Agency Forward

Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey, everyone, today I'm joined by Vince Pieri. Vince is a public speaking coach who specializes in helping high profile professionals deliver high impact talks. He has worked with industry leaders and helped them land speaking gigs at Google, hubspots, inbound and exit five, and he has mastered the art of turning complex ideas into compelling, easy to remember presentations for their audiences. Now I wanted to bring Vince on because so many agency owners, founders, experts, are sitting on these valuable insights, but they struggle to communicate them effectively. So whether you are preparing for a big keynote or just want to improve how you pitch your ideas, Vince's insights will help you level up. In this episode, we discuss how to craft a talk that's both memorable and actionable, the biggest mistakes new speakers make, and how to avoid them, how to develop a natural and engaging speaking style. And more, no one was asking for another community, but I've made one anyway. So what's different? The dynamic agency community is designed around access, rather than content, access to peers who've done it before, access to experts who've designed solutions, access to resources that have been battle tested and right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at Dynamic agency dot community and now. Vince Pieri, it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency for

Unknown Speaker 1:51
what's the biggest mistake that first time speakers make

Speaker 1 1:55
great question. The thing I've seen again and again and again with new speakers is that they spend, from my perception, way less time on the actual content and too much time on the delivery. Sometimes they don't spend enough time on either. But I think a lot of new speakers think public speaking is about stage presence. It is about confidence, it's about the energy you bring. All those things are good. But if you do not have content, that is two things, one just so ruthlessly clear in your own mind, and also very high value. And you know it's going to be high value, you are set up for failure every time, a lot of people, they put a deck together, there's not clear, logical connections between each part of the talk. They practice it a couple times. They get up there and they go, why am I so nervous? And a lot of times, the reason why they're nervous is nothing to do with and we'll talk about this probably more as we go, but it has very little to do with being on stage in front of people, and it's way more nerves about the content itself, whether it's structured well, and whether it's going to land right. And so, man.

Chris DuBois 3:07
So I guess if you had to break down the amount of time they spend doing like different stages of preparation, like just looking at the content versus actually rehearsing and making sure their delivery is good, how would you how would you break that up.

Speaker 1 3:21
I mean, it kind of depends on the context and the speaker, right? But a lot of times, well, to be honest, a lot of times it's not a lot on either one, but they oftentimes can't trace the problem back to the content piece. Like, for reference, when I'm working with clients or my own talks, it is 90% content. 90% of the time is spent on crafting the content, making it dialed in with, you know, the tweetable one liners, analogies that you love to share and that totally get the point across, great examples and just that super clear, linear, logical flow. That is not an easy endeavor to really nail that, and so that has to be where most of the time is, like vast majority. Once speakers get going, after you get used to writing content in that way, you can spend usually, you know, you do one or two reps of practice and you're ready to go. But if the content isn't dialed in, you're spending so much time practicing and it doesn't even really help you, because you're practicing content that you don't love to do. Has that been your experience? Do you do? Do you do some speaking? Yes, I do. What's your own journey been?

Chris DuBois 4:39
Yeah. So a lot of like, virtual presentations, for the most part, actually, I had probably my favorite presentation. It was a speech I had to do for when I was in the Army as a company commander at infantry OSA training. So this is probably a fun story to share with everybody, yeah. So we have this. Turning blue ceremony. It's where all of the these new trainees have become infantrymen, right? So it's a big, big deal they get to put on their blue cords on their dress uniforms look cool. And so I made the presentation about them. Usually, everyone was making it about, like, oh, the drill sergeants. And like, the this is why we're proud to be Americans. And, like, I made it about these guys who just spent, you know, 14 weeks going all in on doing this training, trying to make their families proud of them all this. And I made a line. I had a line that I wrote which was like, hey, you need to know that the world is watching right? Your children are going to look up to you. Your peers are going to judge you. Your elders are going to count on you, and our enemies will fear you and pause in there. But someone in the audience yelled, like, Fuck yeah. Enough ends. I was like, All right, nailed it. So that was, like, probably one of my first, like, big speaking, like, engaging speaking engagement. I had a couple 1000, yeah, it was a lot of people.

Speaker 1 6:00
That's a big room, man. But yeah, it

Chris DuBois 6:04
was out, actually, outdoors, so like, easy to fit everybody,

Speaker 1 6:08
yeah, what? Uh, what did the prep look like for that? Did you write it all out?

