everything was being done online and that in and of itself can have

certain amounts of stress for people, because whether you realize it or.

There are some benefits to speaking in person, you can draft

off of the audience's energy.

The first time you get a nice rousing laugh or you get heads nodding, that

tell you you're on that right track.

You're saying things that are resonate with that helps the speaker that

starts getting you into that, that confidence mode that allows you to really

kind of turn it on and be yourself.

A lot of that goes away in, in virtual mode.

And so then you have to really, really be good in order to convey the same

kind of energy and enthusiasm in a world where you, for the most part, you can't

see anybody that you're talking to.

Yeah.

I had an interesting start on my virtual speaking and presenting career because

mine started long before COVID and all of this, I started doing online coaching

and training about 10, 11 years ago.

And And I remember I was being trained by some very well-known professional speaker.

A lot of people who a lot of people would have heard of.

And the one thing that kept saying to me over and over again is you have to

bring the energy, you have to turn up.

And I even remember them saying to me, if you can't do it,

we'll find someone who can.

Oops, I'd better work on this then.

But I did and that lit a fire and got me to do it.

And I've always understood since then.

You don't have to be super high energy there.

Some people go really over the top with it, got a bit crazy with it.

Which I think can really turn people off, but just turning your energy up.

A few notches is usually enough, without, hopefully without it becoming like high

speed and a bit crazy and disjointed and disconnected and all those kinds

of things, but keeping it just that bit of higher level energy, what for online

presenting, what is absolutely critical?

Well, and that's why I go back to my first point about

getting comfortable watching yourself.

And certainly in our virtual world today, there's all kinds of ways

for you to record yourself, giving a presentation and then going back

and looking at it and just asking yourself, cause the camera doesn't lie.

It's going to show you exactly what it's recording.

And that will allow you to say, gee was my energy there.

If I listened to myself, am I motivated?

And if you're not, then that's a real, that's a cue that

you really need to figure.

How to bring up your, maybe your voice, tonality is everything.

And if you just learn how to bring it up just enough with the right spots,

how to learn, how to pause, how to make your diction and your delivery

interesting, as opposed to monotone.

All of those things can add to people's desire to engage what you're saying

and not start looking at their watch or answering their phone, or, turning their

screen off and go into the bathroom.

I mean, any number of things people do to just eat up time until it's over.

So you really have to be aware of how you come off, how you use hand

gestures, facial expressions, all of these things that are part of you that

are just accentuated, just a little.

Can really go a long way without you coming across looking like maybe

this isn't really who he is when he's, when it's in his personal life.

Cause when you win, if people get the feeling that what they're seeing on

stage or on camera, isn't exactly real.

That's, you're dead right there.

But at that point they're clicking off.

They're going to something else.

Yeah, I had that experience when I very first started out and whilst

it was a bit unpleasant to end up.

Fairly well, trolled on YouTube at the time.

And I took the video down and realized it wasn't very authentic.

And probably the criticism that I got was fair enough.

Although there is a part of me that other people have said, you should

have just left it up, it's a good example of me doing it wrong, but I

can look back and say, yeah, I was trying to be something that wasn't very

authentic to me, but it was what I thought a presenter should be.

What I thought someone doing, well on YouTube should be like and I'm sure

some people may start out that way, but what really brings people in is

you, so the authenticity feeling, not that they need to know everything

about you, but that you are a real person and this isn't just an act.

Yes.

Super important stuff.

What, in your opinion would be the key traits then of influence for

a speaker or presenter or anyone?

Well, I think whether you're in a leadership role in a business, or

you're doing public speaking for your own business or your occupation, I think

people need to have a feeling that you are confident in what you're talking about.

If you're confident your whole delivery is going to be more at ease,

you're going to feel better about.

What you're saying.

And certainly maybe, if it's a small enough venue and there's

an opportunity to feel questions, that's when you really need to be

confident about what you're doing.

I'll give you an example.

Before COVID hit, I was doing quite a bit of local speaking through chambers

and other business organizations.

Sometimes when you're in a group of maybe 30 or 40 people, which is that's intimate.

Alright.

I would say something and I would start to see people in the

audience pulling their phones out.

And I'm like what are they doing?

So after the first time this happened we knew we were done.

I sat down at a break.

I went over to the lady that was coordinating, the whole.

