Speaking and Communicating Podcast

From the April Challenge, I had some ladies that were in sports.

They were aspiring to be 80s, which is athletic directors and athletic administrators.

And some of them have gotten promotions, and some of them have gotten speaking engagements, and they talk about how their delivery had improved a lot since taking my training.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta ndela.

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

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

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Now let's get communicating with Stacey L.

Miller all the way from sunny California.

She's a best-selling author.

She's the founder of CCA Media academy, a public speaking coach and media trainer who is focused on helping women in sports with their leadership positions.

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

Hey, Stacey.

Hi, dear Roberta.

Thank you for having me today.

I'm excited that you're here.

Welcome.

It's my pleasure.

Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

So my name is Stacey Miller and I'm the owner of Clutch Communications academy.

I call it CCA Media academy for short.

I do public speaking and media training for both student athletes and women in administrative and athletic positions.

Was that literally your first journey after graduating college, or is this something that came later in your life?

Absolutely not.

So when I graduated college, I had a fresh arm, fresh and shiny with a new degree in media and communications.

I wanted to be a broadcaster.

And the old saying, if I knew then what I knew now, I would have went into sports because I have become a really sports fan.

And so I had a non-traditional path into where I am now.

I initially had a small boutique public relations firm.

When I pretty much did like crisis management, I did a lot of speech writing and I did do some coaching.

I had a non-traditional path into sports, however, because I was a massage therapist for several years.

And in that work, I became a publicist for some of my clients.

And so I was able to kind of transition out of the physical technique and physical therapy side and go full time into the public relations and media training side.

When you say crisis management, I know a lot of us have watched Scandal.

Is it that every time they do something scandalous in the quotation marks, they call you and say, Stacey, fix this.

Don't let the public know I did this.

Or if I'm caught on video, spin it and say something different.

Is that what that is?

It's kind of a combination of those types of things.

Sometimes what I would deal with would be things like that.

But I would mostly try to be proactive in my approach with crisis management.

So it's kind of like if you can prepare for something ahead of time, you can kind of get in front of the problem, if you will.

If you train and coach your clients on how to conduct themselves and talk to them about the pitfalls and show them examples of people who have done things and try to almost, for lack of a better word, have the fear factor installed in them.

You really wouldn't have to do crisis management.

But yes, of course, we would get the call to say, hey, this is going on, and can you help with this?

It wouldn't be a cover up, per se, but it would basically be a way of managing the communication surrounding the crisis.

Like you said, you graduated with a communications degree, so you've always been very passionate about the whole aspect of communication.

Why is communication so important to you?

Well, initially, it was interesting.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an English teacher.

And so as I grew up and started learning about different careers and studying different things, I realized it was communications that I really liked to do.

English is a part of that.

And so the communications piece, I'm a natural, what I call a talker.

So I like to talk a lot.

And just being able to communicate, make sure that everyone is heard and understood and get their point across in a clear and concise manner, that became more of my focus.

And so that's how I ended up on that trajectory as far as being in the communication space.

And speaking of being a kid, I've had guests who say, when I was growing up, I was told, you talk too much, Stacey, you need to be quiet.

And they've had to learn as grownups to start speaking up for themselves again, and then they get into public speaking because of that.

Did you have any grownups saying, you talk too much, Stacey?

I did.

I was that one that would get very good student on her report card, but talks too much.

I would also get from my mother, be quiet.

So yes, it does fall hand in hand in hand with that.

It's like you kind of morph into that.

But part of that is the ebb and flow of communication.

I really like to talk.

I really like to find out more about people, get to know people.

I think it transitioned into a pretty good and meaningful career for myself.

Absolutely.

Which we're now going to talk about.

So how did you decide that you're going to have this media training company and help other people with their communication skills?

Well, I think what inspired me to transition and to work specifically with women in sports is that I like emphasizing the confidence piece.

I like to encourage women to network and build strategic communication skills because they're critical.

They're critical in public relations.

They're critical in leadership.

They're critical in executive communications type positions.

And I like to focus on empowering women to like own their own expertise and be able to communicate effectively, as well as break those barriers that have traditionally been installed for women like the glass ceiling and not being able to claim leadership positions that were normally reserved for men.

