How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Keynote Speaking

James Taylor interviews Victor Antonio and talked about How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Keynote Speaking

In today's episode Victor Antonio talk about How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Keynote Speaking.

A poor upbringing in one of the roughest areas of Chicago didn't stop Victor from going onto become of of the world’s most successful keynote speakers. After earning a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, an MBA, and becoming President of Global Sales and Marketing for a $420M company, Antonio now writes and speakers about sales and motivation. He has shared the stage with top business speakers: Rudy Giuliani, CEO of Intel Paul and FedEx Kinkos CEO John May. He's the author of 13 books on sales and motivation and recently launched the Sales Mastery Academy learning platform with 300+ videos. He latest book is called "Sales Ex Machina: How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the World of Selling”.

What we cover:

• How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Keynote Speaking

• Finding your speaking style

• Generating passive income from online courses

Resources:

• Victor's Website

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Read full transcript at https://speakersu.com/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-keynote-speaking-sl090/

James Taylor Hi, it's James Taylor, founder of SpeakersU. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Speakers Summit the world's largest online event for professional speakers. And if you'd like to access the full video version, as well as in depth sessions with over 150 top speakers, then I've got a very special offer for you. Just go to InternationalSpeakersSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yep, that's right 150 of the world's top speakers sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to launch grow and build a successful speaking business. So just go to InternationalSpeakersSummit.com but not before you listen to today's episode.

Hey, there is James Taylor and I'm delighted today to welcome in Victor Antonio. Victor Antonio is incredible keynote speaker approved bringing in one of the roughest areas Chicago didn't stop him from going on to become one of the world's most successful keynote speakers. After earning a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and MBA and becoming president of global sales and marketing for $420 million company, Antonio now writes and speaks about sales and motivation. He shared the stage with top business speakers, Rudy Giuliani, the CEO of Intel, and also the FedEx kinkos CEO, john May. He's the author of 13 books on sales and motivation, and recently launched the sales mastery Academy learning platform which helps people in terms of selling and learning about selling, it's got over 300 videos in there. His latest book is called sales Ex Machina, how artificial intelligence is changing the world of selling. It's my great pleasure to have Victor join us today. So welcome, Victor

Victor Antonio James, thank you for having me. My pleasure.

James Taylor So share with everyone what's going on in your world just now.

Victor Antonio going on in my world right now. Well, right now this month, you know, I did three months of hard traveling. So international wise, we're talking about that before the interview, you know, I did the Philippines and i did was i Jordan. So I got to see the old city of Petra while I was there. So that was very nice. So now I'm we're going into the spring, summer months, so my schedule is slowing down. So this is when I get back to writing and creating more content online. So that's kind of the mode I'm in right now.

James Taylor So you've had this very interesting journey. You come from obviously a very strong sales background, large corporates as well. When did the speaking part begin? How did you get into the speaking world and Who were those early mentors for

Victor Antonio you? You know, so my upbringing is very unusual. You're my family's originally from Puerto Rico. So you know, my parents, when they moved to the US, you know, didn't speak the language, so had to learn language. So it's Spanish at home English in the streets. And so one of the things that was instilled early on was obviously a work ethic. But more importantly was, my mother was always like, you gotta learn, you gotta learn, you gotta learn. Fast forward, I go get an engineering degree, decide, I don't want to be an engineer, I figured salespeople make more money. Let me go make let's go do some selling. That's when I hit my pace. It was around that time that I got a ticket. I was living in Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, that's when I got this ticket to go see these speakers every month. They bring in new speakers. So it was around 90. I'm dating myself here, but I'm saying 97. Somewhere in there. I saw Zig Ziglar for the first time like onstage. And James. It's that moment people talk about, you know what I mean? You see it you go, that's it. That's what I want to do. But still, you know, I had a new family. So I still had to make money, right? And but I remember having that image in my head being on a platform one day. So I joined Toastmasters. I don't know if you're familiar with the organization. Great organization join. Toastmasters became very good at it was getting a lot of competitions. But it was always back there. You know, I mean, so I'm selling in the b2b world technology equipment. But in the back of my mind, I want to be a speaker, I still have that Zig Ziglar thing in my head. And somewhere around 2001, I just decided to say you know what, it's time to do it. And I tell people, what developed in me was what I call a quiet discontent. And a quiet discontent is that thing and you know what I'm talking about jams, you know that, that's something that says, you know, everything's going well, but I'm just not on purpose. I'm not doing what I want. And it was just sitting there humming for a long time. And I just couldn't ignore the noise and the longer and so may 9 2001 3:48pm, to be exact, you know, I made the call, I quit. I'm gonna go with, you know, write books and become a speaker. I was that naive, I was like, I'm gonna do it, you know, had a little money stored away in the bank. And I'm like, you know, the kids are, you know, they're good, you know, and so I decided to go for it. And so that was the beginning. So 2001 is when I first started getting into the speaking world. And it's been, it's been quite the journey.

James Taylor And what was it about seeing seems like I never saw Zig when he was alive. And I never got a chance. But I actually had his audio tapes. It can grow up probably about 1516. So he influenced me just by listening even though I never got a chance to see him because we didn't have like YouTube and things like that, that we have now. But what was it about that that first experience of seeing a real masterful public speaker like that, that really attracted you to think, Okay, this is why I want to do with my life.

