095 - Summit 10 - Andrew Weiss - Create a Contagiously Passionate Life

Andrew. Wow, as I was telling Chris earlier, this is so cool. I've I get to bring you all on, which is not I'm used to you bringing me on. So for those who called, Andrew is another one of the gentlemen that works with Podfest. They do such an awesome job. I've learned so much from working with him. He is a ridiculously talented, committed and amazing person and is about to call you young man for Devi Adea.

Not that much younger, but anyway, he's a good young man. He's a good boy, awesome person, and he's going to share with you about creating a contagiously, passionate life. I'm going to let him take over the mic and I will pop back in as he is finishing. Thank you so much for joining us today, Andrew.

Of course, I'm excited to be here. And hello, everyone. Good to see you. Just to make sure who is all on the chat. Feel free to say where you're tuning in from. So I get a sense of the geography of everyone and making sure you're all active and you didn't leave your computer or phone somewhere and go for a run. So definitely type in the chat room tuning in from love to hear from you. Debbie Ford from D.C..

Whoo! Go Divi represents. And I'm actually in the east coast of New York right now. I got a white background to try to catch up with the Wade and the school's Wade. And so trying to do my best to make sure you all get the information you needed for today. And we got Al Mega and Orlando, Wade in Naples, Florida, and someone tuning in from Denver. See Danny tuning in from Denver. So awesome. Good to see everyone.

All right. So with that said, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and show you the presentation of creating a contagiously, passionate life, because that is what I'm sure you all are here for today. And knowing how do you bring more passion into your life and how do you make it contagious so that other people want to be a part of it? And before I get started, I want to share a very powerful quote that really sparked the passion of my own life, and this quote is by Martin Luther King and hopefully you all recognize this man.

And he said. If you're not willing to die for something, you don't deserve to live. And I'll say it again, just because of how powerful it is, if you're not willing to die for something, you don't deserve to live. And this is such a fantastic quote because it is so easy for us to go through the motions. It is so easy for us to be on autopilot, is so easy for us to not recognize that the beauty of life and how short it is and how much things actually do matter.

And if we don't have that passion or lives in the first place, how can make that passion contagious? And so as we go through this presentation, I want you to really start thinking about what are these things you're willing to absolutely die for? Put your life on the line for to get your message out there, to have your vision be heard. And I'm actually going to do a workshop style presentation. So I hope everyone has a piece of paper and pen ready to go, or at least a Google doc notepad, or if you have a pigeon carrier out there somewhere to get the connection that way, whatever you have.

Ready to go to take notes? I hope everyone's ready because we're going to go through this really quick. And Wade says, Andrew, we want something that's actionable, that's tangible. And I said, OK, let's do it. So first, just, you know, where I'm coming from. Believe it or not, I did not come out of the womb being a passionate public speaker. I know very, very hard to believe this is actually me.

In eighth grade, I was about five two and one hundred and twenty pounds and I did not have a beard. And I actually the reason why this this picture is so significant is because I had a happy childhood and my parents got divorced at eight years old. That was unfortunate. But fast forward to eighth grade. I was president of the student body at my school. I was the starter for the basketball team and I was a lead role in the school play and I thought everything was going great.

And then I went to a private Catholic school, which is one of the most competitive in the state of Oregon, if not the nation. And I thought, I got this. I'll keep my train running, I'll keep going with this. And I actually got cut from the basketball team, not just the team, but the B team. I wasn't popular enough to even make the studio school government secretary. And when it came to the school musical, I couldn't even make it as a background singer.

And so to say that my first year of high school was rough would definitely be an understatement. And I recognize that. You know what? There are two choices in life. You can either let things tear you down and you can be an egg where once an egg hits the ground, it splatters all over the place. It says, woe is me, everything is awful, everything is bad. Or you could be a bouncy ball, bouncy ball where once you hit the ground, you can bounce right back and keep fighting and keep going and bounce higher than before.

And I thought, you know what? I want to be someone who bounces back. And I read the book, Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. I highly recommend you check that out. I'm even going to type that in the chat here to make sure everyone can follow along. OK, Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. And that book really sparked me. And help me recognize once again how important it is to have more enthusiasm, energy for things.

