Presentation Vocal Tips with Danielle Benzon ~ Make Your Presentations Sizzle!

00:00:01:03 – 00:00:31:22

Greg Dixon: Happy Saturday everyone. That’s Greg Dixon here with our my guest Daniel Benson. And I’m in British Columbia at the moment and Danielle is in South Africa.

I know Danielle through Vancouver because Bonnie and I have taken a number of workshops with her for,speaking and presentations and vocals.

You have a number of drop-ins. I’ve gone to several drop-ins with you and also you have some course materials. 

00:00:31:24 – 00:01:08:27

Greg Dixon: We have a number of clients and I was just telling Danielle what my hidden agenda was for asking her to be here.

Part of it is, is in a bunch of, in networking groups, a lot of people I see spinning their wheels. They’re in there going every week. They’re spending money to be there, and they’re doing the same thing over and over again and having zero success. So either they need to either become more effective in their presentations or go do something else, really, you know, just to stop it. 

00:01:09:02 – 00:01:19:01

Greg Dixon: And also we have a number of clients where we coach them how to do short presentations on video.

00:01:20:18 – 00:01:51:15

Greg Dixon: And also we’re working with somebody who’s going to be a guest on shows like this or had, you know, hope hopefully at the Oprah Winfrey level and do two keynote presentations and all those things.

That’s the kind of thing that you help people with. So maybe you can give a little bit of an introduction to yourself. And, I’ve asked you to come up with some tips and some things that are pretty easy to do. 

00:01:51:17 – 00:02:11:16

Greg Dixon: I know you’ve given me several tips. I’ve gone on to your workshops and you’ve, you know, you’ve had these speak for two minutes and then you give me ten things that I should do. And, you know, I still need to practice some of those ten things.

I’ll hand it over to you. 

00:02:12:06 – 00:02:56:21

Danielle Benzon: Thank you so much, Greg. It’s lovely to be on online and chatting with someone you know already, and you’re having a lot of fun with, so thanks. Thanks so much. Yeah, it’s, you know, we’re human beings. And whether we’re standing up at BNI in-person networking on a Tuesday morning or we’re trying to go Facebook Live or we’re doing our Ted talk on stage, it’s really funny how we always have the same crutches that we lean on, the same bad habits that we do, no matter what type of speaking that we’re doing. So I’m hoping that these five tips will relate to everybody, no matter what type of speaking you’re doing, whether you’re a new speaker, um, whether you’re just kind of venturing out online or whether you’re an experienced speaker and am going to have to stop every now and again to cough because I have a cold. 

00:02:56:23 – 00:02:58:09

Danielle Benzon: So just excuse me for a moment. 

00:03:02:00 – 00:03:33:21

Danielle Benzon: But I soldier on. So yeah. And I wanted to before get started into the tips, just give you a little bit of background. Who am who is this crazy person talking to you? My background is in acting. I trained as a theatre  actor, so a lot of the emphasis in my training was on working without a microphone, working to use the voice body instrument to reach potentially 2000 people in an auditorium with all the emotionality and the fullness of someone you know, who’s right next to you as well. 

00:03:33:23 – 00:04:05:27

Danielle Benzon: So even in those really small, vulnerable scenes, how do you make sure everyone in the audience can hear you? And it’s not an easy thing to do. It does take a lot of physical training. And, you know, it’s funny, I had a conversation with a client yesterday saying, you know, it’s crazy that we have to have voice coaches to teach us to do something that we do all day, every day. We speak all day, every day. And we need a coach to teach us how to do it professionally. But if you think about it, anyone who uses their body professionally needs a coach, a gymnast needs a coach, a soccer player needs a coach, a swimmer needs a coach. 

00:04:05:29 – 00:04:42:02

Danielle Benzon: And just because speaking is something that we do day to day. Doesn’t mean that when we’re doing it professionally and in any professional sense, networking is professional, that we do need someone to help us just with the basic physicality of how this instrument works, because we’re not taught that at school, and it is very important. It’s important for vocal health and it’s important for your impact on the world. So my first tip today is please, for the love of everything, please don’t read your script. 

00:04:42:14 – 00:05:17:14

Danielle Benzon: I know it’s very tempting and you spend hours and hours and hours making this perfect script, and you want to make sure that the audience hears every single perfect word. The problem is the cadence that you have when you’re speaking. Extemporaneously, like when you’re just speaking in conversation. Compared to the cadence that you have when you are reading is very different and everyone can tell and just the way. You know, your eyes glaze over when something isn’t interesting or it’s overstimulating or it’s kind of boring. 