Chris DuBois 6:12
Yes, that was actually, I was, uh, on a trip to uh, Disney World with my family, and I realized, oh, that event's coming up, and so we're sitting on the bus at Disney World. And I just started. Writing down everything I could think of that I want to pack in here, just how powerful I can make it. That's cool, man. That's not the norm. Usually I have a marketing agency, like conference, event, panel or something. Yeah, I'm picking the content. This is what I want to get across for, for the big takeaway. And I think I'm focusing a lot on the mindset that I want them to walk away from. Usually, like most of the presentations I see are very tactical, and it's awesome if you want safety stuff, but it's like, by just changing how someone's thinking I feel, we can have a more impactful kind of message. It gets across. And so I will, and this is where I could probably use tons of your help. I'll get my initial content out, and then I'll rehearse it. And in that rehearsal I'll be like, Oh, that part wasn't good, like, I need to go back and refine it. That it's like watching Game Day footage, but going back through and so my after, like, the fifth attempt, my deck looks completely different than what it did initially. But yeah, there's probably a more productive way it's actually doing? Yeah,

Speaker 1 7:22
that makes a lot of sense. And I think a lot of people sort of find their footing with that method. And I think it is a very like, if you're just figuring it out on your own. I think it's a great method. After doing that a bunch of times. Have do you sort of have a starting template now, of like, regardless of the talk, here's kind of how the pieces fit together, or does it just completely depend on the

Chris DuBois 7:49
talk for the most part? Yes, I think for presentations like, like this that I'm, like, planning out getting ahead of it's, yeah, I gotta doing the intro, like, getting a little hook in there to get people interested, and then, hey, this is what's going to be our big takeaway. Let me talk about, you know, the status quo, like, what are we currently struggling with? Here's why, like, that's actually not the problem. Here's the actual issue we need to get after. Then I go into, like, this is why, this is how I'm thinking about it, and why you should too. Yeah, that makes sense. That's the best method.

Speaker 1 8:21
But I think any, any template can work, you know, if it's, well, that's probably not true. There's probably something to work better than others. But the, the main thing I've seen is, if you have sort of a starting, logical template for how your thoughts can flow, it takes a lot of the stress out of the prep and then out of the speaking as well,

Chris DuBois 8:41
right? So I guess, is there a, is there a template, or, like, just general template, right, that you would recommend for, especially, like new speakers, to be able to just, like, quickly get their presentation locked in, so that they can start rehearsing and get after it?

Speaker 1 8:57
Yes, there are. There are a few different ones that I'll sort of refer to, depending on the situation, but there's one main one I use with 95% of my clients. One of the ways I think about it is, like in pop music, it always goes, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. Have you heard that before? Yeah, you are you a musician? I am

