275: Lea Pica - Virtual Speaking Is Not Going Away (so here's how to make the most of it):

Virtual, it's never going away. Even as we step back out front with live events and we get together again, oh, it's, it's a beautiful thing, but virtual is never going away and it is on us to make virtual work better, not just for us, but for the audience. Enter Leah Pica. Now Leah is a data viz expert, but she has discovered some really powerful, important tricks for us to be thinking about as we continue to embrace this virtual landscape. Hey movers, it's Sally Z with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're going to talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved. This moved me.

What is moving you?

Hey everybody, welcome back to This Moved Me. I'm Sally Koering Zimney, your speaker coach, and I empower purpose-driven entrepreneurs and changemakers like you to leverage the power of speaking on behalf of your business or your idea so you can unleash your authentic voice and finally have the massive impact that you have always dreamed of. And today, what is moving me is that we are still not done with virtual. In fact, we're never going to be done with virtual. Virtual was not something that was on my radar a year and a half ago. Mm-hmm. My guess is it probably wasn't on your radar either, but even as we continue to step out front, back together, step on stages, there's more in-person things happening, virtual's gonna continue to be an option. In fact, a lot of the conferences that I am speaking at or connected to or going to, even months down the road, they are keeping virtual as an option. There's a lot of good opportunities as we continue to have virtual as an option for us. And this weird relationship that we as speakers need to have with us and our platforms and all of the methods and the ways that we have to connect with our audience. Every update like throws us into a, uh, I don't know what I'm doing again and again and again. It is challenging and it's hard, but there are some important grounding foundational ideas that we need to keep in mind as we continue to bring our voices out front virtually. And that is why I'm so excited to bring on the show today, Leah Pica. Leah and I met a few years ago. Actually, I had her on my podcast and I was so wowed by her marketing genius. Now she's a speaker, she's a data visualization expert, and that's what she speaks about. She helps people use their data better in their presentations, and she's amazing. But one of the things that stands out to me about Leah is that she is a, just a brilliant wordsmith. She knows how to frame things and orient things from a marketing perspective that I just want you to pay attention to as you listen to her and as you check out her stuff, because she is so, so good at it. She is the host of her own podcast called Present Beyond Measure. And so if you ever present data, really qual— quantitative, not qualitative, stuff like that, graphs, you know, the like numbery things, a lot of corporate people, mm-mm, you guys pay attention. I want you to go check out her show and check out her stuff because not only is it excellent presentation advice, she does it in a way that is just delightful and engaging. She is a gem. Now in all of Leah's experience in her work, she has done a lot of presenting virtually even before the pandemic. So she has a long history of figuring out how to do this well and how to do this in a way that our audience will care about it. Now, especially when you're talking about things like graphs and numbers, and mm, unless you're already a numbers person, it's hard to get people to care about this stuff. And I think that's why Leah is so good at what she does. And so she has framed up some really foundational important ideas for us to keep in mind as we continue to step out virtually. So I know last week on the show, maybe 2 weeks ago at this point, I don't know. We were talking with David Meerman Scott about just like the joy and the excitement of being back out front, being together live and in person, and like how to wow in our delivery. And that was really fun, and, and it was so fun to put that back out into our mindset of like, yes, we're gonna keep— we're gonna do this again, we're gonna get back out there. And that is true, but I'm bringing us back down to where we are right now, which is on the whole, we are virtual speakers still. And especially, especially beyond the, the keynote concept and like all of the ways in which we think of like traditional speaking, like, oh, I've got a speaking gig. We are still showing up virtually every day with our audiences every day. So these ideas that we're talking about today have a really, have an important place for us in our business on the daily, not just when we've got that virtual keynote. Know what I mean? You know what I mean. So I'm really excited to share Leah with you here. Let's make the most of this virtual speaking thing. Here she is, Leah Pica.

You're not just focused on how do we present the data well, but how do we present well when we have to be presenting data, right? That has been your, your focus for a long time. But when I saw that email and your post about Zoom, I was like, this is awesome. And this is coming from somebody— I spent a lot of time on Zoom.

Yeah.

