Latest / Two in Twenty / AIM High: Techniques to deliver cut-through presentations

Transcript

AIM High: Techniques to deliver cut-through presentations · Two in Twenty

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to another episode of Aim High.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Twink Field, and I'm the host of these podcasts.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're talking about techniques to deliver cut-through in presentations.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: And Dylan Emmery, who is the founder of Last Word Media and director of research there now, he, as many of you will know, has hosted and chaired a number of conferences for Last Word Media and has listened to many, many presentations.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we thought he'd be the perfect person to speak to about what best practice looks like and what the easy mistakes are to make.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, Dylan, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about how we make presentations as impactful as possible and really get cut through with our audiences.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: I know it's something that people spend a lot of time on, um, and rightly so.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: So perhaps you could introduce yourself, your role, and uh probably your experience in this area would be great.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, thanks very much for inviting me to this podcast.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's very exciting.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: For those who don't know who I am, I'm Dylan Emery.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I am the uh one of the founders of Last Word, um, which is a uh uh publishing research and events company in the financial media space.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we have been around for like 15 years or so.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the uh editorial director of that, so I could have created all the magazines and did all that uh for the first sort of 10, 12 years of it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then about a couple of years ago, I kind of switched jobs and I'm now the director of research for last words.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what I now do is gather all of the research we do, we've got a big chunk of the company now, basically just does research.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So all of the readers of almost everything we do in the company.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we have basically um we have magazines for financial advisors and for professional investors basically in the UK, in Europe, in Middle East, in Far East, uh Asia, Hong Kong, South Singapore, also South Africa.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: We also now have a US business, um, and we're part of a uh a company called Investment News, is now our sister company, and that basically does the same, but in the US.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all these financial advisors in the US.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: But what links all of them is that they are all professional investors and they need to be communicated with.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, we're driven editorially by everything that we do, but we also run events and we do the research that I do.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the research is interesting for a couple of reasons.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, because I used to chair like all of our events until we got too big and then I couldn't, but I chaired still 50, 60 conferences a year.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just a stupid number.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh and then I uh uh and then I've cut that down a little bit.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously, uh now in lockdown, we've had to transfer all of our events over to virtual events, online events.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's been a really interesting transition.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I could we could talk about that a bit as well.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you continue that having a high impact um when you've got screen, you know, and this really limited space?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and also the other problems, which is like interrupting is so much worse in you know, in uh in an online platform.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you mean.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh so is that so yeah, so now I do lots of research.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we basically ask all of our readers across the world, uh, in the at like 20 countries or so, we do business and we ask them all the time, like, what are you thinking of doing next?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: How do you want to be communicated with?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you bother showing up to events when when events were live?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um also what you what are you gonna invest in next and everything else?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a big old mix of things, but still, most of what I do is either the research bit or is actually chairing conferences.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so my experience in terms of you know getting people to present in a way that doesn't waste everybody's time, uh, it's been a a basically a career-long battle for me.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so yeah, so that's that's my experience of doing this.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And given all those conferences that you've hosted, um, and I know you you talked about so much about the impact of it is based on whether they give a damn about what they're saying.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: What else, uh, you know, when we think of the listeners and how they can help shape that and and work with uh the fund managers and presenters, you know, what do the best presentations really have in common that that we as marketers can get our hands around?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there's two things I would say.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, you've got to start with, yeah, there's two completely separate things.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: One is the is the speaker, and the second one is the is the viewer, is the listener or the audience member.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and you've got to just obviously have both of those.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so let's start with the let's start with the audience member because it often gets forgotten.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the typic this is a typical conversation I would have if I was talking to, say, you know, the marketing director of a fund management group, and they're considering, you know, you going to one of our events.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's assume this is a live event, because they will come back again in hopefully six months or so.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this will typically happen.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I will talk to the marketing director and the sales director, and we will say, okay, there's a bunch of people coming, they're all professional investors, they're all usually, you know, private bankers, wealth managers, et cetera.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they are, and they buy third-party funds.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: These are your key top clients.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: These you know most of them personally, and you've got a chance to basically, you know, make yourself compelling in front of them.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and they will, and I'll say, so the best thing you can do, you know, you've only got half an hour, say, to do a presentation, or maybe you're in a panel debate.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just a short amount of time.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And all the people in the room, they have not come to listen to your sales pitch.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you book a meeting with them separately, that's exactly then they absolutely have come to listen to your sales pitch.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they go, Oh, I'm interested in the fund.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Come along, I'm gonna spend half an hour listening to you and literally talk about exactly how you run it and give me your numbers and talk about your alpha and your beta and you know, your correlations, and give me the data that I need.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: However, when you're in a conference, then usually it's an educational kind of format.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: They are there to just be inspired, to go, oh, is this something new?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is this something interesting?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: They are listening out for USPs.