How to Simplify Complex Data and Make Your Presentations More Memorable with Brian Krogh.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. Do you want to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then stay tuned as Peter and his guests discuss public speaking tips, techniques, and tactics that help you increase your impact, influence, and income. Here's your host, Peter George.

Peter: My guest today is Brian Krogh, a presentation coach. Brian, it's great to have you here.

Brian: Thanks, Peter. It's great to be here.

From Sales to Pulpit to Coaching

Peter: Before we dive into tips and ideas, tell us a little about yourself and how you got into presentation coaching.

Brian: Throughout my career, the one constant has been standing up in front of other people and trying to get an idea across. I've been in sales. I pastored a church in the Boston area for many years. I lectured at Boston University for six years, teaching public speaking to undergraduate and graduate students. Honestly, working at the university led to coaching opportunities — and I found I enjoy being the person behind the scenes, encouraging someone and helping them grow, just as much as I enjoy being the person on stage.

Peter: I feel very much the same way. I love to present, but I love to train just as much — if not more. So let's dive in. Why do you think it's still a good idea today to stand up in front of a room and present when there are so many other ways to communicate?

Connection and Inspiration Over Content and Information

Brian: I love that question because I don't think we often sit down and really think about it. Why is a live presentation better than putting all the research in an email, dropping your slides on a server, or posting your thoughts to a Slack channel? The only reason we think it's a good idea for you to stand at the front of the boardroom is because we want to connect with you — and have you connect us to your information. Not download everything into our brains. That's overwhelming, and we'll do that on email.

Brian: A lot of times when we're presenting, we feel so much pressure because our name is on the slide, and we say to ourselves, this is all about me and everything I know. But the reality of the presentation is it's not about you and everything you know. It's about them and what's most helpful for them to know. You have to sift through your content and ask: how do I connect? How do I inspire? Not just: how do I deliver content?

Peter: And when we put the focus on ourselves, doesn't that undermine us in other ways too? We're not looking at what our audience needs to receive — and we're placing all that pressure on our own shoulders to perform, rather than simply help.

Brian: Exactly. I think of it this way: we put the light on the speaker and put the audience in the dark. It should be the other way around. And think about when you're sitting in the audience yourself. The world is full of impressive people. If you want to compete to be the most impressive person in the room, that is a very difficult competition to win. But when I'm in the audience, I'm not looking for the most impressive person in the world. I'm looking for someone helpful — someone with something that can help solve my challenges. We find helpful people impressive, not impressive people impressive. Yet we forget that the moment it's our turn to speak.

Creating Tension That Demands Attention

Peter: What advice do you have that will help our listeners be heard — and not only heard, but remembered?

Brian: This is the big question. It's genuinely difficult to stand up in a world where everyone is talking and no one seems to have time to listen. Even in a Zoom meeting with five people, you know that while you're presenting, the inbox doesn't stop pinging — and there's another meeting coming up right after that people's minds are already on.

Here's one thing I think is key: do you have a show where you sit down planning to watch one episode, and you simply cannot stop?

Peter: My wife and I just binged The Mandalorian.

Brian: Perfect example. The question is, how do they do that to us? How do the writers get us to the end of an episode and we cannot shut it off? Obviously, they create a cliffhanger — a tension that won't be resolved until the next episode. TV used to wrap everything up in an hour. Now they don't, because they want you to keep watching. One of the ways to be heard in our world is to bring up a tension that people genuinely feel. If you know your audience, and right at the start you can surface a problem or a challenge they face, it will work just like that Netflix show. You're saying: if you stay with me, we'll resolve this in the next fifteen minutes.

Infomercials do it all the time. The infomercial starts with, Has this ever happened to you? And we say yes. And they say, we have the solution. Even though we didn't plan to watch, we can't look away. It can feel a little gimmicky in a business context, but it's not — it's the same principle. If you want people to put down the email, flip on their video, and actually participate, you need a tension worth their time. Something that will solve something they're dealing with, not just something you're dealing with.

Peter: And that brings it right back to making it about them.

Brian: Always. Andy Stanley says, tension gains attention. And Haddon Robinson framed it this way: if you ask an amateur to speak, they'll say, What do you want me to speak about? If you ask a professional, they'll say, To whom will I be speaking? I can have the exact same points, but if I miss the audience — if I miss how those points address their challenges — one group will hear it and another won't. It has nothing to do with whether the content is good. It has everything to do with whether I made the connection with that particular group of people.

Anchoring Ideas in Long-Term Memory

Peter: What advice can you give our listeners about anchoring ideas — moving them from an audience's short-term memory into their long-term memory?

Brian: Donald Miller at StoryBrand says we're hit with about 3,000 messages or ideas a day. I've heard estimates as high as 7,000 to 10,000 — but whatever the number, it's a lot. Think about how many of those you actually retain. Some people can deliver ideas and we don't forget them. So what are they doing? Why does their idea stop and stick while everything else just flows through?

I use a story to illustrate. My friend has a boat anchored near Amesbury, Massachusetts. One day we went out to Star Island — about nine miles offshore — hopped on the skiff, had lunch, and came back two hours later. The boat was in the exact same place. Why? Because it was tied to a mooring anchored into the ocean floor. It would have been crazy to expect it to still be there without that anchor. And the reality is, most ideas that enter our short-term memory will just float away. If you want yours to stick, you have to anchor it to something already in a person's long-term memory.

Here's a simple example. If you told me your phone number was 707-194-9597, I'd probably never remember it. But if you knew I was a lifelong Nebraska Cornhusker fan, and you told me your phone number happened to be the exact years Nebraska won the national championship — I'd never forget it. Those numbers are already wired into my brain. Your new information hooks right onto something that's already there.

That's what happened when I worked with the head of IT at a global biotech who had to explain a complex database to hundreds of scientists. Instead of detailing how the database worked, we found his anchor: My team is building a car that will help the whole company move faster. But I need the car parts. If you give me the parts, I can build the car. That became his entire presentation. Everyone understands a car. And he presented around that idea with fantastic results.

Peter: That gives people something they can actually digest, rather than just the nuts and bolts.

Brian: Exactly. And this doesn't diminish the seriousness of the work. Dr. Ken Edwards said it best: anyone can be complex. It takes a genius to be simple. If you get all your data out there but people walk away confused about what to remember or how it helps them, you've missed the entire point of what a presentation is for.

How to Know If You've Actually Succeeded

Brian: A good way to register whether or not you've succeeded is to notice whether the audience is talking about you or about themselves when you're done. If someone comes up and says, I'm going to go back and do this differently, or I took away something I'll never forget — you've likely succeeded. If they're walking by saying, That was really interesting, or Great eye contact — you've missed something. I have clients who speak to high school students, and I know they've nailed their purpose — not just nailed the presentation — when they tell me a student came up afterward and opened up, or that they spent the next hour in the guidance counselor's office because of what was said. When they tell me that, they connected. And that's what it's really about.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. Are you ready to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then visit petergeorgepublicspeaking.com and let's make it happen. I'll see you next time.