402: Become a Powerful Speaker and Storyteller with Chuck Hooper

Robert Plank 0:00 marketer of the day number 402 become a powerful speaker and storyteller with Chuck Hooper. Hey, everyone, and thanks for listening. And we're talking right now with Chuck Hooper. And Chuck is a business intelligence consultant. And he specializes in data visualization analytics, and he brings over five decades of business experience with him. In addition to current consulting offerings, Chuck is an author and a speaker. And he does workshops on being a better speaker and presenter, and he conducts training sessions on the use of Tableau software product. So Mr. Chuck, glad to be talking to you.

Chuck Hooper 0:38 It is my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Awesome. Glad to have you.

Robert Plank 0:42 And so we listed out a bunch of cool things that you do. So I mean, what has you the most interested lately

Chuck Hooper 0:49 speaking, I've been in the business consulting, business intelligence consulting, training data visualization world for quite a few years. As part of that, I was asked to speak at a number of conferences. And I found out that in most of my speaking engagements, I had a way of motivating or inspiring people. And what I was trying to do was educate, teach them about data visualization. But as part of that process, I would use examples from my life personal stories, that all had some sort of inspirational or motivational bent to them. And I found people coming back to me sometimes a year or two later, and telling me what the presentation did for them, how it changed their lives. And I realized that it's time and this was about a year and a half ago, it's time to start getting away from the consulting and training, and move more into the speaking and writing business. And that's what I'm trying to do. Now. I still do some consulting. But instead of business intelligence, I've partnered with another young lady, a young lady, Janice Burt, to create a speaker presenter workshop. And we target that at businesses, that maybe you're sending three or four people to do breakout sessions at conferences, and they don't want their speakers to suck, which is, if you've been in a lot of conferences, you know, the vast majority of speakers are not, you would not call them professional speakers, right. And you wouldn't even call them good speakers. And they sometimes they do more harm than good for their business.

Robert Plank 2:35 So as far as this speaking thing, I kind of have to admit like, I feel almost like someone who maybe, maybe like, took some college classes, but didn't go to the sixth grade. So basically, what I mean by that is, all I pretty much know about speaking is you know, I've gone to a bunch of conferences over the years, and maybe up until say, like 2012 or so all I really saw as far as like speaking in conferences was to kind of do you like that, like the pitch fest sort of thing. And I've only spoken maybe 510 times, I've run a couple of my own events. But as far as like other people's events, I've only spoken five or 10 times. And it was usually the kind of situation where it was maybe 30 to maybe 80 people at the most. And I was there speaking for free. And then I picked up for 60 to 90 minutes, had a package at the end, usually about 1000 bucks, and then split that with the promoter. And then I always hear just like little bits and pieces about how like, there are these paid speaking gigs or at or these keynote speaking gigs are like, there are other ways to make money speaking so can you kind of like assume I know like nothing or next nothing and kind of catch us up on this whole idea of like, like speaking and all this.

Chuck Hooper 3:48 Certainly, you know, in the public speaking world, people that call themselves professional speakers, there are two great lies, how often you're paid, and how much you get paid. The bottom line is the day of the $25,000 keynote, unless your name is Clinton, Bush, something like that. You're not going to get that kind of money. What's your what's your targeting, for the most part, giving away a free speech giving away your time can still be extremely profitable. They have what they call back of the room sales, just like you said you had $1,000 package. If you could reference that or guide people toward that in your free talk. It doesn't take selling too many of those they have a very profitable session. If you have books, CDs, web services, something that people can sign up for and pay you money for. The free speech is just advertising. I do also what I call middle of the room sales as opposed to back of the room. middle of the room sales is where you're targeting the people in the room for consulting services and I've given away that Just in the last year, probably eight or 10, free keynotes, and every one of them became profitable, because of the people in the audience seeking me out afterwards, striking up a business deal for some consulting services. Super

Robert Plank 5:16 cool. And so can you kind of unpack that part a little bit, because, like, sort of, as I said, is what I've been exposed to is like the the sort of pitch Fest, but it seems like in the last few years, at least, the type of conferences that I've been attending, they've really dialed that back. And it seemed like there was a period of time where the the whole, like, back of the room stuff really worked. And then it seems like it worked less and less, almost to the point now where a lot of attendees or event organizers don't seem to really want that, it seems like a lot of them just kind of want people to be there and speak, you know, speak for free, and then have some kind of like coaching or consulting offer. So can you kind of explain like how that works? Like? Like, do you just say like, you know, come find me afterwards? Or how do you get like, how do you get them from that that speech you're doing on stage to getting them to approach you for these sorts of offers?

