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Episode 74: How to be a Compelling Presenter (Pre-Showit United 2019)
164 Plays5 years ago
Today I am joined by Speaking Coach Mike Pacchione. Mike has flown around the world teaching people how to give presentations. And he’s worked with some pretty big names companies—as he puts it, while he’s not at liberty to discuss every company he’s worked with, if you have used a computer, phone or search engine today, you’re probably familiar with one of his clients.
I hired Mike to help me get ready for my United 2019 keynote presentation. Although I feel comfortable speaking in front of people, I wanted some help continuing to develop that craft, and I chat a little more about that in these episodes.
This is part 1 of a 2-part episode. This episode was recorded PRIOR to my keynote, and we discuss some general advice for giving better presentations, Mike critiques a past presentation of mine, and, of course, we get to hear a bit of Mike’s story.
The 2nd of this 2-part episode was recorded AFTER my keynote and reflects on my experience working with Mike, and he gives me some feedback on how I did. My hope is that this behind-the-scenes is helpful to you the next time you’re crafting a presentation for a group of people.
If you’re interested in watching the keynote I presented at United, which was titled: The Only Two Questions You Need to Answer to Win Business (and how to answer them on your website), check out the show notes at https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-mike-pacchione-episode-74
Recommended
Transcript
Treat presentations like stories
00:00:05
Speaker
I think most people treat a presentation as if it is a lecture. You should actually treat a presentation as if it is a comic book or a movie. What I mean by that, comic book or movie has a story to it. A story has illustrations to it. What most people do is the slides are either competing with you or they're your scripts. Presenters who are really going well, the slides are more like a beautiful backdrop.
Introducing Mike Pacchione, speech coach
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:50
Speaker
Today I'm joined by speaking coach Mike Pacchione. Mike has flown around the world teaching people how to give presentations and he's worked with some pretty big names as he puts it. While he's not at liberty to discuss every company that he's worked with, if you've used a computer, phone or search engine today, you're probably familiar with one of his clients.
00:01:09
Speaker
I hired Mike to help me get ready for my united 2019 keynote presentation and although I feel comfortable speaking in front of people I wanted some help continuing to develop that craft. So I chat a little bit more about that in these episodes. This is actually part one of a two-part episode. This episode was recorded prior to my keynote and we discussed some general advice for giving presentation
00:01:34
Speaker
Mike critiques a past presentation of mine and of course we get to hear a little bit of Mike's story. The second of this two-part episode was recorded after my keynote and reflects on my experience working with Mike. He gives me some feedback on how I did and I hope that this behind the scenes is helpful to you the next time you're crafting a presentation for a group of people.
Part 1: Presentation advice series begins
00:01:55
Speaker
If you're interested in watching the keynote I presented at United, which was titled, The Only Two Questions You Need to Answer to Win Business and How to Answer Them on Your Website, check out the show notes at DavianChrista.com. Now, onto the episode. Mike Pacchione, welcome to the Brands That Book Podcast. I am pumped to have you here. You are kind of a big deal.
00:02:24
Speaker
emphasis on kind of. Well, you know, it's my favorite kind of big deal because you don't come off that way, right? You just super, super easy guy to talk to. But you've worked with some huge names. Yeah, and that I was unaware of before reaching out to you. So just to give our listeners a little bit of background, I know I like a subtle way of saying like, Mike, you need to communicate better who you work with.
00:02:48
Speaker
No, well, it's funny. And we're going to get into this and how I found you in a second so we can kind of talk about why I wasn't aware of that before I reached out or when I reached out. But you are a speech coach, help people give the best presentation of their life. And I have recently hired Mike to help me with a keynote that I'm working on.
00:03:08
Speaker
that I'm going to give in early November. So we're kind of in the pits of working
Mike's journey to becoming a speech coach
00:03:12
Speaker
on that. And we're going to talk a little bit about that process too, which I'm excited to share about getting a little vulnerable as well with where I'm at and some of the feedback that Mike has given me on past presentations as well. But Mike, how would you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and kind of how you got started as a speech coach? Yeah, God smiled on me as the short version. The longer version is
00:03:37
Speaker
You know, there's that stat about public speaking is the number one fear. I don't think it's actually number one. And I would question the validity of it anyway, because like, I don't know. This is what I always say to friends. It's like, nobody with like a gun pointed at their head is like, oh, at least I'm not giving the Q3 update right now. I never had that when I was.
00:04:00
Speaker
I mean, I'm going back to elementary school. I loved show and tell. I loved, every Wednesday, we did a current events speech. I loved it. Other people were up there, and this is when you had actual newspaper clippings. People would read the newspaper clippings. And I was like, why in the world would you read the, I had no idea that people were scared of this, right? So I'm like, why would you read the newspaper clippings? Why wouldn't you just summarize it? Later on, I realized that people don't like speaking, and I'm a little weird that way. It was always a skill I took with me.
00:04:31
Speaker
middle school, high school. When I was in high school, they had to change the rules of your... I wound up being a school vice president. It was mostly because I gave this great speech. Next year, they changed the rules of the speech. Anyway, I took it with me wherever I was. I never knew it was something you could do for a job. My life changed when I was... I had gone to graduate school at Portland State. I was teaching a college class. I always wanted to be a professor.
00:04:56
Speaker
When I got into grad school, I like it was pretty quick to realize like, oh, being a professor is mostly not about teaching. Yeah. So that was troublesome because the teaching part is what I liked. Grading, total nightmare meetings. Meetings have always been weakness in mind. So it was like one of those three things is what I got to do. And I and that was like 20 percent of the job. Anyway, one way to say so I was stuck in terms of career adjunct into payoff grad school.
00:05:24
Speaker
I had a guy who came up to me during a break. He said, Mike, I'm not actually in your class, which, first of all, if you're the teacher, you should notice when someone in your class shows up, but I didn't. The guy comes up and he's like, hey, I'm not actually in your class. My girlfriend is, I thought I'd come with her. She said it's a good class. And I actually work at Nike. I'm in charge of bringing in presenters to speak on campus. You seem like a pretty compelling speaker. Would you want to come in sometime? So I mean,
The challenge of open topics in presentations
00:05:52
Speaker
sweet mercy.
