In short
Podcast Summary: Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson
Episode Title
Ep. 238- NEW!😮PUBLIC SPEAKING TIPS! Noooo Boring!💤[Speak to SMALL Groups, BIG Groups, ANYONE..with these TIPS!]🔥🔥🔥Jay’s SCOOP
Episode Overview In this episode, host Jay Schwedelson shares practical public speaking tips tailored for various contexts, emphasizing engagement and interaction with the audience. Schwedelson draws from his extensive experience giving speeches to provide actionable advice aimed at avoiding common pitfalls in public speaking.
Key Takeaways
- Definition of Public Speaking: Public speaking is not restricted to large audiences; it encompasses any scenario where one speaks to a group (e.g., Zoom meetings, small gatherings).
- Importance of Engagement: Successful public speaking hinges on delivering content in an engaging manner and fostering audience interaction.
Main Points Discussed
- Never Memorize Your Speech
- Reciting a memorized speech can bore the audience.
- Practice is essential, but it should be done in realistic settings with distractions.
- Practice Effectively
- Rehearse in environments with background noise (e.g., while walking or with the TV on).
- This prepares you for real-life speaking scenarios.
- Use Up-to-Date Information
- Avoid referencing information older than one year to maintain relevance and audience interest.
- Present recent data in a manner that emphasizes its timeliness.
- Q&A Sessions
- Validate the first question asked by the audience to encourage further participation.
- Acknowledge the contributions of audience members to create a comfortable atmosphere.
- Filling the Space
- Move around the stage or room to engage the audience visually.
- Use body language effectively to create a dynamic presentation.
- Avoid Embarrassing Questions
- Ask questions that everyone can answer to avoid alienating audience members who may feel intimidated or embarrassed.
Sponsor Mention
- Marigold: A relationship marketing platform supporting customer acquisition and loyalty. Jay encourages listeners to explore Marigold’s services to enhance their marketing strategies.
Fun Segment
"Since You Didn't Ask"
- Jay shares humorous personal anecdotes about embarrassing party moments, adding a light-hearted touch to the episode.
Conclusion
- Jay encourages listeners to utilize the public speaking tips shared in the episode and offer feedback through reviews.
- Listeners are reminded to subscribe for more actionable marketing tips and engaging content.
Additional Resources
- For more on relationship marketing, listeners can check out Marigold's new loyalty guide at [Jay Schwedelson's website](https://jschwedelson.com/marigold/).
---
This summary encapsulates the essence of the podcast episode while highlighting key concepts and actionable insights for effective public speaking.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:08Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.
0:40We are here for Do This Not That podcast presented by Marigold. And one of the most popular episodes we've ever done of the podcast was about public speaking. And we did not even scratch the surface on some of the tips that I want to share. So we're going to go through some other public speaking tips that I think could be super valuable. And we talk about public speaking. This is not you just getting up in front of a big audience. Public speaking could be you running a Zoom meeting. It could be you in a conference room with five other people. It could be you at a cocktail party talking to five people.
1:13Public speaking is when you're talking to any group of people, and certainly this applies to when you are talking on stage in front of a big group of people. And why me? Why should you listen to me? Number one, you shouldn't, not on anything other than reality TV. That would be a good topic because I'm all about that. But as it relates to public speaking, yeah, I give about 100 speeches a year in all sorts of different places, online, everywhere. and they get decent reviews, and that's where my information comes from. I didn't take a formal class. I just know what resonates and what doesn't resonate, and that's what I want to share with you because I think a lot of the information out there about what you should do or shouldn't do comes from people that are epically boring, and if you follow what they say, you too will be boring, so I don't want you to be boring.
1:54I want people to pay attention to what you're saying, So let's jump into it. Number one, never memorize a speech. Again, this could be a small webinar. It could be a meeting on Zoom. It could be a speech to a lot of people. Do not memorize your speech ever. There is nothing more boring than to hear somebody recite something that they have memorized because they're not really into it. They're just trying to remember the next word that they're supposed to say. So never memorize your speech. And the other problem is if you do memorize it, what happens is if you miss even one syllable of what it is that you know that you're supposed to say, you are all screwed up.
