Ep. 213 Start Clowning Around With Don Colliver

Hey there, Mark Brown. So here I am going to the Toastmasters convention, and there's a speaker there who's talking about clowning around. And I have to tell you, I'll never get the visual out of my head where he was on stage with pink underwear. And, man, I was really impressed, though, with all that he did. That was just one thing that stood out. So I want to ask him about that moment, but start clowning around. Everyone in the world says, stop clowning around. This guy has a very unique background. We've never had anyone on with this specific background.

Mark, I can't wait to find out what our guest Don Carliver can teach us and to tell us why we should start clowning around.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts 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, now, Mark, didn't see you on stage. Don, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here. You earned your way on. I was very impressed with your presentation, and your engagement stands out. I want to talk about your background for sure, because it's so unique. Let me get to that in a second, but first, give me some background on how did you get Toastmasters to let you be on stage just in your underwear, like it was unforgettable?

Well, thank you so much, first of all, Darren and Mark, for having me on your podcast. And thank you for putting this podcast out. You provide so much value for your listeners. I was ingesting your podcast long ago, so I really appreciate getting invited on. First of all, thanks, Don. So. You're welcome. So the question was, how did I.

Tell me about that moment.

Masters. Like how you let me pull my pants down.

Okay, well, now that we have everyone's attention.

Well, I did a TLI workshop. For those of you who aren't Toastmasters, that's a Toastmasters Leadership Institute. They have these little training sessions at districts around the country, around the world, and I think it was 2018 in Los Angeles. I did one about utilizing clown concepts to engage more deeply with your audience. And so I'd always kind of had this in my mind. And I guess I should probably tell everybody I am a clown. I was a blue man I was, I toured as a host clown for a Cirque du Soleil partner by the name of Spiegel World through North America. And by host clown, I mean I didn't have any makeup, I did have a costume. But I would come running out throughout the show. It was an 800 person theater in the round in a tent. And I would have to re engage the audience and make them laugh, keep the energy up throughout the entire show. So no matter what happened, I had to be ready to get out, engage, have interaction with the audience and push the energy forward. So there was a lot of crossover that could help Toastmasters and speakers. And so that's why I built that original TLI and think. I started writing for Toastmasters magazine, the international magazine. I wrote about how to engage like a clown and how to use humor like a clown. And then Toastmasters reached out to me to develop this session for the convention because of the articles I'd already written.

Nice, Very nice.

Wonderful, wonderful.

That's great.

And they approved that moment. Or did they not know?

Oh, they, they were in full awareness of what was coming. It's actually lots of props to the organizers. We were in close contact months and months before I had sent the outline because not only did I have a pants drop involved and just so everyone knows, I had silly long underwear on underneath, I also had a bunch of sound effects because I developed a relationship in the script with my tech person at the back, which was crit critical to the session. So I kind of needed to get everybody on board with all of the technology to make sure that the presentation went off without a hitch.

You know, Darren, I'm going to inject something here for our listeners and the viewers. We have talked for years now, Darren, about becoming best friends with the tech team. And Don, in simply explaining your process, you've told us the significance of clear communication with a meeting planner with the organizer. Step by step, all the way through, you actually coordinate with the audio tech at the venue to make sure everything flowed smoothly. We have talked about this on for years and without us prompting you, you just reinforced to us and our listeners and viewers the significance of that aspect of being unforgettable on stage. You can prepare to be unforgettable before you even hit the platform. Now the commercial is over. Over to you, Darren.

Well, we need that team though. What I love is you used the AV and you used it well, the team to intentionally actually almost dis you on the stage, but in a playful way. And I loved, loved how you did that and by the way, if you're listening to this, I just want a quick shout out. He's got a book. Wink. You can check it out. Transforming public speaking with clown presence. Now, we're not talking about six year olds, which, by the way, we got to find a clown who is a speaker who did do six year old birthday parties. Because I want to know.

That's magic.

That's not clowning. But what you did and what you just described when you had to come out and engage people in a Cirque du Soleil. Was it in the round? Just curious.