00:05:18:07 – 00:05:49:16

Danielle Benzon: It’s too much or too little. Your eyes can glaze over your ears. Do the same thing. So as soon as we hear that someone is reading, we glaze over. We don’t listen with the same interactiveness . We don’t listen with the same enthusiasm as we do when someone is speaking from the heart off the cuff. So I know that that’s a horrible thing to hear, because most of us, we want to become better speakers by writing. But you know what? You become a better speaker by doing speaking, not writing. So I do encourage you absolutely, you know, make bullet points. 

00:05:49:18 – 00:06:20:10

Danielle Benzon: You know, I’m going to say topic one, topic two, topic three.

Sure do that.

But do not make full-sentence notes and never, ever read them. Ideally, don’t even take your notes up with you. Use them as an organizing tool beforehand. And then when you go up and speak, or when you press record to speak, forget it. Jump off the cliff. Trust yourself and speak from the heart. Because if you are speaking in a way that is difficult to listen to, no one’s going to hear your perfect words anyway. 

00:06:20:13 – 00:06:49:15

Danielle Benzon: No one’s going to be listening to hear them. Rather, have people listen and have yourself be imperfect, but at least make a connection. It’s all about making a connection. If you can make a connection with someone, you can, you know, sort out the details later, but they will not hear your perfect words if they are not listening. So that is the first thing that I have to say. Please, please, please, please do not read any questions about that before we keep going. Greg, are we going to like, is this just me or are we going to chit chat? It’s just me. 

00:06:49:17 – 00:07:13:12

Greg Dixon: No that’s perfect. So yeah. So along those lines, one piece of advice that I’ve had. Think from Marie Forleo and others is to just look into the camera, which I’m not that great at, and pretend you’re talking with somebody on the kitchen table like you’re just having a conversation. Even if there’s 10,000 people out there, you’re really talking to one person at a time. 

00:07:13:29 – 00:07:53:04

Danielle Benzon: 100%. You’re always talking to one person at a time, even when you’re standing in front of a group of people. Yeah. The key is and I know that the camera can be intimidating. The key is looking into the lens. Don’t think of it as looking at the camera. Think of it looking through the camera. You’re looking through the camera to your audience on the other side, through space and time, through this miracle of the internet, we can actually reach a real. There is a there is a real person on the other side. So you need to really have them in your in your mind. And the more you can make that ideal audience member, part of your target market and someone that you like talking to, if you can really have them strong in your mind. 

00:07:53:06 – 00:08:16:08

Danielle Benzon: And what I will often do if I’m recording and it’s not live either. You know, after usually after I press record and I’ll just cut it out the beginning bit that I cut out before I actually start my speech, I’ll address that person by name just to really get that relationship there, just to really get it strong. Because yeah, you want to you want to feel like you’re talking to a real person. And when you’re alone in your basement, that’s not easy to do. 

00:08:16:10 – 00:08:44:15

Greg Dixon: No, it’s not easy to do. So I’ve spent a fair amount of time doing getting people to talk to me on camera about their business, right, to do short presentations. And one of the things I say is get them to imagine that I’m there. They’re one they’re perfect client or their specific client, right.

So I have a friend who still sends me a note and says, hi, Lisa, because she was Lisa, her client. And so I almost created an email address with Lisa in it. But they’re love it. That’s a different story. 

00:08:44:29 – 00:08:46:04

Danielle Benzon: That’s commitment. 

00:08:46:06 – 00:09:08:20

Greg Dixon: That’s commitment. Yeah. So yeah. So that’s what comes down to really knowing your message and your target audience.

If you really understand your ideal customer avatar or whatever buzzword it is used for it, like just the person you’re talking to, really who, who, who, who do you think needs to hear your message? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

00:09:08:22 – 00:09:33:21

Danielle Benzon: And the thing is, I think the reason we’re so scared and the reason we want to read is because we are unaccustomed to speaking about what we do. And the answer to that isn’t to write the perfect script. The answer to that is to speak more about what you do. Get used to it. Yeah. Do it with your friends. Do it, you know, go to more networking events, talk to yourself, record yourself. Just get used to talking about what you do so that that’s not the scary part. 

