Becoming a Captivating Speaker

Do you wish you could captivate your audience and deliver impactful presentations? Today on Inspector Toolbelt Talk, we're breaking down everything you need to know about public speaking for home inspectors. We explore the significance of understanding your audience and conducting thorough research, and we're also sharing some top-notch advice about how to balance timing and information flow. No more worries about cramming too much in a short span of time!

In our second segment, we dive into the nitty-gritty of creating effective presentations. We'll expose you to the power of an organized outline and the magic of visuals. Not just that, we even spill the beans on how to use private notes to supplement your visuals. And if you think that's all, wait till you hear about our unique 'three-second rule' for eye contact! It's all about bolstering your confidence and emphasizing your key points.

Finally, we take a deep dive into audience engagement and preparation. We're recommending an easy approach to long presentations: breaking them up into shorter sessions and rotating speakers to keep the audience hooked. We'll also touch upon the importance of dressing appropriately for presentations and seminars, even going as far as to suggest a personal care kit! We wrap up by highlighting the crucial aspect of genuine care in interactions. So, tune in, absorb, and get ready to transform your public speaking skills! Don't forget to check out the Inspector Toolbelt app.

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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.

Transcript

Ian Robertson  
Welcome back to another riveting episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. How are you, David? Welcome back.

David Nyman  
Doing well, how you doing, Ian? 

Ian Robertson  
Hey, not bad. You said that very kinda almost like Barry Manilowish. Like, how are you doing, Ian?

David Nyman  
It's not that good. 

Ian Robertson  
Not that good. 

David Nyman  
Yeah, just coming over COVID. So got a little bit of deeper voice than usual, I guess.

Ian Robertson  
Got your batman voice going on.

David Nyman  
Yeah, we're actually had a friend. He'd always go on Instagram when he had a cold. Start recording videos like I sound so cool right now. Everybody's laughing at him.

Ian Robertson  
That's awesome. Well, it's funny that you can't speak normally today, because those are actually what we're going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about public speaking for home inspectors. And this was actually your idea, but I thought it was pretty fantastic. Because we do a lot of public speaking and not when I say public speaking, I'm not talking about just in front of four or five people at the inspection. But most of us who own our own business, or even if we work for another inspector, some of us will do office presentations, we'll do conferences, we'll do first time homebuyer seminars, the whole nine yards anywhere from five to hundreds, and sometimes, sometimes 1000s of people, we have an opportunity to and very rarely, but most of the time, it's going to be in a couple dozen range. So I've actually had home inspectors asked me about this, not necessarily what do I present, although that's a question that we're actually going to do in a podcast coming up here, what to present, but we're going to talk about the basic principles of public speaking.

David Nyman  
Yeah. Sorry, I hope that people don't pay too much attention to what I say, though, because I know a lot of principles, I still have to work on how to apply them on my own speaking, I think.

Ian Robertson  
Well, you're a very experienced public speaker. So you've been doing public speaking for 20, 30 years now? 

David Nyman  
Yeah, something like that. 

Ian Robertson  
Somewhere in that range. Me and you both belong to the same public speaking school or we've both been students and also instructors in it, so to speak. And what's the biggest crowd you've ever spoken to?

David Nyman  
That's a good question. I don't think, I mean, near 1000. I don't think over 1000, small crowd.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, no, I Well, I'm usually speaking like you in front of maybe 100 people, or 200. The largest crowd I've done is a little over 3000. And, you know, I've technically I get paid to do public speaking at times. I feel really weird saying that. But yes, people do actually pay me to use my words in front of people's faces. So the only reason we bring that up is to add some validity to things that we've learned as basic principles for public speaking, that work in both small and large crowds. We're going to give some basic principles, but stay tuned and listen in, because we're also going to give you some very real tips and tricks, some things that you can use, you know, big principles or small principles, all aside. The classic okay, if you're in a situation, never picture people in your underwear, if you ever heard that expression, picture people with more clothes on.

David Nyman  
It can't get worse.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, it can't get worse. So, David, what's the first point of our discussion today?

