How to Deliver a Magical Audience Experience and Get Booked More with Lee Warren - 313

Hello, you are watching and listening to Sarah Archer and episode 313 of the Speaking Club podcast, and I want to open this show with a quote from a famous Greek fellow called Demosthenes. As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not, so men are proved by their speeches, whether they be wise I started this podcast for 2 reasons: because I want to help people recognize the power of stories and humor in speaking, and because I believe it's your message that counts, not the number of ums and ahs you use. There are some organizations that want to create robot speakers. They want you to sacrifice your personality in order to speak perfectly. I want to let you know that you can be yourself and and a sensational speaker. So if you wanna be a speaker that connects and engages authentically through stories, a speaker that gives value as well as a great performance, then welcome home. Hey, welcome to the show. It's great to be here. Nice to see you. Nice to chat with you. And yeah, how you doing? That's my little frenzied, Sort of impression there. I you know I missed friends. I was in Germany for about three and a half years. I got out there when I was about twenty one, and so I kind of missed the whole friends thing. I saw the odd episode maybe when I came back, but I are you? I could not do a friends quiz. I wouldn't have a clue. Maybe I know I know some of the characters, but that would be about it. I know there's some people who can spout all the all the words and. Conversations and so on, but that is not me. Not that I didn't like it, just that I don't know it. Anyway, enough about me and Friends. Uh, we're here to talk about today's episode, and I am absolutely thrilled to bring on Lee Warren as the guest today. Now, I saw Lee first time at the PSA, so the Professional Speaking Association Summit last year, And I was blown away by his generosity, and you'll hear me say that word a lot in this interview, in terms of what he shared with the other speakers in the room. The theme was standing out, and he definitely gave some amazing tips to the audience around how to stand out as a speaker, and we've got a lot of that in this show but also more. So Lee was a magician as well as a sales director, I suppose both of those things make magic happen and there's tricks, I don't know, I'm not going to go down that road, but anyway, he was both of those things before he fell into professional speaking and that was about 15 years ago and he's been speaking internationally, professionally, consistently ever since and he's been using his background in sales and performance and psychology to help audiences at global brands, we're talking some big names here, to become more compelling, confident, and connected. And he's also written an award-winning book called The Busy Person's Guide to Great Presenting, and he's also visiting faculty at Oxford. Blimey! And if that wasn't enough, he's also a fellow of the Professional Speaking Association and a recipient of the highest award for professional speaking, the Hall of Fame Professional Speaking Award of Excellence. In this show, I wanted Lee to give you the inside track on what it takes to get going, to stand out, and to stay at the top of your game as a professional speaker, and he did not disappoint. The tips and advice that you get from him in this show are diamond, and I know, right, I'm going to guarantee this, If you don't just listen to this stuff and go, oh, that's really interesting. If you actually implement some of the stuff that he's talking about, I think it's inevitable that your speaking is going to improve and your, you know, the whole business of speaking that you're into is going to improve. So without further ado, let's switch over to me and Lee. Welcome to The Speaking Club, Lee Warren.

Thank, thank you very much. It's lovely to be here.

It's great to have you here. And the reason I brought you on was I saw you deliver a talk at the Professional Speaking Association Summit and again at a virtual meeting, and I thought you were brilliant, and I thought what you had to share would be amazing to give to my audience. So thanks so much for coming on. Now, you've got an eclectic background, and I wanted to talk about your magic first. I'm curious to know how you got into it.

My story of getting into magic is a bit of a cliché, really. It's a very typical magician's story. I was a 4-year-old boy who had a magic trick in his Christmas stocking, and I fell in love with it, and I did this one magic trick over and over again to my poor family, who I think were so bored by this trick. that when my birthday came around 10 days later, they bought me a magic set. My mum bought me a magic set, I think just so that she could see some different tricks rather than this one again and again, and that was it. So when I was 4 years old, I knew what my vocation was going to be, and then when I was 12, I entered a talent contest that was judged by the Brotherhood of Man. Some of you might be old enough to remember them, I'm not sure, and I won a trip to the Isle of Wight and £20 in cash in 1983 when I was 12. So that was sort of the start of my showbiz career.

Oh, fabulous. I'm curious to know how the experience that you've had in magic have influenced your approach to speaking.

So what is it? One is a lack of fear about addressing an audience directly. So one of the, I think one of the really distinguishing qualities between a good speaker and a poor speaker is when you watch a poor speaker, you sort of feel like you're watching exactly what they're rehearsing. rehearsal was like in their bedroom last night, right?

Yeah.

There's no sense of connection with it. It wouldn't— if the audience got up and left, that speech would be exactly the same. That's a poor speaker, I think. So having spent years sort of engaging with audiences directly and reacting to what's happening in the room and not being frightened of what's happening in the room, that's been a big influence. And then the other thing is when you perform magic, what's called routine is really important. So So you'll learn very quickly the ebb and flow, what works. So if you go and see a magic show, a classic magic show will have a sort of sharp, punchy opener, and then there'll be a few peaks and troughs, and then it'll finish on the best trick, you know, will be the very last one. So basic routine stuff like that, which is very pertinent to putting together a good keynote and giving an audience a sense of a good journey through a 45-minute speech.

