What Should be Prioritized: Audience Connection or Performance? Presentation Review 17

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 Edmies. Welcome to the Unforgettable podcast.

Sonia, thank you so much for being here. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I'm really, I appreciate you being willing to come and play.

Me too. I mean, we've spent a lot of time together, but we've actually not actually sat down. Well, maybe one time we had a one on one at dinner a couple years ago, but it's been a while, so I'm happy to be here for background's sake.

We're at the Transformational Leadership Council event that we're, we're members of this sort of mastermind. And, and so to a large degree, this podcast was kind of born out of the idea that, I mean, I've been coming to these meetings since 2008 and the number of times I've walked away from a dinner like the one we had, or I've walked away from a conversation, you know, in the hot tub or on the, you know, on the boat or whatever, and I thought, oh, if only we'd recorded that. And so to a large degree, this podcast is sort of about that. It's about having a conversation that's interesting to us and maybe hopefully interesting to people that would listen in. So anyway, let's go. So for the most part, our members and listeners and followers and what have you are curious about, you know, in a sense, public speaking or training influence, writing books, getting their message out into the world. And so let me start where I typically like to start with this is at what point in time in your life did you feel like you had a message that you wanted to share with the world?

Well, I started my first workshop when I was 14.

Wow.

I know, Isn't that wild? And the reason I started it is because I grew up. My message is to teach people you have six senses and that six sense is reliable. Up until the workshop, people were relying on me to function as their sixth sense. And I just thought, oh, you're so lost without this. How can you, how can you function in the world without your inner guidance? That's like being in, on the highway at night, in the dark or in the jungle. So I thought, rather than me being the fish, I'll give them the fishing pole. So at 14, and here's my first group of students. I had a woman that I would do intuitive consulting with. She brought her truck driver brother who was from out of town, and his local mistress. And I was too young to understand what that was, but it sounded okay. I wasn't discerning. I was just glad I had them there. And they came for six weeks every Sunday when he came on his Sunday rotation and I winged it, but I was trying my full darndest to give them the skills to listen to their guidance. And he told me at the end, he said, I came here because I didn't want to get caught with my mistress. But I learned a lot more than that. So that was my beginning.

You were the alibi.

And I was teaching him. I was teaching him about being about your energy communicates as much as your words. So if you are hiding. Took me a while to catch on at 14 that he was. He was being inappropriate. But I thought I said, you're broadcasting who you are anyway, so you might as well either tell the truth or find a better cover up. Because when we communicate, it's whole body communication. It's not just words. That was when I first started. That was my first, my first inspiration.

It's funny, I don't know where I heard this story, but it was similar. Is that somebody's talking about, you know, doing like couples therapy, sex therapy work, and this couple kept coming back and back and back and they were making all this progress and, you know, like, and it was like, let's say interactive therapy. And they were making all this progress. And finally the sex therapist says, look, guys, you guys seem to have this handled. I don't mean to be here anymore. I mean, unless you have some fetish about being watched. And he goes, no, no, you're just a lot cheaper than a hotel room. So it's their alibi as well.

I love that.

I love that.

Being creative, being creative.

So intuition, I think, is a fascinating topic. And frankly, as a speaker, I think intuition is one of the most important skills that you need to have. Because any speaker who walks out with a fully prepared talk and simply gives it at the audience breaks connection, breaks authenticity. So there has to be some level of intuition about how to guide your presentation and construct it.

Well, part of intuition is when you stop communicating. Roll to roll, I'm over here and you're over there and I'm going to speak at you and you start communicating soul to soul is like, my heart is going to connect with your heart, and we're going to have a genuine interaction. And audiences can Feel. I call it drive by eyes. If you are speaking roll to roll, and you're speaking to an audience, you have this drive by eyes. It's like this, and you're not looking at anybody. And the audience picks up on that. They will know if at any moment you're actually connecting. So they feel like you're speaking to me.

You know, as a kid, you know, 18, 19 years old, I started listening to Tony Robbins on tapes, as many of us did. And then I went to my first couple of workshops with him. And, you know, this is earlier on, they were still big rooms. There were still 2,000 people or something. But one of the things that I heard consistently from people is people would be walking around lunchtime going, there was this one moment when Tony was talking right to me. I'm like, Kate, there were 2,000 people in the room. The odds of that are pretty low. But it was a consistent feeling that people had. And I remember thinking that. And I was like, to be able to do that for my audiences. I want. I don't care if there's 10,000 people. I want the 10,000th person in the back of the room to feel like.

I spoke to them. And, you know, I really believe that they will feel your energy, if your energy is that you are trying to be when you're speaking. Here's what I noticed, because I've spoken a lot for 50 years, actually. People can tell if you're being interesting or interested.

Yeah.

And if you're being interesting, you're not a good speaker. Even if you aren't as savvy or wittier, but you're interested in truly supporting who's there. They feel it. And that is an intuitive, energetic exchange.

It's funny, I have a similar expression to that, but it's that you are far more interesting when you are interested.

There you go. So it's full circle.

