1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,000 Tell me about your vision. 2 00:00:02,320 --> 00:00:10,040 My vision, well, my mission is to bring joy back in education and workplace and I do that in four different ways using the different 3 00:00:10,120 --> 00:00:16,920 aspects of language communication, speaking, listening, reading, and writing. So in terms of reading, 4 00:00:16,920 --> 00:00:20,640 I have the world's top reading engagement program, which in just over two months 5 00:00:21,080 --> 00:00:28,040 shows parents how to get their kids to read more, read better, and most importantly to love reading. Writing, I've written 17 books. 6 00:00:28,040 --> 00:00:31,540 Speaking, I speak over a hundred dates all over the world. 7 00:00:31,540 --> 00:00:35,740 And then finally, this is probably most applicable to your audience in terms of listening, 8 00:00:35,740 --> 00:00:42,580 I help individuals, entrepreneurs, and organizations leverage speaking on stages as a major client lead source. 9 00:00:46,220 --> 00:00:51,100 Danny, where would you say that this vision of you going in the world and 10 00:00:51,980 --> 00:00:56,140 creating a better education for people, creating more audience and more 11 00:00:56,140 --> 00:01:02,140 business for people to speaking and writing books by, why is all this tied together? Where does this come from? 12 00:01:02,940 --> 00:01:07,020 Well, in terms of the coaching, I never thought I'd coach because I have very high standards, 13 00:01:07,020 --> 00:01:13,100 just like when I was a teacher and I basically tell people I have a two-step process. Listen to what I tell you and then do it. 14 00:01:14,220 --> 00:01:20,540 I never thought I'd be coaching, but because of COVID and losing over a hundred speaking engagements overnight, 15 00:01:20,540 --> 00:01:25,180 I had to make revenue somehow and people always asked me to help coach them. 16 00:01:25,180 --> 00:01:30,620 How to create more engaging presentations. And now I absolutely love it. 17 00:01:31,500 --> 00:01:37,420 Probably my favorite success story was last year, my business partner and I coached Jimmy Hayes Nelson. 18 00:01:37,420 --> 00:01:43,340 We were working with a gentleman named Gustavo from Ecuador. Gustavo should be president of the United States. 19 00:01:43,340 --> 00:01:50,620 He came to America 30 years ago, didn't speak a word of English, did every menial job he could, saved every dime, invested in real estate. 20 00:01:50,620 --> 00:01:57,180 30 years later, he's a multimillionaire. And so we worked with him on crafting his story into a presentation. 21 00:01:57,180 --> 00:02:03,180 Now his offer, Harry, was a four-month coaching program for $40,000. 22 00:02:03,180 --> 00:02:11,020 Now that's a big offer, but one of the things I always stress to my clients is, hey, there are two ways to get better as a speaker. 23 00:02:11,020 --> 00:02:16,300 First of all, you got to watch a lot of speakers. And then second of all, one of my mentors was a guy named Jim Rohn. 24 00:02:16,300 --> 00:02:22,060 And Jim used to say, you can't pay other people to do your pushups. Translation, you got to do the work. 25 00:02:22,060 --> 00:02:28,540 So I said, hey, you got to get out there and speak. You can speak to service organizations, clubs like Rotary Club, Lions Club. 26 00:02:28,540 --> 00:02:33,820 Speak to schools, speak to synagogues, to churches, to chambers of commerce. 27 00:02:33,820 --> 00:02:38,780 He said that he was going to be on a podcast that night. And I said, okay, here's my phone number. 28 00:02:38,780 --> 00:02:43,340 You got to call me tomorrow, Gustavo, and tell me how you did. 29 00:02:43,340 --> 00:02:50,460 So he calls me up the next day and Jimmy and I were so excited, Harry, because he says, Danny and Jimmy, you are geniuses. 30 00:02:50,460 --> 00:02:55,900 And I asked, well, did you go on the podcast last night? He said, yes. I'm like, did you make your pitch? 31 00:02:55,900 --> 00:03:01,020 He said, yes. I'm like, did you sell any? He said, 23. 