Transcript

Dave Bricker (00:07)

Want to expand your speaking and storytelling skills and grow your influence business? This is Speakipedia Media brought to you by Speakipedia .com. I’m your MC, Dave Bricker, bringing you straight talk and smart strategies from visionary speakers and thought leaders. My guest is a TEDx speaker and executive speaker coach who works with high profile leaders in Spanish and English to fulfill their fullest potential when they speak.

 

She’s recognized as America’s premier bilingual public speaking coach after decades as a corporate spokesperson and media personality in the US, Hispanic and Latin American markets. Current media training clients include Intercontinental Hotel Group, the Everglades Foundation and Norwegian Cruise Line. In 2020, she adapted her coaching model for the virtual stage.

 

and created the ZOOM score based on 10 essential elements of professional video meetings. Her first book, The Joy of Thinking Out Loud, which chronicles her struggles with stuttering, will be published in 2024. She’s a member of the National Speakers Association and the director of Pecha Kucha Night Miami, the Japanese style of concise live storytelling popular in more than 1300 cities. Please welcome Rosemary Ravinal.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (01:30)

Hello Dave, what a pleasure to be with you.

 

Dave Bricker (01:33)

Good to see you, Rosemary.

 

how did you get into this whole speaking and coaching thing? What took you on this

 

Rosemary Ravinal (01:41)

Well, communication was a challenge for me from my childhood.

 

the boarding school was a Catholic boarding school. There were no children who spoke Spanish. And I was really a parachuted into a situation that was at my age, very challenging. And from there on, I struggled with speaking altogether. I developed a very strong stammer. I went through periods of being able to work through it. However, it followed me into my early

 

adult life in my early 20s. And because I was so challenged by it, I determined that it was the dragon that I had to slay. It was the mountain I had to climb. It was the challenge that I had to overcome. And it was fundamental to my being a successful, not only professional, but a successful human being. So I took just almost countless classes and therapy sessions, but it wasn’t until I was challenged to speak.

 

on the radio live as part of coursework that I had to complete in a major in broadcast communication. That was really my moment of truth. That was the, in a way, the epiphany that I had that I could do it because I was able to execute an interview with the college president without stammering. So that gave me an enormous boost.

 

And from there on, I went to a career in public relations where I was called on to do a lot of public speaking, a lot of media interview work, and then eventually did a lot of television. So I know what it’s like to have this impediment. And again, that brings me to a more of an empathetic place when I work with clients who have sometimes, as you know, Dave, sometimes imaginary obstacles that could be fear -based, could be based on their…

 

fear of being rejected or being ridiculed. And we know that that’s something that we can work through, but you have to face your demons of sort. And so with that experience behind me, that’s what motivates me to do more coaching.

 

Dave Bricker (03:53)

So as professional speakers, we have to turn our ideas and experiences into income. And you’ve opted, of course, you speak, but you’ve opted to work on the coaching side a great deal. And I know that many of our listeners are coaches too. Can you talk about the business relationship between speaking and coaching?

 

Rosemary Ravinal (04:15)

sure. I enjoy the coaching side. My intention is to do more speaking. However, there is a big demand for someone who can be a confidant. Not only have I been in the trenches about 40 years of experience in corporate communications, public relations and spokesperson work. So I understand the building blocks of a good speech, of a good presentation, of a good panel, of a good media interview. So those skills are

 

regularly called on by clients who want the full package, not only the speaking and the mechanics of speaking and all that goes into a good performance, but the creation of the strategy, the messaging, the confection of sorts of the information they’re going to deliver. So I enjoy that part. However, I do like stepping onto the stage and telling my story.

 

So my goal in the balance of this year is to do more of that, more of being the speaker and maybe having a coach behind me as well.

 

Dave Bricker (05:17)

And to add to this, we both live here in Miami, Florida, where there are people from all over the world, especially from Cuba, from South America. We have a lot of different Spanish dialects. And I’ve met so many people who are ashamed of their accents. They’re afraid to speak English. They just feel like they’re not as communicative as they actually are. And…

 

That just seems again, something that you are perfectly situated to address. So what advice do you have for people who want to either reduce their accent or just get over the idea that it’s even a problem? Because as long as we can understand people, accents are actually charming.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (06:02)

That’s one of my favorite assignments when I have a client who is facing that very predicament. It is for me, such a gift that I give to these clients to say, you know what? You can be just who you are. Your accent is charming. It’s part of your personality. It’s part of what makes you you. And so there’s nothing to change. Let’s just find a way through it by word selection, by making sentences shorter.

