Is an art or talent, but is an art or talent that can be taught and you can get better,
of course, by practicing.
He started out as a child actor, but he's really come into his own, but he has since
left the business and he's creating a very interesting freedom to listen to.
So if, no, by no other way, let me introduce Darryl Stern and he let him introduce himself.
Let's start that way.
Well, super cool.
If you're older, you have to remember something called Schoolhouse Rock in the 70s and 80s.
I was the voice of Scooter Computer on the first years of cartoons that let a little
boy meet a computer and explain how a computer works.
The ironic part of that is computers take input.
They run the program and they give you the output that you need that was in 1983.
And it's still true today, even with this new AI where we've got to build the correct
prompts to get the right output that we want.
They still work the same.
Very good.
So now let me ask you, just give us, I know it's very difficult because you have quite
a lengthy experience, but give me an idea of what your journey was and how did you get
where you are today?
Sure.
My dad was my first talent agent.
I was Theo in Pippin when I was seven years old by age nine.
I had an agent in New York City, so I'm living in New Jersey, 20 minutes out of New York
City.
So my dad would pick me up or my mom from junior high would race in New York City.
He would drive around the block.
We didn't have cell phones.
So I would go up audition, come down and try to find him and then straight to New York
and get back in the car and go home.
So that led to all kinds of things like being in a commercial for the very first Ms. Pac-Man
cartridge in 1983, of course, Scooter Computer, eventually being in the workshop for Smile,
which is a Broadway show written by Marvin Hamlesh.
Now, you theater people know he's the guy who wrote the chorus line and other famous
Broadway shows.
Howard Ashman wrote Little Shop of Horrors, the book, in other words, the lyrics for it.
And then I was in the show with him in that play was Jody Benson and he got recruited
and eventually wrote The Little Mermaid, which in 89 when I graduated high school it was
on of course the movies and Jody Benson was the voice of Little Mermaid.
I won the National Young Playwrights Festival.
I went to college for theater directing, acting, playwriting, all that got into stand-up comedy
in the 90s and then threw it all the way when I saw a floppy disk that said HTML.
So we'll do that introduction that's up to like 1997 there where I gave all that up to
sit in front of a silly computer by myself all day.
Yeah, you mentioned cartridge and that should bring most of us way back because before the
floppy disk and everything else there were actual cartridges that went into the Atari
system and the Atari system of course was the prelude to the Xbox and everything else.
Yeah, also the cartridges are the prelude for SSD, which is called solid state storage
where now you can buy two terabytes on something that doesn't have moving parts.
So that's the cartridge that used to hold only like 2K.
I'm going to nerd out on you for a second.
So a disk that spins but they would crash and you shook it or drop it, it would lose
all the memory and then finally they went back to the original model which is make this
a solid state unit, all electronics with the memory in it.
So there you go, there's your nerdy.
I love it, I love it because I am probably 10 years older than you are.
So I understand all of that.
Can you give me a personal experience where effective networking impacted your career
or business?
Well, cool.
The ironic part is although I've grown many, you know, huge network online, I am still
a shake hands, meet people in person.
So after my divorce, I moved to Denver in 2010 for four years.
I was still doing work that I could get online, you know, all over the country.
But then I made a wonderful lady named Angel Tussie.
She ran a group called Experience Pros.
I wrote them a 35 page proposal for their marketing.
She thought it was so incredible.
She put me on stage in front of their networking group in 2014 and said, oh my gosh, this Daryl
Stern is a genius, you know, pay attention.
And that's what rocketed my business to six figures.
I booked everybody in the room.
And it still has been networking, which during COVID it was, you know, the viral, you know,
the big zoom rooms with 500 people in them.
And I just got very good at introducing myself in a way, you know, the 90 second elevator
pitch or the 60 second hello that would get them interested enough to schedule that appointment.
And then I'll have had something else.
So in Vegas, when I lived in Las Vegas, because I got married 2003 to 2006, I lived in Vegas
and I sold time shooters.
And I actually was a sales coach by the name of Corey Poske.
And he taught me use words like feel, don't use the word think, always answer a question
with a question.
And he taught me how to be a closer and me being an actor and a playwright and being
able to listen to somebody's intonation and their voice, what mood they're in and then
come back with something that would, you know, counter that or keep the mood positive or
whatever you want to say about it, that may be able to close $40,000 deals in 90 minutes.
I mean, these people walk in, they hate you, you know, the timeshare business, they don't
want, they don't want to be on the tour and 90 minutes later, I'm making them feel so
guilty that they don't spend enough time with their kids.
This is another whole podcast episode, you know, so that though was essential.
