The Power of How and What You Say with Jenny Rearick

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 175. Today I'm sitting down with Fit to Speak owner Jenny Rearik and we're talking all about the power of how and what you say. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is the first time you are pushing play today, welcome. I'm super pumped to bring to you an incredible episode that I did with Fit to Speak owner Jenny Rerick. She is a communication and presentation skills coach as well as trainer. She founded Fit to Speak, which is a business dedicated to teaching fitness, sport and health professionals no nonsense communication strategies so they can share messages that matter. In fact, in this episode, when you stay till the end, she gives you some tangible takeaways that you can instantly implement right now in the way you're showing up in social media, in the way you are doing presentations, and in the way that you are connecting with clients. She's going to give you some tangible takeaways to help you get started and also get present to what you may or may not be communicating unconsciously. She's going to bring it to the forefront of your mind and then show you how to change it. I learned a lot in this episode and I cannot wait for you to hear it. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. What's up, Jenny? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm great. I'm pumped to be here, Beverly. Thanks for having me.

Oh, honestly, it's my pleasure and privilege. I'm so excited to get into our conversation today because just hearing a few minutes of your backstory, there are so many nuggets, I just cannot wait to dive because I know it's going to be really beneficial for you when you stay till the end. So for those of you who haven't heard of Jenny before, Jenny, I'd love for you to please share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

Great. I'm Jenny Rerek. I own a company called Fit to Speak. I am a communication and presentation skills coach. For the last five years, I've been doing this full time. I work in the corporate space with professionals at every level, teaching them how to communicate more effectively, speak more confidently, and then how to end. To end create and deliver presentations. And then I've created Fit to Speak to bring that same level of professional development into the fitness, sport and health spaces. So currently, through Fit to Speak, I work with sport coaches, personal trainers, group trainers, physical therapists, athletic trainers, chiropractors on their speaking skills. Because many of them at the level that they're at, they want to speak at conferences, they want to participate in panels, they want to simply increase their presence across their professional network. And as people in the corporate space have found, one of the key things to distinguish yourself amongst other professionals at that level is how well, effectively and confidently you can communicate.

Oh my gosh. I have so many questions. I cannot wait to dive in. But let me just quickly, I've always been curious about this because I hear a huge distinction between corporate world and basically other. So I'm curious, what are the biggest differences that you've noticed since you facilitate presentations and conversations in the corporate world? What are some of the biggest differences in a corporate business versus not the.

Biggest difference, I would say, is environment. In a lot of corporate environments, it's much more formal. Whereas when I'm working with coaches, trainers, physical therapists, it's not that it's not formal, but the tone is typically more casual or conversational in nature, which I tend to prefer. But other than that, the actual skills that I teach people are the same through and through. I also have found people in our space are typically more personally invested in what they are doing than people in the corporate space where they're maybe more so motivated by achievement in terms of title, they're maybe not inherently interested in, in the work that they're actually producing. And I know that because I work with a lot of professionals who like what they do, but they don't necessarily love it. They wouldn't choose to do it as a hobby. Whereas many people who are working in fitness, sport and health, it is their life's passion. And so I actually find that to be or to make my job easier because I don't have to convince them of anything. I simply have to help them develop technical skills so that they can communicate everything that they know and that they've invested their entire life in learning into communicating it using language that other people understand.

Oh my Gosh, so true. I didn't even think about that. How. I mean, that almost feels like it's so much harder trying to help people because you can't, you know, be. Get passionate about what you're doing. Like, that must be so challenging.

Yeah, well, I work with a lot of people who. Let's say one of the clients I work with, the corporate clients, they do uniform and safety equipment sales.

Yeah, sure.

It's not a personal hobby. It's not something people tend to aspire. I want to sell safety equipment, but whereas people in our industry, they think, I want. I want to help people lose weight. I want to help people get out of pain. I want to help people discover movement. And that's something you can't teach.

Yeah, that's hard, for sure. So how did you get into the fitness space?

I. I played volleyball in college, and then after college, I started training and competing in Olympic weightlifting, and so I started coaching that as well. It was something I picked up in college. I loved it. Aside from my corporate job out of college, I've been coaching on the side as a passion project. So I've been doing it for the last 10, 12 years, and I stayed with it. And now my husband and I own a little boutique training studio here where we live. And so I have a lot of personal training clients that I work with. And he. My husband also owns a education company called Certified Functional Strength Coach. So I help educate and run courses with them as well. So I'm pretty integrated into the fitness space. And then through that space, I have contacts with other fields as well.

