Michelle Mazur – The Rebel Speaker

Dr. Michelle Mazur is the founder and CEO of Communication Rebel.

At Communication Rebel, Michelle is on a mission to shake up presentations in order to keep you from getting lost in the sea of sameness.

Armed with a Ph.D., in communication with a specialization in persuasion, Michelle, can help you go from a secret to a sought-after speaker by discovering your unfair speaking advantage.

As if the Ph.D., wasn’t enough, Michelle has also logged over 10,000 hours of speaking to groups from as few as 10 to over a 1,000 attendees.

She is also a certified Fascination Advisor, which means she knows how the world sees you at your best and how you can use your unique strengths in your next presentation in order to make an audacious breakthrough.

Michelle also happens to be a fellow Maverick Leader.

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MICHELLE MAZUR THE MAVERICK LEADER

Michelle wasn’t always the communication rebel but she did know at a young age that communication was important.

Her first attempt at content creation as a form of communication took the shape of a blog titled, relationally speaking. The blog was aimed at how you can use public speaking to build relationships.

But like all of us do once we begin to blog and write, Michelle began to find her voice and realized her ideas and opinions were often contrary to popular thought.

This gave her pause until she took the Fascination Advantage assessment and discovered she was a Maverick Leader. At first, she struggled with this “designation” because the leading power as a maverick leader is innovation.

Michelle didn’t see herself as innovative or creative. However, as she would discover, this is exactly the way others viewed her.

As Michelle continued to evolve personally, professionally and as a blogger, she eventually became very comfortable with being the communication rebel.

MICHELLE’S BOOK – SPEAK UP FOR YOUR BUSINESS: PRESENTATION SECRETS FOR ENTREPRENEURS READY TO TELL, SELL, AND COMPEL

Michelle’s book is broken into four parts, your mindset, your transformational (or signature) talk, storytelling and finally delivering your presentation.

On today’s show, we discuss each part in detail.

Part One – Mindset

Everybody knows, public speaking is like enemy number one to the vast major of people. It’s also fair to say most people think public speaking means standing on a stage in front of people.

However, as Michelle and I discuss, public speaking also includes something we all do every day, or a lot of us anyway, which is speak in front of groups in our office.

We present financial numbers and powerpoint presentations to our bosses and/or their bosses. These are all forms of public speaking.

But even this form of public speaking comes with some nervousness of us all. Fortunately, Michelle offers six ways in her book we can use to help us cope with our nerves.

Out of the six, Michelle recommends exercise as the best way to help you reduce your nervousness. This might sound weird at first but Michelle offers a practical way to test this out.

The next time you are exercising at the gym, or wherever it is you exercise, think about something that makes you nervous.

It could be an upcoming presentation, a difficult conversation (think employee performance review), or maybe you need to ask for the sale.

The topic matters less than the fact that it makes you nervous.

Once you have the topic in mind, think about it while you are exercising and you will discover that the movement of exercise makes the topic less nerve racking.

There are scientific reasons behind why this works, Michelle does a great job explaining this during the show.

Part two – Your transformational (or signature) talk

Originally called the transformational talk, Michelle now refers to this as your signature talk because it is unique to you.

Understanding what your signature talk should be about is what Michelle helps her clients discover but you can also get there by asking yourself the following questions.

What makes you go on a Rant?
What makes you go on a Rave?

We spend a lot of time walking through how to answer these questions then tailor your answers to address your audiences’ pain points.

This, of course, raises the question, how do you know your audience’s pain points. Michelle suggests to really identify their pain points we need to get into their head.

We can do this via a number of avenues once we take off our expert hats. Ask questions about them such as:

How old are they?
Did they grow up listening to Prince or Justin Bieber?
What kind of day-to-day challenges do they face related to your message?

If you have already booked a speaking gig, Michelle suggests using the person who booked you as a resource to get information about the attendees.

Use social media to listen to how others are talking about your topic.
“Stalk” your audience members (in a good way with excellence as John Sparks told us).

Through these activities you will discover what your audience is saying, thinking and feeling about your topic before you get up on stage.

Part Three – Storytelling

A great way to capture and hold the attention of your audience is storytelling. But not just any story.

The story needs to be relevant and it needs to include the audience. It needs to relate to them.

Your story will help keep the audience connected to you and engaged throughout your presentation because they will see themselves in you.

To help her clients identify and build her clients story in their presentations, Michelle uses a process called SPARK.

S – Set the situation
P – Probe the problem
A – Activate action
R – Recognize remarkable results
K – Killer call to action

We talk about SPARK quite a bit during the show and we answer the question of whether you should use the word “We” or “You” when giving your presentation.

Part Four – Delivering your presentation

Do NOT memorize your speech. If you take nothing else away from today’s show remember this, never memorize your speech.

Michelle does believe your speech should be internalized using a specific structural and organizational technique she refers to as buckets.

She divides these buckets into the different categories of SPARK. This is also how she practices her speeches. Remember your goal here is to connect to your audience not give a mechanical speech.

If after you’ve practiced your speech if you still feel mechanical while giving it, Michelle offers a unique way to loosen up.

Read a children’s book out loud. And yes, use different voices.

This will definitely help you loosen up, take your mind off the “seriousness” of your speech and may even make it fun for you.

THE REBEL SPEAKER PODCAST

Michelle has a great podcast that releases every Thursday called The Rebel Speaker.

Each episode is usually less than ten minutes and they are all filled with action packed tips and information. All of which can be implemented right away.

If you want to learn about your unfair speaking advantage, how to get paid speaking or how to get booked on speaking gigs, you need to check this podcast out.

MICHELLE MAZUR’S REBEL SPEAKER BOOTCAMP

Michelle will soon be launching a 6-week group boot camp designed to help you craft your signature speech.

In addition, you’ll learn how to get your speaking opportunities aligned with a path to revenue and she will help get you positioned correctly in your marketplace.