In this episode with her, we discuss public speaking, how she started loving presentations and public speaking while being a lawyer writing the company’s board minutes, and what it takes to speak and present like a badass.

We opened the talk with Bronya sharing the story of how she started her career in the industry. In her first job as a lawyer, right out of law school, she ended up writing the board meetings’ minutes for the company she worked for. Don’t know what meeting minutes are? It’s like an instant memo of a meeting. No worries, Bronya is describing it in the episode. So, after countless hours of seeing the best and the worst in those meetings, she figured out her passion was public speaking. She then took a leap of faith in herself, and it took her where she is now – a public speaking coach running highly-customized sessions for numerous clients and the creator of The Badass Speaker Accelerator program.

She also talked about the inner critic we all have and how it is very wrong to think that you have to shut it out. Spoiler alert: you can’t! She shared a roundabout way of giving a personality to that inner critic, which can help you acknowledge that it is there to help you, not stop your growth.

Listen to the full podcast episode to learn more about what the three main problems are that you have to wrestle with to become a better and badass speaker and presenter. We hope you enjoy this one!

Connect with Bronya Spitzer on her LinkedIn here.

Boris Hristov:
Hey there and welcome to another episode of The World of Presentations podcast. Brought to you by us at 356labs, every single time. When I say this, it makes me laugh for some reason, probably because this episode is the 109th episode. So, my name is Boris. I’m the founder of 356labs, the company that brings this podcast to life. And today, together with me, we have a guest from our industry. Her name is… Let me be very careful here. Stay with me on this one. Bronya Spitzer, am I correct? All right. Brilliant. And currently, she’s based in Tel Aviv, but she’s now moving to Florida. I was about to say Orlando, Florida, but I don’t think it’s Orlando. So, she’s moving to Florida. She’s going to tell us where exactly she’s going to be. Now, Bronya is a public speaking coach, again currently based in Tel Aviv, but moving in a month to Florida and to the US. And she delivers highly customized one on one coaching sessions and runs something that’s an eight-week on-camera public speaking program called, and I wrote that down, “The Badass Speaker Accelerator.” All right, everyone. Bronya, thank you very much.

Bronya Spitzer:
Well done. You got the name right; you got the details right. Fantastic. Yes. Thanks so much for having me.

B.H.:
The name was a little bit tricky, although I say everything is great right now. When are you moving to Florida and where exactly?

B.S.:
So, for all the listeners and the viewers out there, this is very important information. I’ll be moving in July, mid-July, and we’ll be moving to that sunshine town of Boca Raton. That’s where I will be based.

B.H.:
Brilliant. Now., tell us a little bit more about how did you end up in the presentation industry and being a public speaking coach? What happened?

B.S.:
OK, so in order to understand how I ended up creating and developing the program, I have to take you back really to my first day at my first job back when… And not a lot of people know this about me, especially in my professional world, is that I’m actually a lawyer. And so yeah, so that I was, you know, going to my new job in my sharp suit and my high heels and wearing makeup, and I’m walking to the skyscraper in town and I’m riding up the elevator to the forty-fourth floor and I’m walking into the beautiful offices of beautiful building, and these are the offices of a very large, important public company.

And there I am. It’s my first day of my job and about to start working as a lawyer in the legal department. And I’m really excited. I’m fresh out of law school. That’s literally my first job. And I’m sitting at my new desk and my phone rings, and I pick it up and it’s my new boss. And she says, Bronya. I said, yes. Oh, hi, my heart is racing. And she says, “There is a board meeting right now in progress. I want you to pick up your things. You’re going in there and you’re going to take the board minutes.” And so of course I want to oblige and I’m very excited and I say, “Yes, yes, of course.” And I pick up my bags and inside I am absolutely freaking out because I have no idea what board minutes are.
I have never been to a board meeting, and I absolutely do not know what to do. And so very nice and sweet coworker took pity on me. She took me to the boardroom, which I do not even know where that where it’s located. And she’s and she gives me literally a ten second rundown of what it is that I’m supposed to do. She says, “Just sit there, listen to every single word that said and write down everything that you hear” Simple. I’m like, oh, my gosh. OK. So, I open the door, I walk in and there is a big, large room, big round table and around the table sitting there, many serious men in suits. And that was my first board meeting.

