Lenny's Podcast Transcripts

Transcript

Tristan de Montebello[00:00:00)]People tend to get into a public speaking voice. We'll be in a class and they'll be chatting normally and look super normal. And then we'll say, "Okay, now just a timer, I'm just going to give you a speech. Just speak for 60 seconds so we get a baseline," and I click play, and suddenly I say, "The important part about doing this," and they enter into a different version of themselves, a professional version, whatever that would mean. It's so much more freeing, powerful, connecting,

and effective to speak conversation. So the cue I often give people is- Lenny Rachitsky[00:00:36)]Today my guest is Tristan de Montebello. Tristan is the co-Creator of Ultraspeaking, which is the best public speaking workshop I have ever come across. In 2017, Tristan became the fastest competitor to reach the finals of the world championship of public speaking. And based on that experience, built a very unique course that helps you quickly build the skills to become better and to become more comfortable speaking in public,

and especially speaking on the spot.[00:01:04)]I'd like to spend time on this topic on this podcast because becoming a better speaker is such an accelerant of your professional life. And in this episode, we delve into a bunch of tactics and also misconceptions about how to become a better speaker, and to make it even more fun and interesting, we go through a few of the exercises that Tristan and his team have developed live on the podcast. He goes through them, I go through them, it was a lot of fun. I'm excited to hear what you think. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you,

Tristan de Montebello.[00:01:45)]Tristan,

Thanks so much for having me. Lenny Rachitsky[00:01:51)]So I took an abridged version of this speaking course that you teach called Ultraspeaking, and it immediately made me feel more comfortable public speaking, which I've never felt doing any other course. Public speaking is something it's just is very scary to me as it is for a lot of people, but it's just something I really dread. Even doing these podcast episodes, every time I get nervous before doing these things, as much as it may not seem that way. So this is not my natural habitat speaking, being in public. It may not seem that way to people,

but it's true.[00:02:22)]And the way you approach this stuff is so unique and worked for me. And because of that, I thought it'd be awesome to just bring you on this podcast and basically try to teach people the stuff that you've learned about how to become a better public speaker. I know we're not going to do your course here, but just, what are some very tactical things people can immediately start to apply? And also, I want to make the super interactive, so we're actually going to do some of the exercises that you use in your class. So that's what we're here for. How does that sound?

Great.[00:02:59)]This episode is brought to you by Eppo. Eppo is a next-generation, A/B testing and feature management platform built by alums of Airbnb and Snowflake for modern growth teams. Companies like Twitch, Miro, ClickUp and DraftKings rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Experimentation is increasingly essential for driving growth and for understanding the performance of new features. And Eppo helps you increase experimentation velocity while unlocking rigorous, deep analysis in a way that no other commercial tool does. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved most was our experimentation platform, where I could set up experiments easily, troubleshoot issues, and analyze performance all on my own. Eppo does all that and more with advanced statistical methods that can help you shave weeks off experiment time and accessible UI for diving deeper into performance,

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X your experiment velocity. That's geteppo.com/lenny.[00:04:18)]Today's episode is brought to you by Command AI. If you're like me and most users that I've built product for, you're probably used to chatbots at the bottom right of websites, where you ask a question and it says something like, " Check out these three helpful articles. Did that answer your question?" And then you click away and then a few seconds later you get bombarded with some other useless pop-ups. For those of us who work on software, no one wants their product to feel like this. Command AI is an AI power toolkit for support, product, growth and marketing teams that embeds in your company's product. The AI support agent can deflect upwards of 80% of support questions, providing actually useful answers, and it can magically co-browse with your users to show them around your interface. They do pop-ups too, but their nudges are based on in-product behaviors like confusion or intent classification,

which makes them much less annoying and much more impactful.[00:05:11)]Command AI works with web apps, mobile apps and websites, and they work with industry-leading companies like Gusto, Freshworks, HashiCorp, LaunchDarkly, and over 25

million end users interact with Command AI interfaces. To try out Command AI. You can sign up at command.ai/lenny and experience a custom demo of how it works in your app. That's command.ai/lenny.[00:05:36)]Okay, so let me first ask just kind of a broad question. What do most people get wrong about public speaking? What are some of, what's maybe the biggest misconception about how to become a better public speaker and how to be good at it?

Tristan de Montebello[00:05:49)]I actually think that the biggest misconception with tackling your speaking is that people grossly underestimate just how transformative it could be to your life. And the reason it's so transformative is because speaking is not a specialized skill, it's a meta skill. That means that the better you get at speaking,

the better your life gets.[00:06:16)]So an example of a meta skill is fitness, for example. If you were to start saying, "Okay, I'm going to transform my fitness," and you start lifting weights and you start going on runs, obviously your muscles are going to get bigger, you're going to get more in shape, and your cardiovascular system is going to improve. But that's actually only a sliver of the impact it's going to have on your life because you're going to start feeling more energy, and you're going to start having these nice hormones, these endorphins flowing through your body and you're going to feel better about yourself. And when you walk in front of the mirror, suddenly you're going to have a boost in confidence. So naturally, everything else in your life is going to start to improve as a result of you focusing on your fitness. And for speaking,

it's the same thing.[00:07:01)]This blew my mind when I went on my own speaking journey, is when I started making breakthroughs in speaking, other things started to feel different. So as you get breakthroughs, how you feel at work feels different. How you feel in your group of friends feels different. How you feel in a group of strangers, especially, how you feel and your family can even be impacted. This seeps into everything else in your life. But the thing is, because there's so much self-consciousness that goes with speaking, we often feel kind of constraints under the layers of overthinking and anxiety that come with speaking. So it can be hard to realize that underneath these layers, you actually have this extraordinary superpower, because as humans we're evolved to speak, this is what we are. So you don't need to teach a baby how to speak, it will learn by itself with no formal education. So what that means is,

we all have this incredible hardware.[00:08:12)]The thing is, over the course of our life, because of all these little situations that happen, we start getting bugs in the software and we're not really upgrading our software. The moment you get the bugs and things start working, not working, we start avoiding, and suddenly it's like we're not upgrading our software anymore. So we're stuck on old, buggy software. But the reality is, let's not forget that we have incredible software that were evolved for this. So all we need to do is some debugging and some upgrading of the software and suddenly your entire life can change. So that's really one I want to impart on anybody listening. You have it in,

you already have what it takes. Lenny Rachitsky[00:08:56)]Okay. So kind of building on what you just talked about, some of this insight of, your life can improve and how you kind of always have to unlearn stuff. One of my favorite maybe core insights and tenets of the way you approach teaching people to speak, is you talk about how if you don't enjoy speaking, you're doing it wrong. And that really helped me because you kind of encourage, you kind of remind people, try to have fun as you're doing. Can you just talk about that insight and why that's important and how that helps people become better?

Tristan de Montebello[00:09:26)]Well, I think that's very tied to what you were saying. I see enjoyment as a barometer, if I'm doing things right, I'm probably enjoying myself. If I'm doing things wrong, particularly with speaking, because again, this is something we're naturally evolved to do. So if we're naturally evolved to do it, it's not something that we dislike doing. It has to be something that rewards us. So as soon as things start not feeling enjoyable, it's a sign, hey, I'm probably doing this wrong,

guy. There's something here that I'm doing that is making this unenjoyable that's probably not helping me.[00:10:03)]And I think you mentioned that in those people who can hold an audience who are really good communicators in business, it looks like they feel very comfortable, it looks like they feel like themselves. And if you think about speaking, when you're talking with your kids, or with your partner, or with your best friend, your childhood friend, your parents, ever, we all have environments where we feel completely like ourselves. And when we do, communication is extraordinarily enjoyable. It's just a means to connect with other people, a means to share what we have on our mind and it's very,

very empowering and it feels very good.[00:10:42)]Then I take the same person with the same skill set and the same ability and I bring them in a business setting, and suddenly I don't feel like myself anymore. And because of the pressure, I start trying to speak differently. So people start having, I'm going to try to think really hard of what I need to say and I want to control the words that are going to come out of my mouth before they come out of my mouth so I make sure I don't make a mistake. And you basically loop in this thing that is so counter what communication is, which is just a natural subconscious scale. So using speaking as a barometer of, hey, if this is not feeling good,

I'm probably overthinking. I probably need to relax and try to just feel a little bit more like myself.[00:11:27)]But this also applies to practice, where in your practice, because this is not an overnight thing, you can't just snap your fingers, read a book, and be a better speaker. Well, your practice has to be enjoyable as well because otherwise two weeks in, you're going to quit just like a shitty fitness journey or diet. Right? You have to find joy in it and it has to be structured in a way where it rewards you as well,

so that you get more energy and you get more enjoyment while you do it. Lenny Rachitsky[00:11:58)]Awesome, and we're going to show people how you do that. You do these games, they're games that you play that help you actually learn these skills. So before that, and also I want to get into actual tactics that we can just give people to become better public speakers. But right before we get there, are there any other core insights or principles or lessons that are fundamental to the way you found that it works to become a better public speaker, that kind of inform a lot of the stuff we're going to be talking about?

Tristan de Montebello[00:12:25)]The day I understood that speaking was a subconscious flow-oriented process and not a conscious process, completely changed the way I approached it. So instead of thinking tactics and frameworks and adding more to the outside of the things I need to think about, when I realized when I speak best, I'm actually not thinking about speaking. It's the last thing I think about is the speaking part. I'm completely in tune with whatever it is I'm trying to convey to my audience or the person in front of me. And the goal is to get into a flow state and stay in that flow state all the way through the finish line. That's what really, really changed my mindset about speaking, because then it changes all of the exercise,

the exercises you want to do. It changes how you can think about speaking.[00:13:24)]And one of the ways that changed how I practiced was, instead of focusing on the symptoms of speaking, I started to try and figure out, well, what are the root causes that create these symptoms, and can I address those? So instead of counting my filler words, if that's something that's annoying to me, I'm going to go back and try to figure out, well, what's the root cause of that? Well, the root cause of having lots of filler words or racing in your speaking, is that you probably struggle to feel comfortable slowing down, relaxing, or even pausing when your mind is racing and you feel pressure. Solve that, and not only do the filler words take care of themselves,

but the racing takes care of itself and you suddenly have more mind space.[00:14:11)]And if you feel super constrained in your speaking, very monotonous, then maybe you feel boxed in and you're struggling to allow yourself to feel to be all of what you are under pressure because there's probably a lack of certainty. A lack of trust in, hey, if I let myself be more intense or if I let some of these emotions pop out, or if I take a time to gather my thoughts, is everything going to unravel, or is that going to work for me? And if you haven't proven that to yourself, then you're just going to go for safety and so you're going to be very monotonous and constrained, and that's creates monotony. But if I can solve that, suddenly I have freedom. So thinking through this and understanding that the goal here is upgrading the software and it's really layering, taking all the bad habits away and putting in new habits that I can just stay in this flow state without getting pulled out,

that really changes the game. Lenny Rachitsky[00:15:15)]That is a really interesting insight, and I love that you actually demoed that in the way you answered this question, where you took time to get into that state and not just get, um... It's just like,

Pause. Lenny Rachitsky[00:15:29)]Yeah, that was a really beautiful example of that. Okay,

Sure. Lenny Rachitsky[00:15:34)]... actually change about the way they speak this week. What are two or three things that you can recommend people tweak in the way that they do public speaking, in the way they speak in meetings and presentations, whatever?