And I said, I noticed people in the audience were on their phone.

It was like their text messaging or something?

She goes, oh no, she goes, they're Googling what you're saying to

find out if it's right or not.

And I mean, I'm sure she looked at the expression on my face and

thought you didn't know that did you.

And I know I didn't.

And so now what you have to realize if you're going to be authentic and if

you're going to come off as an authority in the area that you're speaking, you

really got to know your stuff, because people are fact checking you every minute

that you're up there talking, and they may not say anything to you directly,

but they may go on LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever they saw the advertisement

that you were speaking that day.

And they may put some comments in that aren't all that nice they're flattering.

And so, I tell people, know your stuff really well.

Know it well enough that you can accept other points of view without feeling

like you're off track and you have to defend yourself, really know your

stuff well, and that can only come with practice and with, with delivery and with

looking over the message you're taking people through for 10, 20, 30 minutes,

however long you're going to be up there.

Understand what it is as a primary point you want everybody to walk

away from, if you can get that.

Everything else you build around.

It eventually ends with that and you get a much better presentation, much better.

Yeah.

I was having a conversation.

I think it was last month on an episode with a guy called Simon Raybould.

And one of the things that we were saying was how it does

undermine people's credibility.

If they're saying stuff that is factually incorrect.

And if you know that it's incorrect and you say people can check this on their

mobiles, but a lot of times there may be people in the audience who just knows.

In the public speaking mode, we often will get a lot of people who

quote the Albert Mehrabian study and they quote it incorrectly.

And they say like, something that I forget what the percentages are now, like 77 or

78% of communication is body language.

Which of course isn't what the study actually says.

And and so when you hear somebody misused it or misquote it it's hard

to take their credibility seriously.

Is that, well, I guess they don't know what they don't know.

But it's hard to trust somebody who wasn't getting some of the basic facts right.

Well about about six or seven years ago when I was

still building out my business.

I had developed quite a few colleagues in various types of businesses.

And one guy that had developed a friendship with one day calls

me up and he says I'm going to a marketing conference up in LA.

And he goes there because I've paid for it,

they're offering me a free seat to anybody I want to bring.

And I thought, okay, well, I know that, I mean, these guys are trying to fill

seats at some point and this conference center, it had about held about 300 people

and they wanted to make sure it was full.

So I said, sure, I hadn't been to one of these in awhile.

I'll go and see what I can learn.

And the gentleman that was giving the the conference was actually a very,

very well-known figure in the music industry years ago, he was the general

manager for Guns and Roses and Journey.

And so he had built up quite a fan base for that, and he was trying to morph it

into what he called Rockstar Marketing.

Okay.

And so I went there and, it was, it was well orchestrated.

It was your typical, small business conference on marketing techniques

and things of that nature.

And he handed out everybody a book that was about maybe two and a

half inches thick of the binder.

So there was a lot of material we were going to go through

in that two and a half days.

Well, throughout the first day as I'm going through this and he's talking

and he's fighting in little tips and techniques cause he wanted people to

have actual things that they could work.

And I started noticing how much of the information he was conveying was dated.

It didn't work that way today.

And cause you know, let's face it in the marketing industry, stuff changes rapidly.

And what worked, at the end of last year, at the beginning of this year may

not work at the beginning of next year.

It stuff changes quickly and he's delivering a lot of tips and techniques

that I knew in some cases for social media, we're not going to work at all.

And so at lunch, I got hold of my friend.

I said, how well do you know this guy?

And he says, oh, I'm in his mastermind group.

And we've done all these great things.

And I said, well, most of the stuff he's talked about this morning, isn't actually

real or current, it's dated it's stuff.

That's that doesn't work as well as it used to do three or four years ago.

And, he just wasn't willing to hear it.

He was just too much embedded in this guy's persona and

connections and things like that.

But I walked away from that whole conference realizing if you're going

to seek information and strategies and tips and be able to improve in

areas like marketing or like, sales,

you really better check out the gurus that you're following, because a lot of

these folks, they've done a super job of building a persona that people just love

to attach themselves to and course go to seminars and spend thousands of dollars

on books and tapes and videos and stuff.

You got to make sure these folks really know what they're talking.

Yeah, it's funny because I regularly get recommendations.

And I mentioned to you that I asked my guests for.

