13. Cody Brumley - Immanuel Baptist Church

Cody Brumley:

Leaders in today's culture and really all culture throughout time, they have to have that tool. They have got to be able to, in a moment, stand in front of a group and command an audience. A measurement I use is, I should be able to argue the other side's case against it. If I can't, I don't know it well enough to present it yet. And so I prep its content, what am I going to say? Once I feel really good about that, I move in to how do I say this?

Robert Wagner:

From Hogan Taylor CPAs and advisors, I'm Robert Wagner, and this is How That Happened, a business and innovation success podcast. Each episode of the show, we sit down with the business and community leaders behind thriving organizations to learn how business and innovation success actually happens.

On a prior episode of How That Happened, I asked Matt Crafton what was the skill that he's had to learn as a leader of his organization that was completely different from his technical training. And Matt's immediate answer was communication. Now, Matt's a civil engineer by education and training, but he said that as the CEO of his company, Crafton Tull, he is expected to speak frequently to his employees, to city and county governments, to the press, and other stakeholders of his company. Matt said that communicating, and in particular, speaking in public to various constituencies is now a vital part of his role as CEO, and it is not something that came naturally to him.

I think Matt's experience is common and in today's culture, the ability to communicate effectively in public is a requirement for all organizational leaders. So with that in mind, we wanted to talk to someone who makes their living communicating in public and to get their insights on what it's like to be a professional communicator, and what the rest of us who need to be able to communicate effectively but are not professionals at it could learn from their experiences.

Our guest is Cody Brumley, a professional communicator serving in the faith community. Cody is a graduate of Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, with a degree in communications and a Master's of theological studies from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Cody is currently the pastor of ministries and mission at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, a position he just recently accepted. When we recorded our episode earlier in the fall, Cody was the executive pastor at First Baptist Church in Jenks, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa. The church has enjoyed phenomenal growth in attendance and community impact over the past few years. We kicked off our conversation about communication by discussing the role of an executive pastor. Cody, welcome to the How That Happened podcast.

Cody Brumley:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Robert Wagner:

So Cody, your title is executive pastor. So what is that? How did that happen?

Cody Brumley:

Well, the truth is the first time I met an executive pastor was at the church where I am now. And I walked away and looked at my wife and said, "What do you think he does?" And I assumed because we were in Jenks, maybe he pastored executives, like there's a whole bunch of executives, and they needed like a children's pastor and an executive pastor. I found out that's not what they do. They vary context to context. In my role, it is being the second chaired our senior pastor, doing whatever he needs to move the vision forward. And I came into that, having never desired that position, but just desired to be faithful wherever God put me. And so I wasn't really back to being a kid like wanted the aspire to a certain role. I was like, whatever opportunity I get, I just want to be all in there. And that led me to this to the spot.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. Your bio says you started speaking like when you were in seventh grade or whatever.

Cody Brumley:

Yeah.

Robert Wagner:

So what were you doing in seventh grade?

Cody Brumley:

The first time I remember like public speaking was seventh grade, and we had a Bible study at my junior high, Collinsville High School, seventh and eighth grade in classroom. And so it's me and like 60 of my peers, and my social studies teacher who said I should speak. And it was the first time I had to put material together, have a timeframe, present it to a group of people. And as a young man, I cried in front of a group like sweaty palms, it was like so overwhelming to try and communicate these things I put together, I remember. It wasn't even sad, like just a tear showed up and I thought, I'm a dead man. I'm a boy in junior high that just cried in front of people. I'm going to live in a locker. But I made it through that experience.

Following that moment, my social studies teacher heard a quote that I'd said about don't let circumstances overcome your joy. She goes to her blackboard and she writes it on there and puts my name under it. It was in the space that she would put quotes from famous people through history. And I remember thinking, I just cried in front of a group. This was super not great. And I thought, the power of a sentence that goes way beyond me, like every person who would see that would like be able to be moved by that. That's kind of that moment that solidified this is worth doing and doing well.

So I did that in a Bible study In seventh grade and I just never stopped. It was Bible studies. It was a D.A.R.E. program for the high school, it was honor societies and student council stuff. On into college, getting a communications degree, having a speech teacher who threatened me by saying, "Hey, you know how to speak in front of people, and you'll be graded on your improvement, not your ability." And I remember going "Oh, no." So everyone else got to give persuasive speeches about their favorite things. I had to speak on aglets, which is the ... Aglets, the plastic tip at the end of a shoelace. That was my assignment because she wanted to push me as a communicator.

Robert Wagner:

What a blessing to have someone who didn't let you just [crosstalk 00:06:21] in.

