Podcast Episode: Dr Dan Young - Entrepreneur, Author, TEDx Speaker, and College Professor - Guiding Speakers in an Era of Authenticity

Transcript

Melanie Wilson (00:00)

Dr Dan Young, welcome to the show.

Dr Dan Young (00:04)

Nice to be here, nice to meet you.

Melanie Wilson (00:06)

For those who don't know, how do you explain what exactly you do?

Dr Dan Young (00:09)

Well, I would say that I'm a force multiplier. think, you know, work that I've done through both the TEDx world, the music festival world, the higher education world, it's really trying to help locate people who have great talent, great work ethic, great energy, and try to bring them from obscurity to admiration.

We do that through media, through Facebook, through YouTube, through websites. So basically, I'm basically just an amplifier of talent wherever I can find it.

Melanie Wilson (00:47)

I see a parallel between what you do and what I do because I love seeing other people finding their voice and sharing their message with people. Is that something that draws you to the work? Sharing the word about other people? What draws you to what you're doing?

Dr Dan Young (01:07)

Well, I mean, I think I've always just been very comfortable being the guy behind the guy and trying to help people. And I think, you know, I was a college professor and administrator for 20 years. And before that, I was a financial advisor. So I think a lot of my work always dealt with working with other people who wanted to just do the best for themselves.

And so there's just a naturally kind of nurturing part kind of of my personality that I just love watching You know the light bulb go on over top someone's head or like a person feel like they achieve something I get a big Charge out of that more than I get a charge out of achieving myself So I think that a lot of that leads itself into kind of the work that I've done for a living ⁓ And leads me into kind of what makes me get up in the morning, which is just trying to help other people succeed

Melanie Wilson (01:59)

That's awesome. Did you find you still needed to build your own personal brand and your own professional image to then create a vessel that can support other people?

Dr Dan Young (02:12)

That's a great question. think I've focused more on that lately than I had before. I'm only about two and a half years out of my last W2 job working for of the Wharton School at Penn. And so I've become much more cognizant that, you know, a lot of the work that I was doing was encouraging other people to build their own brands. And probably it's only been like a year or so that I've really tried to do the same thing with myself. It's a very different process to kind of build the brand, saying, I'm here to help you as opposed to come look at me. So I've been, I've tried to be very intentional about seeing about being a steward of other people's genius more than my own genius. But the good thing is by working enough with a lot of other people, you naturally become a genius at something or you naturally become an expert in something. So it's something that I have to admit I hadn't really focused on for a long period of my life.

I was used to getting referrals. I was used to doing basic marketing, but I think I'm slowly but surely kind of building a brand as someone who has the skill sets, has the experience to work with high net worth, high-level entrepreneurs, CEO, C-suite executives to help them get to where they want to go. So that's been a fun process, but definitely like an iterative process. definitely did not have all the answers. I don't have all the answers now, but it's becoming more and more necessary to make sure that I'm working with people and helping them get to where they want to go.

Melanie Wilson (03:43)

Absolutely. What was the shift for you in getting out there a bit more publicly? And also the second part to this question is what tips do you have for people who are starting to be a bit more public and trying to get comfortable with it?

Dr Dan Young (04:02)

Yeah, so I think I'll give you the obvious answer and the non-obvious answer. The obvious answer is the need to make money, right? The need to be able to make sure that I had enough things going on. I'm someone who's married, I have six kids, three of them are in college, so I needed to make sure that I had enough resources going on to not necessarily tap into other assets that I had. So that's the obvious part. The second part was the realisation that, you know, of all the people I was taking care of, you have to take care of the golden goose first, and that's you. And I can't really be a like a great bellwether for going out there and saying, you need to do the best that you can do in terms of building the brand if I didn't do the same thing. So as I've mentioned, I've always been very comfortable in life, just kind of taking a back seat and kind of moving people forward to make sure that they are able to accomplish their goals.

But, you know, I knew that in order to make sure that I could differentiate myself in the marketplace, I had to kind of have my own brand. So I think I have kind of a brand as, you know, a person who was higher ed for a long time, saw that I could have a much more direct impact by working with people directly as opposed through a school. And so that's really led me on this journey to building my own brand and not being shy about talking about the expertise I have, which I was for a very long time.

Melanie Wilson (05:31)

really understand. I need to check on something for one second, if that's okay. Awesome.

Dr Dan Young (05:35)

Please go ahead.

