Ep 23 Should You Curse in Podcasts, Videos or Speeches?

Should you curse or use profanity when you're giving a speech or on a podcast?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking, speaking with T.J. walker.

Hi and welcome to the special weekend edition of the program. I want to focus on language, what works for you and against you when you're speaking live? Speeches, videos, YouTube videos and podcasts. Now, one piece of advice we all hear all the time is be yourself. Be yourself. Be real, be genuine, be authentic. We've all heard that advice and in fact, in many, many situations, like most situations, that is perfectly good advice. But like everything in life, there is complexity and there are exceptions. Here's the issue with cursing. And folks, some of you may think, well, is TJ just some old guy religious fundamentalist who's got a stick? That's not it. My focus and the whole point of this show is not to promote a particular politics with you or ideology or certainly religion or any of that. It's just to help you increase the odds that you can communicate more effectively when you speak. So please keep in mind that is my only desire. That is my only purpose in this show. Not to make you my style or to make you a traditional style. So here's the issue with cursing. Human beings curse. They use obscenities to make their point, to show frustration. Full disclosure, I curse. I hit my thumb with a hammer. I miss an easy overhead on the tennis court. My tennis colleagues will tell you I have, let's just say, less than perfect Wimbledon decorum at all times on the court. So that's not the issue. The issue is when you are giving a speech, a presentation, a talk in a business setting, or you're doing anything business related on YouTube or iTunes, or you're trying to just reach a larger audience through the media. Here's the contradictory advice again. You hear people say, well, be yourself. Look at someone like Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary Vaynerchuk is social media guru, was rose to fame with his wine, library, tv. He's fabulously rich and successful as an investor, as the owner of businesses, as someone who is invested in every kind of Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, you name it, he's there. And he has a 600 person new media agency and gets invited to speak all over the world for huge, huge sums of money. And every other word out of his mouth is the F bomb. And he's authentic. And I in fact have done reviews of his speaking where I have lauded him for his authenticity, his passion and his Insight. So he is a good speaker. So a lot of people look to him and say, well, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, curses. I better curse. Time out, folks. And let's look at the ramifications. Now, you personally might not be offended by profanity, but some in your audience might be. So if you use some aspect of profanity and the rest of the time they are thinking you're crass or gross or low class, then they've shut down listening to you. Is it really worth it for you if you simply can't talk any other way? Go ahead and do it, but just realize there are costs. Now, this was brought to my attention just recently by one of the experts over at Libsyn, the service I use for syndicating and hosting my podcast. Rob Walsh, one of their top consultants and experts there, told me, said, TJ, if you use the F word, if you use curses, guess what? Boom. Your podcast will not be available in India. Folks. We're not talking about Indiana or a small, tiny island nation. We're talking about the largest English speaking democracy in the entire world, India. More than 1.3 billion people. That means 2.6 billion years. Now, I've done a lot of India. Might not be important to you, but I've done a lot of work in India. I've been there several times and done a lot of trainings and speeches there, get emails almost daily from people from India. A lot of them are my online students. So do I really want to write off a market that big just to put in an occasional curse word? Now, this isn't necessarily common sense, folks. I didn't know that. And I don't go out of my way to curse. But if I'm quoting a prominent politician or someone, I might say exactly what they did to be accurate. And according to the experts at Lipson, who are the podcasting experts of the world, it's going to cost you dearly. Now, if you're speaking to 50 people at a PTA meeting and you're trying to advocate some position, and a curse word would naturally come out of your mouth, you do have to consider, what are these people's preconceived notions about cursing? Again, in general, I would just suggest it's not something you would say at a funeral to your mother. For those of you go to houses of worship, if it's not something you would say in a house of worship in general, most of the time, if you're trying to reach the widest possible audience and you're trying to Be on multiple platforms where people might hear you on itunes or Facebook or picked up by Comedy Central to use a clip of your if you're interested in the widest possible reach, then just keep it clean. If you can't figure out how to communicate your ideas without using curse words, you're not using your full intellect. Again, I don't say this as someone who's offended. I'm not offended by profane. There's nothing you could say to me that would offend me because of the curse words. I'm giving this purely as tactical advice. It might not help you. Now, there are exceptions. If you are hired to be a host or a commentator for an online network and they are specifically positioned to go after young people under 30 or under 25, you may actually be given explicit instructions to curse more. I'll leave it to you whether that is advice you want to follow or not. I well remember back during the first dot com craze there was a TV network called Pseudo, which should have been an indication it wasn't going to make a lot of money in the long run. But pseudo.com was positioning itself as young and hip, and they were doing shows in all sorts of different niches. I went in to audition for the role of political commentator for one of their shows and I gave what I thought was perfectly fine advice. And I remember they said you had to dress young and hip and and I wasn't even that Young back in 1998, but I had hip young, new clothes, a little darker hair back then. And I did my whole political commentary on whatever the topic of the day was. And I'll never forget the producer who was probably 24, 25, said, you know, that was pretty good, but it would be better if you could curse more. Could you add a few? And then he proceeded to F bomb and all the usuals, which I would say, but I don't want to get banned for India, so I'm not going to do that. And it just felt contrived and phony. Now it would be contrived, I guess, for Gary Vaynerchuk to say the F word and spell it out like that. I don't want to change him. He's got to get a great niche for himself. But on the other hand, if you don't normally curse in public when you get speeches, I certainly wouldn't start doing it just because a producer has asked you or because you think it will make you look young or hip or cool, because chances are that will in fact backfire on you and it's not going to make you look cool or hip or young or anything else. And you just got to be comfortable in your own skin. I'm perfectly comfortable not being the person that everyone thinks of as young and hip and cool because I'm not young, I'm not particularly hip. And if young people don't think I'm cool, well, based on their particular issues, I would say they're absolutely right. So there's nothing wrong with that at all.