Tristan de Montebello[00:15:47)]I actually thought about this because once you think about speaking being much more about the root causes, like play the games that are going to change you at the root, don't focus on the symptoms,

then you find yourself sharing much less purely tactical advice and frameworks because we're trying to get out of our brain into our subconscious.[00:16:10)]So when I thought about it, I thought of three things I wanted to share. One makes you sound better or look better, one makes you sound better, and one makes you feel better. So the first makes you look better. Now this is super basic and very crunchy, but it's a bad habit that a lot of people have. That when I am trying to gather my thoughts or think, people tend to look down. And if you're looking down on Zoom, it's three times as bad because it looks like you're looking at your phone or looking at notes if you had any, but even when you're in person, it doesn't look very confident. And so you're suddenly giving off of that vibe of, oh, this person feels a little bit uncertain here,

and maybe it's going to look like you stopped speaking and you might get more interrupted.[00:16:56)]If instead you switch that up and you start thinking up. I think up into the right, but you can think in any direction you want, but as long as you're looking up, you actually look thoughtful by default. So suddenly you're looking thoughtful. That means you look more confident because anybody who'd be willing to pause in their speaking is somebody who's confident. And as a result,

you're much less likely to get interrupted. So it's a small tweak but makes a real difference.[00:17:24)]The only thing is if you're not used to doing this, if this is not your habit, then it's going to feel a little bit awkward the first time you do it and you probably won't think about doing it. So I recommend writing, think up, on a post-it and putting it on your computer so that it's there for you. And then once you've done it a few times, this will become the new normal and by default,

you'll look more confident. Lenny Rachitsky[00:17:46)]I'm going to do this as we talk. I have a poster right here. Think up.,

Tristan de Montebello[00:17:48)]Oh,

nice. Think up. Lenny Rachitsky[00:17:50)]Okay, great. What else?

Tristan de Montebello[00:17:53)]Look more confident. Now how to sound more confident. This is a really important one, and this concept is called end strong. And it's, we had to bring this up because most people tend to end weak. And why is that? They put freestyle rappers in an fMRI, and what they found out is freestyle rappers have to enter a deep flow state. If you're freestyle rapping, you have a beat, you don't have any lyrics, and you have to get into the beat and invent the lyrics and the melody and everything on the fly. So there's no choice but being completely present. What happens is you can see their brain and it's lit up in a very specific place that shows that they're in flow, and when they get to the very end, the brain just blows up. Before they finish, they start getting pulled out of flow. And this is the same feeling of you're running at school and you see the finish line and just a few yards before you start slowing down. It's just, I don't know,

we're built that way.[00:18:53)]And in speaking, it's the same thing. People tend to give a great answer and then either they kind of taper off at the end, which doesn't leave you with a good impression, or they'll actively say the doubts that are coming up in their mind of maybe they'll be giving a great answer and then suddenly they say, "I don't really know if that makes sense."

I do that all the time. That's very relatable. Tristan de Montebello[00:19:13)]Yeah, but what the thing is, what happens when you do that? When you do that, it's like you're forcing this lens on your audience, where now even if they had the best of experiences with your answer, now they're looking at everything you said through the lens of, oh, this person was kind of uncertain. So it's like you had a very smooth flight across the Atlantic and your landing was absolutely horrible. You were bumpy when you were coming up, and then when you hit the landing, you bounced three times and you thought you were going to die. You're not going to remember the smooth flight, you're going to remember the ending. So a simple tactic here is, anticipate that as you get to the end of anything you're saying, you're going to naturally start regaining consciousness and you're going to start being a little bit more self-aware,

and some of those uncertainties are going to pop up. Know that it's coming and make sure you land the plane.[00:20:14)]So what that looks like is, either you just make your ending sound like an ending and then leave it at that, or you can prompt your brain. You can use summary prompts, this is incredibly powerful. It just means you say the beginning of a sentence or the beginning of, yeah, the beginning of a sentence, and your brain's going to fill in the gap. It's going to. You're prompting your brain and your brain will always deliver. So you get to the end, you're like, okay, I got to wrap up now. And so you'll say, "So to wrap up..." And your brain's going to fill in the gap. Or, "In summary, so my point here is, so what I want you to remember," and you just place those words and your brain's naturally going to do the work of closing it for you. But make sure you don't let go of the gas pedal at the very last moment,

you need to land that plane. Lenny Rachitsky[00:21:01)]Awesome. I could definitely get better at this,

great tip. Tristan de Montebello[00:21:04)]Yeah,

Yes. Lenny Rachitsky[00:21:07)]And what else we got?

I'll be paying attention to that. Lenny Rachitsky[00:21:11)]Okay,

pressure. Tristan de Montebello[00:21:15)]Yeah. The third one is staying in character. And these go hand in hand. And what's really powerful is when you start doing these,

there's a beautiful feedback loop that happens that gives you a lot of confidence. So staying in character I said is the one that's going to make you feel more confident.[00:21:33)]What's staying in character? So it's related to end strong in some sense, in that people tend to self-sabotage a lot. I'm speaking, and obviously as I'm speaking, all of my senses are really, really heightened. So I'm aware of everything, if a word comes out a little bit weird or if it's not the word that I was expecting to hear come out of my mouth, I'm going to be very aware of that because I was expecting something and something different happens. But that happens all the time when speaking. I'm starting to not make as much sense or I feel like I'm rambling, going a little bit too long. All of these create insane noise in the back of my mind, the insecurities. And you have a choice there, because I can tell you right now, nobody can tell. People cannot see what you feel, even though it feels that way when you feel really, really strongly, but people can't see it. You're just looking like a normal speaker, competent and confident. But internally,

it feels like everybody can see.[00:22:34)]So you're feeling all this insecurity and it feels like there's an elephant in the room. And so what most people do is they start leaking and they break character. And they'll say, "Oh, man, I'm not making sense right now," or they'll laugh nervously after saying a word that came out weird, which is kind of saying like, "Oh, I also noticed that this word came out weird and it's okay." Right? Or they'll keep letting all of the insecurities and doubts come out when people didn't see it in the first place. So again,

it's like I'm forcing these filters onto my audience and now they can only see me through that light.[00:23:15)]And so one analogy I love for this is, again, a flying analogy. You're on the plane, everything's smooth, you're having a great time watching your movie, and suddenly you're interrupted by the pilot who picks up the intercom and says, "Oh, ladies and gentlemen, so I just had a red light start blinking here in the cockpit, and I'm not sure what this is. It could be really bad, honestly, but I don't know. So don't worry, please, I'll get back to you soon." First thing that's going to happen if you experience that is you're going to think, I wasn't worrying in the first place. But then you start thinking, wait, something probably is going wrong. And now the smallest noise, the tiny little bit of turbulence, a creak on the right, you're going to start thinking, oh no, we're going to die,

every time.[00:24:03)]So you're going to make any little mistake, any little imperfection, you're going to turn that into something big. That's what happens when you speak. If you start leaking and letting the insecurities come out, people are going to start thinking, this person doesn't really know what they're talking about. It's like a leader who isn't clear in their direction. Suddenly I'm thinking, wait,

I think I have to second guess everything here because I'm not sure about this guy or this person.[00:24:33)]And the good news is, the solution is very, very simple. The solution is that is just, don't share your insecurities. Put your best foot forward and stay in it the whole time. Stay in character from beginning all the way through past the ending, because you go all the way through your speech, then you got to end strong, which is a form of staying in character, and then let it be. And that's so important, just let it be and you're going to notice something incredible. If you're the type of person who would break character a lot, start staying in character, and the cue use for myself is, stay in it. And the worse it gets, the more I'll say, just stay in it. And what happens is,

you stay in it.[00:25:21)]And you expect everybody at the end to say, "Oh my God, you looked so uncomfortable, what was happening?" But people can't see that, that you look confident. So they're just going to give you the reaction that a confident person would get, and you're going to notice, oh wow, I am coming off as confident, and that's going to make you feel more confident. And so it's a very reinforcing cycle. If you start staying in character and ending strong, naturally, you're going to be reinforced by this behavior and you're going to realize, oh, I didn't need to break character. I didn't need to hedge every time I spoke, and that's going to give you much more confident, and you're going to start realizing, people just look confident by default. This is a crazy thing. I want everybody to walk around the world and look at people and think, most of the people I'm looking at are actually nervous right now. You're going to look at them and you're like, I can't tell. Most people speaking up in meetings are feeling a level of nervousness,

but you can't tell unless it's through the roof. Lenny Rachitsky[00:26:23)]I love this, and it's something I'm extremely guilty of. And I think the reason I do this and the reason I think a lot of people leak, which I love that term of just I don't leak, that you know, feel something's not going right. The reason I do it is I feel like me being upfront,

Exactly. Lenny Rachitsky[00:26:41)]... makes it okay, but in reality, that's hurting you because it's like when I watch standup comedy. When the comedian's like, "Oh, sorry, that bombed," if he didn't say that or she didn't say that, I'd just forget about it, and we'd move on to the next thing. And it brings all this attention to, oh, I see, okay, it's not going great. Otherwise, you're just like, all right, whatever, I didn't like that joke. And so, yeah, I guess any thoughts on just that, why people do this?

Tristan de Montebello[00:27:07)]Well, I think that's exactly that. It's because you're convinced that everybody can tell. And so two things will happen. Either they could tell because it was a big thing and everybody could tell, but you shining light on it is literally that. It's like, hey, everybody, you're driving a train, everybody's in the train, you're the driver as the speaker, everybody's going with you. So if there's a crash on the side of the road, you can keep going and they'll not be looking at the crash a second later and they'll be looking at the next landscape, or you can stop the train and tell everybody, "Hey, let's look at this crash here real quick. I'm so sorry about it." When you keep going, people will forget it in a second and they're not going to pay attention to you. And with the peak end rule, what we we're seeing,

people remember the end of experiences more than they remember the beginning of experiences. So you're going to be left with that feeling at the end.[00:27:58)]The other piece is, because most people won't notice it in the first place, they'll be in their own minds. So when you share this, you're popping their bubble. And so I see people speaking all the time where I'm super in tune with the feeling I'm getting when they're speaking. I'm listening to the energy, I'm listening to everything that's happening, so I can try to understand, what state are they in right now? So when I get woken up from that state of somebody saying, "Oh man, can I go again right now? That really sucked."

