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Becoming an Effective Public Speaker w/ Matt Beaudreau

Workshop Overview:

On this call, we were joined by Matt Beaudreau. Matt is the Founder and CEO of Acton Academy Placer (a Praxis BP!), host of The Essential 11 podcast, and a professional public speaker (who gives keynote speeches across the country, for organizations as well known as Lochheed Martin, American Eagle, and the Air Force).
You can check out his TED talk on education here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPAXMNXy5UQ

On this session, Matt talked about public speaking. More specifically:

  1. His top tips and tricks for public speaking
  2. How he became a well-respected public speaker
  3. How you can leverage public speaking expertise to become a better communicator across the board in your career.
If you’re interested in communication in any form — podcasting, presentations, hosting Zoom workshops, or formal public speaking — then there’s valuable content in this session for you.
You can read a little more about Matt here: https://genhq.com/generations-keynote-speaker/matt-beaudreau/

Workshop Notes:

Part 1: organization — important whether you’re going on a podcast, hosting a podcast, starting a conversation, going into an interview, etc. 90% of the work.
  1. When he’s creating an organizational chart for a speech or conversation, step 1 is to identify the audience. He does a deep dive into who they are, and answers:

    1. How does my audience see the world? How do they see this interaction? Are they there because they want to be there or because they’re being told to?

    2. What do they want out of their time together? What is the end goal? And whose end goal matters?
  2. What is my message? What do I want to say? What are the 1-3 things you want them to take away from the talk? Then you build the communication around that.
  3. Who do I need to be so they’ll listen? What part of myself do I need to be so they know what I’m talking about matters to me and them, and so there’s a connection there? Thought leader, engineer, concerned dad, business owner, etc.?
    a) be yourself — just get into different moods
    b) understand the right humor. Everybody wants to try to be funny on stage to break the ice, but most people aren’t that funny. Humor is like an AR-15 — it’s only good if you know how to use it.
    c) Where do we naturally connect? As soon as humanly possible you want to open with a human connection.
  4. What are my key stories? What are the key stories I want to bring up to connect with the people I want to connect with? Are those stories quick and relatable? Stories either illuminate a point or highlight the speaker/audience connection. Those are the only places you use them.
    1.  it’s easy to try to prove that we’re smart because we’re telling impressive stories, but actually that overwhelms people.
  5. What is the specific thing I want them to do when we are done? At the end of a talk, you need to give them a specific action you want them to take.
Part 2: clarity — 
  1. “How you say something is even more important than the words you use.” –> action speaks louder than words, but also:
    1. Relax. It’s your biggest hurdle to clarity, and being a good communicator, period. The more relaxed you are, the better you’ll do.
    2. Slow down. We have this weird thing where we don’t like to pause. We start doing any type of presentation, and we feel like we have to sell ourselves, and we stop relaxing and start to speed up. The pauses are only uncomfortable for you, and only if you let it. It’s not uncomfortable for anyone else — pauses are a natural part of speech. Slow down and pause will actually increase your credibility, and it’ll make things clear for the audience, because they have time to process what you’re saying.
    3. Don’t worry about trying to sound smart. You don’t want to sound smart; you want to sound like your audience — you don’t have to be fake, but talk like them and communicate with them. Don’t try to be the expert — try to be the guy that’s just like they are. The more you come across as “we’re all in this together,” the better you’ll get across.
    4. Get to know the inflections of your voice. Knowing the inflection of your voice and utilizing that is a really powerful thing. To get better at this: listen to your voice a lot, until you get to know it. Start recording conversations, start doing mock podcasts, and go back and listen, and be honest with yourself — am I somebody I like listening to? Then talk to somebody else about what you sound like.
    5. Your body language matters, and so does the audience’s. Be aware of how you come across to people and how people normally respond to you.
Part 3: be compelling: care about what you’re talking about, and know about what you’re talking about.
  1. Don’t just tell the audience you care about them. Be genuine. Do you care about the outcome for the people? Can you communicate that you’re all in this together?
  2. Matt ends every keynote with a story that related to who the audience was and what they did, and how it impacted their life. Sometimes he has to dig, but eventually he’d find something.
  3. Matt doesn’t love powerpoints, and doesn’t love other gimmicks. Doesn’t like polls from the stage either. Doesn’t like the questions. Only good if you care about the answer. The best way to engage is to just have a conversation, or giving them a framework to have conversations from each other.
  4. Be an expert. Know what the hell you’re talking about.
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