Ep. 143 - 8 Ways to be Powerfully Selective

Hey there, Mark Brown. You have a new idea, a new insight and a new foundational phrase and this has got to be an episode.

Well, I appreciate that, Darren. I was thinking in my coaching the last couple of months how often we try to do so much in a presentation, but the key is if we are selective, we can be effective. Let's talk today about the power of are being selective.

Anyone can give a presentation, few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcast with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation? AHAs. Let's dive right in.

Mark Brown, where do you come up with these things? Brilliant.

The thing is, you and I have been coaching individuals and also in a group setting through Stage Chime University for a long time. And as I recall, as we recall this, we're in the contest season for Toastmasters and many different individuals have come to me for help, both within stage time and also for their contest speeches and also some for corporate presentations. And I began to notice a pattern in their zeal to deliver a good message. What happens is, and we're often guilty of this, we try to provide so much content, so much information and use so many different types of speech and different tools, hoping will really drive the message home. And sometimes it can be overwhelming. So I had the thought, let me talk to my buddy, my good buddy, Darren Lacroix, about the power of being selective. And the first thing that came to my mind is when telling stories, very often speakers, particularly new speakers, tend to speak in narration. They'll tell you about what happened. And you and I had this conversation years ago. We had this conversation about using dialogue other than narration when you were competing 21 years ago. Where are all the years gone?

Wow.

But the thing is, as you and I both know, we hear this idea. You know what? That's right. I can really relive the scene and use dialogue. However, one can go from one extreme, all narration, to the other, all dialogue. And you yourself have told me, Darren, that you've seen people go on stage and they put a table and flowers and they build a set and basically a speech is transformed into a dramatic presentation or a monologue, becomes a one.

Man show or one woman show.

But here's my point. We have to be selective about how much narration to use and how much dialogue to use. And I also recommend you choose which dialogue to use at what point in the presentation. Because you, Darren, I heard you say this very often. Dialogue can create that moment in a presentation where the audience gets an aha. Not through what we say as a presenter, but through the dialogue of one of the characters.

Yeah. And it's not just turn it into dialogue. It's the right dialogue, the selected dialogue. And sometimes that's one of the reasons we need a coach, need feedback from that qualified coach that can help you see. Yeah, that might have been exactly what happened. But we've almost got to dramatize it a little to show the difference, to show the emotion of the character and show the shift of. Of the characters. So there's so much to being selective. It seems like anyone can stand up and give a presentation. Yes, they can. The challenge is, are you truly leaving that lasting impact? And Mark's idea of being selective is so important. And sometimes we do need help in that area.

Yeah. And I'm so thankful that I had someone to coach me 27 years ago. David Brooks, the 1990 world champion, my master mentor, to help me see some of this. But much of what I'm talking about today, I happened to learn along the way from my own mistakes. When trying to do what I did with lack of knowledge and not enough guidance, not only is the narration versus dialogue selection is important, you and I had this conversation back in 2001 when you were competing about selecting action versus words and action being selective about when to let the action tell the story as well as. As you always say, the reaction tells the story. I wanted to share with our listeners your perspective on that one switch between the action and the words. Be selective there.

Well, sometimes I get a little legalistic, okay. Often I get a little legalistic and I learn a new technique, and then everything has to be that technique. And what I learned from you, I remember I kind of pushed back on this because I remember, okay, it's gotta be clear. It's gotta be clear. It's gotta be clear. And I believe you're talking about the story where the woman covered my mouth. And so I'm telling this story about bombing on stage. And I said, and the woman. So she was standing behind me. We were doing an improv game, and her hands became my hands. And she was telling the story verbally. Excuse me, visually with her hands as I was telling it verbally. And bottom line is, it was bad. And I said, please do something with your hands. And she Covered my mouth and it got a huge laugh. The only laugh I got in that presentation. But it. I mean, there's no worse thing to get a laugh about than when the person coming up on stage and you're supposed to be the funny person and she gets to laugh. But I kept saying, and she covered my mouth, and then I covered my mouth with the hands, like they were her hands. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. They'll get it. It's more powerful in silence. I'm like, but they have to understand that she covered my mouth. And you're like, they can see it. Yeah. And you gotta give them some credit for intelligence. And so I remember I put. I pushed back a little bit on it, and then I realized, ooh. And I remember Jim Key doing that in his speech, at the end of his speech, ending it in silence. How truly powerful it was because he was signing. One of his characters was hearing impaired, so he was signing what happened instead of saying it and signing. And it was just much more powerful in silence.

