Lisa B Marshall - High Level Podcast and In-Person Communication

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate.

These days. If you have an audience in the.

Hundreds, a lot of people are going to say, Fantastic, that's great. 100 likes on Facebook. Aren't you something? Well, our guest today doesn't have an audience of 100. She's had 17 million downloads for her podcast. She is a master, master communicator. She's written numerous best selling books including Smart Talk. You've seen her on every kind of TV show, radio program. Her columns are everywhere. She is one of the foremost experts in the world on public speaking, workplace communication, verbal and nonverbal communication. I'm so happy to have with us today Lisa B. Marshall. I think you're going to enjoy our interview. We had a few technical problems. The interview was a little shorter than I would have liked, but she was a real trooper. Appreciate her time. The program today as always, brought to you by Media Training Worldwide. Before your next interview, before your next podcast, if you want to get ready, you might as well learn from the best and at no cost.

If you click in the show notes.

Below or just go to mediatrainingworldwide.com you can get at no cost our online media training school. This is video based, more than 100 videos, plus a couple of my books. Absolutely no charge whatsoever. So click on the Show Notes for that as well. And now here is the interview with Lisa B. Marshall. Lisa, thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me, T.J. finally we got together for an interview.

Yes, and a lot of our listeners have heard of you over the years. They've followed your books, your podcasts. You're all over the Internet.

What does the B stand for? And how many list marshals are there?

The B stands for a name that's unpronounceable. It's a German name, it's bame, but it's not spelled the way you would expect. And it's a name that I use it only because the Lisa Marshall without the B doesn't let me take her domain. I've been trying to get the Lisa Marshall without that. So since I can't, I have added in my bag.

Now, I've made a lot of blunders in my career and a lot of social media blunders, but I did fairly early on try to buy up everything that said TJ Walker on it. TJWalker.com and Facebook.

Yeah, I wised up and bought for my children. I bought their domain names when they were born.

Oh, I did the same thing.

People laugh at me.

One of the criteria for my daughter's name was I wanted something. I had several, but one of them was it had to be a domain name available and a domain name that someone could hear it and spell it. Her name is Rasa Walker, and Rasa is a very unusual name. I didn't even know it was a name, but, yeah, I don't think I've.

Heard that name either. Rasa.

When I test people, how would you spell it? They spell it correctly. Now, the only problem with the name is people, when they see it, mispronounce it and they call it Rosa.

But that's a whole other issue.

You do a lot with your brand. You help other people with their brand, specifically on how they communicate when they're speaking. It always shocks me and amazes me that people will spend so much money on logos, maybe spend $10,000 on a Chanel suit, briefcase, and shoes, and then spend nothing on the services of someone like you to make sure they give a great presentation. How do you put. What's the relative importance you put on someone's spoken communication on their overall brand?

I think communication skills are what differentiates a person when they're presenting themselves. If you take somebody to people of equal skill, for example, or equal knowledge, if you look at the better speaker, the better communicator, they're almost always hands down the winner. In fact, there was a study that looked at authors, authors who had put out books. They had the same amount of books in their past, and they were at basically the same level in terms of the publisher. And they put them out on their tour and they wanted to see, well, which one would do better on the tour in terms of selling books. And of course, who do you think sold more books? The person that was comfortable with their speaking skills. And somebody might say, well, an author doesn't need to learn how to speak because they write right? They don't have to be able to speak properly, or they don't have to be able to communicate effectively. But even a writer that does need to be able to communicate effectively. They need to be able to communicate their passion. They need to be able to communicate their brand. They need to be able to connect with people, because we buy from people who we connect with. And so in order to connect, we need to be able to communicate.

And people like to point to the aberration, the J.D. salinger, and say, oh, that's what a writer's like. A reclusive. You know, there's only one J.D.

Salinger, and he's not even J.D. salinger anymore.

And when I think of the great writers, when I ask people, especially growing up younger, what writers do you respect? People would often mention Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley. What do they all have in common? They were fighting on TV constantly. They were speaking more than they were writing. And in fact, Mark Twain actually made a lot more money in his life as a speaker than he ever did as a writer.

Exactly. So I do think that communication skills, people connect with people through their communication. And if you want people to buy from you, if you want people to buy from your company, then your communication has to resonate with your demographic.

Lisa, you've worked, as our listeners know from the introduction, you've worked in every kind of industry.

Pharmaceutical, big businesses, small businesses, financial.

Tell us something we haven't heard heard before about what really makes a great communicator. Because you can find them in every industry and you can find horrible communicators in every industry. What have you experienced in your own personal training and consulting business?

