Explore the world of public speaking with Eric Silverberg, co-founder of Speaker Labs, a top coaching company for public speaking in Canada. From overcoming fear to crafting compelling content, Eric shares valuable insights and tips to help you become a more confident and effective public speaker
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding and taking action are the two ways to overcome the fear of public speaking
- Clarity, creativity, and idea construction are essential for creating effective presentation content.
- Authenticity and leaning into your own strengths are key to successful public speaking.
Guest:
Eric Silverberg, co-founder of Speaker Labs, a public speaking coaching company based in Toronto, Canada.
Resources Mentioned:
- Eric Silverberg: LinkedIn
- Organization: Speaker Labs
- Speaker Labs: LinkedIn and Instagram
- Barack Obama: 2004 Democratic National Convention speech
Quotes:
“The fear of public speaking is often rooted in the perception that people are judging the speaker, but in reality, most audiences want the speaker to succeed.” – Eric Silverberg
“Great public speakers make their audience feel something.” – Mark Wright
Listener Challenge:
This week, identify an upcoming opportunity to practice your public speaking skills, whether it’s a presentation at work or a toast at a social gathering. Focus on authenticity and connecting with your audience, and share your experience with us on social media using #BEATSWORKINGShow.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
[00:00:00] Mark Wright: Eric Silverberg, welcome to the BEATS WORKING podcast. It’s great to have you here. Welcome.
[00:00:04] Eric Silverberg: Thank you for having me. Very excited for our conversation.
[00:00:07] Mark Wright: Eric, I’ve been looking forward to our conversation because you are an expert at dealing with the greatest Fear, one of the greatest fears that we have as human beings. And you’d think with our evolutionary history, you’d think that like saber tooth tigers or other big, like sort of cats of prey would be our number one fear.
[00:00:25] Mark Wright: But apparently, according to the polling, public speaking is right up there at the very top. Does that surprise you at all, given your, your life’s work?
[00:00:35] Eric Silverberg: Well, certainly given my life’s work, it doesn’t surprise me. Though I will say that part of the reason I think that it ranks near the top is because as people living in Today’s world, we come into contact with public speaking opportunities much more frequently than we come into contact with a roaring tiger.
[00:00:55] Eric Silverberg: So I still think that fear of the tiger might top the charts [00:01:00] if actually in that scenario, but we’re faced with that scenario pretty infrequently. That doesn’t take away from the fact though, that public speaking fear is very real. And no, I’m not surprised that it’s near the top of the charts.
[00:01:12] Mark Wright: And what’s funny about it is that I found in my own life, and I’ve had, you know, 35 years of experience on television, I’ll get nervous sometimes presenting something to a group of maybe six co workers. And I’m thinking, why am I getting so nervous about that? But we’re going to dive deep into why we get stressed out and also some great strategies.
[00:01:33] Mark Wright: , I’d love to start though, Eric, our conversation. It seems like public speaking is one of those traits throughout human history. Thanks That if you are a great public speaker, you rise to the top. And we’ve, we look back over history and we see the greatest leaders of every generation are those who can communicate well.
[00:01:53] Mark Wright: Why, why do you think that is? I’m sure you studied this over the years.
[00:01:56] Eric Silverberg: I think that first of all, you’re right. That if you want to be an [00:02:00] amazing leader or you’re ambitious in any facet of life, chances are you’re going to be more successful if you’re an amazing public speaker. And I think the reason for that is sort of based on the definition of what public speaking is.
[00:02:15] Eric Silverberg: Everyone communicates. We communicate all day every day. Right now you and I are having a one on one conversation. Today I’ve written some emails. That’s communication. You might write a tweet, that’s communication, or you can public speak. And the biggest difference with public speaking to me is that public speaking is one to many communication.
[00:02:36] Eric Silverberg: One to many communication. You can define many as five. You can define many as 5, 000. You can define many as 500, 000 in some very extreme cases. But that’s ultimately really what public speaking is. It’s just communication, but the specifics around the context is that it’s one to many. And I think that by definition, one to many provides a larger opportunity.
[00:02:58] Eric Silverberg: There’s scale [00:03:00] there. So whether you’re trying to motivate or rally or teach or persuade or even just update people, maybe if you’re public speaking from a business context, you’re running a town hall or something like that, regardless of what your goal is of your presentation, the stakes are higher.
[00:03:15] Eric Silverberg: Because you’re communicating now at scale and that’s where magic happens, right? Scale is where magic happens. So you’re not just motivating one on one, you’re motivating maybe tens, hundreds, or thousands of people at once. So of course the people that can do that well, they get ahead because they’re having more impact by doing something that’s a little bit more scalable when it comes to communication.
[00:03:36] Mark Wright: And the great public speakers, it’s like any form of communication, the great movies, the great plays, the great poems, great communication makes us feel something, right? And so I’m guessing it’s not just, Oh, you, you were able to convey these facts and figures and, and, and this story or whatever, none of it matters.
[00:03:55] Mark Wright: Does it, Eric, unless we make our audience feel something, right?
[00:03:59] Eric Silverberg: Yeah, of [00:04:00] course I mean, we always like to say that the great Maya Angelou had it right. That people don’t remember what you say, they remember how you made it feel. Sometimes I also disagree with Maya Angelou a little bit. I know that’s a big no no. Don’t disagree with Maya Angelou. But it turns out actually that it’s a bit extreme.
[00:04:16] Eric Silverberg: People actually do remember what you say. They just will remember what you say differently based on how you made them feel., the premise is true. Whether you agree with Maya Angelou’s version or my version, which is that feeling emotion, it matters. Great
[00:04:30] Mark Wright: I remember driving in the car. It was 2004, I think, the Democratic National Convention was on the radio. And I was listening to this Senator from Illinois, a young Senator named Barack Obama. And I remember saying to myself, this guy is going to be president someday because that speech that he delivered to the DNC in 2004 was so masterful.
[00:04:52] Mark Wright: And it was like listening to, you know, the best preacher and, and Steve Jobs all rolled into, to one [00:05:00] who, who in your mind over the years, have you looked up to as, as some, some of those great communicators?
[00:05:07] Eric Silverberg: question. And we could probably spend the remainder of our time today talking about who my favorite public speakers are. And I think there’s credence to the conversation because ultimately, If anyone’s trying to pursue greatness with public speaking, chances are the voice that you should find in yourself is some sort of combination, amalgamation Of the people that you think are the greatest.
[00:05:32] Eric Silverberg: We might talk about this, how there isn’t only one great way to public speak. There are infinite ways to be an amazing public speaker. So for me, my favorite public speakers are simultaneously who I’ve sort of modeled my public speaking style after. And a few people that come to mind, we can talk about any of them, or I could keep listing them, like I said.