It's even more visible for me.[00:28:36)]And I'll often have to say, "Hey, man, I was so into what you were saying," and I'll poll the audience, "is anyone surprised?" And everybody every time is like, "No, I thought that you were doing great. I was completely with you." So that's the case most of the time, but because we're convinced that people can tell, we want to break that fourth wall or because something happened and we know people can tell, we want to acknowledge it so it doesn't feel like I'm the only one in the room who can't tell that something went wrong here. But this habit of saying, "No, I'm going to be confident, I'm leading, I'm going to keep us going in a certain direction,"

is extremely powerful and very self-reinforcing. Lenny Rachitsky[00:29:18)]Okay, so let's actually show people what this looks like by actually doing some live games. I know one of your principles for Ultraspeaking is you can't learn to speak by not speaking. You need to practice speaking to get better at speaking, and these games are a way to actually do that in a really fun way. So maybe first of all, just why games? When I did this course, I was just like, huh, because it's a bunch of games. I thought this was a public speaking course. So maybe talk about just why you approach it through games,

everything you do is a game in this course. Tristan de Montebello[00:29:48)]Yeah. Well, the first piece of the puzzle is what you were saying, that you can't get better at speaking without speaking. And it's, intuitively you could think, everybody knows that if you want to become a great cook, you can't just read 100-

Tristan de Montebello[00:30:00)]Everybody knows that if you want to become a great cook, you can't just read a hundred cookbooks. You actually have to spend most of your time in the kitchen refining your intuition, testing things, experimenting, learning new recipes, and building your timing and everything that goes with it. But in speaking, we tend to do the opposite, probably because it's a little bit scary and because there aren't that many options out there to practice the speaking itself. There aren't that many environments where you can do it right now. So we're kind of left with nothing, so, "Okay, I'll just go read an article or watch a YouTube short and hope that's going to make a difference." (00:30:38): But maybe the bad news is, you have to do it. You have to ask yourself, "Am I going to be serious about taking on speaking and making a difference here?" And if you are, then you're going to have to do the thing. You have to practice speaking. But the good news is, it's only the outside that's scary. As soon as you get started, you're going to get rewarded. And then, the better you get at it,

the more enjoyable it becomes.[00:31:03)]So why games then? Well, games number one, are fun to play. And as I was saying earlier, if your practice is not fun, you're going to stop. So you need intrinsic reward with what you're doing. But what all of the Ultraspeaking games have in common is that it's short, deliberate practice, short reps followed by feedback,

followed by another rep. So that was more important than the idea that it was a game at first.[00:31:35)]When we started coaching with Michael Gendler, my co-founder, it was just him and me in my backyard with somebody in front of us testing things out. And we would say, we would give him a speech title just to get a baseline. "Okay, what's the most incredible invention in the world?" And we'd watch this person go into their mind and start freaking out. And they'd think, " The iPhone," and then, "I don't know the iPhone. That's pretty recent. So maybe it's fire. Is it fire though? Was there a bigger maybe communication? I don't know. Wait. Maybe we've evolved for communication." (00:32:08): And the longer they spent thinking, the worse their answer tended to be, and the more their confidence tended to go down as they were speaking. So then we said, "Well, we've got to get this person speaking right away." So we'd say, "I'm going to ask you another question, but just start speaking." And so,

I'd ask them another question and they couldn't start speaking right away.[00:32:27)]So we just tried to compress it more and more and more to turn it into something where then it was like, "I'm just going to say a word and you have to say something about it, so horses." "Horseback riding is fun because you can go places." "Cats." "Cats are crazy because if they were bigger, they would eat you." And I just,

almost like word association. Let's get words out.[00:32:46)]Then we started developing different games for everything. Every root cause we were seeing, every symptom we were seeing, we'd figure out the root cause and we'd create some sort of a way to get the person into it as quickly as possible. And it's just one day, six months in that we realized, "Hey, did we just create a game? This feels like a board game." And then we created, I have this, we created Speak Before You Think, the game for people who think too much, and this is a bunch of cards with all of our games. And then,

Covid hit and we turned it into online games. Lenny Rachitsky[00:33:21)]Oh,

I didn't know that. Tristan de Montebello[00:33:23)]Yeah. The magic of games is short reps, immediate feedback, practice feedback, practice feedback. And it's enjoyable, you get rewarded, you get to adjust as you go. And what's changing is your internal feeling as you're going. So you're learning lessons,

but you're internalizing. All of the practice is happening through speaking. Lenny Rachitsky[00:33:48)]To reinforce what you just shared, I haven't shared this with you, but after I took the course, the mini course, I went to see my family in L.A. We visited for a few days, and I was talking about this course and just how fun it was and interesting and how much I learned from it. And I pulled up the games because I have access to the things online. I was just like, "Hey, you guys want to try this?" and we started playing some of these games that we're about to get into. And it was just,

Wow. Lenny Rachitsky[00:34:15)]Everyone just felt so much better about their public speaking. Afterwards, my mom was like, "Hey, how do I do that on my own later?"

Lenny Rachitsky[00:34:22)]Wow,

that's cool. Tristan de Montebello[00:34:23)]My sister's like, "I want to start doing open mic nights because that was really fun just to talk."

Nice. Tristan de Montebello[00:34:28)]So were you actually coaching them? How were you walking them through the different games?

Lenny Rachitsky[00:34:34)]We just pulled them up and played them. And then, I shared some of the tips that I learned in the class that we took, just like, "Try it this way" or "Try not to focus on being correct. Just focus on confidence and not leaking that you're not doing great." All these things we're going to talk about. Yeah. So it was a lot of fun. So let's get into some of these games. So we're going to try two or three. Which one do you want to start with?

Sweet. I love Conductor. That one was really insightful to me. Tristan de Montebello[00:35:00)]Okay, so I've got Conductor. The way this game works is that when I click "start training," I'm going to have a random title that's going to appear. And for those of you who are just listening and not watching this, Lenny will say the title out loud so you can hear. And then, what you won't see or what you'll see if you're watching is in front of me, all I'm going to see are a series of random numbers. It's going to start with five, and five is just my natural rate of speaking like I'm speaking right now. But then, I might see a number from one to 10, and each one of these numbers represents an intensity or a state that I have to tap into. So if I see a seven, I automatically have to raise my voice and get into that kind of an energy. And if I see a 10, you could only imagine what that is. But it's also true for the lower ones. If suddenly I see a three,

I have to find a way to calm my energy and match the three and go all the way down to one.[00:36:00)]And then, there might be a slide that says "breathe," which is just an indication to pause. And when I see that slide "breathe," if I just go silent, that's because I'm in front of the breathe slide and I'm not allowed to speak. And in that moment, my goal is just to relax myself and calm myself and then see what happens where I'm at when that slide moves on to the next one. And now we're going to do this. This is going to be 70 seconds, so it's going to be super quick. Ready?

Perfect. Lenny Rachitsky[00:36:33)]"When I grow up."

Tristan de Montebello[00:36:36)]When I grow up, I want to have taken on all of my weaknesses or all of the emotional things that are holding me back. Because kind of annoying for me that I'm 40 years old and there's still things that are holding me back that man, I've had these when I was a kid. I was like this when I was 10. And it drives me crazy, because aren't I supposed to be an adult? Aren't I supposed to be mature and have my life together? I have two kids. I have this incredible responsibility. And I have to teach them, I have to show them the way. So I've decided I'm going to hire a coach, and I talked to him just a couple of days ago, so this is perfect timing because I want to unwrap, unravel, and untwine every single one of these emotional blockers so that when I grow up,

I'm completely free. Lenny Rachitsky[00:37:45)]That was so fun to watch. I'm seeing the numbers. If you're on YouTube, you can see what's going on there. If you're not, basically there's different numbers that give Tristan the different energies to be at,

and that was masterful. Tristan de Montebello[00:37:56)]I think we saw, what did we see? We saw a six. It went up first, six, seven, then it went down to three. Then we saw, I think a two, a one, then a breathe,

and then it went back to a five. How about you give it a go and then we chat. Lenny Rachitsky[00:38:10)]Let's do it. What do you think?

Tristan de Montebello[00:38:11)]Ladies and gentlemen,

let's see this. Here we go. The title is The Greatest Puzzle. Lenny Rachitsky[00:38:19)]The greatest puzzle that I think that I've had in my life, and I think just for most people, is trying to figure out what to do with their life. And I just had to spend so much time thinking... Actually, no, let me change. I'm changing direction. I actually have known from very early on what I wanted to do with my life. I've actually found it to be not much of a puzzle. I knew from pretty early that I wanted to be a software engineer. And interestingly, I became a software. And as I think about the puzzle that created around my life, I ended up... So my life actually started to look like a puzzle instead of what I'd always thought I'd be. So I ended up having a bunch of different careers. And I look back at my life and it started with one piece,

and each piece led to all these other careers. Nailed it. Tristan de Montebello[00:39:33)]It's funny. At the end you were like, you didn't even see there was a six that came up and then when you looked up,

it had already gone away. That's a good warm-up. Lenny Rachitsky[00:39:42)]Yeah,

yeah. Let's do it. Tristan de Montebello[00:39:42)]It's funny, because what it looked like to me is that, well, you just didn't let yourself play the game. You wanted to... You were more focused on, "I want to make sure this works well, this looks good, or I don't make a fool of myself" than "Let me just play the game." So switch your mindset from that. Back in the Creator Cohort, you didn't really care, because if you failed,

Okay. Tristan de Montebello[00:40:15)]The game will do good. But that was actually really interesting. I feel kind of similar, which is cool, except I didn't know where it was going. But that feeling of all of these puzzle pieces, and suddenly when I hit Ultraspeaking, it's like, "Oh wow, every single... There's no more. There are no more gaps."

Here we go. Tristan de Montebello[00:40:36)]You ready?

Ready. Tristan de Montebello[00:40:38)]Here we go. "Integrating new cultures."

Lenny Rachitsky[00:40:48)]It's interesting having a kid. So we just had a kid about a year ago, he is a year and a half. And there's an interesting new experience where there's my family and their culture, there's my wife and her culture. And it was never a big deal for us, these different backgrounds that we have because we could do our own thing, we have our families, they're doing their thing. But now that we have a kid, I have to really think about this. I have to constantly wonder, "Is he getting both experiences? Is he being pushed in one direction or another? Is he going to get the full benefits of both of these cultures?" And I find if I don't actually think about it too deeply and just let him have fun and hang out with our different family members, he gets everything that I want him to get; that he experiences my wife's family's culture, my family's culture, and then the combination of my wife and I's new kind of culture and family that we're building. And so,

I'm really excited about the future for us all. Tristan de Montebello[00:41:57)]Yeah,

that was awesome. Lenny Rachitsky[00:42:00)]I'm practicing not leaking. All I think about is how much better it could have been, but now I'm leaking as I say that. See?