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to just think of a few things, like why are they there and what will they do with the information that they are there?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, why are they there?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: They are not there to be sold to.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they don't care, they they will make a decision, they're all professionals.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you come along and a fund manager says, uh, starts any kind of sales pitch, then immediately they'll switch off because they'll go, okay, this is a separate thing.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're trying to sell, so now I have to pick my defenses up, my intellectual defenses have to be up because uh this is no longer honest information.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is a person who wants me to you know go back and eventually just buy his fund.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, which is fine, and we all know that's the deal, except that's a different deal from the here's a fund manager saying, you know what's going on in Singapore, it's really interesting.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this company doing that, and then the government's doing this.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's an opportunity here.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: That conversation is an honest conversation because the fund manager is just saying honestly what's you know what the what the issues are.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as you start saying, Well, we've you know, we've we've done 12% every year for the last five years, you know, then first of all, the mode of thinking of the audience member changes and it switches immediately.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you can literally see it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm slightly surprised people don't do that more often.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the audience, especially if you're if you're if you're accompanying a fund manager to a conference, okay, and the fund manager's speaking, don't look at the fund manager, don't look at your watch.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, there's so many things I could say.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Don't look at your phone.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so many salespeople just get a bit bored because they've heard this 20 times.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're not allowed to look at your phone, you're not allowed to look bored because it's even though I know it's unfair because you've heard this and you're there's nothing for you there.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh unfortunately, everyone else will go, Oh, well, if you're bored, then why on earth should I pay attention?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so what you should be doing is look at the audience and you'll see when they switch on, you'll see when they switch off.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see the ones who look up and go, Oh, I hadn't thought of that.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll immediately know whether there's an opportunity opportunity there.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very, very hard for a speaker to be able to do to speak and at the same time notice the audience.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can only really do that if you know your material so well or if you're improvising, which is what I tend to do.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where you know, there's not much of a speech, you know, it's this I know points I want to hit, and so I can try to look at the audience.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it's really hard to do that.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so uh so yeah, you'll notice that switch.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So basically think, why are they why are they there?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: What are they listening out for?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: What are they going to do after they've listened to your fund manager speak?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if the fund manager um immediately starts basically doing this is our team, they'll go, Well, I know I can't, then the audience member is going, I can't.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do with that?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Am I gonna go back?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Think what they're gonna do after the conference.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna go back to their okay.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Assuming even that they're there to listen for funds at all.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of the time they're there because their mates are there.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're there because it's an industry shindig.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: They can get drunk, you know, later on and have canopes and they can talk, you know, talk shop.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's a big reason why they come to a lot of the live conferences, you know.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they are there during the day to listen to stuff and come up with ideas, absolutely, but they're also there for other reasons as well.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not the primary reason necessarily that they're there.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, what they're gonna do though, if they are if you do manage to get through to them and go, yeah, here's a fund you might not have thought about buying, we think you should buy it.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine you said something interesting enough for that.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna go home back to their office, they're gonna go to their CIO, back to their investment team, and they're gonna go, there's this fund manager, you know, Jane Smith.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think she's really interesting.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's something up there.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the the the you know, the asset class is really interesting, and she, you know, I think she's really bright, we should get her in.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um so that comes from creating that inspiration.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so we need to have that objective in mind when we're going to those types of live events.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: How do we how do we inspire?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: How do we kind of engage people rather than tell people the story we want to tell?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely that.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You you have to go.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to go home.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what you're actually doing when you're talking in that context of like a 20-minute speech or a panel debate, um, uh, even if it is about your fund, what you're doing is you are not selling a fund, you're not even talking educationally.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: What you're really doing is you're recruiting a salesperson.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're recruiting that person in the audience to be your salesperson.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a few disadvantages that this particular your new recruit has.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of them is they've that's the first time they've ever heard about your product, so they're not very good at remembering stuff about it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, they don't work for you.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and thirdly, they're gonna be surrounded by uh when they go back to their office, they're gonna be surrounded by cynics.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you have to give them so that they've got the maximum chance of getting through those barriers to go back home to eventually persuade them to go, okay, let's say let's have a look at this interesting fund.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you have to do a few things.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, you have to be memorable, and that's the most important thing.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You because again, it's very easy for a fund manager when they're talking, they are so into their own topic, and they're often, you know, brilliant people.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're really, really I really love fund managers because even the the even the most you know nerdy and boring fund manager is not at all nerdy and boring, they just love their topic so much.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's very few fund managers that actually are kind of totally blase and then don't give a damn about stuff.