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Hey, what's our friend? Greg Baldwin here. Welcome back to the speaker lab podcast. Good to have you here

with us today.

Hope you're having a great day, whether you are listening on the treadmill or in the car or making dinner. Appreciate you making us a little tiny part of the day. Hey, before we get to today's guest, let me remind you that our new book, the successful speaker, is out. I know you're probably sick of me talking about it, but we really want you to check this book out.

If you are serious about speaking, we are serious about helping you get your message into the world. So the book is called The Successful Speaker, Five Steps for Booking Gigs, getting paid, and building your platform. And it walks you through a step-by-step process of exactly how you can book your gigs. Whether that's one gig, whether it's your first gig, whether it's your 100th gig. It is for you. So we've heard from several speakers who are brand new and speakers who are veterans and pros. We said that there's several little tips and tricks and tactics that they learned and took away as well. So again, the book is the successful speaker out now. Go pick it up wherever books are sold. All right. So today we are talking with my friend Sreeny Rao. Sreeny runs the site and the podcast, Unmistakable, creative, very smart, very wise guy. It's got a lot to say and a lot of great insights that he shares. We're talking about his speaking journey, how he got into speaking. We also spend some time where he talks about creativity, kind of this broad, big, big, almost squishy type of topic. How do you pitch that to organizations and companies and how do you show what the real value is of that topic? We talk about that. We also talk about how speaking fits into his business in terms of everything else that he does. We also talk about for him, he said that he's much more of an artist than an entrepreneur. But if you focus just on the speaking and not on the booking the gigs, you're not going to make any progress in your business. So we talk about how he has found the balance of that. We talked about how he has kind of his framework and filter for picking out new projects and different things that he's going to potentially pursue in addition to speaking and building his business

beyond the stage so big wide conversation I think you're going to enjoy this let's jump right

into this conversation with sereney row of unmistakable creative enjoy it's a friend's

grant baldon here welcome back to the speaker lab podcast good to have you here with us today. Today got my buddy Shreeny Rau hanging out with us from Unmistakable Creative. Shreeny, thanks for joining us. How are you today? I am great. Thank you so much for having me. All right. So first of all, let's get a big picture, Unmistakable Creative. You're an author. You have the podcast. You have a lot of things going. Give us the big picture of what all you

do within that and how does speaking fit into that world. Yeah, I mean, I think that you mentioned that I'm author, you know, podcaster speaker. I think the real funny thing is that I am known for the unmistakable creative, but I want to, you know, to emphasize this because I've always hated the term podcaster, I think it's incredibly limiting. I personally, I'm so much more than that. So, you know, what I think is that labels create limitations. So I always tell people, I'm, you know, a storyteller who happens to use audio as a, you know, medium for telling my stories. But I also happen to do it with speaking and writing. And, you know, the whole reason the podcast started is because one of my friends, the guy who was the co-founder of the podcast, said he's like, you're an average writer, but you're a great interview, which is hilarious considering I write books now. But to this day, I still don't disagree with him. Like, I am a much better interviewer than I am a writer. I think that as in your interview, it's one of those things that came very naturally to me. And, you know, writing was one of those things. This is what I always say is like, I write for myself. I do interviews for my audience, you know, and if my audience happens to like my writing, then great, if not, I don't care. I don't know how that has actually led to a book deal. It's not a philosophy. I think I would necessarily recommend. It's funny because in one way, it is the entire ethos of my second book. That's the core message of creating for an audience of one. So, you know, I think basically the way to describe it is if the podcast was the hub, then everything else is a spoke and speaking is one of those spokes that really honestly just kind of came about somewhat organically. I think that if you host a podcast, you know you know, if you're good at it, you inevitably start to develop communication skills. But presentations always came very naturally to me. I was, you know, it's funny because I was just thinking back to college because I was just writing about this. I had a professor in a entrepreneurship class who said, you're a hell of a salesman. Now, I mistook that to me and I should go work in sales and I realized after 10 years, I hated working in sales. But what I realized he caught onto was the fact that I just felt very comfortable in front of an audience. My sister jokingly says, she was like, I hate being the, she hates being the center of attention. And I was like, yeah, that's probably why I do what I do because I have absolutely no issues with it. In fact, we had her wedding and I actually turned her wedding into a paid speaking gig. Like my speech for my sister's wedding led to a speaking gig. I was like the most profitable five minutes of my life. I was like, you charged your sister? I was like, no. But I understood. I was like, hey, I got a captive audience. And, you know, I look good in a tux and I give great speeches nobody here stands a chance

against me. Now I want to dig into more like just your story kind of how you got into speaking,

how speaking fits in. But I'm curious as someone where the podcast is such a hub, do you feel like

that the podcast has helped you to get speaking gigs? Yeah. I mean, it has. It's funny because I've been

very, I've been very finicky about

how we promote things on the podcast. And like, I'm, you know, I try to avoid self-promotion almost to a fault. I'm getting to the point where I'm like, all right, you know, what, now it's a non, you know, non-issue. When people get mad, I'm like, look, we're running a business, not a charity. and if they get mad you know what i'm like there's an unsubscribe button there like if you're not

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