E104 – Public Speaking Tips featuring Matt Drinkhahn

As a leader, you're going to have to talk. From boardroom presentations to team meetings, public speaking is an unavoidable reality of leadership—yet it's often the skill we're least prepared for when stepping into leadership roles. 

The question becomes, "How can leaders prepare to step behind the podium and truly connecting with their audience?"

In this episode, Matt Drinkhahn, high-performance coach and host of The Eternal Optimist podcast, will explore the fundamental shift that turns average speakers into exceptional ones. Matt reveals his journey from focusing on himself (his appearance, his memorized script, his performance) to genuinely serving his audience - pivotally reorienting everything about his speaking effectiveness.

Drawing from his experience delivering over 175 speeches to audiences of up to 2,000 people, Matt shares practical frameworks for speech construction, including the "spider web" approach that liberates you from memorizing every word while maintaining focus on your central message. You'll hear candid stories about his biggest speaking disasters—from splitting his pants onstage to completely freezing mid-presentation—and how these moments became invaluable learning opportunities rather than career-ending catastrophes.

This episode offers actionable strategies for preparation, delivery, and recovery when things inevitably go sideways. 

Learn how to read a room, pivot when necessary, leverage modern tools like AI for preparation, and collect meaningful feedback to continuously improve. Most importantly, discover how shifting your focus from impressing to serving creates an authentic connection that resonates with any audience.

Ready to step up to the microphone with confidence? Listen now and transform your approach to one of leadership's most essential skills.

Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front is humbled to have been named #7 in the Top 20 for Best Canadian Leadership-themed podcasts for 2025.

Matt’s Episode Link:

Website: matt@proadvisorcoach.com

Matt’s Recommended Book/Movie/Podcast List:

Books:

1. Conversations worth Having by Stavros

2. Getting Naked by Lencioni

3. Ask by Mark Victor Hansen

4. The Road Less Stupid by Cunningham

5. Hard-Wired for Happiness by Kothari

6. Can’t Hurt Me by Goggins

7. The Pursuit of Happyness by Gardner

Podcasts:

1. Achieve

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Trench Leadership
• 1:42 The Challenge of Public Speaking
• 7:48 Making It About the Audience
• 19:35 The Anatomy of an Effective Speech
• 32:06 Handling Public Speaking Fears
• 43:07 Using AI and Modern Tools
• 48:07 Key Takeaways and Conclusion

Transcript

Simon Kardynal: 0:07

I would like to begin this episode by acknowledging that I am located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and I am privileged and honoured to live and learn on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Glen: 0:24

Hello, you're listening to Trench Leadership, a podcast from the front produced by iGlenn Studios, a show for emerging leaders from all professions to hear from other leaders who have led from the front, made the mistakes, had the triumphs and are still learning along the way. And now here's your host, SimonKardynal.

Simon Kardynal: 0:52

Hello and welcome to Trench Leadership, A Podcast From the Front, a show for emerging leaders. Folks, as the leader, you are going to have to talk. There's just no way around it. You will have to deliver speeches, briefings, performance reviews, all of these things. None of these things. So many more of these things, but here's the thing you are expected to do. One of them, all of them, all the time.

Simon Kardynal: 1:17

The challenge is that most often, we aren't quite ready for these kinds of public speaking requirements, and that's not anyone's fault. The fact is that emerging leaders are most often dealing with these type of tactical level taskings completing the work projects, letting the leader take on the speeches. But now it's your turn. You're the leader, and have you had any training in it, who knows? But regardless of that, it's your turn. And so in this episode, you'll hear from Matt Drinkhahn, a high-performance coach and entrepreneur, who will talk about public speaking. Matt will offer advice for emerging leaders to be the very best, most efficient, clear-minded and effective speakers possible. But, as always, it's not about me, it's about the guests. So I'm going to go ahead and try and be quiet and say hi to Matt. Hey, Matt, how's it going?

Matt: 2:05

It is going exceptionally well today, Simon. Thank you for asking.

Simon Kardynal: 2:08

Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure to have a fellow podcast host on the show because we just get it. You understand the ebbs and flows of podcasting. It's a lot of fun. Before we get into it, I would like to start with the visual introduction.

Simon Kardynal: 2:22

And for myself today I'm not wearing my black golf shirt. Today I'm actually wearing a gray shirt, and that is because when I was having a sip of my very delicious coffee, I decided to see how much my shirt could sop up that coffee and spilt it everywhere. So at the last second I had to make a quick change. But that's part of the game. My microphone is still black. My glasses are still black rimmed. I still have some as far as I'm concerned, way too much gray hair on the sides of my head. The background screen for me is a screenshot of a stone wall with the Trench Leadership logo. The logo itself is white with the purple highlight around it, as always. The irony of that is the actual Trench Leadership logo is black. But that's what happens when you buy something on Amazon too quickly and don't double check before you hit buy now. Matt, would you like to take a second and offer us your visual introduction?

Matt: 3:09

Absolutely. Thank you very much, Simon, and as an eternal optimist, I would share that. It's not that you have too much gray hair. You have amazing wavy, thick hair, so there's definitely an advantage to that. It's beautiful, beautiful mane you have there, sir. So I would give you my visual introduction as the following I'm sitting straight up in a chair.

