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. This is a communications and public speaking podcast. So my guest today is exactly the perfect fit because he
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is a public speaker, a public speaking coach, and the award-winning author of the Captivating Public Speaker, which is a book that shows you how to engage, impact, and inspire your audience every single time. Peter George is joining us today in the show. Please help me welcome Peter. Hello. Hi Roberta, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you Peter? Very good, thank you.
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Pleasure to be here. Thank you for being here. I'm so excited about our conversation. I get excited every time somebody's a public speaker and tell us the show. Well, that's what makes it interesting to listen to as well, the enthusiasm. Right, so before we get into all your credentials, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where in the US are you based? I'm in Rhode Island. And for people who don't know where Rhode Island is, it's in between Massachusetts and North of New York. We're the smallest state in the union.
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We're right on the ocean, beautiful ocean. I grew up here. I've lived other places, but I've always come back because it's so beautiful. And I grew up with a lisp and a stutter. And that's why it's ironic that I do what I do for a living, that I'm a public speaking coach and speaker and the like, because when you grow up with a lisp and a stutter, you don't think you're ever going to be speaking for a living. Of course. You know how they say focus on your strengths to make your life a little easier? Yeah. It's intriguing that.
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having those challenges and yet this is the career you ended up having. When I got into the corporate world, when I got out of school and got into the corporate world, I had to present. I had no choice. So I went to get help. I went to get training. And what I realized at that point was I had been learning about communication throughout my life by avoiding it. I'd see what was happening and know I didn't want to get involved. So even if it was from the other side of the coin, if you will, I was still observing it.
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And then when I got that training, I was realizing I know exactly what's going on here. I know what the perspective is from the other side. So it really lent itself to helping me become a more effective communicator. That's interesting. So first of all, when you went to the corporate world, what career were you pursuing? I worked for Sony Corporation in marketing. And the great thing about marketing is you think you can stay in an office and come up with ideas and provide information and the like.
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and that you won't have to speak to people. But isn't that why we channel surf so much? Cause all these marketers are selling us stuff on television. So, uh, it turned out well. And then when I left the corporate world and I left cause my dad died. So I came back to Rhode Island to be with my mom. I had to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I went into business for myself, been in business for myself ever since. And being able to present and present fairly well did nothing but increase the revenue of my companies. The more I spoke.
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the bigger the bumps were in our revenue. So when you were doing the marketing job, did you still have the lisp and the stutter? No, they really were gone by the time I got to high school, more or less. Okay. They still come about every so often, especially the stutter. If I'm tired or if I'm speaking about something that's truly near and dear to me, that's heartfelt, my stutter will come back. Right. It's funny that you talk about how communication skills have improved your business.
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There's a quote and it's actually in your book, The Captivating Public Speaker by Brian Tracy. You know, he's from the generation of Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn. We grew up listening to them. And he says, if you learn communication skills, they will improve your business and your personal life by about 80%. Yep. It's amazing. You look at Warren Buffett, he's done okay for himself over the years. If he hadn't given away a lot of his fortune, he'd still be the wealthiest man in the world.
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Every investment he makes is scrutinized, analyzed, torn apart piece by piece. And people want to know, should they make a similar investment? Should they not? Yet he'll say the most important investment he ever made in his entire lifetime was his investment in his public speaking. In course. He took a course when he was 27 years old. He said because he knew back then that if he couldn't communicate well, he wouldn't be able to lead and achieve what he wanted to achieve.
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which is a big word. We talk about leadership and leadership coaching a lot on this podcast. What is it about communication that is such a key part in being a leader? People have to know what you mean. They have to know what's expected of them, what you're trying to accomplish. All that has to be clear. And when we leave it up to people assuming or people guessing at what we want to achieve or our objectives are, or whatever it might be that we want to do or have them do.