Melanie Wilson (05:37)

Mousetrap.

Sorry about all that. So did you find, so you found that there was a self care in building up the public presence?

Dr Dan Young (05:41)

No problem.

I mean, you could say that, it's some of its self-care, some of its self-actualisation. You know, but I think that, you know, at the end of the day, as entrepreneurs, we have to understand that the most important asset that we have is ourselves, our mind, our health, our, our, our mindset, things of that nature. So I would say, I would say, I guess that there is a self care aspect of it that.

We have to make sure that, you know, of all the things we have, our cell phone, our laptop, our plant and equipment, our storefront, the most important assets are self. And so you have to be very, being very intentional about taking care of that asset is something that I take much more seriously than I did when I was just working for someone else.

Melanie Wilson (06:39)

Is that a lesson that you pass on to the speakers that you're supporting that they need to look after themselves to then get to where they want to go?

Dr Dan Young (06:48)

I do, I think I do it from a very cursory perspective. Like I know that there are better, there are better people to talk to about that part of it. But what I do tell them is that you have to be very authentic whenever you're doing any sort of speaking. And that authenticity stems from who you are and where you are in that moment. So we want that person to be the best that they can be in that moment. Like, we're certainly not asking a speaker to be someone who they're not, speak as though they're someone who they're not, but we certainly want them to be the shiniest, brightest version of themselves whenever they take the stage. So yeah, we do talk a little bit about making sure that you're in the best place. And for a lot of people, that does entail health and wellness, eating right, working out, doing all those things, less for the aesthetic part of it and just to make sure that the machine is running as efficiently as possible.

Melanie Wilson (07:44)

What other things do people need to keep in mind when they are getting started as professional speakers, or are you working with people who are further along in their journeys? What do they normally have to keep in mind?

Dr. Dan Young (07:57)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, I think the number one thing they have to keep in mind is that humanity and society evolves, right? I think that what went into being a great speaker in the 1970s is different than the 80s, is different than the 90s, is different than the aughts, is different than the tens. And I think oftentimes people come to the stage with this avatar that they believe they need to be as a speaker, but that avatar is not really authentic to who they are.

You know, most good influential speaking does have a number of important pieces. You know, there is authenticity. There's often a really good analogy that's used to convey a message and make it memorable. There's usually a good contradiction in terms to keep the audience off their feet a little bit. There are usually good visuals, not necessarily PowerPoint per se, but something that is kind of like the spice on top of what's coming out of your mouth to make people remember it. And there typically is some level of simplicity, you know, taking a complex concept and breaking it down so that a 10-year-old can understand it. Because if the 10-year-old can understand it, then everyone from 10 to 100 can probably understand it. So I think that understanding that those different areas are more important often than the actual words that are coming out of your mouth. I think that's something that's very important for people to always realise.

Melanie Wilson (09:11)

The visuals have been important for so long. We can all think of something like the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle, and that is translated to help people communicate, and we're all learning to adapt that. One thing that is...

Dr. Dan Young (09:25)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Wilson (09:28)

One thing that I think has evolved though, like you said, is how speakers have been changing over the decades. And I'm really curious about what you have seen with that because I very much learned, I think I learned the 80s approach, but I learned it in the early naughties or 2010. And now I think it's completely different. So I'm curious, what have you seen about what has changed over the decades?

Dr. Dan Young (09:59)

Well, I mean, I think you've seen a couple things. I think you've seen people be much more kind of car salesy in the delivery, making sure that every stone is, no stone is left unturned to a way that was much more about very direct, many more hand movements, things of that nature. Now it's much more, I think it's much more laid back. It's more about being the authentic person. That's great.

Obviously, once you were in the 70s, 80s, 90s, a lot of it was having the sign that was on an easel that you're pointing to. Then it kind of went to having the PowerPoints. And now it's about having more live things there, right? Because the PowerPoint has become some level of a speaker's crutch to get away from actually knowing your material, right? And that's one of the things I kind of like about TEDx speaking in many ways, because that you're not supposed to have a lectern in front of you. You're supposed to just speak, you know, just from the heart. If you have any sort of visuals, they're supposed to be, you know, one picture, one number, one letter, one video, not a bunch of bulleted points there. So I think in a world where we have AI, where people can look up information online, typically, whatever's coming out your mouth is nothing new. You know, I used to say that my major job as a college professor was to do two things, was to give people permission and accountability. In most cases, anyone can find anything. All of us should be eating all salad, should be running five miles a day, but we don't do that, except for some people do. But I think that the people who are on stage now, we're giving people permission to be authentically themselves and live in their truth. And then we have something, whether that's a webinar, a newsletter, a follow-up to give some level of accountability, to make sure that they're doing what they need to do. So I think that movement from having to share information to having to grant permission is a general arc that's now in place because people can find out almost any bit of information at a second's notice.

