#95 – Interview with Dr. Danny Brassell: Storytelling, Practice, and Reading Skills

"Poder aprender", el pódcast que te ayuda a aprender idiomas, hobbies

y skills de manera más efectiva.

Acá hablamos sobre hábitos de aprendizaje, práctica deliberada

y estrategias para aprender mejor.

Mi nombre es Walter Freiberg y te invito a desarrollar tu poder

de aprender para alcanzar tus metas personales y profesionales.

I recently had a great conversation with Dr. Danny Brassell, a very

accomplished public speaker and storyteller, and today I wanted to

share this conversation with you.

We're going to learn a lot about how to tell a good story, what it takes to

practice speaking in public, and the importance of cultivating reading skills.

Danny, would you like to introduce yourself?

I'm Dr. Danny Brassell.

If I was gonna write an autobiography, I would probably call it "Pivots"

because I've lived so many lives so far.

Bush Sr. in presidential election.

I had a great job, got to meet editors of every major daily.

And one editor offered me a job doing the city beat for $16,500 a year.

Meanwhile, a friend told me they were hiring teachers in South

Central Los Angeles, in the inner city for $25,000 a year.

So, I became a teacher for the noblest of reasons, Walter, for the high pay.

And I actually fell in love with teaching.

I've actually taught all age levels from preschoolers all

the way up to rocket scientists.

I can make that claim because I used to teach English as a second

language to engineering students at the University of Southern California.

turned out to be a scam, and we lost everything but I'm a positive person.

First of all, my wife is my soulmate.

I put her through the wringer and she stuck right by me.

She's an incredible human being.

Second of all, I learned that money's not the end all be all 'cause

you can lose it just like that.

Third I try not to judge other people, 'cause if I was somebody looking at

what I did, I would've said: 'Well, you deserve that!' But now I realize, if you

don't know everything about a person, you really don't know anything about a person.

Fourth, I became a Christian, which I'm always embarrassed to admit, but I'm

not the first screwed up to find Jesus.

And fifth, I didn't want to file for bankruptcy, and my accountant said: 'Well,

you have to make this much more money this year in order to avoid bankruptcy.'.

So I started speaking on the side.

I was a professor at the time, and I hit the number right, on the number, Walter.

Well, then the next year he gave me a much higher number.

And I hit that number right on the number.

So then in year three, I thought: 'Well, maybe I should set a higher

number.' And basically, during one of the worst economic downturns, I

was able to build up a very lucrative speaking business, which was going great.

And then for many years people had asked me to coach them.

And so I started working with, I'm not gonna give names 'cause

I like to not mention some of the famous people I work with.

But I work with probably the top speaking company in America for several years.

I met the gentleman who's now my co-founder, coach Jimmy Hays Nelson.

And coach Jimmy, Dave Ward and I, the professor, the

performer, and the producer.

'cause my background is in academics.

Coach Jimmy is a Broadway performer and Dave was a former attorney.

And we formed the WellCrafted Story workshop where we empower

leaders to transform their personal experiences into powerful business

stories that inspire action, drive growth, and create lasting impact.

And I just love what I do and I really appreciate you having me here today.

So that's a very long answer to your short question.

Danny, you've said in different places that great speakers are made

and they're not born, and this is something I deeply resonate with in

terms of growth mindset, fixed mindset.

This is something people can develop, can get good at.

And this is very in line also with the idea of deliberate practice.

This idea of setting goals, getting high quality feedback, doing

the repetitions, over and over.

What does a deliberate practice plan look like for someone aiming

to master storytelling on stage?

Yeah, so I'm a perfect example of that concept, Walter.

I was speaking in India to a school, got the kids all pumped up

and kids came up to me afterwards to say how excited they were.

And then I looked at this little boy and he had tears in his eyes.

He was about six years old, and I noticed he was missing his left arm and he looked

up and he said: 'How can I succeed?'.

And so I bent down to his eye level and I said: 'Well, when I was

your age, I went to 18 different schools before I was 12 years old.

Everybody used to call me s-s-s-s-s-s stupid because I stuttered.

And eventually I went to a school where a teacher, she worked one-on-one with me and

she would sing things to me and I found I could sing them back without my stutter.

Kind of like the movie, the King Speech.

And eventually I lost my stutter and I became a swan.

Isn't it interesting the little boy that people used to make fun of

'cause he couldn't speak right now, gets paid ridiculous sums of money

to travel the planet, to do what?'.

And he gets the biggest grin on his face.

He's like: 'Speak!'.

I'm like, don't ever let anybody tell you what you can't do.

Everything is possible.

And so my encouragement to those that are afraid of speaking or feel like they

don't speak very well, it is a skillset.

As a matter of fact, most of the people that I work with are entrepreneurs,

executives, business owners that are either terrified of speaking on stage

or they really don't want to speak on stage, but I'm showing them what is the

quickest way for them to acquire a lot more customers and have a lot more impact.

And the way you do that... Two ways you get better at speaking, Walter.