Chris DuBois 9:23
totally guitar back there and play a couple

Speaker 1 9:27
others. I can see the Yeah, the head or whatever, yeah, the headstock, yeah. So you've heard that right? Yeah. So, like, there comes a point in every musician's life, sometimes when they're in high school and they're just starting, where they discover verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, and then once you hear it, you realize it is most songs on the radio, and then that can become sort of your starting point for songwriting. That doesn't mean you have to stick to that every time, but it is a basis. Right? It's a foundation people's ears, even if they're not musicians, even if they've never heard verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, they expect songs to flow that way, even if they know nothing about songwriting. That's just what they expect. So this template that I use with clients is is, to me, sort of the equivalent of that. If someone has never given a talk, but they're listening to a talk, this is, I think, sort of what they expect to hear. A lot of talks fall into it, even if they don't know it. And a lot of talks fall into it on purpose, because they've just seen it work. Now there is like layers to this. The same way there's layers to pop songs. It's not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. There's other things baked in, like the chorus oftentimes has a lift, right? The chorus is in a higher vocal register than the verses. Usually the chord changes. How fast they're happening will change between verse and chorus. So everything I want to say this is like the very, very basic, but then there's deeper layers of the framework. But essentially it's four T's, tension, trust building, teaching takeaway. Tension, trust building, teaching takeaway. So first tension, that's essentially the hook that is starting with a felt need of the audience. If you want to introduce a new idea to them in the talk, that's fine. If you want to bring a problem to their minds that they don't even know they have, that's fine. But my perspective is the first thing that needs to come out is a felt need that they are aware of. If you are bringing them an idea that is not actually going to solve any real problem in their life. It's probably not the right audience for that time, right? So you start out with the actual problem that they're aware of, that you're going to solve. That's the tension section. There are sub pieces in that, but I'll leave it there for now, so it doesn't get too boring. We can go deeper if you want to, but that's the high level after tension is the trust building section, and this is where you're helping the audience to understand why you are somebody worth listening to, or the solution to that problem. Too often, I think people will do the hook, they'll set it up, and then they'll go straight to like, well, here's what you should do, or here's what you should think, or here's how you should change your perspective. But people want to know why they should listen to you before you tell them what to do. You build trust before you build an argument. The fastest way to do that is actually through stories of your own journey, walking in their shoes, dealing with that same pain point dealing with the same problem. So the trust building section is actually not where you say, Hey, I've worked with 100 different marketing agencies, or you say, Here's how many people are on my roster, or here's how fast we've grown, or here's what my agency did. Is none of that. The trust building section is where whatever you're teaching them like, I'm just making something up right now. But let's say your talk is about like maximizing one channel first before you go multi channel for your market, right? So if you're gonna give a talk on that, which probably your agencies would know that sort of thing, but let's say they didn't. You're giving it to them with people who don't know that you want to share this story about when you were trying to manage 10 channels, and how hard it was and how horrible it was, and how you didn't figure out why that didn't work, you lead with that self deprecating vulnerability, because the vulnerability and the transparency makes people say, Oh, this guy gets me. He's not trying to lift himself above me. He's being so humble right out of the gate, and he knows the pain. So it's tension, then it's trust building. If you execute those two things, well, it should by this point be notebooks out. People want to write down what you're about to hear because they understand the problem. They understand that you understand their problem, and they trust you at least a little bit enough to listen to the answer. But I'm a big fan of three point talks. One point talks are also good. I'm not a fan of anything above three, because anything above three, they're not going to remember it, and they're probably not going to remember the three even. So I love one, ideally with three works as well. So that's your teaching section. Tension, trust, building, teaching, what teaching? Take them through one to three points. There's, again, sub like pieces in here to like, how do I build a point? There are frameworks for that, also to make points as sticky as possible. And then your takeaway. At the end, for the takeaway, it can be a CTA. Obviously, you probably want to have a little bit of CTA in there always. But one of my favorite things for the CTA, sort of close, is to tell a story about somebody who is not you, somebody else who used those same three teaching points, and it made all the difference for them. At the end of the story about somebody else, it sort of puts someone vicariously on behalf of the audience, like in that hero position. It right? Another marketing principle like the cus, the company is not the hero, the customer is the hero. It's the same thing with speaking you want to end with the audience as the hero that they don't end with, okay, Chris has all these great ideas that led to Chris having all the success. It ends with somebody else did this and they leveled up or found breakthrough, or whatever it is. If you can end with an inspirational story about someone applying those points, then it ends upbeat and hopeful and uplifting and like, ready to

Chris DuBois 15:33
Yeah, I want to go back to trust building, right? But I see a lot of presenters will have, like, a slide, quick bio slide right that shows them, and it's like all of their awards and like different things stacked up. Would you obviously that can have its value. I don't want to write anything off entirely, but would you say it's probably more powerful to actually have the stories related to the problem and how you conquered that problem over just listing all of your, you know, accolades, let

Speaker 1 16:03
me ask you a question, Chris, how do you feel in that moment when that slide pops up as an audience member?

Chris DuBois 16:10
I guess it depends on why I'm listening to them, but that requires some kind of no ahead, like, if I, if I'm aware of of the individual and stuff. Like, I already know. Like, tell me the actual stories. Like, I know what accolades you have. If I have no idea who this person is, I'd probably still like to hear the stories over just seeing their like, whatever awards they've won, but at the same time, like, if you can just give me a quick snapshot of all these awards, and like, we don't necessarily spend a ton of time there. But like, I know you've actually achieved what you say you're doing. That could be things super valuable as well.

