Why most public speaking advice is wrong—and how to finally overcome your speaking anxiety | Tristan de Montebello (CEO & co-founder of Ultraspeaking)

27:25Everybody's in the train, you're the driver as the speaker. Everybody's going with you. So if there's a crash on the side of the road, you can keep going and They'll not be looking at the crash a second later and they'll be looking at the next landscape or you can stop the trade and tell everybody Hey, let's look at this crash here real quick. I'm so sorry about it when you keep going People will forget it in a second and they're not going to pay attention to you and with the peak -end rule We're saying people remember the end of experiences More than they remember the beginning of experiences.

27:55So you're going to be left with that feeling at the end The other piece is because most people won't notice it in the first place, they'll be in their own minds. So when you share this, you're popping their bubble. And so I see people speaking all the time where I'm super in tune with the feeling I'm getting when they're speaking. I'm just, I'm listening to the energy, I'm listening to everything that's happening. So I can try to understand like what state are they in right now? So when I get woken up from that state of somebody saying, man, can I go again right now? I that really sucked. It's even more visible for me.

28:36And I'll often have to say, hey, man, I was so into what you were saying. And I'll pull the audience. Is anyone surprised? And everybody every time is like, no, I thought that you were doing great. I was completely with you. So that's the case most of the time. But because we're convinced that people can tell, we want to break that fourth wall or because something happened and we know people can tell. We want to acknowledge it so we don't it doesn't feel like I'm the only one in the room who can't tell that something went wrong here. But this habit of saying no, I'm going to be confident. I'm leading.

29:10I'm going to keep us going in a certain direction. Is extremely powerful and very self -reinforcing. Okay, so let's actually show people what this looks like by actually doing some live games. I know one of your principles for ultra speaking is you can't learn to speak by not speaking. You need to practice speaking to get better at speaking and these games are a way to actually do that in a really fun way. So maybe first of all, just why games? Like when I, you know, I did this course as just like, huh, because it's just a bunch of games with, I thought this was a public speaking course. So maybe talk about just like why you approach it through games.

29:46Everything you do is a game in this course. Yeah. Well, the first piece of the puzzle is what you were saying that you can't get better at speaking without speaking. And intuitively you could think, everybody knows that if you want to become a great cook, you can't just read 100 cookbooks. You actually have to spend most of your time in the kitchen refining your intuition, testing things, experimenting, learning new recipes, and building your timing and everything that goes with it. But in speaking, we tend to do the opposite, probably because it's a little bit scary, and because there aren't that many options out there to practice the speaking itself, there aren't that many environments where you can do it right now.

30:29So we're kind of left with nothing. So okay, I'll just go read an article or watch a YouTube short and hope that's going to make a difference. But the maybe the bad news is you have to do it. If you have to ask yourself, am I going to be serious about taking on speaking and making a difference here? And if you are, then you're going to have to do the thing. You have to practice speaking. But the good news is it's only the outside that's scary. As soon as you get started, you're going to get rewarded. And then the better you get at it, the more enjoyable it becomes. So why games then? Well, games number one are fun to play.

31:09And as I was saying earlier, if your practice is not fun, you're going to stop. So you need intrinsic reward with what you're doing. But all of the ultra -speaking games have in common is that it's short, deliberate practice, like short reps followed by feedback, followed by another rep. So that was more important than the idea that it was a game at first. When we started coaching with Michael Gennner, my co -founder, it was just him and me in my backyard with somebody in front of us testing things out. And we would say, we would give them a speech title just to get a baseline. Okay, what's the most incredible invention in the world?

31:54And we'd watch this person go into their mind and start like freaking out. Okay, they'd think the iPhone and then like, I don't know the iPhone, and that's pretty recent, maybe it's fire, is it fire though? Was there a bigger maybe communication? I don't know, wait, maybe we evolved for communication. And the longer they spent thinking, the worse their answer tended to be. And the more their confidence tended to go down as they were speaking. So then we said, well, we got to get this person speaking right away. So I'm going to ask you another question, but just start speaking. And so I'd ask him another question, and they couldn't start speaking right away.

32:27So we just tried to compress it more and more and more to turn it into something where then it was like I'm just going to say a word and you have to say something about it. So, horses, horseback riding is fun because you can go places. Cats. Cats are crazy because if they were bigger they would eat you. And I just like almost like word association. Let's get words out. Then we started developing different games for everything, every root cause we were seeing, every symptom we were seeing, we'd figure out the root cause, and we create some sort of a way to get the person into it as quickly as possible.

33:01And it's just one day, six months in that we realized, hey, did we just create a game? Like, this feels like a board game. And then we created, I have this, we created, speak before you think, the game for people who I think too much. And this is a bunch of cards with all of our games. And then COVID hit and we turned it into online games. But the magic of games, yeah. The magic of games is short reps, immediate feedback, practice, feedback, practice, feedback. It's enjoyable. You get rewarded. You get to adjust as you go. What's changing is your internal feeling as you're going. You're learning lessons, but you're internalizing.

33:43All of the practice is happening through speaking. It's reinforced with you to share it. I haven't shared this with you, but after I took this, the course, the mini -course, I went to see my family in LA. We visited for a few days and I I was talking about this course and just like how fun It wasn't interesting and how much I learned from it and I pulled up the games because I have access to the things online And we just started I was just like hey you guys want to try this and we started Playing some of these games that we're gonna they're about to get into and it was just like we spent like an hour Just doing this and everyone loved it Everyone just felt so much better about their public speaking afterwards my mom is like hey, how do I do that on my own later?

34:22My sister's like, I want to start doing open mic nights because I was like, really fun, just like talk. Nice. So were you actually coaching them? How are you walking them through the different games? We just pulled them up and played them and then I shared some of the tips that I learned in the class that we took. Just like, try it this way or try not to focus on being correct. Just focus on competence and not leaking that you're not doing great. All these things that we're going to talk about. Yeah. So there's a lot of fun. So let's get into some of these games. So we're gonna try two or three.

34:53We're trying to do you want to start with? Conductor maybe sweet. I love conductor. That one was really insightful to me. Okay, so I got conductor The way this game works is that when I click start training I'm gonna have a random title that's gonna appear and for those of you who are just listening and not watching this Lenny will say the title out loud so you can hear and then what you won't see or what you'll see if you're watching is is in front of me, all I'm going to see are a series of random numbers. It's going to start with 5 and 5 is just my natural rate of speaking, like I'm speaking right now.

35:30But then I might see a number from 1 to 10. And each one of these numbers represents an intensity or a state that I have to tap into. So if I see a 7, I automatically have to raise my voice and get into that kind of an energy. And if I see a 10, you could only imagine what that is. But it's also true for the lower ones. If suddenly I see a 3, I have to find a way to calm my energy down and match the 3 and go all the way down to 1. And then there might be a slide that says, breathe, which is just an indication to pause. And when I see that side breathe, if I just go silent, that's because I'm in front of the breathe slide and I'm not allowed to speak.

36:11And in that moment, my goal is just to relax myself and calm myself and then see what happens where I'm at when that slide moves on to the next one. And We're gonna do this. This is gonna be 70 seconds. So it's gonna be super quick. Ready? I'm gonna yeah, so I'll read the title as soon as you as soon as it pops up. Perfect. When I grow up When I grow up, I want to have taken on All of my weaknesses are all of the emotional things that are holding me back because it's kind of annoying for me that I'm 40 years old and there's still things that are holding me back that man I've been I've had these when I was a kid I was I was like this when I was 10 and it drives me crazy because or are I supposed to be an adult or aren't I supposed to be mature and have my life together.

37:12I mean, I have two kids. I have this incredible responsibility and I have to teach them. I have to show them the way.

