All right, next up this morning, we are diving into a powerful guide for anyone who wants to own the stage, whether it's a boardroom, a webinar, or a keynote. Joining us is Dnestri, Play, professional speaker coach and creator of the speaker Ignite program, and she's here to talk to us about her book Ignition. Three Steps to Drive from Newby or three Steps to Drive from Newby Presenter to expert speaker. It's packed with speaker hacks, visuals and practical tools.
It's not just a book, it's a full on transformation manual for presenters of all levels. Good to have you.
Hello, Hi Mourning, I'm well, I'm well. Listen.
Tell us what expired this book, Why inspired the book? Why why did you feel the need to write it now?
I felt the need to write it because I felt that there were a lot of individuals like myself who myself, I struggled with speaking when I started going into corporate and needing to present to teams and at executive board levels.
And no one.
Actually gives you the structure on how to speak. They give you the position, they say congratulations, all the best with you, but no one actually tells you when you have to do your first board presentation. How to structure that message? And it really came out of my early corporate career. I was asked to present to as senior executives. I was prepared, I was excited, I was even confident, But when that moment came, I froze, I stuttered, I
forgot my words. I wasn't actually nervous, I was just overwhelmed. And that experience just shattered me. But it inspired me to become a better version of myself, and it set up this part to redefine my communication identity. So for the next twenty years, I traveled, I trained with master communicators. I turned this weakness into a teachable strength. I teach
people how to speak in partblic right now. I have been doing it over sixteen years, and I just thought it was about time I put all of this knowledge into a book for others to work with. So I essentially became the culture I went needed. And I'm giving this book out so that people can be coached and get the same insight that I once needed.
How much of it is down to personality? Do you think dinner shreet? Because there will be some people, you know, I just mentioned myself, who I can do a very good impression of an extrovert and somebody who is very very confident. But actually I've got an awful lot of imposter syndrome going, an awful lot of negative self talk going. Maybe not in this seat, you know, after a a few twenty four hours of being in this seat, I'm okay.
But I do speak for a living IMC events. I host events, and even in that space, I kind of have to go with my Sarah Jane MC while a king hat on. I don't just rock up a Zeschja, because if I just rocked up as esch I'd probably never get onto the stage. How much do you think it has to do with personality and confidence?
A very interesting question and it's something I get asked all the time. You have what I have in my groups. I call them introverts, and they want to identify themselves as extroverts. And it doesn't matter whether it has to do with personality, whether you feel you're more introverted or extroverted. For me, everyone is a speaker. You just don't know it yet. There are some principles that goes into it. So my introverts they still need help because they need
to overcome their shyness and get confidence. The extroverts also need help because they come across as being too loud and too much emotional and passionate, and so have to teach them how to turn down their messages personality. Now, there are some principles to speaking, and that is, regardless of your background, speaking as a privilege. When you are speaking, you are allowed to share your knowledge and experience, and regardless of who you are speaking to. I believe that
you attract the audience that you're ready to handle. Just to go a little bit step further with that. The reason why I call this book Ignition is because I want to transcend this thought that it has to do with something like a gift. And that is why I use the analogy of driving, because learning to drive and
speaking require practice and not perfection. With driving, you gain confidence as you progress from short drives to highways, just like speaking, where you move from speaking to small audiences eventually get to the boardrooms and then lent to go to bigger stages. The more you speak, the more skilled
and confident you become. And it's so important for me to express this analogy because I want to tear down this barriers that exist that speaking has to do with personality, or I'm an introvert, or I'm an extrovert, or I'm gifted, or it's really a skill that you learn by doing.
I love that you've written down a list of common fears related to public speaking, and I imagine that these are well, they are common fears because that's what you've called them, But some of the top ones being I'm afraid of not being as good as the speaker before me. I'm afraid that I might forget my speech. I'm afraid that people are going to be staring at me. I'm afraid that I'll be too nervous. I'm afraid of not
knowing the answer to a question. Are these all hurdles and fears that can be overcome?
And how absolutely I address these? Because over the course of these years of working with individuals, I started finding trends in the fears that people are bringing across and that's what I've essentially written down in that book. And so I then came and worked on a different analogy and how to overcome this. And if you can imagine an upside down you every time you are speaking, you need to picture yourself being on the top of that upside down you. They are one of two things that
can bring you down. One is being too anxious, and that's where you can't think anymore. You are so overwhelmed with fear that you've forgotten your talk. And the other one is over confidence, where you feel you are so good and you are just going to ace this presentation that you end up attracting a humbling for from grace, something goes wrong with your speech. So you need a balance of the two, a balance of confidence and a balance of anxiety, and that keeps you at the top
of your upside down you. That's one of the techniques of how to overcome fear. What you have listed there are the common fears that I have picked up, and a principle that I share with my students is to say, you need to be a selfless speaker and not a selfish speaker.
Speaking as a.