Well, I don't know if this is something that we haven't heard before, but this is something that I firmly believe and hold. I have worked with people with heavy accents. I have worked with people that have an awful and ah. I've worked with people who have balance issues where they're moving left and right when they're speaking. But all of those people I just mentioned were incredibly magnetic, awesome speakers. Why? Because they were passionate and themselves when they were on stage or when they were in front of people talking, they allowed their personality to come through. And their personality was so magnetic that, that the arms didn't matter, the standing from foot to foot didn't matter, the heavy accent didn't matter. It was the passion that came through. It was their magnetism that came through. Their charisma, some people might call it. And that is what people want to see. They want to see a natural person. They want to be attracted to something that's truly a unique individual. And so a lot of times people say, well, I have to learn this skill, I have to learn that skill. Yes, you need to learn those skills to become the excellent top of the line speakers. But you can be a really good speaker just by being yourself and being enthusiastic and passionate about your topic.

Now, you just mentioned charisma. I've gotten in fights with people on this show before. I happen to believe there actually is no such thing as charisma. It's just another word for someone being. But I want to know, how do you define charisma?

Well, to me, if you are to talk about charisma, yes, it is a good speaker, but there's a second half to it. It's also a good listener. So charismatic people are people who are able to connect with others very easily. At least that is, for me. A person who's charismatic makes the others in the room like their conversation partners feel like they are the only person in the room. And so if you're an excellent speaker, yes, you can be charismatic because you can speak in the way that the audience feels like they're connecting directly with them. But there's also times when you're individual and you're having conversations with people, and that connection is necessary as well. And so a key for anyone to make those connections is to understand that other party, to understand what's important to them, and to be able to put themselves in their shoes. And that's important for a speech or important for any communication.

As you know, I think listening is a fantastic skill. It's an often undervalued skill. But I have to bring up, and this is not a political podcast, and we don't get into who favors whom for what office. But you bring up such an intriguing point. I have to put this out there. Donald Trump, according to many people, they do find him to be a charismatic speaker. I mean, the excitement at his rallies is palpable, and yet I think even his most strident supporters would not put listening as one of his top skills.

I'm sorry, you're going to have to repeat that last sentence. I didn't hear it.

I would say that Donald Trump is someone that his followers perceive him as, as a charismatic speaker. Again, if you don't like him, then it's hard to see past the cartoonishness. But to people who like Donald Trump, they see him as a charismatic speaker, and yet they don't think of him as a good listener. So I'm just wondering, is that skill, is it really related?

Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I would agree with your premise that they don't believe he's a good listener. I believe that they think that his words are resonating with them. It's about that audience. Right. So what he says are things that the people who follow him, things that they agree with, things that they say, things that they will say to their peers. And so when he speaks, he is connecting with that subset of people, and the people he's not connecting with the other half, so to speak, when he's saying things that don't connect with them. That's why they don't view it as charismatic. I mean, I believe that the reason why they half view it as charismatic is because he is connecting them. He is saying things that they feel that they have been saying or agree with.

Fair enough. Fair enough.

Lisa, you speak in a lot of different venues. You speak to small groups, large groups, trainings, but also in podcasts. In fact, you've been downloaded some 17 million times on the various podcasts you've appeared on. What medium do you find?

What's your favorite and what do you find the hardest medium to really communicate in?

Well, you know, it's an interesting question. When I first started doing the podcast, which was about eight plus years ago, I think I was not a good podcaster in terms of my delivery, in terms of how I created the podcast. In a lot of ways, I don't think that I enjoyed podcasting, but over years, over time and again, eight years, that took a long time. But eventually I actually began to really enjoy the podcast format. And I think that for me, the thing that gets me excited is when I'm actually with an audience and I can of think, see their faces and I can see the light bulbs and I can see the passion and excitement that's for me, most personally satisfying. But in terms of enjoying the delivery process and the preparation process, I probably enjoy the podcasting more.

It can be a lot of fun because there's so much freedom to it and you have the boundaries of it. It has to be exactly 30 minutes.

Or you can't do this or you can't do that.

Well, what I find interesting is that a lot of times I'll talk about a certain topic and I think that it's going to resonate with an audience in this way, or I think it's going to be, oh, I wrote this one. I think it's going to be great. Things are going to love this. And it tanked. And then I read another one that I was really quick off the cuff. Oh, you know, whatever. I'll just get this one out. And then that's the one that was a huge success that people write me and say, oh, this is the best. It was the best. So I think one of the things you talk about, the freedom of the podcast, I think it gives you the, because it's such a regular medium, you can do it every week and do it every day, and it gives you the freedom to try things that you wouldn't normally necessarily do. If you're doing it in front of an audience that's paid you a lot of money to stand there and deliver a talk.

