Breaking Barriers in Public Speaking with Bobbie Carlton

Tim: 0:37

Welcome to Speaking with Confidence. The podcast is here to help you unlock the power of effective public speaking. I’m your host, tim Newman, and I’m excited to take you on a journey to become a better public speaker. Today’s guest, bobbi Carlton, is the founder of Innovation Women, an online speaker platform that was created to help get more women on stage at conferences and events. She’s an entertaining tell-it-like-it-is speaker who speaks extensively and passionately about public speaking and how it can be the driving force behind career growth and business success. She’s a TEDx speaker, an entertaining startup event host. She’s spoken at the United Nations. She’s shared the stage with a storytelling legend and NPR’s Snap Judgment host, glenn Washington, and she’s been on the main stage for some of the world’s best-known conferences for technical and professional women. Bobbi has inspired thousands of technical and entrepreneurial executive women to take control of their own speaking careers and has worked with event managers around the world to deliver diverse and inclusive events. Let’s go ahead and welcome Bobby to the show. Bobby, welcome to the show, and I’m really excited to talk with you today.

Bobbie: 1:46

Thanks, tim, me too.

Tim: 1:49

You know you have a long history in the speaking space, but I want to take, before we get really started into talk about what you’re doing now, let’s go back to where it all started, Talk about your speaking journey and, specifically, you know, were there any times that you know you messed up and you felt embarrassed about it, and how did you handle that? You know you messed up and you felt embarrassed about it, and how did you handle that.

Bobbie: 2:18

I think all of them were mess ups early on. Just for background, I actually have a broadcasting degree. I went to school for radio and television, but I kind of immediately jumped into my role as a public relations person and so it was my job to get other people on stage, and I spent a lot of time working with executives, often at big enterprise software companies, to help them get on stage. So when I started my second company Innovation Night, I kind of feel like I blocked the fact that I would have to be the emcee and the host for these monthly events. That first night everyone expected me to be that emcee and the host and to speak to the assembled 200 or so people, at which point I immediately sweated through my blouse thank God for blazers and it was awful. I mean, I was just absolutely a literal hot mess on stage and of course this was a social media-powered event. In other words, we were encouraging people to have their phones out to take video and pictures. So there is ample evidence of me being that literal hot mess.

Bobbie: 4:00

And afterwards I saw all of those pictures. I saw all of those videos. I looked at every one of them and I looked at it and said, oh God, I’m going to either have to stop this immediately or I’m going to have to get better. Now we did 130 events with Innovation Nights before we ran into the pandemic. You know 11 years of monthly events and I got. Better, I had to, it was a survival thing. Better, I had to, it was a survival thing. And you know it does show that practice is so important. You can read all the stuff you want, you can get all kinds of advice, but until you put it into practice.

Tim: 4:51

You are never going to get better and it’s so important to be able to share this because everybody goes through this. You know, even the best speakers in the world, I would say everybody. Let’s just say 99% of the population goes through this. Even the best speakers in the world had to start somewhere and they had to practice. They had to. I would say everybody who spoke in public has said something embarrassing or done something. They had to. I would say everybody who spoke in public has said something embarrassing or done something. And to me, it’s important for young professionals to understand that that they’re not alone in this. It’s not just about them. Everybody goes through this and, like you said, you have to get out and do it, you have to practice it.

Bobbie: 5:28

You have to put yourself out there Absolutely, and you know it took a while to get to the point where I felt comfortable with it.

Bobbie: 5:36

I’m naturally an introvert and people now they kind of scoff at me when I say that I’m like no, I am absolutely, 100% an introvert and I think there’s a lot of well, I’m an introvert, so I shouldn’t be a public speaker. I have actually made it my mission to tell people if I’m an introvert, so I shouldn’t be a public speaker. I have actually made it my mission to tell people if you are an introvert. I encourage you to take up public speaking, because we need more introverts on stage, because I feel that introverts have some natural things that they do extremely well, and one of them is they practice, they prepare because they are a little nervous about getting on stage. Meanwhile, extroverts have probably been told their entire lives oh you should get into public speaking because you’re an extrovert, or oh, this comes naturally to you. And a lot of times those extroverted people or more extroverted people, they don’t put in the time, they don’t practice as much as someone who is more introverted and they may be less likely to finish on time, for example.

