151: Rick Altman - On How to Make Your Power Point Actually Powerful

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 waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Hey Movers, it's Sally, and guess what? I am sitting in my kitchen today. I just, I cannot sit in my office. Anymore. My office where I have my good microphone and where I get all set up, and it's just— it is— here's the deal, there's 3 more weeks left of school, I think, and I have 3 kids, and my— you should see my house right now. You should see my office is stacked full of crap, and I just couldn't take it. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna record this intro on my iPhone. Forget setting it all up. I just can't be in there. I cannot be in there. So here I am in my kitchen, which is also messy, but, um, has whatever bubbly water available. So anyway, here I am, here I am hanging on to the end of the year. It's like sprint time, my friends. And in a moment, you get to hear an interview that I got to do with Rick Altman from Better Presenting. And Rick is a PowerPoint MVP. And initially I was like, wow, Rick and I are gonna have nothing in common because I am not a PowerPoint MVP. I have learned how to sort of manage PowerPoint and I'm one of those people that saw PowerPoint as kind of the enemy. And then I started working with some clients that use PowerPoint and had people on staff who really, really knew how to use it well. And I started to see what an amazing tool it is and also why so many PowerPoint Why Most PowerPoints Actually Suck, which is— I'm stealing that a little bit from the name of Rick's book, which is Why Most PowerPoints Suck. And so I really wanted to kind of dig in with Rick and bring him on the show and talk to him because I feel like this is depending on the area that you are working in. You know, if you are an online person, generally the slides that I'm seeing look much, much better than what I see in the business world again and again, day in and day out. I am shocked sometimes about how bad people's decks are and how little they support a compelling, authentic, connected presentation. So many times it becomes really about the PowerPoint deck. And so it was really refreshing to talk to Rick as his approach is exactly that, that it's an amazing amazing tool that should support your message, and it's really not, um, the presentation isn't the PowerPoint deck, it's you and who you are. So, uh, but if it's bad, it absolutely can take away from your presentation, and there are so many bad ones. So we had a really good conversation about how to make them less bad and what are some really tangible things that we can be doing to avoid so that our presentation decks don't suck.

So yeah, let's do that, please, because I just saw one the other day that I'm still kind of reeling from.

That's a very strong response and strong reaction, but there it is. I'm sure you've had the same reaction. And if you are somebody who, um, really loves to build PowerPoint decks but you're not a designer, this is for you, okay? And this is for all of us because there's something we can all, I think, be doing better on this. So I'm really excited to have Rick Altman on the show. Rick is himself a consultant and a speaker, and he has this phenomenal conference, I hear, called the Presentation Summit. I'm hoping to be there. It's this fall in Florida. It sounds amazing. We talk a little bit about it and you'll hear some more, but wouldn't that be fun to like hang out, go hang out together at the Presentation Summit?

Let's do it!

Woohoo!

Anyway, here he is, Mr. Rick Altman. Oh cool, oh my gosh. I thought it might be good to start with a confession. I don't know how many people say this.

Well, you go, you go first.

Okay, that's, that's fair, that's fair. You don't have to confess anything, but I feel like I should. Um, so I, uh, started, uh, because I, because my background is really in the delivery and the writing of talks, I I paid no attention to slides for a long time. I mean, I knew that they were a part of it, but they were not a focus of mine forever. And my confession is that I was like a PowerPoint hater for a long time.

And then that's, that's not a confession. That's like a badge of honor.

I know, for so many people. But here's what happened. I started working with a really a big corporate client and they used PowerPoint. And instead of— and that was not going to change. It was like that was, that was what they were doing. And in the process of working on their presentations and helping them change really what they were doing with their slides, I learned how powerful it is and And what I realized is most people just don't know how to use it, and they don't— it's such a powerful tool if you're using it wrong or really not using it at all. Yeah, you don't realize what you have, the capacity of it.

It's powerful the way a hammer is or a screwdriver. You know, a carpenter couldn't possibly do his or her job without one. But, you know, it's just a hammer. There's a lot more to creating a building than, than using a hammer, even though you couldn't do it without one, right?

But it's complicated. I mean, this is, this is a, a tool that I have been using, and I still know I am scratching the surface of what is possible with this thing.

