Deliver Your Message Like a RockStar with Craig Duswalt

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Talking Too Loud. Today, we'll be breaking down how to deliver your message like a rock star. To drop these value bombs, I brought Craig Deuswalt and EO Fire Studios. Craig is a keynote speaker, author, podcaster, and the creator of the brands Rockstar Marketing and Rock Your Life. He has written 11 number one bestselling Amazon books, and his background includes touring with Guns N' Roses as Axl Rose's personal assistant and Air Supply as the band's personal assistant.

0:40In today's foundation, we'll talk about the three most effective ways to deliver your message. We'll talk about committing your audience with confidence. We'll talk about living with passion and being authentic and thinking way outside the box and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Craig and our sponsors. Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for For business professionals, Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners who want to get straight to the point.

1:09Join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions. Recent episodes include five must-knows to sell your online course, program, or membership, and four steps to grow your email list for your next launch. Listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts. Craig, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Well, first, hello, Fire Nation. How are you doing? And thank you, JLD, for having me on this show. I am honored and blessed and I am ready to go. So, all right. So I'm a marketing guy.

1:45I used to tour with the bands Guns N' Roses and Air Supply. So I learned marketing in the non-traditional way, even though I have a degree in marketing from college. But all these traditional marketing guys and girls, they do Facebook ads and they do split testing and they make cold calls, which would drive me crazy. And they track their ads. And I never do any of those things. I deal with relationship marketing. I do these rockstar marketing boot camps and big events for 500 to 700 people. Never, ever, ever have I tracked anything, did any ads like that. It's all about positioning yourself as a rock star in your industry, the expert, the go-to person in your industry.

2:38And I know that traditional marketers will, that'll drive them crazy that I don't do any of the typical traditional marketing things to track things, but I've never had to do it. Got tons of people in my event. I toured with Guns N' Roses, and I never, ever saw Axl Rose make a cold call to have someone come to one of his concerts. So I learned from the best not to do the traditional marketing, think outside the box, do things differently, position yourself as an expert, and then you'll thrive in the industry. Fire Nation, that's why we're talking to Craig today about delivering your message like a rock star.

3:15As he mentions, we're talking Guns N' Roses, Axl Rose's personal assistant. We're talking Air Supply as the band's personal assistant. And you believe the three most effective ways to deliver your message, Craig, are speaking, podcasting, and by writing a book. Let's chat about these three delivery platforms now. You could do a million different things, social media, all that stuff. Like I said, all those traditional marketing things. But I've narrowed it down to three things. If we all, no matter what business you're in, like an insurance salesman, real estate person, a coach, speaker, author, all those things, no matter what you do, brick and mortar store owner, no matter what you do, if you did these three things, speaking, podcasting, and writing a book, you will stand out from your competition.

4:06So I do these rockstar marketing boot camps in Los Angeles and Dallas twice a year. I have a ton of people to come. And I always teach them these three things because this, rock stars, music rock stars that we know that we listen to on the radio or on Spotify and everything, they put on concerts. So they're on stages. So we need to be on stages as well. And that's where the speaking comes into play. Many of them do, well, they all do interviews. So all the time, they're all doing radio interviews, interviews about their concerts, upcoming concerts, interviews about their new album coming out. They all do interviews all the time.

4:45So we, as rock stars in our business, need to be interviewing people and doing interviews on podcasts. And then the last thing is the rock stars, the music rock stars that we all listen to write songs. So they all write songs and we listen to those songs. Well, we don't write songs as businesses, but we sure can write a book. And if you write a book about what you do for a living, your program, your system, how you do what you do, you know, people will flock to you because you are now positioned as the expert and celebrity in your field. So I've had like real estate agents, I've had mortgage brokers, insurance salesmen write books about either the business that they're in, or maybe even a hobby that they do just to get people to see that they're an expert in some sort field, and then they'll come to them to do business with them.

5:39Fire Nation, speaking, podcasting, writing a book, which one are you doing? Which two are you doing? Are you doing all three? And you're a strong believer, Craig, that a positive attitude, as well as combined with vibrant energy, something I look to bring to this episode, is going to help you stand out. Can you share more on this topic? I graduated college in 1983, a long time ago. And right out of college, I got a job because I was an actor in college and I got a job at a theater in Long Island, New York called Westbury Music Fair. And literally two weeks out of college, the band Air Supply comes in to do a concert at the Westbury Music Fair.

6:20And at this concert, they're doing a Friday night show and a Saturday night show. Friday night, I'm working the show as a runner backstage. I'm like a gopher getting towels for the band. I'm picking them up at their hotel, bringing them to soundcheck, bringing them back to their hotel, bringing them back to the show. But I'm a runner, go for the lowest man on the totem pole working at the Westbury Music Fair. So Air Supply does the show on Friday night. Everything goes good. Saturday, I'm not scheduled to work, but they're doing another show. But my mother wants to go see Air Supply, and she wants me to take her to the show.

