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

0:00 People tend to get into uh a public speaking voice. We'll be in a class and they'll be chatting normally and and look super normal. And then we'll say, Okay, now just a timer, I'm just gonna give you a speech. Just speak for sixty seconds, so we get a baseline. And I click play, and suddenly I say, the important part about doing this, and they enter into A different version of themselves, a professional version, whatever that would mean. It's so much more freeing, powerful, connecting, and effective to speak conversationally. So the cue I often give people is. Today my guest is Tristan De Montebello.

0:39 Tristan is the co creator of Ultra Speaking. Which is the best public speaking workshop I have ever come across. In twenty seventeen, Tristan became the fastest competitor to reach the finals of the World Championship of Public Speaking, and based on that experience, Built a very unique course that helps you quickly build the skills to become better and to become more comfortable speaking in public. And especially speaking on the spot.

1:04 I like to spend time on this topic and on this podcast because becoming a better speaker is such an acceler of your professional life. And in this episode, we delve into a bunch of tactics. And also misconceptions about how to become a better speaker. And to make it even more fun and interesting, we go through a few of the exercises that Tristan and his team have developed live on the podcast. He goes through them, I go through them. It was a lot of fun. I'm excited to hear what you think. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.

1:34 It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that I bring you Tristan De Montebello. Kristen, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me.

1:51 So I took a an abridged version of this speaking course that you teach called Ultr Ultra Speaking. And it immediately made me feel more comfortable public speaking, which I've never felt doing any other course. Public speaking is something I Just like it's very

2:07 uh scary to me, as it is for a lot of people, but it's just something I really dread. Like even doing these podcast episodes, Every time I get nervous before doing these things, as much as it may not seem that way. So this is not my natural habitat speaking. being in public, like it may not seem that way to people, but it's it's true. And

2:23 The way you approach this stuff is so unique. And Work. For me. And Because of that, I thought it'd be awesome to just bring you on this podcast and

2:32 Basically try to teach people the stuff that you've learned about how to become a public b better public speaker. I know we're not going to do your course here, but just like what are some very tactical things people can immediately start to apply and also I wanna make this super interactive, so actually can do some of the exercises that you uh use in your class.

2:49 So So that's where we're here. Or how does that sound? That sounds exciting. Amen.

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5:24 To try out Command AI, you can sign up at command. dot ai slash Lenny and experience a custom demo of how it works in your app. That's command dot ai slash Letty. Okay. So let me first ask just kind of a broad question. What

5:40 Do most people get wrong about public speaking? What are some of the what's maybe the biggest misconception about how to become a better public speaker and how to be good at it? I actually think that the biggest misconception with Tackling your speaking. Is that people

5:57 Grosly underestimate. Just how transformative. It could be to your life. And the reason it's so transformative is because speaking is not a specialized skill. It's a meta skill.

6:10 That means that The better you get at speaking. The better your life gets. So an example of a meta scale is fitness, for example. If you were to start saying, Okay, I'm gonna transform my fitness and you start lifting rates and you start going on runs

6:26 obviously your muscles are gonna get bigger, you're gonna get more in shape and your cardiovascular system is gonna uh improve. But that's actually only a sliver of the impact it's gonna have on your life because You're gonna start feeling more energy. And you're gonna start having these nice hormones, these endorphins flowing through your body, and you're gonna feel better about yourself. And when you

6:47 walk in front of the mirror, suddenly you're gonna have a boost in confidence. So naturally Everything else in your life is gonna start to improve as a result of you focusing on On your fitness. And for speaking it's the it's the same thing. This blew my mind when I went on my own speaking journey.

7:05 is when I started making breakthroughs in speaking. Other things started to feel different. So as you get breakthroughs, how you feel at work. Feels different. How you feel in your group of friends feels different, how you feel in a group of strangers

7:19 Especially how you feel and your family can even be impacted. So this seeps into everything else in your life. But the thing is because There's so much self consciousness. That goes with speaking.

7:33 We often feel kinda constrains under the lay of Overthinking And anxiety.

7:40 That come with speaking, so It can be hard to realize that Underneath these layers. You actually have this Extroordine superpower.

7:51 Because As humans we're evolved. To speak. This is What we are.

7:59 So you don't need to teach a baby how to speak. It will learn by itself with no formal education. What that means is We all have this Incredible hardware.

8:11 The thing is Over the course of our life, because of all these little situations that happen. We start getting bugs in the software. And we're not really upgrading our software. The moment you get the bugs and things start working, we s not working, we start avoiding

8:28 And suddenly it's like we're not upgrading our software anymore. So we're stuck on old buggy software. But the reality is Let's not forget That we have incredible software that we're evolved for this. So all we need to do is

8:42 some debugging and some upgrading of the software. and suddenly your entire life can change. So that's really one I want to impart on Anybody listening, like You

8:53 Have it in you. You already have what it takes. Okay, so kind of building on what you just talked about, uh some of this kind of this insight of your life can improve and how s you kind of always have to un Unlearn stuff. One of my favorite

9:06 Uh maybe core insights and tenants of the way you approach teaching people to speak is you talk about how if you don't enjoy Speaking, you're doing it wrong. And that really helped me.

9:17 Because you kind of encourage you kinda remind people, try to have fun as you're doing can you just talk about that insight and why that's important and how that helps people become better? Well you I think that's very tied to what you were saying. I see enjoyment as a barometer. I If I'm doing things right.

9:34 I'm probably enjoying myself. If I'm doing things wrong, particularly with speaking, because again, this is something we're naturally evolved to do. So if we're naturally evolved to do To do it. It's not something that is that we dislike doing.

9:48 It has to be something that rewards us. So as soon as things start not feeling enjoyable. It's a sign, hey, I'm probably doing this wrong. I there's something here that I'm doing. That is making this unenjoyable, that's probably not

10:02 Helping me. And I think You mentioned it You know, and those people who are who can hold an audience who are really good communicators in business, it looks like they feel very comfortable. It looks like they feel like themselves. Yeah.

10:15 And if you think about speaking When Your Talking with your kids. Or with your partner.

10:22 or with your best friend, your childhood friend, your parents Ever we all have environments where we feel completely like ourselves. And when we do Communication is extraordinarily enjoyable. It's just a means to connect with other people. It means to share what we have on our mind. And it's very, very empowering. And it feels very good.

10:42 Then I take the same person with the same skill set and the same ability and And I bring'em in a business setting. And suddenly I don't feel like myself anymore. And Because of the pressure, I start trying to speak differently.

10:56 So people start having I'm gonna try to think really hard of what I need to say and I wanna control the words that are gonna come out of my mouth before they come out of my mouth. So I make sure I don't make a mistake. And you basically Loop in this thing that is so counter. what communication is, which is just a natural subconscious scale. So using speaking as a barometer.

11:17 I have Hey, if this is not feeling good. I'm probably overthinking. I probably need to relax and try to Just feel a little bit more like myself.

11:26 But this also applies to practice. Where In your practice because This is not an overnight thing. You can't just Snap your fingers, read a book and be a better speaker.

11:40 Well Your practice has to be enjoyable as well. 'Cause otherwise two weeks in you're gonna quit just like a a shitty fitness journey or diet, right? You have to find joy in it and uh it has to be structured in a way.

11:52 where it rewards you as well, so that you get more energy and you get more enjoyment. while you do it. Awesome, and we're gonna show people how you do that, you do these games. They're like games that you play that help you actually learn these skills. So before that, and also I want to get into like actual tactics that we can just give people to become better public speakers, but right before we get there,

12:12 Are there any other Core Insights or principles. Or lessons. that are fundamental to the way you

12:19 found that it works to become a better public speaker. That kind of inform a lot of the stuff we're gonna be talking about. The day I understood that Speaking was a subconscious flow oriented process.

12:34 And not a conscious process. completely changed the way I approached it. So Instead of thinking tactics and frameworks and adding more to the outside of the things I need to think about.

12:51 When I realised When I speak best, I'm actually not thinking. About speaking. It's the last thing I think about is the speaking part. I'm completely in tune. with whatever it is I'm trying to convey to my audience or the person in front of me.

13:06 And the goal is to get into a flow state and stay in that flow state. All the way through the finish line. That's what really, really changed my mindset about speaking. Because then

13:18 It changes all of the exercises. the exercises you want to do. It changes how you can think about speaking. And one of the ways That changed my how I practiced was instead of Focusing on the symptoms of speaking.

13:32 I started to try and figure out well what are the root causes that create these symptoms. And can I address those? So instead of

13:41 Counting my filler words if that's something that's annoying to me. I'm gonna go back and try to figure out well what's the root cause of that? Well, the root cause of having lots of filler words are racing in your speaking. Is that

13:53 You probably struggle To feel comfortable. Slowing down. Relaxing or even pausing. when your mind is racing and you feel pressure.

14:03 Solve that. And not only do the filler words take care of themselves, but the racing takes care of itself and you suddenly have more mind space. And you feel super if you feel super constrained in your speaking very monotonous Then maybe you're You feel boxed in.

14:18 And you're struggling to allow yourself to feel to be all of what you are under pressure because there's probably a lack of certainty, a lack of Uh trust. In hey, if I let myself be more intense.

14:32 Or if I let suddenly these emotions pop out. Or if I take a time time to Gather my thoughts. Is everything gonna unravel? Or is that gonna work for me?

14:42 And if you haven't proven that to yourself. Then you're just gonna go for safety and so you're gonna be very monotonous and constrained. And that's what creates monotony. But if I can solve that Suddenly I have freedom.

14:55 So Thinking through this and understanding that the goal here is upgrading the software. And it's really layering taking all the bad habits away.

15:06 and putting in new habits that I can just stay In this flow state. Without getting pulled out. That really changes the game. That is a really interesting insight.

15:16 And I love that you actually demoed that in the way you answered this question, where you took time to get into that state and not just get um you know it's just like Pause. Pause.

15:28 Yeah, that was a really beautiful example of that. Okay, let's get into a few tactics just to give people something they can actually change about the way they speak this week. What are two or three things that You can recommend people

15:42 tweak in the way that they do public speaking, in the way they speak in meetings and presentations, whatever. I actually thought about this because Once you think about Speaking being much more about the root

15:55 Causes like Play the games that are gonna change you at the route. Don't focus on the symptoms. Then you find yourself sharing much less

16:03 purely tactical advice and frameworks because it's we're trying to get out of our brain into our subconscious. So when I thought about it I thought of three things I wanted to share. One makes you Sound better or look better.

16:18 One makes you sound better and one makes you feel better. Nice. So the first makes you look better. Now this is super basic and very crunchy, but it's a a bad habit that a lot of people have. That when I am trying to gather my thoughts or think

16:31 People tend to look down. And if you're looking down On Zoom it's three times as bad'cause it looks like you're looking at your phone or looking at notes if you had any. But even when you're in person, It doesn't look very confident.

16:46 Um So that's you're st suddenly giving off of that vibe of ooh, this person feels a little bit uncertain here. And maybe you it's gonna look like you stopped speaking and you might get more interrupted. If instead you switch that up. And you start thinking Oh.

17:00 I think up and to the right, but you can think in any direction you want. But as long as you're looking up. You actually look thoughtful. By default. So suddenly you're looking thoughtful. That means you look more confident because anybody who'd be willing to pause and in their speaking is somebody who's confident.