And I think I kind of have the tricks down, but there was some really powerful stuff in there. And here we are, we are in this virtual world.

Yes, here we are. It's not safe for the most part.

I know, and it's not going away. Yeah, I mean, it will be back live with people, but I think one of the things that my event planner friends are telling me, yeah, and even, you know, my corporate clients to where I do workshops, they like the virtual option. They like offering it to people. It's easier to schedule.

Pajamas.

Yeah, more comfortable, less travel expenses. Some of the events that I've been speaking at in the last few months that have gone virtual, they're all— they're all of them have been like, our attendance is way up, right? Revenue is way up. So I think for events I think there's always going to be a virtual option.

And I think so too.

Yeah, so mastering these tools that help make it possible for us to connect with and reach our audience is really, really important.

And I agree.

So my question for you is, are you— how did you get to this arena where you have been presenting virtually, and how did you get to mastery on the tool, because that's the, that's the hard part in my world.

Yeah. So what's interesting is that a certain turn of events in my life actually precipitated my perceived mastery of this online medium. Thank you for, thank you for that verbiage. So when I was working as an analyst, uh, for a Fortune 500 financial services firm. I had a pretty long commute, and after the, uh, birth of my first son, my health completely collapsed. And suddenly I was trying to take care of him and also hold my job down. So luckily I had an incredibly generous, understanding, compassionate boss. He was the best, and he really wanted to make this work because he still saw my value and felt that I could still transmit that from home. So we got really creative and I started working from home 3 days a week out of 5. This was very unusual. This is going back 8 years now. Yeah, so pretty unusual. And I decided that I was going to make it feel like I was in the office. I was as responsive. I would generate even more energy on my presentations. I would make it feel like I was right there with them. If they were going to give— if an audience was going to give me their time and attention, I was going to give them something in return. I was determined. At this point, I was also starting to begin my industry speaking career around presenting data effectively. And because my very even though I had delivered, I don't know how many corporate presentations before that, I knew I was really going to have to up my game in terms of the energy and the storytelling and the engagement for these very large format, you know, 600 to 900 audience events. So I kind of put my deep background in musical theater into practice, and I tried to think, what are the tools from that that are helping me in this particular arena. So that was, it really coalesced at the perfect time. I really started to feel all those skills gel really well. And then when I went off to my own training and consulting and podcasting career, that's when we first met years ago on our shows. I was doing 95% live engagements, training workshops for companies, industry conference events. And at the same time, I was really starting to get fatigued. I was starting to travel every 2 to 3 weeks, and I missed my bed and my family. So I started offering web classes about 2 years ago and eventually transferred my knowledge into an online course as well. So when #2020 hit this year, changed I don't know, a few of the ways that we worked, I started going on Twitter and researching and thinking, how can I pivot what I know to what's happening out there? And I started going on Twitter and I caught wind of the hashtag #ZoomFails. This was maybe the highlight of my entire summer. There's something about reading about these like catastrophic things, but at least people trying to like laugh about it and make light of it. But the fact is, is that all of that is trying to make light of a really serious situation where organizations are trying to maximize the value they still have from the people they have working for them. And also figure out what the heck is going on with the data and customers right now, because this is a very precarious time for everybody. Except for maybe toilet paper manufacturers and Zoom.

Yeah, right, totally.

So, so earlier this year, I decided to develop a specialized training. It would be data or whatever material you're presenting agnostic. And I called it the Four Horsemen of the Presentpocalypse. So good. If you're familiar with that biblical story, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, They are 4 aspects of the human condition that arrive at the end of days. For me, it certainly seemed to feel like that based on some of the hilarious and very embarrassing things that were happening. What I based these around were these 4 areas of what go into delivering any presentation virtually, where you have more control over the outcome than you think you do. It's not having total guarantee control over everything. And part of the training included a mindset shift around how to roll with things when they don't go exactly according to plan. Right. But for the most part, it was generating confidence and trust that you're going to take every step available to you and more, because I might not have thought of some things. And that is going to give you the absolute best shot at delivering something memorable in a way that people feel like they're right there with you. When I get that feedback from my clients' training and things like that, that's when I know I've mastered this process.

