David Thomas - Creating Presentation Rockstars

Podcast

Guest Profile - David Thomas

Bio

Sunday Times #1 bestselling author, Hall of Fame speaker, Guinness record breaker, media personality (Oprah), global presenter in 23 countries, national level Masters competitive bodybuilder.

David Thomas - Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidthomas314/

Location

Sowerby Bridge, UK

David Thomas - Contact Details

Telephone number: 07525 069235

Transcription

Tony Radford 0:05
David, how are you today?

David Thomas 0:32
I'm brilliant, actually.

Yeah, so it's really I'm in Yorkshire, so the reading is getting ready to rain. But so from that I'm good.

Tony Radford 0:42
You've got a very sunny or very light shirt, you know, very colorful shirt on. So is that is that one of your trademarks? The shirts?

David Thomas 0:49
Well, no. Oddly enough, when I do my speaking, I'm a presentation skills coach. But I also do professional speakers. And I shall put a picture of me when I was like four, and I'm wearing something absolutely. as ridiculous as this. I don't know if it is indoctrination. But I've always worn shirts like this. But until I start being a speaker, because there's a speaker while the you know, the the suit and the shirt in time. And then I got about 10 years in this, I don't want to do this anymore. So I started wearing shirts like this. And I thought that I get a bit of kickback. And maybe people won't book many I'll just went on to the last show. They don't. But I didn't lose work. Because I'm not an idiot if he loses me work. But the great thing now is I'm wearing this shirt I like.

Tony Radford 1:31
so that's the that's the lesson where wherever she feel good in? I think so. Yeah, yeah. Excellent. So could you tell us about your business?

David Thomas 1:41
Well, I'm a presentation skills coach, that's what I spend kinda 95% of my time doing is it leaders and make them presentation workstyles. She's like the cheesiest line in the world. So a few years ago, I started doing presentation skills. And in there, you know, let's go for a snazzy title. Because the problem is as a small business, finding your niche, finding the space, making enough noise to get attention. And so I said to him, he says, Karen, I said, you know, I'm gonna say creative presentation rockstars. And it was just kind of a bit cheeky line. I get the the week, four weeks ago, a chief executive Monaco, incredibly wealthy, very, very successful, zooms me and he goes, I want you to make me a presentation box down. I was like, come on. So yeah, that's what I do. I'm a tech leaders and aspiring leaders, because those are the people who really want to improve their presentation skills, those who were climbing the greasy pole to get to a certain stage, and they realize they're not going to go any further, unless they learn how to present but it's virtually like this to a camera or face to face.

Tony Radford 2:49
What is it about presenting that helps that helps people elevate themselves?

David Thomas 2:54
Well, these, these two ways of looking at it, if you're not good enough, then they just won't give you the job. It's just become an essential tool when you become a leader at certain level. Why? You know, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure. But if I'm going to be obvious instead, the obvious if you want to close the sale, you've got to be convincing. You've got to be able to talk with passion, and all these other great things that actually once people get in front of an audience, or they're trying to deliver clam up, and it just become this boring, monotonous automaton, right. All it is getting a message across at all. So people waffle, minis game, Monica, a great example.

He turned around, and he sent me a copy of his film, from his last talk. He's got 200 members of stuff all over the world is in gaming. And they said, What do you think? And I said, it's 38 minutes long. And he said, yeah, it was Yeah. I said he could have said it in eight sentences. Anyone know? And I said, Yeah, I did. I gave it to me sentences. And he was like, ah, I said, Man, you to say went around the houses is an understatement. And the thing is that when you do things like that, when if somebody gives you 40 minutes, and you turn 40 minutes in, you just waffle, you lose people, you lose your message, you lose your impact. And these are all soft areas, aren't they?

But as a leader, we all identify those leaders who've got great ability to get a message across, connect with an audience, motivate them, and these all seem very soft, but trust me, if you don't have those abilities, you know that it affects your bottom line on some level. Because if you're doing a presentation on a Monday, for example, a Monday morning team meeting or the lady talking to your team, that might be the only 20 minutes they hear your voice if you stand up or go you know when driving rally cars this weekend. Let me tell you about me and and you know, and then it goes Yeah, well, you know, I forget we can eat anything gives a shout, you know, and if you go through that kind of weirdly wofully kind of dilly dally shaitana crappy presentation. They don't sit there and feel empowered. They don't feel encouraged to sit there and give you 40 hours of their life. That way, and, and come in and be a 10 out of 10. And that's a very simple example. But it's true.

