093: PJ Brady - Become a Master at Public Speaking

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to docs of talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Oh, public speaking. I feel like many people, you probably fear it or if you've gotten to where you're okay getting up, but you just don't feel masterful for it. In either case, today's show's for you. How to go from being abject fear to getting good, even great at public speaking. Over time, we're going to be talking, working with a public speaking expert, a guy who's worked coaching and developing other people in public speaking performances for 20 years. So listen in and hear what we've got to share for you in the world of public speaking. Get better right now. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host, Gazelle's growth coach, Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is PJ Brady. So PJ is connecting with us from Brussels today and I know PJ from the world of the Entrepreneurs organization where he spent, I don't know, like 12 years of time. So. And PJ is going to talk with us today all about the world of public speaking. How to get comfortable at it, how to get good at it, how to be kin, to even get great at it. He coaches speakers all over the world on a regular basis. So welcome to the show, pj.

Thank you very much, Bill. I appreciate you having me.

Yeah, I'm so glad to have you. It's very late at night there, isn't it?

It's almost 10 o'.

Clock.

But look, when you work with people all over the world, you get used to odd hours of operations.

You get used to the weird time zones. Exactly. Well, I'm so glad to have you on and I know this is a regular thing. There are certain people like me who are born reaching for the mic and we're not afraid to speak up and speak out and maybe we learn and get better. But an awful lot of people are uncomfortable at it. They don't do it often enough to really feel confident. And they just, I mean, it's a well documented fear for a huge number of people. And I know you're going to help address that and give people some secrets that they can tap into to not only speak to 10 people, but to speak to a thousand. So we're going to get into that in just a minute. But let's start off with a little bit of like your credibility. Right. How did you develop your chops? What did you learn? How did you get to be good and learn the ins and outs of speaking and to the point where you could work with others on it?

Absolutely. So growing up, I was a theater kid, so I was on stage a lot. And when you're a theater kid, you're, well, similar probably the way that you are. You're reaching for the mic, you want to have a voice, you want to be in that spot. But obviously not a lot of people grew up like that. And it's. Yeah, you're right, documented. About 75% of people have glossophobia.

Right.

The fear of speaking in public. And so at a very young age, I was up on stage and I was going with my mom to different theater events and I was getting into musicals. I really enjoy musicals. Did that throughout.

I'll like, try not to hold that against you. It's like my worst thing. Try to get me to go to a musical. I just want to stab my eye.

You know what, maybe now you'll think differently of it.

It's a taste thing.

Indeed, indeed. And so look, I loved being on stage and so went through and did a lot of productions. And then as I was graduating from high school, I wanted to go and see the world more. So I actually signed up with a group called Up With People. And up with People is an international nonprofit organization that sends college age students around the world. And they do a couple of things. They live in host families, they do community service, and they perform a Broadway style musical in all the communities that they go into. And so I did that for, for a couple years. Actually started doing it in 1998 and I was in the microphone groups. I would get up on stage and I would sing.

And.

Ended up that a couple of our dancers were traveling around in Bermuda. One of them cut his foot on coral. Another one, his grandmother passed away, he had to go home. Another one sick. And all of a sudden we had no dancers. And so being a semi athletic person, they Said, hey, pj, you know some of the dances. Why don't we teach you all the choreography today so you can perform the show tonight? Yeah, so, yeah, of course, that happens all the time, Right. And so that's what happened. And it turned out not the world's worst dancer. So got up on stage, danced the dances.

You know, here's a pause that thing right there. I think it'd be great for people to reflect on how the business that you're in, there's these certain sort of random, accidental things about it. Right. There's an extraordinary number of sort of momentary glitches in the universe that lead us to the place that we are. And for some reason, some of them stick. And I think I talk to people all. All the time. They're like, well, why do you do this or that? And they're like, well, it's kind of an accident, really.

So many stories there, and we'll get into it later. So those are some of the best stories. But my grandmother always said, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And the more times you put yourself out there, the more opportunities you're going to find yourself in. And if you're prepared for those opportunities, you're going to be able to take advantage of them.

Okay, so you get coached up on all the dance routines and then.