Hedging. Tristan de Montebello[00:42:13)]So the point of all of these games is to create turbulence. This is going to be the theme of this podcast. I'm going to share only flight analogies. But if you think about a pilot, a flight simulator, you can think about these games as the flight simulator. You don't put a pilot in a flight simulator and waste those precious hours having them just cruise at 30,000 feet in clear skies. You're going to say, "Okay, you're going and now hey, you've lost your captain and you have to do something" or "Hey, your motor just broke" or "You're going into crazy turbulence." (00:42:46): So the gain here is always, every one of these games have in common that we're creating turbulence for you. So it's on purpose that like, "Ooh, that's interesting how I tend to want to leak, to want to break character. Wow. It's interesting how at the end, the ending strong is not just an automatic habit that I've built for myself." So what we want with the turbulence is that it highlights areas that we want to work on. And you can go again and see immediately because you have that same pressure every time. There's no way you can prepare for Conductor. You can do just a ton of reps and get to become the person who can just navigate the turbulence really,

really gracefully.[00:43:29)]Which reminds me of a Kevin Kelly quote that I love where he says, "Pros are just amateurs who've learned to recover gracefully from their mistakes." And this is what we're trying to do here. If you know that you can recover from any mistake gracefully, then you're going to have confidence in any speaking scenario. And most of the scenarios you're going to be in are spontaneous,

are ones you can't prepare for. So it's that much more important.[00:43:57)]So tell me, what do you remember from going through Conductor and the Creator Cohort, or specifically here, what was coming up and what were some of the things that pop into your mind?

Lenny Rachitsky[00:44:10)]There's two things that I really took away from it,

Yeah. Lenny Rachitsky[00:44:16)]But the things that I really took away that have stuck with me from this exercise is one, is that you have this kind of metaphor of these file folders that you have kind of in your head where every energy level, like a one when you go low and a 10 or even a five, when you're at that energy level, you access different insights and memories and stories. So it's not just like, "Now I'm going to say the same thing at a 10, or I'm going to say the same thing at a one." It's when you let your body just slow down and relax to a one, new thoughts come up, because making it up as you go along and you're just trying to figure it out as you go. And that really happens when you're forced to go from five to, "Okay," and you let your body settle into a one. You're like, "Oh, okay, here's a new thought that comes to mind."

So that was really powerful for me because I never had realized that.[00:45:12)]And then, the other is just this idea of doing these really hard things with very low stakes. It's higher stakes, so maybe that's why it's different, how it feels different doing it here where it's like, "Oh, this is-"

Tristan de Montebello[00:45:22)]Yeah. Yeah,

this is extremely high stakes for you. Lenny Rachitsky[00:45:26)]Yeah, relatively. But yeah, there it's a couple people and you're like, just don't worry about failing so you don't even have to worry about apologizing or fleaking. It's just like, "Yeah, I did what I did." So those are two really powerful ones. I just like practicing this. And knowing you'll be okay at low stakes builds confidence. I'm like, "Okay." It's making up a minute of talk about the most random thing on the spot, not something that I would feel I'd want to do, but then you realize, "Okay, it's fine. I can do that."

Tristan de Montebello[00:45:54)]The common theme for me, and I've been on this journey for seven years now, I still am blown away every week by the lessons I've learned over the course of the seven years, which all come down to your brain, your subconscious is so incredibly powerful. So your hardware is magical. And because I've spent seven years kind of getting rid of the bad habits, getting rid of the gunk and trusting myself more, I allow myself to take many more risks. So I'm jumping into these games still with the same doubts in some sense, but they've just, everything's tapered down way, way,

way into the background. So I get to be much more present.[00:46:43)]And I talked about the summary prompts earlier in the podcast, saying the beginning of a sentence and trusting that your brain's going to fill in the gap is something that's initially hard to do. But when you've done it 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 times, you start believing, "Hey, maybe my brain will deliver every single time." So you can start saying the beginning of sentences the direction you want to go into and your brain fills in the gap,

and we're going to do a game on that in a second.[00:47:12)]But the Conductor one is so beautiful because the way we describe it, so that folder one when it came into my mind was my favorite ever. But the original one was when you tap into a certain energy, that creates emotion. And if you tap into that emotion, the words come as a natural consequence. So it's energy leads, emotions follow,

and words fill in the gap.[00:47:44)]And when you experience this for yourself, if you go into Conductor and you play, you realize, "Okay, if I want more conviction, I can raise my energy or get into a state of conviction and the words that are going to come out, the ideas, the stories, the anecdotes, the examples, everything is going to fit into that. If I feel frustrated, I can dive into that state and stay in that state, and naturally the content is going to follow. It's a very, very powerful game. It's a very exciting game, and it's a game that, especially when you're playing with low stakes, you very quickly feel the effect of, "Oh, I can see the potential of what it could be if I could just be like this anywhere."

Maybe you taper out a little bit of the extremes.[00:48:42)]But you can access this for free on Ultraspeaking or the way we did this at first, you just go to Google and type in a random series of nine numbers and then just have a friend say each number, one after the next, and you just match it. I used to just put my hand out and go up and down. So in essence, it's very,

Yes. Lenny Rachitsky[00:49:16)]They're either, correct me if I'm wrong, they're strong at the highs and just very uncomfortable at the lows or the opposite. And for me, I thought I was going to, "Oh, obviously I'll be more natural at the lows, because like introvert world." And you're like, "No, you're actually super energized at this high end, and then it's hard for you to access the low."

And I thought that was really insightful for me. Tristan de Montebello[00:49:39)]Yeah. You'll notice it pretty quickly once you jump in, especially with a friend. It's cool because when you get to see, "Oh, I'm much more comfortable going up than I am going down or vice versa, or I'm stuck in the middle and I am only comfortable when I'm not in the extremes."

It's just telling you something.[00:49:59)]This is what we want. We want to a mirror in front of us so I can know, "Okay, what's happening here?" I'm not very much a fan of actually watching yourself on camera on video, because again, this is an inner game, not an outer game. So when I watch myself on video, I see the outside, which can be useful for certain things, but the fundamentals are inside. So getting a mirror of I play this game and I feel a certain way, "Oh, interesting. It was easy to go up." So I can muster energy pretty quickly, and I'm willing to take risks of jumping into a different energy stage,

which might mean changing the direction of where I'm going.[00:50:37)]But slowing down means I need to be willing to take up space. I need to be willing to just be while everybody's looking at me and I'm using up their time. But I'm going to take up space and I'm going to take a moment to go inside and be introspective and really ask myself, "Okay, what do I want to say here?" And so, that's a reflection of, "Well, what does that mean if I struggle to do that?"

And that's why speaking such an interesting skill set. Lenny Rachitsky[00:51:08)]All right,

let's do another game. Tristan de Montebello[00:51:10)]This next game is called Triple Step. And Triple step is a game for people who struggle to stay on a single thought or get very easily put off their game or distracted. If you're the type of person where you're speaking and suddenly somebody yawns and you just start freaking out thinking, "I'm so boring and things are horrible, I must be terrible." Not, they probably have a baby and they didn't sleep last night. A pen drops and you start losing your ability to stay on track, this is a game for you. Also,

a very fun one.[00:51:46)]The principle of the game is pretty simple. Similarly to Conductor, we're going to start with a random speech title. So I have no idea what's going to show up. Then as I'm speaking, in this setting here, I'm going to speak for a minute. There will six random words or series of words that are going to pop up as I'm going through my speech. And my goal is to integrate the words into the speech as seamlessly as I can, as if they were part of the speech the whole time. So in theory, if I do a perfect job, if you're listening, you should struggle to pick out which words were actually the words that were popped up. The likelihood in one minute of me being able to do that is low, but let's see if you can do it. So if you're listening, you're not going to see the words. We'll tell you afterwards what they were. See if you can pick up on them. But otherwise,

my goal is just to choose a strong direction and stay on that direction as naturally as I can.[00:52:43)]Here we go. The title is, How Would Your Friends Describe You? I've been described as a Labrador by my friends. And I think the reason people describe me as a Labrador is because I am so easy to excite. It's like if you give me a box of french fries, I'm going to go nuts and it's going to be the best french fries I've ever tasted in my life. But if the next day I get a massage, I'll be completely in that experience and the massage is going to be the best massage. And then, I'm going to think, "I need to get a massage every day."

I'm going to start daydreaming about massage as my natural day to day.[00:53:19)]But the problem with being a Labrador is that Labradors get kind of excited. So I may be doing cartwheels one second, and the next second I'm supposed to be working. And so, I'll be on my computer, but then I hear the microwave ding and I think, "Oh, maybe I should go get some food next." And so, there's a beautiful trait to being the Labrador that allows me to explore all of what it's like to be human. I always have access to the internet inside me,

but there are definitely some drawbacks as well. Lenny Rachitsky[00:53:50)]Okay. So the words that you had to integrate are french fries, getting a massage, daydreaming, cartwheels, a microwave,

and the internet. Tristan de Montebello[00:54:05)]Yeah. And so, you might notice that some of the words I'm integrating literally, and some I might integrate more metaphorically like the internet of my mind. It's like I have access to the internet. So you can give yourself as much leeway as possible. The whole point here with Triple Step is you want to be that tree in the storm that is not so rigid that if the wind is too strong it's going to break in half, but not so flexible that it's going to swing every which direction as soon as there's a gust. So you want that firm solid grounding, which is in choosing a clear direction, that one thing off the bat, and then you want to make the words work for you. So stay focused on that one thing. And as the words come in, the more focused you are on that groove you've created for yourself, the easier it will be to let the words work for you. Okay?

Lenny Rachitsky[00:55:03)]And again,

the skill this builds is to be more comfortable with things not going perfectly and being distracted. Tristan de Montebello[00:55:12)]Yeah. I would say this one can be used for two other things. Number one is resiliency, right? Because this one will make your brain go crazy. And if you can stay composed within it, with all of these things happening, it really builds this ability to say, "Well, man, if I can do Triple Step on hard mode, I can do anything. Why would anything else scary? Why would an interview question scare me when I can throw these kinds of things? I can always navigate my way through." Right?