Correct.

So in the round, which is 10 times harder, by the way. And talk about improv skills. Oh, my goodness. So, Don, that's part of why I invited you. Cause you're about engagement. You've done this at the Cirque du Soleil level. Come on now, teaching the rest of us, what can we do to be more engaging? Give us some of your secrets.

Well, I think first of all, because you two are such pros and your audiences and your audience here is such a pro are such pros that I think I can kind of connect the dots between improv and what I mean by clown presence. One of the things that you. I'm sure many of the folks listening have done improv classes, and if not, I highly recommend. I know, Darren, that's a big pitch that, that you give. It's incredible. It's, it's. It really changes the game. It allowed me to realize, hey, the thing I come up with in the moment on impulse may very well be better than the thing I had scripted. So I learned to trust myself on stage. But what clowning? The next level where it took me was in clown. In the kind of clown I learned, you start to train to intentionally lose the audience, to train yourself to get them back, and that is a next level talent. How do I lose an audience and then get them back? And if you're put in a situation in a class, you can drill on that, you can learn what are the buttons that only I personally can push to pull an audience back. And usually the way that clown teaches it and what I was talking about in the presentation was making it real. If something goes awry in your presentation, I encourage people to, if it's obvious to the audience, acknowledge it, acknowledge the humanity of it, don't dwell on it, then move on because the audience will get more on your side. There was actually a study. I mentioned it in the presentation. It was 1966, and the professor defined something he called the pratfall. Effect. He had two groups of highly competent speakers present to an audience. One of the group, one set of the highly competent speakers was flawless. The other set of the highly competent speakers spilled their coffee. They had the audience rate those two groups on likability following the presentation. And this, coffee spillers were rated as more likable. But before anybody thinks, oh, I just have to spill coffee, everybody's going to love me. They also had two groups of incompetent, ill prepared speakers. Same two groups, some didn't spill their coffee, some did. The ill prepared speakers who spilled their coffee were the least likable of all. So the takeaway is prepare just like we know how to do, like know your beat, like know exactly where the pauses are. But if something goes, that's a huge opportunity to get engage with the audience and get them on your side.

That's brilliant. I love that. I wouldn't have seen that coming, but it makes total, total sense.

Definitely. Nice. So you said real quickly, Don, you said acknowledge the humanity of your error and then move on. In your experience, have you seen where speakers had the error? They realize it, they acknowledge it, but before the program is over, it's in the back of their head, the back of their mind. Have you ever seen speakers who can just navigate their way through, they push their way through and never quite get back up from having that error on the platform? And how would you advise them?

Sure, I've seen that. I'm sure I've done that too in various presentations. I think just like Darren says, stage time it is so rehearsals and running your presentation till you can basically go on any off ramp, any kind of distraction, and boom, you can get right back on because you just know those beats so well. You can even drop a beat if it suddenly is inappropriate. Like I've often in my classes, I teach public speaking classes, crazy things happen in the news. And then that day, that lecture, there's a portion in it that is just completely inappropriate. But because I know that content so well, I'm able to take an off ramp, avoid that, come back on and continue. But that only comes from really knowing your content really well. But what you said, you said something about not being able to let go of the error. There sometimes can be gift in that. And Darren can probably speak to this because you're kind of a joke guy. Callbacks like you. If you can wrap that error, that coffee spill into some point later in your presentation, suddenly you look like a genius.

Absolutely. They actually outlawed callbacks in Toastmaster speech contest because it's such a powerful technique, and they didn't want to give an advantage to somebody speaking at the end of the contest versus somebody speaking at the beginning.

But did they really? They. You can't reference other speeches, not anymore.

In the same context. Correct.

Very smart.

