all it serendipity that a
rare lapse in self-discipline
launched the catchphrase
for which professional speaker Rory
Vaden is now known. Vaden had just
keynoted at the National Speakers
Association Winter Lab in San Francisco
in February 2008, and he and NSA
member Dave Avrin, author of It’s
Not Who You Know – It’s Who Knows
YOU!, were kicking around branding
ideas while sitting in the hotel lobby.
“I was telling Dave a story about
coming back from a trip with a friend
in college,” Vaden says. “I was always
big on self-discipline, and I’d been
speaking about it in high schools since
I was 17. So, we’re in the airport and
I get on the escalator, and my buddy
says, ‘Oooh, Mr. Discipline can’t even
take the stairs.’ When Dave heard that,
he said, ‘You know, a branding message
using stairs is huge.’ Two weeks later, I
woke up in the middle of the night, and
realized ‘Take the Stairs,’ that’s it!”
THE SEEDS OF SELF-DISCIPLINE
The metaphor perfectly encapsu-
lated the young speaker’s core keynote
theme that “success means doing things
you don’t want to do”—and reflected
the tough climb that he’d had in his
own life. Raised by a single mom who
sold Mary Kay cosmetics, Vaden grew
up in trailer parks and apartments
around Boulder, Colorado. At age 5,
he was in martial arts, and by 10, he
jokes, “I was the youngest black belt
in Colorado to ever be beaten up by a
girl.” Encouraged by his mom to go to
college, with the knowledge that money
was tight, Vaden tried to spend more
time studying and more time in the gym
than his peers. It paid off, earning All
American honors as a basketball player
in high school and a full academic
scholarship to University of Denver.
PROCRASTINATION
BUSTERS
One of Vaden’s key concepts is
eliminating what he calls creative avoidance—which he distinguishes from
procrastination because it’s unconscious.
In a way, however, that makes it even
more pernicious. “As professional speakers, it’s easy to fill our days with trivial
work,” he says. “You can be at the office,
in meetings, sending emails, endlessly
tweaking a flyer, and generally moving
fast, but when you’re honest with yourself,
you’re just busy being busy. That’s a very
real downside to social media. Having a
lot of Twitter followers enhances my credibility, but no one has ever booked me
because of a tweet.”
