Welcome to another episode of My First Stage! This is the podcast where we dive into the early moments of some of today’s most seasoned speakers. We talk about the nerves, the mishaps, the lessons, and the surprising paths that can turn one first stage into a lifelong calling—and a business superpower.

This week, I sat down with Jeremy Shapiro, a serial entrepreneur, author of Your Business Growth Playbook, and host of the Your Business Growth Podcast. Jeremy’s story is not just a masterclass in public speaking, but also a hilarious reminder that sometimes the biggest mishaps become our most pivotal memories—yes, even if they involve ripping your pants before a big sales pitch.

Jeremy Shapiro has spent 30 years building businesses and helping other entrepreneurs break through plateaus and frustrations. He’s a systems thinker, a champion of iterative growth, and a firm believer in just getting out there and starting—even if you’re scared, unprepared, or in desperate need of a tailor. As an author, podcast host, and sought-after speaker, Jeremy’s advice is equal parts practical, actionable, and empathetic (with plenty of war stories to prove it).

Here’s what Jeremy and I covered in our conversation:

1. A First Stage You’ll Never Forget: Jeremy recounts his first big speaking gig—a nerve-wracking sales presentation, complete with cold calls, last-minute changes, and a catastrophic wardrobe malfunction.
2. Teaching vs. Selling from Stage: The psychological and tactical differences between teaching a small interactive class and commanding a big room with a clear sales goal.
3. The Power of Systems (and Scripts): How following a tried-and-true framework can help conquer your fears and get real results, but why injecting personality and adapting is key.
4. Failing to Sell Live: The painful story of a zero-sales webinar, what went wrong, and how feedback and constant tweaking turned a flop into an eventual success.
5. Building Connection and Confidence: How Jeremy learned to bring personal stories, improv, and interactivity into every presentation.
6. Secrets to Audience Engagement: From hand raises to “trial closes,” real-world tactics for keeping a crowd involved—even when you can’t see them through the blinding stage lights.
7. The Book, the Podcast, and the Trifecta: Why Jeremy believes in having multiple platforms as a thought leader and how he uses each to land more stages and clients.
8. Real Advice for Getting Started: Why embarrassment is part of the journey, why MVPs matter, and how every pedal stroke and every ripped pair of pants get you closer to your dream stage.

If Jeremy’s story got you fired up (or left you checking your own pants before your next talk), here’s what you can do:

1. Share Your First Stage Story – I want to hear from YOU! What was your most memorable first time on stage? Head to myfirststagepodcast.com and share your story.
2. Connect with Jeremy – Check out Jeremy’s book and podcast at yourbusinessgrowthplaybook.com for more tips on growing your business and your confidence.
3. Subscribe & Review – If you loved this episode, subscribe to My First Stage, leave a review, and let’s keep sharing these real behind-the-scenes journeys.
4. Start Speaking, Start Failing – Seriously: pitch yourself for a local workshop or event, host a webinar, just get in the reps. Every “embarrassing” start is an investment in your future success.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I can’t wait to bring you more raw, honest, and inspiring first stage stories right here on My First Stage!

Timestamped Summaries

[00:00-01:02] – I introduce Jeremy Shapiro and set the stage for his first-stage story—about being thrown into a sales presentation he wasn’t expecting (and most definitely wasn’t ready for).

[01:04-03:28] – Jeremy describes his absolute reluctance to be on stage, the shock of having to cold call hundreds of prospects, and the blunt reality of a pre-pitch wardrobe disaster.

[03:28-04:14] – What do you do when you rip your pants an hour before your first big speaking gig? Learn about Jeremy’s mad dash to a tailor and how the show had to go on.

[04:14-06:37] – Breaking down the difference between teaching a workshop and selling from a stage—and why that mental shift tripped Jeremy up at first.

[06:39-09:21] – Why selling from the stage is a different beast, and how bombing a live webinar taught Jeremy the value of iteration, constructive feedback, and refining your pitch.