Privilege, like I said before, and someone has asked you to speak because they believe that you have certain knowledge and experience to help them. And so if you're going to be overly focused on your selfish fears like what if I fall, what if I forget my talk what if, and I can continue on that you are not in
a state to give to this audience. You've got a group of people who are waiting to listen and receive information from you, and they're not going to ret this if you're in a state of selfishness where you're thinking about yourself. So one of the principles and their mini that I share in the book is to be a selfless speaker, where you are focusing your thoughts on what your information is going to do to help your audience.
And when you shift that focus from yourself to the audience, you take away the fear because now you are in a giving state, and in that giving state, there's no space for fear.
You you talk about the book is the book is divided into into three three steps. Just give us a quick overview of that, and how do those three steps guide a speaker's growth.
The three steps have to do with the categories of where you could be as a speaker and the journey that you could be on. I talk about speaking being a journey and not a destiny. It goes with the driving analogy, and so each one of us, each one of you is on a different journey. Some of you are in a beginner stage where you need to learn how to overcome your fear of speaking. Some of you a little bit more advanced, you have been speaking for a while and you're looking for refinement, and.
Some of you at the expert stage.
Where you're now looking at more complexity. And that's the three steps. So ignition is then very practical, it's visual, it's personal. Every chapter gives you tools, tips, and structures
for speaking at each of these levels. So a person could almost pick up a chapter, pick up the book and start with what they know the beginner content for that chapter, or if they know something about the beginner they can go straight to the advanced section or the expert And so as a result of it, a person can pick up the book and systematically work through each
chapter at a time and put their talk together. It helps people to craft their message, and it's that full journey of how do you start speaking, how do you use props, how do you use your stage, how do you use your hand gestures, your body gestures. What do you need to do to get your audience's attention in the first forty five seconds to three minutes? How do you structure a message? How do you package and deliver
that content? How do you answer questions? And so it's that full journey, including at the end, I've got some speciality talks like how to delute, praise talks, bad news MCing toast speeches. The book is center around the top three speeches that most people are asked to speak, which is how to sell a product or service, how to
inspire or uplift an audience, how to teach content. And so the end of the chapters I focus on all these specialty talks and so as a result of that, it makes this book a very complih hends of guide. I was told it's three books in one Why you need to speak? What do you need to do to prepare? And how do you deliver that message? And as a result of all these illustrations, real life stories, step by step formulas, it makes it relatable and it's at one step in one book.
It's interesting.
If you're just joining us this morning, we're talking to dnestri Play who's a professional speaker, coach and creator of the speaker Ignite program, and she's talking to us this morning about her latest book. It's called Ignition. Three Steps to Drive from Newbie presenter to expert speaker. When we think of a business context, Dnesiri, we can all be experts in our field, in our particular field of business. And then you throw in, oh, yes, but excuse me,
John or tandor whoever. In three weeks time, you need to go and present to a group of people which may not necessarily fall within their their skill set in that particular sector, and can throw even you know, senior level managers off because that's not there, or senior members of staff off because that's not necessarily their skill set.
These are the types of people that you work with, people who maybe are more academic in nature, or maybe work much more in isolation and then are thrown into the deep end when they suddenly have to present and perform essentially in front of other people. Is that quite a common thing that you deal with.
Yes, that is a common theme that is part of my audience. I've had a wide spectrum of audiences, ranging from trainees newly qualified, especially your new managers who have just been appointed into their role and suddenly are thrust into speaking. Some other delegates that come through. It's a niche need. Perhaps there's a product or a service that the company is now launching, and they want this team to learn how to package this message and sell it
to an audience. So they bring me in to teach their teams on how to package the content and allow them.
To sell it.
Could be also a group of individuals where you are taking them through a leadership development program and now you're inserting communication skills as part of that, So they're.
Bringing me in to teach that.
Now, to your point, I was smiling because I tell people, mentally, you'll attract the audience you're ready to handle.
So if you are Joe Blogs, you know.
Sitting in the corner and mining yourn business, doing in normal work, and then your manager comes to you and says, hey, I can't make this meeting in three weeks time. Can you fall in my spot for me? You must know you attracted that opportunity because you're mentally ready to handle it. That's a principle that means you right now, even though you are not in that position, you have what it takes because your manager has seen in you the ability
to speak. So you need to go and say yes to the opportunity, and by doing so, you say yes to growth. If you shut down that opportunity. You're shutting down your opportunity to leadership, to growth, to expensiveness, and so you attracted that opportunity because you're ready.
So you need to say yes I.
Was making, is that something come in? I suppose the point I was making is that some people don't have that. It's not a yes or no, it's you are going to do this. It's not oh, I don't really feel like doing that today. It's like, well, this is part of the remit of your job, and so that's what
you're going to do. And I imagine that in that situation where it's not a choice, where you don't have the choice as to whether you're going to do it or not, that's where a lot of the fear comes in because you may not feel equipped to deal with that. I want to talk about the importance of mindset though. How does one's internal dialogue, and I make reference to myself that sometimes can be that imposter syndrome, that lack
of confidence that what could go wrong exactly? How does that impact your external delivery?
