Stand Up to Stand Out: Expressing yourself in the most powerful way

By Marnick Vandebroek

Have you Ever dreamed of taking control of your own professionnal life, being able to convince others and move forward in your career? This book is made for you...

Are you tired of bumping into corporate walls? Not getting the budget, job or promotion that you want? Are you fed up with other people always being heard, while your ideas are being ignored? Are you struggling to network and pitch your business? Is a dry mouth and shaky voice the only thing you associate with speaking in front of a group? Do you just freeze when someone is giving you a hard time in a meeting and tries to take over?
If the answer is yes, then it’s time for you to STAND UP.
Everybody can learn to express themselves in a powerful way. No matter what other people claim. It’s not a gift, it’s a choice. Inspiring and convincing people to take action on your ideas starts with you, your story and how you bring it. This book will show you exactly how to do that.
Follow the five steps and discover how to:
- raise your energy and credibility
- earn attention and trust
- take people into your world
- become the solution
- trigger action

After reading this book, you will positively STAND OUT in any situation. Because standing up is the only way you can stand out in life and business. Let's inspire action!

EXTRACT

We are living in a rapidly changing world where disruption, digital transformation and innovation are all around us, shaping our society. More than ever we have the tools and the need to spread ideas and connect with each other, but never have people, companies and brands struggled so much to bring humans together and get ideas, visions and plans across in such a way, that they truly inspire action. This book will show you how to do just that, so you can STAND UP, express yourself in the most powerful way and STAND OUT in life and business.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marnick Vandebroek is a frequently asked and highly rated keynote speaker and trainer on the topics of storytelling, speaking and personal branding linked to driving innovation, digital transformation and change within organizations. He helps, trains and coaches over one hundred business owners, managers and professionals all across Europe to express themselves in the most powerful way. He works with people from multinational brands to promising start-ups and scale-ups that want to inspire both themselves and others to transform their ideas into action.Marnick has a background in digital marketing, HR, stand-up comedy, is a certified NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) practitioner and just a stand-up guy. On a personal level, he is happily married to his life and business partner Natalie and has two amazing cats. In addition, he loves writing, drawing, comedy, obstacle runs and pumping iron in the gym like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Die Keure Publishing
• Release date: Nov 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9782874035746

Book preview

Let’s

inspire

action!

CONTENTS

PART 1STAND UP &

LET’S GET YOU

PUMPED

THE BAD TEACHER ALWAYS WINS

MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO

ON A SCALE FROM ONE TO TEN

BLUE, YELLOW, GREEN FOR LIFE

GETTING YOURSELF PUMPED

YOUR BODY WILL KNOW WHAT TO DO

YOU ARE THE GENIUS

FILLING YOUR BACKPACK

PART 2YOU HAD ME

AT ‘HELLO’

DRIVEN BY YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS

FIRST IMPRESSION VERSUS 60 SECONDS

THE HALO EFFECT

A POSITIVE SANDWICH FOR DESSERT

FROM A TO B, BUT WE’LL GO TO C

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE IT’S TRUE

MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL

MAKE THE ROOM SMALL

KEEP YOUR TROLLS IN CHECK

PART 3START WITH

WHO

YOUR WORLD, MY WORLD

LISTEN TO UNDERSTAND

PERSONAL VALUE

MAKE IT TANGIBLE

PART 4EXACTLY

WHAT I NEED

YOU ARE THE SOLUTION

A FOOL WITH A TOOL

GOING OUT WITH A BANG

PART 5STAND OUT

& OWN IT

STEP BY STEP

IT’S MAGIC

For my lovely wife,

Natalie.

My soulmate and

business partner.

Inspiring me every

day to be the

best version of

myself.

2+2=?

Chances are you just said four. You didn’t feel challenged at all, but deep down you are still sensing a little bit of pride for getting this right. Most people don’t have to strain themselves to come to this solution. You probably didn’t take out your smartphone to check your answer or thought I have two chickens and if I now add two cows this will result in four animals. You just responded without breaking a sweat and your mind is now saying: Give me another one, I got this. Who am I to let you down? Try the one below without using a calculator, pen or paper.

