Don't be macho -- use a mic

Download audio here.



I'll be the first to admit that I take an almost macho pride in my ability to project my voice. I was born this way. Even when I wasn't trying, I could be heard talking a mile away. And yes, I got in trouble a lot in school for being too loud.

However, I've learned my lesson about voice overuse, and I'm happy to say that if a microphone is available and a group is over about 40 people, I will use it. Here's why.

Even if you can be heard in the last row without shouting, you will be straining your voice to some degree if you have to give an hour-long or longer presentation to a large group. In order to be heard, you will have to make the effort to project your voice the whole time. In addition, you will be close to your maximum range in terms of volume, without yelling, and you won't have a lot of options with vocal variety. For example, if you want to make a point by bringing your voice down low, the last row may not hear you.

If you use a microphone, however, you have much more vocal control and the ability to play with vocal variety. You still have to project, even with a microphone, but not to the degree that you have to without it.

You can also hear yourself better and get more of a sense of what the audience is hearing when you use a microphone, because your voice is playing over a PA system. This allows you more vocal creativity and control, as I mentioned above, because you don't have to work as hard to project. And if you want to bring your voice down low, you can -- and still be heard.

Even if you, like me, have a naturally projecting voice, please consider not only the health of your vocal cords, but the ears of the audience when you decide whether or not to use a microphone. The last row should not be struggling to hear you, and you should be able to use the full range and abilities of your voice to make your message more compelling.

Don't be macho. Use a mic.

And here's a handout with more info on using a microphone.

Make it personal

Download audio here.



A Twitter user asked the other day if her followers preferred purely "on topic" tweets or if they liked some personal tweets that help you get to know the tweeter. Her replies all said the same thing: they liked a mix of business and personal tweets so they could get to know the tweeter a little. And several people mentioned that Twitter is about building relationships.

Public speaking is the same way (in fact, I might argue that you're public speaking every time you post a tweet!). If you stand up in front of an audience and recite facts, figures and data, your audience will learn a few things, but they won't connect with you personally.

The personal connection is what makes them want to know more, want to follow up with you, want to tell their friends and colleagues about you. When they can relate to you as a person and feel like they know you a little, they're more likely to recommend you to others.

People like to have relationships. They like to feel connected. Remember this when you tweet and when you speak.

Hey, are we Twitter friends yet? Here's my profile!

A tough room

Download audio here.



We enjoyed a lively show by They Might Be Giants yesterday afternoon. What we didn't realize when we bought our tickets was that it was a family show promoting their latest children's album, "Here Comes Science" (4:00 did seem a little early for a start time). The audience was full of kids wearing balloon hats and carrying balloon swords, picked up at the family festival before the show.

Last week, TMBG was interviewed in our local weekly, and one question stood out to me about the difference between audiences of adults and audiences of kids.

Independent: You're playing both adult and family shows during this tour. How would you compare them?

TMBG: I'd say the main difference for us as artists is that the kids are a little bit of a tougher room. They don't worry as hard about how we're doing.

Adults want you to succeed onstage. It makes them nervous when the band isn't going over, so they'll bump up the enthusiasm with feedback. They also observe these formal rules of a concert: They face the stage, and they applaud at the end of the song, and they don’t talk during the song because that’s what makes them comfortable. Kids don’t have these same concerns. [Laughs.]

For some of them, you're just what's going on in the room, and they're not all that worried about it being a successful show. They might not applaud, or they might be facing the other way, or they might be talking to their friend … or on the floor. But then there are a lot of young kids who come right up to the front and pump their fists and sing along to all the songs.

It's kind of exciting, actually, to think that we might be introducing kids to rock music or to live concerts. There might be kids out there for whom this is their first live show, and that’s really cool. That’s an important memory.

Watch the video below not just for an introduction to one of my favorite songs from the show, "Meet the Elements," but for an example of a visual that is fun to watch, easy to understand and sticky for how memorable it is! (Lyrics are below.)



Iron is a metal, you see it every day
Oxygen, eventually, will make it rust away
Carbon in its ordinary form is coal
Crush it together, and diamonds are born

Come on come on and meet the elements
May I introduce you to our friends, the elements?
Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade
They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are

Neon's a gas that lights up the sign for a pizza place
The coins that you pay with are copper, nickel, and zinc
Silicon and oxygen make concrete bricks and glass
Now add some gold and silver for some pizza place class

Come on come on and meet the elements
I think you should check out the ones they call the elements
Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade
They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are

Team up with other elements making compounds when they combine
Or make up a simple element formed out of atoms of the one kind

Balloons are full of helium, and so is every star
Stars are mostly hydrogen, which may someday fill your car

Hey, who let in all these elephants?
Did you know that elephants are made of elements?
Elephants are mostly made of four elements
And every living thing is mostly made of four elements
Plants, bugs, birds, fish, bacteria and men
Are mostly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen

Come on come on and meet the elements
You and I are complicated, but we're made of elements
Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade
They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are

Team up with other elements making compounds when they combine
Or make up a simple element formed out of atoms of the one kind

Come on come on and meet the elements
Check out the ones they call the elements
Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade
They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are

You think you're doing a good job, but you're not

Download audio here.



Is this you?

You're very busy. You're running your business, writing a book, traveling to speak at conferences and trainings, living your life in the cracks between business engagements and trying to find two minutes in the day to breathe.

You believe that you do everything well, even when you're rushed and stressed, because you get good evaluations and you're invited back.

