Ep. 160 The Stories Behind the Fripp's Proven Process

The email said, dear Patricia, I'm a big fan of yours. May I interview you for my blog? I don't know about you. I am a short term project person involved in a long term project creating my online learning system. I was doing my very best to not be distracted. I crafted an email. I'm honored, I'm flattered. I would love to be interviewed for your blog. I'm very busy. Contact me in three or four months I thought before I hit send. Let me check his website. So naturally I picked up the phone and said, what is an Emmy award winning TV interviewer and game show host doing? Being my fan? After a 30 minute presentation skills interview, you can tell how dreadfully shallow I am. He said, patricia, this is wonderful information. I have enough information for at least four or five blog posts. But come on, tell me, what is the number one secret of delivering a powerful persuasive presentation? I said, oh, there's no one secret. And then it hit me. A brand new frhipicism was about to fall flawlessly from my lips. And I said, although there is no one secret, if there were, it would be that your subject is of interest to your audience.

And there it is. Mark Brown. That's how to start a podcast. Only 160 episodes for us to get it right. And of course we had to have Patricia help us learn how. So. Mark Brown, the proven process.

What? Well, we and I both know we have found the process and we have found the source of the process. And she's here with us today. Today, let's talk about that proven process with Patricia Fribb.

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.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time.

Stage time.

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

Oh, Mark. But if there was one, it would be that the subject is of interest to your audience. Bam.

Nice try, Darren. You haven't quite got the accent down, but you got it. And I will confess I'm so happy Fripp is here because in the past we have, we have committed a. No, no. We have said there was just one thing and we all know thing is a nothing word. And we'll get a wrap on the wrist from Fripp. There you go. Be Specific. So it's great to have you back, Frip Darren.

So Mark, I don't know if you Remember, it was 2001, the Toastmasters World Championship, the convention. Now my brain is on the contest on Saturday. But the keynote speaker, Patricia Fripp, who I had known and Mark, I don't know if you knew this, I had the privilege of driving her when she came and spoke at NSA New England. I panicked for hours that I have to be safe. I can't let anything happen to Patricia. I remember it. So here we are at the convention and I have been a Toastmaster for seven years. I've been NSA for seven years. I was in four Toastmaster clubs. I have heard a lot of speakers and I just wasn't getting the process. And here I am sitting there about to listen to Patricia and she put up the Fripp speech model and bam. As a visual learner, I finally got it.

I finally got it.

Finally understood what I was doing wrong and why, even though we might have great elements, Tell a story, make a point, tell a story, make a point. Unless they all go together, unless there's that glue that the audience can actually absorb and take home your wisdom, we miss a lot of help for our audience. We miss a lot of impact. So, Mark Brown, you know a speech model is good. You know a tool is. Is good. And as I always say, the most valuable tool is the one that you use.

Yep.

And Mark Brown, you are the epitome of using the Fripp speech model. Can you show her and our audience if you're watching the YouTube version?

Oh, sure, yeah. These are seven keynotes I gave in the last two years and every one I've used her model there for it. I use color coding, but everything is here. And you said we talk about these tools, but we use these tools ourselves.

So Patricia Fripp, welcome. You are leaving a legacy and you impact every time Mark and I talk. So welcome Patricia.

Well, it's always fun to hang out with two of my favorite gentlemen.

Thanks.

Oh, so sweet.

So Patricia, this model we've captured and we actually created a seven step process based on your teaching in our brand new book, Deliver Unforgettable Presentations which is finally out now.

Woo hoo.

Here it is.

Thank you, Devin.

Do your Christmas shopping early.

Absolutely. If there's a presenter on your list, if you have a sales team, a group of people who give presentations where you work in your organization, please. This will avoid a lot of frustration and most importantly, help them be remembered and repeated.

Repeated.

Remembered and repeated. So, Patricia, what's the background on the model? I'm curious myself. How did you develop it? Where did that come from?

The original idea came from a cocktail napkin sketch in a dark, smoky bar in San Francisco, I would like to say on a soggy cocktail napkin. Actually, it was a. It was a restaurant. I was on a date with somebody else and he said, I've invited one of our friends to join us. And I had so much more in common with his friend. Needless to say, he never called me again.

And we're getting the good stuff inside school.

