In this third episode of the Story of a Speech podcast, we examine what a story actually is. What is the structure and it’s impact on the viewer/listener? Now because Michael de Groot is the resident storyteller, you will hear a lot of him in this episode, well of course it his specialist subject after all.
The Wild West in the UK — Michael & Josh — #weeklycartoon
It has been a few interesting weeks in the UK. The UK prime minister Theresa May resigning, EU Elections and the Brexit party winning (or losing?), you name it, we have had it all. UK politics remind me of the old Wild West and cowboys fighting it out with each other and that gave us the idea for our latest cartoon.
Last Chance Saloon.
For non-uk viewers, scene explanation; Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, UK MP’s are shooting it out to see who wins the leader of the conservatives/temporary prime minster position. There are many more in the race, but I am taking a punt, that it will be these two who will be fighting it out in the last rounds. After all, Gove stabbed Johnson in the back when the last race took place. I’m assuming that their campaigns will be based on ‘No deal’ for Johnson and ‘Withdrawal Agreement’ for Gove, but It is a wild wild guess. Vince Cable (outgoing Liberal Democrat leader) is holding his yellow handkerchief out, so when it drops to the floor they can shoot! Of course his campaign is for a 2nd vote. Nigel Farage (Brexit Party leader with largest EU parliament members voted in), is sitting on the bench drinking a milkshake and of course shouting, as he regularly does; ‘Brexit means Brexit. Note that Jeremy Corbyn is missing, he’s still making up his mind up what the Labour Party policy is going to be over Brexit, so far it has been painful.
In this second episode of the Story of a Speech podcast, we’re examining what a speech actually is. Now because Michael-Don is the resident signature speech coach, you will hear a lot of him in this episode, well of course it his specialist subject after all.
We would love to hear your views, comments and ideas for topics in future episodes. Reach out to us via Twitter, @mdonsmith and @stayingaliveuk.
Michael-Don Smith and Michael de Groot introduce the Story of a Speech Podcast. In this episode they introduce themselves, why they started this podcast and many other insights, ideas and discussions around the topics of public speaking, presenting and storytelling. We would love to hear your views, comments and ideas for topics in future episodes. Reach out to us via Twitter, @mdonsmith and @stayingaliveuk
As mentioned in the podcast if you wish to listen to Michael-Don’s full story, you can hear it on the #shareyourstory podcast.
‘Fear and Doubt’ are potentially the two words that sum up all suffering by humans on this planet. Although they are two different words, they are in fact the same for me. Doubt indeed can create fear and fear causes doubt. But together they make an interesting couple or are they two different sides of the same coin?
Just think about anything that you have ever encountered in your current life that has been a challenge for you, whether in business, your personal life, in relationships and you will come to realise that ‘Fear and Doubt’ will have featured heavily.
‘Fear and Doubt is used by governments to keep control over their citizens and stop them from creating revolutions against those governments in charge, no matter how badly they are performing. Just consider the dictatorships that exist and have existed around the world through the ages. They have all used ‘Fear and Doubt’ to exert control over their citizens. Only when the people of nations decide to over come the fear and doubt that has been bestowed upon them, are they able to create meaningful change, which has happened for example during the Arab Spring some years ago.
Apart from governments, teachers use the same techniques to exert control over their students to prevent any bad behaviour in school, usually very unsuccessfully.
In all areas of society, the workplace, society, medicine, homelessness, relationships, the already mentioned governments and many other areas, ‘Fear and Doubt’ is used to control us and more importantly even our own attention on these means we exert control over ourselves.
It is all part of what Tony Robbins calls, conditioning. In fact he calls it ‘Neuro Associative Conditioning’ or NAC.
We condition ourselves and we have been conditioned to stay in ‘Fear and Doubt’.
This all adds up to what the Buddhists call ‘suffering’. The human condition and our biggest task on this planet, how to overcome suffering and find happiness.
So I developed this ‘Happiness Formula’, which if you have read the above will make perfect sense, I hope.
Happiness does not equal suffering and suffering is a function of ‘Fear and Doubt’. See image below. 👇
Now knowing that this is true, and you will have to put it to the test to prove it to yourself, is one thing but to reverse it is another. Those years of conditioning are tough to undo.
But have no fear I am giving you something to ponder. My wife, Clair and I were mulling this over one day and we jointly arrived at a beautiful statement to counter ‘Fear and Doubt’.
‘Courage and Clarity’.
So the real answer to happiness is ‘Courage and Clarity’.
Hope you like it, now go and test it out and I would love to hear how you get on.