Yeah. It's like I often use this dating metaphor, but it's like if a guy goes on a date and spends the whole time being interesting, but if he instead asks lots of questions, then at some point in time he's going to hear something that he can now match with that'll make him more interesting. So there's something about that empathetic, intuitive connection.

Totally. You know, the other thing that I think is super important is the idea that there's no them, there's just us.

Do you know that not every language has this. It's actually. It's one of my favorite things about English. I caught onto this early on in My speaking career because I was doing a lot of speaking in Europe and I was speaking all over Scandinavia, Northern Europe, and in English, we have the ability to say you to a single person and to an audience. In. In French, for example, you would say two to somebody, but you would say vu to the audience. Right. And so what I'm always telling people is, don't talk to the audience. Like, all of you, it's you, I'm talking to you. And in English, you can get away with that because you is you point. Yeah, it's a powerful thing. Many languages don't have that.

And the idea is that I'm talking to an us, and we are connected, and I am not talking to you as you're separate. And I'm hierarchically, slightly up here because that also doesn't transit. That doesn't translate energetically. If you say, okay, I'm talking to us, and you include yourself, maybe telling stories on yourself, sharing your own vulnerabilities, sharing your own truth about how you came to be in a place to share something, people are going to trust you more and believe and be willing to hear what you have to say than if you come across and you communicate as if I'm going to help you, but I'm good. And I think that, again, it's very subtle and slight, but people feel it.

So, okay, I think we've established and I think, well, that, you know, bringing an active sense of intuition to the audience and to the presentation is valuable. So that kind of brings for me a different thought process, because I've definitely noticed in my life there are some people who are attuned to their intuition. There's some people that are just like, walking around, stumbling around as if they have no sight. And I remember reading a book who. Who's by Shoot. I can't think of the author right now, but the book was called the Gift of Fear. And while it's not necessarily the of intuition we're talking about, as a presenter, what he spoke about was he interviewed many people who had been through, say, an assault or a mugging or a sexual assault or something like that. And he wanted to find out what their intuition had said to them prior. And in one of the stories, he's talking about a woman who got to her front door and she had groceries, and a guy came over and said, let me hold the door open for you. And her intuition said, no, I don't want to do that. But then she didn't want to be rude.

Rude training.

So she let him open the Door. Then she's like, tries to get the groceries back. And he goes, don't be silly, they're stairs. Let me carry them up there for you. Once again, she didn't want to be rude. Yeah. And, well, this culminates with him getting into her apartment and assaulting her. But then something happened, and this is really fascinating is she's sitting post assault on the couch, kind of in a daze, not knowing what's going on. And he goes, I'll be right back. And he closes the living room window. And then he goes to the bathroom. And in that moment, her intuition screams at her, get out of the apartment. Get out of the apartment. So she runs out of the apartment and runs past the bathroom door, runs out of the apartment and gets into the neighbor's apartment across the hall, locks the door. And it turns out the guy, when they eventually arrested him, he was actually. He'd killed a few people. He was. And so when she was interviewed, they're saying, like, wait a second now, why did you ignore your intuition?

Right.

And then why did you listen to it? And because eventually she did. And it turned out that there was something about the closing of the window that activated in her that he wanted to be able to keep the room quiet.

Yeah.

Which meant that he was planning for noise.

She got his intention.

Yeah.

And it was non verbal.

That's right. And it wasn't anything he said. It was one thing, but now. But again, what I'm curious about from your perspective, since you're in this intuition space, is, hey, why did she ignore her in her intuition like at 2 or 3 junctures? And then why did she eventually listen to it? And how can we train ourselves to listen more often?

Well, that is a. That is like the question. Because especially for women, women are taught to be submissive and to be polite. And if you speak up and you push back, that is not culturally perceived as an attractive quality or a feminine quality. That is perceived as, you're too much, you're rude, you're not feminine. So you get this inundated quality. And so unless you're already comfortable with being disapproved of, your automatic conditioning will justify ignoring your intuition. I call that being a member of the woulda, coulda, shoulda club. However, until the click of the window did she realize. Trapped click of the window. All of a sudden she snaps out of her conditioning into the reality of the moment. And then her intuition, because your strongest intuition is to save your life, that kicked her strongest intuition in and moved her physically.

Right. So her intuition earlier might have been, this is not good, but I don't want to be rude. She negotiated it away, but once it became life threatening, the desire to be polite was abandoned.

I did a whole series of workshops with a guy in Chicago, Detective Bittenbinder, and he had this program called Tough Target and invited me. And because it was on this same thing how women, their intuition was working all along, but they were not tough targets, they were soft targets because they were conditioned to deny how to take care of themselves and that the whole program was how to, to stop. And then I. There was this one episode where this woman had it. She was walking and she had a bad back and she was going just three doors, four doors down. But she was shuffling because she had just had this back surgery. She felt something behind her and her mind and conditioning said ignore, ignore. She took a few more steps and the steps followed her. Ignore, ignore. Then she decided to heck with this. She paused and the steps got fast and she turned around and screamed, get out of here, you're going to get in trouble. And this guy who had a knife threw it up in the air and ran away. And she said it took everything that goes against her nature and conditioning to do that. Just turn around and scream at them and catch him off guard. But she said she had been in this Tough Target program. And so that was when I really took this whole intuition even up a notch because it's a non negotiable quality and awareness to me in this world today. Whether you're trying to connect like in communication, protect like in situations where you are vulnerable and deflect. If you're about to make a decision that's going to take you down the wrong road, you have to pay, you have to be in your body and pay attention in all three. You have to be in your body, not in your head.