 

by taking more breaths and more pauses, and perhaps practicing some terminology, some things that don’t have substitutions. But there is a tendency in the corporate world particularly, where I came from, to have someone else write the speech for you, if you’re a CEO or C -suite level executive. And then you get handed this document, which is not even written for the spoken word, it’s written for some corporate…

 

to say press release or a financial report or something that’s not warm and human. And the executive is tasked with reading these long sentences. And of course, it’s intimidating and it’s also discouraging. So we tool it saying the same thing, but saying it in the expression and in the voice of this individual. It’s very effective. It’s very effective. Now, accent reduction, as you know, is a specialty. In some cases, some individuals do need it. But

 

I’ve been fortunate to work with people who have just slight accents that are totally manageable.

 

Dave Bricker (07:38)

Absolutely. And I think of actors like Selma Hayek and Penelope Cruz, who are very talented, but take away their accent, take away that cultural identity, and they’re just attractive, talented actors. And there’s plenty of that around. People can take almost anything and turn it into an advantage, and they certainly did. I just deal with so many speakers who won’t speak because they feel their accent’s too thick or that the accent gets in the way.

 

And that just stops them.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (08:12)

Yes. And let me add that there’s also in the stuttering community, which is very active to sort of remove the stigma of stuttering. And of course we have our president, President Biden, who has been very public about his stutter, his stammer since he was a young man. And that’s noticeable at times when he speaks in public, but it’s acceptable as part of who we are.

 

And there are people who have very pronounced stammers, but they challenge themselves to speak in public anyway. And I think that’s very courageous because just like anything else, you know, I might have some other impediment or handicap and we work through it because it’s who we are. And I think that that’s fundamentally the best kind of public speaking is to give of who you are authentically.

 

Dave Bricker (09:07)

Another thing that you brought up that I’d love to circle back to,

 

and I think it’s really at the core of good coaching, is this difference between written prose and spoken language. Talk about that a little bit.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (09:24)

Yes. Now, we know that it’s important to start out with a document, right? To write down your ideas, to start to put together the pieces that will sort of congeal into a cohesive speech. And that process is essential. But the spoken word is something that is more, it’s music. It’s music that you have to sing of sorts.

 

So there’s a big difference, both in terms of the cadence of a sentence construction, the choice of words, the order of those ideas. It’s a very, very, very different communication methodology. And many people don’t understand that. We know, having lived on ZOOM for several years, and many people still do, how you hear a presenter reading from a document, doing an introduction.

 

or delivering their message. And you can see in that, you don’t even have to see, you can hear in their tone of voice and in their rate of speech and lack of intonation that they’re reading it. And it just, it sort of cancels out the benefit, right? It’s unnecessary, yet they haven’t been taught how to do this differently. So they feel that there’s that, you know, let me ground myself in having this document, which is,

 

which assures me that I’m not going to forget anything where they’re doing themselves a great disfavor. So it’s about capturing your ideas and then molding them into the words, the structure, the flow that will make for a wonderful spoken message.

 

Dave Bricker (11:09)

because too many people, they memorize their speech, which was written to begin with, and then they read it to the audience out of their head, which is no more effective than reading it off the And that segues into my next question, because so many speakers come to us and they say, my topic is X. I speak about DEI, I speak about leadership, I speak about

 

corporate culture, and we get caught up on the topic. It’s so important for us as speaker coaches to take that question and reframe it in terms of what transformation do you deliver? What problems do you solve and for whom? So how do audiences realize value from our programs? Because there are so many people who can go out and lecture about the topic, but a speaker gets in there and delivers their message.

 

Everybody in the room is a little bit bigger, a little bit faster, a little less stressed, and more efficient when they leave. So what problems do you solve and for whom? How do we move that topic focus to the transformation focus?

