How Great Leaders Consistently Captivate, Entertain and Inspire Audiences at Events

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Today we are talking about how to be a captivating public speaker, how to inspire people and entertain people.

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We have a great guest to help us go through that today, Peter George, welcome to the show.

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Hi, eric, it's a pleasure to be here.

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You've been in the public speaking space for decades, why don't we start off by you talking a little bit about who you are and what you do?

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I'm a public speaking coach, professional speaker and author of an award-winning book on public speaking, and I get the most pleasure in my life out of helping people accomplish their goals.

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I love helping people and if public speaking can help them do that, whether they're using it in business or otherwise, then I'm more than happy to help them achieve their goals, their initiatives and practically change their lives.

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That's awesome.

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I think public speaking can be very rewarding.

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I think it's a great strategy for executives to grow their company.

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It's a great part of personal branding, and so I think it's definitely a skill worth mastering, and perhaps it's harder than most people imagine it is on the surface.

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Public speaking is really quite simple in the way that our minds interact.

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That doesn't make it easy, like a lot of things in life.

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Very simple concept, not quite so simple to implement, but the great thing is, eric, anybody can implement it.

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Anybody can learn to be an effective, captivating speaker.

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I've been speaking on stage for more than 30 years.

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I've been training for more than 19 years and I grew up with a lisp and a stutter.

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If there's anybody who really wouldn't make it on stage, it's me.

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I never had any idea I would be doing what I do for a living.

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That's awesome.

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We're ready to be inspired.

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Why don't you tell us a story about some of the best marketing that you've done, that you're the most proud of, that you think has had the most impact?

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What?

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may have had the most impact is what got me speaking on stage.

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I was asked to speak at a conference and I really didn't want to.

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It was representing my company my own company, and it was a fledgling company and they asked me to speak on stage about what we were doing because it was changing the way things were being done.

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And I agreed to and I wasn't that great at it, but I tried to do my best and then, once I did it, I was asked more and more to speak on stage at conferences and other events and my wife, who was my partner in my company, who was also an accountant, noticed that every time I spoke we had a bump in revenue.

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So it didn't take this accounting mind very long to say, hey, do more of that.

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So the more I spoke, the more revenue we had and the more our business increased and grew and it grew into be a very successful business that we sold later on, but much of its success came from my being out in what would be the public of our industry.

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That's awesome.

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Every time you spoke, you made more money.

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I think there's no easier way to say it than that.

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It's a great proof point for why executives getting out there and speaking, founders getting out there and speaking makes a lot of sense.

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I was going to say.

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Think of music.

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People go out on the road for a reason they connect with people straight on, head on.

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So those people in the audience can say, yeah, I want to buy more of your merchandise, I want to buy more of your songs.

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And executives can do the same thing for their industry Not speak about their business per se, but speak about a part of the industry, a part of the business that matters to others.

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They get recognition and their business may grow.

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It's a great way to connect with your target audience.

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So what's the hardest thing about being a speaker?

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That you coach people on?

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One of the things that we all think about when we're asked to speak is what am I going to say?

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How am I going to present it?

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What if I make a mistake?

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What if I don't captivate the audience?

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What if I and we make it about us, and that's reasonable.

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We're the ones up there in front of everybody.

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The truth of the matter is it's not about us.

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Yes, we have to understand what the content is.

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Yes, we have to present it in a way that people are going to want to listen and internalize that information.

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That's all true.

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However, when we make it about us, the audience knows that.

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When we make it about the audience and how they're going to benefit and how they're going to walk away with greater knowledge and abilities that they didn't have prior to coming, that's the secret.

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You transform an audience.

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Let me ask you this, eric You've been in business for a while.

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You ever go to a meeting and after an hour, that meeting's over and you're walking out saying I will never, ever get those 60 minutes back into my life.

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Complete waste of time.

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You ever been in a meeting like that?

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Too often, unfortunately.

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Right, it's what gives meetings a bad name.

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If people don't leave a meeting, if they don't leave a breakout, a conference, a keynote, whatever it might be changed in some way, transformed in some way, then why did we have this meeting?

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And that's the problem with meetings and talks and seminars and the like is often people aren't transformed because the speaker didn't intend to transform those people.

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So when you speak, I don't care what the situation is, work to transform those people.