32 00:03:01,020 --> 00:03:13,180 Harry, reading is my specialty, not math. But if I'm doing my math calculations correct, he made $920,000 that evening on a speech that we had crafted that afternoon. 33 00:03:13,180 --> 00:03:17,660 And since then, he and I have been in touch. He's made over eight figures based on that one speech. 34 00:03:17,660 --> 00:03:21,820 And that's where I get gratification. I always say your results may vary. 35 00:03:21,820 --> 00:03:24,940 It depends on what your audience is and what you're trying to do. 36 00:03:24,940 --> 00:03:32,540 But it's amazing when a person actually goes out there. It's very rewarding to me when a person goes out there, does the work and succeeds. 37 00:03:32,540 --> 00:03:47,660 Wow. That's why I recently had someone on the show and she mentioned that a lot of times entrepreneurs and students getting coached. 38 00:03:47,660 --> 00:03:53,660 Then realized they do have to do the work. You cannot. 39 00:03:53,660 --> 00:04:02,460 You come into coaching and you have to learn, OK, the teacher is going to tell you to do something or the coach is going to guide you to do something in a better, clearer way. 40 00:04:02,460 --> 00:04:12,700 But you cannot skip that doing part. And if you don't do it, every program in the world, every coaching in the world works. 41 00:04:12,700 --> 00:04:20,700 It's predicated on one factor. Do you do the work? And that's what I was like, yeah, that is absolutely correct. 42 00:04:20,700 --> 00:04:29,500 And I'm glad that your friend Gustavo, he had a great experience that with $960,000, that's a lot of money for someone. 43 00:04:29,500 --> 00:04:40,540 Well, and what you're saying, it's what I always whether I was teaching my little ones or my older ones as my students exited my classroom for the day, they always had to listen to me say the same refrain. 44 00:04:40,540 --> 00:04:46,060 I always said, remember, kids, education is valuable, but execution is priceless. 45 00:04:46,060 --> 00:04:49,180 Knowledge is not power. Only applied knowledge is power. 46 00:04:49,180 --> 00:04:53,980 Knowing what the right thing to do and doing the right thing are two very different things to go out, do the right thing. 47 00:04:53,980 --> 00:04:58,540 Let's make this world a better place. So I'm a big believer in action. 48 00:04:58,540 --> 00:05:07,500 Yep, man, I am too. I'm not an as good of an action taker as I'm a talker, but I'm getting there. I have working on that. 49 00:05:07,500 --> 00:05:17,260 So thank you for sharing that, Danny. My next question for you, Danny, is you have a lot that you do and there's a lot that you've done. 50 00:05:17,260 --> 00:05:28,300 Then how did you get started in all this? Like, what was the starting point of you? Coaching and all these things together tied up? 51 00:05:28,300 --> 00:05:34,700 Well, we can take them one at a time. So in terms of speaking, that was out of financial necessity. 52 00:05:34,700 --> 00:05:40,460 I was a professor at the time and my wife and I attended a real estate seminar one weekend, which turned out to be a scam. 53 00:05:40,460 --> 00:05:47,180 And we lost everything. And I could focus on all the negatives that came out of that. But I like to focus on the positives. 54 00:05:47,180 --> 00:05:53,420 My wife is my life mate. I put her through the ringer and she stuck by me. 55 00:05:53,420 --> 00:06:02,940 Second of all, I no longer think money is the most important thing because I realize you can lose it all just like that. 56 00:06:02,940 --> 00:06:12,060 Third, I try not to judge other people anymore because I realize if you don't know everything about a person, you don't really know anything about a person. 57 00:06:12,060 --> 00:06:19,020 Because if I was somebody seeing what I did, I would have said, oh, you deserve that. But again, they didn't know what my intentions were. 58 00:06:19,020 --> 00:06:25,260 Fourth, I became Christian, which I'm not proud of. But the more I read the Bible, I realize I'm not the first screw up to find Jesus. 