Tim Newman [00:00:10]:
What if the thing holding you back from becoming a confident communicator isn't a lack of skill? What if it's a story you've been telling yourself for years? Today's guest started with a speech impediment, had to learn how to communicate in another language, and eventually became a professional speaker, coach, and bestselling author. His journey is proof that confident communication isn't something you're born with. It's something you build. Welcome back to Speaking with Confidence, the podcast that helps you build the soft skills that lead to real results— communication, storytelling, public speaking, and showing up with confidence in every conversation that counts. I'm Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach, and I'm thrilled to guide you on your journey to becoming a powerful communicator. Today's guest is Mike Acker. Mike is an executive communication coach, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and founder of Uplevel Communication and the Uplevel Training Center in Austin, Texas. He works with leaders and organizations to strengthen executive presence, confidence, and communication.

Tim Newman [00:01:16]:
His work spans executive coaching, corporate training, keynote speaking, and bestselling books on communication and leadership. Mike, welcome to Speaking with Confidence.

Mike Acker [00:01:26]:
Hey, thank you so much, Tim. Great to be here with you and with your audience.

Tim Newman [00:01:30]:
We have some things in common where I didn't have a speech impediment. I had that inner talk that told me you're not very good. I mean, we're going to dive real deep into your story, but one of the things you told me about before everything about speaking, you had to actually learn. When did you first realize that, wait a minute, I might actually be good at this?

Mike Acker [00:01:54]:
Yeah, I think I learned that I was good at different points and there's always different levels of being good. So I overcame a speech impediment when I was a kid, won some contests and poetry and such. Oh, I'm good. Moved to Mexico, overcame all kinds of difficulties, learned, oh, I did some good things right here. Moved to the United States, Failed, embarrassed, ground zero, joined a public speaking class. And the professor said, oh, hey, I think I could see something in you. I was like, oh, okay. Failed a couple more times, joined debate, won some contests over the course of time, and started realizing that.

Mike Acker [00:02:32]:
So there's been these different moments one time where I realized I was good for the stage I was at, but not for the next stage.

Tim Newman [00:02:41]:
So was there ever a time in your head that you said, I'm not a good communicator, and then you knew that you felt the change from I'm not a good communicator to this is something that I'm actually good at and can actually do to make a living with?

Mike Acker [00:02:57]:
Yeah, I think the last time I had in my mind that I'm just not a good communicator was probably in college on that. But there's been many times where I thought I'm not good enough of a communicator to go to the next level. So a lot of times what happens is, and I'm sure there's some people listening who think, oh, I want to go out there and be a public speaker. I want to get paid to speak. And here's, here's how I picture it. There's different realms in which we exist and we speak. And people will say things like, oh, you're a great speaker. Oh, you're such a great speaker.

Mike Acker [00:03:25]:
Oh, you're such a great speaker. And so say you work for Dell and you do training, or say, for example, you're a college professor or you're a pastor or you're a business owner or you run a referral network group and people go, oh, you're such a great speaker, but you're such a great speaker within that context. So as a pastor, you're a great speaker. As a college professor, you're a great speaker. As a corporate trainer, you're a great speaker. And what a lot of people do is they go in their mind, they think, oh, I'm a great speaker. Therefore, I will go out and launch my speaking career and get paid for it. And for me, in the realm that I was in, I was a good speaker.

Mike Acker [00:04:02]:
So I thought, like many, I'm gonna go do this and go get paid for it. And I went out there and launched and failed miserably and didn't get paid. And I thought, I'm a good speaker in the context that I was in, but I'm not a good enough speaker to go make money. I compare it to like this, Tim. If you came over to my house, Tim, and I made you a hamburger, you would say, Mike, that was a great hamburger. Thank you so much. Now, if I have enough people come over to my house and they keep on complimenting my hamburger, I might go, you know what I should do? I should quit my job and go open up a hamburger joint. But I would be sorely disappointed to find out that as I leave, no one wants to buy my hamburger for $15 because it was good at my home for my guests, but it's not good enough to sell yet.

Tim Newman [00:04:51]:
That's such a good analogy. And let's take that just a step further. Being a good speaker doesn't necessarily mean you're a good communicator either.

Mike Acker [00:05:02]:
Right.

Tim Newman [00:05:02]:
Yeah.

Mike Acker [00:05:03]:
Communication is a two-way street.

Tim Newman [00:05:05]:
Yeah. And especially with the population that I'm dealing with, their communication skills are so bad. So we're not even necessarily talking about speaking on stages a lot of times. We're talking about just having a one-on-one communication or dialogue at a networking event or a job interview or, you know, your spouse, your significant other. You know, we have to understand that before we can truly become good speakers, we have to become good communicators.

Mike Acker [00:05:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I often talk to people about how be careful that you're not talking to— or sorry, talking at people. You've got to make sure that you're communicating

Tim Newman [00:05:49]:
Right.

Mike Acker [00:05:50]:
So 2 is a 2-way street. I'm making sure that I'm putting it out there, but you're able to pick it up.

Tim Newman [00:05:55]:
When you were younger, again, you had a speech impediment and you moved to Mexico. How did that translate in terms of communication into— you had to learn a whole new language. Did you still have the speech impediment then? Was it— what was that like?

Mike Acker [00:06:11]:
Yeah. So as a kid, and I don't remember a lot of this, But I couldn't pronounce the sound J. And there was a couple other words. In fact, it's interesting, even when I say the words shoulder and I say soldier, those 2 words in my mind, I have to think about.

Tim Newman [00:06:30]:
Okay.

