How to Speak Confidently on Video in One Take (Full Transcript)

[00:02:44] Speaker 1: Um, um, um, um, emulate the taste of like, like non-chicken nuggets. So these nuggets are made from chicken, but they're made to emulate the taste of non-chicken nuggets. Oh, that's much better. Edit all the blather out of your videos, because my time is very precious. Oh, that's fire. Make it less teal and more cerulean, sure. Replace your background with something more fun, the cold void of outer space. Let's boost that sound quality. Emulate the taste of non-chicken nuggets. Emulate the taste of non-chicken nuggets, dope. It needs more style. It needs more clips, more gifs, more, more, well, I might've made it too gnarly.

[00:03:42] Speaker 2: Hello everyone. Welcome to today's webinar on how to make confident, clear, and unscripted videos in one take with UltraSpeaking. I'm your host, Fiona, the learning and operations manager at Descript, and I'm super excited to jump into today's topics and exercises with you all. So as we get started, I'd love to hear where everyone is from, where they're tuning in, and open that up to everyone out in the community. I'm glad to see where everyone's coming from. Before we dive into our agenda today, we are going to go into some quick housekeeping for our webinar, just so we're all aware. So this session is going to be recorded. You'll be receiving a follow-up email right afterwards with a link, or you can hop onto our YouTube and replay it. We'll be hanging out in the chat. So any questions or comments, please feel free to share it there and we'll have our support team from UltraSpeaking and Descript to help answer any questions. And last reminder, we're all here to learn together. So feel free to share your experience, and I'm super excited to hear everyone's experience in our topic today.

[00:05:05] Speaker 1: Cool.

[00:05:06] Speaker 2: I'm seeing a bunch of folks from different places, South Africa, London, Virginia. We are global. How exciting. Cool. Cool. Before we bring in our speakers, I would love to kind of just gauge if folks here are Descript users or UltraSpeaking students or completely new to both, we'd love to kind of see where we're all coming in from. Awesome. Seeing a bunch of different folks coming in. Awesome. Cool. So we'll jump into our agenda. Oh, before we do that, so what is UltraSpeaking? So UltraSpeaking is a communication training program that actually helps you overcome speaking anxiety. And it's not just a tips and tricks surface level program, but actually changes your relationship with speaking, which is a great tip for folks to learn that struggle with speaking. As you can tell, I would love to learn this and benefit from it too. So excited to share more about this. And then so today's webinar, we'll be going over three different exercises. One will be speaking with conviction, staying clear and concise under pressure, preparing your videos without notes and memorizing, and then we'll go into Q&A section as well. So I'm going to bring in our speakers. So we have Michael, who is our co-founder from UltraSpeaking. And we have Laura, our CEO from Descript, who has actually gone through the program. How are you guys doing?

[00:07:04] Speaker 3: Excellent.

[00:07:05] Speaker 4: Well, I decided to prepare correctly for this webinar by preparing nothing at all. I am completely unprepared for it. So we're going to see if the promise actually works here.

[00:07:17] Speaker 3: It's perfect. I love it. That's the optimal state.

[00:07:21] Speaker 2: That's awesome. I feel like I prepared too much. And now I'm like, what was I supposed to say? So I think we'll all have some things to take away from today's webinar. So cool. I will go ahead and hand it over to Michael, who will be leading the exercises. And I'll be popping back in shortly, so all yours, Michael.

[00:07:43] Speaker 3: Amazing. Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Before we jump in, Laura, it'd be great if you could share a little bit about how we met and what circumstances brought us here today.

[00:07:57] Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually took an UltraSpeaking course a couple of months ago. It was a lot of fun. There were people from all over the world in it. And we worked on some of our pitches. We did some of the exercises that we'll do today. And I just thought, oh my gosh, it would be such a gift to be able to, for more people to be able to have this experience and was really excited to partner. Because a lot of the folks that use Descript, they have this incredible content in their head. They have these stories to tell. But when they get up and look in front of a camera and the little red light goes on, it's suddenly like, oh God, what do I say? And there are things you can do in Descript to fix that in post. But there's also just some exercises you can do up front to just feel more comfortable in front of the camera and show up the way that you show up probably in your normal life when you're talking to your friends.

[00:08:46] Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah. Fix it in pre. Cool. Well, yeah, I'm really excited to do this together. And when it comes to talking on camera, which is such a strange phenomenon, because at least in public speaking, you have a public, you have an audience that's giving you live feedback. But on a camera, you're kind of having to generate your own energy. And you have oftentimes a script, something you want to say, and yet you want to make it seem as if you don't have a script, as if you've simply prepared and can speak very naturally. And so some of the biggest struggles that I've seen on camera have to do with a couple of things. One is a lack of clarity, like a rambling type of nature where you feel like, ah, I got to do another take because this one just wasn't sharp enough, or I got to fix it in post. Another one that I'm curious to kick things off with is a lack of conviction. People will see themselves on camera and go, oh, I feel like I want to be a little bit more believable or have a little bit more gravitas. And I'm wondering, Laura, as we jump in, what's been your experience in seeing this relationship between making videos and this attribute of conviction?