Okay. So when you talk about like women have been conditioned and I would say that there's a lot of truth to that and then I would also suggest that there's also a nature. And I think that women are generally more agreeable and men are generally slightly more disagreeable.

Containers.

Yeah. So there's a combination of, there's a little bit of nature and then you've got the nurture on top of that. I think about this a lot. Now. This is going to sound maybe a little over extreme, but I, I refuse to. Silly. But I refuse to lie to my little girl about Santa Claus. I just, I refuse to do that. And, and, and, and the reason I refuse to do that is that I remember as a child, my intuition screaming at me that this story was rubbish. I remember thinking, this is not possible that this guy's watching us all the time. It's not possible that the reindeer are. He can't. It's not right. And then. But then the world conspires against my intuition at this point. Like, my parents lie to me. They put out cookies, they eat them and pretend Santa ate them. Then NASA shows satellite pictures of. Satellite of Santa, and the whole world is conspiring to have me not agree with my intuition.

Here's where I would. Here's what I've done with my kids. As I told my children, the truth about Santa is he's a spirit. And it's the spirit of love for children. And he gives you in the spirit not. And that your parents deliver the message. So they grew up believing in Santa to this day as adult women. But we all recognize it's not a literal story.

Yeah, I think that's more or less what I've done with Zoe.

And that's, you know, to give them that this is a literal story. I support you in saying, you know what? That's not literally happening. Plus, if your kid challenges you and you lie to them, that scrambles their eggs or their trust in you. So I support you.

To my mom's credit, the day I finally figured it out, she stopped trying to deny it. And it was like. But as a child, I was angry. I felt like I'd been deceived.

I was looking for safety. And that's what I think. You know, I just did it. I just filmed a course with my daughter, who's now 35 and my granddaughter's now almost two and a half, on intuition with parents to teach their children that they have an inner sense. And it's all dependent on you as a parent being a safe and honest communicator. Because kids are honest. They honestly feel what's going on. And if you deny it, you cause them one of two things. They'll either feel unsafe because you're the parent and you're not telling them the truth, or they will doubt themselves, and then you compromise them for life. Going around abandoning myself because I was taught before I could even function rationally that I can't trust myself. So I really think that parents mean well. But the ultimate communication is you have six senses. You have one you can trust. Kids feel before they think they're hardwired into the energetic field. And it's your job as a parent to keep turning them Back to that saying, trust that and speak up about it. So how did your mom handle it?

All that happened is my Santa came walking toward the house, and he had the same shirt collar as my dad, and he had that same. My dad smoked these little cigar things, and Santa smelled the same. And I'm like, this is not right. And then interestingly, she's like, look, you're right. It's really your dad. And this, you know, it's a fiction, but let's maintain the fiction for your brother. And I found myself in a really tough place. There was the. There was the. I'm on the inside, right. I felt like I was on the inside, but there's another part of me that just felt like this is yucky and deceptive.

Yeah.

And I knew how I felt about when I. You know, and. But the bigger issue isn't even the deception. It's. It's. For me, it's more a matter of. My intuition kept telling me, this can't be true. And they kept telling me it was. They were gaslighting me. They gaslit me.

They were. They were. And they were gaslighting you because they had not expected their kid to be so bright and perceptive and vocal. So they were caught off guard.

It's funny. Do you know the elf on the shelf?

Yes.

So we were introduced to the elf on the shelf. So we introduced Zoe to the elf on the shelf. And of course, the rules are, the kid, you're not allowed to touch the elf. Right. And that's why it's magic when it moves and stuff. At the end of this last Christmas, Zoe, she comes up to me and she goes, the elves aren't real, are they? And I'm like, you know, I've already told her this, but she's not really listening. I go, zoe, the elves are very real. They're right there. You can see them. She goes, yeah, but they're not really magical elves. And I said this. I said, zoe, you and I know the truth about these elves, but if you let all the other adults know that, you know, they'll stop playing the game. And she went, okay. Got it.

Good negotiation.

Yeah.

And the other thing I think is so important. Well, here's the thing. In all, the context of what we're talking about is that we have more than the literal world to negotiate, that we are multi dimensional and we are interacting on many levels, and we have to change our perceptions to be more current with who we really are. We are lying to ourselves of saying the only part of us that exists is literal and physical. And right in front of me, there's a whole interaction between you and I in this space. When I was looking for you, couldn't find you. I'm beaming to find you. I mean, if humans start integrating that there is a part of us that is non physical, that's just as real, but not, not our physical senses can't perceive it, only our heart and our gut. But now even science has the cells in our skin. That's why you get the hairs on the skin, you know, on your arms come up or in the back of your neck. We are perceiving energy. And the big conspiracy and the big gaslight of the world is for us to be told that what we're feeling and energetically experiencing isn't real. That's the ultimate gaslight that we need to pull the plug on.