First of all, you have to watch lots of speakers.

I watch at least 10 speakers a day.

I watch politicians, I watch comedians.

I watch televangelists.

I watch 'em in front of big groups, in front of small groups, in

front of men, in front of women.

I'll give your audience a strategy.

I watch a lot of televised award shows because when the person

wins the Academy Award, they only have 45 seconds to give a speech.

Now, most people waste their time.

They get up there and they're like, I wanna thank God,

I wanna thank the academy.

It's stupid.

Nobody's paying attention to 'em.

But every now and then, a person does a great job of connecting.

So I'll give you an example.

A few years ago there was a gentleman by the name of Joe Walker who won the

Academy Award for best film editing.

Now, this is Hollywood.

All the important people are in the front of the room and you can tell

none of 'em care about film editing.

They're not paying attention.

Joe Walker gets on stage and he's British, and he speaks very slowly

and deliberately, and he says: 'A lot of people don't know this, but when

phrased properly, the term Academy Award nominee can be used as an insult.'

Well now the camera scans the crowd.

You see people leaning in, like, what's he talking about?

And he says: 'For example, yesterday I got in an argument with my 17-year-old

daughter and she said, well, Academy Award nominee Joe Walker.' All of a sudden

you see everybody laughing hysterically.

He walks off stage.

Denzel Washington wants to meet him.

Sandra Bullock wants to meet him.

Brad Pitt wants to meet him.

Time Magazine said it was one of the highlights of the Academy Awards.

That's the power of connecting with audiences.

And this is what I teach people, my clients that I work with.

So the first way you get better at speaking is watching lots of speakers.

The second way, I've been blessed with lots of coaches myself on one of my

coaches is a guy by the name of Jim Rohn.

And Jim used to say, you can't pay other people to do your pushups.

you gotta do the work, you gotta practice.

So I always encourage people: speak to service clubs, speak to schools, speak to

churches, speak to chambers of commerce.

Several years ago I worked with a gentleman, Jason.

He was about 22 years old.

And Jason drove me crazy, Walter.

He's like: 'I don't know anybody.

I can't speak anywhere.' I'm like, all right.

Do you have a Facebook account, Jason?

'Yeah.' I'm like, okay, we're going on right now.

Facebook Live, and he gets all nervous.

I'm like: 'You're gonna deliver your talk right now.

45 minute talk we just put together.' And so he gets on

with me there for 45 minutes.

One woman from Ontario, Canada accidentally watched him and he stunk.

I forced him the next day, Walter.

Go on again.

I wasn't there, but I made him go on again.

He did it again and he stunk.

He didn't stink as bad as the first time.

Well, here's why I use Jason as an example, because over the last three

years he's gone on Facebook Live every single day, delivered that same talk.

Three years later, Jason didn't know anybody.

He has 6,000 people in his Facebook community and he sold

them almost a million dollars worth of product last year.

And again, I'm not... I think that's wonderful.

But the reason I use him as an example is he did the work, he practiced.

And so for all of your listeners out there that are worried about how do I get better

at storytelling and speaking, it's just like anything, it's just like driving.

The more you do it, the more relaxed you get and it'll become second nature.

That was so inspiring.

And.

It is a matter of practice and being willing to put in the

work and doing the repetitions.

It's not that we need to have access to this stage or this auditorium, this

fancy opportunity or this specific stage with YouTube, Instagram, Facebook.

We have the opportunity available, so it's there for us to take.

So are we going to take that opportunity and start doing the practice?

That is the question.

Absolutely.

I mean, and look at you.

You're a perfect example, Walter.

I mean, English isn't your first language, you practice on this podcast.

How many of your friends say they want to start a podcast, but

they've never started a podcast?

You're actually doing the podcast.

You're gonna get better and better and better.

I shared with you earlier, I'm like, well, puedo hablar en español,

pero como un niño de 7 años.

I mean, Spanish is my second language and I haven't... I used

to teach in Spanish 25 years ago.

But really language is something, if you don't use it, you start to lose it.

If I went back to Mexico for probably two months, I'd, I'd be fluent again.

Uh, but, uh, I admire you.

This is a great opportunity for you to practice your English and practice

your, uh, your speaking skills, your interviewing skills, and it's a great

role model for other people that are aspiring, to get better at storytelling.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I know that the next time, the next interview, we are doing that in Spanish.

¡Sí, sí!

Yes.

And also I have a musician side and a language learner side, as you know.

And I'm curious about your ideas connecting daily

reading with voice training.

How can a daily reading habit become a kind of a voice training that can improve

articulation, idea fluency, and the connection we have with the audience?

Yeah, the last book that I wrote, 'Misfits and Crackpots,' uh, which

is just a whole bunch of profiles of short inspiring stories for busy

people who don't think they have time to listen to inspirational things.

And so one of the stories I share is of, uh, the famous actor Sidney Poitier,

who literally came to America with the clothes on his back from The Bahamas.

