The Astrology Episode (with Aliza Kelly)

Welcome to the POTFOTER Podcast. You can find on references on POTFOTER.me, find everything about me, scan the QR code, go to RoyCalling.com, find my six shows, along with everything else I'm doing. Today, I'm delighted to be speaking with David Goldberg. Again, we had a fantastic conversation the last time. It's the founder, CEO, and chief edge officer of Edge Studio, which can be found at EdgeStudio.com. He is an internationally recognized voice director, speaking coach, author, and presenter who has helped over 10,000 professionals, sharpening their communication presence from C-suite leaders and politicians to authors, podgasters, and entrepreneurs. And today we're going to be talking about making a good impression and strategic war, which are very important, the latest to have you back in it. Thanks for having me back. I really did enjoy our first conversation. Thank you. So did I. This is also, I mean, I suppose making a first impression and the words we use. It's something that, because I've done the toast masters, done hundreds of speeches. And I was mentoring people and seeing it. I can see straight away, people who are loser, are they grabbed their attention? And it's the power of words and just how you do it. And I know you've got incredible experience. So where was your like to take this off? The first thing to talk about is truly the power of first impression. There is the craziest research done on first impressions. You should all go online and search this up. What happens in the first impression and how long does that first impression take? And some of the studies show that in a quarter of a second, just a quarter of a second, internally, we decide whether or not you like someone, whether or not you would trust them, whether or not you would want to do business with them. And for all the people out there who create podcasts, that means in that quarter of a second, your listener decides whether or not you're worth listening to. So first impression is super important. And over the years, I've looked at different ways to make that first impression stronger. How can you do right from the outset in a quarter of a second to let people know that, okay, you're worth my time. I've taken my time and I'm going to sit down and listen to what you have to say. It is so easy for people to switch from one podcast to the next or one TV station to the next or one song to the next. You need to do something so you increase your listener engagement and that can, to a very large degree, be done with your words. I call it strategic words, in fact. What words do you say up front that grab someone's attention and that's what I think would be super fun to talk about. And like if you would ask me, I would have taught maybe three seconds, ten seconds, but if you're saying half a second, I presume it's our intuition that's actually subconsciously doing this. Yeah. It has to be intuition, gut, DNA, hunches. I don't know what goes on in our bodies, but something tells us. And you know, when I first read that statistic, I thought, really could it be a quarter of a second, but after I first read that, I realized that as I go around in everyday life, I do make really swift decisions. It could be at the grocery store as I'm looking for something to purchase. I just quickly scan until something catches my eye. I might scan a whole aisle of ketchup bottles. I don't even eat ketchup, but like 20 kinds of ketchup. And it's probably within a second or two, I just kind of quickly scan and something grabs my eye. That means I'm looking at 20 different kinds of ketchup in a second or two seconds, but one of those bottles is going to grab my attention. Is that bottle of shinier, taller, shorter? Something about it just catches our eyes and same with people, same with music. I listen to even my kids when they are switching songs when they're listening to their, I was about to say iPods, which is such an old technology iPhones and they're looking for something to listen to. They're like one second, one second, one second. They just click around so fast. And yeah, we do make very, very swift decisions. And a lot of a lot of things go into that swift decision. It's your sound quality, your lighting, your camera angles. Those are things we talked about last time. A lot of it is your words. So again, yeah, let's talk about strategic wording. I think there are seven different categories of wording that we can talk about. So I'd like to list those seven types out and then go back and talk about each one. And I have some slides coming up. Number one. I think being interactive with your words is super important. Number two. Avoiding hedge words. Side note. Most people don't know what hedge words are and I will explain. The funny thing is earlier in this presentation, I used a hedge word and as I said it, I thought, oh no. But time and place for everything. Number three. Avoid the word but that's but with one T not two T's. By the way, number four. Use positive first word responses. Again, I will explain what all of this means. Number five. Avoid interrupting yourself. Number six. Avoid filler words. And number seven. Organize your content. Those seven things I believe are ways to strategically use your words. Do you maintain the listenership, the listening engagement of your listeners? So okay. Before I launch into number one, Roy, any thoughts, any questions? Well, what I was thinking because obviously we, whether our podcasters or people doing their business, bored audio and video. And I would think a smile as well would be important because if you see somebody who's going to look, you know, not as happy as the two of us, you know, it's like, it depends on the mood you're in, but you want to do something that's going to lightens your days. So I think even how you come across within the first second as well. Absolutely. Presence is a huge part of this. Yeah. Something I would love to talk about in a future episode. It's a, the, the areas that I study are three wording, talking in presence. Those three, those three categories are ultimately how we come across, how we come through, how someone perceives us. Those three are the, those three items are the big categories. Yeah. Absolutely essential. And so today we talk about words that second category of, of how we say those words is equally as important because you could have a great word, but say in a kind of a yucky way and it doesn't come across super nicely. It's like the word fine. The word fine is interesting. I could, for example, my wife could say to me, how do I look? I could say, oh, you look fine. Meaning she looks great today. She could also say to me, how do I look? And I could say, yeah, fine. And it doesn't mean nearly as much. Same word, it can have a very different connotation. So yeah, it is wording. It is how you say those words, which is called prosody and your presence. And those three things together equal how we come across, how we come through. Okay. With wording, the first item I wanted to talk about was being interactive. If you want to grab your attention, grab the attention of your listeners, make sure you are interactive. Does some degree you and I are conversing back and forth, which is super interactive. If you are on a podcast solo, then ask your listeners a question, ask them something that gets their minds spinning. And one short question can make that conversation interactive. However, there's something really interesting. You mentioned, well, you mentioned Toastmasters. I don't mean, I'm not putting down Toastmasters. Toastmasters and almost every other public speaking coach, truly, all of them out there talk