Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#264: Eduardo Placer (Founder of Fearless Communicators) (pt. 1 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part one of our interview with Eduardo Placer—actor, Story Doula and Founder of Fearless Communicators®. As a global facilitator, Eduardo has led workshops and spoken with groups at HBO, Google, Bank of America- Merrill Lynch, Yale, The Juilliard School, and the Wharton School of Business. His private clients include Industry Leaders, CEO’s of start up companies, UN Diplomats and social activists. Prior to focusing all his energy on Fearless Communicators, he was a professional actor for 15 years, working all over the US in over 38 plays and musicals. If you speak publicly or anticipate you will, this is one podcast you won't want to miss! https://www.fearlesscommunicators.com/
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise and I'm Nick.
Nick Petrella:Petrella. Eduardo Placer is on the podcast today. After earning an MFA in acting from UC San Diego and working as a professional actor for over 15 years, he founded Fearless Communicators, a public speaking coaching business. As a global facilitator, eduardo has led workshops at hundreds of organizations such as HBO, google and the Wharton School of Business. Private clients include CEOs of startup companies, un diplomats and more. Eduardo gave a fantastic presentation at Kent State's Art Without Limits event in 2023, and we're really happy he could join us here. Eduardo, thanks for being on the podcast.
Eduardo Placer:I'm honored to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Nick Petrella:Let's start by having you tell us how you transition from acting to founding Fearless Communicators.
Eduardo Placer:I would love to say that it was like a in a ha moment and then it happened in one. I'm sitting at a coffee shop and I had an idea, you know, but that is not what happened. The seed for Fearless Communicators was actually planted at UC San Diego, where I studied and got my MFA in acting. And just a little bit of context I'm originally from Miami, florida, born and raised. My parents are Cuban immigrants. Prior to that, my grandparents were Spanish immigrants to Cuba and then Cuban immigrants to the United States, so Native Spanish speaker, both bilingual and bicultural. And I just want to say that I am somebody who had a profound shame around public speaking. And I start that story with second grade and show and tell at Pinewood Acres Elementary School in Miami, florida, clutching a stuffed animal, seal, and I said something magical like seals or mammals, they live in the water, they eat fish. Sometimes they're eaten by sharks. You know, in my own mind, my own second grade mind, I was like there's a Tony Award for best second grade performance of a show and tell. Clearly I'm the winner. But I noticed that my classmates weren't interested. They were like glazed over, bored to tears. And there are 12 of them and it felt like 50. And then I just uttered I named him after someone in this class. Everybody was interested and then I said I named him after Brett McGyver, who was the blonde popper, the boy that I had a crush on in Miami, florida in 1986. And it didn't go well and it was like the first lesson that maybe an overshare is not the best idea. Maybe I should have tried it out.
Eduardo Placer:Going off script sometimes has its own uh, unashamed moments, but it was the first moment, nick, that I palpably felt terror and I made a decision in second grade at that moment that was. That was when I stand up to speak, I can't be myself, I can't speak the truth and if I do, it's dangerous. And now there's a well-known statistic, which is that 76% of people suffer from speech anxiety. And I believe everybody else lies Right and I would say at the root of it there is some way in which we shared something, or we we shared our light, or we're really excited about something and we shared it out loud, and either a family member or a classmate or a bully or a teacher I put it off. Yeah, I'm going to show you. No, my back did not really look down at that. So it's kind of like you know, I just got hurt or something around me. Oh, you know what that is the impact and it is like a death. Like you know, again, there's rational fear and a rational fear. You're not gonna die from public speaking, but yet the body gives you the experience like you're being chased by a tiger or a bear in the woods. So that so I named that because there was a context of a relationship with me around that. Now, if we open it up a little bit, there's also a truth which is who I am in a forming brain in the 1980s in Miami Florida. So I have an identical twin brother, right, and my twin brother, I say the difference is when, when we played with our GI Joe's, he played war and I played war, the musical. My little boy sang and they dance and they had monologues. So there was something about little Eduardo which was very different than other boys his age, yeah Right, and I didn't have a word for it until later.
