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TRANSCRIPT BELOW
Sarah:
And we are back again. I am with Diane windilling. I just totally butchered your name.
Diane:
You want me to give you my pronunciation? Then we can just like restart. . It’s, I’ll say it slowly first. It’s wind- een-land and then, then we put it all together. Windingland.
Sarah:
Hello. We are back and today I’m talking to Diane Windingland, the author of 100 Tips & Tricks to Appear Confident in Presentations, and how are you doing today, Diane?
Diane:
I’m doing great. It’s great to be on the call, especially in this time of social isolation when you can be on calls and be on video calls and not be so isolated.
Sarah:
Yeah, it’s great. Now, Diane, you had sent me a preview PDF of your book and I have to say as a fellow Toastmaster, I loved it. I wish all corporations would just give this book to their managers because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to suffer through meetings when I was in the corporate life and just want to hang myself because they had no presentation skills whatsoever.
Diane:
Yeah, it can be really frustrating to sit in on meetings and this book, although it’s mostly about appearing confident in presentations, it has a lot of tips that will also make your presentation be better for your audience.
Sarah:
Well, being a Toastmaster myself, I realized that about 75% of the presentation is appearing confident. I’ve had members give their speeches and it was a well thought-out, well planned-out speech, but they still didn’t have the confidence yet. So the speech came out kind of flat.
Diane:
Right! Or, they start to get breathless. I still remember my first Toastmasters speech. I was so glad that I could stand behind the lectern because my knees started shaking uncontrollably. I couldn’t do anything about it except to be grateful that I was behind the lectern.
Sarah:
Oh yes, but the thing is nobody else notices.
Diane:
That’s right. In fact, one of the biggest things for people who are, let’s just say they’re a little bit married to their speech notes, is I’ve noticed, especially among people who actually like to write, they write out their speeches. They like how they’ve written it. They feel like they need to say it exactly the way they wrote it and that can really increase anxiety plus it could make it a rather dull speech to listen to if someone keeps looking at their notes. I currently have a political client and she is very concerned about saying it the way she wrote it, and I said it totally almost doesn’t matter. They do not know what you were going to say. So if it comes out a little bit differently, honestly it’ll probably be better because it will be more conversational. But in any event, they do not know what you will say. That’s actually tip number 18 in the book.
Sarah:
And your book is so easy to read. I went through it in two days and I’m not saying skimming it. I read every page.
Diane:
Well great! I tried to keep it so each tip was just on one page and you’ll notice there was an illustration for every tip too. So that took up a fair amount of space. I wanted to keep it to one page so you could just turn to a tip and have a tip a day if you wanted to.
Sarah:
And what I also appreciate you’re now all about the video presentation. Now that we’re going through this pandemic and you have the last section all about video presentation. Hence I put on makeup and did my hair for you today.
Diane:
Well, it’s kind of ironic you can’t see me, but yes, the last 10 tips are about presenting on video, whether you’re in an online meeting or doing a video like a YouTube video, and there’s just some very simple things that people can do to appear more confident and look better on video. Now a lot of people are gaining those skills right now. I probably have four or five zoom meetings a day and one of the biggest things, there’s actually two big things people could do that will make a big difference in how they look. Number one is to have the webcam at the same level as their eyes. Almost everybody when they start out has their webcam too low. Thus, you get where you’re kind of looking at a very uncomplimentary angle. You know, you get to see the double chins, you get to look up the nose, and if you simply put it at eye level or even a tiny bit above, you look better. Plus, when you make eye contact, you want to make eye contact with the webcam. But when you’re speaking, not that you always want to look there because you need to look at people’s faces too. In fact, I’m in such a habit of looking at the webcam that even though you can’t see me, I am talking to the webcam right now.
The other thing that makes a huge difference is lighting where you have light on your face from the front, you’re not backlit. And so I actually have two little phone selfie lights that I have affixed, I have two, so I have one affixed on one screen and one on the other one. So I can have a little bit of side lighting because on my right side of my face, there’s a window. So I get light from there. And so the left side has one little selfie light and the front of my face also has another selfie light. I mean you can get much better lighting setups. It’s just that was easy for me. So lighting and having the webcam at the eye level can make a big difference in how you appear on video.
Sarah:
I was competing in the contests earlier this year and I was surprised how dark I looked until I put a lamp right behind my computer so everybody can see me.
