Episode 22 | Part Two: The Communications Guru

Gregory Shepard, an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, TEDx speaker, and Forbes author. This is The Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard.

Thanks for joining me for the rest of my talk with communications guru Carmine Gallo. He's written some of my favorite books on public speaking, including Talk Like Ted, and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Carmine, you're an amazing speaker. You're the go-to guy for entrepreneurs and CEOs. So what are some of the common misconceptions when it comes to public speaking?

Oh, great question. The most common one that— and this is every— almost everyone I speak to has the same misconception— that great speakers are born. No, not one of them. Almost anyone that you see today who you can say inspires me or is a great speaker or a great TED Talk or a terrific communicator like Steve Jobs was, every single one of those people worked at it. Great communicators are made. They're not born, they work at it.

Mm-hmm.

And so I am tired of hearing people, and I tell them this, you gotta stop saying, Oh, I'm not as good as so-and-so. Oh, I don't have the charisma of Steve Jobs. Oh, I would never be. I'm not that good. I'm not as good as so-and-so or that person or this person. Well, neither were they. They worked at it over sometimes over months, over many, many years. It takes time. Public speaking is a skill, and like any skill, it can be sharpened and improved. There isn't one person you look at historically, Greg. I mean, there really isn't. I've studied this. Steve Jobs was not naturally gifted on a stage. And in fact, there was some really early video in the early '80s, and even the Macintosh introduction, 1984, still on YouTube. He's like holding on to the podium for dear life, man, the lectern. And I've heard he was very nervous early on.

Was he bad as Elon Musk?

Okay, so Elon Musk is the most interesting— gosh, I wish I could talk to him. He is very interesting because there are parts of his personality and his presentations that I think are sensational. He pushes the envelope, but it doesn't look like he rehearses very much. And so it's kind of like it's rambling, it's rambling, and then it hits you over the head and there's something amazing. Almost every public presentation that I've seen from Elon Musk has an element of one of the— just an awe-inspiring presentation. He does crazy things. He loves these crazy demos. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So he's, he's just a fun character. I just wish he would rehearse it more to tighten it up a little bit.

So back to Steve Jobs for one second. What do you think made him such an amazing public speaker from your point of view?

Oh, do you know he— well, first of all, he was dedicated and creative. So he worked with his design team to refine every slide, every introduction. There would always be that wow moment.

Mm-hmm.

Most famous being 2007 iPhone introduction. And I would encourage anyone on this podcast Go to 2007 if you are really interested in improving your business presentations. In my world, the 2007 introduction of the iPhone is probably one of the best business presentations of all time. Because at the beginning of the presentation, people were skeptical. The news headlines were like, why is Apple getting into the phone business? 90 minutes later, everybody was saying, I want one. Give it to me. Give that to me now. And he had those real interesting moments that he didn't have to do. He could have just walked out and said, hey, Apple's getting into the smartphone business and we're coming out with one we're going to call the iPhone and here are the specs. Let's go to the PowerPoint. Let's go to the slides. He used Apple Keynote, of course. But he didn't. He kind of laid out the history of Apple and Macintosh and their history of design and improving things and making things easier to use. And then he created the villain and he introduced the villains. He goes, now let's look at the smartphones, the current smartphones on the market. And he said things like, here are the usual suspects. He was even using the language of narrative. Here are the usual suspects and here's the problems with them. So, what do you do? Well, we've decided to introduce 3 new products in this category. An iPod, a phone, and something brand new you've never seen before, an internet communication device. And he paused. An iPhone or an iPod, a phone, internet communicator.

Yeah, and he says it like 3 times.

Says it like 3 times.

Yeah.

Aren't you getting it? This is one device.

Whoa!

You know, it's— you don't have to do that. That was creative. That was Steve the performer. And that's what people remember. They don't remember slide number 32, but they remember that.

Yeah.

Because that was a moment that was created. He was intentional about it. Steve Jobs sat with his team, sits with marketing, sits with designers, and most of it was his. Most of those presentations were his ideas. Let's do something that will get people talking, that will grab their attention. So, he didn't just open up a slide deck and start filling in the information. He was a storyteller. And here's the other little-known fact about Steve Jobs, and it's absolutely true because I've had it confirmed by 2 different people who have worked side by side with him. He relentlessly practiced and rehearsed for every one of those presentations for weeks on end.

Really?

