[[:encoded, "Today we are honored today to have a very special guest to talk about a resource that you may want to take advantage of so you can be even more successful. Our guest today is Brian Collins. Brian is a Naval Academy graduate, and former submariner. He is also a man of some 30 years experience in television, theatre, movies, and public speaking. He's been in 'General Hospital', 'The Young and Restless', and many other soaps and series; performed on stage in Europe and the U.S.; and has given presentations in just about every major European country, in just about every major European language. And he’s done all this, without memorizing a single word. Here to tell us how he does it, and how you can, too, is Brian Collins.\n\nOne way to help you be successful is to leverage resources so you can be even more productive. There are many ways to leverage the many resources available to us. The Earprompter is one way to leverage a resource that can help us be even more successful. Enjoy the interview. I certainly did, and I also found him and the whole Earprompter resource very interesting. \n\nTake advantage of the complimentary special report on Keys to Working Less, Making More Money, and Having a More Balanced Life by going to www.AccountabilityCoach.com. To help keep you focused on these activities that produce the results you want, subscribe to The Accountability Coach Blog at www.AccountabilityCoachBlog.com. Invest in the 30-day Goal Achievement program so you can begin achieving your goals in the timeframe you want so you can have the life you desire. Get started by going to www.AccountabilityCoach.com and review all the resources and tools available to you. \n\nAim for what you want each and every day! \nAnne Bachrach\nThe Accountability Coach™\nAuthor of Excuses Don’t Count; Results Rule and Live Life with No Regrets. \nGet your copies today."]]
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I’m the author of many books, including, Excuses Don’t Count; Results Rule, Live Life with No Regrets, No Excuses, The Guide to Stopping Procrastination, The Power of Visualization, My Gratitude Journal, the Work Life Balance Emergency Kit, and The Roadmap To Success with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard, and more.
Aim for what you want each and every day!
Anne Bachrach
The Accountability Coach™
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(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to the Accountability Coach podcast, where we will discuss topics, ideas, questions, and issues relating to having a totally balanced and successful life. This is Ann Bakrak. One way you can be successful is to leverage resources so you can be even more productive. There are many ways to leverage the many resources available to us. Today, we are honored to have a very special guest to talk about a resource that you may wanna take advantage of so you can be even more successful. Our guest today is Brian Collins. Brian is a Naval Academy graduate, a former Submariner. He is also a man of some 30 years of experience in television, theater, movies, and public speaking. He's even been in general hospital, the young and restless, and many other soaps and series. He's performed on stage in Europe and the US, and has given presentations in just about every major European country, in just about every major European language. And he's done all this without memorizing a single word. Well, here to tell us how he does it and how you can do it too is Brian Collins. Brian, thank you for joining us today. - Ann, a great pleasure to join you today. - I think we'd like to start off our time together, first of all, by telling everybody here who's listening about the ear prompter itself and how you actually were able to do all these things without memorizing a single word. - Well, the ear prompter is a magical tool. It's basically the new paradigm in public speaking. There were 3,000 years of memorizing, sweating, losing sleep, and spending months preparing. And now there is the ear prompter, a couple of hours of preparation, giving your presentation word for word perfectly every time, no memorizing, no notes, no fear. Basically, it works like this. You record your presentation on a small recorder. We have a full range of kits for doing this. You record your presentation on a small recorder, put it in your pocket, and it plays back through a tiny, wireless earpiece about the size of your little fingernail. Nobody knows you're using it. All you do is start the recorder, listen to what you have recorded, and repeat what you're hearing, much as you did as a kid mimicking your friends. It's not a new skill. I've been teaching it for 25 years, and everyone has gotten it. The young, the old, the timid, the bold, non-speakers, speakers, everybody has gotten it. It's about a three or four hour workshop. So all you do is repeat what you're hearing, staying about a second or two behind what you're hearing, which again, as I said, is what you do as a kid mimicking your friends, and you continue doing that until your friend either ran away or punched you out. So again, this is not a new skill. It's very easy to do. - Well, what comes to mind for me