Hey, everybody. Welcome to my guest tonight. I'm Jeff Revilla. I'm your host.
I've got an amazing guest joining me tonight, Phil Barth. We're going
to talk stress, productivity, game shows, and chickens.
He's got a book and a bird and a heart full of grit. Teach us
how to laugh when life throws a fit. From a millionaire stage to the
speaking mic. Bill. Bart's got the tools to help you in the fight.
Silent chickens and rise. And new highs. Stress won't win what
feels inside. It's my class tonight with Jeff Revilla,
where laughter meets wisdom.
Phil, welcome to the show. I can tell by your reaction backstage I think you
like the song. I love the song. That was awesome. I try.
I used to give people a choice if they wanted to hear it before, but
everybody really seems to enjoy the song. I think hearing it in the moment as
we're live is the way to go. So way better. Way
better. And I see you're. You're living in Cincinnati now.
Were you always born in Cincinnati? No, I was born in northern Ohio.
Relocated to Cincinnati. Oh, gosh, it's been about 40 years ago.
And where did you go to school at? What kind of led you down
this path of where we're at today? All right, so where we're at
today, I went to school for my undergrad
at Bowling Green up in northern Ohio, studied computer
science, got a job in southwestern Ohio
out of school in computer science, which is, you
know, where they find all the good speakers from, is computer nerds.
Truthfully, there are a lot of computer nerds turned speakers, but that's another story.
And met my wife at work and have been
happily in the greater Cincinnati area for
just about 40 years. Oh, very nice. And so while you're. You're
this computer science major and
how did you. How did that turn into public speaking? What
was the little thing that. That was that little pivot that got you out
of computer science. That's a, That's a good story.
My. See, I went into computer science because my uncle was in computer science
and he drove a Corvette. And I thought, well, therefore, if you
program computers, you get a vet at some point. Never
did. But the evidence in
my undergrad especially showed that I was good at a lot of things, computer
programming not being one of them. But I went ahead
and so after a few programs, they said, we need to find him
a role that doesn't involve as much programming. And so I was
talking with the business and talking with computers because
I was good at talking. And then that led to presentations,
and eventually I wound up in Toastmasters.
And then in Toastmasters, I was. They have the world championship of
public speaking. So I got in the world championship for a number of
years. And then finally in 2011, I told a story
about frying those inner chickens inside of you. And
I went, the world championship public speaking goes all the way until they have
a world champion. So 20,000 start out. The one person
wins. I wound up in the final nine with my chicken story.
And so I said, this is probably something I need to do. And it was
a side hustle for a while, and now I do it full time. And how
did you stumble across the Toastmasters? Because that's an interesting pivot point from
computer programming to, hey, I want to get up in front of people
and tell stories. Yeah. So I
put in to speak at a conference in San Diego
before I knew of Toastmasters, and the main speaker was
Tom Peters. And he said, you know, you need to try Toastmasters. It's a
great networking. I mean, to the audience, not to me specifically. It's a great
networking thing, and they'll work on your communication skills. And that's a critical skill. I
had a side little symposium session, and
I was awful. Just absolutely awful. I got the. They gave
us all the reviews back later, and I think I was. There were 72 people,
and I just barely made the top 70. It was. It
was just brutal. And so I said, you know what? I need to find out
about this Toastmasters, because if I like talking to people,
but I suck at it. So I found
Toastmasters and learned it. Learned how to speak
publicly. You wouldn't know it from that last sentence I just delivered, but.
But I learned how to do that public speaking. Enjoyed it a
lot. I've always enjoyed humor, and so they helped me develop
the skills. And how many years did you enter the. The national competition?
Or is it a worldly global competition? It is. It is. I.
I started entering probably in 2002. Yeah. And so 2011,
I made the finals. 2015 and 2018,
I made the semifinals. Wow. But you mentioned that
the chicken story was starting to develop all the
way back in 2011. What. What was the origin of, you know,
why did you start leaning towards the chickens in your. In your public
speaking? So the thing that happened was they
said, hey, are you going to be in the 2011 contest in our club? I'm
like, yeah, I'll find something. And so with about a week to go,
I said, well, I did a project management presentation for people, and
there was a story. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. And so
I kind of crafted that into the story of asking my wife
out for the first date and how scared I was and how the chickens are
like, you'll never make it, and she's out of your league and so on. And
it kind of you. When I put those fears and made them into a
chicken, then people were like, I can relate to that. I can
relate to the nervousness and so on. And you just make it like a little
chicken. Rubber chickens came later and he just,
it scored with people, and I made it all the way to the finals and,
and I said, you know, there's something to this. And it
was another 10 years before it really kind of took off.
