From Zero to World-Class: Tristan de Montebello on the Art of Public Speaking

29:21I one day ended up being neighbor to a clown. And I didn't even know it was. I just thought a clown was somebody goofing around. It's actually a very serious profession that is very, very interesting when you look, when you dive deep. It's not Bozo the Clown. It's really deep. No, it is not Bozo the Clown. I mean, this is so funny because I'm telling you, yesterday, my daughter is just finishing college now. I told her she should consider going to clown school. Wow. So just yesterday, I had that conversation with her. people will consider improv and now it's become part of the zeitgeist and they'll say oh i'll go do improv i know it'll help me but clown school is not yet there and clown school is is that pushed to a really interesting extreme so i love that you're interested in that yeah so so the clown was saying play whatever you have that's what his teacher was telling him which means if you show up and you don't want to be there, then they should feel that you don't want to be there.

30:18Play the fact that you don't want to be there, but play it with confidence. And so there's something about what great speakers, and I think what's interesting about this idea here is that it works in prepared speaking as well as all of the other areas you're going to be in. What people will tend to do is they're going to show up in any environment and they will start leaking. They'll start leaking all of their insecurities. If they were hoping they would feel confident and they show up and they don't, or like a word comes out of their mouth wrong, they start fumbling, something happens that was not supposed to happen, everything internally is going to break down.

31:01But what if instead, you could keep those insecurities inside? So plug the leaks, stay in character, and play whatever it is that you are experiencing. Use that energy in a confident way. We call it staying in character. It kind of looks like conviction. And what that does is it sends the message to your audience that they're okay and you're okay.

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34:37Let's say you say that one wrong word or the audience didn't laugh when you thought they were going to laugh. And so now you're crumbling inside. So what does it mean play what you had? Should you acknowledge that didn't go well? How do you stay in character? there's always two, you always have access to two ingredients. It's kind of like the two walls. You have the, there's always some insecurity that's going to be predominant and always something that you're confident and you know is the truth. Like insecurity is hedging and the other side is the truth. So say you're in a normal conversation, like a business meeting, and you're trying to explain something and it comes out wrong.

35:26The insecurity is saying, oh my God, sorry, that's coming out wrong. I must be losing you. And suddenly you're forcing a lens on your audience that now they have to see you as somebody who is insecure. Somebody, okay, this person doesn't really know what they're talking about and they're not very confident. So that you can't just go with whatever's happening. But in that same moment, there's that insecurity, but there's a little bit deeper. There is a confidence of, no, no, no, I do know what I'm talking about. And I really want to get this across. And say you're struggling to get it across in that moment.

36:06Then the confident version of yourself would say, instead of, oh my God, I'm so sorry, I'm messing up, would say, hey, this is a little bit harder than expected to get out, bear with me. Or, right? It's like, stay with me, guys. This is going to make sense. And so you're playing the moment that, hey, this isn't working well for me right now, but what you're projecting is confidence. In many cases, it can look like just not mentioning it at all and just continuing to convey the natural confident self that you have. Those are kind of two different stories. I'm trying to understand what the clown friend of yours said, which is, you know, play what you have.

36:53Yes. So what do you have in this case? You have the confidence? You have the knowledge that you know the truth about something? No, in this case, what you have is, wow, it's taking me, it's harder to get this thought across than I thought it would be. That's what you had in that moment. So in that moment, can I be in that? So if you're a clown, you're trying to find humor in it. So you might say, okay, this is going to be super laborious. Like you can tell that my brain's not working today. So you would lean into that side of it very, very strongly and try to find the humor in it. Whereas if you're in a business meeting, it might be that, hey, bear with me, this is going to make sense.

37:41So it's two approaches to this same idea of what I have here, what's happening in the moment, is that I'm not expressing myself with the clarity I wish I had. The example he gave was much closer to what might happen as a clown. I think his example was, say you show up and for whatever reason, you absolutely do not want to be there that day. you're hating what's happening or something happened in your life, then that's the energy you're coming from. Your whole act will feed on the idea that you don't want to be there that day. But it's a choice you're making with confidence and conviction. So how do you do that?

38:31There are two types of confidence. there's the confidence that comes from a thousand reps that you can't replace you just have to have put in the reps and when you show up you say you can feel that level of confidence and then there's the confidence that acts like a switch and the one i'm talking about is the confidence that you can turn on or off and that's the one of the insecurities because if you don't want to be there, you can retract within yourself. If you say something, if you fumble, you can think, oh man, everybody's thing can tell that I'm not making sense and they must think I'm so stupid.

39:11And you can let yourself go down that route. That's mindset. So it's just a decision. In the moment you can say, no, I'm not going to give any weight to this negative thinking in the back of my mind, I'm going to stay in character. I'm going to bring my attention back to where I was going. And I'm going to plug all the leaks. I'm going to make sure none of these insecurities that I have in the back of my mind are coming out. So I'm going to show up completely as I desire to show up in the first place. And so I'm just trying to think of like a practical example. Like, so for whatever reason, I don't want to be there.

39:51I'm up on the stage. Something happens that triggers some insecurities. What's my gut reaction? Like, how do I react right now to the audience? So I think it's a little bit different. So because we kind of have two things here. One is the predominant fundamental feeling you're experiencing in that moment. And one is a fleeting moment. so what you described feels more like a fleeting moment it feels more like a fumble and if there's a fumble it makes more sense to not draw attention to it and to stay in it if it's a small fumble then just stay in it, keep going and people will have forgotten it four seconds later they probably didn't even realize it was a fumble in the first place but showing up after a day where everything has been going wrong and you're just in that energy, you're in a funk and you can't get rid of the funk, then that can be the dominant energy that's coming out.

40:54But you will, does it make sense? Yeah, it does. I'm just trying to figure out how to describe it. Like, so I'm there, I'm in a bad mood. Normally I'm in a happy mood when I do this talk or act or whatever. How am I just, I'm on stage. How am I acting? How am I taking that and bringing it with me on stage in a positive way? It doesn't have to be positive. You could be negative. Yeah, absolutely. Well, what would you do? Say that's the situation. You show up today and it's like everything's been wrong. The business deal you wanted to get, it looks like it was green light. Now it's yellow. And you stubbed your toe in the morning.

41:37It's like one of those days where everything is shitty and the last thing you want to do is walk up on a stage and do comedy. because all you want to do is go home, fix your problems, or go home and sleep. What's a way in which you can be in that energy, but confidently? Yeah, so let's say you're doing the normal crowd work. Oh, where are you from? What do you do? You could say, you know, where are you from? You know what? I don't even care. I don't give a shit. Yes, exactly. What you do, I can guarantee you do something super boring and I'm on stage and I could care less what you want to do. Every comedian feels the same way.

42:15Nobody cares about you. That's how I would do it. I don't even want to be here. To be honest, I had the shittiest of days. I'm just here because I'm on this route. I'm going to get through this and you're going to sit here and you're going to listen to me all the way. Right. And by the way, I'm not talking to you anymore. Your girlfriend's much prettier. I'm talking to her. Exactly. And so now you've transformed something that was shitty into something you can work with. you know it's funny it brings back so many memories because people often think comedy is about the joke telling and coming up with jokes and and to be fair it is of course a lot about that but what comedians talk about what i would talk about countless hours with let's say my peers at that time would be situations like this like how do you deal with this type of audience how do you deal when you're in this kind of mood you know we we would tell ourselves things like you know it's it's my party and the audience is in just invited if they want to like it's i don't give a shit like you have to always get this mindset and that's like a key to comedy which of course is a key to public speaking so so this is all very important stuff it truly is i mean after the competition i found myself so i was on top of the world i made it to the finals of the world championships The world is perfect for me.

