This is an iHeart podcast.
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Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?
Think again.
More Americans listen to podcasts than add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.
And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.
Learn how podcasting can help your business.
Call 844-844-iHeart.
2%.
That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.
I'm Michael Easter and on my podcast 2 I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness and building resilience in our strange modern world.
Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.
Listen to 2%.
That's T-W-O percent on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Thank you.
Listen to The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a slightly longer one part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us.
So today I'm delighted to welcome Bill McGowan to Before Breakfast.
Bill is the founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group.
He is an Emmy Award winning journalist and the author of the book Speak Memorably.
So Bill, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Laura.
Appreciate it.
I've been looking forward to this.
Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on this.
So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
25 years ago, I began Clarity Media Group on this belief, having been a journalist for many years, that when people – sit down to do a QA with a professional, it's not a level playing field.
And the journalist has a game plan and they're well-organized, but oftentimes people mistake Success as just doing the best they can answering the questions.
And so I brought a lot of the experience and insights that I have as a journalist and I brought them to the world of communication coaching.
And a big part of what I do now is helping people be memorable when they get up to speak, whether it's in front of a room leading a meeting, whether you're delivering a keynote at a convention or an off-site, a town hall and ask me anything any of those situations where you need to project something executive presence where you need to be memorable and authentic.
I help people craft the content and I also help them with the execution.
So that's an interesting juxtaposition there of projecting executive presence and being authentic, which I think something is maybe more valued now than it was in the past.
I wonder how you see the intersection of those two things as you're giving people ideas.
Definitely being able to convey to an audience something your deep conviction in your ideas and your point of view doesn't have to be something that sounds canned.
It doesn't have to be something that feels like the person was trained.
And one of the things we really work on is making sure that people display an enthusiasm for what they have to share to an audience.
I'm sure people listening to us at some point have been told by people they report to at work you have to show a little more energy when you get up in front of a room.
And people have really been puzzled as to what does that mean?
Does that mean I need to talk louder, faster, flail my arms?
What does that mean?
And over many years of doing this kind of work, it's become clear to me that our definition of energy at Clarity Media Group is energy.
You're palpable enthusiasm for the value of the information you're sharing with the audience.
And I try to get people that I work with and I coach to genuinely get enthusiastic for the fact that the information I'm going to share with these people over the next 15, 20 minutes is going to be incredibly valuable to them in the work they have to do.
It's going to provide them clarity on how they move forward.
And it's going to be enormously beneficial.
Well, that's our first thing.
Then we better be excited about the content we're presenting.
That's right.
It may be a fake it till you make it proposition, of course.
These sales figures are great, got to tell you.
Well, let's say somebody...
Listening to this is, you know, been asked to give a presentation to, let's say, senior leadership in a couple weeks about a topic
As they're going about preparing it, what would you advise them to do?
Because we don't want to get up and just bore people with 100 PowerPoint slides.
One of the tips that I give in Speak Memorably is how to create the content.
And the mistake most people make is they sit down at a computer and start writing it as they would write a document or an email.
And unless you've been trained in the world of television or radio or podcasts, most of us write stylistically for the eye.
They don't write for the ear.
And when you write for the eye, you tend to write in complex prosy sentences with introductory phrases and parenthetical clauses, and we really don't speak that way in real life.
So what I recommend they do is to just create yourself an outline of what it is that you want to say in this presentation.
It can be as sparse or as extensive as you want, but really just a framework.
And then take your phone and launch an app that will record and transcribe what you say.
Otter AI is a good one.
And just get up with your notes in your hand and roll record and just say it as would naturally come to you.
And don't worry.
If it's full of starts and stops and mistakes, you can go back and clean that up later.
But just keep plowing forward.
Then take the transcription and export that to a Word document or whatever you're working in PowerPoint or Keynote and make that your rough first draft.
And I think you're going to find two benefits from that.
One is stylistically, it's going to be much more casual and conversational and, as a result authentic, than something you sat down to write, which tends to be more stilted and formal and jargony when we sit down and write it.
And two, you're never going to be at odds with that content because it's going to represent instinctively how you meant to say it.
And I think sometimes it's a long bridge for people to cross when someone else creates the content for them and they have just a hard time committing it to memory and feeling like they own it.
