Fred Moore Learned to Make Himself Irreplaceable in His Job as a Magician

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My guest for Episode #104 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Fred Moore, who has been a professional speaker and entertainer for the past 25 years, including roles as a corporate magician, event emcee, and more. Fred has done over 6,000 performances and presentations in 30 countries.

In today's episode, Fred shares his “favorite mistake” story about putting himself in a position where he was “replaceable” at work. We'll hear about how he was fired from the beginning of a 9-month performing contract. What did Fred learn from this, for his own benefit and to help others learn from his experience?

We talk about that and other topics including:

• Mistakes that happen as a stage performer?
• Things that REALLY throw you off?
• “How can I use my enemies and failure?”
• Virtual engagements — Pivots, mistakes, lessons?
• Certified Virtual Presenter?
• How did you get into magic?
• Fred's key lessons:
  • Be irreplaceable, not a commodity
  • Nobody cares more about you than you
  • Wallowing in misery isn't that productive
• Haven’t failed if you learned something (videos)

Find Fred on Social Media:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube

Scroll down to find:

• Watch the video
• How to subscribe
• Full transcript

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Automated Transcript (Likely Contains Mistakes)

Mark Graban (0s):

Episode 104, Fred Moore, magician, entertainer, professional speaker.

Fred Moore (6s):

If you talk to anybody who's done anything or been successful, they've been failures more than they'd be successful. Successful people.

Mark Graban (21s):

I'm Mark Graban. This is My Favorite Mistake. In this podcast, you'll hear business leaders and other really interesting people talking about their favorite mistakes because we all make mistakes. But what matters is learning from our mistakes instead of repeating them over and over again. So this is the place for honest reflection and conversation, personal growth and professional success. Visit our website at myfavoritemistake,podcast.com. For links, show notes, and more information about Fred Moore. Go to mark.graban.com/mistake104. Thanks for listening. Our guest today is Fred Moore.

Mark Graban (1m 2s):

He is, has been and still is a professional speaker and entertainer for the past 25 years. My first mistake of the episode, you, you can think of him and he is a corporate magician. Fred has done over 6,000 performances and he's also done presentations in 30 countries. You can learn more about Fred and his website dosomuchmore.com. So Fred, thanks for being a guest. How are you today?

Fred Moore (1m 28s):

Thanks for being here or thanks for me being here. That's that's two mistakes, right? That's two mistakes. Did you just call me? Has been just called me. It has been, he has been, he has been all right.

Mark Graban (1m 40s):

I've been caught his mic. No, no, thank you. Thank you for turning your mic on. That was the prerecording we got off on a very mistake appropriate.

Fred Moore (1m 49s):

Exactly. Exactly all good. And evidently we called each other cause their shirts match. I just noticed that.

Mark Graban (1m 55s):

Yeah. For those who are just listening, they'll have to picture light blue shirts, me and Apolo and Fred and a button

Fred Moore (2m 3s):

Up. But exactly. Yeah.

Mark Graban (2m 6s):

So before we get going, Fred, your, your URL, your domain name, I'm curious. Why do so much more.com?

Fred Moore (2m 15s):

W when I was first getting into the speaking side of it, I've been an entertainer for 30, some odd years now. And when I was going to speak inside of it, all right, well, I need a domain name. That's going to obviously point to what, and as a speaker, they tell you that you got to have a book. You're not a speaker unless you have a book. So I wrote a book and the book was on productivity and getting more done. And the title of the book was do so much more. And I was smart about that before I decided on the title, I made sure the domain name was available. Yes, that's smart because I'd made that mistake with my name. I have a website, moorefred.com.

Fred Moore (2m 56s):

And I got that because Fred Moore dot wasn't available when I initially rejected it, it was, and then two weeks later gone. So it was like, ah, so whenever I find a good domain name, I, I, I latch onto it. So

Mark Graban (3m 10s):

Squatter. Gotcha. Maybe as they say domain squatters, that's that's not the type of profession kids aspire to like Instagram influencer,

Fred Moore (3m 18s):

Right? Yeah, no, no. Yeah.

Mark Graban (3m 21s):

But now it would be a mistake if listeners it's it's do so much more. M O R E not like your last name. M O O R E. Does that ever trip anybody up?