is, is it hard to be able to listen and talk at the same time? I understand mimicking when we were younger. I get that, but as an adult, and let's say I have to give a presentation or I have to stand up at a meeting, is it hard for me to be able to listen and talk at the same time? - When we say, when I use this term, listen and talk, everybody jumps on that right off the bat and says, how can you do that? How can you do that? Well, again, we did this as kids mimicking our friends and we didn't rehearse it. We didn't lose sleep over it. We didn't have any anxiety over it. We just listened to our friend start to talk, gave him a second or two. And generally, a second between a second and two seconds is what I call the comfort zone. We'd give them a second or two to start talking and then we'd start repeating what they were hearing staying, a second or two behind. So when you say, listening and talking at the same time, it sounds like something new. When you say mimicking your friends like you did as a kid, you understand and you realize that it's something old, something you've already done, a skill you already possess. Generally, when we start our class, we start with that part and in 10 minutes, everybody goes, "Oh, that's all it is." And then we proceed with the rest of the course, working on technique and on revising scripts and proper recording techniques. So the easiest part is just listening and talking and that takes 10 minutes. That's really not a problem. Well, this sounds really intriguing. So as a business person, I know sometimes I have to do meetings or various programs where I do have to speak in front of a group and I think what is it, the fear of public speaking is one of the number one things most people are afraid of. So I think that relates to meetings as well, not just on a big stage, but I think a lot of us have a little bit of a fear standing up to a group of any size and maybe speaking. So give me an example of how or when I might use something like this. Well, let me comment on what you said earlier. The fear of public speaking is definitely in the top five and fear of public speaking is sort of a generality. The real fear involved in this is fear of forgetting the words. That's the real fear, fear of looking like a fool up on stage and with the ear-prompter, you never do that. You always have the words right there available to you. So you can focus on connecting with your audience, which is really the important thing, connecting with your audience. I can't give you an exact percentage, but when I was doing the memorizing thing long ago and everybody does the memorizing thing, basically, even when I was up presenting or up acting, up filming, there was a certain percent of my energy that was involved in fear. Like, OK, what was that connecting word between paragraph four and paragraph five? OK, there's a subtext going on right while you're acting or presenting. With the ear-prompter, 100% of your energy can be used in connecting with the audience, on making eye contact, on gesturing, on moving, using body language rather than sort of wasting some of that on fear. So I found that to be extraordinarily effective. And business people, what is it worth to give the perfect presentation? I mean, somebody once told me, and I thought this was funny because it was a paraphrase of a commercial I'd say, and it was, you know, equipment, you know, $800, training, $400, the perfect presentation, priceless. When you give the perfect presentation, whether it's to a group of people you want to become your clients, what's it worth to get a large number of those clients? If you want investors with your company, what's it worth to have the perfect presentation, a jaw-dropping presentation, making eye contact and connecting with your audience, every time? What is that worth? It can be worth tens of millions of dollars. So the perfect presentation is really a huge financial resource as well. When you speak perfectly, when jaws drop, when people are willing to do what you want them to do because of the power of your words, that is really priceless. That is available to every business person how it used to be the actor's secret. It's available to every business person how every business person can give the perfect presentation word for word as they wrote it. And as we all know, how you say a thing is hugely important. When you write the perfect presentation, when you take a week or so to write exactly what you want to say and it's based on facts and it continues on facts. In fact, until the audience finally reaches the one inescapable conclusion that you want them to reach. You want to give that presentation like you wrote it because it was written with great detail and great care and a plan. If you start digressing up there, go off the point and finally come back, you may leave your audience not knowing how you reached the point or maybe even what that point was. So being able to give your presentation word for word as you wrote it is hugely, hugely important and hugely effective. And then I'm asked sometimes, well, what if it runs away with me, what if I have to stop and answer questions? We have a remote pause button and you can put it