MARK Thank you for joining us on Mind Monkeys Welcome, Bananas Optional, our regular opportunity to pause, then name, explain and reframe the most common hesitations that get in the way of the successes that we deserve. I am Mark Franklin, I'm your guide as we embark on this raw, honest, irreverent and important conversation, designed to acknowledge and normalise the fears that we each face at work and at play, in order to help you, our amazing listener, reframe some of those perspectives around the stories you've created for yourself that have been feeding those monkeys. Now, to my right on screen, perhaps to your left, I don't know, my guest today, very excited about this, my guest is an award nominated, we'll come back to that, speaker coach, two times TEDx Speaker, one of which was Editor's Pick, which means he's pretty blooming good at this, to be fair. Drawing on his background in healthcare, mindfulness and comedy, his work explores trust, psychological safety and what becomes possible when people feel safe using their voice, which I love, I love. Using his trademarked brain-page-stage approach, he works with leaders, teams and professionals, taking them from knowing they have something to say, but lacking the confidence and clarity, to speaking without freaking. Mr Dave James, welcome. Don't you sound cool, because you are. DAVE I do, it's almost like I wrote that introduction myself, isn't it? MARK It is, yeah, wow. But you know, that's because there's lots of cool things about you. You are a man that you walk into a room and everyone's just like, yes, Dave is here, because you are one of life's very good guys, for sure, for sure. And it's a delight to have you here, man. I'm so chuffed. This is going to be fun, fun, fun, fun. Mate, let's begin, obviously, in the premise of the mind monkeys kind of backstory. You know, we're talking about hesitations, we're talking about things that get in people's way, speaking, standing at the front of a room. I mean, this is a very obvious question for me to start with you, but I'm going to go there. In your experience as a speaker coach, why? Why do people have that sort of hesitation around, you know, everyone staring at them? DAVE Yeah, it's really interesting, because there's a piece of research which was done back in 1980, which showed that when you rank all the fears that speaking in public is scarier than death, and in fact, death comes third. So, speaking in public, walking through a room full of strangers, death. And you'd think that people would be happier to be in the casket, rather than, you know, reading nice words for somebody else at a eulogy. And the research is flawed, because it's just not true. The scariest thing is death, because when they looked at these fears, what they didn't do is they didn't get people to rank them in order, they just got them to pick them as a preference. And people just went, death, that's scary. But public speaking, that's scary, because it's more accessible. And I believe there's a number of different things to this. One is there is you, you stand up in front of an audience, you are being judged, they are all judging you. And I say that to audiences, I see a 50% of you are probably thinking, yeah, he's all right. 50% are going, no, he's a bit of a tool. And I'm cool with either of those. But you're being judged, and it's hard to put yourself in front of people and be judged. The other thing is, I believe, there's a lot around perfection. We see all these professional speakers on stage who move in a particular way and have perfect slides, and everything is, and we think that we have to be like that. And actually, we don't. You can teach a lot of technique in speaking, and technique's great. But unless you know who you are at the base of it, the technique doesn't matter. And in fact, a lot of technique sorts itself out when you know who you are, you know your content, and then you know your audience. A lot of it is standing up there and being seen. It's hard to feel that you're being judged. MARK I get that. And I will come back to the techniques and things, because I've got a possibly controversial take on that, although I think you might be on my side. We'll come back to that perfectionist thing. So then, in your professional role, your capacity of helping people find their voice, give me three things that you immediately go to to help somebody feel a little more comfortable being judged. DAVE Just tell them they're going to be judged anyway. And in many ways, getting used to it is, put yourself in front of people means that you know that you're going to be judged, so you just do it. You do it, you go with it. And when people talk about nerves, I get nervous before every time I speak. I was nervous to do this today. And it's not because it scares me. It's because I want to do a good job, and it's important. So, it's the reframe in terms of what those nerves are. So, in order to just get better at it, you've got to do more of it. That's one of the key things. And now this is where my brain's gone off, and I've gone, what was the question again? It was three things you were asking. My brain's just gone off in about four different directions now. Stories. There we go. Stories. Stories was the other one. It's understanding those stories. And I've got a mate, Simon, who gets really, really annoyed when people say, just tell stories. Stories are the most amazing thing, but you have to tell the right stories. And one of the things is understanding what the right stories are, and then understanding why those stories are right and getting used to telling them. And the other one is, use your voice every day. Just pick up a, oh, I'm trying to think if I've got