But the, the, you know, then rubber chickens became the thing. And I've got. I
mean, I buy them in bulk from Amazon. And, you know, I
tell people that these chickens, these little ones are nothing to be afraid of. They're
just these little squeaking. The thing you got to fear, and I put
this in that original speech was, I call it the regret, the Red
rooster of regret. And he's. He
just, he's awful. He sounds painful, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And there's
scientific research on that, right? That it's the things you don't do and
the regrets and those one once in a lifetime opportunities that you passed
on that just will con. Continue to nag at you
and, and cause way more damage than the little one that tells you
not to take a chance. Do you remember when you got off the stage in
2011 and. And you, you like, oh, my God, this.
There's, there's something here that's bigger than what I just presented.
What, what was the. Your initial feedback, you know, from that year?
So. Absolutely. I, I won my first two contests and I had really didn't
have the chicken thing perfected. And then in the Cincinnati Division,
I. I got up there and 30 seconds in,
everybody was just dying laughing. And I was like, I've got him. I've got him.
There is something here. And I won that contest against some really
good speakers. And I said, there's something to this. And
then I went on and won in the semifinals in
front of several hundred people in Las Vegas.
And then you had to have a different speech for the finals, and I freaked
out. But I made it so it was cool.
And just hearing the audience reaction and thinking, you know what? These
people are with me, they enjoy the humor when
I'm making a point, they're kind of quieting down and taking it in. This is
probably my gift and what I meant to share with the world.
And that first one was about asking your wife out on a date.
How has that story evolved or how do you adapt that story
for different events or circumstances or for different
stages? So that is a nice core story.
I start out with the whole story of the who Wants to be a
Millionaire audition and, and the chickens again, saying, you know, what makes
you special? Everybody in the world wants to be on this show. You're not going
to make it. Right. And so you talk about that and then I might put
another story or something in there. And then it's like, okay, so we've
been talking about being on a game show. My son's being in
a heavy metal band and getting 100,000 listens. But let's be
clear, whatever your big idea that those chickens are holding you back, it just
has to be big to you. For example, maybe you want to ask someone out
on a date. And so we transitioned to a very small thing in
the big. In, in the overall picture, but something that was very, very big.
To me, it was like thinking, you know, she could be the one. I need
to, I need to get up the courage. And so we transition to that.
And then I talk about other, other things you can do.
For example, I tell the story of when I was 50, riding a roller coaster
with my son and all the chickens the whole time going, you're an
idiot and almost getting sick and so on. It's a lot of fun
that you. Said something in there that I, I
just started to notice about the, about really good public speakers.
And it's almost that when they tell a story,
their details are not just personal, but
all the details are in there that are only specific
to them. But because they're able to tell such a
specific story about themselves, that's what helps
the audience relate to the speaker. Some
speakers try to be general, to apply to everybody. But you gave
me three specifically the heavy metal band asking your wife out.
And the other example where only stories that you have
experienced. Do you find that that helps you connect with
audiences better than a speaker who's just trying to be vague
and connect with everybody 100%. Yeah, it's, it's
my story number one. That means I can talk for an hour because I'm telling
my stories, you know? Oh, I could never memorize a one hour speech. Well, who
could? But if you and I are having lunch and we're telling stories back and
forth, it's not like, oh, oh, wait, I got to look at my notes and
see about what happened when I asked my wife out. Right? No. So it helps
me to remember. And then those specific details.
So talking about the name of the roller coaster, it was
the. We went on the Magnum XL200 at Cedar Point in Sandusky,
Ohio. And so people can. People know, okay, this is real.
And you give enough details like, I'm going up and I'm 200ft off the ground,
and I look down and people are like, I can see that in my mind.
And. And so, yeah, that specific is always
memorable. And even if somebody hasn't
been on a game show or something they can think about, I remember the time
when I was scared out of my mind riding a roller coaster, flying an
airplane, etc. And when you get that
specific and people connect with you in the audience,
when you get off stage, do you ever. Do you just get
inundated with stories about. I. Oh, I did that, too.
