Dawn: Can you tell them a little bit about what you do before an event, like the Personal Story Power Event or a speech? What do you eat? What time do you like to get to the venue? What you do first?
Bo: When you’re on stage, especially when it’s like eight hours a day, nutrition is key. Your body is key. At events like this, my trainer Tim Adams is here and he works on me during lunch because my body is pretty broken up. So it’s got be worked on so that I can open up and have access to all of my emotions.
It’s really hard to be a great speaker when you’re not fed and don’t have the proper nutrition because it takes so much energy to be up here. You’ve got to have the right thing that’s not going to upset your belly too because you’re nervous enough as it is so nutrition, water and other kinds of fluids are all key because my health is key. But my warm-up is too … the voice stuff, the foot stuff, all of that stuff to get myself ready to go before you even walk in here. I’m marking territory. I just want ownership of every room I walk into so that my audience feels it. And trust me, they feel it. You’ve been in those rooms where the speaker doesn’t do that and you’re feeling uneasy and you’re not sure why. It’s because they’re not in control of the room. They have no ownership of the room. They’re invisible. They’re temporary. I really make it my place. Afterward, that’s all about food and body work too. There are recovery mechanisms—ice baths, cool downs, rolling out, putting nutrition in my body immediately like proteins and grains.
If you speak once a year, do whatever you want. But if you speak every day of the year, you’ve got to be ready for the next day. The real key is recovery. I used to just burn myself out and go to the next speech, and then burn myself out and go to the next speech. Now I don’t do that. I have a recovery system in place because the next day is the key. You’ve got to get stronger, better and healthier as the days go on. And if you notice in professional sports these days it’s not like when we grew up. If you ever mentioned the word ‘recovery’ no one would know what you’re talking about. That’s all they talk about now. Sleep, recovery, rest. What if you brought up rest in the ‘80s? Now, you’ve got to recover so you can show up the next day. It’s very important. I’m doing three things at all times in my life. I only do three things—that’s how simple my life is. Number 1: Preparing. Number 2: Performing. Number 3: Recovering. Those are the only three things I do because that’s what drives this business. That’s where I can make the biggest impact. It’s the best use of my time. Going grocery shopping or folding laundry—not a good use of my time. It’s just not.
