David Horsager has one of the most scientific approaches to keynote speaking in the game. From his passion for research to his eight pillars of trust, he leaves nothing up to chance when it comes to achieving his ultimate goal: writing and delivering messages that matter to audiences now. Join us as we get his incredible perspective on Mic Drop.
What Matters Now (ft. David Horsager)
David Horsager on research and trust— and why they’re closely linked
OPENING QUOTE:
“We had, by that October, $1.40 to our name after paying our urgent bills. And we lived in the basement of 86 year old Clara Miller's home with no windows, no bathroom, no kitchen, but we could walk three flights of stairs up and share her bathroom. And we had a half of a shelf in her fridge and we could share that and it had black mold on the walls. And that's how we started this speaking business.”
-David Horsager
GUEST BIO:
David Horsager is the CEO of Trust Edge Leadership Institute, bestselling author of three books, and internationally recognized expert on trust— as well as one of the most successful keynote speakers on the circuit.
Links:
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[4:22] - A Speaker’s Number One Job
Hint: it may not be what you think
The reason you follow a leader, buy a product, or experience transformation after a speech is all about trust. It’s not about being liked, it’s about being trusted. Rather than trying to talk about fifteen different topics, or write your keynote around making yourself look good, you should instead focus on creating trust between you and your audience— then going from there.
[14:05] - David’s Unique Approach to Research
Learning and brainstorming his way
Research, research, research. That’s one of the biggest takeaways from our conversation with David. He’s a diligent, almost obsessive researcher, drawing on resources from every field he can find to come up with actionable and proven messages. As a side effect, this research leads to connections with a wide range of people and organizations— and more engagements.
[22:32] - Key Questions to Ask Yourself
Expert advice when writing and delivering keynotes
When writing or delivering every keynote, David asks himself this question: What does this mean to them now? This ensures that his message is not only relevant, but also timely. Is your message outdated? Is it striking a resonant chord with your audience where they are at this present moment, and where they’ll be tomorrow?
Another question: Are you committed to your client? Are you committed to this business? If the answer is yes, you’ll do whatever it takes to make a five-star impact.
[27:31] -The Eight Pillars of Trust
Applying them to your speaking business
David doesn’t dive deep on all eight pillars of trust, but he does mention a few. Intent and compassion, which shows we care about someone beyond their benefit to us. Consistency is another— the only way to build a reputation is visible consistency. Finally, competency: if you want to be trusted in your area of expertise, you have to be competent.
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ABOUT MIC DROP:
Brought to you by eSpeakers, hear from the world’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing tipping point moments, strategies, and approaches that led to their speaking career success. Throughout each episode, host Josh Linkner, #1 Innovation keynote speaker in the world, deconstructs guests’ Mic Drop moments and provides tactical tools and takeaways that can be applied to any speaking business, no matter it’s starting point. You'll enjoy hearing from some of the top keynote speakers in the industry including: Ryan Estis, Alison Levine, Peter Sheahan, Seth Mattison, Cassandra Worthy, and many more. Mic Drop is produced and presented by eSpeakers; sponsored by ImpactEleven.
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ABOUT THE HOST:
Josh Linkner is a Creative Troublemaker. He believes passionately that all human beings have incredible creative capacity, and he’s on a mission to unlock inventive thinking and creative problem solving to help leaders, individuals, and communities soar.
Josh has been the founder and CEO of five tech companies, which sold for a combined value of over $200 million and is the author of four books including the New York Times Bestsellers, Disciplined Dreaming and The Road to Reinvention. He has invested in and/or mentored over 100 startups and is the Founding Partner of Detroit Venture Partners.
Today, Josh serves as Chairman and Co-founder of Platypus Labs, an innovation research, training, and consulting firm. He has twice been named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and is the recipient of the United States Presidential Champion of Change Award.
Josh is also a passionate Detroiter, the father of four, is a professional-level jazz guitarist, and has a slightly odd obsession with greasy pizza.
Learn more about Josh: JoshLinkner.com
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SHOW CREDITS:
David Horsager:
We had by that October $1.40 to our name after paying our urgent bills. And we lived in the basement of 86 year old Clara Miller's home with no windows, no bathroom, no kitchen, but we could walk three flights of stairs up and share her bathroom. And we had a half of a shelf in her fridge and we could share that and it had black mold on the walls. And that's how we started this speaking business.
Josh Linkner:
Welcome to Mic Drop, the podcast for professional speakers. We cover the ins and outs of the business, helping you deliver more impact on bigger stages at higher fees. You'll gain an inside edge through intimate conversations with the world's most successful keynote speakers. Mic Drop is brought to you by eSpeakers. I'm your host, Josh Linkner. Get ready for some inspiring Mic Drop moments together.