One of the people, they just said I should sit down in a chair, and they are so tapping away. And just to be clear, what board minutes are, OK? Board minutes is basically a compulsory document that every public company needs to have, which is basically a record of the actions and the decisions of the board members. OK, and it was my job as the lawyer to take down everything that’s been said, and this serves as a legal document. And in the event that the company is sued, this is evidence for all intents and purposes. So absolutely no pressure. And there I go and I’m tapping away. And basically, this ends up being a very primary and central part of my job. And I literally over the years ended up spending hundreds of hours, not exaggerating, in board meetings, transcribing and getting the front row seat to the best show in town, because literally I have seen it all when it comes to board meetings and presentations.

I began to understand the difference literally, inherently of what makes a snooze fest of a presentation and what makes a presentation magnetic and can convince the board and make everyone listen. And so there I was in my job and slowly over time, I began to realize that I had no business being a lawyer, and that law was making my soul slowly die inside. And I was very, very unhappy and I was very miserable. But I found that the part that I really most looked forward to during the week was those meetings. It was the times that I would go and sit and literally sit in the front row of a really good show because I love the communications aspect and I love the dynamics and the power plays and getting to see the different styles of communication and presentation.

And it’s there in my head. I believe even before I knew what I was doing, that I was developing kind of a process and a formula to really getting that presentation right. But as I mentioned, I was very unhappy. And so, all the time I was looking for ways to express myself in a creative way, looking for an outlet. So, in the evenings I signed up to a television course where I learned how to be a television presenter, one reporter, and I would go there in the evenings and after work I would, you know, I would go finish early some days until I got a little bit of experience on TV. And I produced and presented an article for TV that was, you know, live.

And I absolutely loved it. I felt like I was coming alive, and I got to use and implement all those presentation skills that I watched. And then I went to LA. I went on to learn radio and got a little bit of a sense of radio and radio, presenting and hosting. And finally, I took the plunge, and I left my really safe and comfortable and smart job as a lawyer. And I went to work at a TV station. And I’m going to cut a very long story short, but the short version of it was that I understood that a TV environment, a TV station wasn’t exactly the environment that I wanted to work in. And we kind of called it you know that chapter ended pretty soon, pretty fast.

And then I was unemployed. I left. I had left this career that I had spent seven years trying to attain, and I didn’t know what did I want to do, you know, what now, you know? And so, I had one day an epiphany, and I said, I want to become a public speaking coach. I’m just going to, you know, it all kind of the dots kind of connected my love of communication my experience in boardrooms and board meetings and presenting on TV and radio and my love of people. And it kind of all just fit together and I said, OK, this is what I want to do. And so, I said, OK, how do I go about doing that? And so, I went along, you know, the, you know, I was very easily sold to, and I bought into a course creating program where I was taught how to create my own program.
And the first thing that they tell you to do is market research, obviously. And so that’s what I did for the next month. I interviewed over 50 or pretty close to 60 people about their public speaking struggles. OK, because, you know, I actually wanted to hear from people in, you know, who are struggling with this. What is it that they’re actually struggling with? What is it that they need? And so, I drew it out there to social media. I said I didn’t give any details. I just wrote on my social media channels I’m in the process of creating something, developing something. If you’re struggling with, if you’re someone who struggles with public speaking, I’d like to interview you. And so many people reached out and I had interviews or interviews a day, and I would talk to them, and I would ask them questions and they would write down everything they say.

And in my head, I had this idea that I was going to leverage my experience in the corporate world and kind of coach corporate people. But and that was kind of the thing that I thought I was going to do. But the people that were raising their hands and saying, Oh, I need your help were not actually the corporate people. It was actually entrepreneurs, coaches and service-based entrepreneurs who were very experienced and were very knowledgeable and, you know, work very hard. But they were missing that special ingredient, which is putting themselves out there on video, which is something that they felt was missing from really standing out in a really saturated market. When people do, where they can actually be the face and voice of their brand. And they felt that their inability to do so was holding them back. And I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Like, that is not what I initially thought I was going to do. But, you know, as someone who was talking to people, I was I said to myself, I’m going to listen to the need and I’m going to develop something that they want. And so that is the long, short version of how the badass speaker accelerator came into life.

B.H.:
So, what happened then? You interviewed so many people. What are the top three issues that they or what are the top three things that they’re pointing to? Having in mind that in our audience we have entrepreneurs and people that run organizations. What are you hearing from them? And if we have to nail it down to the top three and respectively, what is the solution to each one of those?