We're trying to lower the likelihood of a mistake really hurting you.[00:55:48)]And then, the other piece is this is a game, this one and a game called Rapid Fire Analogies, are games that are really, really nice to use as a way to warm your brain up. So you could use it before a podcast. You could use it before a job interview, before a meeting. When you want to be on, do a few reps of this,

and your brain's just going to be completely lit up because it's pulling on so many different parts of your brain that are necessary for communication. Lenny Rachitsky[00:56:13)]One last thought just before we dive into it. I think it's just to zoom out again, the reason that you've found this is a better way to learn to become better at public speaking, my sense is just if you were to just do the standard thing of just give more talks, find more opportunities to do presentations, it's too broad of a brush to build these different skills,

and which you've identified is there's these very specific skills that add up to a great presenter. And these games pick a specific skill and help you just focus on that again and again and again. Tristan de Montebello[00:56:51)]If you're already practicing, you're already leagues ahead of everyone, because most people aren't practicing. They're you're trying to learn from a video or a YouTube short or an article. You can only go so far with that. But if you are practicing, there are kind of two suboptimal ways that might show up. One is what you're saying. You're doing talks and you're speaking up more, but you're not really practicing. It's kind of, as you were saying, it's broad,

broad strokes.[00:57:17)]The other one is you are in a choreography, so it's like learning how to dance, but you only learn choreography. Well, that's all you know how to do. So if I ask you to do, I say, "Okay, now I'm going to put music on. Just dance." You're kind of stuck because you only know how to do the moves you were doing. So we're trying to get people outside of, "I have to be in my mind, or I have to do things that I've memorized how to do"

and come back to trusting your natural ability to communicate.[00:57:51)]So that's what we're doing here. You can feel like when you don't speak, when you struggle with speaking, you're stuck in this box, and everything around you is tiny and you can feel the sides of the box. And we're expanding the range. We're playing around with all kinds of different things, different tools. And all of them have specific meaning, but even if they didn't that much, you still would be able to, "Oh wow," you're pushing back the sides of the box. And now suddenly, "Hey, I can move around. I feel comfortable moving my arms and moving my legs and going to the right and the left and up and down." And just that act of making you feel more comfortable and more at ease is going to unlock your ability to communicate,

because you already know how to do a lot of this. So we're tapping into these different skill sets and we're doing both at the same time. Lenny Rachitsky[00:58:42)]This episode is brought to you by Brave Search. Brave Search is the private, independent search engine that doesn't bias or censor results. Brave Search and its answers with AI feature are available for free to all users on desktop and mobile devices. With Brave Search, you get real answers faster, served from their own independent index of the web. Their AI search engine can give lightning fast,

incredibly accurate results for almost any question.[00:59:09)]But Brave isn't just AI answers. It's also a powerful traditional search engine with real innovations versus big tech options. It fights bias and SEO spam. It brings a cleaner results page with fewer ads, Reddit threads in the search engine results page, powerful local results, and even community-driven ranking options. Tired of big tech's same old list of links?

It's time to try Brave Search. Visit brave.com/Lenny to get started. That's brave.com/Lenny.[00:59:40)]All right,

Let's do this. Lenny Rachitsky[00:59:44)]No, I'm not going to... I was going to say I'm going to nail it, but no,

Okay. And I'll say the title. The best thing about pain. So this is something I recently shared in another talk is just this quote that I always think of. Lenny Rachitsky[01:00:01)]In another talk is just this quote that I always think of, "The cave you fear contains the treasure you seek," that the thing that is hardest often points you in the direction you want to go. Like I hate blue cheese, but sometimes I find that if I eat the blue cheese and add it to a salad, it ends up being the best salad I've had. Having kids is another amazing example where just kids are... There's so much pain, but it's also,

there's nothing that is more joyous than having a kid.[01:00:29)]And sometimes even growing a beard. I grow this beard and I have to maintain this beard for the rest of my life. And I know people would look at me without a beard and be like, "What the hell? Well, you look so different now and so young." Sometimes I think about just having a sibling and the pain that if I had a brother, if he just hit me, the pain that would come from that, but just then having the brother would be so much worth it,

even if he's hitting me all this time.[01:00:58)]And there, I ran out of time,

but that was solid. Tristan de Montebello[01:01:04)]Okay, I realize this is your first time playing Triple Step. It's kind of mean of me if you [inaudible 01:01:09]-

I have to go faster. Tristan de Montebello[01:01:10)]...

Okay. Okay. Tristan de Montebello[01:01:13)]But here's what I noticed. What I noticed is you were letting the word... The word was the beginning of a new thought. Right, so you say, "Another thing is beers. Another thing is...". So you're finishing your thought and then you're moving on to the next one. Try to hold onto one direction. The one direction is approach your fears head on. And then, so when you see a puzzle, it's like, look, this doesn't have to be a hard puzzle because now I know that if it's scary, I do it. And it's like having kids, which I thought was so scary, I just jumped in and now I'm moving forward. And so it's like I'm growing my beard without caring what other people think just because it might be scary,

or maybe I cut my beard because that would be something scary. So you're holding onto the line.[01:02:08)]With four, it's going to be a little bit easier to integrate them. Ready?

Social- Lenny Rachitsky[01:02:18)]Social distancing. It's interesting that social distancing was such a thing that we all had to do for so long. And then all of a sudden we look back at that time we're like, "Was that actually necessary? Did we actually have to stay far from each other? Did that actually have any impact?". (01:02:34): There's all these things we have to learn, like sometimes we look at the stock market and we wonder, "Should I be paying attention to the stock market? Should I be distancing myself from it? Should I be investing more often? Should I be reading every newspaper that comes out every day to stay on top of what's happening in the world? Should I get closer to this information or should I distance myself? What's better for me?". And sometimes it feels like you're running this marathon where sometimes you go back and forth. Sometimes it's, "Let's all be together. Let's pay attention to all the news. Let's hang out."

Okay. Tristan de Montebello[01:03:27)]That's really good. Well, tell me what, because again, the games are meant to put you in a state of turbulence and find out what was easy, what was hard, what am I noticing? And now you know what you want to work on. If you did a rep and you got it and it went perfectly,

then you're learning nothing. A really easy rep is not worth much. The only reps that are worth something are the ones where you feel an edge. Lenny Rachitsky[01:03:57)]Yeah. And by the way, we should say the words right,

that I had. Tristan de Montebello[01:04:00)]Oh, yeah. The first one was the stock market, then a newspaper, which you brought in really, really well, then running a marathon,

and then toilet. Lenny Rachitsky[01:04:13)]Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, just the fact that I'm okay doing this is a big milestone for me of just like, ah, whatever. Because before doing this thing I'm like, oh my God, I never want to sit there and come up with a talk for a minute on the most random subject, and there's a lot of power in just feeling comfortable just doing it, just like, sure,

let's do it. Whatever. Something will come out that's interesting enough. Tristan de Montebello[01:04:35)]That's why taking on this journey of speaking is so empowering because speaking is a high performance skill. So taking on a high performance skill, and starting to tackle it, and getting kind of good at it is very addictive. It feels really, really good. If you get good at tennis, if you get good at golf, if you get good at anything, product management, it's a addicting, it's exciting. And as soon as you get good, there's nuance to it, and it's energizing in and of itself. And because we have such awesome hardware as humans, we've been speaking all of our life, a lot of us have a pretty decent level to start out with. So you really quickly, you're getting to like, "Oh, I'm getting some results here. This actually feels good." So there's something really energizing about jumping into it. It's the thinking about doing the exercise that's scary, but as soon as you're in it,

it's energizing and empowering. Lenny Rachitsky[01:05:35)]And also just doing it, this is a very hard exercise. Just giving a made up talk for a minute with words you have to integrate, and concepts. And I think just doing that makes a regular talk so much easier also, because you don't have to do that. So there's something there about just doing it on hard mode, learning things, and then, oh, okay, I just have to talk about a thing that I already know about, that I have planned, much easier. Anything else around this game that is worth sharing before we do our final game?

Tristan de Montebello[01:06:06)]We have a whole series of games, and you could probably even invent other games, but some people will play Triple Step and will say, "Wow, that's so hard." And then they'll go and play Conductor and think, "Wow, this is my game. This is so easy." But other people will play Conductor and think it's impossible, and then come play Triple Step and they'll be like, "Man, this is my jam. I can get this one very, very easy." (01:06:31): So again, it's just a mirror of where you're at. And what's beautiful about this is you start playing around with these games, you're very, very quickly going to see, okay, this is my edge. And where your edge is, as you were saying with your quote, is often where the gold lies. So if you can spend some time there and learn what it is underneath the struggle, what's actually holding you back. When you unlock that, whatever's holding you back in Triple Step, or in Conductor, in any other game, is holding you back elsewhere in your life. So when you unlock it there, it kind of unlocks the other things, which is really nice,

like a set of gears. Lenny Rachitsky[01:07:12)]And it's interesting, as we were talking, where my mind keeps going is I just want to say how I didn't feel good about my performance, but I'm internalizing the lesson of don't leak how you feel. And that's a really powerful lesson. It's really hard not to just to be like, "Oh, that was not good." I really wanted to say that after every time I tried this and I am making myself not. And I imagine from your perspective you're like, "No, it's fine. It's like whatever."

Tristan de Montebello[01:07:40)]Yeah, absolutely. I was actually thinking, I bet a lot of people watching you do that would think, wow,

I don't think I could do that. That would be their first thought.[01:07:49)]So absolutely. And again, and this is a habit. And the noise doesn't completely disappear,

but it goes down to being almost imperceptible. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to internalize all of these habits to the point where I don't need to consciously think about them.[01:08:12)]So it's like a gymnast who's doing their tumbling routine and jumps into the air. As they're flipping, they're not consciously trying to think of how to do a flip. They've done it a thousand times. They know how to do a flip. The only thing they have that they may be thinking of, all of their attention is on being completely present to what's happening, relying on your body and your subconscious knowing what to do, is they have kind of like listeners, like in programming, keyboard listeners. You have something that's there that is just listening for anything out of the ordinary. And it's very,

very fine-tuned.[01:08:47)]So as I'm speaking, for example, I might think to myself, "Oh, I may be rambling right now. Maybe I'm going a little bit too long." And it's a little listener that's going to just gently, nicely, say, "Hey, warning, I don't know if you're aware of this." And as I hear that, I might say, "Oh, okay, let me wrap it up." Or maybe it's saying, "I'm not sure if you're being clear," or, "Can you be more precise here?". Whatever it is,

it's just a gentle listener in the background.[01:09:15)]So as you get into the habit of staying in character, and if you had an audience here, we could have asked them right away, "Well, how do you feel about this?". You probably would've gotten really good feedback, really positive, which would've kind of jarred that feeling of, wow, I didn't think I did it that good of a job. And people are saying, "Hey, I thought that was pretty good." So As you get that reinforcing pattern,

Awesome. I need that voice to go down. That'd be great. Tristan de Montebello[01:09:46)][inaudible 01:09:46].

Lenny Rachitsky[01:09:46)]Okay,

Always does.[01:09:49)]Cool. Let's do last game. Last one of these practical games. So this is actually a game from one of our courses that I'm pulling out. It's not a standalone game, it's one that's inside of the courses. But again, if you wanted to replicate this yourself,

you can very easily do it.[01:10:09)]So what we're going to do here is we're going to work on conviction prompts. So this comes back to this idea of entering a state or changing your energy to impact the words that are coming out of your mouth. So what's going to happen here, is similarly to Triple Step, I'm also going to get a random topic that I just have to start speaking about. But now, instead of getting a word that I have to integrate into my speech naturally, I'm going to get a prompt. So it's going to be the beginning of a sentence that I have to say out loud,

and I have to find a way for my brain to just complete the sentence. And the sentences are specifically chosen because they're going to put you in a state of more conviction. So it's going to force me to care more about what I'm saying basically.[01:10:56)]And this is a game for executive presence. If you think about somebody who you feel has great gravitas or great executive presence, they usually have, there's something about them that's saying, this person really believes in what they're saying. And what this game is showing you is that, hey, there's a way to fast track myself to that place. If I want to have more executive presence,

let me bring a little bit more conviction to what I'm saying.[01:11:27)]There's a caveat, small caveat. Maybe 10% of people in the workforce need the opposite. They need, "Hey, you need to maybe question what you're saying here." But the reality is the vast majority of people actually are not truly standing behind their words and their ideas. And what that does is that the people who speak a lot and feel a lot of conviction, their ideas go through more often than the others. And you'd want ideas to stand for themselves, but that's just not reality. So for most people listening to this, if you can bring more conviction to your words,

Awesome. Okay. Tristan de Montebello[01:12:15)]Okay, here we go. The title is Saying No. I've had to learn this the hard way as an entrepreneur, that saying no is one of the most important things I can do. But saying no is not saying no to a meeting, because that can be easy. And what I'm going to say now matters a ton. This is saying no to doing all of the exciting projects that I want to do. So as I said earlier, I'm Labrador. I get excited about everything, and I genuinely believe that every idea is awesome,

but that doesn't mean I can do every idea. I need to choose a very clear focus and stick to that focus.[01:13:02)]And this is a game changer. When you start reducing the amount of things you're doing to a painful amount, a painful few amount, then when you get there, suddenly everything else changed. And it astonishes me when I do that, just how much more I can get done,

I love it. That was great. These words are tough. Tristan de Montebello[01:13:27)]They were,

yeah. This was not an easy one. This was not a... Good thing that I get a tough one. Well deserved. Lenny Rachitsky[01:13:35)]Let me read the phrases real quick, just so folks know. So the phrases you had to integrate is, "This matters a ton. I genuinely believe that every idea is awesome. Game changer."

