The School of Greatness - 70 Carmine Gallo: Public Speaking Secrets That Moves Audiences

Episode Date: June 2, 2014

You're in the middle and 50,000 people are waiting for you to speak. What's coming up for you? Are you shaky, nervous and unsure of yourself? Are you prepared, alive and ready to leave the audience spell bound? To learn more and get a resource list of everything mentioned in this show, go to www.lewishowes.com/70

This is episode number 70 with Carmine Gallo. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Hey, greats.

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. And I want to ask you a quick question. I want you to imagine for a second what it would be like standing in the middle of a stage in front of a 50,000 person stadium with all the lights and attention of everyone's eyes in this stadium focused right into the middle of the stage where there's one mic and you standing in front of that mic. would you be sweaty, clammy, be trembling, knees shaking, stuttering, stumbling over your own words, or would you be on fire? Would you be passionate? Would you be excited? Would you be confident? Would you know exactly what to say and how to present it in a way that effectively moved each member of that 50,000 person stadium to take action on whatever it is you were talking about. How would you feel?

What would come up for you? What's coming up for you right now? Do you think you'd be ready and prepared right now to present in a confident manner to get across the message of your life to someone else? Well, I have a treat for you today. And I've got Carmine Gallo on, who is an author and an expert in public speaking. And he's got a book out called Talk Like Ted. And for me, I'm a huge fan of TED Talks.

I don't know if anyone else here listens to TED Talks, but I'm assuming a lot of people do. But they're always so inspiring. Some are more inspiring than others. But for me, the top TED Talks are extremely inspiring. And there's a lot I get to take away from some of these individuals. And there's a lot I get to take away from some of these videos I watch. But what's cool about this episode with Carmine is he breaks down exactly what works and what doesn't work and how you can apply this to your own speech, whether it's to a business meeting, whether you're pitching to get a new job, whether you're selling a product to a potential customer, or you're selling in front of a huge audience, or you're giving a TED talk. He breaks it all down in this episode, and I'm extremely

excited to bring him on. Before I do bring him on, I want to just give you guys a quick heads up. I'm going to be gone, actually, over the next couple of weeks. I'm going to be in Brazil and Uruguay competing with my USA national team for Team Handball. We've got a big tournament coming up, the Pan American Championships. And if we get in the top three, then we go on to the World Championships next year. So I've been training hard, getting ready. Hopefully you guys will root me on from afar. And if anyone's down in Montevideo, in Uruguay,

make sure to come out and check out the games or just say hi to me on Twitter or Facebook, at Lewis Howes, and let me know you'll be down there so we can connect. So with that, guys, I want you to get ready, sit back, ready to receive the information you're about to get here with Carmine in this presentation on Talk Like Ted. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the School of Greatness and thank you so much for tuning in today. I've got a special guest on today. His name is Carmine Gallo. How are you doing, Carmine?

Oh, very good. Hey, thanks, Lewis. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, I'm excited because I've been hearing your name and connected to you through mutual friends for a few years since I heard about your first book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. And when you came out with this new book, Talk Like Ted, The Nine Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds, that automatically piqued my interest. And I was like, okay, it's time to get him on the show and connect and talk and hang out and all those things. So I'm extremely grateful that you wrote this book and the service that you've been giving to people on how to become better speakers to deliver their message, their purpose, their passion, and deliver what makes their heart sing, most importantly, to the world. So thank you, number one, for writing this. And thanks for coming on. Oh, you're welcome. This is what I'm passionate about. So it'll be a pleasure to share the information with your audience.

Yeah, I'm pumped. So let's go ahead and dive. I've got a ton of questions for you. I've got three pages of notes here from the book. And for me, I realized at an early age that I was always inspired when I would watch public speakers. And I remember going to see Tony Robbins speak at a big event with a sold-out arena when I was 16 in St. Louis, Missouri. And he had Donald Trump and Larry King live and all these other great athletes there and coaches. And it was this cool three-day event that he did. And I just remember being so moved and inspired from what he was able to evoke emotionally inside of me to take action in my life on whatever the message he was talking about. And I said, you know what? One day, I want to be able to speak like that. How powerful would that be to be able to evoke emotions and have people take action on what

they love as well? And I was extremely terrified to speak in front of more than two people at a time. All growing up in high school, I remember having to give a senior presentation and was just trembling behind the podium. And after college, I said, enough is enough. If I want to do this, I got to overcome my fear, or at least take it on head on. And I joined a Toastmasters club in Columbus, Ohio, and was so committed to overcoming this that I went every week, I videotaped it every week, I practiced,

had 10 different speeches in a year. And the transformation I had was incredible. And in your book, you go over a lot of the same things that I learned about on how to become a better speaker, but you dive in even deeper. Let's go over first. You have nine public speaking secrets. Isn't that right? In the Talk Like Ted book, yes. I broke it up into nine very specific public speaking secrets that great communicators share. And that includes great communicators like Steve Jobs who never took a TED stage or people who are on TED stages whose videos have become viral because, like you said, they evoke those emotions. But these are public speaking techniques and methods that work for any great communicator

who wants to touch people, who wants to motivate teams to greatness, who wants to inspire people with their ideas, regardless of whether or not you ever take a TED stage. I just use TED to study great communicators. Sure. Now, why didn't Steve Jobs ever give a TED presentation? You know, I think he was too busy running Apple. Yeah. He gave his own speech every time he came out with a quarterly update or whatever, right?

