Talking to Cool People w/ Jason Frazell
Do you ever wish you could sit down with the most interesting people on the planet and just talk?
That’s exactly what happens on Talking to Cool People. Host Jason Frazell sits down with thought leaders, creatives, entrepreneurs, and disruptors for real, unfiltered conversations.
Sometimes it’s about expertise. Sometimes it’s a powerful story. And sometimes—it’s just a damn entertaining conversation. Whether you’re here for insight, inspiration, or laughs, you’ll leave with something to think about and something to implement.
Talking to Cool People w/ Jason Frazell
Mike Ganino - Making a Scene: How to be Unforgettable in Every Spotlight
Like the Avengers all came back in Endgame (spoiler!), Mike Ganino is back for round 2 on the podcast!
Mike joins Jason for a high-energy, no-fluff conversation on what it really takes to communicate with impact. Mike—speaker coach, improv performer, keynote director, and now author of Make a Scene—shares why storytelling, stage presence, and vocal delivery are critical skills for anyone looking to own their space in meetings, sales, and leadership.
From bad advice about public speaking to practical ways to own your voice and physicality, Mike and Jason break down the five Stage Languages that make or break a communicator.
🔹 Why everyone needs to care about communication—even if you're "not a speaker"
🔹 The biggest mistakes speakers & business leaders make (and how to fix them)
🔹 Why storytelling works and how to use it in your everyday life
🔹 Practical exercises to make you a better speaker TODAY
🎤 PLUS: Mike shares his favorite award season speech, Jason drops some tough love on bad Zoom etiquette, and they even give you a quick homework assignment—are you up for it?
🎧 Listen now and get ready to MAKE A SCENE.
Mike Ganino is a storytelling expert, speaking coach, and creative director who helps professional speakers, bestselling authors, and entrepreneurs make unforgettable scenes on stage. He’s the author of the new book Make A Scene: Storytelling, Stage Presence, and the Art of Being Unforgettable in Every Spotlight, a guide to showing up boldly and connecting deeply through with storytelling + stage presence.
A former TEDx Executive Producer and sommelier (because why not?), Mike has trained over 5,000 speakers using his signature Mike Drop Method—helping them craft messages that hit harder than a double espresso. His work has shaped viral TEDx talks, launched bestselling books, and transformed even the most stage-shy scientists into magnetic performers.
When he’s not turning everyday presenters into speaking superstars, you’ll find him sipping wine, doing Olaf and Sven (Frozen) impressions to make his daughter laugh, or trying (unsuccessfully) to convince his dog Elliott to appreciate Shakespeare.
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Hey everybody. This is a special one. My guest on the show today is the one and only Mike Ganino and Mike and I were just catching up. Mike, you were on in 2020. What's happened since 2020? This is going to be out Wednesday, I think March 3rd, 2025. So in five years, what's really happened? And we were just laughing. We're like, we had a pandemic and we each had an additional human enter our lives. Mike's done a small thing. He's written a book, which is one of the things we're going to talk about today. And. I told Mike he's two fifths of the way to his jacket, his Cernit live jacket. Some of my other guests, like Sheila, Steven Drum, who you know has been on a few times. Tony's saying, so Mike, we'll, we'll get your, we'll get your jacket primed up. I invited Mike here for a number of reasons. One, he's just a great, great person. Two, he's written a fabulous book that I got a chance to read, and it's a topic that I love. It's about speaking and more than just speaking, making a scene in any space you're in, which is a really important thing. And Mike, I told you this, we're going to do something we've never done before. And Mike, you're going to give the audience something to do right now. And then Mike and I are going to sit back and we're going to shoot the tea and then we'll come back to you. In other words, we're going to pause for one second. So Mike, what would you like the audience to do right now? And this is only for those of you who want to be a better communicator. So if you don't care about that, don't worry about this. Otherwise, Mike, what do you want them to do?
Mike Ganino:Gosh, and if you don't care about that, call me because I need to convince you why you need to care about that. Because no matter what you want to do in the world, your ability to communicate it is important. Okay, this also is the way the book starts, by the way. It's like kind of the most unhinged introduction. The very first words in the book, besides the dedication of my daughter, are literally this task. There's no soft open. There's no little warm hugs. It is this task. Listener, take your phone. Open the camera app, set it to video mode, prop it up to face you or to not face you. If you don't want to look at yourself, turn it the other way. So you don't look at yourself, hit record and spend the next 60 seconds introducing yourself. You could explain a personal mission, why you do what you do. You could share a specific example or instance that you had to persuade someone to understand your mission or your work. You could describe an experience that has taught you a lesson about the way that you communicate. Your ideas, whatever it is, 60 seconds, hit record, we'll pause, this is weird for a lot, for uh, for radio, for, you know, for radio, for recording, like, Do do do do do do
Jason Frazell:do do Do that, we'll be here waiting. Right here waiting for you. Oh, yeah. Well, Mike, the good thing about this is if they're listening to this on their phone, they probably need to pause the podcast to do this. I know.
Mike Ganino:You know, it's funny at the end of the book, one of the very last things I say in the, in the, in the closing chapter, not the appendix is, Hey, so, you know, it's time to record your next video. And then I'm like, you did record a video at the beginning, right? Cause like, If you've gone through this book and done the work, I want you to see how much better you are now, because video is the greatest tool to do that. Now, for everyone who just did that, or if you didn't do that, and you have a video recently, and you're like, what do I do? We hate watching ourselves, Jason. We It's
Jason Frazell:awful.