[09:33-10:40] – How switching from facts to stories, ditching the word-for-word script, and adding trial closes created a dramatic improvement in audience response and sales.

[10:45-11:22] – The practical mechanics of trial closes: getting audiences to nod, say yes, and qualify themselves before the final pitch.

[12:27-13:18] – In-person vs. online audiences, how body language can tell you everything, and what Jeremy learned from his wins and his losses.

[13:37-14:17] – The power (and limits) of techniques like scarcity bonuses, fast-action offers, and social proof to get audiences to actually take action.

[14:28-16:00] – How adding relevant, real, and recent stories instantly personalizes a presentation, breaks the fourth wall, and makes your audience lean in.

[16:18-18:19] – The cringe-worthy mistake of forgetting to click “start meeting” on a webinar with hundreds of people waiting, and how leading with vulnerability set up a more successful second run.

[19:30-20:31] – How Jeremy’s speaking career has evolved—facilitating small mastermind groups, commanding huge ballrooms, and loving every rep and every format.

[21:00-22:07] – The differences in interacting with thousands vs. dozens, how to harness audience energy, and why panels and conversations are a sweet spot.

[22:27-23:44] – Practical tactics for engaging big audiences you can’t see, from house light tricks to collective questions and building peer-to-peer connection.

[24:26-28:35] – Why the “trifecta” of book, podcast, and stage matters, and how each platform feeds the next—by opening doors, boosting authority, and turning audience members into clients.

[28:57-30:18] – Jeremy’s biggest advice: just start, embrace embarrassing failures, get the reps, and don’t try to perfect your way out of ever beginning.

[31:02-31:27] – One pedal stroke at a time: how Jeremy’s cyclist mindset applies to pushing onward in public speaking and entrepreneurship.

Welcome back to my first stage where we talk to professional public speakers about how they got started speaking on stages. I am here with Jeremy Shapiro. He is a serial entrepreneur, the author of your business growth playbook, and the host of the your business growth podcast. I normally have a heads up about what these stories are going to be and, and what happened the first time someone got on stage. And today I am just as blind about this as you guys, so I'm excited. Jeremy, thank you for hanging out with me today and welcome to my first stage.

Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me on. I'm excited to be here and I love talking about those, those first stages and hearing the stories that you share and bring onto the podcast.

I. I'm excited. I. I need to know. Cause I, I put out a post that I'm like, and I need really fast turnaround episodes. Who's ready with a story? And you're just like, oh, I have a great story for this, so I need to hear it. We all need to hear it. Tell us about your first stage.

So when you mentioned the first stage, it just came back like this visceral, real pivotal memory of that stage, because I did not want to be there at all. But I had signed up to be an instructor of a course with some other folks. And my friend who's running this business then told us, after we learned how to teach all the material that we are going to be doing, like an info night where we talk about what the workshop is and then sell folks into the course. This was something I thought he was going to be doing. And then we just show up and teach. Instead he tells us, like, hey, hey. Here's like the whole list of all our prospects, like, divide them up. Everyone's calling the prospects to invite people to come out to this workshop.

I'd never, like, made a cold call before or, like, reached out, but suddenly I find myself with a handful of other instructors making calls to hundreds of people about this upcoming workshop we have.

That sounds like my worst fear.

I then found out that all these people were going to be coming into a room where my friend wasn't going to be speaking. But in fact, we were the ones who were going to have to present and talk on stage. So this is where I sort of like, you know, backed up, like, hold on, hold on, hold on. Like, I was going to teach the course. I'm comfortable teaching now. You got me doing calls and now you need me to, like, not just speak from stage, but sell from stage. And thankfully, the power of Systems really helped out here. He had exactly what we're going to cover in that presentation that had worked before.

