My First Million: One Question Friday: What Does It Take To Be An Ace Public Speaker?

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now.

HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

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company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find another bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

All right.

It's one question Friday where we answer one question from one of the listeners.

If you want to submit your question, go to mfmpod.com and click the little microphone

to submit your question.

This one came in through text message.

Somebody said, hey, dude, I'm giving a, my first talk at a conference, so I got invited

to speak at this conference.

I'm giving my first talk.

I'm excited about it, but a little bit nervous.

He's like, I know it's going to be fine, but I just don't want it to be lame.

You and Sam are really good at doing these kind of public speaking things.

What's the trick?

What do I do to make this good, not just the same old, same old?

So I thought we could give maybe our take on what we do to make public speaking fun

slash interesting.

What do you got?

Well, I would say first, public speaking is a skill.

So a lot of people think, well, I speak all the time and I speak in public, therefore

I'm probably going to be decent at public speaking.

That doesn't really work that way.

So public speaking, some people are talented and they are just better at Gary Vandertrucks

like that.

I think he's just better than everyone else.

But for most people, it's a skill.

So I highly recommend reading a book on it or Googling how to be better at this.

It's a skill set.

And so there are tricks.

I don't think that this is the best time for us just to say all the tactics are, but

a few of them are just on storytelling.

And it's very similar to stand-up comedy, which again, some people are just born better,

but a lot of people you just have to learn and try.

And so buy a book on it.

And I think that's actually the easiest first step.

Is there a book you'd recommend on it?

Yeah.

I think what's the one that you and I were reading on storytelling by the guy who won

all the muses come?

Storyworthy, I think.

Yeah.

I think storyworthy was awesome that I had a bunch of takeaways from that and then speak

like a TED talk or something like that.

It's called like the TED talk or TED talk speakers guide or something like that.

That's quite good.

But the storyworthy, I actually thought was pretty phenomenal.

So I'm going to tell you what I told him.

I said, by the way, he had also said he's like, I want to bring that showmanship that

you guys talked about.

So they think he was picking up on what we talked about.

So I said, all right, three things.

Number one, be in peak state.

It's very easy when you're nervous to go kind of like inward, you're kind of low energy,

your mouth's a little dry, your shoulders hunched over, like fundamentally, as soon

as you walk out there, people are going to read your body language.

They're going to read your energy and they'll start to respond to it.

When somebody comes out and they're electric, you can feel that they're excited, that they

got a like a bounce in their step, you're paying attention because you want to know

what they're all about.

I said, so just make sure before you go out there, do some push ups, go run a wind sprint,

do some jumping jacks, do whatever you got to do physically to literally just get blood

flowing and be in a like more like high performance state.

I said, think about it, an athlete doesn't go on the field until they are warmed up,

until they're ready, a singer or a dancer or a performer, they're not going to go on

the stage until they're warmed up and they're feeling loose and warm.

It's the same thing if you're going to go talk, you want to feel loose and warm both

in your voice, but also your body.

So that's the first thing, just do the physical, get the physical part right.

The second is, remember, this is the first of many, you'll do this 500 more times.

So this might feel like a big deal now, but a year from now, this will be an afterthought,

you won't even really remember how it went.

Just treat it as a practice rep, one of 500 times you're going to do this, it's a chance

to experiment with some things.

That'll depressurize this moment for you and it'll teach you to remember that like this

is just, like you said, it's a skill, you got to get good at it, to get good at any

skill, you need practice reps.

I said the last one, I said storytelling, I said, have a back pocket story, right?

So what's a back pocket story?

It's like you started the podcast that we just recorded with, dude, I got to tell you

this funny story on, you know, there's something that happened to me today before we do this.

I was walking through the park and these nannies were getting attacked with this guy and I'm

in there in my fanny pack and me and the fanny and the nannies, we all fought these guys

off basically is like this funny story and it doesn't need to be a hilarious, extreme

story like that.

It could be anything.

It could be like, let's say you've got a conference.

You might be like, you know, before we start, I just talked to this guy in the back and

he asked me a really interesting question.