It sounds like— and I know that the— so I used to do stand-up comedy, and it sounds like there's such a lot of similarity between, you know, you put your best material first and last, and you've got to be reading the room and reacting to what's going on. It's such— and I know that there used to be magicians on, on some of the bills that I was on. Do you think it's something that you can just learn, or it has to kind of come over time and and having that sort of face time with an audience?

I think it's a bit of both. I think there's a genetic element to it, a bit like athletics or playing the piano or something. I think some people are naturally better at it than others and learn quicker than others. But there's absolutely no doubt stage time, flight time is essential. And the more of that you— I think again, with a good speaker or a good— I think comedians and magicians are sort of much closer to— you know when people sort of always go off for presentation coaching and for some reason they always go to actors and I never understand why. Because actors are terrible presentation coaches. Sorry, I hope I haven't upset anybody in your audience, but, um, but it's because, you know, actors, it's a different skill set. It's a great skill set, but, you know, they, they don't talk directly to audiences, they don't write their own material, um, they don't, they don't usually deal with heckling or interruptions or distractions, um, you know, people have paid for a ticket to come and see them, the lighting is all set up for them, they've been directed by some So they haven't got any of the— whereas comics and magicians, you just sort of walk on stage and have to make it work, and it's all you really. So yeah, I think there's— and when you've done that 1,000 times in front of an audience at 10:30 at night, you're not really frightened of a corporate audience at 3 in the afternoon on a Tuesday anymore, you know.

No, absolutely right. I think speaking as an actor and a comic, I think you're right. Although I'm seeing more actors breaking the fourth wall more recently, which is interesting. So those people that can do that, and sometimes in Shakespeare, the jest— the jester role will have a bit of banter, but you're absolutely right. Most of the time it's quite like, I'm in this space and you're in that space, and never the twain shall meet. That's, that's cool.

Yeah.

Now you've also had a background in sales and some really, you know, high-powered jobs in sales, and I was curious How did you get into that? And then what made you want to make the switch from sales into becoming a professional speaker?

Basically, the reason I had a career in sales is because I needed the money, you know, I needed a sort of proper job to get a mortgage and set myself up and all that sort of thing. But I was lucky in sales, I had a nice career and I liked it and I think I was quite good at it. I was good at getting on with people, And obviously I'm still in sales today. I run my own business, which is largely about sales. I grew up half of my life in a sweet shop. My grandma had a sweet shop. So some of my earliest memories are sort of serving people in a sweet shop, which is a kind of form of both sales and performing. So I think that affected me very early in life. And the— so I always had a parallel career as a performer and then sort of daytime doing a proper job. The shift to professional speaking was a bit different for me than many people. I think a lot of people, when they go into professional speaking, they do it because they've seen a speaker and they sort of think, oh, I want to be like that, or I want to do that. Now, mine was completely the opposite. I had no idea that speaking was a career. I didn't know it existed as a career for anyone, really. But in a— in when I was getting into my late 30s, coming, coming up to 40, I realized actually I'd done magic enough. I enjoyed performing as a magician. I'd had these these 2 parallel careers, my day job in sales and my evening and weekend job in magic. And magic's a lovely job, but it is fundamentally shouting at drunk people in the evening. And so I realized I had some of these skills, both from sales and from performance, that were really all about connecting with people, engaging with people, becoming more memorable and compelling and convincing. And I sort of thought there's probably some kind of market in helping other people have those skills. So a very good friend of mine and I, we set up a business together, and we didn't really know what we were doing. It was a sort of training business, I think, and it was going okay, but not brilliantly. So we came up with the idea one night of putting on an event at a club in London, and it was free to come, but we gave it a nice title and basically said we'd teach people some of these skills. And so I spoke at this event. Lots of people came, more than 100 people came. It was very popular. And at the end of that event, somebody came up to me and there were a few people who wanted to speak to me at the end. And she said, oh, that was great. Could you come and do that in my business? And I said, do what? And she said, well, what you just did. And my brain was thinking, well, I just said some words in a certain order. I didn't really do anything. And then she used this magic phrase. She said, we've got a budget for speakers. And suddenly I realized, oh, actually there's a market for basically for just speaking. And that's how my speaking career was launched. I suddenly realized, and a light bulb went off, and I realized actually that's in my 40s, and I'm now in my 50s, that's what I was put on earth to do.

So what did you actually talk about at the event? What sort of topic Was it sort of around sales?

I gave it a title, and actually I learned something very important that night, which is the title is one of the things that can really sell an event or a keynote. And the title was How to Persuade Anyone to Do Anything— Well, Almost. And just accidentally, I realized if you give something a good title, it looks good in a brochure. It can sell you to a client. It can, it can get people to turn up. It was a mixture of sort of ways of being more compelling, more engaging, more interesting, more memorable to, to clients and people internally and get your message heard.