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or the direction for a company, if that's not clear to them, then that's where mistakes come in. That's where discontentment, because that's what you told me. No, that's not what I told you. Yes, it was, comes in. All these things happen. And no matter to what degree, what needed to be accomplished wasn't accomplished or wasn't accomplished as it should have been. Clear communication is essential and not everybody has it. And I can give you a story about
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someone I worked with and she was thrilled when she got promoted. The problem was when she then had to present in front of the C-suite, she didn't do a good job and when everybody left an hour or so later, the only one who remained other than her was her vice president, the one who had given her the promotion and he said to her get better or get a new job because it made him look bad. He's the one who promoted her. Problem is we don't assess communication skills till they're needed.
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And sometimes those people don't have the communication skills. I didn't, I never took any type of comm class. So who knew I was going to need it? But once I got to my position, I did. And they hired me without assessing if I had that skill or not. I built that skill and they're the ones who sent me to get that skill built up and develop it. But we assume people can communicate until we find out they can't, whether that's the written word or the spoken word.
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And so many of us rise up to a position and we're like, I can't do this. I don't know how to do this. And that's why I say when you increase your public speaking skills, it's a power skill, it's not a soft skill, neither is leadership. And when you have them, that'll help increase your impact, your influence, and ultimately your income. That's very true. And then somebody listening might be thinking, you sound very courageous. The fact that you even
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stuttered before and you decided to pursue this. But what about tons of people who always think, I'm so afraid to stand in front of people and speak my nerves, or if I forget something. What are people supposed to do with their nerves? Well first of all, everything you just said just proves they human. Show me the speaker who hasn't forgotten something. I do. We all do. For a lot of reasons, I wish Martin Luther King would still be around, but he being one of these speakers of our generation.
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I would love to say to him, what did you forget in I Have a Dream? You probably had some things you forgot. Yeah, most of us sit down and say, now a lot of what they do, especially nowadays, is on teleprompters and everything else, but they still skip them. They look away and come back and it's gone. And of course, we all sit down and go, oh my God, I skipped the most important thing. You know what? It probably wasn't. So we all forget something. We all get nervous. I've been doing this for 35 years, speaking on stage, and I still get nervous.
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I don't look at it as being nervous. I look at it as being pumped up. It's adrenaline. Are we labeling the adrenaline rush as nerves or are we labeling the adrenaline rush as being amped up? I choose to be amped up. It's the same feeling going through your brain and your body. So I choose the positive one. I still think to this day, if I say, no, I'm nervous, then I'm not going to do as well. I won't feel the same. But when people are, unless it's clinical, which there are some cases, certainly.
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But unless it's clinical, most of us are not afraid of public speaking. I don't believe we are. I believe we're afraid of screwing up somehow. Yeah. Of being judged. And even if they're not strangers, our peers, even worse, these are the people we see every day, the people I'm going to have to look up from my desk at and see. Or be on the next zoom call with, oh my God, what if I screwed up? But what's the big deal? We all do. And no one's expecting perfection. They're expecting connection. Don't worry about being perfect. You're not going to be, none of us are.
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but work on connecting with your audiences. And there's a variety of ways to do that. But take the onus off yourself. What if I make a mistake? What if I forget what I'm gonna say? What if I can't connect? It's I, I, I. It shouldn't be I. Focus on the audience. Now you're there to help them. And when you help people, that's a completely different feeling than I have to look perfect in front of people. I was in the hospital not too long ago for an emergency surgery.
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I really didn't care if the doctor's clothing was perfect. Just to save my life, no matter what it takes. Didn't make a difference to me. He was there to help me. So when you're there to help people, it's a completely different feeling. They appreciate the help. And Roberta, you're an expert in this. Think about it. Who wants a speaker to fail? No one. Think of a college class. You go to a college class first day of the semester. No kid ever walks in and goes.
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Man, I hope this professor is terrible. I hope he's monotone and boring. And that's the way I want to spend the next three months. No, we pull for the speaker. We want them to do well, even if it's out of self-preservation, but we want to get what we're there for. I say that all the time. The audience is rooting for you. Oh, they want you to do great. Yeah. It's not like the jerk in the audience at a comedy show.
