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Welcome to Late Boomers, the podcast that is your guide to creating a third act with style, power and impact! Join your hosts, Cathy Worthington and Merry Elkins, as they bring you conversations with successful artists, entrepreneurs and entertainers who have set themselves up for an amazing third act. Everyone has a story, and Cathy and Merry take you along for the ride on each interview, recounting the journey each guest has taken to get where they are, and inspiring you to create a path to success as you look toward your own third act!
This is the EWN podcast network.
Cathy:Hello. It's Kathy Worthington.
Merry:And Mary Elkins.
Cathy:We are excited to announce that we are finishing up season 4 of our late boomers podcast.
Merry:Over the last 4 years, we brought you over 200 fantastic interviews with guests from across the globe.
Cathy:We are looking forward to a great season 5 starting soon.
Merry:Thank you for being our loyal listeners and subscribers and viewers, and stay tuned for a fun season 5.
Cathy:Welcome to Late Boomers, our podcast guide to creating your 3rd act with style, power, and impact. Hi. I'm Kathy Worthington.
Merry:And I'm Mary Elkins. Join us as we bring you conversations with successful entrepreneurs, entertainers, and people with vision who are making a difference in the world.
Cathy:Everyone has a story and we'll take you along for the ride on each interview. Recounting the journey our guests have taken to get where they are. Inspiring you to create your own path to success. Let's get started.
Cathy:Worthington. Welcome to Leadboomers. Today, our special guest is Mitch Carson, a celebrated professional speaker and marketing guru, and he's been a radio host. And he's spoken on stages in 63 countries and produced over 2,000 live events in 19 countries. He's been a home shopping network pitchman, and those he's worked with say he knows how to sell anything, anywhere, and create a unique message around any product, person, or event.
Merry:And I'm Mary Elkins. Mitch has self published several books, including The Silent Salesman, which was translated into German and sold more than 16,000 copies. And for our YouTube audience, he just picked up his book and showed everybody the cover. He's trained over 600 speakers, authors, coaches, consultants, and CEOs, and may have gone the authors may have gone on to be New York Times best selling authors as well as keynote speakers, and he's, spoken with and taught recognized experts in their fields. He has been featured in hundreds of media outlets in the USA and internationally, and he has the secret sauce for how to brand and sell anything including yourself.
Merry:And we're looking forward to hearing what he has to say. Welcome, Mitch.
Mitch Carson:Well, thank you for having me, and it was it was a great pre call to understand that you were all from the same hood and went to our respective universities. And we went to high school at, the same high school, Mary, which was quite unique. Possibly a different kind.
Merry:In in the world of of, podcasts
Mitch Carson:and Yeah. Well, we went to the same high school and the same college. Yes.
Merry:We
Mitch Carson:did. That's unusual. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about creating rapport quickly right out of the gate.
Mitch Carson:This is good. And I even shared that I had hair transplants. I'm not ashamed of it. I celebrate it.
Cathy:And he looks Good. Good.
Merry:Fabulous too. It looks fabulous.
Mitch Carson:And they didn't harvest it from my back hair. That's another discussion. But that's
Merry:That's good.
Cathy:Good news.
Merry:Seen that.
Cathy:So, Mitch Mitch, tell us about your background and how it led to you to the career path you're on today.
Mitch Carson:In 1983, I went through a very traumatic time. My parents both died 5 weeks apart when I was 22 years old. So next week I'll be 64. I I'm not I don't hide my age, my background. I'm fully transparent at this point in my life.
Mitch Carson:And, I went through a period of shock. And during this was 1983. I got left a lot of money, all of which I blew and burned through it all. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, fancy cars crashing, ended up having 9 speeding tickets in that in a year, and ended up selling, you know, 2 of my cars, and then I was left with a Volkswagen Beetle with a missing bumper and an expired registration and no license because it had been suspended. And I was in an apartment in East Hollywood because that's all I could afford.
Mitch Carson:I was $30,000 in debt to the drug man because I went on a downward spiral of cocaine and drinking and was a £150. Today I'm £220 and I thought I looked good, but what I looked like was death. And from that point forward, it was one day I don't know if you ladies remember this because you're both LA natives like me. There was a commercial on TV back in the eighties called Care Unit, and Care Unit had a commercial where if you were below the surface, you saw a sheet of plexiglass, and the camera was underneath the plexiglass looking up as the dirt started to pile on and said, this is what happens if you freebase cocaine. And it meant death.
