Participants:

Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Michael Port

Steve Wershing:
Welcome to Becoming Referral, the podcast that shows you how to become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing. On this episode, we talked with Michael Port. Although one of the most influential speaker trainers, he has important advice even if you are not a professional speaker. His most recent book, Steal the Show, he points out that we are performing all the time. Whether trying to persuade clients to take our advice, networking with other professionals, doing community work, or coaching your kids soccer team. And the concepts and disciplines of acting can help you be more effective in all of them.

Steal the Show is the sixth book by Michael, and might be the most unique and practical book ever written about public speaking, according to a former president of Starbucks. He’s been called an uncommonly honest author by the Boston Globe, a marketing guru by the Wall Street Journal, the sales guru by the Financial Times, and a public speaking phenom by Jonathan Fields. His books have been on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly, and have been selected by Amazon and 800-CEO-READ as best books of the year.

Port started as an actor after completing New York University’s Graduate acting program. He performed on Television in shows like Sex in the City and Law and Order, and in films like The Pelican Brief and Down to Earth. After leaving acting for business, he hit the speaking circuit with Book Yourself Solid, the fastest, easiest and most reliable system for getting more clients than you can handle, even if you hate marketing and selling.

These days, he spends much of his time running Heroic Public Speaking with his Co-Founder and business partner and wife, Amy Port. Our conversation brings in points from both these books, including how to prepare to bump into prospective clients and introduce what you do, the six keys to creating connection and, of course, how to design and rehearse conversations about referrals. It is dense with the practical tips and useful advice for your advisory practice.

And so without further delay, let’s get on to our conversation with Michael Port. Michael Port, welcome to the Becoming Referable Podcast. We’re so excited to have you.

Michael Port:
Thank you so much for having me.

Steve Wershing:
So let’s just get into your most recent book, Steal the Show. And in that, you talk about the importance of performing to everyone, not just professionally, graduate level actors like you and your wife and business partner, Amy. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that for the people in the audience who have not read your stuff yet?

Michael Port:
Sure, of course. So, look, I think that a speech has the power to change the world and the people in it, including the speaker, because anytime you are trying to change the way other people think or feel, or act, you have to up level the way that you interact with those folks. And we play lots of different roles in life. So even if you never give what would traditionally be considered a speech, throughout your whole day, you’re playing different roles.

Now, you play one role as a spouse, play another role as a parent, play another role as a child, you play another role as a friend, you play another role as a financial advisor. And if you’re, say, the CEO or the managing partner of your firm, you play another role entirely. So each role requires that we bring different skills, different sensibilities, and as a result of these different roles that we play, we have different responsibilities in these roles. So anytime you’re trying to influence the way somebody thinks or feels or acts, then you’re performing. That’s the way we see it.

And, frankly, the best performers in the world are the most honest performers in the world. Sometimes performance gets a bad rap. Sometimes people equate or conflate performance with pretend or fake. But if you are fully honest, in the actions that you take, in order to influence the way other people feel, then I think you can feel comfortable that you’re in integrity when you’re performing.

So let’s just look at the role of the financial advisor. When you are in that role for a client, what does the client expect from you? So I actually would love to hear from you guys. What is the client expect from you when you’re in that role?

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, well, and you bring up something really important in that in your comments leading up to that, Michael, it’s that really interacting with people. I don’t think that we give enough weight to thinking about how people feel about that, that we’re trying to bring up feelings because if we ask many advisers, “What do you do? What is expected of you in the role of financial advisor?” A lot of them would end up at the point where they say, “Well, essentially information exchange,” but that’s not really what it’s about, right?

Michael Port:
Not really. There’s a lot of people who can offer information exchange. In fact, the robo-advisors will do that for you quite well. So what role does the human being play as an advisor, especially now that we’re competing against fintech?

Steve Wershing:
Right.

Julie Littlechild:
And I would say guide. In fact, when we’ve done research and ask verbatim questions, the number one word used by the clients who are the most engaged say guidance. And that is an innately human activity.

Michael Port:
Yeah, so they’re exactly right. So if you think about it, if you’re to play the role of guide, then the people that you’re serving when you’re playing that role, need to see you as somebody who is consistent. Somebody who creates safety. Somebody who already has the map for the journey that you’re going to go on, has the emotional security and stability to be able to handle all of the ups and downs that you’re going to experience on that journey.