Chuck Hooper 6:08 Well, for one, hopefully, there's a program out that has your name and email address and what you do, and maybe what you offer, too many times, you're speaking at a conference, you're speaking to a group, and they tell you right up front, this is not a sales pitch, you're not here to sell, you're here to give your customers to give your audience something of value. And that's critical. If you're not giving them something of value, why are you there? But you know, you if you're giving a 45 minute to an hour speech, hopefully, you know, more than 45 minutes to an hour's worth of material, the topic you're speaking on, you should know a whole lot more, they need to want to seek you out in the conferences where you're told you can't sell. You just don't bring up here's my website, here's what I sell, here's how much it is. Instead, you say, here's a story. And I'm big on the storytelling aspect of any presentation. Here's a story, one of my clients. In a speaking coaching session, asked me about this, I gave them this answer. And they became more successful and tell a story that lets people know, not only this is what you do, but did you do it? Well, the people that come to you end up doing something successfully. So you can do it subtly. And like I say I but the back of the room thing is good for the most part. But in a lot of cases, you don't get that table in the back of the room anymore. You don't get to be part of the expo without paying, in some cases, a large fortune. So you have to say things in your presentation that drives people to you. And again, the program, handing out business cards afterwards is big. I've had some talks where I've handed out over 100 business cards before I got out of the room, as people that just come up and say hey, I'd like to talk to you later got to get to the next session. Now do you have a card. And if you can turn five to 10% of those into a paying gig, you can make a lot of money from a free speech.

Robert Plank 8:19 So you do that free speech, you you drop these stories and so that way you kind of like like, sneak in how amazing you are and the things that you've done for your clients and things like that. And then that you get you hand out your business cards to people that asked for them. And then what happens from there? Do you do any follow up yourself? Or do you wait for them to contact you or aren't kind of what's the situation after that?

Chuck Hooper 8:42 Well, I've been fortunate I stay more than busy with people coming after me. I do know people that have to work at it a little more. And what I recommend to them is that they do follow up if they can get from an event planner, email addresses of the participants, email addresses of the attendees. That's gold. For for most speakers, get back to the people. Hey, I was the speaker at this conference last week. I hear you were in attendance. Did you hear my speech? What did you think of it? Is there anything I can do to help you and what is really important somewhere in that and it could be in your email signature, a link to a website. And if you're trying to sell something, have a video that presents it just a link and have a three minute video that pushes what you're doing pushes what you're offering.

Robert Plank 9:42 Super cool and so um, so something that I've seen maybe more recently is someone will be giving a talk and then they'll pass out just you know like eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper saying like we want to, you know give you this free thing. We want to give you this free book and let people fill out their your mailing address and maybe their email address, is that the kind of thing that you recommend, have you used that sort of strategy when speaking?

Chuck Hooper 10:08 Personally, I don't use it, but it is effective. I, again, I don't need it. But I've seen it effective for people that are selling, you know, offerings of $497 for for our webinar, and you can have it today for $99. If you sign up today, handing out sheets like that does two things, it generates more business than you can imagine. I mean, people will go for 97 or $99 offering if it's usually $500. And they'll make a decision very quickly. Especially if your presentation is good. And shows them they need more of what you have to offer. And the key there is your presentation has to be good. If it's not, why would they pay 100? Let alone 500. More more of you. Right?

Robert Plank 10:59 So um, so I mean, what's what's the starting point for people if they say, you know, a want to do more speaking and want to speak at more events? Do you recommend that someone like like, you know, film themselves and figure out what their talk is going to be to beef up their steroids storytelling? Do you recommend that they go to like some of these speaker meetings? Do you recommend that they go and I contact event organizers like what's maybe the first one or two steps if someone is looking to do more speaking?

