Effective Techniques for Varying your Pitch to Captivate your Audience During your Speech

Add variation to your pitch to increase interest and attention and emphasis when you're speaking. Well, there are several ways of doing it. One way people do it is by thinking of memorizing their speech. And this is what happens to their pitch. It sounds awful because it's too consistent. So that's when you do nothing. You're telling yourself, I'm just going to get every word right and it destroys the pitch. You eliminate all elements of pitch variation to add emphasis and attention to certain concepts. Another way of doing this is to think about, what would a Broadway actor do? And now I'm intentionally going to go up and. And you're trying to control yourself. It's as if you have a marionette conductor controlling things, or you're trying to watch a conductor telling you, up pitch here. Don't do that. You're going to sound contrived, phony. You're going to sound like an actor because you are acting, but you're going to sound like a bad actor. It's one thing people all over the globe these days are good at is spotting bad acting. Because everybody, they have access to a phone, can access Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, the finest actors in any country are all available to people if they have a cell phone, an Internet connection. So people know what good acting looks like and sounds like. They also know what bad acting looks like because everyone has seen bad movies, bad sitcoms, people coming across, artificial, stilted phony. That is how you're going to come across. If you tell yourself, I want to add the correct pitch into my speech or presentation to sound enthusiastic, don't do it. Here's what really needs to happen. There's a procedure you need to follow. The first one is, do not write out word for word, your entire speech. The second you do that, you are essentially turning yourself into a Broadway actor, a West End actor, where you're trying to follow a script. It's very difficult to do and it's almost impossible to do without sounding phony and contrived. You're going to be so much better off if you start with a handful of ideas you really want to convey to your audience and then you put it in a simple outline with bullet points, a few bullet points, ideally no more than two, two, three, four words per bullet. Point your entire outline on a single sheet of paper. You glance down at it occasionally, and then you talk, using whatever words come to mind. Will you occasionally make a mistake? Sure. Chances are, nobody will notice it. Will you occasionally repeat a word? Will you occasionally Start a sentence, stop mid sentence, start again and do it. Yeah, you will. But guess what? Your audience won't care. You will sound natural. You'll sound relaxed when you do it that way. The pitch variation comes into your voice. Because we all speak when we're comfortable, in a way, using our voice that varies the pitch, the tone, the speed that makes our words more interesting to people. That's why it's crucial you get to the point sounding like you're just natural. Because chances are, your use of pitch when you're talking to your best friend about the worst thing that happened to you last weekend is perfectly fine. You're going to sound interesting and engaging because the pitch will go up. You can't believe what this guy did when he cut me off in traffic. The pitch is going to go up, the speed is going to change. As you are naturally telling stories. This is what you want in any presentation, whether it's a job interview, whether it is a new business pitch, to investors, to prospects, to clients. You might not use the same words, you might not say anything obscene, the way you might with a friend, perhaps, or off color. But you do want a variation of tone. You want to change in your tone. Speed, pitch, variety. That's what's going to make you interesting to listen to. So it comes from rehearsal and practice. Now, I know you don't want to hear me say this. This is my hobby horse and I've been wildly unsuccessful in communicating. Maybe not you, but a lot of folks like you to do this, but it's still the number one solution to pitch in every other problem in a professional presentation. And that is practice your presentation out loud while recording it. Listen to it, watch it, ask yourself with respect to your voice, does this sound interesting? But I want to listen to this person. Because the vast, vast majority of the time, for business people, students, executives, politicians I work with, the first time they practice a presentation, even if it wasn't written out word for word, even if they're not using a teleprompter, even if they're not using a script the first time they hear it, the pitch is kind of low key and even and smooth and what they think of as professional. And it's boring because it's too consistent. The pitch is the same. You're not using the highs, you're not using the lows, you're not using the best, you're not using the slows, you're not pausing. And all of that makes for a boring presentation. That's not what you want. Your goal Is not to simply make sure I got these words in this order out of my mouth and therefore I can say I got the job done. No, that's not your job. Your job is actual communication. If you want to