Honest Business Conversations, Part 1: How I Handle Industry Copycats and Deliver Compelling Keynotes

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0:38I decided I'm going to try something new and it's going to be scrappy as I'll get out. But you know, depending on how people respond to it, maybe we take it even further. For now, I am calling it a quickie consulting. It definitely needs a rebrand. By the time we actually share this, I'll probably call it something else. But I literally just turned on my computer. I want to record my thoughts and takeaways from a recent consulting session and share them with you. So let's dive into two of the things I'm going to be talking about today. If this is at all interesting, we will then dive in. Have you ever wondered the format of creating a presentation that gets people engaged and positions you as a thought leader in your industry?

1:15Oh, let's chat about that. In addition to this, how do you define and defend the value of your business when people are copying the thing you want to do? Oh, two hot topics. Let's break them down. So I had a consulting session with a person. Let's call this person. Oh, I should give this person a name. This is the first time I'm doing this. Let's name this person Conference Kelly. Okay. We'll name this person Conference Kelly. So Conference Kelly books a consultation with two main objectives. Conference Kelly, well, she's going to be giving the opening keynote of a conference that she's hosting.

1:51That's amazing. Fantastic. But how then do you formulate a captivating keynote? Now, normally everybody works differently, but the thing that I have discovered that has worked extraordinarily well for me is breaking up a keynote into three sections. Now, if it's a 30-minute keynote, each section is about 10 minutes. If it is a 45-minute keynote, each section is about 15 minutes. So as we go into this, I like to break it up into thirds. Now, when I first started speaking, I had no idea what I was doing. In fact, I started speaking to groups of like five or six people for many years, and then it slowly grew over time, whereas today I'm represented by a speaking agency.

2:29Over the years, I decided that it was easy for me to approach things to not get intimidated if I walked in with the framework. So it is a three-part framework and they're all very cleverly named one, two, and three. So as you are formulating a keynote or even a presentation, what I advise to do is in section number one, what you want to do is you want to build the know, like, and trust factor. This is where you share your origin story. How did you get into doing what it is you do? What problem in the world did you see that needed to be solved? And then what you want to do is get into why you. Why did you decide to do the thing that you're actually talking or teaching about?

3:07You talk about your origin story. Then you talk about anything that would lead to validity. Have you won any awards? Have you been featured in other places? Have you been speaking about this topic for a very long time? Have you built out a whole following around this thing? What you want to do is immediately position yourself as a thought leader or as an authority in front of the audience that you're speaking to. Lastly, in section number one, what you want to do is you want to state your thesis. You can do X in Y time. Three steps to accomplishing X because of Y. And so what you're doing right off the bat in the first eight to 10 minutes, you are actually coming out and putting a stake in the ground.

3:47And when you put a stake in the ground, normally what happens is that it divides the audience into two people. Yes, I very much want to know how to solve that problem. Or yes, I want to know how I want to understand X and Y time. And then the other half of the group is like, no, you can't do X and Y time. Both of those people in the audience are really good for you. Then what you're going to do is you're going to move into phase number two. And this is where you share a framework. This is where you share education. This is where you share how to. And this to me is the most power punch of any presentation because this is where you are going to turn the people who agree with your sentiment, I can do X and Y time.

4:23You're going to turn them into evangelists. And the people who didn't believe you know you can't do X and Y time, you're going to turn them into believers. How are you going to do that? You're going to blow their dang minds with the framework that makes them believe they can do what it is you believe can be done. Now you wouldn't be standing on a stage if you didn't think it could be done, Right? So if then that's the case, you have to flex your big muscle and show them exactly how to do it. This is what we call the how. Now, depending on the length of the keynote, it will range anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes, which means you got to know your stuff.

4:59You have to be able to say, if they want X and Y time, you got to give them a framework. You got to give them anywhere from three to five steps. You actually have to give an explanation. Now, when I was talking to Conference Kelly, Conference Kelly had said, yeah, but I really want to explain why it's important or how they can do it according to the why. And I said, that's amazing. And that's beautiful. And if your audience likes that, phenomenal. Based on my experience and the audiences that I have spoken to, if I spend too much time talking about why it's important, it makes it feel like they have to do a lot of work or make a lot of behavior modifications.

5:38And if you're a speaker and you have a short amount of time to make somebody believe or change their mind or make them inspired or have them look at something in a new way, when you spend any time talking about why it's so important, you're actually putting more question marks above their head. Personal decision, but what I had suggested is any time that you can explain the how, because the how will get them to taking action. And when they take action, when they change their behavior, when they come to believe, when they see that you might have a point, then we can get to the why. But getting them to action, knowing the why, it's important, but it's not as important as the how.