 

Rosemary Ravinal (12:20)

You know, that’s still a big challenge for us as coaches. There is such a strong thrust for people to do things by rote, to deliver based on their own sense of self -satisfaction and self, I say promotion, that they forget that they’re talking to real human beings.

 

And that flipping that equation is takes a lot of the patients and coaxing for the client to understand that it really needs to be the other way around. That, you know, in a lot, a lot of corporate settings, there are these structures and these protocols that people need to follow. And when I coach someone to do something a little bit different, for example, to introduce early on a little bit of a check -in Q and A session, I did my introduction.

 

How does that sound? What do you think? What would you like to add? It’s like, my God, no, that breaks the rules. You have to keep going. You can’t stop there. You do a structured 10 minute Q &A session at the end. Well, we know what happens when you wait until the end. People tune out, unless you’ve been extraordinarily engaging. But in other words, there’s so much room to do things a little bit differently, always with the intention of giving the audience an opportunity to connect with you better, to…

 

share what they’re hearing so you can give them more of what they need and you can make adjustments along the way. So it’s not about love me, I’m wonderful, let me lecture to you. It’s about me giving you love that you will then take and be better for it.

 

Dave Bricker (14:04)

And it’s interesting because the creative people are always battling the compliance people. I’ve worked with some people from some of the big financial institutions and they have to battle these rules and protocols that basically mandate. You have to have cluttered useless slides. They have to be complex. They have to be so full of information that no one will ever pay attention to you as a speaker. And we always have to be innovative about helping people.

 

either break those rules gently so they don’t get in trouble or find their way around those problems because the people who make those rules clearly know very little about presentation skills. So many of our viewers and listeners are new to the speaking game. Talk about being nervous speaking in front of an audience. How have you dealt with nerves and imposter syndrome and all of that?

 

Because people see us on the stage and they think, how could she be that confident? How can I find that confidence? And so many people don’t know how well we fake it. I can at least say that about myself. But you’re a speaker coach. Talk about glossophobia, nerves and all of that stuff.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (15:22)

I love that term glossophobia. mean, because many people think it’s a disease, right? That, my God, I’m so nervous that I freeze or my palms get sweaty or my legs shake. And many people think that it’s a real, a real impediment. Now we know that there are situations where people go into extremes of reaction, but the average person, particularly maybe the novice speaker,

 

will feel that fear, it’s inevitable. I always tell clients that everyone feels fear. Everyone has some manifestation of fear. In my case, I get butterflies in my stomach. I get the fluttering and it’s just why I seldom eat before I do anything in public. It’s important for me to anticipate that and to tame that reaction and know it’s there, it’s great. It’s giving me a little bit of an adrenaline boost. It’s good for me. So how do we work with it?

 

Well, first of all, to help people understand that it’s going to happen and that if it isn’t visible, for example, the trembling of a hand or maybe some red blotches on the skin, that there’s ways to deal with it very privately. But the most important thing is to have them understand that preparation is the key. You can use breath techniques, you can sing songs, you can listen to soothing music before you speak.

 

You can, some people jump on trampolines and do something that’s aerobic. Whatever those techniques are, great. But nothing takes the place of preparation, of rehearsal, of absolutely organically internalizing what you have to say so that you don’t have to memorize. You memorize a few things, you memorize maybe some data points, you memorize your opening sentence and your closing sort of call to action. You memorize certain maybe quotes or things that you attribute to someone else.

 

that are necessary to connect the dots, but you don’t memorize the whole script. And prepare, prepare, prepare almost exhaustively. And then when you feel you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve got this, disconnect. Don’t continue to rehearse up until the moment that you go on stage. Let’s say that you’re doing something important noon tomorrow by 6 p today, disconnect, do something totally different.

 

Don’t go partying, but go to sleep early knowing that you did your best. That’s it. And you show up relaxed and what will be will be. And that’s going to be fine because you did everything you could to prepare. And that’s a satisfying feeling. And once you do that several times, you understand that that’s the secret, that there’s no magic wand that coach or anyone can wave and say, you’re not going to be nervous anymore. That it’s going to be there.

 

You tame it, you deal with it, you understand your physical manifestations of it. For example, if someone gets red blotches on the neck, well, you might want to wear something that covers the neck because you can’t avoid that, right? You can’t cover it up and you don’t want to call attention to it. But you work through it. It’s human and it’s all good.

