World of Speakers E.16: Tiffani Bova | Don’t suck on stage

Ryan Foland: We are back here for another World of Speakers podcast, and we are going to jump right into it.

We have Tiffani Bova who is the force behind the Salesforce.

She is fierce, she is someone who I met in Hong Kong, and now we're talking again here today.

She's from a tiny— I guess an island. You're from one of the islands of Hawaii?

How are you doing today?

Are you on an island somewhere in the world, where are you?

TB: I'm in Los Angeles today, but I still call Hawaii home.

RF: Okay, are you on the Big Island?

TB: Oahu actually, born and raised, spent most of my life there and went to college in the mainland.

Then I went back and spent my 20s there.

Then I moved back to the mainland when I turned 30.

RF: Very cool.

You've got LA as a station point, but then Hawaii as your home and you travel all around the world.

It's almost like the world is your stage.

TB: I would have to agree with that.

People go, "Where do you live?"

And I say, "My home airport is LAX, but my home is in Hawaii."

RF: Very cool.

Did you always know that you would end up where you are now, or was this a series of events that built on each other and organically ended up where you are?

As a little kid, when your mom said, "Tiffani, what do you want to do when you grow up?" You were like, "I want to spread the news of Salesforce."

TB: Most definitely not. It's kind of even more interesting than that, I think.

When I went home after college— if I back up, I would sort of joke that everything I learned about business I learned in the carnivals.

I worked for a friend of mine’s family who ran the outdoor arcades and carnivals in Hawaii.

From the age of 15 to 21 (or 22,) I got the best lessons in life and in business running outdoor games and indoor arcades.

It's just all about this non-stop customer experience.

I had to learn to order teddy bears and supply and demand, and how to get people to come and play the game; it was hiring and scheduling, and firing.

Being on an island, your teddy bears are delayed on a container that's coming in a boat, what do you do— carnival is on Friday, all the things like that.

I don't know what my Mom thought I was going to do, but I decided that I wanted to get into sales.

That conversation is always interesting, "Mom, you've spent all this money on my education and I think I want to be a salesperson,"

She was just like, "Yeah, as long as you can pay your bills and move out of the house, I don't care what you do."

RF: I'm curious— what did you study in college?

TB: Well, that's another good one.

I went with a business undergrad at Arizona State and that's not what I ended up with.

At the end of the day, my college counselor pulled me in probably at the end of my freshman year and said, "I don't really think business is for you."

I love that story because I think number one, I was never a student in that way, and I didn't learn that way.

I learned by doing and going back to what I just said, work at the carnivals. I learn by listening and visual, not by reading.

The school was always really tough for me, I wasn't a great student. I was like, "Fine, that's fine, I have to get a degree."

I went on with public programs and I got a degree in criminal justice and pre-law, which I talk about not really wanting to read.

I liked a concept of it, thinking I was going to go to law school, but that didn't happen for all kinds of reasons.

I graduated with that, and went back to Hawaii and went back to work at the carnivals, and then found myself stumbled into selling and marketing and working for small little companies.

Then I found my way to larger companies and that's what eventually moved me to the mainland.

I couldn't sustain that kind of selling and I stumbled into technology which was really not something that you would do in Hawaii necessarily.

I came to the mainland and started selling technology, and that was sort of the beginning of what got me here.

RF: That's a very indirect path.

I think that people can associate with that, and they can resonate with that.

Sometimes it takes I'm thinking games, I'm thinking the price is right and I'm thinking Plinko, right?

Are you familiar with Plinko?

TB: I am.

RF: We all start off here like, "Ding, ding, ding," and you have all these options all these things that you're capable of.

I think sales is like the Jedi Knight form of the modern day force.

If you think about it, really we sell everything from what we want to go watch from a movie perspective, to selling what we want for dinner.

I think that claiming that, owning that in all aspects of life sort of takes the pejorative term from it, "Don't sell me, I don't want to be sold."

And really, you're always convincing people to do something, and if you have a say in that, then there's some sort of value, right?

TB: I agree.

To steal Dan Pink's term, "To sell is human."

What's interesting is, here at Salesforce, we've just created a documentary on the history of sales, it's really fascinating.

It's trying to take the four-letter word out of sales.

It's just the history of it and how it all started and to your point, it's within everything we do.

You want your kids to take out the trash, you are trying to get someone to do something extra, getting your car fixed.

We're always constantly selling and not in a bad way, it is much more about persuasion I'd say than selling.

Within the skill of sales, there is all kinds of things— you have to be a great communicator, a great storyteller, you have to be a good listener.

