Hello and Welcome to Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. Networking is an art or talent, but as an art or talent that can be taught and you can get better, of course, by practicing.
Darrell started out as a child actor, but he's really come into his own.
But he has. Since left the left the business and he's creating videos for professionals.
And it's very interesting for you to listen to. So if no, by by no other way, let me introduce Daryl Stern and he let him introduce himself. Let's let's start that way.
Well, super cool. If you're old enough to remember something called schoolhouse rock
I love that.
in the eighties, I was the voice of scooter computer on the first years of cartoons that let a little boy meet a computer and explain how a computer works. It's the ironic part of that is. Computers take input, they run the program, and they give you the output that you need. That was in 1983, and it's still true today, even with this new AI, where we've got to build the correct prompts to get the right output that we want. They still work the same.
Very good. Very good. So now let me ask you, just give us, and I know it's, it's, it's very difficult because you have quite a lengthy, lengthy experience, but give me an idea of what your journey was and how did you get where you are today?
Sure my dad was my first talent agent. I was Theo and Pippin when I was 7 years old. By age 9, I had an agent in New York City, so I'm living in New Jersey. 20 minutes out of New York City, so my dad would pick me up, or my mom from, you know, from junior high, would race in New York City. He would drive around the block.
We didn't have cell phones, so I would go up, audition, come down and try to find him to New York and get back in the car and go home. So that led to all kinds of things like being in a commercial for the very first Ms. Pac Man cartridge in 1983, of course, scooter computer, eventually being in the workshop for. Smile, which is a Broadway show written by Marvin Hamlisch. Now you theater people know he's the guy who wrote the chorus line and other famous Broadway shows. Howard Ashman wrote little little shop of horrors, the book, in other words, the lyrics for it. And then I was in the show with him in that play was Jody Benson and he got recruited and eventually wrote the little mermaid. Which in I graduated high school, it was on, of course, the movies, and Jodie Benson was the voice of Little Mermaid. I sh won the National Young Playwrights Festival, I went to college for theater, directing, acting, playwriting, all that. got into stand up comedy in the 90s, and then threw it all away when I saw a floppy disk that said HTML. we'll do that introduction that's up to like 1997, there, where I gave all that up to sit in front of a silly computer by myself all day.
Now you, you, you mentioned cartridge and that should bring most of us way back. Because before the floppy disc and everything else, there were actual cartridges that went into the Atari system. And the Atari system, of course, was the prelude to the Xbox and everything else.
Yeah, also, also the cartridges are the preload for SSD, which is called solid state storage, where now you can buy two terabytes on something that doesn't have moving parts. So that's the story
Of the cartridge that used to hold only like 2K. I'm gonna nerd out on you for a second.
A disk that spins, but they would crash and you, if you shook it or drop it, it would, it would lose all the memory. And then finally, they went back to the original model, which is make this a solid state unit, all electronics with the memory in it. So there you go. There's your nerdy
That's great. I love it. I love it because
Yeah.
probably 10 years older than you are. So I understand all of that.
Yes.
you give me a personal experience where effective networking impacted your career or business?
Well, cool. The ironic part is, although I've grown many net, you know, huge network online, I am still a shake hands, meet people in person. So. After my divorce, I moved to Denver in 2010 for four years. I was still doing work that I could get online, you know, all over the country. But then I met a wonderful lady named Angel Tussie. She ran a group called experience pros. I wrote them a 35 page proposal for their marketing. She thought it was so incredible. She put me on stage in front of their network group in 2014 and said, Oh my gosh, this Daryl Stern is a genius. You know, pay attention. And that's what rocketed my business to six figures.
I booked everybody in the room. and it still has been networking, which in during COVID, it was, you know, the viral, you know, the big zoom rooms with 500 people in them. And I just got very good at introducing myself in a way, you know, the 90 second elevator pitch or the 60 second. Hello. That would get them interested enough to schedule that appointment. And then, I'll caveat something else, so in Vegas, when I lived in Las Vegas, because I got married 2003, 2003 to 2006, I lived in Vegas and I sold time shoes. And I had an excellent sales coach by the name of Corey Posgay, and he taught me, use words like feel, don't use the word think, always answer a question with a question, and he taught me how to be a closer. being an actor and a playwright and being able to listen to somebody's intonation and their voice, what mood they're in, and then come back with something that would, you know, counter that or, or keep the mood positive or whatever you want to say about it. That may be able to close 40, 000 deals in 90 minutes.
