Alper asks Matt what he means by the phrase “The Four Things.” If you want to “Pareto” your presentation or speech (do the 20% of the things that will get you 80% of the improvement), these are the four things to tackle first.

Episode transcript:

Alper Rozanes
Matt, today, I want to pick your brain on something that you mentioned a lot in trainings, and I like it, but I want to go a little bit deeper on and that is the four things in terms of presentations. What are they? Tell me.

Matt Krause
Well, the four things, it’s kind of like the initial filter, you know, when a client comes to me with a project, these are the first four things that I work on. And the the reason that we start with these four things, is that they’re relatively simple. And you get the biggest mileage so you know, like the Pareto 80/20 principle? These are the few things I guess. So I guess, with the to use the 80/20 numbers, these are the 20% of the things that will get you the 80% of the improvements. So these are the few things that will get you the most improvement.

Alper Rozanes
Okay, that sounds good. Yeah. So what are they?

Matt Krause
Well, the first one, and I’m not going to go into it into too much depth here, because we’ve beaten it to death on this on this podcast. So we won’t need to do it again today, is is to tell a story, to tell a story with your presentation.

Matt Krause
And one thing that I did want to mention about the telling a story is that one thing that I see often it’s kind of I think of it as a micro story, you know, you can either you can tell the macro story, which is, you know, boy meets girl, man in hole or something like that, with your overall presentation, that makes for a nice way to quickly sketch out an outline.

Matt Krause
But then there’s a, there are often many opportunities within the presentation, that, to tell a micro story. And what I mean by micro story is that, for example, one thing that I’ll see often is that, you know, I do work with technical engineering presentations, you know, whether it’s a software engineer or you know, a construction engineer or something like that, so kind of a technical presentation.

Matt Krause
And one of the the underutilized there’s a diplomatic way to put it, the underutilized opportunities that I see is, to tell a micro story will be in the photos, because often in the slide presentation, there will be a few photos like for example, photos of how a pole is attached to the ground. And it can be attached to the ground, you know, with bolts mechanically, it can be attached mechanically with bolts, or you can just put down a layer of glue. And there are advantages to each one.

Matt Krause
And that’s an example of an underutilized opportunity. Because you’re showing these pictures, you’re showing your audience’s pictures of a pole. And they might be they might not know, I mean, you know, in your head, why this picture of the pole is in there. But your audience doesn’t know. And so you’re missing this opportunity to tell them what’s the story of this pole? What is this pole telling them about your USP? What is this story about? What is this pole telling? What story is this pole telling about the way that your company does business?

Matt Krause
So that’s one thing, then the first thing is tell a story.

Matt Krause
And the second thing is to reduce your ahh count. And the reason that I mentioned that is that, as we all know, intellectually, it’s much easier to listen to somebody who is not saying “uh” all the time, like for example, let me give you an example. I’m going to the store.

Matt Krause
Option number one is Um, I’m, um, going, um, to the, um store, um. And option number two is I’m going to the store. You know, which one of those two options is easier to listen to?

Matt Krause
The second one, the one without all the ums. And the pushback that I often get and it’s it’s an excellent pushback is that the client will often say, Well, I need the ums to think, I need that time to think, because often the client will be speaking you know, English is not the client’s first language or it’s and it’s not the first language of the audience. So nobody in the room, it’s not the first language for anybody in the room.

Matt Krause
So the opportunity to think is extremely important. I mean, nobody wants an engineer who doesn’t think people like engineers who think, you know, if you’re going to drive across a bridge, you want that bridge to be built by an engineer who thinks.

Matt Krause
So the argument, I need time to think that’s a perfectly good argument. The thing is it When you are putting a bunch of these filler words the ahs and the ums into your speech, every time you say one, every time a sound comes out of your mouth, your audience members have to, even if it’s just for a microsecond, they have to their brain has to think for just a microsecond, “Is this a word, and if not, I can just discard it. And if it’s if I can discard it, it’s not a word, so I can discard it. And now there’s a hole. And I’ve got to go through the mental effort of connecting the words that came before it with the words that came after it.”