Mike Ganino:Well, I don't. I enjoy it a lot, but that's me. Um, we hate, because I'm always learning. I want to watch it say, was I effective? Did it do what it needed to do? That's what I'm watching for. My, my four year old daughter loves to watch herself just because she's She's a Leo sun in astrology and she just loves to watch herself perform on video. She goes, let me see me. Let me see me in my phone all the time. So
Jason Frazell:good.
Mike Ganino:But when I'm watching video back and what I want everyone to do with those videos they had that they just did, or with the ones they'll do shortly, or one that you recently did, watch it back. And I want you to turn the audio all the way off and just watch. How did you communicate? What was your face saying? What was your body language saying? What was the takeaway from there? You know, now flip it over and turn the audio on. Don't watch yourself and just listen, just listen. Okay. What's the takeaway there? How was that? And then finally do a third time watch and listen together. And what I hope happens for people that read the book is that you learn not to watch yourself and say, Oh, I hate it. I never want to do that again. But you learn to watch yourself and say, Ooh. Now I know more choices I could make. The choice I made in that moment wasn't effective. It wasn't clear. Let me make a new choice. When I see someone on stage, or like on video, who's not landing it, I know two things. One, they don't watch themselves back on video at all. Even on social media, they just don't watch their stuff. They don't listen to their own podcast episodes ever, so they don't have the ability to improve. They just keep putting out stuff without improving. And two, I think. A lot of times I get texts all the time from people like, Oh my gosh, you won't believe this person speaking, they're awful. My response is always, Wow, I feel so bad for them that they didn't know they had other choices available to them.
Jason Frazell:That is such a brilliant mindset shift that it's all just about the choice. And we're going to go back here, Mike, now that the audience is like, who the heck is this guy telling me to click on my phone to do this? Let's talk a little bit about Mike and I'll give you, you know, like what I know of you and who you are in the world. You're a, you're a, you're an improver by trade. It's one of the many things you're trained in improvisation. You've directed Ted talks. You train speakers around the world, keynote speakers, people that are doing business presentations. You're an actor. And you're a two time author. The first book was not about, not about what we're going to talk about today. And you are now an author here in 2025. And the name of the book, which is brilliant, you need to get it, Make a Scene, Storytelling, Stage Presence, and the Art of Being Unforgettable in Every Spotlight.
Mike Ganino:That
Jason Frazell:is it. It's a little bit of an introduction. You also said, because this show is all about people, you're also a dad of a four year old, just like me. Also a dad of a four year old. You're a husband. And you are a Californian. I am all of those things. You are all of those things, amongst many other things. So Mike, what else do you think would be important for the audience to know?
Mike Ganino:You know, one of the things I, I really tried to talk about too in the book, so it wasn't just like a, here's a book on presentation skills and get rid of this and do this. I tried to like, there's a little memoir moments in there. But I think the thing that's, I find helpful for myself to understand about me is I am a person who deeply, deeply believe since I was a little kid because I grew up in poverty with teen parents, other side of the tracks, trailer park, all of the things I really believe that our ability to change our circumstances. is based on how we communicate. I truly believe that. Like if we want to change the world for sure, but if we want to change our own circumstances and those for our kids, a large percentage of the success rate of that is dependent on our communication skills and what our communication skills are costing us. And if we can learn to make new choices, we can make our way out of a lot of situations.
Jason Frazell:I want to give you and the audience a very small, quite meaningless example of this, but it's true. For me, we're currently selling a, an old vehicle on Facebook Marketplace. And I had somebody that I think would be a good buyer and they just blasted me like there was no warm up, no lead. And it was like, Hey, does it do this? Does it do that? Does it do that? Does it do that? Like a list of questions. And I'm like, nope. Like, and, and, and, and even as something as small as that of just a little bit of a way to. Hey, I'm interested in the car, the warm up. And I, I just, and I told my wife that she goes, that's fine. I'm like, I don't want to interact with this person just on how it feels. And, but the thing of it is, and what you're saying, and what we know to be true, that person, there's probably nothing wrong, there's probably, they don't either know, or they don't, maybe they don't care, but it's not like, they're like, I want to be perceived this way. And that's one of the major problems, and one of the things you talk about in the book is perception, reality, intention versus impact, and how a lot of it comes through the choice. So Mike, we're gonna talk about, for this first episode, which you'll be back on soon to be, this book is great and there's a lot in here. Let's first talk about some of the common misconceptions. about communicating in any format. I know, like really your bread and butter is directing keynote speakers and such, but you do a lot of work with businesses as well. Executives that are presenting to a board or people raising venture capital. What are some of the misconceptions that you probably grew up with? And I probably did too around public speaking and how to be a great communicator.
Mike Ganino:There's the classic ones, right? The like, the bad advice people give you, like we tell people things like, don't say, um, well. That is just a restrictive behavior and saying, um, or like, or something happens for reasons. So let's address the issue there. And most research research shows people don't care. Like I say, um, a lot, it's if it becomes distracting and if you're using it as a crutch because you're feeling a certain way, then it could become unhelpful. But the solve there is not to focus on not saying, um, it's to replace it with, well, what do we do instead? The same way with. How a lot of body language on stage is taught. We teach people like, Oh, have your hands in a, in a pose like this. And it's like, what are we doing? The steeple, the steeple, the guy, the
Jason Frazell:Jeff go, the Jeff Goldblum apartment. com steeple, like so pretentious.
