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Dave Yewman Joins Us On The Steve Jobs Inspired Join Up Dots Podcast
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Introducing Dave Yewman
Dave Yewman is today’s guest joining us on the Steve Jobs inspired powerhouse podcast Join Up Dots.
He is a man who started his life in the UK and now calls the world his home.
Or at least Portland Oregon, USA is where he lays his head.
Starting his journey in Slough, Berkshire….think Ricky Gervais’s creation David Brent, or Sacha Baron Cohens Ali Gi and you are getting the idea of his roots.
But there is no doubt that unlike the character Brent, who thinks he is a great communicator but often fails miserably with comic effect, our guy has created a very different professional persona for himself.
Instead of tripping over his own tongue, our guys opens his mouth and finds the gold everytime.
He is a born communicator, and loves using the spoken word as a laser targeted weapon towards success.
How The Dots Joined Up For Dave
Although, a friend of his’s 11-year-old son Aaron asked, “What does your Dad do?” Aaron thought for a minute, then said, “He teaches people how not to say ‘um.’”
Which I guess is a simple summary, but nails it too.
In the past 10+ years our guest has coached CEOs, professional athletes, tech startup founders, engineers, creative designers and pretty much everyone in between in what makes a wonderful presentation.
Could this be switching off power-point, and actually talking to people directly?
Or perhaps, embracing the world of storytelling to inspire the attendees listening to you speak?
Well we will find our during the show.
But this former newspaper reporter and columnist, now speaks regularly to groups about how to use clear, concise, compelling language as a strategic weapon when dealing with reporters, employees, sales prospects, shareholders, and consumers.
You use the right words that change your situation, empower you and…well stops the “Umms”
So why did he want to leave this amazing country that we call the UK, and depart the natural oasis of beauty that we call Slough, Berkshire?
And when he is standing up, and presenting, does he think “Man, this is easy, I am so in my sweet-spot” or does he have to work hard for every “Umm and Ahh” he stops in its tracks ?
Well let’s find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots, with the one and only Mr Dave Yewman.
Show Highlights
During the show we discussed such weighty subjects with Dave Yewman such as:
Why Dave strongly recommends signing up for toastmasters.org for just $22 to bench-test your public speaking before having to do it in the real world.
How he built his business from scratch based on 100% referrals, sharing how it took time to get going, but by being consistent, professional and unique he starting creating income.
Why PowerPoint presentations are such a killer of inspiring content, and how most companies build their content backwards instead of thinking “What is the message I really want to share?”
And lastly…….
How at his core he has discovered that coaching is what lights him up inside. He loves seeing the improvement in someones speaking, and performance .
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You can also check our extensive podcast archive by clicking here – enjoy
Full Transcription Of Dave Yewman Interview
Intro [0:00]
When we’re young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here’s your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph.
David Ralph [0:26]
Yes, hello there everybody. Hello, listeners. This is this is English day to day I’ve been recording all day and literally, every single person I’ve recorded with is English. Now some of the English guys say to me, I love my country so much. I’m so proud of my country. I want to stay there. And then others have just disappeared and just gone off to pastures new. like today’s guest. I don’t know what’s wrong with the United Kingdom but we’ll find out. We’ll find out because he’s a man who started he’s got up in the UK and now calls the world he’s home or at least Portland, Oregon, USA is I am Wherever I believe he lays his head now starting his journey in slouch in Berkshire in the United Kingdom and think wiki gervaise creation David Brent, or Sasha Baron Cohen, Zadie G, and you’re getting the idea of these roots. But there’s no doubt but unlike the character brain who thinks he’s a great communicator, but often fails miserably with comic effect, our guy has created a very different professional persona for himself. Instead of tripping over his own tongue, our guy opens his mouth and finds the gold every time he’s a bomb communicator, and loves using the spoken word as laser targeted weapons towards success. Although a friend of his 11 year old son aven, asked, What does your dad do and I haven’t thought for a moment and said, he teaches people how not to say, um, which I guess is a simple summary. But now is it too. Now in the past 10 plus years, our guest has coached CEOs, professional athletes, tech startup founders, engineers, creative designers, and pretty much everyone in between in what makes a wonderful presentation. Could this be switching off PowerPoint and actually talking talking to people directly, I don’t know, or perhaps Embracing the World of storytelling to inspire the attendees listening to hear you speak well, we’ll find out during the show. But this former newspaper reporter and columnist now speak directly to groups about how to use clear, concise, compelling language as a strategic weapon when dealing with reporters, employees, sales prospects, shareholders and consumers you use the right words that change your situation empower you and well stops the thumbs. So let’s get to it. Why did he want to leave this amazing country that we call the United Kingdom and depart a natural oasis of beauty that we call slouch in box here and when he standing up and presenting does he think man this is easy? I’m so my sweet spot, or does he have to work hard for every arm and arm but he stops in its tracks? Well, let’s find out as we bring onto the show to start Join Up Dots with the one and only Mr. Dave Yewman. How are you Dave?
Dave Yewman [2:59]
I am Well, thanks for the nice intro. I have indeed escaped the United Kingdom and come over to America. And the answer is a simple one. It was for a go. I go home. Yeah, absolutely. And she is American. So there you go. So now I have I’m a foreigner in my own house. I have two American kids. And they look at me and they say you have a funny accent that to which my response is no, you have a funny accent. So that’s an ongoing debate in the Yewman household.
David Ralph [3:27]
And I must admit, I don’t think the sort of way of explaining I chased a girl home is the right way. That sounds a bit serial killer stalker, he was that the method that you went for?
