Unlocking Your Potential: Mastering Public Speaking with Nick Lambe

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 367. Today we're talking about unlocking your potential, mastering public speaking with Nick Lam. 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.

Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. My name is Chris. I work behind the scenes here at BE Simpson Fitness. And today I get the pleasure of introducing you to someone I have had the pleasure to meet in person a few times now. His name is Nick Lam and he has a focus on educating others in the industry. And what you will get to learn about him in this episode is how he helps people to enhance their speaking presence, their skills, their confidence, and in turn help them find the opportunities that they're looking for within the fitness space and within speaking. So this is going to be an awesome episode and it's kind of a teaser for a future episode coming up where we will once again have Nick on the show again. But without further ado, let's start that episode.

What's up, Nick? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me.

I am so excited. Right before we hit record, we were talking about how this is such a long time in the making. I'm so glad that we could finally get this podcast and, and to the world. I'm really excited.

Likewise. Likewise. Yeah, we finally made it happen. This was, I think this has probably been close to a year in the making in total, maybe even in a different capacity going back further than. Than that. So.

Sure, sure, sure. So for those of you who are new to your work or just joining the podcast for the first time, can you please share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there?

Absolutely. So I have been, I've been in the industry, the health and fitness industry for coming up on 15. Coming up on 15 years, I have worked in a lot of different settings, but over the last, I'd say seven, eight years, I've taken a pretty non traditional path and worked in some different settings and been in some different situations, primarily based around education for the industry. And that is where I have found the most amount of passion and fire has been to educate these amazing coaches that we have in our industry. And a large part of that was focused around sleep. So practical related sleep content for many years, how you can implement practical sleep coaching tools with your clients and your community. Over the last few years, my focus has shifted more to public speaking skills. I have, I've been very fortunate in large part to an emphasis on sleep. I've been very fortunate to speak at this point. Over a hundred industry events, both inside and outside the health and fitness industry and public speaking has completely changed my life. It's changed the trajectory of my career, not just in the opportunities provided, but in all the carryover of these skills, both professionally and personally. And so my emphasis now is on primarily helping health and fitness coaches to improve their public speaking skills. And that can, that can be seeking out and getting on industry stages and speaking, that can be speaking in your community. But at the heart, really, it's just making the things that you say, the things that you're teaching, the things that you share, more engaging, more dynamic, more impactful in the way in which you actually deliver it. I. One of the things I always emphasize, especially in the health and fitness industry and space, there's enough information, there's enough information relayers, there's enough people who just take and regurgitate information back. Where there's a gap is in what I call message shares. You can have all the information, you can learn all the things, but do you have a message to share? A powerful message to share? Can you share? Can you take the things that people likely have already heard and already know and already should be doing? And can you, can you package them and deliver them in a way that actually moves them and gets them to take real action?

So, so powerful. The word impactful was the one that was really coming up to me. Like there's, you know, do coaches ever stop and wonder, you know, if information is so abundant, then why is it that the majority of people continue to struggle? It's because there's this gap, this missed, this, this, this, this implementation component that sometimes be missing.

I always say, I always say there's three, there's three layers to the things that you know and the things that you teach and share. There's, there's what you know. And of course having and acquiring more knowledge is, is incredibly important. There's what you know, then there's the next layer is what you can actually communicate. What can you explain simply? What can you make more digestible? What can you create an analogy or metaphor around. And as we know, a lot of times people don't get to that layer, even they don't get to that second layer. But then what I would say, where there's really the biggest gap, is that there's a third layer, which is what actually lands with other people, what actually sticks with them, and what actually gets them to go and do something different, to take real, real action. And if we don't reach that layer, all the knowledge and information in the world doesn't really matter a whole lot, because it's not gonna change people's lives in the way that we intend.

Mm. So true. So true. Okay, so you kind of talked about it, but just for clarity, say, when you say public speaking, how do you define public speaking?

