Ep. 21 Create a Stronger Contest Speech: 9 DOs, 9 DON'Ts

Hey, Mark, I know if somebody's listening to this and they read the title and they think, speech contest, create a stronger contest. Speech what? What does that have to do with my corporate presentation or my sermon if I'm a pastor? Mark, what would you say to that?

Well, you know, Darren, it's a good question, but the point is this. The tools and techniques you use in a contest speech, you can use anywhere. And. And I can't wait to share these ideas with our audience today.

And whenever you give a presentation, there's a certain kind of pressure. And I know when I joined the speech contest, the pressure helped me work harder and go deeper thanks to you and your coaching. So we decided to dedicate one single episode to the speech contest. But if you're a corporate presenter, a pastor, a lot of these same nine do's and nine don'ts would apply to what you do. Ready, Mark?

Let's do it, buddy.

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.

All right. So Mark, for those people who are listening, who maybe heard about a speech contest or know of it but not really clear what it is, how would you define what is is the speech contest of which we speak?

Well, first of all, the speech contest is a really fantastic opportunity for anyone to learn and grow as a presenter. You and I both know, Darren, every year about 30,000 people worldwide enter this contest with a dream of being the next world champion of public speaking. And from those 30,000 people, through a series of contests at six different levels, they end up with six finalists. Now, when you and I were competing, they had nine finalists back in the day, and for me, in the previous millennium, forget about it. But it takes six months and six. The sixth level of competition is a finals. And these 30,000 contestants vie at different levels. Club, area, division, district, then a semifinal to get to the finals. They invest all that time, they write their own speech, they practice so hard, they do feel the pressure. And everyone wants to walk away with a trophy with only person can. Happily, I was blessed to be that guy back in 95 and as joyfully, wonderfully blessed to help you do that in 2001. And this is a major event for Toastmasters globally.

Yeah. And another quick tip or insight that you gotta know about it is it's a timed speech contest. It's five to seven minutes. And I know some professional speakers that their introduction is five to seven minutes.

Then you know it, boy.

Oh, yeah, you know, oh, I couldn't do that because how do I say so much in five to seven minutes? And that's exactly the point. It forces you to focus. I've talked about this in previous episodes, but go check out episode three, four, and five. That's when Mark and I go deep into our own speeches and dissect them piece by piece. So if you like this one, go check that out. And if you're a Toastmaster and you have friends who compete, please, please pass this episode along and please do Mark and I a favor and rate this episode and be honest if you liked it and if you don't, don't read it. But seriously, the speech contest, the reason that I joined it was to force myself to pull one of the stories out of my keynote speech and work on it, work on it, work on it. With my whole goal not to win, but to put it back in my keynote speech and an improved focus format. So I used the contest to force me to work harder on what I did. And those 77 days from when I met you, Mark, when I won the semifinal speech, to the actual day on stage, like, I changed. It was not easy for you. Bless you for the persistence, the strength, the grace and the honesty that I needed. So really want to emphasize that for me, it was a transformational journey. Forget the trophy. And nobody's ever hired me because of the trophy that I have. No one paid money now in Toastmasters. Yes, I got free speeches because of it, but no one paid money because I got that. However, I am different as a presenter for the rest of my career because of the effort I put in. Mark.

Well, you said three words just now kind of skim by. You said, forget the trophy. And the truth is, many individuals will enter the contest because they want to win the trophy. They want to be the world champion of public speaking. And I totally get that. But the key is, it's not what you win or lose, it's who you become in the process. And you can use the contest as a means of becoming so much better. You eventually do become unforgettable. And if you. If you do it right, you can use the material in your contest Speeches beyond the contest. I mean, I think of the 2014 world champion is a tough name for you. Dananjaya Hettyrachi from Colombo, Sri Lanka, the first Sri Lankan to win the world championship gave a seven minute speech entitled I see something. And he has taken that speech around the world, beyond the contest to world stages as a keynote speaker. The speech I gave in 95 was about intolerance, indifference and ignorance. It's available on YouTube. Check it out. Mark Brown, 95, world champion. And I used that speech, that 6 minute 42 second speech. I converted it into a 45 minute junior high school, senior high school keynote presentation which I have delivered for over 20 years. It was recorded on PBS, got an Emmy nomination for it. An Emmy nomination. That was not the goal when I entered the contest. My point is, as you learn and grow and improve and become better at what you do, you can then use the contest speech in other fora. Now, Darren had the goal, I'll take the contest speech, I'll take my story, put it in the speech, make it better for my keynote, and then put it back in. That was your goal going in. That was not my goal going in. My goal was to survive the contest. But I was able to use my speech material later under individuals who did not even win the world championship, who have gone on to careers as pros, using their contest speeches. So don't think I'm not a Toastmaster. I'm not gonna compete. This is not for me. Wrong. This is for you. Because you will learn today how you can use what you have and then elevate it in your keynote, your presentation, your workshop, if you follow our do's and don'ts. Right, Darren?

Absolutely. And Mark, you skimmed over a phrase that you said. Two words, Emmy nomination.

Oh, yeah.

That deserves a little applause. I want to point that out a couple other things. DJ Dhananjaya also, his same speech actually was a converted TEDX speech. That's correct. So he gave it a TEDx and then changed it and tightened it to fit in the Toastmaster format. So understand everyone we're talking to here. It's just one place to focus to get him. Look, and even if you don't care about the contest and you have a message from your life that you want to bring to the world, hey, here's a stage that all you got to do is compete and get to the next level and you have a bigger audience to tell your message to, another point is there's a lot of people who didn't win who competed. Rory Vaden, a friend of ours, and he went all the way to the got second in the world. And he is actually the first one of the speech competitors to become a speaker hall of Famer. Yeah, csp, cpa, which none of us have done so yet. Yet. If any CPAE board members are listening, you know, hey, just your call. We're just saying. Anyway, our goal is to help you listening to this podcast because Mark and I have not only competed one, we've also been coached by some of the best. And being coached and coaching, we bring a unique perspective to this. And just again, we're going through this podcast, this specific episode, to use the contest as a metaphor, to just being what helps make a speech better, the common do's and don'ts. And Mark, I would even say, as we go through them and list them, I would even say there's probably only two or three that maybe not relate to a sermon or corporate presentation. Most of them do.