17:18 And as a result, you're much less likely to bet to get interrupted. So it's a small tweak. But makes a real difference. The only thing is If you're not used to doing this, if this is not your habit.

17:29 Then It's gonna be a feel a little bit awkward the first time you do it, and you probably won't think about doing it. So I recommend Writing think up on a post it. And putting it on your computer. So that

17:39 It's there for you, and then once you've done it a few times, this will become the new normal. And by default you'll look more confident. I'm gonna do this as you talk. I have a poster right here. Think of nice. Think uh Okay, great.

17:51 What else? Look more confident. Now how to sound more confident. This is a really important one. And this concept is called end strong.

18:00 And it's We had to bring this up because Most people tend to end weak. And wh why is that? It's they they put freestyle rappers in an FMRI.

18:14 And what they found out is freestyle rappers have to enter Uh a deep flow state. If you're freestyle rapping, you have a beat, you don't have any lyrics, and you have to get into the beak and invent the lyrics and the melody and everything else. on the fly. So there's no choice but being completely present.

18:30 What happens is you know you can see their brain and it's lit up in a very specific place that shows that they're in flow. And when they get to the very end, The plane just blows up before they finish. they start getting pulled out of flow. And this is the same feeling of like you're you're you're running at at school and you see the finish line and just a few yards before you start slowing down. It's just I don't know, we're built that way.

18:53 And in speaking it's the same thing. People tend to give a great answer. And then either they kind of taper off it. Which doesn't leave you with a good impression, or they're actively say the doubts that are coming up in their mind of

19:06 Maybe they'll be giving a great answer and then suddenly you say, I don't I don't really know if that makes sense. I do that all the time. That's very relatable. Yeah. And but what the thing is, what happens when you do that? When you do that It's like your

19:18 Forcing this lens on your audience. Where now they Even if they had the best of experiences with your answer. Now they're looking at everything you said. Through the lens of

19:30 Oh, this person was kind of uncertain. So it's like you had a a very smooth flight across the Atlantic. And your landing was absolutely horrible. It was you were bumpy when you're coming up, and then when you hit the landing, you bounced three times and you thought you were gonna die. You're not gonna remember the smooth flight. You're gonna remember the ending.

19:49 So A simple tactic here. Is Anticipate. That as you get to the end

19:57 Of anything you're saying. You're gonna naturally start regaining consciousness and you're gonna start being a little bit more self aware and some of those uncertainties are gonna pop up. Know that it's coming.

20:11 And make sure You land the plane. So what that looks like is Either you just make your ending Sound like

20:18 An ending. And then leave it at that. Or you can prompt your brain. You can use Summary prompts.

20:26 This is incredibly powerful. It just means you say the beginning of a sentence. or the beginning of yeah, the beginning of a sentence, and your brain's gonna fill in the the gap. It's gonna you're you're prompting your brain and your brain will always deliver. So you get to the end, you're like, okay, I gotta wrap up now. And so you'll say, So to wrap up, And your brain's gonna fill in the gap. Or in summary

20:46 So my point here is so what I want you to remember And you just Place those words and your brain's naturally gonna do the work. Of closing it for you. But make sure

20:56 You don't let go of the gas pedal at the very last moment. You you need to land that plane. Awesome. I I could definitely get better at this. Great tip. Yeah. Nice. I'm gonna try to do that as we talk. And yes. What else we got?

21:09 I'll be paying attention to that. Okay. The third one. Is a The third one is staying in character. And these go hand in hand. And what's really powerful is

21:21 When you start doing these, there's a beautiful feedback loop that happens. that gives you a lot of confidence. So Staying in character. I said is the one that's gonna make you feel more confident.

21:33 What's Steg in character? So It's related to Armstrong in some sense in that People tend to self-sabotage a lot. I'm speaking.

21:42 And obviously as I'm speaking My h my All of my senses are really, really heightened. So I'm aware of everything. If a word comes out a little bit weird or Yeah.

21:53 It's not the word that I was expecting to hear come out of my mouth. I'm gonna be very aware that of that because I was expecting something and something different happens. But that happens all the time when speaking. I'm starting to not make as much sense or I feel like I'm rambling, going a little bit too long. All of these create insane

22:10 noise in the back of my mind. The insecurities. And you have a choice there. Because I can tell you right now, nobody can tell. People cannot see what you feel.

22:22 Even though it feels that way when you feel really, really strongly. But people can't see it. You're just looking like a normal speaker. Competent and confident. But internally it feels like everybody can see. So you're feeling all this insecurity and it feels like there's an elephant in the room.

22:38 So what most people do is they self sabotage, they start leaking. And they break character. And they'll say Ah man, I'm not making sense right now. Or they'll laugh nervously after saying a word that came out weird.

22:50 Oh, I also which is kinda saying like, Oh, I also noticed that this word came out weird and it's okay. Right. Or they'll they'll keep a uh letting All of the insecurities and doubts come out. When people didn't sід in the first place. So again, it's like I'm forcing these filters.

23:09 On to my audience. And now they can Only see me through that light. So one analogy I love for this is again a flying analogy. You're on the plane

23:20 Everything smooth. You're having a great time watching your movie and suddenly you're interrupted by the pilot who picks up the intercom and says, Oh, ladies and gentlemen So I just had a red light start blinking here in the cockpit. And uh I'm not sure what this is. It could be really bad, honestly, uh, but uh I don't know. So uh don't worry.

23:39 Please, uh I'll get back to you soon. First thing that's gonna happen if you experience that I wasn't worrying in the first place. But then. You start thinking

23:52 Wait, something probably is going wrong. And now the smallest noise The tiny little bit of turbulence, a creek on the right. You're gonna start thinking, Oh no, we're gonna die every time. So you're gonna make any little mistake, any little imperfection. You're gonna turn that into something big.

24:10 That's what happens when you speak. If you start leaking and letting the insecurities come out. People are gonna start thinking. This person doesn't really know What they're talking about.

24:20 It's like a leader who does who who isn't clear in their direction. Suddenly I'm thinking, Wait, I think I have to second guess everything here. 'Cause I'm not sure about this guy. Or this this person.

24:33 And The good news is The solution is very, very simple. The solution is that is just Don't share

24:43 Your insecurities. Put your best foot forward and stay in it. the whole time. Stay in character. From beginning. all the way through past the ending. You go all the way through your speech.

24:55 Then you gotta end strong, which is A form of staying in character. And then let it be. And that's so important. Just let it be and you're gonna notice something incredible. If you're the type of person who Would break character a lot.

25:09 Start Staying in character. And the Q I use for myself is stay in it. And the worse it gets, the more I'll I'll say just Stay in it. And

25:19 What happens is You stay in it. And you expect everybody at the end. They say, Oh my God, you looked hor so uncomfortable. What was happening? But people can't see that. They you look confident. So they're just gonna

25:30 give you the reaction that a confident person would get. And you're gonna notice, Oh wow. I am coming off as confident. And that's gonna make you feel more confident. And so it's gonna it's g it's a very reinforcing cycle. If you start staying in character and ending strong.

25:45 naturally you're gonna be reinforced by this behavior. And you're gonna realize oh, I didn't need to break character, I didn't need to hedge every time I spoke. And that's gonna give you much more confidence and you're gonna start realizing People

25:59 Just look. confident by default. This is a crazy thing. I want everybody to walk around the world. And look at people. And think Most of the people I'm looking at are actually nervous right now.

26:12 You're gonna look at them and you're I can't tell. Most people speaking up in meetings are feeling a level of nervousness. But you can't tell until unless it's Through the roof. I love this. And it's it's something I'm extremely guilty of. And

26:27 I think the reason like I do this and the reason I I think a lot of people Leak, which I love that term of just like don't leak that you know some you feel something's not gonna Like the reason I do it is I feel like me being Clear like up front, I know this isn't great. Exactly. Makes it okay.

26:43 But in reality that's hurting you. Like I think what it's like when I watch stand up comedy when a comedian's like, Oh sorry, that that bombed Like If he didn't say that or she didn't say that, I just forget about it and we move on to the next thing.

26:55 And it brings all this attention to oh, I see, okay, it's not going great. Uh otherwise you're just like, All right, whatever, I don't like that joke. And so So yeah, I guess any thoughts on just that why people do this. Well I think that's exactly that. It's a it's

27:10 Because you're convinced that everybody can tell. And so two things will happen. Either They could tell'cause it was a big thing. And everybody could tell.

27:20 But You shining light on it. Is literally that. It's like, hey, everybody, you're driving a train. Everybody's in the train. You're the driver as the speaker. Everybody's going with you. So if there's a crash on the side of the road. You can keep going and

27:33 They'll not be looking at the crash a second later and they'll be looking at the next landscape. Or you can stop the trade and tell everybody, hey, let's look at this crash here real quick. I'm so sorry about it. When you keep going. People will forget it in a second and they're not gonna pay attention to you. And with the peak end rule, what we're seeing People remember the end of experiences

27:51 More than they remember the beginning of experiences. So you're gonna be left with that feeling at the end. The other piece is Because most people won't notice it in the first place. They'll be

28:04 In their own minds. So when you Share this. You're popping their bubble. And so I see people speaking all the time where I'm super in tune with

28:16 the feeling I'm getting when they're speaking. I'm just I'm listening to the energy, I'm listening to everything that's happening. So I can try to understand like what state are they in right now. So when I get woken up from that state Of somebody s saying, Oh man, can I go again right now? I that really sucked. It's even more

28:35 visible for me. And I'll often have to say, Hey man I was so into what you were saying. And I'll I'll pull the audience. Is anyone surprised? And everybody every time is like No, I thought that you were doing great. I was completely with you. So that's the case most of the time, but because we're convinced That people can tell.

28:54 We want to break that fourth wall. Or because something happened and we know people can tell. We wanna acknowledge it so we don't it doesn't feel like I'm the only one in the room who can't tell That something went wrong here.

29:07 But this habit of saying, No, I'm gonna be confident, I'm leading. I'm gonna keep us going in a certain direction. Is extremely powerful. And very self reinforcing. Okay, so let's actually show people what this looks like by actually doing some live

29:22 Games I know one of your principals. for ultra speaking is you can't learn to speak. by not speaking. Like you need to l practice speaking. to get better at speaking.

29:32 And these games are a way to actually do that in a really fun way. So maybe first of all just why why games? Like when I you know, I I did this course I was just like, huh, so it's a bunch of games with I thought this was a public speaking course. Uh, so maybe talk about just like why you approach it through games. Everything you do is a game in this in this course. Yeah.

29:49 Well the first piece of the puzzle is what you were saying, that you You can't get better at speaking without speaking. And it's Intuitively you could think

29:59 You you everybody knows that if you want to become a great cook. You can't just read a hundred cookbooks. You actually have to spend most of your time in the kitchen. Refining your intuition, testing things, experimenting, learning new recipes. and and building your timing and everything that goes with it.

30:16 But the In speaking, we tend to do the opposite. Probably because it's a little bit scary and because there aren't that many options out there to practice. the the speaking itself. There aren't that many environments where you can do it right now. So

30:30 We're kinda left with nothing, so okay, I'll just go read an article or watch a YouTube short or and hope that's gonna make a difference. But the Maybe the bad news is you you have to do it. If you're if you have to ask yourself, am I gonna be serious about taking on speaking and and making a difference here. And if you are

30:48 then you're gonna have to do the thing. You have to Practice speaking. But the good news is it's it's only the outside. That's scary. As soon as you get started. you're gonna get rewarded.