Matt: 3:30

It's a white kitchen table chair, not an executive leather chair, because, at six foot seven, needing a very strong back, I have broken my executive leather chairs. I've not had one stick, so I'm sitting in a straight up chair. I've got on right now a professional shirt. It's pink in nature, which I probably wouldn't have worn 20 years ago, but I'm very comfortable and confident wearing pink today. So I've got my pink professional shirt on with this collar straightener thing underneath it which keeps it sticking up straight. So there's that, and I got this sweater pulled over top because it was 42 degrees here in charlotte, north carolina, usa, when I logged on this morning and I got a big smile ready, ready to serve, ready to talk about public speaking and ready, ready to crush it today.

Simon Kardynal: 4:19

. 42 degrees that uh, that's pretty cold here in ottawa. So, of course Ottawa canada, we use Celsius Canada I think it's something around 12 or 15 degrees Celsius, which is in Canada, that's. That's t-shirt and that's, that's but it's raining. So you see a lot of people running around, so it was jeans on, but what can you do? Well, well, thanks so much for that introduction. That's fantastic. I am wondering, before we get right into the, the meat and potatoes of this, you mind taking a moment telling us a little bit about your journey and, ultimately, how we got to this point?

Matt: 4:46

Absolutely. Thank you, Simon. I'll start off with where we are right now. In this moment I'm 46 years of age. I've been happily married for nine years, three daughters, of which my oldest daughter's birthday is today. They're eight, six and four. So that's the personal part of life that just gets me really fired up, excited Professionally. We'll start with professionally, so with the professional part.

Matt: 5:08

My first job back in the day 20, I guess now 30 years ago when I was 16 years old, was cutting grass and then waiting tables when I got to be 17, bartender at 21 to pay for college. Then I started selling Cutco knives in college and going and doing demonstrations in people's homes, and it has since gone on a very interesting journey of leadership in corporate America. I've had as many as a couple thousand people under my wing at one time. We've done about 130 million in career sales so far in a few different companies and it was even a stint at trying to play pro golf in there. I've given, over last tally, about 175 speeches in public. And now where we are is we have a top 1% podcast, the Eternal Optimist podcast, and executive business coach, and I help struggling highly functioning workaholics and recovering perfectionists to scale and keep their businesses simple. That's what I do now. I love doing it and ready to serve your team here, ready to serve your audience in terms of I think we're talking about public speaking today.

Simon Kardynal: 6:22

Is that right? Yeah, we sure are, and the fact that you've done over 175 speeches, been in charge of so many people, had that mantle of leadership thrust on you. You've taken it on. Whatever you want to say, even as a professional golfer, you're always out there in the public and there's leadership lessons to be learned inside of that. But today, today, we are definitely talking about public speaking, and I'm just curious, as we get into that what are your thoughts about public speaking for new leaders? Why is it so important that they're able to get out there and speak to their team in a way that is clear-minded and efficient? What's the importance of that?

Matt: 7:01

Great, and I feel that the importance we'll just dive right in here might be a place to take a note. If you are, if you're driving, then definitely don't start taking notes. But come back to this moment, because why it's so important to be a good public speaker, or at least be able to have influence within your team, within your organization, within your family, within any or within any group, group of well, just yourself or group of a team that you serve is you want to be able to understand how you can help others, get what they want and serve them. And if I am a public speaker and all I'm doing is focusing on me and my message and it's all about me, me, me and I'll delineate what that means in a speech in a moment If it's all about me and it's not about what they want most and why that matters to them the most, then we're not going to get through to them.

Matt: 7:52

And I want to be able to help people. If I'm giving a public speech like today, we're here talking about public speaking and my plan today is to help any person out there, whether you have never given a public speech and you are terrified to do so, or you're someone that's given countless numbers of speeches, you're already an expert, whether you're somewhere in the middle. My goal today is to offer you some nugget of value or wisdom that you can use to level up whatever level you're on right now. And if you could take that to the next level for yourself, then I feel this will be a win for whoever's listening today.

Simon Kardynal: 8:26

So please, oh, no, you go, I cut you off.

Matt: 8:30

Oh no. Well, so that would be the first thought is, the reason public speaking is so important is because we want to be able as leaders, as the speaker, to be able to serve our audiences, and the way that we serve the audiences is to understand what matters most to them and to be able to speak to that. Most speakers, when they get started, they may have an idea of what the audience wants. They may have an idea of the pain the audience is feeling. Most first-time speakers, especially, begin with just trying to memorize the speech and trying to just go through the words. Am I looking good? Is my hair right? Is my outfit on correct? How do people look? How do I look? Right now, when I'm doing this, they're so focused on themselves and I remember that there was a time in my career when I made that switch from thinking of myself to really a hundred percent focused on the audience and the energy in the room, and that made the big difference. So maybe we work up to that point in our discussion today on the places that you're going to find yourself, each stair step to get to being a masterful public speaker which I do not claim to be a master and at the same time, there have been some results behind the speeches, so you can decide for yourself. The point is that I like to help the audience today level up whatever level they're on right now, so you can decide for yourself. The point is that I like to help the audience today level up whatever level they're on right now. So should we start at the beginning? Yeah, let's start at the beginning. Let's go here's.

Matt: 9:51

The first speech I ever gave in front of 1500 people was back in 2001. And I get on the stage at a conference and my team had been the top performing sales team so they gave me an opportunity to be the big speaker. I mean they had a giant keynote person that, like all 1500 people were there to see. And then I was the next big speaker and I got to go after the keynote speaker, my first big speech after the keynote speaker. So I felt great.