6:54So I take her to the show, and we're sitting in the audience, and she goes, you know, you can get me backstage. I would love to meet the band since you work here. So I'm like, all right, fine. My mother's a groupie. So I take her backstage and I introduce her to the band, of which I only met them the night before. And some guy, the security guard for Air Supply, he's like six foot five, 350 pounds, walks over to me and he says, you were the guy that was working here last night, right? And I look up at him and I'm like, yes, I am, Mr. Very Large Man. And he says, how much do you make a week here?

7:27and I thought it's none of his business, but he's huge. So I answered the question. I said about$150 a week. And he said, how would you like to quadruple that? And so many things went through my mind of what this man wanted me to do to him for$600 a week. But I thought to myself, I am in, I will do whatever you want for$600 a week. And he said, the band saw you working last night. They loved your positive attitude and your energy. And they want to know if you want to go on the road. And to make a very long story short, the next day there was a limousine at my house, took me to a Learjet in JFK Airport, and I flew to Wallingford, Connecticut, simply because this is my number one marketing tip.

8:11I teach marketing tools and resources and all that stuff. But my number one marketing tip is always do your best just in case someone is watching. And it changed my life. I toured with Air Supply for seven years. And then after that, the security guard for Air Supply became the manager of this new band called Guns and Roses. And he calls me up one day and he's like, you're ready to go back on the road? I'm like, what do I have to do? You have to babysit Axel Rose. Doesn't he get in trouble a lot? Yes, but I'm going to pay you a lot of money. And I'm like, all right, I'll go. So I toured with Guns and Roses for four years.

8:44All this stems from one night doing my best in a very menial job, trying to stand out, trying to just have positive attitude and energy, and it changed my life forever. Fire Nation, you never, never know when somebody is watching. And sometimes when it matters the most, you expect it the least. So just make a habit of doing the right thing, of working hard, of having a positive attitude, of having vibrant energy. Like, why would you want to live your life in any other way anyways? So just go forth and conquer. And one of your goals in life, Craig, is to command your audience with confidence. Why is this specifically important?

9:25And give us an example of you doing this at some point in your career. One of the things, as we've mentioned, that I teach is everyone should become a speaker of some sort. You don't have to be a professional speaker. It doesn't have to be the number one thing that you do. But in your arsenal of marketing, you need to be on some sort of stage or just position to yourself as an expert and celebrity in your field. So most people have trouble getting on stages. Number one thing in the fear in the world is speaking on stages. So this is why I believe podcasting is the number one thing that you could do to get used to speaking to people.

10:04So I love what you're doing, JLD, because you are doing this five days a week. Seven days a week, brother. Let's go seven days a week for 11 years now. That's insane. And look what you've done. You've created this thing. And I have a mastermind group of 125 people. I have done calls for the last three weeks talking about you talking about specifically your model and how you do things. You know, you could podcast once a week and you're going to get the results of podcasting once a week. You podcast seven times a week. So you're getting the results of podcasting seven times a week. But here's the confidence thing.

10:41You know, getting in front of people, like I said, is hard. Doing this over and over again is when you build confidence. So throwing yourself on a stage, you don't want to do that right away because, oh, my God, there's people watching me and kill me now. But doing a podcast and interviewing people and talking to people and learning how to interact with people on a podcast is way easier because you're kind of hidden behind a microphone. But the thing is, it's great training to do this. Now, here's the beauty of podcasting. When you first start a podcast, you're going to interview maybe people that you know first.

11:18But nobody is going to be listening to your podcast because you haven't promoted it yet. So the beauty of podcasting is for the first eight episodes that you do, you can interview these really, really cool people and no one's listening to you. But so it's a great practice ground to screw up, because when I first started, my podcast is called Rock Your Life TV. And when I first started, I did my first podcast like 16 years ago. I was horrible. The first month was like, oh, my God, you suck, dude. you're horrible. But if you do it over and over again, you get better. The hardest thing in speaking and podcasting is starting.

11:57But once you start and once you get used to it, you become so great at it and you will walk around everything that you do with the utmost confidence in the world because now you're interviewing top people and you know that you can handle this because you have the confidence to do it. Fire Nation, there's so much I love about this. I want to ask you one question to everybody listening today. Did Kobe Bryant practice basketball one day a week? Did Tiger Woods get out there one day a week on the golf course and take a swing with his clubs? Why do you think you're going to become good at something doing it once a week, 50 times a year?

