Joe Yazbeck is an international speaker and leadership communications coach for leaders in numerous industries for over 30 years. His training programs help professionals in many fields become a respected and recognized leader in their industry. He has appeared in front of thousands of people in audiences all over the world and continues to be in demand as a featured guest on many radio and TV shows. His best-selling book, No Fear Speaking, is an Amazon #1 best seller and is now a complete system.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode Joe Yazbeck on how to inspire people to take action through the art of effective public speaking.
- How building your reputation and credibility should come before marketing.
- Why communication and public speaking are vital parts to effective leadership.
- How to use public relations to brand your business and drive success.
- How books are a way to relate to others and in turn, drive business.
- Why it’s important to show up and make yourself visible.
Connect with Joe:
Links Mentioned:
joeyazbeck.net
prestigeleader.com
nofearspeaking.info
Guest Contact Info:
@joeyaz7
Facebook
facebook.com/joe.yazbeck2
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/joeyazbeck
Rob Kosberg:
Welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here. Happy to bring another great guest for the Publish.Promote.Profit podcast. I think you’re going to enjoy already talking to Mr. Joe Yazbeck. We’ve had a fun invigorating conversation and we hope to continue that on the Publish.Promote.Profit podcast here with this episode. Joe is the founder and president of Prestige Leadership Advisors. He has been mentoring heads of state, CEOs of major corporations, high ranking military officers and of course now he has finally made it by being on the Publish.Promote.Profit podcast. Joe and I were teasing back and forth so I thought I’d throw that one in. Joe’s the best-selling author of No Fear Speaking: High-Impact Public Speaking Secrets to Inspire and Influence Any Audience. Joe, really looking forward to chatting with you today and thanks for being on the podcast.
Joe Yazbeck:
Terrific. I’m happy to be here. We’ll have a great conversation.
Rob Kosberg:
I’m intrigued by the things that you’ve done and I know you have a business that serves people that are interested in growing their speaking skills, their public speaking skills, but I’m intrigued by mentoring heads of state and high ranking military officers, et cetera. Was that for speaking or was that kind of mentorship for something else?
Joe Yazbeck:
Leadership and communications and speaking is a very key, vital ingredient in effective leadership. It’s a leadership standard that needs to be applied and used so that leaders can in fact motivate and inspire others to take positive action that’s needed for getting their jobs done.
Rob Kosberg:
Very good. How did you begin the process of mentoring these kinds of people? They’re not going on indeed looking for somebody like that. Clearly, they found you in some other form or fashion. How did all that begin for you?
Joe Yazbeck:
Well, I can see public relations to be a precedent before marketing. I think PR, building your reputation, your credibility, and platform is the first thing that someone needs to do before they really look at marketing and sales. I think when you’ve got your press kit together and you’ve been able to compile, and journalizing the photographs, the videos, the testimonials, all those things that make who you are worthy of being reached for. Being an author is a key ingredient in that. It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. That kind of reputation building is part of our program. The word prestige, which describes the leadership advisory training is key because it’s essential to getting people to take the next step after they read the book. You see, there’s a book as a step of a process. It’s not just an end to itself for book sales. The book sales tell you something, but it is the driving and the next step of the call to action in that book and you’ve got to have that all figured out before you even complete the writing of your book.
Rob Kosberg:
You are in your business for 30 years. You didn’t have a book when you started?
Joe Yazbeck:
No. I think it’s wrong. I think the book should be a distillation of all the successful experiences. That’s what I think. Then it becomes a valuable book.
Rob Kosberg:
So, become an expert first before you write a book.
Joe Yazbeck:
You will have something to write about. You have the case studies. You will have some examples of stories. I’ve seen too many people trying to get attention by writing a book with no experience whatsoever in their expertise or lack of it.