Cody Brumley:

Yep. And I'm thankful at the moment, I don't know how excited I was. But that season taught me so much about preparation, not relying on personality and charisma, or any of those things, but preparing really well to communicate well. So I started then, and it just kind of carried through.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. So you went into the education piece and getting a degree in communication. I'm not sure I knew that existed. I stopped at the A's at accounting. I think most people skip on past the C's and the communication piece. So what do communication majors intend to do?

Cody Brumley:

Honestly, I went in knowing that I felt a call to ministry. Again, not a positional thing. But I knew I wanted to communicate things to people and essentially, as a Christian, like truths to people that would change your lives. And so I got there and I met some other people that are in the same field. So what do you do? They're like, we're communications majors, it's sweet. And I thought that makes sense because preachers communicate. And they go to all kinds of fields of broadcast and some of those things, a lot of written journalism that comes from that. Some public speaking government platforms where they're writing speeches, a lot of those different things.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. So we all hear the statistic about public speaking being like the number two fear behind death. And you've already admitted that you cried the first time, or at least, teared up. So I appreciate that transparency. Did you get over that? I mean, just in the course of just doing it over and over again, did you get past the fear? Or do you still have fears when you speak?

Cody Brumley:

When I hear fear of public speaking, there's two immediate thoughts. One of them is stage fright. Like people when they say, I'm afraid, what they mean is the idea of being in front of a group, like makes me want to pass out. And in that sense, I think there's unhealthy fear and there's healthy fear. Unhealthy fear immobilizes you. And so if you go, I could never do that. You're misreading what you really should be afraid of in that context. And so to that part, I say, anyone who has stage fright is legitimate. Some people will never be in front of groups. But, as you said earlier, leaders in today's culture and really all culture, throughout time, they have to have that tool. They have got to be able to, in a moment, stand in front of a group and command an audience. So you can get over the fear of doing it.

But there's also healthy fear to have. When you think of public speaking, you should be driven by this, I want to honor the person who asked me to speak. I want to communicate something worthwhile and not waste their time. There should be fear of wasting the gift of a moment with other people that drives you to really good preparation. And so when I hear fear of public speaking, I think ... I have told people, first of all, someone asked you to do this.

Robert Wagner:

Right. They had confidence in you.

Cody Brumley:

Like, there's a reason. They could have selected anyone's voice, they picked yours. So have the belief in you that they have in you. And then secondly, just be yourself. They asked you because you already have the content, you already have the personality. Just deliver on being you. And for a lot of people, that kind of starts to unpack some of the fear.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. So this next question maybe is just sort of still addressing the fear, I'm not sure. But do you feel pressure to be really, really good? In the context of how the public sees things now. I just think about everything that's available to us now. I mean, there's nothing sort of not available. We can look up great sermons, great speakers, great TED Talks, great coaches, pep talks, great eulogies, we can look up all that stuff and we could get drowned in it this afternoon. So the access to really great oratory and great speaking and inspiring things is just available to everyone, which didn't always used to be true. Zig Ziglar, you had to go pay to see him. It was the only way to get that. So does that motivate you, do you even think about it as sort of like, man, I got to measure up to kind of where people think I should be in this speaking thing?

Cody Brumley:

I believe is anyone and any leader engaging in that spot, they have to deal with that thought ahead of time. You have to acknowledge, and this is probably going to sound counterintuitive, I go into every moment speaking with the absolute belief that I'm not the best communicator. And I removed that pressure from myself before I step up, because I know exactly what you said. People can get online, and I tell people, you can go find better communicators than me. What I know separates me from them is that I'm in the room with those people. There is a relational equity that you have with others, when you're in the room with them that you don't get through screen.

And so while yes, man, you can have other people communicate better, there's an opportunity to hear me communicate something and then you know I can speak with you and coach you through that. And most change isn't made staged down, that can get in people's heads. Getting to people's hands where it changes their lives is normally made in interpersonal relationships, right? Most of the things that I push to is towards interpersonal interaction across the table with people. I can give you good ideas, but like coaching is huge. And that's where it kind of takes away some of the pressure of do I have to be the best? Do I have to deliver?

As a preacher, I've got to give my next best sermon to get this many view counts and as many shares this week. That gets into a false idea of success. And so I go in thinking, I'm not the best communicator in the world, but I'm the communicator that was picked for this. And they picked me because they know me, they know the way I deliver. And so I'm just going to authentically be who I am and deliver that way.

Robert Wagner:

That's awesome. That is really good, good counsel, I think, for all of us. Let's talk about preparation a little bit. You mentioned that you had an instructor who really helped you hone that. So how do you think about preparation? What do you do? How do you prepare for a talk?