Do you have a speaking related question for number one USA Today best selling author TJ Walker? For more than 30 years, Walker has been a public speaking coach and media trainer to presidents of Countries, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter J. Walker.

Now in a related issue, it's not quite the same thing as profanity and using curse words, but the language you use is critically important to you as a communicator. I have an awful lot of clients who would never dream of just randomly gratuitously putting curse words in their speech. But they do start using big words instead of small words because they think I'm giving a formal presentation. I'll sound smarter if I do this. There's the old saying, never utilize, utilize, always use you. I forgot who said that originally, but it sums it up perfectly. Utilize is three syllables. It doesn't do anything that the one syllable word use accomplishes. Always look for the simplest word possible and you'll be in much better shape as a speaker because it's easier for audiences to understand what you're talking about. It's one thing if you're sending someone a document and they can read it, underline it, look up a word, stop, reread a sentence. If you have big words, complex words, new words, it's easier to process when it's in a text format, but when you're speaking to someone, it's in one ear, out the next. They're listening to you. They're in the moment. They can't process what you said two seconds ago. So the more you are using simple words, easy words, short words, the better. No, I'm not saying dumb it down. It's not about how important or weighty or meaty the concept is. It's about the words you use to describe it. A lot of times people use big fancy words because they think it'll make them sound more intelligent, and it really doesn't. I'll tell you two people I know who use often the smallest word in the last 30 years in the public speaking sphere. Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan. Now, depending on your politics. If you are a Republican, I guarantee you you don't think Ronald Reagan was dumb. If you are a Democrat, I guarantee you, at least when it comes to intellect, you certainly don't think Bill Clinton is a dumb person. People on each political party admired the intellects of those two people and they used smaller words, simpler words than their peers in the political ranks. They don't use a lot of jargon and acronyms and Senate, Washington, SB this and all that. They rather than talk about resolution or sb, it's a proposed law. Sometimes you have to use more words, a couple more words to really spell it out so that someone who isn't an insider knows exactly what you're thinking. Here's the real rule of thumb. If someone walks away from you giving a speech, a presentation, watching an Internet video, or any kind of communication you have, if they walk away thinking you're really smart, often that's a danger sign. Often that means you did something wrong, you're using too big words. What you really want is for someone after hearing you, to walk away thinking they are now smarter. They now know something they didn't know before. They have a new skill that they can actually apply. When you do that, then you're a great communicator. I'm TJ Walker. May all of your speaking opportunities in life be a huge success.

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