118: John Zimmer - On Cross-Training Your Speaking

Hey everybody, and welcome to This Moved Me, a podcast about creating talks that move the world. With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking, because a good talk can move the world and it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful. That's not a small task. I love your giggle.

Wow.

Oh my gosh, so wait for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to another episode of This Moved Me. Today I have on the show with me a a man named John Zimmer. And, you know, I've had a Scott Zimmer, and this is John Zimmer, and my last name is Zimney, and I just feel like, wow, the universe is bringing us together. Power to the Zs! Yeah! Well, John Zimmer is a presentation coach and a trainer. He speaks all over the world on how to be more effective as speakers. And You know, his journey really took him from the world of law and kind of corporate law, and he was an environmental lawyer and worked all over the world in that capacity and realized that one of the things he loved the most was bringing that persuasion and using his— the stage, essentially, his words and how we communicate with each other. And so started building that out. He's an award-winning award-winning Toastmasters speaker, which we talked a little bit about, and now he is training people full-time. So he took the leap about the same time I did, heading out freelance into the world, and I discovered his website, which is chock-full of some really amazing resources. Especially, he does some really interesting speech analysis, which is something that I also love to do. So I really enjoyed that resource, and we talk about that on the show. So I am thrilled to introduce you to John Zimmer. I hope it goes well. Is this like a regular thing that you do?

Yeah, we perform. We've been doing this now for 2, 2 and a half years. We perform once a month from September to June at a big bar downtown. They've got a nice big theater type of stage in the basement and it always fills up. People love improv over here.

Improv as a speaker, and I have a theater background, but I have never had the cojones to do improv.

It really is a growth opportunity, and it's funny because one of the things I've started doing in addition to, you know, doing trainings and working with companies and organizations on public speaking is now more and more we're getting requests to actually do trainings in improv for team exercises, for creativity, and people just love it because it's so different from what they're used to doing day to day in the office.

So, John, I hope it's okay. I just want to dive in because you brought up— Let's do it. Okay, wonderful. What you're talking about is the utility of improv, and you are at this really interesting center point between— you've got this background as a lawyer, which is a whole different realm of Persuasion that I want to, I really want to talk about. But you also have done Toastmasters and have this very, you know, a polished public speaker, and now you do improv. So tell me about kind of what brought you into this, because it's a really wonderful mix.

It, it, it's an interesting mix, that's for sure. And there was a time not long ago when I was actually fairly regular on the, the radio in Switzerland, the English language radio. There was a show for expats, and, you know, we'll We can certainly go into more detail, but you raise an interesting point right at the outset about the value of these different forms of public speaking as a lawyer, doing improv on the radio, on stage. And it's a lot like cross-training if you're getting into physical shape. And I find that the more different ways, the more ways in which you can speak, the better overall speaker you become.

I'm sure that's true.

Let's see my background. I, as you mentioned, I am a lawyer. I'm still a registered lawyer with the Law Society of Upper Canada. I practiced corporate, commercial, and environmental law in Canada at one of Canada's biggest law firms in Toronto. I did corporate commercial litigation, so that got me into court an awful lot. And I was very fortunate because I was at a law firm that gave young lawyers lots of opportunity to get on their feet and get in front of judges, get in front of tribunals, and really cut your teeth. So that was excellent training. And I did that for about, geez, I guess it would have been about almost 10 years. And then in 1998, I was, much as I loved practicing law, I was looking for something different because it was a grind. The stories you hear in Canada, I was on, the firm was one of the big Bay Street firms, which is the Canadian equivalent of a Wall Street firm. So long hours, a real grind, By— at the time, my wife and I, we had two young daughters. I wasn't seeing them a whole lot, and we were looking for a change. And then an opportunity opened up at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. And it was a fascinating opportunity to head up a team at a commission that was set up after the Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait. And you might remember when the oil wells were blown up and the oil was dumped in the Gulf. And basically, I was— in charge of a team of legal and scientific experts who were tasked with reviewing and then presenting to a panel these multi-billion dollar claims from countries in the region who were saying that they'd suffered environmental and public health damage. And it was just a fascinating opportunity because I got to not only move to Geneva, but I got to travel extensively in the region, learn a lot about the region, got to learn Arabic at the United Nations. And it was a really interesting opportunity. But like all claims programs, eventually the claims are all processed and the programs wind down. From there, I went to the International Organization for Migration to work on another program. And then most recently, I guess from 2009 until 2015, I was working at the World Health Organization doing internal law as a lawyer there in the HR department.

