Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. Today, if you've always thought of yourself as this person who's always serious and doesn't have much of a fun side to your speaking, to your presentation.
00:29
And to your storytelling, we have someone who's going to help us to be more edutaining so that we draw our audience in and make it more fun for them to listen to our deliverance speeches. So please help me welcome Geoffrey Klein. Hello, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being on the show, Geoffrey. So tell us a little bit about yourself. I am a visual storyteller, producer.
00:56
So I help people produce video and animation. I'm not actually an animator. And I'm a keynote speaker who talks about visual communication and the power of story. And I really love what I do. It's really fun. I work in marketing generally. So I always think, we should all be having fun. Life is short. And it's not to say that you shouldn't be serious because I take what I do very seriously. I just don't take myself very seriously. That's a major difference, yeah. Yeah, the world is part. And so...
01:25
making sure you have levity and sharing things and people want to smile and laugh and enjoy life and there's some conception that well work is work but if you love what you do it shouldn't be and if you're in a job that you don't love well if you inject some humor and some levity it'll make it a little easier. Seeing the bright side of life I guess. And how did you develop this humor, laughing, fun persona and able to incorporate it into the work that you do?
01:55
I think that's part of who I am, is a person who wants to joke around and have fun, you know, have a very active inner child. He wants to play. That being said, there's times and places for what behavior is appropriate. But in terms of in the workplace, it's like, oh, you're either having fun or you're working. And I believe that dichotomy is not necessarily something we need to adhere to. I think it developed somewhat organically because I've just been always...
02:22
open and eager to live life to the fullest. I've been very blessed with a great family. I've had instances where I've been in a career where I didn't really like it and it was a challenge. But by having opportunities to have fun still, when I started my company, I was saying, I want fun to be a core element. And a friend of mine says, I'm not sure people will take you seriously. And so I tweaked it a slight bit when he said to me,
02:46
When I think of you, yes, you are fun. But when I think about you, one of the things that I like is that you have a lot of enthusiasm. And I said, ooh, I really like that. And so the joke I tell people is that I am the CEO, the chief enthusiasm officer. I like that, yeah. Everyone can have enthusiasm for what they do. Please give us a bit of your work, background, how you got started. Yeah, I was an English and sociology major interested in film and creative writing. I had...
03:14
I love a film and would love to have worked in film, but didn't know anyone, didn't think it was possible or didn't know how to get there. So I ended up stumbling into a marketing job for a marketing genius, Seth Godin. He really deserves all the credit and all the accolades that he has because he really is a super genius when it comes to marketing. And sadly though, I wasn't quite ready. I was still young and I also had this interest in movies. So what did I do? I went to law school. Interesting twist.
03:43
There's the plot twist. And even there are times you have to kind of recognize where you are in your path. And my family history was a lot of law, but I ended up working for the Philadelphia Film Commission. I actually was writing reviews for a local newspaper. So I saw my foot in the creative side and it became clear in law school that I was not gonna be a lawyer. But when I moved to LA, I started to work in the film industry. My first job was in the story department, which was so perfect, at a lawyer agency where I spent most of my days reading.
04:11
a bunch of scripts and then writing kind of book reports on them, what they call coverage. And I was really fortunate, I got a job working for the president of production at Paramount Pictures and then MGM. And I got to see how movies got made. I got to see how the stories went from idea or script all the way through production. And it really gave me a grounding for seeing how stories come to life. And it was pretty awesome.
04:33
another plot twist. I met and fell in love with a beautiful girl. We got married and we moved to her hometown Manchester, England. I lived for 10 years, had my three children, ended up working in real estate. Quick interruption. Was it during the Alex Ferguson era of Manchester United? He was still when I first got to Manchester, but then he exited fairly quickly after. So I was there from 2003. The joke I always tell people, people say, who do you support?
05:01
and Manchester has two big teams. And so it was like, who do you support? I would say the Sixers, which is the Philadelphia basketball team. And people will look at me very funny. Oh my word. Me and the Sixers. But I was able to say unhappy. It was kind of a cautionary tale. Like if you're unhappy in your job, look to ways to get out. Now I was doing some presenting and being able to tell stories. I learned about the licensing trade and I was ways to kind of use that in terms of presenting to people. But eventually I said, I gotta get into something more creative.