37:28So I've decided I'm gonna hire a coach and I talked to him just a couple days ago. So this is perfect timing because I want to unwrap, unravel, and untwine every single one of these emotional blockers. So when I grow up, I'm completely free. That was so fun to watch. I'm seeing the numbers. If you're on YouTube, you can see what's going on there. If you're not, basically there's different numbers that give, give just in the different energies to be out. And that was masterful. I think we saw, what did we see? We saw like a six. It went up first, 6, 7, then he went down to 3, then we saw I think a 2, a 1, then a breathe, and then it went back to a 5.

38:07How about you give it a go, and then we chat. Let's do it. What do you think? Ladies and gentlemen, let's see this. Here we go. The title is The Greatest Puzzle. The greatest puzzle that I think that I've had in my life, and I think just for most people is trying to figure out what to do with their life. And I just had to spend so much time thinking, actually, no, let me change, I'm changing direction. I actually, I actually have known from very early on what I wanted to do with my life. I've actually found it to be not a much of a puzzle. I knew from pretty early that I wanted to be a software engineer.

38:51And interestingly, as I, and I became a software engineer, And as I think about the puzzle that that created around my life, I ended up, so my life actually started to look like a puzzle instead of what I always thought I'd be. So I turned into, so I ended up having a bunch of different careers and I look back at my life and it started with one piece and each piece led to all these other careers. Nailed it.

39:31It was funny at the end you were like you didn't even see there was a six that came up and then you, when you looked up, it had already gone away. That's a good warm up. It's funny because what it looked like to me is that, well, you just didn't let yourself play the game. You wanted to, you were more focused on, I wanna make sure this works well, this looks good, or I don't make a fool of myself, then let me just play the game. So, switch your mindset from that, like back in conductor, sorry, in the creator cohort, You didn't really care because if you failed it didn't matter so you just played the game Mm -hmm, and this is the same idea just don't try just let yourself play the game the game will Do good, but that was actually really interesting.

40:19I feel kind of similar Which is which is cool except I didn't know where it going but that feeling of all of these puzzle pieces and suddenly when I hit Ultra speaking it's like oh wow every single there's no more there are no more gaps. That's really cool Okay There we go. Ledy, you ready? Ready. Here we go. Integrating new cultures.

40:48It's interesting having a kid. So we just had a kid about a year ago. He's a year and a half. And there's an interesting, interesting new experience where there's my family and their culture, there's my wife and her culture. And I never, it was never a big deal for us, these different backgrounds that we have, because we could do our own thing, we have our families, they're doing their thing. But now that we have a kid, it's, now that we have a kid, I have to really think about this. I have to constantly wonder, is he getting both experiences? Is he being pushed in one direction or another? Is he going to get the full benefits of both of these cultures?

41:31And I find if I don't actually think about it too deeply and just let him have fun and hang out with their different family members, he gets everything that I want him to get, that he experiences my wife's family's culture, my family's culture, and then the combination of my wife and I is new kind of culture and family that we're building. And so I'm really excited about the future for us all. Yeah, that was awesome. I'm practicing not leaking. I think it matters how much better it could have been, but now I'm leaking. As I say that, see? Yeah, it's hard. So the point of all of these games is to create turbulence.

42:16This is going to be the theme of this podcast. I'm going to share only flight analogies. But if you think about a pilot, a flight simulator, you can think about these games as the flight simulator. You don't put a pilot in the flight simulator and waste those precious hours having them just cruise at 30 ,000 feet in clear skies. You're going to say, okay, you're going and now, hey, you've lost your captain and you have to do something or, hey, your motor just broke or you're going into crazy turbulence. So the gain here is always every one of these games have in common that we're creating turbulence for you.

42:53So it's on purpose that like, ooh, that's interesting how I tend to want to leak, to want to break character. Wow, it's interesting how at the end, the ending strong is not just an automatic habit that I've built for myself. So what we want with the turbulence is that it highlights areas that we want to work on. And you can go again and see immediately because you have that same pressure every time. There's no way you can prepare for conductor. You can do just a ton of reps and get to become the person who can just navigate the turbulence really, really gracefully, which reminds me of a Kevin Kelly quote that I love where he says, prose are just amateurs who've learned to recover gracefully from their mistakes.

43:39And this is what we're trying to do here. If you know that you can recover from any mistake gracefully, then you're going to have confidence in any speaking scenario. And most of the scenarios you're going to be in are spontaneous or ones you can't prepare for, so it's that much more important. So tell me what do you remember from going through conductor in the creator cohort or specifically here? Like what was coming up, but what were some of the things that pop into your mind. There's two things that I really took away from it. And it's like different doing it now, like on camera with this whole podcast thing.

44:16But the things that I really took away that have stuck with me from this exercise is one, is the other kind of metaphor of these file folders that you have kind of in your head, where every energy level, like a one, when you go low and a 10 or even a five, you access, when you're at that energy level, you access different insights and memories and stories. So it's not just like, now I'm going to say the same thing at a 10 or I'm going to say it's the same thing at a 1. It's when you let your body just slow down and relax till 1, new thoughts come up because you're making it up as you go long and you're just trying to figure it out as you go.

44:55And that was a really, that really happens when you're like forced to go from 5 to like, okay, and you let your body settle into like a 1. You're like, okay, here's a new thought that comes to mine. So that was really powerful for me because I never didn't realize that. And then the other is just this idea of doing these really hard things that with very low stakes, like, you know, like it's higher stakes, maybe that's why it's different, like how it feels different doing it here. It's like, yeah, this is about extremely high stakes. Yeah, relatively. But yeah, there's like a couple people and you're like, just don't worry about failing.

45:31So you You don't even have to worry about apologizing or leaking. It's just like, yeah, I didn't do what I did. So those are two really powerful. And so I just like practicing this and knowing you'll be okay at low stakes builds confidence. I like, okay, that's like, like making up a minute of talk about the most random thing on the spot. Not something that I would feel I'd want to do. But then you realize, okay, it's fine. I could do that. The common theme for me, the more, and I've been on this journey for seven years now, I still am blown away every week by the lessons I've learned over the course of the seven years, which all come down to your brain, your subconscious, is so incredibly powerful.

46:16So your hardware is magical. And because I've spent seven years kind of getting rid of the bad habits, getting rid of the gunked and trusting myself more, I allow myself to take many more risks. So I'm jumping into these games still with the same doubts in some sense, but they've just everything's tapered down way, way, way into the background. So I get to be much more present. And you know, I talked about the summary prompts earlier in the podcast, saying the beginning of a sentence and trusting that your brain is going to fill in the gap is something that's initially hard to do, but when you've done it a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand times, you start believing, hey, maybe my brain will deliver every single time.

47:02So you can start saying the beginning of sentences, the direction you want to go into and your brain fills in the gap. And we're going to do a game on that in a second. But the one, the conductor one is so beautiful because the way we describe it, so I, that folder one when it came into my mind was my favorite ever, but the the original one was when you tap into a certain energy that creates emotion and if you tap into that emotion the words come as a natural consequence. So its energy leads emotions follow and words fill in the gap and And when you experience this for yourself, if you go into conductor and you play, you realize, okay, if I want more conviction, I can raise my energy or get into a state of conviction, and the words that are going to come out, the ideas, the stories, the anecdotes, the examples, everything is going to fit into that.

48:07If I feel frustrated, I can dive into that state and stay in that state. And naturally, the content is going to follow. It's a very, very powerful game. It's a very exciting game. And it's a game that, if you, especially when you're playing with low stakes, you can, you very quickly feel the effect of, oh, I can see the potential of what it could be. if I could just be like this anywhere. Maybe you taper out a little bit of the extremes. But you can access this for free on Ultra Speaking, or you can just, the way we did this at first, you just go to Google and type in random series of nine numbers and then just have a friend say each number one after the next and you just match it.

48:57I used to just put my hand out and go up and down. So in essence, it's very, very simple to apply it. And it's just like a lot of fun to just get an excuse just go wild and high and then just like get low. I love that part of it. And let's get into the next game, but just one other inside I had is that you shared with me when I did it the first time is just people have a strength. They're either correct me for wrong. They're like they're strong at the highs and just like very uncomfortable at the lows or the opposite. And for me, I thought I was gonna, oh, obviously I'll be more natural at the lows because that's like introvert world.