I would agree. And I can't wait to share these with our audience right now, my friend.

All right, so let's dive into the nine do's and don'ts of the speech contest, creating a stronger speech. Number one, don't. Don't think your message is clear enough. If Mark and I could teach people one thing, it's clarity, clarity, clarity. I mean, I've talked about this. Even one of our episodes, we mentioned a pastor who's really good, super talented, have these beautiful moments, but the whole structure of it isn't clear. So especially if you'd only got seven minutes, we often see a lot of people who are trying to work three points into seven minutes, and the idea is getting super clear that it's communicated. A lot of times we know in our head what we want to say, but to get it across the ether into the minds of the audience, that's a challenge. Mark.

Well, you know, you make a good point, because very often we hear about the power of the triad, the power of three. Got to have three points, three means of supporting evidence. Three, three, three. As a matter of fact, when I was competing back in 95, the year I won, I was trying to find three examples, three stories, three anecdotes. Three, three, three, three, three. And I had two. And I had one clear message and two examples. And after a while, I said, you know what? Why must I force myself to get a third? What happened is, some people, they believe to be effective, you need to have three points and then three or four or five or six quotations and supporting evidence. Bells, whistles, kitchen sink, all of the above. But by trying to put Too much into the presentation, you don't focus on one simple, clear message. And here's the thing. When you rehearse or practice or deliver a presentation for an audience, you have to listen closely to what they tell you as feedback. You want to make sure, what message are they getting? You know, what they'll tell you, what they think, they'll tell you what they're here. And I will confess there have been times I delivered presentations believing I am very clear on this message. And I asked, so what did you get? What did you think? And I get a completely different playing. Darren Lacroix, you had your contest speech. You were clearly going to give the message about the ouch. But your first title when it came to me was don't chop down your cherry tree. What did that do for you? In your speech and your contest speech, where was the audience's mind going? What was clear to them? Oh, it's about George Washington.

George Washington, Exactly. What? It's Dr. Goddard's cherry tree.

You thought you were clear.

Oh, yeah.

You thought you were clear because you mentioned Goddard climbing that tree and thinking about going to the moon. But we're hearing, oh, don't chop down your cherry tree. It's a George Washington honesty, truth or lie story. And that was not where you were going. But you thought it was clear at the time.

I did.

So Darren is very.

Everyone does.

You want to make sure, you want to make doubly, triply sure your message is clear and fully understood by the audience.

Yeah. And very simple to test out. Tell someone.

Yeah.

And teach it. Test it and ask them. Don't tell them what your message is. See what they say back to you. And often you'll be surprised. But honestly, that's the challenge. That's the challenge we see with TEDx speeches, with corporate presentations. It's just not clear enough. 99% of what we coach in stagetime university is clarity, clarity, clarity. Each week when we do our live calls. So if you're listening to this, check out stagetimeuniversity.com, get on one of our calls and we'll coach you. And you'll see by being coached and watching other people being coached, that often it's not clear. But that's what Mark and I do. We help people see how to make it clearer. Mark.

Yeah. Of course, our mantra is clarity, clarity, clarity. And one of the cool things is with a coach, a qualified coach, they can see more deeply what you might not see. Darren makes a point to say that I could see in two minutes.

What.

He could not see after seven years, which is a very high compliment. And, Darren, I thank you for that. But the point here is that you need to make sure the individuals who are helping you and supporting you can see what you. You don't and see clearly enough to help you to make sure that what you want to bring to the audience is actually what they receive. Because very often what we say and what they hear is not always in sync.

Yeah. This is a simple concept to grasp. It's very hard to apply.

Mmm, I like that. One more time.

It's very simple to grasp. It's very challenging to apply.

Oh, nice work.

Challenging, challenging, challenging. Three syllables, Mark.

Woohoo. Clarity, clarity, clarity.

Let's go to the next one. Give away your message in the title.

Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That happens very often. People I've worked with over the last several years, they want to talk about fear and they'll say, hold. Overcome. Well, what happens in that case is very often. And the Toastmasters audience, like most audiences, are pretty sophisticated. They get it, they're intelligent. And what happens very often is they hear the title and in their minds, they start to take the journey without you. They do. Oh, I know where he's going with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard that before. Yeah, yeah. And they either A, are ahead of you or B, are ahead of you heading in the wrong direction. Because their minds, your title, has sent them off to an experience they've had before to our minds dealing with, and they literally, without meaning to already shut down and shut you up, because their thoughts have now overtaken them and they're off on a merry path. A title like Ouch is A hmm. What in the world does he mean by that? A, hmm. And now they lean in and they want to pay attention. Darren, what is your experience with people giving away titles? Giving away the whole idea and the title?

This applies to corporate presentations, it applies to sermons. I think it's even more so in a speech contest because you have a lot of people in the audience who've heard 22 speeches in the past month about fear. So we know where we're going. So it's like what I learned from my father about fear. The key with any title, and this applies to sermons or corporate presentations, is to have us curious about. What do you mean? Where are you going with that? Perfect. The purpose of the title is to get us to lean in rather than check out. There you go, Mark, write that one down. Keeper title is to get us to lean in rather than check out. Out. That could be the first time I said that. I like that one. That's pretty good.

I'm writing it down, man. This is a keeper right here.

