Evolving Business Minds

Mastering Effective Communication with George Torok | #125

• Andy Silvius • Episode 125

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Ever wondered how to transform your communication skills to captivate any audience? Join us as we bring you insights from George Torok, an executive speech coach, bestselling author, and award-winning radio show host. This episode is not just about talking; it's about mastering the art of making your message resonate, whether you're addressing a boardroom or engaging with your followers on social media. George Torok shares his wisdom on the importance of listening, adapting to audience reactions, and even offers a unique lesson from the world of magic to help you elevate your communication game.

In this episode, discover practical tips for public speaking and effective presentations. Hear about my transition from a corporate career to becoming a professional speaker, and learn how practice, specialization, and learnable techniques can make anyone an effective communicator. We'll shed light on the nuances of grabbing attention, building trust, and ensuring your message holds value for your audience, whether you're live or online. Listen to impactful stories that illustrate how framing messages emotionally can create stronger connections, and understand why focusing on your core audience is key.

Finally, we dive into the art of storytelling and overcoming the fear of public speaking. George Torok and I discuss the power of personalized language and how addressing listeners as individuals can make your communication more impactful and memorable. Learn actionable strategies to enhance your storytelling skills, avoid the pitfalls of "death by PowerPoint," and use silence to your advantage in presentations and negotiations. This episode is packed with actionable advice, personal anecdotes, and expert insights to help you master the nuances of effective business communication.

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Andy Silvius:

All right. Welcome to episode 125 of the Evolving Business Minds podcast. Today's guest is an executive speech coach, bestselling author and award-winning radio show host. I want to welcome George Turok to the show.

George Torok:

Thank you, andy. A delight to be with you on the podcast Evolving Business Minds.

Andy Silvius:

Absolutely. I'm excited for our conversation today because you are the first guest I've had that has a background with public speaking to this degree. You're the first guest I've had that has a background with public speaking to this degree. I've had other people that do coaching around it, but as I was digging into your just your life and your business I mean you've been doing this quite a while, so I think it'll bring a lot of value to everyone who's listening. Before we get started, if you don't mind, can you just take a minute to tell everyone listening kind of an overview of what you do as an executive speech coach and how they can connect with you?

George Torok:

Fair enough. Thank you, andy. I help business leaders deliver their intended message for greater success, and I do that in two ways. One, it's one-to-one coaching, or sometimes they bring me in to train their team. What they can count on when they work with me is number one. I will tell them the truth and a lot of senior business leaders aren't used to hearing the truth from their staff but I'll tell them what's working and what's not working and what they need to change. And I look at the whole message. It's not just the words, it's not just the body language, it's not just the visuals, it's all that together. And I try to put myself into the mind of their listener. But what's their listener thinking now when they're saying and doing this?

Andy Silvius:

now when they're saying and doing this. Okay, and obviously it's probably one of the most important skills that we need to master as people in general, not only as business owners, but just as people, because we communicate in some form, you know, all the time.

George Torok:

True, and I'll give you. I'll give you an example, a recent example, andy. I attended a chamber networking meeting and there were about half a dozen people who had the opportunity to stand up and give a two-minute talk about themselves or what they do. Excuse me One of the mistakes. Excuse me one of the mistakes. Excuse me um one of the mistakes they all made, is they only? Talked about themselves. They said we do, we do. We there thinking so what? What's your point?

George Torok:

because they've made it about them and not about the person listening yeah, for example, there was a lawyer from a general law firm and they started listening off all the kind of lawyers that they have when do we care? When do we care as opposed to. It would be much better. They've got two minutes. It would be much better if they gave an example, a short story, of a client who had a problem and how they helped them. Now we go, oh, who had a problem and how they helped them? Now we go, oh, I don't have that problem, but I know somebody who does.

Andy Silvius:

Yep, well, I think, as people right Like, I'm trying to put myself in that position. Thinking about it, it's like if I'm listening to someone speak, I want to be able to connect with them by knowing that my problem will be solved by what they're offering.

George Torok:

You got it.

Andy Silvius:

Okay, so I'm curious what are some key communication skills that every business owner should master?

George Torok:

Surprisingly, one of the most important aspects of effective communication and speaking is better listening skills. It's listening to your listeners, observing your listeners, and in fact, I've got a great example of this from a recent guest on my podcast who used to be a magician, magician performer, and he pointed out he said that when you're a magician, you have to adapt your tricks, your performance, to what the audience, how they are reacting, and so you may cut something short, you might decide to pull a volunteer from the audience, but you need to be able to change on the fly lie, and too many people are locked into a pitch that this is all they know and they just give the pitch without thinking of the consequences.