30:59 And then the better you get at it, the more enjoyable it becomes. So Why games then? Well games

31:07 Number one. Are fun to play. As I was saying earlier. If your practice is not fun, you're going to stop. So you need intrinsic reward with what you're doing.

31:18 But what all of the ultra speaking games have in common Is that It's Short. Deliberate

31:24 Practice like short reps. Followed by feedback. Followed by another rep. So That was more important than the idea that it was a a game at first. When we started coaching

31:36 uh with Michael Genler, my co founder. It was just him and me In my backyard with somebody in front of us. Testing things out. And we would say.

31:48 We would give him a speech title just to get a baseline. Okay. Uh What's the most incredible invention in the world? And we'd watch this person go into their mind and start like freaking out. Okay. And they think the iPhone and then like, I don't know, the iPhone, that's pretty recent. And maybe it's fire. Is it fire though? Was there a bigger maybe communication? I don't know. Wait, maybe we've evolved for communication.

32:08 And the longer they spent thinking The worse their answer tend it to be and the more their confidence tended to go down as they were speaking. So then we said, Well, we gotta get this person speaking right away.

32:21 So we'd say, I'm going to ask you another question, but just start speaking. And so I'd ask them another question, and they couldn't start speaking right away. So we just tried to compress it more and more and more. to turn it into something where then it was like I'm just gonna say a word and you have to say something about it. So Horses. Horseback riding is fun because you can go places. Cats. Cats are crazy'cause if they were bigger they would eat you.

32:41 And I just like almost like word association. Let's get words out. Then we started uh developing different games for everything every root cause we were seeing, every symptom we were seeing, we'd figure out the root cause. And we create some sort of a

32:56 Way. To get the person Into it. As quickly as possible. And it's just one day, six months in.

33:03 That we realized. Hey, did we just create a game? Like this is this feels like a board game. And then we created we even I have this, we created speak before you think. A game for people who I think too much.

33:15 And this is uh a bunch of cards with all of our games and then Covet hit and we turned it into online games. Oh, I don't know. Yeah. The magic of games is Short reps.

33:27 Immediate feedback. Practice feedback, practice. Feedback. And it's enjoyable. You get rewarded

33:34 You get to adjust as you go. And it What's changing is the your internal feeling as you're going. So you're learning lessons, but you're internalizing. All of the practice is happening. Through speaking.

33:48 Reinforce what you just shared. I haven't shared this with you, but I After I took this. The course, the mini course. I went To see my family in LA. We visited for a few days and I

33:57 I was talking about this course and just like how fun it was and interesting and how much I learned from it and I pulled up the games'cause you have access to the things online. And we just started I was just like, Hey, you guys wanna try this? And we started playing some of these games that we're gonna that we're about to get into. And it was just like we spent like an hour just doing this and everyone loved it.

34:15 Everyone just felt so much better about their public speaking. Afterwards my mom was like, Hey, how do I do that on my own later? My sister's like, I wanna start doing open mic nights because that was like really fun just to like talk. Nice. So were you were you actually coaching them? Like how were you walking them through the different games? I we just pulled them up and played them and then I shared some of the tips that uh I learned in the class that we took. Just like try it this way.

34:40 Or try not to focus on being Correct. Just focus on confidence. And not leaking that you're not doing great. All these things that we're gonna talk about. Yeah. So it was a lot of fun. So let's get into some of these games. So we're gonna try two or three Which one do you want to start with?

34:56 Conductor maybe. Sweet. I love Conductor. That one was really insightful to me. Okay, so I got conductor. Um The way this game works

35:05 Is that it when I click start training. I'm going to have a random title that's going to appear. And for those of you who are just listening and not watching this, Lenny will say the title out loud so you can hear. That what you won't see or what you'll see if you're watching. Is In front of me

35:20 All I'm gonna see Are A series of random numbers. It's gonna start with five, and five is just my natural rate of speaking like I'm speaking right now. But then I might see a number.

35:32 From one to ten. The and Each one of these numbers represents an intensity or a state that I have to tap into. So if I see a seven, I automatically have to raise my voice and get into that kind of an energy. And if I see a ten, you could only imagine what that is. But

35:50 It's also true for the lower ones. If suddenly I see a three I have to find a way to Calm my energy down. And match the three.

35:58 And go all the way down to one. And then there might be a slide that says breathe. Which is just an indication to pause. And when I see that side breathe, if I just go silent. That's because I'm in front of the breathe slide and I'm not allowed to speak. And in that moment, my goal is just to relax.

36:14 Myself And calm myself. And then see what happens where I'm at. When That slide moves on to the next one.

36:22 And now we're gonna do this. This is gonna be seventy seconds, so it's gonna be super quick. Ready? I'm gonna yeah, so I'm I'll read the title as soon as you uh as soon as it pops up. Perfect. When I grow up When I grow up

36:38 I want to have taken on All of my weaknesses or all of the emotional things that are holding me back. Cause it's kind of annoying for me. That I'm forty years old. And there's still things that are holding me back. that man, I've been I've had these when I was a a kid. I was I was like this when I was ten, and it drives me crazy.

37:02 Because Aren't I supposed to be an adult? Aren't I supposed to be Mature And have my life together.

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

37:28 So I've decided I'm gonna hire a coach and I talked to him just a couple of days ago. So this is perfect timing because I wanna unwra, unravel and untwine Every single one of these emotional blockers. So when I grow up I'm completely free. That was so fun to watch. And I'm seeing the numbers. If you're on YouTube, you can see what's going on there. If you're not, basically there's different numbers that give

37:52 Give Tristan the different energies to be out in. That was masterful. I think we saw what did we see? We saw like a six, a s it went up first, six seven, then it went down to three, then we saw I think a a two, a one. Then a breathe. And then it went back to Five.

38:07 How about you give it a go? And then we chat. What do you think? Lad and gentlemen, let's see this. Here we go.

38:16 The title is The Greatest Puzzle. The greatest puzzle that I think that I've had in my life and I think just For most people is Trying to figure out what to do with their life. And I just had to

38:29 spend so much time thinking, actually no, let me change. I'm changing direction. I Actually Yeah. Actually known from very early on what I wanted to do with my life.

38:40 I've actually found It to be not of a not much of a puzzle. I knew from Pretty early that I wanted to be a software engineer. And

38:51 Interestingly, as I And I became a software engineer. And As I think about the puzzle that that created around my life. The f

39:04 I ended up so my life actually started to look like a puzzle. Instead of what I always thought I'd be. So he turned into So I ended up having a bunch of different careers. And

39:17 I look back at my life and It started with one piece and each piece led to all these other Careers. Nailed it.

39:27 Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh it's funny, at the end you were like you didn't even see there was a six that came up and then you when you looked up it had already gone away.

39:40 Uh that's a good warm up. Yeah, yeah. What it what it looked like to me is that Well, you just you just didn't let yourself play the game. You wanted to you were more focused on I wanna make sure this is this works well. This looks good.

39:57 Or I don't make a fool of myself, then let me just play the game. Mm-hmm. So switch your mindset from that. Like back in conductor. In the uh sorry, in the creator cohort. You didn't really care'cause if you failed it didn't matter.

40:08 So you just played the game. Mm-hmm. And this is the same idea. Just Don't try. Just Let yourself play the game. The game will

40:17 Do good. But that was r actually really interesting. I feel kind of similar. Which is uh which is cool. Except I didn't know where it's going, but that feeling of all of these puzzle pieces and suddenly when I hit ultra speaking it's like Oh wow, every single there's no more there are no more gaps. That's really cool.

40:34 Okay. There we go. Lady, you ready? Ready. Here we go.

40:40 Integrating new cultures. It's interesting having a kid. So we just had a kid about a year ago, he's a year and a half. And There's an interesting uh Interesting new experience where there's my family and their culture, there's my wife and her culture.

41:02 And I never It was never a big deal for us, these different backgrounds that we have. Because we could do our own thing. We have our families, they're doing their thing. But now that we have a kid

41:13 It's Now that we have a kid, I have to really think about this. I have to Constantly wonderful. Is he getting both experiences? Is he being

41:25 Is he gonna get the full benefits of both of these cultures? And I find if I don't actually think about it Too deeply. And just let him have fun and hang out with our different family members. he gets everything that I want him to get, that he experiences.

41:43 My wife's family's culture, my family's culture, and then the combination of my wife and I as new kind of culture and family that we're building. And so I'm really excited about The future.

41:54 For for us all. Yeah. That was awesome. Uh I'm practicing not leaking. I am all I think about is how Much better it could have been, but now I'm thinking as I say that, see.

42:09 Yeah. So The point of all of these games Is to create Turbulence.

42:17 This is gonna be the theme of this podcast. I'm gonna share only flight analogies. But If you think about a a pilot A flight simulator. You can imit you can think about these games as the the flight simulator. You don't put a pilot in the flight simulator and waste those precious hours having them just cruise at thirty thousand feet in clear skies. You're gonna say, Okay, you're going and now hey, you're you've lost your

42:40 Your captain and uh you have to do something or hey, your your motor just broke or you're going into crazy turbulence. So the gain here is always every one of these games have in common that We're creating turbulence for you.

42:53 So it's on purpose that like ooh, that's interesting how I To wanna leak, to wanna break character. Wow, it's interesting how at the end I the ending strong is not just a uh an automatic habit that I've built for myself. So what we want with the turbulence is that it highlights

43:11 Are that we want to work on. And you can go again and see immediately'cause you have that same pressure every time. There's no way you can Prepare for conductor. You can you can do just a ton of reps and Get to

43:22 Become the person Who can just navigate The turbulence really, really Gracefully. Which reminds me of a

43:30 I Kevin Kelly quote that I love where he says, pros are just amateurs who've learned to recover gracefully. From their mistakes. And this is what we're trying to do here. If you know That you can recover from any mistake gracefully. Then

43:47 You're gonna have confidence in any speaking scenario. And most of the scenarios you're gonna be in are spontaneous, are ones you can't prepare for. So it's that much more important. So tell me what What do you remember from

44:01 uh going through conductor in the creator cohort or specifically here, like what was coming up and what were some of the things that uh pop into your mind. There's two things that I really took away from it and it's it's like different doing it now like on camera with this whole podcast thing. Yeah. Uh but the things that I really took away that s have stuck with me. From this exercises one is that you have this kind of metaphor of these file folders that you have kind of in your head. Where

44:26 Every Energy level. Like a one when you go low, and a ten or even a five. You access when you're at that energy level, you access different Insights and memories and stories.

44:40 So it's not just like now I'm gonna say the same thing at a ten or I'm gonna say it's the same thing at a one. It's When you let your body Just slow down and relax till one. New thoughts come up. 'Cause you're making it up as you go along.

44:52 And you're just trying to figure it out as you go. And that was a really that really happens when you're like forced to go from Five to like okay. And you let your body settle into like a one. You're like, Oh okay, here's a new thought that comes to mind.