I love this. So public speaking typically gets classified as being on a stage in front of a large group and a large audience. And this is where a lot of the. The anxiety and limiting beliefs and things kind of manifest is this way of envisioning public speaking. And that. That is a component of public speaking, for sure. But if you really just take it, at the core, public speaking is if you are speaking to someone else, if you are trying. Trying to connect with someone, if you were trying to influence them to do something, if you were trying to lead a conversation in a given way, you are speaking in order to do that. And the person or people listening are the public. Whether that's one on one, that's a group of 10, or it's a group of a thousand. It's all public speaking, in a sense. And so at the core, to me, public speaking is how you express yourself. It's how you communicate ideas. It's how you find ways to connect with other people. And that's. To me, I think that's one of the important shifts, because if you envision public speaking that way you make it more accessible to improve the skills that can. That can help you show up in your personal and professional life. Whereas if you're just positioning it as this maybe far into the future opportunity of speaking on a massive stage in front of thousands of people, and that gives you anxiety, and that scares the hell out of you. You're not going to lean into some of these. These skills that can be so valuable for you.

I'd love for you to dive deeper, a little bit more into what are some of the essential skills, skills that a health professional needs to have in order to cultivate an impactful presentation or an impactful talk that's going to get people to, you know, excited about booking them For a public speaking gig or presenting them, and so on and so forth. What are the.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. There's a few components that we. We can break down here. The. The first is one that I will say is one of the most underappreciated communication tools, one of the most underappreciated assets that you have as a coach, as a speaker, and that is your voice, your physical voice. Sometimes when I say your voice, it gets perceived as, try and find your. Your voice and find your authentic voice and your own. Your mess, your own way of communicating information. And that. That can absolutely be a. A valuable part of finding your voice. But I'm talking about your physical voice, the way in which you actually sound. And I think we lose sight of how much that actually matters. Your physical voice plays directly into how engaging you are, how engaged people are with the things that you're saying, how much they remember of what you're saying, how connected they might feel to you, how impactful the things that you're saying actually are. One of the ways to think about this is you have a visual image and a vocal image. If. If you and I were to. To walk up to one another at an event and you had never met me before, as you're walking towards me, you are taking in my visual image. If I am completely disheveled and don't look like I practice good hygiene, you are starting to form some initial perceptions or assumptions about me, who I am, what I can potentially offer to you, all of these. These things that happen in real time. But as I start to speak, you are taking in my vocal image. And this is where those assumptions really turn into beliefs. Because if I'm very dynamic in the way that I use my voice and I have a presence with my voice where I have volume and I have melody, that makes you feel more connected to me, it's forming a positive vocal image. And when we think about this in terms of speaking and communication, we're really good at understanding that you can change and style your. Your visual image. You can change the clothes that you wear. You can take care of your hygiene, you can get haircut. You can do all these things to change your visual image. You can change your vocal image as well and understand how that actually plays into how people perceive you. One of the biggest misconceptions with your physical voice is the thinking that your voice is set in stone. The natural. The idea of a natural voice. Well, this is just my natural voice. This is the way I always have spoke, the way I've always communicated. And really, it's important to understand that your natural voice is not really your natural voice. It's your habitual voice. It's a set of behaviors and habits just like anything else, based on upbringing, based on culture, based on people that you've been around. You use your voice in a certain way, you communicate in a certain way. The, the best analogy I've heard for this is to think about a piano. And on a piano, you have 88 keys. All of these keys have different notes, they make different sounds, they can elicit different feelings and emotions. They're all the tools that you have to use your voice and to communicate. The vast majority of people use a very set number of keys, a very limited number of keys. They might only use 20, 25 of those keys. They're the ones that they're conditioned to use, familiar with, using. And a big part of leaning into public speaking and communication as a whole is learning to explore some of those other keys so that you can be more dynamic. One of the other things that talk a lot about with voice is these different forms within your voice depending on what you're trying to do and who you're talking to. Are you trying to educate? Are you trying to motivate and inspire? Are you trying to connect? And based on what your goal is in any given situation, you should be using your voice and your body language and your presentation differently. If I'm trying to educate someone on something and it's. It's nuance, there's a lot of details and things to explain, but I'm speaking as the motivational speaker with strong body language and volume and speaking quicker, you're not likely going to be able to digest the things that I'm saying. Conversely, if I am trying to get you excited about something, I'm trying to fire you up and inspire you, and I'm speaking to you like a, like a lecturer, like I would if I were trying to educate you on something. And I don't have a lot of dynamics in my voice. It's not very likely I'm going to motivate or inspire you. And so one of the really underappreciated foundations to public speaking and to being more effective in that space is the use of your. Your physical voice.