Josh Linkner:
Today's show is sponsored by ImpactEleven, formerly known as 3 Ring Circus, the best and most diverse and inclusive community built for training and developing professional speakers. They're not just elevating an industry we know and love, they work with hundreds of speakers to launch and scale their speaking businesses, earning tens of millions of speaking fees, landing bureau representation, securing book deals, and rising to the top of the field.
Josh Linkner:
To learn more and schedule a free intro call, visit impacteleven.com. That's impact E-L-E-V-E-N.com. Mic Drop is produced and presented by eSpeakers. If you want more audiences and organizations to be moved and changed by your message, you owe it to yourself to find out why thousands of top experts use eSpeakers to manage and grow their business. When you use eSpeakers, you'll feel confident about your business. Package yourself up for success and be able to focus on what matters most to you and your business. For more information and a free 30 day trial visit espeakers.com/micdrop. That's espeakers.com/micdrop.
Josh Linkner:
On today's episode of Mic Drop, I sit down with hall of fame speaker David Horsager. David is the CEO of Trust Edge Leadership Institute, The Wall Street Journal bestselling author of three books and internationally recognized expert on the topic of trust and is one of the most successful keynote speakers on the circuit. In our conversation, David shares insights from his expansive body of work, as well as his experience delivering nearly 2000 keynotes over the last 20 years.
Josh Linkner:
Highlights of our conversation include the number one job a speaker has on the platform, and it's not what you think. His unique approach to research and how it's constantly filling his speaking calendar with a hundred plus dates a year for the last two decades, a glimpse into the eight pillars of trust and how these keys can be directly applied to scaling your speaking business. How narrow focus, being wildly deep in one area as opposed to many has helped him achieve at the highest levels. And the key question we should ask ourselves at every point of writing and delivering a keynote. Join me as we go behind the scenes with one of the most impactful experts and keynote speakers on the planet. David Horsager, welcome to Mic Drop.
David Horsager:
Josh, thanks so much for having me, it's a treat to be here.
Josh Linkner:
Well, I've been so excited for our conversation and I've been a fan of yours and a friend of yours for quite some time. And you are in a topical area that I don't know too many other people that are in the area, let alone have soared to the heights that you have. Tell us about, what do you speak about?
David Horsager:
Well, I speak about one thing, I'm an expert on one thing, and that is trust. And I think back when I did my graduate work, there was very little, if any research in around trust and business trust and leadership in the space we're talking about. Now there's loads of people within mostly without research, but a couple decades ago it was very unique. And of course my grad work kind of was one of the first to tie how lack of trust is the biggest expense of a company and how trust is the leading indicator and the root cause.
David Horsager:
And to me, the reason you follow a leader is trust. The reason you buy is trust. A speaker on a platform, your number one job is increasing trust with the audience. That's the only way that I'll listen to you. People think it's about being liked, it's not. I've got friends I like a whole lot, I wouldn't go into business with in a million years. It's about being trusted. That's my work and the framework we use, we solve innovation issues, corruption issues in East Africa, sales, leadership, culture issues with trust. But that's definitely all our focus. And we put out one of the biggest studies every year on the topic.
Josh Linkner:
It's so good. I just want to unpack a couple of things. First of all, that you said, "I talk about one thing and that's trust." And where I think many speakers stumble is they try to talk about 15 topics and it cancel itself out and the market doesn't understand that and rejects them and so you are deep in one area. Second of all, you're deeply researched, it's not just like you are fond of trust, which I'm sure you are, but you went deep and did the work. And so you are not just a trust smart person, you are an expert in the field.
Josh Linkner:
And I also just love how you apply trust to some of the bigger problems. You're saying that many people think that if you're not growing, it's a sales problem. If you're losing people, it's a recruiting problem, but really the underlying issue is trust. And so you've taken your subject expertise and made it sort of the meta issue in people's businesses and conversation, which I just think is brilliant. Can you help us understand how you arrived at that, that deep focus on this particular issue? And then also how you elevated that focus to make it even more important?
David Horsager:
Well, I think the deep focus happened over two decades ago interestingly I started speaking, I was speaking at youth and family events was, I was part of this big youth sports camp. And I built this leadership curriculum. I even got asked to speak at one of the military academies and this leadership work was interesting to people. But I still remember where I was the evening that my wife and I, was before we had the four kids, were traveling together. And we're at this conference and we're out on a deck of maybe the most expensive resort I'd stayed at to that point and I was dealing with this leadership and business issue and I just said, "I don't think their issue is a leadership issue. I don't think they trust each other."