So get cleared on your title and the importance of it, because if they check out instantly, you've. You now have to go a long way to bring them back to you. But if they're curious now, they're leaning in. So this one is maybe, again, more of a speech contest one, but implement all of the feedback that you get when you're in the Toastmaster world. We're conditioned to give feedback. That's a good thing. But we got to qualify that feedback. We've got to be careful that a lot of the people who are giving us feedback are not professional coaches, are not professional presenters, and don't study it and understand the impact and what is good and what isn't good. So Mark and I talk about this all the time on all of our webinars. There's two kinds of feedback. Here's what I thought and felt that's important to know. Here's how to make it better. That's coaching. That's where the problems are encountered, Mark.

Well, here's the truth. Here's a real honest truth. Honest truth. I'm almost. Almost redundant. The thing is this. Most individuals who tell you what they thought about your speech and what you should do are saying, if I were you, I would do this. If I were you, I would say that. And if we're being honest and think about being evaluated as toastmasters or getting feedback on a corporate presentation or response to a sermon or other talk that we've given, there may have been times where one person said left and the other person said right. You should never do that. You should always say this. You must never say that. If we're honest, we have heard both. And if we're inexperienced, we're going, ah, what do I do? They told me to go right. He told me to go left. I don't want to go in the middle. What do I do? And you get frustrated and sometimes discouraged. I go back to what Darren said. Identify those who are better qualified to give you advice and direction to help you to improve your presentation. Because not all feedback is gonna be congruent or synchronous, and you have to find out what's best for you.

Awesome. All right. Imitate your favorite champ.

It shouldn't fall on my face every time I give a speech. Come on, Darren. It's an awesome move, man. I love that move. I can do that move, too.

Hmm. And there's a show here in Las Vegas called Legends. And Legends is a show where there's all these impersonators impersonating Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson and Madonna and all these famous stars. A friend of mine knows someone who is in the show, and the person think about this. The Legends made millions. Millions. Millions, Millions. They probably made a million a show, some of them, but they made tens of millions. Here is an impersonator impersonating the song, the way they sing, the style and everything like that. Yet that person could not pay their own bills. So do you want to be a legend or do you want to be an impersonator? Now, that doesn't mean we can't be compelled by someone's style that almost gets given permission. So for me, David Nottage, who was a champion in the 1990s, when I studied 10 years of contest tapes and I saw his and how animated he was on stage, that gave me permission to be more. Me to be more animated. So it gave me permission, but I didn't mimic what he did. I didn't try and follow his style or. Well, when he does this, he does that. It just gave me permission to be me and be more open about it. Mark.

Yeah. And I've met individuals who really admire a particular presenter so much, so they try to adopt their style. I was watching a series of sermons recently from a preacher, and he had stepped away for a couple of weeks and had guests come or other individuals deliver the sermon. And one of the individuals who came up, I said to my wife, wow, they look a lot like the senior pastor in those. The way he did that. Yeah. When he does that, wow. It's almost as if he admires his senior pastor so much, he found himself even inadvertently imitating some of the mannerisms and the infections of his senior pastor. And we want you to be the best you that you can be. Several years ago, a speech contestant during the interview, because in a Toastmasters contest, they interview the finalists while the judges ballots are being tallied so we get to know who they are. Actually, they have interviews at many levels of the competition. One individual had said he wanted to thank me for my help and said, I want to be like Mark Brown. And I almost cringed because I said to him afterwards, listen, you don't want to be like me. You need to be the best you that you can be. Now, I may have a technique, a style that I have used on the same vein. You may admire and appreciate that, but how can you use that particular technique to be the best you that you can be. So you always think, while you may admire and respect us, your favorite champion or your favorite speaker, it could be Willy Jolly or Mark Sanborn or Ari Wingate, whatever the case may be, or Jeannie Robertson. A really appreciate a legend in the business. But you don't want to imitate them and be them. You need to be yourself to the best of your ability. Find your gift, find your talent, find your voice. Find your thing. Forgive us, Frip. Find your thing and bring that to the world as well.

I hope she's not listening to this one because she's going to be a guest in a couple weeks.

I know she is.

All right, so let's keep this moving. Focus on. On the winning. Do not focus on the winning.

Look, Darren, I entered the contest to win a trophy. Dude, come on, man.

Yeah, and most people can sense that. It's like when you meet a slick salesperson and you are being sold. They might say all the right things, but you cross your arms, you shut off because you can sense their intention. The intention is the important part. Even in a corporate presentation, if you're selling your company or selling your business, you've got to have the intention of showing people that you can help them as opposed to trying to sell them that you're the best. Have the intention of helping whether they choose you or whether they don't. And you have planted a seed that sticks with them and germinates. So, Mark, you know I love telling this story. Whenever I started focusing on the trophy turning into that little creature from Lord of the Rings, Gollum, Precious, precious. You would reel me back in and everyone write this down. Whether you're a corporate presenter, pastor, speech contest, Toastmaster, professional speaker. Mark, like, one of the best gold that I still use from you is before a presentation. You told me, Darren, tomorrow morning you have the privilege of 2000 lives. What will you do with that? Wow.

They say 2,000 lives. You had seven minutes. You had seven minutes to have an impact on 2,000 lives. And it's very easy to lust after the trophy because. Because, you know, I entered the win the trophy. But if you enter to be better, quicker, if you enter to get better quicker and to leave a message with your audience, chances are you'll do well. Will you always win? No. Because only one person wins. What I said earlier, who, what speaker you become in the process of going through this, that is what you can take with you beyond the trophy. Because I'll be really honest again. The world honest back again, Darren. And I know world champions who have done well, did all the competitions, got to the finals, won the trophy, never to be heard from again. And there are others who have not won the trophy, who have gone on to stellar careers as presenters, who are literally changing lives every day with their messages.

And they earn more than you and me.

Very possible. But I'm saying I know champions who I have not heard from for years. They won a trophy. That was nice. Then what? Okay, so where's your focus? Your focus is growth, improvement, and sharing a message. That's where it needs to be. So do not, please do not just focus on the precious.

Yeah. The winning should be the side effect, not the direct intention. So the winning the job should be the side effect. The winning the business should be the side effect. The fact is, you presented yourself professionally with the intention of helping and truly making an impact. Mark, you kind of mentioned this. I love the inspiration from Jim Rohn. He said, make it your goal to be a millionaire, not for the money, but for the person it makes you. And same thing this is. I went for the trophy, but not for the trophy, for the speaker. It made me because even if I didn't win, I was a different person because I was molded by that pressure. All right, so if we look at it this way, so if you wanted to win a speech contest or professional speaker who wants to get paid, or you're a marketer, an Internet marketer, you want to speak to build your list, the intention is going towards that. That's where I started to be honest in early parts of my career. And then every once in a while, when I met Mark, I would be lusting the trophy. But what Mark taught me is if we focus on the audience outcome, the results they get from the message, then the side effect becomes winning the speech contest, getting paid, and building your list. So you and I need to focus our intention on the outcome for the audience, and everything else falls into. Into place. You'll have more passion, you'll have more fun, and it'll be less pressure that you, quote, unquote, have to be the best. Because we have no control over the other contestants. We only have control in ourselves, and we have more than we think we do.

Mark, I couldn't agree more. When you focus on delivering the result, having a change in people's minds. I mean, in my contest, I didn't even think of the weight of this. But my contest talked about intolerance, indifference, and ignorance, drew a parallel to Beauty and the Beast, the cartoon, and encouraged the audience. We must do our best to eradicate intolerance, indifference and ignorance. I was making a social statement in my speech to impact people's lives. And the side effect was I won the trophy. It led to me going into schools to do presentations. I've talked to 1.5 million in kids in the last 25 years. Didn't see that coming, but. But I didn't say, okay, I'm going to win this trophy and that's it. The trophy and the career and everything else has been the side effect of wanting to leave that message with that audience on that day. I can tell my story. That's what I can tell you, my story, and believe me, what a difference it made.

Thank you, Mark. All right, so next, overused topics like fear, goals and love. This, again, more of a speech contest, but I think even a sermon, if the title seems cliche or if you do it in the same way that it's been done many times before, you're not offering a new perspective, so the message is less likely to land. But in the speech contest, because a lot of people in the audience have been through going to contest for 10 years. They've heard the same ones. Now, those are good universal messages. Even mine. Ouch. It's about failing your way forward. Failure has been done before, but I did it my way with my story. To almost come at it from a different perspective on the same universal message. Mark.

Yeah. And truly, there are no new topics, no new new ideas, but there are new treatments and different approaches to the topics. So you have to be creative and don't just say you can overcome your fears, you can set your goals, you can make your goals. Turning your goals into gold. You know, love conquers all. We've heard that before.

False evidence appearing real.

Yeah, exactly. That's. That's that. Yeah, exactly. That's F, E, A, R. Right.

And to give credit to Tony Robbins, I originally heard it from him, but then I heard it from a billion emerging speakers.

Like a starfish story, but a moching.

Yes.

My point being, if we can approach these universal topics in unique ways with our own stories, our own experiences, and not so much make it plainly about fear or clearly about goals or about love, but what impact can love have on us? How do we process fear? How do we deal with fear? Do we have to reset our goals? But don't just give the standard. If the audience says, yep, I've heard that before, you're disqualifying yourself from an opportunity to really change the way they think.

All right, worry about the speaking order. This is definitely just A speech contest idea, Mark?

Well, not only that, Darren, I will say caveat. Sometimes you may be called upon to present at a conference or a convention and they have an opening with two or three different speakers. They've got the corporate CEO, then they've got speaker number one speakers. Do a short speech, then a main keynote speaker at Toastmasters. Even in the convention you have, Darren, I think you spoke one day, one night you spoke, and then Fripp spoke after you. There are times in the corporate world you may find that there are two or three speakers in the opening session, so that may apply here. But in the speech contest, now the finals are six speakers. In our day, it was nine speakers. And there's always a concern. I don't want to be speaker number one because I don't want to set the bar. And people fear being speaker number one. As a matter of fact, I was in a speech contest one time, there were nine of us, and one speaker did not attend a briefing for some strange reason. And the contest chairperson pulled their slot for them. You pick playing cards to get your speaking order. And she got number four, whatever it was. And one speaker got the ace number one. And he said, I got a question, a concern. And the contest chair said, yes. He says, I don't think it's fair that somebody who is not here, speaker number four, has a better speaking position than I do. Speaker number one, Contest chairson rules allow it. That is it. End of briefing. Boom. End of the briefing. Everyone left. Now I'm in the contest, and I want to win, too. I did the dumbest thing I would never, ever recommend. I pulled the speaker aside, said, listen, everybody had left, listen, I'm here. I want to win, too. I should never, ever tell you this, okay? But I have been speaker number one before. I know what it's like. Here's my advice to you. Be so good that the rest of us are scared and believe we can't hit the bar. You have hit. Your duty is to be so good, be so strong, we can't catch you. Because he looked at me, didn't say a word, turned and walked away. And I thought to myself, one down, seven to go. Because that speaker disqualified themselves because in their mind, and they said, I can't win from slot number one. And the irony is, for two consecutive years, yeah, 91 and 92, speaker number one won a speech contest for two years in a row. And speaker number one has come second several times. It happens. But we get so hung up. I don't want to be number One, I don't want to be number nine. I want to be in the middle of the order. I want to be number five or number six. For a contest of nine, I want to be number two or number three. Three. When there are six speakers, I don't want to be one or six. What are your thoughts on that, Darren?

Yeah, the irony is, like, you're saying that that person lost the day before the contest. All that preparation, and if you lose in your mind, you lose. The audience loses.

I like that. Audience loses.

Yeah. Because you're not at your best. You're checking out. You're not all in. Your enthusiasm and love for them and passion for them is not coming through. So the audience loses first.

You know what, Darren, before I forget, I have actually been to events, not contests, events where people who follow me happened to me last month in Chicago and someone said, oh, great. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for letting me follow the world champion, Mark Brown. And the audience laughs, but they're saying they feel discomfort in that place following me in the order. It's not the point. I have something to say and so do you. What you have is valuable. Do not defraud your audience or your congregation because somebody came into your church and delivered a wow greeting for 10 minutes and they gotta give a plain old sermon. No, please don't think like that. What you have is valuable for the audience, for the congregation, for the people who will hear you. You have worked so hard to deliver value. Do it.

Yeah, I heard a great perspective. Alan Weiss was talking about speaking on the platform at NSA with Nito Cobain, and there was a discussion of who went through other people. Not Alan, but who would go first. And Alan was like, who cares who goes first? I think it's a win for the audience. They get to hear him and they get to hear me. Like, that's the difference. If somebody thinks, oh, I can't follow that, well, then work on yourself. Work on your speech and get better so you can follow anything and lead, too. Yeah. And if you're. But if you're making it about. I can't follow that. You're making it about you, not the audience. That's your ego talking. Yeah. Sometimes we're gonna have to follow somebody who's stronger than us. Well, suck it up, buttercup. Let's be better. Let's be world class. Let's focus on being amazing. So let it just be that reminder.

Ooh.

I need to be able to have the confidence to follow anyone. I remember from the comedy world, Vinnie Favorito. Had taught me that that's how you go from opener to middle act. How from middle act to headliner is you become so good at opening that the middler can't follow you. You become so good at middling that the headliner can't follow you. That's how you move up the ladder. That is you working on your own strength. That's not you feeling, oh, I have to follow that. I get it. I understand it. But we, as the presenter, have to be able to follow anything because sometimes it's also out of our control.

Yeah.

You know, well said.

Yeah, well said. Cool. Awesome. All right, good point.

Yeah. This is. There's egos were high at the speech contest. This was at the mic check the morning of my championship. And for those of you who are listening to the podcast, I put a visual up of me wearing my suit, but not pants. I'm just wearing shorts and sneakers. And for the mic check, because I was so adamant, I was so worried that sometimes I can be a slob and spill something on me. And at the mic check, it said you had to wear a jacket. You had guys had to wear a tie. It did not list pants.

I think you mean trousers, listeners. Darren.

Trousers. Yes. And because I had been studying some of the great comedians, and I think it was Jerry Lewis said that he did not go on stage. He didn't put his pants on until five minutes before because he didn't want to break the crease. And I thought that was interesting. So this kind of freaked some of the other contestants out. I won't mention who, but one of them told me that he was wondering, what the heck is he doing or up to? Because in the contest, emotions are high. I did this because I didn't want to get my pants dirty. One of the other contestants took it like, oh, my gosh, like, what's he gonna do? And. And so I got in his head. Even though that was not my intention. My intention was not to get my hands dirty. All right, so don't over dramatize or go overboard on props. Don't overdramatize or go overboard on props. Sometimes people try too hard or they have too many props. The true professional. Unless you're, let's just say, a prop comic where props are your thing, and that's a huge part of who you are, what you love, and how you present. Other than that, I wouldn't tell Carrot Top. Don't use props. You know, that's his style.

Or Tim Guard.

Yeah, or Tim Guard. But if that's not truly your proven style. More than one prop is gonna take away or even the wrong prop. I've seen people, Mark, in a speech contest, they set up a whole dinner scene with a dinner table and candles to set a scene. Now that's not bad. But now is that your purpose? Is that scene or the location of the scene the essence of your message? Otherwise the prop is overshadowing your message, Mark.

Yeah, a prop can overtake your message. Don't let your props do that. A couple of thoughts. Now, I have seen large props, I've seen a ladder. I've seen a life size collapsible horse used by Morgan McCarthy in the 1993 World Championship. Now try to envision a collapsible accordion style life size horse. But what Morgan did was he talked about this horse named Yasmin throughout his whole speech. In the last minute he says, I want you to see what Yasmin has become. And he used the prop as a visual at the end of his presentation. Didn't stand there on stage behind him for six and a half minutes with everyone wondering, wow, is it gonna move? He was wise enough to use it when he needed it at the very end and not lose the audience's attention by them focusing on it. And Morgan finished second in the world in 1993. He eventually beat me and won the world title in 1994. On the other hand, I've seen some smaller props, like a rolling suitcase placed on the stage in the middle of the stage. And the presenter has a prop set up and they're going through their speech and that prop is sitting there center stage. And we're all wondering, what does the suitcase represent? Are they ever going to use it? What's in it? Is there something else inside the suitcase? And if your prop is a distraction to your audience, chances are you don't need it. So you have to always think about what is the audience seeing, thinking and feeling if I use or when I use a particular prop, in what particular way? And so much so that I think chairs have been the most popular prop in the Toastmasters contest. They made a rule change a couple years ago. You can't stand on a chair in a contest anymore because there were so many chairs being used in so many ways. Think about the props. Does it really complement, serve and help your message or is it a nice thing to have? If it's not necessary and it doesn't move your speech forward, you might not need it.

Yeah. And if you think of last week's episode, the thought process in the Listener's mind. It can be a distraction, even though it may seem like. Well, it's not a big distraction. I remember a few years ago, we had one of our members who made it to the finals, and he actually used a pink thong.