[00:05:50] Eric Silverberg: But Barack Obama definitely comes to mind for me. Incredible. He’s almost melodic in how he speaks. I had a hilarious realization once about Barack [00:06:00] Obama, and I think I might have discussed this with you, Mark, the last time we chatted, which was, I’m Canadian. I’m born and raised in Toronto and I don’t follow American politics too closely, but I have this idea in my head of Barack Obama being an amazing president.
[00:06:15] Eric Silverberg: And to be clear, I have no idea what he did as president. I don’t even know if his beliefs and values are in line with my own. But because he’s such a good public speaker, it’s almost as if what he actually did doesn’t matter. That’s just my view of him. It’s really interesting. So Barack Obama comes to mind.
[00:06:30] Eric Silverberg: Oprah Winfrey comes to mind. Jim Carrey comes to mind. And it’s not just, His, his lunacy when he’s in a, in an amazing comedy movie from the nineties. It’s also, I mean, if you watch him, if you watch him give out awards at the Oscars or the golden globes, or if you’ve seen his commencement speech, he’s an unbelievable public speaker.
[00:06:51] Eric Silverberg: So those are a few that come to mind. I mean, we already mentioned Steve jobs, incredible, whether you like Apple products or not. Try watching one of his keynote presentations and saying he’s not [00:07:00] effective at delivering those presentations. Pretty incredible. So those are some that come to mind for me.
[00:07:05] Mark Wright: Eric, I have to ask you, were you one of those kids who just loved to talk and loved attention? I remember when I was a kid, I said, watch me, mom, about 85 times a day. And, uh, I’m sure she got sick of it.
[00:07:17] Mark Wright: But, I think some of this is hardwired and, and I know that you believe that some, a lot of it is not hardwired, but I’d love to know about you, Eric. What, what kind of a kid were you when it came to, to speaking and communicating with others?
[00:07:30] Eric Silverberg: funny. When I was a really little kid, I was like you. Everyone watched me and let me perform and let me speak. And I was in the school plays and I wanted the attention and I loved performing and communicating. And then things changed a little bit for me, and I guess you could say the, the middle point of my life when I was in high school and when I was in business school and undergrad, where I actually developed more of the fear of public speaking.
[00:07:57] Eric Silverberg: And I then [00:08:00] eventually came out of that and had yet another transformation where now again, I love it and I’ve based my entire career out of it. But what it taught me is that the way that we feel about public speaking, it’s not static. It can change over time. And even more importantly, it can change from context to context, even in one point in time.
[00:08:18] Eric Silverberg: So you might feel really great speaking to five people, But not 5, 000 people. You might be the opposite. You might be really comfortable speaking to 5, 000 people, but a little awkward speaking to only five people. For me, I think it was a little bit of the imposter syndrome that comes with when I was having to deliver a business presentation before I even knew what I was talking about in business, that intimidated me because I was worried that I was going to be found out for a fraud.
[00:08:46] Eric Silverberg: And. You know, over time I’ve developed my confidence again, where now, again, I’m the performer and I love public speaking, but my experience of it, it hasn’t been the same throughout my whole life.
[00:08:55] Mark Wright: You started your career as a faculty member teaching business [00:09:00] at one of Canada’s top schools, the Ivy business school. Two important things you told me last time happened during this time. You became obsessed with figuring out the secrets of amazing public speaking, and you also fell in love with teaching.
[00:09:13] Mark Wright: What was, what was that experience like when you were teaching business? And this is like getting up every day and public speaking. What was that like?
[00:09:22] Eric Silverberg: Yeah. It was basically a full time public speaker. It was basically the highlight of my life. I used to joke that I loved my job so much that I would levitate out of bed. And I think what it was was I was just obsessed with giving my students. A really amazing experience. Let’s be real. I was teaching first year business at the university.
[00:09:43] Eric Silverberg: And so I was teaching, you know, intro to business. I was teaching about finance and marketing and operations and general management and, uh, and everything. And trust me when I say some days are a little bit more dry than others. Teaching students how to choose a target market or how to develop a good marketing campaign.
[00:09:59] Eric Silverberg: A little bit [00:10:00] more exciting than today. We are building the statement of cash flows in our accounting class and I needed to do both. So what I really loved about it was I guess I sort of stumbled upon this belief that great education needs to be entertaining at the same time, because if you’re not engaging your audience and entertaining them along the way, then it doesn’t matter what you’re saying cause they’re not listening.
[00:10:25] Eric Silverberg: And so I really embrace the challenge of even on the statement of cash flows days. What can I do with my public speaking to make this the most exciting class in the world? And I loved that challenge. I loved seeing the look on my students faces. I mean, a little bit selfishly, I also loved the recognition that I got from my students when I really knocked it out of the park.
[00:10:47] Eric Silverberg: And that’s when I fell in love with teaching when I realized that teaching isn’t just about the ideas that you’re trying to get across. It’s also about your expression of those ideas and making it really, really exciting to listen to.
[00:10:58] Mark Wright: I think as we [00:11:00] all think back about our favorite. TEACHERS IN HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE, THEY REALLY WERE THOSE TEACHERS WHO MADE IT FUN TO, TO LISTEN TO THE INFORMATION. So after teaching, you jumped into the world of, of tech startups. Give me an idea of what that was like and how your experience, At public speaking played into the world of startups.
[00:11:21] Eric Silverberg: Well, I think what was interesting was when I left academia, me and my co founder Eli, we’ve done everything together. So we both worked as professors and then we both worked for the exact same tech company. And I think we both had a similar hypothesis, which was as professors. Full time public speakers The world of business. We kind of thought that we were leaving our public speaking careers behind in the lecture hall, but what we found was that the public speaking skills that we honed in the lecture hall, they weren’t just having a huge impact in business, whether it was, you know, Persuading prospects into [00:12:00] customers or motivating our team members or, you know, what, whatever the presentations were that we were delivering at the company, they were also putting us on the map at the company.
[00:12:09] Eric Silverberg: So it wasn’t a huge company. I think we were there to see the growth from about 40 people to about 150 people. So it was fun to see the growth of a company during that phase. And. The public speaking skills that we honed in the lecture hall, they really, like I said, they put us on the map. Everyone knew us at work.
[00:12:27] Eric Silverberg: If they needed a host for the holiday party, it was one of us. People would come to us asking, how do you do that? How can I be a better public speaker? And so it wasn’t just that it was that public speaking was a useful tool to get business results. It was also a really great way to get people to assume our credibility and to assume that we were awesome people the same way I make those assumptions.
[00:12:53] Eric Silverberg: About Obama as president.
[00:12:55] Mark Wright: I remember interviewing Eric Westergren. He’s the co founder of, Pandora, the [00:13:00] music streaming service. And this is probably 20 years ago. And I remember I asking him what’s his best advice. I mean, what’s the single skill that will make you stand out in the business world? And he immediately said, public speaking.