And, uh, when he went to Harlem, he was a dishwasher and he decided he was

gonna try out for the Harlem Theater.

And he started auditioning and the director said: 'Don't waste my time.

Go back to washing dishes, boy.' Sidney Poitier thought to himself,

how does he know I wash dishes?

And so from that day forward for the next six months, uh, he

was working as a waiter also.

Actually, he was working as a dishwasher, but he would work with a waiter,

this old Jewish waiter used to read with him every single night, and they

would practice his ennunciation and he would listen to the BBC radio and he

auditioned for the exact same director.

Six months later, the director did not recognize him, and he got cast

in the role and he became an actor.

Um, I taught in the inner city where a lot of my students didn't have

the advantages I had growing up.

And I basically said, shame on me.

I was blessed.

I had, both of my parents were in the home, we were poor, but

we always had food on the table.

And my parents read in front of us kids, they read to us kids, and we had

plenty of access to reading materials.

And so it became very important to me to get kids excited.

I mean, you don't ever have to go to Argentina to learn about Argentina.

There's all kinds of great, uh, history of, of Argentina, incredible

writers and things like that.

I, I mean, a lot of people don't realize that Jules Verne, who

wrote around the world in 80 days never left France his entire life.

Yet he was able to write a book about going around the world.

To me, reading is your passport to the rest of the world.

You have also access to the world's greatest minds.

You can be having a conversation with a person who may have been

dead for 300 years, but you're getting into their mind and figuring

out, well, what drove this person?

How did this person succeed?

And so that's why I use reading as a, uh, wonderful platform.

Plus, I love stories.

I collect stories and I'll read a book, the entire book can stink,

but if there's one good little story in there, it was worth my time.

And so that's why I always encourage people to read as much as they can.

What is the difference, I'm curious, about reading out loud

and reading like in silence?

And I see this all the time with the language coaching

clients that I work with.

There's a difference between reading out loud, speaking, and reading internally.

What are the benefits of this doing this reading out loud practice and in

terms of articulation and for people who wanna develop more confidence on stage?

Yeah, I kind of accidentally stumbled upon that, Walter.

I work with a lot of dyslexic students, so you have to understand that there's

lots of reading disabilities out there, and dyslexia is by far and away the

most undiagnosed reading disability.

And what I learned is that dyslexics, they tend to process information

a lot better with their ears.

And so what I do is I read aloud a lot to my dyslexic students and they understand.

It's kind of like the reason I stuttered.

They get so excited, their mind's working a little bit quicker than their lips.

Same thing with the reading.

All of us read much quicker silently than we do aloud.

But by reading aloud and listening to yourself or having somebody else read

aloud to you you're learning cadence, you're learning articulation and pausing.

It's very helpful for you in terms of your speaking.

I mean, that's why I love watching speakers.

One of my idols and role models was James Earl Jones, who

stuttered when he was a child.

And you know, before he passed away, he's like the voice of God.

He speaks so slowly and articulates and the voice of Darth Vader and

CNN just an amazing human being.

And so that's why I always encourage people.

I mean, I work with parents.

One of my businesses is a program that teaches parents how to

get their kids to love reading.

And I'm a big believer in that children are made readers on

the laps of their parents.

The parent that, that reads aloud to their child, it's that connection time.

It's not just the reading, it's a great way to connect.

Mm-hmm.

And what about dealing with the discomfort of hearing ourselves reading

out loud, when we don't like how our voice sounds or when we think like

our intonation, our articulation is not at the place where we want to be?

How do we deal with that and how can we... because that's part of the process,

and if we don't listen to ourselves, it's going to be hard to correct

ourselves and to get better, right?

How can we deal with that?

Absolutely.

You just have to practice.

I think most of us don't like the way we sound.

We all sound different in our heads than to other people.

You know, I never liked the teachers that do popcorn reading where one kid has

to read aloud and then you point to the next kid, and then that kid has to... I

think that's putting a kid on the spot.

But I do believe in getting kids to read aloud.

And what I would do, I'm a big believer in cross age tutoring, and so if I

had a struggling fifth grader I would say: 'I need you to create a book on

tape for this kindergartener to teach the kindergartener how to read.' By

making him now the more competent peer, it's gonna build up his confidence

and he's gonna take it seriously.

I worked with a lot of children of different ages and I always try to

get him with a younger kid so that they get to model for the other kid.

It seems to work pretty well for me.

I love that.

And it's like learning by teaching, right?

You also speak about building authentic connections within seconds, and I

wonder what's one communication muscle we can train daily to read the room in

pivot in real time, pivot in real time?

What I train my clients to do is to really share their own personal stories.

Here's an activity for everybody listening in.

I want you to sit down in a comfortable chair with a pen and paper

and for an hour, write down every story that's ever happened to you.

I don't mean the entire story, I just mean triggers.

Like the time I locked myself outta the car in front of the grocery

store, the time dad spill mustard on his tie in that fancy restaurant.

You'll find easily in an hour you can come up with about 500 stories like that.

