The Mindset Mentor - Mastering Public Speaking w/ Jon Vroman

Episode Date: April 2, 2018

Episode 409 -  The #1 fear in the world is public speaking. So in this episode I have the top-rated college public speaking in the world to give tips on how to overcome that fear and master your mindset! Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

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podcast designed to transform you from who you are today into who you want to be. There's no fluff here, just life-changing content. My name is Rob Dial and the podcast starts now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial, and I'm very excited for our first ever second time speaker on the podcast. I guess that's the correct way of saying it. But we have Jon Vroman on. And if you remember last time Jon was on, I was saying that Jon is probably the best public speaker that I've ever seen in person in my life. And I have seen quite a few.

And the reason why is just there's a lot of reasons. His presence. I love how he uses proximity and walks around in the crowd and actually brings people along in his stories. And what I wanted was to have John on. And the reason why is because I wanted to take some of his public speaking tactical tips and bring it to you guys so you can have a little bit more of an idea of how to improve at public speaking, whether you're brand new

and you're just starting to give presentations at work, or if you're a little bit more advanced and you're actually going on and giving public speaking and maybe even out to some of the people who might be actual public speakers as a profession. So, John, how are you today? Hey, Rob. I'm great, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm excited about this. And the reason why is because I know that you've been a public speaker for... The first time I met you was actually right after a speech that you gave. And I still remember the exact spot. We were in South Florida and it was right after a conference. And it was incredible. And I just loved how you brought

this presence onto the stage. And I remember at that point in time, I was doing a ton of public speaking. I ran a Cutco office at that time. And I wasn't even taking notes as much of what you were saying. I was definitely taking notes on that. But I was taking notes on what you were doing because I was at that point in my career where I was really trying to be more advanced. So I'm excited to have you on because I know that your public speaking is your actual career. And you've been rated the number one public college speaker in the United States twice in a row. And I want to talk to you a little bit about public speaking. And

I know that you're also from Cutco as well. But if you could give a little bit of a background of how your public speaking started, and then a little bit of the journey that you've been on up until where you are now. And then once we get into that, I want to kind of dive in a little bit more for people who are on this journey of public speaking. Yeah, man. Well, thanks for asking. And it's fun to explore the story. As you asked that question, Rob, I started thinking back to early childhood. And my parents would probably tell you that I began my public speaking at about age eight when they would have parties and I love to engage and really entertain their guests. Actually, I could even go back further and say,

my mom's gone on the record as saying, kindergarten. The moms who were driving me and other kids to school would come back and say, John is quite the storyteller. So I think this was something that I appreciated very early on. But professionally speaking, I think that I took the stage in a similar place to you where it's sales meetings. You're in this world where personal growth and your development is so critical. And so we'd have these meetings and I was asked to speak. And I just loved sharing. I love learning and sharing. So this was my first exposure at probably age 19. And then I did a bit of the speaking throughout my career in direct sales and then into working as an executive, kind of speaking from the podium,

presenting programs and incentives to the company. But it was in 2008 that I took the leap and jumped from my full-time corporate position into the world of being an entrepreneur, speaking, coaching, and running the charity. And I'll tell you a little bit about this story because I think this is an important piece also about when we're chasing our dreams and when we're really finding that deep motivation to go after what we want. And so for me, I knew this was a path that I wanted to go down, but I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be. And so in 2008, when I took the leap, I spent about $80,000 the first year to call myself a speaker. I made almost zero money trying to figure this out.

It was all my savings. And then the next year, because I had been living like $100,000 a year lifestyle at this point, it's very difficult to adjust your lifestyle once you've been at that place for a while. And the next year, I went about $90,000 in credit card debt. And then the year after that, it popped. But I will tell you, there were some really rough spots along the way. And why I share that with you is because speaking is a true passion for me. And at that time, I remember playing out the what's the worst that could happen game. I was like, so it would happen if they take my house, if they take my cars. So I live with my parents in the basement. I do whatever.