All these different things that I did were essential building blocks to then my video
marketing business that then took off, you know, in 2015, where all these other skills
that really you have to learn, you have to learn how to close a scale, you need to learn
how to network and meet somebody and get them to schedule an appointment with you, be interested
enough, right?
All of these aspects were building blocks of them, what took my business to six figures
and beyond.
Well, you hit on a few points that I really want to go back over.
One thing was the pandemic, because ever since the pandemic, all people do are, you know,
cell phones and zoom calls and they forgot how to network.
When I go on a stage and I do a breakout session or I do a work group, a workshop for a group,
I always ask them, who's 30 something and they raise their hands, everything else.
And I say, okay, what I'm about to explain to you is Greek.
You've never heard before and you're like, why should I waste my time in networking like
this?
And forgot all about it.
So that's what the pandemic had done for us.
But you brought out another point about listening and you have to listen to the person that
you're speaking to.
And more important than listen is the pause, right?
So you're listening to what they have to say, you're pausing before you respond and you
don't respond with the next thing that you want to say, you respond with the next thing
that that he was talking about or she was talking about.
This way you have that conversation and you're what you do is you're building up your trust.
Now know you like you trust you and they'll do business with you.
So know you.
Correct.
And everybody knows you because you're a likable guy.
Like you, not so much, you know, that now is the field.
So you like you and then trust you, that builds up that a little bit.
So let me ask you a question.
How about a personal experience of networking or communication, even public speaking that
impacted your...
Sure.
First thing I'm going to go back to what you were talking about.
There are now kids that building $2.5 million businesses on two years by going on LinkedIn
and creating viral stories.
When Elvis shook his hips in the 50s, you know, they said, this is the devil.
Rock and roll is horrible.
We got to shut this down.
It's going to destroy society.
Well, sex, drug and rock and roll turned out to be okay.
I didn't destroy us.
We're still here and we love that.
All that kind of stuff.
So now today when people take, oh, they're taking selfies and they're using filters and
they're doing this and they do that, we think, oh my God, this is the devil again.
It's the end of the world.
This is just the next generation and they're doing just fine without us and our instruction.
So yes, obviously people still need to be able to communicate with each other and talk
to each other face to face and do all these things.
But at the second, on the flip side, those of us that are in the old generation, if
we don't catch on to what's going on in terms of creating social proof, which is creating
the illusion online that I am talking to you in person, it's an illusion.
Because if you do the video marketing the way that I teach you how to do it, it feels
to the person as if I'm talking to you and that's, we can get an end of this too.
This is acting and pausing and listening without the person being there.
So I'm going to give you a quick example.
So what I do breaks the space time continuum.
I'm going to get Star Trek on you.
So in the movie Interstellar with the McConaughey, right?
He goes off in the space, lightspeed.
It's now 28 years later on earth, but it's three hours later in outer space.
His daughter, who he left at seven years old, that's now 28 years old, sends him a video
message throughout her space.
She's crying.
This is her father.
His father's been gone now 20 years.
He gets the message, she's in tears, he's in tears.
Now they're not talking face to face.
She recorded the video here, beamed it throughout her space and now he's receiving it, but
she's being so personal talking to her father and telling him catching him up on the 20
years of her life that she misses him, that he starts crying.
That's where I come in and take what you're talking about, the experience of having a
personal conversation in person and creating the illusion of it through acting in theater.
You can't do it without what I, again, we're going to talk about this too, what I threw
away, which is acting in theater and playwriting and all this kind of skills out of that since
I was three years old and bringing that back into my business and realized that's how we
do this.
So we create the illusion and make people feel the same way with the no-liking trust
that we would as if we went to coffee with you every, you know, every, every B&I meeting
or whatever you want to call it for months and months to get to know, like and trust
you.
So it's not throw one out and do the other.
It's all of it.
There's not one thing that's more important than the other.
Anything that you teach is essential, however, don't throw away or put down, you know, hey,
these kids don't talk enough.
Believe me, they're so fast at growing networks and communicating.
They have discord boards now and telegram beaming out.
And they have a young person on 35,000 people paying attention to them.
That's without doing it without having to travel a single mile.
So, so we've got to take a look at that to us in the older generation if we want to keep
up.
And here's why.
So yes, I would meet you in person, let's say in 1985.
I would get to know you.
I like you.
I trust you.
So I would work with you.
But today, if I did that, I don't like and trust you.
I'm also going to Google you.
And I'm going to see if everything you're saying is legit.