Dave Yewman [3:40]
Pretty much the stalker method. Yeah, I met a summer camp in the United States because in my previous life, I was a basketball player. So being six five, only has limited benefits. And one of them is that you get to run around a basketball court. So when I was a young lad, I played basketball for Crystal Palace. And that led to playing basketball in the United States. And that led to a summer camp job where I taught basketball with little kids. And then one day there was this very cute blonde who taught volleyball to the same little kids at the same camp in upstate New York. And essentially, yeah, I followed her home, but she did acquiesce. It wasn’t that I followed a home without permission. I was invited that did sound a little stalkery now that I think about it.
David Ralph [4:25]
Now we did. You say you need to use clear and concise language. Otherwise your message gets confused. Dave.
Dave Yewman [4:32]
That is a very good point. I should hang on. Let me write that down. That’s a very good point.
David Ralph [4:38]
The master the master has turned
Dave Yewman [4:41]
Yes, it’s kind of funny. You know, the, when we’re talking about getting to the point and telling stories. I was at a client site yesterday and it’s really interesting when you put a video camera on somebody, and you have them tell their story or a story of any sort. It could be a personal story, it could be a work story usually to work story, because that’s why I’m there. You know, the big boss man or the Big Boss Lady has to give a big speech. And they’re very nervous about it. And everyone always is when they give a public speech, and when you turn the video camera on them, and then they start talking, you know, maybe they’ll just waffle and say a whole bunch of arms and ORS and ours, or perhaps they just won’t even get to the point. And when you can tell them obvious things. My dad used to say that I got paid for pointing out the bleeding obvious. Yeah, which is very, very true. Right, get to the point, tell a story. And when you’re when you’re done, get off the stage. You know, there’s a saying in presentation coaching is Be bold, be brief, be gone. And there’s a reason that TED talks are only 18 minutes long. You can say an awful lot in 18 minutes. But what happens is people just get up there and the PowerPoint kicks in. As you mentioned. You know, PowerPoint is a neither a blessing or a curse, but it gets used for evil when it really shouldn’t. And that makes Some go long and long. And there’s lots of acronyms and lots of jargon and suddenly half the audience is asleep. And even though they’re the CEO or senior VP, they’re thinking, well, what’s wrong? Why isn’t my message resonant? Writing with these people were so well, because they went on too long. They didn’t tell any stories. They didn’t get to the point. And in the audience, when people walk out, they’ll say, Oh, yeah, what was Bill’s speech about? And the guy will go, I have no idea. But I do know it was an hour of my life that I’ll never get back. I do know that. So it’s a universal problem, which is why I’ve been firmly ensconced in Portland, Oregon for the past 24 years now, helping people get to the point and tell stories. And isn’t that really the most obvious thing in the world when it comes to communicating?
David Ralph [6:43]
But it does seem strange, and I know that fear of public speaking but I always once I was out there, I felt calm, and I’ve been public speaking for years and years and years, and I used to teach people how to do public speaking and not to to your level, I used to do it sort of internally. So if somebody had to get up and do a presentation or best man speech, that’s always the main one. But you know, I used to sort of teach her how to do it. And the way that I used to do it was I used to get them to throw out the PowerPoint, and just have like an image, but they could look at and then talk about, because that was my big hates you used to go to it. And you’ve seen this as well, Dave, where you go there, and somebody gives you the handouts of the PowerPoint, and then puts the PowerPoint behind them, and then read off the PowerPoint and you go, Well, number one I can read, I can see that you can read and the subject is boring. gets to the point. Why is there that big sort of failure? Is it just a comfort blanket? Or is it just security? Why people wrap themselves around? Because I rarely go into a pub and see anybody have a conversation with PowerPoint behind them? And they’re there for four hours?
Dave Yewman [7:53]
Yeah, the people who use PowerPoint in a pub don’t get invited out very often.
David Ralph [7:56]
No, no, no.
Dave Yewman [7:58]
No, I think the major problem means that most people and most companies and most coaches develop their presentations backwards. what they’ll do is, let’s say we work at the same company. And we’re getting ready for a presentation. And I say, Oh, you know what, I’m going to grab some of David’s slides, and then some of Susan’s slides, and I’ve got that slide from the sales meeting that I did a couple weeks ago. So I’m going to pull together my presentation. And what ends up is I have 57 slides. And essentially, it’s a big blob of information, but there’s no discernible point. There’s no story. And there really is no way of knowing just what the heck I’m saying when I get up there on stage. So what we counselled people to do is to throw out the PowerPoint, as you mentioned, and just stand up and start talking. Because when they do that, and when they do that on video, something interesting happens. They get up and they start talking and perhaps they get to the point maybe they don’t usually they don’t, but after a couple of minutes on video, they’ll say something That is incredibly interesting. Invariably, this happens because the the CEOs and the senior VPS that we work with, they’re very smart people. But they, they give very dumb presentations because of PowerPoint. So when you remove that crutch, and it has become a crutch across all kinds of companies, when you remove the crutch, they forced they’re essentially naked verbally, they just stand up. And they are able to say a couple of things. And then about two or three minutes in, they’ll tell a great story. And and I’ll say to them, oh my god, why don’t you just stop that? That’s an awesome story. Why don’t you just start with that story, and then when they play when we play the video back, and in many ways what we are when we play the footage back, it’s excruciating ly uncomfortable for them. Because no one likes being videotaped. Number one, and even more excruciating is to sit and watch it. Why some six five English guy pauses it and makes fun of you like What’s that? I’m you’ve been talking for three minutes. You haven’t said anything yet. And then they tell a story. And you think oh my god, that’s fantastic. And then They see it. And they think, Oh, yeah, that is that is pretty good. Well, and they’ll say things like, Oh, you know what, I don’t even need the slides, I’ll just put up the logo, and I’ll talk to it, or just have a picture of a flower. And I’ll talk about how the strategy is blossoming or something like that. So we have single image single point slides. And suddenly they start to regain control of the narrative, because what I see is that PowerPoint is doing the driving and the speaker is the passenger. And that’s completely backwards. We want to have the speaker up there think Steve Jobs or thing you know, Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, somebody who’s in complete command, and then the slides are coming along for the ride. They’re a visual aid, but it goes to how people develop presentations. The thing we coach people to do all the time is to stand up and talk out the presentation because to your point, that’s how they’re going to deliver it. They’re not just going to email a slide deck to people and then stand there and read