But ultimately, I played that out. And I was like, nothing was worse than giving up on my dreams. And so I share that as a context because no matter where you are in your public speaking world, if something's a passion and you go after it with all you've got, you can eventually figure it out. And I don't know that I was a natural to begin, but I studied from prose and I really watched intensely and I practiced relentlessly. That's really good. And it's great because we're talking about public speaking. This seems a little bit off topic, but excuse me, in reality, it's not. And I had kind of this epiphany as well of something that you just said about a month or two ago. And I'm currently

completely on this entrepreneur journey as well. And it's a little bit scary, I guess you could say, when you're like, I have no salary coming in. I'm so used to salary. A lot scary. Yeah. And it's crazy. And then I remember I was driving in my car and I saw a person that was a panhandler, a homeless person on the side of the road. And I thought to myself, it's the exact same thing.

I was like, what's the worst that could happen? I have my house and my mortgage, whatever. They could come and get that for me. They could get my car for me. And then I would have seven years to come over the bankruptcy that I would have to file. And maybe I'd be homeless or sleeping outside for a while. But the exact thought that came into my head was, but if all of that stuff is taken away, they'll still never be able to take away my mindset. And that's the thing that's going to separate me and allow me to eventually figure out how to be successful no matter what. That's it. Exactly. And I love that. So you realize this is your passion. This is what you want to do.

You want to be a public speaker, but all of your savings gets cleared one year. The next year, you owe $80,000, $90,000 in debt. Was there not a point when you're like, damn, maybe I should rethink this? And then once you get those thoughts, what made you decide to keep going and keep going and keep going? Because that's the part where most people give up because they say, oh, I failed so much. Maybe I was wrong. So what tips would you give to say, this is what I did. This is the visualization I did, whatever it might have been to make sure that I kept my mindset right. Because obviously, right after that is when it exploded,

and you were able to start making a good amount of money off of public speaking. So what was it at that point? Take us through your mindset when it's going really bad, and you're not making any money to how you were able to push through and actually start making a good amount of money from it. Yeah. Great question, Rob. So the mindset piece of this for me, when it got bad, I just, I remembered, I reminded myself of a couple of core principles or guiding principles, values. One is I have the ability to learn.

I know that if somebody else could make this possible in their life, that I can do that if I just learn and practice and learn and practice. It'll work. I had that faith that this will work. I did at times say, oh my gosh, did I make the right call? But surprisingly, that didn't happen very often. I think I was actually too busy trying to do things to spend a lot of time in the, oh my gosh, what if this doesn't work phase? And I knew that wasn't going to serve me. I had been surrounded by great mentors enough to know that that place wasn't a healthy place to live. So when I'd get there, I would just snap myself out of that by,

again, it was reading great books and listening to great audios. And I surrounded myself by people that were also speakers getting into the business. I reached out to people that were well-traveled down that road and had lunches and picked their brains. I mean, I even had somebody say, you are getting into a very tough business. You have to really want to do this in order to make it work. And I'm glad that I was tested in that way because I realized I did really want to do this. And I just knew the resources that surround us, Rob, I had faith that we could pull this off. I mean, I could go borrow money if I had to. And I did at times, you know, I went out and borrowed some money, you know, to get this going, not an official loan, but I went to somebody that I love and care about and said, Hey,

I've got this idea. I need to fund it. Can you spot me? And it was that bad at one point, you could say. But we pulled it together by focusing on what was possible and then realizing that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Some of the best advice, Rob, that I've ever gotten, and this applies to anybody, no matter where you are. You could be an employee, gotten. And this applies to anybody, no matter where you are. You could be an employee, you could be an entrepreneur, you could be a parent. But some of the greatest rewards are when you show up next year. And it's like the idea is somebody said to me at an association meeting, this is where you pay to go as a speaker and you attend showcasing your skills and then other people attend trying to find speakers for their schools or companies, et cetera. And I remember talking with a guy who was really successful in this