Diane:
That’s right. You don’t want to look like you’re some ghoulish person coming from the background. And the other tip I would have sort of related to that is do consider your background and if possible, try not to be backlit. And also if it’s a little bit dark in your background and you’re wearing a dark shirt, it can look like your head is floating in space so it’s better to wear colors that are . . . . I wouldn’t wear all white and I wouldn’t wear all black if you can avoid it or anything with really busy snake patterns. For example, my political client just the other day was showing me some of the outfits that she was considering for wearing on the Zoom calls. So she goes to these district conventions and one of them, I kid you not, was a snake pattern jacket and I said, “You know what? People are just going to look at that jacket if that’s what you wear. I suggest going with more solid color.”
Sarah:
I like snake patterns, but I don’t know how I would feel if I see them on a political client.
Diane:
That is very true. You don’t want to be associated with being a snake. Right?
Sarah:
Well, I love that snakes and I think they’re misunderstood, but still, I don’t know if I want to see them on a political client.
Diane:
That’s right. That’s right. They’ve gotten a bad rap ever since the days of Adam and Eve.
Sarah:
That is true. Now, Diane, I have known you for quite a few years now in Toastmasters, so I know a little of your story and it is fairly interesting. You are an engineer in the beginning and you really did not have intentions of being a public speaker. You were actually looking into Toastmasters for your son’s school project, is that correct?
Diane:
Well, at the time I was homeschooling my children and my son, who was 14. I thought, I know they do high school speech classes in high school and to have him give speeches in front of me and his sister, that just wasn’t going to cut it. So I had remembered Toastmasters from when I had gotten out of college and I thought, I know there’s Toastmasters clubs everywhere, and I Googled Toastmasters, found one in community and my son and I went to visit this club and I was just hoping he could give a few speeches, that they would allow him to do that. And they said, well, you know, he’s too young to join. You have to be 18 to join, but if You join, we’ll let him give a few speeches. So, I joined so my son could give a few speeches. I ended up giving some speeches. In fact, the week after I joined, they asked me to take on an officer role, educational vice president, if you’re familiar with Toastmasters, which is a pretty big role. And I didn’t know enough to say no. So I said yes, and I just kept saying yes to speaking, to leadership roles, and getting that positive feedback that you get in Toastmasters clubs about what you’re doing well, areas you could improve on– a very nonthreatening environment in which to practice communication and leadership skills. I hadn’t intended on becoming a professional speaker or even becoming a presentation coach, but that’s how it got started.
Sarah:
So what made you decide to really just dive into the world of speaking and coaching people to becoming professional speakers?
Diane:
Well, it was two-fold. I first decided to go into professional speaking, honestly because my husband and I had purchased a business in 2007, which was a very bad time to purchase a business, especially one that we had, which was reselling IT equipment. And it started going down the tubes. So I was looking at ways that I might be able to make money. And I was in Toastmasters at the time. I’d met some Toastmasters who I knew were working for Minneapolis Business College as speakers, basically lead generators at high schools, speaking on different topics and getting leads for the college to do telemarketing to get students to come to their school. I remembered that from when I met them and I contacted this person Vitalia Bryn-Pundyk, if you happen to know her. And she said, “Oh, you definitely got to apply.” So I applied for a position. They had audition interviews, even with speaking. And I started speaking to high school students. Talk about a tough crowd, you know, these are teenagers who have to be in school, they have to listen to you. But it was actually pretty fun.
And then I decided, you know, I think I probably prefer speaking to adults and I took the Minnesota Speakers Academy course as well as some educational offerings that Vitalia Bryn-Pundyk had and realized, “You know, I think I could do this.” And my first topic area that I spoke on. . . I was looking, I don’t really have expertise in anything, but one thing that was common to everything I did was I talked with people. So I thought, Hmm, small talk, chit-chat, networking, and I decided just kind of out of the blue to pick that as my speaking topic, which is the initial speaking topic I started with and I wrote my first book based on that topic. Then a couple years later I started having people ask me to coach them on presentation skills and I thought, “You know, I really love doing this.” So I started another website, Virtual Speech Coach, and I was very deliberate in my blog. I decided that I would blog my way to a book and I took about nine months and I did a blog a week (not every single blog went into the book, however), and at the end of the nine months I put the blog together in a book and self-published my second book and it’s just taken off from there. And I’d picked Virtual Speech Coach as the name, I think in 2011 or 12 not knowing just how virtual everything would be going, but I wanted to be able to do coaching from home. At the time I didn’t even know about Zoom. I was using Skype, Google Hangouts at the time, the phone, and I had, of course, in-person clients as well. So that’s how I got started.
