Danny Brassell: Why Storytelling Is the Secret to Leadership, Influence, and Growth

In episode 25 of The Influence Exchange, I sit down with Danny Brassell, highly sought-after speaker, trainer, coach, co-founder of Well-Crafted Story, and author of more than 20 books including Leadership Begins with Motivation and Misfits and Crackpots.

Danny has delivered presentations to more than 3,500 audiences worldwide, but what makes this conversation powerful is not just his experience, it’s his perspective on leadership, communication, motivation, and the real power of storytelling.

In this conversation, we talk about:

Danny’s mission to bring more joy back into education and the workplace

How losing everything financially became a turning point in his life

Why storytelling is one of the most effective tools leaders and entrepreneurs can use

The 5 Cs framework for creating presentations that connect and move people to action

Why great speakers don’t just tell stories. they tell stories with intention

The biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when presenting

Why people connect more with your failures than your bragging

How Danny wrote more than 20 books and what motivates his work

Danny also shares practical insights for:

CEOs and leaders who want to communicate more effectively

Entrepreneurs trying to clarify their message

Anyone looking to become more confident on stage

Creators who want to use their personal story to serve, inspire, and grow their business

Danny also shared a free resource for listeners:
Visit -  http://freestoryguide.com/ to get his complimentary Well-Crafted Story Blueprint.

The Well-Crafted Story Website: https://wellcraftedstoryworkshop.com/workshop

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Danny Brazu is a highly sought-after speaker, trainer, and coach who has delivered presentations to more than 3,500 audiences around the world. He is also the author of over 20 books, including Leadership Begins with Motivation and Mythfits and Crock Pots. Danny is the co-founder of Well Crafted Stories, where he helps entrepreneurs and leaders turn their personal experiences into powerful stories that inspire audiences and grow their businesses. His mission is simple. Help people communicate better, connect deeper, and use storytelling as a tool to create real impact. Please join me in welcoming Danny Brazo. Let's get into it. Welcome, Danny, to the Influence Exchange. Thank you for taking time out of your day today and joining me on my podcast. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Fantastic. Thanks so much for having me, JV. More importantly, thanks for all that you do. You're spreading some joy around the world. We need a lot more of you, my friend. I appreciate it. Thank you for the kind words.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Danny, you're an entrepreneur. Before we dive in, what is your mission, Danny?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Wow. Gee, nobody's ever asked me just a mission statement. I guess an overall mission is to spread joy back into education in the workplace. I have lots of different projects, as you know. If I was going to write an autobiography, it would probably be called Pivots because I feel like I've already lived nine lives. 30 years ago, I was a journalist covering President Bush Sr. in the 1992 presidential election. I love my job. I got sure. I got to meet every editor of every major daily. And one editor offered me the Citi Beat for$16,500 a year. Meanwhile, a friend told me they were hiring teachers in South Central Los Angeles for$25,000 a year. But I would teach Educator JV for the noblest of reasons, for the high pay. Right. Actually fell in love with teaching. I thought all age levels from preschoolers all the way up to rocket scientists. I can make that claim because I used to teach English as a second language engineering student at the University of Southern California. And in 2005, my wife and I attended a real estate seminar, which turned out to be a scam, and we lost everything financially. And I could give you the woe is me story, but I'm a positive person. I learned a lot. Sure. Absolutely. First of all, I learned that my wife was my soulmate. I put her through the ringer and she stood right by me. She's an incredible human being. Second of all, I learned that money's not everything because you can lose money just like that. Absolutely. Third, I try not to judge other people, JV, because if I was somebody who saw what I had done, I would have said, well, you deserve that. But now I realize, unless you know everything about a person, you really don't know anything about a person. Fourth, I became a Christian, which I'm always embarrassed to confess it took a catastrophe, but the more I read the Bible, I realize I'm not the first to grow up to find Jesus. Exactly. Yeah. And then fifth, and probably most applicably for the purposes of this interview, was I didn't want to file for bankruptcy. And so my accountant said I had to earn this much more money. And so I started speaking on the side, and I hit that number right on the number. Well, then the next year, JV, he gave me a much higher number. And I hit that number right on the number. In year three, I thought, well, maybe I should set a higher number. And basically during one of the worst economic downturns in American history, I was able to build up a highly lucrative speaking business, which eventually attracted the attention of some pretty famous people and companies who asked me to coach them. And I have to admit, I really resisted coaching for a long time because you need to know this about me, JV. I am obsessed of compulsive. I will not let you fail. I will be on your back holding you accountable until you succeed. Well, now that I work primarily with entrepreneurs and business owners and executives, I find that they're highly motivated. They do the work. It's been some of the most gratifying work I've ever done. So uh uh that's a very long answer to your short question about my mission.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Thank you. I appreciate that. Now, Danny, so as a CEO, let's say, um, a CEO that's not motivated or being inspired to lead a business, even if it's a small business or a multi-billion dollar business, how do you approach a situation and a CEO and inspire them to do well for themselves and for their business?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, when I'm working with CEOs, again, everything is about communication. Whether you're communicating with a large audience or your board or your employees, uh, that's why I believe storytelling is the most effective way to uh to lead whoever you're leading. And um, you know, most of the CEOs I work with, they have no interest in speaking or they're terrified of speaking, and I show them some simple strategies that they can use to make themselves uh heard better better. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