05:28
And so I went and found a job at a marketing design agency in England. And then I came back to Philadelphia and worked for a brand marketing agency. And then I started my own agency and we really focused on visual storytelling, producing video and animation. And it's great. And I really wanted to share my belief that the best way to communicate is by sharing stories. That is very true. If you speak for 45 minutes, people may forget more than half of what you said, but the stories are what they take away and never forget.
05:56
I started to research some of the science behind it. There's some statistics and some people argue about that stories are 22 times more memorable than information. I've looked at enough statistics about video and about storytelling and about animation to know it may not be this percentage or that percentage, but the concept is visual stories work and storytelling works and it's what engages people. And if you're in business in any capacity and you're trying to get people to understand what you're talking about and remember you.
06:25
telling the story is going to help you do that. Now, some people are like, well, I need to communicate some facts and some data. And I'm not saying data isn't important, but data alone will never change people's minds. If it did, if data alone was enough, if information was enough to move us to change our behavior, then none of us would smoke, none of us would drink. All those things, those habits we have, we'd be like, oh, on a smoking packet, smoking kills. Well, that's information.
06:53
But when you incorporate that data into a narrative so that people can go along the journey, that's when you start to connect with them emotionally and they'll then understand it better and it may actually change their behavior. Yes. When you were working at Paramount and you saw the idea to production process of the story, did you learn if we tell the story this way, the movie becomes a blockbuster? If we do it this way, oh, I see why this movie flopped.
07:21
any trends that you might have noticed that informed your storytelling expertise? Depending on where you are in the system, because there are some people who are like, let me just find what's gonna sell. And some stories sell because of star power. So, oh, you need to see the latest Tom Cruise movie. I was fortunate, my boss was a storyteller and keen in telling a good story. And I worked with producers who were really trying to make not just entertaining films, but films that were gonna share some value.
07:50
Robert McKee wrote the Bible called story and it's about the structure. And so if you even go back further, you go back to kind of Aristotle, who's credited with coming up with kind of a three act structure. And that's still resonates and still has a lot of what people do. Most good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So I developed something to help people. Okay, great. How do I do that in business? But what the other thing is that stories need conflict. So if you tell a story and it just kind of stays here, no one's going to really care.
08:19
You need to have the ups and downs of an audience, whether it's a movie, a book, or a presentation, that there's change, that there's conflict and then resolution. And some of the techniques of just normal narrative film and writing in general apply. The Hero's Journey, going to Joseph Campbell, is an amazing book called Story Brand, where he really breaks it down, Donald Miller. I wish I had written the book. I'll tell you that one. That's how the technique is really good.
08:46
And he talks about what you're trying to do with your customer or your client. But a lot of what he talks about are some of the tried and true structural ways of telling a story and understanding that what matters in terms of character, in terms of setting, all these things add up. And one of the reasons that movies somehow work in some ways, it's a magic to get all those elements right, because it all starts with the script, the concept, the idea, what is the story you're trying to tell and making sure that it's worth telling.
09:16
talk about the hook. What's the hook in the story that's going to get people interested in seeing the movie? So you'll get trailers, 30 seconds, a minute to hook you in and want to go see that movie. So to give you enough of the story that you want to know more. And when you think of marketing and you think of pitches or presentation, that's the same kind of thing you're trying to do. You need to give people enough of the story for them to want more. I think some people, when they go to presentations, want to dump everything, including the kitchen sink and people just too much. Less is more often.
09:45
and presentations where you're leaving space so that people can fill them in or ask questions. When people speak, one of the things that speakers are often taught is the power of the pause because the power of the pause enables your listener to digest what you just said. Yeah, they need to catch up. Some speakers just keep talking and talking and talking. Yeah, they need to catch up. So some speakers just speak on and on and on and on. You don't have enough time to digest what they said.
10:14
And you also need that modulation. So I talk about conflict in story, you know, you need variety of tone, of pitch in order to keep people going along with you. If you, again, talk at the same level all the time, it's going to be boring. You know, so yeah. And it takes practice. You can go to seminars, you can listen to podcasts, you can listen to all these different things.
10:41
There are two really important things I would always want to share with people. One is, find out what works for you. Because there isn't a magic wand. There isn't a magic wand that says, okay, if I present this way, everything will be perfect. Every person is unique and has different stories to tell and has different ways to tell them. And you have to tap into those things. If you're not really funny, then you have to use humor sparingly. So one is being authentic.
11:08
I think that's so important. So you have to be self-aware in order to be authentic because you need to know who you are and how you operate and how you orient yourself in order to deliver in a way that's authentic. And even polished speakers, people go, oh my God, they're just naturals. And I would say that, yes, some people have a natural propensity to be better at it, but it's a skill that you can learn. Right. And once you're learning it, you need to put it into practice. People get nervous when they're not prepared.
11:38
So one of the things about speakers is that even the most polished speaker, if they don't prepare for speech, they may get tripped up. And even those speakers who look like they're just flowing, they've done a lot of work before you saw them step on stage. People are always looking for shortcuts and sometimes there aren't any. There are best practices, but not necessarily shortcuts. No, no, certainly not. Yes, you can learn the skill.
12:05
You can use the techniques but still be you, be authentically. You don't be a Tony Robbins copy. Well, Oscar Wilde said, be yourself. Everyone else is taken. Exactly. Yeah, you have to be your version of whatever successful speaker you're trying to be. I think Tony Robbins is amazing and some things he does. He's Tony Robbins for a reason. He's embraced who he is and gone all in. And I think that's the thing people have to, A, first of all, they have to identify, OK.
12:35
Who am I? What is it I've got to share that will help people? How do I find that people resonate most with it and then lean into it? So on your Ted talk, you told us about this radio station called we FM. Do you want to tell us more? Yes. Yeah. So one of the things about speaking about story, about communicating is
13:02
that you need to recognize the most popular radio station that everyone listens to is WIIFM. It stands for what's in it for me. I came up with something called the 11th commandment, which is know thy audience. Oh, I thought it means don't get caught. No matter how good a speaker, how great you think your topic is, if it doesn't resonate with the audience you're speaking to, who cares? And when I speak to businesses, I often say to them,
13:31
Nobody cares about what you can do. What do you mean? My business, you know, it's important. People only care about what you can do for them. And so when people are thinking about the speech that they're gonna write or the presentation they're gonna give, why is your audience gonna care? You don't give them a reason to care, you're gonna lose them. And so when people think about what story to tell, you wanna start with thinking about, well, who's my audience? What do they care about?
13:58
What's important to them? What's their pain that I can try and help them with? And then craft stories that will help them get further along in their journey to solve those problems of heal that pain. And if anyone asks, how do I know what the current pain is? If it's purple, we'll work with it. You're presenting or it's another branch of the company. That's, that's easy. But if you are assigned, like you said, you are going to a speaking engagement in Florida.
14:26
How will you find out what their pain points are, what they need to know right now? Usually, you're not agreeing to speak and then speaking the next day. That's part of the preparation piece. So when I work with an event planner, I will ask them, who is the audience that I'll be speaking with? What are they trying to get out of being at this conference? What are their pain points? So it's partly asking the person who's hiring you to help you.
14:54
doing some research, looking at who the people are, looking at their businesses, looking at the conference. Oh my God, looking at the other sessions that are there to figure out what is it people seem to be interested in. And so it's about not living in a vacuum. One of the things that's been suggested, I think it's actually an interesting idea. So when I go to a conference, if I'm lucky and I can afford the time, I'll try and go the day before and meet people, talk to them and ask questions. So the way you get to know your audience is by being curious
15:24
Interested. The distinction between interested and interesting is one that I continually heart born about because I think it's so important. They did a study where people in networking situations, so you and I would be in a networking situation, you and I would be talking and I'd be asking you lots of questions. You know, Roberta, tell me about this, tell me more. And then you would leave and they would ask you when you left, what did you think of Jeffrey? And you'd be, he was so interesting, even though I hadn't told you that much about myself.
15:53
It's not about being interesting, it's about being interested. And so again, that has twofold benefits. One, the person feels heard and therefore you're deepening that relationship and that connection. And two, if you're a good listener, which is really important in terms of learning about your audience, you'll learn, you'll pick up the things that matter to the people that you're going to talk to. Right as you start your speech, you go and introduce yourself, whether or not you have the time, if you do beforehand.
16:21
to go in the audience and say, how are you doing? Tell me about you. And then be able to take that up and use it when you're talking. So if I'm having a presentation, I say, you know, Roberta, nice to meet you. You know, where are you from? Oh, I'm born in South Africa. And then I, you know, lived, I'm in Chicago. And I can then in my speech say, you know, I'm from Philadelphia and I'm big into sports. I know Roberta here may be a Chicago Bulls fan, but I can't help it, I'm a big Sixers fan. Because if I do that, how great are you gonna feel?
16:50
that I've included you in my presentation. That's probably a higher level learning and practice. But again, it's thinking about how can you engage with the people that you're with. And that starts from the way you're introduced, how you come out, that eye contact, all those other techniques about the delivering of speech. They all add up. You wanna have the mindset of I'm here to engage the people who are here to hear from me. Not I'm here because I have something important to say.
17:20
Oh, because I'm such a good speaker. Yeah. Let me showcase with you how phenomenal I am in articulating. I enjoy sharing what I'm passionate and enthusiastic about with others because I believe that by sharing that I can help them be better at what they do. That's foundational. You're just there because you know, for ego, for the money, for those things.
17:50
You're not going to last very long and you're not going to be very effective. Not a long-term plan for sure. Yes. I call them the muffin and coffee conversations, you know, in the morning, usually conferences is started at 9 AM, but you come in eight for registration, getting your name tags. That's when you talk to people. Yes. They've given you the information we spoke about earlier, but you get a sense of them individually and, and I'll always say to people, the one benefit of that, you realize how much everyone is rooting for you.
18:18
Yeah, I think that's an important point that the audience is rooting for you in 99% of the cases. Maybe you have one person who's just trying to be a heckler. If you make a mistake, it's okay, because guess what? They don't know what you're going to say. I tell them that all the time. They don't have your script. They don't have your speech. And if it's a slip of the tongue, which even I do on this podcast, is you can laugh together. Right. It's being vulnerable, something that we're taught, oh, that shows weakness.
18:47
And I say no, what it shows is how human we are. And if you can do that, we're a lot further along to connecting with your audience than by being perfect and by being overly polished. There are times I'm like, should I mess up on purpose and will that endear me to the audience? But again, it has to be genuine. So you can't fake messing up. Just be yourself. Something doesn't go perfectly right. It's okay. Everyone, as you said, is rooting for you. Just be open about it.
19:16
What was I going to say next? Do you know? I believe that stories connect humanity. And so the more human you can be, the better. Don't allow something not going perfectly right to derail you from what you're trying to do. Remember, you're there to help them. And if you're in service to your audience, they'll be very forgiving. Exactly. When I have a sip of the tango, I always say my South African accent is debating with the American pronunciation. You say tomato, I say tomato. There you go.
19:45
Tell us two or three tips. If somebody says, I really don't know how to incorporate the story, the fun part, the edutainment, as you said, into my speech. So I think there's a couple things. I'll give three things I think will really help. One is to recognize that the stories you have that you like, other people probably like. And one of the things you can do if you know you're going to be on stage or you know going to present a lot.
20:15
is to start what I call a story bank. And a lot of people, this isn't original to me, but get a Word document, get an Excel sheet where you can start to list all, because we've all had experiences that are both different, but that can connect with people, whether we've had loss or we've had wins and we've had all the different emotions. So I would say, when you're thinking about stories, think about emotions and senses, because at the end of the day, we're trying to make people feel something. Right. So.
20:41
When you're telling a story, you want to think about, okay, how does this make people feel when I tell it to them or what I'm hoping that they'll feel? One of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou, which says, people will forget what you said, people forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And so I think that's part of the goal. So there are a couple of tips in there, which is A, create a story bank and think about the emotions that it evokes so that you can then use them in a certain time. But if you have a list of 15 stories, then you can say, okay, for this speech,
21:11
this one works. And also recognizing even though you may love a story, maybe it doesn't fit this audience. Don't get so in love with a story that you're not willing to not use it when it doesn't fit. Let me tell you about the time that I scored 50 points. If it's not going to help them, then you cut it. I think it's also important that if you are excited about what you're talking about, audience will be. So having energy, having that enthusiasm, smiling,
21:39
You know, the little thing. So I think it's important to remind yourself, you're on stage. You know, you're getting to share with people, have fun with it. If you're having fun, they're going to have fun. And then how can you engage people? I'm a big fan of kind of gamification and getting people involved in that way. But you don't have to think about it that way. You know, there's just simple things like asking questions. So let me ask you a question. How many people here have been to Chicago? You know, there are ways to get them involved. And if you think about what your topic is.
22:08
People came here because they're interested in. So if you're talking about workplace culture, how many people love the culture though then? And how many people find it really great when your boss comes over and doesn't say hello and just shoves paper in your face? So again, thinking about stories that are real to people, but engaging them, not talking at them, talking with them. There are a lot of different techniques about how you do that. Technology is catching up, so there's ways to...
22:37
ask polls live in real time. I use a technique where I ask a question that they can answer on their phone and then the answer is create a word cloud in real time. If you put in the word, if I say, one of the questions asked is, what are the consequences of poor communication? Distrust. And so if you put distrust and you see distrust up on, you're like, that's from me. Immediately, that person now feels part of the session. And how great is that? And again, knowing,
23:06
what you're good at, what you're comfortable with. You know, not all people dream of being a game show host like myself, but there are other ways, again, being interested with your audience. You could ask the audience where they're from. You know, if you bring a candy bar and you're like, okay, where are people from? Who's from the United States? And you find the person who's traveled the furthest. Here's a chocolate bar. A, everyone loves to talk about where they're from. Even the person who didn't get the chocolate bar will be like, that's cool. He cares enough to...
23:33
Find out who's traveled the furthest and give them a little something. And so, and there are lots of variations on that, but I think it's about thinking about what can you do to connect with your audience. Right. How about this? Put a statement on a slide. Yes. Raise your hand if you agree with this. Okay, now raise your hand if you don't agree with this. Again, something that's simple, maybe everyone agrees and everyone disagrees, but asking the audience to participate.
23:59
And if you can get your audience to participate, even in a small way, I think that is the difference between a lecture, which no one wants to go to. I hate it at university, I don't want to experience that in adulthood. Yeah, and it's not fun. It's not fun versus an engaging session that is a little interactive. So I think if there's ways to be a little interactive, people will thank you for that and they'll be grateful. Oh, so it's probably just being thoughtful.
24:29
Finding ways to include people without putting people on the spot. You don't always want to do them. You know, you're not asking any personal questions. You're asking questions. Anything political or religious. No, no, I always stay away from those. I'm writing political ending, religious ending, sexual ending. The endo is a no-no for me. Who's favorite color is blue? Who's favorite color is red? Everyone loves their favorite color. You know, you and I love purple and everyone else is wrong about the best color, but it's okay. No, no, every color.
24:59
I've done games where I include snacks and things. And I think the most engaged, my, and this was a virtual audience, was when I said, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? Really? People were like, oh my God, I love this, you know, butter pecan, oh, I'm chocolate marshmallow. And so, because it's enabling them to share something about themselves and therefore feel included. The inner child, the feelings, the emotion, it all came together when ice cream was mentioned. I think.
25:28
Think so. They're like, Ooh, this is fun. I'm not thinking about insurance. I'm not thinking about whatever. I'm thinking about ice cream. Who doesn't like talking about ice cream? Exactly. So it's about finding ways to connect our humanity. So whether it's through a poignant story or it's through some humor or it's through interests. What are people interested in? And finding those opportunities to share that with someone to hopefully engage them.
25:55
Just before we close, speaking of being interesting versus being interested, that can be applied to dating as well. You've been married a long time. You probably no longer know any single people, but if they tell you their dating stories and how, oh, I didn't like the guy, all he did was talk about himself. I'm not gonna see you again. I'm about to celebrate 20 years. Interestingly, I like to talk about myself. I like to talk in general, as many speakers do. My wife...
26:25
is beloved and part of the reason she's beloved by others is because she's genuinely curious about people. Wow. She is genuine. That's just too she is. I've learned from her the power of being curious by asking questions and she really that kind of person. I think so even if you are somewhat egocentric as many of us are, if you can try and work towards being a little more interested in others, it will go a long way in terms of dare you and connecting with others. Very key.
26:54
Geoffrey, thank you so much for your time today. You have helped not just the listeners, but especially me because the humor stories and how you craft them, I'm still a work in progress in that with my speaking. I think we're all works in progress, but thank you so much for having me. And before you go, where can we find you so that we can continue this conversation? I have two different buckets. Anything related to speaking, ggklein.
27:21
That's the website and most of the socials, so Instagram, ggkline.com would be the website. My company Nine Dots Media, if you ever are interested in visual content or wanting to craft your story, Nine Dots Media will get you there. And again, most of the socials there. And I'm more than happy to have a conversation with anyone to talk about any of this. It's as I said, I'm very enthusiastic about this and always happy to have a conversation with someone if I think I can be helpful.
27:48
Nine Dots Media. I've seen some amazing visuals behind Geoffrey's screen as we're having this conversation today. Keep working on it. Thank you so much for being on the show. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review and we'll be with you next time.