Chuck Hooper 11:29 Well, it depends on their skill level at the start, if they have a story to tell. And they're just not good getting on stage and telling the story. You know, an easy, inexpensive way to get started. Number one look for meetups in your area that cater to professional speakers tie in with some people that are there to help others entrepreneur groups. The other thing is Toastmasters. I'm a big believer in people that need help with speaking join a Toastmaster group. Now, there are a lot of Toastmaster clubs and I'll be honest with you, some of them suck at helping someone become a better speaker because they don't have in their group. Someone that could be a mentor. Visit a couple of different clubs. Find one where you see someone give a speech that does a great job. See if they'll be your Toastmaster mentor. And don't go in with the idea that your mentor is going to teach you all about Toastmasters. Your goal with Toastmasters is to be a better speaker, you'll get some practice time there. Go in with the idea of finding a mentor that can help you be a better speaker, you'll meet them, you'll spend time at coffee shops, you'll spend time on the phone. It's not just the meeting, the mentor is there in Toastmasters to help you achieve your goal. And I you know, I've been mentoring a number of Toastmaster people now. And it's fun to watch them succeed. And I'm trying to you said something earlier about convincing people how amazing you are. When you're on stage. And I find that it's you're more apt to succeed and what it is you're subtly selling. If you convince people how amazing your clients turn out to be. Don't don't, you know, I'm not the good one. I talk to these people and they become great. that sells people like that's good. Because you don't want to intimidate the people you're selling to.

Unknown Speaker 13:30 Right? Don't

Speaker 1 13:31 Don't be the great one. Right? That makes a lot of sense. And you're making me think back to

Robert Plank 13:36 when people tell interesting stories and things like that I've definitely, you know, watched a lot of people's stories or stage presentations or putting out videos where it's all about them. And I found myself sort of bored, maybe I wasn't bored right away. But it's like after, you know, three, four or five times just like meaning me, it's like I get I get sort of sort of bored there. But then if it's either about how like someone else told them something that was interesting, or they help their clients, I think that definitely makes a lot of sense to me, where, where you're talking up someone else, even though suddenly, indirectly as a side effect. You're the one who helped them. But I think that's a really important distinction there that the those those really good stories, those kind of talking up are about how much you helped your clients not just about your amazing accomplishments.

Chuck Hooper 14:23 Well, it all boils down to understanding what it is your audience needs and what they want out of your presentation. different audiences have very different needs. One example I've haven't been a part of but I've seen in action is if you're speaking to the NRA, your view on guns should be different than if you're speaking to the Moms Demand Action Group. Know your audience. If you're speaking to a high IQ society group, be aware that you are going to be attacked at the end when you get to the q&a session. Everybody there is going to try to show how smart they are by attacking everything you said. You need to be prepared. Know your audience. If you're speaking to business analysts, what is their pain point, typical business analysts don't have trouble analyzing the data, they have trouble getting their insights taken up the line, getting someone above them convinced the work was valid. And that there's something they learned from it that should be implemented. So knowing your audience is a great way to get that whole process started, you're not going to give the audience value, if you give the same speech to 10 different audiences. Same speech can be modified to satisfy 10 different audiences, but know what your audience needs.

Robert Plank 15:42 I like it, that makes perfect sense. And so as far as you know, knowing your audience and speaking, I'm always just sort of, I get stuck a lot trying to reconcile the the balance between information and entertainment, because many times all, like see someone speak and whatever sort of environment and they weren't really say much, but they'll be really entertaining. And then everyone in the room really love it. And then many times, if I give like a webinar, or a some kind of a talk, I'm always more super concerned that I'll be way too over people's heads, or I'll be way heavy on the information, and not maybe leading them thirsty enough to want to know more, or maybe even like, you know, jumping so much that maybe they feel overwhelmed. So do you have any thoughts on that on, like, how to how to actually say something, but also be fun. And then and not overload them. But then also have people feeling like they got something from me any ideas or advice they're