You created a PowerPoint presentation for a prestigious conference, mostly cut and pasted from other presentations you've done in the past, sent it in a month or two ago because they required it, and you haven't looked at it since. Your presentation is next week.

You start to go over the presentation and realize that there are a lot of errors, inconsistent fonts and colors, slides in the wrong order, too many slides for the length of your talk, and general disarray. You realize that your assistant didn't do a very good job of editing, but you never proofread the final draft.

How do you know this? Because you called me at the last minute to help you finalize your presentation.

If you didn't call me and clean up some of the mess, you just got on a plane with a haphazardly thrown together presentation that you haven't practiced and might not even make any sense.

Is this you?

Guess what: You can't do good work if you don't prioritize. You can't give a good presentation if you haven't put one together in the first place. Your audience can't grasp and internalize your message if it's scattered about like pollen on a windy day.

You think you're doing a good job, but I imagine all of your projects are suffering in one way or another because of your inability or unwillingness to slow down and focus on what needs to be done, done well, right now.

You think you're doing a good job, but you're not. Believe me.

An argument worth rehearsing

Download audio here.



"I don't wish to be impertinent, Miss Walters, but it's an argument worth rehearsing. You never know; someone else might want to know the point of it all one day."

In the movie, An Education, student Jenny argues with her headmistress about the value of a traditional education vs. leaving school to marry an older man who has exposed her to art, music and travel.

Do you know what the arguments are against your points? Are you prepared to address them?

It's a quick way to lose credibility if you're not prepared to stand behind your assertions.

See the clip below with the full context of the argument.

Don't be afraid to lay a stinky egg bomb

In an interview with the Foo Fighters recently, Jack Black asked the band if their song ideas ever dry up. The answer was no.

JB: "You never have the fear that you are now empty... ever."

FF: "That's not to say that I think we write the greatest songs ever in the history of songs. But I feel like we could go into the studio for a week and come out with something."

JB: "It's a confidence thing. You have enormous confidence. You're not afraid to fail and lay a stinky egg bomb."

One of the band members talked about meeting Neil Diamond and asking him the same question, as Neil Diamond had started out as a songwriter who had to write for a living. He said that songwriting is like a muscle. If you don't write for a long time the first batch is probably not going to be that great, and that you have to keep the muscles toned.

The Foo Fighters mentioned that a lot of their best songs come at the end of a writing cycle, when the muscle is "built" and warmed up. That is, "Keep your song muscle hard."

Jack Black also asked about old songs that didn't make it onto albums.

JB: "The rest of them, that didn't make it on that first album, did they make it on future albums?"

FF: "No."

JB: "Those just went into the furnace."

FF: "Pretty much. We've got a lot of those over the last 15 years. We'll start in on an album with, like 30, and then wind up with 12. And the other 18 sometimes come back, but they never make it, because they didn't in the first place. It sucked then, it sucks now."

These comments made a lot of sense to me as a writer and speaker.

First, you have to have the confidence to keep putting out new material and trying new things, even if you're not 100% sure it's your greatest. You can take the risk of putting out something less than stellar, or you can not put out anything at all. Which one will move you forward?

Second, you have to keep your creative muscles toned. Keep writing, keep presenting, even if it's giving your elevator speech at networking events. Keep practicing, because your speaking, writing and creating muscles can get flabby!

Third, not everything you put out there is going to be fabulous, and that's okay. Those bits and pieces of writing and material may come back again and they might even fit into a new presentation or a new book. And they might not. But don't stop producing just because you're afraid of laying a stinky egg bomb.

Look at the successful people around you. Look at your favorite musicians, actors, athletes, and business role models. What lessons can you learn from them?

First impressions follow you everywhere

Download audio here.



Hypothetical situation: You're a person who is highly visible in the community. You are a well-known business owner, a philanthropist, or a politician. People talk about you; media covers anything you do.

You're having a bad day and an annoying stranger cuts in line ahead of you. You are less than friendly about it. Word gets around.

Someone calls your home and your spouse can't be bothered to take a message. People talk.

Because people know who you are, there is no time or place that you are not "on."

You, reader, may think you're lucky to escape the constant scrutiny of the public as an average citizen. But the truth is, if you want to be successful as a speaker or business owner -- or anyone else who relies on other people for your livelihood -- you might want to rethink that.

Here's another hypothetical situation: You've been engaged to speak for the local Junior League chapter. You're driving to the meeting and someone cuts you off on the freeway. You honk your horn, yell some obscenities, maybe even (no, not YOU!) flip them off.

You get to the meeting and -- guess what -- the person on the freeway is the president of the organization you're speaking for.

Or you're staying at a hotel where you're speaking at a conference. You get into an elevator to go to your room, and as someone runs for the elevator, you let it close. So what? Next day, you find that person in your seminar, surrounded by influential colleagues. You may have thought it was no big deal, but that person now considers you exceedingly rude.

It may sound like I'm saying that you should always be on your best behavior because you never know when you're going to encounter a client or even a prospective client, and you want to make a good impression. And yes, that's true.

But really, we make an impression everywhere we go. If you really want to make a good impression all the time, you just have to be a good person. It's a lot of work to always be wondering who's watching. It's actually a lot less work to stop worrying about who's watching and just be a better person all the time.

And, by the way, if you are a person in the public eye, you might want to train your family members on how to take your phone calls. Unfortunately, they are an extension of your brand and your business, and their bad behavior can harm you just like your own can.

First impressions follow you, everywhere you go. Remember that.