00:09:33:23 – 00:09:39:19

Greg Dixon: That’s not the scary part. Yeah, yeah okay. So what’s what’s next on your tip list? 

00:09:39:23 – 00:10:10:18

Danielle Benzon: Tip number two is related, funnily enough, along with don’t read and actually with what we’ve just been saying about how you, you know, you don’t want to over plan because you want to be spontaneous, say less. We do. And I’ve actually I’ve done this recently. So I’m not perfect either. We all have this really strong sense of, I want to tell you everything. There’s so much to tell you. I want to tell you everything I’ve got. One minute, let’s go. 

00:10:10:20 – 00:10:41:22

Danielle Benzon: And we speak as fast as we can, and we try and cram all this information in. And once again, those ears just glaze over because we are saying so much. We’re saying it’s so fast, no one can absorb that much information. So instead of trying to communicate a lot, try to communicate one thing really clearly, or even with a lot of enthusiasm and with a lot of personality. And Eunice, your unique, wonderful, talented mess, as I like to say, because we are all a little bit of a mess. 

00:10:41:24 – 00:11:16:15

Danielle Benzon: So choose something specific and focus on that. And this is part of organizing your thoughts before you stand up to record or to speak. You don’t need to prepare a script, but what you do need to do is decide your focus. I’m going to talk about this one thing today, and if I have an idea that is so good, but it doesn’t support that one thing, I’m not going to say it. And so I don’t need to spend too much time in my head editing or trying to think, oh, should I say that? Shouldn’t I say that? Because you will get inspired and ideas will come, or you will want to just say everything. 

00:11:16:17 – 00:11:46:25

Danielle Benzon: Oh, this is everything that I do. These are all the ways that I can help you. Instead of that, say just one thing and say it. Well, I think again, this comes from a fear. A lot of our bad habits come from fears and think the fear of this is that people won’t know everything that we do, and we’ll miss an opportunity, or they’ll miss an opportunity. But what’s amazing is the more we can show our speciality in just one area, the more people open up their mind. 

00:11:46:27 – 00:12:20:05

Danielle Benzon: They go, ooh, they’re really good at that. Maybe they’re also really good at this. Whereas if we try and cover everything for some reason, it tends to kind of close down people’s creative thinking because it’s just kind of overstimulating and it’s too much and they kind of get shut out. It gets a bit monotone a lot. And so they’re they actually get more closed in their thinking and they’re less likely to talk to you. Whereas if you just choose one thing and do it really well, you’re like, oh, you talked about today. You talked about, you know, speaking on camera. Do you also work with people who do TEDx? Yeah, of course they do. 

00:12:20:07 – 00:12:25:09

Danielle Benzon: So, you know, then their creative juices start flowing. So say less but say it. Well. 

00:12:26:03 – 00:13:11:17

Greg Dixon: Yeah, for sure. I’m probably guilty of saying too much sometimes because I sometimes will. We’ll list off a number of things and have a potential client in mind that I going to send a note to, and that’s going to be the advice too, because think what happens is if you say too much, like even if you’re you’re having a discussion with a friend about some political element or something else, um, you know, you can get to a point. But if you say something that they just absolutely discount or something that’s total BS or whatever, you know, like the conversation’s more or less over, you know, and that happens when you’re trying to make a presentation to about you’re trying to get them to onboard is maybe they’re good for four out of the five things you said. 

00:13:11:19 – 00:13:22:12

Greg Dixon: And the fifth one is just too crazy for them to get on board and they’re gone, right? You’ve lost them. So yeah. And and and that’s. Yeah. So stateless. 

00:13:23:04 – 00:13:53:27

Danielle Benzon: And also usually I’m trying to think of a time when we’re speaking when the goal like one of the calls to action isn’t come speak to me. You know always when we’re when we’re speaking we’re doing networking or if we’re doing online speaking or we’re doing a, you know, a professional talk somewhere. The conference part of the call to action is come talk to me. I mean, that is definitely part of what we want people to do. So if we feel like we’ve given them all the information and they feel like we’ve told them everything we have to say, if they feel complete, they have no reason to come talk to you. 

00:13:54:17 – 00:14:11:26

Danielle Benzon: So leave them wanting a little bit more, leave them going. Ooh, I wonder what about this piques their interest so that they will engage. Because that’s what you want. You want them to engage. You don’t want to dump on them and then let them go off into the world because they don’t know everything about you. You want them to come and talk to you. 