49:30And you're like, no, you're actually like super energized at this high end and then it's hard for to access the low and that was really insightful for me. You'll notice it pretty quickly once you jump in, especially with a friend. It's cool because when you get to see, oh, I'm much more comfortable going up than I'm going down or vice versa or I'm stuck in the middle and I'm only comfortable when I'm not in the extremes. It's just telling you something. This is what we want, but we want to mirror in front of us so I can know, okay, what's happening here. I'm not very much a fan of actually watching yourself on camera on video, because again, this is an inner game, not an outer game.

50:13So when I watch myself on video, I see the outside, which can be useful for certain things. But the fundamentals are inside. But so getting a mirror of I play this game and I feel a certain way. Oh, interesting. It was easy to go up. So I can muster energy pretty quickly. And I'm willing to take risks of jumping into a different energy stage, which might mean changing the direction of where I'm going, but slowing down means I need to be willing to take up space. I need to be willing to just be while everybody's looking at me and I'm using up their time, but I'm gonna take up space and I'm gonna take a moment to go inside and be introspective and really ask myself, okay, what do I wanna say here?

50:58And so that's a reflection of, Well, what does that mean if I struggle to do that? That's why this is speaking such an interesting skill set All right, let's do another game This next game is called triple step and triple step is a game for people He who people who tend to be too struggled to stay on a single thought Or get very easily put off their game or distracted you're the type of person where you're speaking and suddenly somebody yons and you just start freaking out thinking I'm so boring and things are horrible. I must be terrible. Not they probably have a baby and they didn't sleep last night.

51:38Pen drops and you start losing your ability to stay on track. This is a game for you. Also a very fun one. The principle of the game is pretty simple. Similarly to conductor, we're going to start with a random speech title. So I have no idea what's going to show up. Then as I'm speaking, in this setting here, I'm going to speak for a minute, there will be six random words or series of words that are going to pop up as I'm going through my speech. And my goal is to integrate the words into the speech as seamlessly as I can as if they were part of the speech the whole time. So in theory, if I do a perfect job, if you're listening, you should struggle to pick out which words were actually the words that were popped up.

52:25The likelihood in one minute of me being able to do that is low, but let's see if you can do it. So if you're listening, you're not going to see the words, we'll tell you afterwards what they were. See if you can pick up on them. But otherwise, my goal is just to choose a strong direction and stay on that direction as naturally as I can. Here we go. The title is, How Would Your friends describe you. I've been described as a Labrador by my friends and I think the reason people describe me as a Labrador is because I am so easy to excite. It's like if you give me a box of french fries, I'm going to go nuts and it's going to be the best french fries I've ever tasted in my life.

53:05But if the next day I get a massage, I'll be completely in that experience and the massage is going to be the best massage and then I'm going to think I need to get a massage every day. I'm going to start day -dreaming about massage as my natural day to day. But the problem with being a Labrador is that Labrador is kind of excited. So I may be doing cartwheels one second and the next second I'm supposed to be working and so I'll be on my computer. But then I hear the microwave ding and I think, oh, maybe I should go get some food next. And so there's a beautiful trait to being the Labrador that allows me to like explore all of what it's like to be human.

53:44Like I always have access to the internet inside me, but there definitely some drawbacks as well. Okay, so the words that you had to integrate are French fries, getting a massage, daydreaming, cartwheels, a microwave, and the internet. Yeah. And so you might notice that some of the words I'm integrating literally and some I might integrate more metaphorically like the internet of my mind It's like I have access to the internet so you can you can give yourself as much leeway as possible the whole point here with triple step is you want to be that Tree in the storm that is not so rigid that if the wind is too strong It's going to break in half but not so flexible that it's going to swing every which direction as soon as there's a gust So you want that firm solid grounding, which is in choosing a clear direction, that one thing off the bat, and then you want to make the words work for you.

54:51So stay focused on that one thing and as the words come in, the more focused art you are on that groove you've created for yourself, the easier it will be to let the words work for you. Okay, and again the skin, the skill this builds is to be less, be more comfortable with things not going perfectly and being distracted. It's, I would say this one can be used for two other things. Number one is resiliency, right? Because this one, this one will make your brain go crazy. And if you can stay composed within it with all of these things happen, it really, it builds this, this ability to say, well, man, if I can do triple step on hard mode, I can do anything.

55:34Like, why would anything else scary. Why would an interview question scare me when I can throw these kinds of things? I can always navigate my way through. We're trying to lower the likelihood of a mistake really hurting you. And then the other piece, this is a game, this one, and a game called Rapid Fire Analogies, are games that are really, really nice to use as a way to warm your brain up. So you could use it before a podcast, you could use it before a job interview, before meeting when you want to be on, do a few reps of this and your brains just going to be completely lit up because it's pulling on so many different parts of your brain that are necessary for communication.

56:12And one last thought just before we dive into it, I think it's just a zoom out again. The reason that you've found this is a better way to learn to become better public speaking is my sense is just if you were to just do the standard thing, just give more talks, find more opportunities to do presentations. It's like such a, it's like too broad of a brush to build these different skills and which you've kind of identified as there's these very specific skills that add up to a great presenter and these games pick like a specific skill and help you just focus on that again and again and again. If you're already practicing, you're already leagues ahead of everyone because most people aren't practicing.

56:56They're trying, you know, you're trying to learn from a video or a YouTube short or an article, you can only go so far with that. But if you are practicing, there are kind of two suboptimal ways that might show up. One is what you're saying. You're just, you're doing talks and you're speaking up more, but you're not really practicing. It's kind of, as you're saying, it's broad, broad strokes. The other one is your, in a choreography. And all, so it's like learning how to dance, but you only learn choreography. Well, that's all you know how to do. So if I ask you to do, like say, okay, now, just, I'm going to put music on, just dance, you're kind of stuck because you only know how to do the moves you were doing.

57:36So we're trying to get people outside of, I have to be in my mind or I have to do things that I've memorized how to do and come back to, relax, to trusting your natural ability to communicate. So that's what we're doing here. You can feel like when you don't speak when you struggle with speaking you're stuck in this box and Everything around you is tiny and you can feel the sides of the box and we're expanding the range We're playing around with all kinds of different different things different tools and all of them have a specific meaning But even if they didn't that much you still would Be able to oh wow you're pushing back the sides of the box and now suddenly hey, I can move around I feel comfortable moving my arms and moving my legs and going to the right and the left and up and down and just that is good that act of making you feel more comfortable and more at ease Is gonna unlock your ability to communicate because you already know how to do a lot of this So we're tapping into these different skill sets and we're doing both at the same time This episode is brought to you by brave search Brave search is the private independent search engine that doesn't bias or censor results.

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59:27Tired of Big Tech's same old list of links, it's time to try Brave Search. Visit brave .com slash Lenny to get started. That's brave .com slash Lenny. All right, let's do this. I'm energized. I'm pumped. I'm gonna... No, I'm not gonna, I'm like, I was gonna say I'm gonna nail it, but no, it's just how fun, let's have fun. Yeah, we'll go with goes how it goes. Indeed, here we go. Okay, and I'll say the title. The best thing about pain. So this is something I recently shared in a, in a, in another talk is just this quote that I always think of. The cave you fear contains the treasure you seek, that the thing that is hardest often points you in the direction you want to go.

1:00:09So like I hate blue cheese, but sometimes I find that if I eat the blue cheese and add it to a salad, it ends up being the best salad I've had. Having kids is another amazing example where just kids are so much pain, but there's nothing that is more joyous than having a kid. Sometimes, even growing a beard, I grow this beard and I have to maintain this beard for the rest of my life. And I know people would look at me without a beer and be like, what the hell, will you look so different now and so young? Sometimes I think about just like having a sibling and the pain that if I had a brother, if you just like hit me, the pain that would come from that, but just then having the brother would be so much worth it, even if he's hitting me all this time.