So if you show up to a client meeting, and you spend the first 10, 15 minutes complaining about the traffic on the way over there. Is that the kind of behavior that somebody who is in that role of guide with all of those qualities and characteristics and traits, is that how they would behave? I don’t think so. So, if we choose our actions, if we choose our behaviors, so that they are in line with the different aspects of the role that we want to play, then we’re going to be seen in that role, in the way we want to be seen in that role, and as a result, we’re given the opportunity to be of service.

Steve Wershing:
Right. And-

Julie Littlechild:
Sorry, go ahead.

Steve Wershing:
Go ahead. No, go ahead, Julie.

Julie Littlechild:
Do you use the word performance then there because it suggests we need to be more intentional about how we do that?

Michael Port:
A hundred percent. Because look, here’s the thing. If someone says, “I don’t want to perform, I just want to be myself,” that’s fine. But, we all day long are influencing how other people feel. And if we’re not intentional about it, then we may, in fact, influence them in a way that we do not intend. Because very often our subconscious is working very actively and is helping us make choices in the moment. But if we are not intentional about those choices, well, who knows how we’re going to make somebody feel. We may not make them feel very good. We might not put them into a particular mood that actually helps us achieve our objectives.

So when you’re thinking about the role that you play, not only do you think about, “Well, what traits does somebody in this role have?” We also want to think about, “Well, what’s our objective?” Because if you know what your objective is, then you can pursue that objective by making choices that influence how they think, how they feel, and how they act. And you can use the traits that someone in this role would have in order to make that happen?

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. So I’m learning from you, Michael. Yes, and-

Michael Port:
Well done.

Steve Wershing:
It’s so important to think about those feelings and how you affect them because a lot of financial advisors need to be persuasive, as a big part of their role as a financial advisor.

Michael Port:
Of course.

Steve Wershing:
Financial advice is a lot less about the technical aspects or the math aspects and it’s really more about influencing behavior. You want to help clients choose to do the right things to help them get where they want. And so-

Michael Port:
I’m a personal finance geek myself, so I’m very, very interested in this space. I’ve never obviously, been a professional and I have no intension to be a professional, but I love, I love what personal finance and investing can do for us. And if we’re not actively engaged in learning what we need to know in order to succeed in the world and the way it’s set up right now, we’re going to have a hard time. And so I’m just a big fan. So I think that the work that advisors with a lot of integrity do is really, really important. So thank you for that.

The thing that’s so interesting, though, is that I’ve interacted with so many different advisors over the years, and what it always seems to come down to, for me, is how they make me feel. I remember I had a relationship with one advisor, who when I would talk to him, I would feel a little bit stupid. Like he would grunt a lot. I’d ask him a question, he goes-

Julie Littlechild:
As if you were a teenage boy, by any chance?

Michael Port:
Yeah. So when I would ask a question that I don’t think he really felt like answering, he’d go well, “Huh, well, you know, okay.”

Julie Littlechild:
Judgey.

Michael Port:
Yeah, a little judgey.

Steve Wershing:
Right, yeah, sure.

Michael Port:
But I manage my family’s money and I manage our defined benefit plan here, because I do it in a very, very straightforward way. But I have an accountant who’s also a CFP, I guess, he’s my advisor, of course, he takes care of all of our tax planning, et cetera. But when I need financial advice, I’ll go to him as well. And then he also works like a part-time … not part-time, but like a partial CFO to help advise in our controller.

But I mentioned him because every single time I talked to him, I feel better about who I am and what I’m capable of. And he never will blow smoke. He never will make outsized promises. He never pushes me to do something that I’m not comfortable with. He never tries to sell me something that he doesn’t understand, which I think is often the case for a lot of advisors, they’ll sell something they actually don’t understand. And so as a result, I trust him. I trust him completely. And I love interacting with him. And as a result, I do more with him because of that. So he’s very, very clear what his role is.