anywhere in your body so that nobody knows you're actually activating this pause button. So if somebody asks a question and you're in the middle of your presentation, all you do is touch this pause button. And again, nobody knows you're using it. Answer the question, elaborate on a point, sip from your cup of coffee, whatever you want to do and then when you're ready to continue and the questions have been answered, the elaboration has been done. You just press the pause button again and you continue right on point. So you never get diverted from the main point and you always give your presentation perfectly. - Right, I think you've really touched on a lot of really key things that maybe I hadn't even thought of before. So once you don't have to think about the words because you've written them, you know the words are good, once you don't have to think about that, you can think about connecting with the audience. You don't have that fear of forgetting the words. So the words are no longer an issue. - Truly. - So you then say, okay, all my non-verbals and all the other things that are really almost more important than the words themselves, you know, come into play which helps me be more effective at say I'm presenting or want, you know, a proposal to get some business or I'm trying to get money to support my business. You know, whether you're in a non-profit situation or any situation as a business person, when you don't have to really think about the words or the fear of forgetting the words, you can really then connect with the audience and do all the non-verbal things that really can put you in an even better position to get the business or to work with people that you want to work with. - Truly, I'm in total agreement with that. Using the ear prompt, it changes the whole paradigm of public speaking and presenting. - I mean, there are a large number of ways of giving a presentation. There are five basically, you can memorize it, you can read it, you can wing it from an outline and that includes PowerPoint. You can use a teleprompter like the presidents do and the news people do. Or you can use sort of the fifth dimension, the fifth thing, which is the earprompter. Going through, memorizing it, some people can, very, very few, but a few people can memorize things and that's a great way to give a presentation. Using the earprompter, look just like that to the audience and it's way, way easier to take way less time to do and you can give different presentations every day and be perfect and right on point and never lose any sleep in preparing for those. So memorizing used to be the only way and it's the hardest way and the most nervous making way. Then you can read it, which a lot of people do, you'll see almost all the politicians looking down and up, down and up. So at least half the time the audience is looking at the top of their heads rather than into their eyes. So that's become acceptable because it's often the only way a politician can do it. They may have two or three presentations to give a day, a couple of days a week. The only thing they can do is read it. And we all know how ineffective that is. A little story here. One very high ranking member, a cabinet member of the Clinton administration, took the earprompter because he was doing two or three speeches a day as I mentioned a couple days a week and he asked me, he said, I don't understand why they even listened to me or asked me to speak. Well, I understood this because of the power of his position. So he took the earprompter. The next week he gave a presentation and a gentleman in the audience came up to him and said, sir, I heard you speak a month ago and you're not the same speaker you were riveting today. And this gentleman looked this guy in the eye and said, thank you, didn't they know anything else but thank you. And that's been the case often for people using earprompters. It changes how they are perceived out there. To continue with this particular story, about a month or two later, the movers and shakers from his state contacted him and said, when you're done here in the cabinet, would you like to run for governor in our state or senator, whatever you want? He had become so powerful and so mesmerizing that the whole world opened to him. So that's probably the most visible guy since confidentiality is part of what I sell. I can't tell you who, but this happens all the time. And I've taught lawyers and ministers and business people and politicians that it's a life changer. - Oh, it sounds great. As a small business owner or entrepreneur, can you give me a few examples of where or when or how I might be able to use this in my business to help me? - Yes, there are a number of examples. A lot of corporate people go on speaking tours for one. Even small companies are looking for money, looking for investors, looking for clients. Often, not even in business, but also in social settings, at charitable events, at political events, people are asked to give presentations. When you get up there and absolutely mesmerize people, your future looks brighter and brighter with every word. This is a thing that can change your life, not only in the business, but out of the business. Giving