Chuck Hooper 16:41 most sure if you're, if your goal was to be an entertainer, a stand up comic, then entertaining the whole way through, you don't have to give them any information. That's fine. Most of us when we speak, we are trying to elicit an action or evoke an emotion out of our audience. We want them to accept this call to action and do something it's either buy a product or service. If it's an analyst talking to his manager taking something up the line, if it's an executive talking to Wall Street or to the media, it's you know, getting them to paint the company or that executive in a good light. If it's a teacher presenting the students will inspire the students. And if it's a politician telling a story or making a presentation, it's important that they tell the truth. And what I find lately is that's a rare commodity politician telling you the truth, they're always bending something their way. The information versus entertainment, in most cases, you want to add entertainment, I don't care how serious your topic is. If you don't get some laughter out of your audience, they're going to tune out, people can only take so much serious and then they start tuning you out. The entertainment, from my viewpoint should be self deprecating stories. Don't pick on anyone else. If you see a bunch of bald guys in the front row, don't pick on bald people. I saw someone do that once and one of the guys stood up and said Go ahead, make fun of chemotherapy and turn around walked out. That speaker was done. He was shattered. You know your audience, but entertain Absolutely. Just be careful. You have to entertain by using self deprecating humor, stale old jokes you've got off the internet. Just keep in mind, your audience probably heard them already. And if you can just tell funny stories about yourself to make a point, you're going to be a heck of a lot more successful. And your comment about sometimes you fear going over your audience head. That that's a serious topic. I have seen people try to impress others with how smart they are by using words that no one in the audience understood. Were they successful? No, not at all. And I don't say dumb it down to where a five year old can understand it. But if you have good material, explaining it so that a five or 10 year old could understand it is not a bad way to go. And as far as leaving them in, you know getting them thirsty, leaving them to thirst for more. Absolutely, that goes back to you know you're doing a 45 minute to an hour presentation. You better have a lot more material than that if you give them 100% of what you know, you have nothing else to offer them. What are they going to buy from you. And if that's all you have to offer, you're probably not going to get that speaking gig in the first place. So offering something else and it's Darren Lacroix is an ex Toastmaster international World Champion from 19 9091 somewhere on there and he has a story that he tells about that that he was speaking and he referenced buying his books or buying something in the back of the room. And, you know, people would complain, you know, I paid to come to this conference, and now I got to go buy something else. And the story goes that when he was that way, he asked one of his mentors about that. He said, I hate selling in the back of the room and the metro looked at him and said, How often do you speak often? How long do you speak? 45 minutes to an hour? Is that all you know? No. Well, you selfish bastard. you tease them for 45 minutes to an hour, and you don't give them any way to learn more. Shame on you. And that's the philosophy that speakers have to understand. There are too many speakers that won't do back in the room sales or won't bring up their offerings, because they think it's tacky. And the truth is, if you're doing it, right, if you have driven that thirst in your audience, to get them to leave wanting more, you better have a way of giving them the more have the webinars, have the CDs, have the books, you know, offer to do other presentations, it doesn't take like I say, if you're selling something and you have the right audience, an audience of 20 if it's high level CEOs you can make a lot of money out of that one contact that brings you in for a week or two is going to more than pay for what you ever could have gotten speaking to the group

Robert Plank 21:26 I love so new ways of thinking about these so

Chuck Hooper 21:29 middle of the room sales as much as back of the room. And you know, it is changing the back of the room stuff is still popular but less and less popular. event planners want people that motivate inspire the audience.

Robert Plank 21:47 Awesome. Well makes makes perfect sense. And, and so that that that piece of advice right there about having those self deprecating stories, those jokes that kind of make fun at yourself. I love that idea. Because like I've been trying to put my finger on it, because sometimes I'll see some speaker on YouTube like, like a Jim Rohn or someone like that kind of start off making fun of themselves a little bit and it kind of in a way that it's like, well, you know, either like if a kind of bumbling idiot like me can do it. Imagine what you can do or Yeah, in front of themselves at a younger age, or before they have things figured out. And that way, there's like a before and after there. And that way they kind of get hooked into a story and then that way, it's okay for them to make fun of themselves because it's like, well, that's me before I had all this stuff figured out and they can relate and, and all that fun stuff. And so I've been trying to put my finger on exactly what that works to seems like some of the speakers that the ones that I like the most kind of start off with this dry humor and even just like just as they start talking, you know, you're in for something different and special. And so those self deprecating stories, that's a really good tip right there as far as like, what to what to use to break the ice get things started.

