The Art of Connection: How Humor and Storytelling Drive Engagement with Dr. Danny Brassell

Freddy D: 00:01:53

coach who has delivered over: 3500

With an energetic and engaging style, Danny specializes in helping entrepreneurs, individuals and organizations leverage public speaking as a powerful client lead source.

As the co founder of the well Crafted Story Workshop trademark, Danny empowers leaders to transform personal experiences into compelling business stories that inspire action, drive growth and create lasting impact.

His expertise bridges education and business, combining his background as a former inner city teacher with proven systems for converting speaking engagements in a consistent client generation.

An author of 19 books including Leadership Begins with Motivation and Misfits and Crackpots, Danny is known for his Paul Harvey style storytelling, making his teachings both practical and memorable.

His core topics include crafting magnetic presentations, building authentic audience connections, mastering storytelling techniques, and enhancing communication through reading.

Danny's unique value proposition lies in his ability to fuse extensive speaking expertise with reading mastery, offering a holistic approach to communication that enhances both platform skills and deeper learning habits. Through his proven frameworks, he helps business leaders elevate their presence, maximize their impact and create lasting success.

Freddy D: 00:03:27

Welcome Danny, from the well Crafted Story Workshop to the Business Superfans podcast. We're excited to have you on the show. How are you this afternoon?

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:03:36

I am fantastic. Thank you so much, Freddy D for having me. I'm spreading some joy and some wisdom around the world. We need a lot more of you.

Freddy D: 00:03:43

Let's go into the backstory of how well Crafted Story Workshop came about.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:03:49

Backstory is I can't hold steady employment. My life has been a number of pivots. About 30 years ago, I was a journalist getting offers from every major daily.

One daily offered me the city beat for $16,500 a year, and a friend told me they were hiring inner city teachers in South Central Los Angeles for $25,000 a year. So I became an educator for the noblest of reasons, for the high pay. And I taught for many years, wound up becoming a professor.

And then in: 2005

I put her through the wringer and she stuck by me. Second of all, money's not everything because you can lose it in a second, just like that.

Third, I try not to judge other people because if I was somebody who looked at what I had done, I'd say You deserve that. But now I know if you don't really know everything about a person, you don't know anything about a person.

Fourth, I became a Christian, which I'm always embarrassed to admit, but the more I read the Bible, not the first screw up to find Jesus and fifth, not declare bankruptcy. My accountant said, you have to make this much more money every year. And so I started speaking on the side, hit that number right on the number.

The next year he gave me a much higher number and I hit that number right on the number. So in year three, I thought maybe I should set a higher number.

And during one of the worst economic downturns in American history, I was able to build up a very profitable and successful speaking business. And then a thing called Covid came around and people are asking, how's your business?

I'm like, wow, how I was able to just lose 200 speaking engagements overnight. It's doing great. And, and so the next pivot I had to make was for years people have been asking me to coach them in speaking and I always resisted.

Freddie D. Because as a teacher I've always had a very high standard and I hold my students accountable and I really want them to succeed.

Now that I work with entrepreneurs and executives, I find highly motivated people and I found so much pleasure. And so that's a very long, roundabout way of how my business partner, Jimmy Hayes Nelson and I formed the well crafted story workshop.

I call us the professor and the poet because he has a Broadway background and I have a research background.

And we do a pretty good job of helping people with their stage crafts, giving them research, supported reasons on why they're doing certain things in their presentations and we have a lot of fun and help people in the process.

Freddy D: 00:06:15

That's a great story because we've all gone down that road of left turns, right turns, speed bumps, flat tires, and really it's about picking yourself back up, putting a couple band aids on, step forward and continue on. Because until you say you quit and lost, you haven't.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:06:36

Anybody loves Rocky. Rocky takes a beating, but always gets back up. I love Rocky.

Freddy D: 00:06:40

Sylvester Stallone, great line. There's nothing that's going to punch you harder than life.

And you got to get back up and punch it back as hard as you can because they're going to punch you back again. Share with us what is it that you actually do to help people with story, branding and all that stuff?

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:06:56

30 years ago I was a reporter. I got to cover President Bush senior in the 92 presidential election. The President would Give what he called a stump speech 20 times a day.

He said the same speech so many times, I could say his speech better than he could. Superhero movies, they call it your origin story. In his book, start with why Simon Sinek would probably call this your visionary statement.