And we know this, everybody realizes that whether you're an employee, whether you're seeing it, whether you're a team leader, whether we see the manager, or whether you're the boss, everybody understands the very simple example I've just given. There's two elements. One is structure.

And then the other is delivery platform skills. Yeah, and we need to do is bring the two together. And what I, for example, I said, I give people an example of how to start a presentation. And I tell them, and I did this on Monday at three strangers, three, they never met each other. They were doing a virtual whole their presentation skills course. And the one thing is, is that says, You've got to get your point across in 60 seconds, you've got to tell them stunning credibility, tell them who you are, tell them what's in it for them, tell them something extraordinary, you use three different elements of the whole session that you're going to deliver.

Put a bit of humor in if you can polarize and challenge but don't find an offering just when you can't do that 60 seconds is not possible. And yeah, show them for videos, and they went, Okay, maybe you can. So the thing is that when you give people a good structure, then all of a sudden it increases of confidence. And they just become instant, the better by learning to cut out the rooms, the hours the waffle going around the house and start to have good eye contact, etc, etc. So give people a template, which is what i have i've got a call it the presentation palace, you know, start with foundations, you've lived in Italy, Leaning Tower of Pisa, beautiful, crap foundations still fall over unless they do all that remedial effort, right? So no matter how beautiful the structure is, it'll fall over if it's done by foundations.

So you know, that's what you do, you put your foundations in, you build the structure, put a roof on it, then decorate it. And that's the analogy that I use. And people get that substructure is really important. But then the performance skills have got to come out. If I stand here, and I just got, yeah, Tony's brilliant Venus speaker and I love being a speaker's coach, and it's fantastic. The content I'm delivering might be great. If I don't deliver it with some passion, and learn how to pause and use my hands really well. I look at their camera, size and cadence, stop, start say something funny says something serious, make you angry, make you sad, but share a bit of light. If I don't learn how to do the platform skills and becomes very boring, very quick, huh.

Tony Radford 7:23
There are actually, you know, some opportunities for people with smaller businesses to do to get up in front of people like in network meetings or before the before that you could volunteer to give a talk and you know, so I've done that a couple of network sites to be it. One of the things I noticed with people is that people can get quite nervous. How do you help people to calm down a bit? Before they

David Thomas 7:49
add on one of the three people on Monday, she emailed me last Friday and basically said, the boss has kicked me in the Kip is onto this course. Right? The word she used was trepidation. Now I don't think that's a soft word. I think that's fairly strong. And she said, but she did say, in fact, Minister, she said I'm looking to improve. I'm interested in improving.

But I'm nervous. And I said, let's have a little chat about it. She goes, she literally just went well. I basically rather not have a chat. I'm like an iPhone or a phone for her didn't think she was going to be difficult or awkward. And so she came on. And I said and she she did I said right, introduce yourself. And what I don't tell them is that I'm again, I'm assessing them while they do it. So she's bought for like two minutes introduce herself. And she had one earn every twin every three seconds. So it's like, round my name, so and so and, and I'd be working at so and so on, you know, do this. And I do that every three seconds, right? So she was a bit nervous, she was doing this. So I tell my dentist, this is what you're doing.

This is what you need to change. This is what you know, so and so I said you didn't look at the camera properly, your eyes like this, and you're like you have this kind of a swiveling head. And if you do this and you do this and you concentrate on reducing you aim to be fine. We did a donor exercise, but an hour later directed to the camera, completely got rid of the herbs and ours was an A nurse just almost instantly disappeared. And at lunchtime, she said to me, I am shocked. Just a little bit process. Bearing in mind I've only given a half the presentation Palace by lunchtime. She said just by being told what I was doing wrong bit of coaching from somebody who knows what they're talking about, you know, pointing out what is best practice and a bit of presentation policy. She said I'm shocked at how good I feel about the presentation already. So the biggest issue a lot of time with nerves is that people stand up and they don't know what they're doing. They don't know what's good or bad.