David Horsager:
And then I started thinking about other issues and it was intuitive at first. I thought, I don't think that's a sales issue, I think the reason they're not buying is there's no trust. How does learning go up in a classroom? Only when trust increases in either the content, the teacher or the psychological safety or trust of the room. Wow. Why aren't they innovating? Well, they're not willing to share ideas and that's because they don't trust each other.
David Horsager:
Then I looked at bigger studies and real research and I found diversity on its own, biggest Harvard study shows diversity on its own tends to pit people against each other, unless you increase trust and then you can get enormous benefits of diversity, equity, inclusion, but only with trust. And so at first it was kind of intuitive and that led to my grad work and going deeper. And that became unique to people, much more important than me.
David Horsager:
And in fact, in the first company we used our framework in, the company, smaller company, 600 people, they were bleeding attrition, and they saved two to four million in attrition costs in nine months. And then we had someone say they tripled sales in 90 days. And then we had someone say it saved their marriage. And then we had someone say it gained a big company. Fortune 50 companies said they gained 11% market share in a year.
David Horsager:
We knew it actually was for real and working. And that, of course, all the depth that came with it. And as you say, books and research. And in 2014, we put out another big piece of research. And in 2017 we started putting out one of the biggest studies of its kind every year annually called The Trust Outlook. When you said, "How did this become you? How did it become so a part of you?" I'd say there's a few things. One, that epiphany that day at the Loews Resort in Tucson, Arizona, 20 years ago.
David Horsager:
Number two, graduate work and being affirmed in it. Number three, seeing real results in the real world. Number four, ongoing research. And number five, it changed me along the way. It made me a better dad, a better leader, a better husband. And I think it continues to, and I see the work, I still need to do, but I think those five reasons.
Josh Linkner:
Oh, so good. And not only so articulate, but you can just feel your passion for the subject matter. When I hear people talking about their topic and they're not exuding passion the way you are, how excited can I be in the audience if the speaker isn't excited? But on the other hand you are just ... I mean, I get the sense that you care so deeply about this. Even if you never got paid a nickel, you'd still want to talk about it because you know it's so important. And that shines through and it makes it infectious and contagious and irresistible.
David Horsager:
I think that's true. And there's a few other big names in the industry and people say, "Wow, what's the difference between this, that person?" And it's like, well, that person had a ghostwriter on it. And that person had someone else doing the work. And it's like, "I did the research. I wrote the books. I saw on the front lines and I was changed personally." I think that passion. Someone said this to me Josh recently, "Dave, when are you going to talk about something else? You just talk about trust. You're known for trust." Never. I can't think of ... This is genuine and real.
David Horsager:
And I think another thing, as long as we're talking of speakers today, people have talked to me. I know one pretty famous, you can maybe be successful this way. Just finding a niche topic, finding a niche, they're out looking for a niche instead of looking for what's real, kind of like what genuinely ... You are innovation. You are passionate about. You've done it. You've lived it. You do it, you've even helped us think differently and innovate.
David Horsager:
Some people kind of found a cute thing or hired a ghost writer to find a good thing or found ... But it's not them and people can tell. As much as I would never want to say I'm the trust guy because that's saying, "Just trust me." That's the last thing you'd trust is someone who says, "Just trust me." Because I'm totally imperfect in everything I teach. I'm absolutely deeply passionate about it and believe in it and see it work. And I think that's because it's true, but it's also I'm passionate because I was there, I saw it, I'm doing the work hopefully.
Josh Linkner:
It's so good, and that credibility and passion shows. As it relates to your speaking business, you and I were just catching up and you said you've been on the road for nine days. You're home for about 13 minutes to brush your teeth and you're speaking again tomorrow. How's 2022 shaping up compared to other years? Will this be your best year on the road?
David Horsager:
Best year ever, and I'll tell you 18 and 19 were jammed. And so I think I did about a hundred events a year or more, and as you know, you do a lot, but there's not many people that are doing that for 20 years in a row. And I think we still did that even in ... we created it, you have five camera studio. Of course we had a little lag time there in 2020 for a few months, but we actually jumped right back into studio and changed everything with the five camera studio and kind of went to business. But as far as speaking on the road live, I'm doing very little virtual now and almost all. I know some people are still doing that, I am live and in person generally, and it's as busy as ever. So yeah, that's the way it is.
Josh Linkner:
What do you think you're going to do this year in terms of number of events?