Jimmy and I called a well crafted story. You can call it peanut butter and jelly. What it is a speech that helps introduce you to new audiences.

Now, we've worked with lots of famous speakers and politics and entertainment and sports, but really, most of the people we work with are entrepreneurs that want to grow their business. We help them create a well crafted story, a presentation that they can deliver again and again that's going to introduce themselves to new audiences.

We're a little bit different than some of the people out there. A lot of these coaches want you to share, like, your most dramatic and lowest point. There's three reasons why I don't do that.

First of all, the world just survived a global pandemic. Everybody's had some bad things happen to them. I don't think we need to hear another sad story. I think we need more hope in the world.

I'm teaching you to tell this story again and again. Do you really want to tell the story, the worst moment of your life again and again? We have a friend, his daughter was murdered.

He's delivered that speech over a thousand times. I mean, you have to be much stronger than me to talk about the worst moment of your life all the time. And third, and this is where I get in trouble.

People get angry with me. I have one objective. When I'm on stage, I want you to leave feeling better than when you came in. I want you laughing, smiling, happy.

I think there's something admirable in that as my objective. I believe that the people that tell the same sad story again and again, by the 20th time they're telling it now those are crocodile tears.

And now you're being manipulative.

I'm not saying it's not an attractive sales strategy, but I don't want to have to take a shower when I get off stage because I just manipulated my audience. And so I want you to have fun. I was working with an engineer from Silicon Valley last week, an Indian guy, very introverted and nervous.

I like adding humor to presentations. He's like, debbie, I cannot connect with my audience. What can I do? And he has a very difficult name to pronounce.

It's something like Shabbunikar Majaharaji. And so I just gave him a line when he starts his speech now he's like, hello, my name is Shakurakar Mahararaji.

Gee, I sure hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. You just want to connect with your audience. That's the most important thing, is just get a giggle. Life's too short, man.

You and I have been around the block a couple of times. I'm sick of listening to all the sob stories. I want people that make me laugh and show me the future's bright.

Freddy D: 00:09:31

I've used humor in sales and it's helped me be one of the top sales guys in the SaaS industry. That was my icebreaker.

I'd say something funny, I'd make fun of myself, make funny of the situation and people laugh and that detention just dissipates. I've been about 32 countries so far. When I was managing global sales for that SaaS company, that was really it because you had communication gap.

I mean, they spoke English, sort of, and I tried to speak their language, but we would laugh and everything was okay except for the Oriental. That's a tough culture to crack to get them to laugh. And I haven't figured out the secret. I figured out how to communicate with them.

But that's a little bit of a challenge for me.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:10:15

Well, I was speaking to 750 people in Portland, Indiana for two days. I had a guy in the front row with his arms crossed, scowling at me. And he comes up to me at the end of day two.

He's like, I just want to tell you to any of the funniest speaker I've ever seen. And that taught me don't read the face because they might actually really be enjoying it.

I've attended speeches where I look like I'm probably not into it, but I'm actually really into it. It's just there's all kinds of other things happening on your. I once had a woman, she was on her phone the whole dang time texting.

I wanted to say something, but I bit my tongue, didn't say anything. And she comes up to me after the presentation. She's like, wow, you're amazing. I was texting all my friends to leave their sessions and come to yours.

I'm glad this is a fan. I was actually just speaking in South Korea, so I know exactly what you're talking about where you're not getting the laugh out loud.

But I do have people that come up to me, they're like, you are very funny. Thank you for that.

Freddy D: 00:11:06

And I've sold into that market space. It's very difficult because it's a stalic face.

You have to be adaptable and understand that I was not making any progress as trying to get Japan to take on a master distributorship to handle the whole country and then set up sub distributors. And they loved the technology, was at the workshops, was at the trade shows, and I was just getting nowhere.

So I'm in Australia with my reseller Paul, and I go, paul, what am I doing wrong? He goes, what are you talking about? So I'm talking about the contracts, the business opportunities, this technology and all that stuff.

He goes, why don't you start talking about them Next time I went there, I says, hey, where should I go visit? What do I need to do? What do you recommend?

And they took me out to a old style restaurant where you had to, you know, take your shoes off, sit on the floor. When they came to Arizona, took them all around the valley so they could take pictures and see things.

So later I got a $200,000 order because I stopped talking about business and started to become a person and talk about their story.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:12:09

Amen. What's great about your podcast is we do business with people. And that was a wonderful strategy you shared. It's not about you, it's about them.