00:14:11:28 – 00:14:24:03

Greg Dixon: Yeah. And it’s kind of a tricky thing because you don’t want to be too vague, right? You don’t want it just says, I know something you don’t. And, you know, see if you can figure it out and call me. Well, why would I want to call? You know. 

00:14:24:06 – 00:14:28:20

Danielle Benzon: And I’m not saying be vague. I’m saying say one thing and do it well. Yeah, yeah. You know? 

00:14:28:22 – 00:14:40:05

Greg Dixon: Yeah. Do one thing, do well and present. It’s always a challenge for me because I do a lot of things. And so the simplified version of what I do is we do a lot of stuff to help you show your stuff and sell your stuff. 

00:14:40:24 – 00:14:48:22

Danielle Benzon: So today I will choose one. So we do these 17 things today in this video I will speak to one of the 17 things that we do. 

00:14:48:29 – 00:14:49:26

Greg Dixon: 17 tomorrow’s. 

00:14:49:28 – 00:14:52:19

Danielle Benzon: Video will be the second of the 17 things we do. 

00:14:52:23 – 00:14:53:28

Greg Dixon: So that’s why we have a. 

00:14:54:00 – 00:14:59:10

Danielle Benzon: 17-segment video already. Just boom, right out of the box you get 17 videos. How great. 

00:14:59:12 – 00:15:18:07

Greg Dixon: Yeah. Pretty good. Yeah. We have what of our clients have just out of his book. There’s probably fuel for 100 short videos out of it, you know. You know, because there’s, you know, just tons of material there to work with really. 

00:15:18:12 – 00:15:20:16

Danielle Benzon: Two years worth of content. I love it. 

00:15:20:18 – 00:15:26:09

Greg Dixon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. And okay so what’s tip number three?  

00:15:26:11 – 00:15:57:23

Danielle Benzon: So tip number three four and five are getting more into the physicality of speech. So we’ve talked a bit about kind of the psychology of it the practicality of choosing what to say. Now I want to talk a little bit about how we speak. And the most important thing that I could ever tell anybody, ever, when they are using their vocal folds to speak, it doesn’t matter what situation you’re in, doesn’t matter if you’re using a microphone or not. Always, always, always breathe in before you speak. I know that sounds stupid. 

00:15:57:25 – 00:16:36:01

Danielle Benzon: Everyone’s like, well, of course, breathe in before I speak. But most of us don’t consciously breathe in when we’re speaking, and we tend to speak on very little breath. And that is why people lose their voice. That is why people have smaller voices. That is why people push their voice when they’re trying to be louder, because they don’t have enough breath to support them. Breath support is the number one failing in untrained speakers, a lack of breath support. And so I’m telling you now, I promise you, you’re probably not thinking about breathing in before you speak, or what some speakers will do is they’ll breathe. 

00:16:36:03 – 00:17:06:27

Danielle Benzon: The first breath will be beautiful. Nice deep breath in. Oh, no need to breathe before I speak. So hello, my name is Danielle Benson and I’m here to speak to you today. Oh, no. I have to breathe in again now. I don’t want to waste everyone’s time breathing in, so I’ll just take a tiny little top of breath. I’m here to speak to you. Today about breathing and speaking. And I’m going to take all these little top breaths. And as I take these top-up  breaths, my breathing gets more and more shallow and my voice gets more and more than and more and, and it just kind of avalanches into this horrible mess. We have to continue to breathe deeply. 

00:17:06:29 – 00:17:28:26

Danielle Benzon: Now, part of that is you cannot breathe through your nose when you’re speaking. It takes way too long, so you must get used to breathing through your mouth when you are speaking. You don’t need to do it on the street. You don’t need to do it in any other part of your life. But when you are speaking live, you will breathe in through your mouth. You cannot waste it. You don’t want to waste your audience’s time breathing in through your nose because that sounds like this. 

00:17:32:14 – 00:18:04:03

Danielle Benzon: Now my breath is full. I’m not going to do that every time. Of course not. So breathing in through your mouth, it’s extremely quick to get a full breath and then that breath will carry your voice. It will relax your voice so it sounds more pleasant to listen to. So we won’t have these kind of tense voices when we’re speaking. A deep breath in will relax your voice so you’re more pleasant to hear. You will carry your voice. Your voice will carry further. It will go to the back of the room, and it will give your voice clarity and strength. 