1:00:59And I heard you, I ran out of time, but that was solid. I realized this is your first time playing dribble step. It's kind of mean to me to give you six words. So I'm going to give you four words. Okay, okay. Like here's what I noticed. Yeah. What I noticed is you were letting the word, the word was the beginning of a new thought. Mm. Right? So you say another thing is beers. Another thing is, right? So you're kind of, you're finishing your thought and then you're moving on to the next one. try to hold on to one direction. That one direction is like approach your fears head on. And then so then when you see a puzzle, it's like, look, this doesn't have to be a hard puzzle because now I know that I just, if it's scary, I do it.

1:01:49And it's like having kids, which I thought was so scary. I just jumped in and now I'm moving forward. And it could, and right and so it's like, I'm growing my beard without caring what other people think, just because it might be scary, or maybe I cut my beard because that would be something scary, right? So you're holding on to the line. With Ford's going to be a little bit easier to integrate them. Ready? Let's do it. Social distancing. It's interesting that social distancing was such a thing that we all had to do for so long. And then all of a sudden we look back at that time or like was that actually necessary?

1:02:30Did we actually have to stay far from each other? That actually have any impact. It's all these things we have to learn. Like sometimes we look at the stock market and we wonder, should I be paying attention to the stock market? Should I be distancing myself from it? Should I be investing more often? Should I be reading every newspaper that comes out every day to stay on top of what's happening? in the world, like, should I get closer to this information or should I distance myself? Is what's better for me? And sometimes it feels like you're writing this marathon where sometimes you go back and forth.

1:03:09Sometimes it's, let's all be together. Let's pay attention to all the news. Let's hang out. And it kind of feels like I just want to just want to go, go to the toilet and, and peace out.

1:03:25That works. That's really good. Okay. That's really good. Well, tell me what, because again, right, that the games are meant to put you in a state of turbulence and find out what was easy, what was hard, what am I noticing, and now you know what you want to work on, right? It's the, yeah. If you did a rep and you got it, if, and it went perfectly, then and you're learning nothing. A really good, a really easy rep is not worth much. The only reps that are worth something are the ones where you feel an edge. Yeah. And by the way, we should say the words, right, that I had. Oh yeah. The first one was the stock market, then a newspaper, which you brought in really, really well, then running a marathon, and then toilet.

1:04:11Yeah, great. Yeah. Just the fact that I'm like, okay, doing this is like a big milestone for me, of just like, eh, whatever, because, you know, before doing this thing, I'm like, oh my god, I'd never want to sit there and come up with a talk for a minute on the most random subject. And there's a lot of power and just feeling comfortable just doing it. And I just like, sure, let's do it. Whatever. Something something will come out that's interesting enough. That's why taking on this journey of speaking is so empowering because speaking is a a high performance skill. So taking on a high performance scale and starting to tackle it and getting kind of good at it is very addictive.

1:04:54It feels really, really good. If you're good at tennis, if you get good at golf, if you get good at anything, you know, product management, it's a dicting. It's exciting. And as soon as you get good, there's new wants to it and it's energizing in and of itself. And because we have such awesome hardware as humans, we've been speaking all of our life. A lot of us have a pretty decent level to start out with. So you really quickly, you're getting to like, oh, I'm getting some results here. This actually feels good. So there's something, there's something really energizing about jumping into it. It's the thinking about doing the exercise that's scary, but as soon as you're into it, it's, it's an energizing and empowering.

1:05:35And also just like doing like this is a very hard exercise just like giving a made up talk in a minute with words You have to integrate in concepts and I think just doing that makes a regular talk so much easier also because you don't have to do that So there's something there, but just doing it on hard mode learning things and then oh, okay I just have to talk like about a thing I already know about that I had planned much easier Anything else over around this game that is worth sharing before we do our final game. We have a whole series of games and you could probably even invent other games but some people will play triple step and we'll say wow that's so hard and then they'll go and play conductor and think wow this is my game this is so easy but other people will play conductor and think it's impossible and then come play triple step and they'll be like man this is my jam I can get this one and very, very easy.

1:06:31So again, it's just a mirror of where you're at. And it's what's beautiful about this is you start playing around with these games. You're very, very quickly gonna see, okay, this is my edge. Here's, and where your edge is, as you were saying with your quote, is often where the gold lies. So that's when you, if you can spend some time there and learn what it is, underneath the struggle, what's actually holding you back? When you unlock that, that whatever's holding you back in triple step or in conductor or in any other game is holding you back elsewhere in your life. So when you unlock it there, it kind of unlocks the other things, which is really nice.

1:07:10Like a set of gears. And it's interesting, like as we were talking, like where my mind keeps going is like, I just wanna say how I didn't feel good about my performance, but I'm internalizing the lesson of don't leak, how you feel. And that's a really powerful lesson. It's just like, it's like really hard, not to just like, that was not good. Like I really wanted to say that every time I tried this and I am making myself not. And I imagine from your perspective, you're like, now it's fine. It's like whatever. Yeah, absolutely. I was actually thinking, I bet a lot of people watching you do that would think, wow, I don't think I could do that.

1:07:47That would be their first thought. So absolutely. And again, and this is a habit. and the noise doesn't completely disappear, but it goes down to being almost imperceptible. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to internalize all of these habits to the point where I don't need to consciously think about them. So it's like a gymnast who's doing their tumbling routine and jumps into the air as they're flipping, they're not consciously trying to think of how to do a flip. They've done it a thousand times. They know how to do a flip. The only thing they have that they may be thinking of every all of their attention Is on being completely present to what's happening relying on your body and your subconscious knowing what to do is they have Kind of like listeners like in programming keyboard listeners.

1:08:39You have something that's there that is just listening for anything out of the ordinary And it's very very fine tune. So as I'm speaking for example I might think to myself, oh, I may be rambling right now. Maybe I'm going a little bit too long, and it's a little listener that's going to just gently, nicely, say, hey, warning, I don't know if you're aware of this. And as I hear that, I might say, okay, let me wrap it up. Or maybe it's saying, I'm not sure if you're being clear, or can you be more precise here. Whatever it is, I'm going to, it's just a gentle listener in the background. So as you get into the habit of staying in character, and if you had an audience here, we could have asked them right away.

1:09:22Well, how did you feel about this? You would probably would have gotten really good feedback, really positive, which would have kind of jared that feeling of, wow, I didn't think I did it. That could have a job. And people are saying, hey, I thought that was pretty good. So as you get that reinforcing pattern, the voice starts going down more and more. Awesome. I need that voice to go down, my secret. Okay, let's do another game. Let's do a last game, last one of these practical games. So this is actually a game from one of our courses that I'm pulling out. It's not a standalone game. It's one that's inside of the courses.

1:10:02But again, if you wanted to replicate this yourself, you can very easily do it. So what we're going to do here is we're going to work on conviction prompts. So this comes back to this idea of entering a state or changing your energy to impact the words that are coming out of your mouth. What's going to happen here is similarly to triple step. I'm also going to get a random topic that I just have to start speaking about. But now instead of getting a word that I have to integrate into my speech naturally, I'm going to get a prompt. So it's going to be the beginning of a sentence that I have to say out loud and I have to find a way for my brain to just complete the sentence.

1:10:45And the sentences are specifically chosen because they're going to put you in a state of more conviction. So it's going to force me to care more about what I'm saying basically. And this is a game for executive presence. If you think about somebody who you feel has like great gravitas or great executive presence, They usually have, there's something about them that's saying, this person really believes in what they're saying. And what this game is showing you is that, hey, there's a way to fast track myself to that place. If I want to have more executive presence, let me bring a little bit more conviction to what I'm saying.

