S6E18 Nikolaj Kloch | Public Speaking, Career Changes, & Leading with Value - Being an Engineer

Episode Transcript
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Nikolaj Kloch (00:00):
It gets way easier the more you do it. It'll

(00:03):
never be as hard as that firsttime you get up and stand in
front of other people. But ifyou can speak as an engineer,
you will go places.

Aaron Moncur (00:10):
You Hello and welcome to another exciting
episode of The being an engineerpodcast today, we have kind of a

(00:30):
an interesting, unique episode.
We are going to talk aboutengineering a little bit, but
more than that, we're going tofocus on our guests journey into
a different career, while stillstill continuing to hold on to
to some extent, the old careerof engineering. Nikolaj Kloch is
an aerospace engineer turnedleading videographer and content
creator for public speakers.

(00:54):
Nikolaj has collaborated withclients who have spoken at
renowned organizations such asAWS Jaguar, or Jaguar, as the
Brits said, rolls Roy, RollsRoyce and Airbus, his unique
approach leverages hisengineering background to help
public speakers enhance theirengagements, grow their
following and increase theirbookings. Nikolaj, I thank you

(01:15):
so much for joining us today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Aaron, so I can't rememberexactly how I came across you,
or maybe you came across me. Idon't remember now on LinkedIn,
but I thought your story wassuper interesting. And I've been
looking for not every episode,for sure, but every now and
then, I think it would be fun todo some non engineering, but

(01:39):
still interesting to engineerstype of episodes, and I thought
this would be a perfectopportunity to do so. So you you
started out as an aerospaceengineer and then eventually
made a shift in your career,although I think I remember you
telling me that you still areinvolved in engineering as well.
Is that accurate? That isaccurate. So how did you let's

(02:03):
start with the first questionthat we all start with, what
made you decide to become anengineer? And then if you could
tell us a little bit about yourjourney into becoming a
videographer and working withpublic speakers. Yeah,
absolutely.

So I kind of stumbled into engineering. I
think a lot of us like to buildthings and see them. I stay away
from software engineeringstrictly because I like seeing
it in the real world. I likegetting my hands on it, you
know. So I'm half Danish, hencethe name Nikolaj. I started
playing with Legos as a kid.
They're Danish as well, so itfits. And I kind of just started
building things and fixingthings and seeing kind of where

(02:37):
it took me. That took me toGeorgia College, and then I
basically went physics. And Iwas like, What can I do with
this? And then I was like, oh,there's a dual degree program
with Georgia Tech, you know, andit just kind of kept going into
it. How do I apply physics? Howdo I go into building with
physics, mechanical engineering?
And then I kind of stepped intomy master's program, and I

(02:58):
wanted to travel, so I went toDenmark and went to grad school
over there, traveled a littlebit, and then took it from there
into aerospace, because thebackground of physics and
mechanical engineering. I mean,you can find a mechanical
engineer in almost any field. Ithink we all know that it's the
jack of all trades, master ofnone. So I went from, I guess,

(03:22):
Denmark, and started applyingaround. Then I was like, What's
the coolest job that I couldapply this to? Again, just
thinking, how can I take this tothe next level? Went into
aerospace. I was a propulsionstructures design engineer.
Worked on some commercial andmilitary aircraft, some really
common, huge platforms, and Ibasically got to go in and do

(03:43):
clean sheet design on thegovernment side, which was
fantastic. I absolutely lovedoing the clean sheet design.
It's a very niche thing in termsof aerospace, because a lot of
these planes have a problem withthem. And you come in and you've
got a bounding box, and you havea list of requirements that you
have to meet. And let's say it'sfour by four by four, right? You

(04:05):
have to fit your design in thistiny box with the clean sheet
design. We were designing theentire missile launcher on
structures, frames, everything.
Kim Milley manufacturing, weactually saw the parts that we
designed, and they produced themand put them up on a engine test
stand, and it was really, reallyfun. And I started figuring out
what the systems were incorporate, and I started

(04:27):
figuring out how to basicallytake what people were telling me
to do and then run with that. SoI started going into a
leadership course, and I startedleading, like 100 gifted
engineers at Boeing, so I was onthis path, and then I was
thinking, Okay, this is fun, butthere's a part of me that
believes that true intelligenceis when you build something

(04:48):
without having your handheld andcorporate has a lot of kind of
red tape structured everywhere,right? You're kind of guided
down this path, this path,you're told kind of what you.
And do when I'm like, I havethis great idea. This would be
incredible if we implementedthis. And they're like, is it on
any other airplane? No. Is itworking anywhere else? No. And
I'm like, but it would work.

(05:11):
Let's try it. But you know, alot of these companies want to
do, what works, what's quick,what's the best solution,

minimize risk.
Exactly.

That's how it always is. So I went from that
and I started kind of peekingout and starting businesses.
I've done a marketing agency.
The other business that I'mstill involved with on
engineering is medicalwearables. So I actually have a
license deal. We just signed forroyalties in a medical wearable
industry. I can't talk too muchuntil everything's signed, but

(05:44):
I'm excited for that one, andthen I'll have a bigger company
that's doing like, 8r and Dengineers, and they have
manufacturing engineers. So webuilt it, we did clinical
trials. I have a surgeon and aphysical therapist. That's my co
founders. And you see the wholebusiness aspect. You deal with
lawyers, which aren't alwaysfun. There's some great ones,
though, too. You take theprototyping, you 3d print, you

(06:07):
basically build something up andout of nothing from a real world
problem. And I was only engineeron the team there's only three
of us, so I had to be right. Andthen you figure out sales and
outreach and marketing and howto make these contracts, and
then you start building that up.
And from this, I had to startpicking up the camera and

(06:29):
starting to do more content. Andit's almost the natural
progression you learn thebusiness skills, you build a
skill stack, and that's kind ofhow you become more well
rounded. So I've always lovedpublic speaking I was in fifth
grade and I was in aToastmasters class and I thought
how can I bridge a business withsomething I love getting around