Fred Moore (3m 32s):

Correct? I thought about trying to be clever like that, but I don't want to be clever. That's just too confusing. Interesting. When I bought moorefred.com, I also bought M O R E fred.com and there's too many dot coms I'm seeing right here. Just stick, do so much more. Stay there. That's all you got.

Mark Graban (3m 52s):

Yeah. All right. Check that out on the interwebs. But Fred, I think from what I've seen of your work, you, you are clever in a lot of ways, and I'm sure you have a clever story for us or interesting or both. What would you say Fred is your favorite mistake?

Fred Moore (4m 10s):

It's funny. Cause there's, there's so many. If you talk to anybody who's done anything or been successful, they've been failures more than they've been successful, successful people. So probably my favorite failure. My favorite failure is I'll give you a little background. I'm an entertainer. I've been doing that for a long time. It still entertained. But I also do the speaking and I was working on her show. And this show we, I got to tour the world. My wife was actually involved in the show is to, is one of the dancers. And I was one of the magicians in the show, big, big production toward the world. Two years, we went to Europe, we went to south America and the show had been going on before I had joined it.

Fred Moore (4m 55s):

I had replaced somebody else and due to legal reasons, I can't say exactly who the show was involved, but they have big ears and ha ha hi, you doing their kiddos. So you make an idea from that. And two years into this show, everything's going great. Everything's going great. We've come around for the third contract, third year of the contract and it was a us tour. Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Awesome. Getting ready to do that. We were Hearst. Everything was good. About two weeks into it. I get a call from the production manager. Hey, let's have a meeting. Okay. I come to the meeting in Washington, in the head of HR for the whole company, not just our whole company and that's never a good sign.

Fred Moore (5m 42s):

I swear. As soon as he walked in, I heard dun dun dun, and I knew some bad was going to happen. Something not good. At least for me, it wasn't going to happen. And I was thinking, this is what's going on. I don't, I've been working for two years. I've gotten good reports. I don't get it. You sat me down. We blah, blah, blah. And he was like, all right, well, let's get right to it. We know you have a nine month contract and you read our contract and there's an out clause in the contract for either of us. And we've decided we're going to release you from your contract. I love, I love the way that they put it, release you from your contract, basically fire right fired. And it was like, okay. And like, why? It's like, well, it's just, you're not fitting in with the way that show's going right now turns out they wanted somebody younger and they didn't need somebody that had my skillset.

Fred Moore (6m 32s):

It was a very smaller role. So they've made some changes in name and I get it. Now I get it at the time. It was like, okay, I've got a nine month contract. And if you know anything about performers, it's usually gig to gig to get and long-term contracts or are rare. I mean, they're out there, but if you can get a nine month contract, that's awesome. I didn't have to look for work for nine months now. There's stability. Yeah, exactly. Which is again, rare in a lot of businesses. So now all of a sudden the rug has been pulled out from under me and boom. I got nothing. I had nine months of work.

Fred Moore (7m 13s):

I, I was turning down work before now. I got nothing. And it's like, okay, well, what am I going to do? I can do two things. I can sit there and wallow in my misery, which I did for about a day. And then I decided, all right, well, there's nothing I can do about this. Let's let's move on. And I started working and started making phone calls and getting some traction. But then a couple of weeks later, this one, I got to look back on this and it's like, well, what happened? Why, why am I in this situation? You know, what, what was the failure in this? And I looked at it and I realized in this particular show, I was replaceable.

Fred Moore (7m 55s):

They weren't hiring Fred Moore. They were hiring somebody to stand there, do this and say that, right. It was an acting role. More than anything. I was just a commodity. I could be replaceable. So that's when I learned, all right, I need to not be replaceable. That's the whole point. It's like, they're not coming to me because ah, we need a keynote speaker at our conference. We needed a virtual speaker. Our thing, we need a magician enter thing. No they're coming to me because they need that. But then they go, Ooh, Ooh, we went for it more. That's what we want. So now there's no competition. There's, there's no other choice. You either get Fred Moore or they get somebody like Fred Moore,

Mark Graban (8m 37s):

If they can find that

Fred Moore (8m 39s):

If they can. Right. Because

Mark Graban (8m 41s):

I mean, you've got a very particular set of skills that you bring out on stage, even in a corporate presentation type setting from the clips that I've seen online, it seems like there's a fine line between entertainer and corporate presenter. You can, you can be both. You can be entertaining with a solid, helpful message, right?

