In this impactful episode, Steve Lowell, Co-Founder of S&J Training Solutions Inc., shares how he helps coaches and other professionals leverage keynote speaking and other communication platforms to build their book of business. If you’re a coach or entrepreneur who speaks often (or wants to speak often) but are frustrated that people come up after your talk and sing your praises but don’t hire you, you won’t want to miss this episode.
You will discover:
– How to know whether your content is hitting the mark (and growing your business)
– Why selling from stage might be the most underrated lead gen strategy for coaches
– How to teach but not overteach by mastering the “tipping point” in your talk
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is the one and only Steve Lowell CSP, who has been speaking and performing on the stage since he was six years old, and that was about 54 years ago, from Ottawa, Canada. Steve is an award winning global speaker for over 30 years. He’s trained and mentored, mentored executives, thought leaders and professional speakers worldwide to deliver high impact keynote speeches drive revenue from the platform and build wealth through speaking. Steve, so excited that you’re here on the show, I’m a huge proponent. I believe keynote speaking is the most underappreciated tool for selling anything from a service for those like myself or in the coaching industry to salvation you know pastors from the pulpit, and we’ve got a number of folks in our audience who really come from both of those worlds, actually. And I’m wondering from you, do you agree? Is it one of the more underappreciated tools? And if so, why is it so effective? And how can we do better? But just start out of the gate here. Why is it so effective?
Steve Lowell
So, well, first of all, I agree it is one of the most underappreciated, and I think that’s because it’s one of the most misunderstood and and so when you ask, why is so effective? It’s an interesting question. You know, Scott, because it’s only effective for certain people and for those for whom it is effective. It can be profoundly effective. It can be transformational, life changing, effective, not only for the speaker, but for their clients and the people they serve and their audience. But it can also be very, very difficult for those who don’t really understand it and don’t don’t know how to do it. And so the reason why it’s so effective when you know how to do it well is because you get to change lives and minds and hearts on mass. And so I have this philosophy that that says, you know, the one on the stage always gets the business, always. And so when you’re on and we’re just not talking about a stage now, after COVID, as you know, the virtual stage now has opened up all over the planet. Now, opportunities to get in front of your audience have increased exponentially worldwide. So there’s more opportunity now to get in front of your target audience than there ever was before. And people are doing it, and it’s very exciting. And the opportunity there, of course, for folks like you and I and your audience is we can get in front of any audience we like almost at any time. The challenge is, other people have figured that out too. So those stages are are quite crowded. So there’s this balance between opportunity and challenge there, because if, if you have certain skill sets and certain understanding, it’s really easy to set yourself apart from everybody else who’s on those stages and on those screens.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So in my world, in particular, I work with a lot of coaches who are starting out. They will join our scale architecture program, whatever it may be. And you know, universally, they’re trying to build up a book of business. And I constantly will urge them and encourage them, and we give them some tools and resources to get out there and speak, but every once in a while, I get some reluctance to it. So when we’re going out and speaking, particularly as coaches, why do you think folks have that kind of hesitation before they’re really willing to jump all in?
Steve Lowell
You know, I think that there is that inherent fear of speaking in public, right? And you hear about that all the time, where it’s one of the greatest fears in the world and and I do believe that to be true, but one of the reasons why I think it’s people are so afraid is because they don’t really know how to do it. And, you know, we’re, you know, one of the biggest fears that we really have, one of the biggest psychological fears, isn’t necessarily speaking on the stage or on the screen or even death, it is a public humiliation. That’s what that’s what people really fear. That’s what drives the anxiety. And so people tend to avoid situations where there’s a possibility of them being publicly humiliated. And then you’ve got, you know, the the whole reputation damage and all those things, but with just a few skills, a little bit of knowledge and some minor successes, that fear tends to diminish very, very quickly. And yeah, and I see it all the time in my business, as do you, I’m sure where people will say to you, I’m sure Scott, they’ll say, Scott, I would love to get on more stages, but, you know, I’ve got this internal fear, or they’ll use all kinds of excuses. And what I found is little bit of a mindset shift, which I know is a big part of your work, and a few simple skills. And you take those things together, put them in a safe and fire environment, in front of a safe audience, and they only need one success, one minor little step forward in order to elevate, you know, their their their strength, and elevate their courage to do it again.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. I want to add to that, something I hadn’t really planned to ask about, but is striking me as necessary. One of the things, especially for folks that are new, right, new professional services, new coaches, imposter syndrome, is like, it’s a huge player, right? And I’ve seen a lot of folks who. So that hits like a peak of crescendo when it comes time to speak. How do you help coach folks through? Or if someone’s feeling that, what would you say to them ahead of a keynote?