Tim: 6:57

Exactly. I mean that’s. You know, most people are introverts. They really are. And you know, I think if we just understood, if we understood who we are as individuals and really thought about who we are as individuals, you know what makes us tick, what makes us, what do we believe and why do we believe in those types of things I think we’d be better off all across the board, but especially with public speaking, because then we can know how to overcome these obstacles which aren’t necessarily obstacles, it’s just who we are, but how we can be better at being who we are to be able to share the information. So when did you realize that you actually had a gift? Because you’re really, really good I mean, there’s no doubt, there’s no question about that you are good at communication. You’re good at sharing information how it comes across. You always seem like it comes natural to you now. So when did you realize you had a gift?

Bobbie: 8:00

Gift or curse. I don’t think I have a gift. I just think that I’ve practiced enough that the things I want to say come out in fully formed sentences. To say come out in fully formed sentences, they come out in ways that again, so that now there are very well-practiced answers to some things and I have a funny little sense of humor that I employ when I am doing public speaking. One of my kids actually told me that I am funny because nobody expects me to be funny. That’s a good one. And I was like whoa, that’s interesting. Actually he at first said you’re funny because you’re not funny. What does that mean?

Tim: 9:16

What does that even?

Bobbie: 9:17

mean. What do you even mean by that? And he’s like it’s really the incongruity of being a not expected to be funny person with the little side commentary. I also know how to use a pause. Pauses are power Pauses and emphasis with a pause gives people’s brains a moment to catch up. But it also means that you’re not inserting extra words. Filler words are kind of the bane of every speaker’s existence. When you don’t know exactly what you want to say, you insert extra words the ums, the sos, things like that and I did a TEDx talk with three days notice and someone afterwards commented that they were so impressed by the fact that I did it without filler words. And I said well, of course I did. I knew what I was going to say and so if you know what you’re going to say, you are less likely to use filler.

Tim: 10:35

And that comes with practice. I mean, that’s something that I harp on all the time. Again, I come from the sport background and there’s no team, no individual goes into competition without practice, and this public speaking is no different. You know, if you’re going to a job interview, if you’re going to stand on stage, if you’re going to a networking event, there are certain things that you should be practicing. Knowing who you’re going to be talking to is paramount.

Bobbie: 11:06

Absolutely.

Tim: 11:09

But it really comes across when you’ve practiced and when you haven’t practiced, and the audience will be able to tell that almost right away. You know, in terms of being authentic you are in terms of, like you said, the filler words, the pauses, all those types of things do come across and the audience is going to find you out really, really quick, and it’s just so important. Now let’s get into what you’ve been doing lately, and I really like the way that you put things. You’ve got three businesses. You’ve got what you call your day job, your night job and your dream job. Tell us a little bit about the dream job. Tell us a little bit about the dream job, because this is where I think we really need to understand the power of public speaking and how that affects women in particular and how we can help elevate them into one-stage roles, into the boardrooms, those types of things.

Bobbie: 12:16

Absolutely, and I’ve always seen public speaking as a path to many things. Two-thirds of all conference speakers are men, which leaves women out of career and business opportunities that come from speaking. When you are on stage, you have the ability to tell your story, to share your ideas. You will never be seen as a leader if you’re just sitting in the audience. So when you’re on stage, you get those opportunities. Sitting in the audience, so when you’re on stage, you get those opportunities. I actually have a little phrase I use visibility equals opportunity, and the day job, the night job and the dream job are all focused around driving visibility. My day job is I run a marketing firm. My night job for many years was Mass Innovation Nights, which is a monthly new product launch event, driving visibility for startups. And then Innovation Women. The dream job is the dream of getting more women on stage at conferences and events.

Tim: 14:00

No-transcript no-transcript, when women get to the point of being on stage, number one being seen as leaders. But you also talk about the power of being the one. What does that mean and how can being the one really elevate you from even just being on stage to becoming a CEO and becoming on a board? Because let’s just leave it at that, because I want you to make another point here in just a minute.

Bobbie: 14:42

All right. So the one is the one that people immediately think of when they need to fill a role, and my personal experience with the becoming the one was what I mentioned earlier. I did a TEDx talk with very, very little notice. The TEDx organizers for TEDx Suffolk University reached out to me and said we want to invite you to be one of our TEDx speakers. And, of course, as a speaker, it’s like oh, my goodness, ted, tedx, great brands. People know what you’re talking about when you say TED.

