In this expressive episode, Mike Acker, Founder and CEO of ADVANCE, Coaching and Consulting, shares how he helped over 500 clients develop confidence in their leadership and communication, in order to deliver incredible presentations to influence their audiences.
You will discover:
– The true source of effective communication
– How to setup a meeting for success (and save 30% of your time doing it)
– The role of practice and preparation in effective communication
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And I’m here with yet another high demand coach. And that is the one and only Mike Acker. He’s an executive Communication Coach, a keynote speaker and author of 10 books, including speak with confidence. His clients come from startups to a fortune 500 companies that you might have heard of like Microsoft or Adobe, and as well as professional sports players, folks from international agencies, churches and relief organizations as well. He’s passionate about coaching business professionals to lead and speak with confidence. Well, Mike, I’m so excited to have you here. It’s been a while kind of getting to the point where we could finally sit down and record this episode. So I’m really excited to dive in. Before we do that, though, I’d love to just tell us a little bit about your story. What is it that you were doing before getting into executive communication coaching? And how did that ultimately lead you to make the leap?
Mike Acker
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, people need to know that when I talk about my speaking part, sometimes people just assume that this is just a natural. So let me just quickly preface I was born and grew with with a speech impediment. And then I had some horrific stories, being bullied, and actually psychosomatic fevers and flus. When I lived in Mexico, standing people and everybody laughing at me, then move back to United States and just did some amazingly embarrassing blunders and public speaking. So let me just preface that. From there. I ended up overcoming a lot of that, which is what now I help people do overcoming that. And then that ended up going into pastoral ministry that started on the stage where the first day I spoke in front of people was eight people. And then a couple of people left, so I was blundeling right away. And then by the end of my career, I was speaking to 10,000 people on a weekend. So after 18 years of doing that, I’m sitting around a campfire with somebody, well, actually, several people, and I said, I’ve just been thinking about doing something different. They said, I’d hire you in a heartbeat. What do you do, and he ended up doing sales. And it was medical sales, as in veterinary medicine, as a whole. I don’t know anything about that. And he said, your communication, and essentially your emotional intelligence, I’d hire you for that. So I made that switch. And right when I was making that shift, I wrote a book. Because I was coaching people on the side been coaching people on the side for years. And I wrote a book, and it just, it just blew up, it was up on Forbes, and all sudden it was on all this list. It’s still if you look at best public speaking books, my first book speak with no fear is on the majority of them. And when that happened, my coaching career started growing and growing and growing. Meanwhile, I shifted over sales, I did that very successfully to $800,000 territory, turned into $4 million. And I was doing both simultaneous. And then when the pandemic hit, I went full time into my coaching.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. Wow. So unpack this a little bit for us. Because I mean, we’ve all heard this stat and whether it’s true or not, but people fear public speaking more than death, and you had every right to fear public speaking yet you kind of found yourself in this position. Why? Why do you think you kept kind of either being pushed or pushing in that direction? And how did you ultimately overcome that?
Mike Acker
Yeah, I think there’s a couple of aspects to that. One, I think people looked at me and thought, Oh, that guy looks like he’s pretty outgoing. Let’s put them in front. He doesn’t look like that’s really getting to him. So let’s, let’s keep on putting that in front. Because I can go inside, I’m mortified. Right, which is a lot of people do. And yet, that fear was was very real to me. And it’s interesting, that fear right there. It’s not that they fear. When you really look at it’s not that you actually fear speaking more than death. It’s just that death is not as as immediate as that presentation you have on Tuesday. The presentation is coming on Tuesday death. Well, hopefully, that’s one of 95 results. I’m not really thinking about it. So that immediacy of oh my gosh, it’s coming now. And it gets everything up inside of people. So how did I overcome it? There was a lot of factors to it. And so part of the 10 books and then that the seven workbooks that I have, all on pack a whole bunch of it. There’s a couple of realizations I had. And one of them shows up in, in speak with no fear. And that’s, it’s not about you, this moment right here. Nobody tuned in, except for maybe your mom’s got, but nobody tuned in to go you know what I’m gonna show up on the podcast today. And I want to listen just to encourage Scott, every single person who tuned into the podcast, or is watching this on YouTube, you started watching this for you. Now of course, you’re a nice human being that you hope Scott and I are doing well. Ultimately, the you want something for you. So that was one major shift. I write about that speak with no fear. The other major shift I talked about in my newest book book published by Wiley called speak with confidence. And I talked about that you are the message. And when I really understood more of me and got more comfortable in my own skin, that I got more comfortable on stage.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, so you bring up a point, and it’s kind of the introversion extroversion, because some of the best speakers I know are actually introverts. And some of the folks who are most worried about public speaking are extroverts. And I think that surprises a lot of folks, because you think you take an extrovert, you put them in front of a bunch of people, and it’s magical, right? But so tell me a little bit, you know, how does introversion extroversion play into this? And what would be the challenges for folks on kind of either side of that spectrum when it comes to public speaking?
