TED Talkin’: DK gives the public speaking lesson you never had

143 TED Talkin' DK

Mikey: [00:00:00] Just a D and a K, Molly. Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, AKA the Storyteller Study Club. This is your co host, Mikey Meduski, founder and CEO of Ghost Ranch Communications, a presentation design, nerdery, studio agency. I'm joined by my co host, your favorite, Molly Gagan, straight out of Inglewood, Colorado.

What's up?

Molly: Whoa. Cool. The. Intro, it never gets old. You're making Inglewood sound so exciting. People are going to come and be like, what a nice quaint little neighborhood. It's a good place to podcast from, I guess. Mikey, happy to be here. How's it going?

Mikey: It's good. I'm pretty amped because we just did one of our favorite [00:01:00] things, which was watch a TED Talk together.

First we watched it separately, apart, and then we watched it together.

Music: Yeah, exactly.

Mikey: The magic of sharing your audio and your Zoom screen. Oh, we love that, yeah. We paused it. There was color commentary. It was wonderful.

Molly: Yeah. If you've never done this with a colleague or a friend, highly recommend. And Presentation Nation, if you're just tuning in for the first time, we love presentations here at Presentation Thinking.

That should be no surprise. And some of the best presenters to learn from are on the TEDx or in TED Talk stages. So we will often find a TED Talk that we find interesting or compelling, and we watch it together and analyze it. So Just a D and a K. What do you mean by that, Mikey? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Mikey: okay. Well, first I thought the speaker we watched was named Justin Adenak or something.

And then, but we saw he just goes by DK online. So sweet. And we were like, huh. Very Donkey Kong. And so I really thought his name was like Justin [00:02:00] Dikinowski or something, you know. Yeah. But really, he goes by DK, and then we figured out his URL. We're like, just a dad a nack? And it, no, it just is just a D N A K dot com.

Because DK. com clearly was taken by some publisher. Yeah, smart, smart. But anyway, Molly, like you found this really good, good Ted talk called the public speaking lesson you never had. And I'm curious, was it in your algorithm or did you search for something like this?

Molly: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, I'm always on the lookout for presentation adjacent or even not adjacent as we discussed.

Yeah. Ted talks and obviously the title journey and the public speaking lesson you never had very compelling. I was like, oh, they're right. We love, uh, like. Nice presenting tips is what people seem to be interested in. That's always the presentation nation has reacted well to presentation tips, and there's always there's so many different frameworks and approaches and belief systems around [00:03:00] presentations.

We always say that you're kind of framework agnostic, so I always love to hear people's fresh takes this Ted talk. By DK, uh, is only a year old, and I just thought it was a nice, first of all, was really drawn in by his deep Welsh accent, so if you're a Welsher and you love, like, the Scottish accent, it's kind of in the same category, it's really, it's really compelling, and, um, I thought he was a fantastic speaker, it's an extremely simple talk, but we'll link this in the show notes, why don't you go take 19 minutes, perfect TED Talk length,

Mikey: and 14 seconds,

Molly: and 14 seconds, so go take, go take a listen to DK, Book your flight to Wales, and then we'll, uh, we'll see you back here in 19 minutes.

Mikey: Thank you, Editor Will. Thanks for going and, and, uh, participating. And I'm curious, what did you think? And Molly, that was a hook. Because what I noticed from Mr. DK was he opened with a classic question. It seems there's at least two, two ways to open a TED [00:04:00] Talk. One is with a question. The other is with maybe a story.

Is there another way?

Molly: Yeah, it could be like a statement. A bold statement. A bold statement.

Music: Icebreaker.

Molly: Yeah, icebreaker too. Stand up.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: Body around. That kind of thing. That can be a little honky, but I like this. The question was, his hook opener. First thing you say on stage. How would you feel if I invited you to share Personal and professional stories to inspire action, like if you and oh, sorry, not even just share come on stage and presents these stories and everyone's like, I think he asked that question with the knowledge that public speaking is one of the biggest fears of people in life besides death and taxes.

And so he goes, you know, would you run towards this opportunity, leave kind of this cliffhanger, or would you like, you know, run for the hills kind of thing. And as a public speaking coach himself, as a creative director of various projects, he starts to [00:05:00] share that, you know, he's worked with people of all varieties to help them share their personal and professional stories on a stage.