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually generally a really good source of material, and they should be used much more of that kind of resource, I think.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to uh you need to, however, give them uh an opportunity to be memorable.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, one, how is the fund manager themselves memorable?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, and that's why you offer you will sometimes people will say, Oh, you know, I was uh you know, an Olympic role or something.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at least it's memorable because they the audience has might have, you know, they might have watched five other presentations on European large caps that morning.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And everything you might possibly say, 90% of your investment process is identical to every 90% of everyone else's investment process.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but the fund manager won't know that because they only know their own will, they don't go around listening to everyone else's presentation.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, quite often they're not even in the room when the other presentations happen.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they have reasons for that, but actually it's a weakness because it means that they end up going, I don't really know how to differentiate myself because I've never listened to the competition.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: They don't really know what they say.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so when that's the case, there's literally no point in saying, uh, oh, you know, we look but the number of presentations where I've heard a firm manager start or a salesperson doing, which do they do exactly the same job, and they say, Well, you know, we're different from all the others.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll tell you how.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have a start with a top-down view, and then we go, oh my god, just end me now.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have to find a way to shortcut the stuff that everyone does.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: What you should ideally do is you should say, you know, the big, the big, you know, uh 600-pound gorilla in the room, that fund that everyone buys.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're a bit like that, but this is how we're different.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I I don't know any, I don't think I know a single salesperson who would ever tolerate that because they can't imagine naming another fund.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: But but essentially that's what you have to do, even if you don't necessarily name the fund.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: You want to just say what it is.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: There's also quite a lot of information available so that you can tee up your fund manager to be able to kind of point to the differentiating elements.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: So if you are going to a conference and you know there are three other fund managers in a similar space or asset class to you, to go and do the digging around rather than not only prepare kind of how you're going to inspire and differentiate, but but really know who your target audience is going to be rotating through so that you can be much more explicit about the differentiations and know what the messaging is going to be in that other room.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, what you can do is ideally, again, this is the ideal situation, but almost never no one ever would be brave enough to do it, would be if you know, you know, you're third and the other two have you know have got great performance, and and you also you ideally know a little bit about you know their actual process, then you can come in and you can say, yeah, just like you know, just like John and Sarah just said, they do this, that, and the other.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, that's exactly what we do.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: We totally agree with them on this.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: However, we disagree with them on this point, and and you look, and ideally you get their agreement beforehand if you want a friendly conference.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you say, look, there's a you know, look at your top 10 holdings and compare them.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, and if there's like, you know, if there's one in someone else's top 10, and you just say, I, you know, I uh if you want to be polite, you say, I understand why Sarah has bought this stock.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think she's an idiot.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think you should buy this instead, and this is why, you know, and you want to make it friendly but actually properly robust.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: All of the best feedback we get in all of our research that we've done, uh, it's always we want to hear fund managers, bright, competent fund managers, where they have differing views.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and the moral, I guess, would be around telling stories, not having everybody say the same thing.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, back to your to your point around having differing views, being able to sort of challenge robustly, um, keeping it humorous and friendly, but but demonstrating uh a conviction view.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a couple of things.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, if you are just an aggressive person, you're just a high beta kind of fund manager, just be honest about it.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: What okay, there's a couple of things you can you can throw in to be good.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: One of them, first of all, is talking about process is almost never a good idea, even though that's it's the number one thing that it's what everyone needs to know.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: They do need to know your process, like otherwise they would why would they buy you?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So again, so I should differentiate.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a conference and you're in a kind of educational bit where you're talking about, you know, what's going on in the stock market or in investment generally, then you shouldn't be talking about your process.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a what it's not why people are there.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: However, if you are there explicitly to talk about your fund, um, and you are doing one of those presentations, um, then uh that is the case.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can uh then what you shouldn't, even though everyone what they need to get out of it is your process and also why your process might be better than everyone else's process.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: However, if you start going through the slide deck of we do this, then we do this, then we do this, then we do this, you will lose the audience.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: They will literally not be able to remember what you said because it's so tedious, but also because it's literally most of it's the same as everyone else's.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh and secondly, you uh they um it that isn't what they will take back with them in any case.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: What they'll take back with them is what differentiates you, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you've got that gives you an edge?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: They at the end of it have to have a ideally a one-sentence reason why you're you have got a better than 50% chance of outperforming their peers over a you know whatever time period you you're actually aiming the fund at.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So always, always the best ones, almost always the best way of people of uh you know the best speakers we've ever had are passionate about like and they'll talk like here's one stock.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here it is, and this is what happened.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so instead of saying, um, instead of saying we do this, we do top-down analysis, and then we do this, uh, we have this filter that we use, and then we do uh you know bottom-up stock selection and man's quality of management's very important, and everyone's just you know going, you know, please kill me now.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um instead, you say, I'm gonna give you an example of what we do.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um so and it would be something like, you know, let's say back in the day, uh, let's say there was a um one of our analysts came to us and said, you know, there's this really interesting gold stock.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, oh, for goodness sake, we're not investing in gold.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like no one's investing in gold, that's ridiculous.