Latest / The One Small Change Podcast / What to Say When You Don’t Know What to Say
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to The One Small Change. I am thrilled to embark on
- 0:03this journey of exploration and
- 0:06transformation. I got tied up lips.
- 0:09I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost 30 years of
- 0:13entrepreneurial experience and a passion for discovering growth.
- 0:16And I have an obsession with the power of seemingly small change and
- 0:20how powerful they can be. And every week I try to bring somebody
- 0:24to you that can expand your insights and your
- 0:28information to help you grow your business. And this week we have the
- 0:32amazing Donna Riccardo, and she's gonna share with you
- 0:36something that happened that makes her really good and very special at
- 0:39what she does. Donna, thank you for being here.
- 0:44Oh my God, Yvonne, thanks so much for having me. So fun.
- 0:48So tell everybody what it is you do and what it is
- 0:52that happened that made you decide to do it so you do
- 0:56it in a way that makes you different from everybody else?
- 1:01Okay, uh, let's see. So I'm a speaker, a speaker trainer and
- 1:04coach, and a bestselling author on public speaking. And, uh,
- 1:08since my business is called, uh, Res Stiletto Get to the Point,
- 1:12I will make every effort to do that as I answer your question.
- 1:16Um, let's see. So it started in my former career. When
- 1:20I was a hairdresser in New York City. And I really, really wanted to
- 1:24work with— I'd gotten some great training, amazing training when I moved there to get
- 1:28that training. And I wanted to give back to others in my community,
- 1:32in the hairdresser community. And so great opportunity came
- 1:35up. And while I was working at this, it's very high-profile
- 1:40salon and, you know, got all prepared and it was a big 2-day
- 1:43show. Famous people used to come to our salon, like
- 1:47rock stars and movie stars, and we had famous hairdressers
- 1:50join us at this big show. And it was my turn at the
- 1:54show, and the salon owner introduced me, and I
- 1:59was terrified. I just completely froze. I
- 2:02panicked. I went mute. I said nothing at all.
- 2:06He stepped in, great man that he was, stepped in and
- 2:10took the microphone, and he said so graciously in his Australian
- 2:13accent, She has a soft voice. I'll speak for her. And so
- 2:17he did. And I was just to do a haircut demonstration and talk about
- 2:21it while I was doing it. And that's what he did while I did it.
- 2:25And something else, I left that salon later because I
- 2:29really wanted to teach and I needed different opportunities. And then I left that
- 2:32salon later to go to another company so I could go around and
- 2:36teach in other salons in that company. Well, something
- 2:39similar happened again. Like I didn't get it the first time.
- 2:43And so something similar happened again where I froze. I went mute.
- 2:47It wasn't quite the high-profile thing that that was, but it was a bigger job
- 2:51stake situation. And I just again
- 2:55froze and went mute. And it was after that I went, oh,
- 2:59I need to go learn this because the people in the beauty business, they're
- 3:02generally the people of the gift of gab and they're just like blah, blah, blah,
- 3:05blah, blah, blah. And that was just not my
- 3:09style. I'm much more capable of that now, but it took me 30 years to
- 3:12learn. They popped out like that. So going
- 3:16forward, I went and I learned, and I learned all like
- 3:20NLP. I did some personal growth things, I did some spiritual growth
- 3:23things, and I left the beauty business to work in a personal growth,
- 3:28personal development company. And that was
- 3:31where I— go ahead. I was going to say my
- 3:35story where I froze
- 3:39was in high school. And I was doing the— oh,
- 3:44I can't even think of the name of it. You know, when you're
- 3:48acknowledged for being a good student? Mm-hmm. I can't think of what the name of
- 3:51it was. And my thing is, I hate to go last because I hate to
- 3:55see other people make mistakes and panic. And I, do you
- 3:59know, and I had— we had done this whole big thing. I mean, you know,
- 4:02the speech and theater teacher, we had rehearsed for months and,
- 4:07memorized and memorized and everything. And I was the last
- 4:11person, and my mother had said to me, take a deep breath before you start.
- 4:16And I didn't. And I think I got the first phrase
- 4:20out before I ran out of air.
- 4:25And I came off the stage, and I had no idea. I mean,
- 4:28I just totally blanked out. And I was— when
- 4:32I got off stage, I started crying because I thought I hadn't said anything.
