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

alright it's one question for friday where we answer one question from one of the listeners if you wanna submit your question go to m m pod is it dot com m pod dot 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 but a little bit nervous like he's like i know it's gonna be fine but i just don't want it to be lame he's like you and sam are really good at doing these kind of public speaking things you know what's the trick you know what do i do to make this good what do i do to make this not just the same old same old so i thought we could give maybe hour take on what we do to make public speaking find slash interesting what do you got well i would say first public speaking is a skill so a lot of people think while i speak all the time and i speak in public therefore i'm probably gonna be decent at public speaking they've done really work that way so public speaking some people are talented and they are just better at gary van vaynerchuk like that i think he's just better than everyone else but for most people it's a skill so i highly recommend like reading a book on it or like googling like how to be better at this it's a skill set and so there are tricks i don't think that this is like the best time for us just to say like what what all the tactics are but a few of them are just like 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 and i think that's actually the the easiest first step is there a book you'd recommend on it or just not on the top of your head yeah i think what's the one that you and i were reading in storytelling by the guy who like won all the muse come story worthy i think yeah i think story worthy 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 story worthy i actually thought was pretty phenomenal so i'm a tell you what i told him i said and by the way he had also said he's like i wanna bring that show shift that you guys talked about so they you think he was picking up on on what we we talked about so i said alright three things i said number one be in peak state it's very easy when you're nervous to go kinda like inward you're kinda low energy your mouth little dry your shoulders hunch over like fundamentally as soon as you walk out there people are gonna read your body language they're gonna read your energy and they'll start to respond to it when somebody comes out and they're electric you could feel that they're excited that they gotta a like a bounce in their step you're paying attention because you wanna know what they're all about i said so just make sure before you go out there do some push ups go run a win sprint do some jumping checks do whatever you gotta do physically to literally just get blood flowing and be in a like more like high performance data and think about it a athlete doesn't go on the field until they are warmed up until they're ready a singer or a dance or a performer they're not gonna go on the stage until they're warmed up and they they're feeling loose and warm it's the same thing if you're gonna go talk you wanna 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 this is the first of many it'll do this five hundred more times so this might feel like a big deal now but a year from now this can be an afterthought you'll just you won't even really remember how it went just treat it as a practice rep one of five hundred times you're gonna do this it's a chance to experiment with some things that'll depress this moment for you and it'll teach you to remember that like this is just like you said it's a skill you gotta get good at 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 of story it's it's like you started the podcast that we just recorded with the dude i gotta tell you this funny story on you know this something that happened to me today before we do this i was walking through the park and these na were getting attacked with this guy and i'm in they're in my fanny pack and me and the fanny and the na we all fuck 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 at 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 wanna ask you guys this too because i honestly i think we might be really split on how we answer this question already you really wanna know what 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 when i here 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 gonna gonna get them and the trick is i said just it 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 in name mystic cell that like woman who's she basically teach teaches you how to you is use excel better but somehow that's like going viral on tiktok and why is something is boring as excel tricks going viral on tiktok one of the reasons is she like it comes out with this crazy energy she seems really excited by this stuff and it's just enjoyable to watch her to it even if you're not even gonna use excel that day it's just enjoyable to watch somebody do that she does this in her interview she goes content is the transfer of emotion i gotta get myself into the emotion of being excited about something if i ever want you to be excited by i have to get myself to be fascinated by something if i want you to be fascinated by and just like i just get myself into that state that i run to the phone click record and i start start to do my thing and it's like that's actually what it is content is the transfer of emotion and so what most people try to do is they think about what they're gonna say which is intellectual that 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 they'll remember the vibe 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 ninety percent of what you say will go in one ear and not the other our software is the worst have you heard of hubspot see most crm are a cobb together mess but hubspot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous thanks i love our new sierra our software is the best hubspot grow better and that's a a thing i was i i tell people all the time i told you this when you're early on when i was maybe six months ahead of you in terms of content you're like i wanna how do i write these articles and i was like it's not really about what you wanna teach it's about what you wanna 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 like a really serious thing like yeah it could be serious but you need to weave in some stories of 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 one of my favorite tricks saw is when i they brought up malaria when steep bill gates or someone let talked about malaria and mosquitoes and he goes i wanna show you why this is an important deal and he opens up this jar in mosquitoes fly out all over the place he goes i'm gonna 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 show shit and so it's the same way with any talk you're doing you 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 kinda got 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 talk 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 ten but the slides to me it's kinda like when you are in and when you're in a band it's about how do i make this song great it's not do i make this one little guitar solo awesome it's like no dude the ga guitar solo exists to make the song great the song doesn't exist to make that solo awesome it's the other way around right and so it's about my my it's it's about my performance and it just so happens that this powerpoint is it's just one piece of that and i should need to treat people stupid and assume that they're not gonna read the small text and it's up to me to use my words my body language in order to make them feel something and the the the the slides are just an extra added effect that's right alright i think that's great there's a ton more i i feel like we could probably like there's probably ten more things but really the reality is you don't need to know all the things if you're just of the things we talked about right which is basically you know show up with energy have some show show ship through either a little magic trick or a story or something like that and treat it like practice because you're gonna you're gonna need to do this a hundred times before you're you're any good at it if you just internalize those three you're gonna be you know ahead of head of the curve you're gonna be ahead of you know eighty ninety percent of people practice we're talking about practice not not the game we're talking about practice this yeah we're talking about practice