[00:13:15] Mark Wright: He said, if you can become a great public speaker, you will stand out. I’m guessing that would, that was, so that was your experience when you went into the tech world, because you had so many hours of experience and tailoring those messages. and then people started to ask you guys, teach me how to do that.
[00:13:31] Mark Wright: , So let’s talk a little bit about how the company came about Speaker Labs. What I think is interesting is that, you know, if, if you do a little Googling on you guys, you really are among the very top coaches in Canada when it comes to public speaking. And there are thousands of coaches and teachers when it comes to communication skills.
[00:13:53] Mark Wright: How did you guys start out and break into that space? And what was it like in those early days?
[00:13:58] Eric Silverberg: great [00:14:00] question. did we break into the space? I think it kind of happened a little organically where when we were at that tech company, first of all, we missed teaching right from day one. We didn’t love working for an academic institution, but we loved being teachers and we knew we were going to miss that.
[00:14:17] Eric Silverberg: So we missed that right from day one. And then, like I said, organically over time, people started coming to us. They’d be like, Eli, how can I be a better storyteller? Eric, how can I be more engaging? Guys, how can I get over my fear of public speaking? And We realized pretty quick, huh, this is a skill that people want to become good at, and they don’t know how, and they’re looking for experts and they’re maybe a little bit tired of, you know, Toastmasters, which has been around for 120 years.
[00:14:44] Eric Silverberg: Maybe there’s an opportunity here for us to take everything that we’ve learned about public speaking through experience and through our own research to start our own business and at the beginning. I got to be honest, it, it wasn’t too exciting. We didn’t have our first client [00:15:00] until we were four months in.
[00:15:01] Eric Silverberg: I mean, it was August of 2016 when we quit our jobs and decided let’s start a public speaking teaching company. And we didn’t have our first clients until December. Those first few months were just locking ourselves in Eli’s apartment at the time. He’s my co founder and. Building our curriculum. We knew that we had to modularize what goes into good public speaking and how can we teach people what goes into public speaking and how can we be different, right?
[00:15:27] Eric Silverberg: We can’t just be the guys that go into a company or that teach people don’t say um when you public speak because there are already thousands of people telling people that. And that ultimately doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, and it doesn’t move the needle. So it was really just tireless research, ideation, brainstorming to create version one of our curriculum. And, you know, from there we were lucky enough, and I guess good enough that things started to snowball. The very first class we ever taught, they loved it. They told their friends, the next class loved it. They told their friends. [00:16:00] So it wasn’t too long before we had a whole bunch of clients. Wanting to book us to help them become amazing public speakers.
[00:16:07] Mark Wright: Eric, give us an idea of some of the clients that you’ve worked with. There’s some pretty, pretty big companies like Google, right?
[00:16:12] Eric Silverberg: Yeah. I mean, we, we thought when we started our business, that we would only have clients in the tech space and that we would only have clients that had customer facing roles, if you were in sales, you would want to be a good public speaker, this wasn’t relevant to everyone else, but then over time, we realized that.
[00:16:31] Eric Silverberg: Wait a second. We’re not just teaching tech companies. We’re teaching and, and you know, we do teach companies like Etsy and Google and, and Wealthsimple and, and tons of great tech companies, but we’re also teaching Canada’s top banks and consulting firms. We even teach forklift manufacturing companies.
[00:16:52] Eric Silverberg: You might not have heard of the company skyjack, but I, I guarantee if you’ve been on a construction site, you’ve seen their forklifts. and so. [00:17:00] We realized pretty quickly that our original hypothesis around who our target market would be, it would expand really, really quick. It’s not just salespeople that want to become great public speakers.
[00:17:09] Eric Silverberg: It’s engineers and it’s product folks and it’s leaders. And it’s not just tech companies. It’s just about every company under the sun. If you’re a better public speaker, you’re going to have more impact and you’re going to rise to the top a little faster.
[00:17:20] Mark Wright: , because you know, you could be in the engineering department of a company and maybe you spend most of your time by yourself, isolated from everybody else. But when it comes time to, you know, rolling out the new product, you’ve got to be able to present those ideas in a way that makes sense and compel are compelling to other people.
[00:17:37] Eric Silverberg: Or how about that engineer who obviously when they need to roll out a new product and get alignment around their vision, that’s important. But how about that engineer who does a lot of the work by himself? Or herself, but has huge ambitions to become, you know, the chief technology officer at that company.
[00:17:55] Eric Silverberg: You better be a good public speaker. When you start leading other engineers on your team, right?
[00:17:59] Mark Wright: Walk us [00:18:00] through when you start to teach. People in companies, how to become a great public speakers. I’m guessing that there are a lot of hands that go up in the beginning. like what are some of the most common questions, Eric, that people ask you when you start these trainings?
[00:18:13] Eric Silverberg: The number one question is always, how can I get over my fear of public speaking? And ultimately that’s the right question because the biggest difference between the world’s best public speakers and everyone else, it’s their relationship with that nervous feeling, with the imposter syndrome, call it whatever you want.
[00:18:31] Eric Silverberg: But the people who navigate those feelings the best, those are the people who are the best public speakers. So that’s usually the most common question. And, and for good reason, that is the right question.
[00:18:42] Mark Wright: Too many nerves can short circuit and I remember going back in television. You have to constantly look at your performance and then kind of look at it and then say, how can I get better? And I remember in the early days. When I was super nervous, it was just really distracting.
[00:18:57] Mark Wright: It was like, Oh my God, this guy [00:19:00] looks like he’s about ready to cry or run away or something. And, and the other thing about nerves is that until your brain is not afraid, it’s really hard to concentrate on the content that you’re talking about. So what’s, what’s your best advice when people say, how do I get over my fears?
[00:19:16] Mark Wright: How do you walk people through that?
[00:19:18] Eric Silverberg: For sure. There’s ultimately two ways through fear. And I think that that is the case in any type of fear, not just the fear of public speaking, right? Fear exists in so many different areas of life. People are afraid of heights. People are afraid of this, that, whatever. And public speaking is just one context where fear is present.
[00:19:35] Eric Silverberg: And there are two ways through fear in our opinion, in our research. Number one is by understanding your fear a little bit better. And when you understand your fear more, you sort of defang the fear and you can start to outsmart it and run mental circles around it. That’s one way to overcome fear. And the other way, and hopefully you’re doing both, and of course we do both in our programs, is Taking action.[00:20:00]
[00:20:00] Eric Silverberg: Ultimately, as an example, let’s say you were afraid of heights, or you were afraid of flying. I could teach you all about the causes of turbulence, and I could teach you about how safe airplanes are. I could do that all here on the ground, but eventually, if I want to truly get you over your I need to take you on an airplane, or I need to maybe even better yet, maybe I should take you skydiving.
[00:20:19] Eric Silverberg: Maybe I should do the most extreme version of the thing that you’re afraid of. And ultimately with public speaking, it’s the same. I can do a lot of explanation and help you understand it here on the ground, so to speak. But eventually you need to get on the stage. You need to public speak, push yourself, get feedback, get coaching and have a breakthrough that hopefully leaves you a little bit less afraid and a little bit more confident moving forward.
