I've invited Mike Ganino, a storytelling and speaking coach to join us today. So listen in as he shares the power of effective speaking.
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Welcome to the Breakthrough Mastermind Show. I'm your host, Jen Argue and I facilitate masterminds for women entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses to help others and create financial independence. I'm so excited to have with us today, Mike Ganino, who is a storytelling and speaking coach, and he has also been exec producer for TEDx.
So would you say your niche is helping people with keynote speeches, uh, as well as all other types of speaking as well? Yeah. I think it's really helping people dive into like, what are they trying to say and realizing that we are also the message. So getting a script, getting some copy written for you by someone else.
Is only part of the piece there because we are also the message, you reading something and having a block, having a fear, having a... protective habit between you and the audience is never going to deliver the message you want. And so we really look at it holistically. And so we're talking about performance, we're talking about, uh, you know, sometimes we got real deep and like, what happened that, you know, what are you trying to hide from people?
And we're working with people on the way they breathe and the way we move. And all of those things are learned behavior, there's instinctual, obviously, but then there's learned pieces that over the years we put on top of it to try to be who we think we're supposed to be or to be safe in a world where maybe we weren't always safe.
And so sometimes in front of an audience on a stage or on a screen, our job, if we want to really connect with them, is to remove some of that. And so that's where it's like public speaking kind of meets self-help professional development, sometimes. [laugh] Well, and that's what I love about you so much and which is why I asked you to be here because I feel like as a speaking coach, you get right into it, which is the fact that public speaking is ranked as one of the top fears that people have. And you're addressing that, you're addressing how our emotions get, you know, delivered when we talk.
And what's really, like the big thing, I say this all the time when I, I was just working yesterday with a, with a private client here in Hollywood, and the real, like, bottom truth under that is that we're actually not really scared of public speaking.
What we're scared of is the loss of status or safety or protection, because we might get it wrong. We're scared of the judgment of the audience. And that makes sense if you think about it, like there was a period of time where we lived in really small groups of people, and if you were kicked out of the group, you didn't make it, you know?
And so... job, that goal of wanting to be safe, not wanting to say something or do something that gets you removed, you hear it in people's voices too. When someone speaks and they think, this is the way I sound, and the work that we do with them shows them. That's not the way you sound. There's a lot of ways you can sound and you are choosing a version of yourself to put out there based on how you think you're supposed to sound.
So do you think you're supposed to sound really up here in breathy, or do you think you need to be really guttural and low? All of those are learned behaviors that somewhere along the way you heard the message that to be safe, to be accepted, you have to sound that way. And so then we bring all that in front of an audience.
And there's all these faces looking at us, and we are scared of losing status, of being kicked out of the group, of not being good enough. All of those things show up there and often the audience can't necessarily read them accurately, but they could tell something's up. And so when it's a high stake situation like that where you need to build a relationship where you need to... share your thought leadership.
It's so critical that we can get rid of some of the stuff that isn't us, so we could really be there with them, you know? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Wow. That is so profound. And as you were saying that, I was thinking about if a person is concerned about how they're perceived by somebody else, and all of a sudden they're in a group of people and they can't tailor it to that one person, and now it's like, what are all these people's expectations?
Yeah, that would be terrifying. And what we often do is we look at them as a, as a like a big mono group and we don't actually connect with anyone then. And so we don't make that individual eye contact. And really, cuz it's so intimate eye contact, really you can't, you can't hide you look in someone deep in the eyes and you can't hide.
And so what happens so often is, and we put up a wall, And we don't really connect with anybody then because we're scared of what that could look like. We're scared of our voice cracking. If you look at someone and, and you know, whatever the case is, we're scared of showing ourselves too much, but that's why the audience is there. That's why they show up.
Tell me a story about somebody who was really afraid or was underperforming, and from you working with them, how you were able to get a transformation, for them. Oh my God, this is the daily work in our... yes. In, uh, in our business, in the mic drop method. I mean, sometimes it comes down to the content, the stories they're sharing, sometimes the delivery, I'll give you an example of a, of a private coaching client I was working with, uh, here in Hollywood.
And her voice was always kind of like... way up here, and this is how she sounded all the time and this is what she thought she sounded like. And she, you know, would, would not connect with the audience, wasn't making eye contact when she was looking at them and just stayed up here I call it the... with eye contact there's the sprinkler and there's the just above the horizon. And the sprinkler is when you see the person that's like, I am making eye contact, I'm looking at all of you. Can't you tell that I'm watching and I'm looking at you, but there's no connection there? It's eye contact to check off the list that I looked at everybody, but no actual real connection with anyone.
