Unlocking Success: The Power of Public Speaking with Phillip Sessions

Join us for an exclusive one-on-one conversation with Phillip Sessions, the driving force behind Speaking Sessions today. In this episode, we delve into the critical role of public speaking skills in both business and sales. Phillip shares invaluable insights into how mastering the art of communication can propel your career forward and drive success in every aspect of your professional life. Whether you're a seasoned business leader or a budding entrepreneur, this episode offers practical tips and strategies to enhance your public speaking prowess and unlock new opportunities. Don't miss out on this enlightening discussion on the transformative power of effective communication.

Transcript

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What's up guys? Chris Bowen here with Level Up the Podcast. I'm joined today by Phillip Sessions of Speaking Sessions. Phillip is our resident expert when it comes to public speaking and really teaching people, you know, the skills necessary to speak in public. So Phillip, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little about yourself. Man, well, I appreciate you having me on the show. When it comes to me, father, husband, Christian, two times girl dad here coming up, I guess depends when this episode releases, probably going to be there. And it's funny, we're right there with each other with having our next child and everything on. So on the personal perspective, that's me, I'm an author, speaker, podcaster, just had you on the podcast. Yeah, man. Try it, try it, try to get there. I work to be the best version of myself every single day, but what I primarily focus on is helping leaders be able to get better with their communication. So whether that be speak on stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people, speak in front of their teams, or just present in any way, shape or form, I help leaders with their speaking skills so they can make sure that they deliver the message. that will then be able to go and transform people, transform the business, whatever that may be. So, it focused all in on speaking and communication. Yeah, I think that's such a lost art public speaking, especially when it comes to terms of business owners and the way that they can use that skill to, you know, not only be able to speak to their team, but to be able to explain what their business is, what their core values are, you know, they can give that 30 second elevator speech when somebody's interested, but if they don't know the art of public speaking... it makes that a lot more challenging, I feel like. Yeah, for sure. And one thing I always think about, I have an engineering background. So I think about this as well. When it comes to speaking engineers, so smart up here, they know so much. But everything gets lost because they either one, well, most of the time what happens is they explain in so much detail that people don't want to listen or it's so high level, yeah, it goes, goes right over everybody's head. And so they don't know how to communicate that. And therefore, because. they don't know how to communicate it. They're not looked at as like, oh my gosh, this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's talking about. They're like, oh my gosh, this guy's so smart. I don't know what he's talking about. And so people are lost and therefore they, one, if they want to get to management, they can't get to management now. But then two, they just, they don't get the information out there so that people, managers can make that decision. And this is exactly what happens to business owners. They know everything going on with the business. They know or should know the business in and out. They were the guy that was doing all the work and now they've leveled up to being the business owner. And so they have all this information and they just start talking like everybody else is also the business owner and understands the struggles of the business right now. And now everybody's lost or they start flying off the handle about somebody using too much toilet paper because Cash flows tight right now and then it was like what in the world I said, what the crap and no pun intended there Yeah and understand how to speak to different people in different ways. And I think that a lot of people don't realize that, especially when you're a manager or a business owner, that not everybody gets managed in the same way. And so picking up on those cues and learning how to speak to them directly and how they listen best is huge. Yeah, it is. It is. And while in theory that sounds kind of easy, it is, it is very difficult, but over time and through repetition, it gets easier. But what I found to be the easiest thing to do is to ask questions. As you're stating something, ask a question back like, Hey, I need you go over there and measure out what the pool would be. You know, look at the drawings and measure out the pool. And then if they give you kind of a blank look, or if you're like, are they actually paying attention? You could say like, Hey, do you know where the drawings are at? And if they're Oh, wait, what? I need the drawings. Then you're like, Okay, really, they weren't listening. That's exactly right. It can show and it can kind