It's definitely underrated. I think so many people are fo. Most people are focused on what they're saying as opposed to the impact of how they're actually saying it and how sometimes we think that will be impactful when we're really loud and we speak really fast and we use our hand and we forget that when that there's so many other variables like pace, like loudness and pauses and how those, you know, sometimes it's not even, sometimes it's not even about what you're doing to fill in what you're saying, to fill in gaps. It's the what you're not saying to let people just sit with what you.

Said a hundred percent. I mean, one of the most powerful tools that you can implement is pausing more frequently, right? And when you pause more frequently, especially when you do it strategically, you give people more context as to what's important. If I am speaking and I all of a sudden have an extended pause, it draws you in and almost tells you that what I'm saying is likely a little bit more important. When you pause, it also tends to reduce the presence of a lot of these filler words and non words, and we can certainly talk about those and unpack those a little bit, but it starts to reduce the presence of those filler words and non words. It allows people to actually digest the things that you're saying. When we go from one idea, one thought, one teaching point to the next, as intelligent as somebody might be, as perceptive as they might be, they're not able to really digest it if you don't give them a moment. If you don't just give them a few moments and a few seconds to actually take in what you. What you just said.

Okay, so now for those of the health coaches that are interested in potentially booking a. Booking their next public speaking gig, what is the process that you recommend? Does someone go through from start to finish to really set themselves up for success when it comes to booking the gig and then nailing the gig?

Yes, I love it. So I break the public speaking opportunity space into. Into three, into three categories. First is, as you alluded to, getting booked, the steps that you take in order to actually get booked. And what we can unpack, that the second layer is really, really underappreciated. And I can't emphasize this enough is staying booked. And it's. If you genuinely want to public speak, what allows you to make it a big part of your business, your brand, and what you do. And know this is not a huge revelation here, but it's underappreciated. But what makes that distinction is to really be a good speaker to where you are delivering on the talk itself, and it leads to future opportunities for you. And then the third layer is scaling booked. And that's how you really connect public speaking to your brand. And that's obviously more of a down the line type of, type of goal and focus specifically with getting booked. And the first step really is getting more clarity on why it is that you want to book speaking engagements often. I shouldn't say often, but sometimes this comes from a place of either ego or it comes from a place of. This just seems like the next logical step in the process. And if you view it in that way, you're likely not going to approach the speaking engagement and the whole process the right way. You're likely going to, you're likely going to build a talk and an idea based around you and your accomplishments and what you have to offer and all these things, as opposed to a place of providing real value and real experience for an audience. And so if the real reason is that you want to grow, you want, you have a powerful message that you feel you need to share and you want to amplify that message, you want to provide more value, you want to reach more people with that message. Those are much better starting points. Those are much better places to, to operate from. And so really doing self audit of why it is that you are wanting to speak and to get on stage and to book, to book speaking engagements, the next piece is figuring out what your message really is and where. I see a lot of coaches and a lot of people in general go wrong with this as it pertains to public speaking. And we'll take our industry, of course, as the. As the example. I've been in the industry for close to 15 years. You've been in the industry. I don't know the exact number, but yeah, long. A long time as well. You know, a lot of things. You could speak to a lot of different things. And when coaches are selecting the topic that they're going to reach out to events with that they're going to try and speak with, they will typically pick a topic that they think an audience is going to receive well. And obviously you want topics that there's interest and an audience excitement about. Don't get me wrong, that's important. But if it's not something rooted in what really matters to you, you're not going to really show up for that talk. In the same way, you're going to deliver that talk a couple times, you're not going to really rehearse the talk much, you're going to give it a few times and then you're going to move on to the next topic. And that's the other piece that I see done in my opinion. Incorrectly is jumping around topics. And when you do that, you don't really get the opportunity to fine tune and really deliver something exceptional in any one given topic or area. You don't become very well known in any domain for a topic. You're not building something that's really referable because people don't know what they're getting from you. If you look at the top three places that referrals or the top three places that event hosts will find speakers, number three is a referral from someone else that they, that they know. I heard this person speak. You should consider them for your event. Number two is another event host. So I host events in the industry, others that host events in the industry. For example, Andrew Coates is a good friend. I was just at his event a few weeks ago. We talk very regularly about speakers, people we've hosted for events, so recommendations from another event host. And then number one is the event organizer or person making the decision. They themselves have heard the person speak. I sit in and I'm attending an event and this happened at Andrew's event a couple weeks ago. I was in the audience, heard someone speak. I was like, I want them for Raise the Bar. I want them to speak at Raise the Bar. That's the number one place. But if I'm experiencing somebody jumping around all these different topics and all these different deliveries, if I'm thinking about them for Raise the Bar, I don't know what I'm getting. I can't be sure. Versus, that's a signature talk and idea. I want that, I want that for the community. And so really having a clear emphasis on what you want to talk about, what you want to focus, that is built around your message. And so what is your, what is your message? Your message is rooted in the thing that matters to you the most. It's, it's not your content, it's your, it's about you. And your message is what really sticks and what really connects to me. It's a combination of the things that you're, you're passionate about, that you feel the most amount of purpose for. That ideally is rooted in some of your own personal stories and experiences. And when you find those things and you have that idea that matters most. This shift happens to going from, oh, this is just a topic that I enjoy speaking about or I think is valuable and I'll deliver it to, this is a incredibly powerful message that I think can change the world or change a certain pocket of the world. And I need to get it out there and get it out there as impactfully as possible. And so being able to have that focus and develop that, that really signature idea is the starting point is really when you have that, it becomes a lot more clear of where you can then go and take that, that talk where you can, can put that talk out into the world. And when it comes to where you find those opportunities, it's a combination of tapping into your own existing network. Not in a transactional way, not in a, hey, look at me, I speak now and I have this great talk, let me speak at your event. But making more people in your network aware of what it is that you're doing and trying to emphasize. There is of course, many events in our industry that have a application process and a proposal process that, that you can ultimately go through. And so really it's just getting a few of those initial opportunities. But if you have something that is a topic that matters to you a lot, and you spend a lot of time practicing, and you spend a lot of time rehearsing, and you spend a lot of time emphasizing the delivery and the experience, you create something that will lead to future opportunities. One talk will lead to the next will lead to the next.

