Are you breaking the fourth wall as a
speaker? Here's why you should do it and
how. On this episode of the Speaking Your
Brand podcast.
More and more women are making an impact by
starting businesses, running for office, and
speaking up for what matters.
With my background as a TV political
analyst, entrepreneur, and speaker, I
interview and coach purpose driven women to
shape their brands, grow their companies,
and become recognized as influencers in
their field. This is speaking your brand,
your place to learn how to persuasively
communicate your message to your audience.
Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your
Brand podcast. I'm your host, Carol Cox.
This is going to be a fun episode and
hopefully get you thinking differently about
the presentations and talks you give, no
matter the topic, no matter the industry, no
matter if you're speaking to audiences of
20, 50, 100, 500 people or more.
So what exactly is this fourth wall and what
does it mean to break it?
And should you even do that as a speaker?
And if so, what does that look like?
Well, the fourth wall is the imaginary wall
at the front of the stage that separates the
fictional world, which is the performance
that's happening on the stage from real
life, which is us as the audience sitting
there in the theater.
When you attend a play or even a movie,
you're an outsider in the audience, watching
the characters live their lives on the stage
or on the screen.
They don't know you exist.
And that's the way theater has been done, at
least contemporary theater and contemporary
movies for a long time.
However, I've noticed recently that more and
more plays, live performances, and even
movies are breaking this fourth wall between
the fictional world of performers and us,
the audience in real life.
I recently did a whirlwind ten day trip to
Europe. We went to four cities in ten days.
It was like our mini Amazing Race and we
went to London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and
Paris. And while we were there we went to
four different shows.
So I'm going to talk about what I've noticed
about these shows.
Some of them broke the fourth wall and some
of them didn't, and the impact that it had
on us as the audience.
I'm also going to talk about the opening
ceremony of the Paris Olympics, and the
recent energy and enthusiasm for Kamala
Harris's campaign for president.
Now, you may be wondering, what do these
shows and the Olympics opening ceremony and
Kamala Harris's campaign have to do with you
as a speaker? Well, that's exactly what
we're going to talk about, because I want
you to break the fourth wall in your
presentations and talks, because that's how
you're going to be a more impactful speaker
and a more memorable one, which will get you
more leads for your business and referrals
for more speaking opportunities.
Now, strategies like breaking the fourth wall
are just one example of how we work with you
to uplevel your speaking skills.
Whether it's in our online Thought Leader
Academy or in our in-person workshops.
Right now, we're enrolling for our Thought
Leader Academy.
You work with us to get clarity on all of
your ideas, to develop your thought
leadership message, and to get your
signature talk created.
We guarantee it.
We do the work with you.
You're not left to do it by yourself.
And we know that you have a lot going on,
which is why you do the work with us in that
one on one VIP day, where we sit down
together for three hours on zoom, and we
create your talk from beginning to end using
our proven framework.
And during those weekly group calls where
you're with the other women who are in the
program so that you do the work during all
of those calls. So expect to spend about 1
to 2 hours per week.
Again, we know that you have a lot going on,
which is why we have really streamlined and
accelerated the process to get you the
results that you want.
Here's a couple of examples of women who've
graduated from our Thought Leader Academy.
One of them is Karen Keen, who was on the
podcast last summer, and she said that I
know first hand how well Carol and Diane
helped women tell their stories on the big
stage with confidence, clarity and
meaningful impact.
Last year, I worked with them in the Thought
Leader Academy to develop my keynote speech,
and I received a standing ovation.
Here's what one of our other Thought Leader
Academy grads, Angela Crawford, said.
She said that our signature talk framework
is incredibly powerful going through this
process, and the Thought Leader Academy
helped me create my own framework and
signature talk to share my message in an
engaging and impactful way.
Carol and Diane teach and model how to go
beyond sharing information to creating
transformation. This is what we want for you
too. You can get all the details about our
Thought Leader Academy, and you can schedule
a zoom call with us by going to speaking
your brand.com/academy.
Again, that's speaking your
brand.com/academy. Now let's get on with the
show. Let's dig in to what this fourth wall
is, and why it's important for you as a
speaker to break it with your audiences.
The fourth wall is that imaginary wall
that's at the front of the stage that
separates the fictional world.
So that's the performers who are on the
stage or on the screen from real life, which
is all of us in the audience.