[00:10:07] Speaker 4: Yeah, I love the word conviction. Too often we use the word charisma, and charisma feels like this sort of magic thing that you either have or you don't have, like, am I good at parties or am I not? And that actually isn't what it takes to be a good communicator when you're doing these kinds of talking head videos. What you need is conviction, and conviction is much easier for us to all attain, right? It just means that you believe what you're saying. And so much of what makes us use video is this kind of connection with the authenticity of the speaker, and that authenticity connection only works when you think that the speaker actually believes the thing that they're saying, when they show up kind of in this full-bodied way. And so, yeah, I think that conviction is something that all of us can attain, and there are things that we do, ways that we communicate that make us, that communicate the real conviction that we feel within, and that's some of the things that we'll talk about today.

[00:11:04] Speaker 3: Yeah, perfect. Perfect. So if you record talking head videos and educational videos and you're teaching something, then having more believability or driving home points with more gravitas or seriousness really makes a difference. And I want to cover a technique that's going to help us do that more naturally so that it's not something artificial, but it can just unfold for us. And I'll share my screen in just a second. I saw a question here from John asking, or I think it was John saying, what does fix it in pre mean instead of fix it in post? Fix it in pre means fix it in the root cause, meaning eliminate the speaking challenges in yourself, not on the video afterwards, but find ways to build speaking skills and improve communication skills that can go wherever you go. And that's really what today's about. So I'm going to share my screen and I want to play a couple of games. What's awesome about today, by the way, is everything that you're going to see happen is going to be completely improvised. It's going to be spur of the moment. So we're really going to put Laura to the test with a couple of speaking challenges to see how do these exercises help us train the key speaking skills that matter in life. And so I'll share my screen here and we'll jump in. Laura, give me a thumbs up and you can see it. Okay, fantastic. So we've already covered the agenda. We'll talk about conviction. We'll talk about clarity and then we'll end with preparing a script without sounding robotic. So how do you deliver something that you've prepared and feel that sense of preparation without sounding scripted? That's where we're going to end. But when we're talking about conviction, which is where I want to start, it's really simple. Conviction is about using bold language, language that feels very, very bold, very confident. And we've all done this in our lives. We say things like, oh, it's absolutely crucial to be here on time. Or this matters a ton because it's going to drive revenue. Or I really want to emphasize. These are phrases that we see all the time spoken in language. However, many of us don't have these types of phrases as habit. Until now, we can do something called conviction prompts to really help our brain use bolder language. And as a result, you'll find that we'll have more believability, greater gravitas, and just a general sense of ease in speaking because we're emphasizing what's important, which really matters. And so, Laura, I want to play a game with you where you're going to train using these prompts right here and other examples of them. Yeah, I get you're stretching in. And so, here's what's going to happen in the chat. When I click go, this timer is going to kick off. And I picked the first topic for Laura. We'll pick another one together. The first topic for Laura is going to be the importance of using video at work. This is something she hasn't prepared for. And we'll just sort of see her on the spot speaking. But while she's speaking, you're going to have these conviction prompts appear on the right hand side of the screen. And Laura's job is to integrate these random prompts on the fly and make it look seamless as if it were the plan all along. Laura, are you ready?

[00:14:38] Speaker 4: Let's do it.

[00:14:40] Speaker 3: Okay, fantastic. Talk to us about the importance of using video at work.

[00:14:45] Speaker 4: Well, video is quickly becoming the dominant form of communication. We already see that happening in our personal lives. How much time did you spend watching videos last week on your phone or on the computer? And increasingly, we're seeing that that behavior happens at work, too. This matters a ton because right now, the tools that we use at work don't often include video tools. So we're still working in PowerPoint. We're working in Docs. And we know how to write these things. And this is supremely important that we make this transition from Docs and Dex into video, that we learn how to use these holistic and fully formed modes of communication in our working styles. It's life changing when you're able to quickly communicate something, not by spending 30 minutes trying to find the right words, but just at the speed of thought, being able to record your thinking, maybe edit a little bit. And it really frustrates me that right now, there's no kind of tool in my job until I started using Descript that lets me do that.

[00:15:58] Speaker 3: Wow, give it up for Laura in the chat. Bravo. Bravo. Before we jump forward, I just want to get a quick sense. What was that like for you? I noticed that not only were you able to integrate all the prompts on the fly, but it almost seemed like you were able to navigate in maybe new directions or in directions you wouldn't have gone in because of the prompts on the screen. Could you talk a little bit about what that was like for you?

[00:16:29] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think that maybe you're the one that told me to think about the butler, like that there is this little butler in your head that's always serving up something for you to say, and that a lot of being able to speak extemporaneously is trusting what the butler is going to serve up. And I think that when you have the hardest time speaking extemporaneously, it's when you're negotiating with the butler. The butler serves up a thought and you're like, I don't like that thought, I'm sending it back, give me another one. And that's when you see someone sort of freeze and be like, they're negotiating with their butler or what their butler has told them to come and say. And so I think it's 9, 10 in the morning, I'm still getting warmed up, but you saw me in real time kind of being in communication with my butler as it served me thoughts to say.

[00:17:19] Speaker 3: Right. You would start these sentences, not always sure what your brain's going to deliver. But the important point is that you started them and you started them with quite a good momentum of confidence. So you might say a phrase like, and it really frustrates me that, and then suddenly your brain's like, oh, I'm going to scan for what does, what am I frustrated by? And something is always there. And the net effect, and I hope it's becoming more clear, the net effect is that these phrases add a little bit of energy, add a little bit of importance to what you're saying, whereas otherwise we might not think to go in these directions. And if you just scan the chat, Laura, I mean, I'm hearing that was so amazing. You were seamless with those prompts, empowering, really well done. Yeah, very nice. So I just want to show to folks in the chat that this is live, that Laura's not just a great memorizer and had all this prepared. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to play this game one more time, but this time I want an audience created title. So can you put in the chat, what is the topic that you would want to hear Laura talk about? It could be like the price of leadership or the key to happiness or really anything in between. I'd love to get some examples so that we can get some inspiration for titles. And meanwhile, we're just getting more and more compliments going your way. Yeah, it's really amazing what the brain can do. So I'm going to share my screen here. We'll get a title in just a second. Okay, nice. So can you see my screen again, Laura?