Okay. I was just wearing my CFS shirt the other yesterday. Really, like, wait, you said the whole name? And I was like, wait, I think I have that, sir.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

So I teach some of their courses. It is. It's really fun.

Oh, my gosh. Amazing. Okay, I love that. So, okay, I want to dive into a little bit of the process, a little bit of the nuts and bolts, because I think there's so many things to unpack when it comes to levels and layers of communication. Because I'm curious, in your perspective, are you teaching the what the how? Like, are we talking about, like, what we say? The voice timbre is like, can you just dive into a little bit of your process and how you begin this?

Yeah, it's all of the above. When we're thinking about communication, we're thinking about what I call presence, which is when you are speaking with somebody, whether that's one on one or you're speaking to a Group, you have an effect on them simply by your body language and the way they hear you speaking your voice. I don't. I think I've maybe met one person who had actually had any formal training on that because they were in theater, and that's unfortunate.

Yeah. I mean, that's why I'm like, this is. It's interesting to me. I mean, it just circles back. This is total side note. But it's like, what you think is so easy is not easy for your clients. Because me, I came out of the womb presenting, dancing, singing, had formal training. So when someone said, go live on Facebook, I was like, oh, yeah, easy.

And so many people really struggle to do that, and they think that they're just naturally not good at it, when that's not true. It's a skill. It is a learnable skill, which is. And it's crazy to me that we don't. We have yet to have integrated that type of professional development into what we do, because I always say communication is the tool that we use to do our job. And a question I often ask groups that I work with is, think about a time. Have you ever met somebody, and in the first minute of speaking to them, you sit, you think to yourself, I don't really like them.

I don't know.

There's something about them I don't like. That is what I mean by presence. When there are other people you meet and you're enthralled with them within a minute, and you think, wow, I could be around this person all day. They're really interesting. They seem so present and charismatic. Now, at some point, we have to back that up with competence. But you want to have that immediate impact on somebody, and that is something you have control over, is how you're showing up physically and vocally. So I work with people on understanding what impact their body language is having, as well as how they're saying what they are saying in terms of tone, cadence, their use of filler words, their pacing, their. The way they articulate themselves. So that's more of the technical side. Should I keep going?

Yes. Oh, my gosh. I'm so like, yes. Tell us more. What a perfect way to pause and then have us lean in. Tell us more. Okay, so the technical sides are things like cadence and filler words. And I'm assuming you didn't say this, but I'm assuming that this is also unconscious. A lot of this stuff will do.

Unconsciously, which is why for most professionals, you don't need to hire someone like me to get Started, you should video record yourself doing something and then watch it back multiple times and simply ask yourself, what do I objectively observe about what I'm doing physically and what my voice sounds like when I speak? It's not easy to watch and listen to yourself, but I promise you, you will find something that you had no idea that you were doing. And only when we're aware of something can we make a correction or at least choose to do something different that we think will make us more effective.

Okay, so I could give you personal examples. And I'm also curious, when you say more effective, how does someone be more effective? How do you know if you're effective?

It's in the response that you're getting. Which also leads me into wanting to talk about responsiveness, part of communication. And people who communicate really well, they've really honed their ability to be responsive to the people that they're interacting with. And when I say responsive, what I mean is that they are, they are continuously observing or perceiving how am I being received right now, and is this the impact I am intending to have? There are a lot of coaches that I work with. One issue that they struggle with is they tend to overshare. They give too many details, they share too much information at one time. And one way to work on that is to get them present to paying attention to social cues that people are giving them who are listening to them. Because often you see that on people's faces or their body language and have I said too much? But because we're so concerned about getting a specific message across, we lose touch with staying connected to that person and trying to actively read how am I being received right now?

So how does one do this? When you're presenting one to many, like on a stage, or maybe you're in a zoom room, and it's, you know, you're one to many. In virtually or in person, there's a.

Prerequisite, and that is you have to have internalized your information, meaning you're not working off of some type of script, which a lot of people still do. Because if I am working off of some highly planned message, I cannot be present to the people that I'm communicating with because I am focused inward on thinking about this is what I'm saying now. This is what I have to say next. So when my working memory is actively trying to engage with where I'm at with my content and where I'm going next, I do not have the capacity to be present to and be perceiving how People are responding to what I am saying, so the prerequisite is always over. Prepare. If you have your, your information so internalized that you can simply talk about it and go with the flow, you can be more present to reading the people that you're interacting with. And if you read them, then you can choose to respond. Let me give you an example. If you're, let's say you're running a workshop with a group of people and you're on some specific point and you notice that while you're on this point, a lot of people are taking notes. Most people will just continue on with their plan of, okay, I'm going to say this now, I'm going to say this next. Someone who is responsive would notice that people were heads down, taking notes, and instead of continuing on, they would find a way to hover around that point or create space for people to finish taking notes or processing whatever they are about that particular message before moving on to the next point. Because their priority is to get their message through. It's not to get through their message.