Steve Lowell
Two things, and this has been said to me over the years. Number one is everybody who has a pulse feels imposter syndrome at one point or another. And chances are excellent that if you’re in front of an audience, or if you’re a speaker on a on a program of multiple speakers, chances are 100% probably 99% that you are not the only one with imposter syndrome. It’s a normal thing. It’s a healthy thing. It happens, and we have to confront it. And so that’s the first thing that I would say. The second thing, as I tell people, is it may never actually go away, so you don’t expect it to dissipate. It may. But for a lot of people, it doesn’t always go away, and it’s situational. It happens in this situation, and it won’t happen in in the next one. But then in terms of techniques, here’s the one thing that I’ve found makes the difference for me, and it makes the difference for clients that I work with, and that is the and that is this, and one of your previous guests, I think his name was Kevin, Kevin Johnson. I think that I listened to, he mentioned something like this, and that is, we need to put ourselves in a mindset of service whenever we speak or present on in an audience, on a stage, on a screen, on a podcast, in a video. The most important shift that we can make is a mindset of service. And that means, you know, why are we here? How are we here to serve this audience? And if I have to make a fool of myself to do that, that’s for their benefit. If something goes wrong, and I get through that, and it makes me look bad in some way, that’s part of the process of being in service. And so I care a whole lot less about how I come out of this, and more about how my audience comes out of this. And if I can put myself into that mindset, then really what it does is it takes the focus off the discomfort, off the fear, off that imposter syndrome, and you focus on providing value to that audience. And then we can chase down this whole track about how you define value, because a lot of people have struggled with that. But it’s about this mindset of being in service. How can I best serve this audience, give them the best I can possibly give given whatever circumstances arise?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I think there’s an interesting nuance, particularly in the world of coaching, in that when you look at it from the terms of service, you can serve the whole group, but if we’re honest, your skill and ability as a coach is, is, is most it’s almost exclusively going to be achieved after the sale, right? So part of that service is your job. There isn’t, and challenge me on this your job there isn’t necessarily to teach them everything right? It’s to get them thinking in a way and to open the door so that you can continue to serve them well. Would you agree with that?
Steve Lowell
100% you’re precisely right and and this is a huge mistake that I often see experts, not just aspiring speakers and people coming out of the gate, but even experts who’ve been to business for for decades, when they get to a point where they need to speak in order to get the audience to convert, a lot of pressure falls upon them, and sometimes that pressure is to, I’ve got to I’ve got to do so well. I got to give them so much information. I’ve got to impress them so much. They have to think so highly of me that they’re going to want to hire me afterwards. And so the mindset becomes this, let me teach them as much as I can. Let me show them how awesome I am. Let me show them how I can serve them. Let me give them some solutions to their problem. Let me give them some actionable items, some new ideas. Let me give them so much that when they walk away, they feel like they’ve received so much value that there’s no way they could even consider looking for somewhere else. And that’s a big problem, because what often happens is, if we over teach, if we over deliver, then they walk away thinking they have the solution, and then they don’t really need you anymore. So there’s this balance between providing value and providing an opening for them to come and see you. So I called it that there’s a tipping point in value this. There’s this point where we provide volume, meaning content more volume. And in our mind, we think in more volume means more value. But there’s a tipping point where the the value starts to diminish. The more volume, the more content you provide. So we need to know what that tipping point is. But even more than that, there is a tactical approach to doing this. And so here’s how I explain it, is we need to bring the audience’s awareness to a problem they never knew they had, or we need to bring their awareness bring them to a different perspective of the problem they do know they have. So what we’re after when we speak Scott, is not this. We’re not after this. We don’t want the audience to be coming up and saying, thanks for that. I’ve got all the great ideas now. I know exactly what to do. I’m so appreciative. You’re the best speaker of the conference, shaking your hand, patting you on the back, and I’ve got 21 pages of notes, of things I’m going to try and we think good. We’ve done our job, but that’s not what we want. What we want. It. We want to convert. What we want is we want the audience to come up and say, you