00:18:04:26 – 00:18:38:09

Danielle Benzon: So to breathe in deeply before you speak. Every time something else wanted to say. And I’ve already forgotten what it was. But oh, that was just a silly analogy. That’s what it was. I wanted to say that your breath to your voice. If you want to use a metaphor, it’s like the gas in your car. If you don’t put gas or petrol in your car, it’s not going to go very far. But so many of us try to drive really long distances with almost no gas, and we wonder why we keep breaking down. So please breathe in consciously before you speak. 

00:18:38:11 – 00:18:40:27

Greg Dixon: Yeah, I pushed a few cars in my day. Yeah. 

00:18:42:08 – 00:18:43:27

Danielle Benzon: Literally and metaphorically. 

00:18:45:10 – 00:19:18:17

Greg Dixon: Yeah. So. I may be anticipating one of your tips, but related to this is we tend to speak without any punctuation. So it’s a one big run on sentence at which, in which case you just, you know, we got to get to the end, especially in the networking group. Got 30s until everything need to know, you know, whereas, you know, you need to take a breath and have some pause so people could digest what you just the first sentence you said and they, they can they can absorb it. 

00:19:18:19 – 00:19:29:22

Greg Dixon: And then you go into the next one. So it takes off the pressure. You don’t have to say as much. And your presentation is better. Is that is that the kind of what you’re going. 

00:19:30:17 – 00:20:01:03

Danielle Benzon: This is how I know that I’ve structured my five tips well, because my previous tip just led you naturally onto my next one. So I know that it’s logical because you got it. That was going to be the next thing I was going to say. So yes, absolutely. You don’t have to remember as much if you’re breathing more often, because you don’t need to remember the whole sentence, but also. Once again, we don’t want our audience’s ears to glaze over. And if I am saying everything on one breath. I’m going to use. Yeah, I’m gonna use. I’m gonna use Shakespeare as an example because I love Shakespeare. 

00:20:01:09 – 00:20:35:19

Danielle Benzon: Just, just just go with me. If, for example, I want to say the entire sentence in one breath, I could say, to be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them. Now that’s one sentence it’s easy to do in one breath. I didn’t run out of breath. But could you understand anything meant.

It is Shakespeare, so maybe you couldn’t anyway.

But chances are it was even more difficult to understand because it’s all one long thing. Now, even if you don’t get all of the words because am using Shakespeare in language. 

00:20:35:21 – 00:21:05:21

Danielle Benzon: But see how much easier this is to understand if I allow myself to breathe where it makes sense for me. And we’re talking like between ideally between 2 and 5 words is where you want to breathe.

To be.

Or not to be.

That is the question.

Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

or to take arms against a sea of troubles. 

And by opposing end them.

Now you might still not quite have the gist of what I want to say, but you can tell definitely that there’s this or that, and I’m kind of struggling with which one should I do.

And the reason that is, I’m not. I mean, when, when we when we do everything on one breath, I don’t have the luxury of living in the meaning as much. I don’t have the luxury of feeling the nuances and the texture of the words, because I’m putting everything in one breath. And no matter how much I say, I only have that one breath, and that the life and that one breath has to spread over that and spread really thin, like really thin butter over bread, over the entire sentence. 

00:21:47:17 – 00:22:18:03

Danielle Benzon: But if I have the life of one breath, or just two words or five words, then I get to live that entire breath in just those few words, and I get to feel more. I get to be more emotionally connected to what I’m saying. I get to live it more so it brings more vocal energy as well. It’s not just about, you know, being louder or pausing more often. It’s about physically inhabiting the grammar. So I am living what I am saying more. 

00:22:18:05 – 00:22:49:26

Danielle Benzon: I have more emotional connection to it, have more relationship to the words that I’m saying, and it comes out in my vocal energy and you can hear there’s more energy, there’s more life. So the more often you breathe, you give yourself a gift. Every time that you breathe, you give yourself a gift of this breath is a new life, and I can choose to use that life and that story anyway that I like. And when that is over, the new breath is a new life. And so even within one sentence, I could have seven or different, like 7 or 8 stories going on. Yeah, different stories within one sentence. 