That is so good. That is so good. Okay, so I have, I have, I have a million questions, and I'm trying to sort in my brain which ones to go through first because I'm curious, you know, what are some of the, what are some of the most common, I'll say, unconscious patterns that people will say? Like, for example, what comes to mind is filler words. We hear those a lot. Well, like, and I think first layer, we all kind of know that. I'm curious. Second, third layer, what are some of the other things that people tend to do without realizing it? So for me, I said I would give you a tangible example. When I'm thinking I will slow down and stretch out my words and my pace, thinking that that somehow isn't going to be noticed, which I only found and discovered when after listening to hundred, you know, hours of tapes, which is also a skill. But that's. Once you get past that and you can listen to yourself objectively, you can become more effective, in my opinion.

Right, because it's about message clarity in terms of filler words. It's not that filler words are wrong. They're a part of our language and I, I use them sometimes. It's really when you use them so often, when they're getting in the way of people being able to process the actual essence of what it is you're trying to say. If you have a habit of finishing every single sentence with the word right, that gets really annoying for people. Who are listening to you. And they, as soon as they notice it, they have really hard time actually focusing on the content of your message because they become annoyed. And they know that they're going to hear that word over and over and over again. The sec. The layers, as you mentioned going down. The next layer, I would say would be your rate of speech. Most people I work with are way too fast.

I'm laughing because I'm like, that's me. I'm.

Though. And the way I like to describe it is people do not process our words in real time as they're coming out of our mouth. They're not automatically being processed. There is a delay. It's like when you watch a TV show and the sound is off. That's how listening happens. People have to first hear the words. Then they can go through the internal process of processing and trying to relate what you're saying to something they already know to gain some type of insight from it. But that takes time. If I don't build a cadence where there's space between my individual points or thoughts that I'm making, I'm giving them an ultimatum. Essentially. I'm saying if you. If something I say catches your attention, you have to make a choice. Either you're going to ignore what I'm now saying because I'm going so fast so that you can internalize and process what I've just told you, or you can just cross your fingers and hope you remember what you really liked because you want to continue listening. Whereas if I take more control of that as the one delivering the message and I build in physical space between my important thoughts or points, I don't have to give you a choice. You get to do both. You get to process my words, and you get to continue listening to me when I go to my next point.

Okay, great.

The next layer. And this is more so in person, and it seems really simple and it sometimes can seem obvious, but a lot of people don't do it is eye contact. If you are in person speaking to one person or group, most of the time, you should be looking at and speaking directly to the people you're interacting with. And I see this most often when, let's say a coach is working with a group, they will be doing something, typically with their eyes that we call scanning, where they're kind of grazing over everybody, but they're never connecting with anyone in front of them. And if I ask people why they do that, their typical response will be, well, I'm engaging the group. I'm looking at everybody. But you can't look at a group of people. Groups of people are made up of individuals. As a coach, I need to create engagement by connecting individually with each of the people in front of me who make up that group. The easiest, most natural way to create connection is to look other people in the eyes. It's something we were never trained to do. It's just a human thing. But now with social media and phones and all these distractions, people actually find it much more uncomfortable to try and make eye contact with people. And yet, from an evolutionary standpoint, that's immediately what builds trust and creates comfort between two people interacting.

Oh, that's interesting. You know, it's. And I. I pause only because you'll notice it. Even when people are filming or they're. They're. You know, you're looking at social media content, they're not even looking directly at the. And I'm guilty of this, too. So no one's. No, I'm not pointing fingers. We're all in this together. But they won't look at the camera when they're filming. They're usually looking at themselves.

Mm.

So, you know, that's interesting. Okay, so that's a point of connection, is the visual as well as the speed. The other thing I was curious about is human beings all have different ways. We primarily learn some are audio, some are kinesthetic, and some are visual. So when you're presenting, how do you incorporate all of those ways of communicating, essentially, for a group of people?

