IAM1495 – Trainer and Coach Helps Clients Blossom Into Credible and Engaging Speakers

Starting my career fresh out of school as an engineer, it didn’t take too long before I got bored and decided this wasn’t for me. As I explored various paths…the field of communications kept flashing in my mind. Through a lot of discovery, I ultimately became certain that training and coaching were what I was meant to do. Once I transitioned into communication coaching 20 years ago I haven’t looked back.

Our expertise is helping clients overcome their fear and nerves to blossom into the confident, credible, engaging speaker that they want to become. It is the best business decision I’ve ever made.

• CEO Story: Jeff worked as an engineer during his undergrad. At some point, he realized he was not enjoying his work. Took advice from his mentor and took a personal growth class which confirmed his passion for communication, coaching, teaching, etc. And so, he transitioned into communications speaker for a company and was so good at it and got promotion after promotion. The opportunity came for him when asked to do a gig outside his company. And he jumped right in and built his own company as a communication coach/ speaker.
• Business Service: Coaching, helping clients deliver their message with clarity, confidence, and engagement.
• Secret Sauce: Certification process to get new facilitators as they go on board. Strong qualification.
• CEO Hack: Landmark Education
• CEO Nugget: Be clear about direction and expectations. Consider the ideas of your team.
• CEO Defined: Being transparent

Website: http://thespeakerschoice.com/

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Deliberate-Mindset-Differently-Presentations-Conversations/dp/1973719630

Episode Link: https://iamceo.co/2018/11/27/iam116-trainer-and-coach-helps-clients-blossom-into-credible-and-engaging-speakers/

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Transcription

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00:21 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:46 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jeff Hornstein of The Speaker's Choice. Jeff, it is awesome to have you on the show.

00:56 – Jeff Hornstein

Gresh, it's awesome that you've given me the opportunity to talk with your community too. So I very much appreciate

01:01 – Gresham Harkless

Me too, And what I wanted to do was just kind of get the show started and hear, I guess, a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

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01:09 – Jeff Hornstein

Sure, you bet. It's going to be a weird route as I take you through this. But to start out with, let me just say to you and your community, I am a recovering engineer. Okay. Believe it or not, a recovering engineer. So how did that happen out of all of the things that we're gonna talk about here? So a long time ago, let's say when I was in undergrad, or actually when I got out of undergrad, I had the real fortune of finding a job in the engineering world because that's where I started and it was a really cool technology. I liked it a lot for a while. And then at some point, I got bored. I thought, man, I don't want to be sitting behind a cubicle doing CAD cam work the rest of my life.

So I started talking to a mentor of mine who was at the engineering company and I asked him one day, I said, do you like what you do? And he said I love what I do. I said, dang, how did you figure that out? Because I don't. He emphatically suggested that I go do a personal growth workshop. So I said, sign me up, brother. Where is it? How do I get there? Whatever he thought. I took his advice. And really, this is the truth, within a matter of a couple of days of participating in this personal growth program, I got super clarity about, wow, I really don't want to be an engineer. I want to be a coach a teacher a consultant or a speaker. There's something in that realm that would help people be more effective in the way they communicate.

So from having that epiphany to trying to figure out, okay, so if I have that thought and I'm an engineer, how in the world am I gonna transition from an engineer to being some kind of communication expert? Well, I started to dig around and I heard a colleague of mine talk about something called organization development. And I had no idea what that person was talking about when they said something about organizational development. So I started looking around essentially for jobs that might fit the desires that I had. And about a year or so into perusing, I came across an ad that had my credentials all over. It was pretty freaky. I showed it to my wife and I said take a look at this advertisement or this posting for this particular career.

So talk about all kinds of things all in the realm of need to have 3 to 5 years of platform experience those of you who are listening to the recording may not know what I mean by that, but platform experience essentially is, instead of people sitting around in a group at a conference table, standing up in front of the room in front of X number of people, whether it's 10 people or 10, 000 people. That's what we're talking about when we talk about that. So I ended up getting the job, oh, the very last sentence or 2 of that posting said, engineering a plus.

So I showed it to my wife and I kinda got the chills and I thought, holy cow, this is for me. This is mine, I'm gonna get this job. And I did, well, we both got the job, worked at this communications company, and loved it for somewhere around, I don't know, 5 to 7 years or so. It felt like there was, it wasn't a job. It felt like it was, it was a joy. It was a dream to travel around, teach people how to deal with the fear of public speaking, or help them become more effective, and more confident more engaging and did it well and then got promoted and then got a little bit more.

And so my promotional opportunities were really terrific. And the issue that occurred for me as time went on was I became very administrative. So my opportunities to work with the clients had to be restrained and reduced because I had to do what I had to do. And at some point, I thought, you know what, this is not why I got into the communications field. It's not to be administrative and do all that. It's to engage clients and help them deal with their challenges. So through a long circuitous route, a colleague of mine, an executive coach called me and said, hey, do you still work for that old company or did you start your own business yet?