world and I said, what's one mistake that you see new speakers make? And his response was not showing up next year. And I thought that was such a brilliant thought. And that's really been anchored into my brain in so many ways where it's like even promoting a book as an example or whatever product you're trying to create or company you're building or, you know, a lot of times it's like not showing up next year is the big problem. So if you show up 100% next year and you just have that mindset, like I'm in it, I'm not going to give up, then that helps. Now, of course, there's times when it is important to abandon ship. You need to know when to let go. But this for me wasn't one of those times. So I just hung in there. I love that. I love it because most people don't show up next

year or most people don't even show up next month. It's kind of the way it works. You can't plant a seed and expect your tree to be grown within the next couple of days. It's kind of the way it works. You can't plant a seed and expect your tree to be grown within the next couple of days. It's something that what you're getting today is all of the fruits of your labor from a few months before or the year before. So what you're going to get next year is now the fruits of your labor of what you're grinding and working really hard at right now. So I love that. So let's take it back to when you were a beginner. What do you feel are some things that held you back when you were brand new?

Let's do this. How about if you could tell us what are some things that you think held you back and then you improved on them? And then what is your biggest mistake? Because I know a lot of people out there, public speaking is the number one fear in the world. It's like, I think Jerry Seinfeld says,

number one is the number one public speaking is the biggest one fear in the world. It's like, I think Jerry Seinfeld says, most people, number one is the number one public speaking is the biggest fear out of anybody. And number two is actual death. So people would rather be in the casket than actually giving the eulogy. So I want to hear about some times where you might've fallen on your face, times where you held,

it's different things that you did held you back and how you started to improve over from when you were brand new and started to see, started to kind of feel like you got your training wheels and you were getting a little bit better as you were going through it. Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting, Rob. There's so many here. Like as you're phrasing that question, I'm thinking I have a hundred examples that I can use, which is interesting. And I think we all know that we look back on our lives and there's so many mistakes that we've all made. And how do we learn from those is the key. But one of them is this, and I'm going from heart here. I'm literally traveling the road in

my mind saying what was happening at that time. One of the things, Rob, is I desperately wanted to give great value. But when I structured my speeches or my presentations, and again, whether you're listening and you're a professional speaker, or you literally are looking to give the toast at a wedding, or run that weekly sales meeting, or you're pitching yourself to your employers for a new job or promotion or anything, trying to get the job. No matter where you are, the deal is you can approach it, let's simplify this, you can approach it one of two ways. It's what do I want to say and what do they want to hear. And so the idea is I was giving speeches based on what I wanted to say. Now, we can actually find evidence that would argue that you should write the book that's within you that you want to say, forget your audience, just write the book, you know, do the speech, live the life that you want to live. And there's some,

there's some truth to that. But there's also the idea that when you want to really connect with somebody, you need to enter their world. You need to know what pains they have. You need to know what their desires are. If you want to connect with that audience that's in front of you, see, that's the difference, right? One is you're trying to attract an audience by being you and have all these people come to you. The other one is when you're giving a speech, you really need to approach it from the world of that person and say, let me enter their world and what do they want to hear? What do they need? And that's something I failed to do early on was just really understand my audience. And that was a big challenge. I was too worried about what I look

like. I was too worried about presenting. It was my ego that was wrapped up in it early on. And I think that when I really started to figure some things out is when I did start to put my finger on the pulse of the audience. I started to ask more questions before, during, and after the speech. I started to videotape my speeches and I started to watch the audience as I would speak and watch their reactions. You know, a lot of times when somebody is brand new, Rob, and they're videotaping themselves give a speech, you know where the camera is set up, right? It's in the back of the room and it's facing the back of the heads of the audience and the speaker. It's so, it's such an ego thing, right? That we're like, I want to see how I look, but I'm like, why, why isn't it that when we're videotaping our speeches or presentations or whatever,

why are we not setting the camera up from behind us facing the audience? Because that's what we really want to see the reaction of. That's who we want to learn from. So for me, it was starting to videotape, starting to educate myself by asking questions, getting feedback after my presentations was really critical. So I would go to somebody and I would say, you know, I would do this in one of two ways, by the way, I would go to the end of the presentation and say either, or I would say, what was something that was your favorite part? And then I would say, if we had to shorten the presentation by about 10 minutes, what do you think we should let go of first? Which is another way of saying, what's the worst part of the presentation? Right.