This is a question that comes up a lot, and I find that it's hard to answer, because even though we might have a preference, we all learn through all three of them regardless. So you don't want to get to the point where you're trying to profile individuals in your audience to say, what type of learner are they? And I'm only going to give them content through that type of medium because you'll end up excluding them at some point. What I would recommend is that you include aspects of both. And that's why. So vocal delivery is always going to be important, because that's how the first contact that people are having with your message. And then often in terms of visual support, if your content or the point you're making lends itself naturally to a visual, then it makes sense. But visual does not mean putting sentences on presentation slides. Hey, like visual means. Is there a concept I'm trying to communicate that if I asked people to draw out what I was saying, would they have something to represent that? Or is There a video example I can show them. If you're working with a client on. This is a random example. But let's say you're trying to work with a client to improve their ankle mobility. Instead of just talking about it, I might show them two pictures. Examples of someone who has limited ankle mobility and someone who has ankle mobility. That would be ideal that we're working toward. So that visual example gives them something to reference as they continue to work toward that thing. The. And then the other aspect I was going to say is stories. Stories not mean. Not necessarily meaning, fictional stories. But we. If we work with people on a daily basis, with which most of us do, we have interactions that are extremely valuable, not just to that person, but to other people that we work with. We need to, I think, develop a stronger habit of taking notes on interactions that we're having to use those stories and those examples to create connection and understanding for the other clients that we work with. Because if I can constantly refer to this other client has a very similar issue to you, and this is how we work through it. Or here's an example of an athlete who had the same injury, and this was the approach they take. All of those types of examples and stories are really easy for people to understand because that's built into our biology to understand story. And yet it's something I think, that a lot of professionals in our field still shy away from because it feels intimidating. We don't have to have these crazy, amazing, obnoxious stories. They can be really simple insights that come to us just in working with someone one on one.

So do you find that the people that you're working with tend to undervalue their experiences through stories?

Yeah, because they're things that they see every day and they think, oh, this is just the same old thing. This doesn't mean anything. But that means a lot to somebody who's. This is the first. Their first time working with a physical therapist. If you can talk about someone else's experience, even though you go through it every day, it's the first time they're hearing it. And that is a theme that I often work around is when you live and breathe it every day, it doesn't feel all that meaningful for you. But often these things, even though you've maybe said it a hundred times, it's going to be the very first time someone else is hearing it. And so you need to always share things as if it's the first time so that people can really get the impact around that. There's a good Example, a sports example, I think it was Joe DiMaggio from baseball. He, a reporter asked him once how he goes out in game after game after game plays with the intensity that he does. And his response was, while I think about that, there's someone in the stands. This is the first time they've ever seen me play. Right. It's like us, we have people, we do this every day. But a lot of people, this is their first interaction with us and we need to make it feel as important as it is to them.

I mean, this is how I explain beginner's luck. People will talk, oh, it's just beginner's luck. And I said, no, it's because evidence is a double edged sword, is because your brain is literally trying to automate and try to expedite the experience. So every interaction, sales, conversation or any kind type of conversation, your brain is already trying to rush the process because they're trying to. Your brain's going, oh, we know what's going to happen. So you're automatically anticipating what's going to happen in this interaction which people A, feel B, then, then we're risking empathy, risking listening, which is all required for connection and more connection, more conversions. That's why. Because beginners don't know what they don't know.

Right.

So every moment is so exciting and people feel that.

I've never heard it put like that makes complete sense.

And honestly, I'm so glad. I mean, I had to learn that lesson the hard way. And I've learned and I've learned it the hard way. And you know, I've lost clients that way, all coming from a place of wanting to help. It's not that anybody doesn't want to, it's just that we're trying to, you know, I had to learn that the hard way and I'm glad it did. So now I can talk about it. But that's an example of a personal story.

Yeah. Something I like to say is you want to be an experience creator, not an information giver. And the difference is where your focus is. And this is true for if you're getting up on stage to give a presentation too. You want to be outwardly focused in asking yourself constantly, am I creating a positive experience for this person that is so much better than am I getting my information across? Because then I lose that connection. Whereas if I'm focused on creating a specific type of experience or feeling within this person, that will usually slow me down and force me to filter my information through what's important to the person. That's sitting in front of me and not just what do I think is important about this topic.

Mm, yeah, so true. So how. Sorry, I had this other thought that came through too, because it's very interesting because I think part of it, part of the connection is the listening. And when you're so fixated on listening externally and intern or and audio, but when you're so focused on what are you going to say next? You cut that off, you know? So I'm curious, how do. How does someone start to start to get better at this skill? Like what are. What's the process you carry them through?