You know, I worked in a for a Fortune 500 company and I work for a smaller company, and I see the difference when it comes to leadership and leaders. Um are to just hand over the work to others, and some are plugged in and willing to do the work. You know, to me that's a huge difference when someone, especially a leader, is is leading by example, for me personally, um it's gonna push me to do better. Absolutely. It's gonna push me to motivate my team to inspire my team for bigger goals. So I I appreciate that, Danny. I love that. While we're in the topic of um business entrepreneurship, talk to me a little bit about you co-founded the well-crafted story workshop. Let's let's talk a little bit about that, please.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, so I co-founded it with uh Coach Jimmy Hayes Nelson and Dave Ward. I call us the professor, the performer, and the producer because my background is academia. Coach Jimmy was a Broadway actor, and Dave is the journey. And so we all bring uh different perspectives to uh our coaching clients. And what we do is we help uh our clients uh use stages and uh create presentations that get people to take the next step. I mean, I love it when clients tell me, hey, people think I'm a great speaker. I'm like, good for you. Or they say, hey, I got a standing ovation. I'm like, that's wonderful. It's important to move hearts, but it's also more important, in my opinion, to move the needle. The only way I measure your effectiveness is how many people in your audience decide to take the next step. Now, it can be an unpaid next step, like subscribe to my podcast, or if I'm working with a politician, vote for me. More typically with our clients, it's a paid offer like buy my product or invest in my coaching program. We want our clients to know their numbers and understand how many people are they moving to take action at the at the end of their presentation.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Sure. Sure. And what are the tools you use for someone to take that action?

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Well, you're gonna have to forgive me, JV. I'm a former teacher, so everything I do either write or literative. And so uh we take our clients through what we call the five C's process. So before we put together any part of your presentation, the first uh C is clarity. There are two questions we always ask our clients. Sure. Who is your audience and what is the problem that you solve? And you would be amazed 95% of the people we work with cannot answer one or both of those questions in a succinct manner. You know, a lot of people say, Oh, my audience is everybody. I'm like, well, if your audience is everybody, your audience is nobody. We want, I mean, you you can eventually reach everybody, but even one of the best speakers in the world is John Maxwell. He had started off as a Christian minister. And so his speaking at first was focused on Christian ministries and been able to expand. So now he's a global leadership uh guru and communication guru. Uh, so you can always expand your audience. And then what is the problem that you solve? And we want you to focus on one specific problem. There's a great story of Steve Jobs when he came back to Apple in 1997. He was all excited to advertise the new iMac, and he had five features that he wanted to uh to advertise about the iMac. And Lee Clau, his friend, who was also the advertising executive who created the famous 1984 Super Bowl ad, he crumpled up five pieces of paper and he said, Steve, catch. And he threw them all Steve at the same time, and Steve didn't catch any of them. And Lee said, That's a bad ad. Then he crumpled up one piece of paper and said, catch. And Steve caught it. And he said, That's a good ad. We want you to focus on one problem. You can you can be solving lots of problems, but you need to just on one specific problem. So that's the very first C is uh clarity. Then the other four C's, once we get into actually designing your presentation, first you need to connect with your audience. This is the most important part of your presentation. You need to teach meaningful content that serves your audience. So that's our process. We love it. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

