March 20, 2024 • 50 mins
In the latest episode of "Growth Talks," we delve into the art and science of public speaking with none Andrea Pacini, a renowned speaker, author of the pivotal book "Confident Presenter," and a seasoned coach in the realm of public speaking.
This conversation uncovers the nuances of enhancing presentation skills, pinpointing common pitfalls to avoid, and strategies for effectively conveying your message to your audience.
Andrea shares invaluable insights and actionable tips that are bound to elevate your public speaking game, whether you're addressing a boardroom or captivating a stadium full of listeners.
If you're looking to refine your presentation skills and communicate with confidence and clarity, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom.
Tune in to the full episode of "Growth Talks" and take the first step towards transforming your public speaking journey.
This is Andrea's book:
https://amzn.to/3TJ8Jcb
📚 Suggested book:
https://amzn.to/3TFqglp
https://amzn.to/493ZYOf
https://amzn.to/4a1pODK
https://amzn.to/4a0xC8J
https://amzn.to/3IKUUU2
https://amzn.to/3THrdtf
🛠 Suggested tool:
https://chat.openai.com/
👍 Follow our guest here:
https://www.ideasonstage.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/apacini/
🧲 Watch my free lead generation course:
https://gaito.link/skillshare
🤖 Watch my free ChatGPT course:
https://skl.sh/3ZKHFcV
🙏 Subscribe to the channel:
https://gaito.link/subscribe
📚 Download the Reading List:
https://gaito.link/gtbooks
This conversation uncovers the nuances of enhancing presentation skills, pinpointing common pitfalls to avoid, and strategies for effectively conveying your message to your audience.
Andrea shares invaluable insights and actionable tips that are bound to elevate your public speaking game, whether you're addressing a boardroom or captivating a stadium full of listeners.
If you're looking to refine your presentation skills and communicate with confidence and clarity, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom.
Tune in to the full episode of "Growth Talks" and take the first step towards transforming your public speaking journey.
This is Andrea's book:
https://amzn.to/3TJ8Jcb
📚 Suggested book:
https://amzn.to/3TFqglp
https://amzn.to/493ZYOf
https://amzn.to/4a1pODK
https://amzn.to/4a0xC8J
https://amzn.to/3IKUUU2
https://amzn.to/3THrdtf
🛠 Suggested tool:
https://chat.openai.com/
👍 Follow our guest here:
https://www.ideasonstage.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/apacini/
🧲 Watch my free lead generation course:
https://gaito.link/skillshare
🤖 Watch my free ChatGPT course:
https://skl.sh/3ZKHFcV
🙏 Subscribe to the channel:
https://gaito.link/subscribe
📚 Download the Reading List:
https://gaito.link/gtbooks
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Choo, everyone, and welcome backto Growth Talks. I'm rough your host
and my guest today is Andrea.Hi Andrea, and welcome to the show.
Thank you, thank you. I'mlooking forward to this conversation. Thanks
for yeah. Man. So Iknow that you have, you know,
watched several episodes of this podcast,so I know that you know the first
(00:22):
question. But we usually start,you know, with a simple one with
a classic and it's telling us yourstory. So who's Andrea? What's a
sorry? Sure, I'll give yousomething and then, of course, ra
I feel free to take it whereveryou want. But I'm a presentation coach.
(00:43):
And the reason why I'm so passionateabout all things public speaking is because
when I was a little kid growingup in Italy, like you, I
grew up in a family of verysmall business owners. My parents have always
been running their own very small businesstogether. They still do, and so
(01:06):
as a kid, I saw theirchallenges because raising four kids while trying to
run a business is not easy.As you know, Raff, I have
won and that's already enough for me, So four kids it wasn't easy.
But I also saw the spark andentrepreneurial mindset, the proactive approach to life.
And so that's why I always wantedto be an entrepreneur, to try
(01:29):
and run my own thing. Now. I don't know about you, Raff,
but for me, in reality,there remained a dream for a long
time because before doing what I donow, I tried many things. I
started many projects. All of themfailed, but it was useful because in
that process, what I realized wasthat there are so many great ideas that
(01:51):
fail, not because of the ideasthemselves, but just because of the way
they are presented or communicated. Andthat's why them to cut it show for
you. That's why eventually I becamea presentation coach. That's why my mission
is to stop great ideas from failingjust because of the way they are presented.
My vision, raf if you want, is to help hundreds of thousands
(02:14):
of business leaders, inspire the audiences, increase the influence, and why not
make a positive impact in the world. I believe that we can make a
positive impact in the world, andwe can do that thanks to the power
of our communication. Wow, justout of curiosity, what's your parents business?
(02:34):
They do? So? I comefrom Les Marque, which is,
as you know, a small,small region in the middle of the country
and in our region, everybody makesshoes, and so they are in the
shoe business. They don't make thefinal product, so they make just the
soul of the shoes, but theyare in the in the shoe business.
(02:57):
And do you think that there issomething of what you're doing down today that
somehow started over there? I mean, apart from the main idea of you
know, helping people presenting their ideas, do you think there is something that
you learned, you know, watchingthem, observing them, you know,
and observing the way they were runningthe business, and of course presenting ideas
(03:23):
to to customers and you know andstackholders and others. What what I've learned
has very little to do with presentingand public speaking. But the main thing
I've learned, which is for memuch more important, that is an approach,
(03:43):
an approach to to life. Andso when I when I said that,
I could see that the the proactiveapproach to life, not expecting that,
for example, if there's a problem, not expecting somebody else to solve
the problem on your behalf. Isthat the spark that creativity that you have
(04:04):
to have if you want to runyour own thing. It's impossible to do
it so more than a specific skill, because industries are completely different, the
context is completely different. They dotheir business, they run their business at
a very local level in a verysmall town. I'm here like you in
(04:26):
London, so different, different typesof clients, different industry. But the
approach is definitely something that I pickedup from them. M hm uh.
You said in you know a fewminutes ago that you believe that sometimes there
are great ideas and they you know, the project fails because the way they
(04:47):
presented. What do you mean bythat? So I'll give you I'll give
you a few examples, like likein my case. For example, many
years ago, talking about me,more than ten years ago, I had
a blog. The blog was calledEcho Presentation, so it was about mainly
(05:09):
presentation design, the design side ofthings. Although today I cover other other
aspects. Presentation design is still partof it, but it's a small part.
And my my objective was to writearticles that as many people as possible
(05:29):
would read. Now, after afew years, I was very consistent,
not as consistent as you are off, but every week more or less I
would write an article publisher. Iwas super proud of it, and in
a couple of years, two orthree years, maybe two people in total
read my articles, and one wasmy wife. And the idea of a
(05:50):
good blog on that specific topic wasnot I think that it was not a
bad idea, but the way thatthe the overall thing was packaged and communicated
was not super effective. Or Anotherthing I tried was instead of creating content,
(06:13):
I then tried to curate content.So I launched a newsletter, always
in the same space, but insteadof creating content, I would collect what
I thought was the best content outthere every single week on all things public
speaking, communication, presentation skills,and then I would send it out and
again. The dream was to havethousands of subscribers. After two or three
(06:40):
years, I had one hundred andnineteen sub subscribers enough, and again I
think that the idea was not abad one, but the way it was
we can talk about. Of course, there is an execution element that also
plays a big role. But frommy perspective, I also think about that
the communication side of things, theway things are packaged and communicated, makes
(07:03):
a big difference mm the way thingsare packaged and communicated. Sometimes you know
in your world there are people's andI think also experts. Sometimes they say
that the secret, you know,for a good presentation is to be just
(07:24):
be yourself. That's what I say. At least, you know, try
to be authentic. You are onthe stage, you know, be yourself
and everything is going to be fine. Is that true? Is that enough
to be yourself to be authentic?Or there is something else? I cringe
when I hear this piece of advice, and it is true. It comes
(07:46):
from from experts. Just be yourself, be authentic. And for those who
have tried to just be themselves andbe authentic, and then they say,
yeah, I've tried, but whatelse can I do? Because obviously there
is room for improvement. So inmy book, for example, Rough Confident
Presenter, there is one chapter whereI say you don't have to be authentic,
(08:09):
which may sound counterintuitive, but Ido believe that you don't have to
be authentic. So, for example, if you want to learn to play
the piano or any other musical instrument, and if the teacher tells you that
(08:30):
you need to sit up straight andhave a certain posture and move your fingers
in a certain way, would youtell the teacher, no, I'm not
going to do that, because Iwant to be authentic. I want to
play my own way. No,you would just shut up and listen to
the teacher. Or if you secretlythink that your best friend's new baby is
(08:56):
ugly, would you tell them becauseyou just want to be authentic. You
want to be yourself, and that'swhat you say. Now again, you
would just shut up and say thatthe baby is beautiful. I'm saying this
because there are many areas in ourlife where we accept the fact that it
does not make sense to be authenticand we are not authentic. And the
(09:18):
same is true when it comes topublic speaking. When I work with clients,
for example, I encourage them todo certain things that sometimes take them
outside of that comfort zone, andbecause of that, they resist, and
they're resist in the name of authenticity. Now doesn't work for me. I
just want to be myself. Iwant to be authentic. Of course,
(09:41):
you want to be yourself. Thisis not about being Steve Jobs. You
don't have to be like Steve Jobs. You don't have to present like Brene
bra. Of course, you wantto be yourself, but at the same
time, you also want to beand become the best authentic version of yourself.
So that's why I think that authenticitySo from this perspective is not the
(10:07):
goal. And how do you findthis balance? Because from what you said,
it looks like there is a balancesomewhere in the middle. So you
need to learn something. As yousaid, you listen to the teacher,
but you maybe also want to haveyour own style. Is there a thing
(10:28):
absolutely absolutely you have? So youneed to have some foundational skills. Foundational
skills in terms of, for example, how do I develop a message which
is simple for the audience to understand, clear for them to follow, relevant
to the audience and the needs.How do I develop a presentation which is
(10:50):
engaging as well? So these aresome foundational skills. If you want to
reinforce your message visually, then forexample, you need to have some foundational
skills in terms of how to avoidthe typical death by power point with lots
of text and bullet points. Peoplecan't read a list. And at the
same time, you also need tohave some foundational skills in terms of how
(11:16):
to make a strong connection with theaudience, and you do that with your
delivery skills. So these are thingslike eye contact, body language, gestures,
posh of voice. Voice is avery powerful communication tool. So we
need to have those foundational skills,and this can only come with acquiring knowledge
(11:37):
and practicing because by the way,any skill, the public speaking, is
a skill that requires knowledge and technique. And when we have this combination of
knowledge and technique, what really makesa difference is practice. So we need
that. But then as you practiceand as you do it for real,
of course, there's a lot offlexibility in terms of how you apply these
(12:03):
foundational skills and make them work foryou, based on what works for you
for your context, for your ownstyle. Mmm. I'm thinking about this
like famous quote I think from Picasso. I'm not sure that says that you
need to know the rules if youwant to break the rules. This is
(12:28):
what you're saying. Also that that'sconnected. So, for example, if
we think about just presentation design,which again is not is not even the
most important thing. So if youwant to be a more credible, confident,
and an effective, compelling communicator,presentation design is an aspect which may
(12:54):
or may not be relevant. Sometimeswe don't have to use slides all the
time, for example, But ifwe just take that as an example,
there are some fundamental principles of presentationdesign like things like without going into too
many details, but picture superiority effect, so we remember visuals much more than
(13:15):
just words or the rule of thirds. I don't know if you're familiar with
the rapt the rule of thirds,which comes from photography. You have the
principle of white space, which tellsus that the more it doesn't have to
be white, but it's called whitespace. But the more empty space we
have on a slide, the better. Again it's counterintuitive, but the more
(13:37):
empty space we have, the easyit is for the audience to focus on
the one thing, that the onemessage that you want to get across.
So these are going back to Picasso. These are some rules if you want,
but then that's what photographers. That'swhat photographers do. So the rule
of thirds is a rule that comesfrom forhotography. But if you take all
(14:01):
the super professional photos out there,it's not that all of them apply the
rule of thirds. We know therule, we know the principle, but
only if you know them. Yes, do you have the power if you
want to break them, But youwant to break them consciously. That's the
(14:22):
key. Often people do it unconsciously. We break rules all the time without
even knowing that we are doing it. But if you break the rules consciously,
that's a different story. I wantto go back on the idea of
being a confident presenter. You saidit twice. It's also the name the
(14:43):
title of your book. What doesit mean being a confident presenter? I
mean, is it about delivering skillsor there is something else? So of
course your delivery skills important. Butand thanks for the question, because that's
(15:05):
exactly why I wrote the book.I wrote the book and I called it
this way because there is a bitof a misconception when you when you say
when I say, when I talkabout confidence in presenting, a lot of
people immediately start thinking about delivery skillsagain, things like I can't a body
(15:26):
language, gestures, voice, postureimportant things. That's that's also what we
do when we work with the client. But it's just a small part of
the of the whole process. Soconfidence comes from three things. First of
all, familiarity and preparation. Forexample, of some time ago, I
(15:48):
watched a video when Kobby Bryant soone of the best NBA players of all
time. Unfortunately he passed away andhe was giving any and one question was
Cobby, how is it possible thatevery time I see you playing, you
always look so confident, And hesaid, the only reason, the only
(16:11):
reason why you think I'm confident isbecause when you see me doing certain things,
I've done those things a thousand timesbefore. Confidence comes from familiarity and
preparation, and the same is truewhen it comes to public speaking. The
other thing is that it also comesfrom following a certain process which goes far
(16:37):
beyond just opening up a presentation tooland putting together some slides. There's a
structured way of thinking about presenting,from for example, knowing how to analyze
your audience and their needs and thecontext, to knowing how to identify your
key messages brainstorming in a creative andstructured way for you to identify your key
(17:00):
messages, to knowing how to translateyour ideas into a clear and engaging storyline
from the very beginning where you wantto be able to capture your audience's attention
to the very end with a powerfulconclusion. You also need to be able
to if you want if you needit, to reinforce your message visually avoiding
death by PowerPoint, and you alsoneed to be able to deliver your message
(17:23):
in a way that's comfortable and convincing. So there's a process, there's a
structured way of thinking about presenting andnot following the process is often what creates
this comfort when we are in frontof an audience, so familiarity process.
And then it also comes from beingable to develop a compelling message. So
(17:48):
there are three key skills that weneed to master a rough message, so
your ability to develop a compelling message. If you need to visualize your message,
that's the other thing, so avoidingdeath by PowerPoint, and the other
one is your delivery skills. Butfor me, eighty percent of your confidence
comes from your ability to develop acompelling message. Without a message, without
(18:11):
a story that resonates with the audience, it doesn't matter how good you are
from a delivery perspective. It doesn'tmatter what you do with your hands,
for example, it doesn't matter whatyou do with your eyes. Message comes
first. Can you tell me more? I mean, that's that's kind of
it's more. It's powerful. Imean the idea that eighty percent of the
(18:32):
final result is from the message.You know, I read a lot of
book about public speaking, I watcha lot of you know, tutorials,
and then keynotes and stuff, andthere is a lot going on about you
know, body language, you know, and you know a ton of voice
and using your hands and these kindof things. But you said that that's
(18:56):
important, but it's just a smallpart of the whole process, the whole
thing. Yeah, so I'll tellyou So, I'll tell you one one
thing which is also very much connectedto the biggest problem I see when it
comes to public speaking, which isconnected to developing a compelling message, or
(19:21):
the opposite, which is the curseof knowledge. And we want we want
to avoid that. Now. Thecourse of knowledge is a principle if you
want that. I've learned many yearsago when I read the fantastic book.
I know that you like that.You love you love books, and maybe
(19:41):
you know the book Ralph Made toStick by the Heath Brothers. Do you
know the book. Yeah, it'sa fantastic book which is all about how
to make sure that when you communicatean idea it gets stuck in the minds
of your audience, made to stick. And in that book they cite a
an example at Stanford University study wherea psychology student in nineteen ninety asked two
(20:08):
groups of people to play a gametappers versus listeners. I don't know if
you know the game rough, butyou have the toppers, and what they
have to do is they need totap out, tap out rhythms of famous
songs on a table. So thinkabout very famous songs like Happy Birthday,
(20:30):
to use songs like that, butinstead of singing the songs, you have
to tap them out on a table. And now you have the listeners.
And all they had to do wasthey just had to try and guess the
songs. Now, before the experimentstarted, the student asked the tappers to
guess how many songs the listeners wouldhave guessed, and the tappers estimated fifty
(20:56):
percent of the songs. That's whatthey thought. Now, in reality,
the listeners only guessed two and ahalf percent of the songs. Massive difference,
two and a half versus fifty percent. Why because if you are a
tougher, you have knowledge that thelisteners don't have, because you have the
(21:18):
songs in your head as you asyou play them, and so for you,
it's very obvious, and that's whyyou find it very hard to understand
why they can't guess them. Butif you are a listener, you don't
have the knowledge, you don't havethe songs in your head, and so
for you, it's not obvious atall. And this is the number one
problem in communication, which is connectedto knowing how to develop a compelling message.
(21:44):
It's not connected to your delivery skills. The number one problem in communication
is the curse of knowledge, whichmeans that once we know something, we
find it hard to imagine what itmeans not knowing it. So, for
example, in your OA is roughyou if I think about you, your
story, your background. You comefrom a very technical background. But even
(22:08):
now, even now that you haveyour academy on artificial intelligence for example,
So when we talk about artificial intelligence, then there's a risk there because depending
on who the audience is, ifwe are communicating certain ideas to an audience,
and if the audience doesn't have thesame level of knowledge about artificial intelligence,
(22:30):
for example, then depending on thelanguage that we use, we may
find it we may make it harderfor them to understand it. So the
course of knowledge is our inability toimagine what it means not knowing what we
know. It's our inability to putourselves in the audience issues. And if
you think about it, raf wesay it everywhere you say, between politicians
(22:52):
and voters, between writers and readers, between sellers and buyers, you say,
between public speakers or communicators in general, and the audiences and are close
hair. It's very, very easyto fall into this trap unless you find
(23:15):
a way to get access to somesort of an external perspective. If you
are enjoying this episode, please checkout my lead generation course. You can
watch it for free on Guido,dot link, slash skill share. G
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(23:37):
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g A I t O. You'llfind the link in the description. I
was thinking about my doctor and myaccountant when I talk to them. I
mean, there is that sad wayevery single type they use, like technical
(24:03):
words, jargons. I don't reallyunderstand what they're saying, and they don't
try. They don't even try tomake me understand. So I got you
and rough and rough, So goingback to your question, and so that's
the issue, which is not adelivery skills issue. You you may be
very very good with your delivery skills, but for example, you mentioned jargon
(24:27):
industry specific terminology. By the way, that's what a lot of people do.
A lot of people use complex languagebecause they think that if they do
that, then they sound smarter andmore credible. The opposite is true if
you look at if you think aboutpeople who you consider smart and credible,
(24:48):
often what they do is the opposite. They replace complex language with simple language,
simple words, simple sentences. Andeither way, the more complex the
subject. Of course, it alwaysdepends on the audience and the context,
but in general, the more complexthe subject, the more this becomes useful.
(25:11):
And it's not about over simplifying things. It's not about dumbing things down.
It's about finding and using language thateverybody in your audience can understand.
And this is just one idea ifyou want connected to the importance of let's
say, the primacy of the messageover your delivery skills. I totally agree,
(25:33):
and I think that's true also forcontent creators. If you have a
podcast, YouTube channel, a blog, a newsletter or something, that's the
way to reach your audience, toreally connect with your audience. If you
are able to somehow simplify you know, complex ideas and then messages, it
(25:55):
makes a huge difference. I wantto go back for a moment on the
process, since you said that,you know, confidence comes from you know,
repetitions, when we read public speakingbooks, when we listen to experts.
I think there are like maybe twotwo main approaches. There is someone
(26:17):
that says, uh, once youhave preferred your presentation, you have to
repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and then you will feel
confident on stage. And on theother side, there is someone saying that
you don't need to do that.You just go, you know, on
stage and you can kind of,you know, improvise. What do you
(26:41):
think, what's your what's your takeon that? Yeah, I'm part of
the former group, so for me, rehearsing is super super important. So,
for example, if we think aboutyour ability to deliver a message in
a way that's comfortable and convincing,and if you think about all of the
possible challenges that you may have thatyou may feel from a delivery perspective,
(27:04):
most of them, if not allof them, can be solved or at
least addressed, simply by rehearsing.And so again talking about books, rough
you made me think of another book, which is TED Talks by Chris Anderson.
Now, Chris Anderson used to be, I think not anymore, the
(27:26):
the the the founder, the organizerof the TED conference, and he wrote
this book, Ted Talks. Andin that book he uses a great analogy.
He says, a lot of peopleand that's that's with me too.
They tell me, you know what, I don't want to rehearse because if
I do, then I sound robotic. And again, going back to where
(27:48):
we started, I want to bemyself. I want to be authentic.
And Chris says that rehearsing is abit like climbing a mountain. If you
want to climb a mountain, thenif you start going up and then you
stop, you will never get tothe top of the mountain. You need
to keep climbing, keep going upso that you reach the top and then
(28:10):
you can start going down. Whenit comes to rehearsing, it's the same
thing. Say, for example,that I know that you speak in public
a lot, and say that youhave an important presentation in a few weeks
from now, and say that yourehearse once or twice. Now, most
people don't do that anyway. Butlet's say that we do it once or
twice and then you stop. Ofcourse, yes you will appear robotic,
(28:32):
but when you appear robotic, it'snot because you have rehearsed often. It's
because you haven't done it enough.You need to keep climbing. You need
to get to the top of themountain, which means that you need to
rehearse a few more times. Nowhow many times? There is no magic
number. So and then we goback to what you said at the beginning.
(28:55):
You said, yes, we needto prepare in a certain way,
but we need to do it.I need to follow my own style.
Yes, of course what works foryou does not necessarily work for me.
But I can tell you that ifI think about my clients, for most
people, I would be interested inhearing your thoughts, Ralph. But for
(29:17):
most people it's very very hard toget to a point to get to the
top of the mountain. So toget to a point where you are able
to appear spontaneous and to internalize yourmessage. You don't have to memorize it,
but you do need to internalize yourmessage. But it's very hard to
do that unless you've rehearsed on averageten times. This is what I see
(29:41):
with most people. And let meclose with this because you mentioned some people
like to improvise. Now, withmy clients, I see two types of
speakers. You have the improvisers andthe memorizers. So the memorizers like to
have a script word for word.The improvisers like to have more freedom on
stage. And by the way,it's a spectrum, so it's not that
(30:03):
you are either one an improviser orone hundred percent a memorizer. Maybe you
are somewhere in between. Maybe youare a little bit more towards the memorizers
or vice versa. However, firstof all, we need to know where
we are in this spectrum. That'suseful to know because there are some important
implications from a public speaking perspective.But also once we know, it doesn't
(30:25):
really matter whether you are an improviseror a memorizer. I would always encourage
people to rehearse a few times,and especially for improvisers, I can promise
them that every time they rehears,they don't have to say exactly the same
things they are improvisers, so theycan repeat the presentation and every time they
(30:48):
can use different words, different sentences, that's okay, but I can promise
them that, for example, thefifth time they delivered the presentation is going
to be much much, much morepowerful than the first. MM. Yeah,
yeah, I totally agree on that. And I also agree on the
uh, you know, the magicnumber. You said at least ten times.
(31:10):
That's usually what I do. Soit depends. I think it depends
from two main factors. For me. One is the audience. So sometimes
if I know that the audience iskind of you know, technical audience,
you know, people from the industry, I try to repeat a little bit
more. And also depends from theyou know, the length of the presentation.
(31:33):
So twenty minutes inspirational tour is onething. Two hours, you know,
super technical presentation is a converte differentstory. So yeah, but I
agree on average, yeah, tentimes, that's what I do. And
that's right, is that that isthe number one consideration for everything, not
(31:53):
just for how many times we're hers. But you said it depends on the
audience. Everything depends on the audience, and what you say depends on the
audience. The key to great presentingand I say, I use the word
presentation a lot of public speaking,but we are talking about fundamental principles of
(32:13):
communication in general. For example,you said, we can apply this to
content creation in general. Absolutely.So the key to great presenting is to
always make it about them the audience. Is to always talk to your audience
about them, even if you're talkingabout you. Now, what most people
(32:34):
do instead, whether they are atWorth or not, is they talk at
the audiences about themselves. You wantto talk to your audience about the audience,
even if you're talking about you.For example, so if I tell
you, Ralph, we have atIdeas on stage, we have fifty eight
offices all of the world, which, by the way, is not true,
(32:58):
just a fictional example. So wehave fifty eight offices all of the
world. I'm talking at you aboutme. If I tell you at Ideas
on stage, we have fifty eightoffices all over the world, so that
you can get access to a customersupporting wherever you are. Now, I'm
(33:19):
talking to you about you, evenif I'm talking about me. And this
is just a simple example, butit can be applied even at a broader
level. The key is to alwaysmake about them. Everything depends on the
audience. I like this one,and I want to ask you something about
this, since you work with severalclients in several industries and you have a
lot of experience in that, whatare the main problems slash mistakes you know
(33:45):
they make when preparing a presentation.So in addition to using a developing presenting
a message which is either too complexor two technique, so we talked about
that already, the other one isthat the very first thing they do most
people do when preparing a presentation isthey just open PowerPoint and put together some
(34:09):
slides. Now I say PowerPoint,it could be any other presentations. Really,
it doesn't make any difference. Weknow that, of course that is
not the very first thing we wantto do. But even if that's not
the case, what many other peopledo is they start thinking about their messages,
what they want to communicate, andthat is already much better than just
(34:30):
opening up PowerPoint. But even thatis not the very first thing you want
to do. So what is thevery first thing? Again, we go
back to the importance of the audience. We need to start. We need
to take some time and ask ourselvessome questions about the audience that Bernie needs.
What do they really need what dothey expect from your presentation? What
(34:52):
do they expect to hear, whatdo they need to hear? What?
For example, you said, ifI'm presenting too a very technic audience,
then they may have some expectations,some needs, some concerns, and so
you need to be aware of them, if possible. What's the context.
Now, don't get me wrong,I'm not saying that, and this is
(35:12):
a very common mistake, but I'mnot saying that if you don't do that,
then you can't create a great presentation. You can, but the risk
is that you develop a fantastic presentationbut for the wrong audience. For example,
some time ago, we worked witha client. Her name is Marie
from Paris. Marie is an executive. She's an expert in leadership and she
(35:38):
was invited by an association in Finlandto give a talk about leadership and she
was super excited. It was oneof the first international speaking opportunities and so
she prepared really well. She knewremember we talked about three key skills,
message, visuals and delivery, soshe knew her message. She told us
that she had prepared fifty five zerobeautiful slides and also she rehearsed, she
(36:04):
practiced properly, and then she flewto Feeland the day before the conference and
then arrived there on the day halfan hour before the audience because she wanted
to make sure that she had timeto set things up. And when she
was about to connect a laptop tothe screen, she realized that there was
no screen. So a little bitof panic, she went and asked the
(36:28):
organizers, assuming that they would say, oh, sorry, Marie, now
we are going to fix this foryou. What they did instead was they
started laughing. They started laughing,and so she says, why are you
laughing? And they say, look, Marie, you want to show fifty
slides. But actually you've been ingup. You've been invited to give a
(36:51):
talk to the association in Finland ofblind people Blind People. Now, Ralph,
I know it's an extreme example.It sounds like a bad joke,
but it happened for real. See, Marie was very well prepared, apart
from one thing. The most importantthing, she didn't know her audience.
(37:12):
She didn't even take the time totranslate the name of the association from Finnish
to French, and she would haverealized that perhaps there was no need to
have fifty beautiful slides. So whatdoes this mean if you want to make
sure you should want to make surethat I say you rough, I'm talking
(37:36):
in general, if we want tomake sure that our presentations are relevant to
the audience, which is the numberone principle in communication before we do anything
else. And that's not what peopledo. That's going back to your question,
that's the mistake. We need tostart with them, We need to
start with the audience. I havea follow up question on this because I
(37:59):
think there are sometimes some situations whereyou don't know the audience and you don't
have any way to have this informationbefore. I'm giving a real example.
So I usually do you know publicspeaking three situations? So one is like
companies, so corporate stuff, youknow, private small group that they called
(38:21):
me, they pay me, theywant me to talk to their you know,
their audience. The second one isuniversities slash schools. And the third
one is like you know, eventslike a conference or something else. So
there are some situations, especially withevents and conferences, for example, where
(38:42):
you don't actually know the audience untilyou are there, you know, at
the conference. How do you managethis situation. I mean, you can
have an idea, a broad idea. We go there, the main topic
is you know AI. So Isuppose it's going to be about you know,
freelancers and entrepreneurs wanting to know moreabout AI. And then you go
(39:04):
there and there are a lot ofstudents that want to learn about AI.
So what's the trick here? Doyou have any suggestions for situation in particular?
Sure? So, you're right,sometimes it's not always possible to have
a lot of information about the audience. However, the reason why I highlighted
(39:28):
that as a key mistake is becauseoften the reason why we don't we don't
know the audience is not because there'sno ways there's no way for us to
find out more about the audience,is simply because we don't take the time
to either ask ourselves some questions aboutthe audience, the needs and the context,
(39:53):
or asking somebody else it could be, for example, at a conference.
I'm not saying raph that this alwayssolves the problem, but if I
also speak at conferences, then Ialways have and I don't want to take
me as an example, but justto give an example, I always have
a say a pre talk conversation withthose who call me with the organizers asking
(40:15):
them questions about the audience. Itdoesn't mean that they will be able to
answer all your questions, but theywill give you some insights. So the
bottom line is that, of course, sometimes there are situations where you need
to make assumptions, and you makeassumptions based on your own experience. What
(40:37):
worked in the past, what didn'twork in the past. That's okay.
But the problem I see is thatsometimes even though it would be possible to
find out more about the audience,we don't because we don't ask either ourselves
or somebody else the right questions.Sometimes, Ralph, it's also possible to
(40:58):
ask directly the audience. Not always, but why not. Many people don't
even think about this as an option. But if it's possible to, we
could send the audience through maybe theconference organizers, a quick survey for them
to answer three quick questions, orto answer just one question, what would
(41:22):
you like to get out of mysession? So I'm not saying that this
is the solution that will work allthe time, but if we think about
it, there are many things wecan do to get more information. I
think the main thing here is doyou actually care about the audience. If
you care about the audience, you'llfind a way. Andrea, thank you
(41:45):
very much for this. We usuallyend these conversations here on the podcast with
two simple questions. One is aboutbooks and one is about tools. Do
you have something that you want toshare with us? Any books that you
love, any books. It canbe related to public speaking or anything else.
Of course, your book is goingto be linked in a description below.
(42:07):
But any more books you want toshare with audience. Sure, so
I can. I can split intotwo parts public speaking books and then say
life life books, which are evenmore important than public speaking. So when
it comes to public speaking, soI'll give you a few authors because many
(42:28):
of them have written more than onebook. But for example, I know
that you know because we had aprevious conversation. Carmangalo, I think is
a great author book books like Talklike Ted or The Storyteller Secret. Recently
last year I think he published TheBezos Blueprints. So great books from Carmeangalo.
(42:49):
Now, my passion for public speakingstarted when I was a university and
I read what I think is afascinating book which is called Presentation Zen by
god Reynolds. And Gar. Ialso interviewed Gar and Carmine as well,
by the Way, on the Ideason Stage podcast Now. Gar wrote three
(43:10):
books. One is Presentation Zen,which gives you the foundation of effective presenting.
Then for those who are interested inthe design side of things, he
wrote a second book which is PresentationZen Design, and then a third one
which is I love the title TheNaked Presenter, and he talks about the
fact that if you want to thisis for delivery skills. So if you
(43:31):
want to deliver your message effectively,you need to present naked rather than for
example, relying on PowerPoint on orusing elect and these kind of things.
So three books by Gar Reynolds,and there's also Oh, by the Way,
Nancy dat great great great books,Slide Theology, Resonate Data story on
(43:58):
Data Storytelling, and also doctor JohnMedina. I also interviewed him for the
podcast now. John Medina wrote anamazing book which is Brain Rules, which
is not just it's not a publicspeaking book, but he covers twelve so
he's a scientist and he covers twelvebrain rules and applications for our everyday life.
(44:22):
One application is communication, so thereis one chapter which tells you what
science tells us about what works andwhat doesn't work when it comes to communicating
our ideas. And I believe thatpublic speaking is a mix of art and
science. So at least that chapteris the whole book is fantastic, made
(44:42):
to stick, We talked by theHeath Brothers. Fascinating book. Oh,
by the way, this is thelast one. I think this is a
masterpiece which goes of course, it'smuch more than just public speaking, but
in terms of communication, persuasion,influence, influence by Robert Chaldini. So
that that is the book if youwant, I think, and that's for
(45:07):
public speaking. Now, apart frompublic Speaking, the most important book I've
read in my life is Men's Searchfor Meaning by Victor Frankel. I don't
know if you know the book rafMen's Search for Meaning. He goes through
his story as a prisoner in Asritzin the concentration cup, the camp.
(45:30):
So the first half of the bookis that story, and then Victor Frankly
is a psychologist psychiatrist, so thesecond half is his psychological approach, so
psychological life lessons coming from the experience. It's the book I've gifted the most,
the number one book for me.Ever, now, last year I
(45:52):
read another book which I'm pretty sureyou read two, because I know that
you are. If I'm not wrong, I think I remember maybe we talked
about in the past. You arevery close to the Stoic philosophy. Is
that correct? Right? Yep?So The Daily Stoic Ryan Holiday is also
a great book for those who wantto learn more about the philosophy. It's
(46:16):
one insight per day, a simpleidea on the stock philosophy and how you
can apply in everyday life. Sothese are two very powerful books for me.
Beyond public speaking, great what abouttools? Do you have any tools
you want to share with us?So if you asked me that question,
(46:38):
say last year or a couple ofyears ago, I would have told you
no, just just a piece ofpaper. I think that if you really
want to be effective in your communicationand creative, especially at the initial stage
of the presentation process, I thinkwe need to forget technology. John Cleese
(46:59):
says that we don't know where weget our ideas from, but what we
do know is that we don't getthem from our laptops. And I agree.
If you really want to be creativeand original, planning analogue which means
a piece of paper or a flipchart or a whiteboard posting note is much
more effective than going digital now today, and again you are the expert.
(47:22):
So when it comes to AI,I've never seen something like that, so
I every day I use artificial intelligence. Now I'm not a super expert.
So for now I'm stuck with chartGPT, but I know that there are
other options. But today, whatcan be done with the help of chart
(47:43):
GPT or AI in general in theprocess or also in the process of creating
a presentation is mind blowing. However, I need to say that for me,
it's very important that it's that combinedwith Remember RAP at the beginning,
we talked about having some foundational skills, so there is still super important because
(48:05):
because if you tell CHGPT, look, I need to and I know that
people do it because I say it. Also with content creation, by the
way, I need to give apresentation on this topic. With this audience
create a presentation for me, sotheir prompt is super generic and so the
output the outcome will be very generictoo. But if you have the foundational
skills to ask the right questions,evaluate the answers, so their their knowledge
(48:34):
combined with what artificial intelligence can dotoday, can do today is is mind
blowing superperfu. No using no youand I say this as a public speaking
coach. Not using artificial intelligence todayas you prepare your talks your presentations is
stupid? Yeah? Uh? Andthe are where can they fund? You?
(48:58):
Follow you? Read you? Doyou have any you want to share
with us? Yeah? Thank you. Now. The main space for me
is LinkedIn so people can find methere. Our website is ideas on stage
dot com. Perhaps just one thingif people want to assess their current presentation
skills against some key fundamental principles ofcommunication, we have a tool on our
(49:22):
website or the url is our websiteIdeas on Stage dot com slash score,
like when you score a goal,and it's a way for you to assess
your current presentation skills in just afew minutes. You answer a few questions.
It's free, by the way,You get a score from zero two
hundred percent, and then the toolwill tell you what the score means for
(49:43):
you, and you also identify asopportunities for improvement. Perfect great. All
links are going to be in thedescription below. Andrea, thank you so
much for your time. It wasgreat. Thank you Rov. Thanks for
listening to this episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and you
learn something new. Make sure tosubscribe to us on YouTube and Spotify to
(50:04):
stay updated on new episodes. Withyour support, I can continue to bring
great content and great guests to thispodcast. So hit the subscribe button now
and I'll see you in the nextepisode.
Choo, everyone, and welcome backto Growth Talks. I'm rough your host
and my guest today is Andrea.Hi Andrea, and welcome to the show.
Thank you, thank you. I'mlooking forward to this conversation. Thanks
for yeah. Man. So Iknow that you have, you know,
watched several episodes of this podcast,so I know that you know the first
(00:22):
question. But we usually start,you know, with a simple one with
a classic and it's telling us yourstory. So who's Andrea? What's a
sorry? Sure, I'll give yousomething and then, of course, ra
I feel free to take it whereveryou want. But I'm a presentation coach.
(00:43):
And the reason why I'm so passionateabout all things public speaking is because
when I was a little kid growingup in Italy, like you, I
grew up in a family of verysmall business owners. My parents have always
been running their own very small businesstogether. They still do, and so
(01:06):
as a kid, I saw theirchallenges because raising four kids while trying to
run a business is not easy.As you know, Raff, I have
won and that's already enough for me, So four kids it wasn't easy.
But I also saw the spark andentrepreneurial mindset, the proactive approach to life.
And so that's why I always wantedto be an entrepreneur, to try
(01:29):
and run my own thing. Now. I don't know about you, Raff,
but for me, in reality,there remained a dream for a long
time because before doing what I donow, I tried many things. I
started many projects. All of themfailed, but it was useful because in
that process, what I realized wasthat there are so many great ideas that
(01:51):
fail, not because of the ideasthemselves, but just because of the way
they are presented or communicated. Andthat's why them to cut it show for
you. That's why eventually I becamea presentation coach. That's why my mission
is to stop great ideas from failingjust because of the way they are presented.
My vision, raf if you want, is to help hundreds of thousands
(02:14):
of business leaders, inspire the audiences, increase the influence, and why not
make a positive impact in the world. I believe that we can make a
positive impact in the world, andwe can do that thanks to the power
of our communication. Wow, justout of curiosity, what's your parents business?
(02:34):
They do? So? I comefrom Les Marque, which is,
as you know, a small,small region in the middle of the country
and in our region, everybody makesshoes, and so they are in the
shoe business. They don't make thefinal product, so they make just the
soul of the shoes, but theyare in the in the shoe business.
(02:57):
And do you think that there issomething of what you're doing down today that
somehow started over there? I mean, apart from the main idea of you
know, helping people presenting their ideas, do you think there is something that
you learned, you know, watchingthem, observing them, you know,
and observing the way they were runningthe business, and of course presenting ideas
(03:23):
to to customers and you know andstackholders and others. What what I've learned
has very little to do with presentingand public speaking. But the main thing
I've learned, which is for memuch more important, that is an approach,
(03:43):
an approach to to life. Andso when I when I said that,
I could see that the the proactiveapproach to life, not expecting that,
for example, if there's a problem, not expecting somebody else to solve
the problem on your behalf. Isthat the spark that creativity that you have
(04:04):
to have if you want to runyour own thing. It's impossible to do
it so more than a specific skill, because industries are completely different, the
context is completely different. They dotheir business, they run their business at
a very local level in a verysmall town. I'm here like you in
(04:26):
London, so different, different typesof clients, different industry. But the
approach is definitely something that I pickedup from them. M hm uh.
You said in you know a fewminutes ago that you believe that sometimes there
are great ideas and they you know, the project fails because the way they
(04:47):
presented. What do you mean bythat? So I'll give you I'll give
you a few examples, like likein my case. For example, many
years ago, talking about me,more than ten years ago, I had
a blog. The blog was calledEcho Presentation, so it was about mainly
(05:09):
presentation design, the design side ofthings. Although today I cover other other
aspects. Presentation design is still partof it, but it's a small part.
And my my objective was to writearticles that as many people as possible
(05:29):
would read. Now, after afew years, I was very consistent,
not as consistent as you are off, but every week more or less I
would write an article publisher. Iwas super proud of it, and in
a couple of years, two orthree years, maybe two people in total
read my articles, and one wasmy wife. And the idea of a
(05:50):
good blog on that specific topic wasnot I think that it was not a
bad idea, but the way thatthe the overall thing was packaged and communicated
was not super effective. Or Anotherthing I tried was instead of creating content,
(06:13):
I then tried to curate content.So I launched a newsletter, always
in the same space, but insteadof creating content, I would collect what
I thought was the best content outthere every single week on all things public
speaking, communication, presentation skills,and then I would send it out and
again. The dream was to havethousands of subscribers. After two or three
(06:40):
years, I had one hundred andnineteen sub subscribers enough, and again I
think that the idea was not abad one, but the way it was
we can talk about. Of course, there is an execution element that also
plays a big role. But frommy perspective, I also think about that
the communication side of things, theway things are packaged and communicated, makes
(07:03):
a big difference mm the way thingsare packaged and communicated. Sometimes you know
in your world there are people's andI think also experts. Sometimes they say
that the secret, you know,for a good presentation is to be just
(07:24):
be yourself. That's what I say. At least, you know, try
to be authentic. You are onthe stage, you know, be yourself
and everything is going to be fine. Is that true? Is that enough
to be yourself to be authentic?Or there is something else? I cringe
when I hear this piece of advice, and it is true. It comes
(07:46):
from from experts. Just be yourself, be authentic. And for those who
have tried to just be themselves andbe authentic, and then they say,
yeah, I've tried, but whatelse can I do? Because obviously there
is room for improvement. So inmy book, for example, Rough Confident
Presenter, there is one chapter whereI say you don't have to be authentic,
(08:09):
which may sound counterintuitive, but Ido believe that you don't have to
be authentic. So, for example, if you want to learn to play
the piano or any other musical instrument, and if the teacher tells you that
(08:30):
you need to sit up straight andhave a certain posture and move your fingers
in a certain way, would youtell the teacher, no, I'm not
going to do that, because Iwant to be authentic. I want to
play my own way. No,you would just shut up and listen to
the teacher. Or if you secretlythink that your best friend's new baby is
(08:56):
ugly, would you tell them becauseyou just want to be authentic. You
want to be yourself, and that'swhat you say. Now again, you
would just shut up and say thatthe baby is beautiful. I'm saying this
because there are many areas in ourlife where we accept the fact that it
does not make sense to be authenticand we are not authentic. And the
(09:18):
same is true when it comes topublic speaking. When I work with clients,
for example, I encourage them todo certain things that sometimes take them
outside of that comfort zone, andbecause of that, they resist, and
they're resist in the name of authenticity. Now doesn't work for me. I
just want to be myself. Iwant to be authentic. Of course,
(09:41):
you want to be yourself. Thisis not about being Steve Jobs. You
don't have to be like Steve Jobs. You don't have to present like Brene
bra. Of course, you wantto be yourself, but at the same
time, you also want to beand become the best authentic version of yourself.
So that's why I think that authenticitySo from this perspective is not the
(10:07):
goal. And how do you findthis balance? Because from what you said,
it looks like there is a balancesomewhere in the middle. So you
need to learn something. As yousaid, you listen to the teacher,
but you maybe also want to haveyour own style. Is there a thing
(10:28):
absolutely absolutely you have? So youneed to have some foundational skills. Foundational
skills in terms of, for example, how do I develop a message which
is simple for the audience to understand, clear for them to follow, relevant
to the audience and the needs.How do I develop a presentation which is
(10:50):
engaging as well? So these aresome foundational skills. If you want to
reinforce your message visually, then forexample, you need to have some foundational
skills in terms of how to avoidthe typical death by power point with lots
of text and bullet points. Peoplecan't read a list. And at the
same time, you also need tohave some foundational skills in terms of how
(11:16):
to make a strong connection with theaudience, and you do that with your
delivery skills. So these are thingslike eye contact, body language, gestures,
posh of voice. Voice is avery powerful communication tool. So we
need to have those foundational skills,and this can only come with acquiring knowledge
(11:37):
and practicing because by the way,any skill, the public speaking, is
a skill that requires knowledge and technique. And when we have this combination of
knowledge and technique, what really makesa difference is practice. So we need
that. But then as you practiceand as you do it for real,
of course, there's a lot offlexibility in terms of how you apply these
(12:03):
foundational skills and make them work foryou, based on what works for you
for your context, for your ownstyle. Mmm. I'm thinking about this
like famous quote I think from Picasso. I'm not sure that says that you
need to know the rules if youwant to break the rules. This is
(12:28):
what you're saying. Also that that'sconnected. So, for example, if
we think about just presentation design,which again is not is not even the
most important thing. So if youwant to be a more credible, confident,
and an effective, compelling communicator,presentation design is an aspect which may
(12:54):
or may not be relevant. Sometimeswe don't have to use slides all the
time, for example, But ifwe just take that as an example,
there are some fundamental principles of presentationdesign like things like without going into too
many details, but picture superiority effect, so we remember visuals much more than
(13:15):
just words or the rule of thirds. I don't know if you're familiar with
the rapt the rule of thirds,which comes from photography. You have the
principle of white space, which tellsus that the more it doesn't have to
be white, but it's called whitespace. But the more empty space we
have on a slide, the better. Again it's counterintuitive, but the more
(13:37):
empty space we have, the easyit is for the audience to focus on
the one thing, that the onemessage that you want to get across.
So these are going back to Picasso. These are some rules if you want,
but then that's what photographers. That'swhat photographers do. So the rule
of thirds is a rule that comesfrom forhotography. But if you take all
(14:01):
the super professional photos out there,it's not that all of them apply the
rule of thirds. We know therule, we know the principle, but
only if you know them. Yes, do you have the power if you
want to break them, But youwant to break them consciously. That's the
(14:22):
key. Often people do it unconsciously. We break rules all the time without
even knowing that we are doing it. But if you break the rules consciously,
that's a different story. I wantto go back on the idea of
being a confident presenter. You saidit twice. It's also the name the
(14:43):
title of your book. What doesit mean being a confident presenter? I
mean, is it about delivering skillsor there is something else? So of
course your delivery skills important. Butand thanks for the question, because that's
(15:05):
exactly why I wrote the book.I wrote the book and I called it
this way because there is a bitof a misconception when you when you say
when I say, when I talkabout confidence in presenting, a lot of
people immediately start thinking about delivery skillsagain, things like I can't a body
(15:26):
language, gestures, voice, postureimportant things. That's that's also what we
do when we work with the client. But it's just a small part of
the of the whole process. Soconfidence comes from three things. First of
all, familiarity and preparation. Forexample, of some time ago, I
(15:48):
watched a video when Kobby Bryant soone of the best NBA players of all
time. Unfortunately he passed away andhe was giving any and one question was
Cobby, how is it possible thatevery time I see you playing, you
always look so confident, And hesaid, the only reason, the only
(16:11):
reason why you think I'm confident isbecause when you see me doing certain things,
I've done those things a thousand timesbefore. Confidence comes from familiarity and
preparation, and the same is truewhen it comes to public speaking. The
other thing is that it also comesfrom following a certain process which goes far
(16:37):
beyond just opening up a presentation tooland putting together some slides. There's a
structured way of thinking about presenting,from for example, knowing how to analyze
your audience and their needs and thecontext, to knowing how to identify your
key messages brainstorming in a creative andstructured way for you to identify your key
(17:00):
messages, to knowing how to translateyour ideas into a clear and engaging storyline
from the very beginning where you wantto be able to capture your audience's attention
to the very end with a powerfulconclusion. You also need to be able
to if you want if you needit, to reinforce your message visually avoiding
death by PowerPoint, and you alsoneed to be able to deliver your message
(17:23):
in a way that's comfortable and convincing. So there's a process, there's a
structured way of thinking about presenting andnot following the process is often what creates
this comfort when we are in frontof an audience, so familiarity process.
And then it also comes from beingable to develop a compelling message. So
(17:48):
there are three key skills that weneed to master a rough message, so
your ability to develop a compelling message. If you need to visualize your message,
that's the other thing, so avoidingdeath by PowerPoint, and the other
one is your delivery skills. Butfor me, eighty percent of your confidence
comes from your ability to develop acompelling message. Without a message, without
(18:11):
a story that resonates with the audience, it doesn't matter how good you are
from a delivery perspective. It doesn'tmatter what you do with your hands,
for example, it doesn't matter whatyou do with your eyes. Message comes
first. Can you tell me more? I mean, that's that's kind of
it's more. It's powerful. Imean the idea that eighty percent of the
(18:32):
final result is from the message.You know, I read a lot of
book about public speaking, I watcha lot of you know, tutorials,
and then keynotes and stuff, andthere is a lot going on about you
know, body language, you know, and you know a ton of voice
and using your hands and these kindof things. But you said that that's
(18:56):
important, but it's just a smallpart of the whole process, the whole
thing. Yeah, so I'll tellyou So, I'll tell you one one
thing which is also very much connectedto the biggest problem I see when it
comes to public speaking, which isconnected to developing a compelling message, or
(19:21):
the opposite, which is the curseof knowledge. And we want we want
to avoid that. Now. Thecourse of knowledge is a principle if you
want that. I've learned many yearsago when I read the fantastic book.
I know that you like that.You love you love books, and maybe
(19:41):
you know the book Ralph Made toStick by the Heath Brothers. Do you
know the book. Yeah, it'sa fantastic book which is all about how
to make sure that when you communicatean idea it gets stuck in the minds
of your audience, made to stick. And in that book they cite a
an example at Stanford University study wherea psychology student in nineteen ninety asked two
(20:08):
groups of people to play a gametappers versus listeners. I don't know if
you know the game rough, butyou have the toppers, and what they
have to do is they need totap out, tap out rhythms of famous
songs on a table. So thinkabout very famous songs like Happy Birthday,
(20:30):
to use songs like that, butinstead of singing the songs, you have
to tap them out on a table. And now you have the listeners.
And all they had to do wasthey just had to try and guess the
songs. Now, before the experimentstarted, the student asked the tappers to
guess how many songs the listeners wouldhave guessed, and the tappers estimated fifty
(20:56):
percent of the songs. That's whatthey thought. Now, in reality,
the listeners only guessed two and ahalf percent of the songs. Massive difference,
two and a half versus fifty percent. Why because if you are a
tougher, you have knowledge that thelisteners don't have, because you have the
(21:18):
songs in your head as you asyou play them, and so for you,
it's very obvious, and that's whyyou find it very hard to understand
why they can't guess them. Butif you are a listener, you don't
have the knowledge, you don't havethe songs in your head, and so
for you, it's not obvious atall. And this is the number one
problem in communication, which is connectedto knowing how to develop a compelling message.
(21:44):
It's not connected to your delivery skills. The number one problem in communication
is the curse of knowledge, whichmeans that once we know something, we
find it hard to imagine what itmeans not knowing it. So, for
example, in your OA is roughyou if I think about you, your
story, your background. You comefrom a very technical background. But even
(22:08):
now, even now that you haveyour academy on artificial intelligence for example,
So when we talk about artificial intelligence, then there's a risk there because depending
on who the audience is, ifwe are communicating certain ideas to an audience,
and if the audience doesn't have thesame level of knowledge about artificial intelligence,
(22:30):
for example, then depending on thelanguage that we use, we may
find it we may make it harderfor them to understand it. So the
course of knowledge is our inability toimagine what it means not knowing what we
know. It's our inability to putourselves in the audience issues. And if
you think about it, raf wesay it everywhere you say, between politicians
(22:52):
and voters, between writers and readers, between sellers and buyers, you say,
between public speakers or communicators in general, and the audiences and are close
hair. It's very, very easyto fall into this trap unless you find
(23:15):
a way to get access to somesort of an external perspective. If you
are enjoying this episode, please checkout my lead generation course. You can
watch it for free on Guido,dot link, slash skill share. G
Ai T. As an entrepreneur,marketer or business owner, you know how
crucial lead generation is. In thiscourse, I'll be sharing with you twenty
(23:37):
proven tactics for lead generation in bothB two B and B two C markets.
You can watch it for free onGuido, dot link slash skill share
g A I t O. You'llfind the link in the description. I
was thinking about my doctor and myaccountant when I talk to them. I
mean, there is that sad wayevery single type they use, like technical
(24:03):
words, jargons. I don't reallyunderstand what they're saying, and they don't
try. They don't even try tomake me understand. So I got you
and rough and rough, So goingback to your question, and so that's
the issue, which is not adelivery skills issue. You you may be
very very good with your delivery skills, but for example, you mentioned jargon
(24:27):
industry specific terminology. By the way, that's what a lot of people do.
A lot of people use complex languagebecause they think that if they do
that, then they sound smarter andmore credible. The opposite is true if
you look at if you think aboutpeople who you consider smart and credible,
(24:48):
often what they do is the opposite. They replace complex language with simple language,
simple words, simple sentences. Andeither way, the more complex the
subject. Of course, it alwaysdepends on the audience and the context,
but in general, the more complexthe subject, the more this becomes useful.
(25:11):
And it's not about over simplifying things. It's not about dumbing things down.
It's about finding and using language thateverybody in your audience can understand.
And this is just one idea ifyou want connected to the importance of let's
say, the primacy of the messageover your delivery skills. I totally agree,
(25:33):
and I think that's true also forcontent creators. If you have a
podcast, YouTube channel, a blog, a newsletter or something, that's the
way to reach your audience, toreally connect with your audience. If you
are able to somehow simplify you know, complex ideas and then messages, it
(25:55):
makes a huge difference. I wantto go back for a moment on the
process, since you said that,you know, confidence comes from you know,
repetitions, when we read public speakingbooks, when we listen to experts.
I think there are like maybe twotwo main approaches. There is someone
(26:17):
that says, uh, once youhave preferred your presentation, you have to
repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and then you will feel
confident on stage. And on theother side, there is someone saying that
you don't need to do that.You just go, you know, on
stage and you can kind of,you know, improvise. What do you
(26:41):
think, what's your what's your takeon that? Yeah, I'm part of
the former group, so for me, rehearsing is super super important. So,
for example, if we think aboutyour ability to deliver a message in
a way that's comfortable and convincing,and if you think about all of the
possible challenges that you may have thatyou may feel from a delivery perspective,
(27:04):
most of them, if not allof them, can be solved or at
least addressed, simply by rehearsing.And so again talking about books, rough
you made me think of another book, which is TED Talks by Chris Anderson.
Now, Chris Anderson used to be, I think not anymore, the
(27:26):
the the the founder, the organizerof the TED conference, and he wrote
this book, Ted Talks. Andin that book he uses a great analogy.
He says, a lot of peopleand that's that's with me too.
They tell me, you know what, I don't want to rehearse because if
I do, then I sound robotic. And again, going back to where
(27:48):
we started, I want to bemyself. I want to be authentic.
And Chris says that rehearsing is abit like climbing a mountain. If you
want to climb a mountain, thenif you start going up and then you
stop, you will never get tothe top of the mountain. You need
to keep climbing, keep going upso that you reach the top and then
(28:10):
you can start going down. Whenit comes to rehearsing, it's the same
thing. Say, for example,that I know that you speak in public
a lot, and say that youhave an important presentation in a few weeks
from now, and say that yourehearse once or twice. Now, most
people don't do that anyway. Butlet's say that we do it once or
twice and then you stop. Ofcourse, yes you will appear robotic,
(28:32):
but when you appear robotic, it'snot because you have rehearsed often. It's
because you haven't done it enough.You need to keep climbing. You need
to get to the top of themountain, which means that you need to
rehearse a few more times. Nowhow many times? There is no magic
number. So and then we goback to what you said at the beginning.
(28:55):
You said, yes, we needto prepare in a certain way,
but we need to do it.I need to follow my own style.
Yes, of course what works foryou does not necessarily work for me.
But I can tell you that ifI think about my clients, for most
people, I would be interested inhearing your thoughts, Ralph. But for
(29:17):
most people it's very very hard toget to a point to get to the
top of the mountain. So toget to a point where you are able
to appear spontaneous and to internalize yourmessage. You don't have to memorize it,
but you do need to internalize yourmessage. But it's very hard to
do that unless you've rehearsed on averageten times. This is what I see
(29:41):
with most people. And let meclose with this because you mentioned some people
like to improvise. Now, withmy clients, I see two types of
speakers. You have the improvisers andthe memorizers. So the memorizers like to
have a script word for word.The improvisers like to have more freedom on
stage. And by the way,it's a spectrum, so it's not that
(30:03):
you are either one an improviser orone hundred percent a memorizer. Maybe you
are somewhere in between. Maybe youare a little bit more towards the memorizers
or vice versa. However, firstof all, we need to know where
we are in this spectrum. That'suseful to know because there are some important
implications from a public speaking perspective.But also once we know, it doesn't
(30:25):
really matter whether you are an improviseror a memorizer. I would always encourage
people to rehearse a few times,and especially for improvisers, I can promise
them that every time they rehears,they don't have to say exactly the same
things they are improvisers, so theycan repeat the presentation and every time they
(30:48):
can use different words, different sentences, that's okay, but I can promise
them that, for example, thefifth time they delivered the presentation is going
to be much much, much morepowerful than the first. MM. Yeah,
yeah, I totally agree on that. And I also agree on the
uh, you know, the magicnumber. You said at least ten times.
(31:10):
That's usually what I do. Soit depends. I think it depends
from two main factors. For me. One is the audience. So sometimes
if I know that the audience iskind of you know, technical audience,
you know, people from the industry, I try to repeat a little bit
more. And also depends from theyou know, the length of the presentation.
(31:33):
So twenty minutes inspirational tour is onething. Two hours, you know,
super technical presentation is a converte differentstory. So yeah, but I
agree on average, yeah, tentimes, that's what I do. And
that's right, is that that isthe number one consideration for everything, not
(31:53):
just for how many times we're hers. But you said it depends on the
audience. Everything depends on the audience, and what you say depends on the
audience. The key to great presentingand I say, I use the word
presentation a lot of public speaking,but we are talking about fundamental principles of
(32:13):
communication in general. For example,you said, we can apply this to
content creation in general. Absolutely.So the key to great presenting is to
always make it about them the audience. Is to always talk to your audience
about them, even if you're talkingabout you. Now, what most people
(32:34):
do instead, whether they are atWorth or not, is they talk at
the audiences about themselves. You wantto talk to your audience about the audience,
even if you're talking about you.For example, so if I tell
you, Ralph, we have atIdeas on stage, we have fifty eight
offices all of the world, which, by the way, is not true,
(32:58):
just a fictional example. So wehave fifty eight offices all of the
world. I'm talking at you aboutme. If I tell you at Ideas
on stage, we have fifty eightoffices all over the world, so that
you can get access to a customersupporting wherever you are. Now, I'm
(33:19):
talking to you about you, evenif I'm talking about me. And this
is just a simple example, butit can be applied even at a broader
level. The key is to alwaysmake about them. Everything depends on the
audience. I like this one,and I want to ask you something about
this, since you work with severalclients in several industries and you have a
lot of experience in that, whatare the main problems slash mistakes you know
(33:45):
they make when preparing a presentation.So in addition to using a developing presenting
a message which is either too complexor two technique, so we talked about
that already, the other one isthat the very first thing they do most
people do when preparing a presentation isthey just open PowerPoint and put together some
(34:09):
slides. Now I say PowerPoint,it could be any other presentations. Really,
it doesn't make any difference. Weknow that, of course that is
not the very first thing we wantto do. But even if that's not
the case, what many other peopledo is they start thinking about their messages,
what they want to communicate, andthat is already much better than just
(34:30):
opening up PowerPoint. But even thatis not the very first thing you want
to do. So what is thevery first thing? Again, we go
back to the importance of the audience. We need to start. We need
to take some time and ask ourselvessome questions about the audience that Bernie needs.
What do they really need what dothey expect from your presentation? What
(34:52):
do they expect to hear, whatdo they need to hear? What?
For example, you said, ifI'm presenting too a very technic audience,
then they may have some expectations,some needs, some concerns, and so
you need to be aware of them, if possible. What's the context.
Now, don't get me wrong,I'm not saying that, and this is
(35:12):
a very common mistake, but I'mnot saying that if you don't do that,
then you can't create a great presentation. You can, but the risk
is that you develop a fantastic presentationbut for the wrong audience. For example,
some time ago, we worked witha client. Her name is Marie
from Paris. Marie is an executive. She's an expert in leadership and she
(35:38):
was invited by an association in Finlandto give a talk about leadership and she
was super excited. It was oneof the first international speaking opportunities and so
she prepared really well. She knewremember we talked about three key skills,
message, visuals and delivery, soshe knew her message. She told us
that she had prepared fifty five zerobeautiful slides and also she rehearsed, she
(36:04):
practiced properly, and then she flewto Feeland the day before the conference and
then arrived there on the day halfan hour before the audience because she wanted
to make sure that she had timeto set things up. And when she
was about to connect a laptop tothe screen, she realized that there was
no screen. So a little bitof panic, she went and asked the
(36:28):
organizers, assuming that they would say, oh, sorry, Marie, now
we are going to fix this foryou. What they did instead was they
started laughing. They started laughing,and so she says, why are you
laughing? And they say, look, Marie, you want to show fifty
slides. But actually you've been ingup. You've been invited to give a
(36:51):
talk to the association in Finland ofblind people Blind People. Now, Ralph,
I know it's an extreme example.It sounds like a bad joke,
but it happened for real. See, Marie was very well prepared, apart
from one thing. The most importantthing, she didn't know her audience.
(37:12):
She didn't even take the time totranslate the name of the association from Finnish
to French, and she would haverealized that perhaps there was no need to
have fifty beautiful slides. So whatdoes this mean if you want to make
sure you should want to make surethat I say you rough, I'm talking
(37:36):
in general, if we want tomake sure that our presentations are relevant to
the audience, which is the numberone principle in communication before we do anything
else. And that's not what peopledo. That's going back to your question,
that's the mistake. We need tostart with them, We need to
start with the audience. I havea follow up question on this because I
(37:59):
think there are sometimes some situations whereyou don't know the audience and you don't
have any way to have this informationbefore. I'm giving a real example.
So I usually do you know publicspeaking three situations? So one is like
companies, so corporate stuff, youknow, private small group that they called
(38:21):
me, they pay me, theywant me to talk to their you know,
their audience. The second one isuniversities slash schools. And the third
one is like you know, eventslike a conference or something else. So
there are some situations, especially withevents and conferences, for example, where
(38:42):
you don't actually know the audience untilyou are there, you know, at
the conference. How do you managethis situation. I mean, you can
have an idea, a broad idea. We go there, the main topic
is you know AI. So Isuppose it's going to be about you know,
freelancers and entrepreneurs wanting to know moreabout AI. And then you go
(39:04):
there and there are a lot ofstudents that want to learn about AI.
So what's the trick here? Doyou have any suggestions for situation in particular?
Sure? So, you're right,sometimes it's not always possible to have
a lot of information about the audience. However, the reason why I highlighted
(39:28):
that as a key mistake is becauseoften the reason why we don't we don't
know the audience is not because there'sno ways there's no way for us to
find out more about the audience,is simply because we don't take the time
to either ask ourselves some questions aboutthe audience, the needs and the context,
(39:53):
or asking somebody else it could be, for example, at a conference.
I'm not saying raph that this alwayssolves the problem, but if I
also speak at conferences, then Ialways have and I don't want to take
me as an example, but justto give an example, I always have
a say a pre talk conversation withthose who call me with the organizers asking
(40:15):
them questions about the audience. Itdoesn't mean that they will be able to
answer all your questions, but theywill give you some insights. So the
bottom line is that, of course, sometimes there are situations where you need
to make assumptions, and you makeassumptions based on your own experience. What
(40:37):
worked in the past, what didn'twork in the past. That's okay.
But the problem I see is thatsometimes even though it would be possible to
find out more about the audience,we don't because we don't ask either ourselves
or somebody else the right questions.Sometimes, Ralph, it's also possible to
(40:58):
ask directly the audience. Not always, but why not. Many people don't
even think about this as an option. But if it's possible to, we
could send the audience through maybe theconference organizers, a quick survey for them
to answer three quick questions, orto answer just one question, what would
(41:22):
you like to get out of mysession? So I'm not saying that this
is the solution that will work allthe time, but if we think about
it, there are many things wecan do to get more information. I
think the main thing here is doyou actually care about the audience. If
you care about the audience, you'llfind a way. Andrea, thank you
(41:45):
very much for this. We usuallyend these conversations here on the podcast with
two simple questions. One is aboutbooks and one is about tools. Do
you have something that you want toshare with us? Any books that you
love, any books. It canbe related to public speaking or anything else.
Of course, your book is goingto be linked in a description below.
(42:07):
But any more books you want toshare with audience. Sure, so
I can. I can split intotwo parts public speaking books and then say
life life books, which are evenmore important than public speaking. So when
it comes to public speaking, soI'll give you a few authors because many
(42:28):
of them have written more than onebook. But for example, I know
that you know because we had aprevious conversation. Carmangalo, I think is
a great author book books like Talklike Ted or The Storyteller Secret. Recently
last year I think he published TheBezos Blueprints. So great books from Carmeangalo.
(42:49):
Now, my passion for public speakingstarted when I was a university and
I read what I think is afascinating book which is called Presentation Zen by
god Reynolds. And Gar. Ialso interviewed Gar and Carmine as well,
by the Way, on the Ideason Stage podcast Now. Gar wrote three
(43:10):
books. One is Presentation Zen,which gives you the foundation of effective presenting.
Then for those who are interested inthe design side of things, he
wrote a second book which is PresentationZen Design, and then a third one
which is I love the title TheNaked Presenter, and he talks about the
fact that if you want to thisis for delivery skills. So if you
(43:31):
want to deliver your message effectively,you need to present naked rather than for
example, relying on PowerPoint on orusing elect and these kind of things.
So three books by Gar Reynolds,and there's also Oh, by the Way,
Nancy dat great great great books,Slide Theology, Resonate Data story on
(43:58):
Data Storytelling, and also doctor JohnMedina. I also interviewed him for the
podcast now. John Medina wrote anamazing book which is Brain Rules, which
is not just it's not a publicspeaking book, but he covers twelve so
he's a scientist and he covers twelvebrain rules and applications for our everyday life.
(44:22):
One application is communication, so thereis one chapter which tells you what
science tells us about what works andwhat doesn't work when it comes to communicating
our ideas. And I believe thatpublic speaking is a mix of art and
science. So at least that chapteris the whole book is fantastic, made
(44:42):
to stick, We talked by theHeath Brothers. Fascinating book. Oh,
by the way, this is thelast one. I think this is a
masterpiece which goes of course, it'smuch more than just public speaking, but
in terms of communication, persuasion,influence, influence by Robert Chaldini. So
that that is the book if youwant, I think, and that's for
(45:07):
public speaking. Now, apart frompublic Speaking, the most important book I've
read in my life is Men's Searchfor Meaning by Victor Frankel. I don't
know if you know the book rafMen's Search for Meaning. He goes through
his story as a prisoner in Asritzin the concentration cup, the camp.
(45:30):
So the first half of the bookis that story, and then Victor Frankly
is a psychologist psychiatrist, so thesecond half is his psychological approach, so
psychological life lessons coming from the experience. It's the book I've gifted the most,
the number one book for me.Ever, now, last year I
(45:52):
read another book which I'm pretty sureyou read two, because I know that
you are. If I'm not wrong, I think I remember maybe we talked
about in the past. You arevery close to the Stoic philosophy. Is
that correct? Right? Yep?So The Daily Stoic Ryan Holiday is also
a great book for those who wantto learn more about the philosophy. It's
(46:16):
one insight per day, a simpleidea on the stock philosophy and how you
can apply in everyday life. Sothese are two very powerful books for me.
Beyond public speaking, great what abouttools? Do you have any tools
you want to share with us?So if you asked me that question,
(46:38):
say last year or a couple ofyears ago, I would have told you
no, just just a piece ofpaper. I think that if you really
want to be effective in your communicationand creative, especially at the initial stage
of the presentation process, I thinkwe need to forget technology. John Cleese
(46:59):
says that we don't know where weget our ideas from, but what we
do know is that we don't getthem from our laptops. And I agree.
If you really want to be creativeand original, planning analogue which means
a piece of paper or a flipchart or a whiteboard posting note is much
more effective than going digital now today, and again you are the expert.
(47:22):
So when it comes to AI,I've never seen something like that, so
I every day I use artificial intelligence. Now I'm not a super expert.
So for now I'm stuck with chartGPT, but I know that there are
other options. But today, whatcan be done with the help of chart
(47:43):
GPT or AI in general in theprocess or also in the process of creating
a presentation is mind blowing. However, I need to say that for me,
it's very important that it's that combinedwith Remember RAP at the beginning,
we talked about having some foundational skills, so there is still super important because
(48:05):
because if you tell CHGPT, look, I need to and I know that
people do it because I say it. Also with content creation, by the
way, I need to give apresentation on this topic. With this audience
create a presentation for me, sotheir prompt is super generic and so the
output the outcome will be very generictoo. But if you have the foundational
skills to ask the right questions,evaluate the answers, so their their knowledge
(48:34):
combined with what artificial intelligence can dotoday, can do today is is mind
blowing superperfu. No using no youand I say this as a public speaking
coach. Not using artificial intelligence todayas you prepare your talks your presentations is
stupid? Yeah? Uh? Andthe are where can they fund? You?
(48:58):
Follow you? Read you? Doyou have any you want to share
with us? Yeah? Thank you. Now. The main space for me
is LinkedIn so people can find methere. Our website is ideas on stage
dot com. Perhaps just one thingif people want to assess their current presentation
skills against some key fundamental principles ofcommunication, we have a tool on our
(49:22):
website or the url is our websiteIdeas on Stage dot com slash score,
like when you score a goal,and it's a way for you to assess
your current presentation skills in just afew minutes. You answer a few questions.
It's free, by the way,You get a score from zero two
hundred percent, and then the toolwill tell you what the score means for
(49:43):
you, and you also identify asopportunities for improvement. Perfect great. All
links are going to be in thedescription below. Andrea, thank you so
much for your time. It wasgreat. Thank you Rov. Thanks for
listening to this episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and you
learn something new. Make sure tosubscribe to us on YouTube and Spotify to
(50:04):
stay updated on new episodes. Withyour support, I can continue to bring
great content and great guests to thispodcast. So hit the subscribe button now
and I'll see you in the nextepisode.
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