Public Speaking 101 : Melissa Entzminger
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Guest: Melissa Entzminger
Release Date: 7/24/2023
Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.
Steve Washuta: How much of public speaking is developing an onstage personality versus just being yourself? Are there facial cues and mannerisms we should avoid when speaking on camera to an audience? is repetition and practice the only way to become good? What’s the difference between a written speech and one delivered in oral form? We discuss all this and much more in the upcoming episode on public speaking.
Steve Washuta: Welcome to Trulyfit. Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I’m your host, Steve Washuta, co-founder of Trulyfit and author of the book Fitness Business 101.
Steve Washuta
On today’s episode, I interview Melissa Entzminger, she is a public speaking coach. Yes, we all need help with public speaking. Many of us are afraid to do this actually, we have a statistic we’re going to talk about on here how more people are afraid to public speak than die. How crazy was that. But you can find everything about Melissa at taking your stage on Instagram, she has a link tree there with our course, was a really good conversation.
Steve Washuta
Again, everybody needs to be a better public speaker. So even if you take one thing from this conversation, it could certainly help you in your business model, whatever that is, whether you’re in health or medical, or maybe some other associated business. With no further ado, here’s Melissa and I speaking about public speaking, Melissa, thank you so much for joining the truly fit podcast, why don’t you give my listeners a little background on who you are and what it is that you do day to day professionally?
Melissa Entzminger
Well, thank you so much for having me, Steve, I appreciate it. I am a professional public speaking coach. Although I didn’t always start out liking speeches or even being good at them. In fact, I was a freshman in high school, and I decided I wanted to be an attorney.
Melissa Entzminger
And so one of the attorneys that I had talked to said, if you want to be good at being an attorney, you should join a competitive speech and debate team. And so I did and my very first speech, I can still remember it to this day, it was an impromptu speech. Now suppose to prep for two minutes and speak for five, I prep for 30 minutes and spoke for two. And I think there were more options in us in that speech than actual words. Since then, I’ve kept working on it.
Melissa Entzminger
And when I had to win national awards, and got to my junior year of high school or of college, and interned at a law firm and realized this is not what I want to do with my life. And so I had that, Oh no, what do I do with the rest of my life since the plan that I’ve had since a freshman in high school isn’t coming to fruition.
Melissa Entzminger
And so I graduated college, and in my spare time went on to volunteer my time to judge and coach my old collegiate team that I had competed on in one day, my old coach said, you know, if you got your master’s, you could go and teach, and people would pay you to do this, like this could be your full time job. And so that’s exactly what I did. I went back and got my master’s, I taught at the collegiate level.
Melissa Entzminger
And I directed my own public speaking program and coached others to win national awards. And through that time, I worked with political candidates and help them get elected. I work with executives and people that want to get into leadership that their job requires them to do more public speaking. And I’ve also worked with people who want to develop a following, but are nervous about giving interviews and talking on camera.
Steve Washuta
I think that’s fantastic. Two things I really took from that is one in our industry as personal trainers, people in the fitness and health industry, we’ve almost all career transitioned, most people do not want to do this right out of the gate. It’s like a hobby, something that they love, something that they’ve always been a part of, maybe they were an athletics, maybe they were somebody who just enjoyed the weight room or giving diet advice.
Steve Washuta
And they went into another career and they decided this isn’t for me, what else do I love and they went off to do what they love. So we understand that completely, you know, shifting careers. And secondly, I love how you said you struggled at first and you became better than you taught people I find the best coaches aren’t the ones who are gifted out of birth, right? They’re the ones who learned the tricks, and they got better. And that actually holds true amongst almost all professionals.
Steve Washuta
Even if you look at things like NFL football, the best head coaches were guys who kind of struggled and played maybe a little bit here and there but they weren’t the best guys because they have to know what it takes the daily grind to get good and dot dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s to become great. So I love how you said that you struggled yourself to before you got great. They say everybody is afraid of public speaking most people even more so than heights and claustrophobia. Why do you think that is?
Melissa Entzminger
I’ve heard that statistic to about 75% of people fear public speaking more than death, which is just a crazy statistic but absolutely believable. And so this fear of dates back to our prehistoric ancestors were living in a group was critical to survival and being rejected from the group meant death. So we don’t want to be left out of the group.
Melissa Entzminger
But speaking inherently means having the spotlight on us. That leaves us open to judgment it inherently, we’re volunteering to isolate ourselves from the group. So I remember working with my client, Amy, and she was moving into a new role where she was required to give presentations. Like most people, she dreaded public speaking, her palms got sweaty, her mouth got dry, she had a knot in her stomach every time she spoke.