Rob Kosberg:
Tell me a little bit more about the PR thing. I’m a big believer in that. I mean, we have an entire part of our company that does media and PR for our authors. You’re one of the few people that I’ve actually talked to that even mentioned that right out of the gate, that intrigues me a little bit. Distill that down. What does that mean to you?
Joe Yazbeck:
Let me tell you, first of all, as a former singer, performing artist, actor, I had a lot of entertainment experience of developing talent. A lot of my depth of experience in performing arts and helping others with performing arts, with stage presence, promotion, marketing, I earlier had a production company and musical HeartBeat Productions. It gave me a sense of what a press kit actually is. It’s not just in the music industry. People in many different industries should have a press kit. An electronic press kit in the old days was a website. Nowadays, a website should be a PR attractor. Public relations is not just writing press releases and getting publicity. It is not. It is a positioning tool to brand you and branding is a real confused subject for most people. Branding is the art of differentiation and it’s how you want the public to identify you. What I teach people, what we teach in our system, in our no fear speaking system is how do you attract the ideal client that will identify you properly so that you can be able to message them on the right channel that reaches them? Those are the key things of public relations. It’s testimonials. It is photographs of people that other people think highly of, that your positioned with, these are allies. You see, writing a book, for example, and having in that book the gravitas or the cache that people connect you with and say, “Man, that guy’s been through, that girl’s been through something. They’ve solved some problems; they’ve overcome some barriers. I want to go talk to them.” Lo and behold, there’s a call to action QR code in the back of the book that can connect you right away. Without the PR end of it, without the telling of the story, there’s really no motivation for people to want to connect. A book should be not just how do you solve a problem and what are the benefits that you provide but can I relate to you? Are you somebody that I can humanly relate to? They will want to follow up.
Rob Kosberg:
This is a great conversation because I certainly am a believer in those things. I’m a believer in those things because I saw what it did for my own businesses in the past. I’ve seen what it’s done for many of my clients that were completely unknown. One client in particular, he was a consultant, but primarily in the energy field, renewables, which is obviously a very, very fast-growing business and field, but there are some big events in that industry, very, very large events, tens of thousands of people. He couldn’t even get on the radar of these events until his book, media, PR, television appearances, radio appearances, even a New York times article and then they came begging him to be a keynote speaker. Tell me a little bit about the whole book and your business. Is there a process that you take people through?
Joe Yazbeck:
Well, yes, but I haven’t done it in a synthetic way the way most people do it. I found that there were so many things missing. I had the senior coach of Anthony Robbins company contact me and say, “What you have in your book is sorely missing with speakers.” It’s structure. I give speakers structure. They need that. They need a universal template of an outline or framework to design a presentation. It gives them steps to prepare and organize their presentations. That’s part one of my book, speech design. Then, there is speaker magnetism. What does it take to own a room? What does it take to really conquer the meeting room like we have right now? What does it take to own the space of a room to increase your confidence, to have that natural conversation with a person where you’re not talking at them but you’re talking with them? Then of course, how do you motivate an audience to take the next step? And what are the inspirational tools and motivating tools that move an audience to want to take the next step; it’s called a call to action. Those are the three parts of the book and I’ve had people read the book and change their speaking skill and ability just by reading the book. I say that unequivocally without any hesitancy. I’m appreciative of that.
Joe Yazbeck:
It’s a well-written book and I’ve been told there’s no fluff in it. There are grids and illustrative tables in the book and I also added a quick reference guide to the book, which is a quick reference guide of all the charts and tables in the book. It’s got no fat on the filet. It’s all the best cut off the filet. The book itself is geared to a speaker that’s just getting started or an international speaker who really needs to go back to spring training and get the skills honed.
Rob Kosberg:
Tell me, Joe, about your average client. Is your average client a seasoned speaker who’s coming to get retooled? I think you can probably work with anybody, but I’m just wondering, what is normal for what you see? Is it somebody that’s newer that needs to get the pieces in place to be successful?