[00:20:42] Mark Wright: I think we have an idea that people are judging us when we get on stage, and I remember taking a drum lesson from a group drum lesson masterclass from one of the top drummers, Todd Zuckerman, who’s the drummer for Styx, and he had each of us play. And then [00:21:00] afterward, he said, who was, who was scared?
[00:21:01] Mark Wright: And we all were like, hands all shoot up. We were frightened. He goes, where, where is that coming from? Because he said, do you really think anybody in this room was hoping that you would fail? And we’re like, Hmm, that’s a good point. No, I guess not. He said, well, then where is that coming from? And somebody said, ego.
[00:21:16] Mark Wright: And they’re like, Hmm, that makes sense too. And I, I, and what he did was he, he basically, you know, like you said, defanged that idea. The fear that we perceive is often just created in our own brains, right? And then when you really start to break down, everybody in your company isn’t hoping you’re going to fail.
[00:21:34] Mark Wright: They want you to succeed. And so, yeah, defanging, that’s such a great way to describe that.
[00:21:40] Eric Silverberg: Part of defanging the fear and part of understanding the fear a little bit better is you’re right. Most people are usually afraid of one of two things. They’re either afraid of judgment or they’re afraid of failure.
[00:21:50] Eric Silverberg: Judgment being they’re going to think I’m an idiot if I forget what I’m going to say. They’re going to be able to tell how afraid I am if I start sweating or if I get all red. [00:22:00] What if what I say is wrong? They’re going to hate me. They’re going to think I’m stupid. They’re not going to think I’m engaging enough.
[00:22:04] Eric Silverberg: Blah, blah, blah. That’s all judgment. And the other thing that some people are afraid of is failure. What if I don’t close this deal? What if, what if, you know, my team isn’t motivated to take this action that I’m trying to teach them they need to take. But when it comes to the judgment category, that’s absolutely something that people need to understand better.
[00:22:22] Eric Silverberg: One of the exercises that we do in our program is when someone is afraid of judgment, We’ll simply ask their audience when they’re on stage, who here is rooting for this person right now? Who here is still going to be on this person’s side, even if they do look like an idiot? And you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear the answer is the same in every group.
[00:22:40] Eric Silverberg: Everyone raises their hand. And that’s something that people get wrong. And part of the reason that they are so afraid is they think the audience is out to get them. They’re going to try to stump me with a question. They’re bored. They don’t think I’m smart enough. They don’t think I’m funny enough. And ultimately your audience is much more likely to be rooting for you.
[00:22:56] Mark Wright: Let’s talk about preparation and other variables that you [00:23:00] can control. I’m guessing that you teach that one way to reduce stress and to reduce the anxiety is to really be prepared for the presentation, because I think it just makes sense that if we just kind of half ass it and don’t really prepare for the presentation, it can raise the stakes because it is more of a crapshoot.
[00:23:18] Mark Wright: Isn’t it?
[00:23:18] Eric Silverberg: Yep. A hundred percent. Prep is key.
[00:23:21] Mark Wright: , I’d love to explore the connection, Eric, between storytelling and great public speaking, because I first really started to pay attention to this when Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks, whenever I heard Howard speak, and I invited him to speak to a number of rotary events that we did, and, but long story short, whenever Howard would get up to the microphone, whenever he spoke, his format was basically to tell three or four stories.
[00:23:50] Mark Wright: That illuminated points that he wanted to make and it was so effective It wasn’t and i’ve heard so many corporate speakers just [00:24:00] read from the annual report and it’s so boring So like when he got up and spoke he wanted to make the point that starbucks cares about people and he talked about in the early Days of the aids epidemic one of their store managers came to him and to howard schultz and said he had aids And said, I’m not sure how much longer I have to live, but I know that it’s not going to end well.
[00:24:19] Mark Wright: And so Howard and Howard basically told this manager, we’ve got your back. We’ll pay all of your medical and you can work as long as you can, as long as you feel that you can. And so he told these really heartfelt stories about How the company dealt with people and dealt with challenges. And it was really those human stories that, that he relied on to weave the narrative of his quote unquote speech.
[00:24:46] Mark Wright: And I’ve never really seen anybody do that quite so effectively, but I’d love your expert opinion on the connection between story and great communication.
[00:24:57] Eric Silverberg: They’re almost synonymous. If [00:25:00] you’re not a good storyteller, then you’re probably not the best communicator that you can be. You’re not reaching your potential if you’re not using story. And the reason for that is humans think in story. Stories work. Stories cause people to feel and maybe even most importantly on that topic of engagement that we were talking about earlier, story is your ticket to engagement.
[00:25:23] Eric Silverberg: And you can, you can recognize that story is the ticket to engagement in 10 seconds or less. Okay. Check this out. A few summers ago, I was hanging out at my uncle’s house. Chances are right now you and anyone listening to this, you’re probably thinking, okay, and what happened at your uncle’s house? Right? What you’re probably not thinking is, or what you’re probably not experiencing is skepticism. Stories cause people to drop their skepticism and just to lean in and wonder where you’re going next.
[00:25:56] Eric Silverberg: No one hears that and thinks you’re a liar. You don’t even have an uncle. [00:26:00] Do you? They’re just wondering, okay, why are you telling me this? Where are you going? That is engagement. That’s how you want your audience to be listening, wondering where you’re going, leaning in along the way. And stories cause people to do that.
[00:26:13] Eric Silverberg: Where people really struggle with story is connecting their stories to make. Strategic points. At the end of the day, as a public speaker, entertainment is part of the equation to being a good public speaker. But at the end of the day, you need to, you need to have lessons. You need to have morals to your story.
[00:26:31] Eric Silverberg: There needs to be a point to your story. We love to say stories without points are pointless. And it’s true. So story is key, but just as key is telling stories. is being explicit and strategic about why you’re telling this story. They need to come to a punchline or else you’re kind of wasting people’s time.
[00:26:51] Mark Wright: And if you think about it, how many hundreds of thousands of years have we all just been sitting around the fire at night listening to what happened in so and so’s [00:27:00] day? I love that. That’s such great advice. I want to talk a little bit more about nerves because I’ve heard actors talk about nerves and using the nervous energy that they feel, as a fuel.
[00:27:12] Mark Wright: , the one thing that I noticed, Eric, when I would go back and look at, and also people that I interviewed on television, a lot of them would say, Oh, I felt, I was so nervous. And I would always tell them, because it’s true. You never look as nervous as you feel. And I think if more people understood that they would probably relax a little bit more because that terrified feeling on the inside, they think looks like, Oh, I’m nervous.
