[00:00:00] Mel: Some people avoid public speaking at all possible costs. Whether it's just in front of a small group of people, like a board or a team, or in a conference auditorium of hundreds. But being able to hone your speaking skills is such a critical part of being an effective communicator. It doesn't matter if you're a team member or a team leader, a solo operator, or a business owner, being able to speak with confidence and articulate your arguments succinctly gives others confidence in you.

[00:00:29] Mel: And that builds trust in your expertise, which just helps you get stuff done. So how do you even start improving your speaking skills? In today's episode, I ask a master of the craft for his top tips. Julian Mather started life as a stutterer and has transformed into a professional keynote speaker, presenting to Australian and international audiences.

[00:00:54] Mel: But along the way, he's had an incredibly interesting journey. For as long as he could [00:01:00] remember, Julian wanted to be a photojournalist. Then he got side tracked, and while Army Sniper seemed like a good idea at the time, he found the telescopic sights of his rifle were starting to look more and more like a movie camera, and so he fell in love with filmmaking.

[00:01:16] Mel: And so began his 25 years as a globe trotting TV cameraman for ABC TV, BBC, National Geographic and Discovery Channel. He was actually awarded the highest distinction for cinematography by the Australian Cinematographers Society. A ten year journey started from behind the camera then to in front of it.

[00:01:37] Mel: Julian became, among other things, an accomplished author of Second Best Job in the World, A Polish magician and stage performer. Yes, a magician, a viral YouTube success with over 30 million views and 140, 000 subscribers. He's the co creator of the world's first online training academy for professional children's entertainers.

[00:01:57] Mel: He's also the creator of Confident Video [00:02:00] Presenter Academy, online and onsite video training for business. And Julian did a Steve and Bradbury. He won a golden guitar, which is Australian country music's version of a Grammy. Despite, at least he says, being the least musical person in Australia. And somewhere amongst all of that, he climbed mountains and raised a family.

[00:02:19] Mel: So in today's episode, Julian shares why being able to speak confidently is so important in any career and shares his top tips, including on how to avoid that pesky um. So without further ado, here's Julian.

[00:02:35] Mel: . Well, hi, Julian. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:37] Julian: I'm very, very happy to be here, Mel.

[00:02:39] Mel: And I'm very happy you are here. So before we kick off, could you tell us a little bit about you? What do you do? How did you come to develop your expertise in that space?

[00:02:49] Julian: So look, I guess in context of this with communication and speaking, uh, I'll just go back and say that I did really well in school if you don't count learning. Um, but, but, [00:03:00] and that was sort of, um, um, critical to me, uh, going out and chasing, uh, the career that I really wanted to do, which was to be a photo journalist, to tell other people's stories with pictures.

[00:03:13] Julian: And I ended up being a documentary cameraman. Uh, and I did that for 25 years for, uh, ABC TV and National Geographic and BBC and Discovery. Uh, and I was, uh, out there, I called it the second best job in the world. They would literally put a plane ticket in one hand, money in the other, kick me out the door and say, go tell people's stories.

[00:03:34] Julian: It was a great gig, but it was the people in front of my lens who kept on influencing me because they were generally out there affecting change in the world. And, and this was playing with my head. So I was telling their stories, but there was one story I never told. And that was the story that was going on in my head because I was embarrassed.

[00:03:56] Julian: I... didn't have the confidence that they [00:04:00] did to be able to stand there and tell their story. And I was mystified. I was like, what did they know that I didn't that enabled them to do this? Uh, I felt excluded because I've come to realise that those people who are in the light, in front of the lens to speak, uh, are afforded more opportunity than those people who stay in the shadows.

[00:04:22] Julian: Uh, and I felt small. I just felt I could be playing a bigger game out there. Uh, so basically what I did was I studied them. For two decades, I was watching what they did, how they did. What were the patterns and it eventually influenced my thinking so much that I walked away from my TV career at the top of my game.

[00:04:45] Julian: I took a program into the world to teach philanthropy to schoolchildren and it was met with deafening silence. It was a complete flop. I learned my first lesson about business. [00:05:00] I'm not very good at it. And I had to reinvent myself. That sent me on another journey as a professional magician. That morphed into me having an online training business, where I was teaching magic.

[00:05:16] Julian: Uh, and then that morphed into me with an, uh, online presence, helping people show up on video in front of the camera. And then that has morphed into me being a professional motivational speaker. Um, with all that, the point I didn't tell you, the very start of my journey was at about four years old when one of my first memories, was going to speech therapy lessons. I was a stutterer, and I stuttered in my youth, into my teens, into my twenties, and into my thirties, until I said enough was enough, I want to change this. So I've gone from being a stutterer to now being a motivational speaker. [00:06:00] The point I want to drive home there, that, an inability to speak in front of other people is not a life sentence.

