Micheal Pacheco 0:03
All right. Hey, everyone, and welcome once again to another episode of the remarkable coach podcast. I’m your host, Michael Pacheco. And today with me, I have Kevin de rocha. Kevin works with business professionals and entrepreneurs so they can grab their audience’s attention, keep it and get a response to their call to action. Kevin, welcome to the podcast.
Kevin Desrosiers 0:23
Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Micheal Pacheco 0:25
Yeah, fantastic to have you. So I’d like to open up the podcast by just inviting our guests to talk a little bit about themselves and what kind of got you into coaching?
Kevin Desrosiers 0:34
Okay, well, I’m a speaker, author and a coach. I actually authored my first book, last October bridge over adversity to stories about overcoming personal challenges. And that book tells the stories of 12 people who have overcome severe adversity in their lives, a woman that was trafficked and escaped, somebody that overdosed on drugs, was in a coma almost died, somebody that lost a child, somebody that was abused by not only their first step mother, but their stepmother. But the second one and every one of these people. They’re successful and happy again in life. So I talk about the 11 characteristics they had in common, that allow them to escape. And there are characteristics that anyone can use to overcome any challenges I have in life. I also speak to audiences about that and how to become a better public speaker. And that leads to what I coach, and that is public speaking. And I work with mostly business professionals, but also some students and people that are just trying to hone their speaking skills. So no matter what level they currently speak at.
Micheal Pacheco 1:40
Kevin, you’re I think your microphones cutting out again, there.
Kevin Desrosiers 1:44
Okay, there, we’re back. Okay. See if that’s back are better. Good. Okay.
Micheal Pacheco 1:52
And it was, so we missed the last part of the last sentence there.
Kevin Desrosiers 1:57
Okay, so that leads into my public speaking, coaching, and I work with mostly business professionals, but also students, and other people that want to hone either an elevator pitch or presentation or giving, or if they have to give regular presentations to audiences, just how to do that and how to get better, regardless of their current level speaking.
Micheal Pacheco 2:18
Okay. Um, so I think I mean, that’s the first thing, I’d like to maybe dive into a little bit, you mentioned your book, on on bridge out bridge over adversity, that’s your, your website as well, I believe, right, bridge over adversity.com? Correct. And you you mentioned 11 characteristics that these these interviewees have in over to help them overcome their adversity? What are those 11 characteristics?
Kevin Desrosiers 2:45
Okay, there’s several of them. And I’m gonna have to actually refer to my book to get them all down. But first, they took responsibility for their actions, they, they realize that, you know, I have a role in this and it takes me to get better. Another is a sought help, they got help from other people. And app because a lot of people they’re offered help people want to help people that others that are having problems in life, yet, they do not seek out that help, and get that help that they need. Because there’s always somebody better doing something than any of us. And in order to do that, you need help with somebody that’s been there already and gone down that same road that you’re going down to, the one that surprised me the most about all of it, is every single one of them are giving back in some way to society to community. And I wasn’t looking for that when I started writing the book, because I didn’t have any preconceived notions on what these characteristics were before I started writing the book, after I interviewed the 12 people, I came up with the 12. Another is that they didn’t give up, they just continued to go on. They had setbacks, you know, it wasn’t easy, where you say, Okay, I’m gonna overcome this. And it’s just a smooth path forward. It was a tough path. And they would have these ups and downs, ups and downs, but it was steadily getting better, a little bit dip, going up a slight dip, going up further, and continuing to go on in that. So those are just some of the characteristics that they use. But you know, each of them these people all shared, and for some reason, they were able to overcome the challenges that they have in life.
Micheal Pacheco 4:33
And when you were coming up with these was 11 or 12.
Kevin Desrosiers 4:37
It was there. 12 people in the book, but 11 characteristics.