it, although that’s what happens sometimes. So we counselled them to get up. Start Talking and then we’ll make adjustments as we watch the video. And when we do that over time, what happens is something profound is they start getting very emphatic on stage, they have stage presence, or sometimes called executive presence, where they look completely at ease completely comfortable. And they’re just walking around on stage telling some stories getting right to the point. And at the end of the presentation, not only do people walk out and go, Wow, that was fabulous. They go, Oh, I understood, you know, days. Point, precisely, he said this, and then you can go and you can take some action, because frankly, people don’t buy what they don’t understand. So if they don’t get your presentation, they’re not going to do anything. They’re not going to buy into the new strategy. They’re not going to sign up for your newsletter. They’re not going to buy whatever it is you’re selling. And this this culture of PowerPoint, really is a cancer. When we do PowerPoint over and over and over and statistically, I think there’s something like 30 million PowerPoint decks delivered Every day, it’s a crazy, crazy ubiquity of software, which is great for Microsoft. But the problem is it’s taken hold of corporate presentations. And I see this whether it’s doctors, attorneys, technologists, I work with a bunch of very hip companies where you would think that they would do very creative presentations, but they don’t they default to PowerPoint, and that’s a big problem. And we got to fix it if people are going to have a good time when they’re up there speaking, which is possible. But it is a little nerve wracking when you get up there, as you pointed out,
David Ralph [12:32]
no, absolutely. I can see that. Now. The thing that interests me and it’s the whole theme of Join Up Dots is not really talking about your specialism but how you got there, because you’ve obviously been on a journey you have come from the United Kingdom, you was a basketball player, you’ve been started chasing skirt, which we’ve all done in our time. But you took it to, you know, you know, left was that you shouldn’t have done it. Let’s be honest with you. Now what if you Going back to that boy in slow who was coming out of high school or secondary school, as we called it in the United Kingdom? Would you have been able to say, yeah, this is this is where I’m going to end up by the time I’m 30 or 40. Could you have seen that where there were plans? Or were you just making up as you went along?
Dave Yewman [13:19]
The no clue that I would have ended up where I am today. Yeah, I still I still go back to that boy, from what it was Ashford which is near flower near stain, and allergy territory, but it’s still staggering to me that I get to walk the holes, you know, places like Google and sort of yell at their executives and put them on camera where this is a boy from Ashford, who really just grew up playing basketball and didn’t really care about anything else. Not in a million years what I called that, but there are I was thinking about it before the show and there are a couple of things that sort of connected those dots. And one of them was having sort of a passion for basketball. Because what that led to was playing for Crystal Palace. And what that led to because one of the coaches of Crystal Palace knew a guy who needed a small forward, the University of Maine, which is which is a tiny school in downeast, Maine. So I ended up going into basketball. That was Crystal Palace, then I ended up in Maine, of all places, playing basketball there for a couple of years. And then when I was on break from basketball during the summer, when college was out, that’s when I met my wife, who’s gonna kill me if she ever listens to this and here’s your reference to chasing skirt, but that’s a separate issue. I dug myself into that grave. And when I met my wife, then I transferred to her school, which was the University of Northern Colorado, in Greeley which is just outside Denver, because that’s where she went. So in my stalker artsy type thing, I followed her there and I walked on to the basketball team. A walk on is a term basically you don’t have a scholarship, you just show up. And if you’re good enough, then you make it. So walked onto the basketball team that played there for a while. And while I was in northern Colorado, I started getting into journalism. And that was really the first connection, the first dot that I joined up. What happened was I needed a job. So I went to the school newspaper, which is called the mirror. And I had some writing that I done, they wanted samples. So I gave them some samples, and they hired me. Now that sounds very glamorous, but it wasn’t theirs. You know, I think they paid us 20 cents a word or something ridiculously cheap like that. But turns out they just needed writers. It wasn’t that I was such a great writer. They just needed writers. And what happened was I got into journalism. Now journalism, of course, as anybody who’s had a communications degree, listening to this knows, is all about getting to the point and telling a story in a very limited amount of time or space. You know, something on the BBC or CNN out here is going to be 90 seconds and you have to tell a story in 90 seconds or if it’s in a newspaper. It’s Gonna be 300 words. So how do you write about something that is very complicated in a very short amount of time, and you get right to the point. So I didn’t know it at the time. But what I was doing at the newspaper was essentially learning how to do what I do now. Which was get to the point, tell a story and take a complicated topic and break it down into its core elements.
David Ralph [16:22]
So it is Do you ever bore anyone day with your passion for the subject? I’ve become fascinated about this recently, where you find something that is in your sweet spot, it is something that you’re hugely passionate about, can you sort of over deliver? Can you actually become so precise that you actually become boring on the subject? I’m a classic one. Don’t get me started on podcasting, because I will bore the pants off here. Are you the same?
Dave Yewman [16:51]
I think so. I think we all have that potential. And the the thing that I coach people to do and I’ll try and do it myself is to check in every now and You know, when you’re giving a speech, let’s say, and you see that the audience is a little flat, maybe a little low energy, and then you look at somebody in the crowd and you go, does that make sense? You see what I mean? But there’s sort of nodding and smiling and engaging, just that little check in can give you a sense that you’re not actually pouring them, putting them to sleep it, it would be sort of ironic if a professional communicator bore the pants off people, but there’s definitely the potential there. Just like there’s the potential to use, you know, crappy PowerPoint slides. We all have it in us. It’s having the discipline to not do it, I guess, I guess you’d have to ask my wife. Whether I do that or not. She’s the one who’s with me, you know, 90% of the time,
David Ralph [17:37]
when I was doing presentations and sort of thinking back on my feet here, I remember sort of I used to walk out and I used to go right, okay, this is not your normal type of presentation, there is going to be audience participation. So if you want to have a sleep asleep now, but if you want to, you know, if you look down at the floor, I will actually choose you for a question. And so if you look at me in the eye, I’m going to choose you as well. So there’s not one person safe. And I always used to sort of set it up as bad. And after a while people just knew Oh, I better pay attention, you know, and it was far more engaging. I used to get people moving around changing position and actually becoming part of the presentation. Is that too much game show? Or is that the way to do it?