Mitch Carson:Oh. I was sitting in my apartment on a 3 day bender of being awake, alone with a pile of cocaine on a plate, drinking vodka, which was my chaser in order to help me sustain the up from freebasing cocaine and snorting cocaine, and I made a decision at that point that I didn't wanna die. It's that point, and that was June 30, 1984. Since July 1, 1984, I have not had a drink or a drug since. So I'm chemically free.
Mitch Carson:Wow. 40 years. Just
Cathy:cold turkey. Just cold turkey like that.
Mitch Carson:Well, I went into a rehab. Let me I'm very involved in a program. No. It wasn't cold turkey. That would be impossible.
Mitch Carson:We call that white knuckle sobriety. I sought help, receive the love and support of others to assist me in breaking through this pain of addiction that I was wrapped up in. I was absolutely tied to the addiction, drug and alcohol, because I was in massive pain. I was an only child, grew up in environment where I it was all about me, and if you didn't know about me, I'd tell you about me. And I had no one to help me, I thought, until I embraced a program where I reached out to other people who then lifted me up slowly.
Mitch Carson:Wasn't easy. I was going to school at USC during this time, attending college, and on my way to college, I was snorting coke at the stoplights out of a vial. I was so addicted. I couldn't make it to school without getting loaded. And I remember on the side panel of my Porsche that I was driving at that point, this beautiful 911 that I had, I put it on the side of the armrest, I was leaning my head over and snorting, and I went up and all this white was there, and this lady that was opposite me in a car shook her finger at me and did this.
Mitch Carson:And I I just felt total shame of I was that addicted. I couldn't make it to class. Leaving Hollywood, I lived below the Hollywood sign on Beechwood Drive up off Gower and was driving to USC to attend classes, and I couldn't make it without multiple times snorting. I was so How did
Merry:you how did you get into such an illustrious time where you your career just flourished?
Mitch Carson:Well, from that point, I then went in through rehab. And since I said July 1, 1984, I went, got involved in meetings of Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. It helped me. All these meetings I attended were on the west side all the way through Santa Monica, Hollywood, Beverly Hills. There was a meeting I went to on Friday nights at the Rodeo Church Methodist Church right there on Rodeo and and Big Santa Monica, and I got involved.
Mitch Carson:I got totally immersed. I detached from any negativity in my life. All those people who were party friends disappeared. The money disappeared. The the all the drugs, alcohol, all of that disappeared.
Mitch Carson:They went their way. I found a new home, and I've been immersed in that new home since. Most of those people I hung with are dead. Some made it into the program. The primary guy that I bought my cocaine from just celebrated 38 years of sobriety recently.
Mitch Carson:Oh, good. Yeah. It was really nice to see him do that. We were not on great terms when I left his his customer I left being his customer, and he threatened me and all these things, but now I celebrate him. We both found a gift.
Mitch Carson:And through that process, someone who is completely fearful of speaking or celebrating in front of a room became fearless and felt privileged to be able to share my experience, strength, and hope with others, and to be able to provide counsel, direction, sponsorship as we refer to it in the program, and support for people that needed it. And then something miraculous happened along the way of my success, and a man in the room asked me would I like to come and speak to his group of clients up in Seattle. I said, sure. He goes, and I'll pay you. I'd never been paid to speak.
Mitch Carson:I mean, I remember taking I took a speech class at SC when I was there 1 semester, but I hadn't spoken professionally. I spoke in AA with just sharing. And I said, okay. I'll do that. And I he he sent me a a first class ticket out of Burbank, Alaska Airlines to go up.
Mitch Carson:I spoke for a day. He put me up in a hotel that night, spoke, and then to the hotel in the afternoon. Something happened, and the doorway opened for me that I had never had envisioned, never dreamt about, never planned. It's called selling one to many. There were there I sold $65,000 worth of advertising services.
Mitch Carson:I owned a small boutique advertising company at this point after being sober a few years, and I all of a sudden realized, man, I've been doing this the hard way, one to one selling.
Cathy:Talk about
Merry:that. What is that?
Mitch Carson:1 to 1 selling. Think of the stockbroker that picks up the phone, old term, now account executive or financial adviser. When it was a stockbroker back in the seventies eighties, you picked up the phone, you smiled, and dialed. Hi. I'm calling from Merrill Lynch and I'm here here to earn your investment business.
Mitch Carson:That was the pitch, pretty much. And I'm here. I've got a stock today to tell you about, and you have at least 50,000 liquid. You know, prequalifier before you get into it. That's a typical scenario of 1 person who's selling 1 to 1.
