Little Things, Big Impact

Speaker A 00:05 Welcome to the Wisdom Parlor, a thoughtful discussion of important ideas among people who are committed to succeeding in life. This is a gathering of leaders from a variety of industries and our role here is to help you reach the top 1% of your field of choice. I'm Jim Cathcart, so come with me and let's discover how much more successful you could be. Jim Cathcart 00:38 Hello, Experts, I'm Jim Cathcart and welcome to Wisdom Parlor. We just came off of a very successful Going Pro Experts Academy and Mastermind event in La Jolla, California. And we awarded the first ever Certified Professional Experts Medallion and certificates to 22 people. The 22 inaugural recipients of the CPE Certified Professional Expert are people that serve as role models for what professionalism looks like. And we're going to continue this tradition. Our next Experts Academy Summit is going to be in Austin, Texas, downtown September 8, 9, 10 and 11. And it's open for anyone to attend. If you feel like you're a professional expert or you, you're striving to be one and you want to advance your practice as an expert based business, that's the place to be. And it's going to be a ton of fun. And I look forward to being with you today. I wanted to talk with you about something that came up in 1981. 1981, Phoenix, Arizona, Biltmore Hotel. It was the National Speakers Convention. And one of the keynote speakers there delivered a speech that became sort of a signature speech, like the number one hit of a hit record, you know, signature speech of almost a decade following that. And the speech was delivered by Joel Weldon, a Hall of Fame speaker based in Phoenix who has been a friend, a mentor and a colleague of mine for years. And, and Joel gave a speech titled Elephants Don't Bite. It was a very funny speech, but at the same time, it was a very meaningful and motivational speech that taught us some important principles. He came out on stage and he said, let me ask you a quick question. How many of you have ever been bitten by an elephant? No hands went up. Hundreds of people in the audience. He said, okay, well, how many of you have been bitten by a mosquito or stung by an ant? And all the hands went up. And he said, well, that proves it. Then he paused. He said, it's the little things that get you. What a great way to make the point. You know, usually what we worry about is the big things. What we can change are the little things. And if we do change the little things, we avoid some of the bad big things. So day to day, how do you do that? What do you do with this concept, by the way? I just noticed something in the screen behind me. This is Joel Weldon's signature item. Like, I have the acorn as my signature logo item. This is Joel's success comes in cans not in cannot. And that's a registered trademark of Joel Weldon and Associates. But I think that's super clever. Cans not in cannots. It's not what you can't do, it's what you can do. And you can do the little things. For example, I have a friend who struggles regularly with depression, and every time we talk, he makes statements like, I have any state, some condition, like OCD or whatever. You know, I have this condition. And I correct him. I say, pause a second. When you say I have, you embrace what that is, and it becomes a part of what makes you who you are. Now, you may have experienced that for years, but that doesn't mean it's a permanent condition that cannot be alleviated. So instead of I have, why not say I have struggled with whatever the item happens to be like depression. I've struggled with depression. Instead of saying, I have depression or I am depressed, I've struggled with depression. Well, why? Why say it past tense, Jim? Because it's never permanent unless you embrace it to make it so. You say, well, you don't know that. No. And you don't know the contrary either. So maybe it has been a condition that's existed up to now, not your problem, necessarily, going forward. It's like, I don't know how to do that yet. You might figure out how to do whatever that was. I'm not big enough yet. I don't know how yet. Whatever it is that you're struggling with, don't embrace it as a condition. Just identify it as something you've dealt with or something you're currently dealing with, and then find a way past it by focusing on the little things that'll make the big things ultimately go away. How do you grow a big, beautiful garden? Well, you don't have the landscapers come in and install a big, beautiful garden. You clean up the land, you put in the appropriate nutrients, fertilizer, et cetera. You plant the seeds, you water it, you protect it, it grows, you trim it, you nurture it, and you end up with a big, beautiful garden. It's the little things that make the big things happen. And this is, you might say, well, why are you talking about this in wisdom parlor? Because that's what wisdom is, is understanding fundamental life truths and applying them to your day to day situation. There's an old poem, it says for want of a nail, and I'm paraphrasing, for want of a nail meaning a nail in a horseshoe, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. Its foot wasn't protected, it came up lame. The horse was lost. For one of a horse, the soldier was lost. The soldier couldn't battle from the