And really, it's about helping them see their expertise as athletic administrators and translate that into powerful leadership skills.

And what have you found are some of the challenges your clients have as women, saying, if I'm in this leadership position, these are the barriers, or these are the barriers to getting to a leadership position, even though I really know my job, even though I really know what I'm doing.

Well, sometimes, you know, of course, it could be like they're in a male-dominated field, right?

So it could be that sometimes the field just doesn't seem open or receptive, per se, for women.

But I think some of the challenges for the women themselves might be a reservation about speaking up and being heard, and more so being able to actually position themselves as leaders.

You know, a lot of people know their jobs, and they know them very well.

But sometimes the confidence piece, or either they've been rejected so many times, it's like you kind of shy away from even trying because you feel like you're just going to be shot down, or you're going to be refused, but and that fear of actually putting yourself out there.

So I think that these communication skills that I try to impart into my clients, it just helps them have that confidence and that fearlessness and that boldness to go ahead and go for what they want and position themselves as the experts.

Which I think especially that confidence piece, like you said, if you've been shut down that many times, I think that's something I also struggle with is, why keep going back?

Just to get punched again and again and again.

How do they then overcome that and still feel, I can still speak up and go for it, despite being shut down in the past?

I think some of it is really about strategy.

And it also could be when you know what you're talking about and you know your level of expertise is leading with your accomplishments.

Accomplishments are irrefutable.

If you've had a success in a certain area, you lead with that.

That gives you a boldness.

It also gives you the confidence to continue on.

One thing I also encourage, of course, is one, know your field.

And two, when you are in a position where you need to present yourself, just practice.

Practice gives you the confidence also, because once you have a skill set and you know that, being able to communicate that and practicing your delivery, it also helps with that fearlessness and reinforces that confidence in your skills and abilities.

Yeah, because we usually emphasize that, what you just mentioned, being able to sell yourself when it's job interviews.

However, if you are already in the job and you feel that you either should pitch your boss on, you know, I want to handle that bigger client or this bigger project, for them to trust you with much bigger responsibilities, that's the negotiation piece that a lot of professionals, women especially, struggle with.

How do I sell to my boss the idea that I'm the person for this?

Absolutely, it's knowing your worth, right?

It's knowing your worth and being able to present examples in which you have excelled in this same area or other areas and being able to present that.

Sometimes what works for a lot of people is to provide their higher-ups with a timeline and show them examples of, in this particular instance, this is how I took the lead in this.

This is how I took the initiative in this particular thing.

And these were the results.

What you have to do is present the value that you bring to the table.

And that also can also increase the level of confidence that your superiors may have in you and show them that, hey, I've been entrusted with these responsibilities before.

I've excelled in this.

I've created new ways, new pathways to attack a particular problem.

And then just provide statistical data because numbers don't lie.

They certainly don't.

Now, let's get to your public speaking training.

Why did you decide that this is another aspect of people's lives or especially professionals that you want to help them with?

Well, specifically because public speaking, it vacillates between one and three as the most feared thing to do for adults.

I feel like nervousness is okay.

If you don't have a little bit of butterflies, you might be a little too cocky.

I mean, it doesn't mean that you don't know your stuff, but sometimes I think butterflies are good because they mean that you care, you know, and you want to do a good job and you want to show up and you want people to understand whatever it is that you're speaking about, right?

And the other thing is that just being able to assist people in conquering that fear, because on the other side of the fear is the accomplishment.

So if you conquer the fear of public speaking, your next job may be on the other side of that, you know, your next position may be on the other side of that.

You may get some notoriety and maybe even some offers that you weren't even aware that people would have known you were there had you not spoken up or had you not had the opportunity to speak in a public forum.

And we do say on the show that your brilliance being hidden on the hard drive of a computer, no one knowing exactly how brilliant you are, you're being robbed literally of potential opportunities, like you said.

And when you help your clients with their public speaking, the fears overcoming, what are some of the things that they have come to you for and said, Stacey, I'm the life of the party, but this is what I really struggle with when it comes to public speaking.

Well, one thing I have had an opportunity to work with is an individual who was going to his Hall of Fame.

He was an athlete, a professional athlete, college athlete, coach, and ended up going to different respective Hall of Fame.