Yeah, this is the real background. But he was talking about he worked with a seminar group that really focused on helping ministers deliver better sermons. And I liked what he was writing on his napkin. So much so that I went to this five day retreat in the mountains of Colorado with ministers. And it might interest you to know this is a side story. I walked in and, you know, even if I'm casual, I don't look the same as everybody else. And I looked around and I thought of a group that doesn't look like me, who looks least like me. And I saw two couples and I didn't know what they were because of how they were dressed. And I went over and said, may I join you? And they were Mennonites. And these became my hangaround buddies for the whole conference. Anyway, one of the ideas in the background behind a sermon was every can. How every Christian can. Well, how do you do that? So I took that into a business context and a speaker's context, because there is the name of our speech and there is the premise of our speech. Now, the premise is the big idea, the central theme. Every book, every movie, every piece of music has a premise. So for example, every year I deliver a keynote for the American Payroll Association. These are really breakouts, but they're large. So they're like keynotes on selling yourself and your ideas. Now, every. So who is the audience? Payroll managers can sell themselves and their ideas. That is selling the subject. And there's nothing wrong with selling the subject. However, I recommend we sell the result of the subject. So what I do after my opening story, I say, every payroll manager can get promoted. Oh, I want to get promoted. How do I do that? By learning to sell yourself and your ideas, especially to your senior management. 1, 2, 3. So when I work with NSA chapters in the Academy program or I have a new client, I always say, what are you going to talk about? Well, if they give me a paragraph, I said, no, you've given me the whole outline. Of the speech. What are you going to talk about? No, what's the result of that? What's the result of that? What is the result of that? That's your premise. So most premises are the result of the result of the result. So once you. And the creative process is messy, so everybody asks us how long does it take to put together the presentation? Well, you might sit together for a day or an afternoon or an hour depending on is this content you use all the time. However that doesn't count the weeks you were thinking about it. And I recommend for what works for me is have a flip chart. And as I'm thinking I put ideas on the flip chart, then I take them and I put them in the fripped speech diagram. So really the premise, the structure that we build the book around, certainly there are different parts of the process. The skeleton under the flesh of your words is your structure built on a premise. And as we heard in the opening comment, the subject of your speech is of interest to your audience. Many speakers have a core presentation. That's why it's your core presentation. But you look at the premise and you put in who is this audience? Every toastmaster, every sales manager, every engineer can. So for example, if I might deliver under the magnifying glass. Good. To great presentations to engineers, engineers to sales leaders, to up and coming speakers. The principles will be the same, the examples will be different.

Principles will be the same but the examples will be different for each audience. That's a keeper right there. Thank you.

So that is the core. So it came from an idea. And you'll find there are other speech books that that talk about obviously they might not call it the structure, the premise. I had never seen a diagram that was so easy to interpret. Whether you're giving a 10 minute speech or an all day seminar or a four day seminar. Because if this were a four day seminar, think of it, the structure. Probably before the coffee break, after the coffee break, to lunch, after lunch. The difference would be that you would probably in an interactive learning session, the last piece of content in each row would be involvement. It would be role play and as we are famous for at all our events, getting people in the hot seat. So the chunk might be expanded for more interaction.

Well, you know, fripping. I am so appreciate you saying that because Darren and I we do two and three day programs now. Three day programs, both live and in person. And we had one a couple of weeks ago and we revealed to our attendees exactly what you said. Darren showed a copy of his original what you call flip chart. He has two or three legal size pads and what appeared to be this mess. He wrote the whole thing out and he proved to our attendees that even a three day workshop, both live or online or even hybrid, fit exactly into the FRIPP speech diagram model. And Darren has proven that. And it's wonderful to know that the principles are the same, the examples are different and this system can apply to a short presentation or to a three to five day workshop. Darren, your thoughts on that?

Well, as I love to say, the structure gives you confidence and it gives the audience clarity and we need that confidence if we want to be unforgettable and remembered and repeated, we need confidence. We need to walk up on stage knowing exactly what we're going to do and have the ability to go on a tangent if a question goes out there or Mark for the first time, Patricia, for the first time ever I've heard the legend of the, of the fire alarm going off. It happened this weekend in Florida. The fire alarm went off and it was, he handled it well, was confident and I was like, I got excited because like, let's see what happens. Because tangents happen. But the confidence, the structure allows us to come right back in where we left off and continue and everyone knows what's going on. So Patricia, you have there the FRIPP speech model. This is the, that helped me understand. I finally got it. Now if you're looking at this for the first time, it may need a little bit of explanation but once you get it, it's so simple and so clear. It's when you're introduced to a world class process, it should be a little, maybe overwhelming at first. It should be, but once you understand it, once you go through this book and get the story, the step by step process behind that speech model, you will never look at speeches the same way. You'll never look at presentations the same way again. Darren Teed I like that.