17x24=?

When I do this exercise at conferences there is always one or two people who yell out the answer in a reasonable timeframe. Congratulations, if you did too. Then I ask the rest of the group who thought, when I asked the question: Somebody else will solve this for me. Or in your case, I’m not going to bother and will just read on. Everywhere I go in the world, more than 60 % of the people in the audience will raise their hands, while laughing to confirm that this is indeed what they were thinking.

The answer is four hundred and eight. Now be honest. Did you try to find the solution or did you give up and just continue reading, hoping I would share it with you? This little test is based on the research Daniel Kahneman published in his magnificent book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ to see what happens to the human brain when a person is confronted with a challenge like the one above. Your pupils will have dilated like those of a cat spotting a mouse, but will have just as quickly decreased in size when you found the solution or, like most people; gave up.

You tend to take in content or a situation more easily when you have a recollection of it. A past memory you can go to that makes it easier to cope with things and tells you it’s ok. As with the 2 + 2, it’s easy and you have seen this so many times before, that your mind has no trouble solving it. 17x24 is, for most people, a different story. An effort is expected and the way towards the solution, as the outcome itself, is unknown. That is something we generally dislike, and we quickly doubt, question or flat-out fear the message.

For me, this is the easiest way to explain what happens in meetings, at conferences, network events or any place where people are sharing ideas with each other. People tap out. They either don’t understand it, are not inspired enough to try or just go straight into panic mode, while you go from walking in like a pumped Magic Mike or Wonder Woman to walking out as a frustrated White Walker from Game of Thrones, tired of bumping into walls, getting rejected or being unheard.

We are living in a rapidly changing world where disruption, digital transformation and innovation are all around us, shaping our society. More than ever we have the tools and the need to spread ideas and connect with each other, but never have people, companies and brands struggled so much to bring humans together and get ideas, visions and plans across in such a way, that they truly inspire action. This book will show you how to do just that, so you can STAND UP, express yourself in the most powerful way and STAND OUT in life and business.

PART 1

STAND UP &

LET’S GET YOU

PUMPED

THE BAD TEACHER

ALWAYS WINS

Do you still remember what your biology teacher told you in high school? If you are a doctor, I hope you are now nodding ‘yes’ for the sake of your patients, but most of us will have no or very limited recollection of the content that was shared in class. I remember something with a frog, passing out and that it is not healthy for your bladder to hold in pee for too long. All the rest is a very distant memory.

Now do you remember the teacher that really got on your nerves, picked on you or gave you cold sweats every time he yelled ‘pop quiz’? Most of us do and you immediately go back in time and feel the same way you did in high school. You will always remember that teacher, because content fades, but feelings stick. Great content is crucial, or we wouldn’t learn anything, but when it comes to staying in the hearts of people, the bad teacher always wins. Same goes for a very likeable one, but let’s face it, we tend to remember the villain more than the hero – unless you are James Bond; nobody can ignore that much style!

In a week or so, this book will also be a distant memory. When you finish reading it, you will only remember 50 % of what I wrote. The next day it will be around 25 % and the next week it will have shrunk to a measly 10 %. Same goes for your presentations, emails, pitches, conversations… When I first read about these stats, I had a hard time believing these numbers myself… until I was invited by a recruitment firm to talk to their headhunters about storytelling.

I spoke for about 45 minutes and was asked by the CEO if I could do a full day workshop around the topic the week after. I agreed to it and showed up the next week ready to start training her enthusiastic team. At a certain point there was a section in the workshop which was pretty similar to the content I had shared during my talk the week before. I knew half of the group attended this talk, but seeing it was crucial information I had to repeat it for the other half who hadn’t. After I finished this section, I rhetorically asked the group if they remembered these insights from last week. I expected nodding heads confirming they had seen this before. Instead I got a group of fast writing headhunters saying that it was super interesting, and they didn’t recall having ever seen or heard this content. I thought to myself: This information apparently wasn’t part of their 10 %.

Expressing yourself, inspiring or convincing people starts not with purely content. It starts with focusing on how you are going to make people FEEL about that content.