know, I’ve never thought of it that way before. Now I understand why my problem exists. Now, how do I fix it? That’s what we want. And so there’s a technique to that, and there, and it’s, you know, there’s a mindset to that, and so we can chase that down, if, if you like, but that’s the the approach. So you’re right. Teaching too much is an absolute killer, and a lot of people do it because some somewhere they’ve been taught to do that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah I love this point because I remember a friend of mine who is a pastor. He once told me that one of the hardest lessons he learned early as a pastor was the more effusive and excited someone was when they came up to shake his hand after a message, the less likely they were to be there the next week. And it goes kind of along the lines, and one of the things that I think happens, both for pastors and for coaches, again, two weird like combination of my life here. What happens for both of those groups is we get that positive feedback, right? We’re kind of freaked out. We’re up on stage. We just want it to be over. To a certain extent, at least the first couple of times, you’re keeping imposter syndrome at bay. But it can’t go forever. You get off the stage and you want someone to tell you it went okay, and then someone comes up and they tell you all about how they learned all of these things, and actually creates this feedback loop where we think, hey, to give them what they want, I have to keep giving more and more. I have to give them more, and that tipping point get skewed. So my question for you is, how do we we? How do we deal with that kind of post feedback, and what is a way of getting constructive feedback that actually moves us forward, right?
Steve Lowell
And so it’s a big question. It’s a good question, but how we deal with that afterwards? If it’s done, it’s done like, I mean, you finish the talk, you finish the keynote, people come up and they tell you how great you were, and then they feel like they’re walking away with with all they need. And it’s really easy to identify whether you are effective or not, because either they’re in your coaching program or they’re not, and if they’re not, and if they’re not talking to you about it, then you have you have been not effective. You’ve made them happy. You’ve given them what they perceive to be great value, but what you’ve really done is just provided free coaching, and off they go. But if they’re in your coaching program, or if they’re setting appointments and if they’re asking you questions, that’s how you know you’ve done a good job. And so how do you get to that point? And so you asked about feedback. So the kind of feedback that we just talked about is, is I find not productive feedback for a coach, and that is, you were so great. I got everything I need. Thanks very much. Like, that’s that is not productive feedback, unless you know this, unless you understand, Okay, I’m getting that feedback, and I know that’s not the feedback I want. The feedback I want is what’s the next step? That’s the feedback I want. So that’s constructive feedback, if you can listen. If the people are coming up to you after you speak and they’re asking you, what do I do now? Now you know you’re getting closer to doing the job. So there is this balance that I want to talk about. So when we speak, you know, as a speaker, whether we’re being paid or not, we have what I call a responsibility package. So there are certain things that we are expected to do. We’re expected to educate, we’re expected to inform, we’re expected to entertain, we’re expected to inspire, we’re expected to challenge, we’re expected there’s all these things that we’re expected to do. These are the baseline requirements of any speaker, in my judgment, and so, and that’s where it starts. So you’ve got this responsibility package, but there’s also an opportunity package. And the opportunity package is at the other end of the kind of figurative stage where you’ve got your coaching programs, your consulting programs, whatever it is you’re selling there. And if you have what I call a high density audience, a high opportunity density audience, which means you’ve got an audience that is filled with people who should be in your coaching or consulting program, then you’ve got to fulfill that responsibility. You have to educate, entertain, inspire. You’ve got to do all of those things. You got to make them laugh and think and cry and all of the things we’re expected to do. But at the same time, you’ve got to change the perspective. You got to change the nature of their perspective on their condition, which means they need to go, Huh, I need something else here, and that’s the piece that’s missed. And you know, you’re missing that piece when people are not coming up and asking you, what’s next? Yeah, what do we do now?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah so good. So there have to be lots of people listening like, oh boy. Like, that’s the feedback I get all the time. How do I change it? So if you were to, and it would be a lot easier if we had a single person here and we could kind of talk through it, but where should you look to make a couple of changes to your talk to start moving the needle in that direction, right?