Mike Ganino:And again, that is a choice someone makes when they want to feel pretentious, when they want to feel guarded in a way and far from someone. So why would you make that on stage if that's not what you want people to feel? So we teach all of these, here's what to do with your hands, don't gesticulate, all of these things that are not actually helpful. And Then we have speech structure, right? So then we tell people you should have an introduction. I saw this yesterday, Jason, in a professional speaking group, somebody said, I'm working on my first speech. What tips do you have? A speech should have an introduction, three supporting points and a close. Sure. I guess. I don't know. But like, I don't know if that's it. That's like a five paragraph essay from high school. We have bad storytelling advice where we say things like stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. And I think everything does. If I Walk away, like everything is a beginning, middle and end. So how is that helpful at all? And then we have storytelling structures and frameworks that we teach of like, Oh, we need exposition. And then we need, um, inciting incident. And then we need a climax and then we need a resolution. And it's like, what kind of, what are we, what kind of story are we telling that has climaxes in it? What is going on here?
Jason Frazell:Yeah.
Mike Ganino:And it isn't helpful for what we're actually trying to do, which is to connect with other people. And so. I think, and of course, then there's always the, the goofy things like, imagine the audience naked, which sounds like a non consensual crime, by the way, so bad, um, you know, we have all these bad advice that don't actually help us do the thing we're trying to do, which is to connect and communicate with the people in front of us.
Jason Frazell:Yeah, thanks. Yeah, there, I'm going to add another one to this is people that talk faster, telling them they need to slow down. Right? As a somebody who's had to work on this for myself. And I do a lot of work, you know, like corporate trainings. A lot of people speak fast and they get nervous. What's the very natural thing that's going to happen if I go, Hey, Mike, don't do the thing that you know, you're very reliable to do and you're nervous. And then you tell people, Oh, you need to slow down and all they do, and then you ask them, Hey, what does that do for you? Well, it just gets me up in my head and then I start to speed up anyway, versus take a pause. Like take a breath, like these, like all these acting and speaking things. There's just so much. It's not, I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad advice. It's all good in principle. It just doesn't work in the moment. I think is the, one of the big problems that people have. It's like all advice. It's not all helpful. Yeah, like don't say, um, and then you say, um, you go, Oh, I just said, um, I guess, which is, which you have to ask yourself now,
Mike Ganino:what is the reason not to say, um, and can I focus on that reason the same way with somebody who's speaking so fast, just so they can get through it because they're so nervous. The answer to that is to one. Change the way you prep to in those moments to have some reliable tools to calm you down and three to stay connected to who you're talking to because you'll start to see their face and you'll start to say, Ooh, I should slow down. I should speed up. I should pause. I should check in because we do all of that pretty naturally anyway, one on one. So what we need to replicate is that level of intimacy when we're with groups.
Jason Frazell:Yeah.
Mike Ganino:And, and focusing on the what not to do is just not helpful.
Jason Frazell:Yeah. What not? Yeah. Let's talk about. I love this. Well, I love this framework that you have. I love frameworks. It's especially for a top, well, especially for Pete and, you know, as an author, especially for people that this field, this can feel like a really intimidating topic, especially for people that. Hey, I want to be a speaker or I've been told I need to be a better communicator at work and they go, what's next? I'm sure you've worked with people. They get, they get the feeling you need to be a better communicator at work. And the next question should be, what do you mean? They're like, we don't know you, or you need to work on your executive presence. Right. What does that mean? I don't know. So I really love that you came with the framework around the five stave language, stave, stage languages as a way to have people think about these five different areas. And some of these people don't think about, I'm sure. I know I don't always think about these as well. So let's talk briefly about each of these and why they're important in the overall context of, being the best communicator you can be. And also, I want to set this for the audience. Everything we're talking about is also being the most authentic Mike and the most authentic Jason, not a robot that sounds like your favorite speaker, because nobody likes to listen to those people. And we all know those people.
Mike Ganino:Yeah.
Jason Frazell:So, so Mike, let's talk about the five stave, staves, stage languages. What do we need to know about them?
Mike Ganino:These came up for me when I, I was a speaker myself and I was teaching like storytelling for leaders and more like, how do you tell a story about your company and that kind of thing and talking about company culture and pieces like that. How do you do new hire orientation more engagingly? And I had a client who wanted me to come back. And work with their executive team to help them be better presenters, because I spoke at their conference for all their general managers. It was a hotel group and at the end, so did all their executives or chief marketing officer, chief HR, yada, yada. And they said. Everyone remembered these little stories and they loved you. And then our executives were boring, not engaging. It, it lowers your trust level. If you're not a great communicator, it isn't just that you don't gain the benefits of being a good communicator. It's that it can cost you because people say, I didn't trust them. I didn't like them. They didn't seem like they cared about us. All of those things can happen from that. And so they had me come back in to work with their executive team to prep them. And at this point it's 2015 or 16. I was a couple of years into speaking. And so they said, Hey, can you do this? And I said, Oh yes, absolutely. Yeah. I know exactly what to do. And then I was like, I don't know how to do this, but what do I do? And at first I did that thing we normally do of like, well, let me see what, what do other people say you should do to teach public speaking? And all of it was awful. It was all awful advice. And I thought none of this is going to do. None of this is what I'm doing when I'm up there. So what am I doing? And I realized all of these things that I'd learned as a performer doing sketch comedy and theater, one person shows improv in Chicago, but also as a writer, writing shows for myself and other people, and also as a director, directing other people's shows, directing, um, sketch shows and things like that, that the things that I. Sitting in an audience, you know, a lot of public speaking coaches are thinking about the speaker on stage and how to change you, what you need to do different to be a good speaker. I really act like a director and I sit in the audience's seat and I say from the audience's perspective, what are they looking at and what are the tools? And so, you know, initially with this first hotel client, I didn't. Come up with the five stage languages right away, but the early origins of it did and eventually it was oh These are the five levers. These are the five places. We can make choices on stage that impact an audience It's a nice