When I'm sharing strategies with clients, first thing I always share is stop talking about your successes, start talking about your failures. Not everybody in your audience has succeeded, but they've all failed.

And the more you talk about your own failures, the more you're going to connect with your audience because they're going to be like, wow, Freddie D, he's been through the ring or two a couple of times. I can trust this guy. That's how you connect with an audience.

Freddy D: 00:12:39

That's what I got to work on. Because some stories I don't want to share, but I need to share because like you just said, they're inspiring.

They would be presented in a proper way. And that's the other part of the caveat. How do you help a business owner or a leader create their story?

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:12:57

We call it our 5C process. It's just packaged differently. The first C is clarity. And this is very important.

Before we ever write a speech with a person, ask yourself two questions. You the amazing part, even in your audience, 95% can't answer these. The first question is, who is your audience?

The second is, what is the problem you solve? So just the other day I was working with a woman. I'm like, who is your audience? She's like, women ages 30 to 50, sometimes it's their Husband's also.

And we get companies. I'm like, you need to get specific about who your audience is. I'll ask people, what's the problem you solve? I'll give you an example.

The engineers, I help people with different problems they have on their computers, but we also develop software. I'm like, no, you got to focus. There's a reason that there's that expression. The riches are in the niches.

You can expand your audience, that's fine, but you got to be very narrowed in and zoom in on what's my focus, who am I trying to help, and how do I help them? So that's the clarity question. Before we ever craft any kind of speech, we have to be able to answer those questions.

And then the next C is to connect. How are you connecting with your audience? I find that humor, and you already said it, too. I love starting by getting people laughing together.

I mean, people crying together. But what's the fun about that? And the easiest way, you don't have to be a comedian to be funny.

Probably the best way to be funny is make fun of the situation. Or better yet, make fun of yourself. When you make fun of yourself, you put people completely at ease.

If you can't laugh at yourself, I don't take you seriously at all. Connection is obviously always the most important part of a talk.

If you don't grab them in the first five minutes, your audience is making a decision. Am I going to be present for this talk, or am I going to be engaged? I watch people. If they're like this, I'm not getting to them.

I need them leaning in that they want to hear every single word. I mean, I'll give you an example. We were working with a financial advisor three months ago. Richard. Richard's very successful.

He started off his presentations like, I've been in the business for 30 years. I've made over a billion dollars for my clients.

I worked with this famous person and this famous person, and I said, richard, what are the three most important qualities of real estate? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, location, location, location.

It's all right to brag, but you're doing it in the wrong part of your presentation. And so we changed his story to when he first started as a financial advisor 30 years ago, the very first client. He made so many mistakes.

It's amazing that this person even signed up with him. It's basically a comedy of errors. Richard does these twice a week.

He has about 15 couples at a steak restaurant, and he's pitching them to invest their retirement funds with him. And after we changed his presentation, he said, you noticed something significant. Most of the time it's stereotypical. It's a couple.

And the husband always has his arms like, you know, how much is this going to cost? What's this guy trying to sell me? That same guy. You notice the guys are just patting their knees, they're laughing so hard.

And he went from getting six of the 15 couples to sign up for an appointment to 12 of the 15 couples to sign up for the appointment. And it's just because he connect now or you have to say your results may vary.

But I was so proud of Richard because he actually did it, he's implemented it, and he's getting better every single time. Because that's how you get better is with the reps. The next seat is content. What are you teaching your audience? And I always tell people it's ironic.

This is the longest part of your presentation and it's the least important. There's lots of research says the bun's more important than the burger. People remember the beginning of your talk. They remember the end of your talk.

They don't remember anything in between. But what they do remember is, are you helpful? And this is fascinating. It doesn't even have to do with what you're talking about.

So I have a friend, he used to talk to parents about how to read aloud to their kids. And in the middle of the talk, he just stopped and said, oh, wait, this is going to save your life someday.

If you ever lock yourself out of your car, if you have your cell phone, call your spouse and have your spouse put your car keys next to their phone, and you put your phone next to the car door, it'll actually unlock the car door. I have tried this from 3,000 miles away. It works. Not with a Tesla new type of car, but those old locks, it works.

And he says he has people from 20 years ago. They come up, oh, my gosh, you saved my life. Because he proved that he was helpful, had nothing to do right.

What he's talking about, and so what we're teaching people in presentations is you have a responsibility when you're on a stage. I don't like these speakers that say, I have 10 step process. I've only had time to share three.