I think Steve Jobs was the world's greatest corporate storyteller. Steve Jobs was one of the great motivators in corporate America and in business period. And when he spoke, it was very motivational. It's very motivational the way he talked about products and the way he fired up employees and got them thinking differently about what their products mean to people. He gave some of the most inspiring business presentations I had ever seen. In 1997, this is still on the internet, 1997, remember Steve Jobs returns to Apple. It was very dramatic after being away for 12 years.

Apple's close to bankruptcy. And at the end of his first major public presentation, he doesn't reveal any new products, but he does outline a strategy of sort of getting back to their roots and getting back to those people that are focusing on those customers that Apple tends to, should be focusing on. And he said that, remember that we don't just make tools, you know, for people to get their jobs done. We make tools for people to change the world. And the way he looked at the product that he made, the way he articulated the vision behind the product was so much different than saying, we're going to build a better computer. That's how he motivated people. And remember that wonderful quote that actually turned into an ad campaign.

In that craziness, he said, the people who buy our products, you know, are the crazy ones, the rebels, the misfits. And in that craziness, we see genius. And those are the people who we are making tools for. He actually, that wasn't just an ad, Lewis. That was actually in a public presentation that he gave to his employees. In other words, that's the way he communicated. That's the way he spoke. That turned into a very famous ad. Here's to the crazy ones, remember? But that actually started from the way he spoke to employees. So it kind of gets back to what we were saying originally and the way you opened

this podcast, which is great communicators can move people. It can create movements. They can build companies. All the great movements of the world have been started by some good speeches. So whether it's in business, whether it's in your everyday business, you can move your customers to action. You can persuade people to do great things on your team if you learn and master the elements of business storytelling and inspiring communication. So the tools are out there. The resources are out there. And I'm a journalist, so I like to serve those resources and help you kind of pick and choose the best methods for you. Yeah, I think it's really powerful.

One of your, kind of going along with this message right now, one of the first TED notes, I like at the end of every chapter you have these little TED notes, which are really cool little bite-sized of information of like tips on what you can do. And you're a coach and consultant as well. I know you work with brands and companies to help them effectively communicate better. And I believe somewhere in here, I can't remember exactly how this came about, but there's a question that a lot of people like to ask and it's, what do you do? And then there's another question that other people ask, which is what are are you passionate about? And in here you talk about how you started shifting this question

that, you know, typical people ask other typical people. And you started asking a question, what makes your heart sing? And can you tell me the story about why you started to use this question and the differences that you saw in people and their communication when you asked it. I'm glad you brought that up because it's very powerful. Yes, I'm a communication coach. That's my day job. I write books. I write for Forbes.com and Entrepreneur and many other platforms. So I love writing and sharing information. I do a lot of public speaking, but my day job is I work with executives to help them craft and deliver their stories, their brand stories more effectively. I used to ask people, and in all of my books, this is a consistent theme,

you have to be passionate about what you do. Now, you know that. That's very, very powerful. Of course, you have to be passionate about what you do. But when you ask somebody, what do you do or what are you passionate about, it evokes some interesting questions, some interesting answers that we then use for communicating their message more effectively. And I always use the example of going back to Steve Jobs, for example. Steve Jobs was not passionate about computers. He was passionate, as we mentioned, about making tools to unleash your personal creativity. That's a very different communication message, a very different marketing message than we build computers. I had a big revelation once I interviewed Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, now the gold standard in customer service online.

And I'll never forget, when you interview Tony Hsieh, he doesn't talk about shoes. And isn't that what they do? Zappos sells shoes online. That's not the conversation. His conversation is, when you ask him what are you passionate about? It's delivering happiness. I like to deliver happiness. How do I make my employees happy? How do we make our customers happy?

That's a very different, again, mindset, a very different marketing message than we sell shoes online. So it's very important to tap into what are you passionate about? What is your deepest meaning to you? What does the company mean to you, your employees, and your customers? So that's a very important question to ask yourself before any pitch, presentation, or you're trying to persuade anybody to hire you or to take action. You have to ask yourself, what am I passionate about? So that question works pretty well. It's much more interesting than what do you do?

Right. However, um, at the end of his last pub, major public presentation, Steve jobs takes to the stage and tells the audience, it's the intersection of technology and liberal arts that makes my heart sing. It gave me chills.

Yeah. Gosh, blew my mind. What a wonderful question to ask. What makes my heart sing? Wow. Now, the answer to that, Lewis, is always different. What are you passionate about or what do you do? Let me give you a quick example from the agriculture community. You and I are both in California. California is actually the leading producer of strawberries in America. 90% of

strawberries come out of California. I work with, simply because I live in California, I work with a lot of technology companies, also with a lot of agriculture companies. But I'll never forget this. This happened last year. It's just a small story, but it's very typical, I think, of what your listeners might find. There was a gentleman interviewing for a job, and he came to me. He was a research assistant, just a researcher, you know, who dealt with statistics. And he worked for a strawberry industry organization. He wanted to be the president of the entire what's called the California Strawberry Commission. It's the commission that oversees all the growers and essentially the marketing arm of California strawberries. So he came to me and we were

chatting one day and I said, okay, his name was Rick. I said, Rick, what do you do? And he goes, well, I do research on this commodity in this food group. Okay. Well, that's not, again, it's not very interesting, is it, Lewis? No. And then so my question was, well, when you're interviewed for this particular role, which was a leading spokesperson role, if you're interviewed for the role, think about what you're passionate about. And he said, well, I'm passionate about the strawberry industry in California, and I'm passionate about promoting strawberries. I thought, well, okay, that's nice. That doesn't really evoke that feeling in me. It doesn't touch me. It doesn't make me want to hire you as a leader for this industry. Then I asked him, what makes your heart sing? I just threw it out. I'm like, okay, this sounds like a really silly question. What makes your heart sing?