David Horsager:
I will ask Josh, but I would say about for me, my max is around 100 and that's what it'll be about. I think I saw the ticker, we have a numbers of things, so we're right about there. And once you get there, maybe raise price a little bit or whatever. So some people want to do more in that, some less, but that's about our right number. I actually am getting to the age where we're talking about coming down in number. We have a bigger business as you know beyond that and you've consulted with us on that business. And so we actually might pull that number down just a little as far as my life and four kids and everything else, even though I'm passionate about it and I love live. I actually love doing this work. But I think our goal is going to be dropping next year.
Josh Linkner:
Well, the point is that you have as much demand as you can handle, probably more demand than you can handle. And you've been doing that for 20 years. I'd love for you to give our listeners a little bit of insight. Sometimes people create a bunch of demand and they fizzle out. You have created significant demand and sustained significant demand. If you were doing an analysis on your own speaking business, what's working so well. And if there's anything that needs to be adjusted or you've adjusted over the years, maybe share that with us as well.
David Horsager:
Well, I'll tell you, first of all, just let me say this to everybody out there. So in 1999, when Lisa and I moved back from Arkansas to Minnesota, we lived there for four years when I was directing an organization there, we started this. Just so you know, in 1999 we had, by that October $1.40 to our name after paying our urgent bills. And we lived in the basement of 86 year old Clara Miller's home with no windows, no bathroom, no kitchen, but we could walk three flights of stairs up and share her bathroom. And we had a half of a shelf in her fridge and we could share that and it had black mold on the walls.
David Horsager:
And that's how we started this speaking business over 22, 23 years ago and that's how we started. And we had a vision and had a message and I had one booked event at $500. That's how we started. There's definitely ups and downs in that journey. Right now I would say, "Why would people say I'm busy or what have I learned or what are some of the keys?" I think that was the question.
David Horsager:
Number one is research based topic that is actionable tomorrow. I think there's something to me, people love that it's research based. But I'm a firm kid at heart and I simplify that down, I think you can find researchers or professors. I was an ethics professor for a time. It's like, you can't be boring. You have to have this real piece, but I got to be able to use it tomorrow. You got to drill it down so I can use it. That's one and two.
David Horsager:
Number three, you've got to be engaging, even entertaining, not cheesy but engaging. And I took acting classes. I took standup comedy, never wanting to be a standup comedian. I took improv, never want to do those things. So being engaging and working at that and I continue to have speech coaching and all that kind of stuff.
David Horsager:
Next piece was actually doing ongoing research has been really busy for us. We send our outlook out to 20,000 CEOs every year and that's interesting I guess. I think having a team has been a reason that we don't ... speaking is not right now, it's not something we're having to work at, it's the other company that we're really growing. The speaking is kind of a lot of relationships. And I think the engine is happening there partly because of the research and partly because of hopefully doing a great job each time engaging.
David Horsager:
And I think another thing people are looking for today is just authentic. They want the same person on the stages off stage. I think there's real information that matters to me to help me help the audience, help them. I'm thinking in terms of them and in an engaging way that's fun, entertaining, even story driven if you're a keynoter, but they get real takeaways that's not just a quote from Lincoln, a takeaway I can use tomorrow morning. And then at the end of all that they really like, at least one thing we hear is this boy, this guy is the same on stage and off, it's authentic, something like that is valuable I think.
Josh Linkner:
I think it's so good. And the other thing I would add to that, I agree with all those things, but just looking at your career. When I think about a thought leader, unlike someone who is just reciting what we already know or confirming existing biases, you really help people see the world differently. You help people understand the real inferences of trust and the impact that it has on their personal and professional lives.
Josh Linkner:
And I think that when sometimes you see a keynote speaker and again they confirm what you already know and you walk out feeling good, but you don't walk out feeling changed. And I feel like when you are there, you change the hearts and minds of people, again in a very authentic and research driven way. You're not using voodoo of course, you're using logic. But I think you make a lasting impact which I think undoubtedly is continuing to keep the phone ringing so to speak.
David Horsager:
I think there's something there, like when I can get up and say, "Hey, from our research, number one reason people want to work for an organization in first world countries ahead of more pay, ahead of a more fun work environment, number one reason, trusted leadership." That like, oh, if you take research with that, kind of say, "Hey, let me just show you, a lack of trust is the biggest cost you have, it's always a trust issue." And show the cost benefit. Or one thing I'm known for saying that can shift thinking is saying, "At the core you never have a communication issue."
David Horsager:
And I can tell you why I say that after I say some other things. But I think some of those things they're real and genuine to me, they're not shock jock stuff, but those are the kind of things that when you can bring in research, when you can bring in a different perspective as you know very well, bringing in an innovative perspective that you bring all the time. I think that's what people do want, that they want to shift thinking and they want to be able to use this in a way that affects them for the better tomorrow morning.