And sometimes the recommendations will be from people who I think are snake oil

salespeople or charlatans in the industry.

But, it's well, that's my opinion.

It's not necessarily to they don't share that opinion, but if there was time

to go into it, I would explain why.

That opinion of them and it hasn't just come from nowhere.

But yeah, it's interesting.

Everyone has their own different perspectives.

Sometimes even when you do have the data in front of you, if it conflicts

too much, if you get into this level of cognitive dissonance where they rate

just conflicts too much with something you either really want to believe, or

you've just believed for so long, or maybe you're even locked into believing it

because you might have based part of your

career around

Absolutely.

then you're not going to be willing to change or take.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's a fascinating area.

Neuroscience is the study of neuroscience is developing super fast.

And whilst it's still a, an early days industry, we're learning so much more.

And so much of it that's coming out is debunking a lot of the stuff that people

have been teaching as common thought or as reality for a number of years.

So

Well, and that kind of connects with something that

also that I find some of the younger people that I coach.

Many times there, when I talked to them about certain behaviors, certain mindsets,

getting yourself in a certain way so that you show up authentically all the time.

You've created a persona for yourself.

Many times they're like they have nowhere to start, so I'll tell them let's do.

And this concept, I didn't invent this.

This has been around for a long time, it's called patterning.

Find someone in your industry that you could serve as maybe you're a

mentor because you like their style.

Maybe it resonates with you.

Maybe you get the sense that you could be like them.

That their personality is somewhat in the same box as yours and start watching them

start listening to them, seeing how they present things, what they talk about,

where they tend to take their message, how they present and pattern yourself

off of them, use them as the benchmark for what you want to be.

That's a great way to build yourself up and really become the

professional that you want to be.

If you're at the early stage of your career, you just have to make

sure you do enough vetting, so you're following the right person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I see the I think I've heard it referred to as modeling.

But it's very much the same kind of thing.

And it is that thing as well, having to find that line between not just trying

to impersonate somebody about you, trying to find the, be more like them in

certain ways, but still yourself without losing who you are in the process.

And that's something that I think people often have a challenge with,

especially in the earlier days of it, of not losing themselves.

And so you see a lot of people trying to be the next Tony Robbins, and

they're going on stage and they're trying to be Tony and it's like,

That's not necessarily their authentic energy and that's not who they are.

So yeah, unless they are a clone of Tony, then

Well,

he's not much of a chance,

And I followed Tony Robbins off and on for a lot of years.

I mean, early in my career, my company had invited him to a national sales

meeting to give a presentation and he was much, much younger than he is now.

but.

When you talk about modeling and that's a really good term,

modeling because you're right.

You're taking the essence.

You're not actually trying to copy them for yourself.

It's important to really take a look at the lifespan of that person that

you're looking at because Tony Robbins today is very different than he was.

40 years ago when he was starting out, when he was first starting out, the

guy was like on fire all the time.

He was jumping around, he had energy.

He just unbelievable.

You got tired looking at him sometimes and today he's a little

more measured in his delivery.

Still has that spark still has that insight and that stuff that people really

love, But his whole delivery is different.

So if you find somebody that you really like, and you'd like to

model yourself after them, just make sure you their own trajectory.

So you know, which part of them you're prepared to duplicate.

But they used to be a show when I was a kid and I P people of a

certain generation and maybe it was even on a, in USA, it was called Joe 90.

And it was like, one of these puppet shows.

It was Jerry Anderson puppet show, like the Thunderbirds kind of thing.

And this, there still a kid.

And his dad was a scientist and he had these special glasses that it

has to sit in this thing and he would have the skills and knowledge of an

airline pilot, a fighter pilot or something like that, or a secret agent.

Plugged into him and every time he'd put these glasses on,

he'd have all of that stuff.

It's obviously it's a kids stuff of it but that's a good way to think about it in

terms of, this is something you do want to be able to put on and take off, at least

in that sense of you, you just want to be looking at the skills and the traits and

the but the, how to the kind of knowledge base and things like that, that you need

to be able to deliver to be more like that, rather than trying to actually do

more of a invasion of the body snatchers kind of thing, and take over their life,

that's good.

Excellent.

What do you think helps to give people?

I think you've referred to it as clout more clout in that, in their

leadership, in their presentations.