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the other said, no, no, no, this is a really interesting company.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because they don't dig gold, but they do transport it, you know, in South Africa, uh, and they got these massive fleet of lorries.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it turns out everyone else has had massive problems with reliability, but this one company hasn't.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: But what they did recently was they had to borrow a load of money in order to be able to hire a load of fleets because they've got so much demand for their trucks.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the banks, uh uh, as a result, they've got this huge debt.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and therefore the stock market is massively um has put their share price down hugely because they're going, oh, this is a hugely indebted company, this is a real problem.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, I've looked at it, and because our we we always recruit analysts from the industries they're in.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he's a guy, he was used to working in South Africa in a gold mine.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So he knows that in fact the consistency of what they're gonna get back from that is incredibly high.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, they've done a deal with the driver's union or something, you know, whatever it is.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big story you tell.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I just made that up from you know on the fly, but there's a huge story you're telling about now, you know, and you say, So, so I think it's a really good deal, you say.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then you tell in in your in your story, you then say, So then we went to the uh our economist and we said, What's gonna happen to gold prices?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, will that affect this?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gave his prediction.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then we went to our uh to another firm manager, and she's actually uh a South Africa expert, doesn't know anything about gold, but she actually knows about the general stock market.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: We talked to her and she said this, that, and the other.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then we went to the committee and we went to the risk team, and the risk said, Well, you can we'll we'll let you have five percent.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a big we're gonna take a big stake in this for now.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, um the way that we do it is that if it goes up by more than a certain amount, then we'll take it off, or if it goes down by a certain amount, we'll take it off.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we put the initial thing in.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so you you're constantly just you're spinning a story about how you that particular stock, why it seemed like a bad idea, but then it turned out it might be interesting.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then you end up buying it, and then you can say, and we bought it at you know 100 Rand.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh what then happened was it immediately collapsed to 50 Rand, and we had a crisis meeting.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then of course it went back up again, and then you know, and it turned out that everything went our way, probably because that's why you're talking about this story.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then a year later, it was up at 300 Rand, and then the and the stock market all went, Oh, yeah, I see what you've done.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then the price went up, but we realized there's probably no other buyers in this market.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're gonna take our profit, and we took our profit.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: So that story, not only You can see why you do improv, didn't you?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm convinced.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, because that story is an interesting story, hopefully, if you've chosen it well, and you know, uh um the audience will then go, Oh, well, I remember the story.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, quite.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: But also, now I know exactly how you manage your fund, and also I probably know a whole bunch of USPs that otherwise might not have come out.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know the fact that, you know, analysts only come from the industry.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know the fact that you've actually got risk meeting, I know that you talk to other fund managers in the same area to get ideas.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: All that stuff is stuff that you absolutely cannot get from looking at the numbers or looking at your fund fact sheet.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, it's genuinely what why you might have uh, you know, an alpha edge.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so here's the rub getting your fund manager to believe in storytelling as opposed to a kind of, I guess, a pretty comfortable place of presenting their fund in all the ways that you say kind of previously, which are pretty uninspiring and pretty kind of repeated um from one presentation to the next or one fund manager to the next.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: How you know they're they enjoy, they they often clearly make decisions based on evidence.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get the evidence to show people that this is how you're gonna be much more impactful and memorable?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and actually just make that the objective, you know.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's that's the other kind of you know, scene setter that needs to be created sometimes, well ahead of these events and and presentations, right?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so on the whole, marketing people immediately get the need for storytelling.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh salespeople require evidence that it will lead to a sale.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And fund managers, uh I mean, some of them obviously get it completely, but a lot of fund managers in in just they'd rather just spend time with their calculators.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they are very different conversations you have to have with each of them.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: But what what joins them all together is that everyone, especially salespeople and fund managers, are very competitive.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So what I found successful is what we do, for example, the last word, is uh we record the scores that every single speaker has ever had at every event.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because after every event, we get all the uh people who are in the audience to write down whether they like that person.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then we put down two scores.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um just a simple five-star kind of review, um, and it is whether they like the speaker, and then secondly, whether they like the topic, which are two separate things.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because obviously you could have a topic that you go in, it's not really relevant, but the speaker was good.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's diff very different from the other way around.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you need to be able to distinguish between the two.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so we have therefore got I've got literally thousands of data points of like appetite and engagement, basically, is what we're looking at.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got like a list of literally like tens of thousands of data points of uh a large number of the of the kind of the big fund managers, and it just I can just see how well did they do.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if they've spoken six times at our conferences over the years, I can just see how consistently well do they do or badly did they do.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then what I did was I did a load of research looking at who did consistently the best, and then uh often I was literally physically there for most of their speeches because I've literally done like 300 conferences or whatever.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: But even if I wasn't, uh, we also get remarks as well, like qualitative remarks from people.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so they say things like, Well, he started talking and then I didn't understand what he was going on about, or he they, you know, uh, or they say, Well, you know, he said I was I wasn't convinced by this particular part that you know the story.