Speaker 1 16:47
Yeah, obviously different perspectives on this. But My take is, if people know you, and they know your background, they know the awards and you earn some points by not putting them on the screen. You know, I just don't like the pros are not like everyone. I'm trying to get someone like, non controversial. I mean, like, a Simon Sinek is not going to get on stage and be like, here's all the awards I've won. Like, he's a pro. He's not going to be like, I'm Simon seddick, New York Times best selling all this. So to me, you immediately put yourself in the amateur league when you walk up there and say, all the awards, and if people know you've won awards, they're gonna be impressed. You just didn't put them up there. If people have no clue who you are, I think it just turns them off even more. If you're like, let me tell you my resume. Who cares? Like anybody can win any award for anything. To me, the talk should stand on the strength of the argument. Now, in the argument, you should have some proof that it works, that whatever you're saying works, but you don't even have to tell your own story at any point, if there's enough other ways to prove that it works, if you have marketing principles that work, and you in your talk are pushing these principles and you share them working for other people, that's going to be more compelling than saying this worked For me and my company, or my work, whatever, that's my take. Not everyone might agree with that, but I think it's just, I think it's very new to use a millennial word, yeah,

Chris DuBois 18:31
from, like, a value first type mentality, right? Like, why would we not just focus on giving them as much value in this presentation as we can? That doesn't necessarily require us showing showing off. All right?

Speaker 1 18:44
If they like the ideas, your resume won't matter. If they don't like the ideas, your resume won't matter. Not gonna be like, Wow, that was really boring, and didn't help me, but he won some awards, so I'll just do it.

Chris DuBois 19:01
Right? So I guess, as you're building out the talk, and you've got the initial like topic that you want to be working on, how do you kind of filter out some of the garbage from that could go into this presentation? Right? What? What's the initial like self check so that you can speed up that content creation process. That

Speaker 1 19:22
is such a good question, such a good question. So many people, they sit down, write their talk, and they put everything down on the piece of paper, and then they have no filter for like, what should make it in and what should not make it in? And a lot of times, it's not just they don't have a filter, but they have an impulse to put things in that shouldn't be there. For example, everybody often feels like I gotta prove myself on some level. So I'm gonna say a bunch of things that are just like sort of industry standard best practices, or cutting edge things. I just want them to know that I know right, even though they kind of already know I just. Want them to know that I know. So the filter, there's a few different like frameworks I use of how to think about this. But essentially, if you picture like the three circle Venn diagram, your content should all be, one, solving that pain point. Two, somewhere you've actually lived it, so it's authentic, and it's not just good in theory. And then three unique to you. Unique to Chris, it should be only stuff that you say. Now there's obviously, it's very few things that like only you say, but if someone can google and find the exact same thing you're sharing, there's no point. So for it to be unique to you, generally you have to go with some things that are at least a little bit controversial, a little bit spicy, a little bit like, not everybody is going to agree with you. If everybody agrees, they probably are only agreeing because they already knew there should be at least some people are like, I don't know about that. Does that work? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So in the center of those three circles is should be everything you say, solving a pain point, something you've lived, where you have expertise, and then also something that's at least a little bit spicy in its take. If you have still too much content, then the next and it can go in either order. Really, you could do either one. But the other thing I like to do is to ask yourself, Who is one real person who I love, who could attend this sort of event, someone I know, someone I'm friends with, someone I care about, someone I'm not trying to sell anything to somebody, somebody about trying to win over. They're already my friend, but maybe they're a little earlier on in the journey, and they'd be going to this sort of event to learn. And you picture yourself getting a beer or getting a coffee and them saying, Chris, here's my problem. Tell me the top three things I need to know. What would you tell that person you loved if you could only tell them three things that is almost always your most important, three things and the highest value things to share with with a room full of people that rule of like one real person makes it the highest value stuff. If you try to write content for a general crowd, you end up writing a general talk. You end up writing a generic talk. But if you force yourself to say, no, no, who's a real person, what does that person need to know will often take you in a completely different and much higher value direction than what you would have come up with

Chris DuBois 22:25
just by yourself, right? So I guess the next question is, how do you now take that and deliver it in a way that's memorable, right? So that, like you already alluded to this, like you want three, because no one's gonna remember anything more than that, right? That's standard marketing, 123, many, but good chance they're not even gonna remember those three they might take. Have one takeaway, how can you increase the odds that they're actually gonna leave there saying, remember that