Victor Antonio I think it was so it's a confluence of things right. The first one was, it was around that time. I was I moved in the sales, I was on this journey of trying to, you know how you know, you go to college, you get the education, you go get the job, you start working at the job. And you say, Please tell me, this is what life is all about sitting in a cubicle for the rest of my life, right? And so I think I was going through some type of I'll say, philosophical crisis at the time, what do I want to do? And sales seemed like a good opportunity to make money, let's move in that direction. Right. But still, there's something like not right, you know what I mean? mentally, you're searching for some deeper answers. And I think so. So for so I was open to listening to other people's messages about, you know, their experiences, and so forth. And then I watching Zig Ziglar, on stage, I think the way he impacted the crowd, is something I said, Man, I love what he's doing. I love that. I love his messaging, but not so and then when you look at the messaging, but beyond that, it was his delivery system. It's just how he did it. And I cut that's just masterful. And so maybe, because I like talking a lot at the time. And I said, Okay, this really combines a lot of what I love, which is, you know, really understanding, I guess, human motivation, but being able to deliver it in such a way that people go, Ah, I get it. And he wasn't beating you over the head with philosophy or lessons. He was just, I mean, just slipping it under the door, if you know what I mean, your mental dorbz is kind of coming in, right under. And if just as a small note, fast forward. I'm gonna say like, 10 years later, loving years later, I spoke with Zig Ziglar on the same stage, got to meet him and his wife the whole bit. It was it was the best thing. It was great, man. It was great. So like, knowing 11 years later, so it was kind of cool.

James Taylor So they said, they say you should never meet your heroes. I'm told you never meet your heroes. But But what was it like? Did the the the image that you had in your head and the person you met in real life did? Did he reflect that?

Victor Antonio Yeah, I mean, he did he, by the way. So when I met him, I met him before he took the stage. Right? And so I was like, Man, I've never been like Tongue Tied or nervous, you know, just like I've met, you know, stars. But I've, you know, to him, it was like, you know, and I remember I blathered on for like, I don't like what seemed like a minute or two without stopping. And then finally, he says something like, well, you know who I am, but who are you? And so, then he was really, I don't know what I said, we talked and I remember, I looked at him, this is almost embarrassing to admit, but I'm gonna admit it to you. The I said, Can I just hug you? He says, Sure, man. He just gave him a nice talk. And then his wife, who he refers to as read was there. And he's and then after I hug him, he says, He says, you know, my wife, Red's a hugger, too. Oh, my God. And then I, you know, I saw him speak and obviously, because of, you know, time and age, right, he was a little slower. But man, it was still there, man. You know what I mean? The Magic was like, in that you could see it in the eyes was still there. And the delivery was great still. But the part I remember the most was after I did my speech, which was later on in the day, I was back, I went back to the hotel, and him and his wife were in the lobby. And they literally, I mean, at their age Lily came over to me, like little kids, and like Victor how to go, you know, I mean, they were like, genuinely interested in wanting to hug. I'm like, it was surreal. You know, I remember driving home from Mississippi, you can drive like six, seven hour drive. Here to Atlanta, I was just smiling, like a Cheshire Cat mouse, just like I met Zig Ziglar. So I don't know about that thing about you should never meet your heroes. In this case. I'm good with meeting my heroes. I was good. But

James Taylor I always remember he said something once someone asked him for what advice do you give, would you give to speakers, and I think it's maybe Rory vaden, who told me this the story and roryd can studied under him and been a protege of Zig as well. And he remember two things he said, one is the mega loss every seven minutes, there is so that we get that in there, that level of interaction. And the other one, he said, always call, call your wife four times a day when you're on the road. And that was his thing. And he used to do this and it was kind of mind blowing, considering he was traveling all over the world speaking. And this is before like Facebook and things Skype and stuff. It was easy. So he was making those calls back to back to the US all time. So as you as you start to kind of develop your speaking you obviously had a bit of an unfair advantage in that part of the the business part of speaking as being a great, great sales. Great, great selling your speaking as well. So when you kind of came into the speaking world, what were some of the things that you took from you your understanding of great sales, being a great, great salesperson and, and building relationships with clients that you then apply to speaking?