There’s a concept called clothed cognition. And clothed cognition suggests that, what we wear, our uniform or our clothing, influences two things. Number one, what other people think about us. And number two, what we think about ourselves. So for example, we’re all familiar with the lab coat or the doctor’s white coat. And they did a study where they took people who were not doctors, were just regular folks, and they split them into two groups. And they had one group wear lab coats when they were doing an exercise, and it was an intellectual exercise, they had to solve some problems. And then the other group, they did not have wear a lab coat, they just wear their regular street clothes. And ironically, the group that wore the lab coat on average had a 15% better results on these tests that they were taking, just because they were wearing a lab coat. They actually felt smarter, which is remarkable.

It’s the same thing. If somebody else is wearing a lab coat, then you will see them as more intellectual. You just make that assumption because generally, when someone’s wearing a lab coat, they have some technical or medical expertise. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re just going to let anybody operate on you just because they have a white coat on, of course, but all the choices that we make, about how we behave, so how we move, how we sit, how we shake somebody’s hand, how we dress, whether we have a beard or don’t have a beard, whether we wear glasses or don’t wear glasses, all of those things influence the way people think about us and, of course, influence the way we feel about ourselves. And that’s part of performing.

So we do this, every single day when we get up and we’re choosing what to put on. But I just think we could be more intentional about it. I mean, even Martin Luther King, used this concept of clothed cognition. And you know the glasses that he’s so famous for? Those thick rimmed glasses?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.

Michael Port:
Those were not prescription glasses. He felt that his face looked too young to be taken seriously when he started some real leadership role in the civil rights movement. And he felt, “Nobody’s going to take me seriously because I look like a baby.” That was his concern. So what he decided to do was wear these glasses, which he felt made him look more intellectual. And as a result, he thought that that would help him in the role that he was playing as a leader in the civil rights movement. It’s fascinating.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah.

Michael Port:
And these glasses are actually up at his museum. And Coretta Scott King, his wife, has talked about this, how he chose to wear these glasses for this very reason.

Steve Wershing:
That is fascinating. So let’s talk a little bit more about that intentionality that you’re talking about. So you can be intentional about how you present yourself and what you wear and how you move. And in your process, you’ve talked a lot about the importance of rehearsal. And so how can an advisor utilize that or how do they rehearse for the things that they would be doing in their role?

Michael Port:
Sure. So we have a seven step rehearsal process, which is a pretty comprehensive rehearsal process that the people we work with use when they’re developing speeches, keynotes, breakouts, workshops, etc. So I’m not going to go into all of those details right now, because I think it’s a little bit too comprehensive for the discussion we’re having. And for what most folks do if they’re not giving those speeches, But for those who are interested in that, they can read up on it in Steal the Show, the book that you mentioned earlier.

But what I would say is this, for advisors weren’t giving speeches, but are sitting down and having conversations with potential clients or current clients, or giving presentations to those clients, or potential clients about what their options might be. There’s a couple things that they can do. Number one, there are certainly things that we know that we say all the time. Every single professional is asked the same questions again and again and again.

And so one of the things you can do is identify, what are the common questions that you get, say, “What are the top 10 questions that you get on a regular basis?” And then you can work on organizing a bit that answers those questions. And then if you can organize that bit in such a way that it demonstrates real care, and concern for the needs of that person asking the question, and fully answers that question, then you always have, in your back pocket, the ability to answer any question really easily, authentically, and clearly. And then you can work on those questions and how you answer them.

Now, when you’re working on them, here’s what I’d recommend. There’s a technique called playing actions that performers use. It’s called playing actions, because when you’re trying to influence how somebody feels, you need to make choices about how you want them to feel. So for example, I might, in a conversation with a potential client, if I was a financial advisor, I would want to make sure that they feel safe. So I might make sure that that’s the action that I play at the beginning of the conversation to make them feel safe. Now, how do you do that?

Well, you do that by designing a process that makes them feel safe from the moment they park their car, in your parking lot outside of your offices. And when they walk through the door, the way they’re greeted, where they’re put when they’re waiting. How one of the assistants brings them a cup of coffee or tea. How you first interact with them. The kind of questions that you asked them at the beginning. Because if they don’t feel safe in the early steps or process of the conversation, then it’s very hard for them to hear the content that is coming. Because they’ll always filter that content through the fears that they have. So in order for them to listen, they need to feel relatively safe and secure. And I don’t just mean physically safe, they need to feel emotionally and intellectually safe.