Dave Yewman [18:21]
It depends how it’s done. As in most things in life, it’s all in the execution. But I think there’s a bargain going on between the speaker and the audience. You know, a lot of audiences today, they all have phones in their pocket, and they all have the attention span of texting teenagers. And if you don’t get to the point, and you don’t sort of arrest their attention, grab them from the very first minute outcome, the phones and everybody’s sitting in the room, checking your Facebook or Snapchat or something and you’re speaking and there’s no connection. They’re just making noise in a room. So I think one side of it is that the audience has to be grabbed and basically grabbed metaphorically by the throat and said, Listen to me. This is important. Here’s what I have to say. The other side of it is that the speaker can’t just go on and on and on. Because if they do that, then they’re going to lose them. And then they think, Oh, you know what a bunch of rude jerks. They’re not listening to my speech and the audience is thinking, God, this guy’s boring. I should just say something interesting. So there’s a negative death spiral going on there and what you’re describing about your presentations, that’s a very non traditional type of presentation, which is great, and that’s probably why it breaks through. A lot of people today do the same old stuff. And they use same old slides and they use a bunch of jargon and acronyms, you know, I do a lot of work in technology and crashed everything is Oh, it’s a robust, scalable, best of breed, leverage, operationalize technology that’s going to be monetized. I just tell me what it does. Yeah, I don’t care about all that stuff and doesn’t monetize me make money. Can’t we just speak English? Yeah, and it makes me crazy. And when we when we beat the stupid out of them, so to speak, and they tell stories and they get to the point Suddenly, the crowds in engaged and I think, Oh, this feels great. This is awesome. This is the best speech I’ve ever given. But it takes work. And you said in the intro, you know, do you just get up there and sort of get into a flow naturally? No, no one ever does right now people have personalities that lend themselves to being on stage, extroverts, people that stage training, things like that. And introverts can be very good at public speaking, but they just have to practice a little bit more. And it’s one of the great basically misperceptions about speaking Well, in public when you see a master communicator, you know, someone like Steve Jobs, someone like Obama, there’s hours and hours and hours of practice that have gone in, but they’ve gone behind the scenes, behind closed doors in a room, probably with a video camera and someone like me, and they’re making adjustments, and they go over and over and over it. And then when they get on stage, for the big performance, it seems like they’re completely natural and comfortable. You know, Steve Jobs used to lock himself in the Moscone Centre in San Francisco for two Do days to practice for those 45 minute Macworld keynotes two days? Now, that’s why he was comfortable when very casual and even in front of 5000. People could say, hey, how’s everyone doing today? Got some cool stuff to show, you know, cool as a cucumber. Why? Because he practised.
David Ralph [21:16]
So how do you get to the point all of you, somebody out there is listening. And we’re not talking about presentations at this point, we’re talking about anything, but you have got that idea in your head of what you want to do. But you don’t know that first step of how to, you know, learn these skills. And it’s easy for us to say, yes, Steve Jobs used to lock himself away, but he’s obviously seen somebody else do that, or he’s been sort of cheated or mentored. How can people sort of start when they get this first idea? I’d like to do something but good. I haven’t got a clue.
Dave Yewman [21:49]
You know, it’s a good question. One of the things I think is a terrific organisation is Toastmasters. Now Toastmasters and it’s, I think, Toastmasters dot org is a public speaking organisation. They’re all over the place. A lot of companies have them. And it’s all of $22 out here to join for the year. So it’s not exactly prohibitively expensive. And what I would strongly recommend to somebody is if they have a speech that they’re getting ready to give, yeah, maybe they just got a new job. And the boss has tapped them to give a presentation at the company meeting or something and they’re freaked out about it. They could do a lot worse and going down to Toastmasters. And going to a meeting and what happens when you get to a Toastmasters meeting, imagine 20 people in the room. Everybody has a job. People are counting arms, they are timing, they are critiquing their speaking, everybody is completely involved. It’s a very quick meeting. And usually out here they happen at 630 in the morning, so it’s either before work or after work because of it. Everybody works, who goes there. And that’s a place to practice and test your message. So if you have a message that you’re getting ready to give in your new job, and you go down to the local Toastmasters And you sign up to speak, you get up and you give a three or four minutes speech, you can practice the speech that you have to give in the real world or your actual job. But you can practice it, you know, weeks ahead of time, and then you can get some feedback. And then the other thing I mentioned the video earlier on, you know, everybody has phones these days where they have video cameras, right. And people use those video cameras to take photos of the kids or video of you know, squirrels on skateboards, the other stuff of the internet. But if they turn that video camera around, and they pointed it at themselves, let’s say they’re standing in their living room, they just have a cup of tea, they’re feeling good. They put the phone on the chair, and they prop it up and point the video camera at themselves. And then they walk around and they start talking and they start practising their speech, then they watch the video. That can be profound. That’s how you get ready, because when you see what the audience sees, that is meaningful, that is what’s coming across and you may think in your head You’re singing a beautiful song with a wonderful melody. And when you see the video, you may find out that’s not the case. But almost nobody does that almost nobody watches the video and it’s in some ways, it’s like a coach. You like the Manchester United or Chelsea coach when they have a game coming up? Let’s say Manchester United playing Chelsea? Well, they’re gonna they’re gonna go watch the managers are going to go watch the game film from the last game. Why do they do that? Because they want to see what went right and they want to see what went wrong and then they can make an adjustment. It’s the same out here with the basketball or the American football. Yeah, when they do that they understand what worked and what didn’t. And I think if we got people into a habit of practising out loud and practising on camera, then suddenly that fear that you mentioned public speaking would go way down.