Sarah:
Wow. And yes, I have heard of Vitalia. I actually interviewed Power Talk Toastmasters, which is actually one of your Toastmasters clubs when they had their book 15 Concise Tips for Speaking.
Diane:
Right. Actually that was written by Jewel Pickert as the person who put it all together. And we had club members contribute chapters to that book. I was one of the contributors. My chapter might been on virtual presentations, I can’t even remember right now. But yeah, that club has been a great place to practice longer format speeches and also to associate with people who are already professional speakers or who aspire to be professional speakers. I think it’s great if you can associate with positive like-minded people and a lot of the people in that club also have written books and once you’re around people who are doing what you want to do, it doesn’t seem so impossible.
Sarah:
There’s some people are like, where do we find such people? Because in the beginning it was very hard for me to find an authors community. I think it took me about a few years before I found one.
Diane:
Well, I wasn’t actually looking for an authors community and in fact for the very first book I self-published, if I can tell you that brief story, I was in the National Speakers Academy, Minnesota Chapter, sort of like a training class and we had a special dinner with Mark Leblanc who is speaker on business development. He’s a past president of the National Speakers Association and he made sort of a dare. This was in January of 2010 and he said, “If you can tell me four things by June 30th: the title of your keynote, how much you want to get paid for your keynote, how often you want to give it, and who your target market is, I will do a free two hour coaching session with you. ” So I wrote that down, put it in my calendar on June 30th and that popped up and I thought, Oh, I want to take advantage of this. So I didn’t have the answers to all those four questions and I just made stuff up and sent him an email and said, “I’d love to have a coaching session with you.” And I remember we got together on July 31st of 2010. One of his first words to me were, “You need to write a book. A book will be your best business card ever.” And I’d said, “You know, I started a blog and I was blogging my way toward a book. And then some speakers came into the Academy and I mentioned to them, I was thinking about taking my blog content and they sort of poo-pooed that idea.” And he said, “You know what, you can ignore advice and just do it anyway.” And he said, “I think you could finish that book next month, in the month of August.” And this was July 31st and I’m thinking, this is what I thought . . . Okay, I’m working three part time jobs. I have three teenagers that I’m homeschooling . . . And the words that came out of my mouth were, “Yes, I can do that.” And I decided to do that Monday through Friday from 5:15 to 6:15 in the morning to actually work on adding a little more content, doing some massaging of content and ordering it.
And so I got it finished by the end of August and, I kid you not, on the day after Labor Day, I googled “how to self publish a book.” I had not read anything about self-publishing. I had not gotten a book on self-publishing. I had not taken a course. I had not been part of an authors group. I just thought, okay, people have self-published, I can do it too. So I went down the rabbit hole that Google can be and I thought, okay, this advice sounds pretty good. And I did a lot wrong, but I got my first book on Amazon and I had it in my hands at the beginning of October, my first self-published book. And then I thought, okay, if I ever write any more books, maybe I should know a little bit more. So I got a book on self-publishing from the library. It was probably two inches thick, a really thick book. And I started reading it. I started paging through it and I remember distinctly feeling grateful that I had NOT read this book prior to self-publishing because it was like, “Oh my gosh, this is a lot harder than I thought it was!” But I did it anyway. So, sometimes I think, now you can get advice and do better, but you can also jump in and do something.
