Ep. 237 The Unforgettable MC with Michael Davis?

Hey there, Mark. Mark's not here. I am sitting down with Mike Davis, one of my best friends, a guy that I go to for coaching, and the emcee of Game Changers. And I think people don't understand what's really important and how important it is to the event when you have a great mc. Mike, welcome. I know whenever we do unforgettable presentations, the first thing we do is we put people in breakout rooms and we say, okay, what's most important at live event and most and most important that pops up or bubbles up is the mc. When we sit back and think about it, we see its importance. But whether you're holding an event, you want to be an emcee, or you're a speaker, we got to understand the emcee's role so we can support them to make the whole event more unforgettable. Mike, your initial thoughts?

Two things. Ol Darren, I am not Mark and I can't even do Mark's voice. And secondly, when something you said triggered. Siri, this is a perfect example of how MCs have to handle the unexpected.

Nice. Hey, Siri.

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.

Hey there, Mike Davis. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Always. I'm part of the stage time family in the faculty, but it's always great to be on the podcast with you and share some insights. And I cannot film Mark Shoes, but I'll do my best.

Yeah, Mark is on a plane to India right now while we're recording this. And who do you go to? You go to your go to guy, Mike Davis.

I appreciate that. Yeah, let's talk MCing events because you're responsible for me being an MC. You know this, right?

Yes, yes. We looked around the room, we're like, we need an mc, you kid over there. And it came out of too when we were doing a coaching camp, Craig and I, and Craig got hurt and he couldn't do it. Now we have these people flying in and we looked at, okay, who is our equal? Who is maybe been a student, but who's our equal? And that put you in the seat, got you in the game, nailed it gave value. And now that just built my trust in you.

And.

And then when we started having lady and the Champs years ago, we look to you to really fill in that critical part. I don't think most people really understand that the event can go either way. Even if you have great speakers, the event can go either way based on the glue, the critical mc.

Yeah, absolutely. And I've also been fortunate since those early days of trial and error and figuring out how it works. I've got some. Some good friends who are also excellent hosts and MCs, and I've learned from them. But the number one rule of MCing is to take your ego, put it in a box, and sit it over here and remember what now. And that's really hard for speakers. I know you and I have seen those events where the MC gets up and starts pontificating on a topic or some other issue, and it's like, no, no, no, slow it down. You're there to transition and make the speakers look really good.

Yeah. You are responsible for setting us up. And we also know dealing with speakers that they don't always get their intros in on time. They might not even send their intro in. But at the same time, I think, Mike, one of the most critical skills that you have, which you're really good at because you teach improv and is that ability to listen, see what's happened and. Yes. And it. And pull out a critical nugget that connected to you that you can bring to the audience as you segue from one speaker to lunch or one speaker to another speaker. That recap is so important. How do you do that? How do we get better at that?

Well, you have to be present in that room. And one of the advantages of working with you early on is I learned your style of planning an event. I knew you as a speaker. I had to understand what you were looking for through the event. And, you know, I spent a lot of time in the early days, not so much now, because we trust each other and we know what each other wants. But you've got to be in that room and listen to those speakers who are up there and pick two or three items and make a note to call back to when you're transitioning from that speaker, when that individual's finished, to the next. It may be to challenge the audience. Hey, you know, you just heard Ford Sakes talk about why AI is so important now. What's one idea that you took away that you can immediately implement? Now, while you're doing that, let's get ready for our next speakers if something like that. Just to tie the last speaker to the next one.

Yeah, the energy too. I've seen people, MC events and, and very talented people who are speakers but, but they just think they can emcee without understanding the role that you really play. They come on and they might tell a good or funny story and it's like okay, but what did it have to do with the last speaker or the next speaker? They don't bridge, you know, one of your critical roles is bridging between one and the next and one and the next. And a lot of people don't understand too that MCs especially the bigger conferences can get paid really well. It's not like a wannabe position. It's actually too critical for a wannabe to just step in there. I've seen TEDx events, you know, where there's a really good person, Cherie, who's one of our stagetime members, she hosted TedX UNLV and she just had this amazing stage presence. So we still gotta bring our specialty but we got to understand the importance of the mc so as a speaker we can support them. It's a team effort even if we don't know each other.