(06:52):
people that are really highvalue I mean these people invest
in their own trainings coursesthey're always paying for more
information, not shortcuts buthow can I get better. So I was
thinking, how could I bridge allthese gaps, and that was a
natural progression and then mywife and I traveled for 10
months we just got back threeweeks ago, six months in Europe,

(07:14):
because we both have familythere so we stayed free food,
free laundry free housing, andthen we went to Asia for four
months. And during this time, Iwas building out the video
editing side. So I was editingvideos, doing the outreach,
getting clients that were publicspeakers, and I was strictly on
the editing side. I had to flyback to New Orleans for a
conference and a few otherplaces to actually film and get

(07:38):
the content on the front end. Sonow I'm pushing on that side
heavier to become the wellrounded business. I think the
beauty of engineers is that Itruly believe that any engineer
is very smart, and that theycould just kind of take off the
ropes on their brain, that theycould figure out that business
is just systems. It's findingout what works taking that and

(08:00):
actually, like deriving fromthat to see what the basics are,
and then pulling from those toiterate on, you know, go in
cycles to actually producesomething of value that you
could do yourself. You know,that's a robotics, a drone like,
whatever that might be inwhatever niche it's all systems.
The business side is allsystems. And I think that's the

(08:23):
beauty that we study so hard inschool, at our jobs and
everything like that, that thisis easy, if you can just kind of
separate the guard rails fromsuccess. You know, if there's a
straight shoot, it's a loteasier to crush it and go all
the way through. But if there'sno rails it's still just as easy
to get through but you kind ofhave to guide yourself along and

(08:46):
that's going to be a gutter ballhere and there Right? Bowling
analogy you're going to makemisses. You're going to have
flops. But if you could fail,quick and I think engineers are
afraid of failing, I know I amso if you can just kind of push
through that failure process. Imean, you've been doing this
podcast for how long did yousave? Four years? Aaron,

no longer six.
Five years. Now, five years.

You've had some some podcasts that were great,
and you've had some that werenot so. Great you pushed through
and look at how refinedeverything is. Now you've got
the audio

they were, they were all 10 out of 10. Thank you
very much. Nikki, one, no flaws,not like you and I just went
through 10 minutes of technicaltroubleshooting before we
started this very episode notlike that happened.

Oh, don't tell them that Aaron I wasn't gonna
rat you out

so let's talk about videography for a second
here How did you know that youcould make money doing this?
Because that's that is thepinnacle question of every new
business, can you make moneydoing it?

I think the simplest way to explain that is,
if you can hit 1% of your goal,you can hit 20, 3050, so if you
can just find one paying clientfor that specific. Specific
problem and asked to be aproblem behind it, then you can
make money off of that. So justtest it, try and hit that as
quickly as possible. And the wayI did that was just outreach. I

(10:12):
edited videos before I reachedout to them, and I would
actually give them value upfront. I've always led with
value. I think it's the easiestway to grow anything if you want
good grades in school. Theeasiest way is to do the course
assignment ahead of time andshow up to your professor, you
know, and talk with them,showing that I put in the work.

(10:32):
Can you help me with this? Andthen it's the same relationship
with everyone in the entireworld. If you can show up with
some value and be genuinelyinterested. The sales takes care
of itself. The sales process iswhere they die and they're
trying to how do I persuadethem? How do I force their
words? How do I close them?

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I think there's an analogy here.
You talked about companies forwho you worked previously, and

(11:43):
they didn't want to let you trynew ideas, because it
represented risk, right? You'reyou're introducing risk into the
equation. So if you can de riska opportunity, a proposition for
a prospective customer, becomesmuch, much easier to convert
that, that prospect into acustomer. I have a very short
example that it did not turn outperfectly, but I got part of the

(12:05):
way there, and I think I wouldnot have gotten any of the way
there if I hadn't started withvalue. I train in Brazilian Jiu
Jitsu, and I've done so for manyyears, and unfortunately, three,
three months ago, I tore my ACL.
I actually am having surgerytomorrow, so that'll be fun. But

(12:25):
anyway, I thought to myself, howcould I make lemonade out of
lemons here? Right? It's, it'snot cheap to get an ACL repair.
Let me tell you that. It's many1000s of dollars. And so I was
talking with the surgeon aboutthis. And I had this thought,
you know, this surgeon, heprobably needs to market
himself, right? He has to findnew patients. And so I had this

(12:47):
idea, what if I, like, created adocumentary from, like, a
genuine story from the patient'seyes, of what it's like to tear
your ACL and then get itrepaired, go through the
surgery, the PT, you know, allof these things. Surely there
are other out people out therewho would find that useful. And
maybe I can bring some businessto this surgeon. So I got in

(13:09):
touch with, I found themarketing director for this,
this hospital and on LinkedIn.
And instead of just reaching outand say, Hey, I have this idea,
I actually filmed, like alittle, you know, short segment,
couple minute pilot, right?
Beautiful lighting in thebackground. And I told a little
bit of the story, and I sent itto him, and said, Hey, this is

(13:30):
what I think it could look like.
Are you interested in talking?
He's like, Yeah, I am interestedin talking. And we got on the
phone. He was like, hey, this.
It was awesome that you createdthis, you know, two minute
segment for me, so I could seeexactly what it would look like.
The lighting was great, theaudio quality was great. This is
really cool. Anyway, long storyshort, it the trade I was
proposing didn't work out, but Igot the meeting, and, you know,

(13:50):
it's a new contact there. Whoknows what could come of that?
Because I started with value.

Oh, beautifully, beautifully done. Aaron, you led
with value. Came in strong. Youknow, you showed what you could
do. That is exactly how to doit. And I just want to say I
think the industry average is 6%for conversion on sales. So that
is, I mean, it's going to take alot, right? Yeah, but you're
showing up like that. You justgot a portfolio builder as well

(14:17):
in the portfolio,

absolutely, yeah.
So you mentioned that in orderto make money at a business,
there has to be a problem thatyou're solving. What is the
problem that you're solving withthese public speakers?

