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Tristan de Montebello: Why public speaking advice fails you

Through flow-first practice and games that add safe turbulence; UltraSpeaking co-founder tells speakers to look up, end strong, and ditch filler-word audits.

Tristan de MontebelloguestLenny Rachitskyhost
Oct 13, 20241h 56mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:42

    Introduction to Tristan de Montebello and Ultraspeaking

    1. TM

      People tend to get into a, a public speaking voice. We'll be in a class and they'll be chatting normally and, and look super normal, and then we'll say, "Okay, now just a timer, I'm just gonna give you a speech. Just speak for 60 seconds so we get a baseline." And I click play and suddenly they say, "The important part about doing this..." And they enter into a different version of themselves, a professional version, whatever that would mean. It's so much more freeing, powerful, connecting and effective to speak conversationally. So the cue I often give people is... (instrumental music)

    2. LR

      Today my guest is Tristan DeMontebello. Tristan is the co-creator of Ultra Speaking, which is the best public speaking workshop I have ever come across. In 2017, Tristan became the fastest competitor to reach the finals of the World Championship of Public Speaking, and based on that experience, built a very unique course that helps you quickly build the skills to become better and to become more comfortable speaking in public, and especially speaking on the spot. I like to spend time on this topic, uh, on this podcast because becoming a better speaker is such an accelerant of your professional life, and in this episode we delve into a bunch of tactics and also misconceptions about how to become a better speaker. And to make it even more fun and interesting, we go through a few of the exercises that Tristan and his team have developed live on the podcast. He goes through 'em, I go through them. It was a lot of fun. I'm excited to hear what you think. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Tristan DeMontebello.

  2. 1:42 – 5:35

    Personal experiences with public speaking

    1. LR

      Tristan, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to the podcast.

    2. TM

      Thanks so much for having me.

    3. LR

      So I took a, an abridged version of this speaking course that you teach called Ultra- Ultra Speaking, and it immediately made me feel more comfortable public speaking, which I have never felt doing any other course. Public speaking is something I just, like, is very s- uh, scary to me, as it is for a lot of people, but it's just something I really dread. Like, even doing these podcast episodes, every time I get nervous before doing these things, as much as it may not seem that way. So this is not my natural habitat, speaking, being in public. Like, it may not seem that way to people, but it's, it's true. And the way you approach this stuff is so unique and worked for me. And because of that, I thought it'd be awesome to just bring you on this podcast and basically try to teach people the stuff that you've learned about how to become a pub- b- better public speaker. I know we're not gonna do your course here, but just like what are some very tactical things people can immediately start to apply? And also, I wanna make this super interactive so we'll actually do some of the exercises that you, uh, use in your class. So, so that's what we're here for. How does that sound?

    4. TM

      That sounds exciting.

    5. LR

      Okay.

    6. TM

      I'm in. (laughs) .

    7. LR

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  3. 5:35 – 8:56

    Misconceptions and meta skills in public speaking

    1. LR

      Okay, so let me first ask just kind of a broad question. What do most people get wrong about public speaking? What are some of... What's maybe the biggest misconception about how to become a better public speaker and how to be good at it?

    2. TM

      I actually think that the biggest misconception with tackling your speaking is that people grossly underestimate just how transformative it could be to your life. And the reason it's so transformative is because speaking is not a specialized skill, it's a meta-skill. That means that the better you get at speaking, the better your life gets. So an example of a meta-skill is fitness, for example. If you were to start saying, "Okay, I'm gonna transform my fitness." And you start lifting weights and you start going on runs. Obviously your muscles are gonna get bigger, you're gonna get more in shape and your cardiovascular system is gonna, uh, improve. But that's actually only a sliver of the impact it's gonna have on your life, because you're gonna start feeling more energy and you're gonna start having these nice hormones, these endorphins flowing through your body and you're gonna feel better about yourself. And when you walk in front of the mirror, suddenly you're gonna have a boost in confidence. So naturally everything else in your life is gonna start to improve as a result of you focusing on your fitness. And for speaking, it's the, it's the same thing. This blew my mind when I went on my own speaking journey, is when I started making breakthroughs in speaking, other things started to feel different. So as you get breakthroughs, how you feel at work feels different. How you feel in your group of friends feels different. How you feel in a group of strangers especially, how you feel in your family can even be impacted. So this seeps into everything else in your life. But the thing is, because there's so much self-consciousness that goes with speaking, we often feel kind of constrained under the layers of overthinking and anxiety that come with speaking. So it can be hard to realize that underneath these layers, you actually have this extraordinary superpower. Because as humans, we're evolved to speak. This is what we are. So you don't need to teach a baby how to speak. It will learn by itself with no formal education. So what that means is we all have this incredible hardware. The thing is, over the course of our life, because of all these little situations that happen, we start getting bugs in the software, and we're not really upgrading our software. The moment you get the bugs and things start working, we s- not working, we start avoiding, and suddenly it's like we're not upgrading our software anymore. So we're stuck on old buggy software. But the reality is, let's not forget that we have incredible software, that we're evolved for this. So all we need to do is some debugging and some upgrading of the software, and suddenly your entire life can change. So that's really what I want to impart on anybody listening, like you have it in you. You already have what it takes.

  4. 8:56 – 15:30

    Enjoyment as a barometer for effective speaking

    1. TM

    2. LR

      Okay. So kind of building on what you just talked about, uh, some of these kind of this insight of your life can improve and how s- you kind of always have to un- unlearn stuff. One of my favorite, uh, maybe core insights and tenets of the way you approach teaching people to speak is you talk about how if you don't enjoy speaking, you're doing it wrong. And that really helped me because you kind of encourage, you kind of remind people try to have fun as you're doing it. Could you just talk about that insight and why that's important-

    3. TM

      Yeah.

    4. LR

      ... and how that helps people become better?

    5. TM

      Well, you, I think that's very tied to what you were saying. I see enjoyment as a barometer. Like if I'm doing things right, I'm probably enjoying myself. If I'm doing things wrong, particularly with speaking, because again, this is something we're naturally evolved to do. So if we're naturally evolved to do, to do it, it's not something that is, that we dislike doing. It has to be something that rewards us. So as soon as things start not feeling enjoyable, it's a sign, "Hey, I'm probably doing this wrong. Uh, there's something here that I'm doing that is making this unenjoyable, that's probably not helping me." And I think you mentioned that, you know, in those people who are, who can hold an audience, who are really good communicators in business, it looks like they feel very comfortable. It looks like they feel like themselves.

    6. LR

      Yeah.