You have to be able to get the customer or the prospect to understand what it is that you can actually do and the value that you add, and it requires you to have all kinds of very broad skills.

It isn't a single skill.

I think people overlook the power of people who are really successful in sales, they are good at a lot of things.

RF: It kind of goes against the, "Jack of all trades is the master of none"?

TB: Very true.

I'd also say that along those lines, going back to your example of the Plinko— it's bouncing all over the place and you have to learn along the way what your strengths are, and what your weaknesses are.

Or, as a friend of mine likes to say, "Non-strengths," instead of weakness.

RF: I like that, it's a good reposition.

TB: I stole it from her, you could steal it from me.

At the end of the day, I found my strengths, and I doubled down on those strengths.

It's what has moved me along in my career and ultimately got me to this place here now with Salesforce.

RF: Not everybody associates speaking with sales, although I think a lot of people do.

In your path, how was speaking and taking the stage and that type of persuasion one on many, how was that integrated into your growth and your learning and your success?

TB: I had a fairly successful career running sales marketing and customer service organizations for both startups and Fortune 500 companies.

My early days, 1999 to 2002 or 2003, I was constant contact beta client, I was selling what we called back then "web hosting".

We were the largest web hosting company in the US and one of the largest domain registrars.

We were really, really early in "selling via chat" and a lot of the technology that's become so pervasive today. It was a great, interesting point in my career.

I got to get really on this sort of bleeding edge path and coming from standard traditional technology.

Then I landed at "Gateway Computers" as the stores were closing and it merged with "E-machines" and so I was running a division there.

At that point, I realized that I was getting a little tired, it had been a good 15 years and I've been working really hard.

Sales is unforgiving if you have a great quarter— things are good, if you don't have a good quarter— it gets tough.

I got an opportunity to work at "Gartner" which is one of the largest analysts firms in the technology space anyway and consulting firms in the world.

I went there as a research analyst which was a big pivot for me to go from running sales to now being sort of an academic analyst advisor to other sales and marketing leaders and some of the largest tech companies in the world.

That's what started that pivot, at that time I had all this experience.

Then "Gartner" allowed me to apply that experience and through that, I was there literally for a decade, I ended that career as a research fellow and distinguished analyst.

Over the 10 years, it really helped me step into this speaking role. Obviously, for those of you who know "Gartner", it's a lot of what they do around their own events.

At my last clip, I was probably doing anywhere from 35 to 50 keynotes a year somewhere in the world for a good 10 years.

RF: That's solid.

TB: And my day job.

RF: Right, on top of it all, that's crazy.

TB: From there, that was really how I sort of made that transition. I was a sales leader and then decided to start speaking.

I sort of landed on that academic side and I really found my voice around some thinking that was considered leading in the categories I was talking about. That's really what spond it for me.

RF: Did you make the jump to Salesforce or did they come hunting after you? How was that transition?

TB: It's interesting, because people will go, "Wow, you went to the dark side," and I’m like, "I don't know which one is which."

I came from a technology vendor side, then I went to "Gartner", now I am back to a tech vendor side. I just look at it as part of my journey.

I'd been there for 10 years and I had reached research fellow, the height of what you can do there, sort of it was a fork in the road.

It was if I was going to go down my fellows program, I had a two-year commitment to investing in a research project that would come out the other end as some foundational piece that the "Gartner" would use.

Or, I was going to go but I didn't want to start that without staying through the full two years, so it was really one of those, "Okay, what do I want to be when I grow up" kind of thing, "What do I want to do next?"

I had really found love for this speaking and really sharing a lot of the things that I had learned along the way.

It was great that I was able to command the rates, a lot of it had to do with the fact I had "Gartner" on my business card, of course.

People were beginning to book me individually, through "Gartner" obviously, but they would say, "We want Tiffani Bova," not, "We want 'Gartner', who will 'Gartner' give us to speak."

There's a difference there.

RF: Inbound request.

Would you consider that your personal brand being established even though you're at a company level and what not?

Were you able to stand out as an individual?

It sounds like that's what happened, right?

TB: That's a great question.

I'm doing a panel in a couple of weeks, I am actually getting interviewed on a "Fireside Chat" about this very question.

Building a brand, a corporate brand like helping marketers figure that out, but then how do you build a personal brand within a very large corporate brand?

How do you do that? What's the balance between the two? It was a balance.

I always first and foremost had "Gartner" on my card right, that is where I worked.

I was fortunate enough to build a reputation around sort of an area of coverage, it was sales transformation, it was digital disruption, it was customer experience.

It was what are the things that companies need to focus on to drive growth.