Bobbie: 15:29

And I was at first like, so excited. And I was like, of course, I’d love to like so excited. And I was like, of course, I’d love to. When is it? And the answer was Tuesday. Like, as a speaker, that’s horrifying. That gives you days to do what most people do in months. Very few people just jump up on stage and go ta-, I’m gonna do a tedx talk. It takes practice. You often get extensive coaching. Uh, you get input on your ideas. And I was like uh, no, no, that’s a really bad idea. Um, but you know, I have this database with thousands of speakers. Maybe there’s a speaker in there who is prepared to do a TEDx talk.

Bobbie: 16:21

With only a few days notice, I went and I collected five names, five names of people who were perhaps rash enough to go and say yes to something like this, enough to go and say yes to something like this, and the event organizers are like no, none of them is in our theme. And I’m like well, what’s your theme? They said innovation. Like ah, now I get it. Now I understand why you asked me. I started two companies with the word innovation in the name.

Bobbie: 17:03

I’m also a relatively well-known speaker in the Boston community because I was running at the time a monthly event where I’m the emcee. You felt comfortable in inviting me. I was a known quantity and my brand fit your theme. That’s part of becoming the one Immediate recognition of that person as being a good fit for your event. That’s what you want to achieve as a speaker. But it’s also helping you with your career options. Like, hey, I need to hire a designer, I need to hire a chief revenue officer. Oh, I just saw somebody and I recognize them and I know their name and they’re well known for that thing. That’s part of it.

Tim: 18:09

And to take that just a step further right, step further right, when, when you’re the one, again, you’re going to start being looked at for CEO roles. Talk about the, the, the being elevated to positions on a board, and how, how, when women are on boards, the, the roles that that they have to take and maybe some of the kind of disadvantages that they have of being on a board. And again, why is it so important to get that one stage so that they can get on to more boards?

Bobbie: 18:49

Absolutely, and being on stage gives you all kinds of advantages in the career and business world. You know, people know you, they know your ideas, they know your story. They feel more comfortable with you because they have seen you in person talking. That’s important. People do business with people they know. People do business with people they know and people feel like they know you when you’ve been up on stage telling your stories. So being on stage also gets you access to new jobs and sometimes board seats could be a part of that, could be a part of that.

Bobbie: 19:41

I think it’s incredibly important for women to be on boards because they are in a position of power. They are able to make suggestions to people who are running companies. If you look at the Fortune 500, how many of those organizations are led by women? It’s still a very small number. How many of those organizations have women on their boards? Again, a smaller number. So if we look at a board seat, there is new legislation that has been happening in California and I believe it is up for consideration in some other states as well, about the number of women on boards.

Bobbie: 20:29

Just having a single woman on a board is really not making the impact that we would like it to have. Because when you are the lone woman in the room, whether it’s a board or any other location, you are being expected to kind of carry the flag for your gender and that can be problematic, like you are in a precarious position when you are by yourself in any group, whether it’s a person of color, whether it’s a woman, whether it’s a non-binary individual, like you’re being expected to represent and you may feel like you can’t do that if it is just you. So sometimes there’s safety in numbers. You need a second woman or a third, and there have been studies done about the makeup of boards that say women don’t have the impact we expect them to have until there are three women in that room, then they are not being there as a token woman. They not, they’re just representing their gender. They are there and the expectations are very different yeah, that’s a.

Tim: 22:07

That’s a very interesting and kind of disturbing data set there for me. Know the whole idea that let’s just take imposter syndrome as a, for example. Right, you know the whole feeling of I don’t belong here. I don’t belong here, I don’t belong here. That’s something that we tell ourselves.

Tim: 22:27

But then you get to this where, okay, now you have earned we all earn things, right, you earn being on stage, you earn being the CEO, you earn the position on the board, but but now you’re not even. You’re not, you’re not even really a part of the board because you’re not taking something maybe not be taken seriously, you’re not going to be listened to. What have you? Even at that level it’s, it’s kind of disturbing, you know, because we tell, we tell, we tell our young professionals, our people, that we’re looking for leaders all the time. Right, we want people to stand out, we want people to speak out, we want people to take charge of situations and move us forward and lead us, and now we’re on a board as a woman and you’re not making any difference because you’re not being taken seriously.

Bobbie: 23:17

It’s just a little disturbing. Yeah, it’s that degree of influence that you have as a single person or a single representative when you’re talking about board seats or any other group that you’re a minority in. So you want to have a quorum, you want to have kind of a critical mass, and that critical mass for women on boards is, I guess, three. You know, you’re not just a single woman by herself.

