How Pro Speaker Garrett Graverson Used AI to Clarify His Keynote Presentation - Workshop Preview

Full video transcript

What’s going on everybody, Darby here with Gen University, joining me on this call today, Garrett Graverson, AKA GG Worldwide, the man who’s been to all 197 countries. Going to talk with us today a little preview about what you’re going to expect at his keynote presentation, a workshop at the upcoming Scale with AI Summit.

GG, so glad to connect with you today. Thank you so much. I wish I was actually on this beach, but I am not. But we’ll talk about how you can go around the world and speak on stages and hopefully end up in places like this.

Absolutely, I love your story. You’re such an inspiration in terms of what got you started in terms of speaking in general, but you’ve been to all 197 countries and you’ve had some crazy wild adventures over the years in your career. And since I’ve met you earlier this year, and seeing kind of your vision for what you want to build, you’ve got big plans for what you’re going to be going into the future, and we connected on this idea about how can we use AI to help you with accomplishing your goals. We ended up creating some stuff together that we can talk a little bit more about here, but in context of what we’re going to be delivering at the summit coming up next week — you guys will have it recorded, scalewithai.com, to make sure you registered to join that event live.

But GG, public speaking, knowing who you’re talking to, so important, so critical. Talk to me about maybe your experience of our moment when we first got to connect with each other and started seeing how AI could actually work for you as a professional speaker who’s getting paid to speak on stages all around the world. Let’s bring it back down to what was the problem that you were experiencing when we first met.

Yeah, and I believe everyone has a story worth sharing, right, if we have the courage to lean into it and the confidence to tell people what we want to do. And so I had been all around the world, but I didn’t exactly know what I could give to audiences to really help them get further faster within their culture. And so one of the things I realized was we could drill down and really find out some of these key learnings of things that I experienced around the world. And what we together came to the conclusion was I spent most of my time finding what courageous leaders do differently, and a lot of companies want courage in their workplace — they want their people to be more courageous so they can serve their customers better, within their teams they can innovate faster. But a lot of it, I think, the cornerstone of innovative brands and the best teams starts and ends with courage.

And so we came to the conclusion how can we build this out into a keynote and take 197 countries in under one hour in what we call the five zones of courage, and a decision that each person can make to help become a world-class company, a world-class culture, and create world-class experiences for customers, to help companies grow larger faster and have employees actually love the jobs that they’re doing. And with the help of AI we downloaded my brain — said not only does this work for me as a professional speaker who stands on stages, but I think we could offer this to the world and help download what I know about public speaking and what I just went through to land on big stages, to get paid to speak, for other people that also believe they have a message worth sharing, so they could stand on stage as well and hopefully make some money off of it, because I believe everyone can.

Absolutely, and I think where we started building from our initial engagement was: okay, we need to get more refined on what are you talking about in the first place. And we went through a number of — we were using ChatGPT, we were using some Market Sauce, and we refined what that initial topic was going to be about. But then the next question, as you said, about anyone that wants to be a public speaker or professional in any regard, you need to find the who — the audience that you’re actually going to be delivering in front of — and then how do you open up that conversation in a way that’s going to make sense, and find the words that can be on the tip of our tongue. We might already know what to say, but sometimes it’s in our head and we can’t get it out of our head and onto paper. And I think that’s where AI is a really effective tool in this case.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on that — when someone has the idea, they have something they want to say, like you said everyone has a story to share with the world — what are the steps that someone needs to take to even get the ball rolling for that first public speaking gig?

Yeah, and I think it’s finding two things: one, that you naturally research, read about, care about, think about — the problem you solve — and then how do you do it in a unique, dynamic way to capture someone’s attention. So typically as speakers you say, “oh, I want to help people unleash their potential.” Unfortunately that doesn’t mean anything, right, because companies are trying to solve problems — they either have a culture problem, they have an AI problem, a sales and marketing problem, a growth problem, and typically one of them is a leadership problem. We all want to lead our people effectively, we don’t always know how. And so I came to the conclusion I want to be a leadership speaker, which doesn’t mean anything, because I want to talk about courageous leadership — okay, that means something a little bit more. And then I believe there are five zones of courage and a decision to make within each one.

