Speaking and Communicating Podcast

And if you're worried about those things, like is the mic not working, or people not hearing you, practice that.

Practice walking into the room.

What would you do if you tripped?

What would you say?

And then come up with 10 different things that you could say.

Because when comedians do crowd work, a lot of it they've done before.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with comedian and entrepreneur, founder of Plausible, Leanne Linsky, all the way from Seattle.

She's here to talk to us about her journey of starting open mics and how comedy can be used as strategies to help us with our public speaking and communication.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Leanne.

Hello.

Thanks so much for having me here.

Thank you for being here.

It's my pleasure.

Welcome to the show.

I'm so happy that you're here.

Thanks.

This is going to be fun.

I love talking.

So this is a perfect place.

Absolutely.

I'm glad you love talking because there's so much we want to extract from you.

But before we get into that, please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sure.

So I actually started out in business and worked a regular job out of through high school and then went to college for business and ended up at a big Fortune 500 company.

And I was there for almost 13 years.

But during that time, I did a lot of public speaking.

And I found myself doing training and presenting and all the things.

And I come from a very funny family who has a wonderful sense of humor.

And I thought, you know, I want to do some jokes here and there, make it fun.

You know, I don't want to be that boring person.

So I took a comedy writing class back in 2001, and I loved it.

And then one of my coworkers was like, you know, you should take an improv class.

And I was like, what?

I'm originally from the Chicago area.

I am very familiar with the Second City.

And it just so happened, I had gone off to school in Las Vegas, and the Second City had a training center in Las Vegas.

And I was like, I did not know this.

I had all these signs that popped up, like, a couple of times in a matter of a week or two.

And I was like, well, this must be meant to be.

And I went and I signed up for a class, took them all two and three times, like, could you not, over a period of years.

I had been with this company for almost 13 years, ended up getting laid off.

And my friend was like, what are you gonna do?

I'm like, I don't know.

He's like, well, I'm moving to New York.

Do you want to go?

And I was like, oh, think about it.

He's like, you have one hour.

He's like, yeah, because I gotta tell him an answer on the sublet.

And I was like, okay.

So an hour later, I call him back.

I go, okay, I'm in.

And a month later, I moved to New York City and pursued it full time.

So I did it on the East Coast and West Coast.

I hosted an open mic in New York City for over seven and a half years and wrote a one-woman show, I did commercials and acting and theater and whatnot.

And then moved to LA and continued producing shows and things like that in LA.

But I spent more time on the freeway than I did on stage.

And that's just bananas.

And I was like, how do I bridge that gap?

So I started doing things online, and that was before COVID.

And then COVID happened, obviously, and people got excited about doing everything online because how else are we going to get things done?

And so people did all of that.

I was like, this is great, but the existing technologies, they're specific.

There's things for podcasting, there's things for business conferencing, there's things for school, but there wasn't something specifically for entertainment comedy kind of thing.

So I'm like, how do I fix that?

And so Plausible was a seed in my mind.

And I went back to school and got a degree in innovation and entrepreneurship and got involved in incubators and accelerators and built a team and built Plausible and launched.

So now I do all my comedy online.

There was a lot of word quota I just met.

No, we loved your story, especially how you got started with the open mics and that when you see these different types of tech for each of those industries, is that what you call tech-tainment?

Yeah, some people call it tech-tainment, or media technology or entertainment technology.

People have abbreviated it to like tech-tainment, streaming services, just like fun names for what it is to differentiate it.

Because everybody's familiar with like a Zoom or Google Meets or a team.

I don't use any of that.

We built our own so that it's specific to the needs of a performer and how we can get audience feedback in real time.

But more so than that, a bigger problem that I wanted to solve with it is so that performers could actually earn money and kind of democratize it.

Because right now, if you want to earn money for your performing, you have to have a minimum of 10,000 followers to get ads or sponsorships.

So you have to meet all of these high bars of success before you get anything paid.

But on Plausible, you could sell one ticket and you're making the majority of the revenue.

So you don't have to have a minimum.

You just have to produce a show and put it up and invite, spread the word.

And then Plausible also helps and will give you shout outs on social media and our newsletter and stuff like that.

And then you charge a ticket price and you make the majority of that money, which a comedy club, there are exceptions.

But typically, medians don't get paid a split of the door.

They get a flat fee or they don't get paid at all.

So does that mean that with regards to what was recently the writer's strike, if you and Plausible, you were not affected?