I was speaking around that topic and learning along the way obviously, because I had a 1000 research analysts behind me similar to me that were pumping out predictive very thought leadership kind of content, which I could then use, which was an amazing position to be in.

I could encapsulate the big nuggets if you will, and then say, "How can I share those nuggets with sort of the story-board of what would it mean to the person in the audience, not just regurgitate the stats, but what's the impact, what does it mean”.

I got really good over time doing that, so I'd say yes, I was able to raise my personal brand awareness through that.

I never made the mistake to think my brand was bigger than who I was working for, you know what I mean?

It was the balance of the two.

RF: I think people have a struggle with that, it's a real struggle, because you have your day job and you're excited, and you can leverage that "Halo", right?

This is usually a big company that you’re working at, or at least bigger than your startup that nobody knows, but the fine line.

I like your concept of a balance right, you have to sort of pay homage to where you're at now but not miss the opportunity to take advantage of the time, effort, brain damage that will eventually sow the seeds for an individual career outside of that.

TB: And hence why I decided to move.

That's exactly the reason. I think you can get caught sometimes drinking your own Kool Aid, in the sense that you go, "Oh it's all about me."

Thankfully, I did not have that problem.

I knew that it was because I had "Gartner" on my card, the rate that they would charge for my day-rate domestically and my day-rate internationally.

It was nothing to shake a stick at, and doing 35 or 50 a year it was very good money for them.

I knew that if I left and I said, "I am going to go work for Tiffani Bova's consulting shop," and hung up my shingle and said, “Okay and here's my rate, it's the same as what it was when I was with 'Gartner'," I knew that would not work.

I knew there were a couple of things that needed to happen prior to that happening.

Salesforce created an opportunity for me to be the global growth and innovation evangelist, which, in many ways, is just out evangelizing very similar talk tracks to what I did historically.

Now I'm doing it with a very big brand obviously, especially in this particular category that my talk track falls into.

I get to do it for our customers at their sales kick-off or their executive meetings or their summits.

Then industry events not so much representing Salesforce, because my talk track is not about us in that way.

It's much more of we do our own research, and sort of what am I hearing and seeing from our customers like when we saw each other at the RISE conference.

It was really about how is customer experience the new battleground and of course in the bottom has the Salesforce logo of my PowerPoint slides but I wasn't up there talking about the technology and our services.

RF: That goes to show the power of the personal brand in an element to where people still want to connect with the person on stage, that's why it's called a personal brand, right?

But you're still haloing in this larger brand.

Again, just like nobody wants to buy your book they want to learn who you are and be inspired and then the book is a product of if they like you enough in the first place, right?

It's kind of a chicken and the egg.

TB: Absolutely, and the RISE conference is a great example because of what I had done for the decade at "Gartner".

I was pretty good at making sure I made it in the region, into APAC somewhere 2 or 3 times a year. Europe probably got me 5 or 6 times a year, and then obviously North America gets me a lot.

I had not been in the region for almost a year since I'd taken the job since I'd left "Gartner".

The fact that the RISE conference came to me said, "Hey we've seen you, we know that you're great, we'd love for you to come in and do this".

This says a lot about it, even though it had been a year, they wanted me to come in and do that, and so that goes back to if you work really hard and find a niche that you can shine in, that people will remember that.

RF: Okay this is a fascinating story. What is a game that you were in charge of, that's Plinko-like that is a representation of your life?

Of the games when you were back in the day cutting your teeth, learning sales and just the customer experience— what was a game that you think was representative of sort of all that together?

Is it the throwing the balls at the clowns that come down, it is it a dart game?

Go back in time what do you think?

TB: I don't know, maybe Skee-Ball.

I think if you think about Skee-Ball, you've got the ball and you just take a toss and it's going to land in the middle or the outside ring and you don't always get 100 points.

It might be 10 points, 20 points, it's just like moneyball. As long as you got people getting on the basis.

RF: I love it.

TB: You don't always need a home run hitter.

RF: You've got to throw it down the line and you hit the ramp and depending on the speed at which you hit the ramp, it can totally take you one way or the other.

Sometimes, I get aggressive, I want to throw it as hard as I can and so that can hit the top and then bounce back right?

TB: Absolutely.

You can get that 100 banking off the side, straight up the middle, there's all kinds of ways to get the 100.

I think what's key in that is that you don't always need to get the 100, because if you are competing against someone that gets the 100 one time, and you're able to get the 20, and 30 every time in the 10 tosses you're going to win.

I think it's just a matter of always trying to get something out of whatever you do, not always trying to go for the home run.

