In this One Question Friday episode, Sam and Shaan answer a listener who’s giving their first conference talk and wants to know how to make it good. They cover five key principles: treating public speaking as a learnable skill, getting into peak physical state before going on, depressurizing the moment by treating it as one of many practice reps, having a back-pocket story to open with, and making your audience feel something rather than just delivering information.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
One Question Friday: Public Speaking [00:00:00]
Shaan: All right, it’s One Question Friday, where we answer one question from one of the listeners. If you want to submit your question, go to mfmpod.com and click the little microphone to submit your question.
Shaan: This one came in through text message. Somebody said, “Hey dude, I’m giving my first talk at a conference. I got invited to speak at this conference. I’m giving my first talk. I’m excited about it but a little bit nervous.” He’s like, “I know it’s gonna be fine, but I just don’t want it to be lame.” He’s like, “You and Sam are really good at doing these kind of public speaking things. What’s the trick? What do I do to make this good? What do I do to make this not just the same old same old?”
Shaan: So I thought we would give our take on what we do to make public speaking fun and interesting. What do you got?
Public Speaking Is a Skill [00:01:00]
Sam: I would say first — public speaking is a skill. A lot of people think, “Well, I speak all the time and I speak in public, therefore I’m probably going to be decent at public speaking.” It doesn’t really work that way.
Sam: Some people are talented and they are just better. Gary Vaynerchuk’s like that — I think he’s just better than everyone else. But for most people, it’s a skill. So I highly recommend reading a book on it or Googling “how to be better at this.” It’s a skill set, and there are tricks.
Sam: I don’t think this is the best time for us to just say all the tactics, but a few of them are really about storytelling — and it’s very similar to stand-up comedy, which again some people are just born better at, but for a lot of people you just have to learn and try. So buy a book on it. I think that’s actually the easiest first step.
Shaan: Is there a book you’d recommend, or is that not top of mind?
Sam: Yeah. What’s the one that you and I were reading on storytelling — by the guy who won all the Moth contests? Story Worthy, I think?
Shaan: Yeah, I think Story Worthy was awesome. I had a bunch of takeaways from that. And then there’s something like Speak Like a TED Talk — the TED Talk speakers guide or something like that. That’s quite good. But Story Worthy I actually thought was pretty phenomenal.
Three Things: Peak State, Practice Rep, Back-Pocket Story [00:02:30]
Shaan: So I’m gonna tell you what I told him. And by the way, he had also said, “I want to bring that showmanship that you guys talked about” — so he’s picking up on what we talked about. So I said, all right, three things.
Shaan: Number one: be in peak state. It’s very easy when you’re nervous to go kind of inward — you’re low energy, your mouth’s a little dry, your shoulders are hunched over. Fundamentally, as soon as you walk out there, people are gonna read your body language. They’re gonna read your energy and they’ll start to respond to it. When somebody comes out and they’re electric, you can feel it — they’re excited, they’ve got a bounce in their step, you’re paying attention because you want to know what they’re all about.
Shaan: So just make sure before you go out there, do some push-ups, go run a wind sprint, do some jumping jacks — do whatever you’ve got to do physically to literally just get blood flowing and be in a high-performance state. Think about it: an athlete doesn’t go on the field until they are warmed up and ready. A singer, a dancer, a performer — they’re not going to go on stage until they’re warmed up and feeling loose. It’s the same thing. If you’re going to go talk, you want to feel loose and warm, both in your voice and in your body. So that’s the first thing — get the physical part right.
Shaan: The second is: remember, this is the first of many. You’ll do this 500 more times. So this might feel like a big deal now, but a year from now this will be an afterthought — you won’t even really remember how it went. Just treat it as a practice rep, one of 500 times you’re going to do this. It’s a chance to experiment with some things. That’ll depressurize this moment for you, and it’ll teach you that — like you said — it’s a skill, and to get good at any skill you need practice reps.
Shaan: I said the last one is storytelling. Have a back-pocket story. What’s a back-pocket story? It’s like — you started the podcast we just recorded with, “Dude, I gotta tell you this funny story. You know there’s something that happened to me today before we did this — I was walking through the park and these nannies were getting attacked by this guy, and I’m in my fanny pack, and me and the fanny pack and the nannies, we all fought these guys off.” Something like that. It doesn’t need to be a hilarious, extreme story like that. It could be anything.
