What Can We Learn from Someone Who Claims, 'I Know about Pain'? Presentation Review 16: Clint Vosloo

Do you struggle with fear, doubt, and worry in your public speaking? Do you find it difficult to connect with your audience and deliver presentations that leave a lasting, positive, unforgettable impact? If yes, then let's dive in the world of public speaking and presentation skills with your host, Eric Edmeads. Welcome to the Unforgettable podcast with guest host David Wood.

Your host, Eric Edmeads, with my co host, David T.S.

Wood.

So we are doing another speaker review, speech review, and this is a very good one. I mean, I guess they all are, but this is Clint, and Clint is just an outstanding guy, and I think he's going to show us here powerful delivery. And it's. One of the things I like about him is that he has this very strong, masculine presence and he delivers with power, but he's able to deliver. I don't know how to put this, but softly. And that's. That's an art form. You know, that having that. That presence and the size and the voice and then still being able to deliver a heartfelt message. It's going to be good.

Yeah. The vulnerability with him is. Is incredible. So, you know, every guy watching or listening, just listen to how he delivers this, because it's something we can all learn that is that it's kind of like the. The big heart and the strength all combined beautifully together. Right.

This vulnerability comes up here. I know a lot of people talk about vulnerability in the context of what Brenni Brown did with her famous TED talk, but I've heard a lot of people say, well, vulnerability is, like, easier if you're a woman. And I'm like, well, I don't think it has to be that way at all. And this is a really good example of vulnerability. Clint is a strong, masculine South African man. Like, you know, and culturally, I'm also from South Africa. I can tell you it's not a culture that, you know, that rewards vulnerability so much. And he shows it to us here. So let's. Let's roll.

