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In this episode of “The Bathroom Break,” hosts Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson discuss tips and strategies for effective public speaking, whether in small meetings or large conferences. They share personal experiences and practical advice to help listeners improve their presentation skills and engage their audience.

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Best Moments:

(01:47) Topic introduction: Speaking in front of people

(02:24) Daniel’s approach to overcoming stage fright

(03:35) Jay’s advice on audience perception and content delivery

(04:37) Addressing audience pain points at the beginning of a talk

(06:28) The importance of energy and movement during presentations

(07:35) Balancing information sharing and teasing future content

(08:41) Catering to the lowest common denominator in knowledge base

(09:48) Discussion on slide content and presentation style

(11:02) The importance of speaking on topics within your expertise

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Transcript
Daniel Murray:

Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom. Or both. But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.

Jay Schwedelson:

This collab is going to be super fun.

We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwedelson from the do this, not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back for another bathroom break.

This is Jay Schwedelson and I am here with the great Daniel Murray. We both got back from doing some travel, so I have a random question before we get going.

Daniel, do you, when you get back, is your suitcase full of stuff that you just should never have packed and you're, you're an over packer or are you spot on? You only bring with you exactly what you need.

Daniel Murray:

I am at the other end of the spectrum. I'm re wearing clothes because I, I packed too little. I, I always underestimate that I need to change something or I need to.

I might get sweaty, you know, bigger guy here. So never. You never. I always lean on the side of overpacking.

For example, Ari brought two suitcases and she got double the amount of clothes that I got for this trip. Which respectable.

Jay Schwedelson:

That's normal. That's normal. Well, here's a note to everybody.

If you see Daniel at a conference, whatever the last day of the conference is, don't go near him because clearly he's rewearing his clothes.

Daniel Murray:

That's why I get. That's why if you hand out swag to me, I'm just going to wear your swag because it's just amazing.

Jay Schwedelson:

All right, well, let's jump into the topic today. We're going to be talking today about speaking in front of people.

Whether you speak in a meeting, in front of five people on a zoom, whether you're in a conference room with 15 people, whether you're giving a speech at an event, we want to talk about little tactics, little hacks, little things about how to crush public speaking. Both Daniel and I do it a decent amount.

And, and there are things that you can do and things that you should avoid that I don't think people realize that can be a game changer in terms of people really liking what you're doing. So, Daniel, what's your vibe on public speaking? I know it's not your number one thing that you love to do, but you're really good at it.

So what's your vibe?

Daniel Murray:

Yes, I really. I actually have deep, like, stage fright getting up in front of people.

But the, the one thing that I took that helped me, Helps me a lot now and helped me a lot when I spoke recently is I said my talk the day of. Of speaking because it gave me confidence that I've already delivered that talk in front of people, in front of, in, out loud.

So what it did is when I got on stage, I was really like, oh, I gave this talk today. I already said these things out loud and made me have real confidence. So that, that's one tip I, I do.

Besides practicing, which you should be doing a couple times ahead of time, there's something called over practicing. But you should at least know your key hitting points ahead of time.

But saying your talk the morning of before you get on stage is so valuable to me, and I learned this lesson recently, and it helped me get on stage and deliver my talk.

Jay Schwedelson:

Yeah, that's. That's a, That's a really good one for me. What I always try to keep in mind is two things. Number one, if you're nervous about spe, just realize this.

You want to do well, and everybody in the audience or in that room, they want you to do well. No one wants you to be boring. No one wants you to suck. You're all rooting for the same thing, so that calms you down a little bit.

But the other thing is, the most important thing is, is the first 90 seconds, nobody actually cares who you are. Nobody cares about all the great things that you've done in your life and all your accomplishments. They don't.

They care about the information that you're going to give them that's going to allow them to do their job better. Allow them to do better in whatever's going on in your company in the first 90 seconds, not in the first five minutes.

You got to give them something, a stat, a tip, something that is awesome to get them hooked in. And don't save your best content for last. Give them the best stuff up front because then they're going to pay attention for the rest of the time.

Do not get boring out of the gate. Boring is bad.

Daniel Murray:

I. I really like that.

I also learned something recently from someone that I talked to that helped me with my recent talk is instead of saying something about yourself at the beginning, talk about their pain points and talk to them about their pain points. So what we did in our speech is we'll be like, we know you have anxiety for posting. It might come off embarrassing for you.

You struggled, you might give God one, like on your last post, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And talk about the pain that they're feeling and talk to them about and then, and then go into like how you're gonna, this talk is gonna solve that pain point and what are you gonna talk about? I thought that was very valuable. When you talk about who that pain that they're going to figure or what you're going to solve for them up front.

We didn't talk about. The only time we ever talk about ourselves is just to say, hey, you're in the right place. Really?

That's what where you, hey, I'm like, you do this really well. Hey, I'm Jay. You're at this session. This is what I'm going to talk about. And then not. It's really a five second thing. And then you go into the talk.

Jay Schwedelson:

Yeah.