It's massive. There are two parts to speaking. The first is to get your psychology right, and that is your limiting beliefs, your internal dialogue, What are you saying to yourself your speaking identity? And that is why a big part of my speaker Ignite program I deal with psychology. I'm a accredited coach myself, and I specifically specialize in that field of understanding the brain and how to untap potential because I saw the benefit of bringing that into
my program. If I teach you speaking alone, which is just the skill, and tell you this is how you structure your message, and this is how you put powerpoints lies together, and this is how you stand. That's only why side of the equation, because then you could be in front of an audience, but then I haven't dealt with that little thought that you might have that then becomes a massive thought when you're standing in front of the audience, something small like I don't think I'm worthy
enough to deliver this message. So if I don't deal with those thoughts that you might have in your head before I teach you the skill, you could always learn the skill, but have this one thought that brings you down. So yes, it's massive, and that is why psychology and your internal dialogue and coming up with the new speaking identity for yourself is a big part of my program and how I work people into becoming the speaker they meant to be.
What do you mean a speaking identity?
Okay, you have created for yourself a description of how you are right now, so you could be calling yourself you know, I'm just a admin clerk, or I am just a finance manager. I'm not meant to be speaking. So you have created a description of yourself that has currently made you comfortable, but it's also limiting you as to.
What you could be doing.
I reshape that, and so I work with individuals to expand what they believe they could be by reworking how they see themselves. And when they see themselves differently, then they are able to embrace this new skill of speaking and start going out and speaking more. So it's essentially your belief mechanisms, the way you describe yourself internally and how you then introduce yourselves. So tapped in with that, I work with the individuals to change their introductions of
how they introduced themselves to an audience. If initially they had just said, you know, my name is so and
so and I am X y Z position in an organization. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about I work with the individuals after reidentifying their speaking identity, I work with the introductions on being more expansive to bring in some of these elements of their passion, their experience, their past working with individuals, or the content, and we have a much more longer introduction that gives them credibility not only to the audience but to themselves.
What are some of the most common mistakes that you see people making once they're on stage? Deni Shre.
I think that could be an expansive list. The most common is taking the audience for granted. So what I mean by that is, if you've just done a presentation last week, you take the same presentation copypaste it to the next audience, and you should always tailor the presentation to your audience, even if you are making one's minded tweak to it. Change something, change a PowerPoint slide, change the delivery, change an activity, change something because it does
two things. One you're honoring the audience for their uniqueness and two for yourself. It makes you excited to want to deliver that message in a different way versus taking the same cookie cut approach to multiple audiences. That's one Can I give you another or do we.
Have time, Yeah, we have time.
Another one is research, researching your audience.
So before you go into the next venue, take a little bit more time to speak to the host, speak to audience members, prep the stage. Most people get into a venue and they just come just a few minutes before they talk and they start presenting. What I recommend to individuals is to get there about at least an hour earlier, put your stuff together, and then sit in the audience. Go stand in different parts of the stage.
See not the stage, the audience, So have a look at the different parts of where the audience is seated and what is their angle from that perspective of the audience. Go to another part of the audience and see where how the stage looks from that other side of the venue. And by doing that, you're getting in your head perspective, space, orientation. You know different parts of the audience, and you can then you know align how you're standing on the stage
relative to the audience. Speak to audience members. A lot of people just go on to the stage and they don't have this connection with the audience. So before you go there, part of that one hour speak to people in the audience, ask them I mean, what are you looking forward to in this talk? What brought you here today? And see if you can bring in some of that messaging and tell your talk slightly to align to some
of the things that you are hearing. People love it when you bring in an element of individuality and you're also bringing or when.
You personalize I guess yeah.
Absolutely, and you connect with the audience better. Yeah.
How do you feel about notes? People taking notes onto stage? I mean, in some cases obviously that people might be doing a presentation, in which case the audience is going to be looking at something. But what about taking actual sort of bits of paper and notes on stage. Are you somebody who believes in that maybe bullet pointed cards or do you think people should always learn the material and speak off the cuff.
It depends on the type of talk that you are delivering, and this is highly critical for me to EMPHASI size.
So let's chat about this.
You get talks like you're speaking to inspire speeches, your educational talks, you're speaking to sell an idea, a product, or a service. Those kind of talks, no problem. You can have a detailed script, take out the keywords, bring the keywords onto a PowerPoint slide or onto some kind of notes pad in front of you. If you look
at the keyword, you know what to say. But then you get very detailed talks, very serious talks like your crisis talks, delivering of bad news, maybe a praise talk at a wedding event, and for that one you want to stay with the script. Imagine those COVID speeches that we had. We whenever we listen to those speeches from prime ministers and presidents, they had a script and they stayed with that script. So there are certain talks, very
formal speeches. If you're giving a speech rewarding someone as an example, you want to stay with the script. So it depends. If it's a general talk, leer, selling, teaching, inspirational, you can get away with keywords, but if it's something more formal and more sensitive, you want to stay with the script.
How do we get hold of the book? Dinish?
The book is available on Exclusive Books Take a Lot for next day delivery in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. It's also available on Amazon as well as Unkindled Great Stuff.
Thanks very much for your time this morning, Dannestripe the Plae the author of Ignition. Three steps to drive from newbie presenter to expert speaker