The Russian Perspective on Public Speaking Sergey Kuzin

Foreign.

Speaking, the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

My special guest is Sergey Kuzin. He's been called the T.J. walker of Russia. No one's called him that. I've called him that, but that's it. He is a prominent, well known media trainer, presentation coach in Russia. I first met him more than a decade ago when he was here in the United states doing his PhD dissertation. He's written a variety of books on everything from Media man to his latest Line of fire to 101 tips on answering tough Questions. He's worked with every sort of major corporation, not only in Russia, but major international banks, car companies on every continent. Sergey, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you TJ for inviting. It's great that the Russian TJ Walker is now meeting the American TJ Walker.

So pretentious of me to say it that way, but I just couldn't. When it's your own podcast, you could do what you want.

Sometimes that will be the first day. When I start doing that, you will show me an example.

I want to talk about your new book, Line of Fire, but before that, I know a lot of our audience is based in America. They're all over the world, but a lot of them are based in America. And when they heard that I was going to be talking to a Russian media trainer, the first question they wanted me to ask is how do you deal with what appears from our own bias perspective, perhaps to be a situation where government leadership there, I'm stating this delicately, is perhaps very uncomfortable with any criticism from a business leader or a government leader. How do you make that tap dance?

There is really quite a lot of restrictions, probably more than in some Western countries in Russia regarding what you say in the media. But you're pretty free to say anything you want unless you're criticizing the Kremlin's position. That being said, a lot of people think that some tough questions are being filtered out massively when it comes to Putin's press conferences. And I can witness that it is not true. Actually, a lot of questions being asked of our president are very, very tough. And he's a good speaker. I cannot say he's a legendary speaker, but he, he handles toughness very well. So there is no need to filter the top questions out. As far as the other speakers are concerned. They've got to be careful and have some double filters on their mind. And part of the Russian media training is to help speakers and business mind their tongue when they are Making comments that are politically sensitive.

I mean, the United States certainly has its flaws, but we do let people, even people running for president, call the current president a moron, an idiot. They've made, you know, wildly inflammatory comments, not only Trump, but others, and there doesn't seem to be any penalty for it. Nobody disappears quickly. But putting all that aside, does that affect how the typical business person approaches media training, public speaking training? In Russia, I would think there would be an even higher percentage of people who say, let me just keep a low profile and that way no one will criticize me.

Well, there are people who want to be low profile regardless of where they are. I wouldn't say that there are more people in Russia who want to be low profile because of those political restrictions. I would say there is no official censorship in the country. There is more like self censorship in the speaker's mind. They try to restrict themselves just to be on the safe side. But when it comes to business, when it comes to promoting their products, brands, products and projects, I would say there is no big difference between Russia and other, some other countries in Europe or the United States.

Lion of Fire is the book. It's also a training program you have and a video. Tell us about it.

Yeah. The book is called in the Line of how to Answer Provocative Questions at the Negotiations, presentations and Interviews. It helps deal with situations like investors meeting startups and asking them questions like what if it doesn't work, why should we trust you? Or recruiters meeting job candidates and asking them questions like what's your main disadvantage? Or maybe account managers making difficult clients. So all sorts of situations in business where you have to deal with resistance is covered by my program in the Line of Fire. That includes the book, the video course and the offline training.

And what's the number one tip people get from you that they say, well, hadn't heard of that before, haven't read that before, never thought of it. What do you have that jumps out at people as being especially helpful and also not something they've heard of?

The number one tip is change your attitude. Once you change your attitude to the tough questions, you are able to answer them. The widely spread attitude is the tough questions is a sort of exam and you're being examined by those investors, recruiters, difficult clients or tough bosses. In reality, you are not and there is no such thing as the right answer. So once you leave that role of a student standing next to the blackboard, trying to find the right answer and forget about the need to look for the right answer, you develop the right attitude that helps you be more effective in the Line of fire.

For more information, go to SergeyKuzan.com that's S E R G E Y K u z I n.com Sergey Kuzan thank you for being our guest today.

Stop.

Okay, so that concludes sort of our initial interview that you would have if you were on the Today show, Good Morning America, presumably morning news programs in Russia, elsewhere, that's a little over five minutes. That's more than you would get on your typical talk radio show. Now it's time for us to pull back the curtain and dissect it. And we certainly talked for a couple minutes for our audience in advance of recording, but when we started all of a sudden, and this happens to host all the time, the host started blurting out all sorts of things that weren't planned. So I actually monopolized. Probably more time than you thought. Talking about the geopolitical situation in Russia took some of your time. Tell me how you planned for an interview for this particular interview, what your goal was and how in general you planned for interviews.

