Why every Entrepreneur should get over their fear of being on stage.

Jim James: 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the unnoticed show. Today. I am talking to a man who I've known for now 20 odd years. One of my favorite people, rich Robinson, who is a God to me. And he's actually calling us from Bali, the island of the gods. Rich Robinson, welcome. Download to show

Rich Robinson: 0:15

Jim James, ladies and gentlemen. Wow. I was, I was about to, um, kind of schooled you. I was like, I know you want to be. On this podcast, but calling it very awkwardly, not. Like, I guess who was taking, circling an unknown. And then I was like, oh, I noticed,

Jim James: 0:36

noticed, yeah. And for all the dyslexic guests out there, Richard Robinson, we call him our to, uh, cause the mine is like RTD is a machine. He's such a hard worker and rich, you've been an entrepreneur, you know, for your whole life. Tell us about what you do, but also how you've built businesses and how you've got notice so that other entrepreneur. Around the world can learn from you how you've done this amazing job of moving from America to Asia and building multiple businesses over to you.

Rich Robinson: 1:04

Perfect. Yeah. Thanks Jim. Uh, so yeah, so we've known each other for, you know, coming on three decades now. And, uh, we first met in Hong Kong and that's where I started my

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Rich Robinson: 1:15

in indeed. I've had a, a string of startups that I've been part of. I am part of the. Mentally ill, the entrepreneurial community and you and I started the first chapter of the entrepreneurs organization in Beijing together. So we know that EO kind of like alcoholics anonymous fraud, blow it a candle. Hi, I'm Richard Robinson. I'm a entrepreneur and a long suffering entrepreneur. And, uh, you know, the default setting is failure and, uh, the road. Uh, long the path to failure is absolutely treasure, treacherous and miserable much of the time. But other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? So if the most likely they'll come as failure and it's pretty miserable on the way, then you better have a pretty terrific attitude and look at it as a way to, uh, build up. Your skills, experience and network, and kind of as a vocation, uh, along the way. So I've always been such a keen student of entrepreneurship and just tried to take, you know, from the ashes, uh, whatever I could from, uh, each, uh, venture and, and bring it to the next. And one thing that I brought from venture to venture is this, uh, really high leverage, uh, insight that I got when I, when I first started my career in the mid nineties, in Hong Kong, uh, which was, uh, being an industry. So it is such an incredibly powerful way to, especially when you're starting off your career, but, but also even later in your career, as you enter new areas, like right now, I'm very involved in web three dot O, which is, you know, quote unquote on chain, like blockchain and gaming and, uh, the play to earn space. So, you know, there's a completely new friends. And I'm doing what, uh, what I did, you know, almost 30 years ago, which is I'm starting like an industry group where bringing like-minded people together. Um, and I have a young person. I was the young person before who was helping me to organize that. They pull the sled, they do all the work and, uh, bring in, you know, terrific speakers and those speakers, uh, Uh, come together, uh, with, uh, the participants of this networking event. And it's all going to come back in person. People love the press, the flesh. And if you wanted to, you know, really make a, make a name for yourself, and you're in kind of a hub, say you're in London or Beijing or a place where there are a lot of like-minded people in whatever industry you're in, then you kind of, um, you, you, you find that. You know, two or three things that you can cross over. Like for instance, let's, you know, start a. A networking event in London for people that are interested in e-commerce from China, right. Or, you know, let's, uh, let's start some sort of a event in, in Singapore that's, um, around social media for a business to business. Right. And then you bring, you, you start a newsletter, social media, you get in, uh, expert speakers and you do a. Fireside chat because a fireside chat is the biggest cheat. It's kind of like a panel. Um, but you're the moderator and they don't have to prepare it all. And you just say, Hey, w what, what are maybe the two or three talking points you'd like to do? Talk about their story, story, their journey, what they're working on now, you know, where they see a few things going, uh, in the future. And, uh, and then you open it up for Q and a from the audience. And through that, What you do is you bring together a whole group of people from the industry who are very grateful for that. Um, you become kind of a node in the industry. You get to be well-known oh, you must be an expert because you're pulling together people around this specific topic and you know, kind of most importantly is you get to connect with like super senior people who are really making stuff happen and you get to, you know, really bond with them one-on-one and be with them, you know, onstage and kind of open up opportunities for them. And I'll start. Well,

Jim James: 5:19

that's fantastic. So when I went from Singapore to Beijing, I called you and we had lunch. And then all of a sudden kind of like the whole of Beijing opened up, you're like the Uber connector. So you've used that strategy to great effect. What about for entrepreneurs that are maybe a little bit more shy because you've got the ability to stand up. In fact, you even do stand up comedy rich. What about for people? You know, they say that's great. Rich to be a connector facilitator. Shit.