Micheal Pacheco 4:42
As you were coming through coming up with these 11 characteristics. Were you just looking back through those 12 interviews and kind of connecting the dots. I
Kevin Desrosiers 4:49
just started connecting the dots on what were some of the things they shared not all 12 Had all love and characteristics. They had three, four or five of them. And then at the end Each chapter I tell which are the main characteristics ahead that allow them to escape and become happy again.
Micheal Pacheco 5:06
Awesome. Nice. And how does that? Or does it does that does that book How does that lead into your your business coaching it with the public speaking,
Kevin Desrosiers 5:17
it leads into my public speaking because that is one of the two programs I offer. I offer two programs on public speaking one on how to overcome challenges in life. And the other is how to become a better public speaker. But I don’t coach, I’m not a psychologist. I’m an electrical engineer by degree Believe it or not, but I had my own challenge in life. And back in 2018, it was March 17 2018. I got on the scale for the first time. And probably six or eight months, I knew my weight had gone up. I didn’t know how much. And I looked down at the scale, 288.6 pounds. And that scared the living daylights out of me. I was a month from retirement. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen so many people retire. And a year or two later, I’m going to their funeral. And I didn’t want to be that person. So I went on my own journey. And a little bit over a year later, I lost 100 pounds, I got down to 188 pounds. In September of 2019. I got to my target weight. And what I’m more proud of is that I’ve kept it off. I’m a few pounds up from that right now. But I am right in that range that little bit about five, seven pounds over my 100 pound loss. But I’ve lost weight hundreds of times throughout my life and many people have but I always refound it and I found someone else’s weight today lost as well. And I just kept going up and up and up. So I was able to overcome that challenge in my life. And, you know, go ahead,
Micheal Pacheco 6:51
I was gonna ask what what characteristics do you see in yourself that you would credit?
Kevin Desrosiers 6:56
I think one of the biggest ones was I sought out experts, I sought out that help. But the other is I surrounded myself with positive people. And that’s something that the people in my book did. If you’re hanging around with naysayers, peeps, oh, yeah, you can’t lose hair. Well, I’ve tried 100 times, and oh, you can’t go without eating Matt, and this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work, you aren’t going to succeed, you have to find a good support group, and I surrounded myself with people that were positive encouraged me. And if I would start to slip a little bit, it was like, come on, you know, get back on the horse and start going forward again. So finding positive influences in your life, people that are cheerleaders for you, and want to see you succeed, that that is really what helped me get through the finish line.
Micheal Pacheco 7:45
I think that’s huge. I think it was Jim Rohn that originally said you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I know for me, I went through a bit of that in my early 30s, where I had a certain group that I was hanging out with and just decided that it was time to maybe make a shift there. And it’s not always easy, right? Getting nothing. If you’ve got a circle of friends that you’re very close with, maybe you’ve been close with him for many years. And you see, you know, you get into personal development or whatever it is you get into and you maybe you’ve come to a realization maybe there’s some things holding you back and it’s time to uplevel your life and uplevel your your circle of friends. What kind of, you know, your one of your programs that you have is how to overcome challenges. So what kind of advice would you give someone who’s looking to make that up level?
Kevin Desrosiers 8:37
I think the first thing is you have to realize what you can control and what you can’t control, and then take control the things you can, that there are certain things in life, you know, I can’t control the stock market, I can’t control the politics around me things that are happening in my neighborhood, but I can control how I react to those things, and how I do the different things that I do in life. So too many people focus on Oh, woe is me. Because, you know, look at what’s happening in society, look at what’s happening, you know, in the job market, look what’s happening, do what you can control. If you’re looking for another job, you’ve lost your job, work on polishing up your resume and putting out X amount of applications a day and working on improving your skills so you can get a better job. If you don’t like the job you’re in. Those are the things you can control. And that is just really important. And then surrounding yourself with positive people and just realizing you’re gonna have some setbacks. Occasionally, things happen and it’s never smooth sailing all the way. You’re gonna hit some rocky roads along the way, and you have to realize that and not the first time you come to an obstacle, say oh gosh, I can’t do that. You know, when you’re on the road, you’re going down the highway and you’re driving to an event. Let’s say you’re going to a baseball game and There’s a traffic jam up front, do you just stop and turn around and go home? No, you either keep plodding along, or you get off the highway and find an alternate route and get to where you’re going. But when we have problems in life, people don’t do that. They just run into that first obstacle, and then they give up. And that’s what you can’t do. You have to just keep moving forward. And even if it’s just small baby steps, every little step of progress is progress.