Tim: 23:52

There’s a group of you, you and even if you have have, have a, have a male, you know that is um championing you or agreeing with you, or encouraging you. My guess is it’s still. It may have some effect, but it doesn’t really have the effect that we’re that we want to have anyway. Is that accurate?

Bobbie: 24:14

yeah, I mean you don’t want to be seen as the token woman. Um, having a male champion, having a male ally, can be helpful, but that’s almost like you need the support to be effective. That can be, you know, not great either.

Tim: 24:33

Right, yeah, I just, and I go. I know I live in a world with rose-colored glasses. I just wish we could just be at a point where we’re hired because we’ve earned it, we deserve it, we’re the best person for the job, not the best male, not the best female, not the best African-American, not the best whatever. We’re the best person for the job and we move forward. Uh, on that and yeah, but unfortunately there are still places where it’s equity, not equality, exactly.

Bobbie: 25:09

And you know, when you are constantly dealing with flights or systemic issues, you are kind of taking your starting blocks to go. And use the athletic comparison, your starting blocks are a little bit further back Right, or maybe you’re running the hurdles race while everybody else is on the flat track.

Tim: 25:41

Yeah, yeah, and we have to be better. I’ll just put it that way.

Bobbie: 25:50

I mean one of the things that I’ve talked about with a lot of people in terms of the speaking game is there are some systemic issues when it comes to seeing women on stage, and this is all from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Women are more likely to work part-time. Women are more likely to work for smaller organizations. Women are more likely to work for smaller organizations. Women are still more likely to be responsible for kids and home, and all of those are reasons why, when invited, women are less likely to say yes. Number one like you know, we talked about part-time.

Bobbie: 26:35

So if I only work three days a week and I get invited to speak at a conference, maybe I’ve got a day of travel. The conference is a day long and then I have to get back. That could mean that I’m out of work for an entire week, for an entire week, and if I’m working for a smaller organization, there might not be anybody to backfill for me or that smaller organization doesn’t have it in their budget to send me to that conference. I might have to pay for my travel and my hotel out of my own pocket, because half of all event managers have no budget whatsoever for speakers. They look at speaking at their conference.

Bobbie: 27:27

As a gift that we’re giving you, we’re putting hundreds of people in the audience for you. You want us to pay you too. Like not everybody gets aid to speak at conferences and events, and if you’re a woman and you’re not speaking as often, you might not be the keynote. 42% of some of event managers pay some speakers. They might only have budget for keynotes, so that means that you’re being left out of the compensation from the organizers and your company isn’t paying for you as well. So lots of systemic things are keeping women from the stages.

Tim: 28:20

Yeah. So I’m going to ask an absurd question here because I already know the answer. So we should tell women to just kind of wait to be asked to be a speaker, right? No, no, no, no, sorry, no, that no, no, sorry, no, that’s okay, keep going. No, you go ahead with that, because that’s it. I mean, if women are only on the stage a third of the time, we should just accept it and not even bother asking, not even start searching those out. Let’s just sit back and wait to be asked.

Bobbie: 28:58

No, okay. So understand that the basic currency of getting on stage for a lot of conferences and events is something called the call for speakers, which is literally event managers standing up waving their arms and saying come at me with your ideas, come to me and tell me why you should be a speaker at my event to be invited, so you might have to apply. You might have to pitch yourself as a speaker at that conference and, understanding how people get on stage, only a very small percentage of people are getting invited. The Innovation Women platform one of the things that we do is we have a database of speaking opportunities and these are all calls for speakers.

Bobbie: 30:06

I think right now on the platform there’s like 1,500 calls for speakers that are currently open, like right now, looking for speakers, and they change all the time. Once the deadline is passed, they leave the platform, and that’s just a small percentage of the opportunities that are out there. We add, like I don’t know, between 50 and 100 a week to our platform and you don’t need our platform. Like I’d love to have you on our platform, ladies, but you don’t need it. You can literally just go and search on Google and put in the words call for speakers and you will see all of the opportunities that are out there begging for you to come and pitch that’s insane and it so.

Tim: 31:03

Is there a certain time of year where there’s where there’s more conferences? Obviously my guess is around christmas.