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going, I'm going to heckle this guy. I'm going to make them screw up. It's not like that. No. And the great comedians know how to handle that. But people are there for you. You're there for them. How can it go wrong? And sometimes it does go wrong. Sometimes you get thrown a curve ball. There's a story from your book that I please, I would love for you to narrate, where they were about to introduce you and the guy was introducing you, forgot his notes. And then there were people talking in the kitchen. Somebody had a question.
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and say, are you a public speaker or a public speaking coach? Yes. Please, can you tell that story? Cause I absolutely love it. Yeah. I'll keep it clean in the book. I use the actual words, but I'll keep it clean. Yeah. It was just like you said, it was at a presentation I was doing for an organization and I always provide the person who's going to introduce me in this case, it was the executive director with my introduction, not a bio, but an actual introduction.
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whoever's going to introduce me, I go over the introduction with them. Because when you're introduced correctly, it actually becomes the very beginning of your presentation. Right. And I play off that. I always keep in the breast pocket of the jacket a copy of the introduction because sooner or later you run into people who go, I left it in the car, I left it on my desk, it's upstairs in the hotel room, wherever it might be. Well, I didn't know he didn't have his copy until he started speaking. He said, well, you know what? I'll just wing it. Which meant it wasn't going to be good.
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and it screwed up what would be the opening of my presentation. But that's okay, it's not the first time it happened and I know how to handle it. So he confused the audience a little bit. When I got up to speak, before I could start to speak, a guy raised his hand from the audience, which is extremely unusual. The first thought that went through my head is, well, it's already messed up a little bit, what's the big deal? And I said, what's up? And he said, I'm a little confused. Are you a speaker or a speaking coach? And now the quick answer is...
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Both. Well, during the introduction, this was in a hotel in the ballroom, I could hear in the kitchen connected to the ballroom, people having a very loud and angry argument. And so I was half paying attention to my introduction being a little messed up and half paying attention to what they're saying because that was very entertaining, what was going on in the kitchen. Well, when the guy asked that question, what are you? The door bursts open from the kitchen that connects to the ballroom.
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And you hear a woman in the kitchen yell, he's a, and a few expletives here, not nice person and you can take it from there. And that permeated the room. Everybody heard it. It's 400 people or so in the audience. They all heard it and you can't ignore it. So my first thought was, apparently there was a third choice. Everybody laughed and everything. And when they calmed down, I just thought and said, you know, I never knew my ex-wife worked here.
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Oh my goodness, that's the punchline. And they started laughing again. And it was what it was, and we had a great time after that. So I really, really connected with that audience. You could feel it. Yeah. And that was because of that whole little unplanned thing going on. That is amazing. And that's what I always emphasize because I had a guest who shared a story where the speaker was, he's one of those, I want to do everything perfectly type of speakers and presenters. Right.
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So the car alarm goes off. If you were speaking and the car alarm goes off, what would you do? Well, not a car alarm, but I can tell you a story about an alarm. Oh, okay. I was speaking once and just as I got up to speak, I was just starting to speak, this was in a hotel as well, the fire alarm went off. So we all got up and filed out and it was a false alarm. We all came back in and I was supposed to speak for an hour. By the time we got back in, I had eight minutes left. So at that point, I just looked at him and said,
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If I had an hour to speak, the takeaway would have been, and I gave them the takeaway. Because, truthfully, that's the essence of why we're there anyway. So my thought was, give them what they came for, which was the essence of the talk. That was it. So you handled that pretty well. The story of the guy with the car alarm went off. And you know the noise it makes. Everybody can hear it. Sure. He carried on like nothing happened. If you're in the audience, it's bugging you.
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to completely ignore a noise that everybody can hear. I'm even wondering if do people then continue to listen to you or their minds are now on the alarm? You can't talk through it. Yeah, it's the ignoring for me. I'm not saying there's a solution or I have a better suggestion. Just like you handled the screen from the kitchen that well. Say something, it's the acknowledgement, I think is what the audience expects of stuff. If you throw the curve ball, find a way to connect, have some fun about it.