No, because comedians aren't union.

Stand-up comedy is not under union rules or anything, it's completely different.

So back to when you do open mic, for instance, when you are a comedian and you're telling jokes, there's usually this pause.

We talk about the pause a lot when you're speaking.

You have the pause and then you have the punchline.

Do comedians learn that?

Like you said, you went to school.

Do they learn that or it's just something that comes with telling jokes?

When you are funny, that's how you know.

I think it's a bit of both to some degree.

Some people can naturally feel like the rhythm or the beat of a joke, and other people, maybe it doesn't come so naturally to, and they have to practice that and learn from going too quickly and not having a pause.

And sometimes we don't need a pause depending on the joke or how it's set up.

But to your point, that is very common.

And I think it really takes practice.

And I think the key to that is having a well-written joke typically.

And sometimes people are good off the cuff, but more often than not, believe it or not, everything's been practiced very much so, so that it appears off the cuff and unrehearsed and more natural.

But all of that timing is what open mics are for.

And as a comedian, we spend a ton of time getting up in open mics for free and working out our jokes.

And putting it out there and changing the timing.

It's like writing a song, right?

How does this work?

How does it sound?

Are people receptive?

Maybe that didn't sound right.

Maybe I need to change things up here and there.

Because if people do write down their jokes, I'm a huge proponent of writing things down.

But when I write, I write different than I speak, right?

Yes.

Yeah, I'm the same, I think.

If I write something, I'm not going to speak it exactly the way I wrote it.

Just the ideas will be the same, but not the way I phrased the writing.

Right.

Because if you hear people read right off the paper, you're clearly reading, because no one speaks like that.

And then when we transcribe something, like a conversation, and we look at it, we're like, whoa, what is that word?

Confetti.

I don't even know what happened there.

Like the transcript of a podcast, it's like, does she even know what she's doing?

You know, I always dread reading what I said out loud.

I'm like, that sounds so bad.

But truly, we speak different and communicate differently on the written page than we do when we deliver it.

And jokes are similar to that.

If I write things down, when I speak it, then I really hear how it lands.

I can change the meaning of a sentence by tone, body language, timing, word emphasis, all of those things make a substantial difference, how something is communicated.

So all of that, although I might have the joke written out, now I have to deliver it.

And how do I package that?

That has to be practiced too.

So that pause that you're asking about, I think it's a bit of both.

And some people have it more naturally than others.

Here's another thing I've noticed with comedians, which is a skill that I'd like to learn and be better at.

If there's two things you're going to mention, the first one is the thing that's not as funny, but the second one is going to be the funny thing.

Or if it's two things and they're different sizes, you first mention the smaller size and then the bigger size is the, when the bigger size is mentioned, then that's what makes it funny, because you started saying something smaller.

I don't know if I'm making sense.

You make complete sense, yeah.

How do you guys do that?

Because that's when it's funny.

Well, it's called heightening.

Well, some people call it heightening.

Some people might call it something else, but I know it as heightening.

And so we heighten as we go.

Because when you were saying that, I'm like, yeah, it would be like if someone gave me an engagement ring, and then they gave me a pair of socks.

I mean, that's kind of like anti-climactic.

I would be like, great.

And what?

Where do we go?

What just happened here?

Take the socks back.

Yeah, I like, I don't care about the socks.

I'm focused on the ring.

I think it's that way with a joke.

And what we love as audience members are patterns.

So as a comedian builds with something, things are typically in threes and fives, odd numbers, for whatever reason, really people, oh, we love that.

You know, we don't know why, but it's like a certain beat in a song or a certain rhythm in a song, a good hook.

Our brains are attracted to that catchy pattern with comedy.

What we do as comedians is we'll say everything's going up, the price of a cup of coffee, the price of cars, the price of homes, everything except my comedy career, right?

Yes.

And then, you know, speaking of sucking my Roomba, and then I can segue into something like that.

So it goes up, and we think we're gonna talk about something else going up, and then instead I throw a curve in there and said, I said it's something that's not getting better, that's not going up.

But if you think of it in terms of the engagement, you're right, like, engagement ring?

Socks.

Nope.

Right.

Exactly.

And also, the way you built that up, the heightening, speaking of engagement, you engage your audience in the sense that they know there's gonna be something else.

Huh, I wonder what that is.