They don't know how to start a presentation. They don't know how to put one together. They're winging it, even if you see some views amazing It's very difficult to reverse engineer a great speech, because you don't really know what you're looking at. And you can't just copy it. You can't go, oh, Barack Obama does that in his talk, maybe I'll do that doesn't really work. What you need is a coach. And that's why, you know, we were talking about sport, and just before we came on air, and how many people out there have got no coach, professional sports people? Like no. Like, no.

And you know, a lot of them. If you look at the very top one is Roger Federer as a coach, not somebody who's being better than him, but somebody tells him what he's doing wrong, and how to make it better. And that's why I come that's why in the day, I transform anybody on the planet. I've been doing presentation skills coaching tip since 2011, nobody's ever walked away and said anything less than that was being critical. Not because of necessarily what I did, or it is me per se, but because they just learned that the problem is in life. We don't know what we don't know. And not enough people have got the humility to just go, dude, I don't know what I don't know. Tell me. Right.

Particularly guidance guys are the worst.

Tony Radford 11:15
I think guys are the worst.

David Thomas 11:18
Yeah, guy just think they can wing it by sheer grind by sheer force of will by you know, losing weight, something I've done. I was 20. Stolen 10 years ago, I've sat there and absolute, just raging testosterone for bid me for begged me to sit there and get a personal trainer. I'm going to lose five stone in five months, which I did on my own. But I tell you, what, three or four months after Alastair thought, you know what? Maybe I should get PT, right. So I've got a personal trainer, and he taught me something in three minutes.

I never knew. And you just sit there and face time yourself and you go. Why didn't I just ask before? Now, of course, money might be an issue, but it wasn't for me. Why didn't I just sit there and go? I've tried to lose weight. I've done yo yo dieting. I've tried Atkins. I've tried keto. I've tried South Beach. I've tried every day that there is and I'm not losing weight. Why don't I ask a professional, but I didn't. Because just a lack of, you know, a lack of any kind of humility, forbid me to do that. Right. And so once I did ask him, he turned to him and taught me all kinds of stuff. And

Unknown Speaker 12:31
here we go. All right.

Tony Radford 12:34
Yeah, no, that's cool. And so if you don't mind me asking if most of your work from referrals, or do you do you know, doing lots of marketing for your work? Or how do you get your clothes on,

David Thomas 12:47
oddly enough, hundred percent is is referral work. Because I think, be in a presentation skills coach, going with this, if you're a if you're a leader, aspiring leader, which is my target audience, and you're sat there and you decide you want to improve your presentation skills, you don't go and look in the Yellow Pages. I know because it looks like yellow pages anymore. But you know what I mean, you don't just sit there and got presentation skills, and stick it in Google. And then click on the first one that you find that come through and just

bug me

know, what you do is you just sit there and you go, does anybody have presentation skills? Or you go on Facebook? Is anybody in our presentation skills? Good? Was he good? Was he crap was in you know, was he amazing? And if you get somebody turns around, he goes, you should use desktops because he's bloody brilliant. Then, you know, along you come in and you do it all podcast. So the chief executive Monaco was interested, because he sent me like two line email, can have a chat. I'm interested in some presentation skills coach, and I want to be a presentation skills Rockstar. And I'm like, anyway, he came on the zoo. And he's 30 years old, and he's just sat down.

I went out did he find me? And he said, the podcast. So I've had a presentation skills podcast for a year, I've done about 70 odd episodes. The most downloads we've had for any individual one is only 100. So we're not talking about 10s of thousands of people watching this. And he said, I went into Apple put in their presentation skills, got your podcast, binge or listened to all 70 Robbins. And he said, he said he did the guy for me. So what's interesting is just you know, podcasting. Gorgeous, I love podcasts. I've just posted on Facebook, I'm doing this podcast with you. And as I always say yes to every podcast interview I get asked for which is a lot. And the reason is because I love podcasts, because you can have a conversation younger the distraction of YouTube, where there's with 58 adverts and all these other videos, you can go and watch it tend to listen to a podcast at times when you're kind of in the car going out for your walk or for me cross train many mornings so I do an hour of listening Test.

But I'm doing the kind of asking the training. And so the thing is, he just came on 15 minutes booked me for six sessions paid all of it upfront, you know, five figures on straightaway, boom. Got second one on Saturday. Because the thing about podcast as well, and this is interesting is that my podcast, I talk like this, I'm chit chatting, right. And I use my sense of humor. I swear a little bit. Not a lot, but I do. I swear a lot. But if you don't like it, I'm not for you. So what it does is it divides my audience. So I'll learn a great phrase, fantastic phrase, because when you start out in business, you just if somebody says, What do you do when you go? I do position skills for everybody?