Okay.

Clout is an interesting term.

Because if you actually look it up in the dictionary, there's two

very distinct definitions for it.

One, you want to try to emulate the other one.

You want to stay away from them.

The first one is you.

That you've hit somebody on the head.

You know, it's a very old term for clouting.

Somebody smacking them on the head.

Obviously we don't want to go there, but when you start looking at the more

influential definition of it, it's really it's having a, and I'm going to use

the word again, a persona almost like a reputation that people already know that

if they can somehow get you in their world or if they can become associated with you,

that their world is going to be better because you have the confidence, you

have the know-how, you have the ability to get things done with other people.

There's just a certain thing about when you show up good things happen,

that's clout in the business world.

And if you can develop that over time, it does wonderful things

for you in terms of partnerships, opportunities, any things that other

people might struggle for weeks, months, and years trying to develop,

you just naturally become a magnet for, for things that

you want now, along the way.

And I've coached people in the past who actually have achieved this and

realize that look, not everything is rosy there's consequences.

A lot of times you get unwanted invites for things that you

really don't want to deal with.

So you have to learn after a while, how to manage that reputation

so that you ward off things that are just not right for you.

And if you don't like saying no all the time to everybody

but that's what clout is.

It's that ability to almost have your reputation, your personality

proceed you in the room.

And when you get to that point, it, it really does.

If you're in the kind of business where your face is the

business, that's what mine is.

It really does help open doors that otherwise you

would struggle to get through.

Yeah.

And that's important.

I am.

I'm working with Chris Ducker if you've ever heard of Chris he's he's the

guy who wrote rise of the Youpreneur and that's very much about building a

business off your, around you, around your personality, your brand, your

expertise and having that kind of thing, which is what we're talking about here.

What are the things, what sort of point do you get to a level where you

know, that, that starting to work?

I, what are the things and what are the things that would be indicators?

Okay.

And this I've had this happen many, many times in my own coaching practice.

And it's what happens when I'm working with somebody and they

recognize that they have a deficiency in maybe in communication.

In in relationship building there's just something that

they've never really done well.

So as a result, they just shy away from it.

At some point they rise up in the organization.

I realized I can't shy away from this anymore.

I have to figure out how to overcome this.

So we start talking about what it is.

That's holding them back.

What skills and abilities and specifically what kind of mindset

that they have to have in order to project a new and different person?

And of course, it always ends up coming around to where they say,

well, how do I know if it's working?

And I tell them, don't worry about that.

It will show up and tell you.

So, as an example, and I've had clients actually call me up and just say, I gave

this presentation and I had people come up to me and say, this was tremendous.

We have noticed a significant change in you over the last several months.

People are very quick to criticize, but not so quick to, to tell

you what you're doing well.

But when you get those, that's a clear indication that you have

made a course correction that other people are picking up on.

So what I tell people is figure out who you are at your core, figure out how to

be as authentic and have as much integrity with delivering that up as possible.

Do what you say you're going to do.

All right.

And over time, people around, you will start to notice that change, especially

if it's fairly significant from the way you've been operating in the past.

And eventually when it hits home with others, they will find a way to tell you.

And when you get that feedback, especially if it's unsolicited, Your gold.

That's the best feedback you can get is when people just naturally come up to

you and say, we've been watching you, and we're really impressed with XYZ.

And if XYZ is what you've been working on, you know, you're getting there.

You're moving in the Right direction.

Yeah.

Do you ever get people who are very unclear on.

Who they really are and what their authenticity is.

And if you do, how do you help them find that?

I have had a few people that.

have been stuck in that mode.

And typically what I find, and it's not part of where I like my coaching

to go, but sometimes it goes here.

What we find out sometimes is that people are just in the wrong.

They've been trying to convince people around them and their business and their

company and their marketplace, that this is who they are, and this is what they do.

And this is what they love.

This is their passion.

And then all of a sudden through very guided conversations, because our

coaching sessions are very, free space.

You can say whatever you want, it's not going anywhere else.

And so people now wake up and they say, you know what?

I really don't enjoy this the way I thought I was going to.

This thing over here is what I really love.

And so now the question becomes, what do you want to do with that?

Do you want to actually move into a different occupation at 48 years old?

Hmm.

Or do you want to figure out how to make the one you're in now?

