Become a Professional Speaker with Michael Hingson: Time We Discuss

Transcription

(Music)

Michael Hingson: public speakers in general, when they go to speak before an audience, audiences want you to succeed. And if you go with that in your mind, then you're gonna

Dan: Today on Time to Discuss, I have returning guest, Michael Hinkson, and it's time we discuss what it's like to be a professional speaker. Michael, thank you for joining me today.

Michael Hingson: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Dan: You always hear about different speakers, and you see different speakers obviously going to different conferences and like that. And I know many people probably wonder, I know I've wondered, how do you actually get to be a professional speaker? So I know in your past, I know one of the things you talk about is your experiences on 9-11, being in New York, getting out of the building with your guide dog. I cannot but wonder, did that kind of pave the way for you as a professional speaker, or were you speaking before that? How did you get started as a professional speaker?

Michael Hingson: in one sense, I'd been speaking before then because I was in sales, and I knew that to be effective in sales and as a sales manager, I needed to be articulate and know about my products and my job as the Mid-Atlantic sales manager for a company was to help my sales force and add value to what they do. And part of that was me being able to be prepared and be intelligent whenever they wanted me to go with them on sales presentations. But after September 11, the next day, I contacted Guide Dogs for the Blind. My wife suggested it. That's where I've received all of my Guide Dogs, including Alamo you see behind me. And I spoke with Joanne Ritter, who was the director of public information services for Guide Dogs, and she said, you know, do you mind if I write a little story about you? Well, I didn't think about it. So I just said, sure, why not? It's the 12th of September, and I wasn't thinking clearly, but that's all right. Anyway, she said, I'll bet you'll also be on TV. What TV show do you think you ought to be on first? So I very flippantly said, "Larry King Live." And on the 14th of September of 2001, three days after the World Trade Center attacks, I had the first of five interviews on Larry King Live. And then of course the media really got the story. And what happened was that people started calling me and they said, we want to hire you to come and tell us what we should learn for lessons from September 11th, and we want to hear your story and so on. And it pretty quickly became obvious, at least in the short term, that I could a lot of talks and as my wife and I both decided, selling life and philosophy was a whole lot more fun than selling computer hardware and managing a computer hardware sales team in New York. So for a variety of reasons, I left Quantum at the end of 2001 and two things happened. One, I became a full-time speaker, but also Guide Dogs for the Blind asked if I would come and join the staff as their public spokesperson. So we wanted to move back to California anyway, so it was a good excuse to do that. So I did both until the middle of 2008 and a new CEO had come on board the organization in late 2007 and in April of 2008, the CEO said, nobody's interested in September 11th anymore, so we're phasing out your job. And I said, I don't agree with you, but if that's what you're gonna do, that's what you're gonna do. So then I formed the Michael Hingson Group, Inc. in July of 2008, and the company has been a going concern ever since and I've been full-time a keynote public speaker ever since then. I've been involved in a few other things along the way. There's a company called Ira, A-I-R-A, which is artificial intelligent remote assistant. It's a whole process to provide information and what we call visual interpreters, sighted people who can look through glasses or an app on a phone and describe to me and other blind people things that we need to know about that visually are not available to us. And I helped bring that product to market and I work also with a company called Accessaby, but still speaking is a major love and part of my life and I do a lot of that. So people call me and ask me to come and of course September 11th is now 23 and a half years behind us, but still people are interested in what I have to say. And also I hunt down a lot of opportunities and conferences to go to. So it's a two-way process. People call me or I reach out to them and I've been a speaker ever since. So in a sense it started at the beginning of 2002 and has gone from there.

Dan: you talked about starting in sales. How important was it, and you kind of alluded to this, but how important was your ability to interact with people through sales? How much did that impact you as a speaker? How much did that prepare you to be a speaker?