communicate, several things have to happen. Your audience has to understand your message, they've got to remember your message, and in order to do that, they got to stay awake and pay attention to you. And one of the biggest problems of not altering your pitch is it's so boring to the audience. Let's try that again. One of the biggest problems with not altering your speech is boring your audience. Do you hear how awful that is? You probably fell asleep right there. Same message, same words, but the pitch was the same, the volume was the same, the tone was the same and it's monotone. It's boring. And that shifts everyone in your audience to plan B, reading their cell phone and ignoring you, meaning absolutely zero communication took place. So yes, you do need to be concerned with your pitch. Altering your pitch so you can put variation in your tones, so you can put emphasis in your words. But the solution is not to, in most cases, mark up your speech and have an up arrow saying, oh, raise my voice here, or a down arrow or underlining it to go louder. That can occasionally work if you're using a teleprompter for certain very specific situations. But the vast majority of the time when you speak to people, especially if it's face to face, leave the teleprompters at home, leave the scripts at home, work from a simple outline, talk to people and make this a real conversation. If you're telling yourself I'm having a conversation with one person, even though there's 30 people in the room, but you're using the same tones of a one on one conversation, your pitch will come across as natural, relaxed, varied and interesting. And you will communicate. Hi everyone, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. That was sort of just a little opener, a palate cleanser, I guess you could say. Let me hop over to channel up to camera three. We're here live today. Thursday is always a fun day because we're live for the most part, 9:00am to past noon, sometimes 1:00'. Clock. But we do it in a slightly different way because I'm with you right here and taking your questions on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Twitter, X Instagram and a few other places. And then we sign off about 10 minutes before the hour. I then go just to face my Facebook group for my Udemy students. If you're One of my UDEMY students that allows you a time to get sort of private personalized feedback on videos you've posted, which is that alone is one of the reasons why people have like to sign up for my courses. So that we'll be doing from 10 to 10:30, then 10:45, we come back and we take questions. I'll be doing Amazon Live today, so we'll be simulcasting on Amazon. I'll be going through more than half a dozen of my favorite books that relate to habits which I, I'm hoping you'll find interesting, number one. Number two, I want you to learn about this new art form, so to speak, of how to be an influencer on Amazon, which is something I've been experimenting with for the last few months, but something new to me, I've only done it once, is going on Amazon Live, where it's broadcast live right on the Amazon platform. This is the very same place that Martha Stewart broadcast live, Paris Hilton, other well known celebrities who've been famous influencers for decades. And now Amazon has sort of opened up, given the keys to the palace to people like me and you with a very minimum threshold of getting in. If you have a thousand followers, typically you can get into the Amazon influencer program if it's, if you have followers on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube I think are the main platforms they're looking for. So we'll be doing that in hour three today. Plus we're going to take you behind the scenes and preview a number of short form videos I have that my editing team has put together and we're going to try to figure out which ones do we keep and which ones do we get rid of, which ones do we schedule for distribution across social media outlets and which ones do we sort of send back to the editors and say we don't think anyone's going to watch this, we're going to have to use different footage and it's typically not the editor's fault. It's something I said or didn't say, it just wasn't interesting enough. So a lot of fun. If you have questions, I see one of my students, Lei, stopped by like sorry we missed you. You popped in, heard me doing sort of my monologue and had to leave. So very much understand that what I, what I'm trying to do here with this channel and across social media and the TJ Walker Success brand is to be accessible to people all over the world, regardless of platform, regardless of time of day, and regardless of how much time you want to put into this I'm here live three hours a day typically. So if you have a lot of time, you can be a part of this and participate, ask questions and be a part of the community. Some of you I know, have very busy schedules and you have 12 extra seconds a day, in which case you have time to watch one 12 second short form video. Either way, I'm very happy to have you here as a part of the community. So the topic I just did on, how to vary the pitch, I just did that as a long form. This is one generated by ChatGPT. I typically answer questions from you first. Some of you post questions on my YouTube tab, Community Tab. Some