And if you have any materials, reviews, Google reviews, you know, Google reviews, followers,
internet, networks, whatever, to see if you're for real or if you're going to do some Charlotte
and you're just, you know, pretending to be somebody that you're not and that's social
proof.
So we've got to catch up to them.
And yes, it's true that they've got to have some of the skills that maybe us old timers
right need to teach them as well.
That's so true.
You know, I'm thinking about my son who's on discord like every night and he has three
screens, four screens, whatever.
He's playing his games online with all of his friends while paying attention to the discord
and certain text message.
He's doing all this at the same time.
And you know, that's how he's networking without realizing he's networking.
Stand up comedy into my public speaking.
I'm going to mix the two together.
I'm going to mix what I threw away, what I haven't done in 20 something years.
And I can do the whole act.
I have memorized, you know, from 25 years ago.
No.
I don't even know how long ago that was.
You know, till now, almost 30 years ago, right?
Yeah.
So I did that and all of a sudden it was fantastic, right?
All of a sudden people are laughing.
They're coming over to me.
They just love it.
They understood and got my character and all that.
So one of the big things that I preach and I think that we do still is now I'm business
version of me, I'm business version and I'm not going to talk about well, what I do for
a living or how many, I'm not that, but like how many kids I have or, you know, my mom had
cancer 20 years ago or any of these other things.
That's a problem when we talk about social networking, social media, social comes from
a word, S-O-C-I-I, meaning alliance, because there was a city state in ancient Greece, ancient
Rome.
I'm not that smart.
I just typed this into Wikipedia.
Like that's all I did, right?
And it means creating alliances because they were fighting the Trojans and the Spartans
and two city states made an alliance.
So that became the word social, which means alliance.
So if I'm creating an alliance, these people in your network are not necessarily your customers,
but they're your allies, they're your fans, they're your cheerleaders, they're your emotional
support when you can't, when you don't feel so well.
So then if you really understand that, you say, well, what social stories would I tell
if you're meeting with somebody, maybe they're a potential client or a friend, it doesn't
matter.
Like what are you going to do every week?
You're going to tell them a different story, right?
You're going to say, oh my God, have you heard this one about my grandpa and the truck that
broke down?
Oh my God, it's a great story.
It's those kind of grandpa stories, right?
Grandpa has always got great stories.
That is social media, right?
And the better that you get, and as in public speaking, same skill set again, telling stories
is what makes public speaking work, correct?
You tell me because that to a really end television commercial, this is more like advertising
when it's not.
It's more like hearing grandpa's stories and tell stories that are just funny and dearing
and demonstrate where you are and what you're doing right now until a funny joke or show
a picture of your dad with you like back in 1970s and look at the funny haircut and all
that stuff is what gets this engagement through the roof.
And we'll talk about what's next with follow up because you're going to talk about, let's
talk about follow up next, that follow up.
Go ahead.
And you can't just stop it right there because you hit on a very important part of the public
speaking.
You can't just go out and speak and speak about a dry, a dry anything.
You have to put storytelling into your speech.
You have to put comedy into your speech.
Otherwise, you're going to lose the audience because today everybody expects so much more
and you want to keep them involved.
And when I say, when I first go on a stage, I say, okay, everybody who has their cell
phone out, raise your hand.
And about 99% of the people raised their hand.
Like I say, that is the problem.
Can you turn it off?
Can you put it away and have people like, well, no, you can't.
Why would you want to do that?
Why would you want to take my cell phone away?
It's attentive to the person.
Okay, so I turn all the cell phones on because they tell them take a picture of me and tweet
it out or send it out on Instagram with these hashtags and I'll get more attention.
And I'll get more attention to myself.
I want it.
It's integrated in.
So again, this is the generation gap.
And also I say, if you can hold an audience's attention, then you need to be a better public
speaker.
They could be eating food.
Let's eliminate the phone.
They could be eating food.
They could be reading a book.
They could be whatever.
It doesn't matter.
If you're not holding their attention, then you're not holding their attention.
It has nothing to do with the phone.
Now here though is where we get into the next part.
So you said you have to put the stories in and you don't force it.
You don't put the stories in.
Absolutely not.
They're naturally there and now I just jump.
Oh, so the next highest level is what I call energy variants.
Now this comes from the Stanislavski method of acting.
Dustin Hoffman, all the great actors, you have this.
What does that mean?
Okay, so opera, silent movies, we're all overactored because there was no amplification.
You had to do opera really loud because there was no amplification.
So it's all overdone.
It's all overdramatic.
Then the Russians who had been through wars and bloodshed and horribles and that we can't
speak of, this woman by the name of Stanislavski created this method of dramatic acting and
they started writing dramatic theater.