And then the other one is the just above everybody, where you look just above the audience at the back wall the whole time and you don't really connect with anybody. And so she was doing that kind of thing. And what happens a lot is we start to... uh, we start to breathe differently, so we get nervous, we get anxious, we feel we're being judged, so we start to hold our breath quite a bit.
And when you hold your breath, then your voice gets way up here. I mean, you're probably all of you that are watching or listening to this, if you're, if you're driving, don't, if you're driving and watching, don't do that. [laugh] But if you're listening to this and driving, then, then, Come back later and do it. But right now I want you to like tense up your, uh, don't hold your breath, but just tense up your ribs, your stomach, tighten everything and think about how your voice changes.
It gets constricted, it gets tight, and so it gets easy to just talk up here in this place the whole time because I'm not actually moving anything. But if you stop, you to take a deep breath, and then on the exhale you say something. Man, does that resonate? And so I was working with her and she was in that place where it was all tied up here.
She was very holding herself and she was presenting, and she was someone who was presenting in front of hundreds of people all the time, but it was always in this place. And I thought, Let's see what's really here. Let's see what's underneath of that. And so I had her just, you know, really ground her feet.
And if you wear heels a lot. Uh, you should rethink that on stage because it keeps you from being really connected to the ground. Uh, especially like a very thin like stiletto tile heel. Mm-hmm. . You're literally on little wobbly pegs the whole time and you're not actually connected to the ground. So you should rethink that if that's part of your normal stage.
Look! But she was just not connected, not grounded, not there was ah, she wasn't really in the room with anybody when she was speaking, and there were hundreds of people. She spoke to them all the time in her company. She was an executive. So I said, I want you to take your shoes off. Just stand on the ground, kind of breathe.
Breathe in through the ground, breathe out, breathe in. We did that for a minute and then I said, Don't say anything and I want you to breathe in and on your exhale the words, Imagine them writing on the breath. Their escape from your body is through the breath. And so she did that in immediately. She went from being way up here and then the next thing she said was down here.
And whoa, did it change? She felt that she like shuttered with like, Oh my gosh, something just came alive. And you realize that your ability to go there and then also sometimes use this voice, those are tools to communicate what we want to the audience. And so realizing that you've got a lot of different crayons in your toolbox.
Uh, there's of course the content stuff, the stories you could tell, the data, the research, the yada yada. There's the slide in the visual. But within your own vessel, your own instrument of your body, you have all these tools. And for her to realize that she didn't have to be up here all the time presenting ideas like this, that she could come down here and say this matters.
Was so breathtaking. She shuttered. You could see it. She shuttered, her body was like, Oh my gosh, something just came alive. And it's really, really, really fun to see that kind of thing happen for people. That is an amazing transformation. [laugh] Wow. . And think about if you're on the other side of that, you're one of those employees where you're watching this person presenting ideas all the time, and it constantly feels like something's up.
I don't know what's up with her, but a kid feels that she's tight and rigid and so her breath is way up here. And then all of a sudden she comes in and she says... Hey! Everybody, we've got some things to talk about today. It's like, Whoa, I can't take my eyes off you now because something real is going on. And that's where we're after. We don't want them to take our eyes off us when we are on stage.
Hmm. . That is incredible. So do you feel, is most of your work with entrepreneurs or business leaders, or sales people? A little bit of a combination of things. Uh, sometimes it's with... people who are professionally speaking. There's the short little workshops we do for, for folks that are, you know, freebies to couple hundred dollars and it's a workshop on a specific topic.
Maybe it's about storytelling, maybe it's about writing, maybe it's about how to create your intro and bio. We have a cool workshop coming up for that too, um, of how to actually create an introduction when you're on podcasts and stages that sets you up and serves you versus what often we do, which is give someone something to read and it's like, oh gosh.
I need to really change that. I, so many speakers feel that way that person's introducing them and they're like, Oh my gosh, I really need to work on that. And then we never do. So we've got a workshop coming up on that. So we've got lots of little workshops like that. We've got the mic drop method, which is a six-month group, but also private coaching.
There's quite a bit of private coaching, weekly private coaching where people there are really working on crafting a transformational narrative, like putting together a talk that is truly transformational for the audience. And then how to perform it, and then how to learn to direct their own performance on camera and on stage.
How to make choices with their delivery to go where they want. And then private coaching with folks one on one. And so a lot of, uh, the, the folks in there are public speakers. There are authors who are gonna go either on book tour and so we're helping them find. What do you pull out? You know, you've got this book that's six hours of an audiobook, but you've got 30 minutes in front of an audience.
What do you pull out of it? How do you connect with them? How do you share with them? So they read your book and buy your book and become... at that point, they've probably bought your book, but you want 'em to deepen their relationship with you. So how do you do that on stage? So work with a lot of folks like that, and then a lot of executives.
Who are going out and speaking at trade shows and conferences or to their own teams? And in that bucket, I include entrepreneurs, like you're an executive if you're an entrepreneur. And so those folks might be speaking on summits. They're going out and speaking to other people's audiences, doing master classes.
And so we're helping them really, uh, the truth of who they are so that when they get in front of those people, those great opportunities, they don't blow it by having up walls and kind of being stuck in their own selves so much that they can't really look across a camera or look out and state and really connect with people.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I would think that it would be a really bad idea to go out and wing it when it comes to those types of things, because like you're saying, uh, so much of those speaking opportunities are high stakes. When you have this amazing opportunity, like let's say the book example, you poured in all this time and energy to create this amazing book, and then you have this one shot to go on a book tour right after, mm-hmm…
Cause people don't do book tours years and years after, No, writing a book, typically it's just after. Yeah. And you have to optimize that. And going and prepared is, is critical. And that's such an interesting thing to think about because those people probably already have. A lot of times the book tour is not for people who don't know who you are.
They're not coming to a conference and you're one of the breakout speakers. And so, It's, Oh, I'm gonna meet her, see what she's about, what is this idea? There are people who probably bought the book to be there or are buying the book there, they're fans. So what are you doing with them to deepen that relationship, to show them who you are, to express what you've been creating in this book and why it's so important for all of us right now?
And that's a slightly different task than a keynote speaker who people have never met before. And in either case, winging it is super dangerous because I, I always think if you're gonna ask hundreds of people to come and listen to you, you at least owe them the amount of time. So if it's a 30-minute talk and there's 50 people, 50 times 30, you should put in that amount of work to get it done.
Uh, and the challenge so often is that we don't know how to rehearse or prepare, so it ends up being like... we end up being very robotic. Uh, people dunno how to write scripts. So we write scripts like we write book pros or like we write website copy. And then of course that doesn't sound right because a script is actually dialogue.
You know, people who have taken a screenwriting class are often really good speechwriters because it's a dialogue. It's just the audience doesn't have any lines in that scene. But it is a dialogue and it shouldn't be written the same way as prose is written. It shouldn't be written the same way as a book or a website copy or anything.
And so it's a really, there's just so many beautiful things to uncover and explore as you, you know, work on this... this craft of being a speaker and a communicator, really. Mm, it's incredible. So, I'm super curious about how you got on this path. You know, did you always start off with being a public speaker and a storyteller, or did you get your way there through some other path?
Yeah, I definitely took a, a windy way to get there, to figure it out, but I, from a very early age, I remember realizing that if you could get people's attention and then you could keep it. That was power, that that was power in some way. Uh, and for me, it started, I used to like rehearse. Do you remember this TV show called Kids Incorporated?
It was on Saturday mornings after Mickey Mouse Club. Um, and I would watch it every Saturday morning. I was like seven years old and we lived in a, in an apartment building. And I would, I would tape it on our little, uh, VHS taper and then I'd watch it back and I'd write down all the lines. I'd write the script.
Yeah, in on papers before computers. And so I would then take that to the other kids and I'd be like, Okay, you're gonna be so and so. You're gonna be so and so. And we'd put on little skits for our families based on what they did on the show. And I realized, Oh, We can get them to pay attention to us, we can get them to listen, we can get them to laugh.
Getting people to laugh, getting them to feel something is power. So that was a really early memory of, for me that I think infused a lot of things, I did in many different ways. Um, but I was an actor in my early twenties. I was, uh, doing improving and comedy sketch writing. Doing one-person shows commercials in Chicago while also working in the restaurant industry like so many actors do.
Yeah. And I, uh, I have a really wild, uh, insulin habit. I'm Type One diabetic, and so I need insulin to stay alive. So I couldn't back then before Affordable Care Act here in the United States, I couldn't not have- I had to have a job that had insurance benefits because I would die without insulin, so I was never able to pursue acting and performing full time.
So I always did on the side. I was really successful in the restaurant industry. Eventually built and sold a, uh, a restaurant brand. We had 14 locations and after that, I thought, I'm gonna do something new. So it was 2014, I went into speaking and teaching what I had learned. How do you build a great brand?
How do you build a great team? How do you have that kind of like very branded, um, experience for customers and employees? And so I would go out, I was speaking to restaurant and hotel and franchise conventions and conferences, and about a year-end, a previous client said, Hey, we wanna hire you back, but not to speak this time.
