Speaking of Wealth #26 – Presentation Tips

Jason Hartman talks with Doug Staneart, CEO of The Leaders Institute about becoming a thought leader via public speaking. Doug’s company has three main areas of competency.

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They are most known for presentation training – especially helping people overcome the fear associated with public speaking. For entrepreneurs and people who are trying to break into the speaking business, they cover topics like; how to use public speaking to become the expert in your industry or how to use your speaking to generate leads and income. The second area of expertise that we have is in leadership, specifically, how to become the “go to” expert in your industry and be seen as a leader. The public speaking part folds into this very well. In that arena, we show people how to write articles and books in a step-by-step (easy) way to get published quickly and generate interviews with the media. The process also helps get make a person’s website much more popular so that they are more easily found when people are looking for that particular expertise. The third area is in team building where people become more effective in team environments.

Introduction: Speakers, publishers, consultants, coaches and info marketers unite the Speaking of Wealth show is your roadmap to success and significance. Learn the latest tools, technologies and tactics to get more bookings, sell more products and attract more clients. If you are looking to increase your direct response sales, create a big time personal brand and become the go-to-guru. The Speaking of Wealth show is for you. Here is your host Jason Hartman.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Speaking of Wealth Show. This is your host Jason Hartman, and we are focusing of course always on profit strategies for speakers, publishers, consultants, authors, coaches, and that's what we are all about, so today I would like to talk about that all important aspect of this whole business, and that is the aspect of presentation skills. Public speaking, how to be a better speaker? We are all probably doing speaking engagements out there even if we are not a specifically noted as a professional speaker if we are an author, a publisher or a consultant. We are probably speaking to promote our business, and of course if we are professional speaker this is our trade, so today we are going to talk with the CEO of The Leader's Institute and that is Doug Staneart, and he will be here with us in just less than 60 seconds on the Speaking of Wealth show.

Introduction: Now you can get Jason's creating wealth in today's economy home study course. All the knowledge and education revealed in a nine hour day of the Creating Wealth boot camp created in a home study course for you to dive into at your convenience. For more details go to jasonhartman.com.

Jason Hartman: It's my pleasure to welcome Doug Staneart to the show. He is the head of the Leader's Institute and we are going to talk about one of their three areas of competency today. They train on the leadership, public speaking and team building, and today let's really dive into the issue of public speaking how to be more effective, how to use public speaking to promote your business, and a whole bunch of other things. Doug welcome.

Doug: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jason Hartman: Well, it's good to have you on the show. Public speaking I think is one of the fastest ways to really become recognized as a thought leader and expert and to promote ones business isn't it?

Doug: Absolutely yeah but people who stand up and speak in front of the group with courage, with confidence they are really seen as the leaders in any specific industry. It didn’t matter what industry you are in, and people who can stand up and say what they want to say, the way they want to say are really seen as the people that other folks want to become like, so they are easy to set yourself apart.

Jason Hartman: Absolutely why call that the podium effect, and the power of the podium is that you are thought of as an expert, and so that's a very powerful position to have, and what are some of the problems that people encounter may be they desire to do more public speaking. They may be a beginner. They may be intermediate, but they still get real nervous. They still could be more polished. What are some of the real things that one has to do to notice what things could be approved on, and what did they do to overcome them on this journey?

Doug: William James over 100 years ago. He was kind of the father of modern psychology in the United States. He basically said people in the paper. Basically in the paper he said that in a person's lifetime he or she is only going to use to develop that 10% of their potential, and basically that is so apparent than public speaking, and the main thing that we figured out over the years that keeps people from speaking more or speaking better is really the self consciousness of the fear from anxiety and it’s appeared in everybody.

I mean we all have it. the people who are really seen as the leaders though are the ones who either reduced that fear or they are able to overcome it in a way so that they are able to present themselves even if they have the fear, but be seen as being in control being the leader like kind of things, so that's one of the very first things as to trying to help people you know really reducing nervousness. It's strange because where it comes from as if ever back when you were in high school or may be first couple of years of college that kind of thing.

