Remarkability Institute with Bart Queen

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Bart: Hey guys, it is so great to be with you. And I'm so excited for you to meet our guests today. Now you all know that I love to share quotes. And when I think about this young woman, two quotes definitely come to my mind. The first one is this. If you believe in yourself and believe in your mission, People will believe in you and your mission and follow you.

[00:02:07] And the second quote is if one, someone, once someone believes in you, you can not fail both of those quotes, really just highlight. Who Kara is and what Kara is all about, and what she does with the young people that she mentors and leads and works with at Virginia Tech, I met. Kara several years ago when I was working for a client in the outer banks of North Carolina.

[00:02:42] And since then, she and I have walked a similar path. We've grown together. We've experienced the ups and downs that life has brought us. So it is with great joy and an absolute treat to have her with us today. If there's one thing that Kara and I have in common, it's the fact that we believe our youth are our future.

[00:03:05] We would also believe that our youth are our future voice and that our youth are our future change. So as we spend our short amount of time together, what I'd like you to do is begin to see a share as Cara shares, how inner confidence in these young people change the complete trajectory of where their lives have come.

[00:03:32] I want you to begin to see how, when they found their voice and they exercise their voice, they were on the right path. They were in the right direction, and they were able to lead change. Kara. And I timed came to know each other as a result of an initiative that I took in 2008 and reaching out to an organization in Kenya.

[00:03:54] Now, many of you may have heard this story. There was a woman in my class who said that her parents owned an orphanage. And I said, if you find any value, I'm happy to come to that orphanage. Now that was in 2008. I had the privilege and the honor of working with 60 young people. 60 young people in an orphanage.

[00:04:15] Most of them with only one set of clothes, very few of them with any shoes. And they got one meal a day. But at the end of that experience, I saw lives transformed because they gained inner confidence. Not because of anything that I necessarily did, but because they began to believe in themselves. And some people reinforced that idea that they were worth something.

[00:04:43] Kara. I am so excited to have you with us today to be a part of our guests and share your story. Welcome wall.

[00:04:53] Cara: Thanks, Bart. I'm excited to be here and excited to be talking to you as always. It's always a pleasure.

[00:04:59] Bart: Now I know you're known at work as the boss lady, but could you tell us a little bit about what your title is?

[00:05:07] Outside of the boss lady, of course,

[00:05:10] Cara: outside of the boss lady, that's at home and pers at personally and professionally, I should note,

[00:05:19] Bart: we need to get your husband on here then. Cause we need to probably talk about that

[00:05:24] Cara: conveniently. He is working on a sidewalk for his grandparents, but we'll say that's

[00:05:30] Bart: my fault.

[00:05:32] Cara: I'm an academic advisor at an institution, a higher education institution. So I do a lot of coaching and mentoring. That means that I. Usually, the bread and butter of what I do is plans of study. If you think about an academic advisor, the reality of what I do is really the coaching and mentoring and leading and guiding portion of my job.

[00:05:57] So I fell into academic advising and a bit of an unconventional way. Originally I wanted to be a wedding planner. There's a. Long string of events between wedding planning and academic advising, but I have always had a passion for helping and mentoring, and guiding people.

[00:06:16] Bart: Tell us just a little bit more about this path that you just shared.

[00:06:21] What was the catalyst that made you say yes, I'm going to go take this job as an academic advisor.

[00:06:31] Cara: It was just a common thread for me, and this is something I share with my students really often. There's going to be a common thread and the things you're attracted to the things you enjoy doing. And for me, that common thread that central pillar has always been people and helping people.

[00:06:49] And what I found through the different organizations that I've worked for between event planning. Lodging hotels and. Property management and now, higher education is just a passion for helping people and mentoring, specifically people students in the high school and college-age range. I have been fortunate enough for that to be okay.

[00:07:16] Something that's a part of my job, but not my central role in most of my positions. And I just have been so drawn to it. And, one day I just said, I think I ought to change my job. And so I did. I was really set on being an academic advisor with no experience whatsoever in doing it. And to give you the glory, it worked out.

[00:07:37] Bart: though.

[00:07:38] Tell me, how long have you been doing that now?

[00:07:41] Cara: Since October of 2016, so 40

[00:07:43] Bart: years. Congratulations. Thank you. Sure. A little bit about when you first got started, what were the challenges that you faced, and then if you wouldn't mind share, of course, as a result of COVID in our pandemic situation, what are the challenges that you're now facing with the students?

[00:08:06] Cara: So, at first, in my role, one of the most challenging parts was not understanding. Higher education as an organization. So if you've ever looked at a higher education website or worked in that industry, there's a lot of people with similar titles. I often tell my students you have to. There are many people with the title Dean, and it means something and higher education, but to students, it doesn't.

[00:08:33] And so I was in this position where I'm trying to figure out who is the Dean of what and what that means. And. That's just a small example. But while they're also figuring it out. So I think that was one of the biggest challenges and transitioning from industry to higher education.

[00:08:54] All of the other stuff was transferrable. If you're just the emotional intelligence, compassion, caring, concern for other people being able to say, I don't know, but I'll figure it out, or we'll figure it out together. That has been pretty much my motto or something that I think I say every day, but I don't know, but we'll figure it out.

[00:09:17] Let's figure it out. And then in the days of COVID. The challenge is being physically distant from them. So we were really intended to create an office space. I have a wonderful team. That's just, they're wonderful to work with and have such great ideas, and they're welcoming. They make you feel at home.

[00:09:37] And we wanted our students to feel at home in our office. So we had a coffee bar and—little snacks. We always made sure some things like gummies granola bars, because they often come to meetings for these really short time periods and haven't eaten, and they need that fuel to be successful in their classes and to get through even just a meeting with me, it helps.

[00:10:00] So what ends up happening is they come by just to get coffee and snacks and say hi, which is totally fine with us. We love seeing them and love the love, the daily interruption. So while. COVID days feel a little bit more productive in terms of getting projects done. The students' distance and isolation make it really hard to connect with them and understand what their needs are.

[00:10:26] Right now, we've been doing zoom, so we've been able to see them that way. Like most people, video conferencing in various formats, sometimes phone calls, but I think that's the most challenging. That's the most challenging part of COVID so far?

[00:10:39]Bart: you said a keyword in there, and that was that idea of connecting with the students and being able to have a conversation with them.

[00:10:46] So share with me just a little bit before us coming in and working with them on some of the communication skills, just from a communication perspective, you saw them, you were working with them, and you said here are some challenges we need to overcome. Can you maybe articulate the three or four things that you saw initially as issues or challenges or opportunities where they could get

[00:11:07] Cara: better?

[00:11:09] Absolutely. So I advise in the STEM field and so that, but my background is in business. And my experience at the same institution was very different from what I was seeing with our STEM students, and that was the focus of their education and curriculum. I had a lot of preparation for job interviews, career fairs.

[00:11:37] The elevator pitches, selling yourself that, that was constant in all of my classes. And it was absent from my students' classes in STEM. So often, what I was saying was we would get to junior, senior year. And they weren't able to articulate what they wanted to do. They weren't able to have a conversation about how valuable they were to employers.

[00:12:03] They have incredibly unique degrees that they couldn't get some, or it's the only place in the United States of America that you can get the degree that they're getting. And still, yet, they were struggling to have that promotional. This is why you need me—kind of conversation with an employer.

[00:12:21] So we saw that and then a lack of confidence, some not necessarily extroverted versus introverted, but just really a lack of confidence in their ability. So they didn't feel like they had anything to bring to the table. I would hear, I'm not this. I know I'm not an engineer. I know I'm not a business student, and it would start from this point.

[00:12:47] Taking a few steps back on. Here's what I don't bring to the table, instead of saying, here's what I do bring to the table. When I got to a point where I was, I helped to advise and lead a team of what we call ambassadors. So they do a lot of recruiting work for us, which meant a lot more one-on-one time outside of just planning their classes.

[00:13:10] And they got to tell me some of the struggles, and that was, that came out over, overtly in conversations that came out in that, in those with them. So I think that's the background where we saw, we really, you need your voice. We want you to have confidence. You have so much to bring to this table.

[00:13:31] You just don't know how wonderful you are.

[00:13:34] Bart: It's interesting to me in all the people I've worked with. That's a common factor for a lot of folks. You can ask anyone, what's the number one reason why I hired you. And typically, you get somebody to go well. And they can't come back with an answer.

[00:13:48] I can even ask a lot of majors. Executives in business. What are the top three benefits your organization brings? What's your unique differentiator? And people struggle just with those simple sound bites of being able to come back and say something clearly and concisely. Yeah,

[00:14:09] Cara: absolutely. And then we see that with our students too.

[00:14:12]Bart: now tell me a little bit about the process. How we ended up getting there together because if I remember correctly, we had to work at it. And I remember many, a funny discussion about. Having to deal with homecoming. Now it was a big issue of trying to overcome on the sketch.

[00:14:32] Cara: Yes. Yes. That was homecoming weekend.

[00:14:36] I think

[00:14:37] Bart: I start class at like noon just to give them time to wake up from the night before if I remember correctly.

[00:14:43] Cara: Yes, there was a Friday night game. There may have been some: tailgating and other fun things happening the night before. So we did the, we did a two-day workshop, which was a little bit shorter than you would have liked.

[00:15:00] I remember those conversations. It was a lot of pull and tug. I need more time. And with the students, they're like they wanted more time to do other things. A meeting of the minds was the two days, the two-day experience we had to work around the students were, they, it's a big culture in. Many institutions and particularly ours to attend football games and be there with your friends and have a good time.

[00:15:28] And there was a night game the night before. So we started. I think you wouldn't budge. You said noon. It felt like noon to you. it was 9:00 AM

[00:15:41] Bart: noon.

[00:15:43] Cara: No, we did not. No, we did not. No. It felt like noon to you because you said eight 30. We got to start at eight o'clock. We got to start. And I was like, Oh no; they won't, it. Maybe I'll give you 10:00 AM at best. It was definitely not new. Cause you were like, Kara, I can't deliver what you're asking me to deliver in time.

[00:16:04] So make it happen. So they did, I put my mom and bear hat on, and I said, you're going to be there. I will bring coffee. I will bring Chick-Filet to show up with your game face on, be ready. So they did

[00:16:17] Bart: correctly though, when we ended, they were like, no, you have to stay longer. It was, yeah. They didn't want me to leave then.

[00:16:27] Cara: Yes. So when I told them, I said, It's very hard to summarize what you do in a way that really tells it in its fullness and all its glory. So when you, in a concise way, you say in a group text, guys, I need you to be here. We're doing communications training. You can imagine the excitement I got from my last saying communication, straightening.

[00:16:56] Why I don't need that. I talk to people all the time know, or I'm not comfortable with that. Who am I going to be talking to? I was like, you talk to me all the time. I will be there. Just look at me. You'll be fine. So yeah, when you sell it to them, communication strategy and we're like, but because we had built that trust, that's part of an advising relationship is we had built that dress. I said, just trust me. You will not regret it. You will love it. And by the end of it, they, I think they spent the entire week after your training in my office, talking about your training or practicing your training, they were over the moon, excited from what they received.

[00:17:38] Bart: That's awesome. I know for the two days that I was there, it was absolutely joyous from the beginning to the end. And they didn't seem like they were in too bad shape when we started at nine or 10 or whatever it was.

[00:17:52] Cara: Remember, mama bear, cat. But your game face on may have even had a finger wagon there.

[00:17:58] Bart: Share a little bit, give us a couple of examples of a couple of students, if you could, on the before and after the process.

[00:18:07] Cara: Sure. So one student comes to mind. I'm not sure if I should use their names or give them,

[00:18:17] Bart: give him any name you want. It's fine.

[00:18:19] Cara: we'll call her Susie. Okay. So see, before the training was exceptional and is generally a pretty introverted person. She's always been very eager, very diligent, very organized student, very strong communicator written communicator.

[00:18:42] Thinking on the fly may have been more challenging and, in some cases. And so before the training, we would have options for students to say, you're going to be public speaking. The dreaded words, public speaking, you're going to be speaking to these families. And you would notice that certain members of the group would shy away from that.

[00:19:06] And. Other members would just be all in. Yes. Put me in front of a bunch of people I'm ready to speak. I have things to say. And that was not Susie. She was not somebody who would just be like, yes, put me in front of a bunch of people. I have a lot to say. And wasn't nearly as confident in what she had to say after the training.

[00:19:31] And this was the most incredible thing. It was probably three weeks after. Not once, maybe even two or three times, I'm trying to remember how many times they did this presentation in and over the course of a weekend event that we had Susie got up in front of a hundred to 150 prospect of students and their families and articulated in a matter of five minutes, this incredibly powerful.

[00:20:04] Delivery of what her major was, what, why she loved it. And she just knocked it out of the park. You would never have thought that she was at all an introverted person, the way that she just, she spoke confidently in Bart's words, no ums or AHS. It was incredible. I had to video all of them, and then they didn't look at me cause I was in the back with my phone, videoing them like a proud mom and a ballet recital.

[00:20:31] It was like that. But, another one that comes to mind. Do you want me to give you another one?

[00:20:37] Bart: too? One more for us?

[00:20:38] Cara: Yeah. So on the flip side of that, I, as I said, I had, we have other people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Yes. I want to talk, put me in front of people. I don't want to say, and they get up there and they.

[00:20:52] Really stumble over their words. Aren't really sure where they're going. The audience isn't really tracking them, but they're excited. They're really engaged. And this particular student, she also had a transition, but it was a transition from being my, being herself, being incredibly extroverted, incredibly excited.

[00:21:17] But she started with she's very articulate. She was able to maintain their attention from start to finish. It was clear where she was going, what she was saying. She was actually starting to engage with the audience in a meaningful way that helped them to help to pull them in. And so after that event, we had a lot of people who were interested in their programs.

[00:21:41] And again, we're talking, they had max five minutes. To deliver a powerful message. And they did just that after the training.

[00:21:49] Bart: Winston Churchill once said that the shortest speeches are always the toughest speeches because every single word counts. So in those five-minute marks, it's rather tough.

[00:21:58] Now, if I remember correctly with your particular group, we spent a fair amount of time on just what I would term the power skills, everything from their posture, just how they carried themselves to this idea of their eye contact. And they're connecting with folks. Short to a medium type sentence. So they're getting a soundbite, and then their ability to pause and get rid of their ums and AHS.

[00:22:20] If I remember correctly, we definitely saw a before and an after with each one of these students to whatever degree each student embraced those ideas.

[00:22:31] Cara: Oh yeah, absolutely. What

[00:22:34] Bart: you feel like was of the skills we shared with them, the one that made the biggest difference for them.

[00:22:43] From an overall perspective with the group

[00:22:47] Cara: that one's a hard one to answer because I think they're all very unique and what they needed and what they took from it as maybe their number one.

[00:23:00]Bart: let me ask a different question, and Kara. You mentioned this idea of what each one of them took.

[00:23:08] Talk a little bit about what you felt like their coaching experience was when each one was up there, and we individually worked with them as a unit.

[00:23:21] Cara: Sure. So I think for a lot of them, they knew who they were getting up in front of. The class was small. I think we maybe had about eight people. So the class wasn't super big, but still, when they got up there, they really exhibited things that they do on a daily basis when they're nervous when they're just not sure when they're in a classroom setting or otherwise.

[00:23:47] And so a lot of the time, You consistently just took the time, just really and care and concern for each individual student. You remember one of them, we called his praying hands. You spent so much time with him on that. And of course, it ended up being this big joke afterward, and still, probably to this day, if he listens to this podcast, he's going to crack up laughing.

[00:24:16] And, but you took the time, and you would. Encourage him to encourage the class members to encourage and in the process, which I think helped build that confidence. And the same was true with the other students who maybe they had their particular posture that they would lean-to.

[00:24:40] That was really distracting for an audience. And you were diligent to, again, just say there it is again. Let's go back; let's start over. It's what you said earlier, just taking the time with each individual one, and that's an extensive process for that many students. It was not a short amount of time that you spent with each of them.

[00:25:03] So I think they were able to catch the moment. It's not just curving a behavior, but catching what is making me. Do that what's happening when I'm doing that what's happening. When I'm going, doing something weird with my hands or my posture or my eye contact, and then they were able to address that. And so it was, I think, even a step further, it wasn't just correction of behavior.

[00:25:30] I think if that, hopefully, that answers your question.

[00:25:32] Bart: It does. And I think. With each one of the students, it's, and you describe this well, identifying what that issue or that distraction might be for that young man you mentioned. It was his praying hands and how he always wanted to go to that.

[00:25:48] So identifying that, then the second piece was making him aware that he was actually doing it. It was then getting Tim to break that habit where you had muscle memory to change that particular behavior. It is always incredible to me to see the transformation that the skill sets make for some of the students.

[00:26:09] It's a huge transformation. And for others, it's small little unique things that continue to set them out apart from everybody else. The show is we work with the students. We're always talking about building their command presence, making them come across as strong, confident, and the idea of getting rid of what we call distractions, things that will take away from their message.

[00:26:36] So in any class, we've got that before and after effect where people can see a real difference. I think that's one of the things that this skill set uniquely does, no matter who. It takes it on to embrace it.

[00:26:51] Cara: That's exactly right. And some of them, I think about another example after the fact, one of them was applying to medical school, and that process is very grueling for anyone who's ever been through it and known anyone who's been through it.

[00:27:07]it's lengthy. It's grueling. It's. It doesn't produce the same return for the amount of work that you put into it, right? In terms of interviews or acceptances, it dwindles down from their applications to their acceptances. And so, one of those students applied to medical school and had what we would call a practice interview.

[00:27:29] And you have to even go through an extensive process to even be accepted into that practice interview process. And. She was, and I got an email almost as soon as she left. I was a part of the committee who we administered the practice interviews. And so this person who did her interview, I didn't personally do it.

[00:27:51] Of course, it would be a conflict of interest. It wouldn't help her practice, her interview skills. We would probably just have a conversation like you and me, and it wouldn't help, but someone else did. And almost immediately after her interview, this person reached out to me and said, wow, a knock out student.

[00:28:08] Like I have never heard these words from that office, but specifically said she is an issue in. She will knock it out of arc. I had no concerns whatsoever with her. And again, like many students, she had prepared up until that point, as far as doing all the right things at volunteering that shadowing the. The working, the research, the grades, and those things are all tangible things that we provide a lot of coaching on in higher education, but they, the interview skills, the communication skills, and the ability to really speak about your value.

[00:28:48] We don't have that nearly as much as we should, if at all. And so for her to get that email. Very shortly after, her training was also just a really sweet affirmation that it was. The results really speak for themselves. A shoo-in, I've never heard that.

[00:29:09] Bart: though. Did she go on to medical school?

[00:29:11] Cara: She sure did.

[00:29:12] She sure did. Yep. She's in medical school now. I texted her today, asking her medical school question.

[00:29:21] Bart: Please wait if you speak to her again, let her know that I send my congratulations to her. That's awesome.

[00:29:27] Cara: Yes, I will. Awesome.

[00:29:29] Bart: Is there anything else from a result perspective that you feel would help our listeners today realize what the power of the skills can bring today brings to the table for them individually?

[00:29:44] Any other comment may be that you would share with them that would make them say yes, this is important. This is something I need. I think

[00:29:54] Cara: it brings out. What is already inside of these young people. You're not producing something that isn't already there. You have to pull it out, sometimes pull it out harder than others.

[00:30:10] And it's a little bit more of a struggle, but in some cases, I'm sure, but I think just the ability to maximize your potential and whether that's. Whether that's in education, whether that's in ministry, whether that's just in your relationships, just generally. Gosh, this is a generation where we do a lot of and even more.

[00:30:33] So now we're doing so much of the virtual world where on Instagram, we're on Facebook, we're on Snapchat, and we're like Googling how to, what interview questions are they gonna ask me? I think the skillset that. These students get and that they will get from this. You can't Google that you can't Google that.

[00:30:53] And you really, it's not something that you can just get this quick answer to. It's not a quick answer. And I, that is a little off-putting does sound right. When I said two or three-day training, they should have seen my students' faces. Why do I have to be in training for two or three days? But again, at the end of it, they couldn't get enough.

[00:31:13] And so I think just the. Bringing out what is already in the students, the potential that is already there just maximizing your potential, coming to your fullest potential. And also, again, something we talked about the confidence, and I think even now, when we look at, I don't want to get too much on my soapbox. Still, the days of Instagram and Facebook and all of these different social media platforms are the days of,; Iwould say comparison, I'm not good enough.

[00:31:45] I'm not them again. Going back to what my students say, I know I'm not this type of student. I know I'm not this, but it's saying here's who I am. And here's why that's valuable. Here's why that's meaningful. Here's why that's exciting. And here's why that matters to who I'm talking to and the message that I'm communicating.

[00:32:04] And I think it can take you away from some of that comparison mindset of I'm just not enough. I'm not enough, and you are. You're more than enough. And I think that, is a reassuring thing that our students experience from the training.

[00:32:19] Bart: You really brought us full circle to how I opened today.

[00:32:22] When I said, if someone believes in you, you cannot fail. And for that particular class, they had you're that one, someone who believed they couldn't fail. And I just got to be, in essence, your wingman, and come alongside and add to that, which was absolutely joyous. And you also bring to the table, you believe in them.

[00:32:44] And then, because they believe in begin to believe in themselves, they believe in what they can do. And when they believe in what they can do, there's nothing that can stop them. And we get our future put back into the hands of the people that it should be in.

[00:32:59] Cara: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you brought up one thing that I would argue if I, in every advising profession, you have an advising philosophy is what it's called.

[00:33:10] Gosh, that is such a hard question to answer. How do you, what's your advising philosophy? And somebody asks me that, and I mold and mold over that question. And finally, I landed on just give them a place to belong and right between the things that I've talked about between the snacks, the coffee, having a rocking chair in my office, having a place for them.

[00:33:30] And even though the classroom setting wasn't something, it wasn't like your office or your home. I think. Your training gave them a place to belong to. And that was something that obviously we do, and our team as advisors, but something that they really experienced from YouTube is they were like, okay, he's he can be in my inner circle.

[00:33:50] I can be, I can share these things that I really struggle with this particular thing about communicating. And so you really gave them a place to belong, and they flourished in that, which was a blessing.

[00:34:02] Bart: Kira, I think it's the opposite. I don't think I gave them a place to belong. I think they gave me a place to belong.

[00:34:10] And I see that every day in my office from the gift that you sent me, a big, beautiful piece of steel that says that iron sharpens, iron and sodas one person, another. And I definitely gleaned probably more from the students and the time I spent with you than you spent with me. It was an absolute pleasure.

[00:34:32] Thank you for that opportunity. And I look forward to coming back in the spring.

[00:34:36] Cara: time. We can't wait. We're excited. We've really hyped it up too. So this next group they're going to be, they're going to be really excited to meet you and go through it too.

[00:34:45] Bart: Oh, don't set me up for failure now.

[00:34:47]Cara: they hear the chatter from the previous group.

[00:34:50] Cause I w again, the same group, I'm saying communications during their go, oh, I don't want to. So I loop in the co we'll call them alum, and I say, tell me why you think they should do this. And they just go on and on. It's going to be the best you're going to love it—art's great. And you're going to, you're going to feel so confident, and you're gonna just really flourish after.

[00:35:13] They've gone on and on. So nobody's setting you up for failure. We're just setting the stage for exactly where we'll be. I'm sure you'll see their expectations.

[00:35:21] Bart: That sounds awesome. I want to come back to what, where I started, and that was that our youth are our future and that their voice counts. So we need to be able to build their voice and build their confidence.

[00:35:35] So as you've listened today, if this is resonated with you, if you, by chance, have a boy scout group, a girl scout group, a four H group, a youth ministry group, a group at your church, a group at your school, wherever you've got a group of young people. If you feel like this would be of any value for us to bring, we would be. I would be happy to bring it to you and serve your group of young people.

[00:36:03] If that so strikes your interest, all you need to do is send an email to my assistant. Debra. Her email address is Deb r@bartqueen.com. Deb are@bartqueen.com. She'll set up an interview so we can chit chat a little bit, find out about what your needs are, and then we can physically facilitate coming to your town or to your school.

[00:36:27] When we give our young people their voice, we put the future in the right hands. We put the voice in the right place. And we created an opportunity to create the right results. Kara, thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure. I can't wait to see you. Congratulations on this new one. That's coming in February. Our heart and our prayers are with you and me, so I look forward to being able to call your mom for the first time.

[00:36:54] Cara: We can't wait. Thank you so much for having me on today. this was such a gift. It feels like a way better version than any zoom call I've been on for the last seven months. So this was awesome. Thank you.

[00:37:06]Bart: we'll definitely have you back.

[00:37:08] Cara: Okay. Hopefully, I'll have more to say. I'm that talker that needs to get that concise.

[00:37:15] I only went through the abbreviated training, so I need to fix that. Eventually

[00:37:20] Bart: we can always do a refresher.

[00:37:23] Cara: Thanks. Bart,

[00:37:24] Bart: give our best to Wesley. I will.

[00:37:26] Cara: Thank you.

[00:37:28] Bart: We'll see you next week.

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In preparation for today's interview, Bart was digging into Gary Keller's book called "One Thing" which highlighted three things for Bart:

Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow your focus is
No one succeeds alone
Mastery should be seen as a path and not a destination

Communication takes a lifetime to master. Thomas has seen his journey with mastering communication as an opportunity to focus on the path and not the destination. He is part of the theological program at the Shepherds Institute. He was involved in an organization called Send international and spent a year in Russia and we dive into his experience in this episode.

They were teaching English in a summer camp format during their time in Russia. Thomas shares about what the three biggest challenges to overcome.

The cultural differences
How to show people we love them without words, but through emotions and body language
Working with the church about logistics without a shared language and vocabulary.

We discuss overcoming the often negative stereotypes of Americans in Russia which Thomas described as an uphill battle. We discussed how in any communication there is a difference between perception and reality. That gap is called disparity. When addressing a group of people the perception of how you might perceive it is going as the communication may be different than the way the listeners are perceiving. The goal of successful communication is learning to close that gap.

Thomas described hurdles he faced when trying to close that disparity gap during his time in Russia. Understanding what they needed and what they were looking for when they attended class versus what he thought they needed. This fits perfectly into an idea often discussed in classes by Bart which is being listener focused instead of teacher-focused.

Thomas also discussed how cultural differences communicated more than he intended. For example, when offered tea, he may have refused because he preferred water or not wanting people to go through the trouble of preparing tea, but in Russian culture sharing tea was a staple and often people would be offended by his refusal of tea.

Thomas also shared about his wife's experience as a woman in Russia, which is a largely patriarchal society. We discussed the power of a woman's voice in effective communication and transforming lives.

When asked about what's next, Thomas shared some potential plans they have for their future.

We spent time talking about the cultural differences between churches in Russia to churches in America. For example, there is less influence of consumerism, mostly smaller, there are small changes in government restrictions.

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Nelson Mandella said, "Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world." Tina is a great example of the idea of taking education and using it as a weapon to produce change.

Giving students the power to communicate helps them with college interviews, presentations, and sets a foundation for key relationships in their lives.

In 2008, Bart was able to travel to Kenya to work with juniors and seniors in an orphanage. It was during this trip that Bart felt called to give a million people their voice. It was during this time that Tina asked Bart to consider coming to her high school and working with her students.

Tina is a dedicated teacher who goes above and beyond with her students. Bart has worked on and off with Tina and her students over a six-year period and they talk about the effects of investing in the communication skills of these young people.

"It has been transformational both for the students and in my life to see these young people that have struggles beyond what we could imagine walking into your class and in three days walk out transformed." - Tina

Tina shares examples of students who experienced transformation in their confidence to speak and engage with others and share their beliefs as they learn to live their purpose.

Guadalupe was a young woman who took the class and went from a young lady with low self-esteem to the next year running for homecoming queen.

"I think that's what this class does better than anything, it empowers the student to be their best self." - Tina

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen, your host. Today. I am very excited about the program I've been doing around virtual communication. If you're joining us for the very first time today, what I've covered over the last podcasts, you're not going to want to miss. So make sure you go back.

[00:01:24] the very first one, I gave a high-level overview of what a virtual meeting really needs to look like. That there were three major buckets to that. There's the pre virtual meeting. There's the actual virtual meeting. And then there's the post virtual meeting. And in my first podcast, I spent a fair amount of time on each one of those.

[00:01:48] On the last podcast, I began to dive into the actual virtual meeting's actual content structure. Now guys, one of the things I shared was that most people think that 90% of the struggle is actually doing the meeting. It's actually now me interacting with the technology, and the student it's wrong.

[00:02:10] It's really only 10%. 90% of the struggle is getting them to come to your meeting, getting them there, and then number two, driving them to action. Once it's done, it's not the actual meeting itself. It's getting them there, getting them to commit. And then how do I drive them? What's the action to take them forward.

[00:02:34]The third piece that I shared was that idea around the actual content structure. And I shared several pins principles that are the foundation for us to build from today's podcast is actually getting into the content structure components, the actual components, as you began to craft content. So now, if you are at home, you're in your office, your listing, you have a place where you can have pen and paper.

[00:03:05] I will definitely be able to take some notes, guys. I think you'll find some interesting things you can use immediately. And if you happen to be driving in your car, maybe, you can relisten to this again. You can turn your phone on record and listen from that perspective. That way you'll have some notes, guys.

[00:03:23] All right. So the versed very first key component that we want to look at in content structure is what I call your three teas. Now, your three teas are your topic, your theme, and your title. When I'm coaching someone. And I ask them, do me a favor and write down your topic. Most people will give me a title.

[00:03:49] Guys, what's the number one purpose of a title, whether you're writing or you're speaking,

[00:03:54]most of you will say something to give the listener or the reader a sense of what you're talking about. Incorrect. The number one purpose of a title is to grab someone's attention period. I want you to start getting creative with your titles. Now with the title, you're allowed two subtitles, one subtitle, clarity to the topic.

[00:04:21] the Second subtitle benefits the listener or the reader, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. I want you the next time. You're. Going to spend a Sunday at a Barnes and Noble or a bookstore. You're just going to hang out, drink coffee, look at magazines and look at a couple of books. Look at how that principle is lived out on almost every single book that you pick up.

[00:04:44] What makes you pick up the book? It's either the title or the picture of the book. And then you look at the subtitles, which give you clarity into that title. A topic is the bull's eye center of what you're trying to talk about. So let's say the topic is just, it could be XYZ solution. It could be risk. It could be security.

[00:05:10] It could be happiness. It could be humor. It could be anything, but you've pinpointed that topic down to something, boil that as simple as you can make it. Your theme is a common thread that you run through your content, a mountain climbing theme. A gardening thing, a physical fitness theme, any type of theme that you feel like you'd like to run through it.

[00:05:38] Guys, this is a tremendous opportunity for you to share a little bit about yourself in building a common thread. One of my favorite examples of this is a book called beyond the summit. Tom Skinner is the author's freestyle mountain climber who climbed almost every single mountain in the world. He decided to write a book about what he's learned about mountain climbing and equated to business leadership, the book's topic, the business leadership theme in the book, mountain climbing title of the book beyond the summit.

[00:06:21] A brilliant use. breaking out the three T's, the second major component. Anytime you're crafting a meeting and especially in the virtual world, it is your open and close. These are critical. That's a starting place in the ending place. Now, if you'll listen last week, you heard me talk about what's the purpose.

[00:06:44] Is it education? Is it selling? Is it building awareness? What's the purpose. So once you've pinpointed the purpose, you have to have a starting place and an ending place. That's all an open-ended closed. Does it frames

[00:06:59] the

[00:07:00] Bart: body of what you want to share? It frames the body of what you want to share, the meat of what you want to share.

[00:07:09] It gives your listener a natural starting place and putting this puzzle together and fitting the pieces together. And it gives you a listener, an exit point. The third major component then is the body. Excuse me, guys. It's the meat of what you want to share. And the last point, the last key component is what I call foundational information.

[00:07:38] It's the logistics, it's housekeeping issues. It's credibility building both for yourself and for your business. If that's what you need to do, it's also the background. Now that background should have been from your discovery situation. Why you're there? What are you trying to solve? Remember, no pain, no value, no business.

[00:08:04] So if you're not relating what you're bringing to the table to some type of an issue challenge or a pain you're hitting, you're just going to be missing the Mark guys.

[00:08:14]Now, with those in mind, let me get into a little bit deeper detail around this idea of your body, the content, the main body of what you want to share. No more than four key points, anything more than four key points, guys. You're on that verge of how do I tell them more? Not how do I get them to remember more?

[00:08:37] And with each within each one of those four key points or four main objectives or format ideas? No more than four sub-points within each one of them.

[00:08:49]Three is ideal. Three major points and three subpoints are what you want to strive for. Now, if you want to go for three major points and four sub-points for each one, that's absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that. If you're going to follow a body structure, that's more of a Ted type talk. It's one message backed up by three supporting points.

[00:09:13] So study a good Ted Talk. They have one thing. That's the message they're trying to drive one single message, not three messages, one single the message. The greatest example that I enjoy on Ted talks like that is Simon Sinek. Start with why the one, especially that I enjoy is inspiring leaders. This is the one where he shows the golden circles.

[00:09:38] If you, by chance, seen that or read one of his books. He's got one major point and three supporting points that back it up. If you go to the other side of a traditional keynote, remember a traditional keynote is really 60 minutes or 90 minutes on the longer side, where at Ted type talk is more of that 18 to 20 minute kind of a Mark a typical keynote.

[00:10:05] You've got three major points that you're working with. Three major 0.3 major ideas that you're trying to drive. Whereas in the Ted type talk, it was one major idea backed up by three supporting points.

[00:10:20] If

[00:10:20] Bart: you're in the technical world, and you're doing some type of a demo of a solution, a product, a service, a piece of technology, I can't encourage you enough.

[00:10:31] No more than five features. Five features that you want to share, that you're prepared to share based on the pain you're trying to solve, based on the pain you're trying to solve. You only want to map the features to the pain. Now, if you're actually doing a demo and someone asks you about, does it do this or do that?

[00:10:52] Show them yes. Share it with them, but keep your demo on message. If somebody comes up to you and says, I want to see everything, you might as well walk away. Cause they're setting you up for failure.

[00:11:08]You've got to keep your demo simple. No more than five features to walk in prepared to show based on the pain. No more than four key points. Go more than that too many. They can't remember it. I could ask you who are the three Stooges. Most people can tell me if I asked you what the seven dwarfs are, you're going to struggle a little bit.

[00:11:29] If I said, can you name all the reindeer without singing the song? Most of us are going to struggle a little bit. Three is your ideal for your hitting max. Now, remember that your key points, whether they're. Four, there three there too. You're doing a Ted type talk. You're doing more of a keynote. Your key points must be three things.

[00:11:52] I want you to remember this. Now your key points must be simple. They must be repeatable, and they must be memorable. If you follow this straightforward structure, you can speak for five minutes or speak for 15 minutes. Within that structure gives you the freedom to expand, and it gives you the freedom to contract.

[00:12:19] And our typical three-day program, I share this a lot. It's called a framing concept. You frame your content at a hundred thousand feet at 50,000 feet. And at 25,000 feet. If you happen to have touched base with me on our teachable program, if you want to sign up for that, we've got the whole program online that you can do it at your pace.

[00:12:41] I'm going to teach you the same idea, a hundred thousand feet, 50,025. That's the framing concept that you want to put your content into.

[00:12:52]Now, when you break into that body, and you've got your three or four key points, pinpointed, remember no more than four supporting points to your key point and those supporting details. Let me just give you some examples of what those could be. They could be third party validation. They could be an example where you're going to say, for example, I worked with back up your point, statistics is a great place to put and your supporting points.

[00:13:27] What I call soundbite soundbites, a quote from another person, a quote from an author, a newspaper, an article, something that backs up your reference, those supporting points should all enhance your major points. So remember in that Ted type talk, it was one key message with three major points that back that up now, you can have supporting points within each of those major points.

[00:13:55] So now you've got supporting points, supporting the supporting point, supporting the main message. It's a framework and a structure to work within. And when you have outlined that structure, it becomes so easy just to plug it in, to plug it in. And it becomes straightforward to remember that you can talk about it and share it and have a conversation.

[00:14:20]Now, with your body, I've given you all kinds of ideas on how to be able to do that. Let's get into your open and close. Cause this is where I feel like this is the most difficult. There are a couple of pieces that you can build into your open and close. I can't encourage it. You always need to kick off with what I call a grabber.

[00:14:43] Or a hook avoid at all costs. Hi, my name is if you open up your virtual meeting with hi, my name is Bart, and I'm here to talk about X. Let me tell you about my company. Let me tell you about me. I can promise you; people are going to go. So what, who cares now? Remember that in a virtual situation, you have eight seconds to engage them.

[00:15:08] Eight seconds. So you can't really engage them. Hi, my name is that's not going to get you anywhere. You've got to start with something that grabs our attention and pulls them in.

[00:15:18]Then, don't be afraid to share your position. Now, your position is your feeling. It's your emotion. It's your position on the topic? So I might say to you. If I could write the script, every 17 and 18-year-old should get this information around communication. That's my position. I could tell you that content structure is critical to your success as far as I'm concerned.

[00:15:47] I can tell you that content structure is critical and creating timely and timeless content. That's just my position. So I've grabbed your attention—story and analogy, a quote, an example. I've got my position, then don't be afraid to share your whys. So if I said, I personally believe it's revolutionary.

[00:16:11] You want to share your whys? I believe that for three key reasons and tell them why you believe it. So guys, remember that people buy why you do what you do before they buy you, what you do. That was the assignment, Senate principle. It's powerful. It's tremendous. Put it to use. I know when I first learned that it changed everything that I do.

[00:16:35] I had a friend send me a link to his video, inspiring leaders. I went back to my office. I sat and listened to it. Now, guys, I have a training room with a whiteboard. That's almost the whole length of the wall. It's my favorite place to work. I must have spent three hours trying to articulate my wife. Not why my communication programs, not why communication is important, but why do I get up and face that battle every single day?

[00:17:05] Why do I care so much about that? Why is it my passion, and why is it my purpose? I linked those as part of my open. I make sure it's relevant to the audience I'm speaking to, but I always do my best to get my wise out. And then there's the action step. What do you want the listener to do opening action.

[00:17:30] Step, as you begin to talk about your content closing action step, what do you want them to do when you're all said and done? When you walk out the door? These are not optional. These are important that you build in. Remember that opening action steps are broad and soft. They're verbs, see, understand, gain, visualize.

[00:17:55] Imagine they pull the lessor into your content. Closing action steps are concrete by the implement, build, create, commit to a partner. They're very specific. Opening and closing action steps are critical to pulling your listener into your content. Once you've shared your content, what do you want to drive them to do?

[00:18:23] Now? This is where I come back to the structure I shared with you in the beginning at an overall perspective of the pre virtual meeting, the post virtual meeting, and the actual meeting itself. If you'll remember if you've listened to that particular podcast in the pre virtual meeting, you set up a quick five minute, two minutes, one minute call after the actual meeting to touch base with your client, the customer, to make sure that they get what they needed.

[00:18:53] That's your opportunity to drive action. But if you haven't built that in there, We lose if you've not built it into the pre virtual meeting, and then you don't build it into the actual meeting. What do you want me to do as a listener, as I share? And what do you want me to do as a listener? When you're done, you miss opportunities to drive your listener forward.

[00:19:15]And then I can't encourage you enough in the open you need examples.

[00:19:19]Examples should take you no more than 90 seconds. If it's anything more than 90 seconds is too much, this is just proof points. So if I gave you my position on a topic, I told you why I believe that's important. And then I went, for example, I'm giving you a proof point. It's all part of my open move, these pieces around any way fit.

[00:19:43] Most of us do a pretty poor job at examples. The classic example of that is in an interview. Someone asks you, what's the number one thing you bring to the table, and you say the number one thing I bring to the table or your organization would be my sense of honesty. And that we stop. And nine times out of 10, what is the interview ask you?

[00:20:04] What's the next words out of him out of his or her mouth? Can you give me an example? They should never have to ask for that. You should always be saying, for example, give them the proof points and then tell them what's ended for them that with them, the benefits, if they take the action step you wanted them to take, what will they get if they learn about your solution, tool or product, what will they get?

[00:20:33]Benefits drive people to action. Now I can't encourage you enough, not just one benefit. So if I said guys, here's what we're going to do. I want you to all come water-skiing with me today. And I said, what you're going to get is great exercise. Now, for those of you who care about exercise, you'll say I'm in.

[00:20:54] But for those of you who could care less about exercise, you'll probably go, Nope, not interested. But if I said, guys, what I want you to do is go water skiing with me today. Now you can go water skiing with me today. Here's what we're going to find one. We're going to get some great exercise. Get a chance to get some fresh air.

[00:21:10] Number two, I'm having a whole huge dinner, barbecue catered afterward with steaks and all the accrue into Mons and your favorite beverage. And then most importantly, we get just to kick back and relax. Hang out in an easy chair. The more benefits you list, the greater chance you have of driving someone to action, but

[00:21:33] you've

[00:21:34] Bart: got to make sure they're listening focused.

[00:21:35] You've heard me talk about that. Listen, focus, listening focused. You don't know who your listeners are. You can't offer the right benefits. Those are key components, just in the open. How do I grab their attention? Number one, number two. What's my position on the topic. How do I feel about it? Why do I think that's important?

[00:21:57] The action step I want you to take, listen, learn, gain, see, visualize, add an example or two proof points that your solution tool, product, or service does what you say it does. And then, in the end, what are the outcomes? What are they going to get? What are they going to receive? All those key components make up a solid open-ended close.

[00:22:23] You can expand those, or you can contract those. You can take pieces out and only share some of them share all of them, whatever fits in my mind. Remember, most importantly, never muddle, the open, never muddled the clothes, muddle the middle, but never the open or the closing. Now the last key thing we want to look at is what I call foundational information.