    7. TM

      And if you think about speaking, when you're talking with your kids or with your partner or with your best friend, your childhood friend, your parents, every, we all have environments where we feel completely like ourselves. And when we do, communication is extraordinarily enjoyable. It's just a means to connect with other people, a means to share what we have on our mind. And it's very, very empowering and it feels very good. Then I take the same person with the same skillset and the same ability and I bring 'em in a business setting, and suddenly I don't feel like myself anymore. And because of the pressure, I start trying to speak differently. So people start having, I'm gonna try to think really hard of what I need to say and I want to control the words that are gonna come out of my mouth before they come out of my mouth so I make sure I don't make a mistake. And you basically loop in this thing that is so counter what communication is, which is just a natural subconscious skill. So using speaking as a barometer of, "Hey, if this is not feeling good, I'm probably overthinking. I probably need to relax and try to just feel a little bit more like myself."

    8. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. TM

      But this also applies to practice, where in your practice, because this is not an overnight thing, you can't just snap your fingers, read a book, and be a better speaker. Well, your practice has to be enjoyable as well, 'cause otherwise two weeks in, you're gonna quit just like a, (laughs) a shitty fitness journey or diet, right? You have to find joy in it and, uh, it has to be structured in a way where it rewards you as well so that you get more energy and you get more enjoyment while you do it.

    10. LR

      Awesome. And we're gonna show people how you do that. You do these games. There are like games that you play that help you actually learn these skills. So before that, and also I wanna get into like actual tactics that we can just give people to become better public speakers. But right before we get there, are there any other... core insights or principles or lessons that are fundamental to the way you found that it works to become a better public speaker, that kind of inform a lot of the stuff we're gonna be talking about.

    11. TM

      The day I understood that speaking was a subconscious, flow-oriented process and not a conscious process completely changed the way I approached it. So instead of thinking tactics and frameworks and adding more to the outside of the things I need to think about, when I realized when I speak best, I'm actually not thinking about speaking. It's the last thing I think about, is the speaking part. I'm completely in tune with whatever it is I'm trying to convey to my audience or the person in front of me. And the goal is to get into a flow state and stay in that flow state all the way through the finish line. That's what really, really changed my mindset about speaking. 'Cause then it changes all of the exercise, the exercises you want to do. It changes how you can think about speaking. And one of the ways that changed my, how I practice was instead of s- focusing on the symptoms of speaking, I started to try and figure out, well, what are the root causes that create these symptoms and can I address those? So instead of counting my filler words, if that's something that's annoying to me, I'm gonna go back and try to figure out, well, what's the root cause of that? Well, the root cause of having lots of filler words or racing in your speaking is that you probably struggle to feel comfortable slowing down, relaxing, or even pausing when your mind is racing and you feel pressure. Solve that, and not only do the filler words take care of themselves, but the racing takes care of itself, and you suddenly have more mind space. And you feel super, if you feel super constrained in your speaking, very monotonous, then maybe you're, you feel boxed in and you're struggling to allow yourself to feel, to be all of what you are under pressure because there's probably a lack of certainty, a lack of, uh, trust in, "Hey, if I let myself be more intense, or if I let some of these emotions pop out, or if I take a ti- time to gather my thoughts, is everything gonna unravel or is that gonna work for me?" And if you haven't proven that to yourself, then you're just gonna go for safety. And so you're gonna be very monotonous and constrained, and that's what creates monotony. But if I can solve that, suddenly I have freedom. So thinking through this and understanding that the goal here is upgrading the software and it's really layering, taking all the bad habits away and putting in new habits that I can just stay in this flow state without getting pulled out, that really changes the game.

    12. LR

      That is a really interesting insight, and I love that you actually demoed that in the way you answered this question, where you took time to get into that state and not just-

    13. TM

      Yeah.

    14. LR

      ... get, um. You know? It's just, like, pause.

    15. TM

      Pause.

    16. LR

      Yeah. That was a really beautiful

  5. 15:30 – 29:15

    Tactical tips for public speaking

    1. LR

      example of that. Okay. Let's get into a few tactics just to give people something they can actually change about the way they speak this week. What are two or three things that you can recommend people tweak in the way that they do public speaking, in the way they speak in meetings and presentations, whatever?

    2. TM

      I actually thought about this because once you think about speaking being much more about the root causes, like play the games that are gonna change you at the root, don't focus on the symptoms, then you find yourself sharing much less purely tactical advice and frameworks because it's, we're trying to get out of our brain into our subconscious. So when I thought about it, I thought of three things I wanted to share. One makes you sound better or look better, one makes you sound better, and one makes you feel better.

    3. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    4. TM

      So the first makes you look better. Now, this is super basic and very crunchy, but it's a, a bad habit that a lot of people have, that when I am trying to gather my thoughts or think, people tend to look down. And if you're looking down, on Zoom it's three times as bad 'cause it looks like you're looking at your phone or looking at notes if you had any, but even when you're in person, it doesn't look very confident. And so that, you're st- suddenly giving off of that vibe of, "Ooh, this person feels a little bit uncertain here." And maybe you, it's gonna look like you stopped speaking and you might get more interrupted. If instead you switch that up and you start thinking up, I think up and to the right but you can think (laughs) in any direction you want, but as long as you're looking up, you actually look thoughtful by default. So suddenly you're looking thoughtful. That means you look more confident because anybody who would be willing to pause in, in their speaking is somebody who's confident. And as a result, you're much less likely to ve- to get interrupted. So it's a small tweak but makes a real difference. The only thing is, if you're not used to doing this, if this is not your habit, then it's gonna be a, feel a little bit awkward the first time you do it and you probably won't think about doing it. So I recommend writing "think up" on a Post-it and putting it on your computer so that it's there for you. And then once you've done it a few times, this will become the new normal.

    5. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. TM

      And by default you'll look more confident.

    7. LR

      I'm gonna do this as you talk. I have a poster right here. Think up.

    8. TM

      Oh, nice. Think up.

    9. LR

      Okay, great. What else?

    10. TM

      Look more confident. Now how to sound more confident. This is a really important one, and this concept is called end strong, and it's, we had to bring this up because most people tend to end weak. And wh- why is that? It's, they, they put freestyle rappers in an fMRI and what they found out is freestyle rappers have to enter a, a deep flow state.If you're freestyle rapping, you have a beat, you don't have any lyrics, and you have to get into the beat and invent the lyrics and the melody and everything on the fly. So there's no choice but being completely present. What happens is, you, uh, you can see their brain and it's lit up in a very specific place that shows that they're in flow, and when they get to the very end, the brain just blows up. Before they finish, they start getting pulled out of flow. And this is the same feeling of like you're, you're, you're running at, at school and you see the finish line and just a few yards before, you start slowing down. It's just, I don't know, we're built that way. And in speaking, it's the same thing. People tend to give a great answer and then either they kind of taper off at the end, which doesn't leave you with a good impression. Or they'll actively say the doubts that are coming up in their mind of maybe they'll be giving a great answer and then suddenly they say, "I don't, I don't really know if that made sense." Sorry.