Cody Brumley:

And it's going to sound like cheesy coach, but preparation is key. And I had coaches that said that. But the longer that I've spoke to groups, I realized that is the place that changes everything. And so preparation, number one, I always start with expectations. So if I'm asked to speak, or given an opportunity or have a regular, recurring responsibility, I start by going, what's the expectations for this? So that's preparation for me, is contacting the person who asked me to speak, how long do I speak? Give me a timeframe. What is my topic? What do you want to accomplish? Like what do you want the people in the room to leave thinking, feeling, doing? You're asking me to do this to reason and it's to propel an audience forward. And so I asked all of that upfront.

So even formality of what I do or don't wear, how formal is the place? How formal of speech you want me to give? Do you want it to be memorized? Could I use notes? Do you want media? I asked all of those before I even get into preparing my content. Because at the end of the day, in a very just kind of like honest, worldly sense, that's the person who's going to give you the check. And so you want to meet their expectations, not your own. And then the second level of expectations is who I'm speaking to. So I'm actually the least important person when I'm public speaking. It's the one who assigned me the role and then it's the people I'm speaking to. If I don't serve them well, then I didn't accomplish my task either.

Cody Brumley:

So I prep first by going, what do you want? What do they need? And then after that, I go into content, which is the biggest portion most of us, when we think about public speaking, we get in our heads and right away, we're like, okay, how do I stand? Where do I go? We're in front of a mirror with like our arms waving around like birds. People can't see this, but I'm waving my arms. We get so focused on how we deliver and the bulk of our time needs to be spent on what we deliver. We should know our content so well. As a preacher, I type roughly 6 to 10,000 words for each sermon that is just background history, dictionary usage, Greek translations. I put all of that together to know what I'm going to say before I even begin to think about how do I say this to the group.

And so in a business setting, it's knowing what you're going to say so well, and a measurement I use is, I should be able to argue the other side's case against it. If I can't, I don't know it well enough to present it. And so I prep its content what am I going to say. Once I feel really good about that, I move into how do I say this. And once I start that phase, there's some great resources on how to do you say. Pastor in Canada named Carey Nieuwhof, he has a article that says How to Craft a Killer Bottom Line. It's written for pastors and sermons, but it is applicable for every single speaker in any moment. And it gets to the heart of how do we deliver like a one point sermon or a one point talk. Because most of us, that's all our brains can really remember.

Back to the old adage, literature doesn't know who said it first. But tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them then tell them what you told them. There's one point through there. When I get into, here's 30 pages of content, what needs to be said, I need to go through five questions that Carey Nieuwhof recommended. I say, what do I want them to hear? Why do I want them to hear it? What do I want them to do? Why do I want them to do it? How do I help them remember? And so I take all that content and think with all this what I want them to hear. Some main objective. Why do they need to hear that? And then I get into, okay, what should they do? They've heard this, they believe it, what's the action? Why is it so important and vital that they do this? And then I'm going to give you a practical tool to help you remember, his should happen.

Robert Wagner:

Right.

Cody Brumley:

And regardless of your topic, that flow tends to work every time and it keeps you as a speaker on track to know that you're actually moving towards action. Once I get through kind of content, how am I going to say it, I move into practicing it. Two best locations to practice. If you can go to the venue you're going to speak, get there without anybody else there and run it over and over with a timer on your phone. For me at a church, I do this in our auditorium, timer on my phone, I want to honor people's time. I want to be efficient. And the best part about giving yourself a timeframe is it makes you say what has to be said. So you start cutting and crafting as you do this. And you go fully animated.

It might terrify a janitor or two who've walked in and Richie's like, "Are you okay?" I'm like on the verge of tears, like delivering something that means so much to me, because I've put in hours of preparation for it. And I have to say, "I'm okay, Richie, don't worry." But you do this over and over and it helps you know this is the right way, the right emotion for this content. Or this joke sounded funny when I typed it. But now that I'm saying it out loud in a room, I think this could be really embarrassing. I'm not that funny. Like, I'm going to take that back out. And so I run that over and over in the location and the other one is the car. People drive by and they think you're crazy, fully animated speaking. But in a car, you're forced to do it by memory and nobody's there to judge you.

Robert Wagner:

Right.

Cody Brumley:

And so you try to run it and run it. I tend to hit stop signs and I'll use little voice recorder, and I'll record myself saying it and listen back and kind of craft it that way. So all of that ... That was like a really long segment. I'm sorry.

Robert Wagner:

It's alright. It's good. It's awesome.

Cody Brumley:

Those are all things that I put in place, because it's a Christian teaching, but it applies everywhere. If you're faithful with little, you'll be trusted with much. If you are asked by a boss or you're asked by someone else to speak somewhere, I take all of those with that same level of commitment. You're asking me to speak for your group, that's a huge thing of trust. I'm going to prepare this way. And if I'm faithful to that for the kindergarten class I'm going to for my son, I'm going to kill it for him. Or if I'm faithful to that to one of our three services with 600 people in it or a small group, God is going to honor that or the employer, the people you're speaking to, you're going to have other opportunities to do this on a big scale. And when you hone the muscle of I prepare the same way every time with the same energy and the same focus and the same determination, then you don't get nerves.