Yes. That was Jim Key, the 2003 world champion of public speaking. His speech was called Never Too Late. I believe you can see that on YouTube. But Darren's correct. He was. He had used a foundational phrase throughout the presentation. And in the last time he said it, he didn't say it. He was using sign language, and he just did it. And the audience got it. We don't recommend you use this thing every single time. Barra saying you have to be selective. When is the best time to do it? Jim Key didn't do it four times. He only selected the last time as the most effective time to. To make that decision. No matter what we discuss today, the key word here is being selective. You may have the best techniques on the planet, but if you overuse them, they will lose their value. And after a while, your audience goes predictable, boring. He or she or they always do that. When can you use action? Let the action speak for the words. Darren, you also say reaction tells a story. Oh, I was so shocked when he told me. She left five hours ago. That may work, but why not let your audience see on your face that you were shocked so they can understand that you are using the reaction to share and tell that story. Again, select the scene in which you will choose to let the audience see a reaction, because very often when they can visually see the reaction and the emotion kicks in, that's when the audience connects to what you're trying to say. And very often just a look on the face Will tell the audience what the character is thinking and what the character is saying. Be selective when to use action only in place of words. Number one was narration and dialogue. Number two was action. And words. Number three will get me in trouble. Because at Stagetown University, we do talk about creating identifiable characters. What often happens is our students and our clients will say, okay, great, I'm going to describe the client, the other person well. And Darren Lacroix will tell you is Mark Brown's story. If you don't know Mark Brown, he's 6 foot 2, he is a Jamaican native, and he laughs like the guy on a 7up commercial. Ha ha ha ha. So Darren gives three physical characteristics. Very often, when individuals find the power of. Of a character description, they will want to tell you what shoes he had on, color of his hair, if he had hair in his nose, the color of his shirt, the wristwatch they were wearing. Oh, she had a really fully skirt. And what happens is we often overdo the description. We recommend that you be selective. And, Darren, you have a rule of thumb that you teach about describing characters. Please share that with our friends who.

Are listening well, and again, for what we're saying too. There's always exceptions to being selective, but as a general rule, we say give us a visual. One tiny visual aspect of them. Mark Brown is 6 foot 2, and if you were watching this on YouTube, I held my hand up showing he's much taller than I am. So I'm using me as the perspective to show he's tall and then give us a visual. He's a native of Jamaica. Of course, they picture the dreadlocks and.

With my bald head, it's not gonna happen.

But they pictured him. It doesn't matter what they pictured. It matters if they pictured. We learned from Patricia Fripp. But give us an emotional and a visual. Let us know the heart of the person. I say Mark has the heart of gold. So when you deliver the very direct feedback that I needed to hear, they know it's coming from a place of kindness. So you may have a lot of ideas, a lot of visuals about your characters, a lot of emotions about your characters, but what we need to understand is what is the one or two that are relevant to this story. So being selective for the visual you give us for this story, for the emotion you give us for this story. There are a lot of other things I could tell you about Mark Brown. He has delivered sermons, he sings in his choir. He has an amazing life. He talks about all the time. He, like, there's so much. But for this story, on this day, to deliver this message, these are the selected descriptions.

And what I appreciate was for the younger audience members, millennials, they may not get this piece, but you're still always included. And he laughed. The guy from the 7up commercial. And people, even if they don't know who the late, great Geoffrey Holier was, they still find it amusing. And they can picture me based upon those three different characteristics. So the point is, we don't need to deliver every single detail about every single character in every single story, in every single speech. If we were to invest the time to do all of that, it will be high on description but very low on content. The key is to be selective in those descriptions. And the same applies to idea number four. It's how we portray scenes or set the scenes in the stories that we tell. I was telling Darren earlier, before we began recording this, and we laugh about this, we say, okay, be descriptive and set the scene. And someone walks down the street. It's a beautiful, sunshine summer day. It's like June 13th. And the grass is green. There's a park bench there. A little girl with a floral dress and frilly socks and black shoes is sitting there with a Rebecca in her hand. And there's a robin, a cardinal, and a blue jay in the tree overhead. You spend three minutes describing a scene that has nothing to do with the fact that she wants to buy an ice cream cone from the vendor down the street. And mom says, no. We invest so much time describing the scene. And again, we have to be selective about what's important, what is critical to the scene, and what does the audience really need to know and see in the scene or for it to come alive and to work for you and for them.