Melanie Wilson (12:12)

really agree. And I think that the shift to being more authentic as we react to an economy that is run by AI, I think that is rescuing us away from the trend, at least I grew up with, which is the death by PowerPoint. Did you see the death by PowerPoint era? And do you think that is going to, do you think people are realising we need to be real and just be ourselves. Do you think that's sinking in now?

Dr Dan Young (12:47)

Well, I mean, you know, I was a college professor from the turn of the century to now. So most of them live by death of power. So, so, so if you are coming out of college and the people that you respect are killing you at PowerPoint, you're going to kill it. PowerPoints. I think that the problem is.

There's a basic marketing concept called advertising wear out where eventually there's all these different messages around you. So your mind becomes your mind slows down and becomes less alert to the individual messages in lieu of the glut of messages. And so, usually when you see a PowerPoint, it now gets stored in your long-term memory amongst all the other PowerPoints. So now it's much more important to shock the system with something, whether it's like a live animal or people dressed up in green suits walking around or doing stuff with chemistry with giant beakers, whatever that is, you're doing that primarily to shock the system and create an emotional response that buffers the words that are coming out of your mouth. So yes, I have seen the death by PowerPoint. And yes, it is still there, mainly because once you have tenure at a college or university, they can't fire you for using your PowerPoints. So there's no real accountability to go away from it.

So I think it's incumbent on people who are entrepreneurs and who are out there to understand that they have to shock someone's system to make sure you're memorable in this day and age.

Melanie Wilson (14:13)

That's an interesting point that some people stayed in their jobs for so long that there's no incentive to change.

Dr Dan Young (14:20)

Correct.

Melanie Wilson (14:21)

that could be happening a lot. A few things stuck with me. You mentioned a live animal. Have you seen that?

Okay, I want that story, please.

Dr Dan Young (14:32)

I was just actually at an event where they had some dogs. And the chaos of the dogs running around the stage was kind of built into what the person was talking about. And the dogs ended up being trained, so the person only had to say one thing, and then the dogs all kind of lined up and sat together. And it was kind of an analogy for basic corporate life, where it's just people just walking around, you know pain and pooping and eating and for the most part, like not having any control. But when given some level of stimulus, then everyone kind of lined up and everyone was like acting good, right? So it was a very interesting demonstration. But it was memorable, it was memorable, which is the most important thing.

It is, it's sticking with me, and I've only heard about it.

Dr Dan Young (15:29)

Yeah, so it was fun. So the more that you can use visuals once again to buff it what's coming out of your mouth, the better. Like, you know, I was just talking today, I was teaching a class, and I brought up a great TEDx talk ⁓ called How to Start a Movement by Derek Sivers. It's a two-minute and 52-second talk. But in that talk, I'll let your audience go check it out and then make comments underneath your podcast. But in that two-minute and 52-second talk, he fully explains the truth behind entrepreneurship through a very simple video that was probably taken at a Grateful Dead or a Fish concert. And this is someone who could have gone on stage and said, hey, listen, I'm a Fortune 500 consultant. I've worked with all these high-net-worth people. You should believe me for that reason. But he does all that in two minutes and 52 seconds with a video from a Fish concert.

I think the people who were able to keep it simple and provide visuals that really stick with you, ⁓ you know, I saw that talk 15 years ago, something like that. But it still stands out to me based on the fact, you know, you have 18 minutes to do a TEDx talk. He took two minutes and 52 seconds and showed a video the entire way through. So the more simple that we can be and the better analogies that we can drive, the more memorable your talk is, right? My angel, who said it best, like people will forget what you say.

They'll forget what you do, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. And so our job on the stage is not to convey information, it's to convey emotion. And the audience will take it from there in terms of what they do with that emotion.