[00:22:53] I get a kick out of most people. Cause this is what they open with. I get, "Good afternoon. My name is Bart Queen. I'm here to talk about it. I come to the table with X. My company comes to the table with Y, and everybody rolls their eyes and says, who cares or someone opens up with him again? My name is. It's the last thing you ever want to do now. It's the last thing you ever want to do face to face.

[00:23:17] And it's even more important that you don't do it during a virtual communication. Remember, you have only eight seconds to engage them. Do your grabber, do your open, and then come to this foundation information. That's critical to share based on what was done in the pre virtual meeting. If you have done your pre virtual meeting properly, you don't need now to build your personal credibility or your company's credibility.

[00:23:47] Sure. Do you want to share how much you care? Do you want to share what you're trying to do and how to empower them? Yes. Mentioned that. But it is not the place for you to give your resume or your company resume that should have already been done. And if you felt like, or you feel like there are going to be people part of your virtual meeting, that we're not a part of the pre virtual meeting, then when you send out your email, inviting them to come to your meeting, I would have put that information in there.

[00:24:19] Now, if you want to touch base on one or two points very easily in a seamless kind of manner, feel free by sharing an example, an experience, or a story, but steer away from that idea of your resume list.

[00:24:34]Now don't talk, don't forget to talk about the meeting logistics. These should have been mentioned in the pre virtual meeting and in the email that invited folks. This is a camera on camera off. Mute on, mute off. When you're going to take questions, how you want to handle things in the chat room, all those meeting logistics critical to your success in a virtual meeting, less stressful in face to face.

[00:25:03] Cause somebody can just raise your hand, and you can talk about it. You want to set the expectation virtually. This should all be done. It should be just a reinforcement period, easy. And then, before you get into the body of what you want to share, confirm the discovery information that you got on that pre virtual meeting based on our meeting last week; these were the three key issues that you talked about.

[00:25:32] These are the five key issues that you said we were going to approach today. Is there anything else that we need to add to this, confirm that discovery information, and then go cause you've given them a reason to be in the seat, no pain, no value, no business. You've got to bring all these pieces together seamlessly, and it's gotta be done in a clear, concise manner because your engagement is the biggest challenge you face in the virtual world.

[00:26:00] These core components just allow you to build anything you want into them. They give you the freedom to be yourself. They give you the freedom to carry the conversation the way fit. It gives you the freedom to share whatever content you feel like is important to that listener group. So in real actuality, if you're looking for freedom, The freedom lies in your structure.

[00:26:28] The freedom truly lies in the structure that you work with. It allows you to take a deeper dive into connection. It allows you to dive deeper into a conversation, and it definitely allows you to be more interactive if you so choose. So I can't remind you enough that structure allows you the freedom to do what you want.

[00:26:55] Now what I want you to do based on these three podcasts that we've delivered for you. I want you to begin implementing these ideas, these concepts, these principles, these components into any virtual meeting that you're doing, and build them into your face to face. Notice how easily it will fall into place.

[00:27:16] It may feel a little cumbersome to start because you're not used to it, but once you understand that structure, When someone says, can you be ready in five minutes? You're going to say absolutely. When someone asks you to a meeting, you mind getting up and talking about it; you're going to say absolutely.

[00:27:33] And when someone says, we want you to prepare for a sales meeting for a Ted talk for a keynote for a demo, I say, absolutely no problem. You find out what the issues are. You craft your open, you craft your close, come up with the body of your meat, that maps to the problem, pain, an issue. You build in your four Hs to the best of your ability, and you are ready to go.

[00:27:59] Remember everything that I've been sharing with you has been about building your confidence. It's been about building the connection, and it's about building the conversation virtually. I want you to be successful. These ideas will help you be even more successful than you already are.

[00:28:19]This is Bart Queen. This is the remarkability Institute, and we'll see you next time.

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen, your host. If you joined us last week, I began a series on virtual communication. And last week, I spent the majority of our time together giving you the structure of what the meeting needed to look like. I shared with you that there were three key pieces to do it, doing something virtually successfully.

[00:01:29] Number one, there's the pre virtual meeting, getting all the logistics set up there is the actual meeting itself. Whether you're on Microsoft teams, you're on WebEx; you're on zoom, whatever kind of a platform you're using. And then there's the post virtual. Meeting critical to drive the listener forward the organization forward, get them to take the action steps that you so desire.

[00:01:58] This is the second major piece of that, and this is around the actual virtual meeting. But within that virtual meeting, you must have some type of structure that you can work with then. And all the world travel that I've had an opportunity to do in my 30 years of working with this skillset and helping organizations.

[00:02:26] One of the key things that I always enjoy is the architectural structures of things that I've had the privilege of seeing walking on the great wall of China, seeing. No true Dom seeing sacred heart, seeing things in the United States, seeing buildings and architecture all over the world. Now having spent most of my life in the Bay area as my home, that part of the world had two structures that I always admired.

[00:03:01] One is the golden gate bridge and the other. It is the Hoover dam. Both of those structures to me are just mind-boggling about how they were built, how they've created, how they have been timely and timeless, and what they brought to you. And I not only visually, but to get from one side of the bay to the other and in the Hoover dam to produce electricity and just the visual sight of such a structure.

[00:03:36] Most people. When we talk about structure, they want to fight me on this idea around content. They will say, Bart, that's not me. It constricts me. It makes me feel like it's too tight. I'm just one of those guys. That's gotta be pure freestyle. I love those people. Whether you want to be freestyle or you, want to work within a structure that you are authentic to who you are, but I want you to realize that in my example of.

[00:04:05] The golden gate bridge and the Hoover dam that structure, the structure that they use gives the bridge and the dam strength. It allows it to be continuous. It allows it to be consistent. It allows it to be timely and timeless and what it brings to us. I want your content, whether you're talking personally or professionally.

[00:04:31] To be timely and timeless with the people that you're sharing it with. One of the key things that will help you be successful in any communication situation is having a content structure that you work with them. Now today, guys are I dive into that second aspect around virtual communication.

[00:04:57] What I want you to do is walk away with the elements of the content structure that you can use anywhere. Why it is so important in the virtual world is because the level of complexity, intensity, and confusion can skyrocket purely because of the mode that we're communicating in. When it's face to face, we can reduce some of those things.

[00:05:22] But if we take these exponential factors that we have to deal with, we have to think of ways to make it seamless, effortless, make it so a listener can retain the information and, more importantly, in my mind so that they remember it. Remember, if you spend any time with me at all, you've heard me say, it's not about how do I tell them more. It's how do I get them to remember more?

[00:05:47] That becomes so critical. I want to make sure that your content, whether it's five minutes, 50 minutes, or five hours, you're doing a whole day kind of an event that people walk out the door, absorbing what you said, structure. Is the beginning piece. It is the key critical factor that will set you out from everybody else.

[00:06:13] Guys, if you will study a good keynote speech, if you will look at any successful book, if you will look at any successful movie, there is a structure that the directors, the writers, and the creators all build within. When I think about good movies. When I think about movies like Star Wars and avatar, though, some of those kinds of movies have followed a structure, and nine times out of 10, the structure that the directors followed was some form of the hero's journey.

[00:06:53] You've heard me speak of this many times. So with that idea, let's dive into this idea of our virtual content structure for the actual meeting that you're doing.

[00:07:06]Now, when I started this process with you, we talked about three major areas, the pre-meeting, the actual meeting, and the post-meeting; we're talking now about the structure within the actual meeting. This is where I'm going to focus on our time together. I want you to remember a simple principle that there are freedom and structure.

[00:07:27] I also want you to remember. We never, we memorize what we put in it. We memorize the structure itself. If you memorize the structure, you can plug and play anything you want. You can move the pieces around if you want. But here's the hard thing. We have to do the hard work and keep it simple for our listeners, especially in the virtual world.

[00:07:51] That is the principle. Number one, you have to be able to do the hard work. You gotta be able to keep it simple, do the hard work and keep it simple. I want you to remember that a confused mind will always say no. So if they're confused, they're not even going to absorb what you're talking about. So now that's principle number one, guys, let's take a look at principle.

[00:08:16] Number two. It's what I call the 75% rule. Now, this rule has been saved many times. Let's say someone invites you to come in, and they're going to give you an hour to speak. You go back to your office, you go back to your acute cubicle, and you're starting to craft content. And most of you are probably crafting content in PowerPoint.

[00:08:43] Now here's what I want you to remember about the 75% rule. It's 75% of the time you've been given is what you should try to fill. So if I've asked you to fill 60 minutes, And you apply the rule. That's 45 minutes. That's what everybody's going to think, but I want you to realize that is not correct.

[00:09:09] There's one of the things that I want you to consider factoring in. I want you to back out what you and I would call your Q and time or your banter time or the time when you're just going to really have a conversation. Maybe that's all the way through. Maybe that's just at the end, depending on how you've laid out the communication situation you're in.

[00:09:33] So if I've given you 60 minutes and you follow the 75% role, you're going to think, okay, I need to fill 45. Now, remember that's incorrect. So you take your 60 minutes back out what you want for banter Q and a. So let's make life easy and say that's 15 minutes. That leaves you 45 minutes. Now you want to take 75% of that to fill with your content.

[00:10:03] Now, a lot of you are well, Bart, that doesn't seem like very much. That's because you have such a mindset of how do I tell them more? How do I tell them more? How do I tell them more? And my mindset to help you is how do you get them to remember more? I've what I'm telling you. If I invited you to a meeting at it ended five minutes early, would you be happy or sad?

[00:10:26] That you'd be happy you go, Oh, great. I just got five minutes back, especially if they were thorough. It is better, far better to end on time and start on time than end late. Because what you're saying is you're not respectful of their time. Now, if you've engaged them if they felt wow, this is really awesome.

[00:10:50] And they're saying, that's interesting. Tell me more. And you go over your timeframe. Then you are winning. But most of us want to try to cram 60 minutes of information into that 60-minute slot. And you leave yourself no leeway for conversation banter or even a question that takes you down a rabbit hole that you need to address.

[00:11:13] And it may take a moment or two before you come back out and then you've really lost time. And if you have dictated everything you're doing by PowerPoint now, you're going okay, what do I have to do? Now I have to go through these sides really quickly. And guys, look what you've just done.

[00:11:29] You've just compromised your information. You just said to this executive audience; this is of no value you've already lost. So let's say you walk in the door, and they gave you 60 minutes, and the executive says. I'm really sorry. We've had some time changes. You're down to 30 minutes. Okay. Now, if you said to them, all right, based on the 10 things I was going to share with you, and my time is roughly cut in half, which five would be the most important to you, and I'll cover those.

[00:12:06] Now you need to think through that 75% rule based on that. But what you're saying in that first page says my information is a value and I'm not willing to compromise it. Don't compromise. Your information uses 75% role have the mindset that I'm trying to get you to remember more, not tell you more. You set a precedent.

[00:12:29] It is your content. This is your valuable information. Don't sell it. Short principle. Number one. There is freedom and structure. Do the hard work. Keep it simple. The second principle, the 75% rule, that let's go for the third.

[00:12:48]The third principle I want you to walk away with is the structure process. So if you have a pen and paper out and you're at home, you're listening to this. Or if you're driving, just keep listening. Then guys just keep listening and come back and make these notes. There are five steps in the process, and if you just follow these five steps every time you have to craft content, to work through the structure, you'll win every single time.

[00:13:19] Number one, you have to set your goals. What is it you're trying to achieve? Are they more strategic goals? Are they more tactical goals? That drives everything. Are you trying to paint the vision? Where do I want to take the customer? Where do I want to take the client? Or you deep into the implementation and process of getting something put into place, and you not need to talk about tactical steps.

[00:13:46] The next thing you want to know is your listener analysis. Everybody will tell your listener, know your listener, and guys, nobody takes the time to understand their listener. What do they want to know? What do they need to know? What's their knowledge level on the topic. Do you want to be able to answer these basic questions?

[00:14:05] Now, the ones I always start with are what I call the five high gain questions, high gain question. Number one. What's your compelling event. What's driving this. Why? All of a sudden, do you care about this? If you can get them to articulate their compelling event, you can map your solution, tool, or product to that.

[00:14:27] And you could just stop. You could be done. You probably got enough. Now, remember you can't walk up to them or have a conversation with them. What's your compelling event. They're going to think that you're strange. I always ask it. Why is this on your radar screen? That's how I ask it. Or w why do you care about this?

[00:14:47] All of a sudden, why haven't you been worried about it before? Anyway, you want to ask that a compelling event is your first high gain question. Second high gain question. What are the top three internal pains that you're facing around X? Whatever the topic is around risk around performance, around security, around innovation, whatever the topic would be.

[00:15:14] The top three internal pains. The third I quick question. High-gain question. Just going to go to the other side, guys. So what are the top three external pains that you're facing around X? Now? Here's the beauty of these too many times. Those two things are interrelated. They're connected in some way, shape, or form.

[00:15:38] If you can find that connection, that can make it very powerful. And then the next two are the two that I think 99.9% of most people. Miss. Typically, what's your challenge. What's your issue? What's your pain. What's your problem? That's one side of the coin I like to go to the other side of the coin is, what are the top three initiatives that you're working on around act?

[00:16:01] Now, remember if a company has got an internal initiative, they're already working at solving a problem. So your job is to enhance what they're already doing. Many of your solution tools and products and services that you bring can do that very easily. And then the fifth tag going high gain question is what's that external initiative in the marketplace or outside your department or your division still within your company, maybe that you're working on.

[00:16:34] Those five high gain questions for me, open up a discovery session. That can be very powerful, very conversation with no threat. That's why I liked those questions. So in the process, number one sets the goals. Number two, have a solid understanding of your listeners. Number three, you've gotta be able to craft your open and your close.

[00:16:57] Now notice that I didn't say do the body yet. Most people want to do the middle first. I don't think that's correct. You need to have a starting place and an ending place. And based on that starting place in any place you can decide. What's the best thing to do to fill in between, to me, an open and a close, if it is done properly and done well, it is the GPS unit of your content.

[00:17:27] So think about getting in your car to go someplace with your family or friends that you've never been before, whether you're using your GPS in your car or using it on your phone, you plug in the destination where you want to go. You plug in the address; your GPS unit picks up where you're at that moment.

[00:17:45] And then does it not give you the fastest, most effective way to reach your destination? That's exactly what an open and a closed does. It gives you a starting place and an ending place and then helps you narrow down what piece of content, the body that you need to share to take them from the open to the close.

[00:18:08] But if you do it the other way around, here's my principle. You just show up and throw up instead of it being clean, crisp, and there's a flow to your content. You want to develop your content what needs to go in the middle based on what that opens and closes. Those are typical. What are your major points?

[00:18:30] Most people would say I'm going to cover three points or five points or six points or eight points. I can't encourage you enough. I would never do more than four. Three is the golden number four boy. You're on edge after five. They can't remember. Now, if you do seven, eight, nine, you're back to that principle of I'm here to tell you more, instead of how do I get you to remember more and then step number five, all that hard work, all that hard work you turn into whatever visual seems appropriate.

[00:19:05] Is that a PowerPoint? Great. If it is super, if it's not, how about you want to do a whiteboard more, have a conversation, or maybe you're going to bring in a physical prompt. Whatever you decide, there's not a right or wrong. I would ask yourself the question. What is the best way for me to visually enhance my content, guys?

[00:19:27] If I'm in an audience of saying a hundred or more, I will use PowerPoint just from a readability perspective. If I have a smaller group, my favorite is a flip chart or a whiteboard, it's far more interactive, but those are my choices. You make the right choice. But I would think through the visual that will best reinforce and enhance the content you're trying to share with your listener.

[00:19:55] So that was principle number three, principle number four. It's what I call the simplicity factor. Now, remember that we're doing the hardworking. We're keeping it simple. We're doing the hard work, and we're keeping it simple. The simplicity factor really has four pieces to it. Number one, remember that we talk to people, we look people in the eye, and we have a conversation.

[00:20:24] Now, if you're doing something virtually, remember you're not talking to your screen. You're talking to your camera. You're talking to your camera, not to the screen. And if I could encourage you, if it's a small group camera's on. Small group camera's on. If I've got 15 or fewer people, I want everybody to have their camera on because I want to see their bright smiling faces because as well as I do, if you allow them to have their camera off, they're going to do something else.

[00:20:51] They're going to do their email. They're not going to pay any attention to you. I know in my home because my home is way out in the country. When I'm doing something, and it's a large group virtually say, for example, on zoom. Because my internet is not that great, if I turn my camera off, I have a steadier signal.

[00:21:12] It works more effectively. But when I do that, I'll tell the people on my call, that's what I'm going to do, but I will stop and do a lot of check-ins. Remember, it's about a conversation with folks—second simplicity factor. Get to the point, be clear, concise, and to the point. When you're doing something virtually, this is no place to be ribose.

[00:21:39] Cause you're going to lose people. They won't say focused. Nobody wants to stare at that screen or a PowerPoint side for that long period of time without something changing. And then guys, remember, you want to say it over and over again. Now that brings me back to the seven-factor phrase. Remember that the listener has to hear something seven times before they remember it.

[00:22:01] Seven times. And you're going to go bar, how do I say something? Seven times in an hour? Seven times in an hour is pretty simple. What I always get a kick out of is when my MBA students would say, boy, how do I say cite something times, seven times in five minutes, but I get them to do it. And it is revolutionary because, at the end of every five-minute talk, I'll say now, what was Sam's seven-factor phrase?

[00:22:26] And the class will call it out. Remember their goal is to get them to remember more, not tell them more. And then in everything that you do, it has to be clear, guys. It has to be easy to understand if it is not, you're going to lose your listener, especially in the virtual world. Now let's go-to principle number five, and this is what I call the four H's.

[00:22:57] Now I want to remind you that people buy with emotion, and they verify with the fact people buy with emotion, and they verify with fact, so there are four simple ages that I want to share with you. And if you'll keep these in mind as you craft content, it will help the first H is the word help. Be there to solve a pain, solve an issue, assist them, educate them, somehow help them achieve what they're trying to accomplish.

[00:23:31] Walk in the door and say, how can I empower you? How can I make a difference? What can I do, too, for you to help you come in with that attitude? Your first His help. The second one is the heart. Now you may think, okay, Bart, you're getting squishy on me, but when I'm talking about heart, I'm talking about captivating their emotions through stories, through examples, through experiences, but you have to be able to share them, share your company's story, share your personal story, share with them why you get up every day and want to go fight this battle.

[00:24:09] Share your heart a little bit. So they get to know you. Remember, they're going to buy you first, and then they're going to get your company or your tool or your product or your service. And the third I would inspire, which is hope, inspire them to take and make a difference, inspire them to recycle that they're trying to achieve that hope and heart are very closely interrelated.

[00:24:36] Now, remember that when you're sharing that kind of hope and heart, it's always relevant. You're vulnerable, but it's relevant, you're vulnerable, but it is relevant. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to be vulnerable enough to share with them your stories and your examples. And remember that it is your failures that inspire people, not your successes because you're sharing with them how you've overcome.

[00:25:08]That fourth H is humor. The best thing to help an audience relax is just a little fun—a little humor, guys. Remember, jokes are at high risk, low return. I'm not talking about jokes, natural humor, self defacing humor. A funny story about yourself. A funny story about one of your children. So if you'll think about allowing them to laugh, inspiring them, to achieve capturing their emotions and saying that you're going to help them those four H's, those four H's will take you a long way when you add in your content.

[00:25:50] But remember you got to do the hard work, and you got to keep it simple. And most people won't think how do I help? How do I share my heart? How do I give them hope? And how do I make them laugh today? That's principle number five.

[00:26:03]Now, principle number six is what I call drivers. These are what drive your actual virtual meeting. Now, this is extremely important. So, guys, I don't want you to miss any of this. Number one, you need to define your purpose for doing this meeting. Let me give you some examples. Is the purpose of selling is the purpose of teaching?

[00:26:29] Is the purpose of educating or is the purpose just to build awareness around what you bring to the table? You've gotta pinpoint what that purpose is because that dictates what you do within the virtual meeting itself. The second driver is audience size. Now, here is something for you to remember.

[00:26:54] If it's one to 10, the content can have greater complexity. Because it's a small group, you can banter, they can ask questions. There could be more feedback. You can go back and forth if the group is small. So if the group is small, raise the complexity of your content. If the group is large, 25, 35, 45 50, if you've got a big group that you're doing a virtual situation around, you have to keep it simple.

[00:27:29] You have to keep it simple because nobody can interact in that group environment. Oh sure. You can do a show of hands. You can do something in the chat room, but realize that 50 people in your session, you've got 50 different people, probably thinking 50 different things, smaller the group, the greater complexity, the larger the group simpler.

[00:27:50] The content has to be. So you pinpointed your purpose. You've worked with your audience size. The third key driver is the outcome or the goal you're trying to achieve. Now, I want to give you three outcomes that I want you to pinpoint. Every time you do a virtual meeting, this is what I want you to be able to answer at the end of the meeting, what do you want them to think?

[00:28:20] What do you want them thinking when it's all said and done, the second one, what do you want them to do? And the third one is what do you want them to feel? What do you want them to think? What do you want them to do? And what do you want them to feel? Any time I get asked to give it. Give a keynote type of feature, a Ted type talk.

[00:28:46] I always ask the person inviting me to come to speak those three things. When I'm all said and done if you could write the script, what do you want them to think? What do you want them to feel, and what do you want them to do? And I have them tell me, and then I began to twist and tweak and work with my content, so I can drive those things because I want that person who's asked me to be satisfied in this situation, say you're a selling situation.

[00:29:12] You want to be able to dictate that, okay. On my first sales call, what do I want them to think? What do I want them to feel? What do I want them to do? What do I want them to think is the fact that this solution tool or product will work for them, whatever I want them to feel. I want them to feel hopeful and inspired that they can get this done.

[00:29:31] And what do I want them to do? I want them to set up—one more meeting. I want them to set up to come in and do some type of demonstration on the solution tool or product. It's very pinpointed. So, guys, I've just walked you through six different principles, ideas. As we think about the actual virtual meeting itself, those are the principle foundation ideas that we will build the structure from.

[00:30:04] Now, this is going to be a two-part session. What I've covered the first one was the idea of what the meeting looked like from an overall perspective. There's the pre virtual meeting, the actual meeting, and the post that's at its highest level. Now we're working within the actual meeting, and I've given you the principles to build.

[00:30:26] Now, I want to come back to something that I shared with you earlier. That structure is key to your success. What I want you to begin to do is implement some of these principles, start integrating them into your next virtual meeting. Think through some of these ideas and make sure you're actually building into your meeting content.

[00:30:48] Now, if it's not a virtual meeting, these things will apply in your face to face a small group or large group. I want to make sure that your information is timely. I want to make sure that it is timeless, meaning it can be shared over and over again with others. And more importantly, I want you to walk into the situation, confident that you can achieve what you'd like to achieve.

[00:31:14] Now, don't miss our next session where I'm actually going to break into the content structure components. We've got to be able to bring these two pieces together. And I look forward to sharing that with you. So, guys, this has been the remarkability Institute. This is Bart queen, your host. I can't wait to see you at our next podcast.

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But remember, in the virtual world, everything is compounded. It's compounded more difficult and the challenges that you're facing. So how do I counterbalance and find all that? Now those are just some principles that are the foundation to you being successful virtually. Now let me mention some communications statistics, I think, are always important to keep in front of you.

[00:01:24] Don't let go of these. In a face to face situation, you have 30 seconds to engage that audience. That's all you get is 30 seconds. Anything after that far more difficult in the virtual world. You have eight seconds, so if you have not said something in the first eight seconds in this virtual meeting that you're doing on your podcast, on your conference call, that engages the audience more difficult.

[00:01:52] So you don't have the time to say, good afternoon, guys. Let's give everybody a chance to settle in. You've already lost because now I'm doing my email. I'm trying to catch up on what I need to get done.

[00:02:02]The second statistic I want you to become aware of is what I call the four to six-minute kind of a rule. Every four to six minutes, you have got to change it up. Now in the face-to-face world, guys that could mean stand up, sit down. If you're doing something up on a big stage, move from the left to the right of the right to the left move forward or backward, depending on what you're trying to accomplish and our virtual world, it could mean stop and ask a question.

[00:02:30] It could mean change slides. Anything that you can do now, this principle is based on a typical 30-minute American sitcom. If you study one of those guys, you'll see that every four to six minutes, you typically get an advertisement. The producers are brilliant at keeping you involved in that 30-minute story.

[00:02:55] So I want you to have that same type of brilliance and say every 46 minutes, I change. I need to change it up. I'll get systems engineers who will come in and say to me, Bart; we are going to do a. Demo. It's a four-hour demo with a customer. My response is you're crazy. Who's going to be looking at a demo seated in front of a computer for four hours.

[00:03:20] This is just not going to happen. It's hard to keep a focus for an hour 30 minutes. You're pushing it. So if that's the case, how do I create that kind of interaction and banter? Keep them focused and change it up every four to six minutes.

[00:03:37] The other thing I want you to remember, and this goes across the board. I find this statistic fascinating. Our face to face communication really takes up. People will argue anywhere from 70 to about 95% of what you do on a day to day basis. A very small percentage is what you and I would call public speaking or presenting.

[00:04:01] That's not the number I want you to remember. The number I want you to remember is that all of that 78 to 95%, 40 to 60% of what you communicate, gets forgotten. So let's just take a look at this podcast, guys. Now, this is roughly going to be 30 minutes. I'm going to have to face the fact that 50% of what I tell you will forget.

[00:04:30] So the question for me is not, how do I slam dunk more information into this podcast for you? I could speak so fast that you could not keep up. That doesn't serve me. It doesn't serve you. So the question is, how do I communicate in this 30 minutes with you so that you walk out the door and share a principle or two with someone else?

[00:04:55] If you're driving in your car on your way to work and you got to work and say, I just listened to a podcast from Bart, and he talked about this one principle. I think we should try to integrate that into what we're doing. Then we both win. That's what I want for you.

[00:05:10]Now, I've laid out some challenges that we've got to overcome. And I laid out some statistics that give us a foundation to build from. So now, let's really take a look at the virtual meeting structure. Now, when I say that, most of you will think about the actual virtual meeting you're doing.

[00:05:31] We're doing this on Tuesday from 12 to one. That's all you're thinking about, but if you're going to communicate virtually if you're going to communicate successfully. In that communication in that medium, that channel, you have to have three aspects to your overall meeting structure. There's the pre-meeting setup.

[00:05:58] There's the actual meeting, and there's the post-meeting interaction. So if I'm doing a conference call, I would encourage you to have these three. If you're doing a webcast, Microsoft teams, a zoom type of a platform, you've got to have all three, the pre-meeting setup, the actual meeting, and the post-meeting interaction.

[00:06:22] Now let me break each one of those apart. I think these are critical to your success. The pre virtual meeting is, in essence, what most people are; salespeople will call it your discovery call. It's getting on with the person who's inviting you in. It's getting with the person who's driving this idea that they want you to speak to their teams.

[00:06:49] It understands their pain, their issues, and their concerns. Now, if you're not driving and just listening, you have a pen and paper. I want you to write this down. No pain, no value, no business, no pain, no value, no business. So during this discovery call, you've got to be able to bring forward, pull out, find out, discover what the three major issues, challenges, pains, concerns that you're trying to solve are.

[00:07:19] You've got to be able to connect your virtual meeting to some type of an issue. Otherwise, why should people listen to you? I love the guy that says, I want you to come in, demo your product, your solution for us and show us everything. And I will tell that person that's a failure, just looking for a place to happen.

[00:07:43] Cause they're not going to link it to anything, and you're not going to be successful. You've got to be able to link it to pain and issue a challenge or a problem. So that's the first piece. This pre virtual meeting is your discovery. The second is to confirm and layout what the meeting logistic ground rules are.

[00:08:08] Now. Some of those are pretty simple. You can make them as complex or as simple as you like for me, I always start on time, and I will tell that person, Mr. Smith, when I come in next week, I will most importantly, I will start at noon, and I will end by one in the afternoon. If that's the time slot you've given me because most people are going, Oh, it'll take him 10 minutes to get started.

[00:08:32] Nope. I start right on time. that's extremely important in this virtual world that you set that precedent that you become known for starting on time and ending on time. Now other ground rules could be at the bottom of the hour. I'm going to open it up for questions. I like to do that after 30 minutes.

[00:08:52] That's just one way of changing it up if the group is small. If I have less than 15 people, that I've got a list of names who are on there, and I will ask very specific questions, and I will call them by name. Cause I'm trying to drive interaction, whatever ground rules you decide to set up whatever those are, to make your meeting work, hold to them.

[00:09:19] There is. A tremendous book by Roger Schwartz called the skilled facilitator by Roger Schwartz. It's a pretty thick book. I think you may find value in that when he gets into some of the ideas around facilitating and organizing the structure of what your meeting looks like. It's a great reference.

[00:09:43] I use it often. The other thing that you want to make clear in the pre virtual meeting is what is the purpose for us having this meeting, the actual meeting? What kind of awareness do I need to do? Is this a teaching meeting? Is this a selling meeting? What type of meeting is this? You want to pinpoint that.

[00:10:07] If it's a teaching meeting, maybe I'm going to turn the camera off because I've got a fair amount of slides. I want to show if it's a conversation, maybe I want the camera on. If it's a selling type of a call, maybe I'm going to go camera on camera off, ask questions, keep my content down to a minimum, depending on what I'm trying to do.

[00:10:32] Make sure you pinpoint your purpose. One of the bigger complaints that the executive gives about any type of meaning, the meeting lacked purpose; it lacked objectives. You want to make sure those are definitely on the front end. Then you've got all that information, guys. Now lay out the meeting agenda, but the meeting agenda, the actual agenda for the actual meeting, is based on what you did in the pre virtual meeting.

[00:11:02] You've already got the person inviting you into sign off. Yes, this is what we want to be covered. Great. You're on solid ground. Now, does that mean when it gets out that somebody doesn't say, what about this, and what about that? No, of course, you may have to flex some that are part of the skill that you bring to the table, but you want to keep that as tight as possible.

[00:11:29] And then I would ask what's their communication preference. Meaning as far as follow up additional conversation, is it, do you prefer email? Do you prefer text? Are you the type of person who wants to get on the phone? Find out what their communication preferences, when you do that, you're being listed focused, and you hold them more accountable.

[00:11:54] Extremely important. If I said to a good friend of mine, Joe, now, as we communicate this, what's the best way for me to reach you. Email, voicemail, or texting? Joe says, Bart, from my perspective, texting always works the best for me. Okay, Joe, no problem. Now, when I text Joe, does he feel more accountable to want to respond or less?

[00:12:20] No. I asked him, and he said text. He's gonna feel that he needs to respond to me because I took the time to ask.

[00:12:27]this last point is a make or breakpoint in my mind, in the virtual world,

[00:12:34]guys, in that, setting up the followup call. Most people will do a virtual meeting. They'll do a demo, they'll do something, and they'll think, you know what I'll call. I'll call them in a couple of days and see how they feel like it went. If they need additional information, you don't want to do that. You want to build in the interaction point.

[00:12:59] So if I was going to set up a meeting, let me come back to my friend, Joe again with Joe, and we're going to do this virtual meeting, I might say. Okay, Joe, at the close of our meeting at one o'clock, I would just like to schedule a brief two or three, four-minute call with you to debrief. what went on, how you felt like it went, and what we, what are our next steps?

[00:13:19] Joe says, okay. Bart that sounds great. Call me at one Oh five or call me at one 10. Call me at one 15. And I'll give you 15 minutes. Great. That now has already been scheduled. You've built that touchpoint in, but if you don't do your pure, your pre virtual meeting, you're not going to have an opportunity to do that.

[00:13:44] And then it's all up in the air. You have no idea how it went, your pre virtual meeting, and your post virtual interaction. Critical to your success and what you do in the actual meeting.

[00:13:59]No, guys, let me get into some of these ideas around the second major bucket, which is your actual virtual meeting. And this is where you all wanted to focus. So a couple of things, when you use your camera, The camera should be eye level with you. So my setup at home, if I'm doing any type of a virtual meeting, I have a separate little table, separate chair.

[00:14:26] Now, in my chair, I pull a kitchen chair. I got to put a couple of pillows in it to prop it up, prop myself up a little bit. They're wooden. So it's a little hard to sit on for an hour. And then I have to set my laptop on a box because if I'm seated straight in my chair, And I'm looking at my camera. Now I have a webcam that sits on top of my laptop.

[00:14:51] I can't encourage you enough to invest in a simple webcam instead of just the camera on your laptop. Just from my experience, it's been a far superior experience. Now here's the hard part, team. When I'm looking at that webcam, then it should be eye level with my eye. So many times you'll see people who set their laptop on the desk, it's slower, and the camera is looking up their nose.

[00:15:19] You don't want that guy. You want it to be more Ida? I remember that part of what we're trying to do was create a connection. I want to feel like I'm having a conversation with you. If that camera's looking at your nose, that's on a conversation—the second thing I want you to remember that most people forget.

[00:15:40] Guys, don't talk to the screen. Don't talk to the screen. You talk to the camera, which you're going bar, but I need to look at my slides. Okay. When you talk, you'll look at the camera. When you glance down, look at your slide, get what you need. Come back up, talk to the camera. Do you want a connection? You don't get a connection.

[00:16:00] If I'm looking down at my screen and they can tell I'm looking down at my screen, having this conversation, it takes practice. But remember, we talked about the perfect storm, and part of the perfect storm is you getting a competitive advantage. That means you have to do the hard work. That means you have to keep it simple.

[00:16:24] The next time you're watching the news, BBC C CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox News, or whoever you watch. And you're seeing these people. Doing these virtual meetings, whether they're talking to their laptop, to the journalists, pay attention that a lot of them will be seated back and you get more of what I'm going to talk say really is the top third of your body shoulders, maybe some hands face compared to looking at people's nose.

[00:16:59] So the second thing you have to do is not only speak to the camera, look at the camera, but the laptop should be arm's distance away from you. Arms, distance. That way, you get more of this full feel to the experience. But most people are really right on top of it. What the listener experiences isn't near as powerful.

[00:17:24] If you're not if you're more of an arm's distance away.

[00:17:28]The other thing that I think is so important, guys, make sure that you face the light force. So if you want to put a laptop, you want to put a lamp in front of you. You want to be facing the light source. Not have it behind you. Now, this may sound silly to you, but when I'm doing my virtual at home, there is a picture behind me.

[00:17:52] If I have left the kitchen light on, cause I have a great room where the kitchen and kind of the family room are in one spot. That picture actually picks up the lights from the kitchen, and there are spots across that picture. You want to make sure that's all turned off. You also want to make sure that you reduce any background noise and any background distractions.

[00:18:24]During one of these sessions, I was watching on the news. They did a special segment on just tearing people's backgrounds apart, messy bookshelves, pictures, tilted plants, dying. It was hilarious at what they were sharing. You want to make sure that any distraction in the background is to a minimum, and you want to make sure the background noise is to a minimum.

[00:18:56] Now, for those of you who know me a little bit, I live on a little teeny farm. And for those of you who know me, you'll know that I have peacocks. And one of my favorite peacocks loves to come to sit on the railing on the front porch. And if I'm doing my virtual session and that peacock comes and roosts on the front porch, if he decides to bark and make his sound, Oh my gosh, everybody hears it.

[00:19:24] But now I want to offer a thought with all that in the virtual world that you and I are beginning to live with, then it allows for a moment of humanity. So if you have children, sometimes they come running in, especially that little two or four-year-old and wants to see mom or dad. Those are moments of humanity.

[00:19:43] The cat comes barreling, and the dog barks. Those are all moments of humanity. Do your best to keep those at a minimum, but don't let those things destroy what you're doing. They build a connection. So if all of a sudden my Bernese mountain dog came and jumped in my lap, and now he's in the camera. What would happen with every other person that enjoys pets or likes dogs?

[00:20:11] Come back to something I shared with you earlier today, they're going to go, Oh my gosh. Bart has a Bernese mountain dog. I've always wanted one of those. we have a golden retriever. No, we have a lab. We have a German shepherd. No, we have a poodle, but you get me-too factor. What happens when you get the meat?

[00:20:26] You factor, you get greater trust. You get a greater connection, and you get rid of greater relationships. Now in this section, guys, I want to cover one more piece. And that is the actual conversation during your virtual meeting. you're probably going to laugh about this, but I want you to take on the idea of being a TV personality.

[00:20:56] Let yourself come forward. Don't feel like you have to be all stiff and formal when you do this. I'm not saying to be a comedian. I am saying, let your natural self come forward. Keep your information brief. Keep your content simple. Keep your slides simple. Start on time. End on time. Start with an opening engagement line.

[00:21:25] Something that grabs their attention immediately. And make sure you start, Y whatever you're sharing is important, don't leave that out. And from a clothing perspective, think through what you're wearing. No stripes, no plans, no things that as you're looking through the camera, it makes, it looks like it's shifting.

[00:21:48] You don't want that kind of an effect. You want to make sure that you have reduced tractions as much as possible. And we keep it as simple as pie.

[00:22:00]Now let me address one more, one more point, guys. In this particular session, I want to talk about your virtual meeting interaction because that's part of the challenge that we are facing. So let me give you some engagement tips, things that I think will help you take engagement and interaction to the next level.

[00:22:22] Tip number one. I want you to realize every time you transition a slide, that is an opportunity to reengage. When you transition slides, that is an opportunity to reengage. So if you've been on a slide for a little bit, and you're going to go to your next slide, realize, gosh, I have an opportunity to grab them, pull them back in Murray, get their attention.

[00:22:49] Your use of questions in the virtual world should be more specific overbroad. Don't say, what do you think too broad? You want to ask very specific questions and if you can use names in your interaction even better. I always appreciate my virtual meetings that are 15 or less in the number of people. If I've got 25, 30, 40, or 50 on it, virtual meeting, much more.

[00:23:19] Yeah. Difficult to have a complete list of names and be able to call people out. And in those situations, you will truly find that most people turn their camera off. Remember that your use of names is one of the most powerful things we can do. And it is the most underutilized interaction tool. In my mind, please remember that the sweetest word in any language is your own name.

[00:23:46] Use of names in this virtual world is important

[00:23:49]also to keep interaction higher. More stories, more examples, more experiences, remember stories, keep people involved. For example, keep people involved. If you're just doing a data dump and the virtual world, and I'm scaring staring at your screen, probably not very engaging. So guys, the way you work a room when you're face to face, you have to work the room virtually.

[00:24:16] How do we do that? we worked the room by using names. We work the room by re-engaging. Every time we change slides, we work the room by use of questions.

[00:24:28]in all of that. Make sure you've done two things. You've double-checked your audio. Make sure your sound is good and make sure you reduce again any background noise that you may be experiencing. Anything you can do to minimize that is the best thing you can do.

[00:24:47]Now, the last piece of everything that we're looking at in these three major buckets, which was your pre virtual meeting, your actual virtual meeting, and your post virtual meeting interaction. Or engagement is your followup. This has gotta be immediately done. 10, 15 minutes at the most. You've got preset that meeting up in your pre virtual meeting.

[00:25:11] And this is where you have outlined your next steps. This is where you verify those things. This is where you find out if they need additional information. And this is where you get your feedback from what you've just done. This piece in this structure. The third piece, your post virtual meeting followup, critical to your success in moving the customer forward.

[00:25:34] So remember, guys I shared with you, the challenge is not the meeting. The challenge is getting them to schedule, to come to your meeting, and then driving them to action. And if you have no followup, you have the inability to drive them forward. These three pieces, from an overall perspective, are the things that set you up for success.

[00:25:58] Don't think that you can just do your virtual meeting. You need your pre virtual meeting, and you need your post virtual meeting. Remember that our goal, when I opened this up today, this first in this podcast, was to get you to go from virtually literate. So virtually fluent in what you're doing. I want you to be able to master this environment in the way you communicate.

[00:26:26] Now, as we leave the podcast today, what I'm going to ask you to do is take one of the principles we've talked about and incorporated into your next virtual meeting. And if you're starting from scratch, I want you to build all three pieces. Build your pre virtual meeting, plan out your actual meeting. And then your post now, and our next couple of sessions, I'm going to break down the structure that you need to look at in your next, in the actual virtual meeting itself.

[00:26:56] You don't want to miss that. You need both of these pieces in order to be successful. Guys, I know that this is the forefront and important to everything that you're doing today. Being able to communicate in the face to face world and now in the virtual world is what will give you the competitive advantage across the board, whether you're a salesperson, you're marketing, you're an engineer, or you're an entrepreneur.

[00:27:22] Your ability to connect, have a conversation, and build your confidence is what will set you apart. We don't have a choice. Failure is not an option. These are required,

[00:27:39]guys. This is a bar queen. This has been the remarkability Institute, and I'll look forward to seeing you at the next session.

[00:27:49]

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen, your host. I am especially excited for the four-part series that I will run over the next couple of weeks on virtual communication guys. I think we're in the absolute perfect storm. So let's take a look at what's happening right now.

[00:01:27] Number one technology is constantly improving, and the competitive advantage is to have the right technology in the right situation. Number two, where we're working really hard, no matter what industry you're in, whether you're with a big company or an entrepreneur, to somehow have that cutting edge, that one thing that inches you above everybody else.

[00:01:57] And then, of course, we are currently facing world challenges, both from a health perspective and from other political and business perspectives. When all of those come together in my mind, we're facing really the perfect storm. I believe that you and I have the ability to overcome that perfect storm.

[00:02:22] And I believe one of the things that we can do to do that is to be able to master the way we communicate from a virtual perspective. Most of us, especially if you're in sales, especially if you do any type of customer-facing situation, face the importance of being face to face and having a conversation.

[00:02:43] But if we look at the challenge that the world is throwing us right now, some of that opportunity is taken from us. So how do we find a place? How do we take what we've normally done face to face, where you feel comfortable, take all that strength. And now somehow put it in this virtual format into this black box into technology, into a computer screen and take your personality and make it come forward through that in this four-part series, I'm going to cover two major buckets bucket.

[00:03:24] Number one, I'm going to spend a fair amount of time. On the actual overall look at what this virtual communication should be, meaning that I believe that there are three key pieces. There is pre your virtual meeting. There's the actual meeting, and there's a post virtual meeting. That's the first two segments.

[00:03:46] So really looking at what your meeting should look like. And the second piece, two parts. Again, I'm going to break that up into the structure that I believe will help you communicate the most effectively. What I want you to do is not only become virtually literate. I want you to become virtually fluent in how you communicate with your -clients, with your customers, with the people you need to interface with.

[00:04:20] What I want you to do today is began to learn at a higher level. Some of the aspects that you need to build awareness around and begin to incorporate them into the way you're communicating virtually. I want to make sure that in these next four sessions, you come across as confident you come across as conversational, no different than if you were having a coffee cup at Starbucks.

[00:04:49] And I want to make sure that you have the ability to just connect with the people that you're communicating virtually. Yes. So let's really begin to dive into this, and what it looks like from my perspective, we've got some virtual challenges that we've gotta be able to take a look at and begin to figure out how we're going to handle.

[00:05:14] Most people, if you look at the virtual world, are going to say that the biggest challenge is the actual meeting. The biggest challenge is right now; I'm using zoom. I'm using a webcast. I'm using Microsoft teams. I'm using some flop platform to communicate with my customer, my listeners right now; this moment is the biggest challenge.

[00:05:39] I don't believe that's true. Correct. The biggest challenge you and I face is getting people to schedule commit to coming to your meeting to your virtual situation, to your virtual training class, to your virtual sales call. I think that's one of the bigger challenges. And the second one is then once you've got them to commit,

[00:06:02] how

[00:06:02] Bart: do you move them to action?

[00:06:05] Really, the actual meeting is really 10%. That is 10% of your challenge, 90% getting them to commit and then getting them to move to action.

[00:06:16]Now, once you've got them there, that third real big challenge is how do I create interaction? You and I have sat in enough webcasts in enough virtual meetings, where you're just looking at a slide, and it is all one way coming at you. There's no interaction. So the challenge for you and I, how do we build interaction into what we're doing?

[00:06:45] Okay, a bigger challenge, especially if you're more of a global company. If you're a global entrepreneur and reach all parts of the world, you've got cultural and language issues that offer a challenge. And then you add on top of that time zones, I was doing some virtual training for several of my clients, and one of my clients was in Singapore, and she said, Bart, this won't work for us.

[00:07:11] And I said, what's the biggest challenge. He goes, it's the wrong time. Even though I've scheduled it for most of the East coast and most of Western Europe, what I failed in my thinking was to realize that the Asia pack part of the world has a 12-hour difference. So if I'm doing something at noon, it is midnight, their time.

[00:07:31] That doesn't work. So how do I need to do to PA? Do I need to do two virtual meetings? One at 6:00 AM, which is 6:00 PM in Asia pack and parts of Asia pack, and then one at noon hitting more of the United States and Western Europe challenges. And then what platform am I going to use? What technology is best?

[00:07:57] When I first started doing virtual meetings, I laid it all out, mostly through zoom. Then, one of my clients came to me and said that our department will not let us do zoom due to security issues. You're going to have to do Microsoft teams. So I'd take everything I learned in zoom. Learn Microsoft teams.

[00:08:18] Now, both of them are fairly similar guys. I get that. But there are some nuances and things that just add a degree of difficulty that you have to think through. Those are some of the challenges that you and I are going to face. We've got to be able to overcome them. If we want to come across and connect with our customers, if we want to be able to have a conversation, and we want them to perceive me to be confident,

[00:08:44]But now let's just look at it from a communication perspective. Those were more virtual challenges, but just purely communication. Number one, creating engagement. How many of you have been on some type of virtual meeting webcast? Whatever it may happen to be, let's say your executive team was running some type of kickoff, and you were at your home office.

[00:09:09] You're in your cubicle, and you're paying attention.

[00:09:11]Be honest with me now, what else are you doing? Yeah, if you raised your hand and said, Oh my gosh, I'm doing email. You'd be correct. You're doing something else because you're not engaged. So how do I create that engagement? And I've gotta be able to do that quickly. And then, how do I develop a connection?

[00:09:34] Now, if you're face to face, you're looking people in the eye, there's a greater connection, but how do I connect through this screen? And especially if you've turned the camera off because you've got a large group of people. I know when I do some virtual communication from home guys because my internet is hot, not hardwired.

[00:09:54] It comes in actually through my television. The system isn't that strong. So if I turn off my camera, I get less challenge in my internet. And then there's just as a technology work at times, making it difficult for us to communicate. So we've got a couple of things. We've got virtual challenges, and we've got communication challenges that you've got to be able to deal with.

[00:10:25] So, with those challenges in mind, let me lay out some principles that I think are important to help us overcome those. Now, if you followed me in any of the podcasts, some of this may be a review for you and some of you, if you're just joining me, you may find this to be new information, but these are foundational pieces.

[00:10:50] We've gotta be able to do the ordinary things extraordinarily well. And if we're not, we're missing out on some of these basic communication principles. So let's go with the first one. The first one is this idea. Okay. Here is my choice. Tell them more, or get them to remember more. Most of us are show up and throw up most of us when we do these types of things; you are going so fast through slides.

[00:11:17] I would not call it a PowerPoint presentation. I'd call it a movie. Now you've spent hours and hours crafting those slides, but you barely give me time to absorb them, let alone have a conversation. So if there's one paradigm shift, I would want you to take both faces to face, and virtually it's to go from, tell me more.

[00:11:39] This idea. Pardon me for telling them more about the idea of how do I get them to remember more? How do I get somebody to walk out of this podcast? And remember some of the principles that I've taught you or shared with you? That's my goal. My goal is not to overwhelm you with information in any podcast that I do.

[00:12:00] I want you to walk out with principles that you can use, whether that's with your family, with a business situation, you're an entrepreneur, or you're adding the information and do a Ted type talk or a keynote type of speech. Now with this idea of building the conversation and building connection.

[00:12:21] Everything that I teach and share is based on three major goals. How do I build trust? How do I build a relationship, and how do I build engagement from a hundred thousand foot level? Those three goals should drive everything you do from a communication perspective.

[00:12:37]If I could write the script for you, mom, dads every morning when you wake up. When you put your legs over the edge of the bed, you're wiping up, sleep from your eye before you ever stand up before your feet ever hit the ground. Ask yourself one question. How do I deepen the trust between my spouse and me?

[00:13:02] And how do I deepen the trust between my children and me? How do I deepen my trust between my parents and me? It should be the number one thing you think about. The CEO of Pepsi. I heard her once say that the new global currency will not be money. It's going to be trusted. There's one of my favorite books, called God, is a salesperson.

[00:13:25] And it talks about this idea that people buy trust before they buy a solution tool or product, and that they buy trust before they buy the provider. Meaning you or me? That's gotta be a key ingredient now; virtually, it's even harder. Guys. It's even harder. So now, how do we tighten that up? How do we shorten that process around building trust?

[00:13:51] When it comes to relationships, just remember that people buy from people, and they buy from people that they like. So if I just stopped right there and said, guys, you have two key factors. You have to build your trust factor and your likeability or approachability factor that comes through on your laptop.

[00:14:10] Ask yourself that, okay, next week, when I do this virtual class, how do I get that trust factor to come through? How do I get my approachability and my likeability factor to come through? When all they hear is my voice, they can't see my smiling face. They can't see what I'm doing. Now. We haven't even talked about how do I engage them?

[00:14:33] How do I can keep that gauge high? We talked about interaction. How do I engage them in the first eight seconds? How do I make that happen? Those three goals to me just naturally blend into what I call the three-levels of selling there's. So what me too. And I need that, or I need you. If somebody opens up and says, hi, my name is Bart Queen.

[00:15:02] This is the company I work for. We've been around for 25 years. Our numbers are X. We've got this number of employees, and we're globally located anywhere in the world. You're going to go. So what, who cares? I don't care. You've heard that a million times from people. If you've listened to a salesperson, come in and present it to your company.

[00:15:23] What I want them to say about you is me too. I'm just like that. Or I've had that similar experience. So think about people that have gone to the same university. They experienced the me-too factor—the same. If you go to the same church, you get to meet your factor. If you've been in an aspect of the military, you have me too factor.

[00:15:47] We can physically look at me to movement with women. We can see that the me-too factor. You can see the me-too factor and people who have gone through a cancer experience, a horrible tragedy, and a hurricane. That's all part of me, too. What you should be driving them to say is I need that. I need that solution.

[00:16:08] I need that product. I need that service. Now, if you think about them saying, I've got to have it, I need that. Is that price or value? That's all value. But if there's, so what, that's all price; you're going to get pushback. It's not what you want. Again, your overall goal with trust, relationship, and engagement is connection conversation in confidence.

[00:16:37] That's what you want to be the outcomes: connection conversation and confidence, connection, conversation, and confidence. Now, within that, in my mind, in any communication situation that you're in, you have three things you've gotta be able to control. Number one, you have to be able to control yourself.

[00:17:01] Number two, you have to be able to control your content. And number three, you gotta be able to control your circumstance or the situation that you're in. let me give a little bit more detail on each one of those. You gotta be able to control yourself. I remember once seeing a politician up on a stage pre-election, and one of the people in this town hall meeting was asking this potential a candidate a couple of questions. They were pushing, and they were pushing, and they were pushing.

[00:17:34] And the candidate finally lost control and got right up in this person's face. What was in the news the next day was not the constituent. It was the candidate having lost control, lost their patience, lost control of the situation that he was in. You've seen that in sales situations where a CEO or an executive comes after-sales for what about this?

[00:18:01] What about this? What about this? And then all of a sudden, the salesperson gets defensive. They start backing up; they fold their arms, their voice goes up, they've lost control. And as soon as you lose control of yourself, you're real, you've lost. The second place you have to be able to control is your content.

[00:18:22] And what I mean by this guy is somebody takes you off track. I am talking about solving compliance and regulatory issues, and some person asks a question about acts and takes me way off track. now you have a choice. Do I go down that rabbit hole, address the comment, and come back. Is this valuable?

[00:18:45] Do I stay there for a while? Or a short amount of time? You've gotta be able to control your content, but I will toss to you if you're not crisp and what your number one message is what your three supporting messages are. And your three key to why's you can't come back on track. Cause you don't have any signposts that you can grab hold of and bring everybody back.

[00:19:14] When I'm helping somebody with a press and media situation, I will ask them, what's the one single message you're trying to drive, and they'll give me a whole bunch of stuff. Now, what's your one single message. They'll give me a whole bunch of stuff, and I'll come back, and I'll say, okay, let me put it to you in this way.

[00:19:30] What do you want the headline in the article to be? And what do you want? The main sentence, the Twitter type message. Do you want them to remember to put in that article? They'll give me a Ph.D. speech. They won't give me a sound bite. So in that press and media situation, you have to have a sound byte.

[00:19:49] Cause that's all that reporter wants. You may get a reporter who says to you I've gotten an article. I just need one, one little sound bite from you and your company. And you're going to give them a 45-minute presentation. That's not what they're looking for. They're looking for that sound bite. You gotta be able to control your content.

[00:20:10] And that last piece is you have to be able to control the circumstance. Now, a lot of this is your facilitation skills or your skills when it comes to answering questions. One of the principles I teach in controlling the circumstances this if someone in your audience asks a question: When you finish the answer to that question, it should drive the next question.

[00:20:39] When you answer that question, the last sentence should cause that audience or that individual to ask you the next question. If you're doing that, you're driving the conversation. They are not that controlling the situation or the circumstance. Those are all skills, and they're just as. Applicable in the virtual world.

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Jeff shares a heart-wrenching story about the kid's at his son's high school raising money for Josh, whose grandfather was hit and killed by a car while picking him up from the bus. He felt powerless and knew he needed to do something to help make it right. After meeting with a bunch of guys, they decided to build him a house from scratch.

Bart met him after hearing this story and brought a camera crew to help tell the story. This led to a lifetime friendship between the two. Later, Jeff introduced him to Yogi. Jeff felt called to serve at the AME church in Birmingham and believed Bart's communication courses could benefit some of the women at his church.

So Bart, already committed to the power of story, spent 3 days unpacking some powerful communication tools for Yogi and the women at the AME Church.

Although she was currently a performer, she felt it would be important for her to attend. She has gone through many struggles in her life and went into it with the attitude of learning to tell her story with courage and heart. One of her key takeaways was thinking of the audience and what they take away or remember from your story.

Yogi shared about the challenges she faced, how she overcame them, and the lessons that she can share with you that can apply to your life.

Jeff shares his experience of being a white man in a predominantly black church and what he has learned from his experience.

Jeff has learned the lesson of relevant vulnerability. Being able to share our weaknesses and what we have overcome is more impactful. Our words are containers that hold things. They either hold people up or tear them down.

Three keys that Yogi hit on:

Know your audience
The simplicity of the message is critical, not volume.
Knowing what the result is

Key takeaways that Jeff hit on:

Be vulnerable
Knowing the right time to share

Bart shares his cancer experience and completely losing his voice and the resulting goals he added to his life.

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Bart: Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen your host. Now, if you've been following me over the last couple of weeks, we've really been focusing in on some ideas around trust. In last week's episode, I gave you more of a high level overview of some trust concepts. I talked about the challenges that we face in building trust.

[00:02:02] I gave you some ideas around the benefits, the things that will come to us as a result of working through our trust. And then I really looked at it a deep dive in building trust from a visual perspective, as a communicator, from a verbal perspective, meaning more your content. And then from a vocal perspective, the idea on how you say things.

[00:02:27] Today's episode is a followup to what I covered last week. Now I come back to this idea that if you Google the number one trusted person in America, you're going to find that the name Tom Hanks comes up. But if you Google, what's the number one authentic person in the world. You will get zero. If you, Google.

[00:02:53] Who is the richest person in America. You'll find currently today, or when I Googled it, you'll get Jeff. So what I find interesting is that we can't pinpoint someone around authenticity, but we can pinpoint someone around trust. I come back to the idea that I shared with you last week. That's so very important in my mind that we need to look at trust as a critical factor that we focus in on.

[00:03:22] It is not something that you should leave to what I call the whim that you don't really think about. And last week, I gave you a challenge that when you wake up in the morning, before your feet hit the floor that you ask yourself, what's a number, one thing I can do today to build trust lost with my spouse, my child, a family member, or one of my good friends.

[00:03:46] And I had you keep it in the context of that close family idea before you start making an application to your customers or your clients, in this session. What I want you to do is begin to learn and understand some ideas around what I call credibility templates. And I want you to take those templates, build with them and begin to build your credibility in the market place differently.

[00:04:16] I want you to get rid of what I call, show up and throw up about your credibility. How many times have you heard someone say this good afternoon? My name is Bart. I'm with XYZ company. Our company's been around for 35 years. We've got X number of employees. Our revenue is X. We're a global company, and we're a leader in this.

[00:04:41] And you hear these long string of things, and you'll roll your eyes. If you're the customer, especially, and you say, who cares? I thought you came here to help me building your credibility by just giving a list of resume. It is probably not the most effective way to do it. I am saying I don't share that information.

[00:05:05] What I am sharing I am saying is don't make that the first thing out of your mouth builds your credibility uniquely stand out so that they can remember you. So I come back to where I started. This is something that you should take a look at critically and not leave to a whim. And what I want you to do is understand these credibility templates and be able to apply them.

[00:05:32] Now, here's what I know. You're going to find; you're going to build stronger relationships. You're going to create deeper connections, and you're going to be able to expand and make your ability to influence people far greater. One of my favorite quotes is from John Maxwell. That leadership is nothing more or nothing less than pure influence. Your ability to influence your friends, your family, and your clients is critical to your success.

[00:06:02] So, let me come back and just review two pieces of foundational information I shared in the last episode that really the effectiveness of our communication relies more on the character of the message than the content of the message. But most of us feel like it's the content of the message. And I see this over and over again because you'll spend hours and hours on a PowerPoint slide, but you won't even take five minutes to think through in this situation, in this business meeting at this conference, in this keynote speech, how can I build my trust factor with my listeners?

[00:06:44] The second thing I want you to remember around these foundational pieces is that credibility will continue to grow. Trust will continue to grow. The connection will continue to grow if credibility continues to go up, but as soon as that fails to go up, as soon as it is lessened, as soon as it is destroyed, the connection.

[00:07:07] Becomes a disconnect. And if you don't have a connection with the people that you're communicating with, why to bother share information because you want to strengthen those connections, remember everything that I've shared with you is about building trust, build relationship engagement, and the, for a level two, that everything is about building connection, building a conversation and building your confidence.

[00:07:33] And as we think about these ideas of trust, These are the things I want you to build in your confidence. I want you to have confidence in sharing who you are and what you're about, whether it's in a one-on-one, whether it's a small group around a boardroom table, whether it's in a training room of 25 to 50, or you're at a conference speaking in front of 250 people or 5,000 people, I want you to know how to build your credit bell credibility in a manner.

[00:08:06] That people immediately begin to say, I'm like him. I trust him. This is good. And when our interaction time is shorter, you know, it's even more critical when that executive says, I've got five minutes, give you, give me what you got. The first thing that come through your mind, go, how do I build credibility or deeds?

[00:08:27] The first thing that goes through your mind is, how do I sell this person? Where if you think about how do I build credibility and build a relationship, he or she will want you to come back, especially if you've engaged them about what you can bring to the table. But most of us don't think that way. I want you to start thinking that way.

[00:08:49] I want you to take a paradigm shift and the way you build your credibility. I want you to think about it uniquely based on who you're speaking to. So think about the things you did when you met your spouse or your significant other; what did you do to create conversation and trust with them? You shared stories; you shared experiences, you shared where you've been, you share how you felt about things.

[00:09:19] And if that connection started to build, if you felt like there was good communication, then the credibility begins to get stronger. So remember, within the first six months of any relationship, that communication trumps credibility, but after that six months, credibility trumps communication or overrides it; those are two amazing principals.

[00:09:42] Think about those as you're building relationships with your customer. So now, let's really get into these ideas. In the last episode, I gave you an overview, but today I want to get very, very specific.

[00:09:56]Remember that why trust is so important is because that we're capable. We're more capable of than what we think, and we're capable and building more, more reliability, we're capable and building more truth with the relationships that we have. W we're more capable of them believing in our ability of what we bring to the table, and in a business situation, someone having confidence in your ability is crucial to moving forward.

[00:10:25] The higher the trust factor, the lower the fear factor of failure, the higher the trust factor, the lower the fear factor of failure. They've got to have confidence in your abilities and what you bring to the table. And how are they going to know what your abilities are if you've not shared the skills and the strengths of your company and the skills and the strengths that you personally bring to the table, remember people buy from people, and they buy from people that they like.

[00:10:58] And as you share about yourself, Seamlessly sharing your strengths and abilities and examples and stories is a great way to build that without saying, hi, my name is Bart queen. This is where I went to school. This is what I bring to the table, and people roll their eyes at you. The other reason that trust is so important is that it creates that firm belief in your strength as a leader, as someone that can take them from point a to point B, that you can take them from uncertainty to certainty that you can take them from being unresolved to resolved that you can take them from.

[00:11:41] No action to taking action from not being able to make a decision to be able to make a decision. I think one of the greatest benefits is when trust is in place, the decision-making process is much quicker, but if there is a lack of trust, it becomes very, very slow.

[00:12:01]So let's look at this a little bit different perspective and guys.

[00:12:05]There are three major areas, three major buckets, three major concepts. When you go to build your trust and credibility that I want you to think about the very first is your character. The second is your capabilities. And the third is your commitment. Now, let me get into really what I mean about that.

[00:12:30] Let's look at the very first one, your character. What I mean by that is, do you walk the talk? Do you say, what do you do? What do you say you're going to do? Do you follow up? When you say you're going to follow up, do you send the information out? When you say you're going to send the information out, this is all part of your character.

[00:12:52] And if you go back to the first foundational piece, I gave you that the effectiveness of our communication is based on the character of the messenger and not on the content. It makes a difference. Think about a young person coming out of school with no. Job experience when someone asks them, well, what's the number one thing you can bring to my company.

[00:13:15] Most young people with no experience will say my sense of honesty, my sense of integrity, my sense of reliability. It's all character because they don't have the skills and strengths that they bring to the table yet. But if you're at someone at my point in life, It's not where I went to school. That's not so important as it is the skills and the strengths that I bring to the table.

[00:13:41] That's the second major bucket—your capabilities. Now, your capabilities are broken into two major buckets. There's what I call resume information positions. You've held titles that you've held where you went to school, places that you've worked. Experiences that you've had projects that you've taken.

[00:14:07] Those are your resume type information. The second bucket is your skills and strengths. Now I'm not saying that we don't put our skills and strengths on the resume. Um, they're there, but what I'm talking about is us sharing those skills and those strengths, what I teach our three-day speaker boot camp, one of the exercises for homework.

[00:14:33] I asked them to write down the top 10 skills and strengths that they bring to the table. And before I send them off at the end of the day, I ask, will that be easier or hard? The majority of people in the class will say, Oh, this is going to be difficult. I can only think of three. And some of these people have been in the workforce for 25, 30, and 35 years.

[00:14:55] And I think you've been in the workforce that long, and you can't pinpoint one, three strengths that you bring to the table more than three skills. But if I asked them, identify the top three areas in your life where you're trying to get better, your weaknesses or areas of opportunity, they won't give me three.

[00:15:14] They'll give me five to 10. I think there's something dramatically wrong. If you can look at yourself and pinpoint all the areas where you feel like you need to get better, but you can't balance that with all the things that you're doing. Well, I personally believe that we sell ourselves short. We don't give ourselves enough credit.

[00:15:35] Now, as you think about these skills and strengths, I'm not asking you to be arrogant. I'm not asking you to be cocky. I'm asking you to be confident. In what you have worked hard at developing and pre, please realize that for most of us, we overlook the most obvious. I can distinctly remember teaching a class.

[00:15:58] It was a public class, and I had two teachers in class, and I was having them do this exercise. And they came to the table with her, their 10 skills and strengths. And I looked at these two lovely ladies. And I said, please tell me that one of you put down your teaching skills and they both looked at me like, Oh my gosh, Bart, no, we didn't put that down.

[00:16:19] Each one of them have been teaching more than 25 years, but they missed the obvious, the things that they do on a day to day basis. I see this with salespeople all the time. I'll say, did you put down your selling skills? Did you put down your closing skills? Did you put down your account management skills?

[00:16:38] Did you put down your questioning skills? Did you put down your some type of foundational financial skills, budgeting skills? Your account planning skills they don't put any of those things down. They miss the obvious in what they bring to the table. The third bucket is your commitment. And what I mean by your commitment are proven examples.

[00:17:04] So I want you to think about this. Think about the last interview, where you're in. It might've been a few years ago, and maybe there was one recently the person interviewing you says, well, what's the number one thing you bring to the table? You told them my organizational skills. It's my reliability.

[00:17:22] It's my personal character. Whatever you answered. And I'll put a $20 bill on the table. That the next question by that person interviewing was, well, can you give me an example? No one should ever have to ask you that question. I see the same thing. When I'm coaching executives for press and media, they'll offer something about the company, a solution, a tool, or a product, and the reporter has to say, or the journalist has to say, can you give me an example?

[00:17:54] When you offer a capability, a strength, a skill, you should say what that is, for example, and follow it up immediately. No one should ever ask that. Now, remember if you followed with me at all on context structure, a structure of a good example has four main pieces to it. Who did you work with an organization, a team, an individual? What was the problem they faced?

[00:18:25] And please remember when you state that problem, you want to state that problem as a negative, as a negative, a lack of an inability to then the solution that you bring to the table. And then the result that you got. You want to make sure that you cover all four of those points; many people, when they give an example, they won't cover all four points.

[00:18:55] It's not giving a good, solid example. Who did you do it with? What was the problem? What was the solution, and what is it? What was the result you got? Now? These are the three major buckets that you want to build your credibility and. Pick and choose based on who you're speaking to. One of the things you always want to do is make sure your listener focused.

[00:19:20]It's by chance. Let's say you're getting asked to speak at a conference. They're going to ask you to send out a bio, and nine times out of 10, when you send out your bio, you're going to send out a fair amount of resume information. So when you get to the conference, I might get you to take a paradigm shift.

[00:19:40] Don't share more resume; share some more ideas around your skills and your strengths. That way, you get a broad scope of sharing who you are and what you're all about.

[00:19:52]Now, let's take a look at breaking those downs and putting in some type of a template that you can use.

[00:19:58]The first template is a very, very easy template and building your credibility. So if you're with me and you're listening, and you have a pen and paper, I'd like you to write this down. When you build your credibility, you want to not share more than four points. Three is what you strive for. Four are on the max.

[00:20:20] I want you to share two pieces of resume information, how long you've been at the company where you went to school, a position that you've held that type of resume information. So two different pieces of resume, one skill, and strength. And then what I call unique business value. Now let me explain to you what I mean by unique business value.

[00:20:48] What I mean by unique is listener focused. If I'm talking to a CFO, I need to gear that business value to the CFO. If I'm talking to a chief risk officer to the risk officer, if I'm talking to a technical person to the technical person now in our three-day class, we always talk about the listener, focus, listener, focused, listener, focused.

[00:21:10] This is the idea of it being a unique listener, focus on them. Business value is simply the, so what, what that means to them, but here is what I find interesting. The majority of people do not distinguish the difference between benefits and value. They are distinctly different benefits. Traditionally are very objective.

[00:22:17] If I was talking to you about a solution tool or product that would help you with complete and C or regulatory issues, I might say that the benefits are greater, accurate, greater compliance, greater transparency, especially it's around Sarbanes Oxley Bazell to one of that kind of key components. But the business value, the, so what to the CFO is what it means to him or her.

[00:22:48] Now that can mean sleep at night, a stronger reputation. You stay out of the newspaper. That is the value. That is the, so what business value is subjective, but if you don't know your listener, you cannot hit the Mark with value. Now, I don't want you to say the value of that is some other type of language will be stronger.

[00:23:18] What that means to you is I would strongly get you to say the benefits are the results are what you'll find is, but when it comes to value, I will get you to stress. What that means to you is. When I was teaching a class at NC state university with the MBA program, and we would teach this concept to the MBA students in their final, which was only a five-minute talk that they had to share with me.

[00:23:48] Anytime they offered a benefit of what they were talking about, a solution, a tool, a product, or service that they had worked with or came up with. I required them to it immediately follow what that means to you. So for every minute, every benefit there was what that means to you. For every benefit, there was a value for every benefit.

[00:24:08] There was a value. The benefit is the value of what that means to you is in conjunction with each other. Think about Volvo cars, probably the number one benefit that they bring to the table is safety because of the extra steel in the door. But if you'll pay close attention to their ads there. So what is typically said, your family, your friends, your mom, your dad, your children will always arrive at their destination.

[00:24:40] They will always arrive at their destination. We're not buying the extra steel in the door; we're buying this. So what we're buying that value, that can be extremely powerful. So I want you to remember, as you share your credibility, your credibility is your currency. Your credibility is your currency—the CEO of Pepsi.

[00:25:05] One said that the new global currency would not be money. It's not going to be money. It's going to be trusted. It's going to be your credibility. So on this template, I got you to do two pieces of resume, one skill, or strengthen unique business value. Now I'm going to give you an opportunity. You can switch that.

[00:25:29] So the second template, just kind of inverts that a little bit, guys. This time it's one piece of resume. Two skills or strengths and your unique value business value. So depending on what you want to stress, whether you want to stress your resume, or you want to stress your skills and your strengths, you have an opportunity to do both picks and choose what you feel like is most important.

[00:25:57] What I want you to remember is that your trust is your currency. Your credibility is your currency. These two templates will allow you to share about yourself in a clean, easy, crisp, conversational manner. Now, if by chance, you get asked to introduce someone to say at a conference or at a business meeting at a sales kickoff, use one of those templates.

[00:26:30] But add one thing to the very top of that. Start with some type of a grabber, something, a short story, a short example, maybe a quote, anything at the front end, then go right through that. So, let me give you an example. Let's say I was going to introduce my good friend, Joe. I might say something like this.

[00:26:59] When I think of Joe, the very first word that comes to my mind is integrity. And when I think about the definition of integrity, I think of that idea that he does what he says he's going to do, even when no one else is looking. That is a word that best describes Joe Joe comes to the table with 20 years of experience and helping people articulate their message.

[00:27:26] He comes with five years of experience of helping people do that, especially in the podcast world; probably one of the greatest strengths he brings to the table is his technology skills. He can work with any type of platform in almost any format. What that means to you is you don't have to make the same mistakes he made.

[00:27:48] What that means to you is you don't I'll have to reinvent the wheel. Let's welcome, Joe. That's a simple example of me following one of those templates and adding a grabber at the top as you want to introduce someone. You should be building your credibility in a seamless manner. And what I mean by that or stories and examples.

[00:28:15] If at the front end, you need to build your company, credibility, use the same template. And then if you have to build your credibility, because it's the first time you've been with someone, use one of the templates. So make sure you vary them. Remember that when trust is higher, the fear of failure is less.

[00:28:36] Remember that when trust is higher, confidence is stronger. Remember that trust is far more important in a relationship than your product or your service. If you think your product or your services most important, you're missing the Mark. It's that trust in the relationship that they're going to have with you, which is far more important.

[00:29:01] And then please remember from a selling perspective, if the trust is high and credibility is high, the chance of a referral of you nurturing that relationship and nurturing another relationship only is exponentially higher because you've cared for your customer or your client. Referral-based selling, as you know, is the best.

[00:29:27] It is the easiest compared to hunt and conquer. Get away from hunting, conquer, get into nurturing relationships. And you nurture that relationship by building your trust and your credibility. So, guys, I come back to what I said when we started this episode and what I said in the very first episode around trust.

[00:29:48] The trust is critical. It's something that we have to work on. Do not leave it to whim. Do not be lackadaisical about building your trust. Now, as you walk out the door today, as we end our episode, as we can in the session, I want you to think about taking one of those templates home. Sit at your desk, go to your office.

[00:30:11] Think through it on a pen and paper when you're having a glass of wine, cold beer, or a cup of coffee and build your credibility template. And then practice saying it. I want you to be able to go through one of those templates in no more than 90 seconds. No more than 90 seconds. Keep it clean and crisp. I want you to have the confidence that you can build stronger relationships.

[00:30:36] I want you to have the confidence that you can deepen the connection between the people that you love and care about and your customer or your clients. And I want you to be able to expand. And increase your ability to influence the people that you're connecting with. Your credibility is your currency.

[00:30:58] This is Bart Queen. This has been the remarkability Institute, and I'll see you next time.

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen, your host. I'm incredibly excited today. As we dive into a different communication topic, I was having a conversation with a colleague earlier in the week. We ended up boiling down things into three major kinds of buckets. Again, number one.

[00:01:59] Building the conversation, number two, building the connection, and then building your confidence. And as we got into a discussion on each one of those topics, I made the point that the number one thing that every one of us should do in building our confidence is to focus more on building our trust factor.

[00:02:24] And when I, when he, when I said that to him, he said, what do you mean by this idea of a trust factor? I had shared with him earlier that we had three major goals of building trust, building relationships, and building engagement and building that trust factor is critical to our success—both personally and professionally.

[00:02:45] I also mentioned to him that for most of us, Trust is something that we leave to a whim. It's not something that we strategically look at it and layout a game plan. Most of us don't get up every day and say, Hmm, how do I build trust with my wife or husband? How do I build deeper trust with my children?

[00:03:11] I don't know how you'd build a deeper trust with my best buddy or friend. We don't even think about that with the customer. We know that with a customer, it's critical to build trust because they're not going to buy or deal with this or have a relationship with us if we don't come across as trustworthy.

[00:03:29] But I come back to the idea. Most of us just look at it more from a whim than from looking at more at a strategic kind of. The focused thing that you're going to think about today. I want you to focus on that, the idea of how do you build your trust factor. And guys, as we discuss this, I would like you to put it in context, more of the people that are immediately around you, your spouse, your significant other, a child, a good friend, a family member.

[00:04:06] Or a close client, but I want the circle to be pretty tight as we look at it. I'm asking you to do that because I want you to begin to think of immediate application on some of the ideas that I'm going to share with you now in our time together today, to me, which is a short 30 minutes for today, I want you to understand trust from a different perspective.

[00:04:31] I want you to look at it differently, and I want you to begin to pick up tidbits' ideas on how you can build your trust factor and make it stronger. Now, if you'll do that for me in the next 30 minutes, here's what I think you're going to find. Number one, you can strengthen and deepen the relationships that you're in.

[00:04:54] Number two, from a business perspective, you can build greater loyalty. So your customer only wants to do business with you. And more importantly, in my mind, in the first two, you get a connection, and you deepen that connection. Today, guys, I'm going to do more of a broad sweep on this idea of trust.

[00:05:18] That way, I can just give you tidbits. If you care to go deeper, each one of these will allow you to do that. The first thing I want to look at is what I call trust, foundational concepts, three simple key ideas that I think layout a foundation for us to work with. I believe that the effectiveness of our communication, whether that's face to face, it's virtually it's over the phone, it's a large group or a small group, relies more on the character of the messenger of you and me, then the content of the message.

[00:05:55] If you think about it, most of us put all our focus on the message. You'll spend hours and hours trying to craft the perfect PowerPoint slide and not even really think about what do I need to do? What do I need to say to create that trust factor? It's the exact opposite of what we think, where the real effectiveness of our communication lies in our character as the messenger.

[00:06:20] So I want to remind you that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear. They're evaluating you. They're looking you up. They're looking you down and making an assessment already before you've opened your mouth, whether they're going to trust you or not. And then as you begin to share, they're going to be evaluating the things that you bring to the table.

[00:06:43] And this is where your executive presence, your sense of authenticity, and your confidence need to come forward. Part of the character of the messenger is then developed through the stories you share through the examples that you give. So that first paradigm shift, I want you to think about and building your trust factor.

[00:07:08] Is that we need to focus on the character of the messenger, you and I, more than we need to focus on the content. First the second thing I want you to realize is that credibility is a thing that makes the difference. And I found an interesting fact in my research, it said in the first six months of relationship communication, overrides credibility; so think about when you first met somebody that you dated, and maybe that person became your spouse in the first month as you went out, you had a good time.

[00:07:46] You shared stories, you talked, you were building your credibility, but it was the connection you were creating through things that you shared experiences, that you had places that you went. But what I found interesting out of this study was the second six months' credibility overrides communication. So now, I want you to think about the communication you have with your spouse over a longer period.

[00:08:19] Let's say you've been married ten years or longer in a relationship, ten years or longer. Hopefully, you both have a bank account of trust that you make deposits into, and you take money out of it, or you take trust out of it. There's an exchange back and forth. If you've built this account up strongly, there are moments when you have a bad day, and something doesn't happen.

[00:08:46] You fail to call something that doesn't work out. And the credibility holds for you, even though the communication did not so if we think over the long haul in building a business if you think of a long haul in a relationship with one of your children in a relationship with your spouse, that credibility.

[00:09:09] Becomes critical after six months over the communication that we have. It's that level of trust that we have. And the third thing I want you to realize from a foundational perspective is when credibility continues when it grows, and it strengthens that connection grows and strengthens, they learn to rely on you and depend on you, and they trust you.

[00:09:38] But when credibility discontinues, the connection discontinues. So we can see this in marriages where someone broke. Their trust. We see that with politicians, where we had trust in someone, and something happened, they broke that trust. And then there becomes a disconnect you've had that happen with a friend where you had a falling out credibility fell apart.

[00:10:06] There was a disconnect and maybe a long period that you didn't talk. Now, if that relationship begins to heal, You find that credibility bit builds again. You find that the connection builds again; these three basic foundational ideas are foundational to laying the trust factor and building it the way you see fit.

[00:10:34] So now let's look at some of the challenges. Some of the things we have to overcome are the challenges with trust that become critical for you. And I.

[00:10:44]One of the number one things that happen with a lack of trust in business, it stymies innovation, it stymies optimization, it stymies growth, and it stymies progress. It almost puts it to a halt and slows it down. Suppose the trust factor is not high enough. If the trust factor is also not high enough, it can create the perception.

[00:11:10] Now, the perception of a hidden agenda. And if you're trying to sell me something and I feel like you have a hidden agenda, I'm going to put my hand out and give pushback. Cause I'm not trusting that. One of my favorite sayings is a confused mind will always say no. So if they feel like they're trying to pull something over on you, if you feel like there's a hidden agenda in there, you're going to push back because the trust levels are so low.

[00:11:42] The other thing that happens in my mind is that the decision making process becomes very, very long, and drawn out—an example. I gave it a couple of weeks ago in class. I was sharing about a man that I met to talk about helping me with podcasts. We met this young man just at a coffee shop, and the idea was, find out what he does, how he could help us, and what it would look like.

[00:12:10] If we decided to commit to doing podcasts, I brought my assistant along so we could just banter and talk. She was very much interested. We walked into the coffee shop within the first few minutes. I had already made the decision that I trusted this man. And we walked out the door after it was all said and done.

[00:12:30] My assistant said he's a good guy. I trust him. And it was an automatic decision that we would do business with him because of the trust factor established so quickly. He was honest. He was upfront. He shared what worked and what didn't work. You got a very clear perspective. Now, the result of that higher trust was the decision-making process was fairly simple, but you know what it's like when you're don't trust the person; a lot of times, you won't do business with them, or you take your time before you make that decision.

[00:13:05] The other thing that happens is productivity across the organization gets very slow. Because people don't trust the people around them, and they're in self-preservation and self-protection mode. You don't want that. You want productivity to go high. So if we're looking to look at these challenges and say, how do we speed up innovation?

[00:13:27] How do we get rid of hidden agendas? How do we speed up the process of making a decision and increase productivity? You got to go to the other side; you've got to be able to build that trust factor. But we don't walk in the door thinking, how do I build that trust again, we leave it to whim, but if we're going to look at the challenges, we've got to look at the benefits,

[00:13:49]the number one thing that happens, I don't care whether it's a personal relationship or a professional relationship. Trust strengthens that relationship. It deepens that relationship, and it creates a powerful connection because you've got trust. I know for myself, I'm just one of those guys that trust is a major issue.

[00:14:10] If I'm going to do business with someone, that trust factor has to be high if I'm going to be in any type of relationship, that trust factor has to be high. It is probably the number one thing in my own life that I would make many judgments by and who I spend time with and the businesses I associate with.

[00:14:32] Now, one of the greatest benefits of strong trust is the idea of loyalty. So if you think about it with your customer base, if you're thinking about it from a funnel perspective, at the top of that funnel is the beginning of the building trust process. And at the tip of that upside-down funnel, the very tip is brand loyalty that they only want to do business with you.

[00:14:56] Now remember that's because of who you are. Not necessarily because of the business we buy from people we don't buy from companies. So you have to come back to where I opened about around your character. Now, if you're doing business again, the results of that, it speeds up the process. It develops greater collaboration, and it drives results forward because people trust that you're going to take them where you said you're going to take just some of the simple benefits of trust.

[00:15:29] We could have a long list. I'm just trying to hit a couple. That makes sense—both on a personal and professional basis.

[00:15:36]But if you've been with me before, and if you've spent any time with me, that Y is pretty important because I believe in what Simon Sinek teaches us, that people buy, why you do what you do before they buy what you do. So let's answer the question. Why is trust so important. Number one.

[00:15:59] I think it's because we are capable of more than we think we are. We're more capable than we think we are. And when trust is higher, we get the freedom to express that capability. Think about when someone encourages you or says you do a great job. Think about maybe that was a child when you praise a child.

[00:16:22] A lot of times, they just want to do. More, they want to try harder. In school, we see that in sports, especially when the coach says, I know you can do it, run harder, run faster, jump higher because someone believes in you, they trust in what you're capable of. And when they become again to trust in what you're capable of, let's think about what happens.

[00:16:49] Number one, people get a firm belief in your reliability. I know I can count on Bart. I know I can count on Bill. I know I can count on Mary. You become far more reliable. They know you're going to get the job done. There's a firm belief in the truth that you speak the truth. Here's where I'm coming from.

[00:17:11] Here's what I think will work. Here's what I think will not work. And because there's a high level of trust, you'll accept those things and question it less. There's also a stronger belief in your ability that you can bring to the table. If you look at a customer and say, I can take you from point a to point B, and we can do that in nine months on schedule and under budget.

[00:17:40] If the trust factor is high, they're going to believe that you can meet that goal. And when it gets tough, when things aren't going so well, when it doesn't seem so smooth, if your trust factor is high, they will stay with you because they believe in your abilities. If they don't, that trust factor will come down, and they're going to question your abilities. Then there's one more important point, especially from a leadership perspective, they have a firm belief in your strength in leading the organization or the team to the destination or the goal.

[00:18:17] Now that could be just your strength in. Just yourself. It could be the strength in your team, or it could be the strength in your company leading forward,

[00:18:27]all of that reliability, the truth, your ability, and your strength gives you an opportunity to increase your authenticity to really who you are. And that authenticity is just equivalent to your character. Understanding why trust is so important should drive you to take it from this thing that you think about just on the whim to something that you are actively pursuing that you think about every day.

[00:18:59] Guys, if I would check if I could challenge you tomorrow morning when you wake up. Before you let your feet hit the floor and you're sitting on the edge of the bed. Ask yourself this one. Very simple question. What can I do today to build greater trust with my family? What can I do today to build greater trust with my spouse?

[00:19:24] What can I do today to build greater trust with my son or my daughter? And if you're a young person, what can I do to build greater trust with my mom or my dad or grandparents? And then just do that one thing. Just do that one thing.

[00:19:42]I am a fond follower of Bernay Brown. And you may recognize her as an author. You may recognize her from Ted talks. Maybe you even read some of her books. Two of my favorites are Dare to Lead and Daring Greatly. I think they have a lot to do and speak heavily on trust, authenticity, and vulnerability.

[00:20:10] But if you follow her a little bit, you'll find that she has said that there are cell seven elements of what she describes of trust. The first one she mentioned is the boundaries that you have. Here's where I will go. And here's where I won't go and understanding what those boundaries are. Builds.

[00:20:35] Trust. The second thing she talks about is reliability. Now I've mentioned that here, she is reinforcing it that you can trust that the person will do what they say. They're going to do. You walk the talk. Do you live out what you say you're going to do? The third point she brings up as an element is an accountability.

[00:21:01] Do you apologize when you need to apologize, you say you're wrong when you're wrong. Do you hold yourself accountable for what you say and what you do as an example to others? I know one of my key values has always been, it is never too late to do the right thing, and I can share with you that there are many times.

[00:21:26] When doing the right thing may have taken me months to get there to that point, to make that decision. And some of them, as you would probably know in your own life, maybe it's gone several years, and you still have it not turn that wrong into a right. All part of our process of holding ourselves accountable.

[00:21:45] There's not perfection at this. There's the process of working at it. The fourth concept she brings up is what she calls the vault. And what she's referring to is this idea. When someone shares something with you in confidence, do you hold it in confidence? In other words, do you keep your mouth shut? Do you keep the vault closed and not break that confidence?

[00:22:12] Now we've all known someone shared a little secret with us, or someone's shared a piece of gossip maybe. And then you share the gossip. And then we lose trust, or we've broken someone's trust because they shared something with us. And then we shared it with someone else. And that you live with that regret after it comes out that you've done that.

[00:22:32]The next one that she brings up is this idea of integrity. You do what you say you're going to do when no one is looking. I think that's a great definition of integrity. Do we do what we say we're going to do when no? One's when no one is looking. The last two, I especially liked one was nonjudgmental.

[00:22:55] Each one of us never hesitates to share our heart, our opinion, our mind, what we're thinking. But when someone else does a lot of times, we're judgmental that when they share their truth, you speak your truth. I speak my truth, but do you judge my truth? This is where that judgment nonjudgmental attitude allows you.

[00:23:18] The freedom to express yourself. Guys. I can remember that with my father. It was very difficult to express myself because I knew my father would be extremely. Critical of my opinion or what I was thinking, but my grandfather had this big open heart in this big open mind and him. I could talk about absolutely everything I can remember as a teenager, having great discussions with my grandfather about drugs, sex, and rock, and roll and having the freedom just to talk things through with him.

[00:23:53] I admired him immensely for the fact that he gave me the strength and the freedom to share with him. And then her last point is this idea of being generous of giving more than you needed to have walking that extra mile for someone, or when someone says need a buck, you gave him two when someone needs a coat that you gave them, not only your coat, but you gave him your scarf.

[00:24:21] That idea of being. Generous. These were the seven elements of what she believes create. Trust your boundaries, your reliability, your accountability, your ability to keep the vault closed, your integrity, the ability to be nonjudgmental, and the ability to be generous and give.

[00:24:45]Now, there are three key places that, from communication, I want to build, give you some practical things to do. There is a study by Albert Mehrabian on linguistics and communications professor from UCLA. It's an older study, but I think the study is still relevant. He took a video camera and filmed people.

[00:25:10] In one-to-one situations, public situations, academic situations, political situations to figure out what caused people to trust and believe in what they were saying. He found that there were three key areas that you and I, as a listener and focused in on the first was the verbal words on a page. So if I sent you an email, you'd be getting words on a page.

[00:25:37] Now, if I color-coded it, capitalize it or underline it. You could infer context to it. I'm just talking about the words on a page.

[00:25:46]The second major bucket was vocal. This is not what you say, guys. This is how you say it. Maybe you've said to a child, or your parents said to you, it's not what you say. It's how you say it. It's your pitch. It's your tone. It's your volume; it's your rate. And then there's the visual perspective. What do you see?

[00:26:12] So what I would like to do is look at each one of those and just offer some thoughts. So let's go to the very first one about building trust visually. I want you to remember that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear; they buy what they see before they buy what they hear. If you followed my podcast in any way, shape, or form, you have probably heard me say that a million times.

[00:26:39] Now. Here's what I want you to do in that context. I want you to build your mental real estate. Here's what I mean by mental real estate. I want you to think about you get a meeting invite. It could be a meeting, listen to a talk or go to a presentation and you look at who it's from, and you go, I would rather die than go to that.

[00:27:02] Or are there other people that you get that invite from or get invited to listen to them speak? And you think I don't want to miss that for the world. How about from a faith-based perspective, you get the agenda, that's going to happen at church, see who's preaching, or who's going to be speaking or sharing the homily, whatever it may happen to be.

[00:27:21] And you think, ah, I think we can skip Sunday, but there might be someone else who's giving the sermon or the homily, or they're talking you go, I don't want to miss that. There are politicians that we might have an opportunity to listen to. Hear them speak, and you go, I want to go. And there are others that you say I could care less.

[00:27:42] That is mental real estate in an instantaneous moment. You decided on whether to go or not go. So my challenge to all of us is what kind of mental real estate you have built when you call a meeting at work? Do people go? I'm going to pass or do they say; I don't want to miss it cause I know it's going to be good.

[00:28:08] Do you have that kind of mental real estate? When you're going to share with a friend, you have the mental real estate in their mind that you will bring value. You've probably got a best friend that when you have a challenge or a problem that you always go to because they're, they're a good sounding board.

[00:28:24] They have good mental real estate. That's because you trust them. The second. Anything you want to do is be able to reduce distractions. Now, there are three main distraction buckets. I want you to think about distractions. You create distractions your listeners may have, and the distractions the environment has.

[00:28:46] So when I talk about distractions that are yours, I'm talking about your arms and your eyes. Do you do some type of a tick that you don't even know that you're aware of? Do you keep your hands directly in front of you do for you, ladies? Do you brush your hair back all the time, guys? Do you keep your hands in your pockets all the time?

[00:29:07] Do you fidget with your wedding ring? All those things become distractions. There's their distractions, their cell phone. It's on the table in front of them, their workload. A problem at home, a problem at work. It's the holiday season. All those are natural distractions that are happening in your listener's mind.

[00:29:33] And the third is then the environment, someone walking in and out, summing getting up and down out of a Pew at church you're at school, the bell goes off. Those are all environmental kinds of destruction. The room's too warm, the warm, the room's too cold. All you can do is reduce those distractions. Now, guys, you can never hit zero, but it should be your goal to reduce those distractions as much as you possibly can.

[00:30:07] And then visually, last but not least, one of my favorite ideas, one of my favorite concepts, every single thing counts. Every single thing counts; what you don't think counts. This includes your dress. This includes your behavior. This includes your message. This includes how you're seated, how you're standing.

[00:30:27] This includes how you respond. This includes how your email. This is how you get on the phone. This is how you walk down the hallway and interact with someone. Every single thing counts. But guys, if you're going to have the philosophy, it's only when I present. If that's your philosophy, instead of how I communicate, you're going to miss the Mark.

[00:30:52] The majority of your communication is that interpersonal communication, presenting public speaking, that's a small, small percentage of what you do on a day to day basis. So there are some ideas on building trust visually. Now let's take a look at building that trust from a verbal perspective. Now, this is just the words, right guys; this is your content.

[00:31:18] Now I shared this with you, and maybe you didn't catch it, but a confused mind will always say, no, I want to add one more thing to that. And that's always continue the conversation in their head. Advertisers are brilliant at this idea. So think about the week between Christmas and new years, and we really, you could look at the week after new year's probably what's the number one ad you're going to hear about if you made the guests of fitness'd be correct.

[00:31:53] Jim's advertising. Discounted rates to join. And the reason they're pushing their ads during that time is that you're thinking about your news, your new year's resolution. This is a year I'm going to get in shape. This is a year I'm going to change the way I eat. All they're doing is continuing the conversation in your head.

[00:32:13] So you're far more receptive to it. But the only way for you and I in business to think about that is that we've made our discovery. We had a conversation with the customer and began to pick apart and understand what they're thinking about, what they're feeling, what their issues are, what their concerns are.

[00:32:32] Then the rest of it is if you followed me, it's your content structure, it's your choice of words. Meaning getting rid of jargon, it's words that are simple and easy to understand. It's back to that idea that we need to speak at an eighth-grade level. Some organizations will tell you at a fifth-grade level.

[00:32:53] Now, if you're dealing with a Ph.D. audience, I want you to do a Ph.D. vocabulary. I'm talking sentence structure. It has to be simple. And this is taking a paradigm shift from a medium to a long sentence, to a short, to a medium sentence. And for most folks, that's uncomfortable because you go Bart. I sound like I'm talking to a two-year-old those sentences.

[00:33:16] Like when you read to your child, see Jane run, watch spot follow to you. It sounds over simplified. To a listener, it's crisp; it's clean. It's easy to understand no pushback, no confusion. And then the last thing you want to do is your competency. And what I mean by that are your personal stories, your experiences, and your examples.

[00:33:42] This is what makes you real. This is what makes you a thematic in the way you come across.

[00:33:48]Now that only leaves one more bucket, and that's building your trust vocally, meaning how you say it. And it's what I call the power. Five. Number one, the power of the pause. You've got to give people an opportunity to absorb what you're saying. Now. Most people have this gut-level reaction. If I pause, some will interrupt me.

[00:34:12] I hear that a lot from women—number two. If I pause, people will perceive that I don't know what I'm talking about, but the power of the pause creates the exact opposite effect. It people, it puts people on the edge of their seat, wanting to know what you're going to say next. Think about Martin Luther King.

[00:34:35] Remember when he said I have a dream, and he paused. And you waited 250,000 people waited, Dr. King, what's your dream? What's your dream. And then he told them, think about John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you. He paused. And then he said, ask what you can do for your country.

[00:35:02] That pause made those two sentences pop and came to life. The second of the power of five is the power of listening. I just came across a quote today that said no one ever listened themselves out of a sale that just made me chuckle. Most of us talk ourselves out of a sale, but we never listen out of a sale.

[00:35:29] Most of us do more talking than we do listening, but in the business world, if you want to do trust, if you want to build trust with your relationships, you have to be able to listen. We are far too quick to want to respond and make a comment instead of just let them talk. Now, the power of listening leads you right to the power of questioning, which is your third of the power five.

[00:35:52] Asking the right questions, asking questions that show that you're listening, that you're listening. I always love the story of the mom that was with her children. And she's got. That's nice. Good for you. And the child finally comes back and says, mom, what did I just say? And she goes, Oh my gosh, I have no idea what my child has told me.

[00:36:13] Number one, she wasn't listening. And she wasn't asking questions and follow up. The fourth is the power of your voice. And this is your rate, your volume, your inflection, your pitch, and tone, and the power of the pause. Those five things make up the power of your voice—we under utilize that skillset. If you look at actors and actresses, they use it.

[00:36:40]if you'll think about going back in history, president Reagan leave politics out of the whole conversation guys, but think about how he used his voice. He was known as the great communicator of the last millennium, but he learned those skills from acting. He knew what the power of his voice could do, and he used it to inspire us.

[00:37:02] And then there's just the power of conversation, not the power of presentation conversation. If you think about presentation, you put yourself on a performance mode, and if you put yourself on a performance mode, you're on a treadmill. And if you put yourself on the treadmill, it's all about being perfect because you've got to perform, and then you lose the whole power of conversation.

[00:37:26] Those make the biggest difference in the way you come across. Guys, I have to come back to what I opened with, and that's this idea. It is critical that you build your trust factor. Do not leave it to whim. Do not take that whole idea seriously if just not in your relationships with the people you love the most and with your children.

[00:37:54] What I'm asking you to do is think through some of the things I've shared with you today and find one place: one, the thing I've shared that you could begin to build and strengthen your trust factor. I want to make sure over the long haul that you deepen your relationships; you strengthen your relationships, you build the kind of loyalty and trust that you want.

[00:38:20] And you deepen that connection with the people you care about most, this is Bart queen. This has been the remarkability Institute.

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Bart Queen: Welcome to the remarkability Institute podcast. This is Bart queen, your host. I'm really glad you're with us today. I recently had someone give me a call and ask me about the fear of public speaking and when I tried to address the issue with them. As I listened to him, he kept talking about all the things that he would naturally not do when he was standing in front of a group of people, and I laid out to him the idea that this is the issue that every single person faces when they think about public speaking.

If I can really write the script, I take the word public speaking out of our vocabulary. I really truly believe it puts just fear and uncomfortableness in people's hearts. So the question becomes for all of us who do any type of communicating, whether it's a small group, one-on-one, a large group, 5,050 or 500, how do we come across more naturally?

I think the best way to come across and their real natural sense is to take a mind shift from this idea of public speaking to just having a conversation. If you and I went to Starbucks and had a cup of coffee and we sat at one of those cushy kinds of chairs, and we're just going to chit chat and have coffee over something, we wouldn't even think twice about the way we're seated in a chair.

We wouldn't think twice about what we do with our hands. We would gesture and just have a conversation. Most likely, we would look at each other as we shared whatever we were talking about. But as soon as you say to someone, Bart, can you get up in front of the group and share with them what your department, your division or company has been doing for the last six months? All of a sudden, people shift in their minds from having a conversation seated to standing to feel like their public speaking and presenting. I think this is the biggest challenge. Every single one of us faces, and to get past that, we've got to do a different mind shift. Here's the first mind shift.

Last fall, I had an opportunity to spend six months in the Asia pack. One of the stops on my trip wasn't Singapore. Now, the package that the client put me up with was in a hotel called the Marina sands. I don't know if you've heard of this hotel. It's a beautiful hotel. It's almost a city within a city. It has absolutely everything, from shopping to casinos to a spa.

At the very top of this hotel is a platform, and when you're on the ground, and you look up, it looks like Noah's Ark kind of landed up there. Now, this hotel is made up of three towers, and across the towers is this platform. There's a pool; there's a place you can eat. It's just beautiful. Now I'm an early riser, so I like to get up in the morning, go to the very top and enjoy some coffee.

Now, as I'm enjoying my coffee, I'm reading USA today on the back page of the very first section, there was a small article about a black market organization, heisting men's kidneys. Now, according to the story, two men are out. They finished up work. They're going to go have a drink, glass of wine, a cup of coffee, whatever it may happen to be that's appropriate, and one says to the other, you know what?

I think I need to go up and get some emails done before the end of the day. The other gentlemen say, "Oh, I'm just going to hang out for a little while." According to the article, a beautiful woman approaches him and says, can I buy you a drink? And this guy, being a gentleman, says, why, of course. And they start the conversation.

Well, according to the story, the next thing that the man realizes is he wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with a small sign on the top that says, we've harvested one of your kidneys. You need to call nine one one immediately. Now. I had never heard this story before, and when I shared this story with folks, many people will go, well, Bart, I've heard that story before, Bart, I even saw a movie about this kind of an idea.

Now, if I were in a classroom situation, I'd say, how many of you have heard this story before? And many of them would raise their hand, yes.

I make the other point for those who raised their hand and said, no, they've never heard it. I tell them that most likely a break at lunch. When you go home tonight, you're going to say to a family member, a colleague. The story that I've just shared with you. Now, I don't know whether this story is true or not.

That's not why I shared the story. Some people say that somebody put it out on the internet and it just went viral. Again, my point is not whether it's true or it's not true. My point is this. For those of you who had heard it before you went, I remember this, and for those of you who hadn't heard it, you'll most likely go tell the story.

So here's the paradigm shift. I want every single one of us to take. As we think about talking to our customers, we talk to our clients as we're sharing information, as we're speaking in our teams, our units, or our divisions. The question in your mind should not be, how do I tell them more? I see this a lot from salespeople.

It's this idea of showing up and throw up. How do I throw as much information at these people as I possibly can, guys? Just from my experience out of coaching folks out of the last 20 years, I don't think that's the right perspective. I think the question we should ask ourselves is, how do I get people to remember more.

How do I get people to walk out of my meeting, out of my sales call, out of my talk, out of my presentation, out of my keynote speech, out of my podcast, whatever it may happen to be guys, and walk down the hall and see someone else and say, I was just in a short meeting with Bart, and these were the three things that he said.

How do I get that kind of retention and memorability into my conversations? To my presentations to my webcasts, to my zoom sessions, to my one on one conversations. In my mind, it comes back to just something very, very simple we need to get away from, how do I tell them more to how do I get them to remember more.

No. I think there are two ways that come to my mind right off the top of the bat that can help us do that. The first one is what I call a seven-factor phrase. Now, if you think about it, what is a seven-factor phrase? And most people will come back and say, Bart, that some type of a phrase that I have seven pieces to it.

That's what I typically hear, but let me ask a different question. How many times does someone have to hear something before they remember it? Now, moms, dads, think about how many times you have to say to your children, pick up your clothes. Go, do your homework. Don't do that. Take out the trash. It's more than once.

Most likely. I was always taught; it's three times you need to say something three times before it begins to stick in someone's mind. Guys, that's not correct. The actual number is seven. You have to say something seven times for it to begin to stick in someone's head. Now what I'm teaching with the MBA students at say, Duke University or NC state, their final for me is just a five-minute talk.

As we walk them through the skillsets and through this information at the end of the semester, each one gives a five-minute talk, and I will tell them in that five-minute talk, you have to have a seven-factor phrase. You have to say something seven times. They'll come back to me and say, Bart, there's no way in five minutes.

I can say one thing seven times, and I'll come back and say, if you don't say it seven times, you flunk. I put that much emphasis on it because I want them to grasp the power of what this does in the way that we communicate. It never fails. A student gets up, they do their five-minute presentation, and I can say to the whole class, what was Bill's seven-factor phrase?

What was Mary seven seven-factor phrase? And the students will call it out every single time. Let me give you some examples of seven-factor phrases. Some of these you may recognize, some of them you may not, depending on where you're at in the world, what part of the region you're at or what part of the country you live in.

How about this one? Can you hear me now? Now, most of you right now are probably thinking, okay, it's a telephone company, and you'd be correct. That's Verizon. So think about when Verizon first launched that. The gentlemen standing, standing up, and he says, can you hear me now? And he takes two steps. Can you hear me now?

Two more steps. Can you hear me now? Two more steps. Can you hear me now? You remember that now if you remembered that phrase, I always get such a chuckle because I'll ask somebody in a class who's your carrier? And they'll go AT&T, and I will go, Verizon loves you. Verizon loves you because they own your brain.

As soon as I said that, you went to Verizon. That's the power of a seven-factor phrase. How about a couple more plot, plot, fizz, fizz, Alka seltzer. Good to the last drop. Maxwell house. Don't leave home without it—American Express. My favorite growing up was this one. You'll probably recognize this one. Put a smile on everybody's face.

Where's the beef? Wendy's. I can still picture that little old lady saying, where's the beef? Where's the beef? That's the power of a seven-factor phrase. That is one way, just one way to create the memorability and the retention that you're looking for. So in your next talk, in your next podcast, in your next meeting, in your next zoom session, in your next Ted type talk, what's the one thing.

That you want to say seven times or more? That sticks in people's minds. No, guys, I'm not saying that you actually have to say it physically. Seven times. Say it four times; four times is better than one. Say it three times. Three times is better than one. The idea is to try to hit that seven Mark guys. That is just one way, one way to get people to remember more of what you said.

Another way just to share with you is what I call the Scooby-doo factor. I heard someone share this principle with me once before, and it really, it really works. So think about Scooby doo when somebody would say something to Scooby-Doo, what was his response. He would typically go by row or a room.

That's what you want people saying when you kick off a meeting talk or a presentation. You want people saying a "Ru?" tells me more cause you've only got two choices. Your customers, your clients, as they listen to you, are either going to say, tell me more. Or they're going to say, is it over? Think about how many times in college or university, somewhere in the school, you're in a class, you leaned over to one of your fellow friends, and you went, how much longer a man?

We've got 20 minutes left; we've got 10 minutes left. How many of you have been some type of face service before and you just, Elaine to your family member went, okay, I'm ready to go because you weren't in your head or your heart saying, tell me more. Tell me more. That Scooby doo factor will give you that idea of why this is going to be interesting.

Tell me more. I tossed a woman in my class on the topic of Monica Lewinsky. When I asked her to come up with a Scooby doo factor, she came up with. She said, I personally believe that Monica Lewinsky is a greater American icon than George Washington and the whole class went through. Where is she going to go with that?

One sentence and everybody says, okay, what's coming next? I was at a conference, and the opening keynote speaker walked out on stage. This was the first thing that came out of his mouth. He said I believe that there are three things that keep you back from success: the first, your family, the second, your government, the third, your faith.

Guys, you could have heard, you could have seen the hair on the back of people's necks go up. Then we sat and listened to the rest of his keynote. What I found interesting was the next day, as you stood in line getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks before you went to your first breakout session, you'd see somebody wearing the same name tag that you were wearing, and you'd say, what?

What did you think about what Randy had to say yesterday? And we bantered about it. We bantered about it for three solid days of that conference. So the question I would ask you would be, did he win or did he lose? He won. I'm still telling the story. That's the power of that Scooby doo factor. Something that grabs someone's attention so quickly and makes them say, wow, tell me more.

You have my interest. Let's go. So let me give you some statistics now. Just some things that I've learned that we need to lay down in this foundation to help build his idea of how do we, how do we get people to say, tell me more. How do we get them to shift and get involved in your conversation?

You're talking to your presentation. So my first question for you to ponder is how long do you have to engage an audience face to face? How much time do you have to pull them into your content? All hear many people say, Oh, you got five minutes. You don't have five minutes. You don't have two minutes.

You don't have one minute. You have 30 seconds to engage that audience face to face. And now guys in, in our current world, we're doing so much virtually. How much time do you have to engage that audience? In a virtual world, you have eight seconds. That's all. You have to engage that listener and pull them into your content.

So how many times on some type of a webcast or something where you're listening virtually, people open up and they drone on and on and on, and you go, okay, they're not getting to anything for a while. So you start doing email. We've all done it because we haven't been engaged. I want you to take this paradigm shift.

What are you going to do in eight seconds to pull someone right into your content immediately? Now, let me ask another question. How long do you think you have, or how long do you think the average adult can stay focused? How much time can you keep them focused on what you're trying to say?

Statistically, guys, you only have four to six minutes. Now before you go crazy without, let me explain what I mean. Every 46 minutes, you have to change it up. You've got to do something differently. And it could be as simple something as simple as stand up, sit down. If you're doing something face to face, it could mean as simple as ask a question, play a game.

Get the audience to interact with each other. Change a slide, move from one side of the stage to the other side of the stage. When I'm doing my webcast or virtual type situations and not in my home office, I will just literally stand up, and when I stand up, my voice changes. I start to gesture more. Just like when you're on your phone at home, and you're pacing back and forth, you don't realize how much your voice is modulating.

So the next time you're running a meeting, let's say there are ten people around a boardroom at some point after four to six minutes to keep that audience engaged, walk up to the whiteboard, do something at the whiteboard. If you're doing some type of a keynote speech, walk into the audience, sit down, stand up, move, raise your voice, get soft, go loud.

Anything that you can do. To change it up every four to six minutes. Now, I think the greatest example of this is a a 30-minute sitcom, an American 30 minutes at a time. If you think about a sitcom, I Love Lucy Friends, Two Broke Girls, Raymond, any of those, roughly every 4-6 minutes; you get an advertisement.

There are typically about four of these sections in a 30-minute time slot. Now they either break you at the top, are you going to go, okay, what are they going to do next? Or what's going to happen? They're brilliant at keeping you involved because they know you're going to get up. You're going to make a sandwich; you're going to let the dog out.

You're going to use the restroom, but they want to keep you involved in those 30 minutes. So guys, at anything that you do, I want you to begin to think about what I can do differently every four to six minutes. To change it up to keep engagement high. Now, two more statistics for you. When someone asks you a question, how long does the average person listen?

Say you ask your question to your spouse, or the customer asks you a question. Statistically, how long does the average person listen? Most people will come back and say, well, I listened to the end of the question. I'm like, most of us don't do that. Most of us are doing what in our heads. You're being asked a question, and this is what you began to think.

I hate this question. This is a stupid question. Or maybe you say something like this. Why does Bart come to my meetings? I hate it when Bart is in my meetings. My gosh, he's such a distraction. You're not even listening. The average person only listens four seconds, guys, after four seconds, they're already up in their head forming the answer.

When I shared this in class one time, a woman raised her hand, and she said, Oh my gosh, why did I do that with my children all the time? They're saying something to me. They're asking me a question or making a comment. I don't even listen. I think she shared this story about taking her five-year-old and our three-year-old to school.

They were in the back seat of the car. The five-year-old was asking her questions, saying what she was going to do during the day and asking mommy questions, and she said, I was responding with saying, Oh, that's great. That'll be nice, honey. Good for you. Oh, how much fun will that be? All of a sudden, her five-year-old goes silent.

So she's telling her story. She says, I looked in the rearview mirror, and I could see that my daughter was looking at me, and then I could tell the daughter could tell that sh mommy was looking at her. They almost had eye contact through the rearview mirror. Then her five-year-old said this to her, mommy, what did I just say?

She goes, Holy Toledo, my five-year-old just penned me. Now, maybe for you as parents, you realize you've had that same similar kind of experience. We do that with our spouses all the time. You come back and say, w, w, w, what did you say, honey? I'm sorry, because you were thinking about somewhere something else, or you weren't even listening.

So here's the principle I want you to walk away with. Well, we're communicating with other people, whether it be your spouse, your parent, a child, your customer. I want you to be present at the moment. You have to be present at the moment. You can't be thinking about something else. How many of you had the experience where you walked into your boss's office, and he was he or she was at their desk?

Maybe they were doing email, and you said, boss, I need to talk to you about a couple of things, and that your boss responds back. Continuing to typing and saying, sure, what is it you need? How did that make you feel? It made you feel like, well, I'm not really of any value. Nothing about that. How many times do we do that with our spouses or the people that we love?

Your significant others, whoever it may be, guys say here, here's a challenge for all of us. The next time your spouse walks into the room, and you're watching a game, or you're doing an email, turn off the game, close your laptop and say, honey, how was your day? How are you doing? And watch them freak out.

Cause they're going to come back to you and they're going to say, okay, where have you been today? Oh, they're come back and say, alright, how much money did you spend? Because we don't typically do that. We try to multitask instead of being fully present at the moment. So as you think about this paradigm shift of going from this idea of public speaking to this idea of having a conversation.

I want you to think about being fully present in every conversation, whether it's with one person, fly people, 50 people, or 5,000. How do you have a conversation? When I'm dealing with executives as I'm coaching them and keynote speeches, as we walk into the conference hall, wherever they're going to be speaking, they'll say, I am so glad I don't have to turn this on.

And I'll look at them, and I'll say, you just made the biggest mistake of your life because people are already observing who you are and what you're doing. And nine times out of 10, I have to say to them once they're up on stage, could you do me a favor? And just pretend you're in your living room and having a conversation.

People are looking for that authenticity, and that authenticity comes out of having a conversation, not necessarily out of presenting or public speaking. Now, here's one more statistic for you. They say that anywhere from about 80 to 95% of your communication on a day to day basis is more interpersonal.

It's running a meeting. It's sitting around a boardroom table. It's in a small group situation. You're in a training class. It's on a one-to-one. A very small percentage of our communication is what you call public speaking or presenting. That number doesn't concern me. What concerns me is this, of that 80 to 95% roughly, they will tell us that 40 to 60% of what you share gets forgotten.

40 to 60%, that's a huge amount of information. So I come back to my original question that when I started to share with you, is this not, how do I tell them more? But how do I get them to remember more? Everything that we should do, everything that we do should be about memorability and retention and the way we communicate.

It shouldn't be about presenting or public speaking. So we'll take that one shift. That idea from presenting to having a conversation, and we let that be the mind shift, the primary number one thing that we think about. Then everything else that we do will follow suit with that. Now, let me share just a couple of more principles that I want to make sure you walk away with today.

The very first one is what I call mind share competition. Mind share competition. Here's what I mean by that. Let's say you're running a meeting, and let's say it's eight o'clock in the morning. What else are your folks thinking about? What else is on their mind now at eight o'clock in the morning? I would most likely tell you, they're saying, where am I need my coffee?

I'm not; I'm not even awake yet. That's a mindshare competition. Let's say you're running a meeting from 11 to 12, and it gets to 1145. What are people thinking about? They're thinking about lunch. In my typical class, it goes from eight to six. I do a three-day program. Just focus around communication, and at five o'clock on day one, I can promise you the Mo, the majority of my participants are saying, okay, when is Bart?

Can it be done? We've got one more full hour to go before this is over. That's all Mindshare competition. Now guys, please realize you will never ever hit zero. It doesn't happen. But your goal as a communicator should be, how do I reduce that mindshare competition as low as I can possibly get it? So here's a couple of other examples.

Time of day can be mindshare competition. The temperature in the room can be Mindshare. Competition. Season of the year can be Mindshare, competition, Christmas time, Thanksgiving time, holiday time, all those kinds of things can be Mindshare. Competition. I remember earlier in my career doing some work for a beer company, and in the afternoon, they would roll in this great little wagon with snacks.

Now there'd be pretzels; there'd be peanuts, there'd be nachos. It was tremendous. But because they were a beer company, they rolled in a little bucket of beer for folks. It was wonderful, and they, they, they brought it in a little red flyer wagon. It was just awesome. But they rolled that in, and then I still had to teach class, mind share competition.

I flew into Washington DC on nine 10 to teach a class, and then we had nine 11 mind share competition. Anything. That's in your listener's mind that you are competing with is your mind share competition. I want you to do your best, do your best to reduce that as much as you possibly can. Now, on the other side of that coin is a concept of what I call mental real estate.

Here's what I mean by mental real estate. How much of your listener's mind. Do you own? So here's an example. Your inbox, an email comes in from Bart, and you have, you think this, I would rather die than open Bart's email. Or you get a voicemail, and someone says, Hey, bill, this is Bart, and you go, I'd rather hit delete than listen to that voicemail.

That individual has no mental real estate in your mind. In class sometimes. I'll give the example of guys, I found out that one of our presidents is speaking locally and I thought it might be interesting to go listen to them and I'll say, I'll just pick a president, Bill Clinton, and I'll say, all right guys, how many of you would like to go listen to bill Clinton speak?

You don't have to go. But since we're talking about communication, I thought it might be interesting, and I'll get them to raise their hands, and there'll be a couple of people who will raise their hand. And I'll say, all right, we don't even know what he's talking about, but he has mental real estate in your mind, but you have perceived value on what he might bring.

And then I can bring up another politician, and I'll say, who wants to go? And nobody raises their hand. And I will say, no mental real estate. The point of the concept is this guy, what kind of mental real estate are you establishing. You establish that mental real estate every single day. It's not just when you do what you call presenting or public speaking; it's how you handle yourself in an email.

It's how you handle yourself on a phone call. It's how you handle yourself walking down a hallway. It's how you handle yourself in an elevator. Everything that you do either builds your mental real estate, or it destroys your mental real estate. Your ability to communicate is one of the most important skills that you can invest your time and your effort into.

Guys, if I could write the script, if I could have it my way, every 17 and 18 years old would get this kind of information, I think it would dramatically change. Their college presentations, for lack of a better term, it would change how they communicate. When someone says, why should I hire you over everybody else?

And it would dramatically change how they communicate with their spouse or their significant other. Well, I'd ask you to do today is to take some of the information that I shared with you, some of these simple principles, and start applying them into your everyday conversations. Apply them into your small group meetings, apply them to your zoom sessions or a webcast.

Apply them into your one-on-ones, apply them to your conversation with your children. I began. It will; I believe it will begin to revolutionize how you come across. You'll begin to people get people to say, wow, that was interesting, and tell me more, and in my mind, more importantly, you'll build your mental real estate.

One of my favorite quotes from John Maxwell was this. That leadership is nothing more or nothing less than pure influence. Every single day. The way we communicate influences people. We influence our children, our customers, our clients. We influence our friends. Your ability to communicate is the one thing that will set you apart from everybody else.

Guys, I can't thank you enough for your time today. I look forward to seeing you the next time at the remarkability Institute.

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Bart queen here, and welcome to the remarkability Institute. Now, if you've been following me over the last couple of weeks or so, we've been focused on this idea of how do you physically come across or what I call your delivery mechanics.

[00:01:42] Your delivery mechanics are just as important as your content, and many times folks will spend hours and hours and hours on crafting content. You've probably done that. Maybe you even spent all day on a Sunday. You didn't spend time with your family. You locked yourself in your home office, maybe even drove to the office, and said, I've got to get this presentation together.

[00:02:05] And you go to the nth degree on what that PowerPoint slide is going to look like, and if you're crunched on time, like the majority of folks, you're doing that kind of twisting and tweaking right up to the very last minute. What just absolutely amazes me. Out of all the years that I've been coaching and helping people is this, they spend hours and hours on making a perfect PowerPoint slide, but they won't spend any time around what does this physical thing, you're you, yourself look like when you're sharing information.

[00:02:46] Remember that I've shared with you many times that what you say and how you say it, guys, has to match. Those two things have to be the same, and when they're not the same, people don't buy into what you're saying. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. It's got to be congruent. You've seen this many, many times.

[00:03:07] We can see this from our politicians, our world leaders, many times, maybe a government office where they're sharing information, and you go, I just don't believe what they're telling me. Often, that's because what they say and how they say it just doesn't match. You've also heard me say that if I could give this to every 17 and 18 years old, that I would know guys.

[00:03:31] Anytime I have an opportunity to travel internationally, I go overseas. I do my best to find a youth group or a nonprofit that I can give this information to. That's how important I feel like it is. Getting it out to our high school students, I think, is critical. I can sit next to somebody on an airplane, and they'll say, well, Bart, what do you do?

[00:03:54] And I'll come back sometimes, and I'll say, I'm in the confidence business. And they'll say, well, what does that mean? And I'll share with them how this skillset, just this vehicle in helping our young people, gives them the confidence to stand up on their feet, articulate their message, what they're passionate about to get out there and make a difference in whatever they want to do in their world.

[00:04:20] In my years of working with MBA students, one of the schools that I worked with came back, and they had done some type of a small survey, and they found that the students who went through this program went through this confidence-building program, learn to articulate themselves. If they practiced and showed those things during their internship, they received a 10 to 15% higher.

[00:04:45] First-time pay offer than someone who was not giving you. Giving anyone the ability to articulate what they're passionate about, what's important to them to communicate their message is the key competitive advantage that you're looking for. It will set you apart from everybody else. You and I have both heard our ability to communicate verbally, and our ability to communicate from a written perspective are the two things that will set you apart above everybody else.

[00:05:20] But it's the two things we spend the least amount of time with. So as we walked through our program today, guys, as we share our time, I want you to become aware of the number one skill. The number one skill that will separate you from everybody else. What I want you to do is not only learn about it, but I want you as soon as this podcast is over, begin to implement it with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues, with your presentations, with your demonstrations, with your WebExes, with whatever you're doing virtually.

[00:05:55] Now, here's what I'm going to promise that you're going to find. Number one, you are going to be perceived as far more confident. Number two, you're going to find that you're far more articulate in your information because you're focused because of this one skillset. And number three, and in my mind, the most important, and you've heard me say it many times, that you can exponentially grow your ability to influence people.

[00:06:22] Now, if you've been listening to some of my podcasts, I've given you an overview of your posture, the number one skill that communicates confidence before you open your mouth. I gave you some ideas and tips and tricks around movement. Now remember this, the number one reason you move is to raise that level of engagement.

[00:06:40] The question that we're going to look at today is what drives movement, and that's that idea of your eye contact in my mind. In my mind, of all the delivery skills you're going to look at the delivery mechanics, your eye contact is the number one skill you should practice. Guys, forget about posture.

[00:07:01] Forget about movement, forget about gestures. Forget about all those things. Focus just on this one. The simple idea of your eye contact. Now, here's, here's your rule of thumb. It's that simple. It's this easy if you want to come across as knowledgeable if you want to be perceived as a subject matter expert if you want to be able to drive people to take action, if you want to be influential in what you do if you want to connect with people, if any of those things mean anything to you, this one skillset.

[00:07:40] Will be the foundation. It will be the cornerstone. It will be the catalyst that will create that for you. So here's your very simple rule of thumb. Do not speak, do not speak period, unless you're looking at a soft set of eyes. Do not speak unless you're looking at a set of eyes. This will change everything.

[00:08:06] Little children do the best at this. Parents, I want you to think back when your children were, say two to about five or six. Yeah. How many times when you were at your laptop, or you're doing something, you're watching a game. One of your children came up to your side, grabbed your shirt, sleeve, your pant leg, and said, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy.

[00:08:31] I have a question for you as you think about that, as you remember that. When did they stop? They did not stop until you looked at them. Little children are brilliant cause dad, mom; if you're not looking at me, you're not listening. How many times when you were younger did a parent walk up to you and say, young man, young lady, you look at me, what I'm speaking to you.

[00:09:01] They wanted that eye contact when you were a child, or maybe how many times have you said that to your child? Young man, young lady. You look at me when I'm talking to you now, in that situation, most likely you were kind of in trouble. So make an application of a teacher that you admired, whether that was high school or college.

[00:09:24] Think about who did the majority of your teachers talk to. If I thought about that, most of my teachers talk to the chalkboard or the whiteboard as they taught, and I can tell you from my experience that's what I may be picked up my phone. I had a chit chat with a buddy. I looked at something important to me.

[00:09:45] I thought about what I was going to do after I got out of class. It gave me an opportunity to check, just check out. But guys, if you'll think about the teacher that engaged you, that you loved learning from that you said to yourself right now, if I had an opportunity to take a class from him or her, I would, I'd put a $20 bill on the table and bet the fact was that they looked at you when they were speaking with you when they were teaching you, and you were engaged in this process.

[00:10:20] The number one thing you want to do is only speak when you're looking at a set of eyes. So let's go to the other side of the coin. How many times have you been in a business situation or a business setting, and the person spent the whole time talking to their PowerPoint slide? We've all experienced that, and you're like, Ugh, this is just painful to experience.

[00:10:42] You're looking at your watch going. Okay. How much longer, I have to get out of here cause there's no engagement to it. How many times, both for you guys and you ladies, has your spouse or significant other walked into the kitchen, the living room, wherever you happen to be. You're watching the game, you're on your laptop, you're doing email, you're cooking, whatever it may happen to be, and the spouse walks in, and you continue to do what you do, and you go, Hey, on, how was your day?

[00:11:16] We've all done that, or how many times have you been doing something like that, and your child walked in maybe as a teenager and they're trying to have a conversation with you, and you're not even paying attention or vice versa. How many times have you walked into your children's room, and they're doing whatever they're doing, and you're trying to have a conversation, and they're not looking at you?

[00:11:36] Gets to be pretty frustrating. Today with our technology, most of us have our head down, and our eyes are on our phone. I always get such a kick as they filmed somebody walking across some type of an open area and they're on their phone, they're not paying attention, and they trip and fall in a fountain, or they run into somebody else, or they run into a post.

[00:11:57] We've all done that the next time. Gentlemen, here's a challenge just for us guys. The next time your spouse walks into the room that you're at and you're on your laptop, or you're watching the game, do me a big favor just as an experiment. Turn off the game, close the laptop, look up and say, Hey, how was your day?

[00:12:20] And just pay attention to their expression. Watch what happens. I can promise you one of them will say, okay, what have you been up to? Where have you been? Or how much money have you spent? Gentlemen, you'll remember that when you first started falling in love, you were Google's eyes across the table.

[00:12:43] You couldn't get enough of looking at her face. And now there are five years of marriage. There are two children. There's work. Life is busy, life is hectic, and we don't even take the time to connect. If you'll think about it, our communication is about two things. It's really about a connection and a conversation, and sometimes the people that we love and care for the most are the ones that suffer the most because we take it for granted.

[00:13:18] The number one skill that you can practice is this idea of your eye contact. So let's dive a little deeper into that and get into some principles that may help you implement this into your everyday life. Western business-standard States that I can look at you for three to five seconds, which is an acceptable amount of time and the way we do business in the Western part of the world that is acceptable for both men and women.

[00:14:32] Now, I'm not saying if you're in a group environment, you look at someone, and you go. A thousand, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4,005, I'm done with you. I'm not saying that that roughly is the amount of time that's comfortable for you to look at someone. What it boils down to is one thought per person.

[00:14:57] Just one simple thought per person in a group environment. It becomes a series of one on one conversations. Let me say that again. It is a series of one on one conversations. You can only talk to one person at a time, but what we end up doing is what most people do, which is what I call I spray. You throw your head from one side of the room to the other.

[00:15:29] Now you're going to go, Bart, I'm looking at people. Yes, you probably are, but you're not connecting with people. That becomes the key differentiator. Your eye contact gives you the ability to connect, and it allows you to focus as I'm coaching folks and looking at people many, many times. To me, they look like Rainbird sprinklers.

[00:15:54] You've seen that that kind of, as you watch a sprinkler across a lawn, they're not connected, but they're going, ah, boom, boom, boom, boom. Some people look like a lighthouse, and their head goes from one side to the other, and from that side to the other. I see this a lot in our executives, and I see this many in world leaders when they use a teleprompter.

[00:16:20] The next time you're watching an executive or a world leader and they're using a teleprompter, notice what they'll do. They'll look at the teleprompter; they'll get whatever they're supposed to say. They'll talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. They'll throw their head goes to the other side. They get what they need off the teleprompter, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and they'll go back to the other side of the teleprompter, and they're just throwing their head back and forth and back and forth.

[00:16:46] Now if they're up on a stage and they're moving, if you pay close attention, you see them get stuck in between the two teleprompters, you will never see them pass that teleprompter. But if you look at the people who know how to connect with people, they know how to use their posture, their movement, and their eye contact, they're engaging.

[00:17:07] They're not stuck in these boundaries. They're looking at a set of eyes, and they're moving toward that person, and they're engaging them. No, I gave you the idea that it's three to five seconds. So let me come back to that point just for a second. Let's say you and I have an opportunity to go-to classic, more classic Asian cultures, so I'm going to ask a question.

[00:17:32] Is that eye contact three to five acceptable in that part of the world or unacceptable? If you said unacceptable, you're correct. From a classic perspective, there, eye contact is more one to three in a classic Asian culture. It's softer. It's not right or wrong. That's just that cultural element. I distinctly remember early in my career, the first opportunity I had to go to Japan and teach.

[00:18:05] I spent one full week with a man from Japan teaching me the ins and outs of the Japanese culture and what was acceptable and what wasn't acceptable. I remember thinking, I will never remember all these things. I remember thinking, I just don't want to put my foot in my mouth. I remember thinking that once I got there, I had to soften that eye contact because I didn't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

[00:18:34] All these ideas are all completely driven by one of the very first concepts I gave you of being listener focused. Now, let me just mention that again. If you happen to be in a group of 15 people around a boardroom table, every single person at that table will let you know what's comfortable for them in your eye contact.

[00:18:53] So let's say I'm looking at John and we get to three seconds and he looks away. Well, John has just given me a big clue that he's not comfortable with anymore with that, but I can look over at bill or Mary or Susie. Or Margaret and I can look three to five, and they're comfortable. Everybody will give you the signal of what works for them.

[00:19:17] Your job is not to make any feel. Anyone feel uncomfortable. Your job is to connect with them, not to make them uncomfortable. Now, let's take that eye contact one step further, and I will keep this focused at just the men. We mentioned that in the Western part of the world, three to five seconds is acceptable.

[00:19:38] We talked about the classic Asian part of the world that it's more one to three. So let's go more to middle Eastern type cultures and just keep it focused around the men. Ladies, this is a different topic, a different subject. It's a different thing and eye contact with you. So from that perspective, the three to five is, is it in that culture longer?

[00:20:03] Or is it shorter? Classically, it's acceptable to look longer. It's all also acceptable from a proximity perspective. They stand closer, or you and I might feel uncomfortable in that proximity. We all have a circle, guys. These are not right or wrong things. All I want you to do is think about, is it effective, or is it ineffective?

[00:20:31] You have to be able to control your mechanics. You have to be able to control your eye contact. But the principle I want you to remember is you don't speak unless you're looking at a set of eyes. Now, if you'll take that to heart, a couple of things are going to happen. If you're doing demos and you're doing that virtually, this becomes difficult.

[00:20:52] You're going to have to focus here, but you're always going to want to talk to that laptop. If you're doing that demo face to face, you can't talk to your laptop anymore. If you're doing PowerPoint, you can no longer talk to your PowerPoint slide. You only speak when you're looking at a set of eyes. This will change everything.

[00:21:12] The majority of people out of my experience, 80% of the time when they're doing PowerPoint, 80% of the time they're talking to the slide, 20% of the time talking the customer or the client. Even if you just take that paradigm shift. 80% of the time with the customer, the client, 20% of the time you're talking to the slide, you'll find that it is not only revolutionary, but it's evolutionary and how you begin to be perceived by your listeners.

[00:21:40] The only time you speak is when you're looking at a set of eyes. Now, I'll always get somebody in class who say, okay, Bart, there's gotta be an exception to the rule. Absolutely. Of course. So a couple of things to think about. You're in the car, you're driving, and you have someone in the passenger seat. Every time you speak, you're not going to look at them.

[00:22:00] You're, you're going to crash if you do that, but you're going to glance over, you know that you do that, that's fine. The idea is to drive and push yourself only to speak when looking at a set of eyes. Are you going to be able to do that a hundred percent, no. The next time you speak at your speak with your spouse, can you make it an effort to connect with them?

[00:22:25] Of course. Can you make an effort to connect with your children? Yes. So the next time you're downstairs, and they're upstairs, instead of screaming at them, come to dinner, do your homework, whatever it may happen to be. Walk upstairs, look them in the eye, and have a conversation with them. Now, at first, they're probably going to freak out on you a little bit, just cause they're not used to it.

[00:22:49] They'll get comfortable with it. In today's world, the one thing that will set you out separate us out from everybody else. It's just that eye contact when we shake hands, just looking at someone's square in the eye. Having that nice firm handshake traditionally has always been a sign of confidence.

[00:23:11] Whether I'm 16 years old, whether I'm 12 years old, whether I'm 55 years old, you want the ability to connect. This is the one skillset that will separate you from everybody else. Now, here's what I have learned as I am sharing this with you. When we were little, as I mentioned with the children, they don't hesitate to look at people when they speak, but as we grow older, we learn the extremes.

[00:23:41] You'll recognize this. The first extreme is the idea of intimidation. We learned to get into people's faces. Most of the time, we're upset. Maybe we're angry. We step into them, and we're eye to eye. You see this in the military, maybe a drill Sergeant. Look at it, someone getting after them. They've got that incense of intimidation.

[00:24:05] I'm not talking about intimidating people. The other side of the coin, as we get older and we learn intimacy, learns how to be intimate with someone. We learn to gaze into their eyes and chat with them. I am not talking about the extremes. What I'm talking about is that the middle section is just called engagement.

[00:24:27] Your job is not to intimidate. Your job is not to be intimate. Your job is just to connect, and the best way you can connect with anyone is to look at them when you speak to the best of your ability—this one scale. If you forget about everything else I teach you around delivery mechanics or what you might call body language, if you'll just embrace this one thing, just this one thing you'll find, it will change everything in your life.

[00:24:58] I distinctly remember listening to a woman talks about eye contact guys, and I remember realizing that I truly had never looked my mom square in the eye and told her how much I loved her. I had never done that. My father had passed, and my mom, after my father passed, she and I grieved. We grieved differently, and for five years, we didn't talk to each other.

[00:25:25] I heard this woman talk about eye contact. I walked out of that little class. I went back to my apartment, I packed my bag, and I drove the four and a half hours to where my mom was at. I looked at my mom's square in the eye and told her how much I loved her and how sorry I was. My relationship with her was never the same.

[00:25:51] Shortly after that, Alzheimer's began to take my mom. What I realized was if I hadn't taken that moment to connect with her, if I hadn't taken that moment to look her in the eye and tell her how much I loved her, she would never have known that. If you look at what I'm sharing with you is only this idea of presentation skills, you're completely missing out.

[00:26:19] Oh, what I'm talking about, these are life skills. These are our communication skills. These are the things we do with our children. These are the things we do with our parents. These are the things we do with our colleagues and our customers. You and I, as humans, are begging to be engaged, and we're begging to be connected.

[00:26:41] And the best way that you can change everything in your life is one simple thing. Just start looking at people only speak when you're looking at a set of eyes. I share all this with you because it's made such a difference in my life. This skillset not only changed me personally, but it changed me professionally.

[00:27:04] They'll skillset not only became my job, but it became my passion and my purpose. My reason for wanting to share this and these podcasts is because I want you to experience what I've experienced. I want you to know that change and the difference it can make in you and the difference it will make in others.

[00:27:28] Your ability to connect and your ability to the conversation have a conversation are two of the greatest things that you can give to another human being as you roll out into your week. As you think about what I've shared, I just want you to start looking at your spouse, your significant other, and your children.

[00:27:48] Just start there for me. Guys only speak when you're looking in their eyes and watch what happens over some time.

[00:27:59] It will change everything, and it will change you guys. This is Bart queen. This has been the remarkability Institute. I can't wait to see you next time.

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Hey there. Bart queen here. Welcome to the remarkability Institute today. Guys, I want to take a very strong look at one area around communication in that physical delivery on how you come across, whether you're doing something virtually or doing something face to face. In this particular area. If I could write the script, if I could have my way, if I wave my magic wand, I'd make sure every 17 and 18 years old got this kind of information.

[00:02:14] Guys, I truly believe it would change how they do their college presentations, for lack of a better term. I truly believe it would change in that first job interview when someone says to them, why should I hire you over everybody else? And I, I believe it would begin to change how they're going to interact with their spouse or significant other whoever they're going to spend their lives with.

[00:02:38] One of my famous sayings, or one of the one of the things I like to repeat, one of the things that are important to me is this very simple concept that people buy what they see before they buy, what they hear, that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear. Now, if we. Embrace that concept.

[00:02:59] Then what we say and how we say it has to match. So for those of you who are parents out there, I want you to imagine that you're looking at one of your children, especially when they're younger, and you say, did you do that? And you can envision your son or your daughter putting their head down, kind of scuffing their feet and saying, no mom, no dad, I didn't do that.

[00:03:24] And you can look right at them. I know you are guilty. I know you did it. That is a great example of what you say and how you say it has to match. Maybe you've had the experience where you've met someone, and you went up to shake their hand, and you reached out, and you said, very nice to meet you, and they looked at the floor and said, yes, nice to meet you as well.

[00:03:52] That's another great example of what you say and how you say it has to match. The challenge here is when they don't match your credibility, and your trust factor goes down. The classic example I see, especially in the corporate world, if someone is in a small group meeting, they've done a presentation, they'll say, now are the, are there any questions?

[00:04:19] And when they say, are there any questions? They, too, they take two steps back if you think about it; I'm sure you've seen that situation play over and over and over again. Or maybe by chance, the presentation is over. An executive in the room raises their hand and asks a question, and the person who is about to answer it steps back two or three steps.

[00:04:43] I can promise you, even though they don't realize that they're stepping back, the visual that the audience sees says this is what it says to them. They're on the run. They don't believe what they've been telling us, and they're not confident in what they're telling us. This very simple concept of what you say and how you say it has to match is powerful.

[00:05:08] People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. Guys, I know you've been in a situation where someone's stepped up front, and you went, Hmm, boy, something about him or her. I'm not trusting. I do not like it. I'm concerned about whether we want to believe that people judge a book by its cover or whether we want to accept that concept.

[00:05:30] It's true. As soon as you and I walk into a room to do something, people will begin to look you up and look you down, and they get an assessment about you. They're already going to begin to say, wow, this looks like it's going to be good. I'm a little concerned. I trust them. No, I don't trust them.

[00:05:51] They're going to make all those perceptions before you ever start. So if you happen to be at your desk, you happen to be at your house, you're seated. You got a pen and paper in front of you. I want you to write that simple concept down to people by what they see before buying what they hear. I want to be able to build on that idea.

[00:06:14] Now, as we walked through this podcast today, guys, I'm going to be giving you a high-level overview of what I call the D delivery mechanics, the pieces that makeup everything that you need to think about when you're delivering a message. Now that's whether that's face to face or that's virtual. So realize if you're doing something virtually, they do not see some of these things, but these other mechanical pieces will come through in the way you carry yourself.

[00:06:43] They're going to hear this through your voice. If you're face to face, I want you to embrace this idea. Every single thing counts, which you don't think counts, counts, which you may not have worried about, may count to one of your listeners. Now. I'm not asking you to change who you are. I'm not asking you to change your choice of clothes.

[00:07:09] I am asking you to think through each one of those pieces and make sure that there isn't anything that you're doing that's a distraction. If there's something that's a distraction, I want you to think about getting rid of it. Just this week, I led a program around virtual communication, and one of the things that I highlighted in this virtual perspective is just for us guys, what is your shirt look like so I can incur and encourage you enough in those situations.

[00:07:43] Get rid of stripes and get rid of plaids. When it comes across on the video, sometimes it can seem like those things are moving, and then it can be a distraction for you. For you ladies, many times, you may wear a lot of Jangles or bracelets on your arm, and every time you took your hand up or take your hand down, you'll get that jingling sound.

[00:08:05] I'm not asking you guys again to change anything about what you do.

[00:08:09] I'm

[00:08:09] Bart Queen: asking, I'm asking you to build awareness around what may be a distraction. So let's take a couple of things in mind. Realize that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear. Big principle to think about. And number two, get rid of any of those distractions that may cause your listener, whether you're virtual or face to face, to not pay attention to what you're saying.

[00:08:35] Now, as we get into the area of the make of the mechanics, there are a couple of things, or let me give you a list of those things that I want us to build awareness around. Number one is your posture, whether you're standing or you're seated. Number two is physical movement. Whether you're standing or seated, whether you're face to face or you're virtual, it matters.

[00:09:00] I contact one of the probably the most important skill I want you to truly embrace and probably make a paradigm shift around from there, your physical gestures, what you're doing with your hands, your facial expressions, what you're doing with your face. You're smiling and realize that people can hear a smile on your face, which leads us to the last big component around your vocal variety.

[00:09:28] Now, vocal variety has five core components to it. There's the rate you speak fast, low; there's volume, loud, soft, there are your God-given pitch and tone. Just how your voice sounds, there's influxion, which is up, down in your voice, or maybe some of you might call that modulation, and then the power of the pause.

[00:09:56] This is your ability to give a sense of a sound bite. This is your ability to get rid of your ums and ahs. It may take us two different sessions to get through this, depending on how we break it apart. So if we only get through half of it, I want you to realize, look for that second podcast on your delivery mechanics and make sure you pick up the 72nd half.

[00:10:22] So guys, let me get into that very first one around posture. Posture is the number one skill that communicates confidence before you open your mouth. It is the one thing where people will look you up and look you down and get a sense of how you come across. I want you to be perceived as confident before you ever open your mouth posture.

[00:10:50] I would also believe it is one of your four power skills. This one scale will separate you from everybody else. Now, as I walk you through this, if we were doing a typical three-day program, or I was coaching you for a Ted talk or a keynote speech. I ask you to do this, you're going to go, Bart, this is uncomfortable, so I want to bring you back to a principle that I taught you in one of our other podcasts, and that was this idea of disparity.

[00:11:22] I'm going to ask you to do things. You're going to go, Bart, that's way too uncomfortable. I don't like that. That makes me feel stiff. But here's the disparity piece. Your listeners get to go, wow. They look confident. They look open. So your rule of thumb is this, do not go with how it feels. Go with the impact it creates.

[00:11:46] Guys, if you go with how it feels, you're never going to embrace these skillsets because they're uncomfortable. It's a skill set. So think about maybe learning a sport, and the coach was asking you to do it over and over again, and you went coach. That just doesn't feel right. And the coach eventually made you do it so many times that it started to feel natural.

[00:12:10] For those of you who are musically inclined, maybe learning a musical instrument. You went through the same thing. I remember my freshman year in college, trying to learn how to play the guitar. I practiced and practiced until my fingers bled, and I finally said, I quit. I can't do this. I never pushed past that pain enough to embrace the idea of making it feel like it's more fluid.

[00:12:36] Now for some of us, that curve as long, and for some of us, that curve is short. Every single one of these skillsets will be different for every single person. Now, if I had you in a three-day program, I would get you up on your feet. I'd put everybody in a big circle, and then I would get you to freeze, and we would start to look at some of these postures.

[00:13:02] The first posture we're going to kind of take a look at is typically a man's posture. Now, guys, we tend to stand with our feet more shoulder with a military background sports background. The other structure or the other posture? IC, is that what I call the GQ pose? One hand in a pocket, you throw out kind of a leg.

[00:13:26] You look like you're modeling for Nordstroms, JC Penny's, or Macy's. Those are the typical, bigger postures I see from men. Women do something a little bit different. They'll throw out a leg, put a hand on a hip, tilt ahead. It's what I call more of a girly pose. You'll also see women a lot of times for the across the Lake, right over each other, put their feet side by side, and they'll stand cross-legged.

[00:13:56] Or I see both a lot of men and women who will stand with one leg out, and they'll put their foot upon a heel. Now I see the majority of this. A lot of time, guys, when women, when you ladies are wearing your nice heels because your foot hurts, you'll rest your foot up on that heel to take the pressure off your feet.

[00:14:19] What ends up happening in that situation? You end up swiveling your foot and moving it, and it becomes a distraction. So if you'll do me a favor and start paying attention the next time you're in your corporate meeting, you're at a conference, you're watching someone present. Notice their posture. Now, you may have noticed it before, but you weren't able to articulate it.

[00:14:44] Now, with each one of these postures, I give them just silly names so that you can begin to identify it, and you can begin to see it. The posture I want you to take. And this is going to feel uncomfortable. Guys, I want you to put your feet hip-width apart. Now, basically, for most men, depending on your size, is two to three inches apart.

[00:15:12] For you ladies, it could be anywhere from two to probably a half-inch apart, depending on your God-given structure. If your more to the taller side, more to the lean side, you may see that you can bring your feet a little bit closer together. For those of us who are what I might say thicker in our body structures like myself, you might have to pull your feet a little bit apart.

[00:15:44] The second piece to this posture is where everybody fights me the most, is I want you to relax your arms just to your sides. Now the best way to do this, if you have one of those full-length mirrors, if you're at home somewhere, stand in front of that mirror and notice two to three inches apart with your feet and relax your arms to your side.

[00:16:07] Now, when you're doing this, if we were doing this in the circle environment that I talked to you about, what you're going to see is you start looking at your colleagues. You're more focused on their face, then you're more focused on their body, but you'll get a lot of folks who want to bring their hands up and put them hands folded dead center, or you'll see some people who drop their arms, and we'll do what I call the fig leaf, where it's directly in front of them.

[00:16:34] Dead center. If you'll do that, what you'll begin to notice is that's where the focal point is. Your hands become the focal point instead of your face. If you'll come to this posture two to three inches apart, arms relaxed to your sides; it is what we call a ready position. So for those of you who are sports-minded, if you'll think about it, no matter what sport you've got, you have a ready position.

[00:17:03] You have a starting position. You don't get stuck in that starting position. But that's where you start. Now. I want you to gesture, do whatever you want to do with your hands. And I want you to move. If you're up on a stage, move from point a to point B. If you're in a conference room, go from a seated position to the whiteboard.

[00:17:26] Go up to the PowerPoint slide. I want you to move, and I want you to gesture, but I always want you to come back to what we call that ready position. That ready position is neutral. It is neutral. Now, a lot of folks, a man especially will fold their arms at you, okay? This makes you look defensive.

[00:17:51] The majority of the focus by your listener, whether you're seated or standing, should be at your face. Now guys, just listening to this can be difficult because this is a skill set, and this is where I believe behavior change is so important. You have to be able to practice. It's that repetitive, do it over and over again.

[00:18:18] And this is where in our three-day program, you get that behavior change, and you get that skill development. It is critical to your success that you get that hands-on coaching. I remember when I first learned this, I thought, Oh my gosh, I can't even move. And I related it to the very first snow skiing lesson I took.

[00:18:41] I was probably 26 years old, and I remember taking a lesson. I remember the ski instructor saying, okay, Bart, bend your knees, great. Grab your poles, super Ben forward, excellent. Point your toes inward. And then he said, all right, all I want you to do is go down the bunny slope. And I remember looking at him and saying, I can't even move from this position, let alone do what you're asking to do.

[00:19:10] That's how cumbersome this can feel, but I can't encourage you enough. You have to fight past it. So as you think about the skillset, here are a couple of ways I want you to practice. When you're standing in front of your sink in the bathroom, and you're shaving, you're brushing your teeth. I want you to go to this ready position.

[00:20:12] When you're standing in line at the grocery store, I want you to go to this ready position. When you're standing in line at the ATM, and you're trying to get some cash out of the machine, go to this ready position. When you're standing in the hallway talking with your friends or your colleagues or the people you work with, go to this ready position the next time you go out in a social event, as you're standing, having a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, cold beer, whatever it may happen to be.

[00:20:38] Guys, scan at the audience, look at the people in the social environment, and just look at their posture. Notice how people are standing now, I can promise you, nobody's going to walk up to you and go, wow, John, your posture is outstanding. They're not going to say that. They're going to walk up to you and say why you look confident.

[00:20:59] You look like you're ready to go. They will notice something about you, but they will not be able to articulate what it is. That's an awesome thing, but if you go by how it feels, you'll never embrace that idea. It took me forever to embrace that skill set. But now, guys, I've been sending that way for the last 30 years, and if I do something different now, that different posture is what feels uncomfortable.

[00:21:31] Now, I mentioned this briefly that your posture is the first of your power skills. This is the one thing that will make you come across. The most powerful to begin with. Before you open your mouth,

[00:21:44]I want to make sure that this becomes one of your strengths, and it may take some practice just like riding a bicycle, but once you find that you can do that, guys, you will find that this is the most comfortable thing you can do. Now, that's kind of an overview of this idea of the ready position of your posture.

[00:22:08] Now, I want to link that with this idea of movement.

[00:22:13]Movement also is part of your power skills. Now, eye contact drives movement, but let me give you some principles around movement that I want you to note. The number one reason you move in any situation around a small boardroom table, you're up on a stage in front of 50 people, 500 or 45,000 people.

[00:22:40] I want you to get this. I don't want you to miss this. The number one reason you move is to raise the level of engagement, to raise the level of engagement your high school teachers if they were effective. Teachers did this a lot. Remember being seated in the back row of the class. Say it was Western save and you're bored stiff, and you're reading the latest sports illustrated.

[00:23:06] You're reading Cosmopolitan magazine, you're writing a love note. Whatever may happen to be, you're not paying any attention, and that teacher decided to go up the side aisle as he or she was speaking. If you remember this, I bet you tucked that love note into your folder or you hit the magazine. The number one reason you move in any situation is to raise that level of engagement.

[00:23:33] Now, most people don't move properly. If you're anything like me, you paced. You went back and forth and back and forth. I remember someone saying, Bart, you look like a caged lion. You see a lion in a zoo paced back and forth on one side of their cage. That's not movement. That's pacing. And I was the King of that for a long, long time.

[00:23:59] Now the idea of movement, there's a couple of principles you have to embrace. Number one, movement is driven by eye contact. Movement is driven by eye contact. Movement is driven by eye contact. Now the second piece that makes that come to life is this idea that eyes pull you forward. Eyes pull you forward.

[00:24:25] That happens because the premise is this, you always speak when you're looking at a set of eyes. When I dive into eye contact after movement, whether it's in this episode or the following episode, I'll talk about the power of that, but right now, I want you to realize that eyes drive you forward.

[00:24:44] So if I'm up on a stage and I want to move one side to the other, I need to be looking at a side of a set of eyes, and I just walk across the stage. I'm as if I'm having a conversation with that image individual. If I'm around a boardroom table and I'm on one side, and I want to move to the other, I might look at the person on the far side of the room, have eye contact, eye contact with them, share my thought and walk to the other side.

[00:25:11] Eyes always pull you forward. Now when you do that, that leads us to the third principle. That is, you're looking for an anchor. That anchor is what pulls you forward. It also dictates the distance that you want to go to. So if I'm in a round, a boardroom table and I'm at a corner, and I want to go to the far corner on the other side, I could look at that set of eyes, begin to speak, and I can pull myself around to that individual.

[00:25:44] I can stop halfway. I could stop a quarter of the way. There are no right or wrong eyes pull you forward. You're looking for an anchor. The number one purpose of the movement is to raise that level of engagement—those very simple concepts. Now give you command presence anywhere in the room. I want you to own the space that you're in.

[00:26:14] If you feel like you're losing someone at the far end of the room, go in that direction. If you feel like you've lost someone at a boardroom table, go in that direction. If you want to reengage an audience and use PowerPoint on a screen, get up, walk to the screen purely the combination of your posture, and your movement will drive things forward.

[00:26:39] You'll also be able to keep that engagement higher. Now, let me remind you at a one POS podcast I shared with you, you have three major goals. Build trust, build a relationship, and build engagement. This is just one way through movement to keep your engagement higher, critical to your success. Now, most people will say, well, Bart, that's kind of uncomfortable.

[00:27:06] I'm around a boardroom table, and I just get up uncomfortable for you, engaging for your listener. I know typically, if I'm dealing with an executive-level audience and I'm not using PowerPoint, I always pick a couple of places that I get up. I go to a whiteboard, I go to a chalkboard, and I write something down.

[00:27:27] Now, here's what's kind of interesting. When I get up, and everybody goes with me to the whiteboard or the chalkboard, I've draw, I've driven there, their eye contact in a different direction. I've made them shift in their seat. They have to turn their head. That just skyrockets engagement, and then as soon as I come back to my desk, I come back to the boardroom table.

[00:27:49] I'm having a discussion. Again, it's a conversation, guys. This is one of the most. Powerful tools you can put in your toolbox. Number one skill that that develops. Command presence before you open your mouth, your posture. One of the key skills in driving engagement is this idea of movement. Integrate those two skills into anything that you do.

[00:28:17] Whether it's a one on one, it's five people, or it's 5,000. Now, Tim, when I started this podcast, I opened up with this idea, this very simple idea that you're trying to drive engagement and that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear. These are just two elements, two elements that will help you command the room that will keep engagement higher, and they will make you be perceived.

[00:28:49] As a subject matter expert. So I leave you with one thought on this podcast. John Maxwell said that leadership is nothing more, nothing less than pure influence. Your ability to influence people, your ability to drive them forward, to get them to take action, to influence them from point a to point B is your ability to communicate.

[00:29:16] So as we wrap this podcast, as you're going into your week, you go into your day, you go into tomorrow, I want you to begin to think about what one place could I integrate my posture and this idea of movement to my next talk, my next presentation or my next meeting that I handle onsite? Guys, I want you to be confident.

[00:29:39] I want you to be strong, and I want you to increase your ability to influence folks. Guys. It's been a pleasure being with you a short amount of time today. It's always great to see you. This is Bart queen at the remarkability expert act Institute, and I'll see you next time.

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This is Bart queen, and welcome to the remarkability Institute. Great to have you all back. Now, if you've been following in the last series that I've been sharing, we've been focused on this idea of your delivery mechanics. And if you're just joining us, one of the things that I've spoken about many, many times is this idea that what you say and how you say it has to match.

[00:02:05] It is the driving principle at looking at what a lot of people may call body language or what I call the delivery mechanics. How you physically come across. Now in our first couple of sessions, the very first one I, I covered this idea of your posture and your movement, bringing those two pieces together. I did one single, separated podcast guys just around eye contact and the power of what that can bring to the table.

[00:02:37] Today, I want to focus on a couple more of those pieces. I want to be able to take a look at gestures. I want to be able to discuss facial expressions, what you're doing with your face, and then I want to get into this whole broader concept of vocal variety. So let me come back to this idea that people buy what they see before they buy what they hear, which has to be congruent.

[00:03:02] So, as we go through this section today, I want you to realize that these mechanics are kind of the cherry on the top. They don't fall into the bucket of what I call your power skills. Your power skills are your posture. Your eye contact, the power of the pause, and a short to medium sentences. Those four things are the things that give you the greatest confidence and the greatest power when you're communicating the additional mechanics of your facial expressions, and your gestures, your vocal variety of some of the other pieces are cherry on the top.

[00:03:42] They continue to enhance what you're doing. But if you said to me, Bart, where should I focus? I'd say focus on the power skills first. Now, I also taught you and shared with you that every single thing counts. So I am not diminishing these. These are important, but if you gave me an opportunity, if you said, Bart, give me a choice.

[00:04:07] Go to your power skills first. Now as we walked through these this afternoon, this morning, wherever you happen to be listening, as you're driving to work, whatever you happen to be doing, I want you to take some notes on some of these ideas, whether their mental notes are notes you put on some paper because there are some pieces here that I want to make sure that you can remember.

[00:04:32] If you can do that, you'll find that when you go to practice some of these ideas, you go to implement some of these ideas. You can come back to your note, and you can physically implement each of these pieces one by one. Let's dive in this afternoon in this idea of gestures, the number one purpose of a gesture, number one purpose.

[00:04:58] Is to enhance your content. Now, when I'm talking about enhancing your content, I mean two things. The number one reason that most people gesture is an emphasis is what you see a lot of. The second reason you gesture is what I call visualization. If by chance, you've ever watched. Drew Carey show, whose line is it?

[00:05:26] The next time you're channel surfing and you come across that show, do me a favor, hit the mute button on your TV. Just watch their gestures are so effective that you can tell what they're talking about without even hearing anything. The majority of those gestures are more for that idea of visualization.

[00:05:48]Now, there's a couple of components within both of those you want to think about. If you think about this idea that people gesture to add emphasis, that brings us to a couple of dues and does not. I want you to consider you'll find a lot of people who will point. Now, if you're a parent with small children, you'll see them do this often where someone is pointing at you.

[00:06:15] How does that get perceived. Most people would say, well, Bart, that gets perceived as condescending or scolding, a basic rule of thumb, never, ever point. I want you to break yourself of that habit. So if you can visualize what president Clinton, President Bush, and President Obama did when they pointed, they kind of.

[00:06:44] Made a little fist, and with their thumb, they would emphasize something in my mind that is still pointing. What I would want you always to do is what I call an open Palm. So if you can do me a favor with your hand, make a finger point, like you're speaking to a child, you're pointing at them. Then do what the presidents did.

[00:07:10] Make more of a fist with your thumb. And notice how that comes across. And then I want you to do what I call an open Palm. You're taking your Palm; it's open, you're directing it forward. Your fingers are not spread apart. Your fingers are together, your thumb is apart from your hand, and you make a gesture.

[00:07:30] Now, as you look at that, ask yourself this question, which is more open and approachable, a finger point or more of an open Palm. I am mystified why our leaders, our executives, don't understand this: one simple comment, one simple concept on using your gestures. Again, we don't even know we're doing it.

[00:07:59] We're not even thinking about it, but we're trying to emphasize a point, and you're pointing at people. That open Palm will create a whole big difference. Now, remember, it's about connecting and having a conversation. So if you're at Starbucks and you're sitting with your friend or a spouse or somebody you care about, a colleague, you're not going to point at them.

[00:08:19] You're going to do more of an open type of a gesture, always an open Palm. Then that brings me to the second kind of guiding principle, never back of the hand. I'm not saying that your listeners can't see your back of the hand, but I see this a lot. I'll see someone standing in front of an audience, and they're going to show the number two, and they'll go, there are two things you should think about, and they'll do the back of a hand.

[00:08:50] Now, in other parts of the world, this is extremely offensive. Most people will say, well, Bart's, that's doing the peace sign. No, the peace sign is more Palm forward. So the basic rule of thumb is if you've got notes in front of you, mental note guys, never back. Rule of thumb, Palm, always forward, Palm, always forward.

[00:09:14] Now, with that, I want to add one more thing. The Palm always leads. Suppose I would share with you that we have increasing costs, and I was standing in front of a group of people. I would put my Palm up, and I would take my hand up. The Palm always leads. If you wanted to share something about decreased risk, take your hand up in the air, face the Palm down and say, this is decreasing risk.

[00:09:44] Bring your Palm down. The Palm always leads. So number one, no finger point guys. Number two. No back, no. Back of hand. Number three, the Palm always leads. Now, a couple of more do not, and I have names for these so that it will help you remember how many times have you been standing or seated in an audience, and you've seen somebody do what I call spider pushups.

[00:10:19] It's where they put their fingers touching each other. They're creating this, and they're bouncing their hand back and forth like this. This is what we call spider pushups. If someone is doing this, answer this question, where's the focus? Yes. You're probably focused on their hands. If you remember, the number one place you as a listener should be focused on is their face.

[00:10:47] Everything you do with your gestures should emphasize a point, visualize the point, and then drive the listener back to your face. The way you do that is you make your gesture, and then you go back to your arms by your sides. If you listen to my podcasts on posture, I talked about that. Do whatever gesture you want.

[00:11:10] Come back to your sides. Do whatever you want. Come back to your sides. Everything that you do drives that listener to your face—no more spider pushups. I do get a kick. I don't see this with many women, but I see this more with men of what I call the Napoleon. What arm is down to the side, what arm is kind of centered in their chest and all their gestures are right here.

[00:11:35] Like Napoleon would be grabbing his shirt or put his hand in his shirt. I get a kick out of this for someone, and we'll go, alright, we need to go full circle, and they'll make a little circle and that, that arm, that hand will barely leave the center of their chest. This is what we call the Napoleon, that other arm that's not doing anything.

[00:11:54] It just had a stroke. It's just hanging there as you want balance in your gestures. Now the challenge there can be that nine times out of 10, your dominant arm, my dominant arm is my right arm. I tend to do the majority of my gestures with my right arm. It takes a little practice and a little bit of focus to incorporate and bring that left arm in, or if you're lefthanded more of your right arm.

[00:12:26] No finger point, no spider pushups, no Napoleon. The others do not is what I call Velcro elbows. The majority of the people that I coach and I train, the majority of folks are this idea of Velcro elbows. You have seen them, their elbows are kind of tight to their sides, and they're waving their arms back and forth, but they never let their side, their elbows leave their side.

[00:12:53] They're very, very tight to the side. This makes you look like you're all tied up into notch, instead of feeling like you can put a little air underneath your armpits. Now your gestures need to be in two places you're in. Yet your gestures need to be chest level or what I call the Northern hemisphere around your face.

[00:13:20] Many people will put their gestures, and when I call the Southern hemisphere, imagine someone standing in front of you, and their gestures are, or more down at their hip level. You don't want your gestures there. I'm not saying you can't put some gestures there or what I call the Southern hemisphere, but most of your gestures need to be chest level and around your face.

[00:13:48] Why? Because it keeps the focus, keeps the listener's focus on your face. So as you began to practice the skill set, as you begin to refine it, as you begin to become more effective with your gestures, remember that there are two reasons why you gesture, emphasize, drive a point, visualization. Where do your gestures take place?

[00:14:49] The majority chest level. Northern hemisphere, around your face. Minimal gestures and what we call the Southern hemisphere. No finger point, no spider pushups. No Napoleon, Novell Crow, elbows. Now that leaves one last place I want you to think about. It's what I call T-Rex. This is where your elbows are tucked to your sides.

[00:15:19] And your arms are directly in front of you. Remember T-Rex, big dinosaur, little arms. It looks ridiculous when people do this. It is out of the box. It's going to feel weird if I get you to expand your arms, cause here's what you're going to say to me, Bart, that's eighth-grade drama club. To a certain extent.

[00:15:42] Yes. If you asked me to look at from an overall perspective, these skills, I would tell you, yes. Look at president Reagan, for example, if you'll remember him as a speaker known as a great, great speaker of the last millennium. Where did he learn his skills? He learned it, and being an actor; he knew the importance of being balanced on his feet.

[00:16:06] He knew the importance of up on stage, looking at people and connecting, using eye contact. He knew the importance of using his voice. He knew the idea that every single thing counts. All these pieces have to come together. For the majority of folks, their gestures become distractions. They flail their arms.

[00:16:30] You've heard someone say, I'm Italian, so their arms are doing all kinds of things, but their arms are doing so much. It takes away from their message. Now, there are many people who gesture a lot on the continuum. I gesture a lot; if that's the case, great, and for some of you, you may have minimal gestures.

[00:16:51] That is fine too. Anywhere on this continuum for you as an individual, your authenticity, wherever your jest shows fall, whether there are a lot, a little or they're in the middle, doesn't matter. The question you have to answer is, are my gestures effective? Do they engage my audience? Do they enhance my content?

[00:17:14] If they do those things, stay on the Mark. Continue to do the things that you're doing well. If they're a distraction, if they take away from your message, I want you to get rid of them. Now, there's one more, especially when you're in a group audience that I want you to consider. This one took me a long time to master.

[00:17:38] I want you to picture yourself standing in a conference room, standing in front of a group of people standing up on a keynote Ted type talk. I want you to envision 500 people in the room. I want you to envision yourself standing center stage. I want you to envision yourself out of the center of your being.

[00:18:03] There is a beam of light that goes forward. Now, if you turn slightly to the left, that beam goes slightly to the left. If you turn to the right, the beam goes to the right. So I want you to have pictured that. Now here's your rule of thumb. I'm setting in front of this audience. The beam of light is directly in front of me.

[00:18:26] If I am going to gesture to anyone on the right side of the beam, I use my right hand and arm. If I'm going to gesture someone to the left side of this beam of light, I use my left hand. So here's your principle that I want you to remember. I do not. I do not want you to cross your body when you cross your body.

[00:18:52] I'm right-handed. Envision this with me. I'm right-handed. I'm gesturing to someone to my far left, and I crossed my body. What happens is I lose that neutrality. I want you to keep yourself as open and neutral as possible. Now, even today, after all these years of practice and trying to bring these skills to a new level for myself, there are many times in my enthusiasm, my dominant arm, my right arm gets the best of me, and I cross my body to the best of your ability.

[00:19:27] I don't want you to do that. Now. I can promise you no one's going to walk up to you after your talk, your presentation, your meeting, whatever you're going to do, and say, Bart, you cross your body five times. I'm sorry you're done. Nobody's going to say that. They are not going to know the mechanics that you're using.

[00:19:47] Guys. What they're going to do is come up to you and say you were open. You were fluid. You look comfortable. So here's the lesson I want you to learn, and all the skills that I'm sharing with you, they're not going to come up and criticize the mechanics. They're going to talk about the results of the mechanics.

[00:20:04] So if you've looked at people and you've connected with folks with your eye contact or say, wow, you were so confident. That was conversational. If you moved in your stage or you moved in your meeting room, he said, wow. That was engaging. That was highly interactive. They are going to comment on the results that the mechanics create.

[00:20:26] They will not discuss the mechanics cause they can't pinpoint it. I remember a young when w when I was young in my career that there are people I admire. I said I so much would like to be like them, so like to come across like them. I could no longer tell you what they were doing than the man on the moon.

[00:20:46] Until I broke down these skillsets and broke it to a mechanical level to where they're repeatable. I want the same for you. Then you can get out and water the group size where you're at in the world. You can make an application to these skill sets. Now, if, by chance, guys, you do a fair amount of international travel, let me just toss you a book that I found extremely helpful.

[00:21:11] It's called a kiss, bow shake. Kiss, bow, shake. It is my international Bible that I carry with me if I'm going to travel abroad. Now, if I haven't had a chance to read it, I take it. If I do have a chance to get into it, I look ahead, I look, I find the country that I need, I read about that country, and then I've got the principles that I can use.

[00:21:37] You'll find that book extremely helpful if you do a lot of international travel. If you have an opportunity to really sit somebody, sit with someone from that culture, I can't begin to tell you how they can give you the ins and outs that you may want to think about. Our overall goal is to be listener focused, listener focus, listener, focus list, or focus.

[00:22:01] That means we adjust to the culture that we're in. That means we had to adjust to the audience that we're speaking to. That means we adjust. If we're on the West Coast or the East coast, that means we adjust. If we're talking in the deep South or we're up in the North, being listener focused, taking that principle with everything I'm sharing with you will change everything.

[00:22:26] Now, that's kind of gestures at a high level—the second thing I want to get in today's facial expressions. Let me ask this question. Do we tend to side smile too much or not enough? Just, on the whole, I would talk to you that for the majority of people, we don't smile enough. Now I'm not asking you to walk up to someone with a big smile in your face and say.

[00:22:57] I'm sorry I ran over your dog today, grinning. As you say, I am not saying that in any way, shape, or form.

[00:23:04]I do want you to be aware of what your face does and all the years that I worked with call center engineers in cubicles in a room answering—client or customer questions for eight hours a day. There are many of the managers. I'd go to them and say, you need to put mirrors in these cubicles.

[00:23:28]Can you hear a smile over the phone? Of course, you can, but as we're on the phone and talking, we're not even realizing what our facial expressions are doing. And if you'll come back to this idea that we had a goal of a balance between. Being authoritative, authoritative, and being approachable. Part of that approachability is your face.

[00:23:52] How many times have you walked into a social environment and saw someone across the room and you went, Whoa, I'm not going to talk to them, and they look like they're angry. They may not be angry. It's their facial expression. I have one of those faces that makes me look angry—my eyes kind of come down a little bit.

[00:24:12] My mouth comes down a little bit. And I looked stern. I've got people who will walk up to me and say, Bart, are you angry? Are you upset about something? I'm like, no. Why? It's my facial expression. When I'm in a social environment, I know that when I'm teaching a class when I'm giving a speech, somehow when I'm up front and folks, I've got to almost overextend my smile in my face.

[00:24:40] And you'll feel, I feel like, wow, that's the most insincere smile ever given to anybody. Yes, that's what it feels like to me, but that's not how it gets perceived by the audience. Remember, that's the concept of disparity, disparity, what you experience, and what the listener experiences are—definitely two different things.

[00:25:04] All I'm asking you to do. Is be aware of what you're doing with your face. Think about it now; I know that there are a lot of people that you're going, yeah, I've had someone come up to me and say that I have a certain kind of a face. Some of us do, some of us don't. Now, there are those people that are hard as they try.

[00:25:24] They've got this big grin on their face all the time. Their challenge, their challenge is, how do I get serious? So they've got to work on the other side of that coin. All you're doing is looking for balance, but it is important. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. So guys, please do me a favor and make sure you build some awareness around what you're doing with your face.

[00:25:53] Gentlemen, if you happen to have a beard or a mustache, please realize that many times, especially if it's heavy guys, that will bring your mouth down, and you may be smiling, but because of your facial hair, I may not see that. I'm not saying shave your beard or mustache. I'm saying be aware of the impact of what that will do when you're communicating.

[00:26:19]Let me add one more note to that, and that sometimes is your eyeglasses. Guys, many times, if you're up on a stage and there's a ton of lights in your face, you may get a lot of glare off your eyeglasses. If I can't see your eyes, it's harder to connect so that there's just another place there where it's all about how do I connect and how do I have a conversation with folks.

[00:26:40] So make sure with facial hair or your eyeglasses, you're aware, and you're sensitive to the impact that may be creating with your listeners. Now. This last concept I want to talk about or share with you is the idea of vocal variety. This is your voice. There are five major components to what we call vocal variety.

[00:27:04] Number one, it's the rate that you speak fast or slow. Some people have a very deliberate rate. I kind of fall more to that bucket. I'm more deliberate in the rate that I speak. There are some people who speak very energetically; they've got a faster rate. These are the folks that always come to me and say, Bart, I'm always get told.

[00:27:27] I talk too fast. I talk too fast. I talk too fast. I want you to realize something. You cannot change your God-given rate of speech. Can you adjust it for a short period? Sure. If I'm a deliberate speaker, can I speed it up if I want to show enthusiasm? Very much so. If I'm an enthusiastic speaker with a lot of energy, can I pull it back, speak more slowly and deliberately?

[00:27:56] I can for a short amount of time. The key for you, energetic speakers to break yourself of this idea. I speak too fast. I speak too fast. I speak too fast. The solution to you is your eye contact. If I'm looking at a set of eyes and I deliver one sentence and deliver it in my enthusiastic voice, they're going to get it.

[00:28:21] That's tremendous. But between the time I go from one set of eyes to another set of eyes, that forces that pause I've shared with you, and now I speak energetically. You can't change the rate that you speak. You can adjust it, but you can't change it. I don't want those people out there who listen to this who are enthusiastic speakers to feel like you have to change it.

[00:28:45] You can't change it. What I want you to do is add that ingredient of eye contact. Your authenticity is awesome. I want you to keep that, and for you deliberate speakers when you feel like you need to ratchet it up a little bit, add some energy to your voice, add your modulation. Keep your eye contact and you'll find that you fought.

[00:29:07] You're far more engaging. So that first element is the idea of your rate. The second key ingredient around vocal variety is volume. Now, nine times out of 10, every single one of us can bring the volume in our voice up two to three notches. The majority of us over the course of all my years of teaching this, I could count on one hand the number of people I've had to say, wow, can you do me a favor and soften your voice a little bit?

[00:29:41] Most people even think that when they're around a boardroom table, they need to soften their voice. I might encourage you; if there's someone at that table that can't hear you, they're going to check out on you in the Western part of the world. A louder voice gets perceived as more confident. Now for an classic Asian parts of the world, that gets seemed as obnoxious.

[00:30:07] We're always listener focused. When you're standing up on a stage, and you're speaking, are we trying to reach the person in the back row or the person in the front row. We're trying to reach the person in the back row. Now, if you're on a Mike, the person who's working the mic and the volume, they will adjust it so everybody in the audience can hear them.

[00:30:33] But if you don't have a mic and you don't have a microphone, I want you to keep the back row in mind. Nice. It's the same with our gestures. Most people think if I give this big huge gesture. The people in the front, Oregon, I think, Oh my gosh, it's, it feels like it's way out of the box, but if I'm in the very back row, it seems like the most normal thing in the world.

[00:30:56] Again, that's that disparity for you. Softer speakers. I can't encourage you enough. I want you to come across as confident. Bring your voice up two to three notches. And this is what you're going to say to me, Bart. I'm yelling. Yes. That's what it feels like to you. That's not what it feels like to your audience.

[00:31:20] The third key element is your pitch and tone. Now, this is your God given pitch and tone. This is just how you sound. Everybody will say part, I don't like my voice. I don't like my voice. I get it. I'm not fond of my voice either. If you really want to know what your voice sounds like, listen to your answering machine.

[00:31:39] That is your real voice. What you hear as you speak, as it goes through all this flesh and bone is not. It is not what the listener hears. Your vocal tone is all part of your authenticity. Now, deeper tones is what we're striving for. So think about James Earl Jones or the voice of CNN, or the voice of Darth Vader.

[00:32:06] That Jeep resonant kind of tones. Those tones get perceived as more confident, higher pitched voices up here. Don't get perceived that way. Your breathing can help with that. A shorter to a medium sentence can help with that. I do not. Do not want you to get hung up on your guide given pitch and tone. Work with it.

[00:32:36] Embrace it. It's part of who you are. Now, that leads me to accents and I'll get many people. I'll get people from, from England, I'll get someone from Ireland or I'll get someone from the South or someone from an Asian country that'll say, Bardo. I want to change my accent. I want to change my accent. I would encourage you.

[00:32:57] Again, that's part of your authenticity. It's who you are. Now, if I can't understand what you're saying, that's when your accent becomes a challenge. Yes. Do certain accents get certain perceptions? Yes. Those are the things that you're going to have to deal with. How you choose to deal with them is what separates you out from everyone else.

[00:33:22] Now, there are two key components left. The first is this idea of influxion. Some of you may call that modulation. This is the up, down in your voice. If I'm dealing with an executive, that would be what I would call narrow banded. I don't mean monotones narrow banded. There's not a lot of up and down in their voice.

[00:33:46] My coaching point to them as I'm coaching them for their event that they're going to be speaking to. I get them to move and I get them to use gestures. So here's the principle I want you to note. Your voice will always follow what your body does. Your voice will always follow what your body does. If I said, this is the number two, and I put it right about shoulder height.

[00:34:13] Now I'm going to say it one more time and I'm going to take it up a little bit higher with my hand. This is the number two. I took it up higher. If I bring my hand back to neutral and I take it as far as I can reach it, listen to the difference in my voice. This is the number two. Your voice will always follow what your body does.

[00:34:34] That principle should help you if you feel like you fall into that bracket of being more narrow, banded. Now one more thought with your inflection, where you put the influxion will change the whole meaning of the whole sentence, where you put the influxion will change the whole meaning of the whole sentence.

[00:34:54] So be very, very careful where you decide to do that. If you want to drive a point, practice that sentence, get the inflection on the right place. I can't tell you the number of times as a young man, my mom would say to me, Bart is not what you say, but it's how you say it. A lot of times that's where we ended up putting the inflection.

[00:35:18] Now, the last key component is this idea of a pause. If you listen to my podcast on the power skills, this is where I shared with you that a pause is purely punctuation in your spoken speech. That's all it is. We pause for two reasons. We pause for emphasis and we pause for clarity. Most people pause for emphasis and PR, and one of my favorite presidents, I remember when he said, if you extend your hand, and he paused, pardon me?

[00:35:57] He said, if you unclench your fist.

[00:36:00]If you unclench your FA, if you unclench your fist, we will reach out our hand. If you unclench your Fest, we will reach out our hand. And between those two pieces, he paused. If you think about Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King said, I have a dream. And he paused. He waited for 250,000 people to respond to what was going to come next.

[00:36:34] That's that power of the pause. Your ability to pause, to take the ums and AHS out of your voice to make a point stand out will make you engaging and influential in everything that you do. So today, guys, I have really taken a look at your gestures. We've given you some idea around your facial expressions, and we spent a little bit of time around this idea of your vocal variety.

[00:37:03] I can probably spend an hour in each one of those buckets and teaching and training you and getting you to practice. And the podcast that we've looked at and that you've listened to around these delivery mechanics. I want you to begin to bring all these pieces together, make sure you've got your eye contact in place.

[00:37:23] It's the number one skill you want to be able to practice and begin to integrate the rest of these skills into the way that you communicate. Please remember that every single thing counts. One is not more powerful than than the other. When you bring all the pieces together is when you win, you win.

[00:37:41] Because what you say and how you say it becomes one solid message. It's what I call letting your life speak. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. No matter whether you're talking professionally or personally. I want your message to be of power. I remember one time hearing someone say, great leaders don't do great things, great leaders help others do great things.

[00:38:13] I would believe that your ability to communicate your message and your passion will help other people do go. We'll do help other people to go out and do great things. This is Bart queen, the remarkability Institute, and I'll see you next time.

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen, your host. Now, if you were following me last week, I covered an episode around visual AIDS. This is the second piece to last week's episode. So if you missed last week, guys, do me a favor. Go back and pay attention to last week's episode first, and then join me on this one.

[00:02:05] We're covering today is the second major bucket on how you use your visuals. In last week's episode, I spent a fair amount of time talking about crafting your sides, not detailed things, but simple ideas that will keep you the center of attention. Everything that I talk about around communication boils up into three major buckets.

[00:02:33] How do we build trust? How do we build engagement, and how do we build a relationship? And when it comes to this use of visual AIDS, building that trust and building relationship is critical to your success, whether using PowerPoint, a whiteboard, chalkboard, a flip chart, or you're showing some type of a prop, maybe a piece of equipment that you're showing them.

[00:02:59] I want you to remember that you need to be the center of attention, not your visual, not the whiteboard or the chalkboard people buy from people. They buy from people that they like. They're going to buy you first and then get your slides. So everything that you do, you have to keep yourself the center of attention.

[00:03:21] Now, on last week's episode, I asked you to take a paradigm shift around how you craft the slides and today's episode. I'm asking you to take a paradigm shift around the way you use your visuals, how you interact with a whiteboard or a chalkboard, how you interact with your PowerPoint, which is the visual itself on the screen, your laptop, that equipment, and your audience.

[00:03:48] If you will take that paradigm shift for me if you'll take everything I'm sharing with you and make sure that you are the center of attention, here's what you're going to find. Number one, you're far more engaging. Number two, you're more connected to your audience. And number three, your ability to move the listener forward is exponentially much greater.

[00:04:09] As you think about using your visuals, there are three major areas where you interact. If you're taking notes with me today, I want you to note these three major areas where you interact, number one, the way you interact with the audience. Number two is how you interact with the visual itself, what's up on the screen or the whiteboard, or the flip chart itself.

[00:04:33] And then how you interact with equipment and a PowerPoint perspective. That's your laptop. Now, if you've been following me through the series of episodes, you have heard me discuss what we called your delivery skills, your eye, contact, your paws, your gestures, your facial expressions. Movement and your posture, when you think about those delivery skills, which three interact in the areas that I just mentioned to you of the audience, of the visual and of the equipment.

[00:05:13] Take a moment and think through those just a little bit. If you came back and said, Bart, the number one skill I practice with the audience is eye contact. You are correct. And here's the paradigm shift you're going to take. When the average person presenter brings up a slide, as soon as the slide comes up, what do they do?

[00:05:38] You're correct. They begin to talk right off the top of the bat. Now let me ask you this question. What is the listener? What is the audience doing? the audience is trying to consume your slot. Now, you and I are both intelligent. Your audience is intelligent, but guys, they can't read the slide and listen to you simultaneously, they can only do one thing at a time.

[00:06:03] They're either reading or listening. They're either reading or listening. A great example of this. If you will think back to when you were in grammar school on the days when you were little, and you came in after recess at lunch, and the teacher read to you when the teacher read the book to you, and she or he wanted to show you a picture in the book, can you remember what happened?

[00:06:29] Remember, the teacher would turn the book and slowly show it to the class. Now, let me ask you, did the teacher speak? Nope. The teacher was silent because they knew you were absorbing the picture and connecting it to what they just read. The majority of you will lock yourself in your home office on a Sunday and make sure your PowerPoint slides are perfect.

[00:07:01] But when you bring it up, you don't give the listener an opportunity to absorb it. Why bother we do this because you have spent so much time around that side, it like the back of your hand, and when it comes up, you're immediately going to try to discuss it. But you have to give the list or an opportunity to absorb it.

[00:07:20] This is the first paradigm shift you're going to take around this idea of using visuals. Now, the second skill set, when that visual comes up, is the power of the pause. You've got to pause and let them absorb it. Now, here's your kind of guiding principle around that. Guys. You do not have to wait for every single person.

[00:07:45] To absorb the slide. Cause somebody's going to look at your side and they're going to go back down memory lane and think, wow, that's pretty cool. They're going to be thinking about their job. They're going to be thinking about whatever's up there. The majority of your audience, when they have consumed it, they will look at you now.

[00:08:02] Here's where it connects to your eye contact. As soon as most people are looking at, you begin to speak again, the person who is so absorbed in the slide, as soon as they hear you speak. They will come right back into your content. But from an eye contact perspective, the slide comes up. Watch your audience; see what they're doing.

[00:08:25] If they're reading your side, don't speak. Now I have to chuckle here because for some of you, the amount of information that you all put on a slide, I could take you all out to a three-course meal, come back. We could watch a movie, and somebody would still be reading your slides for the volume that people put on a slide.

[00:08:45] Now, that's where I want you to reference back to last week's episode because I gave you some very strong guidelines to make readability high. So let me recap what I've shared with you. You bring up a slide; the slide comes up, your audience is reading it. You have to pause. Now, remember they're working, you get a chance to relax.

[00:09:08] So if you'll think about it, this is an opportunity to look at your notes. If you need notes, this is an opportunity to take a sip of water. This is an opportunity to glance at your audience and see what they're doing, and then be able to reconnect with them. So here's the thought from an engagement perspective, when you transitioned from slide to slide, this is an opportunity to reengage your audience.

[00:09:34] This is an opportunity to reengage your audience, but you have to give them a chance to absorb it. Now you can decide the percentage of 50%, 75, 85 90. You decide you have to be able to read the situation. But remember, give them time to read it. A good rule of thumb is you read it. And once you've read it, go again, nine times out of 10, they'll be with you.

[00:10:01] So here are the first two skills—your eye contact. Wait for them to absorb it. Pause, don't say anything to the majority of your audiences with you. The third one is in this idea of, with your equipment. You have to be able to move. Now. Here's what I see—a lot. Someone is using PowerPoint. They are stuck on their laptop.

[00:10:25] Guys. You have seen this. They're afraid to take two steps away from it. It's like somebody put a chain to their ankle and their computer and they can't step away from it. It looks like the laptop is in control of you. I want you to look like you're in control of the laptop. It makes a huge difference.

[00:10:47] So here's what I want you to do. If you say doing a presentation in front of 30 people in a room and you bring up the slide, I want you to step away from your laptop and move to some other place in the room. Now here's, what's going to happen when you do that. When they finish reading the slide, they're going to look to you.

[00:11:11] If you've stepped away from the slide or away from the screen, you can see heads turn, they're done. Suppose you're standing right next to the screen, where most people will continue to stand because they're going to stand up there and read the slide and point to it and touch it. You're not going to know when they're done.

[00:11:31] You don't have to walk across the room. Take two steps, take three steps. Just reposition yourself. So when the audience finds you, and you've moved to a different place, let me ask this question. Does engagement go up, or does engagement go down? It goes up because they're saying, okay, Bart, why did you move over there?

[00:11:52]I moved over there to reengage you, anytime you transition a side to another point of engagement, and now I have your full attention, cause you're not looking at the slide. If you're in a board room and seated at the table, I guess that you feel like you're going to send it the end of the table, closest to the slide.

[00:12:14] I do want you to realize that is not the power position now, Mo somebody may say, I'm going to go to the other end of the table. That is not the power position. Either. The best place you can be is in the center of the table. So that they're going to look at the slide, then they have to come to you.

[00:12:32] They're going to look at the slide, and then they have to come to you. Remember that you want to keep the audience with you, not at your slide, but because you took all this time to craft a slide, you got to give him a chance to absorb it. Otherwise, you don't, why bother even showing that slide? Your slide is to enhance your content.

[00:12:54] It is not your message. You're the message. The visual is an enhancement of what you're talking about. It should reinforce what you're doing,

[00:13:02] so you've moved away, and now the audience is back to you. So the three skills I've shared with you so far is so when you bring it to the slide, you have to pause, give him a chance of, so orbit moves away. If you can, two or three steps, four steps, move across the room, whatever you feel like is appropriate.

[00:13:56] Find a set of eyes and then begin to speak again. Those are the first three, but there's one more skill set. I want you to add to this. This is the one that will give you a competitive advantage. This is the skill set that will set you apart from 99.9% of people who were presenting. I don't care whether it's at a boardroom table.

[00:14:22] I don't care if it's in a training room. I don't care if you're in 50 people, 500 people, or speaking at a conference in front of 2,500. This is not optional. If you want to stand out, if you want to be the person that gets perceived as the thought leader, if you want to be perceived as knowledgeable as a subject matter expert, then you have to be able to do this scale.

[00:14:50] I want you to write this down. You have to be able to preview the slide. You have to preview the slide. You have to let the listener know what's coming. Most people don't do that. Most people bring up a slide. They see the slide; they look at it, and then they begin to speak to it because they don't even know what's coming next.

[00:15:15] You have to be able to lead the listener, not push the listener through content. So if I bring up the slide and talk about it, here's what's happening. Your listener is trying to absorb that slide, and they're trying to listen to you, and they're going, I don't know where you're taking me. It's like I get behind the person, and I'm pushing them.

[00:15:37] I'm pushing them through your content. They're trying to make a connection to what you said and what's up there. You want to make the connection before you bring it up. That's that preview? It's a word. It's a sentence. It's a thought. It's something that when you bring up the slide, they make a connection.

[00:16:00] So let me paint a picture for you. And hopefully, this will illustrate the idea. Let's say the next slide, if you were in my classroom, for example, and the next slide I'm going to bring up is a chess board because I want to be sharing with you how important it is to be strategic. So I might share something like this.

[00:16:23] We have just spent the last few minutes talking about the tools that we can bring to the table for your organization. But now, most organizations will bring you tools that force you to be tactical. What we bring to the table are tools that allow you to be strategic because when you are strategic, you know what the next right move is.

[00:16:46] And when you know what the next right move is, you know what the next right result. Yes. Let's say that was my preview. Now I go to my laptop, and I bring up a slide. That's a chess board. You just connected what I said about being strategic and the next right move. You looked at that chess board.

[00:17:03] You go, I got where Bart's at. I'm right with him. And now I am often running. That's the power of that preview. Most people don't do this guy. It is critical that you practice this skill set. Now, here are the four skills you may want to make—note of these skills. Number one, you have to preview the slide.

[00:17:27] Let the listener know what's coming. Not optional. It is critical. It is necessary. You must review the slide. Number two, you pause for them to absorb it. Wait for most people to read your side, consume what you put up on the whiteboard, what you brought up on a flip chart. Number three. If it's appropriate, take a couple of steps from it.

[00:17:50] Move across the room, move to a new location. Remember that changing slides is an opportunity to reengage the audience. Changing slides is an opportunity to reengage your audience. Now, once they've absorbed the slide, you're looking for a set of eyes. You find people that are looking at you. The majority of your audience is with you.

[00:18:10] Then, begin to speak. Those four skills will separate you from everybody else. So the next time you're at an internal meeting. The next time you're at a client site, the next time you're watching someone else present share slides, right? Those four go down and do a checklist. Did they preview, did they give me a chance to absorb it?

[00:18:33] Did they move in any way, shape, or form? Did they find eyes and then began to speak? See how many on that list they hit. And if they hit all four, you're going to see that as they use their visuals, they are seamless. It is effortless. And it seems more like a conversation, not a presentation. Now I would not share those four skills with you without giving you the tips and tricks to do that.

[00:19:05]Is it not true that when you create a slide deck at numbers, them, now, some people may put slide numbers on them. Some people may not, but typically it numbers them. Slide one through 10, one through 25. Here's what I want you to do. I'm going to give you two choices here. If you use presenter mode, you know what the next slide is coming up because you can see it in the corner.

[00:19:29] Beautiful. Then, to be able to preview to that. If you don't use that option, I want you to present. I want you to print out your slides six to a page. The maximum you can present is six to a page above each slide. I want you to write a trigger word, a word that brings the thought to mind that will allow you to preview lead the listener to the next slide.

[00:20:00] Now here's where it gets. Interesting guys, you're standing at your laptop. Your preview, you bring up the slide. All your listeners are looking at your side. They're reading what's up there. Would they even notice that you glance down at this printout and found that trigger word that will preview the next slide?

[00:20:23] They won't even notice. They will have no clue. When I do my virtual communication on one side, I have my communication roadmap, where I've outlined what I'm going to say. On the other side, I just have slide number one through 20 or whatever I've got with the title on that slide. I can glance at that title and lead right through my content effortlessly and seamlessly.

[00:20:49] They have no idea. That I am leading them through the content, they experience it, but they don't know the mechanics behind it. It's much like when you see someone up on a stage, and you go, wow, I would love to be able to speak the way they do. What you're seeing is the result of all their hard work of their practice to you.

[00:21:10] It seems seamless and effortless. If they're doing a nice job, what you don't know in their head is practicing mechanics and skills. They allow you to perceive it as effortless. It is the same thing with our visuals. So I'm going to share with you two PowerPoint tips. You probably already know these, but I'm always surprised in all my classes how few people know this.

[00:21:37] So PowerPoint tip number one, this relates to you being able to interact with your slides and preview. So let's say, for example, you get to slide number 25. It's your ending slide. And the executive in the audience says, Bart, I'm interested in what you showed us fairly early in your presentation.

[00:22:00] I don't know. It was a diagram. It looked like a tool set of some sort. Could you go back to that? I'd like to ask you some questions you go to. Sure. Now tell me guys, how does the average person get back there? Mother, the majority of people are going to arrow back through, think in their arrows going back, or someone may click out, click on the thumbnail, bring it up, and bring it back in.

[00:22:26] Doesn't look very polished and not very seamless. Here's your PowerPoint tip slide number, enter slide number, enter. If you looked out on your printout and the executive had asked you about slide number five, guys, all you're going to do is go to your laptop, do five, enter whether you're in keynote or PowerPoint will take you right to that slide.

[00:22:55] Now, if you did that seamless, what is that executive going to think of? You. They're going to think. He knows his content. She knows her content there. They have a handle on what they want to share, and they know how to be listener focused and address my issues. Slide number, enter whether it's keynote or PowerPoint.

[00:23:16] Now, you have to be in the slide mode team for that to happen. Suppose you are showing 250 slides. All you have to do is slide number two, five-zero, enter, and it will go right there. You want to go back to slide number one, one, enter. This is the most useful thing to make it seem like you are polishing what you're doing by understanding that one PowerPoint tip.

[00:23:44] Don't forget that one. It is power at your fingertips. The second PowerPoint tip I want to share with you is there'll be key. This is how you use that team. You're sharing a slide. You're done with it. You're done talking about it, but you're not quite ready to go to your next slide. When that slide stays up there, what does it become?

[00:24:10] It becomes a distraction. Your listeners are so going to want to go to it. It's just what Alyssa wants to do. It's natural. But if you will go to your laptop and you will hit the B key, just the letter B that will black out the slide. Now, if that slide gets blacked out, tell me where does the audience's attention goes?

[00:24:33] It goes right back to you where it should be now. You don't want to overuse this key. And I can't encourage you enough. If you're doing some type of a pre-team presentation, there are two or three of you speaking; make sure you tell your teammates that you're going to do this. If you're doing something virtually, like you're doing a WebEx or doing a demo, make sure.

[00:24:58] And that logistical square that I've shared with you many times before, tell your audience, I'm going to hit the B key. The screen's going to go black. You haven't lost me. You can still hear me. You're just not seeing me. Because you want their full attention, now, when you want to bring it back, any key, we'll bring it back.

[00:25:16] You don't have to hit the beachy. Now I'm going to give you one more caveat. A lot of people go barn. That's not so great. Okay. I'll give you another choice. Hit the w key. If you hit the w key, you get a white screen. My only challenge with the white key is this in those small situations where you are in a conference room, and the white board is the screen.

[00:25:42] We've all had to get stuck in that situation somewhere. If you use the white, the w key, not so effective, but if I use the B key and use the whiteboard, now you have an opportunity. To use two mediums of visual. Get up from the boardroom table, go to the whiteboard, put something on the whiteboard engagement.

[00:26:07] The only thing you have to remember is I have to erase the whiteboard before I bring my PowerPoint back up, but you will have no light on you. If you do that, if you do the WK, you will get light on you. Now, one more guiding thought. I want you to have, if you're in B mode and you want to do slide number, enter you're in B mode, and you want to go to slide number 15, if you walk up and go one five, enter, please remember this guy.

[00:26:37] One, we'll bring it out of B. And you're only going to go to slide number five; you will not go to side number 15. So if you're in B key, you have to remember to bring it out of B first and then slide number, enter those two PowerPoint tips and those two alone in combination with preview, pause, move, look, speak the four skills I shared with you.

[00:27:02] We'll give you a competitive advantage far above every other presenter that you are going to find. Most people don't even get close to that. Most people, it's death by PowerPoint. I don't want that for you. I want them to buy you. I want to slides to be an enhancement of what you bring to the table. The gift you bring is yourself, not to slides.

[00:27:30] The gift you bring is your experience. The gift you bring is your expertise in the area that you're sharing with them. The gift you bring to the table is an attitude I'm here to empower you and not impress you. You're speaking from your heart, you're having a conversation, and you're coming across as confident.

[00:27:53] It is critical that as you use any type of visual, that your primary thought in your head is how do I keep myself the center of attention as I use these tools and products. I want you to take the paradigm shift, number one, the way you craft them. That was the first episode paradigm shift.

[00:28:14] Number two, the way you use your visual, this episode, how you interact with it. I want to make sure that you're seen as the thought leader, the expert, the one that's knowledgeable. I want to make sure that when you use any type of visuals, it is an experience for them. It is not something where someone says, how much longer is it over?

[00:28:41] What you bring to the table is too critical to be locked into a PowerPoint slide.

[00:28:46]This will give you a competitive advantage. This takes practice. It takes effort. It's a skillset. Not something that's necessarily going to come natural guys, I believe in you. And I believe that you can make these paradigm shifts. This is Bart queen. This is the remarkability Institute, and I will see you next week.

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We've been hitting a gamut of communication topics. Now, if you've been following me, there were three major buckets that we would spend time around. The first bucket was around this idea of delivery, physically, how you come across the second bucket was around crafting content, your message, your presentation, your keynote speech, and the third was around interaction.

[00:02:05] Today. I want to take us deep into this idea of the way we use our visuals. I am not going to spend a lot of time giving you tips and tricks on how to create your PowerPoint slide. I'm going to give you a high-level overview of that, but where I want to spend the heart of my time with you is how we use our visuals.

[00:02:27] Not how do we create our visuals? The University of Illinois did a study on the use of visual AIDS. Guys. They found that someone who uses visual AIDS is 85%. They are 85% more effective than someone who doesn't use their visual AIDS. So the question you and I have to ask ourselves is not whether I can use visuals for my presentation, my meeting, my talk, my virtual webcast, my zoom session.

[00:02:58] That's not the question. The question becomes, how do I use them in such a manner that I stay the center of attention. Guys, just from my experience of helping folks for over the last 30 years, it is critical, no matter what communication channel that you're using, that you stay the center of attention.

[00:03:20] I want you to remember that people buy you before they buy visual AIDS. I want you to remember that people buy from people that they like, and I want you to remember that people buy from people. They don't buy from companies. So when we slap up a bunch of slides, and you thought you have the ability to sell your company, your solution, tool, or product, you're missing the Mark.

[00:03:45] They're going to buy you first. And then they're going to get your visuals. Now, those visuals could be PowerPoint, a whiteboard, a chalkboard, or a handout. It could be a prop, whatever you decide to bring to the table. As we walked through this brief session today, I'd like you to do two things for me.

[00:04:03] I want you to take two paradigms shifts, a paradigm shift. Number one, I want you to think differently about how you craft a slide and paradigm shift. Number two, I want you to think differently about how you use the visual. Now, if you'll do those two things for me, here's what I think you're going to find.

[00:04:24] Number one, you stay the center of attention. You stay at the focal point. Number two, you're going to find that engagement goes through the ceiling when you make these paradigm shifts. And most importantly, in my mind, you'll increase your ability to influence people. Now want you to remember something. John Maxwell said that leadership is nothing more, nothing less than pure influence, guys.

[00:04:50] What we do when we use our visuals when communicating, we are influencing people. We are taking them from point a to point B. We're taking them from a place where they are uncertain to a place where they are searching. And I want you to remember primarily right to sound now for me, that the purpose of the visual aid is to enhance your content period, visual laser, not your notes, but that's how most people end up using their visuals.

[00:05:22] Now, in our segment today, I'm going to break it into two major buckets. The first bucket I'm going to cover just some tips and tricks that may help you craft your slides. These are very simple ideas that will keep you the center of attention. Then I'm going to spend the majority of our time together, really talking about how to use those visual AIDS in such a manner that you stay the center of attention.

[00:05:46] You keep your audience engaged, and you keep this idea that it's a conversation. Let's look at the first idea that I want to share with you around crafting your slides: idea number one, one idea per visual. So if I'm looking at your slide, if you're crafting a slide that should communicate one idea, you could have five bullet points on there.

[00:06:12] Six bullet points, whatever you decide. You're going to have a cartoon. You can have a quote at the bottom, but as long as all those things on that one slide communicate one idea. Then your wedding. The second one, I call the golden rule. The title must convey the essence of the slide. I should be able to read the title of your slide guys and know exactly what you're talking about.

[00:06:39] So many times, I see people bring up a slide and you read the title, and when you're trying to make a connection to what's in the body of the slide. And there's no connection. You should be able to look at the title of that slide and know exactly what I'm going to be talking about. Now, I want to make an application with that idea to a whiteboard.

[00:06:59] How many times have you walked into a business meeting, maybe you walked in late, and there's a bunch of things on the whiteboard, and there is no title on that whiteboard, and you sit down, and you're trying to catch up, but you have no idea what that person's discussing. If you will put a title on your whiteboard and then put underneath it, whatever you want if you will put

[00:07:20] a

[00:07:20] Bart Queen: title on your flip chart, title on your chalkboard, I don't care what you're doing up there.

[00:07:24] If you're handwriting, put a title and then put everything in it. The principle applies one idea per visual. So whatever you put up on that whiteboard, you've got a title, and then everything underneath it should be communicating around that single idea, goals, and rule number three, no more than seven words in a title.

[00:07:47] Now I know as you're thinking, Bart, that's a lot of words in a title. Yes. I'm trying to think maximum here for you, especially for those folks of you who are in technology. When you need several words, now, seven in the title can include an, a, or XY. So you may need those kinds of simple words.

[00:08:07] And that's why I'm allowing you to expand and did that total idea of seven words per title. So let's look at what I've given you. One idea for visual, the title. It must convey the essence of the slide and no more than seven words in a title. So let's look at the next golden rule. I want you to think about this.

[00:08:31] One is critical, and this is where I get the biggest pushback. Pictures are better than text. Pictures are better than text, or you've heard the old saying that one.

[00:08:42] picture

[00:08:43] Bart Queen: is worth a thousand words. So I'm going to ask you a question. When you think of someone in the marketplace that you said, do a tremendous job with pictures in what I would call their presentations, who comes to mind.

[00:09:01]the person that comes to my mind was Steven jobs. Think about when he launched a new Apple product; he was in his teens, black uniform, black t-shirt, black turtleneck, black jeans, black shoes up on stage, age, very conversational behind him, when he launched a product, typically a bunch of pictures.

[00:09:23] Cause he knew that you would identify with the picture, glance to it, and stay focused on him. The other brilliant thing that he did was he would put music behind it. So you and I both know that when you see a picture, and you hear some type of music, you get an emotional connection. Steven's jobs were brilliant at the principal.

[00:09:46] That people buy with emotion, and they verify with facts, and he drove that whenever he did his presentations. Now, for those of you in the technical world, you're thinking, okay, Bart, if I bring up a picture, I can talk about it. Still, if I'm going to leave something behind for my customer or my client, they're going to look at those pictures and not make any connection.

[00:10:11] You're correct. And I'm with you a hundred percent, which leads us to the next golden rule. And that golden rule is what I call the double-deck idea. Guys, do me a favor, write that down the double-deck idea. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to create a deck that you put Warren peace on.

[00:10:32] Make sure that there's no white space if that's what you feel like you need to do. Create the second deck that follows the golden rules that I'm sharing with you now; between the two decks, two things have to be the same. The titles have to be the same, and the slide number has to be the same. What changes?

[00:10:55] It's what in the body of the slide. Now in your technical world, notice you get to give your client your technical person. You're Mr. R and D miss R and D. You get to give them the information they need, but when you're doing the talk, you're sharing information, you're keeping people engaged by seeing your picture.

[00:11:19] I am not saying that every single slide has to be a picture. I am saying that a picture can speak a thousand words. Now I want to bring one more note in with this one. When you are watching someone share PowerPoint, and there's a bunch of text on the slide nine times out of 10, who is the communicator or the presenter in your words, who are they connected to?

[00:11:47] Are they connected to the audience, or are they connected to the slide? Again guys, most of the time, if there are many words on the text, the presenter, the communicator, is connected to the slide because they're reading the slide. Whereas if you have a picture nine times out of 10, you've turned, and you're just talking about the picture to your audience now, which creates more impact, of course, you being connected to your audience, not reading your slides.

[00:12:19] Guys, if you're listening to this podcast, if I find out just by chance, if somebody comes and tells me, wow, they were reading the slide, I'm going to find you. I'm going to hunt you down, and I'm going to hurt you because it is the number one complaint by executives—people who read the slide. Your slide is not your notes.

[00:12:41] Your audience is perfectly capable of reading. You don't need to read it. Pictures are better than text. So now, with that thought in mind, let's just look at an example of what would be typical text possibly on a slide. So if we were looking at a slide on average, you're going to see anywhere six, seven, eight, maybe nine, ten bullet points that people will put up there.

[00:13:07] So if I was to ask you what would be a golden rule for the maximum now, bullet points on a slide. What number would you come back and give me. I've heard people say three; I've heard people say seven. I've heard people say five. Three is beautiful if you can get three bullet points on a slide and be cool with that.

[00:13:27] That is awesome. But in your world, I'm going to let you go a little bit more five guys. No more than five bullet points per slide. Now, hold on. I'm going to ask one more question. How many words per bullet point, how many words per bullet point. A lot of people will say three. Some people will say seven.

[00:13:50] Again, some people will say five, five is a correct answer. So here's your golden rule. I want you to make a note of it's what we call the five by five rule, the five by five rule. So if you think about it, five bullet points with five words per bullet point, that's roughly 25 words. And if you think about seven words in a title, that's a total of 32 words.

[00:14:13] Yes. It's a huge amount of text to put on a slide. Now, if you can come to me and you were asking me a coaching point and said Bart, I need seven bullet points, but I'm only giving you three words for a bullet point, I would say, okay, stretch it then. Cause you're only at 21 words, the idea DIA is no more than 25 in the body of that slide.

[00:14:34] So if you need to do a variation with that, don't worry about that. If you will stick to these simple golden rules and you have one slide that has more or a title that has more, don't worry about that. That becomes the exception to the rule and not your general rule. Now the next two golden rules, you will not like me for, and this is one of the both of these, or when I get people just cringe in their seat, no bullet points.

[00:15:50]no sub-points. I love the guy. That's got five bullet points and three sub-points under every major point too much. Now back to the double-deck idea, guys, if you want to do a double-deck idea, do that, put your sub-points on there. Fine, because remember that's the deck you're giving them.

[00:16:13] That is not the deck you're showing. Your sub-point should be the things that you naturally talk about and have a conversation around. The second thing you're not going to like is this; if you put it on the slide, you have to talk about it. If you put it on the slide, you have to talk about it. How many times is somebody brought up a slide, say they had seven bullet points on it, and only talk about four of them.

[00:16:40] And in your mind as a listener, you're going, why didn't they talk about those? Those must not have been important, or maybe you even thought the presenter, the communicator, doesn't even know their slides. All you did by doing that was creating doubt. And you're lessening your credibility. Now, if I chance team, just by chance, you are Jen, and the person who invited you said.

[00:17:06] Bart. I'm sorry. I know we gave you an hour, but your time has been cut in half. Apologize. The person who spoke before you, Joe, spoke way too long. And so your time is good. Cut short. Okay. No worries. You're not going to be able to hit every single bullet point. So at the front end of your presentation, your talk, whatever you're doing, I want you to mention that.

[00:17:29] I want you to just say something simple today. My time has been cut short. I'm not going to be able to hit every single bullet point. Like I had planned. I'm going to hit the top three or four. Now, if by chance, after this is over, you'd like me to go back and address any of those key points. Those bullet points I'm more than happy to.

[00:17:50] Now, let me ask you the question, the critical question. As I go through my slides and I skip a bullet point, does it bother you? No, because I set it up on the front end that I couldn't cover it. That's what we call a logistical square. Anytime you do your talk, a presentation, a meeting you're going to do, I would have a logistical square or what you may call housekeeping, where you put that kind of information before you launch into the meat of your information.

[00:18:20] That's square in my mind covers many sins—those kinds of examples. When someone says your time has been cut short, So let me review just right here what I've covered. No more than five bullet points. No more than five words per bullet point. No sub-points. And if you put it on the slide, you have to talk about it.

[00:18:41] The caveat to all that is your double deck idea. Suppose that's what you'd like to do to give the technical person, whoever you want to have all of the minutia details.

[00:18:51]Now, let's go to another golden rule. And this is the one where it's the second major complaint by executives. How many times have you heard someone say, I know you can't read this, but let me tell you what it says, team. This is another one. If I ever hear that you say that I'm going to find you and hurt you again.

[00:19:12] Your slide has to be easy to see and easy to read. Now I love the guy that uses the 12 point font. When he's speaking to an audience of 2,500 and the guy in the back row can't even read it. And that's when the person says; I know you can't read this. Let me tell you what it says. All you do is let your credibility go down.

[00:19:35] When you make that kind of a comment. Here's just a thought. If you're going to speak at a conference, Get a hold of the conference coordinator, ask them to send you the schematic of the drawing of the room that you will be in. Now realize that when you go to convention halls, you go to major hotels, they have to do a diagram of what that room looks like from a setup perspective.

[00:20:01] Is there a stage or no stage where the door is where the water station is? Where the microphone is where the screen is going to be. They have to lay all that out. And there's this comedic drawing. It will give you the length and width of the room. Ask them to send you that then base your font size on that drawing.

[00:20:28] Now, if you were just going to a client site, there are two key questions that you should always ask. Number one, what's the logistical setup. If you ask that question, the client who's asking you to come in and I'll say, it's a little boardroom table. No, it's one of our bigger conference rooms that hold a hundred.

[00:20:49] They'll give you the idea that you can walk in the door with the appropriate font size. Now, when it comes to font size, If I'm going to walk into someone's office and just do a one-on-one just a one on one with someone, I can't encourage you. Enough team, no smaller than an 18 point font. Now that's just sitting across a desk with someone and talking and sharing and bantering back and forth and showing some slides.

[00:21:20] But if I chance you're going to go to a client site in a larger group format, your rule of thumb is this bigger is always better. Bigger is always better.

[00:21:31] You

[00:21:31] Bart Queen: want to make sure the readability factor is high. If someone has to strain to read your slides, you're in trouble, and God helps us. If the executive gets up out of the chair and walks to the screen because he can't read or she can't read what's up there, you might as well just walk out the door because your credibility is now lost.

[00:21:54] Now that leads us to one more question around this font size idea, the maximum number of fonts, the personalized maximum number of fonts per slide. Most people will tell me your rule of thumb is three-one in the title, two in the body. Now what I mean by two in the body is this, your bullet points are probably going to be one size, and they'll all be uniform.

[00:22:24] If by chance, you need a pie chart, a bar graph, you might want to label that. So you've got a label part of the pie chart or the bar graph. That's where you get to the third font. Do me a favor and make sure all your title fonts are the same size. So if you, by chance, have a longer title and you have to reduce the font size by one or two, whatever you do, then make sure you reduce them all to the same.

[00:22:49] Keep them consistent. You get more of a uniform picture when you do that.

[00:22:55]Now probably the other issue that comes up a lot. And for most of us out in the marketplace today, your company dictates what your background colors are. When I first got involved in the marketplace, if you remember way back at the beginning of PowerPoint, most of the time, it was a dark background in light text.

[00:23:16] And if you remember, when you used to go to print, you had to go to gray scale today for the majority of companies that I interface with, it's all a lighter background. Sometimes it's just a pure white, maybe it's a light cream, or sometimes I've even seen the light blue. If you're doing something more socially, you're doing something at your church group at a boy scout group, a girl scout group, something you do with your children.

[00:23:42] You're speaking at an association, think through the background color and the font. If you have the freedom to do it, most people today are doing it: lighter background and Adar, a darker print, darker font. If I'm dealing with an elderly audience, I typically do a darker font and light or print because it pops out and stands out better.

[00:24:09] If my client said, Bart, I got to tell you the room was dark. Then I'm going to do that lighter background. Cause I want to flood the room with a ton of light. This becomes a personal choice, depending on what you're trying to do. Think it through from a listener's perspective, not from your perspective.

[00:24:27] From a listener's perspective. If everything we do is we create our slides is more listener focused. You'll find that you're far more effective. Now that brings me to the last two points. I want to talk about crafting a slide. When you craft a slide, each slide, you should ask two critical questions.

[00:24:49] First critical question. What's the point I'm trying to make. This is where you're tying in your bullet points and your title. So I should be able to look at my title and look at my bullet points and articulate the point I am trying to make with that slide. The second, yeah, you want to ask yourself is what's the impact that you're trying to create?

[00:25:14] Let me give you an example. Let's say that I had gone to a major company and did a presentation to an executive group, and the CEO came up and said, Bart, this was fantastic. I enjoyed it. My son is a senior in high school, and he's involved in an entrepreneurial club. Could you take this presentation and present it to his club?

[00:25:38] I think it would be a huge value to them. And of course, you're probably going to say yes. So when you go back to your office, and you're going slide by slide, you're asking yourself these two questions. What's the point? What's the impact. The point's probably not going to change, but when you ask yourself the impact, it might.

[00:26:01] You're going from an executive audience to a group of high school students. So you decide to put a video clip in, you decide to add some animation behind it. You decide to add a cartoon to it because, with the high school students, your goal to entertain is higher with them than it may have been with that executive audience.

[00:26:26] So please remember that there are always two choices. As we think through what we do, there's educated and entertained with the executives. The majority was educating low on entertainment, high school students. It's the vert reverse high on that entertainment, and I'm still educating, but a little bit higher on that internet entertainment to make it more engaging for them.

[00:26:51] The last point I want to give you is what I call a guesstimation tool. I want you to guesstimate based on the timeframe that you have been given, the number of slides you should have. So let's start with this idea of a 60-minute time slot. If I was to ask, you've got 60 minutes to come present to my team or my company, one slide per tire.

[00:27:17] How much timeframe would be your golden rule as a guesstimation? Now, this is where, when I'm teaching class, everybody's all over the board. Some people will say one slide for 10 minutes. That would be great, but probably pretty real unrealistic. And someone will say one slide per five minutes. And so we'll, that's tremendous.

[00:27:36] That's. That's great in your technical world. I still don't think that's realistic. Your guesstimation guiding principle is this one slide for two to three minutes. Now I am not saying you have to talk about each slide for two to three minutes. I am saying that you look at your timeframe of, let's say 60 minutes, and you do one slide per two to three minutes.

[00:28:02] If we go to the maximum. Of two minutes, that gives you about 30 slides. Now, if you said, great, I'm going to say wrong because there's something I want you to factor in that we have not. If I gave you a 60-minute time slot, I want you to factor out your banter or your Q and a time. Let's say example, we've got 60 minutes, and you said, Bart, I want 15 minutes to banter and do Q and a at the end.

[00:28:32] Okay. Forty-five minutes is your real-time. Then now, I do one slide per two to three minutes. Now I'm at 22, 23, somewhere along in there for the maximum number of slides. Now you're not going to like me on this point either. That includes your title slide, guys. That includes a slide that people put up that says questions or Q and a, why you need a slide that says questions on it.

[00:28:59] You just can't ask your audience. I don't get it, but you see it all the time. Transition slides. When you go from 0.1 to point to that count. If you bring up a slide with your email address on it, or a link where they can download something that you're sending to them that counts one slide for two to three minutes, make sure you back out your Q and a time.

[00:29:23] Now, what if someone said, I'll give you 30 minutes. What's the maximum amount of time. That you should have the maximum amount of slides you should have in 30 minutes, executive-level audience, 30 minutes, no more than 10 CEO magazine recently came out with an article that said this. If you're going to come in and speak with an executive-level audience, come in and tell us a story.

[00:29:50] Do not bring in PowerPoint.

[00:29:52]Learn to tell your personal story more effectively and learn to tell your company story more effectively when your time gets shorter like that. Don't walk in with a bunch of PowerPoint. Now, what if the executive says, I'll give you 10 minutes or 15 minutes? How many slides, if they're going only to give you 10 minutes team.

[00:30:15] No slides, walk-in, tell the story, grab their attention, and then you can come back in. If you get that executive team to say, wow, that's interesting. Bart, a Ru, tell me more. We want you to come back. You have one. If you walk in the door, set up your laptop and try to show a bunch of PowerPoint in 10 minutes, and you have lost them in.

[00:30:36] They're not engaged. You've missed your opportunity. People buy from people. They don't buy from the PowerPoint slides they buy from you. So when you walk in that short amount of time, you should be trying to build your likability factor and your trust factor. And that factor that says me too. I'm interested.

[00:30:54] Tell me more now, guys, in this segment, I've had an opportunity to give you some golden rules around slides. Just some simple things, nothing written in stone, guys, nothing that's coming off the mountain. These are just simple ideas that keep you the center of attention. So when you think about the average room that you end up having to present or communicate in, you're at a boardroom table, dead center in the room is that screen.

[00:31:26] If you go into modern training rooms today, you will see that the screens are off to the side. Suppose you will think about major awards shows, the Grammys, the Academy Awards, the country music awards. If you think about those big award shows, where are the screens off to the side? Now there may be one screen way above the stage.

[00:31:49] Those though that slide, that screen is for the PE people up in the nosebleed. That way, they can see who's up there on the stage presenting. But what should be the dead center is you; everything I've shared with you in this segment has been about keeping you the center of attention. So I come back to what I started with in this session, guys, the number one thing you need to do is keep yourself in the center of attention.

[00:32:19] People are going to buy from you. What I want you to do is apply this principle. The next time you have to create a slide deck, think through each one of those and do your best to map to those golden rules as closely as you can. Here's what I think you're going to find. Number one, that audience is sitting on the edge of their seat, waiting for you to share more and more.

[00:32:42] You will find that they're looking at you and not looking at the slide. You're going to find that the banter is both ways instead of this one-way thing where you're going slide after slide. More importantly, you're going to find that your ability to influence that audience goes from point a to point B, and it is exponentially far greater.

[00:33:05]Remember, as you use your slides, you still have to take control. You still have to control yourself. You still have to control the conversation and the content, and you still have to control the situation you're in. This is Bart queen. This is the remarkability Institute, and I'll see you next time.

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart queen today. Our whole focus is around content. It is probably the number one question that executive salespeople, engineers, and technical folks ask me, how do I craft my content guys? Nine times out of 10, they come to me with a deck of slides and saying, here's what I've come up with.

[00:02:05] And I have to tell them you're doing everything in the wrong order. The never one purpose of any type of visual, whether you're using a whiteboard, a chalkboard, or a flip chart, is to enhance your content. But most people, when they get directed to create some type of a message, go right to their laptop, and they start cranking out PowerPoint slides.

[00:02:27] One of my favorite executives once said that if you use PowerPoint, you have no power, and you have no point. I don't have anything. The thing is PowerPoint. I think it's a tremendous tool, but where I have concerns is how we use PowerPoint. So w with that thought in mind, let me just back up a little and let's talk about structure.

[00:02:53] On Sunday. I had an opportunity to relax for a little bit, and I caught a national geographic special in this special. They were talking about some of the greater things that have been built in America. The two things they highlighted was the golden gate bridge. And the Hoover dam and they were talking about the importance of the structure and how important that design was to make the bridge viable for a long time and the dam viable for a long time.

[00:03:29] And as I was just relaxing and enjoying the special, the ideas of that structure came to my mind when it comes to our content. So let me use the golden gate bridge specifically as an example; that bridge from point a to point B is 1.7 miles. Now, this is a suspension bridge. But the beams that go across one on the left and one on the right that they built the rest of the structure upon is what carries the cars from point a to point B.

[00:04:07] Now those beams are suspended. But what I want you to realize is because they had those two beams, one on the left and the one on the right that allowed them to do whatever they wanted to do. On the bridge to build the bridge. You and I, or on vacation or going to work or whatever it may happen to be, can go across it.

[00:04:29] And then on top of it, they put the guide rails. There are sidewalks on either side, and then there are small fences to keep people from falling off those fences. And then sometimes they put in a guide rail in the middle.

[00:04:45] But

[00:04:46] Bart: here's what I want you to realize as it relates to the way you structure your content.

[00:04:51] The two major beams that take you from point a to point B give you the most effective way to take your customer, your client, or your listener from where they're currently at or what sometimes I call their current state to point B or that vision state, where you're trying to take them. That adds it is an efficient manner for the listener to go through your content.

[00:05:18] The guide rails, once they're put on track or top in my mind, are the things that keep you on track. I want you to realize that there are three things you have to control. Anytime you're sharing a message. Number one, you have to be able to control yourself. Number two, you have to be able to control your content or your conversation.

[00:05:43] And number three, you've got to be able to control the situation you're in or the circumstance in which you're communicating. The guide rails allow you to take your listener from point a to point B. The safety rails allow you to stay on track. So here's the principle. I want you to Mark down. Here's a principle.

[00:06:05] I don't want you ever to forget. There is freedom in structure. There is freedom in structure. There is freedom in structure. Now I never want you to memorize what you put in the structure. What I want you to memorize is the structure itself. As I walk you through this today, when you get done at the very end, I want you to have a structure you can speak through.

[00:06:30] We've all been caught in a situation where someone says, you know, Bart, I didn't plan. I didn't ask you to, but would you mind getting up and sharing about what your team's been doing? What's your division has been doing? And you look at that person and say, Oh, I'm not prepared to do that.

[00:06:47] If you have a structure in your head, all you have to do is plug and play. You look like a rockstar. Not because you took a ton of time to plan, but because you had a structure to work through in my mind; structure in your content is one of the foundation cornerstones that allow you to be successful.

[00:07:14] And out of our time today, I want you to walk away with some of the principles that will allow you to build that structure. Now, if you'll learn those principles, if you'll learn the structure, here's what I think you're going to have. You're going to have freedom in the way you craft your content in your word choice.

[00:07:34] You're going to have freedom in the way you work the conversation. And you're going to have freedom in the circumstance that you're in to flex and adapt. And that's all you need to do is to have this conversation. So please remember it's a conversation. It's not a presentation. It's a conversation.

[00:07:55] Whether you're giving a keynote speech, you're doing a Ted Talk, Guys it's a conversation, whether it's five minutes or 15 minutes, Giving you the confidence to speak no matter what the timeframe is, is what I'm committed to doing is to give you those principles. So let's take a look at one of the first principles I want to share with you.

[00:08:17]It's what I call the 75% rule. If I asked you to come into my organization and speak for 60 minutes, nine times out of 10, you will work through enough content to fill that 60 minutes. I don't think that's the best approach. I want you to take an approach to what we call the 75% rule. So if I asked you to come in and speak for 60 minutes, if you apply the 75% rule, most of you are going to get, okay, Bart.

[00:08:51] I'm going to craft content for 45 minutes, pretty obvious, but there's one slight change. I want you to make it. Out of that 60 minutes, before you apply the 75% rule, I want you to back out what you would probably call Q and a time I'm going to call it banter time, conversation time. Let's say, for example, that I decided to do a 15 minute kind of banter Q and time I'm going to take my 60 minutes.

[00:09:25] I'm going to back out my 15 minutes. That leaves me with 45. Now, guys, I want you to take the 75% rule.

[00:09:36]If you do that, you're resting it a little bit more than 30 minutes or so. That's the amount of time I want you to think about filling your audience will much prefer that you end early then go longer. They will appreciate you giving them time back. Now, remember one of the other podcasts I've shared with you that the driving force is getting them to say, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.

[00:10:06] So if you end five minutes early and they say, wow, Bart, this was great. Can you say a little bit longer? Can you answer some more questions? Feel free to stay. Cause now, guys, I'm guaranteeing you that they are engaged in your content, and you are winning. Now they want you to stay. You always want to finish up in respect a few minutes early.

[00:10:29] Now, if you're doing a keynote type speech or a Ted type talk where you have to meet 18 minutes, and a Ted type talk on a typical keynote that 60 minutes I would get you to in 55 to 57 minutes every single time. The way that I would do that, I would get you to write it out—word for word. Now, in this example, this is the only time I'd ever get you to write it out.

[00:10:52] Word for word, because I need to time the rate that you speak. When I understand the rate that you speak, whether that's very deliberate, more on the slower side or you're one of those enthusiastic speakers that speak on a faster rate, that is going to dictate to me the amount of content you can fit within that 55 to 57 minutes, this 75% rule.

[00:11:17] Is one of the checkpoints that will keep you from "show up and throw up." This will keep you from fire, hosing someone. Your goal is not to tell them more. Your goal is to get them to remember more. And this is one of those checkpoints that will help you. This has saved me many, many times. And guys in those situations, when someone has said, I want you to tell them everything, I want you to tell them everything.

[00:11:44] And I have given into that pressure every single time I've walked out, I've regretted it. Cause you get tied on time. He ended up talking fast at the end, and then all you do is compromise your content. I never want you to compromise yourself and I never want you to compromise what you bring to the table.

[00:12:04] What you bring to the table is too valuable to compromise. It's also one of those things that happen when you walk in and the guy says, I know we gave you 45 minutes, but you're down to 20. And the average person ends up speaking fast. I don't want you to do that. So let's say you walked in with ten items to share with them.

[00:12:26] And the man said you're half the time. Then I would say out of the ten things I would bring to the table, which five are the most important. Now, look at what you're saying about your content. You're saying my content is so valuable. I will not compromise it, which of the five are most important. Now, if you and I have done our job, right, they're going to say that was great.

[00:12:49] We want the additional five. When can you come back notice again? When that happens, you're winning this 75% rule is a tremendous principle that you want to make sure you implement. Into your webcast to your virtual meetings, to your Ted type talks to your presentations or your sales call, the theme in all of this, around this content is this idea of doing the hard work.

[00:13:16] Keep it simple, do the hard work, keep it simple. And to keep it simple, you have to do the hard work harder on our end, better on your listener's end. So let's go to that second principle.

[00:13:30]When you think about the process of crafting content? The second thing I want you to think about is the five steps in creating that content. Step. Number one, I want you to set your goals. Now, what I work with foes, most of the time, they take a very tactical approach. I want you to be more strategic in your approach.

[00:13:57] If you look up the root word of strategy, the root word is three ghosts. It's a Greek root word, not a Latin root word. And if you look up the meaning of that, it talks about the art of generals. Now, for those of you who have read the art of war, you know, it's not the number of tanks you've got, the number of hanger needs.

[00:14:18] You've got. The number of men you've got it's. How do I out-think the competition. And that's the approach I want you to take, as you think about crafting your content, take a more strategic approach. Now, when you set your goals when I'm working with salespeople, the average salesperson will put on their goals to get them to buy the product.

[00:14:41] That's not a strategic goal. That's a closing action—step in any sales call. I want you to push harder. The strategic goals in that sales call situation are more gain a customer. Have someone become a reference, become a vendor of choice. Those are more visionary, strategic goals that I want you to strive for.

[00:15:06] Developing. Those can be difficult. So once you come up with something that you say, these are the three goals that I want you to ask yourself. So what? Push it one more time. And when you've done, that, say so what? And push it one more time. If you will push it two more times, you'll get closer to those visionary type goals that will take you further.

[00:15:30] So think about Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King's goal wasn't to get people to a speech. His goal was until the laws of man are equivalent to the laws of God there will always be injustice. He was striving for this idea that all men are created equal, his talks, his rallies, and everything. He did drove to that visionary goal.

[00:15:54] And if you'll notice people follow that visionary goal. That is a great example of why 250,000 people showed up in Washington, DC, in August on a blazing hot day. It was because they believed what he believed. They believed in the goals that he was talking about that all men are created equal and led toward that setting.

[00:16:17] Your goals is a crucial step. The second thing is understanding who your listeners are. Now everybody will always tell you, no, your listener know your listener, know your listener, but nobody will take the time to do the hard work. Now here, or just a couple of questions before you craft content that I want you to have at your fingertips.

[00:16:40] Number one, one, what's the knowledge level of your listener on your topic back on your topic. Number two, the top three things they want to know. Number three, what are the three major pains that they have that you're trying to help them with? So I want you to remember something. If you craft content, no pain, no value, no value, no business. Don't walk in and just share a bunch of information if you cannot map it to a challenge, an issue, a pain or a concern, no pain, no value, no value, no business.

[00:17:21] So you've set your goals. You understand your listener. The next step is you're open, and you're close. These are critical to your success. Now I want you to notice that we haven't started crafting content yet. I haven't even got you there. And here's my reason why when you pinpoint you're open, and you pinpoint your clothes specifically, the action step in the open and the action step in the closure that becomes your GPS reference points.

[00:17:53] When you get in the car with your family to go somewhere you've never been, you plug in the address of the restaurant, the park, wherever you're going to go. Your destination, your GPS unit, whether it's on your phone and your car, automatically picks up your starting point. So now if you think about

[00:18:11] it,

[00:18:11] Bart: guys, you've got a starting point and an ending point.

[00:18:14] Your GPS unit gives you the fastest way to get from point a to point B, no different than the guard rails that I was talking about in your foundation. It takes your listener from point a to point B that opening action steps in that closing action. Step, give you the fastest way to get there. Now what you'll find, if you do this, you'll realize it begins to.

[00:18:41] Slim down your content. And begin to focus on your content. Instead of this vast message, you felt like you had to share. Now you're getting it down to a focused message, but you've got to do your opening and closing action steps. First, once you've pinpointed, that should give you great reference points to decide what you're thinking.

[00:19:05] The idea is that you want to share that step number four. Now

[00:19:11] you

[00:19:12] Bart: finally, are at a place of creating visuals. The number one purpose of your visuals are to enhance your content. But I want you to craft visuals based on your content.

[00:19:24] I want your visuals to reflect your content. Your slides are not your notes. They're not your notes. And that's what most people end up using PowerPoint for are their notes. They are purely to enhance your content for your listener. So let me kind of go back through those five steps in the process.

[00:19:46] Number one, set your goals. Number two, understand your listener. Number three, you're open in your close, your GPS unit to take your listener from point a to point B, developing your key ideas. And then creating your visuals. So now, let's dive into a little bit more detail on a couple of those posts points.

[00:20:47] As far as your structure is concerned, I want to bring in what I call the simplicity factor. This is where I want you to break out of that idea that you're presenting everything we do as a conversation, just with people you're not talking at people, you're talking with people. Anytime you're communicating.

[00:21:10] get to the point. This is not a time to be verbose. This is a time to be very concise in what you're saying, whatever you decide, the main messages. I want you to say it over and over again. It's what I call that seven-factor phrase. Now, remember, for the listener to remember something, you have to say it seven times.

[00:21:32] So, if we've done our homework properly, you're at one message that you're going to drive through your talk up to seven times. I realize you may not be able to say it seven times in 10 minutes. Maybe you say it three times, but three times is better than one time, five times better than three times.

[00:21:52] You want someone walking out of your message, going down the hallway, seeing a colleague, and saying. I was just with Bart. And here's the number one message he said if you can get them to repeat that you win every single time. And the last point I want to make around the simplicity factor it's got to be clear.

[00:22:12] That means it has to be simple. So remember, a confused mind will always say no, a confused mind will always say no. I want to add one more thought here, if by chance if by chance you're doing something virtually, I want you to remember this principle. If you're doing something on zoom, you're doing something on WebEx.

[00:22:33] You're doing something on Microsoft teams. If your audience is large, let's say you've got 50 people or more on this session. The complexity of your content has to be low. The simplicity of your content has to be high, but if you're doing some type of a virtual session where you've got five people on your call, the complexity of your content can be higher.

[00:23:04] Why? Because you can do more banter. If you've got 50 people on your call, you're most likely not going to have an opportunity to spend a lot of time having a conversation, answering questions. It's going to be more of a one-way communication. So if you're doing something virtually, please remember if the group is large, you have to keep it simple.

[00:23:28] If it's a smaller group, you can be far more complex. All right. Let's continue through these ideas around the structure of your content. It's, it's really what I call the four H's. I want you to remember this principle. People buy with emotion, and they verify with facts. people buy with emotion and they verify with facts, so I can't encourage you enough.

[00:23:55] You need an opening emotion and a closing emotion. Let me give you an example. So if I talked to a group of CFOs, maybe my opening emotion is an angst concern or fear out of something around a regulatory issue. So our banks Sarbanes, Oxley Bazell too, but at the end of my content, I want them to be more excited.

[00:24:21] People buy with emotion, and they verify with fact. We see this time after time after time; I'm sure if you think about it, , you have bought something somewhere and then you got buyer's remorse. The very first horse I ever bought that happened to me. My hand went up, I ended up buying this horse, and the guy goes, you don't even have a place to keep the horse.

[00:24:45] And then that's when the regret me started to set in. Now the four H's that I want to mention to you, the first one is help. You're there to solve pain. Number two, I want you to bring your heart to the table. You have to be able to captivate their emotions. Number three, you want to bring hope. You want to inspire them.

[00:25:06] You want them to realize that you can overcome the obstacle. You can get rid of the challenge. You can increase their performance, whatever that. Particular pain is that you're trying to solve. You're bringing hope. Remember that you're there to empower them. Most people, when they communicate, walk in with a perspective of I'm here to impress you.

[00:25:27] And when you try to impress people, it's all about what, you know, nobody cares what you know, but if you walk in with an attitude of how do I make your life better, how do I empower you? You walk in with this idea that inspires them. And when they feel like you're there to help them, they want to know what you know, but until they know how much you care, they don't want to know what you knew.

[00:25:52] Then that last H is just humor. I'm not talking about jokes. Jokes are high risk, low return. You have to be very, very careful with humor. I'm talking about self defacing, humor, natural humor. A story about one of your children, something that happened to you on the way to work, those kinds of natural humor pieces that are relevant to what you're talking about.

[00:26:17] Humor is the best way to relax an audience. Now if, if you feel like it's something you want to master, take a comedy class, go to your local community college, and learn some of those principles that will assist you in the crafting of your content. Remember, our theme today is to do the hard work.

[00:26:37] Keep it simple, do the hard work, keep it simple. Alright, so let's go to the next idea that I want to make sure you can work with as you're crafting your content. It's what I call content drivers. There are three drivers that I want to make sure that you remember that should drive how you craft your content.

[00:27:01] Number one is what's the purpose of me sharing this content. Now I'm going to give a couple of examples is my purpose selling is my purpose awareness building is my purpose, education, or teaching. That should begin to help you craft how you want to do your content. If I'm an associate mode, my action steps are different from those in a teaching mode.

[00:27:30] If I'm just to build awareness around a solution tool or product, I'm going to offer ideas

[00:27:36] that

[00:27:36] Bart: will help them see how they can apply it to what they're doing. That second principle comes back to the audience. Now I mentioned this earlier, the greater the complexity. If it's a more one-to-one or small group, the larger group, it's got to be simple.

[00:27:53] Audience size is a driver. If you're doing one-on-one lots of conversation, if you're doing one to 5,000 and the information is just. Awareness building, then keep your information at a higher level. If it's one to one, go deep into the complexity of your content, but that has to be driven by audience size.

[00:28:21] And then the goals that you set up, what's the goal that I'm trying to achieve when it's all said and done. When you finish with your five minutes, 10 minutes, 50 minutes, or 90 minutes, whatever it may happen to be or even let's say it's a full one-day teaching program you're trying to accomplish.

[00:28:37] I want you to be able to answer three questions, question number one. What do you want them to think when you're done? So envision yourself after one day of training, and they're walking out the door, what do you want them to think? Secondly, what do you want them to feel? Excited, inspired, concerned. The last thing I'd want them to feel as overwhelmed.

[00:29:04] You don't want that. That's what will happen. If you get a data dump, what do you want them to feel? And then this last one in my mind is most critical. What do you want them to do? Your job is to drive the listener to action. Let me say that again; your job is to drive the listener to action. For example, if your audience walked into a sales call and let's say, they're negative about you and your company.

[00:29:32] So my goal would be at the end of this sales situation is at least to drive them to neutral. But let's say they're walking in the door and they're neutral. I haven't heard from you. They don't know much about your solution, tool, or product. And guys, you should be driving them to positive. And if you'll think about that, it drives you to craft your content.

[00:29:54] If I'm trying to take you from neutral to positive, I will share great examples of success. I'm going to talk about the benefits that my company, my solution, my tool in my product, or myself can bring to the table. If you will think through what you want them to think, what do you want them to feel, and what do you want them to do and relate that to content.

[00:30:15] You will find that that will help you craft what you want to accomplish. All of these things are to get you to be focused on your message. It is not a data dump. It's a focused message.

[00:30:28]Now we've covered a lot of content today, guys, and these are just. Some principles that will give you the structure to what you want to say. I can't come back to the idea enough that content structure is the foundation of everything that you're going to build. Whether it's five minutes, it's 50 minutes, whether it's a sales call, it's a keynote speech, or it's a Ted type talk.

[00:30:55] What I want you to do is take these principles and begin to implement them into anything that you're crafting. I want to make sure that you have the freedom in the content in your word choice. I want to make sure that you have freedom in the conversation. And I want to make sure that you have the freedom to adjust to any situation that gets thrown at you.

[00:31:20] If anything that will set you apart, it's the way you craft your message. You craft the message for yourself, but what ends up happening for your listener? It is seamless. It's like walking the listener through a park, a step at a time from point a to point B from one side of the bridge to the other side of the bridge.

[00:31:46] Guys, it's been an absolute privilege to be with you today. Don't forget. Do the hard work. Keep it simple. This is Bart queen with the remarkability Institute.

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart queen. If you've been following us over the last couple of podcasts, we've been focusing on this idea of around crafting content. Crafting content is probably one of the most difficult things to do well. If you don't do the hard work upfront and keep it simple, the complexity of your content for your listener for the receiver is even more difficult.

[00:02:10] Statistically, we are told that we should be crafting our content at an eighth-grade level. Guys, there are some organizations that will tell you it should be fifth-grade level. I'm not talking about your vocabulary; your work with a Ph.D. group of folks use Ph.D. vocabulary. What I'm talking about is sentence structure.

[00:02:34] I think the greatest example of this is you say today, those who remember when USA Today launched in the eighties. Everybody made fun of that paper. They said this newspaper would never be successful. They called it "McPaper" because it was written to simply, and they added color. But what I find fascinating is that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal they followed suit.

[00:03:06] They began to add color, and they made it simple to read, and for the listener to consume one of my favorite books, when I talk about content, is why business leaders speak like idiots.

[00:03:20] The subtitle is a bullfighters guide, the whole focus. All of that book is creating content to the point that your listener can absorb it and walk away with it. Crafting your content and understanding the structure of your content is foundational to build the message that your listener can walk away with.

[00:03:48] So, as we spend our time together today, I want you to walk away with the key components. The structure at a high level so that you can craft that content, fill in the buckets, and then whatever you want to do within them. You can now there are, in essence, three major buckets today that I want to make sure you build your awareness around.

[00:04:18] Number one, bucket, number two, the body of what you're sharing, whether that's the body of a keynote speech, the body of a Ted type talk, the body of what you and I would call a presentation or a sales call. The other major bucket that you have to build into or think about is what I call foundational information.

[00:04:47] This is foundational information or pieces like the logistics of the meeting. When you're going to take a break where the cocktail party is after the meeting's over those logistical pieces. The second part of that is your credibility, the credibility of your company, and the credibility of yourself. And the third bucket in that foundation is the background.

[00:05:14] This is the information you should be pulling forward from a discovery or research piece that gives you the foundation to share your three key points, your four key points, or five key points, whatever you're going to do. Now, the first thing I want to address is what I call the three T's. So if you have a pen and paper, I want you to note these three T's are your topic, your theme.

[00:05:44] And your title. Now, I want you to notice the order. I put them in topic, theme, and title. If I'm doing some type of a communication class, and I've got people beginning to work with content, I will ask them to put down their topic. 99% of people will put down the title. That's not what I want you to note first.

[00:06:10] It's the last thing I want you to get you to do one purpose of a title. The number one purpose of a title is to grab your listeners' attention. Now, when you're crafting your titles, whether you're doing something more from a written perspective, say you're writing a white paper, writing a book, or you're doing it from what you're going to probably call it more of a presentation type situation.

[00:06:37] You're allowed two subtitles. You can do two. You can do just one. One subtitle gives clarity to the topic. The second subtitle is a benefit to the listener. If you're speaking or a benefit to the reader, if you're writing number one purpose of a title, grab your attention, your two subtitles, then give a benefit and clarity to that theme.

[00:07:05] So don't put—marketing optimization. Don't put financial optimization. That's boring. Come up with a title. How to go from zero to 60 in 12, the top three ways to succeed in your business. Those are the kinds of titles that grab someone's attention. And then you can do your subtitles. Here's what I want you to do the next time you go to your local bookstore, you go to Barnes and noble.

[00:07:35] You go wherever you might look for a book on a Sunday afternoon when it's pouring rain and you going to want to drink a cup of coffee and relax, pick up any book, and you will see this principle lived out in some form or another. The very first thing I want you to note is the topic. So I want you to picture a bullseye, and that red bull's eye in the center of your target is your topic.

[00:08:01] It's boiling it down to something simple. It is not a sentence. It could be your solution, tool, or product. It could be a pain you want to solve. It is very simple. Now, this is where most people get hung up because they're going to go. I don't want to say that. That's okay. I'm not asking you to say it.

[00:08:23] I'm asking you to get a razor focus on what the content has, and then you can expand and talk from there. Your theme is where you want to build something into your meeting presentation or talk a mountain climbing theme, a gardening theme, and an athletic theme, a marathon theme. Now, what I want you to remember about this theme is this can give you an opportunity to express something about yourself.

[00:08:57] I just had a friend who just bought a motorcycle, and he's all excited about it. It sounds like that's a passion for him so that he could build this idea of his love for motorcycles into what he wants to share and to his. So next podcast, he's going to make an analogy around that allows him to speak expressively.

[00:09:21] His passion comes forward, and here's the interesting thing. Any one of his listeners that has a love for motorcycle is going to want it to jump onto that podcast because they have something in common with him. And here's that me too. Factor again. This is where you win the quicker. You get someone to say, me too.

[00:09:41] Me too. You pull them into your content. Now, guys, this information I've just shared with you. It's just around your topic, your theme in a title. One of my favorite books on business leadership is called beyond the summit. Skinner is the author's last name, presale mountain climber, almost climbed every single mountain in the world.

[00:10:05] He decided to write a book. Now he decided that this was what the topic would be business leadership, what he realized was all the principles he learned in climbing a mountain. He could apply to in business leadership, the title of the book, Beyond The Summit picture on the book.

[00:10:28] I believe it's K2 topic in the book, business leadership. The theme in the book mountain climbing in my mind, a tremendous example of someone who leveraged what I call the three Ts. Now that second component, when you're crafting content and your structure are you're open and your close. These, in my mind are the most important.

[00:10:54] So I want you to remember something don't muddle the beginning and don't muddle the end. If you want to muddle something, model the middle; you want an open that grabs them and pulls them in immediately. Guys, remember you have 30 seconds to engage an audience, 30 seconds.

[00:11:13] Now, if you're doing something virtually, all you have is eight seconds to pull them in to craft some type of an open that is engaging and inspiring and brings people in critical to your content. Your close is just as important because the close is what happens at the end.

[00:11:34] When you send them out the door of your meeting, you're talking to your presentation. And that's when I come back to the principle that I've shared with you, what do you want them to think? What do you want them to feel, and what do you want them to do at the end? That's all part of your clothes. The third key piece is the body of your content, the meat of what you want to share.

[00:11:57] The last piece is then that foundation, your logistics, your credibility, your personal, your professional, and your background. So with that overview, let's break into these more specifically. When you think about the body of what you want to share, I want you to think this no more than four key points.

[00:12:23] And no more than four supporting points. Each one of those key points, the principle of three by three, is your ideal. So if you think about it, the number three is almost in everything that we do. It's in our social security numbers; it's in our phone numbers. Now make a fun application. I'm going to give my age away here a little bit.

[00:12:49] But if I said to you, can you name the three Stooges? One of you is going to say, Bart, there's four. And that would be correct. But if you're in my age group, you'd be able to name the three Stooges. Now, if I said to any of you, can you name the seven dwarfs? You're probably going to struggle a little bit.

[00:13:09] If I said to you, can you name all the reindeer without singing the song? You might struggle a little bit. This principle of three in your communication is critical to your success.

[00:13:25] All here, many salespeople drive one benefit, and I'll share and coach them that you need to have two more. That one benefit may not drive that listener. My favorite sport is water-skiing and if I said, guys, let's go water skiing because you're going to get some great exercise. Three-quarters of you go, "I'm out a Bart."

[00:13:45] I don't want any exercise. But if I said, you're going to get some great exercise; we're going to have a chance to relax, lay in the sun. And I'm having a full barbecue catered from steak to all your favorite beverages and a buffet that you'll never stop. I'll get more of you motivated to come. That's based on that simple principle of three.

[00:14:08] Now, let me make a differentiation here just briefly for you in a typical keynote speech. Typical, you're going to share three major points in that typical keynote. Your three sub-points are going to follow this idea of the point. I want to make a story or an illustration that backs up that point and then application to the people in my audience.

[00:14:35] If you will study a good keynote, it feels start to break them apart. You will see that they use these three principles now; as you and I listened to the keynote, it becomes this simple flow, and it's effortless. And we enjoy every step of it. The people who are giving the keynote spent hours and hours and making sure that those three supporting points.

[00:15:01] We're simple and flawless. If we go to more of a Ted type talk that 18 minute kind of a structure if you'll study those it's one key message, not three messages. It's one message that they're going to drive over and over again. One of my favorite Ted type talks is Simon Sinek. The man who wrote the book Start With Why.

[00:15:28] My favorite presentation by him is inspiring leaders. Now, if you went to Ted talks or you went to YouTube and pulled it up, you will see that his key message is very simple. That people buy why you do what you do before they buy what you too. And he drives that message in his 18-minute talk. And then, he gives three simple illustrations that reinforce that point.

[00:15:55] For those in technology, you're more system engineers, you're more technical folks, and you're demonstrating your software. You're demonstrating the tool or the product; I want you to remember one thing your whole purpose in a demo is to prove it. If you look up the word, demonstrate, the definition is to prove it's not training your customer on it. It's not giving them every step in every piece of technology or functionality or feature.

[00:17:03] No pain, no value. So here's the structure I want you to do. Now I'm going to push it on your demos. No more than five, meaning no more than five features that will solve the problems, the pains, or the issues that they've got no more than five. Now, if someone asks you a question, does it do this, do that, show them, but I want you to have those guidelines that keep you on track.

[00:17:29] And on topic, to solve the pain so many times. And I know you've experienced this. Someone will say, show me everything that is just setting yourself up for failure that will not serve you. Now here's the benefit. If you've done the structure, as I've laid it out to you, either four by four or three by three or some combination of that, now you can speak for five minutes or 50 minutes.

[00:17:58] But if this is what you've done, you open up your laptop. You crafted a bunch of slides. Now you're stuck in your structure. Suppose you do your structure first if you complete your grid and then craft your slides. When someone says, I'm sorry, you don't have 60 minutes, you have 30 minutes. You can adapt. Please remember it's about you controlling yourself.

[00:18:22] It's about controlling the content, and it's about controlling the situation. I want you to have the tools that will allow you to do that.

[00:18:31]Now, I've given you this rough overview of kind of the grid or what I call the body of what you want to craft. Let's move on to that next piece. This is all around your open and close. This is made or break. This is the place that, in my mind, is the most difficult. When I first started in my career, I had two major fears.

[00:18:57] Number one, how do I kick something off and pull them in? And number two, how do I answer questions? Those were probably my two biggest fears. Anytime I went to teach class, give any type of presentation or do some type of a keynote. It is required that when you do an open or close, you have to have a grabber or a hook.

[00:19:22]at all costs. I want you to avoid opening up with my name is if you were doing something at a conference and you were one of the main speakers, nine times out of 10, someone is introducing you. And if they're introducing you, there is no reason for you to walk up there and say, hi, my name is.

[00:19:44] If you and I were doing something at a conference, that was more of a breakout session. Number one, you probably had to put some type of a program description in their handout, their program, their catalog. So I already know your name there on top of that. When you find the room that I'm going to be presenting or communicating it, most likely, there's something out the door that says the title and the Bart Queen show.

[00:20:11] I shouldn't have to open with, hi, my name is, I am not saying not to say your name. I am not saying not to build your credibility.

[00:20:22] I am saying don't make it the first thing out of your mouth.

[00:20:26]Now a couple of things about grabbers and hooks. The only difference between a grabber and a hook is where it takes place a grabber grabs your listener by their shirt, by their coat and pulls them into the content. A hook grabs their same shirt and pushes them out the door and drives them to action.

[00:20:46] Or it is the one thing that you want them to remember. These are not optional. So I want you to think about grabbers and hooks, much like a freight train. You've seen a freight train, and at the front of the freight train, there may be an engine. Maybe there's a couple of engines. All those engines are going to be pulling the other cars.

[00:21:08] That's your grabber. Your hook is an engine at the end of this big, huge freight train. It pushes. Grabbers and hooks are emotional engines. One pulls, one pushes. Now, if you happen to know out of the radio, there was a gentleman that did a tremendous job of grabbers and hooks, Earl Nightingale.

[00:21:39] Whenever he would start his newscast, he would start to tell you a story. He would get halfway through the story, and then he would say part two, and he would give you his advertisement. And then he would give you the rest of the news. When you got through to the end of the news, he would say now the rest of the story, and then he would give you the conclusion for the 55 years he was on the radio.

[00:22:09] That was his same structure. You knew you were going to get a story. You knew you were going to get the advertisement and the news, and then you were going to get the rest of the story. He grabbed you and kept you through that is the power of a grabber and to hook. Now, once you got into the open piece, past the grabber, there are a couple of components that become crucial to me.

[00:22:36] And there is no necessary order that you have to put these in. One of the first things you have to drive is your position or a stake in the ground. This acts as a reference point. Now, when I'm teaching class, I'll get someone to put it in this language construct. I believe something that acts as a reference point.

[00:23:03] If you're not excited about your topic, why should I be excited? For the last 18 years, when I've opened up class, my position has always been ness. I believe that every, 17 and 18-year-old should get this information. That's my position. Whether you agree with it or not so important, but you now know where I'm coming from now.

[00:23:27] If this is where I'm coming from and your listeners way over here, your goal is to bring them to that position. We can look throughout history at some of our politicians where they may beat around the Bush around taxes or education or volatile topics that are happening at that point at the time.

[00:23:50] but yet there are other leaders who will take that position, drive that stake in the ground. And you have no doubt where they're coming from. This is critical to your success. Now, the second thing I want you to add to that position or what I call your belief statements here's my stake in the ground.

[00:24:10] Now, I want you to share why you believe that. That could because it could be because you've experienced it. It could because you pulled something from an article; it could be where you're pulling it from a third party voice that you want to bring in to back it up. It could be out of your own experience, but I want you to develop three.

[00:24:32] Why's why you believe what you believe. Now, this comes back to the Simon sending principle that people buy, why you do what you do before they buy what you do. This is where people relate to you. This is where people go. I think like Bart; I think like Bart. That's those why's.

[00:24:52]The next critical component is that action step. Now, most of you will never fail to have an action step at the end of a meeting talk or a presentation, but guys, here's where I think we fail. We fail to put an action step in the open. Here's the principle. You have to give them a reason to be in the seat.

[00:25:16] How many of you have walked out? Some type of meeting looked at your colleague and said, why were we there? What a waste of time? That's because number one, they didn't know you were there. Or number two, they didn't give you an action step. Step action steps in the open are more broad and soft. Are verbs, learn, gain, see, become aware of imagining visualize those are opening type action.

[00:25:45] Step closing type action steps are specific; buy, implement, use innovate, demonstrate, commit, to partner. Those are specific type verbs that go in the action step. In the close. Remember, you're driving the listener forward, you're driving the listener forward. So let me give you an example. If I said, and I was teaching something today, guys, I want you to become aware of the key benefits that this solution tool or product brings to the table.

[00:26:23] If that was my action step, look at how I've set you up to here. What I'm going to cover. If I said, become aware of, and learn of the key benefits that this will bring to the table, you are now expecting me to cover the benefits. So in my content, in my structure, I might say benefit. Number one, benefit number two, benefit number three.

[00:26:44] Notice how I focus that message. Now my closing action step might be. What I want you to do is implement a solution to our product that will bring you those three key benefits. I crafted a very tight message, but yeah, that's because I understood my opening action—step in my closing action steps. I wish I could get every single person who teaches a module.

[00:27:10] I wish I could get every teacher who teaches a concept in our high schools and junior high schools to frame each module with an opening and closing action step. I think our young people would learn a lot more, and they'd be very focused on that hour or 90 minutes. They're on when they're talking about the concepts in chemistry or history or Western saver.

[00:27:30] And man.

[00:27:30]An additional point. I want to make sure you make in your open is what I call proof points. And these are examples, simple examples. This is not a story you may have done more in a story in your grabber and your hook, but within the open, don't be afraid to build. For example, it is just a proof point.

[00:27:52] Now your examples have to have four key components to them. They have to have the, who did you work with? What was the problem that they were facing? What was the issue you help them with? What was the solution that you brought to the table? Now, the solution, in your example, or the product tool or service should map to your position; there should be some integration there.

[00:28:17] Remember that your example is a proof point to your position and your topic. And then the last is the specific results that they got by implementing by using, by developing whatever your solution was. And then, last but not least, the benefits that your listeners or I will get.

[00:28:40] Guys, if they take the action step that you put in your open. If I said in the action step, what I want you to do is learn the key benefits that this solution brings to the table. What's the benefit I am going to get. If I take that action step now, here's where there might be a little twist to your language.

[00:29:02] If I said to you, visualize this solution at your fingertips. Then your benefits have got to be the potential cause I'm just visualizing. But am I close if I said implement by using? I could say here are the three key benefits you're going to get. So notice an interesting point. Yeah. Benefits in my open could be the parties.

[00:29:28] for one, two, three, but in my clothes, I get one, two, three. The potential on the open is because I visualized, I get them into clothes because I implemented.

[00:29:44]Those are just some of the key components in this idea of you're open and in the body of what you want to share. This simple overview of your structure will give you the freedom to craft what's most on your heart. And what's most important to your listener. Remember that the structure is the foundational piece to you crafting content.

[00:30:10] to take your listener from point a to point B. It is your safety rails that keep you on track critical to your success. Now in content delivery. If I'm physically saying something, I've always taught you to be concise, but you have to drive that principle in your content.

[00:30:32] What I want you to do is the next time you craft any type of content, built one of these structures or these elements of these structures into your talk to your presentation, into your information, and to your email. Suppose you're just writing an email. I can guarantee you; it's going to give you freedom in your content.

[00:30:50] It's going to give you freedom in the conversation, and it's going to give you freedom in the circumstance you're in. So you can speak for five minutes or 50 minutes, guys. It has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today and sharing some things about these ideas around a content structure.

[00:31:09]

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen, your host today. Now, if you've been following at all over the line, the last couple of sessions, I've been focused on this idea of content structure. And today, I want to take it one more level into actually what I'm going to call building the conversation.

[00:01:59] Most people, when they start to dive into this, always, you use the term bar to have to go present, and I have to give a public speech. I have to public speak. I am not fond of either one of those words. If I could write the script, we would take the word presenting and public speaking out of the vocabulary.

[00:02:21] I think all that does is put fear in people's hearts. If you look at it, the number one fear in America is public speaking. The fifth fear in America. Is death. Now, if you follow Seinfeld and remember one of his famous quotes, he said most people would prefer to be in the casket than giving the eulogy.

[00:02:44] Why do we want to put fear in people's hearts? Because they feel like they have to stand in front of a group of people and share their message. I might toss to you whether you're standing or you are seated. It is a conversation. But here's how people's minds think. If I invited you to go to Starbucks and have a cup of coffee with me, we sat at a table, sat in a cushy chair, and we had a conversation, get to know each other.

[00:03:12] We would not take one moment to think about how we're seated in that chair. We would just get comfortable. We would not take one moment to think about what you are doing with your hands? slightly, you got a cup of coffee or whatever you're drinking in one hand, and maybe you're gesturing for the other.

[00:03:26] And you're not even going to think twice about it. And most likely, we would look at each other as we have this conversation. What I find interesting is as soon as I say, now, John, can you get up in front and share with us what your division is doing? All of a sudden, John goes from the seated position of having a conversation to a standing position of presenting.

[00:03:51] I'm going to challenge you. There should be no difference when you're standing than when you're seated. You just happened to be standing. I don't care whether it's five people, 50 people, or 500 people when you're standing with a coworker after work in your car. And you're talking about the day and bantering about the weekend.

[00:04:10] Do you feel like you're presenting when you're at home in the kitchen with your spouse or significant other, your family, whoever you spend time with, do you feel like you're presenting? No. Do you feel like you have your conversation? But because we get into this mindset of presenting in my mind, you let go of all the natural things that you do so nicely.

[00:04:36] One of the most important things we can do when we communicate, whether you're standing or seated, is be conversational and be authentic, be who you are naturally. But here's what happens when you put yourself in presenting mode, you put yourself in performance mode, and when you put yourself in performance mode, you put yourself in perfection mode.

[00:05:02] And when you put yourself in perfection mode, you feel like it has to be done a certain way, and then you fall apart. But when you just have a conversation, With whoever you're discussing something with, you don't think of any of those other things. You don't put yourself on a performance treadmill. If there's one thing I wish I could get all of us to do, if there were one place that I'd be committed to helping anyone with, it's getting off that performance treadmill and letting you share your heart.

[00:05:34] I truly believe that you should let your life speak. And when you let your life speak, you're letting your words speak and your body language, speech in congruency. And when those two things happen, you get power. I remember reading a book called to let your life speak by Parker. And he said, when your true self and your true service come together, that's when you find your vocation.

[00:06:03] That's when you find your groove, that's when you find your gift that you're going to share with the world, but you can't share your gift with the world, whether that's on a personal basis or professional basis if you're in prison station mode, you could only do that when you're in conversation mode. So I'm going to share some things with you today.

[00:06:23] They will help you stay in this idea of having a conversation and not presenting. And this still is an all-around structure. It's still all around your ability to communicate whatever you want to communicate. I would believe that your structure is foundational to what you're going to communicate. It is a cornerstone.

[00:06:44] You build everything from that structure, whether it's a complex structure or a simple structure. But there are some challenges with a structure that I constantly hear. Number one, if there is a lack of structure, people are verbose. They're all over the place. People will say I lost track. I went down a rabbit hole.

[00:07:08] I didn't stay on track, and I didn't even get through my information. That's because they had no structure, no guidelines to work with. When you drive down the road, there's a line on one side of the line on the other that keeps your vehicle. This is where you're supposed to drive between now, as they're passing lanes, okay.

[00:07:28] Here's a place where I can come out of the structure and come back into the structure. But if you don't have some type of structure, you can't do that. You're just all over the place. I think my greatest experience of that was the very first time I went to India. I remember when my driver picked me up at the airport and where we came out of the airport, and he's going down this major highway, and for four or five minutes, he was in what I perceive to be a lane.

[00:07:58] And as we went down the road, all of a sudden he's out of the lane and all over the place. And I being a little more fearful, said, don't you want to stay in your lane? And I still remember him saying, here in India, we don't do that. And I was fascinated how they have a lack of traffic accidents, but they're all over the place in moving and jiving with each other in their vehicle, no structure in the way they drive, making it work, but no structure.

[00:08:29] So the typical challenges of a lack of structure. You ramble, you're verbose. You lack clarity. And by no means, are you concise? I think the other factor that happens when you're not, you don't have a structure to work within; you do a data dump. This is where people show up and throw up. This is where you fire hose people with information.

[00:08:51] This is where you're throwing anything you can to make it stick up on the wall, instead of having a focused message. And when you don't have structure, you can't stay on track. And when someone asks you a question, then it is not even relevant to what you're talking about. You get sidetracked, you lose control, and then you lost your moment to drive the listener forward.

[00:09:16] Now, those are just some of the challenges that I typically see in helping people as they go to craft content. The other big challenge I get from content is a mindset by people. They will say, if you're going to make me worth it, work within a structure in narrows me, it limits my big beef. I get all the time.

[00:09:38] The second thing they'll say is, that's just not who I am. I talk from the cuff, I just get up, and I am spontaneous, which is how I've always done it. Those are some of those mindset challenges. I hear them. I recognize them because the number one reason for those mindset ideas is they feel like the structure constricts them.

[00:10:04] But what I want you to realize is within that structure, you have the freedom to do anything that you want to do. So I want you to think about when your children were small or if you have small children. Now you may say to a child, go to your room and play and do anything you want. Or you may say, go into the backyard and do anything you want.

[00:10:29] You may say, go to the front yard, do anything you want, you may say, do anything you want, but do not leave our blocker our street. That's just giving them some structure. We'll work with him, artists all the time. Work with structure musicians, work with structure. Construction people work within a structure.

[00:10:53] There are guidelines that we get these beautiful buildings, but they know how to play within their structure. The first thing you have to do is realize the principle of freedom and structure, freedom, and structure. And the second thing you have to realize, you have to do the hard work, which keeps it simple.

[00:11:12] And for your message to be effective, you got to put it in a structure of some sort. And number two, you got to do the hard work and keep it simple.

[00:11:25] Now, if you begin to work with this, you will find some conflict. The first conflict I get is structure versus freedom. If there's structure, there's no freedom. And I just shared with you that if you work with the right structure, you have the freedom to do anything that you want. The second conflict I get a lot of is skill versus style.

[00:12:29] When I'm teaching the class and our traditional three-day program around delivery content and interaction. As I'm teaching some of the delivery mechanics around posture and eye contact and gestures, how you move in space, someone will say, Bart, that's a style I don't want. And I have to share it with them. I'm not teaching style.

[00:12:53] I'm teaching you the skills that enhance your style. So think, for example, bill Clinton, I'm not talking politics here. Just think about his communication style. Most people would say he's laid back conversational, very comfortable. Now, if I gave you Colin Powell, most people would come back and say more deliberate, more authoritative in the way he comes across.

[00:13:27] I would agree most likely from his military background. Those two men, their style is as different as the color of their skin. But if you study their skill sets, they're very similar. They twist and tweak the skills to make it work for their style. It has become seamless in the way they work with the skillset.

[00:13:54] The other big bucket that people come back to me is well, Bart, it feels uncomfortable. Bart, it feels uncomfortable. The structure feels uncomfortable. I understand that. I know when I was first learning these things early in my career, it felt stiff and awkward and mechanical until I pushed through it.

[00:14:14] And now when I'm teaching class, I have a driving, I driving idea around this idea of emotion, do not go with how it feels go with the impact it creates. Think about any sport or any hobby you've learned that you've struggled to learn as you struggled to go through it; you went, wow, this is so uncomfortable, and you may have quit.

[00:14:35] What I was trying to learn, how to play the guitar. And my first year of college, I got to the point where my fingers were bleeding. I finally just said, I'm not going to go any further here. But when it came to water skiing, I must have tried 500 times before I finally got up on those keys, but I was unwilling to quit.

[00:14:55] And when someone finally said to me, Bart locks your arms when you water ski, like your arms. Cause that was trying to pull me up, pulling myself up, felt natural, locking my arms felt unnatural, but the first time I locked my arms, I popped right upon those skis. So as I walk you through these ideas around crafting content and content structure, don't go with how it feels.

[00:15:22] Don't let how it feels dominate what you're doing, what I want you to get to the places. Is it creating the impact you want? If it's motivating people, if it's inspiring people if it's driving people to action, if it's engaging people, if that's the impact, you're getting stay with it. Do that again and again, fight the fact that it feels bad.

[00:15:46] I especially see this when I've got people in the class that I'm teaching them principles around how they carry themselves around their posture. They will come back to me and say, Bart, that is the most uncomfortable thing I've ever done. And I can look back on my first couple of times and say, yes, it is.

[00:16:03] But now that I've been doing it for over 30 years, it is the most comfortable thing that I do. And when I step out of that, I can feel that, but you've done some things for so long. It becomes natural to you. But if I got you to do it time after time with your structure and your content, you would get to a place where you'd say it's very comfortable, and you wouldn't have to fight that emotion.

[00:16:31] That feeling versus impact is a struggle point for all of us. Don't go with how it feels; go with the impact to create that last idea here in these conflict challenges I want you to consider is control versus chaos. Now the guy that always says Bart, this is how I've always done it. I'm spontaneous I'm off the cough.

[00:16:54] Yes. To him. There is a sense of control to that. But the impact to the listener is chaos because they can't keep track of where you're going, but here's where it gets cool. In my mind, if you have a sense of control, if you have a sense of structure that you work with, you have a flow, it may feel constricted to you, but to them, it has flow.

[00:17:20] It is seamless. Their experience, on the other end, is completely different. If you will think of someone you enjoy listening to, pastor Pirie, stir a rabbi, a politician, a family member, or a colleague, someone in business, a leader out in the marketplace. I can promise you when they think through their content; they're thinking through a structure.

[00:17:44] You and I don't see it because they've done all the hard work. Do the hard work. Keep it simple. Do the hard work. Keep it simple because they've kept it simple. They have done the hard work. We have an experience that we remember. That's a big difference.

[00:18:03] The conflict in your mind can be huge. Now let me give you some definitions of structure. Now when I did my research and just look this up, I'm a word guy. So I like to go to the dictionary, go to Google and say, what's the definition. So here are a couple of things that I learned the purpose of a structure.

[00:18:26] If you look that up, it says to help an organization work toward its goals. I can't imagine that anyone of us, I don't care what our position is from the CEO down to the guy who's washing dishes down to the guy. Who's the janitor down to an AA, to a director, to a VP that our goal in some form or another isn't to move the goals of the organization forward part of the structure.

[00:18:54] If you look up structure by itself, it talks about the arrangement of parts or elements of something complex. So structure or just pieces within your keynote. There are pieces within your presentation. There are pieces within your demo. It's the arrangement of those pieces of an overall complex talk building item.

[00:19:23] you can arrange those elements or pieces according to a plan. So think about a puzzle. If you and I are going to put a puzzle together, most likely, we're going to do the outside framework, and then we're going to work with you inside. It's an arrangement. According to a plan, it's the arrangement by the methodology. It's an arrangement by the process.

[00:19:46] All that structure does is give it a pattern. And if you think that you can communicate in such a manner that gives that a pattern, think about how easy that makes it for the listener to absorb, because they understand the pattern and they can follow it. Suppose you've done it once, you can do it twice. Now here's the benefit to you?

[00:20:04] The communicator, if you understand what that pattern is, you can eventually get up on your feet and go through that pattern. Not even think about it. One of the other definitions that I found was. It was to build something arranged in a definite way. Now, this is the repeatability of it, a structure in my mind.

[00:20:27] If you built it, once you can build it again. I love the old saying if you've made a million bucks, if you know how to make 1 million, your first million, you know how to make the second million. If you built a structure for one talk, you could build another talk. And the more you do it, the more flexible you get with the structure.

[00:20:44] And then the more freedom that you have. And you've heard me say many times there's freedom and structure. But the definition I liked the most. Was the Latin explanation of the word structure, and it's simply mat fitting things together. It's fitting; you're open and close together.

[00:21:07] It fits your key points together. It then fits your key points to your open and your key points to your clothes. It's making it all flow nicely if you study. Good books. If you study good movies like star Wars or guitar, any of those bigger types of films, they follow structure; they follow story structure.

[00:21:36] Now there may be some variances, some give and some tape, but from a basic level, yeah, following a structure. And the reason we enjoy them so much is that they did the hard work. They kept it simple, and then we get to enjoy it. Now there are also two different types of structures that are that I found interesting.

[00:21:58] One was a hierarchy, and that kind of structure is a cascade of one to many, one to many. So that would follow more of a Ted type talk structure, one single point. And now I'm flowing to three, too many to drive that one major point or a network structure. Which is many to many; that's the idea of three key points in what you're doing.

[00:22:25] That's the idea of five major things you want to show me in a demo.

[00:22:34] As we break that structure out, there are two main body structures that many people use today. There's the 20-minute structure, typically following keener, more of a Ted type talk. That's that 18 to the 20-minute idea. You may have also found yourself for somebody who's heard you give a major presentation that was an hour and they ask you, can you come in?

[00:22:58] Cause we've only got 20 minutes. If that is the case, you make your open and one of your main points out of your keynote and your close and frame it into 20, what you want them to say to you when this is said and done. Wow, that was fantastic. I want you to come back and share the other two in that Ted type structure.

[00:23:19] It's one single message supported by three supporting points. Now each one of those supporting points follows a structure. What's the point I'm trying to make that backs up. My single message. What's the story example. It proves the point in my supporting point. And then what's the application to your listener.

[00:23:43] And typically, this is done more in rhetorical type questions. If it's in a small group, you can ask the folks. But if you were doing one of those 20-minute type Ted type talks, where you're just presenting in front of a group of people, you probably wouldn't have that. So the next time you listen to a Ted talk, do me a favor.

[00:24:05] See if you can't see this structure played out. And one of the greatest examples that I always enjoy is the assignment, Senate structure around inspiring leaders. You can find that on. Ted talk, or you can find that on YouTube, the title of that talk is inspiring leaders. Absolutely. One of my favorites, you may also see that lived out in some of Bernay Brown type of Ted talks, where she follows that principle.

[00:24:36] The other structure is that 60 minutes structure. Now, this is the one that typically falls. It was more of a keynote. This is the one where you're going in with the customer and your PR you're presenting your solution, tool, or product. Now with this, remember you're either doing it three key points or four; four is your maximum.

[00:24:57] Don't go more than four because they won't remember it. I can't encourage you enough, anything more than four. You're up to that idea of show up and throw up. They're not going to walk down the hallway and say, I just heard Bart speak. He covered four key points. Your three key points flow at a hundred thousand foot level.

[00:25:18] Your supporting points are at 50 minutes within your supporting points or 25,000 feet. I want you to realize that you've got to take this down deeper and deeper. Now your three key points must be three things. They must be simple. They must be repeatable, and they must be memorable.

[00:25:41] Most people, when they make a key point. There are so many words to it that you couldn't walk down the hallway and repeat them simple, repeatable, and memorable. I'll never forget having an opportunity to prep a CFO who was going to a Forbes conference to give a talk on business continuity. I spent half a day with him, helping him craft a message for 10 minutes.

[00:26:09] He was one member on a panel of four, each one of them. We're only going to speak for 10 minutes. Guys, we spent a half a day crafting a 10-minute message for this man. When we got to the key points we were beginning to craft them; he came up with. First, you have to plan, pardon me.

[00:26:33] You have to assess the risk. Secondly, you have to plan for the risk, and then third, you have to execute the plan. Now there's nothing complex about that. But what I found tremendous was his grabber; what he was going to use to grab their attention was a very simple example of King Kong. Now the movie King Kong had just been rereleased, and he was going to make a very simple analogy around King Kong, destroying cities and risk destroying businesses.

[00:27:06] So, without thought of Matt, let's come back to his key points. So his key points were the fact that you have to assess the risk. You have to plan for the risk, and you have to execute on it. You have to assess, plan, and execute. You have to a P E ape. Now you may laugh and go, okay. Bart way too. Corny.

[00:27:28] Alright. Maybe it is simple? Yes. Is it repeatable? Yes. Is it memorable? Yes. Now I am not saying you have to have an acronym. Let me say that one more time. I am not saying you have to have an acronym. That's just what he came up with, but he worked hard to keep it simple, repeatable. And memorable just in his key points, that was just in his key points that wasn't diving into the content of the three major things he wanted to say about assessing your risk about planning for the risk or executing on the plan.

[00:28:12] You have to be able to do the hard work, and you've got to keep it simple. Remember, guys; there are freedom and structure. Now I want to add one more key ingredient to your success as you do that, trigger words, guys, get away from writing it out, word for word or word.

[00:28:29] And here's my reason why, if you write it out word for word and it starts to say it differently than you've written, you're going to stumble. But if you have put it into trigger words, You'll look at that trigger word, and the way you share it with John will be different than the way you share it. With Mary two different people, two different audiences, the trigger word brings the thought to mind, and then you craft it.

[00:28:55] This is key to your success in being conversational. Remember, it's not about presenting. It's all about the conversation.

[00:29:12] Now, I want to bring in one more time structure for many of you who are in technology, and you have to talk about a particular feature within a piece of technology. What I call the functionality structures may be very helpful. Now I use this structure to talk about my company at a high level.

[00:29:34] I use this coming down to talk about one of my training programs. And I use this even deeper to talk about one of the modules within my training program. So you may say I'm going to use this to talk about my company at a hundred thousand feet. I'm going to use this to talk about a solution tool or product and give a high-level overview.

[00:29:55] Or I want to use this to talk about a specific feature

[00:29:58] within

[00:29:59] Bart Queen: a piece of software or a product tool or service that I want to talk about.

[00:30:09] There are five major pieces to this functionality structure. So if you're listening, if you happen to be at home, you're in your office, I'd like you to write these down. If you're driving, I want you to, when you get back to your office, take a moment and write these down and then play with them. The very first thing you have to call out is what's the feature.

[00:30:32] Now, I'll get many people who will say ease of use is a feature. Ease of use is not a feature. Ease of use is a benefit. What gives it ease of use brings you back to your feature. So of the five, the first is a feature. The second thing you want to articulate is the function. The function is what the feature does.

[00:30:56]if I could get you to do this, I'd get you to do three things within that feature. Now, sometimes it only does one thing. Okay. If it only does one stay there, that's fine. Three is your ideal. This is always a verb. So please note that this is always a verb. The function is always a verb. It is what it does or allows you to do.

[00:31:23] It's what it does or allows you to do. So you've got your feature. You have three things that it does. The nut's next major bucket is the manifest. And I would do one benefit for every function. Here's the key feature we bring to the table. What it allows you to do is number one, number two, number three.

[00:31:46] The benefit of those functions is number one, number two, number three, it's very simple guys. It's nothing complex. So you've got the feature, the function, and then the benefits, the next major bucket that most of us miss is what I call unique business value. Now the unique business value is the, so what, but here's where I get troubled.

[00:32:12] Many people confuse benefits. And the value they'll integrate them as the same thing. They are not the same thing. Benefits are objective value is subjective. What I'm teaching this with the MBA students, when they do their final for me in my coaching, I tell them if you're going to tell me the benefit of your solution, tool, or product or service, you must follow it with a value statement.

[00:32:42] I get them to do that. They'll say something like the three benefits are number one, number two, number three; they follow that with what that means to you is because it is subjective. It is not objective. Now, if you don't know who your listener is, you can't get that value statement to have power. Think about Volvo cars.

[00:33:05] The key benefit today bring to the table is safety. It's the extra steel in the door, but the, so what they always say, especially targeted to our men, is that your family will always reach their destination. So if you're a Volvo lover, you buy that car because, in your heart and your mind, your wife, your children, whoever you care about is going to get to their destination.

[00:33:30] That's that value statement. The unique part is to your listener, unique to the CFO, unique to the CEO, unique to the COO, unique to the technical people. Business value is always so what that is the hardest thing to articulate, but if you have done that well, you can say the key feature I bring to the table is X.

[00:33:54] What that means to you is why. What it allows you to do is one, two, three. And the benefit of that is one, two, three. So notice guys, even though I'm not talking about anything, I can walk through that structure clearly, and I can move the pieces around freedom and structure.

[00:34:14] The last component. Now, remember that there were five to this. What's the feature. What's the function. What's the benefit. What's the unique business value. The last one is the example, your proof point. Your proof point. You always want to have an example. So think about in a job interview, you've been in that situation where someone says, what's the number one thing you bring to the table?

[00:34:37] And you say the number one thing I bring to the table is this. That's typically where we stop nine times out of 10. What's the interview's next question. Can you give me an example? Can you give me an example in my mind, from a communication process? Please take this to heart. They should never have to ask you for an example, period.

[00:35:00] If someone's interviewing you and they say, what's the number one thing you bring to the table, you should come back and say, the number one thing I bring to the table is this, for example, and you give it now, remember an example has four key components to it. Number one, who. Number two, what's the problem that you're trying to solve.

[00:35:22] Number three of the solution, what did you bring to the table? A service, a product, a methodology, a team, and then the specific results, you should be able to go across that whole structure in less than 90 seconds. If I'm prepping someone for a demo and I'll get them to practice, I'll get them to articulate those pieces and then move them around.

[00:35:47] If I'm helping an executive press prepare a press and media situation, I will get them to work with. You want it to come out conversational and easy. If I could help people in technology as they do their demos, I would have them prep. Those five features that they can conversationally go through these before they ever show them.

[00:36:12] Imagine you're speaking to the CMO, and you say now the first key thing I'd like to share with you today is this particular feature. What it allows you to do is this, the benefits that will bring to the table is this, what that's going to mean to you. Mr. CEO is you can sleep at night, for example. And then you gave an example, and then you showed them notice the amount of content they would have at their fingertips before you ever began to show that particular feature.

[00:36:46] The structures that I've had an opportunity to share with you, whether at a higher level, at that 60-minute point at the 20-minute point or where you're down into your minutiae and your weeds, they give you the freedom to communicate your message. I can't emphasize enough that you have to do the hard work and keep it simple within that structure.

[00:37:09] You have the freedom to do anything that you want. I want you to build upon these structures. Make an application and implement them into the next situation that you find yourself in. I believe that's going to give you freedom in your content. It's going to give you freedom in your conversation, and it'll give you freedom in this situation for you to adapt to the best of your ability.

[00:37:33] These are tools that you want in your communication toolbox. They are not optional. Failure is not an option for you. In your professional life and in your personal life for whatever you're sharing from your heart. This is Bart queen. This is the remarkability out Institute. It's been a pleasure.

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Welcome to the remarkability Institute podcast. This is Bart Queen , your host. I hope all of you are doing well today.

[00:01:46] I typically get asked how do I go from feeling confident? To not feeling confident to feeling confident to not feeling confident. And a lot of times, people let their emotions drive them if there's anything that I've found out in my experience of helping and coaching folks.

[00:02:07] Is that emotions have no intelligence when it comes to the skillset of communication. Now, as we spend our time together today. What I'd like you to do is open up your mind to the three goals and the five components that will help you become more effective or what I call a more strategic communicator.

[00:02:29] I think if you have an open mind around those things, you'll gain some principles and ideas today in our short amount of time together. That you can immediately, make an application to implement into your life and see the effects. The outcomes and the results that happen from it.

[00:02:47] I want you to go from this idea of how everything feels to a place where you're relying on the skillset to carry you through every single time.

[00:02:59] Now, to lead you to those skill sets, I want to lay one more piece of the foundation that I think is important. And that's the three overall arching goals that each one of us should have in the way that we communicate.

[00:03:12] Now, this applies to whether you're giving a keynote speech. You're doing a presentation. You're doing a one-on-one, you're doing a training class. You're having a conversation with your children. I have found that these three goals go all the way across the board. Goal number one is to build trust. This should be the most important thing that we do when we're communicating with our family, our friends, and our clients.

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[00:03:41] There's one important principle in this idea of building trust. Something I picked up out of a book called God is a sales person. Now it's not a religious book, but the author drives this point home. He said that people buy trust before they buy a solution tool or product. You also said that people buy trust before they buy the provider, meaning you or me.

[00:04:06] The CEO of Pepsi once said that the new global currency, the new global currency, is not going to be money. It's going to be trusted. So the question that you have to face and the question that I have to face every single day is how do we build trust between yourself and the people that you're communicating with.

[00:04:29] I think every day before we. Let our feet hit the floor with our families and with our children with our spouses. We should. I ask ourself as a simple question. What's the one thing I can do today to deepen the trust in my relationship with my spouse? I'm up. With my children. How can I deepen that trust between my company and my clients?

[00:04:52] How can I deepen that trust between myself, my company, and the marketplace?

[00:04:59] Now, I believe that there are four key pillars to building trust and how we communicate. Pillar number one. Is that our content must be clear. It must be clear.

[00:05:13] It has to be easy to understand. So here's a principle I want you to make a note. If you happen to be listening or you've got a pen and paper in front of you. I want you to write this down. A confused mind will always say no. A confused mind will always say no. I got that principle out of a book called real leaders. Don't do PowerPoint.

[00:05:35] Tremendous book. If you have not read it, I highly recommend you pick it up. But the author drives this idea home that as soon as someone says in their head, I don't get what you're telling me. They stop listening, and then we've lost all the way through. A confused mind will always say no. Pillar number one; your content has to be clear.

[00:05:58] Pillar number two, your content has to be concise.

[00:06:03] We know for a fact that most people are verbose. You've got somebody that you, you listen to, maybe a friend, and you find a look at them and say, what's the point. W, w. W. What are you trying to get to? What are you trying to tell me? Your information has to be concise. It's easy for all of us to be verbose much more difficult.

[00:06:23] To be concise. I always remember something that Winston Churchill said. He said the shortest speeches are always the toughest because it requires an economy of words. So it's not the idea of how do I tell them more anymore. It's how do I get them to remember more; you remember that and one of the podcasts if you listened to in the past.

[00:06:45] So the first two pillars or it has to be clear and it's got to be concise. The third pillar is critical as you and I communicate about our companies. It has to be consistent.

[00:06:59] One of the companies that I've had a longterm relationship with when I was speaking with the. The CMIO. I said, what's the biggest challenge that you face in communicating with your company. And he said the biggest challenge I face is a clear, consistent message out in the marketplace. So he said, Bart, do me a favor.

[00:07:18] Go out and talk to the employees. Ask five, six, seven, ten employees who we are and what we do and come back and share with me. What was the response that you got? I did just exactly what I wanted. He asked me to do. I came back, and I said, here's what I found. Every single employee gave me a different answer to the question.

[00:07:38] On who they are and what they do. That lack of consistency. Creates confusion in the marketplace. Well, one sales person says the other sales person has to be able to say now that can vary just a little bit, but the essence of the message has to be the same. This is another place for that seven-factor phrase that I've mentioned in the past comes in. That gives you that kind of consistency in your message.

[00:08:08] And the last pillar in developing this sense of trust. Is your competency your competency? Now what I mean by that are your stories, your examples, and your experiences. This allows you to bring your individual Allotey to the company message. This brings your uniqueness to the message. It allows you to tailor that message depending on who you're speaking to.

[00:08:34] It allows you to personalize it.

[00:08:38] That very first overarching goal is this idea that we have to build trust. And the four key pillars to building trust. It has to be clear. It has to be concise. It has to be consistent. And you bring in your competency, your uniqueness. Now, the second overall arching goal that we need to think about when we communicate is you have to be able to build a relationship.

[00:09:03] There are two things here. I want you always to remember people buy from people. People don't buy from companies. They buy from people. And the second thing I want you to think about in that principle is that people buy from people that they like. That they like. So if we look at these first two goals, we have two factors that we have to build. Number one, we have to build a trust factor, and we have to be able to build that quickly.

[00:09:30] So think about if you're giving a keynote speech, you want to build that trust factor almost immediately you want people in your audience saying, wow, I'm just like Bart. I'm just like a bill. I'm just like John. I'm just like Mary. You want that to happen quickly. That's building that trust factor.

[00:09:47] The second thing you want to do is build that likability factor.

[00:09:53] You've you all know someone, or you've met someone where you first meet them, and you go, wow. I don't think I want to build any type of relationship with them, and there are other people that you meet and you go, wow. I want to tell that person in my life story. A lot of times, that can be based on that trust and that likability factor.

[00:10:11] Think about a time when you've gone to a social gathering, it looks across the room, and you saw someone, and they had a big smile on their face, and they were laughing, and you go, I'd like to get to know that person. And then there's someone sending on the other side of the room that maybe has a very stern look on your face and think, Whoa, wow. I probably don't.

[00:10:27] They're not very approachable. That's that likability factor.

[00:10:32] I think we see this evident in the example of people who Cut our hair both for men and women. I know for myself, I go to a very specific barbershop. There are four men in that barbershop. They're all great barbers. There are two. I prefer to cut my hair. And this barbershop, you don't make appointments.

[00:10:55] You just walk in, and you have to wait, and sometimes I have to wait a long time to get to the barber of mind choice.

[00:11:02] Now for those of you who make appointments, maybe you've walked into make your appointment, and the receptionist says, gee, I'm sorry that the person who cuts your hair, they just went home ill. They feel really bad, but they set it up for someone else to cut your hair.

[00:11:17] Most of the time, people are going to say it's okay. I appreciate that, but let me reschedule. That's the idea of that trust and likability factor. I will ask a lot of women in my class. How long has that person been cutting your hair? And they'll say ten years, 15 years. And I'll give that example, and I say, what would you do? Would you reschedule, or would you let the person do it?

[00:11:40] And nine times out of 10. They'll say I'll just reschedule.

[00:11:46] Building those first two factors of building trust and relationships are critical and the way that we communicate. Now, the third overarching goal is this idea of engagement. Let me give you the definition of engagement. Engagement is the ability to. Get the listener to listen to respond, and interact.

[00:12:12] Engagement is the ability to get the listener to listen, respond, and interact. Now, if you've paid attention to some of my other podcasts, I gave you some statistics, for example, in face to face. You've only got 30 seconds. If you're doing something virtually, you've only got eight seconds to engage them.

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[00:12:32] This idea of building get engagement in holding engagement. It becomes critical to getting your information out in a clear, effective way. So whatever we're doing, whether it's more personal or more on the professional side. I want you to keep those three goals in mind. Those three goals should drive. Absolutely everything that you do.

[00:12:55] It's going to drive how you deliver the message. It's going to drive how you craft the message, and it's going to drive how you interact with the message, how you interact with your listeners. Now guys, that leads me to those next five components that I mentioned to you. The very first one, when you think about becoming an effective communicator, I'll ask this in class, what's most important.

[00:13:17] Nine times out of 10. Most people go to their content. And if I ask them okay, when you go to craft content. Where do you begin, and most people in the professional world will say, well, I'm going to build some PowerPoint slides. They may say I'm going to do a little bit of research, but they start to put that research into PowerPoint.

[00:13:36] One of my favorite CEOs that I've had the privilege of working through said this to me about PowerPoint one time. You said if you use PowerPoint. You have no power, and you have no point.

[00:13:48] I don't have anything against PowerPoint. I do have issues with how we use power point. Not that we have it. It can be a tremendous tool if we use it correctly.

[00:14:01] So the very first place that very first component that people want to build as their content. Now, when you think about content, I'm talking about certain elements, how do I open? How do I close? How do I craft the body of my content? How do I craft it in such a way that I can speak for five minutes, or I can speak for 15 minutes.

[00:14:22] How many of you have prepped something to speak to an hour for a customer, and you walked in, and the customer said, I'm sorry. I know we plan for an hour, but something came up. You've only got 20 minutes. And now, you look at this piece of content. You look at all these slides, and you think, Oh my gosh.

[00:14:38] How do I boil that down to just 20 minutes? So as we craft content, as we think about those elements, I want to make sure you have a structure that allows you to speak for five minutes or 50 minutes. Cause remember I want to come back to this idea. It's a conversation, not a presentation. It's a conversation.

[00:14:57] So how do I take the slides that I've developed and turned them into a story and a conversation?

[00:15:04] What concerns me most about this idea that everybody raises their hand and says, the first thing I focus on is content. Is this. No one will spend not even five minutes thinking about what does this thing, meaning you, your physical body. How does that come across? Now that component is what I call delivery.

[00:15:29] Many of you will call that body language.

[00:15:33] Some people will call it the ma, the delivery mechanics, it's physically what you're doing. Now in that component, it's everything that you've heard before. It's your posture, whether you're standing or seated. Is it your eye contact? It's what you do with your hands. It's how you physically move if you happen to be standing.

[00:15:54] It's your voice. Is it your volume? Is it your rate? Is it your inflection? Is it your pies?

[00:16:05] It's your gestures. All of those are the physical delivery mechanics that you have to be aware of. But here's where. You get my concern. I want you to remember this make a note of this. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. What you say and how you say it has to match.

[00:16:31] And many times. In the way, we deliver information that doesn't come across.

[00:16:38] A couple of examples. Have you ever shaken? Someone's hand. It looked him square in the eye. You tried to look them square in the eye, but they were looking down.

[00:16:47] Or maybe when you shook their hand, it was one of that fishy kind of handshakes. That's a great example of what you say and how you say it doesn't match. I can look at a good friend, shake their hand and say, I'm really glad to meet you and look at the ground and they'll think you're not glad to meet me.

[00:17:06] Another classic example that I see all the time is someone standing in front of a group of people, and they'll say, good morning. I'm really glad to be here, and they stepped backward. Those two things. Don't match.

[00:17:20] How many, how many times have you seen someone say now? Are there any questions and all of a sudden the person folds their arms, and you're thinking, well, they don't want any questions. Do they. What you say and how you say it has to match. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear.

[00:17:38] Think about a small child. Parents. Have you ever asked your son and your daughter? Did you do that? And your son or your daughter may scuffle their feet a little bit and look at the floor and go, no dad, no, mom, I didn't do that. And you can look at that child and almost know immediately. That they've done what they've done, what they said they didn't do because it doesn't match.

[00:18:39] So the first two big components of being effective is this idea of your content, and the second one is of your physical delivery. Those two things have to match and come together. The third component is this idea of how do you interact with an audience. Those typically falls into two major buckets. How do you answer questions? How do you respond to statements?

[00:19:04] Someone makes just an off the wall comment. How do you work with that? How do you blend it? How do you come back on track? Somebody takes you off track. How do you come back on track? You're going to use PowerPoint. You're going to use a whiteboard. You're going to do a flip chart. You're going to do a schematic.

[00:19:20] You're going to show or give something as a handout. You're going to do a prop. How do I interact with all those pieces now that Doesn't? It doesn't vary whether it's just one on one across the table. Or you're standing in a group of 5,000.

[00:19:37] Those three components and where those three components interact. So imagine three circles driven drawn on a piece of paper. That center point where all three circles overlap. Is what we're striving for. We're striving for balance in your delivery and your content in your interaction.

[00:20:00] Now you've read a presentation book before. You've read a public speaking book before those are not rocket science. You know those things.

[00:20:12] But here's where it typically gets left, and this is where I truly feel like we fail.

[00:20:19] There are two key filters that will bring those to light for you. These two filters will help you decide what the content should be, what the delivery should be, and how to interact with that audience.

[00:20:34] The first key filter is what I call being listener focused. Most of us are really what I call speaker focused. It's that idea of here's what I want to share with them. I am going to show up and throw up.

[00:20:50] Let me give an example of what I mean by listener focused. Parents think about—a small child, a five-year-old before years-old you bought on a business trip. You walk through the door. Your son or daughter sees you and comes running to you, going daddy, daddy, daddy or mommy, mommy, mommy. Physically, what do you sometimes do?

[00:21:12] Well, many times, you may kneel and give your son or your daughter a big hug. Or there may be many times when you pick them up, and you hug them and yo,u tell them that you miss them. That's being listener focused.

[00:21:26] How many of you with your boss? At some point in your career, I've ever said, Hmm. What's the best way for me to approach this with him or her. Do I catch them first thing in the morning? Nope. That's probably not good. I'll do it at lunch. Maybe we'll step off. The campus will walk out of our building, and we'll go, we'll have some lunch, and we'll talk about it.

[00:21:45] Or maybe you've even said yourself. You know what? I'm going to ask them. Let's go out for a beer or something cold to drink, and I'll bring it up then.

[00:21:53] We do the same thing with our spouses. You think now what's the best way for me to address this issue. How do I bring it up? All of those things are being listener focused.

[00:22:04] Now, let's make a specific application to let's just say eye contact, for example.

[00:22:10] Eye contact in the Western world anywhere from three to five seconds is acceptable. We do the way we do business in the Western world.

[00:22:21] Now make an application. Let's say that we had an opportunity to go to class in Asia. Let's say we had an opportunity to go to Japan. Classic Asian culture. Would that eye contact three to five be acceptable or unacceptable? In most situations, that's unacceptable. There are eye contact is more one to three where ours is more three to five.

[00:22:46] Now think about movement. Most Americans or most Western, you'll see people move across the stage. In Asian culture, they're typically more stationary.

[00:22:57] In the Western world, you'll see a fair amount of gestures. In a more classic Asian culture, you'll see minimal gestures. It's not right or wrong. It's effective listener focused in where you're at.

[00:23:14] I remember the very first time I went to Japan to teach. I spent a full solid week with a man from Japan, teaching me the ins and outs the dos and the don'ts. Of how to behave in that culture. I thought I would never remember all the principals.

[00:23:30] I just wanted to make sure I did the best job I could and not put my foot in my mouth when I got over there. The one thing I remember that sticks in my head is how we give out a business card. In a classic Asian culture, you hand the business card with both hands. They will take it with both hands.

[00:23:53] And you treat that like it's gold like a treasurer. We're in the rest in the part of the world. Suppose somebody asks me for my business card. I might just toss it to them and slip it in, and they might slip it in their back pocket, or it's a bit of my back pocket. That would be completely unacceptable in that culture.

[00:24:11] Those are just ideas of being listener focused.

[00:24:16] Now, the second key filter is much more difficult. It's this concept called perception versus reality.

[00:24:25] If I was standing in front of you. And I said,

[00:24:30] Which perception is real, the perception that I have of myself. Or the perception that you have of me. Most people will come back and say, Bart, well, both perceptions are real, and they are correct. The perception I have of myself. I typically see myself as one of those kinds of country boys.

[00:24:50] The second perception, the one that you have of me, whatever that may be, may have been established as you heard my voice, maybe you been to a website. Or maybe when I greeted you and welcomed you into a class, you began to get a perception.

[00:25:07] But here's the more important question. Which one is most important? The perception I have of myself. Or the perception you have of me.

[00:25:18] What's most important in the way we communicate is the perception that the listener has of you.

[00:25:25] Now you and I both know that you never get a second chance at a first impression. And I come back to something that I shared with you earlier. Every single thing counts. Every single thing. Counts. But here's what's interesting what you experienced as my listener. And what I experienced as a communicator.

[00:25:48] Are two different things.

[00:25:51] How many of you ever run a meanie are given a talk and you wrapped it up, and you walked out the door and went, wow, man, I just crashed and burned on that. I'm probably going to get fired on that. And then someone walks up to you and catches you and shaking their hand and goes, wow. That was awesome. You did such a great job!

[00:26:07] You want to look at them and say, were you in the room? I was because that's not what it felt like. That's not what it felt like. So here's the principle I want you to remember. Do not go with how it feels. Go with the impact it creates. Now the difference between what the listener experiences in the communicator experiences is a concept called disparity. Disparity. And again, let me drive the point that you experienced as a listener and what I experienced as a communicator or two different things.

[00:26:43] So if we were spending time together and a full day full three-day program and I would get you up on your feet, I would get you to remember this because I'm going to get you to do things. Maybe the way I get you to stand or use your eye contact or use your gestures, and you're going to go, Bart, "that just doesn't feel natural."

[00:27:00] You may even look at me and go, Bart, "That is just weird." But then I'm going to say to a listener in the class, someone who's watching you. How did that look? Guys in nine times out of 10, they're going to come back and say, wow, that looks fantastic. And you're going to go. That's just not how it felt.

[00:27:19] I think a great application or a good illustration of this. Is if you golf. How many times when you were first learning to golf, did you pick up that club and the pro is trying to teach her in a while. This just feels uncomfortable. I remember the very first time I took a snow ski lesson. And the coach had me point my toes and bend my knees and put my hands in a certain position with the polls, and he said, okay, Barton. Now all I want you to do is go down the bunny slope.

[00:27:44] And I went, I can't even move for this position. That's that disparity. How many of you maybe try to learn to play a musical instrument, and it just felt awkward and uncomfortable. Now, if you stuck with it, you mastered it, and you got past the feeling.

[00:28:03] I tried to learn how to play the guitar until my fingers bled, and I finally said, I've just had enough. I never got past that feeling.

[00:28:11] Think about in sports, how many times in high school or college that the coach makes you run the plate? Do it again? Do it again? Do it again until you got to a place of muscle memory. Where you just did it naturally where you didn't even have to think about it.

[00:28:28] That's getting past that disparity. So when my three-day coaching program, we walk people through this. I get them to do it over and over and over again. And by doing that, you drive muscle memory, and by doing that, you get behavior change.

[00:28:47] I come back to a statement I made earlier if I could get every 17 and 18 years old. To learn this information. I would. Cause I would. I believe it would dramatically change how they come across. Your ability to communicate is one of the most important skills you can invest your time in.

[00:29:06] I remember someone sharing with me this simple comment that 99% of life is showing up. I also remember my mentor saying this. If you want things to change, you have to change.

[00:29:19] And the other thing that he mentioned to me, that's been a pillar in my life, was this. Work harder on yourself than you do your job. Work harder on yourself than you do your job. This is one of those skill sets. That you have to work hard on to master. Now there's no perfection in this skill set. There's only the pursuit of excellence.

[00:29:42] How do I tell the story more effectively? How do I do the sales information? Not in this many words. But in this many words, how do I say it more powerfully, how I say it more effectively. It's the pursuit of excellence, not the pursuit of perfection. If you want to make your presentations, your talks, and your sales calls, perfect. You want to make your conversations with your spouse and your children. Perfect. You set yourself on a per on a performance treadmill.

[00:30:12] I don't want you to do that. I want you to come back to being authentic. I want you to come back to being natural. I want you to come back to just having a conversation.

[00:30:24] These three goals and these five components. We'll give you the foundation that you can build from. These will be the beginning of the evolution and the revolution on how you come across.

[00:30:40] The world needs what you have to share. And the world will miss out if you don't share it. Your ability to touch the world, your ability to influence the world. Is critical. You have too much to give and too much to share. To sell yourself short.

[00:31:01] And as long as you're involved with me as long as you're involved in this remarkability Institute. As long as you allow me to be your coach. I'll make a promise. I will not let that happen.

[00:31:15] I can't thank you enough for your time today. It's been great. I hope you've enjoyed the remarkability Institute. And I look forward to seeing you next time. Have a great week. I got a little bit.

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Remarkability Institute with Bart Queen: Recent Episodes

Bart Queen