    11. LR

      I do that all the time. That's very relatable. (laughs)

    12. TM

      (laughs) Yeah. And, but what, the thing is, what happens when you do that? When you do that, it's like you're forcing this lens on your audience where now they, even if they had the best of experiences with your answer, now they're looking at everything you said through the lens of, "Oh, this person was kind of uncertain." So it's like you had a, a very smooth flight across the Atlantic and your landing was absolutely horrible. It was, you were bumpy when you were coming up and then when you hit the landing you bounced three times and you thought you were gonna die. (laughs) You're not gonna remember the smooth flight. You're gonna remember the ending. So a simple tactic here is anticipate that as you get to the end of anything you're saying, you're gonna naturally start regaining consciousness, and you're gonna start being a little bit more self-aware, and some of those uncertainties are gonna pop up. Know that it's coming and make sure you land the plane. So what that looks like is either you just make your ending sound like an ending and then leave it at that, or you can prompt your brain. You can use summary prompts. This is incredibly powerful. It just means you say the beginning of a sentence, or the beginning of, yeah, the beginning of a sentence and your brain's gonna fill in the, the gap. It's gonna, you're, you're prompting your brain and your brain will always deliver. So you get to the end and you're like, "Okay, I gotta wrap up now." And so you'll say, "So to wrap up," and your brain's gonna fill in the gap. Or, "In summary," "So my point here is," "So what I want you to remember," and you just place those words and your brain's naturally gonna do the work of closing it for you. But make sure you don't let go of the gas pedal at the very last moment. You, you need to land that plane.

    13. LR

      Awesome. I, I could definitely get better at this. Great tip.

    14. TM

      Yeah. Nice. I-

    15. LR

      And I'm gonna try to do that as we talk. And...

    16. TM

      Yes.

    17. LR

      What else we got?

    18. TM

      I'll be paying attention to that.

    19. LR

      (laughs) Okay.

    20. TM

      The third one-

    21. LR

      Pressure.

    22. TM

      ... is, (laughs) the third one is staying in character. And these go hand in hand.

    23. LR

      Mm.

    24. TM

      And what's really powerful is when you start doing these, there's a beautiful feedback loop that happens that gives you a lot of confident. So staying in character, I said, is the one that's gonna make you feel more confident. What's staying in character? So it's related to end strong in some sense, in that people tend to self-sabotage a lot. I'm speaking, and obviously as I'm speaking, my h- my, (smacks lips) all of my senses are really, really heightened. So I'm aware of everything. If a word comes out a little bit weird or if it's not the word that I was expecting to hear come out of my mouth, I'm gonna be very aware of, of that, because I was expecting something and something different happens. But that happens all the time when speaking. I'm starting to not make as much sense or I feel like I'm rambling, going a little bit too long. All of these create insane noise in the back of my mind, the insecurities. And you have a choice there, because I can tell you right now, nobody can tell. People cannot see what you feel, even though it feels that way when you feel really, really strongly. But people can't see it. You're just looking like a normal speaker, competent and confident. But internally, it feels like everybody can see. So you're feeling all this insecurity and it feels like there's an elephant in the room. And so what most people do is they self-sabotage. They start leaking and they break character. And they'll say, "Oh, man, I'm not making sense right now." Or they'll laugh nervously after saying a word that came out weird, "Oh, I al-" Which is kind of saying like, "Oh, I also noticed that this word came out weird and it's okay." Right? Or they'll, they'll keep, uh, letting all of the insecurities and doubts come out when people didn't see it in the first place. So again, it's like I'm forcing these filters onto my audience and now they can only see me through that light. And so one analogy I love for this is, again, a flying analogy. You're on the plane, everything's smooth, you're having a great time watching your movie, and suddenly you're interrupted by the pilot who picks up the intercom and says, "Uh, ladies and gentlemen, so I just had a red light start blinking here in the cockpit and, uh, I'm not sure what this is. It could be really bad, honestly, uh, but, uh, I don't know. So, uh, don't worry, please. Uh, I'll get back to you soon." (laughs) First thing that's gonna happen if you experience that is you're gonna think, "I wasn't worrying in the first place." But then you start thinking, "Wait, something probably is going wrong." And now the smallest noise, the tiny little bit of turbulence, a creak on the right, you're gonna start thinking, "Oh no, we're gonna die every time." So you're gonna make any little mistake, any little imperfection, you're gonna turn that into something big. That's what happens when you speak. If you start leaking and letting the insecurities come out, people are gonna start thinking, "This person doesn't really know what they're talking about." It's like a leader who d- who, who isn't clear in their direction.... suddenly I'm thinking, "Wait, I think I have to second guess everything here. 'Cause I'm not sure about this guy, or this, this person." And the good news is, the solution is very, very simple. The solution is that, is just don't share your insecurities. Put your best foot forward and stay in it the whole time. Stay in character from beginning all the way through past the ending, 'cause you go all the way through your speech, then you gotta end strong, which is a form of staying in character. And then let it be. And that's so important. Just let it be, and you're gonna notice something incredible. If you're the type of person who would break character a lot, start staying in character. And the cue I use for myself is stay in it, and the worse it gets, the more I'll, I'll say to, just stay in it. And what happens is you stay in it, and you expect everybody at the end to say, "Oh my God, you looked horro- so uncomfortable. What was happening?" But people can't see that, that you look confident. So they're just gonna give you the reaction that a confident person would get, and you're gonna notice, oh, wow, I am coming off as confident. And that's gonna make you feel more confident. And so it's gonna, it's g- it's a very reinforcing cycle. If you start staying in character and ending strong, naturally you're gonna be reinforced by this behavior, and you're gonna realize, oh, I didn't need to break character. I didn't need to hedge every time I spoke. And that's gonna give you much more confident and you're gonna start realizing, people just look confident by default. This is a crazy thing. I want everybody to walk around the world and look at people and think, most of the people I'm looking at are actually nervous right now. You're gonna look at them and you're, I can't tell. Most people speaking up in meetings are feeling a level of nervousness, but you can't tell unt- unless it's through the roof.

    25. LR

      I love this and it's s- it's something I'm extremely guilty of, and I think the reason, like, I do this and the reason I, I think a lot of people leak, which I love that term of just like, don't leak, that you know some- you feel something's not going right. Like, the reason I do it is I feel like me being cle- like, upfront, I know this isn't great-

    26. TM

      Exactly.

    27. LR

      ... makes it okay. But in reality, that's hurting you 'cause I, like, I think what, it's like when I watch standup comedy, when the comedian's like, "Oh, sorry, that, that bombed." Like, if he didn't say that or she didn't say that, I just forget about it and we move on to the next thing, and it brings all this attention to, oh, well, I see, okay, it's not going great. Uh, otherwise you're just like, all right, whatever. I didn't like that joke. And so, so yeah, I guess any thoughts on just that, why people do this?

    28. TM

      Well, I think that's exactly that. It's, uh, it's because you're convinced that everybody can tell.