1:11:26Most, there's caveat, small caveat, maybe 10 % of people in the workforce need the opposite. They need, hey, you need to maybe question what you're saying here. But the reality is the vast majority of people actually are not truly standing behind their words and their ideas. And what that does is that the people who speak a lot and feel a lot of conviction, their ideas go through more often than the others. And you'd want ideas to stand for themselves, but that's just not reality. So for most people listening to this, if you can bring more conviction to your words, then your ideas are going to have a better chance of being seen equally to those who are already doing that.

1:12:12So this is what this game's about. Awesome. Okay, here we go. The title is Saying No. I've had to learn this the hard way as an entrepreneur that saying no is one of the most important things I can do. But saying no is not saying no to a meeting. Because that can be easy. And what I'm going to say now matters a ton. This is saying no to doing all of the exciting projects that I want to do. So as I said earlier, I'm a Labrador. I get excited about everything. And I genuinely believe that every idea is awesome. But that doesn't mean I can do every idea. I need to choose a very clear focus and stick to that focus.

1:13:02And this is a game changer when you start reducing the amount of things you're doing to a painful amount of painful few amount, then when you get there, suddenly everything else changed. And it astonishes me when I do that just how much more I can get done even though I'm doing fewer things. I love it. That was great. These words are tough. If we're dead, it's not an easy one. This is not a good, good, good thing that I get a, I get a tough one. Well, just, let me read the phrases real quick just so for Christmas. Yeah. So the phrases you have to integrate is this matters a ton. I generally believe that every idea is awesome.

1:13:45Game chain was, I generally, it was just, I don't believe that. Oh, got it. Okay. I generally believe that. And then game and then it astonishes me when. And it's, I'm so eager for you to go through this and for anybody listening to try this for themselves. Even if you know what's coming, like if you wanna do this for yourself right now, write the words, the problems that Lenny just shared and choose any title and just speak for a minute and see if you can integrate those in. Cause you're gonna notice how, if you bring conviction, these words naturally bring that out of you and so interesting to watch the contents change as a result of the state you get into and what you say.

1:14:29So it's really powerful to discover just how incredible your brain is. So same intention for you I think is choose a strong direction from the beginning. This is always in speaking in general, the stronger the direction you choose in the beginning, the more ideas you're going to have, the more common, everything gets easier when you choose a strong direction. Okay, let's try it. The goal here is, as it says, advocate for an important idea related to the speech title. Ready? Yeah, let's do it. Go low. The title is Space Exploration. I think it's hard to imagine anything more important to the human race than Space Exploration.

1:15:13I know there's a lot of talk about people wasting time trying to get us to Mars or trying to not think about what is happening on Earth, but I feel like there's nothing more powerful and important in inspiring. In fact, the entire world needs to focus more on the value of space exploration. There's so many things we can discover, so many things that can help us on Earth, and we can just, we cannot forget how much potential exists outside of our little Earth that we We think our whole existence and everything that's ever existed on this one planet when really we're this tiny pale blue dot. And it just astonishes me when people don't think about this, don't think it matters, don't think they should spend any time getting us into space, investing money in space.

1:16:01And just hearing stories, if nothing else, of people that have gone into space and how life changing that was for them should tell us that space exploration is incredibly powerful That was so cool. So you had a title with space exploration in the words where in fact the entire world, then we cannot forget that. Then it astonishes me when and finally life changing. So what was that like? What did it feel like getting... Yeah, there's a lot of it like really helps just like here's a thing you're going to believe. And I don't know if I got lucky with stuff, but it just felt like, okay, I have something comes up that, you know, I'm not going to leak.

1:16:53But anyway, it was like, oh, yeah, cool. Something interesting happens. And that's a one of my other actual just like going a little quick tangent insights from the lessons you guys teach is that as you are forced to talk, you have new insights emerge. and you almost figure out what you think and know by being forced to get out of your head. And his problems help you along that. But I think that's really interesting, just like this will help you develop things and insights that in, and take them out of your head. Yeah, well that's, we're gonna, hopefully we get to talk about the accordion method, one of the most powerful methods I have, which is, which is very close to this.

1:17:35But this is often a prompt I tell people when they're speaking. I say, because people tend to get into a public speaking voice. So they'll be in a class and they'll be chatting normally and look super normal. And then we'll say, okay, now just a timer, I'm just going to give you a speech. Just speak for 60 seconds, so we get a baseline. And I click play and suddenly they say, the important part about doing this and they enter into a different version of themselves, a very professional version. version, whatever that would mean. It's so much more freeing, powerful, connecting, and effective to speak conversationally.

1:18:18And so the QI often give people is, don't think about us, just think out loud. And that's really what we're doing. We can, most people will have a skill set that's up here and a mindset that's down here. And so if you can just change the mindset to match the skill set, you've already made a giant leap. And you do that by reducing the stakes in your mind and by just speaking. And as you do that, when you're thinking out loud, you have these moments of connecting things in your mind and then naturally it pops out and if you're doing it well and I love there's a really cool Naval Ravikant interview on the Joe Rogan podcast from many years ago.

1:19:08That's phenomenal and at one point he talks about communication if I'm not mistaken. I think it's on that podcast but he says something along the lines of one should discover the words they are saying at the same time their audiences. And this comes back to thinking out like, if I'm really in my mind, I'm making connections and suddenly the words are the consequence of it. So using prompts, poking your brain, giving these cues naturally creates things that you couldn't have anticipated otherwise. It's like putting constraints on a creative project. I love that. Before we segue to a couple of these methods, the accordion method is one example.

1:19:51I want to ask about when people hear this, they may feel like you're just you're helping people bullshit more just like make shit up and why why do we want that? Talk about just how this isn't just like you're not gonna actually give talks like this necessarily this is and like I guess I'm answering the question but I'm curious if that's how you think about this is building a skill so that when you actually want to give a real talk with They prepare, you were better at it, but yeah, just thoughts on just like that potential element. Yeah, I think that's an important question, and it's a question I hear a lot, because we all know, we all know a bullshitter, and that's the person who masters the skill of communication, but doesn't have anything to show for it.

1:20:42And so this thing happens is that I see a bullshitter and I think to myself, I really, really don't want to become that person. And what happens is it becomes an immune response or like an immune response where I, the desire not to be that person and the feeling being around that person gives you is so strong that now if I put take even the smallest step in that direction of speaking freely, sharing my thoughts out loud, bringing more conviction or confidence to what I'm saying, not leaking, then there's this immediate response, like an immune response in my body that's just too strong, that's saying, uh -oh, you're becoming the, you're becoming the bullshitter, alarm bells, alarm bells, go back to that safe little corner you are in.

1:21:40But the reality is, if you're thinking that, then you have no chance of becoming a bullshitter. Because if that thought is even popping into your mind, then you're the type of person who has developed a very acute skill set of noticing when people bullshit. And you have that same skill set for yourself. So it's just going to be, now it's just too loud. So as we go through this practice, we want to match, hey, I want to match that that bullshit is level of communication, except I'm gonna have the ideas to back it up. I'm gonna really put effort into my craft, so but I'm gonna give them, I'm gonna be able to show them in the best possible light.

1:22:23And what we wanna be able to do is notice, okay, if this is a big thing for you, the bullshitting, and you're noticing a big reaction, just even listening to us, not even playing the games yourself, then you definitely benefit from calming that voice down. So spending time learning these skillsets because you're most likely atrophied because you're staying away from it. And you're going to have this very powerful listener in the back of your mind that's going to ping you. It's like, hey, you're at the limit right now. Stay, stay true to what you know. And it's going to be very a very good compass for yourself.

1:22:57It's going to be there and you can trust it because you develop this capacity. Awesome. That's really helpful. Okay, so so far we've shared a bunch of techniques, things that you could just start doing today. We've done all these fun games that you could play online. If nothing else, just learning from the techniques these games teach you, I think is really helpful. You've shared a bunch of principles of just like here's how you actually get better public speaking, not in this way, but that way. I know you have a couple also methods just like that people can implement that helps them develop talks that I found really helpful.