The one you invested in highly successful?

And so then they have to come up with that decision.

I try to tell people, passionate, there's a lot of discussion about passion.

If you're going to be good and you gotta be passionate, people have to feel it.

Passion, passions, great passions fuel.

It drives your energy.

It's not always the thing that you should be spending your life's work on.

I mean, I love riding motorcycles, my wife and I tour on motorcycle

on our motorcycle a lot.

So I'm passionate about riding.

I have no interest in, in, in having a motorcycle repair shop It's a hobby that

I love, but I like to keep it separate from my business professional life.

So it's really a matter of figuring out what it what is

your internal GPS telling you?

Where do you find yourself showing up in a repeated fashion that maybe

you weren't pre-thinking about?

You were just there.

Let's figure out what you should be doing, or maybe what you need to do

differently within the job you have.

And get you to that point because once you really know and you feel it internally,

it's much easier to bring that out, that authenticity to everybody else around you.

It's when you're trying to force something from the inside out, and everybody around

you is saying, nah, I'm not buying that.

That's it?

That doesn't seem real.

That's the problem.

I can remember doing an exercise in a speaking training one

time that was all about authenticity.

And it was actually based on someone else's work, the company that were

teaching it, where it got asked to stop teaching it, cause it wasn't their stuff.

But that aside it was this thing of essentially turning around someone

saying, this is me, this is who I am.

And people would keep looking at you directly into your eyes and

you have to keep saying this.

Until they believed you essentially.

And what the point they believed you they, you turn around and

it was a very raw feeling.

Having people staring deep into your eyes and.

Really sort of being in this sort of, this is me, this is who I am.

And then thinking, well, what is it about?

And you can just say those lines or how I'm saying it over tiering.

And the more you repeat that, I think at some point things do start

to click or you start to feel a certain energy in a certain shift.

It was an interesting exercise that also really helped people

start to recognize how important their authenticity is in that believability.

I got a lot from, I got a lot from that in, there is many thing that people

need to be able to look into your eyes and see, oh yeah you're really on this.

This is what you mean.

This is true for you.

I think you absolutely have to believe in what you're selling.

You might not be selling a product or a course or anything, but you

have to believe in what you're selling, even if it's an idea or.

Well, exactly three years after I started coaching, I was invited

to a very intimate kind of day-long, I don't even know what you call it.

It was like 12 of us that went to this horse farm.

And we were exposed to this concept, which I hadn't really

heard of prior called congruency.

And it's the basis for authenticity because congruency means if you, who

you think you are and how you feel and what you believe on the inside, isn't

what you're projecting on the outside,

people may not be able to put their finger on it and really

say, okay, that's the problem.

What happens is they get this feeling that there's something weird going on here.

And I can't figure out what it is.

I just know that I need to back away.

Yeah.

And once you start to learn how to manage that and make

sure that what's on the inside is being projected on the outside,

that's where your authenticity goes up.

That's when your ability to get people to recognize that you have a certain

amount of authority and expertise in the field you're in is real.

Because everything you're doing is coming from the inside.

It's not, you're making your out your exterior to look like

what you want it to look like.

It has to come from someplace.

It's not coming from the inside.

You're going to get incongruity.

And that's what causes people to always feel like I can't break through.

You know, it doesn't matter what I do.

I'm not getting the reaction I need.

That's usually what the problem is.

Everybody else around them has already figured out there's something wrong

with this and we're not buying.

Yeah, that's an interesting way to think about it.

I like the idea of congruency leading to integrity and and the

what's the word I'm looking for is

the authenticity.

Thank you.

Flying straight out of my brain today.

One thing that you said that I wholeheartedly agree with, that you said

when we spoke before the show was about how important practic is as being the

way to get there is that also how you develop this congruence and authenticity.

Yeah.

practice for me is the, that's the next logical kind of livable step for

people that are perfecting what they do.

Whether it's leading an organization, whether it's public speaking, whether

it's anything else that requires an ongoing relationship building with

people in your environment, in your community marketplace, whatever

geographic sphere you're trying to define,

Yeah.

the practice element has to come in once you've defined

who you are and what you do.

You know what's, what is your role?

You'd be amazed at how many people that I work with.