00:05:54
Speaker
We're talking someone at a total career impasse what I always thought I wanted to do I couldn't do like I didn't like doing yeah I'm biting time. I'm just like trying to pay off school One way to say I said yes to that guy pretty quickly and at this point I don't know if they're gonna pay me $10,000 if it's free what it is then they started asking me for a topic but like here's the problem So here's how arbitrary my success is
00:06:19
Speaker
Or at least, here's how arbitrary my lucky break is. I don't have a topic. They're like, you can talk about anything. What do you want to talk about? I don't know. I call one of my friends from college, like this is where I'm indecisive and I don't know what to do and it would be easier for me if someone else can just do it for me. So I call one of my friends from college, my buddy John Ranahan is like, well, you know what you should talk about is, well, this is what I heard him say. I heard him say you should talk about the tower of story. I don't know what that is. I'm picturing like a college textbook that says like figure three one, the tower of story.
00:06:50
Speaker
But he said it with such conviction that I'm like, all right, cool. Like, I'll figure it out. The Tower of Story. So I get on the phone with the Nike people. Yeah, I've got a great topic. I want to talk about the Tower of Story. I'll never forget this until my memory goes. The guy on the other end is like, that's a great topic. The power of story. Story is very powerful. He's like really pronouncing the P's. Yeah.
00:07:13
Speaker
Like John said power not tower. Get off the phone with the Nike people. Oh my gosh. And like thank heavens it was over the phone and not face to face, face to face. They would have seen I was saying tower not power. Anyway, put together a talk for Nike. The talk is good-ish.
00:07:31
Speaker
I was a little bit intimidated by the audience was a little intimidated by the moment. But I think that's kind of what separates you right is because most people I think certainly myself included would have been very intimidated by the audience, even by I think it's harder to and maybe a little bit of why I'm struggling with this keynote is when you can speak about whatever you want. Yes, you know, I mean, I think that's difficult to do as well. Yeah, it's like Halloween every year. Like what should I be?
00:07:57
Speaker
And I once went to a party one year for Halloween. This party was dressed to a T. So your costume had to start with the letter T.
00:08:05
Speaker
I had a million ideas. But Halloween, you can do whatever you want. I have no ideas. Yeah. And it's just too many options. And then it's like, at least when you're teaching, you generally have some sort of curriculum that you're supposed to be following. And that might be a little open-ended, but there's generally some sort of objective. But when the topic is anything, it's like you're coming up with the objectives too. And I think that's super challenging for people. I don't want to get us off track either. I am at least a little bit curious, admittedly, on why they had to change the rules for you when you were back in high school.
00:08:34
Speaker
Oh, I made a lot of jokes. And so what I'm hearing is that maybe it was more of a stand up routine. Yeah. Well, and in hindsight, gosh, I can't believe I did this. So I'm in high school. This is like 1995. The Internet is just now a thing. And we had just had our principal hired. He's this young guy. Like he's in his 30s. Maybe he's 40. And like my whole life I've got the classic like 75 year old white guy as the principal.
00:09:02
Speaker
This guy comes in, he's like 36 probably. He's talking about the internet. Nobody knew what the internet was. So then maybe three weeks later, I'm running for school vice president.
00:09:13
Speaker
I get up first words out of my mouth, I'm like, I'd like to start by talking about the internet. And I'm like, just kidding. And the whole school knows that I'm digging at the principle. What am I doing? So from then on out, you had to get your speech approved. Now I was 17. Yeah, yeah. It's funny too, that you wanted to go into education. That's because like, I always felt like school could be more interesting than it was. Sure. And that's like part of
00:09:40
Speaker
truthfully, that is one of the things that I try to help people with when I'm helping them speak. Because most people that I help, it's really rare where I come up with the idea for them. It's usually they have the idea in their head and they need help trying to smooth it out, make the message clear, make it digestible for the audience, make it memorable. Those are the things I'm usually helping people with.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a lot of the reason why I've come to you for help. I went to Mike for help. One, I think I found you through ConvertKit because you are the official speech coach, right, for the ConvertKit conference that they put on. So you work with their speakers before that conference, or anybody who
Transition from corporate to independent coaching
00:10:20
Speaker
wants help that's speaking at that conference. So I came across your name in a blog post and I clicked on a link. It brought me to your website, but it wasn't your current website. It was like an old website.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah. So I worked for a company called Duarte for a number of years. I flew all over the world, helping people. I gave a presentation on how to give presentations. Very meta. I had just a filler website that Nathan linked to.
00:10:45
Speaker
So yeah, and so and this is why I miss the part of the story that we're kind of at right now, which is, you know, I mean, you've talked to some of the biggest names, some of the biggest companies out there, Apple, Slack, Miller's cores, Google, Starbucks, that list goes on, you've talked or you've helped Amy Porterfield, Scott Hamilton is gold medalist, Pat
00:11:06
Speaker
I mean, all sorts of people in the digital marketing world that I'm sure people would also recognize. So I missed all of that, you know, that was all, you know, I already knew that you'd be legit because otherwise, Nathan Barry wouldn't have blogged about you. But I had missed all this and then to be honest, I don't know if I knew that I'm not quite sure I would have ever even reached out because I would have felt like it's like,
00:11:27
Speaker
you know, it would be like me trying to go to LeBron James's coach to help me with basketball. You know, so I think I would have just been. So in a way, I'm kind of glad I didn't know any of that before jumping on the phone with you. But you know, like I said, I mean, it's awesome. You've been great to work with. But there is, you know, for me, some of that intimidation where I'm like,
00:11:48
Speaker
you know, this guy, this guy's working with Donald Miller. Now he's like going through going through my presentation. You know, so I mean, here's the thing. I end up learning so much from different people about all this stuff. I mean, I'm a lifelong learner. I don't feel like I have all the answers and maybe I should pretend I do. But anyway.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah. Sure. I learned from Don. I learned from James Clear. I learned from Amy Porterfield. I learned from all those peoples. My favorite thing in the world is when there's someone like you who has great ideas and the way that they've presented them in the past has been fine, but it just hasn't been the best they can do. That is my favorite thing in the world. Well, I'm glad to hear that because, and like I said, that's a lot of reason why I came to you. I think specifically when we're having those initial conversations and I was talking about what I wanted to get out of this experience was basically
00:12:31
Speaker
You know, I think that there is a distinction between somebody who can get up in front of a group of people and present and be relatively dynamic just kind of naturally, but then somebody who's really kind of worked on that message and refined their craft. And so that's really where I'm hoping to get to. And that's what you've been helping me with so far. And so that process has been really fun and really hard in a lot of ways. It's forced me to get a little bit more prepared a lot earlier than usually I prepare.
00:12:56
Speaker
And that's good. That kind of accountability has been good even though it has resulted in some serious moments of anguish. Dude, you're at the part right now that most people never get to, which is the part where you hate the talk. Maybe people do get to that, but you're at the part where you just need to push through this because on the other end of it is the brilliant part.