David Nyman  
Oh, I figured the first point to start with this. The first point you should start with when you prepare a public speaking assignment of any kind, is to do research, you want to know, first of all, I know your subject really well, you know, talking about home inspectors knowing exactly what you want to talk about. But also, you want to pair that up with knowing the audience that you're going to present this for. Because if you're speaking about home inspection in front of a group of home inspectors, you can go, you know, really deep, really technical. On other hand, if you do that in front of a group of real estate agents, they're really not gonna care too much about the things you're talking about.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. And I think the doing research part is what I see often lacking the most, because we walk in and we say, well, how bad can it be, I'm going to talk about home inspections. I do that every day, but there's always going to be somebody and I think the most common application of what we're talking about is office presentations, and buyer seminars and things like that. I think that's the most common application for most of us as inspectors. But if we're gonna go in there and talk about, you know, just general home inspection, we better know that subject really well. Somebody might throw a curveball at us like we're talking about decks, like okay, today on my presentation, we're gonna talk about decks. Now somebody asks you about a new code that came out or certain type of footing that we didn't really know about, even though we're going to talk about five minutes, about five points, we might want to research the other 30 points that may come up by that one dude in the audience, say, and I read on Google that you can't do this. There's always going to be one, the more researched we are the better.

David Nyman  
Yeah, but at the same time, you want to make sure that you keep your time in mind. So, yes, you want to prepare a wide range of subjects, but keep these main points in your mind, you know, these are the points I'm going to touch on. And say you have a 15 minute window. Okay, I got three minutes for each of these points. This is the information I want to share about those points that it's vital that I get across. Having extra information in your back pocket doesn't hurt. But if you try to squeeze too much information in a short window, you're gonna end up either rushing through it or not giving each point the attention it deserves.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, timing is actually a really good one. I see a lot of people make the mistake on that, especially the broker, if they say you have 15 minutes, everybody in the office knows you have 15 minutes, they're sitting in the office, no matter how interesting we think we sound or how interested they look, when 15 minutes hits. It's interesting. And we've been taught this, that once that time stops, people by nature start to realize things are going overtime. I did a 30 minute presentation in front of about 120, 130 people this past weekend, and I ended at 29.3 minutes exactly. Because even one minute over time, everything you said the 10 minutes prior to that now all just went out the window, they're like, is he still going? Why does it feel like you should be stopping?

David Nyman  
Yeah, yeah, they stopped listening right at the point. That's funny. That's just the way it works, too. I mean, of course, everybody has busy lives. But even if they have a large window of time open, it's something mental, that just shuts off when you hit that time that if they know that you have a time limit.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, so it takes into account practice, we want to make sure that we practice thoroughly. And account for variables, somebody asks a question and takes a little while to answer. So if we have a 15 minute presentation, set up five minutes for quick Q&A, maybe at seven minutes, or even eight minutes, because we really, really want to end on time. A couple other reasons why if I were the broker, and I invited you, David, to come give a 15 minute presentation, and it took, you know, 18 minutes or 25 minutes, I'm probably not going to have you back that readily because now it ate into other points that I needed to bring out. Now my agents aren't hitting the streets like they should be, I brought in bagels, and I wanted everybody to have a bagel, it takes the attention away from what the broker actually needed there. So if you end on time, it also gives you an opportunity to leave them wanting more. That's a basic principle of public speaking, always end at the peak, too many people wait until nobody's asking questions, and nobody seems interested. Okay, that's the time to end. If you got to that point, you gave a terrible presentation, because all they remember is the end. When nobody wanted to listen anymore. Always end when you have three or four hands up and people are still asking questions. Say hey, listen, thank you very much. But I want to hand this over to your broker. If you have questions, I'll be in the back. You know, if you stay for the rest of the presentation, homebuyer seminars, that's the best always end with hands up. Even if you have time left it there's two or three hands up, stop. Because now at the end of the presentation, say come see me personally, and then you end up having a little crowd around you talking after the presentation.  Yeah. And it's a good time to to have your business cards handy. Say, I have a stack of business cards, if you want to email me a question later on, or call me, a good way to spread that word.  Yeah, exactly. So be prepared for anything, but go under time, every single time. And that's super hard, especially when everybody seems to be getting into it. But there's also a perception, maybe the brokers getting into it, but his 20 agents aren't. Or maybe there's two or three agents sitting up front asking lots of questions about septic systems. But now there's 18 agents behind them going Oh, my goodness, when is this going to be over? Always end early.

David Nyman  
Yeah, I think we all wanted to strangle one of our workmates at one point or another when they kept asking questions.

Ian Robertson  
Let me ask you another question. This meeting was over 10 minutes ago. So let's get into the nitty gritty of that, too. So now we've, now we're prepared, we've practiced and we're when we're doing our practice, we're under time, be prepared to speak a little bit quicker qhen you're on site. With a little bit of nerves and everybody watching us. If I have a presentation, that's 30 minutes, I practice it right out at 30 minutes, and then I'll usually be done between 27 to 29 minutes, that kind of thing.