Speaker 1 22:55
100% this is another thing that there are some really solid, actionable, repeatable frameworks to do to make your points sticky and memorable. And it's the kind of thing. It's like the verse, chorus thing. It's the next layer down. It's like, once you hear enough songs that the chorus is like a soaring vocals go up or register. You hear that enough times, and then when you're songwriting, you're like, that's what makes it have energy. Is when the vocals go up. There's no playbook that, like, says that's a rule, but you hear it enough times and you're like, oh, that just works. So making points memorable is the same thing. Once you see some of these frameworks, you're like, This is everywhere. So what I use it there's, I'm sure other ones that work just as well. But I use this three C's, one this is for every point. So you use all three of these c's for each point that you want to drive home. Every point you want to be remembered. Use these three and they're essentially designed to take somebody on the journey from the abstract concept to the hyper concrete, like, what does this look like in day to day? Lived in the trenches. So at the abstract level, the first thing you do is a punchy, tweetable one liner that summarizes the idea you're going to drive into their brains. I'll use a real example. I'm working with a client right now who is a UX researcher. You're familiar with that field like so he's his he's got a team of people who do UX research to see what's the user experience of the effort, right? So he's speaking to a conference of all UX researchers, and there's and, right? There's endless, I know there's such a niche there's such a niche fields and niche conferences, right? So, so he's speaking to this room, and his whole thing is that most UX researchers are really good at research, and. Not always so great at packaging the research for the stakeholders. They're bringing it to right? So that's the point. Now, what I just said, I said the point, but I haven't used those C's yet. I haven't used them in a memorable way. So the first thing is, how do we say that in a punchy, memorable way? So I'm probably going too deep now, but there's, there's even a framework for how to write the one liner. But the one we came up with was 20% of your job is understanding the study, 80% of your job is understanding the stakeholder. 20% is understanding the study, 80% is understanding the stakeholder. It's got some repetition. It's got some contrast. You're contrasting what, maybe what most people think with what he's saying. It's tweetable, it's portable, it's memorable, especially in that crowd. Like, for a marketer, maybe they're like, I don't know, whatever. But for a researcher, it's like, Whoa. That's like, heavy hitting, because I thought 100% of my job was understanding the study. 20% of your job is understanding the study, 80% of your job is understanding the stakeholder. Then after that catchy one liner, you go to some sort of creative analogy to drive that idea home. And that's where you're taking that principle. And you're trying to take that principle, somewhat of a first principle, and say, what other things in life feel that same way. That's sort of how you write an analogy. So for his, he talks about how, like, gosh, now I'm getting confused in my mind whether this was for a different point, because there was some overlap between these points, but I think this was the one where he says he puts up a picture on the screen of this, like, beautiful snowy street. There's this beautiful house, and there's light things, like a Christmas picture, maybe there's all this stuff, and it's this beautiful scene. And then he takes it down, and he says, What color was the door in that picture, and no one in the room can remember, right? Why? Because they put all of the information from this study rather than trying to understand what the audience actually needs to see in that moment. So now we've got this concept, 20% of your job is this. 80% is this. But now we have this illustration that shows how information overload prevents you from really seeing the main thing that you're trying to get across. Then he takes them to how do you actually put together research in a way that is palatable and makes sense for your stakeholder, down to like a step by step framework they can use by the time you've gone through those three things at the other end of that, it is generally pretty obvious. You get a certain level of memorability with the one liner. The memorability goes deeper with the analogy, and then it goes all the way deepest when you take it down to the concrete level and say, This is literally what it looks like if you structure three points that way, usually you'll get people remembering at least one of them, you know, sometimes too. And if they're really wanting to, like, apply what you're saying, they'll write down all three and they'll come back to them and use them, right? Yeah,

Chris DuBois 28:20
I think the it's like the repetition on different levels of of thinking, Yes, like, yes,

Speaker 1 28:26
yes. It's taking one idea and hitting it in that abstract, a little less abstract, concrete, different levels are own thing. You get the same idea across that spectrum. My take is that's the stickiest way to get an idea across, especially when you're speaking.

Chris DuBois 28:42
Yeah, I feel like it captures any like if, if someone isn't an abstract thinker, then you still have the chance to capture their attention with it. And so, yes, yes,

Speaker 1 28:52
yes, you get the spectrum of people, and you get the spectrum within everybody's brain as well. The other nice thing about using those three C's, catchy one liner creative analogy concrete examples is that you never have to wonder what's next in your talk for the rest of your life, you say, I'm going to make a point, I'm going to give an analogy. I'm going to give an example, next point, one liner, analogy, example. And a lot of times like he used a picture for his analogy. But a lot of times the analogy is my a story from your life, or it's just a straight analogy. You know, some day to day thing, going to the gym or going to the grocery store or whatever. A lot of people who use this framework, their deck will be five slides total for a 30 minute talk, because it's just so stupidly linear in their own minds, and they're running the same play for every point. Now, if they want visuals to back it up, that's fine, but they're not trying to remember what's next, because they know tension trust building teaching for every teaching point, these three C's. Takeaway at the end, Bada bing bada boom, I'm in and out, and this thing comes alive in them, where they can really start to connect with the audience. Because there is zero brain power wasted on how do I what am I saying next? So much brain power is just lost by people trying to remember how their freaking deck is set up. And when you remove that, a lot of people, they're just like, oh, I actually like doing this, because I'm just speaking straight to people, heart to heart, if, if you could say it that way, I