Josh Linkner:
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Josh Linkner:
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Josh Linkner:
Being an expert in trust and being an expert speaker, I'd love to get your thoughts on what we as speakers can do to earn trust and perhaps what we can do to eradicate it. I was coaching a speaker earlier today who was telling a personal story about someone from the past. And then there was a piece of stock imagery, which was clearly high def shot recently. And the story she was telling is something from 45 years ago. And so I said, "Is that the picture of the person?" She goes, "Oh no, that's sort of a cool image we found."
Josh Linkner:
And I said, "Well, have you considered that that might eradicate trust, if you're talking about Jim and that's actually not Jim and someone could pretty quickly tell that picture wasn't 45 years old. Does that hurt your credibility on stage?" She wasn't being a bad person. She's a wonderful, thoughtful, caring, smart person, but there was a trust pothole she didn't even see. Again, maybe you could elaborate, what can we do to earn and continue to build trust and what are some things we should watch out for as speakers that could erode it?
David Horsager:
Well, this could be a long time here I could talk about this, but let me give you a few. Number one, people trust the clear and they mistrust or distrust the ambiguous or the overly complex. Where I was a professor, people were like, "Oh, got to be complex, got to look smart." Whenever you over complexify something beyond what is needed, you lose clarity, which loses trust.
David Horsager:
Clarity is so difficult today. And I'm talking about a different level of clarity. People think they're clear when they're not. I mean, marketing companies and branding companies think they're clear when they're not. I am talking about an absolute level of clarity, clarity about how to use this, clarity about what you actually do. Clarity, clarity, clarity, be clear. So clear in the message, clear in how you help them solve it, clear in what this means to them, clear in your mission, our mission, building trusted leaders and organizations around the world.
David Horsager:
Our staff, each of them know clearly how their role fits in that mission, they could say that, how they win at this organization. There's all kinds of ways of being clear. The team knows what I do and what I don't do. Oh, is it one of these five things, then it's not for Dave. I mean, there's a lot of ways to be clear. And a lot of people who've won on clarity and lost on clarity. Another one would be compassion. People trust those that care beyond themselves. If I don't feel like you care about me or at least a mission beyond yourself, I have a hard time following you or being accountable to you.
David Horsager:
When I see this from the stage, I see speakers that try to be the hero of their own story, or they abuse the audience. You've seen this I'm sure, where they use the audience as a therapy session for themselves, that's absolutely not the place for the privilege of the platform. A tip here would be get on stage and never be the hero of any story in your speech. And you can be the guide as my friend Donald Miller says, but don't be the hero and make it about them.
David Horsager:
I'm teaching. When I teach our certified facilitators, every section, every part we talk about, make it about them. In other words, ask this question after every section or every point, what does this mean to them now? If I can't answer that, don't do it. What does this mean to you now? What this means to you is you can solve this if you use this framework and it'll help you grow sales, or it'll help you speed up agile or it'll help you innovate.
David Horsager:
I always be asking the question in every speech, what does this mean for your audience now? There are many others. How do you rebuild trust? This might be interesting. We have a whole process. If you're the CEO of a company with an oil spill, 10 step process. But whether you're a big company or an individual, how do you rebuild? Trust comes down to one thing and it's not the apology. You never rebuild trust on the apology. I'm sorry I'm late. No, you're not. You're late every single time. It doesn't mean we don't apologize. I'm just saying the only way to rebuild trust is to make and keep a new commitment. So you think about that from the stage. You think about that with your team. You think about that with your audience. You've done this when you've helicoptered in and made these commit.
David Horsager:
It's like there's a snowstorm, they're not flying. I've been driven through the night in an Uber to make the event. I've hired in private jets to be there. Always people will understand if there's really something beyond our control, but are you really committed to them? Are you committed to this business? Are you committed to that client and doing your best? I'm kind of, I don't know, shocked by people that are a little bit unwilling to serve the client like, no, I don't want to have a pre-call.
David Horsager:
Well, if they're spending tens and tens of thousands of dollars or whatever they're spending, you won't take a pre-call to make sure you're hitting a home run for them, I don't know. I'm a little shocked by some of those things, but some of those things show the commitment to them under the ... I could tell you lots of things. I guess caring about them.