Melissa Entzminger
And the more speeches she gave, the more her anxiety became worse and worse, until one day, she couldn’t take it anymore. And so she gave me a call. And as I worked with Amy to overcome her performance anxiety, I taught her these three tips. First, you want to make sure that you practice your presentation, practice a few times in front of friends and family, you also might want to videotape yourself. So you can see areas that you want to see you can see what your audience is seeing. Second, you want to focus on your message, not your feelings. It sounds really simple.
Melissa Entzminger
But just the simple fact of shifting your focus to your message will help decrease your nerves. And finally, you want to visualize visualize your success, you want to visualize your presentation going, wow. Now, this is something that famous athletes do like Michael Jordan, he would watch himself, visualize his legs running the rotation of the ball in the hoop. And he would do it over and over again. If you show someone a picture, a certain part of their brain lights up.
Melissa Entzminger
And if they close their eyes, and they visualize that same picture, the same part of their brain lights up. You see, the trick about visualization is your brain doesn’t know the difference between you actually doing it, and you visualizing it. And so when you go to actually do your speech, your brain is gonna say, Oh, I’ve already done this before, I don’t need to be nervous. Because everybody knows the second time you’ve done something or the 40th time you’ve done something, it’s so much easier than the first.
Melissa Entzminger
And so the trick with visualization is you want to be really specific in your visualization, Picture yourself walking up to the front of the room for your exercise class, which visualize yourself going through those first lines and seeing your students as they wait for class to begin. And as you go through that in more detail, it does in fact, trick your brain. Now I know these tips might not necessarily sound earth shattering.
Melissa Entzminger
But my clients have come back to me after they’ve tried out these strategies and are raving about how their fear of public speaking has decreased. In fact, my client, Amy said that she was very skeptical. But frankly, she didn’t have anything to lose at that point. And so when she came back to talk to me, she said her speech was amazing. She felt calm, she was able to project confidence. And so many people came up to her afterwards and told her what a great job she had done.
Steve Washuta
Do you think it’s best to maybe it depends on the person to develop a sort of onstage personality, for lack of a better term, somebody who, you know, let’s go ahead and say I have to present a speech of some sort. Am I just being myself? Or do I have to sort of put a show on and become a different person.
Melissa Entzminger
In today’s day and age, we crave authenticity. And so the best speeches happen, I believe, when you’re just yourself, you have an innate, incredible personality. And letting that shine through helps you quickly develop the know like and trust factor, which is critical to getting a following.
Melissa Entzminger
And whether that’s following is in fitness. Or maybe you’re a doctor or nutritionist, people do business with people that aren’t liked. And so if you get to let people see the real you, then the like you if you’re fake people will see right through that too. Yeah,
Steve Washuta
well said, I totally agree with that. I think there are certain certainly people who make that mistake, and they have too much of an onstage presence as if they’re a celebrity or movie star instead of just being themselves. But part of that. I believe that leads into my next question. Maybe it’s because they’re just not comfortable. And is it just repetition that gets you there? I mean, according to you that maybe that’s not the case because like your client Amy’s had she did multiple speeches, but before she had the right work behind her, she was still struggling.
Melissa Entzminger
Yeah, I have a few tips with with regard to that. It’s kind of like anything you can practice and then you can practice the wrong way. And so there are definitely some tips when it comes to helping people to overcome those nerves. So first, I want you to remember that nerves are normal.
Melissa Entzminger
It shows that you care. It’s just when those nerves are debilitating, that it becomes problematic. And so you want to use you want to use those tips like visualization to help you overcome that. was and you do want to do, you want to make sure that you are doing some practice.
Melissa Entzminger
Some times, sometimes you will practice it a couple times, and they just think that they are ready to go. You want to practice your speech about starting a week in advance. And about six times, I had a client. Her name was Lisa and she thought that she was prepared for a meeting. And she called me frustrated that she was stumbling over her presentation content, and she chalked it up to just kind of being a mediocre presenter.
Melissa Entzminger
And when I asked her how many times she practice, she said she’d done two rehearsals, one in the car, and one on the way to this meeting. Well, of course, it was Rocky, even the most celebrated speakers don’t have their material down on the third run through. So speakers who made public speaking look easy, though, are ones that have practice their craft and their material. And the secret about public speaking is that most speakers are nervous, and most speeches are bad because presenters don’t practice nearly enough.
Melissa Entzminger
So there’s a few different tips with regard to practicing that I would encourage. First, you want to use an extended outline or small paragraphs, if you write it out word for word. Oftentimes, if people lose their place, then they get flustered as to where they were. And it kind of tells your brain that there’s only one way to give the speech when there’s really multiple ways that you can be giving your speech. Next, you want to make sure that you’re familiar with your speech by reading through each bullet point.