Victor Antonio You know, it's a great question, James. Here's why because I really think I became a better salesperson after I left corporate America, you know, and it's a very interesting perspective. So what happened was, for those folks listening to this, I did a documentary it's on youtube for free. It's called the motivator, just type in Victor Antonio, the motivator and it tells the story even tells us Zig Ziglar story and some other stuff. But, you know, one day you'll one of the things one of the markets I decided to start in was the college market. The High School in the college market. Because, you know, I came from a very disadvantaged family. So I kind of wanted to reach back into the neighborhood, if you know what I mean and pull people up. And so I remember I was doing the college market James and I wasn't getting booked a lot. I wasn't getting booked a lot. I wasn't, you know, I just wasn't making a lot of money and I wasn't having fun. You know. And I remember that I was driving to Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. And I specifically remember saying, you know, you have those contemplated moments you go, you know, not having fun. It's not what I expected. Not having fun not making money. But then I always go back to the What's it a Stephen Covey's a circle of influence? What can you control? What can you not control right? as well? What can I control, I can't control how much money they're paying me. But I can't control how much fun I have on the stage. And so it was at that time, I decided to almost like not discard this. The thing is, I came from corporate America. So I had that standard presentation, tell them what you're going to tell him, tell them and then tell him what you just told them. Right. And then I just kind of said, screw it. I remember that day was like, there was this quiet panic right before I went on stage. Because I was about to walk into a huge auditorium. And by the way, we recorded that day. So I had the video. But I said, You know what, I'm gonna let it fly my way. I'm just gonna have fun with this thing, you know, let it fly my way, which is why it's interesting. You said that Zig said you should act make them laugh every seven minutes I've ever heard that. But that's kind of the sequencing I use. And I just did it my way. And when I was done, it was like, I felt different. The crowd reaction was totally different. I was having fun, but still delivering great content. The very next day, I had to fly here to Atlanta, we were living in Miami at the time to speak to Bell, South big telephone company at a time. And I said, Okay, now speaking to those college students the day before, but now these are business people, these like strictly b2b people. Do I do it? Do I regress back to my corporate shelf? Should I do the new style, my style, the authentic Victor, right. And there was like this, this back and forth fighting right, just like this back and forth. And in finances, screw it, you know, let's go for it. And so all I remember is I finished that presentation. Standing ovation, never had never had one standing ovation. I just couldn't believe it. Right. And it was at that moment that I found my style. And so, you know, how does this tie back to selling I guess, I learned to be more authentic. Because now I control to see when you're working for a company. You know, there's certain protocols, the unwritten rules, right. You know, we're in business suits, you know, be respectful, do certain things a certain way, you know, you know, ask key questions, you know, building rapport, ask discovery questions, get ready for the presentation, do the demo the dog and pony as tied down questions after that and close the deal. And so I knew that. But in reality, what people want is authenticity. Because I think that's where people connect. You don't I mean, as much as we'd like to think that we're logical beings, which we are to some extent, but there's that there's that part of us that we, you know, we always talked about this, right? If there's no connection, there's no authenticity, people can smell that they can see it. And I wish I could take some of that authenticity back to when I was in corporate America, I think I would have sold even more. And so that's why I said, I think I learned how to sell better afterwards, because I was able to deliver it my style, but great content, and I felt good about it. And my customers, the audience felt better about it. So

James Taylor how long in that process of going into being a becoming a speaker leaving corporate america becoming a speaker? What was the gap then between that moment? And then, you know, finding that speaking style? Was it due to years? or months? or How long did it take you

Victor Antonio if going going off memory, memory is always, you know, a distorted thing once in a while. But I think it was no more than two years, no more than two years, I put it in that bag. On the outside three years, I think it was no more than two years. And that was because in my first year of speaking, I made like $17,000 like one seven, so just make sure 70 it's one seven, right? And so just to give you a I guess a relative reference point, my base salary on the job I just walked away was 250,000 a year to $300,000 on top of that with commissions plus all kinds of stock options and Benny's, so I went from there all the way down here, you know what I mean?

James Taylor On that point, that's I mean, that's a huge drop. So that meeting that you had with your your accountant near the end of the tax year and you can sit and go that is you know, can they look at the numbers that that what

Victor Antonio is my accountant,

James Taylor your wife, okay, so sitting that moment was a point that you went You know what, I just need to go back to that back to the old deal day job is just it's just not cutting it and obviously you didn't make a decision but on what made you not make that decision and keep going?

Victor Antonio No, no. So you you ask a question that I wish more people would ask because that's the reality of the business right? And I don't want anybody walk around with the impression that okay, Victor figured it out. Boom, made it you know, he's 17 years into the game. Boom, be strong, right? No, here's what happened and this is why I think it's a great question and why you bring it up cuz I think People need to hear this. So I make 17,000 the first year, right? I'm like, Oh, damn, that wasn't the word I use, if you know what I mean. So anyway, I said, Oh, damn. And so it was at that moment, James, that I had this, this this awareness slash realization that he right, I have an MBA, I have an engineering degree, I'm a decent smart guy got all this experience. I mean, I grew businesses, you know, I mean, one of the markets, we grew, we took it from 14 to $98 million in two and a half years. And so I had all these skills. But then, when I went into the world of entrepreneurship, solo, I was like, I realized that within corporate America, you focus in on what you're good at, which is selling, but you don't know how to market. You don't I mean, if you don't know how to market, you're screwed in this business. And that's one of the things I realized that's the big nugget, you know, you're I had a guy, his name was Randy gage. I know he's a speaker does a lot of network marketing, speaking. And I remember I went to one of his events one time, we sat down for lunch with a bunch of other people around table. And I remember I was kind of lamenting, you know, the the growth, the lack of growth in my business. He says, Victor would business you in acid? It's not a trick question. He goes down, it's just asking you a question, what business you in? So the speaking business, I guess, he goes, No, I go, the training business. He goes, No. I said, Okay, the motivation business goes down. And I can go on on that. And if I say, Okay, tell me what business I'm in. Dammit. You know, it's like, kind of like that upset. Just tell me what business I'm in. He says, You're in the marketing business first. And that was like, dude, I mean, it's like somebody just says that the right moment. And then I realized how, and I mean this in a kind way to myself, I don't mean to be pejorative, but I realized how inept I was at growing my own business. So I'm good as part of a cog, as a cog, as part of the big machinery. But when it came to me, the individual I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to market I didn't know how to, you know, because you got to be the finance guy, you gotta be the marketing guy, you got to be the technology guy, you got to be everybody. And that's when I, first of all, my respect for entrepreneurs just went through the roof, right? Because now I get I get them now. Now, there is no safety net, the only safety net I have is my bank account, which is getting depleted every month, right? Because the expenses are not going away there I can smaller. And so I went through that moment. And here's what happened. Year, 115 $1,000. A year 250 $6,000. Not bad, right? 1756, we're going good. It was in that third year, that an opportunity appeared, I said, You know what, I need to go back to work a little bit, and replenish my funds. So I went to work for this seminar company. And I did a lot of training for them. And I worked for them with them for about a year, maybe a little over a year, stock some money away, and boom, we're back out in the market again, let's do it again. Right. And sure enough, a year went by money's going down. But you know, this, it's picking up though, you know, we're hitting six figures now, wherever you're close to 100,000. Little bit over that, right? But not enough, you know what I mean, for what I wanted, and this opportunity showed up? And I was like, ooh, do I stay on the stay the course? Or do I go back, I took the sissy way out, I went back, right. And I became CEO of a technology company. And that lasted for a year, year and a half, made great money. So I can't complain. And experience was wonderful, because it gave me CEO level experience, which I had not had within a technology company. And so that was 2007. Eight. And then since then, I haven't gone back. And we've been doing exceptionally well,