But I love, I love what you're saying, though, is walk away with. Walk away from it. So don't beat a dead horse, me. Early in my career, I would spill a coffee accidentally, not intentionally, and then I would like, be in the moment because of my improv background and get a laugh. But then I would keep going with it and I would bring it back too soon and bring it back too soon, and the laughs went lower and lower each time. But what Don is saying here, which I learned the hard way, is like, walk away from it. It's too cold. Fire alarm goes off, use it, then walk away and. But what you're saying is later on now we call back to it. Not too soon, not too often. But a well placed callback is powerful, Don.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's funny. And I was just thinking, does this connect to unforgettable presentations? More to sketch comedy. I was a sketch comedy guy for a long time in Los Angeles. We all know the rule of three, right? Same, same, different. It's a classic way to get a laugh. There's also something in sketch and clown called the rule of a thousand, where like you say, Darren, maybe you keep referencing the cold. The cold. The cold. People start the. The laughs start going down, going down, going down. But there is a moment where it starts to come back up when they're like, I can't believe he's still talking about the cold. Can you believe this? It becomes more of a meta laugh. But that's like, sorry, no, no, everybody, perfect insights, Mark.

That's fine. Now, Don, you mentioned something earlier, and I want to be mindful that some of our listeners and the viewers are emerging speakers. And you use two terms that may not be familiar to them, and I want to honor them. One is you're speaking in the round. And for many of us, it's a familiar phrase. But I'm new to speaking. I have a message. I want to talk and I want to speak. But what does speaking in the round mean?

Very simply, speaking in the round is when your stage is in the center and you have seats all around you. 360 degrees. So in my case, it was 800 seats. No, maybe there was like 30 rows or something all around me. And how that impacts my preparation as a speaker is, you have to consciously know that you're moving and addressing all 360 points. Not only all 360 points, but also close and away. Just like we have to prep in any kind of a keynote speech. Am I talking to the people in the back? Am I talking to the people in front? It's just more people you need to be sure that you're addressing.

And that's why I asked the question. Because let's be honest, it can be difficult enough facing an audience right in front of you. But to know at any given point in time someone in the audience is seeing your back, that can be nerve wracking and disconcerting. How would you advise a speaker who gets an opportunity and they find out, oh, it's in the round. I've never done this before. How would you advise them to prepare for that in the most effective way?

Well, I think, you know, to get down to the nuts and bolts. For me, when I was prepping for the convention talk, it's not, it wasn't in the round. It was a standard stage, looking straight out at the audience. I had islands for different parts of my content and I would walk over here to tell this story, walk to the center and close for my mom's funeral story. And then I had specific islands for my content and I would land there. When I watch. I have not done a keynote speech in the round, but when I watch speakers, do you notes in the round, they don't land, they keep moving. They may slow down as they're talking, but they keep on moving. So I think, I guess that would be the difference. Not like running, sprinting around the stage, but keep, keep moving.

Was that what you did as a clown in the, in the circus realm? Similar concept. Just keep moving and make sure you engage front and back, center, look left and right.

Oh, absolutely. I was always moving and not only on the stage, I would come down, talk to people, get back up. If I was spent too much time on one side, I have to run up and go address the other side. You kind of had to have a sixth sense of like, am I leaving anybody out? I better get over there and engage.

Now, just curious, was when you did that for the Cirque du Soleil, was the stage turning? Oh my.

It had the, it had the capability. It would do that for some acts. It didn't do that for when I would be running out, because that would.

Be one more aspect overwhelm.

It's not as crazy as you think. Once you do it a couple times, it's actually kind of cool. Yeah, it really didn't bother me that much once I got the feel of it.

And how long did you do in between sessions or how long were you on stage or given the mic in between acts?

Anywhere between two and four minutes. But then we had. I was with a clown partner, my clown partner Jamie. We had three skill acts which we had to do, which were obviously longer. One was a Vegas quick change act. There was in the 70s, there was a really kind of smarmy act where to a couple would come out and they would have a tube of fabric and the guy would lift it up and drop it and the woman would be in a completely different outfit. So we did that. And then we also had. Okay, listeners, buckle up for this. We had a banana spit juggling act. So we both would stand on either side of the nine foot stage, bite a piece of banana, spit it in an arc. The other person would catch it in their mouth and we would spit it back and forth and it would heighten from there. It was crazy.