45:06 So that was really powerful for me because I never realized that. And then The other is just this idea of doing these really hard things at l with very low stakes. Like, you know, like It's higher stakes, so maybe that's why it's different. Uh like how it feels different doing it here where it's like, Oh yeah, this is extremely high stakes for you. Yeah, relatively. But yeah, there it's like a couple people and you're like

45:29 Just Don't worry about failing, so you don't have to worry about apologizing or fleaking, it's just like Yeah. So I did I did what I did. So those are two really powerful ones. I just like

45:39 Practicing this and knowing you'll be okay. at low stakes builds confidence. They're like, Okay, that's like Like making up a minute of talk about the most random thing on the spot. Not something that I would feel I'd want to do. But

45:52 Then you realize, Okay, it's fine. I can do that. The common theme for me, the more and I've been on this journey for seven years now. I still And blown away.

46:03 Every week. Buy. the lessons I've learned over the course of the seven years. Which all come down to Your brain, your subconscious.

46:13 Is So incredibly powerful. So your hardware is Magical. And Because I've spent seven years kind of getting rid of the bad habits, getting rid of the gunk.

46:26 And trusting myself more, I allow myself to take many more risks. So I'm jumping into these Games Still with the same

46:37 Everything's tapered down way, way, way into the background. So I get to be much more present. And You know, I talked about the summary prompts earlier in the podcast. saying the beginning of a sentence and trusting that your brain's gonna fill in the gap.

46:52 is something that's initially hard to do, but when you've done it A thousand, two thousand, ten thousand times. You start believing Hey, maybe my brain will deliver every single time. So you can start saying the beginning of sentences that the direction you want to go into

47:08 And your brain fills in the gap. And we're gonna do a a game on that in a second. But the one the conductor one is so beautiful because W the way we describe it. So I I That folder one when it

47:20 came into my mind was my favorite ever. But uh The original one was When you tap into a certain energy That creates emotion.

47:32 And if you tap into that emotion The words come as a natural consequence. So it's energy leads. Emotions follow. And words fill in the gap.

47:44 And When you experience this for yourself of you go into conductor and you play, you realize, okay. If I want More conviction. I can

47:57 raise my energy or get into a state of conviction. And the words that are gonna come out, the ideas, the stories, the anecdotes, the examples, everything is gonna fit into that. If I feel Frustrated. I can

48:12 Dive into that state and stay in that state. And naturally The content is gonna follow. It's a very, very powerful game. It's a very exciting game and it's a ver it's a game that

48:25 If you specially when you're playing with low stakes. You can You you very quickly effect of oh I can see the potential of what it could be if I could just be like this. Anywhere.

48:39 Maybe you taper out a little bit of the extremes. But this is you can access this for free on Ultra Speaking, or you can just The way we did this at first, you just Go to Google. And type in

48:50 a random series of s nine numbers and then just have a friend say each number one after the next and you just match it. I used to just put my hand out and go up and down. So it's In essence, it's very, very simple to apply it. And it's uh it's just like a lot of fun to just get an excuse to just go wild and high and then just like get low. I love that part of it.

49:10 And uh let's get into the next game, but just one other insight I had is that you shared with me when I did it the first time is just people have a strength. They're either Yes. They're strong at the highs and just like very uncomfortable the lows or the opposite. And for me

49:25 I thought I was gonna oh, obviously I'll be more natural at the lows because that's like introvert world And you're like, No, you're actually like super energized at this high end and then it's hard for you to access the low. And that that was really insightful for me. Yeah. You'll you'll notice it

49:41 pretty quickly once you jump in, especially with with with With a friend. It's cool. It's cool because when you can when you get to see, oh, I'm much more comfortable going up than I'm going down, or vice versa, or I'm stuck in the middle and I I'm only comfortable when I'm not in the extremes. It's just telling you something. This is what we want, right? We want a a mirror. in front of us so I can know like, okay, what's happening here.

50:05 I'm not very much a fan of actually watching yourself on camera on video. Because again, this is an inner game, not an outer game. So when I watch myself on video, I see the outside, which can be useful for certain things. But the fundamentals Hard inside. But so getting a mirror of I play this game and I feel a certain way. Oh, interesting. It was easy to go up.

50:27 So I can muster energy pretty quickly. And I'm willing to take risks of jumping into a different energy stage, which might mean changing the direction of where I'm going. But slowing down means I need to be willing to

50:43 To take up space. I need to be willing to just be while everybody's looking at me and I'm using up their time. But I'm gonna take up space and I'm gonna take a moment to go inside and be introspective and really ask myself, okay, what do I wanna say here? And so that's a reflection of Well, what does that mean if I struggle to do that?

51:03 That's why this is Speaking's such an an interesting skill set. All right, let's do another game. This next game is called Triple Step. And triple step is a game for people who people who

51:16 Tend to be To struggle to stay on a single thought. Or Get very easily Put off their game or distracted.

51:24 You're the type of person where you're speaking and suddenly somebody yawns. And you Just start freaking out, thinking I'm so boring and things are horrible. I must be terrible. Not They probably have a baby and they didn't sleep last night.

51:38 pen drops and you start losing. Uh your ability to stay on track. This is a game for you. Also a very fun one. The

51:46 Principle of the game is Pretty simple. Similarly to conductor, we're gonna start with a random speech title. So I have no idea what's gonna show up. Then as I'm speaking.

51:57 In this setting here, I'm gonna speak for a minute. There will be six random words or series of words that are gonna pop up. As I'm going through my speech. And my goal is to integrate the words into the speech. As seamlessly as I can, as if they were part of the speech the whole time.

52:14 So In theory, if I do a perfect job, if you're listening You should struggle to pick out which words were actually the words that were popped up. The likelihood in one minute of me being able to do that.

52:28 Is low. But uh let's see if you can do it. So if you're listening, you're not gonna see the words. We'll tell you afterwards what they were. See if you can pick up on them. But otherwise my goal is just to choose a strong direction and stay on that direction as naturally as I can. Here we go. The title is How Would Your Friends Describe You?

52:47 I've been described as a Labrador. By my friends. And I think the reason people describe me as a labrador is because I am so Easy to excite. It's like if you give me a box of French fries

53:00 I'm gonna go nuts and it's gonna be the best French fries I've ever tasted in my life. But if the next day I get a massage, I'll be completely in that. experience and the massage is gonna be the best massage and then I'm gonna think I need to get a massage every day. I'm gonna start daydreaming about massage. as my natural day to day.

53:19 But The problem with being a Labrador Is that Labradors get kind of excited. So I may be doing cartwheels one second, and the next second, uh, I'm supposed to be working and so I'll be on my computer.

53:31 But then I hear the microwave ding and I think oh maybe I should go get some food next. And so there's A beautiful trait to being the the Labrador. That allows me to like explore all of what it's like to be human. Like I always have access to the internet inside me.

53:47 But there are definitely some drawbacks as well. Okay, so the words that you had to integrate are French fries. Getting a massage. Daydreaming.

53:59 Cartwheels. A microwave and the internet. Yeah. And so you might notice that Some of the words I'm integrating literally.

54:12 And some I might integrate more metaphorically, like the internet of my mind. It's like I have access to the internet. So you can You can give yourself as much leeway as possible. The whole point here with Triple step is You wanna be that

54:28 Tree in the storm. That is not so rigid that if the wind is too strong it's gonna break in half. But not so flexible that it's gonna swing every which direction as soon as there's a gust. So you want that firm solid grounding, which is

54:43 in choosing a clear direction that one thing off the bat. And then You want to make the words work for you. So Stay focused on that one thing.

54:53 And as the words comes come in, the more focused are you are on that groove you've created for yourself. the easier it will be to let the words work for you. Okay. And again the skin the skill this builds is to be less uh Be more comfortable with things not going

55:10 Perfectly and being distracted. It's I would say this one can be used for two other things. Number one is resiliency. Mm.

55:20 Right. Cause this one this one will make your brain go crazy. And if you can stay composed within it with all of these things happen, it really it builds this This ability to say, Well, man, if I can do triple step on hard mode. I can do anything like Why would anything else scare me? Why would an interview question scare me when I can throw these kinds of things? I can always navigate my way through.

55:42 Right. We're trying to Lower the likelihood of a mistake really hurting you. And then the other piece This is a a game, this one and a game called Rapid Fire Analogies. Are games that are really, really nice to use as a way to warm your brain up.

55:57 So you could use it before a podcast, you could use it before a job interview, before a meeting. When you wanna be on Do a few reps of this and your brain's just gonna be completely lit up because it's pulling on so many different parts of your brain that are necessary for communication. I one last thought just before we dive into it. I think it's it's just to zoom out again. The reason that you've found this is a better way to learn

56:20 to become better public speaking is My sense is just If you were to just do the standard thing of just give Give more talks. Find more opportunities to do presentations.

56:33 It's like such a it's like too broad of a brush. to build these different skills and which you've kind of identified as there's these very specific skills that add up to a great presenter. And these games pick like a specific Skill.

56:48 And help you just focus on that again and again and again. If you're already practicing, you're already leagues ahead of everyone,'cause most people aren't practicing. They're trying you know, you're trying to learn from A video or a YouTube short or an article. Uh

57:01 You can only go so far with that. But if you are practicing There are kind of two sub optimal ways that might show up. One is what you're saying. You're just you're doing talks and you're You're speaking up more.

57:13 But you're not really practicing what you're it's kind of as you're saying it's Broad, broad strokes. The other one is You're in a choreography. And all so it's like learning how to dance, but you only learn choreography.

57:26 Well That's all you know how to do. So if I ask you to do like say okay now Just I'm gonna put music on just dance. You're kinda stuck'cause you only know how to do the moves you were doing. So we're trying to

57:39 Get people outside of I have to be in my mind or I have to Do things that I've memorized how to do. And come back to s realize to trusting your natural ability to communicate. So that's what we're doing here. You can feel like

57:53 When you don't speak, when you struggle with speaking, you're stuck in this box. And everything around you is tiny and you can feel the sides of the box. And we're expanding the range. We're playing around with all kinds of different different things, different tools, and all of them have specific meaning. But even if they didn't that much.

58:11 You still would be able to oh wow, you're pushing back the sides of the box. And now suddenly Hey, I can move around. I I feel comfortable. moving my arms and moving my legs and going to the right and the left and up and down and Just that is gonna that act of making you feel more comfortable and more at ease.

58:31 Is gonna unlock your ability to communicate because you already know how to do a lot of this. So we're Tapping into these different skill sets and we're doing both At the same time.

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59:40 All right, let's do this. I'm energized, I'm pumped. I'm gonna no, I'm not gonna I'm like I was gonna say I'm gonna nail it, but no, it's just have fun. Let's have fun. Yeah. Well go it goes how it goes. Mm-hmm. Indeed. Here we go.

59:54 Okay, and I'll say the title. The best thing about pain. So this is something I recently shared in a in a in another talk is just This quote that I always think of the cave you fear contains the treasure you seek. that the thing that is hardest often points you in the direction you want to go.

1:00:10 Like I Like I hate blue cheese. But sometimes I find that if I eat the blue cheese and add it to a salad, it ends up being the best salad I've had.

1:00:20 Having kids is another amazing example where just kids are s there's so much pain, but it's also there's no nothing that is more joyous. than having a kid. And Sometimes even like growing a beard. I grow this beard and I have to maintain this beard for the rest of my life.