[00:06:10] Julian: It is a skill. You do not have to be born with what people consider to be the gift of the gab. That works sometimes. But it is not a be all and end all and if you're listening to this and you want to go: You know what? This is something inside of me. I've got something to say I want to be able to stand up there and say it It is entirely possible and I stand here before you as living proof that that is possible

[00:06:41] Mel: That's incredible.

[00:06:41] Mel: Thank you for sharing that. And it sounds like you've had a few different roles and career pivots, but they all seem to have had some element of communication. Like, if I think about even your time as a magician, like, can you tell us, were there any sort of communication lessons that you [00:07:00] learned, doing magic?

[00:07:01] Julian: Oh, absolutely. So when I, so when I started doing magic was, was when I, I left my TV career, uh, and I took this program into schools and it was, uh, met with deafening silence, uh, was that I had no money and I had to reinvent myself. So my first lesson about magic was as a cameraman, I used to carry magic tricks in my camera vests, little tricks. And I found it was a good way to build rapport with people because get this: apparently people don't trust the media. Oh, I know, I know. So, uh, I always found that, you know, uh, a trick to get people just interested in laughing and talking was a good way to start building bridges.

[00:07:46] Julian: So that was that, that, that was my first lesson. That is that there are techniques and skills you can learn to be able to improve communication. And then when I started doing magic, I mean, I was terrified. [00:08:00] I mean, I wouldn't even put my hand up and speak in front of a, uh, a group of people that I knew - I was that timid.

[00:08:08] Julian: Uh, so when I started doing this, I was really terrified about audiences. I thought standing in front of a people that they were there almost ready to take me down. Like, um, like, like a pack of wolves takes down a lone deer out there. Uh, and then I started to learn and understand how audiences react. Um, and audiences want to be directed.

[00:08:36] Julian: And what I mean by that is that all of our lives. 24 hours a day. We're busy. We have to make decisions. We have to make decisions about our job. We have to make decisions, what to buy. We have to think for our children. We have to think for ourselves and we are tired. So if somebody stands in front of you and [00:09:00] shows you with some sort of conviction and confidence that they can take over your thinking for be it 60 seconds, be it for 60 minutes.

[00:09:12] Julian: If you can make that connection and build that confidence with people early on, people go, Oh, take me. Does this mean I don't have to think for the next 30 minutes? And they are yours. So understand that audiences are on your side. They want you to be good. So don't fear that work with that. Um, and you know, like, and you might be listening to this and going, yeah, but well, that sounds good for you.

[00:09:44] Julian: You know, you've had this experience you've gone through and now you've learned the techniques and the skills for this. It's nowhere near as complex as you think most of the problems are in your head here. It's all these stories [00:10:00] you've told yourself, the same stories that I told myself for decades that are holding you back.

[00:10:05] Mel: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I think, uh, you're absolutely right. You know, nobody wakes up in the morning thinking I'm going to go see the speaker and give him a hard time.

[00:10:14] Mel: You know, there's nobody that is doing that. Well, very rarely is that happening. Uh, and it's something I encounter a bit with other people that I talk to around their own communications, whether it's written, verbal, whatever, you know, they're putting together books or presentations or workshops. And you know, they all worry about what other people are going to think about them, which is innate.

[00:10:36] Mel: Uh, but again, as you say, they're on your side, they don't want a bad experience either. So we're all working in this together, but let's talk about talking. From your perspective, why is it so important that people invest the time and the effort into becoming more confident speakers?

[00:10:54] Julian: Because the best story wins. I was naive. [00:11:00] I would say for two thirds of my life, if not, I would say three quarters of my life, I've been naive. I thought that showing up and doing the best work possible, that my work would speak for me, and I would sit here, and then the phone would ring and people would come to me. It doesn't work that way.

[00:11:22] Julian: It doesn't matter how good you are. It doesn't matter what field you work in. You have to be able to sell yourself. You have to be able to sell the work that you do. If you want to affect more people, whether that's a whole world full of people or just someone in your local community, in your family, in your neighborhood, in your school - you've got to be able to sell your message and how you sell your message is through story.