Shaan: It could be like, let’s say you’re at a conference. You might be like, “You know, before we start — I just talked to this guy in the back and he asked me a really interesting question. I want to ask you guys this too, because I honestly think we might be really split on how we answer this.” And now they really want to know what it is, and I’ve taken control of the scenario and I’ve made it already an interesting talk — before I even jump in and say, “Hi, my name is this, I’m from this, and today I’m here to talk to you about blah blah blah.”
Shaan: So have a story in your back pocket. It could be fun, interesting, controversial — whatever. Something that’s going to get them. And the trick is: you need to be excited by it. If you’re excited by it, they’ll be excited by it.
Content Is the Transfer of Emotion [00:06:00]
Shaan: Remember the lesson from — what’s her name — Miss Excel? That woman who basically teaches you how to use Excel better, but somehow that’s going viral on TikTok. Why is something as boring as Excel tricks going viral on TikTok? One of the reasons is she comes out with this crazy energy. She seems really excited by this stuff, and it’s just enjoyable to watch her do it, even if you’re not even going to use Excel that day. It’s just enjoyable to watch somebody do that.
Shaan: And she says this in her interview: “Content is the transfer of emotion.” I’ve got to get myself into the emotion of being excited about something if I ever want you to be excited by it. I have to get myself to be fascinated by something if I want you to be fascinated by it. And she’s like, “I just get myself into that state, then I run to my phone, click record, and start to do my thing.”
Shaan: That’s actually what it is — content is the transference of emotion. What most people try to do is they think about what they’re gonna say, which is intellectual. That stuff is just words. People don’t remember the words that you said. They will remember if you had some emotion and some energy behind you. They’ll remember the vibe. They’ll remember how you made them feel. And they’ll take away just a few nuggets out of what you said. Most of what you say — 90% — will go in one ear and out the other.
Make People Feel Something [00:08:00]
Sam: That’s a thing I tell people all the time. I told you this early on — when I was maybe six months ahead of you in terms of content — you were like, “How do I write these articles?” And I was like, it’s not really about what you want to teach. It’s about what you want to make someone feel.
Sam: And oftentimes when people give presentations, they think, “Well, I’m talking about this — like, I’m talking about mosquitoes and how they cause malaria in Africa, and this is a really serious thing.” And it’s like, yeah, it could be serious. But you need to weave in some stories. You need to do some crazy thing. And it’s no different than a comedy show or a play where you capture attention. Yes, you’re doing it about something important and it isn’t just entertainment, but you have to leave that in there.
Sam: One of my favorite tricks I’ve seen is when they talked about malaria — Bill Gates opened a jar and mosquitoes flew out all over the place. He goes, “I’m going to tell you about how many people die from malaria, which comes from mosquitoes just like this.” And people are like — you know, that’s showmanship. And it’s the same with any talk you’re doing. You don’t have to do something that extreme, but it starts with the story, it starts with an emotion.
Don’t Lean on the Slides [00:09:30]
Sam: And then the last thing: you have to treat your audience — regardless of how smart they are — kind of dumb. A lot of people put way too much emphasis on the slides. In my opinion, most talks should be able to be at least a B-level without any slides. The slide maybe makes it go from a nine to a ten.
Sam: It’s like when you’re in a band — it’s about how do you make this song great? It’s not about how do you make this one little guitar solo awesome. The guitar solo exists to make the song great. The song doesn’t exist to make the solo awesome. It’s the other way around. So it’s about my performance, and it just so happens that this PowerPoint is just one piece of that. I need to treat people as though they’re not going to read the small text, and it’s up to me — through my words and my body language — to make them feel something. The slides are just an extra added effect.
Wrap-Up [00:11:00]
Shaan: That’s right. All right, I think that’s great. There’s a ton more — I feel like there’s probably 10 more things. But really the reality is you don’t need to know all the things if you just do the things we talked about. Which is basically: show up with energy, have some showmanship through either a little magic trick or a story or something like that, and treat it like practice — because you’re going to need to do this 100 times before you’re any good at it. If you just internalize those three, you’re going to be ahead of 80-90% of people.
Sam: Practice, not the game. We’re talking about practice.
Shaan: Yeah, we’re talking about practice.