RF: Yeah, I do these stick figure drawings every day so I think in terms of quotes sometimes, and I said something the other day at a workshop saying, "It's not about being groundbreaking, it's about breaking ground every day." Throw the Skee-Ball.

I want to transition now into a little bit more of some of the magic behind what you've learned.

I'm on twitter lot @ryanfoland and I'll ask people questions that they want me to ask speakers from around the world.

One that I think would be great to ask you is the concept of what is the specific process when you create a new talk?

I think you have so much experience, so much to pull from.

It's probably difficult because you have so much to pull from, but do you have a specific process that you go through to put together a talk and could you talk us through that?

TB: There is a couple of things.

I'll start by saying that what was always difficult when I was in my previous role at "Gartner".

I spoke at the particular conferences in the tech world just because of who I worked for if you will, and so I might do 10 or 12 tech conferences in the course of the year.

The challenge is that the audience is going to have some same people.

You don't want them going, "I've seen her," and they don't show up.

Not only is it kind of an annual, "Let me refresh sort of throw everything out and start again," right, so that in case they see me next year — they are seeing me 3 months from now or 4 months from now.

That is really tricky when you find a niche and in a segment that people may see you multiple times in a year because you speak at multiple conferences they are attending, then you always have to be mindful of keeping it fresh.

Keeping it fresh could be the stories you tell, keeping it fresh could be the order of the slides.

Keeping it fresh could be the style of the slides meaning you can do more TED Talk than it being more statistical if you will, that sort of much drier kind of content.

Even those little things, because even the best, they're not going to remember everything you said and everything you did, you just want them to feel that they got something new out of hearing you again.

That's tricky and probably because I did such a volume in a very specific category, it was challenging.

Even over the course of the year, you have to be mindful of that, but if I have an annual flip, I am a huge consumer of content in the topics that are of interest to me.

I'm always looking for what's the angle and I've gotten pretty good at, I like to say sort of all these data points are kind of stars on the wall.

I'm able to make the “Big Dipper” out of those stars. The “Big Dipper” may change shapes a little bit, but I'm always looking for what's next in the areas I talk about.

I'd say my preparation is just being a consummate student of what I do for a living.

What I do for a living is in many ways, I try to tell stories to inspire people to think differently about the way they use technology, in order to engage with their customers, and how to really create memorable experiences.

I have to do that on stage as well, so I think just being a consummate student of the content and then finding your voice, the way in which you tell stories.

I have some thoughts as well as people are sort of coming up to find their voice on stage, that I did, and sometimes I still do, but I used to do it for sure for a good 7, 8 years consistently.

RF: Would you be willing to share some of that voice searching technology that you worked through?

TB: Yeah so I'd say this— one, I would find someone who has moved you. It doesn't matter on what topic.

And by voice, and by video as well would be even better. Let's say you have a video recording with the voice of somebody who really moves you from a speaking perspective.

Once again, regardless of the topic. I want you to do two things, one is, I want you to listen to the video without watching the video.

All I'm looking for you to do is listen to pace, pause, the inflection in their voice.

I'm really going to tell you this, I am going to tell it to you fast, and this is what I mean.

How are they moving through the content, from a voice perspective?

RF: And not watching them, right?

TB: Not watching them, you can't watch them. I only want you to go stand in another room or minimize the video, so you're only listening to the voice.

Then, I want you to watch the video and not listen to the voice.

When you're watching the video, that is a very different thing— are they pacing on the stage, are they really fidgety with their hands?

Are they adjusting their glasses all the time, touching their hair, fixing their tie, their shirt, they put their hands in their pocket?

Are they just really fidgety or are they just smooth like butter, right, they're just sort of moving through it?

Two things— I want you to listen and not watch, and watch and not listen.

RF: This is good.

TB: From that, you're going to find ways that you will start to realize, "Wow, I always put my hands in my pocket and I think it looks terrible."

Or, "I'm constantly touching my hair," or the dreadful "Uhms" right, the stalls and the stutters and what it is that you're saying.

I did that, and I would always get a recording of my presentations.

I would do the same thing with myself, so I would watch and not listen, listen and not watch.

I have film of one of my first presentations some 12 or 13 years ago where I got "paid to speak", when I watch it now I go, "Oooh god,".

I thought I was great, I went up there and I was authoritative and I told the story and I sounded like I knew what I was talking about.

RF: You crushed it.

TB: I crushed it...

No, I didn't. I had to learn.

This little tip no one told me, I just sort of came up with it, because there were people who I enjoyed listening them speak, and I enjoyed watching them speak and so I just said, "I want to learn from them."