Bobbie: 31:10

You know the holiday time there’s probably not as many, but yeah, but um, so, like an annual conference, they are probably putting up their call for speakers right after the previous conference. But I always say that there are kind of some what I call event silly seasons where it is super busy September, october, also April and May. Those times are extra busy because all of the conferences and events are trying to get in before the holidays and get in their event before summer, when they might lose some people to vacations. So there’s an extra like predominance of events during April, may and September and October, but there are events year round all over the place. I’ve done speaking at one particular event every year for like four years in a row and it’s in August. You know it’s like people who are scheduling events. They look at the calendar and they say, okay, when is it? We’re getting together.

Bobbie: 32:28

Little side note here A lot of organizations actually have it written into their bylaws that they have to have an annual event, like that’s part of their internal rules, which means that when the pandemic hit, a lot of those same organizations had to. Like they didn’t have a lot of choices. They could either cancel their event and run up against their own bylaws, or they could postpone, and somewhat indefinitely when the pandemic hit, or they could go online. And going online was a fantastic opportunity for women in particular, because it meant that we could do our speaking from right here. We didn’t have to travel, we didn’t have to find a babysitter, we didn’t have to find somebody to take care of our parents or whatever it is we do.

Bobbie: 33:33

We could do it from our homes.

Tim: 33:36

So that was a really good thing for us. Yeah, not even lose a full day of work, right? Yeah, because it’s an hour, maybe an hour and a half, two hours tops of you still had to prepare Right.

Bobbie: 33:49

You still had to practice, but that could be all done on your own time and you didn’t have to hop on a plane.

Tim: 33:54

That could be all done on your own time and you didn’t have to hop on a plane. Yeah, that’s. And you know even still now that the pandemic is over. You know there are still a lot of conferences that stayed virtual, which is great or hybrid.

Tim: 34:07

You know, and I think it’s, I think everybody here’s Tim talk now. I think everybody should find the way that suits them the best and then become good at that, become the one at that you really do. As a speaker, you really do need to be seen at both virtual and in person. Even if you’re better at virtual, you still need to be doing both.

Bobbie: 34:44

And there’s a real power in speaking in person on a stage. Interesting side note here as well when you are on a stage, you are actually physically elevated above an audience. There’s something that happens psychologically when we’re sitting in an audience and we’re looking at someone who is above us, there’s a little extra like credibility that gets added, because that person is on a stage and we are looking up at them literally.

Tim: 35:26

And you know, from the audience perspective, that is a psychological phenomenon, right? I mean, it’s something that we as, even as experts in our own right when somebody else is up on stage, we still see them as elevated. That’s just the way it is. Yeah, we see them as elevated. That’s just the way it is.

Bobbie: 35:48

Yeah, we see them as experts.

Tim: 35:49

Yeah.

Bobbie: 35:50

The expectation is they’ve been vetted by the organization. They are experts because they are on stage and we are in the audience. There’s that extra layer of credibility that gets added to them when they are on that stage. Credibility that gets added to them when they are on that stage.

Tim: 36:09

So let’s talk about another word that you use a lot, that I didn’t know what it meant, you know, until just the other day the mantle. I thought the mantle was something that went above the fireplace that you put, you know, your elf on a shelf.

Bobbie: 36:25

But what’s a mantle A?

Bobbie: 36:31

mantle, not a mantle, exactly that’s by baltimore accent yes, so a mantle is, uh, the derogatory term for an all-male panel. And uh, these days, you know, we all run around and and we’ve got our phones, slash cameras in our hand and there is a, you know, very easy for us to take a picture of the all-male panel in front of us and share that on social media saying, hey, they couldn’t find a woman expert for this. We have a term that we use as well. We call it the all male, all pale, because often they are all white, all stale, because it’s often the same people. So, all male, all pale, all stale.

Bobbie: 37:29

Because we understand, you know, like event managers, they see somebody on stage who does a good job and they say, okay, I’m going to use that person again, or I’m going to use that person at my event. Which means that if you go to multiple events in an industry or a category, you might be seeing the same speakers over and over and over again. And that’s because speaking begets speaking. The more speaking you do, the more speaking you will do. And often the all-male, all-pale aspects of that are because industry leadership is all-male and all-pale and, by the way, I don’t have anything against old white guys, I happen to be married to one. It’s just that we need that diversity on stage in order to present diverse viewpoints and diverse life experiences. My experience as a woman is going to be different.

