When You Have A Message

This is Peter Rosenberger and I'm really excited to tell you about my new book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday.

I compiled a lifetime of experience to offer a lifeline to my fellow caregivers. Each chapter only takes one minute to read them. I know I timed them. You can read them in order. You can read them out of order. You can flip to any page and you're going to find something on that page that will help you at that moment.

It's called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday. Go to Hopeforthecaregiver.com slash book. Hopeforthecaregiver.com slash book.

And you can sign up. We'll let you know as soon as it's available for pre-order. We'll send you a special bonus feature for it, sample chapter, all kinds of things. Go to Hopeforthecaregiver.com slash book. I can't wait for you to read this book.

You're going to love it. I want to address something. I get a lot of books sent to me. People want to come on the program to promote their book. They've got this going, this going, whatever. And they don't... I'm finding more often than not, they see I have a program and then they want to come on it because I have a platform and I help them sell their books.

And that's great. I've done that with many people myself and I'm happy to help because people have helped me. I'd like to give you a few practical tips on that for those of you who are even thinking in that direction. Now, these aren't caregiving tips.

This is not caregiver stuff. This is media stuff and speaking and communication. Some of you may be in a position where you could teach Sunday school. Some of you may be feeling a call to the ministry. Some of you may be feeling all kinds of leadings and calls to go into all kinds of places. If you're going to go on the radio, if you're going to go on television, if you're going to be up in front of people, there's a couple of things that would be helpful for you to wrestle with before you do such a thing.

And part of that is knowing what your message is and who your audience is. And I have people that have wanted to come on the show and they didn't even know what the show was. They just saw that I had a radio show. And I always ask them, are you a caregiver? Well, I'm a parent. I said, well, that's a parent, but that's not what I asked. Sorry, a little pun. But I would also say, okay, well, what's your book about?

Well, it's this and whatever. No connection to you all whatsoever. So why would the world would I bring somebody onto this program that cannot offer you anything, but they're just promoting their own book and agenda, whatever. And if it's not going to equip you and inspire you, elevate you as an audience, or me for that matter, then why would I inflict that on people? So I'm getting a little bit more judicious.

Is that a good word? Judicious on who I want to talk to or allowed to talk to you on this program. This is your time. There's precious little for the family caregiver that can elevate our hearts.

And I don't feel like compromising that at all. So if you're feeling called to come and speak on this program, if you happen to hear this on the podcast or on the broadcast, I'm always willing to have a conversation about it, but it would be helpful if you actually knew what the program was before you call me or reach out to me. That's number one. But more importantly, know who your audience is. Know who you're speaking to. My speakers bureau, one of the biggest complaints they said they get off of a lot of the speakers that they've encountered over the years is they didn't know who their audience was.

And so they go out there and they have a canned speech or a general speech and it means nothing. There's an old saying, if you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. I'm not here to speak to everyone. I'm here to speak to family caregivers. I know who I am called to speak to. And people say, well, you need to have a bigger audience.

I mean, you're saying stuff that would really apply, maybe do some political stuff or whatever. I appreciate the compliment. I appreciate the thoughts, but that's not really where my heart is.

My heart is to my fellow caregivers. I know this audience. I know this journey. And the last thing I want to do is try to be a political pundit or something to get out of my lane. This is my lane.

And I'm very comfortable here. And I look for speakers who found their lane. I look for people to come on this show who found their message, their audience, who are committed to that and not just committed to sounding clever. You follow me? And there's some things we can explore to help us do that better when we find that place. And when I come back, we'll talk about some of those things. I just thought it might be helpful. Okay. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll be right back. Back to what I was talking about in the last segment of learning how to communicate and speak if you want to take this to another level. And some of you do. I get books and letters and emails and so forth about people that do want to do that and share their testimony. The Lord has put something on your heart and you want to do it. Well, part of that is you're going to have to discipline it. A lot of people would love to play the piano the way I do, but don't necessarily want to put in the time to learn how to do it. And that's part of the journey for us. If we're going to be excellent at anything, then we're going to have to put in the time for it. And part of the time of being a speaker, part of the time of going on radio or television or anything else that happens in the media and broadcasting is learning how to articulate your message. You've heard of an elevator speech. That's when you have 30 seconds in the elevator with somebody and they say, what do you do?