Mike Acker
Yeah, so introverts and extroverts, it’s really about how you get charged and what fuels you. an extrovert, a classically trained extrovert is someone who, who gets energy who gets renewed being with people. So I was on an airplane come back from a mission trip from Mexico, where we’re just surrounded by people. And I was just done, I was tired people, I would be what I call an introvert. Come back to that. But my my friend, Amy, she’s an extreme extrovert. So she came back from that trip. And she went out to be fueled re energized all of that, by hanging out with people. That’s what an extrovert is. And an introvert is someone who gets energized fueled on their own. So I come alive when I’m with people, but appeal on my own, which I’ve discovered a few years back that there’s a classification of introverts. So that’s, that’s for me. But if you look at those two classic categories, an extrovert, there’s someone who they’re, they’re feeding off the energy of the person. So if they haven’t good enough content, and good enough communication skills, then it seems like people are with him. And it feels it but many extroverts don’t have great content, they don’t have great ability to, to skillfully speak. And so people tune out, and then that kills them, because they feel people are not with them. So that’s the difference between extroverts that are good and experts that are bad. And introverts, it’s all about the ideas. So here I am with the ideas. I know, an introvert is often known as one of the best communicators United States, and he’s a full on introvert. But for him, he spends a whole bunch of time and he really comes up and writes about ideas that people really care for. And as a result of that, what happens, he comes alive when he’s speaking, and doesn’t even matter if people are really there. He’s just gonna speak that content. And he wants that content to feed people. That’s a lot of the differences between the two. Yeah, introverts like me. If I work on on my own, there’s a combination of those two, a fair amount of people more along that spectrum versus one or the other.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right, right. So as a Communication Coach, what would you say some of the most important work that you’re doing right now?
Mike Acker
Again, and again, and again, a lot of people who come meet with me, they’re there, when I have NFL coaches, I have professional athletes, I have politicians, I have people that can’t really talk about it at all, that I have to sign NDAs or, and then I have just a ton of mid to high level professionals. And again, and again, and again, they come to me just thinking that they need to improve some skills, Mike, I’m not very good with my tone of voice, and I need to be able to go up down, I need to get rid of them and earn it right. And this helped me help me develop some skills. Now, when we work together, one of the most important things that they realize is, wow, there’s a lot more to communication than just kill than just writing something. So a lot of people end up even after couple sessions, what we’re working on the first part of the first source of confidence communication, which is identity of man, I’ve never thought about myself like that before. Well, I’ve never processed that. There are a few people who’ve gone to professional counseling, even after beginning to work with me. It’s like they unearth something going, Oh, well, they never knew. And now they go, oh, there’s this holism that a lot of people experience and we’re talking with some of the guys I work with these big huge buff dudes, CEOs of companies that just on the outside, everything that you would imagine success is and yet in this one area, they feel it feel like they’re not top notch they feel worth less than others. And as a result of this, they end up feeling this syncing up of who they are. And it’s really cool. Now, that’s a personal level. You asked about what is important about that that’s on a personal level. On the external level, what’s amazing is think about communication. Some of the biggest things in life have happened through huge speeches, I have a dream. And many other ones, as speeches can communicate speeches can change lives. One of the coolest things is getting to work with that person, and sometimes working with their speech, that then goes out and changes lives. So I got to work with one international agency, that is that people will be aware of, and I helped write the speech. And knowing that that speech went out to a huge audience to have this impact, it was pretty darn cool.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s exciting. That’s very cool. So speeches tend to be the the kind of, you know, obvious and initial place we go to when it comes to communication. But for a lot of executives, they don’t spend a whole lot of their time giving speeches, right? They’re not preparing for the next TED talk, or whatever it may be. So where do you feel? Where do you feel the biggest leverage of if you could just say, hey, if most people could improve their communication in this area, it make a massive difference in their productivity, their effectiveness, their happiness, whatever it may be.