the perfect presentation, you never know who's in the audience. Giving a perfect presentation every single time you speak. Gets you a reputation in a hurry and talking weeks and months, not years and decades. Gets you a good reputation in a hurry and pretty soon you're the go-to guy. And your visit as your visibility expands, your business grows. So, the earprompter is good for any presentation to any number of people, any time. Not only that, I was giving presentations in Europe on a speaking tour for a company. I think eight major countries, 10 cities. It was Stockholm and Oslo and Helsinki, Paris, Madrid, London, Munich, Frankfurt, Milan. And after the first two, and everybody an hour and a quarter, in a huge setting in the best ballroom and the best hotel in every country, in every capital. And after the first two presentations and I did one every four or five days, I got bored with it. So, I decided I would do part of the presentation in the language of the country I was in. So, I wrote out in English what I wanted to say in each country it was about a four or five minute opening and had the concierge in the hotel I was staying at, translated for me. And then I would re-recorded on my recorder doing it more phonetically. And so, I would open for four or five minutes in Paris. I opened, of course, in French and then in Madrid and Spanish and then in Germany and German and Italian in Italy. And it established huge rapport, huge rapport with the industrialists and major corporate people in those countries. I was mistaken for a native speaker in Paris and that was like the feather in my cap. I thought, "How could that possibly be in Paris?" But that's what happened. So, basically, with the ear-prompter, you can give a presentation, and not only yours, but anybody else's presentation. Anywhere, anytime, about anything, in just about any language. This is a magical, magical tool. - Wow, it sounds like it. Earlier, you had talked a little bit about a workshop or something for three or four hours. So, how long does this actually take to learn how to use this and how do I attend a program or how do I do that? - Well, we have a half-day workshop and usually it's a little less than half-day. It's three hours, but it can be three to four hours. That is one way, and I always like, when I go to a training, I like to go live. I like to go and actually be with a person, because then any bad habits I might tend to develop are quickly squelched, and that's how I feel when I teach the ear-prompter. I'd rather do it in person, and it's a three to four hour course, and you can get good in that three or four hours. I think people use this the next day to give a presentation. So, this isn't one of those. Well, study with me for a couple of weeks and work really hard at it for six months, and maybe down the line, you'll be able to get the good presentation. This is, take it today, use it tomorrow, kind of thing. And another way, we have an award-winning, interactive DVD training, because when I get a call from Germany or France or Miami or New York, they're not coming to San Diego to take this course, it's just too extensive. So, they get this award-winning, interactive DVD and work with that for a day or two. We also have a manual that comes with it, and they can get up to speed on their own, probably within a week or two. So, live training one-on-one or one-on, I think the most I've ever trained at one time was about 10 or 12, because it's hugely interactive. But that's the best way, but in lieu of that, our interactive DVD works, it just takes a little bit longer time, because you're not getting corrected and encouraged face-to-face on a minute-by-minute basis. - What's the investment for me to get something like this, Brian? - The ear-promptor kit, which includes extraordinarily modified recorder, either digital or micro cassette, depending on what people want. And two, remote, a high-profile remote, and a low-profile remote, which you can wear anywhere on your body, and an earpiece, and just a neck-loop connector. So, nothing is visible. That kit is about $800. We occasionally have sales 10 to 15% off, but not so much anymore. The training is $300 per person, and I teach up to 10 people at a time. But even if one person comes to me, I just do a one-on-one for $300. That's the, and as I mentioned earlier, what one of my clients said, the equipment $800, the course $300, the perfect presentation, priceless. So, it's really an investment in your future. And people who give presentations or do road shows, or do conventions, you know, make that end about a day. So, they have been invested in their future. It just changes the whole paradigm. When I first started this, and this was 25 years ago, and there's no guarantee of this, but when I first started my income tripled in a year, and the demand for my services was huge. And that continues today. You have an advantage when you can do this. If somebody calls me, I've stood in for freaked out CEOs at the last minute. One time I was at a convention for a company, not giving, you know, 10 or 12 presentations today, which I normally do, but just being around for them. And at the very end of this convention, the CEO