Andy Silvius:

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Andy Silvius:

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George Torok:

Interesting that you put it that way. The short answer is yes, it can be taught and yes, intuition can be enhanced by becoming more aware of your intuition and by asking yourself what, okay, my intuition is telling me this. Why is that? What? What is the evidence that's triggering? Because something is triggering your intuition and your intuition is processed in your subconscious, so your subconscious is picking up on signals that your conscious isn't picking up on.

Andy Silvius:

So, when your intuition is telling, you start thinking oh, wait, a minute, my intuition is far more able to pick up on things far more sensitive than my conscious mind, because our conscious mind is, is you know, focused in a certain line, but the but their subconscious is picking up a lot more, and so part of it is, yes, training yourself to, to be more in touch with your subconscious mind I want to set this framework up for everyone listening, because I think, as we're just starting this conversation, I'm thinking of so many different things this can be applied to, because some people might listen to this right away and think, okay, well, I'm not a public speaker, but it can even be for the content creators, the people that are putting messages on their social media and the graphics and the videos that they're putting up for their company and how do they effectively communicate through those mediums as well and you got it.

George Torok:

Yes, it's not just speaking, it's. However, we send our messages and we need to reach the audience, and, and first we need we need to. First we need to grab their attention, and then, and then we need to build trust rapidly, and then they need to see that there's something in it for them.

Andy Silvius:

So I hope I'm not jumping around too much, but I'm curious, when we talk about this, when we're talking about a live audience versus, maybe, social media content, and how we communicate differently between those. When we're with a live audience, you have, um, you have a faster feedback loop. You can read the body language, you can, you can hear the responses, you can see the responses. But on social media, how, like how do you differentiate the two or how do you make sure you're communicating properly through that medium?

George Torok:

your communicating properly through that medium. A good observation of the difference is yes, the best conversation is always when you're in the room with the person, when you can pick up on their body language, their tone, their attention, all these signals that we get. That when you're posting on social media, you don't get that and, unfortunately, what you tend to get, what we tend to get on social media, is the extremes, yeah, and that is not necessarily an indicator of the audience you're trying to reach. So when you're posting on social media, think about who you most want to reach. Who is the person? What do they like? What are they interested in? What problems might they have that you can solve, and how do you believe they will react to you? So direct your messages to those people and ignore the extremes. So here, here's a here's a tip.

George Torok:

I tell people when you are speaking to an audience in the room, the numbers aren't scientific, it's more the concept. So if you've got a room full of people, 10 of the people love you. No matter what you do, you can do no wrong. They think you walk on water. 10% of the people hate you. They can't stand you. It doesn't matter, they don't like the way you look, the way you dress, the way you sound, whatever you remind them of an old ex or a former teacher or something. You can't reach them. So that 10% and that 10%, forget about them. You're not going to change their mind. So work on the 80% that you can possibly move and forget about those extremes.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, because if you get caught up trying to handle the extremes, you end up losing your message for the core audience.

George Torok:

Yes, and I've seen it happen. And when I started in the speaking business, I wrongly believed that I was supposed to please everyone in the audience, and that's a big mistake. You cannot please everyone. In fact, you need to be willing to have some people who can't stand you, and the reason is because their personality is just radically different from you. And that's okay. See, if you are totally bland, then you don't appeal to anyone and you don't repel anyone. When you're really you and a strong you, whatever your character is, there are people you attract and there are people you repel. That's life.

Andy Silvius:

How did you get into this field? What started this path for you?

George Torok:

The shorter answer is. At the time I was partway through my corporate career that's where I went after university and I was a middle manager in a huge corporation and part of my job was delivering presentations. And a notice came around about a two-day workshop on presentation skills. I asked my boss if I could attend the workshop and he said, yeah, you can. You got approval. But, george, you don't need this, you're good enough already. I've seen you present.

George Torok:

I took the two-day workshop and I started with that attitude yeah, I'm already good enough. What are these people going to teach me? Guess what they taught me a lot. Going to teach me? Guess what they taught me a lot? The first thing there are two big ahas. The first aha was that I wasn't as good as I thought I was, no way, and my boss was fooling me too. And the second big aha was that it wasn't talent, it's all technique. It's all a system of techniques that can be learned, can be honed and can be adapted to fit your individual style or character, and I was intrigued by that.