 

Dave Bricker (18:32)

I completely agree. I think that’s great advice. And speaking of great advice, some of the people listening to this podcast are aspiring speakers and they’re brand new to the game. And aside from dealing with nervousness, what advice do you have to offer them?

 

Rosemary Ravinal (18:50)

Where to begin? Well, speak anywhere to anyone. Speak about what you love. There are countless opportunities to speak in public. I’ve coached people who are doing ministry, who are doing volunteer work in their church. I work with volunteer coordinators for getting out the vote and getting engaged in the civic citizenship process. I work with people who are in the C -suite, who are…

 

nervous about giving their first speech to the board of directors. At all levels we speak. I’ve coached people who are doing wedding toasts. I’ve given interview coaching to college graduates who are applying to graduate programs and their first jobs. So those everywhere we go, we need to speak and we need to speak with our best voice, with confidence. All of that is probably the most important human

 

trait that we have as humans on earth that we need to speak to each other, that we need to go anywhere and be able to converse and let people know what we’re about and to share our messages. And particularly now that there’s a lot of disharmony in the world, we need to be able to connect better person to person.

 

Dave Bricker (20:08)

Love that. Completely agree. If you’re just joining us, you’re tuned into Speakipedia Media for aspiring and professional speakers and thought leaders who want to make more money by changing hearts, minds, and fortunes. My guest today is speaker and presentation coach Rosemary Ravenall. So, Rosemary, you’ve done a lot of work in the online presentation space. We all got forced into that during the pandemic, but you’ve made that your home in many ways.

 

What are some important things we can think about when giving a virtual presentation?

 

Rosemary Ravinal (20:43)

The most important thing is how you show up. How you show up that you need to curate everything in this rectangle. From your appearance, to your clothing, to your makeup and hair styling, to every piece of real estate that surrounds you. There is a lot of study that’s been done. There’s actually some extraordinary research out of Stanford that shows that the more power that you have in your

 

role of the hierarchy, that you appear smaller on the screen. You have a sense of separation. You might be alluding to or insinuating that you have a huge desk in front of you. And that that distance from the camera suggests that you have rank, whereas people who are lesser in the scheme of an organization might be more focused on the screen and closer and more.

 

sort of in your face and unaware of how they’re coming across. The poise and charisma that you project in this rectangle is fundamental to you having credibility and building trust and having an effective exchange of information. So it’s almost as if you want to make virtual as close to real life as possible. And another factor that’s extremely important is understanding that the lens is your friend, not the screen. You need to look at the lens.

 

and train your eye to go to that little circle in the middle and not to the image of the person who’s on the screen with you. And that discipline is important to hopefully I’m doing eye to eye communication with you right now. And that’s, that’s again, one of the most important attributes in terms of establishing a sense of leadership, someone you want to hear more from, someone you want to trust, someone you want to do business with, someone you want to buy from, someone you want to invite to your next party. And that’s,

 

the kind of subtleties that come into play here. Of course, always having good equipment, good camera, great resolution, good lighting, good sound, and understanding that this is very different. You have a limited space. How do you use your hands? How do you use your head? How do you acknowledge other people? How do you project warmth? How often do you smile? All these things come into play, and it’s a very interesting field, which is still…

 

Unfortunately, Dave, still in its infancy; people have not adopted the best practices as you think they might have now that we’re perhaps, what is it, two years away from the so -called end of the lockdown.

 

Dave Bricker (23:22)

So I have to share an experience briefly. I went to an online meeting last week and I watched as blank square after blank square after blank square came onto the meeting. Nobody turned their camera on. Now I always turn my camera on. It’s not to show off. It’s to interact with the speaker. And it was the speaker in me, which felt awkward because the expectation is, is Dave part of this program? Who’s this Bricker guy?

 

And what I did is I put a brief note in the chat that said, please turn your cameras on. It helps the speaker because it really does help the speaker to have eyes and facial expressions and voices to engage with. Talk a little bit about cameras on culture.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (24:10)

yes. I have done sessions, Dave, where I have refused to continue. If I’m leading, refused to continue until people turned on their cameras. And that’s, I’ve taken that bold position because first it’s a disservice to me. You’re paying me to deliver important information to you.