And here's his response. He said, the American dream. I said, wait a minute. What does that have to do with strawberries? He goes, oh, strawberries is a stepping stone to the American dream. My family were immigrants from Mexico. They came here from Mexico and started with one acre of strawberries in Southern California. And they leased the land back then and it grew into many, many more acres with strawberries. All the strawberry growers in California are Japanese or Mexican immigrants. Use the fruit and the commodity to live the American dream, you know, and to build a legacy for their families. fruit and the commodity to live the American dream, you know, and to build a legacy for their families. So by this time, Lewis, I have a completely different of a fruit. Right, right. The point is he and then Rick walked in to that interview, knocked it out of the park, and the people interviewing him said to themselves, this is the guy we want leading

the industry. We want him to be the face of the industry. So you go from a research assistant to president of a major commodity group with an interview because you evoke those feelings. But how did he evoke the feelings? You have to ask yourself not what do you do, not what you're passionate about, but what makes your heart sing? And make sure that that, the answer, is what you share. So if you really want to inspire people, you want to inspire people to hire you, you want to inspire people to work for you, you want to inspire people to buy your service or product. You need to ask yourself, what makes my heart sing? And that's what you share with people. I think that's a great question and a great question to ask ourselves and other people when we're coaching or whatever it may be. And ever since I read this and read that question, I was

just like, I've been asking people that over the last few days and I've just been like, man, the responses are so powerful and moving and touching and inspiring. So it's cool. I'm really grateful to have learned this one thing just from this book because I think it's going to change a lot of people's actions

once that question's asked. So I appreciate that. Yeah. So you say storytelling is the ultimate tool of persuasion. So why is it so powerful and how is it so powerful? Oh, I'm absolutely convinced of it. In fact, more and more. Communication is the kind of thing that there's a lot of gray area in communication.

I meet so many different types of people. I've seen Tony Robbins live. Not everybody is like that, Lewis. Sure. And there's many people of a completely different type of personality, and yet they're just as persuasive. So communication, there's always something to learn about communication. And so I've always known, as I'm a journalist, I was trained as a journalist. I went to Northwestern for a master's degree, and then I went to CNN.

I've worked as a journalist most of my career. I guess I've intuitively understood that the ability to tell a story sets people apart. How do we start all the articles that we write? Read a newspaper article in the New York Times. They always start with the story of somebody and then broaden it out. And yet in business today, we rarely tell stories. Stories, personal stories especially, inform, they illuminate, they inspire people. But very few people know how to tell a story. And yet, storytelling triggers movements. It's all about story.

So let me give you a specific example. And I think this will be tangible to your listeners. And this is exactly what I mean by storytelling. Most of your listeners are probably familiar with Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. And I'm sure they're very familiar with the movement that she essentially started, which is called Lean In, convincing and encouraging young women in business jobs across America to lean in and to reach the goals that they had in their careers, for example. I argue that we never would have heard of this movement. Millions of women around America would not be leaning in if it had not been for a TED Talk that Sheryl Sandberg gave in, I think it was 2010. It was an 18-minute or less conversation about why we have too few

women leaders. I believe that was the actual title of the talk. It was a conversation. So that led to that video, which is still online. If you go to TED.com, you can watch it. That video of Sheryl Sandberg went viral. It led to a best-selling book called Lean In, which led to the movement. Here's the thing about storytelling. Sheryl Sandberg recently acknowledged that she was prepared to deliver a presentation that was, in her words, chock full of data and no personal stories. That was her exact quote, Lewis. It was chock full of data and no personal stories. That was her exact quote, Lewis. It was chock full of data and no personal stories. A friend of hers pulled Sandberg aside before the presentation and said, you seem a little out of sorts. What's going on? And Sheryl Sandberg opened up to her and said, ah, you know, I just

flew out here from California, but I had to leave my daughter who was screaming and tugging at me and saying, Mommy, Mommy, don't go. Don't leave me. And the friend turned to Sandberg and said, Why don't you tell everybody that story? Why don't you be more transparent? Lower your guard and let people in. Be authentic. And Sandberg, her first response was,

You want me to tell that personal story in front of everybody? That wasn't her mindset. Her mindset was, but I'm a data person. I'm going to tell you about women in the glass ceiling and how many people are in executive positions, and I've got all the data. I'm a data person. Finally, she realized, she's got a point. I mean, if I'm going to touch people emotionally and I'm going to share my passion, I want to connect with people and evoke that response from people. I need to let them in. And the only way I'm going to let them in is by sharing my personal story.