Chuck Hooper 22:57 Yeah, and, and one thing you know, we talked about Toastmasters meetup groups, there's something else I think people should do if they really want to get into speaking. And we'll say speaker presenter, the the speaking part, if you google 10 best speeches of all time, you will get Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, look at 10 names, you know, and 10 speeches you recognize, if you google 10 best presentations of all time, you'll get 10 PowerPoint presentations you've never from people you've never seen or heard of. There's this huge difference between being a speaker and a presenter. A lot of speakers use PowerPoint to back up what they're doing. My challenge to most speakers is find a way to give your talk without PowerPoint, find your way to get up and let the audience focus on Whew. 100% on you. We can't always do it, you know, I do some presentations where they give me a template and it's advertising for the event and they want me to run a PowerPoint. Sometimes there's two or three slides. Yeah, they're add something that says q&a and my ad. But somebody that wants to be a speaker, learn to do it without being a presenter.

Robert Plank 24:16 That's really good advice. And what I'm hearing from you a lot is to to be adaptable. So whatever is in front of you, like change your speech up a little bit depending on if you're talking to the NRA or someone else or if you have to work with different lengths or PowerPoint or not or you know jokes don't quite lands you know, don't make fun of the ball people and all of that so it's like what I'm what I'm hearing from you is just that. The speaking just scenario in general changes over time, but then event to event changes over time. So it sounds like you kind of have to fit yourself into whatever sort of box you're you find yourself in when you're speaking at some kind of event here.

Chuck Hooper 24:56 Right and the thing you have to remember is it is so much easier To find a new audience than it is to come up with a new speech, a good speech takes a while to develop. And for you to get to the point where you deliver it so that it has the impact you desire. But if you give the same speech to four different, let's say, regions or chapters of an organization at different parts of the country, the same speech, they want you to give the exact same speech, you still want to change it up a little, a story up front, a story in the middle of story in the end, that is more to their local environment. It could be a sports story, if you're talking in Miami, find some funny Miami Dolphins story or make some wisecrack about it. But bring the local audience flavor into your talk, same meat in your presentation. But you have a better connection with that audience. Like you said, If you tell a self deprecating story up front, you start to connect with people that might look for, or like the fact that, hey, this guy's as bad as I am. And now he's up front, maybe I should listen. And if you bring the local stuff into it, people just seem to like you more. And, you know, some people say, well, the goal isn't to be liked. Oh, hell yes, it is. If you're not like, they're not gonna remember what you said. Yeah, okay, and you won't get good reviews.

Robert Plank 26:29 I love it. And what that that part of it makes me think of is, is you know, I used to always hate that part of when I was younger, and I'd see someone speak, I was always like, oh, can't we just get past all the, you know, the the jokes, the filler, the fluff. But then as I get older, I kind of realized that now I like that part, maybe even a little more than the information. And also, when I look at the other attendees in the room, it seems like a lot of them are there. They're drawn into the the entertainment. And that part seems to be like a lot more necessary than I had previously believed.

Chuck Hooper 27:06 When you look around the room, the audience while someone's speaking, and you see a lot of other people smiling and nodding their heads affirmatively, you know, the speaker is hitting home somewhere. And the speaker looking out the audience, if he sees people smiling and nodding, that's a good sign. He knows he's on the right track. If the speaker looks out and sees people just glaring and maybe some shaking their head, no, he's hitting a nerve. And he's got to decide, okay, is this am I trying to hit that nerve? Am I going to recover from it? speakers have to think on the fly. You said something a little bit ago about the whole thinking on your flight being able to adjust. What do you do when you walk in with a PowerPoint presentation and someone says what just blew the ball but the presenter, it'll take two days, get another one, you're up. You have to take the fact that things will happen, power is going to go out, the room is going to change. Something will happen that makes your presentation need to be adaptable. You as the presenter need to be able to fit in with just about anything that can go wrong.

