What is Your Water Cooler Message?

• 00:04 I want you to imagine this.
• 00:06 You've walked into your office you're into the kitchen, the lounge area and
• 00:11 there are a bunch people gathered around the water cooler and
• 00:14 it's the day after you gave an important presentation.
• 00:19 Visualize it.
• 00:21 Well, what are they saying about you?
• 00:22 Someone said, oh, I missed TJ's presentation yesterday, what did he say?
• 00:28 What is that person who is there actually going to say?
• 00:32 I need you to visualize this, really think about it.
• 00:37 Now there are few guarantees in life, but here's one guarantee I'll give you.
• 00:41 The person who was there is not gonna turn to the person who wasn't in there and say,
• 00:45 well, TJ made 23 key points.
• 00:47 His first one was boom.
• 00:48 His second one was boom.
• 00:51 That's not how real human beings talk, it's not how they process information.
• 00:56 It's certainly not how they retell information at the water cooler or
• 01:01 the lunchroom table or the boardroom or anyplace else.
• 01:05 Part of being a good speaker, a great speaker is you gotta step back for
• 01:10 a minute.
• 01:11 Put yourself in the seat of an actual audience member and
• 01:16 ask yourself not only do they understand this, not only do they remember this.
• 01:23 But how will they process this information to tell other people,
• 01:27 because that's the real power of your presentation.
• 01:32 That's what great speakers do.
• 01:34 They leverage their audience to do the work for them to tell more and
• 01:39 more people outside of that room and that's what you've got to do.
• 01:44 Now the big problem most speakers have not you, of course,
• 01:47 cuz you're going through this course, but the problem most speakers have is
• 01:52 if someone were to ask at the water cooler the next day what that person said
• 01:57 to another audience member they would say, eh, I don't really know.
• 02:02 I used that time to catch up my email, cuz we had this project and
• 02:06 my boss was all over my.
• 02:08 That's not what you want, you
• 02:10 want someone to really be able to summarize your key points.
• 02:16 So please, please give it thought.
• 02:18 Now if someone hears me give a speech or for that matter, goes through this
• 02:23 whole course and someone else asks them, what did this CJ fellow say?
• 02:29 Here's what I'd want them to say.
• 02:31 Oh, well,m what TJ was saying is the most important thing to do
• 02:36 is to narrow your message down to a handful and
• 02:39 then practice on video and watch yourself until you like it.
• 02:44 If someone can remember that from my speeches, my presentations,
• 02:49 my trainings, I consider that a huge success.
• 02:53 But note what I did there, I actually used my own name.
• 02:57 What TJ said was important to.
• 02:59 Now I don't say that to sound vain.
• 03:03 I do it, because I'm literally trying to put myself in the shoes of
• 03:08 an audience member and feel it and experience it.
• 03:12 So, I can see how they would describe it to someone else.
• 03:16 Most speakers don't do that, because they fixate on all their data,
• 03:21 all their information, all their bullet points, all their slides.
• 03:25 The data, the massive amounts of data they want to dump.
• 03:30 Here's the thing, your audience doesn't care about your data dump.
• 03:34 They're looking for information that's most helpful to them, most useful to them
• 03:39 that they can actually tell other people about when it's appropriate.
• 03:43 So you've go to digest this information make it real, make it believable.
• 03:49 Give examples and allow people to visualize it even though you don't
• 03:54 relish the idea of video recording yourself on your cellphone, some of you.
• 04:00 You can visualize yourself doing it and I'm making it easier for
• 04:04 you to visualize it now, cuz I'm acting it out.
• 04:07 You need something like that, a story, an example and act out in your presentation.
• 04:13 If people are going to talk about you tomorrow or
• 04:16 even five minutes later at the water cooler.

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