3 - Surround yourself with successful speakers

One of the best techniques for developing yourself and your skills is to surround yourself with great and encouraging people. Better yet, hang out with people who are already doing the kinds of things that you want to master. So that's exactly what I did as I was growing my own speaking business. And in the process I started a television show on public access television in which I interviewed top speakers who were already speaking for a living and were willing to share their secrets.

In this episode, I'll share with you my interview with professional speaker and trainer, Jim Bouchard, who is known as the black belt guy. I got Jim to share his inspiring transformation from dropout and drug addict to Black Belt and Sensei -- and how that experience made him a genuine leader.  He went on to open 5 martial arts schools, helping hundreds of people achieve their Black Belt rank, and thousands more discover their best selves.

​Today, Jim helps leaders around the world connect on a deeply human level to attract, engage, and lead people to their highest levels of performance and productivity. He actually took his passion and turned it into a 6-figure income. You can learn more about him at that black belt guy. You'll meet Jim in this episode and then in a future episode, I'm going to ask him to share some tips that will help YOU develop your skills. So without further delay, here's my interview with Jim Bouchard, that black belt guy.

Thanks again for listening to this episode of THE GET PAID TO SPEAK PODCAST with me, Bill Corbett. I've got more great episodes coming up, especially another conversation with Jim Bouchard where I'll ask him to share some tips on becoming a successful speaker. You're not going to want to miss it. Don't forget to check out Jim's website, that black belt guy. And if you liked this interview, you can download THE EXPERT'S GUIDE TO PROFESSIONAL SPEAKING on Amazon.com, available on kindle or audible. This recording is the property of Bill Corbett and the GET PAID TO SPEAK PODCAST, Copyright 2022.

For more help with professional speaking, get the book FROM THE SOAPBOX TO THE STAGE, available on Amazon. Copyright 2025  Bill Corbett and The Get Paid To Speak Podcast. All Rights Reserved.