of you post them live right here in the show. And I see a number of you have joined us today. Thank you so much. And some of you write questions in to me. We've had a number of questions written in people who see a notice about this on my newsletter. If you want to join the newsletter, please go to my website, mediatrainingworldwide.com and you'll see a sign up for that there. And you'll also see a sign up on my YouTube channel in the about section if you want to check that out. And so now what I'm going to do is a short form version of the very same topic I just did. How can you vary your pitch to add interest and emphasis? I'm going to go to camera two, I'm going to stop my recording of the 4K version and I'm going to hit start again. Okay. And I'm going to remove some of the clutter so there's fewer distractions. How can you use the pitch of your voice to arouse more curiosity with your audience and to put an emphasis on certain words? Well, I urge you, don't try to memorize. You're not a Broadway actor. The main way of doing it is don't memorize a speech script at all. Instead, work from bullet points. Have a conversation with your audience. Practice out loud on video. That's what will make your pitch varied and interesting. Okay, so that was the short form version. That was. I felt like that was a little bit harder for me to do. Sometimes I may be better off starting with the short form. Really trying to crystallize in my own mind what's most important on a topic, a particular question, and then expanding to the long form. What I did today for the beginning of the show, in part for SEO reasons, is when this video stops being live, it's then converted into an on demand video. And I wanted something that if people didn't know I was live or didn't know it was a show, they just stumbled across it. They would right away hear something of that value to them, rather than me saying, good morning, it's Thursday, things like that. Because if it's a video on demand and someone's watching it Saturday night, it's not Thursday to them. And that's boring and uninteresting. So what I try to do with these lives is hop right in with something that is of an evergreen nature. Now, I've gone back and forth on that. There are differing schools of thought. Certainly if I had a million people watching here every day, then I might make the live audience the number one priority. But typically for me and most people on YouTube, the on demand audience is going to be much bigger than people who watch live. So it's not that I want to ignore you or not talk about anything topical or new or fresh, but the first couple of minutes I'm trying to create something evergreen. Because the beauty of evergreen is if it's really evergreen, it can play a long, long time. I was stumbling across Amazon. I have Amazon prime, as a lot of people do. You get it for free if you're a member of the video service. You get it for free if you belong to Amazon and pay a yearly fee to help you get all your free shipping. And I went and looked at their live channels last night. I'm scrolling down and I say, Susie Orman. I think, oh, well, she's still at it. She's great. Wow, she doesn't seem to have aged at all. And then I'm hearing references to tomorrow is Hanukkah, next week is Christmas. Oh, this is clearly not live today. I continued watching the show. She's giving people solid financial advice that is of an evergreen nature. Cut up your credit cards, reduce spending, don't go on the expensive vacation if you have to pay for it on credit card. Great information for 2024, but also great information for 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago. And then at the end of the show, before it went to the next one, it said, oh, by the way, the Susie Orman show finished airing and producing in 2015. So what I was watching was nearly 10 years old, but it was of an evergreen nature. And this was on a Susie Orman channel that is 24 hours a day on Amazon. So it does make me think, can we get this show on Amazon and other distribution streaming services? So that's one of the reasons why you do see me here creating content long form content because I certainly think people need constant information on how to improve their finances. But I also think people need information on how to be more successful in life by improving their communication skills and building confidence in their communication skills. So that's a part of what we are trying to do right here. If this is your first time here, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me. This is the TJ Walker Success Channel. This is the place where we try to help you become more successful by improving your communication skills and by boosting your confidence in your communication skills. So we come to you live nine to noon most days of the week if it's not a holiday or I'm not off doing a speech or on vacation. And we're here with you live today. If you have any question that relates to communication skills, I'll do my best to answer it, demonstrate best practices and bring to you insights that I've developed not just by thinking about this or reading a few books, but based on me having trained in person face to face around the globe in 45 nations, more than 10,000 individuals, and having trained more than 2 million online students. So that