Now, the caveat here, a huge asterisk next to this is— I do not want you to try to be them or mimic them.

I want you to see what it is you don't like or potentially things you do, all you are trying to look for is things that you felt really worked and could you authentically apply it to you on stage when you're speaking.

The moment you try to be somebody else, that's a bad combination, because it comes off as being really inauthentic and that's worse than being terrible.

RF: This whole “listening without watching” and then “watching without listening”, this is really a training exercise for you to start to identify these things.

Breaking them down into their core elements so that you can recognize them in yourself as well.

TB: Yes. I was probably year 5 into my "Gartner-speaking-for-fee career” and I had a presentation and I have this picture of me where I was speaking at this event many years ago and I am standing in this group of people and my shoulders are a little rolled forward and kind of my chin is down and my eyes are up and I am looking very passive.

It is funny, people who know me now they're like, "Yeah, whatever," they don't believe it.

RF: I've got that whole body language on right now, you just described it and I am like, my shoulders are like— I got you, yeah.

TB: And then whenever I am giving a presentation about this topic, I have something, I give a speech called "Building your confidence muscle," and this is this whole speech that I am sort of sharing with you now.

Then I show this picture of me getting on the main stage in the round at the Verizon Center, in front of 15, 000 people, in front of Satya Nadella who is the CEO of Microsoft and so I was his opening act.

I had 12 or 15 minutes in front of these people, and literally in the round, it was the largest audience I'd ever done a talk in front of, being intimidated on all kinds of levels, and it was his first event in his new role.

Anyway, so I saw the picture of me with my shoulders rolled and then I show me walking on stage, my arms are open, my shoulders are back, my head is held high a big smile on my face like, "I am on this stage and I'm going to own it for 12 minutes”, right.

Obviously, I have the recording and I do what I said I do, I watch it and do not listen and listen and don't watch, and even when you sort of do that, I still think like I said, you need to be a student.

I decided to send the video to Nancy Duarte, if you know who Nancy is?

RF: Yes, I don't know her personally.

TB: She wrote the book "Illuminate".

RF: I don't know her personally, but maybe you can intro later on her.

TB: Okay, so Nancy right, and she's written a book "Illuminate" and she's all about storytelling and her TED Talk is viewed by million people, so she's the bomb.

I said, "You know what, I'm just going to send this to Nancy and say, 'Tell me what you think'".

Now you just sort of start sweating as you hit "Send", boom. "Send", there's no taking it back right.

RF: Have you ever used MailChimp?

TB: I have, but it wasn't MailChimp.

RF: What I am saying is there is a little monkey finger like before you have to hit "Send" and it wiggles and it sweats when you have to make that final decision.

TB: I just hit "Send".

The rating from the presentation was good, they were one of my largest clients at the time, they were really good to me. So I said, "Well I'm sure it's okay," so I sent it to her.

And I get back this feedback, now when I was watching listening, listening watching my presentation before I sent it to her, I noticed something and I said, "Ha, I wonder if she'll notice it".

Sure enough, she did because obviously, it's what she does for a living.

She comes back and she goes, "Yeah you know, the first 4 minutes of that presentation, it doesn’t seem like it was you. And then all of the sudden, you showed up at about minute 4."

I said, "Funny you'd say that." She was right, she was spot on right.

I had 12 minutes and the first couple of minutes I had to get through very specific content, because I was setting up the CEO who was obviously coming behind me.

I was giving sort of facts and figures and stats, and you know, "This is what's going on," and it was very "Gartneresque", right, so I was delivering the high-level content in the first 4 minutes.

The second 3, 3 and a half minutes, and second I finished that last period, I showed up.

Because then I started walking on the stage, I was telling jokes, I was smiling.

Actually let me say it this way— I was very natural on stage where she noticed the shift and so the reason I'm giving this story is because I'm going back to not being your authentic self, I was trying to be something I am not on stage.

And even if you didn't know me, which at the time, Nancy didn't know me very well, she caught it right away.

That means that the audience probably caught it as well.

RF: Exactly, yes.

TB: Now I just don't ever do that.

If someone says, "Hey listen, we need you to get through this content, we sort of try to shape it a little bit," I don't mind if they shape it, but I do not let them sort of give me specific guidance on how they would like something positioned or presented.

Because it gets me out of my groove and I don't do well there. Going back to learning what works for you and what goes on for you.

And that little thing that I did with Nancy, she has never forgotten that she's like, "Look, you've done 300 keynotes and you're asking me for advice, and you are billing out 30,000, 50,000 for an hour, what am I going to tell you?"