6:17When somebody walks away from something that you're talking about, a presentation, a keynote, a webinar, a masterclass, when they understand the how, they immediately trust you more. They say, this person knows what they're talking about. This person has given me a framework. This person has opened their kimono, shared everything, behind. And now it's on me to go and do. That brings us to the third part of a presentation. And this is where you get into what I call the human conditioning part of the presentation. At the end of the day, regardless of who you're speaking to, dentists, doctors, photographers, lawyers, medical practitioners, anybody, we as humans, the people doing the work, But we as humans, we're all the same.

6:58We all endure the same human condition, which is filled with a myriad of emotions. Many of us, like right now, I'll have a conversation with you right now. If we are having a conversation around business, we might all identify with emotions of doubt, uncertainty, elation, success, what other people call failures. Those are all human things. And so in the third part of my presentations, the thing that I've discovered over time, which might be different for anybody else, is if I can connect the human emotion to the outcome that's desired, it makes them become stronger in their belief system that they can go and do the thing that I am advocating for.

7:42So when you talk about your origin story, when you talk about your street credibility, and then you talk about making a statement like you can do X and Y time, and then you share frameworks or steps on how they can go home and exactly do it, the how. There's no secrets, you're giving them the how. And then you come in and you use that last part of the human condition and you say, I have given you all the tools you need to get the thing that you want, but, but, and then you insert the human condition, fear, doubt, stress, anxiety, imposter syndrome, whatever the case may be, whatever you think that audience is going to struggle with, after listening to your how, you must address their objection during this point and then identify the human condition attached to it.

8:31So phase one, you're building your street credibility, your origin story, things that make you an industry leader or thought leader, like why you're on that stage. And then you go and create your thesis statement. And then in order to get X and Y time, you're going to be giving them the how, the framework and the steps. And then in the human condition part of the presentation, you're going to be telling them what will stop them. And it's not because they don't know how, and it's not because they don't believe. It is because oftentimes we as humans get in our own way to the very thing we want. So then you must go and tell them this is on the horizon and this is how you're going to get over that fill in the blank human emotion.

9:13This is how you're going to get over stress, anxiety, overwhelm, all of that. And then you're going to ask them at the end, now that you know the how, and now that you know what could stop you, and now that you are ready to make the decision to stop or continue forward, that is on you. And you invite them to do that. You don't make your presentation about you. You simply become the vehicle or the mechanism that makes it entirely about them. Moving on to the second quickie consultation. I mean, we had an hour-long conversation. We went in a lot of different directions, but it was all focused on one particular thing.

9:51And the question that was underlying the question was what happens when people copy what it is you're doing? Ooh, if that ain't a hot topic. You know, I have to tell you that the humanness of me and perhaps the humanness of you when you put your heart and soul into building a business and then you see somebody else come in and rip it off almost exactly the same. You, the humanness is like, oh, hold my earrings, I'm about to scrap. Like, you don't do this. You don't get to reap the benefits of the months, of the years of me breaking my back to see if this thing's gonna wake that work. No, you don't get that.

10:32That's what comes up. And then what I started slowly realizing that nothing is truly, by and large, ownable, right? We can have patents and we can have copyrights and all of the things are amazing. And as a law school dropout, I'm a big advocate of it. I do take legal precautions in many different ways. But what we've seen time and time again is that even if you have like a utility patent on something and you think you're insulated, that there's gonna come like a knockoff from abroad and somehow it slurps its way underbelly and starts being sold as in competition with your product where you have like a patent and how deployable is that patent in a different country?

11:11It's a lot of time and energy. And so Conference Kelly asked me, there has been a clear and distinct knockoff. How much time and energy and how much should I be paying for legal fees to pursue this? And I said, as much or as little as you darn well please. There's not a right or wrong. There's not a right wrong. But here's one thing I do know is that if or when you win in court, you will have to measure that against the time, the money, and the energy you got to get to that point. And after that, even if your competitor gets a cease and desist, they're still going to continue to do the shady stuff, but just 1 % less than what is legally acceptable.

12:01At the end, who wins? Who wins there? I then told her that after we launched Social Curator, and here's one thing. Here's one thing that I know to be true. I have enough self-awareness to know I am not a special snowflake. I'm not even truly like a true innovator. But what I can tell you straight out was that back in 2017, when we launched Social Curator, the nature that Social Curator was, the packaging, the offer, the deliverables, the way it was presented, that had not been done. And I feel weird saying that because it makes me feel like, oh, you know, I built the Instagram app before Instagram was around.

12:38Like, no, I'm really not saying that. What I am saying is the way that it was packaged, the deliverables and what was promised and how it was sold, that hadn't been done. So we were doing something that hadn't been done. So just imagine, just imagine when you see like ripoffs that are like one derivative from our like name, like this isn't the exact name because listen, I ain't trying to, I ain't trying to hash out anything, but just, just imagine the name that's similar. Like instead of social curator, it was like socially curated, you know, like actually, I don't even know if that's a business right now, but there was like a knockoff that was like just as similar and they were taking like the similar copies and they were taking our action plans and then repurposing them inside of a paid community.