When you attend a play or performance or
you're watching a movie as the audience,
you're an outsider watching the characters
live their lives.
They don't know that you exist.
And that's really been the premise of
theaters and movies for a long time.
However, as I said in the intro, I've
noticed that more and more plays,
performances, and movies are breaking the
fourth wall. So let me give you an example
and then why they're doing this.
If you watch the Barbie movie that came out
last summer, there's a part in the movie
where the narrator, who's played by Helen
Mirren, makes an aside to the filmmakers
about their choice to cast Margot Robbie as
Barbie. There's a scene where Barbie is
crying, and she says something to the effect
of, I'm not that pretty.
I don't look like a stereotypical Barbie.
Now, you know when Margot Robbie looks like,
especially in the Barbie movie, she looks
exactly like a stereotypical Barbie.
So us as the film goers, the audience, we're
probably thinking to ourselves, ah, really,
you are beautiful and you look just like a
stereotypical Barbie.
So Helen Mirren cuts in on that scene as a
narrator and says, note to the filmmakers,
Margot Robbie is not the person you would
cast. If you want to make this point, not
only is it funny, but also it lets us, the
audience, know that they get it like they
understand how ridiculous it is for Margot
Robbie playing Barbie to have said that
line. So why are performances and movies
doing this? My hunch is that first,
audiences desire more interactivity.
We want to be more involved in the
experience. Think about social media.
We are co-creators of so much of what we see
online. It's also fun to feel in the know.
Like that example from the Barbie movie
where we're watching it. We're like, uh, of
course, uh, Margot Robbie looks like a
stereotypical Barbie.
And if they had an addressed it, it would
have felt, well, weird and incongruent.
But when they do address it, it makes us
feel like we're in the know.
Audiences are much more sophisticated
nowadays than they ever have been.
So what does this have to do with you as a
speaker? Your audiences are also more
sophisticated than they have been in the
past. They want acknowledgement of what they
already know, and they want acknowledgement
of what they're already thinking, and they
want to be part of the experience.
I'm going to share with you examples of what
I've noticed recently, and what we can take
away from them as speakers.
So specific strategies you can do.
First, let's talk about Kamala Harris.
Wow, what a turn of events.
It feels like a year of news happened in a
week, and I am so excited to see how much
energy and enthusiasm has sprung up on the
internet, but also in real life.
So many of us just took a big sigh of relief.
We were allowed to like, exhale and feel
hope. We could feel hope once again.
And all these Kamala memes that are going
around, people doing TikTok match ups of
coconut trees and Charli Xcx's Bratz song.
It's been fun.
I think that's what we've been longing for
for so many years.
We just want to be able to have fun.
And also there's this feeling of collective
effervescence. Collective effervescence is
when people come together and they start
synchronizing like they start getting in
sync. You see this at concerts when people
are dancing and singing together.
And that's why I think Taylor Swift's
concerts have also been so successful.
People are longing for this sense of
collective effervescence.
Just in the week since, Kamala Harris has
become the presumptive Democratic nominee
for president, her campaign has raised over
$200 million.
Unbelievable. Tens of thousands of
volunteers have signed up, so clearly this
energy and enthusiasm has been there.
It's just been waiting to have an outlet.
Also, if you think about these Kamala memes
like the coconut trees and her love of Venn
diagrams, it's really about people embracing
her authenticity, but also about Kamala
Harris being willing to be authentic, being
willing to be a little quirky, and to
embrace those quirky aspects of her
personality. And I have more on this idea of
authenticity coming up in an episode in a
couple of weeks. The next example is that
when we were in Amsterdam, we went to see
pink in concert.
I have been following pink probably since
the mid 2000.
I love so many of her songs.
We happen to be in Amsterdam the same time
that she was holding her concert.
So we said, okay, sure, let's go ahead and
go. It was in one of their football arenas
and it was so much fun.
So of course it's an incredible show.
Dancers and acrobats.
And she does acrobatic moves herself.
And she's been doing that for a number of
years. But she and she still does them and
it's so impressive.
And it's just and talk about fun.
It was just a lot of fun. It's called Summer
Carnival. That's the concert tour she's
doing right now, and it's a lot of fun.
But what's great about pink is that she's so
real, she's so authentic, she's so relatable
that during a couple of parts of the two
hour plus show, there was there was one part
where she came back out after a costume
change, and she basically came out and said,
okay, my costume is not snapped all the way
because we couldn't get it to snap in time
before I had to come back out here.
So I'm feeling a little weird right now and
it was just so funny.
It was so relatable that at one point she
was really sweaty and she's like, can
someone please get me a towel?
So when you know, someone on the side of the
stage got her a towel, right?
And it's like, that is real life.
Like real life is not perfect and airbrushed
and not everything goes off exactly like you
want it to, like. Stuff happens.
It makes me love her.
And that experience, being at that concert
even more, she also interacted with people
in the audience and the gifts that they have
brought with her. So she would see that they
were holding up gifts and she would go, and
now she wouldn't just take the gift and then
just kind of put it on the side of the
stage. She would actually start having a
conversation with them about their gift and
all this stuff. So it was just it was a lot
of fun. I know lots of other artists do this
too, and I feel like the reason they do this
is because audience are expecting to feel
more a part of the experience.
When we were in London, we went to see a
Shakespeare play at the globe, which is the
reproduction of the original Globe Theatre
that Shakespeare actually performed in way
back circa 1600.
The play that was on was Much Ado About
Nothing. It is so playful.
It is so fun.
It is so funny.
And I think a lot of times when we were in
school and we had to study Shakespeare and
we just had to read it on the page,
obviously the language feels really odd.
It feels dense because it's not the way that
we talk nowadays, and a lot of the humor
doesn't come across for some of for his
comedies. But this production of a
Shakespeare play was the best we've ever
seen, and we have seen a lot over the years.
We've probably seen at least 30 Shakespeare
productions, and this by far was the best
actors were coming through the different
kind of floor part of the audience with,
with, uh, props.
As they were coming up onto the stage, they
were interacting directly with people in the
audience. They were singing, there was
dancing. It was so fun.
Again. It was so funny.
It really felt like how it was when
Shakespeare was alive and people would go
see the plays. Then I feel like we've lost
so much of that authentic audience
engagement. When we were in London, we also
went to the opening night of the musical
hello, Dolly! In the Western Theatre
District, the star is Imelda Staunton, who
played the Queen in the last few seasons of
The Crown. So extraordinary actor and singer
and performer now, this musical was
technically perfect.
Impressive stage production.
There is parts of the stage that removing
every actor was perfectly choreographed and
exactly the spot that they needed to be in,
and again, it was technically perfect, but
it lacked, to me at least, heart and soul.
It felt sterile.
So even though I was impressed with their
performances and the acting and the singing
and the dancing and all of the technical
wizardry, we might as well have been
watching a film on a screen now.
I still love theatre and plays, and I like
being in the audience. And there is
something different about being at a live
performance versus watching a film.
But I just feel like there was so much
distance, like there was the lack of
intimacy between us as the audience and what
was going on on the stage.
Now contrast this with the musical called
And Julia that I saw on Broadway in New York
last year. It's a take on the Romeo and
Juliet storyline, except Julia is the center
character instead of Romeo, and it's really
done a lot of it from her perspective.
And at the very beginning of that
performance, the performers addressed the
audience directly.
They actually talked to us as the audience
to let us know that they know that we exist,
and we're all in on this together.
So again, as I mentioned, this idea of the
fourth wall is that there's the fictional
world on the stage.
There's us, the audience in real life, but
neither the twain shall meet.
So the performers on the stage never
acknowledge the audience.
But you're starting to see that they're
doing that now. Again, I think it's because,
number one, audiences really want this
interactivity. But number two, because they
know audiences are sophisticated and they
want to be acknowledged that they're there.
The last example that I want to mention
before we get into specific strategies you
can use is the opening ceremony of the Paris
Olympics. Now, I was just in Paris for
Bastille Day, July 14th, which I absolutely
love. My master's degree, my PhD
dissertation are in French history.
I've been to Paris four times now.
I love the city.
I love walking around the city.
I was really rooting for them.
For the opening ceremony, there was a behind
the scenes documentary that I had watched
about everything that was being put together
for the opening ceremony, and I loved that
the organizing committee wanted to be
creative and different and use the river
scene to showcase the beautiful architecture
and art and history of Paris.
So I loved all that.
But as I was watching the opening ceremony,
it felt like a film production, which is
fine, but that's not really what an opening
ceremony of the Olympics is supposed to be.
Now, of course, the rain did not help.
I felt so bad for them, but it was more than
that. What makes the Olympics, especially
that opening ceremony so special, is the
interaction and integration of everyone who
is there, the athletes as well as the
audience. It's supposed to be a big party,
plus a concert, plus a welcome to the
athletes. So what was missing from this
opening ceremony was that collective
effervescence of all the athletes from all
of the countries together being in the same
physical space, cheering each other on and
just having that sense of the collective.
So now that I've given you these varied
examples of performances and plays and
movies that have broken the fourth wall,
plus what it looks like when they don't,
here are some specific things you can do in
your presentations and your talks.
Number one, bring humor and fun.
Your audiences are longing to laugh and to
bond with each other.
No matter your topic, there is always a
place for appropriate humor.
And this is one of the key things that we
work with our clients on.
Number two, bring yourself to your talks,
your personality, your quirkiness, your
sayings, your stories.
If you have a saying or a story about
falling out of a coconut tree like Kamala
Harris does, put that into your talks.
Number three, make your presentations and
talks even more interactive than you already
are. I know you know about audience
engagement and audience questions and asking
for show of hands questions.
I want you to go even further than that.
And number four, say out loud what your
audience is thinking. Acknowledge where they
are. Oftentimes when I'm working with a
client in our VIP day, they'll say something
to me like, well, if I say X, what if the
audience takes it the wrong way?
Or what if they're thinking Z instead?
And what I say back to them is, well, say
out loud, well, your audience is thinking in
their head. Address it directly.
Let them know that you know and understand.
This will create more trust and connection
and empathy with your audience.
Just recently, I did a breakout session at a
conference called Teaching and Learning with
AI, where I share some of the ways that I'm
integrating AI with my students in the
business and marketing classes that I teach
at a university.
I was the speaker right before lunchtime, so
my session started at 12 noon and lunch was
at 12:30 p.m.
and this was on day two of the three day
conference. So about half way through the
the conference. So as we were getting warmed
up, I still had a minute or two before the
clock hit 12 noon.
I asked some questions about where people
were from and who was from the furthest
state away. And there actually was someone
from Alaska, and this conference was in
Orlando, Florida.
And then I said, okay, I know I am standing
between you and lunchtime, so we're going to
keep this as engaging and fun as we possibly
can. And then I said, how are you all
enjoying the conference?
Okay. Yes, you're loving it.
And I said, you probably feel a little
overwhelmed. There's a lot of ideas, a lot
of things that you've been shown.
And so what I'm going to show you today is a
framework that you can use.
So what did I just do?
I acknowledged that I'm standing between
them and lunchtime. So I'm going to make it
fun. I acknowledge that they're probably
feeling overwhelmed.
And so I hoped that they would use my
session in what I was going to present to
them as a way to provide context with
everything that they were learning.
I integrated humor right at the very
beginning, with the second and third slides
that I had, as well as about two thirds of
the way in and the way that I use humor were
kind of like inside jokes.
I found some funny GIFs that I showed on the
slides about that as teachers, how worried
we were when ChatGPT launched, but then how
excited I was as a marketer to use it, and
then a few more slides in.
I made a comment about.
I felt like I had outsmarted my students
until they outsmarted me.
So I planted a little suspense, a little
tease, and then I came back to that about
two thirds of the way through the
presentation and I said, okay, here's where
now my students started outsmarting me with
AI, and I had this funny video of a dog
where there had been someone had put a gate
around the stairs so that the dog could not
go up the stairs, but the dog very easily
found a way to get past the gate and go up
the stairs. The audience loved it.
They laughed at all of those very corny
jokes. Because here's the thing people just
want to laugh. Even if it's corny, they want
to laugh. So use these techniques to break
the fourth wall with your audiences, and you
will be a much more impactful and memorable
as a speaker. If you would like to work with
us to create your signature talk to tie all
of your ideas together, to integrate your
stories, to develop your framework, to
incorporate humor.
This is the work that we do in our Thought
Leader Academy. You can get all the details
and apply as speaking your Brand.com slash
Academy. We also have a one day in-person
workshop coming up in Orlando, Florida on
October 10th.
The focus is on storytelling, and your
delivery on stage is going to be so much
fun. You can get those details as speaking
your brand.com/workshop.
Again, that's speaking your
brand.com/workshop. Until next time.
Thanks for listening.