horse, had to do it on foot. And the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the war was lost. For want of a war success, the nation was lost. So where'd it start? Little things. I was reading something today I found very amusing. Do you remember the urban myth, which is actually based in truth, that rock bands have bizarre requests, self indulgent requests in their contract when you book them. And the classic one that's always referred to is when the band Van Halen specified in their contract, legal binding contract, no Brown M M's candy backstage. In other words, if they had M M's candy backstage, whoever had booked them had to separate out the brown M M's and throw them away. Because if the band or the crew found brown M M's backstage, then the payment for the entire concert was due. And without performance. You say that's absurd. Well, yeah, it is absurd, but the backstory explains it all. This was not a bunch of drugged out hippies looking for a way to indulge themselves. Instead, it turns out it was a piece of wisdom. David Lee Roth, the lead performer in the band Van Halen, told the story recently. I was reading this in a news feed I get from Ken Rutkowski in a newsfeed called Metal M E T A L. And he said David Lee Roth was disclosing why they had that stipulation. He said most bands would show up at a venue, major bands, with three tractor trailer, you know, 18 wheeler rigs full of equipment. He said ours had nine tractor trailer rigs. Nine. Three times as many technical details, props, etc as normal big name bands, he said. And our setup was very technical, so we had to be extremely careful about every single thing. For example, just putting up the rigging had to be done in a very specific way so that the rigging would support the weight of the speakers, the lights and the other things that were hanging from it. Because if it didn't, it could crash down and kill people. The stage had to be a certain way to support the weight of certain things. The sound system, the electrical details, all had to be laid out in a very, very precise fashion. Otherwise the Band couldn't put on the kind of show it was known for and it would be too dangerous for them to perform some of the parts of that complex performance. You say, okay, yeah, but what about M M's? The stipulation in their contract that specified no brown M M's backstage was put right in the middle of a long list of technical specifications. And they knew that if someone read the technical specifications, their attention would be drawn to that. And if their attention had not been drawn to that, they knew they weren't reading the technical specifications closely enough. And so everything had to be double checked. So it wasn't about self indulgence at all. It was about safety and of all things, professionalism. Wow. Getting the people you work with to take the details as seriously as you do. I heard one time about Barbra Streisand being criticized for being so meticulous and demanding about the stage set up, the sound, the lighting, all the details. Well, at the time she was accused of being that way. She was also the single most popular major female singer in the world. I see a causation, I see a relationship between the little details that were so, so very important and the level of success she was able to achieve. So let's throw this over to you and me. How important are the details? How much time do you take? How many specific details do you attend to to make sure everything's just right for your performance when you're doing what you do for your client? My company focuses on experts. What Cathcart Institute's all about is training people in expert based businesses where you're selling your expertise to solve somebody's problem for pay. Training the people to become truly professional so that we can certify them as professional experts. In my book on speaking what to do when you're the speaker, it came out last year. I have in the back of that book what I call the Speaker's professional Pledge. The Speaker's Professional Pledge. And it goes along with this, the same thinking as the contract for the band Van Halen, except mine is a lot more benign and less technical. It says, here's what I will do when I speak for your group. In other words, I'm. I'm making a commitment in writing up front as to what I will do and will avoid doing when doing a presentation or conducting training for that company in preparation. I separate mine out. Here's what I'll do in preparation, here's what I'll do on site. Here's what I'll do during my presentation, and here's what I'll do after. Okay, I'll give you some examples. I will, in preparation, be available to discuss your plans for my presentation. I'll know what your organization does and why you do it. I will know why I'm there and have a specific plan and to achieve your goals. In my talk, I'll know the theme of your meeting and I'll relate to it. I'll know why your people would want to hear what I have to say on this topic. I will coordinate with your other speakers with the setup crew. I'll notify you in advance of my travel details and when I arrive on site. I will be accessible to you from the moment I arrive until the moment I depart and then in all capitals I have one statement. I will tell you the truth 100% of the time. I'll retire early the