Just before you mention it, they're already trying to conclude in their minds and trying to guess, basically, to say, I wonder what she's gonna mention in the next thing, Octavette, yes.

Yeah, right?

Like if I were telling a joke about a relationship, he took me out to dinner, he brought me flowers, and then he presented a ring, right?

Like we are natural, our mind is like, that is what we know is typical.

He took me to dinner, he brought me flowers, and then he introduced me to his new girlfriend.

There's the curve ball, right?

Yeah.

Right.

And then let's talk about irony in comedy.

I heard the curve ball, but sometimes there's just the complete opposite when you make a joke about it.

And so when the opposite comes, that's the funny part.

Yeah.

So I dated someone long distance, and everything was really going great.

And then I received this text from him that said we needed more space.

You know, it's like, yeah, a curve ball.

Like really, that's what he texted you.

Yeah, true story.

Who knew?

Is there really enough space?

You want more?

I don't know if that's a really good example of opposite, but it's like not what we would anticipate getting.

Because we laugh when they say the opposite of where we thought the story was going.

Yeah, exactly.

We usually try to deduce where this might be going, and then suddenly they take us the opposite direction, and that's when we find it funny.

And also we love how comedians, like I said, engage with audiences.

Sometimes when the audience laughs, instead of him telling the next story, he'll look and say, it's funny, isn't it?

Or say something, or say, yeah, the man in the front row seat, you think that's it?

And they ask a question about the joke they just told to the one who's laughing the most in front of them.

Just that ease with the audience members is what a lot of us strive to have when we're speaking.

That takes practice.

That takes a lot of practice.

And it takes practice in a couple of ways, right?

When people are most familiar with doing a presentation, not necessarily comedy, but even in a presentation, if I have prepared and practiced my presentation well, I pretty much know it by heart.

I have it memorized.

I'm not referring to my notes because I find that presenting on something I know well makes it easier for me to memorize it.

And if I organize my presentation correctly, it's logical.

So it flows in a very natural order.

So when I do my jokes in my set, I have them specifically laid out in an order that makes it easy.

Oh, of course, that joke comes next kind of thing, because it just makes it easier for an audience to follow.

It makes it easier for me to remember because it's logical, right?

And then when I have prepared a set and practice it in such a way, and I know it from front to back, I know my jokes, what happens is, is I do not like to riff.

Some comedians do, but this is a personal preference.

I find that if I riff in my set, I ramble, like it's that word salad of like what is happening right now.

And when we're speaking on comedy, it's timing is, is super important.

And if I add words and start muddying the waters with extra information, I don't get to the punchline.

And people are now leaving, going to the bathroom, getting a drink, like looking at their cell phone.

So I got to stay on point and make my point so that it's easy for people to listen.

Because think about it, if all music, like jazz would be an exception, jazz is all improvised.

But even there's rules in jazz, they maintain in order to keep it music, right?

But a song in general is it has structure, and so should a presentation, and so should a set.

So in my mind, if I put together the structure and do it away.

Now, going back to crowd work, crowd work takes practice just to work with a crowd and how you respond and how quick you can be on your feet.

And typically, if I'm doing a set, and I know I can tell you what is going to get a big laugh and what's not going to get a big laugh, or not going to get a big laugh because I practice.

So now I know where I can naturally interject something to the audience.

And if I know my set well enough, and I somehow something happens in the audience that's unexpected, I can step away from my prepared set and easily flow and handle whatever situation's happening in the audience, and then find my way back smoothly to my set.

But if I don't know my set well, and I have a heckler or something happened in the audience, chances are it will mess me up, and I'll be like, oh, I need a drink of water, like what is happening, gather myself.

So if I prepared and practiced my jokes well enough, if I'm doing a show, I typically don't do new material to the degree of like brand new, I've never worked it out before in front of an audience.

My stuff is butt tight, because if people are paying to see me, they should get someone who knows what they're doing.

So takes a lot of preparation on that side, and crowd work in itself, I think is an art.

And I think a great example, if you ever seen, there's a movie with Steve Martin, where he has a really big nose, Roxanne, I believe it's called Roxanne.

He is in a bar, so a guy picks on him, like bullies him because, oh, it makes fun of him because he has this big giant nose.

And so Steve Martin turns around and he goes, oh, you think you're funny?

You think that's the funniest thing you can come up with?

Well, I've got news for you.

And then he went on for like 10 minutes in this movie.

And he did all the jokes about his own big nose, worked the crowd and did all of that.