59 00:06:25,260 --> 00:06:33,260 And fifth, and this is the most important, I didn't want to file bankruptcy. And so my accountant said, well, you have to make this much more money this year. 60 00:06:33,260 --> 00:06:43,660 And so I started speaking on the side and I hit that number on the number. Well, in year two, he gave me a much higher number and I hit that number right on the number. 61 00:06:43,660 --> 00:06:51,100 So in year three, I thought, well, maybe I should set a higher number. And basically, during one of the worst economic downturns in American history, 62 00:06:51,100 --> 00:06:56,660 I was able to build up a speaking business, which far exceeded anything I'd ever earned in education. 63 00:06:56,660 --> 00:07:02,380 So that's what got me into speaking in terms of writing. I've always been a writer. 64 00:07:02,380 --> 00:07:09,740 I was a journalist before I was a teacher and I loved writing. And somebody asked me to put some of my thoughts into a book. 65 00:07:09,740 --> 00:07:18,540 And that became one book. And now many years later, I have 17 books. The last book I wrote, I was really excited about because when I was a middle school teacher, 66 00:07:18,540 --> 00:07:25,580 I was the only teacher at my school, never have a tardy student. And it's because I always started off class by reading a lot of Paul Harvey's story. 67 00:07:25,580 --> 00:07:30,580 Now, I don't know, you're younger than me. Paul Harvey, when I was growing up, he'd be on the radio every day at 12, 15. 68 00:07:30,580 --> 00:07:38,500 He'd say, I'm Paul Harvey with the rest of the story. And he tells you a story and you're trying to figure out who is he talking about or what's the company. 69 00:07:38,500 --> 00:07:42,620 And my students loved it. But a lot of his examples were of people like Sears and Roebuck. 70 00:07:42,620 --> 00:07:52,180 Well, kids today don't know what Sears Roebuck is. And so the last book I wrote, Leadership Begins with Motivation, it's an homage to Paul Harvey. 71 00:07:52,180 --> 00:07:58,020 But my stories are about people like Jeff Bezos and Sarah Blakely and Michael Jordan, people like that. 72 00:07:58,020 --> 00:08:06,500 And then the book I'm writing right now is actually a direct result of the last book, because after I wrote Leadership Begins with Motivation, I read it. 73 00:08:06,500 --> 00:08:13,460 And I was amazed because completely unintentionally, most of my examples were of white male Americans. 74 00:08:13,460 --> 00:08:18,620 And so the book I'm writing right now, most of the examples are females, minorities and international people. 75 00:08:18,620 --> 00:08:26,180 I'm having a ball writing that. So that's how I got into writing in terms of the reading. 76 00:08:26,180 --> 00:08:35,300 I was actually in India touring schools. And at one school, the principal opens up the door and there's five thousand kids. 77 00:08:35,300 --> 00:08:41,900 There's 20 newspapers, five TV stations. And he said, you know, for the next hour, Dr. 78 00:08:41,900 --> 00:08:47,140 Bricell is going to teach us the three secrets to reading better. 79 00:08:47,140 --> 00:08:55,140 Harry, nobody told me I'm speaking and I have no such speech, but I got five thousand people in there and I got media. 80 00:08:55,140 --> 00:08:59,340 And so fortunately, it was in India, so I get to speak slower. 81 00:08:59,340 --> 00:09:07,860 And so I looked at the kids and like today, I am going to teach you the three secrets to reading better. 82 00:09:07,860 --> 00:09:12,260 Who wants to learn the three secrets to reading better? 83 00:09:12,260 --> 00:09:17,940 And the kids are going wild and in my head, Harry, I'm asking myself, what the heck are the three secrets to reading better? 84 00:09:17,940 --> 00:09:27,900 And during that 45 seconds, I created a speech using the exact same structure I teach people now today on how they craft their presentations. 85 00:09:27,900 --> 00:09:33,700 And like I mentioned earlier, the reason I started coaching people was out of financial necessity because of covid. 