David Ralph [24:48]
I teach everyone in podcasting land, I teach everyone to listen back to their own shows. You know, I listen to my own shows maybe five or six times each episode. I rarely listen to anyone. Else it’s just my own show, just so that I can understand the nuances that make a good interview where the flow didn’t quite go right the wrong kind of questions. I have some guys say to me. Oh, yeah, but I don’t like listening to myself and I think it’s your it’s your bloody show. Everybody else has got to listen to it. Why should you not listen to it? It just doesn’t make sense. But what I’m gonna do now I’m just gonna play some words from the comedian Jim Carrey, which will take us to the second stage of our conversation. I’ve got some good things I want to ask you. Here’s Jim Carrey.
Jim Carrey [25:31]
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job. And our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
David Ralph [25:58]
Now I’ve really become fat noted on that speech, when I first played it, it was very much like the leap of faith, just go for it, just go for it and find out. But more often than not, I now find that people just can’t get to that point of knowing what they love until they start doing things. What was it about you day? What put you into that environment that you started to want to become a master at speaking and teaching other people? What was the love there? Or did you do the action and then find the love?
Dave Yewman [26:29]
I did the action and then found the love because what happened was I went to a newspaper after I met my wife at the summer camp and then went to college in northern Colorado. I got a job as a reporter in Galveston, Texas of all places, and it wasn’t that I chose Galveston. It’s just that I sent out a bunch of CVS and got a job at the Galveston Daily News. So now I’m in the newspaper world. And we start you know, moved to Galveston and we have our first kid and Suddenly, I’m working every evening because of course, that’s how newspapers function. The deadline for a morning newspaper is typically somewhere in the nine to 10 o’clock range. So I wouldn’t get home until 1030 at night, and my wife at that stage was teaching. So she was gone at seven in the morning, and she get home at three in the afternoon. So we never saw each other. So it was a very practical thing because I said, Okay, I gotta get out of this. And then I got a job in Public Relations at the local hospital as a University of Texas Medical branch on Galveston Island. And I was a spokesperson there basically, when I went to the other side, or I went to the public relations side of things. So I started doing that for a while. And then we decided that we weren’t going to live in Galveston forever. And we had visited Portland, Oregon, or one spring and it was gorgeous, just absolutely flat out gorgeous. You know, we didn’t figure out that it rained 300 days a year until we moved here. We got there. And we thought, okay, we’re gonna move to Portland, Oregon, we’re going to quit our jobs. And that’s exactly what we did. We got an A u haul and we drove from Galveston, Texas, to Portland, Oregon, which is quite a hole. So we did our own version of the Oregon, you know, pioneer trail, but we did it in a u haul. So we get to Portland, Oregon, can we find a little apartment and then I start looking for jobs, I look for a PR job. And I happened on a small agency that had this little tech company in Seattle called Microsoft as a client. And what happened after the probably four or five years that I was at the agency, I was usually the guy who got the call, which was Oh, hey, you used to work in a newsroom, get this guy ready to go. He’s got to go on CNN, or this woman has to give an interview to The Wall Street Journal, why don’t you help prep her and make sure that she’s delivering the message we wanted to deliver. So almost by default, when I was at the PR agency, I became the one who helped executives get ready to perform essentially to go out and to tell people about the new product or the new service or the quarterly earnings, whatever it might be. And this happened over time, and I really enjoyed it. And I thought, you know, this is actually the part of PR that I do like, because there are a lot of parts of it I didn’t like. And when, when I transferred to another PR agency, it became pretty obvious to me that this is what I wanted to do, I wanted to coach now by that time, I was also coaching as a former basketball Dude, I was coaching my kids possible team. And you know what, it’s a very similar thing. When you’re the coach, you’re just helping people get better at things. And it’s very satisfying. I think it’s very rewarding when I see somebody who’s was freaked out and physically shaking at the mere thought of going on stage. And then they go on the TED stage, and they just hit a huge home run and they come off, and it has a profound impact on their confidence on their ability and frankly, on their business sometimes. So I find coaching to be very rewarding, whether it’s little kids, when my kids were young and they play basketball or football, I would be the one on the sidelines, yelling and screaming and coaching and there’s not as much yelling and screaming in the corporate coaching world little bit. But what I found is when you get people in the room and you start working with them that can be really, really fun and really, really rewarding. And it essentially grew out of the journey, from basketball player to newspaper reporter to public relations dude, and then the specific part of public relations, which is prepping people to go out and tell their story. So how
David Ralph [30:24]
did you take that and actually change it into money making because this is a key part of this show what where we are here. You’ve got this idea you’ve been doing it, you’ve obviously got that sense of Hang on, there’s value, but you’d been an employee. Now you’ve got to go and become entrepreneurial. Was it a walk in the park? Did you suddenly find clients everywhere? Or was it a you know, a famine for six months? Tell us about it.