Guess what, Lewis? That 18-minute video goes viral of the storytelling. Stories trigger movements. Stories spark movements. That's the way you get people in mass to do something. Data is a supporting point, but the stories come first. So business professionals, entrepreneurs, anybody who wants to change their life and change the world in some way must communicate through the power of story, must learn how to tell better stories and communicate stories. That's how you touch people emotionally. And if we don't touch people emotionally, then persuasion never happens. You can't even get to step two. Yeah.

And you talk about it on page 48, actually, of your book, 4748, about kind of the three parts of Aristotle's, I guess, components of persuasion. I believe that's what this is, where it's the pathos, the ethos, and the logos, right? Yes, absolutely. So can I, right? Yes, absolutely. So can I explain that? Yes, please. Okay. So on page 48, there is an image of Aristotle with a pie chart next to him. Aristotle is the father of persuasion.

So in communication theory, you know, we communication geeks like to refer to Aristotle time to time. But here's what happened. I watched and then I interviewed a gentleman named Brian Stevenson. So Brian Stevenson is a civil rights attorney. Go to TED.com or look him up on the internet. TED Talk in 2013 that resulted in the longest standing ovation of any TED Talk ever in your history. Longest standing ovation. That's his claim to fame on TED. Brian Stevenson knows how to persuade. He wins, successfully wins, cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. So you might be asking, telling yourself, oh, my audience is really tough.

Yeah, probably not as tough as the U.S. Supreme Court. And so Bryan Stevenson knows persuasion. Bryan Stevenson delivers a talk, and he's a civil rights leader. So he actually delivers talks that are somewhat controversial, because he's the kind of guy who goes into prisons and finds people who he believes are unjustly imprisoned and tries to win their release. As you can imagine, Lewis, in many circles, that's controversial. So he knows that. I've talked to him extensively about this.

He knows that. So what does he do? He tells stories. He tells stories, personal stories from his life that connect you to him, that make him more likable so that you can emotionally have a relationship with him. His first story is always about his grandmother and what his grandmother taught him about identity. And I asked him, Brian, why do you start with a story about your grandmother? And he was very honest. He said, because everybody has a grandmother.

People like me when I talk. But getting back to the Aristotle thing, Aristotle broke up persuasion into three categories. Pathos, which is emotion storytelling right um logos which we just talked about with cheryl samberg which is the data numbers statistics and ethos which is establishing ethos establishing credibility for for your talk. Well, if you take Bryan Stevenson's 18-minute TED Talk and you break it up and you categorize the content sentence by sentence, 65% falls under what Aristotle called pathos, emotional, the stories, 25% data to support the stories, and then only 10% establishing credibility.

This is who I am and this is what I do. But 65% of the content of Bryan Stevenson's presentation, again, the longest standing ovation ever on a TED stage, stories. Sandberg's, which I did not categorize until after the book came out, 72% storytelling. Wow. So do you see the difference, Lewis? Most of us think that a persuasive pitch, if we want to be persuasive, powerful, we're going to get in there and we're going to overwhelm people with it because we're data people. I'm an expert at Excel and I'm going to deliver all the power. And yet the most inspiring communicators are those who flip it around and are much more focused on the stories they tell.

Right. And you talk about three simple, effective types of stories. Can you tell what those are? Well, simply there are stories about brand other people. You could tell a story about another person, somebody you know, or that could be a case study. Case studies are great stories, but those are about other people. You could tell stories about brand successes. So Seth Godin is a great marketer. He gave a fantastic TED talk. He talks about brands, right? Brand successes like Silk Soy Milk. Why has Silk, why has that become such a great marketing campaign versus other types of products? and then there are the most powerful and that's the personal stories so brian stevenson and his grandmother cheryl sandberg and her daughter what are those lewis that's personal stories right so

in order to touch people emotionally make sure you tell stories but they don't always have to be personal they can be stories about brand success or stories about other people. Sure. Got you. And kind of a side note here that I read in your book that when you get invited to speak at TED, I think somewhere in your book you say that you receive 10 TED commandments on a stone or something like that. Is that correct or is that – Yes. Yeah, you do. And I haven't received that because –

I like to tell people, Lewis, and I'll probably give a TEDx talk. TEDx is the smaller independently organized TED conferences. But to get on the national TED stage, the once-a-year conference, which used to be in Long Beach. Now it's in Vancouver. The once-a-year conference, I like to tell people, unless you're Bill Gates or curing malaria, you're unlikely to get an invitation. They're very, very selective, and it's usually people who are changing the world in some way like that. But they do send out a stone tablet, which would be very cool. It's the TED commandments.

Don't ask me to go over all the TED. But, you know, one of the TED commandments that I do like, I like it very much, and I developed a chapter out of it, is thou shalt, and everything starts with thou shalt not, right? Thou shalt not trot out thy usual shtick. That's the actual commandment, right? Thou shalt not trot out thy usual shtick. What that tells us is that, and neuroscientists have studied this, you got to create an emotionally charged event. You have to create a portion of your presentation or your pitch that elicits joy, surprise, unexpectedness, that that, in my opinion, is not trotting out the usual shtick. So people see PowerPoints every day and they see many, many bad PowerPoint presentations. And then every once in a while,

somebody gets up there and does something so different, so unusual, that it breaks out of the usual mold. And that's what grabs people's attention. A great example of that is Bill Gates. Bill Gates has really transformed himself as a communicator. He's become a marvelous communicator because, and I know this as a fact, because he has to learn how to communicate very complex ideas. How do we reduce malaria in third world countries? How do we improve education? How do we lower childhood deaths in Africa? You know, that type of thing. Very complex things. How does he distill that information in a way that grabs people's attention. You got to get people to listen to you first. So what he did in 2009, when he was on a Ted stage was he was talking about

malaria, how malaria is spread, especially in Africa. And he said, and malaria spread as most of you know, uh, through mosquitoes. And then he walked to the front of the stage and he opened a jar of mosquitoes. He said, I happen to have some mosquitoes right here. Uh, let me just open this jar and let's walk around for a bit. If you watch the reaction of the audience, first there was quiet. No one said anything because they were stunned. And what's happening emotionally or cognitively, Lewis, is that the audience is saying to themselves, well, wait a minute.