Micheal Pacheco 10:27
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s super important, too. I want to, I want to circle back to something that you said a little earlier on about what was it, like you’re looking for a job and you send out X number of resumes per day, right? That those are the baby steps that you’re talking about setting yourself simple, small goals, things that are easily under your control, they’re not going to be perfect, but every resume that you send out every cover letter that you write, you’re going to learn something from that. And you can make adjustments and tweaks and you get better and better and better and better. And eventually, you’re gonna get a job.
Kevin Desrosiers 10:58
Yeah, you know, people laugh at me, but I, I love keeping a task list at home. And things I have to do today, tomorrow, whatever. And I break it up into manageable size items. So for example, I don’t say do laundry, I have three items on there, whites, dark colors, light colors, because if I get two of the three loads done, and I can’t check off laundry, you know, I feel like I failed, I didn’t get something done. But now I’ve gotten two things. And those are good sized chunks. So I break it into smaller steps. So I see that progress. And I feel good about myself because I didn’t get all three loads done. But I got two of the three completed. And if you break your items that you have to do up into smaller tasks, you feel better about yourself as you accomplish a little bit more instead of this huge task, get a job well no. Mail, 20 resumes this we polish up my resume are whatever it may be, learn a new skill, whatever that skill is that you want to learn break are bite sized chunks.
Micheal Pacheco 12:08
Yeah, instead of mailed 20 resumes this week mail for resumes today. Yeah, right. I love that. So I keep our reached over here, I keep a little post it note stack of post it notes on my desk. And anytime I have a little win, I’ll write it down and attach it on my screen. And then at the end of the day, I just pull them off and read through them. And I’ve kind of got every day, I’m stacking my wins and showing myself small ways in which I’ve succeeded. It’s a great for me at least it’s been really fantastic. I’ve been doing this for two years now. Excellent method. It’s really fantastic for my mindset, because every single day I see here’s here’s some things that have gone right. Here’s some things that have gone well for me today. And at the end of the day, I just feel really good about what I’ve accomplished. Very good. I know it’s a good one. Let’s talk about your, your your public speaking coaching. So tell us a little bit about your your ideal client, who is it you typically work with? I know it’s it’s business people is there a specific patient there.
Kevin Desrosiers 13:12
Usually it’s people that have to give presentations to organizations are at work, and some professional speakers as well. Because they are looking for ways to grab their audience’s attention to hold it. And then to get that call to action at the end. Because usually when you’re speaking to somebody, you want them to do something at the end of that. But if you don’t grab their attention in the very beginning, they’re not going to listen to you, they’re going to tune out and you have to continually keep pulling them back in and keeping their attention throughout making it interactive. And the way I do it, it one of two things, I can either go and watch somebody speak but you know, we have these things, and I will film it. Then that way. I can say at four minute 22 second mark, you did this because a lot of times you’ll tell someone they did something and say I didn’t do that. And now they can actually see and I don’t really I didn’t realize I did it that many times or whatever I did. Or, you know in today’s day and age of online meetings like we’re having right now. I tell people just have somebody get out of cell phone and film you and then send that file to me and I will analyze it. So what I’ll do is they’ll get a four to five page report that tells them what they did well, where they have some opportunities, what they did best and suggested next steps to get better because let’s say they have eight or nine things that I feel they can improve on. You can’t work on eight or nine things at once and do well. We pick one or two and then they work on those master those then we circle back around and work on the others. And the other thing I will do when I talk to them is sometimes when people are surprised by this, I will ask them to work on a strength because how many times do we say, I have this weakness, I have to get better at it. But you may have a strength, that if you enhance that strength, you become even more effective by enhancing that strength. It’s not something that is a deficiency, but you can make it just a little bit better. So a lot of people overlook, working on their strengths and making those even better than they already are. But that’s how I work with people is just video their presentation, or watch it three, four or five times however many times I have to take a lot of notes, condense it down to a nice, manageable report, meet with them, talk to them, and then work on those and then we come back and do it again if they want to. And if they feel they’ve gotten everything and wandered, we stopped several people I do multiple times other people two or three times. And we’re done.