David Nyman  
Same thing for me, I always speak, it's funny that you know, you keep telling yourself, you know, I want to keep it calm, keep them you know, moderate tempo, so it's easy to understand, but once you're in front of the crowd, or in front of the camera, you just keep going a little little bit faster.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, exactly. So just a couple of really good tips, though, for now getting into the nitty gritty of preparing. So have an outline, but not a manuscript. I usually will write down on a card, a sentence or two. So if I'm going to go on I'm going to talk about maybe the buyback guarantee, I might write down pre listing inspections, and then I might write down buyer's inspections. So now I remember the two main points, if we do any more than that, and we keep looking at our cards. Have you ever watched a talk show, and a guy kept looking down at his cards? It feels unreal, right? It doesn't feel natural.

David Nyman  
Yeah. And when it comes to outlines, it's interesting, because there, there are a lot of different ways to do outlines out there. We can't go into them all. But some like to use a mind map where like thoughts are connected on a paper, something I've found that works pretty well for me is using pictures as an outline. Like, I guess I'm kind of a visual person that way. So if I see a picture that helps me remember, okay, this is what I'm going to talk about with this picture. And which is why I actually put into our notes, a PowerPoint presentation, if that's the way you work, you know, having a picture here and there. That will pop into your mind. Okay, I have this picture of this basement for this reason, because I'm going to talk about this point. And then you can talk freely about that. And you have those pictures as your personal outline, maybe a word are here scribbled, here and there scibbled down.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, so be careful with PowerPoints. What I've seen guys do with PowerPoint presentations, and I've had brokers complain about it to me is they just read the PowerPoint presentation. So you have a big long paragraph or even just a few sentences. And it's like, we can read that faster than you can in our minds. Don't do that, do like you just said, have a picture. Okay, guys, here's how a septic system is hooked up. So actually, one of the most requested presentations, ironically, that we have are about septic systems. Now, I thought that was funny, because we had some really great presentations and people were like, tell us about poop in our backyard. Okay, don't have a lot of words.  Yeah, like, why not? We'll talk about that. But brokers actually have us visit multiple offices with that presentation. But um, yeah, very few words, you can actually have notes on the back end as a little pro tip of your PowerPoint presentation. So you have private notes that go on your screen, side by side with your picture that you put up for everybody to see. So the private notes they can't see. But again, if you're just reading them, or you're reading a manuscript, you're doing it wrong. A little tip here, I one time did a presentation that I was there, and also a dry basement company, the dry basement company people walked in, and he was a professional salesman that they hired. And I couldn't believe it. Because he didn't have a really great way about him. When he talked, he looked at the floor, or he looked at his hands. And he's talking like he was talking to himself in the corner. And he leaned up against the wall. And you're kind of like, you know, when you're kind of like waiting in line, you're kind of bouncing off the wall just slightly. That's what he was doing. Talking, it was the most awkward presentation, you could see the agents, agents remember our professional salespeople, and when we're doing seminars, these people are usually have jobs. So a lot of them will have jobs where they have to do public speaking, maybe they've done courses, kind of getting judged a little bit. So a couple, a couple of things that we can do. There's what's called the three second rule, make eye contact across the room with separate people for no more than three seconds, and no less than one. Now we're not we don't have to go out there and time it but just practice. Like maybe put up a couple of, this sounds weird, maybe put up a couple of posters or get some friends, practice your speech in front of them, which we'll talk about. It shouldn't be a speech, it should be a presentation, and practice three seconds of eye contact, matter of fact that follow this channel on YouTube, and they talked about that if you look at movie stars that do really well with their speeches, like shows and stuff like that, like wow, that was really great. Like notice this person, this person basically said the same thing. But this person needs the three second rule. They looked over their whole audience. And they never really went back to the same person twice until they got through most everybody. Three second rule. So we're not talking about when you drop something on the floor. That's the five second rule.

David Nyman  
Who doesn't want to hear about that? I don't believe in that one.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah don't. I don't think that's proven. But there's our first step. And if you have a hard time looking at people in the eyes, look at their forehead, just above their brow, they won't be able to tell 99% of the time.

David Nyman  
I can always tell, like someone looks at my forehead, and it's just going up.

Ian Robertson  
I'm not talking about looking at the top of their forehead, like in between their nose just above the brow. It's a nice trick because sometimes when like I do it a lot and when people are awkward, some people are gonna be awkward. Let's be honest, some people are gonna be awkward and loud. You're gonna have the one agent in the back talking and this agent here, just making unbreaking eye contact. That's the worst thing we could do as a public speaker,unbreaking eye contact. But you see somebody else doing it. They're like, I'm gonna stare you down and I don't blink. So we're uncomfortable with that, me, I'm just I love awkwardness. I'm like, Oh, cool. Staring contest. I'll even talk about it, I'm like..