So in your opinion, do you think the skills of you, for example, being a guest on a podcast or being a guest on a YouTube or some type of collaborations, is that a good first step for someone that hasn't potentially had experience yet? And then as they go through the application process, or they go through their existing network, or they even host their own event and invite other event hosts to come, do you think that those skills are transferable and could be a good starting point for someone who's trying to book, get more speaking gigs?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think if you're, if you're approaching it, I think there's a few things you have to consider with that. Again, if you have that, that core idea, that big idea that, that matters to you the most, and you're clear on that, you can take that idea and, and focus with you, no matter the context. And I always say that the best signature ideas are the ones that you can deliver in a two minute conversation with someone you meet at an event and you can deliver it for 60 minutes on stage. It's just how much you actually include in support of that. And so podcasts can be a great medium to that. Or being a guest on a podcast where you're sharing that same message, you're, you're rooted in that same message. It's just a different, a different deliverable. Right. It's just deliverable in a. In a different way. So I absolutely think it's. It's a great starting point. It's also a way to build some additional capital and reputation when people see that you are on podcast. One of the other things too that I think is valuable to address is understanding that when event posts are booking speakers and they're considering speakers, they're considering multiple things. And the acronym for this is, it's called fee. So it's fee. So it's fame, entertainment and expertise. And a lot of times perspective speakers or aspiring speakers in our industry or otherwise, we'll only look at the fame side of things. Well, I don't have a large social media following. I'm not somebody who's very well known. I don't have that level of fame. And so I'm not likely going to get booked for speaking engagements. Fame does matter. Notoriety in the industry matters. It absolutely does. But it's not the only place to secure opportunities if you really lean into the delivery, and this is where, again, the delivery is so incredibly important. But you lean into the delivery where it's creating an experience that makes people feel. Remember that information alone doesn't make people feel. Reaching them and moving them emotionally does. Information is never going to drive people to take action. Reaching them and moving them emotionally will. So if you create an experience with your talk and you take on the expertise side of things, everybody's a subject matter expert to some degree if you've been doing something for a while. But you can take those same things around subject matter and deliver it in a little bit of a different way that challenges the status quo or implores people to think how to think differently as opposed to just do this, this and this. If you do a combination of those things, you're able to secure speaking engagements. You're able to get more of your message out there without being famous or exceptionally well known. And as you're able to do that, you start to build more of the notoriety and more of the fame and recognition.