Mike Acker [00:06:30]:
Even at 40-something years old, right? So 46 years old, I'm still thinking about it 40 years later. But at the point in time, those sounds I couldn't make. And what happened again and again and again, Because people would hear me talk to them as a 4 or 5-year-old, and people would turn to my mom and say, what did he say? So my mom told me that I got to a spot where I was so frustrated that nobody could understand me that I drove the desire to go get help. So they got me with a speech therapist, and I worked on it, overcame that. I was able to differentiate different sounds and correct myself. So then I went into this whole journey of kid spelling bees and poetry contests. But then right when I got comfortable, Tim, right when I got to a spot where, hey, this is good, I now feel like I'm a good communicator, I can get up on stage, I moved to Mexico. When I moved to Mexico, I was a pretty serious kid.

Mike Acker [00:07:24]:
But when I moved to Mexico, I would stand up in front of the audience and the entire class would laugh at me, including the teacher. And it got to a spot, Tim, where I was so afraid to go to school and be laughed at all day long. I mean, singled out, be laughed at all day long that I got psychosomatic sickness. Wow. And the fear in me would actually give me fevers. My mom would say, you're sick again? Why are you sick all the time? And it was actually just the intense anxiety in me and the fear in me that I was going to go and people were going to laugh at me and I was going to have to go to this environment again. I was a pretty serious kid. Now, ultimately what that did is it actually shifted how I saw myself because there's a relationship between what we do and how we see ourselves and how we see ourselves and what we do.

Mike Acker [00:08:11]:
And out there I was making everybody laugh, so I turned into the class clown. So I had a shift of identity.

Tim Newman [00:08:17]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Acker [00:08:18]:
And I had to work through a bit of that. Eventually I got to a spot where, okay, yes, I have an accent. Yes, occasionally I say words that are incorrect. Yes, occasionally I do that and people laugh, but I was able to turn that around and actually be me. Right. So I got to a spot where now I'm speaking in front of people, got accepted to the top law school of Mexico. And then there's a shift. Instead of going to that next venture, I moved back to the United States.

Mike Acker [00:08:46]:
Now my grammar is incorrect because I'm putting the verb after the noun instead of before the noun. Red car, car red. And I'm doing things that don't quite make sense and still shows up at time and time. And all of a sudden, I'm having some failures in front of large audiences. And again, it caused me to go, maybe I'm not good enough. I thought I was good. I thought I got a good burger. I don't have a good burger.

Mike Acker [00:09:09]:
What's wrong with me? And it wasn't until I worked with somebody and a coach that got me to a spot where I felt more comfortable.

Tim Newman [00:09:16]:
So, what did that teach you about confidence that someone who's always been comfortable might never understand.

Mike Acker [00:09:25]:
Yeah. So sometimes when we have not gone through something, we just go, well, this is how you do it. Like if you've always had access to money and then you talk to somebody, well, you just invest money. And the guy's like, I don't have any money. Where do I get money? And he's like, well, just invest money. Or if It's like my dad's the type of guy who eats food and loses weight. So he's never had to ever watch his diet. He's just always eaten and been fine.

Mike Acker [00:09:56]:
So my dad would be someone horrible to tell someone like me who has to be very intentional about what I eat on that. So my dad doesn't get it. If I gain a couple pounds, he's like, hey, Mike, you're gaining weight. Thanks, Dad. Yeah. Versus if someone has been there before, like I have a friend who He started businesses and he gained weight. And he's like, hey, as an entrepreneur, I know what it's like to comfort. And so it was encouraging.

Mike Acker [00:10:22]:
So there's people that teach you that they've never been, had to start from the ground zero. They've just always had the confidence. They've always had the money. They've always had the whatever it is for it. And others have to learn it. And I think what I really have found has helped people is because I've had to learn a lot of things the hard way, I'm able to help people learn it the hard way.

Tim Newman [00:10:49]:
Yeah, that brings up a whole bunch of points, one being that it doesn't really matter where you are in your journey, right? If you want to be good at something, it takes work. It takes hard work. It doesn't just happen. And I go back to the 10,000 reps or if you— I come from the sport industry. If you look at the best of the best, they practice fundamentals over and over and over again. They're still practicing fundamentals. They're still working on the basic things so that they can get better. In terms of speaking, what's the difference between being natural And something being so practiced that it actually looks natural?

Mike Acker [00:11:38]:
Yeah. I mean, I always actually talk about it as in terms of proclivity and practice. So proclivity is that you have some natural, but I use the word proclivity that your body has a proclivity towards it. For example, you look at Michael Phelps and people go, oh, he has a swimmer's body. So his body had a proclivity that would allow him to do it. And some people are more outgoing and they have a proclivity towards it. Now, often that proclivity matches a level of practice. So, okay, great.

Mike Acker [00:12:11]:
Michael Phelps has a body for swimming, but if he never had the practice for swimming, he wouldn't have developed that proclivity into something that we know, oh, he's a natural on it. Right. So you have to combine these 2 things, right? And there's proclivity, there's practice. A lot of people don't actually have the proclivity, but they were put in environments where they could practice again and again and again. Now, the best case scenario is this, and I write about this in my book, Speak with Confidence. I said, practice beats proclivity every single time.

Tim Newman [00:12:42]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Acker [00:12:43]:
If you have a natural proclivity, but you never put the practice in, then hey, yeah, you could pick it up fast. But you're probably not going to be great. But if you have proclivity or some level of it and you put in a lot of practice, that's when you become a phenomenon.

