Show Notes
Bart Queen: Welcome to the remarkability Institute podcast. This is Bart queen, your host. I'm really glad you're with us today. I recently had someone give me a call and ask me about the fear of public speaking and when I tried to address the issue with them. As I listened to him, he kept talking about all the things that he would naturally not do when he was standing in front of a group of people, and I laid out to him the idea that this is the issue that every single person faces when they think about public speaking.
If I can really write the script, I take the word public speaking out of our vocabulary. I really truly believe it puts just fear and uncomfortableness in people's hearts. So the question becomes for all of us who do any type of communicating, whether it's a small group, one-on-one, a large group, 5,050 or 500, how do we come across more naturally?
I think the best way to come across and their real natural sense is to take a mind shift from this idea of public speaking to just having a conversation. If you and I went to Starbucks and had a cup of coffee and we sat at one of those cushy kinds of chairs, and we're just going to chit chat and have coffee over something, we wouldn't even think twice about the way we're seated in a chair.
We wouldn't think twice about what we do with our hands. We would gesture and just have a conversation. Most likely, we would look at each other as we shared whatever we were talking about. But as soon as you say to someone, Bart, can you get up in front of the group and share with them what your department, your division or company has been doing for the last six months? All of a sudden, people shift in their minds from having a conversation seated to standing to feel like their public speaking and presenting. I think this is the biggest challenge. Every single one of us faces, and to get past that, we've got to do a different mind shift. Here's the first mind shift.
Last fall, I had an opportunity to spend six months in the Asia pack. One of the stops on my trip wasn't Singapore. Now, the package that the client put me up with was in a hotel called the Marina sands. I don't know if you've heard of this hotel. It's a beautiful hotel. It's almost a city within a city. It has absolutely everything, from shopping to casinos to a spa.
At the very top of this hotel is a platform, and when you're on the ground, and you look up, it looks like Noah's Ark kind of landed up there. Now, this hotel is made up of three towers, and across the towers is this platform. There's a pool; there's a place you can eat. It's just beautiful. Now I'm an early riser, so I like to get up in the morning, go to the very top and enjoy some coffee.
Now, as I'm enjoying my coffee, I'm reading USA today on the back page of the very first section, there was a small article about a black market organization, heisting men's kidneys. Now, according to the story, two men are out. They finished up work. They're going to go have a drink, glass of wine, a cup of coffee, whatever it may happen to be that's appropriate, and one says to the other, you know what?
I think I need to go up and get some emails done before the end of the day. The other gentlemen say, "Oh, I'm just going to hang out for a little while." According to the article, a beautiful woman approaches him and says, can I buy you a drink? And this guy, being a gentleman, says, why, of course. And they start the conversation.
Well, according to the story, the next thing that the man realizes is he wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with a small sign on the top that says, we've harvested one of your kidneys. You need to call nine one one immediately. Now. I had never heard this story before, and when I shared this story with folks, many people will go, well, Bart, I've heard that story before, Bart, I even saw a movie about this kind of an idea.
Now, if I were in a classroom situation, I'd say, how many of you have heard this story before? And many of them would raise their hand, yes.
I make the other point for those who raised their hand and said, no, they've never heard it. I tell them that most likely a break at lunch. When you go home tonight, you're going to say to a family member, a colleague. The story that I've just shared with you. Now, I don't know whether this story is true or not.
That's not why I shared the story. Some people say that somebody put it out on the internet and it just went viral. Again, my point is not whether it's true or it's not true. My point is this. For those of you who had heard it before you went, I remember this, and for those of you who hadn't heard it, you'll most likely go tell the story.
So here's the paradigm shift. I want every single one of us to take. As we think about talking to our customers, we talk to our clients as we're sharing information, as we're speaking in our teams, our units, or our divisions. The question in your mind should not be, how do I tell them more? I see this a lot from salespeople.
It's this idea of showing up and throw up. How do I throw as much information at these people as I possibly can, guys? Just from my experience out of coaching folks out of the last 20 years, I don't think that's the right perspective. I think the question we should ask ourselves is, how do I get people to remember more.