Oh my. Yeah, I remember you telling that story of practicing. Did that Mark. Just the thought just elicits emotion, as we say.

That's a powerful story. Very, very short story. But the purpose of a story is to elicit emotion. And certainly with that story, Don did elicit emotion. I'm sure we have viewers and listeners going either ew or cool, depending on who they are.

Gary, what else do you pass on? So I know you teach public speaking and you have such an amazing background for this, which is again one of my attractions to wanting you here because I love it. It's my lane. So what other insights could you share from your experience that might help our listeners?

Well, I think underneath it all there's a clown term, a clown concept called le jeu, which means finding joy and pleasure and making a meal out of every interaction with your audience. So you're holding that interaction almost even more important than your content. So if someone interrupts you, that's great. I'm so excited that you're so engaged that you want to say something. And it really shifts the dynamic of. I see. I work with a lot of starting beginning speakers and they're so scared of getting any kind of an interaction that they're going to get thrown. I want to shift that where it is fun to connect and it's easy to say, hard to do. That's why I think at first you need to work on. You are enough. Do some personal work. Because if you're stepping on that stage for validation, if you're stepping on that stage. So the audience is going to make me feel valid or my content feel valid, you're going to be in trouble. That's why you're so afraid of interaction. But if you are confident in yourself, if you know you are enough, if you're there to be of service to your audience, you are welcoming all those questions, even if they seem antagonistic, hey, they're engaging with you. Let's have, let's double down on this content.

That's great. It's curious. What do you find, Don to be the biggest obstacle that your clients have to being engaging with an audience?

Well, I teach public speaking in small groups or corporate teams and inevitably top concern, stage fright, anxiety, stage fright. And I'm preaching to the choir here. Darren's slogan is stage time. Stage time. Stage time. It is doing it. That's it. It's cognitive, behavioral, behavioral therapy. It's just like exposure therapy. Do it in a very supportive context and it will eventually start to not be that bad. There's many theories you can do to look at it, but bottom line, doing it in a supportive context. That's why in my classes the first couple times, only positive feedback. Only positive feedback. And I encourage that for your any, a speaker at any level, have somebody in your corner that just thinks you're the best, that gives you positive feedback. I could not be here where I am without my partner who's like, rah, rah, rah, you did great. I need that. And when I need constructive feedback, I consciously ask for it.

I know one of the principles you teach looking at your book is frustrated with your. When your listeners just don't understand. Tell us about that.

Well, we're getting into. I teach a lot of at a lot of technology companies and we have a lot of developers, engineers, people that come from more of a technical background. And again, when you're starting to work on a presentation, the first question as you folks, you guys know who is your audience? Why do they care? What's in it for them? And for someone who's worked with a team to develop some technology or come up with some results, they want to talk about what they did. Look at all this work we did. Unfortunately, audience probably doesn't care. You need to take those extra steps. Who's there? Why do they care? What's in it for them? This is my bread and butter. I speak at trade shows for different companies, mostly technology. And I'll get these presentations that are just like, look at all this stuff about our product. It's like well, who's going to be walking the floor? Who's going to be listening? Why do they care? And a lot of times, frankly, it's a lot dumber than, than what they built. We can't go into the weeds. We can't do that. We have to make it very simple. And that's another thing that you guys are so great at is making it punchy. Like having four tips, three tips. Make them all start with the same three words. I don't know. I actually learned that from you guys coming up with make it in the present. Make it about them, make it real. I originally that was all over the place, but I really made it clear and understandable.

And because you teach a lot of emerging public speakers as well, or even corporate presenters who are maybe with a fear of it, what are some of the mistakes that you see?