Melissa Entzminger
And so it’s kind of like how you eat an elephant, one bite at a time, you don’t want to read through your speech, top to battle them over and over and over again, you want to break it down into bite sized pieces. So you read through the first bullet point three times. And as you read it out loud, then you highlight the key phrases. And then you read it a few more times. And as you do it, your eye is drawn to those key phrases.
Melissa Entzminger
And if you feel comfortable, you can delete out all but those kinds of key phrases. And then your mind will just fill in the remaining part because that’s how you’ve practiced. So you can do this for all of your points and your sub points. And the other thing that surprises people is that you don’t want to start practicing when until your outline is totally perfect.
Melissa Entzminger
Because then you won’t have time for all your rehearsals, you want to start when you’re about 80 to 90% done with your outline, you can still adjust the content of your speech after your initial rehearsals. But it’s better to give a speech where both your content and your delivery are at 85%. Whereas the content, you don’t want to give one that the contents 100%. And the delivery is unpolished.
Melissa Entzminger
So my last tip is that you want to make sure that you start strong. So if you start out great with your presentation, then the rest of it will follow. So how do you do that, you want to practice your introduction more than the rest of your speech. I also encourage memorizing the first four words of your speech, because that ultimately allows you to have your eyes up looking at your audience. And you’re able to establish that connection right away with them.
Steve Washuta
Or they’re speaking of establishing that relationship with the audience or their facial cues or mannerisms or tics or things that people typically do that you advise against, or does that come down to again, them just being a part of themselves and allowing them to be authentic.
Melissa Entzminger
You know, when I worked with one of my political clients, these are the tips that I told him, I said that you want to think about the camera as a good friend. Oftentimes, people find the camera intimidating. But if you think about it as a good friend, then your facial features will relax and you’ll have a better recording.
Melissa Entzminger
Sometimes it even helps it sounds kind of silly, but to tape a picture of your friend and behind the camera so that you can look at it while you’re speaking. want to remember to keep your eyes on the camera, even if you can see yourself, maybe turn off the mirrored part of your video. So that helps with that distracting element. You also want to have a big smile and be energetic with your facial expressions.
Melissa Entzminger
You want to amplify those emotions when you’re on camera so that you’re interesting and engaging. Also, make sure that you have good posture, you want to sit up straight. If you lean back that conveys disinterest. And if you sit too far forward, you could look too intense. You also want to videotape yourself before you tape yourself for real and then watch it back so that way you can make adjustments.
Melissa Entzminger
Maybe you’ll need to tilt your head or maybe we’ll need to smile more. Maybe you thought that you were being really energetic and you came off really monotone having those Practice sessions helps you make those adjustments.
Steve Washuta
Makes perfect sense good advice. You know, as fitness professionals, we do a lot of group fitness. So I’ve taught classes anywhere from five people to 150 people in one large class. And I do know that people will get nervous before those classes start, you did give a really good tip to say, remember the first four words of your speech.
Steve Washuta
But do you have any other tips as far as when you’re first starting out, let’s say in a group fitness class, and you’re in front of anybody, or all of those people, is there something to either think of, or tell yourself prior to talking to them, so you’re not as nervous.
Melissa Entzminger
The first thing you want to think about is to remember that all of these people have come to this class, because you’re the expert. And so you have something that you want to share with your audience. And at the end of the day, they came to have a class from you.
Melissa Entzminger
And so remembering that your audience is your friend, they’re there on your side, can help with those nerves. You also want to think about as you walk to the front of the room before your class, you want to take a big deep breath. And that way the serotonin releases in your brain, and it helps to lower your pulse. You want to look around the room and smile.
Melissa Entzminger
And the tip is to introduce yourself, you want to practice your self introduction in advance. I found it great to arrive early and connect with a few people before class, it helps calm your nerves, it helps you not think of them as a big scary audience. But you’ve already made some friends and establish some connections. And that helps with your nerves as well.
Melissa Entzminger
And make sure you give a big enthusiastic greeting Good morning, say your name and maybe an interesting fact about you, and then discuss the structure of your class. If you sound enthusiastic and excited to be there, your audience will be excited about what you’re seeing as well. I also want you to think about some cognitive reprocessing about stress.
Melissa Entzminger
So if you look at a roller coaster, and you label it as fear, then you’re going to be afraid every time you look at roller coaster. But if you look at that same roller coaster, and you think of it as exciting, then you’ll be excited to go on that roller coaster. Now, the same is true for giving speeches, whether it’s your exercise class, or maybe a nutrition program. If you think of your class as stressful and anxiety producing and nervous about it, then every time you go to give that to teach that class, that’s what you’re going to think.