So then, there might be a client you’ve been working with for … And so then, one of the things that throughout that whole meeting, if you know what your objectives are through that meeting, then you can choose different actions to play to hopefully achieve those objectives. So you, as we discussed, may want to make them feel safe at the beginning, but then there may be a certain part of the conversation where you do want to provoke them a little bit. Because some of the things that they have been doing in the past are actually problematic, in fact, are not moving them forward, but moving them backwards from a financial perspective. And so in order to get them to think about making a change, they may need to be provoked just a little bit.

Now, in order to provoke them, you have to make them feel safe first, so that they will accept that provocation. But it’s a choice that you’re making. And then you’re able to then read that person very, very well based on how they’re responding to the actions you’re playing. And then of course, you’re going to choose other actions if you need to make adjustments, but you do that on the fly. So if you know what your objective is, then you can make these choices going into those conversations. And you can adapt in the conversation by choosing different or additional actions they’re going to make them feel differently.

Like you might provoke them and then they get really nervous. So you decide I’m going to soothe them now. Well, how do I do that? And then you’re going to choose behaviors. You’re going to choose your words, what you’re saying, to help influence the way they feel.

Steve Wershing:
I think it’s so valuable to think about those client conversations that thoroughly and in that kind of depth. I had an experience just like that this morning. The first meeting I had today was with a client and it’s a client who is really going to be challenged to make it to their retirement goal because they don’t have control over their spending. And that requires a certain kind of conversation. And we had the tissue box out 20 minutes into the conversation, which I thought was really a very positive thing, because, like you’re saying that they accepted that provocation and they felt safe enough to cry about their struggles and that stuff in that conversation. And that’s how we’re going to get to a breakthrough is if they feel safe enough to actually deal with all those things going on.

Michael Port:
That’s right. And one of the ways to create safety at the beginning of a conversation or at any other point in the conversation is by using contrast. So if you first tell somebody what you do not intend, or what your goal is not, and then you follow it with what you do intend, then you’re more likely to help them feel safe and they’re more willing to have the difficult conversation with you. So for example, let’s say that you have a teenage daughter, and she starts dating a guy. He’s a couple years older, and he looks like he maybe make it about a year before he ends up in the penitentiary. He’s just not the kind of guy you want to see your teenage daughter dating.

So you could say to your daughter … And look, this is a big deal for her because she never went out with a guy that seems so cool and exciting. And now she’s hanging out in a social circle that is a little bit more popular. So she really likes this attention that she’s getting. So if you just go to her and say, “Listen, your boyfriend is a jerk. I’m not letting you date this guy. He’s absolutely wrong for you, and that’s that. So you just call him now tell him to take a hike.” That’s not going to go very well. It’s not. And even if she says, “Fine, I’ll do it, dad.” She’s still going to see the guy.

So but if you approach her with a contrasting statement, like, “So, listen, my intention is not to break you up. My intention is not to take you away from hanging out with this new group that you’re socializing with, because I know you’re really enjoying it. My intention is, however, to talk to you about some of the other things that you have been doing for so many years in your life that you’ve loved and have been a big part of your life and your development that you don’t seem to be doing that much of now. And I just want to talk to you about those because I think it’d be wonderful if you kept some of those things in your life.”

Now, what happens? She feels, “Oh, okay, I’m safe because they’re not going to take away the thing that I really, really want. So I’m okay there, I feel safe. So you know what? All right, I’m willing to talk to them about these other things.” Now, if you can get into that conversation about the other things, and you can get her reengaged in those other things, well, that might help you feel more secure, because then you feel like, “Okay, she’s not losing her entire identity, at the moment. She’s still an actively engaged in the things that are positive for her, even though she’s dating this guy, and maybe over time, she’ll start to see that maybe he doesn’t really fit in with her life and her development.”

So, this way, you still get to have that conversation because you’re always working to create safety, when the conversation starts, and anytime the conversation starts to go off the rails, you’re always trying to bring it back to safety.

Steve Wershing:
And so that’s an excellent example. And one of the conversations that advisors will, at least, want to have with clients is conversations about referrals, which is, of course, what the whole podcast is about. So what suggestions could you make for advisors as they prepare for having conversations about referrals?