I’ll give you an example of getting advice to do better. So for this last book, I put it on Amazon. I think about April 21st . . . is when I put it on Amazon and that day or the next day I happened to be on Facebook and I happened to see a Facebook sponsored ad on self-publishing and marketing your book that caught my eye. I read the copy and it was compelling. Whoever wrote it, genius! And I was like, Ooh, I want this. She had like six steps to self-publishing and marketing your book that really work, simple steps, and it was $27 so you know that is more than I would spend on most books. But when you compare it to taking a course, I thought, okay, she’s got six simple steps. If I get one idea that pays off. . . The return on investment, plus maybe my time savings, would be worth it. So I got the $27 ebook, I read the six simple steps and really it didn’t seem that hard and she had some very specific advice, some of which I should have done earlier and hadn’t done, but it included things like having a launch team. Now, I don’t have a huge list. I probably have 450 on one newsletter and then I have Thinkific course subscribers on another newsletter, maybe 200 and so I sent out, using actually some of the words she suggested, a request for people to be on my launch team and to get a review copy of my book and leave a review on Amazon. So I did that like on the next day. And so right now it hasn’t even been a week or so and I’ve already gotten five reviews. Several people have agreed to review. Anyway, the point is you can take a risk and just jump in. It’s good to have a little bit of advice, but you can’t do everything. I’ve since self-published probably about 10 books and I’ve learned a little bit every time. I’ve never done a big promotion effort. And I’ve come to realize that if you actually want to sell books on Amazon, you need to promote it. You need to get reviews, you know, I’m purchasing ads, but the ad costs that I’m purchasing on a few different platforms probably will be like 120 bucks, not that much money. So my point is jump in, learn as you go, but don’t be paralyzed by thinking you have to be perfect or you have to wait until things are perfect in your life.
Sarah:
There is never a perfect time.
Diane:
No, there isn’t.
Sarah:
I heard the greatest advice is to write a book, it just requires a butt in a chair.
Diane:
I think it requires a little bit more than that and it sort of depends on the book you’re writing. I can tell you about my process in short. So I had not even thought about writing this book until near the middle of November, and I’ll tell you what happened. I think it was in November or maybe it was even, yeah, it must’ve been November that I was in a Toastmasters club called readership Toastmasters, where we read one leadership book a month, and I don’t know if this was our December book or November book, I’d have to check, but the book that we had selected, which was a very easy kind of silly, snarky, sarcastic book, was 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings. And the advice was mostly tongue-in-cheek and there were little illustrations for each of the tips. And I thought it was a really fun book. And I thought now I don’t think I want to go the totally snarky route. But that book gave me the idea for 100 Tips & Tricks to Appear Confident in Presentations. And so, in fact, when I gave my cover designer the concept for a cover, let’s just say that my cover echoes very closely, some aspects of that book’s cover with coloring and kind of the layout a little bit. But, so anyway, I got this idea and it just so happened, I also have a friend who has been trying to write a book for over a year and she spent quite a lot of money with a publishing company and she needs to get this book done. So I thought, Hmm, I know I’ll get this book and I’ll set up some retreats at my home, like one day retreats, and she’ll come over and we’ll do some book writing together. So part of it was wanting to inspire and motivate somebody else.
And during those book retreats–we had one in I think December, one in January– I started doing post it notes in different categories. I had, you know, those flip chart papers, the kinds with the sticky back? I set up five on my wall because I had five main categories. And then I took some of my blog posts I’d already written. For every idea I put it on a post it note and I numbered it. And then I had a Microsoft word document where I wrote a little bit about that idea. And then maybe I did some research, so a few of these tips I’ve actually done some research on. So I just threw it all into a word document but numbered by the tip, so I took some tips out, added some tips, but the main point is I actually thought about the overall organization and did brainstorming prior to jumping in and writing the book. Once I had more tips than I could use, then it just became a matter of organizing them and writing them. I wanted each tip to be a page or less. There was some like, “How do I make this in a page or less?” Then I wrote the book, it was probably done the end of February I think, and I’ve used primarily Fiverr for a lot of aspects of the book: for the book cover, for some book formatting, and for the illustrations. I will have to say Fiverr can be a dicey way to go because you don’t always get the quality that you would like. I will say I’m pretty happy with the illustrations. I paid a lot for Fiverr standards on the illustrations. I searched through Fiverr to see somebody whose illustrations I liked and I put a bid out for request of people and I was overwhelmed. I got like 42 people in a day. And I said “Nope.” None of them did I really like. So, I found this one guy in Pakistan and he worked very well with me, where I gave him ideas for most of the illustrations and he either used my ideas or actually did something better. All in all, I think my final cost after advertising, for the illustrations, and whatnot, I’ll probably end up spending about $1,300 on this book. But 600 of it, maybe a little more with tip, were for the illustrations.