And just for um the audience, where can they find you, Danny?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Well, if you go to uh freestoreguide.com, guide like a tour guide, freestoreguide.com. Uh this is something I wanted to give you and your audience as a freebie for listening to me today. Uh, you'll get uh your own complimentary well-crafted story blueprint. What this is, is the actual process that we would take you to help you create your well-crafted story. What this does for you is it takes the guesswork out of what story should I use and where should I put it in my presentation. And what this means for you is you now have an actual system to convert your audiences into actual clients. You can get that at freestoryguide.com.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

I love it, Danny. And um, I will add uh um the website on the episode description. So, Danny, I have to um kiddos and I'm I'm inspired because you are author of 21 books. That is impressive. Talk to us a little bit about your journey from I won't say from book one to twenty-one, but in between, especially the leadership begins with motivation.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah. Well, I mean, so I was a journalist. I writing's always been in my blood, so I love writing. Um the the majority of my books at first they were all education focused because I spoke, I had been an educator, and so I practiced what I preach. Uh I started off, my tribe was just speaking to educators, and I expanded into to working with uh parent groups. Now I I pretty much will work with just about anybody. Um the leadership begins with motivation book you were talking about. When I was um a middle school teacher, uh I was the only teacher in my school that none of my students were ever tardy to class because I always started class by reading aloud a Paul Harvey story. I don't know for Paul Harvey. When I was a kid growing up, I'd listen to Paul Harvey. Every day on the radio, he'd come on at 1215 and say, I'm Paul Harvey with the rest story. Right. And for five minutes he's telling you about somebody, and you're trying to guess who it is or what's the company or whatever. My students they loved it, but the problem with Paul Harvey, he's passed on, and his stories were about people like Fred Astaire and companies like Sears Roebuck. Well, in today's day and age, you know, kids don't even know anything about those people, which is not but they would they're more interested in people they know about. And so I wrote um Leadership Begins with Motivation as an homage to Paul Harvey, but it has more updated stories and more contemporary people like Elon Musk and Jeff Baker, people like that. But then after I wrote a JV, I read it, I'm like, huh. Completely unintentionally, um a lot of my stories were of white male Americans. And so I wrote this book afterwards called Misfits and Crackpots. And this book, most of the stories are about women and minorities and international people because I think people benefit from hearing inspirational stories. I mean, um, I was watching this horrible show on TV last week called uh the news, and it just totally and I'm like, there's so much sadness and negativity in the world. Listen to your podcast. Uh yeah, I mean, like, we need more positivity, we need more uplifting stories, stories of Pope. And so uh I like to share those types of stories. Um, yeah, that's that's my motivation. Uh the last book I wrote was called Um Convicted. And uh this is a book I'm giving away to every prisoner on the planet. Uh it's a book about prisoners that found Christ while they were in prison, all these uh 52 separate stories, also Paul Herbie-like stories of famous people that were stuck in prison, and uh so convicted is a double entendre. And uh I'm excited, I'm I'm working on book 22 right now. I'm very excited about it. That is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

That is awesome. Danny, what is the thought process of just creating a book? You know, is you do you do interviews with others, and and that's how you get your work done, or it's just all in your mind from your experiences?