Eduardo Placer:But what happened is that I knew that I had to play a role. I knew I had to put on a show for other people to feel safe. So, of course, what I wanted to be more than anything in the world was an actor. Cause that's what actors do they don costumes and they say other people's lines and they put on a character. Because I think at my fundamental core there was a belief that who I was at my core was unlovable and I had to perform something other than who I was in order to get the attention, validation, whatever in the world. And being a child of Cuban immigrants, that's their worst nightmare One gay and two an actor, right. So it's like be a lawyer, be all those other things, right, right. So I had this, like you know, I had this closeted, not only closeted homosexuality, but like this desire to be on stage and to be seen. And so there was that struggle.
Eduardo Placer:So, you know, I performed perfect immigrant child, did extraordinary in high school and had the privilege of attending the University of Pennsylvania, one of the top universities in the United States, where I majored in English. And then I came out at 18, my freshman year of college, and then, by the time that I graduated, said I played by everybody's rules and now I'm gonna be an actor. So that's when I moved to New York City at 22 with a dance belt, a diet coke and a dream. And I moved to New York City and I was like show biz, here we go and I'm living my chorus line in 42nd Street like dream fantasy. But I didn't have any training. I was like it was pure impulse, it was pure desire and dream and the excitement of, you know, being in the city that I always aspire to imagine, where actors and theater practitioners go. And that was a five year run where I discovered and knew there's something missing.
Eduardo Placer:And in order to elevate myself to the next level because I didn't grow up doing community theater, I didn't grow up doing theater in my high school or my middle school I needed a place where I could practice, which is why grad school to me, was a great opportunity, and maybe we can talk about training programs and stuff like that, because that's when I went to conservatory. And the thing about UCSD is that all the actors at UCSD teach undergrads, all the masters actors, all the MFA actors teach undergrads acting and they teach public speaking. So the seed. So even when I was looking for grad schools, when I was looking for MFA programs, I thought to myself wow, the fact that I'm teaching not only acting and not only public speaking.
Eduardo Placer:For me as an actor, who'd already been in the world for five years as a professional actor, I know it is important and necessary to have a parallel career. Either you're independently wealthy or you have a parallel career. I am not independently wealthy, so this entire experience has been self-funded. I wish that I was the person that had a mommy and daddy that could buy me a fabulous apartment in New York City and I could live rent free and I could take my dance classes, I could take my acting classes and I could do my Jamba Juice and I could have my Equinox and my personal trainer and all of that other stuff. But that and some people have the privilege of that experience that was not my reality.
Eduardo Placer:So, having that break to focus on the crafting and the technique and then the practice of being able to teach undergraduates, I was like that is helpful to know that I could have that as a use to become faculty at a university or teach public speaking out in the world. So as I ventured out of grad school in 2007, I had multiple side hustles Right, so one side hustle was so my main thrust is I'm an actor. Yes, I'm also making money as a waiter at a restaurant, but I also discovered I'm a photographer. I take amazing pictures. The first wedding I photographed was in Jamaica. The second one was in Columbia.
Eduardo Placer:Yeah, that's too bad, right, so entrepreneurial, you're always thinking in those terms, right? And then I was like, well, I've also taught public speaking at the university level, so I started a. I started befriending the board members at the events for the plays and the theater events I was going to, and I was like, oh, and I also do this on the side, you know, I also do this work. So then I started like planting these seeds. You know, leveraging relationships, businesses and everything is all about relationships, as you know. So really leveraging those relationships to start creating opportunities that are extra beyond from a revenue perspective, diversifying my revenue streams, because I knew that the acting one was limited and, again, I love the stage.
Eduardo Placer:This is not a knock on film, this is not a knock on TV. There's some people who their dream is to be a series regular on a TV show and to be in commercials. I was like the thought of being in LA to me was really depressing. To drive around for hours and hours and hours to be at a Colgate commercial, you know, and then live off of that for the year. Yeah, the money is good, but like it's not like I love LA or driving that much that I want to be there to be like I'm fulfilled in being having a Colgate commercial, so so, yeah, so, so, so that is kind of like the origin and then, and then leading to a moment in my acting career where I was like it is just not giving me enough, and we can talk about that, where then I pivot fully into fearless communicators as a business and my entire team are stage actors.
Eduardo Placer:Okay even my operations person has an undergraduate degree in theater, like everyone on my team has a degree in theater, most of them there are. There's a certain trend, which is Ivy League English majors that have MFA is an acting that's another combo platter or people who have an undergraduate degree in English or language. Because we are in our, our skill is in the use of the, in the use of words and the spoken words specifically. So there's a way which facility? Or Phyllis, phyllis facility, around language. I love that. I stumbled over that Phyllis facility around language making you nervous.
Eduardo Placer:Perfect timing.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, no, it's beautiful.
Eduardo Placer:It's beautiful, but I always say, speaking is an exercise in connection, not perfection. So the fact that once stumbles is beautiful, we're alive. That's what happens to us as human beings. So, anyway, I hope I planted a bunch of seeds there for you to pick up and because I'm an open book.
Andy Heise:Yeah, we're going to explore a lot of those things as we go through here. So you started doing sort of the coaching as like a side hustle. Was there a moment when you realized, wait a second, this, this is the thing that I could really make something out of? Or did those clients just kind of build over time and eventually you kind of had this, this thing going?
Eduardo Placer:You know, I think, I think there are two, there are two things that are happening concurrently. Okay, so one is an acting and an acting a ton. So specifically when I graduated from my training program, there's a lot of attention and drive around the showcase, the showcase, the showcase. I had a horrible showcase, and yet I would say that I worked more than most of my classmates afterwards and what I did was I found myself in repertory acting companies, so initially at the Pearl Theater in New York City doing classical theater, and then I found myself in the Great Lakes Theater Festival, idaho Shakespeare Festival, lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival kind of circuit, which is where I have some connection to various Kent State faculty members, and then finally, at the end with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, oregon. So I had these like contracts that were anywhere between 30 weeks to 50 weeks where I was working as an actor, where I was doing anywhere between three to five roles.
Eduardo Placer:And for me I would say have you heard of the story of the Fox and the Hedgehog? I don't think so, I don't remember. So there's a famous Canadian political philosopher or philosopher that has this kind of parable or fable about the Fox and the Hedgehog, and I think it's interesting to think about it in terms of business and entrepreneurship, because he kind of says, like in the area in the era of the Renaissance, like you had were Foxes, which were people who knew a little bit about a lot of things, and those will call today generalists. And then we have the industrial age and what you have are unique people who borrow like a hedgehog. Who are the people who are extraordinary at one thing the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours type of conversation. Right Now, I'm not a hedgehog on the Fox. I'm not someone who is curious or interested in it, nor do I have the attention span to be the person who's going to spend 10,000 hours, you know, playing the violin to become the best violinist, or swinging that golf club for 10,000 hours like Tiger Woods to be the best golfer. That's not interested. I'm not interested in that. However, I am somebody who's profoundly curious and highly competent and very, very, very, very, very, very good at many things. I'm not the best at one thing, but I'm very good and very competent at many, and that is a different type of extraordinary and I think as an entrepreneur, as a founder, I think that being a Fox is very helpful and for my work as a public speaking coach. I would say that I have the privilege of working with people across industries and sectors for everything like the future of rail, the voting rights, to women's reproductive health, you know to cybersecurity, and I have enough knowledge or insight and curiosity that what I'm able to act is as a translator from their expertise to an audience, because their expertise exists in a vacuum unless it is targeted to human beings who can understand what they're saying. So I get to be the bridge and I think for me I got eventually as an actor board.
Eduardo Placer:My energy. Showing up at a theater company was like Morris artistic producer, and they wanted me to stand at six and sing my line and then exit stage left and after a certain point I was like I think I had my parents let me sing and dance when I was like seven or eight. I probably would have gotten them out of my system, you know, but they didn't. So that I had this like energy was like I got to prove to myself that I'm talented. I got to prove to myself that I have a gift. I have to prove to myself that I can do this, and then did it, you know, consistently, and then kept finding myself on stage saying, well, this is fun, but now what?
Eduardo Placer:And I think that my brain and my curiosity, I think, was always hungry for more. So, even as an actor in theater companies, even when I was in Cleveland, you know, I would reach out to now I'm blanking, there's Cleveland State University and I would facilitate audition workshops and acting workshops. You know, like Ashlyn University, I was like let me do a workshop, let me do more, because I found that that was feeding my curiosity, my need to be in connection, my need to be in service, more so than what my acting career was doing. And I think there was a part of me that, as an actor, was like this play is going to change the world, you know, and no, you know, I mean, and I think they're micro in macro ways in which it does.
Eduardo Placer:Like you know, I've been. I've been in comedies, you know and luckily I was I was more on the comedy vein and not the tragedy vein, because I'm going to talk about split your vein if, like, your whole career is like Shakespeare tragedies. But you know, I was doing Shakespeare comedies, I was doing musical theater. So if we can give people a great laugh and they have a beautiful evening and they're able to forget their troubles or their woes or whatever, amazing. But is that making a lasting difference in the world? Probably not, and not at the scale that. I knew that I was committed to make a difference and from the beginning it was never Eduardo Plasero coaching. Initially it was called Speak, the Speech which comes from a hand-buts instruction to the player. So, really, leaning in on my Shakespeare and leaning in on the classical training, realized nobody cares about Shakespeare in the marketplace and then pivoted and shifted it to Fearless Communicators and noticing that it was never Eduardo Placere coaching. So I always was imagining that I would have a team of people, that I would be in a company. I always wanted to be the company of actors, which is why I was in theater companies. So I ended up building a company that's a company of actors and what we get to do is make a difference with.
Eduardo Placer:We are monologue coaches for real people who are out on the planet making a difference and we get to meet with them and, just like me and just like many of my team members who are women, people of color, queer people, have a lot of shame and fear and anxiety around speaking, because there are ways in which the truth of who they are has been shut down in the public space, in the public form. And how can we also liberate people from the past understand that speaking is not a mental calisthenic exercise, but it is a physical, a spiritual and an emotional exercise. And they are not resource and they are not trained to do that. We are as actors to do that. So we have the tools and the ability to really get them comfortable, fully in themselves. Not to put on a show to convince them that they're anybody else, but they are who they are. Who they are is powerful and who we are is ready to listen. Yeah, but what they have to say?
Nick Petrella:you're meeting them where they are. And 100% yeah yeah, and it's so fun listening. It makes total sense now. It just looks just what you said. You're an acting company, right? I mean a theater company.
Eduardo Placer:Yes, and we have different roles. We have different roles. We have different offerings. Like you know, some of them you know some of them are part of my sales team, you know some of them then facilitate this workshop, or they facilitate that other workshop, or they do one-on-one client work because we're both a B2B and a B2C business. That's right, sure Right. So these are actors who can also shift roles that they need to right. But what I want to say is that when we work with our clients, one of the things that I tell them is I don't want, you're not putting on a character.
Eduardo Placer:That's like 1980s public speaking. It's 1980s public speaking. You know nobody cares. You know it's. What we're really after in this moment is authenticity, vulnerability and understanding that I would offer that historically marginalized people. That comes at a severe cost. It's not easy. It's not like authenticity is easy. Like when was it easy to be yourself? Like when was it easy to be authentic in a middle school cafeteria or high school? No, we don't actually center authenticity. What we center is conformity. So authenticity comes at a great risk. So how do you equip people with the courage to really step into their authenticity? And I think that that's where our work is. Also. They think they're getting public speaking coaching, but ultimately what they're getting is transformational coaching on confidence, presence, power.