Right. And so I would get feedback. The other thing I would do is before the presentation, I might go to a couple of people and say, Hey, it would really be valuable for you to watch this presentation from the eyes of what are your favorite parts of it. Um, and let me know at the end, cause I would really be curious as to like, where did your energy go through the roof? What were you like? Oh, that's so great. I really want to know that those best parts, because a lot of times it's like finding the highlight of your presentation, finding what really should stick. And then you keep that and you start shaving off some of the other stuff that might not be getting the right reactions and try to replace it with other stuff and eventually end up with all A plus material. And that's how

a speech is developed over time. And what I'm so fascinated by, Rob, is that even back from the early days of giving my speech, which I've now given hundreds and hundreds of times, is how much this thing continues to evolve. In fact, as we record this podcast, I'm looking at my wall. There's a mind map on the wall of my speech, which I'm giving tomorrow in Albany. And I will tell you that this is still evolving. This is seven years later. The speech is still evolving. So way back from the early days, and I don't want to get too much into what the advanced stuff is now, but back in the early days, it was literally about figuring out how can I connect with my audience? How can I keep rehearsing this? How can I watch my own speech? How can I get feedback from others? get feedback from others. And one more part here, and I don't want to ramble, Rob, but I want to give your audience one more bit of what was to me super valuable content in the beginning. And that is have some type of structure. Eventually after I got up there and I just kind of wung it a few

times and that wasn't working for me, I was like, what is the structure? What's the framework? What's the formula of a great speech? I started watching them, right? Studying the greats, watching all the videos online and dissecting their presentations. And what I learned for me was this. It comes down to number one, telling a story. Number two, backing that up with some science. Number three, adding something that was what I would call silliness, right? Like it's a joke, it's a playful game, it's an activity, something to lighten the mood, right? Something to just, I'm always asking, how do I bring fun into this? Lightheartedness, joy, right?

And then the fourth part is, what's the strategy then for the audience? Like what's the step one, step two, step three? So let me repeat that. It's like you have a great story and people love great stories, right? So what's the step one, step two, step three? So let me repeat that. It's like, you have a great story and people love great stories, right? So what's the story? And then the second part is, what's the science that backs that up?

Because in your audience, there's always people that love to know, what's the fact behind, like, what are the facts? Where's the case study? Where's the example of that? These are the very logical minded people. And then where's the silly part? Like, what do I play? I'm do something with their neighbor or whatever it might be. And then what's the strategy from there? So guys, now here's what you're going

to do. Step one, step two, step three, and your life will change, et cetera. So that to me was the framework that I learned early on that I then started building on. And it doesn't always have to be that framework or even in that order, but trying to appeal to all different types of people in the audience, keep the energy up, keep the engagement there was really critical. I love that. And I love that you talk about mind mapping because that's honestly for me, that is, I'm actually wasn't even planning on, I wasn't even thinking about this, but then I looked to my left on my whiteboard and I was like, oh damn, there's a mind map right next to me. But when I do a speech, I mind map as well, where I take, okay, here's my speech, here's my topic, I circle it. And I do it exactly like we

were taught in, I don't know, probably elementary school. We had to start mind mapping and brainstorming with other people. You went to a great elementary school, Rob. I don't know. It's just ingrained in me where they're like, okay, this is how you're going to... If you want to do this, if we're coming up with this idea... So mind mapping, I feel like is that for me, it's the easiest way to come up with anything. Whenever I structure a podcast, I have to do mind mapping and I have to just... Literally, it's just like taking my brain and throwing it onto a piece of paper. And I try to cover every topic I can and think of everything. And then from there, and I'm going to ask you if this is what you do. So if I'm somebody who's working for a company, and I'm going to do a mind map because I need to go over