[00:19:08] Speaker 4: I can.

[00:19:10] Speaker 3: Okay, perfect. So there's a couple of great titles in the chat. The marketing funnel, why brown is the best color. How do you get people to watch your videos? That's a cool one.

[00:19:24] Speaker 4: Let's do something off video though. Because I think about video, let's do.

[00:19:27] Speaker 3: What do you think about, what do you think about creating the best day of your life?

[00:19:33] Speaker 4: Creating the best day of your life? Yeah, I love that.

[00:19:37] Speaker 3: I love that too. So let's pick that one, creating the best day of your life. This is the harder question that the audience chose for us. And we're going to get completely new prompts on the screen. So whenever you're ready, I'm going to hit the timer. Creating the best day of your life. Let's give it up for Laura.

[00:19:58] Speaker 4: I want to help you create the best day of your life. That's always going to start with intention. What, as you wake up in the morning and you think about how you want to spend this day, what is it that you are trying to achieve? Are you looking for peace? It astonishes me when I think about how many minutes of my life I spend without real direction or purpose. I'm just sort of a passenger on a moving walkway that's taking me forward. That's the importance of intention. Intention means making a decision. I mean, it's staggering to consider the number of decisions that we make every day. But it's so much easier to make those decisions in alignment with your values and in alignment with happiness if you set intentions. If you set intentions. Look, the truth is you're not going to be able to do this every single day of your life. But if you wake up in the morning and you just write down a few thoughts when you first wake up, saying like, today I want to live embodying this, it can be life-changing. And so I'd like to offer this as a daily practice to you to have the best day of your life.

[00:21:06] Speaker 3: Excellent. Wow. Super impressive. Well done, Laura. That was really cool. And it felt like that last one, life-changing, was just like served up on a platter for you. It's just like, it's where your brain was going anyway.

[00:21:21] Speaker 4: Yeah, the butler and your slides were very much in alignment.

[00:21:26] Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit about this rep. What else did you notice as you were playing?

[00:21:32] Speaker 4: You know what? I love the word. I love that you said the word playing. In some ways, this one was easier for me. Like my life is thinking about video and strategy. I have like a gazillion thoughts about it all the time. And so being able to present them in exactly the way that I want, I have like this control thing around it. Like, is this 100% true? Is this right? Could I defend this in a court of law? And there's like that kind of critic in my head. But when we're talking about how to have the best day of your life, I'm just, I'm having fun. I'm playing. And then it's like even easier to just go with it and enjoy the ride. And that makes speaking so much, I don't know, makes it more fun.

[00:22:13] Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I would wager that the people that we call the naturals, those who have real ease and what seems like effortless ease on, not just on camera, but speaking on stage in front of people, I would wager they approach communication with a sense of play, with a sense of fun. And there haven't been many ways to practice your public speaking skills in a way that builds that sense of play and that sense of fun. And so all the games we're playing here today, they are available and they were built to be trained so that speaking can be a little bit more fun. You can find them on ultraspeaking.com. They're all free. And the goal is just to build a little bit more play into your speaking. And so we really saw that. And could you talk a little bit before we move on on what did you notice with the conviction prompts? What do they do for you?

[00:23:08] Speaker 4: I think the conviction prompts help you move on and sort of like maintain structural interest. Otherwise, I think like it can all sort of be glommy, you know, kind of a ramble. I'm a bit of a rambler. And pulling back out with that conviction prompt, it sort of says to the audience, like, hey, listen up. But it also to you reminds you like, what is my main point here? Like, if I had to summarize this. So I think it's just like a helpful bookmark for both audience and speaker.

[00:23:39] Speaker 3: Yes, so well put. So conviction prompts tell your audience, hey, listen up. And the audience can't help but do it. Because when you hear somebody say, and what's important about this is, they're going, oh, okay, I should probably listen. Like the message is about to get delivered. And it helps the speaker to synthesize. What do I really want to say? So if we recap on this idea, I'll go back to my screen. The technique's called conviction prompts. We do this all the time without recognizing it. What if we started doing it intentionally? So if you want more enthusiasm on camera and just enthusiasm in your speaking, you can use phrases like, what's fascinating about this is. Or what's exciting me about this is. Or if you want to place greater emphasis or more gravitas, you could say it's absolutely crucial. Or it's super, super important. Or if you want more importance, you could say this matters a ton because. And there's lots of prompts that we can use. What's important is to get into the habit of using them. And that's why we want to train with these games. So that becomes second nature. Now, Laura, you were talking about you being a bit of a rambler, which I don't know if I've seen that yet. But it sounds like that's your inner experience. And it's a lot of people's inner experience that feels like, how do I stop this monologue? And where do I go from here? And so I think it's helpful for people to know that when you're rambling, it's really simple. There's really only one goal. Your audience is desperately craving that you get to the point. That's really the only job. When you know you're rambling, it's like, ah, goal number one, get to the point. And so we can get to the point in very much the same way by using a prompt. These prompts are called clarity prompts. And they're literal instructions for your brain or for your butler to get to the point. So an example of this might be, basically, the point is. Or imagine you're rambling. And then all of a sudden you go, essentially, what I'm saying is this. Or the thing to remember here is, instantly, we're giving instructions to our brain to synthesize the main point here. And as a result, we get back on track and the audience gets the most valuable part of what you're saying. So I want to put this into practice in just one round. The audience is going to choose another question. But we can choose from the list that we had below. And you're going to get these new clarity prompts appear on screen. And let's see what they do for us. Some of the titles here is taco a sandwich. Thank you, Trevor, from Descript. That's a good one. Influencing people really well without manipulating. That's a good one. Getting out of the comfort zone. Data privacy in the modern AI world. Yeah, all of these are really good. I like this one, the joys and struggles of being a female CEO in tech.