Mike Acker
So let me disagree with you on the speeches, although they don’t give a formal speech, they speak all the time. And they give all kinds of speeches, that if they thought of his speeches, their productivity would go way up. Okay, so I met with a group 1000 person 1000 person organization. And when I met with them, I audited their, their meetings. So on the on a low average, they were having three, because between all their technical people, their management, everybody, so they were having three meetings per week, on a low, low average, every meeting was an hour, hour, out of that hour. One wanting minutes are wasted. So 20 minutes times three meetings, that’s one hour, they were wasting on a minimum 1000 hours per week. Well, so even put a very low amount of dollar per hour on that. You’re talking 10s of 1000s of dollars every single month, that they’re wasting simply because of very poor communication. Things like at the beginning of a meeting doing things like alright, well, yeah, so yeah. And then they do like, one of these openers where you, you’re kind of reading the audience, and you’re not quite ready, and you’re not really confident. So you do something like Yeah, everybody, everybody doing good right here. All right, yeah. That kind of stuff repeatedly throughout it, as well as not being prepared. And so they’re trying to figure out what they’re saying as they go. So they’re poor speaking, of course, this is just a team. Meeting, but still speaking, because of poor team meeting leadership, because of poor team meeting, speaking, because of poor presentations, they’re wasting 10s of 1000s of dollars, we need to start thinking of speaking, as all encompassing, whatever I’m getting across my message. So an update in a meeting a tell me about yourself, and interview. Speaking as a universal advantage, that means that if you can increase or decrease your speaking in one area, it will, it will go across to others. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO or a truck, driver, truck driver or a stay at home mom, it doesn’t matter. If you’re speaking can increase can improve, you’ll come across more productive, you’ll get your ideas across to get more by and you’ll persuade people more people will see you as more credible, more confident, people will see you as productive. Take two people, exact same education, exact same IQ, exact same experience, put them as twins in all areas of life. They’re they’re kind of considerate, they’re hardworking, all the things that you want, but one at a level eight of speaking and one at a level for Who do you think will rise to the top? By far the one with an eight, by far, so speaking is a universal advantage. And it will help people in all areas, one of the worst things that people can do is undermine that and really just think, you know, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It’s just speaking, and I have this happen on a regular basis. In fact, in fact, Scott here yesterday, I was talking with a person VP have a specific role in a growing company of 100 and something and they they hired this guy, we’ll just call him John, they hired a guy named John and they, they elevate him to a pretty darn high role just below C suite. He’s a horrible speaker. And they’re frustrated with him. They might you got to work with him. Like I only work with people who want to work with me. And when I got on the call with him, it was evident to me that he didn’t want to work with me that he wouldn’t do it. So why not? I mean, he realizes so Yeah, but you elevated him to that platform. So he sees his current speaking as already providing him everything he needs to be at the level he’s at. So you hired him with something that frustrates. So if you want him to change, you got to be very direct with him. And you have to make the pain of change as staying the same, greater than the pain of change, because right now, for him to change what he needs to change. It would be painful for him to commit that time. Yeah. Okay, so what is that one thing? And he asked me, what is the number one thing, the number one thing that frustrates and annoys and takes away and makes you look less confident is the use of fillers and in my book, speak with confidence, I talked about different fillers. The one that we’re probably most commonly using is, um, the second one that people commonly use is some kind of extra word like, right? You know, anyways, or anything that is a filler.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, the so I catch myself doing that all the time, all the time, especially going back through these recordings. I was like: oh no, I did it again. It’s so easy to me that so it’s a great, great point there. Now, I’m gonna be self conscious the rest of this episode. But there’s a question that I have here. And this is actually one of my biggest struggles. And that is the idea of preparation and practice ahead of time. And as in business, we’re very bad at practicing just across the board, right? Everything is we’re in the game we’re going, there’s not this kind of clear, like, Hey, sit down and practice. Okay, you’re in the game go. And because of that, I think we have a habit of undervaluing and under exercising both practice and preparation. So when it comes to something like a meeting and setting up, you mentioned this earlier, the kind of generic Hey, how’s everyone doing? How do you prepare for an open a meeting? Well, is there something that you can do to practice that to be better at it when the moment shows up?
