#2050 Dedicated to Dr. Rob Gilbert
I just had a nice talk with Dr. Rob Gilbert. Rob is one of my lifelong mentors. I met him in the early nineties, and we quickly became friends. Rob is responsible, more than anyone else, for my initial launch into the paid speaking world and for much of my development as a speaker. On stage, I use so much of what Rob has given me that I cannot distinguish between my original material and what I borrowed from him.
Dr. Gilbert is a professor of sports psychology at Montclair State University. He is also an excellent speaker and gets hired by big organizations and sports teams to give motivational keynotes, stir up a locker room, or work one-on-one to elevate anyone’s game, whether in sports or business.
A couple of weeks ago, in this blog, I mentioned my godfather, Uncle Tommy, who went from telegram delivery boy to senior VP at Western Union Telegraph after dropping out of high school and doing a two-year stint in the Marine Corps. My uncle not only showed me what was possible; he believed in me and steered me into a sales career, even though I was already fast-tracked to an NYC civil service job that was waiting for me as soon as I was discharged from the Navy.
In Uncle Tommy and Rob,, I found two people who had achieved great heights in what I aspired to do, and two mentors who believed I could do it too. They saw me on the bottom rung and reached down to help me start climbing the ladder. I wouldn't be where I am today (in a place of happiness and satisfaction) if I hadn't been fortunate enough to have these two men as my mentors.
I remember meeting Dr. Rob when I hired him to speak at my company's sales kickoff meeting. He absolutely wowed us. When the meeting ended, I told him I aspired to be a professional speaker and asked if I could pick his brain. He invited me out to eat and gave me a master class in professional speaking. I vividly remember him comparing giving an hour-long keynote to playing music. He said,
“Frank, speaking is more like jazz than classical piano. You don’t want to memorize a speech note for note as you would a sonata. You want to have a few central ideas and a few stories that connect them and then feel the crowd and go where the talk takes you.” I said, “How will I do that? How will I know what to say next and next and next?” He said, “It’s in you. Trust yourself. You will know what notes to play based on what you hear and what you feel. It will come.”
He dropped a bunch of other gems on me that day at a diner in Little Falls, NJ, and I have remembered and used them all. Rob took five years off of my learning curve as a speaker. After that day, I called him at least a dozen times to talk about specific talks I was hired to do, and he gave me stories, quotes, games, and, most of all, the confidence that I could deliver the talk.
Had I gone to speaker university for a degree, I don’t think I would have learned as much as Rob taught me in our few meetings and phone calls.
His generosity and belief in me shaped me as a speaker.
Great mentors are like that. As Rob says, “A mentor is someone whose hindsight can be your foresight.”
I can tell you that NOTHING can up your game as much as a great mentor can. (If you find one that is at least half as generous as Dr. Rob)
When I wrote B2B is really P2P, I interviewed many successful businesspeople. Every one of them spoke about early mentors, and one, Peter Chieco, said (and I paraphrase),
The most important advice I can offer someone looking to be successful is to find someone at the top of their game, doing what you aspire to do, invite them out for coffee or lunch, and ask a lot of questions.
If you do nothing else I have suggested in the past two thousand- plus posts, do this. Seek relationships with people who are great at what you want to be great at.
PS: For more than thirty years, Dr. Rob has shared a three-minute motivational message every day of the year. It’s called Success Hotline, and I start most mornings by calling 973-743-4690. I strongly recommend that you do the same.
Own Your Sales Gene…