    29. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    30. TM

      And so two things will happen. Either they could tell, 'cause it was a big thing and everybody could tell, but you shining light on it is literally that. It's like, hey, everybody, you're driving a train. Everybody's in the train. You're the driver as the speaker, everybody's going with you. So if there's a crash on the side of the road, you can keep going and they'll not be looking at the crash a second later and they'll be looking at the next landscape. Or you can stop the train and tell everybody, "Hey, let's look at this crash here real quick. (laughs) I'm so sorry about it." When you keep going, people will forget it in a second and they're not gonna pay attention to you. And with the peak-end rule, what we were saying, people remember the end of experiences more than they remember the beginning of experiences. So you're gonna be left with that feeling at the end. The other piece is, because most people won't notice it in the first place, they'll be in their own minds. So when you share this, you're popping their bubble. And so I see people speaking all the time where I'm super in tune with the feeling I'm getting when they're speaking. I'm just, I'm listening to the energy, I'm listening to everything that's happening so I can try to understand, like, what state are they in right now? So when I get woken up from that state of somebody s- saying, "Oh, man, can I go again right now? I, that really sucked," it's even more visible for me. And I'll often have to say, "Hey, man, (laughs) I was so into what you were saying," and I'll, I'll pull the audience, "Is anyone surprised?" And everybody every time is like, "No, I thought that you were doing great. I was completely with you." So that's the case most of the time. But because we're convinced that people can tell, we wanna break that fourth wall, or because something happened and we know people can tell, we wanna acknowledge it so we d- it doesn't feel like I'm the only one in the room who can't tell that something went wrong here. But this habit of saying, "No, I'm gonna be confident. I'm leading. I'm gonna keep us going in a certain direction," is extremely powerful

  6. 29:15 – 34:50

    The importance of practice and games

    1. TM

      and very self-reinforcing.

    2. LR

      Okay, so let's actually show people what this looks like by actually doing some live games. I know one of your principles for Ultra Speaking is you can't learn to speak by not speaking. Like, you need to l- practice speaking to get better at speaking, and these games are a way to actually do that in a really fun way. So maybe first of all, just why, why games? Like, when I, you know, and I did this course as just like, huh, so I guess it's a bunch of games, what, I thought this was a public speaking course. Uh, so maybe talk about just, like, why you approach it through games. Everything you do is a game in this, in this course.

    3. TM

      Yeah. Well, the first piece of the puzzle is what you were saying, that you, you can't get better at speaking without speaking. And it's, intuitively you could think, you, you, everybody knows that if you wanna become a great cook, you can't just read 100 cookbooks. You actually have to spend most of your time in the kitchen refining your intuition, testing things, experimenting, learning new recipes and, and building your timing and everything that goes with it. But the, in speaking, we tend to do the opposite, probably because it's a little bit scary and because there aren't that many options out there to practice the, the speaking itself. There aren't that many environments where you can do it right now. So...... we're kinda left with nothing. So, okay, I'll just go read an article or watch a YouTube short or, and hope that's gonna make a difference. But the, maybe the bad news is you, you have to do it. If you're, if you have to ask yourself, "Am I gonna be serious about taking on speaking and, and making a difference here?" And if you are, then you're gonna have to do the thing. You have to practice speaking. But the good news is it's, it's only the outside that's scary. As soon as you get started, you're gonna get rewarded. And then the better you get at it, the more enjoyable it becomes. So why games then? Well, games, number one, are fun to play. And as I was saying earlier, if your practice is not fun, you're going to stop. So you need intrinsic reward with what you're doing. But what all of the Ultra Speaking games have in common is that it's short, deliberate practice, like short reps followed by feedback, followed by another rep. So that was more important than the idea that it was a game at first. When we started coaching, uh, with Michael Gendler, my co-founder, it was just him and me in my backyard with somebody in front of us testing things out, and we would say, we would give them a speech title just to get a baseline. "Okay, uh, what's the most incredible invention in the world?" And we'd watch this person go into their mind and start, like, freaking out. "Okay," and they'd think the iPhone and then they're like, "I don't know. The iPhone, that's pretty recent, so maybe it's fire. Is it fire though? Was there a bigger, maybe communication? I don't know. Wait, maybe we evolved for communication." And the longer they spent thinking, the worse their answer tended to be and the more their confidence tended to go down as they were speaking. So then we said, "Well, we gotta get this person speaking right away." So we'd say, "I'm gonna ask you another question, but just start speaking." And so I'd ask them another question and they couldn't start speaking right away. So we just tried to compress it more and more and more to turn it into something where then it was like, "I'm just gonna say a word and you have to say something about it." So horses, "Horseback riding is fun because you can go places." Cats, "Cats are crazy 'cause if they were bigger, they would eat you." And I just, like, almost like word association. Let's get words out. Then we started, uh, developing different games for everything, every root cause we were seeing, every symptom we were seeing, we'd figure out the root cause and we'd create some sort of a way to get the person into it as quickly as possible. And it's just one day, six months in that we realized, "Hey, did we just create a game?" Like this is, this feels like a board game. And then we created, we even, I have this, we created Speak Before You Think, a game for people who, uh, think too much. And this is, uh, a bunch of cards with all of our games and then COVID hit and we turned it into online games.

    4. LR

      Oh, I didn't know that.

    5. TM

      But the magic of games... Yeah. The magic of games is short reps, immediate feedback, practice, feedback, practice, feedback. And it's enjoyable. You get rewarded, you get to adjust as you go. And it, what's changing is the, your internal feeling as you're going. So you're learning lessons, but you're internalizing. All of the practice is happening through speaking.

    6. LR

      To reinforce what you just shared, I haven't shared this with you, but I, after I took this, the course, the mini course, I went to see my family in LA. We visited for a few days and I, I was talking about this course and just, like, how fun it was and interesting and how much I learned from it and I pulled up the games 'cause I have access to the things online and we just started, I was just like, "Hey, you guys wanna try this?" And we started playing some of these games that we're gonna, that we're about to get into. And it was just like, we spent like an hour just doing this and everyone loved it.

    7. TM

      Wow.

    8. LR

      Everyone just felt so much better about their public speaking afterwards. My mom was like, "Hey, how do I do that on my own later?" (laughs)

    9. TM

      Wow. That's so cool.

    10. LR

      My sister's like, "I wanna start doing open mic nights" 'cause that was, like, really fun just to, like, talk.

    11. TM

      Nice.

    12. LR

      So, it was a lot of fun.

    13. TM

      And were you, were you actually coaching them? Like, how were you walking them through the different games?

    14. LR

      I, we just pulled them up and played them and then I shared some of the tips that, uh, I learned in the class that we took-

    15. TM

      Right.

