Executive speaker coach

Do you remember how the first two weeks of Covid lockdown were?

Overnight, businesses stopped spending money. The tap turned off.

Everyone was in shock, waiting to see what would happen next.

Consultants, coaches, freelancers, we were all looking at tumbleweed blowing through our empty pipelines and thinking, ‘Is this the end?’

As the days went by, the digital penny dropped and kept on dropping. Businesses that hadn’t yet taken digital seriously as a channel for marketing and sales realised they needed to get online yesterday. Everyone else upped their digital ante 200%.

Zooming entered the global vocab.

LinkedIn blew up with millions of new users, many hunting jobs, others chasing sales, some simply hoping to make sense of what was happening.

In all that mayhem, I first noticed this guy called Michael.

He was showing up on LinkedIn with videos from his Christchurch apartment, where he and his wife were navigating lockdown together.

I don’t remember him talking about this at the time, but his income had just fallen off a cliff.

Michael coaches speakers and speaks himself on public speaking.

Covid blew all his bookings out the water.

Of course, now, following the great digital pivot of 2020, speaking events are just as likely to be virtual happenings, as they are to take place in an actual conference centre. But this is now, and that was then. Every single event was cancelled.

So, Michael was probably feeling shocked, even a bit scared and desperate.

But that didn’t stop him getting out there and supporting others. Throughout lockdown, his was one of the most frequent faces in my feed. Sharing advice, showing up, drinking gin online and getting a bit loose and honest.

I don’t know about you, but some of the people that I met online during that whole period now feel like friends. I got so as I was looking forward to them showing up with their daily post, just as you’d look forward to having a coffee with a mate.

So, after lockdown ended, and I saw that Michael was offering speaker coaching as part of the Covid support programme, I rushed off and applied for Covid funding so that I could work with him. Reader, it was a damn fine idea.

So last week, Michael and I met for coffee at the Welder, and over Grizzly salted chocolate cookies (try them, you won’t regret) we talked about his coaching business, his wins, his fails, and his learnings. It may not surprise you that there was much gold.

The importance of charisma and authenticity

I’m an executive speaker coach. So, I coach people to speak at national and international conferences, and to present investment pitches.

I’m also a conference speaker myself and a facilitator and trainer.

Predominantly I work with senior executives. Generally, they lack five cs. Clarity, confidence, congruence, conviction, and charisma.

Charisma’s the hardest one. If you look the word charisma up, the definition is the type of person who can walk into a room and make the room a better place for everyone.

If you have charisma, you’re not self-focused. You’re focused on the needs of others.

And it’s hard for the people I work with to make that transition to being a more charismatic person, when they’re lacking those first four cs. Because that makes them self-focused.

Self-knowledge and being comfortable with yourself mean that you’re able to come into rooms and leave behind your needy self that seeks constant validation and affirmation.

If you’re in that needy space, you’re coming into a room thinking ‘I hope everyone likes me’.

It’s irrelevant whether people like you as a consultant or a coach. You’re a conduit.

My thing for this year is to focus on being more myself and accepting that not everyone will like me.

It doesn’t matter who I am, or who I try to be. Not everyone will like me irrespective.

It’s getting your head around the fact that you can be perfect, but not everyone loves perfect. Some people hate perfect. So, if you spend all of your life trying to be something for other people, then you’re spending your life not being yourself.

My focus for this year is to embrace the concept that by being more of myself, I’m finding my tribe. It’s something I’ve struggled with. But that struggle is self-imposed.

Shelly Davis is a person that champions the power of being yourself. She runs training on business writing made simple and she’s a speaker. She’s brutal, she’s abrupt, she swears. She’s 100% just doing her.

At the end of 2020, she was contracted by Women in Dairy to deliver 12 keynotes around the country to their members. That’s a big gig. They chose her because they wanted someone genuine to come and talk to their members. These are women from farms. They’re down to earth, strong, outspoken. Just like Shelley herself. It wouldn’t have made sense to have anyone else in who wasn’t aligned. So, in being herself, she attracted her tribe.