2:35You are off track. I hate when people memorize their speech. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice, right? It doesn't mean you shouldn't practice what you're going to say and you should practice. But there's one very specific way that you should practice what you're going to say. When you rehearse, rehearse with a lot of background noise, rehearse with the TV on, rehearse when you're going on a walk. And yeah, you'll look ridiculous talking to yourself, but you want to rehearse when there's a lot of distractions. There's a lot of stuff going on because when you ultimately do speak in that conference room, on that Zoom, in front of a big live audience, it's not going to be this perfect isolated thing where nobody's making a noise and nobody's moving around.
3:16So when you rehearse, you want to rehearse in that kind of real scenario to be out and about. Now, when you talk about anything, when you are giving your talk or you are presenting, okay, you never want to talk about anything that's older than a year ago. So if you are talking and it is, you know, February 2025, you don't want to say, and in July 2023, blah, blah, blah, instantly nobody cares. You're like, that is old. They won't say they don't care, but they don't care. Anything older than a year ago, do not include in your presentation, even if you can't find something more recent, because it is not, it doesn't matter anymore.
3:56People don't feel like, okay, is that still accurate because it's older than a year old? Find something new or don't use it at all. And let's say you are giving that speech in February of 2025. And let's say you have some data from four months ago. You don't say that the data is from 2024. You say, this is information from four months ago. What sounds older to you, the year prior, right, or four months ago? It's the year prior. So you want to reference. Don't try to use that year in your speech because it makes people think it's old information. The other thing is that at some point you're going to ask for question and answers, right?
4:36You're going to say, does anybody have any questions? You always want to make the audience feel like they're part of what you're doing, that they're comfortable in participating, whatever that first question is that somebody asks, okay, the whole entire audience or the people in that room or on that webinar, everybody's trying to like feel out, should I ask a question? Whatever the first question is that somebody asks, as soon as they're done saying, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that's their question, you say, you know what, that's a great question, or that's a really good question, I'm glad you brought that up.
5:06You validate the person that asked that question immediately, because when you do that, everybody else that's there feels more comfortable participating. You instantly say, that's great. I'm so glad you brought that up. That's a really interesting point. Validate that first question always. Another thing you want to think about doing is filling the space. What do I mean by that? If you're on a stage, you want to move around a lot. Don't stand behind some sort of lectern, some sort of podium. It's so epically boring. You want to fill the space, walk from side to side, make everybody that's there feel part of it.
5:42And even if you're in a room, a conference room, you want to move around a little bit. Even if you're seated, you want to move your arms around a little bit. You want to fill whatever space you're in. Even if it's on Zoom, you want to move yourself. You want to move your arms, move your head, move your thing. Fill the space because it's more engaging. It gets people more interested. It's in the subconscious. It gets them more energized to be a part of it. And the absolute worst thing that you can do when you do any kind of public speaking is when you ask the audience a question, make sure everybody feels comfortable with the question.
6:17Don't make your audience feel stupid. So if you turn to your audience and you say, who here knows what ABM means, which means account-based marketing, but only like half the audience might know, instantly you'll get a few hand raises that go up. But a lot of people won't raise their hand because maybe they don't know. Don't ever assume that your audience knows the thing. And the worst thing you could do is ask a question that is not basic enough that everybody knows. You want to ask questions like, who here loves horror movies? Everybody has an opinion on that. They can participate. You can't ask something super technical that somebody might not know because you will lose that audience member instantly because they feel embarrassed.
6:58Never embarrass your audience. Okay, so before we get into Since You Didn't Ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast, always ridiculous, I want to let you know that this podcast is presented by Marigold. Marigold is awesome. They are a roll-up of Sale Through, Campaign Monitor, MyEmma, Cheetah Digital, LiveClicker. And yeah, I've talked about them a lot because they're awesome. They're my email sending platform, and they have this new loyalty guide. If you don't do loyalty marketing, you are leaving the most important thing on the table to really connect with the people in your database, your customers, right?