And you've got to be able to explain it by the time you get to the next floor. I say 30 seconds is too long. I say, you ought to be able to do it in 10 seconds. But that takes work and a lot of wrestling with some great ideas. You know the old saying, if you need a 20 minute speech, I'll have it ready in the morning.

If you need a five minute speech, you got to give me two weeks. It takes a lot of work to condense something down. You have to spend time with it. Shakespeare said brevity is the soul of wit. You've got to be able to spend time with the subject matter in order to say it simply. That's the price.

That's what it takes. And there are no shortcuts around that. If you cannot say your subject matter simply, then you haven't spent enough time with it. And somebody said, well, give me an example. I said, okay, I don't need 30 seconds to tell you what the mission of the show and my books and everything is about. It's three seconds. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Period. That's it. Now I can unpack that for three hours.

I can unpack it for a lot longer than that. I've been doing the show for over 12 years. And when I first started, people looked at me and said, how are you going to be able to do a show about caregivers and fill up a whole hour? We have about 700 programs on our podcast, which I would encourage you to check out, hopeforthecaregiver.com. Go out to the podcast. That's the name of the podcast, Hope for the Caregiver.

You can get it wherever you get podcasts, Apple, whatever, Amazon. But 700 episodes over 12 years. Now you can unpack this forever if you know your subject matter, but can you condense it? Anybody can blather, but can you condense it? Can you say it concisely?

Can you put it on a bumper sticker? Can you say it so succinctly because you've spent time with it? You live it. You understand it. And so for those of you who feel called to get up in front of people and speak or write a book or preach or teach or come on my program or other radio programs or television programs or people's podcast, I encourage you to work on your message. Know your audience.

Know your message. Be able to share it at a moment's notice without any hesitation, whatever. So you got your elevator speech, which I think should be very short. Then you have what they call a stadium speech where you get up in front of a whole bunch of people, but for a very short amount of time, maybe three minutes. A friend of mine asked me a long time ago, if you were on Good Morning America, for example, and you had three minutes to say something to the world, what would you say?

That question prompted me to go deep into that. Set a timer and see how long it takes you to say certain things. Get used to saying it. Practice saying it. Let your mouth move. It takes practice. And I'll give you a piece of advice that a guy gave me when I first started doing radio.

He said, leave the crutches at home. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, when people go on the radio, they feel like they have to have a radio voice.

You know, hey, we'll be right back, you know, kind of thing. And there are guys out there that have great professional radio voices. I mean, would you hear Mike Rowe talk?

I mean, what a voice that guy has. He said, you know, you're not Mike Rowe. So you talk like you.

You be you. And the only thing that I asked Gracie one time, I said, do I have a radio voice now after I've been doing this for a while? She says, not really, but you enunciate better.

So I thought, man, what did I sound like before? You know, hey you, but you want to enunciate. You want to speak clearly. You want to answer the question, but you don't always have to go with the question that is asked. You can frame the conversation. I like to answer people's questions directly.

And then I like to redirect it. You know that old saying, the customer's always right. Well, they're not. The customer's rarely right, but they're always the customer. And it's not your job to capitulate to the customer and sometimes the newscaster that's asking you a question, but it is your responsibility and opportunity to educate, to teach them about what it is you do and why you do it. So I've had many reporters ask me questions before the interview. I mean, we're live on television or whatever, and they were quite truthfully ignorant, stupid questions, but that's okay because it gives me a starting point to help them see what it is I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

And then we have a good conversation. So don't depend on somebody to ask you the right question. And that's part of you understanding your message. And if you don't know your message, that's a problem.

Okay. If you can't articulate it and set a timer and say it in a way that is concise and meaningful and understandable and try to avoid the God talk. If you notice a lot of people fill up the conversation with tried and true Christian-y statements. In the world, I saw this in a review of a movie, a secular review of a movie, and the reviewer said the writing gaps were filled with profanity. Now that was a secular reviewer talking about, of course, a secular movie.

They said it was just poor writing, so they filled the gaps up with profanity. That's a lazy way to communicate. Well, I would suggest to you as believers, we fill the gap up with a lot of Christian-ese, a lot of God talk. It makes it sound more spiritual.

We don't need to do that. One guy I know always lectures and preaches. He's like, there could be no remission of sin without the shedding of blood. Well, that's true. That's scripture. But what does that mean?