Melissa Entzminger
But instead, if you think of it as this is an opportunity for me to share my knowledge, all these people are here because they want to be able to learn from me, that will help your nerves decrease positive thoughts help decrease your performance anxiety. Ultimately, your brain just wants to prove you right? So if you think it will go well, then that’s a great step to helping it actually go out.
Steve Washuta
Great information. Yeah, I do think too, people are intuitive, they sent your energy. And they can tell when you’re happy and you’re excited, and you’re having fun. So I always make sure to have a smile on my face, like you mentioned earlier, and be really happy in front of the people and set the mood.
Steve Washuta
Start chit chatting with people before the class and just get everyone to be comfortable and relaxed. I think it’s easier in that sort of a setting than it is, let’s say, in a speech, political speech in front of a camera where you have to be serious. So I always take advantage of the fact that this isn’t serious. This is just fun.
Steve Washuta
We’re having fun. We’re in a fitness class. So let me brighten up the mood and make sure it’s fun. I call myself sometimes an entertainer. Instead of a, you know, an entertainer, you have to use those skill sets to to entertain people. Speaking of that, we just talked a little bit about you know, being in front of people, maybe being in front of a camera, maybe you’re writing writing a speech, are there major differences between all of those, like an oral speech and a written speech.
Melissa Entzminger
The biggest difference between a written speech like an email and an oral speech is the ability for your audience to reread a sentence. So if you’re reading an email and you zone out or you didn’t understand a sentence, you simply reread it. However, if you’re listening to a speech and you start thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner, you can’t really ask the speaker to go back and state what they just said again.
Melissa Entzminger
And so if you have a key idea that you want the audience to remember, you want to make sure that you repeat that phrase a few times over the course of the speech. When you go to write your speech, you also want to write your speech, like you’re thinking to a friend. I heard this the other day that we’ve heard of writer’s block, but no one has ever heard of speakers block.
Melissa Entzminger
You don’t wake up in the morning and say I have no idea what I’m gonna say today. You just start talking and words just come out of your mouth. And so if you take the topic and you think about how you would talk about it to a friend, you’ll find that your speeches are much easier to write.
Steve Washuta
You kind of hinted at this in the beginning, but do you think and I’ll be He is slightly leading with this question because I do think that it’s a huge mistake to not have some sort of presence on a camera to not get good at public speaking to not show who you are a lot of fitness professionals sort of hide behind pictures in the Instagram life but like you alluded to before, I think allowing to hear somebody’s voice see their facial cues and mannerisms and associating them with like an expert in a certain area seeing them on camera. For some reason, it just allows me to trust them more.
Melissa Entzminger
I agree wholeheartedly with you, Steve, that you need to have videos. First on social media. The algorithm is designed to favor videos because it keeps people on their platform longer. This extra attention then results in more conversions and sales, which means more revenue.
Melissa Entzminger
So if you want to encourage potential customers to follow you, and buy a product or service, then you definitely need to be on video. In fact, for an article on LinkedIn 84% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video, whether that’s a you know, traditional brand that we think of or maybe an influencer. Second to develop a following you need to have the know like and trust factor.
Melissa Entzminger
We talked about this a little bit earlier. And that all happens so much faster. When they get to see you and they get to know your personality from video, you’ll attract your followers and repel those that aren’t a good fit. In our post COVID world more people are watching video content. Back Forbes reported that marketers who use video are growing their revenue 49% Faster than non video users 49% It’s no wonder that more people and businesses are using video as a marketing tool.
Melissa Entzminger
So when you do go on video, you want to focus on storytelling techniques. If your marketing material comes off as too salesy, it will turn people off. However, storytelling is engaging, it’s memorable. It has emotional and psychological appeal. And this allows you to create that deeper connection with your audience.
Melissa Entzminger
Think about it. We relate to each other through storytelling. At the end of the day, you’re going to go home to your family and tell stories about what happened during the day. As author and blogger Seth Godin said, marketing is no longer about the stuff you make with the stories you tell.
Steve Washuta
Could you tell me a little bit about if you don’t mind? The you mentioned earlier on? You took a public speaking I guess you called it like course of some sort where you were injected into having to make these speeches. Were they debates, were you against people? Were you being graded? How exactly did this workout?