So it’s dialing down the bigger problem, or a passion that you have, into a way that lands on the ears of event planners, conference coordinators, executives and CEOs, and saying “I want that person to speak on my stage” and address the problem that they already see they have, because they’ve set it in a unique way. And I even drilled it down further into saying I can not only help do that but do it in “10 seconds of insane courage.” Now someone says, I don’t know what the five zones of courage are, I want to learn, I don’t know if you can do anything in 10 seconds of insane courage, but you’ve captured my interest. And so we said, what if we could help do that and dial in your message about what you’re already passionate about, in a way that lands on the ears of the event planners and corporate people putting on conferences, so they are looking for you next time when they’re looking to have someone stand on stage and get paid for it.

Now that’s great, and that’s what we’re going to be covering in depth on our workshop, which is going to be a mix of some keynote presentation that we’re putting together but hands-on interactive of: one, how do you even get that message down, what’s the topic that you’re going to drill down to — not just “unleash your potential,” but how are we getting deeper into something that’s unique to you, using AI of course to help us with refining that message — and then also, who are you going to be speaking to in the first place about this. And then what I’m excited about with that is the next step of how do you present that idea in a way that they’re actually going to take it seriously, which is what we’ve covered in our conversation — the speaker kit, which is a critical piece, but you can’t go straight to the speaker kit until you have these other pieces in place first.

Yeah, exactly. And then the other thing is being vulnerable and sharing what’s authentic to you, right — everyone has a unique story, few are willing to share their personal narrative. I start off — the only reason I went around the world was not because I love travel, because we all love travel, or not because I thought I could do something that insane — because I start off every speech and I say “40 years and 30 days.” I don’t introduce myself, I don’t say my name, I don’t say thank you for having me here. I start off, I say “40 years and 30 days.” My dad worked in the insurance business for 40 years, and all I wanted to do is travel with my dad — he was my hero in life. On his 50th birthday we didn’t get to do it, on his 60th birthday we didn’t get to do it, and he said when I finally retire we’re going to do it, we’re going to do a father-son trip together. And he finally retired after 40 years, and 30 days later he found out he had stage four cancer and one year left to live. And I stop, and the audience stops, and we all have a human moment together, and we realize that we don’t have time like we think we do, and what are we going to do in those moments at this time here together to decide on what truly matters, and then do we have the courage to go after it and do it.

And that’s how I start every speech, and it’s the bigger why — I’ve faced pain and you’ve faced pain and every single person in the audience has faced pain, and then we have fear that gets in the way of all of it. We all understand that and we all want to address this fear, and one of the things I say is there’s a famous David Foster Wallace quote which I think is amazing — he said “you’ll become far less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” The thing is, people are not worried about you, they’re worried about themselves, so it’s this freeing, funny opportunity to lean into our passions, to lean into the things that we want to do. And I believe again every single person has a story worth sharing, but it starts with being vulnerable, it starts with going back into your history and finding the moments when you did not know what was going on and you did not have the right answer, and your best position to serve that person in life. And so if we can take your personal narrative, which you already know, with the help of what Gen University, Darby, and this conference is going to present — we’ve got something super special where you can enter in all of that and it will create your first perfect speech, and then the opportunity to create a speaker kit around that with the problem you solve, the people you’re positioned to speak to, what you need inside that speaker kit — and then you are on your way, within one hour a speech you can have, a kit that’s created, so you are ready to go and become the speaker that can stand on stage and get paid for it.

A little bit of context here, GG — I just want to make sure expectations are set as people are coming in. Everything that you said, with the only caveat being the AI is not going to write the entire speech for you. It’s more specifically going to identify the topics and the language that’s going to land with the audience, that you’re going to create based on your unique experience and based on what you’re bringing to the table, to help you with that outline and that draft of what you can then build from. I think it would be a little bit of an oversimplification to say that you’re going to have the keynote speech written perfectly for you, but you need to make sure you’re talking on the right topic, and I just wanted to clarify that for those coming in, because it takes time to build this type of stuff up.

Yeah, and listen, most speakers it takes a year to create a speech. What we’re trying to say is how do you go from zero to one, one to ten, much faster — instead of staring at a blank page not knowing what you’re going to do, can we leverage AI to say, hey, here’s exactly the way you could share it, a way you could think about it, the topics that actually land on the ears of these people, instead of just thinking, waiting. And I don’t think you need to wait — I think we have the tools in place that can give you a pretty good starting point, and then from that starting point we’re all smart enough to put that into a message that’s unique to you and a speech that you believe in.