Mitch Carson:Mhmm. And when you are looking for clients, you can be my mom was a realtor in Beverly Hills for for for, I think, it was Coldwell Banker, which which was Fred Sands Realtors, which then turned into Coldwell Banker. And she marketed herself one to 1. Had she embraced one to many marketing slash selling of doing group presentations, the client and lead flow would have been infinite.
Merry:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:It is much it can be. It's more finite when you do one to 1. But if you speak to a group or groups of people, your chances of landing more clients is much greater.
Merry:Mhmm. It's actually a number of How do you sell one to 1 to a group of people?
Mitch Carson:Well, you don't sell one to 1. You sell one to many. That's what I'm saying. So one to many. So, for example, if I were a financial adviser today, if I decided to go in and become a financial adviser, I wouldn't pick up the phone and smile and dial.
Mitch Carson:No way. I know the power of speech and presentation one to many. When I sold products on home shopping network in the nineties, I sold 1 to 5,000,000 households that were live on the phone, on the TV watching. So when and it was largely females that were in the audience who pick up the phone and dial the 800 number and order over the phone, and they would take their credit card. There was no there was no Internet back then.
Mitch Carson:It was Mhmm. Pick up the phone and
Cathy:call. Sure.
Mitch Carson:Yeah. They they took it. So if I were a financial adviser today, for example, I would put on public seminars the 7 myths dispelled on where you should invest your money after retirement because the money I would want as a financial advisor, people of my generation, the baby boomers from 1946 through 1964. They have the money. Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:We have the money of our generation. It's where the money is. It's not Gen z'ers and all these these kids with their thumbs on phones. They imagine to have that, but we still have the money. I would go after the market.
Mitch Carson:The old adage is is a tried and true principle is you sell to a starving crowd with money, with the capacity to pay and pay and procure your services. Well,
Merry:how how do you, build and brand yourself when you want to get a speaking gig, and how do you maintain a strong personal brand in business and as a speaker?
Mitch Carson:Okay. Great question. I'll answer that comprehensively because I know it real well. Mhmm. Think of a peacock.
Mitch Carson:The peacock, the male peacock as a great plumage. How he scores a mate is based on how beautiful his feathers are. So imagine they plumage, it's now I'll make it unisex for purposes of example and metaphor. You have this big plumage, you have this big all these feathers have no color at this point. Feather number 1, one of the most critical pieces for a speaker if you want to be a professional speaker, one that makes and gets compensated for speaking, that's a pro, someone that makes money at it, gotta have a book.
Mitch Carson:This was my first self published book. Then I have another book. Those are 2 feathers. I have 18 books in total, but I would put these books as proof, assets, feathers that are beautiful, colored, oiled up on one set of my feathers. On the other set of feathers, since I've been covered in the Wall Street Journal I would put that logo.
Mitch Carson:Since I've been covered in the Sydney Morning Herald I would put that logo. I've been covered on Reuters TV, Fox TV, ABC, NBC, CBS, had my own show on CNN in the Philippines. All of those logos would also be covered here. Any print publications, any speaking spots of notable stages, I might put there as well. Testimonials from well known authors or celebrities, people that I've shared the stage with, I might place their photos.
Mitch Carson:I've got a comprehensive, extensive plumage of feathers that I can peacock to promoters and earn more media. Because people ask me all the time, when do I stop publicizing? The answer is the n word. Never.
Cathy:Never. Yeah. Right.
Mitch Carson:Keep that rolling because yesterday's press is good. Today's press is better.
Cathy:Yeah. You've achieved some major success in international markets. So what do
Merry:you need what
Cathy:do you need to know to become an international speaker?
Mitch Carson:You do it. You hook up with somebody like me that produces events internationally. I mean, this is this is, this is something I did a lot during the pandemic. I lived over in Asia. I ran events between Japan and Dubai.
Mitch Carson:I ran 7 major events in Dubai, 18 in Japan and Tokyo, and probably 70 or 80 in Singapore, and in Malaysia, Thailand. So I created these these events and then I ran about 200 events in Australia back in 2,006 and 7. You simply go and do it. You first start out as a speaker, then you realize, okay, there's the business side to this. I can certainly be the hired talent that comes in, albeit a keynote speaker or a platform pitchman, and you can also work as an emcee, but the person who gets hired has the most feathers.
Merry:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:Mhmm. Who's got all the credibility? Do you wanna hire let's just take the Beverly Hills dentist. Cathy, you live on the west side. You're in Brent.