And I thought, I remember back being a seven-year-old, you're not the first people to tell me that you would pay me not to speak, [laugh] pay me to shut up. And so what they wanted was for me to come in and coach their executive team because... everyone remembered the stories and ideas that I shared previous year and they said we need them to listen to our executives that way we need our executives to be able to be up there and be honest and charismatic and, and likable and interesting and tell stories.
So I went back and I coached this exec team for, for a big hotel chain and I thought, Oh, this is what this was all about... me becoming a speaker, having the business background, but also 20 plus years of performance and writing and putting shows on stage, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. So that was in 2015.
I slowly started. Uh, transitioning from speaking about leadership and culture and all that kind of thing to speaking about storytelling and performance and stage presence and how we can deliver our ideas to each other. And, uh, and then that speaking offer merged into coaching, merged into group coaching, and all the things we do now came from that client who said, Hey, we want you back to teach us what you do.
That's incredible. I love hearing how it just was a natural outpouring of who you are. Yeah. But how you can see those early seeds in your childhood and then you know, how it morphed into how you built this big brand with your restaurants and your acting. And I didn't know you were in Chicago, did you do Second City?
Yeah, pretty. And, and what's so common with, uh, so many folks is you do 'em all. So I was at Second City, I was at Improv Olympic. I was at, uh, the Annoyance. I did a bunch of like, street front theater, um, pretty much anywhere. If someone would let me on a stage, I showed up. That's awesome. I love it. I love it.
Makes me wonder if I ever saw you when I was there, [laugh] Probably, probably if, if you were seeing shows frequently there's. Yeah. Probably some time were at least in the same building, we're at least in the same building. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Right now with your business and helping the people that you are. What is your favorite type of way to really make a quick hit transformation with somebody?
Hmm. It's probably twofold, but the biggest thing that generally affects most people is the connection between their breathing and the... their voice. So when I say voice, I don't mean like the voice you write within your copy, I mean the literal sounds that your, your voice makes because our, the word we say.
The words we say when we speak are not really just words. They're little packets of feeling for the audience. We are telling them how we feel in that moment, what we're trying to express, and we're in some ways telling them how we want them to feel by the way that we communicate, by the way, we choose to say words.
And so, I find that is often the most successful way in for people. Mm-hmm. . It's often very emotional. It can be very emotional the way I sound, realizing again, that I don't, I don't have to be tight and talk way up here. And if you're listening to this, I'm tightening my, uh, my arms, my chest, getting my ribs tight, holding, uh, holding myself really tight and getting my voice away up here because I'm squeezing it.
But realizing that I can also come down here sometimes and if I only live in this place where I'm very deep realizing that I could get up here and tell people that I'm upset about something, that I think something's ridiculous. It is really amazing how that unlocks for someone, almost this alternate version of themselves that they've kept hidden away that they say, mm. . Now the floodgates are open, baby. Now the floodgate are open, and then what happens next? Stories, ideas, perspective starts pouring out cuz there's a freedom, to express it. And so the breath and the voice and then moving, people have to get very constricted. And it's like they move inside of a very slick little box.
Maybe on stage, you pace, maybe on screen you, you don't move very much. You don't move your face, you don't move your hands. And getting some of that movement in there, you start to unlock stuff that you didn't even know was locked up. And so those are, those are probably the two like, you wanna see some magic stuff happen quick. It's usually.
Yes. Yes. I feel like what sets you apart is your ability to connect with people's emotions and to, to be able to identify the emotional blocks that are happening and how to work through those. What is something else that you feel like sets you apart? From other speaking coaches? You know, I think that there's this really interesting intersection.
When I went to college, I studied journalism, I studied broadcast journalism in public relations, and I was always very interested in the truth. And even with writing and reading, I'm very interested in, if I'm reading fiction, I wanna get to the truth of what's going on here, what's underneath of this situation.
And so that journalism side of me was about finding truth. But then the performance side of me, the acting, the writing, the, the putting on shows was about dramatizing the truth we all share. And so there's this really interesting intersection I think that I live in that, and I've started to say it's, I'm in dramatic pursuit of the truth is what I'm after.
Wow. And so, I think as far as speaking coaches go and media trainers, you know, I train a lot of people who are gonna go on, on television and be on the news, and they wanna make sure they're going on "Good Morning America" or something like that, and they wanna make sure they're, they're coming across the way they want to.