So I'd like to believe I know a thing or two about pain. Jennifer. Ladies, considering that childbirth has been on the table, I humbly concede. But I still like to believe that I know a lot about pain. I grew up in a part of South Africa. Very, very interesting time. I don't know if anyone's seen the Truman show before, but it was pretty much like that, except there were a lot of very angry Afrikaans men try to keep us in that bubble, not to pop that. Long time ago, I was a professional rugby player. I used to get paid, paid money to play rugby. For those who don't know rugby, it's a bit of an idiotic sport, to be honest. And the whole concept between this training strategies and all this stuff, if you want to win, you got to physically dominate people. I know a lot about pain. My dad was a national rugby hero, translated into South African God. He taught me to learn about pain. I think I wanted to play soccer when I was or football. Apologies when I was about five. That lasted one training session. Rugby it was. I remember coming off my first game and I was injured, but looked up and down. Mom and dad, you're not bleeding. Get back on there. Came with blood, you don't add stitches. Get back on there. I knew about pain from that moment. I started putting a shield on this armor. Every year another layer. Armor, armor, armor, armor. I used a mantra like I'm bulletproof. One of my favorite lines, you see that wall? I run straight through it for you. I knew about pain on the way. I was actually thinking of the story and it's quite bizarre that I actually thought of the story. But let me just preface this first. When I played rugby, I think I spent more of my time talking to the opposition than actually playing rugby. I had a lot to say. And this large Afrikaans man didn't take fancy to what I had to say to him. He didn't appreciate my commentary. So one day I was pinned under a ruck and he decided to use my head as a soccer ball. He kicked me so hard that all my teeth came through my mouth guard. I don't know if anyone's been concussed before, but you kind of wake up and you see the leaves and it's this weird, weird moment. But all I heard was my dad's voice in my head. Cowboys don't cry. You're not a mophie. Get up. So what did I do? Kept on playing. I was a captain of the team. Got a game to win. I understand pain. I've broken eight of my toes, had five knee operations, ripped my quad off my knee, ripped my kneecap in half, fractured a shoulder blade, put a hole in the chin, had a boot take my ear off. And as non actually rugby related injury. I've had my whole face taken off while I'm awake. That's a completely different story for another day. I understand pain. Cape Town's a beautiful place. It's the most sensational place in the world. And there's a specific path called so a specific path called Chapman's Peak. It's this Mountain pass that goes high up. It was actually built by the Italian prisoners many a year back. The Atlantic Ocean below, Super, super blue water, freezing cold. I'm a crazy surfer and I spent hours in the ocean. I loved the ocean. It was my happy place. But not this day. The last thing I remember was seeing my kids. And they were one or two at the time. You know, if I know what I believe now in terms of spirit and energy. When I walked out the door to go for a run up Chapman's Peak, they knew that something was off. The way they looked at me, they knew that something was up. The next thing I knew, I was at the top of that mountain and I was standing on the cliff. Now here's the funny thing about me is I pretty much remember everything. I got almost perfect recall every conversation, every leaf, every blade of glass on that way up that mountain pass. Everything. To this day, I don't know how I got there. I have absolutely no high doctor that day. It was cold, it was stormy. A month or two before the love of my life chose to go with another man. I didn't know what to do. I phoned my parents. For the first time in my life, I didn't know what to do. I had no idea. I phoned my mom and said, mom, what do I do? I need to go speak to someone. She says to me, you do not go speak to a shrink. Only people who are weak go to a shrink and you are not weak. I don't know what to do. A few days later I was in my parents house, flustered. I needed somewhere to just go. I lay on the floor. I wanted to start crying. I started crying. My mom comes up to me and says, keep quiet, the neighbor's going to hear you. I don't know what to do. So I went to the therapist. But I knew there were consequences. When I was 18, I did something my parents didn't want. Moved out of home. They didn't speak to me for 18 months. God, I love my wife. And I wanted that marriage to work so badly. So I spoke to a therapist. That led to the moment three days before that when my parents ultimatum be. There's a place in Cape Town called Newlands Forest. Tall prine, tall pine trees. We went for this meeting with my parents and they gave me an ultimatum. Either throw your wife on the pavement or we cut you out. I chose to stay in my family. My dad pulled my mother screaming out of it, screaming out of the car as I drove off. That was the last time I saw My mother. As I stood there looking down at the dark Atlantic ocean, I knew what real pain was. My heart was shattered. I was in a million pieces. I had all the cars, the houses. I was 30 at the time. You've heard this so many times tonight, it's not important that stuff. All I wanted was unconditional love. All I wanted was someone to choose me. If it wasn't for my kids, I would have stayed on that cliff for that day. Thank goodness. I stepped back, lay on the floor, and started crying. Cried and cried and cried and took off my armor. That day, the one big lesson for me was to give your children unconditional love. And the lesson to all of you is everybody does unconditional love, especially your children. Thank you.

Clint, my brother. I just want to talk about what you did in the beginning, because it was. It was really beautiful. You know, a lot of people get absorbed by their story, but the fact you recognized every woman that's given birth, but you did it in such an honorable way, and that's the word that I have for you, is honor. You have this. And you. You bowed and. Because you're going to talk about pain, but you wanted the women in the room, and it was such a subtle beauty about you, but that. That ripple all the way through. This morning, when I heard your story, I had a shudder go down my spine, and I was interested to see if it would happen again. And it did, which is very rare to be able to tell a story again. When you introduced me to your father and I went back into my own story, and I was able to bring some of that. Well, a lot of that to bear. And I think great storytelling is like that. We come along with our story with you while we listen to you, and so it was fabulous. Thank you.

Thank you, Lind. I really loved how you kept doing the callback to I Know About Pain. It's a really neat style, and I think it's something that you adopted very well, and I think it's a great style for you.

That was so good. And you. You. You really do have that gorgeous energy of, like, I'm holding this space, and everyone in this room is safe as long as I'm standing here. And that is really excellent. That's the bubble. You created it. We're inside it. We're enjoying it. We're watching, we're listening, and. And we are opening up windows into our own perspective of the way things work. And you drop it with a really powerful point. You are a very powerful man, and you know what's great about it, you don't ever tell anybody. You don't. You don't need to show it. You don't need to. You don't need. There's no macho about you. There's just grounded, solid, masculine strength. Well done.