00:13:21
Speaker
And you know, during some of this inner conflict, I was talking with Krista about that. And she basically said that she's like, David, listen, like, so you came up with this talk, and it's decent. But and this is likely about the version that you would end up giving time to not been working with Mike.
00:13:38
Speaker
And so think about how much better this is going to be now that you're working with Mike and you're getting his feedback. And we're still about a month out from the conference with plenty of time to refine it and rehearse. So I'm really excited about that. And I'm excited to dig into, you know, dig into some tips that you have for putting together presentations and delivering presentations. I do want to hear though, I because I kind of cut off, I just had to hear about the high school story. So I do want to hear about your transition from working for and I'm going to butcher the name here.
00:14:08
Speaker
Yes. I don't know why that's so difficult for me. Your transition from there into doing your own thing, into helping people more on a one-on-one basis. Yeah. Well, that's always been my favorite thing in the world is one-on-one, even when I was working at Duarte. Duarte was a fantastic job, probably the best corporate job I will ever have. It would be hard to top that. Well, it was time for a couple different reasons. It was time for me professionally and it was time because we had our first child in June,
00:14:37
Speaker
I was getting on a plane. I was spending about 100 nights a year in hotels. And I don't know that works for some people when they have a child, but it wasn't gonna work for me. Sure. I had a distinct moment. And if you care about this, but I'm apparently gonna tell you, I had a distinct moment where I had helped a speaker in Dallas. So one of the things that I do is I'll spend a full day with someone full day VIP day. I helped a woman full day in Dallas on Monday.
00:15:05
Speaker
So left Sunday, helped her all day Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday, I did full day workshops for a company still in Dallas. It was one of those like, finish the workshop, like hop in the rental car. I should be able to make the flight as long as there's no problems with traffic. Return the rental car. I'm on the bus that takes you between the rental car place and the airport. And I'm like, okay, I should make it. I should make it. There's a lot of should make a flight.
00:15:31
Speaker
Dallas to Seattle, Seattle to Portland and walk in the front door at like one in the morning. I should be so spent right now. I woke up at about four in the morning. So that's three hours of sleep. And I'm like super stressed out, but it was all stuff about work. And I had this moment where I'm like, what am I doing? It was my only chance to be a first time father. And I'm sitting here worried about like, this guy didn't email me back. Why does he ever want to be back? What am I doing?
00:15:57
Speaker
I was always moving in the direction of helping people one on one and making that my big employment. I'd always done that on the side that always been the funnest thing for me. And now that I have a child, it's also just it's challenging because you're like taking phone calls outside because he's asleep and stuff. But it is just the very best thing for our family.
00:16:16
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a lot of people that can resonate with that. And, you know, working from home definitely has its challenges. Like you said, you know, some of our conversations I've taken outside because it's nap time and you can hear everything in this house. But it is a huge blessing to get that extra time with Jack on a daily basis. So
00:16:33
Speaker
I think a lot of what you're saying, you know, is going to resonate with people. And even what you were saying about teaching as well, I mean, my background is in teaching and coaching, and I love both those things. And if only those jobs were actually more teaching and coaching, and less all of the other stuff, then perhaps I'd still be a teacher and a coach. But making $36,000 a year.
Influential speakers and storytelling techniques
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. You know?
00:16:57
Speaker
I think it'd be hard to go back to that. But yeah, and I do want to start transitioning to more of the content for today. I do want to mention that you have and I'm going to mention this, I would usually mention this at the end of the podcast, I want to mention it now, because this was, I think, very striking for Krista, she listened to your podcast that you did on typology. And I hadn't heard a typology until I listened to your it's a two part podcast, actually. And you talked about speaking or presenting based on the different Enneagram numbers.
00:17:24
Speaker
right and krista she's the same any gram number as your wife i think as well so number one right is that right yep and she always kind of told herself the story that she you know just based on her personality type isn't a good speaker you know or couldn't be like a dynamic speaker and so listening to
00:17:43
Speaker
that podcast I think was really eye-opening for her and kind of got her excited about maybe exploring that a little bit more. So after you're done listening to this episode, you should head on over to Typology and check out this other episode. I just thought it was excellent. And you have some other great podcast episodes out there. The one with StoryBrand or Donald Miller's podcast StoryBrand was also great.
00:18:03
Speaker
But I do want to, again, move into the content for today. And I want to start by asking who are your favorite speakers or speeches and kind of what is striking about those either speeches or speakers? Yeah, my favorite speaker in the world is Andy Stanley.
00:18:19
Speaker
those of you who are Enneagram people. He's a one, which is what your wife is, which is what my wife is. And I think that was so eye-opening. Yeah, because Gandhi was a one too, right? I would think so. Yeah, I mean, that's what kind of people project on him, I guess. Yeah, I would think he was a one. Andy Stanley's my favorite speaker in the world. A few reasons why. He boils everything down to one point. He uses illustrations just wonderfully. Illustrations and stories. One of my favorite sermons I ever heard. In fact, this was probably my favorite.
00:18:48
Speaker
He was talking about making changes in your life, but his way of framing it is he talked about renovating yourself. He said, OK, well, what happens when you're like renovating your kitchen? There's a point where they've been doing construction for so long. You're like, screw this. I hate this. But because it's a physical product,
00:19:10
Speaker
You can't just like reverse and put it back. But you have to keep going. This is actually where you are in your talk right now. Yes, that would be just completely demolished kitchen. That's where I guess I think that's a pretty good assessment of where I am in my talk right now. Because it's a speech like you could just stop right now and give that talk. But there's no way you would keep going if that was your kitchen. Sure. That was the illustration. His wasn't about speeches. It was about like the condition of your soul and your behavior and stuff.
00:19:38
Speaker
I was like, Oh my gosh. Yeah, you're right. Like this thing I'm working on. I have to keep working on it until it's actually renovated. So Andy Stanley regularly comes up with illustrations like that. That are fantastic. Let me give three of my favorite speeches though. Like things people can actually watch online. Yeah, absolutely. So one of them is Amy Webb's Ted talk. It's so funny. Amy Webb. The talk is called a how I hacked computer dating. Okay. Amy Webb.
00:20:05
Speaker
So she's a data person. Data speeches are usually so boring. What Amy did really well is she used data to help tell her story. And she used suspense in the way that she shared data. So, you know, my wife loves all these CSI, NCIS, criminal minds type shows. And there's always this moment where they call the, on NCIS, I think her name is Polly. She's got like the purple hair. Yeah. Like she's, she's real, you know, quirky.