Mitch Carson:Mary, you're you're in Hollywood, okay, in the Hollywood Hills. If you're going to pick a dentist, of which you all have nice teeth like I do, we've invested in our mouths. Okay? We do we go to the dentist that's in the Wilshire district near Western? No way, Jose.
Mitch Carson:I'm not letting that dentist operate on my teeth. I'm going to Brentwood, going to Beverly Hills for my dentist because I want to, a, associate with Tiffany packaging and a Tiffany quality dentist. Someone that has blue and white paper around him or her who's gone to the right school either UCLA or USC dentistry or maybe Loba Linda possibly if they're celebrating and they've got the right placards on the wall saying that they are the best dentist or one of the top 25 dentists in LA and I'm bringing it back home of which we can all relate to, but my dentist when I lived in Los Angeles was in Brentwood. He was on Wilshire and Bundy in a medical building. Was he more expensive than the guy that was at Wilshire and Western?
Mitch Carson:Probably. And the furniture in the office reflected it. Do I wanna sit in a wicker chair or a plastic folding chair, and do I also think that I'm going to get plastic polyester pants service out of the guy on Wilshire and Western, or am I gonna get the the Fendi pants and Gucci's loafer service of doctor Goldberg that's in Brentwood who went to USC Dentistry?
Merry:My dentists are women who went to USC.
Mitch Carson:Okay. Fine. I I didn't say the
Cathy:man. I didn't Brentwood.
Mitch Carson:Okay. There you go. Mine was in Brentwood. The guy I went to for years was on the same okay. I don't care about the their their their sex or gender or whether they're cisgender or this gender that I don't whatever they identify with.
Merry:So, Mitch, what's so social media is so important these days. What sites are essential to being well branded?
Mitch Carson:Good you're asking smart questions. When I I'll answer it through a story, an example, and a very strong learning experience. I had 38 speakers that wanted to speak at my event in Dubai. It was called Speak in Dubai. This is about 8 years ago.
Mitch Carson:35 of those speakers then traveled with me over to Bahrain to speak in front of the largest crowd at the University of Bahrain. Seventeen of those speakers did not have fully developed LinkedIn profiles, meaning all star status. They did not have it fully it did not have it filled out. All the fields were not populated properly. They did not have a proper headshot or devoid or their backdrop, which is the big banner that goes behind your your headshot photo on LinkedIn, was not filled in.
Mitch Carson:It was the default banner provided by LinkedIn until you upload an appropriate banner slash advertisement of what services you offer. 17 of these speakers killed the spons sponsorship I was gonna receive from the Bahrainian government of $8,000, which would have covered all the food and room costs which were associated with the one day event. Pissed me off.
Cathy:Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:And not only did I lose out on the money, and they had a negative view of us, they did not in the Middle East. They are super scrutinizing of your Linkedin profile. That's number 1 there. So in the Middle East it's dependent. Now if you have a terrible or non existent Linkedin profile in your Japan, no effect.
Mitch Carson:Now here's why. Here's why. It depends on the market, and this is what I've learned speaking all over the world. Depends on the market. But I would say a good general answer is have LinkedIn for sure, and if you are a speaker, you must have YouTube because what are you?
Mitch Carson:A speaker. What are you gonna do? Show all your articles? No. You gotta show yourself speaking, being interviewed.
Mitch Carson:You that that is necessary. But in Japan, LinkedIn failed because LinkedIn is all about me and I and me and I. Look at me. This is what I've done. These are my accomplishments.
Mitch Carson:The culture in Japan is all about we.
Merry:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:They put 1,000,000 of dollars, tens of 1,000,000 of dollars into marketing and lifting off LinkedIn. Nobody uses it there because of the culture.
Merry:Interesting.
Cathy:Very interesting.
Merry:What do they use there?
Mitch Carson:They it's all about we, the search engine or the ad placement that I used in order to fill my events when I was in Japan was Yahoo. Oh, Interesting. Yahoo. Who thinks of Yahoo today? I get my news through that.
Mitch Carson:I look at it online because my email is associated with it, but to run ads on Yahoo, never thought about it. It's different in each market. It worked. I filled my events, made money.
Cathy:A lot of people
Mitch Carson:here don't
Merry:even know. You have to know the culture you're speaking to.
Mitch Carson:100%. So that's why I answered the question the way I did. Because in Bahrain, it mattered major majorly mattered in that market. In the US, if we were to answer that, if you were to ask me that question as a fellow American what would happen here? I would say YouTube, I would say LinkedIn, depending on the people you're speaking to.