Rich Robinson: 5:48

I call bullshit. I'm an introvert. I'm shy. Bullshit. That's bullshit. That's an excuse. You're hiding behind

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Rich Robinson: 5:57

like it's like, you can bring out your inner extrovert and just be up there. You can practice. Right. That's the thing is people are like, oh, I can't be like you, like, like you'd look at Steve jobs. In the early days, he was a lousy presenter. He was. Right. And, and, and I'll tell, I'll tell you about a common friend. We have Benjamin Joffe remember, like, like I would, you know, and I've talked about this publicly and I love the man, right? I really do. He started something called mobile, Monday meeting. He asked me to be the first. And he was a bag of like ticks and, you know, just,

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Rich Robinson: 6:34

awkwardness. And he was, he was painful to watch. Right. When he was introduced to me, he didn't think that he had to do that. Right. And, uh, he just never been up on stage before. And he's, he's a little, a little introverted, but he's got, you know, a really, you know, Uh, you know, great personality and I would go so far as to say that he may be the best presenter on planet earth when it comes to a hardware startup. You just need to get out there and do it more. And the fact is most of the time people fail before they even start a company. When people fail before they even get up on stage, the number one fear of people is not, you know, cancer. Speaking in front of an audience, which means to risk that if you

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Rich Robinson: 7:23

eulogy at a funeral, then statistically, you would much rather be in the box than the podium. Right. That's ridiculous. And I can tell you that the number one problem, public speaking. Is not people judging you and just dissecting you and looking at you in such a, you know, snide just cynical way. It's that blue light on their face because they don't give a shit. They're not even listening to you. You've lost them already. Right. And, uh, that's the. Is that you have to be you times two and you have to learn how to sell if you're an entrepreneur and you're like, I can't do this. It's because you haven't done it enough. You have to sell to your investors, to people you're recruiting to your customers, to your partners. Even if you're not an entrepreneur, you have to sell to your boss, you have to get budget. You have to. You have to sell to your family, right? You have to learn how to persuade people and to be able to tell a story. And it's like a soft skill that I push really, really hard in the MBA program that I teach at. And, uh, it's a, it's super important. It's, it's incredibly important. And it's a learned skill. There are so many learned skills, the other big learn skills. Shit's going wrong because it's going to go wrong. It's supposed to go wrong and just staying completely calm as an entrepreneur. And I think the other thing about deep into yourself, it's a learned skill.

Jim James: 8:53

Yeah. And I think that's a great one about not limiting yourself, but also about the value of preparation. When I do media training for clients, we can see within half a day, the improvement in performance, just by people having prepared. What they want to say and what messages they want to get in front of the audience. So rich, I think you're right to call bullshit on that. But also,

Rich Robinson: 9:15

and, and, and it's not, it's not even just preparation. It's deliberate practice. It's about, you know, filming yourself and watching yourself

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Rich Robinson: 9:25

you got to get rid of that tick

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Rich Robinson: 9:27

use that word repeatedly. And your body language is

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Rich Robinson: 9:31

you. Your cadence of your voice

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Rich Robinson: 9:34

you completely, you know, talk, you know, every second when you're up there, because you don't want to actually have any silence whatsoever, because then you would be able to actually realize that you're naked on stage in the void of your existence. And, you know, the meaningless of life is all comes at you. Right? Whereas actually, one of the most powerful things to say, when you are speaking to an audience, There's nothing. People look up like when you're

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Rich Robinson: 10:08

get comfortable. And you're like on the edge of a stage and you're

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Rich Robinson: 10:11

a thousand people, 5,000

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Rich Robinson: 10:14

do as an

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Rich Robinson: 10:16

the web summit in Lisbon. And you get up on stage and you throw some energy out there and then you say, Nothing then you

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Rich Robinson: 10:30

give you more attention. Right?