Fred Moore (9m 2s):

Oh, exactly, exactly. And that's why a lot of main pillars are pretty smart about it. They need to bring in somebody that not just had good information, because I mean, if you've been to any of these conference, you can go to some of the breakout sessions. And these are people that have the good technical knowledge, but they're not professional speakers and right after an hour or so, you know, whereas a professional speaker knows when to break up the monotony when to insert something that's funny or something that's going to grab, people's focus back from their phones and whatnot and being an entertainer first.

Mark Graban (9m 41s):

I was just going to say, I mean, I think of conferences where there are presenters who stand on the floor in front of a screen, in a breakout room and doing well in that environment is different than trying to command a big stage in a big room. It's not just about the content, it's about presence and knowing how to work that size of room, because otherwise you could, you know, you could print out a Wikipedia page and put it up on stage.

Fred Moore (10m 9s):

Oh, exactly, exactly. That's I, I say, I love to see this, but I hated to see you this when presenters go up there and they bring up a slide and it's just full of text, bullet point bullet point bullet point is like, could have just, you know, sent me a PDF and I would've got the same information and I would as to just stay 45 minutes, you know?

Mark Graban (10m 30s):

Yeah. You could have taken that PDF out by the pool instead of being in the conference ballroom. Yeah. My w we're we're veering into speaking, pet peeves, maybe here accidentally, but my favorite is no, it's all right. I mean, somebody's speaking mistakes and I'd like to think these were in my past, but you know, putting up a slide that's really, really, really dense. And someone says, I know this slide is an eye chart, but I'm like, well then why did you put it in the deck that way, if you you're acknowledging that there's, it's too small, too much, blah, you know, let's learn from those mistakes. Yeah. So, so back back to your story, Fred, and for those who need further hints while staying out of legal trouble, this could be coincidence, but Fred is based in the Orlando, Florida area.

Mark Graban (11m 18s):

If you weren't already kind of getting to what he was hinting out with the story, but, you know, so I'm interested to hear more about that reflection of, you know, the situation. The it's, what I hear, I hear you saying was the mistake was being in a role where it wasn't particular to you, like, have you, did you shift directions to where corporate speaking would be more of the situation of, we want Fred Fred's not replaceable or you're still in more of the entertainment realm, where there things that you did to adjust to be less replaceable?

Fred Moore (11m 55s):

Yeah, yeah. In the keynote speaking world typically. Yeah. I am sort of a commodity in the aspect that they have a need, right. They need a keynote speaker for their event. The, what I can do to differentiate myself from everyone else is the fact that I'm entertaining and I'm funny and there's the magic and there's the message as well. So it's they call it infotainment, that type of thing. So that was kind of an easy, not an easy in, but an easy idea to bring across since I was already entertaining, adding the information and then determining what the information was from the book I'd written years ago and all that was, it was easy enough.

Mark Graban (12m 41s):

And so then what, what year was it when you made a bit of shift to focus more on speaking and corporate events?

Fred Moore (12m 50s):

It was probably right around that time was 2010, so 11 years ago. And I've been doing a bit of both. And when I was doing that to her, like I said, I was, I was enjoying myself because Hey, they paid us to go to Europe, to south America. I've been to so many different places since then, too. But once that happened, my, my focus had to shift dramatically because I had to learn is like, all right, I'm not, I can't be a commodity anymore. I can't be replaceable. And then in the situation where now I've got nothing, what do I need to do to fix that? And to fix that was just take what Tony Robbins called, massive action.

Fred Moore (13m 35s):

I need to do a lot of things right now. I need to contact Andy the market. I need to get my name out there. I need to, I just need to, you know, work on the business side of the show business right now.