Good. So now you mentioned the signature talk and coming up with, you know, having that signature talk or that signature idea. What would you recommend or how would you recommend someone go about discussing discovering what is that signature talk and how do they decide whether or not this could be something that could be part of their signature talk?

Yes, absolutely. It's a good question. I think it's rooted again in what matters to you the most. So if you think about, if you think about all the things that you could get out into the industry and you could reach as many people as possible with. Which of those things do you feel would have the greatest amount of impact? Which of those things would you have would you feel the greatest amount of fulfillment for? And that's a really great place to start spending time with some of your own stories and experiences, unpacking really what you feel your, your passions and purpose are. And it's important to distinguish between passion and purpose. I think these get lumped together very often. Your passions are dynamic, your passions can change. Your purpose is more rooted. Your purpose is what you genuinely feel is, is your role and what you're able to do best. And speaking is an amplification of that purpose. So your signature talk and idea is how do you amplify the best parts of who you are? How do you amplify the best parts of what you feel your purpose is? I give myself as an example, as I mentioned in the intro, I spent a lot of time talking about sleep and educating about sleep and now I'm focused on public speaking skills. Those two things are not, they're not very interconnected in any way. Those are two different passions that have been dynamic and have changed. But I genuinely feel, and I have felt this for a while, that my purpose lies in educating, having the opportunity to educate, to take information that's out there and, and package it for people differently in a way that they can connect with. I feel that that is my purpose. And so both sleep and public speaking have served that purpose. So that the purpose is the reason that you're on the journey. The passions fuel the journey along. They're the gas stations that you keep stopping at to fuel, to fuel the car. And if you look at the things that you have been passionate about, you can usually start to find some type of synergy between those things that can usually point you in the direction of your purpose if you don't already know what that is. And this is a, it's a, it's a lot of self reflection. It's spending time with that. But again, I genuinely feel that if you do that, you're going to land on something that matters a lot more and that you're genuinely excited about getting to speak more on and to share and to put out into the world versus this is just some specific programming strategy that I learned that can be valuable for some coaches and I'm going to try and speak about that. There's, there's not going to be the same feeling attached to it and people are not going to feel that same energy and enthusiasm for the topic.

So true. And then you won't be able to rinse and repeat it because that's what you're going to do as you continue to book your gig.

You can't, you can't quickly, you can't hit quick, quickly hit eject on, on it. Right. You can't abandon it where it's like if it's just this moving topic or seemingly random topic, you can just immediately jump to the next, to the next thing. And because one of the other things too, and this is maybe thinking of public speaking more as, as the long, the long game. But what. One of the things that really, really, really differentiates good speakers, great speakers from say, average speakers is in how they prepare and how they rehearse. If you look at the vast majority of how people prepare for a talk, they're putting together their slides up until the last minute and they are in their hotel room or in their room and they're just kind of reading through the slides loosely versus actually performing the talk and doing multiple iterations of it and getting feedback. And the rehearsal process for a talk shows in how you show up for the talk, how you rehearse is how you perform. And when it's not a topic that you're genuinely passionate about, that you genuinely don't feel real purpose for, it's near impossible to show up and rehearse in the way that you actually should. It's just not, it's just not going to happen. But if it's something where, again, it's. That core message of this is so powerful, I need to share this message. You're more likely to go through the real rehearsal and preparation process. I always give the analogy of leading with purpose. And a core message is like being a lifeguard. You think about a lifeguard, they have one sole purpose, one sole job. Regardless of the circumstance. If somebody's drowning, they jump into the water to save the person who's drowning. Regardless of the weather, how cold the water might be, how come cross carry technique or whatever it might be, they have one sole purpose. When you're leading with a sole purpose around your talk and your idea, regardless of the circumstance, it's your job to get that message out there and reach more people with it.