Matt: 10:22

I had on this fantastic suit it was my New York Yankee striped pinstripe suit. I was feeling super confident walking up there and I had all these notes. I had like three pages of notes all written out very strategically, put them on the podium, stood right behind that podium and I proceeded to essentially read that speech for the next 25 minutes and all these things that I've taught in small workshops to people in the organization, to people in my region. When I got in front of this giant group and basically read the speech to them, there were crickets the entire time, simon, total crickets. And I'm thinking, whoa, wait a second, I have this great suit on, I'm looking good, I'm feeling confident, I've got a good energy. Look at me. I'm thinking, whoa, wait a second, I have this great suit on. I'm looking good, I'm feeling confident, I've got a good energy.

Simon Kardynal: 11:08

Look at me, I'm amazing! it was

Matt: 11:10

all about me. I, I, I, I, I, I was so focused on me and the way it was all about me, and that was the first big speech and that was the big learning lesson. After the speech, the person that was the biggest player in the whole room, the leader of the whole organization, came up to me and said Matt, great effort today. Where you were great is your energy. Where your delivery fell short was it was all about you. When you think about that and we work on that, you'll be able to level up your speaking game. And that was the environment to give real-time, like real feedback. At the time that was hard to hear and it was oh so true. So that was the first public speaking experience and some great nugget of wisdom. It's if it's about you, just yourself. If you make it about me, make it about I, then the audience is not getting the best of you. It's all about you. You have to make it about them, all right. So here's some bullet points on how we might do that.

Matt: 12:07

Okay, step number one is we've got to make a promise of some kind. Got to make a promise of some kind, a promise that will really connect with this audience. So, for example, to rewind about six minutes ago, I made a promise to this group and that promise was if you pay attention and you have the antenna up, I made a promise to this group and that promise was if you pay attention and you have the antenna up, I guarantee you're going to take something away of value today some nugget of wisdom. Give them a promise. I guarantee you're going to take away some nugget of wisdom today. So that's number one is to make a bold promise.

Matt: 12:38

Number two you have to enroll the audience and make this accessible for everyone. That doesn't necessarily mean that every single person in the audience is going to 100% be tuned in. Some of them probably won't, just because that's what's happening in their world at that time. I want to make this accessible for everyone. I want to enroll the audience and I want to make sure that I give a big web statement that catches everyone.

Matt: 13:05

So, whether you are here and you've never given a speech and you're terrified to give one, or you're excited that you're just brand new at speaking, or you've given countless numbers of speeches and you're a master of it, or you're somewhere in between, there's something you're gonna take away today when you pay attention and give it your best, enroll the audience, get everyone in there to feel like you are connecting with and speaking with them. That's step number two, right? So step one, step two. That's a place to consider when you get started. So I'll pause for a second, simon. What did you think? What did you feel, what did you hear in what we just shared? To kick things off step one and step two in what we just shared to kick things off, step one and step two.

Simon Kardynal: 13:45

Well, I appreciated how it's about reminding ourselves that it's not about how we think we're going into this. I think there's about being prepared, but also not about being over-prepared. If you come in in my opinion, if someone comes into a speech and they've got it locked down, memorized, and you're going into this thinking, okay, I've got to be ready for this, which we all do, of course there has to be a preparation made for it. But if there's not any understanding that there's going to be little weird quirks that are going to throw us off, maybe the lighting isn't what we expected, maybe you spill coffee all over that suit that you were planning so much to be the thing to get you to the power, ready to be ready to go, you to the power, ready to be ready to go, all of a sudden that's going to throw you out of whack. And then maybe we're over prepared and that might be the thing that that screws us up.

Simon Kardynal: 14:27

And I've experienced that myself when I've had to go out and deliver speeches and whatnot, and all of a sudden I'm like, okay, well, now what do I do? There's about that. And what I found was when I realized okay, this isn't about me having that nice suit that if the message is stronger, that it's okay to show up and have a gray shirt on, versus my standard golf shirt I wear when I'm doing these things because it's about the messaging that I'm trying to get out there and not about what I look like or how I sound. Necessarily does that make any sense at all 100% makes a lot of sense.

Matt: 14:56

And to build on that. Well, here might be another tip uh and you catch my language here to build on what Simon just said not, but always. And and is a building word. So to build on that piece of wisdom that Simon just dropped right there.

Matt: 15:12

I would think of it in this nature when I go up to give this public speech if I'm focused on me, then I'm not going to connect with the audience. I've got to focus on them. How do I convince myself to do that? How do I do that? Well, I want to walk up on stage and have something that gives me inspiration or confidence or certainty. And what does that mean for me? I have a framework that I'll follow in every speech, and that framework starts with the idea of connecting the heart. Connecting the heart, Connecting the heart, connecting the heart, connecting the heart. What does that mean? It means that I want to connect with them personally, emotionally, in some way to kick things off.