something here. There we go. I've got the instructions. I can hardly read them, because I'm old and I need glasses. For a carry bag I had, just read that. Pick something up and read it every day, because then you get used to the sound of your own voice. MARK Yeah, that's an awful lot of instructions for a carry bag. I'm kind of intrigued. Anyway, let's not get distracted. Let's stick to the plan. DAVE I'm the one who's allowed to get distracted here. You're the one who's holding this together with perfection. MARK Well, let's see how that ends up. But yeah, you know that I get beautifully distracted by you and your energy. The most exciting thing about this is it could go anywhere. There's a story about pole dancing we're going to come back to, apparently. But let's let the audience wait for that one. Let's keep them on tenterhooks, as they say. DAVE Tease, isn't it? MARK Tease. Hey, surely that's a good speaker technique, isn't it? Just kind of twice people in and have them hanging. Is that too much of a push? DAVE No, you use techniques to create attention and engagement. And this is why, if you look at the Quentin Tarantino, he takes a story which runs in a logical way, and then he picks it up and puts it in the wrong order. And so, it leaves you guessing. And perhaps Quentin Tarantino wouldn't want to do that in a speech, necessarily. But a James Bond film would never get made now. But because we have had James Bond around five, six, whatever decades, and Ian Fleming's books have been there for ages, you never see Bond just sitting there in a towel going, you know what? It's too hot today. I really don't want to go out and be a spy. I'm going to stay here in my dressing gown and watch Netflix. You never see that at the beginning of a Bond film. You always see him doing doughnuts with machine guns sticking out the front of an Aston Martin gunning down baddies. It starts in the middle of the action. So, you can use all these techniques to create engagement. And you can bring something in and going, this is a thing, but we're going to talk about this later. And you keep people engaged throughout that process. So, it's balancing and playing with the audience. MARK I love that. I love that. And I have to say, you are a master of finding that balance. You really are. Again, watching both of your TEDx talks, they're so engaging. What you do is better than almost everyone I've seen. In fact, no, to be fair, everyone I've seen. I'm going to go there. You are that man. There's a lovely sort of portfolio, I guess is one way to say it, of you've got the comedy, you've got the attention, you've got that kind of serious, your tone, you know how to kind of invite people in and then throw in a pause. Tell me about the pause, because I think it's one of the most powerful weapons that speakers use, but you do it like. DAVE It comes back to what I was saying before that you can teach the technique of the pause. You can say to people, just pause and it can be a little bit awkward. But once you've got the stories and once you know who you are and then bring it into your content and you bring it together, the pause has almost become a natural thing. And again, it's practise. The more you do, the more those pauses are, yes, they might be planned or they might be scripted to some degree, but the more the pauses appear where they should be. And I often think I don't pause enough, which probably sounds weird when you look at stuff, because time changes when you're speaking. Time, it speeds up and slows down, and it does weird things. The pause is something that you do have to practise. And a lot of speaker coaches will talk about filler words, and you mustn't have ums and errs and other filler words. I don't mind filler words because filler words are part of normal conversation. And for me, speaking is about having a conversation with the audience. You are speaking with them. You're not speaking at them or to them. You're speaking with them. You're creating a collective thing. Filler words are great, but when you start to use that moment of pausing and instead of dropping in an um while you're thinking, you have a pause while you think, it changes so much in terms of the delivery. And it looks effortless. It's not. It's practise and it's playing and having fun with it. And I can always tell the delivery, which I haven't spent a lot of time with. So, my first TEDx spent a lot of time with it. It's really good in many ways. My second TEDx is a really good TEDx, but the things I look at and I go, mate, you didn't really spend as much time. I only had 16 days. You didn't spend as much time with that. And I can see little tells, which no one else will notice, but I can say little tells. And so you practise. The more you practise, the easier it becomes, the easier it becomes. And we practise. It's one of those continuous loops, but the pause is something to practise. And we, here I am as that neurodivergent person going, as soon as you leave a gap in conversation, I just want to jump in there with both feet and do something. So I've had to learn that ability to be the person who steps back and some days amazing, other days I'm atrocious. MARK I think atrocious is probably too strong a word, but I get the humility. And again, like you say, that desire to improve, that need to practise, that sort of willingness to just better your craft all the time. DAVE Yeah, always, always. It's always about... I did a post earlier this week where it was talking about the percentage increase in confidence on the last four clients I had. And I find it really hard because it's a very subjective thing. And no one rates themselves; people rate themselves as an eight individually, but no one does a nine or 10 because there's still work to do. And every time I'm going up and speaking on stage, and I still take every opportunity I can to speak. If my neighbours next door, Dennis and Sue, if they knocked on my door and said, Dave, we've got a new American fridge. We want to open it, but we want it done in a style which is fitting of an American fridge. I'll be like, I'm there. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gender pronouns if you're choosing, welcome everyone to the opening of Dennis and Sue's fridge. I wonder which one's the alcoholic? And I can tell you exactly which it is. So, I will take any opportunity to speak because it's practising the craft. And one of the things which winds me up more than anything else, not that Dennis and Sue, they are brilliant neighbours, is it's when you have speaker coaches where there's no evidence of them speaking. And I speak because if I'm going to help somebody to speak, you need to know that I'm using it myself. So, it's a big thing for me, big, big thing for me. MARK And stepping back and just listening to what you're saying, I mean, practise, anything we do, any hobby we pick up, anything we studied at school, it's such an obvious statement, practise. But coming back to the kind of the mind monkey, when that initial hurdle of, as you say, the first two things on that list, you're walking to a room of strangers and then walking to the front of that room and speaking. When there is that kind of very powerful emotional blocker, coming back to a fourth thing, in terms of how do you help someone who has something to say recognise their value of practising being able to say it? DAVE You repeat it back, you listen, you repeat it back to them. One of the, I hate to use the term superpower because it just makes bits of my anatomy twitch and twist upside down. But when I listen to people speak and tell their stories, because we tell our stories all the time and we get bored by them. I've heard that story so many times, no one else will be interested. But actually, when you turn it around and you repeat it to them, back to them in a different way and you mirror it back, you show them that that story is really powerful and really interesting. The other thing, and maybe this is the fifth thing on top of that, and I've been thinking a lot about this. And in my newsletter for next week is I'm thinking about this quite a lot. People come to me and say, I want to be confident to go and speak on stage. I don't think it is about confidence. I believe it's more about; it's having the evidence. It's having that belief that you can do it. It's just until that point you don't have any evidence that you can do it. So, I talk about loaning people my belief. I loan you my confidence; I loan you my belief. And a lot of environments are not set up particularly for people to walk into and feel safe. So, if you as that individual can be that safe beacon for people, which is why I go and watch my clients speak. It's like I want to be that person in the audience so that when you look out in the audience, you go, there's somebody I know. I feel safe because there's a familiar thing going on. So, it's making sure that the space is safe enough for people. So that idea of borrowing my belief until you're ready. I used to talk about it with, when I was doing more sort of personal coaching, was saying to clients, I'm going to hold on to your awesome for you because you're not quite ready for it. And when we work together, I'm going to let you hold it and use it and play with it. And at the end of the session, you give it back to me. And then there'll be a time when you go, no, no, no, I don't need to give it back to you anymore. I'm now ready to go with this. And that's the time where they go off into the world and they do amazing things. So, it's a balance with all of those things. MARK That's such a wonderful kind of generous gift of yours. Borrow my belief, borrow my confidence. Again, I'm coming back. I'm not just blowing smoke because genuinely you are one of my good guys. And it's very obvious. You walk into a room where Dave is. And those rooms have a very welcoming, safe is a very good word, but there is a lovely, you bring a lovely presence, which I think, I'm sure this goes through your work, gives people a little bit more belief and a little bit more confidence, whether they're borrowing it from you, from the energy you bring. However, it kind of manifests that there is, you have an aura, my friend. Thank you. DAVE Thank you. If you say that with the wrong accent, that could be describing something else. Well, you have a lovely, you have a lovely aura, sir. Oh, damn. Did I forget my trousers again? MARK Well, in this weather, you know, anything, anything could be on show, couldn't it? DAVE Please don't blow any more smoke. It's warm enough in here as it is. And that's why I literally have a towel to dampen myself down. I don't have hair like you to capture this stuff. MARK But in many ways, this is just holding the heat. But anyway, for those people who are listening and not watching, let's not kind of go there. Coming back though, like I say, I'm not, not just blowing smoke. I think about the work you do. Okay. And again, I saw this, you run a fantastic workshop at Atomicon just the other week. But this ability, and I'm interested to know how you got there yourself. So, we'll come back to that. I want to know a bit more about your journey. But this ability to hold a space, and it's a very coaching kind of thing, but hold a space for somebody to have that just very brief reprieve from the fear and think, okay, all right, there's someone who's kind of with me, physically on stage, but with me