Micheal Pacheco 15:49
Yeah, that’s awesome. I love I love that you you focus on the strengths a lot of people I agree with you will think about will get kind of focused on their weaknesses like and try to fix their weaknesses, I think it was Peter Drucker and the effective executive originally wrote, double down on your strengths, double down on your strengths, forget about your weaknesses and double down on your strengths. What kind of successes have you seen with some of your clients who have who have really doubled down on their strengths and focused on that with your help?
Kevin Desrosiers 16:20
You know, a couple of them, they were doing pitches to clients, and some pretty high price clients that they were going for. And they were able to get their attention and get them asking questions, because a lot of what the one on one presentation, so I was working with this person for they want them engaged, they want that other person asking questions, they don’t want to be doing all the talking. And I taught them ways to coax the questions out of the person and get them asking, Well, what about this? How do I do that. And now once you have them engaged and interested, now you have a better chance of getting that hook at the end that you want to get. So a lot of it has been people have been able to get that call to action that they’re looking for. Because how many times you know, as an executive, you want your company to do this, you know, the people in the audience, you’re you’re doing a communication meeting to a department of 1015 100 people, however many it is, and you need them to head a certain direction, you’re dictating some change, and how to make them understand that change how it affects them. Make it what I call you focused and by you focus is why Oh, you. And that is we’re selfish society. You and I are always thinking what’s in it for me. And I have taught these the people that I’ve coached, to make it about the audience not about yourself, we need to do this, we need to do that I need to know, it’s if you do this, here’s how it will make your job better. Here’s how it will make your life better. Here’s how you will benefit from this. And I help people reframe things. And now they’re getting the audience listening because now it’s about their audiences, not about them. And I’ve had several people come back to manage it, just the differences amazing. How much more responsive the people they’re talking to are, even if it’s one on one, or if it’s smaller, large group, they’re getting more interaction and more buy in.
Micheal Pacheco 18:20
Hello, yeah, that’s I mean, that’s a classic marketing and copywriting technique is to stop talking about yourself, man focus on focus on your customers focus on
Kevin Desrosiers 18:30
the most used word in the English language is I Yeah. And people get tired that I and what happens when somebody gives you pitch, I work for this company. And we do this and we do that. And we do that we sold a gazillion of this, we did that we help 500 million customers, and not once have you addressed my needs or what I want. And I’ve seen so many presentations that just start off that way. And if nothing else, just to start off, making it you focused is a huge upgrade. And most people a lot of people don’t do that.
Micheal Pacheco 19:05
And it extends I think it extends across any communication platform whether it’s public speaking, whether it’s your your website, really anything if you go to you know 90% of business websites. It’s going to be you know, we offer these services here’s how we do it. We us we
Kevin Desrosiers 19:25
we have five 500 years experience between cannabis Yeah, good for you. How does that help me? What about me?
Micheal Pacheco 19:36
Yeah, that’s great. Interesting. Okay. What? Why why coaching Did you I’m not sure if you if you talked about this yet, but why why coaching for you what really got you into coaching specifically?