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Rich Robinson: 10:34

tool, um, when you really want to make an impact and there, and there are so many ways to improve that executives, entrepreneurs like you don't learn it in school. You don't really, you don't really learn it unless you join Toastmasters. And even then, you know, people quit that when they hit a certain plateau, it's something that is so incredibly powerful. Like what are you doing to just have a 1% improvement in your public speaking, uh, to, you know, really make a big impact and like, that's how you become comfortable doing that. It's not any sort of, you know, Gift.

Jim James: 11:10

Yeah. I think it's a really good point that as well, that is the practice, right. That you got to keep doing it now. Rich. From a practical point of view, if someone is going to think about becoming a sort of a node or a facilitator, Should they do that on their own? Or should they ponder the people? What's your experience and best practice there?

Rich Robinson: 11:29

One of the most powerful things that I've done is once you collect enough of those speakers, then maybe, you know, what you can do is, oh, wow. There's a. Industry luminary coming into town and you somehow reach out to them and say, Hey, I have, um, you know, six people in London or Singapore, and I can pull them together to have dinner with you and they can give you insights into the industry. And then you go to those people and like, Hey, you know what, so-and-so's coming into town. And like, they they're really interested to meet with everybody. That's super high impact. And you're just the facilitator of that. I started doing that a lot more and that became incredibly powerful. But public speaking. I mean the worst part of public speaking is when you have to create some sort of bespoke, um, presentation like that, that's terrible because then it's takes a lot of time and oftentimes it's the first time that you're giving it and it's, um, You know, it doesn't work so great. Right. And you don't want to just give your sales pitch. So if you can, if you can maybe build something up where you have some sort of meat, like I can talk about our industry, but with only Bibby giving one slide about your company, or maybe no. And you're just offering kind of neat to the audience. And, but you can practice kind of like stand up comedy where you do smaller gigs and then you do the stadium show after you've practiced that that's one, the next one, that's a little more challenging. Um, but, um, you know, it's actually okay. As the BIA. Um, of a, of a panel, because then you have to coordinate with all the panelists, but, but the hack there is to, um, this is what you want to do. If you're early on in your career, you go to an event and you say, Hey, I want to put a panel together of this sexy, new, interesting angle in the industry. And I suggest these speakers and I'll be the moderator. And here's the topics. So then, uh, that's, that's juicy if you're putting together an event. Yeah, you might, you really, the most expensive thing in an event is an empty seat. So you're organizing a venture like, ah, I got to get people to the events, they got to get sponsors. I got all the logistics. And then you may not even know what's going on to the industry and for you to give them that kind of meat. Like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to put together this panel for you that sexy. Now you can go to those people and say, Hey, I have a slot at this big event. And I would like you to be a panelist.

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Rich Robinson: 13:52

And then all you do is you ask everybody all the three people in the, on the four people in the panel, three or four is the most, you shouldn't have

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Rich Robinson: 13:59

two's too few, I think. Right. Or you do one-on-one as a fireside chat. What would you like? What, what are the, what are the three talking points that you'd like to, you know, that you'd like to get over that are not about your company, but are about, you know, really interesting in the end. And then the thing is, is that it's not, when you're, when you're moderating a panel, it's not like little league where everybody has to play. Not everybody has to answer the question. The shittiest thing on a panel is I totally agree with what she said. And, uh, I would just like to, you know, it's like, uh, w we're not here to like, make everybody agree. We're here to give meat to the audience. Right. So, okay. You two have answered that. Let's go, let's, let's switch gears. Matter of fact, you don't have to be an expert. You have to be really good at just keeping it like interesting and snappy and, you know, um, and then, um, you know, being a panelist is, is a, is a little bit easier because then you can just kind of show up and as long as you prepared well, um, and then you can do a fireside chat or you could, you know, if you're, if you're big enough, you can actually be in the fireside chat, but then there's emceeing events. And that's my hack because that's the easiest all you got to do is show up.