SPEAKER_01 13:25

That's actually a good question, JV. I mean, it depends. Uh, that's the answer. I know that's a lame answer. Uh I the easiest book I ever wrote was uh Bringing Joy Back into Education. It was based on a keynote that I had delivered over a hundred times. And so I was able to just crank that book out really quickly. Um, books like The Leadership Begins with Motivation, that was basically uh based on articles I'd been collecting for over 10 years. Uh interesting articles. Uh the Misfits and Crackpots book. It was interesting because uh I realized I had a bias with the leadership book. I was like, huh. I was writing about white male Americans. I'm like, I wonder if that's because the education system, those are the stories we're taught. And I had to actually um do a lot more research on the misfits and crackpots, and I loved it. It was probably my favorite book I've ever written because I'm like, wow, I had never heard this story. It's a fascinating story. Um and the book I'm writing right now is basically an homage to another author I loved. Uh I I can't say anything about the book because I I the moment I start talking about the book before it's published, then I'm doomed. Um yeah, no, no. They all they all take on a different um a different uh perspective. But I I I always like something. It's actually the the book I'm writing right now is kind of like a parable book. It's a little bit different. It's a leadership book uh because an organization, they they said they'd buy 5,000 copies if I'd write another leadership book. And I'm like, well, there you go. That's motivation to write the book. Uh so but it it's been a lot of fun writing it. Uh, but the process is different. Um, you know, I'm a person that gets up early in the morning, and so basically I'll just lock off the first two to three hours for the day because that's my creative time, and I I write that way. Uh, everybody has their own process. Uh some days I get a couple of pages written, sometimes I get 20 pages written. It always depends.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Yeah. I always thought um an author will lock themselves in a room for one to three to six months just 12-hour days writing and writing and writing. I guess I'm it's not true. My my thought process maybe is not.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

I mean, people do differently. A friend of mine, his aunt is is Danielle Steele. You know, she's written all these romances. Sure. Yeah, yeah. And her process is she books the fanciest suite at the Ritz-Carleton in New York City for a week and she has room service and she writes the book in a week.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Sure. That's amazing. I've never heard of it.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Uh Roland Smith, uh, he he wrote a great book called Peak, which will convince you never to try and climb Mount Everest. But uh I asked him his process, and he said, Well, a lot of people say, if only I had a cabin up in the mountains, I'd write my book. And he said, if I had a cabin in the mountains, I'd be looking at the mountains all day. So yeah, he has his big uh notebook, and if he's waiting for a plane for 15 minutes, he's writing. Before he's going up, he's writing. I'm like, wow, that's that's really discipline. So everybody has their own process. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Wow, thank you. Uh earlier you spoke briefly about being a teacher. What inner shift took you from teaching in LA to a global speaker?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Financial necessity. As much as I love teaching, it doesn't bring home the bacon as well as uh talking to us. But I learned everything I needed to learn about speaking, I learned from the classroom. Uh and and in terms of teaching, one of the most important things by teaching kids of different ages is I I learned that what works with 12th graders does not necessarily work with kindergartners. But what works with kindergartners works with all age levels. I call kindergarten New York, New York. If you can make it there, you can make oh yeah, because those kids have a seven-minute attention stand. You cannot be boring. And I I I thank God I got to teach the little ones because they made me much more energetic and always figuring out how can I take this and make it more interesting.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

I hear you.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

That's awesome. So, Danny, 3,500 keynotes globally, and your your mindset, you do over a hundred annual presentations. How do you stay motivated and inspired?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Oh, I love it. It's like breathing. I don't even think about it. I get very, and it's weird. I al I the the largest group that I and I mean, there's people that have spoken to much larger groups than I've spoken to. The largest group I ever spoke to was around 5,500 people. And uh I looked at my, it was my Michael Corleone moment because I looked at my hand right before the speech and it was steady as a rock. I'm like, wow, I'm not nervous at all. This is what I'm meant to be doing. And uh I just feel completely comfortable on a stage. Now, most of the people I work with, they're either terrified of speaking or they have no interest in speaking. And so I had to I had to really kind of put myself in their mindset and and help them get over those things. But uh for me, it's the great and a lot of people they don't like travel. I actually love travel because I love reading, and so whenever I'm on an airplane, I'm reading. Um I I love what I do, which is you know, it's nice when you find something that you love to do. I I I I'm bothered when I see people that are miserable in their jobs. I'm like, well, you should change your job. I I changed my job many times because I didn't like this or I didn't like that, or I didn't like who I was working with, and uh I'm in a really good place right now, JP.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah, that's awesome. You know, reading definitely teaches you a lot, Danny. It's no matter what you're trying to accomplish in life. You know, currently I'm I'm studying and reading a lot of AI, artificial intelligence, because I'm my background is in technology. I've have learned so much because that's the future. Robot robotics and eventually self-driving cars that I think in California, I think some in Miami now, you could go get an Uber instead of someone driving your car. It's uh a robot in a car. There's no driver.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