All we had to do is step in and do it ourselves. So the fateful evening approaches and I had to make sure I was all suited, booted and ready to go for like my first real big speaking from stage to a few hundred people engagement. And wouldn't you know it, about two hours beforehand, I am in my suit, dropping off something at the office, A big old fashioned giant laser printer from a friend of mine. And as I go to the office just to touch down, drop this off, and then head off to the speaking engagement, I squat down with this enormous printer and hear the worst fabric ripping sound that I'll always remember as my pants tore from, like crotch to waist up the back. And I'm like, I'm on stage in like 90 minutes. This is like the one pair of pants I have between here and there. What are we gonna do? And thankfully, like, you know, I reach out to some friends, I'm like, what do I do? Where do I go? Like, well, there's this, you know, menswear shop. They have a tailor there.

Hopefully the guy's still in. And so, like, I screech into the parking lot, standing in my underwear at this point in the store with a pair of pants. I'm like, can you fix this? I go on stage in like 45 minutes. They're able to like, tailor this up, fix it up, and I get out, you know, with not nearly enough time to get my head in the game and be ready for this, you know, this big sales presentation. But, you know, we get up there, I'm introduced, and I find myself looking at this ocean of people in the audience who, many of which are going to become our customers that night and actually enroll in and pay for it and sign up for that class. And we followed the script we were given that I had rehearsed through and gone through, that had worked before. And what do you know? When you follow a system, you can get a result. And we did.

We filled a great class. We went on to teach those classes, and I really enjoyed that part of it and was never again thinking twice about being on stage or what's the worst that could happen.

It's always good when you start with the worst thing happening, right? And just set the bar, set the bar. I have so many questions. First, did you tell the audience that this happened?

Looking back, I probably could have mentioned that and connected better with the audience over that moment. I was not at the point in my speaking career where I was ready for that level of comfort. I was just so focused on like, follow the system and let's just do this presentation as planned.

I feel like I wouldn't be able to help it. I would be like, just throw the script out, guys. I just need you to know what just happened.

Nowadays I absolutely would do that for sure.

I. I love it. And okay, you said something, a few things interesting before that I want to touch on first. You said I was ready to teach this, I wasn't ready to speak like on it. What is the like the difference in the mindsets? Because if you are teaching a class, you are public speaking like you are basically on a stage as a speaker. What was the difference in your head about that?

Yeah, that's a really good differentiation and I love how you brought that up. Right. To me, what I understood the teaching is going to be and was is a smaller classroom environment, right? You're working with a small group of folks. There's not a big AV setup, There's a projector and workbooks and so forth. But you're working one on one interactively. You're getting the feedback from a person as you explain a concept. They ask a question and you, you know, bounce the ball around the room, as it were, and keep the conversation engaged. And you're teaching something to a result of comprehension and ideally then implementation.

The speaking from from stage part to a larger audience in not a workshop, but with the goal of moving them towards a sale is not an interactive one, you know, one on small group. It is now much more in a presentation mode. Right. That does not open up to Q and A from a large audience that is very much expected to get a specific result of people raising their hand, getting a form, signing up and so forth. So that to me was that big differentiation is the teaching content interactively versus presenting to get a sale.

And you had said about just the act of selling from the stage and that really is its own monster. And I'm a person that I really don't sell from this stage much at all. What was that mental shift for you to get you comfortable and ready to do that? Or was it really just you had to read a script? So there wasn't much to it.

So the interesting thing with scripts is you can have a script that anyone can read and get a result, but just reading a piece of paper is not going to get you that same result. And if it's not tailored to who you are, it doesn't always get the result. Right. So in one of one of my later businesses, you know, many years after that, we were launching a new product and we crafted a whole sales presentation. And we're going to launch this to somebody else's list, right? They had an audience, we had a product and no audience. And so this was a straight up affiliate JV scenario, right? They would get folks onto a webinar. We then pitch people buy, they get money, we get money. Well, this was a never before tested script by someone who is not comfortable or familiar doing this kind of thing.