Everybody could No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, dude, who does it work best for your instinct? You just got everybody because you want the work? Right? It's your instinct. And but I heard this phrase the other week, and it's brilliant. It says, divide your audience before the committee or community, or they will divide your community after they've come in. Hmm. That is bloody gorgeous. So that's what I do. So I swear a little bit, I swear a little bit on the Facebook page. People go elsewhere, I go, Well, first of all, he was busy as me because I'm, you know, stuck to the rafters we work, we got to go well, then he's working this out there. It's not you is it. I do get word from referrals a lot.

But actually, you know, people just see me on Facebook. I'm vicious on social media. And pile it in all the time social proof is the number one reason I get booked social proof. So every time I do a client, I do an interview with them to do an exit interview. And I just, you know, and I've just edited sharply and stick it up. As I say I do a 10 minute interview with somebody who I've worked with, I'll chop it up into 10 more minutes. And I put every single one of those 10 more minutes. So and then I put in, you know, a five minute bit from it, then all the 10 minutes. And then I do an edited version in three minutes. So I get one video, I'll show it 15 times over the year.

Tony Radford 17:04
A good lesson for everybody really? What's your biggest challenge when you first started out as a as a presentation trainer?

David Thomas 17:12
Well, to be honest, I started out as a memory guy. Hmm. So you've seen my you've obviously seen my my background. But my background was interesting because I was an operational firefighter, I never went to college, never went to university, I got kicked out of school at 16. So join the fire service at 20%. See on the job, one a few jobs that was valuable to me as an older working class guy, right? Being a firefighter is top of the food chain. With no qualifications. Everybody loves a fireman. But I couldn't pass the exams to get promoted. So suddenly, one day, and I'm watching TV, and I saw a guy memorize a packet playing counts. And I'm like, That is amazing. I'm gonna buy that guy's books. It's every bit. But anyway, long story short, I taught myself how to do it. Eight months later into the world memory championships came forth in the world. In eight months, life just exploded. So what was interesting for me is that, and this may not work for anybody else. So but what was great for me is that I came back from B, I was an expert.

I was an expert, I had this expertise, which was showing people how to train their brain. I told myself, then other people start saying, will you teach me so start teaching in the face service. And for me, I because I was fortunate enough to have a full time job where I wasn't working office hours, I was able to develop the business on the side. And so what I ended up doing was building up side by side and I was actually a speaker for four years before I retired from resigned or, you know, resigned from the fire service. And so I am a gave yourself a great tip business, it doesn't matter how long it takes, as long as you get there there. You know, they always say Rome wasn't built in a day that it got built.

Don't just think it's gonna happen in three or six or nine or 12 months, since alpha targets are out or maybe two years, two years from now I'm going to be doing this full time, then you reverse engineer, you go backwards. So today, what do you need to do? You don't need to get tingles with work today, if you could, you would. So for me, I know it's not quite the question you asked to me. I do apologize for that. But I think it's also important that people understand that it doesn't happen have to happen overnight. I can remember in 1997, I gave the first talk in the fire service and I started doing more in the fire service. And it took me a year before I thought I might be able to do it commercially. And what I did back in the day, I had no computer no internet, or went down to the library. And I found a book that had all the the top companies listed in West Yorkshire that were in the footsie 1000 but more things and after. And what I did was I took all their phone numbers and a phone remote. And the biggest lesson that I learned that going through that period is that nobody taught me how many calls To make why was that the biggest lesson? Because I wasn't told when to stop.

Because that was fun companies of parsec kind of speak to the HR department and they go, yeah, costs again. And I got my name is David Thomas, and I'm a world class member guy who wants to come in and teach you stuff. And most would just go, no one would wonder why would we want that? anyway? That's a great question. To which I have no. So never been on a marketing cost. I've been on the sales course. never done anything. I just phoned him up and said money and they're gonna come and see and Muslim just went No.