Matt: 15:53

I will usually start with a story, and this is where I feel it does pay to be prepared. I want to know this, if I can, what is my first 30 seconds to a minute going to be? I want to kick off with confidence and certainty. So I like to have a story or some lesson or something that shows a little bit of vulnerability, a little bit of real, and it connects to the audience right away emotionally. So what is that story? What's that story that might help you to kick off? Here's a popular one I like to use and you can all Google this out there when you get a chance. There is a real popular book out there right now called Atomic Habits with James Clear, and if you go to that book and you start on chapter one, episode one, right when you get started the very first chapter, first word, the first story he shares an amazing story about the English national cycling team and their coach and they have this policy called the aggregation of marginal gains. Google that, check that out. That story to start that book so resonates with me. I've used that as the opening to maybe 25% of every keynote address that I've given, because the story connects so deeply about a team that was laughingstock, horrible, no one wanted to even do business with them in all of Europe. And then they bring in a new philosophy of coaching and now they're tops in the world for the next decade and that's exactly how it goes in that story.

Matt: 17:22

So I want to have a good, compelling opening talk that will connect with the audience that I'm with. I want to make this accessible for my audience and enroll them. I want to have a huge, big promise that they can see that there's something they're going to get today, and it's got to be a big, bold promise. This is going to change the way that you are able to do speaking in public. When you pay attention, it doesn't matter if you're brand new at this or you're someone who's a veteran at this or somewhere in between. Find a way to enroll them, give them a big promise and start in the heart. Do those three things, my friends, and then from there, if we are dissecting the anatomy of a speech, we just covered the first part and, when done effectively, we now have some emotional connection with the audience. We've now enrolled them, so more of them are going to pay attention because you've made it available for them. And now we might get to what you'd call the body, if you have some point you'd like to make.

Matt: 18:20

And this is where I learned something very amazing. There's a man name is David Mattson and he runs a company. There's a well-known sales organization out there, a sales training organization called Sandler Sales Training and Mr Mattson is the CEO of that company. He runs it now that David Sandler passed away. So I had the privilege of hanging out with Dave Mattson and sitting with him at a table and asking him about public speaking as he was preparing for the speech that day. And I'm sitting there with him and I see that he wrote down on a sheet of paper big circle in the middle, and then he wrote five little arms off of that circle. And I asked him what are you doing, Dave? And he told me Matt, what I'm doing is I'm writing my speech right now.

Matt: 19:08

His entire speech is what he called the spider web. That's his format. Spider web is I have my main central theme and then I drew off five little arms right there. Those might be five little stories, five little bullet points, something that I'd like to bring up with the audience. He doesn't go and write out word for word you know 500 words underneath little arm. He simply knows what the main theme is and this guy's little arms, like a spider web sticking out there and he writes down a little story at the end of each one of those. So he then said to me Matt, here's the format of every speech Story point, Story point, Story, story point, Wrap-up theme, call to action. Something of that nature is how someone who trains people in sales in public speaking this is one of the people that's had a big influence in my speaking when I had that breakfast or that- yeah, I had that breakfast with him back in 2016, december, I believe and amazing, amazing experience, and, yeah, we'll do a little bookmark here.

Matt: 20:30

So where are we now, Simon? What are we hearing? What are you thinking so far?

Simon Kardynal: 20:34

Well, I love how you're talking about breaking down the anatomy of the story and breaking down the anatomy of the speech and understanding that, sure, having a well-prepared speech is fantastic, but it might not be a great speech, even though you haven't memorized. It might not be a great speech because maybe you're hitting that mark and there's something about taking a look back and understanding whether or not you're really doing that. So if I could offer my two thoughts on that and what I do when I'm in that process, would that be okay? Absolutely, yeah, I appreciate that. So when I'm in charge of getting, when I know I have a speech to write or I have to get ready for some type of presentation, I am always asking myself two questions. The first one is what is the goal? What am I? What is the goal? What am I trying to talk to? Where am I trying to go with this? And I'm asking myself that constantly as I'm going through the preparation, as I'm writing out my bullet points what is the goal? And then the other question I'll ask myself is am I achieving that goal?

Simon Kardynal: 21:33

And the reason I ask myself these two questions as I'm going through is it's fact check. Does this make sense? Because a lot of the times my experiences have been, when I'm out delivering a speech or whatnot, if I'm not being very clear or very clearly getting to a point about where I'm going with the speech, the message is lost. If people are confused, they're very quickly going to start thinking about what's going on at the end of the day or when they're done this, this, waiting around for this presentation to end. So the point has to be there, and if the even if the point isn't exactly obvious in the beginning of the story or a speech, that you have to clearly be leading someone to an end point. And so that's why I ask myself those questions Is this clear? Because just because something is clear to me doesn't mean I'm actually necessarily, rather, getting that information out there. So how are we going forward? And those two questions for me are vital when I'm preparing a speech or a presentation. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?

Glen: 22:25

Oh, hello there, it's Glenn, the voiceover artist, and if you're hearing me, that means we're at the midpoint of this episode. Do you have an idea for an episode that you feel is vital for emerging leaders? Leave the idea in the comment section and, if your topic is chosen, you will have the opportunity to join us as a co-host during the recording session. So drop us a note and let's talk. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you, and if you feel we've earned it, please tell your friends and leave a review to help us grow our following. And now back to the show.