From the time that we were in those types of classes, teachers kind of made us do like book reports and things like that and that's where the lot of public speaking here comes from is that we were asked to stand up and speak on stuff that most people don’t know anything about. You never remember back the first book [unintelligible 0:04:23] Julius Caesar or Wuthering Heights or something like that. I mean if the people who wrote those books get up to give they do failed fairly well, didn’t go no matte what kind of experience all they have in front of the group.

They will probably do very well explaining those, but somebody who you know does a superficial reading is going to have a very tough time giving the report on those kind of things, and so from that time we were — we've kind of set ourselves up to fail our teacher said, and then like really set us up to fail in public speaking because anything that you do a couple of times, and don’t have a great success doing it. We are going to have feel more self conscious about that the next time we get up and to do it so public speaking is kind of that way.

Jason Hartman: They need to channel that fear into something positive that's an important part because the fear does serve a purpose in it. I think it puts one on their game. It brings their full attention to the matter at hand which is a powerful thing in speaking in making someone better as a presenter, but then they need to be talking about is some area of their expertise, and you talk in one of your programs about becoming a presentation black belt getting there your black belt in presentations. And I think one of the big things that has really hurt the quality of public speaking is good old Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynotes or slides and people are just too married to the darn slides aren't they?

Doug: Yeah a lot of times I think that we do to try to help us when we feel subconscious or the exact things that hurt ourselves. A lot of times people think I am afraid I am going to forget something. So, if I am afraid I am going to forget something I will write everything in the world, but I am going to say in the PowerPoint or you know on the olden days before PowerPoint we used this thing technique that we used is the different _____ [0:05:52] we used the right amount and buy five cards, and all that kind of stuff.

And with the hi-tech now you don’t have to do that and so what people tend to do is they overemphasize the presentation in fact we see people all the time saying call us up and saying hey can you help me be better at delivering a PowerPoint presentation? And the first thing we always tell him is well, what you want to do is you want to get better at delivering a presentation. And then use the PowerPoint as your visual aid to help you reinforce the things are important about your presentation. Get the presentation down first, the more people rely on PowerPoint's or any other because they are like the more nervous they are going to feel. We find that in just about any industry too.

Jason Hartman: How does someone Doug learn to think on their feet? Is that just natural gift either you've been born with it, and you have it or you just don’t know how to think on your feet spontaneously?

Doug: I mean we all know how to think on our feet which is that happen though if somebody is using those stretches like we talked about before. What we happen is they will rely less on the spontaneity of the intellect that they already have. They are going to be relying more on I've got this prepared this way, and I'm going to say at this way you know that kind of thing.

And so if you prepare a little differently that's where the first things we kind of teach in our classes is to unless somebody comes through one of our you know Phil's presentations, classes or program like that. We teach them how to redesign the way that they organize the presentation so that they are more likely to be able to they can speak on their feet. It really has very little to do with confidence. It really has more to do with preparing a little differently, so don’t try to write a presentation word for word, and then use your confidence finds to help to remember all those words. Think about the concepts that you want to deliver.

Once you started speaking on those concepts, and you all need to understands what you are saying you can move on to the next point no matter saying all these words this way so that you get this reaction that kind of thing, a little bit different and its all easier to deliver in the latter way versus former.

Jason Hartman: One way that I think people can really convey ideas more effectively is through the use of examples, and the use of stories, metaphors. These tools for some reason the human mind just responds to them so well. How can someone get better at using the examples and stories in their presentations?

Doug: That's one of the things that we really focus on when we are doing individual coaching with people or in the public speaking class as we focus primarily on helping them get better at delivering stories because a lot people kind of fight it too. If you are in a business culture that is really interested in the numbers you know.

If you are going to do a financial report you got to be, you got to get the numbers and then what happens is people hear the data, and they don’t really comprehend. Well, they can comprehend, and I don’t want to say too dramatically. But basically what happens is the more data that we bombard people with and one sitting, the more likely they are to forget it, so what we find though is if you deliver the data with the story behind the data with the example behind the data that people would tend to remember the details, the numbers without having even taking notes.