And then eventually a Jacuzzi manufacturing Brantford just went, yeah, okay, come see me. Someone open. So I sat down and told him what I did. And he said, I'll book you for a day on which I I said 1000 quid 1998. I said, 1000 quid, anyway, yes. And I was like, do we have a night. So I was in the 980 quid in the fire service, I'll be after tax, but 980 quid take a bit for a month in the faces. And this guy was going to give me 1000 quid for debt. That's when I knew it was all change. It was never going to go back. I was never, I was never going to look back in the face of sin. Same way, it still took me 18 months to get out the faces. Yeah. But you know, my lesson there was, don't listen to other people too much. Find out somebody who has been where you want to where you want to go. And that's how they got there. But just be careful. Be careful, because there's just a lot of people talking a lot of bollocks on this on social media, that will tell you how to do stuff. We've never done it themselves. Hmm.

Tony Radford 21:34
Yeah, that's very good advice, actually. I mean, in terms of advice, what is there anything that you wish somebody had actually told you when you started out?

David Thomas 21:45
I tell you what's on it. If I was doing it now.

The number one thing I would learn. And I would learn it before I even came up with an idea for a business would be how to sell online. Learn how to use social media properly, not not tell them what you've had for your tea. Not not put pictures of you and the kids 14 times a day, nobody cares. Learn how to use social media properly, learn how to do you know do marketing funnels, digital marketing funnels? So for example, you know, we're doing one soon for presentations, because so you must make your referral. Yes, it is. But it isn't going to be soon, we're going to do a Facebook ad. And so we do a physical kind of maybe it costs a pound, get somebody to click through, we're going to have what's called a break even funnel, which means that we bring them through, we say to them, easily magnet, a PDF, seven ways in which lead is sucker presented and how to put it right, that's free, then click on it. And it's that before you go, I've got two videos here, one, and that's present remotely, and one on how to handle the two biggest problems at the moment in speaking nerves and how to present through a camera lens. And you can have both of these for $17. In the foot, people will buy that at $17 to offset the ad costs. So what we end up then is we've got this beautiful little email address. Now email marketing is very clear. This, it's an absolute science is email marketing, and you can learn it for free. So once we've got that email address, we email them every day with our daily email that we're gonna be sending out. And then every so often, once or twice a week, we just drop in a social media link or social proof testimonial. This is this is internet marketing. And I'll tell you doing it now I do it all this, I don't care what you're selling, we send him widgets where he's selling, you know, I don't know, plastic dogs toys, where he's selling, you know, financial services, I would learn to do it, I'd learn how to use internet marketing funnels.

Tony Radford 23:57
That's really great advice, actually. I mean, the kind of people that I may mean, my software practice at are exactly the people that would benefit from that kind of advice that you've just given the very, because what you know, when you were talking about it, and he said you can learn this for free? Well, so that's really nice advice, actually. Yeah, thanks very much in terms of your business, I mean, you've covered some of this, but what would you say were the next steps so you're going to demand more marketing?

David Thomas 24:25
Yeah. Well, the whole point is now is where we get an automated system that delivers your email address, email, you know, email is sale is still buyer because we follow this incredible detail. We're in the right Facebook groups, we're following the right people, the right podcast, we know what is happening in the world of marketing, and without a doubt, email marketing is still the number one way to get people to buy into you to indoctrinate people in an ethical and manipulate those into your mindset. Absolutely the number one way you've got to learn how to do it. Well, email marketing is not easy. It's not about hey, I made by my by my stuff, buy my stuff isn't that it's about trying to find, you know, 365 nuggets of value that you can give to a to your audience every single day, you know, for a year, that's what you've got to learn to do. But once you learn how to do that, you'll bring them in. And the thing is, then it becomes a numbers game. And that's a problem you got turned if for me, if I do it refer alone, like, I have to do a piece of work for them to refer me. The master not great on that. The fact is that I do a great job on them and give it absolutely the whole beans. Just give it everything I've got. And hopefully they call me tell somebody else. And then over a long period of time, I've built up a database of maybe 10,000 people, this next year, it's taken me 25 years to get 10,000 it's going to take me 12 months to get into the 10,000. What I'll do is you do an advert that says, Are you a leader who is having trouble with his presentation skills, and has an important talk coming up. If they click on it, I know three things. The presenter won't be their leader, my target audience, and they've got a talk coming up, which creates the urgency. So when he wants to perfect client, they need to afford things need authority, money and urgency. urgency is the thing that makes a room towards you. If I say to somebody, would you like to improve your presentation skills? Because Yeah, we get almost everybody that comes to me goes Dave, I've got to talk to give House of Commons, you know, admissions, I've read them all, and they come to me and got a nice kill, I need to slightly nail this. And that's when the urgency kicks in. So by the time people click on that, it comes to me, they've been there already the right person, the 10,000, people have already got, you know what so many people have been on the course, maybe I've seen something somewhere, they're not the decision maker that I really need. So if I get 10,000 people in the next 12 months, and I charge 100 quid a day, and you know, there's five people on the course, then we're making four grand a day 10,000 I only need 1% today, you know, and it's 80 grand. So the thing is, is you know, and then it will give me other work, I'll get more one to one work, and so on, and so on and so on. But I need to build an email list, what you've got to learn to do is instead of it being one to one, which is how everybody thinks you should sell, internet marketing allows it to be one to many.