 

And then it’s also a disservice to your colleagues. And it’s a disservice to yourself because you’re there to learn from the coach and you’re not communicating. You’re hiding, you’re in the closet, you’re in behind the curtain or you’re in another room, in another place, in your car. You’re not present. How can you take a class if you’re not present? So being on camera says present. Now what I do is I go square by square and I say, Joe, is there something wrong with your camera?

 

or are you driving or maybe you’re at the airport? Just turn your camera on for a moment. Let me say hi. And that person will turn the camera on. And then it might be an excuse like, well, I don’t have very good resolution here or I need to choose toggle between good sound and good video. That’s understandable. I probably will let somebody take a pass on that. But there’s others who say, my cameras aren’t working right. Or there’s a lot of noise behind me.

 

I’m sharing the space with someone else. I said fine mute yourself, but turn on your camera so I go one by one and I pick on people I put them in the hot seat and eventually I get maybe 90 % compliance and then then I say now we can begin and That’s worked for me so far a little gutsy, but it’s worked because otherwise It’s a waste of everyone’s time and money

 

Dave Bricker (25:59)

I completely agree. And it really comes down to a leadership problem because leaders need to set the tone where, hey, we have a guest speaker coming in. You’ll show them the respect of being there and showing your face on screen and paying attention. Just as you would have them do if you hired a trainer to come into your physical office and meet with your team. You wouldn’t have people in the hallways or, or.

 

who didn’t show up, they get in trouble for that. So absolutely it’s.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (26:30)

No, it’s worse than that, Dave. It’s almost like being in a conference room when you have a guest speaker and turning your back to that person. Because we know the person is there, but that person isn’t engaging at all. So it’s worse actually than not showing up.

 

Dave Bricker (26:43)

Right. Because speakers are going to do a better job if they’ve got people who actually engage with them. If they can read the faces… are people staring at the screen or are they clearly looking down, checking their phone, doing something else? You can see and you need to gauge your impact as a speaker and make sure that you are calling on the people who need to be called on and etc. It’s a leadership thing. I think as speakers,

 

we need to set that expectation that if you want me to come in, great, make sure your team shows up on camera. Another one, we see people with their faces disappearing, their hands are disappearing, all sorts of weird effects. It’s not that hard to get some lights and a green screen and set it up to work right. And I think, again, it’s a leadership issue.

 

Make sure that your team members make that investment or invest in your team because people spend a lot more on a pair of shoes than they do on a set of lights, a good microphone, a decent camera and a green screen. I think it’s just about looking professional in the office. Talk about how important it is that we set the standard for appearance rather than just be another talking head with our hair and faces fading in and out.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (28:06)

Yes, that still happens so much. I attended a webinar, an international webinar yesterday where everyone on screen had to have a uniform virtual background, which is very common. But some people didn’t have good lighting. So what happened is you just described they were like amoebas fading in and out. If they were still, they could get away with it. But once they started to gesture and move in any way, their fingers disappeared into a background or worse, they…

 

it revealed what was behind the curtain. And that’s distracting and it’s unprofessional. So it is important to have the minimum, as you said, green screens, you can get something now for $40 or less, that clips onto the back of your chair and decent lighting, enough lighting to really bring the best resolution out from the camera. And that’s it. Then everyone can have their uniform virtual background. But otherwise it is, some people show up,

 

well, other people show up poorly. And that’s, again, it’s not good for branding. It’s not good for morale. And it’s not good for reputation.

 

Dave Bricker (29:13)

completely agree. The other part that goes unspoken about way too often is good audio, which is actually even more important than good video. A good microphone, certainly something better than that little tiny thing in the lid of your laptop, is not expensive, and it makes a huge difference in the quality of your presentation.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (29:35)

indeed. And you don’t have to even invest. You can do very well with earbuds or with corded earbuds. There’s many media interviews on network television that are done with the corded earphones, which have very good quality, as well as the earbuds. So the worst kind of audio comes from the built -in microphone. That’s definitely a no -no.