So that's the first part of the exercise.

The second part of the exercise is then I want you to think about

what's this story really about?

Oh, this is a story about never giving up.

Oh, this is a story about overcoming embarrassment.

This is a story about loyalty and so.

On my computer, I literally have hundreds of files with

tens of thousands of stories.

And so when I'm speaking, I'm trying to figure out, what is it that I want

my audience to do and giving a story that actually exemplifies that point.

So, for example, I was working with a woman a few weeks ago, Kathy,

and she was trying to get people to buy her product and she couldn't

get ' em to buy their product.

And I said, what's the point that you want?

People to get.

And she's like, well, I want them to understand that they should

hire me ' cause I'm an expert.

I'm like, oh, okay.

So you need a hire an expert story.

She says, yes, I need a hire an expert story.

I'm like, okay, I'll show you an example.

So this was for the close of her speech.

I said, I'll leave you with this.

My wife and I had theater tickets many years ago.

We were dressed to the nines, driving to the theater, but as we drove to

the theater, we got a flat tire.

And my wife said, we'll all call the tow truck company.

I said, you don't have to call a tow truck.

I'm a man.

I can fix a flat tire.

So I went to the back and I opened up the trunk and I got the spare tire and I got

the pumper thingy and the thing shaped like an X, that you take the nuts out.

And I was trying to get the nuts out of the tire.

And 27 minutes later I had grease all over my hands.

I was filthy.

My wife is shaking her head like, I could have done so much better than this guy.

Well, unbeknownst to me, Walter, she had called the tow truck company and a tow

truck shows up and a 17-year-old hops out of this truck and in three minutes

flat was able to fix the flat tire.

I think there are times in our lives when all of us feel like we can do

it on our own, but if we wanna save time, we want to save money and we

want to save a whole lot of headache and embarrassment, we hire an expert.

And so what I'm doing is a story as a metaphor to show the audience what I want

them to do, what they should be doing.

That this person made the, the same mistake this person made.

I need to hire an expert.

A lot of people, I'll watch speakers and they tell stories,

but their stories have no point.

And your story has to have a point.

It has to connect with that audience.

I'm a big fan of Brené Brown as a wonderful speaker, and I completely agree

with her, philosophy that vulnerability is more important than uh, your credentials.

That I could share one strategy with your audience right now, I'd say stop bragging.

Start talking about your failures.

Not everybody in your audience has succeeded, but they've all failed.

And the more you talk about your own failures, the more they're

gonna see themselves in you and they're gonna trust you.

It's a quicker way to develop trust.

I love that.

And talking about vulnerability and failures, you gave more than 3,500 talks.

That's a lot.

And I imagine many of those didn't go as planned.

Can you share a memorable failure and how you use that to intentionally

move closer to mastery in your craft?

Yeah, the failures are always very important.

So for example, I was speaking to 750 uh, Catholic school teachers in

Wichita, Kansas, and a tornado hit the power line, and so we lost power.

And so I asked the janitor for a flashlight and I did the

next 90 minutes in the dark.

Oh, I can do it in the dark.

I was speaking once in Las Vegas and my entire PowerPoint stopped.

And so I had to reboot the PowerPoint, which takes about four minutes.

And so as I was waiting to reboot the PowerPoint, I said: 'Just so you

all know, whenever the PowerPoint fails, I have to teach you songs.'

So I started teaching 'em different teaching songs, and that was

funny, Walter, because I probably got the best evaluations ever.

People were like: 'Wow!

He didn't even miss a beat.

After his PowerPoint went down, he started teaching us songs.' Maybe I

should fake, like there's a problem with my PowerPoint every single time

and just do this every single time.

But that's what you do, you learn from experience.

I use a lot of humor in my presentations, and so I'm constantly

paying attention to the audience.

What is it that they're laughing at?

What lines did they like?

What could I do a little bit better?

I mean, here's a strategy for your audience is I see a lot

of speakers film themselves.

I don't film myself.

I film the audience because when you see the audience leaning in, that was good.

If they're on their phones, that's boring.

So I have to figure out, what am I doing well and what do I need to improve on?

That's how you get better.

That's such a wonderful tip.

So, when you are performing instead of filming yourself and then seeing

that and using that as feedback, you are using your camera and you are, you

wanna see the reactions of the audience, so you have the audio and so you see

which part of the speech you're at and you can see how they are reacting.

That sounds wonderful.

That can be like life changing for a speaker.

Yeah,

That wasn't a tip.

I give strategies to my clients.

So that's a strategy for you.

Could you clarify what's the difference between a tip and a strategy?

A tip is something you leave on a table for a waiter.

A strategy is a technique that you can have repeatable results again and again.

Wow.

That's a very powerful distinction.

Yeah.

That's repeatable and that's something that can compound

your growth and learnings.

Yeah, I can see that.

And speaking about a specific practical exercise that you could

share with my listeners in terms of creating their own storytelling?

