Michael Port

Lewis: This is 5-Minute Friday!!

Welcome everyone to this podcast episode with my man Michael Port and I’m very excited about this. Michael Port has become a good friend of mine. He’s a NYT best-selling author, he’s written 6 books including books ‘you’re solid, the think big manifesto and the brand new book out today steal the show.’ He’s also probably the only NYT best-selling business book author to have also been a successful professional actor.

Michael: When you create any kind of content for a speech and you know you can apply this to any kind of writing that you do or any other type of information product so to speak. You need to have a big idea that’s got to be something that drives you as a reason that you are bringing this topic to bear. And as I said before the big idea does not have to be different to make a difference. If you think about Martin Luther King I have a dream speech, you know his big idea was that all men and women are created equal. Well, that wasn’t exactly different.

Lewis: Right.

Michael: That was in the constitution, but the problem it didn’t actually exist. So that was what made it so important and so pressing and that it had to be addressed, but it wasn’t different. So, that’s important to remember the big idea is something that you care about that you feel needs to be addressed and then if you have a big idea you can make a promise, and that promise is what you deliver and it’s got to be of course incredibly relevant to the person on the other end of the promise.

Number 3 you need to make sure that you can demonstrate how the world that you know how the world looks to the person on the other end of that conversation.

Lewis: What do you mean by that?

Michael: If I’m speaking about say public speaking performance and I say ‘look it is easy, any dummy can do it.’ There I’m gonna have, I’ll say 3 people will listen to me that’s about it. Because they’ll go ‘this guy is so out of touch, he doesn’t understand how I feel.’

Lewis: Right. If you started out saying ‘listen, I get it public speaking is difficult’ and it’s rated as one of the top 3 things that people are afraid the most, people are paralyzed by this. Then you’ll be able to connect with 98% of the room.

Michael: Exactly right, as long as it’s true you know we can’t pretend. I wouldn’t want to make up an origin story that says ‘I was once a young man who never spoke.’ It’s just made up, you need to be honest about how you are and they won’t mind if you have talents that they don’t think they do as long as you understand how they feel.

Number 4 is being able to demonstrate the consequences of not adopting this world view or not adhering to this big idea, not going to this promise because if we don’t feel some pain around a change we may not be willing to move forward.

Number 5 is being able to demonstrate the rewards of realizing this promise, but if we introduce the rewards first they may not be enough because people may that would be so great to have or so great to do but it’s so far off it’s not possible, but if you can really push them you know to realize to negative consequences of not making a change then they might be more willing to get into action then eventually see that those rewards are actually possible. And this is true for a speech and it’s say for an interviewer for example.

Lewis: Hey guys if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show then you’ll love the free book I’m giving away right now It’s called the millionaire morning and it includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at the millionairemorning.com and just pay shipping, again check it out right now the millionairemorning.com