Ep. 303 TOP 10 MISTAKES - PART 2

Hey, Darren Lacroix. How you doing, buddy?

I'm great. I want to know five through one.

All right, part two, our top ten mistakes. Our guest, our fellow coach today is Michael Davis, who kind of put this list together. We did the top 10,9876 last week. Number five in our list of mistakes is the guide isn't clear or the guide is the same person as the hero.

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, Darren, that number five. The guide is unclear or the guide the same as the hero might be Unclear. Someone who's new in presenting. We need to clarify who those two characters are and why they need to be different. So I'm going to ask our guest, Michael Davis. Jump in and clarify quickly. Guide versus hero.

Well, this is a lot of confusion in storytelling, even amongst coaches. Mark, the three of us have heard this. There's this idea of the hero's journey that's kind of in the lexicon. Now, the hero is the main person going through the journey who faces obstacles and overcomes the challenges. Well, the guide, who's sometimes called the hero is the one who provides the wisdom. I've even taken to calling that person now, the compass that shows direction to the person who's trying to overcome the problem. But this is the person who's providing the wisdom and cannot be the same person as the character who's overcoming the obstacle. It says a lot. I'm not saying a lot, I realize, but one of the challenges we often see is that people try to be both the person with the challenge and the person with the solution. Well, in that case, you sound very special, but people can't relate to you. You can be one or the other, but not both.

Yeah. And sometimes a guide isn't always a human being. The guide can even be an inanimate object. A guide could be a cartoon character. But the source of the wisdom is somebody who is not the individual hero who is going through the journey, but their wisdom, their insight, their direction gives that hero just what they need to overcome the obstacle that they face. Any thoughts on that, Darren, real quick.

Yeah. I refer to the Person as the guru. Now all of us are correct. It's just what you're comfortable with or what you used to. Doesn't mean one's better than the other. You got to go with what works. And I just like the idea of calling the person a guru. So the hero, the Luke Skywalker, needs the guru, who is Obi Wan Kenobi, which again, could be a book. It could be an audio tape. In my championship speech, it was Brian Tracy. On the audio tape, it could be Wudwick, a teddy bear that speaks to you. We just need the wisdom dispelled from somewhere. Now the hero takes on the wisdom and now the hero uses the wisdom. And now they're different because of that. So we see this in a lot of toastmaster speeches. We see this in some, let's say high level executives who, they have all the wisdom right off the turnip truck. And they, they are just knew it all from the beginning. Yeah, we need to point it out or where that came from. And what's powerful is, especially if it's not. We don't want like overused quotes.

Right.

There sometimes be a tendency with that, and I'm guilty myself with emerging presenters, but we don't want the overused quote. As Patricia Fripp would say, our mentor, friend and co author, stop quoting dead white men because you learn lessons. But we learned it from your scoutmaster, from your uncle, from your grandmother, from your dog. But give us that person and make it clear they don't have to become a major character, but they need to be clear that the wisdom came from maybe even an experience that you had that taught you the lesson.

Well, that's an important point, Darren. The guru does not have to have a major part in the story. In your championship speech, Brian Tracy got all of two sentences. You introduced him with one and then you quoted him in the second and he was done. But he served his purpose, and that's key.

You don't need to spend a lot of time trying to develop the guru and give their background and where they're from. As long as the wisdom is clear and the audience gets it and the hero gets it, then you're good. That was number five.

All right, number four. I'll take this one resolution without reflection. What? I hate to keep quoting a live white woman, Patricia Fripp, but she.

She.

Has taught us that true learning happens in moments of reflection. So not only is it resolute, but that reflection, taking that time to let the audience reflect, it's almost like letting the audience digest what was just said so that they take them. Take it home with them instead of just saying, here's the 10 mistakes. Okay, now, you know. No, think about it. How is this. How do I do this? Do I do that mistake? Hmm? Let me reflect.

Yeah. And, Michael, it's also relevant, I think, in the character's journey, too. We're talking about a hero's journey. We can't just see an instant change without seeing how they change. Have you seen having clients who kind of want to rush to the end without having them see how the character develop the wisdom, how they applied it, and how to change the really works? I mean, that may be what you have seen once or twice as well, you know, how would you advise your clients about that?

Well, I got frustrated with that for years, Mark, because I couldn't understand why they were jumping to the end of the movie, so to speak. And then one day a client said, well, I didn't think anybody wanted to hear about all that hard time I went through. Bingo. I now have my problem solved. They just taught me what the challenge was, that people don't see the value of their struggle. And, Darren, you have a great quote that I completely paraphrase. I never get it right. Show me your struggle, and you show me. There's something else you say.

Take away my struggle.

Take away my struggle.

Right, Darren?

Take away my struggle, you take away my growth.

That's it. And if you don't show the audience your struggle, they can't relate to you. Again, it goes back to, well, you're special. You went to bed with this problem and you woke up feeling better. That's awesome for you, not good for me.