1:00:36 And And I I and I know people would look at me without a beer and be like, What the hell? Well, you look so different now and so young. Uh Sometimes I think about just like having a sibling and the pain that if I had a brother if he just like

1:00:50 hit me the pain that would come from that, but just then having the brother would be so much worth it, even if he's hitting me all this time. And And there we go. I ran out of time. But that was that was solid. Okay, I realize Uh, this is your first time playing triple step. It's kinda uh mean of you six could give you six words. So I'm gonna give you four words. Okay, okay.

1:01:13 But here's what I noticed. Yeah. What I noticed is You were letting the word the word was the beginning of a new thought. Mm. Right. So you say another thing is beers. Another thing is, right, so you're kind of you're finishing your thought and then you're moving on to the next one.

1:01:31 Try to hold on to one direction. That w the one The one direction is like Approach your fears head on. And then so then when you see uh uh a puzzle, it's like look, this doesn't have to be A hard puzzle.

1:01:46 Because now I know that I just if it's scary, I do it. And it's like having kids, which I I thought was so scary. I just jumped in and now I'm moving Forward and it could And right, and so it's like I'm growing my beard without caring what other people think just because

1:02:01 It might be scary, or maybe I cut my beard because that would be something scary. Right. So you're you're Holding on to the line. Yeah. With four it's gonna be a little bit easier to To integrate them.

1:02:13 Ready? Let's do it. Social distances. Social distancing. It's interesting that social distancing was such a

1:02:24 thing that we all had to do for so long. And then all of a sudden we look back at that time we're like, Was that actually necessary? Did we actually have to Stay far from each other, that that actually have any impact? All these things we have to learn. Like sometimes

1:02:39 We've look at the stock market. And We wonder. Should I be paying attention to the stock market? Should I be distancing myself from it? Should I

1:02:49 Be investing more often. Should I be m reading every newspaper that comes out every day to stay on top of What's happening in the world? Like should I get closer to this information or should I distance myself? Is what's better for me?

1:03:02 And sometimes It feels like you're writing this marathon where sometimes you go back and forth. Sometimes it's Let's all be together. Let's pay attention to all the news. Let's hang out. And it kinda feels like I just wanna

1:03:16 Just wanna go go to the toilet and And peace out. Mm-hmm.

1:03:23 Oh amazing. That works. That's really good. Okay. That's really good. What tell me what 'Cause again, right, the

1:03:32 The games are meant to put you in a state of turbulence. And Find out what was easy, what was hard, what am I noticing. And now you know

1:03:42 What you want to work on. Right. It's the if you did a rep. And you got it. If and it went perfectly, then you're learning nothing.

1:03:50 A really good a really easy rep is not worth much. The only reps that are worth Something are the ones where you feel an edge. Yeah. And by the way, we should say the words, right, that I had. Oh yeah. The first one was the first one was the stock market

1:04:04 Then a newspaper, which you brought in really, really well. Then running a marathon. And then Uh toilet. Yeah. Yeah.

1:04:13 Yeah. Just the fact that I'm like, okay, doing this is like a big milestone for me of just like, ah, whatever. Cause you know, before doing this thing, I'm like, Oh my God, I'd never want to Sit there and Come up with a talk for a minute on the the most random subject. And there's a lot of power in just

1:04:29 feeling comfortable just doing it. You know, just like, sure, let's do it. Whatever, something something will come out that's interesting enough. That's why Taking on this journey of speaking is so empowering. Because

1:04:42 Speaking is a high performance Skill. So taking on a high performance scale and starting to tackle it and getting kind of good at it. Yeah.

1:04:52 very addictive. It feels really, really good. If you get good at tennis, if you get good at golf, if you get good at Anything. You know uh product management It's addicting, it's exciting, and as soon as you get good, there's nuance to it and it it's energizing in and of itself.

1:05:08 And because we have such awesome hardware as humans, we've been speaking all of our life. a lot of us have a pretty decent level to start out with. So you really quickly you're getting to like, Oh, I'm getting some results here. This actually feels good. So there's something There's something really energizing. about jumping into it. It's the thinking about doing the exercise that's scary.

1:05:29 But as soon as you're into in it. It's It's an energizing And empowering. And also just like doing like this is a very hard exercise. Just like giving a made up talk in a m for a minute with words you have to integrate in concepts.

1:05:43 And I think just doing that makes a regular talk so much easier also, because you don't have to do that. So there's something there, but just doing it on hard mode. learning things and then oh okay, I just have to talk like about a thing I already know about that I I planned. Much easier. Anything else around this game that is worth sharing before we do our

1:06:04 Final game. We have a whole series of games, and you could probably even invent other games, but Some people We'll play triple step. And we'll say, Wow, that's so hard.

1:06:16 And then they'll go and play conductor and think, Wow, this is my game. This is so easy. But other people will play conductor and think it's impossible and then come play triple step. And they'll be like, Man, this is my jam. I can get this one Very, very easy. So it again, it's just a mirror of where you're at. And it's it's what's beautiful about this is you start playing around with these games, you're very, very quickly gonna see.

1:06:39 Okay, this is my edge. Here's and where your edge is. as you were saying with your crot, is often where the gold lies. So s that's when you if you can spend some time there and learn what it is underneath the

1:06:53 The struggle What's actually holding you back? When you unlock that, whatever's holding you back in triple step or in conductor in any other game. Is holding you back elsewhere in your life. So when you unlock it there.

1:07:06 it kind of unlocks the other things, which is really nice. Like a set of gears. And it's interesting, like as we're talking, like where my mind keeps going is like I just want to say how I didn't feel good about my performance, but I'm internalizing the lesson of don't leak.

1:07:22 How do you feel? And that's a really powerful lesson is just like it's like really hard not to just be like, Oh, that was not good. Like I really wanted to say that after every time I tried this and Yeah. I'm making myself not. And there's a and I I imagine from your perspective you're like no it's fine. It's like whatever. Yeah, absolutely. I I was actually thinking I'm

1:07:42 I bet a lot of people watching you do that would think Wow, I don't think I could do that. That would be their first thought. So Absolutely. And and again, and this is a habit.

1:07:53 And the The noise Doesn't completely disappear. But it goes down to being almost imperceptible. So

1:08:03 What we're trying to do is we're trying to internalize all of these habits. To the point where I don't need to consciously think about them. So it's like a a gymnast. who's doing their tumbling routine and

1:08:16 jumps into the air as they're flipping. They're not consciously trying to think of how to do a flip. They've done it a thousand times. They know how to do a flip. The only thing they have that they may be thinking of, every all of their attention is on being completely present to what's happening, relying on your body and your subconscious knowing what to do.

1:08:35 Is they have kinda like listeners, like in programming, keyboard listeners. You have something that's there. That is just listening for anything out of the ordinary. And it's very, very fine tuned. So as I'm speaking, for example, I might think to myself

1:08:51 Oh, I may be rambling right now. Maybe I'm going a little bit too long. And it's a little listener that's gonna just gently, nicely, Say Hey warning. I don't know if you're aware of this. And as I hear that, I might say, Oh, okay, let me wrap it up. Or maybe it's saying, I'm not sure if you're being clear, or can you be more

1:09:08 Um precise here. Whatever it is. I'm gonna ha I it's just a gentle listener in the background. So as you get Into the habit.

1:09:18 And if you had an audience here, we could have asked them right away. Yeah. How did you feel about this? You would probably would have gotten really good feedback. really positive, which would have

1:09:29 Kind of jarred. that feeling of wow, I didn't think I did it that good of a job and people are saying Hey, I thought that was pretty good. So As you get that reinforcing pattern.

1:09:39 The voice starts going down more and more. Awesome. I I need that voice to go down. That'd be great. Okay, let's do a game. Cool.

1:09:49 Let's do uh last game, uh last one of these. Practical games. So this is actually a game from uh one of our courses that I'm pulling out. It's not a standalone game. It's one that's inside of the courses. But again, if you wanted to replicate this. Yourself.

1:10:06 You can uh very easily do it. So What we're gonna do here is we're gonna work on conviction prompts. So this comes back to this idea of entering a state. Or changing your your energy.

1:10:19 to Impact the words. that are coming out of your mouth. What's gonna happen here is similarly to triple step. I'm also gonna get a random topic that I just have to start speaking about.

1:10:29 But now instead of getting a word that I have to integrate into my speech naturally. I'm going to get A prompt. So it's gonna be the beginning of a sentence that I have to say out loud. And my I have to

1:10:41 Find a way for my brain. To just complete the sentence. And the sentences are specifically Chosen Because

1:10:49 They're gonna put you in a state of more conviction. So it's gonna force me to care more about what I'm saying, basically. And this is a game for Executive presence. If you think about

1:11:01 somebody who you feel has like great gravitas or great executive presence. They usually have There's something about them that's saying This person really believes in what they're saying. And

1:11:15 What this game is showing you is that hey, there's a way to Fast track. myself to that place. If I want to be have more executive presence Let me bring a little bit more conviction. to what I'm saying.

1:11:26 Most There's Caveat. Small cave, yeah. Maybe ten percent. of people in the workforce.

1:11:34 Need the opposite. They need hey, you need to maybe question what you're what you're saying here. But the reality is The vast majority of people Actually are not

1:11:44 truly standing behind their words and their ideas. And what that does is that The people who speak a lot and feel a lot of conviction, their ideas go through more often than the others. And you'd want ideas to stand for themselves, but that's just not

1:11:58 reality so for most people listening to this If you can bring more conviction to your words. Then Your ideas are gonna have a better chance of Being seen.

1:12:09 equally to those who are already doing that. So this is what this game's about. Awesome. Okay. Okay, here we go.

1:12:18 The title is saying no. I've had to learn this the hard way. as an entrepreneur. That Saying no.

1:12:27 is one of the most important things I can do. But saying no is not Saying no to a meeting. Is that Can be easy.

1:12:34 Um And what I'm gonna say now Matters. A ton. This is saying no to doing all of the exciting projects.

1:12:43 That I want to do. So as I said earlier. I'm a Labrador. I get excited about everything, and I genuinely believe. That every idea is awesome. But that doesn't mean I can do every idea.

1:12:56 I need to choose a very Clear focus. And stick to that focus. And this is a game changer. When you start

1:13:04 reducing the amount of things you're doing. to a painful amount. of of painful few amount. Then when you get there. Suddenly

1:13:14 Everything else changed, and it astonishes me. When I do that Just how much more I can get done, even though I'm doing fewer things. Love it.

1:13:25 That was great. These words are tough. Yeah, this was not an easy one. This is not a good good good thing that I get a I get a tough one. Well deserved. Let me read the phrases real quick just so folks know. The phrases you have to integrate is this matters a ton.

1:13:40 I generally believe that every idea is awesome. Game change. It was just I don't really believe that, yeah. Oh, got it. Okay. I generally believe that. And then game changer and then It Astonishes Me When.

1:13:55 And it's I'm I'm so eager for you to go through this and for anybody listening to try this for themselves. Even if you know what's coming, like if you Wanna do this for yourself right now, right? The words, the the prompts that Lenny

1:14:08 Just shared. And Choose any title and just speak for a minute. And see if you can integrate those in. 'Cause you're gonna notice

1:14:17 How If you bring conviction, these words naturally bring that out of you. And so interesting to watch the content. change as a result of the state you get into and what you say. So it's really It's really powerful to discover just how.