[00:27:37] Mark Wright: You know, just, just a total scared face, but it’s not, it’s not like that. How, how do you, how do you get people to, to think about that nervous edge as perhaps fuel? I guess,
[00:27:50] Eric Silverberg: There’s a couple things that I can say there. I think nervousness on some level is a good thing. We wouldn’t want to completely eliminate it. It shows that you care. And [00:28:00] obviously you’re not going to get anywhere in life. If you don’t care, right? Things don’t happen by accident. Pursuit of greatness comes because you care about that greatness.
[00:28:09] Eric Silverberg: So if you’re nervous about public speaking, it’s probably because you care about the stakes here. So nervous energy is good to some degree. It’s bad if it’s so extreme that it makes you a shell of yourself, but it’s good as fuel. I think it is. And, and as long as you’re able to use The other tools that you have as an outlet for that energy, then I think you’re good to go.
[00:28:30] Eric Silverberg: And I also love what you said there about, you never look as nervous as you think you do. Try this experiment. If you’re ever coaching a team member or a friend or a family member on how to be a better public speaker, try this experiment with their audience.
[00:28:47] Eric Silverberg: And we love to do this in our programs. Get the public speaker, once they’re done speaking, to give them a, give themselves a score one out of 10 in their mind about how nervous they [00:29:00] think they looked when they were public speaking. One being, Oh, I looked so confident, calm, cool, collected. 10 being I looked mortified and I’m sure my audience could tell.
[00:29:10] Eric Silverberg: And then ask the people in the audience, and you have to, you have to make them promise they will be honest. Ask the people in their audience, how nervous did the person look? Not how nervous do you think they were? Because we all innately know on some level, everyone’s afraid of public speaking, but how nervous did they look while they were speaking?
[00:29:28] Eric Silverberg: And the delta between those two scores is always enormous. And so the more that you can, you know, You know, through, through way of an exercise and actually proving to people that these things are true, the more they internalize that message, but the message could not be more spot on. That’s a hundred percent right.
[00:29:45] Mark Wright: Eric, is it a good idea to use humor in public speaking?
[00:29:50] Eric Silverberg: People ask us this all the time. Should I be funny when I’m public speaking? Our answer is only if you’re funny. If not, then for the love of God, avoid it. So is humor good? [00:30:00] Absolutely. But what’s even better than humor is you leaning into who you are. So, you know, I think one of my favorite presentations of all time Was Steve Jobs’s keynote introducing the world to the very first iPhone.
[00:30:13] Eric Silverberg: Zero laughs in the entire presentation from me, at least, maybe some people chuckled here or there, but you know, laughs per minute, he gets a very, very low score, but overall presentation is close to a perfect presentation as I can imagine. And I think the lesson there is that there is no right way to public speak, but you should lean into who you are.
[00:30:34] Eric Silverberg: So if you’re more methodical and intellectual and suspenseful and how you like to public speak, awesome. Do that. And don’t try to be funny. But then if Jim Carrey were delivering a presentation and he wasn’t funny, well, what are you doing, Jim? You’re so funny. We want you to be more of who you are. So ultimately, I can’t give you an answer on is humor important or not.
[00:30:57] Eric Silverberg: I can give you a little bit of a different answer, which is. If your [00:31:00] friends would describe you as funny, you should probably be funny when you public speak. And if your friends would not, then ask them what are your good traits and lean into those traits when you public speak.
[00:31:10] Mark Wright: Because authenticity is more important than any other tactic.
[00:31:14] Eric Silverberg: currency.,
[00:31:15] Mark Wright: Let’s talk about reading the room. I’ve had the honor of helping nonprofits over the decades, raise money at fundraisers and galas and things like that and do it and emceeing events. And what I’ve realized is that every single room, every single audience that I’ve ever stepped up to is different.
[00:31:33] Mark Wright: and it has a different dynamic and I’ve tried one tactic one time, and then I try it in this audience and it doesn’t work. And what I learned a long time ago is you just have to really tune in to when you start to get those looks of connection, or maybe you start to get a chuckle over this or may it just, I’d love to know what you’ve learned over the years, Eric, about reading the room when it comes to your public speaking.
[00:31:58] Eric Silverberg: I don’t want you to take what I’m about to [00:32:00] say the wrong way, because there is a time and a place for reading the room. Ultimately, the biggest lesson that I’ve taken away when it comes to that topic I learned a few years ago. So the very first client that we ever had at Speaker Labs was a company called Uberflip.
[00:32:17] Eric Silverberg: They’re a marketing software tech company out of Toronto, and the program went really, really well. And over the years, Uberflip has brought us in to train more and more and more of their people. We trained their team, you know, new cohorts of their staff once or twice a year, every year since the year that we founded our company.
[00:32:35] Eric Silverberg: And then I remember it was during the pandemic, we were running one of our programs virtually on zoom and it was a, it was a group at uberflip and we’d already run like 10 amazing cohorts through uberflip and then there was this one group and I don’t know what happened, but man, they hated us. They weren’t asking us questions.
[00:32:55] Eric Silverberg: They weren’t turning on their cameras. They weren’t laughing, laughing, [00:33:00] screw laughing. They weren’t even smiling at our jokes. They seemed unengaged, uninterested, and that they did not like our program. I remember Eli and I, we spoke over lunch when we were on lunch break. Like what happened to us? I thought we were good at this.
[00:33:13] Eric Silverberg: Why do they hate us so much? We’re never getting another class at Uberflip ever again. And then you might know where this story’s going. We sent out our feedback survey at the end of our two day course. The highest scores we ever received. And I think that the takeaway, at least for us, was one of the reasons public speaking is so hard is because it’s so hard to read your audience because there’s a broken feedback loop, right?
[00:33:40] Eric Silverberg: You and I, we’re having a conversation right now. It’s dialogical. We’re going back and forth. I can answer your questions. You can answer mine. We can learn about each other, build rapport, but with public speaking, that feedback loop, it’s compromised. It’s broken. And so you can make assumptions. About what your audience are thinking like Eli and I did during that program.
[00:33:58] Eric Silverberg: They hate us. This isn’t going well. They’re [00:34:00] never going to bring us back. But the feedback scores told a very different story. And so ultimately the thing that we try to get people to internalize more than anything else, when it comes to reading your audience is. When it comes to public speaking, it is very difficult, if not impossible to do.
[00:34:16] Eric Silverberg: They don’t laugh at your joke. Maybe they didn’t think it was funny. Maybe they were distracted. Who knows what they were thinking, but to assume what they were thinking isn’t always the best strategy. So instead, we encourage people to just be a little bit more agnostic about what your audience is thinking and try to find out the best you can with some actual feedback once it’s all said and done.
[00:34:38] Mark Wright: Wow, that feedback loop, comment really has me thinking. That’s, that’s really, really profound.
[00:34:44] Eric Silverberg: You’ve seen it before, right? I can ask you right now. How you doing today, Mark?