Michael Hingson: Well, it interacts a lot because I believe that good speakers need to be able to sense their audience at all times. And I've seen so many people who speak. I've been to a lot of presentations where people just read whatever it is that they have or they have a bunch of slides and they focus mainly on the slides. People aren't there to see the slides. They're there to hear the speaker. And my job is to really engage with the audience. And in fact, I've realized of late in the last few years that in reality, we have a whole generation of people who have no memory of September 11th and what happened. So my job, when people wanna hear the story, is as I describe it literally, to bring them into the building with me and take them through the process of what I did and bring them out of the building on the other side of the time and give them a real sense of what happened. So I'm drawing them in, taking them with me through the journey and bringing them out the other side because I want them to understand what it was like being in the World Trade Center in general. And then for me as a blind person, because people really have such misconceptions about what blind people can and can't do. They think that the dog led me out. Die dogs do not lead, they guide. I've had letters of reference that people have sent me and they've said things like, when you're telling your story, you could hear a pin drop in the audience. And can say what they want. I take that very seriously. My job is to make them focus. And as I'm speaking, I can tell if people are not focused or focused. And generally I find that they really are listening. They're not fidgety, they're not getting up and going out and doors aren't opening and closing and so on. They're listening. And that's what my goal is, is to help them listen and remember afterward.

Dan: So you talked before about finding conferences. How did you go about doing that? Are there websites? Are there listservs? How do you find opportunities where you can speak and get paid?

Michael Hingson: Well, there are databases that are out there. I use one called Diamond Engine. It's created by a guy named Sam Richter. And you pay for it. And that has done us very well. There are a lot of ways to find speaking engagements. Now, of course, using AI and asking it to go out and find conferences based on certain parameters is getting better and easier to do. So there are a lot of different ways to find conferences. And I have a website, michaelhingson.com. And I find that people go there and then they email me or send me a request through the contact page saying, "We've been to your site. We wanna know more about you coming and speaking to our organization."

Dan: someone comes to your website and they want to book you for a speaking engagement, what are some of the things that they will typically pay for? Do they typically pay for the travel, hotel room, or is that all on you and you just get paid for the speaking itself? In your experience, what is typical for someone that wants to do public speaking professionally?

Michael Hingson: So if people want me to come and speak, it will be speaking P plus travel and expenses. That's only fair because I'm going to speak to their organization. Now, having said that, my job is to make this as painless as possible. So there are a couple of variations. Sometimes people will say, "Well, just give us a number for the whole thing because we don't separate them out. I'll do that." Other times they'll say, "Well, how much do you want?" And I will tell them, but I also say I do work with budgets. My belief is that I wanna speak and I wanna make it as easy as possible. So I will work with people in their budgets, at least to a degree, to be able to make it affordable. And so the reality is when people reach out to me and want me to speak, we'll talk about what the fees are and what their budgets are. And if we can make it work, we will. I'm not trying to get incredibly rich from this, but at the same time, I do need to earn a living. So if somebody says, "Well, we're gonna offer you $1,000 to fly from California to New York, but that's all we can pay you all together is $1,000." The answer is gonna be no, because it'll cost mostly that for transportation, ground transportation here and an airplane. That's not gonna work. So we discuss it, but I will try to work with people in their budgets and make it meaningful for them. The other thing that I do is if I go somewhere, I don't charge by the talk. First of all, I customize every talk I give. So I wanna make sure that I provide whatever messaging and other things people want in a talk when they invite me to speak. But also I'm willing to give more than one talk while I'm there. I don't charge by the talk. So if, for example, somebody says, "Well, we can give you $7,500 or $8,000." And I say hopefully plus expenses, but let's say it's in the $8,000, $9,000 total. And people want me to do a keynote and a one or two or more breakout sessions. Glad to do it. Because I want to add value to the conference and I want people to feel comfortable about me being there. And I have different presentations that I give for breakouts and so on as well. So my job is to make this as easy as possible and don't put incredible demands on the event sponsors who want me to come. You can tell when someone knows what they're doing when they're trying to book you or not.

Dan: That is awesome. I love to hear that. I love that you're so flexible with that and just willing to basically get your content out there, so to speak. Now you talked about flying. So in a post COVID world, you said you've been doing this for a while. In a post COVID world, how much have you seen of a shift to like virtual presentations versus actually still flying out and doing it in person? Has it changed much since 2020 or not so much?