Tim Newman [00:12:58]:
Right.

Mike Acker [00:12:59]:
So if you're listening, you're going, hey, people always say I have the natural gift of speaking. Great. So you have a proclivity towards it. But a lot of times people just bank on proclivity. They're just like, hey, well, I just based on what I got or what I have going for me. Some people, The moment that they start playing baseball, they catch and throw so well, and then they rely on that. Meanwhile, there's a kid over here who doesn't have as much natural or proclivity towards it, but puts in the time and the effort and the energy on that. And that kid goes far and eventually beats out the kid with natural abilities, with a proclivity towards it.

Tim Newman [00:13:36]:
Yeah. And that's so important. And one of the things that I would tell my students all the time, I would rather have the C student who's working their butt off than the A student who coasts by. Yeah. That's just to me that there's that work ethic, there's that desire to be better and doing those things to get better, even if you're— because we're not always going to be the best at whatever it is that we do. And let's just take speaking as a, for example, I told you and I tell all our guests when we do our pre-interview that I say dumb stuff all the time. I say dumb stuff all the time on the podcast and I leave it in because we're not perfect. Right.

Tim Newman [00:14:26]:
And that's what people really want to see is they don't want to see perfect. They want to see Normal. They want to see human. They want to see and understand that you make mistakes so that they can more relate to you than the whole idea of relating to perfect.

Mike Acker [00:14:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Maybe someone's listening and going, I've always seen myself as a good speaker. I've always been natural at speaking. And that word natural, whether it was true proclivity or just lots of opportunities to practice that they don't even take into note. But then they get stuck. And I've talked to a lot of people.

Mike Acker [00:15:05]:
I would do a lot of one-on-one coaching with people. And they'll get to a spot where they go, man, but I've always been good at this. What's my problem now? And what I'll say is, here's what's happened is your proclivity ran its full course. Right. So let's say that on his own, without putting in the practice that he put, Michael Phelps, have got into winning high school level, just banking on pure natural build of his body and minimum practice efforts. Now, some people do that. They can go quite far on just their born assets. But let's say, for example, Michael Phelps bottoms out and— or tops out, I guess, in high school.

Mike Acker [00:15:49]:
Meanwhile, you have a guy named Bob, and Bob did not have a swimmer's body, but man, he put in the work. He's always behind Michael Phelps. He's always behind the guy who's got proclivity until it starts stacking. And all of a sudden it starts stacking at a whole nother level. And in college, he continues on because he's got the work ethic and he's put in the time, he put in the effort, and it's stacking versus the person who just did proclivity. Tops off.

Tim Newman [00:16:18]:
Yeah.

Mike Acker [00:16:18]:
So now, best case scenario, you are like the real Michael Phelps who had the proclivity. And my gosh, we hear about his work ethic and the time he put in there. No wonder he's got so many gold medals.

Tim Newman [00:16:32]:
Exactly. And that's kind of how we have to look at it. Speaking is also a little bit different in that as much work as you put into it, sometimes you lose What we call the magic of the first time, right? So you're practicing your keynote, you're practicing your stories over and over again so that it looks like it's natural and it becomes almost like emotionless. How do we get over that?

Mike Acker [00:17:05]:
A huge part of this, we forget that it's about the people we're talking to and we turn it into a performance. And so it's like, oh, I hope people like it. I hope people like me, or I got something great. And in the book, Speak with Confidence or Speak with No Fear, I've written a couple of books. I talk about there's 2 surefire ways to get rid of all nervousness. These absolutely work. One is arrogance and the other is apathy. And so if you absolutely believe, see, if I'm going up on a stage and I think I'm better than everybody here, Man, are they honored to have me in this space? Wow, I'm a top dog.

Mike Acker [00:17:41]:
And there are people out there who are like that, who are actually well-known names. And they go in there with a level of, look at me, I'm amazing, I'm awesome, look what I've done, everybody should be like me. They're not nervous because they're arrogant. And other times, apathy. They go in there and it's like, I don't care, I'm getting paid. Man, I listened to a speaker one time many, many, many years ago. And it was like, yeah, he was just calling it in. He talked about this whole bunch.

Mike Acker [00:18:07]:
He gave it. He didn't really care if anybody walked away with it. And I've had some measures of these at different times in my life too. Now, these two different areas, apathy and arrogance, you don't care. You stop caring. But all of us should have some degree of nervousness. One, two, nothing huge. But it's the nervousness of caring.

Mike Acker [00:18:29]:
Man, I hope I can make an impact. I'm going on Tim's show, speaking with confidence. People are listening, they're spending their time, they're taking their car ride with me, and I want them to walk away with something. I really care about it. So I got to put in the energy. And it's the— on the flip side of nervousness is energy. And so I put in that energy so people can grab ahold of it. And so I can't get apathetic.

Mike Acker [00:18:53]:
I can't get arrogant. I got to care. And take that care and let it fuel me to speak.

Tim Newman [00:19:00]:
Yeah, that really is so important. The whole idea that it's not about you, it's about the audience, is critical. I was having a conversation with somebody a couple days ago, maybe a week ago, and something bad happened. And we were talking. I said, look, if something bad happens to you, you still have to go out and it's not about you. You have to think about the audience. You have to get over that feeling, that emotion, and give the audience what it is that they deserve to get. Because it's not about you.

Tim Newman [00:19:43]:
Yeah. You may not like what happened. I may not like what happened, But it's not about you and your feelings or me and my feelings. It's about what value can we bring to the audience to close this out? Because we're closing out a podcast, and that's how it has to be approached. It's not about anything other than that.