And he kind of builds a resume for maybe 20 or 30 seconds after that. There's like, you know, that's kind of a filler. But he's building some credibility, which we'll later talk about. Yeah, why should we

Mikey: trust this, this guy up on stage? Yeah, he's like, what if I invited

Molly: you to come do this? He's like, well, what if I told you that I could really help you do this?

Basically.

Mikey: Yeah, Molly, one of the things that blows me away is For 10 years, he's hosted the TEDx in Wellington, New Zealand, uh, as the producer of that event. So he's the one who books and brings in speakers for over a decade. And so in doing that, that's what you're talking about. It was like that part of that resume.

It was like. He's worked with former, you know, rugby players and politicians and you know, like

Molly: a dame

Mikey: a dame or two mean like, uh, yeah, I

Molly: Wonder what I

Mikey: think. No, I know what that means.

Molly: Yeah a great. That's

Mikey: amazing I like I know Molly we don't like to talk about [00:06:00] ourselves as an intro Because that is by nature not talking about the audience or bringing them in but in this case first He hooked them in with the question Then he says, here's why you might want to trust me on this subject matter.

Right. Cause I've, I've been doing it for over a decade.

Molly: Yeah. And I think it's just important to keep like a limit on it. It's like, as we've always said, the, your talk should always be for the audience. It's not about you necessarily, but you do have to like build rapport and credibility if you say you're going to help them or teach them something.

And even still, once he gets to only minute one 26, which is when Kind of he like does that thing where he's like, this is what I'm gonna talk to you about today and tell you He says even still there. He's like very humbly I'm gonna give you what I find to be you know The public speaking speaking lesson you should have gotten with you were when you were a kid or at the very least when you started Working

Mikey: to

Molly: help you

Mikey: and then cue the vulnerable moment Molly, right?

Then he had this like really cool So we'll talk about like his [00:07:00] slides I guess but very intentional And so for most of the speech, there, there's just a black screen. And then on click, he knows when to bring up a visual. And the very first one was. footage from the 1970s up in Wales of him growing up playing on a swing set or something and there's nothing like that you're watching for specifically it's just background footage and this is me but um he talked about how he had hearing deficiencies and had to go through like all these procedures and ended up like losing quite a bit of hearing like his whole childhood and into adulthood and he talks about how Superheroes have, yes, they have their superpowers, but they also have their sort of super deficiencies or those Achilles heels.

And so he ended up ironically, and he calls it out. It was like, I turned my, my super weakness into my superpower, because here I am speaking about speaking and, you know, I couldn't hear for a good part of my life. And now I'm, you know, I [00:08:00] use listening as my ultimate superpower. And so, He says good speakers do more listening than they do talking.

Molly: Yeah, and he shares that like, that connection from listening to, you know, his speech therapists say words and like imitate the pronunciations and the intonations, right, and the consonants. And he says that story so well, you can tell he's said it before, but it builds such a rapport and confidence with the, with the audience is like, I'm the last person that I would have thought you might have thought would be teaching and talking about presenting because I had this speech impediment and this, he kind of does a little hero's journey allegory being like, yeah, like this was my weakness.

So I turned it into my superpower as the hero's journey kind of thing. And I thought that was just a, a really well, lots of people do have a childhood story or like, this is this thing that happened in my past. Sometimes it's the big reveal at the end, but this, this was the, as the beginning. It's like, Well, I talked to you about my professional resume, but like, let me take you back how I got here.

And so that's, he's [00:09:00] like opening a little bit more of a door for the audience to, to see it too.

Mikey: That's a good way to put it. It's like more accessible, because if, if you're like, I'm going to talk to you about public speaking, and if, I think three quarters of the people in the audience are like, Nope. Yeah.

Like, no, thank you. Absolutely not. He's like, no, no, no. Like it's a skill and it can be, you can master it. You can prepare for it. You can, it's a muscle and trust me because I had to overcome quite a bit and you can too. So yes, exactly.

Molly: Yeah. So once we're like over that hump or maybe like four minutes in, you know, and he talks about, he's like, well, yeah, I have.

So my first keynote he gave at MIT in Boston, I wonder how he booked that gig. Very cool. It's awesome. And he expresses that there was this moment where he was able to invite the audience to, like, dance all with him. Oh yeah. Which is kind of like, yeah, yeah. And he was like, this is cheesy, but he's like, I, I really clicked for me that with the right components, you can get people to move with you and think with you in a presentation and you only, you know, And he's like, so what are, what are those components?

And then boom, [00:10:00] we start getting into his, yeah, rule of three. That's about, yeah, four and a half minutes in, AKA maybe like a third of the way, a little bit less than a third. So he gives himself tons of time to go through his. Belief system of our presentations, which is really cool. Yeah,

Mikey: it's funny. We love a pillar But we love we love a stool with some three legs, you know And I think I like his terminology here or the phrasing so for his three It was grace credibility and resonance are the three pillars right of great speaking that he goes through as these sort of like secret powers or Jedi mind tricks that you can use Grace, meaning not what you say, but how you say it, credibility, stories you choose to tell, and the way in which you choose to tell them, and then resonance, what are you leaving them feeling with, what's that, what's that feeling, and he, of course he paraphrases Maya Angelou quote unquote.

You know, which is a TED drinking game now, so take a shot, Molly.

Molly: And I will say we've used it ourselves. It's a [00:11:00] famous, beautiful quote. It's like, people will forget what you say, but they'll remember how you made them think.

Music: Yeah. Which is

Molly: all the core of storytelling and so many other things, so it's a beautiful quote.

Beautiful quote, but, um, funny how many times it comes up, you know?

Mikey: So, does he spend the most, I think he says Grace is his favorite, and I think he spends the most time here.

Molly: I think so, and it occurred to me when he went through the Grace one, with this physicality of the delivery.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: Because he says, this was really cool.

I never heard these kind of, these pillars named as such, where Grace, he's really talking about, like, the body language and physicality of how you deliver something. And, It made me think of Amy Cuddy, you know, these superpower poses, and he gets into like specifics of what people are doing. But it occurred to me, since he says this is what he works with a lot of his clients on, This is, yeah, where he spent a good amount of time and was one of my, it was my favorite color that he went through.

Mikey: I did, cause you can, cause you know it, and he's, he's listing off some of the things that you and I probably are guilty of [00:12:00] when we're just straight standing on a stage.

Molly: Yeah, you hip, the hip bounce like from one hip to the nags. A lean pocket, you know, stuffing of the hands, pacing, incessantly swiveling.

One legged

Mikey: walking.

Molly: You know, that's, that's funny. It didn't like, I do that.

Mikey: You're like, I'm gonna take a step, no. Yeah, you're gonna take a step, kind of like,

Molly: you rock back and forth with just one leg. Yeah, totally. And I, I'm guilty of many of these most specifically hand movements to emphasize each point, even on the podcast I do that.

But that's also different because maybe I'm just like here looking at a camera with you. But um, yeah, it's just, it's so funny to be called out and you, he has such humor about it and you can tell the audience really is bought in, in this way because they already trust him from all of his stories and he has a great suggestion.

He made up this own pose similar to Amy Cuddy's, you know, superhero pose about like posing before you go out and talk and if you hold that pose for a minute or two, you will be, it's like studies have shown you'll be more confident. Your [00:13:00] confidence will transfer over. But he calls it the soft rock star pose.

Yeah. And, you know, a traditional rock star, you're like talking about like really wide leg stance and you're like jamming on the guitar or like rocking out, like singing or something. So if you're just bringing your legs slightly to the legless. You know, weird, but like, take a really strong stance, not with your feet close together.

So you can like, so you be prone to swiveling or something, but really like a strong stance of maybe a little wider than shoulder distance, Mikey.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: And you just kind of like, wait till you're standing to, to talk, to speak. He says something really beautiful, like poetic. It's like, wait to stand, wait till you're standing to speak.

Something like that. I love that. No, the strength strong stance to speak.

Mikey: Yeah. You said it gives you haptic. It's just geometry. Like you get this haptic feedback, like that triangle keeps you from going too far. Yes. You can still sway a anchor little, but it's, yeah, it anchors you down.

Molly: Yeah, yeah.

Mikey: [00:14:00] Molly, my buddy Kyle always does this, the metallic, what he calls the Metallica stance.

But if you Google like James Hetfield stance, he's got that like, it really is. It's not too, his legs are pretty wide, but he's always got that X in the middle and that is exactly who I thought of. And. Yeah, just classic.

Molly: Yeah, and I think that's a good thing. And I think the other advice that's so simple, we've heard similar to this, is like, you really can take, you, when you get out onto a stage, especially if you're not behind a podium, you can take a minute to be like, I'm settling in here.

I'm taking a breath. Yeah. Yeah. Before I launch into something, and I think that's really important. I did that before starting the officiating at the, my brother's wedding this summer, and I was like, Danny, you would call, like, you know, you just, he could take your time. He also calls out shaky, holding a piece of paper, looking at a script.

They get shaky, if you're, if you're a little shaky. And he'd, you know, as we've said in TalkTract and stuff, we'd always talk actually different than we write. And so those stories are going to sound different and [00:15:00] feel less authentic. You can use a talk track, but it has to be how you talk. You have to have said it out loud in the past, and you know, that's different.

That's easier said than done. People might not have used a conference monitor before, which is where your script is coming up on the screen in front of you on the stage. But if you are, maybe most often I'd say like Presentation Nation's like biggest use case for this, Mikey, is probably like on Zoom. So if you have the opportunity to use a talk track on your screen, maybe you have a second monitor at home, Make sure you're able to say it out loud before you actually present it because that will really enforce the way it's like authentically sounding.

So if you said it out loud once or twice, you will, I guarantee will change it than how your script, you just wrote it down without saying it out loud,

Mikey: right? Oh, it's 100 percent true. And he, yeah, I liked his quote about a little controversial, but he says you can't practice public speaking. You can only prepare for like anticipate how you're going to [00:16:00] feel when you're actually up there.

And he says most people practice the wrong way, to your point. We read and read and read and read, but then the words sound a little funky when they're actually coming out of our mouth.

Molly: Yeah. Yeah. So

Mikey: you gotta do it. Do it on the Zoom. You're right. Like, practice and prepare.

Molly: Practice, like, looking at yourself.

In the zoom like mirror, get your own solo zoom room before you present something.

Mikey: Yeah, the grace section. So I, I did a little bonus digging and found on DK's website. He's got this, he's got a ebook and also an audio book version of it. It's just like 90 minutes, but it is like an expanded version of this talk.

And speaking with purpose, he mentions that you should be a little bit of a diva, like as a speaker. And not like, not like a jerk, but you want to know he has like this list of questions that he always asks anyone who's asking him to come speak. And he just wants to know, so he can mentally prepare. Like, is it a stage or am I on the floor?

What, how big is [00:17:00] the audience? What's the room layout? What are the screens like, you know, what are the, what's the equipment? Well, I have a confidence monitor, this, this, this. So being really, really prepared means like just anticipating what's the scene going to be like. And yeah, no, no surprises. Right, Molly.

Molly: Yeah, absolutely. You need to, you're able to put yourself, ask questions so you can be a pro because the more you know, the less you'll be nervous yet, unless you want it because it's because you don't know how things are going to go. It's like that's a

Mikey: patient of anticipation, unknown. So credibility is the next chapter of these three.

Pillars, if you will.

Molly: And he kind of calls out Ted at the beginning of this section, this, this chapter of his talk where he's like, people do expect great presenters now because of things like Ted, like they've seen amazing stuff. So when even their average, like, you know, colleague gets up, their average colleague gets up to give a presentation, they expect really great things because of the access to, we can see amazing presenters all over the world now.

And I think that's partly Ted. That's probably the [00:18:00] internet. It's probably just media. Yeah. Steve Jobs. Yeah,

Mikey: I know. Yeah, you have this, what's he call it, a raised literacy for what is or isn't a good speech.

Molly: So he's like, how do we craft a good story that's gonna like, resonate with people and like, they're gonna believe you.

He shares like, briefly that Woodrow Wilson quote about like, brevity. And how shorter talks are harder to prepare for is like, if I need to talk for an hour, I'm ready right now. If I need to talk for 10 minutes, I need a week to prepare. Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

Mikey: Right? I love that.

Molly: And TED Talks are usually 12 to 20 minutes.

It's usually the average length. So that's short for the most part. And that's tough. Like you have to need to be really distilled and intentional with what you say.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: So he says something, you know, he's like, all you got to do is tell. Lived experience stories over bullet points totally calls out bullet point.

Yeah, he acknowledges that he uses he's like I know I know I showed you three [00:19:00] words grace credibility resonance And those are like, in a way, bullet points, but they weren't explicitly bullet points.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: You know, he, we can talk about his visuals, but they're so simple, like, we didn't really, I didn't question that that was, you know, Oh, just, it didn't feel list y, right?

It's like

Mikey: typographic design, it took up a whole, yeah, it's just beautifully done.

Molly: And he tells his story, like, you know, I was reflecting on his own, like, way he uses this, Mikey, he, like, by sharing his, you know, speech therapy story and background, and having to, like, Really learn how to speak and listen successfully himself.

It builds that credibility and rapport with the audience. Like, he built up his professional resume, goes through his personal stories, and then, yeah, talks about, like, the own physicality and stuff, little anecdotes and stuff. It's, it's much more believable than if he was, like, Well, there was this one person who had this, you know, crazy stutter and like, they worked through it.

So you can too. It's like, it's much more impactful when it comes from his life, you know?

Mikey: Yeah, Molly. And then that one visual you write about the, the bullet point slide, [00:20:00] he does have some pretty powerful ones. And there again, he just like brings up this, this image of a pistol. And then it's kind of there for a while as he's talking about bullets.

And then he's like, basically he said. Just hold the slide until you're ready for your complex information to be brought up. And so he, he's a master of the click and he shows, you know, he brings up his bullet points when he's ready to talk about them. And then it's sort of an aha, because it's like slides don't kill people.

Bullets do or something like that. Right. Or kill complex ideas, whatever. So yeah, he, uh, he had a very good balance of leaning on visuals that weren't distracting. And if he was going to employ something like bullets, do it intentionally and do it in a way that doesn't overwhelm the audience. You bring them along for the ride.

Molly: Yeah. And this is a funny, the first time he shows bullets, but it was like very tongue in cheek, very much like making a joke. Like, ha ha.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: Guns don't kill people. Bullets kill

Mikey: people. So we've got, we have grace, [00:21:00] credibility, and now onto the third act, resonance.

Molly: What am I leaving you feeling as a group of humans?

What are we leaving? Kind of like call to action. Coming back to the Maya Angelou quote, like what will they walk away associating with feeling like, you know, A lot of TED Talks and presentations in general are about imparting information onto people.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: Hopefully, maybe that brings you to action or to a new way of understanding things, a new perspective.

And I've never heard this before, Mikey, I've heard that, but I've never heard this spectrum of feeling that he presented, which is, you know, You can arrange anything. Spectrum of emotions ranges from like fear and disgust to joy and elation. And he's like, you really don't want your presentation to fall in the middle where it's just like, meh, information meh ness.

Maybe people would argue with that. I don't know. But even if you, you know, maybe you present some new scientific information that like really stresses people out and they're scared, but they're going to remember you. So that's, you know, I mean, maybe not the most positive thing, [00:22:00] but, but maybe that's, maybe that's a serious talk.

I don't know. And then on the other hand, it's like, they're so excited, they're inspired, they're joyful about what you presented. And they're going to go act on it or something.

Mikey: When I did, um, and we had Michelle Siracusa on, who's the voice coach, she does voiceover acting. She talked about emotion a lot and it could be not just for the whole speech, but like just sections, right?

Like, so if you're, you know, delivering your end of the year rally or, you know, like sales kickoff rally, you might have a section that reflects on a downtime and you're going to be a little toned down, more somber or serious there. And then as you ramp things up, let's get fired up for the next year.

You're going to bring it up a bit. And so, yeah, it's not like you have to just label this whole speech is going to be this one way, but you will hopefully bring them on, on that kind of up and down there and just be appropriate for the content and the subject matter. And I bet you will have a feeling and overall feeling.

I think it's good to think about. What's that [00:23:00] one theme. But then during certain moments, it makes sense to reflect the emotion that, you know, the audience should be feeling. And so he had a really insightful question that he asked the CEO who he was going to coach. And so the CEO sent him like this 40 minute talk about data and numbers or whatever.

And, you know, So the, the first question that DK asked the CEO was like, all right, during your 40 minute presentation, how many times did you smile, you know? And the answer was, uh, what do you mean? And, you know, like, I guess he smiled once when he thanked the guy or the gal who brought him up on the stage.

And then once at the very end, and so, yeah, we have the power, emotion is contagious if we need them to feel a certain way. It would be reflected in our own body language and our own delivery.

Molly: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Mikey: And that's how you get them involved. That's the point of Resonate, right? Resonance.

Molly: Yeah, totally.

Like, it's a relationship between the listener and the presenter. Like, you have, there's emotional cues you can create with your body language. Kind of comes back to that with the, yeah, facial [00:24:00] expression. Yeah. And if it is a serious talk, you can figure out ways to align with that, you know, otherwise it will come across as inauthentic.

Like if you're smiling while talking about something super serious, that's going to be weird and creepy kind of, it's giving Joker and you, but on the converse side of that, if it's like a really exciting talk and you're so nervous and you're like in the background, it's not going to, Line up.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: Which brings him to his final, like, Jedi mind trick He's kind of been teasing.

He says that a few times throughout the talk. Maybe he's a Star Wars fan.

Mikey: Do you have like a gif on the screen? Yeah. Just that blue dot that got Animation. From small to large. Yeah, talking

Molly: about a really slow I forget what that kind of breathing is called. Just like, but breathing slowly essentially, matching that small circle to a large circle to reset your nervous system, to bring yourself down.

And he says that like, if you're feeling nerves, that means you are also excited. Because as we've talked about like nervousness is a form of excitement and you can use that as hard as [00:25:00] it yourself and flip that on its head. So you're not nervous, trick your mind into saying like, it's the same feeling of like if you're going to, he says, like, you know.

Like a concert or like an event that you've been really, really excited about. I myself have felt like nervous, I felt this like anxiety going to something I'm super excited about. I'm like, oh my god, I'm so excited, I'm freaking out or I'm excited to see someone or something. I'm not, I wouldn't say I was nervous to see them, it's like I'm excited.

So it's, it sits in the same spot in your body.

Mikey: But if you tell your mind, nope. And then if you tell the audience that too, you're like, I think one of the biggest mistakes we could make is to get up there and say, I'm really nervous, but if you tell them like, I'm really excited to be talking about this topic today.

That is contagious. People love, they're passionate about what you're passionate about. So that's the best place to start. And you just tell yourself, tell the audience. How stoked you are to be there speaking.

Molly: Absolutely, even if, yeah, trick yourself. And the film ends with the call to action of kind of simple, [00:26:00] like, when you're up here, it really is possible to relax and have a bit of fun with it, so

Music: Yeah, totally.

Molly: Like, again, just like demystifying, keeping it simple.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: It doesn't have to be scary. He had opened with like, you know, if I invited you up here to share personal stories, would that scare you or would you run from it? And I have a feeling like if he asked the same question, maybe some people in the audience would be like, Alright, now I have some ideas of like how to tackle this.

So, a super simple talk.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: The public speaking lesson we never had. I liked it.

Mikey: Yeah. Really well done, DK. Shout out, Down Under, there. We did plug this transcript into the Analyzer 3000 Okay, how'd it look 19 minutes 14 seconds or something three thousand seven hundred and sixty nine words about 198 words per minute Molly so faster than the average Joe But, uh, I think he had a lot to say and he had a great diction.

I don't know, like some of the vocab words he was using, [00:27:00] I loved. And in his audio book, he talks about how, like about, um, M's, uh's, er's, you know, and he found when he rewatched his TEDx that he was like, man, I said the word cool a lot and I need to remove that from my, Vocabulary. So pretty funny, but I did dig in a little to the keyword density to find out what are some of the core themes and ideas, obviously grace, credibility, resonance.

Those are about six or seven each. So well balanced. Good job. Hands nine story, eight, listen, listening, 11.

Molly: Yeah. Cool. 14. Speaking, listening. And he talks about that.

Mikey: Yeah, he had a diatribe about scripts. So during that little hot rant, he mentioned the word scripts throughout this one 17 times. Even though he said, he thinks scripts are sort of the devil, you know, cause like you can be over scripted and then it's just not a, it becomes sort of a hindrance.

But the number one. Word he used. You [00:28:00] want to guess?

Molly: I actually am looking at the, uh, transcripter 3000 yourself. So I, um, I know, but I'm not surprised to say speaking and speaking. Yeah. I see that 31 times.

Mikey: Yeah. Yeah. That's it makes sense. And it's in the, it's in the title of this time, which is the public speaking lesson.

You never

Molly: This is always so interesting because sometimes it's something we really don't expect, but this one I think queues up almost perfectly. Maybe script is an outlier, but queues up pretty perfectly to what he wants to prioritize and want people to take away with. I would go away being like, all right, yeah, DK, he talked about public speaking.

He's a presentation coach, and I would remember probably the body language thing more than anything. Credibility in the body language. Mike, you said, starting to read his book, Speaking with Purpose, he reflected on his own TED Talk, and there was an interesting insight you shared with me before we recorded.

Mikey: Was it about, The word cool.

Molly: Yeah.

Mikey: Yeah. Yeah. So he, he said, I need to take that out of my vocabulary. He said, uh, cause he didn't realize you say it cause [00:29:00] that was not in his script, but he just said really cool, cool, cool. But, uh, no, he did it. I thought he did a great job. You would have fooled me. And it's funny that we get a little in our heads about, you know, So some of these things, you know, but when you do see a really really polished speaker like a Steve Jobs, man They don't someone like that has every dang word was was there for a reason.

Oh, yeah

Music: Yeah, but it still feels really

Mikey: conversational somehow hence the difference between like writing for reading and writing for speaking Another book we just stumbled onto, Molly, that's gonna make our list was that Terry Suzuplatt, how do you spell that, find your, say it well, find your voice, speak your mind, inspire any audience, so he was a speechwriter for Obama for like eight years.

Molly: Cool.

Mikey: So, obviously, an incredible speaker, and so to read, About some of the like stories of the behind the scenes, I think is going to be really insightful.

Molly: Yeah, that'll be, I'm excited to dive into that one for sure. Um, all right, Mikey, I think we got to get into the Spice Cabinet. Here for DK, DK's Spice [00:30:00] Cabinet.

And I am going to link his talk, The Public Speaking Lesson, you never had. I'm going to link DK's incredible website just to dnak. com. With the book, you can get it yourself on Gumroad. I'm also gonna link his, uh, video podcast, creativewelly. com. I wanna dive into that a little bit more for inspiration.

Curious how this Welsh man found his way to New Zealand. I'll have to message him and ask him. Mikey, what else should we plug in the Spice Cabinet before guesting DJs?

Mikey: Ghostranch. com, you know, if you or someone you know would like to make Awesomer presentations, you know, there's a team for that. We do both strategic messaging, left brain, visual storytelling, right brain, all under one roof, one friendly to work with bend over backwards.

Awesome partnership team. That's Ghost Ranch. We're here to help you and your team make awesome presentations.

Molly: And even though we are not official presentation coaches, we, Mikey and I are like amateur [00:31:00] figuring this out on our own, we do have quite a few other episodes and resources. That will help you with presenting, including our very own pitch planner on GhostRage.

com. And some other episodes has really just made me think of as far as like getting confident to get on stage. So I'll link a few of those as well, especially if this is your first time tuning in, we have quite the public speaking playlist. I think we could build at this point, I'll link our YouTube playlist on public speaking.

Mikey: Well, Molly, the most important question we have to weigh here is what do you think is DK's walkout song? As a dude who's produced. 10 years worth of TEDx's. That's pretty cool. The man knows some walkout songs. You know what I mean?

Molly: I know. I have thought about this for once. Sometimes I just do this off the cuff.

Music: Yeah.

Molly: I have two answers. One, little silly, but he does seem like a Star Wars fan. Talking about Jedi mind tricks. Yeah, there's a Yoda baby Yoda pops up at the very end slide And so I think the Star Wars theme could be really [00:32:00] fun

Music: theatrical Universally

Molly: beloved don't get people a little amped And my second, my second idea is spoofing from his wanting to leave people with a feeling and feeling confident and feeling like they are capable of getting on stage. I'm gonna go with More Than a Feeling from Boston.

And then he has released in the 70s. He said he was born in the 70s. Seems like More Than a Feeling by Boston I think would be a fun one for DK to walk back to.

Mikey: I was thinking, Metallica, Enter Sandman.

Cause, power stance right there, you know what I mean?

Molly: Oh yeah, I love that. Great. Yeah. What do Soft Rockstar pose? Soft rock. dk, are

Mikey: you, are you listening? Tell us what, uh, what's your [00:33:00] walkout song?

Molly: We'll be tagging you on LinkedIn dk Yeah,

Mikey: right on in Presentation Nation. If you've listened this far. Gosh, what a joy.

Thanks for being here. We, uh, are always looking for new episode ideas. New resources, new podcasts, new TED Talks, new books to read. If you want to join us as a guest, come aboard. Send us a recommendation.

Molly: Yeah. And also, leave us a review on Sponfy and, or whatever listening platform you tune in on.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: Okay, we gotta wrap this up.

Mikey: Yeah. Your voice matters. So until next time, keep on pitching.