- 4:37Hmm. But apparently I went on, I,
- 4:41I gave a totally different talk just off the top of
- 4:45my head. You know, I came out and my teacher said to me, Yvonne, I
- 4:49was like, she's gonna be so mad. And she said, what a
- 4:52great job you did on recovering. And I was like,
- 4:57I don't remember. Yes.
- 5:01So I don't memorize speeches anymore. But anyway. Yes,
- 5:05I— well, more than 10 years before that big, big
- 5:08event, um, the first one,
- 5:12I was in 10th grade and I had to give a history report. I was
- 5:16all prepared, I was all ready to go, but no one tells you,
- 5:19at least not then, that you need to practice coming out of your mouth.
- 5:23And so I had— I was all ready. I get in my class, they call
- 5:26on me, I go up to the front, and I felt the blood drain from
- 5:29my face. I can still feel how that felt. Said nothing, never
- 5:33said a word, and the teacher just sat me back down.
- 5:39Well, I think that there's
- 5:42some really good tips about, you know, we're all different kind of
- 5:46people, we all need different kinds of support, but I think
- 5:49practicing is really important. And I think, you know,
- 5:53one of the things that I try to get people to do is
- 5:58first figure out what they're really good at, right?
- 6:02And focus on that. So when you give a talk, you're
- 6:06not going wider with your material all the time, you're going deeper.
- 6:11And so you've always got something you can pull out of your pocket,
- 6:15you know, and you can kind of connect with the crowd more. But anyway,
- 6:19so, so if you were, if you were
- 6:25How did you get to, you know, from being a hairdresser to
- 6:29it, you know, exploring speaking for your own benefit to helping
- 6:33other people learn how to speak? And what is the biggest problem most people have?
- 6:38Yeah, so, um, I left the beauty world, beauty
- 6:42field, to work and train at the personal
- 6:45development company. And so I was with them both as a,
- 6:49as a staff member and a volunteer for over 20 years. And that
- 6:53was all the inner, the inner workings.
- 6:57And at the same time I was doing Toastmasters, which is a lot of the
- 7:00mechanics, right? So those two really come together. But that's,
- 7:04that's how I got to that inner part. And then over
- 7:07time my body said, no, you cannot be a hairdresser anymore because I
- 7:11had gone back to it for a bit. And then, no, you do not want
- 7:14to work 12 hours a day anymore for this other company. And that's all I
- 7:18had. That's all I had ever done. And so I thought, how can I bring
- 7:22this all together? And there's really virtually
- 7:26nothing somebody can bring to me in the world of speaking that I haven't dealt
- 7:29with myself or been trained to help somebody with. And so
- 7:33that's how I started this company, because I just, I knew I
- 7:37wanted to help people with speaking because that was the thing I struggled with.
- 7:41And so I brought that all together to start all of this. And I, I
- 7:44don't think I totally answered your question because I forgot what half of it was.
- 7:48I was saying, I— so the first thing, the
- 7:52thing that went through my head is that this typical for almost most
- 7:55people is your message, your message, you know, whatever,
- 7:59whatever you had to advocate, whatever a person has to
- 8:03advocate for themselves to figure out is
- 8:06typically what you turn into your business, you
- 8:10know. So much. And, and so that's the first thing is
- 8:14that you have a wealth— anybody who's speaking, you know, has a
- 8:18business, has a wealth of knowledge already because you've lived it.
- 8:22So you're already ahead of everybody else. And someone told me a
- 8:26very long time ago, one of the first speaking courses I took,
- 8:30is there's always going to be— you know, he said there are 3
- 8:34categories of speakers. He said the one is the
- 8:37ultimate speaker, where there's only certain people who are in that
- 8:41category. So that would be like living presidents. You
- 8:45probably will never be in that category, you know, unless you start
- 8:48very young and become president. But at this point time you're not in
- 8:52that category. And then there are people who are
- 8:57actually experts in whatever it is, and then there are people
- 9:01who are reporters, and so they kind of do compilation
- 9:05kinds of things. I kind of put myself in between, in the middle between
- 9:08reporter and compilation. But even whatever
- 9:12category you're in, there's always going to be somebody who's better than you,
- 9:16and there's always somebody who's not going to be as good as you. And so
- 9:19it doesn't matter. I mean, we're all, we're all just trying to get better in
- 9:23the category category that we're in. So for people that are
- 9:27just starting out, just by the fact that you've
- 9:30advocated for yourself, you're better, you're ahead of most other
- 9:34people. So what are some of the things that—
- 9:40All right, I guess, Mike, I have a twofold question.