[00:11:53] Julian: And for most of my life, and this is really weird, even though I worked in a storytelling medium, in the [00:12:00] world of factual TV, in the world of documentaries, I was a terrible storyteller. I was appallingly bad. So this comes back again to these are skills that you can learn. Where's the starting point? You've got to have a want to learn it. So if you just have something inside of you that you want to say, That's a fantastic starting point, but that's why that you have to learn this storytelling ability and yes, the nuts and bolts of the business have to be solid, That's a given. But above that, it's can I tell you a better story? Can I connect with you emotionally? Because this is the way that we all buy something. And whether I buy it from the shops or whether I'm like, like, you know, buying an investment.

[00:12:52] Julian: I buy emotionally. It's what makes me feel right, which sort of feels right. And once I've made that [00:13:00] emotional buying decision, then I back it up with intellect and, and facts. And it doesn't matter whether you're up there working in the billions of dollars, Or you're spending 10, 10 dollars at the local store.

[00:13:13] Julian: The buying process is, is the same. Don't think that's true. Just follow what Elon Musk says and does for the next three months. And you'll see it's mainly emotional.

[00:13:26] Mel: And it's interesting. It's one of the things I often say when I'm consulting with people is people remember stories, not dot points. So, you know, it's the same message a lot of the time, but how you tell it and to your point, it's that connection.

[00:13:39] Mel: And there was some really interesting research on people who had acquired brain injuries. And the parts of their brains that have been damaged were, was that emotional centre. And they tested them on a different decision making sort of scenarios. And it was so interesting because even though the logic [00:14:00] part of their brain was still functioning, they could not make a decision because they did not have access to that emotional centre of their brain.

[00:14:07] Mel: So it just goes to show. As much as we'd love to think we're logical, rational human beings, and we'll take everything factually. If we can't connect on that emotional level, people will not come on that journey with you. They cannot make a decision. And I find that just so intriguing.

[00:14:25] Julian: Yeah. Yeah, it is. Again, it is just a core skill now. And I, and I'm very like, I'm very cautious about saying that because I think, you know, so many things are fads. Um, I just don't think... that this is a fad, particularly now we're in the world of, of AI, where we're, I mean, when the internet started, information became a commodity.

[00:14:47] Julian: Since AI, information is now, I don't know, commodity times, you know, to the power of 10. Um, it's not about knowledge anymore. It's about how you can package that [00:15:00] knowledge and connect with other people.

[00:15:02] Mel: And realistically for, uh, I think it was up until sort of the 90s, late 1980s, the majority of the world was still illiterate. For all of human history, we have communicated through story. That's how we've, our brains are wired for it. So, you know, that's why I think to your point, it's not ever going to go away - we've got it ingrained in our brains. That's how we communicate, how we understand and make sense of the world around us too. So thank you for sharing that. Uh, we've touched on this a little bit, but when you work with people around, uh, speaking, or just in terms of your interactions with others, what are some of the common fears or challenges that people encounter with verbal communication?

[00:15:46] Julian: Oh, people are terrified of being wrong.

[00:15:51] Mel: Ah, yes.

[00:15:52] Julian: Yeah, we just are. And, you know, I don't blame people, uh, for, for that. Of course not, because we all grew up, uh, I blame school. I [00:16:00] squarely blame school. It's not teachers, it's not the people running school, it's the industrial education system. Because it's binary, it works on this idea that there's a right answer and a wrong answer.

[00:16:14] Julian: And our job is to process you through the system until you get the right answer. So for 12 or so years of our life, that's the role modelling that we get, then we're spat out into the world. And no one gives us a different story. We just continue our life thinking, well, you know, like, it, it, it, it has to be right, because if, if I get it wrong, I'm going to be penalised.

[00:16:41] Julian: And so we don't want to speak up and say something that we're going to be criticised, and people are going to say that, that you're wrong. So, um, overcoming this, this idea, uh, that, you know, uh, everything has to be right, um, And you know, it's, it's a skill again, it's a skill to start, um, [00:17:00] just going, you know what, it's okay if I say, I don't know.

[00:17:04] Julian: So, uh, being wrong. Uh, another one is people hate the sound of their own voice. But what people don't realise is that when they're hearing their voice back like that, they're not hearing their voice like the rest of the world hears their voice because when we speak, we speak, uh, uh, convectively and conductively.

[00:17:28] Julian: So convectively is when our voice comes out and goes through the air, it bounces around the walls and comes back in, into our ears. At the same time, we speak conductively. The voice comes out of a voice box, comes through the bones in our jaw to the little bones in our ears. And we hear through the bones.

[00:17:47] Julian: And if you're listening out there, here's a little test you can do now with me. Put your hands on your ears and together, we're going to count to five. So press on your ears and count to five. One, two, three, four, [00:18:00] five. And if you do that, you hear that it's quite deeper and bassier. That's because you've cut out the convective sound.