Shelley is Ngātiwai, and not that long ago she got her moko kauae done, as a statement about who she is, and her whakapapa. She’s unapologetically her and I’ve been watching her journey, from a very envious standpoint going, fuck that’s good. I want some of that.

So I’m at a stage now where that’s my transition for this year, to show up as unapologetically myself. Kaushik Kumar and I are doing a weekly video series of advice that helps you show up at work, at home, and in life.

We’ve done three videos already, and in every single one I'm wearing what I’m wearing right now, a short-sleeved t-shirt that shows my tattoos.

I just had this realisation that who you are is your choice, irrespective of how you look or how you present. That goes hand in hand with showing up as myself, and that’s a message we’re exploring in the videos. So, it felt more authentic to leave my business shirt at home.

Also, my mantra for this year is embracing the concept of good enough. Combating my own personal perfectionism, which stems from my own childhood trauma.

Everybody keeps talking about being your authentic self

But what does that mean? What does authenticity look like? What does it sound like?

We all have our own quirks, mannerisms and behaviours, and if you spend your life trying to control them, which is what I’ve spent my life doing, it’s exhausting.

But during Covid, people had to show up in a more authentic state. There we were in each other’s homes, getting familiar with your books, your pets, your kids, and your tracksuit collection.

So now, more of us are asking ourselves why we’re putting on formal clothes to go to work. Why are we dressing in a way that isn’t so comfortable for us?

Covid caused a lot of additional stress and anxiety, there seems to be an extra level of exhaustion this year. So, people haven’t got the bandwidth and are less willing to pretend.

So, my focus for this year is to show up as myself and not try to control everything all the time.

Encouraging his clients to push out off their comfort zone since … well a long time.

Starting out in organizational training

In 2012 my wife and I started our business, offering bespoke training and development to corporate organizations. But it was always difficult for me for three reasons.

The first was because I was dealing with people working in Learning and Development, Organizational Development, and Human Resources, and these departments are primarily run by older women. Unfortunately, I have an innate disconnect with older women because of my childhood trauma. I was brought up in an orphanage, where I was abused by older women in powerful positions. So, here’s me starting a business where I have to deal with the exact type of people that generate trauma for me.

Secondly, my clients often didn’t do any training needs analysis. Instead, they would say, we think this what our people need. As a result, when I was evaluated after training, sometimes I wasn’t scoring well, because I was developing training courses that weren’t meeting the team’s real needs. It was a horrible loop, and it was hard to get good results.

And the third reason the work was hard, was because my tendency to perfectionism was being triggered. Because we were creating bespoke training, every time I was delivering training, it was the first time.

And the way you get better with training and development is with repetition. The first time is always going to be average. The second time you fix the problems and make it better. The third time it’s starting to get good. So, for someone who suffers from perfectionism and who is overly self-critical, my business model was completely wrong.

Shifting the focus to speaker coaching

It only took seven or eight years to figure out that my business model wasn’t working.

I started getting into speaker coaching in 2018, towards the end of my time coaching speakers for TEDxChristchurch.

Someone said to me: “You could be a full-time speaker coach. Why are you farting around training small companies in New Zealand when you represent a global brand like TEDx?”

At that time there were a lot of life coaches touting for business, I remember I was hit up by three in one week. One sidled up to me at an event, which was pretty sleazy. So, the idea of being a coach was tainted by that experience, and I put the change off for a while.

Then Jade Software reached out and asked Kaila Colbin, the curator for TEDxChristchurch, if she could recommend a speaker coach.

Their director of technology was flying around the world delivering an 18-minute presentation as a marketing exercise. And it wasn’t working. The outcomes they were getting were the opposite of what they wanted. So, Jade became my first speaking coaching client and that started the transition for me.

Working with Jade, I had a moment of realisation.

As a trainer, you work into a room. 40 people are sitting there with their arms folded, looking at you, going, come on then, teach us something if you dare. Your job is to use your training kit, tools, techniques, and tricks to educate those people. It’s high pressure and it requires a great deal of preparation.

But the first time I did speaker coaching, I didn’t really have to do any prep, because I knew my stuff from coaching all those TEDx speakers. I rolled up at Jade with a pencil and post it notes, because that’s all I needed.