 

but you can get a Lavalier microphone with a USB plug for about $20. And you can carry it around as part of your office supplies. You carry around usually a battery pack, right, or a charger for your phone. You can take one of these along as well. So there are countless products on the market now. I think when we started working on ZoomScore and all of the online meeting training,

 

There were very few, if I could say, maybe a dozen different options for different accessories, but now there’s hundreds of different combinations of lights and microphone built in and this and that. And so you can shop around. Amazon’s a great place to start to find something that fits your budget and your environment, where you are and whether you travel a great deal or what kind of devices you have, laptops and such. And you can also do very good work.

 

On a smartphone, you don’t have to have a big screen.

 

Dave Bricker (31:07)

completely agree with that. And it’s just a matter of, I think, people cultivating some awareness of how easy it is to get to the next step because people are afraid of that technology. So.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (31:21)

Right. And let me add something to that, Dave, which I actually encountered this morning with the client is that when you are talking about smartphones, that when you’re doing presentations, take into consideration how the people at the receiving end are watching because the client I’m referring to has a population of the employee, the employee group.

 

Dave Bricker (31:42)

Hehehehe

 

Rosemary Ravinal (31:48)

is all remote, they’re all in the field. They do work that requires them to be distributed in different locations, not necessarily in offices. And so they connect via their smartphones. So why are you going to give them a PowerPoint presentation with tons of data that they won’t be able to read anyway? Because of the size of the screen. So take into account how it’s being received and make that experience something that will be worth their time.

 

Dave Bricker (32:15)

same old story. It’s about the audience, it’s not about you.

 

So Rosemary, if you’re willing, share a disaster story. Maybe a time when you bombed or things went sideways at a speaking engagement, because it does happen to all of us. And what can we learn from that?

 

Rosemary Ravinal (32:35)

Yes, well, I had one not too long ago. I was asked to do a significant presentation in the Pecha Kucha style. And you’ve done a Pecha Kucha. Pecha Kucha, for those who don’t know, is a visual storytelling format that comprises 20 slides that advance automatically without you clicking every 20 seconds. So you have speaking time of approximately seven minutes.

 

So it’s extraordinarily concise and powerful. You can tell a great deal of story in those seven minutes. Well, I took a shortcut and I didn’t want to rehearse as much as I should have. And I used note cards.

 

And I was said, okay, I’m just going to use the note cards because this is too complex a presentation. I’m just going to wing it. I broke all my rules because I was reading from note cards. I ended up reading, even though I knew the material because the note card is there. I ended up reading and worse, they fell out of order, Dave. They fell. So once they were on the floor, I had to say, well,

 

It’s not meant to be this way. And I finished, it was halfway. I finished without the notes and it was fine. But it was the sense of the attachment to that sure thing. I don’t know this material too well, so I’m going to take, do a little bit of a cheating thing and use note cards. Which are fine in certain situations, but not for a seven minute talk. And it was, yeah, it took care of itself. Cause the cards just fell out of my hands, fell out of order and that was that.

 

Dave Bricker (34:25)

Love that. Let’s get back into coaching for a moment because I coach people and you coach people. I was working on something recently and I went to you for coaching and I have a number of other people I go to to run stuff by. I think it’s so important that we all have a coach no matter what level we’re at. And even if we don’t go to that person on a regular basis, talk a little bit about coaching and mentorship and speaking.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (34:54)

Yes, well, you need to have a professional community around you. Certainly you need to have a community in all the different facets of your life, your spiritual life, family life, civic life, but the speaking community is fabulous. There are not only groups like the National Speakers Association, the Florida Speakers Association, but there are many Toastmaster clubs as well. And I was fortunate to be part of one.

 

and be president of a club for a year and I still consider myself a Toastmaster. And so those relationships, whether you’re still active or not, are always there to be cultivated and to make yourself available to help someone else or to ask for help. And there’s nothing better to polish a presentation than asking someone who has no skin in the game. They’re in a different industry, right? They’re not connected to, they’re not…

 

involved in the success of that effort. They’re just observers listening to this material and you can ask them, does it make sense? Is it cohesive? Is it does it flow? How’s my delivery? How’s my inflection? How’s my rate of speech? And that is invaluable information, invaluable. You can record yourself all day long, but you’re not your worst critic. You need to have someone with a fresh perspective give you that feedback.