[00:18:06] Julian: And we're now just listening to the sound that's coming through our bones, the conductive sound, and it's deeper and bassier. But here's the key point. You are the only person in the world who can hear that. Mm-Hmm. . No one else can hear your conductive sound coming up, that deeper bassier. And it's almost like a more authoritative resonance. When you speak, you hear a mix. It's like a DJ. You hear a mix of these two things. Other people only hear your convective sound. So when you hear your voice come back on a video or through speakers, we hate the sound, but we don't understand.

[00:18:45] Julian: That's how everybody else in the world has always heard us. And ask yourself this, All through your life, when you speak, do people put their hands up in terror? No, of course they haven't said that. They, [00:19:00] you know, respect you and what you say for who you are.

[00:19:04] Julian: So this whole idea that your voice, there's something wrong with your voice. No, it's not. Uh, join the club, the rest of the world thinks exactly the same thing.

[00:19:14] Mel: That resonates with me. No, no pun intended. Uh, I remember listening to my voice back on a recording once years and years ago. I think it was at uni when I was doing radio in my undergrad. And I was like, who is that nasally 12 year old girl? And of course the Queensland lilt, you know, where everything is a question. So yeah, there's things I think, we can learn about voice and speaking. What would be some of your top three to five tips on becoming a more confident speaker?

[00:19:45] Julian: Number one, you can't learn from a book. So this, you've got to get out there and start speaking. So where do you start and speak? And when I say speak, I mean, speak in front of people. It's one of the hardest things to do is to find an audience. [00:20:00] I'll tell you where you can find an audience at Toastmasters. If you don't know about Toastmasters, it's the international, speaking, professional development organisation based around speaking in front of other people.

[00:20:14] Julian: That's where you find an audience. It's an incredibly supportive organisation and it's ridiculously cheap in any professional sense. And, start with what you know, because people go, well, I don't know what to speak about. Well, okay. Let's just talk about business. What do generally most people in business do? During the day, they're on the phone and they're answering questions and quite often it could be a customer or a client question.

[00:20:45] Julian: Tell a story, make a story about it. You know what? Here's something I get asked almost every week of my life. So what happens is the customer gets on the phone and asks me this, blah, blah, blah. So then I [00:21:00] say to them, you should do this, blah, blah, blah. So the key takeaway here is to do B before you do A. I hope that helps. There you go. You've just told a story. You've helped someone. You are a speaker. That's how simple this can be.

[00:21:20] Mel: I love that. That's a really great structure to, to, for people who are just getting started to, because I do find with any comms, having a structure can be a real help in terms of just getting started, just getting the ideas out in a logical way that flows.

[00:21:36] Julian: And that structure we talked about, well, what I did there was just... told a factual story, but made it first person. Yeah. Yeah. I get on the phone and I listened to the customer say this, and they said this, then I said this back to them. It's storytelling. It's not super complex. And one of the easiest ways is to do is just make it [00:22:00] personal. Just tell it as you experienced it.

[00:22:03] Mel: I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Now, one last question, before we get into the lightning round, the word um. It can be a big challenge for a lot of people who are speaking, especially on the fly. Do you have any tips for how people could address the um?

[00:22:21] Julian: Close your mouth. I'm not joking it's one of the simplest things that I learned. Uh, I've been a terrible um and aher and I still, I don't try for perfection. I did six years at Toastmasters where they are onto you. Like you actually get someone counting your um and ahs and that's fantastic because it makes you aware that, that you're doing it. I don't try to remove it completely, but I've learned the techniques for when I do want to remove them. The simplest thing is when I don't know what comes next. And the reason we say um and ah, it's a space holder [00:23:00] because if we're in general conversation, okay, let me make this a personal story.

[00:23:04] Julian: If I'm in a conversation with my wife and her friends; They are great conversationalists. I'm not. And if I leave a gap, bang, they're in, I'm out of the conversation. So what we do is we go, ah, as we're thinking to hold our place in the conversation, that's how it's come around. But when we're speaking in a, in a, uh, uh, in a persuasive sense, we don't want to use those.

[00:23:30] Julian: So when I don't know what I'm going to say, instead of going, ah, all I, all I did was train myself. Honestly, it took a couple of weeks to go, when I find myself going, ah, I go, it's just saying nothing. Just literally close my mouth instead of going, ah, feel my lips together. And then instead of ah, you've just got pauses. There's an upside to this. If you get into this, into recorded [00:24:00] conversations, it makes editing stuff so much easier.