43:34I just can't, my mind is completely blown. I had no idea. Scott had no idea. Nobody had any idea that this could actually happen. And I had worked so hard. So I was very, very proud of all the work I'd put in as well. But just a few weeks later, I find myself in a small online mastermind. And the guy running it says, hey, Tristan, would you give us a little speech? Just teach us something. In five minutes, you'll give us a speech. Teach us something. You have three minutes. and I had five minutes to think through whatever this was while listening to the others. And I mean, that should have been so easy to me.

44:11And it was, I remember feeling everything I had felt on day one of the competition. I felt anxiety. I felt imposter syndrome. I felt like I was, I had, I didn't even know where to start. I didn't know how to do anything because what I knew how to do, what I had trained was a very deterministic skill. I knew how to sit down, write a script, and then go test it on many, many, many audiences while editing the script and watching the video and testing all these things. And then after a while, I'd feel really, really confident overacting it on stage. That's what I knew how to do for this competition.

44:47So suddenly I'm asked, hey, can you be a human being? I don't want to see a rehearsed speech. I just want you to be a human being. but I also want you to be clear, concise, impactful, and inspiring. And I was just like stuck in front of this camera. And I remember I was probably at 170 beats per minute the whole time. I was freaking out. And that kind of cued me onto a mission of trying to figure out, okay, well, what is it? What do you need? What are the skills that are going to impact everything else in your life. Because it's nice to break down storytelling and to get all the frameworks and tips.

45:29But until you find a way to learn how to show up completely as yourself in any given moment, in a way that where you feel confident, nothing else matters. Because if you break down, then you can't think about the storytelling tips and the frameworks. You don't have time to structure your thinking. You're just in the moment and you have to flow. And so Michael and I started trying to figure that problem out. We'd figured the world championships out, the prepared speaking, and now it's like, well, what's the other side? What's the true meta skill of speaking? Communication is something we do all the time.

46:12What are the habits we need in order to feel comfortable everywhere? And what are the bad habits we have? What are we doing wrong? And we started trying to figure those things out. And what we found out as we were working with people and training people on these skills is that a huge amount is mindset. Almost all of it is mindset actually. Because everybody's speaking all the time. So we're all, you know, 2000s in chess. Everybody has a pretty high ELO when it comes to basic communication. Credit for understanding the chess rating system. She has credit for it. Thank you. But we're all showing up as 800s because everybody's shooting themselves in the foot all the time because I don't feel like I have a seat at this table.

47:00I'm unsure that this is going to work. Or as soon as the environment changes, I don't know what to do with all of the feelings that are going through my body. I think I'm a fraud. And all of these things, these thoughts come into play. and suddenly we shut down. And so I was doing great talking to my best friend. I'm 2 ,000. And then I'm asked to speak up in a meeting and I'm 800. And I just fumble and break down. And so a lot of our approach to training communication today and how we run all of our pedagogy is very much around the fundamentals that play on mindset. So I love that this is what you guys were talking about because this is the only thing that matters as the foundation.

47:51And then all of the small tactical things, you build on top of that. But if you're missing the bottom part, you're missing the base of the pyramid, then the rest doesn't matter as much.

48:17it's interesting because what you said earlier about what the pianist said that uh uh the audience is very empathetic so the way we would talk about this let's say in the comedy world is to say you have to always address the elephant in the room so in this case like let's say and i'm just curious how you fully resolve the the so you're you're at this online mastermind and suddenly you have all those fears insecurities nervous they're asking you to speak about the thing you just was a finalist for the world championship about and you suddenly find you can't talk so that's the elephant in the room and so i'm just i'm again i'm asking you if this is the right way to do it so what i would do is i would say listen it's really funny i just was a finalist in the world public speaking championship and i find i cannot even answer your question so that's the elephant in the room because everybody can see it the audience is an x-ray machine everyone can see it there's some problem.

49:14And, and now you have to address that, that problem that, that before you do anything else. And then you could say, uh, what you just said to me, which is that, you know, you train for X, this deterministic thing, but you see that if you, if you extrapolate the core concepts, you know, I need to tell you a story about public, you know, you would just kind of just say what it is. You would just lay it out there. It's, it's the clown's version of, of what he said about you got to bring it all with you on the stage. Okay, so I'm going to say the opposite of what I've been saying. Because in a situation like this, I would advise to do the exact opposite.

49:58Interesting. Yeah, so here, by saying, man, I should kill it at this, but I'm going to flub it, you're actually, you're hedging. This is just an insecurity that's coming out. It's not a confident, you're not writing something confidently. So the easiest thing to do, because we all have these kinds of thoughts. We all have the, man, I'm a VP of this. I should know what I'm talking about. Oh man, I'm the engineer. I'm the person who's in charge of this project. I should be able to answer this question. Everybody always, there's always an equivalent of that in your mind when it's your turn to speak.

50:42If you come out and say, oh, I'm sorry, I'm so unprepared, or I should be so much better than I'm about to be, you're just turning on a negative cycle. And so instead, that's a moment where that would be leaking. So instead, we want to show up and say, no, no, no, no, no. I am confident. I can do a good job of this. I'm just doubting myself. That's what's happening in the back of my mind. And instead, I'm going to say, I'm not going to put any attention on that part. And I'm just going to go through with this. I'm going to find a way to convey confidence. I'm going to find a way to, that's not it, actually.

51:28I'm not going to try and convey confidence. That will happen naturally, as long as I don't share my insecurities. because humans just look confident by default. So it's really fascinating. So what would you do in that situation now? So in this situation, I would not say anything that would hurt my chances of having a great first impression. And I would just jump in as if I were confident, as if I'd done this 50 times.

52:00uh well in this case my i was asked to i was asked to teach something and i was close to my backyard and i had a slack line in my backyard so what i what i said is uh i think it was probably something like Like, this may not come naturally to you, but slacklining is one of the perfect representations of what learning a hard skill looks like. Because if you put your foot on a slackline and try to stand up, it will immediately feel impossible. Like, actually impossible. Your foot's gonna move from left to right and everything's gonna feel unstable and it's gonna feel like this is just not a skill for you.

52:47You're not somebody who's supposed to be slacklining. But having a slackline in my backyard, I've taught probably 25 people how to slackline. And I can do it in 30 minutes. Within 30 minutes, I have people with no hands walking five steps over the slackline. So how is it? What can we do about that? And that was kind of my intro. And then I walked in like the three, I broke down three of the principles behind it. I see. So what you did was you weren't feeling necessarily confident that second about public speaking. So you quickly resorted to, you looked around, okay, I'm confident about that. That's what you started speaking about because you knew internally you could speak with confidence about slacklining.

53:34I don't even know what slacklining is, but I'm going with it. And from there, you made an analogy each step of the way to public speaking. Yeah, I love what you said. So slacklining is just, it's a line that's pulled between two fixed posts and you walk on it with no hands. You just walk on a string, basically. It's almost like, you know, the guy who crossed between the twin towers. It's that except you don't have anything in your, it's like a tightrope, but you're not holding a bar or anything like that. So it's a little bit thicker. But I love what you said when you said you weren't feeling confident about public speaking because that's exactly it.