Good question. Non awareness of non verbals. Boy, oh, boy. How uncomfortable is it to watch yourself present for the first time? Oh, my gosh. And I realized as I was teaching these classes and going through the classes, if I gave them the video and asked them to watch it over the week before the next class, nobody did it. So now I give them time at the beginning of the class and I make everybody watch themselves with earphones. It's the only way that'll make people do it. But I will say it gets easier. It gets easier. And one tip for your emerging speakers in your audience, one thing that helps me, if I'm going to watch myself, I will task myself on that viewing to only look for one thing. I only want to check my eye contact this time. I only want to check my pauses this time. Because if I sit down and write down everything I don't like, I will never look at that video again. I will run out and go to the bar. It's a lot easier for my brain to take in one thing at a time.

And what do you say to people when they're going to watch their video? And they hate it because I know I have a famous joke that Mark loves that I do. Raise your hand if I look good on stage. And they all raise their hands.

Let it go. It's not about you.

And then I also tell people about, I've traveled the world. I met many people around the world who are jealous of the trophy. You want to be jealous? Be jealous of my closet of videotapes. I've given. I've gone back and studied. I hated watching myself, too. But I learned from stand up. I learned from being a telemarketer that when you listen to yourself, you will hate it and you'll see insights that you would never get without listening to it. How do you encourage them? Well, at the beginning of class, you make them. That's a, that's a great point, Mark. We got to start doing that. That's brilliant.

Yeah. Make them watch videos with headphones and look at their faces while they do it. That should be interesting.

We should video the face reactions.

And also one thing, one other thing I do is the first time I have them only listen, they don't watch themselves, they only listen. The next time they turn off the audio, they only watch. That's watching without audio is extremely instructive because many times people don't realize that their elbow moves weird. Like, I'm, I'm absolutely guilty of that. I have all kinds of quirks that I do with myself.

Nice. Well, what I love about you is it seems like you really have fun at what you do. Any tips for us to have more fun? Maybe not take ourselves so seriously because it's a presentation, but it's not cancer. Whether we're forced to do it by a company or we want to do it up until five minutes before then we change our mind. But what tips? Just because you, you just have such a great joy of what you do.

Well, a couple tips I think first of all, especially even relating to watching yourself. And I see this so much online with all of the hustle culture and the funnel build this and that and there's a lot of like, just give me the heart, just tell me what I'm doing, just lay it on me. And I think people, they don't want to need positive feedback, but they do. Like, it's. You will progress so much faster if you're getting encouragement. And so give yourself, let yourself have that. Ask for positive encouragement sometimes at the expense of constructive feedback. Sometimes I need that. The other thing which I already mentioned to Darren is find yourself an improv 101 class that is fun. It's fun. And by doing that, you'll start to develop some of that, like I mentioned before, le Ju, or joy and pleasure in engaging. You'll find the joy. It's not about the content, just about the content. It's about the privilege. You get to be up there and engaging with these people. And if you don't engage with them, if you're just delivering content, yeah, I can see that can get a little bit nerve wracking. But if I'm having fun with connecting with these people, that really makes it worth my While.

All right, Mark, you're gonna love this question. How do you spell lejeure?

Say that again.

How do you spell le?

Jeu or L E? Space? J E, U. It's French for the game.

Enjoy. Yeah, enjoy the game. Le Jeu, the game. Have fun with it. It's curious. I'm curious about one thing, Don. You mentioned having several coaching clients and some of them are brand new presenters, very corporate and they have very technical. How open are they to seeing the humor in situations or do you find it difficult to help people to uncover humor in their presentations? Two part question. When they do, how does that change the game for them?

Great question. And first of all, I've never met a student that didn't want to add humor. Everybody seems to want to like that's a common. How do I make my technical presentations more light hearted? How do I add levity? And I'm not a joke guy. I'm terrible at jokes. I'm. I'm not good at delivering them, I'm not good at writing them. I find. And this is why I was so excited to bring clown to Toastmasters and speakers in general. I don't need jokes by being present, by allowing myself to be vulnerable, by acknowledging the moment with your audience, by acknowledging the moment being authentic with them, you can find ways to connect in a fun way without writing jokes. And it just takes the pressure off for me because I inevitably will screw up the punchline. I'll flip the punch, I'll forget the punch line. I'll do. I did this once, I'll tell the whole setup and then I'll forget to give the punchline and move on to my next point. Like it was terrible.