Robert Wagner:

Right.

Cody Brumley:

Because you just practiced that I'm ready to deliver by the time it comes.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, that is awesome. I love the five questions, the five points to think that through because you got to answer those questions if you really want to be effective. That's awesome stuff. What if you don't know anything about the venue? I'm the same way. I'd like to know what it's going to be like, and I'm thrown off when I get somewhere and it's just not what I imagined at all. It unnerves me.

Cody Brumley:

Yeah. So two things on that, one of them goes back to the first like pressing any questions right off the bat. Give me your expectations. What should I be ready for? I've been in plenty of times where I show up and they're like, you're not actually going to have a microphone. Okay, good. It's just 300 people and not a microphone. Like, where am I allowed to stand? And will I scare anybody if I yell. So those things do happen. Part of it is honestly just time. Public speaking as a muscle, the more opportunities you take to do it, and again, to view any moment of 10 or more people is public speaking. And so you take seriously, I've got a team meeting today, I'm going to address them. Before I get in that moment, I want to think through with this level of clarity, how to communicate well.

When you've practiced that, it's just a muscle. And you get into the moment and you think, all right, I can adapt to this space. Sometimes it goes well, and there's other times I have to pull the person who like said, hey, you're speaking and go, based on what I see here, this audience size or this demographic, or this situation, or in our world with the information availability, with what happen in culture today, Like, on the heels of that, this room is not a bustling room of energy. This is a room that is heavy with shots fired in another state. Let me get with you and ask you again, what do you want your outcome to be? And I kind of let them reset it based on, well, now that you don't have a mic, and there's no chairs in the room, and the air conditioner broke. I think my outcomes this, you can toss your formality and notes in you can ... So I try to work with the person on site to again, if they think it's a win, then it was a win.

Robert Wagner:

Quick story, I guess, the last time I spoke was a month or so ago. I went to just a local venue. And I got there, no electricity. None whatsoever. So no, mic, I could sort of overcome that, probably, no PowerPoint, just nothing. So now all that got resolved. But you had to go through that whole psychological thing of what's this going to look like? What's going to be different?

Cody Brumley:

And the power of, again anchoring on good preparation, if you've put in the grunt work that nobody sees of researching your topic. And then for me, I actually work towards a transcript. So I take, here's all these 6,000 words, I start writing down answers to these questions. And I will type out transcripts, like here's everything I'm going to say. Now, I may not speak from that. Depending on the situation, I will. Sometimes it's outlines, most of the time, it's memory on occasion. At our church, we have three services, and so I keep the transcript in front of me, because I've got to say this three times in a row.

By the time you've done all that preparation, and if you've written a logical speech, one thing flows into the next thing, this is how I would explain this to my five-year-old, then it's easy to memorize. If you put in all the preparation work right, you're not trying to memorize it, you understand it so well, that you can tell it without your notes. And that's really the goal of preparation is not, I don't need to have a thing memorized. It is I want something I understand how to communicate the heart of. So you get there, I don't have my slides, I don't have the pictures, I don't have this. It's okay because I understand the one thing I needed you to know. And again, that kind of lets you keep your anxiety down and get ready to knock it out with or without everything you thought you'd have.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. How do you feel about the TED Talk format?

Cody Brumley:

I am thankful for TED Talks. I think that they shook up the public speaking platform in a really healthy way back to kind of micro focused experts now. We used to try and go Sears, Roebuck catalog, one place for everything. In our interconnected world today, there's space for these micro experts. And Ted Talks gave people platforms to say, hey, in this specific arena, you are the top dog. Like you know this better than anybody, and we're only going to give you this space of time to communicate it. And so what TED Talks did is they I feel like put on display for everybody the power of knowing your content so well that you can say it briefly and directly and powerfully. Being on a public speaking, people are like, well, I've got to have an intro and a story and something that makes people cry and makes them laugh. And it used to be the oratory like, I want you to experience a whole vastness of emotions. And so we felt pressure.