I think that's a great example of, he didn't just come up with those.

He lived his whole life with a big nose.

He practiced those jokes.

He knows they're funny.

He's done them before he's worked them out.

And in my mind, when I work my material, Steve Martin, although it seemed off the cuff in a moment in a bar fight, here's a guy who his whole life, he knows these jokes like the back of his hand.

And he delivered them brilliantly in this movie, in the movie as a character.

But that's how comedians are.

To everyone else in the bar, it's like, whoa, this guy's on fire.

He's really riffing these jokes out.

But truly, it's a lifetime of practice.

It sounds to me that comedians find it easier to make self-deprecating jokes.

Because public speakers are usually serious.

Comedy is about being funny anyway.

Do you think that it's kind of harmful to a business setting to make self-deprecating humor?

I can see where it could be.

Yes.

I could see depending on how self-deprecating there's a fine line with it.

And I've done it where I've totally stunk up the stage.

I bombed, you know, it was terrible.

And I noticed when if I got my timing down and I'm delivering it correctly, it shouldn't be, but it's how we deliver it.

Are we delivering it and coming from a place of victim?

Or feel bad for me?

You gotta come out with confidence with it.

And I think like Steve Martin and the example I gave of Roxanne, he's self-deprecating.

He's making fun of himself this whole time, but the crowd is cheering him on because he is doing it with such zest and such gusto.

Look at me, I'm hilarious, and I'm making fun of my own nose.

You guys got nothing on this guy.

And I think the same would go for a business person.

If you come off as confident and still kind of humble yourself and be vulnerable, but you have control of that vulnerability, that's very empowering because it can draw people in, you can make yourself relatable, but you're in control of the narrative of that joke.

So you are able to keep the power rather than feel that you've lost it just because it's a reflection on you.

Because that's when a lot of people, the nerves kick in, and they feel that they've been judged by the audience.

Whereas a comedian usually, they know how to just shoot from the hip and take control of the situation with another joke.

Yeah, yeah.

And I find even in presenting for business or something, if I can open it up with some sort of joke or something to ease into the presentation, to make myself human to the audience and to bring forth some sort of smile, I think that puts me at ease.

I think anytime whether people are performing comedy or doing a presentation, I'm rooting for the person.

I want them to succeed because I do not want to sit there for an hour and be bored.

And not laugh.

I mean, that's painful.

I don't want to see anybody go through that.

The audience never typically wants to see anyone fail.

We're there to be entertained and to learn or be educated.

So I've seen it too where the opposite could be true, where someone comes out and they're like, let's hear it.

Let me hear it from you.

And then they get the crowd all fired up, like something big is going to happen.

And they're like, okay, and here's my PowerPoint.

And then I'm like, what just happened?

You sold me a lie.

It's like, what?

You just reeled me in and now I'm here and I can't leave.

So I think it can be mismatched either way.

I think it takes practice and there's opportunity.

If you're practicing, I used to practice all my presentations for school.

My mom and dad always had me practice and I value that so much.

Because then if something happened and I tripped or I flubbed a word or something, it was easy to be in the moment with it because I was so prepared with everything else.

I could be like, oh, that just happened.

Okay, let's move on.

Everything else would be okay.

But I find that for me, those things would trip me up and I don't see it as self-deprecating as much as defeated.

Brush off the defeat and own it.

I mean, if you trip or fall, look at me, I'm okay, everybody.

It's like, good thing for you.

I can talk better than I can walk.

Exactly.

That's a joke right there.

And if you're worried about those things like, is the mic not working or people not hearing you, practice that.

Practice walking into the room.

What would you do if you tripped?

What would you say?

And then come up with 10 different things that you can say.

Because when comedians do crowd work, a lot of it they've done before.

They're doing the same set.

So the response from the audience tonight, tomorrow and the next night is going to be very similar.

Even though they pick on someone in the front row for this, if you go to three more of this comedian shows, you're going to hear them say the same things to the audience members.

Practice, practice.

You literally make it second nature to you.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

I've heard my dad's jokes so many times, but they're always funny to me, you know, because...

And he works it.

My dad, he has very good comedic timing, and same with my brothers, but I think it can become your thing.

You know, certain comedians have their sayings or their things, and it's okay to repeat it.

And typically people are like, why did that joke the other night?

Yeah, but this is a whole different audience.

You know, they haven't heard it.