That's honest.

Do you have any tough speeches and how did you turn it around?

Well, I can give you a moment from the convention, the Toastmasters International Convention, there was. I have an audience engagement moment and audience interaction audience participation moment. I bring an audience member on stage. I have them function as what Toastmasters call an ah counter, meaning they have to monitor my filler words. And I was going to have them raise their hand and I had a pre built bit with the sound person to cue these wacky sound effects to pretend to throw me off my game. And in Blue man and in the Cirque du Soleil partner show, we're trained to look out through the curtain before the show and select people that look like they'll be good audience participants. And there's a few things there's like they should be seeming like they're Having a good time, but not too much of a good time. They. They kind of seem a. Should seem a little bit shy, but also wanting to participate if you have the person who also always wants to be telling jokes. Bad choice. Yeah. So there was one guy who's super engaged, super engaged. Sitting, I mean, right in front of me on the aisle, front row. And I was like, this is the guy, this is the guy. And I came to that point. I looked down, he's like on his laptop for some reason. Suddenly I hadn't known him. I didn't notice. He pulled it out, but he still seemed engaged. He seemed like he was taking notes. I was like, great. Hey, would you mind being an eye counter, keeping track of my filler words? He looks up at me, complete look of not understanding me. And the guy behind him started talking to me, I think in Japanese. And both of them started talking to me in Japanese. And it was clear that these fellas did not speak any English at all. And so in my head I'm saying, why are you sitting in the front row? Why are you so present? But also I'm like, this is a minefield of things I must not comment on at this moment. I'm going to move on. So I looked over and the fellow who had introduced me was sitting right there, also very, very present. I called on him moving forward. Audience had no idea. My brain was like, oh, my God, what's happening? But it worked out fine.

Nice.

Now real quickly, I need to get a little bit more depth on this. My brain was like, oh, my gosh, what's happening? But what you did next is significant. There are presenters with limited experience or some experience who, when their brain goes, oh, my gosh, what's happening? It's a freeze panic mode. What do you recommend we do in that specific moment?

Well, if there's a way to acknowledge the moment, acknowledge that, oh, this isn't happening. I think I said, oh, it doesn't look like this fellow is speaking English, I'm going to move on, or something like that. I didn't make a status thing. I didn't comment on that because it was. It was too. It felt too culturally sensitive to make a joke about. But I had to acknowledge what was going on because no one else can really see. And I had already asked the person, they would be wondering, why is that person not responding to him? So I needed to acknowledge it, not make a joke about it and quickly move on. I think kind of my primal brain was like, this is a moment to acknowledge and move on as quickly as possible.

I admire the fact you saw right away this could be too culturally sensitive to use any kind of humor. Let's just move on, because I'm trying to, in my mind, what if you said the wrong thing? It could have gone downhill really, really quickly had you not had the presence of mind, despite your panic, what's going on, to realize what was not appropriate and take a safer course. And I would recommend that all of us think about that, because you never know when you'll find yourself in a place where you could, by saying the wrong thing or by saying anything at all could create a situation that you could have avoided by simply either saying nothing, moving on, or redirecting. And that's really kind of where improv can help, I would think. But to be in that situation and handling it that well, I think is good for all of us to hear the story and to learn from it and to take wisdom from it. So thank you for that story, Donna. I really appreciate that.

Darius, One other thing I wanted to add to that, first of all, and I'm sure you folks have probably talked about this on the podcast, never make fun of your audience. Never make fun of what they love. Making fun of me. Total fair game. Always appropriate. Making fun of me. Never make fun, because if I make fun of one person, everybody's going to be like, is he going to make fun of me next? Like, not a good deal. And I think two words inform any kind of audience interaction. Even at these trade shows, when I have antagonistic questions or someone's being difficult. Curiosity and compassion. Keeping curiosity and compassion. Being curious about why this person is being this way and compassionate. Maybe they're having a tough day. Those opportunities are such an opportunity to get an audience on your side. Even if it's like a person who's clearly being difficult, the audience sees what's going on. If you just shut them down in a mean way, the you're going to lose the audience. But, man, if you handle that in a way with executive presence, generosity, curiosity, and compassion, you just got huge points with everyone else in that space.