And this was me. I do. And that's one of my favorite
parts of the job. Oh, man. I remember the time
I. And then the other favorite part is I finished the
keynote last year in Vancouver, and
Lady came up to me afterwards. She said, I got to tell you, I heard
you the year before in Albuquerque, and you told me I needed to go after
my big, bold, brilliant idea, and it was to win a
sand volleyball tournament. And I went for it and I did it.
Thank you. And it's like, oh, my God. You know, that is so
cool. This was her huge idea. I can't play
sand volleyball. But it was her huge idea and she nailed it. And
it's like, I love that. I love hearing that, and I love talking with people
afterwards. Where has this taken you over, over
the years? Where has this just basic
concept that you've applied to different stages? Where have you gone
and spoken about these concepts? I have this year so
far, I have been in Netherlands, Belgium,
Toronto twice, Prague
and Washington D.C. and a couple others
and local events in Cincinnati. I am going
to be in. It's November, November,
Johannesburg. So I will actually. That'll be the first time I've spoken
in Africa. So. And what that means is
not only, you know, I got to do that, but, for
example, with Belgium and the Netherlands. My wife and youngest
son came with me. So we got to enjoy two countries
we had never seen before. And it just, you know, I
spoke on two days, but we were over there for eight days, which meant for
six days we got to travel and see a Part of the world
that I wouldn't have gotten to do otherwise. That's amazing. You mentioned
2011 was the big year, the big breakout year, and you mentioned
2015 and 16, but hasn't always been smooth sailing.
A little bit of a health issue in between all of this, right?
Yes, sir. The 2015, I was
going all around the city of Cincinnati, getting ready to go to
the semifinals, which were that year in Las Vegas again. And
with one week to go, I had a heart attack because I
was burning it on both ends, not managing stress.
My diet wasn't great, but the worst
part was stress. And so I had a heart attack with one week to go.
So I qualified for the semifinals, but I did not
compete in the semifinals. So you had to tap somebody on the
shoulder. Hey, what are you doing next week? Well, now you're going to Vegas and
competing. He hasn't forgiven me for that, but he will
someday. No, seriously. And. And so, yeah,
from there I got another. Another
story, right? And. And a talk about how do we manage
stress in our lives? Because it's all around us. And the
idea is there's a lot of optional stress, and there was a lot
of optional stress that I was taking on that
I didn't need to. And so I stopped.
I talk about how to manage stress. And,
you know, so in my mind, I see a little bit of.
Of opposite ends, right? In one side, you're saying, don't
let your chickens silence you, right? Go forward, charge,
get it. You know, get it done. Don't let fear stop you. On the other
side, you're saying, hey, well, wait a second. Let's also do
this sensibly. Let's be healthy. Let's make good life
choices. So have you merged those two
concepts into. Into a single speech now? Yeah, I thought about that. And. And
I think it's two sides of the same coin. So one of the things I
talk about is all of the optional stress
that you take on, you know, And I'm going to do a quick
detour. There was a study done from Harvard, and
Sean Achor and his wife Michelle Galene did it. They
divided the people in half. The. The groups in half. They didn't
divide people in half, but they divided the groups in half. And
one group was given three minutes of bad news to start the day. 1. One
group was given three minutes of solution, focused news.
At the end of the day, the bad News Group was
27% more likely to report having a bad day.
And what did they do? Three minutes. They had what I consider to
be optional stress. If you get up first thing in the morning and you turn
on the news and it's telling you how terrible the world is, then you have
set yourself up for eight hours of stress. 27%
more likely to have a bad day or over the course of the month. What
is that, nine, 10 days that are going to be bad instead of good. And
that's all going to be holding you back. Those are the chickens, those
stress chickens that are going to be holding you back because you're worried about everything
that sucks, as opposed to you're looking forward, you're looking
positively at the world, and you're pursuing that goal.
So it's kind of another way to make sure you are focused
on the good things that you were meant to do in the world.
And maybe putting all this together. There is a book that's out,
all right. The fry your chicken. 7 Ways to get those chickens inside you
to shut the cluck up. Yes, sir. Sorry.