Excellent. So effectively you built your own stage with your, your colleague friend, and then this person saw you, was so impressed that she booked you, and that was essentially your first paid gig, I presume?

It was. It absolutely was.

Excellent. And so how, how did you move on from there in terms of, you know, did that automatically lead to others or how did you have to put some work in? How did that sort of transition to, you know, an actual career in speaking happen?

I, I wish I could say that, um, I'd been really strategic about it and, and made it work in a, you know, a linear fashion from day one, but it wasn't. It was really It was basically all accidents. I mean, so there were a few people that first night that wanted to book me, and then I did a few things, and everything I did, other people booked me from, from that. Um, I'm still in touch, by the way. She's, she's a good friend now and still a client, that, that woman who came up to me that very first ever gig. Um, so that was 15 years ago now. We know, we know her. I know we know each other really well. I know, I know her son and her husband really well now.

That's brilliant. I think to an extent though, you do make your own, you know, people can hear this and think, oh, well, he's just been lucky. But, you know, you do make your own luck. There was all of the, the sort of stuff that you did in, in, in magic that was essentially building up the skills that make you stand out as a speaker. And then, you know, hitting a topic, which is one of those perennial topics that organizations need help with. I think it's more than luck, to, uh, to, uh, to be fair to you. And I think that's the thing that people need to pay attention to, is, you know, do put in the stage time. It's not, you know, you've got to build a platform and make your own luck, I think, in some senses.

Oh, it definitely wasn't luck. I would use the word accidental more than luck. Um, yeah, uh, what I mean by accidental was, you know, I— it just happened that the night I put the event on, that person was free and a few other people were free. You know, there's lots of things that are accidental But no, it definitely wasn't luck, and I definitely worked hard at certain things, and even really basic things like, I mean, one of the things about having a career in performance is you learn very quickly, you have to be on time, right? For example, so as a performer, I'll always be in a venue way earlier than anyone else, always, always hours earlier, and I'll have done a sound test and run through slides and walked around in the room and the stage. And I've seen many speakers who've come from a corporate background who are quite the opposite. They'll turn up 5 minutes before with their slides on a stick, creating stress. So I think there was a bit of it, that performance background, that made it very easy to work with me and hopefully a pleasure to work with me as well. I felt like a very safe pair of hands, and that makes you very bookable as a speaker.

Definitely. Yeah, I've, uh, I feel your pain there. I'll never forget turning up at a, uh, a gig that I was doing in Edinburgh to find out that half the audience was facing the wrong way, and then I had to do a show for a month anyway. Try— you've got to try and make the best of it, haven't you? And, and, you know, anyway, uh, that was, uh, that's always fringe, fringe fun. Um, so one other thing that I was really interested in, and I know that obviously you've had this performance background and and stuff, but has your content and delivery evolved over the past 15 years?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, uh, one of the things I've come to learn is I think really a, a bad speaker says a little bit about lots of different things, and, and a great speaker will say a lot about very few things. And, and to some extent, again, that's been influenced by magic. I mean, there's a very old phrase in magic which is an amateur magician shows lots of different tricks to the same few people, and a professional magician shows the same 3 tricks to lots of different people.

Yeah.

And so there's a bit of that in speaking. But if, I mean, if I were to watch or even remember my very early speeches, I'd be horrified. I mean, I made, I mean, the classic mistake everybody makes. I tried to cram a week's worth of material into 45 minutes. And also, I didn't really understand that Excuse me, the key differences between training and workshops and keynote speeches, which I think I do these days. And most of my work now is keynote speeches. I do a few workshops. I don't— I'm terrible at training. I haven't got the patience for training. And the great skill of keynote speaking really is almost— some speakers disagree with me about this. It's a bit of a provocative idea, but keynote speakers aren't really paid to give the audience new ideas. In many ways, what a keynote speaker is paid to do is to almost remind an audience of something they know they can do and they should be doing, but they're not doing enough of, or they're not doing it yet. So really, in a keynote speech, you can only get 3 ideas across to people, and you want to really remind— because it's not hands-on, you know, you're not walking around the audience and getting people to do stuff and marking their exam papers and all that kind of thing. You've just got words and a short amount of time. So, so certainly my content has evolved in the area of being much simpler in terms of ideas, much easier to follow in terms of the narrative journey, but also leaning on, on the real force and power that rhetoric has, the great use of language has, rather than all the other stuff that surrounds things like training and workshops, like, you know, props and handouts and breakouts and all that. You've only got words as a speaker. So that's, that's what I've learned to lean on much more.

Excellent. And I think you're also known for, you know, and I think, I think most great speakers are great storytellers. I think that's a baseline, but you add in humor. There's a, there's an entertainment aspect to what you do that perhaps is different to other speakers. Is that fair to say? And how do you, um, do you intentionally build that in?