And yet I was still holding myself back a little bit. And so fast forward to college. I went to University of Oregon and still had some fun there. I am still with an Elvis Presley impersonator. He was showing me his rock and hip moves and be able to have fun there. But I could tell that there's still some missing link in my life. There is still something that I wasn't doing correctly. I was holding back on and I could definitely improve on.

And my moment, my big epiphany actually happened when I was in a fraternity and the fraternity called the Delta Tau Delta. And believe it or not, we weren't all about partying all the time and we all about making sure that, yeah, the parties were the party. Delta Tau Delta at the school was known for having good grades, for being involved in school. And my epiphany moment happened when I decided that I wanted to be the social chair of the fraternity, making sure that everyone was having fun throughout the year when I was going for that position.

And at that point I had a little experience with being in school musicals, giving presentations. And so here I am. I go up to the stage. I'm I'm all confident and thinking I'm going to do a fantastic job giving this presentation. Of course, they're going to vote for me. No problem. And then I didn't get voted in. And I'm going, well, that that's weird, I thought that they wanted to I thought I did a good job giving a good presentation.

And so I was kind of I was distraught. I was going to get I thought it was a good speaker, but I can't even get voted in by my own fraternity. What's going on? And fortunately, one of my fraternity members came up to me and said, Andrew, the reason why we didn't choose you is because you weren't passionate enough. The reason we didn't choose you is because you weren't passionate enough, and that was such a huge light bulb moment for me, it was huge because we tell ourselves in so many different ways.

Oh, if I don't actually try hard enough, I can never really fail. Oh, if I don't put everything I have into something, then that way I can be able to not take the blame in case it doesn't go my way. And so when he told me that I wasn't passionate enough, my presentation, I thought, you know what, you're right. I wasn't giving it my all. I wasn't having an emotional connection. I was just going through the motions and doing what I'm supposed to do besides going all in.

And once he taught me that, once he taught me that concept of just being passionate about something going on, then not holding back. That's what really sparked an amazing trajectory for me. And because of that, I actually went on to become president of the Club of Toastmasters at the University of Oregon. And by learning this concept of passion, I was actually able to be voted the top public speaker in all central and southern Oregon at just twenty two years old.

And I could tell that the energy and enthusiasm and the passion that I did bring the stage. That's why I got voted as a speaker, because I knew it was more than just going through the motions, making sure that you eliminate filler words, making sure that you use body language, making sure you make eye contact. It's more to that. It's the intangibles. And by adding the extra level things, that's what helped me to succeed. And then by being both the top public speaker and all the central and southern Oregon, I was able to find my dream job where I got paid to travel around the entire state of Oregon, giving presentations to high school students and inspiring them with entrepreneurship and professional skills, making sure they have the skill sets they need to be successful, and being able to get paid to travel around the entire state of Oregon.

And it was an overall great gig. And I'll lead workshops for these students and teach them public speaking skills. I teach them how to start their own business and being able to have a dream job out of college was amazing because there's a study out there that over sixty five percent of people don't like their job, they don't like their career. And so being able to be a part of that. Thirty five percent, I knew passion was a big part of that.

And with that passion, I also went on to run a marathon and be able to survive that. And I also took my passion and wrote a book of bird ponds called Two Can Play at this game, being able to help inspire others to get a good laugh on when it comes to having bird puns and have that creative endeavor happen and just really recognizing that when you do something, do it well, don't hold back. And there's another famous author out there who says, if it's not a hell, yes, or then it's definitely a hell no.

Don't live in maybe land. We don't have time to live in maybe land. And so make sure you go all in is definitely essential. And then, of course, for those who might recognize this guy, this is Chris Krimitsos. We able to put passion into creating a Guinness World record breaking event called Podfest Global and August twenty twenty. And we are able to serve others and help them find their skill sets and match their passions to make sure they have what they need.

And we were able to bring over five thousand people together, over three hundred fifty speakers in August. Twenty twenty, getting my first ever Guinness World Record just this last March. We're spending Guinness World Record to be another world record times two with over fifty eight hundred people, over five hundred speakers. And life is just so much more fun when you have more passion, when you have more enthusiasm and being able to really convey that really shows people want to see it.

People want to be a part of that. And now it's time for you to create your own passion. So now get into this workshop session of the presentation. Hope everyone has their piece of papers and pens ready to go. I'm going to put a quick little timer here, because in case you've already done this exercise, it doesn't hurt to do it again and making sure that you can keep reiterating and reminding yourself why you're doing things in the first place.

