680 Becoming a Master Speaker and Presenter

"PERFORMING IS ABOUT CONNECTING” - MICHAEL I don’t know if you know this, but I used to be TERRIFIED of speaking. I couldn’t get up in front of my class to give presentations. I was even scared to read in front of a few friends. Any time I had to speak before a big games, I was trembling. Public speaking is one of the most important tools, no matter what your career is. You need to be able to properly present yourself so you seem confident, and people trust you. Thanks to some training I was able to overcome this fear. Today, I get on stage in front of thousands for people and make a lot of money doing it. For this episode, I decided to give you some tips that can potentially change you life like it has mine. I wanted to share some of the lessons I’ve learned on what makes a great presenter, which is why I put together this new mashup for you. This one is really powerful. I hand picked some of the best words of wisdom from people like Michael Port, Bo Eason, Carmine Gallo, and Sean Stephenson. Don’t miss this one. I know you’ll be able to take a lot away from these guys, so get ready to take notes. This episode could easily change the trajectory of your life. You’ll be learning all about what makes a great speaker , on Episode 680. In This Episode You Will Learn: Why it doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or extrovert (6:33) How to be a better performer (7:32) Where criticism comes into play (10:07) How to find your voice (11:44) Where you should start your stories (12:15) How to get people to connect with you (14:30) What to do if you don’t think you have a great story (16:38) How to find your pacing (19:18) How to properly use body language (22:12) How to leave someone breathless (23:29) The thing that makes other people trust you (24:48) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 680 on becoming a master speaker and presenter.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:32Lewis Howes?

  John Ford said that you can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart. One of the most important skills I've ever developed is public speaking. It was once my biggest fear. I stressed about it. I was terrified to get in front of five people, to stand up in front of my classmates, to stand up on a stage, to stand up in the football field. It didn't matter. I was terrified of it. But through lots of practice and training, I now speak on massive stages, guys, tens of thousands of people, and get paid tens of thousands of dollars for it. And I've had the chance of getting coached by some incredible speakers throughout the years.

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  So on this master's episode, I'm bringing you wisdom from previous interviews with some of the best speaking coaches in the world. This is such a powerful skill to develop. I cannot emphasize this enough. When you learn to communicate what's on your heart to the world or to one other person, that's when you can start to make a change. That's when you can start to see things develop. That's when you can start to manifest what you want. Those who can learn how to communicate are some of the greatest leaders in the world. So imagine if you can just learn one or two little things that you can be better in your day-to-day practice of communication and speaking and presenting. It will change the trajectory of your life when you learn to communicate

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  and get that message across better to the people in front of you. Featuring some clips from Michael Port, who's an incredible speaker, Beau Eason, Carmine Gallo, who talks about TED Talk speeches and really how to present on TED stages. Also, Shawn Stevenson, incredible and inspiring speaker and coach as well. Before we dive in, big shout out to the fan of the week. This is from Erica L. Makeup, who said, This is an incredible daily inspiration. I get so excited for each new episode release and continuing to listen to past episodes. I love how passionate you are, Lewis, and truly bringing on amazing content to inspire us, motivate us, and challenge us to become

• 2:36Lewis Howes?

  the best, authentic person we can be. So, thank you so much, Erica L. Makeup. You are the fan of the week. And again, we've got our 3,300 five-star reviews. If you guys haven't left your review yet, you can right now on the Apple Podcast app. Again, big thank you to both of our sponsors. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode on the masters of speaking and presenting.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  I want to try to separate these two things because introvert, extrovert doesn't necessarily make you a better performer one way or the other. But if you are very shy, or you label yourself as shy, and you don't like people watching you, maybe that's something else. And that's okay. That's not a bad thing. You don't have to change yourself and all of a sudden start having this big, huge personality. That's definitely not necessary. Because ultimately, performing is about connecting. That's what it's about. And all of us can connect with one person or 1,000 people. So, when I coach, one of the things that is really important to me in all of our heroic public speaking training programs, is that

• 3:50Speaker 01

  you will never see one of our speakers look like another speaker. Like, nobody would watch anyone that I've trained and say, "Oh, that's a Michael Port method teacher, speaker." It's just not going to happen. Because it's an art. It's an art. Performance is an art. And each one of us is an individual. And what I do with the books, deal, the show, and in all of our training, is find the individual and give you an opportunity to express yourself as an individual. So, one performer may move a lot on stage, and that's the way that we're going to direct them and coach them. And they use their physicality in really extreme ways, and it works very well for them. But another, we may have them very still for

• 4:34Speaker 01

  most of their presentation. Because- That is a much more powerful place for them to be. So there is not a one size fits all approach to any kind of performance. Performance is an art and often the performer's job is to break the rules. Not necessarily to be controversial or just to break the rules, but to try to create something better in its place. And to that end, I think we have two options. We can be critics or we can be performers, but I don't think we can be both.