Oh, yeah.

And it was a man. For those listening, it was a man who was wearing it, and he was, like, making light of it. It was funny. It was a cute story. It wasn't offensive at all. But the problem was he threw the thong and it landed on the stage and it stayed there.

Thong underwear. Not thong. Flip flops.

Yeah, underwear. So if he picked it up and put it back in his pocket, it would have been less distraction than if it just sat there, because it just draws attention. So what are we drawing attention to? And just the first part of this, too. Over dramatizing, just insincere storytelling or trying to force the emotion of your character. It's just. You just gotta be careful. It's another don't. All right, Mark, I wanna keep this moving here. The last note. Don't. Is force the humor to get left. So many people take a joke and they, like, force it in. It's not even their joke a lot of times, but they force it to put it in there. Craig Valentine says it so beautifully, it becomes a detour. So he says, look for detour. Free humor, meaning we don't have to go over here and come back. And number one, if it's not yours, that takes away from your credibility. Even if the whole rest of the speech is. And then, number two, it's distracting. So why we went over here, that takes it away from your message. Going right back to don't. Number one, don't think your message is clear enough. Mark.

Yeah. Regarding humor, this applies beyond the contest, is using canned jokes. I was very inexperienced, maybe two years after I won the contest, and I was getting, you know, more invited to speak around the world and so on. And I went to a conference, and I was opening speaker in the morning, and I told this joke. Very, very funny, I thought. And it landed so well with the audience. I'm like, yeah, it landed well. At lunchtime, we had a second speaker who had not been to my morning session. They arrived later in the day and they spoke at lunch. And they told the same joke I told. Wow. And they had no idea why it fell so flat. And it got. They had no idea what happened. So you don't need to find the right joke that somebody told in 1973 to make it work. Uncover the humor from your own Life and experience, and don't try to force it. I saw one contestant at a very high level several years ago, in the middle of their presentation, just told a joke like, what did they flee, said to the bartender, bartender, here, hold that thought. And then went back to the speech. And we thought, wow, detour. They yanked the wheel, took us a hard left turn, and then yanked the wheel again and came back. And we all wondering, that was a joke. It wasn't humor. Where did it come from? Why was it there? What were they thinking? And I will say this. I suppose that someone told the speaker, you need to have more humor in your speech. It needed to make people laugh. So put a joke in there. That was bad advice from an unqualified person. You don't just throw in a joke to get a laugh every 2.179586 minutes because someone said it was painful to watch and listen to. Because I knew it was not seamlessly flowing as a part of the presentation. It was inserted and forced just to get the laugh. Please don't do that.

Yeah. And sometimes if you get a joke or a laugh line that works in a story, they can have to throw it away to make the story better, which then makes the laugh irrelevant or not even as important. So clarity, clarity, clarity. So if you make something funny before you make it clear, you may then have to throw away that laugh line to make it clear. So we always try to say make it clear first and then uncover the humor. Thoughts on that?

Mark, last three words you said we're uncover the humor, which means don't force it. Think about situations, individuals, dialogue, conversations, funny things that happen as part of the experience you have. And they can then easily be uncovered, incorporated. But it has to be relevant to your topic, to your subject. But if you look for it, I spoke with a legend in the business, Jeannie Robertson, who's a legendary humorist who at 76 is still touring the country with new material. At 76, she said, Mark, all you gotta do is look around you. The humor is there. Pay attention. We go back to getting the stories. Get a humor file if you have to. Funny stories. And adapt to your story file. And you can see you can use your own experiences to include the humor that can help the audience get the message.

So, Mark, those are the don'ts. Let's go through some nine do's. So we'll go through this, pick up the pace a little bit, honor everybody's time. So number one, have a foundational phrase, have that sticky phrase, 10 words or fewer. Got rhythm or rhyme, but we remember it three days later. The purpose of the speech is to plant that seed that helps us not in that moment, but helps us appreciate we get back there out in the real world.

Mark, it's funny. You took my speech, you and Ed, you dissected in, out, left, right. And you actually spent some time with Dawson, one of your staff members, and you took my video and you picked out the places. I said, a second chance, A second chance. I said, intolerance, indifference, and ignorance. And you found so many instances I hadn't even thought about. But they were threads that made them memorable. And I want to thank you for that because I didn't realize I was actually using it, that technique and not even knowing it.

Yeah, we see so many without foundational phrases, even in the corporate world. I love this. Even in sermons. I've been working with Vince on this to try and convince him and show him. So he's. Convince him, convince him, convince Vince. Okay. In the corporate world, there's a woman who's a Wells Fargo executive who I just thought was awesome. I even wrote an article about it. But she was talking about, we can either win together or lose alone when they're working with client teams, and it's just brilliant. She would say it three times, and I was like, oh, my gosh. I was like having a phrasegasm. I just wanted everyone to see how important, how powerful, and yet how simple it is. So have a foundational phrase number two. Have a guru who taught you. We need to know where you learned this lesson, that it didn't just come to you. It didn't just happen, that you, in fact, had someone, whether it's an uncle, an aunt, a pastor, a coach, a mentor, a book, something that taught you the lesson that you're trying to pass on or the process.

Mark, in my contest speech, one of my gurus was a Disney cartoon called Beauty and the Beast. And they taught me the lesson about how the people in the village responded to one character with intolerance, indifference, and ignorance. And I found myself literally rewinding the VHS videotape because I was learning a lesson from a cartoon. Have. In your presentation, you don't want to make yourself the hero, the guru, the wise person. You don't want to pontificate. I will tell you how to solve your world's problems by doing this, but if you show what you learned. Darren, in his talk, mentioned Dr. Goddard. He said, I remembered Subway. He went through all these experiences and realized he was learning from Dr. Goddard. He learned from a subway failure. And he's learning that when you fall on your face, you still make progress. He had several gurus who weren't all human. He had Brian Tracy, who we didn't even meet, but the audio tape was a guru to him. The history of Dr. Goddard was a guru in your presentation. Let us know who taught you.