In a moment.

I want to know which podcast really generated the most mail feedback controversy. I agree with you. Quite often it's ones you don't suspect. One time I was getting a haircut and an idea just popped into my head. I pulled out my cell phone and I said, okay, guys, you want to look professional, and you're like me, and your hair is thinning and you're balding and you're starting to look old and pathetic. Here are the tips. Just make it really short so that people are not focused on your hair and no one's laughing at your comb over anything. And just simple, basic tips. And it got 50,000 views. Other videos that I spent tons and tons of time on and really planned and prepared, you know, 18 views. So you. You don't ever really know which topics.

Of yours resonated the most with your audiences.

One topic which I thought was interesting that did resonate was the Rule of Three. And so I think that I thought that people wouldn't necessarily know what the Rule of Three is and probably wouldn't download it just based on the title. If it just says Rule of Three. I forget exactly what the title. Of course, Rule of Three was in it, but I don't know how more sophisticated the title was. But yet that was a really highly downloaded episode. And I think it's because it's such an important skill to have as a public speaker, as a speaker in general, and even as if you want to add comedy. I mean, there's so many aspects to the Rule of Three that's important. So I think perhaps people resonated with that because they weren't familiar with it. Another episode that was extremely popular.

I'll give you an example or two just of that one. Unfortunately, the first one I think of is George Wallace. Segregation Today, Segregation tomorrow, and Segregation Forever.

Right. There's a ton of examples. The Three Little Pigs. I know that's not a typical example. The Three Little Pigs or the Three Musketeers. That's putting together something in the three. Or it could be life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So we have these three concepts that are grouped together. The Rule of Three could apply to just a story in general. The fact that it's got a beginning, a middle, and an end. Or if you're putting together the main points of a speech, you want to have three main points. And each of those three should have three forms of support. So the Rule of Three is broad. In the sense that it applies to a lot of areas within speaking.

People ask me, you know why? Because I recommend no more than three points, not for a speech, but for media interviews. And what I always say is, you know, one is too few, one or two, there's just not enough there. You try to do more than three and you're getting greedy. It's unlikely you can get more than three ideas into the story.

Right.

I think that there's certainly some studies, psychological studies that show that our brains are suited for the number three. I mean, even if you think about like a humor, a humor use of the rule of three. So you do two things on a list that are common things and then you put a third thing on the list, which would be a funny thing. So you might say something like, my 69 year old mother looked in the refrigerator. Of course she saw my eggs, the milk and my weed cookies. You put the third thing on there that is not expected and people will laugh or find that humorous. I think that you have to have. You can't have just one because when you go to the second one, you haven't created enough to figure out what the categories are. So the two, the first two on the list help you for your mind to kind of say, oh, okay, I see where she's heading. Stuff in a refrigerator. Okay, those are common things you see in your refrigerator. So I think the 3 is the least amount that you need in order for the mind to sort of grasp and to get the full idea, whether that's a comedy idea or whether that's just an idea in general or even, you know, you're describing, you know, what three items did the girl walk home with, you know, a lipstick case, her stiletto heels and her jacket from the night before. You know, that's one image of the woman was carrying a briefcase, an iPad and a, I don't know, sensible pumps, something like that.

And this has been around a long time. I'm not particularly a fan of religion, but the whole Father, Son and Holy Ghost, many religions have basically three part gods.

Exactly. So that was. This rule of three was a popular one, but one that was extremely popular. And I did several other shows that were variations on the topic, which was how to introduce yourself. So how to Introduce Yourself was the first one that I did. How to introduce yourself in a Meeting. How to introduce yourself at School. How to introduce yourself in an Interview. How to introduce yourself. There's a ton of them and they all got thousands of downloads. They were very popular. How to introduce Yourself and I never quite understood why that topic was so popular. You would think that introducing yourself is something that we all know how to do, but perhaps it's something that we get asked to do so often. And I think a lot of people get nervous around that when they have to introduce themselves, that maybe that's why so many people were trying to look for that information. I don't know.

It's definitely something that makes people feel awkward. I get questions about that all the time from my online students, and it's a common awkwardness that relates to something I am seeing as a trend in podcasting.

There are all these hosts out there.

Who have a guest on, and then they say, well, let's start at least introduce yourself. Which I just think is the laziest, worst form of hosting, to have someone on the guest as your talk show. I mean, I. I try to really take time to look through someone's bio and build them up. And I even record it separately so that my audience is just, you know, they're drooling practically because they want to start listening to the guest. I just think it's an awful imposition.