Sarah:
Well, I’m glad that you had a semi decent-experience with Fiverr cause I’ve done Fiverr for both ways. I actually have helped as a virtual assistant and also use them for editing and cover work. And, as you said, it can be pretty dicey.
Diane:
Yeah. I know. For example, for the person doing my formatting, and part of it was me, I had sent him a copy of the book where I did have every tip on one page. Now, I didn’t tell him . . . this was my bad . . . I didn’t tell him that every tip needed to stay on one page. So when he did his initial formatting, the tips would spill onto a second page because he made the font bigger and just a lot of things. It took a few rounds of getting it where I wanted it. And, you know, it’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Sarah:
Well I didn’t notice any imperfections when I reviewed it.
Diane:
You know, some of the ways some of the titles appeared, it was like, well I kind of would, would’ve liked that on a second line . . . but that would have looked weird in another way. So you make tradeoffs essentially. I did pay a Toastmaster friend to do some proofreading for me. So that’s something I did not do through Fiverr.
Sarah:
Yes. With that, you get what you pay for.
Diane:
That’s true.
Sarah:
And I know with those who are Fiverr really can take offense that people expect you to do a thousand dollars worth of work for five bucks.
Diane:
Oh, that is bad. That’s like I know for my illustrator I offered him $550 and then I tipped him like 20%. I was looking up the average income in Pakistan and what I paid my illustrator was the equivalent of the average annual income in Pakistan and I’m happy to pay that.
Sarah:
He did a really nice job. I even liked how he drew you at the about the author page.
Diane:
I know I look a little chubby but the truth is I have gained a little weight so Hey. . .
Sarah:
Well I don’t think you looked chubby.
Diane:
So, but it was fun. You know, I’ve since used all of those illustrations. I made a video that is on YouTube about a 100 Tips & Tricks to Appear Confident in Presentations where I just added all of the illustrations as a picture album and then put their titles on it. And I discovered that YouTube has an audio library and you can search by genre, by length, by mood. And it was easy to just add music to that particular video.
Sarah:
So you mean YouTube has a library where you can borrow sounds?
Diane:
They have music and they also have sound effects, which I didn’t really look into. So I was thinking, so I had this idea in my mind that would be really cool since I have these hundred-some pictures to make a photo album slideshow and put that on YouTube. You know, I have the book at the beginning, I have a little note with my author picture and then I have the book at the end. And then these hundred tips in the middle with their title. Just a visual summary that takes under four minutes. And I thought, but how boring without any music to watch a video. And so then I started looking around like, okay, where can I get some music? And most of the places you have to pay to get the music. And then I just happened upon, Oh, YouTube has an audio library where you don’t have to worry about copyright or music rights. You can just use the music without a problem. I think my video was like three minutes and 47 seconds long. And so I did a search on length and mood and type of music and found something that was three minutes and 50 seconds long that had a happy, upbeat tune and just added it. It was really very simple.
Sarah:
Wow.
Diane:
Yeah. I didn’t know that until this. So sometimes you know, just deciding to do something and then figuring out how to do it, you learn a lot too.
Sarah:
That seems how it is, especially listeners can hear it within my podcast, my recent episodes sound nothing like my first ones. And that’s a good thing.
Diane:
Right. You can learn a lot by doing, and if you never take a risk, if you’re never willing to fail, you won’t learn. You can read stuff in a book, but until you actually apply it . . . and I think of it as learning in an upward spiral. When you first start, you’re at the bottom, you don’t know very much and you just make some kind of effort and you’ve learned a little bit and then you’re actually able to learn more. Then you can read something on Google . . . Oh, now I get it, and you can apply that the next time you do it and then you can just have a continually upward learning spiral where you can produce things of better quality in less time.
Sarah:
Diane, you have both a speaking business and you are also an author and all your books are about public speaking and leadership. Correct?
Diane:
Pretty much. As I’m thinking about them, yes.
Sarah:
Because I have come across a few. I don’t know if I’ve come across all 10. So do you feel that both businesses help fuel the other, your books bring in speaking businesses and speaking business, bringing in book sales?