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if four or five people in the audience say the similar things, that's probably something to focus on.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we just did a load of research.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So what I then did was when I went into and talked to fund managers, how I pitched it was not you're terrible at communicating, you should change what you do, because then they'll just say, Go, you know, go, go away.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I'm not listening to this, I'm the fund manager.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, instead you go in and you just say, Would you like to know how to win this game?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: This scores appeal to that competitive nature.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like this got you know, this person got 4.1, but this person got 4.5, and this person, oh my god, they got an average of two.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that suddenly, almost always that tends to make them pay attention because they like to win and they also don't want to be bad.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like obviously, they do want to communicate well.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So by making a a statistically based uh opinion, as opposed to it being we just think storytelling is like more effective, they'll just go, Well, I'll you know, I'll tell you what's more effective is you leave me alone.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I've got six million channels, right?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so instead, if you put it the other way, then uh they're like they're much more likely to be engaged.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: So now it doesn't always work, and sometimes you just gotta just uh rely on that, in which case there's a few solutions.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is uh obviously the person who's set who's creating their presentation, you can actually work on the presentation itself and make it so they just avoid the more howling, dull bits.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: To be honest, if they're going to be interesting, like if they're gonna just tell stories and be interesting about it, that's kind of the most important job.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you in a conference, you cannot convince someone by standing on a stage.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna go and buy your fund after hearing you stand on the stage anyway.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you'll have to have follow up meetings and do all the research.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's sort Doesn't matter if they don't even cover what their fund does, as long as there's like a slide somewhere saying this is basically what the fund is, um, and then you do the follow-up meetings.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's also what I was thinking, you know, in terms of that persuasion with your fund manager and the sort of stakeholder management piece, that if you're able to point to the the right, the appropriate meeting, and where you can do much more of your sort of process of due diligence and sort of fund positioning and um sale, that that maybe the the anxiety and and the the sort of innate need to do that, but it kind of goes away because you're like, what we need to do, we're at the top of the sales funnel.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: We want to sort of if there's no loyalty, there's no reason why they should listen to us.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: So all we've got to look for is some inspiration.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then we can shepherd it through, and this is when you're really gonna get let's save that, you know, for later on in the process of trying to win this client.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I think sometimes we don't frame it in that journey, you know.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: We sort of kind of think this is it, we're all in, push it all into 20 minutes, and then let's just it'll probably take up the whole half an hour, we won't have time for questions.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we try and say too much.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's the other point.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: Let's try and be really focused about what we want to be the outcome, and then and then work for and then in the knowledge that more can come later.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's really very wise.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you should start with, you know, this is as exactly as you say.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like you if you explain to the fund manager, fund manager is obviously interested in getting more you know assets in their funds.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only reason they're there, they've agreed to, you know, fly to Beirut, wherever it is that you've gotten.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is they don't necessarily like to travel, some do, but a lot of them don't.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're doing it because they expect to see results, like they want to see it turn into sales.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, if you explain, your job is simply to is just to make it so that they rem so that I mean in in actual fact, their real job is so is to make it so that when the salesman calls the fund buyer a week later, the fund buyer remembers the company.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they answer the call.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's that is it.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they are not there.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can as you say, you can't do the whole thing.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot take them through the entire investment process.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you did, they would just fall asleep and they wouldn't remember who you were.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, exactly.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: You have to, I think uh uh explaining it in that sense, I think, is a really good idea.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: To say, look, you're here just so they remember who you are.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: They've got to come out of it going, remembering a unique fact about you personally, about the fund?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is the thing it does that's slightly different from the other things?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um, and then uh something about the company.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: The other big thing I would always suggest is uh, you know, think about your company.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Does the entire audience know who you are?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Often they don't.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if they don't, what is the one-sentence thing you can do that's going to make them remember who your company is?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everyone's got their thing.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: If it's um American Century, you can say, like I think American Century, they've basically got like a uh the owners basically gave loads of their shares to a medical foundation.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that medical foundation is kind of a massive shareholder.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of what they do, the basically the money they make, goes to a medical foundation.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's first of all memorable, but second of all, everyone's gonna go, okay, that's probably means it's run in a fairly conservative way.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's sort of good people there.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're not messing us around.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're not likely to take huge risks.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, find the thing that's the memorable one sentence.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: And what I find interesting about that is that that that requires time and preparation and some really considered thought.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's not the obvious thing, is what I typically find.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when you're working on kind of how to differentiate or how to build a proposition, I think there is a sort of misnomer that it's that it's quite quick to fix, right?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: With actually getting down to the to the really uh sort of nuanced differentiating aspects of what you do takes time and it needs that dedicated time and space to do it.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Don't don't leave it to just on the hoof, oh, one of the quick things that we're gonna sort of say in front of this quite important audience.