All right, let's take this to getting your message into the world. So what I have found is that there are some topics that are, that people are very open to, they're ready to go for. So if I'm teaching, say for example@businessfreedom.com, i'm speech, I might be teaching entrepreneurship how to increase profitability. I might be teaching marketing how to get new leads. The fact is there's a welcoming incoming audience of people that are looking for that answer. It's an easy answer to take to any audience. Then at the same time, you know, somebody else wants to have a conversation about deep meditative practices. Well, there are some corporate events where if you even say the word meditation, you're basically uninvited. Right. It's like you're at a velocity, they're not there. In fact, one of the talks that, that happened today was like psychedelics on how to transcend consciousness. That's not a topic you can take out to the broad.

Exactly.

You know, so I'm going to suggest that awakening intuition is pretty broad spectrum. I mean on some level it's a. You can take that to just about anybody. But the openness of it, how do you.

Well, here's what's happened. I started teaching this a long time ago and I was out in the field and treated like the pariah and dismissed and laughed at. And now it's evolved. So about 10 years ago, I'm not quite sure, I think it was after maybe longer, 9, 11, change the consciousness of the planet. And all of a sudden there's this huge corporate interest in safety and energetic safety. So all of a sudden the conversation I started getting requests to come and speak. But I had to contain it. And it was that tough target on my resume that said, okay, she worked with a detective with the Chicago Police Department. You know, she's legitimate. So I got to start speaking about protection and safety in the world. That was a big topic. And then it sort of inched toward leadership and that. I truly believe this, and I'm going to ask your opinion on this. The definitive quality between a leader and a manager, a good leader and a good manager is the leader will follow their intuition and take that risk. Where the manager will follow the rules but not take too many risks.

Yeah, I would agree. I think it makes a lot of sense that. And honestly, as a business owner, I hope that my managers can follow intuition to some degree, but within the constraints of their job. Whereas as the actual leader of the business, I'm going to.

You're the one taking the risk.

Yeah. And it ultimately does stop with me. So I think that's valid.

I really think in the last year, two years, I've evolved, too. I have also learned I have to speak the language. I have to be. I can't come in from the wilderness and start speaking to people who have not had any conditioning around. This is natural. So I've learned to change the language. When I began, I was teaching people to be psychic. Well, say that word and everybody runs away. So get rid of that. Then I went into intuitive. Okay, better, a little safer. Then I evolved it into the missing piece. Okay, now everybody's interested. Because I don't want to miss out. I have. I don't want to have fomo. So I am now using more language about. You know, our physiology has an ability, it's called proprioception, to pick up energy in the organs of the body. And that informs you, but it doesn't inform you verbally or through our outer senses. It informs you energetically. So once I started recognizing that I had to speak the language of the land. Everybody wants to learn. Now all of a sudden, everybody's interested. And I think it's kind of a zeitgeist. I think the world has changed. I've learned to speak differently. Plus, I think our world, because it's so unpredictable right now, people are more receptive to. I need everything I can. You know, I don't feel safe as I used to because the general condition of the world is not predictable or we can't go into autopilot with it anymore. So it's a whole thing. I think in five years, probably every business will want to have some element of this. What do you.

So I have a thought about how we cultivate it within ourselves. And I think that when I've shown this to clients, many of them have come back to me within a few months and going, okay, I trust myself again for the first time. And that's. That's a fundamental. The key. It's a fundamental aspect of self esteem, even. And so here's the basic principle is that I. If I think about it as. When I've done coaching and mentoring work with people, I have fired clients in the past because I'm not going to have the same conversation with them to. I might twice. But the third month in a row, if I'm having the same conversation and they're not taking action, then I'm afraid we're not a match. Right. Like, it's not going to work. And I suspect that intuition behaves like that. Intuition is this, like, internal coach that's like, got the antenna going up and it's saying, hey, you know, maybe don't do a deal with that person or don't date that person or don't. That's not the right, you know, story to tell in the, in the stage presentation you're doing. And if you don't listen to that voice, then that voice fires you. The voice gets. It tries harder. It tries less hard and less hard, and it gets quieter and quieter and quieter. And then the reverse of that I have found in my own life and with clients is that if I can get them for one day, you know, just to make a commitment for one day, if that little voice says, do something, I want you to do it. If it says, you know, hey, my intuition is, you need a glass of water right now, Just go get it. If for one day you listen to that inner intuition, even about the smallest thing, like a glass of water, then the next day that voice will be a tiny bit louder.

Yeah.

And then the next day it gets louder again and it's, you're building trust.

That's a really great way to build trust. I like that. I like that. One of the tools I use that's worked is I'll say to people, okay, here's the deal. You don't have to listen, but you do have to say it out loud. Because once you say it, you can't deny it. So every, aha, gut feeling, hunch, say it out loud. You can't let it roll around in your head. Say it out loud and then watch what happens once you say it. I said, you don't have to listen because 99% of the time, your intuition is telling you something that is a disruptor.