It's kind of cool the way that it happens, but from the time that we are four, five, six years old or even younger really and my son is three and he loves to have me telling stories before he goes to bed. And we never really grow out of that, and you are at a happy hour or something like that with coworkers the way that we build rapport with people is to tell stories about what's happened throughout the day, or what happened last week and that kind of thing. All we do is channel that skill set that we already know how to do exceptionally well into using at with your business presentations and helps you build that rapport with your audience, helps you reduce your nervousness, helps you really command authority in the room.

And the cool thing that it does is it helps you build your credibility too because if you are sneaking from personal examples, things that you have done in your own career, and it gives you a chance to kind of a little brag a little about it those successes that you had without making it sound like you are bragging. So there is I mean a ton of different advantages that you give asking, good at relaying your data across in the example of the story.

Jason Hartman: Yeah very, very good. But speaking of stories is there a certain sort of format that is ideal for presentations. Now may be this depends on the type of presentation and you feel free to chiming about that. But a lot of people talk about this sort of ancient methodology by which people learn, and the way plays were constructed back to Roman times, and certain sort of cadence of bringing people down and up, and talk about that is there any sort of a secret format that people should know about.

Doug: Well, it's interesting you brought up the Roman plays. I never really thought about that particularly a metaphor, but it does fit very specifically into the type of format that we give folks when they are designing their presentation. Remember I said if you design your presentations a little bit differently you get a whole lot better results, much greater competence when you deliver them.

What we figured out was that in anyone getting, people who are sitting down to hear a presentation they are all going to remember just a few key times that's in one times we give them way too much information, we give them way too much data, and as a result they are kind of overwhelmed when they walk out and the retention is very, very low. And so we kind of teach people is you know start off with three concise points that you want to get across to your audience.

It may be four points or five points. Every additional concept that you give with somebody in a single city, it decreases the amount of retention if they are going to have expeditionally. My friends spend an hour given a presentation and I focus on just one thing. I mean absolutely just one thing, and that's it. And there is a good chance. Everybody walking on I was going to know what I was bringing that one that I were on. Once I give him a second concept it decreases the amount of retention that they are going to have to about 30%, and that's 30% chance that I will remember either of the things I talked about.

Once it goes to three points, it goes down to about 25%. The fourth point in there goes down to about 10%, and once you get the 5 points it decreases to about less than 1% that anybody in the audience is going to remember anything that we said. And if you think about most business presentations, most of the time people will cover 10, 15, 20, 30 different things in the sitting, and they wonder why people are bored, and they don’t remember anything when they walk out.

Jason Hartman: Let me take a brief pause. We will be back in just a minute.

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Jason Hartman: Now, how does this differ in a one hour keynote speech or an all day workshop? On an all day workshop you have obviously got to communicate a lot more information. You use the phrase in one sitting, does that mean that you can give them less certain number of concepts between breaks if it say all day or all weekend or all week long, or how does that differ based on that?

Doug: That's right. Absolutely yeah and that's exactly why I say I freeze the terminology that I am using specifically when I say in one sitting that means from the time that somebody sits down and I start speaking or A speaker starts speaking to the time that they get a chance to stand up, and move around and do something else.

It would be national and you want to give people is about five concepts, and it doesn’t mean you can't give them more. It just means that if you give them more than five that's going to reduce their retention pretty dramatically. I mean there are a lot of times then in presentations where we only have a certain amount of time. There we only have 45 minutes to present. It’s the only time I ever going to present and I be speaking in front of this people, in front of this audience, and I have got to cover 10, 15 things.

That's okay to do that, but we have to manage our expectations. If we cover those 10 or 15 things, and we expect them to be able to retain that information to be able to use it. In the real world we would set up for our failures, and then look for failure, so a better way to do it if we have you know 15 things that you had to cover, do it in a half day format, go in for an hour, an hour and 15 minutes something like that. Giving three, four, five concepts take a little break even if it's just a matter of letting, getting and going to the restroom, and get a new cup of coffee or something like that. I am back. I will now have three, four, five key points, and then take another break come back, and get another three, four, five. And there is a good chance if they were especially if those concepts that we are delivering are interrelated if they organize really well, and if they build on each other then its going to be a whole lot easier at the end of that, that half day workshop or sitting in our program for them to actually gain the information.