Yeah, I absolutely do. And in fact, a weakness when I started speaking was I had too much entertainment in, uh, and that again might sound a bit counterintuitive. Um, but I, I have a rough model these days in my own mind, which, uh, and I call it the 3 E's, and that, that, that's education, entertainment, and enthusiasm. And I think a great keynote speech has, uh, education in it, so people either learn stuff or they, or they relearn what they already know. But if you've only got education, it's, it can be very easily be boring. It's very easy. It's basically a training session that happens to be on a stage rather than in a training room, and that's a real shame. So you, you need to leaven that with entertainment, and entertainment can be anything from laugh-out-loud stuff to, to people just really thinking differently, to people being really engaged in an idea. That's also entertaining. Um, and then the third thing is enthusiasm. So people, people learn stuff, they enjoy learning it because it's entertaining, but they've— when they leave that room, they've got to be able to act on it, and they've got to feel like they want to act on what's happened. So, and when I'm putting a new keynote together, I'll record it into Zoom and I'll get Zoom to spit out a transcript of what I've said. I don't write a script, I just speak and then read back what I've written. And when I'm about halfway there, when I think, okay, I've got the structure of this speech, what I'll do is I'll go through it and I use a highlighter and I'll mark the bits that are just education and I'll mark the bits that are just entertainment and I'll mark the bits that are just enthusiasm. So I've got a sort of visual guide as I'm looking through my script. is it looking to me like it's roughly one-third each? It's not scientific, but it's quite a good model for building a good speech.

Absolutely, yeah, I think that's a really good thing. It's a sort of, in a sense, it's looking at where the audience journey is going and visually seeing that. I think that's a really good thing to do. And I suppose having said all of that and making those distinctions between training, workshop, and speaking, Within speaking, there are distinctions. How would you describe yourself as a speaker today? Would you call yourself a motivational, an expert, or a transformational speaker, and why? How would you position yourself?

I've always let my clients describe me however they want to describe me. I wouldn't call myself a motivational speaker because I have more— I tend to use content more than story. So the stories I use in my keynote speaking tend to be sort of more anecdote stories. They're quite They're very relatable stories. So I don't tell any stories about being up on a mountain and being shot in the face.

Yes.

That's not my style of speaking. And for me, a pure motivational speaker, that's what a motivational speaker does. They tell their story and you sort of learn, you know, whatever lessons either you want or they drag out of that story. So I'm definitely a very content-led speaker. Although a lot of clients describe me and put me in brochures as a motivational speaker, I'm always asking them not to, especially in the UK, because people are a bit cynical about motivational speakers. Transformational, I think no, because I'm not— I'm not in— as a speaker, I'm not really engaged on a personal journey. I'm not engaged on a change who you are in the audience journey. A great result for me as a speaker is people leave and, you know, whether they're in sales or whether they're presenting or whether they're engaging people internally, that they leave the room and they think, there are 3 things I can do that are really great. I'm really glad I was told those today and I can do them right now. So it's sort of transformational, but it's very content-led transformation, I suppose. That's a short way, long way of saying I don't know.

Well, it's a very good explanation. I think people will have learned from that don't know answer nevertheless. So the other thing that I wanted to, and I think I might have heard you talk about this this before, possibly, which is for me, and I don't know if you agree with this, to be a great speaker, your talk needs to be polished. It needs to be, you know, at a level where the audience gets that experience that we've been talking about. But also, you know that when you do that, it's selling itself for other things. And often people make the mistake, I think, of bespoking every single talk every time they're asked to speak, and you can never get it to that level. So I was curious about how you tailor your presentations to audiences across different industries so that they're getting that feeling of getting a tailored talk but without reinventing the wheel every time.

Yeah, so I think this goes back a bit to that thing I mentioned about a professional magician shows the same 3 tricks to lots of different people. And I think if you— I think most good speakers try and have the best of both worlds. So for example, If you— I'm not, but if you were a futurist, you can pretty much— you could pretty much guarantee that every single booking you're going to get in 2025, people are going to be— what they want to know about AI, for example, right? And so as a futurist, you become an expert in AI, and then if you've got a gig with a, a, a, um, a furniture company, you bring in 2 examples of how AI is going to relate to furniture. But you might have exactly the same jokes and exactly the same context and exactly the same setup for AI So you'd probably have a 95% set thing and then 5% of it is bringing in some examples. That's exactly what I do. So all of my work is around being more compelling, more engaging, more connected. And the lessons I've got are identical, pretty identical for pretty much every audience in every industry. Now, people don't say this in briefing calls. Every client will say, we've got these unique challenges in our business. They're almost never unique challenges. They're always things about morale, retention, getting better sales, bringing different cultures together. You know, they're always the same challenges. However, the great skill, I think the great skill is in having something that's very polished that you know is going to work. So a bit like a stand-up comic, but it feels almost like it's being made up in the moment. Yeah, that's the skill of a truly great speaker. And I think if you went to see great speakers, many people would be astonished that you'd see them the first time and think, wow, that was really conversational, that's really free-flowing. And then you go and see them the next day and you realize actually 99% of what they're doing is exactly the same— the same words in the same order, the, the same sort of breakout moments and pauses. Um, uh, and I don't think anyone learns it as a script. I certainly don't learn scripts. I think you just do it so often, you know what's, what's going to work and what's not.