So I'm sitting, I'm sitting doing a job interview and my intuition says, not, not this person. So in the middle of the interview go, not this person.

Well, that's a bit radical. But you could say, you could just say even any volume, because it stops here. You can say, let me reflect, let me take a breath. And that's your code word for I'm feeling something. So. But the key that I have watched in teaching people is if you verbalize, when you name it, you claim it and you can't deny it. And the fact that you don't have to follow it lets people feel a little bit safer to acknowledge it because it is going to ask you most of the time to do something uncomfortable and different than what you're doing or difficult to explain or hard to justify. So at least if you get it out, see what happens. You only have to have it backfire on you once or twice and you're going to start saying and listen instead of.

You know, it is interesting that let's use the example of you're interviewing somebody and your intuition says no, but on paper they're the right person. Then you hire them even though your intuition said no, and three weeks later you're having to fire them or what have you. I can imagine that the kinesthetic feeling in the body is very different if you simply heard the intuition as to whether you vocalize it, because three weeks later, when you're firing that person, you go, did my intuition warn me about this?

I can guess.

Yeah, but if you said it out loud, it's a lot harder to second guess that. You're like, oh, no, I know, I know. This came up for me.

We have been conditioned to tune. We gaslight ourselves. That's what we've been conditioned to do. In fact, I just created a journal, the five minute intuition journal, where you start in the morning, three minutes in the morning, and you just say, my intuition says. And then at the night, my intuition says, and you do this for 60 days. Watch what happens because you're not gaslighting yourself anymore. There's no obligation to listen. There's no obligation to follow through. There's no big disruptor. Just allow it to exist.

Just eavesdrop on your own intuition.

And what happens is everything changes. And all of a sudden it works. It's like a light, you just turn back on. And then you know the movie. What the bleep? I love that movie. And it Was in the, in the 90s. They have this guy looking on the horizon. These, these natives are watching a ship come over the edge and they can't quite register what it is. So they, you know, they, they didn't delete it in their consciousness until it's in their face. Well, that's intuition. We get all this information that we're delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, until it smacks us upside the head. And then we go back and say, ah, what a coulda should have club. You know, I knew that, I felt that. But if you verbalize it, record it, write it down for seven days, you can't ignore it anymore. I've watched this, I've tested it. Seven days. You can choose to ignore it, but you can't deny that you're being informed because it's natural.

All right, let's turn the tables a little bit and put it in another way. And that is that knowing that everyone has intuition, some are more attuned to it than others, but everyone. So the way I often think of this is I've got an audience, say there's 2 or 3,000 or 4,000 people in the audience, whatever it is. There are varying degrees of intuition in the room. There are people who trust automatically, easily, everybody, and there are people who almost trust nobody. And everywhere in the middle, you know, as a trainer and as a speaker and as a best selling author, you're out there in the world and you're speaking. What do you feel like our listeners should be thinking about when they're preparing and delivering a presentation to send the right signals to people's intuition? In other words, instead now thinking about our intuition, what do we need to do to make sure that we are appealing to other people's sense of intuition?

Well, the first thing you want to do is recognize the fundamental basis of intuition is you trust yourself. If you make three decisions, your intuition will take you to the audiences. Trust your spirit. Trust their spirit. Not their ego, not their story, but their spirit. Because spirit to spirit. So you don't speak to their head, you don't speak to their story, you speak to their spirit. And then trust that there's a unifying spirit, that we all came here together and we all found each other at this point in time. Because something good can happen. And I'm going to speak to that. I'm not going to speak to your resistance, I'm not going to speak for your approval. I am going to speak to the part of you that really wants to be empowered and I'm going to be relaxed and I'm going to enjoy you. I'm not going to be afraid of you. I am going to enjoy being with you. And we're going to have a playful time. And play is the incubator of intuition. Because to play you have to be spontaneous. And that is what your intuition is teaching you to do, is to go with your spontaneous feeling. So be playful with your audience and ask them to play with each other. Invite them to like. Whenever I say to my audience, I speak to my audience, I say, okay, not everybody's here because you want to be. Some of you got dragged here. You know, I am speaking on intuition. So you have to acknowledge that you're in the room. Some part of you wants to be here. And so they're all aware, and it's keen sense of the obvious. You start there and then I'll say, but it's not easy that you're here and you invested your time and energy and we can only grow as far as the person holding back. And they'll listen and I'll say, so turn to the person next to you and tell them that better not be you. Then everybody laughs, and then we're unified field, and then we're all friends. And I speak to the obvious. Some of you I know aren't here. I'll now say, anybody want to leave or should we lock the doors? Are you ready? Because I'm going to lock the doors and I joke with them. Because when you laugh, you're in spirit to spirit. A shared laugh is no one's ego, a truly shared laugh. So if you want to connect with your audience intuitively, laugh with them. Don't try to make them laugh. Make the joke on you if you have to. I'm uncomfortable. I don't know what to say. In fact, I'll tell you a quick story. I was invited to speak to 1,000 attorneys after 9 11, all women in Washington. That's the toughest audience. It'd been easier a thousand men. So I say to these women, okay, here's the deal. I'm here to speak to you about metaphysical law. But I know you're masters of social and civil law, and I just have one more thing to say. You women scare me. And then some woman in the audience says, you scare us too. And then we all laughed. And I said, okay, everybody, take your high heels off and let's dance for five minutes. And then we had a great time. Because they could get out of their Persona and I could get. I said, I'll take my shoes off, too, and we'll all.