Melanie Wilson (17:07)

sensing that the emotional message is now done in an even more simple way than before. What you're describing, it reminds me of the visual hammer that I heard of from Laura Rees. so I learned marketing alongside learning speaking. And I think that what you're describing is really both of those. And everybody is learning that. But I can say

In all my years of hearing about speeches and doing speeches, nobody ever said, get your pets to do the presentation for you. So that's going to stick with me. And that's really showing, I think that people have something to learn, because let me know if you agree. I think we were all taught to show what we know, but these days, there's even more emphasis on just showing what we can transform.

Dr Dan Young (18:08)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, in, know, there's two seminal talks, two seminal books on Tedx and TED speaking. There's TED Talks by Chris Anderson, the outgoing CEO of TED, and there's Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo. And in Carmine Gallo's book, he talked about the research of Aristotle, like going all the way back then. And Aristotle was working with all the different senators in Rome and all the other fun stuff. And he basically said that there are three pillars of successful, influential speaking.

There's ethos, which is basically our resume, like what's on our LinkedIn, our experiences and our education. There's logos, which are statistics, third-party research, databases, surveys, things like that. And there's pathos, which is basically emotional connectivity with the audience, right? So I could go out and say, hey, you should believe what I say because I'm Dan and I have a PhD. That could be seen as influential. I could say that, hey, I have a PhD, but based on research from the Journal of Marketing,

Here's exactly what they say, which can also be influential. I can also say something along the lines of, " Hey, have you guys ever been in a position where your kids are like, we're just driving you absolutely insane, and you just want to chuck them out of your car and just drive away like, and just not look back? That's also influential. So what Carmine Gallo did was he researched hundreds of TEDx talks and Ted talks, and he basically did an analysis of the most-watched talks. It broke it down by minutes.

And what he found was that six that of the most watched TEDx talks of all time, 60, they were 65 % pathos, emotional connectivity, 25 % logos, statistics, and only 10 % ethos. So your point is well taken because here's what that says. Most of us, when we're chosen to speak, we're chosen to speak based on our ethos, based on our education and our experience. That's where you get most of your keynote speakers, because they want someone who's done it, and you bring them in.

But that's not what leads to influence. What leads to influence is being able to emotionally connect with the audience and then provide third party research to to buff it what you're saying. And lastly, basically say, and by the way, I know this because I was a college professor. And so I've seen I saw this happen every day, something like that. So I think I think that that is something that many people get wrong. But it's because the market tells you to get it wrong because the market chooses you based on your ethos, even though your pathos is by far what is the most directly correlated with success in speaking.

Melanie Wilson (20:40)

Yes. Yes. So sometimes it seems like the last thing that you mentioned is that you are a professor, and it sounds like the family angle that you mentioned will connect with people. I'm wondering what sorts of angles I was so keen to ask this when you're working with speakers, what sorts of angles work the best? Do they focus on a life moment that they overcame, like an adversity, or are they focusing on how they value family or something else? What sticks these days?

Dr Dan Young (21:21)

Well, think it's going to be, know, a wise person once said, you never ask a marketing professor a question because the answer is always depends on maybe. So to answer your question, it depends. And oftentimes, what it depends on is who your target market is for that talk, which is always different. Right. So if I go through a basic hero's journey, like, I had this issue, I overcame it and you can too. That tends to not be very influential.

Mainly because what happens is once you tell me your story, it'll stick in my mind until someone else tells me a similar story with similar actors. And now I replace that hero's journey with another hero's journey. Right? If you ask me, you know, what happened in Batman, like a Batman movie, I'm probably going to tell you what happened in the last Batman movie I saw, even though what happened, the storyline, the first one was very, very similar. So.

Going by hero's journey is not found to be effective anymore. What's much more effective is thinking through what is the impact that I want to have on a specific target market of people and what is the idea that I'm sharing that changes everything because people want to think broadly but they also want to input themselves into the solution. Once you put yourself into my story, now you're trapped. You're trapped in the story. You can't get out of it.

And so now you won't forget it. If I just tell you my story, which obviously means a lot to me because I lived it, there's in most cases, people within a day, a month, a year will have forgotten my story because they replaced it with something else. to answer your question, I'm a Scorpio, so I'm long-winded. To answer your question, it oftentimes depends on who is the target market because that whatever sticks with that target market most is the major driver of what you want to cover in your talk.

Melanie Wilson (23:13)

Okay, so it depends. I'm hoping there would be room or space for the hero's journey if it leads to telling people they can transform something. But it sounds like the commons read in what I'm learning from you and from everywhere else is we need a simplified transformation. Do you think that's where everybody has ended up? The simplified transformation.