And then go on stage, perform them. News gets to the choreographer. I get brought back the next year not to sing, but to actually be a dance captain. So going on stage and teaching other people how to dance as well, and not having a background in dance, it actually came very naturally. I got to teach other people who didn't necessarily have backgrounds in dancing either, to get up on stage. Well, one of the parts of Up With People is that when you go into these different communities, you go on stage and into a school, and you just talk about the program and about your experience. There's a recruitment aspect to it. And so I would get up on stage and I would talk to these people about the experience, and it would come very naturally. But I would have cast mates who would get up there with me. And for all the times that they're on stage in front of thousands of people, they just couldn't get their stories out in a coherent way. And they just got ridiculously nervous to go on stage when they had to be vulnerable or transparent and tell their stories. They could do it with a script, but they couldn't do it just from their own. From their own heads. And so right at that point, I said, all right, well, you guys, let's just take some exercises that we go through in theater and just apply them to you speaking. And that's where that started kicking off. There was actually a girl from Germany, and she was 18 years old, and she almost just broke down in front of an auditorium of college students because she couldn't just tell her own story. And I said, all right, well, we're gonna be doing this a bunch throughout the year, so let's work on it. And so what I did with her is I put her in front of a mirror and I didn't say, okay, let's rehearse your speech from a distance where you can see your body movement. Like, honestly, a lot of that stuff can come naturally and can be taught. To get somebody really comfortable on stage, they have to be comfortable in their own skin. And so what I did is I put her face to face in front of the mirror, and I'm talking like, 3 inches.

Let me have people get that. Also, I notice as I've developed over time in my speaking that the biggest barrier are the things going on inside my own brain, all the concerns, all that stuff like that. And doing your work with a mirror drives that up, right? You end up not so much working on the talk, but working on the man in the mirror as mj Michael Jackson saying, absolutely, absolutely.

And that's what happened. So I put her in front of a mirror and I put her like. I'm talking three inches. Your nose is almost touching the mirror. I said, all right, what you're going to do is you're going to tell your story, but you're going to look at yourself in the black of the eye. Don't even worry about the way your face looks. Don't worry about hand motions. Don't worry about walking. Just look yourself in the black of the eye and tell your story. And so I stepped back and she looked at herself and looked at herself and looked at herself. And then she just started crying. I mean, just bawling. And here's the thing is, I call this the bullshit test. From that day on, I call it the bullshit test because here's what you're able to do as a speaker. You can learn to bullshit anyone else, but you can't bullshit yourself. And so that test, what that really says is, all right, am I comfortable with whatever it is that I'm going to say? And for anybody who I do public speaking training with now is we do a bullshit test. So they have to be so comfortable with their content before we ever get into the body language delivery side of public speaking. And so that started through theater. And so that public speaking, me just being able to help people throughout my business, throughout my coaching, there's one thing that I'm driving for my why is to make sure that I'm able to help people. And if I'm not helping people, then there's not a lot of satisfaction in anything that I'm doing.

If anybody has any acting background or whatever, they've tuned out by now because they're like, oh, we know this.

Yeah, we got it.

But this is a classic thing, mirror work. Take your speech, take your content, take your story and tell it into a mirror. I was given this with some scripted material once in addition to my own stories, and we had to do it 10 times in the mirror. And I remember being annoyed and stupid. And the first, like, two or three times were kind of rote. I didn't have that first crisis in front of the mirror like your friend did, but I did. And around, like, five or six, I lost my thing, right? And what disappeared for me in that was the distance, the barrier between me and the other person, right, who happened to be me. And instead of, like, it being a performance or pretense, the vulnerability and the authenticity arose and the heart of the story emerged, right? And I was telling a personal story that was really scripted and rehearsed. It was real, but I'd sort of written it out and. And then it had gone into a place where it was, you know, theatrical and performed and a little. A little remote and. And the. And after doing that mirror work that five or six times, just all the stuff went away. And then it was raw and real. It was still the same words, but somehow I got to the other side. And I've since gotten to where I can go there a little more easily than that. But powerful thing for folks to do. And let me tell you, it's really awkward for many of us at first to stand in front of the mirror and do that, right?

I'll tell you the percentages. I've done this hundreds of times. 100% of the time, people say, this is the most awkward thing I have ever done, and I hate it.

This is stupid. I don't want to do this. Exactly.

I've had people who have tried to walk out of the session during that time, and I will tell you 100% of the time, after it's over, everybody says, I feel better. I feel better. This helps. I feel much more comfortable in my own skin than I was before. Because if you put someone in that awkward. Anything. Anytime you make something worse than whatever it's going to be and then they step away from it, it feels better than what it was. So if you're going to get on a stage and you feel so scared that you're going to get on a stage because it's going to feel awkward because people are going to be staring at you. If I can put somebody in a more awkward situation than that, get them to a point that they're okay with it and then walk them back, they feel much better about it.