I think that's a really important thing. I know many people are nervous of public speaking, and I always say to them that even if you are, you really should hide it. And I know a lot of people are like, well, that doesn't seem very authentic. And I'm like, well, you know, there's a. There's another, bigger problem. And that is that if you walk out there and you are displaying in any way that you're nervous, then you're going to trigger the audience to feel nervous as well, because they're sitting there going, is this person about to steal an hour of my life, however long the talk is going to be? And so what I've noticed is that on first interaction, people are more vigilant, which means that their intuition is more skeptical. They have a skeptical filter on. And so anything that you can do in that first, you know, five minutes, make them laugh, get them to dance, get them to talk, get them to talk to each other, or. I love what you do, because I do that all the time. I'll acknowledge everybody in the room. I know some of you are here because you've wanted to see me speak before. Some of you have seen me speak before. Some of you came because your friend got you so excited, you want to be here. But I also know that some of you were dragged here. And by acknowledging all those people, their vigilance goes down a level and they take the skeptical filter off and they become a little. Yeah, curious.

I'm curious. And it. If you go out there, this is another big point of mine. I want to see how you feel about this. Your audience. When you go, you have to go with only one intention, and that is to be of service. If you go needing. Needing something from them, they're not going to give it to you. If you need them to like you, if you need them to applaud, they are going to sense it, and they're going to feel like, you cannot be up there and want me to take care of you. If you're up there, your job is to give me something, not the other way around. And I have seen public speakers who need to be liked. In fact, I was just at this wedding in Paris, out in the country, and the woman who was the officiate, they were doing their own version, spent the first three minutes telling us how scared she was and how she needed us to make her feel comfortable. And. But we never got to really enjoy the wedding because she was so obnoxiously. Needy up there. We're like, shut up. I mean, okay, you're friends here. This is. This is not your audition. Yeah. This is not an audition for your, you know, dream job. Come on. But then three more people came on and did the same thing. I thought, what is this? This is just. What is this? Apologizing and take care of.

It's something we talk a lot about in Speaker Nation is that children are. You know, we all go through this 12 years of school. And during that 12 years of school, one of the lessons we learn is that when we do a project or an assignment or a class presentation and we make it look easy, we get less accolades. When we make something look hard, we get more. You have the one child who does the presentation perfectly nice, polite applause. Next child cries and stammers and stutters, and that child gets hugs and love. And every child in the room goes, oh, if I make things look a little harder than they are, and I'll be a little sexist about this, but like, every man who has ever taken the garbage out makes the garbage look heavier than it really is.

Oh, my son.

It's just how it is. But the trouble is that as a speaker, if you do that, if you walk out there and you make it look harder than it really is, then what you're doing is you're going to trigger, I feel, their intuition that you're not competent, and therefore they're going to be tense. And so it's actually really important to go out there and do the things you've described. Break the ice. Show the confidence. Well, hold on, hold on.

But tell the truth of the energy. You don't have to tell the truth of. I'm dreadfully uncomfortable. But here's the truth. Some of you want to be here, some of you don't. The room is hot. Sometimes, I'll say your chairs are too close. How do you like sitting in each other's lap when you don't know each other? Let's stretch those chairs out or just acknowledge the reality of the situation that actually fits.

There's another principle that I think is true both of, say, the coaching therapy world and the marketing world, and that is that if you can articulate the problem better than a member of the audience can, they will automatically assume that you have this solution. And so if you can walk out on stage and describe what they're worried about and describe what they want or what they're worried about, first of all, you're demonstrating you're there to give them something. But the second thing is you're demonstrating an understanding of their problem, an empathetic connection to the problem, and they'll assume that you have the solution. Their intuition will relax and they'll be more open, receptive and curious.

That is so true. I mean, I think people are all very intuitive all the time. They're just not languaging it, they're not necessarily conscious of it. But if it's a non threatening situation, they often will let it guide them to a large degree, especially in an audience scenario. Yeah, if they're out in the world and trying to negotiate with people, maybe not so much, but if you're blending in a crowd, you'll follow your intuition more than not if you're not threatened. What I think is most important if you're going to be a communicator on any level is you have to genuinely love what you're talking about and love people. And if you love both, and even if you hate speaking, but you love people and you love talking about what you love, they're forgiving. The audience will still love you if you, even if you fumble through it. But you're not in your head, you are in your heart and you are genuinely trying to make a connection that will make life better. I have found my very first book, my very first book signing. I had my book published for shock of shocks go in front of a metaphysical bookstore. 300 people that are all my clients are sitting there. I got up, I said thank you and then burst into tears and never recovered. And then said thank you and sat down and got a standing ovation. It was like, you guys are really nice. You just. That was my first mass public speaking experience. And I thought, you know, trust that people will be generous with you if you're, if you get a little bit more grounded. Sonia. But human nature wants everything to work out more than not.