Jason Frazell:love that
Mike Ganino:day. Um, the first one is verbal verbal is largely about the choices We make with the words we say so, how are we telling a story? How are we putting together our? Bits, how can we be funny? How can we? Package this so that the audience is on the edge of their seat so that we're leveraging all the, you know, a lot of times we hear you should tell a story and we have these bad storytelling frameworks and then we see people telling stories, we're like, well, it wasn't a good story, so I don't know. Did it help them because. It isn't looking at the right elements of storytelling. It's like we copy the wrong parts, right? Like, ooh, we should do exactly what the story did because that's why it worked, but we're ignoring why it actually worked. And so in that section, I introduced the idea that what we're trying to do is Really control the dopamine for an audience verbally, because what we're wanting is this anticipation of reward. Like when we watch a TV show, a play, read a book, even like I'm such a, I was leaving a book review of a fiction book recently. And I was like, the pacing of this book is chef's kiss. It's delicious because it, you never got to the point where you thought, God, where's this going? It was always like, I can't wait to hear what happens next. An example of the verbal language would be, I could say, I used to work in an office in Manhattan and it was one of those offices, very tall building, very intimidating. I took the elevator up to the 87th floor. It was all glass conference rooms. And so one day I had a meeting there. Okay, cool. Not that interesting to see where's this going. Or I could start and say, I'm sitting with my hands on my knees, worried that my jeans are going to be soaked with sweat, as I stare at the rest of the buildings below, bur uh, billowing smoke out, and I see her walk in the office. It doesn't help my hand sweat as she gets closer to the conference room. Now that's not even a good example, but people are like, Ooh, why is he nervous? Why is he in this building? Why is he wearing jeans? Who is the woman coming into the office? Why is he scared? And so we can tell stories and we can put together our speeches and our presentations in a way that gets the audience. Constantly dopamine triggered to want to know what happens next. So that's the verbal, that's the verbal one. And in that section of the book, I really talk a lot about storytelling. Um, once you've got the words down, you got to say them. So the second one is voice. It's the vocal image. And this is really something I find a lot of people have never. Thought about it makes sense. Right. The first part, verbal your, your words and your story makes sense, but vocal, we forget on podcasts, on video, on presentations, on webinars, and keynote speeches, it is largely. A physical job, right? Cause your voice is physical. It is muscles and air moving around and turning ideas into sounds sounds into words. Okay. But we often don't think about all of the choices we can make with our voice. We can speed up, which is effective if you want an audience to feel like it's moving very quick or to Rattle off something like and I couldn't believe that she was talking to me She was looking at me everything in the room was going like that can help an audience feel something we can Slow things down when we want people to tune in To listen, we can go into this place in our voice so we can play with all of these levers in our voice, but most of us are unaware of the choices we could make. And so we end up playing the same kind of key on the piano all the time. Like we have all these keys and we play the same two because we don't realize. Oh, there's an impact to the way I sound, to the way I'm breathing and how that comes out of my mouth and creates meaning for someone. So voice is that second one. And there's all these little levers we can pull. And in the book, actually, there's this fun, like bonus half chapter on the voice one. That's all about these archetypes that people fall into vocally, which are useful. If we leverage all of them, but not if we get stuck. So like the coach archetype, you've probably seen this in speakers where they get up there and they are really just trying to get people to understand, yeah, this matters. We have to go. We get the intellect who likes to really pontificate and they speak a little slower. All of those are good if leveraged together, but getting stuck in one of them could cost you impact. Okay, so now brilliant. We've got our words. We've turned those words into sounds that have meaning to an audience. Now we've got our bodies. The third stage language is our physicality, which is another place. I think a lot of people just do not spend time thinking about maybe they've gone and done some acting training. So they think of like blocking the speech of like, I'm going to do an action like this, but what I'm talking about here, that is there, that is helpful, but how does your proximity impact an audience member? How close you are to them. If you're telling a story about giving your baby a bath. I do this in my talk. It's the closing of like a keynote. I deliver. I talk about her being in the NICU because my, my daughter was born, uh, at 28 weeks. So she was very, very small preemie. And I talk about kneeling and I kneel on stage. I get to the lip of the stage, very intimate, very close to the audience. If I did it further back, it doesn't have the same feeling,
Jason Frazell:but I get
Mike Ganino:right up on the lip of the stage. I lean down on one knee, Okay. And I put my little hand up and I say, she's holding my hand. She's two pounds. She's holding my little finger. And I remember in that moment, I'm not a religious person, but I prayed to, uh, I think I'd say something like I prayed to God, Buddha and lady Gaga, just hoping I hit all the bases usually gets a laugh. Um, so then I'm holding her finger and I say, I'm never going to leave you. Yada, yada. Then I replay that scene in a minute. I get back on my knee. It's her taking a bath. And me talking to her in her bath with her little finger. So that physicality of me leaning down creates intimacy with the audience. Right? So sometimes people will come and say, Oh, people didn't laugh. People didn't cry. And they're focused just on the words they're saying the verbal language, but our physicality can tell people how to feel hopping off stage and getting right up with an audience member. So good. And you do so much really high level training, Jason, you probably see this all the time, all the time, knowing how to
Jason Frazell:use the whole room. I want to, I want to ask you something on the physical piece specifically, you do a lot of work with people on virtual as well. And so do I. Yes. And, and, you know, Mike and I here, even in this interview, you all are not seeing Mike, but Mike is leaning in. He's moving back. He's moving a little bit left and right using his space. This is a question I get all the time. He's like, this all sounds great, but I don't speak on a lot of people. And you probably hear this all the time when you're working with companies. This is all nice, but I don't speak on stages. My, my thing is I do it in a team meeting, or maybe I'm at a salesperson. How does the physical, and I know we're going to get into some other parts of this that, you know, cause everybody can understand the verbal and the vocal. You can do that all the time. Let's talk about physical as it relates to virtual environments.