54:13And I think that summarizes so much of what people struggle with and what people confuse when they struggle with speaking in general and communication is that they confuse I'm not confident with my content and I'm not confident with the speaking. And so in my case, I was not confident with the speaking because I didn't have all the things that I could rest all my confidence on. I hadn't given a hundred speeches completely impromptu spontaneously. So I didn't know what was going to happen. There was huge doubt in my mind in terms of the public speaking. But teaching slacklining and thinking about the, what that meant for learning, I had done hours and hours of.

54:59So what I decided to do is I said, one of them is an illusion, and that's the speaking part. And I'm just not going to give any, allocate any bandwidth to thinking about that. I'm just going to plug that leak, and I'm going to bring all of my focus on what I know about the slacklining. And so suddenly, one side of me, the illusion side, the unconfident side is kind of gone, and all of my attention is focused on this part that I could talk about for hours on end. And you probably have the skill to make the analogies starting from that core. So you knew that if you're talking about slacklining, you knew you were going to have confidence that no matter what they asked you to talk about, you could build an analogy between slacklining, which you were confident in, and whatever else was, in this case, public speaking.

55:51Yeah, I do think analogies is one of the most valuable skills you can build as a communicator it's incredibly valuable and we do a bunch of training like that to help people build analogies so that is something i think i probably got better at during the world championships that i used there well if you think about it analogies is a critical part of comedy because you're basically finding two situations that are roughly analogous, but somehow there's like a, they're not as analogous as people think. So like, I remember hearing a joke by Andrew Schultz in a comedy club. And he basically just said, why do people who, I'm not going to do it as a joke, but he just basically said, why do people who, why do countries who treat their women bad have the best food?

56:45Like no one ever says, and then you just take that analogy. okay, is there an analogy between women who I mean, countries who mistreat their women and good food. And so he just plays with that. He's like, no one ever says, hey, let's go out for some Canadian tonight. It's always like Middle East Chinese food. And so you think, oh, this is interesting. This analogy works, but it's like a weird, funny kind of analogy. So analogies are like a critical skill in stand-up as well. Well, I really like that. And I think there's something, this funny, because since I'm in your world, it reminds me of your concept of idea sex, of taking two things that are seemingly unrelated and finding the overlap.

57:32And I think that's what makes humans interesting. What makes us interesting is the weird overlaps that we see. And I think that's why vulnerability done in the right way, not from a place of insecurity, But showing like humor is vulnerability. It's saying, hey, I saw the world this way. That's very inappropriate in many ways to look at, to say that kind of an analogy. But you saw it and just putting it out there is interesting or funny. And you can build on that. So there's so much there. Yeah, there really is. And this is one of my favorite Louis C.K. jokes. I just have to share with you because it's also somehow using an analogy, but it's, he basically was saying he was, he was playing with his little five-year-old or six-year-old daughter.

58:24And, but he was saying she is not a five-year-old is not emotionally prepared to deal with the darkness of monopoly. Like at some point in the game, she's not good at it. She sucks at at some point in the game, I'm going to say to her, okay, now you're going to, here's what's going to happen next i'm going to take all your money i'm going to take all your property and you're not playing anymore a game is over for you like and he just goes on and on about this and the analogy there is that how does a little girl you know the analogy is this little girl is also a player in this game and it doesn't mix somehow and and he that's all his jokes that's what he plays with so yeah it's just it's just interesting so what would you do if you felt like you're speaking in front of audience and you felt like the audience was kind of biased against you for some reason let's just say the political thing is you're a Democrat and you're speaking in a room full of Republicans you can do one of two things because it's hard for me to give you a blanket statement on this you can do one of two things one is you can play that and you can say whatever you're feeling in that moment that is not your insecurity, you can put out there and be like, okay, I know every...

59:47So basically, one strategy is saying, breaking down all of the bad things they probably think about you in that moment and saying, I know you probably think that I am this, this, this, and that everything I'm going to say is this, this, this. And you just put out all of their rebuttals to start out. But I really want to talk to you because. another version is not even addressing it. and this is kind of judgment in the moment but i'll tell you talking about laughter you were saying that a joke if a joke works on one audience it's likely to work on another audience if it's a good joke i noticed that as well having spoken in front of probably a hundred different audiences over the course of the competition and trying out like testing out jokes in all kinds of ways But what I found was, although that is true, there is a, there's a, an intensity knob or a volume knob in the sense that, well, here's, here's the actual example.

1:00:59I went to speak at Raytheon. So I'm with a group of, you know, like hardcore hardware engineers. And they fit exactly what you imagine they looked like. And I'm there. And I know by this time, because I was pretty advanced with this one speech I was giving, I know exactly when people are going to laugh in my speech. and I know exactly how much they're going to laugh. Now, I don't know, and this is where it becomes interesting. I don't know, let's say a roarish laughter where people are clapping because they don't even know how to express how funny things are. Let's say that's a 10. The only thing I know is that I know which one of my jokes is the funniest, the one that tends to get the highest laugh, and that every other laugh is indexed on that one.

1:01:55And in this case of this speech, it was my first joke, my opening joke. I know whatever I got. So if I got a 10, then my worst joke would be at a two. But I also knew if instead of getting a 10, for some reason, this audience didn't do the laughter clapping thing and they just chuckled, then the one that would have been a two would probably not even be laughter, would be maybe a smile. In this group, I show up and I throw out my opening joke very confidently. And I don't even get a smile. I get nothing, just total crickets. And I'm 30 seconds into a seven and a half minute speech. And I know that every single one of my next jokes are not going to land.

1:02:48because this is my reference. So now I know everything's going to be at a minus something. It's negative. And I had a choice there. I could say something. I could say, wow, tough audience and try to catch it up. Kind of maybe the way a stand-up comedian would, but not all cases. I've heard people just run through their act anyways. In my case, I chose to stay in character. So I chose no leaking. So I just kept going as if they had laughed. And I still told the other jokes in the same way I would have, expecting them to laugh even though they didn't. And it was very painful. But by the time I got to the end, I sat down.

1:03:31And as usual, I requested, and this was kind of the deal of me coming to speak, I requested that we go around and every single person, one by one, give me feedback. Because they knew I was competing and this was a speech. The first person to speak said exactly this. He said, first of all, before I give you any feedback, I got to say, that was one of the funniest speeches I've ever seen. I swear, I wanted to punch that guy in the face. It's like, why? I told him, I'm like, why didn't you guys laugh? It was so hard for me. But what I'm saying here is that it's actually hard to read an audience. So say you're at your example and you're a Democrat speaking at a Republican event or vice versa.

1:04:18If you're looking at the audience, they're incentivized to look mad at you. And it's very hard for one person to start saying, yeah, preach, because everybody's going to look at them and be mad. Same way in this group of, you know, super introverted engineers. If one of them laughed, they knew they would stick out of the bunch because that's not the culture there probably. And so it's risky to do that. So in that situation, there's also the argument to say, hey, you can just go through your speech and say it as if you had an audience that was really receiving everything you're saying because there probably will be a bunch of people who will be resonating with what you have to say.

1:05:01They're just not going to show it to you explicitly. That's really smart because you also don't never know if culturally, like he said, it was the funniest speech. So maybe just culturally though, everybody feels funny about laughing or making any kind of, you know, noise at that particular culture at Raytheon. It's a very conservative, and I don't mean conservative politically, just conservative, you know, people in their lifestyles. And, you know, they all have top six secret clearance. They don't let their emotions maybe be seen. So you could have been doing, It's like if you're going to maybe like a Northern European country, they don't tend to laugh out loud hysterically as much.