Robert Plank 28:18 Right, you better make it work. Otherwise, I mean, what are you going to do? Everyone else is waiting. So um, so these days where it is, I mean, we listened today like, you know, a lot of things that speakers maybe mess up on sometimes need to correct and lots of other things that speakers do correctly. So these days, like, Where are speakers getting stuck? And you never down to maybe like like, Is it a bunch of things? Or is it one glaring thing that you're always notice?

Chuck Hooper 28:44 There are a few things that I noticed. One is that speakers tend to start the wrong way. They'll start off with Well, I want to thank you for being here. My name is Chuck Cooper, I'm this I'm that I'm from here, that was all covered in the introduction. They know you're happy to be here. If you go more than 20 or 30 seconds with that kind of a beginning, the audience starts to tune out because they're thinking this guy doesn't have anything. He's just going to be SS and they start tuning out. They end up what they call the iPhone prayer, you know, hands claps together in front of you head bowed and you're watching your iPhone. About 20 years old 2025 years ago, if you looked at a book on speaking it would say you have eight minutes to capture your audience's attention. If you look at follow up books from 10 years ago, you have three to four minutes to get your audience's attention. A recent study said you have eight seconds. When you get up there and you start thanking people it's too late. You've lost part of your audience. You need to say something right off the top. Just boom. Here you are. Go. You need to start with a line. That is the first line in a story they want to hear the ending to and the story might take 30 seconds but in the first five to 10 seconds You've grabbed their attention. And the other thing is a close, you always want to close and I see people just screw this one up a lot. They'll have a good, close, they'll have a power statement at the end that gotcha. This is wow. And then they'll turn to somebody else and say, well, thank you for allowing me to be here. And they've now given the audience the option to quit thinking about the power close. They've sometimes you just want to close and shut up and stare at the audience for a full minute, let it sink in. And the other one that kills me and this, if you're a Toastmaster, every meeting when people are speaking you have what's called the grammarian. The art counter. It's someone that counts the arms and ahhs out of a speaker's mouth. You know, it's like, well, john, you had 17 arms today, we need to work on that. I have had speakers. High Level speakers start their presentation with Well, I'm I am. And I find myself having come from a Toastmasters background, taking a sheet of paper writing the word I'm on it and starting to go for tick marks. And when I hit 40, I realize this guy said 40, ohms, and I haven't heard anything else. I've turned him out. Speakers need to cut out the filler words, have a quick grab up front, I gotcha at the end. You know, if the middle part is a little flaky, probably get away with it. Just be prepared, know your material well enough so that the hums and ahhs go away the extra and Susan butts, I had a lady speaking recently, she had a good seven minute presentation, every single sentence started with a word and and when I looked at a written speech that she had rehearsed from it wasn't there any anywhere, never getting over the nerves. Darren Lacroix has a tip for people that want to be speakers, stage time, stage time, stage time. I don't care if you're talking to a group of dogs at a kennel, practice, practice, practice.

Robert Plank 32:16 Really good advice there. And that's the kind of thing that I struggle with. Over and over again, well, there's a right there, right. But over and over again, it's really tempting to slide back into those old speaking patterns and to want to fill the space or to bridge the sentences within and things like that. So that's a really good reminder, even though it's a reminder, we've all gotten since given the book report in the third grade, really good reminders there of taking the time to make sure that if there's that repeat word to keep that out and starting strong and ending strong. And then as far as that there is a nomogram. But as far as the storytelling part, have a different upfront middle, and an end that you can swap out based on your audience. Really good ideas there. And so I want to make sure that if everyone listened today gets the most out of it. So can you tell us about some resources of yours like some websites or books or any place you want to send people who are listening to this conversation today? What do you have?