Mike Ganino:Yeah. Well, and I'm going to say two things really quick. One is. If someone's watching and saying, Oh, I'm not on a big stage at the lip of the stage, talking about my infant daughter, Mike, I don't need that. Great. If you're in a presentation with five people, where you sit, where you stand, when you stand up, if you lean and put your hands down on the desk, those all send emotional triggers to them. And we don't think that all the time I'll work with executives or salespeople who are going into physical rooms still, but they're not on stage. It's a meeting room and they do not think about where they stand, where they sit. They don't think about any of those pieces. Um, even down, this is a really easy one. This is a little pro tip before I go to virtual. If you are the person presenting, sit closest to the TV in the room, wherever the, wherever the slides are gonna be, or the, whatever you're looking at. Because then when you're talking, the audience can look at you in the screen. I was, I was coaching someone the other day, their sales team, and they had learned from someone to sit on the other side of the room, so they could talk towards the slides. And it was like Now what you're making the audience do is left, right, left, right, the whole time, versus sit by it so you can always see them, even When the audience is watching the slides, you could see the audience. You could start to read. I think they're getting it. I don't think they're getting it. She looks uncomfortable. Such a great tip for physicality in a room. Again, imagine someone standing up gently, leaning their hands down like, Hey, we've got to get to work. Let's get going here. You ready? It sends a signal. So even if you're not on a big stage, physicality matters, even in boardrooms, all hands meetings, virtually so many people get stuck. Jason, you're so right. Get stuck with like looking like a hostage and it's like only good. The, the, the, the frame, the way they frame their camera is just like above the nipples to their head, right? So it's like, you're just like a disembodied head speaking. Your hands are below you. So if you do gesticulate, it's like, what are you doing down there? Like what's happening underneath? Cause you can't see them. Yes. It's like, what's happening? A lot of times they don't understand the angle of the camera. So there'll be looking like, yes, daddy. Hello. Or there'll be looking down like an overlord. All of that impacts how we feel outside of all the camera framing and that stuff. We have that alone, but little tricks, right? Like so far on this podcast, people are listening, but I am using my hands. Yeah. Same as I would in person. I am connecting to the camera. And, and gesturing to it, if I was doing something and I wanted to say that, like, you know, in the beginning you asked me the question of what are the tips that people get wrong. Let's say that I said something like, Ooh, I've got three and a bonus one that I don't tell anybody. The first one is this, the second one is it, the third one is this. Okay. Now what I'm doing for the audience is listening. I'm pretending like I'm about to tell a secret. So I'm going to look over my shoulder on camera, like, okay. So here's this one. I never tell anybody and I'm going to lean forward maybe and say, okay, so come here. Here's the deal. I'm going to change my voice. All of that. I have access to all of that on video. So why wouldn't I do it? But we don't think that we think I'm going to sit here. I did a, um, Instagram post recently. I was in Portland and I was doing a, I was there for a speaking gig, a workshop on storytelling, but then I had a TV interview to do. And in my hotel room, I took. You know, the ironing board stacked a suitcase on top, put a trash can on top of that, then my laptop and camera on top of that so that I could get a good angle that I could be standing up and that I could have lighting on me. So I didn't look on national TV like I was in a relocate witness relocation program because I've done all this signals, right? Because it signals to the audience. We tell the audience how to feel.
Jason Frazell:I've got a couple things to add here, things that I've seen. One, the hostage is one look, the other look I call is the Kid at the adult Thanksgiving table, and they're taking up like a third of the screen. And you, and I, and I see really senior people sometimes doing this. I'm like, why would you do that? And they, and they have like a blank wall behind them or something else that's just not visually appealing. And, that's the first one. The second thing that I see a lot is the, that I, that I really, really hate is people that have moving virtual backgrounds. Why would you ever do that to your audience? Moving? Moving. So, Zoom has moving virtual backgrounds. And sometimes companies will create, and they're almost like a meme, or a gif, but they're a virtual background, and every now and again I'll go into a place, people use that, I said, don't ever do that again, it's just bad. Like, we under, we understand in virtual you may not have a great space to work in, you may be traveling, you may have, you know, kids running around behind you, that's cool, blur your background, whatever. But some of these things you see and, and I'll, I'll say to people, as we, the training work I do, we talk about this, I'll say, there's just no reason, unless you're just not paying attention. Yeah. Not paying attention. It is, it is. And then the last one I'll say is the hostage is the total backlight where you end up looking, I call it the witness protection.
Mike Ganino:Yes. Where, where you're just like a silhouette.
Jason Frazell:And so, and, and so, yeah, I'll say this, Mike, for, for everybody listening is some of these things you may go, Hey, I'm never, I don't want to be a speaker. I don't, you know, like my job is that, but these things are things that all people should be doing, like just straight up, if you want to own your impact, make a, so yeah. Thanks for all sharing all those. I love the kid at the Thanksgiving day table, Thanksgiving table look. You're like, we know you're a six foot man. Why are you taking up like one third of the screen?