"A great story isn’t about

WHAT you say,

it’s about how you can

make people FEEL."

Making people feel is the most beautiful thing in the world. The thing that separates great speakers from bad ones, inspiring leaders from KPI crunchers and a great story from a boring one. My most memorable experience of this was around the time when I just started my company, during a 5-minute pitch to 40 + CEOs of the most influential companies in my region.

I pitched my business for the whole 5 minutes, using the story flow I use in everything I do (videos, presentations, blogs…), which I will discuss broadly later on in this book. It was over in a blink of an eye and I could only hope I practiced what I preached, and business opportunities would follow my talk. Afterwards one of the business owners immediately came to me to shake my hand and said: I don’t yet fully understand what you do, but I just have the ‘feeling’ that I need to work with you. A couple of weeks later I was training his development team.

No matter how fancy your suits, dresses or function titles look, in the end you are still human. No matter how many graphs and Excel files you flip through at your desk, when you step into your car, you will most likely watch a funny cat video and share it with your friends. We are social creatures, emotion driven. We like to feel something. Like with any great movie that takes us on a creative, emotional rollercoaster of highs and lows, keeping our attention every step of the way and leaving us in an ‘OOOH!’ at the end. It’s what we call ‘entertainment’.

Don’t get me wrong, entertainment doesn’t necessarily equal funny. I’m not saying we should all be clowning, cracking jokes and taking nothing seriously. Entertainment is when elements like emotion, creativity, surprise and passion meet. It moves people, takes them on a journey, triggers their curiosity and of course lets them have some fun. You know, that thing you experienced every day as a kid and slowly lost during your schooling and career.

Chances are you are now professionally active in a B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumer) environment – which are also often referred to as Boring to Boring or Boring to practically Cremated. Let’s be honest, what is the closest thing most of us come to entertainment in our professional life, besides the occasional gossip at the coffee machine? In my opinion, it’s these little colored squares that should get everybody fired up, commonly known as Post-its. Yep, freaking Post-its. You have been there. You come to work knowing you have a half day workshop about the new company values. You don’t want to go, but your colleague comforts you by saying that the team manager guaranteed it will also be entertaining. But the moment you walk in the room, you see those colored squares staring at you in the middle of the table, like they did so many times before. Yellow, green and if you are lucky, the pink ones. In that moment you know this is about as entertaining as it will get. Come on people, let’s go crazy, let’s stick some ideas to the wall. This is so much fun, I wish my kids could see me now. I also brought some blue ones, just to step a little out of the good old comfort zone.

I’m not against the use of Post-its. I use them myself. I am against it often being an excuse for not going the extra mile when it comes to making messages and information entertaining. As there are so many other excuses for the lack of entertainment we put in the stories we tell. We fear it, think it’s not professional, it will distract from our message, or we take ourselves too seriously and link entertainment and feeling solely with comedy and fluffy mumbo jumbo.

A beautiful example was when I came across people facilitating workshops for c-level profiles and having them share their ideas and questions using helium balloons hanging all over the room. Link the colors to concerns or opportunities, send a balloon forward if you have a question for the facilitator. If you ever want to see if people like entertainment in a business context, give them some helium balloons. They will give you great feedback with a very high-pitched voice.

People like to be entertained. It makes it easier for us to process info, to learn something new or just get ourselves in a better mood. Music and theater have done it for centuries and now, more than ever before, music, movies, videos and theater are our source of relaxation, inspiration and information. Unless you are sending Morse code during the war, all your communication is emotional. A business pitch, based on emotions. The stock exchange, based on emotions. A job interview, based on emotions. Being human is in our DNA, we are emotional creatures.

To stay within the music scene, at the time when I’m writing this book, the song ‘Baby Shark’ entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart and is challenging artists like Drake, Lady Gaga, Maroon 5… A simple kid song that is conquering the world like so many of these songs have done in the past. According to neuro-scientists, the reason sits within the simplicity, the repetitive nature and the emotion it taps into. The right side of our brain captures the melody or rhythm. The left side does a shallow attempt to capture some text and messaging, while deep inside our brain the emotion it triggers is being recorded. No matter if you like a song or not, these very entertaining creations tap into your entire brain and stick. Introducing, ‘the earworm’. They don’t even have to be as simple as a kid song, because when I say, Yesterday… in the right tone of voice, you automatically complete the sentence with… Exactly, you might not be a Beatles fan, but chances are you just uttered ‘all my troubles seemed so far away.’

