Okay, you've tested your own story on yourself, it passed. you've tested it on others, colleagues, friends, family members, it passed. Now we're going to try it on the actual audience, a real audience. So you'll give your presentation, you'll have the stories embedded in your presentation for all your key points. And then your presentation is done. Now, if you're speaking to more than five people or so, typically someone will come up and say, Oh, good job today.

Good presentation. Most the time, what do we do? Thanks. Thanks a lot. Guess what you just threw away valuable focus group research. My recommendation and what I do personally is say, thanks, thanks a lot.

Tell me what do you remember from the presentation? How would you describe this to a colleague he wasn't here today. This is gold, the information that comes out now, if you told a story and you told it an interesting, compelling way. Typically, that's what they'll remember first. So ask and really listen, what do you remember? What do you take away?

What stood out any examples, case studies stories, and then listen to what they say. If they tell you the story, and they throw back in your face the very same elements, you know, that that story was successful as far as making an impression on your audience, and that's a huge success right there because so much of what people say, leaves no impression. Then you want to follow up and ask what you take away from that story. What was the message of that? How did that help you really listen, because sometimes they'll get exactly what you want, but other times, they may take away a completely different message that was not what you intended. Guess what, it's never the audience's fault.

It's your fault if they don't remember your message or if they remember the wrong message. So you've got to really use this, it may be that you have to tweak your story or change it or emphasize certain things, so that they really get the message or you got to nail down certain points, reemphasize them. Sometimes there's simply something in your story that is too confusing or too inflammatory, too scary. And it just turns the audience in a completely different way. They may think they like your story, but it's confusing them and it's not getting the message you care about stuck in their brains. In that case, you may have to completely throw away the story and use others.

So that's how you test stories. Just like the best comedians in the world often test dozens Sometimes hundreds and sometimes thousands of times before they're so confident that they use a joke and a TV special, or on a high profile TV interview. great storytellers will test refine stories again and again and again in different speeches. So that each time they make it just a tiny little bit better for the next audience