I mean, these people walk in, they hate you. If you know the timeshare business, they don't want, they don't want to be on the tour. And 90 minutes later, I'm making them feel so guilty that they don't spend enough time with their kids. This is another whole podcast episode, you know. So that though was essential.
All these different things that I did were essential building blocks to then my video marketing business that then took off, you know, in 2015 all these other skills that really have to learn. You have to learn how to close a scale. You need to learn how to network and meet somebody and get them to schedule an appointment with you, be interested enough, right?
All of these aspects were building blocks of them what took my business to six figures and beyond.
Well, you hit on a few points that I really want to go back over. One thing was the pandemic, because ever since the pandemic, all people do are, you know, cell phones and zoom calls, and they forgot how to network. When I go on a stage, and I do a breakout session, or I do a work group, a workshop for a group.
I always ask them who, what's it, who's, who's 30 something. And they raised their hands, everything else. And I say, okay, what I'm about to explain to you is Greek. You've never heard it before. And you're like, why should I waste my time in networking like this? And forgot all about it. So that's what the pandemic had done for us.
But you brought out another point about listening. And you have to listen to the person that you're speaking to and more important than listen is the pause, right? So you're listening to what they have to say, you're pausing before you respond, and you don't respond with the next thing that you want to say, you respond with the next thing that That he was talking about where she was talking about this way, you have that conversation and you're what you do is you're building up your trust.
Now know you like you trust you and they'll do business with you. So know you,
Correct.
well, everybody, everybody knows you because you're a likable guy like you, not so much, you know, that narrows the field. So do you like you? And then trust you that builds up that, that a little bit. So let me ask you a question.
How about a personal experience of, of networking or communication, even public speaking that impacted your career?
First, I'm going to go back to what you were talking about. There are now kids that are building 2000, 2 million, 2. 5 million dollar businesses on two years by going on LinkedIn and creating viral stories. When Elvis shook his hips in the fifties. You know, they said, this is the devil, rock and roll is horrible, we gotta shut this down, it'll, it'll, it's gonna destroy society.
Well, sex, drugs, and rock and roll turned out to be okay, didn't destroy us, we're, we're still here, and we love the, you know, all that kind of stuff. So now today, when people say, ooh, they're taking selfies, and they're using filters, and they're doing this, and they're doing that, we think, oh my god, this is the devil again, it's the end of the world.
This is just the next generation, and they're doing just fine without us and our instruction. So, Yes, obviously, people still need to be able to communicate with each other and talk to each other face to face and do all these things, but at the second, on the flip side, those of us that are in the old generation, if we don't catch on to what's going on in terms of creating social proof, which is creating the illusion online, That I am talking to you in person, it's an illusion, because if you do the video marketing the way that I teach you how to do it, it feels to the person as if I'm talking to you, and that's, we can get into this too, this is acting and pausing and listening the person being there, so I'm going to give you a quick example, so what I do breaks the space time continuum, I'm going to get Star Trek on you, so in the movie Interstellar, With McConaughey, right?
He goes off into space, light speed. It's now 28 years later on Earth, but it's 3 hours later in outer space. Okay? His daughter, who he left at 7 years old, that's now 28 years old, sends him a video message through outer space. crying. is her father. His father's been gone now 20 years. Right? He gets the message.
She's in tears. He's in tears. Now, they're not talking face to face. She recorded the video here, beamed it throughout her space, and now he's receiving it, but she's being so personal, talking to her father, and telling him, catching him up on the 20 years of her life that she misses him, that he starts crying. That's where I come in and take the, what you're talking about, the experience of having a personal conversation in person, and creating the illusion of it through acting in theater. You can't do it without acting. What I, again, we're going to talk about this too, what I threw away, which is acting in theater and playwriting and all this kind of skills that I've had since I was three years old, and bringing that back into my business and realize that's how we do this.
So we create the illusion and make people feel the same way with the no like and trust that we would as if we went to coffee with you every day. You know, every every B and I meeting or whatever you want to call it for months and months to get, you know, like and trust you. So it's not throw one out and do the other.