Do you have a favorite, like narrative arc or specific technique that you'd

like to share in terms of something practical, an exercise they can use

to incorporate in their storytelling?

Well, I think Walter, that most people make the mistake, they want to

sound impressive, and I don't think those are the most powerful stories.

I have a client right now and the guy's amazing.

He's climbed the highest mountain on all seven continents.

He swam with sharks from Madagascar, he did the Iditarod to the North Pole.

I'm like, nobody can relate to you.

Nobody else has climbed Mount Everest in your audience.

But everybody peed their pants when they were six years old and got embarrassed.

Everybody has those types of stories.

Those are the stories that all of us get in silly arguments

with our significant other.

Those are the stories that connect a lot quicker for people.

And I like using, with your background in teaching, I guarantee

you, you have hundreds of stories just from teaching your students

and the silly things they say.

I mean... here, I'll give you an example.

So here's how I start one of my talks.

'When I was an elementary school teacher, every other teacher at my school

went through hundreds, if not thousands of bandaids every single school year.

I mean, kids love bandaids.

They work better than smokes on the prison yard.

Well, every year.

I went through exactly one bandaid.

My colleagues always ask me, what's your secret, Danny?

Well, on the first day of school, I always have a chubby little boy.

We will call him Paco.

He's picking at a scab all morning long, and finally after lunch, he has success.

And the annoying little girl next to him raises her hand,

rubs her nose and says, 'Mr.

Brassell, Paco's bleeding.' I'm like: 'Oh my goodness, Paco, you know what you need?

You need a bandaid.' Now, 33 little heads, look at me.

I'm like, you know what?

I have a drawer full of bandaids in my desk and I don't

have just ordinary bandaids.

I have mighty morphin, Power Ranger bandaids, and I'm gonna give you the

Green Ranger 'cause he's the coolest.

Now, Paco's smiling.

All the kids are just delighted.

I walk Paco back to my desk.

'Oh, Paco, before I put on the bandaid, we've gotta clean out

the wound.' I show all the students my bottle of rubbing alcohol.

'Hey, Paco, squeeze my hand.

This might sting a little bit.

I start pouring on the rubbing alcohol.

He starts screaming: 'Ahhh!.' I put on his bandaid.

'All right, kids.

Anybody else need a bandaid?' My students can have a skull fracture and

they will never ask me for a bandaid.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not gonna give you bandaids today.

I'm going to give you practical strategies on how to use speaking to

grow your business and have a bigger impact on the audiences that you serve.

That's how I'm using a story and I always like funny something that distinguishes

me from a lot of people out there.

I get annoyed and I've worked with these people and they say: 'Well, you

should talk about the most traumatic moment of your life.' And there's

three reasons why I don't do that.

Walter, first of all, the world just survived a global pandemic.

Everybody's had bad things happen to ' em.

I don't think we need another sad story.

I think we need stories of hope.

Second of all, the clients I'm working with, I'm teaching you how to create,

I call it a well-crafted story.

When I covered the president 30 years ago, he called it his stump speech.

It's the origin story.

You can call it peanut butter and jelly.

It doesn't matter what you call it, but this is a story that you're

gonna deliver again and again to introduce yourself to new audiences.

Do you really want to share that sad story again and again?

I have a friend, his daughter was shot in a school shooting, died.

He's told that story a thousand times.

You have to be a lot stronger than me to talk about the worst day of

your life over a thousand times.

I have no idea how he does that.

Third, this is where people get angry with me.

I have one objective when I'm on stage.

I want you to leave feeling better than when you came in.

I want you smiling, I want you laughing, I want you to be happy.

I think there's something admirable in that as a goal.

I believe the people that teach you to tell that same sad story again and again

by the 20th time you're telling that story, now those are crocodile tears,

and now you're being manipulative.

And I'm not saying it's not an effective sales strategy, it's actually

a very effective sales strategy, but I don't wanna have to take a

shower after I get on stage because I just manipulated my audience.

There are more ethical ways to get people to want to do business with you.

I know Coach Jimmy and I, we really refuse to do the sad stories

because, I mean, you can do a sad story if there's a happy ending.

But I think you have a responsibility to give hope to your audience.

That's something unique to me.

I agree a hundred percent with that.

There's a coach that I really like, his name is Steve Chandler and he speaks

about the ladder of consciousness.

And he says, like, as coaches we get to lift people up the ladder.

We don't want them to be low on the ladder where anger or

sadness, all those feelings are.

And I love that you are bringing this up and also on the, on the stage, what

we can do as speakers when sharing a message, we have an important role there.

We can be uplifting, if we decide to be.

Absolutely thank you.

We always have that choice and I'd rather be the light rather than the darkness.

Thank you for that.

And talking about motivation, you are a big encourager of readers.

You want to encourage reading as an activity.

Tell me more about what have you learned about sustaining motivation for reading

and after the initial enthusiasm fades, and how can we connect that to keeping

enthusiasm in skill building in general?