You know, it's funny you did. Then another thing, I was at a conference and you had like a soapbox set up and a camera and you were doing this in Germany. Do you remember this in Frankfurt?

No, I don't. Oh yes, I do. Glc. That's right. The Global Leadership Academy.

The Global Leadership thing.

I do remember now.

Oh yeah, you had the soapbox set up or whatever. And nobody's doing it. And I'm like. Or it didn't seem like anybody's doing it. I'm like, all right, I'll do it. I've spoken in dozens and dozens of country, in cities and more than a dozen countries like, you know, and thousands of people. Like I could just stand up, but I didn't have. It wasn't an audience there for me. It was just people walking past. And then I didn't really have anything specific in mind to talk. You're like, okay, get up there and talk. And I like, did it. It's one of the more awkward things, but it was really kind of good. And then after a second then I'm like, okay, now I'm sharing some particular found some story or whatever. But again, such a good exercise, right?

Well, so what I do when people come to Belgium and sometimes I'll go out and I'll do the coaching, but a lot of times I prefer people to come here because they get away from their families or their businesses or whatever and we can just focus for a couple days. And so I've got this box and you're right, it's about square foot, right? Gets you up higher than the crowd. And what I do is I take it down to grand place, like the center of Brussels where all the tourists are, there's vendors, there's photographers, and I put it in the middle of the square and I tell someone to get up on the box. And first it just starts off with, you know, I'm really close to them, they give a one on one conversation, they're giving me their Content. And then I just start walking away. But I tell them they can't stop speaking. And then what they do is sometimes they'll just draw a crowd around them and again, incredibly uncomfortable, yet prepares them for actually a stage, which can be very safe because an audience tends to be rooting for you anyway. But yeah, if you get somebody in uncomfortable situations and then pull them away, it actually makes them do so much better in public speaking.

Yeah. So tell me about then. Take us through the evolution of this thing. So you got them in front, you continued, you did the mirror work, then they went out. Keep going with that whole thing because I think we're picking up a lot of good nuggets along the way here.

Sure. Happy to. Okay, so that was 98 through 2001 when I was traveling round it up with people. And I just did that over and over and over again. Anytime there was new castmates that came in, I was the one who was helping prepare them to get onto stage, whether that was for the musical or that was out talking to groups. Then I just decided to travel the world. That's what brought me to Belgium. I started studying international affairs and politics, did my college here in Belgium. And then after I went back to the US and went to Washington D.C. where I started working for the Group Entrepreneurs Organization where we met. And that organization is incredible because it helps leaders become better leaders. It helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses through growing the entrepreneur themselves. And a lot of entrepreneurs, what they want to be able to do is speak to their company, speak to their clients, speak at a TED Talk. TED Talk. So there's a lot of members that I was working with to help develop their message, help them deliver their message. And then that I did for 12 years, believe it or not, over all five or seven continents, depending on where you were educated. And it was an incredible, incredible experience to which then I started my own company about a year ago.

Right. So for our listeners, the eo, the Entrepreneurs Organization, once known as Young Entrepreneurs or yeo, is a global organization. I don't know the latest number. I want to say there's more than 12,000 members around the world. World. And maybe 134 chapters or something like that.

I think they're 175 something around there.

There you go. Better, like so, lots and lots of. So these are entrepreneurs with businesses of their own. And it's led by member leaders who rotate in and out. So these people and the members themselves are all striving to develop their leadership and including their public speaking and a Big feature of the organization are conferences and learning events and things like that. So there's an opportunity, whether it's to emcee something or to give a talk or to facilitate something with a board or a committee or some other thing like that. There's always this. So that's an environment where you have people and you're coaching them for 12 years in developing that.

Yeah, absolutely. And the experiences that they have, that's something much harder to help someone develop. If you don't have any experience, it's hard to become a better public speaker.

Right.

So pulling from their experiences of being very highly successful entrepreneurs and I think after my 12 years, I estimated this for a presentation I did the other day. I worked with 3,000 EO members throughout my 12 years, which is an experience you got. You can't buy it.