Mike Acker [00:20:07]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The caring about the other side. I mean, one of the— in that first book, Speak with No Fear, I talk about 7 different strategies to overcome nervousness. And one of them is to remember that it's not about you. It's not about you at all. Anytime you're speaking, nobody cares about you. So nobody tuned in today to your podcast and thought, man, I'm going to be here to encourage Mike Acker. I just want to encourage him.

Mike Acker [00:20:33]:
Now, people, and not that people are ill-willed, they want well for me. The moment I mentioned, I hope he is doing well, but they tuned in because they think You know what, I like to listen to Mike Ackerman on Tim's podcast because they're going to help me do something. So if I'm worried about what you think about me, how I come across, then it's actually going to make me come across worse. But if I think, man, I really want to help Tim's audience speak with confidence, I really want to help them advance their career, I really want to help them get that next interview, I really want to help them get their idea of out and sell great burgers. I really want to help them. Then the nervousness goes away because my mind is all on how can I serve? How can I help?

Tim Newman [00:21:17]:
Right, right. It's again, you just said it's about serving. How can we serve the audience? How can we provide that value? Another one of your strategies talks about uncover and cleaning the wound.

Mike Acker [00:21:31]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:21:31]:
What does an old wound have to do with the way somebody communicates.

Mike Acker [00:21:37]:
Yeah, you know, it was interesting. When I wrote this book, I was actually in corporate America at the time, and I was just coaching people on the side, and people would come to me, find me on different places, and we'd— I used to take a walk with people and just be like, all right, just send me a Venmo afterwards. I'm gonna take a walk. And then I would listen to them coach. And so often I'd say, so, you know, how long have you been feeling this? And what does this remind you of? And what I realized was about 1/3 of the people I talked to, and back then it was only like 10 people per week maybe. So maybe 3, 4 people per week were like, oh, this happened, that happened. And I started realizing that a lot of the things that I had been anxious about was because of something that happened. So a couple years later, oh my gosh, am I not going to be able to be understood? I used to have a speech impediment.

Mike Acker [00:22:23]:
A couple years later, oh my gosh, Are they going to laugh at me and make fun of me? And it was my nervousness was getting triggered by something that happened back when I was dealing with it. And likewise, for a lot of people I'm working with, I'm like, oh my gosh, they have a wound. And when you get close to that wound that's not cleaned out, it causes them pain and it closes them off. And so I said, you know what you got to do is got to go in there. You got to uncover and clean the wound. It's interesting is It's the first chapter of that book. And in the second edition, I said only about 1/3 of the people will have this. But in the first one, I didn't put that.

Mike Acker [00:23:03]:
And it's interesting that so many of the comments that I've heard from people who love the book, it's got tons of 5-star ratings, like 1,200 reviews on the first book. And a lot of people will say, I didn't realize that That thing that held me back was something that happened in high school or middle school or my parents or college or this experience or a failure. And they'll go in and sometimes people will go to counseling, they'll go in, clean the wound, and the nervousness and anxiety that they had disappears.

Tim Newman [00:23:36]:
So how do you teach them to understand or know the difference between being nervous about a presentation And something that's, you know, deeper that's actually triggering that reaction?

Mike Acker [00:23:49]:
Yeah, it's often the how visceral is this? Like, is it just some pre-speaking, speaking, pre-speaking? Is it just pre-speaking jitters? Are you, can you turn that around into some energy, just some preparation and some skill work going to help you out? Or is this something like where you have a visceral fear And it's not just nervousness. You have a fear of this and it plays in your mind. Are you laying awake at night the night before thinking to yourself, I can't believe I have to do this. I can't believe I'm just not good enough. I don't have this. Do you have the imposter syndrome? A lot of those are because of some kind of— well, it could be huge. It could be small. Let me walk you through a couple of different— Okay.

Mike Acker [00:24:37]:
wounds that people have cleaned and told me they cleaned. Like one guy, extremely driven, extremely driven. His dad was the type of dad who just pushed him and pushed him and pushed him. He had to be the best at everything. So this guy goes out and he starts a company and the company takes off. I mean, does phenomenally well. The guy's rocking it. The guy's multi-multi-millionaire.

Mike Acker [00:24:59]:
His company's in 40-something different places. Just He's a handsome guy, he's athletic, he's fit, he's wealthy, he's got all this stuff, partially because his dad was like, you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go. Well, whenever he would speak, he would get really nervous because he hadn't developed the skill set that matched this platform he had on. And, and so it would trigger this intense anxiety that he used to get in different settings that his dad brought up. Or there's another woman that was also— it was her stepdad, and her stepdad always told her, you're not going to amount to anything. And so when she would get up to speak, she would think about these words. Now, those are quite deep. Another person, he just got in front of his entire class in junior high, and the entire class just laughed at him.

Mike Acker [00:25:50]:
And he just carried that with him, and he started thinking to himself, oh my gosh, I didn't realize it. So there's all these different situations that people never treated that. They never processed that pain. They never processed that. And it became something triggered subconsciously. I got to speak. And they go to that feeling of that dad situation or that classroom situation.

Tim Newman [00:26:15]:
Yeah, I put myself in that position as you're talking about it. The first time I had to get up and speak in my human communication course, I threw up. And this was after being in the military, after being able to talk to people and lead people. And for whatever reason, standing up in front of the classroom at the lectern, for whatever reason, just really kind of sent me over the edge. So I I get that. And if we go back to the whole idea of imposter syndrome or whatever wound it was that triggers these things. So for me, back up for a second. For me, when I threw up, that wasn't just being nervous about the presentation.