night before my speech. I'll be reasonable and considerate relating to room charges or incidental expenses, if any. I'll be in the meeting room where I'm going to speak for a sound check at least one hour in advance. I will coordinate with your setup crew. Stay out of the way until it's my turn. I'll study your audience and your other speakers. I'll be dressed appropriately. I'll send you the files of any handouts or visuals I'll be using. Then during my presentation, I will never use off color language. I will interact constantly with the audience. I'll never be rude to an audience member. I react maturely, good naturedly and flexibly to any problems that arise. If there's an emergency, I promise to be the calmest person in the room and I will help guide others. I'll stick to my time frame and adjust if needed. After the presentation, I'll stay around briefly to answer questions, pose for photos, give autographs, hear audience comments. I'll check out and depart from the hotel with minimal effort from you. I'll provide receipts if you need them. For my larger expenses like air travel, I'll send a PDF copy of my slide so everyone can have one. I'll never disclose sensitive information about your group to any other group and I'll accept any phone calls or emails for follow through so I tell people in advance. I will do the little details that add up to allowing me to do my best possible job on stage for you. So what's your professional pledge? What is a professional reminder? Because we've covered this in previous wisdom parlors. Someone who is paid for what they do, they do it as a service to other people. They are highly educated in their craft. They continue their education for a lifetime, constantly renewing and refreshing their education. They do it according to a set of ethical standards. They tell you the truth. They do what they say they will do. They're people of integrity. That's a professional. And my goal in my business and in my life is to improve the world one professional at a time, to help other people become more professional in what they do, to constantly be as professional as, as practical in what I, I am doing and to encourage others to see professionalism as cool as something they ought to want to do. It's sort of like the implied goal that exists for them. So when it comes to the big things and the little things, how important are the little things? I would say immensely important. For example, if you're a speaker and you have an introducer who's going to tell the audience about you before you get up, what do you do to help that person feel comfortable as your introducer? Well, I give them my bio, really my cv, curriculum vitae, vital curricula about yourself. That's what they call it, an education. And that's the way it was done for years. But when I joined the National Speakers association, when we were just a little club of people that wanted to create a profession around speaking for pay, the practice in that day was you either let the introducer come up with whatever they had or you gave them your sort of your resume and they would read it to the audience. We decided it's far more practical and humane to provide an introduction that's virtually scripted and tell the introducer, please read this exactly as it is or feel free to paraphrase it. But there's no need to go into more detail than this. Just let them know, why is this speaker speaking to our group today on this topic? In other words, why should they listen and then just say, let's welcome our speaker? What we found was the vast majority of people who were doing the introductions of speakers at meetings had little or no experience ever introducing speakers at meetings. They had no training in how to do it, so they just approached it in whatever way they could. And a lot of them would just get up and say, okay, our speaker today is the graduate of Southern University and, and has owned a business for 20 years and, and wrote a book called Blah blah, blah blah, and let's welcome our speaker. And that's about how a lot of introductions went. Or others would get up and tell a joke and try to be funny and then poke fun at the speaker, thinking that was a Cool thing to do. In neither case did it make the audience eager to hear the speaker. So my introduction, when I give one to somebody, and sometimes I don't. I'll tell you about that in a minute. Mine says, our speaker today is the author of 26 books. He's delivered 3, 500 convention speeches all over the world over the last 48 years. Past President of the National Speakers Association. He's got a TED Talk that's got 2.7 million views. But there's another side of our speaker that's more interesting. He's also been a nightclub singer, a bartender, a bill collector, an insurance agent, an Internet business owner, an association executive. He may not be able to hold a job, but I understand he can hold an audience. Let's welcome Jim Cathcart. Now, you can say, well, Jim, that's making fun of you. Well, no, it's allowing that the introducer to have a small laugh with the audience at my expense. But he's already made or she has already made the case. I'm a fairly substantial guy when it comes to speakers, and there's another side of me that makes me more human and more real. So this guy's done a lot of things. Wow. Let's see what he's got to say, what it boils down to. Right. Well, the other day I was in Phoenix, and I was speaking to a group of consultants, experts and speakers, every one of whom had read my bio in the program announcement, either in the email or in the printed program. So everyone in the room knew who I was. They knew enough about me to know I was credible as their presenter that day. And I went up to. And I was talking on the subject of how do you become and remain a leading expert in your field? So I told the introducer, come here. Don't do an introduction. Just say, ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome our keynote speaker, Jim Cathcart. She said, really? I said, really? I said, there's a reason for this. She said, okay. So she did it. Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome our keynote speaker, Jim Cathcart. I walked up, I said, good morning. Good morning. And they said, or I said, how many of you, before this meeting started, had absolutely no clue who I was? And a few hands went up and I said, okay. So most of you read the material or at least had a sense of who I was, and even those who didn't. How many of you think that if she had done a lengthy introduction with all my credentials and told you all the positions I'd held in the books I'd written, the places I'd been, it would make my speech better, no? So really, the success or failure of my speech totally depends on what happens starting right now, and is not enhanced or detracted from by a long, flowery introduction. So let's talk about it. I'm here today to talk with you about how to become more of a leading expert in your field. And here's how I've done it in my own. So pardon me for using myself as an example, but my example worked, and I figured you'd want to know what I learned along the way. So this isn't about me saying, isn't Jim wonderful? This is about me saying, here's what I tried, that worked, here's what I tried, that didn't go and do likewise, right? So I did the presentation, got a great response, excellent response. And then I did a second presentation and then a third that day for that audience, and the whole thing was done without any particular introduction. Let's talk about little details, though. When I got to the meeting, I got there an hour and a half early. I went in fully prepared with my laptop with a connector, you know, all the little gadgets you need to connect to different types of output. And I had a USB thumb drive with my presentation on it, the PowerPoint. So I immediately went to the guy in charge of the sound system and the lights and the computers, and we started getting me set up. And I found that I needed to be able to connect to Zoom in order to show my presentation because they were live streaming it as well as doing the in person program. And my laptop computer needed an update before it could run Zoom, and the update took an hour and a half. So when we tried to do the update and it showed it was going to take an hour and a half, we had to forget about that. And I gave him my usb and he was having great difficulty getting my program loaded into their system in time for the beginning. So I'm sitting there sort of, you know, getting really, really antsy because I use my PowerPoint as my notes. We're down to the wire and it's time to introduce me. And so I said to him, don't do it. Don't Even use my PowerPoint in this first hour. And he said, well, I said, I'll handle it. He said, okay. And so when I was introduced, I stepped up, I started the presentation, and then I said, by the way, I would normally use PowerPoint for this portion of the presentation, but we had some technical difficulty with that. Today. But let me tell you what we're, we're going to cover. I'm going to describe the arc of my career, starting as a brand new trainer who decided to go out and give speeches and seminars for pay. And then I'm going to show you how the career came up over many years and what the highlights were and the low lights and what you can learn from that. And so everybody's. Yeah, yeah. And I started telling stories and I had speech notes about this big a little post it to myself with a handful of words on it. And that was my entire one hour speech. But it went beautifully. And then for the second hour, we were able to solve the tech problem and I was able to use my PowerPoint, so that was fine. And then I gave a PDF file of all the PowerPoint, even the portion I didn't use, to the meeting planner. And they sent that document out to all the people in their organization. So everybody got the images they would have gotten anyway. And I didn't send out, this is important. I didn't send out the PowerPoint file. I sent out a PDF, a file, a document. There was a picture of the PowerPoint file that had every one of the slides in it. Why a PDF? Because what I found over the years is if you send out, if I send out the PowerPoint slides, many people capture PowerPoint slides for their own use, never referencing me at all. So my trademarked personal proprietary material gets used by others without credit. And I have had occasion over the years where a couple people said to me, oh, you're using, you know, Jane does concept? No, actually it's my concept. No, I saw Jane Doe last year at the conference and that she had the exact same slide. Whoops. Right? So