George Torok:

I volunteered to do more presentations and in the following year I volunteered to organize a conference for an association that I was a member of, and at that, at that conference, I got to speak, I got to introduce people, I got to, you know, tell people welcome to the lunch. The bathrooms are down the hall, here's what we're doing. And when that was over, I was thrilled with the experience and I went back to the, to the people who ran the two-day workshop that I because I had become friends with them, yeah, and I said I want to do this for a living. And they said they gave me good advice. They said, first of all, don't quit your day job just yet. Don't do that, don't be silly.

George Torok:

The second, a second piece of advice was to join toastmasters to get regular practice. The third piece of advice was, in the beginning, start volunteering to speak to anybody anywhere, any group of people, just to get practice, get feedback, and start to, because you need to practice. And the fourth piece of advice was at some point, specialize, Pick a topic, one, two, maybe three, no more than that, because anybody can speak. But what we value are people who are experts. And I followed their advice. It took me a couple of years to wean myself before I left my job, so I started working on the business part time.

Andy Silvius:

And you said it took a couple years.

George Torok:

So once, once you were able to transition, then you just went all the way in. I went all the way in and, yes, and over those two years I used all my evenings, most of my weekends, my vacation time, uh, the holidays, and the odd sick day to work on the business I like that, though.

Andy Silvius:

I think giving us that perspective is good, because there's so many business, um, there's so many individuals that rush into starting a business and they're not prepared, and I, I'm one of them. Um, you know, I pushed myself. Now it worked. I think having my back against the wall worked, but it, um, it was very messy and stressful. So, you know, I think that's there's a there's a portion of my audience that are still employees and want to transition into being business owners, and that's a huge takeaway is just preparing. You know, be patient and work on your craft on all your free time. If you really want to do something different, you have to be able to give something up.

George Torok:

That is one of the most valuable pieces of advice that I think you could give Andy. If you really want to, you really want something, you first have to decide what you're willing to give up to get that something.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah. Can you share any specific techniques for improving clarity and confidence when speaking in public or crafting a message, for you know whether it's a business, business associate or just our audience?

George Torok:

When you're getting ready to deliver a message, first of all spend time on preparing. Don't wing it. Stop winging it. I see too many people. They just figure well, I know my stuff, yeah, but do you know how your audience is receiving this and how can you deliver? How can you deliver your message in the least amount of words, least amount of time and get the maximum benefit from that? You do that and people will start to appreciate you, they'll value you and they'll trust you more.

George Torok:

So the first thing is to figure out what's the core message. First thing is to figure out what's the core message. What do you want people to do? So here's, before you start any presentation, whether it's a 30-second introduction or a three-minute promotional statement, or a 30-minute sales presentation or training program presentation or training program ask yourself this three-part question as a result of this presentation, what do you want people to think, feel or do be be clear on what success looks like. Success isn't covering the material. Some people say, oh, oh well, I want to. I need to cover all the material. No, you don't what?

Andy Silvius:

do you?

George Torok:

want them to do? I, I, I remember I had one person in my one of my training programs and I was explaining this concept and I was asking about what they were doing, and they were. They were giving safety instructions to new employees. I said, well, why are you doing that? Well, because we have to know that's not why you're doing it. Why are you doing it and how and how can you make the why clear to the audience? Well, but we have to. This is part of our program, it's our policy. Why? And this person couldn't get, they were too stuck in. Well, this is my job. I got to do it.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah.

George Torok:

And the reason is the reason you teach safety is to save people's lives, save them pain, stop them from bleeding all over the place, save the company money. And I had a similar conversation with a president of a company who was a new president and they have a safety program, and he said well, I'm not the expert on safety, I know you're not the expert on safety.

George Torok:

However, you have a message that is worthwhile to them because you and this was a construction company, Okay, and I said and I took and I said to him, I said your concern, your interest is that you're worried about them and that you want them to pay attention to the safety procedures and follow the safety, because you do not want ever to have to call their family and tell them that you're not coming home today did it click for him when you said, when you put it in that way you got it and so taking those examples and communicating that story across to the person the the message is intended for, that's how you get yeah.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, it's interesting, I think I'm. As we're talking about this, I'm thinking about things that you know presentation I'm, presentations I'm currently working on and ideas I have, and I get caught in that loop too, where it's like you want to squeeze all the information into it but you're not, but maybe not necessarily putting yourself in the listener's shoes and how they're going to receive the message, and that can be difficult. I think that's a that's a difficult skill to learn over time, but, like, as you've said multiple times through the podcast already, it's like it's practice and preparing.