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You know what's funny is after that happened, that was several years ago, I've often thought of other comebacks. There's so many different things you could say, don't ignore it, play into it. Those are some of the funniest things you can have. Right. And most of the time we're looking for some humor with the audience, people like humor. Not jokes necessarily, and I don't suggest jokes, but I do suggest humor. That's provided up on a platter for you. That's perfect. And when we get overly nervous, which...
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It's understandable, but when we get overly nervous, then we're trying to become calculating, I think, as opposed to just going with the flow. Go with the flow. Yes. Now let's talk about when you are assigned the speaking engagement and the organizers of the event. You know that phrase, people like working with people they like and people who are easy to work with. Back to communication. What are some ways in which
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you can make sure that the way you communicate with people who plan events, you are cordial, you are polite and respectful, even if there's a glitch like you and I had our technical glitches before today. And so what are some of the things that you can be cognizant of when it comes to how you communicate with event organizers? I try to communicate with the event organizers the same way I communicate with the listeners and an audience. You're there to serve them. You're there to serve an audience.
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The meeting planners and the people who pay the meeting planners, the head of the organization, head of the company, whoever pays them, they're your audience as well. So if you want to get along well with your organizer, which certainly behooves you and the audience, then just simply ask, what can I do to make your life easier? How can I help you? Is there anything I can do? I'll tell a couple of stories and I'm not patting myself on the back here. It's just the way I was brought up. My dad's been...
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dead for over 30 years, but I think if I were ever a jerk to someone, I think my father would come up out of his grave and smack me. I was speaking in Alabama once, Birmingham, Alabama, many years ago. We were in a church gym slash stage area, and the person who was supposed to clean up never showed up. So I was the host, I was staying at the house of the head of this company, and he and his wife were there. And so at the end, I'm getting my stuff together.
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and he's folding up chairs, took off his jacket, took off his tie, rolled up his sleeves. He's folding up chairs and his wife's sweeping the floor. And this man makes quite a nice salary, it says, head of this company. And I looked at him, I said, let me help. He says, no, you sit there. And I said, no, don't be foolish. The three of us do this and we'll get out of here sooner and go back to your house and relax. That's just the way I was brought up. Just because I was the other person to speak, I was just another person there. I'm no great shakes. They can get a million other people to do what I do.
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I just want to help people. So if that's someone in the audience or a meeting planner or the head of the company, just help them. Be pleasant. I ask for one thing. I have friends in the industry who ask for a whole laundry list of things, including certain color M&Ms. So a bottle of water for each hour I'm speaking. That's all I ask for. That's reasonable. Yeah. I just signed a contract for next March to fly out to California and speak for a company. And they said, what can we provide for you?
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And I said, clean sheets, a shower and a bottle of water. And I'm a very happy camper. So just try to be a pleasant person to work with. You're there to help them. Yeah, they're giving you a check, but you're their guest. Just be pleasant. That's all. So now let's talk about your actual speech. Yes. Your actual delivery. You have what they call an EMPT framework. Tell us a little bit about that. EMPT framework. That's what I devise so I can work.
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with my clients to show them the foundation they have to build to put their presentation on. So AMPED stands for audience. Know who you're speaking to and know who you're speaking to intimately. Not only who they are, the demographics, all that stuff, are they with a company, an organization, all from the same community, but what do they want to know? What do they need to know? When you research, when you speak to them ahead of time and ask questions, you find that out. How do you want to make them feel? A lot of speakers don't think about that.
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How do you want to make them feel when they leave there? Do you want them to be, to use the expression, amped up? Do you want them to be confident? Do you want them to have a fire lit under their butt? Do you want them to be able to accomplish something? How do you want them to feel? And then what are they taking away? What's the actual benefit? I'm a believer in transformation. When we speak to inform, we've made a mistake. And that's what most of us want to do, speak to inform.