Now, it's, I want you to tell me the one thing really well. Ted Talks shone a light on how effective that is when we are brief and direct. It's the old Mark Twain quote, "I sat down to write a short letter, but didn't have enough time, so I wrote a long one." It takes a lot of skill to start getting rid of things that aren't effective in the one thing you're trying to communicate. So I feel like they've been good for everybody. And they remind us ... And if I know my one thing, I can say it well. Now, in my circle, I've never heard anybody complain about a short sermon. Right? And so I remind myself that as I write them, the TED Talk model is actually really healthy, I think.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. I'm urging you and all pastors out there to adopt the 17-minute rule. Yeah. It is really hard, I think, at least for most people to condense something that might naturally be 30 minutes into 17. I recently was asked to be part of an organization, it's actually global, but they meet like four times a year, and they have presenters, and you have five minutes, five minutes, continuous slides, whether you're ready or not, they're moving. I mean, that was a really cool experience to just think about you really just have the one idea at that point. And how do you hone that down and say what you want to say about it? So that's really good experience. It kind of gets us to attention spans. So do you think about attention spans as you're preparing and sort of the rhythm of your speech? I've been going seven minutes, I need to do something different. Do you think about those kinds of things and plan those?

Cody Brumley:

I do. And a lot of that also just, again, comes from the more that you do this, the more capable you're to read a room, and you're ready to present something new or change something. The first person who talked to me about attention spans gave me the numb butt rule, which is when people's bottoms go to sleep, so do their brains. And that was his way of saying, when you're saying something, the reality is, there's not like a magic timeframe neuroscience. We've got this many minutes of attention span. We know attention spans are shrinking because of things like TED Talks, because of really well done short film, because people can have heightened emotional, deep moving content in really short frames. So people are used to getting that now, so we've got to be more and more effective at delivering it.

But as I am looking at the content, I'm going to deliver I think, I've been really serious here for a little bit, I need to give people an emotional break. Or this has been a really deep, I need to give them a mental break. Because the point of speaking is engagement. The point of speaking is not humor. Humor serves engagement. It's not emotion or deep feeling, those things serve engagement. And so I think, how do I keep people engaged? And I will look through and try to time those out to make sure that there's some extra lean in lightning, everybody take a breath and get back into this moment.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. So what about storytelling? How do you think about storytelling? Are there storytelling hacks that we could use? Because not all of us have great, colorful lives to pull stories out of.

Cody Brumley:

When I think of storytelling, I've seen it done great and I've seen it done terribly. And most of us have, right?

Robert Wagner:

Yeah.

Cody Brumley:

You've watched a speaker deliver something and you're like, you don't even believe that, nor did you experience it. It just misses the mark. And so I think in regards to creating some of those lean in moments, going back and remembering engagement is the goal. Now, the best example stand up comedians, not because they're funny, most of them are, but because they have found ways to take relatable experiences across the human experience in certain cultures, and bring humor or beauty or insight to them. So it's the way that Jim Gaffigan like, nobody ever looked at a hot pocket the same after he did a skit on hot pockets. And before they were just a weird food. And now they were like this anomaly. And that's the gift of for me, storytelling is saying, here's the important thing that needs communicated. Here's a relatable way to make it make sense to everybody.

Once again, on a Christian trend, like Jesus in his time was the best at this. They ask really deep questions and he says, "Let me tell you a story." And so all the way back to ancient literature, you Look at Homer's Odyssey, they communicated the deepest things that should alter the direction of our lives by relatable stories. Let me tell you about a fisherman. Let me tell about a farmer. So in storytelling, a few hacks to that, because they're really important is, I try to default that I don't tell stories that aren't my own. Which kind of stinks because it'd be easy to Google and go, that's such a good story, I'm going to tell it. If I tell a story that's not my own, I end with telling how that story moved me emotionally.

So if I do say, man, I read this story. Here it is. I ended with, this impacted me this way because ... Otherwise, I really just try to tell stories I see. So if you want to be a good public speaker, you have to be a good student of life. You have to observe things in you and your peers that they find to be funny out of regular everyday life. You have to observe the things that cause weight in you or your peers, because if it's true for you, it's probably true for other people in your context. And so you just have to study that really well and pay attention. And I keep notes on my phone. My kids will do something ridiculous and I will write it down.

Robert Wagner:

Okay.

Cody Brumley:

And I do that with a word or two like, this taught me about hope, this taught me about cleanliness, or I've got three kids, this taught me about whatever it may be. So first of all, you just be a student of life. And remember, your stories don't have to be these incredible things. They've just got to be genuine. In our culture, today, people have a radar for authenticity, I believe like never before. They can see through fakes so quickly. And what creates engagement is whenever they look at a speaker and they go, they've experienced that same frustration as a parent that I have, or that same frustration as a kid that they ... They just took something in my life and made me see it in a fresh, new way. So your stories need to be genuine, authentic. They also need to be culturally sensitive, which comes down to knowing your audience.