Tim: 38:47

And if we have those different experiences and they’re actually shared, then you know, what I told you a couple days ago is you know, we may actually learn something, we may actually want to change policy, we may actually want to change direction, or we may want to keep doing what we’re doing, or we may want to keep doing what we’re doing. You know, I think there’s so much to getting feedback from you know, from different people. Now, the page you told me about where you know there’s the ridiculous mantles Eddie, congrats, you’ve got an all-male panel Tumblr.

Bobbie: 39:28

Um why, congrats, you’ve got an all male panel Tumblr.

Tim: 39:32

Yeah, that’s Tumblr. Yeah, that Tumblr is, is a is a resource for, for, for a lot, for a lot of things, especially if you want to laugh, but but but tell us about that again. The resource for for, uh, all male for all-male panels.

Bobbie: 39:51

Yeah, so I mean, this Tumblr page has been up for many years and it’s called Congrats, you have an All-Male Panel and it’s a tongue-in-cheek poking at event managers who create mantles, and each picture of a mantle is stamped with a picture of David Hasselhoff from the Knight Rider. I mean, we’re going back a ways here, giving the event manager that big thumbs up. Good job, event manager. You once again managed to put up an all-male panel. Once again managed to put up an all-male panel. Now, my personal favorite is the all-male panel on breastfeeding.

Bobbie: 40:35

I mean, yes, they’re all doctors, but not one of them has had personal experience with the phenomena, so you would think that they could have possibly found some other expert on breastfeeding who might perhaps have been female.

Tim: 40:54

Exactly. Just maybe it’s killing you have to shake your head. I mean, you would think, though, that there would be somebody would see this and say you know what?

Bobbie: 41:07

Something’s just not right here, yeah we’ve got a problem folks, a little bit of a problem, yeah, and there’s actually things that men can do as well. Um, I recently gave a presentation and one of the pieces of feedback I got from a member of the audience is I am one of the male and pale folks, how do I help out? And there are various pledges that you can take, gentlemen, where you can say I will not appear on a mantle or I will not appear on a panel, that is all Caucasians panel, that is all Caucasians. And as you take this pledge, then you need to kind of deliver on it. So if you are asked to be on a panel, you need to raise up to the event organizers the issue and say hey, folks, I’ve noticed that this panel that you asked me to be on is all men currently. What can we do about this? Can we invite women? Do you need to replace me? Now, this is a big ask of men, because what they are being asked to do is to step down from their own speaking opportunities and, quite frankly, somebody who takes that pledge and is prepared to step down is probably enough of a male ally that I do want them to get their opportunities. So you know there’s a little bit of a thing going on there.

Bobbie: 42:48

I actually wanted to um give a shout out to another organization as well. Uh, they have an app called the ga tally, and ga stands for gender avenger, and the ga tally is an app that you can download and you can create a social media ready image that shows the gender balance and also the number of people of color on a speaking slate for a conference or an event. Oh, wow. It also has a really neat feature where you can sit in the audience during a talk or during a presentation, especially a panel, and you can push a button two buttons on this screen. One is labeled Dude and one is labeled not a dude and you can actually look at the share of voice, because having women on stage isn’t necessarily the end, it’s only the beginning. They have to be able to speak, and a lot of panels you’ll notice this. If the moderator isn’t like right on people, some people get more opportunity to speak than others. So you need that share of voice as well as you need the presence.

Tim: 44:22

Speaking of that number one, we’re looking for leaders. So, man, if you’re, if you’re signing this, good on you, but obviously follow through. But it goes back to we’re looking for leaders to affect change. And you know what I? I I get that it may, it may hurt a little bit, but I think in the end it will actually help. Be be a leader. That’s what we’re looking for, right? I mean, that’s to me, that’s what it’s all about. And how do you coach women to when they’re on a panel or they’re in a discussion? Let’s just talk about panels, for example, when they’re talking, they’re finally given their opportunity to talk and then they’re interrupted.

Bobbie: 45:13

Yeah, unfortunately that happens quite a bit, and sometimes you just need to be prepared. You know, if you get interrupted in the moment, sometimes it’s kind of hard to speak up unless you’re prepared for it. So I invite people to practice their preparation, especially if they’re going to be on a panel where there are one of the only women or the only women or only woman. So, for example, one of the things I love to use myself is wow, I really appreciate your enthusiasm, but just let me finish my point and then I’d love to hear your thoughts, or hold that thought. I’ll be wrapped up in just a moment. Or maybe you need to be a little bit stronger. I’d like to finish what I was saying and then we can discuss your perspective. So practice your response ahead of time, especially if it’s happened to you before, or perhaps you’re anticipating the interruptions.