[00:26:50] Speaker 4: Oh, LOL. Oh, no.

[00:26:54] Speaker 3: I like that one because that's a tough one. There's a lot to be said. We only have a minute. And if you're open for it, Laura, I'd love to put you on the spot with that one. What do you say?

[00:27:05] Speaker 4: Yeah, let's do it. I haven't taken this one yet.

[00:27:09] Speaker 3: Cool. So the title is the joys and struggles of being a female CEO in tech. You have a minute 10 and your prompts will appear on the screen. You got this. Here we go.

[00:27:21] Speaker 4: I've always felt like a core text for me in my experience of just being a woman with ambition is legally blonde. And the gif, if you will, of Elle Wood saying, what, like it's hard? And that is just the spirit that I try to bring to all things. Essentially, having the confidence in believing that I'm capable of achievement and I'm capable of doing something like running a company. Now, look, it's certainly not easy, but I think it's hard for me to understand. What's important to remember is that I don't have the experience of being a male CEO. And so I'm not sure if the challenges, the joys and the sorrows and the anxieties of being a CEO that I experience are because I'm a woman experiencing it or just because it's the hardest freaking job. The essence is that being CEO is something that not many people have an opportunity to do. And so there's not a lot out there that teaches you how to do this job. And there's even a smaller amount out there written by women or experiences that women have. So if you remember nothing else, it's the importance of being a pioneer who is often trailblazing in a difficult world where there's not a lot of representation.

[00:28:39] Speaker 3: Wow, awesome. Yeah, really well done. What a tough topic. And I love the direction that you took it to because you made it very much your own without having to speak in a way that feels like you are performing for somebody. It felt very authentic. Yeah, that felt really nice. And what did you notice in these types of prompts? And same question to the audience. As Laura was going through and integrating these clarity prompts, what did that do for you? What does it do for you as the listener? And Laura, I'd love for you to speak about what did that do for you as the speaker?

[00:29:21] Speaker 4: Well, this one was harder for me because I think like I haven't spent a lot of time. Well, first of all, it's a much more vulnerable topic. And it's a little sticky. Like you're like, oh gosh, do I wanna be quoted saying something about being a woman CEO? So it felt higher stakes and very personal. And I don't know that I have my like, when you're a CEO, you like eventually get your like, these are my three talking points about this. And so I don't know that I had my little shtick about this one. So I was kind of processing in real time. So it's a good one to do with the de-rambler.

[00:29:59] Speaker 3: Yes. So you were processing in real time, which is so, it's so common. That's the most common speaking scenario we get put in at work. And if you wanna do more one take videos, just turn your camera on and start speaking. We won't have our three points. We won't have our talking points ready. So you were emulating one of the most realistic scenarios. And I think it was really cool to see how at certain points, the exercise forced your brain to synthesize. So what are you actually trying to say? And sometimes in the moment you're like, oh, I don't actually know yet. And so going through that process was really awesome to watch because your brain did it over and over and over again.

[00:30:46] Speaker 4: Mm-hmm, my little butler.

[00:30:50] Speaker 3: Your little butler. In the chat, Rhonda says, these clarity prompts focus the thoughts and put them into a logical framework. Yeah, so it gave it a little structure. If we're wondering, how do we structure our thoughts on the fly? Prompts are gonna be a really good friend to you. And someone else says, oh, Laura just sounded much more confident in what she was saying. And I would agree with that. Yeah, really well done. So this is how you practice. This is how you practice your speaking, at least in the modern day. You know, we don't just rehearse the same thing over and over and over again because there's gonna be many times where we're gonna be put in situations where we have to navigate on the fly, where we have to express ourselves well and eloquently and confidently, but we don't have a script. And in those moments, it's great to have some techniques to rely on. And so I'll go back and recap this technique here. And it's called clarity prompts. And it couldn't be more simple. It's just something that becomes a habit. So every time now, I remember when I was in my early 20s, I would blank all the time at work. It was one of the most scary scenarios for me because I'd be in front of my manager or a director and I would not know what to say. And now I do. Now I say, basically, my point is this. And it's a surefire way to get out of the blank or to get out of the ramble. So whenever you're feeling stuck, you always have phrases like bottom line to prompt your brain into the message, which is really the most valuable thing you could say at any single point in time. Oh, very quickly, by the way, there's a lot of techniques that we won't get to cover in this workshop, but they are essential to communication. And some of them we already did. So if this is interesting to you, take a screenshot on your phone or a photo if you're on your computer. This is the Ultra Speaking Playbook on communication. And it's some of our best ideas put into one email course. So check it out if this is interesting to you. We're gonna wrap up today with one final exercise. And this exercise is for not sounding robotic when you're on camera. Laura, I don't know if this is something you've thought about deeply or have seen in your experience, but I found it quite difficult where when I have something to say, when I have a script, when I have my talking points, sounding natural actually is quite difficult. It becomes much more, yeah, it's tougher. Have you noticed that for yourself?