00:20:35
Speaker
And she's like, OK, well, I started with this data set and then I cross reference with this and the killer is in Baltimore. Right. Like, yes. Look at that. So Amy Webb basically does that with computer dating. She says there she's living in Philadelphia at the time. She's like, there are this many people in Philadelphia. I want this trait, this trait, this trait, this trait. I realized there were 35 people in the whole city of Philadelphia I could possibly marry. So funny. It's like the perfect set up. So Amy Webb love her talk. Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity Water,
00:21:06
Speaker
His chatty water presentation is wonderful.
00:21:09
Speaker
And Seth Godin is just one of the greatest speakers out there. Yeah. Seth Godin, he was actually so he's one of the few emails that I subscribe to him will read every single day. But it just even along the lines of talking about, you know, writing this presentation, something that I found encouraging from him recently, and this is sort of the sidebar here, but he talked about writer's block and how maybe on some sense, on some level, it doesn't really exist. Because, you know, the people who say that they're not good at writing, you know, they've never
00:21:38
Speaker
Started writing, you know, you have to go through a tons and tons of bad writing to get to the good stuff was ultimately the point He was trying to make so I found some encouragement and Seth Godin recently, but did he give a TED talk? He did give a TED talk the one that I love it. So he's won a craft and commerce Okay conference, which by the way, I did not help him with that and He's like one of the few people where I feel like if he wanted my help I'd say Okay, if you're sure
00:22:05
Speaker
That talk is tremendous. The story at the very end is just the greatest ending to a talk. I mean, outside of Martin Luther King or something like that, like for a business presentation, it is just the greatest thing. And what was the gist of that ending? Or what did he do during that ending that made it so striking? Yeah. So first of all, most people run out of gas at the ending. So the ending of most talks is
00:22:28
Speaker
And that's my last slide. Or so go take photographs and charge more. You know what I mean? Like it's there's no energy to it. So he ends one of the things that I try to encourage people to do, it doesn't have to be a story, but it needs to end with energy. He tells the story of his plane having to make an emergency landing. Him calculating that, yeah, I think that it doesn't matter, but I think they landed in Albany and they're trying to get the white planes in York. He calculates that it will be faster for him to just rent a car
00:22:58
Speaker
and drive to white planes versus trying to wait out the delay. So he stands up at the front of the plane, he says, I got the last rental car, anybody can come with me. It'll be faster and nobody takes him up on it. And he said he had the whole, the entire, I think hour and a half drive between those two places to try to figure out why nobody took him up on it. He said, and I finally realized, because if they stay on the plane, anything bad that happens, it's United Airlines fault. If they go with me, they made that choice.
00:23:27
Speaker
This is most people would rather let someone else make the choice. So interesting. Looping that back in, ironically, that's what I did on my talk at Nike. I would rather have someone else make the choice. But yeah. So that ending was just like, hmm. And that's the last speech at the conference. And that is the perfect way to go out.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah and is there something between these three speakers because I imagine that and I don't know as much I don't think I've heard Scott Harrison before don't know as much about Amy Webb but I've heard and it might have been you that brought this up this presentation up before are there any things among these three presentations that make each of them striking?
00:24:03
Speaker
Like do they share any characteristics or? Yeah, I think there are a couple of things and it's interesting because they're really, really different talks. Like one is about computer dating. One is about the world water crisis. One is a business presentation. But what all those presenters do, like number one, they bring a lot of energy to the presentation. It's a lot easier to do that when your content is good. But regardless, bringing energy to the presentation is crucial. But your audience will not. If you don't have energy and you don't seem like you care that much about the presentation or if you don't seem like you believe it,
00:24:32
Speaker
Why in the world would the audience do that? So they all bring energy to it. But the second thing that jumps mine when you say that, they all use tension really well. And can you explain what does that look like? So the easiest way to understand that is actually through stand up comedy, which I mean, frankly, those are like the best presenters out there. So working backwards, a joke ends in a punch line. A punch line is tension being released. The buildup is the tension. I think that was really helpful.
00:25:01
Speaker
analogy for me, because you've actually given me some feedback on a presentation that I gave at Show United last year. And I'll actually post this or link to this presentation in the show notes. And you can see the video version of this. And so I asked Mike to give me some feedback on that, just based on a presentation that I've previously done. And that's one of the pieces of feedback you gave me was basically, don't give the punchline before the joke, you know, and so I'm not building up that
00:25:26
Speaker
attention, you know, before delivering, I guess, whatever the point is, you know, and so like Amy Webb does in her presentation by at the end wrapping up with and I concluded that there's 35 people and in wherever that I can marry, right? So I thought that was really helpful. And so just to get an idea of what Mike is talking about, go and watch that presentation.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, and like, okay, so you had some studies in that presentation that were surprising. Yes. So like, what's one of those? So one of them was the mere measurement effect. And I was talking about how, if you were asked, I'm trying to remember the self thought my head, but it was something along the lines of basically, just by being asked about future intentions, made it more likely that you would actually take that action. And so I think it was in the context of purchasing a car.
00:26:09
Speaker
people were asked if they were going to purchase a car in the next year were 35% more likely to actually purchase a car. And again, I'll post this in the, you'll be able to see this in the show notes. So if I've just butchered that study there, hit that up for some clarity. But that was one of the things that I had mentioned. And it was in the context of questions that I asked people during client consult or I used to, you know, when we were shooting weddings, I would ask people, when would you want to schedule your engagement session? And this was before they ever booked us. But by asking them that question, they started
00:26:39
Speaker
you know, sort of imagining their engagement session with us. Oh, so we're thinking this day, and we're thinking about doing it here. And we'd be able to say, Oh, wouldn't it be great to do, you know, XYZ. So by the end of it, we've planned their session.
Critiquing past presentations and improvement tips
00:26:51
Speaker
And we've just found that, you know, all of a sudden, people are way more likely to book us in a talk. The way to actually do that, as I say, so Kristen, I last year realized that
00:27:00
Speaker
There was a way to bump our book rate by 35 percent. So you're probably thinking right now it's like Facebook ads or it's Instagram ads or it's a coupon. I don't know. Whatever those wrong answers are. Do you know what it actually was? It was by asking one extra question. So now there's like suspense building around it like, oh, like leaning in like, oh, what was that question?
00:27:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it was when do you want to schedule your engagement session? But yeah, and you know, it's so funny, it's always hard hearing feedback like that, because I wish I could go back in time. Totally. Because I thought it like you said, I thought it was a decent presentation. But you know, there's just a few small levers that I think I could have switched right to make it that much better and maybe that much more memorable for people. To be clear, it was a decent presentation. But we're trying to deliver one that like sticks with the audience is memorable. It's the best speech of your life. You get like a thunderous applause walking off.