I want you to ask yourself what fascinated you as a kid? What what puts you in what in awe and wonder it made you go, wow, was it sports? Was it arts? Was it just being able to talk with other friends? One of my my first childhood memories actually was having my dad used to own a pizza chain and one of my first childhood memories is actually being able to come in and share pizza with everyone. And that just brought me so much joy because I love food.

Apparently my classmates also love food and just being able to have that shared experience together was incredible and so definitely fascinated me as a kid was obviously food. Got to have your priorities. I love sports. I love spending time with people. I love learning about history. And I was always interested and always curious about something all the time. And so really making sure that you take the time to write down what fascinated you as a kid. And make a list of those things so you can go, oh, yeah, that's what my kid wants, that's what my inner kid enjoys and being able to really recognize that.

Next question I want you to ask is what settings made you popular? What settings made you popular? And as you think about this, what the reason why I said what settings is because I love a video that called Adam Ruins Everything. He's a comedian who does these informational videos on YouTube. And he's what he says is that there's no such thing as extreme extrovert and introvert because everyone has knowledge and expertize about certain things. For example, if I go into a public speaking room, oh, of course I'll be able to talk about public speaking and leadership and presentations and how many slides you should have for presentation, how many bullet points per slide.

But if you put me into an autobody conference about cars. I'll be like, yeah, go, go cars and I won't know much about the subject, and so kind of writing down and making note of like, what are the certain settings, what are the certain environments and conferences and events that make you thrive, that make you go? Yeah, I actually do enjoy speaking on this subject. I do enjoy talking to this group of people. I do enjoy spending time with with this kind of community.

And making note of that will be crucial if you understand your passions. Next question. If money wasn't an issue, what would you work on if money wasn't an issue, what would you work on? And the reason why this is so important is I've a quick story to help back this up. So the story goes is that a wealthy man goes on vacation in Mexico and he comes across this fisherman and the wealthy man says, oh, you're a fisherman, are you enjoying fishing?

And the guy goes, Yeah, yes, I am. And the wealthy man goes, Why don't you think about scaling up your fishing business? And the guy goes, Oh, and then what? Oh, and then once you scale your fishing business, then you can be able to have employees and the fisherman goes, Oh, and then what? Oh well then once you have a bunch of employees you can build a very successful wealthy empire. And then what?

And then you have to build a successful empire of a fishing businesses. Then you can sell it off for all this money and the fisherman goes and then what? And then the guy goes and then you can go fish. And the reason why I love this story so much is because it's easy to forget why we why we're doing things in the first place. What are the things that make you happy along the way? But you don't have to go build a multimillion dollar business or company just to go fish in the first place.

It's OK to do both or it's or you know, I've also heard stories about people who are they're very happy just working that that that nine to five and getting their basic needs met just so they can go do that fishing. And so recognizing that we shouldn't have to, not shouldn't, but we must not hold off on the things we actually enjoy doing in order for us to make the sacrifices that need to happen. And so recognizing that a, everything can be monetized.

I mean, I've literally saw a YouTube video about a woman getting paid one hundred thousand dollars just to have people watch her sleep recently. So if someone can get paid to have people watch them sleep, you can get paid, whatever your passions are, weather activities you enjoy doing, and just recognizing your engagement and recognizing what is it that makes you happy. Next question to ponder what vision and message are you willing to die for? All right. Making sure that you're you're writing this down of what's the vision or message you're willing to die for?

What is it that when when you leave this earth in a physical and the physical sense, what do you want to be remembered as? What do you want people to say about you? What do you want to be said at your at your funeral, at your obituary and recognizing what is that most important thing to you? And if you don't know yet? Figure it out. It's a funny human thing that humans do where we say, oh, I don't know.

But if you ask yourself again that if you did know the answer, what that would look like, there's a good chance there's a little voice deep in the back of your mind. If you had going, oh, yeah, I guess this could work, too, or this this might be able to make it happen. And so really recognizing what is that vision? Was that message you're willing to die for? And then once you know that it becomes so much easier to get out of bed each morning, it becomes so much easier to carry a different presence for energy about you and say, this is what I stand for.

This is who I am. These are my values. And people recognize that. People recognize that because a lot of people don't take the time to do what you're doing right now and saying, you know what, I do want to know my passion. I do want to know the vision and message that I stand for. I know how important it is and I want to die for it, because once you recognize what you're willing to die for, everything becomes a lot more clear and you become so much more confident and everything else you do.