George Torok:

Yeah, and Andy, you're right, it's difficult when you are an expert on a topic. It's very difficult for you to get into the mind of your listener. You either tell them too much or you assume they are at a certain level and they're going what the heck is this guy talking about? And you use industry jargon or expertise jargon that they just don't get, that they don't understand, instead of putting it in terms of them. So the first thing you need to do is, of course, grab their attention and you grab their attention and what's important to them, and if you want them to act and remember what you say, you need to attach the information to either a visual or an emotion, and when I say visual, I don't mean a slide, I mean an image in their mind. I, I, I.

George Torok:

One of the stories I've told and I'll just describe it briefly is I talked about when my son was seven years old, his first year playing soccer, and how I remembered that soccer games of all the games and I've been to hundreds of games watching all three of my children play soccer but I remember this one the most, remember this one the most, and the reason was because partway through the game, while I'm standing on the side cheering my son on. He stopped running and he looked up in the sky and he's staring in the sky and I'm thinking, chris, get going, get the ball, get the ball, chris, and I'm jumping up and down and then, finally, and then everyone on the field, all the kids, stopped running and they're looking up in the sky and at this point I'm thinking what the heck is up there? Is it the mother's ship? And I look up and there was the most gorgeous rainbow I've ever seen.

George Torok:

It covered completely across the sky and it had the full spectrum. The referee blew his whistle and said tweet one minute to look at the rainbow. And everybody enjoyed the rainbow for one minute to look at the rainbow and everybody enjoyed the rainbow for one minute. Then he blew the whistle again and they played on.

Andy Silvius:

Why that story is so good is because there's there's a visual content and an emotional content to it, and that's what you want to look for in your stories now I'm curious, I, when I was digging through your website and the information that's online about you, one of the things that that came up was I think it was a blog article on your website death by powerpoint, and I just feel like what we just talked about kind of leads into that. So when you're presenting with powerpoint, well, I guess here's the basic question what do you mean by death by PowerPoint?

George Torok:

Well, have you ever suffered through a PowerPoint presentation where a slide comes up, it's full of words or numbers and the person reads the slide to you and just drones on and treats you like a complete idiot? Because they are, they couldn't be bothered to prepare or make better slides. That's that's when it's not actually death by powerpoint. You just sit there and say somebody, kill me, kill me quick, not another slide. And and it's painful. It's terribly painful and and yet people still keep doing it. And one of the the because because PowerPoint is such an easy piece of software to work with, it's so convenient, and I'm not saying you shouldn't use PowerPoint, but people misuse it. And one of the reasons why a lot of people misuse it today is because they learned how to misuse it from their teachers and professors how to misuse it from their teachers and professors.

Andy Silvius:

It's interesting that you bring this up because there's a couple of content. Well, they're business owners, but they create content online and I think, as I watch some of their videos, some of the best videos I watch from them have PowerPoint slides. But the PowerPoint slides are so simple. They're simple that you're drawn to the point that they are making on the page but it's not for you to read. It's something simple that they build from and it's not necessarily a bullet point, but it's the core of that slide that they talk around. And is that what you mean is to stop filling the words up and really work on the presentation?

George Torok:

The ideal slide has no words on it. The more words you put on your slide, the more garbage it is. Ideally, you might have a title, or you might have a statement, a short statement or question. However, whatever text is on the slide, do not read it to the audience. If you put text up the slide, you say and so the way to look at this issue is from this advice from Albert Einstein. Then you click the slide and this quote from Albert Einstein comes up and you let them read it, you pause, you shut up, you just keep quiet. They read it and then you can discuss okay, what's the significance of this quote, how does it apply to our situation? But see that way, what you do is you use the slide like a partner, not a teleprompter.

Andy Silvius:

I like that. You said that you sit back and shut up and let them read it. Um, I think one of the one of the skills that I have been able to learn more of and I'm still trying to work on it all the time but with podcasting is is listening instead of filling the gap. Sometimes there is silence, and sometimes there's and I don't do it well all the time Um, and sometimes there's, and I don't do it well all the time, but we've all been around people who, as you're speaking with them, can't sit in the silence for half a second for the response, and it's just one thing after another and it becomes exhausting.