This is reality now.
What they said was if you're sad, you're going to pull up the actual memory of when you were
sad and relive it.
Here's what the problem is with some public speaking and the storytelling where you say,
well, I have stories in it.
So why isn't anybody talking to me?
Because you're not reliving the story.
You're really excited on stage because you are actually really learning how to put yourself
in the mode of acting, which is not fake.
A lot of people think, oh, I'm acting.
That's fake.
It's not fake.
It's being more authentic.
It's actually having you feel the emotion that you're talking about when you're expressing
it.
That's what Tony Robbins has over Winfrey.
You name it.
All the people that have risen to a multi-million dollar, billion dollar status is that they
aren't afraid to actually be really emotional and relive the moments of their lives.
They don't just talk about it.
This same thing goes on the social media.
A lot of people still.
PowerPoint presentation today.
I'm going to explain the three steps to this.
Not interesting.
Not interested in it.
You lost me in three seconds in the presentation.
I'm going to go pick up my phone and read a book.
So all the things you're saying are spot on.
I just caution when you say, well, oh, but the phone is bad.
I say, no, the phone is great.
You're not going to take it away.
It's like, it would be like saying when television came out, right?
And then let's say they were all watching television or whatever, and you're trying to
get the attention in the room and say, oh, everybody turn off the televisions.
They're not.
You just got to be better at what you do get them to focus on you.
One thing that I say about phone is that major distress and when you're sitting down with
somebody and if your phone goes off, you immediately look at your phone.
And if it vibrates, if it whatever, so you don't have 100% of their attention.
So by all that time, so that's disrespect.
Okay.
If somebody has their phone on and it's beeping and ringing.
Yeah, that's disrespect.
There have been Broadway shows on Broadway living theater where they have stopped the
show or a person and say, what are you doing?
And they've been yelled at and kicked out of the theater because that's just disrespect.
So it can be on silent.
You can be taking pictures and putting them on Instagram, all those kinds of things where
nobody's, you know, they know, he's not a disturbance to anyone.
But I mean, that's just like they have it at the movie theater now, right?
Silence your phone.
Somebody's in front of you and they got the phone is bright and it distracts from the
movie because the light and all that kind of stuff.
I'm trying to bring this all around.
So let me ask you a question.
What essential tip would you give somebody that's looking to improve their networking
or sales skills?
Take an acting class, take a theater class, take a playwriting class, take comedy class,
join an improv comedy group.
We are in a world of media, video media performance.
If you can't, if you aren't seen and nobody gets to know like and trust you, you won't
attract the attention that you want.
And of course, public speaking and join a toast masters and learn how to tell a really
good story and all the other skills.
This is now a performance, German media based on your ability to be more of an actor and
a public speaker.
It has nothing to do with the technology.
This is the thing people ask all the time, right?
Well, how does LinkedIn work?
How do you click and you post?
That's how it works.
Click post to what you're talking about, right?
When you get down to it and you're going to sell, right?
You're in person or in a zoom or anything like that.
Now we go into listening, generous listening, which is just let them tell their whole story.
Don't say anything or go, yeah, yeah.
And just let them, you know, especially in digital marketing, my God, do they have horror
stories of all the ways they've been ripped off before and the whole thing and where their
website was before and how it crashed and oh my God and all this kind of thing.
The funniest one that I know is when people say, well, we have videos, we're on YouTube
and they're proud of that.
You know, oh, we have, oh, we, I have a podcast and then I just turn to them and say, okay,
how much money did that make you?
Do you know the total of that?
Well, I have a podcast.
Well, how much money is it making you?
And then they can't answer that because they don't, they're doing it because they heard
that they need it and somebody who's a really good salesman, you know, sold them on, they
need this now, they need that now.
And that's a big thing.
Going back to what you said, if I network and I can get enough clients for my plumbing,
let's say local plumbing, right?
And I have the van with the plumbing, you know, the phone number on it and then gets
me the income that is fantastic for my business.
No, you don't have to be on the internet.
You don't have to be on the internet.
You can be a public speaker and just to teach workshops like you're doing.
You don't have to be on the internet.
It's just, it's just that it's an amplification device because there are people that need
you millions and millions of them.
I mean, there's nine billion now.
I remember in the eighth grade in the eighties, there were like four billion people.
Now there's nine billion.
I mean, in our lifetime, right?
That many people, there's at least 600 million people that need you, but you're not loud enough
and you don't understand how this amplification device works enough to reach them.
And that's your choice.
You don't have to do that.
But then, you know, when you drive through the graveyard, it's not the sad thing that
the people are dead.
