 Hey there and good morning or afternoon, whatever time it might be, that you're joining us here at the nonprofit show. We are so glad to have you back and I am so glad to have you back, Ashley Bright. Ashley joins us, he's the message fixer and he's gonna talk to us today about overcoming stage fright and sharing five easy tips with you. So stay with us, it's a poignant conversation because many of us in the nonprofit space are often making presentations. So it's a good topic for us to talk about. So hopefully, Ashley, you yourself don't have stage fright in this moment, but if you do, I know you've got your own five tips for that. And Julia and I are just so glad to be here with you and all of you are viewers and our listeners each and every day. Julia Patrick is here, CEO. She is at the American Nonprofit Academy and I'm Jarrett Ransom, her nonprofit nerd, but yours too, CEO of the Raven Group and really honored to serve alongside as a co-host for the nonprofit show. We owe so much gratitude to our amazing partners. So thank you, thank you, thank you to our presenting sponsors. I'm gonna give a verbal shout out to our friends over at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd as well as the nonprofit tech talk. So thank you to these companies. I like to remind everyone every day that these companies are here for you. They're not just here for the nonprofit show although we are so grateful that they are, but they're really here for you and your support. So please do lean into them because they are certainly there to lean into you. And hey, we are celebrating moving into many episodes and you can find all of them on Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Fire TV and you can also listen to us on the podcast. So anywhere you stream your podcast, go ahead and queue up the nonprofit show there as well. So we have a lot happening, a lot going on, really excited for today's conversation. You know, again, coming up on nearly 800 episodes and Ashley, thank you for saying yes to join us again. You have been on the show before and again for our viewers and our listeners. This is Ashley Bright, CEO and the message fixer. What have you been up to, my friend? Well, first of all, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction and it's great to see your smiling faces again. It is my, this is my second or third time on and I'm excited to be back. I have been busy, you know, with COVID sort of, you know, hopefully in the background for the next while we've been, things have been opening up. And so I've been doing a lot of speaking gigs. I've had the good fortune to be in Toronto and Vegas and I've actually made a couple trips out to North and South Dakota and it's been wonderful getting reconnected with people and looking out from the stage and seeing those smiling faces all ready to learn and be empowered. And so I'm loving it. And other than that, I've been working on some, a variety of different workshops and some new nonprofit focused workshops which we can talk about maybe towards the end. But I'm excited to be here and I can't believe we haven't talked about this topic yet. This is such a elephant in the room kind of topic. It is. It really is, Ashley. And I think, you know, we think a lot of times, oh, it's like getting up on a stage and making the big pitch or whatever. But I think we need to back it up because I think it could be speaking in front of a board, making a presentation to a funder or for a grantor. It can be a smaller but intimidating group. And so I love this concept and I know you're gonna help a lot of people. I mean, Jared and I, as we show up today in our matching outfits that we did not plan on. I planned what I just got to say. It does speak to a bigger issue about being the Bobsy twins. However, you've got five steps and the first one is kind of an unexpected one. Exercise and stretch. What does that look like? Well, so when we think about that, that fight or flight, that anxiety, that fear you feel going into your point, to any situation, could be a job interview, could be meeting with the board, could be getting up on stage, could be getting on a Zoom call. You've got that nervous energy. And part of that is that your body is, we're hardwired to survive. And so your body's doing the thing it's supposed to do. It's giving you that energy so that you can be ready to fight or flight, as it says. So one of the things that I always recommend and that I do personally, is to do my best to burn off as much of that energy as I can. And so for everybody that's gonna be a little bit different. For me, I'll usually go for a run, maybe do some yoga or work out of some sort. But the idea is you're just sort of minimizing the amount of energy that your body is gonna give you. So hopefully starting to kind of tap down that nervousness and that anxiety that comes from it. So that's what I do, and that's how I approach it. You know, this is again, such a critical talking point for us to take because whether we are innately an introvert, an extrovert somewhere in between, for all of you, I think you can only imagine I am a complete extrovert and I've always been, right? But I have to, I know. I can't believe it. Own up that I still get stage fright. You know, even with the amount of presentations, the amount of speaking opportunities, my extrovert energy, I still experience stage fright. So. Isn't that, Ashley, before we go on to step number two, isn't that kind of a sign of a, it's a good thing? Or are we just selling ourselves