789 – Be a success as a trickster: Tom talks On Stage Tricks

Episode 789 – On Stage Tricks
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 789 of Screw the Commute podcast. We begin such good feedback on these presentation tips that can help build your business or if you want to be a pro speaker, or if you just forced at your job to be a presenter. Hey, this can lead to raises and career changes and promotions and but you know, I like to use it to promote your business because, you know, this is screw the commute. We don't want you going to that job every day if you can help it. All right. Anyway, today's on stage tricks and techniques to make great presentations. And then I'm going to have another genius technique for you clear at the end, like I did in the previous episodes. Episode 788 was How to Practice. Episode 787 was attention gaining devices. That's the basis of my whole Wake Him Up system. And 786 was bomb proofing. So you never leave a presentation where people think it sucked. All right. So so anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screw.com slash. Then the episode number, bomb proofing 786 Attention getting devices 787 practice methods like a pro 788 and today is 789 on stage tricks and techniques. You probably should keep track of all of these if any of this interest you because they they really will raise you up like crazy with very little effort.

[00:01:55] And you might want to grab a copy of what all this is based on is my wake 'em up book at screwthecommute.com/wakebook get the e-book version. All right follow me on at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire on TikTok and then grab a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. All right. Let's get into a random assortment of on stage tricks and techniques that have helped me make a fortune as a speaker. And they're they're all over the place, folks. But these are some simple things that will just make you better. Now, this one's for the guys. If you wear a tie and if you keep your jacket buttoned, you usually want to keep the tie right in the center. But if it gets off the edge, cock eyed people look at it and it's just distracting. So the trick I learned from the great presenter Paul Roddy was to put the the skinny part of your tie through the loop in the back of the main part of the tie, and then underneath that, get a big paper clip and clip it to the middle of your shirt where the buttons are, right? It'll keep it perfectly in the middle. Now, if you're a laissez faire presenter with open jacket and your ties flopping all around, that's different. But if you want to keep it perfect in the middle paperclip trick now for the ladies, make sure if you're on a dais and that's a stage, basically a raised stage, there's always cracks between where they put the sections together, make sure they tape them together with heavy duty gorilla kind of tape so that your heel doesn't if you happen to wear high heels, it doesn't get stuck in there and break your shoe or break your ankle or cause you all kinds of trouble and you'll be worried about stepping on the cracks if you're up there.

[00:03:46] And so you don't want that. So make sure they're taped. All right. The step placement to get up on the dais is. Make sure that if you're coming from the ground level, that it's close to where you're going to enter the stage. Not so you have to walk around the stage. I mean, these are simple things, but people don't think about them. And then if you plan on having anybody on stage with you, make sure that there's steps everywhere front and both sides so that people don't have to waste time walking. If you pick somebody from one side of the audience and they have to walk clear around the stage, you just blew another minute of your presentation. And that can be critical. So make sure the step placement is good. All right. Have a method if you're going to use props to hide them.

[00:04:37] If they're hidden props, it could be as little as a little round cocktail table with a flower on it, but it's draped to the floor so that you can hide stuff behind it. You can hide all kinds of stuff in there. I mean, I hide my whole laptop case and a whole bunch of stuff a lot of times. So make sure you can hide stuff on stage if you're if that applies to you now. Notes. I always use notes in one fashion or the other, but sometimes it looks good. If you're using notes, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe you don't want to use hold notes, so forth. So one thing is to write them really big and put them flat on the floor or on the the stage, the dais, and nobody can see them but you, you know, you can glance down at a second or hold your chin like you're thinking about something and you're really looking at your notes on the floor and they can't see them. Now, I mentioned this in the props section. I think that was in the tension gain devices about hiding notes in props or in the back side of a prop so that the audience doesn't see it. But it's reminding you what to say about the prop. All right. So that's a way to hide notes with props. Now on flip charts, if you have a flip chart.

[00:06:01] And I also mentioned my dueling flip chart technique where you have a flip chart on both sides of the stage and volunteers writing on them. But if you're going to be writing on a flip chart, you can very lightly in pencil put your notes on the page that even somebody five feet away can't see them. But when you walk up to the flip chart and look at the flip chart and start writing on it, maybe a heading or something, then you can see your notes right there and nobody else can see them. So that's a good, good trick. Now, what I like to do is, first of all, I always use handouts no matter what I'm doing. I use a handout. And then I there's one of two things that I do. I may have a person in the crowd where I say I need a volunteer, right? Instant involvement technique. And so I got a big prize for you and then the hands go up. So. Hey, okay, folks, you got that handout here. I want you to help me keep track because I'm always confused up here. So I'm teasing myself a little bit and I need to stay on track. So you're going to tell me which section we're at and what's the next section whenever I get done with a section. Okay. Is that agreed? Okay.

[00:07:15] And here's a big prize for you ahead of time. And I give him one of my, you know, some books or something or something. So then every time I'm done with a section where I've practiced my bits, chunks and series, which was in last episode, then practice techniques, then I say, Oh, what's next? And then they call out the next section and bam, that kicks me off on my next big chunk or series. All right. So it's beautiful involvement. Now if you fear that the audience is going to be distracted and there's a lot of people, you know, checking email and doing this, that and the other, instead of having one person, you say, I'm going to be asking people in the crowd today to help me keep on track. So you got your hand out there, follow along closely, and then I might choose you to to tell me what's next. And now everybody is is forced to keep an eye on things because they don't want to be embarrassed if you call on them and they have no idea where you're at in the presentation. So I love these kind of things. Next thing I let's see where this was in the bomb proofing 786 Episode 786 about preplanned ad libs. This is where you have something ready to say if something goes wrong on stage. And I gave you there's there's like tons of examples in the Wake them up book but here's here's and I gave you one in that episode but here's another one.