Melissa Entzminger
That’s a great question. Yes, it was a Speech and Debate Club. So I did some debate. And so there we would be given a policy and that policy. The first one my freshman year in high school, we were debating agricultural policy. And so I got to learn all about agricultural policy and subsidies. And I got to be really good at crafting arguments and being able to read my audience. And there was also a speech program as well.
Melissa Entzminger
And so there I did some impromptu speaking and I did some dramatic speeches that are kind of similar to acting, and some speeches you write like a persuasive speech. And so kind of throughout the course of my time being in a competitive Speech and Debate program, in high school and college, I competed in a variety of different kinds of events and categories. And I learned different skills through all of them that I still use to this day, and I still use when I’m coaching with my clients
Steve Washuta
as well. Yeah, that sounds really helpful. I know there are adult clubs like that. There’s actually a name that evades me you might know the name of like local speaking clubs.
Melissa Entzminger
Maybe Toastmasters,
Steve Washuta
Toastmasters Yeah. Have you ever been to one? Do you recommend that? Do you think it is advantageous for professionals or just people in general general public?
Melissa Entzminger
I haven’t ever been to one I hear good things about them. I I think if there’s one in your local group, it’s worth checking out. I also offer a digital course that I’ve created and some one on one coaching as well.
Steve Washuta
Tell us about exactly what you do one on one coaching, is it all virtual? Do you do some in person? Is it package based? Do some people just call you on a whim and say hey, I’m writing a speech for a wedding. I’m really nervous about it. I want to review it with you. How exactly does the process go?
Melissa Entzminger
So yes, I work. I work with virtual I also work face to face with clients, I offer workshops for corporations as well. And I can help everything from the brainstorming step of I have a speech to give it a wedding. And I have no idea what to say, all the way through. I’ve already written this speech, but can you please review it and help me with my delivery, and kind of everything in between.
Melissa Entzminger
And so that’s how the one on one coaching goes. I’m also created a digital course. And it’s been said that all speech is public, as long as you’re talking to someone else, at the end of the day, you want the person to have respect for you and value your ideas. And so strong public speakers now how to command the room in the audience. And it’s a skill that is vital to the success of any career.
Melissa Entzminger
So I’ve written this course with my degrees in communication, and 15 years of coaching people as well as all of my time competing and speech and debate and giving speeches. And I condensed all of that down into a simple, easy to implement tool that will help you start to take immediate action on writing your speech.
Melissa Entzminger
I’ve designed it to accelerate results and have this course walk you through crafting your message from brainstorming, to deliberate practice. Each module has downloadable guides to help you as well. And this course will walk you through my proven focus framework to help you get results fast. This course is ultimately for people that are looking to find those techniques to help them write successfully dynamic speeches who are ready to take their career and public image to the next level.
Melissa Entzminger
And who are ready to learn simple tips to read, write their speeches faster by clients who’ve gone through the course and upgrade their speeches and half the time that would have prior to learning these tips and tricks. And we all have presentations and have had people come up to us afterwards telling us that maybe they didn’t understand the point they were trying to get or maybe their boss came up and said Your speech just didn’t quite land.
Melissa Entzminger
And nobody wants to repeat those experiences. Those are not not fun. But using my years of experience, I’ll share techniques that will help you successfully write and deliver your speeches. Every time using the right tools, you’ll be well on your way to be an influential speaker. And just for your audience, do you have I will offer a 20% discount on my digital course.
Steve Washuta
For Nash, if you Melissa, I appreciate that. I’ll certainly put the links below. And I just want to add here before we finish up. Nobody is really trying to do this. It’s such a skill set. Because like we talked about at the outset, people are nervous to do they avoid it.
Steve Washuta
So it’s such an advantage in any career to be good at it because no one else wants to do it. So if you are the person who can do it. It’s a way to get a leg up and whatever you do, whether you’re in some sort of desk job, or whether you’re a personal trainer, it’s it seems to be a skill set in which nobody else is it everyone covets the skill, but no one else is actually trying to attain it.
Steve Washuta
So why not take advantage of it? Melissa, this has been fantastic information. Why don’t you give my audience and listeners some more information on a website, they can find your course or anywhere they can reach out to you directly?
Melissa Entzminger
Yeah, so I am on all of the social media channels, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, my handle is called Taking your stage. Taking your stage. And do you do show notes, Steve? Okay, can I just send you the link for you to put them in the show notes. Awesome.
Steve Washuta
Awesome. My guest today has been Melissa Ensminger. Thank you so much for joining the Trulia podcast.
Melissa Entzminger
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Steve Washuta: Thanks for joining us on the Trulyfit podcast. Please subscribe, rate, and review on your listening platform. Feel free to email us as we’d love to hear from you.
Thanks again!
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