something? I mean, because I've always heard if you don't have stage fright, then you've got a bigger problem. Yeah, I mean, I think it's an inherently a human thing. I mean, as I said, you're hardwired for this. And so I've heard many accounts of, you know, very famous people, people that are on stage all the time that have some sort of a ritual they go through before they go on stage, some more extreme than others because that is just, it's just part of the game. I heard a wonderful quote years ago that said, you know, you're not really gonna be able to minimize the butterflies, the trick is getting them to fly in formation. Oh, I love that, I've not heard that. Yeah, and it's been attributed to a few different people, but I just love the essence of that quote, which is like, you're not gonna make them disappear. It's about learning how to adapt and have a level of control over it so that you can go on stage and be successful. Oh, good. Yeah, I think it's really important to talk about that because so many people, you know, have said to me in my career, like, oh, I know it's no problem for you. And I was like, no, no, no, trust me. I still go through a process of my own, of preparation and stress and anxiety and all of that. So as we talk about this, you know, just really looking at it from all different lens, I love the exercise and stretch. I don't think that I could go out and run because that would be even more stressful for me. But as you said, for us to find what that means for us. Yeah, it could be stretching, it could be meditation. I mean, you know, the point is that you're taking some time to put some concerted effort into trying to minimize that energy. I think that's probably the best way to sum it up. Okay, great. Well, that was tip number one. So moving into overcoming stage fright, tip number two, you have here shift nervous energy to passion. Talk to us about that one. Certainly. So the previous one was very much about what's going on with your body. This one is very much about what's going on in your mind. Okay, many times our mind, again, it's sort of about survival. And so it's trying to stop you from putting yourself in a situation where you may be vulnerable. And so it's gonna be telling you potentially like, you know, don't go do this. You're gonna make a mistake. You're gonna screw up. People aren't gonna believe you, et cetera, et cetera. You know, that kind of inner critic. And so part of this exercise is really taking some conscious effort and some time to shift that focus from that fear to the value that you can be providing. Okay, whatever situation you're walking into, you have value, you have knowledge, you have expertise, you have something to share that other people are there to hear. And so shifting from that fear and I'm gonna fail to, I'm gonna provide so much value and bringing that passion forward for what you're doing. I think especially in the nonprofit space, people are very passionate about what they're doing. And so if you can bring that forward, not only does that help you feel more confident and feel better, but it's also gonna resonate with your audience, okay? They're gonna feel that passion. They're gonna wanna participate. And so it's incredibly important to just really kind of shift your mindset to the value, the passion, the impact that you can have. You know, Julia, think about this. We've had again, nearly 800 episodes and probably over 650 unique guests like yourself, Ashley. And we go through that all the time, right? Reminding the guest, you are the expert, you know? This is your passion, this is what you know, live, eat, sleep, breathe all the time. So I love really like having that mindset to shift what could be nervous energy to passion because you're right, we're coming from a place of a lot of knowledge. Yeah, yeah, and time served, time served. Okay, now this one, I'm really interested in hearing what you have to say. And I'm gonna switch it up because I'm going to expand my presence with my right glasses because I have waited for a long time to get these glasses on. They look wonderful. They're prescription, dude. So I mean, I gotta say, okay, what does expand your presence mean? Is it funky glasses? It could be, it could be. It's whatever it is, much like the first couple. It's sort of whatever works for you. But the idea here, I mean, we've heard this sort of old, I don't know if there's truth to it, but you know, if there's a bear trying to run at you, you wanna look big. Personally, I've never been in that situation, so I'm not sure how that would work. But it's very much this idea of how your physiology and what you're doing with your body can help transform how you feel. And some of you may be aware of a woman named Amy Cuddy who is a social psychologist and she's got a couple of wonderful TED talks out there, but she talks about the power. And they've actually studied this. There is scientific data to back this up, that if you hold certain poses, power poses where you're large and you're feeling strong, before you walk into an interview, you go on stage, you walk into a meeting, that it actually changes sort of your entire sort of outlook and the feeling that you have. And so you feel more confident, you feel more powerful. Similar to the previous tip, it's helping you recognize that passion, that value, that impact that you can have. Yeah, and I love that you addressed this because again, for women, we have been taught to stay small, right? Don't take up space and you want to look