Oh, he ran off stage. He's back. Sorry. I had to go get it off
the bookshelf. There it is. And I think there's, like, seven
lessons in this book. Can you tell us a little bit about the book? Yeah.
So this was. This is
distilled from the stories I use in my keynotes. So,
for example, and each one of them has their own little chicken that's in
there. So one of them was. Face the facts Fiona. I call her
the one that was, like, in my ear when I was
asking my wife out for wanting to ask my wife out for a date. I'm
like, you know, I'm gonna ask her out. And then this chicken in my ear
go, face the fact she's out of your league. You're. You're.
And she was right. And you're gonna make a fool of
yourself. Well, that's an opinion. So when I got up the courage that
fried. Face the facts, Fiona. The one
comfort zone Carl, I call him that just wants you to
keep. Couch potato. Sorry, Couch potato Carl. You got to get out of the comfort
zone. Couch Potato Carl want you to stay sitting down. Don't get on that roller
coaster with your son. Well, I did it, and he was screaming the whole. Not
my son. The chicken was screaming the whole time. But we had. We
made a great memory. So each one of them is kind of a. I put
a metaphorical chicken name on. On
each of those fears that was holding me back. And it's stories. Various stories
in my life and how I fried them. Then there's
exercises in the back. Like, hey, what's your big idea? What's your big,
bold, brilliant idea? What chicken is holding you back? And
here's some things you can do to fry that chicken.
Do you have anything else in the works? The. Is there going to be a
second version or do you see yourself building upon this
book? I. I have several ideas
for books. I did one before that called Great Things Happen Every
Day. And that's just based on my positivity practice where
I. I just listed for. And I still do it on social
media. Here are the great things that happened today and talked about all the
changes that it made in my life. I am thinking that there are
other. Fry your chickens we could do, you know, fry your chickens for
teens. Maybe my son wants to help me with that. Fry
your AI chickens. If you're scared of using AI, how can you use.
I use AI a lot to make my life better.
I'm not going to worry about. Is this the
Terminator coming to life? I'm not going to try to
understand how it works. I just know that it's one of those.
It's a tool I can use to, to make my life
better and help me along. Along that path of helping others.
So that's, that's one I've got. I've got a whole list of things I want
to do. But. But I'm also having fun, traveling
the world, delivering the keynotes I already have. Yeah. I mean, nothing you can do
with AI, you can't shut it down. And that's definitely a fear
that people take on when they have no control.
So I can't do anything. Stop AI. This whole show runs on
AI. I have 10 pages of research on you. I write you a theme
song. I don't do all that. I, I partner with AIs and I
help and I try to get a good show put together. And
I am a little bit, you know, in the background. I'm like, you know, how
much do I want this thing to grow? You know, how much power do I
want AI to have? No. And that's fair. That's fair. I
think as humans, what we need to do is make sure
it's. We put guardrails up and make sure with
any tool, there are bad actors that can use it for bad purposes.
So on the other side, people, we need to make sure that that
can't be done that way. And, and that's no different from anything
else. It's just one more tool. And
I'm not going to go any more on the Soapbox on that. I personally, I
love it. I wondered if you didn't have an AI like a
pseudo or something behind you for my. My song, which I really
appreciate. I love it. I have. I have some talent, but I'm not that talented.
Yeah. One thing, you mentioned you purchasing the chickens for your
presentation. When people participate in your talks,
are you throwing chickens out into the audience ever? 100%.
Yeah. I've got to go to Amazon and see how many
chickens I have bought and thrown to the audience. I'm
certain the number is over a thousand. So what I do
is I have a bag full of chickens, and. And before I go
on, I will talk to a couple tables in the back of the room and
say, look, when I come out here, I'm going to be tossing chickens. I need
you to go like this and not like that. Please don't act
like you're under heavy fire. Do you promise you'll. You'll check, you'll catch them and
get excited? They're like, absolutely. You know, who doesn't want a rubber
chicken, right? And so you toss a couple there, and then everybody
in the audience is raising their hands. Get me one. Get me one. And so
the music is playing. We're throwing rubber chickens. This one isn't made up.
This. This one. But they all have a QR code that takes
you to my website. So I'm actually using my business card there and giving them
my business card, so. Oh, that's. I just. I just picture all these chickens
flying through the air and just a great time, a great party atmosphere.