You know, I'm glad you saw it that way because I think what happens to a lot of people is that they go on stage and their emotion takes over, their nervousness takes over. And then what happens is they get a stronger applause or a standing ovation, or they get more attention and love. But the challenge is they don't believe any of it because they know that their expression of nervousness or their expression of emotion was asking for sympathy. Right. And so I've talked to many people, I mean, friends of ours here in TLC that have been speaking for decades and they're still nervous before they walk on stage. And I'm like, wait a minute, haven't you received all the accolades. Haven't people told you how amazing you are? Haven't your books gone up the New York Times list? Like, everybody loves you, why on earth would you nervous? And I think finally figured out what it is. And I think what it is is that they go on stage. Their nervousness is obvious in their physiology. They might even vocalize it. I'm a little uncomfortable to be here. Then they get all this love from the audience, but their mind deletes it. It says it's sympathetic. I know you're not telling me the truth. Whereas if they one time walked out on stage and said, I am not nervous, in fact, I am confident and I'm going to deliver unbelievable valuable to you today. Unbelievably valuable information. What's interesting is they might get a little less applause, but they will believe it.

And you know, I've done both. I have done both. I've actually spoken to very hostile audiences. My most hostile audience was a group of MBA business alumni at the University of Chicago, all men. And then one of them was, was a client of mine who said to all of them, you need to hear her. So of course they hate me before I even say hello. And when I walked in, they were snickering and this is stupid. And what are you, can you read my palm? I mean, this is before I even said hello. And again, I had this thing about if you're going to get a real hostile audience. I said, okay, fair, you don't know me, I don't know you. So how about. And again, I totally disarm. I disarm my audiences. I said, let's all take off our shoes. There's something about asking people to take off their shoes that takes off their attitude. There's something about that. First of all, whoever is getting asked to take off your shoes in a public, they took off their shoes and they were different. They were like not cocky, not arrogant, not. They were self conscious. And I said, now we both feel the same. You're self conscious, I'm self conscious. So let's just. You can hate me, you can pretend you've never seen me before, you can boo me out, but let's just have it. 45 minutes of fun. And that was how I disarmed the audience. But this wasn't pre planned. This was just following intuition, dancing in the fire of the moment and saying, this is all I know. And my intuition is the one that said to do that. So. Right.

It's interesting. Humor is a funny thing on stage. I don't regard myself as a particularly humor based speaker. But everywhere I go, people are like, oh my God, you're one of the funniest. And I'd like, I don't intend that. But what I have noticed is that humor requires risk. And so that's why a lot of people are afraid to try to be funny, because it requires risk. You know, it might not work. There's nothing worse than asking for an audience to laugh with a joke or a gag, and it doesn't work. It's tough. But if early on in the talk, you disarm them, you tell a funny story and they laugh or what have you, what's interesting is at that point at least I found that I become more brave at that point. And what's really going on is I am now running a less skeptical version of my intuition. I'm trusting it more. And so then the next thing you know, I'm zooming along and then my head pops in this little funny comment. I'm like, yeah, what the hell, let's try it. Whereas if I was still in vigilant mode, I would go, I'm not saying that.

Interesting. See, the more you relax into your spirit, which is that part of you that's not intellectual, it gives you, it feeds you ideas in the moment. And that is part of what makes the best public speakers. And that's what makes the best comedians. They're not necessarily coming in with the whole slew of jokes, they have a framework of jokes, but it's this interaction in the spontaneity and improv and it's calling out what's actually happening. That's what makes people laugh, is let's call out what's actually going on here.

Years ago, I was speaking at a conference and many speakers were there and high caliber. And you know, the conference was largely about possibility and achievement and what have you. And one of the speakers that came runs a speaking training academy and he was a professional football player. And his talk is perfect. It's perfect in every possible way. Like it's word for word perfect. It's funny, his postures are hilarious. The story is super engaging, but it's perfect. And in its perfection, you realize that he does that talk exactly that same way every single time he delivers it. It's a one man show. It's not an improv intuition, guided presentation. And I had people come up to me during the breaks afterward, and they would come up to me and go, oh my God, you and the other guy, you guys were my two favorite speakers. From the whole conferen conference, I just have a question for you. And I go, great, thank you, thank you. And what? And they go, I really loved both your presentations, but I felt like I got to know you, right? But I. I just, I don't feel that connection with the other guy. But his talk was so good. What's the difference? And it was exactly that. Their intuition was telling them that that is manicured and cultured.

That was a performance. And yours was a talk, yours was a conversation, yours had an energetic interaction. And I just believe that if you are willing to connect with people on this more intimate level and really assume the best in their listening, instead of I have to perform for their approval, I'm going to trust that we are going to co create something here that's going to have lasting value, that's going to stick. Because how many great talks have you heard that slide like eggs on Teflon, just right out? It was a great talk, but I can't remember what he said.

Well, the name of this podcast and the entire purpose of this is the name of the podcast is unforgettable. And the whole idea is to walk off stage and to not even so much for you as the speaker to be unforgettable, but that your content is unforgettable.