1:05:43Yeah, the Russians who don't smile. Yeah, but they still might think something's very funny. So you kind of have to have that confidence as well. You know, let me ask you a question. I'll describe a technique I've used, and I'm curious if it's good or bad. But so there was one point I was speaking at a conference where I had a feeling some people or some group of people in the audience didn't like me for whatever reason. And what I did was I said, look, I could talk about one, I could talk about two different things. So I want you guys to pick which topic I'm going to talk about. And then I said, I gave topic in, you know, and clap for the topic.

1:06:27So I gave topic A and I gave topic B. I knew they were going to choose topic A, but I wanted to give them, and that was really the only talk I had come prepared for was topic A. But I knew, I sort of pushed them on topic A, but I made them choose it. And so after that, I felt like my reasoning was they couldn't really hate me as much or dislike me as much because they're the one who, they think they've chosen the topic. And I think that worked. That's brilliant. That's actually a, I don't know, you probably didn't do it. I don't know which one came even first, but that's a parenting advice that I got that's really interesting is many times people are, your kids will be resistant by default just because you're imposing something on them.

1:07:16So just give them a choice. And one of the choices could be, it's choice A, choice B, or I choose for you. So even if you're the one who ends up choosing, it was their decision to have you choose for them. So I love that you did that. That's brilliant. And it's so much more funny that the stakes were very, very high and that you hadn't prepared the other speech. But yeah, I think that's brilliant. That's brilliant. And you're making them clap, not in a corny way. Like, hey, raise your hand if, you know, that kind of thing. It's been so overused that, you know, is everybody here tonight? Are you excited?

1:07:52And say it again. You're just that thing of trying to just get people pumped up. in a way that's just a little, has become a little artificial. What you did is very genuine in the way it comes across. So I love it. Well, and you know, in the other example you gave of what you would do, like when the Democrat-Republican thing is you gave an example where you sort of list all the reasons why they might not want to see you. And then you kind of describe, well, but this is why I want to talk to you. And it reminds me actually of the famous scene in the movie eight mile where eminem is battling the other rappers at the end and he's like and you know it's a whole black audience he's white he's rapping against you know he has no reason to think he's in the same you know group the in group with the audience and the people he's rapping against and so he says basically everything they could say against him he's white he lives in a trailer park he went to a prep school yeah the other guy went to a prep school yeah yeah yeah he didn't go to a rep school but but the the the other guy like you know fooled around with his girlfriend they all beat him up and and whatever so he kind of listed everything they could possibly argue against him but then this is why he was there is because he really is one of them and the other guys aren't so he used this in-group out-group bias quite a bit and that's what you what you did in your in your first example with the democrats republicans you kind of explained why you might be out-grouped, but then you're going to explain how you're really in-group because this is why you want to talk to them.

1:09:29And I think that's a powerful technique too.

1:09:48What I love about these techniques is that if you're going to speak in the moment, It's hard to predict these things. I mean, obviously, if you're showing up to a Republican event and you're a Democrat, you can kind of think through, okay, what am I going to do? But in most cases, when you find yourself at a disadvantage for whatever reason, you can't predict it, right? You don't know how you're going to feel. Maybe you suddenly have a huge stomachache before a very important team meeting, and now you're showing up or, you know, you had planned to prepare and you were taken away into another meeting.

1:10:18Now you don't have time to prepare. You're given twice the time to speak or half the time to speak. All of these things require you to be resilient in the moment, require for you to have very quick mindset shifts. They're almost like choosing a path instead of following a framework. Following a framework in the moment, I find, to be very, very difficult, particularly if the stakes are high. But choosing a path with no return is much easier. So in this moment, you're in front of the audience and you're thinking, okay, I have two choices. I can, and that's all you have. It's like, oh, either I say it out loud or I just hide it completely, or I just keep it inside.

1:11:03I decide this is leaking. I'm going to stay in character and I just focus on what I want to say. And it's a fork in the road. There's no way back and you choose one, but whichever one you choose, you must commit to completely. And this kind of philosophy in speaking is very, very powerful and you can apply it immediately. So anyone listening to this can start bringing this. You can bring awareness. When am I not doing this? When am I hedging? When am I keeping everything open? When am I sharing my insecurities? And instead, you can choose strong roots. And when you do so, you are more likely to hit a flow state.

1:11:46And speaking when done right is a flow state. Speaking is a subconscious act where the words are coming out. You're discovering the words at the same time as your audience is if you're doing it right. You should be almost surprised by some of the words that are coming out of your mouth. If you know what's coming out of your mouth before it does, then you're not speaking, you're writing, you're editing in your mind. And that's not a flow state and that's much harder to do. That's fascinating. I've never thought of it that way. It makes sense as a flow state because there's so much adrenaline and so much dopamine coursing through you at the same time that that can easily trigger kind of this altered chemical state where you're in flow.

1:12:26And it's true, really. The best times, I'm not saying, by the way, I'm great or even as a good comedian, let's say over the course of six years of doing it every night, I got good enough that other clubs around the country could ask me to go and I wouldn't embarrass them most of the time. That's pretty huge. I was by no means good in the really good sense. I was like, let's say using the chess rating system, maybe best case, 2 ,000 to 2 ,200, but not like, let's say Louis CK is 2 ,700, 2 ,800. So Chris Rocks, solid 2 ,700. so um but uh now now i'm forgetting what i was what point i was making other than bragging about my comedy you were talking about uh what you got out of the we're talking about flow state and then what six years of comedy uh taught you about that or something like that yeah oh is that that would happen that sometimes you get into this flow where you don't even know what you're saying and everyone's laughing and it just feels that's what feels really good about all of these things whether it's public speaking comedy writing programming any you know playing the piano all these things that can lead to a flow state feel really good if you do it right and part of it does come though with a lot of experience i think people don't realize that like these these decisions like when you've described you have to make you're in a difficult situation you have to decide between two paths you're going, your decision in that moment is going to come from having done it hundreds of times.

1:14:07Exactly. Experience is really going to... There's no avoiding putting in the hours, unfortunately. Yeah. And the reason why is because it's too risky otherwise. Like flow is a state of no return. It's a state of lesser awareness. or more awareness, how are you going to see it? But what I'm trying to say is when you go into a state of flow, 99 % of your bandwidth and of your being is inside of that state of flow. So there is no space for self-doubt, for criticizing yourself, for second-guessing yourself. All of those things don't exist when you're in a state of flow. The moment they come in, if you give them attention, you're just pulled out of the state right so when you're in a state of flow what feels so incredible about it there are many many things that make it feel incredible but one of them is i'm not doubting myself i'm riding this thing and it's amazing and i'm trying to stay in it as long as i can it's like surfing a wave right it's like i just want to keep going keep going keep going keep going so why can't i just jump into a state of flow in in in comedy when i show up on stage the first time because I've never done it.

1:15:27So if I do that and I go down the wrong route or I get lost, I'm going to fumble too many times basically. And when I fumble, I'm not going to know how to recover. So that means I'm going to be pulled out of flow and I'm not going to know how to go back into flow. So our whole philosophy, the way we think about training people in speaking is very much, I was saying in the beginning, it's very much about mindset. Another way of seeing it is it's very much about flow. How do I get into a state of flow? And how do I get back into the state of flow over and over and over every time I make this a small mistake or suddenly I'm rambling and I don't know how to catch myself and that's creating more thoughts and now that's pulling me out of flow?