Theresa May as the Pied Piper — #weeklycartoon — Michael & Josh
Lots happening in the UK Parliament today (27 March 2019). Nobody knows what will happen next, however I got an image in my head of Theresa May (UK Prime Minister) as the pied piper with just a few rats, oops I mean politicians, following and the rest of the rats way behind and going in opposite directions. History is being written right now. Enjoy!
Our venue at The Civic in Stourport on Severn — Photo by Daryl Barber
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Thanks to a new friend Chris Sanson, who we visited in Devon during August of 2018, I’ve taken up Taiko Drumming.
Taiko is the art of Japanese drumming on very large drums and performed in a group format. It’s electrifying to watch and even better to play.
I played on a conventional drum kit, when I came to the UK in 1977. I then joined a punk band in London in 1978 and we even recorded a very poor demo tape in a studio in Islington. We didn’t have a name for our band, so I named it ‘Islington’, listen to our recordings below! I loved drumming. But life took over, a possessive girlfriend didn’t like me leaving her behind and she had no interest in my craft. I gave it up. Probably the biggest regret of my life I can recall.
But the regret has now turned into joy. Chris showed me what Taiko was all about, explained it and I knew that I had to do it. Upon returning to the Midlands after our trip to Devon, I searched to web to find a local class or group. There were none!
Except a class, one hour drive away. I booked on it and have been a student of Taiko now for the best part of 6 months. I attended my weekly class in Church Stretton, Shropshire, a monthly class in Bearley, Stratford upon Avon and I have even convinced my teacher, James Barrow of Taiko West, to open up a class in my local town Stourport on Severn in February 2019.
We’ve been interviewed on local radio twice (BBC Hereford and Worcester), you’ll find the interviews below, and have had a great attendance so far with booking for the next 3 months looking really strong.
Most Social Media feeds have become a feed littered with adverts and I’m not even talking about the paid adverts that appear there, although there are of course millions.
As Social Media Marketing World winds up it’s series of keynotes, its highfiving, the back slapping, littered with sound bites and good vibes towards everything Social, the objective of it all was really to learn about how to get more money out of consumers.
I feel like being sick in my porridge. Denial is the key word here, every Social Media Marketer is in denial of the damage Social Media is doing to humankind, the exploitation of our democracy and our choice to choose our own consumerism.
Not only will they be coming back to their communities with new ideas on how to con their connections, they will be delivering their workshops to teach others how to do the same and charge handsomely for the privilege.
I used to be a huge proponent of Social Media when it all appeared dubbed as Web 2.0. I spent many hours learning this skill and teaching others too. I’m totally guilty and was taken in by it all. However little did they know how they were going to use it to grow their gold reserves. It took a while for them to realise where they were heading towards themselves and then they discovered that our desire to be able to communicate with friends and loved ones via a digital medium meant that we were very very happy to share our most intimate details, thoughts and desires, including our anger and frustrations.
Global mental health is a rising epidemic and we already know that Social Media has a massive part to play in this rise. I first wrote about this in 2013 in the non-significant journal of psychology, an article titled ‘Do Social Networks Sell Drugs?’.
We also know that Social Media has been used to manipulate voters to elect Donald Trump as president, possibly the biggest abuser of democracy the free world has ever seen. It has also been used to deliver ‘Brexit’, the Social Media mastermind that came up with the slogan ‘Take back control’, Dominic Cummings, portrayed by the brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch in ‘Brexit: The Uncivil War’.
Molly Russell’s father Ian says he believes Instagram is partly responsible for his daughter’s death. Molly Russell committed suicide whilst being active on Instagram and she is just one of the reported cases we know of.
Whilst I appreciate that Social Media has also been responsible for much good in the world. The Ice Bucket challenge, that went viral on Social Media to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). It raised a lot of money for the charity, which supports the sufferers of this disease. There are I am sure thousands of examples where Social Media has been beneficial for many.
However, there is a huge underlying motive for the owners of these platforms and that is to make money for it’s shareholders.
Printing money from your content, your discussions, your fears, your mental health. If you knew the extent of the exploitation that’s taking place you would leave these platforms overnight. But you don’t, even though you realise at some level that this is happening, we are in fear of missing out (FOMO) and the platform owners know this all too well. They’ve built their technology to ensure that this is the case constantly.
As a result most business owners now believe that Social Media is the ONLY way now to promote their products and services and they are spending billions in doing so.
But not everyone has millions to spend on advertising and they are using the newsfeed to post their adverts for free and that’s why the newsfeed has become the advertfeed.
