Become a Better Speaker with the 3 Es: Episode 4

How do you know if you're a good speaker? In this episode, Jenn shares how to become a better professional speaker using the 3 E's.

Most speakers are strong in one of these, and neglect the other 2. 

She also shares a free guide to self-assess how well you include all of the 3 E's.

Which E are you strongest in as a speaker, and which E would you like to improve upon?

Great speakers take time to rehearse, ideally with feedback from other speakers. Join the new Mic Drop Moments rehearsal group for weekly rehearsal on your presentations! Runs March 17-August 11. View details and pricing: https://calendly.com/jennchat/mdm?back=1&month=2026-03

Resources mentioned:

Walk-up Music playlist for speakers (add your own song): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT6JMOSA-TuefdR--vQ80Cwqrm8gmpIc3&si=dtQdgancMxt0KyjR

Elevate your Presentation with the 3 E's (free download): https://jennspingo.com/free-guide/

Talkadot for audience feedback (affiliate link) https://www.talkadot.com/s/jennespinosa-goswami/share

Have a question or suggestion for a future episode topic? Email me jenn@jennspingo.com.

Ready to deliver mic drop moments in your next presentation? Schedule a call to learn more about coaching www.calendly.com/jennchat

Looking to book a speaker for your corporate or association event on topics including leadership and communication? View my programs at www.jennspingo.com

Transcript

Do you know whether you're a good speaker? I would love to share with you the three E's to your next speech and how to make it an even better speech so you have a stronger impact on your audience. Listen along to hear the three E's to become a better speaker. Let's join.

I can't tell you how many times people come up to me and say, Jenn, should I do this or should I do that? Well, I love that people ask me that, but let's be real. I'm only one of many audiences that people could perform for. And yes, it is a performance. I'm not gonna sugarcoat that. You can be authentic and still perform, but that's a topic for another day.

When it comes to what resonates with your audience, there are three main areas of your delivery and your content that allow you to shine as a speaker. As we go through the three E's, you'll learn more about how these can be applied to your next speech, as well as examples from my own presentations [00:01:00] that worked and didn't work so well.

If you wanna cut to the ending here, I will provide you a free guide on my website, www.jennspingo.com, where you can just take the resource and run with it. But let's listen in on how to use it and then you can download the free guide on your own terms.

One of my most creative and fun speeches as I'm looking back through the years, I've had many, I've been fortunate to present for many different kinds of groups.

I would have to say one of my favorite speeches was back in my Toastmasters days. Yes. I was a part of Toastmasters International for many years. It was a business-based, group at my company at the time was Wells Fargo, and I had been part of this particular group during my lunch hour for about three years.

We had an opportunity to do a different type of presentation. I had been doing so many different types of presentations from business to educational presentations. We only had five to seven minutes, which if you've ever [00:02:00] delivered a presentation for five to seven minutes is not as much time as we think it is.

I wanted to do something a little more creative, a little different. Can you guess what I came up with? I came up with a rap speech. I was rapping my presentation in front of my group in the auditorium at the Wells Fargo location here in Minneapolis. If you look at me, I may not look like someone who's into rap, and I'm not really, I mean, I love Eminem, but I'm not really into rap that much.

There are some artists I love like Missy Elliot, Eminem, but I would never have called myself someone who has skills when it comes to rap music. I can't spit a beat as well as other people. I. respect my performers out there. That's just not me. So this was really taking me out of my comfort zone, and it was a really good illustration of the three E's that we'll be talking about.

We'll break it down.

Here's the setup. Here's what it looked like. So I asked two of my friends and Toastmasters, Juan and [00:03:00] Tim. You couldn't get two different guys if you tried. Juan was this bald, bearded, happy, go lucky, Hispanic dude, and Tim was this tall, thin, curly haired glasses guy who regularly inserted words like.

Hubris into everyday conversations like these guys were as different as you could possibly be, and they were the perfect guys to be a part of my posse for my rap song in this Toastmasters group. So what I asked these guys to do is be a part of my stage. I asked them to dress up, you know, maybe wear some chains, maybe wear certain clothing, stand there with their arms folded and look like they're just cool bodyguard guys.

It was so fun. They had a lot of fun with it. They wore their sunglasses. They were up there with me supporting me, if you will, and they were just standing there looking pretty cool. They didn't speak at all. So the E that this fulfilled was entertainment? [00:04:00] Yes. It was kind of entertaining to see a girl like myself.

Try to do rap because it wasn't my skillset, you know? But we provided entertainment value. Me with my fumbles, my posse with their cool attitudes. You know, it worked. It was entertaining and it was way different than anyone in that group had ever presented before.

I'm a fan of novelty and variety, and that was one of the skill sets that I brought to that entertainment. So as you look at your presentation. 

How entertaining are you? I think sometimes we fall into this trap of entertainment means ha ha, ha ha, I make them roll in the aisles. Laughing or entertainment is, I've got a skillset like I'm juggling on the stage or I am doing puppetry or something like that.

You don't have to do those things. I do know speakers who like roller skate on stage or do drum sets on stage, like professional speakers who bring all of that on stage as part of their entertainment [00:05:00] value. Hey, I'm not, I'm not judging anyone else's entertainment value, but what I would say is it's important for you to have some sort of entertainment value in your presentation.

What could that include for you? We've already talked about some examples, maybe it's background dancers. If you're bringing up people on stage with you, maybe it's a prop that you're bringing on stage that. Whether it speaks or not has some sort of involvement in your set. Maybe it's your lighting or a certain type of music that's part of your entertainment.

I actually have a YouTube playlist on walkup music for speakers, so if you wanna contribute to my playlist on walkup music please let me know. I would love to include your song, and if you can guess what my particular song was, give me a shout out.