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If they leave, the same way they came in, whether it's virtual or in person, then why do you have the meeting?

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At that point, it's just information and you can send an information on a PDF through email and they'd appreciate that.

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Yeah, so it's definitely more than broadcasting, and I guess that leads me to one of my questions is how can people consistently wow their audience and get that sort of opposite reaction that you're talking about?

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ask Wowing is when we go into it with that, we may or may not hit that, but if we go in to serve them with a service mindset, that's a little different.

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That's a great way to wow them.

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By the way, that's a great way to separate yourself from the guy who just comes and vomits information all over them.

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When you can learn to connect with them, they can digest and internalize what you're saying, so it benefits them.

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That's a wow, and it's not difficult to learn how to do that.

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And that's the great thing about it is when you service people, they appreciate it.

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The only thing you really got to do when it comes to public speaking is not only make it about them as opposed to you, but deliver it in a way that truly engages them, and that's not difficult to learn at all.

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What are some of those strategies that you teach your clients and how to engage the audience?

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I think the first one you mentioned is don't make it about you, make it about them.

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But what are a couple other things that people can do to be engaging?

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Right off the bat, let me ask you this how long do you think, according to some scientists, how long do you think you have to engage an audience and have them have confidence in you?

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How much time does it take?

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How much time do you have to do that?

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I think very little time, much less time than people think.

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You have to have a really good hook at the beginning.

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If you start off slow, people just tune it out pretty quickly, like even within a couple minutes.

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I think, yeah, you have three seconds.

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Yeah.

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So there are ways to extend that before you ever open your mouth.

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That's one of the things I train my clients on.

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But let's say you have those three seconds.

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Let's say you have 30 seconds.

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Some scientists say you have up to 30 seconds.

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So let's take that, we'll get.

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We'll make it a little more lenient.

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You've got to get their attention right off the bat, because if you don't, man, you've got to spend an awful lot of time trying to get it, and one of the ways to do that is to speak to them directly.

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Have a question, have a story, have a startling stat.

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In some way get their attention.

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Too many of us come out and say it's a pleasure to be here as opposed to what Not be here.

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I'd like to thank so-and-so for having me here.

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Eric, when you open a magazine, how many articles do you see that before it gets to the headline, it says I would love to thank the editor for having me in this particular issue of this magazine.

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Never.

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Yeah, you're wasting your time.

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No writer would ever do that.

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They get to the point.

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They grab you.

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Yet in speaking we do these little pleasantries for some reason.

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No, it's not about the people who invited you.

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It's not about you, and it's a pleasure to be here.

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It's not about oh, I had handouts for you but I forgot them in my printer or I'm nervous, or any things you might say to them.

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Get to the point.

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Get their attention right off the bat, and I mentioned some great ways to do that.

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A question always gets our attention because as human beings, we're conditioned to answer questions, whether it's a real question or a rhetorical question.

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Tell them a story that will get their attention, as long as it's a compelling story and pertains to the point of the talk.

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Come up with a startling statistic that grabs their attention.

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Get their attention from moment one.

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When you do that, then it's much easier to keep that wheel going just by ticking the top to keep their attention than it is to get that wheel running all over again.

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Yeah, sometimes people come out with a good joke, but it has to be a good joke.

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Yeah, most of us aren't very good at jokes.

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That whole thing about start with a joke If the joke pertains to the talk, okay.

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But then you better make sure you're good at telling jokes, and not just in your living room.

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Your timing has to be spot on.

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Jokes are not as much about the punchline as they are about the timing.

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So your timing has to be excellent, and when you're nervous, your timing generally isn't excellent.

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So humor, yes, add humor when you can.

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Even in business talks, add humor Jokes.

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Structured jokes might be a different story, depending on your ability to tell them under a stressful situation.

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Not everyone's a comedian, for sure no that's why they get paid very good money and sometimes if you're in front of a big live audience and the joke doesn't really work, that will add to your anxieties.

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Worth considering, but also worth planning out.

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I told a joke once in front of 750 people and it absolutely bombed.

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I went against my own advice While walking on stage I threw out my opening and said I'm going to start with this joke.

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Horrible idea.

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Yeah, it's heartbreaking.

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So it's interesting.