Yeah, and I think it does, it does iterate because when, again, I mean, I'm assuming you're the same, when, when you do a talk, or certainly when I used to do stand-up, I would see, you know, if an audience reacted to a certain bit in a certain way, then I'd be like, right, I do that again. And you're kind of picking out that you're creating that best set that you know is going to have the reaction you want all the time. It's that consistency. And that's what you said before about what bookers are buying. in you is that safe pair of hands, that great experience for the audience. So, you know, it's something that you get to a point where you can guarantee that, but there's a journey on the way to getting there, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, fundamentally, what we're speaking— what bookers are buying is that they're buying a result, right? So they— yeah, and that result is something like, we need our sales to increase 3% this year, or, or we need, or we need the team to want to come back into the office more than 2 days a week. You know, whatever their result is, that's what they're buying. And then there are lots of processes you can have in place as a speaker to reassure clients that they're going to get the result that they want. So they won't book a speaker just because they're on time, right? That, you know, they want to know they're going to get the result. But being on time and being reliably known for being on time is definitely one of the key things that contributes to getting that successful, uh, successful result.

So I guess one of the things that I wanted to see, because I know that you're a fellow of the PSA, so you see a lot of speakers and you've obviously done the journey yourself. What do you think are the most common mistakes? So perhaps we've talked about a few of them, you know, some of the hygiene factors around being on time and that sort of, but what mistakes do you see speakers make who are trying to transition from unpaid to paid gigs?

I think some people, to use that dreadful American phrase, reach out. They reach out to the market at a level they're not ready for yet. So if one of the strong things I would do is, you know, if you're currently at— if you've never had a paid gig ever, you don't contact speaker bureaus, right? Don't send an email to HSBC and say, I'm a motivational speaker, would you like to book me at £7,000? Because you're not— A, you're probably not good enough, frankly. You haven't done it enough yet. But also, you haven't— people sense it. You haven't got the experience behind you. You haven't got the full-on showreel. You haven't got the You know, currently all your testimonials are other audience members saying things like, that was really great, I learned so much, you know, rather than a chief exec saying that transformed. So sorry, this is— there's no way of doing this without sounding arrogant, but I had, for example, I had an email recently and it was from a leadership team and it said, thanks to your work with us, we've just secured $200 million in extra funding.

Wow.

So that's a great— I mean, that's a real testimonial. And that testimonial means I can email HSBC and say, I'm a speaker, would you like to book me? Right? So I think reach out at the level you are at the moment. So if you've never been paid, then get in touch with associations, local groups, employee networks where people might have a little bit of money, but they need a speaker as much as you need a speaking gig.

Yeah.

And then when you've done 10, 20 of those, you've now started to pick up more experience. You've started to pick up better testimonials. Better contacts. And frankly, I think if you're any good at it, very quickly people will start finding opportunities for you. If you've done 20 gigs and you're still having a problem finding gigs, honestly, I think you've got to take a step back and say something's not working. And the most likely option is it's me. So it's either my style isn't good enough or my content isn't good enough. The way I engage with an audience isn't good enough.

Absolutely. I think that's, that's the key thing is around without that, that's the thing you're selling. The product is, is you delivering the talk in a sense. And there's a lot of, you know, the branding and the outreach and, and all of that stuff. But that product has got to be spot on. And the only way you're gonna get it spot on is by doing gigs in a sense and trying out the material. And, and I think you're absolutely right. There's no point in testing out something at HSBC level or whatever when it's not there, not there yet. That's really, really good tip. And I guess so one of the things that I heard you say also, and you think you've referred to it a little bit, is the lady that booked you the first time, you're still in touch with. She's booked you, uh, several times since. You, what you do very well, it seems to me. Is build and nurture relationships. And is that the strongest tip? Once you've got the goods, is that one of the strongest tips you get for filling the pipeline?

The trouble with all tips is you can immediately find a speaker who breaks that rule, right? Who's incredibly— so for example, I know, I mean, I know a speaker and he's well known on the speaking circuit and he's always late and he always overruns. And you know this when you book him. But he's so brilliant and audiences love him so much that he's extremely well booked, for instance. Whereas I would say to any speaker, punctuality is, is an entry-level requirement, and he breaks that rule. I know a speaker, for example, who, who never dresses up, wears a shabby old shirt, drags a flip chart onto stage, um, and just does a mesmerizing session with just a flip chart and writing on a flip chart, even when there's 3,000 people in the room and none of them can see the flip chart. Breaks every rule of good presenting and yet is one of the busiest speakers in the UK and is brilliant. So my personal tip would be absolutely, um, speaking is, it's a very personality-led business and it's a very personal, uh, uh, um, business. And many of my best referrals, well, all of my best referrals come from either existing clients or event. If I turn up an event and there's an event production company there, they're, they're wonderful sources of referrals because if they, again, if they see you do a good job and you're a nice person to a pleasant person to work with, um, that's, that's absolute dynamite. Um, to be honest, it's in my career now, it's at the stage where I don't really like getting cold emails. If, if someone sends me an email and say, we're looking at some speakers, we've seen your website, you're down to the last 5, can we have a chat? I'll do it, of course I will. I like building that relationship, but, but my heart slightly sinks, you know, this is going to be an uphill struggle. And, and, and it's so much nicer getting an email saying, saw you last week, you know, thought it was great. Are you free in July? We've got a conference coming up.