In years to come the newsfeed will disappear completely, it doesn’t have the value it once had. Community discussions will grow and replace it, I call it the ‘Group Chat’. These aren’t that new, they have been emerging on messaging apps, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Snapchat and Instagram.
But we don’t need to be beholden to these platforms, you can look to create your own community chat forums, just like the ones we used to have in the good old days. We may have to pay a small amount for them, but I promise it will be worth it in the long run.
Leadership is potentially the most difficult human trait any human has to perform and try to master. Unfortunately most of us will never realise our potential.
We are all leaders in our own lives, you don’t have to be managing people to be seen as a leader. Leadership is evident in your deeds, in your words, in your writings, your actions and behaviour towards humankind.
In the past week, we’ve had many opposing examples of leadership in the world. Without going into massive detail, I’m sharing some of the top level detail of those leadership examples.
The first leadership example is by Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, whose outstanding leadership amongst one of the worst terrorist crimes to take place in her country, has been incredible. Her compassion and decisive gun law changes is a great example of leadership in government. Let’s hope that many leaders in the world will look to copy her leadership style.
The second leadership example is by Theresa May, UK’s Prime Minster, whose leadership style is quite interesting indeed. I am sure you have heard about Brexit and it is quite an emotive topic in the U.K. and has been for at least 6 years, when leaving the EU was first promoted by the previous Prime Minister, David Cameron. Theresa May went on national television to complain about parliament for not voting for her deal. She also takes everything very personally and uses the ‘I’ word regularly. She rarely says ‘we’, suggesting that she is the only one running the country, which of course can’t be further from the truth.
The third example is Donald Trump, who will go down in history for potentially the most famous president of all time. He loves the limelight and if he doesn’t get it, he goes on Twitter rants. His latest rant was a series of 29 sequential tweets in one rant sitting. It almost seems as if he is unable, unwilling and incapable of actual speaking with people. He uses Twitter to hide behind and believes he can reach his supporters in this way.
In summary one great leadership example and two poor ones.
Hopefully you will chose example one to take forward into your journey of leadership.
I wonder if David Cameron (Ex Prime Minister) gets a good night sleep to think that he persuaded the UK electorate to vote for the Tories (Conservative Party) and would make sure we would get a referendum to decide whether to stay in or leave the European Union. We are actually all Europeans, we live on her continent, but we may not all be ‘Europeans’.
The EU government run by non-elected officials who are at best administrators have never really had the UK interests at heart.
If their reaction and language has anything to go by, it proves that the UK should not be part of their administrative process. The cultures between the countries in the EU are so diverse and apart from having the same currency and some of the same labour laws, basically the countries and its people are very very different. A united EU has never been a true possibility and now with the UK out of it, it will never happen.
That Theresa May (Prime Minister at time of writing) believes that she can force the elected members of parliament and the UK constituents to lay down and accept a deal that she agreed, without initial consultation, is unacceptable to the democratic process in the UK. To then complain that MP’s use their democratic right to vote against an unacceptable deal means that she is lost in her own power.
Words like ‘you the Public’, in a recent address on TV (20 March, 2019), shows that she is so far removed from the ‘Public’ and our lives and how all this seems to be about her. I say this because if you listen carefully Theresa May uses the word ‘I’ very often.
In scrolling through Twitter, I discovered a tweet promoting a petition to revoke article 50 (Brexit) and when I clicked through to it, the amount of signatures that were being added were running at some pace. I looked in the morning at around 6.30pm and there were 392k signatures, now looking 3 hours later, there are 632k signatures, 240k added in just 3 hours.
The government must have a debate in the house if it reaches 100k signatures, I think this has been surpassed 6-fold and it will likely reach the millions.
I know the TV is now classed as an old-fashioned way of absorbing entertainment. We’re now spending potentially more time on YouTube and Netflix compared to watching traditional TV programming.
However here in the UK we pay a TV licence fee directly to the BBC who is, allegedly, adverts free. The cost of this is around £13 per month, give or take a few pennies. This is double of what we’re paying for Netflix, not insubstantial I thought.
The BBC is a national institution in the UK, many regard them as the best TV in the world, which of course includes their news channel and many radio channels, both national and local. They have done a decent job of introducing BBC iPlayer in order to allow us to catch up on programmes we may have missed and also access some box sets of past series. We have been enjoying Cuckoo right from the start, as we had not seen it previously.
However Netflix is also transmitting many series that originally have appeared on BBC TV, so wondering where the value is now?
My complaint however is that the BBC is starting (maybe I had not noticed before) to repeat programmes that had either been aired the previous day, albeit on a different channel and even a topical news comedy series, which had aired last year.