Dr Dan Young (23:15)

It depends.

Well,

I mean, I think at the end of the day, transformation is simple. It's just not easy. Like, you know, I've known people in my family who ate Reese's Pieces every single day. Then they got diabetes, and they stopped eating Reese's Pieces. That's a very major transformation, right? It was very simple. It just wasn't easy. There was just like it was just their time and they just had a trigger. And so transformation is unbelievably simple. You just need a trigger, and you need the right timing. Now, the hard thing about public speaking is you have no idea what the triggers are of everyone who's sitting there, and you have no idea what the timing is for them. So the only thing that you can do is pull them into an emotional story. Like, know, have you ever thought this, or have you ever, you know, really wanted to impress your father? And I apologize by seeing my screen shaking, that is my poodle who was scratching herself at my feet. Have you ever wanted to do that? And by doing that, now you pull them into the story.

And so now it becomes their story, and they're much more triggered. If I just go with my hero's journey, unless they have lived something similar to my life, they won't be triggered. So there will be no transformation. So that's why, that's why it's so important to get people out of state, out of their state, their current state. If they're just like watching you talk for hours, having good information about who's in the audience, making sure it's the right time for them.

and making sure you have the right trigger. If you do those things before the event sets up, then you put yourself in the best position to get transformation during the event.

Melanie Wilson (25:14)

audience, right time and trigger. What I'm learning from that is I think people need a common ground. There'll be something in the audience that they have lived through in some way that the speaker will be able to relate to, identify with and focus on. So that's possibly part of the key, finding the common ground.

Dr. Dan Young (25:18)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yes. You're always, let's say, you had four webinars in a month. Instead of just doing the same webinar four times, it's going to make much more sense to have some level of a profile, which you can use using AI, profile of the four most likely people to work with you. Let's say that they are stay-at-home moms, are encore entrepreneurs who worked in a business before, and then they've come out.

Let's say that they're, you know, industrious students who are just coming out of college who want to make money. And let's say it's for, you know, people who are first generation Americans who are trying to build wealth, right? If those are the three target markets, you need to do three separate webinars. Because you will know that they have a common experience and a common trigger. If it's just a webinar about like, here's how we make money, you're going to get less people show up and less results because you don't know the trigger and you don't know the time.

So the best that you can do, you want to make sure the people who are in the room have similar triggers and similar timing. And that will definitely increase whatever lead conversion that you're looking for.

Melanie Wilson (26:53)

I'm joining so many dots with what you are saying, and I hope that other people can find their own version of this. What I'm getting from what you are saying is that I need to focus on the story that someone else can own. Because I think my story for so long was I grew up around speakers and then I tried to figure out what's next. Not many people can relate to that at all. But when I talk about losing weight, losing a lot of weight, basically a few clothing sizes, then a lot of people either have done that or want to. And so I'm curious, are there some very universal themes in some of your speakers or even with what you do? I'm wondering, maybe it's the burnout. There, I think we do have a few experiences that basically everybody has lived in, do think so?

Dr Dan Young (27:54)

I think so because I think the human experience, what we experience physiologically, can be the same as someone who had a completely different thing happen to them, right? Like I can feel, as I like to call it, like I can feel like bubble guts in my stomach because I was on a roller coaster, because I'm going on a first date, because I just got turned down for a job, but that feeling is the same in all of our stomachs, right?

And I think that at the end of the day, we need to focus on what are the emotions that we're trying to convey to the audience. So, for example, you mentioned burnout, right? Burnout is something, is a word that has lost power, kind of in the English language. But if you talk about burnout, for example, as the intersection, if we imagine two circles and like a Venn diagram, right?

Burnout is the intersection of ambition and fatigue. So let's say you are a person who is dealing with burnout as a doctor. If I start telling a story about, I'm a doctor, and I'm burned out, blah, blah, most people who are not doctors will not relate to me. However, if we start talking about ambition and how, for example, in America, ambition is everything. You go to high school. You go to college. You try to pick the right career. You try to marry the right person. You get like all these, like some people get prenuptial agreements to make sure they hold on to what they got. Like all that is just based on this belief that we need resources, you know, now and in the future. And that's the ambition. And it's like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. However, the argument is what happens when all that ambition leads to fatigue? And we realise that at no point in time, we have the great house, we have the great family, we have the two, and we have the two and a half kids and one and a half dogs. And I still want more.