We just went from the PowerPoint slide to this. Something's happening. That's unusual. They weren't sure what it was. And then, of course, it evokes fear, shock, surprise. So a couple of people start crying. They don't even know what to do. You hear like a smattering and then uh bill gates injects humor

which it blows me away how do you inject how do you make that topic funny and yet be serious and he said we don't it's not just poor people who should have the experience everywhere and people start laughing And then they start applauding and cheering and laughing because I think they realized, wow, we've been hit. We have been touched. I mean, this guy really grabbed us. How did he do it, Lewis? He did it by getting away from that slide. Even though the slides actually were beautifully designed. But he was thinking differently about how am I going to connect people in a way that is unusual, unexpected, fresh. Thou shalt not try it out by usual shtick. Completely different. They expect it.

I like it. I like it. And you talk about four elements of verbal delivery. Now, are there different ways to deliver your message verbally? Isn't it all just one way? Yeah, let's talk about verbal delivery. So, for example, when I had an interview with Bryan Stevenson, again, he knows a lot about persuasion because of his practice in front of the Supreme Court. He said when he delivers a presentation, he thinks about it as how do I sound as if I am having a conversation over dinner with a friend? So most people, when they deliver presentations, for example, they sound very stilted, very stiff, really boring, because I think they get into

presentation mode. PowerPoint presentation to you now. And so everything becomes very inauthentic, and it just doesn't sound natural. So think about Tony Robbins' delivery. His delivery is wild and manic and energetic and high energy. It's very much who he is. Very much who he is. He turns it up a notch, turns it up a few notches for his stage presence, but he's still naturally just a, if you listen to that delivery, the only way he can keep people's attention for that many hours over two days, right, some of his workshops are two days, is by having a very compelling delivery.

Most people don't think about delivery, and yet as a broadcast journalist, I have to think about it quite a bit. So there's different ways of making sure that when you deliver a podcast, for example, you're being interviewed for a podcast, or you're delivering a presentation, you have to think about your verbal delivery, because that is what also attracts people. Not just the visuals that you show, but how you sound. You can alter your verbal delivery in several ways.

The most common ones, at least what I learned as a broadcaster, are to vary the intonation a little bit so it doesn't sound like we're just speaking in a monotone. If I were to deliver this entire interview to use this monotone, we would have had people… They're asleep by now. Yeah, that's it. They would have tuned out. So you have to keep the tone different. Sometimes I'm a little higher pitched. Sometimes I'm lower pitched

and I'm a little more serious. You also have to change the way the pacing of your delivery. So I can speed it up a little bit, and I can talk to you a little bit faster, and then pause. And slow it down. When I'm emphasizing an important point. There was even a point in the book where you talk about the amount of words you should give, the rate of the words and the delivery of the words over the – if you're doing a TED-style talk for 18 minutes, you shouldn't go over a certain amount of words. Isn't that correct? Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about that. I don't want people to get too focused on the number of words, but you bring up a good point. So let's go back to Brian Stevenson,

Brian Stan, you know, I'm, I'm urging your listeners to watch Brian Stevens. His delivery is the best delivery I've ever heard. It's very natural. Why? Because like I just talked about, it's like he's delivering a conversation over dinner. When you're having a conversation over dinner, you're speaking in a natural rate of speech. It's kind of like you and I are talking now.

It's sort of a little bit more natural. It's kind of like you and I are talking now. It's sort of a little bit more natural. It's not a formal PowerPoint presentation. And now turning to slide 28, where it's very slow and plodding, I analyzed Bryan Stevenson's rate of speech. It was about 190 words, which makes sense because an audio book, for example, is more like about, I think it's about 120 words, but an audio book, and I've read audio books, I've had voice instructors or voice directors in the studio with me when I read the audio book, you're supposed to slow it down a little bit. You're supposed to slow it down because people are only hearing it through one channel, audio. So it's important to kind of slow it down a little bit. But you don't want to slow it down so much that people lose attention. But you also can't talk this fast. If I'm talking really fast

in an audio book, you're not really going to to pay attention you're not going to capture a lot of thoughts right so that's too fast so 190 words a minute for just a casual more face-to-face conversation makes complete sense that's completely uh sensical it just makes logical sense which is why people like brian stevenson speak at about 190 words a minute. Then you get people like Tony Robbins. That's more like 225 words a minute, right? So, and again, we're not, most of us are not Tony Robbins. So I can't talk like this, like Tony Robbins, really fast, really fast.