Matt Krause
And now the audience is having to do a lot of mental work and your audience is having to do twice as much work just to get the same point. If you said the exact same thing without the ahs and ums, then the audience would have to do half the work to get your message.

Matt Krause
And the next pushback that I get is usually, you know, how do I do that, which is also an excellent question. And I just, I recommend, uh, speaking of filler words, there’s one for you, “uh,” I recommend, I recommend becoming comfortable with silence.

Matt Krause
And it’s hard to become comfortable with silence, it’s not natural to become comfortable with silence. So the exercise that I’ll start with is the client will utter any one sentence, any sentence, it could be anything, I am turning on the light, or I’m shutting the door, or I’m going to sleep now in any any example sentence.

Matt Krause
And then as part of the exercise, then, you say that with spaces in between the words, so I’m going to the store becomes I… am…, and nobody in the world is actually going to speak like that, but through the exercise, you become more used to the idea of putting silences in between your words and with the fact that nobody’s going to die if you do that.

Matt Krause
Nobody’s going to die if there are silences between your words. In fact, they’re probably going to love you for it, because it gives them time to think, which is what they need, and what your ahs and ums are robbing them of the opportunity to do. So that’s the second thing is to reduce your ah count.

Alper Rozanes
I agree. One question before we move on to the third one. Why do you think we feel uncomfortable with silence? I mean, I have a theory, but it’s more limited to maybe the Turkish culture where I grew up in.

Alper Rozanes
Because ask any Turkish person probably whether they heard the words during primary school or elementary school or high school, when they were asked a question in front of everybody in the class, and when they couldn’t answer the teacher asked what did they swallow their tongue in a way that would really, you know, make them suffer at that moment? So we, as a culture may be traumatized by that? I don’t know if there are things like that in the US.

Matt Krause
Oh, yeah.

Alper Rozanes
There are?

Matt Krause
Well, maybe they’re a little different. But the endpoint is the same is that things are expected to be flowing out of your mouth. And if things aren’t continuously flowing, mouth, you’re stupid.

Matt Krause
And that’s the baggage that people come away with is that if I am not speaking at all moments I am dumb. And it takes a while to get over that baggage because you have had decades to build that baggage into your way of thinking. And often that baggage can be stripped away in just a couple of sessions. But it still takes a couple sessions. It’s not you know, a one and done sort of thing, stripping away that baggage.

Alper Rozanes
You’re making a mini exposure therapy during the trainings about the silence.

Matt Krause
Yeah, it’s basically an amateur version of exposure therapy. Shall I move on to point number three?

Alper Rozanes
Before that, let’s remind, let’s remember, the point number one was using a story structure, and the second one was reducing your filler word count.

Matt Krause
And number two, yes, reducing your filler word count.

Matt Krause
And so number three is make mirror neurons work for you. And you know, mirror neurons are, it’s basically a fancy way of saying humans do what other humans around them are doing. You know, if you are sitting across from somebody and your shoulders are facing them square on, it’s highly likely that their shoulders are going to face you square on. If your foot is pointing at them, it’s highly likely that eventually their foot is going to end up pointing at you.

Matt Krause
Yeah. So and one way that you can make this work for you is becoming less nervous, because if you’re up there and you’re nervous, then your audience is probably going to become nervous too. If you’re scared of your audience, they’re going to be scared of you. So whatever you want your audience to be feeling about you, you need to be giving off that air, or giving off that vibe.

Matt Krause
And the first one the most common one of course, since this is giving a presentation or public speaking is being nervous. So that’s the first hurdle to overcome, is to not be nervous. And that’s a very hard one to overcome. And actually, for a lot of reasons, it’s completely unnatural for a public speaker to be not nervous. So it’s completely natural to expect a public speaker to be nervous.