Well, initially I was planning to talk about the in the Line of Fire product, which is the book, the offline training and the video course. And we happened to mention it. But it seems to me that the focus of the conversation shifted a little bit to the political issues. And I felt like I lost track of myself because although I'm having my sound bites and messages in front of me, you know, from time to time I forgot to add them into my answers. So it was pretty challenging, tj to talk about politics all out of a sudden without being ready to do that.

And to me, I want to hear your impressions on the lessons. But to me, the lesson is you can't structure everything perfectly every time. Sometimes a particular host will want to just go off somewhere. They're not out to get you. I wasn't out to get you. I was just all of a sudden genuinely interested. Now, I should point out a number of things you did. Well, that wouldn't be obvious to just listen to it because I'm looking at Sergei's bio here. He's written a number of books, so we took the time in the pre interview to talk about. Okay, of the ones you have written, which one do you want to focus on? Do you want to focus on the training? Your main website, and we discussed in advance that it was in the Line of Fire. And I did in fact mention it several times. So a lot of the influence I believe you have in a media interview is what happens in the pre interview, by the way, that gives me a good suggestion to myself for the future. I should probably record the pre interviews with the guest and make that as part of the podcast too, because that can be helpful to people to learn how that goes. All right, tell us what else you were doing to prepare not only for this interview, but other interviews.

Yeah, what I usually do to prepare for an interview is I have a speaker buddy, someone who can hear me before I actually get my message across in a real interview. When I first had my interview on one of the Moscow FM radio stations, I was pretty anxious about my first upcoming experience. And what helped me was the fact that I took the phone and just called my school friend and said, sasha, please listen to me right now. And I just told him everything I want to say I wanted to say. And he said, you know, Sergey, I'm not sure I got you. I'm not sure I understood a thing out of what you said. And I had to talk through for the second time and it was better. And when I talk through, well, I have to say for the third time, it was much better. So my number one tip and the number one thing that I have that I always follow during the preparation is that you have to put the words you're going to get across on your tongue in advance and make sure you rehearse your speech out loud and make someone hear you or record you before you actually pronounce the speech. So this is the number one thing I do when prepared. So have a speaker buddy.

And to me, the most important thing you mentioned that I think really helps people is it's not enough to practice in front of a buddy. You have to ask them, what do they get, what do they remember? And if in the case of Sasha, the person says, I don't know what you said or I don't understand, my rule of thumb is it's never the audience's fault. It's always my fault. It's always the speaker's fault if the audience doesn't get it.

Absolutely. It's always the speaker's responsibility, you know, to get the message across and to make sure the audience understands that. Going back to your question about what I did to prepare, I frankly speaking, I was sleeping for 15 minutes right before the interview, you know, getting well rested.

That helps. Yes.

Because the day was so stressful. It's pretty late now in Russia, almost 9pm and I really had to forget about the upcoming interview with tj, you know, to come thing to let things calm down a little bit. So that's probably thing number two. But of course, before that, I was thinking about the messages I want to get through and some sound bites that I want to make sure I pronounce during the interview.

Okay, let's take a step back in time. You weren't always a presentation coach, trainer, nor was I. How did you get started in this career? Because this isn't something that the typical first grader says, mommy, daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a public speaking coach. How did you get into this?

Yeah, I started as an interpreter working for a public relations agency. It was late 90s, and after that I worked as a public relations manager at that prior agency. And how I decided to be a business trainer was like a little bit more than 15 years ago. The agency I worked for staged an event to celebrate 10th anniversary of Reebok, which is the sportswear company in Russia. And more than 400 people gathered in one of the most prestigious places in Moscow downtown. And the president of Reebok went on the stage. It was a very quiet, very reserved 60 year old guy standing somewhere in the shadow, pretty short, and can you imagine the interpreter, very loud, very unreserved, quite tall, you know, standing right in the center of the stage in the spotlight and translating the president as if he was speaking, not the president. So the people who have never seen the president actually mistook the president for the interpreter and vice versa. I had a very difficult conversation with my boss who afterwards said, you know, Sergei, you have to be the shadow of your client, not vice versa. So, and that was the, that was the moment of truth for me. And I understood that I'm more effective in the spotlight than when I'm not in the shadow. You know, there are some people who can manage things in the shadow that are more effective there. And I asked myself, was that just feeding the ego that I want to be in the spotlight? And over the years I answered that question and it was no. It's just the way I feel better and work better when I stand in front of a group of people and tell them something interesting, it inspires me much more than anything else. And that's the way I decided to be the trainer. But I could not be the trainer immediately, you know, because I was working as an interpreter. So I suggested the president of the public relations agency for which I worked that I, on a weekly basis, I make English language training for the employees of that company. And very soon after, a couple of months, I think we started corporate debates in English, we started meetings, we started learning how to speak in public in English. So it was through learning how to speak in English that I became teaching people. And that was the moment when my career started to transform.