7:31If you go to jschwedelson.com slash Marigold, that's jschwedelson.com slash Marigold, you can download Marigold's new loyalty guide. And I'm telling you, as you're planning for 2025, grab this thing, get loyalty going, make your customers feel that you appreciate them. That's jschwedelson.com slash Marigold. It is free. All right, let's get into Since You Didn't Ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast. Oh my God, I was at a holiday party the other day. It was amazing because one of my buddies, he shouldn't have been there. He wasn't feeling well. And I was standing like near him, not next to him.
8:08And out of nowhere, it wasn't because he was a drunk or anything like that. He threw up. He threw up on the floor, on the floor, like in this dude's house. And it was a disaster. And it was amazing. and I mean everything you can imagine happened happened and of course oh my god are you okay are you okay not me I'm like that's amazing he's fine now by the way nothing's wrong with him he just like I don't know he ate something I don't know what's wrong with him but that's amazing and it got me thinking about other party fails so I'll tell other party fails of my party fails so this always stuck in my brain when I got married okay we sent out this is so bad we sent out save the dates.
8:47You know, you send out a save the date and early, early on in the process. And then later on you send out the invitation. Well, we screwed up and we sent out save the day. So a handful of people that for whatever reason, our list got messed up. We never sent them the invitation, right? So then it became the day of our wedding. And I'm like, where's so-and-so? How come, where are they seated? Where, whatever. And in that moment, we realized there was a handful of people we sent save the dates to that we never sent the invitations to. And to this day, they never talked to me again. It was like three of them never talked to me again, whatever.
9:22That's their problem. The other party fail was it was one of my daughter's birthday a while back now. And she was very into Dora the Explorer, you know, the Nickelodeon girl travels around, whatever. So I was like, Oh my God, we're going to get a Dora, you know, a big, somebody in a costume like Dora to come to the party and surprise her. And so I don't know, I must have found this Dora. I don't know where I found this Dora online. So we hire the Dora and the door shows up to the door in full costume, giant door head, door outfit. They come in and my dad was like, oh my God, this is so great. And all the kids are like, this is so great.
9:58And then after like five minutes, I was like, what's up with Dora? She was like, kind of like leaning against the wall, not really interacting with the kids. And so I walk up to the door. I'm like, Dora, can you hear me? And the person goes, yes, I can hear you. I'm like, what's up with you? And Dora, which oddly was was a dude, whatever. Dora goes, I don't feel that well. I go, okay, what's up? And they go, can I sit down somewhere? So we went into this room right where all the kids, next to where all the kids were. And Dora took off her head, you know, her big thing. And he's like, I'm going to be honest with you.
10:30I'm crazy hung over right now. I'm like, dude, I can't have drunk Dora at my daughter's birthday party. What's wrong with your clown? And then the worst thing ever happens. My daughter comes in the room with a bunch of her friends because they're running around the house and they see Dora with no head on. And it was a dude and crying. What's wrong with Dora? Oh my God. It was so bad. I kicked drunk Dora out of my house. I was so angry. I'm like drunk Dora. What is wrong with you? You can't be hung over Dora and take your head off. Anyway, I don't know what I'm talking about. Listen, I appreciate you being here.
11:08I hope you got something out of these public speaking tips, leave this thing a review. Be awesome. And hit me up at jschwedelson.com. That's where a lot of stuff is. And you rock. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five-star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. lastly if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100 free visit guru events.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like damon john martha stewart and me guru events.com check it out
From the publisher
In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson shares valuable public speaking tips for various settings, from large audiences to small group meetings. He emphasizes the importance of engaging delivery, audience interaction, and avoiding common pitfalls in public speaking.
=================================================================
Best Moments:
(00:59) Definition of public speaking in various contexts
(01:58) The importance of not memorizing speeches
(02:51) How to effectively practice for public speaking
(03:33) The rule of not referencing information older than a year
(04:36) Handling Q&A sessions and validating audience questions
(05:27) The importance of "filling the space" when speaking
(06:06) Avoiding making the audience feel uncomfortable or stupid
(07:00) Introduction of the podcast sponsor, Marigold
(07:57) "Since You Didn't Ask" segment: Party fail stories
=================================================================
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!
Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don’t take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!
Regardless of your size, check out Marigold today to get the solution you need to grow your business!
Check out this free content from marigold that Jay has loved digesting, 5 Steps For Selecting The Right Email Marketing Platform.