The point that you just made is one I'll build on because I think it's important. I sent out and I sent out a newsletter last week about this particular technique, which is simply paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is after someone says something to you, instead of responding to them, you're going to repeat back to them what you heard them say in your own words. So if I hear you correctly, what I hear you saying is this or are you saying that? And then you fill it in with your own words. And if you add in this extra step, it puts you in a position where you're essentially forced to be a good listener. So I'm not trying to remember all these crazy techniques about listening. I'm simply saying in this communication process, when I'm interacting with a client one on one, every time after they share something with me, instead of responding, I'm going to take a moment to paraphrase back to them what I heard them say. Building in that simple step does a lot. It puts you in a position where you have to listen because you know you're going to paraphrase. And it gives you space before you respond. And now you're typically responding to what they've shared as opposed to, like you said, just giving them more information.

Yeah, because no one said, my favorite book is the Encyclopedia.

Like that. Like that.

Oh, gosh.

In terms of improving communication is such a broad. It's so there's so much within communication, which I think is what makes it daunting and why a lot of people don't pursue working with someone formally. When it comes to communications, what I typically encourage people to do is have a problem you're trying to solve. So if you're going to work with someone to get the most value out of that, don't just take a communication skills training, because if you're going to do that, just go read a book, spend $20 and buy a Communications book. If you're going to work with a coach, which is there's a lot of benefits to it, but you're really only going to get those benefits if you're working through something that you're actively trying to solve. Let's say you have this client that you would maybe label as a difficult client, and you think, I really want to keep working with them, but I don't know if I can. I experience a lot of, like, burnout with them. It doesn't feel like I ever get through to them. That's a problem that a communications problem that you can work through. And now there's something tangible that little aspects of communication you can tackle within that. Or I have a lot of professionals come to me and say, I was just asked to speak at a conference in three months. Can you help me put together my presentation? And we can work on the delivery of that presentation. Now we've got something specific to tackle as opposed to just saying, I want to improve my communication skills. Which, I mean, it's like someone coming to me and saying, you know, I just generally want to be fit. I can put together a program for them and we can get into it. But we all know at some point over the course of doing that program, little things will work themselves out. To say, oh, we should focus more here, we should focus more here. I just think professionally, for your time and money investment, if you're going to ever pay someone or invest in training, know what outcome you're trying to get. And typically that comes from having clarity around a specific problem you're working to solve.

That's so good. So how does one know. You mentioned earlier, you talked about the social skills, like the social cues, I'll say that people will give you when you're in a room and you see, you know, how can you receive. What are some of the common social cues that people miss that are really good signals to show you? Hey, you might need to work on your communication skills.

The most obvious one that comes to mind for me is if you're not getting questions, if you're sharing information with the clients that you have, or maybe you educate other coaches, and after you share information, people aren't asking questions. To me, that's a red flag.

Oh, that's so good. I've never heard that before.

Because questions come from a place. Well, they come from a place of curiosity. And it's also someone who has said, okay, I think this means something to me, but I need to ask a few questions to understand how this might relate to me more personally. And the same goes for if you give a presentation. I tell people, if you don't get questions at the end of your presentation, that's not a good thing that does. You should never assume that means because you did such a good job and you got everything right, it typically means that you didn't do a very good job articulating how this message has some personal impact on the person or people you're sharing it with. So in whatever position you're in, if you don't get questions, I would encourage you find a way to create questions. And sometimes that might mean if they don't ask you a question, you might say, you know, after sharing this with people, a question they often are asking is this. And then you pose the first question and then you give the answer to that question, or you put them on the spot and you say, with everything I just shared with you, what are some of the moments in your life you could see yourself integrating something like this or where if you did choose to do this, what are some of the challenges you think you're going to face in, in using this in your own life? So I'm posing questions to them to start getting them to see how can I personally connect with this information.

That's so good. It's so good. I have never heard that before said in that way. And it's so impactful because it speaks to what you said earlier, which is if you've over shared, people get overwhelmed that they don't even have a question because they don't even know where to start or they don't know what the. You know where they can start. And it can be. That's partly why they have no questions, because they're overwhelmed or they weren't listening.

Right. Which is why really you want to build in checkpoints. When you're sharing information with somebody, every time you make what you feel is an important point, you should stop and create some type of conversation around that point before you share your next point. So there's more checkpoints. So like you're saying you're not building up this surplus of information because likely they're not going to remember what you said at the very beginning, so they're not going to have questions. Whereas if you can create opportunities to engage with them throughout your message, you'll find they'll be, well, more engaged because they're actually able to participate and they'll have an easier time remembering what exactly they're wanting clarity around that.

That is so good. I love that. That's one of my favorite things. I'm so glad that you shared that. Thank you. That's so helpful. Okay. The other thing I'm curious is how do you, when you're in a presentation, how do you continue to maintain the. The attention span of attendees when our attention span is generally getting shorter and shorter and shorter?

Yeah. I can't remember where I've read this and maybe it was in a few places. The attention span thing. I agree, it's true. I think it is short. But as an example that I saw cited somewhere, people listen to three hour Joe Rogan podcast episodes.

They're three hours. I've never.

Some of them are. Yeah. Can you imagine?

No, I can't. I have to do Exit.

What that tells me, and I totally believe it is if people aren't engaged, that tells me that you've either done a really poor job helping them understand how your information is personally going to benefit them, either in their personal life or their professional life. Is it going to save them time? Is it going to save them money? And to do that, you need to know what's important to them. So you haven't done a good job connecting that or you're almost. You're giving them too many details. I. A few days ago I posted about this on social media. I said one of the mistakes I see most often in presentations is that at the end of the presentation, they don't tell you what to do with the information. So they, they usually in a lot of presentations in our fields, they're introducing a lot of these really big systems. And here's this big system and here's this framework and all these things. Those are really good. And I think in the moment people are inherently interested in them. But the number one question is people want to walk away and they want to be able to use it. We do a really poor job of telling people what the first step is. And the thing the same is true when working with individual clients. If you've taken them through a rehab program, yeah, they're. They want to know what the next six months is going to look like. But what they're more interested in is what am I supposed to do when I leave the office before I come to the appointment next week? That's what's most important. And in presentations, the same is true as you're going through your content. You want to be leaving bread crumbs for people hinting at here's what you can do with this information that I'm giving you right now. Not just, hey, this is really nice to know. But here's what you can do with it tangibly so that it's going to have an impact in your life.

Yeah, that's good. And I was laughing because we've all done it. I know that I've done it and I live on systems and frameworks. That's how I can simplify things in my mind.

And people, when they get those and they like them and they feel right, you want to do something with it, but because they've never used it before, they don't know where to start and we miss the mark if we're not making an explicit statement of okay, so you're bought into this. What do you need to do as soon as you leave this to be able to use this framework or the system?

I love it. I love it. Okay, so I. Since we're also talking about presentations, or we're mostly talking about presentations, I think this is what I'm about to ask you is also true. In one on one client interaction is the, is the component of the unspoken communication, things that happen. Right. I think that we focus a lot on the what, the how, the voice, you know, some of the technical components, what are, what's the impact of what's communicated that non verbally.

So what comes to mind first is body language. There, there's this idea of congruency. Have you, in your life, have you ever maybe walked into a room and either a family member or friend, you got this feeling that something was just off. And you ask them, you say, hey, is something wrong? And what do they say?

No, I'm fine.

No, no, I'm fine. Do you believe them? No, it's like, why don't you believe them?

Brooding their way, they, they not speaking.

Breathing, it's all body language cues. And what's fascinating is that you probably never learned to consciously read all of that stuff. But that's like, that's the basic operating system we have is we, that's our, that's our gut or our instinct saying I, there's not congruency here. I'm hearing them say this, but I'm seeing this. People will always believe what they see over what they hear. So you want to be thinking about that when you're communicating with people. If you're sharing difficult news and you're trying to take on this positive outlook tone, but your body language is, is saying the opposite. People, it doesn't matter the words you use, it doesn't matter the tone you say it. And people are getting the feeling from reading your body Language. So often this. I feel like this especially comes up in when people are having to have difficult conversations is how are you going to show up physically and vocally so that those two things are congruent? Because if you don't, if you can't do that, people are going to automatically believe the feeling that they're getting from your presence and your body language over your words. Your words won't matter.

I'm laughing at this because I literally try to do this voodoo trick on my children. My children are ages 6 and 5 or 7 and 5, where I know I'm about to deliver them bad news. Like, it's not bad news to me, but it's going to be bad news to them. So I literally tried to confuse them with all this joy, energy I'm bringing to the conversation.

They're like, that's hilarious. It's so true.

Because they're looking at me for a second like, wait, wait, yeah, yeah.

Or like, cleaning up. Like, we're gonna clean, clean. Cleaning's not a fun thing. Why do you sound so happy?

Yes, exactly. Oh, my God.

I think in terms of the unsaid you have, and it's not that we can always control it, but if you're saying something and you're not getting the reaction you expected, I wouldn't automatically just look to blame the other person for something. I would probably be asking myself, what was my body language saying? Was I sending the same message with my body language? Because that could have been often. Often people aren't going to say anything to you. They're not going to say, well, I hear you saying this, but your arms are crossed. They'll just get that feeling, and they'll believe that over your words.