[00:34:48] Mark Wright: Yeah, good,
[00:34:49] Eric Silverberg: Awesome. And you see, you just responded, but you sit, that’s what people do when you’re having a one on one conversation. Right. But you’ve seen the public speaker on stage, they’re on stage. There’s like, Hey, how’s everyone doing today?
[00:34:59] Eric Silverberg: [00:35:00] I can’t hear you because the feedback loop, it’s like crickets. And that’s so painful that moment. So yeah, you’ve seen it before the broken feedback loop. I guarantee it.
[00:35:09] Mark Wright: Let’s talk about the idea of clear and concise thinking and writing. I think it was Mark Twain who said, I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have time. And declarative sentences are best because that’s how we talk. And I found that, you know, too many words dilute the message when you’re trying to convey a news story.
[00:35:31] Mark Wright: , is that, is that something that you guys cover in terms of when people are sitting down to write their speeches or to figure out what they’re going to say, the idea of clarity and conciseness?
[00:35:41] Eric Silverberg: 100%. I mean, public speaking is a lot of things, right? It’s about being engaging with your body and voice. It’s about overcoming fear. It’s about building amazing visual aids. And the one that you’re asking about is around content. What do I say? And we teach people that great content is really three things.
[00:35:59] Eric Silverberg: We can talk [00:36:00] about all three if you want, or we can just focus on the first one.
[00:36:02] Mark Wright: Yeah, let’s do all three.
[00:36:03] Eric Silverberg: let’s do all three. Okay. So great content is three things. The first is you need to be clear on your message. If we run a quick little thought experiment, I’ll run it with you, Mark. Let’s say you were going to an astrophysics conference.
[00:36:19] Eric Silverberg: Okay. And there were two speakers in two rooms and you had to choose between which room you wanted to go into. Okay. Both speakers. They’re identical in IQ, they’re identical in their past experiences, they’re identical in their knowledge, okay? One is not smarter than the other or knows more than the other.
[00:36:37] Eric Silverberg: The first astrophysics, sorry, the first astrophysicist, see it’s okay to screw up when you’re communicating, the first astrophysicist thinks to herself beforehand, I know a lot about this and I am just going to wing it. I know a lot about astrophysics. I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I’ll say something because I’m so knowledgeable on this topic.
[00:36:58] Eric Silverberg: The second astrophysicist, [00:37:00] he says to himself, if I had to get one idea across to this audience today, what would that one idea be? And he spends some dedicated time thinking about what’s the main message I have today. Mark, which room would you rather go into?
[00:37:17] Mark Wright: Yeah, the one that promised me a specific outcome.
[00:37:21] Eric Silverberg: Yeah, because clarity matters. And when it comes to clarity, you’re right. Being concise, that’s the main thing that you can strive for. The other thing that you can strive for when it comes to clarity is stop thinking in topic. And start thinking in thesis. So let’s say my message is marketing. Well, what the hell about marketing?
[00:37:43] Eric Silverberg: And that’s, that’s the trap that a lot of people fall into is they think in topic. Topic isn’t enough. You need to think in thesis. You need to have a stance or a position or an opinion about your topic and build your ideas around there. A clear thesis, a clear [00:38:00] stance. That’s what goes into clarity. And that’s one of the three things that’s required for good content. The second thing that’s required to create amazing content for presentations is creativity. So basically the same idea can be expressed in multiple different ways. Let’s go back to the astrophysicists example. Is that okay? So now let’s pretend that both astrophysicists, they both had the exact same idea that they wanted to get across in their presentation.
[00:38:28] Eric Silverberg: And the idea that they want to get across is The universe is enormous. There are trillions of stars in the universe. That’s their message. Okay. Astrophysicist, the first, he gets on stage and he just says it. The universe is enormous. There are trillions of stars in the universe. Okay. The second astrophysicist, she does something different.
[00:38:51] Eric Silverberg: She does this. Okay. She says, I want you to imagine that you’re on a beach. Now I want you to get down on your knees. Okay. Feel the [00:39:00] sand on your knees, and I want you to pick up a heaping handful of sand. And I want you to look and picture what that handful of sand looks like. Picture how many grains of sand are in your hand.
[00:39:14] Eric Silverberg: Picture what it would be like to try to count them. And now I want you to recognize that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand. Not just in your hand, but on every beach on planet Earth. BEATS WORKING. The universe is enormous. Which presentation is more engaging? I don’t even need to ask because I know the answer, right?
[00:39:38] Eric Silverberg: So it’s not only about the clarity of your idea, it’s also about how you bring that idea to life. You can state your idea and you’ll get by, or you can figure out a way to creatively package that idea. And then you’re going to really blow people’s minds. And then the final thing that goes into amazing content is of course, we all know this when we’ve built presentations [00:40:00] before is presentations are not just one idea.
[00:40:03] Eric Silverberg: They’re a series of ideas. And so connecting those ideas together, how you construct those ideas and how you flow from one idea to the next. That’s what goes into great content too. So really it’s three things. It’s about clarity, like you said, so important, but it’s also about creativity and construction, weaving those ideas together.
[00:40:23] Mark Wright: That’s great. Those three points, Eric, I’ve heard people say a great blueprint for public speaking is tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them and then tell, tell them what you told them. is that, is that too cliche or do you, do you generally agree with that?
[00:40:37] Eric Silverberg: No, I generally, I generally agree with that. I think that if you picture being in like grade 11 English class, maybe you remember learning about rhetorical devices, things like analogy and metaphor and story and hyperbole and repetition. All of those things are awesome. All of those things make your idea more memorable.
[00:40:57] Eric Silverberg: Do you need to do all of them in every [00:41:00] presentation? No, but you better be using some of them in every presentation. And repetition is just one useful tool.
[00:41:06] Mark Wright: Let’s talk about notes and cue cards. And, I I’ve heard some public speakers who stand up and can give a 25 minute speech with not a single note. I’ve seen other ones that come up with cue cards. I’ve seen other ones that have a. Speech written out verbatim and you look at the top of their head for most of the speech and it’s kind of boring And I’ve I’ve struggled with this Eric because I try to use as few notes as I can and I’ve I’ve resorted just to bullet Points now, but I’d love your advice on it Just seems like it’s it’s kind of an unknown for those of us who aren’t expert public speakers on what what form should our speech?
[00:41:44] Mark Wright: Take fully written sort of bullet points or just you know BEATS WORKING From memory.
[00:41:50] Eric Silverberg: You want my very annoying answer?
[00:41:52] Mark Wright: Yes.
[00:41:53] Eric Silverberg: My very annoying answer is it depends. So, I mean, I think we innately kind of know [00:42:00] That if we’re delivering a eulogy or a wedding speech, that kind of calls for writing out my full speech. That kind of calls for writing out a script, doesn’t it? For some reason, and I don’t know why the cultural norms or the situation, I think we all kind of would agree that if I’m delivering a wedding speech, maybe I should just write out the full script.