And I said, well, that's a really interesting question to ask. She said, tell me more. Or I said, tell me more. And she said, well, I have a handful of computer engineers that work for a big Fortune 500 company. They're super smart folks and they have to deliver their updates and their value proposition to the executive leadership team as to why they should be promoted or why they should take themselves to that next level. And she said they're scared to death, They're really, really bad at it. And I told them, I got a guy.

So she said, so you want the gig? And I said, I think so. But hold on a second. Let's talk about this a little bit more. So we spent we spent literally it was probably 2 and a half to 3 hours on the phone. And by the time that phone call ended, I said, OK, I just started my own company. So she said to me, do me a favor, give me your company name as soon as possible. I said, OK, OK, good. So that's that's where the whole thing started.

05:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. I love that story. Awesome that, you know, the universe seems to kind of directed you that way, but also that you kind of took hold of it and kind of went with it as well and are helping out so many people.

05:52 – Jeff Hornstein

Yeah, it was a really neat circumstance, a set of circumstances that occurred for me to transition from something that I got bored with quickly to something that I really fell in love with. So yeah, it was really, really neat experience that occurred for me.

06:08 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, definitely, definitely sounds like it. So now I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper to hear how you're helping out these people with public speaking. What are some of the things that you're doing to kind of help support your clients?

06:16 – Jeff Hornstein

When they typically come to us from whatever route they take to get there, they're usually in a state of warrior concern. And it's typically around a big presentation that they're going to have to deliver in a certain period of time, whether they get a really short notice and they've got 2 days to be prepared or get ready for a big presentation or 2 months or perhaps even longer. Obviously, if the duration between when they've been told when that occurs when they've been told that they have to deliver a presentation.

And if they do, the phone rings pretty quickly. So what we'll do is try to get super clarity as best we can about what they're going to need to present and what their content is. We'll typically start there by asking them, Start just share with me what your experience is about what you're going to have to deal with who you're going to have to talk to, and most importantly who is your audience. So we get them to really purge as much as they can about who their audience is, what their audience needs to hear about. What information do they need to stand clear from and not press any hot buttons that they hopefully know the audience doesn't wanna hear about? What are the real important components that the audience does need to hear about?

So we'll do a really in-depth, thorough assessment for them to help them get super clarity about the audience so that when they start to build their message, it's tailored to that particular group in an effective way. So once they get clarity about that we help them with their content and how they structure and organize their content if they need that support. If they do, we'll handle that. And once they get clear about that, then we start digging into the skill-building process.

And that skill building is all around helping their clients or helping our clients get to a place of being able to exhibit and demonstrate when they're up in front of the room. Here's a handful of list of phrases that they'll typically suggest or ask about. And they'll say, I need to be perceived as confident, engaging, inspiring, and perhaps really 1 of the most common ones is credible with this particular audience. So how are we going to get there?

We do very intense video recording and video feedback. We will get, if it's a one-on-one client that we're working with, we'll get them up in front of the room and we may work together for half a day, perhaps even a full day, if they have the energy to work for a full day. And in the case of when someone's got a presentation that's going to be that they need to deliver in the next 2, 3 days, we're spending the entire day together and we're working through it. And so when we do the video recording, we're trying to assess, Are they, as they're talking and perhaps working the room and delivering their content, are they demonstrating and exhibiting those components that they said they want to match up with?

So in other words, if they said that they want to be perceived as credible and confident, let's say, we do the video recording, play it back, and ask, do you think you look confident? Do you sound like you're engaging and passionate? And oftentimes they'll make comments about it and they'll say, heck no, unfortunately, I don't. What do I do? And that's where we start digging in. We start putting in some course corrections for them through obviously another assessment with the video. And we'll continue the process and assess for them the components of what they're saying and doing that's not working for them.

And then we'll shift over to talking to them about what they're currently doing that is working for them. And we'll tell them all those things that you said that you're doing or that you wanted and you are doing currently, they're awesome. Don't change them. Some of the things that you're doing that's having us struggle a little bit as audience members, we're going to need to remove those from the content that you're gonna deliver and how you're gonna deliver it.

And then we're gonna suggest adding on some additional things, all designed to make sure that they're being perceived along the lines of what they're searching for. And the process is pretty intense. It's not a quick hit, especially if those like myself as a recovering engineer, those of us that had that analytic orientation typically struggle with these kinds of things a lot more than those who have a very extroverted, very gregarious personality and don't have that analytical mindset. Folks that have more of that creative and engaging mindset, typically, typically, not always, but typically have an easier time picking up on the skills and exhibiting them quickly.