It's it's all of it. There's not one thing that's more important than the other. Everything that you teach is essential. However, don't throw away or put down. You know, Hey, these kids don't talk on the phone. They don't believe me. They're, they're so fast at growing networks and communicating. They have discord boards now and telegram beaming out. And they had a young person. I have 35, 000 people paying attention to them nuts without doing it, without having to travel a single mile. So, so we've got to take a look at that too. Are us in the older generation, if we want to keep up and here's why. So yes, I would meet you in person, let's say in 1985, I would get to know you.
I like you. I trust you. So I would work with you. But today, if I did that and I don't like and trust you, I'm also going to Google you. And I'm going to see if everything you're saying is legit. And if you have any materials, reviews, Google reviews, you know, Google reviews, followers, internet, networks, or whatever, to see if you're for real, or if you're kind of just some charlatan, you're just, you know, is pretending to be somebody that you're not.
And that's social proof. So we've got to catch up to them. And yes, it's true that they've got to have some of the skills that maybe us old timers, right. Need to teach them as well.
That's so true. You know, I'm thinking about my son who's on discord like every night, and he has three Four screens, whatever. He's playing his games online with all of his friends while paying attention to the discord and certain text message. He's doing all this at the same time. And you know, that's, how he's networking without realizing he's networking.
Standup comedy my public speaking.
I'm going to mix the two together. I'm going to mix what I threw away, what I haven't done in 20 something years, and I can do the whole act. I have memorized, you know, from 25 years ago. No, 1996. I don't even know how long ago that was, you know, till now. Almost 30 years ago, right? Yeah. So I did that and all of a sudden it was fantastic, right?
All of a sudden people are laughing. They're coming over to me. They just love it. They get they understood and got my character and all that. So one of the big things that I. Preach. And I think that we do still is now I'm business version of me. I'm business version, and I'm not going to talk about, well, what I do for a living or how many, or I'm not that, but like how many kids I have, or, you know, that my mom had cancer 20 years ago, or any of these other things. That's a problem when we talk about social networking, social media. Social comes from a word, S O C I I, meaning alliance, because there was a city state in ancient Greece, ancient Rome. I'm not that smart, I just typed this into Wikipedia. Like, that's all I did, right?
Right.
creating alliances because they were fighting the Trojans and the Spartans, and two city states made an alliance. So that became the word social. Which means alliance. So if I'm creating an alliance, these people in your network are not necessarily your customers, but they're your allies, they're your fans, they're your cheerleaders, they're your emotional support when you can't, when you don't feel so well. So then if you really understand that, you say, well, what social stories would I tell?
If you're meeting with somebody, maybe they're a potential client or a friend. It doesn't matter. Like, what are you going to do every week? If you met him every week, you're going to tell him a different story. Oh my God, have you heard this one about my grandpa and the truck that broke down? Oh my God, it's a great story.
It's those kinds of grandpa stories, right? Grandpa's always got great stories. That is social media, right? And the better that you get. And as in public speaking, same skillset, again, telling stories is what makes public speaking work, correct? You tell me because
Absolutely. Very much.
picture of your dad with you, like back in 1970s and look at the funny haircut and all that stuff is what gets this engagement. You know, through the roof and we'll talk about what's next with follow up because you're going to let's talk about follow up next
that follow up, go ahead. Of
let me just stop you right there because you hit on a very important part of the public speaking. You know, you can't just go out and speak and speak about a dry dry anything. You know, you have to put storytelling into your speech, you have to put comedy into your speech, otherwise you're going to lose the audience, because today, everybody expects so much more, and you want to keep them involved.
And when I say, you know, when I first go on a stage, I say, okay, you know, everybody who has their cell phone out, raise your hand. And about 99 percent of the people raised their hand and they say, that is the problem. Can you turn it off? Can you put it away and have people like, well, no, you can't. Why would you want to do that?
Why would you want to take my cell phone away? Because you
have to be attentive to the person
Okay. So
all the cell phones on because I tell them take a picture of me and tweet it out or send it out on Instagram with these hashtags and I'll, and I'll get more attention and I'll get more attention to myself. I want it. It's integrated in. So again, this is the generation gap. And also, I say, if you can't hold an audience's attention, then you need to be a better public speaker. They could be eating food. Let's eliminate the phone. They could be eating food. They could be reading a book. They could be whatever. It doesn't matter. If you're not holding their attention, then you're not holding their attention.