Tony Radford 27:21
What so if you're not me asking what's your, what would you say your most profitable channel is for instant marketing,

David Thomas 27:29
or internet marketing, we've only just went we haven't done it yet.

Tony Radford 27:32
Okay, so this new thing for you.

David Thomas 27:34
Without doubt, it's gonna be Facebook ads, Facebook, our prices are on the floor, we know how to do it. And I'm talking from theory, we know other people that were doing it. So we are aligning ourselves with people that we know of 18 months, two years, three years down the road from us. And they go, this is what you need to do, this is what we're gonna do. So we've got a learning curve to go through, you're gonna put out an ad and something will work and something will be split. So you put that picture in that picture, that picture wins out cdmo like that, you put that head in that one works, that one doesn't see that, you know, an event, you know, if they don't click on it, it doesn't really matter. So, you know, we've got an upsell, which is the videos for $17, which is going to help liquidate the ad cost that might not sell, I'll just do another video, you know why? Cuz it cost me zero. To do it on my phone, right? I do it with some PowerPoint slides, and audio over the top, just put it up on Vimeo or even on YouTube on a hidden link. That's all you need to do. You could do this for free. But what you've got to learn to do is give people value, people need an enormous amount of value now, before they buy from you. So just find ways in which find your client, you're the most beautiful client you could ever have, find their greatest problem and tell them you can solve it and show them how, and then they'll buy the rest. So at the moment, you know, our our, our channel is just me we're getting referrals and existing clients at 25 years and all that. But this is a painful way to start a business to it not long. Moving forward. I have no doubts at all. Even though I can't even I can't prove it. I'll put my hand up and say that to me. I absolutely know that we are going to do well on Facebook and YouTube ads because I'm good. I'm good to camera. I've got good presentation skills. I know what the pain points already are. I've been speaking myself. I know what my pain points were 25 years ago, when I sat there and I could have this speak for stuttering through nerves. And that's why in the last what we're going to do, so you know, we're going to we're going to, you know, if we did an interview in a year, it would be quite interesting, I think because we'd be able to compare and contrast and you say well, I would when you got but it you know, I'm not saying you should but I'm just saying you know this is a this is the start of a journey of is of immersion for us into internet marketing. It's all we're going to do all day every day. We're going to make it work

Tony Radford 29:59
excellent. He says full of really, really good advice as well. Thank you for that. Yeah. So you know, we're aimed at the smaller guy. And that's why I've asked this question really, which is if somebody gave you 500 pounds to spend on marketing, how would you spend it?

David Thomas 30:15
The thing is that people like websites,

you know, they do, they want a point to go to, like you did with me, where you can find everything. So for me, whilst you can build websites incredibly cheaply, I think you want to do it? Well.

Tony Radford 30:35
Excellent. Thank you for that advice. And speaking of advice, do you do you have a business mentor or support group similar to that? No, I don't.