Tristan de Montebello[01:13:45)]It was just, "I genuinely believe that."

Yeah. Lenny Rachitsky[01:13:49)]Oh, got it. Okay. "I generally believe that." And then, "game changer". And then, "It astonishes me when."

Tristan de Montebello[01:13:55)]And I'm so eager for you to go through this, and for anybody listening to try this for themselves, even if you know what's coming. Like, if you want to do this for yourself right now, write the words, the prompts that Lenny just shared, and choose any title, and just speak for a minute, and see if you can integrate those in. Because you're going to notice how if you bring conviction,

these words naturally bring that out of you. And it's so interesting to watch the content change as a result of the state you get into and what you say. So it's really powerful to discover just how incredible your brain is.[01:14:36)]So same intention for you I think, is choose a strong direction from the beginning. This is always, in speaking in general, the stronger the direction you choose in the beginning,

the more ideas you're going to have. Everything gets easier when you choose a strong direction. Lenny Rachitsky[01:14:54)]Okay,

let's try it. Tristan de Montebello[01:14:55)]But the goal here, is as it says, advocate for an important idea related to the speech title. Ready?

Lenny Rachitsky[01:15:01)]Yeah,

The title is Space Exploration. Lenny Rachitsky[01:15:08)]I think it's hard to imagine anything more important to the human race than space exploration. I know there's a lot of talk about people wasting time trying to get us to Mars, or trying to not think about what is happening on earth, but I feel like there's nothing more powerful, and important, and inspiring. In fact, the entire world needs to focus more on the value of space exploration. There's so many things we can discover, so many things that can help us on earth, and we cannot forget how much potential exists outside of our little earth, that we think our whole existence and everything that's ever existed on this one planet, when really we're this tiny, pale blue dot. And it just astonishes me when people don't think about this, don't think it matters, don't think they should spend any time getting us into space, investing money in space. And just hearing stories, if nothing else, of people that have gone into space and how life-changing that was for them,

should tell us that space exploration is incredibly powerful and important. Tristan de Montebello[01:16:14)]Yes, that was awesome. That was so cool. So you had, the title was Space Exploration, and the words were, "in fact", "the entire world", then, "We cannot forget that," then, "It astonishes me when," and finally "life changing". So what was that like?

What did it feel like getting... Lenny Rachitsky[01:16:41)]Yeah, there's a lot of... It really helps, just like, "Here's the thing you're going to believe." And I don't know if I got lucky with stuff, but it just felt like, okay, I have, something comes up that I'm not going to leak. But anyway, it was like, oh yeah, cool,

something interesting happens.[01:16:57)]And that's one of my other actual, just going on a little quick tangent, insights from the lessons that you guys teach, is that as you are forced to talk, you have new insights emerge. And you almost figure out what you think and know by being forced to get out of your head, and these problems help you along that. But I think that's really interesting, of just like, this will help you develop things, and insights,

and take them out of your head. Tristan de Montebello[01:17:26)]Yeah. Well, hopefully we get to talk about the Accordion Method, one of the most powerful methods I have,

which is very close to this.[01:17:35)]But this is often a prompt I tell people when they're speaking. I say, because people tend to get into a public speaking voice, so we'll be in a class, and they'll be chatting normally, and look super normal. And then we'll say, "Okay, now just a timer. I'm just going to give you a speech. Just speak for 60 seconds so we get a baseline." And I click play, and suddenly I say, "The important part about doing this," and they enter into a different version of themselves, a very professional version, whatever that would mean. It's so much more freeing, powerful, connecting,

and effective to speak conversationally.[01:18:18)]And so the cue I often give people is don't think about us, just think out loud. And that's really what we're doing. We can, most people have a skill set that's up here and a mindset that's down here. And so if you can just change the mindset to match the skill set, you've already made a giant leap. And you do that by reducing the stakes in your mind and by just speaking. And as you do that, when you're thinking out loud, you have these moments of connecting things in your mind,

and then naturally it pops out.[01:18:59)]And if you're doing it well... And I love, there's a really cool Naval Ravikant interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast from many years ago that's phenomenal. And at one point he talks about communication, if I'm not mistaken. I think it's on that podcast. But he says something along the lines of, "One should discover the words they are saying at the same time their audience is." And this comes back to thinking out loud, like if I'm really in my mind, I'm making connections,

and suddenly the words are the consequence of it.[01:19:31)]So using prompts, poking your brain,

giving these cues naturally creates things that you couldn't have anticipated otherwise. It's like putting constraints on a creative project. Lenny Rachitsky[01:19:46)]I love that. Before we segue to a couple of these methods, the Accordion Method is one example, I want to ask about, when people hear this, they may feel like you're helping people more, just like make shit up, and why, why would we want that? Talk about just how this isn't just like, you're not going to actually give talks like this necessarily. This is... And I guess I'm answering the question, but I'm curious if that's how you think about it. This is building a skill so that when you actually want to give a real talk that you've prepared, you are better at it. But yeah,

just thoughts on just that potential element. Tristan de Montebello[01:20:23)]Yeah, I think that's an important question, and it's a question I hear a lot because we all know a bullshitter,

and that's the person who masters the skill of communication but doesn't have anything to show for it.[01:20:43)]And so this thing happens, is that I see bullshitter and I think to myself, I really, really don't want to become that person. And what happens is it becomes an immune response or like an immune response where the desire not to be that person and the feeling being around that person gives you is so strong that now if I take even the smallest step in that direction of speaking freely, sharing my thoughts out loud, bringing more conviction or confidence to what I'm saying, not leaking, then there's this immediate response like an immune response in my body that's just too strong, that's saying, "Uh oh, you're becoming the bullshitter. Alarm bells. Alarm bells. Go back to that safe little corner you were in." (01:21:39): But the reality is, if you're thinking that, then you have no chance of becoming a bullshitter. Because if that thought is even popping into your mind, then you're the type of person who has developed a very acute skill set of noticing when people bullshit. And you have that same skill set for yourself. So it's just going to be,

now it's just too loud.[01:22:05)]So as we go through this practice, we want to match, "Hey, I want to match that bullshitter's level of communication, except I'm going to have the ideas to back it up. I'm going to really put effort into my craft, but I'm going to be able to show them in the best possible light." And what we want to be able to do is notice, okay, if this is a big thing for you, the bullshitting, and you're noticing a big reaction, just even listening to us, not even playing the games yourself, then you definitely benefit from calming that voice down. So spending time learning these skill sets, because you're most likely atrophied because you're staying away from it. And you're going to have this very powerful listener in the back of your mind that's going to ping you, and it's like, "Hey, you're at the limit right now. Stay true to what you know."

Awesome. That's really helpful.[01:23:05)]Okay. So, so far we've shared a bunch of techniques, things that you could just start doing today. We've done all these fun games that you could play online. If nothing else, just learning from the techniques these games teach you I think is really helpful. You've shared a bunch of principles of just like, here's how you actually get better at public speaking, and not this way,

but that way.[01:23:27)]I know you have a couple also methods just like that people can implement that helps them develop talks that I found really helpful. So maybe just as a closing, we talk about these two methods, the Accordion Method, and I think it's the Bow and Arrow Method?

Uh-huh. Lenny Rachitsky[01:23:41)]Awesome. Let's talk about the Accordion Method. We did this in the class briefly, and it was really helpful,

and I've been explaining it to people of just like a really cool way of making your talk better. So talk about how that works and how people might be able to implement it when they're trying to develop the talk. Tristan de Montebello[01:23:55)]Now, I'm biased when I'm going to say this, so take this with a pinch of salt, but I think the Accordion Method,

the Accordion Method might be one of the things I'm the most proud of in my entire life because it's almost revolutionizing the way I think we should prepare speaking.[01:24:19)]So up until now, we've talked about spontaneous speaking mostly, and that's going to be the vast majority of your speaking. Probably 80% of your speaking is stuff that you can't prepare for. But there are going to be situations where you know you have a deadline and you're going to have to speak. And either you have to speak because it's a job interview, or you're talking to your CEO,

or maybe you're presenting to your whole team or an audience of a thousand.[01:24:45)]The old way I think is shitty. I think it's broken, and I haven't found anything out there that is innovating on this. And it drove us crazy with Michael, and that's what gave birth to the Accordion Method. What's the old way? The old way is I have a talk coming up, so I'm going to dump all of my ideas on a piece of paper or multiple pieces of paper. Then I'm going to try rearranging those ideas. And as I'm rearranging the ideas and trying to make them in a talk, I have more inspiration. And I'm thinking, oh, maybe I could say it this way,

and I don't want to lose that other thing that I said in the beginning because maybe I would use it.[01:25:22)]And you start just creating this alien stack of paper with all of your ideas of what your talk might be, and then you're left with 10, 15 pieces of paper. And now as the deadline comes closer, what do you have to do? Well, you have to go through the excruciating pain of turning 10

pages into a script so that you don't forget all of those brilliant lines that you spent so many hours editing. And they're still in writing mode. They're not in your mind.[01:25:50)]So now that I've created that script that I spent a lot of time editing, now I have to memorize it. And memorization is pretty. We're not good at memorization. Robots are good at memorization, humans are not. And memorization is like a chain where you just have all of these links very linearly. And everybody knows the feeling of going through, reciting a poem as a kid, and suddenly you miss one verse and you're lost,

and now you're a deer in the headlights.[01:26:21)]So what we're doing with the Accordion Method is instead of preparing our talk by writing, we're going to prepare our talk by speaking, and we're going to do so in a very specific way where we're going down the accordion to create extreme clarity, and to understand what the essence of our talk is,

and then back up the accordion to bring back in intentionally just the right pieces.[01:26:48)]So I was thinking of an analogy for this, and one that I really like is imagine you're redecorating your living room. The old way, the writing 10

