Lessons That Help Public Speakers from Justin Bieber

Lessons that Help Public Speakers from Justin Bieber and Darren LaCroix.

Lessons from Justin Bieber… a Teenager!

My partner in the April Story and Structure Speaking School and Two-Day Coaching Camp Darren LaCroix wrote a great article in his Punchline newsletter. I thought you would enjoy.

Justin Bieber? Who the heck is Justin Bieber? I had no idea myself. If you ask any young girl, they’ll tell you. I have one thing to say… twenty-two minutes. That’s how long it took him to sell out Madison Square Garden. If you’re not familiar with what that takes… it’s up there with U2 and the Rolling Stones.

He’s sixteen.

If you’re anything like me, you love inspirational, true-to-life movies. When my friend, Brent, told me the movie was very well done and inspirational, I was intrigued. Still having no clue who he was, I decided to go see the film.

I was prepared to be inspired, but had no idea what lessons would come glaring through his story.

#1) Justin Bieber was born with natural talent.

The movie showed footage of him as a baby rapping on the kitchen chair with amazing rhythm. Though he had a natural talent and got a recording contract without taking even a single lesson, Justin still got coaching to get even better. That’s a lesson for all of us.

#2) He had an amazing support team around him.

It started with his Mom and grew from there. As Justin’s notoriety grew, so did his team. They kept adding team members to get to the next level. Scooter Braun was the person who discovered Justin and believed in him. He put Justin and his talent in front of record producers and people of influence like Usher. Who is on your team? If they don’t you believe in you, then drop them and start recruiting new team members.

#3) Justin performed anywhere and everywhere.

When radio stations wouldn’t play his songs, Justin went around the country and performed for them live. That eventually got their attention, so the stations finally started playing his songs. I was inspired by the footage when they showed Justin performing at a water park… under a tent… in the rain. It was a horrible setting! Didn’t matter, he performed anyway. For presenters, I love this message! Before he could sell out Madison Square Garden, he had to blow them away at the water park. If we aren’t willing to get excited about speaking at a service club, and serving them, we don’t deserve the motivational rally in front of thousands. Success is earned through experience and referral. Want to speak at a national convention? Be amazing at the chapter in your hometown!

#4) He persisted.

Even when the talented Justin got turned down by many people of influence — including record producers — he kept at it. The first time he met Usher, Usher blew him off! When he had his second chance to sing for Usher, he listened. Usher then got passionate about Justin and his potential.

#5) Justin leveraged his list.

This is the first thing I teach speakers in my 52 Get Paid to Speak Tips. Build your list. Social media was crucial to Justin’s success.

He was first discovered on YouTube by Scooter. Scooter watched one video of his, thought it was pretty good. Then he watched another video… and another. Justin’s the one who put it out there, though. If it wasn’t for having the message out there, he’d still be playing at local high schools.

As his career grew, so did his influence (his list). This was the business lesson for me while watching the movie. Justin and his team leveraged his talents with Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. They notified his growing list each time he had a performance around the country. They started doing this even when he was still doing small venues. More and more fans were showing up for each performance.

I loved seeing what commotion he caused at the Omaha Mall. His fans swarmed the mall! It was crazy and impressive all at the same time. They even recorded a little silly song about that incident and it was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times!

One big ah-ha for me came from Scooter. When he was pitching Justin, he mentioned that kids these days are spending more time on social media than they are TV. That’s HUGE! That means that social media — and what’s out there — has more influence over kids than TV. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, I’m just saying that if that’s where more and more people are spending their time, then that’s where potential influence is.

I just checked Justin’s YouTube channel. At the moment he has more than 304 million views of his videos.

Keep in mind that social media will only leverage what you have. If your skills are less than average, you will leverage “less than average.” (See Lesson #1.) Even if you are born with natural talent, it still needs to be nurtured. If you don’t have natural talent, it’s up to you to get even more personal coaching.

Maybe you won’t sell out Madison Square Garden in 22 minutes, but you can learn from Justin’s example. You can get more people to know you and your expertise and get invited to speak more often at higher fees. You may very well take away different messages and lessons from this movie than I did. I think it’s a pretty good movie with lessons for people who want to be better on the platform and/or build their speaking business.

Go see the movie, and take notes!

By the way, Fripp and Darren have more than 3 life times of Justin Bieber in professional speaking and executive speech coaching experience.