David Nyman  
I might or might not have done that to other people in my life. Yeah, exactly.

Ian Robertson  
I love to roll up my tie at meetings and then let it drop when they look at me. But if we feel awkward around that stuff, stop making eye contact and it helps, just look above their eyes and people won't be able to tell, the three second rule, that's a good one. 

David Nyman  
Just don't use your laser pointer to point where you're looking.

Ian Robertson  
And there are some awkward, like when I've taught courses for real estate agents and home inspectors, they went, it was, I'm still in New York State home inspector instructor just don't really ever do it. There are some awkward people in there. Like just, I'm like, man, I do this a lot. And you're still just making this really weird up here. I just, I don't know. Yeah, I had, I had the peanut gallery a couple of times where two guys in the back, just making crude jokes the whole time, because they were bored. And I'm, I'm like, okay, here we are, we have eight hours of this. So I hope you run out. Another thing is we're going to talk about gestures, matter of fact, the same YouTube channel that I follow, they talk about a very common gesture is kind of like talk and slap our hands at the side, you know, we kind of hold our hands down, raise a hand talk and say, if you look up on the roof, and then our hand immediately goes back down to our side, and it almost slaps our thigh. That is almost immediately the worst possible way. So we talked about that guy leaning against the wall, stand up straight, decent posture, but not awkward, like we're sticking out our chest, don't cross our arms gesture with our arms forward, and our palms up. And interestingly enough, they showed two people, one guy gesturing where he was either holding the podium or hand at the side, and other people gesturing versus they use Tom Holland interestingly enough as as an example, I'm like I watch Tom Holland talk about this subject. And he's gesturing with his hands up, with his palms up rather. And for some reason that just felt more comfortable to watch. So there's a little trick, gesture with our palms up and our hands in front of us.

David Nyman  
The tricky thing about gestures is that it's good to have them. But if you don't do them, right, it's almost worse to have them than not. They can look very mechanical, especially if you repeat the same gesture over and over and over and over and over again. You know, it takes a lot of practice to get that one down right. And it's good to have someone to actually tell you, you know, that gesture, maybe you should stop doing same, same movement over and over.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, you know, and there's two types of gestures. There's emphatic gestures, and there are descriptive gestures. So an emphatic gesture is we're talking and our emotions are coming out. And we're gesturing for emphasis. You know, we might not that if you're listening on audio, you can't see me here. But, you know, shrug my shoulders, and I lifted my hands. I wasn't describing something. Those are the ones that get us in trouble. Descriptive gestures, those are easy, you know, we're talking about the roof. So we raise our hand up and make a like a flat angle and okay that's the top of the roof, you know, down into the basement, we kind of gesture downward. Those are the kinds of things that are a little bit easier. So try to add more descriptive gestures at first and less emphatic ones, because the emphatic ones add liveliness. But if we're a new speaker, they're also, are what are going to get us in trouble. Yeah, especially if you roll your eyes when someone's talking. Like I just did when you were. Also to practice in front of people, that's an important one I had I had a guy recently, he's just like, I had to do a presentation. I'm like, oh practice in front of your family. He's like, nah, I feel awkward.

David Nyman  
That's the idea.

Ian Robertson  
I'm like..Exactly. How are you going to, how you going to talk in front of those 50 1st time homebuyers, if you didn't practice in front of your family?

David Nyman  
Yeah. And it's important to pick the right audience too. You don't want to pick someone that is not going to be painfully truth, painfully honest with you, you really want to know their honest opinion, you don't want them to just pat you on the back and say that was great. But instead, you know, really give you a good review. You know, this you did good. Keep working on that one, you know, this one, not so good. So you might want to practice that more. And one thing is, you can use each time you have a presentation, also as a practice for next time. So asking for feedback after you're done. You know, maybe you can ask someone beforehand, someone in the audience that you might know a little bit before, just be like, Hey, can you just, you know, tell me a few points that I need to work on for my next presentation and take notes.