George Torok:

In those conversations or in those types of presentations, being silent is a powerful skill to have. It's difficult to learn because we think we should be making noise. And once you master that silence, you become a much more. You appear more confident. People will pay more attention to your words. You also become more persuasive and a much better negotiator. When they teach negotiation skills, they tell you to make your offer and then zip it. Yes, Because whoever speaks first loses.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, whoever speaks first loses. Yeah, and I have talked myself out of sales sometimes and uh, coming from a sales background with real estate you. When you oversell, you kill the deal you got that so what are, what do you think are some common communication challenges you see among business owners?

George Torok:

I'll give you an example. I'm going to go back to this networking breakfast. There were three key mistakes they made. One was they didn't think about the listener's point of view. So this is a common, common mistake in any presenter they don't think about the listener's point of view. How does the listener feel about this? The second mistake is they did not connect with their audience. They think that it's talking about how good they are, and I'll give you another example on that one.

George Torok:

So I worked with one president who was pitching multimillion dollar projects and he started losing deals at the presentation stage. And he had another project it was a $10 million project and he called me in and I coached him. I found out he had lots of confidence. Confidence wasn't an issue, however, in his presentation. I watched his presentation, we reviewed it, the first one he had and it was all about him, his company, his customers, customers, his awards, him, him, him, him. Look at me, look at me, look at me. We changed, we changed his perspective, which was difficult for him to do because he was a strong a type, proud of his success, you know, and certainly deserved it.

Andy Silvius:

You've probably been doing it a while been doing.

George Torok:

Yeah, and we, we got him to change his perspective to talk about this particular client, because I asked him why are they doing this project? What's in it for them, what do they want, what's their success look like? And so now he went to that presentation and talked from that point of view and he won the deal. It was a $10 million project and the biggest change he made was his perspective to talk from their point of view. The other change he made is he said less. A lot of people say too much and okay, and here's another problem that business leaders have Sloppy language. They use words and terms and cliches that are just wasted words, don't add value and demonstrates that they're no different from everyone else.

Andy Silvius:

They sound like everyone else do you have any examples of, of words or of that scenario?

George Torok:

yes, yes, in fact, um, yes, in fact. I have been writing a series on that and I call them weed words, weeds that choke your message, so okay. So here are a few or honestly, or you guys, which is crass and it demonstrates that you don't know that the word you is both plural and singular.

Andy Silvius:

I'm guilty of that one. I'm guilty of using that all the time.

George Torok:

It's an easy one, yeah, and you guys is fine with your friends? Hey guys, where do you want to do today? You know where are we going, but not to business colleagues and certainly not to customers and clients. So those are phrases. Another, oh, okay. Here's another. Oh, moving forward. What the heck does that mean? We can't move backwards because you're talking about time. You're just like going forward, moving forward. You're talking about time, right, so what does that mean? Just the next step, or here's what we're going to do now, but stop the silly phrases that don't add and demonstrate that you don't have original thought. Here's another word that's overused, awesome. Yep, I'm another word that's overused, awesome.

Andy Silvius:

Yep, I'm guilty of that one too. Actually, most of these I think I'm very guilty of using in messaging, whether it's email content, responses.

George Torok:

And the first step is to become aware. Once you become aware, you start to pick up on that and you might say, well, yeah, but I've been using this word forever and all my friends use it. Well, okay, but who are you trying to reach? What about your audience? How does your audience? And you might say, well, I sell to other people like me. Okay, then maybe it's okay, but if you're going to sell to me or people who have a better appreciation of the language, you're not going to get through. We're going to write you off as an amateur. One of these lawyers stood on stage at the networking event and started calling us you guys, what? That's how you talk to your clients. You guys, that's what you talk in your gang, in your gang. That's how you talk to your clients, you guys.

Andy Silvius:

That's what you talk in your gang In your gang. That's funny. The other thing I noticed that I do well, right, there is the ums and the ahs, and I think I do it when a lot of times I do it and I'm unaware until I go back and I see my content later. So you know, a lot of the times for the podcast, I'll go back and preview the edit, so the editor will send it to me and I watch it. And I noticed that when I'm, you know, talking about something that I didn't have a clear idea of prior to going into it, or maybe a response, there's a lot of ums and ahs instead of me just pausing and really clearly thinking out my thoughts, me just pausing and really clearly thinking out my thoughts, and we're all guilty of filler words, om's and ah's at times.