and appear smaller, thinner. And that's really, I think, from like an attraction, probably sexual in nature state, but really what you talk about with Amy, this power posing that she talks about is fantastic. And that's for all, all people, every single person. So thank you for bringing her up. She's one of my favorites, right along with Brené Brown. But yeah, Amy is fantastic and what she shares in that is really, really amazing. So really expanding our presence does make that shift. I want to say like in our neurons. Yes, yes, it's hard wired. It really transforms sort of your entire body and your entire outlook and the feeling that you have. And it's only a couple of minutes. If you can find a quiet spot to get in that position and hold that, I will admit to doing that in bathroom stalls at different locations when I'm about to go on stage, but you just stand there and you kind of get in the zone and you get ready to walk out there and be powerful. Yes. You know, I love that because I think you can see people doing that sometimes whether they really know that they're doing it or not. But it's kind of an interesting part of being in the animal kingdom. You know, that we do, we were joking about the bears, but we truly do need to emphasize our being. And I love the word expanding presence. I think that's brilliant. Yeah, you're sort of psyching yourself up for another term. Yeah, yeah. And building confidence, right? That like we're going to stand there. We've already done our run or our meditation or yoga practice, whatever that is, we've shifted our energy, which was tip number two, from nervousness to passion. And now we're like, I'm gonna say like locking that in, locking that in, expanding our presence with confidence. So that when we take the podium, or we take the stage, or we take the microphone, right? Like we're really coming from a place of poised presence and confidence. So I love that for tip number three. So move us into tip four, which I can't believe we're going so quickly. There's a lot, I know there's a lot to cover here. You work with a lot of different organizations, but we have here stage fright, tip number four is to slow down. So talk to us about this one, Ashley. Certainly. So you see like the progression of tips here, we're getting sort of closer to being at the main event. And so now step four, tip four, you've walked out on stage, you've walked into that donor meeting, you've walked into that place that's given you potentially that nervousness in the beginning. And now you need to be present and aware of what's going on. And one of the things is learning to speak with a certain level of pacing. Looking for those pauses, being aware of how you are projecting on your audience. Because again, if we let that nervous energy take hold, we often will start talking really quickly and we won't be able to understand and we'll be moving around and it'll be versus I'm here, we're going to talk about this topic. It's going to be really valuable for you. Here's how it's going to work. Let's get started. And learning how to use your voice and your pacing to capture attention and also calm your nerves a little bit more. Because again, you are the subject matter expert. You have the knowledge that people are there to hear. And so you want to help make sure it's heard, it's understood, it's easily processed. And so if you can slow down and just get comfortable with those pauses, it's going to help serve you. That, I love it. And just as you shared that example with us, when you exercised the fast talk, the lack of pauses like already my nervousness, my anxiety was like, oh my gosh, I can't keep up. And there's so much noise in our world right now. There's so many distractions. And I'm imagining you, Ashley presenting on a big stage, a lot of people, people are checking their emails either on their laptops, their phones, their watches, like whatever smarty device they're using. And then having the speaker even project that energy, I think just continues more of that, more fast pace. But as you then demonstrated that exercise and slowed down, it immediately drew me back to like being present. Right. Yeah, present in the moment. It's amazing the power of a pause. It's true. When you hold that space, whether you're on a Zoom call or you're in a room with people, that pause, you know, you'll suddenly, the people will kind of perk up because they're, wait, what happened? There's a pause. And it's incredibly powerful as a tool for kind of capturing attention, also maintaining that pace. And ultimately it's about communicating your message more effectively so it's heard. So Ashley, let me ask a question about this because I know that with me, and I do a lot of public speaking, you know, you do work hard to amp yourself up and to go out there and be strong and build confidence and all that. But there's also that point where you have to quote, read the room. And I find that I go in like troughs, like I'm, okay, I gotta go faster. Okay, I gotta go slower. I gotta go, you know, where do we do that? How does that fit into this? Or is it just not part of this conversation? No, it is very much part of this conversation. And I mean, I think both of you with the amount of time you've been doing public speaking and being on stage, you probably have a pretty good intuitive sense for what the room is feeling and kind of the energy. And so as people do more of this and start to build that confidence, you become very present and very aware of what's going on. And so part