B.S.:
OK, so it was actually very interesting because you know, as a public speaking coach and a lot of the public speaking books you’re probably familiar with, they speak a lot about the tactics and the tips and the tricks. And, you know, stories using stories and storytelling, but not a lot of them were referring to what I was hearing to these people from these people and what they were saying to me essentially was that they are their own worst enemy. When I asked them, So what’s holding you back? Why aren’t you why being you just getting on video? Why aren’t you just recording yourself and creating video content, putting yourself out there? They essentially told me because I am afraid and when we when I really ask them these questions like, what are you afraid of? So, they were afraid of judgment.

They were afraid of rejection. They were afraid of being visible. They were afraid of putting themselves out there and opening themself up to scrutiny from their peers. A lot of them people that I was speaking to. There are people just like me. There were people in the corporate world who felt like they needed they had to do something else like their soul was dying that they wanted to do their own thing. And the fact and putting themselves out there was the scariest thing that they could do because suddenly, you know, they have this persona. And I could very much relate to that. As someone who was a lawyer, you have this very serious kind of persona and demeanor, and they talk about very serious things. And suddenly to put yourself out there on social media and to be so exposed and vulnerable and talking about public speaking or about social media, talking about whatever it is that they want to talk about, they felt suddenly silly that perhaps people would laugh at them.
What would their coworkers like? What would that bosses think, what would their friends say of their family? And so that was a real big thing that came up. And the more we dug into it, the more we concluded that these voices that they are actually articulating are coming from within. These are their own and this is their inner critic. And that is basically the foundation of the work that I do with people. It’s focusing on the confidence and mindset aspect, and we do a lot of work in that area. So that’s the main primary one. The second one.

B.H.:
Is tell us a little bit more about how book let’s go let’s go with this one a little like what is the work that you do with those guys? Because I think that the everyone here who is listening or watching this follow up or associates with and what you just said will resonate with them. This inner critic is with everyone. And the higher stakes, the moment, and the presentation are, the more it talks to you. Right. So, what is let’s say one thing that the audience can do or can try to kind of make that low, that inner critic just disappears or at least not be as noisy or as loud as it OK.

B.S.:
Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. And I have to I have to relate to one of the words you said is what make the inner critic disappear? And that’s a big mistake that people think because the inner critic is there to say it’s not going to disappear, and our job is to manage it and to navigate it. Now, one of the most powerful and empowering, empowering things that we could do in order to manage our inner critic is to separate it from our self, is to separate it from us. And it’s easier said than done. But once think about all the times where you know, we do a lot of exercises, but essentially I get them to think about the times where we heard these voices, where the voice says, no, no, no, don’t do it.
Don’t say this, it’s already been said, or no one will listen. All these things that we these thoughts, that race in our minds, once we are aware of these thoughts, that is the first step awareness of it. OK, I hear these thoughts. These thoughts are not me. And then we go into a process of making a persona out of this inner critic. We separate it from ourselves. We give it a name and we say, OK, I hear my inner critic thank you, thank you in critic, because the job of the inner critic is just to keep me safe because it’s terrified that I’m going to embarrass myself and I’m being highly visible, and it doesn’t once. It just wants to keep me safe.
And so, we really go into the process of saying, OK, that inner critic, how does it sound? Is it what kind of voice does it have? Does it have a male voice? Does it have a female voice? OK, so it has a female voice and I’m talking about myself. All right, who’s saying it? How does she look? And I’m imagining the person who’s saying this, these words of, oh, baloney, you know, just cancel the podcast because, you know, maybe you’ll make a mistake, maybe you’ll look silly, maybe, you know, oh, it’s a woman she’s an old woman and she’s gray. She’s dressed in gray and she lives in this house and she’s looking out the window. And she says, all these people are doing unsafe things to stay in your house, so go out. And the second I personify this voice, it suddenly becomes humorous. And I say, OK, and I gave her a name and give her a name like what is.
And you call her whatever is you want to call her. Oh, him. I said, Oh, Mildred, thank you. Thank you for looking after me, but it’s OK. I got this like I’m OK. You can you can go back. You can you can chill, you know? And that is a really powerful thing because the second, you know, you can separate these voices. So that’s not me. That is a voice you have a job teaching me. So thank you for that. I got this. And then you feel the power of it, minimizing it. That’s really, really powerful.

B.H.:
All right. Interesting that that is the first time I’m hearing someone personify the inner critic inside of themselves. But yeah, that is an interesting one for sure. For sure. What about the second one you were about to say? The second thing that you found with the entrepreneurs that you interviewed, what was the second thing.

B.S.:
That I just found out? Yeah, I’ll get to that. I just want to add about the inner critic. A lot of times people think that if they ignore it or suppress it or be mean to it or shout it like this voice, it will go away. But, you know, I try to say that that is not the right way about it because it’s like a little child, you know, heaven forbid we should smack a child or do something. You know, it’s not going to help the child. It will only make them come back louder, stronger, more trouble. Right? So, the trick is the compassion the self-compassion to be conscious self. All right. So, the second one is being terrified of the camera because a lot of people they love that one and one. They love speaking to people and they get that energy from people in a room, and they see that feed of that energy and suddenly when they’re speaking to a camera, it’s such a sterile experience, especially not like we’re doing now where I can see you.

You know, you’re not here in this room, but I can see your face and your expressions. So, it’s easy for me to communicate. But when they’re recruiting a video by themselves in a room, looking down the lens it’s a very paralyzing experience for some people. And it is they feel really unnatural. So that is a really big one. So, so this is obviously there’s a lot of things that go into it, but the main the main kind of thing that we need to overcome is really, you know, becoming best friends with the camera. And understanding that the lens is the eye of the audience. And a lot of times, you know, apropos, personifying something, the people who really feel not, you know, kind of really tense in front of the camera, I encourage them kind of to put a picture of someone that they like or love next to the lens of the camera.

And or just above it and pretend they’re speaking to their friend. And look at that picture. And, you know, if it makes you smile, someone that you like, you know, a daughter, a friend, a mother, or a sister, you know, you smile and you really pretend like you’re talking to that person. It’s obviously something that is developed over time with practice but, you know, looking at someone helps you imagine the person that’s on the other end of the camera watching you yeah.

B.H.:
I think it just requires, as you mentioned, practice until you make it a habit, because even for me, it’s not natural to start looking at the camera. When we converted into this online, only a world, everyone was used to looking at the screen because this is where people were. But when you look at the screen for the other side, as you mentioned, the camera and the lens of the camera is the eye of the audience. So, it’s the eyes of the audiences. You’re missing the eye contact. And when there is no eye contact, we also teach our students that, hey, every single client that we work with especially in the corporate world, they themselves say that trust is mandatory if they try to. And if they want to move an audience from point A to point B, but in the in person, reality trust was built when you have eye contact.

Like one of the things that builds trust is, hey, are you looking at everyone in that room or in that expo hall or whatever it is, then why are we not doing this online? What’s going on? And why is your audience feeling disconnected right. One of the reasons was because everyone is looking at the screen and the lens of the camera and any other. Let’s go with number three. You have one more here?

B.S.:
So.

B.H.:
So, so far, the inner critic. The problem with the camera, and what is the third one?

B.S.:
The third one is not understanding the medium of your content and not understanding the pace of it, the fast pace. And a lot of times when people are creating video content, they don’t understand the micro attention span of that. Usually, social media with where they create the video content, the social media consumer, and it’s literally seconds where they decide to watch what you’re going to say. And so, you have such a tiny amount of time to hook them and draw them in. And so very often I see people and I say, why, why? And they start and they say, Hello, everyone, how were you? How was your day? So, I just wanted to tell you and then they get into it. Think about how many seconds passed since I told you that, right?
In Social media standards, that’s an eternity. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Instagram, but there are stories. So, each story, 15 seconds, a lot for 15 seconds is a long time. People don’t even have the patience to watch. 15 seconds. And so, every millisecond of that is crucial. And so that is one of the things that I really teach them to capitalize on the small attention span and to go right into the hook.

B.H.:
And so that one for sure, I think this is, so it is so relevant, especially you are coming and you going there from the online-only perspective. It is to me, it is unbelievable. You know, I was in December, I went to Barcelona for the biggest conference. It was actually an expo for four events. So, you can find every country on the planet presenting their hotels, presenting their countries and where you can do an event in that country.
And this was my first experience coming out of the cover thing and online only with our customer’s events, conferences, obviously, our conference itself then going to an in-person event again. And when the people like when we were seeing the audience going back for sessions, when the speaker went on stage, the only thing that I was doing is to navigate, to monitor. How was the audience reacting to that?

B.S.:
Well.