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And also the other thing that, again, I mean, sorry, this is kind of repeating this.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone listening to this who's heard me go in and talk to them all will recognize a lot of this stuff.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it is this thing of, you know, if the the people that you are talking to, so let you go into a room full of you know professional, you know, private bankers or you know, wealth managers or whatever, uh, and and let's say you've got a uh often a young, enthusiastic sales team, marketing team, you might have an old hand from your company, but you know, fund managers on average don't last more than five years, right?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Marketing and salespeople tend to do three years, then they move on, which means you're in this rather unique situation, which is you're going in and you're trying to pitch to a room full of people, and you've been with your company for three years, and they have known your company for 20 years, they know your company better than you do.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had this before.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking about to I was doing a lot of consulting on ESG because we do huge amounts on ESG, and it's big, you know, obviously a very, very important thing.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there were people going, oh, we've got to just you know change our messaging on ESG, and we've got to just explain that we're an ESG company, and we've always been an ESG company, and ESG is in our DNA, and we've always had sustainability at our heart.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I just said that is bullshit.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: You are not, and I know because I've been around for long enough to know that is you've never said that before, and it is absolutely not at the heart of what you say.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it might have been in the last two years because that's when you started working for this company.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you think that's all there's ever been, and it has come from the top, like it's genuine, like they really do want this to be the message of the spread.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's true or not, is a whole other thing we can talk about with ESG.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is that they it is a genuine, like it isn't just a quick thing, like it is a company-wide thing.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: However, it is incredibly recent.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if you get your fund manager or your salesperson to come in and say, you know, ESG is at the heart of what we do, and it has been in the you know, in the 150 years that we've been investing, the entire room will call bullshit and go, no, it's not.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're lying to me.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna listen to you anymore.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: So don't try to fool the people who know your company better than you do and be aware of that context.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, interesting.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: So earlier, Dylan, we were saying that we come back to moving to presenting online, you know, and what needs to sort of change or or things need to have top of mind.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because, as you say, live events will hopefully come back in a few months' time, but there would likely be a hybrid.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll we'll need to always remind our fund managers and presenters how to present best in each environment.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we think about the online uh environment, what what uh what have been the classic mistakes?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: And where have you seen people really be thoughtful about getting their message across in in this type of dynamic?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I would say actually, oh, before I forget, suggestion for a fund manager who who who struggles to be interesting, sorry, uh this is also works for online as well, but actually, is don't have them do a speech, make it an interview.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: So much better.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like me now talking to you is much more compelling than if I was just trying to speak for 20 minutes.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to speak for 20 minutes without stopping, you know, and and be interesting.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just your vocal performance, it just gets starts to get monotonous and you start to bore yourself, you know, or you start to get into a zone.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: So having someone else there makes a huge difference.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, in recent times, I've been doing a little load of corporate videos um for Genfun management groups, and almost all I'm really doing, I'm just there saying, So how'd you do that then?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And why did you buy this stock?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you did what?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: But this doesn't make sense to me.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's playing the skeptic, it's playing the interested, energy, energized uh party.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what it does is it makes them, first of all, it breaks it up.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Second of all, it means I can ask questions if I'm allowed to, if I'm given permission to, I will ask questions that I know a fund buyer would actually want to know the answers to, as opposed to just allowing them, you know, whatever deck they normally use to get through.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but also the energy that you give them, they will spark back with that energy.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Unless you're a professional performer, it's very hard to maintain that energy over any length of time.
• 29:26
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, sorry, so I throw that in.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually so that starts probably the online thing.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Energy.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it isn't any different, really, from a live show.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: But in a live show, you have your entire body.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: The audience can see a huge amount of information being given by your body language.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you can move and you can walk up and down the stage and you can point to things.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's energy and there's movement, and that will add a lot of punch.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes it just easier to literally absorb what you're saying and to be engaged and compelled in it.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're on a on a in a screen like this, you it's it's a TV show, you know.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh people at home listening with audio, so they won't be able to, they won't be able to tell.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you have to imagine what I would look like.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't move my arms around because can't see anything, right?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can only see the tops of my shoulders and maybe my hands, you know.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: So there's only a very small amount, uh, you know, in order to be if you to communicate, there's only a very small amount of the body that you can actually use.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing is that is to be aware that that is the case, which means when you're on a stage, um, your job in both cases, your job is to basically communicate your emotional state to the audience.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, why if you're a fund manager, you know, try to be excited about this thing, you've got to remember it.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And on a stage, you'll use your entire body, you'll move across the stage, and that means something, you know, and then you'll turn and you'll just see all this sort of stuff.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you therefore have to have good vocal projection.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: You have got to move your body in a way that isn't um distracting from you know what the audience wants.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: You have to leave pauses so they can absorb the information.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: So your vocal performance, your content performance, your your the physical performance, all of that, and your face, everything else, has to you have to look at the audience regularly and then turn and then look back again so they can check what you meant by that.