James Taylor I guess like, like going into a CEO role as well. You described it, okay. It was a mistake. And but it was good in terms of financially. But now because you're primarily going and you're speaking to CEOs, that is your that is your decision maker most most the time that you do so many big corporate events. So you have that you can have that conversation of someone that's been in there, you weren't just a cog in the wheel, you know, Vice President of Sales, you were the actual, it was on you everything. You know that pain.

Victor Antonio Yep. Yep. I think that was the decision we had to make, you know, so what we're doing well, I think we're on I said, we're finally on track, I think. But then I said how often you get to be CEO of a technology company. And the goal was to basically pump up their sales, and then we're going to sell the company, which is exactly what we did. And so the experience has been great, because now when I meet other CEOs, I'm like, so what I was a co2, you know, it's like this, this, you know, and as you say, the dialogue is different. Now, the conversations are different. And when I'm when I'm when I'm in front of a crowd, spend a large crowd, big b2b crowd, but it's a large technology company or not. As soon as I insert that little piece, CEO with technology company, here's kind of what we did. They're like, Okay, this guy's just not another speaker. Yeah. And so that benefited me in the long run. But I wanted people to know that I had to go back twice to replenish my funds. You know, that not every not it's not a straight line. No,

James Taylor no, it's not. It's, it's, you know, the, the, the, the, the graph is gradually is going up, but you have those, it goes down, goes up and down, up and down, up or down. So one of the things I also noticed you, you speak, you write about this idea of how artificial intelligence is changing the world of selling. So this is something we share in common I, I, I speak about artificial intelligence related to creativity and innovation in companies, you speak about in terms of how it's changing selling. I, you know, the things that can be applied to that in terms of us as speakers, maybe as trainers, these things coming down, or maybe already there with artificial intelligence that we can start to use,

Victor Antonio I think what's going to happen? I mean, if you look at where let me step back, one of the reasons I started doing what the reason I did a book on artificial intelligence was, is that I spoke for a company, just a two minute digression. And I'll come back, and I think it's important point. And this company, it's a big healthcare company. And what we're doing JJ is fascinating. They have, let's say, 200 people in the call center, right? And they would call out each one made, let's say, 100 calls a day, just using some round numbers here. And let's say they close 20% of those calls, right? selling insurance products over the phone. That means there's 80 left, right. Now you take 80 times 200. That's 16,000 calls. All right. The question is for each of those individuals who didn't close the ad, who do you call back? And what order Do you call back? While they have to go off memory instinct, you know, whatever notes they wrote in, right, it's very, it's true that I'll say that that confirmation bias filter of theirs. And so what this company did was, they would record our conversation, I'm selling you over the phone right there, record our conversation, they would split the audio tracks, they'll take your track your audio track, the listener, the consumer potential buyer, and they could analyze words that you use keywords, keyword phrases, tone velocity, and they could make a determination the machine would make a determination whether you wanted a call back or not, whether there's a high probability of closing or not. So in other words, they were able to prioritize leads for these telemarketers