Mike Ganino:And what is the impact of that, that the audience wouldn't say the audience doesn't know sometimes why they feel how they feel, but they leave feeling a certain way. And so it's so funny too, because our first episode when you had me on was in 2020 and in 2020 I had a whole, I had a huge year lined up of going in and doing a ton of workshops with, uh, one of my big clients was a big financial. Like a hedge fund company. And I was going to go all over Germany, Australia, it was going all over to work with their teams on presentation and story skills. COVID happened. Yeah. We know, we know,
Jason Frazell:we know where this, we know where this story is going.
Mike Ganino:And I thankfully have a good contract, so they weren't going to get their money back, but we could do lots of creative things. And so I was trying to help them out and I, to see like, how could I still help? So I called my contact and I said, Hey, are they all, how are they doing their jobs? Because they used to travel or they would bring clients into New York or to Mountain View or to Hong Kong and meet them there. How are they doing it? And she's like, over Zoom, and I said, do you guys record it? She's like, yeah. I said, can you send me a couple? She did. And I was like, Oh. Well, this is how I earn out this money because over and over, I was like, these people are asking governments, like they're the kind of people that would go in and tell like the country of Australia, how they should be investing their, their governmental, like the version of 501k essentially, what should they be investing in to the tune of like 5 billion and it
Jason Frazell:was government pension stuff. That's crazy. Yeah.
Mike Ganino:Yes. And I was like. The camp, the angles look weak, the lighting is awful, you could fix a lot with lighting, the, all of it's awful. And I was like, it is costing them, Gravitas, it's costing them deals. So here's my proposal for you. And I, I recouped like 400, 000 in revenue that would have just, eventually I would have earned it, but I wasn't going to earn it in 2020. Cause They were going to pay when I did the work. So at some point I would have, but I was able to still move forward with all of that by coaching and teaching these people how to do what they needed to do. And they were, again, sometimes it was one person presenting to a group of five, or it was teams. I worked a lot with like, Hey, if there's going to be three of you presenting So how do you do that in a way that feels good and natural and uh, it really makes a big difference. I mean, you know this, you see this every day.
Jason Frazell:I need to ask you, Mike, did you, did you have an Arnold Schwarzenegger twins type contract for that? Where you said, I'm going to, I'm going to reduce my upfront fee, but I'm going to take a percentage of all the ways you increase this thing. Like the famous story about when he did that movie, that was the, that's how he got into his comedy, comedy years and Jack Nicholson and Batman as well. Yeah. You're like, Hey, I'll just take a percentage of your profits. It's fine. Yeah, I should have. Next time. So we've got, so, so far for the audience, we've got verbal. It's what you say. We've got vocal. It's how you say it. We've got physical, how are you using your body, how you're using your body language, your face, one thing you need to say, your face, how are you, you know, I, I say this a lot, if you go into a meeting room and you say, I'm really excited to be here, we should believe that you're really excited to be there. Yeah. Come with a, come with a nice, um, resting bitch face as you say that, or, I'm so happy
Mike Ganino:you're all here, but you look, yeah. I called it in the book, called it resting bro face, resting bro face. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the fourth one is visual. So what are the visual elements you have to you? So this is in a virtual setting. This is your background. It's of course your lighting. It's even down to, this is really, so right now we're doing this podcast interview and For podcasts, it's very, if people are watching the video, we both have microphones in front of us, which makes sense because we're doing an interview that fits, but if I wanted this to feel like a conversation, like a TV show, like a, like a TV interview, I don't use this microphone, I use a lav mic. Even for virtual, um, segments where I'm, where I'm recording here and they're filming in studio, I use a lav mic because it sends the signal to the audience differently because you don't see these kinds of microphones in a TV show. So I think about that too, of like. Is there visually something that the microphone is communicating when I do sales videos, I use a boom mic or a lav mic because I don't want the microphone in front of me between me and the person I'm talking to. I wanted to feel more intimate, so little things like that for virtual are the visual language. What is the stuff around you communicating? Um, a little pro tip to right now when I'm filming, I'm standing. With the camera in front of me and then I'm, it's crooked in the room so that behind me is the corner, the crease of the wall where the two corners meet. There are bookshelves on both sides of that. Those bookshelves point towards me in the center.
Jason Frazell:Yep.
Mike Ganino:That is taking advantage of something that cinematographers know all the time, of how to use lines to get the audience to look where you want them to look. So when you look at this on video, you're seeing a bookshelf on my left and a bookshelf on my right, and those are both pointing your eyes to focus on me in the middle. Those little things do make a difference. Visual is also your slides. Your wardrobe. It's all of those other tools that send a signal to the audience. So that's the visual. And then the final one is emotional. And this is really taking kind of, it's a little bit of a cheat one, but it's really taking all the previous four and saying, what is the overall Experience you're creating for the audience. How are you hijacking their hormonal, like the chemicals in their body, the serotonin, the, the, um, the dopamine. How are you triggering the things that trigger emotional responses in the audience? And are you aware of them? Do you have enough contrast? So those are the five stage languages that I think are the way that an audience sitting in a, in an arena. An audience sitting at their desk watching you on a webinar, an audience sitting watching a podcast interview, or four people sitting in a boardroom watching you present your idea or your sales pitch. These are the things that they don't even recognize, but these are the five areas that are impacting what they walk away with.