Diane:
Yes. In fact, I have a very small, little ebook called something like Public Speaking Lessons from Ted Talks. I never even made it into a regular book and how that book came into being, very quickly, is I was going to be doing an education session on publishing ebooks at a National Speakers Association, Minnesota Chapter meeting and that was like in three weeks and you know, I’ve published a few books by then and I thought, well wouldn’t it be interesting if I could do a book in a day? And I had been writing a blog series on the top 10 most-viewed Ted Talks and I was giving an analysis of the delivery and content of those top 10 Ted Talks. Now, honestly, I wish I hadn’t picked the top 10 most-viewed because two of them were so very similar. They were by the same speaker. But anyway, that’s what I chose at the time and I took the content, made it into an ebook and published it that very day. Now that book took, I mean it’s not anything like really fantastic, but I have gotten business from it. People who are going to be doing a Ted Talk, have searched on Amazon and have found that book. And I have gotten presentation coaching business from people who are preparing to do Ted Talks from that little book. And I have gotten other business and even interviews by various media outlets. When I had the Small Talk Big Results book, I got a couple of media requests, especially around the holidays. There was something about networking around the holidays that was like a hot topic. So the books can lead to business, and they can lead to more exposure as well.
Sarah:
And when are you going to be doing a Ted Talk, Diane?
Diane:
You know, I don’t have any plans for a Ted Talk at this time because Ted Talk speakers, they need to have something that I would call a big idea. And also Ted does not look too favorably on professional speakers. So at this time I don’t have a plan for Ted Talk. I’m not saying I wouldn’t do one, but I don’t have that big idea that I would want to develop into a Ted Talk at this time.
Sarah:
I’m just saying a lot of times Toastmasters talks are just as good as Ted talks.
Diane:
They are. I enjoy going to my Toastmasters meetings and hearing people talk, especially when they’re passionate about something. Although my favorite Toastmaster speeches are often the icebreaker speech when we first get to learn a little bit about a new member.
Sarah:
And isn’t it interesting when you see somebody go from there? While I’m talking within the legacy program, now I know Toastmasters has recently changed our educational program, but I always found it interesting when you saw somebody go through their icebreaker to their inspiration talk and just see the growth in them.
Diane:
Oh, I know. I experienced growth from that first time where my knees were shaking to being able to give an inspirational talk. In fact, I think from that time to the 10th speech, I actually even did some contests and I would have never thought I would have been involved in contests where I spoke in front of a whole lot of people, but there’s a lot of growth in Toastmasters and a lot of support.
Sarah:
There is. I think it should be requirement for everybody to be a Toastmaster. You’d be better leaders, you’d be better communicators and it’s just all around better people.
Diane:
That’s right and it’s very interesting now that we’re all meeting virtually instead of in-person, but I kind of like the idea of having hybrid meetings. In one club, we had made this decision back in December that we were going to continue with our once-a-month in-person meetings, but in the school year we were going to add in about seven once a month virtual meetings where it would just be all virtual and it was a good thing we had decided to try that idea out because when we had to go virtual we were ready to do it.
Sarah:
Oh yes. And virtual meetings, they are different from face to face meetings. I remember when the contests had to go virtual and I had made it up to division. I had practiced my international [speech] for about nine months standing, gestures, everything and then I had to start practicing just sitting down and making sure my gestures are purposeful and I’m not going like this [moves hands quickly, blurring them].
Diane:
Right, with your hands being just a blur.
Sarah:
Yeah, it was vastly different, but I think just practicing with the medium really helped.
Diane:
Oh that’s right. And that actually is one of my tips. Tip number 92, Practice the Platform. If you’ve got an important interview, an important presentation and it’s on a platform that you’ve never used, you should find a way to practice it. I know, for example, probably everybody by now has used Zoom, but in the beginning of this whole social isolation, social distancing, a lot of people hadn’t. Oh, it was painful to be on some Zoom calls with people not muting, people’s cats coming in. All sorts of things where people not knowing what to do, not knowing that there was a chat. So like with Zoom, you can get a free account and you can play around with it, maybe with one other person just to figure out how things work. I know my son-in-law had a Zoom interview for the first time several weeks ago and he said, “Hey, can I jump on to zoom with you? So I can see what it’s like?” And that made him feel so much more confident to actually have practiced the platform prior to having it be a for-real situation.
Sarah:
And you just don’t give tips on video presentation. You give tips that almost seem like they should be second nature or maybe I’m just saying it because I’ve been a Toastmaster for a decade, but you get practical advice that people don’t really think about initially. Like go to the bathroom beforehand.