In a moment, I'm going to want to know about the first time ever you were in the spotlight. And I don't mean even in a business setting. It could be first grade show and tell. But if you have any memories of the first time you ever stood up and spoke to more than three people, I want to hear it. But first, some housekeeping matters. If you're trying to become a better speaker yourself, you can sign up for our free no Obligation online media training course. Just go to mediatrainingworldwide.com or click in the show notes below and. And you'll have more than 100 online videos on media training and public speaking training sent to you at no Obligation. Our special guest today is Sergey Kuzant. You can reach him at Sergey K U Z I N.com Sergei, when were you first in the spotlight?

All the kids in the Soviet Union had to go through this public speaking experience. And I believe that's one of the reasons a lot of people in this country hate to speak in public. Because when you were in the kindergarten, there was a group of people, the group of other kids actually looking at you, and the teacher put the chair in the center, put you on that chair, and you had to tell a verse to everyone else.

And this was pre 1989, so it is still in fact the Soviet Union. Or you're in.

Yeah, it was. Yes, it was 80s. It was like middle 80s that I had. That recollection of mine goes back to those times. And the first thing you think and feel about this experience is, thanks God, it's over, you know, and you feel like you'd never probably do that thing again. That was certainly not the time when I wanted to be a public speaker. Because you were made to do that. You hated that verse. You didn't know why you were doing that. You had just, you know, had to survive through that experience. So when I help people speak in public, and most of the people who are my clients come from the Soviet past, they recollect that. And that's kind of fear that I think has some national traits for us, and we have to overcome that. For the younger kids who were born in 90s and early 2000s, I think it's much easier to learn to speak in public because they didn't have that experience.

And growing up, did you have anyone that you really thought, wow, that is a great Public speaker, Any role models you had, and especially if it's not an English speaker, I'd love to expose the audience here to some different names.

Well, my father actually influenced me a lot. He was not a public speaker, but he was fan of public speaking. And when I was 10 or 11 years old, he read to me a book. I didn't know the name of that book, but he looks like he picked up the most interesting pieces from that book. And before we went to bed, he read those pieces to me. And when I asked him, daddy, what is the book's name? And he said, it's just a secret book. Time will come, you will know what it is. And I think I was very, very excited by that experience. I wanted to say the name of a book, and he never told me, but I found that book under his pillow. And I'm sorry, it's not the Russian name. It's Dale Carnegie's how to Influence People. You know.

A classic book that is 100 years old.

Yeah, absolutely.

And is actually still filled with good advice. I mean, some of it is dated. It always talks about he when a man does this, it's sexist. But so much of the advice is still worthwhile. He says things like, don't read, tell a story, be conversational. Things that you and I have to tell clients every day because people get scared.

Absolutely. Yeah. And because it was a secret book, you know, I was so intrigued to discover what it is that I think it was the first time I was interested in the theory of public speaking.

Now, was that book secret because he was a capitalist American?

No. At that time, actually, it was not a forbidden thing. Just my father wanted to incite some interest in me, like encourage me to learn something about public speaking. That's why he was keeping that suspense, you know, he was trying to stimulate an intrigue for me, and he succeeded very much. I'm still very fond of public speaking, as if I was, like, 10 years old.

That is a good attitude to have you mentioned. Attitude is so important. I always stress to people that public speaking is really one of the few things in life where your attitude can make all the difference. Sergey, you and I can go out golfing today. I can have the best attitude in the world. I'm still going to shoot 150, and that's cheating. My attitude is not going to help my golf game at all. But speaking is different. I'm interested in your take on that.

You mean the attitude to public speaking?

Yeah. How does attitude really affect public speaking? And how do you Change an attitude. If someone just inherently has a bad attitude about public speaking.

