How to Identify, Sharpen, and Champion Your Most Important Points With Joel Schwarztberg.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. I'm Peter George, public speaking trainer, speaker, and award-winning author of The Captivating Public Speaker. My guest today is Joel Schwartzberg, Senior Director of Strategic and Executive Communications for a major U.S. nonprofit. Since 2006, Joel has been teaching effective presentation techniques to clients including American Express, Blue Apron, Comedy Central, and the Brennan Center. His award-winning book, Get to the Point, was published in 2017, and his articles have appeared in Fast Company, Toastmasters Magazine, and The Huffington Post. A former national and state champion competitive speaker, Joel was inducted into the National Forensic Association Hall of Fame in 2002. Here's my conversation with Joel Schwartzberg.

Without Your Point, You're Pointless

Peter: Your book is all about knowing and getting to the point. Why is that so fundamentally important?

Joel: The short answer: without your point, you're pointless. Even the most polished public speaker, if they don't know their specific point, is leaving their audience with nothing — it's like a cake that's just icing. We hear the phrase "get to the point" constantly, but what most people don't realize is that a point is a very specific thing. People confuse a point with an idea, a title, or a theme — things so general they're not actually points at all.

If you build a presentation around a theme rather than a point, you're almost guaranteeing that you'll ramble and circle around your subject without ever landing it clearly. Let's say someone asks a podcaster, "What's the point of your presentation?" and the answer is "podcasting." That tells the audience nothing — no opinion, no direction, no argument. But compare that to: "I believe podcasting is the best way to engage citizens in our democracy." Now you have a point. The audience knows exactly where you're going and why it matters.

The Danger of Too Many Points

Peter: Do you find that speakers who mistake a theme for a point tend to dilute their message by trying to say too much?

Joel: That's one of the biggest problems. I call it "split ends" — and it's not about shampoo. Speakers think a speech is like a Christmas tree: the more ornaments, the more brilliant. The opposite is true. When you give five ideas at once, each one competes with the others for the audience's attention. Audiences can really only process one thing at a time, and in the best case, they'll walk away with two or three ideas. So if you give them sixteen, they might take away the wrong ones entirely.

Einstein said something I share in every workshop: if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. That's not just about using fewer words — it's about doing the hard work of understanding your precise point before you ever open your mouth. Your job as a speaker is not done until that point has been received by the audience. And if you're trying to move sixteen ideas across the room simultaneously, you've effectively delivered nothing.

The Power of the Pause

Peter: You just spoke about giving the audience time to process. What's the best way to actually build that in?

Joel: The audience needs twice as long to receive your point as you need to say it. Understanding that forces you to slow down and insert pauses — especially right after you've delivered your key point. Give that statement a moment to land before you move on. A CEO who ends with "And this is how we're going to change the world — now, I'm happy to take some Q&A" has stolen the power of that moment by rushing past it. Create a chapter break instead. Say the point. Two beats. Three beats. Then continue. The pause is your best friend on stage.

People rarely come away from a presentation thinking, "That speaker paused too often." Pauses are moments of silence that the audience barely registers. But what they do is give your mind time to find precision. For most of us, our mouths are running ahead of our minds, and our minds are scrambling to catch up. Pausing puts your mind back in front so that when you speak, the words have been chosen rather than just released.

For fast talkers — which is my own biggest challenge as a New Yorker — I also recommend speaking louder. Not just at normal volume, but uncomfortably loud. You physically cannot speak both loudly and quickly at the same time. The volume slows you down naturally.

Volume, Confidence, and Competence

Peter: Would you agree that an audience gauges a speaker's confidence — and even competence — based on their volume?

Joel: Absolutely. Not just confidence — volume signals competence, authority, and credibility. In my workshops, I ask participants to state their name, title, and point at an uncomfortably loud volume. When they finish, I ask the rest of the group what changed. The words that come back are "strong," "knowledgeable," "experienced." The content didn't change at all — only the volume. People who sound like interns suddenly sound like managers. Managers sound like vice presidents. Aim for what feels too loud. Your own internal limits won't let you go truly ridiculous, so aiming high will get you to effective. Volume is one of the most underrated tools a speaker has.

Badjectives

Peter: You use a word in your book that I love — "badjective." Can you explain that?

Joel: A badjective is an adjective so broad and general that it carries no real impact. Words like "great," "awesome," "very good," "interesting." When you tell an audience, "This approach is awesome," you've said almost nothing. What is awesome to one person may be completely meaningless — or even off-putting — to another. You think you're saying something powerful. You're actually saying something vague.

The antidote to a badjective is the word "why." If you catch yourself saying "This is great," ask why. The answer — "because it's the most effective way to reach this specific audience segment" — is what you should actually be saying. Drop the badjective entirely and lead with the reason. "This approach will reach our target audience faster than anything we've tried" — now you've said something. Identify the badjective, ask why, remove it, and go directly to your point. It's one of the fastest ways to sharpen any presentation.

The Only True Measure of Success

Peter: When someone comes up after a presentation and just says "great job," I always wonder if they actually absorbed the takeaway — or if they're just being polite.

Joel: Exactly. And the only real way to know if you succeeded is to ask someone: "What do you think the point was that I was trying to convey?" If they can repeat it back to you, that's the ballgame. That's your feedback. If the best they can offer is "great job" — that's a signal, not a compliment.

That's also one reason I sometimes caution people against practicing in mirrors or watching themselves on video. Very few people watch themselves and think, "Am I making my point effectively?" They're focused on their tie, their posture, whether they look nervous. The mirror misses the most important question entirely. Whether you're asking it of yourself or someone else, the only question that matters is: do I know my point, and am I conveying it?

Thank you for listening to this episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. To connect with Joel Schwartzberg and learn more about Get to the Point, visit joelschwartzberg.net — J-O-E-L-S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z-B-E-R-G.net — and follow him on Twitter at @TheJoelTruth. 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.