12:30I'm not saying it has to be a podcast. I'm not saying it has to be anything. I'm saying, what is the thing that you want to be great at? Guess what? Put in the flipping reps, get up every day and do it and then do it again and then do it again. I mean, I'm actually coaching somebody right now and this person is terrible on video. I'm having him record a 30 second loom video that he's going to send to prospects and these videos are horrible. And he's like, John, why am I so bad? I'm like, because you've never done this before. You're horrible and you've never done this before, but guess what? At a hundred of these, you'll be okay.

13:05At 500, you'll be good. At 2000, you'll be like, wow, I'm actually pretty amazing at this. And we're talking about a 30-second video, Fire Nation. We get to do it over and over again. Put in those reps. What are you waiting for? This individual that I'm coaching, he would have just done one or two, thought that he sucked, and then never sent on a video because he thought that he sucked at it. He does suck at it because he doesn't do it. Put in the reps, Fire Nation. We have so much more to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. If you're a startup with big goals, then it's important to find a CRM that can keep up, but I get it.

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15:25That's promo code FIRE at fieldofgreens.com. fieldofgreens.com. Craig, your motto is to live with passion and to be authentic. Tell us why. So I am passionate about a lot of things. I love helping people. I love seeing the light bulbs go off in the room when I'm on stage and teaching people what they could do to become successful in whatever they want to do. I'm also very, very passionate about music. It's been a thing with me ever since touring with Guns N' Roses and Air Supply. And, you know, I live with passion every day. And I think I know I add that to my family. And my kids are the most passionate people that I know.

16:15So I must have done something right, my wife, and I must have done something right with our kids. So one of my kids is a drummer for the band Thredge. It's a heavy metal band called Thredge. they've just finished their second album and they are killing it we're playing all of Southern California right now and I manage this band because it keeps me young and I do a bunch of other things with marketing but this is my new passion is managing these four 20 year old kids and like I said they are killing it but they have a new album coming out like I just said they have a new single called Dysfunctional it's on Spotify But here's the thing.

16:57My son is a drummer. He's played Bottle Rock, Lollapalooza, because he practices every single day, like you were just talking about the podcasting, do it over and over and over again. He literally plays drums six hours a day. Now, in high school and before that, he was a top golfer in Southern California. And I spent tens of thousands of dollars on golf lessons so he could become the greatest golfer. But that was my passion for him to become a great golfer. I used to have to make him go to his golf lesson, make him practice golf every day. And somewhere in high school, he transitioned to really liking music because of my background.

17:48It's my fault. And he just started playing drums. And yet every day he would practice for six hours a day drums. And I would force him to play golf. What happened was at the end of high school, he's getting all these D1 scholarships for golf. And I'm like, dude, this is great. You're going to have a full ride at all these great schools and play golf and get a great education. And he comes to me one day and he's like, dad, I am so sorry, but I don't want to play golf. I want to play drums. And to my credit, my wife's credit, we said, you know what? you know we've spent all this money but i could totally tell that you have a passion for music and i make you play golf and we we we gave him our blessing and now he's become one of the top young golf uh drummers in the world in the world and and it's just the proof is there if you are passionate about something you will be successful you have to eat drink and sleep it you can't just dabble in this.

18:56If you want to do something, you have to be passionate about it. You have to want it so bad that it helps you breathe. And that's what I do for marketing. I just love speaking on stages. I love talking to people about marketing. But if you're doing something that you're not passionate about, you ain't going to be authentic and you're not going to be successful. Fire Nation, I talk about finding your big idea. And then of course, discovering the niche within your big idea that you can dominate. Part of that process is having excitement, enthusiasm, and passion for that big idea. That's on the left-hand side.

19:29On the right-hand side, yes, you do need skills, knowledge, and ability because you have to be delivering value in that big idea. You have to find where can I combine both of those things? Because if you just have enthusiasm, but there's no real skill or value that you're exchanging, it's not going to work because people aren't just going to be giving you money because you're enthusiastic about something. But if you just have skills or knowledge about something, but no real enthusiasm or passion, you're going to lose as well. Why? Because there's going to be somebody out there, like Craig was just talking about, who lives, eats, and breathes that thing.

20:03And they're always going to beat you. They are always, always, always going to beat you because they're going to wake up excited to do that thing every single day over and over again. Why do you think I've beaten every single podcaster that's tried to do a daily interview show? because I've done it 11 years and I wake up every day like I get to talk to really cool people today. I love this. And they did it. So they lost. I won. You need to win, Fire Nation. Follow this model. And you don't just think outside the box, Craig. You think way outside the box, especially when it comes to marketing. So give us some examples of this way outside the box thinking.