Mm. The reason I asked is because I was curious. You know, I'm assuming, so correct me if I'm wrong, is because I just. Based on my experience, a lot of people have a lot of self confidence and have a lot of imposter syndrome, and they. They will get nervous because, you know, it comes from the brain trying to protect you when you're like, whoa, don't do. So we're not doing. We're doing this big, scary thing. You're like, brain. No, I'm just going across the street. But you're. You know, that reads. So how does somebody process those feelings, that experience without sacrificing, you know, the value that they're just about to deliver?

Yeah. And it's presenting. If I'm going up on stage to present something, and I'm an extremely competent individual in my field or I'm a subject matter expert, my competence is not in question. But if I deliver that information and I, like you're saying, I don't come across as confident. Maybe my voice is really low, maybe my voice is quivering, maybe I'm looking down, I'm moving around a lot, I look fidgety. All of those signs are going to be in conflict with my competence. This is why I love what I do, because that's what I teach people to do, is how to physically show up to match your competence. Because these are skills. You could be oozing nerves out of every cell in your body when you get up to speak, but they don't have to manifest themselves physically. You have control as long as you've learned and practice a set of skills in terms of how you manage your posture, how you choose to project your voice. If I don't or I'm not aware of, or I don't have training on those things, then I'm just going to default. My body is going to determine what it does. But these are all learnable skills. And people will say, typically the reaction I'll get as well, then I'm just like faking it. That's not genuine. But do you, do you know how to drive? Okay, so if you think back to, to when you learned how to drive, did it feel like a natural thing for you to do? No.

Just as my parents.

Yeah. You're like, oh my God, I have to push this puddle and I have to be doing this blinker and I have to be looking at my mirrors, all while I'm also trying not to get in an accident. But over time, you, your brain begins to automate those things and you get really good at it. These skills, body language skills, especially when you're presenting, that's a physical skill set. And I can teach that to you. You can learn that from somebody. You can learn how to stand so you look more confident. You can learn how to manage your voice. You can learn how to manage the, the rate that you're speaking at. You can learn how to make eye contact with people and for what reason. You can learn how to use your gestures. And at first they seem really unnatural and you think, this is not me, but it's just that they're new skills. And if you give yourself time and you practice them, they become totally natural. And now you're body language matches your competence, which is what we really want.

Oh, I love that. Now I know that I'm about to ask you a question. That's probably nuanced in the sense that it's part of what makes human beings so amazing is that we all have different gesture gestures and ways of. Of delivering information and. And presenting. Are there some universal, I guess, universal signs or gestures that signal nervousness more so than just normal delivery?

Yeah, really. Generally, I would say if you're not gesturing for some reason, there's this. I. I have a lot of people that come to me and they'll say I gesture too much or I use my hands too much. If you watch anyone speak in a casual conversation, every single person uses their hands, but for some reason, when they get up in front of a group of. They become very stiff.

I'm an. Or they make.

Or they play with their rings, or they tug at their fingers, or they crack their knuckles, or they hold something like a pen, and then they start fidgeting with the pen. Those things they can show people that you're nervous. Whereas all I tell people to do with their gestures is, number one, let yourself gesture. And. Well, there maybe there's three things. Number one, let yourself gesture. Number two, when you gesture, pick your hands up above your waist. Do you. Do you know why you would want to do that?

No.

When.

So that it brings your. Brings attention to your face.

That's exactly right. So you think about it. When you see someone gesturing, because it's movement, it will catch your attention. And if your gestures are up, they'll be able to see your gestures and watch your face, which is important because that's where your words are coming out together. Whereas a lot of people will leave their hands down and just do these really little movements down by their sides. And now you're. You're splitting people's visual attention. The third thing is, is keep your hands open and relax. A lot of people who are nervous still make fists when they gesture. So I just say, pick your hands up and keep them open. I don't care then what you do with your gestures. Just pick your hands up and keep them open. And generally that works just fine.

It's so funny because it's. One of those things is as you're talking, I'm really trying to recall casual conversations. Like, I'm trying to picture my family sitting in the living room right now. And it's one of those things where consciously I'm not noticing it unless it's weird or unless it's like, down, you know, forced.

Yeah, yeah, it's. I mean, even when you're presenting, you're just having an enlarged conversation. Yeah, it's not the morph. The more you try and sound and look like a professional, the more disingenuous it feels. You're. You really have to go in and treat it as an enlarged conversation because now you come across as sincere. And that's what we want. We want sincere. People have really weird quirks when it comes to presenting. But if they're sincere, meaning if I went and talked to them in the hallway, they would sound the exact same way that they do on stage. Their quirks work really well for them because I know they're being sincere. But if I have a conversation with you in the hallway and then you get up on stage to present and you're an entirely different person and you become very formal and rigid and stiff, now there's a disconnect for me because I think, well, that's not her. But for some reason we're so afraid to be ourselves in front of a group of people because we think it's too casual. It's not. Our content elevates us, but we still want to be sincere and genuine. That's what the main goal of this is, is to be your.