Like, you know, I don't know, maybe we should start with It's very enigmatic because the reason that I actually would take a slightly different point of view, I think it's one of the easiest programs in the Office suite to start using. And I like to say that both of my daughters started creating slides when they were 10 years old. It really doesn't take a whole lot to begin creating slides in PowerPoint. And that's one of the problems, and that's what complicates things, is that most people are undertrained. Most people take an hour or 2 and they declare themselves proficient with the software. And that wouldn't be such a problem if it weren't for the fact that this is a craft that's practiced in public.

Right.

The rest of us have to just be subjected to—

That's right. And it doesn't take a whole lot to make people's heads explode and say, "Oh my goodness, I had no idea that PowerPoint could do this." Well, yes, but like if you took a second hour of learning the software, then maybe Maybe you would.

Yeah. So Rick, let's just like take a step back and start with you and your story. Like, how did you get into this? Right now you are like one of the foremost experts on slide design and PowerPoint in particular. So like, what does that trajectory look like for you?

So now it's time for my confession.

Yes, let's hear it.

How far back do you want me to go? I was not good enough to play on the professional tennis tour. And so, all of this was my second choice. So, I mean, that's all go all the way back into the 1980s, the golden era of tennis, you know, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova. And yeah, I wasn't good enough to hang with them. So, I took a job after graduating from UC Berkeley as the editor of a tennis magazine. And, and, and I, so I got to meet all those players instead of play against them. And I, and, and I was, you know, playing tennis tournaments here in Northern California every weekend and writing about tennis. And I just lived tennis for about 4 or 5 years as the beginning of my plan B of not being able to play. And then, then desktop publishing got invented. In fact, I would tell you that I invented desktop publishing. Really? In my own little vacuum, and this is really, I'm really going to date myself here, using one of those 300 baud modems that we spent $800 on and an Osborne 1 computer because this was before IBM PCs, and we figured out how to send our articles in WordStar files to our typesetter so that they wouldn't have to retype everything. Because back then in the early 1980s, you know, you would send your manuscripts to your typesetter and they would then retype everything and give it back to you on these, you know, big sheets of— we called them galleys— and you put wax on the back and you take your knives and you put them up on the board.

You sound like you're talking from the 1800s.

Practically, I mean, you would think so. But then when we when we figured out that they didn't have to retype everything and that we could put little codes into our WordStar files that would allow the headlines to be big and the bylines to be italic. This was just amazing. Now we still had to take our knives and put wax on the back and all that stuff, but this was just life-changing. And in our own little vacuum, we were doing this. We didn't know that anyone else was doing it and nobody was calling this anything yet. But it was so compelling that I actually quit my job at the tennis magazine because following this unnamed thing was more fascinating to me than writing about tennis all of a sudden. But then I floundered around for a year or so because I couldn't get anybody to understand. There was no handle to this. I would call up companies and I'd say, well, I'd like to show you how you can use your computers to help you publish more efficiently and more intelligently. Yes, we have a word processor, thank you very much, goodbye. No, no, this is different. This is not just word processing. If I could just meet with you and show you. Yeah, go fall through the floor and die, thank you very much, goodbye. And I just couldn't get anywhere until John Warnock proclaimed, let there be desktop publishing. And then suddenly, you know, there was this handle, you know, had I given it a name, maybe I'd be the one. But So then, you know, oh, I teach desktop publishing. Oh, let's meet for lunch, you know, let's talk. Suddenly it was all different. It was just because there were these two words attached to it.

Amazing, the power of giving something a name and having that be recognized.

Wow.

Yeah, that was a real life lesson back then. Why didn't I do that? But, um, so, so, so though that was really the roots of this all, I mean, I come from graphics and publishing. And I spent the better part of a decade hosting learning events and user conferences for the electronic publishing and the graphic design industry. And this was back before Adobe stomped all over it. This is back when a little company in Canada called Corel was producing— you know Corel— producing CorelDRAW and PhotoPaint. And they were the darlings of the Windows-based graphics community. And I hosted Corel World for well over a dozen years until the company completely lost its focus and its footing and ceded the entire ground to Adobe. And we had 300 people coming to our conferences in the mid-1990s, and by the early 2000s, it was barely 100 or so. And one of the guys on my tech team who was a Microsoft MVP, that's a designation given by Microsoft, the most valued professional. He said, "You should be doing this for PowerPoint." And I said, "Well, who gives a crap about PowerPoint?" And he just kept nudging me and as attendance at CorelWorld continued to drop, I said, "All right, you know what? I'll put my money where your mouth is. Let's do this." And he introduced me to the rest of the team of PowerPoint MVPs. There were about a dozen of them back then. And I said, "All right, well, here's this whole technical team involved." place and I know how to put on conferences. Let's try. And it was 2003 and 180 people showed up for it. We just called it PowerPoint Live back then. It was all just about the software. But my goodness, that was 15 years ago. And you know, now the Presentation Summit, as it's called, is enjoying a nice little run. So, you know, who would have thunk?