So hopefully even taking the time to write down what you what the vision with the message you're willing to die for and write down a piece of paper and document in a notepad, whatever kind of way you have. And then the final question. Is who needs to hear this message? Where can you speak to them? All right, who is it that if it was a younger version of you and they had heard this message, it would have really helped them out, whether it is someone who is in their 60s plus and they just and they got through a divorce past the age of 60.

What do you do now, whether it's a 10 year old who who knows nothing about fitness and nutrition, whether it's a 30 year old who's going through a 30 year old life crisis thing, what the heck am I doing with my life, my career? Who needs to hear that message? Who needs to hear about that vision that you have? And where can you speak to them? Where do those 10 year olds hang out? Where do those 30 year olds hang out?

Where are those 60 year old hang out? And how can you make sure that they hear this one thing that you feel like you are put on this earth to go, how am I going to thrive today? How am I going to dominate and how can I make it happen? So making sure you write right down, who needs to hear the message? Where, where can you speak to them? And then once you have a sense of that's part two of this presentation, little surprise of you as I'm actually going to teach you how to actually get in front of those people, how to actually get speaking gigs, to speak to them and present to them.

Or if you absolutely hate public speaking, I suppose I can teach you how you can train someone else to speak for you. But of course, we want you to be the star. We want you to be the the person who conveys this message. But as long as the message gets conveyed in some way whatsoever, that's the most important thing. So not once you have your vision and your message, once you know who you want to speak to.

Let's talk about how to actually get booked and really recognizing that in order to get booked in the first place, you have to know it does take luck sometimes in the sense the universe can open up to you. And a quick little story is that there is actually a school unluck, there's a school unluck. And this psychologists and scientists discovered that people who told themselves they were lucky were actually more lucky, believe it or not. And it was it was the funniest thing.

That's, for example. So he'd take one group of people who thought that they weren't lucky. He took another group of people who thought they were lucky. And one of the things that he do in the school is he would have them walk down a normal street and on that normal street, he'd put a 20 dollar bill just like somewhere on the ground, hid in the bushes or something, and all the lucky people. Sure enough, they would always see that 20 dollar bill and go, oh, sweet, 20 dollars and go and pick it up and then keep walking to the next assignment of unlucky people.

They would all miss the 20 dollar bill and the and when the when the person would tell them, hey, did you see that Twilla bill that was lying on the street right next to you, they'll go, Oh, I guess I wasn't lucky enough. So telling yourself that you're lucky in the first place does make a huge difference, as you can bet your passion and as you build your speaking business. So really recognizing that. And then once you get your lucky personality, really take the time to spend time with people who want to see you succeed, want to be successful, who are passionate, who are enthusiastic, who do convey great energy out there because you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

So even if you're super passionate, contagious, enthusiastic person, if you're spending time with people who are going, oh, man, I'm not lucky, oh, man, I don't know my passion. Oh, man, I don't know my vision. It's only a matter of time before you get from here to here and you get down somewhere another. So really recognizing who is your pack, who's your tribe, who those people are going to constantly elevate you and and support you and have your passion be contagious to them and have their passion be contagious.

You get those set in place. Everything else is easy from there. All right. So we keep speaking time, the one you're very excited for. So once you have a presentation about what you want to talk about, makes you have a topic, a description, get a nice headshots and professional photo of yourself, get a nice bio and a speaking real. And in case you don't have any of these, then really make sure to get them and figure it out and ask someone who does have the answer to this and just keep going.

And I read a book recently called Straight-line Leadership. And one of the things they talk about is stop stopping. All right, stop stopping. Just because you don't have a speaking role does not mean you should give up on your speaking, speaking opportunities to be able to convey your message, your story. Just because you don't have a perfectly written bio. Does it mean that you shouldn't figure out how to either ask for advice from a copywriter harvest or friend or family member?

Just talk about you and have them write the bio for you. Just keep going and making it happen. And then finally, sure, you create a CRM where you want to speak. Believe it or not, it does take work to be able to have a speaking real. So really recognize or speak in real, but a speaking portfolio of where you want to be talking, recognizing when you're reaching out to them what time, what they said and what the next steps are.