00:22:49:28 – 00:23:14:20

Danielle Benzon: And it brings everything to life. It also parses the grammar. It makes the grammar more physical so that people can break it down more easily when they’re listening. Because if I say everything quite monotone and I’m doing one sentence and it’s all one thing, then it’s really hard to kind of pick apart the meaning. Whereas if I say one sentence and then I breathe and I say another sentence, and then I breathe and say a third sentence, it’s a lot easier for the listener to keep up with me. So that’s the other thing. 

00:23:14:24 – 00:23:46:29

Greg Dixon: Yeah. So you said something very important, just by the way, before you came, I had a Shakespeare’s. All the world’s a stage on the screen anyway, what was really important, and it was very evident when you did that is every line, as you said, had had its own like one was a question. Right? Yeah. And the other was a statement, you know, like each. You were connected to the meaning of each one of those phrases which are different. 

00:23:47:01 – 00:24:21:18

Danielle Benzon: And your voice managed to communicate that to the audience, to the so. And that’s the thing is, I think that gets lost when we’re especially when you’re reading a script or you feel you’re rushed or and and just not. And the same applies in a vocal presentation to. Absolutely. You know how to if you most vocal coaches will say, you know, you need to connect with the lyrics more, you know, to communicate the joy or the pain or the hurt or whatever it is that’s in those that song you need to connect. 

00:24:21:20 – 00:24:31:08

Greg Dixon: And that’s where sometimes, you know, people don’t have the life experience to resonate with the songs they’re singing sometimes, and then others can make anything sound believable. 

00:24:31:16 – 00:25:01:17

Danielle Benzon: Yeah. And that’s that’s about living a full emotional life and being connected with yourself. You don’t have to have lived something to connect with it. That’s a whole other conversation we can have another day. But I did want to say something you said about, you know, yeah, the complexity of the language. Not all of us are as conflicted or as complex as Hamlet, but some of us are talking about complicated ideas. Some of us are talking about it. Some of us are talking about business finance. 

00:25:01:19 – 00:25:20:12

Danielle Benzon: These are complex ideas. And if we don’t give those ideas enough space to breathe, they are going to be very difficult for our audience to digest. And it’s not always about dumbing down the language. Sometimes it’s about allowing the language to live more. Yeah. 

00:25:22:12 – 00:25:26:05

Greg Dixon: Absolutely. So what’s next on your tip list? 

00:25:26:08 – 00:25:58:06

Danielle Benzon: I have I have one final tip. My fifth tip. I mean, I could go on forever, but I decided to cap it at five up.

My fifth tip is, you know, on this idea of vocal variety and energy.

Even if we can’t see your hands, like, right now, you cannot see my hands. Sometimes I bring them up to show you, show them to you and put them down again. But even if your hands are not in view, always speak with your hands. Now be careful if you’re on a desktop or something, please don’t hit your table with your hands, because that will be very loud on your microphone and it might wobble your table. 

00:25:58:08 – 00:26:37:28

Danielle Benzon: But the reason it’s so important to gesture is, again, we’re bringing the voice into the entire body. A lot of us think of the voice. We think of ourselves as, you know, talking heads, the body just it’s just this, this vehicle to move my head around. And it’s not true. You speak with your entire body, and I promise you this is true. I can feel my voice and my toes right now. You speak with your entire body if you know how to use it. And the more we can allow ourselves to access that full body, the more interesting, the more engaging, the more fun our voices, the more captivating we are to listen to. 

00:26:38:00 – 00:27:08:11

Danielle Benzon: And so a very kind of cheap hack is to gesture, because once we are physically sizing, we’re physically sizing our grammar. So again, the same as breathing more often, allowing our gestures to support our grammar. And what we’re saying really helps. It helps us orient things in space. It helps us develop a relationship to what we’re saying because we’re we are moving in space. But it also helps my body to have a different vocal relationship with what I’m saying. 

00:27:08:13 – 00:27:39:25

Danielle Benzon: This is over here and this is over there, as opposed to this is over here and this is over there. You know, we want to be in our bodies when we’re speaking. And the best, easiest kind of trick way to trick yourself into being your body without, you know, coming to work with me and doing all the exercises and easiest, the easiest, fastest way to start the process is to get your arms moving. So even if we can’t see your arms, move your arms anyway, now you got to be careful. If you’re on camera, you don’t want to do these little, little, little fingers in and out. 