Transcript

0:08

Thank you for downloading and listening to the Get Paid to Speak podcast with me. Bill Gobin. One of the best techniques for developing yourself and your skills is to surround yourself with great and encouraging people. Better yet, hang out with people who are already doing the kinds of things that you want to master. So that's exactly what I did as I was growing my own speaking business and in the process, I started a television show on public access tv, in which I interviewed top speakers who were already speaking for a living and were willing to share their secrets. In this episode, I'll share with you my interview with professional speaker and trainer, Jim Bouchard, who is known as the Black Belt guy. I got Jim to share his inspiring transformation to Black Belt and Sensei and how that experience made him a genuine leader. He went on to open five martial arts schools, helping hundreds of people achieve their black belt rank, and thousands more discover their best selves. Today, Jim helps leaders around the world connect on a deeply human level to attract, engage, and lead people to their highest levels of performance and productivity. He actually took his passion and turned it into a six figure income. You can learn more about him at that black belt guy.com. Now, you're going to meet Jim in this episode, and then in a future episode, I'm going to ask him to share some tips that will help you develop your skills. So without further delay, here's my interview with Jim Bouchard, that black belt guy with me on the show today is Jim Bouchard, a martial arts black belt and entrepreneur. He's the author of the Amazon bestseller, think Like a Black Belt, a book that takes you inside the mind of the black belt to develop confidence, courage, discipline, focus, and leadership for excellence in personal and professional life. Jim has been speaking to groups since 2007. Thanks so much for being here, Jim. Oh. It's good to see you again. What is it you do? And then I'd like to take a step back to find out how did you get to where you are? Because I think a lot of people will be watching this and say, how can I become a professional speaker? How do I get to that point? Tell us what you do now. What I do and why I do it, I think is important. It's important to anybody getting into the business. What I do is I teach people how to think like a black belt. I was telling your other guests the story about that. We were trying to come up with a brand. We were working on our second book. You know what? We're going to title it. We knew we had to shift. And my wife, Alex, who she came up with it, she just sat there one day. She said, why don't you just tell people that you teach 'em how to think like a black belt? That's what you do. And it stuck and we tested it. It looked pretty good, and we went with it. There needs to be a why behind it though. And the why is because discipline, focus, excellence. These traits are not optional in business and life or anywhere else. And the reason I'm emphasizing that, I think it's very, very important for some, A lot of people can do a lot of what's, but you have to understand why you're doing it. Because when you start to pitch yourself, you start trying to make a living at it, right? The why is going to be where you're going to build your marketing from. That's going to be the essential part of it. So before we go any further, I want to make sure that my control room can hear me. I've got a video clip that I captured and that I want to share now. So if we could go ahead and roll the clip now and take a look. This is a shot of you live in action. But this could be a surprise. It's some of your footage that I captured online off your website, but it's a great example of what you do. Let's go ahead and roll that film. You live in a crowded, noisy, fantastic, but very loud world, right? If I want to concentrate on the task at hand, I've got to turn off all that noise and allow myself to be mind asking me, how do you become disciplined? Not being the nicey, nicey motivational guy. Here's what I say. Decide to do it. Pull up your pants, turn your hat around and get to work. Then we can start to take the first principles behind. Black belt mindset are universal. The application is unique to each individual. Exactly. I won't even go further. He said, do the best you can, right? That you measure yourself against who yourself develop this mastery. How do we develop this willingness to learn? How do we develop this proficiency? How do we develop this excellence more basic, a practice like a Nike adjust to do it. If we could get that process happening, we're asking questions of ourselves and of other people, then it's a constant activation process. If you can embrace that idea, a constant self perfection, you can enjoy that moment, you can access that moment at any time. What does that do to any process you're engaged in your life, whether it's life or business or anything else. You see? Just chew on that for a second. Think about that. So perfection is not a destination. It's a never ending process. Thank you. So that's a great clip. What was the primary message you were giving them at that event? It always comes back to certain keywords, and I usually start, well, early in the presentation, I like to ask the audience questions. Not everybody's comfortable doing that, but I like to do it. I like to ask them what words come to mind when they either see a black belt or they hear, because it's an iconic symbol. And once we start to establish those words, then we can work from there. And we mentioned a few of them just a few seconds ago, discipline, focus, excellence, and this idea of perfection that I think we're going to touch on a little while. So I, I'll kind of leave that on the table for now because people have weird ideas about that. But that's it. Those key words and how to take these ideas and these concepts and make them work in your life, whether it's business or. So, how did you get to where you are? You've got an interesting story. I mean, you're not in a. Resume time. How did you get into speaking? What. Made. You do it? And I know your story, but whatever you're willing to share. Well, it's part of the adventure. I'm a two time college dropout and a former drug addict. And at some point in that journey, it would take a while to tell that at some point I realized I needed to make a change in my life. I quit drugs left out behind, and then got into martial arts. I got into martial arts more for the philosophy than I did for the physicality, although I enjoyed both. But the philosophy of the martial arts, again, discipline, the hard work, the rewards for hard work, all this stuff really started to mean something. And then I started to translate that. Well, actually, students of mine who were business people started to say, Hey, you know what? All that, I won't use the word that they said, stuff that you talk about in the dojo. We're using it in business. We're using it in our regular lives as well. So that was the first part of it. People started to ask me to come out and share this philosophy and share these ideas. First, I probably sounded like the nine steps guy from Little Miss Sunshine. But over time, I learned how to craft it and how to hone it so people would buy into that message, buy into those ideas. And that's the important thing. I talk about ideas. I'm not a solutions guy. I'm not opinion, well, somewhat opinionated, but really what I'm doing is introducing ideas. And then we talk about how to apply that in life. And I think that's important for people to understand when they're speaking that purpose. And. What you revealed is you got it at some point that said that, I'm making a mistake. I shouldn't be doing that. And you. Became aware. Daily. Daily. You became aware of that. And so many people are out. There, they. Don't have the awareness yet. But. At what point, and we only got a couple minutes left, what point did it become professional speaking? Yeah, well, you know what? One of my most treasured mentors and dear, dear friend Larry Wingett, who really helped me turn this business around at one point, he said to me, he said, Jim, you're a professional speaker, not a public speaker. And there's a huge difference there. You have to embrace the business side of it. And that's hard work. It's like any other business, and a lot of it has to do with work, accepting that we're evolving and changing and wanting to do that, embrace the craft of it. I think too many people leave that aside. They think they have a good idea, or they have some degree of talent, and they leave it there. I'm never satisfied. I can't stand watching these videos, and I wouldn't care if we shot one today. That's game film. We go back and we try to polish it and try to improve it. So yeah, you got to embrace that process. When you went down the track of the professional speaker. And just a question, how long did you speak for free before you actually began to earn some money at this? Well. Depending on what's going on, I might still speak for free once in a while. It has to be a good cause now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. A good two or three years, even when I was starting to be paid for it, I would still take a lot of pro bono gigs. I think that's important. Along the way. I think it's important to speak as much as possible to embrace every opportunity. If nothing else, it's experience, which is sometimes more valuable than the fee. And then it's a trade off as to if you're going to an event and you're not getting paid, you could be in your office developing more content. Or something. You. Got to make sure it's worth your while, right? Yeah. But you know what? The opportunity to speak and share ideas, I think most of the time, especially for people starting out, most of the time, that's worth it because the most important part of it, you've got to get out there on the stage. That's where everything happens. That's where you make your mistakes, that's where you find your moments of joy. And hey, you don't get that sitting in the office. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Get Paid To Speak podcast with me, bill Corbett. I've got more great episodes coming up, especially another conversation with Jim Bouchard, where I'll ask him to share some tips on becoming a successful speaker. You're not going to want to miss it either. It's going to be good. Now, don't forget to check out Jim's website, black belt guide.com. And if you like this interview, you can download the Experts Guide to Professional Speaking on Amazon. It's available on Kindle or Audible. This recording is the property of Bill Corbett and the Get Paid to Speak podcast copyright 2022.