a presentation and I start mind mapping and throwing all this stuff. Is this the same strategy you do where you put it down on a piece of paper, you put down as much as you possibly can, and then you go, okay, what are my key points from this mind map that i need to put and i'll put maybe one two three different parts and then you try to pull all the rest of them and go into it and then from there start structuring it or what is what is your process and what tips would you give someone where if i'm going into my company and i need to give a presentation i've never given a presentation my entire life and i'm nervous as hell and i don't know what the hell i'm doing but i need to go in and give a presentation. And I want to do really well at

this or at least try to impress some of the people in the room. When you're putting the structure together, because I think that might be the first step in it, what would you give as far as tips of putting a structure together for a 15-minute presentation for the marketing group at my company? Yeah. So good, great question. For me, yes, I dump everything in my brain out on paper. I mind map it. I try to keep with a central theme, right? So I even write in the top left corner of the map, I'm like, what's my theme? What's my main point? I'll even write down then if I'm looking through my audience's eyes, what's their pain points? I'll say pain and then I'll list their pain points. And what are their goals? And I'll list that out.

So as I'm doing the mind map and dumping, I'm trying to filter it through those values, right, or concepts. Then what I'll do is if I'm creating a 15 minute talk, you could do this a number of different ways, but let's use the most simple way, which is number one is I would set some type of intro that might be like a two minute intro. of different ways, but let's use the most simple way, which is number one is I would set some type of intro that might be like a two minute intro. And what that says is I understand your problem and I'm making a promise to you. Here's what's coming. So here's why you want to listen. During this intro, you might want to have some part where you qualify yourself as to why you're

doing it. If that hasn't been done in your introduction, you might want to connect with your audience in some way that has that audience say, I can learn from this guy or gal. They're qualified. They understand my pain and they know what I want. Then what I need to do is if it's a 15 minute talk, maybe I've got like two, four minute stories or three, three minute stories, but somewhere and you've got like two to three stories per se and in those stories is embedded an idea or a concept that is addressing the problem and showing a solution per se and then I have some type of close I have some type of in summary of I have some type of where I tie all this together I bring it all together in one place and hopefully into one

theme or one concept. So for me, it's all about living life in the front row. And in my talk, I talk about why you want to live life in the front row. How do you get there? And that to me is the mindset piece. Who's in your front row is the relationship piece. And what's in your front row? That's your environment. So the whole theme of my talk is your personal mindset and developing that, surrounding yourself with amazing people and in an empowering environment. And then the main concept is to act with courage in all those areas. So if there's one running theme in my talk, it's act with courage. Living life in the front row is stepping up, standing up, speaking up for your life. And so if you can get it down to that simple of a thought where you can literally articulate

your presentation and just a couple of key, like you should be able to say the whole thing in 30 seconds. The point of it is this, this, this, and ultimately it's this. And if they walk away understanding this point, then I'll have done my job. And I think that's how I start with the mind map. I love that. So I love that. And I love the other thing that you said before that was you like to video your presentation from the back of the room, but also from the front of the room to see everybody. Because in a sense, you're not just going up there and just saying the same thing over and over again. You're saying kind of the same thing. You're giving the same speech, but you're trying to make it better and better. And it's honestly kind of like an athlete. If you think of any athlete, the ones

that are the best are the ones that spend the most time in the video room and see, okay, how did I do here? Oh, where did I screw up? How did everybody react to this? And so the next step, I think that, and you could agree with me or you could disagree with me, whatever you would prefer. But once you get to that point, you put the structure together, I would say you need to start practicing. And I would recommend videoing your presentation because I mean, everybody has a phone so you can stand up in your room and videotape yourself actually going over the presentation. And I think the reason why is some of the things that people don't realize the most is I think the body language that they have, weird little quirks that they might do. I noticed with myself just that I used to speak way too fast. I still speak really fast, but I just get excited. So it's hard for me not to. But body