00:27:53
Speaker
That's the difference and that speaks to the value of doing more than one draft, frankly. The first time you think through something, like of course you think in that linear fashion, okay, I'm going to talk about this study, I'm going to talk about this study, I'm going to talk about this study. Unless you've trained yourself to say, okay, I'm going to talk about this study but I'm going to talk about it this other way, why wouldn't you present it the way that
00:28:14
Speaker
you presented it at that conference. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, all that inner turmoil had, I did that like a couple days before the conference. Not that I wasn't thinking about it, you know, for months leading up to the conference, but actually going through the steps that you're having me go through so much earlier. So what are some, you know, common mistakes? And I can guess some of these, because we've chatted about not only feedback from talks that I've given in the past, but just in general. But what are some of the common mistakes that you see presenters make?
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah. So let me say that I want to move beyond the obvious ones. If you look at any ink.com fast company Forbes type article on this, they're all going to be like, didn't think about the audience too much on the side. And those things are accurate and they're true, but I just want to give stuff that's a bit more advanced than that. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So one that jumps to mind and going to make sure that you do this, if you're talking at a conference, like think about what it's like going to a conference.
00:29:10
Speaker
You're there for at least one day. Most conferences are more than one day, so you're gonna see several different speakers. You're gonna leave that conference, you're gonna get in your car, or you're gonna fly home, and you're gonna have all these different ideas. So thinking like someone who's at the conference, I just heard like 12 speakers over two days. I like all their ideas. How am I gonna implement them? Okay, so what that means, the mistake that people make when they're presenting is they sell on the idea
00:29:41
Speaker
rather than the urgency. Let me say that maybe a little better. Instead of the thesis of your talk being an idea, the thesis should be more, you need to prioritize my idea. I think the reason why this happens, and this is coming from someone who used to teach communication classes. Back when you took communication classes in college, I don't know, I had a persuasive speech to give. And when I taught public speaking, I had students give a persuasive speech.
00:30:11
Speaker
People persuaded me that I should eat less fast food or I should exercise or marijuana should be legal. I live in Oregon, so that was a popular one. It is out here in your D.C. too. Right. So when you're in class, you get a good grade for that. Like if you did a good job persuading, you get a good grade. The problem is when you get into the business world, there are 200 good ideas that you can share. Think of your own inbox right now. You said you
Effective use of slides in storytelling
00:30:36
Speaker
read second emails almost every time.
00:30:38
Speaker
That means you prioritize this over other people's. When you're speaking at a conference, or this is true in the business world too, but specifically at a conference, you're actually competing with the other ideas that are at that conference. So long way to say it, I would encourage people to think of it more like this needs to be a priority and less like this is a good idea.
00:30:58
Speaker
And I think I'm just thinking about my own presentation and what I'm speaking on are basically relationships and how that's the most important thing in building a business. And I think that's one of the things that I'm struggling with right now is turning that corner from here's the idea of relationships.
00:31:14
Speaker
And I think that's a pretty easy pill for people to swallow. I think that I have to do a little work on. I think it's one of those ideas people could easily roll their eyes at and be like, okay, yeah, of course, let's, you know, we want to be nice to people and whatever. You know, so how do you turn the corner and make it practical for people in a way that they go home and they implement it?
00:31:32
Speaker
Yep, and that what you just did right there is another I don't know if this is a mistake people make but it's certainly something that you should consider doing in a talk Okay, so if you can sense how the audience would resist it. Mm-hmm I would consider at least saying that resistance out loud. Yeah. Okay, that's great in your talk. You might actually say oh, okay You're probably thinking oh cool another talk about being nice to people. Yeah, I get it right like say that out loud Yeah, and then counter it
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And this is going to be such a fun episode. And we're planning on doing a second episode where we go back and dissect my presentation, which is probably going to be just so gut wrenching for me. But we're going to do it because I think it's the way to grow. I think it's going to be also revealing for other people who are working on similar things. So we have, so far, the mistake being selling the idea rather than the urgency. So how we can implement or how can we get people to implement what we're talking about? How can we get people to prioritize our idea?
00:32:27
Speaker
And then what you just said, saying the resistance out loud, especially if you think people are definitely thinking that. Yes. If you're presenting on something that is true, accurate, but might feel basic to the audience, call that feeling out.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's going to be one of the objections that people come up with is that maybe it does feel a little bit basic, but I can't tell you how many people, if they implement this, it ends up in changing their business.
00:32:58
Speaker
And I can't wait to share some of these statistics. I'm going to do it in a way this time. So I interviewed pretty much everybody that I've interviewed on the podcast. A lot of these people are going to be speakers at this conference coming up. And it is just so revealing, I think, the results of this survey in just the importance of relationships and stuff like that. But anyways, go on. So we have prioritizing the idea, saying the resistance out loud. What else? Yeah, I think most people treat a presentation as if it is a lecture.
00:33:27
Speaker
and what you should actually treat it as I'm gonna give you a pic here just depending on how you're wired you should actually treat a presentation as if it is a comic book or a movie so what I mean by that comic book or movie has a story to it a story has illustrations to it what most people do is
00:33:50
Speaker
is, listen, you don't have to use slides in a presentation. But what most people do is the slides are either competing with you or they're your scripts. But like the presenters who are really going well, the slides are more like a beautiful backdrop.
00:34:06
Speaker
I really, really like that. I think that resonates a lot with me. One, being a teacher, I think I can follow into lecture mode. And also, if you listen to your podcast on the Enneagram types and speakers, just being an Enneagram 8 challenger, I feel like I can lean that way. And I think slides are such a tricky thing. And maybe you can speak to creating compelling slides because I think that's so true that sometimes they do compete with you.
00:34:32
Speaker
And I think I've struggled this as well where, you know, people will be like, Hey, can you hold on for a second so I can like, you know, maybe copy down what's on your slide. And I think that's a great example of your slide not, you know, kind of elevating your message, but instead competing with your message so that people are paying more attention to that than maybe what you're speaking about. Right? Totally. Yeah. So if you had a slide that someone needed to write things down from,
00:34:56
Speaker
That's the equivalent of going to the movies and they just play the screenplay. There are no actors. There are visuals. Yes, we need to go in the building. So that should basically never happen. If there is an instance where you're like, I just can't figure out how to.
00:35:15
Speaker
I just can't figure out a way around this. I need my audience to read this slide. Then what you should do as the presenter is you should stay silent and let the audience read the slide. Like literally prop your body like turn and look at the slide. So it tells the audience it's OK to read this. Quotes would be an example when that makes sense. But for the most part, like.