And instead of me standing in front of a class, trying to teach, the first thing I said to Eduard from Jade was: “Come on then, show me what you’ve got”. And he said: “What, right now?” I said: “Yes, because I need to see what we’ve got to work with”.

And in that moment the pressure was off. I wasn’t there to entertain him.

Eduard did his speech. and as he was speaking, I wrote post it notes about the areas we needed to address and put them up on the wall. When he finished, I said: “Right, let’s take those post its down one by one and deal with them.”

It flowed, and it was fun, and it was rewarding and I came away from that experience saying, I’m never going to do another training ever again.

That said, this year’s focus is to reduce the amount of one-on-one coaching I’m doing and increase the amount of one-to-many group coaching. So, I am circling back.

Michael and his wife and business partner Astella, diving for kai moana

On returning to group coaching

After my first year doing speaking coaching, word started to get around.

Meridian reached out and said, can you do group coaching, and I said no, I’m not doing any more group training. Then Ngāi Tahu got in touch and I said no. Then another business called, and I started to think, ‘maybe I should rethink my stance on this’.

And there’s another piece of the puzzle.

In my first year of speaker coaching, I did all one-on-one coaching. But I got to the end of that year drained and depressed because I’d been doing too much one-on-one work.

I’m ambivert, which means I’m an extrovert introvert mix. I draw my energy both from being the centre of attention and from being alone. So being in the background all the time coaching others and not having any time on stage wasn’t working for me. I need balance. I can’t do all coaching or all on stage presenting. Both are too draining.

I decided to rethink the choice I’d made around only doing one-on-one coaching.

So, last year, I delivered a free workshop for Michelle Sharpe and The Executive Connection group. I said, I’m going to turn up, I’m not going to have any slides, we’ll do some cool stuff, hopefully we’ll have a shit ton of fun, and you can tell me what you think.

That group evaluate all their external trainers and give them feedback, and they gave me the highest score they’ve ever given a trainer.

So, I said to myself, I rolled up and had fun, it was easy, it wasn’t stressful, they loved it and the outcomes were good. What if I put some more effort into it?

As a result, I constructed a group coaching workshop, which I’ve now delivered to Rotorua NZ and several other organisations with success.

Group coaching also opens up other opportunities.

There are people who want to work with me, but who don’t fit my core target market. They’re not senior executives, they don’t have a talk to prepare for, they just want to be better at public speaking.

I’ve always said, I’m probably not for you, because I’m outcomes based, and I charge a lot.

So, I’ve been missing a big market for more entry level speaker coaching and training. And group coaching allows me to offer this group an affordable solution to their needs.

On top of that, there are only so many hours in the day and so much money I can earn if I stick to one-on-one coaching. Group workshops are a good way to scale your income.

And you can put dates in the calendar way out in advance, which gives you security and stability from an income perspective.

A lot of my private coaching clients come to me at the last moment, needing my services urgently. Which is fine, except for the fact that my calendar is chaos, my business pipeline is always full up, then nothing, and that instability drives me crazy.

The impact online learning offers

My wife has been pressing me for years to create online learning. I’ve always been opposed to it because I didn’t believe it was as good as face-to-face coaching.

But recently I signed up to Business Made Simple University from Donald Miller, who wrote the book Brand Story. I’ve been finding the experience of learning at my own pace through videos really good, and I would recommend that course to anyone.

So, knowing online learning can be high quality, seeing there are people who prefer online learning, and developing material that will work online, has made me reevaluate my attitude to offering online courses. Plus, it’s aligned to my big goal.

My over-arching goal has always been to earn enough money to be in a position to give my time for free to people who need my services but can’t afford them.

One example is, I’d love to see speaking and presentation skills taken seriously in the education system and universities. I hear stories that MBA students can’t present for shit, and it’s ridiculous not to have presentation training as part of a $50,000 MBA.

So, my goal has always been to work my arse off, so I can have enough money to work for free somewhere else. And that’s a really bad business model. I’m going to kill myself so I can kill myself for free? And how many students can I reach anyway?

Creating online learning resolves all that. I’m going to create entry level, affordable speaking training for people who want to work at their own pace. It will give them the skills they need to up their speaking game.