of, it helps build that engagement with people as well, when you ask a question versus just spitting at the mouth about something I can imagine, you know, and so it really helps build a conversation. Exactly, exactly. But then also save some of that headache too, because I've been right there where I'll ask somebody to do something and yeah, yeah. Okay. And you're like, Oh, cool. They got it. They were a hundred percent on board only for them to not either one, not do it at all or two, they do it so wrong that now we have to go and do double work. So asking little questions like that helps you not to be like, Hey, did you listen to me and ask them and make it sound like you're talking down to them? But now you can gauge if they heard or not, because if they didn't know where the drawings were at, well, one, maybe they just didn't know and they actually heard you, but two, they'd be like, well, what do I need the drawings for? It was like, oh, okay. And you can start to learn how to talk with them and help them understand. And that's really coaching opportunities and all sorts of other stuff that you can get into from there, but you can gauge that person based on that, based on asking those questions and stuff. Yeah, I agree. It kind of goes back to that conversation we had, you know, earlier today about, you know, when your wife's talking to you and you're sitting there watching TV, you're doing something and she's talking, talking. You go back, you answer to her and then you go back to focusing on what you were doing. And then, you know, two seconds later, she keeps talking to you again. Wants to know why you're not listening. You know, you got to make sure you're keeping people engaged when you're having those conversations with them. You know, That way, not only are they learning, but you're speaking to them a little bit more clear and they're able to understand a little bit better, I feel like. Yeah, and that doesn't mean we need to be a motivational speaker or sound like we're really eloquent or, or make sure we're using our hands or moving around. Like, no, we're not talking about being engaging that way. It's just, yeah, going and asking those questions, getting them to buy into the conversation by contributing back. Like, Hey, what do you think we should do here? Which is a coaching tool right there for you too, to get them to start thinking. about what they need to do on that job. So especially those younger people, that's the way you communicate with them to help them be able to learn it and know what do I need to teach them? Because that's the big thing that I see a lot of business owners in the trade space not do, is that they just assume that everybody knows like them or assume that everybody's gonna start picking up on things like them. No, I would almost say 99% of people and all statistics are made up, 99% of people Do not just think about what do I need to do next? Oh, what should I be doing right now? They're not gonna be proactive. They're gonna be reactive. So for you to be proactive, have that conversation ahead of time or start asking them. And when you get them to say, oh, I think I probably wanna have the drawings before I go measure out that pool or go measure out what this deck, the dimensions of the deck need to be and what my measurements or what my cuts are gonna be. and everything, if they start saying that now they're bought in to the work that's being done versus you saying, Hey, boy, go cut that wood for me. Hey, boy, go measure that out. Like, you know, go here, go there. Yeah, yeah. So you're gonna get more that buy in and you're gonna have somebody that's happier now as well. And I think to me, I mean, I like working with people versus telling them what to do. So it just makes a better work environment. it builds a relationship really is what it does. And learning how to speak to people helps build that and foster that relationship. And on another note, I think that it also helps when it comes to sales. When you know how to talk to people. You know, it may start with talking to your team or talking to others, but it translates to sales in my opinion, because then you pick up on some of those cues of asking questions, being engaged in conversation. You learn what kind of their pain points are. And then once you know that, it helps you close that deal. Yes. So true there. And, and with that, and I've talked to several other small business owners about this, like you've got your guys out there doing the work and perhaps you're on a, another job site, or maybe you're at a point where you've got a whole sales team, you've got project managers and they're kind of bouncing around from prospect to prospect or, or job site to job site. And they're not there, but you have somebody come up to. your frontline worker, the person with the shovel, with the hammer, whatever that looks like. And they say, Hey, do you think we could add this here? Well, if they don't know how to communicate first of all, it's going to make your company not look good. But if they're like, Oh yeah, we can do that. Like, because yeah, physically they can do the work, but if they don't understand the business aspect of that, if like, no, that that's a major change that's going to require a change order. And, you know, and then there's