whilst I give this a go and take that first step. How did you, how did you find that strength in yourself? Where does that come from, that ability, that generosity? DAVE It's a really good question. And about two years ago, I think I was at the PSA, Professional Speaking Association, doing something at the Speaking Business Summit. And I, I had a session on, I was talking about the, I can't remember exactly what it's called. It's not about, it's not about the slides. And the whole premise was you can have beautiful slides with beautiful font on it, and no one really cares about it. What they care about is other things. It's like the connection to the stuff you have. And I remember agonising over that, over that presentation for a while. And I talked to my girlfriend about it. She was, she, I think she, she hated me for, for days before because I was in a proper grumpy place. Because I was going through this whole thing of how, who am I to stand in front of professional speakers and talk about this stuff? Because surely they know this shit and it'd be fine. And then I realised in the preparation for that, that the, that all of the stuff which had happened in the past around my work in healthcare was connected absolutely with speaking. And I hadn't, I hadn't really understood that connection. And then realised that as an A&E nurse in particular, you have four hours with a patient. You, you, you get to meet them, you introduce yourself, you, you go through the assessment, you have to work on a diagnosis, there's a treatment plan, you administer treatment, then you discharge them. And you've got to do that in four hours. In most years, like 98% of people have to be through that department in that time. You have to be really present for that. And you have to be really present for that person in any way you can. And a lot of that comes through into the work I do now. And I can tell you now there are many times where I'm not present. And I can, I can be present in a very intent way for a while, but then there's times where I'm just, I'm not at all. And I suspect that's the same for many people. I give myself a lot of grief over it, but that's a whole other story. But it's all of that, that work about being present with someone and saying the main focus of what we're doing is to get you from here to here, knowing that you are scared, you're concerned, you're confused, you don't understand the language of healthcare. In the same way, people don't understand the language of speaking. And one of the things I love to do is you change the stakes to stand on a big stage in front of a hundred people, 200 people, a thousand people. It's got big stakes to it. It comes with a lot of pressure, but standing up in front of a room of 10 people and playing a story dice game has less stakes to it. So, you bring in little things where the risk is less, but the skills are exactly the same. You are speaking in front of an audience. You're creating something in the moment. You're connecting and engaging with an audience. You're being present and you're realising that you don't have to be perfect. And so, you take people on that little journey of tiny, tiny steps. I mean, the dice game, I have my story cubes here. This idea of, and we saw this when we did it at Atomicon, you roll the dice, you tell a story. The stories are made up in the moment. We don't know what's going on, but it's those small steps which take you towards being able to stand on those bigger stages and do things which have bigger stakes. And also it's like the comedy stuff I do. I now have plenty of evidence that when I go on stage and do stand-up comedy or stand-up comedy hosting, I'm not going to die. First time I did it, it felt like a real assault on my life. The second time it was still a bit, by about the sixth, seventh time I'm like, I'm just going to have fun. It'll be fine. What's going to happen? What's the worst going to happen? I'm going to die? Maybe I will. Maybe I will die on stage at some point. I don't want to, but maybe I will. But you change the stakes a little bit and you show people that they have those skills and they can start to grow and create things in that moment. MARK Lovely, lovely. And we talked briefly about the comedy thing before, because in my head, and as you said, I mean, this whole business of changing stakes, I think is so important, so powerful. It's a really valid point. In my head, I'm not a professional speaker. I speak. I'm not a professional speaker. I'm a professional musician of sorts. So, I get up on stages all the time. I spend a lot of time on stages. But comedy, to me, that's like a whole higher level of judgement and exposure. And you are basically naked, waiting for a room to pull you apart. But I love how you've sort of twisted that. Again, you've brought it all down to this level playing field of it's the same skills, but it's a different space. Is that fair? DAVE Yeah, absolutely. And I do as many different styles of speaking as I can. I'll try as many different disciplines. Not because I'm bored and like variety, although that probably is part of it. It's because then I know that in any situation I'm in, I can bring this absolutely unique amalgamation. I would say intersection, but it's too much of a way everyone's using the word intersection. This is amalgamation of all of these different techniques in different moments. And when you're present with an audience, you can go, actually, I was going to do a keynote with this, but instead we're going to turn it into an interactive workshop. Or I'm going to get these two people up on stage and I'm going to get them to do an exercise together and then we're going to deconstruct it. And you find the