Tim: 46:24

Yeah, those are a lot more less abrasive than I would handle it, but then again that’s just me and my style. When I get interrupted, I pretty much say thank you for interrupting me while I was, Thank you for talking while I was interrupting you. You know, it is what it is you know, I think as women.

Bobbie: 46:58

we have less leeway. If we are at all assertive, we are called abrasive If or worse.

Tim: 47:12

Worse.

Bobbie: 47:13

Or worse, you know. So we have to be careful. Even being funny, even being humorous, you can end up in trouble.

Tim: 47:26

Yeah, I don’t understand that. I just Neither do I, but has a story right. Everybody has something that they want to share about. Everybody has has their expertise and experience and if if we’re not willing to to accept that and listen to it, then we’ve got all kinds of other issues. Let that person be who they are. If you don’t, if you don’t like that personality, you don’t have to like that person out. Let them be them and move on.

Bobbie: 48:14

Yeah, I think that people forget that when we shut down someone else’s perspective, we also lose. What if that’s the person that had the answer to your problem? What if that’s the person that had the cure for cancer? What if that is the person that could make a difference in your industry, and yet they were never allowed on stage, they were never invited to be on stage. Like we are all losing when we lose the opportunity to hear from everyone.

Tim: 48:58

Is there anything else that you think we need to talk about that we haven’t talked about?

Bobbie: 49:04

I could talk about this topic for days.

Tim: 49:10

I understand, I really do. What about one piece of advice for women outside of stand up and do it now. Which would you give them?

Bobbie: 49:21

Yeah, I often tell people from the stage during my own presentations just say yes to public speaking and we’ll figure it out later on. Okay, yes, absolutely Say yes to any opportunities that you get and figure out how you can make it happen. But I think being prepared and practicing for public speaking opportunities is the biggest lesson that people need to hear. You know you are not expected to be an expert the first time you jump up on stage, but you can do things that will make you better, whether it’s asking a question from the audience, getting your practice there.

Bobbie: 50:12

I think we tend to think about public speaking very narrowly, like what we’re doing right now, that’s public speaking. Being on a panel, that is public speaking. And, by the way, being on a panel, that is public speaking. And, by the way, great opportunity, because you usually don’t have to do a whole presentation and you’re sitting in the comfy chairs on stage Like you’re just having a conversation and there happens to be an audience. But if you really are looking for a way to practice public speaking in a very small way, dipping your toe in the next time you go to a conference or an event, ask a question from the audience, you get to introduce yourself. You get to tell people who you work with or what it is you do. You ask your question and, ta-da, you are now a public speaker, because you spoke to the exact same audience that the speakers on stage spoke to.

Tim: 51:38

No applications, no preparation necessary, you just did it. So give that a try the speaker that’s on stage, or whether it’s other audience members. And now you’ve just grown your network, you’ve just grown your influence with very little effort by you.

Bobbie: 51:56

Yeah, I actually tell people that every time you ask a question from the audience, you just became the speaker on stage’s hero, because there is nothing more disheartening as a speaker to finishing up your presentation asking for questions and no one in the audience cares enough to ask a question. It’s like I’m dying. You know crickets and it’s awkward. So ask a question that shows that you’re interested in the topic.

Tim: 52:34

You’re interested. You listened Again. We’re looking for leaders. That’s to me. That’s what it comes back to as well. So, bobby, where can people find you if they want to work with you?

Bobbie: 52:46

Absolutely Innovationwomencom.

Tim: 52:49

Awesome and I’ll put that in the show notes for everybody.

Bobbie: 52:52

Thank you.

Tim: 52:52

So, bobbi, thank you so much for joining us today. I really do appreciate it. I love what you’re doing, I enjoy the conversation and hopefully we can connect soon and if I could be of any help, I’d love to be able to do that for you. Excellent, thanks so much. Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencecom to join our growing. I should know my own website. You know that’s the third time this week. That’s the third time this week I’ve messed up my own freaking website. That’s what editors are for. Oh, my goodness gracious, go again. Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcastcom to join a growing community and register for the Formula for Public Speaking course. Always remember your voice has the power to change the world. We’ll talk to you next time, take care.