Yeah. The key to this is going to be communication. You've got to communicate with the meeting planner which you and I already had that relationship built early on. So you and I would talk a lot and get with those speakers and find out, have them send the intro. Now in the early days I was too intimidated by all the world class speakers. I'm like, yes, I'll read this. Then as I started to learn what an effective introduction is, I would push back on them a little bit and say, you know, this is very focused on you, which is you've done wonderful things, you know, stroke the ego. But what's the audience going to get out of this? After a couple of years everyone became really confident with me as an emcee. But I knew last year I had made it as an emcee. Darren, when Ford Sakes, who never lets anyone introduce him, he always has a video introduction. He came up to me the first day and said, oh by the way, you're introducing me. Excuse me. I hadn't prepared but improv skills paid off. I'll tell you where I got my earliest training for for emceeing events and I had no idea that was my training grad. It was Toastmasters meetings where I was the toastmaster of the day, as you know. And if you're watching this and you're a toastmaster, you know, in that critical role, you organize and control the whole day. Something goes wrong every single meeting, without fail. The first time I did a professional gig, I got there, we were planning it out, and all of a sudden they said, well, we already know that the key speaker is going to go over. He does every time, and we don't like to tell him no. So I'm having to take the script that we'd worked on for a week and start scratching out. And they were kind of losing their minds and they're getting all upset and I'm like, what's the big deal? You just take this out and this out and this out. But it is because I had that training improv on top of it. It's like there's nothing you will face as an MC that you haven't faced as a toastmaster of the day. And in improv.

Yeah, it's almost like me in the old days of stand up comedy. I used to have to do stand up in the back of a bowling alley with the TV going on because they don't want to shut it off at the bar because there's a guy sitting there drinking, which is earning money. So it's almost like we have to earn through that experience of the tough situations and be able to handle those. Then when you're working in a more professional environment, you're working with pros, they know what to do, they know, and everybody is on the team for the event. So it's almost like you got to earn your way. You got to pay the mountain. As it says in learning how to ski, you got to pay the mountain. So you did that in Toastmasters. But here's what I would think would separate you, Mike, from the average person. You took it seriously. You took that role, not, oh, I've got to be toastmaster today. Let me just see. Okay, here's the agenda. Go with it. You took the time to dive in, do a little research, understand what they're talking about, understand how that ties in. How does that tie into the theme of the day? What's the word of the day? How can you use that? And so I think your approach is your all in attitude. That whether you're getting paid for it or it's for free, all of us, whether we're the speaker or the mc, when we take that all in attitude, we are going to grow from it. It's going to give us that experience that we learn from that. Next time we can tap back into what did work or what didn't work. But without going all in, you're just filling a role. Don't fill a role. Make the role stand out.

Take it just as seriously as you would a speech. You prepare, you get the agenda. And you and I have developed this relationship on. On the. The whole structure of the game changers agenda. You send it to me a couple months ahead of time. So we're working on it and I review it every time. I will practice each of those introductions in my office here, looking at my four walls and I'll just like I'm introducing that person because once I get up. But yeah, I will still read it. I don't think there's anything wrong with reading, but it doesn't. You don't want it to sound red. You want to have gone through it a couple dozen times. So it's just. Yeah, it feels comfortable flowing out of you.

Yeah. I think a lot of people don't understand the importance of how well you do. Again, speaking or emceeing, how well you do. There are people in there in an event. Well, they know people who hold other events. People go to live events. Go to live events and they know people. And that referral, that recommendation is gold. That is better and more important than a great website or a $25,000 video. Those have their places. Don't get me wrong. But when someone of credibility knows somebody of influence who is either booking or knows the booker like that, our proof is in our performance. And that's what's going to get us referred, man.