He would gather— Ken Kosienda told me this, and he's the guy who was involved in, I think, the original iPod, but also the iPhone keyboard on the iPhone, one of the engineers. But he was with Steve Jobs in those rehearsals for the iPhone. And he said it was like a performance. He said it was weird. Like Steve would come in, there's only me and a handful of other people who could only watch that part of the presentation. And he got up on stage. in the auditorium and raised his voice and used gestures and talked like he was speaking to 5,000 people. And there were like 3 people in there. And then he would stop, step out of character. That's what Ken said, stepped out of character, walked down and started getting, okay, tell me how this line worked, or what do you think of that line or the way we present it? So here, that tells me, Greg, that Steve Jobs was intentional.

He—

this was not a presentation, it was a performance.

So that's the key, right? That you're not presenting, you're performing, and you're performing this story that you mentioned earlier.

And, you know, I love that. I mean, you just cut to the chase. It's a performance, not a presentation. And there is a difference. And what do all of us do, myself included, for many years when I was in corporate America? Oh, great, I've got a presentation. I'm going to open PowerPoint and start filling in the text. That's not a performance. Or you flip through your slides on the way to the pitch meeting. You haven't presented it the way you would in the real world. That's part of practice. And so, when people say, well, I'm not as good as so-and-so, or I'm not as charismatic, or I'm not as good a speaker as so-and-so, Well, they probably practiced and you're not. How many times have you practiced this presentation on a stage in front of an audience? When is the last time you put yourself on video and recorded yourself and looked at your mannerisms and your body language and your delivery? Oh, well, never. I don't do that. Okay, that's why you're not as good. But you can get there with practice. It's a skill.

So it's just like acting. I mean, you, you know, you see these actors that get in the mirror and they act over and over and over again the role and they fall into the role. So this allows you to step into character, right? And tell the story from the perspective of the, of the storyteller, the character, the main character in the story. Is that—

Yeah, I like that. It absolutely is, you know, transforming yourself. It's contrived, right? It is a little contrived. This isn't just a natural conversation. A presentation is in many ways a performance. So I'm not trying to get you to be anyone or to act like anyone you're not. You have to be authentic to who you are. But let's at least bring out some of your strengths and your skills and make it more creative and interesting.

I love this.

This is—

I'm actually learning a great deal here just right now. I can't wait to follow up with you I love that.

I learn something new every day too. So I enjoy this.

So let me ask you, you know, you mentioned earlier on to rehearse and look in the mirror and look at your performance. If you are an entrepreneur and you're sitting there and you're all by yourself, how do you measure your own performance in those scenarios?

Well, you know, Greg, I'm not sure if that is the most effective way. Steve Jobs asked for feedback. What's wrong with that? I think communication should be more collaborative. You may not be the most creative person in the room. Maybe someone else has a much better analogy or a metaphor that you should be using in your next presentation. Metaphors, getting back to storytelling, are very powerful. And people like Warren Buffett use metaphors all the time. You know, I'm looking for an investment that's surrounded by a moat. Like a castle with a moat around it that makes it hard for competitors to enter the industry. That's a metaphor. It's an analogy. And really good speakers are heavy users of metaphor. So maybe you're not the best at that. Be more creative. You've got to start expressing yourself and pitching and presenting to other people. Get some feedback. Maybe they're seeing things about your delivery Or your body language that's maybe off-putting that you don't even realize that you're doing. I'm not sure how effective it is to just critique yourself. I like communication being a little bit more collaborative. Get a trusted advisor, a friend, someone else to watch, because often you won't get an honest opinion from people. They're too nice. So, you know, you get a trusted A peer and practice. Try that presentation. How did it come across? Ask for feedback.

So, you said something I found really interesting, this concept of like sort of— I think of the story as a tapestry and these metaphors sort of weaving in and out of the tapestry. And so, that means there are other elements to the tapestry, which you mentioned is why should I care? So why should I care? You can use metaphors for that. Are there other ingredients that you can mention for the listeners to sort of consider when they're putting together their talk?

Yeah, absolutely. Storytelling is one. Tell your story, tell the background story, use case studies.

Okay, case studies. That's another one.