10:25 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I appreciate you for obviously doing that to help out the clients. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be something that you feel kind of distinguishes you or your organization. There are

10:34 – Jeff Hornstein

2 things that come to mind for sure. One is our certification process to get new facilitators as we bring them on board to get them to a place where we are all saying as the CEO, I will agree that that facilitator is now ready to get up in front of the room on their own and deliver the program. And I'll talk more about that in just a second. And the second piece is what we would call ruthless compassion. So let me dig into the certification process first. When I was going through that transition from engineering to communication and found a communication company that I had mentioned that I had worked with for 567 years, in order to get hired as a facilitator and speaker, it was a grueling process that took anywhere between 6 to 12 months before someone was anointed, if you will, or given the opportunity where we said, okay, this person is certified.

So that process, I don't know of anybody else that has and spends as much time making certain that the facilitators are exhibiting exactly what we're teaching. So let me back up for just a second and reinforce why this first piece of it is the certification process is such a big deal. Let's say I bring somebody in and we tell them, okay, so stand in front of the room, and let's see what you got. Talk to us for a couple of minutes here. Cold. If there's someone that's a facilitator and they say that they've got significant experience in teaching people how to deal with the fear of public speaking and presenting and we'll look at them and we'll listen to them and in many cases when we've invited big groups of people to come to our open houses and have them each stand up one at a time and deliver 2 minutes of content, we critique.

And unfortunately, when we looked at on paper what the majority of the people that we've taken through these open enrollment sessions, their certification or the qualifications are all really, really strong. But then when we see how they look and sound when they deliver information, almost all the time there's been a huge mismatch. So the challenge is a lot of the candidates who thought they were really good at what they were doing couldn't exhibit or demonstrate the presentations, or their presentation skills that they needed to deliver.

So the tough part about it is they think they're good, we assess and look and say, no, they're not. They're not. I can't take that person right there who we just listened to and have them be up in front of our clients. If we're teaching presentation skills and we can't exhibit or model the skills for them, we'd look like a fraud. So that's kind of my stake in the ground with what we have to have happen is we can't allow any facilitator, I don't care how good they think they are, If they can't pass certification for us, then we can't put them in front of the room.

We can do other things perhaps and have them be in different departments for us, but not be a skilled facilitator that we would say, you know, that's what you got to look and sound like. Now, let me back up for a second and make sure I'm super clear about what you have to look and sound like.

13:32 – Gresham Harkless

And Jeff, I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This could be an Apple book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

13:41 – Jeff Hornstein

Yeah, this is a simple one, no doubt. Without exception, it was me participating in that program that I mentioned that my mentor told me to go to. And the name of that program was called Landmark Education. Changed my life, changed my business, changed everything.

13:56 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Yeah, I love that. I've heard a lot of great things about Landmark. It's great that you were able to kind of benefit from that. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, but it's something that you might tell your younger business self.

14:10 – Jeff Hornstein

Yeah, number one, be as clear as you possibly can be around direction and expectations, for sure. We found throughout the years that when that's not in place, that creates big problems. The other one is to seek feedback and ideas from your team and really, really genuinely consider their ideas, and what they tell you about. You may be surprised. We find that sometimes we're surprised at what people come up with. So at a minimum, make sure you're giving them airtime.

14:36 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome.  Awesome. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So What does being a CEO mean to you?

14:46 – Jeff Hornstein

Well, like several of your guests, I took a peek at some of the some of the videos that they had. Very similar, very similar. Right. So I think instantly also about Fortune 500 companies and phrases like charting the course, setting the tone, being a leader, empowering the team, that kind of thing. The biggest one of all for me is being transparent. When we can reveal things to our team that we can reveal, we do. There's always gonna be some times when we can't reveal things, like if there's a termination coming up or some impending change, we can. So just to reinforce, when we can exhibit transparency, do it. And why do it? Most importantly, it builds trust among everybody on the team.

15:26 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that definition. I think a lot of times, like you said when you have the opportunity to be transparent and show who you are. It also develops a stronger connection, it seems. So Jeff, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and also how best people can get ahold of you.

15:45 – Jeff Hornstein

Most importantly, I want to give you a big thanks for giving me the opportunity to be part of your community here. And so thank you for doing that. And your community, if they do want to reach out to us, we love to connect with you. So the name of our company is The Speakers Choice. So www.thespeakerschoice.com or you can email me personally at jeff at the speakers choice.com Jeff at the speakers choice.com. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

16:07 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate you so much Jeff and what I'll do is make sure we have those links in the show notes just so that anybody can click through and follow up with you. But again, I appreciate you for everything that you're doing and taking some time out of your schedule. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:19 – Jeff Hornstein

Thanks so much, Gresh.

16:21 –  Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.