1:14:33 uh incredible your brain is. So Same Same intention for you, I think, as Choose a strong direction.

1:14:43 From the beginning. This is always in speaking in general, the stronger the direction you choose in the beginning, the more ideas you're gonna have, the more com everything gets easier when you choose a strong direction. Okay, let's try it. Um but the goal here is, as it says, advocate for an important idea. Related to the speech title. Ready?

1:15:01 Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. The title is Space Exploration. I think it's hard to imagine

1:15:10 Anything more important to the human race than space exploration. I know there's a lot of talk about people wasting time trying to get us to Mars. Or try not think about what is happening on Earth. But I feel like there's Yeah. There's nothing more powerful and important and inspiring

1:15:25 In fact, the entire world needs to Focus more on the value of space exploration. There's so many things we can discover, so many things that can help us on earth. And we could just

1:15:37 We cannot forget. How much Potential. exist outside of our little earth. that we think our whole existence and everything that's ever existed on this one planet when really we're this

1:15:48 Tile and tiny pale blue dot. And it just astonishes me when people don't think about this, don't think it matters, don't think They should spend any time Getting getting us into space. Investing money in space.

1:16:01 And Just hearing stories, if nothing else, of people that have gone into space and how life changing that was for them. Show us that Yeah.

1:16:10 Spatial exploration is incredibly powerful and important. Yes. Mm. Mm. That was awesome.

1:16:18 That was so cool. So you had The title was space exploration and the words were in fact the entire world. Then We cannot forget that.

1:16:30 Then it astonishes me when And finally. Life changing. So What was that like? What what did it feel like getting

1:16:41 Yeah, there's a lot of it like really helps just like Here's the thing you're gonna believe. And I don't know if I got lucky with stuff, but it just felt like okay, I have Something comes up that You know.

1:16:52 I'm not gonna leak, but anyway, uh Uh It was like oh yeah, cool, something interesting happens. And that's one of my other actual just like going a little quick tangent. Uh insights from the lessons you guys teach is that

1:17:05 As you are forced to talk, you have new insights. Emerge. And you almost figure out what you think and know. By being forced to get out of your head. And he's promised to help you along that.

1:17:17 But I think that's really interesting. I've just like This will help you. Develop things. And insights that In from and take them out of your head.

1:17:26 Yeah, well that's we're gonna Uh, hopefully we get to talk about the accordion method, one of the most powerful methods I have and which is which is very close to this, but this is often a prompt I I tell people when they're speaking. I say because people tend to get into a a public speaking voice.

1:17:42 Right. So they'll we'll be in a class and they'll be chatting normally and and look super normal. And then we'll say Okay. Now just a timer. I'm just gonna give you a speech. Just speak for sixty seconds, so we get a baseline. And I click play and suddenly I say

1:17:56 The important part about doing this and they enter into A different version of themselves. A very Like a professional version, whatever that would mean. It's so much more

1:18:10 Freeing Powerful connecting. And Effective To speak conversationally.

1:18:18 And So the cue I often give people is Don't think about us, just think out loud. And that's really what we're doing. We can most people have a skill set that's up here.

1:18:33 And a mindset that's down here. And so if you can just change the mindset. To match the skill set. You've already made a giant leap. And

1:18:44 You do that by reducing the stakes in your mind. And by just speaking. And As you do that When you're thinking out loud

1:18:53 You Have these moments. of connecting things in your mind and then naturally it pops out. And if you're doing it well And I love there's a really cool Naval Ravikant.

1:19:04 uh interview on the Joe Rogan podcast from Many years ago. That's phenomenal. And at one point he talks about communication, if I'm not mistaken. I think it's on that podcast. But he says something along the lines of one should discover the words They are saying

1:19:19 At the same time their audiences. And This comes back to thinking out why, like if I'm really in my mind, I'm making connections. And suddenly the words are are the consequence of it. So Using

1:19:33 Prompts. Poking your brain, giving these cues. naturally creates things that you couldn't have anticipated otherwise. Putting constraints on a creative project.

1:19:45 Love that. Before we segue to a couple of these methods, the according method is one example. I wanna Ask about When people hear this, they may feel like you're just

1:19:56 You're helping people bullsh more. Just like make the shit up. And Why? Why would we want that? Talk about just how this isn't just like you're not gonna actually give talks.

1:20:07 I like this necessarily this is I and like I guess I'm answering the question, but I'm curious if that's How you think about it is this is building a skill so that when you actually want to give a real talk with prepare they've prepared you were better at it. But yeah, just thoughts on just like That

1:20:22 Potential. Moment. Yeah. I think that's an important question. And it's a question I hear

1:20:29 A lot. Mm-hmm. Because we all know We all know a bullshitter. And that's the person who masters

1:20:37 the skill of communication But doesn't have anything to show for it. And so This thing happens. Is that I see a bullshitter.

1:20:48 And I think to myself I really really don't want to become that person. And what happens is it becomes

1:20:59 An immune response. Or like an immune response. Where I The the desire not to be that person and the feeling being around that person gives you is so strong. That now

1:21:13 If I put take even the smallest step in that direction. of speaking freely, sharing my thoughts out loud. bringing more conviction or confidence to what I'm saying, not leaking. Then there's this і mediate response. like an immune response in my body that's just too strong.

1:21:31 That's saying, Oh, you're becoming the You're becoming the bullshitter. Alarm bells, alarm bells go back to That safe little corner you were in. But the reality is

1:21:42 If you're thinking that. Then you have no chance of becoming a bullshitter. Because If that Thought is even popping into your mind.

1:21:51 then you're the type of person who has developed a very acute Skill set. Of noticing when people bullsh. And you have that same skill set for yourself. So it's just gonna be

1:22:03 Now it's just too loud. So as we go through this practice, we wanna match, hey, I wanna match that bullshitter's level of communication. Except I'm gonna have the ideas to back it up. I'm gonna really

1:22:16 Put effort into my craft. So but I'm gonna give them I'm gonna sh be able to show them in the best possible light. And what we want to be able to do is notice okay if this is a big thing for you

1:22:27 the bullshitting and you're s noticing a big reaction just even listening to us, not even playing the games yourself. Then You definitely benefit from Calming that voice down. So spending time learning these skill sets'cause you're most likely

1:22:42 Atrophied. Because you're staying away from it. And You're gonna have this very powerful listener in the back of your mind. That's gonna ping you.

1:22:50 It's like hey, you're at the limit right now. Stay stay true to what you know. And it's gonna be very a very good compass for yourself. It's gonna be there and you can trust it because you've developed this capacity. Awesome. That's really helpful. Okay, so So far we've

1:23:07 Shared a bunch of techniques, things that you could just start doing today. We've done all these fun games that you could play online. If nothing else just learning from the techniques these games teach you. I think is really helpful. Uh you've shared a bunch of principles.

1:23:21 Of Just like here's how you actually get better public speaking, not And not this way, but that way. I know you have a couple also methods just like that people can implement that help them develop talks. That I found really helpful.

1:23:34 So maybe just as a closing, we talk about these two methods, the accordion method, and I think it's the bow and arrow method. Mm-hmm. Awesome. Let's talk about the accordion method. Uh we did this in the class. Briefly and I was really helpful and I've been explaining it to people just like a really cool way of coming of making your talk better.

1:23:50 So talk about how that works and how people might be able to implement it when they're trying to develop a talk. Now I'm I'm biased when I'm gonna say this, so take this with a pinch of salt, but I think the accordion method The accordion method might be

1:24:04 One of the thing I'm the most proud of. In my entire life. Because It's almost revolutionizing. The way

1:24:15 We should I think we should prepare. speaking. So up until now we've talked about spontaneous speaking mostly. And that's going to be the vast majority of your speaking, probably 80% of your speaking is stuff that you can't prepare for. But

1:24:29 There are gonna be situations Where you know you have a deadline. And you're gonna have to speak. And either you have to speak because it's a a job interview. Oh, yeah.

1:24:39 talking to your CEO, or maybe you're presenting to your whole team or An audience of a thousand. The old way. I think Is shitty.

1:24:49 I think it's broken. And I haven't found anything out there. That is Innovating on this. drove us crazy with Michael, and that's what gave birth to the accordion method.

1:25:00 What's the old way? The whole way is I have a talk coming up. So I'm gonna dump All of my ideas on a piece of paper. Or multiple pieces of paper.

1:25:09 Then I'm gonna try rearranging those ideas. And as I'm rearranging the ideas and trying to make them in a talk, I have more inspiration. And I'm thinking, oh, maybe I could say it this way. And I don't want to lose that other thing that I said in the beginning because maybe I would use it. And you start just creating this alien stack of paper with all of your ideas of what your talk might be. And then you're left with ten, fifteen Pieces of paper.

1:25:33 And now As the data line s comes closer. What do you have to do? Well, you have to go through the excruciating pain of turning ten pages into a script. So that you don't forget all of those brilliant lines that you spend so many hours editing.

1:25:47 And they're still in writing mode. They're not in your mind. So now that I've created that script that I've spent A lot of time editing. Now I have to memorize it. And memorization

1:25:59 Is a is pretty shitty. We're not good at memorization. Robots are good at memorization. Humans are not, and memorization is like a chain where you just have all of these links very linearly. And everybody knows the feeling of going through you know, reciting a poem as a kid and suddenly you miss one verse

1:26:17 And you're lost. And now you're a deer in the headlines. So What we're doing with the in with the accordion method is instead of Preparing our talk by writing.

1:26:29 We're gonna prepare our talk. By speaking. And we're gonna do so in a very specific way where we're going down the accordion to create extreme clarity and to understand what the essence of our talk is, and then back up the accordion. Two

1:26:44 Bring back in. Intentionally just the right pieces. So I was thinking of an analogy for this. And one that I really like is Imagine

1:26:53 You're redecorating your living room. The old way that like writing ten pages and memorizing it is I'm gonna look at my living room. And I'm gonna rearrange things and like put stuff in a corner that I might need later. And then I'm gonna bring some new things that I thought I could re be really nice. And I'm gonna struggle to like

1:27:11 Make something work. The accordion method. Is saying And imagine this were easy to do with furniture. I'm gonna take

1:27:20 Everything out of my living room. Except The most essential pieces. That make My living room.

1:27:29 So I might be left with that one couch that I really love. A pillow. A beautiful light that I bought three years ago. and one or two other small things. And as I look at that, I'm gonna have clarity on

1:27:41 The vision I want. For my living room. And then very slowly. Very intentionally.

1:27:48 I'm gonna go take certain elements that were already there. that I might want to bring back in. And I'm gonna bring new elements that now I see make sense. And so by the time you finish with your beautiful living room It's gonna be this beautiful minimalistic room.

1:28:03 That has a very clear design choice. And All every element there Is there Because you chose it. It's there because you did it very intentionally.

1:28:15 So how does that work with the accordion method? What we do is You can Go through the first step. Wait.

1:28:22 If you want, you can write all of those ideas on paper just to get them out of your head. That's totally fine. But from this moment on There's no more script. And I'm just gonna give an example of of times.

1:28:36 But you can change these time constraints slightly. We're going down the accordion. By using time constraints. But for example you would say I'm gonna speak for it.