Diane:
My dad is actually reading a review copy of the book and he thought that was hilarious about making sure if you go to the bathroom and you’re wearing a microphone that the microphone is off or that you’re not trailing toilet paper when you leave. I have done both of those things, so that’s from personal experience!
Sarah:
And also taking the time to research your audience, learn their mission statement, meet some of the people beforehand . . .?
Diane:
Right. Those are things that you often don’t think about and a lot of people get very nervous about presenting in front of a group maybe that they don’t know that well. I’ve often felt that if I get there a little early and people are walking in or sitting down, I can go around, introduce myself, say, “Hi . . . What are you looking at getting out of this presentation? What are some of your challenges?” We could have a little conversation. I feel like I’ve made a new friend and then when I’m giving my presentation I can land my eyes on some of those people that are already my new friends and it just seems way less intimidating.
Sarah:
And when you gave advice of practicing eye contact by posting pictures up and keeping them at eye level, it didn’t make me feel crazy when I one day decided to stack up my daughter’s stuffed, animals and pretend I was practicing with an audience.
Diane:
Well, I have to say, I think in the book I said something about not using stuffed animals or pets because I did that once. My children are grown up now, but when they were younger, my daughter did have stuffed animals. I set up the stuffed animals to talk to them and my husband happened to walk in and he’s like, “What is going on?” I was talking to a menagerie of stuffed animals and then I tried doing a presentation in front of my cats and they were just bored, so that didn’t work either.
Sarah:
But your husband’s a Toastmaster as well. Shouldn’t he just figured you were practicing eye contact?
Diane:
He just thought it was super weird. To me eye contact with something that’s more humanlike is probably a little bit better, which is why I suggested . . . you don’t even have to be a good artist . . . just draw a crude face or even just a set of eyes on a piece of paper and then when you’re practicing you can make eye contact for a complete thought. Because what I have noticed, and I still work on this, if you practice to an empty room where you’re not making eye contact, then when you’re in front of a live audience you tend to scan the audience and never really land on people. Never really make eye contact. And I’m sure you’ve been an audience member where the speaker actually connects with your eyes and that’s a completely different experience than with a speaker who just scans the audience and never really lands on anybody.
Sarah:
Yes. I remember being in the corporate world and the manager director at the time would just scan the audience just to make sure we were not sleeping. It was not my place, but I wanted to scream, “Engage with me! I’m here. I’m taking out moments of my day from doing actual work to listen to you.”
Diane:
Right. And it’s not that difficult to engage, but a lot of people aren’t used to speaking to more than one person or to a large group. And you know, you’ve probably have heard people sometimes say the advice, “Practice in a mirror.” That always struck me as a little bit weird because, honestly, when I’m speaking, I am not going to be seeing me. However, the one thing I like about that, is you do want to see how you look on video or how you’re going to present. So I do think it’s very valuable to either video yourself or get someone to video you doing a practice or doing a speech so that you can actually see how you come across. You may even notice things that if you hadn’t been videoed, you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. For example, a long time ago, someone videoed one of my first Toastmaster speeches and in the course of this five to seven minute speech, three times, I hitched up my pants and what had happened is I’d lost some weight and hadn’t gotten a belt and so my pants were a little bit loose and I did not even know I was doing that until I saw it on the video and thought, “Oh, I got to get a belt!” You know?
Sarah:
Oh yes. I know one time I kept itching my nose like this. Although I know the audience can’t see me. They could probably hear me bump my microphone though, and I did not realize I was doing it until I had my evaluation. They said, “Make sure your gestures are purposeful. I’m sorry for your bout of allergies, but please be aware.”
Diane:
Yeah, that can be really tricky and watching yourself on video . . . Plus, even if you don’t video yourself at a Toastmaster meeting, you have an evaluator who may notice things not only that you can improve on, but that you did well and that you can do more of. I’ll give you an example. Most people when they’re presenting, they somehow get into presentation mode and they forget to be themselves and to be friendly and smile. It can make such a huge difference to the warmth that your audience feels and even to make you feel better if you smile, especially at the beginning before you start. And it just comes across as so warm. And you might not notice how serious you look if you haven’t seen a video of yourself.
Sarah:
Yes, I noticed that a lot of people can tend to be really stone-faced because they think they need to be serious and then that just ruins the engagement between the presenter and the audience.