And we tee this all up, give the whole presentation. At the end of that presentation, we got goose egg, zero sales. And that's terrible. Like not just for the business, but also for the host who put themselves out there. They brought their audience, they put their reputation, their name out there, everything. And then you don't deliver for them. They could have had someone else on that and that's in that spot on the calendar that made them a lot more money. Right? Anything above zero.

So that was really tough. Thankfully, we circled back with that host afterwards and we're like, what happened? What could we have done differently? Why did that bomb so bad? And this was a person who was pretty experienced and had had many different folks on doing very well and had a lot of really good feedback. So we ended up, I wouldn't say scrapping that presentation, but refining it drastically. We got a second, you know, a second swing at the bat there. That's the wrong phrase. You can tell my sporting prowess. We got another go sport, another go sports ball, another swing at the ball, and we did better. And we continued to take this Kaizen approach of refining every time and looking at what we could do better and asking for the feedback from our hosts.

And the presentation continued to produce and get a better close rate and better close rate and better close rate over time. But that only comes from having the at bats, the looking for feedback from people qualified to give the feedback and then implementing that kind of change. So it is an iterative process to get better at it. But you got to start with something.

Is there any specific changes that you remember making that made a really big difference that you learned it so we don't have to.

Yeah, I mean very much. And you touched on this earlier with one of your questions. Is this idea of like bring that personality into it. Right. You've heard about how, you know, facts tell, but stories sell 100%. It was a fact full presentation. There were so many good facts in that presentation, but it often came down to simplifying the slides telling more stories from the heart. Not reading from a script at all, but, but really moving to bullet points.

Right. So we have the structure we want to follow and we know the things we're going to say and where we're going to say them, but not necessarily word for word. And speaking more from the heart instead of the reading. And most importantly is understanding various presentation pieces around how to have like the trial closes throughout the presentation. Help folks get into the mindset of yes, I want this. So at the point you are looking for the sale, you're not shifting to this. And now the part where you buy, they're already wondering how they can buy. They're already hungry to make that purchase.

They're waiting for the opportunity to do so. And that was very different than like educate, educate, educate, ask for money.

Do you say trial closes? Yeah, talk about that. How do you do that?

Yeah. So a trial close is what when you're getting someone's head nodding yes and you're seeing if there's a fit there early on, it allows folks to either qualify or disqualify earlier in the sales process. And you can do this in one on one sales as well. Simply asking question like, you know, so if we were able to do this, would that make sense? The person's like, well yeah, that's good, now you can move forward. You already know they're interested and if they're like no, that wouldn't help. Well, now you know, you're off base and you can course correct and, and get back on track with that sale versus waiting for the end and then realizing the person wants nothing to do with what you're selling and you didn't understand at all. Right. So you can do that even in large format presentations by getting the audience nodding and saying yes and you're asking them sort of leading questions where you know what their answer is going to be.

Because you teed them up for that

with the first one that you did where you sold nothing. Did you? I guess you probably didn't add those in.

No, we had not learned a lot of these things just yet that, that, that came through this iterative education process of asking folks who'd hosted successful speakers that had done really well, what we were missing, what we could do better. And we kept getting really good feedback. We ended up hiring someone to actually go through the presentation with us and find some of those stories to put in and remove some of the facts and make it a more engaging and interesting presentation.

Was there anything you remember from the, the first One where you could just tell from your audience that like they weren't in it. They even without having those test closes that you can kind of just tell you were losing them. Like any, any specific whether it was their body language, their reactions. Like did you know before the close that you were not going to be closing?