It's that, you know, that expression.
It's that they had the cure and they weren't loud enough.
They didn't understand everything that you're doing.
Isn't it?
No, that kind of stuff.
So this is essential, you know, part of it.
All of it is a block to success.
We're, we're trying.
We're trying to get the word out.
No, no, no, no, no.
Do, hold on.
Do or do not.
There is no try.
Master Yoda, 1980.
Absolutely.
I am doing.
You're absolutely right, Splinter.
Out of everything you told me, what's your favorite marketing tactic?
My favorite marketing tactic is when I do my stern storming, which is content extraction,
I extract your whole life and then you have me in your home with you and we start shooting
videos.
You forget that you're making videos that people are going to see and I just get you
in a comfortable enough position that you just open up and really tell the stories from
your life.
I'll give you an example.
A lady named Jen DePresis.
She's a billionaire.
I mean, she sold a billion dollars with the mortgages and all that.
Very stoic lady.
Yes.
No, running my business.
Yes.
And the reason, and the reasons why people get so stoic in the future is because they
had tragedy in the past.
So as I'm talking to her, one video, she talks about how her mom dropped her off at the bar
when she was eight years old.
She had to go in there and talk on her dad's leg and her dad turned around and said, who
were you?
Didn't recognize her.
And then two videos later, she's crying because that was her dad.
That was all the only dad that she knows and she's in tears.
That's the viral video.
It's the bearing of your humanity because we all have tragedy.
We all have had to overcome a lot in this life.
And it's the stopping just saying, look at me with the Queen of England that I paid for
this certificate.
I'm so important.
And instead doing this humanity story, which is, you know, showing the real pain that you've
been through, the implication in that is we've seen your other videos.
We know how successful you are, but all of a sudden you become approachable.
And I think this is important in networking and public speaking too.
If you're so advanced, they'll think, wow, that's awesome, but I'm not worthy of that.
Right?
So you have to bear your humanity too in this kind of thing.
And that's why it's social.
And you tell real stories from your life that aren't all look at me and how great I am.
All right.
So let me ask you a question.
Let's just, let me start to close things up.
Give me one takeaway from everything that we spoke about that my audience can use today.
The hottest thing in the world right now is one minute reels, which are vertical videos.
They can work as your YouTube shorts.
They linked in now has a TikTok function where you can see the one minute things.
And in those, you've got a long headline, bam, and give a really powerful tip that really
has value.
And that can create massive amounts of in of exposure fast.
One of the ones that I did recently has a half a million Pete impressions on LinkedIn.
A half a million people saw Daryl Stern in that hour of that day.
And that's incredible.
The, the, the, the, it's just a method of vernacular.
Now there was what format then goes in that one minute thing that will make it do what
we want it to do, which is bring massive amounts of exposure for you.
It's, you know, networking tips.
I wouldn't put down the phone.
I would put up the networking skills.
Yes.
Right.
Because you're not going to, you know, tell people to put down your phone while they're
watching you on the phone.
I mean, I mean, I mean, more, right.
Will Michael explain the rest of the program to you?
You know, what is the secret that Michael is talking about today?
Like tune in to the next episode or click here and sign up for the class.
Right.
And that's the theater of it.
That we've been born with, but bared witness to in, in television, movies, all serial dramas,
all this stuff, all of our lives goes back to the 1930s.
So there's a couple of different tips that I made into one tip.
No, that's Daryl.
That's great.
Listen, if anybody wants to get hold of you and wants some of your services or just wants
to learn all about Daryl, where would they go?
So if you really want to scale and you really have an ego and you really want to put in
the work that it takes to get up there and basically take over your industry, you can
go to sternmarketing.agency and schedule your audition to go sternstorming with me.
So that's sternmarketing.agencyisnote.com and you can sign up and schedule an audition
to go sternstorming.
That's great.
Daryl, I can't thank you enough.
You gave some great insights and forward to talking to you in the future and hopefully
everybody, they want to learn about acting, about how to market themselves or the comedic
value, please go see Daryl or listen, just ask him.
Ask him anything.
He's good.
All right.
So have a great day.
Well, that's a wrap, folks.
A huge thank you to our special guests for sharing such incredible insights today and
of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners for tuning in and spending your time
with us.
Remember, networking isn't about being perfect.
It's about being present.
So take what you've learned today, get out there and make some meaningful connections.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review and share
it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
Let's keep the conversation going.
You can find me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or my website, Michael A. Foreman.
Remember, until next time, keep practicing, keep connecting and keep building those relationships.
This is Michael A. Foreman signing off.
Take care and happy networking.