Mark Graban (13m 47s):

And, you know, kinda thinking back to this, this combination of speaking and writing, like here are your thoughts on this. So my, what I would propose is somebody who's got speaking skills can get a book written, whether they write it or they get varying degrees of help. I mean, as, as an author, I realized, you know, writing a book is a big challenge, but it's doable. I think sometimes there is a poor assumption that's made, or we could frame it as a mistake that just because somebody wrote a book, therefore they can get up on stage and be a compelling speaker about it. Yeah,

Fred Moore (14m 23s):

Yeah, yeah. That's, that's, I think there are two polar opposite skillsets, for sure. And like you said, it's totally most speaker. If it's a good speaker, they can write a book or they can get somebody, a lot of speakers. What they'll do is they'll record their speech and they have a transcribed and they got a book. It's not, it's not a great book probably to read, but it's a book. Whereas a writer will sit there and

Mark Graban (14m 52s):

Think about the sentence structure and, or at least a good writer and the story and how it ties together and what words to use and all that. And if you just basically read that on stage, it's probably not going to be anywhere near as good. And plus the fact that it, you know, if, if it's a good book full of information, that's going to end up being a four hour speech. And nobody wants to sit through that. So, Fred, you know, I wanna ask about times when as, as a magician or even I've seen some of your, your corporate clips of bringing someone from the audience up on stage, like that can be really entertaining. There's these variables and ways maybe that it's risky.

Mark Graban (15m 34s):

How, how do you handle it when there are mistakes on stage, do you expect it, do you just try to, like, let's say if somebody isn't following your instructions or if it was, I don't know, a cruise ship and somebody drunk and he didn't realize it. I mean, is that a mistake? Is that potential gold? Does it just depend?

Fred Moore (15m 54s):

It depends on the situation and the person a lot of times. And that happens more often than not. I've gotten pretty good over the years of picking the right people from the audience. I don't want to pick somebody that is all like, whew, pick me, pick me because they want attention. And I can guarantee that once they get on stage, they're going to, they're going to want more attention than I than I want. And it's probably not going to tie into when I do it now, sometimes that could be funny. I've had that happen where it's like, oh, she seems very, you know, not really shy, but you know, not gotta be like two and woo. They'll just go crazy.

Fred Moore (16m 35s):

Which can be funny. It just depends on the situation. I've had several instances where w once or twice I had to fire somebody on stage. Yeah. They were in the middle of routine is like, you know what, how about we do this? We'll have a seat. And one of you help me instead.

Mark Graban (16m 56s):

Well, why, why, why did you have to do that? Or why did that seem?

Fred Moore (16m 59s):

Well, normally I wouldn't do that. If the audience was on my side, you know, well, if the audience was on their side, if they were enjoying what was going on, if they were, because if they're messing with me and I'm, you know, that's, that's funny to me because normally that's not what you would see, but where, if they're just not cooperating, like in this instance, it was just like, you know, here pick a card. No. You know? And it's like, no, okay, well here put the card in here. Now I'm going to, I'm going to keep it. You can't have it. That

Mark Graban (17m 32s):

Doesn't seem,

Fred Moore (17m 34s):

Yeah. They think it's fun. They, they think they're being hilarious. The audience is like, this is awkward. And so I'll be like, why don't you just go sit down when it's okay. And I'll usually as they're going down, I'll look at the audience and give them like, <inaudible> in the audience were like, yeah, we know, we know. And that gets somebody up and then just carry on. But sometimes when stuff like that happens, I enjoy it because I'm used to doing kind of the same thing again and again and again. And it's those unknown elements that make it fresh for me, it makes the show spontaneous

Mark Graban (18m 10s):

In the past year, shred with, with COVID any of us who've depended on, on travel or being someplace on stage or whatever that that's, you know, the they've been fewer or no opportunities for that. How did you pivot to working on virtual stages or doing virtual events? What are some of the things you've done? Were there any mistakes? Were there lessons learned in working in that format?

Fred Moore (18m 39s):

Oh yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, you can just Google it on YouTube and you'll see tons and tons of video mistakes at conferences. You know, the early one was the guy talking to the news reporter and this kid walks in and the other room and his wife comes in and grabs the kid and drags them out. Was it not too long ago? Somebody had a, a filter on that, made them look like a cat. I think it was there's the thing. Right.

Mark Graban (19m 6s):

Right. There was a lawyer who had to, you had to tell the judge, I am not a cat. That's the first thing a cat would tell you if they were,

Fred Moore (19m 14s):

Yeah, exactly. It's like, ah, you're a cat, but yeah, mostly it was like technical stuff. And I did something that I, I think it was pretty smart. I, I had to dial in the tech. That was the biggest challenge. And I'd already been doing a lot of videos. I had a studio set up in my office to do YouTube videos and stuff. So it was just a, not a huge leap to get into live streaming or live content. But there was a learning curve, obviously. So I started doing Facebook lives twice a week. Sometimes. I didn't know what I was going to talk about an hour before, but I knew I was going to commit myself to doing it twice a week because then I could fail and that could fail fast and I could learn what all the mistakes were and what to do to fix them.