Kevin Desrosiers 19:50
It started with Toastmasters. I joined Toastmasters back in 2001 and I entered their speech evaluation contests and twice and I want it twice when in fact, I entered the third time this year, and I’m in the finals tomorrow, or Friday night this week. So my perfect records on the line. But I became pretty good at Toastmasters. And then in 2008, the company I worked for was bought out by a foreign company. And I oversaw maintenance, I went and traveled to all of our breweries and help them improve on maintenance, I audit how well they plan scheduled, executed and followed up on maintenance. And I went to conferences every year to keep up on the latest maintenance techniques and principles and guidelines and everything and just to interact with other maintenance professionals. Well, when we got bought out, my boss comes to me and says, I can’t send you to conferences anymore. We don’t have the budget for it. And I said, Well, you know, they pay speakers to go there. They pay their way and all their expenses. If I could submit an abstract and get accepted to speak at a conference, would you send me and my boss said, Sure. So I went. I live in St. Louis. It’s cold here in the winter and December, they had a conference in Daytona, Florida International maintenance conference. I applied and I was accepted as a speaker and I was one of their top rated speakers. And as soon as I finished my presentation, I had people coming up to me saying, Hey, can you speak at my conference? Can you speak at my conference, and I got invited to speak in Australia, South Africa, various cities across the United States. So I started doing speaking back in 2008 2009. And then in 2009, I was teaching a class that my Vice President of Operations kicked off and he said, Hey, Kevin, I hear you’re a Toastmaster. And you speak at conferences. Could you evaluate my presentation in your class and give me some feedback? I said, Sure, I’d be happy to. I wrote a five page report gave it to a secretary at the end of the night, and didn’t hear from for about a week. week later, he pokes his head in my office door says, Hey, Kevin, what are you doing next week? Still have a job after his head evaluation? He says, oh, yeah, since I’m going to Williamsburg next week to deliver communication meetings, would you find a corporate chat with me, and helped me rehearse my speech and then critique my speech and give me some feedback on the flight back. So I did that for him. And then when I got back, he started inviting me to other meetings, where I was watching him coaching him on a speaking this went on for over six months, and I started doing some other managers. And I left that company five years later, and I told my boss and my new company, hey, this is what I did. And he said, you know, our boss could use that too. So I went to him and said, Would you like me to evaluate your presentation star department, he said, I love it. And I did it. Then he had me do all of his direct reports. They started having me do their managers that became part of my annual review. I had to evaluate managers on how well they presented and coach them on getting better. So I figured if I could do that in the corporate world, why can’t I do that after I retire? And when I retired in 2018, I started doing that on my own.
Micheal Pacheco 23:04
And then all and in before you started doing it in corporate you were you kind of learned to cut your teeth in Toastmasters
Kevin Desrosiers 23:12
Correct? Oh, great organization, and it helped a lot. And this going to other conferences, I’ve taken several courses from other professional speakers as well. You know, just because I’m a speaking coach doesn’t mean that I don’t have to continually go to classes and learn more, I go to people. Darren Lacroix, the 2001, World Champion of Public Speaking, I take lessons from Craig Valentine, who was a 1999, World Champion of Public Speaking, I seek out people Patricia Fripp who was president of National Speakers Association, first female president, and I’m continually learning and that’s the other thing that people in the book I wrote, did is they invested in themselves, you can’t stay stagnant, you have to keep reinventing yourself. So just because you’re an expert in a certain field doesn’t mean you have to stop learning about that field. Doctors are continually learning new processes new ways in medicine. Just like a public speaking coach has to learn new ways to coach and new techniques and speaking as the Times change, no matter what you do, you need that continuing education to just keep investing in yourself.
Micheal Pacheco 24:23
It sounds like would you is Toastmasters? Something that you would recommend for people kind of just getting started in that.
Kevin Desrosiers 24:29
I would highly recommend it. It teaches you the basics of principles of foundation. And it teaches you how to evaluate somebody’s speech so you can learn how to evaluate your own because the other thing I will recommend to people is film yourself or record yourself giving a talk and then watch it yourself and critique yourself because we’re our own worst critic. Yeah, when I was in Toastmasters, my club film my speeches, and we’d get them on these old VCR tapes. I bring them home and my son who was a teenager at the time would just rip me apart. But you know what he was right. And I enjoyed bringing them home to him because he found things that the people in Toastmasters didn’t pick up on, because he has a different set of eyes a different way of looking at things. And that so, you know, record yourself when you speak and watch yourself, you’d be surprised how many things you see that you could get better at without the aid of a coach.