I prepped a man to move to Nicaragua last week, and he's going to be speaking while he's there. And I said, write what you're going to speak and then go sit down with a local you trust and say, "Does this illustration make sense?" Because we give illustration about families, I travel to see my grandparents in Nicaragua was like, I traveled to see my grandparents. That's the next door in our house. Like, completely lost on them or humor. It was funny to us, may not be funny to them. So you need to know when you're stepping outside of your cultural context and have someone trusted to say, if I wanted to illustrate this, what would do it? So for storytelling, keep it authentic, make sure it matches your culture, and then tell stories that if you genuinely believe it's moving or funny, and people see that you're moved by it, they believe you more than your story.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. So you've hit on chamber here a couple times in the answer you just gave, but you also talked about in your preparation, writing a joke, you're practicing, it works, it doesn't work. You're a funny guy. You're a naturally funny guy. You've been funny just as we've been talking here. So how do you think about that? I mean, is it really intentional or does it come in a moment? And I sort of want to ask a question as well about, what do you do while you're speaking and those ideas start hitting your head? How have you learned to filter that?

Cody Brumley:

Well, you've seen me speak and you know sometimes I don't filter that, and I probably need to keep getting better at that. So to answer the two questions. One of them on intentionality, I always come back, again, just being yourself. Some of the most engaging communicators I've watched, they're not funny. And they know they're not funny, which makes them relatable, because they are not trying to be something they aren't. They're not trying to think, well, every time people laugh, it's good. On occasion, knowing they're not funny, there's like a self deprecating humor to it. And you can only go so far there before people get worried about you. And so, I do think you start with, who am I really? And if you have people that know you listen ahead of time to what you're going to say, they'll be able to let you know if you're being genuine or not. They'll be able to go, you're trying.

And it's super humbling, but it serves your audience better and serves the person who asked you to speak better to go and let people critique you before you do it and say, all right, I'm just going to be me, which again, you are asked to speak because you are you. So if you're not funny, don't try to be funny. It's actually super painful to watch. If you are funny by nature, which I put that on, I'm willing to say things that I think are really funny because my metric, and it's probably not good, there's people smarter me that would say different. I think I would laugh at that. And so I go ahead and say it. And even if I'm the only person that laughs at it, there are people that laugh at me laughing at it. And you know what, mission accomplished.

It became relatable because I would say this to somebody over coffee. If I wouldn't make that joke over coffee, or laugh about this thing that way, why would I get in front of a group of people and do it? It doesn't make sense because it's not going to connect and it's not going to be genuine. I do filter out because the truth is, any room that you're speak and you talk about stories, everybody has their own story. Whenever you are approaching the idea of humor or there's something you think would be funny, you always have to remember, is there a person who is the object of this joke? If this joke tears out a person or a type of person or lifestyle person, it doesn't belong. Because there's probably somebody in your room who is that person or who cares for somebody like that.

And so there's a place that you've got to know, which is why a lot of the times for humor for me I think, are funny or are somewhat in a healthy way like self-demeaning, like, I think this is funny. Or I have done this thing, and you can laugh at me because I'm okay with it. I'm big enough to handle it. But you do have to measure as things, whether it's coming to your head, or as you're writing them and go, could this like crumble somebody? And there's times in my writing of a speech that I would had a joke prepared or I would write something or say something and go, that's funny. I think, but what if somebody out there is dealing with this? And my very next step is then to follow that rabbit trail.

Okay, well, if I'm not going to, like ... If I said that and somebody's had this life experience, maybe I need to talk to someone in that life experience, who is the person who feels like the outsider at the office? And I'm just going to address it. The reality is people feel that way. And so now, by good preparation, I found a way to bring in everybody in the room to the same playing field.

Robert Wagner:

Awesome. Those are such great insights. We talked earlier, and it came up in your five questions about ultimately, the purpose of most speaking is to move people to do something, sometimes just to educate, but to move people to action. Does it freak you out when people actually do it?

Cody Brumley:

It is my opinion, the most rewarding thing. We always say, I sit down with our Senior Pastor Rick and my metric for, did today go well, is when we hear stories in my verbiage is that the sermon left the church. When I hear that families talked about that over lunch or that family put that into action here, that was the goal. The goal was never for me to be entertaining, for me to be funny, for people to think you're good speaker, or you prepare so well. And for all of us in any context, business context included, you are not the goal of you speaking. And that can't be your metric is people come up to me and will say, Cody, that was great. And I think, if it was, you are going to be living differently by the time I see you next week. And I appreciate like the thoughtfulness of it.

But at the same time, my metric for success is exactly what you said, if I present on a topic in a workspace, I want to be able to hear from the employer, hey, our culture here has started to change because we're using that verbiage. And that's a lot of what public speaking is, giving people clear verbiage that allows them to put things into action. I now have a way to talk about this feeling or talk about this issue or talk about this dream that didn't have before I heard you. So the goal is again, not me, it's a put an action. And it does at times freak me out when people come back and I think, yeah, they're listening.