- 9:44Are most people looking for, I guess, organizing
- 9:48their content Or are they looking more for the
- 9:51craft and getting over their, their yips
- 9:55about speaking? I think that oddly,
- 9:59that seems to come lower on the list. And that was who I wanted to
- 10:01start out helping, you know, people that were more like me.
- 10:05But I think that, like, I think I'm kind of the exception
- 10:09to be that terrified and still want to do it. So those are not the
- 10:13people that I, that I talk to. And mostly they tell me that they,
- 10:17they would like to do it. They don't know what to say. And the other
- 10:20thing they say is, what do I do with my hands? So these are the
- 10:23main, these are the main things. And there's a lot of things that can fall
- 10:26under, I don't know what to say. But it's,
- 10:30that's mostly what they come to me with, you know, tell me.
- 10:34But the short answer to that is you talk about what you
- 10:38know. You talk about it like we're not, unless you're becoming a professional
- 10:42speaker, and that's a whole other animal completely to be like a
- 10:45corporate speaker or a conference speaker or something, or you, but you still
- 10:49stay in your zone. Right? You might not talk about the same things all the
- 10:53time, but there's still gonna be a world of things that you would talk about.
- 10:56That's not most of us. And so you talk about what you know if you're
- 10:59speaking as an entrepreneur. And then the other thing with the hands, you
- 11:03just— nothing is the answer. You just let them, you let them just
- 11:07like, let them hang down. Just relax because you'll naturally
- 11:11gesture as you speak. But if you're flapping them all around, people are
- 11:14gonna have their attention on your hands, which is not what you want. You want
- 11:18them to be listening to what you have to say. Well, I
- 11:22have to tell you,
- 11:26probably the most valuable lesson that I
- 11:29learned, and it's so common sense,
- 11:34you know, is before you give a speech,
- 11:38what do you want the end result to be? Where I went
- 11:42to a 3-day conference, I was so prepared for the speech. I
- 11:45mean, I wasn't speaking, it was a training. It was like, get your speech done
- 11:49right. And, you know, they were like, start your thing, bring it
- 11:52with you, you know, we'll help you polish it up kind of thing. I had
- 11:56this great talk and I had this great offer,
- 12:00and I had actually given the talk and the offer and it did not convert.
- 12:04And the first thing she said is, start with your
- 12:08offer and reverse engineer it. And I was like,
- 12:12oh my God, this offer makes no sense with this talk. I
- 12:16mean, it was just— I mean, it was like, that was the first day of
- 12:19the— I mean, the first thing they said, and I was like, Oh,
- 12:24I paid airfare.
- 12:28You know, so I think that's really the most important thing. And,
- 12:31and, and probably the, the,
- 12:36you know, just knowing what the purpose of the talk is. Who are you
- 12:39talking to? You don't talk to a group of
- 12:43senior citizens necessarily the same way you talk to a way of
- 12:47teenagers. I mean, and people sometimes
- 12:50don't take something as simple as that into consideration,
- 12:55right? Um, and that to me is like a big thing,
- 12:59right? Before you start working on the talk, just where do I want to
- 13:03take them in the end and who am I talking to?
- 13:07Yes, and that's part of the reverse engineering. I mean, people think
- 13:11that— I, I have this one, this new friend I met at the Chamber of
- 13:14Commerce, and she wants to speak. And we'll call— let's call speaking for 2 entrepreneurs
- 13:17and making an offer. Offer. Let's call that
- 13:21speak to sell, right? You want to sell, and it could be a free
- 13:25offer, it could be a phone call. If you have a long time to speak
- 13:28to them, you might make them an offer for a product or service, but we'll
- 13:31call that speak to sell. Now, this woman, I met
- 13:35her and she's telling me she, she does speaking. So I find
- 13:39out about her and her business, and then I find out what she's
- 13:43speaking about, and they have nothing to do with each other.
- 13:47So I'm thinking, well, she— if she's finding places to speak, why
- 13:50isn't she speaking on behalf of her business and making an offer so she can
- 13:54grow her relatively new business fairly quickly? Because that's an easy
- 13:58way to do it, getting in front of many instead of talking to one here
- 14:02and there. So yeah, that speak-to-sell thing is
- 14:05key for entrepreneurs because that you can reach many with one
- 14:09talk. Absolutely. You can leverage your action. The other thing
- 14:12that I have found, um, Over
- 14:16time is for me one of the
- 14:20hardest things to do is
- 14:24really focus in. You know, there was a joke once, and
- 14:28the you know it was about a preacher, and he said, "You tell them
- 14:31what you're gonna tell them. You tell them what you need to tell them, and
- 14:35then you tell them what you told them." Right?