1:23:34So maybe just as a closing, we talk about these two methods, the accordion method, and I think it's the bow and arrow method. Awesome. Let's talk about the accordion method. We did this in the class, briefly and I was really helpful, and I've been explaining it to people of just like a really cool way of coming, of making your talk better. So talk about how that works and how people might be able to implement it when they're trying to develop a talk. Now I'm biased when I'm gonna say this. So take this with a pinch of salt, But I think the accordion method, the accordion method might be one of the things I'm the most proud of in my entire life because It's almost revolutionizing the way we should I think we should prepare Speaking so up until now we've talked about spontaneous speaking mostly and that's gonna be the vast majority of your speaking probably 80 % of your speaking is stuff that you can't prepare for.

1:24:28But there are going to be situations where you know you have a deadline and you're going to have to speak. And either you have to speak because it's a job interview or you're talking to your CEO or maybe you're presenting to your whole team or an audience of a thousand. The old way I think is shitty. I think it's broken and I haven't found anything out there that is innovating on this and it drove us crazy with Michael and that's what gave birth to the accordion method. What's the old way? The old way is I have a talk coming up. So I'm going to dump all of my ideas on a piece of paper or multiple pieces of paper.

1:25:09Then I'm going to try rearranging those ideas. And as I'm rearranging the ideas and trying to make them in a talk, I have more inspiration. And I'm thinking, oh, maybe I could say it this way. And I don't want to lose that other thing that I send the beginning because maybe I would use it. And you start just creating this alien stack of paper with all of your ideas of what your talk might be. And then you're left with 10, 15 pieces of paper. And now as the deadline comes closer, what do you have to do? Well, you have to go through the excruciating pane of turning 10 pages into a script so that you don't forget all of those brilliant lines that you spend so many hours editing.

1:25:47And they're still in writing mode. They're not in your mind. So now that I've created that script that I've spent a lot of time editing, now I have to memorize it. And memorization is pretty shitty. We're not good at memorization. Robots are good at memorization. Humans are not. And memorization is like a chain where you just have all of these links very linearly. And everybody knows the feeling of going through, reciting a poem as a kid, and suddenly you miss one verse and you're lost. and now you're a deer in the headlamps. So what we're doing with the accordion method is instead of preparing our talk by writing, we're gonna prepare our talk by speaking.

1:26:32And we're gonna do so in a very specific way where we're going down the accordion to create extreme clarity and to understand what the essence of our talk is. And then back up the accordion to bring back in intentionally just the right pieces. So I was thinking of an analogy for this. And one that I really like is, imagine you're redecorating your living room. The old way that like writing 10 pages and memorizing it is I'm gonna look at my living room and I'm gonna rearrange things and like put stuff in a corner that I might need later and then I'm gonna bring some new things that I thought I could read be really nice and I'm gonna struggle to like make something work.

1:27:13The accordion method is saying, and imagine this were easy to do with furniture, I'm going to take everything out of my living room, except the most essential pieces that make my living room. So I might be left with that one couch that I really love, a pillow, a beautiful light that I bought three years ago, and one or two other small things. And as I look at that, I'm going to have clarity on the vision I want for my living room. And then very slowly, very intentionally, I'm going to go take certain elements that were already there that I might want to bring back in. And I'm going to bring new elements that now I see make sense.

1:27:57And so by the time you finish with your beautiful living room, it's going to be this beautiful, minimalistic room that has a very clear design choice and every element there is there because you chose it. It's there because you did it very intentionally. So how does that work with the accordion method? What we do is you can go through the first step. What if you want? You can write all of those ideas on paper just to get them out of your head. That's totally fine. But from this moment on, there's no more script. And I'm just going to give an example of times, but you can change these time constraints slightly.

1:28:39We're going down the accordion by using time constraints. Now, for example, you would say, I'm going to speak for three minutes. So you're going to put a timer and you have two rules. I have to stay in character the whole time, and I have to end strong. So you must make it to the end of the three minutes, and it doesn't matter how bad it sounds, how many mistakes you make. The only point here is I'm trying to get my ideas out

1:29:05into spoken word, right? So I'm starting to like populate my mind with everything and seeing where am I actually at. And after the three minutes, you think, okay, what did I like, what didn't I like? Then you go to two minutes and you put a timer and you do two minutes again and you're very strict with those two minutes because we're just trying to learn something every time. It doesn't need a people perfect. So at the two minute mark, you do the same thing. But now you have to take a whole, shave a whole minute out of that content. And as you do that, well, that means getting rid of the noise, getting rid of anything that doesn't feel right.

1:29:37Then you go down to one minute. And you're going to go down all the way to 30 seconds. So you started at a three minute speech and you make your way down to 30 seconds. By the time you make it to 30 seconds, you're going to have only the essential pieces. like that couch in that lamp in the living room. When you have the essential pieces, you're gonna have a clear sense of what your talk is about. And it might have changed as you were going down the accordion. And then from that place, we're gonna do another 30 second rep, and then we're gonna go back up the accordion. So you do another 30 seconds, and then you do one minute, two minute, and all the way back up to three minute.

1:30:17And every step of the way, you go from 30 seconds to a minute, it initially a minute felt hard. Now that's double the time you just had. So you can intentionally bring in something that's aligned with the talk you want to share and then two minutes same. And then when you get to three minutes, one of my clients once said that it felt like he had a football field in his mind. So much space. And now whatever talk you have left there is a very clear intentional talk. And not only that, And this is why this is such an incredible method. Your talk is now internalized. So you're at the stage of I've written a script that I've painfully edited in the old way that you now still have to memorize and it's a written speech that you're going to have to pretend to give in a spoken way.

1:31:06In this case, you're there, but it's already completely internalized. Not even memorized, it's internalized because you have these pillars, you know where you're going. and by the time you make it through the accordion method, you're basically ready to go give it on stage. But you could even give it, and you could give it now in one minute, two minutes, three minutes, five minutes. You're going to, it's very plastic. You're going to be able to navigate different time frames. It's not going to really matter if you make a mistake because you're going to, you have a deep sense of what your speech is.

1:31:37It's not memorized, it's internalized. So not only have you getting clarity and built out your speech in a very intentional way, but by the time you get to the end of it, you also actually know it and you're ready to perform it. That example of the three minute, when you come back up, the accordion, that's exactly how I felt when I did this, is just like, wow, so much time now. Because you, essentially the way I think about it, you concentrate it to the best, most important nuggets. And then you have time to build on those nuggets and you cut out all the stuff that no one really cares about, which is usually a long introduction, just like not just get to the good stuff and then you expand the good stuff.

1:32:14And it really worked for me. It was a really illuminating experience. For someone that wants to actually use this, say they have a speech coming up, they say they're doing like an all hands presentation and like a week. Do you do this like a week ahead of time? Do you do this like a few days before? I guess, how do you, what do you fit this in the workflow so that you actually remember what you want to say when it comes time? I can't say I do it exactly a week or two weeks or whatever. It really depends how well you know your, how familiar you are with the content. If you have in all hands and this is something that you've been hashing with your executive team over the past two months, you probably know it really, really well and you have a lot of clarity and now it's just about organizing it nicely.

1:32:58So in that case, maybe you want to do the rough go through the accordion a week ahead of time. So you have a clear sense of what is it that I want that I want my audience to remember? And what are the pillars that I know I like to hit that that feel really good? So you can think about these as like the foundational pillars that support that one thing that you're sharing or bookmarks that I know I have to hit. And then what I would like to do and so that's what I would write down. I wouldn't write a script. I'd write those down. And then before the all -hands, maybe the day before, maybe even the morning of, depending on how important this is or how comfortable you feel, then you might go through just one or two reps of it.

1:33:39But now you already know it, so it should come back very, very quickly in your mind. And it sounds like it's okay to have some bullet points at the end. Like it's hard for me to imagine going on stage with a bunch of people watching, not have any slide bullet point speaker notes, speaker notes, any problems just having like a a couple of the bullet points of like core points next to me. Before I talk, I might have four things written down. My one thing, and we'll talk about this in the bow and arrow, my one thing, the one thing I want people to remember, and then the three bookmarks or pillars that I want to hit.