Matt: 23:06

I love it. I love it that you have everything you're doing in your speech. It goes back to this, this main point of why are we here and what is the most important thing I want to convey, or what action do I want to inspire people to take. Everything in the speech goes back to that. So I appreciate that for sure. And you make an interesting point that how are we going to know if our speech is effective or not? And you make an interesting point that how are we going to know if our speech is effective or not? And I've been thinking in terms of giving a speech in front of like a large audience, and maybe that's a 1500, 2000 person audience is what I would call large for me, right? So maybe, instead of that, that lens, maybe it's a lens of I'm giving a speech to my team of four or to my team of 23, and I'm maybe not all that comfortable with it right now and I want to have an effective presentation, effective speech. How might I approach that? Well, in a smaller setting like that and I might advise you to do this team If you're giving a speech to your own team or your own community, your own organization, one of the benefits of having a smaller audience is that at the beginning of it, if you know everyone and you can look around the room, make that connection with the eyes with every person in the room, that gives you a huge advantage because you can make the connection If you know everyone's name, you have the ability to say names of people in the audience of the smaller group, which also gets their attention and keeps them engaged.

Matt: 24:28

At the conclusion of said speech, when you think it might have gone well you don't know, if it went well, it might not have gone well, you don't know. You could even say when you're beginning the speech, or you can say at the conclusion of the speech I'd love to take a few moments and gain some feedback, and what I love to do at every speech that I give now for what I would say is a smaller organization, if I have the ability to do this, I would like to send them a simple survey and I will. If I'm speaking to a team, I will at the end of this presentation or speech. I have a friend who wrote, created a song for me, three and a half minute song, called the survey song, and I will put that on in the background and I will have everyone there at real time.

Matt: 25:15

Click on the QR code, take their phone out, qr code right up there on the screen and I will ask them to fill out three or four simple questions, which three of them are yes or no, and the last one is like a net promoter score. Would you recommend this scale of one through 10? And that will give me some feedback on how my speech went, because if you don't know if you're any good at speaking or not, then how would you know if the speech is effective, right? So I like to get that feedback at the end when I'm in smaller groups and it makes sense to have that.

Simon Kardynal: 25:45

I love the idea of the survey song and, I'll be completely honest, I'm going to steal that from my next few presentations. That's a fantastic idea, so I hope that's okay.

Matt: 25:56

Well, I'd love to, and I'll tell you what. Any of your listeners out there that are interested in this feel free to connect with me on any of the places. My name is pretty unique. There's only 13 people in the world that have this last name Drinkhahn, D-R-I-N-K-H-A-H-N, and I'm the only one named Matt. So reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook any of those social media platforms and if you message me and say, send me the survey song, or if you message me and you say I've heard about you speaking, public speaking, love to find out more, I would be happy to send you that survey song. That my friend his name is Brother James Jeremy Rysick, my favorite musician. He created that song. I'd be happy to send that to you because he gifted it to us. I'd love that. That's amazing. It's great, yeah, it's great.

Matt: 26:42

Well, I'd love to give you one other thought here, because I know that sometimes there are some things that happen on stage that we might not be expecting. So what happens when you're in the middle of a speech, whether you think it's going good or you're a good speaker, or you're challenged that you're speaking. Sometimes stuff happens, and one of the great advantages of giving public speeches is that you can really fine tune your resilience meter when stuff happens. So I'll give you two quick stories, or two quick examples. That might be the fear of every public speaker who's newer at it, and I want to quell some of those fears. So here's story number one.

Matt: 27:23

This is with a larger audience. This happened in 2002. It's still the biggest audience I've been in front of. It's a couple thousand people and I get up there on stage to deliver a 30-minute talk. I get up there on stage and I run up there on stage with some energy and I do a jump stop, which I've never done before. I did this jump stop. I randomly just came up with it. For I did this jump stop. I randomly just came up with it and I heard and felt the backside of my suit pants, from the belt all the way down to my leg. The entire back ripped in half.

Matt: 27:59

And I can feel at the moment. It happened. I knew it, no one else could hear it, no one else saw it. The room is a semi-circle, so there are people out in front of me but no one else can see behind me. Thank God that now my derriere is back there.

Matt: 28:16

The people backstage who I called friends I don't know why I called them friends at the time were back there hooting and hollering and making a little bit of a crude remarks to me and I could feel it and I could hear them and we like to play bad jokes on each other like that.

Matt: 28:31

It was a couple thousand people and my pants were split open on the rear. So I'm a walker and a pacer when I speak in public. So at that moment, rather than walk all around the stage back and forth like I'm at the carnival, I just move from side to side very stoically and very robotically so that they could only see my front. That might have been the most terrifying thing that happened at that early time in public speaking is that my pants were ripped to shreds in the back. If I had turned around, it would have been the biggest embarrassment. This is before social media, thank goodness, and I don't think anyone to this day still saw that, except for my friends in the back, scott and Matt. I know they saw it because they were yelling at me, so that happened.

Simon Kardynal: 29:17

"Friends" with finger quotations.

Matt: 29:19

Yes, yes, friends Actually they're dear, dear friends today, but we had fun like that. We made it into a game. We made it into a game, we made it into a very interesting experience, and that was even a double interesting experience. So, if you have a clothing malfunction I mean I know Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl, my clothes didn't come off, but they almost did so that happened. That was one. One more quickie that might be the thing that speakers fear the most who are inexperienced and new at this and no judgment if this is a fear, because you don't know how you're gonna respond until it happens.

Matt: 29:52

I gave a speech right before COVID started. It was 2019, august-ish. It was to a real estate organization here in Charlotte, north Carolina. There's 125 people in the room, it's a luncheon and they hired me to be the speaker. So I go up there.

