Doug Staneart is the President and CEO of The Leaders Institute, LLC ® and has been a speaker and trainer for over 20 years. Doug has consulted with over 400 of the Fortune 500 and delivered keynote speeches and coaching services to executive groups around the world.
He is the host of two popular podcasts, Fearless Presentations ® and High Impact Leaders. His podcast episodes have received over one million downloads!
Doug is the author of the books Fearless Presentations ®, Mastering Presentations, Cultivating Customers, and 28 Ways to Influence People and Gain "Buy-In".
https://www.leadersinstitute.com/titan
Doug Staneart is the President and CEO of The Leaders Institute, LLC ® and has been a speaker and trainer for over 20 years. Doug has consulted with over 400 of the Fortune 500 and delivered keynote speeches and coaching services to executive groups around the world.
He is the host of two popular podcasts, Fearless Presentations ® and High Impact Leaders. His podcast episodes have received over one million downloads!
Doug is the author of the books Fearless Presentations ®, Mastering Presentations, Cultivating Customers, and 28 Ways to Influence People and Gain "Buy-In".
https://www.leadersinstitute.com/titan
Josh: What is up everybody, Josh Tapp here again and welcome back to the lucky Titan and today we're here with Doug Staneart, I'm so excited to have this guy here, I wanted to read his bio for you guys, because it was just so amazing, I'm really excited to have this guy on so it says Doug Staneart is the President and CEO of The Leaders Institute, LLC, and has been a speaker and a trainer for over 20 years, Doug has consulted with over 400 of the Fortune 500 and delivered keynote speeches and coaching services to executive groups around the world and I also have to throw in here for everybody, this guy has gotten over a million downloads on his podcast, he's written multiple books that have been amazing books, providing real true value to people and they're just rock solid, amazing leadership content so Doug, I'm excited to have you here, say what's up to everybody, and we'll hop in.
Doug: Oh, thanks, Josh, I want to hug myself now, Man, that sounds that was pretty good,
Josh: he's gonna pat myself
Doug: Oh, My God, dude, this guy's Awesome. Thanks for the great intro that appreciate it.
Josh: Yeah, not a problem. I honestly have to say to everybody, and for most of you who listen to this probably don't know this but the very first business I did was actually in the leadership space.
Doug: oh yeah,
Josh: I have part of my heart still lies in that space and I realized that it was such a crowded space, because there's a lot of people just regurgitating what they've heard from Tony Robbins, or somebody, what Doug provides everybody more than anybody else is that he's providing real life experience, and a real, what I would say his own valuable creative content so I am excited about that so I do have to ask you this Doug podcast as a podcaster, wha, where do you get the inspiration for that content to provide real content that you're not just regurgitating?
Doug: Oh, well, okay. Like you're saying that life experiences really is really key, I mean, the, like, for instance, I mean, I was a, I was a pretty good teacher in the very beginning but I got much better after a year, and much better a year later so I'm constantly trying to kind of reinvent create something new, because things are changing, how do we adapt to those changes that are in the marketplace, and that kind of thing so basically, it's, it's funny, because, you know, I'm up to like, on one of my podcasts, we're up to like, almost 250 episodes, and I can now go back to some of those earlier ones that I did when I thought I knew at all, I mean, I've been teaching for 20 years, I've been doing this stuff for 20 years before I started my first podcast, and I go back and listen to like, Episode Number 10, or episode number 20 and go, Wow, things have changed a lot, in the last three and a half years, since I've recorded that I got to update that thing, right and it's funny, because I think that's what a lot of folks that are really good at creating good blogs do you know, they're, they're going back to the stuff that they've done in the past, maybe what they had earlier has kind of changed our, our, we're seeing it from a totally different perspective and so it's all at ease, what's old is new, again, a lot of times, and then especially when something like a pandemic hits and things change dramatically, then all of a sudden, you have to kind of reinvent pretty much everything that you do. So it's, it's, it's a constant, I think it's a fun process, though, to kind of keep going back and revisiting some of the stuff that we've that we that we thought were absolutely true in the past, and then kind of improve on that and find new ways to do it and, and look at look at the way the world has changed, and the markets have changed and just adapt so that's, that's it, it's fun for me. So I continue to do that as much as I can.