Yeah, totally. And, and it's such a refreshing experience for the audience. And that's why people will say thank you, because it felt like— that just feels different. That felt so different. That was thank you for your energy, thank you for that experience. That is somebody who has invested a little bit more, a little more thoughtfully, to do your best to try and control the scenario and utilize the platform I think one of the realizations I've had in the last 8 months is there's some really powerful things that can only happen virtually.

That's right.

And I've never thought of it that way. I've always thought of it as a liability. And now I'm like, actually, I really love that if we can utilize the the parts of the platform, the tools in the platform. Like, I love that there's some easy interactivity and I can see what people are thinking and how they are responding as they are going through this. Like, before I was just kind of feeling it, which I got— I'm really good at that part. And you know, there's a— we have to manage, you have to manage the chat so it Yep. You're not so distracted and, and it doesn't become distracting for other people. But on the whole, I think that is a major plus. And the fact that now I think of my experience with people when I show up virtually starts with the email before.

Okay.

Information about what this is and the expectations and how to log in and And then the follow-up, because, because now, because it's all happening virtually, it's, it's utilizing this digital funnel in a way that a regular talk— we were kind of forcing people out of that experience and trying to bring them back with us, and they're coming more on our turf as entrepreneurs. And so in some ways I'm like, this has actually been really good.

I never thought I'd say that. Yeah, I mean, there's no question just from the scope of who is able to attend because of the virtual platform. I've seen attendance, global attendance, increase pretty dramatically because of the virtual nature. One summit I'm speaking at in a few weeks has gone from what normally they might have had like 600 to 800 people attend, they have 3,500 registrations. Wow. I'm not sure, I'm sure a number of people may not sign on live, but I have definitely seen higher numbers. And just the fact that there are more people present, that can increase the energy level. And especially if you're very thoughtfully building in specific checkpoints to create engagement with them. I love to use something called neurolinguistic programming. It's something called trial closes. So, neurolinguistic programming or NLP is all about using particular language to influence a particular decision or drive towards a reaction that you want. It sounds manipulative, but it's used in sales all the time to close people essentially and for all different applications, not just sales. But, even one particular way, like I'll tell a story and one was about hating listening to my own voice when I was preparing and trying to refine my speech patterns, which is one of the tips I give. And I was like, I don't know about you guys, but nothing makes me want to jump out a window more than hearing my own voice. Ugh! You know, I made it really dramatic. And I was like, come on, guys, can you relate? Let me know in the chat. I want to know if you relate to what I'm saying. Everyone's like, oh, I hate it. Oh, God. And, you know, it just gets that camaraderie, but it gives people these opportunities to weigh in which also snaps them to attention and breaks any kind of like distraction, reverie they might be in at that moment.

Yeah, so good. Yes, I've never heard it called the neurolinguistic programming, but I have heard and used trial closes all the time. So cool.

Yeah, isn't that great, Sally? Isn't that awesome? It's so great.

See what's happening here? I love it.

There's another, there's another tool I'd love to offer too that I actually learned through a client of mine who's been doing a lot of virtual training. It's called Mentimeter, and basically it's an online presentation slide platform, but the idea behind it is that it allows for interactive polls and grabbing, getting people to weigh in and actually visualizing that in a certain format. So right now I'm trying to see how it can integrate with PowerPoint so it's a little more seamless. For now, they have to go to a website really quick and just enter a code, but it's, it's really fast. But I've asked people like, what, how do you feel, like, what makes you nervous when you're presenting? Drop 1 to 2 word phrases and you'll see a word cloud instantly manifest. That's and built, or you can have them weigh in on, you know, particular things and you'll see a bar chart and you'll see it grow and shift as people that are interacting. And just that motion alone gets people really wrapped up and back to you.

I love it. That's awesome. What is that tool called?

It's called Mentimeter, and I'll definitely send you the link.

Yeah, please do. Please do. That sounds really cool. I'm thinking of a few things coming up that I'm like, oh, maybe I should use. That's awesome.

Okay, cool.