is my basis for bringing you expertise and holding myself out as an expert. It's not that I have a Ph.D. in communication. I, to my knowledge, I don't think I've ever taken an academic course on communication. I have a degree in philosophy and I'm not anti intellectual or anti academy. I certainly want a brain surgeon who's operating on me or a family member to have a traditional medical degree and to be properly licensed. Communication skills, I have found, is one of these things. It's in a sort of a black hole, a gray area where traditional academic world, the traditional academic world does, in my view, a horrible job of teaching people communication skills and the people who advance in academic departments in major universities around the world and minor universities, community colleges, for the most part, I don't want to say a blanket statement. It's impossible for any of them to be good. But for the most part, when I meet people who are PhDs in communications, they're horrible communicators. They don't give interesting speeches, they don't come across as compelling. I'm sure there are exceptions. When I ask my clients around the globe, have you had a course in communication in college? The typical answer is no. And when they say yes, I always ask the same question. How many times did you get video recorded in every class? And typically the response, I mean the response used to be they never recorded this Once, then for years. The response was, well, we had one at the beginning and one at the end of the semester, which just blew my mind. Even now, quite often people tell me they only get recorded once a week and that is anathema to everything I know to actually work on improving people's communication skills. So when I work with people one on one or small groups, typically I get each person on camera to speak, then they watch themselves review themselves not one time in a day, not two times, not five times, not half a dozen times, typically at least 10 times to a dozen times per day. It's that rapid succession of recording yourself, figuring out what works, doing more of that, figure out what you don't like, doing less of it. That actually has a huge impact. So that's a little more on me. We're going to dive right in answering more questions. I'll be happy to take your questions. By the way, you can also join me right here on screen. That's right. We've posted the link in the comments section on Streamyard where if you click that, I will see you on my computer screen. Your name will pop up and then I can add you right into the show. You can do a split screen with me so you can ask questions. If you want to practice a pitch you're giving for later in the week. If you want to practice being interviewed for a job, we can do it right here. So we've got a lot of different ways of interacting. You can also just come into the green room and listen. If you are watching, please do me one favor, hit the thumbs up button on this so we know you're watching and ideally where you're from. Also, if you could just leave a comment saying what city and country you're in today and also what platform you're on. Because we are simulcasting this on a couple of Facebook channels, on YouTube, on Twitch, on, on Twitter, on Instagram. And later today we're going to be doing our second live stream ever on Amazon Live. But it'll be the first Amazon Live that I'm doing solo without interviewing a guest. And I'll be talking about some of my favorite habit building personal development books of all time. And more important, what I'm hoping is to demonstrate to you how you can be selling things, how you can be using your spoken words, your voice, your presentation skills to put a spotlight on things you care about, to reach new audiences and to do it in a way where the brands are talking about benefit. But you benefit too, because at least potentially you can get affiliate Commissions and revenue streams. We do live in a world now where now not everyone can be a Kardashian and sit around and chit chat and make billions of dollars. But we do live in a world where anyone I believe who's willing to put some work in and not expect immediate payoff can in fact be an influencer at some level. Whether it's for Amazon, Walmart, TikTok, YouTube. Again, I'm not promising get Rich Quick, but it is possible to speak on behalf of products, clients, services, books you like and enjoy. And if you help persuade one person and that person buy, you can get something for it. Speaking of the Kardashians, I was as I mentioned to you earlier, I was on my prime account, the video app on demand on my TV at home last night, stumbled across their live channels and I did in fact see a whole channel devoted to the Kardashians. It was just a loop of running a new Keeping up with the Kardashians show from The E. Network 24 hours a day. And for me, I'm not their demo audience. I just thought it was the most boring, uninteresting thing imaginable. What's the real lesson there? The lesson is it's a big world. If you feel like you're not funny enough to make video content or do a show or do a podcast, you're wrong. If you feel like you're not good looking enough, you're wrong. It is a big, big world out there. There's so many opportunities and you don't have to appeal to everyone. The Kardashians don't appeal to