The WORST Public Speaking Advice You Keep Hearing 🤐 Jay’s SCOOP | Ep. 457

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast from marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This, Not That podcast. And one of the things I think we all have fear about, nervous about, feel like maybe we're not good at it in some ways, is public speaking. I've done a few episodes on public speaking tips, but I wanna do another one because there's so much misinformation out there about when you're going to give a speech. And it's not just public speaking like, okay, I'm getting on a big stage, I'm gonna speak in front of hundreds or thousands of people.

0:44Public speaking is also when you get on a Zoom with people and you are the one that's leading the talk or you're in a conference room and you're the one that's leading the talk. Maybe you have a few slides and you're trying to pitch a client. Public speaking is when you are speaking to a group of people in some capacity, big or small, it doesn't matter. And when you go online or you read books or whatever about how to do public speaking, the overwhelming majority of the stuff that's out there is total trash garbage. Now, I'm not trying to say I'm cool, but I've given hundreds of speeches in front of tens of thousands of people.

1:20And also I've given speeches in front of two to three people. And I've done this a bunch and they go relatively well. So I wanna share with you what I have realized works and what doesn't work and what best practices as it relates to public speaking are absolute embarrassing, garbage, trash, stupid. They're stupid. What am I gonna say? All right, so let's get into it. One that I think we all know that we shouldn't do, I hope that we know this, is don't memorize what you're going to say. Please never memorize what you're going to say. That doesn't mean you shouldn't practice. But I will tell you, there is nothing more boring on earth than watching somebody that has memorized what it is that they're saying.

2:01They're not into it. Okay. All they're doing is trying to remember the next word. And the problem is when we're out there and we're trying to memorize stuff for these speeches, what do we do? We make these other mistakes. We practice in front of a mirror. What is that? Have you ever given a speech in front of something that reflects back to you, that is the most ridiculous best practice. Practice in front of mirror. Don't do that. That's super distracting. That makes no sense. Now, when you do practice, though, don't practice in silence. Practice outside where there's trucks driving by. Practice with your TV on.

2:41Practice leave your phone ringer on. When you go to speak, whether it's on that Zoom, in that conference room, on that stage, it's not going to be silence. Why would you practice in silence? And never practice until you say, okay, I got it. It's perfect. It's not supposed to be perfect. Perfect is boring. The interesting parts of speeches is the stuff that's not perfect. So practice until you kind of know what you're going to say, but don't practice until you're perfect. It's annoying. All right. Probably the number one best practice as it relates to public speaking that I think is the worst is when you start whatever you're going to say, you should open with a joke.

3:22Everybody always says open with a joke. Well, first of all, I don't think you're Jerry Seinfeld. Okay. You don't have the ability to open with a joke. And that's not even what Jerry Seinfeld does. Okay. You're not a comedian. What you do want to do instantly, which has worked really well for me, the moment I get on stage anywhere, the moment I'm going to do a big webinar, the moment I do anything, I don't open with a joke. What I do is I open with something that is wildly relatable in that moment. I instantly connect with whoever I'm speaking in front of in that moment. What do I mean? I'll walk on a stage or on the Zoom or in a conference room.

3:59I'll be like, oh, my wife picked out this sweater for me. I haven't worn this sweater in three years. I don't even think it fits me. And it smells weird because It's been in a weird closet. I don't know why I'm wearing it. All of a sudden, everyone's like, ah, ha, ha, ha. And it's not a joke. It's being relatable about being self-conscious about what it is that you're wearing, right? Or I just said this on the stage because it was true. I said, I just had a prime energy drink for the first time because I want to have energy for this speech. And I feel really weird, like edgy right now. Instantly, everybody in the audience is like, oh, I've tried one of those.

4:36that messes me up, or I've never tried one, those scare me, whatever, you are connecting with the audience. So don't say a joke, but do something instantly relatable about something that just happened to you offstage or off camera or last night, or I had salmon for dinner last night and I'm still nauseous, okay? Relate to the audience and whoever you're speaking to as fast as you possibly can. Another best practice that I cannot stand is when people tell you you wanna stand still and project confidence. Make sure you stand behind a lectern if you're on a stage and really try to look the part. Get out of here.

5:12That's so boring. All right. You need to fill the screen if you're talking on Zoom. You need to fill the stage if you're talking on stage. You need to fill the conference room if you're in a conference room. Stand up. Obviously, don't stand up if you're on Zoom unless you have a standing desk. But if you're on stage, you're in a conference room, stand up, move around. But even when you're on a Zoom, move your arms. Move your hands. Point. Do things. Have energy. You have to have the energy for the entire audience that's watching you. You're not a physical comedian, but why are physical comedians so popular?