You know, I'm so glad that you brought up rehearsing and you said specifically how you rehearse is how you perform because it always, it, it baffles me how many times people want to say, oh, I just want to be natural. I want it to be fluid. I wanted to you know, you know, when we're talking about rehearsing the conversation in a enrollment like a sales call or even a sales presentation, they're like, I'm just reading my notes because I want it to be fluid and natural. And I'm always saying to myself, I'm like, listen, would you go to a power lift meet and be like, all right, I'm going to rip up this, you know, 700 pound deadlift for the first time out of me. No, you wouldn't do right. Just like, also like actors, you know, actors, you ball your eyes out and you're so moved by words that they didn't write, by words that they delivered but didn't flow through them. So why do you expect to have the same impact when you're communicating and you've never practiced before?

A hundred percent. And, and here's the part of the irony as well, is that most of the things that people are after in terms of that natural, authentic feel come when you are genuinely prepared. If you think about this as a public speaker, if you are not genuinely prepared, there is zero percent chance that you're going to be present in the moment to connect with the audience and display that authenticity and realness that you want. The ability to improvise and the ability to connect with the audience comes as a result of the preparation. Because if you're not having to think about what you're saying next or think overly too much about your content, you're able to be there and in the moment. I always say, I call this the 8020 rule. In terms of how you're actually preparing and rehearsing and scripting your talk, 80% of what you're doing should be completely rehearsed. I like using the word scripted, but in a, in a sense, scripted, well rehearsed. You owe that to the audience. They're giving you your time, their time, often money, and their most valuable asset. Of course, in time you owe it to that audience to be that level of prepared. But then you keep the 20% to actually interact with the audience to go in a different direction. But you're only able to allocate that 20% when you are very well prepared. I, I always say, and I challenge anybody who is genuinely aspiring to speak, that the filter that you use for this in terms of level of preparation is, let's say you're about to speak at an event and the AV tech comes running and sprinting over to you and tells you, there's no way we can get your slides up. Our whole system just Crashed. Can you still deliver something of value to the audience? Can you still connect with them in a meaningful way? If not, there's a gap in your level of preparation. I'm not saying it'd be ideal. It's valuable to have the visuals and things to support. It's a layer. But if you're not able to, if you feel that you need to just go backstage and just disappear in that moment, you haven't approached it with the right layer level of preparation.

So. Good. So now just to shift gears a little bit, you had mentioned fame, you talked about fee fee, and you talked about, you know, fame and reputation. In your opinion, do you think, you know, I've heard people say before, like, oh, you know, first impressions really matter. What if, you know, and then they'll start to get super in their mind about, I. It has to be perfect because if I mess this up, then my reputation is going to be ruined. Can people change their reputation? How long do you think that that takes?

Absolutely, I absolutely think you can change your. Your perception. You can change your reputation. I think, I think context, of course, matters of what type of reputation. Where are you? Have you genuinely, you know, screwed people over or, or things like that, like those type of reputation things. But in terms of, of how you share the information, let's say you have a speaking opportunity that doesn't, doesn't necessarily go well to change your perception. It's just the next opportunity that you have. And I think that is a valuable perspective to have because I think one of the other things to really remember that is valuable around an audience and an audience's psychology, so to speak, is remembering that the audience always wants you to win. They want you to succeed. No one has ever gone to an event, whether it be in our industry or otherwise, saying, you know, I really hope this next speaker is absolutely terrible and provides me absolutely no value. Nobody goes to a theater performance and says, wow, I really hope that the, the actor forgets their lines and it creates a really awkward moment for everybody involved. Right. But we sometimes have this perception of an audience that they're like, waiting for us to mess up or for the next thing that we're gonna screw up. If they're just waiting with a bucket of tomatoes underneath, like, ready to. Ready to fire. Right? And it's just, if we win, they win. And so there are genuinely pulling for you and they want you to succeed. And the other thing is that the audience doesn't in any way want perfection. They don't connect with per perfection. And, and so this also kind of ties into storytelling and stories as we, we haven't. Which one thing we haven't talked about yet. But a lot of times why people don't tell stories and they don't tell stories on stage is because they don't feel that they have big enough stories and valuable enough stories. But people don't connect often or relate to the big moments. Let's say there's this massive tragedy that's happened in your life. Likely the vast majority of the audience hasn't experienced that exact tragedy. So they can't relate to that specific thing versus just these day to day, week to week personal stories and experiences that you're sharing that become much more relatable. And the same applies to just your approach overall, where if you are more vulnerable and authentic and not trying to be perfect. There's a, there's always a balance to this because I, I always do emphasize that there is a performative nature to, to speaking and you, you, in a lot of ways, you have to appre. Approach it as such because without that, it just becomes a set of you sharing information. You're just a lecturer. But being too performative, where there's no substance and where it's obvious that it's just this incredibly staged performance is not something people relate to either. So it's, it's finding this balance of the performative elements with these, these practical elements as well.