James Taylor based on antigens like mine. Yeah,

Victor Antonio yeah. Because you look at intent sentiment the whole bit, right. And so then on my side, they took my track, now I'm calling you, right? Instead of using, you know, little scripts, or posted notes on the side to say certain things, the machine would actually listen to the conversation and would pop up scripts, that was one thing, but it would also analyze my voice and yours together and says, you know, Victor, you need more training, because when James says this, you really should have responded with this, we need you to go back to module number five, and really studying that again. And just sitting there going, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? And that was like the, I think, when I went to see the company, Gartner came in on if you're familiar with the company, well, Gartner came in, and they started talking about the hype cycle, you know, that this type of you know, artificial intelligence went through it, you know, you know, you know, it's nuclear winter. Now, it's, it's spring again, right? I said, I need to dig into this. And if I dug into it, the more I said, Okay, I can see how this would work. I've given too much thought, how would help speakers, because a lot of what this machine learning does is you will know, it's based on a lot of interactions and patterns, right? So for having a lot of interaction patterns, we can measure something, how speakers could use it, I have to get some more thought James, you know, I got some general ideas of, you know, I was studying one yesterday it was an application actually look at it can look at documents, like RFPs. And using, you know, different types of algorithms, it can actually pluck out all the objects in everything from the tables, the graphs and everything, and then interpret those graphs and tables and so forth. And so I was thinking about, you know, the prospectus, you know, when they, when they issue a 10 K, at the end of the year, large corporation issues, the big prospectus? Well, what they're doing now, and this is Bloomberg, they're running it through an algorithm. And these algorithms basically tell you how they believe the company is doing based on the data table to extract because they can't do it manually. Now, imagine if we have speakers with maybe we can record our conversation, I'm talking to you your perspective, you know, company wants to book me, and it may be based on that conversation, I can actually why figure out transcribe it, right? And all of a sudden, I can figure out whether this is a go or no go, what should I follow up on? In my book, I talk about an application called phrasing. And phrasing, this is something we can use right away, is basically a plug into Google. And as you're writing, it's like an equalizer on the side. It talks about sentiment good, positive negative, like they'll tell you basically, you don't want to send that out, you need to add more positive spin on it. And so it's called phrase phrase with an extra e at the end, check it out. So this will allow at, you know, for speakers, if you're responding to somebody for an inquiry, based on what they've asked, you can type out your response and it will give you a rating and it basically gives you the green light to go ahead and send it

James Taylor very cool. Very cool. I was speaking an event recently and I've actually been signed to run my keynotes through IBM Watson. And so what I do is essentially I'll run the order Audience data in terms of like, Twitter accounts and other things, other points. And it gives me a visual representation of the audience. This is this kind of audience and basically basically using personality insights. And then what I can do now is you can basically run your, the text of your keynote through that. And it will then give you the same reference. And you can overlay these two things on each other. And I've been doing it for a number of speeches, it doesn't tell you it doesn't make you didn't teach how to craft your speech. But what it does do is it very quickly goes, Oh, okay, I'm speaking to a b2b marketing says b2b marketers. I'm a little bit off here because these are more analytical type of Barker's and I need to be putting a little bit more detail because that's, that's down on my keynote. So you can start to start to adjust. And actually, as I was at that conference, and there was someone else speaking from a chemical Converse occur, and very good, I didn't have in the book. Oh, great, very interesting, because it's conversational AI. And actually, one of our sponsors here, this called bom, bom, I know is a is a user of that of that service. And so where I saw the opportunity for speakers there is, is warming up the conversation, you know, some of those email conversations that go back and forth between your assistant and the prospective client. So when you as a speaker, if you're doing discovery calls, or getting on those calls to discuss if you're the right fit, or the cause or ending up coming through on that, a much warmer course they're they're much you there's this, you're much further down, and then much more kind of segmented as well. And I was talking to folks from Converse again, and they're getting a 2,000% ROI from the NSA, people are just saying, keep sending me I mean, they're going through 100 1000s of leads every month. Now

Victor Antonio think about that, James, that's, that's really interesting. So

James Taylor unfortunately, it's not quite as is the pricing point, just now is a little bit more for larger companies. But as we know, with technology, because things are coming down all the time, and I can completely See, in maybe less than 12 months, you'll start seeing AI assistance for speakers that are doing a lot of those things as well. So just keep you keep your eye there. If anyone's watching, maybe, maybe there's someone you're watching just now maybe you've already starting to experiment with this, let us know, right?

Victor Antonio I love that. But probably one if I could add one more thing, there's something called x, I think it's x.ai. That it's almost like a you know, conversific a stripped down, but it's conversa. And the calendly applications put together. What it does, if you call me, right, we're trying to set up a meeting. And I'll just say, a James, my assistant, Camille will be following up. So we can set a meeting because maybe we'll have to go back and forth. And it will actually do the back and forth with you. Yeah, it's all automated. It's just it is the coolest thing. And that's another way of actually setting up meetings without having, you know, nobody wants to sometimes just go to a website and just plug something in this way actually have the conversation and post it to your calendar. And I mean, it's really fascinating stuff.

James Taylor After a while you kind of start to get into conversation with with these AI and you do have to stop yourself every so often say I am talking to rashidiya this is you can think that

Victor Antonio happened to me.

James Taylor I go to write this in case I hurt their feelings. This is a machine

Victor Antonio emotion with this AI machine. That's amazing. That's cool. That's cool. What do you want to change ebooks? Man, I'd love to read your material. Yeah,

James Taylor so one of the other things that you kind of came on. And this is obviously becoming a much bigger part of what speakers are doing now is you added an online learning component online training component to what you do as well. So first of all, what was what was your purpose? What was the reasoning behind doing that? And how's that going for you?