like whole timeline, there's all this stuff. But if they could start to understand that you might, well, hey, you know, that's, that's something we could definitely look at, but we need to get with the project manager to be able to say like, Hey, can we add this in or even be able to stay on timeline? Just, just some generic stuff like that. But can they have a conversation and the frontline workers are the ones that usually get left out of that. But if you can teach them that helps you get some upsells. especially when you're on a job site and everything. That's exactly right. Question for you, if you were working one-on-one with a business owner and they really wanted to work on that 30 second pitch, what are some tips that you would give them to be able to do that? In your mind as a public speaker, what is the ideal 30 second elevator pitch? You want to be very specific to who it is that you're speaking to. So much like marketing with what you do, you want to niche down. So I was actually, actually did this on a webinar the other day for, uh, blue collar business owners. And that's one of the things with the owner of that group, he had the, this idea and it was pretty good. Like what it was, but I'm like, Hey, here's what you could do to make that a little bit better. Cause he said like, Hey, I helped. uh, was it, I helped, I helped blue collar business owners between the ages of 20 and 30, be able to scale their business. And I said, why don't you say, yeah, well, he wanted to be really niche there. Yeah. So that, so that was, that was a beautiful thing that he wanted to be niche between 20 and 30. I was like, but between 20 and 30, or 20 to 30 year olds, like that's a little fumbly with words. Why don't you say 30 and under. because I mean, it's not a couple more years, but you never know who might be 18 or 19 that feels like now they can't come to you. And not to open up the niche, but when you say 30 and under, that's that much more clear. It's a better statement than 20 to 30 year olds. Like that just sounds a little bit, I don't know. It just sounds better. Yeah, it's a lot cleaner. And so I would say that like, make sure, like try and find ways to make it clean. So maybe you have something like, oh, I work with 20 to 40 year olds, or I work with businesses doing five to 10 million. And that might be okay, but maybe you say instead, like, I work with people that make 10 million and under or something like that. Like you could change up something like that, but I would, the more specific you can get with it, the better, because what you're doing is identifying a very specific person that can then say, that's me versus, uh, you know, I kind of fit in that. five to $10 million range. But if somebody says, I work with people from five to $5.1 million, that's a lot closer. That's very, very niche or like Alex Harmozzi kind of talks about that too. Like we work with people with like, three to 5 million or something like that. I forget what he says, but he doesn't just say, yeah, we just we help people, you know, scalar businesses from like, you know, whatever it is between this range, but he sets a specific range to talk about that. Not that he can't help people below that or people above it, but that's his ideal target. And so that's what you want to do in your elevator pitch, identify that exact target, because you will still have those outliers come to you, but you're also gonna get rid of a lot of people that aren't confident, that wouldn't be good customers, because you've identified that they're not your customer in the first place. And those people that... You know, maybe you were at the five to$10 million range that there may be that like three or four. They're like, you know what, but I'm on that track. I think like, you know, I think I do fit into this or eventually will. And, and they'll still reach out with the people that, oh, well, you know what? I'm not five to 10 million, whatever. And you might miss out on some work, but that's okay because you're going to work with your ideal people because you said that. Yeah. one of the things that we work through with our clients in marketing is, you know, discovering who that ideal client is. And so when I ran my construction business, we decided that it was, you know, people between the ages of 35 to 45. And so we crafted our elevator pitch to, we help families create memories in their backyard. Hmm. You know, and that's really kind of what we left it at because, you know, that was the goal was we were targeting people who had kids, you know, people that wanted to enjoy time outside and really kind of worked everything around that. I think you got to figure that out. too, just to just go in that real quick, like family. So you identified family. So if I don't have a family, yeah, you could still help me, but I don't have a family. So maybe it's not the right fit and to make memories in my backyard. That is a beautiful, it's, it is open ended, but it's also beautiful as well. Cause you're talking about family memories. And so now it makes the customer or potential customer now envision what those family memories could look like. with your business. So that's like a beautiful elevator pitch right there. I guess that was probably more of a mission statement, but a mission