Guaranteed. You know, I know for some people the idea of putting together a presentation. Now many of our viewers and listeners are toastmasters and they're accustomed to five to seven minutes. But once in a while you may do want to do a TEDx talk or you're called upon to deliver a presentation for your local community, maybe a youth organization, your house of worship and you begin to think, oh my gosh, I normally do five or seven, they want 25 minutes, what do I do? This particular structure will make it easy for you to provide a presentation that flows seamlessly, that is coherent, hopefully and cohesive with a Set destination. And you can really give your audience not just a speech, but an experience with the proper structure. And, Darren, you said earlier you may get a question during a workshop and go off on a tangent. And please don't think that structure means you're gonna be in a box. I think, Darren, you say it doesn't freeze you, it kind of freeze or releases you.

What's that quote Lou Heckler says? Structure doesn't freeze you, it frees you.

It doesn't limit you, it liberates you. I had to get alliteration in there somehow, Darren, you know, it doesn't limit you, it liberates you. It's a very simple idea. And what I find comforting, and I use the word comforting deliberately, because when you follow this particular structure, you have the assurance that you know where you are, you know where you're going, and you get the blessing of taking your audience along with you on a journey. And Patricia, when you. When you first came up with the structure, what were some of your considerations, Your thought, this system will benefit my listeners and every presenter in these two or three ways. What was going through your mind in terms of what the benefit of the structure would be?

To be honest, so long ago, I can't remember what I would think. Remember, I am the senior member of this partnership. Well, I think in the early days, I was thinking more how to improve my presentations. That was long before I thought I'd be a speech coach. But as you will remember, there was a time that I hired speech coaches. None of them, however, gave me a structure quite like this. The closest was probably Dawn Bernhardt, wonderful woman in San Francisco. She got me more, really talking about chunks of content. I think dawn was the first one that talked about chunks of content and parallel structures. So it's. The first idea came from the cocktail napkin and the ministers, and then working with dawn and chunks and parallel structures, and then screenwriting classes and comedy writing classes. So you absorb all this information. Often I've been asked, patricia, how do I learn to think like you about presentations? And I said, well, of course, there are two ways to learn. You learn slowly, or you learn from other people's experience. But there's no way anyone can think exactly like one other person. Because although I might talk about two or three movie principles in a speech, you know, I've attended 10 different speech, you know, screenwriting classes. It all gets absorbed. Now, what is valuable. And Darren, to use your phrase, to be a sponge, is at this point in my career, I hear myself give advice to executives and Engineers and sales teams about what they are saying or even beyond their presentations. And I know I have never made this statement before. I have never given this advice before. It's just the more you sponge, to use Darren's words, it's all inside you and it flows flawlessly from your lips. At moments that you need it, that is. And I often say that my clients, they'll say, you know, how long would this take? I say, I'm not sure. Just trust the process. And I know you do the same in your workshops. We don't know exactly what your walk away best ideas will be, but just trust the process because it's a proven process.

Darren, real quickly, I know you want to talk, but I do want to point one thing out and I'm hoping everyone.

If it weren't a thing, Mark, what would it be?

Oh, one point. I'd like to make one. I stand corrected. I do want to point out one principle that Patricia has shared and I'm very, very serious about this and I'll take the hits for the time being. That's cool, I've earned that. But I am very serious about this. For all our listeners and viewers, please understand. We have here the first woman president of the National Speakers association hall of Fame presenter, mentored to thousands, vastly experienced, and she has just told us countless classes, joke, comment, writing classes, reading books and continuing to find within herself what she has learned that she can then pass on to her eager clients. To this day, Patricia is the epitome of the continual learner. And that's why Darren gets annoyed when he says, hey, get this book. And someone says, I didn't read the book. And Darren goes and he pulls his no hair out of his head. Because we understand the value of being a sponge ourselves, learning ourselves, Patricia continues to mentor us. We encourage you to see the value of continuing to get coached, continuing to read, continuing to learn. And when you mention chunks, Patricia, we know we mentioned chunks in our book. Deliver unforgettable presentations. Please take advantage of opportunities to learn continually because I believe if I stop learning, I stop living. And people say, mark, you won the world title 27 years ago, but I just showed you I'm still using the tools that Patricia has taught us to use because they work.

Darren and Patricia, you'll be happy to hear that using the FRIPP speech model and going in. I learned how to customize from you. I did it early on, but I learned how to do it much better because of learning from you and your tree company that you had worked for oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Bartlett tree.

Bartlett tree. Bartlett tree.