Ian Robertson  
You know, I think that's important to do with anything that we do as home inspectors for marketing, because one of the worst things that I've seen happen is, I had this one client years ago, and I'm like, you know, if you do X, Y, Z, you'd have a better conversion rate. And so he did XYZ and his conversion rate went up. Then he was talking to his wife, and he's like, he's like, she doesn't like that, I'm like, okay, but you're, okay, this doesn't make sense. But alright, and he's like, and then I put it on one of the home inspector forums, and they all said, this is stupid. So what are you trying to do here? I'm like, Well, I'm trying to increase your conversion rate, like are you marketing to your wife and to home inspectors, so we changed it back and his conversion rate went down, but he was happier with it, so I didn't really understand that, but we have to know who we're going to market to. So if we're doing a first time homebuyer seminar, grab some friends. It doesn't have to be a ton of them, have a little pizza. So hey, can I practice my 10 minute presentation in front of you guys that have never bought a house? And then tell them beforehand, be brutal. Like you said, be brutally honest, tear me apart. And then they'll may, they may say things like, all you just said was fluff. You need to give me something to chew on. I want to know, what do I do next? Do I follow you on the inspection? Can I be there? What are you responsible for? Who fixes it afterwards? You know, and then we're like, oh, okay, let's trash that and, and start over. Now if we're going to do an office presentation with agents, it may be a little bit harder. But can we find a couple agents that we know say, hey, can you watch this? Like, no, no, no, no, don't talk about that. Every home inspector comes in and talks about, you know, I'm the most thorough inspector and here's what is included in the home inspection, drop that, talk about this instead. Perfect. It's the same thing we talked about on, man, probably two years ago now with our home, with their home inspection website podcast, stop showing your website to other home inspectors. Other home inspectors aren't looking for the same thing that a consumer is looking for. I watched this guy online, this was probably eight years ago or so he's like, Let's build the perfect home inspection website. And he got all the home inspectors to put it out there. And it was the worst possible website in the world. I'm like, where's the phone number. Somebody wanted to get ahold of you. There's no phone number. There's an 80, there's an 80 page website on hydrostatic pressure and, and step flashing, but there's no reason to actually hire you. So two different audiences. What one audience wants to see the other one really doesn't. So know your audience, and practice in front of them.

David Nyman  
And it's good too, don't overwhelm yourself. So if you get tips, don't say, Okay, I'm going to work on all these things at once, you know, kind of get an idea of which ones are the most pressing ones, I'm going to take three, two, three items, I'm going to work on those for my next presentation, see how I do on those and see if I can drop them and work on some of the other ones.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and remember too, subject matters. So before we even start working on something, get some help. So even if you go to our website, and Inspectortoolbelt.com. For our users, we actually have pre built office presentations for them. And if you email us on that page, and request which presentation you want, we'll actually change it to match your company, add your logo, change all the colors to match, look at those presentations, you'll notice that none of them are about home inspections in general, every agent in that room knows what a home inspection is, pick the subject that matters to them. And I can't believe every time whenever a guy calls me, Ian can I run this presentation by you? And I'm like, okay, is that about home inspections in general? Well, yeah, what else am I going to talk about? I'm like anything but that, why, unless you're doing a first time homebuyer seminar, then talk about that. Do you know what a home inspection is? Do you know what it covers? And if you listen to our other podcasts, use the driveway speech, I can turn my driveway speech into a first time homebuyer seminar in about 10 minutes, and it works beautifully. So choose the right subject. And I think it goes back to your point to know your audience, what matters to a real estate agent. You know, for instance, you could have a presentation on what to do after you know, something's been called out as a defect that you don't think it is, you know, that's a sensitive subject. Could we talk about, I've talked about that in office presentations. And I've gone over the fact that, you know, general practitioners, we're not going to always be right, but, you know, if I see a house that's crooked, I'm gonna say houses are crooked, you know, it is what it is. But instead of, you know, creating aftermath of being okay, well, let's just prove them wrong. Say okay, be very calm, get the specialists, have the specialist come in and make the call. I usually try to turn them more into question and answers. And I ask the agents, what have you done when this happens? And I've done entire presentations, where basically, I didn't really say much. Yeah. And they did the presentation for me. And they're like, that was great. I'm like, I didn't say anything, you guys did it all. Exactly. And it's funny, you know, a question and answer, you can have so little material prepared, just having the right questions, knowing beforehand some of the concerns they have, you can just use those questions. And like you said, people will love it. They will think it's amazing. When you yourself know, I didn't do anything. I just, you know, listened to your questions, gave answers. It's a beautiful thing. Yeah. And you know, what is beautiful about what you just said, is the point where you don't really have to prepare a whole lot, material wise. So that goes back to be well researched, know everything really well. But then just have three to five questions prepared. My favorite presentation that I used to do was, I didn't really have a name for it, but it was basically what do you look for in a home inspection report? And I already knew from doing a presentation a bunch what they were going to say, I just need if there's a defect, just call it a defect. So, I'm like okay, so you really want clearly defined defects. And I already have my presentation built out. So whatever they were looking for, I'd have like 15 slides, but I'd only use like five or six of them for that audience. So I'd have a slide for if they talked about clearly defined defects. Or I don't want a whole lot of fluff, okay, well, here's a slide for not a whole lot of fluff. You know, I want, I want a PDF, not a web report, or I want a web report, but no PDF, or I want both, I'd have a slide for each one of those. And I kind of just kind of hop around a little bit. You didn't even really need to do that, though. Because the question and answers it would just open up a conversation. And now they felt listened to instead of talked at. Audience participation. If you're listening to this, that is the best possible route to go. If you're nervous, you're doing especially if you're doing your first presentation, do one that's completely audience participation, have an introduction saying, Hey, my name is Ian. Today, we're going to talk about, what do you look for in a report?