Josh: Right and I love that, that you've, you've done that by by refreshing the content that we were talking about this beforehand, because it's kind of funny, everybody thinks there's all these new concepts being introduced into the world, but there's very few and it's kind of funny to me, I mean, Simon Synnex a great example of this, because he's an excellent presenter, he does an amazing job of, of teaching the power of why but what's so funny is that that's been around for centuries, I mean, you've got Napoleon Hill who's talked about and all these people, he just really he taught the same concept with his own stores in his own take and that's what people loved and they stuck to and I want to ask you this, Doug, because you have helped so many people with presentations, helping them become good leaders when it comes to presenting so what are some of the key factors you see, and helping somebody present in a way that actually honestly provides a real result for them?
Doug: Well, there's two different aspects of that question and that one, the main one is that anytime that we're going to be presenting something, whether it's verbally in a speech, or whether that's in marketing, like you're doing, basically, you have to kind of look at the end user, who is it that is receiving this information, what problem do they have, what challenge do they have, and then help them solve the problem, I mean, that's business 101, if you can help people solve problems, you'll become successful right and so that's, that's kind of the key thing. So when we're designing a presentation, a lot of times, folks will, will design the presentation by the, the first part of their their thought process is okay, what do I know about this topic? And what do I need to tell people and that's the opposite, what you should be looking at is what is it that this person, this single individual that's sitting in my audience, what is it that they absolutely need and how can I help them, you know, get that solution that they're looking for and then the second side is the nervousness part because a lot of times when we're put on the spot, and we have to speak and present, we're putting under a lot of pressure, it's one of the few skills that you do in your life where the first time that you do it, you're in front of people, and they're judging you, right, it's like, it's, it's weird, I mean, when you're riding a bicycle, when you're four years old, you know, it's like you and your parents, that's it, you know, it's not like the whole elementary school is watching it but this is one of those things that the very first time you do it, there's a there's kind of a judgmental audience and so that's so the second part of it is helping people kind of reduce that nervousness and that's really what we've kind of made a mark for ourselves in it in my company anyway.
Josh: See, and I love that because that's, like you said, it's kind of the root of the problem is learning to get that confidence and I know, for myself, the reason I got into podcasting was because I didn't want to be on camera and it's, we've kind of had to tread you have to learn it right, you eventually have to get to the point where you're comfortable with it but it's it's such a different dynamic, in my opinion, even that being on stage than being on camera we're doing here and I mean, you've probably seen this working with people as they're speaking in front of two or 3000 people that jitters get higher but this this episode will be seen by 50,000 people plus are going to be seeing this, but the, the nervousness level always seems a little bit lower, because you're not looking at them directly.
Doug: Right. That's true and well, I mean, one of the neat things about the the type of podcasts that you're doing, too, is that it's a dialogue, you know, so it's, it's a, it's a whole lot harder when you're, you're the only person talking so the dialogue, especially if you got somebody that's that's, you know, can create a good conversation, that's obviously going to lower the number of folks that are listening that want to experiment with a podcast, that might be a good way to kind of get started without a whole lot of pressure anyway, but um, Yeah, that I mean, the nervousness is, is is kind of big, but it's one of those things that it's a skill, just like anything else, the more that you do it, the better you get at it, I gotta tell you, I was I mean, I had, I may have mentioned this to you earlier, but the, the very first podcast that I did, I've been speaking for 20 years, I've been in front of 10s of 1000s of people on in on stage and had all the lights and all that kind of stuff, which is pretty nerve racking very first time I sat down to record a podcast, I think I hit start and stop about 150 gazillion times, I mean, it was like, I was screwing up left and right I'm like God, this this is this is you should
Josh: take me 12 hours to record two minutes of content that's because
Doug: it was a new skill. It was something that I hadn't yet experimented with, but have now been if after doing a couple 100 a few 100 of these things. Now, I can go in and knock one out and 20 or 30 minutes or so one take right so it's right it's in public speaking is like that to the, the more you practice, the better you get at it.