That was so much fun.

And so this weekend, I was probably the lowest paid speaker. There were people who are probably two or three times what I charge. And I'm not cheap either. But Patricia, I want you to hear the meeting planner said to me, and I give you credit, I did effort, but I give you credit because she said I had people coming up to me saying, you saved the best speaker for last.

Thank you.

I give you the credit because if it wasn't for the FRIPP speech model, because here's what I want to point out. In the FRIPP speech model, when we say chunk, if you're listening to this for the first time, we mean a point of wisdom, one point that you want to be unforgettable to your audience, and three pieces of evidence to be able to back up and prove that point. And then underneath that, we have a seamless transition that the audience gets a clear indication we're now moving to another point point. So, Patricia, I've never asked you this before, but why only three points of.

Wisdom and some presentations? Let's face it, your three and four day courses, you can have more than three points. However, we all know traditionally the law of three, three is what people can learn. Three is reinforced. So if you have a much longer presentation you have, then you would reinforce your three before you build on the next three. And when you're reviewing the second three, good to remind them, well, the foundation was this, this, and this. Now, this afternoon we've reinforced this, this, and this. Tomorrow we'll do this. So, but three is traditional. The law of three goes back to Aristotle as far as how many ideas an audience can keep in their mind to retain. And we are talking about how to speak to be. Let's look at our subtitle, how to speak to be remembered and repeated in person, online and on stage. And when we do our job well, we are in fact speaking to the audience of our audience. When I coach my engineers, which is a big portion of my business, helping engineers from several big technology companies who speak at the user conference conferences, and a lot of them are online, which have a life for beyond the event that it's promoted for and what I build within their presentations, I always say, when you do your review before your close and your last words linger, mic drop is say and remember, or so it would be thank you for your interest in the company or the subject, the product they're talking about, remember to tell your colleagues or remember to tell your leadership you put in their mind, you are supposed to talk about what you've learned to other people and you do the review. In other words, not only are you saying, remember to, to tell your colleagues that bullet, bullet, bullet, which is a review of the key ideas. And you are putting in their mind, share this and this is what you say, that is being specific. Yes, talk about our product. But say this and then always I say is, you know, and then you can go get more information here, take a test drive today, whatever you want them to do. And then your last words linger. And I say, what phrase out of your presentation would you want them to almost have tattooed on their wrist? That's your walk away line.

There you go. So it's not thank you with a thank you slide to help reinforce.

Well, they always have the thank you slide up. It's in the deck. But now this is what I say is, this is, this is a nothing slide. Unless you thank them for something specific. Thank you for your interest in this company. And then remember. And that's when you deliver your walk away line. If you want to say the link to, on this slide of the demo, whatever, but your last words linger, it's usually on the thank you slide.

Well, structurally, what we're hearing, and I thank you for this, regarding the conclusion of any presentation we have, we've talked about in the past having a cta, a call to action, the specificity of choosing to end in that particular fashion, has a review to remind them of the main points that they've heard. And also, and I like this a lot, encouraging them to share what they have learned with others, their colleagues, their associates, their subordinates, superiors, giving them a reason to act as well. And the walk away line is. I like the idea of the one line they would have tattooed on their wrist when they walk away. You want to leave an indelible impression on the audience. That's how you become remembered and repeated. And the beauty is it works in person, online and on stage.

And Patricia, what is the importance of the transition line?

Well, the transition line or the transition pause or the transition movement, it's with our chunks of content. And remember, for our friends who are giving five to seven, seven minute Toastmaster speeches, that is one chunk of content. And even your chunk, it has the big idea, the premise, it's just one chunk. So our Toastmaster friends can develop a keynote one chunk at a time, one 7 minute speech at a time. Now you're saying the transition. How do you get from one idea one chunk of content? Now what I do in my presentations, especially online and next week I have a four hour presentation. @ the end of every chunk of content I put a slide that is all question marks. So that is telling me and I let the audience know. This is when we are going to take do you agree? What does this mean to you? How are you going to use this? So this is my break. What you are giving your audience is time to digest what it is we told them in the first chunk. And you can pause, you can use a phrase. That is the first way you deliver an unforgettable presentation. That is the second way you deliver an unforgettable presentation. That is the third way you deliver an unforgettable presentation. This can be considered an echo or a chorus. I have mentioned to you before that Janice Stanfield saw the Fripp speech model, said that's exactly how I write a song. Well, as Bert Bacharach said, you can't say too many times, do you know the way to San Jose? Well, our do you know the way to San Jose?

Is.