language is one of them. And then filler words. A lot of people say, um, and uh, and you know, and we all have different filler words that we use. And would you agree that when someone gives a really good presentation or a really good speech, the reason why is because they've practiced it a lot. And because of the fact they've practiced it so much that there's a confidence that they naturally exude that everybody in the room kind of looks at them as, oh, this person knows what they're talking about. everybody in the room kind of looks at them as, oh, this person knows what they're talking about? Yes. Yeah. Well, a lot of people will walk up to me now and say, that was the best presentation I've ever heard. And I want to say to them, that's because I've given it 500 times. Don't

measure your next presentation against this one, per se, because trust me, I've ironed out the kinks here. And so, yeah, here's what happens a lot of times. This is one of the biggest mistakes, Rob, is that people try to put too much in. They try to memorize too much. If you give a great presentation, you could have like literally five bullet points. I remember the first time I went on TV and I was interviewed, it was like, I had to remember just a couple of bullet points that I could pull from. And you should know those bullets so well that you could talk about them in any order, in any situation. But you should really be thinking about, that's why stories are so powerful, because you don't have to memorize that. You just tell the

story, right? So yes, you need to rehearse it. You need to rehearse transitions, Rob. You need to think about, how do I move from this point to the next point? And is that so seamless that they'll get that? We know, like, you know, we need to rehearse transitions are important. We also need to rehearse, Rob, what happens when something doesn't go our way? Like what happens? So I think this is a mistake for people when they're preparing is they go, what happens if somebody says you've got 15 minutes on the program? And then what happens on a lot of programs is they run behind and then they come to you and say, hey, can you shave five minutes off? Are you prepared for that?

You know, are you can you respond to that in that moment? What happens if something doesn't go the way you want it to? And so I want I want to honor, by the way, that you asked me earlier on, like, hey, did you ever bomb? You know, it was a big mistake. I failed to answer that. But I'll tell you right now that not having a response, this actually sets up perfectly where I bombed one time. I took a joke that I had heard and it was a really funny joke. And I tried to

clean up the joke because the joke uses the F word and I was with a crowd that I didn't think I could do that with. And so I tried to take the F word out and replace it with something else. And I got to tell you, Rob, I got up there and I told the joke and this was in front of hundreds of people. And this was in front of hundreds of people. And this was a crowd, by the way, that had just nominated me speaker of the year. So I was the speaker of the year. I told this joke. And when I tell you this joke fell flat, like there was not a single person laughing.

And here I am, dude, speaker of the year. And I'm bombing this joke. And I don't even have a great response at the moment, Rob, because I literally, I become so well rehearsed in my own speech and I hadn't been thrown a curve ball like this in a long time that I didn't even have the clever response. Like, well, that joke worked better in rehearsal or, you know, like, you know, nothing, nothing. I had nothing. I just literally went silent. Dude, my hands started to tingle. My face, I'm sure, turned beet red. And I just was like, I just moved on. I just went to the next thing. I pretended like it wasn't supposed to be a joke or something. I don't even know. But it was terrible. But what happens is,

in rehearsal, what you can say to yourself is, hey, what would happen if somebody, if I get a curveball thrown like that, where I expect a laugh and it doesn't? What will you say or how will you respond? So I think planning for what could happen is also critical. And that's part of the rehearsal process. Now, you don't want to be a pessimist and think everything's going to go wrong. But I will tell you, what happens if your PowerPoint isn't available? What happens if there's a technical hiccup it are you relying totally on your PowerPoint for that and is that gonna throw you are you ready to go without that what happens if you're this has happened ready you have all

your notes and you put them up on the podium and then the person comes up to introduce you and they walk away with your notes they take your notes and they pull it's like that happens so So what do you do, right? And so the idea is how can you find a way to transition out of that, find humor in that, have the crowd turn to one another and share something so that you can go fix whatever problem exists. You should have backups, you know, as a key.