Tim Newman [00:27:07]:
There was obviously something deeper there. I still don't necessarily know what it was, but— To be able to get over that, you've got to go, you've got to be able to get through it.

Mike Acker [00:27:21]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:27:21]:
Yeah.

Mike Acker [00:27:21]:
You know, it's interesting as, as, as of this recording right here, something in my son's middle school, a teacher reacted a certain way and my son was shook by it. And I said, you know what? Most likely, she's not mad at you. Most likely she blew up because something's going on in her life on that. If, if you said something and I said, I was like, oh my gosh, Tim, what the F? I can't believe you, and blew up, that's probably not because you said, you know, you got a tear on your shirt.

Tim Newman [00:27:59]:
Right.

Mike Acker [00:27:59]:
It's something going on underneath me, underneath the surface. And I blew up at you because my car exploded and my dad yelled at me. There's something underneath there. And this teacher in my son's school, she acted in a way that— wait, what? Most likely she's not just a mean person. Most likely something's happening in her life. Happening. And likewise, when we have these incredible responses like throwing up or something, something is happening. And it could be something that happened a long time ago.

Mike Acker [00:28:35]:
And that's the wound. And you threw up because you felt unprepared and it reminded you of something. And it's usually subconscious. You can't just go, you know, oh, I know exactly what it is. Now, sometimes people can, but it's usually some subconscious response.

Tim Newman [00:28:51]:
Right. But we can get over it if we're willing to do the work. That's the other piece of it too. I'm an introvert. I would rather poke myself in the eyeballs than go to a networking event. Somebody gave me a strategy about a year ago, and I go because we have to, right? That's what professionals do. You go, and I've got strategies that I teach people. But somebody gave me a strategy about a year ago that said, get there early and pretend like you're the greeter.

Tim Newman [00:29:24]:
You just greet people. And then it becomes natural. One of the things that you said in our first call that I really liked, it was the stand 5 feet away from the wall at networking.

Mike Acker [00:29:33]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:29:34]:
Why 5 feet?

Mike Acker [00:29:36]:
Yeah. So often what we do when we're in different environments is we're like, you know, I'll just kind of be over here and I'm going to back off. And, you know, it's like kind of, you know, hopefully somebody will come over to me and we kind of hide. We take our coffee cup or our cocktail drink and we're kind of like this. Nowadays, we got the phone and we're on our phone like this. And it's like, oh, I'm super busy. Really what we're doing is playing Angry Birds, right? We're doing something.

Tim Newman [00:30:02]:
We're

Mike Acker [00:30:02]:
hiding. We're surfing social media and we're hiding. And all of those are protective environments. I'm unsure. I'm in a dangerous situation. Somebody might not like me. Somebody Might do this. I mean, what do we learn in middle school? A lot of times, not stand out.

Mike Acker [00:30:20]:
Just kind of mind your own business, because if you're a 6th grader, 8th grader might pick on you, something like that. And so we find ways to do that. Now we go through life and we learn just kind of be myself off in the corner. So that's our natural tendency. Just think about the next time you go to something as you're listening to this, or last time you went to something, did you put yourself out there? Or did you hide away? I help out at the youth group at my, my son's youth group at church. And what I often do is I will actually be away from— I'll be out there 5 feet away from the wall and I'll greet people and I'll do all that kind of stuff. But a lot of the other leaders, they're around middle schoolers. These are like college age, 30-year-olds and such.

Mike Acker [00:31:01]:
And they're out and about talking to other leaders. They're hiding where it's safe. Right. And you don't see just the random person. Being there. Now, a better strategy is to stand 5 feet away from the wall. And so literally 5 feet plus away from the wall, out in the open. And I love what you said there, pretend you're a greeter.

Mike Acker [00:31:22]:
I've never thought specifically of, hey, I'm a greeter for this event, but I've exactly done what you're talking about. I've gone to an event early. I'll stand out there and be like, hey, how's it going? Welcome. I'm Mike. This is my first time here. How about yourself? And sometimes I've done this. It's funny that you said that because sometimes I've done that and people go, oh, why are you greeting? And not in a bad way, just kind of curious.

Tim Newman [00:31:44]:
I'm like,

Mike Acker [00:31:44]:
I want to meet people. They're like, I'm actually running the event. I'm like, oh, great. Well, great to be at your event. Why did you put it on? But it puts you in the way of others. So stand 5 feet out of the way. Be a greeter. It's amazing how many people you meet.

Tim Newman [00:32:01]:
Exactly. So again, coming from the introvert perspective, you're standing 5 feet from the wall and somebody walks up to me, what do I say?

Mike Acker [00:32:12]:
Yeah. I mean, honestly, there's the 4 Fs of building community. The first one is find someone. And then the second one is to dig in and find some kind of inspiration, like find some kind of questions like, First interaction. The first interaction could easily be like, how long have you come— been coming? The easiest one to do. Or where are you from? So first interaction, find someone. Now you're out there, they're finding you. First interaction, how long you been coming to this event? Are you usually at BNI or Provisors or Westlake Chamber or whatever? Are you from this city? Yes.

Mike Acker [00:32:52]:
It's just the first interaction. And then from there you follow up. So put yourself somewhere right there where you're going to be able to find someone. First interaction, open question. Not like, hey, this is a good event, isn't it? That's a yes/no. You want open interaction where it can't be yes/no. And so they have to do something that then you can follow up. Oh, you've been in Austin for 5 years? That's great.