5:51Because it adds something to it. It makes you feel like you're a part of it. You can relate to it more. It gets you to pay attention more, whether you realize it or not. You want to always be thinking about having your hands out there, filling the screen however you can do that, filling the stage however you can do that. It's critically important. The last one that kind of drives me bonkers is where people say, okay, when you're done with your talk, whatever it is, your presentation, your pitch, your whatever, end with a strong summary. Seriously? Okay. Do we really want that? But here, I just bored you to tears for the last half an hour, hour.

6:31Let me recap about why this was so epically boring, okay, and tell it to you again. Oh, my goodness. Who wants that? Who wants this garbage? Don't do that. You don't want to recap. Here's all you want to do. You almost want to call people out. Say, listen, I just shared with you a bunch of stuff. But there's one thing that I want you to do. I want you to take one of these test ideas, and I want you to try it. And I want you to think about right now, which one of those ideas it's going to be, or listen, I just threw out a lot of services at you that my company does, but what is the one or two services that really stuck with you that you say, you know what, that would help us out a lot.

7:09Nail it down, crunch it all down. So the person in their mind is able to say, you know what, I'm going to do this one thing, or you know what, I got this out of this. Don't do a recap and make it epically boring. Make the person think about what they just consumed and to have a takeaway that they can actually do something with. Public speaking, if you go on Google, what should I do for public speaking? You probably should do the opposite of whatever it is that it tells you back. Yes, I get worked up. I do, I do, I get worked up. What am I gonna tell you? All right, let's get into the portion of this podcast that's ridiculous called Since You Didn't Ask, where I talk about nonsense.

7:46So the nonsense that's going on is that we just opened up actually this morning, Like right now, you're hearing this before anybody's even seeing it online. We just opened up registration. I'm not telling you this for a commercial. I'm telling you this for a reason. For Guru Conference. Guru Conference is the giant free virtual marketing event. And we give out swag to people that register early. So you should probably stop listening. Go to guruconference.com so you can get our crazy hoodie that we're going to put out there. But so yesterday, because we were working on the plans for Guru Conference, which last year had 29 000 people and nicole kim was there and i don't know what's going to happen this year and we're like every year we do an eating thing where we eat something like one year we ate spam with joey chestnut uh this past year we ate bugs me and nancy harhead ate bugs so we were talking about um what should we do and someone's like hey why don't you do like the one chip challenge i'm like what's that and they're like it's like you eat this like i don't know hot potato chip and it's the hottest thing in the world and you can't even do it.

8:51And I was like, oh no, is that, by the way, I don't know that that's what we're going to do. We're still talking about many different things, but the problem is, is that we did the hot wings, the hot ones challenge a couple of years ago. I did it with Nancy Harhut and a few other people. And, um, I didn't really understand these hot sauces. I'm going to be real. And I poured them on the chicken wings. I ate them live. and yes they were very hot in that moment but I will tell you why am I telling this I don't know that evening after I ate these like the ultimate hot sauces I don't know what you know inferno mania I don't know what they're called whatever I was violently ill like like I don't know how much weight I lost that night and this is probably getting a little bit TMI but I went missing in action in my house for like a few hours.

9:39Like there were some wellness checks outside of the bathroom. He was like, you all right in there? And the answer is no, I was not all right in there. And I was really, I remember vividly being in the bathroom and saying to myself, this is how it's going to end. That's how bad I felt. I go, it's going to end with me having eaten chicken wings live at a virtual conference and getting violently ill. And I'm going to go down for the count in this bathroom right here right now and that's going to be the story and the people are going to be on social media like can you believe what happened to jay that is crazy what a crazy story i thought that was the end fast forward it wasn't the end but i i have like i really am having like a reaction here to thinking i have to go down this road again i don't know what i just shared i don't know what i'm talking about as usual go to guru conference.com register for this thing and there's a field in there when you register on crazy ideas of what we should think about doing put in the box when you register whatever ridiculous ideas you have because we are trying to figure that out literally right now no idea is too ridiculous no eating idea it doesn't have to just be eating it could be anything all right and hope to see you there you're awesome and appreciate you later wait the party is not over go to jay swettleson.com because i want to do stuff with you i want to partner with you when you click on the button partner with jay you let me know what you got going on.

11:02Work with my agency. Work with me directly. Get access to all of my free resources at jschwedelson.com. And I got a book coming out this April. It's called Stupider People Have Done It. And all of the net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Go on Amazon, buy Stupider People Have Done It. That way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might have been, leave it a review, follow the show. You are awesome. Go out there and crush it.