Well, for me the bad attitude to public speaking is the feeling that you have to perform. I think public speaking has nothing to do with performance, even less with some perfect performance. Some people are very scared of speaking on public just because they think they have to be perfect in public. All they have to do in reality is talk to the people. I think that's one of the reasons I'm such a big fan of Nick Vucic, for example, the guy from Australia without legs and feet. I'm sure you've heard about him. He's his experience. I, I don't think he's very proficient in some public speaking techniques, tricks and gimmicks. But he's leaving what he's speaking and that's why the level of trust to what he says is so high. And he's such a good public speaker solely due to the right attitude. He loves the people he's talking to, he knows what he's talking to, he feels what he's talking about. And that's the number one reason why he's so great as a speaker.

I do agree with you for the most part. I think that 99.9% of people in the world, in business, politics, academia, they are better off not thinking of their speech as a performance. What I always tell people is people come to me thinking I'm going to teach them how to act on the stage. The reality is I teach people to stop acting, they're already acting scared. For most people, they're better off just speaking as if they're having an interesting conversation with one friend. Doesn't matter if they're giving a so called formal speech to a thousand. But there is one exception. There is a type of professional platform speaker who really has polished stories and they do bring in quite an element of theatricality. They're using every inch of the stage. They really have their pauses down and they are in fact doing it word for word. That's a rare exception, but I do think there are the occasional exceptions. Any thoughts on that?

When people are speaking to the media, actually it's a different genre, I would say it's different type of speaking. And you cannot be conversational to the journalists. It's not a friendly talk. When you're sitting in a cafe and chatting with your friend. You cannot apply that same pattern to the media interview. So it's a very different story.

Well, you can, but it might result in loss of job or reputation because humor, sarcasm, yeah, irony, it just doesn't come across well when edited down into a text story. How do you continue to improve as a speaker? You gave a lot of thought to this, and you started off in a very logical way of translation. And then to the next step you went, and I'm going to ask a few more questions about your academic work. But you took the time and trouble of traveling to the other side of the world, getting a PhD. How do you continue to learn now that you're outside of the academic world when it comes to your speaking and communication skills?

Well, first of all, I'm reading the books of D.J.

Walker, ladies and gentlemen, Shameless Pandering, which we encourage here at this program.

Well, you have plenty of material. You know, they're endless. You're watching them and you develop with you, and it's a lot of fun, actually. And also, I attend a lot of trainings by other trainers in my country and outside. And when you see how other professionals work, it helps you develop very, very, very fast. In addition to that, when I don't have time to attend someone else's training, I watch them online and I watch things like Lindacomm and Courseracom. And I subscribe, of course, to the official TED Talk Guide playlist. You know, there are 50 or so talks and many of them are dedicated about to the subject of effective public speaking. And another thing I do develop is the speech critique. When you pick up a famous person, a public politician or a famous businessman, and try to see what can be improved in his maybe already perfect speech. And you've got to think well before you critique guys like Barack Obama as a speaker, you know, but if you dare do that, you become a better speaker yourself.

Now tell me, I'll give you my assessment, but I want to hear your assessment. Barack Obama, strengths and weaknesses. And let's give equal time to both.

Well, strengths and, well, first of all, strengths. He is a very strong speaker. Otherwise, I think that people would not write books such as how to Speak Like Obama. There are several books with that title. And I think one of his strengths is that he can explain ordinary people some complex things. One of his speeches was about the American Jobs act, which is very controversial. And it was a thick piece of paper, like 500 pages or so. And in three minutes he was able to explain why it's so important for the Senate to accept the American Jobs act. And the people supported it because he could put 500 pages into, I know, seven or 10 sentences to make it clear for the people what's inside. And I think this is one of the strengths. He can speak in slogans, he's Twitter like, and he's a master of sound biting. And a lot of things are very flamboyant in what he's talking about. But after now for the hard.

Now for the hard part, where do you feel he's weak? Where do you feel he needs to improve or could improve? He obviously doesn't have a big need at the moment, but where could he still improve?

I think that, you know, where, when you're speaking in slogans, people also when you become a president, people expect you to change the way you speak. And I think he found his way to speak and he's pretty. He got stuck into his genre. You know, he's Barack Obama, and that's it. I think he's. He lacks flexibility in terms of adapting to situations. Different audiences, different occasions, different topics. So you could recognize Barack Obama even if you don't watch him, don't hear him. You just take a text, read it, and you say, hey, Barack Obama said it. You know, I think as a speaker, especially if you're a president of the United States, you have to be more, you know, flexible and be ready to work in different genres.