[00:24:05] Mel: That is very, very true. Uh, and you know, one of the things I learned to your point, I remember listening to a podcast a little while ago about all sorts of things, but one of the things I brought up was why do we, um, and to your point, it's about your brain is moving really quickly and trying to catch up and think of the next thing to say.

[00:24:24] Mel: So what I learned to do was slow down, just slow down my speech because that gave the brain time to catch up and think of what's next and how do I want to articulate it. And I think a lot of us do talk really fast, maybe, or maybe it's more of an Australian thing. I don't know. What do you think?

[00:24:42] Julian: I don't know. I think it's different. I think we, I mean, we get caught up with the people who are in the immediate conversation. So if somebody is, starts a conversation and they are a fast talker, quite often we feel like, Oh, I don't want to be different. And so you try to match the [00:25:00] pace. So the trick there is to go, no, when you speak is to go the other way to do what you are saying and slow it down.

[00:25:08] Julian: And you will find that if it, as long as what you're saying is half interesting, is that people then will follow you. They will start to slow down to match you. This is a skill that you can learn. If you want to learn it.

[00:25:24] Mel: And it's all continuous improvement to write, none of us are perfect. We're never going to be. If you think you are, then you've stopped learning. It's as you say it's something you can learn and then keep building, keep building over time and there's always new things coming out.

[00:25:37] Julian: And I just want to make a point to anybody listening now if you're listening to me and thinking oh, yeah Look, you know, my thoughts are coming and it's relatively articulate. That's because I'm talking about something that I know about.

[00:25:50] Julian: I mean, I talk about this stuff. This is the stuff I live at the moment. If we were talking about something I didn't know about, do you know what you'd hear? [00:26:00] You would hear my stutter to start to come back out. And you can go, or like I've got thousands of videos online. Just go and have a look at them, some of them. So don't be fooled.

[00:26:11] Mel: And as you say, if you know your stuff, then you're obviously going to be more confident speaking about it too. So that's really helpful. Julian, thank you for all those wonderful tips. I'm going to ask you three questions I ask every guest on the podcast. You ready for those?

[00:26:25] Julian: Yeah.

[00:26:25] Mel: Well, let's do it. What is one of the best communication lessons you ever learned and how did it change the way you approach communication?

[00:26:35] Julian: Fix nervous with service - is my number one tip. So when you're out there and you're thinking, Oh, I can't talk. I can't do this. That's because you're thinking about you. You're thinking about, am I going to be criticised? Am I going to sound good? All about me, me, me. If you flip that and go, you know what? I'm going to stand up here and try and help you. [00:27:00] No one ever criticised anybody for standing up and trying to help them. And when you make that simple mental flip, that confidence that it gives you is empowering.

[00:27:12] Mel: I love it. Yeah. Next question. What's one thing you wish people would do more of or less of when communicating?

[00:27:20] Julian: Stop sacrificing clarity for cleverness. Um, and I put my hand up because I've been terrible about this and what I mean by that. In fact, I was just having a conversation where actually with somebody, you know, only half an hour ago on this, uh, about how we go like, You know, we want to give people three points. So we try to work in a word palette, you know, that they all start with the letter A or the letter T. And, and so we try to squash, uh, the clarity of a message into a clever packaging.

[00:27:57] Julian: Uh, and I mean, I've done so much of [00:28:00] that. And I'm going the other way now is because if it's about. Just clarity of message because confused people don't buy. And what we're doing is selling. We're selling an idea. We're selling our service, whatever we're selling. And if people are confused. They're not going to take the action that, that you want them to.

[00:28:23] Mel: I love that. And I must say I'm guilty of it too. And you know, while there is research to say that rhyme is memorable and those sorts of things, by the same token, it's only memorable if it means something. So let's make it memorable and meaningful. If I'm going to use alliteration again. Last question, who do you turn to for communication advice?

[00:28:46] Julian: I would say stand up comedians. I just think that their ability to stand on stage for 50 minutes or so, and talk, and tell [00:29:00] stories, and randomly go off in what seem tangents, but in the end, they bring it all back and they land this Aha moment that you don't see coming. Uh, it's a real skill and you know, you speak to them all; they will tell you this is a skill. It's a, it's a craft. It's a process.

[00:29:21] Mel: Yeah, I totally agree. Well, Julian, thank you so much for your time today. How can people find out more about you or get in touch with you?

[00:29:29] Julian: Uh, easiest is julianmather. com, uh, or all the socials are @ julianmather.

[00:29:36] Mel: Fantastic. And we'll pop those links in the show notes as well. Julian, thanks again for being on Less Chatter, More Matter.

[00:29:42] Julian: Oh, I've loved talking about this stuff.

[00:29:43]