If you want the other seven, buy my product group 99, 97. I hate that scuzzy. You have a responsibility to serve your audience. They gave you their time. So there's two things we want you to do.

We want you to provide your audience a short term solution. This is a quick win that all of them can succeed. I want to show the audience that they can do it themselves.

But also we want to provide them with a long term solution, which I have nicknamed the Home Depot. The long term solution is you can do it, I can help. The long term solution shows them I know I can do this.

But gosh, if I hire Danny, he's going to be able to help me craft this presentation a lot quicker. He does it all the time. I work with people all the time. I don't want any sales. I'm like, this isn't salesy at all.

What you should be doing, when you're looking at your audience, you should look at them like they're dying. You have the antidote and if they don't get the antidote, they are going to die.

If you have a service mindset, I see that when people say servant leadership, I'm like, well, that's just being redundant. A leader by definition is supposed to be a servant helping the people around you.

And so the content portion, there's a couple of other little strategies we embed inside the content. But the most important thing is to actually help your audience. And then it leads to the last two Cs, which are the call to action and the close.

Now, most people only speak to half of their audience and they don't realize that they're doing it. So we're going to be stereotypical and we'll go with a couple, married couple. So there's the husband and there's the wife.

The husband's the guy sitting there with his arms crossed. And I call him Joe Friday. He wants just the facts. How much is this going to cost? How long is it going to take me? What do I got to do?

And you have to make sure to provide that when you're doing your call to action. A good call to action should be less than 90 seconds. You don't want to burden people with too much information. But then you have the wife.

The wife I call the Julia Roberts, she makes decisions based on emotions, not facts. She just wants to feel good, you know, oh my gosh, Freddy D. I don't know what you sell, but gosh, I feel so good when I'm with you.

I want to work with you. If you craft your presentation the right way and address both people, you're hitting a hundred percent of your audience.

Now, the biggest single mistake that Jimmy and I see in all of the presentations is people make multiple offers. I see it on podcasts all the time. I hear people at the end of the podcast, like, if you enjoyed this podcast, like, subscribe and write a comment.

Well, you just gave people three options, and they're not going to do any of them because choices confuse and cause you to lose. You have to give one single course. Watch politicians. A politician that's at a fundraising event, they're asking for money.

At a rally, they're asking for your vote.

Freddy D: 00:20:14

That's interesting. Never thought of it from that perspective. When I was selling technology, I have a saying. To be terrific, you need to be specific.

If you're specific, you'll be terrific.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:20:24

I'm not going to steal it. I'm going to liberate it from you.

Freddy D: 00:20:27

I love it. But that's something I came up with because I would do presentations myself.

The other thing you made me think of was back when I was selling the emotion and the thing, you're talking to business owners. What's it cost me? What's it do for me? How fast am I going to make money? That's all. They're interested in three things, just like you said.

The husband, the engineers, and everybody else selling engineering and manufacturing. So they were all giddy because this is going to make their jobs easier. So you had to tweak the message to both groups in a different way.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:21:00

They're right.

It's kind of like My Big Fat Greek Wedding when she says, your father, he's the head of the family, but I'm the neck, turns the head to whatever you want to do. Just because a person's an owner doesn't mean they're the ultimate decision maker. Sometimes that ultimate decision maker is the secretary.

So are you appealing to both those people in your audience?

Freddy D: 00:21:19

Yeah, and one of the things I would do was I would make sure. Well, first off, I'd start off the presentation. What's everybody's objectives is today's meeting.

So we had an idea of expectations, and we could tweak the presentation based upon each individual's interest. So I'd write that down.

Then when we would wrap up, I would go around the room and says, okay, Danny, did we address what you were looking for out of today's presentation? So it'd be yes, and then get everybody consensus. And if there was somebody off, I would go back and we would readdress till that became a yes.

Now, basically what I did is I got everybody in the room to say yes, and then I went one step beyond, and that was that.

When we left, I sent a thank you letter Recognizing them for taking their time out of their busy day to attend our presentation, the input that they gave, and hope we provide enough value.

And we looked forward to working with them to help them scale their business in the engineering or manufacturing sector, whichever one was working at the time.

I closed more sales on that approach because they would have a meeting after the fact and they would turn around and says, well, which guys we're going to pick? I knew this because I asked later, why did you pick us?