So if you were to— and, and I will be sure to link the article that, that originally inspired this conversation, so I'll make sure to send people there— but if, if you were to, to give for us some of the highlights of here are the big things that will help you as you show up virtually. And some of these are particular to Zoom, I know, but some are also platform agnostic. Yeah, pick up on your word earlier.

Yeah, so I can kind of share what those four horsemen are.

That'd be great.

We can kind of pick and choose. The very first one that's the most important to master, and it's completely agnostic of anything, is yourself. So you are the biggest variable that you can refine and help empower during this process. Most people who present, especially where I am in a business context, were never given any kind of training in terms of public speaking. And I think that that's a huge gap and that's what we're here for. But for me, you know, I start that by saying delivery is 90% of your presentation. And I say it in this really like impactful way. And it's totally a lie. I just completely made that up, but because I have total confidence in how I'm saying it, people believe me. They're like nodding like, "Oh, right, right." So it doesn't matter how buttoned up your numbers are, your facts, your stories. If people can't connect to the energy and the passion and enthusiasm that you have and the confidence that you have in what you're saying, it's just going to sound like Snoopy's teacher, school teacher, that "wah wah wah." And that gets harder here when they're facing 10 different browser tabs that are all blinking with notifications and their kid is throwing spaghetti in their hair and running naked behind them. These are real things that are happening. But part of that is understanding what about the process is making you nervous. And for the most part, it's because of a lack of preparation. So I encourage different methods for practicing, but the biggest tip is to pretend that you wouldn't be allowed to go in that conference room unless you had practiced your presentation or on stage.

Yeah.

Most people feel, well, I can't show up without myself or my slide deck and I'm good. But if people were not allowed inside unless they had practiced, let's say twice, Yeah, that'd be amazing, right? Everything would change about the way presentations are delivered. It's just that it's not a critical part of the process yet. And there's so many different ways to do this, which I'm sure is part of your teaching as well. But my favorite way is to record myself, and in that way I'm hearing my own voice deliver my content. That actually creates new neural pathways in the brain that kind of lay down tracks for your own content. It has to be your own voice though. That's what's so powerful. That's why things like affirmations work when you're like, I'm smart, I'm great. You know? Oh yeah. I use those all the time. There's actual, yeah, there's science behind that. So you're learning your own content just by recording yourself, but you're also getting these extra side benefits of hearing that you might sound comatose, which is what I learned about myself. And different speech patterns that might be influencing the way people see you as a credible speaker, like hyper-speed and filler words and uptalk. Those are the 3 big ones. So good. That first horseman is really like, have you examined how you come across as a speaker and what can you do? Can you create a ritual to help calm you down? Are you standing up? Have you learned how to use your hands? You know, so many different ways to do that and still come across incredibly strong in a virtual medium.

Beautiful. Yes. And like you said, the most important thing is that people feel connected to you, because that's right, it doesn't matter what else you do if they are not pulled in by you and interested in how your take on what it is that we are talking about, right? So, so good. Okay, so that's the first horseman, is you.

The second horseman is your home environment. So I always paint a picture of this woman in this like beautiful West Elm ad type home where her angelic children are playing quietly in this pristine room while she's like— all the mother is like gently on her computer, just enjoying her job. And I think that's what we all would love to imagine. But in reality, everyone got smushed together and no one was prepared with becoming a homeschooler, present cats hanging off of you, children like demanding food, partners. Like, I don't know if you saw the story where a partner walked across in his underwear. Yeah. I mean, It's just wonderful. Thank you, Twitter. Thank you. But I mean, these things can really knock you off guard because here you are trying to keep sane when you're presenting from like a closet or bathroom or basement in cases I've heard, and, or you don't have any private space and you just don't know what to do. And the solution is for me, building a home office fortress. As best as you possibly can. I love that.

Fortress.