Yeah, absolutely, and what I love about what we’ve spent a lot of time actually on this over the course of this year — we, GG, flew out to Austin in June, we had a hackathon where we had other members of our mastermind come into Austin for a three-day intensive, really where we extracted your expertise from years of professional speaking, and we paired it with our Market Sauce system, customized it, to create these reports that help someone get clarity and confidence about who they’re speaking to. But then we also filmed a master class at the same exact time that’s paired with that, so that you’re not just going into it alone with no real perspective — there’s literally 40 minutes of you giving exactly what you need to do to fill out and go through this entire process and extract that to have a deep and profound speech that ties in with that language that you’re getting in collaboration with the AI.

And I don’t say this lightly — that master class, I listened to it numerous times because I was editing it with you and we’re going through refining it, and it’s as powerful as you can distill all that information and all that understanding about getting started into less than an hour. But you pair that with the understanding of how to use AI and the system that we developed during that intensive two-to-three-day period, with our sponsor of the summit, Gamma, to create a speaker kit that you can export as a PDF, and then you can give that to somebody and say, “you can book me for a speech, my fee is 1,000 bucks, 5,000 bucks, whatever” — talk about how to charge and how to start with this inside of the master class. That’s powerful, and the fact that we’re going to be able to do it in a 60-to-90-minute period, I think, is going to be a very profound experience for the personal brand, for the influencer, for the creator, for the entrepreneur, for the business leader who has the idea, who has the story, and wants to connect with their audience at a deeper level and do it and make some money while doing it, so they can grow their business, they can grow their impact.

And you couldn’t do this type of stuff a few years ago without these types of tools at our disposal. So now, super excited for that event to come up. Any last parting words for those that are going to be considering speaking, that maybe haven’t gotten started with their career?

We’re going to have a whole master class about this that’ll be recorded for free — you guys will have it available on YouTube after the summit — but for someone coming in, anything that you’d like to say to someone that maybe hasn’t gotten started speaking yet, but why would they even want to come and enjoy this in the first place if they want to, but they maybe just haven’t gotten started yet?

Yeah, because we have to speak every day, and we can all get better at it. We probably have to speak at our jobs, we speak with our friends, we speak in our relationships, if we’re going to apply for a new job or for a raise we have to speak, we have to communicate. And oftentimes we do have a story — the types of people that are going to come to this have a story worth sharing. They may have not thought about that they could get paid for it on stage, or maybe they thought about it and didn’t know where to start. Most speaker coaches, it’s $10,000 in one year of time — this is one summit that you can come to, and you can get started ASAP. I don’t know what better value prop than that — but start here, come take a listen, like I said I’ve already recorded over 25 videos for the master class, and check out what we’ve got, because again you have a story, it’s just getting clarity on it that lands on the ears of the people that book you. And I believe the first step is listening, coming to the summit, and getting started with us.

Absolutely, and a little pre-work for those that want to be joining the summit — check out GG’s book, “10 Seconds of Insane Courage,” it’s available on Amazon, so you can get an idea about some more on that topic that you discuss. But also, it’s a free summit, free event, if you’re interested in becoming a better speaker and speaking with more confidence in general. I can’t think of a better professional that’s actually doing this than to learn from you, and just by interacting with you over the course of the past year, it’s clear to me that you take this stuff to a level of seriousness and professionalism that you need to succeed in this field, but you’re willing to give back and share what you’ve gone through and help people cut a lot of time off of just getting started with this, which is really what holds most people back from getting that first win — is like, where do I start. This is where you start, and no better person to learn from than someone that just spoke on stage at the Coca-Cola Brand Summit — what was that event?

Yeah, there were two huge keynote speakers on my day — it was Damon John from Shark Tank, so the people shark, and me. So you get me and I’ll give you everything that I’ve got. So yeah, if Coca-Cola, one of the world’s largest brands, hired me for their Think Strategic Summit along with Damon John, I’m happy to share everything I know with you. I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I also know what it’s like to feel frustrated and stuck and not know how to get started, so I want to just shave off years, if not decades, of frustration to provide you as much clarity as I can within one hour to get you going.

Love it, GG. So guys, go ahead and register for the summit right now to catch it live, November 5th through 7th, at scalewithai.com — that’s scalewithaisummit.com, scalewithai.com. You’ll also want to register even after the live dates because we’ll have bonus resources and exclusive content for free for those that are registering for this event, that’s going to be available inside of our Gen University community that’s hosting it. And again, thanks to a few of our sponsors, Howdy and Gamma, for making this event possible, to make free powerful resources for those that are getting started in their business, want to scale their dreams, their impact on the world. And if you want to be a public speaker, professional speaker, just get better at speaking — come and learn from Garrett Graverson, AKA GG Worldwide.

All right, see you there.