- 14:38And I gave I gave a I do a
- 14:42monthly workshop. And afterwards, somebody said to me, can I
- 14:46talk? Do you mind if I talk to you? And I was like, no. And
- 14:49she said, you spent a little too long on this slide. I go, I know,
- 14:53I can't quite figure that out, right? And then she was
- 14:57like going on and she was like, you know, the timing of this and I
- 15:00don't— and this and I don't know about this story. And I was
- 15:03like, wait a minute, what do you do? She
- 15:07said, I help entertainers. And she
- 15:11probably didn't ask you permission to give you that feedback either. Well, I—
- 15:15the feedback was all right, but what I always say to people is
- 15:19you have to understand what you need. And I was not there
- 15:23to entertain in my workshop, and apparently that's what I was
- 15:26doing because I was having a good time, right? I was entertaining
- 15:30everybody. People were coming back because the stories were changing and
- 15:34stuff. I really had to narrow
- 15:37down and really make the stories support
- 15:41the point that I wanted to make, not just because I had a good time
- 15:45telling it. And so, I think that is, you know, part of the
- 15:49whole thing too, is that we think, I don't want to keep doing the same
- 15:52talk over and over again. But
- 15:56what I have found is the skeleton of my
- 16:00workshop is the same. I mean, I— when I started it, I had 25
- 16:04slides, and then I paid somebody, and then I had 40. You know,
- 16:0742, then somebody else looked at it and I had 52. I am now
- 16:11at 13 slides. It is always 13 slides.
- 16:15Right? And those are the points that I want to hit, and
- 16:19I may spend more time on one than the other, depending on who's there. So,
- 16:23the fact that there are different people there means that the talk flows a
- 16:27little bit differently. Right? And I
- 16:31get smarter. I figure out how to punch that line
- 16:34better because I can see what kind of re— you know. So one of the
- 16:38things I do is I take my chat and I put it in the— to,
- 16:41you know, to ChatGPT, and it'll tell me,
- 16:45you got good reaction from this, you got, you know, nobody
- 16:48reacted to this part, you know, because it's building on itself.
- 16:52So it— I'm trying to stick with that. You tell them what you're going to
- 16:56tell them, you tell them what you're going to tell them, and then you tell
- 16:59them what you told them. Right. And I think that makes it
- 17:03easier no matter what talk you're giving. It's a
- 17:06version of the same talk. And so you get
- 17:10really comfortable with it. What do you think about that? I think as an
- 17:14entrepreneur, absolutely. Because that's what we would call a
- 17:17signature talk. Think your signature, right? It might vary a little depending on, you
- 17:21know, today, how you slept, how you feel, whatever. But
- 17:24it's your signature. And the signature talk is the same thing. And
- 17:28it's like the gold in the
- 17:30entrepreneur's knapsack, if you will, right?
- 17:34It's the gold in there because you give it to different audiences
- 17:38that could have your same ideal client in them that could potentially
- 17:42become your client. And then you're making that offer and
- 17:46you are getting more and more and more familiar with this. You can have fun
- 17:49with it and you can go deeper on it, but you're
- 17:53still in your lane. And it makes it, I think, easier to
- 17:56also know what you want to say. You can dance with it a little bit
- 17:59more. And I think that that's the best thing an entrepreneur can do.
- 18:04And, and, and that does not mean, you know, I always say clarity is
- 18:08not a— clarity is not—
- 18:13it, it doesn't just stay there. It evolves as you
- 18:17get clearer. So, you know, one of the things, um, that happened to
- 18:21me is I started out my talk and it had this really rambling title like
- 18:23Discover Your Unique power to attract your ideal
- 18:27client. Da da da da da da. And my coach was like,
- 18:31if you're selling a horse, just say horse for sale. Nobody knows what that means.