1:34:14And these are kind of like cues or reminders that are going to send me into that part of the speech. So for example, if I'm talking about the accordion method, like what I just said, if I go back and I think through the pillars of this one, well, my one thing would be, the accordion method is more powerful than memorizing and then doing it the old way. And then my bookmarks might be number one, describe the old way or like the old way. Number two, the new way or the accordion method, and then number three might be, like internalized don't memorize. That'll be kind of the takeaway. way. And if I have that in my mind, if I have 30 seconds, I can say the old way sucks, because you have to work so hard and memorize everything and you're memorizing written stuff.

1:35:04The accordion method is much more powerful because you are going to compress it and go down and then open it up. And then I'll say, and then I'll explain that in a second. And then I'll say, so you're internalized not memorized. What I realize right now is actually funny enough, though those were the bookmarks there. So that sent me down that path, but actually I would say bookmark number two is probably the living room analogy. So it would be the old way sucks, the living room analogy, and then describe the accordion method. That's cool. That was an awesome example. If you just the insights that appear by forcing yourself through this exercise.

1:35:41Yeah. And it sounds like maybe the best use of this method is if you have a talk all of a sudden short term, like it's coming all of a sudden you have to give a talk somewhere. There's a really powerful method to come up with a great talk, like that's maybe tomorrow, which you expect. When I say I love this, I use this for myself, I use this with every single client I work with, regardless of if it's a five minute talk, a 20 minute keynote, we're using the accordion method, and you can use this at the macro level, or at the micro level. So you can use it for the whole talk, but you can also say, hey, let's hone in on this part one that you're struggling with or part two, and let's use the accordion to like get clarity there.

1:36:26So you can use the accordion as a, like almost like a brainstorming way. Like I just want to see where I end up here. And it takes maybe 15 minutes or something to go through a full accordion. It depends the time constraints you give yourself. Sometimes I'll just do two minute, one minute, 30 seconds. That's even shorter. But I'll go through it for one piece of the puzzle. Or it's like, hey, we're almost there. Let's really internalize it. Let's clarify this. Let's get it really, really tight. And then I might say, okay, now let's do the whole thing through the accordion. So you're 20 minute talk.

1:36:59I want to hear it in three minutes. That gets really, really interesting. Amazing. Okay. Anything else along the accordion method before we talk about the final technique before we wrap up? We have a full self -paced course on ultra speaking on the accordion. I think it costs like 30 bucks or something like that to access all of the games and all the platform. A bunch of them are free, but I think this one's behind the paywall. But we also have, we put together a resource where we like go all the way. We describe all of the accordion method, the bow and arrow, staying character, ending on a free email course that we put together that's ultra speaking .com slash Lenny.

1:37:43This is shameless self promotion, but if you wanted to go grab it there, you can grab it there. And then the bow and arrow is going to tie into the accordion method as well. Awesome. I'm glad you mentioned all that. And we'll point people to that URL in the show notes. Okay, final topic is the bow and arrow technique. Let's talk about what that is and how folks can use that to give better talks. The bone arrow starts with a mind, it's really a mindset shift that most of us are in the weeds. So we're very sensitive and familiar to all of the content that we're working on. If you're in data, then you have all of the data.

1:38:25If you're sharing ideas, you still have all of the ideas. And the mistake that most people do when they're preparing a talk, a presentation, and all hands of meeting, whatever it is, is we tend to focus more on what we want to say than what we want our audience to remember. So the mindset shift here is stop focusing as much on what you want to say and focus more on what you want your audience to remember. What we've found out is if you think about your last all hands, the last big meeting, in the last talk you saw on YouTube or in person, you probably don't remember much. In fact, I'd wager, you might only remember one thing from that talk.

1:39:07And that's what this is all based on. We call it the bow and arrow technique because we think you can only remember one thing out of a talk, and that it's very powerful to go through that framework or that kind of thinking when you're building a talk. And the one thing is your arrow. So when you have that one thing, to me, I say it's literally a single sentence that is the only sentence your people would remember if they left your talk. Would you be satisfied with that sentence? It takes some time to get to a good one, but if you have a good one, it unlocks everything. It's like you're having a North Star or a compass in your pocket.

1:39:45You know, always pull it out. You always know where you're going. It gives you a lot of clarity. It's also giving a lot of clarity to your audience, obviously. But you can't just throw an arrow at somebody's face. You need to notch it in the bow and pull the bow back. So to pull the bow back, you need to add in weight to that sentence. And that often comes in the form of an interesting anecdote or a data point that's going to support that or a story that's going to add emotion or illustrate it. So you want to find ways in which you can give weight or pull back the bow so that your arrow has that much more impact.

1:40:30So when usually the process of clarifying what your arrow is, is a back and forth between the bow and the arrows. So if you're going down the accordion method, like after the first one you might write or before the first one, you might write a tentative arrow. Here's my one thing. And then the next one, you say, okay, actually my one thing might be a refined version of that. So you might rewrite it a little bit. And then you might tentatively put in what you think the bow is. I like the anecdote I used here. I like this data point that I thought was powerful. And maybe I can end on this story or this call to action.

1:41:11Then you'll put that in. And then you go back in and you give that a try. And that's starting to simplify in your mind. And as you go, usually one informs the other. By the time you finish the accordion, for example, you should have a very clear arrow and those clear bookmarks which is the bow. But really the thing to remember with the bow and arrow, if you could only remember one thing, is switch your mindset from what I want to say to what I want people to remember and limit whatever that is you want them to remember as much as possible. That's going to give you extreme clarity. That is really helpful.

1:41:50Like I'm preparing my talk for the summit and so I'm going to use both of these exercises. And like what I take away from this last piece is as much as you may want to say a lot of things, really all someone's going to remember as you said is one thing, if anything, but hopefully they remember that one thing. So it's essentially what's the one thing you want people to remember? and then what are the pieces of support that will convince them that that's right and that's something that'll stick with them. Exactly. And again, similar to the accordion method, this works in the macro and the micro.

1:42:22So if you have a talk where you're using slides, use it for the whole talk. But then for every single slide, ask yourself, what is my one thing? And you might have some support there as well. But if you don't have a one thing for each slide, either the slide shouldn't exist or it should be multiple slides Right the the symptom of not having a one thing is Usually having a slide that says way too many things Like I don't know what data point I want you to remember so I'm gonna put all of it on that slide I'm not sure which piece of information is more important so I'm gonna write down all of my thoughts And I'm gonna go through all of them or hope that you go through all of them and extract what you think is is interesting, but the reality is people are just going to zone out if you do that.

1:43:11So if you do that slide by slide, you're going to gain incredible clarity, and again, you're going to need less preparation and less memorization. And to build on that, a pro tip is to make the title of that slide exactly, that one thing you want them to take away. Just put it there and tell them exactly what you want them to learn. I love that. Sweet. Tristan, we've been on a journey. This is a really unique. We have. Experimental episode. I had a good time even though I've done some hard things. You made me do hard things that are good for me. Is there anything else you want to share before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

1:43:47Is there anything else you want to leave listeners with or nugget you want to? I hope people found value. I really, I mean, we did. This was really a group effort. And I really appreciate you working on the edge like really bringing in the game and trying to make this as practical as possible. I think the only thing I want to leave people with is again this idea of how transformational tackling speaking can be. And the more constrained you feel with your speaking, the more transformational it will be to your life. So I just want to give this encouragement. It's much, much, much more enjoyable than you think it will be.

1:44:30It can actually be exhilarating and energizing and you feel like you can take over the world once you're on this journey. It's beautiful. So I just encourage everybody, take the first step and start practicing. You're speaking. Awesome. And I definitely felt that after doing the workshop, I feel energized. I want to just talk all the time, but then I'm like, I need more work and eat more practice. Tristan, with that we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Let's do this lightning round. Here we go. Here we go. First question, what are two or three books that you have recommended most to other people?