I'm interested, JV, because you're so interested in AI. If people are always trying to figure out, and I would include myself on this, what should a person be studying about AI? Because when I when Chad GPT first came out, I actually hired an AI coach, and everything he taught me is already irrelevant three years later. It's happening so quickly. So, what would be your strategy if I wanted to be very uh directed in my reading towards AI?

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Yeah, that's that's interesting because we could talk about this today, and tomorrow AI changes completely. I that's how fast paced, and if you don't stay up to the technology, you are gonna fall behind so fast. Um so in AI, you have different product lines. Um, I would use chat chat chat excuse me, chat GPT for a moment. And um right now, if you write something in ChatGPT and says, give me the recipe to make pasta, they're gonna give you an 80% accurate response how to make the pasta. You boil the hot water, you put the pasta, you get the marinara sauce. I see AI, I'm gonna use ChatGPT. In three to five years, you're gonna say, I am a 45-year-old male, I'm stuck, and I want to create my next future business that can make me a hundred million dollars. What's gonna happen in three to five years? I'm gonna use again ChatGPT. They're gonna design your path and how to do that. From uh from building an LLC, starting from the ground up, getting your your taxes in place, all the way up. They're gonna script it for you, they're gonna create the documentation for you, they're gonna do everything for you while you just sit and just wait for the results. That to me, I feel like that's the future, and that's what I've been reading a long time.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

I told my wife last night, once AI figures out how to create sperm, I'll be completely worthless.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