Mitch Carson:Instagram and Facebook might be necessary. TikTok is not our generation. I don't understand it. I mean, I looked at a few of the dancing girls in the beginning and I got bored. It's like, okay.
Mitch Carson:Another ding dong. Dancing and shaking her booty. Alright. Enough already. I'm past that.
Mitch Carson:I'm in my sixties now.
Cathy:How do people get booked to speakers, even if they don't have very much speaking experience?
Mitch Carson:You fake it till you make it. Mhmm. And what I mean by that is you get on TV, you write a book. A book is critical because you cannot be viewed as a serious professional, as a an event producer. If you don't have a book, I won't even consider you.
Cathy:But first, you have to figure out what your topic is.
Mitch Carson:Well, of course.
Cathy:But you
Mitch Carson:write something. If you're whatever your top if you write about if you're a leadership speaker and you're selling a leadership program or you're a keynote speaker on the leadership category, write the book, Buster or Betty. Okay? Write the book, Betty. You gotta have a book.
Mitch Carson:And that is also the fuel, the necessary fuel to push your engine to where then I can create an opportunity for you to be covered on television.
Cathy:Mhmm. Right.
Mitch Carson:Network television because we grew up the highest credibility of any media's television. Mhmm. Podcasts are great. We're all, let's just say, in our age group of of I'm sorry. Let me turn this off.
Merry:Sorry. I don't understand.
Mitch Carson:Yeah. You do. It is all important for television radio. We grew up with that. Today, social media, as you ladies brought up, is totally important.
Mitch Carson:Gotta embrace it. Podcast is a new platform. We're on a podcast today. It took me a while to get over my snobbery of I'm not gonna do a podcast. Why would I do that?
Mitch Carson:I'm a trained journalist, and I've been done I'm a television personality. Why would I do this? I'd be crazy not to today. It's where a lot of people choose to consume their information, and the beauty of podcast, you think at it think about it at a primal level. Who is it that spoke into our ear when we were infants, toddlers, all the way up until Mom, stop talking in my ear.
Mitch Carson:Oh, I just gave away the
Cathy:I knew the
Mitch Carson:answer, right? Yeah, you knew the answer, I know the answer. Talk about it.
Cathy:Of course.
Mitch Carson:The audio input is the most trusted input that we experience. We tend to distrust more visual. It's the audio that makes sense. We can interpret better because our moms talked in our ears. It's a trusted platform of communication.
Mitch Carson:People consume podcasts at a much higher rate. So even my clients now that I'm running a speaking training in Singapore in November, going back to running 2 particular events over there for it because there's such demand, all of them, I'm going to insist, get covered on podcast to credentialize themselves and add more feathers to their public.
Merry:So, Mitch, why do some people fail at this, at speaking and perhaps in branding themselves? What could they do about it?
Mitch Carson:The best way when people ask me, how do you define personal brand? Now there would be the textbook answer from Philip Kotler, who's the big textbook writer for universities, And he would say, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah with his elbow patches. Bye. You like that? Bye.
Mitch Carson:Bye.
Cathy:Yeah. It's great image.
Mitch Carson:Tutorial. Yes. Well, he grew up with that. Perfect. And and a pipe.
Mitch Carson:My answer, my real street answer to what is defining a personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. How do you change that perspective? How do you change what people say about you? And sometimes surveys can can provide us that detail and that information to help us learn how we're perceived in the marketplace. Because changing that perception is 100% our responsibility.
Mitch Carson:Yeah. We yeah. Because if we're being honest with ourselves
Cathy:Sometimes people maybe don't even know that they're failing.
Mitch Carson:They don't. And it's and it's you know, they have these wake up calls and, you know, I've gone through these self help trainings when I was younger back in the seventies. I went through Lifespring, and there was s and kinda dating myself with these things. But, you know, you get the direct feedback from people during some of those events, and it was eye opening. It's how would your friends describe you?
Mitch Carson:How would you describe yourself? And if they are out of balance, you've got a perception problem. So if you can bring where you want to be perceived into the alignment of where others perceive you, you've done your job accurately.
Merry:Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:People tell me things about myself, which sometimes shock me and it might even hurt. It's then my responsibility to alter that perception.
Cathy:Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:My responsibility for what I communicate to the world. It's my responsibility if I go to the doctor, because I just did a podcast earlier about this, I go to the doctor and my appointments at 10:30 and the doctor finally sees me at 11:15, I'm going to scold him because I'm gonna say to the doctor, look, he may have a big ego or she may have a big ego. I'm gonna say my time is just as valuable of as yours and I probably make more money than you. And you so I should send you a bill, and you just see the shock. Well, I've I've said it to more than one doctor.