George Torok:

The point is to cut down on them and the best way, as you just pointed out, is to have it transcribed. Have one of your talks, one of your conversations, one of your transcribe and then actually see it, notice it and start becoming more conscious and aware. And here's a technique. Now, where you want to get to is when you are silent, you get more comfortable with silence. But when you've got those thinking moments, instead of making noise you could say, hmm, let me think about that a bit, or that's an interesting concept I hadn't thought about. Or let me clarify my thoughts first. So train yourself to come up with a phrase that pleases the part of your brain that wants to hear noise, without using the filler words so when you started public speaking and giving these presentations, I'm sure you weren't the most comfortable, were you?

Andy Silvius:

were you comfortable with being okay? So my question is the followup to that is how can business, over business owners, overcome fear or anxiety related to either public speaking presentations or even something as simple as making content for their social media?

George Torok:

The first point to keep in mind is that anxiety or fear of public speaking is normal. It is considered our most common fear. It's not our, you know. Some people say, oh, it's greater than death.

Andy Silvius:

No it isn't.

George Torok:

You know, if you've got a choice give a speech or die you'll do the speech every time. So don't be silly. But it is a common fear, and it's not really the fear of public speaking, it's the fear of being publicly judged. And that is a strong fear because we are social creatures. We depend on our social connection. I mean, look how much angst the pandemic caused us because we couldn't be with people and we want to be with people and we want to be respected by people and accepted. So when we speak, we know we are being judged. However, if people know you and like you and trust you, they forgive your flaws.

George Torok:

So how can you build your confidence? Well, first of all, give yourself permission to have occasional moments of anxiety. That are not the end of the world and it's not critical. It's not critical that you are a hundred percent confident all the time. It's just not going to happen.

George Torok:

I still I've been doing this for more than 25 years and occasionally I will still experience um, a moment, a second or two of inner panic. And the key is not because something doesn't go exactly the way, or I suddenly forgot something or whatever, or there's somebody in the audience who I didn't expect to be there. You know, for whatever reason, we, they don't need to know what's going on inside. So remember, they don't need to know. And when you have those moments of anxiety, here's, here's, here's one tip to keep in mind. Sometimes you think you, you feel like, oh, I don't know, I'm feeling terrible, I can't breathe, I don't know, or my heart's pumping. Well, it's supposed to pump. You just become more aware of your symptoms. It's not that anything's changed, it's just you become more aware because you're too self-focused. So, focus on the audience, focus on your purpose and take your attention off your symptoms.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, when you have those moments of inner panic, do you freeze or are you able to just move right through it?

George Torok:

And I'm glad you raised that, because the first response when we experience fear, the first response is to freeze. That's normal. We freeze before we fight or flight. It's freeze first, and it's important to keep that in mind that you might freeze for a second or two. And when we freeze here's what we often do we hold our breath, and that makes it worse.

Andy Silvius:

There's no oxygen.

George Torok:

There's no oxygen going to the brain. Yeah, and so? And then we even start panicking. Oh, I can't think my brain's not working Well cause you're not getting oxygen in there. So so when you have those moments, remind yourself to breathe, and breathe slowly, a slow breath, what they call belly breathing. Breathe from the bottom of your diaphragm. Don't do this thing with your shoulders. You're not breathing properly. Breathe deeply. So when you have that anxiety, take a second or two or three and just take a slow, deep breath, and the audience won't know you have a problem as long as you smile. When you do it Now, you won't feel like smiling because you're panicking, but if you make a little smile, what it does is it'll relax the audience, it'll relax you and it'll give you that two, three seconds that you need to calm yourself down and move on.

Andy Silvius:

It's great advice, you know. Uh, I'm gonna go back and watch this again because I I do podcasting and I'm comfortable on video. But I have, since a young kid, had a fear of being in front of the class or up and doing public speaking in front of large groups of people. And, um, you'd think most people would think I would probably be fine with it because I can jump on here and I can record a podcast and not have any issue with it, or I can jump on video, or I can be in a small setting and be fine, but as soon as it gets to a bigger room, uh, and even if I'm in the audience and I get called on, it's like pure, just terror comes over me and it's a weird feeling, right, and I think there's a lot of people that struggle with that.