He went to the Hall of Fame in his city that he lived in, grew up in, and he went to the Hall of Fame in his state.

Now, he's waiting to go to the Hall of Fame, the big one.

I helped him not only write, but prepare for his speech.

And one thing that he was really concerned about was his accent, because he's from the South, and he was feeling like his accent might be a little off-putting.

And I told him, I said, one thing about the training that I provide, is that I always encourage people to be themselves.

I encourage authenticity.

And I felt like his accent is part of who he is.

So don't try to mask that.

Be who you are.

Speak to your accomplishments.

And I told him, I said, you're a likeable guy.

You wouldn't be in the position that you are.

You wouldn't have the nomination that you have had you not been the person that you are.

So just be who you are.

And so he ended up delivering his speech, and I felt like a proud mother hen when I witnessed his delivery.

He hit all of his points.

He was very poised.

He was confident because we had gone over it.

He had practiced, and I got him to the point where he knew his material.

So if anything happened, he could just pivot and still get right back on track because he knew his material.

So those are one of my biggest accomplishments as far as helping people deliver with the public speaking aspect.

Absolutely love that story.

And like you said, be yourself.

We always say, take the tips, the strategies being shared by other seasoned public speakers.

But at the end of the day, when you deliver the message, you just got to be yourself.

It's not about taking the mask off the person that you admire and becoming them on stage.

Just be yourself.

Absolutely.

I think that a lot of times, especially with public speech, we have people that we admire, the Les Browns, Lisa Nichols, Tony Robbins, those type of folks.

People have a tendency to really admire those folks.

And part of the admiration, they want to take on some of their mannerisms, their ways and things like that.

It's always good to have a earmark, to kind of aspire to.

But in that, you want to create your own way, say your own voice.

And so that's what the authenticity piece is about.

I encourage everyone to be themselves, because it's great to have a example and a mentor, if you will, but it's always best to be yourself.

You'll be more genuine.

People will like you, they'll relate to you, and they'll feel like they know you better.

The audience does feel, if you're being genuine or if you're acting apart, they certainly feel that.

And now back to writing the speeches.

You said earlier that your client knew his material that well, that if he forgot something, he could pivot.

Is that memorizing the speech, or is that knowing it well?

Because there's a difference.

And you know how sometimes, I don't know how it was when you were in school, you know how it memorized for the exam?

And then there's a word you forget, and then you forget everything else.

It's a disaster from there.

Absolutely.

So you bring me to one of my favorite points, one of my favorite quotes, right?

So one of my favorite quotes is, I want you, when I'm training someone in their public speaking, specifically with the delivery of a presentation or a speech, I do not want you to memorize it because your memory will fail you.

I want you to know it.

And the difference is, if you know something, anything can happen and you can get right back on point, or you can still stay in the same vein of what it is that you're speaking because you know your material.

It's almost like I presented to them and like you're an expert, right?

If you're called upon to speak, you're speaking on something that you know about.

If you know something, you could probably talk for hours and hours about it.

So even if it's yourself, and people have a tendency to be a little shy when it's about talking about their own accomplishments and their accolades.

But if you know what you've done, that is an accomplishment.

If you know your accomplishments, you could talk about them.

Like, for instance, if I was a football player, I know football, so I could talk about football without a script, without prompting, you could just talk about it.

And that's the difference between knowing, memorization.

It may be talking about a subject that you know, but if you're trying to memorize word for word what's been said, if you forget one word, then it'll cause this anxiety, and it'll be this ripple effect.

But I always tell people, if you know your material, your audience does not know if you did not say a particular word.

They do not know.

Well, skip an entire point, and then come back to it later.

They don't know.

Absolutely.

We always circle back, right?

And so people do not know.

Only thing you do is just keep going.

But if you know it, it doesn't matter if you forgot the word.

Your audience does not know.

But if you tried to memorize it and you forgot the word, you probably panic, you know, you'd experience anxiety.

It will show on your face.

You'll get a little nervous.

Sometimes people start to fidget.

And that's what I talk about, you know, memory as well as the use of devices.

What if your battery died?

The projector doesn't come on for the presentation.

Absolutely.

Something doesn't work.

Anything can happen.

So when you know something, you're really able to pivot in the moment as well.