    16. LR

      ... just like, "Try it this way," or, "Try not to focus on being correct, just focus on confidence and not leaking that you're not doing great." All these, like, things we're gonna talk about. Yeah. So it was a lot of

  7. 34:50 – 45:54

    Game 1: The Conductor (Accessing different emotional states)

    1. LR

      fun. So let's get into some of these games. So we're gonna try two or three. Which one do you wanna start with?

    2. TM

      Conductor, maybe.

    3. LR

      Sweet. I love Conductor. That one was really insightful to me.

    4. TM

      Okay, so I got Conductor. Um, the way this game works is that when I click start training, I'm gonna have a random title that's gonna appear. And for those of you who are just listening and not watching this, Lenny will say the title out loud so you can hear. And then what you won't see or what you'll see if you're watching is in front of me, all I'm gonna see are a series of random numbers. It's gonna start with five and five is just my natural rate of speaking, like I'm speaking right now. But then I might see a number from one to 10. The, and each one of these numbers represents an intensity or a state that I have to tap into. So if I see a seven, I automatically have to raise my voice and get into that kind of an energy. And if I see a 10, you could only imagine what that is. But it's also true for the lower ones. If suddenly I see a three, I have to find a way to calm my energy down and match the three and go all the way down to one. And then there might be a slide that says breathe, which is just an indication to pause. And when I see that slide, breathe, if I just go silent, that's because I'm in front of the breathe slide and I'm not allowed to speak. And in that moment, my goal is just to relax myself and calm myself and then see what happens, where I'm at when that slide moves onto the next one. And, uh, we're gonna do this, this is gonna be 70 seconds, so it's gonna be super quick. Ready?

    5. LR

      I'm gonna... Yeah, so I'll read the title as soon as you, uh, as soon as it pops up.

    6. TM

      Perfect.

    7. LR

      When I grow up,

    8. TM

      ... when I grow up, I want to have taken on all of my weaknesses or all of the emotional things that are holding me back. 'Cause it's kind of annoying for me that I'm 40 years old and there's still things that are holding me back that, man, I've been... I've had these when I was a, a kid. I was, I was like this when I was 10 and it drives me crazy because aren't I supposed to be an adult? Aren't I supposed to be mature and have my life together? I mean, I have two kids. I have this incredible responsibility and I have to teach them, I have to show them the way. So I've decided I'm gonna hire a coach and I talked to him just a couple of days ago so this is perfect timing 'cause I wanna unwrap, unravel and untwine every single one of these emotional blockers so that when I grow up, I'm completely free.

    9. LR

      That was so fun to watch. (laughs) And I'm seeing the numbers. If you're on YouTube, you can see what's going on there. (laughs) If you're not, basically there's different numbers that give, give Tristen the different energies to be at and that was masterful.

    10. TM

      I think we saw... What did we see? We saw like a six, a s- it went up first, six, seven, then it went down to three, then we saw I think a, a two, a one, then a breathe and then it went back to a five. How about you give it a go and then we chat?

    11. LR

      (laughs) Let's do it.

    12. TM

      What do you think? Ladies and gentlemen, let's see this. Here we go. The title is the Greatest Puzzle.

    13. LR

      The greatest puzzle that I think that I've had in my life, and I think just for most people, is trying to figure out what to do with their life. And I just had to f- spend so much time thinking... Actually, no, let me change. I'm changing direction. I actually f- uh, I actually have known from very early on what I wanted to do with my life. I've actually found it to be not of a, not much of a puzzle. I knew from pretty early that I wanted to be a software engineer. And interestingly, as I... and I became a software engineer. And as I think about the puzzle that that created around my life, the f- I ended up... So my life actually started to look like a puzzle instead of what I always thought I'd be. So I turned into... So I ended up having a bunch of different careers and I look back at my life and it started with one piece, and each piece led to all these other careers. Nailed it.

    14. TM

      (laughs)

    15. LR

      (laughs)

    16. TM

      Oh, it's funny. At the end you were like, you didn't even see there was a six that came up and then you, when you looked up, it had already gone away. Uh, that's a good warmup.

    17. LR

      Yeah, yeah.

    18. TM

      It's funny 'cause-

    19. LR

      Let's do it. Let's do it.

    20. TM

      ... what it, what it looked like to me is that, well, you just, you just didn't let yourself play the game. You wanted to-

    21. LR

      Mm.

    22. TM

      You were more focused on, "I wanna make sure this is, this works well, this looks good."

    23. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    24. TM

      Or, "I don't make a fool of myself-"

    25. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. TM

      "... than let me just play the game."

    27. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    28. TM

      So switch your mindset from that. Like back in conductor in, uh, uh, sorry, in the creator cohort you didn't really care 'cause if you failed it didn't matter, so you just played the game.

    29. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    30. TM

      And this is the same idea. Just don't try, just let yourself play the game. The game will-

  8. 45:54 – 51:07

    Mindset shift: playing the game

    1. LR

      that.

    2. TM

      The common theme for me, the more... And I've been on this journey for seven years now. I still am blown away every week by the lessons I've learned over the course of the seven years, which all come down to your brain, your subconscious is so incredibly powerful. So your hardware is magical. And because I've spent seven years kind of getting rid of the bad habits, getting rid of the gunk, and trusting myself more, I allow myself to take many more risks. So I'm jumping into these games still with the same doubts in some sense, but they've just, everything's tapered down way, way, way into the background. So I get to be much more present. And, you know, I talked about the summary prompts earlier in the podcast. Saying the beginning of a sentence and trusting that your brain's gonna fill in the gap is something that's initially hard to do. But when you've done it 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 times, you start believing, hey, maybe my brain will deliver every single time. So you can start saying the beginning of sentences that, the direction you want to go into and your brain fills in the gap. And we're gonna do a game on that in a second. But the one, the Conductor one is so beautiful because, well, the way we describe it... So I, I, I... That folder one, when it came into my mind was my favorite ever. But the, the original one was when you tap into a certain energy, that creates emotion. And if you tap into that emotion, the words come as a natural consequence. So it's energy leads, emotions follow, and words fill in the gap. And when you experience this for yourself of you go into Conductor and you play, you realize, okay, if I want more conviction, I can raise my energy or get into a state of conviction. And the words that are gonna come out, the ideas, the stories, the anecdotes, the examples, everything is gonna fit into that. If I feel frustrated, I can dive into that state and stay in that state. And naturally, the content is gonna follow. It's a very, very powerful game. It's a very exciting game. And it's a ver- it's a game that if you, especially when you're playing with low stakes, you can, you, you very quickly feel the effect of, oh, I can see the potential of what it could be if I could just be like this anywhere. Maybe you taper out a little bit at the extremes. But this is... You can access this for free on Ultra Speaking or you can just, the way we did this at first, you just...... go to Google and type in a random series of s- nine numbers and then just have a friend say each number one after the next and you just match it. I used to just put my hand out and go up and down. So it's, in essence, it's very, very simple to apply it.