[00:33:42] Speaker 4: Yeah, 100%. Like recording with a script is, you know, 70% of the time what I do now when I'm making a video. I read off of a script just because it's nice to kind of think about what I'm gonna say ahead of time. But the biggest drawback of recording with a script is where is the riz? Like, where is the conviction? It's obvious that you're reading from a script. And so trying to make that just sound natural and have the authenticity as if like, oh, it's just occurring to me right now is difficult to do. So that's the downside of reading off a script.

[00:34:17] Speaker 3: Yeah, very cool. Very relatable. And so we're gonna solve for that. And I'll introduce the method to solve for it. In the meantime, we are gonna need one more title for Laura to talk about, one more topic. So you can start typing that in the chat as we're going through it. What's one final thing you'd love to hear Laura talk about? And imagine Laura was doing like a brief one-take video on it. What would that topic be? So we're gonna see Laura practice creating a video in real time without having thought about it first. And if we were to do this in the traditional way, well, Laura would first write out her thoughts on paper on the topic. Then she would maybe go on a treadmill and wouldn't get off until she's memorized the whole dang thing. And then finally, she would recite it over and over and over in her sleep, in the shower until it's become second nature. What a very laborious process. But on top of that, the problem is that it sounds robotic. You'll feel prepared, but you'll sound like you've scripted the whole thing, which we did. The other option is we could wing it, but wing it often makes you sound natural, but feel rambly and feel unprepared. You have that anxiety of like, I don't know what I'm gonna say. So is this gonna be a good, sharp, crisp video? So we want this X factor. We want to feel prepared, but we also want a natural delivery. How do we do that? Well, luckily we're in the modern day. So there's lots of new innovations in the world of public speaking. And one of them is to get rid of writing, which is a crazy thought, but it's actually so interesting. What if instead of using our writing voice, we started using our speaking voice to prepare for our speaking? What a concept. That means it'll already be in our conversational tone. And what if instead of memorizing and focusing on the right words, we internalized the main essence of what we want to say. We had a deep felt sense of, I know what I want to say, I've got it. And instead of reciting, we freestyle it. Meaning when we practice, when we rehearse, we never say anything in the same way twice. So we practice in a way that forces our brain to articulate the same ideas in totally new ways. And as a result, we feel a sense of spontaneity every time we do it. This is called the accordion method for effective preparation. I don't know if any of you have heard of it, but it's really powerful. And the key is to practice with time constraints. So we're going to watch Laura do this in just a second. Typically, the way we practice is we set a timer for the duration of our talk. Let's say it's a two minute video. And in round one, we practice, we do the full two minutes. And then in round two, we do the same two minutes again. And we keep doing the same thing. And it sounds very rehearsed because at some point we're not even there anymore. We're just sort of repeating some mantra that we've practiced. If we want to sound more natural, then we can use time constraints to force our brain to say things in new and exciting ways. So round one might be a two minute round. But then in the second round, we're going to ask our brain, hey, can you say the same thing, but only in half the time? And we keep cutting the time in half to see, are there ways we can internalize our main ideas without sounding scripted? And that's called the accordion method for speaking. And we're going to watch Laura do this in just a second. So she's going to have three rounds. First, we'll get a topic. And Laura's going to freestyle on it for a minute. And this freestyle, Laura, is kind of like, imagine you were going on a walk or you're at home and you're just sort of going, okay, what are my raw initial thoughts on this topic? But you'll give it in a way as if it were the real thing. So it would feel like, oh, this is take one. And then we'll play around and we'll workshop your idea. And for the audience, you're going to see the evolution of how an idea evolves and how we start to internalize our scripts. So all we need is a topic. Let's see what we got here down in the chat.

[00:38:44] Speaker 4: Yeah, we got a lot of ideas.

[00:38:46] Speaker 3: Yeah, was there anyone that stood out to you?

[00:38:54] Speaker 4: Maybe we could do advice to solopreneurs. Because I think there are a lot of them on the call.

[00:39:01] Speaker 3: Perfect. Great. So we have a topic, but we don't know yet what we want to say. And so round one is for figuring that out, but treating it like it's the real thing. So it's a draft taken with a bit of seriousness. Cool. Okay, Laura, here we go. Advice for solopreneurs.

[00:39:22] Speaker 4: Being a solopreneur is so hard. And I think the hardest part about it is the solo part. You're all alone. And that means that there's no one there to motivate you every day. There's no one there to kind of share your joys and your anxieties with. And so it's all about kind of motivating yourself and keeping yourself in the game. So how do you do this? I think that the only way to do it is by finding other people. Like, okay, they're not going to work for your company, but can you find a community of other people who are living this life? Can you motivate each other? Can you find someone who can help raise the bar for you? Like, can you find two or three other solopreneurs that are also in this game who you admire, who are doing it in the way you wish you could? And the truth is they'll probably find things that they think you do better than them too. So it's this mutual raising of the bar that you can give each other so that you're not as lonely in this very difficult job.