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That's something that can be sent by email and a PDF. But when we speak to transform, that's different. The audience leaves with something they didn't have when they came in the room. And that's a public speaker, someone who transformed someone. They gave them something that they didn't know that now they'll be able to accomplish something they want to. They reaffirmed something they believed in, but to a greater intensity. They feel challenged. Whatever it might be, don't speak to inform.
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speak to transform. So the Amped with the A, finding about the audience is the foundation that you're going to build everything else on. The M is the message or main point. What are you actually speaking about? Not the topic, but what are you actually going to say, I believe this, whatever that might be. I don't know, in the community it could be, I believe we can lower taxes and still serve even more. And that's what you're going to expound upon. That's going to be your main point.
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Then the presentation is the actual presentation that you work on. You're opening, you're transitions, you're three talking points, you're sub points, you're transformation statement, which tells the audience how they're going to be transformed by your time together. You're concluding transition, which is kind of a restatement of the transformation statement saying, this is what you just learned. So it gives them a reminder of what they learned and what they're taken away. And then your conclusion. That's all the presentation.
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And that's very much the same if you're speaking to 10 people or 10,000 people. And the D in Amped is the delivery, working on your delivery, the rehearsal, putting everything together, creating your slides or props, working with those while you're rehearsing, but rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing. And a lot of people, well, if I rehearse too much, it'll sound rehearsed. Now that means you haven't rehearsed enough. Rehearse more. I like the old actor saying, and I hope I get this right.
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to get it right, rehearsed to you can't get it wrong. Just what we were talking about before, Roberta, something goes wrong, you've rehearsed enough that you can come out of that, address it, and get back to where you were. Right. I'm a guitarist and I'm a huge Eric Clapton fan. Went to see him for the 30th time last month. This guy's a virtuoso in music. He can be playing a song and go off nowhere on a lead, and the band will just keep backing him up, playing the same thing while he's off on a lead, going, no, and he comes back and they go right back to where they were.
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You want to be the same way. You know it so well, not so you can get it right, but so you can't get it wrong. In your book, you mentioned about presentation. I also have an opinion on slides, but I want to hear your take on this. Sure. I always say, please don't write the entire novel on a slide. People can read. And you don't want them looking and reading at the slides. Some of them can read faster than you. Instead of looking at you, just have bullet points, keywords, use them as almost like a sticky note.
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What is your take on that? If you write on slides and read from them, you might as well just again, send a PDF. We can read it at home or in our office just as well as we can read it in wherever you're speaking. So slides are made to support and foster your presentation. There's no such thing as a PowerPoint presentation. I hate that term. There's no such thing as a PowerPoint presentation. It doesn't decide what it's going to create for slides. It doesn't decide what all that are coming in. It doesn't decide what is to be said. You do.
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you're the presentation, they are there to just accent the presentation. So like I can see your earrings. Would you say your earrings are your main attire right now? No. No, they're an accent, right? Right. So there's a slide. Why does no more than earrings or a ring or a bracelet or a necklace, it's there to accent your presentation. I don't even believe for the most part, there's always some cases, but for the most part that we should have words on slides. Why?
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People say, well, people are visual animals. Yes, they are, for the most part. Then put up graphics. Put up a lion. You're talking about courage, and that's an old throwback, right, a lion for courage or confidence. For reaching a goal is tried and true bullseye. There's other things you can come up with which are much more clever than those old ones. But that idea is much more important than saying goals at the top of a slide. And I'll say, why do you put up words? Well, they're visual animals. I want them to have something to look at. Two problems with that.
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First of all, a sentence is not visual. A sentence is an equation that must be solved, no different than a math equation. Words are the same way. We have to read them. We have to figure out what all those little words, letters mean together. Well, that's a word. What all the next little bunch of letters mean, that's a word. What's all those words mean? Together, they mean something. Something. Now we do that in an instant because we're used to it and great mathematicians can do a mathematical equation very quickly, but it's still an equation.
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And when we solve an equation, we can't be listening. No. So when we're reading, we're not listening. And that's a problem. Isn't it also common knowledge that we think in pictures? We do think in pictures. We dream in pictures. We don't see bullet points when we dream. And if we do, man, go see someone soon. But we don't dream that way. Watch, I'll have a dream tonight with bullet points. Yeah, you're right. When we say we're visual animals, we're graphic animals.
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pictures, whatever it might be, show those. I was working with the head of a company once for a specific talk. And when we got to the slides, first of all, he tried to make the slides for us. I'm like, don't do that. Make the slides afterwards. Figure out after you decide what you're going to say based on the audience, the occasion, what they want and need to know and the like. Now we put together slides. You don't go to the computer, make slides and go, okay, now I'm going to figure out what I'm going to talk about. Let's put in the cart before the horse. So when it came time to making the slides.
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He had this spreadsheet, like 20 rows deep and 15 to 20 columns across. And the numbers were so small. I said, what's the point of the slide, which is what you always want to ask yourself? What's the point of the slide and is this helping with that point? And he said, well, I want to get across the fact that we're up 13% year over year when we expected to be up 3%. It's a great windfall. What are all those numbers? He's the head of the company, he's the CEO, but he's a finance guy. So that's how he thinks.
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This is confusing. Where do I look? From the audience? I don't know where to look. He goes, well, then should we darken everything and highlight that and pull out the number? He still wants to keep all these numbers. Wants to keep everything up there. And I said, you could, but let's look at that. I said, how much money are we talking? And they were talking just under a billion dollars. It's a pretty good sized company. Just under a billion dollars. And I said, if we're talking 900 and some odd millions of dollars, do the pennies make a difference? Well, no. Okay. Then let's get rid of the pennies.
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And I said, does the fact that it was $872 on the end of it make a difference? Well, of course not. I would take that out. Get rid of that. So finally, we came down to $980 million. $980M. Yep. I said, isn't that so much easier? He goes, yeah. I said, now what's the actual point? So that's the number you're hit that you weren't expecting. Why are we here? What's the point of this slide? That we're up 13% year over year. He goes, oh, I know what you're saying. I should have the $980 and then whatever the previous year.
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and show the difference. And I'm like, okay, here we go with the numbers again. And finally, he said, Peter, what do you suggest? I said, Bob, if it were me, what I would have for that slide. How about we take this big green arrow that fills the slide bottom to top and half is wide, pointing up with 13%, the numbers one, three, and then the percentage sign inside the big green arrow. So now you can talk about being up 13% year over year.
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That's what they need to know. No one has to know 982 million over 914, whatever it was. No one has to know that, right? Well, no, I just want them to be jazzed up about we're up 13%. No, the arrow is much better than a spreadsheet of 20 rows. Just an arrow. And then of course he had their logo on the bottom. I said, Bob, why is your logo on the bottom? Well, it's our logo. I get that. Why is it there? Well, that's what you do. Everybody puts their logo on the bottom. They know who they work for. Get rid of the logo.
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Oh, it was an internal presentation. It was an internal presentation. But even if it's an external, if I go to present to GM, they know they're GM. I don't need their logo on the bottom of the slide. That's pandering. Exactly. And anything you put on a slide competes for what you're actually trying to show. And most corporations do, by the way. You see Starbucks slides, there'll be a Starbucks logo on the bottom of every slide. Because they don't know about presentation. They're looking at a graphic. And
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You don't want that up there. You want just what you want the people to look at. You want them to look at it instantly. You do not want to be talking while they're looking at it. You want it to be a three second flash card that they can look at and then look back at you. Now, Roberta, when you're going down a street and you're looking for someone's home, you've never been there before. And all you know is the street number and you've got the music playing one of your favorite songs and you're driving along. Now you're getting close to the house and you have to concentrate on the street numbers on the house.