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because then, you know, this is the important bit your face is saying, and then the audience goes, oh, that was the important bit, and they'll remember it.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: If your face is static, then they won't remember it because you've not reinforced it.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like teaching when you have, you know, different people have different ways of learning and they can learn an auditory way, or they can learn through in a uh kinesthetic way, or there's different, you know, ways that people have taken information, and you need to do multiple different routes in to people remembering.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So on a stage, you're using an entire body and everything, and you need to be able to perform, and you your voice has to come out and you have to build a move, and that can be enough, and that's and that's why you need loads of training to be any good at that stuff, or lots of practice.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: On a screen, it's different.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I talked to a uh an actor who's my wife is a screenwriter, she writes films, and I was talking to one of her actors uh in one of her films, um, who is this really interesting guy?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, uh, and he's really good, he was great in this one particular film, actually, uh but he's really young and he hadn't really had he hadn't had any acting training.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: He just did a lot of stuff acting with his dad and stuff when he was brought was brought up.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was just very compelling, very kind of you know, uh engaging, big featured guy, really great actually, but he only could play himself.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Are you gonna go and get some acting lessons?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna go to you know drama school or something?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, to so that you can do more things than sort of what you're already comfortable with.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I could, but the problem with that is that it's gonna really hamper me in film.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, why is it gonna hamper you in film?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, because and this is what he'd learned from his dad, which I think is totally true.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: He says, thing is this in on stage, I have to move and talk.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I need to be able to have vocal performance, I need to be able to move my body in a controlled way because all of that is part of my performance and the content.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, I don't need to do any of that stuff when I'm being filmed because it's not my job to have to convey my emotion to the audience.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's the DP's job, the director of photography's job, it's the person holding the camera, right?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's their job.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: They have to capture what I've done.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't have to worry about my vocal performance because there's a microphone.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's the sound engineer's job to make sure that they capture it.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to worry about the fact they can see my face or not because there's the lighting operator.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: The entire job is to set that up.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, and that is true, you don't need to do all that stuff.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you actually try to excessively, if you do theatrical style um speaking uh and performance on a on a camera, it's too big.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm slightly doing it now, right?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of big and slightly, it's people probably at home, you know, if they were watching me, they'd step back a bit.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, but that's so what but anyway, the point of that long and winded story is that it is vital, therefore, to make sure that you have effectively done your own directory photography and lighting and sound really well.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the single most important thing is you have to have the right equipment, okay?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't have to be expensive equipment, but you have to have thought about it.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to have it so that you have light on your face, okay?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is when you're doing video.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: They have to see your face.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Your face is the most important thing, it is where all the information comes from, considering they can't see the rest of your body.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's even more important.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: There isn't anything else.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: So light on your face.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, don't so make sure there's not a window behind you, so you're totally in shadow.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ideally, make sure that you have a half decent webcam so that you know it doesn't, you don't end up just blurring out or becoming you know in darkness.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you can do it with just a desk lamp uh or a couple of desk lamps and then close the window behind you or turn your desk around so that light goes on your face.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a single thing, light goes on your face.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, you're fairly close to the camera so that you can be seen.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, audio.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your audio's got to be good.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I noticed, for example, I was clipping a few times uh during uh during speaking, right?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I noticed that because I happen to have plugged my thing into a, I've got a sound card and I can literally see clipping and I was changing my volume.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is you need to have, you need to be aware of your audio performance as well.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you just do it with someone else, just literally listen to what you've got.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the uh depending on your laptop, if you're just using a laptop and the microphone in the laptop.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that microphone is very specifically engineered to pick up the human voice.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of terrible at everything else.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds kind of awful, but it does pick up the human voice.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, it can be quite good.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, don't try to play music through it because it just hasn't got any range of you know dynamics.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, often they're quite good at that, especially if you've got the high-end kind of laptops, you know, MacBooks are really good at that.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the high-end, uh like the XPSs and stuff.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're not bad actually.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Those microphones, even though they're tiny and they're kind of not, you know, they can't pick up a big wide range, they can't get any bass.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, they're not bad at communicating.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're in echo in an echoey room at home or in an office, then what happens is, and you're not using a uh a headset, so you're just literally using the microphone, and sound is coming out of the speakers, then what's happening is that the sound from the speakers is echoing around the room.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your voice is echoing around the room.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's all going into the microphone, and then Zoom or Teams or whatever platform you're using to record it has to do a load of calculating to remove all that feedback, all the echoes of your own voice and the other things going through.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you end up with this weird garbled you know form of your voice.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when you stop speaking, you'll hear suddenly it goes completely silent.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you listen to this, probably you'll get the same because Teams does loads of it.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you the and the problem with that is that the tails of things, the track, the transients, like the the pops can just vanish.