How do I get people to walk out of my meeting, out of my sales call, out of my talk, out of my presentation, out of my keynote speech, out of my podcast, whatever it may happen to be guys, and walk down the hall and see someone else and say, I was just in a short meeting with Bart, and these were the three things that he said.
How do I get that kind of retention and memorability into my conversations? To my presentations to my webcasts, to my zoom sessions, to my one on one conversations. In my mind, it comes back to just something very, very simple we need to get away from, how do I tell them more to how do I get them to remember more.
No. I think there are two ways that come to my mind right off the top of the bat that can help us do that. The first one is what I call a seven-factor phrase. Now, if you think about it, what is a seven-factor phrase? And most people will come back and say, Bart, that some type of a phrase that I have seven pieces to it.
That's what I typically hear, but let me ask a different question. How many times does someone have to hear something before they remember it? Now, moms, dads, think about how many times you have to say to your children, pick up your clothes. Go, do your homework. Don't do that. Take out the trash. It's more than once.
Most likely. I was always taught; it's three times you need to say something three times before it begins to stick in someone's mind. Guys, that's not correct. The actual number is seven. You have to say something seven times for it to begin to stick in someone's head. Now what I'm teaching with the MBA students at say, Duke University or NC state, their final for me is just a five-minute talk.
As we walk them through the skillsets and through this information at the end of the semester, each one gives a five-minute talk, and I will tell them in that five-minute talk, you have to have a seven-factor phrase. You have to say something seven times. They'll come back to me and say, Bart, there's no way in five minutes.
I can say one thing seven times, and I'll come back and say, if you don't say it seven times, you flunk. I put that much emphasis on it because I want them to grasp the power of what this does in the way that we communicate. It never fails. A student gets up, they do their five-minute presentation, and I can say to the whole class, what was Bill's seven-factor phrase?
What was Mary seven seven-factor phrase? And the students will call it out every single time. Let me give you some examples of seven-factor phrases. Some of these you may recognize, some of them you may not, depending on where you're at in the world, what part of the region you're at or what part of the country you live in.
How about this one? Can you hear me now? Now, most of you right now are probably thinking, okay, it's a telephone company, and you'd be correct. That's Verizon. So think about when Verizon first launched that. The gentlemen standing, standing up, and he says, can you hear me now? And he takes two steps. Can you hear me now?
Two more steps. Can you hear me now? Two more steps. Can you hear me now? You remember that now if you remembered that phrase, I always get such a chuckle because I'll ask somebody in a class who's your carrier? And they'll go AT&T, and I will go, Verizon loves you. Verizon loves you because they own your brain.
As soon as I said that, you went to Verizon. That's the power of a seven-factor phrase. How about a couple more plot, plot, fizz, fizz, Alka seltzer. Good to the last drop. Maxwell house. Don't leave home without it—American Express. My favorite growing up was this one. You'll probably recognize this one. Put a smile on everybody's face.
Where's the beef? Wendy's. I can still picture that little old lady saying, where's the beef? Where's the beef? That's the power of a seven-factor phrase. That is one way, just one way to create the memorability and the retention that you're looking for. So in your next talk, in your next podcast, in your next meeting, in your next zoom session, in your next Ted type talk, what's the one thing.
That you want to say seven times or more? That sticks in people's minds. No, guys, I'm not saying that you actually have to say it physically. Seven times. Say it four times; four times is better than one. Say it three times. Three times is better than one. The idea is to try to hit that seven Mark guys. That is just one way, one way to get people to remember more of what you said.
Another way just to share with you is what I call the Scooby-doo factor. I heard someone share this principle with me once before, and it really, it really works. So think about Scooby doo when somebody would say something to Scooby-Doo, what was his response. He would typically go by row or a room.
That's what you want people saying when you kick off a meeting talk or a presentation. You want people saying a "Ru?" tells me more cause you've only got two choices. Your customers, your clients, as they listen to you, are either going to say, tell me more. Or they're going to say, is it over? Think about how many times in college or university, somewhere in the school, you're in a class, you leaned over to one of your fellow friends, and you went, how much longer a man?
We've got 20 minutes left; we've got 10 minutes left. How many of you have been some type of face service before and you just, Elaine to your family member went, okay, I'm ready to go because you weren't in your head or your heart saying, tell me more. Tell me more. That Scooby doo factor will give you that idea of why this is going to be interesting.