Oh my gosh, that's amazing, Rick. I did not know that you came from that background. It makes so much sense to me, like the world before PowerPoint was just publishing, of course.

It could be. I mean, there's, you know, there's many bridges to PowerPoint, but interestingly, very few of them travel through the arts. You know, very few people who are in the trenches creating slides and crafting messages for corporate America, very few of them actually have a background in design and yet they're asked to design presentations all the time. You know, so when you talk about the challenges in the presentation community, we've uncovered two of them already that people are undertrained in PowerPoint and they're asked to design presentations but they barely know what the word means.

Right. They don't have a design background.

That's right.

So do you find that in the world of PowerPoint, that's what you've got? You've got a group of people who are— it's part of their job in corporate America. They've got, they've got the sophomore, they've got a sophomore, they've got this software that they've got to figure out how to use and they don't have design experience. And so they know the program, but they don't know the design principles.

Yes, you have identified at least half of the dilemma. I mean, there's more. But wait, there's more. You know, most people who craft messages for their organization, you know, they go on autopilot and they start with, "Oh, let me tell you about our company. You know, we were founded in 1975, largest manufacturer of widgets." You know, and most audiences, they don't care about that. I mean, they've got the own issues. And most people, when they go on their corporate America autopilot, that's how they start out. Let me tell you a bit about ourselves. Let me tell you about our company. Let me tell you why you want to do business with us. And that just doesn't really resonate at all. So, you take all of that and you add to it the fact that most people are scared to death to speak in public. And you have a deck that really is stacked against our community. No wonder there's job security for what I do, you know? Right.

No, it's so true. The, the, you know, the corporate clients I have, it feels layered in stuff that we have to kind of dig through and, and grapple with. And part of it is about the, you know, just the fear of doing the skill of standing up and speaking. And then the part of the reason I've always hated PowerPoint and And the sort of obsession with slides was because it was the crutch. It was the thing that they just threw all their content, you know, and like every— it was their script. Yeah. And then how people build those slides collaboratively just became such a problem because it was all these different voices being thrown in on one deck. And I mean, oh my gosh, there was so much a morass of stuff to work through.

And that's the irony of so much of this, that even if people were not undertrained, even if they really took the time, you know, you could become a PowerPoint god, Sally Koering Zimney, and that would not in any way ensure that you could craft a message with imagination and creativity and find compelling visuals to complement the story and deliver it with impact. In a way, really, the, you know, PowerPoint, uh, proficiency is, is maybe the, the, the least important commodity of this formula.

Yeah, I agree with you. Um, I mean, I think it's important, uh, and when you have a great deck, it sets you apart. But if you don't have a great message and you're not delivering it authentically and compellingly, then it doesn't really matter.

Yeah, yeah, having a good— having a great deck could set you apart, but again, there, there's no promise there. You know, there's just so much more to the formula.

Yeah, for sure. So knowing that one of the big challenges that most people face, especially in the business world, is that they're undertrained in PowerPoint, what do you suggest for people? Like, what step, assuming most people are creating bad decks just because that's kind of the way it's always been done, especially like culturally in their business, how do you begin to shift the culture around how that works?

Well, there's a real softball for you. I guess I should talk about my conference, huh? Sure, just come to the Presentation Summit and all your answers, all your problems will be solved. URL below. So, I mean, yes, I stake my livelihood on the fact that there's really no substitute for learning in person and for finding good training, whether it's a conference or whether it's a local consultant or— I'm one of a handful of people that go around the country and this is what we do. I mean, one week out of the year I make people come to me, the other 50 out of the a year. I go to them and I give workshops at organizations. And so I understand well what these issues are. And I've seen it with my own eyes that people will spend hours upon hours pounding their head against the software and not getting them anywhere. And one of the disconnects that I have experienced is this belief that the software alone can create success for you. And that just doesn't work. And so much of this is mindset starting with what the real ingredients of a good presentation. And I would define it perhaps a little bit different than most people. I would define it that a good presentation is made up of 3 things: what you say to your audience, what you show them, and then what you give to them in the form of some sort of a handout. And all too often, those three things get all jumbled up inside one very crowded slide deck, and all three of, of these tenets are ignored or, or, or disregarded. And when you start to think about those three things separately, then you really can start to do your job better and you can find more fulfillment in, in thinking about how you were going to tell this story.