- 18:34You're happy with it, but nobody else knows. And I had a
- 18:38situation where I was in a networking or masterminding group, and I've told
- 18:42this story a lot of times, um, and it actually happened this year,
- 18:46um, and I got really frustrated
- 18:49because everybody was telling this poor lady what to do. Mm-hmm. And
- 18:53I said to her, do you have paying clients? She said, yes. I said, are
- 18:56they happy with your services? She said, yes. I said, then
- 19:00you don't have a service delivery issue, you have a client attraction issue. You
- 19:04don't need to be fixed, you just need to be found. And
- 19:07everybody in the room went, oh! And so
- 19:11that's my thing now, be found, right? Yes. And, and
- 19:15so, you know, there are pieces of it that I've built out
- 19:19more than others, but it, it's something, and when I put
- 19:22it in as a LinkedIn event, same workshop, different title,
- 19:27typically I get about 20 people on LinkedIn events, right, over
- 19:31about 2 weeks with the old title. When I put the new title in, I
- 19:34had 20 people who signed up in 2 hours.
- 19:39So you know that your talk is, you know that you're, you've got evidence that
- 19:43your talk is speaking to people. All right, so before we run out of
- 19:46time, Um, let's talk about 3 things that
- 19:50people can do, especially entrepreneurs can do, um,
- 19:54in terms of using speaking to grow their business or to get over their fears
- 19:58of speaking. Okay, so
- 20:02number one, the 3 Ps: practice,
- 20:06practice, practice, right? So that kind of
- 20:09falls in with what we were saying a minute ago about getting so familiar with
- 20:12what you have to say. Which means points 2 and 3,
- 20:16network, network. Because once you're practicing, you know how
- 20:20you can just like nail down a short little piece of what
- 20:24you have to say when you're talking to somebody at a networking group or you're
- 20:27speaking, you know, at a group situation for
- 20:31networking. So know what you have to say and be able to
- 20:34say it clearly, succinctly, simply. When you're
- 20:38networking, you don't want to go on and on. You don't want to be that
- 20:40person that people can't wait to get away from because you're just going on and
- 20:44on and on. They're, they're gonna remember you in all the wrong way.
- 20:48They're gonna remember you as the one who didn't stop talking.
- 20:52But you wanna be remembered for who you are and what you know
- 20:55and be seen, heard, and known as the expert that you are. So
- 21:00that's the other one. And number 3, public speaking. Get out there
- 21:03and speak. So you have long, long talk. It's a version of your
- 21:07same talk, right? Long ones, short ones. You need, you know, 1
- 21:11minute something, 10, 5, 10 minutes,
- 21:14maybe 20, 25, depends on the group, right? Always find out
- 21:18how long your talk is. Always ask your host if you can make an
- 21:22offer and always stick to your time.
- 21:26Absolutely. You know what's something that I, that we talked about and you and I,
- 21:30I think, know it so well that we didn't really emphasize it.
- 21:35And one of the reasons that
- 21:38speaking is so powerful is, I mean, the
- 21:42obvious one is you get to speak to one person. I mean, you
- 21:45get to speak to many persons at a time versus one-on-one.
- 21:49But the other thing that I think a lot of times people don't talk about
- 21:53is if you're speaking at an organization or an event,
- 21:58that gives you automatic credibility. Somebody
- 22:02has allowed you to come into Their audience, and that
- 22:06automatically makes you an authority. Yes.
- 22:09The third thing is that people
- 22:13that are in the audience—
- 22:17there's always going to be people who kind of hold back. They're going to be
- 22:20some people there that are like, well, I want to know more. And it
- 22:24kind of gives those other people permission to go, well, maybe there's
- 22:27something here. Do you know? And, and they kind of
- 22:31let down their, their, you know, their callousness or whatever it is,
- 22:35you know, their I don't want to get involved. And so speaking
- 22:39is incredibly, incredibly powerful to
- 22:43build your business. It is one of the fastest ways to do it.
- 22:47And I don't think we put enough emphasis on that. The other thing
- 22:51is that I think is really
- 22:55important Is we talked about the variety of
- 22:58things, you know, the 1-minute, the 5-minute, always ask.
- 23:02Absolutely. Um,
- 23:06this is my opinion, but I
- 23:10hate the fact that we've been taught to go, hi, my name is, I do,
- 23:14I help, blah blah blah blah blah. That is so boring. And
- 23:17the other thing is that the more detail-oriented you are,
- 23:21the more you tend to want to tell people how you do it.
- 23:25And my theory, and it's taken me a long line to learn this
- 23:28myself because I'm really a process person,
- 23:32is they don't care how you do it
- 23:37if you're not solving the problem that they've got.