That is how you deliver an unforgettable presentation. If this is a live presentation, what you might do, you can use it on movement. It was my first executive client that I'd had my shingle. I am now an official speech coach. And you might remember the call. This was a memorable. I had had so many people say, patricia, will you coach me? Are you a speech coach? And I usually said, well, you know, go to Dawn Bernhardt, go to Ron Arden 1. Because I thought, well, I work with speech coaches. How can I be a speech coach? You know, it takes a while for the penny to drop. People in are telling you they want to give you money. And of course I was, I was still very busy as a keynote speaker. And then I had a memorable day. I was speaking for a small personnel company in Walnut Creek, 2530 miles from home and I delivered my speech. The president gave her a speech. We sit and had lunch and she said do you ever do any speech coaching? And I said oh, a little for my friends. And she said I wish I was one of your friends.

Nice.

I drove home and on my answer machine was this frippy type woman voice, say, I don't know if you do this, however, if you do, I want to to give you to my husband for his birthday. I thought, well, I have jumped out of a cake for the 50th anniversary of our NSANC chapter. I could do it again. And then she continued and said my husband is a good speaker. How he ever he has the most important presentation of his career. And seven of my sales team heard you speak recently and came back raving. And I wondered, if you're a speech coach, I want to hire you for my husband. And I said, okay, Lord, I got it two times in less than 90 minutes. I'm a speech coach. I'm an executive speech coach. So I called it back and say, yes, I do coach executives. One, if the project interests me, two, if they do exactly what I tell them. And three, you pay me such and such. And that was. So now, that was a big setup for movement on Transition. This was a multi millionaire, and everyone in the audience knew he was a multimillionaire millionaire. However, none of them knew the backstory. And so there were three heroes. Now, this is a secret that we talk about, so it's not really a secret. If you are outrageously successful talking about your life, you need to structure the presentation around giving credit to those who helps you become who you are. Because none of us, we all talk about our mentors and the. The experiences we had that give us the right to give advice to others.

That's why you're here.

He was an illegitimate child that was raised by his grandmother. And then when he was 20 years old, he worked in a company that had hired a business consultant and who recognized he has so much greater potential. And then the third hero to him was what he considered his adopted grandfather, who was his major business mentor. And the speech began. I never met my mother. I didn't meet my father until I was 14 years old. I was raised by my grandmother, and life was perfect. And then when she died, he was 14. So every way through the presentation, it was fast forward 7 years. Fast forward 7 years. Fast forward 7 Years. And he would move across the stage to the next time in his life. And as you teach Darren, what you do is you. You don't have to move back, but you just gesture to what you call a hologram of that story that is anchored in their minds. So there's. There are multiple ways, words, silence, phrases, movement that can go from one talking point to the next.

Well, Patricia, I want to honor your time, and I thank you for being here. If you're listening to this, please. If you give presentations, you just got to check out this book. It is distilled wisdom from not only Patricia's experience, Mark and I add our experience as well. So deliver unforgettable presentations. Now available on Amazon. If depending on when you're listening to this, we have a special going on September 13th through the 20th for a Kindle special. So check it out on Amazon. Also check out our website deliverunforgettablepresentations.com and there is a bonus section bonus where we have a Knowledge Vault. We have a lot of great free wisdom for you from the Vault.

And don't forget to give us a five star rating on Amazon.

That's it. Every time. Every time.

Five stars. If you've learned anything from us, that is the greatest favor you could do for us is to review it on Amazon. So Patricia, any other stories behind the model? Did the model evolve or did it come out the way we see it now?

I think it evolved and it has been this way for quite a few years.

Excellent.

It works. You don't want to fix.

Works, we both use it. Patricia, thank you for helping make me be a better presenter, a better business person and a better human being. Thank you for trusting Mark and me with I even said it right with this project and Mark, I'm going to ask you for your final thoughts. But then I think there's no one more important to have the last words linger than Patricia.

Well, I am truly thankful also this book has been a labor of love and I consider myself blessed to be able to share that with our friends, our listeners, our viewers because it really provides not only clear guidance on how we can build a great presentation. We talked last week about mistakes on the podcast and with every chapter we often will share with you common mistakes. So we really want to help you truly become not just good, not just great and to be unforgettable. And I'm really thankful. Darren and I who do this podcast together a lot. We do so much together a lot but we get to be anchored by the inimitable Ms. Fripp and Patricia. I'll let you bring us home today.

Remember, all learning needs repetition and reinforcement. Read, think, Digest, reread, deliver unforgettable presentations.

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