That's awesome because that is one thing. Since I was a little kid, I've always loved standup comedy.. I was one of the weird kids when Comedy Central first started coming out and I was eight or nine years old and my mom would let me watch stand-up for like four or five hours. And so I would study these people and just... I didn't study them at first, but I started studying them after seeing them over and over again. And the one thing that I noticed is that no matter what happens, the best comedians, if their joke bombs, they've already got a backup joke about how their joke just bombed. That's right. That's right. I've noticed that. Have you noticed that as well? Where it's just like, they just,

they just fell flat on their face, but they recovered so well. Like they had to have, they had to be so good that they practice screwing up just in case they screwed up or it didn't work. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Hey, three people in the audience love that joke. You know, whatever it is to just call it out. Like just bring attention to it. Yeah. I love that. So let's say this. Let's say I've, you know, I work for a company. I might be a little bit more advanced. I've got a couple of promotions. So I have to give some more presentations. And I'm more confident getting up and speaking in front of people. But I want to go from, let's say, a 3 out of 10 to a 6 out of 10, 7 out of 10. I really want to start getting better.

What are some of the advanced tips that you would give someone maybe with stopping the filler words or how to use their body language, voice projection? Or I know that one of the things I noticed about you is you talk about proximity and how you get close to people. What are some of the tips you think that would really help somebody go from a three to a six or seven just to start? What's the easiest way to say it? To start having everybody that's in the room go, oh, damn, John actually knows what he's talking about. Maybe next time we have a presentation for that company that comes in, we want John to give the speech because he really is the one that will impress everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rob, this is so much fun,

man. I love talking about this. So thanks for asking such great questions. Here's what I would say. I'll tell you about my personal experience in the last couple of years. After having given hundreds of these presentations, I think what's helped me to advance, and I'll try to keep it in that, like you said, if you're going from a three and you want to take it up a couple of notches, where might you go? And I would even put myself in that category because I think I've got lots of room to go to become the world's greatest speaker. I've got lots and lots of room to grow. But here's what I would say. One is that storytelling is something and telling

your story or stories of others, the story of your product or your company or whatever it is that you're trying to present is all about figuring out how to expand it and contract it to find the sweet spot. And over the years, I've been telling this story about the super fantastic tollbooth lady. I love that story. It's one of my absolute favorites. We need to turn that into a book, by the way. It needs to be like a standalone book. But the idea behind this story has always resonated with every crowd. People remember it. They send me emails. They're like, oh, you're super fantastic. It sticks. It's a sticky story. But one of the things that's happened is that when I first started telling it, Rob, people would laugh a lot. And then what

happened, I went through this period where people didn't laugh at all. And I was like, what's happening? I've literally told this story, you know, 50 times and now people aren't laughing. Whereas before they used to laugh. And so I became obsessed with, well, how is that possible? And I started learning about how it's the way you tell stories. It's the, it's the, it's the tonality. It's the tempo. It's, it's when you pause, it is, um, adding a word in, taking a word out. I remember, I think it was, um, it was, maybe it was on a Tim Ferriss show. He was interviewing Whitney Cummings and she was talking about how she wrote this joke for somebody and they changed one word and the joke didn't work. And she talked about how

literally it's that, it's the essence of trying to figure out how to expand something to give it real depth and volume and characteristic and to describe it, but not to do that so much that you lose the story. And also not to make it so simple and cut out so much that there is no backbone to the story and that there's nothing there. It's not meaty enough. But you breathe in and out with this story over time and you figure out where's the sweet spot. And a lot of that's just trial and error. It's just figuring it out. It's like great comedians going in

and practicing their jokes in smaller clubs before they take it to their big specials. So for me, what takes somebody to the next level is the art of communication, which is the figuring out literally how many words they can put into that story where they're going to lose it on either side, too short, too long. And learning when to pause. I remember I was already a paid speaker. I was speaking 50 times a year. I was taking care of my family and people were coming to me for advice. And yet I'm