I think what I'm very interested in getting to is what is the truth of this person. What is the truest thing about this person and this situation and the, and what they've seen in the world, and how can we... put that out there for others. And so that journalism side and the performance side kind of do this, I don't know, fun little dance, and in the middle is me, [laugh] somewhere.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it, it feels like you are very authentic, you know, to who you are. Like your approach is authentic. You want the people you're working with, to present themselves authentically as well. Yeah. And yes, I love that you're after the dramatic truth. The, the word drama or dramatic doesn't need to be histrionic.
Like, um, like, like being dramatic. What we assume it means that we're, after, I call it third rail energy, you live in Chicago, you'll understand that anyone who's ever lived in a city with a subway, the third rail is the one that has the electricity. So there's all these signs that say, don't touch the third rail.
If you get down on the track because it's gonna electrocute you. What I think, when I think of drama is I think of that third rail energy. What is so true that it shakes you down to the bones, that it zaps you out of your, your experience that you're in and gets you to look at what really matters here.
And so when I say drama, I'm talking about third-rail energy, got it, which is that I think we desperately need more of in this world. Yes, Yes. And I think when people get connected with really who they are and their values, and then they can like identify what is actually lighting them up. Mm-hmm. . And makes them wanna wake up every day excited about the day.
And infuse that into everything that they're doing. Yeah, I think that really helps things to come alive for people. Such a beautiful way to put it, I love that. Yeah. So, okay, so something I, I want our listeners to get to know you a little bit better personally. Sure! What is something that lights you up? You know, every morning I am lit up by, I have a daughter who's two and every day, it's just amazing to me.
Uh, she's like a new little person in some ways every single day. The things she can say, the things she's interested in and what's been really fun for me and [laugh] therapeutic and healing and triggering all at once. And if you've had kids, you probably experience yourself. If you ever went through any kind of like traumatic thing as a kid, you're like, Oh, all that's back.
I gotta deal with it now. I thought I had buried it, but nope. Here it is. This little one's reminding me. Yeah. What has really been beautiful as a performance coach and as a, as a voice and a speech and a storytelling coach is really being able to look at all the moments when we're little and we haven't had all those walls put up yet.
We haven't been taught all the things that we're not supposed to do, the things that are polite to do, the things that are nice to do, the shaming of who we are hasn't happened yet. And so it's such a gorgeous thing to watch her and her friends and her little schoolmates and think about, gosh, what would the world be like?
If more of us had that freedom, that expressive freedom, what if what we learned was yes, how to cohabitate and be thoughtful and be honest with what we want to say, but we weren't doing it, uh, because we needed to protect ourselves. What would the world be like? And every single day, she's just such a beautiful little lesson and reminder in that for me, that we all start, pure and we all start expressive.
And the very first things we do are use our sounds and our movement to communicate what we're about. And so I'm just on this quest now to make sure I don't mess it up as much as I can. I know I will, I will, I will do my own thing there. But really, uh, really watching that learning from her and bringing that kind of energy into my work is just really freaking inspiring every day.
Mm. . It's so true. Kids just really get us back in touch with our own child within, yeah, you know, they help us to play again. They help us to just get in touch with that innocence again. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love that. A two-year-old is something else do, so much fun. [laughs] So many ways. So, so many ways. [laughs] And all their little two-year-old friends. [laugh]
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Thank you so much, Mike, for coming to share your brilliance with us. I loved it. And how can people get in touch with you if they would like some of your genius in their lives? I'm easy to find you just Mike Ganino and find me all over the Internets and things. A good thing, that's a good like SEO name Mike Ganino.
Uh, once you type it, you'll probably find me and, uh, Mike Ganino on Insta and all those places sharing ideas. And if you want, um, we've got this cool little workbook you can grab. It guides entrepreneurs through the five stories that you need to be able to tell in your business. How to break down, how to really talk about what you do in a way that's engaging and fun for people.
And that's over @mikeganino.com/storycraft and it's, it's the same one I, I came and I taught your folks about those five stories. We need to be able to tell how to put together our brand story, how to embody it, how to be able to tell it. So you can go grab that over mikeganino.com/storycraft. And, uh, yeah, otherwise just come poke around and let's, let's hang out and support each other on the socials. Love it. Thank you so much, Mike your were absolutely fantastic. Thanks for having me.
I absolutely loved having Mike Ganino with us today. He came and spoke to my masterminds about effective storytelling and guided us through different types of stories that we can be telling to help communicate the passion behind our brands to our audience.
So I highly recommend everything that he does. Definitely go check him out. And thank you so much for listening. And if you are looking for more support, challenge, and inspiration in running your online business, I would love to have you apply to my mastermind.
Check it out! @jenargue.com