Mitch Carson:Well, I've never been talked to that way. And I said, well, I'm doctor Smith, and I'm master's degree Mitch, and I'm gonna tell you exactly how I feel because my time is not less valuable than yours, it's not more valuable, but I charge more than you. You've just made me lose 45 minutes of my life which is irreplaceable. Now that may not be nice and maybe rub people the wrong way who are doctors that are listening to this, and I say tough stuff.
Cathy:Yeah. Okay. How do we how do we recognize the qualities in ourselves or in our business that make us different than others in our space? And for instance, with our podcast, we'll throw this personal thing on
Mitch Carson:Oh, how do you guys I love the fact that you're LA natives. You live in LA. You've survived the falsehoods, and now you've come into the alignment of sincerity and clarity with your lives. You went from Gucci, Uchi to Uncle Louie the Baton, and now you're at you're in the space. You've obviously seen everything, the same stuff I saw growing up.
Mitch Carson:We're all from the same environment. Now you see with clarity what's real and what's not. Why I could not live in LA again and you folks have survived it and decided to stay there, and I respect that. It just wouldn't fit for me anymore after what I've seen living overseas. And that's that's a personal choice.
Mitch Carson:Could I live there? Yes. I know LA like the back of my hand. I know everything about it. I can drive
Merry:But how do you recognize the qualities in yourself, or do you really need to rely on what other people think about you?
Mitch Carson:I think it's a blend of both, Mary. I think part of it is you get earnest feedback from people that love you enough to give you honest feedback. I I would imagine the relationship with between the 2 of you however long it is or I don't know. Okay. You got a lot of your okay.
Mitch Carson:You got a long background. I think there's probably enough love, respect, and support of each other at this point in your lives to be honest with each other, to risk hurting the other person to help her. If I'm to assume correctly, because you both seem you're both obviously educated smart ladies who speak from the heart and have spoken honestly, and I guess and I'm curious what the answer is. Are you willing to risk hurting each other so in order to help each other?
Merry:And what about a business?
Mitch Carson:A business is it's important for you to get that feedback, to get the hurt feelings from your clients who will give you blind feedback to learn from. So you don't know who it came from, do nothing to identify who gives you this feedback because there's no growth unless you experience pain first.
Merry:That's harsh. It is harsh.
Mitch Carson:Well and that's just my opinion. You're asking my opinion, and I I'm willing to be wrong.
Merry:Yeah. Yeah.
Mitch Carson:I'm willing to be wrong. I just well, okay. The short answer, you know, you know, no pain, no gain. We've heard that. That comes from Arnold years ago.
Mitch Carson:You remember Arnold Schwarzenegger? Yeah. No pain, no gain. You gotta push through the discomfort. I won't even call pain.
Mitch Carson:We'll lighten the word. This comfort of change, the discomfort of leaving familiarity and comfort to doing something that might be uncomfortable getting out of what you used to do, trying something different, and seeing if it works, you could always go back to the way you were. Yeah. But stretching that rubber band because it never goes back to its original shape. But then how do you harsh word, Barry.
Merry:Okay. Then how do you, how do you find the spot that makes you different from others in your space?
Mitch Carson:Everybody's got a unique thumbprint on that which we can agree. Okay. One of the the greatest differentiators is we've got unique fingerprints. We've got unique DNA. We share some of it with our parents and siblings, possibly cousins.
Mitch Carson:A book is yours. I'm going back to the basics here. I believe in the basics. If you've written a book, that unique thumbprint is yours. It's truly there can be 4,000 books in the leadership category.
Mitch Carson:I'm picking one that is large. Personal development is a huge evergreen category. Fit over 60 is a niche area. I'm thinking of writing a book. I'm 64 next week.
Mitch Carson:I'm thinking of writing a book
Merry:birthday.
Mitch Carson:Thank you. Not yet. Next week. Not I'm still 63 for a few more days. So I'm a registered Virgo.
Mitch Carson:So until I read and so it would be unique to me in my experience to write a book on health, having been a heart attack survivor in December I've got 2 stents in my heart That also changed as part of my unique story, how I overcame the depression that follows having a heart attack. K? Heart disease is the number one killer in America. I overcame that. However, adjusted my diet from being blubbery to now getting more fit because I had a couple hand surgeries as well.
Mitch Carson:A lot of stuff was fall falling apart all at once. But how I think once you're under the knife, and this I'll just speak for myself and everybody's got their unique story. It starts with a book but their journey. And one of my big deliverables is taking people through the authorship process of writing their book, finding that unique angle, what everybody is unique, and it starts with your own thumbprint, and your experience. And people relate to stories.