Well this is, and I know you know this 'cause you're a teacher, it

begins with us, when I was a middle school teacher, I was the only

teacher in the school that none of my students were ever late to class.

And the reason was, cause I always started off class by

reading aloud a Paul Harvey story.

I'm not sure you're familiar with Paul Harvey, but when I was a kid,

Harvey with the rest of the story.'

And for five minutes he'd describe a person or a company, and you're

trying to guess who's he talking about the whole five minutes.

And my students love those stories, but the problem with

Paul Harvey is he's passed away.

And a lot of his stories were of older things like Fred Astaire or Sears Roebuck.

Kids today don't even know what those things are.

And so I wrote this book, 'Leadership Begins With Motivation,' as an homage

to Paul Harvey, and my stories are shorter stories about more contemporary.

May I share a quick one with you?

Yes, please.

This is how I get kids excited about reading.

Let's see.

Okay, here we go.

into a chair with a bag over his head, awaited a firing squad of five law

enforcement officers to execute him at the state prison in Draper, Utah.

Convicted of murdering a gas station employee in Utah the year before, Gilmore

would be the first person in the United States to be executed in nearly a decade.

Shortly before his execution, prison officials asked Gilmore

if he had any last words.

Neither he nor anyone else that day would know the impact of those words.

the Wyden and Kennedy Agency in Portland, Oregon, made something of a morbid

pitch to a struggling fashion company.

He recalled the inmate's final words and used a slight variation for his pitch.

And seemingly everyone hated his idea for the company's new slogan.

'Trust me on this one,' Wyden implored the company's co-founder.

And the co-founder, his company and the public had not looked back since.

The co-founder's name was Phil Knight.

The struggling brand he co-founded was a shoe company called Nike and

Advertising executive Dan Wyden, slightly Altered Death Row Inmate

Gary Gilmore's final words 'let's do it' into the phrase, 'just do it.'

So, this is how I get kids excited about reading telling ' em stories like that.

After I wrote this book, Walter, I read it and completely unintentionally

I noticed that so many of my stories were of white male Americans.

And so the last book I wrote is called 'Misfits and Crackpots,' and most of

the stories in this book are of females, minorities, and international people.

And I had more fun writing and my kids love listening to these.

I always test the stories on my own children and they love it.

I think the way you get people excited about anything is

you have that excitement.

I watch old lectures by Richard Feynman, a physicist.

If I had him as a professor, I would've been a physicist

because he shares his passion.

It's contagious.

I've watched women do quilting videos and they're so excited about it.

I wanna learn how to quilt ' cause she's all into it.

It's all about your passion and that's how you keep that momentum up.

And I also have a policy with kids.

If they don't like a book, this is for everybody in the audience.

If you have that 700 page book by your bed that you started three years

ago, I absolve you of that book.

Get another one.

I mean, reading a book should be like eating a piece of food.

If you take a bite, you're like: 'Oh, that's nasty.'

Do you take another bite?

Maybe it gets better.

' Oh no, it's nasty.' If you read the first couple of chapters,

you don't like it, put it down.

I've always thought it's silly that people say: 'oh, you should finish

what you start.' That's dumb advice.

There was over 4 million books written last year alone.

Some of 'em are pretty good.

Don't waste your time on the bad ones.

We get a lot of kids to hate reading.

When I was in high school, I was forced to read 'The Scarlet Letter'

by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and no offense to the people that love the Scarlet

Letter, but basically the book is about this woman named Hester Prynne

and she commits adultery and she's forced to wear an A on her chest.

And I raised my hand in class and asked my teacher if I could wear a B on my chest

cause I was so bored reading that book.

And this is one of the things, I always have to point this

out to teachers, to parents.

Our research is really clear on this.

It doesn't matter what you read, what matters is how much you read.

It doesn't matter if you're reading James Joyce or James in the Giant Peach.

People who read more, read better.

I had a little boy, Kiara, when I was teaching second grade.

Kiara came into my classroom one day and Kiara's first grade

teacher told me: 'Kiara don't know nothing.' Thank you for that Hey, Mr.

Brassell, you see Barkley last night he had 18 points and 16 rebounds.

Thank you, Kiara.

From that day forward, every day after lunch, I'd sit him on my lap, we'd read

the Los Angeles Times sports section together, and guess what, Walter?

By the end of the year, Kiara was the best reader in my class.

Now, should he read things beyond just sports?

Yes, but sports are what got him interested in reading.

Figure out what they're interested in.

Then they'll continue that passion with, I mean, yeah, then I'll expose the kids

to poetry and to Shakespeare and I'm thinking of great Argentine authors.

One of my favorites is Isabel Allende.

I'll read it aloud.

Listen to how she wrote this sentence.

Isn't this beautiful?

I'm like: 'Let's listen to it in Spanish.

Because it's even prettier in Spanish.'

Which is also reaffirming.

'cause most of the students I used to teach were African American, Latino, and

while I thought it was important for my Latino students to learn English, I also

thought it was important for my African American students to learn Spanish.