[00:40:22] Speaker 3: Nice, perfect. We can just cut and post. That was really good. How did you feel about that one? What was that like?

[00:40:33] Speaker 4: Um, yeah, I liked that one. I mean, I think there's probably a lot I could go. Probably the way I do that is like I go for five minutes because I think like there, that's one good idea. I'd probably keep going until I got to like three and then I'd be like, okay, I got it. I found out my content. Now it's time to tighten her up.

[00:40:53] Speaker 3: Got it. Yeah, yeah. So, and this is a big question and it deserves some thorough answers. At the same time, what you shared was really valuable already. And so if you were to record a video on this, what you really wanna do is have this confidence of like, oh, I could do that again. Like, oh, I wasn't recording that one. How do I do this all again? I didn't remember any of the words that I said. So one of the ways we do that is we cut the time in half and we try to see, okay, if you only had half the time, what would you share? So same question, advice to solopreneurs, but now you have half the time. Let's see what your brain comes up with.

[00:41:34] Speaker 4: Here's my advice to solopreneurs. Right there in the name, you have solo. That means you're alone. There's no one that you're brain buddying with to solve hard problems. There's no one who's raising the bar on you, asking to give your best every single day, except you. And so what you need to do is go out and find your community. Find two to three other people who are in the game too and help make each other better so that you're not alone.

[00:42:01] Speaker 3: Wow, excellent, excellent. So notice how Laura is able to deliver the essence that's quite similar to what she said in the first round, but in a completely new way. And in this one, I felt you had even more conviction. It's like you had a little bit more certainty in, oh, I know what I want to say. And so everything just seemed to flow really naturally. And so what if we went to the extreme? What if we cut the time in half one more time? And now you only have 15 seconds to really deliver the heart of what you want people to remember when it comes to advice for solopreneurs. Let's see what that's like.

[00:42:42] Speaker 4: Solopreneurs, you're in the game alone. Make that different. Find people who are doing it with you. Find people who can make you better. Find people who can solve problems with you. Take the solo out of solopreneur by finding your community.

[00:42:57] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a short right there. That's a real right there. Really well done. Okay, fantastic. So give us some feedback in the chat. What did you notice in this exercise? What did you see? Because what I saw was the progressive distillation of your main point. And I don't know how it felt for you, Laura, but for me, it was like watching the essence of what you want to say get clearer and clearer and clearer. Was that your experience?

[00:43:29] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I gotta be honest, felt the time crunch in the 15 seconds, but I do think we got to the heart of the message. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe got a little bit there, but we got the heart of the message.

[00:43:45] Speaker 3: And that's really the, that's all you have time for in the 15 seconds. And if we did the full accordion method, what would happen next is Laura would now go back up the accordion. So we'd go from 15 seconds. Now we'd go back up to 30 seconds. Now we'd go back up to a minute. Maybe we'd go to two minutes or to five minutes. The idea is that once you know your core message, you are much, you are able to navigate with much more ease because you know where you're going, you know, your North star, and you don't always have that in the one minute round. You don't always have that in the beginning round. And I get it. People in the chat are saying, look, this is kind of unfair. Laura is quite good at this already. And I agree.

[00:44:32] Speaker 4: I understand this might be traveling tangerines, my high school improv troupe.

[00:44:37] Speaker 3: That'll help. That'll help a lot. But let's look through some other comments. One is her voice got stronger each time. Why do you think that is, Laura? Why do you think that came through?

[00:44:50] Speaker 4: Gosh, I don't know. It's interesting to read this feedback, but I think it's just because of the time constraint that I had to really cut to the chase and really go out on a limb. Like we talk about trusting the butler, like this almost felt like jumping out of an airplane and hoping that the parachute kind of, you know, disappears.

[00:45:13] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And when you go down the accordion, you're really forcing your brain to say it more concisely. Get to the point, get to the point. And so the goal of the accordion method is to first get to the point. What do I, if the audience forgot everything, we could only remember one thing. What is that one thing? Oftentimes when we write a script, we have three things or five things. But we don't have the one thing that is most important. And so this process helps us remember it, but also remember it in a way that, as we saw with you, is supernatural in a way that you feel like you've internalized. And only once we have this one thing can we start going back up and add in the detail in the stories and the anecdotes. And so one thing that Laura does really well for all of you who want to get better at speaking, here's the single most important key to practicing. Laura stayed in character this entire session. You didn't see her go, oh, I'm so nervous or, oh, sorry, I messed up or, oh, can I start over? Or, ooh, I don't like how this is going. Every single rep, she treated like it was game day and she just went for it. And regardless of how happy she was internally or externally, she got through the rep before we debriefed. And were there moments today, Laura, sorry, were there moments today where you felt like, oh, I could have done that one better or I wasn't really as happy with that one?

[00:46:47] Speaker 4: Every single one. But this is my number one piece of advice to people. And I actually think Conan O'Brien talks about this in his Hot Wings episode, which is great, which is never let your audience know that you're having trouble because now they're very nervous. Now they're very uncomfortable. Now we're all just having a bad time. If you look like you're comfortable, even when you're struggling, if you just look like you're comfortable, you're having a great time. You're not panicked at all. Everyone else is having a good time and they're not anxious either. And that's a contract that you make when you get up and do public speaking. It's like, I'm not gonna make everyone feel uncomfortable. And so just show up and stay in character.