Jason Frazell:I have to say I have a friend and he has a podcast mic in front of him all the time on Zoom and I'm realizing now it feels like I'm being interviewed all the time, even if we're just catching up. And it's not, I don't, I don't think I've, I don't like consciously go, Oh, this is, I do think it's weird, but I didn't know why until now. Because it doesn't make
Mike Ganino:sense contextually.
Jason Frazell:It doesn't make sense contextually because we're just doing a zoom with a one on one, but that's, that's his setup is. So, Mike. I am very present to the fact that you do this for a living, and I do this for a living, and that's all fine and dandy to talk about this, but not all, not all people, not all of us are Mike and Jason and a lot of other people that we know that do this kind of work and help you with this, there are a lot of people that go, eh, who cares? And you probably have these people all the time, and when you're working with corporate, some people just don't care. And I'll give you a great example, I do a lot of training work with a big, Aerospace manufacturer. And a lot of those people are brilliant. They're like rocket science, rocket scientists. They work in plants. They're looking at numbers. They're looking at things all day and they would say, yeah, that sounds nice, but it's going to feel too dramatic for, I hear this, oh, this feels a little dramatic or the other people will think that it's strange because they're so used to doing it a certain way. So I want to wrap for, for today and talk a little bit about why everybody should care. And this is your opinion, obviously, but, and you cover this in the book. Why do we all need to care about this? Whether you're in sales, whether you're sitting in a cubicle, looking at spreadsheets, why does all this matter?
Mike Ganino:It really comes down to, and what I say to people who, who say, Hey, I don't care. Fine. I don't care if you care. It doesn't matter either way. The people who are listening to you, the people that you're communicating with are walking away based on all of these things that we've shared today with an opinion of you, with an opinion of your product, with an opinion of your service, or your idea of your book or whatever it is, they're doing it either way. So, I don't care if you care, I promise you they do. And if you are saying to me, Hey, I give five presentations a week and I landed every time I get what I great, then don't listen to me. Keep doing what you're doing. Cause it's working. Yeah. But if you find yourself thinking, huh, I don't know why I'm not getting every sale. I don't know what to do to increase my. The, the, my employees listening to our new initiatives and our new ideas. I don't know why audiences aren't asking me to come back and give another speech or to give another presentation. I don't know why people aren't buying our product and signing up for our SaaS service. Then I would say if the product's good, if the idea is good, it is these five levers and the way you communicate them that determine whether people walk away wanting to. Listen to you, do business with you, and adopt the way you think. And you cannot care about that all you want. I don't care. I promise you. The people listening do. And they're making decisions based on how you show up.
Jason Frazell:Yeah. The other objection that I hear a lot is, it's just not natural for me. I hear this a lot too. And some, I've had people say, I don't, I don't think I can, and Everybody's got, you know, like your level, you've got a high level of functionality to do all these things. Everybody's starting somewhere. You started somewhere. Some people, some of its nature, some of its nurture. When I have people that will say this just doesn't feel natural. I know what I say. I'm curious for the audience. What do you say to that? And I'm talking about people. I think they're, what they're actually saying is I don't think I can do this is what I believe they actually mean by that. Now that's not natural. And I'm going to just share this really quick and anecdote. What I'll say is. They'll say, Oh, it feels unnatural to be this, they'll call it like dramatic or something. I'll say, has any, have any of you ever read a book to a child? And they'll go, ah, how do you read a book to a child? You and I have four year olds. You do not read your book to your child. Flat, monotone, no emotion, no thing. Because the kid, the kid will, your, your worst critic will go, this is boring. And they will tune out immediately. So we, I would offer that we all know how to do this. And we all actually, we are meant to do this. Hmm. And then we, and most of my work is in corporate, we get trained through culture or through bad training or not enough training that these are not things that we, that are important or should be done. So what do you say when somebody comes and gives an objection? And of course the speaker is not going to say this, but a lot of corporate people will say this.
Mike Ganino:Yeah, no, it's because you say it a lot too, um, the way that I teach storytelling to make a scene, like literally the name of the book is make a scene because it's twofold. One is the like cultural, like, go do something, say something, make a scene. But then also like the way to tell a story is to start in a scene, make it a scene, like If I always say, if you think you're telling a story, my question is if I was there and I was the director and I had to decide what to put in front of the camera to film, are you telling me that? And if you're telling me when I was five, when I was little, I used to always love to hang out with my mom. That's not a scene. That's a summary. I can't put that in front of a camera, but I can put a specific time at Trader Joe's when you love shopping for walnuts with your mom that I can film. So
Jason Frazell:what
Mike Ganino:I think about that is it's, so I get a lot of pushback, even from professional speakers, Jason, where they say, ah, my way of doing it. You know, it's just habitual is what you're tapping into. I think. And so I say, you're right. It probably is not natural that there's some situation where you're invited to someone's office and you're going to go sit in a conference room and you're putting on clothes that you wouldn't wear at home. You're dressed up for work in a suit with a tie, but you don't wear that at home. None of that's natural either, but you do it. Why? Because you know it's effective, because you're working the gears. And so I always say, it is gonna feel unnatural at first for you to change what you always do. The same way that like, you know, my husband loves to like, move, move, reorganize the house. I always get annoyed at first because I just, where's my little bowl for my keys? But in a week, it's fine. Wherever you put it, I'm going to find it. I'm going to get used to it. You're just used to this way of being, but I would say, ask yourself the question of, what is this way of being costing me? And is it worth doing some work to find new choices that I can make?