It's it's fascinating to me. It it really is. And um I'm trying to teach my son. He's young, he's only nine years old. So he doesn't know much. But it's no such thing of handbooks anymore. Yes, they do write 'cause that's So important now, but everything is on a Chromebook. Everything is on an iPad. It's he's not bringing home workbooks anymore. Everything is done digitalized. It's it's nuts. Danny, um for listeners, how can they craft a story that clarifies their legacy?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Well, I've never had that question, JV. Well, I mean, again, um don't overthink these things. Here's a uh here's an exercise you can do, J. It's the first exercise I usually have clients go through. Is later on I want you to sit in a comfortable chair with a pen and paper, libation of choice, and for an hour I want you to write down every story that's ever happened to you. And I don't mean the entire story, I just mean triggers. Like the time I locked myself out of the car in front of Costco, the time dad spilt mustard on his tie when we went to that fancy restaurant. You'll find in an hour you can come up with literally hundreds of stories like that. So that's the first part of the exercise. Second part of the exercise is then I want you to think about what's this story really about? Oh, this is a story about never giving up. Oh, this is a story about facing your fear. Oh, this is a story about priorities. On my computer, I have hundreds of folders with literally tens of thousands of stories. So when I'm putting together a presentation and I want my audience to have a certain type of emotion, emotional reaction, I know exactly the story to use. And that, I mean, that's the difference between a good presentation and an excellent presentation. Good presentations, the presenter tells stories. Excellent presentations, the presenter tells stories with intention. They're driving you towards the call to action. That's what you should always be thinking. That's why those clarity questions are so important. Who am I talking to and what is it that I want them to do at the end of this presentation? Once you can understand that, then you're gonna be much more powerful as a speaker. So any type of story, um, you know, I think it was Tony Morrison said, uh, if if the story you've always wanted to read doesn't exist, it's your responsibility to write it. And so that's why, you know, I'm not gonna write a book that somebody else has already written. I'm like, there's I want to tell stories that people aren't familiar with. Um I watch so many presenters that get paid a lot of money for telling stories that I've heard told 28. I used to belong to kind of a secret society of speakers. Our inside joke was, did they tell the starfish story? Because I've been to at least 30 presentations where a person tells the same starfish story. So lame. Like, give me a real story, give me something unique to you. I I guarantee you, being the father of a nine-year-old, you have a ton of resources to draw from just about uh your relationship with your nine-year-old, the stupid things you've done. We're comedians, that's where they get most of their materials, just the daily day.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Yeah. So, Danny, when you're talking to an audience, it could be five or a hundred people, how do you keep them engaged from them not picking up their cell phone and just start scrolling on social media? How do you just keep every audience member saying, Whoa, Danny, your message means a lot. I'm I'm I'm gonna take the tools you are delivering. I'm gonna take that and bring into action.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yeah, I try to practice what I preach. I learned this from teaching the kindergartners. Some kids like to talk, some kids like to draw, some kids like to sing, some kids like to dance. And so I try to incorporate all those things throughout my presentation. Uh, probably my my super skill is uh most pres most trainers, they train people to always share the most negative experiences of their lives. And there's three reasons why I don't coach people that way. I mean, first of all, I'm teaching my clients how to create what I call a well-crafted story. Um politicians call it a stump speech. I've heard people call it a signature talk. You can call it peanut butter and jelly, it doesn't matter what you call. This is a a presentation you're going to deliver again and again to introduce new audiences to you. Sure. Like I want you to be comfortable. Do you really want to talk about a negative story again and again? I want you to have fun on stage. Uh secondly, you are repeating this again and again. Like the we don't need that negative story. The world just survived a global pandemic. I mean, uh uh, I don't think we need sad stories. I think we need more stories of hope. Uh and nerd, and this is where people get angry with me. I have one basic objective when I'm on stage. I want you to leave feeling better than when you came in. I want you laughing, smiling, happy. I think there's something admirable about that as a basic core objective. I think the people that tell the same sad story again and again, by the 20th time they're doing it, now there's a crocodile tears, and now they're being manipulative. And I'm not saying it's not an effective sales strategy, it's actually a very effective sales strategy. But I personally don't want to have to take a shower after I speak because I just manipulated my audience. There are ethical ways to get people to want to do business with you. And I'll give you the research on this. Uh, I watched a very important film called Monsters Inc., and Monsters Inc., at the end of the movie, they prove that humor has more power than uh sadness and scaring people in the end. Uh and I think I think we need a lot more humor in the world.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Sure, sure. So, Danny, thank you for that. That's uh it's funny. If I tell my son that story, he he's gonna say, What? Danny use monster ink. How how can Danny, your clients when it comes to success, how can you guarantee success? Because sometimes people self-doubt themselves. Yeah, Danny's amazing. I'm I'm taking all the tools and all the advice and going to the presentations, but then they self-doubting themselves to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah, I've had people that they bomb the first couple of times. And again, this is this is why people like me as a coach, because I'm going to be on your back forever. I I'm still in touch with the very first woman who hired me 15 years ago. Uh, she still has to hear from me once every three months because I check. How's everything going? Anything I can do to help. Because to me, the transactional nature of business is one part, but that's not where I get all my satisfaction. I get my satisfaction from watching people that used to be uncomfortable on stage who are now easily delivering presentations uh with flair and have that confidence. But you know, this is an important point you're actually bringing up, JB, because people have to understand speaking is a skill. You can learn it. I mean, my youngest daughter, she's learning how to drive right now. And so when we drive together, she gets in the car and she adjusts her mirrors and she puts her hands at the 10 o'clock, 2 o'clock in the 10 o'clock position. You and I know a year from now, she'll be driving with one hand, eating a Big Mac with her other, radio. And it's she'll be comfortable because she had the reps. This is a skill. You just need practice. I was I was speaking to schools uh to kids in India in 2018, and I spoke to one school, and afterwards, all the kids come up afterwards, they're all excited. And I look down, there's this little boy, he's got tears in his eyes, and I notice he's missing his left arm. He looks up at me, and he's like, How can I succeed?