confidence just to play. And I've done things with comedy audiences, which are like, I don't know why I ever did that. But it was fun in the moment. I've had my head played like a bongo by one of the other comedians. Quite often there'll be a man in the audience with a delightful beard and with his consent, I normally will have a feel of the beard. And you do it because you're engaged in the audience. I'll pick on people and work with them. You find all these different skills and all these different techniques, which you can do. And probably one of the big distinctions is that we're talking about standup comedy. When you take that across to professional speaking or even public speaking, it's not comedy, it's humour. It's a very subtly different thing. And partly it's because of the contract. When you're in a room as a standup comedian, the audience are there to be abused in some way, shape or form. And the word abuse might be a little bit too much, but they're there to be challenged. And you still see people get up and walk out of standup comedy gigs because they feel offended. It's fine that they feel offended, but they haven't understood the contract. Come into a professional or public speaking environment, the contract is not there that they're going to be. They're going to be challenged in the same way. And it's all about status. And it's about understanding your role, where your status is, and how you keep your audience safe. And usually when it goes wrong is when people don't manage that play of status, or they abuse it, or they just don't. They play high status when they shouldn't. But you have to try different disciplines in order to understand how this works. MARK And again, that just comes back to the most important point you kind of made, which is that practise piece, isn't it? Your confidence, your ability to switch, play with the room, spark an idea, run with it, comes from the fact that you've done all these things many times. Sometimes it hasn't worked. Sometimes it's worked beautifully. But you've got, you know, you've looked at, I'm guessing, you tell me if I'm wrong, you've looked in the whites of the eyes of the front row and thought, yeah, I know what I can do with this lot. Is that fair? Oh, yeah. DAVE Yeah. And, you know, people don't think about doing CPD for continuous professional development for comedy, but you do. I've been on workshops, which are improv hosting workshops, where you will look at the front row and you'll see somebody who looks like a surfer. And you'll go, ah, you look like Thor. And then you'll go, which of the other Avengers have you brought with you today? And it'll be like, oh, you must be the Hulk. And you talk, and then you must be Loki or, you know, who are you? Are you drunk, man? You endow certain things upon an audience, and you bring them into a world, and you start to create that world. And if that doesn't work, you let it go and you go in a different direction. So, there's all kinds of continuous professional development you can do. And partly with comedy, it's the open mics, it's the standing up and it's the trying things and realising that everything in your head you thought was really funny is not in real life. And it's the same with, you know, professional and public speaking is that there are some things in your head which you deliver and you think these are wonderful and this is going to change the world. And people actually don't have any interest in that piece. What they're interested in is that throwaway comment you had two minutes ago. That's the which will change their life. So we have to understand that what we think is working and what we think is the thing in any kind of delivery might not be what the audience picks up on. And you only know that, again, from preparation practise and trying it and getting feedback. MARK I'm going to be really cheeky. I'm going to try and shortcut all of this practise, just kind of drill in, come on Dave, tell me the secret to being an amazing speaker because I personally believe, and you may disagree which is absolutely fine, I'd encourage you to kind of challenge me, I personally believe everyone's got a story to tell. Everyone has something within them that the world needs to hear. And let's say we've got that somebody past those initial nerves and they're ready to be at the front of the room and they're ready to share that. There is a difference between telling a story and getting the room to really experience that story with you. What tips would you give someone in terms of that transition between just recounting and involving? DAVE The story has to be yours, it has to be true and it has to be yours to tell at least. You have to have permission to tell that story. You also have to understand where that story is going to take your audience. I quite often say to people that speaking from stage and talking about deep, dark stories which might be triggering for some people and we have to, again, it's keeping audiences safe, is a bit like opening up Pandora's box and saying, look in here, and then going, let's close it up again and let's tie it up again so everyone can go off back to their lives knowing that we've been changed but everyone's okay. I see some speakers who literally open up Pandora's box, they'll tip it out on the stage, they'll kick it around a bit and then they'll bugger off because they've done their bit, they'll bugger off stage, but they'll leave the audience absolutely broken. I suspect that with the preparation and the practise there are going to be times where we do speak on stage and we either say too much or the wrong thing or we don't keep people safe and we're going to make that mistake. The odd throwaway comment, the