- 23:40Right. So, you know, one of the things that, you
- 23:44know, the easiest way that I can say this is
- 23:48when I was doing productivity and profit, you know, profit and productivity, I would
- 23:52start my introduction with, do you find that at the end of the
- 23:56day you have worked really hard, but everything that only you can do is
- 23:59still on your desk? And people will go,
- 24:04right? Those are the people I want to talk to
- 24:08because I've identified what, what they're having a problem
- 24:12with. That's part of your purpose and who you're talking to.
- 24:17And so, you know, Again, you know, I can go in and say,
- 24:21do you have, you know, paying clients that love you? You just, you know, you
- 24:25don't have enough of them. Then you don't need to be fixed. You just need
- 24:27to be found. And I'm working on a new one, you know, be focused,
- 24:31be found. You know, so we'll see. But, but
- 24:35my point is, your
- 24:39ideal client doesn't care that you have an MBA,
- 24:43doesn't care that you've got a 7-step process, doesn't
- 24:46care about all the stuff that's going on.
- 24:50If you cannot say to them something that will make
- 24:54them curious or something that will solve
- 24:58their problem. Like, I have, I have this— I have a weird sense of humor.
- 25:02So I have this question thing called the refrigerator question,
- 25:08which— and it goes with the story that I gave all my good friends this
- 25:11past Christmas the silicone mold
- 25:14that you put in like toner and stuff. And you freeze it and then you,
- 25:18you know, you do your face in the morning, you know. So I'm not going
- 25:21to get in a cold dunk. I'm not going to slush a bowl of
- 25:24water and put my face in. But this was perfect. I mean, it cost
- 25:28$5. I bought them toner. I, you know, and I, I put together
- 25:32these packages for like 10 people.
- 25:362 weeks later, I called everybody up and go, don't you just
- 25:39love this? And not one person had
- 25:43used it. Because I forgot to ask the
- 25:46refrigerator question. Where is your refrigerator? My
- 25:50refrigerator, because I have to take medicine, is on the second
- 25:54floor. So, I finish in the bathroom, I go
- 25:57take my medicine, I do my ice roller, I'm a happy camper.
- 26:02I am not going to go downstairs to do that, and neither would they.
- 26:08And I never bothered to say, where is your refrigerator? Let me
- 26:11show you how this will work for you. And I think you have
- 26:15to, you have to help people see themselves working with you.
- 26:19And so that, you know, sometimes I put it, you know, when I'm doing
- 26:23my, you know, we— where it starts tomorrow, come find out about the
- 26:26refrigerator question. And they're like, you know,
- 26:31like, should I go? This woman's crazy, right? But I think you have to make
- 26:34people curious. So, okay.
- 26:39Um, I think we agree that you need to, you need to
- 26:43practice. And I think the—
- 26:48so let me ask you, is the purpose of
- 26:52practicing to get it perfect?
- 26:56No, it's to get it familiar. And what
- 27:00does that mean? What does that look like? Yeah, so that means you
- 27:03know what you know so well that if some new thought
- 27:07comes to mind, because you never know, different audiences, different energies,
- 27:11right? Sometimes something new comes to mind. You can, you can
- 27:14dance with it because you know it so well, for example, or
- 27:19that you can add something in, right? That would be another kind
- 27:22of dancing, right? You can add something in, or if somebody asks a question, if
- 27:26I'm gonna make an offer, I generally discourage asking questions
- 27:30because I don't want that person who wants to be the expert but isn't willing
- 27:33to stand in front of the room to try to look like the expert while
- 27:36I'm in front of the room. So generally, if I'm going to make an offer,
- 27:40I generally, I will say, please hold your questions. I'll address, I'll address them at
- 27:44the end and then I'll make my offer and then I'll be available after for
- 27:47those questions. Mm-hmm. If they're, if they're real questions, I'm happy
- 27:51to answer them. I just don't want somebody derailing me from the front of the
- 27:54room. But somehow some hosts expect you to take questions. If that were
- 27:58to happen, you have to be able to dance with that too. And you have
- 28:00to know what you know so well. If what they're, what they're
- 28:04asking isn't the next thing you were going to say, you need to be able
- 28:07to still bring it all together. So, you know, and
- 28:11that's probably one of the hardest things is learning how to control the room and
- 28:14how you feel comfortable doing it. You know, whether you say
- 28:18something like, that is a great question, let's take it at the end so I
- 28:21can give you a full answer, right? Or
- 28:25maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the real question you should be
- 28:29asking is this, and that's what I'm going to cover next.