Victor Antonio The so I was well the biggest reason was I wanted to generate passive income. I think that's an obvious one, right? generate passive income online. And so before that, I was doing downloads, right if you bought a package, you get the whole thing downloaded. And so then I started looking at and it was because a friend of mine, Grant Cardone know if you know Grant Cardone so Grant Cardone is using a learning management system. We use a platform called lightspeed vt, good company, good people, man. They they're very responsive. And I looked at a lot of there's a lot of different ones out there. I mean, that's just the one we chose, because I think it has the I hate to say it this way, but it has this the sex appeal. It's just graphically it's more just visually appealing. And so one of my goals is, you know, as speakers when we first start out, we talked about this for the interview, you know, we're all excited about traveling, right? We love traveling all over the place, right? It's just great. It's exciting. But when you've done it for at least 20 years minimum, you know, you get to the point where you know, I think I want to slow down, stay home more. And so part of the strategy was wanting to do passive income, but really because I want to stay home more. But second, I also saw that that's where the market is going. Yeah, people don't want to read books. You know what I mean? And so what we're seeing is this whole video market, you know, you look at the millennial generation, they just want it seems like their attention spans getting shorter, and I think so is ours, not just them. I think ours is also and so I see a market where people just want snackable video content So I've been creating videos for the last, I don't know, six, seven years. And it's all snackable content, I call it, which means if I do a full course, or break it down, chunk it down into small court, you know, chunks. And I think people been very receptive to that. So my goal is simply extra revenue. And if I can generate enough revenue, then I'm back my speaking fee. Yeah, yeah, I don't care if I get or not. I mean, that's kind of fun.

James Taylor But here's the other point about that is because I heard a stat the other day, which kind of blew my mind, Peter Diamandis was saying that this idea of the raising billions in the next I mean, in here in the West, we think everyone's online, but that's not the case. And in the next, two to three, next 24 months or so, around 3 billion people will be coming online for the very first time. So that's 3 billion people who have never bought, uploaded, uploaded, sold anything online before. So that's a huge market from Asia and South America, and Africa. So that's the markets and they're all going to go online first. Because that's that in terms of terms of learning, so you've got this giant market, and there is no way you can speak on stages to all those people. So if you're passionate about your subject, whatever your topic is, and you want to meet, have that to get to the most number of people, then it makes complete sense that you'd be kind of going online and almost having an online first approach. And I think it's interesting, we're seeing a lot in the newest speakers coming through, because they've come from the digital natives. And that way, they're, they're coming with this idea about video, video video. And thinking in that way, which is probably very different from our

Victor Antonio concept is mind blowing down 3 billion people. And yeah, that's amazing. You know, two things. One is I love the fact that you talk about how you know, the new speakers are coming on board, as you say, digital natives were seven, eight years ago when I started doing this people like Why are you giving your content away or putting it online. But the other thing I want to point out is that my 30% of my revenues come from international. And my peak point selling international is around two or three in the morning, Eastern time. That's where we see the peaks. So Tuesdays are always good. And two or three in the morning is even better. You know, it's just the weirdest thing. And I think it's if you can find the right price points because against other countries simply don't have the money like we do here in the US. So I think that's also a tricky part also is finding the right price points

James Taylor that he hasn't he's a really nice kicker to this. So in someone's watching this just now maybe a new speaker, thinking Well, that's all very well, Victor, you've got a great profile, you know, people know who you are in the speaking world. These 3 billion people are coming online now. You, me, jack Canfield, Tony Robbins, we're all as equally as unknown to this organs. So it gives you a little bit of confidence to be able to go, Hey, this is a brand new audience. This is this is virgin territory we're talking about. So you can you can really have have a lot of fun with that. So so I'm loving seeing how you're doing and how many other speakers are doing the online side?

Victor Antonio Oh, you're making me think because I think I think something has changed in the market. James, I don't know what it is. You know, I, I was talking to a friend of mine this the other day was about a month ago, I met him in California, I'm doing an event he wants to see me speak live, right? And I said, I said watch. I mentioned Zig Ziglar. Nobody knows who he is. and So sure enough, he's in there watching me and I go, by the way, how many folks have heard of Zig Ziglar 200 people in the audience, at least 200 people, maybe three or four raise their hands. And now like, and I looked at I go see what I mean. And that's it. And to your point is that, you know, I think memories are short, I think you know, the days of the icons, I gotta be I think they're gone. I mean, you're gonna have one or two that break through the noise, right, the signal to noise ratio, but the rest of us are going to be in the morass, the noise, but I think what people are looking for is, Who can I relate to Who can I follow? And so if you're a new speaker starting out, you know, you as you say, you can just start from zero and build a basis very quickly, because it isn't so much reputation management anymore, is the content you're delivering. And I think the quality of the content is the greatest equalizer. Yeah, I don't care. You could have been in the business 15 years. But if my content is better, I'm killing you online. And I think that's what they need to keep in mind.