Yeah, you know, it's, it's interesting. A lot of my clients, to sort of pull them away from putting everything on the slide, it was like, you know what, you can just put that in the, in the giveaway, in the handout, in the packet that they're taking with them. Like, I know this is important information, but Either— I love how you have separated those. You know, there's some things that you say and then there's some things that you show and they should be different.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's the challenge though, is that, well, first of all, I'm asking people to do two things instead of one. I'm asking them to create slides and create a handout as two separate parts of the project. And I know all about, you know, crazed bosses and 11th hour emergencies and ridiculous deadlines and everything else. And so I, I mean, I realized that that's That can be daunting. And autopilot is such that people just don't think that way straight out of the box. And then third is the belief, sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit, that if you create wonderfully simple slides with finely honed text messages, there are people who are going to just look at it and say, well, You're lazy. Where's all the work? And I remember it was 2010 at the conference one year when this gentleman from South Korea stood up. He was a soft-spoken man. And he said, "Rick, I understand what you're saying," as I showed all about how to take this, you know, take a crowded slide and hone it down to just the key messages. And I was so proud of myself. I mean, I took "Like, you know, 150 words and took it down to about 7 or 8, found a beautiful visual and created this after example that I thought was just, you know, going to be the envy of anybody." And he said, "If my boss looked at that, he might fire me. He would tell me that I'm being lazy. He measures my work by how crowded my slide is." And that was really, that was an epiphany for me that day in 2010 when I realized, you know, this is not just about, about, you know, get all the crap off of your slides. You know, we've got some— we have some mentalities that we really have to change here, and we have an aircraft carrier to turn around, and that won't be easy.

Yeah, I mean, it feels like if you are in, in this industry at all, everybody knows, right? You use visual slides, you, you create very simple text. You know, you don't put bullets, you're not throwing all your text on there. It was sort of like, no duh at this point. And no duh, see it happening again and again, especially in the business world, because they're just doing what's always been done and what has— what is expected of them.

That's right.

So like, what have you done in that situation? What did you tell them to do? Did you say like, talk to your boss, or have them call me, or I'm gonna sit down?

You know? Yeah, you know, it's—

it's— yeah. That example might be extreme because we're talking about such a strong cultural boundary between what we do here in America and in his case, in South Korea. So, you know, while that was sort of dramatic to me, you know, I sort of had to say, well, you know, I'm not going to win every battle here. Here in America though, I'm more optimistic because I see, I do see a change in consciousness. I see executives who have been coached properly, who have sort of gone through detox as I like to say where they're no longer addicted to having slides that practically function as scripts of a speech. And while in some cases that might have been a painful journey, they have come out the other side and they now understand that how much more evocative a well-crafted slide can be and how much more effective effective they can be when they get themselves to a place where they can really share their expertise, their vision, their passion and all of that with their audiences when they get out from under their slides. There are enough people in positions of authority that have gone, that have undertaken this change that now they see that yes, the rest of my company, they might say, needs to go through this also. So I'm optimistic that there are now people that are carrying that torch.

Oh good, I'm glad to hear that because I keep getting surprised.

Yeah, well, Rome wasn't built in a day, Sally Koering Zimney. We got a ways to go. It's true, it's true.

So Rick, knowing— I know PowerPoint is like your, your baby, it's your favorite, but there are so many options out there for presenters of different experience levels, of different, uh, design abilities that are trying to take some of the, um, some of the technical knowledge that you need to design well and just take care of some of that for you. So I'm curious, what are some other programs that you've seen out there that help kind of break that code for people and make it easy to step in and, and do good design quickly and easily?

Yeah, well, I guess I want to start by just by perhaps gently pushing back on the notion that PowerPoint is my favorite.

Oh, okay.