Fred Moore (20m 5s):

And it, it, I didn't have a huge, huge following. So it was minor little things. And one of the topics I talked about was failure. And I w I would share stories of, of massive failures, epic fails that I'd had in my life. So if something screwed up in the live stream, it was like, wow, it just kind of plays into the thing. Right. Doesn't it, there was one I was doing, I was about 15 minutes into it and I checked my phone cause I had the comments there. And cause I was really into the story and all that. And I look and somebody had commented like 10 minutes into it. Your microphone's not working. So I've been blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, for 10 minutes and nothing.

Fred Moore (20m 48s):

And it's like click. Okay. So where was I? Yeah. And fortunately, that kind of stuff, I can go back and delete it off of Facebook. And it's only going to live in the moment and if I want to get rid of it, I can delete it. And, and it's fine.

Mark Graban (21m 5s):

So I don't mean to pick on you about this, but the, the, the microphone issue, at least you caught that before. Well, I couldn't hear you. Right. So before we went into the recording here, you had that happen. I don't know. This is more of a suggestion, like for, for people who are just listening and not watching on YouTube, Fred's got the click bond, lavalier or Mike that you have to turn on, or, you know, just thinking out loud, like my microphone here is just perpetually plugged in, perpetually on. So the process improvement guy on me is wondering how, how can we help you error, proof that, or it's just a case of making sure there's somebody willing to speak up and say, Hey, I can't hear you.

Fred Moore (21m 46s):

Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny on my Amazon list is that next purchase right? There is the mic right here. So I don't have to worry about this because like earlier today I went out and got fresh batteries. Yeah. Right. And I think this is my default, cause this is what I'm used to using, being on a stage. And if I, if I'm doing a virtual presentation that is more magic related, I'll be standing up and there'll be a wider shot. So I'll be moving around with a bit more so. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. That is the, the, I think probably the best solution right now. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Graban (22m 26s):

Well, sorry. That's a good point. It depends on the setting because you don't want to be for certain virtual presentations tethered to a desk.

Fred Moore (22m 35s):

But I liked your idea because when it's time to do these videos or podcasts or whatever, I'm doing the mix, they, I don't have to worry about click the button and go so simple. Simple is better.

Mark Graban (22m 48s):

So our, our guests today, again, Fred Moore check out his website, dosomuchmore.com a couple of want to ask a couple of other things in, in your email signature. It says you're a certified virtual presenter. What does that entail? I don't think I've seen that before.

Fred Moore (23m 6s):

Obviously it's relatively new. And in this past year, and it's a company it's there, they're more of a database for speakers bureaus. They gather you sign up for it. You and you can get listed with other speakers bureaus as, and it's a resource to check out their information. That's where your bio lives, your fees, all that good stuff. And they were getting calls from bureau saying, alright, we need somebody to do a virtual presentation, but are they any good? We know they're good on a stage, but good on a stage doesn't necessarily translate to good in the virtual. Just like you can be, it's going to be a really good writer, but you're not a really good speaker.

Fred Moore (23m 50s):

So they said, okay, how do we know? And so they were getting clips of them actually doing things. And that's when they came upon the idea, well, why don't we set some criteria and submit, and then the speakers submit to them. It's like, all right, I want to try to get this certification from you. And they go through and they test your mic, your video. They, they log you off and see if you can log back on, they throw a bunch of tech issues at you to say they, you know, they make sure your microphone's turned on. And so they certified that. Yeah, you can handle the tech. You're good enough at what you do that it's going to look presentable.

Fred Moore (24m 32s):

It's going to sound good. And you can work the tech as far as the content, that's all up to you. So it's just a way for speakers, bureaus, or agents or companies that are booking people to go, oh, okay, well they know what they're doing. So I don't have to worry about that.