Right. They remember. This is the thing that I have noticed about when I first went on tour, once my book got published, I went on tour with the top like six or seven authors of my publisher, hey House. And these were the best speakers. Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer. I mean, the icons of my realm, Carolyn Mees. And I'm again thinking, you know, who am I? And I would listen to them. And the ones that I felt really were my teachers. And the one who was my greatest teacher was Jean Houston. And when I saw her speak, she was telling so many sensual stories. She was saying, like, I was in Italy and I smelt the oranges and I was eating the bread. And I thought this involved everybody. And that's the way to speak, is to involve everybody in the experience of what you're saying, not just parlaying the information.

You know, I remember those tours that Hay House did with Wayne and Deepak. And I remember early on, I hadn't even started speaking yet. And I remember somebody interviewing Wayne and asking him about how he puts his presentations together, how he structures them. And he said, I don't. Right?

He didn't.

What do you mean you don't? I mean, I don't. I go, yeah, but you must, you know, you Must have, like bullet points. No. Well, how do you know what you're going to say? I don't. And he was truly guided 100% by intuition.

Absolutely. Wayne Never. There were some that had the same talk city to city to city. And that surprised me because I was unfamiliar and they were all my icons at the time. I just felt like I was like the little puppy coming along for the ride. But I realized the ones that really, truly were working with intuition were not scripted. And so I took from that. I never know what I'm going to say when I speak. I show up and I trust I know what I know and I trust that I can communicate it. But if I get in my head and I try to plan something out or have something pre planned, I feel fake. And it's. I feel like it's felt, it's fake.

Yeah.

So I think it takes a certain degree of practice maybe to get to that place. But I think the best speakers, you're speaking from a depth of what you know instead of what you've. What you're remembering.

You know, it's interesting. I think practice is part of it, but not for the reason that we might think. It's not practice in the sense of rote and memorization.

Right.

It's practice because each iteration allows you to build more trust. Every single time you stand in front of an audience and follow your intuition, you know, that worked out fairly well and then you're willing to do it again.

It's building experience is probably a better way to say that.

I was just at a mindvalley event in Tanzania, Thailand, Esonia, and they came up to me and I'd already spoken. I did a full day workshop earlier in the work in the program, but they came up to me and go, could you do 20 minutes in the closing ceremony? Just quickly, 20 minutes. I don't have time to plan that. And you. And I know, like, listen, you give me three hours, I don't need a plan for that. But 20 minutes, you know, what's that old expression? If you, If I had more time, this letter would have been shorter.

Yes.

You know, I gotta go and do 20 minutes. But I basically said, I. I know roughly what I want to give the people. And I went out and just followed intuition. And every time I do that, I have a little bit of energy about that. Like, holy co. Can I finish it on time? Am I gonna. But it flows and each time you do that, then the trust gets bigger.

Don't you find it fun too? Yeah, it's like A game. It's like, let's do this. Let's hope it works out. But there's a level of excitement that you bring to the conversation that also charges the audience.

I have noticed, however, that the producers don't like that.

They don't.

They don't like. They go, hey, Eric, what's your talking about? I don't know. They don't like that.

The Left Brainers, who we love because they anchor it down with recording whatever, you can make them crazy.

It's so funny because they asked me, like, the night before. And then we have a party to go to. I don't have time to plan. And so the next day, Vishen, the founder of Mindvalley, he writes me. He goes, hey, listen, we're trying to move the schedule around, trying to figure out where we should put your 20 minutes relative. What are you planning to speak about? And I'm like, oh, no, I'm gonna have to give him a plan. I don't really have one. So all I said is, well, these people have been studying here at mindvalley University for the last three weeks. I'm going to do a talk about how to integrate all that learning and carry it forward in your life. And he goes, okay, good, good. But even that was an improvised intuition answer to the question.

Exactly. And see, that's the thing I love to teach people, is once you turn this faucet on, it doesn't disappoint. It keeps giving you better ideas and better solutions than you could have ever figured out. You. It just. It just. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

I would say. I think one of the things that I believe for a long time, and it's anchored even further from this conversation, is that a big component of intuition is trust. The more you trust your intuition, the more you will let it guide you. And the more you let it guide you, the greater trust you'll build in it. And that's a tremendously free place to be.

And the key for that is your intuition is the voice of your authentic spirit. Your true self, your best self, your most expansive, connected self is what intuition is. So you're trusting your best self, and it doesn't disappoint.

Sonia, this has been a total treat. How do people find you? How do they find out more?

You can come to my website, sonyashoquette.net and I have tons of books. I have tons of stuff. And you can also, if you want to have some fun, I have a podcast with my daughters called it's all related which is about having intuition in the family and friends conversation. And it's pretty silly and pretty fun. So you can just look me up there and you'll find it.

Make sure you get us the links and we'll put them in the show notes. Thank you so much.

This was fun.

It has been great. Thanks so much for coming.

What does Unforgettable mean to me? It means that you've been changed in some. Some way, hopefully positive. But you. You've been touched and changed in. In some way, and it's made you. It's influenced your life.

So that's it for today's episode of Unforgettable. Had I never done 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.

Sam.