You know, it's tough because that was in a webinar format. It wasn't in the days of, or the setup or structure where you see everyone's face and you're able to, to get that right in person is way different. You can tell like you can look at your audience and if they're all just over there, you know, typing on their phone or tuned out or leaving the room and all then, you know, you kind of don't have that connection. Body language wise, you can tell when someone's sitting there with their arms crossed, leaning back right, versus leaning forward in their chair, engaged, taking down notes right. Like there's, there's things you can pick up on in a larger format audience to tell if you're on track or not. And, and, and I didn't have that in the, the sales presentation where we goose egged the live workshop. One that my very, very first, I shared that we absolutely did have people in the room that was a, you know, a full room and we totally could see that body language and we, you know, we could tell where we, how we were doing in that presentation.

I've heard people, because being the first person like at the end of a presentation, being the first person to like raise your hand and be like, yes, I want. This is stressful for the audience. So I've heard that people will plant someone in the audience to be the first person. Have you done that or do you know of people doing that?

Oh, we've never, I've never done that. Uh, do I know anyone who's done that? I don't think so. I mean that, that seems like the thing people would joke about, but no, I've never known that to happen. Usually what you're doing is when you're getting folks who are clearly interested and engaged and you have the right size room, right? You can do things like fast action bonuses or you know, early action, know bonuses where it's like, well, for the first five, what we're going to do is when you sign up the first five, you get this thing right. And that is for the people who are on the edge. Now you add that scarcity component in. So now if, if you're thinking about buying, you're like I don't know if I want to be one of the first ones. That can often be what gets you from saying, well sure, I'll buy when this is over to oh, I better do it now.

And once you get that initial group going back that now tells if we're like, no, no, no, it's, it's okay. People are now buying this. You're not the only one. There's the social proof around you.

Before we were talking about, I would have like shamelessly just told everyone like I ripped my pants right before this. Let me tell you about this. What are a few ways that you now being a little more experienced are like adding in that personality and like that real connection you.

Yeah. So I think one is the relevant recent stories. The like, you know, on my way over here just this morning that sort of disarms the audience in two ways. One is this is clearly now not a pre canned presentation unless you're totally making it all all up. Right. You're sharing something recent, relevant and ideally that they can relate to as well. Like this morning when I was listening to so and so's keynote, right. They were all there, they heard the keynote as well.

And you're able to tie back into that, that lets them know that you are a real person and you are adjusting to the real thing that's going on that you're sharing this experience with them. Right. It also means it's not just the same old pre canned presentation. There is that variable to it. So yeah, I totally enjoy bringing that in. Especially if you're at a conference, convention, engagement where there is a theme or whatever it is to that audience. The more personalized and almost co branded you make it, the better. So tailor your stories to that industry.

If it's an industry, trade show or event, mention the host. If it's an individual or organization and some story time back to them. But make it a much more relatable and clearly not pre canned, preset, one size fits all presentation.

Going back to like all of the different like advice that you got as you were shaping your, your talk. What are some of the things where they were like I cannot believe you did this. Like you did this so wrong. Like what were the worst things you were doing?

Well, I remember back to the very first webinar we ever hosted. So we weren't speaking but we had an outside speaker come on. And so it was our first time as a company using, if you can recall, GoToWebinar back in the day. And so we had GoToWebinar which we had been on before as like a attendees, but never as the organizers. And so we were bringing in this like really excellent speaker in terms of results. Like we knew he closed and how much he produced and we get X people on the line. We knew how well he do. And we're mentally cashing the checks before he's even showing up.

Right. And we go and we start the evening webinar. I'll never forget, this was the week before Thanksgiving. And he gets on, we get on, we introduce him, he goes into his whole presentation, the slides, the pre done pitch, everything lined up and we're like, oh, this is so great. And when the call is over, we're looking at where the orders are and no orders are coming in and we're starting to wonder what's going on, what's broken in the system. We look over at our customer support queue and we see the customer support queue is full of folks saying like, hey, we can't hear you. When's the meeting going to start? And we realized we didn't know as organizers you have to like click start meeting. And we couldn't believe it.