Impenetrable fortress. And I have a whole blueprint that I share around that, which, you know, talks about what does your background look like? That's the second thing people will see. Is it going to add to or distract from you? Do you have a do not disturb sign on your door? Do you have a lock on your door? If you don't, it's time to get one. You know, like make these changes that are necessary so that You can literally lock yourself inside. And, you know, if you have kids banging on the door, is there someone else home that you can communicate with? For me, this whole thing has been a huge exercise in partner communication if you have a partner. Yeah. Because usually not everyone's on meetings at the same time. So, you know, check with each other in the beginning of the week. What do you have going on? I have the same office as my partner and we both go live for our businesses. So we have to coordinate that we know we've got this right. And for me, the biggest thing is what you do in like the half hour or so leading up. Are you communicating with your family? I have a big mass text group saying, I'm going live from this time, please no ATVs or, breaking furniture from Fortnite and other things. No banging on the door. Does everyone have food? Have we gone to the bathroom? Do you need anything from here? You know, like, don't assume that everyone is covered because you are playing multiple roles when you are delivering and working from home. That's the reality. That's what this new reality has brought to us. So for me, it's about communication and prevention.

The fortress. The fortress. That's brilliant.

And look, the biggest thing is if you— if someone breaks through the, the defenses, you know, be prepared. For me, where you start to lose the audience is you're like, oh God, oh, I'm so sorry, oh, you're being very apologetic and like coming unraveled. Just take a deep breath and be like, oh, here's my kid. Hey, you might wave and, you know, they think it's adorable, but you you keep it moving, you make it brief, and that's the pro part of this whole process, right? For me is you just handle it and you keep that moving.

Yeah, you know, totally. Yeah, it does not have to derail you because you are not the only one living a real life. Everybody's living a real life where this is real. We're real people there's real things happening just outside the door, and that's true for everybody. So I think it's okay when we have those moments. They, they can be endearing if we don't make it awkward for everybody else. If we just say, right, you know, can I need just a minute to attend to my little person?

Yeah, you're laughing and it's Yeah, yeah, you make a really good point, Sally. I think when that worldwide viral sensation of that diplomat who was on live on CNN or something and his amazing kids like pop on and they're walking into the club like this and they're having a blast and this poor woman like comes in and is like freaking out that they got through You know, people found that hilarious, but I don't think people understood until now just the kind of emotions that run during an experience like that. And, it's so much about having that compassion for others. Even before all this happened, during my delivery training, I would tell them, "You're the first person where PowerPoint died or your clicker died or the internet doesn't work." You are incorrect. Your stakeholders in your audience are dealing with the same thing. Totally. But it is how you handle that situation that ultimately matters. It's, it's not whether it happened or not as much.

Yeah, for me, no, no, totally. Yes, so good. Okay, so you, your home environment, then what's the third one?

The next one is your online environment. So this is where you kind of have to wrestle with technical demons. So I love the story I'm going to tell you so much because it's over now. When I was delivering this, you know, Zoom webinar, which went through like the whole Four Horsemen, I had developed a pre-flight technical checklist that tried to account for every single aspect of the process so that I felt good going live, kind of like a pilot does all these checks with control tower to make sure they can take off. Well, the universe sent me the one situation I hadn't accounted for.

Of course, of course.

Which was a power outage right in the middle of the session, and we don't have a generator yet. It's on the way. That's how committed I am to Just to—

everything checked off.

I love it. Oh my gosh. Well, the best part was that the power went out in the middle of my first one. I rescheduled that one because I'm committed to the next day, and then the power went out a half hour before that.

No, again.

So I had to move my whole station to my neighbor's, uh, place. And I'm good to go, but I drop my charger and it just stops working, so my computer dies. The second one.

Oh my gosh.

So now I have 3 chargers and a generator on the way. That's— and that's the point for the online environment. So not everyone's going to need to take as extreme measures. I have backup power supplies so that I can get through pretty much any session without power now, which is— this is the busiest hurricane season coming. But the thing is, there's always, always, always steps you can take that you probably have not taken yet. And what this is about is having a specific checklist. And that's part of the resource I'm going to actually offer your listeners, which is this preflight checklist where I've really literally tried to think of everything where you are going through— I have it memorized by now, but you are literally going through and thinking of everything. If you have a Mac, have you turned on Do Not Disturb so you don't get like messages about from your dad whether you like broccoli or not in the middle of something or get knocked off a call? Have you turned off all your messaging applications on top of that? Do you have the right microphone? And camera setup? Is your laptop charged and running? Has the family been taken care of? You know, like, have you—

are—

have you learned how to, like, mute everyone at once or quickly unmute yourself? Like, these are the little things to keep in mind, but they make a big difference because you know that call isn't going to come through and, you know, set everything off.