Jason Frazell:Brilliant. Mike, I want to thank you for coming on for the second time, and I want to give the audience a little shout out to you, and then we'll, we'll wrap and talk about the book, we've been talking about the book, we're going to talk about the book, and so now, Mike has been doing something really fun, for those of us who are film and television and awards people, awards season people, and I certainly am, you've been critiquing speeches. And you do this on Instagram and it's really fun. I want to ask you, and maybe we'll tag this person when I put this on social. What's your favorite speech of this award season so far? Ooh, of this award season. This is improv. He had no idea this question was coming.
Mike Ganino:One of my favorite ones that I've, I've been talking about in the, I've done a bunch of, uh, TV news talking about these speeches and what we can learn from them.
Jason Frazell:Yeah.
Mike Ganino:And my version of critiquing is always taking something that worked and explaining why it worked because I think that's more helpful, you know, it's way more
Jason Frazell:helpful. Yeah.
Mike Ganino:One of the ones that I think has not gotten a lot of attention but is really great is Jesse Eisenberg accepting the Independent Spirit Award for the movie he wrote and directed called A Real Pain. This is the movie where you're seeing Kieran Culkin get a bunch of, um, I think supporting actor wins for it. Yeah, supporting actor, um, mm hmm. And so the movie is written by Jesse Eisenberg, who has been, you know, an actor performer a long time, but a writer, and he got up there to accept his award, and he could have just gone through and listed a thank you, you know, a lot of, a lot of execs might do this at an end of the year speech or an awards dinner. Let me list all the information. Let me list all the thank yous. What Jesse did was interesting. He did something different. He said years ago, I was in a movie with Emma Stone, Emma Stone, of course, huge actress, her career's blown up. They were in a movie called Zombieland. with Woody Harrelson years ago as teenagers. It's
Jason Frazell:a fun movie. And he said,
Mike Ganino:over the years, she has stayed my friend as her star has blown up. You know, she's a huge star and she's one of the only people he would do writing. He would write on McSweeney and these different sites where people could write. He would write. And he's like, Emma all the time would text me all the time and say, Oh, this line is really funny. This way you open this story was so great. He's like, my mom didn't even do that. Emma Stone kept doing that over the years. And when I had this script ready, she was the first person I wanted to read it. She is of course, the producer, the producer, she helped make it. That's so much more meaningful because he gave us context to their relationship versus just, thank you, Emma Stone for your friendship and being a producer. That's been one of my favorites. Cause it's not getting attention for the right reasons. Yeah. We can all use that. We can all use that.
Jason Frazell:Yeah. And to go back to your point, you could film that. You could film Emma walking into a bookstore or reading something and texting Jesse. You could totally picture that in a TV show or a movie. That's so brilliant. Yeah. And he called her what his godmother or something, or he made a funny comment about her. It was great.
Mike Ganino:Yeah, it's, it's, it was fantastic and her reaction was so beautiful because she clearly didn't expect him to reference all the way back to Zombieland, which is one of both of their first movies. Um, it just was such a moment that was simple, you know, so it could get overlooked easily, but I think it's really, it makes a lot of sense for your, your folks listening here who are. Giving thank yous, thanking people for their, you know, in a weekly meeting, let's say that you're doing a end of the end of the week, weekly meeting, and you want to thank a team member for something above and beyond, give it context. I used to say this all the time with, um, when I was in the restaurant industry and I would teach our managers, I owned a restaurant company and I would say, don't say, Hey, you know, I want to give a shout out to Jason, like great job this week, team member of the week. It means nothing. Nobody knows what to replicate.
Jason Frazell:Yeah.
Mike Ganino:Versus saying, you know, I walked into the shift last week and everyone, it was chaotic. It was one of those days. Y'all know what it's like. Everyone was in the weeds, racing around, there were fires going everywhere and you all were working your butts off to make it work, manning your stations and getting it through. And then I kept seeing one person. Leaning over and saying, what do you need help with? What do you need? What can I get for you? And I just want to call out that behavior from Jason and say, thank you. That is what teamwork is. Let's all get Jason around more meaningful, more meaningful.
Jason Frazell:And also one of the things, uh, we'll wrap with this. When you're talking to leaders, they say, I want to be a better leader. I want to be a more inspirational leader, which is a lot of what communication is. That also is literally telling other people what behavior will have you get acknowledged and will help you advance your career versus, Oh, did Mike and Jason go out for drinks and they shared some dirty little secret and now they like, they're just like buddies and he's just shouting him out. No, like here's what Mike, here's the actual thing that Mike did. That made a difference for our business. Mike, this is brilliant. Want to wrap today by sharing about Mike's book. So Mike's book is out now. It is out in paperback. It is out on. It is out on Kindle. It is brilliant. I don't buy many books anymore and I bought yours because I wanted to read it and mark it up because this is a topic that I love and I'm so happy for you that you were able to come out with this because I know you bring such a wealth of you bring such a wealth of experience from the different contexts that I know you in coupled with you get to work with these brilliant people who are already great communicators. That's the fun thing. And so I would imagine you're always absorbing from them. And then we get to experience that wisdom in a book that we all can go out and go grab in the bookshelf or. or grab from your favorite local bookstore. So thank you, Mike. Thanks for putting out the good work in the world. And thanks for doing, thanks for doing the good work to make a difference with communication because so much communication is so darn boring. So boring. And for those of us with a short attention span, I appreciate it greatly. Uh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Mike.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to Cool People with Jason Frizzell. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell your friends, follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and give us a shout out, or take a moment to leave a review on iTunes. If something from today's episode piqued your interest and you'd like to connect, email us at podcast at jasonfrizzell. com. We love hearing from our listeners because you're cool people too.