Dave Yewman [30:51]
There was definitely some famine in the beginning and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault other than mine, because I didn’t set up the business. By the way I should have what I mean by that is, when I was when I left my last public relations job, I had a very nice severance package. And I thought, Oh, this is great. got six months of full salary. Awesome. So I essentially sat around for six months enjoying full salary. And then by month seven, it became obvious like, Oh, Oh, whoops, I need to pay the mortgage. So it’s pure, dumb ignorance on my part, that I didn’t spend those six months cultivating business. So then there was another, say, six or seven months in the wilderness, where I was trying to get business. And it turns out that was about probably 12 or 13 years ago now. And it turns out that a lot of people need this service, but the only way that they know they need it is when they get in a room, and they stand up and they go on camera, and suddenly they realise, oh, wow, I am not quite as good at this as I thought I was. Yeah, that’s usually the guy’s approach to the male CEO is I’m a genius and I’ve been been doing this for 25 years? And who the heck is this guy with a video camera? And why do I even need that? That’s a very stereotypical guy guy approach. And then the women executives are hungry for help. Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re here. This is great, you’re really going to help me do a good job. And what I found is when you go into those rooms, getting into the rooms is the trick, as you pointed out, you know, how do you find business? What I found is that it has to be a referral. No one is going to put the senior executive in a room where the guy in a video camera unless somebody else has said, Oh, yeah, this guy’s okay. He really helped our executive or he really helped me You should work with him. So building that network of referral, which is 100% of my business’s referrals. Now, that took some time initially because obviously I hadn’t done it so I didn’t have any referrals. So you got going very, very slowly. And then I was lucky enough to get that referral daisy chain, that engine going and that’s really been The last Actually, it’s been 14 years now that I think about it, wow, 14 years I’ve been doing this and running my own business. And frankly, it’s a lot of fun. There’s, there’s, I don’t think anybody who runs their own shop, goes back willingly and says, Oh, you know what, now I want to go back and work for somebody else. Yeah, if you can, if you can do something you absolutely love doing, that you’re good at, and that you can make a living doing well, then that’s where you should be. And that’s where I’m fortunate enough to be right now.
David Ralph [33:28]
I don’t think he’s even what you love. I think that it’s the time restraint. That’s what I find. The years it was always I’ve got to get on the 758 train to London, I’ve got to be at my desk by you know, 1010 nine, I’ve got to be I’ve got to be I’ve got to be and now other than on the first day when I have to record because I have everything scheduled. We have interviews booked. The rest of the time, I can just do what I want. And if somebody says Do you want to go and see a movie? Or go to the pictures, as we say in the United Kingdom at two o’clock in an afternoon? Yeah, just do it. That That can’t be taken away from you. I don’t think once you’ve tasted that that forbidden fruit of choice, you’re never going to go back. Oh, yeah.
Dave Yewman [34:08]
Yeah, no, it’s absolutely right. I mean, there is ups and downs. So for example, my wife and I, there’s this little coffee shop near us. And we will go there if I’m in town almost every day. And we’ll go in there at 1030 in the morning and have a nice cup of coffee and sit and chat and catch up and it’s awesome. Now, that’s the upside to it, as you pointed out, you can do that you can go and go to see the pictures at two o’clock in the afternoon. The downside is, you know, when I have to run payroll, or when I have a huge proposal that I have to do, or I have to, you know, do accounting stuff, the boring but important stuff. Well, that’s on me too. So I’m up at midnight, writing a proposal because I went and chose to do some coffee with my wife at 1030 in the morning. So you take the rough with the smooth I guess is what you say.
David Ralph [34:54]
I would still choose coffee with your wife over anything you know that day.
Dave Yewman [34:59]
That’s That sounds a little stalkery right there, doesn’t it? You
David Ralph [35:02]
love it when my wife learned from you, you see, it only takes me 35 minutes with a master and I found out how to do it. yourself Aaron when he said, You know, he stops the arms, which is you know, which is brilliant, really because I’ve remembered there was an artist in the 80s called Howard Jones and he was like a keyboard artist. And his son was asked what his dad does. And the son basically said, the same thing. He bangs on the piano and makes strange noises, which is kind of probably right because when he’s writing a song, it’s very much under your breath just sort of doing doing the do. Do your kids understand now what that does, because my kids don’t they haven’t got a clue they it was basically quite exciting in the beginning and my daughter used to walk around with an iPhone, playing her dad’s voice. And now I say to my son who walks around the house with headphones on you know what he listening to you listening to? He says that podcast is it me? No No one wants to listen to you. And they don’t want to listen to me at all. Nobody wants to listen to me, Dave.
Dave Yewman [36:06]
Well, I’ll listen to you, David, you’re okay by me. But I hear you on the kid thing because our kids are older now than they are having helped us teenagers. So they do have a little bit of an understanding of what I do just because they’re older. But there was a great story out here that I heard years ago about Chelsea Clinton. So Bill and Hillary Clinton’s daughter when Bill was the president. Chelsea was very young, 1213 years old. And someone asked her what is your dad do now? That’s a pretty easy answer, you would think but what she said was, he talks on the phone, he drinks coffee and goes to meetings. Well,
David Ralph [36:43]
he didn’t mention cigars. That would have been a bad one, wouldn’t
Dave Yewman [36:46]
it? Oh, no. Oh, this is a PG podcast, and I’m sure
David Ralph [36:51]
we’re kind of on the cutting edge. Do you see it satirical? Which is best? It doesn’t matter if it’s 30 years ago. I’m still gonna get that joke in
Dave Yewman [37:00]
Where you can tick that one off the list? You got you got that joke in
David Ralph [37:03]
the talk talking about jokes and stuff. If somebody is doing a speech, is it dangerous territory to try to put humour into? Is it better to stay straight bat?