Michael Hingson: I think it's changed and started to change back. I prefer in-person conversations because I can get a better sense of the audience from an in-person presentation than I can get from a virtual presentation. So it really is helpful for me to be there in person. And mostly people are back to wanting to do in-person events. And there's an energy that goes along with that. I have been asked to do virtual events and I will do them as well, but primarily we're getting back to being in-person again.

Dan: thing I'm very curious about, okay, technology has certainly changed over the past 20 plus years. How has that impacted you as a presenter, as a blind presenter? Have you been able to utilize more technology as it made it easier, I guess is what I'm asking. What has that been like from your personal experience as a presenter?

Michael Hingson: Oh, it certainly has made it easier to be able to use some advances in technology. I use something called a refreshable braille display. So it's a device that will display a line of text in braille. And the unit that I have now is about eight years old. There are new pieces of technology coming out that are better and I'll be working to get one of those because it's a multi-line display. I have a laptop that I carry with me and I will do videos from time to time. And I've done a few PowerPoint presentations. I don't like to do PowerPoint presentations very much because I want the audience to be listening to me, not focusing on slides. Slides are easy to provide to people to look at later. When speakers speak, they should be speaking, not reading slides and just pointing to slide presentations. I learned that when I was in sales. I learned how to give presentations to different companies that we were selling products to. And whenever I went with my salespeople, did the presentations because I could look at the audience and point over my shoulder the screen. And I had a braille script that told me exactly where even on the slides, different pictures appeared. So I could point to different parts of a screen and do all of that without ever looking away from the audience. And I actually had people come up and tell me afterward, we're mad at you. And I said, why? Well, not that you gave a boring presentation, your presentation was great, but you never looked away like most people do to look at the slides. So we didn't dare fall asleep, but your presentation wasn't boring anyway. But didn't dare look away because we forgot you were blind and you kept looking at us.

Dan: Yeah, when people are reading from the slides, I'm sure everyone would agree with this. That is like the bane of our existence. I can't stand when people just read verbatim. It's like, I could have done that and saved time.

Michael Hingson: Too many people do it. Too many people do it.

Dan: Michael, let's talk about getting started as a professional speaker. If I wanna get started, or not me specifically, but if I wanna get started as a professional speaker, what are some steps that I can take to help me go down that road?

Michael Hingson: Well, first of all, I think that every speaker should have a story to tell. Even if you're talking about specific of things and technologies, bring stories into it. Bring your audience into it. One of the things that I did early on was also did a lot of speaking locally at Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, Lions Clubs, Elks Clubs, and so on, where they would bring speakers in. They don't pay for speakers, but the experience that you get in those event situations is second to none. Usually your speeches are maybe no more than a half hour, but you can also use that to promote you to move up to other speaking opportunities for some of the companies who are represented at those organizations, but also you get a lot of practice. I would also say, at least make an audio recording of your speeches and listen to those recordings so you hear what you sound like to the people who are listening to your speech. You will find that you will improve greatly by listening to yourselves. What I also have learned over the years is not to say I'm gonna do that because I'm my own worst critic and I'm gonna pick on what I don't do right or whatever. Rather I've learned I'm my own best teacher. It's a positive approach, but it's a much better approach. If I'm listening to myself and I hear things that I, well, maybe that wasn't really the best way to put it. I'm my own best teacher. How do I change that? How do I fix it? When I was a program director of a radio station, I made all of our DJs listen to their voices. I made them listen to their shows. I was amazed, not too surprised, but a little bit at how much improvement people had at the end of the year. It was a campus radio station at UC Irvine. And some of those people ended up going into broadcasting and so on and they were and are very articulate.

Dan: I can totally understand that. Yeah, going back to listening to a recording and hearing, even when I edit my own videos and I generally like to think I'm pretty okay at speaking, but even when I'm listening back to it, I hear all the times I stutter or the times I say, or any of those other fillers, because it's just the nature of the way I talk sometimes, but you don't think about it in the moment. You think, oh yeah, I don't say that. And then you realize you sure do.

Michael Hingson: Well, and you can decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. It may or may not be a bad thing to have an "uh" occasionally or whatever, but the bottom line is you listen to it, you become aware of it, and then you deal with it accordingly. But you can make that decision because you're your own best teacher.

