In a future lesson, I'm going to tell you specifically about how you practice on video. But I'll never forget why it rings so true to me and why it's so important. Many years ago, I was training a prime minister over in Eastern Europe my first time in that part of the world. And the prime minister said it will teach at mine If I give it in my native language. It was an Eastern European language I didn't understand. So well sure fine when we're in this former dictator, Summer Palace, this was a democracy now.

Surrounded by bodyguards with machine guns. And the Prime Minister stands up he proceeds to read his speech head down in his foreign language. We then watch the tape. He turns to me and says, well, TJ, what did you think of the presentation? I was frankly a little bit nervous. Because I thought he was awful.

He was so boring. It was just monotone head down. No expression, no eye contact. I was also thinking I'm in this foreign part of the world. I'm surrounded by people with machine guns. This was a long time ago.

To I tell him the truth, or do I sort of make him happy? And I finally said, You know what? He's paying me a bunch of money to tell him the truth. I'll just tell him the truth. I said, with all due respect, Mr. Prime Minister, I have no idea what you said, but you bore the hell out of me. He looked at me, He looked at his arm guards.

He looked back at the video. For a second said, teaching, you're right, it was boring as hell. So what do we do? We took his speech. tore it up, he came up with a new simple outline, where he spoke looking up giving examples telling stories, looked at the video, and he loved it. Okay, so what did I just do there?

I told a story. Is it a brilliant story now? So you're gonna win awards now? Now happens to be true. All I was trying to do was to communicate one point, the importance of practicing on video because it becomes obvious to you how awful and boring you can be sometimes anybody can learn doesn't matter if you're prime minister or a seven year old giving a show and tell presentation in a classroom, anybody can benefit by practicing on video. Now, it only takes two seconds to say practice your speech on video.

Instead, I told a story it only took a little more than a minute. But it had characters it had dialogue. It had a setting. It had a problem. It had my feelings, I was nervous about it. It had a point.

It had a resolution. So you might not consider yourself the world's greatest storyteller. That's okay. But I want you to pick one of your points the most important point in your presentation and I want you to To tell a story to make that point come alive. Doesn't have to be as dramatic as being in a strange part of the world surrounded by machine guns. It can you it can be used simply retelling a conversation you had with a real customer, or a real client, a real prospect of fellow employee about a real problem, where you were, how you felt, how it was resolved, and how that relates to an issue of importance to your audience.

So I want you to think of a start, you don't have to write it all out. You can just write a few words, Henderson client and asheboro. Whatever it is, that's going to remind you of a conversation that you can then give in the presentation. It's the single biggest difference between great communicators are awful communicators. great communicators illustrate every single important point In their presentation with a story. Awful communicators consistently, go through the data, do a big data dump no stories.

If you have a great story that's relevant to your audience makes an important point. They are going to think you are a far better speaker than one of your colleagues who has been writing and rewriting and practicing and rehearsing this speech for six months. So here's your chance to really leapfrog above all the others and to do it quickly and easily. So think of that story right now.