a PDF file, they get to see everything, but they can't just pick it up and use it in their own material. They can recreate it, but that creates a new and different image and requires extra work. So it's not as likely. So little details. Little details like when do you go to the bathroom just immediately before showing up in the meeting room to get ready to go on stage. And what else? You know, how are you going to dress? First off, find out how the people are going to be dressed before you get there and then either dress up or dress down to the point where you are one step better dressed than the typical audience member. If they're in T shirts and jeans, wear a polo shirt and slacks or something like that if you're a man. If they're in business casual, then wear A sport cup and maybe a tie. If they're in sport coats, wear a suit. So whatever is appropriate for the setting. Just give yourself a little edge in looking a touch more professional than they do. And is it okay to show that you're going to be relaxed and be one of them? Of course. But start with a good, solid, professional first impression. Don't try to look like them. Try to look like you're compatible with them and you fit in. So the way you're dressed, the way your materials are laid out, is part of the presentation. And also just look at the little details and get them. All right, let's go back to the elephants. Don't bite. Masterful presentation by Joel Weldon in 1981 in Phoenix. It was in the Biltmore Hotel in a big ballroom. The ballroom had a stage. Joel chose not to get up on the stage because of the size of the group. He stayed on the same level as the audience. And he put his screen, which was one of those projector screens that unfolds, you know, you put the arm up and then you undo the screen and hang it up there. One of those classroom screens from your school days, right. This was before they were installed frequently in hotels. So he put that up on the stage so he could get a clear image up there. And it didn't matter where he stood, he wouldn't be in the beam of light from the projector at that time. It was slide projector, right? And so he had the screen up there raised about this much from where he was standing. He was able to stand there among us. Now, if we'd been a large group, like hundreds of people, he couldn't have done that because all we would have seen is the top of his head. One time at a conference in San Diego, I saw Stephen Covey and I was the first one to show up. There were 700 people and Dr. Covey was in the room getting ready and he had on a three piece suit. And he came over to me, say, excuse me, Jim, can I borrow your tie? My tie? He said, yeah, I forgot mine. Oh, okay. So I took off my time, gave it to him. He put it on, buttoned his vest again and got all packaged up and he had a bald head. And that'll be meaningful in a moment. So the meeting starts, there's 700 people in the audience. I'm in like row eight, and they introduce Dr. Covey. He gets up on stage and he's a brilliant presenter and a absolutely amazing, intelligent man. So he gets up on stage, he Starts speaking. And then being the college professor that he was, he felt more comfortable down in the classroom. So he stepped off the stage into the front rows of the convention audience. And he stayed there for the balance of the entire two hour seminar problem. From row three back, all we could see was the top of his bald head. The first few rows, could see his face, see his gestures, relate to him. The rest of us just knew he was speaking and saw the movement of his head. Little details make a big difference. He would have gone over probably two to three times better with that audience had we been able to see him instead of merely hear him. Little details, like, if you're going to have a stage, where are the steps off to the side in the center? Are they solid? Are they shaky? Is there a handrail? Do you need one? Will you be walking into the stream of light from a projector at some point? Will you be able to stay in the spotlight or the lighted area where the audience can see your number one audio visual, tool your face and see your hand gestures, your body language, See, little details matter. So Joel set up his screen up on the stage. He identified the area where he was going to be and where the lighting was best. He literally unscrewed, loosened some of the lights in the ceiling, got a ladder and loosened some lights in the ceiling so that certain areas were darker for better image on the slides and other areas were well lit for better light on him. He went to the big doors coming into the convention auditorium. And he realized that when the door opened and closed, there was a loud click from the latch. So he got masking tape and taped over the latching mechanism so that when the door was pulled on, it opened smoothly and closed silently. Because if people were going out in the hallway or going to the restroom or something, or arriving late, it would distract everyone else. He also took the remainder of his tape and he taped off the last three rows on both sides of the room. And why would he do that? And how did he do that? Well, first off, he just took the chair in the row three rows from the back and attached the tape to it and then ran it back three chairs to the furthest chair and then