1:45:10I was given a book by my first coach, Nathan C. were seven years ago called The Big Leap by gay Hendrix that I've recommended so many times. And it's based on this idea that we tend to self -sabotage ourselves when we experience too much success or too much happiness, and that that's linked to I think five things that would happen to us when we're growing up. Like one of them is the wild poppy syndrome or something like that. Like the tallest poppy is the one that's cut first. So if you shine and you're in a family of siblings Then anytime you shine too much we're gonna say hey, hey, that's not cool for the others so that's gonna be internalized and hardwired in your body and As an adult as soon as you start shining a little bit too much You're gonna do the same thing to yourself.

1:46:05So the idea is going from having this this Point above which you can't be happy to turn it into he calls it an upward facing spiral with no upper limit. It's a really exciting and empowering book. You have favorite recent movie or TV show? You really enjoyed. I haven't watched much very recently, but I'll say my TV show, my favorite TV show, one of my favorite TV shows of all time is the Peaky Blinders, English show with Killian Murphy. I'm absolutely obsessed with that movie, that show. I think it's a true masterpiece. And I've recently rewatched, so I called, I'll qualify this as recent. I recently rewatched The Nice Skies with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe.

1:46:51And I think it's just a brilliant comedy, brilliant, like another masterpiece, I thought. Do you have a favorite recent product that you have discovered that you really love? Could be an app. Could be something physical. I have a physical product actually right in front of me. It was gifted to me by my business partner, Michael Gunner, co -founder of Allterspeaking. This is called an Embermug. And this keeps whatever you have in it warm, that is extraordinary. Whether you have a coffee drinker or a tea drinker, you know the feeling of pouring this and wanting and sipping it and by the fifth sip it's cold.

1:47:28This keeps it at whatever temperature you want it to for however long you want. And I absolutely love it. I've been using it basically every day. I have one of those. I find myself you could actually control it through the app, right? You can control the temperature through now, which I love. I haven't been using mine, but I love the idea. I know a lot of friends love them. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to share with friends or family find useful and work or in life? I think we were too future focused as a species or as a society. and as a result we're always looking for the next thing.

1:48:05So the motto I share with my friends and my business partners and my family, the most I think is these are the good old days. And I remind myself, like I'll tell you right now for you and for whoever's listening, like, I mean, think about the podcast. It's never going to be this young. It's never going to feel like it feels right now. And it always feels like these things are eternal. but truly one day you're gonna look back and you're thinking, man, those were really the good old days. And so I say it right now, enjoy because these are the good old days. I love that and it's so relevant with a young kid because you're always gonna think about it.

1:48:44Yeah, very little. I love that. Final question, you were the fastest person to reach the finals of the oral championship of public speaking. Imagine that was quite a journey. I'm curious if there's a story from that experience that comes to mind that's like a wild part of that journey or something that might surprise people. Yeah. Well, the journey lasted almost seven months and it was the craziest journey of my life because I went into that with no experience whatsoever speaking. And so really just a random amateur and I just climbed the ladder by outworking everybody. The story that came to mind right away was six days before the semi -finals.

1:49:37So I'm six days before the semi -finals and I've qualified for the semi -finals two and a half months ago. So I'm nobody. Now I'm going to the semi -finals of the World Championships of Public Speaking. So my mind really is struggling to compute. And I had finally unlocked a speech that I thought was worthy of giving on the final stage. Because you have to show up there for the semi -finals with one speech. And then the next day, if ever you win, you're going to the finals. And you have to have a brand new speech, a completely different speech, that you're going to give on that stage. So you need two speeches ready to go and both of those speeches have to be in theory world class I'm six days before I was struggling at that really really struggling to get that speech together I finally got something and Michael managed to get me I was flying the I think two days later to Vancouver for the semi's and Michael managed to unlock this one Opportunity to speak in front of 50 people to give it a try and so I ran there I give the speech and as usual we film, I film every single speech.

1:50:45I gave more than a hundred speeches over those seven months and I filmed every single speech. And we get home, we'd ask everybody for feedback and I get home and I'm thinking man something is wrong, something is wrong. I was so pumped, I genuinely wept as I wrote the speech because I was, it was so moving, it was all about my life. It was something that I was so connected to, I don't know, probably the emotion of the pressure as well, but that's how much I believed in that speech. We get home, we put the speech on the computer, and as I get to the most important part of the speech, I see two things happen.

1:51:23So this is the moment where like I'm expecting people to pull out their their tissues. One person pulls up their pulls up the the agenda for the event that they're at and starting to look at the agenda. Another person like pulls out their phone, another person starts going through their purse. And I'm looking at this and suddenly I realized, oh, this speech, nobody cares about this. This is not a good speech, this is terrible. And then I go through all of these feet, I have 50 pieces of feedback. And all I'm getting is like, good luck for the semi -finals, it's gonna go great. I thought it was good.

1:52:03And I'm like, this is, I'm gonna humiliate myself. This is terrible. So I had waves of anxiety. I threw my speech away. And in five days from the ground up, I rebuilt a completely new speech that was basically the best of everything I'd explored, everything I'd experimented with over the course of the three months leading up to that. like the jokes that work the best, like a stand -up comic would I built my special, and I focused on different areas, like all of the transitions. And right before the semi -finals, I gave the speech to one person. I was in Vancouver trying to internalize my speech and memorizing it like in the plaza where I eliminated the size of the stage, And I'm just giving my speech out loud to get over the nerve.

1:52:57So I'm ready for the pressure to see if my brain will remember and everything. Anyways, I gave it in front of one person who was our district director at Toastmasters. And this is a speech meant for 500 to 1 ,000 people, not one person. So I was scared it would flop. But in the middle of the speech, which is a completely different one, like I saw a tear roll down her cheek. And then she just hugged me and said, you got it, you did it. You did it and I walked out on that stage and I made it and I won the semi -finals with that speech. I think to me that was really the... It showed me that everything I'd done was worth something that it actually worked.

1:53:42If I was able to do is to build a speech in five days that could get me a win at the semi -finals of the World Championships, that was kind of the ultimate, wow, I won. So when I walked into the finals to me, I felt like I had already won. Wow, that is a story. What an arc. Amazing. I'm so happy to ask that question. I am now I just wanna watch that speech and I wanna learn more about this whole championship of public speaking, which I have no concern to. That could be its own podcast interview. But, Tristan, thank you so much for being here. This was incredible. When I'm most interesting episodes I've done, And two final questions, where can folks learn more about ultra speaking?

1:54:22I know you built a page where they can experiment some of the stuff, so share that. And then how can listeners be useful to you? If you go to ultra speaking dot com slash Lenny, so ultra like you L T R A ultra speaking dot com slash Lenny, we put together, you have a five emails that go deep into a bunch of the things that we've talked here. You can also just go to ultra speaking dot com where you'll get access to a bunch of the games for free and you can check out everything else that we do. If you want to follow me or hit me up or ask me questions about this podcast, you can do that on Twitter at Montabello, M -O -N -T -E -B -E -L -O.

1:55:01How can listeners be useful to me? Well, first of all, if you made it to here, then I really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you for being here with us. and what I would love for you to do is to apply this. We said in the beginning, you can't get better at speaking without speaking. And another piece of that puzzle is you want to do the thing that you're trying to get better at. So if you're nervous speaking in front of people, you want to speak in front of people as part of your practice. So the way you could be useful to me is introduce these gains to somebody else. Try them for yourself, practice them with somebody else, go through the accordion method with a friend, try conductor, and When you succeed and when you have an awesome experience, then you can tell the world that Ultra speaking helped you do that and that would be huge awesome Tristan, thank you so much for being here Thanks, honey.

1:56:01It was an honor. It was my honor Tristan. Bye everyone Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'sPodcast .com. See you in the next episode.