Mike Acker [00:33:14]:
I just moved here a year and a half ago with my family. What brought you here? And you follow up that question. Now you do this long enough and you find common ground, you can go to level 4, which is move it forward. Tim, it's been so great talking with you. Love to do this again. You wanna do coffee next week? And then you move it forward from there. So that first interaction though, people often overthink this. And really, I would say practice this 100 times.

Mike Acker [00:33:36]:
Like if you think about, if you ask a runner, a sprinter, how do you run fast? They probably, probably a lot of them won't even talk about getting off the blocks. Because it's just what they do right away. It's so ingrained in their mind. Hey, how do you become a great professional swimmer? And they won't say about getting off and diving in. Some of them might, but it's just be something that they're so used to. Now, what we need to do in conversations is we need to practice. So quite literally, I was practicing with a client this week, Tim, and we were just practicing the open question again and again. And he'd say stuff like, How long have you been coming to this event? And I would answer real quick and say, okay, do it again.

Mike Acker [00:34:15]:
He goes, where are you originally from? We do it again. And we just do a lot of first interaction type questions again and again and again. So for me, I'm going to a networking event later on today, and I'll show up a little bit early. I'll stand 5 feet away from the wall. I'll be like, hey, how long have you been a part of the chamber? Oh, really? Great. Are you from here? No. What do you do? Why do you do that? You've been doing that for a long time? Oh, that's really interesting. And follow up.

Mike Acker [00:34:45]:
Eventually, if you're so interested in other people— and anybody who's in sales here, this is such a great technique in referral networking— if you are truly interested in someone and you're not just there to sell, but you're truly there interested in somebody, I was like, oh, you're a plumber? Wow. So is this something that I Like, how'd you get into that? Your dad does this too, and then you grew up. So what was your first plumbing thing? No way, really? That's crazy. I can't believe that was your first thing. And you follow this up and you're really interested. You're like, oh my gosh, I, I've never done that profession. Then they go like this, they go, man, what about you? And then that's your opportunity.

Tim Newman [00:35:29]:
Right. And you keep saying interested, interested, interested. And it comes back to, you and I talked about this, be more interested than interesting, right? Yes. Because again, because even in this scenario at a networking event, it's not about you. People like talking about themselves. And if you're showing that interest, if you're asking those good questions, and the other thing you said that really hits home for me is the whole idea of common ground, building common ground or finding common ground. That way you have that as a launching pad into other things.

Mike Acker [00:36:11]:
Yeah. I mean, there's— I love what C.S. Lewis said about friendship. He goes, and I'm going to paraphrase him, he said, friendship is found at that moment where you say, You too? Or you do this as well? Me too.

Tim Newman [00:36:25]:
I

Mike Acker [00:36:25]:
thought I was the only one. Something like that. And so, basically, we're talking and that person says, you know, I moved here a year and a half ago and I didn't know anyone. Really? Wow. Me too. I felt like I was the only one.

Tim Newman [00:36:39]:
Yeah.

Mike Acker [00:36:39]:
Or, you know, I started this company and I didn't even know how to do it. What? Really? Me too. And you have this moment of me too and they stack enough me too's. And you go, you know what, this has been so fun, we need to do this again. Tim, recently I decided to super integrate myself into Austin. So if any of your audience is from Austin, love to connect on that. And literally I've been going to networking groups. I joined like 5 different networking groups.

Tim Newman [00:37:08]:
Wow.

Mike Acker [00:37:10]:
And then I've been cold emailing people on LinkedIn.

Tim Newman [00:37:13]:
Okay.

Mike Acker [00:37:14]:
And just be like, hey, I see that you're doing this. Are you always from here? They'll be like, no. I'll say, well, what do you like to do in Austin? And they'll shoot me some thoughts over. I'm like, oh, thank you so much. And I have this like whole list of different things that people have told me to do. And then I'll say, do you want to grab coffee? And a lot of people go, no. And I was like, not a big deal.

Tim Newman [00:37:34]:
That's right.

Mike Acker [00:37:35]:
If you're going to go far in life for anything, you got to be okay with the rejection, right? But a lot of people go, yeah, I'm going to do coffee. and then we'll shoot it for time. So I have found all these cool coffee joints because—

Tim Newman [00:37:47]:
How was that?

Mike Acker [00:37:48]:
I've reached out. I met someone this morning and we just had coffee at this cool place. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. I gotta bring my wife here. This is amazing. Thank you so much for introducing this to me. And then as we're there, I'm like, what can I do for you? Like, can I introduce you to someone? So I gave her a text, a LinkedIn connection, and an email, all At the end of the time of the hour together. And she's like, you know what? I got a couple of different people that could go to that event that you told me about.

Mike Acker [00:38:14]:
I'm like, great. Thank you so much.

Tim Newman [00:38:17]:
Well, now that you said it, I do. I've got a good friend that lives— I've got 2 good friends that live in Austin. One, her name is Sarah Losey. Her business is called Branded, and she's the one who does all of the editing for the podcast. So once this is done, I download it, I send it to her, and she uploads it and takes care of my website and everything else. So I will definitely put you in touch with her.

Mike Acker [00:38:41]:
Cool.

Tim Newman [00:38:42]:
And the other, he's one of my former students. He works at the university there in recreation. But it's funny you say about that, becoming super involved in your community. I think that is so overlooked because people always, they want to grow, they want to grow, and they look far away. They look outside when your best connections, at least at this stage, I think for us, it is local. You know, it's about being involved in the community, adding value back to the community, and then that will come back to us, you know, tenfold down the road.