Dave Yewman [37:17]
It is dangerous it is. Sometimes it can be very powerful, but it is incredibly risky. If you tell a joke up front, and it doesn’t work, it can create your presentation. However, if it does work, you know, there’s no better feeling than there have a roomful of people reacting to something humorous that you just said, I tend to counsel people to stay away from the, you know, a bishop in a non walk into a pub type of jokes because in error in invariably, you’re going to offend someone. Yeah, what I tend tend to get people to do is try and turn the humour on themselves. Yeah, so they can make if they make fun of themselves. That’s a very safe territory. And I wouldn’t necessarily say you want to tell a joke, even stand up comedians bombed sometimes because they tell the wrong type of joke. And people aren’t professional communicators can struggle with that. But I if you want to say something that is humorous, that can be powerful, that can be very powerful, but it is risky. There was a great incidence of several years ago when Obama came to the Houses of Parliament. And he stood up, and it’s a very obviously very musty and dusty setting there with a whole bunch of people that everyone in England would recognise him from the Prime Minister on down, and Obama standing on the lectern. And he stand and he says, In the first 30 seconds of the speech, he says, I’m told that the last three people to give a speech here are the queen, Nelson Mandela, and the Pope. Which is either a really interesting story or the beginning of a very funny joke. Yeah. And then he paused And everyone just cracked up laughing. And at that point, he had that room. He controlled that room. He owned that room. But what if it didn’t work? So that was a high profile thing to do, because everything that guy does is on television. And it could have I’m sure Fox News went crazy out here anyway, but he doesn’t need to do anything other than get out of bed in the morning for Fox News to go crazy out here. But it’s risky to tell a joke up front. So turn the humour on yourself and just pass along an interesting and funny story, rather than two guys walk into a bar type of thing.
David Ralph [39:31]
Because I had a guy on my show, and if you haven’t listened to this one, Dave, I think he’d like it called Greg swim. And he is a corporate comedian. So he goes and does public speaking but tailors it as a comedy routine for ease ease your clients and he goes in and sort of MCs and stuff, which I thought was very difficult territory to be able to turn what people would expect as a straight business presentation. In to something humorous and amusing, but he’s done it to great effect just because what he does he tailors it specifically on that group of people, both clients, he does his research. And he’s not just cutting out the same old jokes for every single conference. He does his homework. right way of doing it again.
Dave Yewman [40:22]
Absolutely. I mean, doing your homework is the price of entry. Any speaker who does things to any audience, the number one thing that we tell them to do is think about what’s in it for the audience. You may have heard that term now with your weapon. Yeah, what’s in it for me? What’s in it for you? every audience is thinking that whether it’s the audience listening to his podcast, whether it’s an audience sitting in a room or at the other end of a telephone, so that’s the price of entry. And that guy sounds like a really interesting guy because frankly, corporate comedy is hard. I did a session several months ago with a company a very big name company, and I made a joke about it. legal in the state of California to do a presentation at this company and not use slides. And I was being kind of wise because they were all using such very busy, complicated slides. And it was hampering their ability to get the point across that they wanted to get across. And every time I said something like that, I’ll throw out a what I thought was a witty aside, everybody in the room looked at this guy sitting at the front table. And so I stopped the workshop. And I said, Matthew, everybody keeps looking at you. Why is that? And it turns out, I didn’t know this. He’s the general manager of the group. And everybody was terrified of this guy. Now, I didn’t know that as the communicator, but when I asked a couple of questions and checked in, because the lines that I delivered that usually worked, weren’t working, and they weren’t working so much that everybody was looking at Matthew. So I started looking at Matthew and then I asked him directly, could people on this team who will report to you do a presentation and not use slides? Would that be okay, or is that out of bounds and he said, No, it’d be totally fine. And there was almost this collective. Yeah, sigh in the room, but they were all scared of him. And I didn’t know that. And that’s why I think your corporate comedian there must have a tremendously difficult job and must do a tonne of research. Because if people hate the boss, they’re not necessarily going to tell an outside speaker unless he asked them 25 questions and finds that out. Yeah, absolutely.
David Ralph [42:20]
Episode Four to five. If anybody wants to go back, he was it was a great one. so great that we actually brought him back, as we can rewind a few weeks ago when we bring back our back catalogue. So let’s listen to the words of somebody who has mastered the art of speaking and we’ve already mentioned him two or three times on the show. Here’s Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs [42:40]
Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards. 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path. And that will make all the difference.
David Ralph [43:15]
So what is it about those words that remain as powerful every time we hear them, Dave?
Dave Yewman [43:21]
Yeah, it’s a fabulous speech. And one of the one of the things he did in that speech is right up front, he did something that I coach people do all the time, which is called a signpost, you get up and you tell them what you’re going to tell them and you tell them how long it’s gonna take, because he stood up at the beginning of that commencement speech that you just played the snippet of. And he said, what I want to do today is tell you three stories from my life. That’s it, no big deal, three stories. And then he went into each of the stories and that was part of one of them. And he is a pretty profound guy, very smart guy. And his advice is still as relevant today as it was then, because you’ve you’ve got to follow your gut. I mean, he got fired. from Apple, you know, he he came up here, actually to Portland, Oregon. He was at Reed College for a while. And he didn’t take any classes like officially he just what they say audited, he just sat in on a bunch of classes. So he didn’t have to pay tuition. And they were kind of pissed about it, frankly. But he sat in on a typography class. And he actually absolutely loved it. And the reason that he sat in on the typography class is that he had a friend who sort of dragged in there. And the reason that Apple has the what’s called the whiskey or what you see is what you get printing is that he sat in on that typography class at Reed College back in the 70s and 80s. So I think he’s right you you wander and you think you’re wandering but you’re not. You’re actually grabbing and sort of cultivating things that you’re going to use later in life, even though you don’t know that. You may think, Oh, God, I hate this job, or I wish I didn’t have to do this. But it can be preparing you I mean, frankly, when I was in the newspaper business Making absolutely no money and chasing down stories. It was fun to trace down the stories, but I didn’t realise that essentially, that was finishing school for doing what I’m doing now. I had no clue. I enjoy doing it for sure. Just like I enjoyed playing basketball and I enjoy doing all these things. And when I coach some of the athletic companies that I work at, whether it’s Adidas or somebody, they certainly Americans, by the way, call it Adidas. I know it’s added us. I get caught on that all the time. But that’s the only place where it makes any difference. I play college basketball, no one else cares. But it’s really interesting to think about how everybody essentially is preparing for the thing that they want to do. It’s just that most people are living sort of unconsciously. As you said earlier on, Oh, I got to get on the 715 train. That means I got to get up I got to have a cup of tea. I got to make a slice of toast. And then I got to go to the train station and they just do that. And they don’t take a step back and think well what do I want to do? And I don’t know if it’s because it’s Too scary to do that, or perhaps they just get set in a rat, I got to pay the mortgage and you know, the kids and the clothes, etc. So therefore I have to go off. And hi ho hi ho it’s after work I go type of thing. But I think it can be really powerful if you do what Steve Jobs just said. Yeah. And just think about it and prepare for it even if you don’t realise you’re preparing.