Yeah. Yeah, it will and it's great. One of the best moments I had was unsolicited when Patricia Fripp walk up to me after one of the lady enchants and said, that's one of the best emceeing performances I've ever seen. Please drop the mic. But that gave me so much more confident and confidence to know that a woman of RIP stature and her reputation would come up to me and say that because, you know, she's authentic. She doesn't just do that to do it. No. That gave me a lot more confidence going forward and to. To be more in control. With each sub subsequent event that I've done, I feel a little more in control. Not to be controlling, but the audience wants to know that MC is in control of the meeting because something will go wrong and they know you can handle it.

Yep. And Mike, I know you also host some virtual ones. Let's talk about virtual hosting.

Sure. Look, I don't have the research on this one. Of the greatest you've given me so many gifts in my career to get me really going was the day you called me up and said, oh, by the way, you're going to be hosting our weekly Zoom calls. And I said, what's Zoom? I don't have the research on this, but it takes three times the effort to put on an equally impressive and impactful virtual presentation as it does in person. Because as you and I have learned together, it's the buttons you push and how do you keep people engaged. You talk a lot in your virtual presentations. Boot camps, all about making it pace elements. You got to change the pace up. And that, that takes a lot of mistakes and repetition and just say, screwing up a lot, but getting comfortable. And the technology is changing all the time, so you've got to stay on top of that game. But it can be a lucrative type business. I have a lot of people coming to me now because they know I can handle the virtual presentations and handle the inevitable mistakes.

Yeah, it's. It's not just turning on Zoom. I mean, a lot of speakers saw that early on and felt that. And, you know, we had Jennifer Lear who said, look, it's. You can't just come on, turn on the camera and tell your story the way you did before. Well, an emcee, even though they're good and talented, there's more in the background with a virtual one, because you're gonna have. You're gonna have issues. There'll be different issues virtually. And again, you gotta have that experience and the confidence to be able to. What do I do when this happens? What do I do when this happens? What do I do when there's an annoying person, you know, who also paid for the event, but they're diluting the, the beauty, the power of the whole event?

Yeah, you. Well, we had that a couple years ago with a member. It's stage time. And we had to take this person and mute many times and eventually say, well, you're going to have to leave this particular meeting and then talk with her offline. It happens. I will tell you, though, and I, I'm not going to attribute my ability to handle this problem as getting a paid gig. But, you know, I did that gig in presentation in Denver a few weeks ago, which was a paid keynote. Well, go back to last summer. I was doing a presentation. I was kind of a host and a presenter. I was in on their Zoom, and they were doing it from a hotel. They kept their Zoom, kept kicking me out, kicking me out. This went on for like 10 minutes and we're burning time. I finally called them and said, let's get on my Zoom. Got them on my zoom, picked it right up, had a great opening line which fed into to, you know, connecting with the audience. And when it was over, the reviews I got were on the ability to handle the problem, which I think was one of the reasons they came back to me and said, we want you to come speak at our event. Yep, you taught me this early on, Darren. We don't get paid for our genius and our wisdom and our expertise. We get paid for handling problems which will occur. And that's a perfect example of how that helped secure a paid speaking opportunity.

It's those adversities that how we handle those. And guess what, the event planner, they have a lot going on. Whether it's a free event or a high paid event, they have a lot going on. And so it's our ability to have the bigger picture in mind. The event, putting the event before self. When you do that, and especially when something goes wrong like that, they will never forget you. That's what makes you an unforgettable mc, an unforgettable speaker. You handled the tough situation, you handled the fire alarm going off, zoom going down, teams going down, whatever that might be. But having that ability, that's why, you know, I love reminding people, experience is the greatest teacher. You want to be better, you want to be unforgettable, you want to be world class. More experience, simple, don't over complicate it. But experience with the intention of the event, more important than you.