1:16:09How can I come back into it? And so a lot of what we do are tons and tons of reps. We have basically everything we've created are games. We found that that's just the best way to teach speaking is by gamifying it. So it's a series of games that are small reps that all teach you, all make you fumble in some way and teach you how to stay in and come back into a state of flow. That's a great way to look at it. So what are you measuring in that game? What do you mean, what am I measuring? Like what's the score? Like you're gamifying it. Like, are you gamifying how many times you picked up when you fumbled?

1:16:51Yeah, so it depends on the game. This way you don't take it so personally. It's a game. It happens. Bad things happen in a game. The other team gets a goal. Now you have to get a goal. And you don't feel horrible about it necessarily. Yeah. Well, you want to play one or two of the games with me? I can show you an example. Okay, awesome. So if I'm looking over here, it's because the games are over here. But let me show you. I think you're going to like this. Let's see. Here you go. Okay, so if you can't see, we're on a page on UltraSpeaking that has a bunch of different games. I'm going to choose some of the games.

1:17:29So all of them teach you different skill sets. And as you're saying, how do you know that you're going to win? Well, each game is winnable in a different way. I'm going to choose rapid-fire analogies because it's a fun one that I think you're going to enjoy. And by the way, if you're listening, to this, how could someone find this so they could play for themselves? Good question. If you go to ultraspeaking.com, you're going to have access to all these games. In fact, we put like a free email course together that gives you like the breakdown of a bunch of these techniques and philosophies at ultraspeaking.com slash James.

1:18:06And that'll give you the link and access to all of the games and everything. So if you go to ultraspeaking.com, just like you would pronounce it, U-L-T-R-A speaking.com slash James and you'll have access to all this. Excellent. Most of the games we're going to play, they're all accessible for free. So this one's called Rapid Fire Analogies and it's the game that started everything for Michael and I because it's the game about leaking and staying in character and it's made to make you fumble. So the way what it looks like is random words put together. Becoming a billionaire is like toilets because.

1:18:46And banana is like a lion because. And you have mere seconds to complete the sentence. So you have to read it out loud and then complete the sentence. And it's almost impossible. I've never even seen anything like this. This is really great. I could see the benefits of doing this. Oh, I love that you can already see it. A surprise party is like breathing because you have to pause. you can whatever it is that comes through your mind first is what has to come out and here's where the game becomes really interesting so we'll let's each play some reps and this is an easy one to listen to even if you can't see just know that everything before the word because is written on the screen and we're reading it out loud and then we're using our brain's autocomplete function and we're just stream of thought letting our brain fill in the blank so the the goal of the game level one of the game is just saying something for every rep so it really genuinely does not matter that you say something meaningful as long as you say something and you say it with with uh with confidence so no leaking okay so anytime you fumble you're going to be tempted to leak i'll try yeah that's good okay ready yeah here we go blue cheese like running because both make me sick.

1:20:04The internet is like social distancing because in both cases, you're far away from people. A broken finger is like daydreaming because it's blah. I don't have it. Honesty is like an omelet because I can eat it all day. Playing tag is like entrepreneurship because I'm always trying to tag money. Cartwheels are like learning a language because I can't learn any language. I'm flipping over and over all the time. Wow. Okay. Really good. There are a few things that I'm impressed by. One, when you said, you know, blah, I don't have it. You said it, you did say it in flow. You said it with some confidence of like, I don't have it, but I'm already focused on the next one.

1:20:45It's like, you know, doing a golf swing, missing one golf swing, and then your whole game is messed up because you're living in the past. Or, hey, I messed that one up, but the next one is brand new. That's the first thing. The second thing you did really well, in addition to getting some really interesting connections, is the last one, the timer went off and you were not done and you still found a way to complete it. And what they found putting freestyle wrappers in MRI machines is that as they got to the last verse or the last line of the last verse, the wrappers would get completely pulled out of flow.

1:21:23Because when you get to the end, your brain has already processed everything. So the words we're hearing are the after effect of something. And when we get to the end, we tend to get pulled out. So you did a really good job of even as you were feeling the tug of being pulled out of flow, you found a way to still land the plane. That was really cool. Tell me about your experience. It was fun. I did get on the blah. I did get for a split second nervous because I didn't know. I also was pleased with one of my first answers. I thought the analogy was so dead on. I would both make me sick. Yeah, that was very cool, the running.

1:22:00Right, so I felt like, boom, that was a good quote-unquote answer. And then the problem with that is the next one was not as good, so that made me almost for a split second fall out of the feel of it. But yeah, I think it's a really good exercise. So isn't that interesting, right? Because that is exactly what speaking is like. That's what life is like. If you expand this at a meta level, we're always going to have moments where we kill it and moments where we don't. So what if we trained our ability to treat both the same way? What if you could let that feeling of, oh, I really knocked that one out of the park, kind of permeate into the next one?

1:22:48And that when I train people on this game, sometimes when people, I really can't get people to not break character, to not leak. So a lot of people, when they leak, is if they do some wrong, they'll be like, ah, or they'll show it with their face. They'll give you a little grimace of, oh, I really missed that one. And I'll say, I'll have them go and I'll have everybody in the room or in the virtual room turn their volume off. And I'll say, hey, I want you to watch. And by the end of it, I want you to tell me if it looked like they lost confidence on any one of them. And it's so interesting because now that the words are not landing in anybody's ears, you're still doing the same thing.

1:23:34You're still trying to connect these things together, but you can show up in a way where it looks confident for every single rep. Yeah, that's fascinating. And when you're doing that, you can notice what you're training, right? Like what would happen if you became a master at something like this. Well, also, you could isolate the different skills. So you can isolate the showing up with confidence as opposed to the answers. And then you could isolate the answers as opposed to the confidence, if you want. So, like, for instance, this is normally considered bad advice, but, like, my daughter was going to try stand-up.

1:24:09And she ended up doing improv and things like that. But the advice I gave her, most comedians would never give it. I told her... For your first time at an open mic, steal a bunch of jokes. Only do stolen jokes because you know those jokes work. So you're not going to try to practice every skill, like being on stage, being in front of an audience, writing a good joke. You know the jokes work. So just try to deliver them well, and then people will laugh because they're 100 % they work. It's Louis C.K.'s jokes. It's Amy Schu... Whoever is your favorite comedian, it's their jokes. By the way, nobody will really know that you're stealing their jokes unless they're super familiar.

1:24:47and I've even seen, by the way, Jerry Seinfeld steal jokes. Like none of these guys are immune to it. But then you isolate. Okay, in this case, she can isolate her delivery and performance as opposed to also trying to isolate writing a joke because then you know what's going wrong when something goes wrong. So it's important to do those isolations. And what's funny is we do that with everything else, right? Yeah. If you're learning like a physical skill, you're obviously going to look at somebody who does it well and try to take their swing or do the thing they're doing or copy somebody's opening, you're always gonna be copying.

1:25:26And I think that's a mistake not to try and find somebody to mimic when you're starting things off. And so oftentimes if somebody's struggling with this, I'll try to explain to give them a cue here or there, but if they can't get it, then I go. I say, okay, I'll go or I'll have somebody else go or we'll go back and forth and I'll do two, you do two. I do two, you do two. I do two, you do two. And that way, and I just say, hey, feed off my energy. Just try to do like I do. Try to copy, not what I'm saying, just my energy. And I raise my energy a little bit. And I bring a little bit more like extra energy, extra intensity, because that helps you stay in that state.