If we wanted to watch programmes again, surely we can just watch it on the BBC iPlayer app?
Furthermore the BBC is also planning their own streaming service in partnership with ITV (UK commercial channel) called ‘Britbox’. I suspect any box sets that currently are available on the BBC iPlayer will probably transition there and then we’re expected to pay for that as well?
Eros & Manneken Pis — #weeklycartoon — Michael & Josh
Listening to all the nonsense discussions between the EU and the U.K. in connection with Brexit, I imagined the Eros statue in London Piccadilly Circus, shooting arrows at the Manneken Pis statue in Brussels and that’s exactly what our latest cartoon shows. Enjoy!
It no longer makes any sense to post on Social Media. What purpose is it serving you? Are you advertising or are you showing off? At some level it meets a need in you to be recognised, looking for affirmation or even looking for attention. But all the content you have posted in the past 10 years has been lost, you are not able to retrieve it, unless you are writing on a site like this or on your own blog. This will be my strategy going forward. Writing in places where a permanent record is kept, where I can download my writings, which after all are precious and I have invested time, effort and thinking time towards.
I used to be a serial networker when I first discovered the practice in 2005 after leaving corporate life. I had been convinced that ‘network marketing’ (MLM) was the future and signed up (mug) to a project that operated in the telecoms industry called Euphony Telecommunications. Needless to say the company no longer exists. The concept was getting people cheap calls by plugging their phone into a box, which re-routed the call and you could save hundreds on your bill. I was convinced I would be the next telecoms millionaire, they promised it after all.
After falling out with friends and family who did not want to support me, they’re supposed to be your warm prospects in MLM by the way, I needed a new strategy. And hey presto business networking was it! I was introduced by someone, no idea who and I’ve never forgiven them either, to join BNI. Another mistake. Pay a big amount for a substandard unhealthy breakfast and pretend that you can give business to lawyers, printers, will writers, insurance brokers, accountants and financial advisors. They clean up at these events, because, well, every business needs those services right? Wrong!
This started my decade of being a serial networker and apart from the odd bit of loose change, I never made any substantial business from them. So I changed my approach and outlook.
I see networking events as places where I can build relationships with like-minded people. I have actually made some really great friends for many years now and I did get some business from them and ‘some’ is the key word. I am grateful of course I am, but it’s never long term sustainable business. It’s just that they wish to be nice to you.
I see networking events as an opportunity to learn from others and use any tips that I may pick up for my own personal and growth. I go to see what I can give and not what I can take. I go to listen to the people I meet instead of touting what I have to sell. Invariably I strike up a better connection with someone when I let them speak first and I ask questions to uncover their story. After all people’s stories are the most interesting part of who they are.
And that’s why I was inspired to start my own podcast ‘Share Your Story’. You can listen to it here; stayingaliveuk.com/podcast.
But, nowadays I see so many networking pundits, my new name for the organisers of networking events, spouting on about what you might be missing out on and the potential business you are losing by not attending their events. I like meeting people because working on your own can be a very lonely experience but there’s nothing better than being in the office, getting orders and working on your own projects because at the end of the day it pays the bills.
Networking costs on average £5k per year for most businesses. Be interesting to note what your ROI would be on that.
Have I been cured of my networking addiction? After a long while of not going to any events, it slowly creeped up on me again, like some virus. I must confess my amount of networking has increased to a level that I’m questioning myself yet again.
These are the events I have been known to attend regularly: Tech Wednesday — It’s an evening event so I convinced myself it doesn’t interfere with my day. Silicon Canal — Another evening event and I did the same with that one. Maker Monday — Oops another evening one. Fiverr Community — Oh my god another evening one and the same excuse! Actually I haven’t been attending the Silicon Canal and Tech Wednesday events for quite a while because of other personal interests, like Taiko drumming and Yoga, so maybe I’ve only been going to two events per month after all. Not too bad then.
But then I am being told across Social Media that I’m missing out by not going to Phoenix Lunch, Gem Media Lunch, Coffee & Natter, Chutney & Chat, Cereal Network and many many others. The ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO) brigade is well and truly at work and it does take a lot of effort to stop being persuaded to go to all of these events, spend a fortune on expenses and lost productivity.
I’ve decided on just one networking event per month and that will be in the evening and it will be based purely on who the speaker is going to be at that event. If they don’t grab my attention, I’m not going. There you have it, I’ve decided.