story where you haven't gone through the process of working out what it means, that differentiator between the scar and the wound, speak from the scar not the wound because if you're speaking on stage, you should not be speaking because it's cheaper than therapy. There will be times when you try things out which are a little bit raw and a little bit edgy and I'm sure that you've seen those people on stage who are not quite ready to tell their story because when they do start to tell it, it gets them and they're not ready for it and they don't know what to do with it and you can see them in that real sort of confused and anxious state going I'm feeling things I wasn't expecting and I know I've done that and I'm very careful with some of the stories I tell to know at which level I'm telling it from. Am I telling it from this intellectual level up here where I'm telling you the facts or am I telling it from down here where I'm talking about from a place in the heart and most of the time it's somewhere in between, somewhere in between. Depending on the day, depending on what's going on for me will depend on where I am with this and that's a signal for me that there's still stuff which I need to process with some of these stories. So, you have to understand that when you speak about things on stage there's a chance that you could take somebody in a direction which isn't going to be great and you have to know how to work with that and that's really, really hard and that's where things like invitations come in. We talk about it in terms of coaching language, it's not do this, it's like I invite you to. You take people through a meditation; it's like I invite you to close your eyes if you're able please stand if you are able. It's that openness to the fact that some people might not be able to do the things that you want them to or they might have a level of trauma or triggering or something in their life which means that when they go to that place it's a problem so you invite them in and you acknowledge that for some people they might need to get up and move around they might need to take themselves out of that situation and you give them that invitation, you give them that permission to do it. Again, that's a skill, it's an absolute skill but you have to really make sure that you understand your story and what it means to you and that you've done the work on it. MARK Amazing, brilliant, brilliant. So just a follow-on question, again this is more of a practical question I guess more than anything else but when you are booked for a gig how will you approach a story that you may know very well a story that you've told many times differently with the audience that you're expecting in mind even though I appreciate that might change again when you see the whites of their eyes. DAVE That's a really good question and certainly if I think about the audiences I generally speak on I don't do how to be a happy human as a keynote much anymore which is fine, it's a great keynote I'm doing a rewrite on it at the moment for a conference I'm speaking at in August. And I'm looking at it very differently and partly the reason I'm thinking about that is that you're bringing in stuff which has happened since you first started to write those speeches so how to be a happy human was written before I had a diagnosis of ADHD now my diagnosis of ADHD now makes me look back on all those things and go ah, this is quite a big thing and I need to look at what this means so you're constantly writing, rewriting and refining. You also understand that if you're speaking to a certain audience you probably shouldn't go in and talk about certain things how to be a happy human could be given to anyone however if it was a primary school kid audience I would not be putting in certain stories if it's a different audience, a different adult audience I might put more of certain things in what I tend to be doing, and I do this with smaller deliveries as well is I want to know who the audience are beforehand because I want to tweak the language of the message to fit where they are to understand their position and that's why going to a conference. The conference I'm at in August two day conference, I'll be there for the whole of the two days I'm closing with the keynotes, so I will be picking up on what the mood is throughout the two days I will, when I'm mic'd up, I will have a Britney mic so I'll be walking around. So, I'll make sure I can work in the room itself so I'm looking at how I deliver that message I look at things like props, when I do how to be a happy human there's a very particular bit where I talk about having a haircut which is always a weird thing, I always get to laugh because people can't imagine me with hair and I'm sitting for that. So I actually have a chair which I sit down on, so I use props to change the way the story is delivered, so you do the work to understand how your story is going to fit in with those different audiences and also knowing that it might not work you might mess it up MARK Yeah, but again I guess the confidence and the practice and that belief the fact that you have tried different permutations you're testing things, you're playing with things, you're playing with the audience the fact that it doesn't work. Coming back to the fears and notations, that's all learning that's all material for you to play with next time. DAVE Yeah, and it becomes a story it's like comedians will do this quite often, they'll go I told that joke to an audience last week and they laughed a lot and you didn't and it's a bit of a risky thing because you never blame your audience for not laughing at your jokes. You are 100% responsible when things work and 100% responsible