Tearing up the Public Speaking Rulebook

I’ve written about the various tips and techniques of creating effective public speaking skills. A quick google search or a run through some of the peeps on my blogroll can reveal a lot more of the Dos and Don’ts. There’s advice on effective openings, structuring the body of your presentation and so on and so forth. But sometimes I really don’t think it’s necessary. Sometimes I think that the techniques we learn from books, workshops or places like Toastmasters can be thrown out the window entirely!
However, this can only happen if the speaker is really passionate about their subject, knows A LOT about that subject and knows the direction that they are going in.

One such example I’ve seen recently is Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. This is a clip of Gary giving a 15 minute keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in 2008. (Just to note, he gets quite a few laughs in his speech, but I’m only going to pick up on a few of them).

He walks purposely out on to the stage and opens with “hey“. Why does this work? Why is this better than opening with a quote or one of the other ways that a lot of public speaking coaches (myself included) advocate? The reason, in my mind, is because it’s genuine. It’s 100% Gary and sometimes that’s what it takes.

His frustration kicks in around the 52 second part as he advocates people not doing things they hate. His energy comes through, which makes the audience start to laugh, then he kicks in with “you can loose just as much money being happy as hell”, which gets a big laugh and a round of applause.

Then he starts telling us a little bit about his background. He gives us a very condensed version of what happened. He’s using the “this is where I was, this is what happened” which eventually lead to where he is now. Whether he is using this consciously or unconsciously I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

He is also dressed really casually. Now I am a firm believer in dressing to the level of your audience. Some people say that you should dress better than them, but I’m not sure about that because I don’t want anything to stand in my way of connecting with my audience. Anything.

If I’m doing stand-up comedy, I am more than likely to dress casually in jeans and a plain t-shirt (you don’t want the audience distracted trying to read some logo rather than on you), than I am to dress in a suit. If I’m doing a corporate gig, then I’m going to dress like they do. This was a Web 2.0 Expo, so the chances are that the audience was casually dressed. Not only that, but you know Gary is himself and not trying to be something that he’s not.

Then he gets down on one knee to emphasize what he used to do getting up early to work in a liquor store. He goes on to acknowledge the one audience member clapping one of his comment about making money along the way. This shows he is alive in the moment and not ploughing ahead saying what he’s saying regardless of what the audience is doing.

Then he lets us in on his world  a little bit when he says “it’s not fun answering what wine goes with fish 74 times a day“. This gets a laugh from his audience again because his passion and honesty flood through. He even acknowledges his mistake when he says “on the air” instead of “in the air”. He gets another laugh when he says “I’ll give you, like, 8 bucks each” this gets a big laugh because it’s a very specific figure. Not 10 bucks not 5, but eight.

He also uses a technique that stand-up comedians often use, which is out loud acknowledgement of a comment. He says that he told Domino’s Pizza franchisees to bring back the Noid. This comment gets a huge laugh and a round of applause.  He then says: “why did the Noid get such a big response? I need to use that more often”.

The he ends his keynote with “I’m done“. I think for one so full of energy and passion and sheer commitment to his topic a simple I’m done is enough.

Perhaps it would’ve been a little nicer if he had used a few more “you-based” statements to connect with his audience, rather than the mainly I-based ones. But I think it was so obvious that the keynote was about his audience that he wasn’t especially necessary.

Another comment could be levelled at his use of expletives. Whilst I use them in my everyday life, I make sure that I never use them in a corporate environment. Too many people are easily offended. Not only that, but too many people are offended on behalf of other people which is just stupid (a post for another day I feel). But, you know what? that’s Gary’s way. No-one can ever accuse him of not being genuine or 100% committed to what he’s saying.

With that comes expletives. The thing is, I guess it also depends on the audience. As I said early it was a Web 2.0 Expo, not strictly a corporate audience. I think that but’s a big no-no to swear at a corporate audience, but that’s just me.

Lesson: it’s great to use all the techniques and tips that we read on my blogs like mine, or that we learn in workshops, in books or whatever. But sometimes we have just set that aside and talk from the gut. If we’ve been through a lot of training and studying we should just trust that it’s going to be there.