Public Speaking

Welcome back to another episode of CRE – The Unspoken Truth. I’m Charlie Coppola with my father Craig. Our topic today: public speaking. Something you’ve done. How long have you been doing it?

30 years, 30 plus years. I started speaking early. I remember 1987 or 1988, I was number one in the office division at Grubb & Ellis, and at that time we had an annual summit. 600, 700 people would show up, and the top producer for each division would do a five minute C talk, and that was my first introduction. They brought in public speaking coaches. We basically memorized the speech, and I gave it, and it was really good. And so I liked it, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Yeah. Cool. So I didn’t know that. So where else have you spoken? I mean, I know you’re doing reps today. You’re speaking at the Lee & Associates Summit. You’re doing things for nonprofits and charity stuff. You’re doing other commercial real estate organizations. What else have you done in your career?

Well, I have 15 or 20 different talks that I do now. And so I’m all over the board, from nonprofit. Like, this week I was at Grand Canyon University talking to their Canyon Angels, which is their entrepreneur group. So I did that. Two weeks ago I was at a ULI Young Leaders conversation where I did a different conversation. So on average, in the last 20 years, I do about 30 talks. So that’s, you know, somewhere two to three a month. So I’m talking quite a bit, all the time.

And I enjoy it. I think I’m okay at it. I’m okay at it.

So I was going to ask, do you get nervous?

Never. Never.

Did you used to?

Yeah. Yeah. But now, I mean, I’ve done it for a long time. I did the keynote at the Lee Summit last year, and I think we had 800, 900 people there. You know, I used to, I guess maybe I got a little nervous. I was doing some of the talks with Robert Kiyosaki when they were traveling around. They do the big conference, couple thousand people, and so I got over that. So I’ve been doing it a long time, and I like it.

And I like it, I’ll tell you why. I wrote this down, which is really good. The reason I like public speaking and doing presentations and writing books, because, you know, I’ve got, I don’t know, seven books published, two more to round out my career on the way in this year or next, is because I get clarity of my message. And you and I have been doing this with our own team. We will do a little talk and we’ll write it up and get clarity on it. I have found for me that public speaking, writing books, writing blogs like C2 voice or lifeies, gives me a lot of clarity on what I really believe in and what I don’t believe in, because I’m out there and I’m believing it.

So I’ll give you an example, simple thing. Backing in car. I wrote a life years ago on backing in my car, and I back in my car everywhere I go.

When you’re parking. Yeah.

When I’m parking. And it’s just something that I do. And so I back in my car, and so I’m like, why do I do that? What does it give me? It always gives me feeling, and I feel good about it, and then when I leave. And I always do it. And so these little things that give you some clarity in your life. There’s a lot of talks, like grit or resilience that I do, or goal setting. So those are three that I do. And those help me kind of articulate why I think I’m gritty, why I think I have resilience, and why I’m a goal setter.

Yeah. I’ve noticed we’ve done this podcast now for a couple of years, and in addition we’re writing blogs, our own blogs, our own content, and then kind of our own perspective on current events or topics or someone else’s pieces of content. Doing a piece of content each week, and I do them all, and it takes me, you know… I find the same thing. Helps me get clarity on what I believe and how to articulate it. And I have found I’ve become a better teacher because of it. I’ve become a better leader, because I have clarity in my thoughts and perspectives on a lot of these topics.

Yeah, this clarity is a byproduct of speaking. Of course, you want the speaking to get your name out. You’re talking to multiples of people, so that you can actually start getting business from that. So the idea is, hey, people see you, and I have this happen to me quite a bit. Hey, I saw you, or give me a call, we have this requirement, I heard you speak here. So that’s nice, that I get the business. But it’s more the clarity for me.

That I did want to wake up, and because I run into a lot of young people who either have never thought about what they’re saying, and it’s complete that they don’t have a reason why they feel a way or what they’re doing. They just do it. And I didn’t want that. I wanted to wake up as I got into my big years, and I wanted to know exactly why I was doing things. And so I did. And so I started talking. I wanted to be able to talk about the market, articulate the market. I wanted to be able to talk about who I was as a person. And I thought I was gritty. And so that made me think about what grit means and what it means to me. And so I did a talk on it. And so I still have it, and I update it. I update my talks. So…

Yeah, it’s good. That was one of the things I wrote down is, and you alluded to this just now, you’ll get a call, an inbound deal, essentially. How else has public speaking helped your business?