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I was at a conference last week and one of the things I noticed was when people were even in the main keynote session forget about breakout sessions, but when people are watching the keynotes.

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There was almost a thousand people in this keynote session and I saw that a solid 85 to 90% of people were on their phones while the speaker was speaking, and these were well-known keynote speakers talking that everyone should have been paying rapt attention, but they were even distracted doom scrolling while the keynote was going.

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So how do you break through that sort of world we're living in right now where people are only half paying attention anyways?

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What can you do to be engaging to overcome things like that?

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Generally?

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that's on the speaker and not in the presentation itself.

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But the prep.

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We often forget to prep and that's a doomsday scenario.

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You want to know who's in your audience and there's ways to accomplish that.

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You want to know who's in your audience.

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If I go speak to marketers my background is marketing then hey, I can just speak my language.

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But what if there are finance people in that audience?

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What if there are finance people in that audience?

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What if there are IT people in that audience?

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These people think differently than a marketer's mindset.

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I have to present to them too, and we forget that.

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We think we can just go talk about what we want to talk about and it's going to resonate with everybody.

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Nope, wouldn't that be nice if it were the case.

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But that's why you were seeing 80% of the people tune out.

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What that keynote, or those keynotes, were saying to those people, was designed in a way that it just happened to represent with 20%, not the other 80%.

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You can design where that's flipped, where it's resonating with 80% and the other 20%.

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You could do a song and dance or anything else, and it probably wouldn't get their attention.

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But you can flip that simply not easily by researching your audience and designing your talk to resonate with each one of those audiences, not a general audience, it's anything else.

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If you're not specific, then what luck are you going to have?

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If you go marketing and you market to everybody, what luck are you going to have?

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Very little.

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You target a specific audience and you can do that in your talk as well.

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You can almost always tell how much they prepared or if people are winging it.

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If you're paying attention to the speaker, you can tell just because they don't know the audience they are presenting things that you can just look around the room are not connecting with people.

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So I agree 100%.

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Being prepared seems like an obvious thing, but I often see the worst is like panels where you can just see if there's a couple people talking at the same time and they haven't even rehearsed and planned it out.

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You just end up with a mess.

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When I've been on panels, I've spoken to other people hey, you want to get together and just talk this through?

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We'll just wing it when we get there, cool.

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So what we're saying is we are not going to take the time to serve the audience.

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The audience has taken its time to be there, but we're just going to give them a first draft.

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We're just going to throw it out there and see if it works.

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Yeah, don't do that.

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I hate that.

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I agree and, to paraphrase Dale Carnegie, the unprepared speaker gets exactly what he or she deserves 100%.

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So how do you think about the size of audiences?

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This is always something that interests me.

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I'm curious what is some of the biggest audiences that you've spoken to?

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And then how do you reconcile that with some of the talks you've given that you think are the most impactful?

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The largest audience I've spoken to is a little over 2,000.

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And I find that much easier than speaking to 10 people.

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What we think of this, eric, when we say we're going to have a conversation, okay, no problem, then we put the word presentation in its place and suddenly it becomes a problem.

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I've got to do this, and how am I going to present?

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What am I going to say?

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How am I going to interact with them?

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All these things we have all these, this connotation of what a presentation is and it's just a conversation.

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Now, it's a very specifically created conversation, but it's a conversation.

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Even those people might not be speaking out.

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They're still communicating back with you.

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You can see it in their face, you can see it in their body movement, you can see if they're holding a phone or not.

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You know what they're saying, what they're thinking, as long as you look and get that response from that audience, many people say you know what, peter?

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I'm great with one, two, three people, but you put 15 people in front of me, or any more than that, and I don't know how to speak with them.

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The problem, eric, is you can't speak to 15 people, you can't speak to 100 people, you can't speak to 2,000 people.

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You can only speak to one effectively, no-transcript.

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But we try to speak to 2,000 people and that's why we fail at it.

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But when we devise our conversation, our presentation that I'm speaking to one replicated 50, 100, 2,000 times and I use my words that connect with the singular person, not trying to speak to a group of 2,000, making someone feel just a little bit of a big group.

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You want everybody to feel like you're the only one they're speaking to and it makes it so much easier to create a presentation with that mindset, as opposed to how do I go out and speak to a hundred or a thousand people?