00:35:35
Speaker
your slides should err on the side of being visual and they should be the background to what you're saying out loud, to the story that you're telling out loud. Okay, awesome. And as far as like making slides look presentable, is there like do they need to look pretty? You know, is that so important? Right? Like is it? It kind of depends on the presentation, right? Because studies show that
00:35:56
Speaker
Okay, so why do people remember what's on slides? Like more often than not, it's because of visuals. People will remember visuals better than words. They'll notice visuals before they notice words. Okay. And so when you say, but not yet, not every single time. So there's obvious exceptions. Would you say that it's more important to use visuals and slides than it is to normally than it is to put words on slides? Yeah, normally. Yeah. There's some times where there's no way around it. And please don't hear this the wrong way. I'm not telling you that
00:36:26
Speaker
if you're giving some quarterly update that you're putting a butterfly on the screen and you're like, well, the butterfly represents how we did in Q3. But people need to be able to digest the slide really quickly while they're listening to you. If you think about what's happening in a presentation, when you present at the United Conference, you're gonna have how many people in the audience? Probably, I'd say 300 to 400, I think is, yeah.
00:36:53
Speaker
So you're going to have 300 to 400 people in the audience who all have their own problems, who have their own things that they're distracted by. And you're asking all of them to tune out those distractions.
00:37:02
Speaker
You're asking them to forget how long they've been sitting there already. You're asking them to forget how hot or cold it is in the room. You're asking them to forget that they have to go to the bathroom. You're asking them to forget all that stuff. You're asking them to listen to what you're saying out loud. You're asking them to process what is on the slide. You're asking them to merge what's going through their head with what you're saying out loud to connect how what Davey's saying would actually help me. That is a lot of stuff. Great slides that have a bunch of words on them that take the audience longer than two seconds to process.
00:37:33
Speaker
You're asking your audience not to listen to you. Sure. I mean, think about that for a second, right? So the average human speaks somewhere 130 to 150 words a minute. 150 is going to make the math easier. So 150 words a minute. And let's say that you've got a bunch of words on the slide, and it takes me five seconds to read through that. So what's 150 divided by 12? My point here is I think that's
00:38:01
Speaker
That's like 12 or 13 words a minute, right? That's 12 or 13 words that they would miss. Let me make that point clear. Absolutely. Think about the average human being speaks between 130 and 150 words a minute. Okay. Let's say you've got a slide that is requiring the audience to look at it for about five seconds to understand the point. Not uncommon that people do that, by the way.
00:38:28
Speaker
Okay. So 150 words a minute, you are asking them to not pay attention to five seconds worth of those words. Like that's a full sentence. Yeah. You can't just give away sentences. Like what's the point of presenting if you're going to repeatedly do that? And by the way, that's going to be true for people who have beautiful photography. It might not take five seconds, but if you've got beautiful photography and you're going to like click to it and show off your photography, totally fine. But.
00:38:57
Speaker
I would encourage you to just take a second, let the audience marvel at it. You might even say out loud, like, I want to show you, like, I'm really proud of this next photo. Click. Like, let people absorb it for a second. Most people don't do that because it feels weird and it feels weird talking.
00:39:14
Speaker
Yeah, by not giving people time to process it, they're not listening to you. And then who knows what that does to the rest of your presentation, because, you know, maybe that sentence was important to the greater point there. And so now they're playing catch up, for sure. But I mean, I think that's definitely and especially just some of the topics that I've had to speak about in the past, which can sometimes be very technical, I've definitely struggled with that, you know, how do I get this point across and give people directions
00:39:36
Speaker
and use slides to help doing that without those slides distracting. I've definitely had instances where I can tell, okay, nobody's listening to me right now. They're looking at this slide, which has a tutorial and they're trying to think, okay, where in WordPress or show it or Squarespace do I do this? You know, where in Facebook Ads Manager do I do this?
Audience understanding and presentation clarity
00:39:55
Speaker
And so that's definitely been a challenge for me as well. Yeah, that's a great example. So it's like, if you show screenshots of that stuff, yeah.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like I need a huge red arrow that points to what needs to be clicked on. You need to let the audience see it for a second. Yeah, and I don't think, and a lot of times I'm just trying to shove so much into that hour that it's like, you know, nonstop. And I'm usually finding myself apologizing in the beginning like, and I talk fast naturally, like that's just who I am. So that combined with some of these slides, not sometimes a good recipe, I need to be recorded so that people can go back and fast forward and rewind and stuff. That's such a natural thing to do because for you,
00:40:33
Speaker
you already know this stuff. And this is one of the things when you're presenting, like you're the expert already. Yeah, you know it inside and you might not feel like the expert, but you wouldn't be asked to present if you weren't. So to you, it's really easy to be like, okay, well, you go up the file, and you click here, and you click here, and you click here. And if you're in the audience, like, wait, hold on, what?
00:40:51
Speaker
You do need to think about what is the experience like for the audience. Yeah. I want to get to some of this other stuff. If you have some other points that you definitely want to share about, I want to get to that as well. I do want to say that that's just off that point in being the expert. I think sometimes I forget how much I know. I think this is probably true for anybody in their field. So I struggle, I think, and get really caught up in like, oh, this sounds like
00:41:14
Speaker
This sounds really basic. Nobody's going to find this interesting. And so I make it either more advanced or more complicated than it needs to be and then realize, no, actually, you know, people didn't know this and I really should have started here. Do you find that? I mean, because you've worked with some just incredibly talented, intelligent people, do you find that people struggle with that when giving a presentation? Yeah, absolutely. It's funny because there are – I don't want to say who this is, but there was one person in particular where
00:41:43
Speaker
You know how I described like a step going and calling one of my help would be like, OK, yes, what am I going to teach you? Like there was someone like that. And yes, so first of all, yes, there is that feeling. Sometimes people get lucky that they're good at something. They don't know why. So a checklist to go through is always helpful. The times where I've been a little intimidated by the people I've helped, one of the things I try to remind myself is like,
00:42:10
Speaker
Even if this were someone who was really good, they're going to benefit from having a second brain working on it. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a big benefit of a coach in general is the outside perspective. I had a mentor once. He compared it to the Knights of the Roundtable. And talking about how one of the most important characters at the Knights of the Roundtable was the court jester. And I thought this was fascinating, but it was because the court jester could poke fun at things. Like everybody else, when you're inside an organization, sometimes it's hard to see how outrageous
00:42:39
Speaker
an idea is. It's like the Emperor's new clothes, you know? It took the little kid for him to be like, hey, yeah, he's naked, you know? And so it's just really interesting illustration where you have the Knights of Roundtable, you have the court jester and he's actually one of the most important characters there because he's the one that's going to poke fun at something and say, you know, that's not right. You know, like he's the outside perspective. And so he can kind of speak in, you know, he can call out these ideas. And so he's not necessarily, I think this is where coach
00:43:08
Speaker
differs from the gesture as a coach can step in and say, Hey, I don't think that's quite right. And maybe here are some suggestions we're getting here. So the court gesture is not going to necessarily do that second part. But he's going to say, Hey, that is an outrageous, that was just an absolutely outrageous, silly idea, you know, and they're going to bring that to light. But you know what, frankly, you don't necessarily need your outside advisor to solve for you. Sure.