13:24Do you know the anger and disillusion I felt? Do you know how much time, money and energy that it went into creating caption prompts and action plans and a private community? Do you know that amount of time and energy that went into that, let me tell you, it was not cute and it was not fun for somebody to go and rip it off in its entirety. And then to have quasi knockoffs, right? So then it's like the nature that is social curator. They're like, but we do this kind of sort of different. I was like, dang, but you want to know what? I didn't own Jack's squat. I didn't own an idea. Do I see that they look shady and like, you know, a day late and a dollar short?

14:09But listen, one thing that I know to be true is that if I am a proper Louis Vuitton bag, then what I am looking at is a fake on a sidewalk street of New York City being sold on a blue tarp. You're a cheap fake. You're a cheap fake. And you want to know what cheap fakes are? Things that people don't use. Do you want to know what a cheap fake is? Things that people don't appreciate. You want to know what a cheap fake is? it's not on the cusp of doing things different. Listen, if you're copying this business, you're already behind. That's it. But this is not about my business. This is about your business.

14:49If somebody's copying you, this is what you do. You get the permission to feel every human emotion. Be angry, be sad, be pissed, raise an angry fist, file a cease and desist. You do whatever the heck you need to do to come right. but you got to do it in a very specific amount of time. If you give yourself one day to be real freaking angry, do it. If you give yourself one week to be angry and just simmer and just be, wake up in the morning and just say, I'm angry, go ahead, go ahead. If you need a month to be that angry, go ahead. But after that timeframe, anything outside of the time you gave yourself, That's on you You're letting them win You will never beat an enemy who has an outpost in your head Period You let them get in your head You invited them in So what I will tell you is that early on in my career I would let my angry periods like my burn-off periods They were really long And the more that I got accustomed to understanding There will always be cheap fakes and they will always under deliver and be underappreciated.

16:05They will always be behind if they are copying somebody else. And let me tell you, I haven't seen a good copy exist long time. So there's that. I have seen myself mature as a business owner by letting my downtime, my gray cloud that I'm going to be piss time sit with me. I'm telling you when something hits me outside of the blue and I'm like, that's dirty, that's wrong, you're wrong. Whenever I feel that way, I give myself that whole day. Ooh, my poor husband, he has to sit through me being like, and then, and the nerve. Can you believe? I can't right now. I can't. Like, I am just so glad I do not see that person walking down the street because I'd have some words.

16:46My husband just lets it be. He just lets it be. And then the next morning after I have slept, I will write down some facts about the situation. Literally some facts. because there are emotions that I have and those emotions are real, but it doesn't make those emotions true, right? It is real that I feel angry and hurt and disillusioned. That's real, but what's not true is my business going under because I'm some fake, some two-bit second-handed bag on the sidewalk of New York. You think I'm gonna go down to that? Oh no, the fact is it exists. My response is, I'm going to get better. The fact is, I'm going to express gratitude because if I don't have a copycat, I'm not doing something right.

17:37If I list a fact and I say, I'm going to express gratitude because the more people who copy this idea, it means that I'm onto something. So then the challenge becomes, how do I stay two steps ahead, two days ahead, two weeks ahead? How do I become the innovator? And how do I serve people so dang well that a two-bit copy will never be enough to suffice. So let me be clear. I am not saying you should not pursue legal endeavors. If you know that the law is on your side and you have the time, the money, and the energy to do that, please, I applaud you. You do that. But if you are on a very limited timeframe for your time, your energy, and your money, I would say that any time that you spend worrying about squashing somebody else, I want you to remind yourself that you're better.

18:31You're better. And if you are going to win, it is predestined that you're going to win. Why? Because you got to this point having not copied anybody else. So I speak this lesson from my heart. I speak this lesson to anybody who needs to hear it. And I am creating content in a new way, just off the fly as a distillation of things that I work through, sharing this content. And I believed, like y 'all will remember if anybody has been around from the podcast in the beginning, that I created the podcast because back when I started my photography career around 2007, I made a promise to God. And I said, if you allow me to start a business, I'm going to share everything I know.

19:15And so this is me on the back of generosity from other people who are taking time and money and investments to set up consulting sessions for me to distill two of the 22 things that we spoke about. So if this is at all a help to you, thank you for paying attention. Thank you for joining the conversation. If you have thoughts on feedback of one of two things, a framework for how to deliver a keynote and a presentation in the most efficacious way, and or how you deal with copycats in your business, please feel free to connect, leave your opinions wherever you are listening to this podcast or watching this video.

19:54It is with much love and respect. I am Jasmine Starr and it is an honor to serve you well.