Where I fault him, where I still think he's not great, is when he's doing interviews, he looks down too much. That can make him look less than confident. And the US Creep in in a way they don't when he's giving his set speech from the teleprompter. I do think he's a great teleprompter speaker. And it always amuses me when in this country, political figures who love Ronald Reagan and always talked about what a great communicator he was are the very same people who trash Obama for reading a teleprompter. Wait a minute. You love Reagan for reading a teleprompter?

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Look at the way he is turning his head left and right. Look at the teleprompter.

You know, now that's the one area where I would criticize Obama and have for most of his presidency. Although his most recent speech at the Democratic convention, he wasn't doing that. Where I fault him is he has traditionally been too mechanical in looking at the left teleprompter for a set amount of time and then the right teleprompter and going back in a way that's almost clock like the best speakers mix it up, they'll look straightforward for a while. They'll look for a short time at the Left one they'll look, then maybe a longer one at the right. It's not as mechanical. And for years that's the one area where I faulted him is in how he used the teleprompter because he did so many other things well. But that was the one flaw. He was just too mechanical, going back and forth at the same set time. I do want to ask you about the academy. You take your academic life seriously. You received a PhD and came to Iowa. In fact, that's when I met you. You were on your way there to Iowa. I hate to sound like an anti intellectual. I'm certainly not an anti intellectual. I didn't work my way up being a junior high school dropout. I went to some would say a prestigious university, graduated from honors. But I personally never pursued any graduate school studies in anything to do with communications because I always found that there was an inverse relationship between higher education in the academic communication field and actually being a good communicator. And that was sort of a fancy academic way of saying. In my experience, anyone who has graduate studies in communication is usually a lousy speaker, number one. And number two, they're usually lousy at teaching people how to be better speakers. You think I'm fair? Unfair? What was your experience?

You're fair for the Russian reality. I think because when I met people like Bob Baron, professor of the Year in Social Psychology 2005, and when I started working with Bruce Grumback, who worked with Alan Monroe and wrote the Principles of Speech Communications and must Read book, I think I saw them speaking. You know, I saw Bruce Grombeck speaking. He was a very good one. He was a perfect speaker himself, although he was a perfect academic too. I cannot say I've seen like a hundred of American academics speaking, but I can say that most of them are good speakers in comparison to what I saw in Russia. Because in Russia we mostly learn what is called rhetoric, like, you know, ancient Greek rhetoric. And a lot of that is concerned with the theory of constructing a speech and has little to do with the practice of public speaking. When my daughter went to the kindergarten to the first grade in the American school, I noticed that she has to speak in public almost every day. And you know, it is such a drastic difference between the two countries. So when I got back, I started noticing the huge gap between theory and practice, between academia and what they are trying to discover and the real life. So probably there are always there is a problem between theory, practice, always there is a problem. But I would not.

What I find, yes, What I find talking to clients, even today, sometimes young executives who perhaps were in college or business school just two years ago, and I'll ask them about their speaking experience. They'll mention they had a public speaking class in college. And I always. A business school. I always ask the same question. I say, how many times were you videotaped in an entire semester of your own speech? Half the time it was zero. The other half the time it was three times or fewer. Once at the beginning of the year, once in the middle, and once at the end and still have a lot.

Of work to do then.

I just find that bizarre at a time when every single student has four, five video cameras on their cell phone, their iPad, and sorry to get on my own hobby horse, but as I stress to all of my clients, any training I do, someone is going to get on camera not one or two or three times, but at least 10 times in a day. That's really. I find the only way to help someone dramatically improve as a speaker.

Yeah, of course, there is always room for development, but I just thought about the time TED talks, and if you look at the, let's say, top 50 TED talks, many of those talks are pronounced by professors, and they're very good speaking.

Oh, certainly some professors are good speakers. In my experience. They are not professors of communication or rhetoric or oratory or media. They, they happen to be, you know, passionate about physics or chemistry or urban development. So I certainly don't mean to suggest that all professors are bad. I am limiting my criticism to the academic arena of communication studies, which for some reason seems to be just, in my view, a disaster in the academic world. But enough of me beating that. That horse. How have you improved over your. How have you improved over your career as a communicator? We all continue to evolve, grow. You're continuing to watch TED talks and learn from others. But what are you doing really differently now when you're asked to give a speech compared to 10 years ago or 15 years ago?