So the big the best way to frame it is, if you
want to get paid more, you haveto look like you're charging
more. I know that simplifieseverything down, but the best
way to look like you're speakingat these huge events is to get
somebody professionally filmingyou and editing you and then
also talking with them. Sothere's ways of guiding

(14:53):
videography, as you know,prompting people with questions,
prompting people saying, Hey,you. For example, there's a
content unit. Alex hormozi talksabout this, and it's basically a
problem, agitate, solve. Soyou're the classic storytelling
arc. If you could build thatinto the public speaking
presentation, which they shouldbe speaking like this, because

(15:14):
it's very satisfying to themind. If you're given a problem,
you're agitating that problem,giving pain points, if it's
performance, you're tired,you're dragging, you can't
focus. And then you solve thatby saying you need sleep, water.
You know, all of thesesolutions. So just packaging it
from this vantage point, and youcome in and of course, you'd say

(15:35):
you guide them along thisprocess, because it's the
overall process, from sales allthe way through the end product,
which is that content, the topof funnel that's actually
feeding people in so they canbook more speaking engagements.
And really quick, I just kind ofwant to note that a CRM, a
customer relationship manager,management system, is built for

(15:58):
engineers. It is the easiestthing to do in the world, if you
just look at the very top, youhave outreach conversation,
started sales, and you gothrough this entire step by step
process, and you just make anExcel spreadsheet, and you drag
people along. You couldliterally see who's converting.
So if 80% of your funnel isdropping out at the very top,

(16:21):
you can see, okay, I need to fixthis. Then you fix that for 14
days, if it works. Move on tothe next problem in that sales
funnel. It's the simplest thingin the world, if it's not
convoluted with all of thesebusiness terms. You know, it is
built for engineers to actuallybuild a business and actually
run from there. They're the bestpeople to do this with, because

(16:43):
they love numbers, and numbersdon't lie, and numbers are easy
to fix. You don't know numbers.
You don't know what's happening.
You don't know where water'sfalling out of the bucket, what
holes to plug right? And if youcould just take that system and
work on it for six months, thinkabout how much better that sales
pipeline could be, it would betremendous. Your life would be

(17:04):
changed. But it a lot of peopledon't like numbers, and I think
that's where engineers stand outsystems you know, going through,
seeing the basics, and then reengineering it, from what you
want back to where you are.

Just out of curiosity, what CRM are you
using? So

I tell anyone starting Excel spreadsheet, put
their names in and a column withall the column you know, types
like outreach, connections,conversation starter, blah,
blah, blah. But I use go highlevel. It's pretty premier one.
You can do a bunch ofautomations, texting, follow up
emails. Those are big ones. Ofcourse, if it's a client you

(17:44):
really want, never use theautomation on them. You should
always do a custom email,especially if you have the time
never, ever automate somethingif you really want that
customer, if it's not a customerthat you really want, then I
would leverage AI, right? That'swhere you can really take that
and run with it. And

Why would, why would you spend time on a
customer that you don't reallywant playing devil's advocate
here?

So it's a double edged sword, right? Because when
you're starting out, you needall the clients you can get.
When you get better, that's whenyou start being able to get
choosy and picky with who youwork with. So it's a balance,
and there will be a time ineveryone's career where they get
to say no, and it's going tofeel like I have to say no or
something. It's going to bereally heavily weighing on you,

(18:30):
but that is the best thing inthe world to do for you long
term, is when you can actuallysit down and go, Hey, we're not
the best fit. I don't think Ican give you what you're
wanting, you know, or settingexpectations in that call very
firmly is something that youalso have to look at and do,
because if you over promise andunder deliver, that's how you

(18:53):
mismatch expectations. If youunder promise and over deliver,
that's how you really get thatthat middle ground of a great
referral, referrals are theeasiest way. It's a warm lead
coming in to get more business,right? So really talking through
that and then doing follow upemails. The best businesses in
the world do outreach to theirclients, their current clients.

(19:15):
They ask them how they're doing,what's their problems? You know,
you speak with them. If you'rejust responsive on email, you'll
beat everybody else in thefield, because nobody's
responsive. They don't followup, they don't hit deadlines.
And again, that's what we'rebuilt for as engineers, is ETAC
dates, right? Engineeringtracking and control dates,
things like that, that canreally if you can hit those

(19:37):
deadlines and be responsive,you're ahead of the curve.
You're way ahead of the curve.

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You know, what amazes me is that there are so
many vendors we've reached outto over the years because they
had a product or a service thatwe felt would be useful for our
projects, and they don'trespond. You know, you call, no
one answers. You leave avoicemail and it's days or weeks
or maybe never, so nobodyresponds, or you send an email
to some black void inbox and noone gets back to you. We're

(20:50):
literally trying to give thesepeople money, and they fall on
their faces and don't take itbecause they don't. I don't know
why. I still don't understand itto this point, but when someone
reaches out to us, we get backto them, like, within an hour.
You know, it's quick, and itjust blows my mind that there's
so many companies out there thatdon't respond. They just don't
respond. It's

a industry worldwide problem. Every every
industry has it. Every companyhas it. If you can just stand
out on that part, which you'realready doing. I mean, you're
halfway there, just beingresponsive, talking to people
like their people are you doing,like, engineering, relevant
products and things like that.
We mostly

do engineering services. So we develop a lot of
automation and custom fixturingfor manufacturing, testing,
inspection, assembly, that sortof thing. So it's all custom
equipment services based we dohave a product right now called
Easy Motion. It's a pretty coolcontroller using a drag and drop
visual block based programminginterface that anyone can use.

(21:53):
But outside of that, it's allengineering services.

They're missing out on money. That's all right.

Do you remember your very first public speaking
customer, and what that processwas, how you found the
individual, what conversationsled to that individual saying,
Yeah, okay, did they? Did theyknow that you'd never done one
of these before? How did yousell yourself, having never
completed one of these projectprofessionally.