1:26:05And then it works. And then I get to sit back and they can do tons and tons of reps in a row. Yeah, that's really important because mimicking is is key like before i would go on stage i often by the way even like i'm thinking 15 16 years ago before i would go on a date i would even watch stand-up comedy right before the date because then your mirror neurons are yeah look they're the best public speakers as stand-up comedians so and they're using their body they're using the stage they're using the audience they're telling jokes so your mirror neurons kick in and just for like it's like you get a temporary dose of like comedy superstar for for the date or for a talk or whatever like i think that kind of feeding off that other person's energy is is very good and by the way in some in some games like chess for instance it's a basic part of the game that you're going to copy the people who came before you like just you're going to copy you're going to study you're going to learn like you know all the best chess players know a bunch of the masters games then they've they could play them in their mind.

1:27:11They have played them and imagine what would I be thinking. What is it? The common one that I really love this one. This advice is you start the game of a master and you stop and then you pretend you're in their position and you say, okay, what would be my follow-up move now? What would be my candidate move? And then you think about it for as long as you can. And once you have your candidate move and you have the thought process behind it, you try to find, you go look at what did they actually do? And then you get to confront those two ideas. And then let's say it took you five hours to do a hundred of those.

1:27:46Now the key is do the exact same hundred, but in two and a half hours. Then the key is do the exact same hundred, but in half that time and then half the time and then half the time until you do it like as quickly as possible. Cause then it just becomes part of your, your, your gut reactions. Yeah.

1:28:15so all of these techniques obviously we're talking about public speaking but they're about meta learning in general which you know scott young with ultra learning and you with ultra speaking this is this is the whole idea is that these are meta learning techniques i have a question what's the role of voice in public speaking like you think about do you make your voice deeper at points do you make your voice a little lighter at points or higher this is something i've i've given a lot of thought to because what's interesting is very quickly i started having people who would reach out to us and say i need help with my voice like my i Either I don't like my voice or I'm too monotonous, which is the most common.

1:29:06I just come off as monotone. So I need, there's something broken basically in my voice. What do I need to do? And we've tried all kinds of things with that. And we found that except for some exceptions, there are some exceptions that people who genuinely, have an underdeveloped instrument and in their voice, almost everybody, I would wager that almost every single person listening to this and every single person I've seen, they have a beautiful organ in that they can be serious and they probably have a certain tone of voice. If they get mad at someone and they start yelling, they can go up to a 10, they can go down to a one, they can be intense, introverted extroverted like all of the natural musicality that makes a human being is within them so you don't necessarily need to go see a voice coach and learn how to do all the voice exercises to change your voice you need to figure out what is the state i need to be in in order for different sides of my voice to show up and the game we use for this because we have a game for all of these fundamentals and this is one of the fundamentals is called conductor.

1:30:28All right, let's see. Conductor might be one of my favorites. So I'll show you how it works. Conductor, you're going to get a random topic that shows up. And then you start speaking. And what you see on the screen is a number. So you might see right now it's a five, and that's just the normal way I'm speaking. And I'm going to see a number between one and 10. And in this case, I see a two. So I have to... But if I see an eight, like right now, I have to find a way to immediately boost my energy to match the eight. And if it's a nine, I have to find a way to bring even more energy. But this is my way of bringing energy.

1:31:04Somebody else might bring a three in a different way. And it might not even be volume that you're playing with. That's interesting. As I see a one, I let my nervous system calm down in order to hit this one. And then you see you finish at a five, and the five is back to baseline. You wrap your speech up, and then you're done. And this is a game of exploring all the different states and all the different emotional ranges you could tap into and get to get comfortable with them. And that expands your overall range. But I have a question, though. Knowing when to use the different numbers seems to me to be perhaps a learned skill.

1:31:48So for instance, let's say you're telling the story of your grandma picking you up in the motorcycle and you're giving your talk. So you're like, and then my grandma, it was so embarrassing. She picks me up in the motorcycle. Everyone's like, who's that freak? Okay, so that's that part of the talk. And then you're ending, you know, and then by the time my grandma was done with me, I no longer care what people think. Like you get more, you get deeper when you're concluding the story and you're concluding, you're cementing your conclusion with a deeper voice. And so I'm wondering, that's something somebody had to tell me to do that.

1:32:27You know, I wouldn't necessarily naturally do that. And so I'm wondering how much of a voice is, you know, the rhythms of a talk, you know, you have to be told. So I think there are two parts to it. There's your vocabulary and I don't mean that by words. In this case, I mean your vocabulary is your range. Is that I have an ability to tap into anger and hold that energy. I have an ability to tap into excitement and hold that energy. That's a high energy. I have the ability and the familiarity with deep thoughtfulness, reserved thoughtfulness and I can tap into that energy and hold onto it. I can hold onto sadness.

1:33:19All of these are, you can imagine it as your vocabulary, your emotional vocabulary and your range. So you do need to develop that because if you only have six words, it's going to be hard to write a novel. I see. So no matter what, you still need to develop the range. Exactly. The range gives you the ability of, oh, all of this is possible. And it feels like this when I'm in these different areas. then you want to find out um you want to you might need a little bit of awareness of hey this would be a moment where you want to push but oftentimes it's not pushing like if i'm telling a story what i've noticed in training a lot of this the effect of it is not necessarily that in my mind i'm seeing numbers and i'm like oh i should raise my energy oh i should lower my energy It's more of a, say I'm riding a horse and I'm holding the reins.

1:34:16What I'm doing is I'm just letting go of the reins or I'm tugging them in. And so if I'm feeling excited because I'm getting to a point that's very exciting to me because I'm interested in this idea, I notice the excitement come into me. And unless I'm in that moment, I'm rambling like crazy and that's a moment where I'm trying to wrap up. If it's not, then I'm going to let go of the reins and I'm going to say, hey, run, run, run. And I'm going to let the energy overcome, take over. And because I've trained it, I know that I'm not going to lose control. I'll be able to rein in whatever I want at will.

1:34:53But then, hey, there's a moment, like this excitement moment is over and something happened. Say, I was telling you about this crazy adventure. And then suddenly we make it to a refuge and we were freezing cold and we make it up there and we're thinking, finally, we're going to have heat. We're going to survive. And we walk in and we realize there's no fireplace. There's going to be no heat tonight. I can't stay in that excitement. So there I would want to rein in. And the mistake would be to consciously think, let me lower the volume. Let me do all of these conscious steps. Instead, I'm going to say, hey, and there's no fire.

1:35:38And suddenly we realize, hey, we could die tonight. And then I'm going to stop speaking. Because I want to let that statement and that energy and the emotions that go with it, I want to feel it all. So I'm going to stop. And I know for myself in a moment like that, I would feel prickles all over my body. I would feel the contrast of that exciting energy and the silence, and it would overwhelm me. I would feel all kinds of things in my body. And from that state, I'm going to pick back up. And it's going to feel like something. Everything I went through, you're going to feel an equivalent of, your own version of.

1:36:22and when I pick back up, I'm going to be solemn. And it's going to be because I'm genuinely in that energy. And because I'm in a different state, I have access to different content. So the words that come out of my mouth are actually just a consequence, a symptom almost, of many things that happened upstream. So if I'm very excited, and I'm in that high energy, it's almost like I have access to a set amount of folders in my memory and in my memory bank. And in those folders, I have certain stories and anecdotes. And in those stories and anecdotes, I also have access to kind of a dictionary of words.