    3. LR

      And it's a- it's just like a lot of fun to just get an excuse to just go wild and high and then just-

    4. TM

      Yeah.

    5. LR

      ... like get low. I love that part of it. And, uh, let's get into the next game but just one other insight I had is, that you shared with me when I did it the first time, is just people have a strength. They're either-

    6. TM

      Yes.

    7. LR

      ... correct me if I'm wrong, they're like s- they're strong at the highs and just like very uncomfortable at the lows or the opposite. And for me, I thought I was gonna, oh, obviously I'll be more natural at the lows 'cause that's like introvert world. And you're like, no, you're actually like super energized at this high end and then it's hard for you to access the low. And that, that was really insightful for me.

    8. TM

      Yeah. You will, you'll notice it pretty quickly once you jump in, especially with w- with, with a friend. It's cool, it's cool because when you can s- when you get to see, oh, I'm much more comfortable going up than I'm gl- I'm going down, or vice versa, or I'm stuck in the middle and I, I'm only comfortable when I'm not in the extremes.

    9. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. TM

      It's just telling you something. This is what we want, right? We want a, a mirror in front of us so I can know like, okay, what's happening here? I'm not ver- even much a fan of actually watching yourself on camera, on video, because again, this is an inner game, not an outer game. So when I watch myself on video I see the outside which can be useful for certain things. But the fundamentals are inside. But so getting a mirror if I play this game and I feel a certain way. Oh, interesting, it was easy to go up. So I can muster energy pretty quickly and I'm willing to take risks of jumping into a different energy stage which might mean changing the direction of where I'm going. But slowing down means I need to be willing to, to take up space. I need to be willing to just be while everybody's looking at me and I'm using up their time, but I'm gonna take up space and I'm gonna take a moment to go inside and be introspective and really ask myself, "Okay, what do I wanna say here?" And so that's a reflection of, well, what does that mean if I struggle to do that? And that's why this is speaking such an, an interesting skillset.

  9. 51:07 – 1:07:51

    Game 2: Triple Step (Staying focused amid distractions)

    1. LR

      All right. Let's do another game.

    2. TM

      This next game is called Triple Step. And Triple Step is a game for people who, people who tend to be, to struggle to stay on a single thought. Or get very easily put off their game or distracted. If you're the type of person where you're speaking and suddenly somebody yawns and you just start freaking out thinking, "I'm so boring and things are horrible. (laughs) I must be terrible," not they probably have a baby and they didn't sleep last night, pen drops and you start losing, uh, your ability to stay on track, this is a game for you. Also a very fun one. The principle of the game is pretty simple. S- similarly to Conductor, we're gonna start with a random speech title. So I have no idea what's gonna show up. Then as I'm speaking, in this setting here, I'm gonna speak for a minute, there will be six random words or series of words that are gonna pop up as I'm going through my speech. And my goal is to integrate the words into the speech as seamlessly as I can, as if they were part of the speech the whole time. So in theory if I do a perfect job, if you're listening, you should struggle to pick out which words were actually the words that were popped up. The likelihood in one minute of me being able to do that is low but, uh, let's see if you can do it. So if you're listening, you're not gonna see the words. We'll tell you afterwards what they were. See if you can pick up on them. But otherwise, my goal is just to choose a strong direction and stay on that direction as naturally as I can. Here we go. The title is How Would Your Friends Describe You? I've been described as a Labrador by my friends and I think the reason people describe me as a Labrador is because I am so easy to excite. It's like if you give me a box of french fries, I'm gonna go nuts and it's gonna be the best french fries I've ever tasted in my life. But if the next day I get a massage, I'll be completely in that experience and the massage is gonna be the best massage and then I'm gonna think, "I need to get a massage every day." I'm gonna start daydreaming about massage as my natural day-to-day. But the problem with being a Labrador is that Labradors get kind of excited. So I may be doing cartwheels one second and the next second, uh, I'm supposed to be working and so I'll be on my computer, but then I hear the microwave ding and I think, "Oh, maybe I should go get some food next." And so there's a beautiful trait to being the, the Labrador that allows me to like explore all of what it's like to be human, like I always have access to the internet inside me. But there are definitely some drawbacks as well.

    3. LR

      Okay. So the words that you had to integrate are french fries, getting a massage, daydreaming, cartwheels, a microwave, and the internet.

    4. TM

      Yeah. And so you might notice that some of the words I'm integrating literally and some I might integrate more metaphorically like the internet of my mind. It's like I have access to the internet. So you can, you can give yourself as much leeway as possible. The whole point here with Triple Step is you wanna be that tree in the storm that is not so rigid that if the wind is too strong it's gonna break in half, but not so flexible that it's gonna swing every which direction as soon as there's a gust. So you want that firm, solid grounding which is in choosing a clear direction, that one thing off the bat. And then you want to make the words work for you. ... so stay focused on that one thing and as the words comes, come in, the more focused out you are on that groove you've created for yourself, the easier it will be to let the words work for you, okay?

    5. LR

      And again, the skin, the skill this builds is to be less, uh, be more comfortable with things not going perfectly and-

    6. TM

      Yeah.

    7. LR

      ... being distracted.

    8. TM

      It's, I would say this one can be used for two other things. Number one is resiliency, right?

    9. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. TM

      'Cause this one, this one'll make your brain go crazy and if you can stay composed within it with all of these things happen, it really, it builds this, this ability to say, "Well, man, if I can do Triple Step on hard mode, I can do anything." Like, why would anything else scare me? Why would an interview questions scare me when I can throw these kinds of things? I can always navigate my way through, right? We're trying to lower the likelihood of a mistake really hurting you. And then the other piece is this is a, a game, this one and a game called Rapid Fire Analogies are games that are really, really nice to use as a way to warm your brain up. So you could use it before a podcast, you could use it before a job interview, before a meeting. When you wanna be on, do a few reps of this and your brain's just gonna be completely lit up 'cause it's pulling on so many different parts of your brain that are necessary for communication.

    11. LR

      And I, one last thought just before we dive into it. I think it's, it's just to zoom out again, the reason that you've found this is a better way to learn to become better public speaking is my sense is just if you were to just do the standard thing of just give, give more talks, find more opportunities to do presentations. It's like such a, it's like too broad of a brush to build these different skills and which you've kind of identified is there's these very specific skills that add up to a great presenter. And these games pick like a specific skill and help you just focus on that again and again and again.