Joe Yazbeck:
My ideal client is someone who knows they’re underachieving as an executive or leader. They haven’t been able to really hone their skill on a primary executive leadership trait, which is motivating and inspiring anyone. Maybe it’s a team’s call, maybe it’s a board room, perhaps it is a webinar where they’ve got to be able to get in front of the camera and be able to not introvert. These are people in the tech industry, the financial tech industry or the healthcare industry, industries that solely rely on communication skill. Now I’ve worked with heads of state. I’ve been in many countries. I have my book published in eight languages. I did that for a reason because I wanted to be global. I’ve had workshops and seminars in over 17 countries with translators as many as five or six in one room. It’s been interesting. I’ve had mayors in Moscow, to political parties, chairman of political parties in different countries. Some of these people I can’t tell you who they are, I’ve been sworn to secrecy or my laptop might be compromised. I had Archbishop Desmond Tutu endorse my book in South Africa while I was in South Africa. Gary Player, a golf legend, endorsed my book for leadership skill. I have photos of them endorsing my book. The only reason why that occurred is they recognized the absolute vital necessity of being a speaker as a leader. The key to leadership effectiveness is to be able to walk into a room and having heads turned to some degree. If you think having that kind of effect on an audience, having that kind of charisma, is something only military and religious leaders have, It’s not true. Basically, charisma is having the capacity to move an audience or move somebody inspirationally, tell a story, telling a story and moving them to make a decision.
Joe Yazbeck:
That’s what the coaching is all about.
Rob Kosberg:
I love that. That’s not what I expected hear you. You actually took a step back and you talked about leadership as opposed to speaking primarily, which is fantastic. So obviously speaking is an element within what you’re coaching and what you do and perhaps what you teach even in your book. A person that sees that they’re underachieving in a leadership sense, this is a great book for them.
Joe Yazbeck:
They’re going to learn how to increase their vocal quality. They will learn how to handle a difficult audience and how not to resist. They’ll be Teflon. They’ll learn how to not let things stick to them in an audience. They’ll learn body language and the simplicity of body language. How to be humorous without being synthetic. You see, how to open a presentation so that you’re giving your audience a wakeup call where they’re ready to listen to what you have to say. Where do questions and answers come from? At what point in your presentation do you do a question and answer period? There’s one point that you never, never, never put a question and answer period and that’s at the very end, because you can really take the wind out of the sails of a climatically building presentation when you open a question and answer period at the very end. Many of these tools and tips, emotion, how do you evoke emotion from your audience and use the best ways to interact with your audience to get them part of the solution to the problem. It’s wild. I don’t speak in front of groups, I coach people, I pull them out of the audience. I like to change something in them for 10 or 15 minutes when I speak. It’s coaching an individual and everybody learns from that and then they all want to come up. They come up and get that kind of “Well, how do you milk an applause? How do you milk it?” How do you get the most out of an applause at the end. It’s real tools and tips like this. The primary thing is converting an attendee of an event into a prospect who will buy. That’s one of the most major things I get from companies or executives, senior executives, particularly. If I narrowed it down and said, mostly people like tech executives who don’t really know how to communicate to the real world, except for digitally, they learn how to move an audience and convert an audience into wanting to take the next step. That’s the big part of our program.
Rob Kosberg:
Now you maybe opened the curtain up just a little bit to how you attract your own clients. It sounded as though maybe one of your primary tools of growing your own business is speaking engagements in which you are delivering your magic and then attracting clients. Is that part of it?