George Torok:

So and and and I've. I've seen people that have. I know people who who say, george, I'm good one-to-one or one with a small group, but as soon as it gets more than 50 people or 100 people, I'm I terrified. And so here's the trick to overcome that First tip is to it's a mindset change. Don't see a crowd, see a collection of individuals.

George Torok:

So what you do is you look at a person over here, make eye contact with someone you, ideally someone you know. Make eye contact with them for three, four seconds and if they know you, they'll probably smile at you. That gives you some energy. You look at another person here while you're talking, but don't do this kind of thing where you're just waving your eyes back and forth or you don't see people. See people as individuals and use individual language. Don't use crowd language. Don't call them a crowd. Here's other crowd language Hello everybody, how is everybody? Is anybody? Those are all crowd words. Instead, how are you today? I'm glad to see you Use language that you would use talking to one person and that soothes your mind as, oh, I'm just having a conversation with one person. Well, there's a hundred people in the room, but I'm having a conversation with each one, one at a time. That's the mindset change you want to make, and then change your language to support that.

Andy Silvius:

As you were telling that piece. I just thought of all these things I can change about my podcast because I don't think I do it in the beginning. But as I sign off, I always address it as everyone, like as a crowd, and I should be speaking to the beginning. But as I sign off, I always address it as everyone, like as a crowd, and I should be speaking to the individual. Because when I you know, when I listen to a podcast and they're talking and directing it at me, saying you, I feel like they're talking directly to me and I don't know why. I mean, I've done a lot of podcasts. I think I just said this is episode 125 and I never thought about it that way from this perspective.

George Torok:

You is one of the most powerful words you can use, and so get rid of all the get, get rid of as many of the me and I as you can and turn it into you. So here's an example. Somebody might start off with a presentation and say today I'm going to talk about. Get rid of that, change it to today here's what you're going to learn.

Andy Silvius:

Have you ever read the book? I think it's called how to Build a Story Brand or Story Brand. It's something along those lines.

George Torok:

I don't know if I know that one. Who's that by?

Andy Silvius:

I can't think of the author right now. It's something I was thinking about asking you and I can't think of the author, but I'm pretty sure it's called how to Build a Story Brand. My question for you is there's a lot more information or a lot more people discussing building a brand based on telling stories. So, in your opinion, how important is storytelling in business communication and how can somebody develop that skill?

George Torok:

One storytelling is essential to messaging. Whether you're building a brand, whether you're leading a team, whether you're selling a product, a message, storytelling is essential. How do you build your storytelling? Well, we first of all recognize we love stories. Look at how big storytelling is in our economy, because you've got the movie business, you've still got television and the whole entertainment world is about storytelling. The music business is about storytelling. Sports is about storytelling.

George Torok:

So, first of all, start looking around you and notice the stories that you enjoy and ask yourself why do you enjoy this story? And you can learn to become a good, a better storytelling. One of the tricks is to just start making a diary of things that happen in your life and you might say, well, yeah, but nothing happens to me, my life is boring, I don't have any stories. Yes, you do what happens in your family, what about what's your routine, what's your hobbies, and write down these. So, for example, I told the story earlier about my son playing soccer. The story could be that simple of a setting, but yet there's a lesson there. So you look for the stories, you use the story to anchor a message, to anchor a lesson or a point, and people will remember the story. And because they remember the story, they remember the point. If you just give the point without a story, it it's not remembered.

George Torok:

And and here's an example that I heard of recently that was in story sell. So here's an example of I heard recently about a study that was done on the effect of adding a story to a product to sell a mundane product. And this was a study that was and I forget the source, I just heard it this week. So they did a study on selling simple products on eBay and what they did is they took 100 mundane items like tea kettles, oven mitts, wine glasses, and they posted them first with nothing written about them, and then they posted them again, not with a sales pitch, but with a story. And the story could have been as simple as saying oh, these were my grandmother's oven mitts and I remember every time I used to visit her she would use these mitts to take the muffins out of the oven that she would always bake for me. And they found that when they had stories they got 27 times more money.

Andy Silvius:

That's huge. And, as you're talking about that too, I'm just trying to think how I can implement stuff like that in our business, right Cause we have one of our businesses is a fairly boring, mundane business. It's bookkeeping, you know, and financial records, and so, uh, how do you tell stories around that, you know? It's just like figuring out those concepts behind it that we can share.