Because, well, because, because I mean, again, that sort of suggests, well, what's your favorite hammer? You know, I mean, okay, yeah, I like this hammer, feels good in my hand, but you know, again, it's, this is just a hammer. Yeah, you know, that said, the current version of the software does really have some nice new features and One of them in particular might go a long way toward allaying what I might call Prezi anxiety. And one of the tools, one of the alternative tools is Prezi, which, which, you know, got out of the box really quickly. And there were a few years there where it was really quite the phenomenon. And I feel as if it has fallen out of favor a little bit, and I'm not sure that the company itself did any favors when they called themselves the Zooming People, which describes the signature move of Prezi, who's the whole thing behind Prezi is that you have one big canvas instead of a group of slides. And on this canvas, you create all the parts of your story and you move in and out to create context. Prezi is great for creating context, but people got carried away with it. Just like we've gotten carried away with so many things. I mean, all the way through, you know, the things that— you know, PowerPoint got— people got carried away with all the ridiculous animation. And I'll go all the way back to the 1980s when we started out, you know, with desktop publishing getting carried away with rounded corners on our boxes and shades behind everything. I mean, you know, just throughout the— and let's not even talk about websites and the ways you can get carried away there. But with Prezi, it was in some cases literally nauseating, the zooming in and zooming out that again was sort of its claim to fame. And I think that was a bit short-lived. So now, for better or for worse, PowerPoint has a tool that can do that also. And it is my hope that PowerPoint users use it a bit more judiciously.

Yeah.

Apple Keynote is a great tool, and there's some wonderful things that you can do with it, and there's some truly hideous things that you can do with it. You know, these tools just sometimes get, you know, given too much credit and too much blame. I mean, death by PowerPoint is in everybody's vocabulary and, you know, whose fault is that? You know, do we blame the software for that? I don't know.

So what's the hideous thing that you see happening in Keynote?

Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure I use the word hideous.

That's what you said, Rick.

Okay, you're right, huh? Okay. And I thought it was a great word. Sally Koering Zimney Zimney.

I love hideous.

I think it's a great word.

All right, you know what? I can't retreat from it. I'll stick to it because, yes, I mean, here's the thing. You can, you can, you can, you can take Keynote, you can put a bunch of crap on a Keynote slide, and it can be just as bad bad as anything with PowerPoint. Keynote has some templates and some automation that will sort of guide you through to creating less cluttered slides. So maybe you have to work a little bit harder to create, to achieve hideousness, hideosity.

Hideosity.

I love it. Channeling my inner Woody Allen here. Creating heavy hideosity in Keynote, but you can still do it. I think that sometimes the issue with Keynote is that you end up with slides that are kind of banal because there's actually not a bulk to them. And then you know, you want, okay, well, that's a nice picture. What the hell does it mean? And so, you know, there's plenty of ways to drown. With, with all of this software.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point, and I've kind of felt that, that difference. And, you know, when Keynote did their big update a few years ago, in order to— I think, and you probably know more about this than I do— to simplify it, to make it easier to use, you know, as Mac likes to do.

Exactly.

And at the end of it, I was like, I feel like it kind of lost its oomph, you know. And, and of course, that was the same time I was discovering really the how powerful PowerPoint was if you can, if you know what you're doing.

Yeah. And again, the new version, boy, Morph is a wonderful tool which will enable users to, to, in about a tenth of the time creates some fairly complex animations. And I use that word advisedly, animation, because it really has gotten a bad rep with the boomerangs and spirals and the screeching brakes that a lot of people do. When you use the animation engine in PowerPoint to sequence a complicated story, to give it to your audience in sequential bite-sized pieces, then you really are on the road to becoming a better storyteller. That's where animation really really finds its highest form is when you sequence dense chunky data so that your audience can better appreciate your message. And Morph is a wonderful new tool that will allow you to do that in often half the time. I mean, like one very simple point, if you're trying to show how an object might move in relation to another object, you know, and maybe this is literal, maybe you're creating a tutorial on how to how to operate something and part of it is you take your passkey and you put it into the receptacle and you need to actually move it there. Well, the motion path in PowerPoint is the bane of just about all of our existences. It's so difficult to use. You have to almost guess at the ending point and now Morph makes that really easy. You create two slides, your starting slide and your ending slide and you take the object and you put it exactly where you want it to end up and you ask PowerPoint to morph between the two slides and in about a tenth of the time I can make that happen. Yeah, so, so that, that tool is really going to be a game changer.