[00:42:17] Eric Silverberg: If I’m doing a toast at a friend’s birthday party, maybe it would come off as inauthentic in that scenario. If I wrote anything out at all, if I was delivering a business presentation, maybe I probably shouldn’t have a verbatim script, but instead maybe I would use my visual aids as cues. So I think ultimately the best case scenario is you are so familiar with your content.
[00:42:42] Eric Silverberg: That you don’t need any cues at all. But I recognize of course, that everyone’s life has a lot of different things going on, a lot of different competing priorities. So being so prepared that you don’t need a single cue for your next presentation, it might be unreasonable [00:43:00] for the super, super high stakes presentations.
[00:43:02] Eric Silverberg: That’s your North star, but for every presentation that might not be possible. In those scenarios, what I would encourage people to do is think about your content like a GPS system. If you picture opening up Waze or Google Maps in your car, and you picture the instructions that it gives you, it gives you instructions of where to turn left, where to turn right, which on ramp to go onto, right?
[00:43:30] Eric Silverberg: But what it doesn’t do is, turn left, go straight, go straight, go straight, go straight, go straight, go straight, go straight, turn right, go straight, go straight, go straight, go straight, go straight, go straight. I would encourage you to know the turns in your presentation, and then what you say at each turn.
[00:43:45] Eric Silverberg: Hopefully that is a little bit different. From this group to that group or from this presentation to that presentation, but you got to know the big turning points. If you know those, then you can play with it a little bit in the, in the inside.
[00:43:57] Mark Wright: are the biggest mistakes people make when [00:44:00] you watch people who maybe have some improvement to do on their public speaking skills? What’s a really common stumbling block?
[00:44:08] Eric Silverberg: Ooh, the biggest stumbling block. I mean, let’s break down public speaking into its four component parts. Public speaking really is just four things. It’s about what you say. We call that content. It’s about how you say it. We call that delivery. It’s about your visual aids. If they’re required, they’re not always required.
[00:44:29] Eric Silverberg: Obviously the president doesn’t do his or her inaugural address with a slide deck. And it’s about your mindset. So maybe I’ll, I’ll share with you maybe one common mistake on each. And I think we’ve already been through a few of them. The first is when it comes to your content, when it comes to what you say, people really struggle to connect their stories to the point they’re trying to make.
[00:44:52] Eric Silverberg: I spoke about that earlier, but it’s worth doubling down on. When I picture the worst storyteller I know, It happens to be my own mother. Now [00:45:00] she is the best mother on earth, guaranteed. Like when I was a kid, I was the kid in the schoolyard that said, my mom’s better than your mom. She is the best mom on earth.
[00:45:07] Eric Silverberg: She’s not the world’s best storyteller. And the reason is when she’s done telling you the story, you’re sort of left there thinking like, why did you tell me that? Where’s the punchline? It never really goes anywhere. So you need to meticulously plan. Where is this story going? Why am I telling this story?
[00:45:25] Eric Silverberg: And then don’t assume your audience knows, but explicitly state that at the end. It’s a big mistake people make. When they’re storytelling. So that’s, that’s one mistake on
[00:45:36] Mark Wright: I have to, I have to interrupt Eric. I’m laughing because my mother is the same way. She’ll be telling a story and I’ll say, no, I’m sorry. Can we back up? Who, who are we talking about here? It’s like, can you give me some context?
[00:45:49] Eric Silverberg: exactly. Exactly. So, so anyways, um, but I’ll, I’ll double down on saying that. I love her very much. The most common mistake that people make when it [00:46:00] comes to delivery, I think is being uncomfortable in silence. Silence is such an amazing tool and people think that they aren’t allowed to use it because I’m public speaking.
[00:46:11] Eric Silverberg: I’m not public silencing. I better fill all the gaps. I better fill all the, fill all the air, fill all the space. But silence is beautiful for creating suspense, for taking some time to remember what you’re trying to say, for giving your audience time to think about what questions they want to ask you. So don’t fall into that trap.
[00:46:29] Eric Silverberg: Use silence. Don’t be afraid of silence. When it comes to visual aids, I think the biggest mistake is just pretty obviously putting too much stuff on your slides. If your slides look like PhD theses, you’re doing it wrong. It’s as simple as that. Let’s leave it there. And then the biggest mistake when it comes to mindset, I think is what we discussed earlier, assuming that your audience is out to get you, that they’re, that they’re going to try to poke holes, that they’re rooting for you to fail.
[00:46:57] Eric Silverberg: When in reality, your usually they fall into [00:47:00] one of. Either they’re too self absorbed to care about you at all, and they’re not even present right now, or they’re actually not rooting against you, they’re rooting for you to succeed. So, maybe that was a little bit more than you asked for, but I figured I’d give you one across the four pillars of public
[00:47:16] Mark Wright: I love it because I’ve seen so many presentations, they’ll put up a slide and the font is so small you can’t even read it. And it’s like got, you know, 13 graphics and, you know, 17 paragraphs and I’m trying to squint and see it. And they think that that somehow is enforcing, reinforcing what they’re trying to say.
[00:47:35] Mark Wright: , wow, those are really, really good points. as we start to wrap things up, Eric, I’d love to talk a little bit more just about. You’ve had the business, what, since 2016? , how has it gone in terms of growing the business and what, what pain points or lessons have you learned about growing what you guys do over the years?
[00:47:56] Eric Silverberg: The first thing that comes to mind when you say pain point was the [00:48:00] pandemic. We were one of those businesses that wasn’t just affected by the pandemic, but that literally went to zero. So over the span of I think a week, we had 100 percent of our future revenue canceled because going into the pandemic, we only ran in person programs.
[00:48:17] Eric Silverberg: So that’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of pain, but what it did was it allowed us to rethink our business. We were so I mean, at the end of the day, we’re in the service business, right? So I’m a founder and an entrepreneur, but ultimately I’m also a teacher, right? I am the product. I go into companies, I train their staff and, and it doesn’t happen without me in the room.
[00:48:39] Eric Silverberg: Right? So what that going to zero kind of taught us. was maybe we need to rethink how our business operates and the most obvious solution was we ran our first ever program online over zoom. It wasn’t so good. It’s hard to engage a team for two full days, which is how long our most popular program is [00:49:00] over a computer screen.
[00:49:01] Eric Silverberg: But over time we got better and better and better at it. And now finally, we’ve cracked the nut where our feedback scores for our online programs Are just as high as our in person programs, but that was a learning curve. The other thing that sort of strikes me as a pain is when we started our business, we developed our program.
[00:49:19] Eric Silverberg: This is our program. It is a two day program. This is what it covers buy it or don’t buy it. that time off also allowed us to do was rethink what’s maybe our catalog of programs. Maybe having one product isn’t a great idea. Maybe we need our one hour session, our three hour session, our one day course, our two day course, and our five day course, and our online product, which you can consume on demand on your own time.