1:28:45 Three minutes. So you're gonna put a timer. And you have two rules. I have to stay in character the whole time. And I have to end strong.

1:28:53 So you must make it to the end of the three minutes. And it doesn't matter how bad it sounds. How many mistakes you make. The only point here is I'm trying to get my ideas out. Into

1:29:05 uh in into spoken word, right? So I'm starting to like populate my mind with everything. And seeing what where am I actually at? Then after the three minutes. You think of okay, what did I like, what didn't I like. Then you go to two minutes.

1:29:19 And you put a timer. And you do two minutes again, and you're very strict with those two minutes because we're just trying to learn something every time. Doesn't need to be perfect. So at the two minute mark, you do the same thing, but now you had to Take a wh shave a whole minute. out of that content.

1:29:33 And as you do that, well, that means getting rid of the noise, getting rid of anything that doesn't feel right. Then you go down to one minute. And you're gonna go down all the way to thirty seconds. So you started at a three minute speech. And you make your way down to thirty seconds.

1:29:47 By the time you make it to thirty seconds. You're gonna have Only the essential pieces. Like that couch and that lamp in the living room. When you have the essential pieces

1:29:58 you're gonna have a clear sense of what your talk is about. And it might have changed as you were going down the accordion. And then from that place on we're gonna do another thirty second rep. And then we're gonna go back up the accordion. So you do another thirty seconds. And then you do one minute.

1:30:14 Two minutes. And all the way back up to three minute. And every step of the way, you go from thirty seconds to a minute. Initially a minute felt hard. Now that's double the time you just had. So you can intentionally bring in something that's

1:30:29 aligned with the talk you want to s you want to share. And then two minutes same. And then when you get to three minutes One of my clients once said that it felt like he had a football field in his mind, so much space. And now Whatever talk you have left there.

1:30:42 Is a very clear Intentional talk. And Not only that. And this is why this is such an incredible method.

1:30:52 Your talk is now internalized. So you're at the stage of I've written a script that I've painfully edited in the old way. that you now still have to memorize and it's a written speech that you're gonna have to pretend to give in a spoken way. In this case, you're there, but it's already completely internalized. Not even memorized, it's internalized.

1:31:13 Pillars, you know where you're going. And By the time you make it through the accordion method. You're basically ready to go give it on stage. But you could even give it in you could give it now in one minute, two minutes, three minutes, five minutes?

1:31:26 You're gonna it's very plastic. You're gonna be able to navigate different time frames. It's not gonna really matter if you make a mistake. because you're gonna you have a deep sense Uh what your speech is. So it's not memorized.

1:31:38 It's internalized. So not only have you getting clarity and built out your speech in a In a very intentional way. But by the time you get to the end of it.

1:31:47 You also actually know it and you're ready to to perform it. That example of the three minute uh when you come back up the accordion, that's exactly how it felt when I did this, is just like, wow, so much time now. Because you Essentially the way I think about it is you concentrate

1:32:01 it to the best, most important nuggets. And then you have time to ex build on those nuggets and you cut out all the stuff that no one really cares about, which is usually a long introduction. Just like no, just get to the good stuff and then you expand the good stuff. And it it really worked.

1:32:15 for for me it was it was a really illuminating experience. For someone that wants to actually use this, say they have a speech coming up, they'll say they're doing like an all hands presentation in like a week. Do you do this like a week ahead of time? Dude. Do you do this like a few days before, I guess.

1:32:30 How do you Where do you fit this in the workflow? So that you actually remember what you want to say when it comes. Time. I can't say do it exactly a week or two weeks or what it really depends

1:32:41 how well you know your how Uh familiar you are with the content. If you have an all hands and this is something that you've been hashing with your executive team over the past you know two months. You probably know it really, really well and you have a lot of clarity.

1:32:55 And now it's just about organizing it nicely. So In that case, maybe you you wanna Do the rough a rough go through the accordion a week ahead of time so you have a clear sense of What is it that I wanna that I want my audience to remember?

1:33:10 And what are the the the pillars that I know I like to hit that that feel really good. So you can think about these as like the foundational pillars that support that one thing that you're sharing. Or uh bookmarks that I know I have to hit.

1:33:23 And then what I would like to do, and so that's what I would write down. I wouldn't write a script, I'd write those down. And then before the all hands, maybe the day before maybe even the morning of, depending on how important this is or how comfortable you feel.

1:33:36 Then you might go through just one or two reps of it. But Now you you already know it's it should come back very, very quickly in your mind. And it sounds like it's okay to have some bullet points at the end. Like it's hard for me to imagine going on stage with a bunch of people watching. Not have any

1:33:52 Uh slide bullet point speaker note speaker notes. Any problems just having like a couple of the bullet points of like core points? Next to me. Before a talk I might have four things written down.

1:34:04 My one thing, and we'll talk about this in the bow and arrow. My one thing. The one thing I want people to remember And then the three bookmarks or pillars. That

1:34:13 I want to hit. And these are kind of like cues or reminders. That are gonna send me into That part of the speech. So for example, if I'm talking about the accordion method, Uh like what I just said, if I go back and I think through

1:34:26 the pillars of this one, well my my my one thing Would be uh You know, the accordion method is more powerful than memorizing and then doing it the old way. And then my bookmarks might be number one. uh describe the old way or like the old way.

1:34:42 Number two. the new way or the accordion method And then number three. might be Like.

1:34:49 Internalize, don't memorize. That'll be kind of the takeaway. And if I have that in my mind If I have thirty seconds, I can say the old way sucks. Uh, because you have to work so hard and memorize everything and you're memorizing written stuff.

1:35:04 The accordion method is much more powerful because you are gonna compress it and go down and then Open it up. And then I'll say and then I'll explain that in a second, and then I'll say So you're internalized not memorized.

1:35:17 What I realise right now is actually Funny enough, though those were the bookmarks there. So that sent me down that path, but actually I would say Uh, bookmark number two is probably The living room analogy.

1:35:29 Mm. So it would be the old way sucks. The living room analogy. And then describe the accordion method. That's cool. That was an awesome example of just the insights that appear by forcing yourself through this exercise. Yeah.

1:35:42 Yeah. It sounds like maybe the best use of this method is if you have a talk All of a sudden. short term, like it's coming, all of a sudden you have to give a talk somewhere. There's a really powerful method to come up with a

1:35:53 Great talk. Like that's maybe tomorrow, which you can expect. I When I say I I I I love this I use this for myself. I use this with

1:36:03 Every single client I work with for regardless of if it's a uh Five minute talk, a twenty minute keynote. we're using the accordion method. And you can use this at the macro level or at the micro level. So you can use it for the whole talk, but you can also say, Hey, let's hone in on this

1:36:19 This Part one. that you're struggling with or part two, and let's use the accordion to like get clarity there. So you can use the accordion as a Like almost like a brainstorming way. Like I just want to see where I end up here.

1:36:32 But it takes maybe fifteen minutes or something to go through a full accordion. It depends the the the time constraints you give yourself. Sometimes I'll just do two minute, one minute, thirty seconds. That's even shorter.

1:36:44 Um But I'll go through it for a One piece of the puzzle. Or it's like, hey, we're almost there. Let's really internalize it. Let's clarify this. Let's get it really, really tight. And and then I might say, Okay, now let's do the whole thing.

1:36:57 through the accordion. So your twenty minute talk, I want to hear it in three minutes. That gets really, really interesting. Amazing. Okay. Anything else along the corning method before we talk about the final

1:37:08 Technique. Before we wrap up. We have a full self paced course on Ultra Speaking on the Accordion. Um

1:37:16 I think it costs Like thirty bucks or something like that. to to access all of the games and all the platform. A bunch of them are free, but I think this one's behind the paywall. Um but we also have We put together a a resource.

1:37:29 Where you we Like go all the way. We describe All of the accordion method. The bow and arrow, exting character, ending trong. uh on a free email course.

1:37:38 that we we put together that's ultraspeaking dot com slash Lenny. So this is shameless self promotion. But if you wanted to go grab it there. you can grab it there. And then the bow and arrow is gonna tie into the the accordion method as well.

1:37:53 Awesome. I'm I'm glad you mentioned all that. And we'll point people to the U.S. In the show notes. Okay, final. Topic is the bonair technique. Let's talk about what that is and how folks can use that to

1:38:03 Give better talks. The bow and arrow starts with a a mind it's really a mindset shift. That most of us are In the weeds. So we're very

1:38:14 sensitive and familiar to all of the content that we're working on. If you're in data, then you're you n you have all of the data. If you're sharing ideas, you still have all of the ideas. And the mistake that most people do

1:38:31 When they're preparing a talk, a presentation, an all hands, a meeting, whatever it is. Is we tend to focus more on what we want to say. our audience to remember. So the mindset shift here is

1:38:44 Stop focusing as much on what you want to say. And focus more on what you want your audience to remember. What we found out is if you think about the last big meeting, the last talk you saw on YouTube or in person.

1:38:59 you probably don't remember much. In fact, I'd wager you might only remember one thing from that talk. And That's what this is all based on. We call it the bow and arrow technique. Because

1:39:13 We think you can only remember one thing out of a talk. And that it's very powerful to go through that. framework or that kind of thinking when you're building a talk. And the one thing is your arrow. So when you have that one thing

1:39:26 To me, I say It's literally a single sentence. That is the only sentence you're people would remember if they left your talk. Would you be satisfied with that sentence? It takes some times to get to a good one, but if you have a good one

1:39:40 It unlocks. everything. It's like you having a North Star or a compass in your pocket. You can always pull it out. You always know where you're going. It's it's it gives a you a lot of clarity. It's also giving a lot of clarity to your audience, obviously.

1:39:54 But you can't just throw an arrow at somebody's face. You need a n notch it in the bow. And pull the bow back. So to pull the bow back. You need to

1:40:05 Add in. Wait. to that sentence. And that often comes in the form of An interesting anecdote.

1:40:13 Or a da a data point that's gonna support that or a story that's gonna uh add emotion or illustrate it. So you want to find ways in which You can Give weight.

1:40:25 Or pull back the bow. So that your arrow has that much more impact. So When usually the process of Clarifying what your arrow is.

1:40:37 Is a back and forth between the bow And the arrows. So if you're going down the accordion method. Uh f like after the first one you might write or before the first one you might write a tentative arrow. Here's my one thing. And then the next one you say, Okay

1:40:52 Actually my one thing might be a refined version of that. And so you might rewrite it a little bit. And then you might Tentatively put in. What you think the bow is. I like the anecdote I used here.

1:41:04 I like this st this uh data point that I thought was powerful, and maybe I can end on this story or this call to action. Then you'll put that in. And then you go back in and you give that a try. And that's you're starting to simplify in your mind. And as you go, usually

1:41:19 One informs the other. By the time you finish the accordion, for example, you should have A very clear. And those clear bookmarks which is the bow. But really the thing to remember

1:41:30 with the bow and arrow, if you could only remember one thing. Is Switch your mindset from what I wanna say. to what I want people to remember.

1:41:40 And limit Whatever that is you want them to remember. As much as possible. That's gonna give you extreme clarity. That is really helpful.

1:41:49 Like I'm preparing my talk for the summit and so. I'm gonna use both of these exercises. Um and Like what I take away from this last piece is As much as you may want to say a lot of things, really all someone's gonna remember as you said is one thing.