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Speak to one, you look at everybody, you make eye contact with people, but you speak using words that are designed to speak to one person.

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That's when the people in the audience go wow, eric was speaking to me.

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He knew what I was thinking.

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How was that?

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These other 1,999 people must be PO'd because he was only talking to me.

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Now you want that to happen 2,000 times people sitting there and each person saying that.

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It's impractical to think that's going to happen for all of them.

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But when you design it correctly, the vast majority will walk away thinking you were speaking just to them.

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It's no different than being in the audience listening to your favorite singer and you're thinking that singer is singing just to you, even though there's 18,000 people in that auditorium.

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I think that's a great tip.

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If you're trying to speak to everybody, you're speaking to nobody, so that's a fantastic way to really be engaged with people.

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So let me ask how do you coach people to do a great job at TEDx?

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Much of it is the same way I coach them anyway.

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But you have to remember TEDx has a limitation of 18 minutes, which is cool.

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You have to break everything down into 18 minutes or less and I've had people I've coached who've given tremendous TEDx talks that are five minutes.

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So when you break it down it's actually more difficult than if you have more time.

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There was an old saying and it's attributed to presidents and people before presidents, and it had to do with writing, but you can use the same thing with speaking.

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Forgive the length of the letter, if I had more time I would have made it shorter, because it's much more difficult to make things concise.

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So we could ramble and ramble.

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When you get things down to 18 minutes or less, that's pretty cool, I think.

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Anyway, everybody's attention span is a 20 minute attention span.

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Now I don't necessarily agree with that.

00:19:16.279 --> 00:19:23.085
A compelling, captivating speaker can keep people's attention for 60 minutes, 90 minutes and longer.

00:19:25.016 --> 00:19:43.395
So I have seen that a lot of conferences are doing sessions that are shorter, closer to 20 minutes, versus just giving everybody either 30 minutes or an hour, minutes or an hour.

00:19:43.415 --> 00:20:06.489
I think a lot of the problem with that is sometimes, if a speaker is given a half hour or an hour of time, like a longer block of time, in a lot of cases they will just fill that time with stuff that's not that captivating, like the example you gave of having a bunch of opening things that aren't really that engaging, like housekeeping and just thanking people and just weird things that sort of fill the time, like housekeeping and just thanking people and just weird things to sort of fill the time, and that at the end as well.

00:20:07.410 --> 00:20:13.728
And I think people sometimes add extra things to get to the time and then they're oh, like I have 30 minutes to fill.

00:20:13.728 --> 00:20:28.750
I better find some more things to say, whereas if you take the opposite approach of what you were saying about TED Talks, of their 18 minutes, you start by really thinking about what is the thing I need to convey and how do I most concisely convey that?

00:20:28.750 --> 00:20:36.414
I think if people start there, you get great, and if you need more time, I think that's fine, but a lot of people are just filling it up is what I've seen.

00:20:36.414 --> 00:20:46.567
But I am glad that a lot of conferences are forcing people to shorter times for that reason and it hopefully makes people think that way, but not always is my experience.

00:20:47.555 --> 00:21:02.886
I and my clients have all run into people saying you've got an hour and I and my clients sometimes say to them I can't do that Because what you want for this specific audience will not fill an hour.

00:21:02.886 --> 00:21:07.226
We can't come up with information to fill an hour.

00:21:07.226 --> 00:21:09.840
It's not right for you, it's not right for the audience.

00:21:09.840 --> 00:21:13.746
This might be a 30-minute presentation for what you're asking for.

00:21:13.746 --> 00:21:27.522
I just spoke in Massachusetts last month, five weeks ago, and when they contacted me last year they said we'd like you to speak for an hour and here's what we'd like you to speak about.

00:21:27.522 --> 00:21:29.442
And I said I can't do it.

00:21:29.442 --> 00:21:31.402
That's not going to be fair to the audience.

00:21:31.402 --> 00:21:38.064
That's two hours, easy, I can probably get fitted into two hours and that's what we ended up doing is two hours.

00:21:38.064 --> 00:21:40.075
It was just this morning.

00:21:40.075 --> 00:21:53.025
I received the testimonial for that and as soon as I read it I forwarded it to my wife and said this is one of the better testimonials I've received in my 37 years of speaking on stage.