pages and memorizing it is I'm going to look at my living room and I'm going to rearrange things and put stuff in a corner that I might need later. And then I'm going to bring some new things that I thought could be really nice and I'm going to struggle to make something work.[01:27:14)]The Accordion Method is saying, and imagine this were easy to do with furniture, I'm going to take everything out of my living room except the most essential pieces that make my living room. So I might be left with that one couch that I really love, a pillow, a beautiful light that I bought three years ago, and one or two other small things. And as I look at that, I'm going to have clarity on the vision I want for my living room. And then very slowly, very intentionally, I'm going to go take certain elements that were already there that I might want to bring back in, and I'm going to bring new elements that now I see make sense. And so by the time you finish with your beautiful living room, it's going to be this beautiful minimalistic room that has a very clear design choice,

and every element there is there because you chose it. It's there because you did it very intentionally.[01:28:15)]So how does that work with the Accordion Method? What we do is you can go through the first step. If you want, you can write all of those ideas on paper just to get them out of your head. That's totally fine. But from this moment on, there's no more script. And I'm just going to give an example of times, but you can change these time constraints slightly. We're going down the accordion by using time constraints. So for example, you would say, "I'm going to speak for three minutes." So you're going to put a timer, and you have two rules. I have to stay in character the whole time and I have to end strong. So you must make it to the end of the three minutes, and it doesn't matter how bad it sounds,

how many mistakes you make. The only point here is I'm trying to get my ideas out into spoken word. So I'm starting to populate my mind with everything and seeing where am I actually at.[01:29:13)]Then after the three minutes, you think of, okay, what did I like, what didn't I like? Then you go to two minutes. And you put a timer and you do two minutes again. And you're very strict with those two minutes, because we're just trying to learn something every time. It doesn't need to be perfect. So at the two-minute mark, you do the same thing, but now you had to shave a whole minute out of that content. And as you do that, well, that means getting rid of the noise,

getting rid of anything that doesn't feel right.[01:29:38)]Then you go down to one minute. And you're going to go down all way to 30 seconds. So you started at a three-minute speech and you make your way down to 30 seconds. By the time you make it to 30 seconds, you're going to have only the essential pieces like that couch and that lamp in the living room. When you have the essential pieces, you're going to have a clear sense of what your talk is about,

and it might've changed as you- Tristan de Montebello[01:30:00)]Sense of what your talk is about and it might've changed as you were going down the accordion. And then from that place on, we're going to do another 30 second rep and then we're going to go back up the accordion. So you do another 30 seconds and then you do one minute, two minute, and all the way back up to three minute. And every step of the way you go from 30 seconds to a minute. Initially, a minute felt hard. Now that's double the time you just had. So you can bring in something that's aligned with the talk you want to share, and then two minutes, same. And then when you get to three minutes, one of my clients once said that it felt like he had a football field in his mind. So much space. And now whatever talk you have left there is a very clear,

intentional talk.[01:30:45)]And not only that, and this is why this is such an incredible method, your talk is now internalized. So you're at the stage of I've written a script that I've painfully edited in the old way that you now still have to memorize and it's a written speech that you're going to have to pretend to give in a spoken way. In this case you're there, but it's already completely internalized, not even memorized. It's internalized. You have these pillars, you know where you're going and by the time you make it through the accordion method,

you're basically ready to go give it on stage.[01:31:22)]But you could give it now in one minutes, two minutes, three minutes, five minutes. It's very plastic. You're going to be able to navigate different time frames. It's not going to really matter if you make a mistake because you're going to have a deep sense of what your speech is. It's not memorized, it's internalized. So not only have you gotten clarity and built out your speech in a very intentional way, but by the time you get to the end of it,

you also actually know it and you're ready to perform it. Lenny Rachitsky[01:31:51)]That example of the three minute when you come back up the accordion, that's exactly how it felt when I did this is just like, "Wow, so much time now" because you essentially, the way I think about it is you concentrate it to the best, most important nuggets and then you have time to build on those nuggets and you cut out all the stuff that no one really cares about, which is usually a long introduction,

just like now just get to the good stuff and then you expand the good stuff. And it really worked for me and it was a really illuminating experience.[01:32:19)]For someone that wants to actually use this. Say they have a speech coming up, say they're doing an all hands presentation in a week. Do you do this a week ahead of time? Do you do this a few days before? I guess where do you fit this in the workflow so that you actually remember what you want to say when it comes time?

Tristan de Montebello[01:32:36)]I can't say do it exactly a week or two weeks or it really depends how well familiar you are with the content. If you have an all hands, and this is something that you've been hashing with your executive team over the past two months, you probably know it really, really well and you have a lot of clarity and now it's just about organizing it nicely. So in that case, maybe you want to do a rough go through the accordion a week ahead of time so you have a clear sense of, "What is it that I want my audience to remember and what are the pillars that I know I like to hit that feel really good?" (01:33:15): So you can think about these as the foundational pillars that support that one thing that you're sharing or bookmarks that I know I have to hit and then what I would like to do. And so that's what I would write down. I wouldn't write a script. I'd write those down. And then before the all hands, maybe the day before, maybe even the morning of, depending on how important this is or how comfortable you feel, then you might go through just one or two reps of it, but now you already know it, so it should come back very,

very quickly in your mind. Lenny Rachitsky[01:33:44)]And it sounds like it's okay to have some bullet points at the end. It's hard for me to imagine going on stage with a bunch of people watching, not have any slide, bullet point, speaker notes. Any problems just having a couple of the bullet points of core points next to me?

Tristan de Montebello[01:34:01)]Before a talk, I might have four things written down. My one thing, and we'll talk about this in the bow and arrow, my one thing, the one thing I want people to remember and then the three bookmarks or pillars that I want to hit. And these are kind of cues or reminders that are going to send me into that part of the speech. So for example, if I'm talking about the accordion method, like what I just said, if I go back and I think through the pillars of this one. Well,

my one thing would be the accordion method is more powerful than memorizing and then doing it the old way.[01:34:35)]And then my bookmarks might be number one, describe the old way or the old way. Number two, the new way or the accordion method. And then number three might be internalize, don't memorize,

and that'll be kind of the takeaway.[01:34:53)]And if I have that in my mind, if I have 30 seconds, I can say the old way sucks because you have to work so hard and memorize everything and you're memorizing written stuff, the accordion method is much more powerful because you are going to compress it and go down and then open it up and then I'll explain that in a second and then I'll say, so you're internalized not memorized. What I realized right now is actually, it's funny enough though, those were the bookmarks there, so that sent me down that path. But actually I would say bookmark number two is probably the living room analogy. So it would be the old way sucks, the living room analogy,

and then describe the accordion method. Lenny Rachitsky[01:35:36)]That's cool. That was an awesome example of just the insights that appear by forcing yourself through this exercise. And it sounds like maybe the best use of this method is if you have a talk all of a sudden short term it's coming, all of a sudden you have to give a talk somewhere. There's a really powerful method to come up with a great talk that's maybe tomorrow,

which you didn't expect. Tristan de Montebello[01:35:58)]When I say I love this, I use this for myself, I use this with every single client I work with regardless of if it's a five-minute talk, a 20-minute keynote, we're using the accordion method, and you can use this at the macro level or at the micro level, so you can use it for the whole talk, but you can also say, "Hey, let's hone in on this part one that you're struggling with or part two and let's use the accordion to get clarity there." (01:36:26): So you can use the accordion as almost like a brainstorming way. I just want to see where I end up here and it takes maybe 15 minutes or something to go through a full accordion. It depends the time constraints you give yourself. Sometimes I'll just do two minute, one minute 30 seconds, that's even shorter, but I'll go through it for one piece of the puzzle or it's like, "Hey, we're almost there. Let's really internalize it. Let's clarify this. Let's get it really, really tight." And then I might say, "Okay, now let's do the whole thing through the accordion. So your 20-minute talk, I want to hear it in three minutes." That gets really,

really interesting. Lenny Rachitsky[01:37:03)]Amazing. Okay. Anything else along the accordion method before we talk about the final technique before we wrap up?

Tristan de Montebello[01:37:10)]We have a full self-paced course on ultra speaking on the accordion. I think it costs like 30 bucks or something like that to access all of the games and all the platforms. A bunch of them are free, but I think this one's behind the paywall. But we also put together a resource where we go all the way, we describe all of the accordion method, the bow and arrow, staying character ending strong on a free email course that we put together. That's ultraspeaking.com/Lenny. So this is shameless self-promotion, but if you want it to go grab it there,

you can grab it there and then the bow and arrow is going to tie into the accordion method as well. Lenny Rachitsky[01:37:53)]Awesome. I'm glad you mentioned all that and we'll point people to that URL in the show notes. Okay,

final topic is the bow and arrow technique. Let's talk about what that is and how folks can use that to give better talks. Tristan de Montebello[01:38:05)]The bow and arrow starts with a, it's really a mindset shift that most of us are in the weeds, so we're very sensitive and familiar to all of the content that we're working on. If you're in data, then you have all of the data. If you're sharing ideas, you still have all of the ideas. And the mistake that most people do when they're preparing a talk, a presentation, an all hands a meeting,

whatever it is we tend to focus more on what we want to say than what we want our audience to remember. So the mindset shift here is stop focusing as much on what you want to say and focus more on what you want your audience to remember.[01:38:51)]What we found out is if you think about your last all hands, the last big meeting, the last talk you saw on YouTube or in person, you probably don't remember much. In fact, I wager you might only remember one thing from that talk. And that's what this is all based on. We call it the bow and arrow technique because we think you can only remember one thing out of a talk and that it's very powerful to go through that framework or that kind of thinking when you're building a talk. And the one thing is your arrow. And so when you have that one thing to me I say it's literally a single sentence that is the only sentence people would remember if they left your talk. Would you be satisfied with that sentence? (01:39:37): It takes some times to get to a good one, but if you have a good one,

it unlocks everything. It's like you're having a north star or a compass in your pocket. You can always pull it out. You always know where you're going. It gives you a lot of clarity. It's also giving a lot of clarity to your audience obviously.[01:39:54)]But you can't just throw an arrow at somebody's face. You need to notch it in the bow and pull the bow back. And so to pull the bow back, you need to add in weight to that sentence. And that often comes in the form of an interesting anecdote or a data point that's going to support that or a story that's going to add emotion or illustrate it. So you want to find ways in which you can give weight or pull back the bow so that your arrow has that much more impact. So usually the process of clarifying what your arrow is is a back and forth between the bow and the arrows. So if you're going down the accordion method after the first one you might write or before the first one, you might write a tentative arrow, "Here's my one thing", and then the next one you say, "Okay, actually my one thing might be a refined version of that." (01:40:55): And so you might rewrite it a little bit and then you might tentatively put in what you think the bow is. "I like the anecdote I used here. I like this data point that I thought was powerful and maybe I can end on this story or this call to action."