Like we just bought this huge opportunity. And so now we're looking at the calendar. We're like, oh man, like Thanksgiving is next week. How are we going to do a do over the week of Thanksgiving? Everyone's traveling, everyone's busy, like this is going to be a mess. But we got to do it. And so we did. We scheduled for like less than a week later, like four days later, a do over. And we totally led with the personality of like oops, our bad.

We totally goofed. We're new to this new mistake. We didn't click start meeting, but we're doing it over. We got him to agree to come back and we ran it again live and this time click start meeting. And he did phenomenally well. I forget if it was like, like high five or low six figures on that call in sales. And of course we're kicking ourselves. Like imagine if we actually did this correct the first time.

And despite it being just before Thanksgiving, like that that went. So I to answer your question, I couldn't believe we never clicked like the start meeting. But in terms of like the feedback we got on things we're doing wrong. Yeah, just like in terms of how we'd ask for the sale or how we tee that up or having a part of the presentation where it's like the now's the part where you buy and you can almost hear the shift in tone and voice from the educate to go buy something. And when you hear it after the fact, you realize like, oh, that was. That's icky. That's totally visible, audible, and doesn't flow right. So keeping those trial closes early, keeping it story based, having it have a lot more social proof built in, all these things really, really helped.

I somehow I just knew you're. No one was in that webinar. I'm like, they. They didn't let him in, did they? They're all in the waiting room.

They were all there.

It's the webinar version of a podcaster forgetting to hit record. Yeah.

Who's done that, though? That's crazy.

No, none of us ever. Never, ever, ever. We are perfect. So do you do a lot of public speaking now?

Yeah. So these days, like, all my work is in the world of serial entrepreneurship. That's what I've done now for 30 years. And so my talking is nowadays for business owners who like, are feeling stuck or jammed up in their business and they don't get why they've plateaued or more importantly, why the stuff they used to do isn't getting them where they want to go. It got them here, but not there. And so we go through the strategies on how to get unstuck and back to growth.

And is it the same kind of type of speaking as you were doing before? Like, are you selling while you're speaking or is it more educational? Like, how. How does it compare to what you used to do?

Yeah, so both. Right. I still very much love doing workshops and small group format. I've been facilitating mastermind groups now for about 20 years, which is, you know, small boardroom format. And I love that. I also enjoy teaching workshops when we're talking to, you know, dozens to hundreds of people. And in terms of stages, I, since those early days, have been on stages in front of thousands of people in like giant ballrooms and been totally at home and comfortable with that. All from those, you know, early engagements and getting the reps in.

So these days I enjoy that full gamut of speaking from, you know, your more larger room formats, keynote style to small, small group workshops as well.

How. How do you switch? Like, is there any, like, mental switch you need to make to go from the small groups or the small stages to the keynotes and the thousands of people kind of stages?

Yeah. So when you're on the stage with thousands, what you see is mostly blinding lights. You don't really get to see as much the faces in the audience and the body language and who's There or any of that, you are there sort of presenting into the blind light. And that is so, so different than being able to, you know, get out and walk amongst an audience or have interactive Q and A or ideally be with a group where you know some of the people there. So you have that more personal one on one connection as happens over the course of a workshop or smaller group thing. So it's not so much in my mind a matter of like mental prep in different ways. It's just a matter of knowing in one format you'll have a lot of good interactivity and you can build on that. And if you can't tell, like I love that kind of stuff.

Right. Versus being in sort of the one way broadcast mode, the kind of middle ground there is if you are in like a multi speaker panel or you're facilitating a panel. Right. Or you're doing something more like this as a conversation that lets you get that energy from the interactivity with other people for the benefit of a much larger group.

When you are on that stage, when you can't see people, it's just a blinding light. You're just kind of speaking into the abyss. Is there anything that you have found does help to get the audience engaged a little bit more and make it like slightly more interactive despite it being hard to really engage one on one?

Yeah. So sometimes like depending on the size of the AV setup or what their requirements are, you can have them bring up the house lights a little bit. You know, you can have folks do hand raises. I'm always a big fan of that. Like, you know, how many of you here today, blah, blah, blah. And then folks can raise their hand. It gets them moving. Right.