• 5:09Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean critics?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Well, I think that there's a place for people who are professional critics. You know, someone who in the New York Times, they review movies and plays. And I think there's a place for that. But if you spend any time on Facebook these days,

• 5:27Speaker 01

  many people have a lot of very strong opinions about what other people do or don't do. And I think one of the reasons that we're so afraid of performance is because we're afraid of being criticized. And if we spend our time criticizing others, how are we going to get up there in front of others and take any risks?

• 5:49Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying people that do criticize a lot of the time usually aren't the ones taking the risks themselves and?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  No, all right, let me ask, let me ask you a question. When's the last time you wrote a negative review about somebody's podcast, book or anything else? Have you ever done that?

• 6:04Lewis Howes?

  I don't know if I ever have.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. And when I ask all my colleagues, and I really, I very rarely use absolutes, but every colleague at a high level that I've asked the same question to, they've said, hmm, no, I've never done that.

• 6:17Lewis Howes?

  Too busy creating.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Exactly right. So one of our students called up Amy and he was really upset because somebody blasted his video, you know? Oh, you're like Joel Osteen and blah, blah, blah. And I don't, you know, I don't know why the guy hates Joel Osteen, but you know, for whatever reason, this guy just blasted him. And his video is fantastic and he's a wonderful speaker. But rarely will everybody like what you do. But he took it so personally. And I asked him, who's the guy? He's like, well, I don't really know him that well. I said, okay, what does he have to do with what you do for a living? Nothing. What does he have to do with the people that you're trying to serve? Nothing. But yet it's still so powerful when other people criticize us. And look, there are, there are two types of critics.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  There's the external critic and then there's the critic in your own head. And when you criticize yourself, you tend to hear the external critics even more.

• 7:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, those are the, like, I always call them the people in the cheap seats who like to push other people down to lift themselves up. Yeah, yeah, so we don't really have any time for that. It's not interesting to us. We're trying to make things because anybody can break things. The question is, can you build something better in its place? And that's what we're focused on. But if you can work on silencing those voices of judgment in your head, the ones that tell you you're not enough, you don't know enough, you'll never be enough. What do I have to say that already hasn't been said? If you can quiet those down and you won't hear those voices out in the cheap seats quite as much. And you don't need to be different to make a difference. In our world, and when I say world, I mean our industry,

• 7:58Speaker 01

  often there's this real strong push to try to be different than other people. And somehow, the idea of being different has been, is conflated with being unique, yourself. As if, as if that's what you're supposed to do. Be different, be different, be different. And, and I don't think trying to be different is a way of finding your voice. Trying to be more honest is a way of finding your voice. And if we focus on being different, then we will feel either like a fraud or we'll feel insignificant because we don't feel that different.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  If I'm unknown and I'm speaking in front of an audience, which happens all the time. So I'm speaking in front of people who's never heard of me. They don't know what, any of my background. The first place I start is a defining moment. And if you think about storytelling throughout your life, like you and me and everyone who's listening, has grown up with story. That's how we were taught, that we've watched movies, we've been read books, we've been watching TV shows. Everything is story to us. So we know as a human being, one of our greatest attributes that's natural to us is we understand story and we connect to it. We love it.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  So if you think back of every great story that you've ever heard, or any great movie that you've ever seen, it starts in the middle of the story. Do you notice like, think of a movie right now, like think of like a movie, like an action movie with Tom Cruise, like say Mission Impossible, one of those kind of movies. Every time, the first frame of film that they show, isn't Tom Cruise getting ready to do something, it's Tom Cruise.

• 10:06Lewis Howes?

  Him doing it.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  He's swinging from a rope.

• 10:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  He's being punched in the face, they're taking his children, they're taking his wife. He's in the middle of the story.

• 10:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  So that is a defining moment in his life. So same is true for you and me. So when I'm in front of groups that don't know me, the first thing out of my mouth is not, "Thank you," or "It's great to be here in Detroit." The first thing out of my mouth is, "When I was nine years old, I had a dream." So I drew up a twenty year plan. That sentence is in the middle. Now, you know me like you know your next door neighbor because of one sentence. Because like it's a defining moment. It's a moment when I'm nine. So when you say that to people, when you let people in, like say you, say it was you, Lewis, and you said to me,

• 11:04Speaker 03

  first thing out of your mouth, you come on stage and you say, when I was thirteen years old, I was in love with a girl named Cindy. And I asked her to the prom and she said no. You start a story like that. That's a defining moment that shapes your life forevermore. So right when you do that, when you get that intimate and that personal right out of the gates, people connect to you because now they think they're you. They think because you, everyone has that kind of pain and everyone has that kind of defining moment. So the minute you say, when I was nine years old, I had a dream.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Everyone in the audience and everyone listening is now thinking of themselves when they were nine. And what dreams they had and what dreams where they, where they have heartbreak. So that is really the key. The more personal your story, the more effective it is, the more universal it becomes.