Matt: 30:06

I'm two minutes and 47 seconds into this story that I mentioned earlier and I start to stutter, and I stutter when I'm saying the aggregation of marginal gains. I'm not able to say these words. I go literally. The words would not come out of my mouth, and when this happened, simon, for a second there, I went deer in headlights the only time it's ever happened in my speaking career. There's no note cards, no notes, no podium. I'm walking in the audience and I go deer in headlights and at that moment I paused and I took a breath, took a smile, looked around and what may have been an eternity was really only about three to four seconds. I said to the audience this is what it's like when your professional speaker forgot what they were going to say. Next, everybody take a deep breath with me. I love that we're all still here and it's going to be okay. And then I went back into the speech.

Matt: 31:10

But there's something about when you see that there's a fear that you might have, rational or irrational, and it happens, it comes to life. You learn so much in that moment when you're curious to it. So I was curious, I was in that moment. I could feel the butterflies, I could feel a little bit of something adrenaline, whatever it was. I felt it that moment. I could feel the butterflies, I could feel a little bit of something adrenaline, whatever it was. I felt it and it was actually a really cleansing and teaching feeling. And I got there because I was really curious to that feeling. That might be a thought you ever have a fear as a speaker team if you're doing it in public speech or you're doing it in front of a smaller group, doesn't matter the size.

Matt: 31:47

If you ever forget what you're gonna say, you go deer in headlights, it's okay, we're gonna come back, it's gonna be okay. What are you gonna do in that moment? Part of my coaching practice, simon, is preparing people for things that we can reasonably expect are gonna happen in the future. And if you give a lot of speeches, you're probably at some point going to forget what you're saying. And if you do, then how are you going to respond? So we can practice that in advance? That's one more thought practicing that in advance. So I've practiced, I'm ready If I forget what I'm going to say. I got a couple of jokes you might use, and that was one of them.

Simon Kardynal: 32:21

I love that. Thanks so much for that. And I think there in that and talking to the audience and asking, hey, what's going on, you know, and if you have whatever a brain fart, there's a misstep for whatever that might be, just just own it too, that's okay. People aren't out to lynch you. More often than not it's just about getting the information and having a conversation. It's a two-way dialogue. Even if there's only one person speaking, there's information going back and forth. With that.

Simon Kardynal: 32:45

I think think for myself, like when I'm you know, there's speeches are speeches in a lot of ways, I believe, and I happen to be a private pilot and one of the best things I love to do when I'm taking, when I'm going flying, is I like taking people getting that first experience in a small airplane. There's nothing like that. I love the whole idea of aviation and the concept and all the freedom that comes with it. But I used to think I was really good at giving speeches and delivering information to people during the pre-flight and during the flight and even after the flight, thinking wow, I've really helped this person understand the joy of aviation. And then I was actually went flying one time and and at the end of it. The person that I was flying with, who did not really enjoy uh, didn't like small planes in the first place they said, yeah, I had no idea what was going on the whole time. You didn't explain anything to me, and so in my mind, I was thinking well, I, I actually did a lot more information than I normally would with someone who's an experienced aviator, and that was a learning experience for me.

Simon Kardynal: 33:47

To okay either a I need to ask more questions to find out what exactly their version is about, what is too much information and what isn't. Because it's not about me, it's about what they need to hear and see and feel, and that has drastically changed how I do my pre-flight briefings with people, even with experienced aviators in the aircraft. Uh, and those types of things matter, and going into a prepared speech, it's the same thing. What they want to hear and see and feel matters, and we making assumptions is a surefire way to lead into missteps, because more often than not, when I've delivered speeches my experience has been I'll be halfway through it and realize, oh, I'm, I'm not right, I'm not exactly in the right path right now. Now, what do I do? And now I'm, now, I'm caught, I'm on the. I'm on the stage. I have no choice. I have to keep going, and that's a challenge. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?

Matt: 34:39

I sure do. I have a recurring thought in my brain on this subject and I can tell what I'm doing because I'm one of those people you might call a long talker, right? So when that happens and I can see it in the audience, when it happens I can see that they might get the glaze where they start to ooh this guy, he just keeps going, he keeps going.

Matt: 34:56

My wife would call this Matt land the plane, land the plane. So if I ever catch that in the audience, if I ever catch that in the audience, then the way that I combat that it's really simple than the way that I combat that. It's really simple. I know, going in, who the audience is. That's essential. Know the audience. You know who the audience is and you have some understanding of what the pains or challenges might be that you're here to help them with. So I know, if I'm speaking to a sales organization, operations, accountants, lawyers, you name it whatever the audience is, have an understanding of what their challenges might be. So if I catch myself not landing the plane and going on and on and on and on, one effective technique that's helped me on stage might be the following Might be to raise my hand like this.

Matt: 35:41

Does anyone here ever and then fill in the blank right. Has anyone here ever been in the middle of a speech before and forgot what they're going to say? Yes, that just happened to me right now. I might do that if I'm in front of people out there in an audience at real estate at the middle of lunch. If I'm in front of a sales organization, it might be. Hey, has anyone here ever been in a speech before and they heard so much good stuff and they did not actually write it down and they didn't actually take anything away from it? Anybody ever done that before? I know I have.