Yeah, it's usually there. The problem is we skip over it or we don't think it's important, but yet we, as the audience member, we want to know that. We want to know too, so we can relate to you that you didn't know until you got this wisdom. All right, next, think beyond the speech contest. Do think beyond the speech contest. Just like we mentioned with Denon Jaya and Rory Vaden, who didn't win, who then has an amazing career, has earned a ton and became a hall of fame speaker, which I am not. Mark is not. And he's a great friend. He's an amazing speaker. The contest made him better, but he's thinking way beyond the contest. Mark.

Yeah. Many presenters I know have taken their contest speeches and have developed them into something else. They've built not only keynotes, some have built presentations, and they've built workshops. Do half a day, one day, two day, three day workshops. Based upon what? The seed that was planted in the contest speech. So don't think about, I gotta win a trophy. But what can you do beyond the contest with the material you've worked so hard to build? Whose lives can you change and in what ways can you use it? Beyond the contest?

Yeah. To me, it's kind of sad. All the people who worked really hard and then didn't use that information again.

Like this is true. But real quick, partly I'm going to get in trouble here for saying, but, you know, partly it has to do.

With finally you and not me.

Well, many of us are, you know, through Toastmasters, we are taught, give a speech, get evaluated. Go on, get evaluation. Give a speech next week, give a new speech next week, give a new speech. We're not taught to redo a presentation and to make it better every. Because the way we were raised in Toastmasters was give a different speech. You want to go through a manual, get 10 done. Get 10 more done. Get 10 more done. But if you have one that's working, improve on it, make it better and use it beyond the contest. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Darren.

No, you're good. All right, Moving here. Whoops. By the way, if you want a speaking trophy, just buy one. It will alleviate you don't even need the nine do's and don'ts. You just need a debit card or a credit card that can reach $35. Okay, do write a six minute speech and deliver it in seven. We see so many people are trying to cram in their message or cram in extra words so they speed up. But the point is the pause. Again, going back to last week, you got to check out last week's episode. It was awesome. When you are pausing, the audience is reflecting. So we've got to let them digest our message in order for them to internalize it. And the way we do that is letting them absorb it with the pause. So if we're not pausing, we're just trying to get as many words in as we can. I heard Craig said that if you squeeze too much in, you squeeze your audience out. Mark.

Well said. On average, we discovered that most contest speeches will take about 700 to 750 words for a seven minute speech. I've had clients who have gone 8, 900 words. They speak rapidly. But the point is, you want to get all these words in. No, no, no, no, no, no. You have seven minutes. If you write a six minute speech and deliver it in 7:1, the audience has time to reflect and they also have time to respond. They might want to laugh or to think. Get in that room. The one cardinal sin of a contestant is to deliver a contest speech in 7 minutes and 48 seconds. Unless you're Darren Lacroix, but you're disqualified. For those who don't know, you get disqualified if you speak for longer than 7 minutes and 30 seconds. And I've seen contestants in the world championships get disqualified for time. I've seen 2, 2 of 10 contestants in the World championship get disqualified for time in the same contest. And that seems pretty much unconscionable. You've worked for at least six months on your presentation. You get 2,000 lives live plus many live streaming around the world, plus video later. Afterwards, you literally meet a million people or more. And then you go over time and all that work you put in gets none more because you lose the opportunity to wear a trophy or wear a crown that says, you have worked so hard, you've earned that championship. Now go share it with the world because you weren't very careful about your time. So write it in six, deliver it in salad.

It's like an Olympian not sticking the landing, coming off the bars. I love this by James Clear. He has a great quote. He says everyone wants a gold medal, but no one wants to train like an Olympian. And part of that training is getting your message down, delivered in a comfortable, non rushed way so that the audience can absorb, absorb it. And just to clarify what Mark said about me, for those of you who are speech contest junkies, my official time was, well, I don't know the official time, but it was like 7:53, which is over the seven and a half minute mark. But there was a timing light malfunction which gives the contestant 30 extra seconds. So technically I lost, but based on the rules it still worked. But I almost lost twice because of time, because I almost went over the 30 seconds. So, Mark, next, understand the judge's guide, understand what people are actually judging you on. It blows my mind that a lot of people never even downloaded it or looked at it and then never go and give a speech and have people give them feedback based on the guide. Where are you strong? We don't want to overdo this because it's about the audience and impacting, but we should know the guidelines and should be aware of what are they judging us on. Mark?

Yeah. What would be cool too is you're a contestant. Would it be cool for you to judge a speech contest yourself and kind of see what is involved? Involved? The Judges Guide gives you every category from delivery, from content, from, from language and impact on the audience. It tells you what the judges look for. My, my mentor, David Brooks, the master mentor who won in 1990, had entered the contest before and he had given a speech and he said, one person came to me and said, david, do you realize you'd have won if you made a point? You look at the judge's guide and Dave said something like, I didn't know there was a judge's guide to look at. But the Judges Guide is available on PDF to download. Look at it and see what they look for and ask yourself, am I meeting the criteria of the guide or am I just simply going up and winging it and giving a cool talk and making the audience laugh? If you're serious about competing, well, it goes to your preparation. It also goes to serving the audience in a way that meets their needs. And that's going to be key.