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I will bet you reach over and turn down the radio so you can concentrate on the street numbers. Of course. Let's focus on the music. There's this taking away the focus from what I was doing before. And we all do that. We even make fun of ourselves and other people when we're in the car going, really? You got to turn down the radio so you can see better? Actually, yes. Your brain does not want to get confused. So we already know for a fact when we're looking at
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We don't want to hear things. We want to concentrate on what we're looking at. But many of us bring up a slide and start speaking right away. It's like, click, you'll see right here that we're up 13%. No, let them look at the slide. Give it three seconds, doesn't take long. Now you can start talking. Here's what somebody said in regards to that point. You already know your material. That's why you must pace yourself and remember the audience that this is their first time hearing this, just give them time to digest.
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Greatest thing you'll ever say is nothing. Pause and let people internalize, digest, and process what you said for the very reason you just gave. They're hearing it for the first time. You've got to pause and let them take it in. In my book, I actually use this idea that a gentleman who wrote another book and did a great job, and when I heard how he expressed it, I wrote to him and said, can I include this in my book because I've never heard it expressed better.
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And his idea for what we're talking about here is, do you have a houseplants? I have friends who do. Okay. When they go away and come home from vacation a week later, you can imagine that the soil is hardened. Now, if they take water and just pour it on the top of the soil of hard soil of a plant, it just runs off. Yeah. It doesn't absorb. Doesn't absorb. Usually if they go away, they ask me to take care of the plants, but that's how I know it doesn't absorb.
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Because the soil is hard, yeah. Right. So it just runs off. It does no good. It doesn't absorb it. However, as Joel put it so well, if you pour a little on and let it seep in and wait a few seconds and pour more on and let it seep in, now it's absorbing what's happening and it's becoming useful as opposed to just running over the sides and not being useful. So to your point, say what you need to say when you make a point, pause. Three, four, five seconds.
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When you ask a question, even if it's a rhetorical one, pause and let the people answer. Let the people absorb what you're saying. And when it comes to questions, a lot of us will ask a rhetorical question and then ride right over it. We'll keep talking right afterwards. You just ask people a question. Let them answer it in their heads. Think of a comedian. If a comedian didn't pause and let people laugh, they teach the audience not to laugh.
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They teach the audience, if you laugh, I'm already into another joke, you'll miss it, so don't laugh. So they have to know to pause and let the audience laugh. That's why they're all there. So it's just as important to us to when we talk, especially if we ask a question, pause and let them answer it. Otherwise, you're going to teach them not to be engaged. Right. One thing you mentioned in your book is storytelling. You can give us one tip, because this is the one thing we always try to emphasize and a lot of us are still a work in progress in it. To get us to...
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Tell a story that connects with the audience and bring out that emotion, and it's going to be something they remember if they forget everything else we spoke about. What is the one tip you can give when it comes to storytelling as part of your presentation? Don't tell a story. Relive the story. And by that I mean share the conversation, share the atmosphere, not down to the nth degree because that'll be too much. Whatever you feel is the right amount, share it. And when we share it, dialogue.
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then the characters come alive. If you're talking about someone who had a slow gate of a walk, well then maybe you just want to walk slowly a little bit and then continue to tell the story, stop and tell the story. But bring it to life, relive the emotion. And I'll give you an example. A client of mine speaks to high school students about making good choices. And he talks about his brother overdosing and dying. Now that's happened a while back. And when he tells that story,
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He's become numb to it. He's told it so long. What he had to eventually do was think of something else that really got to him while he was telling that story. Cause let's face it, high school kids will eat you alive. There's no tougher audience in the world than high school kids, especially when you're old, like he is 33, by the way. So, but to a high school kid, that's double their age. So he's an old guy to them. He has to relive that story. He has to bring that emotion forward. If he tells that story without a quiver in his voice and without
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tears in his eyes, that will not relate with those kids. And it's not that he's acting, but he is. He knows he's got to feel that way and transmit that feeling. So he relives it. He finds a way to relive it and have that emotion come to the forefront. So whether it's a happy story or a sad story, relive it. And when we're telling it, Roberto, let's do this. Peter, no, let's do that. As opposed to, he said, Roberta, let's do this.