Yeah. One critical idea for that, too, is when you're practicing, when you're delivering to a practice audience, which is actually, there is no such thing as a practice audience. But when you're getting feedback, ask your audience specific questions. And in this situation, the one question you would ask is, did you picture the scene? Because if they pictured it, they're there. And again, if you give too much detail, if you're not selective. Now you're confusing them. Now they're off on tangents. That's why it's just these selected details. And as we learned from Craig Valentine, check the vax V A K s give us a visual, an auditory, a kinesthetic, and a smell. But you also want to be careful that if you're telling several stories, it's not the Same way each time you're not using the same description or the same smell. Like you've got to be selective. This one, this time.

Yeah. And also one of our mantras, it could be a criticism as well, is you don't give the audience a reason to take a mental detour. If I go off onto a red, a cardinal, a blue jay and a robin in a tree fighting over a worm, I'm not giving you a reason to go picture or what happened, who won, you know?

Yeah, they're taking bets in Vegas.

Cardinals fan. This is about baseball in America. Okay? It's a ridiculous thing to say, but you get the idea. You don't want to give the audience a reason to take a mental detour. So if you give them what they need to know and understand to properly picture the scene, if you are selective about those descriptors, chances are they'll follow you along that journey. We have to be very careful about using those descriptors very, very well. That was point number four. Idea number five is really very helpful, particularly for those of us who give shorter presentations. It could be a Toastmasters presentation, a Toastmasters contest speech, or even a TEDx speech as opposed to a 45 to 90 minute keynote. And that is the use of quotations. Now we're doing an audio recording here. You cannot see Darren's face when we talk about the proliferation of or the overabundance of quotations that some people choose to use in their presentations. I distinctly remember one individual sending me their seven minute speech, and I believe they had eight or nine different quotations from eight or nine different people in a seven minute speech.

Wow.

And I think, Darren, will you kind of hit on what may be the reason why people feel they need to double down on other people's quotations? What are your thoughts on that, Darren?

Well, I think many emerging presenters, whether you're a Toastmaster, you're a corporate presenter, sometimes we don't really trust ourselves and we want to back up our point. We want to prove our point by edifying it from quotes from famous people who are agreeing with our perspective. Almost like we need their proof. My idea is because people said, but you quoted Brian Tracy in your speech. Yes, I did, but I talked. It's part of the story. I talked about here's how I live my life. Then I heard the Brian Tracy quote, then here's how I live my life. So there was a definite change in me, the main character. I'm not quoting for the sake of edifying my own opinion, backing up my own perspective. So for us, we can't be a quote book. Look, I get it and I understand it. I'm guilty of it back in the day too. But our job in this podcast is to give you world class insights to help you be unforgettable. If you quote 32 quotes in a half hour speech, you'll be unforgettable for the wrong reason. And then they could have just bought a quote book instead of brought you in.

Yeah, I recall correctly, Darren, you had said when you were first starting out, you realized, wow, I have to give longer talks and my content's kind of short and you had to find ways to fill the time. And sometimes we do that. If I get a nice quote, it'd be great. And I've heard five or seven minute speeches with a 30 second quotation or longer. I'm like, you're going to recite a whole poem. We want to hear from you.

It's your stage, your turn.

Yes, your turn. It's your stage. And please, please hear me on this. Hear us on this. Darren is very passionate about this, as am I. You have your experiences, you have your insights. And sometimes the best quotes that you can deliver is not the one from Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King or, you know, Indira Gandhi. Sometimes the best quote you can give to us is a quote from your guru who gave you wisdom and advice. That guru could be your mom. That guru could be your mentor. And Darren, you found that that was helpful. You've been using quotes from your mentors, your comedy mentor with great effect, to teach us principles about telling stories as well.

Yes. And obviously we quote Patricia Fripp a lot, but she is the one who incited our growth as presenters. And so we're passing along what helped us, not just trying to back up our point with evidence from another expert. You're the expert. We want to hear you. And like Mark says, quote your coach, your teacher. We haven't heard their quotes when you're quoting other people. Well, yeah, I've heard that before. Yeah, that's a great quote. I've heard that before. Why are we listening to this person being selective? And if you're not sure, ask yourself, why am I using this quote? And that might just lead you to whether it should be selected or rejected. Bam.

Yeah, mic drop right there. And regarding being selective, sometimes what it takes is for us directly just kind of take a step back and look at our script. And I know some will say, hey, I don't write a script, I just speak. Fine.

I Don't know what you're talking about, Mark Brown.