Yeah, no, it definitely is something you can get help with, but ultimately it has to be your voice.
I want to actually ask about the speaking with slides aspect because I know a lot of people do.
I tend not to.
I prefer more to just get up and talk.
But a lot of people are speaking with slides.
And from what I understand from your writing –
People kind of approach this in the wrong way.
Like they might just be putting whatever words they're going to say up on the slide, as opposed to thinking of this as a visual medium.
Yeah.
People confuse their presenter's notes with the text on the slide.
The two should have absolutely no resemblance.
And our... theory at Clarity is if they can see it, you don't need to say it.
It just winds up creating redundance.
And ultimately, the worst mistake people can make is engaging in what we call slide karaoke, where you're basically just narrating the slides.
And that's the quickest way to make your audience feel like you're wasting their time.
I like for people to think of the slide deck and themselves as a sports broadcasting team.
And if you think about a sports broadcasting team, you have a play-by-play announcer and you have a color commentator, an analyst.
I'd like to think that The slide is the play-by-play person.
They're calling the action.
They're telling you what's going on.
And you're the color commentator, the analyst.
You're providing the insight and the context and the stories behind it.
Those two things are very different.
If you listen to any sporting event and the analyst came on after the play-by-play person called the play and said the exact same thing, you couldn't listen to that.
And that's what reading your slides is.
So I try to make people feel as though they're the star of the show.
The slide deck is just a visual adornment that's behind them.
And in fact, the words slide, deck, bullet, presentation should never come out of people's mouths.
It should be a separate entity altogether.
And so, given that, I think the reason a lot of people are doing it is because the notes are what they're trying to remember, right?
Coming off of the PowerPoint.
Sure.
So you just keep your notes separately or else you know it so well.
It's like telling stories at a cocktail party.
You don't need notes for that.
The ratio of rehearsal to length of the length of the presentation.
Think of it as an eight to one ratio.
If you have a 15 minute presentation to give after the content is all set and locked, you should be practicing out loud for two hours.
That's how long it takes to really commit the content to memory.
And, rather than memorize every single thing you're going to say verbatim, there are three things that are important on each slide to know cold.
One is what's the concise, punchy, declarative statement I'm going to make when that slide first pops up?
What's the first line out of my mouth?
What's the big idea in this slide?
What do I want them remembering more maybe than anything else I say?
And what's the finish line look like?
What is the crisp finish finish to this slide?
Or what is a segue line that helps me foreshadow the next slide coming up?
And all three of those things should be crisp and concise.
If they're lengthy, it's going to be harder to commit them to memory.
But those three things I find are what usually give a presentation a nice, well-produced feel to it.
Everything you say in and around those three things can have a little conversational wiggle room.
And if they come out of your mouth differently each time, that's fine, as long as you're still following the navigational directions you set for yourself in advance.
Well, let's talk about that practicing, because I think that ratio, I think that just blew a lot of people's minds that they heard.
But getting up on stage is a big deal.
I mean, you've taken all these people's time.
They're watching you.
You know, you want to make it good for them.
How should those practices be conducted?
Would you recommend doing it exactly like you do it with the presentation?
I mean, should you have friends watch you?
What would you suggest you do?
They used to say practice in front of the mirror and your phone has completely displaced that.
Your phone is the greatest rehearsal tool on the planet.
Now you can prop it up anywhere, record yourself and play it back.
The video does not lie.
And oftentimes I will see things in recording myself that I realized Ooh, that That transition from slide three to slide four, that isn't very good.
I got to smooth that out.
It really does help you edit yourself.
So I think that that's very important.
But you play the way you practice.
Every superstar athlete will tell you that, that they go 110 in practice so that that becomes – the muscle memory and the mode they just are conditioned to play in.
And for anybody who's thinking well, I'll just sort of read it silently to myself or quietly to myself.
We have an expression no one ever makes a mistake silently in their own head.
You have to hear it come out of your mouth and you have to put everything into it, Because you do play the way you practice.
The other thing that I recommend people do in rehearsal is never, when you make a mistake say, Let me take that from the top.
Let me start over.
You're not gonna be able to do that in front of an audience.
So you should not be doing it in rehearsal.
In fact, one of the muscles you need to build in rehearsal is how do I pull myself out of the spiral downward?
When I've made a mistake, maybe my mind goes blank.