• 12:08Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Because people, and this is, this, you know, you and I were raised, you know, in a, in a world that says, you know, don't brag about yourself. Don't talk about yourself. It's not about you. Well, that's just not true. Look, a great storyteller shares himself or herself so that other people can participate.

• 12:28Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  So, so when I say, um, when I was thirteen, my, my girlfriend Cindy dumped me. Everyone goes, everyone listening goes, oh, man, I remember that heartache.

• 12:39Lewis Howes?

  I got dumped, yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  Yep. And so you have, now you have intimacy and connection and trust that would have taken you five years to build. And you have it in one sentence.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  That's what I'm talking about. So when I teach, when I teach business people and entrepreneurs, that, that opening line, what is it? So you can lay out some connective tissues so these people can start to co-create with you. That's what you want.

• 13:07Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Very cool. Yeah, because it's all about building that bond and that trust and that likability and that relationship with anyone else coming in contact with you. So I think that's extremely valuable. But what about people that feel like they don't have a great story or don't have anything to talk about? What do you say to them? Or how, or how do you help them discover it?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  That's true of almost everybody I've ever taught, everybody I've ever taught. That's true of myself. And that's true of every person that I've ever encountered. They think that the first thing that we do as human beings is devalue our own story.

• 13:41Lewis Howes?

  Or compare to someone else's story.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:44Lewis Howes?

  It's not good enough.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Your sto-, yeah, your story is so dramatic. It's just not dramatic to you because for you, you've lived it. And so it seems mundane and ordinary to you because you lived it. But often, like I, this one kid got up and I swear this is the first thing that came out of his mouth, Lewis. And he thought it was nothing. But to everyone else, they fell off their chairs. He got up and he said, "The second time that my dad broke my arm",

• 14:17Speaker 03

  that was the first sentence out of his mouth.

• 14:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Now, he thought, because that was his life, he assumed that that was everybody's life.

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  It was normal.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Everybody's experience. Yeah. But so us in the audience were falling out of our seats going, "Did he just say that?"

• 14:38Speaker 03

  But to him, it was mundane and ordinary because that was his life. Now, when I talk about playing pro football, I played pro football and therefore all my friends that I kind of grew up with and that I knew, all the people that I knew, were also pro football players.

• 14:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  So to, so to us, it wasn't anything big deal. It was just like, "Doesn't everybody play pro football?"

• 15:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  And then you get out in the regular world and you realize that that's very rare.

• 15:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  And it's dramatic to people to tell them that. Well, the same is true for every person that I've ever met. They've got super dramatic, moving stories. They just don't know it.

• 15:20Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Because they try to encapsulate their whole story. Like, I'm fifty-three years old. So if I was to break down my whole fifty-three years, that would be a long, boring, stupid story.

• 15:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  But what I break down is the most defining moment, like when I was nine and had a dream.

• 15:38Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  That, that was dramatic.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  I don't want people to get too focused on the number of words.

• 15:50Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  But you bring up a good point. So let's go back to Bryan Stevenson. Bryan Stev- you know, I'm urging your listeners to watch Bryan Stevens. His delivery is the best delivery I've ever heard. It's very natural. Why? Because like I just talked about, it's, it's like he's delivering a conversation over dinner. When you're having a conversation over dinner, you're speaking in a natural rate of, rate of speech. It's kind of like you and I are talking now, sort of a little bit more natural. It's not a formal PowerPoint presentation. And now turning to slide twenty-eight, uh, where it's very slow and plodding.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  I analyzed Bryan Stevenson's rate of speech. It was about a hundred and ninety words, which makes sense because an audiobook, for example, is more like about, I think it's about a hundred and twenty words. But an audiobook, and I've, I've read audiobooks. I've had voice instructors or voice directors in the studio with me when I read the audiobook. You're supposed to slow it down a little bit. You're supposed to slow it down because people are only hearing it through one channel, audio.