It gets you some interactivity, gets you a little bit of energy. When you do say something that lands and it amuses the audience, you can hear that collective laughter. Right. So that's always good. So anything you can do to get some energy back from the audience in some way is really powerful. If you definitely can't see and you're open to it, you can ask folks, like, you know, I'm gonna have you guys just go ahead and shout out, like when I say, you know, what's, what's your number one lead source in your business right now? Just go ahead and shout out what it is for you and your business. I know there's a lot of you, but just shout them out. And so you then can get that energy back from the audience.

And then a whole bunch of people shouting things out. And then people also hear, guess what other people around me have similar challenges. And so it creates some audience connection amongst themselves and you're then able to work with that and say things like, yeah, so I heard, you know, ppc. I heard, you know, direct outreach. I heard, you know, direct mail. So, yeah, we're going to be talking about all of those today. Right? And so now you get some of that engagement that you've asked, they've given, and now you get to deliver on that. And so that can work even if you can't see everyone.

Do you ever make up words that they said because you either couldn't understand them or you're really hoping for one answer and they didn't give it and it. You just had to pretend they did. I just hope that they couldn't tell,

you know, when you've, when you've done it enough, it's. It's funny. You can almost like, like an illusionist, you or mentalist, you know what's going to be said, right? That only becomes an issue with like a really small room. And yeah, and other times, other times you can't hear every word. So it's like, yeah, you know what, what I think I heard there was this, this, this and that, and like, maybe you were wrong, but you probably heard the things you want to hear. And you're also not going to tell your presentation to only those things, right? You're going to touch on those things and then the rest of the stuff you have in the presentation preloaded and ready to go.

Now you are, you speak from stages and virtually and physical stages, but you also, you have a book, you have a podcast. And whenever I talk to people about public speaking in the thought leadership space, it's always, you need to have the trifecta of thought leadership. You need stages, you need a podcast, you need a book. So you do all of them. What are a few ways that you've used your podcast or your book to grow your business and to get you on more stages?

It's funny because I have a habit in life of doing things backwards. Like, I start at the top and then somehow work backwards from there. So a lot of folks will create a podcast, and that generates a lot of content from that. They go and they create a book. And I instead went the genius route of write a book. And then after enough people badgered me over the head about it and asked why I didn't have a podcast, finally relented and said, like, okay, the book is now done and published. I'll get going on this podcast thing. And so while I could have used all these stories and lessons learned from my podcast to make the book creation process more colorful with, with stories from guests, I did it backwards.

And so the book and the podcast are like this really great combination. So the book is called your business growth playbook, and the podcast is your business growth podcast. And what we do on the podcast is we share the stories in an interview format of business owners who've grown their business, gotten stuck, use the strategies I cover in my book, and gotten back to growth. Now, maybe that happened before they read my book, but it's still the strategy I talk about. It's still that validation of like, hey, I know a thing or two. Look, it actually works out there, so it serves well there. The doors that open from having a book or having a podcast or any of these are really wild. Even before I had my book published, it was just in that pre launch period, not even finalized, I had the manuscript finally moving towards done.

I'd emailed out to folks and I heard from like a local and rather large chamber of commerce that they love what I was writing and want to know if I could come in and do a workshop or, you know, speak to the chamber community, which, by the way, is like my ideal client, right. Of local business owners who want to know more about how to grow their business. So those kinds of opportunities presented just by mere fact of having that book right now, does having a book guarantee that people are just calling you all day long looking to book you on stages or book you on podcasts? Like, no. I do get cold pod podcast pitches all the time. No different than getting all the cold pitches I get from people who said I should write a book and they wanted to help me do it for lots of money. So, like, there are businesses out there who will help you to do these things. The key piece in a lot of this, though, is leveraging one thing to get the next and having a sort of like circular swirl, like the trifecta. You're talking about your swirling triangle trifecta.