statement there, yeah. pitch to kind of describe what we did. And, you know, we worked that into it and it really helped us a lot. Um, and I think that that's what a lot of small business owners are missing. Is that kind of that catchphrase or, you know, how to say what their ideal demographic is within that elevator pitch. Yeah, but it goes beyond like because you could have said like we help make you know, make pools for families Okay, great. Like yeah, cool. Wow. Okay. You you touch me a little bit. I am I do have a family I want a pool But when you say make family memories, it's like it makes you different as a pool builder Now because like oh, yeah, I would make a lot of memories here with my family And I do need a pool and everything versus like, okay cool. It's another pool guy. Like i'll find one like guys. He's okay He likes family focused on that. But when you put that memory in there, just it, it differentiates you in the market and makes it kind of that unique selling proposition a little bit. Yeah, and it evokes a little bit of emotion from people as well, when they start thinking about making memories with their families as well, which, you know. we can invoke, the more we'll get people on board and just put politics is always the easiest one to draw this emotion. You know, most people they're on one side or the other because they believe in the certain things. There's a lot of emotion behind that. And that's why they're so strong on this side, or they're so strong on that side, because of that emotion, it's not the logic of Oh, this, you know, XYZ on this side, XYZ on that side or ABC, whatever. It's about the emotion behind it. Yes, there is some logic, but the more emotion you can bring in, the better it's going to be, and the more you're going to differentiate yourself and the more people are going to want to work with you or not work with you, which if they don't want to, yeah, that's the people that you don't want because they don't jive with you, which again, we'll go back to politics, Republican versus Democrat. Some people may say, and I'm not trying to say I'm here on one side or the other, but if you're on the Democrat side, Republicans don't like you. If you're on the Republican side, Democrats don't like you. The same thing with business was identifying your niche and putting that emotion in there. They can identify if they're with you or against you, which helps filter out those bad clients for you. Yeah, I can absolutely help with that. And then, so when you're dealing with clients, a lot of times that are, you know, really trying to understand how to communicate better, what are some of the things that you run through with them to really help them out in that aspect? The main thing is, is figure out really with every conversation, every presentation, what is the takeaway that you want to come out, like your objective to come out of that conversation, that presentation, or what do you want the team, the audience, the individual to take away when they leave that presentation? It's too often times we don't set up what is the end goal. We don't think about that end in mind. It's like going on a road trip and saying we're going on a road trip. Cool. Where are you going? We're just going we're going on road trip. All right, well, hopefully you get there. But how do you know you actually got there? One, so how can you measure it if you don't know where you're going? And then two, like, you know, was it the most efficient route? Three, like, are you are you sure you even got there where you were thinking about going? And so when we go into this happens. Most often, I feel in one-on-one conversations that are crucial, we just go into it and then hope that we can get through that tough conversation. And that usually ends up becoming a train wreck, a lot of emotions, we get pissed off at each other. And then guess what? Nothing was resolved. Yeah. nothing got discussed that you wanted to discuss. Exactly. But if we can come in there and say, this is where we want to be at the end of the conversation, here's what we want to transpire. We can kind of reverse engineer that and make steps towards that. But also, especially if it's a very tense conversation, when things go off left field, or they go off the beaten path, you bring it back in much like the GPS reroute you back to that conversation. And especially if you're having to speak up, if you're not the business owner. Or even if, you know, it's so, or if you're, if you're not the business owner or even as the business owner, you got to go speak to investors or whatever. You can bring things back. He's like, Hey, we're here to talk about this today. We're not talking about that. We're not talking about something else. Let's table that for now. Let's get back on track and everything. You could keep everybody on track with that. yeah, absolutely. I think that bringing it back to politics, I think politicians actually do a really good job of that when they're speaking or they're debating, they always bring it back to what they want to focus on. You know, sometimes they'll just, you know, dance around every single answer, every single question that's out there, but they'll bring it back to what they want to focus on. You know, and so I think there's, yeah. about the salsa