00:43:31
Speaker
Like sometimes just drawing up like, hey, this is a problem. I'm going to solve it. But you think this is clear and it's not. Yeah. Sometimes that is valuable enough. 100 percent. 100 percent. I mean, you know, again, I think the great example of that is the emperor's new clothes, you know, and this emperor walking around naked and it, you know, he just everybody just needed to hear this kid say, hey, he's naked, you know, for everybody to understand what the issue is. So what else? Are there a few other things that we're missing here?
00:43:58
Speaker
Yeah, let me give, I'll give two content things and then two delivery things. Okay, two content things, two delivery things. Yeah, content thing. Number one, most people hem and haw at the beginning of their talk. And the reason why they're doing that is because it's weird to get on a stage and start talking. So a lot of people will start and it'll sound like this. So they'll be like, Hey, I'm Davey. I'm in here from Columbia, Maryland. Well, it's great in Phoenix weather so much nicer here. Oh, man, I'm glad I haven't run into any scorpions.
00:44:23
Speaker
So first of all, hopefully you have better jokes than that. But the point here is most people don't take advantage of the beginning. And the beginning is like when you have the audience's attention. Definitely in the first sentence, right? Who knows where they were going to be in the last sentence, but the first sentence, yeah. First sentence, you have the audience's attention. So push them into the pool. I obsess about what that first sentence is going to be. And we haven't got there yet. And this is one of the interesting things about the process so far for me, and I think it's been really hard for me, is that we're currently working on the middle of the talk.
Crafting impactful beginnings and endings
00:44:53
Speaker
right now so i don't write things in sequential order most people do yeah and i think it's in the past i've really. I've always started from the beginning you know it's difficult for me to come back so i'm excited to get back there but i can see having done a first draft now why you start in the middle. Right and then similarly. Send the audience on their way with something positive so the conclusion or the outro.
00:45:22
Speaker
needs to give some level of inspiration. So it doesn't have to be like Martin Luther King for your last, for your last, but it should be some picture of like how much better their life could look if they were to take your idea and apply it with urgency or priority. Most endings have trouble because most people write in sequential order. What's the last thing that you write is the ending. The ending is when you're tired and you hate the speech.
00:45:51
Speaker
So you're like, OK, so as you see, if you ask better questions, you will book more clients. Thank you. And that's most people's endings. This is one of the reasons why I love that Seth Godin one. And he got this rousing applause. And it's partially because of Seth Godin. But it's also because that story was perfect. It left the audience thinking about, am I going to be the type of person who lets other people make decisions for me and gets to blame other people? Or am I going to take the step and be my own person? Perfect.
00:46:21
Speaker
So, push the audience into the pool and then send them on their way, feeling inspired might be the wrong word, but feeling some positive limiting beliefs are being challenged. Yeah, okay. I love that. So, push them into the pool, send them on their way. Was that second piece the second content piece or is there another content piece? That's the second content piece. Okay, awesome. I think we came up with one other one there, so 2A or 1A.
00:46:48
Speaker
Zero A is don't write in sequential order. Yeah, don't write in sequential order. Awesome. I have so many notes. Delivery, I'm going to give one specific tactic and then one that's more of an overall vibe. Okay. Specific tactic, I think we've talked about this. Most people, and this is especially true if you were telling a story, most people, okay, so if I were transcribing the way that most people speak,
00:47:18
Speaker
It would be one long paragraph with like two periods for a 20 minute talk because most people the way they speak do not end sentences. This is how most people talk.
00:47:32
Speaker
So I woke up today. I went downstairs and Barkley was awake already. So I got him out of his crate and then I went and I fed him and then we went in the backyard. And so the next thing we did, right. So do you hear how there are no periods in those sentences? Yeah. I am subbing in. I'm doing a fine and replace, but it's a dumb fine and replace. I'm doing a find the period and I'm replacing it with and but so. It would also be best. Yeah, right.
00:48:01
Speaker
So end your sentences. That's harder to do than it is for me to say. It helped me to actually visualize someone with a keyboard typing out what I was saying and I desperately wanted people to put a period at the end of a sentence. And I imagine that's something that's like pretty common.
00:48:20
Speaker
for people and just having taught high school students especially and watching them give presentations even stuff that they're reading which is really interesting blowing through periods. So I wonder if it's just like maybe it's a little bit of nervousness just being up there or you know, I'm not really sure. So what's this other tactic that's more of a overall? Yeah, the overall vibe of a presentation as best you can get there your talk
00:48:47
Speaker
should sound to the audience as if it's a friend who has thought through what they're talking about and is simply delivering it to you. So there are exceptions to this. For the most part, it should be pretty conversational. It should feel like, oh, this is a friend. They're making jokes with me. Oh, they thought that through. They're really smart at this. That's how it should feel. It shouldn't feel like it's this. Again, there are exceptions, but for the most part, it shouldn't feel like this really buttoned up.
00:49:16
Speaker
this person is completely robotic. That's not how it should feel. I think this is something that I'm currently struggling with with this presentation. And it's sort of ironic because I think breakout presentations I've done, presentations that I've done on more technical topics, I naturally fall back into being more conversational and relational. Even as a teacher, I was like that. And maybe it's finding comfort in some of these technical presentations that I've done in the past.
00:49:44
Speaker
where it's easy to poke fun at something like SEO or Facebook ads or some sort of subject which you're trying to bring to life a
Engagement and presence with the audience
00:49:53
Speaker
little bit. Also, just the setting as well. A lot of stuff that I've done at conferences, I've done some main save stuff but a lot of it has been breakouts and it's classroom setting and it's 30 to 50 people and I just feel at home like I'm back in the classroom.
00:50:06
Speaker
And so I think one of the things that I'm overthinking right now is being up on the main stage in front of 400 or so people and thinking that maybe it has to be a little bit more buttoned up as if I'm giving a long TED talk or something like that. Yeah, no, and it doesn't. What's interesting about that, so I wonder if part of it is when you do breakout sessions, is it two-way so people can ask you questions?