Mark Graban (24m 48s):

How do you address? I mean, so the, the thing I struggle with sometimes, and I wouldn't say I'm, you know, really a comedian, I'm not a comedian. Like, you know, when I do my presentations, I have certain lines that I think predictably get a laugh. And I think that that's a good thing. But to me doing a webinar presentation or a virtual presentation is like talking into a black hole. You don't hear laughter you, you maybe don't even see facial expressions of a delight or nodding or boredom. I mean, how, how do you cope with that challenge of, of maybe not seeing your audience not getting feedback?

Fred Moore (25m 29s):

It's funny. I've before all the virtual stuff, I was doing a lot of YouTube videos and it was talking directly to the camera. And I'd learned a long time ago that especially on videos like that, that you need to imagine. You're talking to one person and the same thing. When you're doing a speech, you're talking to one person, you don't say everybody here should do this. You say, you should do this. You because you are talking to one person, the person that's listening to you now might, there may be a thousand people listening to you. But to each of those individuals, it's just about them. So that, and it's all about, you know, the connection, eye contact with the camera right before we started this, I shifted the screen.

Fred Moore (26m 17s):

So that I'm looking at you right now. I've got a teleprompter here, the camera behind it. But the image I'm seeing is you. So I'm making eye contact with you, but I'm also looking right at the camera. And the big problem of course is like you said that the energy, your mind, you're not talking to anybody, but if you can imagine that you're talking to somebody, I know people that they take a picture right below the camera of, you know, their wife, their husband, their kids there, who, you know, whoever they imagine that they're talking to could even be the client or the audience so that you, haven't an idea in your mind of that. You're talking to somebody and it's a conversation.

Fred Moore (26m 60s):

And if I'm on stage, I'm going to be animated. I'm going to be like this. I'm going to, I'm going to be neat. As opposed to talking and reading off the teleprompter, what I'm going to say next,

Mark Graban (27m 14s):

Right? Yeah. That's a whole different skill. And, and, you know, politicians use prompters a lot and some of them are good at making it seem really extemporaneous. And some of them you can tell they're clearly reading and sometimes they're reading it for the first time.

Fred Moore (27m 28s):

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Mark Graban (27m 31s):

Well, so yeah, you've got a good setup because the, on my screen, I've got your image as high up as I can get it. Like right now I am looking right at the camera. So yeah, that, that, there's a good lesson there in trying to retrain myself it stumped. I want to look at your, I want to look at your eyes, but that's down below. So high audience or high Fred looking into the camera is a good practice, but you you've got the setup where you're literally like, I know how the teleprompter works. You're looking through a mirror and there's a image. The words are projected up on it. So you're literally looking through you. You have that set up right now. I might ask you to send me a picture of that later. Cause yeah,

Fred Moore (28m 10s):

It's essentially, it's a third monitor, but yeah. Yeah. It's easy enough.

Mark Graban (28m 16s):

Wow. That's a, that's a great tip. So, so Fred, one of the things I was going to ask you is just going back to more of the beginning of your career, and this probably goes back to childhood. How did you get into magic? Like what was the spark and the appeal for you? Okay.

Fred Moore (28m 33s):

I always wanted to be a performer ever since I was a kid. I was the youngest of four boys and they were all two years apart in age, except for me, I was five years apart from my oldest brother. So, and this is what I'm thinking. It's sparked my creativity over the years is the fact that they were older than me. So it got to a point where they didn't want to play with me anymore because I was too young and they were onto older things. So I spent a lot of time in my imagination and discovered theater and whatnot. And so all through middle school, high school, I was involved in drama.

Fred Moore (29m 14s):

I took, I took tap dancing lessons within a good edit, took music lessons. Wasn't good at try different things, but I wanted to be on a stage. And then 16 years old, that's when my high school guidance counselor sat me down and said, all right, you're 16 years old. What do you want to do for the rest of your life? You're smart. Yeah, I know. It's, I'm 16. I don't know I'm growing in hair in places. I didn't know. I should have hair and my hormones are what? And so I looked him, I said, I want to be a magician because I'd always dabbled in magic. Like kids do. We've got that magic kids at Christmas. And he looked at me and went good luck with that because he had no way me, no resources.