And the way they're gonna do that is by being exposed to it and

hearing the beauty of the language.

I love that.

And the variety that we can get when we are reading and reading widely.

And that's one of the reasons I see people learning foreign languages.

It's because it gives us more, we get to experience more about different

cultures, different people, different countries that enrich our lives . And

that's lovely and that's wonderful.

Talking also about what's going on right now in terms of technology and AI.

You talked before about we can, do 45-minute presentations on Facebook

Live or we can do that on Instagram.

And there's also short form video and there are shrinking attention spans.

What are the skills that we can practice, especially for new speakers or people

who are interested in getting on stage or sharing a message in whatever

form, what can we practice now to stay relevant in the next 10 years?

Well, what you and I are doing right now is wonderful practice, doing podcasts.

I think now I just saw statistics over 5 million podcasts on the planet right now.

A lot of people think it's crazy that I do probably about 20 podcasts a week

and people think it's a waste of time.

I'm like, there's no way it is a waste of time?

Two things come outta doing every one of these podcasts.

First of all, it gives me reps. Gives me a chance to practice.

And second of all, a lot of people say: 'Well, that, that podcast

only has 10 subscribers.' I don't care how many, I just care Who.

If you only have one subscriber and it's the president of Argentina.

That's a pretty good subscriber to have.

It doesn't matter how many, just matters who.

What kind of influence you can have over that person.

And so that's why I'm practicing this.

I love practicing video.

Some people, they're scared of video you don't even have to worry it about now.

Now there's AI technology that all you have to do is film two minutes of

yourself and they can create it so it looks like you're actually speaking and

it can make you speak in every language on the planet, which is fascinating to me.

I don't use those because I actually like being on video, but I've worked

with plenty of clients that are nervous and they're not comfortable on video.

And so I'm not gonna give the names of the companies that I've used,

but you basically film a script for two minutes and then for the

rest of your lives it can create.

What do you want a video about, selling Tootsie Rolls?

It'll look like you're saying that, and it's fascinating.

I mean, AI is just, so quick now, Walter.

I'm amazed.

I hired a coach two years ago to teach me AI and most of the things

he taught me are already outta date because AI has advanced so far.

It's unbelievable.

And I'm a person... for all those people that are worrying about technology.

Everybody else is telling you the doom and gloom of technology.

I'm gonna tell you, I think technology is here to stay.

It's constantly gonna happen.

3000 years ago, the Greeks, they thought writing was the downfall of civilization.

What?

You can't memorize it?

That's ridiculous.

pay attention to the teacher anymore.

They got a chalkboard they get to look at.' And then it was, movies and

television and then it was computers are gonna just do everything.

I always say figure out the technology and embrace it.

And so I like to make things fun and so if my kids like doing TikTok

videos, I'm like: 'Okay, let's do it.

Let's do TikTok videos based on famous speeches by politicians around the world.

Let's do the Winston Churchill 'Never surrender' speech.

Let's do Eva Peron's 'Don't cry for me, Argentina' speech, something like that.

But I wanna make it fun.

And the reason I do that is I was just talking to a class the other

day and I said: 'Well, why don't you create your own company?'.

We can create a website and things like that.

And so rather than giving this kid a worksheet that they're gonna spend 20

minutes on and they have no interest in whatsoever, I'm encouraging them

to create their own company in which they're gonna spend a hundred hours of

their own time outside of school all excited about how to create the website,

how to create the YouTube videos.

Oh, I can do podcasts and stuff like that.

I'm not forcing 'em to do anything.

I read biographies like crazy, Walter, and the one thing that drives me nuts

about most biographies of successful people is the one thing most of 'em have

in common is they dropped outta school.

That tells me a lot about school.

What are we doing wrong?

I always tell people, anybody can teach.

It takes a lot of hard work to be a good teacher.

If you have 33 kids, all of 'em are different.

And you have to figure out what motivates each and every single one of these kids.

Some kids wanna perform in front of the class.

I work with a lot of English language learners, so not only are they

uncomfortable being on stage, but they're uncomfortable speaking in English.

And so that's why I started videotaping the kids.

I'm like: 'Oh, you can mess up again and again and then we'll just air

your video in front of the kids after it's exactly the way you want it.'

Well, that's a lot less stressful than actually having

to present live to everybody.

And then I found a lot of the kids like doing it that way.

Or we would do puppet shows where that way they don't even have to look at anybody.

They can do the puppets and the kids liked it that way.

I'm always trying to figure out different ways to utilize

the technology in my favor.

So people that freak out, it's like regular books versus eBooks.

People always ask me, which one should I use?

Yes.

Use 'em both.

I'm old.

I like physical books.

My wife, she likes her Kindle.

I'll give you three reasons why Kindle's wonderful.

First of all, my wife is from Singapore, and so every year when we fly back to

Singapore, while I'm packing 20 books in my suitcase, she's packing a one

pound, six ounce Kindle device that has access to the entire world's library.