Jason Hartman: So back to I don’t know if you really finished on the concept about the methodology, the pattern for presentations, go ahead with that.

Doug: Well, yeah what we do is if you design your presentations using just a few key concepts. You can go back in and now so when things that we call, we call them the impact ideas. It’s the things that when you add them into your presentation that makes it where people remember the concepts, retain it, wherever they use it more effectively, so things you mentioned before like storage and example that your number one that's your ace in the hole right there. Every time I give a key concept, I mean any type of program, I am going to use it to a story or a example or you know what you call the metaphor or some people call them analogies one of those comparisons that we make that, make them really fun.

Any of those kinds of things can add a lot of impact, and then anything else so you can use to prove your concept, or the key points that we are focusing on will help us well. You know that don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the charts and the graphs and the numbers. All that stuff is in there and people will do that automatically. They are going to put their charts and their graphs and stuff like that in there, but that’s really not as helpful to proving a concept as what most people think.

Most people aren't going to remember your chart. They are going to remember what you said about the chart. They are going to remember your interpretation of the chart a whole lot more effectively so I spend more time when I am giving a presentation really focusing on those things versus the interpretations and so as examples versus the actual numbers themselves. It’s a whole lot easier to do that way, and it’s the same way whether it's an informative speech, or a persuasive speech, or whatever give them a few key concepts, and then use your evidence to prove it.

Jason Hartman: And how do you gain the rapport of an audience may be there is one speaker and there are 30 people in the audience, 300 people or 3000 people in the audience. What are some of the techniques the speaker can use to gain rapport?

Doug: The thing you mentioned earlier, the stories and examples are the best way to actually build rapport because it’s a great way to kind of set yourself, so a lot of times when we tell a story to friends for instance, we will them, we might tell about a mistake that we made, and sometimes we can answer kind of self-deprecating humor into the presentation very quickly and easily, and people start to see this as a real person. They start to see it's just not a person not just the expert; it’s the one in front of the group.

Although we get that too, but they also see as a real person, and he is just like or she is just like me that kind of thing. So the stories are very effective. The thing that really can hurt rapport most often than I see anyway is that a lot of times people misuse only as participation or questioning. You know a lot of times when we get nervous especially what we will do is we will ask like rhetorical questions to the audience.

And a lot of times if we don’t, if we are not very careful about using questions just for the sake of using questions then it can sound confusing to the audience and sometimes even condescending so, give an example. I for instance say somebody comes up and say that it doesn’t really matter what the presentation is, but let's say its public speaking training which is what I do, and I walk into the room, and I say okay then you guys we are all to be better at public speaking right that’s a rhetorical question.

Jason Hartman: It's obvious of course through there for that yeah right.

Doug: Exactly and people in the audience are going. They certainly are going does he really want me to answer that, or if you are just saying that and so with that when it basically distances ourselves from the audience a little bit, so a lot of times people will kind of overuse the questioning. What we tend to do is we liked to build rapport with the audience by using what we call an open-ended question, so instead of me saying you know walking and then saying you know we are all here for public speaking training right. I will go out and say hey, let me ask you a question.

What happens to people when they get nervous in front of a group? What happens to them physically and that might be the first thing that I do to kind of get the program started. The more that they participate in that, the more they start to say hey I am in the right place. You know somebody says my hand gets sweaty or my heart starts beating you know to my chest are racing and starting to sweat replaces, and my hands shake and all that kind of stuff, and any time people start to kind of say those things to me.

They are basically creating a consensus when within the audience it starts to develop. When that does, it builds a great rapport between the audience and the speakers. And its easy I don’t want to — it shouldn't say it’s a simple process to kind of master, but it does take time, and does take practice, that's why a lot of time folks will, and that kind of get a good coach to kind of coach it through them.