James Taylor So let's go to some final quickfire questions here as well. What is in your speaker bag, what is in that bag that you take with you to all of your speaking engagements you never leave home without

Victor Antonio never leave home without a extra pair of glasses, to use glasses. My favorite tool is a typical Logitech PowerPoint pointer that has a timer on it. Because I never like to be over my time. And this is the one that you can program it to vibrate like 15 minutes before you're done. And so I always know you know when I'm supposed to end my speech so I always end on time. I always have an extra USB plug with me in case somebody my my computer dies or theirs dies or something weird happens and I have it stored up in the cloud. I've started to use now flip charts. And my remark is and

James Taylor this is interesting because I noticed on your your your your A website as well, you make a big play of that which a lot of speakers don't, you know, there, there's usually them in a big room and things but you up, that's obviously a key part of what you're trying to do on stage. I just added

Victor Antonio that within the last year and a half, two, and here are the advantages. One, it's a great pattern interrupt, you know that try to make them laugh every five to seven minutes, we'll also try to change the the the medium of what they're what they're seeing, or listening every five to seven minutes. So by going to the chart, I go, now watch this. Let me draw this. It's a pattern interrupt, what's it going to draw? Right. The other thing is that sometimes, you know, as a speaker, sometimes your message isn't vibing. You know what I mean? Yeah, with the audience. And in your brain. If you're a professional speaker, you go, you know what? This is not the right track. Let me You know what, let me go. Let me go to the flip chart. And what I've noticed is that the interaction, the engagement just shot through the roof, man. Yeah, the response has been so much better. It's more organic. And I think I love it more. Because I mean, I know what I have, I think in models. So I always have these models, right? So I wrote a book called sales models, which has, like 50 different business slash sales models. So I can just talk about whatever you want to talk about. You want to talk about entering new markets here, check out this model, check out these numbers. And so that allows me that flexibility to throw something in if I need to hook you back in Yeah, because I'm my slides are losing you. This isn't really what you want to hear right now. So I'm, you know, I didn't have Watson with me, right? It didn't align me it didn't lie. Right. So maybe I'm just like one degree off center, whatever may be. The flip chart allows me to close that gap. Yeah. By inserting something I already know.

James Taylor And actually, that's the you know, is that thing where stories make people listen, the visuals make them remember. And I can think of a lot of speakers who I don't really remember too much for the see. But I really remember the visual that they drew, I mean, Simon Sinek is a perfect example of that. We start with y with his his circles, you remember that, you know, you can hold on to it. And actually you mentioned something about AI like happening live. There is actually now I recently ran an event with with speaking the law of events, professionals, then the new tags are now making for people in terms of their wristbands for coming into events instead of the ones here. They're also doing wristbands for them, which is taking biometric data as they're in the room, which is then being fed back to the event organizer, and also to the speaker. So they can see, hey, 18 minutes here, people start like this, this, this connecting. And so that's a little bit. I don't really know if I want that information live. But I think after it would be very useful to have that so you can like tweak and change things. It's

Victor Antonio almost like that little you know, that little knob when they're like they're watching a political ad. Yeah. And they can rate them by turning the knob. Exactly. I guess this is more honest. Yeah. Cuz you're not consciously thinking about turning the knob. That's very fascinating. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

James Taylor I don't we have to do this like old school version of if you see lots of faces lighting up because they're on their mobile phones and lights coming up, you know, you probably lose like them. So we get that's the middle stage that we're at the moment. And what about online tools? Or you mentioned a couple of great online tools and resources here already. But is there one tool you find really useful for yourself as a speaker

Victor Antonio we're using, we started using Click Funnels. I don't know if you know what Click Funnels is. We

James Taylor sat down with Russell Brunson. Great.

Victor Antonio Yeah. And so I spoke with Russell Brunson on stage last year, and he just killed it on stage. I mean, just murdered with this application. I mean, just crazy numbers from the stage. But you know, so we've been using Click Funnels, we've tried to find other alternatives, and other alternatives turned out that's out there, that's about a 10th of the price of something called builder all. And but I think this company a year from now is gonna be very good. We tried their product. So as a couple of bugs, but it does everything. Click funnel does even has a few more bells and whistles. But there's a couple of features in terms of the email list and stuff like that there's still need to be worked out. But I'm putting that on your radar for a year from now. It's called builder, all because, as opposed to paying 297 a month, which is what I paid for Click Funnels, it's only like $29 a month, like 30 bucks. So big difference in price. So even though I'm paying 300 bucks a month, we're seeing the return on investment with Click Funnels. I think that's our biggest tool. The simple tool that we use, anybody can use is we use buffer a lot buffers, like almost like Hootsuite to blast out our graphics and everything on social media. I think those are the real those are the main tools I use. I try not to you know, my whole thing is YouTube is my channel, LinkedIn, but YouTube is my channel every time I talk to someone, how did you find me? YouTube? And so if you're a speaker, I think this is key that we live in a visual medium people want to see us speak. great article. Love your book, but can you talk I think YouTube is one of those channels that every speaker should leverage

James Taylor and as it is it because it's it uses a different SEO in terms of algorithms. You can often be maybe let's say if you're if your topic if you're a College leadership speak, I'm just gonna make something out college leadership speaker, there's, there's lots of those. And you can it can take a while to get track, you know, get that listing get on that first page on Google, for example. But with YouTube, they use a different algorithm that's going on. And, you know, a little tip here that you can do is if you interview lots of other let's say, college leadership experts, and put those in a video, you could do like this and put that up onto YouTube. Suddenly, as soon as someone types in college leadership expert, you're going to be right, you know, right there at the top. And so it's you know, there's the you can definitely play I think YouTube is an amazing resource for speakers is totally overlooked low design here, here, here's