And it almost feels like, you know, and I would say to the audience, has anyone felt like I have all these things and for some reason I still want more? Has anyone felt that way? Everyone's felt that way, right? If you want to tell like a weight loss story, I wouldn't even tell a weight loss story. I would tell a story about feeling the first part of it would be about, hey, I feel like I want something, but I just can't grasp it. Like has anyone in the audience felt like that?

Like you want something so badly, and you can't grasp it. Maybe it's like dating this beautiful person in high school. Maybe it's getting the job you want. And then you'd say something like, in my case, it was weight loss. Like I knew I wanted to be thinner, but I just couldn't get there. But I'm going to, but see, I'm going to start with the broader theme of something that you really want, but you can't get to it. And then you can go to a hero's journey of have that, have you then ever accomplished something that seemed massive in the beginning, but then after a while and you accomplish it, you're like, wow, that was actually a lot simpler than I thought it would be. So you don't have to be talking about weight loss. Your job is to make how you feel about weight loss transferable to anything that anyone else in the audience has done.

Melanie Wilson (31:00)

Okay.

It's the feeling behind it. That is clicking for me so much because a month ago I talked with a fitness trainer, Robbie, and I asked, okay, what exactly do people want? What motivates them? And because I accidentally lost weight, I wasn't even trying to. So then I tried figuring out what's going on for everybody else. And he said,

Dr Dan Young (31:14)

It's a feeling. Correct.

Melanie Wilson (31:39)

that people want to lose weight or get results very quickly. And I wondered why, why are they trying to achieve other life goals more quickly? And there was a perception, apparently, that if you reach your destination sooner, you'd be saving money. And then I'm wondering why do people care about just saving money in the short term? It's all a whole lot of anxiety. So then if we're talking to an audience, then they are thinking, okay,

How can I just change my whole life now? But you're saying that people are reaching their goals. They are aspiring to something, getting there, feeling dissatisfied. I'm wondering, I think there's the potential that audiences are in a sped-up loop these days, especially if they see something on Instagram, and then I need the next thing tomorrow. And then two days later, I need this other thing. So I'm wondering if perhaps audiences need

Dr Dan Young (32:26)

Yes.

Melanie Wilson (32:38)

a bit of reassurance as well as the transformation. Reassurance that there's less pressure.

Dr Dan Young (32:45)

Well, I mean, the people who actually think that it happens that way are the people who haven't done it. Right. It's kind of like Mark Zuckerberg said, like, it took me seven years to become an overnight sensation. You know, everyone, everyone who knows, whether you're talking about social media with like Mr Beast or whatever, like it's like it took him like 10 years of posting three times a day. Like how many of us do one activity three times a day for 10 years? Like hardly anyone does that. But that's what that's what it takes. So.

I think that you have to get joy in the journey more than you get joy in the destination. Like I knew that I knew I would never be a college football player because I hated practice. I just wanted to play in the games. But in order to get to that level of being a division one athlete, you have to love practice as much as you love games because it just takes the grind. You know, this is the reason why 45 % of all people who win more than seven figures in the lottery are broken three years because there was no grind.

And our bodies are evolution, are evolutionary. Like we need to go through stress. Like that's the reason why you have to go to the gym. And if you want to get bigger muscles, you have to literally rip the muscle fibre for the muscles to grow bigger. So we are evolutionary creatures. We need to go through stress to have something, something that maintains for long periods of time. And you can look at anything. You can look at the biggest loser on TV shows. You can look at anything that gives money to people fast.

90 % of the time, they lose it because there was no evolution there. So the people who are seeing in those audiences, they need to understand that when they hear me speak, I'm giving them permission to go on an evolutionary process and I'm giving them the accountability to have someone who'll hold their feet to the fire because it's going to take a while. But what you gain from that is not just riches, it's not just a great body, but you gain the resilience that's necessary just to evolve as a human being, and all those things are necessary. So we do a really good job in marketing of making you feel like you evolved with no evolution, right? You don't have to lose weight because we'll give you liposuction and we'll give you like a BBL. We'll fix your face with a facelift so it seems like you haven't aged. But very few of those people are ever happy, though. I mean, just ask them. They're usually not very happy, but they like how their BBL looks.