Yeah, Keynote has the same thing. That's their Magic Move. The Magic Move, which I've used a ton, and when you find the right moment to use it, it's really great. And it, and yeah, it just kind of puts a little pizzazz in what you're doing without it being like sparkle, shiny, twisty turny, you know. On my show, I get to this moment, we do a "this moved me" moment, something that has moved you recently to keep us as presentation people inspired and also inspiring other people. So what is something that has moved you lately, Ray?

All right, so let's see, how about something that happened 4, 3 weeks ago? My wife Becky and I, we just took a cruise, and this, we love to cruise. We've been on many, many cruises, and usually the cruise director is, you know, some middle-aged man, and he comes out and says hello to you at the evening shows, and you never see him again. He welcomes you, and usually it's in some thick accent because just about everybody who works cruise ships seem to be from Europe, and that's just about it. And, but this time there was this young woman, her name was Sarah, as our cruise director. And so right off the bat, it was the first time we've ever had a woman as a cruise director. And so that alone was worthy of note. And she was much younger than most of the cruise directors. That also was noteworthy, but mostly what it was, was the way that she interacted with, I mean, there's 3,000 of us on a cruise, on this cruise ship. After the shows, she would walk up to the, to the exits and she would greet everybody with handshakes and a kind word. We had never seen that before. Becky and I stopped and chatted with her. In fact, the show involved a song that was sung in Italian and it was a song that we all knew and I couldn't think of its name. And I said, "Sarah, what song was that they were singing in Italian?" And she said, "You know, I'm gonna find that out for you. What's your cabin number?" No cruise director has ever asked me asked me what my cabin number was before, let alone remember that our names were Rick and Becky, because she remembered us the next night. She says, "You know, I'm working on that for you, Rick." Wow. Wow.

Seriously.

A night later, when Becky and I got back to the room, there was a handwritten note from Sarah along with a little plate of strawberries with chocolate and printed out the lyrics to this song.

Oh my gosh.

As a conference host, host. Boy, did that move me, you know. I mean, my goodness, talk about a model for how to, how to make your guests feel welcome. And she's doing this on a scale— I mean, you know, we limit attendance at our conference to 200 people. She's, she's hosting 3,000 people. And on Saturday afternoon when we left the ship, there she was saying goodbye to us at the disembarkation. Never had anything like that before. So, so Sarah's my new hero.

Totally. And there is there's something so important for anybody. Like, I'm thinking about people— when you host a meeting or you are, you know, are presenting somewhere, it's like that effort to go out and meet people and to have conversations and to remember them and to put yourself aside and just be at service to the people who you are speaking to and connecting with there, that is so powerful.

That's right. That, that, yeah. Yes, it is. I mean, that, that, that, that truly can be a game changer, you know, and, and to, to circle back and we were talking about hammers and nails and everything. I mean, those are the real skills right there. I mean, this, the, the ability to be genuine in front of your audience, to the ability to give your audience the impression that nothing else matters right now except captured the interaction that you and I are having at this moment, you know, to be able to give your audience that impression, that really is a gift.

Absolutely. Ooh, here, here. Love that. And so Rick, what I wanted to talk about for my This Moved Me moment is very personal. So a friend of mine, her mom passed away, maybe it was maybe a month ago at this point. And the, the funeral was just beautiful.

Yeah.

Afterwards we went to like the local— it's kind of like the VFW, you know, a VFW.

I'm sorry, what is a VFW?

Oh my gosh, a veterans— it's like a, it's like a, it's like a bar for veterans. Okay, community center kind of.

Yeah, mostly.

Sure.

Okay, I'm trying to remember what the acronym stands for.

Anyway, nice fusion there of a community center and a bar. I like that. Center, a bar.

I mean What more can you ask for, really?

That's right.

And so it was really casual, and that was part of what they wanted to do is just bring everybody together and connect and like you do, you know, to celebrate and share stories. And they had pictures and it was lovely. Well, she had two kids and I'm friends with the daughter, but the son got up and he wanted to share some stories. And I'm watching this, of course, I always have sort of a presentation mindset when I see these things and I'm just really curious about, A moment like this, you know, this is a moment that you want to highlight and really give honor to this person that you love so much and that you're grieving for, you know. And so he had pages of notes, like he had stories written out and he probably talked for 15 minutes. It was very sweet, right? And, and, and moving. But I contrast that with my friend who did not want to speak. Yeah, but she knew, I think, that she would regret it.