1:42:03 If anything, but hopefully they remember that one thing. So it's essentially what's the one thing you want people to remember? And then what are the pieces of support. That will convince them that that's right and that's something that'll stick with them.

1:42:16 Exactly. And again, similar to the accordion method, This works in the macro and the micro. So If you have a talk where you're using slides Use it for the whole talk.

1:42:28 But then for every single slide. Ask yourself, what is my one thing? And you might have a uh some support there as well. But if you don't have a one thing for each slide. Either the slide shouldn't exist.

1:42:42 Or it should be multiple slides. Right, the the symptom of not having a one thing. Is Usually having a slide that says way too many things. Like I don't know what data point I want you to remember, so I'm gonna put

1:42:55 All of it on that slide. I'm not sure which piece of information is more important, so I'm gonna write down all of my thoughts and I'm gonna go through all of them or hope that you go through all of them. and extract what you think is imp is interesting. But the reality is People are just gonna zone out if you do that.

1:43:11 So if you if you do that slide by slide. It's uh you're gonna gain incredible clarity and again you're gonna need less preparation and less memorization. And to build on that, uh a pro tip is to make it a Title of that slide exactly that one thing you want them to take away.

1:43:27 Just put it there and tell them exactly. What you want them to learn. I love that. Sweet. Tristan, we've been on a journey. This was a really unique we have.

1:43:36 Experimental episode. Uh, I had a good time, even though it's I've done so I did some hard things. You made me do hard things. But are good for me. Is there anything else you wanna share before we get to our very exciting letting around? Is there anything else you wanna leave listeners with or a nugget you wanna I hope people found value. I really uh I mean we did. This was really a a group effort and I I really appreciate you working on the the ag like really bringing in the games and trying to make this as as practical as possible.

1:44:03 I think the only thing I I want to leave people with is Again this idea of how How transformational Tackling speaking can be.

1:44:14 And the more constrained you feel with your speaking. The more transformational It will be to your life. So

1:44:24 I just want to give this encouragement. It's much, much, much more enjoyable. Than you think it will be. It can actually be exhilarating and energizing, and you feel like you can take over the world once you're on this journey. It's beautiful. And so I just encourage everybody Take the first step.

1:44:41 And Start practicing your speaking. Awesome. And I definitely felt that after doing the the workshop of just like feel energized. I wanna

1:44:50 Just talk all the time. But then I'm like I need more work. I need more practice. Kristen, with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Let's do this. Lightning. Here we go. Here we go. First question. What are two or three books that you have recommended most to other people?

1:45:10 I was Given a Uh a book by my first coach, Nathan Seward. seven years ago called the Big Leap. By Gay Hendrix.

1:45:20 That I've Recommended. So many times and it's Based on this idea that

1:45:27 We tend to self-sabotage ourselves. when we experience too much success or too much happiness. And that that's linked Two I think five.

1:45:37 uh things that would happen to us when we're growing up. Like one of them is the why the What is it the pot why wild poppy syndrome or something like that. Like the tallest poppy is the one that's cut first. So if you shine in you in a family of siblings And any time you shine too much, we're gonna say, Hey, hey, hey, that's not cool for the others. So that's gonna be internalized and hardwired in your

1:45:58 Body. And As an adult, as soon as you start shining a little bit too much. You're gonna do the same thing to yourself. So the idea is going from having this

1:46:08 This um Point. above which you can't be happy to turn it into He calls it an upward facing spiral with no upper limit. But it's a really exciting and empowering book.

1:46:20 Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? I haven't watched much very recently. Uh but А сай Май ТВ шоу, май Фейвер ТВ шо.

1:46:31 One of my favorite TV shows of all time is the Peaky Blinders. English show with uh Killian Murphy. I'm absolutely obsessed with that movie. That show. I think it's a True masterpiece.

1:46:42 And I recently rewatched so I'll call I'll I'll qualify this as recent. I recently rewatched The nice guys with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. And I think it's just uh Brilliant comedy. Bring like another masterpiece.

1:46:57 I thought Do you have a favorite recent product that you have discovered that you really love could be an app? Could be something. Physical? I have a physical product actually right in front of me that was gift to me by

1:47:10 My uh business partner Michael Ganley, co-founder of Ultra Speaking. This is called an Ember Mug. And this keeps whatever you have in it. Warm. And it's

1:47:20 Extraordinary. Whether you have you're a coffee drinker or a tea drinker. You know the feeling of pouring this and wanting and sipping it and by the fifth sip it's cold. This keeps it. At whatever temperature you want it to. uh for however long you want. And I

1:47:33 Absolutely love it. I've been using it basically every day. Mm. I have one of those I find myself you can actually control it through the app, right? You can control the temperature through an app. Which I love. I haven't been using mine, but I love the idea. I know a lot of friends love him.

1:47:47 Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, share with friends or family, find useful in work or in life? I think we we're we're too future focused as a as a species or as a society. And as a result, we're always looking for the next thing. So

1:48:06 The motto I share with my friends and my business partners and my family The most, I think. Is These are the good old days. And I remind myself, and like I'll tell you right now, for you and for whoever's listening, like

1:48:21 I mean think about the podcast, it's never gonna be this young It's never gonna feel like it feels right now. And it always feels like these things are eternal. But truly. You one day you're gonna look back and you're thinking, Man

1:48:33 Those were really the good old days, and so I say it right now. Enjoy because these are the good old days. I love that. And it's so relevant with a young kid. 'Cause you're always gonna think about yeah, very little. I love that.

1:48:48 Final question. You are the fastest person to reach the finals of the world championship of public speaking. I imagine that was quite a journey. I'm curious if there's like a story from that experience that comes to mind that's like a wild

1:49:03 Part of that journey. Or something that might surprise people. Yeah. Well, the journey lasted Almost seven months.

1:49:13 And it was the craziest journey of my life because I went into that with no experience whatsoever speaking. Um Uh so Really just a

1:49:23 A random amateur. And I just climbed the ladder by outworking everybody. Um Stor the story that came to mind right away.

1:49:34 was Six days before the semi finals. Time six days before the semi finals. And I've

1:49:41 qualified for the semi finals two and a half months ago. So I'm nobody Now I'm going to the semifinals of the world championships of public speaking. So my mind really is struggling to compute. And

1:49:54 I had Finally unlocked. The speech. That I thought was worthy of giving on the final stage'cause you have to show up there for the semi finals with one speech.

1:50:04 And then the next day, if ever you win. You're going to the finals. And you have to have a brand new speech. A completely different speech. That you're gonna give on that stage.

1:50:12 So you need two speeches ready to go. And Both of those speeches have to be in theory world class. I'm six days before I was struggling at that, really, really struggling to get that speech together. I finally got something, and Michael managed to get me. Uh I was flying the

1:50:30 I think two days later to Vancouver for the fine for the semis. And Michael managed to unlock this one opportunity to speak in front of fifty people to give it a try. And so w I I ran there I give the speech and as usual we we film. I film every single speech. I gave more than a hundred speeches over those seven months, and I filmed every single speech.

1:50:49 And we get home, we'd ask everybody for feedback. And I get home and I'm I'm thinking, Man, something is wrong. Something is wrong. I was so pumped. I can that the I Wept.

1:51:00 Len I genuinely wept as I wrote the speech because I was It was so moving. It was all about my life. It was something That I was so connected to I don't know, probably the emotion of the pressure as well. But that's how much I believed in that speech. We get home.

1:51:15 We put the speech on the computer. And as I get to the most important part of the speech. I see two things happen. So this is the moment where like I'm expecting people to pull out their

1:51:26 uh their tissues. One person pulls up there. Pulls up the No the agenda for the event that they're at and is starting to look at the agenda. Another person like pulls out their phone another person starts going through their

1:51:41 Their um Their purse. And I'm looking at this and suddenly I realized Oh, this speech Nobody cares about this.

1:51:49 This is not a good speech. This is terrible. And then I go through all of these feet. I have fifty pieces of feedback. And all I'm getting is like good luck for the semi finals. It's gonna go great. Uh I thought it was good. And I'm like this is I'm gonna humiliate myself. This is terrible. So

1:52:08 I had waves of anxiety. I threw my speech away. And in five days. From the ground up. I rebuilt a s completely new speech that was basically the best of

1:52:22 everything I'd explored, everything I'd experimented with over the course of the three months leading up to that. Like the jokes that that work the best that like a stand up comic would I built my special. And I focused on different uh different areas like the all of the transitions.

1:52:38 And right before the The The semi finals. I gave the speech to one person like I was in Vancouver Uh

1:52:47 Trying to to internalize my speech and memorizing it like In a Plaza. where I delimitated the the size of the stage and I'm just giving my speech out loud to get over the nerve, so I'm ready for the pressure. To see if my brain will remember it and everything. Anyways, I gave it in front of one person who was our our district director.

1:53:06 at Toastmasters. And This is a speech meant for five hundred to a thousand people, not one person. So I was scared it would flop. But in the middle of the speech, which is a completely different one. Like I saw

1:53:19 A tear rolled down her cheek. And then she just Hugged me and said, You got it, you did it. You did it. And I walked out on that stage.

1:53:28 And I made it and I I won the semi finals with that speech. I think To me that was really the It showed me That

1:53:38 Everything I done was worth something, that it actually worked. If I was able to do a s to Build a speech in five days. It could get me a win at the semi finals of the world championships. That was kind of the ultimate

1:53:52 Wow, I won. So when I walked into the to the finals, to me I I felt like I had already won. Wow. That is a story. What an arc. Amazing. I'm so happy you asked that question. Um now I just want to watch that speech and I wanna learn more about this whole championship of public speaking, which I have no insight into.

1:54:10 That could be its own podcast interview. But Tristan, thank you so much for being here. This was incredible. One of the most interesting episodes I've done. Two final questions. Where can folks learn more about

1:54:21 Ultra speaking, I know you built a page where they could experiment with some of the stuff, so share that. And then How can listeners be useful to you? If you go to ultraspeaking dot com slash Lenny So ultra Like U L T R A ultraspeaking dot com slash Liny. We put together you have a

1:54:39 five emails that go deep into a bunch of the things that we've talked here. You can also just go to ultraspeaking.com where you'll get access to a bunch of the games for free. And you can check out everything else that we do. If you want to follow me or hit me up or ask me questions about this podcast. You can do that on Twitter. Uh Montebello. M O N T E B E L L O

1:55:00 And How can be how can listeners be useful to me? Well, first of all, if you made it to here Then I really appreciate you. Thank you.

1:55:09 Thank you for being here. With us. And What I would love For you to do is to

1:55:17 Apply this. You we said in the beginning You can't get better at speaking without speaking. And another piece of that puzzle is You want to do the thing.

1:55:27 that you're trying to get better at. So if you're nervous speaking in front of people, You wanna speak in front of people as part of your practice. So the way you could be useful to me Is Introduce these games.

1:55:39 to somebody else. Try them for yourself. Practice them with somebody else. Go through the accordion method with a friend. Try conductor. And when you succeed and when you have an awesome experience. then you can tell the world that ultra speaking helped you do that. And that would be huge.

1:55:56 Awesome. Tristan, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Sunny. It was an honor. It was my honor, Tristan. Bye, everyone.

1:56:07 Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast.com. See you in the next episode.

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