Jason Hartman: Yeah absolutely. When it comes to just regular Q&A sessions, I see speakers mess that up just repeatedly and his repeating the question first of all for the microphone, and for the rest of the audiences benefit that's the first thing I would say, but any tips on actual Q&A sessions. You talked about like rhetorical questions and that's true too. Well, some rhetorical questions back to that just for a moment are used to sell in like sales oriented presentation someone from the platform, right and that's okay, isn't it?

Doug: You still had to be very careful because one of the things about rhetorical questions is that if you are not careful with it, people would start to feel like they were being manipulated, so and in some cases they might be being manipulated with the rhetorical question, so that's its something especially for a new speaker that's something I would really caution on the speaker is using the rhetorical questions very early. And there are other ways that where you can getting buy in, and we are opening the question with a whole lot better for and they are speaking, and the times they will have them to groom, and something that you are, and if you are talking to 20 or 30 people it’s a lot easier to ask open-ended questions of them if you are speaking to a you know a room of 1000 or 2000 people then the rhetorical kind of questions worked a little better. Here is the kind of the little trick the little tip that times that worked really well, when asked a rhetorical question I was always asking them the opposite way. And the reason and when I say opposite way is I will ask the question and then I will very quickly tell the audience that they are probably thinking the exact opposite of what they are.

Jason Hartman: Give us an example if you would, what does that mean?

Doug: I will give you an example like for instance, like one of the things that we do early on is we try to show people they have the key to speaking in front of the group is trying to create a picture in the mind of the audience that you have in your own head. You know when the mind thinks, mind takes some pictures. They don’t think in numbers. They think in pictures, so when I say the word elephant you know what you are seeing in your head. I don’t know pause for a second I will say you will probably see the letters E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T you know, right?

Jason Hartman: Right.

Doug: And it's almost always people start to giggle and laugh. And they go no, not really that's your picture right? And I say yeah but even though I would say think of the word, I would think of the word, and I will put them a picture pops in your head so its kind of over the — anytime you use a rhetorical question then the opposite way like that for some reason it adds humor when you asked for rhetorical questions in the words that kid of gain or consensus it well as sometimes back fire though and so want to be careful about doing it that way.

Jason Hartman: Yeah makes sense. So what else would you like people to know about public speaking just to got to wrap this up I mean there are some areas of it, and it's such an important thing for people in today's world which is a world where communication skills are so critical possibly more than ever before? We've got all the technology, but still the skill has not necessarily improved. It just depends.

Doug: The thing that I think most people really overlooked about public speaking is, its kind of what we started out the whole interview here talking about was that it is the absolute fastest, easiest way to set yourself up as the expert in any industry. It doesn’t matter what you do. If you are the person who stands up and speaks and speaks well and people are following you. They are going to see you as the leader.

They are going to see you as the person who is the go to, go-to person and think about I mean it doesn’t matter whether you are an entrepreneur just starting out, you know you started out a brand new company giving a good example like for instance like financial planning folks. Financial planning guys one of the ways that they found that works really well for them to gain new clients is to go out and do financial planning similar or if the person who is up on that stage is also the person who they are going to be communicating what they are coaching with. They are going to be do their financial planning. It's going to work really, really well. Yes that person on stage turns it over to our salesperson that go and try where the salesperson tries to sell somebody, shares the stock, or something like that, doesn’t work very well because they see the person who is on stage is the expert.

They see the person on stage who is the kind of go-through person, but you can do that in the industry though. It doesn’t matter what you do for a living on a day-to-day basis as you stand up and speak and form people about the things that are important in your industry. You are going to be seeing as the leader, and I would encourage everybody just listened to you right now to use that to their advantage to help become the expert in their industry.

Jason Hartman: Well, very good advice. Give out your website if you would so people can learn more.

Doug: Yeah at leadersinstitute.com, and very easy to find out all kinds of stuff about what we do at the Leader's Institute whether its public speaking or leadership or I have seen running programs here.

Jason Hartman: And you've got a free newsletter as well. Well, Doug thank you so much for joining us today, and we really appreciate it, and again people have the website so they can learn more, appreciate it.

Doug: Yeah thanks Jason.

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The Speaking of Wealth Team


Transcribed by Renee