Yep. You just upped. Upped your reputation big time. I remember. Don, I don't know if you heard or saw Carson, Johnny Carson's last show. Someone asked him what made him so successful, and he paused for a second, said, I always played up to my audience. And that's what you were saying is like, don't cut them down. Don't make fun of what they love. We have no right to tease what they love. What they hate. They're pet peeves. Bring it on. My last question as we start winding down here is what other insights do you have for. Let's just say the non humorous person who just wants to create some more engagement. What advice or what insights could you offer that we want to be more engaging? How do I create an engaging moment?

Well, how do I, how do create engaging moments? I think it starts with, as I said, being comfortable with yourself up there. One of the early clown exercises, which is frankly torture, is you stand in front of an audience for 60 seconds to 120 seconds and you say nothing. Your only job is to keep eye contact with everyone in the audience. It is rough. It is incredibly rough. And the audience, you start to see all the quirks of this person because they start twitching around and all these things. But by doing that, you start to realize where your power is. Because sometimes they may laugh, people may smile at you and you're like, what did I do? I'm just standing here, I'm not providing any content. It's just me. It's just my presence that is connecting with these people. So doing your, getting your stage time, stage time, stage time is going to help you with that. You're going to start to realize, hey, what is it about me beyond my content that really connects with my audience? And once you pass that, if you want to engage your audience, simply acknowledging the moment, acknowledging what's going on right now, maybe there's traffic in the parking lot. Wow, it's, it's what a beautiful day, right? Something that is clear that you did not script this, this something just for us. It is just us in the 60 person room. He's talking just to us. He didn't rehearse this. That's such a way to get an audience leaning forward.

And how about if we're intentionally looking at a piece of our content? Any thoughts or advice? Well, okay, so I'm doing this deep point or this important critical point. How could I bring some engagement to that? Like, I love what you're saying, but is there any ideas you have for us for planning some engagement?

That's a great question. And I spent a lot of time on that for this 45 minute session keynote that I did. And with every point I tried to have an audience engagement moment building into that point. I think Craig Valentine talks about, and I'm sure you guys also have some framework of is it story point stat or. I mean as long as you have some kind of a structure. And for me as a clown, kind of my Superpower is audience participation, audience engagement. Can I do an activity that feeds me in to this point that I'm trying to teach? For example, when I'm talking about how sometimes all you need to do is talk about things you have in common to find some humor, I did an exercise where I had the group speak to someone next to them, find one thing they had in common that had nothing to do with the Toastmasters convention, then hold up their hand. I didn't know what they were going to say, but since I did it a bunch of times, I knew that 100% of the time, even if they said some random thing, we both have Toyotas, people would laugh and enjoy it. Simply finding things that we all share, people love it. It adds levity. It adds engagement.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Well said. I think a lot of us need to take that time to try and search for how can I? And I love what you did because you did that at the convention, just saying, okay, turn to your neighbor and boom. But strategically giving them that question and being ready, because you never know what's going to come out of anybody's mouth. But that also builds your confidence. Once you handle that a few times, and even the times you can't handle it, like, I got nothing on that. I don't. I don't even know what. What's a Toyota?

You know, the audience will do this. They did the work for me at the. At the convention. These two. This one couple said, we have a son, and they didn't know each other. I couldn't even hear them. But everyone laughed around them because they both had sons, but they said, we have a son. So it sounded like they had a son together. The whole audience was laughing, and I had to be like, like, why are you laughing? What? What? And so, yeah, but what you did.

Is you set up a safe environment, which is critical for them to share. So they knew, because of your Persona, because of your presentation up until then, that no matter what they said, you weren't gonna laugh at them. You were gonna let them be them and love them where they are at. So just for all of us, we need to set up that environment if we're going to do audience interaction, that we're okay with whatever they say.