Micheal Pacheco 25:24
How important do you think the individual group is in so for example, right? Every every city, a city like St. Louis might have three or four or five different Toastmaster groups? Did you try a couple different ones? And then pick one that that resonated with you? Or did you just dive into the first one you found? How important is it to find the right group for you?
Kevin Desrosiers 25:51
It’s very important. The first Toastmasters club I joined, was actually a corporate club, it was at the company I worked for. So I joined them automatically because of that, and they happen to be a very strong club. But in the St. Louis area, for example, we probably have 70-80 clubs in the St. Louis area
Micheal Pacheco 26:09
70-80. Wow, I vastly underestimated.
Kevin Desrosiers 26:12
And in our district, between Springfield, Illinois, and just City, Missouri, Jefferson City, Missouri, that’s the capital of Missouri and the middle of the state, middle of Illinois, Springfield, we have about 100 clubs. So you have a lot of choices, you can go on the website and evaluate how strong those clubs are based on how many members they have. If they are achieving their goals, there are ways to look at that on the Toastmasters website. So yeah, you need to find the right club, you need to visit a club before you join and make sure you get along with people that could be a great club, but you’re just not a fit personality wise with that group. And you don’t want to get in a group where you don’t fit personality wise. So you have a lot of options. And now with Zoom, most clubs are still meeting online, some of them have a hybrid meeting where they meet in person and online, a few are backed up in person only. But a lot of them are just online. And you can join a club, anywhere in the world. I’ve attended meetings all over the world. And I enjoy it because you learn from different cultures. And it’s nice to have people from Canada, from Australia, from Germany, from France, wherever it may be, and see how the different cultures communicate, you learn to communicate globally, as opposed to regionally because when I start talking about things, a lot of times I’ll refer to things that are united states only, or St. Louis only. And other people say how what’s he talking about? And they don’t know you have to when you communicate to a large audience, be able to say things that everybody understands. And that’s helped me by going to meetings in Europe in like South Australia, India, and learning different cultures and understanding that some things I say, they will not understand. So I have to adapt how I talk.
Micheal Pacheco 28:01
Yeah, interesting. I don’t want to get too far down this rabbit hole. But if if we could talk a little bit more about Absolutely. So you mentioned like you can check to see like if a club is meeting their goals? How do you do that? And what what other kind of things would you look for when evaluating a new club short of, you know, going to a meeting and obviously seeing if you’re a good personality fit? What other things would you specifically look for?
Kevin Desrosiers 28:29
Okay, they each club is scored. So they have a distinguished club report. And you can find that on the Toastmasters International website. And every club has 10 goals every year that they’re asked to achieve. And the first goal is to get four people at level one. So each path, we have a program called Pathways. And there are five levels in each path. And the first level is basics. And you start off, and you need four people to achieve level one. And then you need two people to at least achieve level two and then another two people to achieve level two. And then there’s level three, level four, level five. So are people progressing through the educational cycle and getting to those goals? Then there are some goals around membership. Have you added four new members and if you added another four new members, there are other goals around submitting your paperwork on time and getting your officers trained. So did you submit news on time? Did you submit your officers list on time because you elect officers every year? So they want to make sure that you’re run? Well do your officers get trained in the first half of the year and in the second half of the year. So these are marked off on the scorecard on how well you achieve those items. And if a club is doing well, they are getting most of these items at least six or seven of those items. Another key indicator is How many members are in the club. If a club has a nine or 10. Members, it’s tough to be an effective club because you have about 10 roles in a meeting that you have to fill. And people are doubling up and tripling up on roles. If the club has 20 members, 25 members, it’s a lot stronger clubs. So you’re looking for a club that has hopefully, in that 20 to 30. Member range. If there’s 18, or 19, that’s not too bad, that’ll work as well. But once you get down 1211 10 members, it’s tough to have an effective club. So when I traveled for work, I travel a lot for work, I would find clubs, in the cities I traveled to, and that’s how I would judge them. They they have a lot of members, and where are they achieving their 10 goals that are set forth for them every year? And if they did, I would call ahead and say, Hey, can I visit your Toastmasters meeting? And I’ll take role if you want and I’d fill a role at those meetings.