It has nothing to do with the phone. Now, here though, is where we get into the next part. So I can, so you said you have to put the stories in and you don't, you don't force it. You don't put the stories in
no, absolutely not.
they're naturally there. And. now I just, and I just jumped, oh, so the next highest level is what I call energy variance.
Now this comes from the Stanislavski method of acting, Dustin Hoffman, all the great actors, you know, you have this. does that mean? Okay, so, opera, you know silent movies, da da da, right? We're all over acted because there was no amplification, right? You had to do opera really loud because there was no amplification.
Right? So it's all overdone. It's all overdramatic. Right? Then, the Russians, who had been through wars and bloodshed and horriblism that we can't speak of, this woman by the name of Stanislavski created this method of dramatic acting, and they started writing dramatic, Theater, right? That was this is reality now. what they said was, if you're sad, right, you're going to pull up the actual memory of when you were sad and relive it. And here's what the problem is with some public speaking in the storytelling where you say, well, I have stories in it. So why isn't anybody talking to me? Because you're not reliving the story.
You're really excited on stage because you're. You are actually really learning how to put yourself in the mode of acting, which is not fake. A lot of people think, Oh, I'll acting. That's fake. It's not fake. It's being more authentic. It's actually putting, it's actually having you feel the emotion that you're set talking about when you're expressing it. And that's what Tony Robbins has. Oprah Winfrey, you name it. All the
I'm going to go ahead and run through the code, and I'm going to show you what it looks like. very much.
Not interesting, not interested in it, you lost me. And three seconds into the presentation, I'm gonna go pick up my phone and read a book. So, all the things you're saying are spot on. I just caution when you say, well, oh, but the phone, you know, is bad.
I say, no, the phone is great. You're not gonna take it away. It's like, it would be like saying when television came out. Right? And then let's say they were all watching television or whatever and you're trying to get the attention in a room and you say, Oh, everybody turn off the televisions. They're not. You just got to be better at what you get them to focus on
thing that I, one thing that I say about phone is that major distraction. And when you're sitting down with somebody, and if your phone goes off, you immediately look at your phone and if it vibrates, if whatever you, so you don't have 100% of their attention. So by
that's
on. So that's just disrespect. Okay. If somebody has their phone on and it's beeping and ringing. Yeah, that's disrespect. There have been Broadway shows. On Broadway, Living Theater, where they have stopped the show
over to this person and say, what the, are you doing? And they've been yelled at and kicked out of the theater because that's just disrespect. So can be on silent. You can be taking pictures and putting them on Instagram, all those kinds of things where nobody's, you know, they know it's not a disturbance to anyone, but I mean, that's just like, they have it at the movie theater now, right? Silence your phone. Somebody's in front of you and they got the phone is bright and it distracts from the movie because the light and all that kind of,
I'm trying to bring this all around. So let me ask you a question. What essential tip would you give somebody that's looking to improve their networking or sales skills?
Take an acting class, take a theater class, take a playwriting class,
comedy class, join an improv comedy group. We are in a world of media, video media performance. If you can't, if you aren't seen and nobody gets to know, like, and trust you, you won't attract any attention. The attention that you want, and of course, public speaking and join a Toastmasters and learn how to go to tell a really good story and all the other skills. This is now a performance driven media based on your ability to be more of an actor and a public speaker. It has nothing to do with the technology. is the thing people ask all the time, right? Well, how does LinkedIn work? How do you, you click and you post. That's how it works. Click post.
To what you're talking about, right? When you get down to it and you're going to sell, right? Either in person or in a Zoom or anything like that.
Now we go into Listening, generous listening, which is just let them tell their whole story. say anything or go, yeah. Huh. Yeah. just let
Interaction.
You know that they all, especially in digital marketing, my God, do they have horror stories of all the ways they've been ripped off before and the whole thing and where their website was before and how it crashed and oh my God, and I don't know, and all this kind of thing. The funniest one that I know is when people say, well, we have videos. We're on YouTube. they're proud of that. You know, Oh, we have, Oh, we, I have a podcast. And then I just turned to him and say, okay, how much money did that make you? Do you know the total of that?