• 17:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  So it's important to kind of slow it down a little bit, but you don't want to slow it down so much. Right, that people lose attention, but you also can't talk this fast. If I'm talking really fast in an audiobook, you're not really going to pay attention, you're not going to capture a lot of thoughts. Right, so that's too fast. So a hundred and ninety words a minute for just a casual, more face-to-face conversation makes complete sense. That that's completely uh sensical, it just makes logical sense, which is why people like Bryan Stevenson speak at about a hundred and ninety words a minute. Then you get people like Tony Robbins, that's more like two hundred and twenty-five words a minute. Right, so and again, we're not, most of us are not Tony Robbins.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  So I I can't talk like this, like Tony Robbins, really fast, really fast. I if I do that in a presentation, I'm gonna look like a phony because I'm trying to be somebody I'm not, but also it's too fast for just a public, for a typical type of presentation that most salespeople would have or something like that. So you gotta think about how how quickly am I delivering, what's my pace? How many words per minute am I delivering? So I I don't think people should get hung up on, okay, now I'm gonna pace my time myself, that type of thing, and see how many words. But I do think that it's a a pretty good role model. Start looking at people like Bryan Stevenson

• 18:30Speaker 04

  and realize that the way most of us speak when we're pitching ourselves or delivering a presentation is is very stilted and slow and plodding compared to a much more natural and authentic rate of speech.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. And you know, the verbal delivery is obviously important, but there's another thing that's important or could be distracting, which is the body language and the use or lack of use of hand movements and gestures and things like that. And you talk about, one, the power sphere and why you should use the power sphere. And can you talk about the importance of that, but also easy fixes for common body language mistakes?

• 19:17Speaker 04

  Sure, absolutely. Uh, one of the best. Examples of strong body language is Colin Powell. So, and that doesn't surprise me, you know, Colin Powell, he's a great military guy, right? Great military leader. And I find that military leaders are awesome speakers. There's a viral video right now, I think of a Admiral.

• 19:39Lewis Howes?

  From Texas, right?

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Texas, right.

• 19:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 19:42Speaker 04

  So, military commanders are great communicators. Uh, so Colin Powell has magnificent body language. It's what I call commanding presence. It's that kind of presence that just draws you in and makes you feel like this guy's in control.

• 20:01Speaker 05

  I believe to leave somebody breathless, you need to have that courageous vulnerability where you're willing to tell them, I am struggling with being human and here's how I am dealing with it. And you just share that openness. And I think when we do that with people, if, if they're ready, they're, they're, they lose their breath for a moment because they go, whoa, I could do that.

• 20:28Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 20:29Speaker 05

  You know, I, I could be that vulnerable and what would my life look like if I was that vulnerable? And, and it's funny, by letting people know your weaknesses, they see you as stronger. It's very counterintuitive because when you only lead with your strengths, people don't trust you because everybody's got strengths and we, we would put them up front. We put our best foot forward. But what about things, they're not really weaknesses, but like they're perceived weaknesses, you know? I mean, our shortcomings, our, our vulnerabilities, our fragile, our frailties, you know, our fragileness. And when you're willing to say like, here's where I'm, here's where I'm still working on myself. People are like, wow, Lewis, I get that and I hear you.

• 21:13Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 21:14Speaker 05

  But when you just want to share your strengths, people are left breathless. They end up kind of not trusting you.

• 21:21Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 21:22Lewis Howes?

  So would you say vulnerability is one of the most powerful qualities you can have?

• 21:26Speaker 05

  I think it's certainly one of the most powerful qualities to help you connect with another person.

• 21:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 21:32Speaker 05

  Because human beings, we really, we wanna know what people are really all about so we can trust them. We wanna know their agendas. And when somebody only shows us the strengths and their winnings, then we're like, but yeah, that's a part of who you are. But there's more. There's your disappointments, there's your failures, there's your mistakes, there's your, your, your times when you've tripped, fell and hit your head. Like, show me your boo-boos. You know, show me your alleys, your ouchies, you know, and, and, and when we're kids, we, we show people our boo-boos.

• 22:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 05

  We, we go, oh, look at my skinny knee, you know, will you kiss it? Like, look, look, look at what I did over here. Look where I ripped my jeans. But as adults, we get to the point where we're like, oh, no, I'm, I'm fine. I don't ever, I don't have any scars.

• 22:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 05

  But we do, we, we do have scars.

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. If you enjoyed this episode, all about becoming a master speaker and presenter, then please take a screenshot, share with your friends on Instagram stories, post it on Twitter and Facebook, at Lewis Howes, and let me know what you enjoyed the most about this. You can check out the full show notes at lewishouse.com/680. And if this is your first time here, thank you so much for being here. Make sure to click the subscribe button over on the Apple Podcast, on iTunes, wherever you are listening to this. Become a subscriber because each week we bring out a new episode on a topic, an idea, bring out a person who is going to help you unlock your inner greatness.

• 23:05Lewis Howes?

  And as John Ford said, "You can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart." The mission for me is to help you continue to share your message from your heart to the world. Come on back, be a subscriber. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.