Micheal Pacheco 30:52
Cool, cool. Awesome. Thank you for that. Let’s get back to Kevin de rocha. You’ve got some some programs that you offer as a speaker at events. Can you tell us a little bit about those?
Kevin Desrosiers 31:04
Okay, yeah. And although I have pretty much a canned presentation, I cater to the audience. So in my bridge over adversity book, overcoming personal challenges, what I will do is I have 12 people in there, if I’m talking to an organization, that’s a woman’s organization, I will talk about the woman that was trafficked, I will talk about the woman and overdosed on drugs, I might talk about the woman that was born with congenital heart disease or the woman that was abused by her step mother’s. And I will talk to them, I will let them pick which stories I give at their conference or event. And same if you know if it’s a men’s group, I might talk about the person with PTSD, the guy that went to jail for a drug deal gone bad, the man that lost a son. And so I pick the stories based on the organization and ones that will resonate with them the most. And then I will go through the different stories, how that can apply to them, how they can use the lessons from each of those stories to improve their lives and get better. And then my second program is on public speaking how to become a better public speaker. And once again, this depends on the level of ability that the group I’m talking to has. So I will talk with the event planner, or whoever is inquiring about me talking to them, and say, Okay, what do you want, I can cover the basics, or I can go all the way to advanced techniques and different things. So I have several modules. And I will mix and match those modules based on what the organization needs. And also depending on how long their presentation is, most of the speeches I give end up being about 40 minutes, they leave 10 minutes for questions and answers. But if somebody only has 1520 minutes, I have them set in modules such that I can take this module out or put that module in and get it to the time limit they want. And that’s the other thing too is I’ve been at conferences before I’ve been speaking. And all of a sudden they get to me and they’re behind 1520 minutes, and I will turn to the event planners say do you want me to catch you up? Or do you want me to just use the time you allotted me? And you’d be surprised on my attempts? Oh, if you could catch me up, you’d be my hero, please do. And I will tell them, here’s what I’m gonna cut. Is that okay with you? And they say yes, that’s fine. As a speaker, you need to be cognizant of the audience. And there’s nothing worse than an audience sitting there and knowing they’re behind schedule, and thinking about oh my gosh, I’ve got this event after you know, this meeting is over today, will I get to it or not? You know, you have to respect the audience.
Micheal Pacheco 33:53
And as a speaker, having that flexibility, you’re it’s easy for you to show up and be the hero.
Kevin Desrosiers 33:58
But sometimes you don’t want to cut some here. It’s painful to cut some of the material when you’ve prepared something you’d like to give them. But by the same token, you need to respect the audience and the event planner. Yeah. I’ve had somebody asked me back again, you know, you didn’t get to give your whole presentation. I know you cut some good stuff. Can you come back next year? There you go. Yes.
Micheal Pacheco 34:22
Are you are you able to? I don’t know are you able to take you know the stuff that you cut and I don’t know offer to you know, meet with any anybody who’s interested meet with him on Zoom later that weekend or something like that. Have you ever tried something like that?
Kevin Desrosiers 34:38
I haven’t tried that before? You know, I’ve only had it happen a couple times where I’ve had to actually cut a lot of times they’ll just say you know go we have other we have cushion built in we’ll catch up there. But in today’s day and age of zoom in that you you can do those things. The one thing I don’t like to do is give a recording or something thing to people, you know, it’s intellectual property. And you know, you want to be careful how you get that out there and how much you get out there?