You have to get accustomed to getting that ship righted in practice.
And if you don't know how to do that, you'll never be able to do it in front of an audience.
Excellent advice.
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Bill McGowan.
2%.
That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.
I'm Michael Easter and on my podcast 2 I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness and building resilience in our strange modern world.
I'll be speaking with writers, researchers and other health and fitness experts and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry.
We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory.
We got it wrong.
Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress.
Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.
Listen to 2 that's T-W-O percent on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting.
Think again.
More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.
And as the number one podcaster, I heart's twice as large as the next two combined.
So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.
Plus only I heart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.
Think podcasting can help your business.
Think I heart streaming radio and podcasting.
Let us show you at I heart advertising.com.
That's I heart advertising.com.
On the Serving Pancakes podcast, conversations about volleyball go beyond the court.
Today we have a little best friend compatibility test.
Okay, how long have we been best friends for?
Since the day we met.
As the League One volleyball season heads towards its final stretch, there's no better time to tune in.
We really are like yin and yang, vodka and tequila.
You'll hear unfiltered analysis behind the scenes, stories and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport.
Today we have Logan Lednicki.
I feel like our fan base in general is very connected.
It's like a comforting feeling getting to play at home.
Whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, serving pancakes brings you closer to the action and the people shaping the future of volleyball.
Jordan Thompson had that microphone out.
God forbid we make a mistake or cuss at our coach.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Serving Pancakes and listen now.
This has been Serving Pancakes and we'll catch you on the flip side.
Okay.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Well, I am back talking with Bill McGowan, who is the founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group.
He is also the author of the book Speak Memorably has helped many people prepare better presentations.
So, Bill, I'm sure you've been on stage in front of a lot of people.
I wonder if any particular talk has helped, gone not as you intended it for some reason or another, and what you did in that situation.
I find I always learn something new from each of the times I present.
And I had a talk to give recently at NBC Universal one time.
And I always try to make sure that I use my own laptop.
I don't love it when I give the laptop to the AV team or I even email the deck ahead of time.
But They gave me a clicker and I said, you know, let's pair this.
Oh, no, no, no.
It pairs automatically.
Famous last words.
Famous last words, right?
So I start in and I push the button and I see it's not advancing it.
And I look over and I realize that I see a screen over at the AV table.
And it's the screen where you are trying to pair.
You know they're trying to do the pairing and I realize OK, this is a process I know takes five minutes.
So I am going to have to fill and just start in and go.
You know, there's no other way to do it.
But one thing I learned from that experience is always get the name of the audio visual technician right.
And the reason why you want to do that is, let's say, the clicker doesn't work or let's say, your mic is not working.
There are lots of technical glitches that can happen.
If you know the name of the person you can say Diane, would you have another clicker?
You can just toss up to me.
I think this one might need new batteries.
As opposed to.
I think there's a problem here with tension in your voice, and it makes a huge difference.
It makes it sound much less stressed.
So, from that day on, I've always committed to knowing who the technicians – You got to know Diane, beforehand.
Yes, exactly.
Go say hello.
That's right.
Diane, you and I are in this together now.
That's right.
It's running on both of us.
Diane, if anything goes wrong, I'm going to mention your name.
I know you've also heard a lot of presentations.
People may be nervous if they know you're in the audience.
But you have a list, I believe, of speaking pet peeves, things that people do more often, possibly because they're just not thinking it through.
What are some of those?
One of them is all this warning people about what you're about to do in the presentation, or what we call talking about what you're going to talk about.
And it's amazing listening to somebody else.
If you find you need some extra stimulation sitting through other people's presentations, just do a running tally of how many times somebody says
So I want to talk a little bit now about this.
Those words should never come out of anybody's mouth.
Our motto is inform, don't warn.
Get right to it.
You don't have to announce what you're about to do.
It's just a waste of time for everybody.
But I think we've learned how to present through osmosis and everybody does it.
So I think it's become this, mistakenly, it's become this acceptable practice.
The other thing that's very funny is that when people come up, let's say they've got notes in front of them on a lectern and there's an audience in front of them they tend to look down when they say their name and their title.
And I'm thinking that is something that you don't need to read.
You should be making eye contact with the audience.
But it is simply people's desire to break eye contact with the audience, because it can be very intimidating looking at all those eyeballs on you.
Those are two things right off the bat.
Having this disjointed timeline, I think doing the over-agenda setting is not good.
Also saying so.
I want to talk about that, but before I do this, let's take a couple steps back and let's do this.
I feel a little whiplash coming from that style.
So I like to try to get people to speak in a linear, smoother way.
All right, so we don't need to warn the audience what we're doing.
No, do not.
Well, unfortunately, I am about to warn our audience.
Well, that's okay.
You have to set their expectations.
You have to set their expectations of why we're not listening to Bill for the next two minutes, but I promise he will be back.
2%.
That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.
I'm Michael Easter and on my podcast 2 I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness and building resilience in our strange modern world.
I'll be speaking with writers, researchers and other health and fitness experts and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry.
We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory.
We got it wrong.
Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress.
Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.
Listen to 2 that's T-W-O percent on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting.
Think again.
More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.
And as the number one podcaster, I heart's twice as large as the next two combined.
So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.
Plus only I heart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.
Think podcasting can help your business.
Think I heart streaming radio and podcasting.
Let us show you at I heart advertising.com.
That's I heart advertising.com.
On the Serving Pancakes podcast, conversations about volleyball go beyond the court.
Today we have a little best friend compatibility test.
Okay, how long have we been best friends for?
Since the day we met.
As the League One volleyball season heads towards its final stretch, there's no better time to tune in.
We really are like yin and yang, vodka and tequila.
You'll hear unfiltered analysis behind the scenes, stories and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport.
Today we have Logan Lednicki.
I feel like our fan base in general is very connected.
It's like a comforting feeling getting to play at home.
Whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, serving pancakes brings you closer to the action and the people shaping the future of volleyball.
Jordan Thompson had that microphone out.
God forbid we make a mistake or cuss at our coach.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Serving Pancakes and listen now.
This has been Serving Pancakes and we'll catch you on the flip side.
Okay.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
Well, I am back talking with Bill McGowan about how we can speak memorably, how we should not over-narrate what we are about to tell the audience.
So Bill, I wanted to look a little bit more at your schedule and how you manage your life, because this podcast does talk a lot about time management.
I'm curious what your days tend to look like.
I tend to get up on the early side and try to monitor and respond to emails from clients in Europe and the Middle East, because they've been sitting in my inbox for probably five or six hours already.
I balance that with... giving a read of the news, whether it's Axios or the AP or the information.
I try to get a broad sampling because when we work with clients it's really important that we flag them on what's trending in the news cycle.
Because if they're doing a fireside chat or they're on a panel And journalists, if they're in that moderator chair, love to bring up something that is currently cycling.
And they really need to have a POV, or they need to be able to respond to the latest news on tariffs or an escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, or what's going on in Minneapolis with ICE.
People are not immune to being asked what their take on things is today.
So I want to make sure that I have the latest news so I can advise them properly.
And then I usually say around 8 o'clock, I am the person who makes breakfast at home.
I have a 12-year-old who loves breakfast. pancakes I make.
If I have the opportunity to walk him to school, I will.
If not, I need to research the clients that I'm going to be training that day.
In any given day, I'm probably training three four, five different companies, or one company for the full day.
And I try to squeeze in a little business development in the breaks of the day.
But it's a challenging juggling act.
I was talking to a friend today over coffee about just how much down-the-road business development vision can you squeeze into the day when you have clients saying hey, I got a big type talk coming up next week and I really need your help right away.
It's just a balancing act.
And then when the sessions are done for the day, I usually send follow-up notes to clients.
Try to get a sneak peek of the materials for the next day's client.
So it's that wheel that turns.
I love pancakes as a morning routine, though.
Yeah, it's either pancakes or like a quesadilla, the breakfast quesadilla.
There's a real breakfast in your house.
I find my time to zone out.
Not zone out, but just become very focused on something other than work is the kitchen.
And cooking for me is a great release.
Yeah.
I'm curious, you mentioned meeting with a lot of different clients over the course of the day.
Are you often doing most of this via, you know, tools like Zoom or?
It's a combination now.
Obviously, a few years ago, it was 100%.
But I really love the fact that the sessions have resumed in earnest in person and I travel a fair amount
So.