David Horsager:
Here's a tip by the way, I'll give you one little tip that just comes to mind. You're so good at this, Josh, I know you and your team, but we've noticed one thing we're pretty good at is appreciating people for having us, okay. We always send a thank you when we have an event, that's a pretty cool package and gift. By the way, here's one place that showed itself. I have a podcast like you called The Trusted Leader Show, and I have some pretty cool people on it, everything from the founder of the Ritz-Carlton to the person that sold the most books of anybody in the world outside of the Bible, whatever.
David Horsager:
We had this person on, a famous name, and he came on, he's done over 300 podcasts a year he said, 400 maybe, he's on. He's older now, but this is one of his ways of keeping his name out there and he is sold half a billion books. Anyway, we did the podcast and whenever we have anybody on the podcast, we send an actual gift. And this isn't a thing for people on podcast evidently. He called our office directly, I happened to be here. And he said, "I just have to find out. I don't even remember doing the podcast. Can't even remember the interview." But he got this gift and he had to thank us for this gift, because he'd never gotten a gift for being on podcast.
David Horsager:
And by the way, after that event, he for months gave us multiple referrals a month and still thinks of us and gives us referral because of a thank you, which was kind of a one way that we're just showing compassion and gratitude toward having him take his time and beyond. And in fact that came back to bless us significantly.
Josh Linkner:
It's so good. I mean, one of the things that I want to sniff test with you, because I was thinking about this in advances of our conversation. One of the things we can do to botch trust as a speaker, you talked about some things you can do to gain trust. One would be, if you're using these big, all encompassing, absolute statements, if someone can disprove it, you've eradicated trust. So if you're like, "Hey, everyone does this." Well, that might be true that 99% of people do that, but you could point to one exception, your trust is shot.
Josh Linkner:
Another one would be inconsistency. So you say one thing earlier in the speech and something different later in the speech, trust is hurt. Another one would be showing ... Those are trust of more of honesty type trust, but then there's the trust like, do I trust you as competent? And so if I shared with you a bunch of decisions that I made that were clearly poor decisions, then you're like, "Yeah, you might not be lying to me. You might not be dishonest, but I don't know that I want to give you the ball to get it in the end zone, because you're not that good at what you do." I think demonstrating some competence is certainly an element of trust.
Josh Linkner:
But then the last one I just wanted to touch on, because it is kind of building on what you said was the notion of your intent. So if you have a selfish intent versus a noble intent, if I come across like greedy and it's all about me, even if I didn't say anything that wasn't factually accurate, you kind of don't trust me because you figure I'm in it for myself. Whereas if I'm more benevolent, I'm sharing ideas like you a person of service, then there's more trustworthiness and you're probably even willing to give some grace because you know they're doing it for the right reasons. Are those accurate statements? And if not, how should we think differently?
David Horsager:
Well, I'll tell you, you're hitting the eight pillars of trust. I didn't go through the eight pillar framework, but these are several of the pillars. Intent comes under the compassion pillar, that's the pillar where we show we care, we have a hard time trusting someone that doesn't show they care beyond themselves. In fact, the most trusted person in the world to the most people turns out it's not Oprah, Denzel or even the Pope, it is in fact, mom. Mom, by and large globally has this intent to be under self, so that fits exactly what you're saying.
David Horsager:
Consistency, we say it all the time is the queen and king of the pillars, you said it. But the only way to build a reputation and the only way to build a brand is consistency, sameness. By the way, you can have for good or bad, if you're late all the time, I might trust you to be late. So you can build trust for good or bad, but you will be trusted for that. If you speak ill of people every time I come upon you, I will trust you to speak ill of people or well of people if that's who you are. Consistency, it's the only way to build a brand.
David Horsager:
People in our space, especially bureaus, they want to know we're going to be the same every time, we're going to come with that energy, that fresh research, we're going to come ahead. We're going to be whoever we are. I'm not going to speak of something else. I heard it recently again, someone said, "Boy, the bio said they're going to talk about this and they talk about that." What it said in the program was totally different. That inconsistency just lost trust in both the meeting planners and the speaker, so consistency is trust.
David Horsager:
They want to know we're going to show up with the same energy the same way, the same every time. This is why it's so important to be healthy by the way as a speaker. You have to take care of making sure you are fit and healthy in a way if you're going to last a long time at a high level in this business, there's more I could say about that.
David Horsager:
Competency is also one of the pillars in fact, and you called it out, competency or capability. And that is I might trust Josh Linkner to take my kids to the ballgame because he has character, that's a trust pillar. He has compassion. He cares beyond himself. That does not mean I will trust Josh Linkner to give me a root canal because of competency. So in the area you want to be trusted, you have to be competent. So in my space, I open up right away, I say, "I'm totally imperfect at everything I'm going to teach. I wish you would've responded differently to my 15 year old last week around this trust stuff."