Not very practical. So make sure it's very clear what the character has to go through to learn to grow so the resolution makes more sense and more palatable. It also gives us, the audience, hope for our own struggle as well.

Absolutely. Which leads us into point number three.

Number three stories. Skip the struggle. Right. Sorry. Go ahead, Darren.

Okay.

It was in the background there. We got it. Just trying to add a little professionalism. Production.

Nice try, Darren. You got me on the line here. Okay, but, yeah, we talk about the struggle, but, Michael, let's dig a little deeper on that idea of. I didn't think they'd want to know. All I went through. The caution here is if the individual goes through several struggles, how much do you want to unload on the audience for them to get it? So there has to be a bit of balance here as well. But the struggle is important. Wouldn't you agree, Michael?

Yes. And we want to see the struggle ideally, in three quick steps. And it should get a little more intense each time. And one of the keys to effective struggle is to put a ticking clock somewhere in the background. We learned this from Michael Hague, our friend, our storytelling friend from Hollywood. When there's a time limit to accomplishing or overcoming a goal, that increases the tension, that also increases the struggle right up until the moment where the. And this is from Hollywood, the bomb is diffused, the Death Star gets blown up. Harry Potter defeats Voldemort. Whatever the story is, there was always a time limit there. It may not be overtly stated, but it's there. We know it. And if we can do that in our stories, we create much more of an emotional impact.

You know, real quickly, we had. Darren and I had a coaching client recently. I won't give any details, but they were dealing with a timeline, significant financial risk involving their business. And the struggle was very, very real for them. And by letting us know they had a window of time to accomplish this during a pandemic, when things are going wrong, really elevated the conflict that they had. And it was tension all the way through. But having that time limit there, facing what we're dealing with, dealing with managing the struggle of negotiating the business failure and getting up on your feet, it really added to the tension and brought us to a place as audience members to empathize and say, wow, that was really worth the struggle. And having enough detail of the struggle for the audience to identify and relate to can make a significant difference in what the audience experiences.

And the best stories, the audience intuitively knows the person succeeded or else they wouldn't be telling the story, most likely. But they still want to hear about the struggle. They still want to hear. That's why people watch their favorite movies over and over again, even though they know how it ends.

Yeah, and in movies, it's very visual. There's that emotion and visual aspect in a movie, and we have to bring both of that to our presentations. We need to. What we say, too, is escalate the conflict so we can think of internal conflict. This happened inside. They were scared because they were bit by a dog when they were young. And then on the outside, the external, you know, this dog looked like Cujo running at him. So you got the childhood thing, you got the. The visual as well. Like in my favorite movie, Rudy, he gets physically hit and knocked down and gets back up. Physically hit and knocked down and gets back up. It is the struggle where a lot of people Emotionally relate to the struggle. So they need that element of hope that gets them to say, okay, me too. And okay, well, what did they do? They kept getting up. They kept getting up. And that's how my story related to bombing and stand up related to the Rudy story. Getting. Getting pummeled in practice. There we go. Pummeled in practice. There's a. There's alliteration for you, Mark. So we want to escalate, make sure the audience is feeling the emotion and that's the relatable part. So we don't want to miss that, we don't want to skip over that because that's where they're going to truly, as we say, unforgettable presentations. That's where it's unforgettable. Cool. All right. The main character lacks a clear goal or stakes. What's at stake? I know Chris, Chris McGuire talks about that a lot as well as Michael. Michael Hague does. But we don't know the desire, we don't know the goal if we're not clear on that. And what's at stake, well, what's going to happen if they don't get it, even if it doesn't become part of it. As great presenters, as great storytellers, we need to dive into it, explore it and see which elements. So, Mark, for example, thinking of number three stories, don't skip the struggle. Sometimes we have the opposite effect we've had with one client that we won't mention the person's name. But there was so much struggle, it was the opposite that this person died and this person died and this person died and this person died, all in a very short time frame, which is brutal struggle. But at the same time, it can be too much for the audience. So we've got to see which, which of them best represents. Almost like we talk about sometimes condensing characters, we have to condense the struggle and maybe let one or two things represent 32 things having that clear goal that we as the listener know this is the goal of the hero or the main character.

And real quickly, one thought on that. Sometimes we make the goal the what, when the goal should be the why. For example, we're talking about, oh, it's a struggle. I gotta get on the highway, it's late. I gotta be there by 5:30pm it's already, you know, five, 10, it's 20 minutes more. I don't know if I'll make it in time. I. I got to make sure. And we see the struggle to get there, but why Trying to get there why? It's your 7 year old daughter's first ballet recital and you promised her you'd be there. That's the goal. The goal is not so much getting there. The goal is not disappointing your little girl. So I would invite everyone to think about what you state as your goal. Not so much to what, but should it be the why Thoughts, Michael?

Well, if you're listening to this, Mark did something brilliantly there. He gave us specific details. Looking at the watch, I got to be there at 5:30. It's 5:10 traffic all, oh my gosh, am I gonna make it? I don't want to let down my little girl. Specificity in those details makes for a clear goal. And right there, any of us that are parents that listen to that are like, oh yeah, been there and I didn't want to let my kid down.