Cool.

But along the way, I started being asked to give a speech here, give a speech there. People were saying, geez, I've got this presentation. Could you help me with it? And then many years ago, I guess 7, 8 years ago, the University of Lausanne Executive MBA program contacted me and said, you know, we could really use a course in our overall program on public speaking. Would you be interested? So I set up a course there, and that, of course, got me meeting other people. And one thing led to another. I reached a point where I thought to myself, you know, I love doing this, this working with people. I love giving speeches. I love training people and seeing them come along. I could probably have a— make a go at this on my own. And I thought about it. In 2013, I actually resigned from the World Health Organization and they asked me if I would stay part-time, which was a real— it was very flattering. And it also gave me a bit of a base to test the waters for about a year before deciding, you know, you're either in or you're out. So, I took the plunge. It was, I guess it would be about 14 months ago now. So, full-time doing what I'm doing now.

Well, congratulations. That's huge.

Thank you.

Yeah, I took the leap about a year ago, too. And I love it. I love the variety. I love meeting different people wherever they're at on their journey and pushing them to the next level. I love it.

It's quite the ride, isn't it?

It is. It is.

One of the things I love about it, and of course, and I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about, I mean, it's not all sunshine and roses. There are times when you're wondering, geez, what am I doing? Or when's the next client coming along? But like you say, I love the variety. No two weeks are the same. And I find it really rewarding, especially when you start getting feedback from people, you know, weeks or months after a training, they'll contact you and they'll say, hey, I had this presentation and I applied these things we talked about, and it was great. The client, my boss loved it. I find it really rewarding.

Yeah, me too, me too. So I'm curious, you know, you've had quite this amazing journey from the idea of a lawyer and the persuasion of a lawyer in the classroom— in the classroom— in the, in the courtroom.

Yep.

So you're in the courtroom. That's a very different mode of persuasion, I'm guessing, than what the kind of training that you might be doing with people, helping them tell their story or do a sales pitch, whatever it might be. So I'm curious what you see as the distinctions between these areas and where the crossover, because of course there's some crossover too.

Absolutely. And you know, if anything, I'd say there's probably more crossover than people might think because at the end of the day, whether you're pleading a case to a court or you're making a sales pitch to a prospective client, basically you're speaking to another human being or human beings and trying to persuade them about something. So there are many parallels. Of course, in the legal setting, you have rules of procedure, you have certain constraints, certain time limits, you have to provide written materials. So you have this whole extra, this whole corpus, if you will, of legal rules that you have to adhere to. But within, you know, I think back to some cases that I had speaking to judges, and judges really appreciated it always when lawyers would speak plainly, they would get to the point, they wouldn't ramble on. Humor, if it was appropriate and well-timed, was always appreciated.

Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.

So there are a lot of parallels, in fact, between speaking as a lawyer in court and as a speaker on stage.

Well, and I'm guessing that one of the mistakes some lawyers make is to not humanize. And I feel like that's such an important part of what we do as speakers is to humanize an idea. And that is such a persuasive mode. So if you can do that as a lawyer, I'm sure that gives you a big step up.

Well, absolutely. At the end of the day, if I think back, I was fortunate in my firm. There were some excellent lawyers that I got to learn from.. And the ones who impressed me the most were the ones who could turn a case into a narrative. They would basically tell the story of their client to the court. And that was always more effective than just trying to hammer home every single possible point. It reminds me of a great quote from a former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Mm-hmm.

And I came across this quote early in my career, and it's something that stuck with me, and it's something I think every lawyer should take to heart. And the quote goes something like this: Holmes said, "I wouldn't give a fig," which was the old-fashioned way of saying I couldn't care less. "I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity." And I really pondered what that meant. And for me, it's, you know, you get these cases which can be very complex, hundreds, thousands of documents and laws and witnesses and all these things. And You've got to get into the complexity, but at the end of the day, you've got to come out on the other side and just hit the 2, 3, 4 key points. You've got to be able to distill it down and tell the story to the court. Otherwise, you're not going to be nearly as effective as you could be.