Unpack that. Can you unpack that for somebody who has no concept of what that even means of why there has to be shedding of blood? Does that mean if he bleeds, then that is atoning blood or does it have to be the emptying out of one's life?

What does remission mean? You see where I'm going with this? Being concise and being precise.

Okay? That's the goal. If you want to be in any kind of public speaking, media broadcast, anything like that, writing a book, all those kinds of things, learn your subject matter and learn it well. Be an expert at what you talk about.

And oftentimes the best expertise we have is our own experience. If you remember, scripture says they overcame by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. I don't have to go out and memorize a speech on how to share my faith with people. I remember a caller, she called into the show one time when I was doing drop the needle and playing, you know, name that song. And it was, he touched me and I'll never forget her. I said, tell me why that song is important to you. And she said, because I used to be one way and now I'm not that way anymore. I said, man, that is concise and that is precise. That is somebody who understands her relationship with Christ. And I loved that. I've always admired that moment when she called in and shared that. I can't remember her name.

She's from North Carolina. And if you're listening today, I just want you to know how much that affected me when I heard you say that. So we are called to go out and make disciples and teach. That's teaching.

That's what it means to make disciples. You're teaching, you're instructing. In order to do that, you got to spend some time with your subject matter. You got to really know what you're talking about and be able to say it in a meaningful way if you are going to be in broadcasting, if you're going to come on somebody's show, if you're going to get up in front of people.

If you feel called to those things, that's great, but don't go after somebody just because they have a show and you've got a book and now you're ready to do the media circuit. Be ruthless with yourself. I'm ruthless with myself. I go back and listen to this program. I record things that I do and I am ruthless with myself. I have to be. And you want to always seek to improve it.

I'm a pretty good pianist and I never stopped practicing and I pushed myself to play better. Study and show yourself approved. That's what scripture tells us. And so if that's something you want to do, and I'm certainly willing, particularly if you're a caregiver and you want to test the waters and see, I'm willing to have that conversation with you, but I'm asking you to do some homework first. Okay. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com and we will see you next time.

You've heard me talk about standing with hope over the years. This is the prosthetic limb ministry that Gracie envisioned after losing both of her legs. Part of that outreach is our prosthetic limb recycling program. Did you know that prosthetic limbs can be recycled?

No kidding. There is a correctional facility in Arizona that helps us recycle prosthetic limbs. And this facility is run by a group out of Nashville called CoreCivic. We met them over 11 years ago and they stepped in to help us with this recycling program of taking prostheses and you disassemble them. You take the knee, the foot, the pylon, the tube clamps, the adapters, the screws, the liners, the prosthetic socks, all these things we can reuse and inmates help us do it. Before CoreCivic came along, I was sitting on the floor at our house or out in the garage when we lived in Nashville and I had tools everywhere, limbs everywhere and feet, boxes of them, so forth.

And I was doing all this myself and I'd make the kids help me and it got to be too much for me. And so I was very grateful that CoreCivic stepped up and said, look, we are always looking for faith-based programs that are interesting and that give inmates a sense of satisfaction. And we'd love to be a part of this.

And that's what they're doing. And you can see more about that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. So please help us get the word out that we do recycle prosthetic limbs. We do arms as well, but the majority of amputations are lower limb.

And that's where the focus of standing with hope is. That's where Gracie's life is with her lower limb prosthesis. And she's used some of her own limbs in this outreach that she's recycled. I mean, she's been an amputee for over 30 years.

So you go through a lot of legs and parts and other types of materials and you can reuse prosthetic socks and liners if they're in good shape. All of this helps give the gift that keeps on walking. And it goes to this prison in Arizona where it's such an extraordinary ministry. Think with that. Inmates volunteering for this, they want to do it.

And they've had amazing times with it. And I've had very moving conversation with the inmates that work in this program. And you can see again, all of that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. They're putting together a big shipment right now for us to ship over. We do this pretty regularly throughout the year as inventory rises and they need it badly in Ghana. So please go out to standingwithhope.com slash recycle and get the word out and help us do more. If you want to offset some of the shipping, you can always go to the giving page and be a part of what we're doing there.

We're purchasing material in Ghana that they have to use that can't be recycled. We're shipping over stuff that can be, and we're doing all of this to lift others up and to point them to Christ. And that's the whole purpose of everything that we do. And that is why Gracie and I continue to be standing with hope. Standingwithhope.com.