Well, first of all, I make sure I videotape myself and I make sure that I have a speaker buddy. And what I call is I rent an ear, someone who can hear me before I speak. Also, my little trick is to try to sleep right before I talk. You know, it takes some stress off me. And when I try to sleep, I'm sending the message to my body, that's okay. Life is not over after this presentation. And what I also do differently when I get ready for my speech is I'm using the Mind Map program, which is like mindjet or any software that helps you build those. Mind Map. And this is a perfect tool to brainstorm everything you want to say as part of your speech and structure it in the way you want it. So these are some of the things I do differently.

Any speeches or for that matter, media interviews really stand out as disastrous for you. Real learning moments. I mean, I've been. I've had people scream at me, hang up on me on shows. I had a host pull a gun on me once on the air. I've been booed off stages. Tell us about some of your worst experiences as a speaker and as an interview subject.

Well, talking about the worst experience of mine as a public speaker, I remember the time when I first came to the United States and joined a local toastmaster community. And it was a little disaster because I had a stereotype that, you know, all Americans were so politically correct that they never talk about such interesting subjects as sex, politics and religion. And I decided to pick up a subject and talk about, hey, guys, you've got to talk about sex, politics and religion more frequently. And I prepared a 10 minute speech in front of an audience of 50 people or so. And to hook their attention, the first thing I did is I asked to raise the hands those of you who have talked about sex, politics and religion in the last two months. And believe it or not, more than half of the audience raised their hands, which meant that, you know, Americans are not as politically correct as I thought they are. Because back in Russia, when I was part of a toastmaster community too in Russia, and I just pronounced the name of Jesus Christ, the president of our club came up to me and said, you know, Sergei, we are an international club and we don't. They don't mention the names of religious leaders because there may be Muslims or representatives of some other religions in the room. And, you know, I had such. Oh, my God. So it was a stereotype. I made a big mistake because I did not analyze my audience and I based my speech on a stereotype instead of actually going and meeting the actual members of the audience and talking to them.

But I'm curious. You asked the question, you gave them the opportunity to register feedback and to raise their hand. You didn't just assume that only 2% had talked about politics. Once you saw that half of them had spoken on that topic, how did you adjust your speech or how did you recalibrate?

I understood that I cannot now pronounce the speech that I had prepared because I had like 210 minutes of arguments. And you know examples and statistics proving that you have to talk more about those subjects. And I had to make a confession. And I said that, dear Toastmasters, I frankly speaking, was preparing a speech about this topic. And now I will talk about the biggest mistake you can make getting ready for a public speech. So I disclosed the situation and of course instead of 10 minutes, I was talking like for five or seven, so much less. But my blunder somehow turned into sort of success just because I asked them a question in the very beginning. It could be much worse if I didn't.

Sure. And a lot of people make the mistake of having asking a question and then just keep on going with what they planned. If you're going to ask the audience a question, you've got to listen to it and react to it. Let's take a time out, a moment and give a little plug to Toastmasters because you know, if you're ever going to make a bad speech, Toastmasters is the perfect place to do it because the stakes are so low, you're not talking to actual investors, clients, customers, person prospects. So for those on our audience looking to practice more, there's probably a Toastmasters chapter near you where you can practice your speaking. So check them out. Google Toastmasters or I believe it's toastmasters.org a good organization. And as I'm sure you are, Sergei, I'm often asked to speak at chapters around the world, so just wanted to give them a little plug. Is there any speech that really stands out for you? Is the best speech of your life? You're a member of National Speakers Association. I've been active and a past president of the New York chapter myself. And there are a lot of speakers in that organization who say, you know what? 80% of my business today all traces back to one speech I gave to this trade association or this convention 17 years ago. And it all sort of that that started with three big clients and that snowballed. Is there anything comparable to that for you? And it doesn't have to be a success in terms of clients or money. It could just be the response you got.

Well, we started talking about Toastmasters and another example from that life pops up in my mind, if you don't mind.

Sure.

It was an international speech contest taking place in Moscow and I did not have any time to prepare because my schedule was so busy. But I found a little idea that inspired me so much that I pronounced the speech that was the winning one. I got the first place just because I found like a little simple thought that I was so much Inspired, the thought was first you become happy, then you achieve something. You know, a lot of people think that they become happy after they achieve something. And you know, it just occurred to me that first you have to become happy and then because of that you have a better chance to achieve something in your life. You know, this little simple thought, when I started developing it in my mind and thinking about examples of a lot of people who are, you know, dreaming to get a job and promise themselves that after that they become happy or they marry the right person and after that they become happy, you know, well.