Yeah, yep, yep, yep. That's where you hone your craft. So tell us about then. You were telling me as we got ready for the show about working at a TEDx event. And TEDx events, if you haven't been to one, are not. So they're like the regional or the outlying sort of TED styled events that are put on by small groups in different places, either in a regional focus or on a subject matter focus. And they have a range of speakers who are not generally like high paid professional speakers. They're somebody with an idea. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. I've worked with a couple TedX events. One was in Ghent. And then just two weeks ago I was working with TedX Brussels. 42 Walls got to be the official speaking partner with TedX Brussels. And I had one speaker who the morning of, they hadn't. They knew their content. Everybody in there knows their content. They're professionals and what they do. But they were extremely nervous. And so I said, all right, well let's look, let's just go backstage. And we went and found a dressing room and I said, we're just going to sit here, pretend we've got beers in our hand and you're just going to tell me what your ideas, tell me what you've got to say. And so she started talking and I said, she started going into her public speaking voice and that's the voice that people have rehearsed for a long time and they know the intonation they want to put on all the words and it's sounds very scripted and very inauthentic. And I said, okay, slow down, tell me the name of your best friend. And she did. I said, how long have you known your best friend? And she said, 20 years. I said, great, pretend I'm that person. And we're just sitting down, we're having that conversation. You need to be able to deliver this and make a connection with me before you're able to make a connection with the audience. And so that's what she was able to do. She sat there and just talked to me like she would talk to any normal person. And then I said, okay, as she's talking, I said, all right, let's stand up. And so we stood up and we're still in close proximity. And then I just started taking steps backwards. And she was able to keep the connection that she had with me, but still be able to project, still be able to use her hands, still be able to give all the body language that she wanted to give, that she was going to give up on stage. And so for me, what public speaking is, is you've got. We all have voices in our head. Some say very strange things. Sometimes you don't want to say them out loud. But we've all got this voice in our head, and when that voice comes out of your mouth, you're public speaking. That's speaking in public. And I don't care if you're speaking to one person or you're speaking to a thousand people. The basics of public speaking are exactly the same. So if you're able to make a.

Connection, if you're making noises, word noise, words noises, right? Belching word noises in public, that's public speaking.

That's public speaking. That's what it is. And so if you're able to make a connection with one person, then the only things that change, the only things that change when you're on stage is where you connect with people with your eyes, right? You can't just look at one person the entire time. You have to move that around how you're going to stand or, sorry, how you're going to walk. Because typically if you're having a one on one conversation, you're not pacing back and forth. But when you're on stage, you walk, you make a point, you look in a general direction, you look in the back of the audience, you look at a person, you make your point, and then you intentionally walk to another part of the stage, make a connection somewhere else and get through your stuff. And then the other thing that changes is your elbows. And when I tell people that, they get a little confused if you're using your hands, right, and we're having a conversation and you're just a one on one conversation. If you notice Your elbows are always in. They're always right at your side. Because that's a normal place for your elbows to be when you're having a conversation. It keeps all of your emotions really close to your body. Well, when you get on a stage where there's a lot of people watching you, you look small. If you do that, you look a little mouse ish. Right. You need to be able to have a better presence on stage. And the only thing you need to think of is do the exact same thing with your hands. Just keep your elbows out. If you're going to keep your elbows out, then your hand isn't just going to go, you know, right in front of your chest when you're making a point. Like, let's say I have one thing to say, and I'm gonna put my finger up to say this is one thing. All right? Well, if I put it here and my elbows are in. If you're doing this at home, your one is right in front of your chest. If you get your elbows out, then all of a sudden your one is either above your head, it's out to the side, or it's way out in front of you. And people are gonna be able to see that and be able to see you as a bigger presence on stage. But if you take those aspects out of it, it's the connection that you make with an audience that's important.

Right? Yeah. It's funny, I often think about holding the space, and I imagine myself with my arms, my legs a little further apart, my arms wider, like filling, holding the space, projecting my voice to the back of the room, and I'm out to fill the stage or the. The platform or the front of the room or whatever it is. And then there's other times where I want to listen and I pull back like this and I lean in. Absolutely right. And so I don't often think about that in terms of the actual arms and legs movement, but more about where my attention is, like where I'm projecting wide and out or where I'm looking laser in and like that kind of thing.

Well, and what that goes into, and what I'll tell everybody whenever we're doing coaching, is that you need to, Whatever you're going to do, just do it with intention. Just do it on purpose. And if you find yourself doing something on accident, then lots of times that's distracting. Right. If you're going to walk, do it on purpose. Make it mean something. If you're going to walk on stage, you can go back and forth. Occasionally not pacing, but where you walk back and forth to make points. But a lot of people will go forwards and backwards. Well, the rule on that is you can't walk backwards unless you're going to say something negative or something that you want somebody to question, right? You can't make a point walking backwards. If you're going to make a point, you need to step forward and lean into the audience, sit up on the balls of your feet and make your point. And then you say, if you're going to say something like, now, everybody, I don't want you to think that I'm telling you what to do, right? If you say those words now, everybody, I don't want you to think what I'm telling you to do. You can back up, right? But if you're going to say, now, here is the most important part of my presentation. You better not be walking backwards because your body language is doing something opposite than what your words are doing. So if you're going to walk around, if you're going to do something, just make sure you're doing it on purpose and understand what that's going to mean to people.