So actually, it comes down to network again to
get your foot in the door. Atthe airspace engineering job
that I worked, I was in thatkind of accelerated program for
leadership, and they paid formentoring time. So then I could
actually go and meet otherpeople. And you should
absolutely join this if you'rein any company that offers

(22:45):
something like this, these arethe highest performing people
that are offering mentorshipbecause they love doing it. So I
met this guy named Ryan Cass,super talented ultra marathon
runner, all of these things, andoutside of work, basically, we
sat down, he invited me to amastermind and then it was a
bunch of real estate executivecoaches, things like that. And

(23:07):
there was this one guy I metnamed Dante de Batista, and I
talked with them a little bit. Iwas like, Man, this guy's sharp.
He's really knows what he'sdoing. He's paying for coaching.
He's on top of it. So I kind oftalked with them a little bit.
Got his number, and then Ireached out every month or so.
And then six months later, I waslike, Okay, I'm gonna travel.

(23:29):
I'm going to pivot. Let's tryand do this thing full time. Let
me find the customers all ofthese sorts of things. And then
I reached out to him and said,Hey, I will do it for you at
this rate on a contractretainer, and 100% refund is one
of the best ways to get clientsas well. 100% refund, there's no

(23:50):
risk at all. And a big one, ifyou can do this, is basically
saying, I've never had someoneask for a refund. So really,
really set those expectations onthe sales call, if you can. But
I basically reached out to him,offered him that service, and
we've been working we'reactually working on some big
courses now. He's doing freshmanseminar leadership courses right

(24:13):
now, so it's a lot of fun. Iflew with him to New Orleans
from Bali, and then I had to flyback because my family was
meeting us, and we had alreadyarranged this. But then I had to
go film him at the conference.
So it was just an absolute mess.
But never give up. Your phone isfull of contacts that you could
reach out for your service, yourproduct, whatever that might be.

(24:34):
And if you can sell one person,you can sell 100 it just it
translates across the board. Youget better and it gets easier.
The start is always the hardest.
It will never get harder thanwhere you're at right now. It
will only get easier. You havebigger challenges and problems
that come up, but I'm sure withthe podcast, you've had 1000
problems come up day one, itfelt like into the world, and
now you're you're rocking androlling, right?

Yeah, you get those systems in place, and then
everything. Just chugs alongsystems, see? Systems. That's
right, yeah, this is whyengineering is so great. One of
the things that I reallyappreciated about my education
as an engineer is that theyteach you how to think, right?
It's, it's not just regurgitateproblems from a book, although

(25:19):
there is a lot of that as well,but I feel like I learned how to
think, and that was the mostvaluable thing about my
education in engineering, waswas that, and just like you
said, I think that engineers cando just about anything they
want. And I bet there are a lotof engineers, probably some even
listening right now, who mightbe thinking to themselves,
engineering is cool. I'm gladthat I have that tool on my

(25:41):
belt, but I'm kind of ready totry something different. And you
can, you can try somethingdifferent. There's nothing that
says you spent four or six yearsin college getting a degree in
engineering, and now that's theonly thing that you can

do exactly. And there's a lot of creativity in
engineering. I think peoplereally separate the two. But you
have to be creative to come upwith a design, you know, to
figure out what the coding issueis, you really have to think,
sit down, process it, and thenbuild a solution. So I don't
know why everyone says thatthere's no creativity in
engineering. There is still alot. Look at all these designs.

(26:16):
Look at the Tesla cyber truck. Iknow there's a It's a
beautifully designed car. If youthink of it from a manufacturing
process, it's just all stampedaluminum sheets. It's crazy, but
it's completely unique. Therewas a lot of design thought that
went back into that. There was alot of creativity. We won't go
into Tesla's on this, but

Well, talk to me a little bit about the upward
cycle that you emphasize withyour speakers, right leading to
more engagements, higher pay.
What are some of those keyfactors?

So it takes seven touch points to create a sale. A
lot of these public speakerscome in and they'll publish a 60
minute video, and then they justthink people are gonna sit down
and watch that as they'rescrolling their LinkedIn feed,
or whatever that might be. It'sjust the craziest thing to think
that you have 30 to 60 differentsound bites out of that that you

(27:12):
can pull out and have it inslow, digestible clips. So if we
can break that up from the 300speaking engagements that they
already have, break that up intodigestible clips. Make something
relevant that adds value topeople. There has to be value in
that, some sort of tip,something they learned, it needs
to be something quicklydigestible. If it's under 90

(27:35):
seconds on social media, you'llget twice the engagement. So if
you're doing a 10 minute video,it's a lot harder to break that
down and hit that sameengagement. And then basically
pulling all this together on thecontent side, you would then go
and pull out images out of thevideos, them on stage, them
speaking. And then you couldactually go and put a topic that

(27:58):
they want to be speaking on.
Then they get the value in thewritten post, so then they can
bridge out into other topics,all of this together in a nicely
packaged, you know, contentsolution is how they really get
the leverage to look like ahigher paid public speaker. Then
people are starting to reach outon the sales touch points that I
just talked about. Then they getmore speaking engagements, and

(28:20):
it's an upward cycle because thecontent looks better. They're
investing more. The camera gearis better because they're
investing in it again. And it'sjust that it gets easier and
easier to grow off of that frontif you invest at the front end,
which it's not fun to invest inthe front end if you're not
where you want to be, but it's alot easier to smash that if you
think on a longer cycle. So ifyou think in a year, what that

(28:44):
could be, how many sales touchpoints would that be? If you're
connecting with the rightpeople? Again, you can't be just
connecting with everybody orfollowing everybody. It needs to
be relevant to your message. Itneeds to be the conference
leaders. It needs to be thespeaking coaches, everybody in
the industry, because if you canhit those seven touch points,

(29:05):
those sales touch points, thenyou can close another sale from
warm, inbound or outboundmessaging. So all of this is an
upward cycle, because you looklike you get paid more, then you
get paid more. And I kind ofalways fall back on that,
because it's the easiest way todescribe it all. Of course,
there's hundreds, hundreds ofhours of work that goes into

(29:27):
that, but it's, it's simple, noteasy, if that makes sense, yeah.