And they're at very high levels in companies and we'll have these

conversations and I'll say, tell me what your role is really there for?

and of course, they go to the HR book and they give me their resume

and all this kind of, I said no, I don't want to hear that.

Tell me what your, if I took your roll away, how would your company suffer?

And sometimes they can't tell me that.

And so then you have to say, all Right.

there's the problem.

You're in a role that probably serves something really valuable for this

company, but you haven't really dove into it and made it your own and

actually extended the value of that role to the rest of the company.

You're kind of a place sitter.

And so when people are in that situation, the real idea said, let's figure out how

to maximise how you show up in that role.

And once you know what that looks like, it may be a little foreign at

first that's when practice comes in, that's when we have to start building

a routine and rituals to help you internalize and develop the belief

system that supports that role.

And it's the daily practice.

It's doing things it's repetition, it's over and over again.

And for some people it's a lot of things.

It's a lot of it's a lot of mantras, it's saying things that you want to

internalize because you already know them.

You just, it's not secondhand.

It's like it's not muscle memory yet.

And So that's where the practice helps to take what you've determined

is real on the inside, and have it come out seamlessly and flawlessly

and with a lot of confidence and not ego-driven confidence, I taught it,

I call it inner confidence that it's mixed with a little bit of humility.

You're confident, you know what you do well, you do it well all the

time, but, but it's not boastful.

You're able to pick yourself apart or take criticism, in, in its

proper fashion, because inwardly, you know, you do this well, sure.

We can all improve.

We can all, take little tweaks here and there and modify what we do.

But at its base, you know, that you do what you do really well.

And when people get to that point and you get in this daily

routine, that's how you stay there.

That's what keeps you from falling off the wagon.

And, cause you, look, you hear this all the time.

They're entertainers athletes, people that are in the public eye,

they're riding high and all of a sudden something happens to them.

They go away and you don't hear about them for you.

And all of a sudden they pop up someplace else.

It's because people allow their heads to start changing the message about who they

are and they lose sight of what they're doing and then they're down and out.

Right.

So it becomes more of a thing of trying to impress and trying to keep your ego

fed rather than serving rather than caring about how other people feel or

the emotions that you might be generating or stimulating in them is more of a it's

that inner focus rather than that to focus or it's the wrong kind of inner focus.

and I wish I could tell you the guru that coined this phrase.

But somebody of that ilk many years ago said, if you want, if you

want to be successful, help other people be, achieve their success.

That's paraphrasing it, but if you're really confident and this goes back

to public speaking too if you really know what your audience is looking

for, give it to them, figure out a way to just wow them and make them feel

like that the hour they spent with you is the best hour they've spent

all week and it will come back to you.

So it's all about taking what you know, and figuring out how to help

other people be successful with that.

And you'll always have an audience you'll always have an audience.

Well, one of the key things, I think, especially in speaking may, maybe

not always in the us or business settings, although I think it's still relevant

is the ability to take people on an emotional journey to engender particular

feelings and emotions within them.

And one of the things that you said that stood out,

when we chatted before it was about having this natural ability to help people feel

important to me bit more about what you mean by that and what that looks like?

Well, that really works well in more of individual settings.

Let's say you're going to a conference or something and you're getting a

chance to meet a lot of people that

you don't know.

To me, the best thing you can do in those kinds of environments

is immediately take control.

Of the dialogue, not by telling them who you are and all the great things you've

done and, giving them a business card and, lapsing into your own sales pitch.

The best thing to do is show immediate interest in.

Ask them something that gets them to think about themselves.

One of the questions I find really interesting is after you figure out what

somebody does, they tell you the name of their company or their occupation.

Gee, that's interesting.

How did you decide to go into that line of work?

Word choice really matters to this kind of thing.

How did you decide to go into that line of work?

And all of a sudden people are just like, oh wow, this is really good.

I get to talk about myself.

And you get to learn about their motivations and the things that are

not just surface with them, but really things that allowed them to make really

important choices in their life, which got them to where they are today.

You can have a three or four minute conversation and when you

leave that, they will think you're the smartest person in the room.

And all you've done is sat there and ask them a question to open them up

and spent time listening to them.

And if you really want to build this gravitas of someone who is influential,

just be interesting and be interested.

And if you can do that, a lot of people have trouble with that because they're

like, oh, I'm at this sales conference.