So the first thing you said there is, you have clearly in mind what you have to say. And you start talking to one person and then you expand back till you're speaking to more and more people. But you're remembering at the same time that you're only really talking to, like you're connecting to one person at a time. Right. So if I'm connecting to you and there's a room of a thousand here, I'm staying, like locked my attention with you, but I'm keeping sort of peripherally aware that there's a big room and I'm allowing sufficient volume and physical animation to communicate to the rest of the room, even while my eyes are sort of laser with you. And then I move to another person so you don't get weird, so it doesn't become creepy. Absolutely right. Okay, so we've got that going on. And that then thinking about each, talking to one person at a time is probably a better thing to calm nerves than some of the things that we've heard before. Like imagine them all naked or whatever. Like. Yeah, I think that sends you into a weird place. Like, I don't. I don't want to think about everybody naked. That'll be some combination of interest and you.

Exactly, exactly. Well, and look, the thing is just to get people out of their heads, you know, get people out of their heads because where they're at, they all they're thinking of is, I'm about to go up and talk to a thousand people. People.

Right.

And you're not. You're going up to talk to one person, just one person at a time. There's just going to be 999 other people watching you.

Now, what I do is maybe a little funny, but so, you know, and I'm practiced at this point, but I still find myself from time to time getting nervous or going, sort of losing my attention and focus by thinking about something else in my own head. And so what I usually do now is I just speak it. Like, I cop to it. Like, oh, I got distracted thinking about something else for a minute, or you reminded me of.

Whatever.

I'm sorry, I lost it. And usually just sort of speaking, the internal distraction or conversation brings me back.

No, that's a really good way to do it. Honestly, if anything ever goes wrong in any talks ever, the best thing to do is just acknowledge it. Right. Let the audience share in that experience and just keep moving.

I. I accidentally spit on somebody in the front row once. I'm speaking like, a little spittle. Not like aggressive, like accidental. Right. Like a little. I'm like, oh, my God, I just spit on you. Then, like, everybody's laughing. So I said, oh, I'm sorry. I got a little carried away. And, like, clearly I lost control of my bodily fluids.

Yeah. And honestly, if there's anything that you know, that you do on a regular basis, find some kind of joke about it and be able to move past it, I think that's really good thing.

So what? So knowing yourself, knowing what you do, I don't think we often know, like, somebody. I got something back recently that said, oh, you're pretty salesy. Right?

Okay.

And at first it caught me by surprise, and I'm like, of course I am. I'm total, like, evangelist pitch man. Like, I'm definitely that guy with a side of strategy. And then since then, I've been reminded when I first sort of notice it in my. Oh, I'm being kind of pitchy. I'll just say, if you haven't noticed by now, I'm kind of a salesman or I'm kind of persuasive or.

Yeah.

And. And that usually takes, like, look, it's not personal, whatever. Like, you know, just how I am. It's my nature. And then they're kind of like, oh, yeah. Instead of being like, oh, he's so. Like this.

Absolutely. And here's the thing is, being an American abroad, a lot of times you know we will get pigeonholed. I was at a European Union event, and I asked a guy on stage a question about entrepreneurship and had nothing to do with any culture or country anywhere. And he said, oh, well, we don't think like Americans think.

Where did that come from? I have no idea.

So sometimes when I get up on stage, if it's an international crowd, I can make some crack about being American. I just address it. And then I tell them that I was educated in Belgium, I'm married to a Belgian, I've got three Belgian kids, and I pay Belgian taxes, right? So that's automatically. They're like, oh, okay, he's cool. No big deal. He's part of this international community. But if there's something about you that the audience might think is a little. If they're going to come jump to some assumption that you don't want them to, then you address it and make sure they get past it.