So you're, you're leveraging consecutive wins,
like you leverage a success toget into a bigger success, and
then you leverage that successto get into a bigger success and
onwards and upwards. I imaginethere are maybe some engineers
right now listening to this,thinking, why do I need to know
any of this? I have no interestin being a videographer or
working with public speakers.
But here's here's why this isuseful. I am an engineer. And

(29:57):
have been for 20 years now, andintend to continue being an
engineer. And I actually spend anot in what's the word, I'm
looking for a non trivial amountof time doing photography and
videography as a tool to promotemy business. And I actually

(30:19):
started a photography companywith a buddy of mine many years
ago. We ran it just a sidehustle, like 15 years ago. And
those skills have served me sowell, because I've been able to
get really lovely, beautifulpictures of equipment and
products that we've developed.
And it's just like you said,Nikki, right? You leverage these

(30:40):
wins, right? We deliver aproduct to a customer, we get
some really, you know, coollooking photos or video of this
product, and then we put it onour website and say, hey, look
what we did. And it looks veryprofessional, right? It looks
like we're higher end than weactually are, because we have
really nice looking pictures andvideo of these things. And you
throw some lights in there, andyou get a nice lens and some

(31:01):
blur in the background, and allof a sudden, you know you look
legit. You look like you knowwhat you're doing. And maybe
photography or videography,videography is not the tool for
for you, dear listener, rightnow, but perhaps there's another
supplementary skill that youcould learn that would just
enhance your career, yourgrowth, your engineering
trajectory that much more. Idon't know what that is, but you

(31:23):
know, hopefully you canunderstand the concept and apply
it to whatever that might be foryou

exactly. And I do want to bridge the other side
too, which public speaking isone of the highest leverage
skills you can learn for yourengineering career, because you
have a lot of presentations. Ifyou can do that confidently, you
will stand out from the pack,you will absolutely grow on that
front, even if it's justinternally to your business,
right? Yeah,

that's a great point. What are some pro tips
that you can share about publicspeaking that engineers could
use in their presentations totheir management, their
leadership, their stakeholders?
So

absolutely don't try and just memorize the
slides, but don't try and readeverything off. If you can run
through that slide five times,you will be better than
everybody in the room, I promiseyou, if you can just run through
it five times, and then theeasiest way to get out of the
nervousness feeling is really tojoin a Toastmasters or something
like that. Locally, it's freeuntil you sign up on a program,

(32:20):
something like that, or justget, you know, a friend, in the
room, and then just try and giveit to them and see what they
think. This gets easier. It'sthe exact same thing as
engineering. You were soterrified with your first exam,
and you saw that big fat 60 orwhatever you got. I know every
engineer at every school hasthat, that bell curve that is

(32:40):
absolutely skewed to the left.
But it gets easier. You get moreconfident. You grow from that. I
would suggest also maybe notstarting public speaking in a
high stakes meeting. It's a loteasier to go and teach on a
breakout topic that your companyis actually starting to
investigate. If that's AI inyour business, if that's
whatever you know, and there'sgoing to be a room full of five

(33:02):
people, it might be 10 people.
It's not going to be 100 people.
Those Breakout Rooms usuallydon't have that many attendees,
right? It's low stakes, it'seasy, it's fun. You can actually
get interactive. Another greattip is to get the audience
moving, whether that be thingsalong the wall, you know,
posters, and getting them to dosome sort of activity if they're

(33:22):
moving, the focus is off of youand your own brain. The focus
really isn't on you. If they'restaring at you during the
presentation, their mind is abillion other places, but it's
really hard to connect that.intheir heads, but getting them up
and moving and doing somethingin the room is the easiest way
to make our brains turn off andgo, Okay, they're focused on

(33:42):
other things, you know? Andthat's it's it gets way easier
the more you do it. It'll neverbe as hard as that first time
you get up and stand in front ofother people. But if you can
speak as an engineer, you willgo places in any any business.
So to start practicing trial byfire. I'm

curious about what kind of gear that you use, what
editing software, and whatcinematic camera or video camera
that you're using, what kind oflenses?

Yeah, absolutely.
So I have the Sony FX three.
It's a Netflix approved camerathat's a big one for public
speakers. Nobody cares about thecamera type specifically, but
you make a lot of people lessnervous if you say Netflix
approved.

Netflix approved.
They shot

full films on it.
So there's a few films you canGoogle it. I can't remember
exactly. I think one's theCreator, but it just means that
it is approved for you to film amovie on this camera, and they
will post it. They will uploadit to their network, wireless
mics. I have a bunch of lights,24 to 70 GM. Two is the best
lens all around for these. Youknow. Know, close tied up shots

(34:59):
and then the far away shots, itgives a good blur behind the the
clients as well. So again,lighting would be not again, but
lighting would be the mostimportant thing you can do for
your shot. It's absolutely comesdown to lighting. If you can get
a nice warm light at a 45 degreeangle off the camera, it will

(35:19):
make your camera look $3,000more expensive. Or you could
take a $10,000 camera into harshlight without like an ND filter
or something, it'll blow outyour shot. So it comes down to
tools, and you don't have tohave the most expensive to stand
out. If your editing isincredible and the video isn't,
then you know you can make upfor it other places.