I've got to, I got to hand out 50 business cards.

I've got to get leads.

If I don't come back with a client, I'm going to be in trouble.

No, that it's, those conferences are not about that.

They're about relationships.

And the best thing you can do is leave an impression with everybody else that you're

somebody that they want to get to know.

And here's the benchmark for that, earlier on we were talking about how do you

figure out when you've achieved clout?

Well, how do you figure out when this is working?

It's the number of times people will send you emails after it's over and

say, wow, I really enjoy talking with you, talking with you, right.

You, instead of thing,

Yeah.

Can we meet, can we have coffee?

Can we get on zoom, whatever it happens.

And that happens all the time.

And that's a great way because now that they've got this interesting understanding

of who you are and you haven't said a word yet, so there's a lot of influence

that can be relayed in that one simple technique of, Hey, just tell me how you

decided to get into this and then just listen to what the hell they have to say.

Hmm.

It's an interesting, almost paradox for me of, in a lot of professional

environments that a lot of the people who get on and do very one of the people

who talk most about what they're doing.

And it's say, oh look what I've done.

And wow, I'm great at this and the people who pipe up the most because

often they're being noticed that I'm perhaps just because it's easier to

notice and not have to dive deep as okay, well, these people are

showing me what they're doing.

So clearly they have drive.

They have the intent and stuff.

Whereas other people who may be really good at their job and perhaps more

introverted keeping their heads down, doing the work expect, expecting

to be rewarded, but not actually speaking up on getting that, but in

networking environments and in this all great to world, I think if you

go out into those environments with this, Hey, look at me, I'm amazing.

Look what I've done and I can do this, this and this, and here's my

business card and come away with.

Most people, unless they're very green.

I think most people are going to back away from that.

Like you say, and I think, hang on a minute, this is a bit needy.

This is a bit, this is a bit intense.

Whereas the people who come in are much more concerned about their

relationship and say, oh, tell me more about what you do and showing

real interest and seeing if there's

any crossovers or maybe I can't help you, but I, you know what you should speak

to my friend and, um, or I'd love to introduce a business to in the future.

If I find him just having those relationships, like you say,

that's so much more powerful there.

So it's interesting that's not necessarily the same in corporate environments, a

lot of the time, but in the business networking world and more entrepreneurial

environments, that is the case.

Well, the folks that show up as you've described big egos, talk

about themselves, their accomplishments.

They do a lot of name dropping the people that are most impressed

with those folks are them.

I mean, they're, they're all impressed in their head about who they are.

Many times people, like you said, if they're green to networking,

they might be kind of odd about who they just spent time talking to.

But most folks that have been around a while just recognize that for what it is

and I, and if I'm working with somebody that has, that's like that, that can be

a very tough engagement to have because you have to be able to get them outside

themselves to see how they're coming off,

without completely destroying the base that created that ego,

Yeah, it doesn't make them a bad person.

It may be, it's just a bad approach and one that they don't, like you said,

they don't recognize what's going on.

And sometimes it takes a bit, just a bit more work to get past that

impression of them and see, there, there is a real person under that.

I mean, you have to work a bit harder to get to it sometimes.

Unfortunately.

Yeah,

Steve, I really enjoyed the conversation.

I know we have to ask them to spend time when we start drawing things to a close,

but it has been really interesting.

I've learned some things talking to you and it's been very valuable.

I want to ask for the benefit of our audience, if they want to find

out more about you, what you teach and kind of stuff you maybe share

online, where's the best place for them to come and connect with you?

The best place if they want to learn more about my approach

and the various things I can do with clients is to just to go to my website.

It's growth source coaching.com.

and

there I have a lot of videos and I have a lot of information.

I try to give people.

As many things that they can try on their own and work with

experiment on their own as possible.

And because what I find is a lot of times people say, wow, this

is really good, but I don't know if I can go this journey myself.

So they'll come back and we'll talk about working together.

But if they're the kind of, the DIY folks that that can, take a tip

and run with it, come going to get everything you can't off the site,

because that's why I put it up there.

I'm also on LinkedIn, so you can connect with me on there.

It's coach Steve, or just Steve Smith.

I know there's a lot of Steve Smith, but you'll find because

my picture is on there,

but there's a lot of John Balls as well.

Don't worry.

I have the same problem.

Yeah.