had to give a five-minute presentation to a press conference in which he expected maybe a dozen to 15 people. About 15 minutes before the press conference started, the PR guy handed the CEO this five-minute script, and he started shaking the CEO. He just freaked out. It was five-minute, he could have read it, and he freaked out. He just couldn't handle it. And the PR guy with whom I'd worked before said, "Do you want Brian to give you a presentation?" And the CEO just laughed, and the PR guy said he can do it. Anybody within her printer can do it. So he gave me the presentation. I didn't even get to modify it. I just recorded it while being pulled into the auditorium. I had no rehearsal time, and this is really not advised, but it was a thing that had to be done, and it had to be done right away. So I got up and gave his welcoming presentation for this press conference, and there were over 200 people there. And I gave it perfectly, but I sweated a lot, 'cause I had not rehearsed. So you can give your presentation, or anybody's presentation, with very little prep time. You can actually be anybody. You can also make your engineers who really know this stuff, and your scientists who really know this stuff, you can make them the best presenters in the company. Normally, the presentations are given by a PR guy, a marketing guy, somebody who's used to speaking, but now anybody can give a perfect presentation. Even your most techy guys can give the perfect presentation. - Well, that's great. I mean, whether I'm looking for money for a nonprofit group, or I'm at a networking function, or I have to just have a meeting with a small group of people and come across very clearly and succinctly so I connect with the audience. There's just a lot of uses for this, for a very minimal investment is what I'm hearing, and that's really a great tool to leverage. So again, I'm a firm believer in leveraging resources that are available to us to help us be even more successful. And there are so many tools available to us for people who are in a position where they do have to be in front of a group of people, no matter how small, no matter what the reason is, this certainly would be a tool to leverage, and a resource that would be a terrific advantage for them to help them be successful. - Yes, and one use, which I have not mentioned, is to give other seminars. I give a half day public speaking workshop, "Trepidation to Ovation." And I change it every time I've been doing this for 15 years, and I've given it, I don't know, many, many hundreds of times, and I change it every time because changing it doesn't involve remembering anything. I put the whole four hour course on the ear prompter, and it's a very interactive course, so I'm pausing 40 or 50 times during this half day workshop to be interactive, and no one ever knows I'm pausing or restarting it, so it's totally transparent. You can use this to give a presentation to one person if you need to have it be perfect, or to 10 or 15 people. I teach groups of CEOs, 10 to 15, and nobody knows I'm using the ear prompter to give this other workshop because it's that transparent. - Well, Brian, I really appreciate you spending your time and your expertise with us today, and sharing a very innovative resource with us. For those of you who are interested in learning more about this remarkable ear prompter tool, or any of Brian's services, please feel free to email him at brian@earprompter.com, or you can certainly go to his website at www.earprompter.com, or Brian, if it's okay, can we give out your 800 number if people wanted to call you directly? - I would love that, and that is 800-776-5376, and if you're away from your Rolodex or your Blackberry, it's actually 800 spokesman, S-P-O-K-E-S-M-A-N. It's a couple letters too many, but it works perfectly, and I just wanna thank you for giving me the opportunity to be on your show and to speak with you. - Well, we appreciate you being here today, and my hope, of course, for our time together, is that you got some value and ideas, or two or three, and a new resource to help you be even more successful. To help you stay focused on the activities that produce results that you want, feel free to subscribe to the Accountability Coach blog at www.accountabilitycoachblog.com and invest in the 30-day goal achievement self-study course so you can begin achieving your goals in the timeframe that you want so you can have the life that you desire. Get started by going to www.accountabilitycoach.com and review all the free resources available to you. Aim for what you want, each and every day. Until next time, make it a great day. Today and every day. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
[[:encoded, "Today we are honored today to have a very special guest to talk about a resource that you may want to take advantage of so you can be even more successful. Our guest today is Brian Collins. Brian is a Naval Academy graduate, and former submariner. He is also a man of some 30 years experience in television, theatre, movies, and public speaking. He's been in 'General Hospital', 'The Young and Restless', and many other soaps and series; performed on stage in Europe and the U.S.; ...