Communicating, presenting, networking is not music, it’s like music. In my opinion the same rules apply. In workshops people tend to challenge me on this part, because it goes against their belief that facts, data and words are everything. I always respond by saying, You don’t have to believe a word of what I’m saying. Do whatever feels right to you, but if your goal is to move people, get them interested in you and your message, to have them take action on your ideas and remember you in the long run. Well, then no matter what the topic is, my ‘Baby Shark’ version of the story is going to kick your ass.

The late scientist Stephen Hawking is perhaps one of the best examples of this claim. He was able to transfer his very complicated theories to a very broad audience in such a funny, simple and entertaining way, that everybody understood what he was talking about and wanted to listen. He even did it, without the ability to use his own voice. What is your excuse? Are people just scratching the surface of your message or are you deep inside their brain triggering a feeling?

Time to shake off that fear or bias thinking. If you want to express yourself, inspire, convince, motivate and be remembered, you will have to learn how to entertain and make people feel something. You will have to become the bad teacher or the good one with James Bond flair. Do that and you will see you have a better feeling towards your story. You’re able to connect with people more easily and be remembered longer than a week. In some cases, you will even notice that you don’t need much content to make that happen.

In 2017, together with a dozen other startups I had to pitch my business at an event for start-ups and scale-ups. We were the speakers, but at the same time the audience together with some investors. My goal, having these companies come to me after my pitch to do business. All of us got 2 minutes and a slice of pizza afterwards. I was number 7 and had already seen sweat, dry mouths and shaking hands take the stage. When my name and company was called by the host, I took the spot. I looked at the audience and asked: Who of you likes to do this? Likes to pitch, stand in front of a group, present their business? Raise your hand. Of the 70 + people that were there only one person raised his hand. The rest were shaking their heads while the 7 previous speakers were still in recovery. I mentioned the dry mouths, the shaking, the short breath, the red cheeks. Then I said, I’m Marnick Vandebroek of Stand Up Company. I love doing this and I’m able to make you love it too. So when you present your business, you will tell your story with confidence, a smile and make an impact. Let’s talk. Thank you. Before I could take a bite from my pizza the first people were asking for my business card.

My pitch took 40 seconds, my content was a simple question and a promise, the impact on their feelings was huge. I tapped into their emotions and made the story stick. Time for you to do the same.

MONKEY SEE

MONKEY DO

I won’t claim I know everything about raising children. I don’t have any. That might change in the future, but currently the closest I’m getting to Skylanders, Fortnite and Frozen is when my godchildren visit and I go from being a keynote speaker to a living crash test dummy. What I do know from observing our friends and family that have kids, is that author James Baldwin was right, when he said, Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

The 5-year-old son of a befriended couple is a true daredevil. He jumps off everything, is doing Indiana Jones stunts around the house. His parents told me, He is crazy, it’s only a matter of time before he breaks something. We will spend a lot of time in the hospital as he grows up. The fact that they have a passion for skydiving, extreme skiing and downhill mountain biking might have something to do with it. Other parents complain their kids spend too much time in front of a screen, not realizing them checking their phone 58 times a day and binge-watching Game of Thrones is the example they are giving.

Kids are our mirror. Monkey see, monkey do. We never really lose that habit. We grow up and become more aware of our actions and can determine for ourselves what behavior matches our values and beliefs. However, our inner monkey is still very much in control. Every human being, when feeling an emotional connection, will copy the other person in some way. We wear the same clothes as our favorite celebrity. We act the same way on the soccer field as the player we so admire. When we have a positive connection with another person, we tend to copy their behavior. Later in this book, we will discuss how to use this to your advantage.

When you work with a company for the first time or you are there to apply for a job, you can immediately estimate how the rest of the company will act based on the behavior of the managers. They are