This does bug me all the time when there's something that seems so obvious and the speaker doesn't address it, and I'm just like, oh, come on already. We can all see this, right? I had somebody do it really interestingly, I forget the guy's name. Anyway, he taught speaking also in some vein, or he did something around this, and he got up and he was going on for a while, and he's a little effeminate in his presentation, but he kept referring to his wife. And I'm like, I don't know. That's. You know, we call it a beard in some places, but. And then he finally says, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not the most manly man. And I grew up here, and I'm like this. And suddenly, like, it all shifted. He caught to this thing that he just. He was character, right? He had a certain, like, gentlemanly and a little flair about him and all that. And it just was. And then it incorporated and he could own it. The thing is, I think we all do. We have funny tics, we have mannerisms, we have things. I wear jeans. I swear a lot. I'm informal, and I just start to say them all. Listen, I come from California. We're like this. I may say something a little too liberal at some point, I just sort of own the whole thing. And I think I try to not hit every encyclopedia checking them off. But the big things that people are going to call out later. And it's almost like an inoculation, right? Vaccination.

Absolutely, absolutely. It gets the buy in. It helps delicate, helps you connect with people, right. There's ways to do it through your body and there's a ways through to do it through your personality. And if you can connect to individuals like you would on a one on one, then they're going to listen to.

What you say really good. All right, so then tell us about emotion. Right. This is something that I think a lot of people, so I use emotion a lot, and I didn't always, but I sort of worked through some barriers over time and I got to where I, like, I can go anywhere emotionally all the time. And it's not so much a manipulation as like, you know, I just have to think of something or go to a story and, and, and make myself open and then like. But I might be crying, it might be happy, it might be like, it's any number of kinds of things that will do, but there's a lot of power in that. Why is that and how do we get at that?

Absolutely. So I really like the quote that's misattributed to Maya Angelou. It actually comes from Carl Buhner, and it says people aren't going to remember what you tell them. They're going to remember how you make them feel. And it's an incredible quote, and it's half true. And I'll tell you, the half that that is true is that people are going to remember what you make them feel. And there's a science behind it, too. So what happens when the brain is processing emotion is that dopamine is released into the brain. And dopamine serves a couple different functions. One thing that it serves is that it acts as a bookmark for anything that goes through your head. People might have heard this before, but it's a really easy example to say, where Were you on September 11, 2001? Most people are going to remember not only where they were, but who they were talking to, maybe what they were wearing, what TV they were watching, what station they were listening to. Whatever it is, they're going to remember that. And they're probably going to remember the days after that because they were processing so much emotion that a lot of dopamine was being released at that time. You could say the same thing for the fall of the Berlin Wall, right? Or when Challenger exploded, or when you look at good things like when a baby was born or when you were married. When you're processing those emotions, dopamine gets released and it acts as a bookmark. What I use for that for in public speaking is say, if you're able to make the audience feel Something they're going to remember what comes next. Right. If you're able to make the audience feel something, they're going to be able to remember what comes next. And so as an example, I could tell you a story. I could tell you about my grandmother. So my grandmother passed away when I was 21 years old, and amazing woman. Through my parents divorce, she really taught me what it was like to love unconditionally. And a lot of the reasons I'm a good father today are because of the lessons that she taught me. All right, there's a story I told you a little bit about my grandmother, or I could tell you the story like this built my grandmother, amazing woman. You know, we were going through a really hard time. And so when my parents got divorced, she taught me what it was like to love unconditionally. Right. And so me being a father today, a lot of the lessons that I learned of how to be a good father, I learned from her. So you can imagine how devastated I was when I found out that she had cancer and she was going to pass away. Same story. I was giving you the same details of that story, but one made you feel something, and the other, I started you at a very low energy level. The first one, I said, okay, well, she passed away when I was 21. Right. If I save all that and I tell you all the good things, if I'm able to tell you the good things, when I tell you the bad thing, it's going to make that much of a difference. Difference in where your emotional scale is. Whereas if I just say she passed away and hear the lessons, this is what it is. And so if I'm able to make you feel something, then whatever comes next, you're going to remember more. So I could tell you exactly what lessons she taught me to be a good father, whatever that is. Let's say I was giving a parenting class, and my goal was to make sure that fathers are educated and whatever makes a good father, and I want to do that, then that's the story that I'm going to tell so that they remember what comes next. But if you're not able to evoke emotions out of somebody, then they're not going to remember what you say. Just chemically in their brain, they're not going to remember what you said.

Yeah. People are left with some feeling of something, right?

Absolutely.

And there's something, for me, there's an openness and a vulnerability that makes a difference, but there's also something in being unleashed. Right. Because the openness and vulnerability is great for, like, evoking empathy and making people cry or be touched or moved by something. But sometimes you want to, like, get them excited or rail them up. And for that, like, you have to sort of come unglued, right, to raise the. The volume.

I'll get to that example in one second, but I need to explain something to that point. So, again, something that I learned from musicals. If you look at any musicals, there's an energy flow to the way that it works. And every musical to start you off, as soon as the curtain opens, they'll start you off at a very high energy number. So if you look at this as a graph on your x axis, you've just got the time of the musical. And on the Y, you've got, like, an emotional scale of how intense an emotion is. And the higher it is, the more intense it is. And so they'll start you off pretty high, and then they'll go through some of the character development of that, and maybe the energy level gets a little lower. There might be a comedic act, whatever. And then right before intermission, they bring it up slightly higher than where they started the show. Something good's happened. There's a plan flowing, whatever that is. And then you go to intermission, they come back, they started about the same energy flow. And then whatever wonderful is going to happen starts to happen, and everyone gets super excited. And then what happens? Every single musical, I watch them now. You're going to go see musicals and pay attention to this. Somebody dies, some relationships on the rock, someone gets caught lying. Whatever could go wrong goes wrong, and they drop you as low on that scale as they possibly can before what happens at the end of every musical, right? They raise you way up as high as they can with some huge emotional number that's the whole ensemble's out there. The colors are out, the flags are waving. Whatever it is, they really get you on that. And because they do it on purpose, they save whatever is terrible right before whatever is wonderful because they want to do this roller coaster of an emotion. So to your point earlier, if you want to be able to empathize or get to where a crowd is, every talk has this scale. And so now let's talk about what a motivational speech would look like. No motivational speech ever starts out with somebody being super excited about something, because if the audience is at that super excited state already, they don't need a motivational speech. Look at it. Their energy is always low, and that's where the speaker will start. Let's say it's a coach. Watch any athletic come from behind story of anything. And the coach has to go into the locker room and be like, hey, guys, I know we're in a really crappy spot here, but you've worked harder than anyone else. Everybody believes in you. I believe in you, everything. And then they raise that energy level to the point that they're screaming when they come out of the locker room and say, go do this Right. But you have to be able to get on the level of your audience and know where your audience is at before you want to take them anywhere else. But there's obviously tricks and tips to do that as a speaker, and one of them is personal storytelling. If you know where you want to get your audience, you start them at a very specific place and intentionally take them on that roller coaster of a ride.

So I think telling personal stories or making stories personal makes a real difference. So if I tell you a story and I just give you a couple of facts and I don't bring it to life, or if I make it all in business, we see this a lot. People tell stories, but they leave out so much detail that it ends up just being principles. Then there's no story there. We're not engaged in the characters, the feeling and the whatever, and we don't connect in any way. So I like to open a story at, say, a moment of crisis, and then sort of pause there and go back to, well, how did we even get here? We see movies go this way. They'll open the movie at this key decision point, and they were like, okay, now, 12 days ago, here we were. And then you start to build the foundation. Then we see the characters, their motivation and why they. So then you tell, okay, well, how did you get into this situation now that you've hooked them with the crisis point. Right. Without resolving it? And then you can go back and give some foundation, some background, just enough to sort of bring them back to the moment of crisis. Then you take them through the transformation or the heroic arrival. Right? So this is how we dealt with the whole thing, and this is what it's like today. And people see a brighter future, Right? And then as a speaker, you're translating that. Then you can ask a question or you can say, how many of you have like, so there's a couple of points in there to. To map it back. It's not just a performance or a theatrical thing at that point.

Yeah, Making applicable is really big. And just for storytelling, I mean, the first thing you have to know, obviously you need to know your message you want to get across. The other thing you need to know is who the audience is. And so I was working with a client in Arizona off Madison Ave. And so they were saying, look, we pitched to a lot of bankers, we pitched to some investors and they said they're not always the story type. You walk into the room, they've got their arms crossed and they want to know what it is. Here's the thing, it's not only stories that make people feel something. If you can come out with some killer statistic, a different mind is going to appreciate that a lot more. Sam Horn, a really good coach, actually, she says, all right, the way that you can set that up is just start your presentation with some ridiculously accurate but surprising statistic to say one in five people are going to die of cancer. So people in this room look around 20 of you are going to die within the next 10 years of cancer. And then they're like, oh, crap. And say, wouldn't it be amazing if you were able to develop an early warning system for people who are predisposed to this? Well, you don't have to imagine it. I've already invented it. And here it is, right? If you're able to make them feel, if you know, if they're going to be insecure about something, say, okay, well, this is why you should be insecure about it. And here's my solution, right? If you've got something to say about global warming, I mean, how one of the reasons why people really put such passion behind that is because of the statistics of how it affects them or how it's going to affect their family or whatever it is. So you just have to know what people's triggers are and then get them to feel something before you address what.