Or if you check out the playlist, um, there's quite a few songs on there, lots of really good options, but you choose your own entertainment value. 

What would that be for you? Is it humor? Is it props, visuals, [00:06:00] sets, techniques? Any of those things can be part of your entertainment value. Because at the end of the day, you are performing.

That's not to say that you're acting because a lot of people have this negative connotation around acting. I respect actors. They do things that are very difficult to do in a moment. A lot of people think that, oh, acting means you're not being authentic or performing means you're not being authentic. I think that you're most authentic when you bring other elements, bigger, bolder elements to your presentation because it creates that connection between you and the audience.

And at the end of the day, that's what we want to have more of. So that's one of the E's when it comes to your presentation. 

The other E I'd like to talk about is something that. You're probably already doing way more than you need to. That E is education.

How many times have you heard the phrase adding value or educating the audience? Guess what? You can Google anything and find an [00:07:00] answer. You don't need to educate a darn person. Most people when they're coming to a presentation, they're not looking for education. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be informed on your topic and know the ins and outs of some of the subtle differences of different approaches, different styles, different statistics that you can bring in.

I'm a data nerd. If you don't know my background, I'm a fraud investigator from the past, so I cannot come to the stage without statistics, without figures, without facts. That's part of my process. That's part of how I inform and how I learn about people. So you can certainly bring in those education elements to your presentation, but don't just focus on those.

Too many times I've seen speakers who cram in as much education into a 60 minute presentation as they can, and it ends up being a 95 minute presentation. Unfortunately, the person who's bringing you to their stage only has so much time for you, and it's very [00:08:00] disrespectful to go beyond the time you're given in which to deliver this education.

So if you're a person who really gets into the details and gets into the specifics of it, pull yourself back. Maybe have someone else look at your speech, have someone else observe you recording your speech, or even listen to yourself on a voice note on your phone and listen in and say, was all of that necessary?

Your best friend will be editing down so you get the bare minimum of what you need to still give it Justice education is one of those areas that most people spend too much time on. And by the way, I mentioned that there's a free guide I am here to deliver for you. I'm your speaking partner in this. So in that guide, there is a self-assessment where you can look at, okay, we talked about entertainment. Here are some other entertainment options you can include as part of your next speech. We just talked about education. Here are some other elements you can include that focus on education elements.

So if you're a [00:09:00] performer by nature, you might wanna look at the education section just a little more closely. 

Now, last but not least, we have the third E. And this is the one that I specialize in. This is the one that makes this podcast a little more difficult for me than a live stage speaking experience actually.

So you can help me out with this one listeners engagement. It's just me and a camera right now and my supportive studio crew out here. But I don't get any engagement from a camera. So it's through you listening and you commenting and sharing here on social that I get engagement. 

But how are you including opportunities for the audience to engage with your content?

Some of the things I love to do when it comes to live speaking are rhetorical questions. Imagine a keynote stage and there's a thousand people in the audience, and maybe you can't even see your audience because of the lighting on your face. You are limited [00:10:00] in different engagement options, but you still have opportunities to engage.

So never fear. There's always a way to find an engagement area of your next presentation, but compare that to a virtual presentation. Maybe you're showing up on Zoom. All they see is you in a box. Well, you still have plenty of engagement opportunities because there's a chat function. There are polls you can set up ahead of time.

Again, this requires preparation. Engagement always requires preparation in order to do it well. I was speaking from Medtronic the other day, the event planner and I were able to get together, send a poll to the audience ahead of time. There were only seven people responding to that poll, and there were about 55 people at the actual event, but that was still information that I could use.

To dive deeper into what they needed at that particular event. If you're not doing pre-event calls with event organizers, you might miss some of those opportunities to engage your folks. These are also good opportunities to learn about what do they need to be educated on, because as [00:11:00] speakers, we lead with what our skillset is, what we're passionate about, and sometimes people want some of this and some of that, and just not any of the rest of that.

So we have to be really discerning with what we're offering for which audience. Engagement is one of the biggest things that events are looking for today because as you think about it, I'm sure you've attended your fair share of conferences, annual events, those sorts of things, and they're long, right?

You can have an entire day from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM with back to back programs. nary, a chance to breathe , barely have a chance to stuff your face during lunch while catching up on work, emails, and doing all these other things. So engagement is where you can actually process the information that's being shared with you.

Nobody wants to be sprayed upon. Nobody wants this talking head perception of they're just talking to talk, they're just disturbing the air, [00:12:00] and they don't care what I receive from this you also want to learn what your audience is receiving, so there are opportunities for engagement through feedback after your event as well.

If you don't have those opportunities set up, I highly recommend TalkAdot. I've been using it for quite a while and I'm happy to share that link in the show description here. Don't neglect those opportunities for pre and post-event Engage. As well as ways you can engage with your folks throughout the course of your presentation, because it's about what our people receive and what they're receiving value from, which is most important.

So let's recap. Today we talked about the three E to better presentations. 

Those E are in no particular order, entertainment, education, and my favorite engagement. Now is your chance to engage with me. If you haven't subscribed to this podcast yet, what are you waiting for?

I would love to see you comment on which E you feel you could work on more [00:13:00] in the next presentation. And don't forget to download your free guide@jenspingo.com. Until then, I'll see you on stage.

Thank you for tuning in to Mic Drop Mindset. If you enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave a review on Spotify Apple or share a comment over on YouTube. Stay tuned for biweekly episodes and subscribe to Discover your own unique mic drop moments. Leaders don't just talk. They also listen.

I'm listening. I'll see you on your next stage. In the meanwhile, don't forget to visit my website, http://www.jennspingo.com.