00:27:39:27 – 00:28:13:23

Danielle Benzon: If your arms are up, you want we want to see them. If if they’re in screen, they’re on screen. They’re in the frame. That’s the word. If they’re in frame, we want to see them move them around a little bit and then put them away and then keep them away for a while. But you still move them. You still make gestures while your hands are off-screen. That is the important thing. I am still gesturing while I’m speaking, even when you can’t see my hands because it brings life into my voice. So when you are standing up at a networking event, start with a gesture. Please don’t stand up there with your hands by your sides because I don’t know what to do with my hands. 

00:28:13:25 – 00:28:45:25

Danielle Benzon: I’m just going to leave them there. I’m just going to exile them to the side of my body. You stand up and you’re so rigid and you’re so nervous. Start with a gesture and the easiest gesture when we are, when we’re saying hello, when we’re introducing ourselves, the easiest gesture is just an open to open your hands and say hello, good afternoon, and good day. And it’s like a hug. It’s like a welcome handshake. It gets everything going. It gets the breath flowing, it gets the blood flowing and it gets your vocal energy more in your body. 

00:28:45:27 – 00:28:55:21

Danielle Benzon: So gesture, please.

You don’t know what to do with your hands. Think about integrating your body with your voice. Think about your hands supporting what you’re saying. 

00:28:57:04 – 00:29:07:22

Greg Dixon: Yeah, that’s that’s great advice. I’ve had some embarrassing moments gesturing with my hands in a live. Yes. Like, you know, knocking the other person’s drink on their lap. You know. 

00:29:08:01 – 00:29:15:14

Danielle Benzon: That’s why  I have to be careful at parties because I’m a hand talker and not have a drink in my hand. 

00:29:15:16 – 00:29:16:23

Danielle Benzon: Because sometimes, yeah. 

00:29:16:25 – 00:29:17:20

Danielle Benzon: Terrible things happen. 

00:29:18:23 – 00:29:51:06

Greg Dixon: Is that like an Italian thing? He can’t talk without their, you know, like some people say, stop their hands or can’t move their mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I put a little, uh, there’s https://www.theinspiredspeaker.com/.

You want to learn more about Danielle? There’s, the inspired speaker. And, and I’ve created a, a little page where you can go back and watch this video with some notes. There might even be a transcript at some point here. And, um, I’ll put that in the chat here, too. 

00:29:52:01 – 00:30:14:16

Greg Dixon: And so you you’ve got. For one, you’ve got a bunch of information, some more tips and things, and then you also do a needs assessment, like you will, um, you will meet with somebody to figure out what they need, um, and, and, and figure out how to work with you. 

00:30:14:26 – 00:30:46:09

Danielle Benzon: Yeah. So I have a lot of things online. I have a YouTube channel, and I have a mailing list now where I, I, I disseminate one voice tip a week, which has been really fun to create. Uh, but, you know, for people who want proper training, for people who want to, you know, do, do speaking as a profession or just to learn to love their voice because some of us hate our voices. And I know that was me when I grew up. I hated the sound of my voice. And it it took some time to figure out why that was and to work on that. Because. What I find so disempowering. 

00:30:46:11 – 00:31:17:04

Danielle Benzon: Sorry. I’m going to talk about the needs assessment, but this is why it’s important. What if I’m so disempowering is people think that the voice that they have is the voice that they were born with. Like, well, I’m as tall as I am, and that’s it. The voice. This is the voice that I have. No, it’s not true. You are. The voice that you’re using now is probably not the voice that you were born with. It is years of conditioning and trauma and responses and responses. And we are all, all of us, born with a beautiful, expressive voice. 

00:31:17:06 – 00:31:49:26

Danielle Benzon: And if you are hearing something in your voice that you don’t like, that is not you that you are hearing, it is a habit that you have picked up. And it’s something about the habit that you don’t like. So for me, I was hearing my insecurity and my self-doubt and my self-loathing. I was hearing that in my voice, and that’s what I didn’t like. And when I learned that and learned how to kind of separate those two things obviously had to work on myself as well. But I also got to connect with a voice that was much more myself, much, much more true to my real self. Yeah. And now speaking is an empowering act instead of something that I cringe at. 

00:31:49:28 – 00:32:20:04

Danielle Benzon: So yes, the vocal needs assessment is not only for people who want to do like Ted Talks or Facebook lives every week. It’s also for people who want to develop a real relationship with their voice, body, instrument and with their self-expression because it is something we do every day. And this work is so vast that I can’t just, you know, talk to someone for five minutes and be like, oh, this is for you. This, this, this of my 17 programs. This is the one that you need. So what I like to do is I like to sit down with someone. 