So we have to understand when we're speakers that our job is not to be an Uber driver and like quickly drop you off for low cost, our job is to be a Sherpa helping to lead you up a mountain, and so we have to embrace that as just a part of what we do, as as people who lead other people

Melanie Wilson (35:31)

So many of your phrases are perfect for a little chunks to put on social later. Be a Chopin, not an Uber driver. That is so good. And knowing that it is a slow journey to a destination in a world where everything is fast-paced. I'll ask you a question that you can know more about because you are a college professor.

I never felt like I was book smart. And I'm wondering if you saw people reaching their goals not because they were perceived to be traditionally smart. And this will translate to speaking and personal brands. But did you find sometimes people just put in the work even if they were not seen as the A student anyway?

Dr Dan Young (36:24)

No, absolutely. I mean, I think there's, I think there's a difference between being smart and intellectual, right? So I always say that with, um, with, example, TEDx speaking, it's done really well by smart people, done very poorly by intelligent people. Intelligent people have a, a strange need to rattle off facts and figures and experience that other people have done. Smart people try to get the least amount of information possible to let them execute as fast as possible. So in my mind, it's way more important to be smart than it is to be intelligent. And this is someone who has a PhD saying that. I think I'm probably smarter than I am intelligent. So yes, going through the process of coming up with an idea and just as we say, just shipping it, understanding that that idea is at 70 %, and the only way you can get an idea to 100 % is by failing in short bursts and talking to the audience. That's way more impactful than being able to rattle off a bunch of stuff that other people did. Way more.

Melanie Wilson (37:28)

Interesting. So the intellectual book types are focusing on what other people did. And are they normally the ones who are struggling a bit more and needing more guidance to reach that human interest story and the connection?

Dr Dan Young (37:48)

Yes, because they can't get to the point. Successful speaking is about getting to the point. It's about simplicity. It's about putting it in the words that just normal everyday people can do. When people do TEDx talks, they're not for the 10 % of people who just get it all the time and are really just driving, and you just have to give them an idea, and they run with it. They're for the 90 % of people who can never get right. And you've created some level of fire underneath them with some sort of structure that they say, wow, maybe this is finally the time I can do that now that I've heard this talk. That so it's much more about that than it is about me trying to cram as much information into 18 minutes, for example, as I possibly humanly can.

Melanie Wilson (38:33)

Totally. One of my favourite presentations of all time was Rory Sutherland, I think his name is, talking about the diamond shreddies, where there was some sort of square cereal, and it was just tipped. So that visual, it's so simple, but it taught me everything about perception more than a pile of papers could have. So I completely agree. And I'd like to ask you some of the questions that people asked about speaking for so many years to see how the answer and solution has changed, because seriously, I feel so old in saying that for too many years or decades, as hearing people say, I couldn't do a presentation because I feel too scared. I don't feel capable yet. I don't feel ready. I am not enough of an expert. I haven't made it yet.

Dr. Dan Young (39:10)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Wilson (39:30)

Do you see people saying that where they think they are not what they need to be to do something like this?

Dr Dan Young (39:38)

Sure. And I think a lot of those people, they're focused on their ethos, right? Instead of focused on their pathos. The logos we all have access to, right? As long as you have perplexity.ai, you can look up like sources. So I think that the people who need to speak more are those who are empaths who can look out at an audience and see themselves in a number of different ways, or see people they want to impact in a number of different ways. So yeah, we hear that all the time. It's usually someone who feels somewhat insecure about what their LinkedIn or their resume says. But those are typically the people with that level of humility that we want to have as speakers more than the other.

Melanie Wilson (40:15)

The humility will get you there.

Dr Dan Young (40:18)

Yes, because humility equals authenticity. So authenticity is everything.

Melanie Wilson (40:23)

I'm so glad that the culture has reached that space of authenticity, because really, I think people can be reassured about that. It was honestly just a decade or two ago where you had to look completely perfect, but also it was about the title you held. You would have emphasised that you have a PhD, but then other people, if they didn't have a PhD, would have wondered, can I do this? So, there is basically a lot more freedom, and perhaps it's a lot more democratic, a lot more accessible for anybody to claim credibility through their personal experience or through just showing up.