unknown 29:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

So I I crouch down, I get to his eye level. I'm like, you know, when I was your age, I went to 18 different schools before I was 12. Everybody used to make fun of me and call me stupid because I stuttered. Eventually I went to a school, and this teacher, she worked one-on-one with me, and she would sing things to me, and I found I could sing back and I didn't have my stutter. It's kind of like the movie The King's Speech. And eventually I lost my stutter and I became a swan. But this is what I told that little boy. I said, Isn't it interesting? The little boy that people used to make fun of and call him stupid because he couldn't talk right, now paid ridiculous sums of money to travel the world to do what? And he gets the biggest smile on his face. He's like, speak. Don't let anybody ever tell you what you cannot do. I can't tell you how many people I've worked with that are completely, and there's nothing wrong. You're in good company, by the way, if you're nervous speaking on stage. I mean, Barbara Streisand, she still vomits before she goes on stage. Uh President Reagan vomited before almost every speech he ever gave. Uh Bill Russell, NBA All-Star. He used to puke for every game for the Boston Celtics. Uh you know, what I like about that is it means something to you. That means it's important. That's what it's it's serving you. Um and we have little techniques to help you out. But the way you're really going to build up that confidence is the more you do it. It's just like this podcast, JV. The first time you did this podcast, I guarantee you it sucked. Oh, absolutely. The second time you did it, it sucked, but it didn't suck bad as the first time. And now you've been doing it for a while. It's a finely tuned machine and it's second nature. Well, you had to have the reps. You you have to have the process. There's a people just want to microwave the answer. Right. And life isn't microwaving. Life is you have to take all the ingredients. You got to be patient, wait for the water to boil. And it it's a process, it's not something you just nuke in the oven for but microwave for 45 seconds.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Oh, absolutely. It's not just handed to you.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

I don't know. Not nothing worth having.

unknown 31:23

Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Yeah, if I go back and you you're 100% correct, Danny. My episode one to today, it's it has transformed to something completely different and better. And I'm just excited for it. Danny, what is the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make today from your experiences?

SPEAKER_01 31:43

In presenting, the biggest mistake people make is they brag. And I also I always insist stop sharing your successes from the stage. Start sharing your failures, because not everybody in your audience has succeeded, but they've all failed. And the more you talk about your own failures, the more your audience is going to see themselves and you. And that's ultimately what you're trying to do in a presentation is to connect with your audience. Man, if JV can do it, maybe I can do it. Uh, that's what you want them to really start to recognize. Um, the second biggest mistake I see people make is they have multiple calls to action. We talked about this earlier. Uh I was on a podcast yesterday and the hostess, she ended the show. She said, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure you like, subscribe, and give us a five-star review. We got it off camera, and I said, You just asked your audience to do three different things. They ain't going to do any of them because people are lazy. So, again, former teacher, choices confuse and cause you to lose. If you look that if you look at the largest grocery store chains in America, Smith's, uh, Food Lion, Crowe or Publix, uh GB, they're not the number one grocery store chain in America based on volume. The number one grocery store chain in America based on volume is Trader Joe's. And the reason is when you go into one of these big grocery stores looking for mustard, they got 38 different types of mustard. When you go into Trader Joe's, they got one. It's called mustard. They made the choice for you, and that's why they have a higher sales rate. People, people don't like having lots of choices. It just confuses them and call, you know, it's analysis paralysis. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

You're 100% correct.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Annie, so earlier today, you said something interesting. Um, I think when we first started the interview, you said you you started in um you had goals. Every year you started here, the next year you wanted a little higher, and then year three a little higher. How can someone meet those goals? Because in anything in wealth, in being an entrepreneur, a CEO, a leader, when someone says, okay, I want to accomplish 20%, then second year 40, or or even 30, 35, so on and so forth. What is your thought process behind that? How can leaders meet those goals in life?

