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Episode 1503:
Vitaliy Katsenelson shares how seemingly small moments in life can unexpectedly shape your ability to give great speeches. Through the lens of personal anecdotes and experiences, he highlights the power of preparation, genuine emotion, and simplicity in delivering memorable speeches that resonate deeply with an audience.
Read along with the original article(s) here: https://contrarianedge.com/little-moments-give-great-speech/
Quotes to ponder:
"A good speech doesn’t have to be long, but it has to be memorable."
"The key to a great speech is not just in what you say, but how you make people feel."
"It is not the quantity of preparation that matters but the quality."
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[00:00:59] Little Moments, oder How to Give a Great Speech, by Vitali Katzenelson von ContrarianEdge.com
[00:01:06] Ich war supposed to give a presentation at the Guru Focus Conference in Omaha
[00:01:11] a day before Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting.
[00:01:13] I was more nervous than usual.
[00:01:15] I agreed to give this presentation because I wanted to push myself to explore a brand new topic.
[00:01:20] I wanted to zero in on the investment process.
[00:01:23] Guru Focus seemed to have the right audience for this topic.
[00:01:27] I need a looming deadline to build the pressure to unleash creativity.
[00:01:31] Two days before I was to leave for Omaha, I wrote a nine page speech titled
[00:01:36] How to Stay Rational in an Irrational World.
[00:01:39] A day later, I created a 40 slide PowerPoint, which I was still tweaking an hour before my talk.
[00:01:44] The Guru Focus Conference was at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Omaha.
[00:01:49] There were maybe 200 attendees in a typical hotel ballroom.
[00:01:52] A few minutes into my presentation, the lights went out.
[00:01:55] Though the lights came back a second later, my microphone and projector were dead.
[00:01:59] The speech that followed ended up being the best presentation I have probably ever given.
[00:02:05] And I have given plenty of them over the last 10 years.
[00:02:08] Charlie Tien, who runs Guru Focus, emailed me and said,
[00:02:12] quote,
[00:02:12] went through the surveys we collected from the attendees and found that you were rated one of the best speakers, end quote.
[00:02:18] I am sharing this with you not to brag, not at all.
[00:02:21] I find that little, often random moments shape the journey of our lives.
[00:02:26] Before I go further, let me tell you this little story.
[00:02:29] When I started writing for thestreet.com in 2004, my writing was dry and incredibly boring.
[00:02:35] It would make a corporate press release look like a standup routine.
[00:02:38] It was efficient, but it didn't have a soul.
[00:02:41] Then, a few months into my writing career,
[00:02:43] I penned a short, funny article describing my little adventure configuring TiVo.
[00:02:48] These were the very early days of artificial intelligence.
[00:02:51] The layer of TiVo phone technical support consisted of an AI that demanded,
[00:02:56] please speak in complete sentences.
[00:02:58] You may or may not know this, but I have a Russian accent.
[00:03:01] The system could not understand me.
[00:03:03] After half a dozen tries, I came up with an elegant solution.
[00:03:06] I gave the phone to my then three-year-old son, Jonah.
[00:03:10] I told him what to say and he'd repeat in his adorable,
[00:03:12] Disney accent.
[00:03:14] The TiVo system did not have a problem understanding him.
[00:03:17] That was the gist of my article.
[00:03:19] It was a very short piece.
[00:03:20] It was funny and it was by far the most human article I had written.
[00:03:24] And yes, it exposed my frailty,
[00:03:26] which is obvious to anyone who has ever heard me speak.
[00:03:28] I have an accent.
[00:03:30] I received a few dozen emails from readers who loved the article.
[00:03:33] I can say that this little article,
[00:03:35] this little moment, had a huge impact on my life.
[00:03:38] I realized it's okay to be myself.
[00:03:40] Funny, sarcastic and even frail.
[00:03:43] In other words, I learned that when I write, I should be me.
[00:03:46] If I hadn't written that TiVo article,
[00:03:49] I might have arrived at that conclusion later
[00:03:50] or I could have given up writing altogether before I ever arrived at it.
[00:03:54] The lights going out at my guru focus was my TiVo moment for public speaking.
[00:03:59] It was a gift that made me completely rethink how I give speeches.