Dan: So let's stick with teaching for a second. When it comes to education, and I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. When it comes to education, are there any specific pathways in your opinion or from people you've spoken with? Are there any particular educational paths that will lead a person to be a better speaker or what kind of opportunities can they take advantage of to learn to be a better speaker?

Michael Hingson: Well, you certainly can also join the National Speakers Association. There's a fee to join. They have meetings all over the country. I generally haven't gone to meetings just because I don't have transportation even when they're local or fairly local. a lot of information on the NSA website, NSA speakers, that's available to speakers. So there's a lot to learn from them. There are people who will help you become a better speaker and you can reach them through the NSA as well. A lot of people wanna share knowledge and help others improve. So I really do encourage people to take that approach as well. There are a lot of ways to go and places to go, but you can't beat doing those even though they're free presentations to rotary clubs and other things. Go speak at schools, go talk to students. Offer, if you've got something that you believe that students and schools would be interested in, volunteer, although sometimes they will also pay you. But that practice, if you're gonna be starting out as a speaker, that practice is second to none.

Dan: Okay, so hanging with the NSA for a second, aside from the practical experience you can get from the other professionals, is there any kind of, I'm gonna say networking opportunities there from a perspective of getting other speaking opportunities? Is there networking opportunities like that where people help each other out, get into different organizations to speak, or is it really just all about improving oneself?

Michael Hingson: No, it's not all about improving oneself. There are a lot of networking opportunities. There's another organization called Speaker Hub that I'm learning about, and they have meetings almost every day where people can go and compare notes with other speakers and so on. There's a lot of networking opportunities available. They're all available online. You can find them if you search for them. But the fact of the matter is sharing knowledge, and then as you become better, you sharing your knowledge to help other people is also important.

Dan: Michael, one thing I like to ask whenever I'm speaking with someone is a particular attribute of a job that could be a game changer, or I should say a deal breaker. So for instance, if I'm a web developer and I don't like to sit for eight hours a day, web development probably isn't for me. But when it comes to public speaking, and we're gonna take fear of public speaking out of the mix, when it comes to public speaking, what's one thing you can think of that if you don't like this particular thing, public speaking is not for you?

Michael Hingson: I think public speaking is always a choice. So I'm not sure that there is one thing that I can point to that would say public speaking isn't for me. Even people who may stutter a little bit may find that speaking is really a good way to improve on some of that. I think that the issue is it's always a matter of choice. And I know you said taking the fear of public speaking out of it, but that's a taught fear. And there's no need for people to fear public speaking, which is why going to rotary clubs and other places is helpful. But I would say in general, keynote speakers, public speakers in general, when they go to speak before an audience, audiences want you to succeed. And if you go with that in your mind, then you're gonna tend to be more relaxed. The first time I did a speech after September 11th, I was called by a pastor of a church in New Jersey and he said, we're gonna do an ecumenical service for all the people who were lost in New Jersey in September 11th. Would you come and speak? And I said, sure. He said, you only have about five or six minutes, but we'd like you to come and quickly tell your story. And I agreed to do that. And then I made the, I love to put it this way, made the mistake of asking how many people are gonna be at the service? Well, about 6,000. And that was my first speech, publicly talking about September 11th. And so the bottom line is that reality, don't be afraid of it. The audience wants you to succeed. you're doing something where you're going to an audience, it's really negative, then probably that's not the place to go and, or maybe you need to find out what the issues are. But I find that audiences want you to succeed. They wanna hear what you have to say, tell it in an engaging way. I don't get into politics and things like that very much because I know that today, that's not only a controversial thing, but it is really something that people tend to react very negatively about in any way, shape or form. So what I love to tell people is, I'm an equal opportunity abuser. I can pick on all of them if we ever have to, but the bottom line is I want people to laugh. I don't need to go into politics to talk about September 11th, for example. I think that all too often, we try to bring politics into things where it doesn't belong. And I've had some places that say, don't talk about religion and faith. I wanna know what messaging different event sponsors want me to include or not include. And I always meet with them so that I understand what their needs are before we go. And I will work accordingly.

