Study after study shows that we are being inundated with more messages, advertising, marketing, and distractions than ever before in history. Between the TV, newspapers, magazines, books, e-books, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, iPads, iPhones, billboards, placards, signage, e-mail, radio, streaming radio, podcasts, faxes, and voicemail, how are we ever going to be heard in this noisy world?
And being heard is only one part of the problem. Being heard the way we want to be heard and getting our message out clearly is entirely another thing.
I'm an expert on this. I have this column, for which I am extremely grateful. I have a blog at MensFamilyLaw.com. I have divorce and child custody related videos on my MensFamilyLaw YouTube channel. I have my "A Man's Guide" series on Amazon.com. I have my Men's Family Law podcast on iTunes. I do Google ads, I do YouTube ads, I have multiple websites, and I do public speaking to groups like the Rotary Club, corporate and social media conferences, Toastmasters and anyone who wants to hear me.
As an expert I follow the world of marketing and messaging, and it's not easy. There are profound mistakes made by giant corporations.
For example, United Airlines spends millions of dollars a year promoting their company, their quality of service, their on-time records, etc. But one time they had a passenger who was traveling with a guitar. Somehow the guitar was broken in transit. Hey, it happens. But that's not the end of the story.
How they handled the damaged guitar is what became the story. They didn't take responsibility for the damage and cut the owner a check. They didn't arrange for a guitar company to donate a new one. They stonewalled. Big mistake. Huge.
Musicians like to write about the events in their lives, and then share them. Well in the age of the Internet, with everything being online, and it has become so extremely easy to produce a message that can go viral, it's not hard to see that this musician would do exactly that.
Dave Carroll's YouTube video, United Breaks Guitars, has now been viewed almost 14 million times. It's a four-and-a-half-minute video that's 59 million minutes, almost 1 million hours of bad publicity. Then there are the thousands of articles that have been written about the video.
That level of publicity became great for Dave Carroll. He went on to become an Internet sensation, has a Wikipedia page about the song, and he's a sought-after public speaker.
Which brings me to the point of this article. Just because you have a message, doesn't mean it is being heard the way you want it to be heard. Dave Carroll was being heard, but he wanted to fine tune his messaging because he was going to do a TED talk. He needed to be coached.
We all need to be coached at some point in our lives. Most of us are done with coaches after high school, and certainly after college. But the most successful people and organizations always rely on additional coaching. They need an outside perspective to see what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong, to keep their messaging and purpose on track.
Dave Carroll talked with my friend John Bates of ExecutiveSpeakingSuccess.com to coach him and bring a new perspective to improve his performance. He said this about John, "I can honestly say he is improving the world by doing what he does."
And that is partly why New Vision Foundation is bringing in John Bates to do a training next Wednesday to improve the messaging of nonprofits and members of the public who want to attend.
New Vision Foundation is another awesome creation from Paul Cummings and the work they do on the campus of New Roads is extraordinary. They boast of programs that reduce recidivism rates by 1,500 percent. They work with nonprofits to help low-income families survive and thrive.
John will be giving his "Speaker Bootcamp" next Wednesday. I am scheduled to do a complimentary guest appearance and a portion of my presentation, "How To Improve Credibility Through Content Writing." My co-author and friend Steven May will be doing a presentation on how to grow your social media footprint with Facebook as well.
I am honored to share the stage with men like John Bates and Steven May, at a facility like New Roads for the New Vision Foundation.
We will be at The Capshaw-Spielberg Center for Arts & Educational Justice (Leadership Center, second floor), 3131 Olympic Blvd. in Santa Monica, on March 26 from 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Early bird tickets are $30 until 6 p.m. on March 19; after that they are $50. www.eventbrite.com
If you'd like to come out and learn from a great coach, I guarantee you'll leave with an improved skill set of how to have your message heard in this noisy world.
David Pisarra is a Los Angeles divorce and child custody lawyer specializing in father's and men's rights with the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He welcomes your questions and comments. He can be reached at dpisarra@pisarra.com or (310) 664-9969. You can follow him on Twitter @davidpisarra