So, you know, sometimes when people hear that, they think, well, I'm just not talented. No one's going to pick me because I'm not talented. So curious. Is it talent? Is it skill? Is it a combination of both? Are you born with it?

You are definitely not born with it. Nobody was born a great speaker. There are, of course, certain things that can come a bit more natural to other people. There are certain things that were. That they have less barriers, internal barriers in the way to, to lean into. But nobody that you've ever heard speak who you thought, wow, that person's really dynamic or wow, they have a really great presence or they're a really great speaker, was born that way or was just given that talent or skill. If you go back again your voice, you can change your voice. I challenge anybody. We're, we're on a podcast here in 2024. I challenge. Unfortunately, they're out there. Find podcast appearances of me in 2017 and 2018. It is a completely different person, unrecognizable in terms of my voice. You absolutely can change these, these things. They are a set of skills. It is you Are you're not lacking the ability, you're blocking the ability. I love, I love that and I think that explains that really well. That's from my, my friend Martin Rooney. You don't lack the ability, you block the ability. There are stories that you tell yourself, there are things that you tell yourself that, that hold you back from, from leaning, leaning into the ability to speak. But public speaking as a whole, it's a set of skills. When you're sharing your own personal stories and experiences, those are things that literally no one else can share. There's literally your, your personal stories and how you make them relatable to a message into a piece of content is something that literally no other human being in the world can do. Because it's your story and your context and your context. Someone might be able to, to try and rip it off but they can't deliver it in the same way that you can.

So good. So good. Okay, so I want to be mindful of your time. Where, where do you recommend someone start? Like let's say they're curious, like where. What's the first step?

I think a really, really valuable first step is some self awareness around where you are currently speaking and being honest about that. Especially if you're looking at this as a long term skill and that long term skill can be something you take on stage or again it's just being able to just share ideas more effectively or whatever the end game is. If you're really looking at it as a long term play and trying to create real behavior change in your speaking, you gotta know where you're starting. And so we call this the speaking mirror. And what you do is you record yourself speaking on a topic really at this point of any interest, a topic that you want to talk about. And you record yourself speaking on zoom for five minutes. And when you have this recording you're going to do a few things. You're going to place the few different mirrors, you're going to firstly place a auditory mirror. So you are going to turn the camera off or not look at the camera and you are going to just listen to your voice. What does your voice communicate? Is it engaging? Is there a lot of filler words and non words? Does this, the pace seem like it's the same? Does it feel like there's not enough volume where you can't even really hear yourself speaking? Take an honest look of the, the voice component to what you're saying. The next is you're going to do a visual mirror. So watching the video back on mute and of course, when you're recording on zoom, you're not getting the full picture. If you can record yourself speaking on a, on a camera or record yourself speaking in full view, you get the full picture a lot better. But taking note of your body language. What is your body language communicate? Does it convey confidence? Does it convey uncertainty? Are your hands supporting what you're saying? Or they may be in contrast to what you're saying? Just take note of what your body language is communicating. And then the last is transcribing the video. And there's descript. There's lots of these transcriptions out there and available. Most, if not all of them will give the option to remove filler words and non words. You're not going to check that box and you're going to take note of how often these filler words and non words pop up. And these are really important. They're, I would say underappreciated, but they really take away from the clarity of your message, the clarity and effectiveness of what you say. They are Verbal clutter.

What are some.

Got a lot of clutter. What's that?

I was in I. What are some examples of filler words?