It's funny that you say that I would always back
in my photography days, peoplewould ask me what kind of camera
I use, and I would always saythe camera is the least
important part of the equation.
Lighting is the most important.
And then I think your glass, thelenses that you're using and
maybe editing, are maybe tied insecond place, and then the
camera body that you're using iskind of in last place, as long

(36:04):
as it's like 30% and

then it kind of stacks on each other. And for
the editing software I'm usingthe Adobe suite and the Adobe
Premiere and After Effects, if Ithink the powerful thing about
being engineer as well is thefact that you can take 3d
modeling and put those intoscenes. You can actually go into
After Effects and start doingrenderings, you know, looking at

(36:29):
the lighting, the angles, thedrop shadows, all of these
things, with a model that youmade in 10 minutes that looks
like you've put hours, 1000s ofhours into it. I mean, I've done
Catia SolidWorks fusion, 360 andthat is a super powerful skill
set to have in today's age, evenif

you don't want to have no idea you could do that.
You can import, like aSolidWorks model, I don't know,
a separate digest or something,into After Effects, and then
render that in esteemedinteresting it's super

low weight, so it's not like a high detail, but
it renders in high detail. Youcan actually bring them in. You
don't need these other softwaresuites to do it anymore. It's
getting a lot easier, a lotquicker. There's plugins with AI
where you can just write aprompt and it'll produce the
model. Don't do that if you'rean engineer, you have that. You

(37:20):
have such a good skill set thattook years to learn, that makes
you stand out, right?

That's really cool. What's an example of
something you would model andthen use that in a scene, like,
I don't know, a microphone orsomething. So

a really easy one would be to hang a microphone
off of a string. You film it in'em. D model, making that from
the person to your your video,there's for products. That's a
really easy one. For a can, abag of chips, a medical

(37:53):
prototype, you could absolutelytake that, put it on the the
rotating, I can't remember whatthe table is called, the
turntable. Yeah, nice lighting.
It looks like a real productthat you spent $10,000 on a
video shoot that took you twohours to make. I mean, it's
really incredible. Very cool.

(38:14):
What?

What advice would you give engineers who are
considering some kind ofsignificant career change.

This came from a friend and a public speaker
who's doing really well, and hewas saying, Don't flinch. I
talked to him about this alittle while ago, and he said,
Don't flinch when you're doingthis. You need to go all in. You
know, don't doubt yourself. Ifpeople are telling you not to do
it, it means you're on the rightpath, unless you want their
life, if you want their life,listen to what they're saying,

(38:43):
right? But if you don't, if youwant something different, if you
want something new, you need tonot flinch. You need to go head
in and then fail. Of course,failing doesn't sound fun, but
it's the best way to learn. Andif you could stack that failure
with another try right behindit, it's the best way to
reinforce that it's okay. But ifyou fail, and then you don't do

(39:04):
it for six months, that's theworst thing you can do for your
brain. You really get stuck inthese cycles of thinking that
the failure is the end of theworld. I've been up plenty of
time speaking for companies,right when you're presenting all
of your work, where I've hadeight of the smartest engineers
I've ever met just grilling me,absolutely grilling me. And then
I get out, I'm just head down,feel like a failure. They were

(39:28):
like 1000s of questions I didn'tknow. And then, you know,
leadership walks up and they go,that was incredible. You did a
really good job. I've never seenanyone you know stand up and
defend their designs like that.
To these engineers, the bestthing is that we can't or the
worst thing is that you can'tsee it from the outside frame
until somebody tells you. Sodon't judge it off of the way
you interpret things. Right? Tryand take yourself out of that.

(39:50):
Get another try at what you'redoing, if that's sales, if
that's product design, whateverthat might be, if it's freelance
work, a lot of engineers go intofreelance work, you just need.
To keep trying. If you get thefirst sale right and then they
cancel and want to refund, trythe next one. You've got a great
still skill set that can beiterated on, and it's the same
as iterative prototyping, right?

(40:14):
If you build one, it's going tostink. It's the exact same thing
you need to iterate figure outwhat works, what doesn't, fix
it. Move on to the next one.
That one stinks too. All right,we'll do 50 of them. That 50th
is going to be incredible.

I love what you said about if people tell you
you're you can't do it, thenyou're on the right track. Or,
I'm paraphrasing, it wassomething to that effect, we are
putting on an event later thisyear called PDX, the product
development Expo. We're notevent planners here at Pipeline.
We're engineers. Right? Lastyear we did a little pilot of
this. We got our foot wet, butthis year I am I'm 10x ing it.

(40:49):
We're going big. We've rentedout a convention center for
this. And when I told my teamthat we're going to do this,
some feedback was like, Are yousure we don't know how to do
this, like you're planning youwant to plan a major event,
basically a trade show. Andwe've never we don't know how to
do this, right? That's not whatwe do. And to me, it was like,

(41:13):
Yeah, but we can figure thisout. This is not rocket science,
right? This is like,organization, communication,
promotion. We can 100% figurethis out. And one of our team
members actually found a eventplanner and and called her and
said, Hey, we're doing thisevent. You know, we don't really

(41:34):
know what we don't know. Canyou, can you consult for us? And
I thought, that's that's not abad idea, right? Get someone who
has been through this many timesbefore, and this event planner
came in and basically fearmongered us. She was like,
There's no way you can do this.
You're setting your team up forfailure. If you don't have a
venue found already, then you'renot going to find one. You need

(41:54):
more time than this. You needmore people than this. And it
was so shocking to me, likethere were other people as well.
It wasn't just this eventcoordinator, but there were,
there were multiple people whowere like, you, you're not going
to be able to do this, right?
You know that, right? This isn'tactually something that you can
do. And man, here we are, threemonths later. We've got the

(42:14):
venue book. We've got, like, ourvendors signed up. We've got
everything is all the bones arethere. It's ready. We've We've
got attendees who are signed up,registered, and we still have
six months to go before theevent starts like we we've, I
feel like we've killed the thepreparation, the organization,
the communication. And it wasjust mind blowing to me, how
many people were telling me youcan't do this. You know, you

(42:36):
can't do this, right? This isnot going to work anyway. It's,
I love it best is accepted.

Oh, I love it.
You're making everybody stretch.
That's what you should be doing.
That's amazing. The best tip,take whatever go to a
conference, take everything thatyou like from that and try and
implement it. It makes thebiggest difference in the world.
If you like their recap video,you know, watch 10. Take some
bits from each one. Storyboard,if you like the way they set up.
Take tips out of that right?