Merry:Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:People buy based on stories and relatability.
Merry:That's right.
Mitch Carson:Relatability. And if I'm we already created a connection and sorry, Kathy, you went to UCLA. But the we created a connection because we're LA based people or LA origin or born people who then have all I lived in LA more than almost 50 years. 49 years I lived in Los Angeles, then I moved out of the country. But that is part of my story.
Mitch Carson:So if I were to talk about it, my world travels, I don't know what your respective backgrounds were before you started your podcast or what you guys do now. I'd be curious to hear that, and I could certainly, hearing it for about 2 minutes each, come up with a spin for each of you.
Cathy:Oh, I love that.
Mitch Carson:That'd be very easy. Challenge me.
Merry:Well, I we'll do it after the podcast because Yeah.
Mitch Carson:That's fine.
Merry:I know that you've mentored a number of really notable people, and I'd love to hear how you worked with them. And some of these people are are so well known like Mark Victor Hansen, who's one of the authors of the very best selling chicken soup for the soul, and you shared the stage with people like Richard Branson and Mhmm. Chris Okazaki, who is known as the Tony Robbins of Japan and also members of royal families from Asia, Malaysia, Bahrain, Oman. So can you share a few stories about working with them?
Mitch Carson:Yes. They're just people. K. Sir Richard, I met we shared the stage in London about 9 years ago at the O2 Arena, which was houses or or or or seats 40,000 people. He was the most noteworthy of the speakers at the event.
Mitch Carson:I was also there with Stedman Graham, who was Oprah's boyfriend, was there, and a lot of Robert
Merry:Hill. Successful businessman.
Mitch Carson:Yes. Exactly. I mean, you know, it doesn't hurt to be the partner to Oprah. That certainly didn't hurt his brand. Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:And a host of other big name speakers in my life were all just people. Those people, how they're different than, let's say, the rest of us who are super, super high level. Mark, I know quite well. He's spoken on my platforms and I've spoken on his events in LA. He had mega marketing events back in the early 2000s, and I spoke on those, you know, at the Wyndham Hotel at LAX over on Century Boulevard.
Mitch Carson:And Mark's a great guy. Jack Canfield is a really nice guy. I shared the stage with him also, his partner. I don't know him as well, but Mark, I knew quite well at one point. I was also gonna bring him to speak on my stages in Australia.
Mitch Carson:Mister positive loves to wow a crowd. He's an excellent, likable person, speaker, prolific author, but he doesn't write a word. Mhmm. He's a great marketer. He and Jack are great marketers.
Mitch Carson:The chicken soup for the soul series is other stories of other people under the brand of chicken soup for the soul, which they sold, by the way. They no longer own it. But that brand has sold 600,000,000 copies worldwide and still utilizes their names, and they write not one word. Yeah. And they have done Wild.
Mitch Carson:Super well. Now the royal family people, I can't name who they are, they're insecure about their backgrounds.
Cathy:Oh.
Mitch Carson:And they have to speak and wanna get out there and do this, and they're afraid because of the label that they're wearing. They've worn that their whole lives is this label. Very few royals that I have come in contact with, and I don't have big contacts. I've met many over the years. Most of them are that wanna steer away from their background.
Mitch Carson:They don't wanna embrace it and live in it. I mean, the king of Thailand presently got there because by birthright.
Merry:Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:He is not visible at all. He's got $40,000,000,000, and he loves to live his life on his own terms, rarely provides public appearances. Whereas I think, the royals in England, you know, if you wanna follow all this, they're different. They're probably the most exposed royals in the world, or at least the most visible. Here we have Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, which would be our version of of the experience.
Mitch Carson:So they they I'm sure at one time, maybe Donald didn't. He probably had confidence to speak his whole life. He's a unique individual, and I shared the stage with him once when he was only known as the Donald.
Cathy:Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:This is probably 25 years ago in Florida. He came in out of the helicopter, spoke, turned around, got on his helicopter, and left. Never shook his hand, not didn't get a chance to meet him, but we were on the same stage together. But we're all people. When we're in the green room together, we're just people.
Mitch Carson:Some are more successful than others simply because they got comfortable in their role, because they believed they deserved. They believed they deserved. When I started writing books, my income went up multiple folds. Why? Because I felt and believed I deserved.
Mitch Carson:I had ticked the right boxes. I had spoken on the right stages. I had the media feathers, so my personal expectations that existed between my right ear and the left ear, I felt I deserved.