They haven't heard it.

Let's go back to the technique that you shared earlier about structuring your jokes such that you don't forget.

And even if something distracts you, you are able to come back because there's a certain structure.

Can you just walk us through that again?

And I want to see how we can apply it to public speaking.

Absolutely.

I took it from my experience in public speaking.

I structure it in this way.

Here's my big secret sauce.

I open with something that's about me personally, like my name or something like that.

I start with something a little bit personal.

And when I do presentations, I open with something other than, Hi, my name is...

Like someone just introduced me.

Why am I repeating it?

If you have a good monster.

The only time I do it is I have a joke because sometimes people mispronounce my name.

So I have a joke in a fun way in which I can correct it, or so that people can remember.

So I have a joke about my name.

But it's never, Hi, my name is type thing.

So I do something that opens it up.

And then I start my jokes with jokes that are most audience-friendly, like not shocking, right?

So as I go through, then I heighten.

I can maybe get away with something riskier at the end because I built trust with my audience.

So I have to build trust.

So I come out and I bring people in.

I'm personable.

I'm a human, whatever that is, depending on what environment I'm in, right?

And I can change my opening joke, because if I'm doing a clean corporate show, of course, I'm not going to do a dirty joke or something that could be misunderstood or have people sent to HR.

We don't want that.

We don't want that.

And that's very important to know your audience, to know how you're going to open and what's going to connect you immediately.

You want to create a sense of belonging with your audience.

It could just be one line, whatever that is, that makes it a little bit more personal than, how's the weather?

Or, my name is this, or something.

And then I ease into my jokes, and I build.

Every comedian is different on what kind of material they write, but I try to thread it together so it's common sense.

So if I'm talking about, oh, this is who I am, oh, this is what I'm wearing today, I pick this because, then I have a joke about relationship and shoes, and then I can go into relationships, and it just segues.

There'll be a piece of this that, like, speaking of this, then I go into that, and then it builds, and my more edgier material will come later in the set, because I am building trust.

I'm getting laughs.

I'm bringing people along this journey with me.

And not every joke is connected to the last joke, but I try to think, like, if I just talked about this, it makes sense to put it here, because it kind of leads to the next thing.

So in a presentation, I think it's nice to set expectations of what I'm going to talk about, like, make that somehow personable, be like something to bring people in, whether it's a very short story, and that is a personal story, that leads us to the topic of today of what?

That's a personal example or a case study, and this is the piece of gold that we're going to really focus in on today, and we're going to cover three key things.

And then you make sure you do one, two, and three.

And each thing, like, to share a story about, people love stories, right?

I'm about to say, because I was going to ask, all this stuff, whenever you tell a joke and give examples, the boyfriend said this, and we were along this, that's a story.

I find that comedians easily incorporate stories, and they don't need to be long.

No?

Just those examples you were giving, that's the skill that we want to master as well.

Yeah.

They could be very short, but people remember stuff that is personal.

I love a good story.

We binge watch Netflix because we love a good story, right?

Stories can convey your message in such an entertaining way.

So set the expectations, bring people in, and be like, this is what we're going to talk about today.

And then these three takeaways, or these five takeaways, or whatever it is, and then each takeaway, number one would be introducing yourself at a networking event.

Let's just talk about that.

How do you approach somebody?

So one is the approach.

Two is, what do you say?

And three, how do you not make it transactional, right?

And so number one, how do you approach somebody?

Well, let me tell you about a time, or let me tell you about Mary.

And Mary went to a networking event, and she, and maybe an example of something that went wrong.

And you'd be like, so here's the things that we see that went sideways.

What if Mary had actually gone in and had this conversation, you know, and did this and approached a person this way, and then tell a story about someone who did it successfully?

Great, now we know the approach.

Number two, what do we say?

Now that Mary's made the approach and she's got someone's attention, they're like, Mary, what do you do?

And then does anyone have a personal experience in this?

And what do you say?

Maybe that you call on someone in your audience, or again, do you tell another story?

Do you just a one-liner, maybe some examples or something like that?

And then you go into number three, how do we not make it transactional?

How do you carry on a conversation?

Maybe it's another example.

And then at the end, you're like, so we just covered three key things.

So thanks to Mary, Mary gave us examples of this.

Remember, she did that, and we switched it, and it was brilliant.

And then we did this, this, and this, and we covered all of those things.

So when you walk away today, I want you to think back to that original story I told you when I came in the room.

