Why I love speaking in public (and how I came to love it.)
Last week I was invited to talk about blockchain technology at a small event in the Innovation Center at BBVA. This invitation happened rather naturally as I interjected a couple of times at a prior event they hosted in the bank’s headquarters in Madrid a couple of weeks prior.
This was the third time I was invited to talk to an event in about a month. Not having a lot of time in my hands, I accepted two and rejected one; preparing both talks the day before, making the poor organisers feel “uneasy” until the very last second. The talks went great, people were met, meetings were set up, and more invitations followed. And I’d lie if I said I didn’t love it.
But the general consensus seems to be that people hate it. People fear it, dread it and flat-out despise it. In studies, speaking in public is determined worse than death. With a skill so useful in life, I’ve always wondered how come we Spaniards were never taught how to present or speak in public at school like they do in other, more participative systems, such as the UK.
Luckily for me, speaking in public has become a second nature. I must have given over a hundred talks. From 20 mins to 1h 45m and from groups of 6 to 150 people at industry events; with themes varying from pre-prohibition Absinthe to company culture, the science of flavour or the common problems found in startups. I genuinely enjoy speaking to a crowd, despite -or perhaps, because of- the rash prior to start. Because don’t fool yourself, there are two kinds of people, those who get nervous before speaking in public and those who lie about it. The key is what you do with that feeling.
For quite a few years, speaking to groups of people was an essential part of my role as a Brand Ambassador; travelling from country to country, communicating features, benefits, history and heritage of our brands to anyone who’d listen, from press to entrepreneurs, to influencers, to restaurateurs, to barmen and chefs.
Are big groups worse?
While presenting to groups of up to a 150 people, I found more challenging the smaller crowds, where interruptions are more common and disruptive, while conversations are more likely to spark. Less script and more improv. Eventually, one gets to master those too.
At bigger events, I learned to listen to whatever speaker was before me, and read about the ones after, so that during my talk, I could create a feeling of coherence and connection by mentioning common points, in order to create a sense of community that sometimes didn’t exist.
Image-rich style
I learned that presentations with too much text were directed at the presenter and not the audience, so I dumped all my text. I learned that the larger the print, the better, Steve Jobs famously said 80point prints. We can not read and listen at the same time. Give your audience one word per slide. Maybe two, but no more than a handful.
In more recent times, Jeff Bezos is also famous for popularising this style of presenting.
Have Fun
I learned to use shocking images and make jokes, to make sure I keep people’s attention. Here’s Job’s presentation on the first iPhone ever… he built the audience… and then showed them this.
Silences
As a person who speaks faster than average, I learnt to slow down and pause, because the audience can’t listen and process at the same time, they need time and silences. Use them wisely.
Learn from others
I learned many things from Yago de Marta, among them that your presentation is as rich as the gaps in it. The gap between the slowest and fastest you can talk. The gap between the loudest and the quietest you can speak. The gap between the highest pitch voice and the lowest tone with which you deliver. All consciously and cleverly used to emphasise something. One thing.
From another amazing presenter (Mr. Jacob Briars) I learned to enumerate the topics before starting to talk about them. And at the end, to remind the audience of the things they had learned. He’d say:
Tell them what you’ll tell them. Tell them. And then tell them what you’ve told them.
If you’re interested in knowing more, I’d recommend anything by Carmine Gallo.
Get closer
Communication’s ultimate goal is to deliver a message. “How?” is a different matter. Sometimes, the message can get lost because of the vehicle we use. The words. We should match our audience’s language and terms. It is of little use, that we deliver a message with such terms that our audience doesn’t understand. In the best case scenario, we won’t deliver our message, in the worst case, we’ll be perceived as pretentious and opulent.
Passion
And then there’s one thing I learnt that’s more important than anything else in the world. One must talk about the things that he’s passionate about.
Emotion is such a big part of discourse, the preparation before the talk is hours and hours of highlighting, creating and merging content from a dozen places. Repeating it in your head, looking for better words, better images, bettering yourself. So don’t do this to yourself, if you’re not passionate about whatever it is you’ll be talking about. We, your audience, will notice.