on the aisle inside and on the aisle inside of the next one and the aisle outside of the next one. Tape those off. And he put a little note, said reserved. Now, why were they reserved and who were they reserved for? You would think they were reserved for specific people. No, they were reserved for late comers in the event the room overfilled. Because one thing We've learned over the years about meetings is that the more densely packed an audience is within reason, the better they respond to the presentation. You notice in movie theaters, there's a very specific width for each of the chairs in the movie theater, and it's been that way for many, many years. The reason they don't have wider elbow room for people is because the further you are from the people next to you, the less you feel like a group. And when you feel like a group, you tend to react as a group. You laugh together, you applaud together, you cry together, you look at each other and go, oh, man, wasn't that great? Or, oh, and that's sad. Whatever. So Joel set the room for the number of people he expected to arrive and just a few more so that it wasn't awkward for everybody to be seated. And then once we were seated, he had someone remove the tape from the back rows so late comers could sit there without distraction. Little details, they make a huge difference. So think about your day to day business, Think about your day to day behavior. Little details. The phone rings. It's probably a customer calling. How do you identify the company? I had a friend, Sam Gross, used to answer the phone this way. Speak first, out, that's a command. And second, it's blunt and could easily be considered rude. He thought it was clever, and it was kind of clever. But this was the 1960s, so in today's world, answer in a way that indicates who they have reached and what the nature of your organization might be. Hi, this is Jim Cathcart. This is Cathcart Institute. So if I'm answering in a business office, that's how I would answer. I am my primary product. Cathcart Card Institute is mostly the lengthened shadow of me. So typically I'll answer, hello, this is Jim. But if I were, like when I was partners with Dr. Tony Alessandra years ago, I would answer the phone. Cathcart Alessandra and Associates. This is Jim. How may I help you? So the way you answer the phone, the way you respond to emails, you know, little details matter. We, when we made all our sales calls in person, when we would go up to someone and knock on their door and then shake their hand and look them in the eye, give them a firm handshake, you know, back in those days, it was common to do all those things, and people understood how to do that, and they even taught you, like the Dale Carnegie course would teach you how to do those things. Well, in an email, there's a similar process going on. So let's look at the little details. One of the little details, first off, your name, which email address is it coming from? When I look at an incoming email, I look who's it from? If I can't recognize who it's from or if it's something cute or weird, I may not even open the email. Second thing, I look at, what's the subject line. So the person that's from, that's your general appearance when they see you approach. Subject line, that's your eye contact. If you look them confidently in the eye and get right to the point of why you're sending an email, it increases confidence. Or you could have something that stimulates curiosity, but it needs to be relevant to the reason for the email needs to be congruent. Okay, and then the first line, don't start with I, this, I, this, I. I made my mind start with you. Start with talking about them, making it relevant to them. And throughout the email, answer the question, what does this mean to you? So you can say, and then what this means to you is you save money, you save time, you have someone you can trust. You don't have to worry about X or whatever it happens to be. So just think of your emails as you would making an in person call and look good, look trustworthy, have solid, sincere eye contact, get to the point quickly, make it about them and make it short and let them know how you'd like them to respond. This is the Wisdom Parlor and the first Wednesday, Wisdom Wednesday. Every month we meet here and it's free, it's open to the public. And if you want to participate, you want to be involved in the dialogue, tune in on any podcast platform you can find it. Wisdom Parlor. And if you're looking for the recordings of the past Wisdom parlors, go to cathcart.com wisdom and you'll find them there. And my name is Jim Cathcart. I train experts to become leading authorities in their field and I'd love to help you. I'll see you again next month. In the meantime, contact Cathcart.com experts if you want to be one of those at our upcoming Experts Summit. See ya. Speaker A 42:29 Thank you for joining us today in the Wisdom Parlor, a thoughtful discussion of important ideas among people who are committed to succeeding in life. If you are committed to making more success happen in your own life, go right now to my website free.cathcart. and download my free ebook and then watch the video. If you decide that you'd like my assistance in helping grow your success. Then come with me and let's discover how much more successful you can be.