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: The beginning of a sentence, you might not quite hear the beginning, the end of a sentence might just trail off and go away.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and as a result, the audience is having to just strain to work out what you're saying.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's as bad as someone who mumbles.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's effectively Zoom making you mumble because it's having to do all this noise reduction work.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, two things one is, and I'm not a good example of this, slow down, um, but certainly make your and obviously I speak far too fast, but if you're gonna speak fast, try to be as crisp as possible.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and if you're someone who is slovenly uh in your speech, you have to slow down more.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the second thing is if at all possible, don't have your speakers coming out uh next to your laptop.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like you either use a headset, you you don't need a headset, actually.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: All you need is earphones.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you have earphones in, like just earbuds, and then you can trail it down and you can then put it into your laptop.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you're hearing through your earphones, your ear, your earbuds, but you're using the microphone on the laptop, which is often better than the microphone on cheap earbuds, on any earbuds, they're not very good.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, just doing that means suddenly just wear them, have it going around the back, because it's not, it doesn't look at all bad.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine having a couple of earbuds in.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like having massive earphones where everyone can see it, which is a little bit more intrusive, obviously.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it just means you won't get that problem where Zoom is having to do noise reduction because it's having to, you know, work on all the uh on all the sound that's coming through.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you have got a microphone or a headset, uh, I would highly recommend it.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like with me, both um me and Twink here, we're using headsets, right?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it just means that there's total isolation.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can hear everything I can hear is through my ears, and I've got a microphone stuck next to my mouth.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: As a result, there is no way, even though this room has got some echo in it, you can't really hear it.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and you're not no noise reduction needed because it the microphone can't pick up what you know what what I'm saying through the speakers and can't pick up what you know, Twink Twink's saying through the speakers.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so that's the second thing.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you possibly can use headphones, if you can't, certainly use earbuds um and uh yeah, and then obviously just slow down and speak clearly.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also really important is get a decent internet connection.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I would suggest that's maybe the most important of all of them.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually a conversation I had with our with our uh board, like uh uh a while, well, our management committee, I should say, a while back when we when when lockdown first started.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I suggested, I said, you know what, what you know, because I say what's the most useful thing we can do for all our we're asking our people to work from home.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: What's the most useful thing can we do?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Should we get them, you know, should we send them, you know, buy them all laptops they can take home, or can we, you know, get them good good chairs, so that you know ergodynamic chairs, you know, decent keyboards and stuff, you know.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and actually all that stuff is also very useful.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: And making sure you've got, for example, screens that are high enough so that you don't end up looking down.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Laptops are, you know, really bad for your back and neck, especially if you're when you're getting on a bit.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to really that is all good.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, I said we should pay for them to have the best internet connection that their house is able to have.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because the biggest thing that's going to get in people's way is if you start getting garbled speech and you start glitching and breaking up.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is this, and it's the same with all the other things I've said, they're all part of the same package.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Someone's listening at home and they're trying to focus on what you're saying, and it's already hard for it to be interesting.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, like in TV, there's a new shot every one to five seconds.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it there's a reason why that's that's modern editing, right?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: You rarely get shots longer than that because we want it to break up.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in a stage, you're you when you're seeing people on stage, uh your eye is constantly moving and making things interesting.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're hearing different people speak.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: You see you're you're being your own camera operator.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking at the left-hand part of the stage, you're looking at the right-hand part of the stage, you know, you're looking at your watch.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can you know you can make things more interesting.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you look back again.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: But in a TV, this is one thing to look at.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it needs to be, and so it tends to be boring.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is so what you have to do then do is um uh to uh if you then make it so it's hard to understand what someone is saying, then the mental load on the viewer at home starts to go up.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: They start to get literally mentally tired from listening to you because it's breaking up slightly and it seems a bit garbled, and I couldn't quite work out what that last word was.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's as bad as someone who's uh you know who's doing, say, an English language conference and their English isn't very good and they got a strong accent, and and and again, well, there's a lot of stuff on that.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Strong accents, certain strong accents are fine, and certain strong accents are not fine.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like German is actually quite good strong accent to have, because uh on the whole, it means you're more clipped and you're actually easier to understand.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: But if someone has got, say, is speaking Spanish or one of the Latin languages, Spanish or French or Italian, and that and the speech patterns of those languages are in their English, then they are then they will have these long flowing sentences, and if they're hard to follow, it's it's actually just physically tiring to listen to them for any length of time, and they've got to be aware of it and they've got to know how to slow down and leave pauses.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's exactly the same if your audio or your especially the audio, but if your internet isn't very good and you start getting glitches and breaks and noise reduction increases, it means people get tired, and when they get tired, they just stop paying attention.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's a pretty thorough rattle-through.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm conscious of time.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, typically we always finish with a few tips, but you think you've perfectly covered that request uh in that in that last answer.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: So again, many, many thanks for taking the time and look forward to talking to you soon.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a pleasure.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for inviting me.