I want to ask you guys this too, because I honestly, I think we might be really split

on how we answer this question already.

You really want to know what it is and I've taken control of the scenario and I've made

it already an interesting talk before we jump in and say, hi, my name is this.

I'm from this and today I will not hear to talk to you about blah, blah, blah.

So have a have a story in your back pocket.

It could be fun, interesting, controversial, whatever, something that's going to get them.

And the trick is, I said, just you need to be excited by it.

If you're excited by it, they'll be excited by it.

Remember the, the lesson that what's her name, Miss Excel, that like woman who was, she basically

teaches you how to use Excel better, but somehow that's like going viral on TikTok.

And why is something as boring as Excel tricks going viral on TikTok?

One of the reasons is she comes out with this crazy energy.

She seems really excited by this stuff and it's just enjoyable to watch her do it.

Even if you're not even going to use Excel that day, it's just enjoyable to watch somebody

do that.

And she says this in her interview, she goes, content is the transfer of emotion.

I got to get myself into the emotion of being excited about something.

If I ever want you to be excited by it, I have to get myself to be fascinated by something.

If I want you to be fascinated by it.

And she's like, I just get myself into that state that I run to the phone, click record

and I start to, start to do my thing.

And it's like, that's actually what it is.

That is the transference of emotion.

And so what most people try to do is they think about what they're going to say, which

is intellectual.

That's shit's words.

People don't remember the words that you said.

They will remember if you had some emotion and some energy behind you and they'll remember

the vibes or remember how you made them feel.

And they'll take away just a few nuggets out of what you said.

Most of what you said, 90% of what you say will go in one ear and out the other.

And that's the thing I was, I tell people all the time, I told you this when you early

on when I was maybe six months ahead of you in terms of content, you're like, how do I

write these articles?

And I was like, it's not really about what you want to teach.

It's about what you want to make someone feel.

And oftentimes when people give presentations, they think, well, I'm talking about this,

like, I'm talking about like mosquitoes and how they like cause malaria in Africa.

And this is like a really serious thing.

It's like, yeah, it could be serious, but you need to weave in some stories and you

need to do some crazy shit.

And it's no different than a comedy show or a play where you capture attention.

Yes, you're doing it about something important and isn't just entertainment, but you have

to weave that in there.

One of my favorite tricks I've saw is when they brought up malaria is when Bill Gates

or someone talked about malaria and mosquitoes and he goes, I want to show you why this is

an important deal.

And he opens up this jar and mosquitoes fly out all over the place.

He goes, I'm going to tell you about how many people die from malaria, which comes from

mosquitoes just like this.

And like, so people like are like, you know, that's showmanship.

And so it's the same way with any talk you're doing.

You don't have to do something that extreme, but it starts with the story, it starts with

the emotion.

And then I would say the last thing is you have to treat people, your audience, regardless

if they're smart, you kind of got to treat them dumb.

Meaning a lot of people, what they do is they put way too much emphasis on the slides.

And in my opinion, most talks should be able to be like at least a B level without any

slide.

The slide maybe makes it go from a nine to a 10, but the slides to me, it's kind of

like when you are in, when you're in a band, it's about how do I make this song great?

It's not, how do I make this one little guitar solo awesome?

It's like, no dude, the guitar solo exists to make the song great.

The song doesn't exist to make that solo awesome.

It's the other way around.

And so it's about my performance and it just so happens that this PowerPoint is just one

piece of that.

And I need to treat people stupid and assume that they're not going to read this small

text.

And it's up to me to use my words, my body language in order to make them feel something

and the slides are just an extra added effect.

That's right.

I think that's great.

There's a ton more, but really the reality is you don't need to know all the things.

If you just do the things we talked about, right, which is basically show up with energy,

have some showmanship through either a little magic trick or a story or something like that

and treat it like practice because you're going to need to do this a hundred times before

you're any good at it.

If you just internalize those three, you're going to be ahead of the curve.

You're going to be ahead of 80, 90% of people.

Practice.

We're talking about practice.

Not the game.

We're talking about practice.

Yeah.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.