Excellent. No, that's, I think that's really, really useful. Okay. And a couple of sort of, well, penultimate questions before we go into the standard ones. How has the landscape of public speaking changed over the 15 years that you've been in the industry? And how do you think speakers can make sure they stay relevant going forward?

It's a great question. I think like so many things, COVID sped up some things that were happening but probably would have taken 10 years to happen, and they happened in a year. So obviously the huge change is the acceptance of virtual delivery and hybrid delivery. That's an enormous change. And so just on a delivery level, I think— and sorry, I'll definitely upset some of your audience by saying this, but some people are still using slides online in 2025. Right? It's utterly bonkers, for example. So just on a delivery level, get engaged with the technology of being able to deliver online. Learn how to look into a camera when you're doing hybrid stuff with people in a room and there are 2 cameras there. Learn how to work with those. I was in a meeting with an event production company a fortnight ago, and they booked a non-celebrity host, and they had the budget for a celebrity host, and they booked this woman. She's a terrific host. I've worked with her a few times. And in the conversation they said it out loud, they said it's because she's the only one, including the celebrity TV presenter host, she's the only one who can make our audience, speech marks, at home, you know, on the laptops, feel as included as the people in the room. That skill got her that very well-paid gig. So I think there are some delivery things around understanding different kinds of audiences. Another thing that's changed is we're now So yesterday I was at an event where the average age was 25, roughly. The audience were between about 23 and 29. The average age was 25. So for basically the entire working life of that audience, being virtual is normal for them.

Yeah.

And being in the room is a temporary blip. Whereas for me, I'm 54 years old. For me, being in the room with people is normal and going online was a temporary blip. So I think you have to accommodate that. What does that mean in terms of an audience's attention span, in terms of what they expect, in terms of the kinds of language you're using to address different audiences? And that takes us to another— so a huge change in 15 years, especially as a London-based speaker, a European speaker, is how much more multicultural audiences are now. You just can't have topical references. You can't be referring to stuff that was on TV in the '80s. You just can't do it. You'll alienate your audience. And I think in terms of staying current, it's a big question. It's a difficult question. I think it's one that all speakers tussle with. My way of tussling with it is just sticking to the stuff that's been true for humans for the last few thousand years and is therefore likely to still be true for the rest of my career, which is only, you know, it's only about 15 years I've got left. So Um, so sticking to those real fundamentals, um, and putting it really frankly, a lot of what I do is, is I get paid to remind people of stuff they should know, but they're just too busy to know.

Yeah.

Um, um, so if I tell an audience, uh, so a phrase I use in, in one of my keynotes, for example, is, is I say to an audience, and they love it, and they absolutely love it, and it's so simple, you— it's embarrassing that I get paid for it, But I'll say to an audience from the stage, right, here's one of my golden rules, everyone: if you ask boring questions, you get boring answers, right? And the whole audience says boring answers, and everybody laughs, and they write it down. And it's not that the audience can't work that out for themselves, of course they can, it's just a delight to be reminded of something that's, you know, the audience's brains immediately go, oh my God, that's so obvious, I'd forgotten that, you know, I'm so busy, thank you for reminding me of that really obvious thing. Um, so I think that's another way of staying current. It's not technologically current, but it's a way of understanding in a busy, pressured world, are there some basic truths that people really would find valuable to be reminded of?

I think that's so, that's so true. But I was— I don't know if this is the right word, how sometimes though we can over-engineer— I'm going to say profundity, something that's profound. I don't know if that's a word. I might have just made that word up. Who knows? Um, but you're so right. It's those profound things that are, you know, eternally true and valuable that people, that get lost in, in everything else.

There's clearly a very fine line between profundity and a banal homily.

Yes. Yeah.

So I guess you've got to be careful of treading that line.

Absolutely. Um, Lee, you've been so generous in sharing all of the stuff that you've mentioned today. I think people are going to get an absolute ton of value. from what you've shared. And also, I think it shows exactly why people book you and why you're a professional speaker. Before I let you go, before we share where people can find out more about booking you or see you or whatever, I have some standard questions if I can just have you for a little bit longer. The first question is, what's the best thing that speaking has done for you?