Dan: There's so many things I wanna comment on that. (Laughs) 6,000 people. So when you're speaking, the camera's on you, when I'm speaking, the camera's on me. And when you said 6,000, my jaw dropped, my head went back, eyes wide open. I couldn't believe that. And I heard that a very similar thing that you described as well, where it's like, when people go to a presentation, they wanna get, they want you to do well. They're not coming there hoping you fail. So it's, and I think a lot of people like that. They go in, they're very nervous, they're scared, whatever. But the bottom line is exactly what you said. People, they're rooting for you. They're standing behind you cheering you on, so to speak.

Michael Hingson: Especially when you're in there talking about something that they're interested in. And I always wanna know what people are interested in before I go, so that I make sure that I deal with that as best I can. And I think that's extremely important to be able to do. As I said, I think that speakers ought to always have stories to tell. Don't make your speech boring. I've heard a couple of very boring speakers in my life, and they didn't need to be. But the reality is they didn't really understand how to interact with an audience. And so as a result, they read speeches, they did other things, they were very boring. And people weren't really engaged or interested. They gave up good facts and so on, but there's a whole lot more to speaking than that if you're gonna be a good speaker. Completely, completely agree.

Dan: Let's talk about, we didn't talk about contracts at all. When you are involved with speaking, I'm assuming there are contracts that go underway. Do you need to get a lawyer involved? Are they pretty straightforward at this point? What does that look like for you?

Michael Hingson: I have my own speaker contract, which I will use, but I've done speeches at organizations and schools and other places where they wanna use their contract. And so either way we go, we all look at the contract. And if there's something that really is an issue, then we'll talk about it and we can fix it. And then we move forward. But I prefer to have a contract. I have had some speeches where there isn't a contract, but they're with organizations that I'm certainly gonna trust. And so as a result, I will go ahead and enter into an agreement. And so it's a verbal contract, if you will, but it works out okay. Generally though, I like to have a contract. That way we all know what we're supposed to do and where things sit. And also it's a good reminder for me of what I'm supposed to do and not supposed to do if I get that information before the contract is signed.

Dan: Michael, this is all really, really good information. We are running a little short on time, but one thing I like to do whenever I'm speaking with someone is give them the opportunity to talk about a project they're working on, a cause they believe in, or business. It's kind of open-ended, but I'm gonna hand the floor over to you.

Michael Hingson: We mentioned Accessiby a little bit. That is a company that makes products that help make internet websites more inclusive and accessible for people with a lot of different kinds of disabilities. And the company is expanding and growing and their products are becoming more robust. The idea is in this country and elsewhere, internet websites are generally not accessible. Only about 3% of websites are really accessible and have features in them to make sure that they remain accessible for blind people, people who can't use a mouse and a variety of other people, even ADHD and so on. And so I really urge people to look at accessiby, a-c-c-e-s-s-i-b-e.com. And there are a lot of things that they can incorporate. It's not that expensive to do, but by doing it, you're making your website available to up to 25% more viewers and visitors than you otherwise would have access to. For me also, it is traveling and speaking. I love to speak. I love to tell the story of the World Trade Center to try to educate people, to draw people in, as I said, and to inspire. So I hope people will, when they listen to this, will want me to come and speak. And they're welcome to reach out to me. It's speaker michaelhingson.com. Or they can go to my website, which is just www.michaelhingson.com and they can reach me there as well. And there are videos and other things so that they can get a sense of what I do. But I'm glad to interact with anyone, answer any questions, and inspire, which is what I love to do. We also have a podcast called Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. And as I tell people mostly, we talk about the unexpected. That is anything that doesn't have to do with inclusion or diversity, which is most things. And if people wanna be a guest, again, they can email me at the email addresses that I gave. And they can talk about wanting to be a guest on the podcast, and you've been a guest, so you know what it's like. Yeah, it was an awesome experience.

Dan: I was gonna say, it wasn't painless. It wasn't painful, so good. Yeah, not painful at all. So I definitely encourage anyone that is interested to definitely reach out. Michael, I will get all of those links for you. I'll put them in the show notes, the website. They'll be all over the place. So when people are trying to find you, they can easily do that. Perfect. Michael, again, it's been absolutely awesome having all the time we discussed and we learned what it's like to be a professional speaker.

Michael Hingson: Thank you, it was a pleasure to be here. And anytime I can help, just let me know.