Dr Dan Young (41:09)

Sure, but that's a double-edged sword, right? Because it's more possible for people to claim credibility, but it's also more possible for people to feign credibility. So I think that there's gonna be a good combination of experience plus execution that anyone who follows someone or pays someone should definitely take a look at, right? If someone's like, not that you can't have geniuses at 19, but if you're a 19-year-old and claim to be a life coach, it's like, have a life first. I mean, like, this is not rocket science here, so I think that it's easier to claim credibility because you have access to all the resources that I had during a doctoral program. Now, do you have most of? You can learn something from someone who has success stories, but you'll learn more from people who have failure stories. And it does take a certain number of reps to have enough failures to basically be able to tweak, and be able to look at someone's journey and say, Hey, you might want to try this, or you might want to try this with this group of people because I had an experience where I tried to do it this way and it didn't happen. So those failure stories are what, if you're working with someone, they will save you one major mistake and find one major win that someone who hasn't had that experience won't be able to do.

Melanie Wilson (42:27)

So do the reps and still earn your spot.

Dr. Dan Young (42:33)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Wilson (42:33)

but then adds to it.

Dr Dan Young (42:37)

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, at least here in the States, we're really kind of focused on being in your lane, right? Like, I'm thinking of one of my professors in college, like, the guy just like worked out every day. He was just ripped. I mean, he could have been like a professional bodybuilder. And he was an anomaly because we didn't think a bodybuilder and a professor could exist in the same space. Like, as a professor, I remember times where I would be teaching a class, and then I'd be out later on that weekend, and I was grabbing a drink at the bar, and one of my students would be there and be like, my God, what are you doing here? I'm like, what are you doing here? You're a freshman. I'm supposed to be, I'm old enough to drink, and you're here. Because we can't think of, we almost think that the teacher lives in the classroom. We can't separate space like that. So I think that being able to kind of combine different modalities is something that's jarring, but being jarring is good because it shakes people kind of out of their malaise and gets them thinking about what's possible.

Melanie Wilson (43:37)

I am finally seeing where the dots join, and I like that example. I knew an engineer who was ridiculously perfect-looking. So I think that happens occasionally, and it does shock people. Actually, Matthew Hussey talks about the unique pairings off the top of my head. I think that's what it's called. So I think you are identifying the same thing. If there are two or three things being jarring, whether you are doing something shocking like bringing pets on stage or combining a couple of things together. My weird thing was that I went very health nut, and that was very unusual in response to that old era of just dressing corporate and not thinking about looking after yourself. So it sounds like one of the things we can encourage people to do is to

Think of a couple of things they can combine in themselves that will make them a bit extra unique or help them to stand out a bit more.

Dr Dan Young (44:40)

No, absolutely. think that if you can have...

If your existence can kind of, mentioned the Venn diagram with different circles intersecting. If you can have something about you that has like three different circles intersecting, that automatically is what makes you unique, right? Like you, you doing what everyone else does in social media does not make you unique. But if you're doing a social media post that has unique content with unique lighting, with a unique call to action, now you're unique. And so I think that a lot of times when you're building a brand, basically a brand from a purely logistical sense, is having three different interlocking circles, and you're in the middle in a way that no one else is in the middle there. And so I think that that does make sense and that can lead to you standing out in the marketplace.

Melanie Wilson (45:26)

To wind up as we lead close to the hour mark, I feel like I could talk all day about all of this, but to wind up, really curious, what are three things that everybody needs to learn and implement so that they can be speakers in this era?

Dr Dan Young (45:48)

So number one, gotta be authentic. You gotta be you. It's not about you, like if you're saying, like, hey Dan, like I'm a homeless surfer, that's great. But just be like a super shiny version of a homeless surfer up there. Don't try to be corporate. Number two is simplicity. You wanna make sure that whatever your messaging strategy is, if you think it's too simple, it's probably not simple enough ⁓ for people to be able to hang on to it. And third, if you have visuals, visuals are just the salt and pepper on the steak. They are not the full steak. Do not try to, you

entice the audience with PowerPoints, with all this information, like just use something that makes you memorable. The visuals could be like what you're wearing. It could be something that's on stage. It can be anything that separates you. So if you have the authenticity, if you have the simplicity, and you have the effect of visual, then usually you're gonna stand out definitely in the marketplace.

Melanie Wilson (46:37)

That's great wisdom. Use the bells and whistles, but don't rely on it. Absolutely. It sounds like everybody can adapt based on all of knowledge. Look, thank you for explaining where the world is heading with speaking and what everybody can do. I really appreciate your expertise, the time, and the insights. Thanks.

Dr Dan Young (47:08)

Thank you, Melanie. Thanks for having me on.

Melanie Wilson (47:10)

Anytime. Bye.

Dr Dan Young (47:12)

Bye.