Robert Wagner:

Right. That's scary, right?

Cody Brumley:

There's a lot of weight in like what I tell you to do, fostering and adoption is huge in our family, and again, in Christian worldview. I remember like talking about like caring for kids from really hard places. And I remember our family coming and be like, we're doing that. I was like, "I forgot to tell you, this is like super scary." And you need community around you. But so sometimes it's terrifying, but it's also really rewarding.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Thanks so much. So the tagline to our podcast is an innovation and success podcast. So we don't like to talk about failure, but I just feel compelled to ask, have you had any memorable failures? What you would classify as a failure as a speaker.

Cody Brumley:

I do. I have gotten more than my share. And again, I'm super grateful for grace. Knowing all the things that I've said, I have failed at all of them that I have said. And you probably remember the first time when the [inaudible 00:40:23] the first time I spoke at First Baptist Jenks. I remember stepping up and feeling like, I've got to say everything. This is like my one time to speak. Public speaking 101 is remembering, you say one thing, don't say everything. But I just like for 40 minutes. And I think we have 25 minutes of service time. And I was like 40 minutes of just the whole like narrative of the Bible, because what if I don't ever get to speak again, they need to know all of this.

I remember getting off stage and thinking I'm a moron. I was so nervous that I let so much that of drive me and undo a lot of things I prepared for. I do have some times where I've said things in an effort to communicate and realize, no, what just came out of my mouth is not even what I was trying to say, like not socially acceptable and how to go. And so, I don't know, if there's a rating on this, and so I won't share some of those. But yes, I've had some moments that just did not go well.

Robert Wagner:

So you've given us some amazing insights, and I appreciate them so much. Will everyone get better if they just keep at it? Do you think? For those of us who need to be able to speak frequently, we're leaders, is expected, and as you said, it's just part of that role. Are we going to get better if we just keep at it?

Cody Brumley:

I'm going to say, there's a yes and no, and there's two sides of the coin. In one sense, yes. The only way in anything to begin public speaking as a muscle, to work that out is to keep doing it. My band director back in the day, his phrase was perfect practice makes perfect. It wasn't just practice makes perfect. It was if you're going to practice, you might as well do it the way you're going to do it. Back to being faithful with little ... You will get better not by doing it, but by preparing the right way. I've seen communicators who just plateau, and they can never get over the hump, because they've decided this is what a communicator does, this is the kind of persona communicators have, and I've got to become that person. And they focus all on their delivery and they never hone in on the content.

And that is if people are listening to this like scared of public speaking, and going, man, I need to do this to be the leader that I feel like I could be. What's holding me back is my confidence to stand in front of a room and deliver. The work is not on the delivery, the work is on how you prepare the content to deliver. Because if you know it, and you believe it, and you put it together well, that is going to drive everything else. Like that's the secret sauce to how do I become a better speaker, you get a preparation practice that is golden. And you do that over and over and over. Because some speakers start to rely on charisma, personality, those things. Those speakers are always replaced by people who know their content so well they're never knocked off their feet.

And so in that side, I say, yeah, the more you do it, the better you get. Because it took me about three years of being in a regular preaching pattern before I found my preparation mode that I walked you through. Like it took me a while to land on that. And even now there's some change up to it. But for the most part, I'm like, I figured that out and my confidence Shut up once I knew that. So just by getting in front of people and talking, sometimes you just reinforce bad habits. And so to that side, I'm like, no, you can do it a lot and you could actually just be bad every time. And that's the other side of community that I think if you're going to be in public speaking situations, you need one person in the room who you trust will critique you, at least.

I always have one person that I say, hey, how did that go? How did I communicate? Shred it. What did I miss? And I give them a free game? So I think you surround yourself with people that can speak to that. And then secondly, surround yourself with some people that are always going to see you as a person and not a persona. It's easy to get like the oversized gift mentality, especially in our culture, if you do learn to speak well. Or if people are like listening to this, and they are good public speakers, people elevate them further than their character can take them. And that's a really dangerous place to be.

And so you always need to surround yourself as well with people that are like, they're not as impressed with your jokes. They're not as impressed with your ability to move a crowd because they know you. And if your content is strong, and you've got people that keep your character strong, your communication will be incredible. And it will be effective. But you kind of have to have community to keep both of those things going well.

Robert Wagner:

That's a great answer. The preparation, it's not just the practice of doing it. That's awesome. Again, another great insight. I really appreciate all the insights very, very much. So Cody, we're coming to the close of our time. And before we wrap up, we've got five questions that we ask every guest. So are you ready?

Cody Brumley:

Bring it.

Robert Wagner:

All right. What was the first way you made money?