On a personal level, it's let me find the career that I was absolutely 100% put on the earth to do. And I I changed to being a speaker when I was 40. Um, so it's, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's a perfect match of who I am and what other people need. And that's deeply fulfilling. It's deeply fulfilling to, to do that. And the second thing is, and sorry if this sounds a bit, um, a bit sappy, but, uh, but it's given me an amazing network of great friends.

No, that's, that's absolutely brilliant. A good answer. Have you had a gig which you would like to erase from your memory, one that didn't go so well? Can you share about that?

Yeah, absolutely. So, so, as in my magic years, I did a gig once. I was booked at Yo Sushi in St. Paul's on, on a Friday afternoon in December. And if any of your audience don't know, Yo Sushi is a sushi chain of sushi bars in London, and you sit around a sort of horseshoe shape and the sushi is on a plate. It goes past you and you, you take the plates off and then you get charged at the end of the meal. according to the number of plates you've taken. And this company, excuse me, they haggled wildly on my fee. I knew it was going to be hard work, and I turned up and they were all sat sort of facing away from the room round a horseshoe shape, and they'd asked me to do a sort of mini cabaret. So I had to immediately say, look, cabaret is not going to work. And they said, oh, we thought you could step into the horseshoe, as in where all the food's being prepared. We've got the chef's net hat for you to put on, right? Because you've got to put that on to go into— and I had to say, absolutely not. I used to perform in a purple velvet suit. I'm not going anywhere near sushi being prepared and also trying to shout over a whole restaurant. So we tried in real time to sort of rig up some sort of performing area, and it ended up with me and about 20 very chemically enhanced advertising executives all standing up in the middle of a busy restaurant. Um, and my sort of 25-minute cabaret lasted about 4 minutes. It was the, the low— the lowest point of my, my performing career. Um, I've never had, touch wood, I've never had anything as awful as that as a speaker. I've definitely had gigs where they haven't gone as well as they should have done, and that's been my fault. Um, so for example, I speak very fast, and I always have to remind myself to slow down when I'm walking up. It's the first— it's the last thing I say to myself myself as I'm walking on stage, uh, slow down, Lee. Um, I have to say that every time, and sometimes I haven't got that right. And, and so, you know, I've had a sort of 60% gig instead of a 98% gig. And then occasionally I've done gigs where it's, it's not been good, and it hasn't been my fault. It's because, because of geographical factors, uh, ambient factors. I did one once where it was in the early evening in the city, and the heating, the central heating, it just got hotter and hotter, and it was a summer's day in London, and it was as in I was dripping with sweat about 20 minutes, but I could see the audience were deeply uncomfortable, and I had to say it to the organizer, is there anything we can do about the air conditioning? And no, sorry, it's centrally controlled aircon, it just gets turned off at 6, there's nothing we can do, and I had to finish about halfway through what I'd planned. It was just impossible to carry on.

What a nightmare. Because that is one of the things that they, you know, if certainly in comedy, I don't know if it's true when you perform, but one of the things that comedy venues try and do is keep the, keep the temperature cool so that people stay awake. And, uh, that's a nightmare. That sounds awful.

Very quickly, there's other lessons from comedy that apply to speaking as well. So comedy clubs, you know, get everybody as close together as possible because laughter is contagious. Um, get everybody as close to the stage as you can because you want that connection. And the number of venues that have chairs 800 feet away from the stage and with that big aisle in the middle, you know, where you're— that's where you're speaking and you've got this energy gap. I could go on about that for hours.

No, it's absolutely true. All of those things are so true. Um, brilliant. Well, and I was gonna say, the thing to make a point of here, and this is why I asked this question, is that you just learned from those things, got back on the horse and, and, and moved forward. Didn't let any of those things stop you, which is, which is brilliant. Cool. Next question. What's the book that's had most influence on your life and why?

Well, in terms of speaking, there are a few writers I think are sort of non-negotiable. Um, so they would be for me, uh, James Joyce, uh, Nabokov, Truman Capote, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Uh, so their prose is so— it's, it's all different for all of them, but it's so magnetic and glorious. You can't help but speak better if you read that kind of writing. And then, and sorry for the cliché, but Shakespeare, I have to say, I think as a— because if you're dealing in rhetoric, which keynote speakers are, so rhetoric, you know, is elevated extravagant language that is designed to be emotional as much as rational, then, you know, I mean, you can't read Mark Antony's speech in Julius Caesar and not then be a better speaker if you've got any sense yourself. So I, I think— I hope it doesn't sound too pretentious, but I, I definitely would say the Four Tragedies of Shakespeare being the greatest influence.

That's brilliant. No, and you know what, it's never come up before with all the people that I've interviewed, um, this point, and I think that it's a really important point. And I know that you're involved with the theater yourself, and I know you've written, um, lyrics for a musical, and, and the, the book for the musical And that has also, I think, must come through in your speaking as well, beyond the things that you've mentioned. That love of theatre must come through.

Oh, absolutely. I'm obsessed with live theatre, and I'm particularly obsessed with the works of Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricist. And again, you can't love Sondheim's lyrics and not be better at language.

Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Okay, what's the best bit of business advice you've had and why?

I think— oh gosh, that's a big question. So there's a wonderful book, I'm not sure how current it still is, I'm guessing it is, I read it a long time ago, and it's got a terrible title but it's brilliant. It's called Selling to Big Companies by Jill Konrath. And the basic message of Jill Konrath's book is you have to understand the people you're selling to. You've got to deeply understand that world. Now, in paraphrasing it like that, that probably sounds really banal, but actually the way she sets her argument out in the book is I found it quite revolutionary actually, um, and how to run sales meetings in a way that was focused on the client, not, not your own, what you want to sell. I think understand your client, understand their problems is probably the single best bit of advice I've ever had.

Excellent. No, that, that's brilliant. Yeah, I think it— and I think the same is also true of speaking. So I talk about audience intimacy and I think transplant that advice into speaking as well is, is a massive leg up if you just really think about who you're trying to connect with. So that's a really great point. Thank you. Our last one, if you could have any mentor, they can be alive or dead, fictional or non-fictional, who would you choose and why?

So the first great famous orator was Demosthenes, the Greek orator who taught himself to speak by putting pebbles in his mouth, apparently. I think I'd probably love to meet him. I'm sorry to be boring. I'd absolutely— I mean, you know, can you imagine sitting down for an afternoon with Shakespeare and saying, here's my keynote, could you look over it? I mean, who could pass that up? But I do have a great love of Greek and early Roman rhetoric as well. So sorry, I'm not giving you one answer, but even some of the great senators like, like Cato or someone like that, who— people who gave, um, rousing speeches that changed the course of European history. Um, I guess a lot of people say Churchill. He wouldn't be top of my list, actually. I think he was a, a good speaker at a certain moment, but he, he wouldn't be there. I— so, so I think another of the great Greek rhetoricians, I guess, would be my, my slightly vague answer.

No, that's brilliant. I'm seeing a theme. That's fantastic. That's all good. Well, listen, Lee, thank you so much again, as I said, for your generosity. And every time I've seen you speak, you've been so generous. And I imagine when people book you, they, you completely overdeliver too. So, uh, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show and to, um, hear all the things that you've wanted to share. So where's the best place for people to go if they do want to find out more of a booking about booking you for their event or just to connect with you?

LinkedIn's normally the best place to connect with me, so you can find me easily if you type in Lee Warren Speaker into LinkedIn. That's the best place to find and send me messages, and then we can always take it from there.

Brilliant. Thank you so much again, Lee. Best of luck with all the things you're up to in 2025, and thank you again.

My pleasure. Thank you.

There you go. I just, I was so thrilled with the episode and I said at the start, I said generous lead because I was so impressed by how much Lee shared. There's some real golden nuggets in that episode and I would probably suggest have a listen again because you've maybe missed some of them the first time around and I hope that you got some ahas from that and if you did, it'd be really great if you could share in the comments or message me to let me know what you got from the episode, and I guess more importantly, if Lee gave you an epiphany, go and let him know on LinkedIn. The details are in the show notes of how to connect with him, and if you have an event and you want a great speaker, definitely have a look at Lee's website and get in touch with him because I'm sure that he's going to blow your audience away. So, There you go. I'm definitely— I picked up a couple of things from that that I hadn't thought about in that way before that I'm definitely going to put into play, so, um, and I hope you did too. Well, that is all from me this week, and I am so grateful to you if you are watching the show on YouTube or listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, any of the podcast apps, and yeah, it's great to have you picking The Speaking Club as your podcast of choice for now, and I hope that you subscribe if you enjoyed the show. Leave a comment below if you're watching on YouTube. Yeah, subscribe to the channel, subscribe to the podcast if you're listening, and if you can leave a rating or review, that would be amazeballs. That's it from me. I will see you next time. In the meantime, you know what I'm gonna say. Don't forget to go out, grab your life by the nuts, and get cracking. Bye-bye. It's a nightmare. You're an expert with so much to say, but now that you've been booked to speak, you're struggling to know exactly what to talk about. You want a talk that engages the audience and wins you new clients without you losing your personality or anyone feeling pitched to. But what happens when you sit down to create that talk is that you end up staring at a blank page for ages, or worse, surrounded by hundreds of sticky notes with content that you could include. With so much material, you just don't know where to start or finish. Don't worry, because many experts like you face exactly the same same challenge, and that's why I created the Blank Page to Stage Guide. In just 50 minutes, this breakthrough resource is going to help you identify the big idea of your message, make it relatable for the audience that you're speaking to, and convey it all in a way that gets the audience inspired and on board with your idea. And it works even if you have tons of material or your subject feels less than exciting. If you want to cut through swathes of content and get a talk that you're excited to share, your audience loves, and wins you new clients, then grab your Blank Page to Stage guide from saraharcher.co.uk/newguide-tsc. Oh, I forgot to say, it's completely free. Enjoy!