me. Guess how much time they spend worrying about that? Not at all. Guess how much that hurts their bank account? Not at all. So don't focus on trying to appeal to everyone. Focus on talking about something that you do, some insight you have that's either helpful to people, useful, educational or entertaining. That's really all you have to do. And while I was flicking through the channels, I also saw Judge Judy. Judy Shailen, well known host of the syndicated TV show Judge Judy for years and years and years, about I guess a quarter of a century, ended her relationship with traditional broadcast tv, turned right around and did a deal with Amazon, makes shows for them and they call it it's exactly, it's basically the same name but the words were review. Instead of Judge Judy, it's Judy justice or something like that, where I guess they're technically not violating the copyright of the TV syndication company she did her first series with. It's the Same thing again. I can't imagine watching a show like that for more than about 10 seconds. Hearing two people talk about, oh, they didn't give me my security deposit back because I let my dog poop on the front yard has absolutely zero interest to me. Guess what? Does Amazon care? Does Judge Judy care? No, because there is a huge audience for that and some people find it entertaining. Again, big world, try things, experiment. Figure out what you can do to help people to add something interesting in their life, whether it's useful, helpful, educational or entertaining. And you can benefit as well. The role I play in all that is what I find is there are so many people for every Judge Judy out there, for every Kardashian out there, there are hundreds if not thousands of people who are just as talented, just as smart, just as interesting, but they hold themselves back. I can't put my face on tv, I'm not good looking enough, or my voice isn't any good, or I've got to wait till I lose weight. People have all these excuses. And yes, you could write a book, there are successful authors in the world. But when I look at the people who are reaching the largest audiences in the world today, especially if they didn't start with a large audience, it's rarely ever somebody who just wrote a book. It's someone who starts by putting their face on camera and their voice into a microphone. That is the way to build an audience, build a community, build a career in the modern day. Then you don't have to put your face on camera. You could just podcast and put out audio content, audio books. I think you'll grow a lot faster if you do both. The big trend these days for podcast is audio and video. I'm pointing to a boom microphone here, which is just out of camera, but that's why you don't see a lav mic on now. I have a boom shotgun mic pointed right at me. But I hope the audio quality is good. So I do want you to think about that. If you've ever seen the Kardashians or Judge Judy and say, I can't believe these people are making all this money. It doesn't seem that hard what they're doing. Well, I'm not going to tell you it's easy. Kardashians are doing something that is completely different than what I do. They are very good at it. Whether they deserve all that, I'll let other people debate that at other times. What I do want you to think about is should you be creating content and sharing your ideas of the world. It can be just about. I don't say it can be content. You're creating just for people in your community about how all of you need to get together more often to work on the community garden to grow fresh vegetables for people in your community. It doesn't have to be something of worldwide importance or significance. Sharon has joined us and says hashtag live. So we are live today. Sharon, if you would like to join us or come on camera, happy to have you join us and be a part of the conversation. Sharon, let us know you're on Facebook. Happy that you're joining us from Facebook today. Let us know where is your next presentation. It could be speaking to three colleagues at a Monday morning staff meeting. It could be promoting a book you've done. It could be talking to a family member about a tense situation. Let us know where you spend. Insurance says I'm riding in a bus right now. Well, glad you can access us. I mean that is one of the things that's so fantastic about the modern world is when I was a kid, you had to be home, you had to have the TV on one of three channels. To change the channel you had to stand up, walk across, push a button. These days you can watch wherever you are right on the phone. So Sharon, thanks so much. So you don't have to come on live with us. It may be noisy where you are, but let us know what sort of presentations do you give. And by presentation, I don't mean on a stage in front of 20,000 people. I just mean when you're talking to someone and it's not just your best friend about where to go to dinner tonight, something that's either work related or there's some stakes involved or maybe your landlord just increased your rent and you know you're going to be walking in to negotiate with your landlord. Just try to get the rent reduction, some rent reduction. That's a type of communication that makes people tense and sometimes they like to prepare for it, prepare their arguments and talk about. I just got a