    12. TM

      If you're already practicing, you're already leagues ahead of everyone 'cause most people aren't practicing. They're trying, you know, they're trying to learn from a video or a YouTube short or an article. Uh, you can only go so far with that. But if you are practicing, there are kind of two suboptimal ways that might show up. One is what you're saying, you're just, you're doing talks and you're, you're speaking up more, but you're not really practicing. What you're, it's kind of as you're saying, it's broad, broad strokes. The other one is you're in a choreography and all, so it's like learning how to dance but you only learn choreography. Well, that's all you know how to do. So if I asked you to do like say, "Okay, now just I'm gonna put music on, just dance." You're kind of stuck 'cause you only know how to do the moves you were doing. So we're trying to get people outside of, "I have to be in my mind or I have to do things that I've memorized how to do." And come back to s- rely, to trusting your natural ability to communicate. So that's what we're doing here. You can feel like when you don't speak, when you struggle with speaking, you're stuck in this box and everything around you is tiny and you can feel the sides of the box and we're expanding the range. We're playing around with all kinds of different, different things, different tools, and all of them have specific meaning. But even if they didn't that much, you still would be able to, oh wow, you're pushing back the sides of the box. And now suddenly, hey, I can move around. I, I feel comfortable moving my arms and moving my legs and going to the right and the left and up and down. And just that is go- that act of making you feel more comfortable and more at ease is gonna unlock your ability to communicate because you already know how to do a lot of this. So we're tapping into these different skill sets and we're doing both at the same time.

    13. LR

      This episode is brought to you by Brave Search. Brave Search is the private independent search engine that doesn't bias or censor results. Brave Search and its Answers with AI feature are available for free to all users on desktop and mobile devices. With Brave Search, you get real answers faster, served from their own independent index of the web. Their AI search engine can give lightning fast, incredibly accurate results for almost any question. But Brave isn't just AI answers, it's also a powerful traditional search engine with real innovations versus big tech options. It fights bias and SEO spam. It brings a cleaner results page with fewer ads, Reddit threads in the search engine results page, powerful local results, and even community-driven ranking options. Tired of big tech's same old list of links? It's time to try Brave Search. Visit brave.com/lenny to get started. That's brave.com/lenny. All right, let's do this. I'm energized-

    14. TM

      Let's do this.

    15. LR

      ... I'm pumped. I'm gonna-

    16. TM

      Whoo!

    17. LR

      Mm, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not g- I was gonna say I'm gonna nail it, but no, let's just have fun. Let's have fun.

    18. TM

      Yeah.

    19. LR

      We'll go, it goes how it goes. Mm-hmm.

    20. TM

      Indeed. Here we go.

    21. LR

      Okay, and I'll say the title. The Best Thing About Pain. So this is something I recently shared in a, in a, in another talk is just this quote that I always think of. "The cave you fear contains the treasure you seek." That the thing that is hardest often points you in the direction you want to go. Like I, like I hate blue cheese but sometimes I find that if I eat the blue cheese and add it to a salad, it ends up being the best salad I've had. Having kids is another amazing example where just kids are s- there's so much pain but it's also there's no, nothing that is more joyous than having a kid and sometimes even like growing a beard. I grow this beard and I have to maintain this beard for the rest of my life and, and I, and I know people would look at me without a beard and be like, "What the hell? Well, you look so different now and so young." Uh, sometimes I think about just like having a sibling and the pain that if I had a brother, if he just like hit me, the pain that would come from that but just then having the brother-... would be so much worth it, even if he's hitting me all this time. And, and, (laughs) I, I ran out of time, but, that was-

    22. TM

      (laughs)

    23. LR

      ... that was solid.

    24. TM

      Okay. I realize, uh, this is your first time playing Triple Step. It's kind of, uh, mean of me-

    25. LR

      I have to go faster.

    26. TM

      ... to gi- to gi- give you six words. So I'm gonna give you four words.

    27. LR

      Okay. Okay.

    28. TM

      But here's what I noticed.

    29. LR

      Yeah.

    30. TM

      What I noticed is, you were letting the word, the word was the beginning of a new thought.

  10. 1:07:51 – 1:09:46

    Quieting the noise

    1. TM

      and, and again, and this is a habit, in that the noise doesn't completely disappear but it goes down to being almost imperceptible. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to internalize all of these habits to the point where I don't need to consciously think about them. So it's like a, a gymnast who's doing their tumbling routine and jumps into the air. As they're flipping, they're not consciously trying to think of how to do a flip. They've done it a thousand times. They know how to do a flip. The only thing they have that they may be thinking of, every, all of their attention is on being completely present to what's happening, relying on your body and your subconscious knowing what to do, is they have kinda like listeners, like in programming, keyboard listeners. You have something that's there that is just listening for anything out of the ordinary and it's very, very fine-tuned. So as I'm speaking, for example, I might think to myself, "Oh, I may be rambling right now. Maybe I'm going a little bit too long." And it's a little listener that's gonna just gently, nicely say, "Hey, warning. I don't know if you're aware of this."

    2. LR

      (laughs)

    3. TM

      And as I hear that, I might say, "Oh, okay. Let me wrap it up." Or maybe it's saying, "I'm not sure if you're being clear," or, "Can you be more, um, precise here?" Whatever it is, I'm gonna ha- I, it's just a gentle listener in the background. So as you get into the habit of staying in character, and if you had an audience here, we could've asked them right away, "Well, how do you feel about this?" You would, probably would've gotten really good feedback, really positive, which would've kinda jarred that feeling of, "Wow, I didn't think I did that good of a job," and people are saying, "Hey, I thought that was pretty good." So as you get that reinforcing pattern, the voice starts going down more and more.

    4. LR

      Awesome. I, I need that voice to go down. That'd be great.

  11. 1:09:46 – 1:17:27

    Game 3: Conviction Prompts (Building executive presence)

    1. LR

    2. TM

      Nice. It does. It always does.

    3. LR

      Okay, let's do, uh, do another game.

    4. TM

      Cool. Let's do a last game, uh, last one of these practical games. So this is actually a game from, uh, one of our courses that I'm pulling out. It's not a standalone game; it's one that's inside of the courses. But again, if you wanted to replicate this yourself, you can, uh, very easily do it. So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna work on conviction prompts. So this comes back to this idea of entering a state or changing your, your energy to impact the words that are coming out of your mouth. What's gonna happen here is similarly to Triple Step, I'm also gonna get a random topic that I just have to start speaking about. But now instead of getting a word that I have to integrate into my speech naturally, I'm going to get a prompt. So it's gonna be the beginning of a sentence that I have to say out loud and my, I have to find a way for my brain to just complete the sentence. And the sentences are specifically chosen because they're gonna put you in a state of more conviction. So it's gonna force me to care more about what I'm saying, basically. And this is a game for executive presence. If you think about somebody who you feel has, like, great gravitas or great executive presence, they u- usually have, there's something about them that's saying, "This person really believes in what they're saying." And what this game is showing you is that, "Hey, there's a way to fast-track myself to that place. If I wanna be, have more executive presence, let me bring a little bit more conviction to what I'm saying." Most, there's... Caveat, small caveat. Maybe 10% of people in the workforce need the opposite. They need, "Hey-"

    5. LR

      (laughs)

    6. TM

      "... you need to maybe question what you're, what you're saying here." But the reality is the vast majority of people actually are not truly standing behind their words and their ideas. And what that does is that the people who speak a lot and feel a lot of conviction, their ideas go through more often than the others. And you'd want ideas to stand for themselves, but that's just not reality. So for most people listening to this, if you can bring more conviction to your words, then your ideas are gonna have a better chance of being seen equally to those who are already doing them. So this is what this game's about.