Mike Acker [00:39:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. My vision for the future visibility is pretty decent in the space that we're in.

Tim Newman [00:39:33]:
And

Mike Acker [00:39:33]:
so I get to work with people around the world in communication. It's been really a huge honor to do that. But I'm ultimately, because my audience has been global, I'm an extremely small fish in a global pond. Extremely small. I mean, there's, Dale Carnegie is probably the biggest fish. in the big pond of communication or in the realm of communication. Yet a lot of people listening here don't know who he is. And he's the top-rated author in the world on communication.

Mike Acker [00:40:06]:
He's got the books on it. He passed away many years ago. But even then, the pond is so big, the ocean is so big that lots of people don't know him. However, in Austin, I can be a medium-sized fish in a much smaller pond. And I can make a greater impact. And I want to teach some high schoolers and middle schoolers and college students communication. I can make a greater impact in terms of scale. Now, I'll still do my global stuff and I'll still have those programs and such, but it's a way for me to make a local impact on a larger scale.

Tim Newman [00:40:45]:
Yeah, it really is. And I think if more people thought Thought about it from that perspective, how much better our local communities would be as well anyway. The whole, what's the saying that they have in Austin? Keep Austin weird or something like that. Keep local things local. Yeah. And by keeping them local, it goes global. But anyway, that's a different story for a different day. You and I both love frameworks, and we talked about a few of them already.

Tim Newman [00:41:25]:
But if there's somebody listening, what's one framework that somebody listening today could start using in a conversation when this podcast is over?

Mike Acker [00:41:37]:
Yeah, I mean, for a conversation, even just that first interaction is the beginning of one and the follow-up, follow-up forward would be one that leads to it. I think there's other types of environments where people are speaking. Like if you want to persuade someone, like say you're at work and you want to use a framework for that, it's value, need, action. So if you're trying to win someone over an idea, so say for example, you want to make sure that you're trying to win the company over to install a better coffee machine. Mm-hmm. In, in the house. You might say something like, here's the value of this. This will keep us more alert.

Mike Acker [00:42:14]:
Here's what it will do for us. Here's the value to the company of having a coffee station, a better one. And then the need is the urgency. And you go, an urgency right now, XYZ company has one for sale. It's $100 off. And so we could save it by doing it, and then we can make more money right away because everybody's productivity is gonna go up. Action. Here's the link to buy it right here, or here's the request to it.

Mike Acker [00:42:41]:
So a lot of times what people do is they just start off with a vague value and they go, you know what we should do? We should get a coffee thing. That'd be really great. Lots of people want it. Okay, there's no framework for that,

Tim Newman [00:42:53]:
right?

Mike Acker [00:42:53]:
And people go, okay, well, well, why? Well, it'd just be really cool. I mean, lots of other companies have it. There's no value. There's no need. There's no action,

Tim Newman [00:43:01]:
right? Right.

Mike Acker [00:43:02]:
Or people go, if we had a coffee machine, that would really make people happy, value, and it would really increase morale. Can we get one? No, because there's no urgency of, or maybe later. Sure, maybe next year. Let's put in the budget right there. Right. But a framework, it goes, Tim, we need to hire someone for the podcast. Our podcast has been really growing. If we hired someone who could do some PR for the podcast that we run, Then we could double the amount of people that we reach, which would then secure us sponsorships on that.

Mike Acker [00:43:35]:
Right now is the time to do it because people are going to get ready to listen to podcasts a whole bunch more on this topic in January. So we need to hire them to get them on board so we're ready to go January. Here's my, here's my job posting that I created. It's ready to go on LinkedIn and Indeed. Can I click yes? Now that's much more persuasive than, hey Tim, um, I know you and I run this podcast called ABC Speaking, and what do you think about hiring someone? I've been thinking about a whole bunch. Oh, you don't want to? Come on, can we re— please? Oh, in the future. Okay. So because there's no frame, it doesn't go anywhere.

Mike Acker [00:44:15]:
But with a frame, all I gotta do is plug and play. Value, need, action. Right. And now I have a process to go through.

Tim Newman [00:44:24]:
Yeah, I like the way you broke that down and gave the examples of if a piece is missing, why it's not going to work. And that kind of goes for a lot of different things in the space. If you miss one thing, the whole framework falls apart. It all has to flow together. And this is one of the things I love about your books. And we haven't really— we've talked a little bit about them, but I want to go just a little bit deeper for a second. If there's somebody who hears the conversation and thinks, gosh, this is me, fear is keeping me from speaking up, what will they find in Speak with No Fear and where can they get it?

Mike Acker [00:45:10]:
Yeah, Speak with No Fear is A lot of people really like it because they feel like I'm sitting across the table from them, encouraging them. It's the same reason why some people don't like it. You know, there's 1,200+ reviews on Amazon for the first edition. And some people are like, ah, it's just, it just feels like he's just telling stories because I'm sitting across the street or sitting across the seat from you. But then other people are like, oh my gosh, it was so relatable. I understood it. And so that book right there, Speak with No Fear. first edition, second editions that got professionally edited and all that kind of stuff.

Mike Acker [00:45:44]:
It's my encouragement to you to do and take action to get through your nervousness. I've been so honored to have some people say, Mike, I read your book 3, 4, 5 times. I've had people say incredibly kind words about that book because it felt like I was encouraging them, giving them something that they could act on. 5 feet away from the wall, or remind yourself it's not about you. Here's how you do that, or here's a checklist you can do to be in the moment, or here are some ways that you can study yourself to uncover and clean the wound on that. Speak with Confidence was my follow-up a couple of years later. It's a traditionally published book by Wiley. It's actually used in a couple of colleges.