Joe Yazbeck:
I’ll give you secrets for those viewing. You’ve got to appear. I went out like a banshee when COVID started and I said, “I am going to 10X my appearances.” I did it online. I got people to understand how important it was to master virtual conferencing and all the tools needed. I developed an entire program when COVID started back at 2, 2020. It became an instrumental training program. I hate to say it, I had a great year during 2020. You’ve got to appear, make that a statistic for your business development division. How many appearances did you have today? Where did you appear? Did you appear live? Did you appear on webinars? Do a minute commercial on the problems you solve and the benefits that you provide your ideal client and send it out. Send it out to LinkedIn, send it out to social media, but learn how to deliver this communication. A part of our training program is to be able to deliver a communication and look at a lens of a camera like it’s one person. “Hey, how you doing today? Good to see you. Welcome back. Did you have your coffee? Great. I have my coffee this morning and I got some things I realized today that I’m going to share with you. It’s the conversation, learning to be a natural. It’s the amount of and the quantity of those kinds of communications that go out and to keep track of those people that you are getting responses from to keep in communication with them. Sometimes I have to do that myself. I don’t want to leave it up to my LinkedIn specialist who does my work. I’m operating at a click funnel campaign. So, I don’t want everything automated. I need to show up. People want to know about me. I show up where I’m automated and I show up where I’m live.
Rob Kosberg:
Have you started back live speaking engagements?
Joe Yazbeck:
Yes. In fact, I did one on Saturday in Orlando. I had a three-hour workshop and the protocols were there, but it was worth it to me. I didn’t want to get sales showing up in front of a live audience, so I did it. It was only two hours from my training center. I’ve got another one coming up in Kansas City. I’ve got a two-day event coming up in Kansas City soon. I think that’s booked in about two or three weeks. I may end up taking a trip to the UK. I got some clients in the UK that want me to come out and speak. I’m now ramping up live, but I am ramping down virtual. All of my client’s sessions with the exception of those who are in the Tampa Bay area, they’re online, except they can come into my training center and we can do intensive training here in Tampa Bay. Show up, appear and learn the sequences of what you want to say. By the way, my book is free. They can go to nofearspeaking.info and they can order the book for free. I think there’s a delivery charge, like a couple of bucks or something, I’m not sure what it is and then they’ll get bonuses. You buy the book for free; you pay a delivery charge and then you get all these bonuses for free and then you’re in our system to getting all the help you need at whatever value you want to pay. I’ll tell you, that makes a big difference.
Rob Kosberg:
Let’s shift gears a little bit and let’s talk about the book itself. I just heard that you’re using the book as part of a free-plus-shipping funnel. Tell me about other ways you’re using the book. Tell me about your successes with your free-plus-shipping funnel, for example, or how you’re using your book to attract clients successfully.
Joe Yazbeck:
I have a QR code in the back of the book that they can go directly to my website. There’s two chapters called, Your Call to Action and Further Study, like next action steps. That is so important for an author to know what the call to action and outcome of where they want to take their reader next. I can tell you that the very laws of presentation apply to a book because a book is a presentation. It’s only a look at the laws that I’ve laid out in the book, you can formulate how a book should be developed, the attention getting opening, support sources to build credibility of the stories or whatever you’re using in the book. What problems are you solving? What benefits are you providing? You’re moving your audience up a scale. You’re getting them sufficiently aware that they need to read this book. The first few pages are like an attention getting to open of a live presentation. It’s creating a wakeup call. Maybe the intro does that. Maybe the preface does that. Maybe the forward from somebody special does that. Whatever you do, you’ve got a hook. It’s a hook and then the offer. The story and then the offer. Those three things that the click funnel philosophy is, hook, story, offer. That applies to a book. You see it is don’t overwhelm people with too much technical data. They don’t need to know how smart you are. They just need to know that you have answers to things and there are more answers that they can get after they read the book. I tell people, “Don’t tell people so much of the how, tell them the what, tell them the why and a little bit of the how. That creates a mystery and an urging to find out more.” The sales process. Authors need to understand the process. They’re not dumping data into a storage bin and expecting people to go, “Wow.” Some people are going, “Man, I’m getting a headache thinking about this.” That’s not a good thing. It’s not a well-written book for your audience to learn from, grow from and take the next step. That’s what a book is for. In the old days we taught in the New York Times bestseller list. Why? Well, that’s good. That’s okay. But nowadays it’s not the New York Times best seller list isn’t paying $100,000 to get a major New York style company to say, “We’ll put this in, but you’re not getting anything back until we sell the books and you’re only going to get 80% of it.” You know how that is. That’s the way it was in the music industry. That’s the same with the publishing industry. It’s the same industry. You’re publishing music or you’re publishing books.