That is so true.

Or, you know how sometimes you can prepare your Hall of Fame client for a 45-minute keynote.

And then they say, actually, we're running behind schedule.

Can you just do it for 15, 20 minutes?

So if you are so stuck on what Stacey wrote for you for 45 minutes, you see.

Then that's all you know, right?

And then in your head, you're thinking, how can I condense this?

How can I deliver it?

And you're like, I only know the 45-minute version.

I only got notes for 45 minutes.

But if you know it, you say in your head, you'll start doing the map.

You start deducting things.

Oh, I can cut this story down.

I can leave that example out.

Oh, you know what?

Okay.

And then, of course, someone will be there to cue you, to tell you like how many minutes you have left or whatever when you're delivering.

But it won't make you nervous when you see five minutes and you're thinking in your head, you got 20 more minutes worth of speech left.

Exactly.

So that is literally the key to knowing versus memorizing.

Absolutely.

Right.

You have a public speaker.

Is it a template to overcome speaking challenges, etc.?

You have a three-step, crafting a message, overcoming the challenges of public speaking.

Would you take us through that, please?

Sure.

So I do what's called a three-day speakers challenge.

And it's normally a free speakers challenge that I do.

And with that, there is a handout that I provide as a download.

And what it does is it takes us on a journey for the three days.

The three days cover, one, the fears of public speaking.

So we talk about fear, because that's one of the number one things.

And that's one of the reasons why a lot of the people that are in the challenge, that's why they joined.

They want to kind of overcome the fear, or they want to increase their confidence.

So the first day and the first book of the information is about fear, talking about the different fears and how to combat fear.

The second day, we talk about their messaging, and that's about how to deliver the concise message or get your point across in a clear and concise manner.

And then the third day or the third part of the download is about the challenges.

So we talk about the different challenges that public speaking have.

That could be anywhere from wanting to do a good job, and sometimes people are talking about they want to make sure that they are able to get their message across clearly.

That's one of the challenges.

Sometimes people have challenges in that.

What if someone doesn't agree with something that they're saying and being able to handle that without being offended?

Or sometimes they could interrupt you with a question while you are not yet ready and not done with your presentation to answer questions.

Some people can't handle that.

They're thinking, I want to get through everything.

I hope Stacey and everybody don't interrupt me until I'm done.

And then Stacey interrupts, that just throws you off.

Yes.

And it's how do you handle that?

Right.

You know, in that download, we have a conversation about it in the challenge, but I provide the download with just the slides that we've gone through.

And it has some of the answers to some of those questions and some of the suggestions to how to deal with those types of things.

The fear, the messaging, and then the challenges.

And what is the website to be able to access that download?

It's on my website, which is ccamediaacademy.com.

And I'll provide the link to the download on there.

Okay.

Because it's normally in the challenge, but then I'll provide a link to the download on there for you to listen to.

Thank you, Stacey, ccamediaacademy.com.

Yes.

And then, have you had any feedback from any of your clients on how learning these public speaking strategies and implementing them?

Have they seen any improvements?

Whether personally or professionally?

Absolutely.

Most recently, just did a challenge in August.

It was 19th through the 21st.

I also did one in April.

From the April challenge, I had some ladies that were in sports, and they were aspiring to be athletic 80s, which is athletic directors and athletic administrators.

And some of them have gotten promotions since my training, and some of them have gotten speaking engagements.

And they talk about how their delivery had improved a lot since taking my training.

I talked to a few of them offline, and just kind of helped organize their thoughts and prepare for their deliveries, and they nailed it.

I love that.

Just one last thing, I wanted to ask about the messaging.

You know how a lot of people say, oh, Stacey, I don't have a story, because we have this myth, this idea that I need to have had a traumatic experience to have a story, which is absolutely not true.

And so when you say you help them craft their message, do any of them say to you, Stacey, I don't have a message, I don't have a story, there's nothing interesting about my life.

What am I gonna say?

Yeah, a lot of, everybody thinks they don't have.

Most people, like you said, they think automatically they go to the trauma piece, right?

But I could tell people, you can have a story of triumph, you can have a story of resilience, you can have a story of bravery, you can have a message that you can impart to someone, you can show a level of growth.