Josh: I love that and one of the things that it was an advice piece of advice from somebody came on our show, honestly, when we almost first started, she was talking about just do Facebook Lives because there's no way to have the oper the option to stop because when when you are sitting in an office with a camera, you'll start recording and I don't know about you, Doug but for me when I first start recording, it's even now honestly, I will stop myself because I know I have the chance to to redo it but after about five takes your blood pressure rises you're in the content doesn't come off the way you want to because you're too concerned about making it perfect
Doug: right, yeah, and it's more authentic. You know, I we don't edit out my ORS and ohms and we don't edit, I mean, we basically what you get on the podcast is what you and I are talking about right now this week on our podcast, we do the same thing is basically we record it now if I if I miss say something or misstate something or say something an error and I go back and I can kind of edit that out but for the most part, it's a it's a one take from start to finish. And you get all the herbs and the arms and it's more authentic and I think people like it a whole lot better as well.
Josh: I agree. And honestly, we had we had an episode I it was one of the first ones we did where I sent it to our editing team because I've been editing myself and when we set to the editing team, they actually left somebody sneeze in where I said Bless you and I was listening to the episode. I'm like, oh, my goodness has been live for a week and this sneezes in there, that was one of our highest listened to episodes. I don't think it was the sneeze but if you think about it, it's like, that's the transparency people care about, you know, we're having just an open conversation here. I'm asking you questions I care about you're responding in a way you care about, it's just awesome, I love it.
Doug: Yeah.
Josh: So let me ask you this, Doug. You know, especially where you're you come from that presentation background, what's kind of the big difference between presenting on stage to presenting to like a fortune 500 executive team because I feel like there's such a big difference there.
Doug: Okay, well, Hmm, okay, there, there, it there is a huge difference but it's probably not what you think as far as the way that I communicate, my when I'm up on stage, I don't care if there's one person in the audience or 10,000 people or 20,000 people or whatever, my, my goal is to make every single person in that audience think that I'm speaking directly to that person so I'm trying to make it personable for for the group, it's a little bit more challenging to create the presentation and design the right stories and that kind of thing, when you're talking to a bigger group, I think the so as far as the delivery goes, it's not the type of speech that you give isn't a whole lot different, it's just like when if I happen to be on stage, though, I use a lot more energy, because I have to, if I'm speaking in a in a, in a room to an with an executive and single single audience, then obviously, I still want to have that natural energy in my voice and I still want to be enthusiastic when I'm talking but I'm not going to be kind of over the top, but I will likely be highly exaggerated when I'm on stage because I don't want to leave it up to the camera guy to make sure that I'm framed Well, I want the person in the back row of that big auditorium to be able to see my energy as well so that's, I mean, that's kind of the major difference but I would say that, that as far as the designing of a speech and the, the presentation style and that kind of thing, it's it's very similar, I mean, it's basically all we're doing when we're speaking in front of a group is we're having a conversation with the audience, it's just that I'm doing most of the talking, right.
Josh: And so walk us through your framework a little bit for how, how you prepare a presentation and how you deliver that presentation.
Doug: Okay, so so, one of the big mistakes that people make, when they when they start to present is they will, they will start with their visual lights, that's the biggest mistake that people make, they'll start with a slideshow or something like that and basically that that's the technique that I the analogy that I use there, it's kind of like watching an old Kung Fu movie, my little brother and I used to watch those when I was a kid, you know, that came on Saturday morning and, and they would be dubbed in the the the voice would match up with the lips moving and that kind of thing.
Josh: That's Tiger Hidden Dragon is that?