David Ralph [46:22]
So when you look back on your life, as he was talking about, you can’t see the dots. But is there a big.in your life? I asked literally every single guest we have, but what do you think?
Dave Yewman [46:34]
I think it was going there. And what I mean by that is, quite often people will say things like, oh, I’ve always wanted to be a lumberjack I’ve always wanted to be I’ve wanted to move to Spain, you know, live on the Costa Brava or something, and they always want to do that, but they never do it. And I think they wait for the perfect situation. And if I’d have waited for the perfect situation, I would never have done the things that I’ve done. I would say just get in the car and go there or get on the plane and fly there. And when you do that, it forces your hand. For example, my daughter who’s now just getting ready to graduate from college is desperate to go live in New York. She doesn’t know why. And she doesn’t have a job yet. And she’s not really sure what she’s going to do. But she knows that she belongs in New York. And we’re saying to her, Hey, go do it. You’ll figure it out. And she will, once she gets there, she’ll figure it out. And everybody would if they go there, but the people are scared to make that leap. Much like people are scared sometimes to leave the nine to five job and start their own business. So if I had one piece of advice, it would be just just go there. Just move to where you want to be. And then figure it out. Because there’s a desperation that comes there. You have to figure it out. If my daughter goes to New York and can’t get a job, you know, she may fail and that’s okay. Then she’ll just come home, but she should go there and she should try for as long as she can. And when I When I moved from Crystal Palace, and went to play basketball at the University of Maine, it happened very quickly. And I remember thinking, oh my god got to do this. This is gonna, this feels right. And I didn’t know this at the time, but my dad told my brother a couple months after I had left, he’s like, Oh, yeah, he’ll be back. I wouldn’t, it’s not gonna work out, he’ll be back. And if I’d heard that, that really would have ticked me off. I never knew that. But I it was never a question for me that I was going to come back. I was not going to come back. I was gonna make this work. And I had to because I was there. And I was hungry. And I had to make it work because I moved there. So just go wherever you want to be, and then figure it out, I guess would be the summarization of that advice.
David Ralph [48:46]
Well, this is the end of the show. This is a journey that we’ve taken you from slouch to Crystal Palace to Maine and everywhere in between, but this is the part of the show that we call the Sermon on the mic when we send you back in time to have a one on one with your younger self. And if you could Go back in time and speak to the young day. What advice would you give and what age would you choose to? Well, we’re gonna find out because I’m going to play the theme and when it fades up, this is a sermon on the mind.
Unknown Speaker [49:18]
With the best beer
Unknown Speaker [49:23]
My
Dave Yewman [49:35]
dear 12 year old Dave, here’s the key thing I have to tell you. Calm down. It’s gonna be fine. You don’t need to be so anxious about figuring out what you want to do or figuring out how you’re going to have friends or figuring out how you’re going to meet girls. It’s all gonna work out just fine. Number one, you are going to end up moving to America. Number two, you are going to meet Cute girl and live out here a number three you are going to get a college out here. So it’s gonna work out. I know you don’t know that right now, but just calm down Take a breath because it’s gonna be just fine and this is 53 year old Dave telling you that so I know this for a fact.
David Ralph [50:18]
Dave what’s the number one best way that our audience can connect with you sir?
Dave Yewman [50:22]
The website would be the best way it’s elevator speech.com so elevator just like an elevator or a lift. As we would call it in England and speech like giving a speech so elevator speech calm. There are two talking heads on that side on the one in the blue shirt. The other is my tiny Texas compadre. I’m six five, he’s five, seven, I call him mini me, which he hates, which is why I keep doing it. His name’s Andy and this is the site this is the front door where you can access the world of public speaking should you dare to go in it but beware it’s a pretty uncomfortable world lots of videotaping and critique.
David Ralph [51:00]
is a is an unusual website. I went over there and it does actually operate like an elevator, you click on things and he goes shooting past you very unique.
Dave Yewman [51:09]
Yeah, I can’t claim any credit for that. That was our web designer. But I do think it is an interesting idea. It’s very engaging.
David Ralph [51:16]
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Dave, thank you so much for spending time with us today. joining up those dots. Please come back again, when you have more dots to join up. Because I do believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our past is the best way to build our futures. Dave, human, thank you so much.
Dave Yewman [51:31]
It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
David Ralph [51:35]
Mr. Dave human comes from the United Kingdom ends up in America and coming to us, he says made it up as he went along. But every step, you’re in training, you’re in training to where you want to go. I can see that. Absolutely. skills that I learned back when I was 16 skills that I learned when I was nine. They all come together. You just got to find that thing back play. To those skills and that is, it’s not hard if you start looking in the right places, but if you’re just constantly going to work and coming home, going to work coming home looking for the weekend, then you will be stuck. I get so many people contact me that say that their mindset is changing just because they’re listening to the possibilities that they get from the shows. But they’ve got to start taking those first steps themselves and we will be here to support you as always. Go for it guys, because that’s what life is all about. Thank you so much for listening to Join Up Dots. This was David Ralph. That was Episode 546. And we’re gonna see you probably on episode 547. Cheers by
Outro [52:44]
David doesn’t want you to become a faded version of the brilliant self you are wants to become. So he’s put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed his life. Head over to Join Up Dots dot COMM to download this amazing guide for free and we’ll see you tomorrow on Join Up Dots