If I do that in a presentation, I'm going to look like a phony because I'm trying to be somebody I'm not, but also it's too fast for just a public, for a typical type of presentation that most sales people would have or something like that. So you got to think about how quickly am I delivering? What's my pace? How many words per minute am I delivering? So I don't think people should get hung up on, okay, now I'm going to pace my time myself, that type of thing, and see how many words. But I do think that it's a pretty good role model. Start looking at people like Bryan Stevenson and realize that the way most of us speak when we're pitching ourselves or delivering a presentation is very stilted and slow and plodding compared to a much more natural and authentic rate of speech.

Sure, sure. And, you know, the verbal delivery is obviously important, but there's another thing that's important or could be distracting, which is the body language and the use or lack of use of hand movements and gestures and things like that. And you talk about one, the power sphere and why you should use the power sphere. And can you talk about the importance of that, but also easy fixes for common body language mistakes?

Sure. Absolutely. language mistakes. Sure, absolutely. One of the best examples of strong body language is Colin Powell. And that doesn't surprise me. Colin Powell, he's a great military guy, right? Great military leader. And I find that military leaders are awesome speakers. There's a viral video right now, I think, of an admiral. From Texas, right? Texas, right. Yeah, it's great.

The military commanders are great communicators. So Colin Powell has magnificent body language. It's what I call commanding presence. It's that kind of presence that just draws you in and makes you feel like this guy's in control. When you watch great communicators, great speakers, start paying attention to their body language, they use gestures. They use gestures to compliment almost every sentence that they say. They use a lot of body language. So if Colin Powell says, you know, we have to be strong, we have to fight, he'll clench his fist together says you know we have to be strong we have to fight we have you know he'll he'll clenches his fists together you know and raise his arms up above his waist uh that's very powerful body language uh Tony Robbins great body language doesn't he I mean and he spreads his arms apart doesn't he spreads his arms apart wide so that that's that exudes confidence. If you can have these grand gestures, that's confidence.

And it gives you the feeling of confidence in the speaker. The power sphere, when you're delivering a presentation, think of the power sphere as going from about eye level to your arms outstretched down to your navel. And I just caught myself doing something really stupid. I'm doing it as I'm saying it. So am I. Okay, wait a minute. No one's seeing us here.

But that is the power sphere. Keep your gestures within that sphere. So if you keep your hands down below your waist, you know, kind of at your side, you can have great delivery. You can have a fantastic message, but the perception that you have of that person, of that speaker will be noticeably different than if that person is using gestures within that power sphere. So try it sometime.

I mean you can tell the difference. I actually came across some research and I talked to the researchers, really well done on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who were pitching their, yeah, literally delivering their pitch in front of investors. Investors were asked to rate, this was done in Southern California actually, investors were asked to rate the quality of the pitch based on what they read. So they actually had to read 10 pitches, or I think it was 10 pitches, and rate the quality of that investment based on what you read. And they rated them from 1 to 10.

Then they were shown, oh yeah, the second part, now that I'm remembering those, the second part was the audio. So then they could hear the entrepreneur deliver the pitch. The rating changed based on the audio. So verbal delivery was very important. But guess what? Then they got to see the pitch. They got to see it here.

The ratings actually changed. One person who was near the bottom of the pitch was all of a sudden number one or number two. Based on how effectively, again the perception changes the perception changes when people see and hear you rather than when they just read your so you can you can read a pitch on paper but then it when you see and hear someone deliver that pitch it could be much more effective yeah and energy doesn't lie whether it can speak the perfect words, but your energy, if your body language is insecure or lacking confidence or not connecting emotionally with the eyes, then you can feel that energy and you're going to feel less connected. Whereas if you're dynamic and connected and looking up as opposed to down to the ground, it's going to have a difference. I can only assume. And Lewis, no, I'll be honest. Very few

people think about this stuff. We know it's important. You hear about it a lot. I tried to break it down very specifically and talk like Ted so people could understand what exactly are we talking about when we say commanding body presence. But very few people do this. Very few people in business today. And I work with top executives from leading companies. Again, they spend so much time on the data or even worse. Is that the right word we should use in that sentence on slide 32?

Let's spend 30 minutes debating that. Or is that the right font size? Maybe we should increase it from 36 to 48. Let's have a meeting on that. Right. And nobody thinks about the emotional connection that you're going to have with your audience through the way you deliver it and the body language. So nobody practices all that. They spend weeks ahead of a major product announcement or a major meeting focused on slide number 231. Right.

So what are some things that people can do to, you know, let's say they've practiced their speech a bunch, whether they're giving a TEDx talk or just a speech at a local community event. What are some things they've worked really hard on their presentation, but you know what? They're a little afraid still to speak in public. They still haven't overcome this fear. And every time they speak, they still get a little crippled. There's a part where you talk about, I believe her name is Amy Cuddy, and I've seen her presentation, but can you explain what she does to increase this confidence in the body and in the mind so that you give yourself a little

bit of an extra boost before you speak. Yeah. Amy Cuddy was the one who also said, she's a body language expert, fake it until you become it. Isn't that interesting? Fake it until you become it. Many people were very terrified of public speaking early on. You said you had a hard time getting up in front of two people. You're not the only one.