The consensus was we felt after the sale, you would provide the best support because you're the guy on the shop floor that nobody engages and nobody talks to because you're running the milling machine, the lathe, the wire, edm, whatever it is. You got a letter that says, thank you, Danny, for participating in our meeting. You got recognized so you felt important.

That tweaked everything to close the deal. And it wasn't Price anymore. Like we talked earlier, it wasn't about price.

It was a fact that we understood where they wanted to go and we had the right story.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:23:14

You just gave your audience gold mine. The simple act of writing a handwritten thank you. Just that simple gesture makes you memorable.

I had read Mary Kay Ash's autobiography, and she said that every potential customer, they have an invisible necklace that says, make me feel important. And that's what you just illustrated is you made everybody feel important. That's one of the things I love reading.

Biographies on Teddy Roosevelt and Edmund Morris wrote a trilogy, which is my favorite. But Teddy Roosevelt would be like, oh, my gosh, Vladimir, you gotta need Freddie D. Freddie D. Is the head baker here at the White House. Freddie D.

Makes the best biscuits I've ever had in my. Oh, my gosh. I get up early in the morning because Freddy D. Makes these incredible biscuits. Oh, and Freddie D, this is Vladimir.

He's the prime Minister of Russia. Look at what he just did. He just made sure to boost up.

Freddy D: 00:23:59

That person, edify them.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:24:01

I love it. So much wisdom there. Plus, you got me rhyming now, too, because I'm here. Sound like Muhammad Ali.

So from now on, I'm like, readdress until they say yes.

Freddy D: 00:24:11

Those guys became my super fans. Everybody in that company was a fan of mine because I took time to recognize and appreciate them. More importantly, the sale isn't the sale.

The sale is the implementation and the ongoing and the onboarding and everything else of the deal.

But they would turn around and the owner of that company would call the other owner that was doing offload work and says, man, you need to talk to Freddy D. Because we're having data exchange issues. And so Jack was his name. He's called me up and says, hey, you got to talk to Bob.

He needs to buy this stuff. I called Bob and set up an appointment to see him and bring our computer stuff. Hey, man, I don't need to see it. Jack says, I need to get it. How much?

How fast can you get it to me? $60,000 sale, 30 minutes. Most of the time was filling out the order form and using their fax machine to fax in the order.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:25:05

I absolutely love that it's all relationships. How are you working with people? It's always about the relationships, what you.

Freddy D: 00:25:11

Guys are doing, helping people craft their story to build that relationship with the audience.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:25:18

And it works whether you're talking one to a boardroom or to a ballroom. I've used these strategies with my own children. They don't know that I'm doing it, but I'm practicing it all the time.

We tell people there's only two ways to get better at speaking. The first way is watch a lot of speakers. I watch politicians. Hello, angels. Comedians.

I watch them in front of big groups, in front of small groups, in front of men, in front of women. Here, I'll give your audience a ninja strategy.

I watch a lot of award shows because when the person wins the Academy Award, they only have 45 seconds to address their audience. I want to see if they can actually connect. Now, most people, they waste their time. They're like, I want to thank God. I want to thank the Academy.

Nobody's paying attention, but every now and then a person does something clever. So a few years ago, Joe Walker won the Academy award for best film. I think the important people are in the audience, the actors.

None of them are paying attention to film editing. Joe Walker gets on stage. He's British. He speaks slowly and distinctly.

He says, a lot of people don't know this, but when phrased properly, the term Academy Award nominee can be used as an insult. Well, now the camera P.S. the audience. You see people lean in like, what's he talking about?

He says, for example, yesterday I got in an argument with my 17 year old daughter and she said, well, Lonnie, Joe Walker. All of a sudden you see everybody laughing hysterically. Joe Walker gets off the stage. Denzel Washington wants to meet him.

Brad Pitt wants to meet him. Time magazine said it was one of the highlights of the Academy Awards. 30 seconds. He connected. That is a good speaker. I'm always looking.

What is the person doing? That's why I love watching comedians. Comedians are the best at this.

Kevin Hart is a short black guy, and he makes a lot of jokes about being a short black guy. Jim Gapkins, a big fat white guy. So he likes to make a lot of jokes about being a big fat white guy. Like, that's brilliant.

Take any perceived weaknesses you have and turn it into your strength. And people can't use it against you. I mean, if you nervous. I was working with a guy the other day, total stage fright. I said, just own up to it.