Michael Port:
So referrals are a funny thing. I wrote about referrals in my first book, Book Yourself Solid, which I wrote in 2005. And there’s a number of editions of that book out and even an illustrated one for people who like pictures. Because, the book is-

Steve Wershing:
Oh, Book Yourself Solid, the graphic novel, I can’t wait.

Michael Port:
That’s exactly … it’s out there, but it’s close. Close enough.

Because the original book is 70,000 words. And then when I did the illustrated version, I said how can I cut at least a third of this book down and replace what I cut with images so they can get it more quickly. And that’s what Book Yourself Solid illustrated is. But I have a section on there about referrals.

And on one hand, yes, asking referrals for referrals is wonderful, it’s effective. But it only works when somebody really, really wants to share you with their friends or colleagues or family. There has to be something in it for them. And I don’t mean financially, I would never pay for a referral for a client in my business because I never want a conflict of interest. And I think it’s probably not … You wouldn’t be out of compliance, as a financial advisor, if you are getting paid for referrals. Although I don’t know. So, of course, that’s your area of expertise.

But that’s not really why most people would give a referral anyway. Like I remember, the very first house I bought, maybe 20-some years ago. After I bought this house and at the time, it was an expensive house for me, it was about a half a million dollars. 20 years ago, that was a big deal. And my real estate broker sent me a note with a card afterwards they said, If I send them any referrals, that buy a house with them or sell a house with them, they’ll give me $250. I’m thinking-

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, right.

Michael Port:
Do they really think I’m going to go out of my way to work really hard. I got to get … This is going to how I’m going to develop a whole additional stream of revenue because I’m going to send … no, of course not. I will only send them referrals, if I absolutely love them, if they’ve changed my life, if there’s been some transformation that I’ve experienced as a result of them. And I know that they’re going to be able to consistently do that for anybody else I send them.

So Matt, my accountant/CFP, who I mentioned earlier, I have sent him more referrals than … I mean, I would send this guy referrals every day, every time someone mentions anything financially, I’d say, “You got to talk to Matt, you have to do it.” He’s never once asked for a referral, ever. But he takes such good care of me.

And there are people who love making referrals. And there are others who just won’t do it. Because even if they love you, they’re nervous that if it doesn’t go well, they’ll be blamed, which of course, I understand. But some people love it because they get such pride and joy in being able to refer somebody. So when I know that Matt is helping somebody else sell a business, and is doing things for them and with them that they couldn’t do with their previous accountant, then I feel really good about myself because I sent that over.

So the first thing is to identify who actually is the person that will send referrals. Rather than trying to get every single client you’ve ever had to send referrals, probably about 10% of your clients will send 90% of your referrals. And this, I think, anybody that’s been in business for a long time, has seen this, at least anecdotally. So can you identify who the connectors are? Who are the people that you know, both professionally and who amongst your clients, who love to connect, they’re the people who love, love recommending restaurants, they’ll post on their social pages about a new thing that came out, they’re often early adopters. They’ll often talk about deals or opportunities that they have seen, that their friends can take advantage of.

So if you pay attention to the people around you, especially paying attention to your clients, you’ll start to see who does that naturally. And then you want to do everything in your power to focus on supporting that individual who sent that referral. By certainly, certainly sending them all the gifts that you possibly could ever think that they would love to receive, no doubt about it, as long as, of course, that’s compliant with regulations and really have a referral tracking process.

So you keep the referrer in the loop throughout the whole process as again, is appropriate and as is compliance, because if someone sends a referral over and they have no idea what occurred after they sent that referral over, then it doesn’t really mean that much to them. But if they get an update on a regular basis from you about how the referrals that you sent over are doing well, then they feel really good about it. They appreciate. They know that you appreciate it, and they’re going to want to do more of it.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, before you go Julie, I think that’s really brilliant. And Michael, I’ve never really thought about it that way before, but you’re totally right. I never thought about. You should pay attention to what your clients are doing on social media or when you’re in conversations with them. And yeah, those people who are naturally referring all the time, “Oh, this movie. Oh, this restaurant,” that’s great information. That’s really information.