Victor Antonio here's an inside secret, because got to give it we got to give your fans really, I can do that. A lot of people when they record a video, they simply upload their video, right? They put the headline, put a nice description, put some tags, that's okay, all well and good. Keep in mind that searching is just a spider, just an algorithm, it can't see visuals can't see pictures. And so one of the things I do that I think helps with my rankings, is that before you upload the file, rename the file with the keywords, most people don't do that. So in other words, if my video is on sales velocity, and I know people look for sales velocity, I just I don't load up a file that says 593 sv for sales velocity.mo v. Now I got sales underscore velocity dot m o v. And that gives you a couple of extra brownie points. But even better, before you upload the video, after you rename it, if you right click it, you can actually load tags into the actual video. Like which, okay, if you load your keywords, push you up on the search engine.

James Taylor So that Yeah, I like that. That is some cool. That's some cool stuff. There some some ninja techniques, if anyone's watching this just now as well.

Victor Antonio Yeah, that'd be perfect for them. Okay, which works?

James Taylor Well, by going a bit old school again, about a book. Is there one particular book that you'd recommend to our attendees?

Victor Antonio For?

James Taylor It could be king, it could be on sales more generally,

Victor Antonio I think, you know, I just I read a book about I'll say six months ago, it's called unknown, or known rather known, sorry, it's how to become known. I don't know, the guy's you know, I don't remember his name. But it's kind of cool. Just to look for known. It looks like a bunch of Hollywood lights, you know, hitting the word known. It's a, it's a great book. It's one of those books you wish you read. Before you started, you know, years ago, when I first started on social media, everything. This book is just great. I mean, it just, it's like a three day seminar in a book. I mean, it's one of the best books I've written. I've I've read in terms of selling. You know, I still say the the challenger sale is one of the best books out there still, the challenger sale came out in 2012, even though it's got a few years out, and I haven't read anything in sales better than that, in my opinion, is based on research real, you know, experiential data, experimental data, rather. And I think those are two books in philosophy while I'm an iron Rand fan. So if you haven't read it, yeah, you guys read Atlas Shrugged The Fountainhead. So

James Taylor those are my recommendations. And a final question, which kind of leads a little bit to what you just said, there. Let's imagine you woke up tomorrow morning, and you had to start from scratch. So you have all the skills that you've acquired over the years, all the tools, but no one knows you, you know, no one you have to restart. What would you do? How would you restart? When I first started out?

Victor Antonio I wasn't as focused and narrow as I am today. So when people ask me, What are you talking about? I go sales. I mean, the motivation part kicks in because people want to be motivated when they sell right? But it's really sales. And so years ago, what I didn't do is I didn't start in sales. I did a lot of motive. I emphasize motivation more. The problem with that is that everybody's a motivational speaker. Right? And so motivational speakers are a commodity, right and a few again, will rise above the noise. If If I were to start again today, I would have cut out maybe two or three years on I'm off my path. I'm close to three years I struggled at the beginning. Yeah, I would have been more focused on being a sales dude, which is where I came from. So I think you have to pick a lane and then just you know, to use, you know, you want to dominate that lane. You want to be the best in that lane. You know, when I started my sales thing. The guy that was the king of sales was Jeffrey Gitomer, right Little Red Book of selling Jeffrey Gitomer. And I'm like, I read all Jeffrey Gitomer stuff. And then I held whether Brian Tracy, whoever had a book on selling, I read the book on selling, so I got one of the biggest libraries on selling. And so I try to read everybody on selling. And so if you want to start today, if I do it all over again, I would just focus on it and just commit to be the best at that niche. So simple strategy, you know, but it's funny how it's so simple and easy, but yet we don't do it because we think we we focus in on a niche, we're going to miss out on other opportunities or business where what happens is when you focus in on a niche, you begin to see these these subtleties, these nuances, these pieces permutations within that market that actually have more opportunities. Yeah, and I think that's what people don't get.

James Taylor So someone said the analogy of difference between what a general practitioner or an MD will earn as opposed to a top consultant who specializes in this particular thing is, I mean, they both have a large they both had a lot of money, but like a top surgeon in a specialist field will will make a lot more than the general general kind of doctor for example. So that's great. So going down and really focusing and if people want to start reaching out to you maybe it's to learn about your your sales programs that you have that we've been speaking about sales machine Academy, or the book the sales Ex Machina, or just to learn about you as a speaker. where's the best place to go and do that

Victor Antonio I'll just one place Victor Antonio, calm. You know, there, you'll see the books, I have written 13 books. You'll also see the sales mastery Academy there. But that's where you'll find the book and just search Victor Antonio, you'll find me online. Well, you know.

James Taylor So we'll have all these links here for everyone so they can they can check all these different things when we speak about fixed it's been a pleasure speaking to you today is great. We could have gone on and on. I'm sure we could exchange lots of ideas,

Victor Antonio kindred spirits and spirits. Thank you. Well,

James Taylor I wish you all the best of your speaking and I look forward to catching up in person soon.

Victor Antonio Great. Thank you again.

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