David Nyman  
Do they have to say my name is Ian?

Ian Robertson  
They do. Especially if their name is Ian. Yeah. But now, that's your whole introduction. So let me start off this presentation by asking, what is it that you look for in a report? And sometimes I wouldn't always get an answer on that one. So I'd follow it up with what have you found on a report that you hate? What do you hate about some home inspectors..

David Nyman  
Strong feelings that will elicit a response usually.

Ian Robertson  
Yep. So we're usually going to get a lot of participation. Prepare for the occasional they don't. So again, that's put be prepared, say, okay, didn't say anything. So I'm gonna go through these five slides about why my reports are better. You know, the..

David Nyman  
Or, like you said, if you have experience from this previously, these are the things that other people mentioned that they really had a problem with on reports.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. You know, we've had a lot of success from our one of our office presentations on our website, again, they're free, is about how to use the report and why our reports are better. And it goes to the inspectortoolbelt app. But I've had guys email me and thanked me saying, Wow, that's this made it easy. I got halfway through. And there's a couple of questions. And now, you know, everybody's talking. So. And again, they're like, I think the longest one is like seven slides. We have a short version, and we have a long version. Going back to that timing thing, know what your audience wants for timing. We've been asked to do presentations that are five minutes. And then I've had offices say we're doing a training day. It's all day, we have speakers coming in eight hours straight. Can you do a full hour and bring lunch? Yeah, so now you need to stretch that out, not stretch it out and fill it, you want to make it interesting, you want to make it something that people will think about afterwards.

David Nyman  
And one option for that, too, is you know, don't treat it as a one, one hour presentation. Think of it as like four 15 minute presentations. It will help people keep the you know, help keep people's attention much easier, because usually you shut down on one subject after you know, 15 minutes, switch it over.

Ian Robertson  
That's a beautiful point. Yeah, I like that. So if we have an hour long presentation, can we break it up in the four subjects? And then tell them that at the beginning, we have four points that we'll take 15 minutes each on. So now you're halfway through when you're done with that with 15, two 15 minute sessions, and are like oh, okay, cool. This is moving along. Oh, that's great. I like that. 

David Nyman  
And if you have someone else working with you, switching speakers will also help people keep attention.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, I think that that works well, for larger companies, that basement company that I just talked about, they would always send two guys and they would kind of play off each other. Just the one guy was terrible.

David Nyman  
Good cop, bad cop.

Ian Robertson  
No, I don't know. Good speaker, bad speaker. But yeah, that would be great. If we had more than one inspector, kind of, especially for a husband and wife team. Can we go back and forth? That would be nice. I like that. That's a good suggestion. Another thing is enthusiasm and naturalness. I think that's really hard if you're not regularly public speaking, like I went through a dry spell. I think it had been like, two, two and a half months recently, where I hadn't talked in front of more than two or three people at a time. So I got up and I started to speak in front of 120 people. And it felt weird, like it didn't feel natural. You know, in this podcast, I mean, we get what did the one estimate, say, like 2400 downloads a week. So technically, we're talking in front of 2400 people a week, but I'm just sitting here with you. So..

David Nyman  
What a great audience. 

Ian Robertson  
You're a great audience. I'm making lots and lots of three second eye contact. Exactly. Awkward, awkward, so it felt weird. And then it reminded me when I first started public speaking, the fear, the shakiness, the.. 

David Nyman  
Throwing up.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, the throwing up, the lack of naturalness. So I think that goes back to the old saying, if you feel nervous picture people in their underwear, because it puts them at a, it puts them at a disadvantage. But here's my, here's my thing on it. I've always felt the most comfortable not putting people at a disadvantage, because here's the thing, even when I would teach a course. So technically, New York State or what Cornell University one time I taught a bunch of courses for them. They're like, you're an expert at this. Feel strongly about it. But I'd be teaching the course. And sometimes there'd be guys in the room where I'm like, you blew my mind. Like, you should be up here. Wow. You're a genius. So if I took that arrogant approach, I've had people take that arrogant approach with me in the audience, it doesn't feel right. If that's what we need to get natural it's not going to work out well for us, because we're pumping ourselves up. And the first time someone in the audience kind of knows a little bit more than we do. Or they kind of throw us off track a little bit. Cuz some people like to do that, oh, he seems like he's very natural. Let me throw a joke at him or throw a weird factor, my own opinion, see, if I can throw him off, there's always that one guy. If we're puffed up, that's easy for us to pop.