Theresa May & Donald Tusk — Wonderwoman and Hellboy — #weeklycartoon — Michael & Josh
“I’ve been wondering what that special place in hell looks like.” ~ Donald Tusk — EU Council’s President. Guardian article. His comment inspired our latest cartoon; Hellboy (Tusk) meets Wonder Woman (May).
Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May — A Dog’s Brexit — #weeklycartoon — Michael & Josh
It’s not boring in the U.K. is it? We have a Brexit shambles. It took me days to think of a cartoon to sum up the current state of ‘fear and doubt’ in this country and then it came to me a ‘Dogs Brexit’. Enjoy!
Theresa May like Oliver Twist — #weeklycartoon — Michael & Josh
Theresa May has had to go begging to EU ministers to get more clarity on the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’, she also went begging to her own conservative parliamentary party to remain confidence in her. It reminded us of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. The question is does she actually deserve more? It inspired our latest cartoon. Enjoy!
Well that depends on the eye of the beholder, the person who just was trolled, spammed, hacked or they had their private data stolen, because they trusted Facebook or Google or Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram and all of the others who exist and don’t exist yet.
When you have a service, which is free to the user and the prime objective is to get as many eyeballs as possible on the platform, so they can parade it in front of advertisers, you have just created a toxic recipe for disaster.
Why?
Because now the same platform that has billions of users, becomes very attractive to governments at large. Ever wondered why not one single government in the world has taken any serious action against Facebook? Because they all want access to the public data. I have sat through presentations where cyber security professionals can walk all over Facebook in nano-seconds and deliver the kind of intelligence on people they would have only dreamt of years ago. Mark Zuckerberg will be loved and hated always.
Loved because now criminals and charities can get in front of millions. Loved because governments are able to manipulate audiences. Brexit and Trump come to mind and they are the ones that grab the headlines.
If you believe that Facebook can police the millions of users that create bad stuff, the so-called bad actors, think again and again and again. They may tell us they have employed thousands of employees staring at screens, trying to catch the bad actors.
What’s the solution Michael?
It’s so simple, you will be amazed why it has never been done before.
Verification!
Instead of spending millions on having people stare at screens, trying to catch bad people in the act, good luck with that, have them spend the time verifying every single user, whether existing or new and especially the new (hacking) kind.
Everyone should have a verification tick. Governments can do it with all citizens, well most of them anyway, so why can’t these platforms adopt the same approach.
Sure it will slow down the user growth and billions of dollars of income, but it sure would be a guarantee that bad actors would find it much harder to keep adding fake accounts all over the place.
That’s the sad situation with Andrew. Andrew is 75 years old, a retired first officer in the British Navy. I met Andrew whilst volunteering during the health and well-being week, organised by Crisis Birmingham Skylight in the week leading up to Christmas 2018.
Andrew is very talented, he started by sharing some funny stories (jokes), which are great and he knows a LOT of them.
He shared a little bit of his story with me.
Being a British Officer in the British Navy meant that he sailed the open seas for many years. He shared just one such journey with me. It was the S.A. Seafarer that stranded off the coast of South Africa on July 1st, 1966. Most people were hoisted off by helicopter and this is when Andrew’s journey began in earnest.
As he was an Officer in the Navy he had a passport that allowed him to stay in South Africa, so in effect he was repatriated there. I know very little of what he did after that, except that eventually he retired into a home in South Africa.
S.A. Seafarer August 1966
Unfortunately the home closed down, which meant he had to go back to England, which is when his homeless journey started.
Living in a hostel in Birmingham, he doesn’t wish to have his own house now, he can’t deal with the hassle and why does he need any belongings at his age?
He seems content in the hostel, but nevertheless he is still homeless, living with other people who are deemed homeless too.
Should this be his outcome after having served in the British Navy for many years and now left to live out his few years left in the world inside a hostel? Surely there’s something seriously wrong with how we handle our homeless in this country and possible even the rest of the world. How did we manage to get such parity between the rich and the poor?
At Christmastime, there is a lot of guilt and many reports about our homeless situation in the U.K. and then it all goes quiet, and we forget about the plight of the homeless. Not charities like Crisis, they continue with their work, assisting the homeless to get off the street, out of temporary accommodation, provide education to develop new skills or dormant skills, help them into permanent accommodation and into a vital job of work.
And that’s not all, they campaign heavily with the government and members of Parliament to change the law and improve outcomes for these vulnerable citizens in our communities. They have a 10 year plan to end homelessness in the U.K. and you can download a copy here.
Show your support, by talking to anyone who might be homeless, it’s likely there might be several in your own private network, but you won’t even have noticed them, they’re not all on the street.