Diane:
That’s right. You know, sadly as you get older, your neutral face starts to look more and more like a little bit of an angry face. So if you want to look younger and look warm, smile!
Sarah:
That is really good. If I think that’s one of the best advice I’ve heard on this podcast. Well Diane, people need to run to Amazon and get your book ASAP because you have a promotion going on the week of May 5th.
Diane:
That’s right. May 5th through May 8th is the official launch of my book and the ebook will be available for only 99 cents.
Sarah:
So if you’ve been taking advantage of Amazon and their digital credits, you pretty much already had the book paid for.
Diane:
That’s right. If you’re not in a rush to get something, Amazon is very happy to give you digital credits for waiting.
Sarah:
And we’re not talking about a dollar anymore. I think I got $3 off the last order.
Diane:
That’s right. I’m in fact, I think I even have watched a few movies for free from Amazon prime because I had digital credits.
Sarah:
So yes, people you’ve been buying from Amazon, you’ve got your digital credits. There is no reason why you cannot buy this book right now.
Diane:
Great. Because if you even get one tip that makes a difference, it’s worth way more than 99 cents.
Sarah:
That is for sure. So Diane, I consider Minnesota the state of 10,000 lakes. 10 million books. But you think of it as something else.
Diane:
The 10 billion mosquitoes? I think I got bit by my first mosquito two days ago we remember it was like really warm. It was in, I think, in the seventies and we went on a walk on a trail. I’m like, you’re kidding me. Was that a mosquito? So mosquitoes are not my favorite insect.
Sarah:
No, but you are living in the state where they’re practically the state bird.
Diane:
Practically, that’s for sure. I lived in San Diego years ago and I remember when my brother visited me, that was his biggest memory was that there were no mosquitoes. So I miss that.
Sarah:
And are you a native of Minnesota, Diane?
Diane:
I was actually born in Oregon, but I grew up from age four to about age 20 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. So very close to being a Minnesota native. And my husband and I moved back to Minnesota in 1997.
Sarah:
What brought you guys back?
Diane:
Honestly, my husband’s father had had a health scare and we decided we wanted to live a little bit closer so that we could drive and not have to fly to Grand Forks to be available and to visit them.
Sarah:
Yes, because I bet flying got very expensive. And you were flying from San Diego, correct?
Diane:
Correct. Right.
Sarah:
And I consider Minnesota to be the state of flypaper. Once you move there and you think you’re going to move out you stay.
Diane:
That is true. We’ve been staying in Minnesota, although I have learned that one of the secrets to staying sane in Minnesota winters is to go somewhere warm for vacation, which unfortunately we were supposed to go to my brother’s wedding in Mexico, but that got postponed till November. So I hope we can go in November.
Sarah:
Oh, I’m sorry to hear about that. And how are you staying sane during self-quarantine and isolation?
Diane:
You know, honestly, I don’t mind it that much. I was already working from home. I already had some virtual clients. I am spending way less time driving to meetings so I have more time and I’ve also tried to not go out to the grocery store as often. So now I’m only going to the grocery store once every two weeks. That’s how I could not drive basically for two weeks. I filled up my car in the middle of March and I still have three quarters of a tank, which is kind of too bad considering how inexpensive gas is right now. But hey, I’m saving a lot of money on gas, that’s for sure.
Sarah:
I haven’t seen gas prices this low since the nineties.
Diane:
Yeah, they’re pretty low. I remember as a kid, I still remember seeing a gas price of like 25 cents, but that was a really long time ago.
Sarah:
Well, Diane, before we go, is there anything else you want our audience to know?
Diane:
I want them to know that confidence is a skill that you can build. There aren’t just people who are naturally confident. People become confident because they’ve exercised confidence skills and a lot of it begins in your mind, and that’s actually what the beginning of the book talks a lot about, how to prepare before you give a presentation. And part of that preparation is mental. For example, I used to get pretty nervous because I was afraid people would judge me, and one of the ways I’ve found to get past that feeling is to consider what I’m saying as a gift for the audience and to be excited about giving that gift. So my message is confidence in public speaking and in other areas of your life is a skill you can build.
Sarah:
Well, Diane, thank you so much for your gift of your time with us today.
Diane:
Thank you so much, Sarah. It’s been a pleasure being on your podcast.
Sarah:
And audience, go out on May 5th and get her book. You have no excuse not to.