David Nyman  
Now your clothes are off. 

Ian Robertson  
Now my clothes are off. And that gets awkward when I start taking my clothes off during a meeting. Here's my approach. I always walk into the room, everyone in there, I assume everyone in there knows more than me. I try to take a humble approach. All of my courses always started out, I always learned something from all of you. And I try not to keep telling myself it. I tried to actually build it into my inner self. They probably know more than me. And I forget who said it. But you can learn from all men. No matter who they are. Every person that you meet can teach you something that you don't know, when we realize that we go in with a humble approach. Now, if you're humble, who said that was that, Hammurabi?

David Nyman  
No, I'm saying I didn't even realize something could smell like that?

Ian Robertson  
Well, anyways, moving on. But when we go in with a humble attitude like that, number one, it puts our audience automatically on disarm. That guy in the back that wants to be the peanut gallery, all of a sudden doesn't sound so funny, because he's not being a jerk to a guy who's puffed up, he's being a jerk to the guy that humbly walked into the room, and is genuinely interested in helping people. Now everybody looks at the guy in the back and say dude, shut up. Let him finish the presentation. You get honest answers from people. When people approach you, me humbly. And especially I was telling you, I was talking to an engineer friend of mine, he asked me a question about something that I know, that he is nationally recognized for. And he asked me a question. I'm not going to try to stump that guy. I'm going to I'm going to respect him more for that. When we approach the situation humbly, especially with agents, I would often say like, listen, you've been doing this a long time. And I would point to a couple of agents I know that did for a long time. I'm like, he's been doing it longer than me. He's been doing it longer than me. So I'm not trying to be here, tell you what to do. Let me show you what I've learned on a particular subject. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, really hard to be a jerk to that guy. You know what I mean? We have to honestly, believe it, not have mock humility. In other words, we just feign it. 

David Nyman  
Ya know, that's really a put off. 

Ian Robertson  
There's a word. There's a word, though. Word of the day, feign. Not that good. Okay, see, there you go. But um, I find that helps me to be enthusiastic and natural and takes the pressure off of me. Because now when I've approached that, I'm like, I don't have to be the expert. I've already determined in my mind, they are. Now if they don't know something here. Let me show you. But I always take it as let me show you what I, what I've learned.

David Nyman  
It's not that good. No, it's a good approach. 

Ian Robertson  
I think that's also one of the best things about our podcast here. The people that we've had on the podcast are just awesome, highly successful home inspectors. But they all come in with a very humble attitude. And they share. Like, I'm not going to tell you how to do this. But here's what works for me. And they give us tips and tricks. And I think those have always been the best podcasts. 

David Nyman  
Yeah, it's true, I enjoy those.

Ian Robertson  
We can learn from them. What's another point or two that we can share, David?

David Nyman  
One thing that you mentioned before is about the personal appearance. And it's, you know it it depends a lot on the setting, of course, but usually you want to err on the side of overdressed than underdressed. When you do a presentation you don't want your appearance to distract on what you're saying in front of people. If someone is sitting there looking like you know, he looks like a mess,did he just roll out of bed, come out here, he's not going to be paying any attention to what you're saying, he's just going to be looking at you and judging the way you look.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and we can go back to the podcast on how to dress as a home inspector. Because there's some really good principles in there. Here's a couple of things where I've seen guys in my own market fail. If you have a beard, or don't have a beard, choose between one or the other. I'm just saying, because not all of us grow in the stubble evenly.

David Nyman  
Some, some faces are just not meant for beards, you have to realize that.

Ian Robertson  
Or some faces are meant for the half beard. Like I've seen some guys were like, wow, that looks good on you, man. And I've seen other guys, like you just said, did he just get out of bed. It's just pick one or the other. If we have a beard, make it neat. If we don't have a beard, clean shaven, we have a mustache, trim it up, to comb our hair, whatever happens to work for you. So personally, when I would show up to an office presentation, I would show up in my work clothes, but my cleanest ones. So I'd wear my nice jeans, my nicest work shoes, which are still my work shoes, but they were office presentation shoes, they were just clean, my polo shirt, but I would not wear my hat, I would wear my polo shirt or shirt with my logo on it. But I wouldn't wear my hat. Because it was just it just looked a little bit better, in my opinion. Wear something with your logo on it. If we're coming from an inspection to a presentation, or vice versa, we should never, ever be dirty. We should, I don't care if we think that, well, I didn't climb into anything, I must be clean. Worst possible thing you turn around, you have a cobweb on your back that you didn't know about. You sat down in the dirt and you didn't think about it and there's mud on your butt. Whatever it happens to be, change. Always fresh, clean clothes. I always tried to do my presentations in the morning so I'd be fresh, showered and all cleaned up, fresh breath is important, especially if you're doing an office presentation in the small room.