Then you'll put that in and then you go back in and you give that a try and that's starting to simplify in your mind.[01:41:17)]And as you go, usually one informs the other. By the time you finish the accordion for example, you should have a very clear arrow and those clear bookmarks, which is the bow. But really the thing to remember with the bow and arrow, if you can only remember one thing,

is switch your mindset from what I want to say to what I want people to remember and limit whatever that is you want them to remember as much as possible and that's going to give you extreme clarity. Lenny Rachitsky[01:41:48)]That is really helpful. I'm preparing my talk for the summit, and so I'm going to use both of these exercises and what I take away from this last piece is as much as you may want to say a lot of things, really all someone's going to remember, as you said is one thing, if anything,

but hopefully they remember that one thing.[01:42:06)]So it's essentially what's the one thing you want people to remember and then what are the pieces of support that will convince them that that's right and that's something that'll stick with them?

Tristan de Montebello[01:42:16)]Exactly. And again, similar to the accordion method, this works in the macro and the micro. So if you have a talk where you're using slides, use it for the whole talk. But then for every single slide, ask yourself what is my one thing? And you might have some support there as well, but if you don't have a one thing for each slide,

either the slide shouldn't exist or it should be multiple slides.[01:42:45)]The symptom of not having a one thing is usually having a slide that says way too many things. I don't know what data point I want you to remember, so I'm going to put all of it on that slide. I'm not sure which piece of information is more important. So I'm going to write down all of my thoughts and I'm going to go through all of them or hope that you go through all of them and extract what you think is interesting. But the reality is people are just going to zone out if you do that. So if you do that slide by slide, you're going to gain incredible clarity and again,

you're going to need less preparation and less memorization. Lenny Rachitsky[01:43:21)]And to build on that,

Yes. I love that. Lenny Rachitsky[01:43:32)]Sweet. Tristan, we've been on a journey. This was a really unique experimental episode. I had a good time even though I did some hard things, you made me do hard things that are good for me. Is there anything else you want to share before we get to our very exciting lightning round? Is there anything else you want to leave listeners with or a nugget you want to?

Tristan de Montebello[01:43:50)]I hope people found value. I mean, we did. This was really a group effort and I really appreciate you working on the agenda, really bringing in the games and trying to make this as practical as possible. I think the only thing I want to leave people with is again, this idea of how transformational tackling speaking can be, and the more constrained you feel with your speaking, the more transformational it will be to your life. So I just want to give this encouragement. It's much, much, much more enjoyable than you think it will be. It can actually be exhilarating and energizing and you feel like you can take over the world once you're on this journey. It's beautiful. And so I just encourage everybody,

take the first step and start practicing your speaking. Lenny Rachitsky[01:44:45)]Awesome. And I definitely felt that after doing the workshop of just I feel energized, I want to just talk all time, but then I'm like, I need more work. I need more practice. Tristan, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?

Let's do this lightning round. Here we go. Lenny Rachitsky[01:45:04)]Here we go. First question, what are two or three books that you have recommended most to other people?

Tristan de Montebello[01:45:10)]I was given a book by my first coach, Nathan Seward seven years ago called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks that I've recommended so many times. And it's based on this idea that we tend to self-sabotage ourselves when we experience too much success or too much happiness. And that that's linked to I think five things that would happen to us when we're growing up. One of them is the... What is it, the wild poppy syndrome or something like that. Like the tallest poppy is the one that's cut first. So if you shine in a family of siblings, then anytime you shine too much we're going to say, "Hey, hey, hey, that's not cool for the others." So that's going to be internalized and hardwired in your body and as an adult, as soon as you start shining a little bit too much, you're going to do the same thing to yourself. So the idea is going from having this point above which you can't be happy to turning it into,

he calls it an upward-facing spiral with no upper limit. It's a really exciting and empowering book. Lenny Rachitsky[01:46:20)]Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?

Tristan de Montebello[01:46:23)]I haven't watched much very recently, but I'll say one of my favorite TV shows of all time is the Peaky Blinders, English show with Cillian Murphy. I'm absolutely obsessed with that movie that show. I think it's a true masterpiece. And I've recently rewatched, so I'll qualify this as recent. I recently rewatched The Nice Guys with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, and I think it's just a brilliant comedy. Brilliant. Another masterpiece,

I thought. Lenny Rachitsky[01:46:58)]Do you have a favorite recent product that you have discovered that you really love. Could be an app,

it could be something physical. Tristan de Montebello[01:47:05)]I have a physical product actually right in front of me that was gifted to me by my business partner Michael Gendler, co-founder of Ultraspeaking. This is called an Ember Mug, and this keeps whatever you have in it, warm and it's extraordinary, whether you are a coffee drinker or a tea drinker, you know the feeling of pouring this and sipping it and by the fifth sip,

it's cold. This keeps it at whatever temperature you want it to for however long you want. And I absolutely love it. I've been using it basically every day. Lenny Rachitsky[01:47:37)]I have one of those. I find myself, you could actually control it through the app. You can control the temperature through an app, which I love. I haven't been using mine, but I love the idea. I know a lot of friends love them. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, share with friends or family, find useful in work or in life?

Tristan de Montebello[01:47:56)]I think we are too future focused as a species or as a society and as a result, we're always looking for the next thing. So the motto I share with my friends and my business partners and my family the most I think is these are the good old days. And I remind myself, I'll tell you right now for you and for whoever's listening. I mean think about the podcast, it's never going to be this young, it's never going to feel like it feels right now. And it always feels like these things are eternal, but truly one day you're going to look back and you're think, "Man, those were really the good old days." And so I say it right now,

enjoy because these are the good old days. Lenny Rachitsky[01:48:40)]I love that. And it's so relevant with a young kid, you're always going to think about, "Oh, they're little."

I love that. Final question. You were the fastest person to reach the finals of the world championship of public speaking. I imagine that was quite a journey. I'm curious if there's a story from that experience that comes to mind that's like a wild part of that journey or something that might surprise people. Tristan de Montebello[01:49:09)]Well, the journey lasted almost seven months, and it was the craziest journey of my life. I went into that with no experience whatsoever speaking, so really just a random amateur, and I just climbed the ladder by outworking everybody. The story that came to mind right away was six days before the semifinals. So I'm six days before the semifinals and I've qualified for the semifinals two and a half months ago. So I'm nobody, now I'm going to the semifinals of the world championships of public speaking. So my mind really is struggling to compute, and I had finally unlocked a speech that I thought was worthy of giving on the final stage. You have to show up there for the semifinals with one speech, and then the next day, if ever you win, you're going to the finals and you have to have a brand new speech,

a completely different speech that you're going to give on that stage.[01:50:12)]So you need two speeches ready to go, and both of those speeches have to be in theory, world-class. I'm six days before. I was struggling at that, really, really struggling to get that speech together. I finally got something and Michael managed to get me. I was flying I think two days later to Vancouver for the semis, and Michael managed to unlock this one opportunity to speak in front of 50 people to give it a try. And so I ran there. I give the speech, and as usual, we film. I film every single speech. I gave more than a hundred speeches over seven months, and I filmed every single speech. And we'd get home, we'd ask everybody for feedback, and I get home and I'm thinking, "Man, something is wrong. Something is wrong." I was so pumped. I wept. I genuinely wept as I wrote the speech because it was so moving. It was all about my life. It was something that I was so connected to. I don't know, probably the emotion of the pressure as well,

but that's how much I believed in that speech.[01:51:14)]We get home, we put the speech on the computer, and as I get to the most important part of the speech, I see two things happen. So this is the moment where I'm expecting people to pull out their tissues. One person pulls up the agenda for the event that they're at and is starting to look at the agenda. Another person pulls out their phone, another person starts going through their purse, and I'm looking at this, and suddenly I realized, "Oh, this speech, nobody cares about this. This is not a good speech. This is terrible."

And then I go through all of these feedbacks.[01:51:53)]I have 50 pieces of feedback, and all I'm getting is, "Good luck for the semi-finals. It's going to go great. I thought it was good", and I'm like, "I'm going to humiliate myself. This is terrible." So I had waves of anxiety. I threw my speech away, and in five days from the ground up, I rebuilt a completely new speech that was basically the best of everything I'd explored, everything I'd experimented with over the course of the three months leading up to that, the jokes that worked the best,

like a stand-up comic would. I built my special and I focused on different areas like all of the transitions.[01:52:38)]And right before the semi-finals, I gave the speech to one person. I was in Vancouver trying to internalize my speech and memorizing it in a plaza where I delimited the size of the stage and I'm just giving my speech out loud to get over the nerves,

so I'm ready for the pressure to see if my brain will remember it and everything.[01:53:01)]Anyways, I gave it in front of one person who was our district director at Toastmasters, and this is a speech meant for 500 to a thousand people, not one person. So I was scared it would flop. But in the middle of the speech, which is a completely different one, I saw a tear roll down her cheek, and then she just hugged me and said, "You got it. You did it. You did it." I walked out on that stage and I made it,

and I won the semi-finals with that speech.[01:53:32)]I think to me, that was really the, it showed me that everything I'd done was worth something, that it actually worked. If I was able to build a speech in five days, that could get me a win at the semi-finals of the world championships. That was kind of the ultimate, "Wow, I won." So when I walked into the finals, to me,

I felt like I had already won. Lenny Rachitsky[01:53:57)]Wow, that is a story. What an arc. Amazing. I'm so happy you asked that question. Now I just want to watch that speech and I want to learn more about this whole championship of public speaking,

which I have no insight into. That could be its own podcast interview.[01:54:13)]But Tristan, thank you so much for being here. This was incredible. One of the most interesting episodes I've done. Two final questions. Where can folks learn more about Ultraspeaking? I know you built a page where they could experiment with some of this stuff, so share that. And then how can listeners be useful to you?

Tristan de Montebello[01:54:28)]If you go to ultraspeaking. com/Lenny, so ultra like U-L-T-R-A ultraspeaking.com/Lenny, we put together, you have five emails that go deep into a bunch of the things that we've talked here. You can also just go to Ultraspeaking.com where you'll get access to a bunch of the games for free, and you can check out everything else that we do. If you want to follow me or hit me up or ask me questions about this podcast, you can do that on Twitter @Montebello, M-O-N-T-E-B-E-L-L-O. And how can listeners be useful to me? Well, first of all, if you made it to here, then I really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you for being here with us, and what I would love for you to do is to apply this. We said in the beginning, you can't get better at speaking without speaking, and another piece of that puzzle is you want to do the thing that you're trying to get better at. So if you're nervous speaking in front of people, you want to speak in front of people as part of your practice. So the way you could be useful to me is introduce these games to somebody else. Try them for yourself, practice them with somebody else. Go through the accordion method with a friend. Try conductor, and when you succeed and when you have an awesome experience, then you can tell the world that Ultraspeaking helped you do that,

and that would be huge. Lenny Rachitsky[01:55:56)]Awesome. Tristan,

thank you so much for being here. Tristan de Montebello[01:56:01)]Thanks,

Lenny. It was an honor. Lenny Rachitsky[01:56:03)]It was my honor,

Tristan. Bye everyone.[01:56:05)]Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at LennysPodcast.com. See you in the next episode.