Contrary to belief, your audience actually wants you to succeed. So if you're nervous, say, I'm nervous as can be. Look at my hands. One of my favorite movies of all time is Blazing Saddles and Gene Wilder.

He's supposed to be the fastest draw on west, holds up his right hand and Cleveland Little's steady as a rock. He's like, yeah, but I shoot with this hand, which is going crazy. There's wisdom in that. I want people comfortable on stage.

You're going to deliver this again and again. You get better at speaking. Watch lots of speakers. One of my mentors was Jim Rohn. Jim used to say, you can't pay other people to do your pushups.

Translation, you got to do the work, even if you live in the smallest town. Every town has a kiwanis club, a rotary club, a Lions club, an optimist club. They got schools, synagogues, churches, chambers of commerce.

Speak everywhere. I had a guy, Gustavo should be the president of the United States.

Came from Ecuador, didn't speak a single word of English, did every menial job on the planet, invested every dime in real estate. 30 years later, the guy's worth $40 million. His pitch is the four month real estate coaching program for $40,000. Freddy D.

I put together a lot of pitches. That's a pretty high ask. I told Gustavo, you got to do the reps. He said, well, I'm going on a podcast tonight. I'm like, you're calling me tomorrow.

I want to hear all about it. He calls me the next day. He's so excited. Oh, my gosh, Danny, you're a genius. I'm like, did you go on the podcast? Did you make the pitch? Yes.

Did anybody buy 23? He made $920,000 that night on a pitch we put together that afternoon. He's made eight figures off in one speech.

And the reason I share that isn't to to talk about how much money he made. What makes me so proud, proud of him is he did it. Most people never do anything. I can't stand people like that. I'll give you a better example.

I was working with a guy three years ago, Jason. He's a Debbie Downer. I'm telling him, you got to speak. So I don't know. I'm like, finally. I was just frustrated. Like, do you have a Facebook account?

Yes. All right, you're going on right now on Facebook Live. I want you to present the speech. So I forced him to do it. He does it.

One woman from Ontario, Canada, accidentally is watching him, and he sucks. I tell him the next day, do it again. So he does it the next day. Like three people watch it. And he doesn't suck as bad as the first day.

Here's why I'm giving Jason's example. Freddie D. He has given that same speech every single day consistently for the last three years on Facebook Live. He now has 6,000 people in his tribe.

He made almost seven figures last year. And I'm proud of him because he just stuck with it. I've never seen a person that was that consistent.

You look at Tiger woods, and they're like, wow, he's so good. They don't look at all the work he puts into being the best golfer in the world. Plus, he's smart enough.

The only way you succeed is you get good coaches in sales. You need lots of coaches. I mean, Tiger woods has a putting coach. He has a driving coach, a mental coach.

Maybe he should have hired a relationship coach.

Freddy D: 00:30:15

That's another conversation for another day. You remind me of a story. When I first got in the tech world, I used to be an engineer. My world was drafting boards. That was it.

And some of the co workers, and it. I got in a computer aided design world when it began. And here's the manual, here's the computer. Learn it.

There was no teaching back then because it was brand new. I got sent to a company in St. Louis. I'll keep it anonymous, that had the manual.

And I'm looking at the manual and says, all right, Danny, we're going to do these sets of commands. Follow us on this page. And yep, okay, you're right there. See that paragraph? I want you to do that stuff. That was my training.

Fortunately, it was just me and you, so it was not a big deal. I get sent to a company in Wisconsin and I got to stand up in front of a room. I didn't get trained to do this. I got to figure it out myself.

So I'm doing the same thing. I got everybody with the manuals going through the Paragraphs and going through. And there's a manager.

Never forget, the guy changed my life at the end of the day, pulls me over and goes, that was the worst effing training I've ever seen in my entire life. He goes, I'm gonna give your dumb effing rear end to figure it out by tomorrow or I'm calling your boss and having your blah, blah, blah, fired.

I slept well that night.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:31:40

Sure.

Freddy D: 00:31:42

training. It didn't exist in: 1980

And so I had to think of something because, you know, clock was ticking and I didn't want to get fired because I just started the job. So I would turn around and says, all right, I'm going to put this string up in here, this command string, to create a box.

Is this to create syntax, you say? Well, yeah, I think so. Well, Mike, do you agree with Danny? Well, no, there needs a semicolon.

Steve, do you agree with what Mike said about Danny's stuff? It became a conversation training, which really, as I learned later on, that's the best way to teach because it actually gets memorized.