Yeah. And if you want to be a professional speaker, understand that the Judges Guide in the corporate world for professional speakers is all about the audience impact. They're bringing you in for audience audience impact, for helping deliver a new perspective. So that's in line with becoming a professional speaker. So that one category should be, let's say, given your double focus so that we can in fact make sure we're having that impact, because that's what they're paying for. They're not paying for you to stand in front of an audience and speak words. That's not why they're paying. They're paying for your extra expertise. Transferred to. As Alan Weiss says so brilliantly, we get paid to improve the client's condition. So another reason I love the metaphor of the speech contest, because we get paid or we win. If we improve the client's condition, which is the audience, we're more likely to go the next level. Now, there's other categories that they judge us on, but the most important one is the audience impact. Going back to Mark's advice tomorrow, you have the privilege of 2000 lives. What will you do with that next? Another do. Be unique, not over the top. Be unique, but not over the top. We see a lot of people again, trying too hard, but you got to do your way. And highly recommend. Go back and check out the episode 19 with with Erin Gargan King where she talks about how she ended up wearing a pink dress and sneakers and the story behind that. But that's who she was. To give you a quick, quick insight, I love the part of the story where she said she was trying to be corporate, she was trying to fit in. So she would wear heels. So she would carry her heels, put them on backstage, go out in the heels, and then as soon as she got up stage, she put her sneakers back on. Well, she realized one time she's like, that's just not who I am. I just want to be me. And went out with the sneakers and they loved her and nobody cared. But I believe they felt more of her authenticity.

Right.

Because she, in fact, was living that life and being her own way and her own unique style and her animation on stage, her enthusiasm just comes through. It's infectious. It's a beautiful thing. So each person is unique in their own way, but you got to discover that. But accentuate your uniqueness, but don't force it and try too hard, Mark.

Yeah, and not going over the top means don't try too hard to be. Speak your man or speak your woman. You know, be authentic, be conversational, be yourself. That's what the audience wants to see. They want to hear you, but they want to know you.

Thank you, Mark. And that leads to the next one. Be authentic and vulnerable. Vulnerability connects us with our audience. Great TED Talks on this. The lady's name is. Do you remember the lady who had that super famous viral TEDx talk? I'll think of it. But anyway, it was about the power of vulnerability. And just we talked about the this with Aaron too. Being authentic. You just gotta be like, the audience can sense it. The audience is so much more savvy than 10 years ago, 20 years ago. 20 years ago you could stand behind a lectern and you could just talk and without your knees shaking and people are like, whoa, that's amazing. Yeah, you can't do that anymore. So this is the era of authenticity and vulnerability.

Mark, we're going to know what I always say, Darren. Authenticity plus vulnerability equals credibility.

Bam.

Authenticity plus vulnerability equals credibility.

Right.

Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

There's. You can't top that. Boom. Next is have an audience focus message. We've got to be aware that it's got to be for them, about them. And Mark, you explain this about your story, but for them.

Well, you know, when I said it's your story, it's about you, but it's for them. People say, well, you know, it's. I don't want to talk about myself. It seems so egotistical. It seems so self serving. No, not true. Because your audience by and large is you. Your experiences in many ways mirror theirs or are similar to theirs. How you respond to your circumstance situation can be instructive and also inspirational for them. So you can tell your story about you, but for them. And when they see the value for them, they're more willing and eager to embrace it and apply it. And that's where real change happens.

Bam. And finally have a memorable title. That title that stands out, brings in curiosity, makes us curious to want to hear more, but is not something that's cliche, that's very different, that's very unique and gets us to want to hear more. So Mark, real quick, the do's have a foundational phrase, have a guru who taught you, let us know who that is or when that moment was. Think beyond the contest, write a six minute speech and deliver it in seven. Understand the judges guide. Be unique but not over the top top. Be authentic and vulnerable. Have an audience focused message and have a memorable title. Mark Brown, what are our keepers for this episode?

Oh, I got a couple that are really good. One is the title should get us to lean in rather than check out. I love that one. And you had a phrase here, a word here. I don't know, you said a phrase. Gasm. I'm not sure I want to go with that.

Well, you just did two more things.

I want to point out. Authenticity plus vulnerability equals credibility. And I like this. Alan Weiss we get paid to improve the client's condition, the audience's condition, the congregation's condition, and when we realize that we have this not only opportunity but responsibility to give the audience the best in a window of seven minutes. Those seven minutes can transform the world. Last Keeper Think beyond the contest. Not about the trophy. Think beyond the contest. What impact can you have on your audience with your message?

Mark well said. Thank you for the recap and taking notes as we go along. And by the way Mark, the TEDx talk. Thank you for reminding me it is Brene Brown the Power of Vulnerability. Check it out. Mark Brown Final thoughts for Speech Contest Do's and Don'ts you enter enter a.

Speech contest for what you can become. Not so much for a trophy that you will win. You will grow more quickly, you will grow better. You learn about yourself and you will give yourself the opportunity to share with the world a message that they need to hear. So please, please please enter the contest. Learn, grow and change.

So please pass this episode on if you found it helpful. If you know somebody in the speech contest for the nine do's and nine don'ts. If you want to be coached, if you want more insights, check out stagetime University. Connect with Mark and and my coaches faculty of eight world class coaches. We have a live call every single week where you can get coached from world class coaches. Check out stagetimeuniversity.com or if you want one on one coaching, go to getaspeakingcoach.com and you can work directly with Mark Brown or one of the other faculty. Check it out. Mark why should they join us next week?

Ah hey listen, if you miss a.

Week, you miss a lot.

A lot.

Check it out.

Make sure you subscribe to our show.

Remember to subscribe because if you miss a week, you miss a lot.

If you like this episode, please leave us a review. If you want to get more from Mark and Darren, check out stagetime University where they provide experienced presenters a proven path and world class feedback to become the speaker everyone is talking about. Go to stagetimeuniversity.com join us next week if you're going to take the time to prepare a presentation. Make it unforgettable.