And then finally recognizing that fortune is in the follow up that will put you ahead of so many other public speakers and presenters out there is really understanding the importance of following up with people. Reply to them again, make sure they get your previous messages, know when the time are, and that will be a huge difference maker. And then once you get book to speak, leverage that presentation. One of the biggest things to learn in the speaking world is that once you speak somewhere, you can speak everywhere else in that area and you can leverage that opportunity with other opportunities.

So, for example, I used to be a speaking coordinator at book, other people speaking gigs, and I got one of my first clients speaking gig at one school and I think it was in Tennessee. And once she got that gig, I started calling all the other schools in the area saying, hey, my client is going to speak at the school at this time. She should. Do you have opportunities for her to come speak at your school, too?

And they'd say, oh, well, yeah, she's in the area that then. Yes. And I said, OK, here's her speaking fees and you have this kind of budget. And they'd say, yeah, we do. Actually, I'd say, all right, great. And you close the deal. So make sure you follow up people presentations. And there you go, get your vision and your message out there. And then finally, because you're here today, I want to give you a special gift, the conflict communicator, checklists.

This will give you a great sense of how to make sure your presentation stick. Out with passion, making them contagious, having the audience pay attention. I took a screenshot of half of the list to get to give you a sneak peek of what you have in store for you. And all you have to do is contact me on Andrew Josephites at Jim Muehlhausen, or you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram at Dandrige. Just give me and I would love to hear from you so I can see that checklist and I will subscribe to any emails right now.

So I'm not I don't have an email list, but this won't be able to serve you give you what you need for that confident communicator checklist and make sure you're on your way. So with that said, Wade, are there any questions? I want to make sure I'm not missing anything in the chat here.

Thanks so much, Andrew got a lot of amens and and compliments and support for you said definitely on gosh, a lot of different things here. You know, it's been so interesting for me to see. You know, you and I have talked a lot about business passions, life outside of work and whatnot. And I'm just really impressed for. What you've accomplished already and what you're already doing and what you continue to do, so first of all, congratulations on that.

I think that's that's awesome. I think a lot of the people that I work with are. You know, when they're talking to me about, oh, well, you know, he's a millennial, it's like, oh, OK, it's you know, it's all right to sit down and have the millennial talk, you know? And the thing is, is an obvious like anything else, people either, you know, they found their passion like any other generation.

There's there's there's people that people associate with or don't want. I just love that. You're going after what you're looking to go after and more than anything and you know, you and I talked about this when we did the podcast interview, which is not out yet, but it'll be coming out. Is just your decision just to continue, you know. Going forward and moving forward and growing, even though you mentioned, like in the interview, that you weren't as tall with you, not just when you're born, of course that's obvious, but as you know, as you grew up.

And so I just think there's something to be said for that decision, that level of commitment, like you mentioned, in the Martin Luther King quote, of just continuing to move forward, continuing to choose something and and go with that. So I'm, you know, one of the things that. I think maybe people don't always get to see they don't get to see the the back side. So right now, of course, as you know, Debbie is doing helping me with a lot of the back end stuff of what's going on.

Now, I've worked with you with the Podfest part. You're a huge part of that with the Podfest. And that's where you see when people really actually implement, people live, what they say they're going to do. And, you know, probably if someone would ask me, what would you say about Andrew? Andrew does what he says and then some. But with a level of passion and intentionally intentionality and excitement and gratitude that is genuine and willing to serve.

And so for any you know, people are looking to see what you're up to. I definitely encourage them to do that. I'm looking forward to doing more stuff with you and connecting with you more as we work together. More so. And thank you so much for sharing what you have. And again, you know, everybody go into the community, connect all you know, all the people who are in here, they're making themselves available there. They're making it possible for you to connect with them.

So I really encourage you as somebody who's been in the in the audience at times and has been on the on the stage, quote unquote. Sometimes we're not superheroes. We're not magical people or people who are doing a job at your job. You're a hero. Probably whatever you do, if there's something you need, something you want help with, just let us know. And we're happy to help. And like I said, Andrew Weiss is the real deal.

So thank you so much for coming out to speak with Andrew. I'll keep you posted as we go from there. And I really appreciate it, man.

Sounds good. Thank you. Ed, good luck with your conference. Good seeing everyone. And yeah. Have a fantastic day. Yeah.

Thanks for showing me the ropes, man. I wouldn't be doing this without your help.

I got here. No problem.