Tell me more. I tossed a woman in my class on the topic of Monica Lewinsky. When I asked her to come up with a Scooby doo factor, she came up with. She said, I personally believe that Monica Lewinsky is a greater American icon than George Washington and the whole class went through. Where is she going to go with that?
One sentence and everybody says, okay, what's coming next? I was at a conference, and the opening keynote speaker walked out on stage. This was the first thing that came out of his mouth. He said I believe that there are three things that keep you back from success: the first, your family, the second, your government, the third, your faith.
Guys, you could have heard, you could have seen the hair on the back of people's necks go up. Then we sat and listened to the rest of his keynote. What I found interesting was the next day, as you stood in line getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks before you went to your first breakout session, you'd see somebody wearing the same name tag that you were wearing, and you'd say, what?
What did you think about what Randy had to say yesterday? And we bantered about it. We bantered about it for three solid days of that conference. So the question I would ask you would be, did he win or did he lose? He won. I'm still telling the story. That's the power of that Scooby doo factor. Something that grabs someone's attention so quickly and makes them say, wow, tell me more.
You have my interest. Let's go. So let me give you some statistics now. Just some things that I've learned that we need to lay down in this foundation to help build his idea of how do we, how do we get people to say, tell me more. How do we get them to shift and get involved in your conversation?
You're talking to your presentation. So my first question for you to ponder is how long do you have to engage an audience face to face? How much time do you have to pull them into your content? All hear many people say, Oh, you got five minutes. You don't have five minutes. You don't have two minutes.
You don't have one minute. You have 30 seconds to engage that audience face to face. And now guys in, in our current world, we're doing so much virtually. How much time do you have to engage that audience? In a virtual world, you have eight seconds. That's all. You have to engage that listener and pull them into your content.
So how many times on some type of a webcast or something where you're listening virtually, people open up and they drone on and on and on, and you go, okay, they're not getting to anything for a while. So you start doing email. We've all done it because we haven't been engaged. I want you to take this paradigm shift.
What are you going to do in eight seconds to pull someone right into your content immediately? Now, let me ask another question. How long do you think you have, or how long do you think the average adult can stay focused? How much time can you keep them focused on what you're trying to say?
Statistically, guys, you only have four to six minutes. Now before you go crazy without, let me explain what I mean. Every 46 minutes, you have to change it up. You've got to do something differently. And it could be as simple something as simple as stand up, sit down. If you're doing something face to face, it could mean as simple as ask a question, play a game.
Get the audience to interact with each other. Change a slide, move from one side of the stage to the other side of the stage. When I'm doing my webcast or virtual type situations and not in my home office, I will just literally stand up, and when I stand up, my voice changes. I start to gesture more. Just like when you're on your phone at home, and you're pacing back and forth, you don't realize how much your voice is modulating.
So the next time you're running a meeting, let's say there are ten people around a boardroom at some point after four to six minutes to keep that audience engaged, walk up to the whiteboard, do something at the whiteboard. If you're doing some type of a keynote speech, walk into the audience, sit down, stand up, move, raise your voice, get soft, go loud.
Anything that you can do. To change it up every four to six minutes. Now, I think the greatest example of this is a a 30-minute sitcom, an American 30 minutes at a time. If you think about a sitcom, I Love Lucy Friends, Two Broke Girls, Raymond, any of those, roughly every 4-6 minutes; you get an advertisement.
There are typically about four of these sections in a 30-minute time slot. Now they either break you at the top, are you going to go, okay, what are they going to do next? Or what's going to happen? They're brilliant at keeping you involved because they know you're going to get up. You're going to make a sandwich; you're going to let the dog out.
You're going to use the restroom, but they want to keep you involved in those 30 minutes. So guys, at anything that you do, I want you to begin to think about what I can do differently every four to six minutes. To change it up to keep engagement high. Now, two more statistics for you. When someone asks you a question, how long does the average person listen?
Say you ask your question to your spouse, or the customer asks you a question. Statistically, how long does the average person listen? Most people will come back and say, well, I listened to the end of the question. I'm like, most of us don't do that. Most of us are doing what in our heads. You're being asked a question, and this is what you began to think.