[00:08:46] Your microphone squeals. All right So I say, well, oh, that was my elephant impression. All right. So like I said, it doesn't have to be knee slappingly funny. But when it's done appearing to be instantaneous or impromptu, people are like, Oh man, you know, this guy's or woman's cool. So that's pre-planned ad-libs. Now, another really interesting technique is make mistakes on purpose. Now you have to you can't be someone with low self esteem to do this because you're always thinking, Oh, somebody will feel badly about me. No, if you have good self esteem, you can use this and make a mistake on purpose for them to catch you, to give them, make them the stars. Now, we went way overboard on this one time where when the movie by Jim Carrey liar Liar was out I was doing a presentation for some big, big company. And I suggested to them, Hey, why don't I just lie my way through the presentation on all these things they're supposed to know. I'm going to say the opposite. And they have to catch me. And whoever catches me first gets a prize. See? So this was a lot of fun. They made up a poster, put my head on Jim Carrey's body like a movie poster.

[00:10:06] And. And it was a blast. A lot of fun. So you can make mistakes on purpose. Another thing is to pretend not to be able to come up with a word. And this is again, audience involvement that forces them to like they want to help you and they want to be involved. And so, so I might say something like, yeah, I found this dog on the road and I've helped out so many dogs that didn't have homes. You know, they're called what do they call these kind of dogs? And then people were yelling out Rescue, rescue. I said, Yeah, yeah, rescue. Yeah. And I knew it was rescue, but it got them all excited and involved. And we're talking about helping little animals and, you know, so it's a beautiful thing. So you can pretend not to be able to come up with a word. Another thing you can do is have a funny opening slide when people walk in something that applies or a funny quotation, you know, something from Mark Twain or something like that, It just sets the mood that this is going to be a fun presentation. You can also have a funny laser pointer pointer, so maybe you could get one made up that looked like a golf club. If you were crazy about golf and you were in Vegas and everybody's going golfing when you're done, you know? So a funny laser pointer.

[00:11:24] You could have a fun slide about you or your family or something embarrassing about you, like self-effacing, that could come up. In the middle of your presentation as if it was accidentally put in there. Okay. And then you said and it flashes on the screen saying, Oh, my God. Oh, that wasn't supposed to be here, but it really was. All right. And you're not lying. You're just having fun with the people. So that's that's another one. Now, another trick is when you're doing a visual, any kind of visual. And it pops up on the screen, a new one. You don't want something that's been up there for five minutes. This doesn't work. But if it pops, a new visual pops up on the screen. You might say something like, I want to show you this graph I made up and everybody looks at the screen and you peek at your notes because they will never notice that you're peeking at your notes if you are directing them towards the visual. And then here's your genius technique. I learned this from Patricia Fripp, the first woman president of the National Speakers Association. And this is genius. This is so genius. I'll tell you how I applied it. So I used to do speeches for Meeting Professionals International. It used to be meeting planners International. And they would have these luncheon or breakfast speeches.

[00:12:53] I usually did the luncheons where. The these are all meeting planners who could hire you as a speaker. So they came in for this luncheon presentation. I mean, this happened to me over and over and over again. It's the same thing. So the meeting planner of that event, a meeting planner of the meeting planner event, would come up to me and say, Tom, don't feel bad if people get up to leave because they have to get back to work and so forth, you know, during the end of your presentation. And so I'm nodding like nice, just being nice about it. And in my mind I'm thinking, yeah, you watch. You watch what happens. And I didn't say that to her, too. It was mostly it was mostly women in those days. I said, you know, don't don't worry. It's okay. I understand. So so I would use this genius technique called the split story technique. And this is based on the fact that people can't stand. This is kind of the zeigarnik technique that I teach in my copywriting that people can't stand unfulfilled curiosity. That's the Bluma Zeigarnik was a Russian psychologist and psychiatrist who identified the trait of the human mind that they can't stand unfulfilled curiosity. It's the basis of all the cliff hanger shows like 24 was the first real binge watching cliff hanger show that people binge watched and there's been loads of them since.

[00:14:27] Where at the end of the episode you're like, Oh, what happened? And then you got to tune in next week, right? So so I would start a story in the beginning of the presentation and get to this cliffhanger point. And then I would go on with the rest of the presentation and nobody left. Nobody ever got up to leave until I was completely done and finished the story at the end of my speech. And in the meeting planners for these various events I was at would come up to me Tom. They must have really loved you. Nobody left for said, Oh, well, that's that's nice. Thank you. I'm humbled by that. So that's your genius technique. Learn learn to do split stories that can make people stay and they can't leave because they don't really want to miss the end of the story. All right. So there's a bunch of on stage tricks and techniques that are going to help you make great presentations. If you want my mentor program on professional speaking, it's I'm pretty sure it's through the commute.com/pro speaking and it's included if you are in my main mentor program for internet and digital marketing at greatInternetMarketingTraining.com. So check it all out. Be great on stage and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.