I can tell you marry the wrong person is a great way to guarantee being unhappy.

Right? Yes. But, you know, this little simple thought really inspired me so much. Everything, you know, statistics, references, quotes, came by themselves after I found the, what I call the point of passion. So once I found a point of passion, everything went by itself and it was one of the most pleasure pleasant experience I've had.

So now I am curious about this because the point you just mentioned, you got to be happy first, then career accomplished, not reverse, is certainly a point that many people have said. It's basically said in every motivational book, book on life, book on happiness, book on success. How do you take a concept that is already well known, has been talked about by a lot of other people and make it fresh? How do you get people to pay attention to something like that when their inclination is to say, okay, same old stuff, I've heard it before. Let me zone out and check my email. To me, that is the fundamental challenge of certainly most speakers in the motivational genre is it all starts to sound the same. And not that any of the advice is bad, but it does sound generic after a while.

Yeah, absolutely. The only way to do that, tj is to talk about your life, your personal experiences, your stories. And I remember another speech when I was talking about something like it's time to act. What could be more commonplace and banal than the call for action? Time to act, you know. But I remembered a friend of mine who is 18 years old girl and she had a cancer. And the doctor said that she has two years to come. And I made an interview with her. I was about her and the answers she gave me. And the answers which I quoted in my speech, which was called Start to Act, was so full of insights and full of personal impressions and feelings that it sounded really fresh. There is nothing new under the sun, you know, Solomon said, but if you take a, a thought and put it through your personal experience, it sounds new and fresh.

You mentioned a moment ago. Your stories. In a moment, I'm going to ask you to share what you think of as your own signature story with our audience. But first, quick reminder, you're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. If you like the show, please subscribe. Better yet, give a rating on itunes. Better still, forward the link to the show to friends, family members, colleagues, others who you think could benefit from our content. Our guest is Sergey Kuzan. You can find out more about him by going to his website, S E R G E Y K u z I n.com he is an internationally renowned media trainer, public speaking coach, and business trainer based in Russia. Sergei, what is your favorite signature story that people come up to you afterwards and are repeating it back to you?

Well, it's hard for me to think about a particular one. I already told the story about the way I found myself in this life when I used to work as an interpreter, and after that I decided to work as a business trainer. But now I'm thinking about, you know.

The story.

Of an HR director in a big four consulting company. And I had a meeting with her at about 10pm she was very tired. And I was very tired, actually, because I was waiting for your. For her.

Oh, wait, I thought you took naps all the time.

Just kidding.

Not that day.

Okay. And, you know, and I asked her, what do you have to say? And she took me like four pages of text which her assistant was writing based on what she, what she told her. I looked through the text and found all those corporate mantras about effectiveness, about the need to delegate to manage more people, you know, to incorporate some changes into our everyday life, all that banal stuff that comes from speech into speech into speech. And I looked her in the, in the eye and said, what do you believe? And she said, I believe in God. And I said, okay, it's great that you believe in God, but what do you have, what do you really believe with regards to the subject of your speech? And she said, you know, I have to talk all these things, you know, and she gave me these four pages of text. And I said, forget about the text. You know, imagine that you're not going to have 400 people in front of you. You're going to have just one friend sitting in front of the table. On the other side of the table, you're having a cup of coffee. Just tell me one thing that you believe with regards to the subject of your speech. And she said, everyone is hr. And I said, what? She said, everyone is hr. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, you know, if you're a manager, you've got to be able to recruit perfectly well and motivate people and try to help them develop within the organization. So if you work here, you've got to be in hr, regardless of your real position and regardless what's written on your business card. And I said, do you believe that? And she said, yes, from zero to 10. How much do you believe that? She said 10. And that's the way we found the point of passion. You know, once you find the point of passion and help or help the speaker find a point of passion, everything goes by itself. All those examples, statistics, references, quotes. After that, we started structuring the speech, and in two hours or less, we prepared something drastically different from what she initially had. And it was the biggest and most successful speech she ever delivered. Because a year ago, before that, she was afraid to speak so much that she wanted to retire, you know, before. Before the time. But when she found the point of passion, everything went. And I felt like I really, you know, help people. I found that point of passion that made me really happy.