Chris DuBois 30:33
like this, because I feel like you can even blend this with, like, one of the one of the other ideas that I've seen was just being able to go in with, like, a specific framework that you're teaching. And the power of having this framework is, I could have an hour presentation or a 20 minute presentation, and I know what I'm talking about, because I know the framework is just how deep do I go into it? You could literally take this, these three C's, and apply it within, like, I can do an hour on this and still apply that same focus to be able to hit all those points. Or I can speed it up, do it in 20 minutes. And, yes,

Speaker 1 31:09
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You can elongate each part. Or you can add more points in, if you wanted. With those three C's, you know, throw a few more points in. And there's obviously other ingredients besides those, just those like, but essentially those three in combination will make a point just land so hard,

Chris DuBois 31:33
you're already making me rethink one of my upcoming presentations. So this is good. I love

Speaker 1 31:37
it, man. Once you see it, it's like, it's so it's so freeing, because you're like, I don't have to waste any mental energy on how to write the talk. It's like, when you're writing a pop song, you're not saying what should be the first thing. You're like, we're writing a verse. Let's spend our energy on what the verse is not Should we do a verse first? Should we have a chorus. It's like, we know there's gonna be a chorus. So, yeah, right,

Chris DuBois 32:03
yeah. And I'm usually guilty of doing a lot of slides, but clicking through them fast, like it, yeah. It's like, I'll just have a couple words on a slide to really punch home a point as I'm as I'm talking, and then the next slide will have some graphics that I'm I'm working through. But like, I've done a 45 minute presentation that had like 100 plus slides, and I was just, and so, yeah, I'm capturing people's attention, but they're probably also not retaining everything, because, like, things are flashing so fast, and might actually give them epilepsy or something.

Speaker 1 32:35
Yeah, and I'd be curious if, like, if we were to look at one of your talks, I'd be curious if what is actually happening, like, if you were to take that presentation and put it into a Google Doc, do you actually have, not, like, put the slides in Google Doc, but just put the logical pieces in a Google Doc? Is there? I'm sure you don't have 150 points, you know, you probably have a few main sections. So what is each of those slides really doing, in terms of like, rhetorical elements? Is each one of those an example of a point? Are they just are you just giving yourself little sentence triggers for how to explain a point? Because a lot of times, when you start giving yourself more simple frameworks, you feel less of a need. It's not even that you're training yourself off the slides, it's you just feel necessary less of a need, because you're like, I'm gonna make a point, I'm gonna explain it, I'm gonna do this fun analogy, I'm gonna give them some examples. Wait, why do they need all those slides before you know what I mean?

Chris DuBois 33:45
Yeah. So as we start to line this down, what would you say is, like one of the most underrated skills for someone getting into speaking?

Speaker 1 33:57
I'm probably a broken record now, but, but to me, it is all about content. It is content creation. I have seen first time speakers give presentations, literally first talk to hundreds of people with no notes and feel pretty confident because, again, they're just like, I understand how my content works. I understand every single part. Why do I need notes? Why do I need a deck? I'm I just know what I'm doing. And they get up there and they feel great, and then it's not because they're more confident people. It's because they wrote content that's easier for them to remember. Like, here's another way to think about it. If I Chris threw you, you know, in front of 1000 people, like you've already spoken in front of 1000 people, but you're speaking in front of 1000 people. And I was like, I want you to tell them, like, where you're from and like the your favorite part of your time in high school. You. I just go up and do it. Like, I don't need to, I don't need to prepare for this. I know this. You might be a little nervous because, like, yeah, my I want you know what was that for you?