That's the story.

Everyone has a story, right?

And you just have to figure out which one fits the audience that you're talking to, because sometimes you can have multiple stories, right?

Because we're multifaceted people.

And so it's just finding out what it is that you wanna talk about, and thinking about what do you have to relate to whatever it is your topic is.

Everyone has a story.

And so it's just really about doing almost like a braindub, and just kind of looking at different things that you've gone through, different things that you've accomplished, and then that's how you can pull out a story out of that.

I don't know how old you are, Stacey, but, you know, I grew up watching MacGyver, and I think sometimes people, not just the trauma, people think something grandiose, like a MacGyver type of situation where I took a pen and I've made a bomb out of it, and that's because MacGyver says MacGyver used to make bombs out of pens.

But it doesn't have to be grandiose.

It doesn't have to be spectacular.

People can actually relate to the day to day of, I did this and this is what happened, and this is what I did about it, and this is what I accomplished at the end.

They can relate to what you think is regular, or boring, or it's normal.

That's actually what they're looking for.

Absolutely.

I have a specific example like that.

I have a client, she is a brand strategist, and what she does is she looks at people's brands and find out how they can be more profitable in their brand.

Her story is when she was a little girl, she used to sell candy and she used to sell pens, pencils, papers to her students.

And so she was saying she had a natural ability to see what people needed and provide the need.

So she had a natural ability also to help people.

She tells the story of when she was a little girl and she sat in her classroom.

Some of the students didn't have pens or papers and things like that.

So she would sell them for a quarter and she would provide them with candy because everybody likes candy as a kid, you know.

So she would just have her little store set up.

And she did that.

So these days, she does that with people and their businesses.

She looks at their brands and sees what is it that their brands need to make their brand that much bigger, that much better.

And she said the seed was planted when she was a little girl assessing the needs of her fellow students.

And now she assesses the needs of brands.

And so that story is lighthearted.

It's cute.

It's fun.

But it's also something that everybody can remember.

We all had a classmate that sold something.

It was candy too, but it was, they would sell the blow pops.

And my brother and I, we started doing it too and outside.

You don't even think of that kind of stuff, but it was really interesting.

But everybody can relate to a lighthearted story like that.

It was not full of tragedy, but it was simply rooted in assessing need and helping people.

And what a powerful lesson of self-awareness.

Wow.

Is there any one last thing you feel I haven't asked you yet that you feel our listeners will benefit from your perspective on?

Maybe about my transition, of how I transitioned into the communications and PR piecebook specifically focusing on the women.

I picked that up because one, being a woman, of course, but also being around a male-dominated industry in the form of sports.

I noticed that a lot of women were doing a lot of the work and kind of not having a lot of the positions of power or positions of authority and things like that.

A lot of them were working really, really hard.

And so my desire to help women have more of a professional face and more of administrative positions and more authoritative positions was something that helped me decide to help women in the marketplace with their speaking abilities.

The story there is I saw the need and now I provide the solution.

Yes.

So in my Speaker's Challenge, I say, a need creates your niche.

A need creates your niche.

Words of wisdom from Stacey L.

Miller from California, founder of CCA Media academy, the selling author and public speaking coach who focuses on women in sports and athletics.

I really enjoyed our conversation, Stacey.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me.

I had a blast and I'm so happy to chat with you today.

I am too.

It's my pleasure.

Speaking of author, would you like to also share details on your book as well and where we can find it?

Sure.

I am the co-author of an anthology that became a best-selling book.

It's on amazon.com.

And the book is called Girl, Your Brands, A Big Deal.

And it's specifically targeted toward women and their brands.

And my chapter is Chapter 3, and it's called The Go-To Girl, because that is what people call me.

They call me the go-to girl for getting all kinds of resources and information to people to help them better themselves in the public speaking arena.

The go-to girl that is Stacey Miller wrote on Girl, Your Brands, A Big Deal, which you find on Amazon.

Get in touch with Stacey at ccmediaacademy.com.

We thank you for being here today, Stacey.

Thank you for having me.

My pleasure.

What is public speaking and conversation, Stacey?

You know, I tell my clients that public speaking is thinking of it as being in a room full of friends, having a conversation about some stuff I know.

I know.

I like that.

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