about being interactive. And beginning a presentation with a question. This is interactive. It pulls in people. But I kind of feel a little differently sometimes. A lot of the questions that I see people use at the beginning of a podcast are questions that the listeners could not possibly answer. And when you ask a question that no one else can answer in order to grab attention of the listener, there's no way that because there's no way that they can answer that, then they have to say to you, well, I don't know. And you say, well, here's the answer. And the way that comes through is that you are a show off. And one way to turn people off is to show that you are a show off. I could have started this podcast by saying, guess how many people don't smile when they begin a podcast? There's no way anyone out there could know the answer to that question. And maybe I've researched that. Maybe I haven't. But regardless, if I ask you a question that you can't possibly know the answer to, then when I tell you, ah, the answer is three million, then it's just me trying to be better than you. And what I'm doing is I'm setting myself apart from my listeners. I can't imagine why a presenter is. Whether a podcaster, a keynote speech, a public speaker, I can't imagine why anyone in that position would want to set themselves apart from your listeners. You want to be engaging, you want to be interactive, you should not set yourself apart but instead join them. So ask a question that people might actually know the answer to or something that could take a logical guess at. Again, it's a great way to begin a conversation, ask a question, but make it something that they can join in and make it a conversation. So there's another thing as well that I've seen people do on what it is, is they ask a question in this straight, "Gwyn, you have to give a few seconds for your listener to contemplate the answer because you've lost me if, if, like for example, if you had said about the three seconds, that was the question. And just when straight into you and just left, you know, few minutes people kind of, you know, we're within a second or two they have an answer, but sometimes people don't even give the answer." Yeah, I reviewed a presenter think it was last week. And in her presentation, as I worked with her, in her presentation, she kept asking questions to herself and then answering them. So for example, she'd say, "So why am I here?" Well, I tell you why I'm here. And later on she said, "So what do I have to talk about?" Well, I'll tell you what I have to talk about. And that was. That's a lot to that. Yeah, they do. Yeah. It's become sort of a common way of speaking. It may feel good to say it that way, everyone, but it doesn't come across good to the listener. And that's the key thing. Unless you pull out a popus, then it looks okay. If you don't have what. Sure. I'm not doing a sheet of that part. Yeah. Repeat that more clearly. Oh, was it? Or an organized issue? Yeah. It is a. It's really important, everyone, when you're giving. When you're recording a podcast, giving a speech, giving a presentation, a customer presentation, an investor pitch, a media interview, an elevator pitch, when you're leading a seminar, speaking with a perspective client, when you're on an interview for a job, in any situation when you're talking, in your words are important. Be interactive for sure, but in a friendly, easy way that people can converse with you. That is just absolutely important. Remember, don't set people apart from you. Bring them in. Join them. Okay. The second item on the list. Actually, let me go back right. Any other questions or things to talk about? I mean, if we're talking, it would even say, "Stay" or whatever. Because sometimes people, they're just sitting position. You know, like, I mean, a mob is going to, like, forward like that. You're standing. That's the set up you've got. But you'll see people, and I've seen it in interviews. I mean, I've interviewed lots of people even when I was like, "You see people like that?" And the same with the podcasters. And it's like, "Not only your diaphragm, but it's just just a little bit wrong." Yeah. There's so much to that. One thing when you are online, as we are, think about your square. Make sure that your head fills up that entire square. Yours does. And you have an amazing background. When we got off the podcast last week, or I think it was earlier this week, in fact, Monday of this week. Monday of the week. After the podcast, they said, "Right, I really like your background." The display, like, is great. My background simulates a recording studio, which is what I spend my life in in New York City. And so we all have backgrounds that should support us. Also think about where your hands are. Right, when you use your hands, we see your whole hands. And that's good. Sometimes people position their cameras and their angles. And so all you see are fingertips coming up. I'm trying to simulate that. Like, here's, you see my fingertips just. And so you see like this, all the time, little fingertips going up and down. And that's really distracting. So make sure that you do use your body. But either set up your camera. So when you use your hands, you see all the hands. Where you don't see hands at all. It's weird to just see fingertips. Like that. And just as you're on the camera, what I had this week, and it was strange, because newer cameras, it kind of reacts and it zooms in. So the person was talking to me. And she done something next to the camera, zoomed right in, so there was like, in our face. And then later I kind of went up. But then I could see if she was trying to move her hand movements to get it back, because it didn't look great. So sometimes people with the best technology, this times I done a year, but it turned off that feature. But it doesn't solve it well, unless you know how to use it. Yeah. The auto focusing or auto movement, I guess we'd call it. Auto movement. It was just zooming in. It was all clear. It was not a gut blur, but it just. It didn't look great. Yeah, I shut it off on every device I have. Yeah. I think in all the calls I've had, I had it on one call. I was on one call once, and I knew that'd be kind of moving around. And I thought, "Oh, let me turn it on." It was a unique call where I had to walk around, literally walk around. And I had a headset system on. And so it made sense. But that was the one time I've ever used it. Yeah, I would not use it right now. People get vertigo when you watch someone. When you're the person moving, you don't notice the camera moving with you because you are moving. But to the. to the. to the. to your. to your audience. Yeah, it's distracting. It relates to. The layer which projectly. Yeah, exactly. I remember those scenes clearly. Running through the forest and everything. Yeah. It's very fun analogy. Okay. So, the second thing I mentioned I wanted to talk about is they're called hedge words. Hedge words are words that lessen the certainty of something. Hedge words take what you intend to say and they make them less relevant. I don't know why you would ever want to do that when leading a seminar, running a podcast, trying to influence someone to buy your product, to hire you. Here, you want to be confident, come across confidently. However, hedge words, they. they distract from that. They weaken your. your message. Hedge words are words like, probably. And maybe. I probably should do that. Maybe I could do that. I. I should do that. I think we can do that. All of those words are hedge words. Interestingly, in the early part of the conversation, I used the word "think". I said, "I think there are seven things I want to talk about." And as I said, "I think I was thinking." That's when I should have said, "I believe," or "I know," or "I should have just said there are seven things I want to talk about." Listen, in fact, right to the difference of that statement. I could say, "I think there are seven things I want to talk about." Verses, there are seven things I want to talk about. Yeah, the sac one's 100 times better. Exactly. And I threw in the word "think" and I really work hard on not doing that. Interestingly, in everyday conversation, we all tend to use hedge words all the time. It's become second nature to us because it's so common. We hear other people do it. We're influenced from our parents when we learn to speak. Our parents parents did it, and their parents probably did it. I don't know how many generations back it goes. Nonetheless, it's hard. It's a very hard habit to break. However, when you are running that podcast, if you want to come across confidently, if you want people to listen to you talk for an hour or give a speech or a presentation and walk away saying, "That person is on top of their game." That person knows their stuff. I would trust that person. If I was an employer, I would hire that person. If I was shopping for a coach, I would hire that person as a coach to do business with them. If you want any of those things that happen, avoid hedge words. It's an amazing difference. That one example that we just ran through a moment ago. In a few minutes, I'd like to show you some slides and show you examples of hedge words. Examples of a sentence when there is a hedge word, a hedge word, rather. Then removing a hedge word, it's really pretty cool. So we'll get there pretty soon. Just start and die before you. What I've noticed is usually people that are doing their lives on Instagram and things like that. A lot of people, and I know I'm guilty of myself, they start off the sentence with "so." No reason for it. So today I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. There's very high percentage of people that use that. It is astounding. How many people do that? I often teach classes on how to interview. How to be interviewed, I should say. I teach this class to a lot of high school and college kids who are going off to apply for college interview, rather with college recruiters. They're interviewing for internships for first jobs. I teach interview skills classes for adults who are transitioning from one career to another or looking for a promotion. And 99% I guess say every sentence begins with a "so." It is amazing. And one of the things we talk about is the interviewer makes interview 10 candidates or 50 candidates for a job, 100 candidates for a job. And if each interview has 10 questions and you have 100 candidates, that's 1,000 times they ask a question and 1,000 times someone starts with "so." That answer is, it drives them nuts. In an interview, the potential employer can ask the potential employees employee, why are you interested in this company? Why are you interested working here? So I'm interested in it, and there's that word so. Yeah, it's interesting. Third thing on the list, get rid of your butts, seriously. But is a negative word. Yet we all use the word butt when we don't mean anything negative. - But why? - But why? - I will tell you, off the bat, the best thing you can do when you speak is change the word butt to the word and. For example, I could say this podcast is going well, I'm enjoying talking with you, right? But I have to get going. As soon as I say the word butt, there's a negative feel. If I was to say I'm really enjoying talking with you, and I do have to get going. I'm still communicating the same thing. I've enjoyed my talk with you, and now it's time to go, but there's no negativity in it. It makes a big difference. Someone at work might say to their boss when interviewing for a promotion, I've been working here 10 years, but I've been working really hard in those 10 years. Why not say I've been working here for 10 years, and I've been working really hard. Change the word butt to the word and. Transform how you come across. If you are keen enough to catch yourself saying the word butt, you'll probably notice that you say it in every paragraph. In other words, every three, four or five sentences, there's going to be a butt, and work hard to catch that and change it to the word and. And instantly things seem more positive. And when you are more positive, you come across way more effectively, way more engagingly, which is the point of all of this. You want these strategic words, so people do stay tuned, they do stay engaged, they do continue to listen. So change the word butt to the word and. There are definitely times to use the word butt. Sometimes you need to be negative. There's time, there truly is a time and place for everything. But I will venture to say that nine out of 10 times the word butt can be changed to the word and, and it does make sense. - So what you should do is when you say, slap yourself on the butt, and then you don't want to be doing that in public and that makes you to stop doing it. - Yeah. - And I used saw there, no, to stare up to that, and I was kind of just as soon as they said it, I was like, why didn't I do it? - Absolutely. It's the pattern, so it's when you say it so many times, that's the problem. I like the idea of slapping everyone in the butt. I think this whole society would walk around, hitting themselves in the butt all the time, yeah. We get echoes, like, okay. That's why maybe that's why the word butt for your rear end has two T's, or the echoes back and forth. That would be like, sliding down the stair banister, sitting sideways, you get like a sound. Okay, next thing to the list, the fourth thing on the list is positive first word responses. This is something I think you should all write down. Positive first word responses. Every time you begin speaking, try to use the positive word. Try to say something that is exciting, grabbing. Roy, if you look at the emails I send you, I bet every single one of those emails, every sentence begins, the first sentence, rather, of every email, because of the great or a yay or, I'm excited about talking with you tomorrow, just always something at the beginning. When I write emails or when I give speeches, I think about that first sentence. If I'm writing the email, I go back and I read it again and I make sure there's something positive in the beginning. I might write to someone and say, we need to speak at nine o'clock in the morning. But then I will go back and say, hey, good news, we have to speak at nine in the morning. I can't wait to share something with you. Something positive in the beginning, makes a big difference. That catches people's attention and it keeps them listening. If you don't begin with something positive, they are very likely to not read whatever it is that you have to say. If you want people to be receptive to your messages, if you want them to listen to staying gauge, use positive first word response. I know that not every situation is positive. And sometimes this doesn't make sense, but the vast majority of times, this is a great way to get in. If you have someone that you've been trying to get a message to and they just never respond to you, they don't call back, they don't write back whatever it is, try using a positive first word response, put something exciting at the beginning. I have a bunch of examples to show you when I share my screen. And that's fascinating. And what I was just like to say in that, I know it's not the force work, but based on emails and things, it's a brilliant tip. A couple of years ago, somebody said to me that we're signing emails with like yours since earlier, kind of regards and stuff like that. But when you're having the conversation, you never say something about that. So it's changed the degree things. And it's the same kind of thing. Sometimes it's different if you're writing somebody a letter on your boss, not a letter, which I don't know does anybody do anymore. But it's like, would you ever say yours since earlier, kind regards to me? You know, it doesn't. And I think keep it more human and like both the start and the end, I think have a big impact. Absolutely. I don't typically write emails by typing. I turn on my mic and I transcribe my emails because there's a huge difference between written English and spoken English. They're so different in so many different ways. For example, written English has lots of punctuation marks spoken English doesn't. Written English can be very formal year regards, best regards and things like that. Spoken English, yes, we never say that stuff. So I take pride in transcribing my emails because I want my emails to sound like spoken English, not written English. Even though I am writing them, I write them in spoken English. They are almost like two different languages. And I choose to come across in an informal everyday casual spoken way. My whole world is about spoken English or spoken language, truly. And so I want everything to sound like it's spoken. Yeah, so it's interesting. When you transcribe someone, when you transcribe someone talking naturally and you put it next to a letter that they had written by typing the words out, it has a completely different vibe. That email where they transcribe it is just fluid and way more readable. People do read an email that is written in spoken English. More readily than they would read an email that's written in written English. Interesting. Okay. And I think it's the same in a book actually, because sometimes those people that are speaking a lot and people love what they're saying. But they're not putting it into the words like that. They're putting it into the way they think people would like to be reading it. And there's even goals, traders, they do it wrongly. Like the person might transcribe like the way you said it, but then they put it into words the way it's would be in proper written English. And that's why some books aren't taking off like they should. Very true. In everyday conversation, we have lots of descriptive words. And we have lots of, let me think what else we have. Lots of colloquialisms, I'll use that word, contractions and colloquialisms. And when you add those to your written English, your written language, yeah, it does come across more, more favorably. It just is engaging. I'd like to share my screen events. Okay, Roy. Absolutely. This is your set. And I don't know what I mean when I'm sending engaging with people, whether it's WhatsApp or Facebook, I prefer leaving a voice message because so many times, people get the wrong impression from the way it's written. But like you said, like you were given an example earlier, when you say it in a nice way, in all that you don't mean it bad, but sometimes when the words are written down, they just, it's how they interpret what you've just written. And that's why I prefer sending a voice message. Right. Exactly. Yeah. When you speak, you can, you really control how your words land, much more so than when you write, because when you write, there's only one opportunity to convey your emotion. And that's the word choice. But when you speak, there's the prosody of your voice. It's your timing, your intonation, your spacing, your pacing, the emotion in your words, the hesitance in your words, the colloquialisms in your words, the spontaneity, the authenticity of human voice. There's so much more. And take that a step further. When you are in front of an audience, then you also have body language and how you come across. That's when you communicate the best. When you're, when you're visual with someone. Okay. On the screen is this very basic situation. A new customer asks if you can complete a project by Monday and of day. I get this all the time in our office. Clients call and they say, we have a recording we need done. Can you do it by tomorrow afternoon? We have a big project. Can you get that done by next Tuesday? And, and that's what clients typically ask. Sure man. Imagine everyone that you are asked the question and it's a really big project. You think and I want to use the word think here. You think you can do it, but it'll take some preparation. So here's what typically people would respond. Some people would say, yeah, I think we can do that, but it'll take some preparation. Let's examine this sentence for a second. Yeah, I think there is that hedge word. I think we can do it. I think the customer would feel a lot more assured that you could do it if you said, I believe we can do it. And it would feel even more assured if you said we could do it. That's a big transition from I think we can to I believe we can to yes we can. If you are selling any of you out there, if you sell a service, a product or you are a coach or whatever service or product you sell, think about how your words land to your listener to your customer. Further in this sentence is the word but there's that negative word but instead of saying I think we can do that, but how about say we can do it and it'll take some preparation that it will take is positive versus but it will take the moment someone here is but they think negative territory. I can't imagine why you would want to do that with a prospective customer or a prospective employer or if you run your own podcast and you have listeners, why keep going to the negative when you can keep it into the positive. The third thing here is positive first word response. The first word here is yeah, that's not a negative word per se but certainly there are stronger positive first words you could use like the word absolutely. If I said absolutely we can do that. That means a lot more to you then yeah I think we can do that. Absolutely we can do it and it will take some preparation. Watch this slide. Here it is say it better over here where my cursor is. Absolutely we can do this and I look forward to taking some time to carefully prep for it. What a difference that is. To take away the bottom here we are avoiding the edge words replacing put with and and using positive first word response. I always mentioned this number 98% you see here where my cursor is spinning. 98% is not an accurate number so you may question why am I putting it here. I'll tell you why I'm putting it here. It may be accurate but I'm not sure and that is a but that's a negative because I'm not sure. I went into search engines and I said how much more effective is someone when they speak and they avoid the word but and the search engines had some number like you're 120% more effective whatever the number was I don't recall and I asked search engines how much more effective are you when you avoid head words and there was a number and how much more effective are you when you use a positive first word at the beginning of your sentence and there was a number and I averaged out those three numbers and they came to 98%. That's not a scientific 90% that's a David Goldberg who doesn't know much about math averaging three numbers together when I got 98%. Before the number is you will be significantly more effective if you follow these things let me let me go to another slide here. The organization of the next slide is a little different. Your colleague asks, "Hey, why don't you go out after work?" So that's a very logical question. In fact last week my son said to me two weeks ago my son said to me, "On a Sunday night, can you take me and my friends to the mall?" It was eight or not a clock at night on a school night and I wanted to say, "Dude, no, it's eight o'clock at night on a school night." Like, malls closed anyway but I would never want to speak that way to my son and if you are out there and you have an employer who asks a question or an employee or a guest on a podcast or you were the on you were the host of a podcast or whatever the situation instead of starting with a negative word, how about you use a positive first word response. So think about that right now. What could you say if you did want to say to your employer or to your colleague, "I don't want to go out," but how could you say that in a positive way? Well, let me show you the slide. This is set up a little differently so it's going to take your eyes a moment to adjust here. The top line your colleague asks, "Hey, you want to go out after work?" And people say, "No, I have to work tonight." You could say, "Yeah, I'd love to." However, can we go tomorrow? I have to work tonight. In the first example here, "No, I have to work tonight." The moment you say, "No," to someone, they feel rejected. If I said to my son, "Dude, no, it's Sunday night." He feels rejected. As I said a minute ago, I would not want to do that to my son. So I'd rather say, "Yeah, I'd love to take you to the mall." However, they're closed right now. So can we go tomorrow? Can we go next week and win it's earlier in the day? Keep it positive. Let's go to the next slide. Fun example here. Hey, Laura, did you move the file? Okay, so I get this situation. I can't find something. Maybe you can't find your glasses at home. You say to someone in your home, "Did you move my glasses?" What do you think? Everyone thinks to yourself, "How does that person feel? How do your words land with them?" What message does that resonate with them? How does they feel? I'm sorry, what, right? You're accusing them, basically. Absolutely. Yeah. Blame. All you want to do is find your glasses. Do you need to blame someone? How about say, and here's it, by the way, the next slide has a different format. Hey, Laura, do you know where the file is? As opposed to, "Hey, Laura, did you move the file?" That makes a big difference. Now you're not accusing them of anything. And then, much more apt to help you look for your glasses or your file in this case. I'm going to jump to two more here to show you, and I need to skip ahead. I think most of us have to be reconditions to stop doing that because most people are guilty of what you're showing. And there's an incredible difference when you look at it like that. It is. This, this, this, this burden here where it says some say, "We're all taught to speak like this, and I have to work very hard to not say these things." And I know they slip out. I had a headgear where it's about before. They always slip out. And I always catch, I think they always catch them. And I try really hard. I believe that I've been working so hard at removing all of these things, but they're so common. I probably get rid of like seven or eight out of ten of them. I definitely catch myself throughout the day saying, "Hedge words or the word button, things like that." However, if you can get rid of the vast majority of them, it makes a big difference. So look at this example here. You're slammed at work, and it took you a while to get back to someone. That happens to all of us. You'll, you'll, you'll take a couple of hours off emailing and you look at it and you realize you have hundreds of emails and you don't get to it for the next three days. And boy, you feel bad and you finally write to someone and you say, "Hey, Bev, sorry for my delaying getting back to you." I had a lot of work. I fell behind. How does Bev, in this example, see that? How do those words land with Bev? She was in priority. Yeah, not priority. I have count on you. That's a shame. So let's jump to the next slide. Here's where my cursor is. Is what we just like that. Let's look at the next example here. Hi, Bev. I'm catching up on emails. And how fun to see yours. Now it's all positive. That's excellent. Here's another example here where my cursor is spinning here. Hi, Bev. It's been an amazing last two weeks. I've had a number of new projects come our way and now I'm excited to work with you. As opposed to apologizing, "Hey, Bev, sorry for my delay. I had a lot of work." Apologizing and whining. Keep things positive. Use this 90 percent. This number. So when I did look up those numbers, it is the positive spin increases things by 98 percent. Again, it's not scientific. That's this number that I'm getting when I look through Google. You'll be twice as effective, nearly twice as effective, 98 percent more effective by just changing a couple of your words. It's these three things. It's about adding a positive spin to things, using positive first word response. It is getting rid of the word, but it is avoiding hedge words. Let's do one for you. Based on my choices just there, you some say. And if my father, when somebody was saying, "Day say," it's a "Who's Day?" Use this the same thing. You're saying a conversation and you're saying, "Day say," it is as opposed to naming exactly or an argument. organization or something loads of people day Who's day when they're at home? Right, I've never heard anyone else say that you're the second person me and you Definitely you rock is the coolest person ever I don't need to say I'm also the coolest person ever But it's cool that you think about that. I find myself to be a word and nerd and like notice these nuances The fact that you noticed the word so being used so often, but you know that makes sense Because you interview so many people That you get the responses back you hear people starting their their responses with so and you you notice these these commonalities and It's interesting. I eat the word they I really try to avoid it Okay, last example your email wasn't working and you write to someone. Hey Ken. Sorry for my delay our email wasn't working so What is that take away? Ken is thinking You aren't good with technology. I Can't count on you and if your email is not working and it takes you days to fix How could I ever hire you as a as a as a a coach or a consultant or how could I trust that you'll ever be able to get back to me If you can't even fix your email your your number one mode of communication you can't even get that fixed in days Let's look at this next example here Say it better hey Ken. I'm glad I found your email. There's the positive first word response. I'm glad I found your email Look at the difference before we read on of the this second phrase the first phrase is high-cam In these some say sorry for my delay versus Here I'm glad I found your email Right from the outset the first impression is lifted And then you continue yeah for some reason it was in my spam folder anyway. I'm thrilled to get going on this It's adding a positive spin It's avoiding hedge words all of these things are key Now I'm going to show you one other type of scenario. I'm going to skip ahead a few slides here So as I skip ahead it's going to be very quick. Don't get vertigo here hang on I should do that anyway. I can say that I am guilty of writing I I've flirt both sorry. I might say I apologize, but that's so much more powerful It is it's something I'm going to start doing so I encourage everybody to do the same I am a big believer in apologizing when there's something to apologize for and otherwise not apologizing if you don't need to apologize It weakens your professional image if you need to apologize Then do it loudly boldly in front of other people so There's the so but it's okay sometimes We didn't talk much about At the beginning of his call we didn't talk much about what I do and my business is based in New York City And I have teams of people I have employees I have engineers and admin and all sorts of people and if I make an error I will say in our team meetings everyone That one was done me I totally messed up I have written a note so I don't do that again and I apologize I will say it out loud up front clear as day That actually strengthens your professional image it is when you try to avoid apologizing for something that you should apologize for when you really come across looking smaller That's when you erode you totally erode your professional image Take pride in apologizing and do it and and always include that why you won't do it again I you guys were all right. I was wrong I now now I know to listen to you next time and my bad sorry Always apologize when you should apologize otherwise don't apologize Don't apologize when there is nothing to apologize for So look at this example there's someone in my office who is always late for meetings He is an excellent employee Everyone has their one thing and his one thing though is being late for meetings He forgets them he skips them I always find myself wanting to say and I'm not going to say his name out I'm going to use a fictitious name here. I always want to say he John don't forget about our 10 a.m. meeting How do you think John feels if I say that That's great. I remember we have a 10 o'clock meeting this morning Now granted John should at some point say I know I know thank you for reminding me But I don't I don't want to make him feel bad I don't want to diminish him Because then he's not as comfortable at work He's going to go into the meeting and feel a little I know he'd been admonished and everything I don't want I don't want my employees to feel that way. I want to empower them So here's some other ways That I tell John about our 10 a.m. meeting Hey, I'm really looking forward to meeting you at 10 I might just say that in the morning John I'm really looking forward to seeing you at 10 in that meeting The second example here. Hey John. Thanks for thanks in advance for meeting at 10 Number three John here's the link for our 10 a.m. meeting in case I didn't send it to you That's a nice way to remind him Hey, by the way, John I have a heart out of 10 30 So if you can begin our 10 a.m. meeting a little early, let me know Hey John for our media 10 I'll be there a little early So if you are able to get there earlier that be awesome Hey John his 10 still good for you Those are all nice of him saying hey, don't forget about our 10 a.m. meeting It's just it's how your words land that is so important Okay, I'm going to come out of slides share here Okay We have two more things to talk about But do you want to talk any about this Roy? Any questions? Any comments? I mean what you've Thumb rolled on that is is fantastic and I mean other ways of doing that is when you're there You can say that I if someone's constantly forgetting that you want to be random I said I did that as well and what I'm doing now is I'm putting in a 10 minute reminder on my phones for every meeting like For example what I do on my podcast. I've got a 15 minute reminder of every single meeting Whether it's a podcast or whatever Because sometimes you get so engrossed in something and by me telling people that Or for for example even with a notification sometimes and telling people and then doing it in a nice way and then put it back on me and nobody feels attacked and We're so much alike it's crazy. I have my 15 minute reminders every morning. I look at my schedule My wife hears me do this in the morning if I have a 7 o'clock session and 8 o'clock session and 9 o'clock session I say into my phone. Hey Siri Turn on my 645 AM alarm. Hey Siri turn on my 745 AM alarm. Hey Siri and I go through the whole day every morning My phone is right next to me. It's like flashing now. It's funny Okay, there are two more things to talk about one is filler words When we talk about what words to say what words to use or what words to avoid When you are podcasting or speaking in any important situation filler words has to be at the top of your mind filler words are non words their utterances That really don't mean all that much words like um and Uh-huh and Like and you know I'm sure you're for people who use the word like a lot For example Ireland Most people say that after the sentence and it was faria. I still do it, but I tried to remove it You put on the way and you go you know what I mean now like It's like conversation with most people thus but they'll say and we all earned Here in the United States the word like is used in the midst of the sentence And I wonder if it is that way also in Ireland in addition to the end of the sentence Here people say things like Uh this weekend like we're gonna go Well, it's like our our younger son's birthday Uh, and so like we wanted to get some movie for him and his friends But like they they really didn't want a horror movie and like we wanted to find some dinner and like listen to all of these likes The other things so many people use our filler words as I mentioned moment ago the ums You probably hear this a lot also right when people answer questions a lot of people begin with a filler word like an um Every sentence All day long I listen to people do this on interviews when I interview people at work if we're hiring for position I ask a question and they either begin with so or um sometimes both I listen to people oh actually very fun example At the open a parent night at this our local school it was meet the teachers night And my wife and I went and we met all of our our older son's teachers The math teachers stood up in front of the audience like 50 parents 100 parents I just said like and Every sentence began with an um The teacher said um I'm your child's math teacher um, so this year we have a really fun set of things to talk about. We're going to start by breaking down algebra and then geometry. So I started saying to my wife, "Um, and she said, "Stop it, I can't hear. I like going to focus. I'm, um, a lot of people have a lot of arms. If you pay attention to yourself, you'll probably hear them. And when you use the word "um" on a regular basis, which typically is every three and a half seconds, tens of every three and a half seconds, a lot of people will say them. The credibility that you, how can I say this? The way, the amount of credibility that you convey, the way that your credibility, the way it's perceived, is maybe the better way to say it. The way that your credibility is perceived is estimated to be 25 to 35%, 35% lower. So you come across 25 to 35% less credible by saying, "Um, that's a big number. There have been these studies, which I encourage everyone to go online and look at. When an actor is told to say a statement, for example, at an interview or in any situation, even a public presentation, they give a speech, and one speech they use the word "um" constantly, and in the next speech, they don't use the word "um." And then the attendees of that audience are asked, "How credible is that speaker?" And that credibility, that credibility level drops so much when you use the word "um." Just by avoiding the word "um," or the word "like," or, you know, "can raise your credibility 25 to 35%, that's massive." The word you know does, that one really makes me laugh right. Because I listen to someone even being interviewed on the news, and they say, "So we wanted to share the story with you, because, well, you know, the way the government is doing this, you know, it's, I keep saying you know, and I think, well, if I knew, then I don't need to listen to you tell me. Obviously, I don't know, which is why I'm listening, so stop telling me that I do know. Like, it doesn't make any sense. The "you know" is in the States are huge. So what are the bigger filler words in Ireland? Here, it's so, you know, and like. What do you have there? You have "like" at the end of sentences. You know, as well. You know? Yeah. Okay, our arms is big in Ireland as they are in these states. They would be, yeah. Okay. And then I think I'll just. If we look at somebody that's kind of on TV a lot, whether you love them or hate them, because that's the way he kind of comes across, "Biddle Gates, I cannot understand for what he's doing." He never got professional speaking, because he is the world's worst. And I mean, you would pick up on this when you listen to him speak. It's like, it's cringe-worthy. Yeah, I am calling to give a lot of people reviews. I spend on average, I have three reviews a day right now. And reviewing people is very often. I time them, in fact. I time how often they say "umms" or "yinos" and after listening to a minute of speech or a video that I review, whatever the situation. I'll say, you've said in the one minute you've said, "You know, 17 times or 15 times, that's once every four seconds." And it is fascinating when people hear that from me. They typically say, "Really?" "Are you sure?" And we play it back and I'll point it out. And they realize and they say, "Holy crap, I can't believe how often I'm embarrassed." And they catch it. And it doesn't take long to start catching it on your own. You have to. As long as you're cognizant of your speech, you catch it. And as soon as you catch it, you can start eliminating it. There's a pattern. It's interesting. There's a pattern that you say "um" or "you know" or "so" or "like" and then you hear it after. And then eventually you get to the point that you start hearing it as you're saying it. It's still too late to stop it because it's being said, but you catch it as you're saying it. And then eventually you get to the point that you actually catch it before you're about to say it. And by the way, when you have a filler word and you catch it, don't fill it up with anything else. Leave space. Space is great when you speak. When you talk with people, having a little space between sentences is excellent. It gives them a moment to absorb what you're saying. It gives them a moment to digest it. If you go from one thing to the second thing to the third thing to the fourth thing, they never have breaks. Your entire speech is a run-on sentence. People can't process run-on sentences. We can't read run-on sentences. Luckily, if you're reading a book and there's a run-on sentence, there's probably punctuation marks throughout that sentence. And even then, if it's a run-on sentence, you can stop and realize, my goodness, where is the sentence going? And you can go back and read it again and try to make sense of it. But when you're listening to someone speak in a conversation, you can't say, "Can you go back again?" I mean, it's not necessary. I guess you can in certain situations. But a lot of the time, you can't. When I'm listening to the teacher talk about math and I'm sitting in an audience, I can't say, Mr. Teacher, can you go back and repeat that? It's just going to be quite the right thing to do. And it's important to be able to remove filler words and leave the space. Space is amazing when you speak. I'm just not. Because I would have evaluated hundreds of speeches with all the tossed masters done. And same, there's some very good things with tossed masters, some bad things with it as well. But one of the things was the filler words. They can't concentrate on that. They do. There's different groups, some had a bell, the others had a musical instrument. And what I used to, if I was, I'd ask the person, because I saw people getting a night, getting drawn. So if they're trying to do a speech, especially if they're learning, they're kind of maybe under fifth speech or just walking their way up. They can draw them and then they have a very bad speech just because they're filler words. So what I would say to people is you can just, like you said, you make note of it. You said 35 E's. I have seen people that, like you say, four seconds, I've seen more. Did nothing that you can more on it and it's fascinating. And just on the different words that people say, like I can't agree. And he got it to the final. I think he won it, actually, the Polish competition. And he was in one of the groups straight. And I caught him out there. He's gone. And he lungated and that was his pause for that. I just said, that's not normal. That's your end. And he kept doing it for a while, but eventually got out of it. People do things like that as well. Oh, sure. Yeah, lots of people have interesting quirks when they speak. That's one of the great things about working with a good speaking coach. They can find the quirks. They can find your odd speaking habits and correct them for you. We all have them. I have them. I have them in the middle of the world. Let me talk about this, and I want to begin with an analogy of something. When I start giving you the analogy it won't really make sense. As a share this analogy with you, you might be thinking, "What does this possibly have to do with words and organization?" But it will make sense and I'm going to tie it back to what we're talking about words. Imagine you're looking at a book, a textbook, my kids like math textbooks or something like that. The graphic artists typically do a really good job. Each chapter begins with a big heading that says chapter 7, chapter 8, and big letters, a really big font. And then there are under that chapter there are lots of paragraphs and the paragraphs are nice because they're separated by a blank line between them. There's some organization. And all the words which are being introduced are in bold letters or italics. Sometimes textbooks have a column along the left or right side, like by the edge of the page where there are footnotes or additional comments. And then there are graphics and different colored fonts and different sized fonts used to emphasize different words. In other words, a graphic artist takes all the information and they put it into this book and they organize it in such a way that you can read it and parse it. And that's great. I sometimes think if you took that math textbook, And he left all the words, the same words in the same sequence. However, he made every word the exact same font. You got rid of all of the punctuation marks. You got rid of bolding at italics and sidebars and paragraphs and chapters and blank lines between them. It was just one long sentence. The same words from the beginning of the book to the end one long sentence. It would be impossible to read. I guess I should rephrase that. You could read it, but it wouldn't make any sense. Are you flawless? Sleep tight to read it. Exactly. Yes. Luckily, when there is written text, people organize it. And people take pride in organizing it. And we all do when we write letters. We write in paragraphs and we use commas and we use periods and we do things like that. So we tend to organize our written text. It is really helpful if you organize your spoken text. In your head, when you give a speech, you know exactly what you want to say, but your listeners don't know. So it's very easy for us to jump around and interrupt ourselves. Interrupt one thought, go into something else and then go into something else and go into something else and then a tangent and then a side tangent, the tangent of the tangent. And listeners walk away confused. When you speak with someone, it is super helpful if you organize it like a book. Think about the book. Think about, here's what I want to say. And if I was putting it into a textbook, how would I organize it? And well, that's exactly how I should put it into my conversation, into my talking. Even though it's not written English, it is spoken English. It is just as important to organize it. However, most people don't do that. I don't know why they don't, but we don't. We because we're rushing through conversations, we're rushing throughout the day, we're all running around. So we don't have time to organize our thoughts. However, try to organize. I tried at the beginning, at the beginning of this call to say there are seven things I want to talk about. And then at some point, I will say, great, we finished one thing. Let's talk about the second thing. Great. That was two things. Now let's talk about the third thing. So there's some kind of organization. In fact, when I gave that analogy of the textbook a moment ago, for concern that it wouldn't make sense, I set it up by saying, here is an analogy. I'm about to give that. It may not even make sense, but I will tie it back to what we're talking about. I think if I hadn't said that, I think anyone listening might say, "Oh, wait, all of a sudden he's talking about a book." Versus head gone. They've lost it. I've lost it. And now they stop listening because it doesn't make sense anymore. But because I organized it, because I said, here's where we're going to go. And then I will tie it back. It did make sense. Try to organize everything. No. Don't try. Definitely organize everything you say. Don't try it. Do it. Organize your thoughts. Structured sentences. And one of the places where most people go wrong is interrupting themselves. When people speak, they keep thinking of things that they forgot to say and they interrupt themselves with an add-on. For example, this is an example of interrupting myself. This weekend, well, it started last weekend. Anyway, my wife's parents are coming over to visit. Well, just one of them, the other one will show up the next day. We want to go to this restaurant. It's a great restaurant. It used to be, that's the place I think I told you used to be an Italian restaurant. Now it's changed to a French restaurant. Anyway, now that's interrupting myself. I probably began 10 different sentences in that one minute. I never really concluded. Nothing came to a conclusion. I kept getting sidetracked into different sidenotes. When you speak, as your mind fills in gaps and figures out what you should have said or what you forgot to say, don't spit it out. Hold on to it. Finish one sentence and then say the add-on. For example, I could say we're going out to this French restaurant tonight. Interestingly, it used to be Italian, but they've changed back to French. Rather than we're going out to, well, it used to be French now to Italian. Anyway, we're going to this restaurant. You can communicate the same things with organization. Always go back to how you would write the written text. How would you write a story and organize it in written text with paragraphs, chapters, paragraph sentences, phrases, sidebars, italics, bolded words. Think about how you would write something in text and then transcribe that into spoken English. When you do that, you maintain the organization. Things make more sense to the listener. The listener stays more engaged. Scary thing here. The moment a listener is confused, they check out. If you want to drop your listeners, be confusing. They will stop listening. They will tune right out. Once someone is lost, it's very, very unlikely to get them back. You lose those listeners. To maintain your listeners engagement, be clear, talk about side tangents. Tell them you're going into an analogy. Think about your structure of your sentences. Say up front. I have three things to talk about today. Here's the first. In fact, I'm interrupting myself now. I caught myself. One of the things I did in the beginning of this conversation is I said there are seven things and it listed those seven things off. I said, the first thing is interactive words. I'd like to talk about hedge words. It doesn't make sense, but I will define it later. The third thing is this. The fourth thing is that we went through all seven things. Then we went back and we talked about those seven things. That's very helpful for a listener. It is so much easier if you have a piece of paper in front of you that says, "Here are the seven things." I choose to lead without much slides. I'd like to talk. I try to organize it with my voice. Be organized and don't interrupt yourself when you speak. It's for the slowest. You slow us here, hear that all the time because you interview people all the time. With osmasters and also with podcasting and listening to different people, what I can see sometimes is people structure. If it's speech-sticking, plan their introduction and their conclusion and their bullet points and they'll talk and they might mention the way you did it, the way you did it was very nice, but they'll just go through it. They start to beat themselves up on stage or on camera. I know there was something else and it's saying to credibility, "You don't know what I was going to talk about. Whoever the person is, nobody goes away, but some people are beating themselves up." They're on stage trying to do that. There's no reason to be doing that. If it's not coming to your mind, it's okay. Next time it might and make a note of it. It's happened. The air member just now, he's been going, "I forgot to mention this, because I could never enact the type of person that I'd read to speech and memorize it. I used to always speak from the heart. That's what worked for me." They'd be like, "I never mentioned this and I saw other people in the sun and they were beating themselves up because of that." They'd listen or don't know. As long as the speech made sense, it works. Definitely. Exactly. I may have had an eighth point to talk about, which I forgot. No one left. I know next week. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Roy, thank you so much. Thanks for this opportunity to speak. I'm not rushing off the call. If you have other questions, if you have things you'd like to talk about, I'm happy to answer or chat about anything. Those are the seven things that I wanted to cover today. There were seven. I think I got all seven. It was totally enjoyable. I've learned a lot. I think once you start to play in these things, and I think the thing is to have fun with it. Not to beat yourself up, but even say the email is just writing the nice things. It's so powerful. The apology and stuff like that. So, totally enjoyed it. Really appreciate what you're sharing. How can they listen to Swanger, David? My email is [email protected]. Again, [email protected]. If you email me, put down in the subject line. Roy's shows rock. Thank you very much and I look forward to our next session that we're doing together. Yes, we have five sessions total and next session will be number three. That's amazing. I've already well thank you again. Thank you. Thank you, David. So, that's all for the podfotter. Find out reps is on podfotter not me. As I mentioned, you find just scan the QR code or go through rikon.com, find the six shows. I have a look up for virtual assistance code of the eight half world. I've talked to you because the thumbs up somebody said I shouldn't say three things because there's too much for people to do, but I think you're able to do it. Thumbs up, why is there written? I share what you're friends. Until next week, take care.