Cathy:And speaking of media, share with us how to get booked on major media outlets and share a few strategies for getting featured with them.
Mitch Carson:Okay. Number 1 is write a book. I've already talked about that. No need to cover that. Embrace the media calendar.
Mitch Carson:Every and I'll I'll be happy to send you a copy of that, which you can then share with your listeners later. I've created a media calendar for America because it varies based on country. Canada's a little bit different, which shows each month what the themes are related to the media, what they're looking for so they can editorialize you.
Merry:Oh, that's great.
Mitch Carson:Yeah. So so, for example, in April, I had 3 ladies that came out were African American who came out for Black Women's History Month.
Merry:Ah.
Mitch Carson:Wasn't white women's history. It's black women history. And I'm saying black, and I'm not gonna get in trouble by saying that because that's the labeling. And I got them very easily positioned on television here in Las Vegas piggybacking on the media calendar. You would also have back to school, which is going on right now.
Mitch Carson:If you've got something back to school related, you could probably use that as traction to get on TV. Now piggybacking on a trend, anything AI will garner attention more than anything that doesn't have AI. It's still newsworthy.
Merry:Mhmm.
Mitch Carson:Be interesting so the news department is interested in you. Mhmm. Are you interesting so they will be interested in looking at your message? They get hundreds of pitches every day. How do you stand out?
Mitch Carson:Piggybacking, be an author, top piggyback on a trend, or jack the news? Newsjacking. Well, meaning you're, again, piggybacking on a news cycle. When 911 happened, I came up with toilet paper with Osama bin Laden's face on it. Oh, it's shocking.
Mitch Carson:In order to wipe out terrorism and put his face wrapped for exactly where it belongs on my buttocks.
Merry:And I do
Mitch Carson:Yeah. It's funny, but it was timely, and then the proceeds went to the American Red Cross. That was my angle. You know, when I when that happened in 911, I was 41 years old, formerly married, and I I was watching what happened with the the 2 towers, like every other shocked American at this point, and I was standing there with my then wife and said, I think I'm an enlist in the Marine Corps. At least I'll be an officer because I have a master's degree.
Mitch Carson:And she said, you're too old. I said, we'll see. Sure enough, she was right. I said, well, oh, ouch. That hurt it was so accurate.
Cathy:Yeah. To be honest. Mitch, what would you like our audience to have as a takeaway today? Give us some advice.
Mitch Carson:If you have an idea and you turn that idea into a reality, act on it. If you believe that you have something that is worthy of media attention, act on it. And there's no harm if it's something that you want to get on network television and are willing to invest in yourself. I don't do this for free, reach out to me in the link that I shared. Get interviewedguaranteed.comforward/meetwithmitch.
Mitch Carson:That's my pitch. Meet with Mitch. Oh, and take your dreams from the category of classification of dream into reality. Realize it so you can feel like you accomplished. Mhmm.
Merry:I love that. I love that. Thank you so much, Mitch. Our guest today. Yes.
Merry:Our guest today on late boomers has been Mitch Carson. He's a celebrated professional speaker, radio host, and he has given us pointers on how to brand, market, and sell anything including yourself, and it craft an unique message around it. You can reach Mitch on his website, mitchcarson.com. That's mitchcars0n.com. And if you'd like to connect directly with him, Mitch, would you repeat again how to get how our audience can get a one to one with you?
Mitch Carson:Yes. Get interviewed guaranteed.comforward/meetwithmitch. That's the direct link. You've gotta use the whole URL, get interviewguaranteed.comforward/meetwithmitch.
Merry:Thank you. Thank you again. It's been great.
Mitch Carson:It has been. Thank you, ladies.
Cathy:And we wanna thank our listeners for subscribing to our late boomers podcast and checking us out on YouTube and recommending us to your friends. We appreciate you, and we'd love to have you give us a 5 star review. And we wanna hear about your experiences with late boomers, excuse me, and what gets you inspired. We are on Instagram at I am Cathy Worthington and at I am Mary Elkins and at late boomers. Thank you for listening, and once again, thank you to Mitch.
Cathy:Thank you for joining us on Late Boomers. The podcast that is your guide to creating a 3rd act with style, power, and impact. Please visit our website and get in touch with us at lateboomers.biz. If you would to listen to or download other episodes of Late Boomers, go to ewnpodcastnetwork.com.
Merry:This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other major podcast sites. We hope you make use of the wisdom you've gained here and that you enjoy a successful third act with your own style, power, and impact.