Well, what you just said is so powerful, especially when you're doing virtual. Keep it simple in the beginning, get really good at transitioning from speaker mode to slides and back to speaker, then add in. How do I send people to a breakout room and do it effectively and how can I pop in if I need to and come out? Then how do I incorporate sound effects? Then how do I show a video? If you try to do it all at once, which was my early mistake, it's like, no, I need to go back to square one. How do I do this basic task? Right. And then how do I add and add an ad and if you do it, I'm what, eight years in now? It becomes second nature. But it also puts you in a position to handle all the new technology that keeps coming out.

Yeah. And it's great thing to bring up. It's the technology I've seen experienced world class speakers with a horrible background, with a horrible audio. We use Mark's Example of the yeti. We started our podcast. He didn't. He used the speaker. I think it was in his headphone. Jack and somebody. Thank you, whoever that was. One of our listeners said, hey, I'll. It was like our second episode. He responded and let us know. He said, hey, I'll excuse guests having poor audio, but not the hosts. And we're like, you know what? He's right. He's right. So he immediately got Mark the yeti microphone. However, I've seen a lot of people get the yeti microphone, but they don't know how to use it. They pull a man which is not reading the instructions, plugging it in, turning it on and expecting good audio. And just like if you're listening to this now, one of the things we teach is proximity effect. I didn't know what that was. I used to make fun of people wearing headphones on a podcast. It's like, are you trying to impress us? So they get this big microphone right in front of them and I'm like, oh, you're trying to impress us with the microphone. Okay. My attitude was horrible. I didn't realize the proximity effect. That if I'm right now, if you're listening on one of the audio only podcasts, I'm taking the microphone and I slowly move it away. And you'll hear the difference as I move it away and it's going to sound not as good. And even though it's the same microphone, the only difference is proximity. So now it's about 2ft away from me. How would it feel if you had to listen to me either speak for an hour or MC all day? Okay. It's just, it's proximity.

Yeah. And you don't think about that. But if you listen, go back and listen to what Darren just did. Listen to it for a couple. Play it over and over. That will exhaust you. You don't realize you're working harder to hear. It's. It's the lighting. You got to look at the lighting. I'm constantly frustrated with lighting in my office because it's where I am right now. I'm two hours. Well, I'm hours ahead of you. So it's mid to late afternoon, the sun's going down. I have to go adjust my lights again. But it's worth it. And look, it's, it's not hard to do this. Do the microphone test and all you do is hit record on zoom and see how it sounds and move it around. You'll be able to see yourself. You'll be able to see where that microphone is, make a note with your. When you're changing your lighting. Okay, my lighting is at 90% now. I'm going to go change it to 80 back and forth. It's not that much effort to figure out how you can look and sound as good as possible. And I'll tell you in Darren, you know this. You see as many of these webinars as I do, it's not that hard to work yourself to the top.

Yep. And even going back to the yeti, just like you said, I love that idea. Mike, by yourself, open up a zoom or teams or whatever format you use and just turn it on. And then there's, let's say, five different settings on the Yeti. So, okay, here's setting one. Here's setting one. Here's setting 1. Click. Okay, here's setting 2. Here's setting 2. Here's setting two. Okay, click. And there's going to be one that sounds best. But guess what? Mike in his office and me in my office. It might be a different setting that sounds better in those environments because acoustically every environment is going to be a little bit different. So we've got to take the time to not only try it in our environment, but try it with our computers. Ed Tate has a Shure microphone. His sounds awesome. But I remember, I've seen, and I won't mention, this is a different speaker. The speaker I saw using the same high quality microphone was speaking at it in the wrong direction. So the one Ed has, you speak into the tube, if you will, whereas mine, you speak to the front of the tube. And if you don't, if you're not aware of it, A, if you tested it, you'd find out B, jump on YouTube and do a little research. Now, kind of going off topic, but it's directly on topic. Whether you're speaking or emceeing, we've got to hear you. And reminder, audio is more important than video. Audio is more important than video. If you're a little out of focus, if it's a little pixely, if the lighting's not great, I'll still listen to you. If your content is good, if you're reminding me why this is important in my life, where does this apply in my life? We've got to do that connection, bridge that gap between our listener and our content. Or in the case of an emcee, the content of the speakers or the event.