Cody Brumley:

The first check I remember getting, I think I probably mowed lawns and stuff in neighbor's houses.

Robert Wagner:

So mowed lawns is the number one answer here. I'm going to have that…

Cody Brumley:

Actually, I mowed my neighbor, Robert's lawn, and I got money and my dad made me give it back. That's like that was the first way I made money. And he was like, "No, we did that because he's our neighbor and we love people. Give him back his $20." That was painful. My first check I remember getting was from Eastside Baptist church when I was a church janitor. Cleaning toilets, windows, all of it. And then I'd clock out play the drums a little bit. And then clock back in and I'd vacuum the sanctuary.

Robert Wagner:

That's great. So Cody, if you weren't serving as a pastor, what do you think you'd be doing?

Cody Brumley:

In a dream world, what would I like to be doing if it wasn't that? I always thought it'd be really cool to be a songwriter. I love writing spoken word and doing songwriting and those things. But I always thought, what a great gig like to write a song and then get to someone who can slay it, and then you get to go home with your family. And you don't have to be on tour anywhere.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. And you get mailbox money.

Cody Brumley:

Yeah. That always just sounded like a fun way to use a gift of words and have a lot of family time.

Robert Wagner:

Okay. What would you tell your 20-year-old self.

Cody Brumley:

Sleep. I would say you're going to have three kids, man, just sleep now because they're going to walk in with questions about the universe at 2:00 a.m. or need to go to the bathroom. So on a practical note, I say that being a tired dad, who loves being a tired dad. I would probably tell my 20-year-old self to embrace the decade. I had a mentor who once sat me down and said, "Hey, like your 20s, you should be learning. Your 30s you get to contribute more, but you're contributing in a submissive role. In your 40s, you're really getting to start to shake things up and lead. In your 50s, is going to be like your golden, strongest leadership years." And he kind of laid this out for me for someone who does fall into the millennial category.

I remember thinking, our culture has told us like, no, 20-year- olds, you're the biggest contributors. You're supposed to bring everything. I thought, I don't have enough life experience. And so in one way, youth brings so much to the field in innovation, in creativity and outside the box thinking. In another way, they're losing relational ability, relational equity and loyalty that other generations have had. And if they don't learn that, then all of our businesses are going to be in trouble. Because no one's going to want to work for anybody and no one's going to trust anybody. So if I could going to go back, I would say embrace. You're going to be in this decade, look at it as 10 years to sit at the feet of wise people and just learn. Wait to contribute, learn all you can.

Robert Wagner:

Yeah. Great, great answer. Cody, what will the title of your book be?

Cody Brumley:

The title. Two that jump to mind, the first would be Congratulating Strangers in Bathrooms and other awkward things my kids have done to humble me. I learned so much. I'm humbled, often, by watching my kids just walk through life. And so there's so many stories that I would probably write a book on that. The other thing that jumps to mind is What If? If I had a title of a book, if could be What If? Most of the things that have been incredible to watch unfold in my life kind of started with a what if question. Like, looking at my best friend, Breanna, and going, what if I could date her?

Like, if you watch ESPN, they always have these 30 for 30 and starts with, what if, and it poses this question, and that always startled me. What if I really lived like these things that I read as a preacher in the Bible that were true? What if Jesus was right in serving is the best way to lead? What if public speaking has its place, but the biggest impact you're ever going to make is across the table with 12 other guys? Posing that question, what if, there's been a lot of moments in my life that have been, I think, wisely directed by dreaming with what if that can happen?

Robert Wagner:

Possibilities.

Cody Brumley:

Yeah.

Robert Wagner:

Right. Okay, thanks. So our last question is, what is the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Cody Brumley:

Actually, I think of a mentor of mine, his name's Bob Lipscomb. He was just always dropping wisdom in my life. He was the one that talked to me about these generations. And again, I'm cheating, because you said the best piece. I have to pick one. Okay. So he consistently says, "Seek to understand before seeking to be understood." Whether it's in marriage, or with my kids, or with organizational leadership, or it's speaking to an audience, in any situation, going in and thinking before I seek for someone to understand where I'm coming from, I want to understand them first. I want to know where they're coming from. I want to know what motivates them to do what they do or make the decisions they're making. And that piece of advice has served me really well in my life.

Robert Wagner:

Cody, thanks so much for being a guest on our podcast.

Cody Brumley:

My pleasure.

Robert Wagner:

Thank you so much. That's all for this episode of How That Happened. Thank you for listening. Be sure to visit howthathappened.com for show notes and additional episodes. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher. Thanks for listening. This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Copyright 2019. Hogan Taylor, LLP. All rights reserved. To view the Hogan Taylor general terms and conditions visit, www.hogantaylor.com.