B.H.:
And whether or not they were engaging with her or with him or with them and the speed that you can see them disconnecting with nowadays is scary to watch, right? It is just scary to see because this thing is now applicable to every speaker, not just the person that I saw there, but also to meet you to absolutely everyone, probably because they came from the online world where everything was just a click away. Now, when the speaker is not engaging for like 10 seconds, it’s over. They open their laptop; they check their emails and all everything else. But listen, it is crazy how much we need to adapt and how much better I would say we need to become as presenter speakers, whatever we may want to call ourselves. Right. All right. So, let’s go with one more here. You are a public speaking coach, obviously, and you do that for living now.

B.S.:
So, I’m telling you, I mean, not long, but since 2020, 2021. So I’m pretty new in business, I’m still evolving and developing and formulating my niche and who I want to work with. So yeah, so less kind of established I’d say yeah.

B.H.:
OK, but still two years is four years or three years. So, what is the, what is the one thing that you would point to for entrepreneurs or and not only why would someone want to get and work with a coach, what is the, what would change what is the importance or how much more can they extract, let’s say, for their public speaking or in presentation skills when they work with something?

B.S.:
Yeah, it’s a really fantastic question. And I have a twofold answer because I always say, you know, there’s lots of books out there. There’s lots of resources and materials, tons on the Internet for public speaking. But I always say trying to learn good public speaking from reading a book is like passing the theory test of driving and then thinking you can go and drive a car. OK, it doesn’t work like that because public speaking is all about the implementation. And as a coach, that is something that we can facilitate and we can provide now, the thing about public speaking is that it’s not information that you can go and learn and it’s in your head and then you know it. It has to go through your head.
You need to create and form those new neural pathways and you have to implement; you have to apply it. Otherwise, it’s just information and that’s it. It will just stay information that you know about public speaking, and you will not become a better public speaker. And that’s something that’s really important because it’s also, you know, it’s not a fun thing to do because it requires you to step out of your comfort zone and do something that makes you feel uncomfortable. Right. Because, you know, it’s scary to step in front of it, in front of a crowd and think it’s uncomfortable and so people on their own perhaps will not willingly subject themselves to this discomfort. And so, the coach is there to provide that accountability, to provide that support framework as well in order for them to do it in a safe environment.

And with the appropriate feedback. That’s number one. Number two, and this ties back to the very theme of the things that we were speaking to at the start of the podcast, which is and this is what I always say, public speaking is an inside game. It’s an inside job. And I’m speaking about those of the people that are listening out there that look at public speaking as something that only other people do, you know, because they feel that it’s something that either you’re born with or you’re not. And they feel that, you know, that, you know, there’s all these people and they’re super confident and they do the public speaking jobs, and they feel the sense of frustration inside them because they listen. You know, they go to these conventions, all these professional conventions, and they listen to the person on stage, and they say, hey, I know that I know this stuff, but they feel that they can’t do that.
And that is the confidence and mindset work that I as a coach, that you work very, very deep with my clients, because scary often the person is their own worst enemy. And the obstacles that they have to overcome, it’s all in here. It’s a mindset. And so that’s where I work with my clients. So those are the two main reasons.

B.H.:
Yeah, I will take more than enough it’s more than wrong. Yeah. The badass speaker accelerator. Where can people find out more about it?

B.S.:
OK, so I’m a social media recovering recovery, which means I, I despise social media. And so, the main place that you can find me is LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn and you can find me Bronya Spitzer and I will come up public speaking coach and you can don’t hesitate, send me a message and we can chat and yeah, that’s where you can find me.

B.H.:
Brilliant, we are going to make sure that we put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes or in the description. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can find it there. I would also support what you just said about LinkedIn. We were exchanging messages. There was quite heavily extensive, and we met on LinkedIn first I would.

B.S.:
Say, that’s right, I’m.

B.H.:
Going to connect this. So, we need everyone, and Bronya is very responsive on LinkedIn, so reach out to her and find more about what she’s doing, what the again, the best speaker accelerator program is all about, what you can do within the together. I really like the name. Bring it. Thanks again for joining. This was almost 30 minutes. It’s almost 30 minutes but yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for doing this one.

B.S.:
No problem. My pleasure. It was so nice to speak to you.

B.H.:
Absolutely. Probably will have to do it again. And in the meantime, everyone, if you like the episode if you learn something new, help us reach more people and help us bring more people into the presentation world and make them wish for better presenters through the knowledge that the whole community has. You can just like subscribe, share with friends, and comment you know what you need to do in order for this episode to become a little bit more viral than it’s going to be if no one does it. All right. See you in the next one. Everyone.