still growing so much at this point. I remember giving a speech and this guy who I respect tremendously is also a great speaker. He comes up to me at the end. He goes, John, here's a point when you, or here's an idea. If you, cause I had asked, right? I'm always soliciting ideas. Hey, tell me what you think. So I had this guy in the audience and he walks up, he says, here's my idea. When you make your big point, don't be walking as you say it. Like if you're about to reveal the big aha, the big point, the big moment, stop, anchor your body and say your point and then pause and let that land. Because remember this, Rob, that you may have said this a hundred times and you know

this story so well and you've lived it and you've experienced it. So the tempo in your mind is very different than the tempo in the audience's mind who's hearing it for the very first time. They need longer to process it. They need longer to capture that. So you need to stop and pause and let it land and let that echo and let that boom hit. And because it's a big idea. He's like, you just breezed right over your big idea. Like you were like, here's the big reveal. And then you just right on. So you can talk fast, you know, right?

There's no problem with that because, you know, I know really excellent communicators that are just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But when they get to their big idea, it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they let it land. That's awesome. So understanding the power of the pause. No, I love that because it's like you said, you put your big idea, you pause and you let it land. And the reason why I think I love that the most is because it's like you said, where people have to have time to process it.

And I think that if I'm, once again, if we're the marketing team and I'm giving a presentation, the marketing team, and I go, you know, this is our biggest mistake. And here's the numbers of why it actually was the biggest mistake. And this is what it did to our business. Yeah. And then you pause and people, their next reaction is, Yeah. And then you pause and people, their next reaction is, oh shit, like this is a really big deal. When you do those power pauses and that's, that's a little bit more of advanced stuff. Even, even further is the power pauses and knowing when to use them, but super powerful when you do get to that point. So, um, I do want to be mindful of your time cause I think there's really good stuff in here, but, um, I know that we were

speaking about, you have a webinar coming up. And what I'm actually gonna do is I'm going to push this interview to Wednesday, which means that when it comes out on Wednesday, two days after that, I think is when you have your webinar. Is that correct? It's coming up on Friday. Yeah, that's right. So what I'll do is I'll put this on Wednesday, which means that your webinar will be two days after this comes out. So if you could tell us a little bit about your webinar, and then what you're going to be covering, because I know it's with John Berghoff,

who was on the podcast last week. So both Johns within one week have been on the podcast in the exact same time. So if you could tell us a little bit about the webinar you both have coming up. Yeah, well, I think if you're listening to this right now and presenting and speaking is something that you want to improve upon,

then yeah, we've got this call, this webinar. We're going to talk about where to start when planning your communications, Rob. Where's literally step one, regardless of whether you're brand new or you've been doing this for a lifetime. We're going to talk about how to structure and organize your content. We're going to dig into that concept of the mapping a bit. We're going to talk about how when you model the best speeches throughout history, what are the consistent running themes that we find as we've evaluated and dissected dozens of those. We're going to talk about how to create some permanent,

you know, transformation with an audience by using storytelling. So we, we take it a little further, um, you know, on that concept, which I'm really passionate about of storytelling. And those are some of the big ideas, but this is, um, we're doing this as a preview to our, you know, our live event that we have in March on the 24th and 25th, which we're really pumped about. And we want to share with people what we've learned over the years. John Berghoff, as you may have already shared, is just maybe the world's greatest facilitator, trainer. He is just phenomenal. He is also the designer and creator of the Best Year Ever Blueprint event

that we had in San Diego, 330 people, 13 different countries. It was epic. And this guy knows his stuff and we've partnered up and we're going to bring it to the world. So we're really excited. Thanks for mentioning it

and thanks for supporting. So, well, I appreciate your time. I'll put all the stuff in the show notes. And one more time, the address where they can get to you is what? SpeakerTrainerExperience.com slash webinar. Great. All right, John, I appreciate your time. I hope you have a great day. Thank you, buddy. All right. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at MWFMotivation.com.

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