What did I say to you when I first walked in?

You know, you could tie it in and bookend it, but you've taken everything you wanted to do in that presentation, and you made it unique to you as a speaker, and you made it memorable because you connected with people on a human level.

Memorable, which is what, whenever you speak, if you do comedy, if you've been on stage, you want people to remember you.

Yeah, unless I completely stink it up.

And there's nobody laughs.

Have you been in a scenario where the joke didn't land, nobody laughed, and then you switched it up quickly?

Yeah, that's happened a lot, to be honest.

That's just part of comedy.

I have to tell a lot of bad jokes, especially in open mics.

I mean, I ran an open mic for seven and a half years, and I had a lot of regulars.

They're not gonna laugh at anything that's not funny.

So even in shows, I've done shows where I was like, I'm so ready for the show, and I went in there and just somehow started off on the right foot and couldn't get it back or try to get it back.

There were times where someone before me completely just was terrible.

A couple tables got up and walked out, and then I was like left with half the room, and I had to bring those people back.

Fortunately, I felt like I did a good job doing that, but that's not always the case.

And I think the same thing can go for presentation.

And sometimes you'll hear a comedian say, well, I was a terrible audience.

And it's like, was it?

And so we have to look at all of that.

Another key thing that could influence your audience's response is what was happening before you did your presentation.

Did they just have a heavy lunch?

Have they just been listening to people for three hours and haven't had a break yet?

Those things can influence an audience response to anything.

The other thing is, is if I have done comedy between bands, that's like the worst.

Like people are like, get off the stage.

We want to dance.

You know, nobody wants to hear me tell jokes.

Like, brah brah brah, I have lobster claws as hands.

Or like, no, we want to hear music.

So there really are instances in which it's not a good audience for you.

And so you have to know, where am I in the schedule?

Where am I in the lineup?

Am I first?

Are people going to be coming in late?

Am I last?

Are people going to be leaving early?

Are they going to be checking their phone, packing up their things?

In a comedy club, there's a place called the check spot.

And that's when the waitress comes by and puts the check down for everybody to pay their drinks.

Nobody wants the check spot because everybody's going, wait a minute, here's my, oh, they charged us how much for drinks?

And you're like, hey, I'm up here doing jokes.

I'm hilarious.

So they're like, nobody cares.

So there are instances in which what has happened before or maybe what's going to happen after you, if they're all going to go to happy hour and you're the last person up, people are like, make it quick.

You better be interesting.

I'm sure that a lot of speakers as well, because if you're a keynote speaker, there's been an agenda for the whole day and you're going to deliver for 45 minutes, you're going to be somewhere in that list.

So some might have been bored.

Like you said, they haven't had a three hour break and all of those kinds of things.

There's a lot of factors that go into that.

Leanne, any last words for presentations and public speaking, any strategies that can take away from comedians to better their presentations?

I'll give you three.

So my favorite one is practice.

Practice, practice, practice, practice.

Practice your presentation.

Not so much word for word, but practice so that you're comfortable that if anything else happens in the moment, you're not flustered and sweating profusely to get back to what you have memorized.

Two, be kind to yourself.

Public speaking is one of the biggest, most fearful things up there with death for most people.

Like that is, it's terrifying, right?

And I still get nervous, and I consider my nerves to be the respect that I pay the audience.

It means I care, and that's okay.

I feel nervous.

That is completely normal, but be kind to yourself, you know?

And then three, have fun.

Find a way to incorporate a smile of your own.

Bring a smile to the situation.

And if you find yourself being flustered, step back, deep breath, and just look at everybody and smile.

It's contagious.

Smiling is contagious.

And if you just walk down the street, practice smiling at people, people will smile back.

They may wonder what you're up to, but they will smile back.

It's contagious.

So just practice, be kind to yourself with the nerves.

That's respect.

We pay your audience.

And three, smile.

When in doubt, throw a smile out there.

When in doubt, smile.

Words of wisdom from Leanne Linsky, the founder of Plausible.

Leanne, please just repeat this one last statement you made earlier that the audience is rooting for you.

The audience is rooting for you.

Yes.

Thank you so very much.

And before you go, we can find you on social media and on the web.

Yeah, you can find me at plausible.com, plauzzable.com.

And you can find me on social media, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, at Plausible.

I will put all of those on the show notes, plausible.com.

Thank you, Leanne Linsky.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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