86 00:09:33,700 --> 00:09:44,820 But I absolutely love coaching entrepreneurs and CEOs and executives on how to craft a presentation that gets their audience to take the next step, 87 00:09:44,820 --> 00:09:51,380 whether that's to purchase their product or to invest in their coaching program or to donate to their cause. 88 00:09:51,380 --> 00:09:59,740 And so that's a very long answer to your short question, but that's my motivations behind my different aspects of of why I do what I do. 89 00:09:59,740 --> 00:10:04,460 That is awesome. Well, I want to go back to your India story. Where were you in India? 90 00:10:04,460 --> 00:10:08,180 I was in Tamil Nadu. I was in Chennai, which I love Chennai. 91 00:10:08,180 --> 00:10:13,500 I actually I got to get back to India right away. India is amazing. 92 00:10:13,500 --> 00:10:16,860 I spoke to a school, an all girls school. 93 00:10:16,860 --> 00:10:22,980 And after I spoke, these two beautiful seniors come up to me. One wants to be an attorney. 94 00:10:22,980 --> 00:10:27,700 The other one wants to be a doctor. I said, well, that's this is in 2018. 95 00:10:27,700 --> 00:10:33,340 I said, that's great. Are you going to go to university here in India or maybe the UK or even the United States? 96 00:10:33,340 --> 00:10:36,380 And they said, oh, we're girls. We can't leave India. 97 00:10:36,380 --> 00:10:42,220 I said, get back in that auditorium. I got up on stage and said, now is your moment, ladies. 98 00:10:42,220 --> 00:10:49,140 You know, India is, you know, within the next five years, India is going to become the largest country on the planet, 99 00:10:49,140 --> 00:10:53,180 which it is now in terms of population. I'm like, you know, you're a very young democracy. 100 00:10:53,180 --> 00:10:57,260 You're only 75 years old. Yet you've already elected a woman prime minister. 101 00:10:57,260 --> 00:10:59,740 America still has not elected a woman president. 102 00:10:59,740 --> 00:11:06,460 Like right now, there are twice as many women in India as there are people in the United States. 103 00:11:06,460 --> 00:11:12,260 There are actually more women in India with a graduate degree than there are people in the United States. 104 00:11:12,260 --> 00:11:14,460 And I told those girls, I'm like, you just made it my mission. 105 00:11:14,460 --> 00:11:19,420 Like the next CEO, the next prime minister and the next really good mom is coming out of this audience. 106 00:11:19,420 --> 00:11:22,420 Don't let anybody ever tell you what you can't do. Everything's possible. 107 00:11:22,420 --> 00:11:27,740 I got me in a teacher mode. I got very excited. But I got to speak throughout Tamil Nadu. 108 00:11:27,740 --> 00:11:35,620 I was in Chennai, Bangalore and Utti were the three major places that I got to speak and spoke to about 20 schools. 109 00:11:35,620 --> 00:11:40,540 Absolutely fell in love with the people. And I can't wait to get back to India. 110 00:11:40,540 --> 00:11:43,540 So Utti were like in the northern side. 111 00:11:43,540 --> 00:11:48,140 Utti is in the forest. It's up in the mountains. 112 00:11:48,140 --> 00:11:52,860 It's absolutely isn't it beautiful. I mean, I spoke at one school, they didn't have an auditorium. 113 00:11:52,860 --> 00:11:59,580 So I was speaking on the balcony with all the students there and there's literally monkeys on the banisters. 114 00:11:59,580 --> 00:12:04,980 And I'm looking at the mountains. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is just one of the most incredible experiences 115 00:12:04,980 --> 00:12:09,420 of my life. And I just I fell in love with India and I can't wait to get back. 116 00:12:09,420 --> 00:12:13,300 Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. 117 00:12:13,300 --> 00:12:18,140 I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. 118 00:12:18,140 --> 00:12:21,740 This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. 119 00:12:21,740 --> 00:12:26,220 We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention. 120 00:12:26,220 --> 00:12:35,220 Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.