Doug: Well, I mean, I'm older than you are. These are like, you know, what I'm not gonna say but anyway, but um, but basically those Kung Fu movies, though, what's happening in that is that the the voice is being dubbed to what's on the screen they're trying to make it match what's on the screen and that's kind of what that's the big mistake a lot of people make when they're designing their presentations is they start with a slideshow, and then they say, Okay, what am I going to say about this slide right. So we're, we're trying to create verbiage for the for the visual aid, what we teach people to do is we teach them to design the, the presentation first, does it determine what you want to say first, and then at the end, kind of create a slideshow that well, are there any visual aid not just slideshow, but any visual aid that will help you explain your your content better, the visual aid is for the audience, not for us as a as a cheat note, and then when we're when we're actually designing the content but you know, our advice is to not cover too much, no, I mean, I like that your podcasts are really short, you know, like 20 minutes or so right do you're basically gonna cover one or two really key things, and people can finish that and really digest it so if you cover 150 bazillion bullet points in a presentation, it's gonna be very confusing so you'll do a whole lot better if you just kind of designed two or three or four or five really, really good concepts, spend five minutes talking about each one of those things and you got a really good presentation, that's that's that simple. It's easy people remember it, it's easy, you don't have to memorize a bunch of stuff and it makes it it makes it just a whole lot easier but actually, it's it's funny, because like I like what you said earlier, you were talking about how you started out in leadership and it's funny, we've been talking about the public speaking stuff, a lot but I mean, we are I mean, my company is the leaders course bigger leaders, leaders Institute because they started teaching leadership training leadership courses and it's funny from a marketing standpoint, the reason why we started focusing more on public speaking is just because if somebody has a negative experience speak in front of a group, they will typically go to Google and type in public speaking classes. Right, if somebody is a bad leader, they typically don't go to Google and type in leadership course you know, they don't it's it's basically it was it was it was a path of least resistance and that was one of those big things that early on in the company anyway, that got us over the hump, you know, we were kind of stalled out on leadership training, he was me and a handful of instructors and we were talking to added about maybe 350 grand a year or so which is not bad for a small company and, and we were, we were traveling around and having some fun doing that but the moment that we we kind of picked up on the fact that the audience are the people that we were presenting to, we're really interested in reducing public speaking fear and we created the public speaking class, we went from teaching like 30 or 40, about 30 or so classes a year, like over 300, in less than three years and we hit that that million dollar mark for the first time and what was interesting was that, that it took me I don't know, a better part of 16 years, maybe from the time that I started studying, and about six years in business before I hit that, that million dollar mark and then we had plateaued at that $350,000 for about a year or so and then all of a sudden, we change what we were doing, we changed our infrastructure, we change the things that we're offering to the to the, to the market, and all of a sudden, we hit that million dollar mark and then interesting enough, we plateaued there's whatever it was that got you to that previous point, you know, we'll we'll get to be also be your downfall so then we were kind of looking for the next big thing and it took us a couple years to kind of figure that out and then once we figured that out, we hit the two and a half million dollar mark and plateaued again, right and then where to change infrastructure and start adding more people and that kind of stuff so it's a it's a process and I think I think that those, those plateaus that we hit are those things that that kind of I, to me, anyway, it's what it's what drives the whole process, it said that we have what it's now a new challenge, it's something new to kind of tackle, okay, we figured out how to get here, now, how do we go further and that's what the chats are, I love the love your podcast, I love all the cool stuff that you guys are, are kind of getting across to help people kind of get through those plateaus.
Josh: I appreciate that when we talk about this a lot on this show, it's the rule of ones and threes and you're such a great example of that, because we get stuck at 100,000, 300,000 and 1 million and 3 million, you are almost exactly at those marks and it's because each of those steps, this is what we've learned from just interviewing some people on here is that each of those steps require really a complete shift in your identity of how you run a company, I mean, you have to start as the salesperson and you have to become the manager, then you have to become the investor type, it's it's crazy to just watch the shifts you have to make in order to grow a company.