Matt Krause
But one way that you can reduce the effect of that is just by practicing a lot, practicing your presentation a lot, practicing your speech a lot, practicing way more than you think is necessary.

Matt Krause
And the result is that when it’s time for you to get up and give it, your brain will not be occupied, you know, 80% by thinking, Okay, what am I going to say next, it’ll be occupied, you know, 10 or 20% by thinking about what am I going to say next.

Matt Krause
And so you’re basically by practicing a lot, you’re reducing the brain space that you need for your presentation. And that brainspace, the excess or unused brainspace can just revert to the things that you’ve already been practicing all your life.

Matt Krause
I mean, you’ve been practicing all your life, like how to speak to your wife, your children, your friend, you know, at the bar, or whatever, and how to, how to talk to people at a party, how to use your hands. These are skills that you’ve been practicing all your life.

Matt Krause
But if you’re, if 80% of your brain is occupied, just by remembering the things that you’ve got to say next, then there’s very little room for that stuff. So that’s why we practice a lot is to make room for that stuff. That’s the third thing.

Matt Krause
And the fourth thing is to use vivid language. And this is very, very rarely something that the client can do or even lead, it kind of requires an outside person to do.

Matt Krause
And so what we do is, we’ll take what I call a baseline, which is the client delivering the presentation. And so so now I’m talking a little bit about my my work process. We’ll take a recording of the client giving the presentation.

Matt Krause
And then I’ll, you know, get a transcript of that client giving a presentation, using you know, whatever tool, I have a gazillion tools that I use to make transcripts.

Matt Krause
So I’ll get a transcript, and then I’ll go through that transcript, and I’ll do what I call combing or cleaning. And I’ll go through that transcript. And I’ll say, Okay, well, here’s a word and a more vivid way to say that is XYZ.

Matt Krause
And the reason we do that is that if you get up there, and you give your speech or your presentation, and you use dead or uncolorful words, then you know, five minutes later, or when your audience leaves the room, they’re going to forget what you said, they’re going to forget you.

Matt Krause
And when you’re doing a pitch presentation, that’s not the that’s not the effect you want, you don’t want them to forget you. Whereas if you use vivid words, then they’ll those vivid words will rattle around inside the heads of the people who are in your audience.

Matt Krause
And even after you have disappeared off the stage, even after they don’t see you anymore, they’ll still be thinking about those vivid words.

Matt Krause
And let me give you a quick example of how that would look. Let’s let’s talk about a door. A door. The door closed quickly. That’s the unvivid way of saying it, or that’s the plain way of saying it, the door closed quickly.

Matt Krause
If you comb through that sentence, again, you might say the door slammed shut. And when you use that phrase slammed shut, then people can imagine like the sound of the door slam, yeah, the sound, there’s the sound of the door slamming shut, there’s the rush of air of the door slamming shut. There’s maybe some anger behind somebody who pushed the door shut, slammed the door shut quickly.

Matt Krause
So there’s, there’s, there’s some images, there’s some sounds, there’s some emotions involved. And none of those things were involved in the previous sentence. And so when your audience leaves, or when you leave the stage, those emotions or those images or those feelings or those sounds are going to remain or are more likely to remain in the audience’s heads.

Matt Krause
So those are those are the four things that I, the four initial filters, telling a story, reducing the ah count, putting mirror neurons to work for you, in other words, practicing a lot. And then using vivid vocabulary or vivid language, those four things.

Alper Rozanes
Great. And you use these in almost every client interaction that you have in the training, right?

Matt Krause
Yeah, pretty much every single client, 100% of the clients are going to be run through this this filter. How are they doing on these four things?

Alper Rozanes
Okay, that’s great. Well, thank you very much for sharing those tips and the content.

Matt Krause
You’re welcome. My pleasure. So I will talk to you next week, then.

Alper Rozanes
Yes, take care.

Matt Krause
Alright, bye bye. Bye bye.