Nick Petrella:How much did you know about starting a business before you founded Fearless Communicators?
Eduardo Placer:Zero, zero, absolutely zero.
Andy Heise:So you didn't write a business plan.
Eduardo Placer:No business plan there's still no business, plan.
Eduardo Placer:I'm now almost 10 years in and I'm finally doing budgeting Right. And you know, I would say there's a really great assessment that I recommend people take. It's called the Colby Assessment. I don't know if you know it, nick and Andy, but I love it Because it tells you who you, it tells you your kind of ideal working style, like kind of when you're in your zone of genius, and they're kind of these four pillars One of them is Fact Finder, another one is Implementer, another one is Follow Through and another one is Quick Start.
Eduardo Placer:Right, I'm a nine Quick Start. I'm like a two Implementer, follow Through, fact Finder, right. So I am like throw me in the deep end and let me swim. Not every entrepreneur is that way, right, right, like. There's some entrepreneurs that are like I'm a Fact Finder, like I'm going to build my business plan, I'm going to do the research, I'm going to sit there for three, four, five, six, seven years, make sure it's perfect while I have my corporate job before I start dipping my toe. So it's not to say that one is better than the other.
Eduardo Placer:I also had no other option, right, so I was. I mean, that's not true. I am resourced, I am privileged, I have many, many options, right, but what happened is that as a stage actor. So I was that my last two years I was a company member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where for two years I worked 51 weeks as an actor, right. So I did the season.
Eduardo Placer:That was like maybe 38 or no, it was like 42 weeks that I worked. And then I did their school visit program where we went to middle schools and high schools in the Washington state, oregon area and did kind of shows and then, little you know, teaching middle school students and high school student kind of workshops around language arts and theater or whatever I also. When I did that I I had some private clients that I was doing public speaking with. I was also a tour guide. I was also a teacher I would do when student groups would come, I would also teach. And I also produced their HIV and AIDS fund razor. I took it from six events to 10 and raised 40% more than that ever raised before.
Nick Petrella:That's great.
Eduardo Placer:So. So what I realized when I did that is that there was all this energy and attention that I had for all this stuff that was beyond what I was doing as an actor and I was like I had to be furious and interested that there was a little sound, that a little whisper in my, in my internal brain mechanism was like is this really all you want to do with your life to be an actor? And for those, there's some people for whom that is an absolute, 100% yes, and that's wonderful and they can have. They have a whole life and a creative life and an imaginary life that exists around the creation of that role and that play. That's not my creativity. I'm not the hedgehog I am. I'm like why are they lighting that part? That's a terrible arrangement of that music. Why is the education department not talking to the marketing department? You know, why are they choosing that design? They need a new graphic designer for the logo. Like I mean, my mind is literally in all these other spaces. That is not in the world of that play or that role, and I think at some point it just I just noticed that and I was like I think I'm ready and what happens is they didn't have a job for me.
Eduardo Placer:So there's a day at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival they call it Black Monday, and it's the day that everybody finds out what their casting is for the next season. And even though I was a beloved member of the community, even though I had done all this work around all that other stuff, at the end of the day Again, it's a repertory acting company. They either have a job for you or they don't have a job for you, and none of that other stuff that you do matters. And I was sick and tired of also showing up in these communities to give everything and then, at the end of the day, their ability to only really process a narrow scope of it.
Eduardo Placer:And then I'm back unemployed in New York City, in my mid to late 30s, you know, and I'm catering, cater, waiting with people who had Broadway contracts and national tours, and that's really cute when you're in your 20s and maybe early 30s. But at that point I was like I could see the future. I could see the future of repertory company actors, I could see the future of the theater industry. I could see the future of all of that and I was like this is not solid ground for me to build a life, a life without limits not the first art without limits, nick. To go back to the theme and what I talked about, a life without limits and I knew that, for me, that entrepreneurial piece, that's where I say in 2015, I made fearless communicators legal zoom official and I had no idea what the hell. I had no idea what I was doing, no idea.