Are you kidding? Warren Buffett has publicly said he was terrified of public speaking. Some great preachers like Joel Osteen, who preaches in front of 40,000 people a weekend, was terrified of public speaking. Steve Jobs was not a great public speaker early on. So people evolve. You grow into confidence. And so Amy Cuddy said, you know, people evolve. I mean, they, you grow into confidence. And so Amy Cuddy said, you got to fake it. You just, you got to tell yourself how would a confident speaker act and look like, and pretty soon you become it, right? The one thing that she has that is a very good method is she says, and there's signs behind this. I don't think she developed this, but she talks about it. Extend your arms, you know, before you talk. Stand. Stand up,

you know, preferably where no one's seeing you, so they don't think you're a total weirdo. And I'm doing it now, so people in my office space must think I'm an idiot. You know, stand, stand up, arms outstretched, you know, legs shoulder width apart, and just stand there for about a minute or two. And it increases your, your endorphins and it increases those positive chemicals. Well, when I first heard that, I thought, well, that's silly. Whatever. I kind of overlooked it. And then I saw an interview with Tony Robbins. And Tony Robbins was backstage getting ready. And I've never seen Tony Robbins backstage. he was doing a lot of movement, right? So he was clapping his hands together and beating his chest and jumping up and down. And then I saw him do this outstretched pose

where he stood there with his arms outstretched. And I said to myself, oh, maybe Amy's on to something. Yeah. So again, it's that movement that increases those chemicals in your mind that make you feel powerful, make you feel good. Sure. But I got to tell you, the one method, if you want to overcome nervousness, would you practice?

Would you just get up, stand up in your office space or wherever and practice? Actually practice delivering a presentation many, many times. Some of the best TED speakers, people who have really rocked the show and whose videos have gone viral. One person told me she practiced 200 times over like three months. Sure. I mean. So when you've done it that many times, Lewis, it's hard to be nervous anymore. Sure. I mean. really important to overcome, you know, overcome the nerves before you actually go on. And practice actually works for interviews. Very important. A college student actually contacted me. This was after last season. So he had graduated from a, a middle university, you know, not, not an Ivy

league, but it, but it was like top 100. Uh, but still he had to compete against a lot of Ivy leaguers for jobs in San Francisco, wanted to work at a startup. And on his third interview, practiced, rehearsed the presentation, the, uh, the interview so that he could go in and pitch that product just as well as their salespeople could. He practiced it. He practiced role-playing. What kind of questions am I going to ask? And he recorded himself and he watched himself, the body language, how he delivered it. He nailed that third interview. And in fact, the reason why he called me is because he said, hey, Carmine, not only did I nail it, but the recruiter said, we have never heard our product pitched as well. That's awesome. Can we record you to show our other salespeople? And here's a guy fresh out of college who had never worked for a startup in his life.

It really is about communicating. Communicating effectively changes everything. It triggers movements and changes your career path. Sure. Now, I've got a ton of questions still left, but I want to narrow it down to the final three to save time here. And I want to really encourage people to get this book. So we'll talk more about that at the end here. But I had Simon Sinek on the show probably a few months ago. And I believe he has one of the top five or top 10 most watched viewed TED Talks of all time. And it was a TEDx talk on Start With Why. And I just wanted to know if you have really broken down, let's say, the top 10 or top 20 TED Talks of all time

and figured out the key characteristics that each one of those speakers all possessed or all had. Is there, have you kind of figured this out? What is the one thing that they've all come from, believe in, do, think, say? Is there a common trend? This book is based on, I'll do one better, okay? This book is based on 500 TED do one better this book is based on 500 TED Talks

that we categorized that's 150 hours worth not all of them are good but TED Talk doesn't mean it's great and I have no connection per se with the organization I'm more of a communication observer, what do they do

so yes, if you look at the ones that are the most viral, and that's probably my best way of gauging best, because that's subjective. What are the best TED Talks? So I look at different categories and who are those, which talks went the most viral. Ken robinson is number one and his ted talk he's an educator has been viewed 20 million times wow watch it uh there's no powerpoint there's no presentation to it which is interesting to me although some other ted talks do have great visuals but uh there's a lot of humor humor according to a psychologist who studied the category, is what they call a highly prized personality characteristic. People do engage with other people who do have a sense of humor. But how do you use humor without telling a joke? Watch Ken Robinson's talk. Ken Robinson brings

the house down. Ken Robinson does not tell a joke. He doesn't start with, you know, hey, two people walk into a bar and here's what happens. He's not Jerry Seinfeld. But he uses what's called observational humor, anecdotal humor, self-deprecating humor. That works very well too. So he starts out by saying, I'm an educator. And the other day I was at a party. I'm an educator and I was at a party.

And then he stops and he pauses for a second. Great verbal delivery. It says, actually, if you're an educator, you're rarely invited to parties. And he kind of goes on. And people start laughing and chuckling. And he does a lot of this throughout it peppers the entire conversation with this just observational humor stuff uh it's not meant to elicit a big laugh but it is meant to elicit a smile so by the end of it people are

they're rolling it's very funny he's endearing I don't know him personally, but I like him. I like him a lot. Right. He seems like a nice guy. Right. A lot of that is humor. But the big picture is that I divided it into three parts. I divided all these.

There's three elements that every single one of the great TED Talks have in common. Every TED Talk is emotional, and we've talked about that a lot. It's novel. It's novel, which we've also touched on. Teach me something new. Teach me something fresh, unexpected. And third, they're memorable. And we can talk about a couple of techniques, but they're very memorable. So you remember things about them. You remember Bill Gates and the mosquitoes. So every TED Talk that is the most successful and things that we can take away today are that make your next pitch or presentation emotional, novel, and memorable. I like it. Emotional, novel, and memorable.