Yeah, so in the event world, we, we talk about it as productive paranoia, that we have to bring some really productive paranoia to our prep and imagine the scenarios. Yeah, their plan B and your plan C, and you hopefully don't have to use them, but a little productive paranoia then allows you to show up and trust And I love you said something earlier about that. Essentially, we are working towards our own self-trust in that, right? That is a mantra of mine too. It's just we want to get to a place where we can trust ourselves to handle whatever might come our way.

It's true. And the more that you take off your mind, your mental plate of, did I do this, did I do that, the more room in your mind you're gonna have to trust yourself and focus on the content and the audience as well. That's what I've really found. And what's amazing is that it took me some time to really perfect that part of the process. I have a mom who is like the worst case scenario handbook. You think of a situation, she'll find all of the things that go wrong. But for some reason, I can be a bit of a realist, but for some reason with presenting, I was always an optimist. And I'm like, eh, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Until one training experience really brought me to my knees in terms of humility, and I almost wanted to be like, "I quit, I'm a fraud." But I was like, "No, actually, this is my chance to perfect this part of the process because I've neglected it before." And in one— in a week of auditing my entire delivery process, and checklists, I went from one of the most problematic training sessions I've ever had to going to two conferences and both of the organizers saying, "You are the most prepared presenter we have ever had here. Can you help us with this and that?" So, I know this, it just requires taking the time to set up the processes and then follow them every single time. Yeah, it's a commitment.

Okay, so we've got you, your home environment, the online environment, which I think is the biggie, and what is the fourth one?

The fourth one is the one you have the least control over. It's your virtual audience, because these are autonomous human beings that have their own agendas, preferences, emergencies, needs, wants, distractions, et cetera. And they're the most important because they're the whole reason why you're doing this in the first place. So how you think about engaging your audience is critical. And I've developed some really fun ways, I think, of doing that. And it's so funny, one of my favorite tweets from this whole thing was, this woman listed like her checklist of how Zoom meetings normally go. She's like, it's important to remember good call etiquette. And she's like, awkward silence. Oh, can you hear me? Beep boop. Someone crunching loudly. Oh, oh, you, you go. No, you go.

Yeah, that sounds right.

And by the time you get through that, no one even remembers why they've joined, you know? Like, this is an opportunity to start your meeting the way like a TED speaker would start with like Rapt attention. So I actually developed, I'm really proud of this, Sally, very proud, but I developed this thing called the meeting kickoff superhero script. And I'm going to include that for your listeners too, because I love them. I love you guys. And it can be customized to whatever, you know, type of presentation you're giving, but it hits it hard. You like hit the ground running. Hello and welcome to whatever this is. Thank you so much for joining. I'd love for you to drop in the chat for a second. Tell me where you're at and tell me one word that you're feeling right now. Are you excited to be here? You know, like, help them remember that they're human beings that you're not talking at, right? If you're recording, tell them that so that they don't have to go crazy writing notes and they can pay attention and focus. I ask them to put their phones on do not disturb and their computers to to quit social media tabs. It's an honor system, but at least you're bringing their attention to it. And, you know, I'm going to be muting everyone. I can't hear your beautiful laughter, but I'll imagine it. Like, you know, you can just think of these things. Any questions or concerns before, you know, someone's going to be monitoring the chat, answering any questions. I always try to have someone else monitoring the chat and making sure technical issues are taken care of because I get super distracted by commentary coming in while I'm presenting. Especially my most recent one where someone pointed out like a typo and then someone contradicted something I said and I'm like, I am not being helped by listening, by watching this right now. So, you know, have someone else because if you're worrying about it, you're not focusing on your content. I tell people that to quickly unmute themselves and ask a question, they can press and hold the spacebar in Zoom. Best trick ever.