David Horsager:
But I know it's true from the research and I am ... One big magazine said I'm the most researched on my topic, at least out of North America. I'm deep in it. I'm researching it. I think competent in it for sure. I want to make one other comment to the thing you said the first right at the beginning about saying big things and saying different things in the end of your speech or saying big things that like all people this when it's not all people. What you said is absolutely true. However, if uncovering your research you can say something absolute that is big and different and true, and it is absolute, it can actually increase trust.
David Horsager:
My example would be, and I don't have a lot of time to explain it, but people will quickly come to see when I give the framework why I can say, "David, you love these kind of things, you love C words." I have the kind of list of Cs, even though they came out of research. I don't want them to think of kind of C motivational, C list you made up. But isn't it ever a communication issue? And I'll say, "It is never ever ever a communication issue."
David Horsager:
And I'll talk about how communication is happening all the time. Clear communication is trusted, unclear communication isn't. High character communication is trusted, low integrity, low character isn't. Consistent is trusted, inconsistent isn't. High competent communication is trusted, incompetent communication ... And I can go and they go, "Oh, so if I solve against these, I'm solving the real issue instead of just saying communication or leadership or whatever." So if you can with authenticity, congruency and consistency say a bold statement that is true, and you can show a twist on it that actually can increase trust especially if it's research backed.
Josh Linkner:
I'm really glad that you elaborated there, because the point here is not for all of us to become experts in trust, that's you. But the point is that as speakers, if we can build and cultivate and be intentional about our trust, that's just going to boost our business. I mean, not that we're doing only for selfish reasons because we all want to make impact, but if we fall short in those, that's when people's careers spike and drop. We fall short on those, that's why we're losing consistently to a competitor or stop getting pitched from a close bureau partner.
Josh Linkner:
I really do think that trust, and I'm glad you brought it up, is crucial, yet often overlooked element as people look to build their speaking practice, they're thinking about their book cover. They're thinking about their performance skills on stage, but they're not thinking about their underlying trust quotient. And again, I'm so grateful for you sharing that. Looks like you want to add something else.
David Horsager:
Well, I was just going to add to that, the amount you get paid is based on your level of trust to do a certain job. The referral factor, what we know now is you never have a net promoter score is only based on trust. You don't get referrals with referrals, you only increase referrals when you increase trust. You don't get engagement with engagement, the only way to increase in engagement score is increase trust. That's what created the enterprise trust index, it measures trust and engagement. So you have to increase trust. If you increase trust with a bureau, you get more referrals. You have a load of trust with bureaus. If you increase trust with that meeting planner, you get paid more, you get more referrals, the contract happens quicker. If there's low trust, oh, we got to check that. What about you? I got to go check testimonials.
David Horsager:
Higher trust speeds up everything and increases the bottom line of everything. I don't want everybody to ... I've had plenty of people rip me off and say their quotes are my quote, plagiarize my first book and all this kind of stuff, so I don't want people to do that, but I do want people to think about trust because when they think about trust in this speaking business, if they can increase trust, they will increase the bottom line and the referrals and the stickiness of their message and relationships.
Josh Linkner:
David, I'm known for the innovation creativity, but that's also a lot of pressure. I can't have a boring business card. I have to have creative slides, or what, that's incongruent. And so you being the trust person, that's a high bar, there's a lot of expectation and you're a human being. I know you're obviously a well-intentioned character, you're a friend and I know your intentions are wrong, but I'm sure that there's areas where you've made a mistake. You've misinterpreted something. Even if it wasn't intentional, how does that land and how do you recover if you stumble across a certain line being the trust guy, how do you come back from that?
David Horsager:
Well, first, there's two things I want to answer here. Number one, I was just mentioning one of those cases ahead of you. Sometimes you don't know, and something might have happened in one case, a certain bureau heard something a certain way from somebody on my staff, whatever. And all I can do is, number one, go back apologize first. Remember, apology does not rebuild trust, but I want to apologize to open the door of communication and make a commitment and keep it.
David Horsager:
The only time they'll rebuild trust is once I've made in their mind at least a new commitment and kept it. And sometimes in just that communication, also they'll understand, oh, that was a misunderstanding. Oh, I see that perspective. If it was well intentioned. Of course if it wasn't, people can tell that a hundred miles away too. But I'm imperfect, things have come across wrong. We missed that, thank you, whatever it was.