Okay, so I, and I think I. I'm at least I am the only one that I've heard heard say it this way. But I actually distinguish between filler words and non words. They get lumped together and they sometimes show up similarly. But I do think there's a distinction in when they show up. And so I actually differentiate the two. Filler words are words used to fill the space and fill the. The transitions. When we don't practice how we transition from one point or idea to the next, this is where we see things like, right, okay, you know, think of pausing as a way to add verbal punctuation, as a way to bridge from one thought or idea to the next. Non words are the ums and ahs. These can happen on transitions as well, but these typically tend to happen when you're speaking more quickly than your brain and ideas can actually keep up with. When you're speaking too quickly and you haven't spent time really practicing the delivery and the flow of your ideas and the pace, and you get ahead of yourself, the ums and oz start to start to show up a lot. The analogy I always give for this to really highlight things like filler words and non words and how impactful they can actually be is to think about your message as your favorite drink. So I'll ask you, since it's you and I, what's your favorite drink can be alcoholic or otherwise. Your just your favorite, your favorite drink.

I had two things pop, and I'll, I'll say coffee. That was first that came to mind.

Okay. So if you're someone who likes coffee, there is a, there's a distinct flavor to coffee. There's the coffee beans. There's. There's, there's good coffee and there's very bad coffee. There's a, there's a flavor to, to coffee. That flavor is the clarity, impactfulness of your message. That flavor, any drink, whether it be coffee or otherwise, what happens when you place ice cubes in that drink and they stick around for too long? Watery becomes diluted. Right? The, the, the ice cubes melt and it becomes diluted. This is what happens to your message and the impactfulness of the things that you say when there's too many ice cubes in your glass. And ice cubes are not varying your rate of speech. They are not using enough volume. They are the presence of too many filler words and non words. They are things in your body language that communicate something differently altogether. And so being mindful of and part of why we do the speaking mirror is to observe these ice cubes in your glass. I always say it's. You're trying to find the, the hypothetical spinach in your teeth that everybody else sees and experiences that you don't know is there until you place a mirror there.

So funny. You know, in the list that you gave, I'll share that. Number one. As a former actor, I was an actor, I've done a lot of this stuff. So number one was actually very hard for me to do. Listen to my own voice and listen to it. It was, it took me a long time to just kind of get okay with that for sure. And what was interesting for me is for me, I noticed that when I start to lose my train of thought is that I'll slow down and, or I'll sometimes sing words to extend it. And I'm like, beverly, stop. What are you doing?

That is, that's interesting. Yeah. And again, everybody has their, their things that they do habitually and everybody also has. I always say one of the things. And the value of doing these mirrors is you start to pick up things you can lean into and improve. And everybody also has what I call their, their speaking dominoes. Everybody has. And we, we've seen this. I and I host in person workshops and we have a virtual academy. We do. Everybody has two or three things that when they. And they can be challenging for them. To do. But when they do those things creates a domino effect into every other aspect of how they speak. They. It almost as if they transform into different, becoming a different person. Somebody who has never used a lot of volume and always speaks really quietly. When they just increase their volume two or three ticks, it adds life to their voice. There's more energy in their voice. They're more expressive, their facial expressions change, their body language becomes stronger. It's. Everybody has their, their dominoes and so it allows you to find those things that are. It's the, the old. Like everybody says in, in business, that's the, the 20% of the things that you do that give you 80% of the results.

This reminds me of one of the things I always say. You're literally one rep away from maximum impact, period. But you're not going to do it. You're not. You won't get there without the rep. A hundred percent. So Nick, this has been amazing. Thank you for pouring into me. Thank you for pouring into my community. For those of you who want to connect with you, Nick, where are some of the best places that I can send them to go deeper to learn more about working with you? Where should I send them?

Yeah, so in a, in a public speaking context, the, the Instagram at Impact Education events is, is the, the best hub to just reach out and, and stay on the radar for things that we do. Workshops and public speaker academy and a few other exciting things that we have coming down the pipeline and. Yeah.

What's coming up?

So I am going to be putting together a. A membership. It's a, a speaking. Speaking club in, in a sense and it's, it's essentially like a, a gym membership but for speaking skills. So instead of improving your fitness, you're improving your speakness and we'll, we'll have some really, really cool stuff that'll be included. We're going to be putting that out before the end of the year and it's, it's a, a lower barrier to entry to really lean into speaking skills. And it really, what I, what I emphasize is it's a community will be a community of people who want to use these skills to show up more where it matters the most in their life, be it personally or professionally.

So good. And we'll make sure that we link all of that up in the show notes. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and glad that we finally made it happen.

Me too.

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