And you also bring up a lot of really good points that we’ve covered and other ones that would be a great companion to this episode. We talked with John Ruhlin who, of course, brought you up in that conversation. We’re talking about gifting and giving you something that was personally meaningful to you and Stacy randomly talked tracking-

Michael Port:
Oh, yeah. Oh, John Ruhlin … Everybody should be reading Giftology by John Ruhlin, because, I remember when he told me never to give a gift card and I was like, “Why not?” He’s like, “Because who the hell remembers a gift card?”

Steve Wershing:
Right. Yeah. Exactly.

Michael Port:
First of all, I have a gift card in my wallet that’s been there about three years that’s an American express gift card for $150. I don’t even know if it works at this point. I’ve tried it twice the two places I went didn’t take it. And I have no idea who gave it to me. I’ve no idea where it came from.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, exactly. And I promise, none of your friends is ever going to ask you, “Oh, who gave you that Starbucks gift card?”

Michael Port:
Exactly, exactly.

Steve Wershing:
Julie … I’m sorry, Michael-

Michael Port:
Now, there’s one other thing I want to mention, and I address this actually in Book Yourself Solid. And I call it the always have something to invite people to offer. Because when I started, I really didn’t … I was a little conflicted about marketing because what I saw people doing and when I saw a lot of teachers focusing on we’re marketing strategies. And making this assumption that marketing actually got you clients. But I don’t think it does. I think marketing just creating awareness for the products and services you offer or for yourself.

Steve Wershing:
No.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.

Michael Port:
But what you do once somebody becomes aware of you is, of course, what actually books you the business. So they always have something to invite people to offer was something that I started doing very, very early on in my business because I felt uncomfortable trying to sell things to people really quickly. Like the elevator speech seemed over the top to me. Like this idea that you’re in an elevator for a few minutes with somebody, and by the time the doors open, they take out their wallet and give it to you. I mean, I’m from New York City, where I come from, you guard your belongings quite carefully.

That just didn’t make sense. But I figured, well, if I meet people, and I can extend an invitation to them that has no barrier for entry, well, that, I can feel comfortable with. So this is way before live streaming or webinars or any of that stuff. I just did, every week, on Mondays at noon, I would do an hour long teleconference. And each week, I’d bring a different topic that was relevant to my audience, and I’d address it for say the first 15 or 20 minutes then I’ll open it up for discussion and take questions and it grew really quite quickly.

And the first time I did it, there were four people there. One of them was my mom. I said, “Mom, did you like it?” She was, “Oh, sweetheart, it was just wonderful, but I don’t know what was happening. But you should just do more,” like, she didn’t know what was going on, but she came anyway. And then eventually, I would have a couple hundred people just regularly showing up every single Monday, and not all of them became clients, but 85% of them became clients.

And the reason I bring it up when you mentioned referrals, is because it was a really easy way for people to refer others to me, because it was much less commitment on the part of the person coming to it. So it’s a very big commitment to sit down with a financial advisor. I don’t think financial advisors realize this. Because a, the advisors are asking for an enormous amount of prep work. You’ve got to put your financial statements together. You’ve got to bring in all sorts of documentation. And not everybody has this organized, just where they can just click a couple buttons and they’ve got it all and they’re done, it could take a number of hours or even days, just prepping for that meeting.

So I think sometimes they go too fast. But if I’m doing … If you haven’t always have something to invite people to offer, and I’m your client. And I know that happens every week, and I know what the phone number is, or I know how to join in if it’s a webinar or something or whatever it is, it could be something in person, you could organize this in you know 25 different ways.

But if there’s something that I can regular join in on and get some value from that advisor, and start to build some trust with that advisor because trust is not built in an instant, trust is built over time based on commitment making and fulfilling. If you do what you say you’re going to do, people will trust you a little bit. You do what you say you’re going to do again, they’ll trust you a little more. You do what you say you’re going to do again, they’ll trust you a little bit more and so on and so forth.

And then also, if there are other people around the advisor, and I get to see who those people are, I might see them and say, “Oh, well, they’re similar to me. That person is actually interesting. And they work with, you know this advisor? Well, maybe I should consider it.” And then the next step, I might be willing to come in and have a meeting or even just chat on the phone one to one. So I just think that, Winston Churchill said it best he said, “The future is uncertain. It’s a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”

And I think we can take the same approach to our sales conversation so that we just go one link in the chain of destiny at a time and maybe we should slow it down a little bit so that by the time we actually do get in conversation about managing somebody’s money or selling insurance or any the other things that we might do, there’s a whole number of links that are already tightly connected, so that we have a certain amount of trust already built up with that potential client.