Yeah, that's big. Having the clarity. And this isn't you the presenter, this is the character in the story. We need to know their goal, not your goal. So that might be a client goal. If you're telling a story about a client example, here's where they were, here's where they wanted to go, and here's why, you know, at stake, like, we've got to take the time to almost make sure those important structure points are there or we know the whole story, so we fill in the blanks for ourselves. And like, why don't they get it? Because you weren't clear, because you didn't get coached. You didn't take the time to get that perspective. All right, I'm letting my, my inner voice come out.

You didn't join stagetime University, just unpaid promotion.

All right, all right, we're down to number one, Darren.

Down to the big one. Number one, Michael Davis. Let's have you take this.

Well, thank you, Darren, for offering to let me do. It's so good to be on your podcast today. Isn't it great? Outside there's the example of a weak or wandering opening that has no impact. Look, depending on which research you see. Thank you. Thank you. I'm here for the rest of the podcast. We have a few seconds, and maybe not even that because people are judging us even before we speak. They're listening to our introduction. But we've got to have a strong opening that lets them sit up and say, this is different. And we don't do that by saying, thank you, great to be here, as our friend Craig Valentine calls him. Unpleasant pleasantries. Do something, Ask a question, make a startling statement, a quote, jump into a story that Gives context to what the audience is about to listen to.

And it's funny. I have an opening. I do for speakers. I say, stop giving speeches. I was in Jaipur, India, last week, and I opened one of my talks with that line, stop giving speeches. Start delivering experiences. And people actually posted on LinkedIn one poster said, stop giving speeches, start delivering experiences. These lines captivated me to take more and more from our amazing, humorous, engaging personality, Mr. Mark Brown. But their first words on their post was a quote of my opening. That surprised them. One individual said he had his pen ready to write down everything I said, and in the first line, he froze. He was so taken aback by. It wasn't, hey, it's great to be in Jaipur, India. It wasn't. My wife and I are glad to be here. I love my outfit. No, it was right away, to the point, and it was, for them, captivating. Now, I say this not to brag. I say this to invite you to look at your opening. Is your opening wandering? Is your opening weak? Is your opening inconsequential? As Michael says, you have a very short window of time to get their attention and to make that connection, make your opening matter.

I tell my clients, think about your mobile phone before. Right before you speak. Your audience is addicted to it. They want to go on that phone. Do not give them a reason to love that.

Don't give them a reason to go on a mobile phone. Love it.

And if you listen to this podcast, we encourage you to listen to Part 1, Episode 302, and go through those mistakes. So there are two podcasts, one set of 10 mistakes. But this is connected actually to mistake number 10. I believe it was about your closing and not connecting your closing to your opening. So if you redo your opening to make it more compelling, well, go to mistake number 10. Now, how does that come back, Mark, do you come back to that statement at the end of your presentation?

I often end with the idea of delivering experiences. So the answer is yes. I don't want to end in a fizzle. I want to end in a frame, and I frame that conclusion to match my opening. Michael, you see what I did there? Okay, I'm done.

As always, you wrap it up very nicely.

Nice. All right, if you're watching the YouTube version, you see this. But a quick recap. Number 10, ending mistake. Number 10, ending with a fizzle, not a flame. Number 9, no audience relevance or personalization. Number 8, repetitive sentence structures or passive voice. Number 7, unclear if, then stakes. Number 6, too much tell, not enough show. Go into this Podcast. Number five, the guide is not clear. Isn't clear the person who delivers the wisdom to the main character? Number four without reflection, resolution without reflection. We need to not only have the story tied up in a bow, but now we need to reflect on that message for the audience. Number three Stories that skip the struggle. The struggle is not only real, it needs to be heard. Number two, the main character lacks a clear goal or the stakes. What's at stake if they don't reach that goal? And again, number one or wandering openings. Guys, final thoughts.

I'm thankful Michael was here. That list was one that he compiled over years of working with us. And we hope, I really hope, that what you have heard today will help you to create more unforgettable presentations. Want to learn how? Come to stagetime and join us. Michael Absolutely.

If any of these resonated with you, here's your number one challenge. Don't try to implement all at once. Take the one that just leapt out at you and work on that one for a while. And then when you feel like, okay, I've got that one, then go to the next one on the list. You're much more likely to internalize and use these over the long haul than try to make too many changes at once. And thank you again gentlemen for inviting me today.

Yeah, glad to have you here. Remember, these mistakes are real. We see it over and over again. It takes a lot of confidence to truly step back and take inventory to see if you truly are making these mistakes and then how to fix them. Check out the show notes if you want to see the fixes. Want some more ideas or insights on that? Michael Davis thanks for being here. Mark Brown awesome to share the virtual stage with both of you and we hope that you strive to fix these mistakes. Why? So you can be unforgettable?

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