Micheal Pacheco 35:06
For sure. Yeah. And that tracks. What sort of things? Kevin, what sort of things did you first struggle with when you first started coaching? As a public speaker? Maybe at? You know, when you were doing it in corporate? What sort of things did you find yourself struggling with, as you were coaching these people through, you know, making their public speaking better and better.
Kevin Desrosiers 35:29
There are some people that really do not believe in themselves, they don’t have the confidence. And that’s the hardest type of client is somebody that says, I can’t do this. And trying to convince them that they can and show them the salt, small steps. So you have to really start small, with people like that, and show them that when it’s like your post it’s on your computer screen, is you have to give them several small wins and say, hey, look, you did this. Now let’s go one step further. And guess what? Now you’re able to do an introduction, because you did this sentence you did that sense. You did these three sentences strung together, you have an introduction. Okay, right. I do. So it’s really breaking things down, but convincing some people that they really can do it. Because so many people come to me, I can’t stand in front of a crowd of people. I can’t do this. I can’t do that. And that’s the hardest barrier for me to break through with people.
Micheal Pacheco 36:29
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. So what, what sort of things do you do to help them to help them with that, to help them break through that?
Kevin Desrosiers 36:38
Well, once again, it’s so small baby steps that we do, you know, just giving them a little things of time. And I work on talking to them about other things they do the things they’re good at, and we get talking about, you know, let’s say they play guitar. Well, you know, the first time you’ll play guitar, you know, did you get blisters on your finger? Uh, yeah, I did. Yeah. And just like this, you’re gonna make a few mistakes and speaking Did you miss play some chords? Yeah. Okay. Same thing. But you play the guitar pretty well today, don’t you? I do. It’s a lot like playing guitar, you were going to make a lot of mistakes, don’t think you’re going to just get up there after talking to me or somebody else, and go give the perfect speech, you are going to make mistakes just like you did. When you started playing guitar. When you started your career, and you’re an excellent accountant or IT person, whatever you do, and you started down here. And now you’re up here. And it just takes step by step by step. And it’s making them realize that they weren’t an expert at anything when they started. Yet they got there on some things things are proud of.
Micheal Pacheco 37:43
I love it. One of my one of my favorite quotes is by Samuel Beckett, who wrote the play Waiting for Godot. And it’s, it’s ever tried ever failed, no matter try again, fail again, fail better. And it’s just the idea, right? Every time you just you, you’re you’re gonna mess up. It’s okay, you’re gonna survive. And you can do a little bit better next time. So that’s yeah, that’s, that’s good stuff. Awesome. Kevin, is there anything? Is there anything else that you would like to chat about that we haven’t touched upon? So far? Before we wrap things up a little bit?
Kevin Desrosiers 38:21
Those are the main things. And if anyone, your audience would like to find out more about me, my website is bridge over adversity.com. And they can contact me through that as well. But yeah, it’s just baby steps, no matter what your level, there’s always room to improve and be happy to help. And if you are looking for a speaker for an event, I’d be happy to talk to you about that as well.
Micheal Pacheco 38:45
Beautiful. Is there any specific social media platforms, where our listeners and viewers can connect with you?
Kevin Desrosiers 38:52
Probably LinkedIn is the best. You know, Facebook is facebook. You know, I connect with my old high school and grade school friends there and college friends, do social things. I don’t use that a lot for business. I know a lot of people like to do ads on Facebook and things, but I think LinkedIn is a better one. I have an Instagram account. I haven’t been using that. I’m gonna have to start doing that. And I still don’t tweet.
Micheal Pacheco 39:19
Awesome. Awesome. That’s fantastic. Kevin DeRosa. Thank you so much for joining us on the remarkable coach podcast. This has been wonderful.
Kevin Desrosiers 39:27
Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Micheal Pacheco 39:29
Cheers. Take care. And thank you to all our viewers and listeners. We’ll see you again next time. Cheers.