20:40Yeah, I do these Rockstar Marketing Boot Camps. I have Rock Your Life conferences. Um, and, and all, I have 254 outside the box marketing ideas. And I'd love to give you 254 right now, but I'm going to give you my two favorite. Okay. So my two favorite outside the box marketing, number one is I, uh, I call it blank envelopes. So you take an, a regular envelope, a white envelope or business number 10 envelope. And what I do is if I'm targeting someone that I want to come to my seminar or sponsor one of my events or even be a guest on one of my podcasts, but I don't know them, just trying to make an introduction, I hate cold calling and all that stuff.

21:27So what I do is I take an envelope and I find out their address, their business address. And let's just say his name is John Smith. So I'll write John Smith on the envelope and his address. and in the return address section, I'll put my return address. But underneath that, I'll put my telephone number, my cell phone number. And I lick the envelope and I mail it. There's nothing in the envelope. And then John Smith receives the envelope and he opens it up and nothing's in the envelope. And he's like, what the heck is this? And he's looking on the envelope and he's like, oh, good. He left his telephone number.

22:01I'll call him. So John calls me up and said, hey, Craig, my name is John Smith. and I just got this empty envelope from you. And I was wondering what was in it. And I said, nothing. I actually just wanted to talk to you because I have this event coming up. And so what happens is one of two things. One, 99 % of the time they say, wow, dude, that's amazing. Like, love that. Tell me more. I mean, maybe 0.5 % of the time they get mad at me and they're like, what are you doing? I said, dude, you called me. I didn't call you. So I don't know why you're getting upset. that. So it is a great way. I do this all the time.

22:39I send blank, empty envelopes to people that I want to connect with, and then they call you. So that's one, if you don't want to do cold calling, which I hate doing. My next one is you have to write a book. I teach people to write small books, 96-page books, and there's many reasons why that I could go into it another time. But so you write a book. I've written 11 books, so you could write one book, I'm sure. And we teach you how to do that. It's very easy to do. So you write a book and you take you get them printed and you take about 10 or 15 books and you take them to your local bookstore or an airport bookstore.

23:19and I put them in a backpack and I walk around the bookstore like a Barnes and Noble with my 15 books in my backpack. And I think, where would my book look good in this bookstore? So I walk over to the marketing session section and I kneel down, take my 15 books out of my backpack and I put them on the shelves. And that is called reverse shoplifting. So what I, you know, So do you know that, John, that people charge thousands of dollars on how to get your books in bookstores? And I'm like, why is this so difficult? You just put them there yourself. I don't know why. And what happens is the most amazing thing.

23:55So I always put my books like next to Tony Robbins and stuff like that. And I'm putting 15 books up there. So what happens is this happens all the time. And I have people doing this all over the country. But what happens is someone will buy my book and they'll go up to the counter and it has the ISBN on it, the ISBN number on it. So they scan it and it comes up in the system. And then the system says, that's weird. It says we have no books. So they look and they call the publisher because now it's selling. So they call the publisher, which is me, and they order 10 more books and then they put them on the bookshelves.

24:32I do this at airports. I always walk in an airport. You know, those Hudson shops in the airport where they sell food and goodies and stuff. They always have the New York Times number one bestselling author books or bestselling books. I always put my number under number one. And I take a picture of me as I'm walking through the airport. I am armed with books all the time, just putting them places just to get the word out that I exist. So Fire Nation, guess what? I went the traditional book publishing route with HarperCollins. Yes, they gave me$350 ,000 as an advance, which was sweet. Yes, they gave me an$80 ,000 marketing budget, which was sweet.

25:10But guess what? With all of that, any bookstore I go into, I have exactly one book on the shelf. That's what they do. They put one book on the shelf. Doesn't matter if you're a traditional publisher or whatever. They have some more in storage, but you have one book on the shelf. And guess how many books Craig has on that shelf? He has one book on the shelf. So you need to get inventive, Fire Nation. I'm a huge fan of the following. love me or hate me because there's no money in the middle fire nation i want you to love me but if you don't i don't care if you hate me because i don't need you to be like jld is okay i want you to either love me or hate me because there's nothing else matters it really just doesn't and if you are not willing to be a little controversial and i'm just going to say it be a lot controversial and something that you believe in you know if you're going to believe in something go strong with it don't be just as like warm tepid water because otherwise you're just boring.

26:00And boring is bad. So humans love stories, Craig. I mean, there's a reason why history is broken up into two words, his story, their stories, her story. Why do you believe we need to focus on being a great storyteller? We've all heard the term facts tell stories sell. So I help speakers a lot. One of my main people that come to my seminar are speakers, the main genre that I talk to. So I have this thing called a rock star power program. I've partnered with James Barber. He played the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera on Broadway for three years. He's been in millions of shows. So him and I have this rock star power program, teaching people, teaching speakers how to come up with their story, their defining moment.