(43:04):
Just you're doing exactly whatit is. You're taking it step by
step. You're reaching out topeople. You're talking and if
you get people saying, No,you're on the right track.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Can you think of a
particularly memorableexperience you had with one of
your clients, and can you sharethat story?

Yeah, absolutely.
So my second client is the firstfemale helicopter pilot in the
Royal British Air Force. Hername's Sarah Furness. She is an
absolute badass. Sorry about thepro vanity, but she is amazing,
great public speaker, and weconnected. And now she's been,
well, I guess we connected, andthen I went through the exact

(43:47):
same steps that we talked about.
You know, we're getting moreengagement. Everything looks
clean, polished, cut. We'redoing content bits. We're
actually breaking those speechesdown into better clips. She's
writing the speeches in a betterway as well, to where I can pull
those from that, all of this tosay she's been seeing a lot more

(44:08):
growth. And then from this, I'monly doing the video editing for
her, specifically the rest I doThe Videography side as well.
But from this, I'm actuallygetting better clips that are
making it much easier to helpher grow. So she's going on
better podcasts, you know, she'sgoing to bigger events, she's
going to all of this upwardspiral type of deal. And I get

(44:32):
content back and it's 3,000%better. It's way easier to edit
and make it look so polishedthat it's just a cycle. And that
was actually the first timewhere I realized that it is a
cycle. The exact same way youspeak about your photography and
videography for your podcast,right? This is something that,
if you reiterate on people lookat it and they go, Oh my God,

(44:56):
this looks serious. This looksin depth, a lot of work action.
Of effort has gone into this.
And that was a really big one,where I go, okay, I can work
with these people. I can dothis. You know, if you fit 5% of
your target, the 5% is thehardest to do. The very
beginning is where you're goingto fail. And that's why I always
say, if you can sell the one,you can sell to 1000 if you can

(45:16):
make it past that 5% and you'reon year five, you know, I think
it's 90% of podcasts only makeit to 10 episodes, and you've
blown past that. Aaron, sothere's a lot of things that
people could learn from you inthat type of focus effort, you
know, sticking to something thatI think you could absolutely

(45:38):
talk about for days and yearsand months, you know. So I think
that was a really eye openingmoment for me, and I'm sure
you've had plenty as well.

A little while ago, you talked about a tip for
social media and sharing videosthat are less than 90 seconds,
as opposed to, you know, 10minutes or an hour long. What
other pro tips could you sharethat will help people get that
will help people promote theirtheir whether it's themselves or

(46:09):
maybe it's a product thatthey've developed. But what are
some other pro tips forleveraging promotions on social
media these days? So

the big one is recognizing patterns, you can't
learn anything and it not beoutdated in three three months.
So if you could see the patternsand the content that's
performing well, you couldactually structure your own
videos off of that and get thesame performance. If not, I
guarantee that you will havebetter performance than what
you're doing if you could justemulate off of what is working.

(46:40):
Another one is that LinkedIn isthe it has the highest buying
power per audience member. Sothe people on there are there
for business. So if you'retrying to sell something,
LinkedIn is the best. I mean,the people are on there, they're
professional, they're they'vegot a goal. They're on there for
work. You know, they'reconnecting to progressive
career. If you could help themwith that, with a product,

(47:01):
software, whatever that mightbe, service, then you could
really leverage LinkedIn. Ifyou're consistently posting, you
know, there's seven touch pointsreally matter when the feed goes
away and they see, okay, youposted four months ago. Do you
know anything about this? But ifyou post consistently, that's a
really, really high leveragetip. Once you master one

(47:22):
platform, the best way to spreadout of that platform is to
basically automate it off ofthat platform and learn the
packaging of each platform. SoTiktok is going to be flashier,
quicker, you know, fast cuts,these types of things where
YouTube you could do a muchlonger keynote topic or or video

(47:43):
podcast, right? That's where youactually take from the short
form off Tiktok, you put in yourprofile to YouTube, and it
funnels in viewers, and youactually build the biggest
relationship on the long form.
The long form has the biggestleverage that you could possibly
get, but you have to produce theshort form, to get people into
that, that niche, that criteria,another one on LinkedIn, you can

(48:04):
grow. You get 200 connectionrequests per week, and it resets
Sunday night, your local time,at midnight. If you can use all
of those requests make yourLinkedIn look, you know,
presentable, then you'll get ahigher connection request.
Eventually, at 500 followers,you can turn that or 500
connections, you can turn thoseover to followers, and this,

(48:26):
keep doing this in at a 60%acceptance rate. In, you know,
two months, you'll have 1000followers on LinkedIn. I mean,
it's low hanging fruit if you'retrying to build a business, you
know. And then you can post onthat to the people. The caveat
here is you have to beconnecting with the right people
that are in your network. Youknow, the buying power. If

(48:47):
they're off a, you know,horizontal, that's okay, but you
really want to think verticallyhere in terms of your ideal
customer, because that willallow you to directly push the
content most relevant to yourcustomer, to them, they engage
with it. And then you canactually just keep going off of
that loop and finding more ofthat ideal person. Every social

(49:07):
platform is trying to figure youout. If you make it easy on the
platform, they make it easy onyou. So if you go in, you're
posting on, you know, 30different topics that's really
hard to have the network reallykind of decipher that. Those are
some of my most impactful tips.

(49:28):
I would definitely say leveragethose. At least choose one.

Those are great.
Yeah, let's say that you'veidentified the next client that
you would like to land. Whatdoes your outreach look like? Is
it just LinkedIn, messages, justemails? Is it phone calls? Is it
all of the above? How do you getsomeone's attention?