Matt: 36:12

Has anybody here ever been to a conference, got excited, got a bunch of notes and then, if you go back and take it home, put it on the shelf and never looked at it again? Anybody here ever done that? If it's a smaller team, simon, remember that one time we were talking about when you had that big deal and the big sale that went through and then afterwards you were so excited about it that you decided to take the next two days off. Has anybody ever done that? Had a big deal or a big thing happen and then relaxed for a little while, have some type of fallback? Has anyone here have you ever? Does anyone relate to and raise your hand, and I found that is an effective way to draw the audience back in If you find yourself losing the audience or if you find yourself where the heck am I right now? I forgot what I was talking about, because that can happen too.

Matt: 36:58

So, it might be a thought.

Simon Kardynal: 37:00

No, absolutely. That's definitely happened to me. I am also the long talker. I kind of get going and then I've had to learn to read the crowd and understand what I'm and I'm losing people and it it's tough. It's tough Especially if we think we're on a roll and like, yeah, this is great, I'm doing a fantastic job, are you? And then I always come back to my two questions what's the goal? Am I? Am I getting to that goal? It's a tough, it's tough. What else? What else do you think what's going on?

Matt: 37:26

Well, we'll throw this out. I've got something here. If you're giving a speech, nowadays a lot of things are virtual. How about virtual speeches? So here's an idea on virtual speeches.

Matt: 37:36

I've given a number of those and one of the things that's been very powerful. Recently I had a speech I was giving and there were 50 people on a Zoom and I have a couple of screens set up so I could see them. So I've got these people on here and I have this app. And if you use Zoom regularly, my friends, you're going to find on the right-hand side there is a new section called apps. One of those apps is called readai. It's a big app right on the right-hand side of your Zoom screen.

Matt: 38:03

If you're ever on Zoom, when you click on that and you subscribe to that app, it will be able to, as you are going real time, put a box around every face on the Zoom that has their own Zoom window set up and it will tell you in real time the engagement and the mood of every person in the Zoom window. And that can be very powerful to see if you have the audience or if you don't have the audience, because if you're losing your audience, then what do you do, you ask a couple of pointed questions. If you have the audience in there, then you continue to go on the topic you're on, keep on the story that you're on, keep on the question that you're on. You can use AI now in a very unique way on Zoom, virtually when you're giving speeches, to read the audience and help you there.

Simon Kardynal: 38:47

That's a thought when you're giving speeches, to read the audience and help you there. That's a thought. Oh, absolutely, ai is is. It's wild. What's happening with all that?

Simon Kardynal: 38:53

I'll be honest, I use chat gpt for the first time when I was writing a couple of articles a little while back and I just wanted to see. Okay, well, I was, I was slaving away, I was getting on all my quotes and everything. I'd never used the, the program before. I said I'm just curious to see what it would do in comparison to what I've already written. So I wrote a quote, put in the question and, sure enough, in less than 10 seconds it spat out an article that was different than how I would write, for sure, but it it had quotes, it had all the information in a very similar format to how I was building my article. So these tools are helpful and what I ended up doing was I took some of that article and I took some of mine and I kind of blended together and made it my own and in a way I went because it's a tool, why wouldn't I use it and why wouldn't we use them when we're in delivering speeches?

Matt: 39:37

Oh, this is a great example. Right now, in this moment, anyone who's listening antennas up. This is a sterling example of learning real time, of how you might be able to use this to your advantage. So what Simon just shared right there, using ChatGPT for the first time this is an exciting new topic that many of us have heard of, if never used. If you want to use it for the first time and it is very simple to use, when you just step up and try it, it's simple to use go to ChatGPT and type in there.

Matt: 40:11

Type in give me 10 opening stories that will capture the heart of my listeners, of my audience. Just type that in to chat GPT and it will spit back to you 10 stories, 10 links that you might be able to open a speech with. So if you're wondering, what do I talk about? How do I find a story that connects to the heart? How do I write the speech and do this in the first place? I'm terrified to do this. You can actually use AI to help you generate a story, not make one up out of scratch that's not what I'm saying To borrow a story out there that is getting a lot of traction in the universe, and you can use ChatGPT to help you find those very interesting stories for your speeches, and I've used it for that as well too. So great idea, simon.

Simon Kardynal: 40:53

Yeah, and it's okay to use the ideas. I think there's my experience with having spoken with other people is like, oh, I can't use that, I can't use that program, it's cheating. Well, it's not cheating, it's complimenting, it's figuring out. It's different. If we're talking about plagiarism, we get into that whole. That's a whole other side conversation. But for what we're doing, it's okay to use these things, it's okay to have these tools and it's not a sign of weakness. It just shows that your people are open to delivering the best possible speech or presentation that we can, and why wouldn't we use the tools?

Matt: 41:26

That's right. That's right. I'd like to share one more story of what could have been a horror that turned into an absolute dream come true. I was on stage in February, the 4th 2015, in Atlanta, georgia, here in the United States, and I was given a speech. There were three of us in our coaching company that were tag teaming this keynote speech, so we had 30 minutes to kick off the conference. So we're going up there to kick off the conference and we planned this very, very detailed speech. We planned it so each of us gets seven and a half minutes and we got some video. Wow, wow, stuff up there.