From there, if they want to work with me more, they can come to a group workshop. At a workshop, you get me live, you get to deliver your talk, and you get feedback, all things you can’t get with online learning.

Online training, public workshops, and talk like TED will be my group services. They funnel people towards my premium services, the one-on-one investment pitch, public and conference speaking coaching. I want to be in a position where private coaching is not my primary income stream, but a limited resource for people who really need it.

Michael presenting on the art of public speaking at Global Connections

On self-confidence and shaving off all his hair

One key to doing online learning is becoming more comfortable with video creation.

I just made five marketing videos for my new website. Until I had all my hair shaved off, I refused to do videos. Now I’ve become more comfortable in front of the camera, and I’m in the position to nail out video content.

I want to do a video on this topic, because I fucked around for five years knowing that I was going to shave off my hair. So, I wasted five years not doing video.

When you embark on such a dramatic brand change, a lot of men will piss off overseas to a tropical beach, shave it all off, come back tanned and be all, I’ve always looked like this. That was my plan as well. But if you can’t do that, because of Covid, what are you going to do? You just do it anyway.

I’ve definitely noticed a difference shaving my hair off. I don’t have bad hair days. I don’t have product that I put in my hair to pull it forward.

A lot of people who’ve known me for years said they didn’t even notice I was losing hair. That’s how much energy it took. It was exhausting. Years of hating windy days, because I’d walk down the street, and my hair would blow about and show where I was going bald, and I was so self-conscious about that.

And charisma is the antithesis of that. Because if you’re focused on something that’s making you self-conscious, then you’re not focused on where you are and what you’re doing.

Making that little change is having such a big profound impact moving forward. It’s accelerated progress for me, my confidence showing up has increased. It’s another step in that profound acceptance of who I am, not hiding any more.

Why people choose Michael as a speaker coach

From a marketing perspective, I’m easy to find. It’s about presence. I put a lot of effort into being seen and being visible.

Approachability and empathy are also key. I speak to people’s problems and I keep it real.

And I’m outcomes based. People have started to hear about the outcomes I deliver, they want some of that, and they know that by working with me they’ll dramatically increase their chances of attaining or exceeding their outcomes. Work with me and you’ll win the investment pitch and get $600k instead of the $450k you want.

The most valuable thing I deliver is brutal honesty.

A lot of the work we’ll do together goes far beyond the way you speak. We end up going into your core beliefs and how those beliefs cause unconscious mannerisms and behaviours.

And no softly, gently stuff will address that. Sometimes I have to say: “Did you know that sometimes you can appear like a bit of a dick? Is that your intention?”

Nobody wants to come across that way. So, then we have to figure out the difference between your intention versus the impact you’re having. And that’s not even speaker coaching any more. That’s a deeper level of coaching, intention versus impact.

Many speaker coaches don’t want to go that deep. They don’t have the experience, and it scares them, because they don’t know what to do if their client breaks down in tears.

But emotion is just part of the process and it’s ok. Moments of realisation often bring tears, and often the most significant response represents the most significant change. Sometimes if there’s a lack of response there’s a lack of realisation. So, I like to see response, whether it’s rage or tears. Because response is recognition.

The power of refinement and repetition

A lot of refinement has happened to arrive at the point I’m at now, where I’ve identified what I’m exceptionally good at and I’m building out from that.

All of my life experience and transferable skills, working in training and development for 20 years, outdoor guiding, NLP, and being a career practitioner tie in beautifully to speaker coaching.

That realisation didn’t come fast or easy, but it’s been a turning point for me because I have real authority in my current career, which gets rid of my imposter syndrome, and means I can own the title of New Zealand’s number one speaker coach and not feel too cringy.

Repetition is also important. If you experience perfectionism and imposter phenomenon like I do, then having lots of change and diversity in your work is problematic. You’re trying to be amazing at everything and you feel like you’re not good at anything.

By trying to be too many things, you compromise. And probably you’re not doing the thing you’re exceptionally good at as often, so you feel like you’re not as good at that either. And if you lose the core thing that you’re really good at, the question becomes, what am I good at? That’s real overarching self-doubt.