I hate this question. This is a stupid question. Or maybe you say something like this. Why does Bart come to my meetings? I hate it when Bart is in my meetings. My gosh, he's such a distraction. You're not even listening. The average person only listens four seconds, guys, after four seconds, they're already up in their head forming the answer.
When I shared this in class one time, a woman raised her hand, and she said, Oh my gosh, why did I do that with my children all the time? They're saying something to me. They're asking me a question or making a comment. I don't even listen. I think she shared this story about taking her five-year-old and our three-year-old to school.
They were in the back seat of the car. The five-year-old was asking her questions, saying what she was going to do during the day and asking mommy questions, and she said, I was responding with saying, Oh, that's great. That'll be nice, honey. Good for you. Oh, how much fun will that be? All of a sudden, her five-year-old goes silent.
So she's telling her story. She says, I looked in the rearview mirror, and I could see that my daughter was looking at me, and then I could tell the daughter could tell that sh mommy was looking at her. They almost had eye contact through the rearview mirror. Then her five-year-old said this to her, mommy, what did I just say?
She goes, Holy Toledo, my five-year-old just penned me. Now, maybe for you as parents, you realize you've had that same similar kind of experience. We do that with our spouses all the time. You come back and say, w, w, w, what did you say, honey? I'm sorry, because you were thinking about somewhere something else, or you weren't even listening.
So here's the principle I want you to walk away with. Well, we're communicating with other people, whether it be your spouse, your parent, a child, your customer. I want you to be present at the moment. You have to be present at the moment. You can't be thinking about something else. How many of you had the experience where you walked into your boss's office, and he was he or she was at their desk?
Maybe they were doing email, and you said, boss, I need to talk to you about a couple of things, and that your boss responds back. Continuing to typing and saying, sure, what is it you need? How did that make you feel? It made you feel like, well, I'm not really of any value. Nothing about that. How many times do we do that with our spouses or the people that we love?
Your significant others, whoever it may be, guys say here, here's a challenge for all of us. The next time your spouse walks into the room, and you're watching a game, or you're doing an email, turn off the game, close your laptop and say, honey, how was your day? How are you doing? And watch them freak out.
Cause they're going to come back to you and they're going to say, okay, where have you been today? Oh, they're come back and say, alright, how much money did you spend? Because we don't typically do that. We try to multitask instead of being fully present at the moment. So as you think about this paradigm shift of going from this idea of public speaking to this idea of having a conversation.
I want you to think about being fully present in every conversation, whether it's with one person, fly people, 50 people, or 5,000. How do you have a conversation? When I'm dealing with executives as I'm coaching them and keynote speeches, as we walk into the conference hall, wherever they're going to be speaking, they'll say, I am so glad I don't have to turn this on.
And I'll look at them, and I'll say, you just made the biggest mistake of your life because people are already observing who you are and what you're doing. And nine times out of 10, I have to say to them once they're up on stage, could you do me a favor? And just pretend you're in your living room and having a conversation.
People are looking for that authenticity, and that authenticity comes out of having a conversation, not necessarily out of presenting or public speaking. Now, here's one more statistic for you. They say that anywhere from about 80 to 95% of your communication on a day to day basis is more interpersonal.
It's running a meeting. It's sitting around a boardroom table. It's in a small group situation. You're in a training class. It's on a one-to-one. A very small percentage of our communication is what you call public speaking or presenting. That number doesn't concern me. What concerns me is this, of that 80 to 95% roughly, they will tell us that 40 to 60% of what you share gets forgotten.
40 to 60%, that's a huge amount of information. So I come back to my original question that when I started to share with you, is this not, how do I tell them more? But how do I get them to remember more? Everything that we should do, everything that we do should be about memorability and retention and the way we communicate.
It shouldn't be about presenting or public speaking. So we'll take that one shift. That idea from presenting to having a conversation, and we let that be the mind shift, the primary number one thing that we think about. Then everything else that we do will follow suit with that. Now, let me share just a couple of more principles that I want to make sure you walk away with today.
The very first one is what I call mind share competition. Mind share competition. Here's what I mean by that. Let's say you're running a meeting, and let's say it's eight o'clock in the morning. What else are your folks thinking about? What else is on their mind now at eight o'clock in the morning? I would most likely tell you, they're saying, where am I need my coffee?