Mike Acker
Yeah, the vast majority of basketball practice, or at least professional sport practice, happens, volt lead of an actual game. So it’s happening just on the core, it’s happening by yourself. It’s Michael Jordan shooting and shooting and shooting, it’s LeBron James getting up at 4am. In the morning, wherever it was that Kobe Bryant, getting at 4am in the morning, it’s, it’s a lot of it is on your own, a lot of is in front of a mirror. A lot of it is the couple of people that you trust your team. So you don’t actually have to practice exactly the the meeting again, and you just need to practice. And so a lot of the clients I work with, they’re doing two minutes of practice a day, just by themselves in front of a mirror, typically after they brush their teeth. And you’re just practicing good speaking skills. And that’s what you’re doing basketball. It’s not that you’re doing all this all the time or all this all the time. You’re just practicing this and this and this and this at different times. So what can you do to grab a hold of their meeting? One you can set a culture, because a lot of the problem of speaking is the culture that is in and a lot of me think about churches. That’s my background, right? Why does one church speak this way? When church speak this way? When church have a hour long sermon, when church have a 20 minute sermon, much higher energy when churches is because of the different culture of it? Why is it that people can go to one of the annual MacBook addresses and listen for a whole hour? It’s because Steve Jobs developed a culture now Tim Cook stepped into it and did it well. So first, you got to develop a culture. So when I was in an executive role, for a short period of time in the business world, one of the things I did is I set a culture that as soon as we started the meeting, we started at eight o’clock, I’d be outside greeting people beforehand. I’d walk up in front and start the meeting. But that was a culture that I set. So if some people listening to this right here, when did that tomorrow? And then what often happens, change it shortly after that. It’s kind of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Whiplash, I don’t know what’s happening right here. So set a culture, stick to it. Of course, you can make changes gradually over time. But then grab a hold of their tension. Let them know what this meeting is about, unpack it, and then end on purpose. Think about how I said that grabbed their attention. Often what we do is the opposite. Yeah. So all right, well, all right. Well, let me get this PowerPoint started right here and just hold on one second, if you already lost, I was attempting to get their attention. And then get into what this is about about that. You can tie those two together. My second book, right to speak is about that. So write about that and speak with confidence. It’s something I coached with. So say for example, you start off with Stephen says, our productivity is lower than ever. quick stat shows up. Today, we’re going to work on increasing our productivity. Okay, now, everybody Yes. My mind’s shifted, what I’m going into, I didn’t need to know about the weather. I just cut 20 minutes off the, the whole time, because we’re going to talk about productivity, I’m not going to throw in how this department over here is doing this, something over here and how this new update at the software is over here. I’m gonna stay on track. And I’m talking about productivity at the end. I’m not gonna be like, yeah, so well. Well, that’s, I guess that’s what we’re about to do. A lot of people just wrap up with some kind of lame ending and said, so once you go back to your desk, once you write down one thing that you can enact today, and then you have your closing statement. So that right there is a system, and I’m all about systems for repeated communication. And you can practice the system. Right? Today, I’m doing this basically just what I did right there, boom, boom, boom, boom practices, system practices system. Intentional communication, like that will dramatically reduce business time. And now people will say sometimes, well, you know, part of that is connecting good, connect on purpose instead of accidental.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good. So I’d love to kind of pull this all together, put a bow on it. There’s a question. I like to ask everybody. And it’s this, what’s the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody listening and watching today knew?