But she told me some great feedback and it's carried with me and I never forget it, I just had her on my podcast and we had this whole conversation again about what it's like.

I'd say that you have to just really become a student of what you do and always open to hearing how you can make it better, because you are not perceiving yourself on stage, and that's why watching yourself is a great way to get a handle on the reality of what's going on.

RF: What to me is so incredible about that story and that piece of advice is a bit counter-intuitive to maybe people who are searching for the "golden nuggets of speaking".

This idea of being yourself, not being someone else is something that everyone can do without downloading the course, without taking a certain program right, that's the one thing that you own is yourself.

Sometimes I think we get caught up on all these tactics, right, "Make eye contact, do this, do this, do this."

Maybe by the book you're doing the right moves, but you're disconnecting from the audience because it's not you.

I think it's so powerful because everybody is themselves, but maybe letting them be empowered to really put that forward on stage is something that everybody can do.

TB: I want to make sure though, because I agree with you that you have to know the basics.

Taking a class or reading a book or listening to podcasts like this or other things, I think is highly important as well, because you need to know the basics and that's the stuff you can practice, practice, practice.

When you find what resonates and when people really respond, because Ryan I'm sure you have had this happen to you, I know I have.

When you’re on stage, you can fall flat and you can feel it from the audience, and you might fall flat with the right side of the stage and the left side is totally engaged.

I mean, it doesn't mean the whole room, half of them like you, half of them don't.

Or, the guy in the front row is like looking at his phone and the guy in the third row is reading the paper, you're like, "God I am up here, giving you all I've got and you could at least pay attention."

At the end of the day, you have to be able to read the cues from the audience and adjust on the fly and that just takes practice.

Another great piece of advice I got was from Guy Kawasaki whom I sure you know as well.

We went to rival high schools he is also from Hawaii, he's a little older than me though I'm going to point that out.

RF: Note taken.

TB: He had a migraine and he was supposed to be up at 8 and Ii was up at 10.

So he calls me in the morning, he's like, "Tiffani, I need you to jump in for me at 8 and I'll take your 10 slot."

I am like, "Ok well, I'm going to get on stage at 8 and they're going to go, 'You don't look like Guy'". I said, "That's okay, I'll work it out."

I did that for him and it was not 3 weeks later we were together at another event, so the first one was in San Diego, the second one was in DC.

This was 7- 8 years ago, and he's up now before me, now I am following him and so he's walking down the steps and I'm walking up the steps, and he goes, "Hey Bova, don't suck."

I am like, "Really Guy? Thanks man."

I get on the stage, there was maybe only a couple hundred people in the audience, I said, "Just so everybody knows, Guy's piece of advice as he was leaving was, 'Hey Bova, don't suck'".

Everyone starts laughing.

People ask often like, "What is it that you do before you get on stage now?" I say, "I hear Guy Kawasaki in the back of my head saying, 'Hey Bova, don't suck'"

RF: You almost need that, the heckler just to sort of snap you into it right?

TB: Yeah, and he just meant it, it's funny because when I say that people, they are like, "Oh my god," they thought he was serious and then I have to back up and go, "No, we play because we went to rival high schools,".

In Hawaii, people don't actually ask where do you live or what car do you drive or what job do you have, they ask where did you go to high school. It tells everything about a person.

We have fun with with that when we get a chance to speak at events together.

RF: Yeah, and so just having that awareness is great.

There is a Toastmasters club that's around here and their motto is, "Don't screw it up."

It's fun and they're just bringing awareness to it and they will shout when somebody's up like, "Don't screw it up!" That's their motto.

I think an element of that is also sort of having fun and not taking yourself too seriously. I think Guy is a great example of that as well.

He is definitely himself up on stage, but this idea of including humor and not taking yourself too seriously, I think helps you to not suck.

TB: Yeah, I would say this, as I was just saying, and sometimes you fall flat and some days are just better than others.

You can do it within a speech, within a presentation let's say it's a 45 minute presentation.

The first 10 minutes you might be on fire, and then the next 10 minutes you're not doing so great and then you’ve got to recover.

They are there to hear you, and so even if you feel like it's not going well, you have to be able to recover really quickly.

That's why if you're not authentically yourself, when you try to recover yourself will show up, and it becomes really jerky and it's delivery right, you're funny and you are joking and then you're serious and you're funny...

That's why if you're just yourself the whole time, it doesn't feel like there's two people on stage and so even if you go, "You know what, let me try that again."

I think it's really this, they're going to feel like, "Hey maybe she's struggling a little bit up there," or whatever the case might be, "Give her a hand," or you just tell a joke or say something that sort of breaks the mood for a second to get people to maybe repay attention.