    7. LR

      Awesome. Okay.

    8. TM

      Okay, here we go. The title is Saying No. I've had to learn this the hard way as an entrepreneur, that saying no is one of the most important things I can do. But saying no is not saying no to a meeting, 'cause that can be easy. Um, and what I'm gonna say now matters a ton. This is saying no to doing all of the exciting projects that I wanna do. So as I said earlier, I'm a Labrador. I get excited about everything and I genuinely believe that every idea's awesome. But that doesn't mean I can do every idea. I need to choose very...... clear focus and stick to that focus. And this is a game-changer. When you start reducing the amount of things you're doing to a painful amount, of, of painful few amount, then when you get there, suddenly everything else changed. And it astonishes me when I do that, just how much more I can get done even though I'm doing fewer things.

    9. LR

      (laughs) Love it. That was great. These words are tough.

    10. TM

      (laughs) They were, yeah.

    11. LR

      Oh, man.

    12. TM

      This was not an easy one. This was not e- Good, good, good thing that I get a, I get a tough one. Well-deserved.

    13. LR

      Yeah.

    14. TM

      (laughs)

    15. LR

      Let me read the phrases real quick just so folks-

    16. TM

      Yeah.

    17. LR

      ... know. So, the phrases you have to integrate is, "This matters a ton, I generally believe that every idea is awesome, game-changer-"

    18. TM

      It was, "I generally," it was just, "I generally-"

    19. LR

      Oh, okay.

    20. TM

      "... believe that." Yeah.

    21. LR

      Oh, got it. Okay. "I generally believe that," and then game-changer, and then, "It astonishes me when."

    22. TM

      And it's, I'm, I'm so eager for you to go through this and for anybody listening to try this for themselves. Even if you know what's coming, like if you wanna do this for yourself right now, write the words, the, the prompts that Lenny just shared and choose any title and just speak for a minute and see if you can integrate those in. 'Cause you're gonna notice how if you bring conviction, these words naturally bring that out of you. And it's so interesting to watch the contents change as a result of the state you get into and what you say. So it's really, uh, it's really powerful to discover just how, uh, incredible your brain is. So same, same intention for you, I think, is choose a strong direction from the beginning. This is always, in speaking in general, the stronger the direction you choose in the beginning, the more ideas you're gonna have, the more co- E- everything gets easier when you choose a strong direction.

    23. LR

      Okay, let's try it.

    24. TM

      Um-

    25. LR

      Here we go.

    26. TM

      ... but the goal here is, as it says, advocate for an important idea-

    27. LR

      Okay.

    28. TM

      ... related to the speech title.

    29. LR

      (laughs)

    30. TM

      Ready?

  12. 1:17:27 – 1:37:57

    The Accordion Method explained

    1. TM

      we're gonna, uh, hopefully we get to talk about the accordion method, one of the most powerful methods I have and which is, which is very close to this, but this is often a prompt I, I tell people when they're speaking. I say, 'cause people tend to get into a public speaking voice, right? So they'll, we'll be in a class and they'll be chatting normally and, and look super normal and then we'll say, "Okay, now just a timer, I'm just gonna give you a speech. Just speak for 60 seconds so we get a baseline." And I click play and suddenly they say, "The important part about doing this," and they enter into a different version of themselves, a, a very, uh, like a professional version, whatever that would mean. It's so much more freeing, powerful, connecting, and effective to speak conversationally. And so the cue I often give people is, "Don't think about us, just think out loud." And that's really what we're doing. We can, most people have a skillset that's up here and a mindset that's down here. And so if you can just change the mindset to match the skillset, you've already made a giant leap. And you do that by reducing the stakes in your mind and by just speaking. And as you do that, when you're thinking out loud, you have these moments of connecting things in your mind and then s- naturally it pops out. And if you're doing it well, and I love, there's a really cool-... Naval Ravikant, uh, interview on the Joe Rogan podcast from many years ago that's phenomenal. And at one point, he talks about communication, if I'm not mistaken. I think it's on that podcast. But he says something along the lines of, one should discover the words they are saying at the same time their audience is. And this comes back to thinking out loud, like if I'm really in my mind, I'm making connections and suddenly the words are, are the consequence of it. So using prompts, poking your brain, giving these cues, naturally creates things that you couldn't have anticipated otherwise.

    2. LR

      Mm.

    3. TM

      It's like putting constraints on a creative project.

    4. LR

      I love that. Before we segue to a couple of these methods, the accordion method is one example, I wanna ask about when people hear this, they may feel like you're just, you're helping people bullshit more, just like make shit up, and why, why do we want that? Talk about just how this isn't just like, you're not gonna actually give talks I- like this necessarily, this is, uh, and like I guess I'm answering the question, but I'm curious if that's how you think about this, this is building a skill so that when you actually wanna give a real talk with prepared, that you've prepared, you are better at it. But yeah, just thoughts on just like that potential element.

    5. TM

      Yeah. I think that's an important question, and it's a question I hear a lot.

    6. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. TM

      Because we all know, we all know a bullshitter. And that's the person who masters the skill of communication but doesn't have anything to show for it. And so, this thing happens, is that I see a bullshitter and I think to myself, "I really, really don't wanna become that person." And what happens is, it becomes an immune response, or like an immune response, where I, the, the desire not to be that person and the feeling being around that person gives you is so strong, that now if I put, take even the smallest step in that direction, of speaking freely, sharing my thoughts out loud, bringing more conviction or confidence to what I'm saying, not leaking, then there's this immediate response, like an immune response in my body that's just too strong, that's saying, "Uh-oh, you're becoming the, you're becoming the bullshitter. Alarm bells, alarm bells, go back to that safe little corner you were in." The reality is, if you're thinking that, then you have no chance of becoming a bullshitter. Because if that thought is even popping into your mind, then you're the type of person who has developed a very acute skillset of noticing when people bullshit. And you have that same skillset for yourself, so it's just gonna be, now it's just too loud. So as we go through this practice, we wanna match, hey, I wanna match that bullshitter's level of communication, except I'm gonna have the ideas to back it up. I'm gonna really put effort into my craft, so, but I'm gonna give them, I'm gonna sh- be able to show them in the best possible light. And what we wanna be able to do is notice, okay, if this is a big thing for you, the bullshitting, and you're s- noticing a big reaction just even listening to us, not even playing the games yourself, then you definitely benefit from calming that voice down. So spending time learning these skillsets, 'cause you're most likely atrophied because you're staying away from it.

Episode duration: 1:56:30

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