rent increase this morning sent for my landlord. I was actually pretty happy with the moderate increase. This is one of the few times I think I'm probably not even going to try to negotiate because I was happy with what I got. But Sharon, if you do feel like sharing that with us, please let me know. I'm going to move on and try to do another long form video content. Again, those of you joining us for the first time, we're doing several things at once here. This is a live show where I take your questions that relate to my particular niche of communication skills in the same way Dave Ramsey takes questions about financial stuff. So I listen to your questions and try to answer them, be as helpful as possible. So we take questions directly from you, but we're also producing videos here. This is the live raw footage for short form videos and long form videos that are distributed across YouTube, Facebook and all the other social media platforms. So you'll see me occasionally stop and say, now I'm going to do this as a long form or a short form. And you'll see me change camera angles. So that's what we're going to do. Right now I'm making notes that I did both the short form and a long form on the variation of pitch to add interest and emphasis, which I did earlier today. Next question. This comes courtesy of Chat gtp. How can I use verbal cues to show that I'm actively listening? Okay, I like this question. I mean, I like almost any question about communication skills, but this is one that is rarely asked. But I do know it is one people think about. I'm going to straighten my tie before I make this next video because it could be seen by a lot more people as a video on demand, ideally seen for years. So again, the question is, how can I use verbal cues to show I'm actively listening? I'm going to go to. I'm going to go to camera one. I'm going to hit record to get 4k quality. So how do you show verbal cues? Note to editor. Scratch that. See, this is an example. You'll see me make mistakes, stumbles in a way that you don't see your favorite YouTubers doing because they're only showing you the finished product. This is the workshop right here. You're seeing it in real life. Nobody gets it perfect. Every time I try to get it in one take, typically 95% of the time. So let's start that over. Note to editor. Don't use any of that. So how do you use verbal cues to let someone know you're listening to them, you're respecting them, you care about it. Well, sometimes it's as simple as huh, huh. Now that doesn't sound articulate. If you wrote that down. U h. U h. Doesn't seem like you're that intelligent. But in the moment, when you're having a conversation with someone, when you're in a meeting with someone, the simple aha is letting them know I'm listening to you. It's letting them know I'm not off daydreaming about, where am I going to go out to dinner tonight? What's going to happen for fun this weekend? Now I'm here with you. The actual aha's as a starting point, you can also say things like, yes, I get it. Now, the number one way you can really use verbal signals to let someone know you're listening is to summarize, say to them, let me make sure I get this. What you're saying is, and then you summarize in your own words. I don't mean you try to play it back like a court stenographer using word for word, the same thing. If they talked for five minutes, I don't want you to try to summarize it and do it verbatim for five minutes. That would be tedious and annoying. But if someone has talked to you for several minutes, you can say, let me make sure I'm really getting this. What you're saying is. And then maybe in 10 or 15 seconds you use your words to summarize. And then at the end of it say, am I understanding you correctly? Because now the person genuinely understands you're trying to listen to them. They hear your words coming out of their mouth. And if they hear you summarizing their point, it's going to make them feel good. It's going to make them feel like they had an impact. It's going to make them feel like you truly respected them. We live in a world where everybody wants attention. You've heard it said, this is an attention economy. Well, so many people feel ignored, they feel silenced. Even when they're able to speak, they feel like family, friends, nobody's listening to them. So when you listen to someone, you're showing them tremendous respect. Quite often they will like you just for the fact that you are listening to them. But by verbally summarizing what they said, demonstrating you're actively trying to get what they're saying, it has a much more powerful impact. Now, they don't have to wonder whether you're listening. They have 100% empirical evidence. Because your summary of what they just said is going to verbally confirm that you are listening. Another thing you can do verbally is ask questions, really listen to them. The problem with so many people, whether they're talking one on one with a colleague or they're in a meeting with three or four colleagues, is they're spending all their time thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, hurry up and finish your stuff, because I want to say my stuff. Everyone's thinking about their agenda. Everybody's guilty I'm guilty of that. Sometimes, and therefore quite often, people don't feel listened