The problem is, to use them persuasively, right? So that like I used to teach a leadership class and one of the things that I would say in that, as we began the, it was typically a four month long program, say, listen, let me share a stat with you. 25% of the people who start this program don't finish the program. People be like, they'd nod, they'd be like, yeah, and they're thinking, I'm not one of those people, whatever. And then I'd say, that's one in four. Now look around you, look two to the left, two to the right and one to the other side. Like, you know, however you want to look at the three people around you, tell me who's going to quit. Tell Me, who you'd give up on.

That's an absolutely good one. Absolutely. Yeah.

And maybe you have judgments that that person, like what they're wearing. I don't know if they're gonna make it or whatever. But the truth is we, like, get through this thing together. It's a leadership program, so there's a certain amount of pulling together and engaging it. And there's somebody that you will give up on every time. So look around it, don't say it, but tell me who it is. And then they look around and then privately they're all picking, like, the person that they most disapprove of. Right. For whatever reason, most have judgments about. And then I'd say, I dropped the bomb on them. Right. I'd say, listen, the one you'll give up on again and again is the one in your seat. That's the one you'll make excuses for. You'll tell yourself something in the mirrors and then you'll give me a call and you'll tell me you're dropping out of the program. That's the one you won't really fight for.

That's great.

Thanks.

Great way. I mean, into. Because. But what you're wanting to do with that is to obviously jolt people into, hey, this is going to be a difficult class. You need to try, you need to.

Whatever, fall forward and fight. Like, there was a whole bunch of other things that we built from there, but it was a very arresting kind of a conversation because people had to confront that. That notion that they quit things more often than they quit other people.

Right? And that's knowing your audience. And if you know your audience is going to do that along the line, because you've already had that experience, then pointing that out to them early on to intentionally get them to a place where they're going to be doubting themselves and then saying, okay, well, here's how you're able. Here's how you're going to be able to get past that. That's a great prepping of an audience.

So let's recap a little bit. I think you've given folks a lot for. First of all, there's content and there's delivery in your public speaking. Right. You know, a message you want to, though, structure and figure out how much of your message. So the people that we're speaking to here have some content or something that they want to get out to the world, but it's probably not everything you know about everything. So we want to. Not only you do know your message, but we Want to narrow it, focus it, organize that message into something that's appropriate to the length of talk. Right. You talked about that. Second thing was, is to know your audience. Who are you speaking to? Why is this important to them? Getting it relatable and connecting to them and then getting them to feel something. Right. Being intentional about the delivery and the use of emotion. And in your delivery, getting past the initial fear is starting with that one on one conversation, then backing up till you're including more people, but you're still really talking to one at a time and. And now using your eyes, your elbows, your feet to command bigger space, to a bigger posture that addresses a wider crowd than somebody with their arms closed, you know, legs crossed, standing in the corner, talking to a person. Like you might leaning up against a wall at a cocktail party.

No, Absolutely. And the biggest thing is it's going to take practice. Like anything else, like any other skill.

Any other team, better and better. And when you do well, ask. Ask yourself why you did well. When you did poorly, ask yourself why you did poorly. And there's always something that comes out of it. I think it's really great. If you want to know more about how PJ works and coaches people, he coaches people in developing, talks and giving pitches and things all the time, you can find pj@42walls.com PJ, I want to thank you so much for being on the show today, Bill.

I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

All right. And if you want to get started scaling up your business, you're looking for growth tools. You'd like to know how to pull your team together, you'd like to understand the whole framework. You'll find a free growth kit on our website@scalingupbusiness.com you can download it right there. Gives you the intro to scaling up. Tells you how to get your team started, gives you an agenda, gives you worksheets and things like that to start getting your team scaling up now. All right, I'd like to give special thanks to our original growth guru, Verne Harnish. Our show producer is Nigh Obaid. Audio production is done by Podfly Productions with audio editing by Albert Burge. Our show notes are written by Ein Codena and proofreading is done by Tim McGowan. If you got some value out of our show today, please share it with somebody else and let us know what parts you loved. Thanks again for listening and keep scaling up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our scoreboard software powered by Align. It's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.