Matt: 41:59

I was going to be the wrap up of the three of us 30 minutes. Our leader and CEO, my partner. He speaks first, other coach goes in the middle and then I wrap it up. Leader and CEO my partner. He speaks first, other coach goes in the middle and then I wrap it up. We get up there on stage. There's 178 people these are big business magnates and leaders in this industry that we're coaching Get up there on stage and my CEO says and now to kick things off, matt Drinkon and I'm like whoa, what, what Are you serious? Because we had practiced this for a couple of months. I'm going to be the wrap up and my CEO gets up there and says that drink, I'm going first, right.

Matt: 42:36

So that was a real fascinating opportunity to practice real time pivots, because those things happen in speeches and, even though I gave him heck at the end of it, I learned a valuable lesson. Is that be ready? Gave him heck at the end of it, I learned a valuable lesson is that be ready. Public speaking helps you to hone in and to train that skill of being able to pivot rapidly and read the room better. So part of it. If you have fear towards it, that's totally natural. I still get a little bit of a butterfly every time I do it. It's a different butterfly now. It used to be oh man, what are they going to think about me? It used to be all around me and ego. And now did I give them all the value that they came for? Did I really satisfy and serve that person, that audience member, that client I might call them, because if they're in the audience, they're your client in that moment.

Simon Kardynal: 43:24

And did.

Matt: 43:24

I give them all the things they wanted and they expected. All right. So it shifts from I give them all the things they wanted and they expected. So it shifts from I to them, from me to we collectively. So that's a shift that happens over time. And these pivots, these pivots happen.

Matt: 43:38

I mean, Simon, one time I was on stage and the leader of the company decided to use one of those drones and fly it inside. It's a big grand ballroom in a major hotel flying a drone inside. Somehow the wires got crossed or the frequency got crossed and the drone kind of went nuts. It came out of control and it started to do a nosedive straight towards the front row where all the guests were. So speaker, ceo of our company, jumps up in front of these guests, these people who are paying us, jumps in front of it and grabs the drone with his left hand and it really slices his finger off. So he is the keynote speaker. He's now got his finger which is not just a little paper cut here, it's dripping blood. He can no longer continue the speech. He's got to exit the stage. He must leave now and now we've got to pick it up for him and take over from there, so all kinds of stuff happens. It up for them and take over from there, so all kinds of stuff happens.

Matt: 44:31

It's all a great learning opportunity and I would invite everyone to embrace it, because every speech you give, you're going to learn something from it. When you make the pivot from it's all about I to making it about them, you learn to do that, you're going to be in a new category. My friends, on the way to getting there, use the anatomy of a speech that we talked about today to practice. Use AI to your advantage to help you find out some main stories that, as Simon said, you can always give credit to the stories where they came from. Use some of those stories that you can find out there and then use the anatomy. Use some feedback at the end if you have a smaller audience in some way, shape or fashion and you'll be a great speaker before you know it well, thank you so much for that.

Simon Kardynal: 45:16

I was about to say, hey, listen, how about we wrap this up? But you have done a fantastic job of that. It's it's almost like we're here to talk about public speaking and that you're also a fellow podcast host and you may have done this once or twice. Huh, weird. What are the odds of that? Yes, yes.

Matt: 45:33

I'm also watching the clock because I know that my daughter is going to come walking home from school or she's going to get dropped off and walk in that door any minute now. So the audience may get to meet her or not, but I was watching that too.

Simon Kardynal: 45:43

Fantastic. Well, listen, Matt, if people want to reach out to you, if they want to hear from you, or they want to talk to you, how might they connect with you?

Matt: 45:50

Thanks for asking, Simon. I'd say the first thing I appreciate everyone being here today. Connect with me at the Eternal Optimist Podcast, so that's on every a very major podcasting platform. So connect with me there. Also, connect with me personally Matt Drinkhahn, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. Connect with me at any of those places and for any of your listeners, reach out to me and share that they heard about me on the Trench Leadership Podcast with Simon. Anyone that does that, if you message me, I will send to you the Eternal Optimist Daily Guide, which means you'll have a few questions to start your day that might help you with mindset. That's one of the basis of my coaching practices. So look forward to connecting out there and thank you so much for having us on today, Simon.

Simon Kardynal: 46:37

This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for offering the listeners that mindset the daily listening mindset and as well as for taking the time today. This has been fantastic and I'm very confident that emerging leaders have had an opportunity to learn how to hone their public speaking skills inside of any size of any wow inside any type of group. Thank you so much for that. Well, thanks so much for the time today. This has been great. I'll let you go and have some time with your family to celebrate your daughter's eighth birthday. Get your other daughter her snack or after-school snack and maybe, hopefully, the weather will start warming up for you out there.

Matt: 47:13

I hope so. Thank you so much. It's just been a real honor today, Simon. Thank you, right on. Take care.

Simon Kardynal: 47:18

Well, that's a wrap from the front. In this episode we talked about public speaking. Matt offered his tips and tricks to help all of us be the absolute best public speaker that we can be, reminding us that the speech is not about us, it's about the guests, it's about the people that came to hear your message and get all the information out of there that we can try to get to them, Having a two-way conversation even if there's only one person speaking. Thanks for tuning in and remember, Leadership without passion limits the depth of your vision.

Glen: 47:53

Never miss an episode by following us on all of your favorite feeds. While you're there, please consider leaving an episode review and let us know what topics you would like to hear about. Be sure to join us next week with your host, Simon Kardynal, for another episode of Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front, produced by iGlenn Studios. Music provided by ashamaluev Music.