night and oh my gosh, but can you believe about abortion? Remember, like, what, what we were just talking about? How do we get on abortion? But that's what they want to talk about. And yeah, they are very good about that. They're not great when it comes to speaking in general, most of them. But they are good about getting to the subject that they want to talk about. They'll find any way, shape or form to get to their subject. exactly right. But they're really good when they veer off that path in the middle of a debate, they bring it right back to what they want to talk about. And so, you know, I think that's a lesson that some people can learn, maybe not to the degree that they do it, but, you know, how to bring a conversation back to what your end goal is. So I think that's huge. And one way not to do it is don't just try and over talk the other person. If we want to use politics as an example, again, that that's just rude. So especially when you're talking with employees, I mean, there are, there are times where you might have to step up and talk a little bit like, Hey, we've got to get this back on track, but I would use that more of as a last resort. Or if things just are so off track and we got to get it back, but don't use it. in a sense of how some of these politicians do it. They just talk louder and louder so they can keep talking and being heard. Use it more to get the meeting back on track versus just to hear me, hear Philip, hear Chris. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. You don't want to be rude. You don't, you know, you'd really don't want to put people off, you know, when you're talking to them either. I think that's a great tip right there. So what other kind of nuggets do you have for us today, man? Anything good that you can think of off the top of your head? So when it comes to like meeting structure, I think this is something that I like to think of this as like bringing corporate structure to small businesses. One thing that I see, you know, even in corporations, they, they struggle with this, especially when people are new to leading meetings is they don't have any kind of agenda. So very similar to a presentation, to a conversation, have an agenda set up. And if you can share it ahead of time, that's great. but even just have it for yourself. And that's like literally the intro. So we're gonna go through and just for example, we've got a 30 minute meeting. So from 12 to 12.05, maybe we're doing an introduction of what we're gonna talk about today. And this is where I actually go over the agenda. And then from 12.05 to 12.15, I've got 0.1. From 12.15 to 12.20, I've got 0.2. From 12.20 to 12.25, I've got 0.3. And then we close out from 12.25 to 12.30 or any closing remarks. summarization, stuff like that. So just having some kind of meeting agenda to say, hey, here's our talking points for the day. And you don't have to be right on track and, oh, we're at 10 minutes, we got to move on to the next point. No, but you need to have that to set that intentionality and then set up the talking points in order of priority. And that way, like you can stay on track with that. And then if you don't get to the other ones. you know, like you got to this one because it was the most important and then to the next and the next, but always summarize at the end what was talked about, and then follow it up with an email, also known as meeting minutes. But a lot of times, people don't do that. And I'm guilty of this to where we'll have a meeting, we'll talk about something, and I don't follow it up. Now, if it's a one on one meeting, you probably don't need to do it. But if you talked about some It's a group meeting. topics, you need to do it. You know, if we're like, hey, we're catching up. Like maybe we talked about, you know, next steps, you know, what we're going to do over the next week. Maybe you're talking with your supervisor about it. You may not do that, but if it's talking about like, hey, we've got, you're talking with a customer or something. Like, okay, so the customer, you get on a sales call and you go these things. So you may not have the agenda necessarily with the sales call. but just to give an example of like meeting minutes, but okay, so we talked about XYZ and you might summarize that as in, so if I heard you correctly, you're wanting to get a quote on XYZ. And they're like, yeah, that's exactly what I want. Okay, cool. And then you can send an email, hey, you know, gonna prepare the quote for you over XYZ or maybe it's more of a change order. Yeah, exactly. This is what we talked about and give a summary because and why this is so important, this is what we call CYA, cover yourself, essentially. right. Uh, and so we want that in writing because just talking about it verbally is not going to do you any good. And I'm not a lawyer, so you have to go to your lawyer about this, but the person with the most documentation probably will win. So if you have that in writing, you wrote that and you sent out an email saying, Hey, here's what we talked about. Here's our next steps, whatever. And they never respond to that to disagree. And I would probably put that in the email too. Based on our conversation, here's what we talked about. If there's anything I missed, please let me know. And they never