To invite somebody on a show and then force them to build themselves up.

So I want to touch on that. But then I do want to know.

How you introduce yourself.

Well, I'll tell you a quick story about self introduction. So I believe that people who are professional speakers or people who are in the media should have a prepared introduction that they've written for themselves. Mostly because I think that having an understanding of where you're, where your skills are, the things that you would like to highlight, I think that's important for the person to write it. Now, do you insist that the person who's introducing you follow that script entirely? There's a debate. Some people say yes, it should be 100%, whatever the speaker has provided or whatever the host has provided, and some people say no, the person who's doing the introducing gets their program. They can decide what it is that they'd like to include or exclude from that introduction. And by the way, I just want to clearly state that you have not gotten anything from me directly. So I did not write the one that you presented on me. But typically, again, typically in my situation, I almost always say, here's the base information and go from here. And I think that it's important for at least an outline of the information is given to the person who's going to introduce you so that they have some understanding of what it is that they bring to their audience. Because Every audience is different and again, we talked about having it so it resonates with them. So who's in the best position to know what background would resonate best for the audience that you're speaking to? Typically, it's the person who's doing the speaking. Now, sometimes the host of the show, if it's some sort of media show, they're going to understand their audience fairly well. So maybe it's that collaboration between those two people, but typically it's the person who's delivering the information that knows how they might resonate the best with that audience. And I think that's the most important thing to understand how you can position the background and experience so that exactly as you said. So the audience is hungry to hear from that person.

Folks, this is the real money aspect of this show. Here's the nugget. What I always try to do in every show is have at least one really solid tactical nugget that I've learned for the first time and that I can use. And that you can use too. Here it is. Now, confession. I try to have my interview guest bio in front of me on my desk in the studio well before the interview, well before I record it. I thought I'd done that today, turned out I didn't. I was too embarrassed to call or write Lisa five minutes before the show. So I went to Google, typed in her name plus bio, came to a page on her website. And I have to say it is a perfect media bio because she has a long version that's four or five paragraphs. A medium version, it's 75 words and it says 75 words and then a short version, 25 words. It's the three bears. It's either going to be too hot.

Too cold, or just right.

One of these is just right. And I think of the Three Bears a lot these days because my daughter loves that story and I read it to her at least once a week. But this is a perfect, perfect bio. She also has lots of pictures of her that I can use to put on my own website, the podcast page next to this show. So she just made it really, really easy for the host. Whether it's a talk radio show that's doing a two minute quick interview and they just want 25 words, or if it's a longer show and they want the full bio, and some shows may want to put the whole text version up on their website, some just want the short one. So it's beautifully arranged, it's simple, it's clear, and it's Very, very media friendly. So that's how you do a media bio and you make it easy to find. So when someone types in your name plus bio, that's what they find online. Well done, Lisa.

Lisa, you've written many books on spoken communication, workplace communication. Your latest is Smart Talk. What are people going to learn there?

Well, this is a book that covers a wide variety of topics and primarily what we did is we looked at the top, top, top downloaded topics. So we looked at the ones that people are most interested in, are looking and hungry on and we expanded those areas and talked about how to give practical tips and what the research says about those areas. And so it covers things from accepting criticism or having difficult conversations or dealing with difficult people or following up on conversations. What are some ideas of how to do that or how to influence other people or improve your conversation skills? Negotiation, positive language, tact and grace. There's all very wide variety of topics. In fact, many of the chapters have entire books written on them from other authors. And what I tried to do was to take what the best ideas were, the best tips and the best ways to understand the topic and make it in an interesting format so that people could get a large swath of communication information and use it when they needed it. So if they're going to have so networking, they go look at the follow up on conversations or they're going to have to have a conversation with somebody that they've been dreading. Then they can look at the difficult conversation or difficult people. So it's aimed at person to have it on their desk on a regular basis and to use it sort of chapter by chapter on an as needed basis to get the most recent information on each of those very key topics. Again, the topics that people are always hungry for, always interested in learning more.

Lisa, thanks for being our guest today. Lisa was a real trooper. We had some technical problems with this show. For some reason the Skype didn't work. Then I called her on her cell phone Skype connection. That way it worked okay for a while, but then I could hear her fine. She couldn't hear me. That's why the show was a little bit shorter than usual. Here's the thing, she didn't let it bother her. I tried not to let it bother me because we just wanted to focus on delivering great content to you. Maybe it's not an hour and 10 minutes this time, but if it's a great 20 minutes, then it's still a win win for everyone. I'm TJ Walker, thanks for joining me today.

Thanks for listening to speaking with T.J. walker.