Okay. You
local plumbing, right?
And I have the van with the plumbing, you know, the, the, the phone number on it. And then it gets me the income that is fantastic for my business. No, you don't have to be on the internet. You don't have to be on the internet. You can be a public speaker and just teach workshops like you're doing. You don't have to be on the internet. It's just, It's just that it's an amplification device because there are people that need you millions and millions of them. 9 billion now. I remember in eighth grade in the eighties, there were like 4 billion people. Now there's 9 billion. I mean, in our
Let me ask you a question. All right
it and all that kind of stuff. So
is, is essential, you know, part of it. All of it is a
block to success.
We're, we're trying, we're trying to get the word out. But
no, no, no. Do, hold on. Do or do not. There is no try. Master Yoda in 1980, the Empire
absolutely. I am doing you're absolutely right. Splinter. Out of everything you told me, what's your favorite marketing tactic?
My favorite marketing tactic is I do my stern storming, which is content extraction, I extract your whole life. And then you have me in your home with you and we start shooting videos. You forget that you're making videos that people are going to see. I just get you in a comfortable enough position that you just open up and really tell the stories from your life.
I'll give you an example. A lady named Jen Dupresis. She's a billionaire. I mean, she sold a billion dollars worth of mortgages and all that. Very stoic lady. Yes. No. Running my business. Yes. This. And the re and the the reasons why people get so stoic in the future is because they had tragedy in the past. as I'm talking to her, one video she talks about how her mom dropped her off at the bar when she was 8 years old. She had to go in there, tug on her dad's leg, and her dad turned around and said, Who are you? And then two videos later, she's crying because that was her dad. That was the only dad that she knows and she's in tears. That's the viral video. It's the bearing of your humanity because we all have tragedy. We all have had to overcome a lot in this life. And it's the stopping just saying, Look at me, with the Queen of England, and I paid for this certificate. I'm so important. And instead doing this humanity story, which is, you know, showing the real pain that you've been through. The implication in that is, we've seen your other videos, we know how successful you are, but all of a sudden you become approachable. I think this is important in networking and public speaking too. If you're so advanced, they'll think, wow, that's, he's awesome, but I'm, I'm, I'm not worthy of that. Right?
So you have to bear your humanity too in this kind of thing. And that's why it's social. And you tell real stories from your life that not aren't all look at me and how great I am.
All right. So let me ask you a question. Let's just start to close things up. Give me one takeaway from everything that we spoke about that my audience can use today. Okay. Okay.
fast.
One of the ones that I did recently has a half a million impressions on LinkedIn. A half a million people saw Daryl Stern in that hour or that day, and that's incredible. The, the, the, the, it's just a method of vernacular. In other words, what format then goes in that one minute thing that will make it do what we want it to do, which is bring massive amounts of exposure for you.
It's, you know, networking tips. I wouldn't put down the phone. I would put up the networking skills. Yes. Right? Because you're not going to, you know, people, put that on your phone while they're watching you on the phone. You know what I mean? Like, you know what I mean?
Okay. Have a cool day.
More, right? Will Michael explain the rest of the program to you? You know, what is the secret that Michael is talking about today? Like just tune in to the next episode or click here and sign up for the class. Right. And that's the theater of it. That's, we, they're born, what bared witness to you in In television, movies, serial dramas, all this stuff, all of our lives goes back to the 1930s. there's a couple different tips that I made into one tip.
No, that's Daryl. That's that's great Listen, if anybody wants to get hold of you and wants some of your services or just wants to learn all about Daryl Where would they go?
So, if you really want to scale and you really have an ego and you really want to put in the work that it takes to get up there and basically take over your industry, you can go to sternmarketing. agency and schedule your audition to go sternstorming with me. So that's sternmarketing. agency, there's no dot com, and you can sign up and schedule an audition to go sternstorming.
That's great. Daryl. I can't thank you enough. You gave some great insights and forward to talking to you in the future and Hopefully everybody they want to learn about acting about acting How to market themselves or the comedic value. Please go see Darrell or listen, just ask him, ask him anything. He's good.
All right. Have a great day.
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