respond. Well, now you've got it documented that this is what you sent out. It went to them and they agreed essentially because they never rebuttled against that. So you've kind of put this trail on that, but it also reminds everybody again of what those next steps are. So if this is like a continual meeting and it's a status update, you're working on a project, now you can go back, hey, last week we talked about this. Did, did, uh, you know, Chris, did you get XYZ done that you wanted to get done? Oh man. No, I forgot about that. Or, oh, no, I don't remember being told that. Well, that was in the email last week. Like you can hold people accountable and everything. So that'd be the next thing. Like put, put a structure to your meetings and have meeting minutes afterwards that you send out as reminders, as holding people accountable to the work that they said they would do. Well, and I think not only do the, the meeting layout matters because of the fact that it allows people to focus differently as well. So I've always found that I focus more when I know the structure of a meeting versus when a meeting is just kind of held blindly. You know, you kind of have an idea when you see that layout where you need to focus intently upon. So that's what I've always found. That, and then, and then the other side of that too, because everybody's got their idea of what's important. If it's on an agenda and say, you know, you want to talk about safety first as your first point, but I need, I'm the project manager coming in and I really need to talk about the timeline. Well, I'm like, Oh man, this is important. And then you're talking about safety. And I'm like, what the crap, man. Like the timeline is important. Well, if I have that on the agenda that we're going to talk about the timeline, now the project manager doesn't feel like he needs to butt in and be like, Hey, hold on. We need to talk about the timeline. Don't forget about that. And now he can wait till his turn comes or when that time to talk about that in the meeting and you know very well, and most business owners were guilty as entrepreneurs, we don't focus in on one thing, but the more we focus in on one thing, the more productive we are on that one thing. So. having that agenda allows you to focus in. And it's amazing how much more you can get done in a 30 minute meeting with an agenda versus without. And corporates great at doing this, probably I mean small, basically all businesses, but having a meeting to have a meeting to talk about the meeting we're gonna have. Like we all do that. So when you have that agenda, you throw out a lot of those meetings. So, and I think that kind of helps to what we talked about earlier as well, about staying on track. And I really think when you have a layout of what's going to be talked about, that really keeps you on track for what you're going to speak on. And it keeps you kind of on subject on, you know, for that set amount of time, because then you realize, well, this is what's important. I need to speak on this first. Then I need to get here and then here. If I'm not. staying focused and being where I need to be, we're not going to finish on time as well. You know, so I think that helps in a lot of different ways. Yeah, exactly. Structure, timeliness, all of that good stuff, which meetings eat up a ton of our time and really resources and money. I mean, it gets pretty costly. I've been in several meetings where you look around and you're like, yeah, this 30 minute meeting probably just cost us one or two grand, like just from the salaries we're paying, not, not to mention the amount of time we're sitting in here rather than doing productive work to move the business forward. So. That's exactly right. Yeah, you can eat up some money pretty quick just to have meetings. So it's a, it's a cost savings to create that structure. Well, Philip, I really appreciate your time today. What is one thing that our listeners can take away from you today? If you want to get better at speaking, just start with doing videos. Social media is free and Chris, I know you love this. Chris can help you with the marketing aspect of this, but if you just want to get better at speaking and using your voice, start with a simple video. Do it for 30 days. You can talk about anything. I don't care. You can talk about the food you ate today. Just get on that phone and start talking to that phone, post it on social media and watch over the next 30 days. how much better and more comfortable you're gonna be with speaking by just doing a 30 second video a day. That's exactly right. Hey, that's how Keith Lee became a food blogger and now he gets millions of views. So, you know. But you just gotta do it. You just gotta do it. And so for those that are interested in getting ahold of you that are interested in working with you, what's the best way for them to do it? You go to my website, speaking sessions.com or find me on Facebook at the real Philip sessions. And that's Philip with one L. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today, man. I hope you have a blessed rest of your day. Congratulations on your baby, because when this airs, you will have a beautiful, healthy baby girl. And so just want to say congratulations, man. Thanks Chris, thanks for having me. You too.