[00:47:28] Speaker 3: Stay in character, yes. And then you'll get feedback like, wow, she's a real professional or wow, she looks so natural and confident. And that feedback, we start to internalize once we recognize, oh wow, when I stay in character, people perceive me as more confident. And that's a real big, a real big win. So Laura, that was remarkable. I'm very, very impressed. I wish I had done improv in my high school days.

[00:47:59] Speaker 4: Yeah, everyone should take an improv class. Because like most improv is terrible and that's actually the point. Like nothing teaches you to stay in character. Like being in just the worst, least funny improv skit of your life and it's like, doesn't matter. You're up here, commit.

[00:48:17] Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And can you see my screen by the way? I can't, no. Okay, oh yeah, there we go. Yeah, so I just wanna piggyback off what you're saying and recap as we approach the end. So what we saw with Laura going through the accordion is that each time her brain was able to communicate what matters in new ways. And most people think, oh, speaking is about getting all the words perfect and communicating everything. No, it's really about prioritizing what matters and being able to communicate that effectively. And we saw that round after round. And so as a result, Laura internalized many of the ideas without memorizing any words. So we still got the impact, but we didn't have that rehearsed scripted feeling. And that's the goal. We wanna feel prepared for our videos or our presentations, but we don't wanna sound rehearsed. And that's what the accordion method can really help with. So if I were to recap everything from today, here we go. Speaking with conviction requires us to use bold language. And there are prompts to help us do that. They're called conviction prompts. When you're rambling, you have only one goal. Laura, what's the goal? Do you remember?

[00:49:38] Speaker 4: Get to the point.

[00:49:39] Speaker 3: Get to the point, yes. And there are so many prompts and the simplest prompt you could use to get to the point is the point is, or basically my point is this. And our brain can synthesize the information on the fly. And finally, for preparing your scripts, if you wanna avoid sounding robotic, practice with time constraints. Start with five minutes, go down to two minutes, then one minute and really get ourselves familiar with saying things in different lengths of time. And one final thing I wanna mention before my time is up here. Anyone who signs up for an UltraSpeaking cohort between now and Thursday, and by the way, I didn't really talk about this, but UltraSpeaking is the place to practice your speaking. So there's not many places in the world where you can train your speaking skills in a way that's enjoyable. And that's what we really wanted to build. So we have these 30-day cohorts that run starting at the end of January. And if you sign up for it, you'll get three free months of Descript creator tier. And Fiona's gonna talk a little bit more about that. A huge thank you to the Descript team and also to Laura for her willingness to be coached live in front of the world, which is so admirable. Like talk about valuable practice reps. These are the most valuable practice reps you can get is to put yourself in some high stakes environments and crush it. And so just wanna say thank you, Laura, for having me and thank you to your community for being so lively and engaged. Thanks so much.

[00:51:23] Speaker 4: Absolutely, Michael. Fiona, should I do a demo now or?

[00:51:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to see how we use Descript for this.

[00:51:33] Speaker 4: Okay, so I'm just gonna quickly, I don't wanna spend too much time on the Descript part. I think a lot of you already use Descript, but can you see my screen? This is what it looks like when I'm editing a video. Here is my video over here on the right. I have a full timeline if I like love being a timeline editor down below, but I'm not really a timeline editor. I'm really more of a talker. So what I like to do is just edit over here using the Descript. And you can see that everything that the Descript and the. McDonald's followed in the footsteps of Coca-Cola recently by releasing a. So you can see that if I, everything that's happening over that I'm talking to is connected to the Descript over here. And what I can do is just edit this and it will edit the video for me. So if I like, here's a long pause at the beginning, I can just highlight that pause. Goodbye, pause. Now I start without that millennial pause. McDonald's followed in the footsteps of Coca-Cola recently by. But we make it even easier. I told you I'm a bit of a rambler. I actually read a script here. So what I like to do is remove retakes where I think there's, I've done a bunch of takes multiple times and it'll just find the best one and get rid of when I, oh, look, here's where I'm like, okay, what's going on? It just gets rid of all of that for me and cuts it to what I actually want to say. I can remove filler words, which there aren't any. Although if I come over here and share this tab, this is me on a podcast. And you can see when I'm not reading off of a script, there are some filler words. So I can just go ahead and highlight and delete those. So it looked like I never made any filler words. Uh, here we have, oh, 666. Let's just remove all of those. Shocking. That is in an hour that took five minutes of tape off just removing the filler words. Um, let me go back to this one. I can do other things here, like add eye contact. So it looks like I wasn't reading off of a script on my computer at the time. I can add studio sound. So it sounds like I was recording into a $900 microphone instead of my laptop microphone. I can edit for clarity, which sort of does that de-rambling for you. Like it's automatic accordion method here. Here are some things you could take out. So this is like, uh, you know, Michael was talking about fixing it in pre, this is fixing it in post where you let yourself record, let yourself be as rambly as possible. And then just go through the video and fix it so that it sounds like you were saying things perfectly. Another, the last kind of fun thing that I will talk about, I think is, well, okay. I have, let's say three more things I'm going to show you. The first is, let's say that I want to actually change the word that I said instead of over the weekend. I could, for example, say, regenerate last Tuesday. And I can say regenerate video and it will actually make it sound like the words that I said were last Tuesday. And it'll make my lips say that too. Now you have to give consent and go through a whole consent flow to make that happen. But, um, there you don't even have to do the retake. We just kind of, again, fix it a little bit in post. And then, um, finally you can add layouts and things so that you can do a fun, I don't know, like intro here. Maybe I want to make that look like this. And I can give it a title. And it will automatically kind of create those transitions and animations for me. And I can even, very last thing, I promise, um, do something like going to quick design if I want to. Uh, where is quick design? Oh, quick design. And what quick design lets me do, I think this might be a little too long. What's going on here? Oh, I need to get rid of my scene. So what quick design lets me do is that thing where I was turning this all into, like I was adding scenes myself. If I use quick design, it will just add the scenes for me. So I can say, like, can you just add some B-roll, use stock media or use AI generated, like maybe in this claymation style or over here in this illustration style. And it will actually cut scenes and add in the B-roll images or convert it to portrait and kind of add those images in and make it dynamic. If you're like, I'm not a visual editor, I just want to read my script. So that's a very, very short demo on what you can do in Descript. We give a lot of much more in-depth ones. But I think that these two products really work hand in hand, uh, learning how to speak and then like learning how to fix the things that you didn't quite get perfectly and edit it into exactly the video that you want to make.