1:37:08And the way I'm going to tell that story if I'm in a high energy is very different than if I'm in a solemn energy. So when I'm in that low energy, it's different words. It's different. Everything is different in the way that it's going to be experienced by my audience. But I'm not focused on the output. I'm only focused on what's upstream. And that's what we're trying to train with a game like this that looks just super fun to play with energy. But actually, what we're training is what I just described. So interesting, because I'm thinking specifically of the end of a talk, where you're making a conclusion, it seems like that's when you're going to want to have a deeper voice.

1:37:55For me, I have to sort of train myself to kind of like, okay, start to slow down the excitement about what I'm talking about. I'm going to reach the conclusion. Or let's say I'm in a sales meeting. I'm going to reach the sell. Like this is why you need the toaster or whatever. and uh you know so so then it's almost like i i do have to like consciously remember okay now i gotta lower my voice i'm making the sale but so that's interesting because maybe lowering your voice in your mind could be seen as a cue if you're genuinely just lowering your voice in the volume it can work but it's i i would argue that it's uh you know it's like the the analogy of the horseshoe, where you can do something genuinely or you can work really, really, really hard to fake it.

1:38:42And you're going to get pretty close to the real thing. You know, like the authentic person and the scammer, if they're really good, they look very similar, but there's still a deep difference. It's just the horseshoe that comes pretty close. So in the same... Yeah, go ahead. It's interesting because I always feel like I have a very hard time asking people for anything. So that's why to ask for the sale, It's very hard. I have to sort of play act a little bit. Exactly. So what's happening is... Yeah, exactly. So that's the root of it. The root of it is, I don't feel worthy in this moment. Yeah.

1:39:20I don't... And if you were to solve that, then there would be no issue. I see. I've never thought of it that way. But there is a... It's interesting. So now we're touching on something a little bit different here. Yeah, it's like therapy. This is like psychotherapy right here. Well, a lot of what we do here brings up a lot. That's what's interesting. It's because, hey, if I can't stop speaking, if I can't pause when I'm speaking, it doesn't mean I'm not capable of not speaking physiologically. Everybody's able to not speak. We do it all the time. What it really means is I'm not able to take up space without feeling like I'm adding value in the moment.

1:40:06Or I feel like I don't have a seat at the table, so I'm going to be interrupted if I stop speaking. So it is very much tied to worthiness. And part of the training of learning these fundamental skill sets, the foundation of communication, requires you sometimes to look in the mirror and realize, oh, I have a worthiness problem. And what's nice is you get to immediately apply what you learn. So what I found frustrating at the beginning when I started, when I had a coach, is that I would have these insane insights in the moment. I'd think my life was changed. And then five days later, my life would be completely normal again.

1:40:52I'd be doing all the mistakes that I'd been doing prior. And it felt like nothing changed. And so I thought, I don't understand. I thought I had understood this. I thought I had solved it. But really, it was just an intellectual spark. I had the knowledge, not the wisdom. And the reason why games are so interesting is because you do this, just like you said, and you think, oh, I get it. There's a worthiness thing. Or I'm bringing down the volume, but actually it's not the volume. I have to tap into a deeper state. And from that state, my volume will naturally come down. You have the insight, but if you don't apply it right away in your next negotiation where you have to make the sale, nothing's going to change.

1:41:34This is a really good point. And this is a point about all meta learning. Like I had a chess coach who would label, you know, he'd explain a concept to me and I would understand, of course, what he was saying. But then he would, a week later, we'd be looking at one of my games. He's like, I told you this concept a week ago. And so he would, you know, I would have to write it down and basically just keep reviewing it over and over again. It's like you said, I understood it as wisdom, but it really wasn't built into how I did things yet. It wasn't really a part of me yet. It is fascinating, all this stuff.

1:42:12You have to drill it very quickly after, very specifically. If it were taking your chess analogy, that whatever it was, say it's like recognizing a tactic in a game, then you need to have 100 reps of that same tactic show up in a game where it's planned or something like that. But then you have to take the conscious learning part away and you have to then go play 30 games without thinking about the tactic and see if naturally you recognize it when it arises. So you need those three steps. You need to learn the theory, then you need to consciously apply it through drills, and then you need to let go of it and see if it's stuck.

1:42:59Because if you forget that step, then you just keep looping in the other two or you forget it. So for example, I'm curious to see if you still have a little bit of time. Sure. I'd love to see you play Snowglobe. So Snowglobe is about pausing. And this one's also, I'm just going to turn it on. so we can describe it when it happens. And I've noticed you pause very well. You do pauses very well. Thank you. You're comfortable with your pauses. Yeah, I've learned to become comfortable with the pauses. And because it's that on stage, I think that's one of the most powerful things you can do. If you just don't speak, people freak out.

1:43:39It's very powerful that you genuinely draw them in. So for those who are not watching the video, what we just saw is you have kind of a full circle. It's like a pie. and then at one point the pie starts reducing. So you can see like, ooh, I have five seconds before I'm going to have to stop speaking. And your goal during the game is to wrap up what you're saying within those five seconds. So you have to stop at the end of this. You have to find a way to wrap it up. And then when you're pausing, it says breathe in and breathe out. I want you to actively, I'm going to do it right now, actively breathe in and breathe out.

1:44:18And then when it picks back up, it turns back on, you can start speaking again. And the point here is to use the pause as a way to change your state. So we're not trying to use the pause to actively think about what we're going to say. That was the end of the timer. What we're trying to do is we're trying to just change our state. So that's why the breathing in and out is the most important. And it's the out breath that's the key because it turns on your parasympathetic nervous system, right? It relaxes you naturally. You can't fight an out-breath. So when you breathe out, it's so interesting because even that breath felt like a super long time.

1:45:01Yeah. And for me, it feels like seven times as long. For me, I lived an eternity during that breath. Now, when we train, we always want to exaggerate things. We want to make everything bigger than it needs to be because the very fact of being a beginner on any skill is we have no nuance. We do way too much. So things have to be big. Just like if you're learning how to surf, you need a very big board because you're going to make so many small mistakes that if it were short, you would just be in the water. And the equivalent of being in the water and speak in pausing of falling down is freezing instead of pausing.

1:45:45So if I'm speaking and I stop speaking, but I'm not changing anything in my state, I'm just freezing like this. And then when I pick up, I'm saying exactly the same thing. I didn't do anything. What I want when I pause is I want to stop everything and I want to let my mind and my body just relax.

1:46:09and the length of a pause is however long it takes to cut to the next insight. And so when you train, that could be very long. I've had some clients that I've worked with where I've had them pause, like that was the instruction, and they've paused for 20, 30, 40 seconds in training just to get to that, to be able to relax their body. But once you get it, then you know, oh, this is what I'm trying to get to. Then you can start compressing time. And then a pause can be even half a breath in between two sentences. So if you're down, I'd love for you to give this a go. So you're going to get a random title and you're going to speak for one minute.

1:46:49And just remember when it starts counting down, try to find a way to wrap up. Even if you're not complete, try to see if you can close the vignette you're in. Before the breath, it starts counting down or? Before it says breathe in, breathe out. So when that pie goes down to zero. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Here we go. When was the last time you yelled? You know what? I don't yell at all, really, because A, I'm afraid that you can't recover from a yell. But it happens sometimes.