Fred Moore (29m 60s):

I don't know what to tell you, kid. Good luck. And so I took lessons from magician and I decided, I think it was a way for me to connect with people because I was very shy. You talked to a lot of performers and they're inherently very shy if I'm in a social situation where I didn't really know anybody, I, I probably am not going to be Mr. Extrovert. I'm going to be an introvert. And so it was a way for me to connect with people and meet girls for one thing, because was, here's something cool I can do that nobody else can do. So that's kind of sparked that and that got me going into performing and then thinking about the idea, you know, it was like, oh, okay. I could, I could probably make a living at this good night.

Mark Graban (30m 42s):

Well, good. Well, I'm glad that that path worked out for you. You got to follow your dream and, and pivot and make adjustments from the different lessons along the way. So I appreciate you sharing that idea. And I think there's a takeaway thought for, for dear listener, I'm going to address the listener, not the listeners, the intimacy of having our voices pumped into somebody's ears directly is to think about, and this is something I'll think about. What can you do to make yourself less replaceable in terms of your employment or your career or what you do? I think that's a really good thing to think about. So thank you for your story, Fred, and, and everything that you've shared with us here today.

Fred Moore (31m 25s):

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's been a, it's been a pleasure.

Mark Graban (31m 29s):

Okay. Well good. And, and the website again is, do so much more. M O R e.com Fred Moore with, with two O's and the name of the book again, was

Fred Moore (31m 43s):

So much more,

Mark Graban (31m 45s):

The book is, do so much more about productivity

Fred Moore (31m 48s):

And the website is, do so much more. Yeah.

Mark Graban (31m 51s):

I feel like that's a mistake. I felt like that was a mistake in terms of either my listening skills or my retention skills. I apologize.

Fred Moore (31m 59s):

Probably retention. I'm sorry.

Mark Graban (32m 1s):

That's my mistake. Yeah, the book and the website and, and the guy do so much more.com. You can hire Fred to, to speak and present virtually or at some point back onstage. And then one of the things I was going to ask, I saw on the website here, here's, here's a mistake. I think a lot of conferences make, they don't have a professional, energetic, lively MC. So I'm like, how would you make the pitch of like, why should a conference go through the extra expense of hiring you to be the master of ceremonies?

Fred Moore (32m 34s):

And that's an excellent question. And I'm glad you asked a lot of times at conferences, it's talking head talking, head, talking, head, talking, head and talking head. And I know a lot of companies, especially if it's a company conference, they CEO wants to be up there and he wants to, he wants to be the Steve jobs and that's awesome, but he has a lot of other things he needs to do in, in the company. More important things, talking with the clients, the people that are paying the bills for the conference and, you know, taking them out to lunch, talking with them, networking and all that. And it's great for him to, to be face up there, but to have a through line throughout the conference, that's where the MC comes in.

Fred Moore (33m 14s):

The MC provides brain breaks instead of just constant information dump it's, here's something different. Here's something funny. Here's something to take your brain out of that information overload mode. And it makes people laugh to release tension. It creates networking, creates comradery between all the attendees, because now they're a group in a shared experience of this funny, funny event that happens to be a conference.

Mark Graban (33m 41s):

Yes. And I've, I've seen the difference. I think, as you know, that's a great pitch. And as an audience member, I will, or even as a speaker, I'll make the pitch of the events I've seen that have a professional MC it does make a difference. Oh, he's got, Fred is one of those people that maybe we'll get to. Maybe there'll be the MC someday for an event I'm speaking at. That would be fun. But

Fred Moore (34m 1s):

You go, I'd love to bring you on stage. All right.

Mark Graban (34m 4s):

Well, thanks. Thanks Fred. I tried my best to introduce you and maybe someday. Yeah, you might be introducing me, but Fred Moore has been our guest here today. Thanks a lot. This has been a lot of fun.

Fred Moore (34m 15s):

Thank you.

Mark Graban (34m 17s):

Well, thanks again to the Fred Moore for being such a fun guest today, to find the links to his website and everything that he does go to markgraban.com/104. As always. I want to thank you for listening. I hope this podcast inspires you to reflect on your own mistakes, how you can learn from them or turn them into a positive I've had listeners tell me they started being more open and honest about mistakes in their work. And they're trying to create a workplace culture where it's safe to speak up about problems because that leads to more improvement and better business results. If you have feedback or a story to share, you can email me myfavoritemistakepodcast@gmail.com.

Mark Graban (34m 59s):

And again, our website is myfavoritemistakepodcast.com.

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