Mike Acker [00:46:28]:
And that book is different. That book is more like Oh, hey, I actually go teach at some places like General Electric and Edwards Life Sciences and Adobe and places like this. I teach at some colleges now, so I better up the game a little bit more in terms of how it's created. And it's my Speak with Confidence framework. I teach you how to build confidence in speaking, determine your identity, define the message, develop new skills. So it's got some more of the mechanics and technical aspects of creating the content, of preparation, et cetera.

Tim Newman [00:47:05]:
I like all the— I'd like them, but I'd like the stories. I mean, for me, because that's what's relatable, right? It's a— that goes back to the whole idea of common ground, which we talked about before. If I can see where you came from and, okay, wow, he was going through something very similar to what to how I feel. This is how he did it. This is how he got through that issue. That's what's really inspiring. And that's sometimes the thing that gets people to actually take the action, right? You can be inspired and not take action and nothing's going to change, right? It's the you taking action that's going to move you from point A to point B.

Mike Acker [00:47:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what do I say? Path to hell is paved with good intentions. Exactly. I will intend to, I intend to, I intend to, but I don't do. A lot of people treat communication more like a knowledge base versus— I often compare it to workout. So, if someone came to me and said, Mike, can you help me work out? It's not at all what I do. But, if someone were to say, Mike, I need to help me understand nutrition and muscle gaining and stuff.

Mike Acker [00:48:20]:
If I teach them, they go, oh, that's all good information. Thank you. That information doesn't do anything without their action. They got to go then go start running. They got to go start doing that. So a lot of times people go, oh, that's how you do communication. They don't put in practice.

Tim Newman [00:48:36]:
Right.

Mike Acker [00:48:36]:
So a lot of my programs that I work with, it's like a daily practice, 2 to 10 minutes a day. It goes a long way. If you go in for a 5-day seminar and learn every single thing that you can think about communication in 5 days, it's super meaty. It's heavy content. You know a whole bunch of stuff. You know why we process different things. You know the different variances of sound. You know why a pause affects people the way it does.

Mike Acker [00:49:09]:
You know value of a smile and 14 different things. Right. You know a lot of things. You don't do any of them. It's the person who knows the entire dictionary but never talks to people is worth less than the person who knows 10 words and talks to people.

Tim Newman [00:49:29]:
Exactly. Exactly. It's such a good point. And, um, I used to tell my students that all the time. You got to go out and do stuff. You have to take this and actually put it into action. Otherwise, you're wasting your time.

Mike Acker [00:49:47]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:49:48]:
But anyway, just think if we could get everybody to do one thing a day that they're not doing in whatever it is that they know that they should be doing, how much better would life be? But they've got to want to do it. That's the other piece too, that pain point has to be to the point where, okay, enough's enough. I don't want to have that pain point any longer, right?

Mike Acker [00:50:18]:
Yeah. It's interesting. I always think about it every now and then. Someone will say, oh, you came to mind recently. Oh, thank you. And that I was going through a really tough time and, and, oh, I should have sent you a message. And I've heard those kind of things before. And so now I always think this, like, if I— if someone comes to mind— just recently, uh, Johnny came to mind.

Mike Acker [00:50:43]:
There's a friend of mine and Johnny came to mind. I just reached out to him. I said, hey Johnny, I hope you're doing well, that kind of stuff. And just sent him something random. And he goes, oh man, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Now, he wasn't going through anything tough, but I did it to another friend, Trey. He goes, oh my gosh, man, that meant the world to me.

Mike Acker [00:50:58]:
You have no idea what's going on right now on this. And that extra little action, cool that you thought about that person, cool that you learned that, but that little action. So if you're working on your speaking on a daily basis, think about something that would be beneficial for your work to get better on. Come up with a list of 10, 20, 30 questions. You can use AI to come up with a list of questions. Practice one question in the mirror every day. If you're not good at answering interview questions and you're getting ready to interview for jobs, come up with 50 different interview questions, put them on the notepad of your phone, stand in front of the mirror, ask yourself one question a day for the next 50 days, and after 50 days you'll be better and more ready for the interview.

Tim Newman [00:51:43]:
Absolutely. That's such great advice. Where else could people catch up with you, find you, learn from you, work with you? Where's the best place to go?

Mike Acker [00:51:53]:
Yeah. My company is Uplevel Communication. So it's just uplevelcommunication.com. But people can also find me at mikeacker.com. My books, some of my books have been at Barnes& Noble. I've gone and seen my books there or at other stores like Waterstones in the UK. Okay, easy place to get it online, Walmart or Barnes& Noble, or of course Amazon. And I think my first book has 1,200 reviews on the first one, 700 reviews on second edition, or 200 reviews on second edition, and 400 on Audible.

Mike Acker [00:52:24]:
So you can grab my book on Amazon or anywhere. Mike Acker, A-C-K-E-R. Would love to help anybody out through my books, through audiobook. And of course, this podcast.

Tim Newman [00:52:37]:
Well, thanks for that. I'll make sure all those links are in the show notes for everybody. But Mike, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I really do appreciate it.

Mike Acker [00:52:47]:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me too. I appreciate it.

Tim Newman [00:52:49]:
All right, bud. Take care. Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com to get your free ebook, The Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers and How to Overcome Them. You can also register for the Formula for Public Speaking course. Always remember, your voice has the power to change the world. We'll talk to you next time. Take care.