No, look, we will do this. Record yourself, have it transcribed, okay? Record yourself, have it transcribed. Or use AI software to literally do a transcript when it hears you speak and read what you have written and see how many quotes you really use in your presentation and step back and say, and ask yourself, do I really need to use all of these quotations? Or does my experience with my guru, my family, my lessons learned, can that stand on its own? Is it worthy? You may find, when you are selective, you may be able to remove as many as half of the quotes you have in any given presentation if you are willing to step back, transcribe it, read it, and as objectively as possible, assess what you have. So please go back and look at your script, your idea, even your bullet points. Look at your slides and ask yourself, do I need all the quotations I have? If not, okay, then being selective, which are the ones I absolutely do need and which serve me well? And remember the perspective Darren gave. He used the Brian Tracy quote because of the direct impact on his life and his career. And Aaron, if I'm not, if I'm wrong, correct me, but you have said you wouldn't be where you are today had it not been for the impact of Brian Tracy's words on your life. In that context, it's definitely very, very wise. So, number five, consider being selective about the use of your quotations. Now, I mentioned earlier that we often put our quotations on our slides and our presentations, which brings me to idea number six. The slides you and I use in our presentations with a PowerPoint or Keynote or whatever other tool we use. And I know we're now in a world where virtual and hybrid is very consistent. Darren, you do use more slides when you're doing a virtual presentation. I didn't say more quotes, right? I said you do use more slides. And there are times you have to decide what is the best slide to use in any given situation. And part of the work we have to do is to be selective about the material that we're going to deliver. Darren, you have a philosophy like a basketball Final Four tournament system. Of course, we could also use a stage metaphor or a. Or a film metaphor about auditioning help us to understand part of your selection process for some of your quotes, your stories, your ideas being selective.

Yeah, the idea actually came through Ed Tate on the Final Four, where you compare one to the other. So if in the Final Four chart, I don't remember the exact name he uses, but we brackets he puts this one against that one. So I have the Mark Brown story or I have the Craig Valentine story. Which one would be better served in this presentation for this audience? And that's the key, being selective for that audience, because for another audience, the other story might be a better choice just because of who they are or how it can resonate with them. So for all of us, we've got to take that time. And I love what you're telling about slides, too. When I work with a corporate client back in Boston.

Oh, yeah.

My perspective is one slide, one point. One slide, one point. So I say, quote, unquote, defend your slide. And when I'm working with them, I hit. Well, what I'm trying to say, okay, if it's not clear and you're hemming and hawing, then just make it clear. Okay, maybe that slide has to go. Maybe we need to make some adjustment or take. If it's a big graph or something, what's the important thing? Important number that needs to, boom, jump out at us so we can see otherwise. We're trying to look at the numbers, and this person's looking here, this person's looking bottom left, this person looking top right. So defend your slide. Be selective about your slides, about your content, and about your stories. But literally, I love Ed's bracket system, where this one versus this one. And he talks about auditioning the material back in, so he kind of steps back, looks at the bigger picture, and then puts all the material. So not just this one or this one, literally all the material to rebuild it and make it stronger and clearer by being more selective.

And that applies, Darren, not only to a story, but you can do that for the entire presentation as you go through the flow of your story. Then you and I do a program called Unforgettable Presentations, where we go through a process of creating an entire keynote speech. And you have to be very selective of the slides you take. And speaking of slides, you and I had a conversation when we were abroad several years ago when one of our clients, a corporate client in Europe, had slides that we saw. And our first thought was, oh, my gosh, how can they read that? Because there was so much information on a single slide. As Darren says, one slide, one point. We recommend you be selective about what content goes on each slide and ask yourself, for what purpose have I created this slide? Will the slide fulfill that purpose? And please, please, please, please, please. As a side note, do not fill your slides with words that you read from the slide during your presentation, because as harsh as it May sound. If we can read your slides, why do we need you? I'll let that sit right there. So item six was the slides that you use, the number of slides you use, the content of the slides you use. And bear in mind one slide, one point, and even one slide could have the key quotation in your entire presentation. Number seven. We already touched on the idea of the stories that you tell. If you follow the advice that we give at stagetime University, you will maintain a story file. You will be collecting stories every single day. You'll be recalling stories from your childhood. You will look at your mobile device and you see these photographs and Bing stories begin to just pour in from everywhere. And there are times you will want to tell your favorite story. It's my favorite. It's my signature. It is awesome. But for the program you have to do on that particular day and at that particular time, for that specific audience, your favorite story is not the best story. You have to be selective about the best story to tell. Not for what suits you, but for what serves your audience. I'll say it again. You have to be selective about what stories you tell, not for what suits you, but for what serves your audience.

I think Mark, too, what we're saying is we can't be lazy just because we can give a good presentation. We can give good energy and passion and intention for our audience. Look, I'm guilty once in a while myself, too, that, yeah, this one works. And I don't take the time to be selective when another one for that specific audience could work better.