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yeah. So if you're a leader that wants to increase growth by 20%, you're gonna have to reverse engineer that. You know AI. I mean, what I'm gonna look at is okay, let's let's divide 20% over the course of a year. So that means every day we need to improve 0.1%. And so then I have to figure out, okay, today what am I doing to achieve that 0.1%? I mean, I personally, uh I I two of my favorite coaches I I've had were Rob and Steve Schallenberger. They have a great book called Becoming Your Best, and they gave me a habit called pre-week planning. And so every Saturday morning, I have their planner. I can actually show it to you. Sure. So I'm anal retentive, so I color code things in every yeah, and so the way that this planner works is uh at the very top, it gives you seven different categories. And so again, former teacher, uh, I have my seven F's. And so every week I have in each category five goals. So I have my focus goals, my fitness goals, my uh financial goals, my family goals, my faith goals, my fun goals, and my fulfillment goals. And so Saturday morning, what I do is I review the previous week and look at how many things I was able to achieve, and I insert that into the book. And then I I pre-week plan for the next week. Okay, I'm I'm planning like every minute. Like here's how I'm gonna spend my time doing that. And uh at the end of every month, I then spend an extra hour every month reviewing the month to see, you know, what am I doing well? What do I need to work on? I don't believe you can have balance in life because there's some times in life when you're you're working really hard and not spending enough time with the family. And then sometimes you're on vacation with your family and you might not be achieving your physical goals or things like that. But what I do want to be is completely cognizant, thinking about, okay, where am I at? You know, I can't have two weeks in a row where I didn't spend uh enough time on the exercise bike. Yeah, sure. I need to make sure that I'm putting God first on some of these things, like uh, what am I doing about that? Uh what am I doing to make sure that I'm enjoying what I do? Um, so I I'm very intentional about that. I think you have to be intentional about that. And I think any CEO, that's why I love sports, because sports, that's that's what uh athletes and coaches are looking at all the tunneling is what's that little extra edge? I mean, if you it's just like taking a walk for 15 minutes a day, you're not gonna see the results in a week, but in the course of a year, you can definitely see the results. But you know, it's a little bit every single day. You can't be one of these people that uh uh it's it's like the people that cram for a test on the night before. That's not the way to do it. Uh it's a little bit at a time.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Sure. Yeah. So Danny, we're um running out of time. But before I ask you my last question, um, again, just for the audience, where can people purchase your books? Where can the audience find you? If you want to release your social media tags, you can. Um, please.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

Well, I'll I'll give you those. You can put those in the notes, but I'm gonna I'm gonna practice what I preach. I always only give one call to action. So again, if you go to freestoreguide.com, you'll get your free uh well-crafted story blueprint. And I'm sure that's gonna put you on an email list for the rest of your life uh where I'll be able to contact you. Uh, and you can always contact me. Um, but uh yeah, that's freestoreguide.com. That's that's the best way to reach me.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

Thank you, Danny. And before we part, Danny, I like to ask everyone that I'm interviewing, what are your final thoughts to the world?

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Well, that's that's easy. Whether I was teaching my little ones or my older ones as they left my classroom every single day, they had to hear me repeat the same refrain. I always said, remember, kids, education is valuable, but execution is priceless. Knowledge is not power. Only apply knowledge is power. Knowing what the right thing to do and doing the right thing are two very different things. So let's go out, do the right thing, and make this world a better place. You're making the world a better place with this podcast, JV. I just admire the heck out of you. And uh anything I can do to support you, I will. And thanks for all you do. Thank you, Danny.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

I really appreciate your time today. Um okay, have a good night. Thanks for your time, and um, we'll be in touch. Sounds good. Take care. Thank you. Thank you, Danny. And before I go, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for pressing play. Thank you for listening, and thank you for watching on YouTube. This podcast exists because you show up, and I don't take that lightly. Also, if you want to be a guest, reach out. You could find me on all social media platforms at the influence exchange, send me a DM and we could connect. Subscribe, leave a review, and remember, your influence grows every time you choose courage over comfort. I'm JV. Stay curious, stay consistent, and keep influencing others.