when they don't but people will tell the story of the time where they did the thing and it happened or didn't happen and it's like professional speakers have the they have the thing about the starfish story. The idea that there's a man walking along the beach because it's always a man and he always likes to interfere and he finds this small child on the beach who is throwing starfish one at a time back into the sea and he says, you've got a big job there, not going to make much of a difference are you? And the kid looks at the starfish, picks it up, looks at the man throws the starfish and says, oh, made a difference to that one, didn't I? And that has become a cliched story which professional speakers used to tell but now don't tell what they tell instead is they tell the story as how professional speakers they don't tell the starfish story anymore because it's cliched so it's just another way of delivering it but I did hear a beautiful way of delivering that where there was a woman on stage and she turned around and talked about this man walking along the beach and he stops this child and he says, what are you doing? And she says, why is it always a man who goes and interferes with other people what they do in the business? It's always the men, isn't it? And turned it into something completely different which was a really different telling of that story it was absolutely hilarious because all the men in the audience are going, yeah, yeah, I've upset too many children with starfish on beaches in my time and now I'm feeling guilty but you find a different way of telling the story and in acting they talk about breaking the fourth wall. That idea, like Deadpool, one of my favourite Marvel characters he will look at the camera and he'll talk to the audience. Ferris Bueller does exactly the same in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Matthew Broderick does that, it's brilliant it's breaking the fourth wall. And as a speaker if you stand on a stage and you speak to an audience or you speak at an audience you're missing a trick. And one of the things in action they talk about is having scene partners and if you're on the stage on your own, your audience or your scene partner you work with them and you bring it very much into the moment and you make it very meta and you talk about whatever elephant there is in the room it's having fun, it's having fun in the moment MARK You know what, my head's just full of so many questions I knew this was going to be a problem because I'm like really we should keep this to 35-40 minutes and I'm like, no, this could go on for two days. Who inspires you, Dave? DAVE Oh, blimey, that's a really good question I'm going to do the cheesy one. My dad inspires me. I live two doors down from my mum and dad and they're brilliant they're absolutely fantastic. My dad's brilliant, my mum's brilliant, they inspire me for different reasons Who else inspires me? It's interesting because I'm doing a podcast next week with somebody from the PSA and he's talking about, (if he's watching this he's going to tell me I'm forgetting the title wrong) but it's about amazing humans. And one of the people I'm going to be talking about is a coach I had, a guy called Rich Waterman who was somebody who saw a lot in me before I even saw that stuff in me and we chatted recently and he's like, yeah, I saw this stuff in you before you even saw it and again it was that borrowing of belief, he lent me his belief to borrow. So he massively inspires me. And my girlfriend, Katie, she inspires me because she gets me thinking about things differently and if you want anyone who can ever hold space in a way which is, apart from the fact that the phrase holds space makes me feel deeply sick because it's a coachy phrase, but somebody who has this ability to create a space where everything is okay. She is amazing at that and she's changed the way I think about things and certainly is influencing me as a human and me as a speaker. There's lots of people, lots and lots of people Too many to mention on this 36 minute podcast which is a live stream. Our podcast is a live stream, we've been here for 7 days, what do we do with this? So many people. But it's looking for the inspiration in the smallest things. I've got some amazing people who I've met through LinkedIn who I've then gone on to meet in real life people through the PSA, people through podiatry and nursing and I see there's little tiny things that people do which I just go, that is just so delightful It's those little tiny messages and quirks and phrases and sayings and actions and you just go, yeah, instead of looking for all the big stuff going on in the world why don't you just focus on those tiny, tiny things and that's where there's some real inspiration MARK I'm going to wrap things up with two questions. The first one is entirely frivolous – Tell us the pole dancing story. You dropped that in the chat before we went live. DAVE I know. MARK That's unfair. DAVE No, it's not unfair, it's fine I was a podiatrist in the past life. I still am registered as a podiatrist for anyone who's watching who doesn't know what that is it's a foot and leg specialist. It's not children. I've got three of my own, I don't like children apart from that. And we were asked during our second year podiatry studies we were in a pharmacology lecture in a new building we'd shifted from one building to another and it was right at the beginning of the year and everyone was being asked why they became a podiatrist. Why they wanted to study and be a podiatrist. And of course you go through all the stuff, “my mother was a podiatrist and I wanted to take over the family business” and “I had a verruca treated when I was 