Fantastic example. And I do want to clarify, because I think a lot of people hear this and they say, well, that sounds wonderful, that sounds great. But somehow my topic, my business is different. I love passion. And other speakers, if they're talking about cancer or overcoming their whole family dying or this or that. But I'm just giving a quarterly report on revenues, and my response, interested in your take is you might not think of it as passion, but what is it you care about that's really important? 89 bullet points on a PowerPoint can't all be important. Which one of these points are so important that you're going to be upset if people don't understand and remember and just coming at it from a slightly different standpoint. But certainly if someone can genuinely feel passionate about something, it's almost impossible for them not to be a moral, Much better speaker.

Yes, I believe that even if you're talking about pencils, you can find your point of passion. It's always possible. It's just the way. You just have to start looking for it. Most of the people don't even start doing that.

Sergey, I love your passion for your craft. I don't want to end on a negative note, but I do want to give, I try to give this opportunity to all of our guests. I'd like to give you the opportunity to debunk some of the bad public speaking advice out there, because I'm constantly overwhelmed with how much bad advice there is. As recently as yesterday, there was a front page story in the New York Times about a major American university in their business school having students practice their speeches in front of dogs because they are, quote, non judgmental. Yeah, they're non judgmental. They also don't understand anything you say or going to remember anything you say or take any actions. So to me, it's just an idiotic waste of time. But I want to know from you, what do you think are some of the worst pieces of advice out there that actually harm people when it comes to their presentation and communication skills?

Well, the advice I want to mention is pretty funny, but I've been fighting with it for years now because of the book by Ron How I Can See youe Naked. At every public speaking training, you would hear an advice from every participant that they, when they say that, you know, in order to fight your anxiety, you have to imagine your audience naked. And when I ask the questions, could you please raise your hands those of you who have tried to imagine this audience naked or any other audience naked, and no one does because you know, it's something from theory. It's a funny theory which doesn't work. And as far as I know, Ron Hoff did not actually recommend to imagine that you're talking to a group of naked people.

You're absolutely right. It's a good one liner. It's a good joke. A, nobody does it. B, if they did, you'll find two big problems. Number one, either your audience is too disgusting and you won't be able to focus, or it's a little too exciting and you won't be able to focus.

That's true. That's true. Also coming from this same idea. Imagine that they are little pink rabbits. Imagine that they're little kids. Imagine that they're animals, you know, to fight your anxiety. I think all that doesn't work. And even if it helps you feel a little bit more confident, I believe that there is a danger or risk that you start talking down to those people.

Yeah. That can come across as condescending if you're talking to your audience as if they're children. How about just talk to them like they are human beings the way you would with one friend.

Pink naked rabbits or something like that.

Yeah. Next thing you know, you're patting them and rubbing them behind the ears. That's not going to go over well, especially with the HR department. So since we're all a part of HR now, any final tips or advice that you have for the audience on how they can be better communicators.

Well, when I was writing a book, the media man, a friend of mine asked me why you're writing that book? You're only like 27 years old. Have we ever talked to the media? And I said, no, I've never talked to the media. But she's at, why are you writing the book about how to talk to media if you haven't ever talked to the media? And the surprising thing is that I spent like two or three years writing it and in those two or three years I had dozens of media appointments. And you know, if you want to really do something and you start doing it like God or universe, you know, start helping, starts helping you and those opportunities flood into your life. If you just decide to do it, if you decide to write a book or decide to become better public speaking, just do it. That could be, that's probably my advice. And maybe the second advice, I don't know. Do you need only one or two? How many advice do you need, tj?

Well, the last thing, the last thing I do need from you is what specifically do you want this audience to do for you? You've been generous with your time for the last hour. How can they help you? Do you want them to go to your website? Most of your books are not available in English yet, but what else would you like them to do? Do you have a newsletter? How else can people communicate with you?

Well, they can first of all, book me and I'm ready to deliver a program which is called in the Line of Fire that helps people become better speakers because I take them through stressful experiences and I believe that speaking in the Line of Fire is like.

An.

Emergency kit which you must have before it's too late. Speaking under pressure is the best way of learning to speak. That's what I believe and that's why I developed this program. And I can deliver it in any forward form format from one hour keynote speech for 500 people or at fully fledged two day corporate training, I can personally come and help them be better speakers and speak like a leader in the line of fire. And yeah, that's it. Probably.

Sergey Kuzan, thank you for being our guest today. For more information go to his website at sergeykusan.com s e r G-E-Y-K u z I n.com and that'll be available in the show notes as well. I'm TJ Walker.

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