David Thomas 30:45
I don't. But I do have. I mean, oddly enough, yesterday, I had a chat with a guy that I know who's a speaker, who was a lot further down the road than me with internet marketing. And I've asked him if he would be like, an accountability partner for me. And he said, Yeah, so what we're going to do on the first of every month, or there there abouts, but once a month, we're going to get together, I'm going to tell him what I'm going to do what I'm doing is going to rip it apart on the What's good, but I'm really ship. And it did that yesterday. So simple. I'm thinking of doing this. What do you think that will work? Try this. Yeah, that's okay. Not sure about that. Everybody's doing that. And he just told me what he thought. And I don't have to take his advice. But he's someone who can help so is less a mentor, and somebody who's you know, who's able to kind of keep keep my feet to the flame. But at the same time, I do have something that's very special. And in the background of all this that we've not really talked about that much is I've been on Oprah, I've done 500 media appearances. I've done a written number one bestselling book, a book and a Guinness record. I've got all that stuff that, you know, many speakers don't have like, Kim. So, you know, he's he sees helping me he's helping himself at some level. And so therefore, we I don't see it as being a kind of parent child relationship. You know, what Facebook groups is good. You know, you're gonna get a lot people selling themselves in there. But you know, you if you mind for the gold, you'll get some nuggets. So no, we don't we don't have a business mentor, because we're the best will in the world. It doesn't matter how good they are. They only see it through their eyes.

Tony Radford 32:15
Yeah. But it's interesting what you said about that one specific guy you met yesterday, who has specific things that he can offer you for where your business is at right now. Right? Yeah,

David Thomas 32:26
yeah. Well, and I think that

Tony Radford 32:28
just just as we finish them, you could probably give us 1000. But would you be able to give us one actionable sales tip? Yes.

David Thomas 32:37
Every hour that you spend on producing your product or service, spend an equal amount of time on marketing. And I'm not talking about thinking about marketing, or writing it down. I'm talking about doing it. And a great friend of mine, Frank Furness, fantastic sales guy turned around. And he said that that's the key. Because when you talk to people and you go, what do you do? You know, tell me tell me about your business. They always tell you spend about 90% of the time talking about the product or service. And then you turn around and go. So how are you marketing it? And they go? Well, yeah, I put out social media posts once a week. And you know, and I'm getting around to putting the marketing plan together. But let me just go back and tell you about the product costs. You'll never guess what the product does. Nobody cares. You know? I mean, as a speaker, I have seen amazing speakers make no money. And I've seen average speakers make a fortune on the differences. Because I'm yeah, you can, you know, I'm not saying they were lying. But I'm just saying that if you're a brand marketeer, then you'll never be you'll never be short of work, you'll never be out of business. You can have COVID, you can have funkin, recession of 10 years ago, you can have anything, but if you, you know, just having a great product is not enough. Not enough. And so nowadays, you've got multiple paths to market in 1998 at a telephone, and the list of phone numbers from the library. Now it is there is no reason for you not to have an amazing marketing plan that can go through multiple channels almost for free. I mean, let me just let me just leave you with this. This quick story, very quick story in 2002. I've been on TV a few times in 2002. And for the memory stuff, and I sat down one day, and I just went as I always do em for the top. And I just thought I want to go on a big TV show. I said to my missus at the time, what's the biggest one and we both said, The Oprah Winfrey Show. And we both sat there and went, What are the chances of that happening? And so what I did was, I was like, fine, I'll just see if I can find out. So this is 2002. I mean, it's only a few years after I've been working from a book in the library, but I had the internet I went to oprah.com funding email or just email the show I really cut the story down a very long way. But the bottom line is that email me back, we had a 10 minute call, and decided to ourselves on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Because you know, in the past una with a certain finish Turner. And the fact is right, that we've always have always had about six degrees of separation. You know, we're all six degrees away from somebody six connections. It's not six anymore. It's like two. That's it, because you've got the internet. You can find anybody on LinkedIn, find anybody on Facebook. Or you can find somebody who knows somebody on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever, Twitter, or even Yeah, so the thing is for me, you know, you can have a marketing plan in place, you can start approaching people and get stuff out there, and you need to knock on some doors. And for every hour that you spend fine tuning your process your product or service, spend an hour on marketing, and you'll be fine.

Tony Radford 35:57
That's brilliant advice. And this has been a really excellent interview. And really, really thank you for your time. David, this is really amazing. I wonder what was what would be the best way for people to get in touch with you.

David Thomas 36:11
If they go to creative presentation, Bach stahls.com. That's my website. And all my contact details from there, including my personal mobile, because I want to hear from people if they want to know more than just for me direct get them get on the phone. If I'm free, then we can have a chat. happy to help.

Tony Radford 36:32
Okay, that's really excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much. Part of the secret to achieving true success in business is in focusing on the specific things that result in sales and revenue generation. If you are a small business owner or freelancer, and you would like to break through overwhelm, gain focus and grow your business, visit my practice business.com

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