Chuck Hooper 33:16 Well, the the book on speaking, I have one that's called 59 minutes to great storytelling on Amazon. And it's just about a lot of the things we talked about knowing your audience, knowing your material, knowing your goal, knowing the parts of the speech, the grab the guts and the gotcha. And a little thing I have a little tip I have that I've seen work extremely well on how to make your presentation bulletproof. So the book is 59 minutes to great storytelling. I have three websites, the biologics.com everything is that's on there is geared toward my consulting business. I have Chuck speaks.com, which is geared toward my speaking business. And speaker presenter.com one word speaker presenter.com. That is the one that Janice Berg and I have, where we're offering services to primarily businesses, to get their executives, their presenters ready to go on stage either in front of their own employees, or in front of 70 people in a breakout session at a conference. I've got another book coming out soon. That's called 59 minutes to finding your story. There are a lot of people that have the ability to speak and nothing they think nothing to talk about. Well, this book is premises. Yes, you do. There's something you have that an audience needs to hear. And the last one in the 59 minutes series will be out in October is 59 minutes to great presentations. And it's just stage presence, PowerPoint, anything that involves getting up in front of a group, the other book, then it's not one on speaking, it's Tableau analytics in the accounting classroom. I don't recommend it for anybody that's not in accounting classroom. There'll be another book coming out before the end of the year, 59 minutes to critical thinking, a lot of the education market I speak to tells me that students don't have critical thinking skills. And then I have some traps, I try to use to show them that neither do they. And that what's really missing is critical listening skills. The students are great thinkers, they're just solving the wrong problem, because they either didn't read correctly, or they didn't listen to the problem.

Robert Plank 35:43 super great. So all kinds of stuff out all kinds of stuff coming out. So buy analytics.com Chuck speaks calm, and then speaker presenter calm for that course on how to be a speaker. And then for people who want to get some of those books like a 59 minutes to storytelling, and then those other ones that you have coming out, where can people find those books of yours?

Chuck Hooper 36:04 Well, there are links on any of my websites. But if you go to Amazon and look for 59 minutes to great storytelling, you'll hit my main page, and the other books will hit that shortly.

Robert Plank 36:16 All right, awesome. And so I read that 59 minutes to great storytelling this morning, as far as and it was great stuff. And as far as like the what is it the grab the guts, or the and the gotcha and the gotcha, there we go. And that the thing that and I'm super quick read, but the thing that sticks in my mind, from having read it a couple of hours ago is I need to go back. And when I do webinars and things like that, I need to ask a question at the beginning. And that's one of those things where I used to do it quite often. But then having, you know, done it over and over, I kinda like forgot some of those important lessons. So that's the big one like stuff for me after reading that 15 minutes to storytelling is that I need to start off that webinar strong and ask a really powerful, important question. Maybe just like, ask it and wait a second and let it sink in. Let them think about it before moving on. So that way has that power,

Chuck Hooper 37:07 you want to ask a question that the audience really wants to have an answer to. And you have their attention. It's like the golf pro that started a lunchtime presentation once and just said, how would you like to hit the ball further and straighter than ever before? All golfers in the room, we had our attention. Later that afternoon on the course we realized he lied. But in the meantime, he had our attention. perfectly. It

Robert Plank 37:31 did the job it was supposed to do.

Chuck Hooper 37:33 Yeah. Well, except for the success. Oh, well, there

Robert Plank 37:37 you go. That's a different problem. All right. But at least he had the beginning figured out just had your problem. Yeah, there we go. So it's a great stuff. So lots of stuff for us to think about lots of stuff for those of us who are looking to amp up our speaking business or looking to refine what we're doing or looking to figure out what we're doing right and doing wrong. Really great advice of going into those speaking groups, those Toastmasters groups to figure out your material will figure out your talk. And then once you have that storytelling, and you have everything nailed down, then shop it around it, I love that piece of advice of it's easier to find that new audience, you just take your talk to them, as opposed to making new talks over and over again. And so lots of great stuff to think about and talk about. So by analytics, comm Chuck speaks comm speaker presenter calm and then make sure to also go on Amazon and search 59 minutes to storytelling, and you'll get Chuck's book so Thanks, Mr. Chuck for stopping by and dropping all these great stories, all this great knowledge and getting us on the right track. I really appreciate and appreciate you for stopping by today.

Chuck Hooper 38:38 My pleasure, Robert. Thank you for having me.