Rob Kosberg:
You’ve mentioned ClickFunnels a couple of times. I’m a huge advocate of ClickFunnels. I’ve been a user since it was in Beta six or seven years ago. How is your lead generation using your book?
Joe Yazbeck:
We’re doing well. I’m a dad. I’m a proponent of, I’m never doing enough. I’m happy, but I’m not surprised. Without giving away numbers, which I’ve been swore not to do by my finance, right? I can tell you that you really have to create what Russell Brunson calls the value ladder and it has to be really well done. You got to know the mindset of your buyer. They’re not going to buy the big-ticket item. You got to break it up into its little bits and you’ve got to give them so much value. I’ll tell you; Brunson has done a tremendous job. He’s amazing. He’s done an unbelievable job of learning how to parallel the mind of the public in buying things. I never thought I would automate the way I’ve been automating but I would say this and that is, I can probably do 100 courses based on my book. I’m a big advocate of mini courses, micro courses. I can break up the three parts of my book probably into 30 different courses. I think when you look at writing a book, when you’re writing the development process of writing a book, think you’ve got to be able to know what your future strategy is later for writing the book, that takes some coaching and some mentoring. There are some very good writers that don’t understand promotion, marketing and business development. They just don’t. Of course, they’re writers. And I think it’s a mistake. They let the book sit there. You learned all the expertise in your book, but you didn’t learn how to get that book in the hands of the public. You wrote the book to get it in the hands of the public. How are you going to do that? I say to you, “Okay, let’s talk.” When I get people to me, I talk to everybody. At this stage of my career, I’ll never stop coaching.
Rob Kosberg:
Sounds like you’re having a lot of fun, Joe.
Joe Yazbeck:
I am. I’m going to have it on my tombstone. It will say, “Always coaching.” People need to know what they need to know, not after Monday morning quarterback, they need to figure it out and need to plan for that. To a prospect that comes to me, the first question I ask them is, “What are your goals?” I figure out whether they need a book or not, because if they want to reach a lot of people and they’ve already sown the seeds of authority and expertise, then I say, “Okay, you have a story to tell.” They might say, “What am I going to tell? I’m an insurance guy, who gives a damn about insurance?” I said, “You have lessons. You have lessons to teach people. You’ve got all kinds of ways to wake people up and give them solutions to things they never thought of.” “I never thought of that.” Yeah. “Well, we’re going to make that part of your program; author, in addition to speaker and mentor. ” Those three habits, and you can do all of them easier and better if you’re becoming an author. You’ll be able to catapult yourself on a higher stage, on a bigger platform and reach more people as an author. You’re going to learn how to catalyze your book into reaching them. What you’re doing, Rob, is amazing. I mean, even right now, you’ve got a platform right now that you’re adding so much value and so much happiness.
Rob Kosberg:
We’re trying to have some fun and help a few people along the way.
Joe Yazbeck:
A very noble thing to do that should never be underestimated.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, thank you. My friend. You gave one link out where can people get some more information.
Joe Yazbeck:
I have a public figure site, it’s called Joeyazbek.net. That site could take you to prestigeleader.com. That’s my company’s site. It is a leadership site. It’s got a lot of free stuff on it. And nofearspeaking.info is the ClickFunnel landing page. That’s where they can get the book for free, get all the bonuses that come with it.
Rob Kosberg:
Joe, thank you. Thanks for your enthusiasm. Fun talking to you. Thanks for you sharing your wisdom. Great to have you on the podcast today my friend.
Joe Yazbeck:
I’ve really enjoyed it and let’s have a chat over a virtual cup of coffee sometime.