Well, you know, you’re out there, and so you are meeting people, and you get… so, you know, if you’re a normal broker, you’re making a cold call or canvas, you’re in front of one person at a time. So just having the exposure, and I think people will say, “Oh yeah, I know Craig,” either via blog, or they saw me speak, or they heard someone who heard me speak. And so there’s a lot of that that goes around now that I’ve been doing it for a long period of time. And there is no immediate payoff on the speaking. But over a long period of time, if you’re doing 30 talks a year for 30 years, 900 talks, maybe I hit a thousand talks in my career, that’s a lot of people that you’re in front of.

Yeah.

And including on blogs. Now, even then, this, now on these podcasts, you know, we have 101 over at the C2 side. You and I have this one. So my biggest fear hasn’t been that I’ve been underexposed. It’s been I’ve been overexposed. And so…

You’re saying the same stuff over and over.

Am I? Yeah. I don’t want to tell the same story.

I know. So have you ever completely bombed or had a horrible, horrible talk?

Yeah, a lot of time. Well, I learned early on, like, you’ll show up with your deck and you can’t get the audio visual to work.

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden you’re winging it. So we learned. So yeah, I’ve had some where I wasn’t particularly great. I don’t think I’ve had any where I got booed off the stage. Most people, you know, I’ve done, I don’t know, 50 where I got paid for them, where companies were bringing me in to do it. It wasn’t for the money. It was more for the, was I good enough to get paid? And so you’re really cognizant on those. A lot of these I’m not.

So there are some that I walked away and I didn’t feel like I did as good as I should. But I also know that in everyday life I can never be the best thing ever, and being a dad and being a broker and being a speaker there. So I just want to make sure my message comes across very succinctly. You know, you and I just had a lunch with our teams there, and we had, I don’t know, 25 people there, and I just want to make sure that when we walk out of there, the message was clear. Like, there’s an OBC. So I do have an OBC that I’m getting across. Whether I articulate it very good or whether I do a poor job of it, I still want that message…

Sent across.

Yeah. Yeah.

What do you say? Well, I guess, what is preparation like? And does it vary by talk? I’m sure it does.

Well, I do all my own talks. So I create the presentation. If there is a deck, I do the notes. If there is a note. So it’s just a talk. So I do it all myself. So the preparation is preparing it. And so I know it inside and out. If somebody says something to me, I know somewhere in the deck there’s a slide on that, and I can go to it.

So I wrote a note down here, is like, I will talk on almost any topic. And people have called me and said, hey, would you do a speech on this? And I’ll go, yeah. And then I’ll go prepare for it. And, you know, and I’m, well, I read a lot. I’m pretty exposed across the board to a lot of different topics, and so I can go prepare for it, and when I do, I learn something new. So to me, any topic, anytime, anywhere, was kind of my mantra for speaking. And so, you know, I did Rotary. You know, I did Rotaries, and they say, hey, you know what, tell us what’s going on in this, whatever, and I go make sure I knew the answer. And sometimes I’m talking on stuff I have a lot of knowledge on, so it’s easier, and sometimes I don’t.

Yeah. Do you practice? Like, will you do reps before?

I don’t anymore, but I did for 20 years.

Yeah.

Well, we do when we’re doing pitches, but for me and my own discussion, even on the keynotes…

You’ll do them for our team. You’ll do mini reps where you’re kind of…

That’s a good… that’s right. I’ll do them for the people that work for me, just to make sure I’ve got it down and the timing down. That’s right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I did write that down as a note. Lots of reps.

Like, that’s the reason I like to talk 30 times a year, so I don’t have this fear of whatever, and I haven’t spoken in a year, and I do… I was like, if I’m doing reps all the time, it’s okay.

Yeah. And on that preparation note, is there anything you say to yourself, like, as you’re walking up to the mic? Or are there any words in your mind, you know?