She had to. Yeah, she had to.

And I will never forget what she said because she walked up there and just looked at all of us and said, a lot of you have been giving me crap about the fact that I call my mom every day. That's what I do.

We talk.

And a lot of you made fun of me for years for that, but I knew that one day she wouldn't be here for me to call. And I can't tell you how many times in the last 2 weeks I've, I've wanted to call her. So call your mom. And then she sat down and I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, oh, moving.

Wow.

She, you know, she didn't have anything written out.

Uh-huh.

She didn't plan on it. She basically was like, she was shaking her head like, no, I'm not going up there, no, I'm not going up there. And then I think knew like, oh, damn it, I've got to do this, and got up there. And the truth of what she said and the simplicity of it, it really struck me. And, you know, the act of saying some of these things out loud, I just cannot underestimate the power of speaking something that is so real for you.

Yes.

And what happens, what the power and the potential of saying that out loud to the other people in the room.

It's just like, oh.

Oh man.

Well, that, and that, that's the Maya Angelou moment. You know, I may forget what you said, but I'll never forget how you made me feel.

Yeah.

What your friend was able to do, that, that really is extraordinary because there are, it's that, that's just so difficult to do. And you know, when you pile on top of everything that we've been talking about, about the difficulty of speaking in public, and then you put the emotional distress of a memorial service on top of that. I know, uh, to be able to speak with, with that without notes at all at a eulogy, that's, that's extraordinary.

Well, honestly, I think that's why it was moving, is because she didn't want to do it.

Yeah, right.

And, um, because it, it was so clearly not about her, um, and she just was like, I, I miss my mom. I'm calling your mom. Just call your mom. I could go call Mom, right now, right now, you know. Oh, and, and it made me just respect and admire her even more for her courage in doing that, because it was in honor of her mom. And there's no better reason to stand up and speak than to just pay homage to someone like that. So thanks for joining and jumping in with me. I love your passion, man. Your passion and your joy for this is crystal clear.

That's sweet of you to say. I appreciate it.

Hey movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney.

Thanks again for joining me for another This Moved Me episode, and here I am. I'm no longer in my kitchen. I am now in what might be the loudest Starbucks on earth, which makes this kind of fun, huh? Yay! Alright, so here's the deal. If you haven't yet, I'd love for you to head over to my Facebook page because starting next week I'm gonna be doing some Facebook Live mini movies. Mees. Okay, this is an idea that came from one of my guests, Scott Savage. Hey Scott, if you're listening, this is your fault. I'm digging in, giving it a go. But what these are gonna be is once a week I'm gonna be hopping over on Facebook Live and answering questions, digging deep into some of the hows of how we speak and how we move our audiences and how we we can be more impactful, confident presenters and speakers. So, um, I— gosh, we're gonna see how this goes. I— maybe it'll be fun.

I don't know.

We're gonna give it a try. I'm really excited though. I'm really excited to try this new thing. So I'd love to see you over there. All right, so I'm not just speaking out into the void, but Yes, come meet me over there. And here's what I'm going to do. Next week, I'm going to actually kick it off with a 3-day mini Moved Me Facebook Live, like kickoff workshop. Okay. So I'm going to be for 3 days digging into 3 mindsets that we all need to adopt if we want to be our most authentic, grounded, confident, courageous presenters. And let's face it, speaking can sometimes bring out the inner 7th grader in all of us, which makes, you know, really experiencing the joy of speaking for ourselves kind of hard. And that's important because without that, we can't move our audience. So I want to dive in with you over on Facebook Live next Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, May 23rd, 24th, 25th, 12 PM Central. That's the time zone I'm in, so right around lunchtime. It'll be about like 10 minutes every day. And over on the Facebook page, I will have some links to more info and downloadable workbooks and all some other goodies like that. But you gotta like the page in order to see it, so head on over there, facebook.com/thismovement, and I'll see you there. I'm kind of excited. It could be a total disaster too, but that, I mean, that's worth seeing, don't you think? Come watch me flail. It'll be great. All right, see you then.

Thanks, movers.

This moved me. What is moving you? I can't wait. Tell me about it.