Julie Littlechild:
So there’s just so much value here. And I know we’re at time, but there’s a few strings here. And we started talking about performance. And I wanted to make sure that before we let you go, we really let the audience know about some of the resources, as well, that are available to them. Because as you talked about intentionality in conversation, as you talked about sharing stories and working with your advisor, as you talked about, maybe inviting them to something where they all lead to this performance. And even if we don’t think of performance in the traditional sense, I think your definition of it is so compelling and something that advisors need to think about, and it’s a skill, right? There’s training. They’re involved.

Michael Port:
Oh, yeah.

Julie Littlechild:
And Steve and I, we both speak professionally, but we’re always looking for resources to get better. And we came in and have been involved in a couple of the programs that you run. Can you give us just a quick overview, if you’re an advisor who wants to enhance performance, how your program might support in doing that, or maybe your core program as an entree to that?

Michael Port:
Yeah, sure, of course. So I will say that’s going into 2020, our model is changing a little bit in that we are actually going to be referral only at that point. We’ve been very fortunate to get to the point where we have a fair amount of demand for the programming that we offer at our headquarters. And what we decided to do is go referral only so that our alumni, as well as some friends of the business, who know the business very well, who have thought leadership positions themselves, have the ability to refer into the business.

Because this is a very, very personal work that we do with people, and we find that if somebody has been here before and they get it, if they send somebody else over that person is the right person to do the work with us. So I just mentioned that because if anybody is interested in doing some training at her Heroic Public Speaking, then they should talk to you directly. Because then you could refer them over to Amy, my wife, and you know her.

Julie Littlechild:
She’s awesome, by the way. You probably know that.

Michael Port:
She’s incredible.

Julie Littlechild:
I’ve ever been with a girl crush on her. I have to actually.

Michael Port:
I understand completely. I feel the same way.

Steve Wershing:
because I have a guy crush on Michael. So Julie, you and I have the perfect pair for these two.

Michael Port:
Perfect, we’ve got a love connection going on. But in all seriousness, if there are either listeners of your show, who you know or clients of yours, they can come to you and then you have that ability, as an alumni to introduce them to us and then we can evaluate at that point. Because, this work is really very, very transformational. But it’s not for people who just wanted like a super, super quick fix, let me just do a couple hours. And now I’m going to master this stuff. It’s not like that.

When you’re training to become a better communicator and improve your ability to create content, to write scripts, to rehearse those scripts, to improvise in the moment, and to be able to perform at a very, very high level best in class type level. It does take some time. So for folks who are serious about it, we are very, very appreciative of the opportunity to meet them, for sure. And the people we usually work with are either professional speakers or soon to be professional speakers, or entrepreneurs who use speaking to build their brands and book more business, and then, of course, mission driven people who want to advance a cause or lead a movement of some kind.

Julie Littlechild:
Perfect.

Steve Wershing:
Well, at the very least, everyone should read Steal the Show and Book Yourself Solid. Lots of really good advice and both of those things. If people want to learn more than that, Michael, where would they go to find more out about you?

Michael Port:
Sure. Heroicpublicspeaking.com. And we’re on Instagram at Heroic Public Speaking and Facebook at Heroic Public Speaking. Now, if they have a question that they want to ask, please just send us an email at questionsatheroicpublicspeaking.com.

Julie Littlechild:
Wonderful.

Steve Wershing:
Well, that sounds great. Well, there’s so much good advice in this episode, so much more I know you have to offer and I wish we had time for it. But we really appreciate you taking some time to chat with us today. And thank you so much for joining us on Becoming Referable.

Michael Port:
Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you.

Julie Littlechild:
Hi, it’s Julie again. It was great to have you with us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really does help. You can get all the links, show notes and other tidbits from these episodes at becomingreferable.com. You can also get our free report, three referral myths that limit your growth, and connect with our blogs and other resources. Thanks so much for joining us.