And the vibe is this, is that if you don't sound like an idiot with whatever you're saying at the end of it, people are going to want to, if it's in your own company, they're going to reach back out to you and say, hey, that was really cool. Can we talk about this? If it's to a speech at a convention, whatever, they're going to come up to you say, what are you all about?

You don't need to sell yourself by actually selling yourself. You need to sell everybody on the content that you're sharing and that in and of itself will sell you. And that's what matters.

And you know, in general, you just don't want to be boring. Right. Have energy, have excitement. I never stand behind a podium. Okay. Move your arms, move your body. Any type of movement gets people engaged.

It's something interesting to look at. These things all add up and the content may be boring enough so you have to do whatever you can to spice it up.

Daniel Murray:

One thing I have for you, and this is going off tangent because we do different things before our talk. How many, how many Celsiuses in coffee do you have before your talk? Because you know, you know how many I had before mine?

Jay Schwedelson:did a speech that was at like:

I think I had two coffees in Celsius before for that, which is not great. And at the, at night I'll like fall asleep at 8 o' clock. So that's a disaster. I know you're like in the opposite mode.

Daniel Murray:

I'm in the opposite mode of no caffeine because I, if I have anything throwing, flowing through my body, my heart rate is just going to explode on stage. So I also, I also.

One thing I said, and I do believe this heavily in talks to, and I want to make this point, is if you want people to do an action, a next action, you can't give away every little thing in your talk. You have to give a little bit of teases to, to bring them in your in to want them more, to give them more.

And that's how you really show your expertise. For example, what we did in our talk was we would say, here are seven secrets to build a, an immediate brand. Here are the seven secrets.

But we'll send you the full deck of all our notes afterwards. But I want to give you seven tips that we can talk about now because it would take four hours to explain everything to you too.

Jay Schwedelson:

It's like a teaser.

Daniel Murray:

Yeah, it's a tease. And I think that's what a lot of people don't do, is they just give everything.

So why does anybody want to work with you or do anything if you just give everything away in that talk?

Jay Schwedelson:

Totally.

And the other thing is, and regardless of if this is an internal meeting, a zoom call, a speech, whatever, you need to cater to the lowest common denominator in terms of a knowledge base. One of the biggest mistakes I see speakers make is they make people feel stupid. What I mean by this? They'll put an acronym like on the screen that.

Yeah, okay, everybody should know what that acronym means, right? Or a way of doing something and they say some sort of industry term. Well, of course everybody knows what that means, but you know what they don't.

Every time I give a talk, right.

Or an internal discussion, whatever, and we're talking about a particular topic, when I don't break down what that means specifically, even though I think everybody knows, people say me, but I don't understand what does that actually mean? And people feel stupid because they're not the only ones that don't know what it means.

So you want to make sure everybody feels as comfortable as possible and they feel included and you need to break everything down so everybody understands what's going on. I think that's a fail by a lot of speakers.

Daniel Murray:

What is, what is your advice for people with what's behind them? The slides that they put up there, what should they have on there? Should it be a lot of text, a little text. How many slides do you think is normal?

What is your advice there?

Jay Schwedelson:

That's a good question because it does come down to the speaker. I mean, I have an insanely high number of slides when I do a session. Like, I just did a session that was 30 minutes. I had 60 slides.

That's not normal. The most important thing you want to do is you never want to have a ton of words that you then read off the slide. Nobody there.

This is not like story time with Jay and Daniel. I'm going to read to you what's on the screen. Nothing is more boring than being read to.

And when you see a slide that comes up and it has like a ton of words and you're in that audience or in that room and you're looking at the side, you're like, this sucks. This is boring. I don't even know what it says. So less is more. And then always have visuals.

You know, you throw a meme in, throw something interesting in and throw in examples, real examples of what you're talking about. To me, that is secret sauce stuff. What about you? Do you like a lot of words?

Daniel Murray:

No, I think. I think I want them to focus on the words I'm saying versus the words behind me. Because if they.

They're busy screenshotting everything they start, they miss like key parts of your talk. So that is for me, I honestly think less is better on the side because you want people to focus on you.

And one point I want to make too is when you're giving a talk, make sure you give a talk on something you actually have expertise in because otherwise you. It's easy to get through a talk if you can. You miss misstep somewhere, but you actually have that deep knowledge to pick up where you left off.

The problem I also see is people try to give talks and I fell into this trap a couple of times is I try to give a talk about X, Y and Z and then I look stupid on in front of people because I don't know that topic fully. So I always now just stay in my lane and pick topics that I can be crush in front of people.

Jay Schwedelson:

That's smart. I totally agree with you.

And speaking about keeping things short and condensed, that's what we're going to do with this podcast episode because if it goes too long, nobody's going to listen. So great that you're here. Keep checking out the bathroom breaks. Daniel, anything you want on the way out.

Daniel Murray:

I actually need a coffee right now because you know I'm not giving a talk later, so there it is.

Jay Schwedelson:

All right, later, y' all. Daniel, come on, man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay.

Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for Marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

Daniel Murray:

Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Market Millennials podcast, but also tune into the series. It's once a week, the bathroom break.

We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it.

Just give us a a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

Jay Schwedelson:

Later.