12 and it was a delightful experience” and “I wanted to be able to help people” right the way through to me where I turned around and said “I just want to study the callous patterns of pole dancers.” Silence. Absolute silence. And that's what I want my dissertation to be on and it gives you an idea of the way my brain will go to the place of the most mischief in the shortest time I will say something just to see what happens. And it was tumbleweed, there was nothing at all so that's my pole dancing story MARK I think after this I'm going to Google whether such a hypothesis exists what are the patterns that present most regularly for calluses on pole dancers. Is there a format, is there a certain thing they should look out for let's do the health and safety announcement. DAVE What we're looking at here is we're making the assumption that we're talking about a heeled shoe and possibly we're looking at a different shaped foot. We're looking at something where there might be some friction because callus will form (due to friction and pressure on top of the epidermis). The epidermis will respond by thickening in certain places we're also talking about whether there's a difference in tightness of calf muscles in hamstrings, what are their biomechanics like what's the surface that they're walking on. What's the surface of the shoe. Where do you want to go with this because, while I never did this as a PhD my degree thesis, I did actually do a Masters degree in lower limb biomechanics, which is bonkers. I used to be legitimately clever at one point and now not so much. MARK There are so many AI images we could create on the back of this conversation. This idea of you wrapped around a pole in a lovely skimpy outfit with bunion cushions on your toes. Anyway, let's not go there because everyone who was listening has now left but for anyone who is still here my final question is what's next for Dave? DAVE Oh, what a question. So you're talking to somebody who doesn't have any kind of concept of what the future might be and that's because everything I've done throughout my life and career has been oh, that looks interesting, I'm going to have a go at that. What I do now is something which I can see myself never retiring from because I enjoy it so much. I've got mates who are professional speakers who travel all over the world. I don't want to do that because it can be quite a lonely experience and also you tend to see the inside of hotels, airports and convention centres. And while it's great and it looks great on social media it doesn't seem to be quite as fun as it could be. But the idea of working with people and helping them to find their story and then helping with the ability or the permission the confidence, whatever you want to call it… I could do that forever. My challenge is finding a way to do it in a way where it doesn't break me in the process and I can help as many people as possible. I don't have lofty income goals I just occasionally would like to be able to pay somebody to trim my beard for me instead of me having to do it myself. I'd like that freedom of not having to worry about if I get an air conditioning unit will I be able to afford it or can I pay for a VA to do stuff. So it's all those kind of income goals to make the business run well. But the next thing for me is about how do I really get better at what I do and help more people and do it consistently and have the systems and processes so I can do it consistently without breaking myself in the process. That's kind of where my head is at the moment. And there is a book. It's kind of in bits and pieces on various Word documents and note things and I need to create the time in order to sit down and write that book because there are some people who will go “I can't afford to work with you” which for me is really sad but at the same time I want to be able to have something I can get on the first rung of that ladder in speaking. So there is a book in there so that's maybe the next thing – stop it with your hand clapping MARK How are we going to make this happen? So Dave where can the world of which many people need more of you where can they find you give us your links. DAVE I'm all over LinkedIn. I need to do something about that because it's not good for my mental health. But I've met some beautiful people so LinkedIn is always a good place to find me. Then you have my website www.davethecoach.co.uk which earlier this week somebody did call me and think I was Dave Coaches from Gavin and Stacey and they would like to book a coach so they can take a group of school kids off on their trip on Wednesday. I had to correct them. It's only the second time in eight years that's happened so that website will be changing at some point, but Davethecoach.co.uk is probably the other best place to get hold of me at the moment. MARK Awesome stuff. I demand that people head straight there and begin conversations with you because you are a marvellous human Dave. Thank you so much this has been so much fun it could have gone on for hours but that would have been too self-indulgent on my part just to hear you talk. Thank you everyone who tuned in again this will be available on the YouTube, Spotify and Apple podcast very soon as well as watching this back on LinkedIn. And the next live stream will be with the remarkable and just magically bonkers Alex Beecham DAVE Alex is the one who played bongos on my head at a comedy club of course he is Alex is a delight that man is fantastic MARK I think the three of us in a room together – that's when the world implodes. That's insanity too much insanity in one place. 17th July 10am live on LinkedIn. Thank you again Dave. Thank you everybody see you next time.