And I became the most sought after trainer in the Midwest because of the way I was doing it. And that led me into sales.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:32:33

I need to know about the manager that told you you stuck. Did you talk to him?

Freddy D: 00:32:37

Oh, yeah. That day he said, I know what you did. That was the best training I've seen. That guy transformed my life.

One of the few people that made some impacts on me and got me out of my shell, as, you know, engineers. You were just talking about it earlier. The guy in Silicon Valley, the Indian guy, did not know how to communicate. I was in that world.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:32:56

When I was a teacher, I used to tell my students, I'm like, sometimes you need somebody else to believe in you before you believe in yourself. I believe in all of you. They only give me the best and the brightest. Let's go make this world a better place.

When I started speaking started by training teachers because I was a teacher. Then I started working with school administrators and parents. And I was in a mastermind.

And one of the guys in my mastermind was a very successful salesman. And he's like, danny, would you train my sales team? I'm like, I don't have any experience in sales.

And he looks at me, you got teenage boys in the inner city to reach Shakespeare. You're a pretty damn good salesperson. He was great because he got me thinking, I guess that is sales. And he got me thinking, I can Work.

And Jimmy and I work with people all the time. Some of them are very big. We can't give names. A lot of these people. But I always tell people I work with tons of people with Stage Frank.

Most of the people I'm working with didn't want.

Freddy D: 00:33:46

Well, yeah, by now, wife. We were just starting to date, and we were going to a networking group. I wasn't a member. I was a substitute.

So I brought her along because several people owe me a substitute. Then I couldn't be both people. So I said, I got somebody I can bring. So I brought her through a group.

There's about 30, some people sitting around on the tables. It didn't hit her until it hit her, because then she goes, you mean you want me to read this in front of everybody? And I have to stand up?

I says, yeah, it's just a piece of paper. All I gotta do is read the two sentences here. That person's one minute, elevator pitch. She goes, I'm going to kill you.

And we still laugh about it today because if she could not speak in front of a group today, she can. You gotta start someplace.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:34:34

a school. This is years ago,: 2018

And I got all the kids all pumped up, and this little boy comes up to me at the end of my speech. He has tears in his eyes, and I notice he's missing his left arm. And he looks up at me, he's like, how can I succeed?

And so I crouch down, I get to his eye level. I'm like, you know, when I was your age, I went to 18 different schools. Before I was 12 years old, everybody called me stupid because I stuttered.

And eventually I went to a school. And this teacher, she took me aside, we worked one on one, and she would sing things to me, and I could sing them back without my stutter.

Kind of like the movie the King of Speech. I lost my stutter and I became a swan. I looked at that little boy.

I said, isn't it interesting that the little boy everybody made fun of because he couldn't talk right now gets paid ridiculous sums of money to travel the world. Speak. I'm like, don't let anybody tell you what you can't do. Anything's possible.

I work with so many people that just have the wrong cassette tape in their head. They're telling themselves a story. And you believe the story. That's your worst critic.

Is your inner critic selling you a story to change the Story, man. Like, I was watching the worst show on television the other day. It was called the News. Totally depressed me. President Ford had a great quote.

He was at a press conference, admitted he read the sports page first, and the press pool just went crazy. You're a leader of the free world. Why don't you read the front page first? He's like, well, the front page just shows all of his failures.

The sports page shows his accomplishments. There's a lot of wisdom in that. I want to surround myself with people that are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Freddy D: 00:36:03

Exactly. Totally correct. Well, it's been a great conversation, Danny. How can people find you?

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:36:09

Well, as a thank you to enduring all of my little anecdotes, I wanted to give you and everybody their own free storytelling blueprint. So if you go to Free Story guide again, free storyguide.com you'll get your own storytelling blueprint. And pretty. You're just so easy to talk to.

And I can see why you are an effective salesman because you just make this so easy on everybody. I hope your audience is paying attention because you're doing a lot of cool things subtly that make you successful. So thanks for all you do.

Freddy D: 00:36:40

Thank you, Danny. Great conversation. Great insights shared with our audience. A lot of good nuggets there for them to implement.

And we definitely would like to have you on the show again because I think we could talk probably for a whole day on this kind of stuff. And that's cool when you have that kind of chemistry and both knowledgeable on the subject matter. So that makes it a lot of fun.

Dr. Danny Bassell: 00:37:01

Thank you. God bless.