Mike Acker
Yeah. So I talked about the three sources of confidence and communication, most books are going to focus on skills, here’s how you should get rid of fillers. Here’s how you should do something. A lot of books will also work on messaging, how to organize your thoughts, but very few books. Love, this isn’t my middle finger, I’m holding up as I’m counting down my fingers. The the third one is your identity. It’s who you are. A big source of communication is really understanding of confidence. Communication is understanding who you are. I think a lot of people really haven’t thought through that. That’s that’s something that you know, exactly. It’s changing. It’s morphing ebbs and flows. But the more comfortable you are with your strengths, your weaknesses, your personality, ality versus others, and really who you are. Ultimately, you are the message of reason why you don’t just send in your PowerPoint slides, or just send in a recording of your, your voice, and everyone just listens to it or listens to Siri reading. It’s because they want you they hired you, you are the message. So get very comfortable with you.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s so good. Yeah, that is so so good. So on that note, it’s a great segue into last question for you. And then we’ll make sure folks know how to get a copy of your book. But the question is this, take off your coach hat for a moment, put on your your CEO hat be the message for us here in this moment, as well. And what’s the next stage of growth look like for you and your business and what challenges we have to overcome to get there.
Mike Acker
And the difficulty for me is that I went from large teams of fortune 500 company, super large teams in church. I mean, the last time I ever saw in church was 70 plus. And for me to go into growing, it really means I have to expand again and do large teams again. And I did that for about 20 years of my professional life. There’s been this reticence on my behalf on scaling. And just going you know, just be me and my four team members, let’s just not grow. And that has that has taken opportunity. So I quickly grew to six figures and then doubled it tripled it within a couple of years that I did this, but that has. Now I’m stuck in a spot. And I’m just thinking, do I want to go more New Orleans scale that I want to launch? Do I want to build out? Or that’s really, that’s really where I’m at this spot. I’m actually going away in December, kind of do an entrepreneurial gathering. And I’m really going to be deferring this. I’m gonna walk away either going, Okay, I’m going to do this. Or I’m just going to enjoy where I’m at. And there’s pros and cons of both.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. It’s so true. And the thing that I love about that is up into the right is an option. It’s not that you don’t have that option, but you have the sobriety, if you will, to just say is that right? You’ve done that you’ve tried that, is it the right thing, and it’s not always up into the right. There are other things in life that matters, other things and work that matters. So well done on that. It’s not an easy choice, but it’s an important one. And I look forward to seeing where you land on that. But before we go, you’ve gotten a bunch of books out but tell us about the kind of the main one right now that the most recent release was published by Wiley. Tell us the title and where we can find it.
Mike Acker
Yes, it’s called: Speak with Confidence. And I’ve literally gone to, I think I’m now at four different Barnes and Noble that I’ve gone to the reference section and pulled it off the public speaking spot in Manhattan and other places been pretty cool to see it is. It is really, my framework is my Hallmark coaching. It’s what I’ve been doing now for about full time for four years, and then for 20 years all together, Speak with Confidence walking you through three sources of confidence and communication. Just had someone this morning, wrote me on LinkedIn was talking about how it was a game changer for them. I think it’s about 200 reviews right now. So be very helpful. I’d be honored if you get it on audio or from from Barnes and Noble or Amazon or wherever you might want to pick it up.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Go ahead and grab a copy of that book. You will not regret it. Mike, thank you so much for being on just an honor and privilege having you here. And for those of you who are listening you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I have to get as much out of this conversation as I know I did. And I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Mike Acker
Mike Acker is an executive communication coach, a keynote speaker, and the author of ten books, including SPEAK WITH CONFIDENCE. His clients come from startups to Fortune 500 companies among others, professional sports, international agencies, churches, relief organizations, and celebrities. Such companies include Microsoft, ADOBE, INOAPPS, Phusion Projects, and IMF. He passionately coaches business professionals to lead and speak with confidence. His books have been translated into several languages. His first book is designated as the #1 book on overcoming fear of speaking on Forbes.com.
Want to learn more about Mike Acker’s work at ADVANCE, Coaching and Consulting? You can get a copy of his book Speak With Confidence on Amazon and check out his website at https://www.mikeacker.com/
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