- 28:33That's a perfect segue. Yeah.
- 28:37So, okay. So before we run out of time, what's your free
- 28:41gift? Oh, I have— so I've been
- 28:45watching speakers and speaking for a number of years, and
- 28:49I've been really kind of surprised at what they sometimes do that
- 28:53disconnects their audience from them. And so I
- 28:57like to take notes of these things. So I have a top
- 29:0010 tips of things that you shouldn't do, that I think you shouldn't do
- 29:04because you lose your audience. So they're kind of unique in that way. They're not
- 29:08your ordinary tip. So I have that, and people
- 29:12can find that at showupspeakup.com.
- 29:15And that'll be in the show— that will be in the, um, the
- 29:19podcast notes too. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So
- 29:22yeah, it was— it's kind of fun, and I continue to do that. But these
- 29:25have been— I think these are kind of some juicy ones, and some of them
- 29:28are a little controversial. Well, we'll have
- 29:32to tune in and find out. So, all right, for the fun question,
- 29:36when was the last time you did something new for the first time? Oh
- 29:40my goodness. So probably, uh, like within the last week.
- 29:45My background, as you've heard, has been touching people, cutting their hair,
- 29:49or talking to people, working, you know, personal development, right?
- 29:53Nothing to do with tech. I could barely use my phone, and I've had to
- 29:57catch up very quickly. However, ChatGPT is a whole—
- 30:01and those kinds of AI things, whole other level of things. So the new thing
- 30:04I did was attempt to design a stand-up 6-foot
- 30:08banner for some events I have coming up. So attempt to design
- 30:12that on ChatGPT. And it's— I found out some things. It just—
- 30:16you can't just say, oh, change this. No, you change this and it
- 30:20changes the whole thing. Or— Yeah. It redesigns my
- 30:23logo. No, keep my logo. It puts a picture of somebody that's not me
- 30:27on there. No, I want my picture on there. And so
- 30:31like, that's been hours and hours and hours of trying to get that
- 30:35right, and it's still not right. And I finally
- 30:38sent it over to my, to my person that's gonna print it out
- 30:42and get it all ready for Saturday, 2 days away.
- 30:46And she still has to make some tweaks on it. I also didn't know
- 30:50you put the QR code and it changes it, or it's not an
- 30:54actual thing that you gave it right. There's
- 30:58So many things. Oh, so many things.
- 31:02I have to say that the last 2 I've done, I've been really pleased with.
- 31:05So I'm happy. All right. So guys,
- 31:10we probably could keep on talking for a long time, but we
- 31:14can't. We can. So
- 31:18the, you know, the first thing I want you to do is make sure you
- 31:20subscribe and share and engage with the podcast on social media.
- 31:25It is designed to supercharge your, your business through connection,
- 31:29and it's my way of giving back and trying to grow the community and fuel
- 31:32your quest for growth and impact. So I hope you'll continue to join me with
- 31:36the One Small Change and embark on this
- 31:40journey. And I put in a couple of interesting single
- 31:43solo episodes that you might want to see as well. But
- 31:47I want you to make sure that you check out this generous gift because
- 31:51it's the kind of thing that's going to help you. So Donna,
- 31:55what else have you got? What, what, what are your last words you want us
- 31:58to take away? Oh, last words I want to leave your audience
- 32:01with is when you are speaking,
- 32:05especially in front of an audience, speak
- 32:08slower than you want to and louder
- 32:12than you think you need to. Okay,
- 32:17so don't whisper, right? Don't
- 32:21mumble, don't whisper, and make sure the people at the
- 32:24back of the room can hear you. And if you're offered a microphone, always take
- 32:28it. Always, always. I think that's your quote. If you're
- 32:32offered the microphone, always take it. Anyway, guys,
- 32:35remember that change is simple, but it's not always easy. It requires
- 32:39courage and resilience and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone. If you
- 32:43are always comfortable, then you are not trying something new and you
- 32:47are not growing. So join me on the One Small Change
- 32:51And be sure to check out my workshop, the Be Found Workshop. Get clarity, get
- 32:55confident, and get consistent clients. It happens every month.
- 32:58Donna, thank you so much for your time and your gift.
- 33:03And thanks for having me, Yvonne. It's been great. Thank you. Bye.