You have to even in a given presentation, you can be knocking it out of the park and then falling flat, like I said, either by people or the whole room.

It could be all kinds of reasons why that happens, but you just have to make sure that at the end that you have given it everything that you've got and you did the best you could do in that day.

People will know it.

RF: Yeah. This reminds me, Keith Ferrazzi  talks about this a lot as well, where sometimes he gets so excited about what he's talking about.

Either he delivers it too quickly or he feels like it just maybe didn't resonate with the audience because he knows it way better than they do, and he'll stop and be like, "Wow stop, okay I got excited there, let's back up for a moment."

There's one thing to just like present your message on stage and the other is really being responsible for the audience understanding what you're saying.

That whole idea of reading the audience and that active feedback throughout the whole process is key, especially that the large crowd in sort of the big time.

TB: And that's why if you listen to yourself, you'll know you've sped up; you'll notice that when you get excited you start speaking faster so you become very conscious of it.

I am very guilty of that I just talk fast anyway, and so if I'm on stage and the adrenaline going and it's 15,000 people it's even worse, right so you really have to pace yourself.

A trick that I learned and I'm not going to claim that this one's for me, but in the book "Made to Stick" they gave a great analogy on if you and I were sitting across from each other and we were having lunch or something and I said, "Hey I'm going to tap a song on the table and if you guess it here's a $100 bill."

And I tap a song, as long as it's not "Happy Birthday" because I went defaults to that, but let's say tap something besides "Happy Birthday" and I say, "If you guess this song, I'll give you $100."

I start tapping and then you look at me like, "I have no idea what it is you're tapping, I have no clue."

And to me, I'm looking at you going, "What an idiot, of course it was 'Jingle Bells'. Did you not hear 'Jingle Bells'?"

I am humming it and singing it and tapping it right, you are only hearing the tapping, and so that's what happens on stage is that we in our minds as we're on stage and we're speaking, we are humming tapping and singing and all the audience here is tapping.

That goes back to what you were just saying where it makes all the sense in the world to us because we hear "Jingle Bells". But the audience only hears the tapping.

I don't care where you are and going back to the persuasion where we started this conversation, you know a few minutes back is, it's about persuasion and the way to persuade is to give that full context of what is so obvious to you in a way that's engaging and interesting to whom you're delivering the story.

Then at the end, they are able to make their own decision of whether that content was valuable or not, and I don't mean dragging out the story by giving every permeantation, but remember, how can they hear the tapping the humming and the singing.

I used this example, I read that book, I don't know 4  or 5 years ago and I use it with everybody when they say to me, "Look, I'm really struggling in how to communicate this with someone, even in a meeting or personally."

I tell this story and they look at me and they go, "So, great," and then you start talking faster and then you start telling them all these other things.

Just take a pause and realize that they're not hearing what's going on in your head. 

And also, they don't know like you were just saying like the 10 years of everything I know from working at "Gartner". And now the 2 years of being here at Salesforce.

RF: I think that's a good opportunity for a hashtag #FingerTap.

My challenge to all of my listeners, and I do this at least once a show, if you've had a finger tap moment where you've completely been irresponsible in delivering a message because you're so comfortable and caught up with the message that you're delivering, tweet out to Tiffani or myself and use the hashtag #FingerTap, and then either a picture or you can say, "This just happened..." why not, throw it out there and we'll see if that works.

TB: My Twitter is @tiffani_bova, and it's Tiffani with "I" on the end, because I didn't want to copy the jewelry store.

RF: I love that, that is your personal brand as well.

Let's touch a little bit, I know you're not speaking now charging money, because you’re at Salesforce now, that's a whole different gig, but you were before.

What's the brass tacks when it comes to your advice for people who are trying to make that transition in their own life or in their career to get to a spot where they can charge to speak?

Anything that stands out that you wish to throw out there into the World of Speakers?

TB: Yeah I'm going to steal this from Seth Godin.

Seth told me, when I asked him what's the advice you give people who want to be marketers, just speaking about that.

He says, "Look, I remember when I was a kid I wanted to be a marketer, it's not like everybody was going to let me be a marketer.”

”So I decided to go market for my high school newspaper and for like the local store. I would say to you, if you want to become a speaker, start speaking and forget about the money, initially."

But maybe you go and you volunteer at some place and so you have to speak, maybe it's volunteering about some story or something that you've done.

It's going to be free for a while, but what are you going to do during that time— maybe you have a friend stand at the back and videotape it, so you can listen and watch.

Then you're going to find your voice and you're going to slowly get better and find something that you're really passionate about.