00:50:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's two-way and I actually encourage it during breakout sessions. Hey guys, do you have a question about if you need me to clarify something, stop me and ask me. And I don't let it slow me down, but it's very much like question and I have a lot of fun with that, I think. Whereas with the keynote, it's like, I'm 99% sure for this one in particular that there's no questions and answers afterwards. Yeah, it would be great if there were and it'd be great if I could just be like, hey, can they ask me questions during this?
00:50:56
Speaker
Right? It just this is just a big breakout, right? But yeah, and so I think that's one of the things that I've just psyched myself out a little bit. So there are a couple of things at play there. So number one, there are some presenters who just don't want to put I don't know if it's they don't want to put a time into but there's some presenters who have decided they would rather not present and they'd rather have a straight Q&A. So authors who go on a book tour and they don't present anything, they don't read anything, it's straight Q&A. That is an option for people.
00:51:25
Speaker
I would encourage you to think through whether you're actually better at that versus it's just easier. But that is an option for people. I think for a lot like what you're describing, Davey, is actually pretty common. Some things that are helpful. Number one, you don't need to literally ask a question out loud, but imagine the audience were asking you questions.
00:51:45
Speaker
So this next part, what question would the audience ask? And I'm going to answer it. Yeah. Again, that doesn't have to be you narrating by saying, so you might say, you might ask blah, blah, blah, but you can do it that way. And that's helpful. But I think for a lot of people, you know, I just gave the advice, it should sound like a friend is delivering to you. That also means that you as the presenter need to think of the audience as if they are friends. Yeah. And it's a lot easier to be conversational and funny and all those things.
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think again, a lot of it and this is sort of one of those intangible things that no one probably has like, well, you know, this is the step by step to fix this. It's just like, it's just like you said, and I think I shared this at the beginning of the podcast, but you know, I texted you from a coffee shop that I was working at or maybe this is a conversation we had before the podcast started, but and I was like worked up and I was like this, I'm getting nowhere in this presentation. I've started and restarted like a thousand times. And you were like, dude, just relax, you know, like take the pressure off.
00:52:39
Speaker
Which Krista loved because Krista had told me that five minutes prior and she's like, why do you listen to him? I told you the same thing. I don't know if you've ever had that experience with your wife or your wife. I literally told you the same thing. But I think a lot of it comes down to that. That's one of the things I'm realizing. And your other podcast episodes that you've done, again, all postings and the show notes, typology and story brand, one of the things that you emphasized was just to have fun with it.
00:53:06
Speaker
And I know, you know, even as I was working on it mentally, I was like, I need to just have fun with this. And right now, you know, in the midst of it, maybe not having fun, right? It's tough to have fun when you're sitting there being a self critic, and you really know everything yet. So there's actually like, I say, have fun to people as an encouragement. Most people can't just do that just because I said that. For most people, you can have fun if you know what you're talking about. If you can settle yourself down.
00:53:33
Speaker
And you know that the audience is rooting for you like those things help you to have fun. Yeah, absolutely. And I know a ton of people at this conference is a conference that I've been presenting at for the last few years now. And so I should feel that way. You know, it's very much one of my favorite conferences because I get to go and see a lot of friends. And I think actually, that's kind of the culture of the conference is that
00:53:54
Speaker
It's very much about the relationships there and so that's why people come back every single year. I mean, sure, there's some great content, but it's a lot of being able to reconnect with people and make new friends and stuff. So, definitely, there's no excuse for not being able to get into that mindset. I love it, but that's what's going to be even better when you give the best presentation in your life and you're like, dude, that was incredible.
00:54:15
Speaker
Yeah, I hope so. Friends is the best. So I want to end here just by asking if there are three things. And so this is kind of this is unscripted here, not that any of this other stuff is scripted. So I don't say why I say this, but I do send over a brief outline. But if there were three things that I need to focus on during this presentation, during this next presentation that I'm going to give, what should they be? And we can revisit these three things after I give the presentation on this next podcast episode that we do kind of grading whether I've done them or not.
00:54:43
Speaker
So, hold on, I'm actually answering this for you, right? Yeah, for me. So, this is the actual presentation. I think this will be helpful for other people listening and giving presentations as well. But this way, you know, when I have you on for a second time and we're going back and we're looking at this presentation you've helped me with and you're giving me feedback, we can say, ah, Davey, you know, we talked about this and this was B-. Yep, totally. Okay, number one, have fun for sure. Number two,
00:55:09
Speaker
Use suspense or tension or surprise, whatever word feels best to you. Those two things for sure. And number three, be comfortable. We haven't talked about this on this podcast, but be comfortable being present with your audience. So I know talking about presence is really cool and mindfulness is really cool. What I actually mean here is you don't have to be walking the whole time. Feel comfortable standing still.
00:55:37
Speaker
You don't have to be talking the whole time. Feel comfortable pausing. If you can be present with your audience, that is going to be the biggest win for you and it will feel awesome because great centers are present with their audience. And people who are less than great, not so much.
00:55:55
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I'm excited to continue leaning into these things with you over the next month as we lead up to this presentation. And I thank you for your time. This is one of our longer episodes, but I think it's just full of great stuff. I want to call attention to a few things,
Resources and tips for aspiring speakers
00:56:09
Speaker
and I'll probably include this in the introduction as well. You have a great ebook. Tell us about that. Oh, so I'll give two actually. So if you're into the Enneagram,
00:56:20
Speaker
which you're not required to be, but it's kind of cool these days. I do have an e-book that's public speaking for the Enneagram. So that's at my site. So my site is miketalks.co. I used to use my last name, but nobody can spell it. So people can spell word talks. It's such a great name, though. Pacchione. Yeah. You should be in, like, the mafia or something. But, like, my actual friends leave out letters in my last name. So that's not the best for business. So miketalks.co. That's my website. If you want the e-book on public speaking to Enneagram, so that's miketalks.co.
00:56:50
Speaker
I've got another one that I love. It's somewhat similar to some of the tips in this podcast. Again, every Fast Company Forbes, Inc. article lists the same things to be a good presenter. Those things are good, but I wanted to give stuff that was beyond that. I wrote a book, an e-book called Seven Stealth Presenting Tips They Didn't Teach You in Business School.
00:57:15
Speaker
All right, awesome. And I will link to both of these things in the show notes. So if you're interested in downloading one or both of those ebooks, head on over to the show notes, click the link there, and we'll get you squared away with those. Mike, again, thank you for taking time. In addition to the time that you've already taken with me working on my presentation and sharing some of your thoughts around presenting today. And I'm excited to have you back on so that we can grade my presentation. Now the pressure's on, buddy. That's right. That's right. I'm putting it out there. But also not because you're going to do great.
00:57:45
Speaker
Okay, well, yeah. I appreciate you saying that. But thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.
00:58:16
Speaker
you