I'm not; I'm not even awake yet. That's a mindshare competition. Let's say you're running a meeting from 11 to 12, and it gets to 1145. What are people thinking about? They're thinking about lunch. In my typical class, it goes from eight to six. I do a three-day program. Just focus around communication, and at five o'clock on day one, I can promise you the Mo, the majority of my participants are saying, okay, when is Bart?
Can it be done? We've got one more full hour to go before this is over. That's all Mindshare competition. Now guys, please realize you will never ever hit zero. It doesn't happen. But your goal as a communicator should be, how do I reduce that mindshare competition as low as I can possibly get it? So here's a couple of other examples.
Time of day can be mindshare competition. The temperature in the room can be Mindshare. Competition. Season of the year can be Mindshare, competition, Christmas time, Thanksgiving time, holiday time, all those kinds of things can be Mindshare. Competition. I remember earlier in my career doing some work for a beer company, and in the afternoon, they would roll in this great little wagon with snacks.
Now there'd be pretzels; there'd be peanuts, there'd be nachos. It was tremendous. But because they were a beer company, they rolled in a little bucket of beer for folks. It was wonderful, and they, they, they brought it in a little red flyer wagon. It was just awesome. But they rolled that in, and then I still had to teach class, mind share competition.
I flew into Washington DC on nine 10 to teach a class, and then we had nine 11 mind share competition. Anything. That's in your listener's mind that you are competing with is your mind share competition. I want you to do your best, do your best to reduce that as much as you possibly can. Now, on the other side of that coin is a concept of what I call mental real estate.
Here's what I mean by mental real estate. How much of your listener's mind. Do you own? So here's an example. Your inbox, an email comes in from Bart, and you have, you think this, I would rather die than open Bart's email. Or you get a voicemail, and someone says, Hey, bill, this is Bart, and you go, I'd rather hit delete than listen to that voicemail.
That individual has no mental real estate in your mind. In class sometimes. I'll give the example of guys, I found out that one of our presidents is speaking locally and I thought it might be interesting to go listen to them and I'll say, I'll just pick a president, Bill Clinton, and I'll say, all right guys, how many of you would like to go listen to bill Clinton speak?
You don't have to go. But since we're talking about communication, I thought it might be interesting, and I'll get them to raise their hands, and there'll be a couple of people who will raise their hand. And I'll say, all right, we don't even know what he's talking about, but he has mental real estate in your mind, but you have perceived value on what he might bring.
And then I can bring up another politician, and I'll say, who wants to go? And nobody raises their hand. And I will say, no mental real estate. The point of the concept is this guy, what kind of mental real estate are you establishing. You establish that mental real estate every single day. It's not just when you do what you call presenting or public speaking; it's how you handle yourself in an email.
It's how you handle yourself on a phone call. It's how you handle yourself walking down a hallway. It's how you handle yourself in an elevator. Everything that you do either builds your mental real estate, or it destroys your mental real estate. Your ability to communicate is one of the most important skills that you can invest your time and your effort into.
Guys, if I could write the script, if I could have it my way, every 17 and 18 years old would get this kind of information, I think it would dramatically change. Their college presentations, for lack of a better term, it would change how they communicate. When someone says, why should I hire you over everybody else?
And it would dramatically change how they communicate with their spouse or their significant other. Well, I'd ask you to do today is to take some of the information that I shared with you, some of these simple principles, and start applying them into your everyday conversations. Apply them into your small group meetings, apply them to your zoom sessions or a webcast.
Apply them into your one-on-ones, apply them to your conversation with your children. I began. It will; I believe it will begin to revolutionize how you come across. You'll begin to people get people to say, wow, that was interesting, and tell me more, and in my mind, more importantly, you'll build your mental real estate.
One of my favorite quotes from John Maxwell was this. That leadership is nothing more or nothing less than pure influence. Every single day. The way we communicate influences people. We influence our children, our customers, our clients. We influence our friends. Your ability to communicate is the one thing that will set you apart from everybody else.
Guys, I can't thank you enough for your time today. I look forward to seeing you the next time at the remarkability Institute.