Because people connect with humans, period.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, even if you look at the big brands out there in the world, all of their advertising shows, humans look at, look at Bit, you know, Red Bull is a perfect example, Got wings. And it's all humans that they're seeing everywhere, you know? Yeah.

That's also why I tell people not to spend so much time designing really amazing presentation slides because you don't, you don't want your presentation slides to look better than you do. But a lot, I think a lot of people use their presentation slides as a distraction from themselves because they're so nervous. We don't want to do that. I would rather you spend the majority of your time working on how do I show up to be this the show me the show, not my slides.

Do you ever deal or work with people who sometimes have, have insecurity around their competence level? And the reason I'm asking this is because so many people that I've noticed and work with is that as they get smarter, they start to realize, oh, there's just so much it depends. And they start to almost. It's true masters that really get to this point. Even Buddha said it, Jesus said it like I know nothing is when they became a master. Because as they got smarter, more doors start to open up for them. Right. Which has a double edged sword because then people start to feel, I'm not Competent, they start to feel like, oh my gosh, not only do I not know everything, I also can't speak. So do you also deal with helping people come into their living in the and is what I call it, you could help someone now and continue to grow?

Yeah. And the way I look at that is as if you imagine a ladder. There you're at some place on the ladder in terms of competence. There are always going to be people that are below you and often those are the people that you're going to be communicating with. You even just knowing slightly more than the people you're communicating with, you're delivering value to them. Now I could completely see and I would question if I was going in to speak to an audience on a topic, maybe I was going in to speak to a group of PhDs communication who have studied communication and I'm not. That would probably be inappropriate, rightfully so. And if I had imposter syndrome, it's probably relevant in that case. But if I'm going to speak to a group of new coaches who do maybe group fitness coaching and I'm talking about their communication skills to this is something that I don't know everything about communication and speaking. I don't have a PhD on this stuff, but I know far more than they know. And that's where the value is in remembering that I've got something to offer them because they're at a different place on this ladder than I am. And that's tend to. That's 10 that's how I tend to communicate that with people is where are you in relation to your audience and are you really seeing the gap that you're going to be able to fill for them that provides that value and you're not going to give them everything that they need. But you've got to hone in on what's the specific thing that I can offer them and stay there and keep it specific.

Yeah, that's so good. That's so good. Okay, last question because I want to be mindful of your time is how do you help people protect their instrument? Because for example, I've been using my voice nonstop and when I last week I had, you know, I think it was 36 straight hours of talking. It starts to have. It starts to have a huge impact on the instrument. How do you help people with their instrument?

I refer out to my friend who is a speech therapist. That is not, I know a little bit about it. Not enough that I would feel comfortable helping someone. So just like therapists and trainers, we all have people we refer out to, and there are people who do this for a living. They teach you how to deal with a hoarse voice, recover from vocal fry, all of those things. And so I tend to refer out.

It's important. We used to do that in school. Yeah.

I've heard one technique that has, that she taught me that works really well is when your voice is. When you've been talking a lot or it's hoarse is to get a cup of water with a straw and blow bubbles.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. Because it relaxes the vocal cords so it can provide relief.

So good. So good. Okay. This has been amazing. You are just mind blowing. I learned a ton of things. Thank you so much for coming and pouring into us today. So. So for those of you who want to go deeper with your work, learn more about what it is that you do, connect with you. What are the best places that I can send them?

Yeah, I'll give you two. I post almost daily on social media on Instagram, it's fittospeak and all of my links are listed there. And then on October 22nd, I'm hosting an in person speaking skills workshop for coaches or people in fitness, sport and health just south, about an hour south of Boston. So if any of you are in that area and you want to come actually practice and get coaching in a group setting, which is highly practical, safe, it is non threatening, it's a lot of fun. I've done a few of them now that's on October 22nd and you can find that on my website, which is fit2hyhenspeak.com I love it.

And we'll make sure that we link that all up for a second. I, I know you told me east coast in the beginning, but then I thought, oh, is this going to be in the west coast? But no, it's the east. It's the east. Yes. I love it. Love it. Thank you so much, Jenny. I really appreciate it.

Thanks Beverly. This was fun.

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