Unknown Speaker 35:12
Hit me the questions again. Like,

Speaker 1 35:13
when you were in high school was your favorite part? Was it a sport? Whether you're at a team you loved or club? Year was the best part of high school. I'm a cross

Chris DuBois 35:20
country ski team. And what do you like about it? CO captain with a couple close friends, and we just traveled around. It was, it was our life for that that may wear sports team. And so we traveled around New England, United States, doing different events, racing, stuff like that. And so competitive,

Speaker 1 35:41
yeah, traveling, competitive cross country,

Chris DuBois 35:46
which was awesome when I went to Japan with the army, because they, they had a this regimental ski race. And so we're just random story time here.

Unknown Speaker 35:58
No go. They

Chris DuBois 35:59
They threw out at the end. They're like, if you guys want to participate, you can and stuff, but we're going to start you way in the back so you don't kind of interfere. And so talking to the other Americans who are back there with us, I'm like, I don't think they know that I was on a national circuit racing and so so everybody's like, you should go for it. Just go for it. And so I went all out in this race, first time seeing the course, first time doing like in Japan, right skiing, but I finished in the top 15 of their regiment.

Unknown Speaker 36:24
How many? I

Chris DuBois 36:27
don't know, hundreds. Regiment for them is probably like 1000 plus. But when we So, we finished, and so I get all the soldiers were talking. I didn't understand what they were, example, they were all talking about it because apparently, so the night before we had, there was a party that they had for us, and I consumed a lot of alcohol at this event, but was fine the next day for this race. And so, like, they couldn't believe that I could consume that much and still show up and race and do that. Well, they assume, like all Americans are just built this way. And I was like, No, it's because I was like, early 20s and in the imagery. But,

Speaker 1 37:09
yeah, I love that. I love that, okay, that that is, like a such a perfect case study of what I'm talking about. Like you told that story with zero preparation. I was laughing like half the time. You were using hand motions. You were smiling. If there had been 1000 people watching, 1000 people would have been engaged, and you did it with zero preparation. Why? Because you knew that content. You knew that story. It was inside you. I think anybody can write a talk that feels that way from start to finish. I just know this. It's inside me, and almost nobody learns the tools to write a talk that feels that way for them from start to finish, right? And I think anybody can, and when you do, all of the sudden, you become a completely different communicator, and you show up different. Your presence is different. Your energy is different, not because you like, worked on your hand motions. Or you like, you know, did a bunch of Power Poses before. Like, there's so much snake oil, public speaking stuff that's like, do these weird mantras, or, like, yelling at yourself in the mirror. Yeah, doing it. I mean, it's like, such BS. It's like, so crazy. When, to me, the thing I've just seen work is like, when you know what you're saying, why you're saying it, and you're excited to say it delivery, 95% of the time, just take care. Takes care of itself. And

Chris DuBois 38:54
now I have a story out there for the world, and then I'm sure the US Army is proud of there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:03
It's like, what a picture of Americans to the world. It's like a caricature.

Chris DuBois 39:07
Yeah, I got, there's plenty of stories from that trip that I can, I can say for off air. But so I got two more questions for you. The first one, DM, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read?

Speaker 1 39:21
What book every agency owner should read? Man, I am not a marketing guy so much so I don't know. I don't think I've ever even read a marketing book. I've never read any book, ever, period, no, I mean agency owner,

Chris DuBois 39:44
sure you can. We can generalize it too. What book do you recommend? Any like someone getting into presentations?

Unknown Speaker 39:52
Oh, like speaking? Sure. So, yeah, someone

Chris DuBois 39:54
who wants to be able to get on stage,

Speaker 1 39:57
I will say there is a book called community. Communicating for a change, communicating for a change, by a guy named Andy Stanley. That book is written for a religious context. It is like for preachers, but it is the most fundamental principles of communication book I've ever read, and I know business people who read it just to learn communication. So that's one good one. I mean, yeah, I think I'll leave it there. Yeah, sure.

Chris DuBois 40:30
Last question, Where can people find

Speaker 1 40:34
you? LinkedIn is the place. I'm a stereotypical LinkedIn. I had a website. I ended up just killing it. I'm like, I'm I don't even need this guy. Everything, Everything I do is on LinkedIn all the time. See if I'm in LinkedIn. I'm there all day, every day. DMing and I will respond very quickly if anybody wants to chat about whatever. Awesome.

Chris DuBois 40:59
All right. Well, Vince, Thanks for Thanks for joining Chris,

Speaker 1 41:03
thanks for having me. Man, it was a blast. You got a great pod, and I'm sure we'll chat soon.

Chris DuBois 41:13
That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai