UNDERCOvER SPEakER

“Don’t compete, create!” This idea was first shared in 1957 by Earl Nightingale, the “Dean of Personal Development,” and today it’s still such a powerful mindset for your business.

Whether you’re an author, speaker, or coach, ask yourself: what are all the other ordinary authors, speakers, and coaches doing? Once you find the common thread, brainstorm ideas on how you can stand out and be innovative. At first, your list of ideas might sound goofy and unrealistic, and maybe even impossible. However, your goal is to just flush out all the ideas and all the ways you can be different from your competition.

Here’s an example: Joel Weldon, my dad and business partner, is a legend in the speaking industry and for the last 7 years he’s focused his attention on helping others use speaking to grow their businesses. He helps authors, coaches, and entrepreneurs make their message impossible to be misunderstood, feel confident and connected to their audience, and most of all, use speaking to grow their businesses.

As a coach, he noticed that most ordinary business coaches offer a specific amount of time for their coaching fee, such as 4 hours, 8 hours,

6 months, or 12 months etc. of coaching time.

He used the “Don’t compete; create! Find out what everyone is doing and don’t do it” mentality, and instead of limited hours, he offers unlimited coaching hours. How can that be? How does he have time to coach people for an unlimited amount of time? He does this for two reasons: one, he noticed that most of his clients didn’t exceed 8 hours of coaching time. The ideas and tips are easy to use, and once they learned the system for being a great speaker, they didn’t need to get on Zoom with him because they learned it and were able to implement it on their own. Plus, this is probably one of the best ways that he stands out from his competition, and his clients are thrilled to find out that they can contact him for help in a year or 5 years from now, regardless of how much time they used at the beginning of their coaching time.

I, too, am a speaker, and for years I used humor to energize and connect with my audience. Companies would hire me to make their meetings more fun, introducing me as “the funniest speaker,” and telling their audience that big laughs were coming their way. This expectation was hard to live up to, and often left the audience feeling disappointed. So, instead of competing with other ordinary speakers and comedians, I channeled my inner Earl Nightingale and Joel Weldon and brainstormed ways to still offer laughter, fun, and connection in a creative and unexpected way. I came up with “The Undercover Speaker.” Instead of being introduced as a comedian or a funny speaker, I’m now introduced as a fake industry expert or an award-winning specialist, and sometimes as a new hire. I have a fake bio that is very credible and believable to the audience, and I teach them all kinds of crazy, outlandish ideas that they actually fall for.

My most popular “Undercover Speaker” schtick is pretending to be an Animal Energy Healing Expert. I teach the virtual audience how to breathe through their gills and cloaca (which is a turtle’s anus). Eventually, it gets so over-thetop that they realize it’s a setup, and I tell them they’ve been punked. Once the shock factor and laughter have subsided, I then share the real message: laughing, having fun, and not taking ourselves so seriously at work actually makes us more productive and a lot happier!

(https://theundercoverspeaker. wistia.com/medias/rh0kpsdehr) https://www.creativemessagemedia.com/jennylocklin

Now, it’s your turn to stop competing and start creating! Write a list of all the challenges you are having when it comes to working with your clients, and then write a separate list of all the ways you can be different and create a solution to one of those problems, even if it’s a small problem. Don’t filter the ideas; just let them flow out on paper, and maybe brainstorm with an open-minded friend. Warning: once you find a way to create, rather than compete, you will have so much more fun and a whole lot more success!

Is