David Horsager:
But one thing here I would say to people is your real character comes out. There's someone who is fantastic in a big speaking association and is known as and seen as one of the best. And I saw him after an event berate the sound folks. He didn't know I was there and there was no one else around, but that kind of thing you can get away with maybe once and maybe someone won't know because you're so amazing on stage. But at some point that will catch you somewhere and it will affect everything. If it doesn't affect your own heart, I mean, it'll affect somewhere, right? Bernie Madoff said, "This didn't affect me out there, but it killed me inside." He talked about how he might be on this boat and cruise and all this stuff, but who he actually was being did affect things. And ultimately it did catch up with him.
David Horsager:
The one other thing I'll mention with that is how we try to live out our own values. And you're right, you have to be innovative. It's hard to be so innovative. Being a comedian's like, "Okay, make me laugh right now. Come on, make me laugh." It's like, hey, be creative. Show me something creative. Show me something different. So that's difficult. The trust stuff, we seek to really live out our values. And an example of that would be the products that we have. Let's just take a book as a common, even though we have other things, like when you touch something from Trust Edge Leadership Institute, you can tell it, you can feel it.
David Horsager:
But one of our values has something to do with excellence. And I remember my first book that became kind of bestseller and all this kind of authentic Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly and all these different best sellers trusted. And I was named nothing, I just did my grad work and I was just merging and speaking and stuff. And basically I had it pre designed the way I wanted because I wanted it to be beautiful. I wanted this opaque white paper. I wanted two color. I wanted these tabs. I wanted it a certain way. And I had two publishers interested.
David Horsager:
And one was finally a New York publisher, but it wasn't a huge one. And one was a tiny little no name publisher, was a publisher, but it was nothingness. And when we went to it, the little one said, "We'll do it the way you want. We'll design it this way, whatever. With the 12 types of binding hard cover, we'll do it the top 12th way. We'll do hard cover. We'll do the colored, all this stuff."
David Horsager:
The other little one from New York said, "Well, we'll do it that yellowish paper like we use in novels, we can make the most money. We'll do it soft cover. We'll do whatever." And we made the decision pretty quickly to stick to our values. And we went to the tiny publisher because we said it's about trust and excellence and you got to feel it. And if I pull that book out right now, you'll feel it. It even had a ribbon in the first copy. It was like a certain way. And you could feel the hard cover, it felt trusted.
David Horsager:
And of course we could go to bed every night feeling good about ourselves. The miracle happened not too long later when the biggest publisher at the time, Simon & Schuster picked it up on the biggest bio of a non-celebrity and it was a miracle happened. But either way we could feel good about that. And now anything you touch out of Trust Edge Leadership, there's a certain framework for how things are built, how they feel, how they're on brand. With this feel, it's got a feel trust. When you come to Trusted Leader Summit, it has to feel trusted. It's like the pillars that people feel it. Imperfectly, yes, but intentionally we're trying to drive those pillars forward in lives and in any product we make.
Josh Linkner:
Well, just as we wrap our discussion up today, I'm very grateful for your insights and leadership in our industry. You're the perfect example of living the values, of being passionate about it, continually learning and growing. And that's how one gets from a windowless mold filled no bathroom, half a shelf refrigerator to a beautiful life with your four beautiful children today. David Horsager, thank you again for your insight, your trust and your incredible leadership in our industry.
David Horsager:
Thanks for being my friend. And thank you so much for being an example to all of us.
Josh Linkner:
David Horsager may speak quickly, but his message is one that we should all slow down to fully embrace. Here are a few of my favorite takeaways. Number one, David's expertise on trust is unquestionable. Due to his relentless focus on one topic rather than bouncing around to many, David stands out as a leader in both his field and the speaking industry.
Josh Linkner:
Number two, the idea that your real character will always come out and that we need to think about every interaction as a moment to demonstrate our core values. Number three, the crucial role that trust plays in driving a successful speaking business. I'd never consider that until my chat with David, but he's spot on. Audiences and clients will never embrace our message unless we first establish trust through caring, compassion, consistency, and competence.
Josh Linkner:
And number four, the question that David asks at every step, what does this mean to you now? Is such a powerful mindset of both service and delivering actionable, relevant content. A great framework to consider as we work on our next keynote draft. David's mission to boost trust in leaders and organizations around the world will undoubtedly continue to make a meaningful difference. And his insights today will also leave a positive impact on us all. Here's to his continued success and yours.
Josh Linkner:
Thanks for joining me on another episode of Mic Drop. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. If you love the show, please share with your friends and don't forget to give us a five star review. For show transcripts and show notes, visit micdroppodcast.com. Mic Drop is produced and presented by eSpeakers, and a big thanks to our sponsor ImpactEleven. I'm your host, Josh Linkner. Thanks for listening and here's to your Mic Drop moment.