Yeah, absolutely. It's even more so when you're emceeing virtually. If that microphone isn't crystal clear. And you're making people strain to hear. They're just not going to stay if.

It'S not crystal clear. They have to strain to hear.

Bam. There you go.

New foundation.

Foundational phrase. Boom.

All right, so Mike, you're sitting down with somebody over coffee who wants to do some more MCing. They were a toastmaster at their club and they got this opportunity to do it at a real conference where they're going to get paid. What advice would you give them?

Number one, communicate with the meeting planner. And I mean you can. You can't over communicate with number one. What's your theme? What is your schedule? You want to know who, what's going to happen each. And you're great at this, Darren, you. You've even said you go too far. I don't think you can schedule it to the minute you want to find out everything they want to do. Now will you be emceeing in that mode of knowing every minute? No, you don't need to. But knowing how the meeting planner thinks, knowing the whole flow from start to finish, get crystal clear on that. What do they expect from you? Then you want to get the introductions as soon as possible because you don't want to read those introductions the day of the events. You and I have been too many times we've been introduced by people and that you can tell they just got it. It's like they. And they ruin it. A well thought out and written introduction can make or break the first part of a speech even for professionals. Respect them enough to read it the way they wrote it and get with them ahead of time. If you think maybe it's not audience oriented enough now they make pushback and say, no, read it the way I wrote it. Okay, I'll do that. But see if you can push back a little. If you think it needs to be more audience focused, but have it as soon as possible and go through it.

Don't. And be an mc. Be an unforgettable mc.

Yeah. And the third thing is just go practice it over and over, those transitions and don't. Just like we tell people with their speeches and stories, don't be married to every word. Be married with the flow of what you want to say to get from the opening to the first speaker or the. The previous speaker to the next. Be comfortable with that and know that unexpected is going to happen. You'll hear items, you'll hear statements in speakers that you. You want to call back to. We'll write those down. But that's a Good way to start. Three tips to help them become unforgettable.

MCs and again, go with the mindset of service of the big picture of the event planner. The economic buyer is really your boss and every performance actually an audition for a hundred more. Every performance is actually an audition for a hundred more. Why? Because there's people in front of you who know people. Even if it's 12 people, 12 people probably know a thousand people each. So the better you do at the level you're at is going to be what brings you to the next level. I remember my comedy mentor Vinnie when he was saying, you know, how do you get to be a headliner? You're a middle act. How do you get to get to be the headliner? You be so strong that the middle act or that the headliner can't follow you. If you're the middle act, you'd be so strong that the headliner doesn't do as well as you. And guess what? Event planners will see that. Event planners will know that. Jeff Civilico, friend of mine, you know Jeff, he's an incredible world class emcee and a keynote speaker. But his emceeing leads to speaking and his speaking leads to emceeing because they know and like and have seen the performance of Jeff Civilico. So take it seriously. Go all in. Mike Davis, thanks for being here and if you listening to this, I'd love to see Mike in action. Join us for Game Changers April 5th and 6th. Go to stagetime live.com stagetimelive.com use is it Mike or Michael 25? Your discount code?

My, I think, I think it's Michael 25.

Michael 25. Use the code Michael 25 and get 25% off. Game Changers stagetime live.com see Mike in action. Watch a true pro. Take notes and hey, pull Mike aside, ask him for some advice. So I hope you join us. He's somebody that kind of. He just kept showing up and kept doing the work and we gave him the call. Put me in, coach. And now look at you. You're amazing.

You can't get rid of me.

Nope. Nor do we want to.

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