So the books is nice because for stages, one of the things I like to do is I think it's valuable if an audience has my book. So asking an event organizer to either have the speaking fee, cover a set number of books, and then, you know, a wholesale cost beyond that for the audience is a real value add for obviously book sales, but also credibility and also, you know, a much higher perceived value of the speaker. It's not just someone talking to you that you're getting a copy of the book. By virtue of attending this event. So everyone is a hero in that regard. Right? So that can be good. Podcasts in terms of having guests on the show are great from a network standpoint because many of them have a need for what you have to offer, which is not at all why I did it. But like real clients have come from people not just reading the book, but being on the podcast.

The podcast guests have turned into other podcast opportunities for me as a guest. And lastly, many of those podcast guests themselves are all have successful businesses. Many of them also have and do speak on stages. And so now you have more doors that open from that. So all in all, it's, you know, all three of those things are authority expertise pieces and they're all really powerful and valuable platforms. And the larger your platforms are in terms of podcast audience, book buyers, email lists, et cetera, the more opportunity is open for you.

I feel like you kind of answered my last question, which is generally, what is your like, final big piece of advice for people who want to get booked on stages? You just gave a lot of them in that last answer, but I'm going to challenge you to get find one more.

Yeah, I, I'm a huge fan of MVPs or minimum viable products. Like get something out there, ship something, start with it. I just saw, I think Dan Martell the other day just shared a really great image of his video from like 2016 to 2026 and was, you know, it was a side by side comparison. Like his original ones is like just a plain old white back, white backdrop and he's sort of just shouting at a camera and the modern day, ten years later has come a long way and he's like, 10 years ago this had no production quality. I was doing everything wrong. But like I was getting it out there and I'm talking to a void and no one's engaging. But here we are 10 years later, you know, tens of millions of followers on the platform and all this kind of stuff later, and then production quality has gone up and you learn a few things along the way. But none of that matters if you don't start out and get those reps in.

So like, I look back to some of my earlier podcast appearances versus where I am today or my earlier episodes where I was interviewing versus how I interview today. And you can see growth, but you don't get to that end result without getting those reps in and doing it. So start right, reach out to event organizers and ask people how to get in the door to speak at an event, create A presentation. Deliver your presentation to a small room. Like, do something. Get those reps in. Get those failures out of the way fast, and recover from your failures as quickly as possible.

Just go ahead and rip your pants.

Pretty much go ahead and rip your pants early.

I always tell, like podcasters or my clients that my goal for you is to be embarrassed when you are at episode one right now. When you get to episode 50, I want you to go back to episode one and be like, oh my God, why did you let me publish that?

Right?

And then you get to episode 100 and you say the same thing about episode 50 and it takes them a second to get what I'm saying, but then they understand that you have to start somewhere. You're never great at anything the first time you do it, but if you don't start doing it, you can never get better.

I. I'm an avid cyclist, a road cyclist, and one of my friends has a great saying that I love, which is one pedal stroke at a time and you start out riding, you look at some big, huge mountain far away with a tiny little thing on top that you're like, oh man. Like we're. We're riding to and up that mountain to that thing up top. Like, that is really far away and really high. But how do you get there? It's like one pedal stroke at a time. But you don't get there by over planning it or thinking about it. You get there by starting and going and continuing in that direction.

I love it. Well, thank you so much for being here and for all of your fantastic advice. Where can people find your book, your podcast, everything that you've got going on,

everything I got going on anymore is over at your business growth playbook.com you'll find ongoing content we have there. You'll find the podcast, your business growth podcast, which is also on all your favorite platforms. You'll find the book, which is also available on anywhere you buy books, digitally, audiobook, print books and so forth. Links to everything and more are all there at your business growth playbook.com awesome.

Everyone go check it out. Thanks again for being here. And everyone come back next week for another my first stage story.