Nice. Okay. So just make sure you add all those three components whenever you speak. You should be much better off than any other way. It takes work. It does take work. Great communication does take creativity and a lot of thought behind it. You have to think about what your story is. Right, right. Okay. Final two questions. In the last chapter, you talk about staying in your lane. And can you tell me what that means and the importance of staying in your lane when giving a presentation? Yeah. I actually got that quote from an Oprah Winfrey interview. And someone asked Oprah, what's your secret to success?

And someone asked Oprah, you know, what's your secret to success? And she said, I've learned to stay in my lane, which meant to her, you know what you're good at. Don't try to be good at everything and don't try to be somebody else. Stay true to yourself. Stay true to your authenticity. And I realized that all the most successful TED speakers and the most successful communicators of all time were very authentic, very authentic. It's sort of like Sheryl Sandberg, lowering the bars, letting people in, being authentic to who they are, not trying to be somebody they're not. So Sheryl Sandberg could stand in front of a group of people and say, I'm kind of like you.

I've got some of the same challenges. In fact, today, here's what happened with my daughter before I came out and made me feel horrible. That's staying in your lane. That's being authentic to who you are. People like, we have to be careful with trying to be somebody we're not. Tony Robbins is authentic to who he is. I'm not Tony Robbins. That's not me, although I can still be very motivational and very inspiring when I speak. But I'm not trying to be somebody I'm not. And I've heard that too about myself. A lot of people will say, hey, I really loved your keynote the other day. It was very inspiring and very authentic. So I think what happens is too many people see phonies.

You know, you can spot a phony a mile away. So people see people who are not, they just seem inauthentic, kind of phony. And so I think that's very important to be true to who you are. Sure. No, that's great. So before the final question, I want to first acknowledge you for the service and then the work that you're doing to help so many people like myself to improve our skills and to improve our way of being so that we can deliver our message and deliver what makes our hearts sing to the world in a much deeper, compelling, authentic,

connected way. So one, I acknowledge you for the work that you do and your dedication and your commitment. It's literally changing the world little by little, and it's making a big impact on a lot of people like myself. So thank you. And for everyone listening, make sure to check out this book. If you want to become an effective mover and changer in people's hearts to get them to take action, then it's important to learn how to communicate in an effective manner so that you can inspire and invoke this from people, whether you're speaking on a big stage, in a small office, or just to friends. So check out Talk Like Ted, The Nine Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds.

And it's Carmine Gallo. You can go to his website, to Amazon, I'm sure to Barnes & Noble. But where's the best place for people to find you online? If you can remember my name, you can contact me,

you can connect with me. It's a good Italian name. Hard to forget, I hope. Carmine Gallo. C-A-R-M-I-N-E-G-A-L-L-O. If you go to CarmineGallo.com, there is where everything lives. So you can read more about the Talk Like Ted book. And there's a separate URL for that.

It's called TalkLikeTed.com. So you can go to either one, CarmineGallo.com or TalkLikeTed.com. I'm easy to get a hold of. There's plenty of content on my sites, and certainly the book is available everywhere. Sure. Awesome. And we'll make sure to have everything linked up in the show notes as well over at LewisHouse.com. But to finish up with the final question, which is what I ask all my guests at the end

of the podcast, which is, what is your definition of greatness? of greatness is having a bold, inspiring vision and the passion to communicate that vision. So I think greatness all comes down to vision. I've been thinking a lot about that over the last few years. People who achieve greatness have a big, bold, inspiring vision and that they're very passionate about and that they try to attain. And it can be a personal vision or a vision for a brand. But vision sets forces in motion. A greatness all starts with an inspiring vision. Whether you're Steve Jobs, I've spoken to Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford, about this. I've spoken to other great leaders. All greatness starts with a vision that gets you up on every morning and inspires you to greatness.

Perfect. I love it. Thank you so much, Carmine, and thanks for coming on the show. You are welcome. Thanks for inviting me. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Make sure to head back to lewishouse.com slash 70, that's 70, to see all the show notes that we talked about that we covered here. I'll have a couple of video guides for you guys on what Carmine mentioned some of the top videos on Ted. So make sure to check those out. Some other links in there. There'll be a link to his book. I want you to check out this book. I've got it in front of me right now. And I'm telling you, it's a solid quality book and if you want to become a better public speaker

then you've got to practice and you've got to study and you've got to know what are the best practices to apply to your presentation so thanks again so much everyone for tuning in say hi to me on Instagram

I'm Lewis Howes over there post a picture of where you're listening to this all over the world and be sure to to me on Instagram. I'm Lewis Howes over there. Post a picture of where you're listening to this all over the world. And be sure to root me on this month down in Brazil and Uruguay, getting ready for the Pan American Championships. Go USA. And I cannot wait to see you guys soon. And I cannot wait to upload a new episode coming soon. Again, make sure to check out lewishowes.com slash 70 and be sure to go out there

and do something great. And the first thing they do is inspect my bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers would be pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the covers would be pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the

headboard, and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. It was a simple task, mundane at best, but every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs. But the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another.

And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made. That you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. So if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. Outro Music Bye.