Thank you.

That's powerful. It's a very important message, and I think it's a perspective that some people won't naturally arrive at unless they do face big existential questions like a near death experience or a suicide contemplation. It's like many people won't bump into that and so they won't get that epiphany unless somebody like Clint stands up and shares the story.

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things that, like in the beginning he's talking about pain from mainly sports and rugby, but then how he bows and he honors the women in the room who have given birth to a child. And just that honorable. I love the word honor. I think that's why when I'm even hanging out with him in the restaurant, you get that sense of his honor. And I love the repetition of I know what pain is. He keeps bringing back to that central message, which means, you know, months and years later, you're still going to remember what he was talking about. So it was really powerfully done.

Yeah. That marking, it's often used in comedy. You know, you crack a little bit of a joke and then you can go back and recall that. But it can equally be done with poignant. And he's done that very well as he's marked this out. He also uses a very good voice quality. He delivers a solid tone that's very easy to listen to. But what really punctuates it well is the pauses. He just, he. He leaves you time to think about what he said.

Yeah. I wanted to touch on one other thing, which I. Or maybe two. But I want you to talk about the bubble, because he does it really well. He keeps you in the bubble. The second part, how some people, when they get into descriptions, they can overdo it. And they, you know, it's like one day I was. There was this guy, but how he describes his father, it's in so few words. But you and I knew. And everyone listening knows exactly what his father was like just by that small description of how his father spoke to him.

Right.

You know, there's big debate about this idea, but there, years ago, there was some study that showed that only 7% of your overall communication was made up of your words. And then I think it was 38% was your tone of voice, and then the balance was your physiology. And of course, there's. I know the minute we mention this, somebody's going to go in the comments and go, that science was debunked. But the truth is, that study was on subjects under stress, and that's why it's been debunked, because it was specifically subjects under stress. But it's still a very important subject because any audience is actually under stress to some degree. That's the truth. Like, when you walk in and you're standing in front of that audience, they're all wondering, is this gonna be worth my time? They're wondering that. And so they're a little bit under stress. And if you rely only on your words, then you're missing 93% of the communication with that audience. And one of the reasons I think Clint was able to do that so well is that he used very few words, but he used emotion. And so every one of those words had more power because of facial expression, because of tone of voice, because of actual tension in his body. And to your comment about the bubble, the bubble is something that we talk a lot about at Speaking Academy, and it's. It's. It. The basic idea is that the speaker's job, to some degree, is to create a bubble. And the story and the experience and the lesson is inside that bubble, and the speaker should avoid popping that bubble. And there are many ways that the speakers pop the bubble. One is by, like, calling out time warnings, I got five minutes left. Is that how you know? And the bubble gets broken. But Clint, like, builds this bubble and inflates it and holds it, and you lose track of time when you're in it. And he does such a great job of that. What I want to remind you here is that some of the stories and life experiences that you've had might be painful for you, and it might be difficult to share them. Those are probably the most valuable ones. If they're difficult for you to share, there's a reason for that, and that's because there's a charge about it. That's because there was an emotional journey there. And your willingness to be vulnerable, your willingness to share your story with people, could be exactly the thing they needed to hear to make the shift that they needed in their life to pass through or break through whatever was holding them back. So I really want to challenge you to think about that, both for the events of your past and the ones that are upcoming. What is the value in this for somebody else? Don't be selfishly afraid to share your message because the tiny little bit of embarrassment or the tiny little bit of shame that you might feel about that pales in comparison with the incredible healing power that your story might have for a large number of people. So remember, get out there and share your life experience. Make life better for everybody.

So that's it for today's episode of Unforgettable. Head on over to itunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on itunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a private $25,000 VIP day with Eric Edmeads himself. Be sure to head on over to Unforgettable show and pick up a free copy of Eric's gift and join us on the next episode.