So I put these into two pockets, the clients
that I really want to die for,like I have to have these
people, and then, you know,people that I want to work with,
but it's okay to get a note hereand there. So the people that
I'll die for, I will go and edita video. I will say, I can
record this for you, and I'llbreak it out into this amount
of, you know, speakingengagement clips, but I'll

(50:12):
format that in the way ofsaying, Hey, this is a real
thing I learned from you. Thisis something I really enjoy
talking to you about or learningoff your profile. And here's
value. Here is a video that Iedited for you with a caption
that will lead to higherengagement than what you're
currently getting. So I'll

just give them something, I'll solve the
problem,

and then in the other 80% I will usually go and
connect with them, or followthem, however, on whatever
platform, but LinkedIn is thebread and butter. Because of the
highest buying power, you kindof get rid of all the people
that are on social media just toscroll educational content
performs the best for buyingpower. So if you're producing

(50:55):
entertainment strictly, you willhave more followers, more
engagement, but you'll actuallyget less conversions on that
sales funnel. But on the lowerside, I will ask a question on a
piece of content that they havethat I'm genuinely interested in
to open up a conversation. Andthis will be tied to something I

(51:16):
do. How are you producing somuch content each week? Or why
are you posting more? Whateverthat might be, and you actually
start to agitate the problem inthe questions while having a
real conversation. A pro tiphere is actually when you're
reaching out to these people, ifthey live in Atlanta, and you're
from Atlanta and you know arestaurant there, say, this

(51:38):
restaurant, this item, 10 out of10 would definitely recommend.
Anyways, I hope you're having agreat week. You know that that
everyone loves being tribal. Soif you could be tribal with your
ideal customer, or say, oh mygoodness, you know, I hate
foreigners, and my name's Nikkiline, the other person's name
is, you know, Nikki laughs,something like that, right? And

(51:59):
if I could bridge that gap towhere we're both in this bucket
together. Hey, how are youdoing? It opens up the
conversation on a differentlevel than if you just kind of
reached out and said, Hey, I'mtrying to sell you something. I
think the easy way not to landanybody is by reaching out and
pitching. Instantly. Build aconversation, genuinely talk to
them. Don't pitch on the salescall. Ask questions, you know,

(52:21):
and then eventually they'll askyou what you do. And that is the
door to actually say what youdo. And that is the easiest way
to do sales. If you overcomplicate it. The books are
great. If you just mimic thebooks. These are people doing
volume, 100 sales calls a day,you know. They don't care about

(52:41):
anybody. They are just burningthrough the books. If you care,
it's the easiest way to notwaste your time. Meet people,
and then a lot of the time thesecustomers, these people, will
come back, six months later, ayear later, where they're going,
Hey, I actually have thisproblem now, could you help me?
And you go, I would love to. Howis your daughter doing? By the
way, you know, those just somuch easier than taking the Wolf

(53:04):
of Wall Street book and justdigging in and going, Hey, how's
it going? I've got the beststocks in the world for you. So
I would absolutely leveragethat. You mentioned,

everyone likes to be tribal, and that's a really
powerful principle. RobertCialdini calls it the Unity
principle. This is the author ofinfluence, the power of
persuasion, a really wonderfulbook for anyone who's who needs
to persuade people right totheir opinion. I read his book

(53:34):
years ago, and I thought it wasone of the best books I had ever
read, especially from a businessstandpoint, and I learned that
he used to be a professor atASU, and I'm here at in Arizona,
and I looked him up, and he's nolonger a professor, you know,
he's got on to he's prettyfamous at this point, and multi,

(53:55):
multi millionaire, I'm Sure, anda best selling author, but I
thought I would love to takethis guy out to lunch. That
would be such a neat experience.
But I thought, you know, who amI? Right? He's not going to go
out to lunch with me. How am Ieven going to get a hold of this
guy? Anyway, I found his profileon on LinkedIn, and I used this
is one of the principles hetalks about in his book, The

(54:19):
Unity principle and the unitunity principle, just like you
were saying, if you know arestaurant for the place that
someone lives, talk about a menuitem there, right? Something
that connects you, whether it'sgeographically, ethnically,
whatever, but something thatconnects you. Familial
relationships are the biggest ofcourse. But I reached out to
him, and I said, Hey, I'm herein Tempe, which is a town here

(54:41):
in Arizona, right around theuniversity, and I'd love to take
you out to lunch. And to myamazement, he responded and
said, Yeah, sounds great. Let'sdo it. So we went out to lunch.
And I said, Hey, why did youagree to go out to lunch with
me? Like you're this superstarauthor and I'm just, you know.
Kind of nobody. Why did youagree to go out to lunch with

(55:01):
me? And he said, Well, you'refrom Tempe, and I'm here in
Tempe. So I said, Yes, and itwas, it was the Unity principle.
So that's, I think that's such apowerful one. Anytime you can
leverage that it actually works.
What

a cool example. I mean, he's huge. And for anyone
listening, persuasion is one ofthe best things. If you use it
for good, if you help peoplewith persuasion, it is good. It
is a good thing to learn,because you're helping them. You
don't want to come in and sellthem something you don't like,
because you'll be horrible atsales. So you can't use
persuasion for bad, right? Imean, you can,

don't go short term, you can, but you won't go
very far, exactly. Yeah. Allright. Well, Nikki, this has
been super fun. Thank you forsharing some of your experiences
and insights with us, anythingthat we haven't talked about
yet, that you'd like to hit onbefore we end this episode. I
just

want to say thank you so much for having me
absolute blast. I'm reallyexcited for it. So thank you so
much. Cool.

Excellent. How can people get in touch with you? Go
to

thriver, T, H, R, i, v, r, design.com just go to
the contact page and email me.
Awesome. Thank you so muchagain. Thank you so much, Aaron.
I'll talk to you soon.

I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and
engineering. If you liked whatyou heard today, please share
the episode to learn how yourteam can leverage our team's
expertise developing advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
product design and R D services.
Visit us at Team pipeline.us. Tojoin a vibrant community of

(56:38):
engineers online. Visit the wavedot engineer, thank you for
listening. You.

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S6E18 Nikolaj Kloch | Public Speaking, Career Changes, & Leading with Value

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S6E18 Nikolaj Kloch | Public Speaking, Career Changes, & Leading with Value