Steve Lowell
So it’s actually a big process, and that’s what I do. That’s the work that I do, is help people find that. That piece. But here’s where you start. You start by putting yourself in your audience’s world. Now, this is a general thing. I know you’ve got 1000s of people in your market and in your in your circles of influence. How do you do that? You look at a sort of a general 35,000 foot overview of their existence, and you look for things like this. What are they seeing in their world that they don’t want to see. What are they doing that they don’t want to do? What’s occurring that they don’t want to have occurring. What are they saying to themselves or to others that they don’t want to say? What are others saying to them that they don’t want to say? So we need to look into their world and get a sort of an experiential view of what’s happening in their world. Then what we do is we craft our keynote in a way that references their world. We need to, you know, we hear a lot about stories, right? Every speaker in the world knows they have to tell stories. The challenge, though, is most speakers are never taught how to tell the audience’s story. You see, the audience needs three things from you. If they’re even going to consider wanting to talk to you about working with you, they need three things. Number one is they need to be feel they need to feel understood. They need to think, you know what, Scott gets me. He gets me. Which means, when you’re speaking Scott, you got to tell their story. They need to be able to see themselves in the stress number one. Number two is they need to feel safe. They need to feel like, you know, Scott’s just not out to separate me from my money. I think I could actually talk to Scott, right? And then the third thing they need is confidence in Scott. They need to feel like you can actually do what they what they need. So when you craft your talk around those three outcomes, and you tell the audience’s story, instead of always your own story, or even, you know, a lot of speakers will tell testimonials. They’ll bring case studies into testimonials. And of course, you do that, and yes, you need that. But these are not meant to convince the audience. These are just qualifying things. These are meant to make the audience go, okay, okay, maybe, maybe this. Maybe Scott’s the real deal, right? The things that are the differentiators are when the audience says, Wow, he’s talking about me. We need to make the audience feel like you’ve been following them around for the last two years, and you know everything about the nature of their existence. I mean, you know, that’s an exaggeration, of course, but that’s the premise. So the way we start to do this is we put ourselves in our audience’s world and understand not just what they do and not even just what their problems are, but what are they experiencing? What are they thinking? What are they feeling, what are they seeing, what are they doing, all of which they do not want. And then, how do we offer a change to that? And that’s the foundation upon which we build, the messaging that separates us from everybody else and puts us in a position where the audience says, I think I need to speak to you.
Scott Ritzheimer
That is fantastic, Steve, this is one of those ones. I say this every once in a while, folks will have heard it on the show. There are times when you need to go back and just rewind and listen to it all again, because you missed about half of it. And this is one of those. Before I let you go there, I’ve got one more question that I like to ask all my guests, and that is, what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Steve Lowell
I wish everybody knew this I wish. And it’s about speaking, because I’m speaker coach, and I live in that world that speaking is not about a transference of information. Speaking is about a transference of emotion. And if you understand that and unpack it, it can be a transformative change to your speaking.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. It’s so true. Steve, there are folks listening to this, and you’re just opening up a whole new world for them. They want to know more about how they can take the speaking that they’re doing now and transform it to serve their audience better and to sell without selling, how can they find more out about you and the work that you do?
Steve Lowell
Yeah, everything’s on my website. Stevelowell.com, it’s all there. Yep, everything they need to know is there.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, Steve. Thanks so much for being on the show today. Just a privilege and honor having you here as an absolute blast for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Steve Lowell
Steve Lowell, CSP, has been speaking and performing on the live stage since he was 6. That was about 54 years ago! From Ottawa, Canada, Steve is an award-winning global speaker. For over 30 years, he has trained and mentored executives, thought leaders, and professional speakers worldwide to deliver high-impact keynote speeches, drive revenue from the platform, and build wealth through speaking.
Want to learn more about Steve Lowell’s work at S&J Training Solutions Inc.? Check out his website at https://stevelowell.com/
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