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Rich Robinson: 15:04

evening Lisbon or hello, Amsterdam. Hello, Singapore. Right? Oh my God. Do we have a lineup for you today? You know, our first speaker is so-and-so from whatever and like all you do. And like, if you're really flexible and you're comfortable on stage and you bring energy and then at the end you go, that was such a great insight that ties into what our. Panel said yesterday, and you, you just give some color and some industry insight and a joke and just some energy and you don't have to prepare for shit because they just give you a clipboard and you just, you just bring it. But then you're in the speaker. But most importantly is that if you're at a big enough event, this is what I found at the web summit. In Lisbon. I got a 5,000 person stage I'm meeting people who don't go to the speakers room, who show up just to be on that stage. And they're in the back for 15 minutes before the show. And now I'm sitting down next to them go, Hey, how are you? I'm the. Um, I'm going to introduce you on stage. Um, oh, can I have your business card? Cause I really like to be able to say your name properly and like yeah. You know, just a little background I'm based in Beijing, I'm a serial entrepreneur here and you know what, I'd love to say something on stage to introduce you, that you would be too embarrassed to say, but it will be kind of fun, like a philanthropy that you support or maybe you climbed the mountain or maybe you did something really, you know, skydiving or something. Right. I, I want, I want, and then you connect with them. Right. And like, Like I've built up like Qualtrics, they got sold to SAP for $8 billion and the two founders were on stage and they're like our third founders moving to

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Rich Robinson: 16:35

can we put you in touch with him? And I was

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Rich Robinson: 16:38

like, I helped him land in Beijing and I became friends with him and like, you know, just like small things like that. I really, really suggest to go to PrincipalsYou you, um, there's a great book called principles by Ray Dalio. Must read. If you can order the time to read it, check out a 30 minute video on. Where he summarizes the whole book in a very high end animation, same animation is used for Principals You and Principals Us, which he just launched this week. And, uh, principals you as a personality test and you really need that. One really needs to understand one strengths and then quadruple down on your strengths. If you look at my three strengths, I'm an inspire. Um, I'm a, uh, inter keener and I'm an impersonal. I probably, I probably shouldn't even have been an entrepreneur, but I may have one of those three, but I, but I use all of, uh, all of those skills to, you know,

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Rich Robinson: 17:33

really promote my companies and promote my personal brand

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Rich Robinson: 17:36

you know, that's a, that's an important thing.

Jim James: 17:38

One of the things that you and I did, which you did so well was, uh, EO, the entrepreneur organization. So it's also possible to find an organization that doesn't exist in your market, your town, your country, and offer to set that up. Right. I remember with mobile Monday, for example, uh, I think, and then Wednesday of course was coming from Europe. So if you don't have the passion or maybe the confidence to set up a whole. You can always take a group that exists somewhere else. Right. And offer to be the host of that and take almost like being a, a franchisee,

Rich Robinson: 18:11

If you happen to be in crypto or blockchain, there's a group that I'm involved. I'm running the Bali chapter. What's called off chain instead of on chain it's Optane. Cause it's, it's

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Rich Robinson: 18:23

that's started by John. Who I started this group called the eye and die with back in the day, we, we had 30 people coming once a month to have drinks. Then we had a speaker come and we had a hundred people show up. And then we had this entrepreneur from China show up small company,

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Rich Robinson: 18:41

He was super dynamic. We had 350 people show up to that

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Rich Robinson: 18:45

And. That was Jack ma the richest man in China, but that was, that was in 99, 2000 and then showed up to that event. And, uh, we also had, you know, Charles John, the founder of so who and all these other great, great speakers. Right. I remember.

Jim James: 18:59

Yeah, we had, uh, in the, uh, we had the founder of Youku come along. So Richard people want to find out more about you and your energy and also as an MC or otherwise, how can they find out about you?

Rich Robinson: 19:13

Yeah. So, uh, I, you can follow me on LinkedIn, um, in slash Richard Robinson and also, you know, Twitter, Richard Robinson, uh, yeah, you want to email me? It's a richrob@gmail, uh, and

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Rich Robinson: 19:26

I'm happy to. To connect. I'm always a keen connector and kind of a good egg in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. 24 years in China. I'm now in Bali connecting China to Southeast Asia. And I'm writing my first book and starting my first

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Rich Robinson: 19:42

called at the speed of China. Like at the speed of light. My thesis is that four years outside of China is a year into. Uh, so 20 years of generation is a half decade in China. That's how fast things are moving.

Jim James: 19:53

Robinson joining me from the island. Thank you so much for as always your wisdom, your energy and your friendship. Thanks, buddy.

Rich Robinson: 20:03

YouTube love and good vibes, love and good vibes to you and yours all the best. Thank you so

Jim James: 20:08

much for listening to us on the unnoticed show today. Obviously rich Robinson is someone who is very much noticed and, uh, and now that he's got over the typo in the unnoticed entrepreneur, uh, name, I'm sure we'll be seeing more, right. Thank you so much for listening.