1:47:36And the whole point is perhaps I'm insecure about when I yell. I feel people will hate me when I start to yell. So whether it's children or Jay, my podcast producer, I'd like to yell at him occasionally, but I don't. Or my wife sometimes. But I know yelling is just not going to solve the problem. It never does. It never will.

1:48:09and so I guess in conclusion I try to figure out other ways to express myself to get the message across that I might be disappointed to try to come up with a solution so that when I do need to be firm I'm done yes very cool you really got the you got into it after that first one it caught you, it felt like it caught you a little by surprise, but then you really got it. I'm so curious, what did the pauses do for you? The pauses forced me to figure out what is it that I'm saying that now I can say it in a more concise form, in a sense, a conclusion. Yeah. And the first time, you're right, I was off the first time.

1:48:57I couldn't figure out what I was saying but then you know the second time i started to have an idea and then each breath made me kind of hone in a little bit more on what i was trying to say yeah and so then i was able to sound more conclusive and and i think actually my voice went naturally deeper as a result absolutely like i didn't have to think i need to make my voice deeper yeah because the way i see speaking is a series of segments and gaps. The segments are the moments where you are on a roll. You have a thought or you've caught onto a thread and you're pulling the thread and it's just coming.

1:49:45It's so easy. There will always be a moment where the thread ends and suddenly you're on uneven ground again. And those are gaps. And the mistake most people make is that they treat gaps as if they were still on a segment. So you never really slow down and you just try to cram more inside of your working memory and your brain and your processing power to try and find a way out. But the reality is if you were to slow down or even stop and just treat a gap as a gap, then you get to relax your body, you get, it's like a, that's why we call it the snow globe. When you're speaking, you're shaking the snow globe.

1:50:25When you stop, the snow comes down and you get to see your creation and you get to have an insight. And then you get another thread and you're like, Ooh, actually I'm going to go this direction. And you slightly change direction and to, to, to, to, to, and you just jump from clarity to clarity instead of being in this kind of a mess of a jungle. It's so interesting, the difference between a breath pause and a freeze pause. Because a freeze pause isn't always necessarily bad for instance if you're making telling a story and you suddenly get clap you know clapping or laughter or whatever you freeze because you're going to continue exactly where you were that's what people are rewarding you for but uh uh but the pause when you say something impactful or meaningful or you're drawing to a conclusion or whatever it does really change how you're you're you're the state of your mind the the breathing pause yeah it does but i you said something that i want to i want to challenge here because um we all we have in common that we're huge louis ck fans as a comedian he he actually said something that he learned from someone else because what i'm challenging is this idea that you would freeze during laughter freezing is literally um like stopping the energy in my opinion whereas what what Louis C.K.

1:51:45was told is if people laugh for whatever reason, you ride what that energy is. So it's almost coming back to the clown idea of work with what you have. He says like, if you were super mad and people start laughing at that, then you ride the, you have to stay in the mad. And you're like, yeah, I am pissed off at this. And you keep it going. So you might stop, you might let the, you, sorry, you give space for the laughter. But in that pause and that reflection, I would actually think you would let the anger ride up. You would let it take over even more so you could ride it even more rather than hold yourself in that space.

1:52:27Does that, is that the case? That's true. Like sometimes you can ride it. Sometimes though, you might just be like mid-sentence. And maybe, maybe though you're right, maybe always is the case that you should acknowledge that something different is happening but sometimes you're just like you said a funny word or just a funny way of saying something so people are laughing but you still want to the joke is still at the end of this sentence so you want to take that energy and just extend it into the finish without changing the state but yeah i think i think that's right i know i i know what you're saying like louis ck is doing that by the way when louis ck does that it's prepared right because he already knows which jokes are going to have the laugh so he's already says oh yeah that's that's right that's uh mexican and so he so it's as if he's responding to the laughter but he's already planned that because he's experienced that laughter so many times when preparing that joke and uh you know so it's interesting it's just sometimes every now and then like i was on a news show the other day and i said something that i knew people were gonna clap at and i just held it just to finish my i held the clapper the clapping so that uh uh but but i still wanted to finish my point in the exact same way as in as if there was no that makes a lot so that and that's beautiful because what that is is uh it's conviction it's confidence that's not yeah that's right that's staying in character and saying no no no i'm still holding the same energy but i and i'm aware that this is the right energy to hold so i yeah that's often and i i do think we should bring a claptor as part of in the dictionary that's awesome that's such a good well because sometimes it's like people are laughing and clapping yeah it's not necessarily a good or a bad thing like some people some some people don't like that like the clapping seems like fake laughing, but it is a valid thing that happens.

1:54:26Yeah. To me, it's just like, we're laughing and I just can't, there's, I want to laugh and hoot and holler and there's nothing left to express just how much, how good this is. So you have to add something on. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So, so look, this has been so interesting. It's one of my favorite topics. I've, I've considered myself a public speaker for 20 years. I don't necessarily know if I'm a, I think I'm pretty good, but I'll tell you, learning some of these skills or learning like the comedy skills in particular, 10x my public speaking, but I'm sure following up and learning, I'm going to take this ultra speaking, you know, I'm going to play these games and do whatever else is on your site.

1:55:09Like these skills are so important and communication is such an important skill and it's so pleasurable to give a good speech and talk. I actually wish I did talks more often. I don't really do them as much as I used to. And I don't do comedy anymore at all. I'm just, since the pandemic. But you really got me inspired and it's such a pleasure talking to you about all these things. And so where can people find your courses and learn more from you? Thank you. Thank you so much, James. Ultraspeaking.com slash James is the best place to go. go there because um you will we have a i think it's a five-part email course where we run through some of these fundamentals but also we have a i think it's day one or two or email one or two we describe something called the accordion method which is a way to prepare content with zero notes or memorization and just through speaking it's amazing honestly it's my my favorite tool that we've developed.

1:56:11And, but we also, we'll also invite you or whoever signs up for at this, on this email course to test out these games. So what we run every once in a while, we'll have like a free tester of our courses because we run a series of courses on these. And you can come in and actually like go into breakout rooms with other people who are also going to be mostly beginners like you. Or like beginners, I mean in the ultra speaking games. I'm a beginner. Always a beginner. And we'll be testing and playing with help. Yeah. And I'd love to extend an invitation to you, actually, James. If you want to come, we run also a creator cohort.

1:56:49But this is for... This is private, very small group. It's for people who have over 100 ,000 followers. So we bring a small group of really interesting people together. And we run a small training as well. But yeah, ultraspeaking.com slash James. Yeah, I would love to do that as well. So look, Tristan DeMontebello, great name. Ultra Speaking. You could just, if you forget all these URLs, just Google Ultra Speaking or UltraSpeaking.com slash James. Thank you so much, Tristan. Such an amazing episode. I really hope people listen to this and share this with their friends because it's the scariest thing in the world to do public speaking, but also highest risk, highest reward.

1:57:32It's such a valuable skill to have and a pleasurable skill to have. and I can see how taking these courses and taking your course could really be valuable. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Great episode. Thank you, James, us speaking. Because we have so many people who come because they have anxiety, they stress. It's something that they dislike, have been avoiding. But as soon as you unlock just a few things, it doesn't take a lot, you realize, wait a second, this is actually a really, really fun thing to do. We're evolved to speak. And if you just take the blockers away, it's one of the most enjoyable acts you can do as a human being.

1:58:10I love it. It's great. Really great. Well, thank you again, Tristan. Awesome. Thanks, James.

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