You're going to start to get feedback from people who have heard you speak and you may find something you're really passionate about.

I think you have to speak about a topic you're passionate about or the audience will know it a mile away.

I'd say just start speaking and worry about the money later, and even if you're only charging a little bit, and you're looking to charge more because you want to make it a full time job, you've got to lean into practice and getting better and getting better and getting better.

Then all of the sudden when you say, "Oh it's $2,500" or, "It's $5,00"', or 7,000, 10,000. 15,000, 20,000 whatever the number is, people will blink.

But if you want to go, ''I'm going to get into the speaking business and my rate is 10,000," and let's just say they say yes, and you're not good.

Now you have a different problem, right the problem is that now people remember that or they won't book you again or they'll say, "Oh I saw them one time," and even though it was your first time and they don't know any of that context, they might not book you.

I'd say that this is a profession in my opinion anyway, that this is a crawl walk run, and I'd say even against the giants you know I get the fortune of being on stage with some of the best of the best is I still think I'm in the walking stage, and there's lots to be learned.

At the end of the day, I'd say just go out there and do it and volunteer to do it and do it at your your kids' school or do it at the office.

Do it for let's say training, like, "Okay I'm going to be the floor monitor for emergency evacuation and I have to tell everybody what they need to do," you just have to practice speaking in front of people and learning your voice.

RF: I think that's excellent advice.

One of the things that I kind of mess with people if I'm speaking I'll ask the audience, "How many people here are public speakers?"

And I usually get about half the audience and oftentimes, it's a lot less.

Then I say, "Okay let me ask another question— how many of you have spoken in public today?"

And I won't stop until every single person raises their hand and there's sometimes people that maybe your checked out and I'll say, "You, yeah you," and they'll be like, "What?"

And then everybody laughs and I am like, "There you said it, I heard you."

I think part of the process is just like going through the motions and I think a lot of people have this practice that they are speaking, they're just not clocking it as speaking.

Talking with friends, talking at dinner talking with your co-workers, telling stories, these are all foundational ways to practice speaking.

You don't just have to be up on stage and I think that's empowering because we have to communicate to get everything in life.

So you might as well notch it up to practice and eventually get to a spot where you're passionate enough about selling a message to the world.

TB: I think I'm funny but I would never think I am a comedian.

Just because you could do it with your friends and get them to laugh and everyone enjoys having you at a dinner party, it's very different than being in front of people.

RF: Yeah, especially stand-up, that's probably like the highest level when it comes to the video game of like super difficult extra, extra difficult.

People don't understand how hard those individuals work to just get the right thing at the right time.

TB: Yeah, I agree, we all have to sort of speak in front of people and communicate etc.

Storytelling is about the art of creating a movement to get somebody to do something different or think differently about whatever topic it is you're talking about.

That takes some practice.

RF: Yeah, and that's the golden nugget, that's what we're going to hide in a treasure chest.

For everybody listening, Tiffani, what an amazing fun time, real time story we know that you came from an island and you've traveled all around the Big Island of the world throwing those wooden balls down the gangway to try to hit a 100 but not worrying about it because you've hit enough 60s 70s 80s, that you are crushing it.

I know you will continue to.

I encourage everybody to follow you on Twitter and connect and see you live and all that stuff.

Where is the best place for somebody to find you if they had one arrow to shoot online?

TB: Twitter is great because, I'm fairly active like you are, or LinkedIn.

It would be really awesome if they decided to subscribe, I've got a new podcast up on iTunes called, "What's Next! with Tiffani Bova".

I had some great guests so far and it would be just awesome to have them join me.

RF: Where do they find it,  like what's next. com, I feel like that could be dicey?

TB: Yeah, it could be dicey, yes. So "What's Next! with Tiffani Bova" on iTunes.

RF: Okay sweet. Well, ladies and gentlemen I know what's up next for you— it's subscribing to Tiffani's podcast, that's where I'm going right now.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ryan Foland, also known as DJ Ginger MC.

Tiffani, we are out as soon as you say "Goodbye".

TB: Mahalo nui loa.

RF: Yeey, all right, adios everybody.

We'll see you around!

 

A bit about World of Speakers

World of Speakers is a weekly podcast that helps people find their own voice, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.

We cover topics like: what works versus what doesn't, ideas on how to give memorable presentations, speaking tips, and ideas on how to build a speaking business.

Connect with Tiffani Bova:

• SpeakerHub profile

• Website

• Tiffani Bova's podcast

• Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Did you enjoy the show? We’d love to know! Leave us a review on iTunes by following this link.

Listen to more interviews with expert speakers.