It’s natural to feel a bit out of your depth when presented with something new. That feeling passes as we become more familiar with our new task. But some people suffer imposter syndrome all the time, across everything they do, and feel they’re not good at anything.

So, for people like me, being able to replicate something, repeat it and prove my worth within it over time is really important.

Michael’s revenue and growth model

When I was doing organizational training, revenue was ok. But when we changed our business model to speaker coaching, I let a lot of clients go, and I was not even making enough money to live. It was a progressive regrowth.

Fortunately, my wife had the stability of her income. Without that, I would have had to compromise some values of my own and do things that would have held me where I didn’t want to be. So, I was very fortunate to have that and very grateful for her support.

Pre-Covid, in 2019, I made $105,000 and we were on a 30% growth trajectory, on track to make $150,000. Then Covid hit and our revenue was smashed back down. This year, with our new products and all the new marketing, our annual revenue goal is $250,000.

Pre-Covid, we had never invested in paid marketing. All of my work was referral based, and I was just dipping into using LinkedIn, but not really using it as a tool. I wasn’t creating video content, and I didn’t have public workshops in place.

Being referral based is fantastic until you have a global pandemic. So many people got caught with their pants down when we got hit by Covid, me included, so now we have a plan for increasing revenue.

We’re doing content marketing, creating videos, and using LinkedIn. We use events like LinkedIn Local, which I started managing last year. We’re using a digital marketing team up in Auckland, called Firefly Digital. And we’re a Regional Business Partner. All these activities will funnel people towards our online learning, the group workshops, and Talk like TED. Private speaker coaching will look after itself because that’s all referral based anyway.

We’re also planning a 12-week group programme for 20 people, that incorporates personal brand and marketing using LinkedIn etc. During Covid we all realised how crucial that is, and the Covid strategy work we did with businesses taught us that people wanted that.

The programme will cost $6,600, but the Regional Business Partner Network are willing to fund 50% under their Management Capability fund, so businesses only pay $3,300. There will be two hours of workshops each week, plus video modules, workbooks, and other bonus content. It works out at only $275 a week for each individual, which is really affordable.

Doing the budget projections for this programme, showed me why people set up bootcamps and 12-week programmes. If we book 20 people onto that programme, then we make $66,000, even before the RBP funding is added.

I just haven’t been thinking about growing the business in that way before. When you take away the limitations of working for an hourly fee, and flip your business model, you have the potential to earn so much more. And you increase your impact so much as well.

Money matters to me because to be able to give to everyone else, your own stability is essential. If that’s taken care of, you can be as giving as you want.

I remember in the early days, when I first started speaker coaching for TEDx, I was volunteering my time, but I couldn’t pay for my carparking. So, I’m coaching, but my car’s parked outside, and I’m hoping that I don’t get a ticket. And how can you be 100% in the room if you’re worried about things like that?

We can do, be, and give more when our own security and stability is taken care of as well.

Look out for the people you love

Be careful on your relationships. Growing a business is high pressure. Don’t fuck your relationship with the people you care for, and then blame them for your failings.

My wife is also my business partner, so I’ve had to be really careful how I separate my wife from my business. My disappointments around business cannot be my disappointments towards my wife. I have to be cautious that I don’t blame my wife for my shortcomings. I did for a while. I’d think the reason something wasn’t working, was because she hadn’t worked hard enough. Which wasn’t true at all. It was just my anxiety.

Most of us build a business so that we can have a better life with the people we love. I’m passionate about my work, but I’m doing it because I want to have an amazing life with my wife. But I’m not going to have a wife if I’m not respectful. If I destroy my relationship to achieve my business goals, that’s the ultimate bridge burn.

When we were poor, we were happy. We always said to each other: “I’d live with you in a cardboard box.” We started there, so don’t let go of that connection on the journey of trying to build something bigger. Remember why you started your business in the first place.

Work with Michael

Michael is an executive speaker coach. He coaches people to speak at national and international conferences, and to present investment pitches. This year he’ll be adding online learning and group coaching to his services. He’s amazing to work with. I speak from experience. Check out more of his work at michaelphilpott.co.nz