Oftentimes I'll be at one company for an entire eight hours and three four, five people will cycle through.
So, but yeah, a fair amount of it is still done over virtual.
And I'm curious.
I mean moving back towards speaking advice for people who are giving presentations virtually, which I've, you know, found a number of places are still interested in, because it allows people to come to it that weren't going to come if they had it to be in person.
Any advice for keeping those going?
Well, there's a whole chapter in Speak Memorably called Zoomgenics.
And I had a guy the other day who asked me, I was helping him with messaging about his tech firm.
And he said, how do you think the shot looks?
And so I gave him five pointers.
And he said, oh my God, I think you just made me about $5 million.
I said, really?
He goes, yeah.
I mean, look at how different this shot looks now.
I look so much more authoritative and he had never been told how you should look and how you should show up on virtual.
So I find one tip that has worked for me really, really well is, if I'm giving a presentation, I close all the video windows of the participants on the call, because
If you are going to look over at the video of the people on the call and expect to get that affirmation that they're riveted on every word, you're saying it's not going to happen.
You know, you can read a room, but you cannot read a Zoom.
And people look more disengaged and bored and tuned out on virtual than they actually are.
And I find It's a distraction.
When you need to be focusing on delivering the best you can.
You can't have that little voice on your shoulder telling you I think you're, I think you might be losing them.
They're looking off screen.
They're checking their email.
Yeah, and they could be taking copious notes.
And you may be thinking, oh, I think they're texting their friend right now.
So being overly concerned about how people on the call show up can really hurt.
One of the things I loved in your book though, as you mentioned putting like planting a friendly colleague in the Zoom audience.
And occasionally, when I've been hired for virtual talks, maybe one of the organizers and I have gotten to know each other in the course of preparation.
I'll have them on.
And I'm watching them.
And pin them to the top.
Yeah, I'm pinning them.
I'm like watching them.
And they're laughing.
They're having a good time.
I'm like, this is great.
I'm crushing it.
I'm crushing it.
At least for this audience of one.
Everyone else is checking their email.
That's right.
Exactly.
Um so bill, i always ask my guests what is something you have done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
It could be the pancakes, but yeah, i mean, sometimes making something great for dinner is the high, the personal highlight of the day.
Uh, but I actually had a client the other day say something to me that I haven't heard in the 25 years I've been coaching.
So firsts like that are always memorable.
And he said that this was the second session I had with him.
And he was sitting down with a New York Times reporter.
After the first session we had, and it was on, it was on a background conversation.
The reporter was just trying to figure out if there was a story there.
And he said, I put into practice all the things we worked on in session one.
And guess what happened?
The reporter.
At one point, just about five, 10 minutes into our conversation, was hearing the way I was relating the narrative and said listen, this is a great story.
Do you mind if we just launch right in to doing this?
Let's get off background.
Let's just like do the story.
He said the training actually turned a wait and see yellow light into a green light in five or 10 minutes.
It actually sold the story.
And for a long time.
I've always thought that my coaching just helped people excel.
After it was agreed on, after they had the commitment from the media outlet that yes, we are going to go ahead with do this story.
So it was a very cool thing.
I had no idea that it would come into play in that respect.
Yeah.
Well, that's part of standing out is making people want that.
They want to do it.
They want to be convinced.
So where can people find you?
They can find me at claritymediagroup.com.
We are a group of about 14 coaches that are in Hong Kong, California, East Coast.
A lot of us have journalism experience, or at least we've been taught how to tell a compelling story in 60 seconds.
So that's incredibly valuable.
And the book is called Speak Memorably, as you've been kind enough to mention.
And it's actually the second book I've done.
I had a book come out called Pitch Perfect, which I named that before the movie series came out.
And unfortunately, when the movie series became a huge hit, it hurt our search engine optimization.
I was going to say, there goes your top result on Google.
We went from page one to about page eight.
Thanks to the movies.
But yeah, that book is about how to communicate in any kind of situation.
Awesome.
Well, Bill, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback on this or any other episode, you can always reach me at laura, at lauravandercamcom.
And in the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at LauraVanderkam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
2%.
That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.
I'm Michael Easter and on my podcast 2 I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness and building resilience in our strange modern world.
Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.
Listen to 2%.
That's T-W-O percent on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
This is an I Heart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