Right, and what you're talking about is such an important skill as a speaker in any format is to take the complex and take the richness of life and be able to pull out that meaning and distill it. That's such a great word, to distill it for our audience, not because they're stupid, but because that you're bringing your insight into that moment.

Absolutely, you've hit the nail on the head. And the thing is, and I'm sure you've seen this, people, many people, in fact the majority I would say based on my experience, are reluctant to be simple in their presentations. And we're not talking simplistic, which is not good, but just being simple, meaning just focus on the key points. Don't, you know, don't give me a 40-slide presentation crammed with bullet points. Don't feel you have to cover every single possible thing. You're much better off hitting the main points.

Yeah.

And you're going to be a much more effective speaker and audiences are going to remember you better. I remember growing up in Canada. This reminds me of something that always makes me smile. And you may have seen the same things in papers in the US. In the weekend papers, there's always a big travel section. And the thing that always made me laugh were these advertisements for trips to come to Europe, which of course is a big thing if you're living in North America. But what made me laugh were the ones that said, "Visit Europe, see 12 countries in 14 days." And it was just like, you know, here's the Eiffel Tower, let's take a picture, back on the bus, let's go to Rome. And a lot of speakers end up doing the same thing metaphorically. They try and cover everything and you're much better off seeing just a little bit and seeing it well.

Right. Yeah, I've made that mistake so many times. It's like the first draft of a talk where I'll be like, yes, I have so much in here. This is great. And eventually, if you do it enough and you say it out loud enough and you, you know, if you have the luxury of being able to practice in front of people, that slowly, that iterative process, you realize, oh my gosh, this is a book and I need to offer people a chapter here.

Yeah, absolutely. Or a synopsis of a chapter, right?

Right. A slice of it. So you can really go deep into it. Cool.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, John, one of the things that I really appreciated about you and why I asked you on the show is because you've got this really wonderful website and on it you do a lot of analyzing of speeches, which I think is so fun. Like, I love doing it too. And you've got this great library. So tell me a little bit about that. Like, where did that come from? And why do you offer that to people?

Well, the site— thank you for that. The site, it's mannerofspeaking.org. And it's— this is a project that began— in fact, WordPress just sent me a notification saying, congratulations on your 7th year anniversary. Literally this week I got it. And I thought, holy smokes, it's been 7 years.

Cool.

And, you know, way back then I thought, you know, as I was learning about blogging, I thought, I thought, this is a cool idea. I'd like to kind of, you know, share my thoughts about something, get it out there. I don't know if I'm going to pursue this or not. And so, you know, what could I blog about? And there were a few topics, but of course, public speaking being one of the things I'm very passionate about rose to the top. So I thought, all right, I'll just throw this out there. I don't even know if I'm going to be continuing this for a month, but I started to do it and I really enjoyed the process. And, you know, it started to gain traction and then it started being shared around. And then I started getting these emails from people saying, This was really helpful. Thank you very much. And I'm thinking, geez. And pretty soon I start seeing hits in the administrative back pages. You can see where the hits are coming to your blog. And I see these hits from different schools. So I click on the link and now I see different high schools and even colleges are referring or incorporating some of the stuff that I'm doing into their courses on public speaking. And long story short, it just became— it's just developed into something that I really enjoy doing. People sometimes say, yeah, but it's It must be a lot of work. It must be a lot of time. And it absolutely is. But I can't tell you how much time it is because when I'm doing it, I don't really notice the time. Sometimes a post goes very quickly. Other times, for example, you mentioned these speech analyses, I will end up having to watch a speech, you know, 3, 4, 5 times, take notes and then type it out. It could be several hours working on a post, but it has, um, It's a fun way to give something, to give something back to people, and everything on the site is free. And if people get benefit out of it, it's, you know, so much the better. It makes me very happy. It's brought me into contact with some wonderful people who have become very good friends. It's got me some paid speaking opportunities, probably the most exotic of which was in 2014. I went to Novosibirsk, Siberia in February. Library for a week to do presentation skills training there. Siberian in winter. That was— it was actually a fascinating trip. But they found me through the blog.

Cool. So what has been your favorite talk to analyze? Like what one jumps out at you like, oh, that was a good one.

There's so many, but let me think. Okay, I'll give you two. Two for different reasons. I would probably say one of my all-time favorite talks was Ken Ken Robinson's first talk on TED, "How Schools Are Killing Creativity." That's a good one. I've probably seen that talk about 10 times. If people haven't seen it, I really encourage you to go have a look. He's on stage. It's a 20-minute talk. Robinson, and I've read a couple of his books, when he was young, he contracted polio. At the very beginning of the talk, you see him, he limps out onto the stage, so he's not moving around. He just stands there. No slides, no movement, and he just talks for 20 minutes and he is present and he is funny and he is insightful and he is moving and he tells stories and he just utterly captivates you. And it's the, it's the number one most watched TED Talk and it's in that position for a very good reason. So that's one of them. But a more recent talk that I analyzed on the blog and one that I found very, very moving was Monica Lewinsky's TED Talk. And, you know, it's a very different approach. She's much younger, she went through a much different experience, and she's now coming back. And she's— I really, you know, give her kudos for having had the courage to stand up and talk about, you know, the whole affair with Clinton and the whole issue of bullying. And now she's actually trying to use the fact of, you know, all of the cyberbullying, if you will, that she was subject to, to try and become an advocate against it. And she's not nearly as polished. She stands behind a little lectern. She reads a lot of the speech, but it's genuine. And it's quite moving.

I'm so glad you brought that one up because I remember when that came out, just like out in the Twitterverse, all people up in arms that she wasn't memorized like most TED Talks are. And so polished and they allowed her to use, like you said, like a little music stand. And yeah, and I, I appreciated that conversation. I thought it was really interesting. I'm not somebody— I think it takes a really unique speaker to be able to get to a level of memorization that they can TED Talk it. You know, like, it's a very unusual thing to be able to do that unless it's your one talk and you spend months working on it and making it spectacular. Uh, so I found, like you, that, that her standing behind there and, and having that script, I knew it was a safety net for her, and it was like she needed that in order to be able to do this. And I was like, you do what you need to do because an audience can be forgiving for that stuff. They really, they, they don't need to, for you to, you know, check all the boxes of what an excellent speaker is. They want to hear your story and feel connected to you. And her honesty and her bravery, I think, just overcame all that other stuff.

I, I agree. And Whereas, of course, if you can give a speech, if a person can give a speech without notes, it's always going to be better. You're always going to be more engaged in a way with the audience. I tell people, especially people who start, look, if you need notes or just to refer to it, you know, a few bullet points or whatever, it's fine. It's fine. You know, there are other things that are more important. And you mentioned a number of them. And you're right. And I remember— this discussion on Twitter about, oh, well, she's using notes and whatever. And it's funny because I never saw the same discussion, for example, when Steve Jobs gave his address to Stanford at the Stanford University graduation in 2005. That's also an excellent talk. But if people look it up on YouTube, Jobs is behind a lectern and he's reading his talk. And yet it was also a great talk.

Yeah. But it's one of those things about expectations of your audience. Because TED has such a strict and predictable, in a lot of ways, methodology of this is what a TED Talk is. And that's not all bad, it's just the way it is, you know. There it was like, oh, this is different, whoa, different, you know. And versus a graduation speech is like, well, you're gonna give me a podium and I'm gonna stand behind it it. If that's what I've got to do, then yeah, I'm gonna—

yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Cool. Well, uh, I know you have had a lot of time in Toastmasters, and I haven't had that many guests on my show. I've been doing the show for a year and a half. I've interviewed nearly a— I don't know, probably 75 people, and I've never really talked about Toastmasters that much. Would you share with me about your experience there and what you value and appreciate about it?

Sure. For people who don't know, Toastmasters is an organization that was started in 1924, if I remember correctly, in California by a fellow named Ralph Smedley. And his vision was that people could learn to become better speakers, better public speakers, and also better leaders in an environment where they basically, you know, ran a meeting themselves and supported each other. So in a nutshell, it's an organization today that has a membership of over 300,000 in— I'm gonna get this wrong— but it's 115 to 120 countries. It's, it's massive. It's all around the world. It's growing like, like a mushroom in Europe, in, in Asia as well, and in other places. And basically, uh, what a meeting involves— I'll give you from— no two clubs are exactly the same, but at my club in Geneva, a meeting lasts 2 hours with a break. It's in the evening from 7 till 9. There's a break in the middle for some wine and cheese and networking and just chatting. And it's an opportunity for every meeting— at every meeting, people— there are maybe 3 to 4 prepared speeches of about 5 to 7 minutes length each. And people come, there are manuals, they work from the manuals, and they give a speech about whatever they want. But each manual, each project gets them to work on a different speaking skill, such as vocal variety, such as speaking with persuasion, such as using body language. And they get a chance to give a speech, and then each speech receives a personalized evaluation from somebody else. There's also a section of the meeting called Table Topics, which is Toastmasters' lingo for impromptu speaking. So Sally, I might, you know, if I were the person running that session, I might call you up to the front and I might give you an object from a bag. You pull an object and you have to talk about it, or I might ask you a question on the spot or give you a word, and you've got to give a 2-minute impromptu speech. So what I like about Toastmasters is that it's like, it's like a laboratory. It's like a laboratory where people can try things out. They can fail. Things might not work, but it doesn't matter because everybody's very supportive and you're not really going to know what works until you try it. So it's a pretty, it's a good environment in which you can try things out. Yeah. Go ahead.

Well, no, I just think that's, that's so valuable to have a practice audience because you learn so much from just watching how what you're saying is impacting other people, where the head nods come, where the, like, the head tilts a little bit and they're wondering exactly what's going on. Like, there's so much valuable information there. And it's really— you'd much prefer to do that with a practice audience before you bring it out into the world for real. So that's great.

Absolutely. And people have found, you know, I've spoken to people, hundreds probably, all of whom have said that Toastmasters has been very helpful for them in their work, in their personal lives outside. It's, you know, a Toastmasters audience is a very particular kind of audience and things that might work in Toastmasters won't necessarily work at Forum X or Hmm.

That's interesting. How so? I'm just curious.

Some speeches, especially in the contest, have a reputation for being a bit on the theatrical side, which I think is a great thing in Toastmasters because I think if anything, too many people are too conservative. And in Toastmasters, you can come out and you can try things again. You can push the envelope a little bit. Now, having said that, that kind of a style is not going to work in every forum. For example, let's go back to the courtroom. Certain things that you would do at a Toastmasters meeting, you wouldn't do in a courtroom. But the opposite is the same as well. And it all comes down to, again, knowing who your audience is.

Right. And not just knowing who they are— this is the second time we've talked about this, and I just did a show on Wednesday about audience expectations. So it's probably very present in my mind. But I've had some really powerful conversations with people who say, you know, who realize that they may not be— that may not be the ideal audience for them. And how do they talk to somebody? So for instance, I was working with a group who's really trying to create social change and like improve the community. In the ground in an area of Minneapolis, and they're talking to politicians who don't live in that area of Minneapolis and who, who they're like, they don't get my life. I'm like, okay, that's a problem. But you don't— you can't make that assumption. Like, you need to know what their expectations are, where their worldview is, where they're coming from. And it's your job as speakers to go meet them there and then ask them to come with you into your story. Come, come now experience my life. But to walk in and say, you don't know, you don't get me because you're different, is really unfair to your audience. You know, I think there's some really interesting things there about the assumptions that we have as speakers. And the assumptions that our audiences make about us. And we really have to be in tune with those and be aware of them, not let them rule your approach in the talk. Does that make sense?

That makes complete sense. You're right. And the thing is, as well as between audience and speaker, it's the speaker's problem. It's not the audience's problem. It's the speaker's problem. And this is why I always tell people, when I'm working with clients and we start, Well, before we get into delivery and voice and body language and the slides and all that stuff, we back up and we start from real basic principles of preparation and building the speech up. And I always ask them a number of questions, and two of the most fundamental questions are, what's your key message? And so I get them to try and write their presentation. Let's say they've got a 45-minute presentation. I tell them, write your entire presentation out in one or 2 sentences. That's it. 2 complete sentences. Subject, verb, predicate. You know, all the things we learned in grammar school. That's the first question. But the second question is the flip side. You've got your key message and that's great. Why should I care? Why should the audience care? Because it's always about the audience. And you've got to be able to know why the audience should care. And if you can't answer that question, that's a problem. But once you figure out the why, the who and the what and the where and the how becomes a whole lot easier to get across.

Mm-hmm. Oh, I think that's such a valuable exercise, because if we can't really simply state what it's about and why it's important, we just haven't given it the time. We haven't peeled the layers enough And you'll get there. It just takes time.

It does.

Yep. Oh, well, John, guess what? It is time for our This Moved Me moment. If you're not familiar, this is the time of the show where you and I will both share something that has moved us recently. Some— it could be a song we heard, a talk we saw, a conversation, a movie. It could be anything because I feel really strongly that we as speakers if we want to inspire our audience, we ourselves have to stay really in tune with what's moving us. So I'm going to start.

Okay.

And I had the amazing privilege of being a part of this event last week called Listen to Your Mother. And it's this show that it's a storytelling event where people audition and then, their stories are chosen to be shared about motherhood. So I was— I auditioned back in January, and it, it was mostly for me. I was like, I just need to audition, I just need to, to do this, and enjoyed working on my story and got accepted. Was so excited because, you know, I'm sure you, you, you, you're out speaking a ton, but I spend so much more time now coaching speakers, I was like, I have to get out there and remind myself what it is to be nervous and, you know, step out. So anyway, the event was last Thursday and the most amazing thing happened in this. So a lot of the women, it happened to be all women who were sharing their stories, a lot of the women are not are not necessarily speakers. They're writers, or they just push themselves to do this, and they're outside their comfort zone hugely. And I had heard the stories a few times. We had one or two rehearsals, and, and they were all really beautiful stories. But having an audience in the room and watching what happens when people stand step up and are present in the moment and just bravely step out and share their story, this audience just held them up and it had all this life and movement in it that did not exist without the audience. And so these stories just came alive. It was so cool to see it and to be a part of it and to watch these women stand up there and watch their faces when they're realizing people are hearing me and they're taking it in and they're enjoying it or they're being moved. I mean, it was this wonderful dance that happens between the speaker and the audience, and I just loved it. I was so moved. I was like, I can't stop, I gotta stop crying because I gotta get up there in a second. It was, it was really cool.

That's a real goosebump moment. That's a very good story. And how many How many people were in the audience, would you say?

700.

Wow.

Yeah. So it was a packed house and full of people who were just there to cheer us on. It was a wonderful, wonderful event. I knew it would be, but seeing there and sitting there and watching it all take place and unfold was really empowering and so cool.

That's very cool.

Very cool.

Good story.

Good story. Okay. How about you? What has moved you recently, John?

Recently? Well, I'll give you a recent story. One of the things that I do that I love is I work with a group of 4 or 5 very close friends. We live all across Europe, but we come together to do these different events. And one of the events is in Barcelona. In Spain. And there I work once, once or twice a year at the Executive MBA program at the University of Nevada, IESA. It's called I-E-S-E. It's a very well-respected Executive MBA program. And we come together and we get a group of students who work for a week on, among other things, becoming better speakers, especially persuasive speaking. And in a nutshell, these students have an opportunity to give a couple of speeches. And in my group, there was a fellow, big guy, tall guy, biggest guy in the whole class, and his name was— his name is Sergey. And for his first speech, he didn't do that great of a job. He was, you know, the structure wasn't there, and he was clearly nervous. And, you know, he was having a go, and it was Okay, but you could tell that the speech needed work. But he got great feedback, constructive feedback. Everybody was supportive. And so next speaker came up, and then time went on, and later on in the week it came time for him to give his second speech. And so he stood up, and I'm paraphrasing now, but he basically started off by saying, you know, 'Well, when I was up here in front of you a few days ago, I know I didn't do a good job, and it's because I was scared.' And then what he did was he wove this into a personal story. He is a— he was a semi-professional tennis player in Spain, very good professional, semi-professional tennis player. And he told a story about when he was very young and he went on a tournament with his team to Germany. And how he had to play in this key match, and he was absolutely terrified, and he was shaking just the way he'd been shaking before on stage. And he brought us right in, and he talked about how his coach had talked to him, and then how he actually kind of talked to himself saying, "I can do this, and this is important. People are depending on me, and then you, my classmates, you're depending on me to give you a speech." And everybody in the class is just hanging on every word he said, and it was It was so powerful. It was only a 4-minute speech, but it was night and day from the first one. There were people standing and cheering, and it was really quite a moving experience to see people go through that kind of personal growth.

Yeah. Wow. And just the power of vulnerability and that sort of candid honesty.

Well, I tell people that that audiences are really interested and always willing to listen to any one of what I call the 5 Fs. The letter F. Your firsts, your fears, your frustrations, your failures, and your fiascos. Anything like any of those. And of course you don't want to fill your speech with just that. But you know, if you're willing to share a story when you weren't 100%, when you didn't succeed, when you learned a lesson, when you had a real comeuppance as it were, That, as you said, being vulnerable, it really— it's a very powerful and empowering thing, and you will win kudos from your audience for it.

I love it. What were those 5 Fs? Your first—

First fears, failures or failings, your frustrations, and your fiascos.

Love it. That's fun.

And fun. Yes, exactly.

There's another F. And fun. There we go. I didn't even realize I did that. Oh my gosh, John, this has been really fun. Thank you so much for joining me on the show.

Thank you for having me, Sally Koering Zimney Zimney. It's been a real pleasure.

Well, you just bring so much insight and expertise, and I love the breadth of your experience and how you're bringing it together and sharing it so intentionally with people. So thank you for that. Well, thank you, and thank you for what Hey movers, thanks so much for listening to another episode of This Moved Me. I'm so pumped that you're here, you're sticking with me, and here's why it's exciting. Aside from the awesome conversation we just had with John Zimmer, on Friday it's part 4 of this feedback series that I've been doing on Fridays on the mini Moved Mies. I hope you've been listening to them because I think they're super important for us as creatives and changemakers and speakers. We've got to get better at feedback if we want to get better. So check that out. That's the final series on Friday. And then next week I've got on the show a man named Scott Jones, who I know is a listener. Hi Scott, how are you? Super excited to share your episode. Scott is a comedian, he's a TV personality up in Canada, and he reached out to me, sent me his TED Talk, which I loved, and I wanted to have him on the show to talk more about how he has taken his life experiences and brought them out onto the stage. So really excited about that conversation next week. And it's almost the end of the month, which means that in a few days I'm gonna be doing a drawing for a free hour of coaching. So if that is something that you are interested in, and it doesn't matter where you live— in fact, Sebastian, who won earlier this summer— hey Sebastian, how are you? He and I Skyped and got on the phone, which was awesome, and worked. I, you know, we talked about all kinds of things and and helped him crystallize some of his messaging, and he's doing some amazing work. And I just love it. I love meeting and connecting with people from all over. So if you are out there and you're working on something, this could be you. Just hop over on my website, thismovedme.com, and right there, right under that kind of first big image, it says click here for, uh, to win a drawing, win a chance at a free hour of coaching. So at the end of the month, I will draw a name. It could be yours. Click that button. Let's do it.

Okay.

As promised, at some point in the past I said I was going to give a shout out to one of my reviewers, and there's a fabulous review on iTunes. You can go subscribe and review over there. Joker Z425, um, I love you Joker Z. Uh, you gave me just such a sweet review, gave the show such a sweet review, um, and you said that your favorite part of the podcast is at the end where each person talks about what moved them. Interesting "to hear such varied sources of inspiration every episode. Thanks!" And I am with you, it's one of my favorite parts of the show too. So thanks for reviewing, thanks for listening, Jokerz425. Woo woo! Shout out to you. All right, people, this moved me. What is moving you? Check you later.