00:21:53.025 --> 00:21:55.148
And that was two hours.

00:21:56.375 --> 00:22:00.846
I think you just have to fit your talk for the right amount of time and not try to.

00:22:00.846 --> 00:22:14.472
You just have to fit your talk for the right amount of time and not try to extend it unnaturally or shorten it for the time you need, because I think there are topics that people would pay attention for an hour or two hours, like you're saying, but a lot of topics, no.

00:22:14.472 --> 00:22:21.165
So you really have to size your talk correctly and make sure that you're doing it in the right amount of time.

00:22:21.165 --> 00:22:23.309
Let me ask you about your book.

00:22:23.309 --> 00:22:26.884
People are often very passionate about their books.

00:22:26.884 --> 00:22:31.066
You've put a lot of effort into your book over the years.

00:22:31.066 --> 00:22:41.143
Can you share with us a short synopsis of why you think this book is for everybody who wants to be a great speaker?

00:22:41.143 --> 00:22:50.987
I encourage everyone to get the whole book, but if you could pitch it to us just for 30 seconds, Sure, I wrote this book and actually the book people read is the third iteration.

00:22:51.047 --> 00:22:56.625
I tore the first two apart because I wanted it to follow the way I actually train my clients.

00:22:56.625 --> 00:23:03.239
So it goes from explaining why we get nervous and how you can manage those nerves, not get rid of them.

00:23:03.239 --> 00:23:04.220
You don't want to get rid of them.

00:23:04.220 --> 00:23:08.903
You just want to change that nervous energy into powerful energy.

00:23:08.903 --> 00:23:18.069
How to construct a presentation there's 900 ways to do it, but this is just one that works extremely well and it's very easy to follow.

00:23:18.069 --> 00:23:18.830
Well and it's very easy to follow.

00:23:18.830 --> 00:23:30.373
And then how to present it to the unconscious mind, using the tone of your voice, your body language, your gesturing, all the things that people don't think about but actually make a difference to them when you're presenting.

00:23:30.373 --> 00:23:32.119
And it takes you step by step.

00:23:32.119 --> 00:23:42.268
And it's been fortunate enough to win a number of awards, including the internet runner up of the international book of the Year in 2023.

00:23:43.895 --> 00:23:44.237
Awesome.

00:23:44.237 --> 00:23:47.866
I'm going to link to it in the show notes so everyone can easily get to it.

00:23:47.866 --> 00:23:57.337
If you want to be a captivating speaker, I think it's a great book to have that formula to achieve that sort of outcome.

00:23:57.337 --> 00:24:09.327
Before we wrap up, is there any other advice or secrets you could share about being a captivating and incredible and inspiring speaker?

00:24:10.734 --> 00:24:16.105
Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, again and again.

00:24:16.105 --> 00:24:23.646
The people who are the best in the world at what they do rehearse, train, practice, whatever their industry may call it.

00:24:23.646 --> 00:24:30.648
I'm from New England and people might have heard, outside of New England may have heard, of this guy that was here for 20 years named Tom Brady.

00:24:30.648 --> 00:24:34.903
What did Tom do on the days he wasn't playing?

00:24:34.903 --> 00:24:37.722
Practiced and practiced.

00:24:37.722 --> 00:24:47.343
He not only had a head coach, he not only had an offensive coach, he not only had a quarterback coach, he had a throwing coach.

00:24:47.343 --> 00:24:52.839
The guy who's considered the best ever at what he did had all these coaches who had him.

00:24:52.839 --> 00:24:54.824
Practice and practice.

00:24:54.824 --> 00:24:56.728
He didn't practice because he was great.

00:24:56.728 --> 00:24:59.299
He became great because he practiced.

00:25:01.786 --> 00:25:02.528
Amazing advice.

00:25:02.528 --> 00:25:08.143
Thank you for being on the podcast today sharing these stories and your advice.

00:25:08.143 --> 00:25:17.182
Again, I'm going to link to your website and your book in the show notes so people can easily get the book and get in touch if they'd like to learn more.

00:25:17.182 --> 00:25:18.900
Appreciate you being on the show today.

00:25:19.563 --> 00:25:21.345
Thank you, eric, and thank you to your listeners.