I love that trick. It took me a while to figure that one out. In fact, I think my husband discovered it. And because we were just all Zooming all the time last spring, and he was like, there's a really cool trick I got to show you. So that, yeah, that's an amazing one. It's like your own little speakerphone.

It will shave minutes off of your session because people will now not be scrambling to find their mouse and then click that unmute and then be like, oh, I was on mute. You know, we know, but so that's a good one. And, you know, I'll spotlight my video to make sure that people aren't like flipping around, checking out someone from accounting. They're, you know, staying focused on my slides and everything. But then, like I said, you know, in terms of keeping them engaged, I'm asking different questions. I build in a lot of like, how cool is that? Or let me know if you agree, you know, I want to hear if that resonates for you, or I'll put like a pause slide. To help myself remember what are we thinking? And the other thing that I love to do especially because I run like 3-4 hour trainings online— woo! It's hard. You know, we kind of congeal as we're sitting in place for that long so every 30 minutes or so I ask everyone to just stop and take a deep breath and stretch and then I'll make them say something silly like la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. And I'll unmute them. It's really funny. So just so they can hear each other again, because it's like, yeah, this dead silent space, you know?

Yeah. So I think it's easy to forget that we are all experiencing this together even though we are not in the same room, and that is a powerful thing. Uh, and it's not all that different than if we were sitting next to each other in an auditorium or in a conference room. I mean, it's different in a lot of ways, but it's—

it—

every single one of those people are hearing this for the first time and at the same time. And so I love the idea of every once in a while just letting us really be in the same space together. I know you have to— yeah, especially as you get larger groups, you have to control the the noise and the videos and the extraneous chat conversations. But every once in a while, I think it's really nice to just let people be in the same space together like that.

I think it really is. And especially at the end, making sure everyone's off mute so they can ask questions or say goodbye. I always make sure to take people off mute again, be like, hey, before you go, I'd love to just hear your voice and, you know, sign off, and people, people really like that.

I'm— I—

there are points where I wish— I love to find ways to have people off mute so I can hear more interaction when I know like something, a funny story is coming. But unfortunately, Zoom hasn't figured out how to get rid of like ambient noise yet, and it's, it's just too distracting because that noise is in your ears, literally. Yeah, if it's there. But yeah, so those are the ways. And then, you know, I also teach people how to address challenging questions. You know, if they're asking for information you don't have, or they're possibly derailing the conversation. Sometimes people forget that when they're asking for themselves, they may not be asking for the greater good. So it's up to you as a speaker to make sure they feel acknowledged for their curiosity. And their need to know something. And also making sure, like, can you follow up with them offline in order to keep the meeting on track but make it really clear that what they have to say really matters? And then that gives you the opportunity to extend your relationship with that person after the meeting, which can be powerful if you're, if you're in a more business context.

So lovely. I love these, the Four Horsemen. I don't love them actually, but I love how you framed them up. I think you are particularly good at this. We were talking about this when we first logged in together, but you have such a way of framing things and using really fabulous language around it. You, I think, have elevated some, some really important reminders for us as we continue to live in this virtual context. And that framework is powerful because we can take it with us and make sure we are walking through those Four Horsemen so that we're doing everything we can to make the virtual experience better for our people, our audience, and ultimately for ourselves too, but ultimately it is for the impact that we want to have.

It is, it is for everyone. And I find that the less you are thinking about all of the nitty-gritty things, the more energy and attention you're able to give to your content and to your audience.

So true. Well, Leah, where can we find out more about you? Where can we grab all these goodies that pulling together for us.

Yeah, so I can set up a link. I can set up a link to my Zoom cheat sheet, and I can also add the script in there and everything. I'll— should I send it to leahpeka.com/moved so you can sign up for that? And I'm just so excited to meet your listeners.

Oh, well, thanks, Leah. So good to see you again. So good to know. Thank you for your insight and your organization.

You're awesome.

Thank you too, and I want to honor you too, Sally, because I absolutely love the work you're doing too.