Great.

I definitely recommend it.

So, I mean, if you, if people haven't already got that impression then, which

I'm sure they will have that you clearly know a lot and you're someone who can help

them and and give them a lot of expertise and share your experience as well.

I like to always ask my guests for a book recommendation.

What would it be from you maybe related to what we've been talking about?

Maybe unrelated, maybe just both that you've loved or that's had an impact

on you, but what's your recommendation?

Okay.

And I'm going to, if you don't mind, I'm going to give you two quick ones

for people in completely different.

Okay.

Here's the first one.

If you're in a small business, solo preneur kind of occupation

and you have to rely a lot on networking and meeting people and

presenting, and coming off really well

first time out this book is called Convince Them In 90 Seconds.

it's written by a gentleman named Nicholas Boothman and he does speaking.

I mean, he's a known quantity out there.

It's not just somebody that wrote a book and went away.

But this is a great book because he really tees up what it takes to make

immediate contact with people, build rapport and have them like you write off.

So for a lot of people that struggle with just, I don't want people not to like me.

It's a great book.

You should read that.

You'll learn a lot about just how to show up and how to deliver yourself.

The other book that I recommend for people that have been in management

or leadership roles, fairly high up in companies for quite a while, who was

written by one of the kind of master coaches here in the United States.

His name is Marshall Goldsmith.

He's written a lot of books, but this one I think was either his

first or second out of the shoot.

And it's called What Got You Here, Won't Get You There.

And in his professional life, he interviewed thousands of executives

around the world that he had worked.

And he chronicles 23 different situations that executives get themselves into

when they're interfacing with their team, with their company, with other

people, in their circle that they do that

are off-putting that cause people to either, kind of step back or

maintain distance or maybe lose track.

So it, I thought it was a fabulous read because you can look at that

and say, oh my God, I've done that.

Oh, I've done that.

In fact, he even has a little test in the back of the book where you

can figure out how many of these things that he's talking about

you actually done.

And it's a real eye-opener in terms of, I don't need more education.

I don't need more experience.

What I need to

do is tune up my professional interaction skills because

that's, what's holding me back.

Some great recommendations Marshall Goldsmith is definitely

a very, well-known very well-known name in the world of coaching and

some books you recommend today that I will be adding to my must read list.

I appreciate that.

If there is just one thing that you would like to leave people to stay, and

maybe the one thing they take away from this conversation, what would it be?

Get to know yourself like everybody around you knows you.

Get that almost I kinda like to, it's probably not the best way to describe

it, but it's kind of like having an out of body experience, where you're in a

dream and you're looking in you're down there with everybody else, and you're

seeing yourself as people around you see you, if you can develop the ability and

the perspective to look at yourself that way you will save yourself all kinds of

professional and personal trauma because you're continually doing things that

don't serve yourself well, and yet everybody around you sees what's going

on, but very few people will actually step up and say, Hey, Steve, I don't

know if you know this, but when you do that, everybody cringes, everybody

just wants to leave the room, learn how to look at yourself the same way.

And if you can develop that ability.

And a lot of times it's not just sitting back and say, oh gee, what did I do?

Right.

And wrong.

Sometimes it's asking other people in your immediate circle that you really value.

Gee, you just saw what I did.

How could I have done that better?

And just learn to accept feedback on a regular basis, either direct

like that or through observation.

And if you can really, really hone that in and get comfortable with that, you will

be amazed at how fast you will develop yourself in the direction you want to go.

Yeah.

And it's important to move past that idea that feedback is criticism.

It's actually food for growth, and I think that's been great.

Some great advice that you give there as well.

And a great point to end things today.

Steve Smith, it's been a real pleasure speaking to you and a great show.

Steve, I really appreciate you coming and being my guest on the Speaking Influence.

Thank you.

Johnny.

Thanks for having me.

This has been a great conversation.

I really appreciate it.

Thanks for tuning in.

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I'll be bringing you my interview with Grant Baldwin.

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The Successful Speaker book, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

That was a great conversation.

And I was really thrilled at the Grant took some time out of his

busy schedule to come and speak to me on a Speaking Influence.

So do keep an eye out for that show coming to you very soon.

I'll look forward to connecting with you again very soon.

In the meantime where have you gone whatever you're doing have

an amazing rest of your day.