It is. It gets people going. They're up. And that's what
I was always trying to do with the
contest speech or whatever. I'm like, I got to get them laughing early. I got
to know they're on my side early. I don't want to try and. And,
you know, get. Push this rock uphill in the middle of the keynote of the
speech. So we play music, we throw chickens. Everybody's up and jumping
and dancing around him. And we're off. Now,
as a guy who hosts a trivia game show podcast, I'm
100% interested in the story
of your who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And a little bit of a
prize winner, too, I hear. This is true. Yes.
Yeah. $32,000 was. Was what I want.
I turned it on in 1998, the very
first episode, and I apologize. It was 99,
August of 99. And I watched it and. And I was in a
hotel room. I said, you know, this is the kind of thing I could do,
you know, Jeopardy. You gotta. You gotta know all the answers, and
there's no multiple choices. Got multiple choice here. And I didn't think
much more of it until the end of the show. And they put up an
800 number. If you want to be a contestant, call this number. I'm like,
well, why wouldn't I do that? So every night, I would call.
And at the time, it was the fastest finger competition. You put things in order.
That's what you were doing on the phone. Put these things in order. Countries north
to south, movies most recent to
oldest. And if you got the three right,
then you could make it to the second round and then on to the show.
I never made it that way, but the longer I was watching
every show and the longer I went, the more obsessed I was with getting
on the show. And eventually, I
auditioned in Chicago and failed. Auditioned in Indianapolis
and failed. And then I auditioned in Cleveland and passed the audition.
And I talk about, in my keynote, the tricks I learned from the Internet
on how to pass an audition. And my wife and I got to go to
New York, and I got to be on the show. Meet Meredith Vieira
and $32,000.
What is that hot seat? Like, when the music comes down and the lights go
down, the bass drop.
So they put us. They took us in, like, a day or two
before because they want everybody to practice jumping up in the hot seat and
getting back out. We met the executive producer, and he talked to us. And when
I got into this, the studio, they keep the studio kind of cold because the
lights are going to come up and it's going to get hot. I started, like,
shaking, going, oh, my God, I am really going to do this.
This really happened. You know, I always thought I would be, but this is going
to happen. So that night in the hotel, I, you know, I
was like, okay, what's going to happen is when those.
When those lights come down, when they have the question, I'm going to close my
eyes for one second, and then I'm gonna look, open my
eyes, and there's going to be a question on screen. And that is
all that exists in the world. Me.
And the question. Not Meredith, not people around me,
not the million people who are gonna be watching this on tv, Just me. And
the question. This is what I've been studying for months, is these questions.
And it worked. I was. I don't know. I mean, we could have
checked my pulse and blood pressure. I probably was still extremely nervous. But for me,
that quick look and it's just, just me in the question
really seemed to get my head in the right space.
Now I do remember when the $64,000 question came,
came up, it got darker. I mean, they turned the
lights all the way down and you couldn't see past
like my finger, which is not that far away.
You know, there, there have always been concerns with cheating in the, after
the quiz show scandal back in the 50s or whatever. So they made
sure like nobody was not that I would have. But you
couldn't hear anybody, couldn't see anybody. And the $64,000
question was a whole nother level. And you know, you said
you tried to balance yourself, center yourself so that when that
question came on, you know, you had blocked everything else out. You kind
of, you silenced the, the world around you in some way.
You know, that could have been the, the seeds that you planted that
became the silence your chickens later on. It was that
experience. Hey, you're trying to get a million
dollars. Shut up. Go away.
Phil, this has been amazing. People want to connect with you. They want to bring
you in for a keynote presentation. What's the best way
to reach you? And get in contact
philbarth.com and then. It'S got the
list of my keynotes. And then right down there is Contact Phil on the same
page. Just send me a message. And I swear to
you, if I get a message from you saying I would like to come in
with and do a keynote, I will respond to that email very quickly.
Awesome. Awesome, Phil. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.
Let's go back to that theme song. He's got a book
and a bird and a heart full of grit Teach us how to laugh when
life throws a f From a millionaire stage to the speaking mic
Phil, Bart's got the tools to help you in the fight Silent your
chickens and rising new highs Stress won't win the fills
inside it's my quest tonight with Jeff Reilla. Where laughter
meets wisdom and the truth is a thriller Silent chickens and rise
to new height Strike
switch
meets wisdom and the truth is a thriller.