to because you're not actually being listened to, because the person you're talking to is thinking about what they're going to say next. If you stop to ask a question about what someone just said, you're interrupting this pattern. You're letting the person know that you're really listening to them. You're letting the person know that you're genuinely trying to understand what they're saying, and you're helping them communicate more effectively because your question might spotlight some flaw in their presentation, a gap in how they're trying to convey their idea. So asking questions politely. And you can do this by saying, apologies for interrupting, but I really want to make sure I'm getting this just right. Did you mean. And then ask your question. And it's got to be a real question, not a rhetorical question to make yourself look smart and them look dumb. Not just a question pointing out some inconsistency, but a question that shows you're genuinely trying to understand at a deeper level their point. If you do these things, then you're going to send a very strong signal to the person you're speaking to, whether it's a colleague, whether it's a boss, whether it's someone who works for you, whether it's an investor, a prospect, a client, someone interviewing you for a job. You're going to send a very strong signal to them, not just visually, but orally, that you are listening. And they're going to love that. Okay, so that is the end of that long form video. I think we have just enough time before we take a break. I'm going to do a short form of that same. So I'm going to make notes. So I don't do a long form or short form on exactly this topic again in the immediate month or so. So I'm going to try to do a short form for that as well. And what I have found in my own research and working with my colleague Ben and others in the last few days is it's really important for me to start off a short form video, meaning one under 60 seconds, with a strong engaging question right out of the gate, then answer it with something highly specific, people for people to do. That typically gets 1, 2, sometimes 3, 4, 5,000 views if I just start off with something, an interesting observation about speaking, quite often it falls flat and it really doesn't get more than four or five hundred views. But I will say this, don't be discouraged if you Make a video for TikTok or YouTube or Facebook or Instagram and you get nine views. What if one of them is a client that leads to a decades long relationship. What if one of those creates a professional friendship and alliance that lasts for decades? Something beats nothing. Putting content out with good ideas, letting other people see you and communicate and be a part of a community is in and of itself a good thing. And it's something frankly I didn't have. And nobody had my age the first 10, 15, even 20 years of their career. It just didn't exist. You had to be happy going to a Rotary club meeting or once a year convention to really connect with people. And it was hard divine opportunities to speak now that are at our fingertips every day. And I mean literally speaking opportunities are at our fingertips. All we have to do is hit record or go live. And you're now speaking to a lot of people. So okay, let me do the short form of this question. How do I use verbal cues to let people know I'm actively listening? So I'm going to hit start this angle this time. So how do you use verbal cues to let people know you're actively listening? Well, you can say things like huh, huh. Yes, the most important way, summarize what they're saying and then ask them did I get it? Okay. I don't know offhand if that one really worked. Sometimes I could be too close to this. I mean I like to think I have a good sense of knowing. How does an audience perceive something? I thought about expanding on that last comment for another 15, 20 seconds, but I made a judgment. Let me just stop right there and maybe that will arouse curiosity and it was enough of a nugget with one tip. What I have found quite often is just giving one tip for a YouTube TikTok short and doing it well with force is a lot better then trying to do two or three tips and then it's going to 45, 50, 55 seconds. That's what works for me. Other people do really well using 59 out of their 60 seconds when doing a YouTube short. So there's no one rule that's going to apply to everyone. Hey, I want to thank you for your time today. We've got to take a quick break. I'm going to be going live at 10am on Facebook for my Udemy students. So if you are one of my Udemy students and you've not yet joined that community, it's, it's listed in basically every one of my Udemy courses. How to join that, you could probably just search for it and find it on Facebook as well. So join me there. We'll be doing that 10 to 10:30. That's exclusive to my online communication skills students on Udemy. And then right in 59 minutes at 10:45am Eastern Time, we'll be back here live simulcasting on every single platform. And later in hour three and the probably around 11:30am Eastern time, I'll be going live on Amazon and doing sort of my first solo Amazon Live, going through a half a dozen of my favorite habit building books. So that's going to be a fun experience too. Thanks so much. I'll see you, I hope, in less than an hour.