 

Dave Bricker (36:22)

Yes, and we both know Caroline de Passada. She’s a wonderful speaker and she’s

 

Rosemary Ravinal (36:26)

Yes, fabulous. And a generous supporter, generous friend.

 

Dave Bricker (36:31)

Absolutely. And I love bringing my material to Caroline because she’s an extremely linear thinker. I run my stories and my ideas by her because her brain does not work the way mine does. And she’ll say, Dave, I don’t get it. This doesn’t make any sense. How did you get from here to here? I’m thinking, how could you not just see that how that works? But not everybody thinks the way do the way we do.

 

And I get such value out of running my content by coaches and people who don’t process the world the same way I do. And I think that’s important for everybody.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (37:11)

It’s not to take anything for granted. I think that that’s a mistake. I certainly confess that I sometimes think, no one’s going to be interested in this, or people are going to think less of me because I’m asking for help. They’re going to think I’m weak. And it’s just the opposite. It’s a sign of strength. To say help, I want your feedback. I want you to be honest and constructive, and I will reciprocate in any way I can.

 

And that’s where the magic lies.

 

Dave Bricker (37:43)

Completely agree. So Rosemary, if one of our readers or viewers wants to discover more about you, where can they find you?

 

Rosemary Ravinal (37:52)

Well, I have a robust website that has among a lot of downloadable PDFs on everything from how to have a successful ZOOM meeting to how to ace an interview. There are now, I counted them last night, 165 blogs. And I thought I barely had 100, but I counted them all one by one and it’s an extraordinary collection, searchable. And you can find…

 

help guidance on anything from memorization to how to use AI to craft your speeches and of course tons of information about virtual meetings, how to run meetings as well in person and on and on and lots of information of course on the inevitable fear of glossophobia. There’s a couple of blogs about stuttering and disfluencies that people might have which include for example lisping as well, that’s another disfluency and

 

So it’s it’s I’m very proud of the body of work and hopefully my book will come out soon and that will be another compliment to my gift to the community of people who are looking for ways to become better speakers. And it’s rosemaryravinal .com.

 

Dave Bricker (39:04)

I believe you have a training program coming out, don’t you?

 

Rosemary Ravinal (39:07)

I have a summer camp program that will be announced this coming week. It’s for July and August. It’s four weeks, two hours each week, intensive, limited to 12 people. We’ll be doing a lot of content, of training, coaching on specific topics of interest to that group, and a lot of practice, a lot of feedback, and a lot of speaking time. And that includes an hour of private time with me during those four weeks. So it’s a…

 

real rich, it’s two months only, maybe I’ll turn it into an ongoing program, but I think the summer’s a good time to polish your speaking for what will come in the fall.

 

Dave Bricker (39:49)

And I think people would do well to get in touch with you before that fills up. That sounds like a wonderful program. So let’s sum up. We’ve talked about virtual presentation. We’ve talked at least indirectly about taking your origin story or your Achilles heel, in your case it was stuttering, and using it to propel you forward. What is the number one takeaway you hope viewers and listeners will gain from our conversation today?

 

Rosemary Ravinal (40:19)

What I believe is that everyone has the ability to change the world with the power of their words. Everyone has something to contribute. You may not be in order at a commencement, but you could affect great change just in your interpersonal family communication. You can speak to your neighbor. You can speak to elected officials and tell them what you think and what you want and what you need. You can argue your case for a way that…

 

your company does business, you can promote yourself into better jobs. People who have strong verbal skills and the ability to communicate succinctly and with confidence make more money, they achieve more of their goals, and they’re generally happier people too.

 

Dave Bricker (41:06)

Wonderful. Rosemary, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s always amazing to talk with you.

 

Rosemary Ravinal (41:13)

It’s been a pleasure. Thank you, Dave.

 

Dave Bricker (41:16)

I’m Dave Bricker, inviting you to explore the world’s most comprehensive resource for speakers and storytellers at Speakipedia .com. If you’re viewing this program on social media video, please love, subscribe, and share your comments. If you’re listening to the podcast, keep your hands on the wheel and stay safe. I’ll see you on the next episode of Speakipedia Media.