[00:49:46] Eric Silverberg: And that’s indeed where we’re at today, where we no longer have a one size fits all product. We’ve got lots of different public speaking courses that are taught virtually on demand in person. And so now we’ve kind of got something [00:50:00] for any sort of team or any sort of person that wants to become better at public speaking, depending on what they’re looking for and what elements of public speaking, when it comes to content delivery, visuals, and mindset, which are you struggling with, which do you want to get better?
[00:50:13] Eric Silverberg: And now finally, we probably have a program for that.
[00:50:15] Mark Wright: That’s really interesting, Eric, that you talked about what you guys learned about communicating via zoom, because I think we all struggled when everything went virtual at the beginning of the pandemic. And now what’s interesting is that we’re so much more remote in so many different businesses now. I guess I would be remiss to not ask about what you think the biggest difference is between communicating in person and communicating via zoom like we’re doing right now.
[00:50:40] Eric Silverberg: I’m going to maybe be a little bit Snarky again and answer a slightly different question first, but I promise I’m going to get to it. Okay. The first thing that I’ll say is maybe we should also be thinking about what are the similarities? Not only what are the differences between speaking on zoom versus in person, but what are the [00:51:00] similarities?
[00:51:00] Eric Silverberg: And in both scenarios, you better have clear ideas. You better have creative ideas and you better construct them well. In both scenarios, you better make your audience feel. Emotion matters. So think too about what is similar about those mediums. That’s really important. But when it comes to differences, and of course there are some, I mean, low hanging fruit, really simple.
[00:51:22] Eric Silverberg: I see so many people get this wrong. Eye contact in person means looking in other people’s eyeballs. Eye contact in the virtual world does not mean looking at their faces on your computer screen. It means looking in your camera hole. So there’s low hanging fruit like that, that can have a huge impact.
[00:51:41] Eric Silverberg: And then there are other things. And I think the biggest lesson that we’ve taken away is there’s some sort of etiquette that comes along with delivering a presentation in person. People know they shouldn’t be talking. People know they shouldn’t be on their phones, writing emails, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:51:56] Eric Silverberg: The list goes on for some reason, that etiquette kind of disappears when they’re [00:52:00] sitting behind their computer screen. And so if you want your audience to ask you questions, if you want their cameras to be on, if you want them to engage in a certain way, You better explicitly state those expectations because they’re not built in like they are in person.
[00:52:17] Eric Silverberg: And when we started stating those expectations explicitly, it made a world of difference. And I mean, things like turn your cameras on now. We can’t start a program until your cameras are on or things like it’s time for some questions. Let’s get at least three questions and then we’ll move forward. I can tell you that if you didn’t set that expectation, you might just get crickets instead of questions.
[00:52:39] Eric Silverberg: Hoping for questions, hoping for their cameras to turn on, hoping they’re not writing emails while they’re listening to you. Hope is a very bad strategy. You need to be explicit about what the etiquette is of your virtual presentation. And I think that’ll make a huge difference.
[00:52:54] Mark Wright: So if people are interested in hiring Speaker Labs, do you guys coach all over the world now, now that [00:53:00] you’re, you’re online?
[00:53:01] Eric Silverberg: Yeah, we do. I mean, we’re based in Toronto, Canada. So most of our work happens in our own backyard, but we train virtual teams all over the world. We actually, uh, you know, we were last year we were in the U S we were in Panama, we’ve been to the UK a few times. We just got back from Singapore. We’re heading to Portugal.
[00:53:20] Eric Silverberg: In a few months, so we’re not a global business, but we teach globally if you want us to come out to your location. but yeah, we’re, we’re, we’re happy to train people on zoom or wherever their team might be.
[00:53:32] Mark Wright: All right, I guess we should wrap up, Eric, with you giving some inspiration to, there’s that person listening and they’ve got a presentation next Tuesday. Let’s have some inspiration from Eric Silverberg, the expert.
[00:53:48] Eric Silverberg: Why don’t you think about this? Why don’t you think about the fact that many of your fears, they’re really important. It’s important that you’re afraid of the roaring [00:54:00] tiger to bring us back to the beginning. And the reason is very obvious. The roaring tiger can kick your ass. It can kill you. And then there are other fears that aren’t quite as useful anymore.
[00:54:14] Eric Silverberg: We didn’t go into the huge, long evolutionary history of why we’re afraid of public speaking. So you’re going to have to just trust me when I say a roaring tiger can kill you. A presentation cannot. So ask yourself, what’s the worst case scenario here if I totally screw this up? And once you realize the answer is probably not a whole lot, probably cry myself to sleep, order in some takeout and move on with my life, then you might be more free to actually let the best version of yourself come out.
[00:54:41] Eric Silverberg: So ask yourself that. What’s the worst case scenario? The answer is never death when it comes to public speaking.
[00:54:47] Mark Wright: Ah, that’s awesome. And you know, something that I’ve learned over the years about public speaking, and I think what’s interesting is I don’t really have any formal training on public speaking, but I just have some experience doing it. And, and [00:55:00] the mindset, it’s so cool that you brought up mindset, because my mindset, if I go, To a fundraiser or to any, any sort of public speech.
[00:55:11] Mark Wright: My mindset is I want this to be a fun time. I want this to be an enjoyable experience and just having that mindset of let’s share a good time together as has been really transformative for me, because then instead of dreading the experience and being uptight and all that other stuff and worrying about making a mistake is just going and having fun.
[00:55:32] Mark Wright: And even when jokes bomb, you know, I’ll, I’ll like turn to the side and go, wow, that. That sounded better when I wrote it and people will laugh, you know, after my joke that bombed, but just having that mindset of joy and, and let’s make this a fun experience. I’m just so impressed with what you and your business partner have done, Eric, with Speaker Labs.
[00:55:52] Mark Wright: , it’s just really cool that you’re making work better by teaching people better ways of showing up at work.
[00:55:59] Eric Silverberg: [00:56:00] That was so nice of you. I had a blast talking with you today. Thank you for the amazing questions. You know, for clearly being so prepared and passionate about the topic we were talking about today. If you don’t mind, shameless plug. Is that okay? Check us out at beatyourlabs. ca.
[00:56:15] Mark Wright: Yes, please.
[00:56:16] Eric Silverberg: Thank you. I mean, of course, if you’re looking to become a better public speaker, you want to help your team become a better public speaker.
[00:56:21] Eric Silverberg: That’s the business we’re in. Uh, ca, com. Maybe we should buy the other domain, but we haven’t yet.
[00:56:27] Mark Wright: And we’ll put that in the show notes as well, Eric. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for the work that you do and also just for being such a great human. Thanks, man.
[00:56:35] Eric Silverberg: Thanks, Mark. Thank you so much. Hopefully we’ll get to chat again sometime soon.
[00:56:39] Mark Wright: I hope so.