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And then Roberta said, Peter, let's do this. Well, that gets a little old after a while. Peter, let's do this. No, thanks Roberta. We know who's talking now. We know who they're addressing. That's what you wanna do. And always, always have conflict. An anecdote differs from a story in that an anecdote generally doesn't have conflict. It's a cute little story, whether it's funny or not. Story might have meaning to it, but a story has conflict. For 100 years or more, Hollywood's been doing boy meets girl, boy loses girl.
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Boy gets girl in the end, they live happily ever after. Right. If boy didn't lose girl, it would be boy meets girl, they live happily ever after. And then the movie's 10 minutes. And nothing to it. We didn't go on an emotional ride. Now, when we see a movie like that, we know they're getting together in the end. But we like the conflict in between. We want... Right. And we want to see how it was resolved. Right. Take the original Star Wars. Luke didn't even know at the beginning that he was going to be involved in this quest. But once he did...
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His first problem was his uncle wanted him to work on the farm. He wanted to go to the academy. So this conflict. Right. Then he finds out his uncle and aunt were killed. There's greater conflict. Doesn't know what he's going to do, but then he's going to fight the empire. Well, how is he going to do that? He doesn't know anything about it, doesn't know anything about it. The force doesn't know anything about anything, thankfully as a mentor. But still, how are we going to get to the planet we want to get to, where the rebellion forces are? They had to overcome that. That's when they met Han Solo.
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There were conflicts all along the way, including the internal conflicts. I'm not good enough for this. I'm not a fighter. I don't know if I can do this. I'm going to let the rebellion down. Conflict, conflict, conflict all along the way. And how did he overcome each one of those? That's a story. There has to be conflict show how it's resolved. Most of all, it has to relate to your point.
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can't just tell a story because it's a good story and people go, yeah, but what's that got to do with the price of gasoline? I do know what today, yeah. So it's got to relate. But then at the end, there's the moral. Now, if you tell a story extremely well, people will get the moral. Here's the problem with that though, at least in my eyes. What if I didn't hear 100%? Someone next to me might've been coughing or something or I might've been daydreaming or whatever. I might not get the same moral you want me to. And then it doesn't make sense to your whole presentation or at least that point.
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What if I didn't tell the story well that day? So my moral didn't come across, obviously. Always tell people the moral of the story, the tortoise in the hair at the end of fables like that, and the moral of the story is slow and steady wins the race. There was always a moral and it was told to us, tell us the moral of the story. What that means here today, what that means to you going forward. Tell them the moral of the story. Stories are fascinating and fun. And we remember them for.
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Like I said, sometimes they don't remember what I said, but the story is something. Stories are sticky. How we get feedback on. Yes. Stories are sticky. We can be 40, 50, 60 years old and remember nursery rhymes. I remember those stories my grandma used to tell us when we were kids and I'm 46. The moral I remember, yes. We remember the essence, like you said, and you remember the moral. Tell stories. Peter, George, thank you so much for being here today. Now, before you go, please give us words of wisdom.
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Always remember this, it's all about the audience. Everything you do as a presenter, business, speaker, on stage or anywhere in between, it's always about the audience. Keep that in the forefront of your mind, you can't go wrong. Words of wisdom from Peter George, the public speaker and public speaking coach, award-winning author of The Captivating Speaker. Thank you so much for being with us today. Now, before you go,
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Please tell us where we can find you in the socials. Easiest way to do it is to go to my website, which is petergeorgepublicspeaking.com. Peter George Public Speaking.com. From there, they can find me social media, my book on Amazon, whatever they need, what I do for coaching and the like, they can find right there. Excellent. Peter George Public Speaking.com for all the socials and also get the book from Amazon, The Captivating Speaker.
38:46
Thank you so much for being on our show today. Thank you, Roberta. This has been a blast. I've really enjoyed it. And can I say before I leave, you are the epitome of a podcast host. Thank you very much. This is an honor coming from you. Thank you so much. You're awesome. You made it easy. And I appreciate that. I really enjoyed talking with you and more than anything. Thank you so much for sharing this nugget with us. I think the more.
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that I listen to experts like you, the better public speaker I've become as well. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review, and we'll be with you next time.