[00:56:59] Speaker 3: That was awesome.

[00:57:01] Speaker 2: Amazing. Thanks for showing how to do that. Not analog way, or is that the analog way? I forgot how we... Two different methods. Thank you so much for sharing and being present with different responses during this exercise. I saw a lot of feedback of people getting not only the exercise information, but also like your take on like being a female CEO and all that stuff. So awesome to be a part of that. We have some quick Q&A's. First question that I wanted to surface is from John Dorbar about introverts. How would you do this with an introvert who is shy?

[00:57:45] Speaker 3: Ah, great question. Oh, Laura is extremely extroverted. How would you do this with an introvert who is shy? Do you find yourself extremely extroverted? Is that how you describe yourself?

[00:57:59] Speaker 4: I think extroverted can mean a lot of things. I'm definitely not the kind of person who constantly seeks out sort of opportunities to socialize with other people. But I would say that after doing this for a lot of my life, I no longer feel afraid of public speaking. But to me, a lot of that comes back to this mentality that we talked about at the beginning, which is like approaching these opportunities with a spirit of play. So whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, if you can access the joy, I know this sounds so foofy, but like if you can find the joy, if you can find the play, then you'll find a way to show up authentically, which may not be like, oh, I'm so expressive. I'm moving my arms. Like we don't all show up authentically in the same way. Go look at how most CEOs show up. They actually aren't quite this high on the expressive communication scale. But you'll find that way to kind of authentically, you know, let the butler tell you what to do and appear comfortable, right?

[00:59:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. I really find that it's not a matter of introvert or extrovert. It's a matter of the scale of self-doubt that we carry with us. And so working to have more comfort and certainty in our own thoughts and in expressing our thoughts is valuable for everybody. So I would do this just the same way with an introvert or an extrovert, maybe with a little bit more encouragement, but the encouragement is just to help counteract the self-doubt that many of us carry in communication.

[00:59:41] Speaker 2: Awesome. I think we're almost at time here. I'll share one more question and then we'll wrap it up. So the last one question that was quite common was how do I practice these conversation games? Is there an app?

[00:59:59] Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. So you can go on app.ultraspeaking.com or just go to ultraspeaking.com and click get started or sign up. Many of these games are free. We also have free intro classes as well. The most valuable piece of advice I could give to anybody that wants to improve their speaking is practice with other people. That is the single fastest way to improve because other people create real-time uncertainty, real-time pressure. They simulate the situation that we are all sort of carrying a little bit of anxiety around, which is I don't want to mess up in front of other people. And so you definitely aren't going to practice at work or in the situations that matter the most. So we need a safe, supportive container that simulates the real world, but that allows us to try out new things and practice and fail and be encouraged. And so whether you do it at Ultraspeaking or at Toastmasters or there's other communities that you find fantastic, regardless of where you do it, find an approach that fits your style, but most importantly, practice with other people. That's going to be the fastest way to improve.

[01:01:18] Speaker 2: I love that. I feel like that's one thing that can really help folks like me that are preparing with lots of notes and everything, but really, I just need to jump right in and work with other folks and develop that skill more in real time. So super excited about this new strategy to work with communication. So awesome. Thank you guys both for joining this webinar. Just to wrap it up, I'm going to talk about the awesome the awesome discounts that we have. So if you join the Ultraspeaking January cohort, you'll actually get three months free of the Descript Creator Plan. And if you are a Descript subscriber, you'll actually get $100 off the Ultraspeaking January cohort. So you'll be receiving an email after this webinar that gives you directions on how to move forward with each of those, depending on where you are. And you'll be receiving them shortly.

[01:02:17] Speaker 1: Cool.

[01:02:18] Speaker 2: And if you want to learn more, we'll share this link in the chat. We have a Descript community page that has links to learn Descript for our videos and also office hours with our support team where we can actually support any Descript questions you have as well. And we have a Discord community too. And I think that is it. Oh, one last ask is, please, if you can give us feedback on our webinar, we'd love to hear from you. Any topics you want to learn more about, if you want to learn more about this topic, we'd love to do more of these webinars. So go ahead and scan that QR code and this will also be sent out your email. Cool. And I think that's about it. So thank you everyone for joining. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Laura. This has been such a great webinar. I definitely learned a lot and I can't wait to jump right in.

[01:03:13] Speaker 3: Thanks so much. Thank you. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.

[01:03:18] Speaker 2: Hi, everyone.