Second of all, we both like to read in bed and it drives her crazy I always

have to turn on my lamp to read in bed.

She doesn't have that problem because her Kindle illuminates itself.

Third, I'm getting older now.

It's difficult now for me to see the words sometimes.

Never a problem on a Kindle.

You can adjust the font size to make it bigger.

And so again, the world is what you make of it.

It's all based on your own attitude.

I hear people, they gripe about social media.

I'm like: 'I guarantee if you think social media is the worst thing

ever, it is the worst thing ever.

That's what you believe.' There's no way I'm gonna change your belief on that.

If you think social media is the worst thing, then you have to

figure out a whole other plan.

I try to stay open-minded enough because people are different.

I found very early on if you put it to a song, I could remember it.

And so I like teaching songs to kids they can remember.

It doesn't work with every kid though.

So I try to figure out, well, what is it with this kid?

Oh, it's movement.

I have to make sure that there's movement to help this kid.

Oh, this kid just likes to read on their own, quietly.

They don't even really like to participate.

Alright, well I gotta do it with that kid that way.

Everybody's a little bit different.

When I used to teach kindergarten, I used to always ask my students,

I'm like, what's more important, your arms or your legs?

They look at me confused.

I'm like, here's the answer: They're both important.

Some of you like to talk, some of you like to think, some of you

like to... all of us are different and that's what makes us great.

And I think if we start embracing those differences rather than freaking out

about them, we'd be much better served.

That's wonderful.

And I know that you are known as the Jim Carey with a PhD and now

I'm starting to thinking of you as Robin Williams, like the 'Dead Poet's

Society' character with a PhD as well.

So you, you're both.

Thank you.

And yeah, and I so appreciate your sensitivity for where each student

or which one of your clients is in their learning journey, their

learning preferences, and may add one benefit to reading on a Kindle?

Yes, let's hear it.

When you're reading in a foreign language, you can look up words more easily, right?

Yeah, right there.

Nice and quick.

Nice and easy.

'cause you can also highlight.

I like writing in books.

Don't worry, I purchased them myself.

I write my books, but then I take photos of the pages with notes

on them and then I have all this.

It would be so much easier if I just had the Kindle.

'cause you can highlight and it has a note taker for you, so

you're smarter than me, Walter.

It's different.

And I've heard recently that a good strategy is to have three editions of

each, the books that you really like.

This person said: 'Get the paperback, get the Kindle, get the audiobook.

And use the three of them depending on what is more practical, more convenient.

I think I've done that and I want to do even more of that.

There are times when you're at the gym or when you're on the go, you

want to listen to the audiobook.

Maybe you can continue with where you left.

Once for information, twice for transformation when you're going

over and over on the same book.

It's great to have different formats available.

That's an excellent strategy.

I completely agree.

Some books I like listening to read aloud.

I just read the book 'Green Lights' by Matthew McConaughey, and then I

listened to the audiobook where he narrates it and I'm like: 'Oh, it's

different when you listen to it.' Because the way he speaks is a little

bit different than the way he writes.

I enjoyed the book, but I thought it was even more enjoyable

listening to him read it aloud.

I didn't ask you about the audiobook version of your books.

Are they available on audiobook?

The 'Misfits and Crackpots,' a lot of people are what I call lazy readers.

And so what I did is I turned it into a podcast where every week

I'm releasing another chapter.

It's about 10 to 15 minutes long.

You get to listen to a chapter every week.

So hopefully you'll be one of our avid listeners, Walter.

Thank you.

And that's very generous.

Sharing your audiobook on a podcast.

And is there anything else you'd like to share?

I know there's something that you have a, a gift to share with our

audience is there anything else you'd like to add to this conversation?

Well, I'll end the way I always used to end my class, whether I was teaching

my little ones or my older ones.

As the kids were walking out the door, I always reminded them: 'Remember, education

is valuable, but execution is priceless.

Knowledge is not power.

Only applied knowledge is power.

Knowing what the right thing to do and doing the right thing

are two very different things.

Let's go out, do the right thing and make this world a better place.'

And so thank you for being part of that solution.

Making the world a better place.

I just love all that you represent and I hope you keep on doing this and spreading

your good vibes around the planet.

Thank you.

That was a wonderful conversation and there's a gift that Danny prepared for us

and where they can find that... and tell, tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, so if you go to freestory guide.com, I'm gonna give everybody

their own well-crafted story blueprint.

What this is, is the exact process coach Jimmy and I take our clients

through in creating their own well-crafted story presentations.

What this does for you is it takes the guesswork out of.

Why do I put a story here and where do I put this information?

It takes that guesswork out and shows you exactly where to put these things.

And what this means for you is the peace of mind that you have a powerful

presentation, and it'll get your audience to take that next step,

whether it's to purchase your product or to subscribe to your podcast.

You can get that at freestoryguide.com.

And again, I'm just so grateful for you having me today on your show, Walter.

And just call whenever you need anything.

I'm a big believer in all that you do.

Thank you, Danny.

Great

having you.

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