Doug: Absolutely. I mean that basically, that's what we did. I mean, when, when it was just me and I hired a part time assistant, about 100 grand, that's about what you've man, almost 150 now maybe I'm almost pretty close to it anyway, and then brought in a couple of people and that that and just kind of taught them to do what I was doing and we hit that 350 mark or so and got stalled again and then was like, Okay, well, that works so well, let's just keep doing it. So basically, that hit that million dollar mark, I just started bringing in new people and that worked pretty well short term but the I think the biggest challenge was is that we we got to the point where we were growing so fast that we were just kind of looking for bodies, you know, it's like, oh, okay, you get a pulse, sure, I'll hire you. So, as we we needed we had, we had stuff coming in and we needed folks to do things and and to get to that next one that that next that next plateau, we had to focus way more on the infrastructure of the company, I once once you get past that million dollar mark to get to that million dollar market it I don't know, maybe I may be wrong, this is from my own experience, but I'm sure you, you probably have seen this more than I but you can so you can you can tell me if I'm right or wrong but almost all of it has to do with infrastructure, almost all of it has to do with adding the right support team, it stopped trying to do everything ourselves, you know what, we were really good at doing those things, that's how we get to that million dollar mark and then we have to start turning that over to other people and teaching other people how to how to do what we did, and bring it on experts that have an expertise that we don't have because our expertise got us to a million but you have to bring somebody in from the outside sometimes to kind of shake things up and add new things so I don't know if that's what you see
Josh: a 100% that's what we see. It's so interesting, because that's the hardest pivot for most people because as entrepreneurs, we're the visionary, creative, we are not the manager operations guy and that's for me, that's when we've personally I feel like that's when you need to bring somebody in from the outside or a partner of some sort, who is more operations minded, because you need to just keep doing what you're doing to drive growth and they need to be focusing on refining the growth alright, our job is to send the mud their way and they pulled the diamonds out of it as well.
Doug: Right? Yeah, it's tough, though. I mean, it's tough to turn things over. It's like God, I'm so good at this, though and then and then but if you but if you ask the people that are in my office, they're like, nice he thinks he's that good.
Josh: It's just what you enjoy doing right and that's the hard part is when you really love something, but you're not the best at it and handing that off.
Doug: Oh, that's even worse.
Josh: Yeah, see, and I, I love designing websites, I actually really enjoy that. It's an art to me, and I really enjoy it but it's such a cheap skill that we can outsource, I'm always being told by my partner, he's like, stop building stuff, quit wasting your time building stuff but you know, what's really interesting to your point, too, as well as is that that shift past the million dollar mark requires a team but we've even seen this with multiple other companies, too, is that if you try to implement team to quickly, you're gonna shoot yourself in the foot because you haven't maximized your growth yet and you haven't maximized your own time yet and so it's kind of fun to see the difference that there that's there.
Doug: Oh, interesting Yeah, man, that's Yeah, words of wisdom.
Josh: We're here to hear your words of wisdom, though, Doug. So you've been given us some really amazing pieces of content here, Doug. So I want to ask you this first off, where can people find you and find your company?
Doug: Yeah, well, the main website that we have is leadersinstitute.com, and we actually I actually, I have a link set up for you guys that has a, it just goes to a blog post, right a lot, a lot of times when folks are promoting things there, yeah, come to my website, give me your email address and like I said, it's just going to go to a blog post, it forwards you to a really cool thing on strategic thinking, which is, in addition to the the infrastructure thing that I mentioned, that's that's one of the I think one of the more pivotal things that people do to kind of get to the next level, whether you're at that $100,000 Mark, or the $300,000 mark, or the million dollar mark, or the two and a half million is basically it's how to, to be be more proactive versus reactive, anticipate where things are going, don't just don't just look at where we are right now and in a strategic planning, that kind of thing. So it's a pretty cool blog post that I think your listeners might get a chance of, might get some good value out of out of it.
Josh: I would agree. Honestly, I went over and read that before our interview today so make sure everybody you go check that out and like Doug said, it's not wireless things. It's like, Hey, give me your email. So I can give you a piece of content, they give you just some amazing content upfront, it's just a blog post and it's awesome, awesome content. So make sure you go check that out and then Doug, I just want to ask you one final question to wrap this up so if you could give us one final parting piece of guidance, what would that be?
Doug: Oh, God, okay, one final piece, every all of my all of the all of the, the stuff that's in my head, boil it down to one thing, I you know, I think, for the most part, if you really are wanting to grow and get to that next level, I mean, being able to constantly set goals for yourself, I mean, you have to be a goal setter, you have to be that person that says, Okay, this is where we want to get to three years from now and then in order to get to that point three years from now we have to get to milestones in set those milestones along the way, at year two and year one and next month, and that kind of thing. So set those, set those milestones and then measure your results so that you can see whether or not you're moving in the right direction, you do those things, and you're going to be constantly you're constantly growing, you're constantly moving in the in the right direction and you can't help us succeed.