Yeah, and that's why I like the idea of having Ed Tate. And by the way, Ed Tate is a certified speaking pro as well. He's a 2000 world champion of public speaking. One of our buddies who will often work with us in the workshops. But the idea of having to audition your way back into the presentation, is this really the best story for me to tell to this audience under these circumstances at this time? Because very often we have our signature. We love it. It's our best. We love to tell it. People always enjoy it. And that may be true. We could be wonderfully, powerfully moving and entertaining. But if it has nothing to do with why you were there, then your perspective is incorrect. It's not about you telling your favorite story. It's about what best serves the audience. Now, truth be told, that brings me to number eight, Darren, because number eight is this. We want to serve our audience. We work really hard. We put the work in. We have so much to tell them. And that could be a problem because. Because we have so much to tell them. And you and I have both had clients who are driving themselves crazy pulling their hair out. We don't know how that feels because we are both bald.

We're used to it.

They're pulling their hair out, saying, but how do I get this to fit? Can I put that in there? Can I add that back here? And we say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. There's two basic revelations I've had about that. One, sometimes an individual is trying to tell two speeches at one time, and the other is sometimes you're trying to give the audience everything you know in 45 minutes, which is impossible. And I want to spend a little time on both of these aspects of giving too much. Darren, you know, as a coach yourself, that sometimes a client is so eager to share a point and they get creative and they start off in one direction, and halfway through they go in a different direction. You're like, wait, you have two speeches here. What is the clear message you want to deliver? You have to be selective, which means pick one. It's almost like your dad trying to find his seat at the world championships back in 2001. I can't find my seat. It's 2,000 chairs, dad, pick one. Which sounds kind of ridiculous, but think about it. If you look at your most recent presentation that you're working on right now, and you ever find yourself wondering, well, especially after feedback, well, I got this message. I got that message. If you find out you have two messages, it may be time to step back and say, okay, if I have two messages, maybe I ought to put one aside for the time being, drill down deeply on the other one, and deliver that for the audience by making the right selection.

It's so easy, and we want to squeeze so much in. As Craig says, if we squeeze too much in, we squeeze our audience out. And I think we also dilute our power. You know, that's the power of being selective. That. What's your one message? Yeah, yeah, yeah, That's a good point. That's a very good point. But that's not related to why they showed up. That's not related to your one sheet. That's not related to the description that the event planner brought you in for. It might be a wonderful point, but get the audience on your newsletter and have that be a newsletter article that goes out. Find another way to use that great content. But the most powerful keynotes or workshops or trainings are the ones that have clarity. And you can't have clarity without Being selective.

And I could not agree more, Darren. I know this may sound counter to what we've taught before. We talk about triads and power of three, which really is a very effective concept. But sometimes, if we understand our main message is to focus on just one thing, we can therefore realize the risk of having multiple messages is reduced when we select just one thing. You have preached for years, Darren. Clarity, clarity, clarity. We each need to take a step back, look at everything we put on paper or on our screen or on our notes and ask ourselves, have I deviated? Is it clear? Is there just one clear thing in my message that the audience will not possibly miss? If that is not what we see, we need to be selective and say, okay, how can I best deliver this message with everything I have? It's going to require us to take a look at narration versus dialogue. Number one, to consider. Number two, using action and using words and selectively when to interchange those for effect. Number three, how we describe characters, giving them two or three significant details to make sure they can visualize the character and understand their emotion. Number four, how do we set the seen right? Do we have the right vax? The visual? The auditory, the kinesthetic, the smell? Can the audience derive enough of that from what we describe without going on for three or four or five minutes? Number five. Once again, look at the quotations you use and consider different sources. The more obscure the quotation, the less likely the audience will be of saying, yep, been there, done that, heard it before. Three more. Number six. Your slides. Your slides can be your guides, but use them wisely and well. Number seven, the stories that we tell, Audition them back in. Use the elimination process to make sure you have the best ones. And don't forget, by building and maintaining a story file, you will have a library of stories that will audition their way into your presentations and rise to the top based upon the purpose of your presentation. Finally, number eight. We have so much to deliver, we have to be selective. What will best serve this audience on this day? For this purpose, when you are selective, you'll be effective. Darren, take us home.

Yeah, it seems like a lot of work. Guess what? It is if you want to be unforgettable. But think about this. If you like to get higher fees, if you want to get booked more often, if you'd like to start getting paid if you haven't been yet, being selective is key because the clearer it is, the more powerful it is for that audience on that day. They don't care about the other audiences and how good it was for them. They care about that presentation, that delivery, that day. The better it is, the more selective you are with what you have, the more likely you are to be remembered, repeated and rehired. Be selective.

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