David Nyman  
Filling the room with your presence.

Ian Robertson  
Well, let's be honest, it gets hot in the summer, and we get dehydrated. That's not great for our breath. And we may have grabbed some McDonald's on the way, that's not great for our breath. So I always kept mouthwash, toothbrush, and deodorant in my vehicle just in general. And every home inspector will carry toilet paper, if you're not, carry toilet paper, that should always happen, that is completely unrelated. That doesn't have nothing to do, that has nothing to do with office presentations, in your little personal care kit, toilet paper. But then deodorant, mouthwash and toothbrush because you never know when an opportunity comes up. And also in between inspections, I'd like to just kind of freshen up so I didn't, you know, didn't smell bad. But if we're doing an office presentation, that's how I would do it. I'd have a completely different set of clothes on if I did a seminar. If I did a seminar, it was generally speaking dress shoes, khakis, maybe my polo shirt, or maybe my button up shirt with a logo on it. And no hat, for a for like an event. I always hated those events. Good night. I hate those events, the real estate events and we might be asked to speak, we might even be getting an award. I got an award one time or two uh, you know, we want to be dressed up.

David Nyman  
I see it on the shelf behind you, best dad.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, right. Best dad ever, different award. That one means more, but I would I would wear a suit depending on the event. Some events were shirt and tie. But a lot of those events, they're dressing up the agents are wearing gowns. So wear a jacket and tie, if we don't have one..

David Nyman  
Rent one.

Ian Robertson  
Get one, borrow one, whatever it happens to be.

David Nyman  
Not a tuxedo. 

Ian Robertson  
Rent one, and I feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but I have seen it, no clip on ties. Yes, the top button has to be buttoned. Your shoes should be shined. Yes, you have to wear a belt with a suit and it should fit. And going back to the beard, not beard. If we have straggly facial hair and our hair isn't combed just right, we look like the homeless guy out on the street wearing a suit. Not the nice, well dressed, business guy wearing a suit. So a little bit of a dress code there. But I mean, these are just some basic principles with a couple of quick tips. We could go on all day. And maybe we'll come back with a couple of other quick tips. But we actually have a couple of podcasts coming up by request actually. We're going to do one on some real estate presentation subject matter and how to get the most out of your real estate presentation. We're actually going to have a guest on who's going to talk to us about also how to write a better report. Someone has been writing reports since the 80s and is nationally recognized for writing amazing reports. So we're looking forward to that, Mike Crow. And then also we're going to talk about how to be more charismatic at real estate events. So, at real estate offices, real estate events, I'm looking forward to that one. Because I'm not a very charismatic guy, I don't think. But at events, there are certain things that you can do to turn the levers and dials in to make yourself appear more charismatic, and win people over a little bit easier just by doing a simple few tricks. And then we can turn it off when we leave. 

David Nyman  
It's that dark magic, again.

Ian Robertson  
Dark magic, that's going to be another marketing for introverts, basically. But even if we think we're charismatic, there's a few tricks in there, that will really, really help us, things that I never really thought about. And then when I put it into practice, it worked out really well. 

David Nyman  
Nice. 

Ian Robertson  
Anything you want to leave, leave us with a thought, David, what's your best public speaking tip because you do it a lot.

David Nyman  
So I'd say genuinely care about the audience. That's probably the best thing. And I know, you know, it's a little bit corny with, especially with the subject matter that we're talking about now. It's not really something that lends to caring about people, but just put yourself in their spot, you know, what are they trying to get out of you? How can you help them get that from you? And then really, you know, true concern for what they want, and usually your speech, or your presentation will be much better.

Ian Robertson  
That's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up. We cannot fake caring, you can have an okay presentation that comes out amazing if you actually care about people because that will come across. We have a perfect presentation, but we don't act like we care about them, which you can't fake, can't feign, going back to our word of the day. 

David Nyman  
That's not the word of the day. 

Ian Robertson  
That's not the word, okay. We can't fake caring about people because people pick up on that. I think that's really a fantastic point. So great point to end on. And thank you again, David, we'll talk soon.

David Nyman  
Been a pleasure.