Yeah, it really helps to start a presentation. And you folks know this. Start the presentation with something that shows that you're not perfect. I've seen all the master speakers do this with a story that shows, hey, I don't know everything I've failed in the past. And then if you're doing engagement or interaction, you need to do it incrementally. You can't immediately have say, like, all right, I want everybody to get into a group and talk about their saddest moment in their life. It doesn't work that way. But if you build, tell me something you're proud of halfway through, tell me your biggest triumph. You can get there, but you need to do it incrementally.

Well said. So Mark has been taking notes. The dawn isms the drops of wisdom that Don has dropped for us. And while he's gathering his thoughts, I always like to ask don't. The one question. If you were sitting down with someone over coffee, let's say an emerging presenter, and they said, I just. I just need to be more engaging, what advice would you give them?

First, ask a question. I would say, do you have a meditation practice? Like, I know that's counterintuitive. Game changer for me. And the reason it's helped is I've developed the ability, or I'm working on it, to be a dispassionate observer of myself. And if you're going to evaluate yourself, if you're going to get better, you need to be able to look at yourself in a clinical way. And that's what meditation does. If I'm nervous, I'm learning how to observe my nervousness. Oh, I'm nervous right now. How can. What other tools can I use? But if I am the nervous person, I'm stuck. So it's probably not the tip that you're looking for, but that's tip number one, always. How's your meditation practice?

That's a great tip. I love the ones that I don't see coming and haven't heard before, so even better. And Don, before we go to Mark's Donism's collection, if somebody wanted to follow you, hire you, take your class, how would they find you? Don.

Great. Yeah, Just hit me up@doncolliver.com and connect with me on LinkedIn.

There you go.

That's-O N C-O-L-L-I-V E R dot com.

That's right, Mark. Thank you.

And check out his book, Always trying to spell Gooder. So that's good. Thank you.

I love it. What a. What a brilliant book title. Wink. That says it all. Boom. All right, Mark, what do we got? What do we.

High level. Use clown concepts to engage your audience. Take an improv class. And he said, Improv 101, which I love. And don't be afraid to be impulsive. Because paraphrase, your impulsive action could be better than your prepared material. I love this one. Train yourself to lose your audience and then get them back.

That takes guts.

Oh, that's a wonderful. I love that one. Acknowledge the humanity of your error, but then move on. Don't live in your brain. Take a look at the pratfall effect and be be willing to be honest and vulnerable. Prepare very, very well for every presentation, but if something goes awry, take an off ramp and get back on later.

Find your way back.

Love that belt between you both. Wrap your error in a callback. Unless you're in a Toastmaster speech contest.

Final, you can't do that.

Find joy and pleasure like having a meal with your audience. It's fun to connect. That's easy to say, but it's hard to do. Find ways to have fun with your audience. Be aware of your non verbals what the audience sees. How do you do that? Review your video and look for specific attributes, behaviors and quirks to become better.

At what you do.

Enjoy Le Jeu the game. Remember, we don't need more jokes. Simply acknowledge the moment and find humor in the moment. And always maintain curiosity and compassion for your audience. One more Use engagement activities to reinforce your point and your audience is engaged and involved in your presentation. A lot of wisdom here. Thank you so much. Don Culliver.

Darren, Don, thanks for joining us. Any final thoughts? Anything you'd like to impart before we depart?

I just want to reiterate the thanks and gratitude coming from me and from I'm sure your entire audience for your amazing insights and well, packaged insights. I should say I've learned a ton from you guys.

Wow. Thanks.

Thank you very much Don.

Thanks for doing what you do and helping people get started, especially in that incubator time in their careers when they need it so much. Being that encouragement, giving them those tools and tips that you do. Please check out his book. Don, thanks for being here. Really appreciate your time and insights and someday I'll get that vision out of my head.

But thank you.

Hey, thanks for being here. And Mark Brown, what happens if you miss a week?

Man here you'll miss. You miss a week, you'll miss a lot. It's time to start clowning around.

See you next week.

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