George Torok:

Yep, and often and when you have what might be considered a mundane business, a highly competitive business, there's a lot of people out there. So how do you differentiate yourself with your stories? So you might look for stories, and it doesn't have to be about the bookkeeping. The stories could be about the clients you serve and what they're doing and how you're just part of their team.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, I was talking to my wife about this recently because we were working on content and things for her to start preparing more video and I was telling her to share stories of client wins that she's helped them get things that they were struggling with, set up the framework of what they were struggling with and what happened after she came in and was able to help them and what the end result was.

George Torok:

Perfect, perfect.

Andy Silvius:

So, george, I have a couple more questions for you before we get wrapped up. I've been asking everybody this question just to get a range of perspectives from it, but what are your thoughts on AI and how do you think it has affected business owners and entrepreneurs currently and how do you think it will affect them in the future?

George Torok:

AI. I think it's a terrific technology. It's a new technology. Like any new technology, there are unknowns, some people might fear it, some people might, and there will always be early adapters. I'm using AI. I'm using AI to help create assets for my podcast interviews. I'm using AI to generate ideas to help me write. I don't use AI to write articles. I use AI to say, give me a list of things like topics or quotes or questions about this, and then I'm getting ideas from that. I questions about this and then I I'm getting ideas from that. How are people using it right now? Well, some are jumping on it earlier and, like everything else, there are those who are far ahead and using it and there will be failures and there will be things that don't work. In the future, it'll be just another part of the landscape.

Andy Silvius:

It'll be just like like remember when there was no internet yeah well, I remember growing up with we, we had just got internet and having this stupid modem that sounded like a squawking bird in the in the background going off, and then you couldn't use the phone at the time yep because they take the phone line.

Andy Silvius:

Nobody thinks about those things now because we're so used to this, just like oh, my video didn't load instantly or why can't I have? You know, it's like kids when they question. I know my daughter has asked me stuff, but I don't remember the exact questions. But just it makes you feel old when you start talking about those things. I, uh, I actually like the way you use it it's. I've talked about this um with multiple guests on on my show. I use it in a similar way.

Andy Silvius:

I use it a lot of times to brainstorm with myself because, I I struggle when I'm looking at a blank sheet of paper or a blank document and if I'm coming up with creative marketing work or frameworks or things that I'm trying to write, and I use it to just get my wheels turning and it doesn't mean I use the things that are coming up on there. It's it's like a back and forth and it gives me feedback. And when I use it for um, you know, if I were to go on google, you type in a search or you ask a question, you're just gonna have a bunch of results you have to sift through, whereas you go through a chat, gpt, and you can get that feedback loop and go back and forth and kind of refine your idea.

George Torok:

Yep, and you know, for example, I was writing a presentation tip about using humor in your presentation. So I asked chat gtp to say. It said give me a list of, give me a list of 10 quotes that used the word humor and communication. And it gave me a list and I looked at them and I picked three of them and I I revised them to fit my what I needed. But it but it, you know, and and of course it's rapid, it's fast.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, time saver for sure. So last question I have for you this is an action item. I always ask everyone but if you could leave listeners with one actionable item that would have a positive impact on them today. What would it be and why?

George Torok:

When it comes to your speaking. Every time you speak, record yourself, record yourself and study it later. Record it, get it transcribed and review it with the mindset of okay, what was your point and where was your point in the message? Was it buried or was it missing, and what could you do to get your point out faster and make it stronger?

Andy Silvius:

I like the tip. I like that tip around recording and then transcribing it, because if we're going to do a presentation or even a YouTube video or content, and you record it, transcribe it and go back and refine it and practice it, the message is going to be much more clear.

George Torok:

It always will be content and you record it, transcribe it and go back and refine it and practice it, the message is going to be much more clear.

Andy Silvius:

It always will be yeah, I love it. Well, george, it has been a pleasure having you on today. Thank you very much.

George Torok:

Andy, I'm delighted to be talking with you and every one of your listeners out there, one at a time on the Evolving Business Minds podcast.

Andy Silvius:

Absolutely, and we will go ahead. Just so you know, we'll plug all of your links in the show notes so that people listening today, if they want to reach out to you for your services, they will. They'll be able to. So thank you again.

George Torok:

Thank you. Thank you, this was fun.

Andy Silvius:

And I want to thank you for listening today. If you've enjoyed the show and felt like it provided you value, I'd love to hear in the comments what stuck out the most to you. We'll see you on the next one.