[00:04:03] When the lights came back on and I realized that the projector and mic were out,
[00:04:07] to my amazement, my blood pressure dropped.
[00:04:09] I felt calmer than I had 10 seconds before.
[00:04:13] A weight dropped off my shoulders.
[00:04:15] Suddenly, I was not burdened with switching slides.
[00:04:18] I didn't have to follow bullet points.
[00:04:19] I could just talk, tell a story.
[00:04:22] My 40 slide presentation had been a huge distraction.
[00:04:25] Until the lights went out, the attendees weren't looking at me.
[00:04:28] They were trying to read my bullet point packed slides.
[00:04:31] Their eye contact was with the screen, not with me.
[00:04:35] If I were to redo this presentation, it would have five slides.
[00:04:38] A hello slide, three slides in between with pictures, and a goodbye slide.
[00:04:43] That's it.
[00:04:44] I also learned, however, that writing a speech out is important.
[00:04:48] I was not going to read the speech.
[00:04:50] I couldn't have memorized it if I tried.
[00:04:52] But writing it created a logical structure for my thoughts,
[00:04:55] and even more importantly, unearthed the appropriate vocabulary.
[00:04:59] Speaking is communication in real time,
[00:05:01] where writing allows you to stop and control the clock.
[00:05:04] It affords you the luxury of carefully picking each word
[00:05:07] and gives you the freedom to rewrite ad infinitum
[00:05:10] and show it to the world when you are ready
[00:05:12] or when the deadline arrives, whichever comes first.
[00:05:15] I find when I speak on a brand new topic,
[00:05:18] a lot of my energy goes into looking for precise words,
[00:05:21] the ones that will let me communicate my thoughts clearly.
[00:05:23] Here is a thought.
[00:05:25] I, and probably most of us, are horrible at multitasking.
[00:05:28] My brain is horrible at running multiple processing threads at once.
[00:05:32] If I can minimize the need for multitasking,
[00:05:35] no slide flipping, no vocabulary searching,
[00:05:38] then I can focus the limited processing power of my brain
[00:05:40] on public storytelling.
[00:05:42] After all, that is what a speech is.
[00:05:44] I have read that your state of mind when you get on stage
[00:05:47] is completely programmable.
[00:05:49] James Altucher watches Jerry Seinfeld stand up
[00:05:51] right before he goes on stage.
[00:05:53] It programs his mood.
[00:05:54] I found that Bach's Concerto No. 1 in D minor does the trick for me.
[00:05:58] I listened to it for about 20 minutes
[00:06:00] before I stepped onto the guru-focused stage,
[00:06:03] so my blood pressure was probably already a little lower than usual to begin with.
[00:06:07] We should pay attention to little moments.
[00:06:09] They can change our lives.
[00:06:11] Thank you, TiVo, and thank you,
[00:06:13] whatever caused the electricity to go out at the Double Tree in Omaha.
[00:06:21] You just listened to the post titled
[00:06:23] Little Moments or How to Give a Great Speech
[00:06:25] by Vitaly Katzenelson of ContrarianEdge.com.
[00:06:29] This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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[00:07:31] And thank you to Vitaly.
[00:07:32] He typically writes posts about personal finance,
[00:07:35] so you'll often hear him being narrated over on Optimal Finance Daily.
[00:07:39] He spent the first 18 years of his life in Russia,
[00:07:41] and then his family moved to the U.S. in 1991.
[00:07:45] He received his master's degree from the University of Colorado at Denver,
[00:07:48] and then his CFA charter in 2000.
[00:07:51] Shortly after graduating, he taught at the University of Colorado,
[00:07:54] while also writing for TheStreet.com, Business Week, Barron's, and many more.
[00:07:59] And then in 2007, he wrote a book called Active Value Investing.
[00:08:03] To check all of that out, and to learn a lot more about Vitaly,
[00:08:07] come by ContrarianEdge.com,
[00:08:09] and thank you to Vitaly for letting us share his work.
[00:08:13] And that's going to do it for me today.
[00:08:14] Thank you so much for listening and for clicking subscribe
[00:08:17] if you haven't done that already.
[00:08:18] I hope your week's off to a great start,
[00:08:20] and I will, of course, be back with you tomorrow
[00:08:22] where your optimal life awaits.