In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson shares valuable public speaking tips for various settings, from large audiences to small group meetings. He emphasizes the importance of engaging delivery, audience interaction, and avoiding common pitfalls in public speaking.

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Best Moments:

(00:59) Definition of public speaking in various contexts

(01:58) The importance of not memorizing speeches

(02:51) How to effectively practice for public speaking

(03:33) The rule of not referencing information older than a year

(04:36) Handling Q&A sessions and validating audience questions

(05:27) The importance of "filling the space" when speaking

(06:06) Avoiding making the audience feel uncomfortable or stupid

(07:00) Introduction of the podcast sponsor, Marigold

(07:57) "Since You Didn't Ask" segment: Party fail stories

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MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!

Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don’t take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!

Regardless of your size, check out Marigold today to get the solution you need to grow your business!

Check out this free content from marigold that Jay has loved digesting, 5 Steps For Selecting The Right Email Marketing Platform.

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Welcome to do this not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in.

Marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid.

Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are here for do this, not that podcast, presented by Marigold. And one of the most popular episodes we've ever done of the podcast was about public speaking.

And we did not even scratch the surface on some of the tips that I want to share. So we're going to go through some other public speaking tips that I think could be super, super valuable. And we talk about public speaking.

This is not you just getting up in front of a big audience. Public speaking can be you running a Zoom meeting. It could be you in a conference room with five other people.

It could be you at a cocktail party talking to five people. Public speaking is when you're talking to any group of people.

And certainly this applies to when you are talking on stage in front of a big group of people. And why me? Why should you listen to me? Number one, you shouldn't. Not on anything other than reality tv.

That would be a good topic, because I'm all about that.

But as it relates to public speaking, yeah, I give about 100 speech features a year in all sorts of different places, online, everywhere, and they get decent reviews. And that's where my information comes from. I didn't take a formal class. I just know what resonates and what doesn't resonate.

And that's what I want to share with you. Because I think a lot of the information out there about what you should do or shouldn't do comes from people that are epically boring.

And if you follow what they say, you too, will be boring. So I don't want you to be boring. I want people to pay attention to what you're saying. So let's jump into it.

Number one, never memorize a speech again. This could be a small webinar. It could be a meeting on Zoom. It could be a speech to a lot of people. Do not memorize your speech. Ever.

There is nothing more boring than to hear somebody recite something that they have memorized because they're not really into it. They're just trying to remember the next word that they're supposed to say. So never memorize your speech.

And the other problem is, if you do memorize it, what happens is if you miss even one syllable of what it is that you know that you're supposed to say, you are all screwed up. You are off track. I hate when people memorize their speech. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice, right?

Doesn't mean you shouldn't practice what you're going to say, and you should practice. But there's one very specific way that you should practice what you're going to say when you rehearse.

Rehearse with a lot of background noise, rehearse with the TV on, rehearse when you're going on a walk. And yeah, you'll look ridiculous, Talk to yourself. But you want to rehearse when there's a lot of distractions, there's a lot of stuff going on.

Because when you ultimately do speak in that conference room, on that zoom in front of a big live audience, it's not going to be this perfect, isolated thing where nobody's making a noise and nobody's moving around. So when you rehearse, you want to rehearse in that kind of real scenario to be out and about.

You're like, that is old. They won't say they don't care, but they don't care. Anything older than a year ago.

Do not include in your presentation, even if you can't find something more recent because it's is not, it doesn't matter anymore. People don't feel like, okay, is that still accurate because it's older than a year old? Find something new or don't use it at all.

What sounds older to you? The year prior, right? Or four months ago, it's the year prior. So you want to reference.

Don't try to use that year in your speech because it makes people think it's old information. The other thing is that at some point you're going to ask for question and answers, right? You're going to say, does anybody have any questions?

You always want to make the audience feel like they're part of what you're doing that they're comfortable in participating.

Whatever that first question is that somebody asks, okay, the whole entire audience or the people in that room or on that webinar, everybody's trying to, like, feel out, should I ask a question?

Whatever the first question is that somebody asks, as soon as they're done saying, you know what, and that's their question, you say, you know what, That's a great question. Or, that's a really good question. I'm glad you brought that up. You validate the person that asked that question immediately.

Because when you do that, everybody else that's there feels more comfortable participating. You instantly say, that's great. I'm so glad you brought that up. That's a really interesting point. Validate that first question. Always.

Another thing you want to think about doing is filling the space. What do I mean by that? If you're on a stage, you want to move around a lot.

Don't stand behind some sort of lectern, some sort of podium, as so epically boring. You want to feel this, fill the space, walk from side to side, make everybody that's there feel part of it.

And even if you're in a room, a conference room, you want to move around a little bit, Even if you're seated, you want to move your arms around a little bit.

You want to fill whatever space you're in, even if it's on zoom, you want to move yourself, you want to move your arms, move your head, move your thing, fill the space. Because it's more engaging. It gets people more interested. It's in the subconscious. It gets them more energized to be a part of it.

And the absolute worst thing that you can do when you do any kind of public speaking is when you ask the audience a question. Make sure everybody feels comfortable with the question. Don't make your audience feel stupid.

So if you turn to your audience and you say, who here knows what ABM means? Which means account based marketing, but only, like, half the audience might know instantly.

You'll get a few hand raises that go up, but a lot of people won't raise their hand because maybe they don't know. Don't ever assume that your audience knows the thing.

And the worst thing you could do is ask a question that is not basic enough that everybody knows, right? You want to ask questions like, who here loves horror movies? Everybody has an opinion on that. They can participate.

You can't ask something super technical that somebody might not know, because you will lose that audience member instantly because they feel embarrassed. Never embarrass your audience. Okay, so before we get into since you didn't ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast, always ridiculous.

I want to let you know this podcast is presented by Marigold. Marigold is awesome. They are a roll up of sale through campaign Monitor, my Emma Cheetah digital live clicker.

And yeah, I've talked about them a lot because they're awesome. They're my email sending platform and they have this new loyalty guide.

If you don't do loyalty marketing, you are leaving the most important thing on the table to really connect with the people in your database, your customers. Right? If you go to jschwettleson.com marigold that's jschwettleson.commarigold. you can download Marigold's new loyalty guide.

All right, let's get into since you didn't ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast. Oh, my God. I was at a holiday party the other day. It was amazing because one of my buddies, he shouldn't have been there.

He wasn't feeling well and he was, I was standing like near him, not next to him. And out of nowhere, it wasn't because he was a drunk or anything like that. He threw up. He threw up on the floor.

On the floor, like in this dude's house. And it was a disaster. And it was amazing. And I mean, everything you can imagine happened, happened. And of course. Oh, my God. Are you okay?

Are you okay? Not me. I'm like, that's amazing. He's fine now, by the way. Nothing's wrong with him. He just like, I don't know, he ate something.

I don't know what's wrong with him, but that's amazing. And it got me thinking about other party fails. So I'll tell other party fails of my party fails. So this always stuck in my brain when I got married.

Okay, we sent out. This is so bad. We sent out save the dates.

You know, you send out a save the date and early, early on in the process, and then later on you send out the invitation. Well, we screwed up. And we sent out save the dates to a handful of people that for whatever reason, our list got messed up.

We never sent them the invitation, right? So then it became the day of our wedding and I'm like, where's so and so? How come? Where are they seated? Where? Whatever.

And in that moment, we realized there was a handful of people we sent save the dates to that we never sent the invitations to. And to this day, they never talked to me again. It was like three of them. Never talk to me again. Whatever. That's their problem.

The other party fail was it was my daughter's birthday a while back now, and she was very into Dora the Explorer, you know, the Nickelodeon girl who travels around. Whatever. So I was like, oh, my God, we're going to get a Dora. You know, a big somebody in a costume like Dora to come to the party and surprise her.

And so I don't know. I must have found this Dora. I don't know where I found this Dora online.

So we hire the Dora, and the door shows up to the door in full costume, giant door ahead door outfit. They come in and my daughter's like, oh, my God, this is so great. All the kids are like, this is so great.

And then after like five minutes, I was like, what's up with Dora? She was like, kind of like leaning against the wall, not really interacting with the kids.

And so I walk up to the door, I'm like, dora, can you hear me? And the person goes, yes, I could hear you. I'm like, what's up with you and Dora? Which oddly was a dude, whatever. Dora goes, I don't feel that well.

I go, okay, what's up? And they go, can I sit down somewhere? So we went into this room right where all the kids next to where all the kids were.

And Dora took off her head, you know, her big thing. And he's like, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm crazy hungover right now. I'm like, dude, I can't have drunk Dora at my daughter's birthday party.

What's wrong with your clown? And then the worst thing ever happens.

My daughter comes in the room with a bunch of her friends because they're running around the house and they see Dora with no head on. And it was a dude and crying. What's wrong with Dora? Oh, my God, it was so bad. I kicked drunk Dora out of my house. I was so angry.

I'm like, drunk Dora, what is wrong with you? You can't be hungover Dora, and take your head off. Anyway, I don't know what I'm talking about. Listen, I appreciate you being here.

I hope you got something out of these public speaking tips. Leave this thing a review, be awesome and hit me up@jayshwedelson.com that's where a lot of stuff is, and you rock. Later.

You did it. You made it to the end. Nice, but the party's not over.

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