Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry So this is stuff
Speaker 1: you should know and we're here to say that you
Speaker 1: can do it. You can do it. You can accomplish
Speaker 1: those goals. You can get that tor vet, shoot for
Speaker 1: the stars, engage your passion to ignite your fury. Ignite
Speaker 1: your fury. That's my new one. I'm trying to get everybody.
Speaker 1: I want to go to your motivational seminar Ignite your
Speaker 1: fears called Igniting Fury with Josh Clark. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I know what Aaron Cooper is doing this week. How
Speaker 1: you doing. I'm doing pretty good, man. I'm feeling kind
Speaker 1: of pumped. Took some Vitamin B twelve today. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: ready to go. Yeah, as you notice, I cut all
Speaker 1: that dumb hair off. Yeah looks good. I I like
Speaker 1: it both ways. Yeah chuck two point? Oh was I
Speaker 1: chuck two point? I got too hot? Is the real
Speaker 1: expect Yeah, that'll do it. And literally just drove to
Speaker 1: the place and said, all right, take it off. I
Speaker 1: um I mine mine. As you know, as well as
Speaker 1: has gotten kind of longish, and I've got like that
Speaker 1: sixth grade skater cut tick where like I'm like just
Speaker 1: kind of flipping it. Yeah, just just twisting my head
Speaker 1: suddenly to the side to get the hair out of
Speaker 1: my face. Yeah. I think that was another reason I
Speaker 1: cut mine too, was it was just there was too
Speaker 1: much focus on it, uh, personal focus because it was
Speaker 1: from you. I mean yeah, just like management and having
Speaker 1: to do things to it and like get it right.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, I just it's been so
Speaker 1: many years since I've had to focus on my hair.
Speaker 1: You had to go buy a whole new bottle of
Speaker 1: mane and tail just felt dumb, I think. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I'm going I'm going back to
Speaker 1: Chuck one point. Good for you, man, and welcome back
Speaker 1: to fight club. Thank you. Let me see your fingernails
Speaker 1: all right? Does look acceptable? What do you think about
Speaker 1: this topic? I thought that I couldn't ever, I couldn't
Speaker 1: that the end would never come what like researching it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we know how we both feel about this.
Speaker 1: Then it's not even dude. I have to say I
Speaker 1: got switched mid mid research my the tone of my
Speaker 1: research changed because of a Nancy Besser. Oh. Um. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing. This is my personal opinion. I'll give
Speaker 1: it at the front and you can decide whether listen
Speaker 1: to the rest of the episode or not. It's the
Speaker 1: motivational speaking is so uh flimsy and jelly, like the
Speaker 1: whole field. It's so unscientifically based and just so prone
Speaker 1: to hucksterism in a lot of cases that I just
Speaker 1: I didn't even want to research it. I was just like,
Speaker 1: I meat this stuff so much. Um. And then part
Speaker 1: way I was but I was doing my due diligence.
Speaker 1: I'm a professional, as you know. But um, part way through,
Speaker 1: I was reading the in the House Stuff Works article
Speaker 1: about Nancy Besser, and so I went on to her
Speaker 1: site and did some more research on her, and I
Speaker 1: read her I think, like about me or her mission
Speaker 1: or something like that, and I was like, actually, that's
Speaker 1: I don't disagree with anything. This lady just said like
Speaker 1: that's great. Good for her, good for where she came from,
Speaker 1: good for what she's trying to do if she wants
Speaker 1: to make some money doing it, awesome. So saying that
Speaker 1: it definitely changed course and pulled me back from the brink,
Speaker 1: which I think was really needed because I was really
Speaker 1: kind of like I was crop circle in it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And Um, she brought me back
Speaker 1: and I appreciate that to her, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: find out how I can mail her some money. All right,
Speaker 1: you want to know my opinion? What's like this? We're
Speaker 1: gonna front load the opinions and then talk about the
Speaker 1: more all throughout. UM. My deal is this. If you have, um,
Speaker 1: a really great story to tell about your life, because
Speaker 1: maybe you overcome some great adversities. Uh, maybe you're a quadriplegic,
Speaker 1: or maybe you are a POW or had a life
Speaker 1: threatening illness, or if you had any general like major
Speaker 1: life hardships that you overcame and are like killing it
Speaker 1: in life. And you have a great story to tell
Speaker 1: that is sincere and you can go up there and
Speaker 1: make some dough inspiring people, then awesome. If you are
Speaker 1: just really good at holding up pep rally um, and
Speaker 1: you don't have any big story in your life other
Speaker 1: than the fact that you were like, Hey, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of good at this and I think I can make
Speaker 1: some dough. And I've met these celebrities and I've met
Speaker 1: these famous people and they think I'm cool. Um. I
Speaker 1: have two feelings about that. One is, if people are
Speaker 1: genuinely being helped, I'm not gonna yuck their young, then
Speaker 1: that's great. I think that's good for you to say.
Speaker 1: But I look at that that other scene with a
Speaker 1: very weary eye, um, because it reeks of everything from
Speaker 1: taking advantage of people too. Sometimes it even sounded like scientology.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's a lot of religious overtones to the
Speaker 1: whole thing, and that it would be like, well, by
Speaker 1: this book, uh, and then by this one, and then
Speaker 1: come to this seminar, and then by this thing, and
Speaker 1: it had it had all the markings of like a
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme almost. So I was like you, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of all over the place with it, um. And I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of the deal with motivational speaking is
Speaker 1: it takes many many forms, from an inspirational person who
Speaker 1: has a great life story to someone who was just like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm I can hold a pepperrelly as good as the
Speaker 1: next guy. I'll charge somebody three grand to listen to that. Two, Hey,
Speaker 1: here's a financial seminar where you can get rich, right,
Speaker 1: just give us a bunch of money first. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's really all over the map, um, because it's I mean,
Speaker 1: not that it should be regulated, but it's just such
Speaker 1: a it's kind of like the wild West as far
Speaker 1: as what you can be as a motivational speaker. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think also one of the reasons why it's
Speaker 1: tough for us to to nail down our feelings about
Speaker 1: it one way or the other, or why we have
Speaker 1: multiple feelings, because inherently there's nothing in and of itself
Speaker 1: wrong with making an effort to motivate other people to
Speaker 1: be a better version of themselves. Right, But that can
Speaker 1: be that that neutral thing or maybe even positive thing
Speaker 1: can be exploited depending on the context that's used it. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a really good example of that. There's a book
Speaker 1: called Who Moved My Cheese? And it's like ninety pages,
Speaker 1: big print, lots of illustrations, so it's a quick read
Speaker 1: the title, but the whole thing is there's, um, there's
Speaker 1: a maze, and there used to be cheese in this
Speaker 1: one place, and these two humans Ham and Haw are
Speaker 1: just all up at arms that that that they're cheese?
Speaker 1: Is there anymore? What? What a tragedy? Who could have
Speaker 1: possibly done this? And then these two mice. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what the mices the Yeah, the mices. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what the mice. Yeah, the mice, that's right, the
Speaker 1: mice's names are. But they see that their cheese is gone,
Speaker 1: they run off to find cheese elsewhere. Right, So the
Speaker 1: mice are the heroes of the story where the humans
Speaker 1: are dumb, and it's because the humans are allowing themselves
Speaker 1: to become victims. Now, there's like some certain themes in
Speaker 1: there that's true, Like, yes, it's not necessarily a good
Speaker 1: idea to focus on, you know why this issue came about.
Speaker 1: Just solve the problem and move on. But who moved
Speaker 1: my cheese? Is very commonly a book that's purchased by
Speaker 1: employers when they're going through a downsizing and they're saying
Speaker 1: to their employers or their employees like, hey, you need
Speaker 1: to give us a smile. Don't start asking why your
Speaker 1: job was downsized. Just read this book and try to
Speaker 1: be happy. So, this thing that could be good is
Speaker 1: being exploited in a very negative manner um to to
Speaker 1: exonerate people who are making decisions that are negatively impacting
Speaker 1: people's lives. There's there's that's there. It is in a nutshell,
Speaker 1: there's the the good and the bad. Yeah, I will
Speaker 1: say this, I like UH fictional motivational speakers much more.
Speaker 1: Whether it was uh Matt Foley, which is mentioned in
Speaker 1: this article of course, great Chris Farley character. He gets
Speaker 1: three paragraphs. Yeah, that was overdoing it a bit, but
Speaker 1: definitely one of the more classic SML characters. Um. My
Speaker 1: other favorite is UH from Magnolia Frank T. J. Mackie.
Speaker 1: That was one of Tom Cruise's best characters. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I think so ironic that he played that character.
Speaker 1: In ways, I almost get the impression that it was like,
Speaker 1: um who who directed that was Paul Thomas Anderson, that
Speaker 1: in a way casting Cruise was toying with him a
Speaker 1: little bit, or Paul Thomas Anderson wanted him to face
Speaker 1: him himself maybe, or maybe he gave him the script
Speaker 1: and like literally every day on set after he finished,
Speaker 1: Cruise would look around and say, are you making fun
Speaker 1: of me here? You're not making fun of me? No,
Speaker 1: no, no no, it's on. It's terrific. You're the best time.
Speaker 1: All right, you're not making fun of me? Right? Anyway?
Speaker 1: That that character was specifically about UH picking up women
Speaker 1: in bars and having sex with him. So yeah, that
Speaker 1: was sort of a different type of thing, but it
Speaker 1: was motivational. It was uh. So we mentioned different kinds
Speaker 1: of people who do this. Um, there are people like
Speaker 1: Long who uh is a motivational speaker because he had
Speaker 1: a twenty ton bus hit him while he was on
Speaker 1: a bicycle. Uh. It was in the hospital for five
Speaker 1: months at about forty operations and then finally overcame that
Speaker 1: to run the New York City Marathon. So people like
Speaker 1: that you will often see that have an amazing hardship.
Speaker 1: Like I said that they have overcome and maybe did
Speaker 1: like a small speaking engagement and said, you know, people
Speaker 1: really connected to this, and I think I really helped folks. Um,
Speaker 1: So can I sign up with a company that's gonna
Speaker 1: book gigs for me and I can make some real though?
Speaker 1: And you you really can? I mean, like there's there's
Speaker 1: there are people out there who support themselves just from
Speaker 1: motivational speaking. I think there's probably far more who aspired
Speaker 1: to that. Um. But but it is entirely possible to
Speaker 1: become a motivational speaker with representation and and that's how
Speaker 1: you make your living. Yeah, and you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't think we've ever talked about this on the show,
Speaker 1: but stuff you should know we actually we actually don't
Speaker 1: do motivational gigs, but we've done some corporate speaking on occasion.
Speaker 1: We have specifically told the people who are agents are
Speaker 1: booking it that we are not motivational speakers to book
Speaker 1: us as such, and that we are not experts, but
Speaker 1: we're glad to come talk to your company. By the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how about that. I mean, you just you just let
Speaker 1: the cat out of the bag. You changed our lives
Speaker 1: for the better, Chuck. But long story short, we have
Speaker 1: because of this, we have talked and spoken with a
Speaker 1: number of agencies and representatives who act as the liaison
Speaker 1: between a company or a corporation or a group and
Speaker 1: the speaker, and so we've kind of got a little
Speaker 1: bit of an inside view on kind of what this
Speaker 1: public professional public speaking is all about. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that uh, I mean, we kind of do
Speaker 1: our thing and we're not the best. Um, we're not
Speaker 1: the best for people to sell because we're not like
Speaker 1: we can do this and we're vivacious and we have
Speaker 1: get up on stage and just rally people. We're kind
Speaker 1: of well, we kind of do one thing so if
Speaker 1: you want us to do that, we can do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of a narrower field, but it's niche.
Speaker 1: It is very niche. But if you do want to,
Speaker 1: if you think you have a neck. And this one
Speaker 1: woman in here who was the one that said that
Speaker 1: she was always sort of the cheerleader in her group, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was like I kind of always was just this
Speaker 1: person in life and my friends. I would motivate my
Speaker 1: friends and my family and stuff. So if you have
Speaker 1: that kind of vivacious personality and you can get up
Speaker 1: on stage in front of people and you have a
Speaker 1: good story to tell that's um sincere, then it might
Speaker 1: be something that you should look into. Right. That's another
Speaker 1: reason why I like Nancy bestor too. She's the only
Speaker 1: one in this article who admits that, Yeah, anybody can
Speaker 1: do it. It's just it's a it's a certain type
Speaker 1: of skill set, but not something you would have to
Speaker 1: be born with, Like anybody can figure it out well.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of professional motivational speakers would
Speaker 1: probably be like, no, no, no, no, this is not
Speaker 1: for you. Well yeah, Matt Long, the elite athlete UM
Speaker 1: says like, no, no, not everybody could do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, well, if it were easy, everyone would be
Speaker 1: doing it. So no, that was his answer to can
Speaker 1: anybody do it? I think we like I would say
Speaker 1: my sense of humor, especially as stuff you should know goes,
Speaker 1: is pretty self deprecating. But I say this totally honestly
Speaker 1: that if we can do it, we're proof that anybody
Speaker 1: can do this. Oh yeah, we didn't have any experience
Speaker 1: getting on stage in front of people. Now we learned it. Again.
Speaker 1: We're not up there doing motivational speaking, but we're up
Speaker 1: there doing public speaking in front of groups who don't
Speaker 1: know us, and that that's the key. Now. The next level,
Speaker 1: of course, is whether you can arouse uh, positive emotion
Speaker 1: and in the people out there you know, listening to
Speaker 1: you um, And that that I think takes a decent
Speaker 1: amount of practice. But there are techniques and there are
Speaker 1: methods that you can figure out, and all you have
Speaker 1: to do is a little bit of research. All you
Speaker 1: would have to to research really is if you look
Speaker 1: up like how to be a motivational speaker, that is
Speaker 1: going to leave you a heartache. But if you look
Speaker 1: up sensible things like how do you motivate people? Um,
Speaker 1: how do you give a dynamite presentation. All of these things,
Speaker 1: it's all the same stuff. It's just the thing that
Speaker 1: makes motivational speaking different is the through line is inspiration.
Speaker 1: You have an inspirational story. You're you're telling people that
Speaker 1: they can they can have a better life themselves, that
Speaker 1: it's in there in them. That's that's really the big
Speaker 1: difference between motivational speaking and any other type of public speaking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that guy who said that, UM wonderful
Speaker 1: in his thing he goes, you know, you can come
Speaker 1: over any adverse the except public speaking motivation speaking, like,
Speaker 1: don't don't try that. Anything else you could probably do though.
Speaker 1: The competition is thinking of all right, well let's take
Speaker 1: a break here. It's a good start, and we will
Speaker 1: motivate you to come back and listen more right after this.
Speaker 1: All right. Uh. Psychology wise, people have been um. Psychologists
Speaker 1: have been studying motivation for for many many years, um,
Speaker 1: and what motivates people? And there's a dude, uh named
Speaker 1: Abraham Harold Maslow, and in the nineteen forties came up
Speaker 1: with something a little, a little pyramid called Maslow's hierarchy
Speaker 1: of needs, which is fairly interesting if you look at it.
Speaker 1: It is UM. It's a pyramid. Were down at the bottom.
Speaker 1: I think it's been revised over the years. No, that's
Speaker 1: the food pyramid you're thinking of. Now, this has been
Speaker 1: revised a little bit. At the bottom there are one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: five levels and at the bottom you have physiological needs
Speaker 1: like food and water, shelter, shelter, warmth. Right above that
Speaker 1: you have safety needs UM, security and safety in life.
Speaker 1: Above that you have belongingness and love, which are friends
Speaker 1: and intimates. Esteem goes above that prestige feeling of accomplishment.
Speaker 1: And then finally at the very top of the pyramid, UM.
Speaker 1: People should stop using pyramids because that's just got a
Speaker 1: bad name. Now, UM achieving one's full potential or self actualization.
Speaker 1: And so the idea is that you've divided these needs
Speaker 1: up into groups where once you have fulfilled these basic needs,
Speaker 1: you will become stronger and you will basically satisfy those
Speaker 1: lower called lower level deficit needs, and then you can
Speaker 1: progress onto these higher needs until you reach that final
Speaker 1: level U self actualization. And you I mean you can
Speaker 1: take issue and people have with Maslow's hierarchy, like the
Speaker 1: a literal reading of it would say that homeless people
Speaker 1: couldn't are incapable of having friendships or caring about one
Speaker 1: another because they're lacking in a lower need, which is
Speaker 1: shelter and housing. UM. But the overall it does seem
Speaker 1: to be pretty widely, widely regarded, well regarded most like
Speaker 1: it doesn't take into account social factors. UM, it sounds
Speaker 1: Let's put it this way, it sounds like something developed
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties, right, Yeah, And it's pretty it's
Speaker 1: pretty elementary, and it does it's not very complex, but
Speaker 1: it has formed the basis of UM a lot of psychology,
Speaker 1: Like it is pretty much the standard for motivational theory
Speaker 1: from what I understand, and UM, it definitely forms a
Speaker 1: lot of the basis for motivational speaking and the motivational
Speaker 1: speaking industry and and the the um crux of what
Speaker 1: motivational speakers based their motivation on. Right. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: you have this Maslow's theory, but UM regarded well or not,
Speaker 1: It's been around for a long time and is the
Speaker 1: basis for how to motivate people. And people speakers use
Speaker 1: this in their own way. They have their own take
Speaker 1: on how they want to use it or whether they
Speaker 1: use it, and investor's case. Um, she actually went to school.
Speaker 1: She she went to graduate school and studied, uh, conflict
Speaker 1: resolution and emotional intelligence, which I think UM gives her
Speaker 1: a leg up as far as being schooled at least
Speaker 1: and things she talks about how empathy is very important
Speaker 1: and she's at least studied on it, you know, which
Speaker 1: is more than you can say for a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Did you you interviewed Tony Robbins at one point for
Speaker 1: us for our blog? Imber did. Yeah, he's seven years ago.
Speaker 1: I was part of I don't know, there were like
Speaker 1: four or five other people on the phone. It was
Speaker 1: a conference interview that we were but I mean, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, we were made to do this, yes, very much.
Speaker 1: So it was in the evening, Um it was there
Speaker 1: was something else going on, I think a birthday party.
Speaker 1: I had just step away from UM. But it was
Speaker 1: right before his TV show Breakthrough with Tony Robbins came out,
Speaker 1: and I do you remember that show? I do? Uh?
Speaker 1: Very short lived like it was, Yeah, it was extremely
Speaker 1: short lived, but it was the were selling like super
Speaker 1: Bowl um sized, we're super Bowl price commercials for that thing,
Speaker 1: like that's how much those the ads spots were going
Speaker 1: for on this. It was a huge event and it
Speaker 1: flopped very quickly, which I think surprised everybody because Tony
Speaker 1: Robbins is He's huge man, He's enormous. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: the stats, the four million people he reaches from a
Speaker 1: hundred countries has a net worth of about four and
Speaker 1: eighty million dollars through his books and speeches and services.
Speaker 1: And he's been at it for a very long time.
Speaker 1: A lot of people think that he started the UM,
Speaker 1: the motivational speaking industry. He definitely did not. Read a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting article that suggested that Ralph Waldo Emerson was
Speaker 1: America's first motivational speaker could make sense. I've seen it
Speaker 1: go back even further than that. There's a lady named
Speaker 1: Mary Baker Eddie who ended up founding the Christian Science
Speaker 1: I guess church. She got together with a guy named
Speaker 1: Phineas park hurse Quimby. If that's not a mid nineteenth
Speaker 1: century name, I don't know what is right, or a
Speaker 1: new hipster Brooklyn kid's name. Yes, it is now um
Speaker 1: and there's They came together and created what's known as
Speaker 1: the New Thought movement, which is basically said that if
Speaker 1: you think positively good things will happen, which, now this
Speaker 1: is just such a widespread thought and it's it forms
Speaker 1: such that forms as much the basis of motivational speaking
Speaker 1: as Maslow's hierarchy, the idea that if you think positively,
Speaker 1: you're going to have an actual effect on fate, on destiny,
Speaker 1: on the universe, on on your your own future. Right,
Speaker 1: But that makes zero sense whatsoever logically, and it it
Speaker 1: finds it's its roots back in this, these two, these
Speaker 1: two people coming together, so that actually probably was the
Speaker 1: basis of the motivational speaking industry, and it continued on here.
Speaker 1: There there were some luminaries that pop up between uh
Speaker 1: the New Thought movement and Tony Robbins. You've got like
Speaker 1: Dale Carnegie, who wrote How To Um Make Friends and
Speaker 1: Influence People, one of the greatest selling self help books
Speaker 1: of all time, and really introduced the concept of self
Speaker 1: help to the masses. Dale Carnegie did use an interesting dude.
Speaker 1: And then you've got guys like Napoleon Hill who wrote
Speaker 1: Think and Grow Rich. I believe it sounds like something
Speaker 1: on the Simpsons, like a fake self help book, it
Speaker 1: really was. And there's actually Chuck a really good article
Speaker 1: on Gizmoto called The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill the
Speaker 1: greatest self help scammera of all time. Well, and you
Speaker 1: know how you like those long form articles, this one,
Speaker 1: as long as it gets right, it's basically like a
Speaker 1: mini book. So the mid twenties century, you've got people
Speaker 1: popping up. And then and then a young man named
Speaker 1: Anthony Robbins created an infomercial for his Personal Power program.
Speaker 1: Remember that infomercial I do. And I looked into a
Speaker 1: little bit because I realized I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: even know his deal, Like what was uh? I know,
Speaker 1: he wasn't a pow um Like I wondered what his
Speaker 1: story was. You're like, okay, check that box off um.
Speaker 1: And from what I could find, and I didn't do
Speaker 1: a deep dive, but from what I could find, he
Speaker 1: worked for a motivational speaker. And I think was just like, hey,
Speaker 1: I can do this. Yeah, is that the deal? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, And he was absolutely right. He
Speaker 1: did it. He he's a cottage industry onto himself. That
Speaker 1: Personal Power infomercial. By the way, in the first three
Speaker 1: years that it was out, a hundred million people saw
Speaker 1: it in America, So he became like a juggernai, I
Speaker 1: became a pop culture thing. Remember he was in Shallow
Speaker 1: How he's actually the mcguffin for the whole movie. Meeting
Speaker 1: Tony Robbins in an elevator is what sets like the
Speaker 1: whole plot of the movie off. And then what a
Speaker 1: mcguffin is, I don't I don't remember seeing that movie,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I know the movie, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I saw it. But no, as far as film
Speaker 1: industry parlance goes, and mcguffin is the thing that helps
Speaker 1: the plot along, right, Yeah, a mcguffin is uh something
Speaker 1: in the movie, a device or something that triggers the plot.
Speaker 1: So I think in that case you're correct. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: using it correctly, by goodness. So um Tony Tony Robins.
Speaker 1: So by the time he came out with his show
Speaker 1: breakthrough in two thousand ten, um, everybody just assumed it
Speaker 1: would be huge and it was not for some reason.
Speaker 1: I still don't understand why. But if you watch that
Speaker 1: first episode, it's basically him going around and motivating people
Speaker 1: who have like enormous challenges up against them. And the
Speaker 1: first episode still to this day, I just kind of
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe he did this.
Speaker 1: They he went and met up with a guy who
Speaker 1: was Audre, who was qua quadriplegic, I believe, and he
Speaker 1: had become quadriplegic after jumping headfirst into a swimming pool
Speaker 1: I think at his wedding reception. Um And and became
Speaker 1: paralyzed and I you know, obviously quite depressed as a result,
Speaker 1: and was had lost his job and his life had
Speaker 1: really just taken a huge turn downward. And Tony Robbins
Speaker 1: showed up to help the guy, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: help him by inspiring him. And the way that he
Speaker 1: inspired him was to take him up in an airplane
Speaker 1: and push him out. Do you remember he pushed a man,
Speaker 1: a quadriplegic man out of an airplane with a parachute
Speaker 1: on and said like Scottive or something like that. It
Speaker 1: was one of the craziest things anyone's ever done on TV.
Speaker 1: And I'm including up to present day. So so breakthrough
Speaker 1: Tony Robbins plot. But that was probably just like a
Speaker 1: blip on that dude's radar. It did nothing to his
Speaker 1: personal brand as far as dragging it down. No, um
Speaker 1: And I don't want to like sound like I'm bashing
Speaker 1: the guy, because you know, he helps a lot of
Speaker 1: people that buy into it and apparently is very philanthropic,
Speaker 1: uh in many ways. So that's good, right, sure of course. Um,
Speaker 1: But he also, um, is a firewalker. This is something
Speaker 1: I did not know U. In his Unleashed the Power
Speaker 1: Within program that he does live, he gets thousands of
Speaker 1: people to walk across hot coals. He's gotten Oprah Winfrey
Speaker 1: to walk across hot coals, and um, you know, firewalkings,
Speaker 1: It's it's a real thing. Um, if you look at
Speaker 1: it scientifically, what's going on is is coals are not
Speaker 1: a very good conductor of heat, so it takes about
Speaker 1: a second to actually feel that heat, and if you
Speaker 1: walk at a good clip, it's about a half a second.
Speaker 1: So what you're doing is not really And I don't
Speaker 1: think he's saying there's some danger you're overcoming. I think
Speaker 1: in his case, it's you're overcoming a fear and taking
Speaker 1: part in a group activity and that's where the benefit is.
Speaker 1: It's like staring at those coals and doing it. I
Speaker 1: don't think he's saying, like, look, it's magic because of me.
Speaker 1: You're not getting burned. I don't know. I think that
Speaker 1: what he's the premise of his fire walking thing and
Speaker 1: at these conferences is to show people that they can
Speaker 1: overcome even physical problems like hot coals on their feet
Speaker 1: by using their mind. I thought it was like the fear. No,
Speaker 1: I think in reality that's what's going on. But I
Speaker 1: believe from what I understand, that it's being presented that
Speaker 1: you can say something like yes or cool moss, and
Speaker 1: you're using your mind to overcome the dilemma of the
Speaker 1: hot posed by the hot coals on your feet. Okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough, right? Uh? It all kind of went wrong
Speaker 1: in Dallas though in there was an event there where um,
Speaker 1: thirty to forty people were evaluated. I think five people
Speaker 1: were taken to the hospital with burn injuries, and um,
Speaker 1: his spokesperson, Jennifer Connelly said, you know what, only five
Speaker 1: people out of seven thousand requested examination beyond what we
Speaker 1: had on site to examine people, and you know, everyone
Speaker 1: had a great time. Basically, I have to say, statistically speaking,
Speaker 1: she makes an excellent point. And there's actually somebody in
Speaker 1: this article, um, oh, what's her name, Irene Wiseman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who really kind of put it well, she seems to
Speaker 1: be somebody who goes to these things to go to
Speaker 1: she goes. She definitely goes to Robbin's conferences, um, but
Speaker 1: she also seems to understand what's going on at them,
Speaker 1: rather than like maybe buying into a lock stock and barrel.
Speaker 1: And from what I've seen, someone like her, someone who
Speaker 1: approaches a motivational speaking conference with her own set of
Speaker 1: judgments and values about it and is able to take
Speaker 1: that message and adjust it so that it works for her,
Speaker 1: rather than trying to take everything from the person wholesale
Speaker 1: and putting it onto you so that you're basically magically changed.
Speaker 1: Those people have the greatest greatest chance of succeeding, um
Speaker 1: at whatever they're being motivated to do. But she she
Speaker 1: basically she puts the firewalk like that. She was saying,
Speaker 1: like the real magic is that there were ten thousand
Speaker 1: five people waiting their turn to walk over these colds,
Speaker 1: and everyone was exuberant and calm and happy. Nobody was
Speaker 1: irritated or you know, um like hurry up or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It was a neat communal feeling waiting in
Speaker 1: line to go do the fire the firewalk, and she
Speaker 1: she did the firewalks. She said it was cool or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was more about the camaraderie in the community
Speaker 1: that developed in line waiting for the firewalk. For her,
Speaker 1: it definitely is. And I think if you asked Tony Robbins,
Speaker 1: maybe he'll come onto the show and talk to us
Speaker 1: about it sometime. Okay, if you asked Tony Robbins, I
Speaker 1: would guess that he would concede. Uh that, Yes, you
Speaker 1: could interpret his conferences as a Pepper rallying. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I want to say something, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I hold the skeptic community to account for not giving
Speaker 1: more ink to motivational the motivational speaking industry. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't see a lot. And I specifically looked from skeptic sites. Yep,
Speaker 1: me too, and it's almost not there. So that that
Speaker 1: has two things. One that skeptics either think that it
Speaker 1: is right, that's fine, or they think it's so ridiculous
Speaker 1: that it's not even worth writing about, which I don't
Speaker 1: think that's the case, because skeptics write about some pretty
Speaker 1: ridiculous stuff. Well, I looked at this one article. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you saw it from the guy who
Speaker 1: walked out of a conference, a Tony Robbins conference. Did
Speaker 1: you see that one? Um, this guy was by all
Speaker 1: accounts from what he said, someone who should be into it.
Speaker 1: He's like, I wasn't there to bust him. I'm not
Speaker 1: a skeptic. He was like, I h have read some
Speaker 1: of his books. I'm a fan, Like I'm into it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he walked out and he just had a very
Speaker 1: like just a very leveled critical eye on the presentation,
Speaker 1: not like this guy is this and this. He was
Speaker 1: just like, you know what, he repeated himself too much,
Speaker 1: and he name dropped too much, and um, he kind
Speaker 1: of had some bad segues that and non sequiturs, and
Speaker 1: he just looked at it sort of from a critical
Speaker 1: i of a public speaker, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: like this he's he's kind of phoning it in these days.
Speaker 1: So it was, Oh, it was Tony Robbins himself that
Speaker 1: he walked out on. Yeah, and he was just like,
Speaker 1: you know, I left, He said, I just found that
Speaker 1: I wasn't really getting anything out of it. And he
Speaker 1: didn't go there to to poopoo the guy. Um, like
Speaker 1: I said, he was a fan, so he just it's
Speaker 1: kind of like he you know, he ditched the capris
Speaker 1: and and and start doing a better presentation, was his take?
Speaker 1: Gotcha the capris Tony Robbins his capri pants, he sure does.
Speaker 1: Does he really like the ones with the drawstrings at
Speaker 1: the bottom in the cargo pockets? No? Does he really?
Speaker 1: I've not seen that. All right, Well let's take a
Speaker 1: break and let Josh ponder that, and we'll come back
Speaker 1: and finish up this stuff right after this. All right,
Speaker 1: So Tony Robbins isn't the only person out there that's
Speaker 1: made a ton of money doing this. They want to
Speaker 1: pick on him. No, we should say a ton of money.
Speaker 1: His six day conference, Um, I think it's called Date
Speaker 1: with Destiny this year and last year. So the the
Speaker 1: Irene Wiseman said there were ten thousand, five hundred people there.
Speaker 1: The tickets were about four thousand dollars apiece. That's forty
Speaker 1: two million dollars they grossed for a sixth day conference.
Speaker 1: He should call that conference credit cards on fire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I read an article, I think in Forbes about the
Speaker 1: Chinese UM motivational speaking industry, and um, there's this one
Speaker 1: person who's like, who's going to sign up for the
Speaker 1: for my other classes and um, like, some people came
Speaker 1: to the front and a ring of people with like
Speaker 1: wireless credit card machines formed around them. Oh my god, yeah, wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of us, one of us man's creepy. Uh So
Speaker 1: Tony Robbins isn't the only person out there who's done
Speaker 1: this over the Here's many, many people, I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't it say there was something like close to
Speaker 1: five registered motivational speakers in the U s alone, think
Speaker 1: like six something. That was it. But very famously, a
Speaker 1: man named Jack Canfield wrote a book called Chicken Soup
Speaker 1: for the Soul. Um and this is an amazing record.
Speaker 1: He holds the Guinness Record for having seven books on
Speaker 1: the New York Times bestseller list at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable. Did you know they wrote one for chicken
Speaker 1: Soup for the prisoner's soul, They wrote one for people
Speaker 1: in prison? M I did not know that. And also
Speaker 1: did you know Ashton Kutcher is trying to bring Chicken
Speaker 1: Soup for the Soul to Netflix the Coach as what
Speaker 1: a documentary? Or's I have no idea, that's that's all
Speaker 1: I saw. Or he's starring his Chicken Soup he's starring
Speaker 1: his noodle I book a lot of fun at the coach.
Speaker 1: But he seems like a pretty sincere guy. Uh sure, No,
Speaker 1: I I don't know. I don't know. I I've I've
Speaker 1: learned to just try to shy away from no from
Speaker 1: from like saying stuff about people on air. People I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know him. He's a celebrity. That's
Speaker 1: all I know about him, you know, like, and even
Speaker 1: if I did know more about him, and that's not
Speaker 1: the whole picture. So I have no idea what he's like.
Speaker 1: Is a person just based on knowing people he that's
Speaker 1: probably likeliest that he is a good person. Wayne Dyer,
Speaker 1: another famous author, no longer with us. I wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Your Erroneous Zones, and a lot of these people,
Speaker 1: it seems like, started out as book writers. That's the
Speaker 1: best way. That used to be the best way to
Speaker 1: get started. Now I think the best way to get
Speaker 1: started is to just start speaking and then write your
Speaker 1: books based on your successes there. You want to do
Speaker 1: that almost simultaneously too, because one of the things you
Speaker 1: do if you're an motivational speaker is mentioned by the way,
Speaker 1: I've got even more insights that are going to help
Speaker 1: you out, and my books that are available for sale
Speaker 1: right outside. Yeah, that's when it reeks of scientology to me.
Speaker 1: It's like you can unlock more discoveries by buying more things.
Speaker 1: But all, yeah, all of them do that. Like you're
Speaker 1: a fool if you're a motivational speaker who doesn't have
Speaker 1: a book for sale at your conference, Like you're doing
Speaker 1: it wrong. Right, as far as the industry would be concerned,
Speaker 1: I think that in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that you are a huckster. But there are plenty of
Speaker 1: them in the industry that are hucksters because all they're
Speaker 1: they're doing is selling their book or their class or
Speaker 1: there's something they're They're motivational speech is actually just a
Speaker 1: sales pitch. That's the hucksters, and there's plenty of them
Speaker 1: in the industry. Yes, should we talk about get motivated? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We should. This is a seminar series that was started
Speaker 1: in two thousand two by guy named Peter Lowe and
Speaker 1: in the article I read, he has described as the
Speaker 1: son of a missionary who along with his ex wife Tamarra,
Speaker 1: who was a self help book author who writes Christian
Speaker 1: rap started, uh something that a series called Get Motivated
Speaker 1: that UM is filling up stadiums that at one point
Speaker 1: and no longer, but at one point was in business
Speaker 1: with TD Ameritrade. Yeah. I think they started with a
Speaker 1: legitimate motivational speaker conference, Okay, and then over time said hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we could get somebody in here to
Speaker 1: to underwrite a lot of this and UM they can
Speaker 1: just give they can basically put ads in amongst the
Speaker 1: motivational speakers. Yeah. So they partnered up with t d
Speaker 1: AMR Trade with this UM product they hauled had called
Speaker 1: invest Tools UM and they're no longer in business together,
Speaker 1: but Get Motivated still out there. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: they're partnering with anyone or not. No, they have a
Speaker 1: new owner called wealth Rock that has their own investing
Speaker 1: classes that they now sell exclusively. I think are the
Speaker 1: only things that are sold at the Get Motivated conferences. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's a long and short of it. What they
Speaker 1: do is they charge very little money. It's not like
Speaker 1: you have to pay thousands of dollars like Tony Robbins
Speaker 1: UM live event, but you pay like five bucks or
Speaker 1: something and say hey, I can go here. Colin Powell
Speaker 1: speak or Terry Bradshaw or who else they they have U,
Speaker 1: Laura Bush or Juliani. And who wouldn't go here speeches
Speaker 1: by them for five bucks besides me? Uh? And then
Speaker 1: you go and you h you would, um for five bucks.
Speaker 1: I'd go see Colin all for five bucks if he
Speaker 1: spoke in my living room. How's that? Uh, let's make
Speaker 1: it happen, America. That's a riff on an old joke
Speaker 1: my dad used to say, which was when he wanted
Speaker 1: to denigrate a performer, you would say, I wouldn't go
Speaker 1: see them if they were playing in my backyard. I've
Speaker 1: heard that before too. That's such a seventies dad thing
Speaker 1: to totally. Um. So anyway, you would go and you
Speaker 1: would listen to these motivational speeches. Um. And then what's
Speaker 1: going on is is their financial they're selling a financial
Speaker 1: product basically right, And again it's it's like you've got
Speaker 1: actual like Colin Powell's not like. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if I mentioned how great t D and Merri Trades
Speaker 1: investment tools are, They've helped me out a lot. He
Speaker 1: just paid a boatload of money to go speak exactly,
Speaker 1: and he's giving like a real motivational speech. Right. And
Speaker 1: then after Colin Powell, you have some guy come up
Speaker 1: and say, hey, who wants a Corvette and they flashed
Speaker 1: a picture of a Corvette and everybody raises their hand.
Speaker 1: He's like, you can have them with corvette too, with
Speaker 1: invest tools or whatever. Right. So the criticism of this
Speaker 1: is that these people are super pumped and ready to
Speaker 1: just do anything because they're feeling really good thanks to
Speaker 1: Colin Pal's speech. And then now they're getting this the
Speaker 1: sales pitch that's being wedged in between these motivational speakers,
Speaker 1: So of course they're signing up for this and and
Speaker 1: maybe without really fully understanding what's going on. Um. The
Speaker 1: on the other side, the t D A Mere trade
Speaker 1: people say, how are you gonna do a hard sell with,
Speaker 1: you know, to twenty people in a stadium. You can't like, like,
Speaker 1: that's just that's that's ridiculous to say that these people
Speaker 1: had a hard sales pitch leveled against them. The point
Speaker 1: is that people who went went thinking they were going
Speaker 1: to a motivational speaking event a conference, and it turns
Speaker 1: out the whole thing was just a t D A
Speaker 1: mere trade add to get them to give them their
Speaker 1: money for these investment tools that may or may not
Speaker 1: help them actually make money from that point, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh. In two thousand nine, investivals UM agreed to
Speaker 1: pay three million dollars UH to settle UM allegations from
Speaker 1: the SEC that it let instructors mislead students and the
Speaker 1: things that can make extraordinary profits. Uh and to claim
Speaker 1: they were expert option traders when their income was really
Speaker 1: coming from selling the courses. Yeah. Apparently one of the
Speaker 1: instructors said, like, the returns were guaranteed, you can't you
Speaker 1: cannot do that. And apparently you're also not supposed to
Speaker 1: say what percentage return you can offer, and they they
Speaker 1: apparently said seventeen percent, which is just ridiculous. And these
Speaker 1: are options that we're talking about. These are not like
Speaker 1: stock trades, where you know, you can do a little
Speaker 1: research and figure out stock trades and you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: swimming with sharks. These were options. Options are extremely complex
Speaker 1: and difficult, and they cost more to trade than a
Speaker 1: stock trade does, and you're much more apt to lose
Speaker 1: money because you don't understand what you're doing. There's a
Speaker 1: lot more factors involved in whether you make money off
Speaker 1: of investing in options. Or not. So this is like
Speaker 1: they're going to people who are paying to see you know,
Speaker 1: Colin Powell and Laura Bush speak because they admire them,
Speaker 1: and then they're they're getting sold these supposedly classes on
Speaker 1: investing in very sophisticated financial tools. It's just you shouldn't
Speaker 1: do that. You know. Their lineup is now who I
Speaker 1: went to get motivated website and like, did you say
Speaker 1: that they had they had their own product? Now yeah,
Speaker 1: Wealth Rock is the owner I believe spelled r A
Speaker 1: W k uh. Their current lineup right now for this
Speaker 1: next tour is Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank,
Speaker 1: one of the Duck Dynasty dudes. All right, do you
Speaker 1: know his name? Larry King? Really? Yeah? Okay? Um. A
Speaker 1: woman named Mangeet Minhas who I believe I looked into
Speaker 1: her briefly. She's started breweries and wineries in Canada, made
Speaker 1: a lot of money and then finally rounding it out
Speaker 1: Edwards Snowden. That's a good one, man, that's quite I'm
Speaker 1: sure Edward Snowden. I want to be in the green
Speaker 1: room with Edward Snowden and the Duck Dynasty guy. Well,
Speaker 1: you're you're joking about Edward Snowden. Oh that's four real. No, yes,
Speaker 1: no it's not. Yes, it is what and under his
Speaker 1: thing it says, uh what did it say? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, says entrepreneur below one and said duck Dynasty
Speaker 1: star and blow him, it says whistle blower. No, Edward
Speaker 1: Snowden is doing this conference. Yes, well I'm going I
Speaker 1: gotta hear this. Yeah. Wow, strange times. It is strange times.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I like what Wealth Rock is doing
Speaker 1: these days? Uh. In two thousand five, that was an
Speaker 1: investigative journalist named Steve Salerna who um wrote a book
Speaker 1: called SHAM, which stands for self help in Actualization movement,
Speaker 1: called SHAM colin how the self help movement made America
Speaker 1: helpless And he kind of peeled back. He he didn't
Speaker 1: hold any punches and kind of peeled back the the
Speaker 1: thin layer on this industry and um basically said, there's
Speaker 1: no science behind this, uh, these techniques, there's no evidence
Speaker 1: that this stuff is effective at all. Um, it could
Speaker 1: be just coincidence or people may not be uh maybe
Speaker 1: are not helped by this industry at all. Right, And
Speaker 1: he was saying, like just the law of Averages says
Speaker 1: that if enough people try it, some of them are
Speaker 1: going to be helped, and they may even be helped
Speaker 1: just by other things or by things other than whatever
Speaker 1: the motivational speaker was telling him to do, but it
Speaker 1: will be attributed to the motivational speaker. And if you
Speaker 1: get some people who are willing to give testam O'Neills,
Speaker 1: then that just helps feed the beast, basically right. And
Speaker 1: if you're not helped, then the common line as well,
Speaker 1: you just you're not buying in like you can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where it gets insidious to me. It's where
Speaker 1: the it's is built in self defense. I guess deflection
Speaker 1: mechanism for for motivation the motivational speaking industry, which is, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not enough of a believer, you don't have enough passion,
Speaker 1: you're um not trying hard enough, Like you're the problem,
Speaker 1: you're failing, you're the loser, you're committed to losing. That's
Speaker 1: another one too, and that's despicable to me. If you're
Speaker 1: if you are deflecting blame from yourself and your own
Speaker 1: shoddy product, that's not actually helping people onto somebody who
Speaker 1: is really looking for help because they don't think that
Speaker 1: they have the real strength and of in themselves too
Speaker 1: to overcome the adversity they face. Okay, um, holding it back, man,
Speaker 1: Well you said that great article, Three reasons why most
Speaker 1: motivational speakers are dead wrong, And that was one of
Speaker 1: the things that um that this author, Well did you
Speaker 1: have his name? Uh? He is Hoffman. His name is
Speaker 1: Bobby Hoffman. Yeah, that was one of the things he
Speaker 1: brought up, that is that it's undebunkable basically because they
Speaker 1: can always just put it back on the person do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not good at all. No, So I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess in a nutshell the and apparently in a nutshell
Speaker 1: was Dale Carnegie thing. But in a nutshell the motivational
Speaker 1: speaking industry, it can be good and can be bad depending. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I know we spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: retrospect now slamming it all. But um, like I said,
Speaker 1: good for you. If you do have a legitimate sincere
Speaker 1: hardship overcoming a hardship life story to tell and that
Speaker 1: helps people out and you can make a buck doing it,
Speaker 1: then I think that's awesome. Yeah. And again, if you're
Speaker 1: somebody who's looking to be motivated by a motivational speaker.
Speaker 1: If what somebody is saying makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: to you, it feels right, you feel good listening to them,
Speaker 1: reading their books, hearing what they have to say. UM,
Speaker 1: more power to you. I I don't knock that at all. No,
Speaker 1: just tread lightly and go into it with a with
Speaker 1: a intelligent I. There you go. I don't want to
Speaker 1: see anyone get duped, you know. Okay, those our our
Speaker 1: public service for the week. Goodness. Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about motivational speaking, type those words in
Speaker 1: the search bar how stuff works dot com. And since
Speaker 1: I said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this ghost fishing follow up UM from Anthony
Speaker 1: and Charlotte, North Carolina. Hey, guys, just finished ghost fishing
Speaker 1: and glad you covered this really important topic of an
Speaker 1: environmental scientist who studies fishing water in North Carolina. Have
Speaker 1: worked in this field all over the country. While the
Speaker 1: commercial fishing industry is extremely detrimental to marine life, recreational
Speaker 1: fishing causes a lot of fish to die and freshwater
Speaker 1: because of littering from it. And this is something I
Speaker 1: really thought about as UM. Seldom fishermen many fishermen and
Speaker 1: women throw little excess bits of line while tying knots
Speaker 1: on the ground or in the water while the fishing.
Speaker 1: This monofilament goes in the waterways, and if you look
Speaker 1: into the gut of many fish, turtles, birds, and other
Speaker 1: life associated with water, you almost always find this fishing
Speaker 1: line and hooks stuck in the various biota or the
Speaker 1: biota being stuck in the gear. I would highly recommend
Speaker 1: fishermen and women, let's just say fisher people, uh, fisher
Speaker 1: kings of fisher kings, to make sure they put this
Speaker 1: extra line in their pocket to dispose of later, or
Speaker 1: use an environmentally friendly nylon line that if they can
Speaker 1: find it. This monofilament line just does not break down
Speaker 1: over time like the nylon does. Just wanted to share
Speaker 1: this with you all. Many people are unaware of the
Speaker 1: harm they can do without meaning to these little bits
Speaker 1: of line, and I hope it can help people be
Speaker 1: more aware while they're fishing. Good Yeah, thanks Anthony from Charlotte.
Speaker 1: I'd never really thought about that my own self, and
Speaker 1: that's wrong. Yeah, good going, Anthony, much appreciated. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us like Anthony did,
Speaker 1: and give us a heads up on something We love
Speaker 1: those You can tweet to us at s y s
Speaker 1: K podcast or Josh, I'm Clark. You can join us
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email with Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com and it's always joined us at a home
Speaker 1: on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. Two