No, I’m like focused on what’s the message, OBC, you know. I’m always like, what are the three things I want to get across?

Yeah. Yeah.

Or, you know, and I do have that. One of the things I did learn early on, I had such good slides and really good information, but I wasn’t getting the main topics out. And so they would get focused on some topic, and I mean, like, God, this isn’t, you know, that slide’s cool, but that’s not really what I want to do. So sometimes I have to pull stuff out to make sure that the topic, the real, the juicy stuff…

And I spend a lot of time with Andrew on this too, because he’ll want to put these things in our presentations. I’m like, that’s not moving the needle. That doesn’t tell people what we want them to hear about us. And it’s almost, because we talk about this on the sales side at our company, it’s like it’s almost a negative. Even if you think it’s a good point, if it’s not the main point and it takes the attention away from the main point, then it is serving more as a negative. And so we say OBC all the time. Objective based communication. It’s, what is the main objective, or two or three, that you want the audience to walk away from? We’ve written a blog on it. We talk about it all the time. And that’s sales. That’s how… it’s cool that you’ve said, “Hey, that’s how I’ve, you know, transformed or improved.”

Well, one of the reasons why I got out of doing demos for OneSource is, you know, our sales guys were way better than I was. You know, I would kind of come in and do the broker thing, and I could get by with it, and I had a good closing ratio, but I wasn’t selling the message. I wasn’t doing the message. And therefore, when they signed up and they did it, yeah, they bought, but now, you know, there’s an added step in software. It’s like, now we got to get you onboarded, and we got to make sure that you’re using the system. So that requires some habit changes. And our sales team was doing a better job of kind of articulating that than I was.

Yeah. Yeah. So early on in your public speaking career, one of your reflections was, I have the deck, I’m organized, I’m a good speaker, but I’m not driving there. The audience isn’t walking out with the point I want them to be walking out with. Was that a reflection?

Yep. That’s one of the reasons I really started, that’s why I came up with OBC. I always felt on these communications, there’s so many emails I can’t figure out what the message is. There’s so many talks I can’t figure out what the speaker was trying to tell me. There’s so many times where I was going in and they didn’t understand what I was trying to tell them. I’m like, I have to come up with a better way. And I came up with OBC. And OBC has really done well for me, because I don’t walk out of any meeting anymore without anybody knowing exactly where I stand and what the points are that we wanted to make on it.

Yeah.

And that’s OBC. We’ve done OBCs, right? So we could… yeah.

They can look it up in our archives.

On our website. Yeah, you could see stuff on it. So just on the last thing I’d add here, on your business: you talked about getting some inbound stuff. Anything else, exposure, credibility, anything else that you felt like this has really done for your career, your business?

Other than clarity, I do think it gives me… I was always, I’m always trying to differentiate myself from all the other brokers. There’s thousands of people who do what I do, and we’re looking for a little bit different niche. And so I always felt like, of the thousands of brokers, less than 10 do public speaking. So I’m like, okay, this is just a way that now I’m down to those 10.

And so then I look at those 10 and go, okay, what are they doing? What do they have? What kind of education do they have? Do they have CCIM, SIOR, CR? Nope. Okay, I got them on education. Did they do 150 deals last year? Nope. Good, I got them on transaction volume. Do they write a blog? Nope. Okay, good, I got them on the blog. So I want to kind of overwhelm my clients that say, “This is just… hey, you can hire those guys. They’re okay, but, yeah, here’s why you want us.”

And I’ve seen it. It’s helped you retain and attract talent, right? You build your teams. I would say you have credibility just in the market because of that.

I think we have the best training program in the country.

Mhm.

I do. I really believe it. And our runners, when they come out, are ready to go. And we have a 35 year track record of runners, training them. My first runner, Tom Jacobs, still in the business. You know, he’s been in the business 35 years, 36 years, and still doing fine. So…

It’s cool. It’s awesome. Public speaking. Anything? Any last thoughts? I love…

Reps. Clarity of mind and my purpose. And any topic, any time, so I can learn, to get clarity.

Yep. I love it. OBC. That’s your OBC for the time.

There’s my OBC.

Good. Thanks so much.

Thank you.