00:32:20:21 – 00:33:16:11

Danielle Benzon: It’s completely free because we don’t know if we’re going to work together at the beginning of it or not. I will always give the next steps. I will always give some analysis and some kind of this is what I think you should do. Some recommendations. It’s not always work with me. Sometimes it’s a referral, sometimes it’s some research, sometimes it’s work with me. One hopes occasionally, but it’s important to kind of get really get to know someone, get to know their history with their voice. Understand? For me to listen and hear them under certain circumstances, I might say, you know, could you just demonstrate for me how you speak louder so that I can hear and see what’s going on within their instrument and have a better idea of what they need? So it takes about 45 minutes to an hour to have a full conversation and to get a really good sense of what they need, where they’re coming from, what their goals are, what their challenges are, and for me to also observe what’s going on in their body. 

00:33:16:13 – 00:33:22:00

Danielle Benzon: And then I’ll make I’ll make a recommendation for some next steps. And if we’re interested in working together, we’ll talk about that too. Yeah. 

00:33:22:18 – 00:33:41:04

Greg Dixon: No, no that’s perfect. And as you say this, this involves not just speaking engagements. It involves your life and even your self-expression. You’re like everything. Like I kind of joked before we started, you know, it’s, you know, how to make an impression when you’re talking to somebody, you know, you know, you’re flirting. 

00:33:41:17 – 00:33:43:07

Danielle Benzon: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. 

00:33:43:09 – 00:33:53:09

Greg Dixon: Absolutely. All those things. And so it’s all the world’s a stage. And so it can apply to everything your presentations, your videos. Y

00:33:54:20 – 00:33:58:24

Danielle Benzon: Difficult conversations with your spouse calling your kids in for dinner. 

00:33:58:26 – 00:33:59:28

Greg Dixon: Yeah, yeah. 

00:34:00:07 – 00:34:03:18

Danielle Benzon: Being vulnerable and saying, love you. You know, all of those things. 

00:34:03:29 – 00:34:35:28

Danielle Benzon: These things, we use our voice for them and we use their voice. There is a sound to truth, and you learn to recognize it in yourself. And that’s really cool when you get to the point where you’re having a conversation with someone, and you can tell by the sound of your voice and how it feels. Yeah, whether or not you’re bullshitting them, you can tell, and you can often tell whether or not they’re bullshitting you as well. Not as accurately, but definitely within yourself. You, you you get a real relationship with what truth feels like and sounds like in your body. 

00:34:36:00 – 00:34:36:25

Danielle Benzon: It’s really cool. 

00:34:37:25 – 00:34:47:02

Greg Dixon: That sounds like a good place to end. Connect with your true self, your inner self, your body and your voice and be a better voice in the world. 

00:34:47:19 – 00:34:50:28

Danielle Benzon: Yes, I love that. Yeah. Thank you so much, Greg. 

00:34:51:00 – 00:35:09:11

Greg Dixon: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for being here. This has been absolutely a lot of fun. And also very good insights. And, you know, go, go check out the article.

Go connect with Danielle and have one of those, um, what do you call it? It’s not a discovery call. It’s a…

00:35:09:27 – 00:35:12:17

Danielle Benzon: Vocal Needs Assessment. Yeah. There we go. 

00:35:12:22 – 00:35:13:23

Greg Dixon: Yeah yeah. 

00:35:14:29 – 00:35:20:05

Greg Dixon: Yeah. That’s it. And no matter what, I just have her personal experience. She’s going to be a lot of fun. Right? 

00:35:20:23 – 00:35:27:02

Danielle Benzon: You’ll definitely learn a lot about yourself in that hour, you know? Um, you know, no matter what. Yeah. 

00:35:27:09 – 00:35:28:02

Greg Dixon: No matter what. 

00:35:28:04 – 00:35:29:05

Danielle Benzon: It was a fun process. 

00:35:29:26 – 00:35:34:25

Greg Dixon: Fun process. Anyway, thank you again for joining us. And we’re going to talk soon. 

00:35:35:05 – 00:35:38:16

Danielle Benzon: Yes, absolutely. Thanks so much, Greg. All right.