They're stories. They're stories of other people and how they're, how they're benefiting from the product. So think about yourself not as a presenter, but as a performer who's sharing stories, take people on that journey, answer the, the one question on everybody's minds: so what? Why should I care? Is this going to make me money? Is this going to improve my life? Uh, is— does this have a valuable demographic of potential customers? Why should I care about this stuff? Your technology sounds interesting, but you're in the weeds. Up-level it, big picture. But here's the other thing I've become a real big fan of, and you might know this, Greg, through one of my books, the rule of 3. The rule of 3 simply means that in short-term memory, people can only carry or consume a few points. In an 18-minute TED Talk or a short presentation, you cannot bombard people with everything you know about the topic. Give them 3 things to take away. Give them 3 reasons to invest. 3 reasons why this is going to be a multi-billion dollar category, not 28. You'd be surprised at how hard it is for people to get their mind around distilling their content into 3. They'll, they'll, they come back at me and they say, oh, but Karma, there's so much more. Yeah, but people can only remember about 3 points. There's a lot of research on this now, Greg, that 3 is a really powerful number. 1, 2, or 3. Once you start going over 3 points, like 4, 5, 6, people start to— they're incapable of remembering everything, which is why there's research on the telephone number. This is why we chunk the 7-digit number. We chunk it into like groupings. There was a— speaking of TED, there was a quantum physicist. He gave a really cool TED Talk. I think his name was Dominic, Dominic Walliman. And he gave a TED Talk on how do you explain quantum physics, which is one of the most complex topics to explain. How do you do that? And when he was asked, he said, well, first you don't tell people everything you know. You tell them maybe 3 things. So he, even he was thinking about 3.

Wow.

I'm gonna give you 3 things I know about this topic. 3 reasons to invest, 3 features about this product. To a customer, maybe 3 reasons to buy the product. Once you start going over 3, it's confusing and it's hard to follow. I'm really into this whole groupings of 3. And now that I'm seeing 3s everywhere now, you know, it's sort of the way we naturally group things and the way we talk. You know, Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and happiness, right? Just 3.

So, speaking of 3, let me ask you this. So, when I did When I prepared my TED Talk, I had this coach who helped me, and what she told me is she said, think about these 3 things: what do you want them to think, what do you want them to feel, and what do you want them to do? Is that something that you've heard before? And if so, can you shed some light for everybody on specifically what that means?

Well, it's interesting to me, I'm focused on the 3. So she didn't give you, as a TED speaker, 32 things to keep in mind. She gave you 3.

3.

So we naturally talk in 3. And then I help these entrepreneurs with new product launches or a CEO with a big keynote, and they want to add so much material. And I try to tell them that a really good concise talk is not so much about adding material, it's selecting, selecting the material that you want to talk. to people about? And then you can group things under the, the rule of thirds. Feel is where I focus. What do you want people to feel? Obviously what you want them to do is to take action on your idea. So if you're not specific about it, then yeah, they're confused. It's— I've seen so many presentations like that where at the end of the presentation you say to yourself, Well, that, that was interesting. That's about it, right? That was— that's interesting. What am I supposed to do with it? So it never really answers the question, why should you care? So part of that is, what do you want me to do with it? So I agree with her— think, feel, and do. And feel— how do you get people to feel? That's why, once again, I'm so passionate and obsessed about story. Because story is the only vehicle that we have through which we can get people to feel our emotions. And that's why I think I wrote a whole book just on storytelling in business called The Storyteller's Secret. And I'm still learning about storytelling every day. It's a big area. It's a complex area. There's always something new to learn. But I think the big takeaway is let's get people to start— stop thinking of yourself as a presenter And start thinking of yourself as a performer who has a story to tell. And you'll find that just by reframing the way you see yourself as an entrepreneur who wants to express an idea, just by reframing the way you look at it, the content's going to change and the way you express your idea will change.

This is incredible. Thank you so much. We have a keynote speaker, Harvard instructor, International bestselling author, one of my favorite people right now. I just— on this conversation, I cannot wait to just have follow-up conversations with you. All these books that you have, I've been through them all because after I did the TED Talk Like TED one, I was like, okay, this is good. And then I just went in and did them all. And I would highly recommend this to everybody. And I really, really appreciate your time and energy and all of the wisdom. And I'm sure the entrepreneurs do as well. Thank you so, so much.

Greg, thanks for inviting me. Again, terrific audience. And I would encourage anyone to keep in touch with me through, through my website. If you can remember a good name, a good Italian name like Carmine Gallo, contact me anytime.

Thank you so much. Have a really great day. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

You're so welcome. And that wraps up this episode of The Boss Podcast. If you enjoy the show, please take a second to subscribe so you automatically get my new shows when they drop. Also, if you have a minute, I'd love it if you left a review so more folks like you can discover the show. I'll see you next time. Namaste, my friends.

Learn more about the Boss Business Operating Support System at bossstartupsience.com, or you can reach Gregory Shepard at Gregory. GregoryShepard.com. This has been a production of Forbes Books.