of that is really reading that energy. And so it doesn't mean, you know, when we talk about slowing down, this doesn't mean minimizing that energy, that passion that you have. You can still modulate the pitch of your voice and get high and get low and get excited. But it's really about just putting those consistent pauses in between your words. I was at an event many years ago, and I've always remembered this because it was a panel discussion and it was maybe the third person speaking. It's probably 45 minutes into this. It was a giant room. And the energy was just really low at this point. And the next speaker, he took the microphone off the table, got up out of its chair and walked out into the audience. And suddenly everybody perked up because he was kind of, he was sort of breaking the norm of what was expected here. And so what he was really doing was doing a great job of reading the room and saying, I have to change the energy in here. And so, you know, a very simple technique. I talk about this a lot in terms of moving around the stage, moving around the space is another really good way to kind of capture attention and again, read the room. So, you know, but it's kind of one of those things, you know, you just, you do more and more of this, you start to become more present. I find, I don't know if any of you have this, but when I get off stage, I'm almost like physically kind of tired and exhausted because I have been so kind of on, I'm listening to the little conversations while I'm also thinking about kind of what I'm talking about next and then I've got slides, I've got that or I'm clicking or whatever it is. There's a lot going on, but I'm highly tuned in to all of it. Yeah, absolutely. Before we go on, Jared, and then I'll, You'll have a question too. So I love, I always learn a lot from you and I love your comments. Is there a time where these things, these tips differ from like say that boardroom where it's a lot more intimate and sometimes more fearful versus a big room where an auditorium or maybe there's lighting and you can't even really see the audience past the first couple rows. Do these things kind of still work depending on the audience size? Yeah, all of what we've talked about is applicable to any situation. Cause really it's about, it's very personal. How do you feel like getting on stage can be terrifying for some, maybe not for others. Walking into a room of three people could be terrifying. And so it varies depending on your situation, but all of these are very much applicable. I would say, for example, if you're walking out on stage there's going to be a different type of energy and presence you're going to have versus I'm walking into a small room. We're going to be talking with two or three people. It's much more intimate. But I think what remains the same is like being very present, being really tuned in to the energy of what's going on there. I've been in situations where it's a small group, but people are sort of spread out but it's in a small room and the person speaking literally like says, okay, let's all get in close and they pulled up a chair and sat down in front of everybody. And again, it changed that energy but what they were doing was like being very present. They were reading the room and they were seeing that people were kind of spread out. They weren't really engaged. And so we'll change the energy. And so it's very much about being present. I like to think about it as being adaptable. What are you going to do in these situations? How are you going to change the energy? How are you going to bring sort of focus back to you? Or how are you going to really build that relationship with the person you're speaking to? Because whether it's a stage or it's one-to-one in a small room, you're building a relationship and creating a dialogue. Yeah, or virtual as we have here in the last three years, many galas have been performed virtually, many presentations to donors have been done virtually. So I want to touch on that adaptability before we get to our final stage fright tip, Ashley. And it's about, it is with slowing down, but it has to do with what if you've been told you have a set amount of time and then all of a sudden that time amount has been shifted and you now have to go from what you've practiced to something more condensed in like the drop of a hat. So how does that fall into these tips? And in particular, I'm thinking of it for the slow down moment because you do want to deliver in such a way that is received, but if you have so much more content, how does that play a part of this? Certainly, well, it comes down to preparation and really having clarity on what you're going to speak about. And so when I work with my clients, many times what I'll have them do is we will create, for example, stories. I usually recommend people have three to five key stories that speak to maybe different audience segments, speak to different audiences that they serve and so that they can be, you know, just pull that out when they need to. And so when we work on that, we'll come up with, here's the, you know, the two minute version, here is the 32nd version, here's the bullet point. And so it's very much about having real clarity about your message and can you deliver it in a long and a short form. That's really, really important because if whatever you're saying, if you can only do it in five minutes, it's not as great a piece of communication as knowing that, hey, I can do that. If you want, if you have five minutes, let's get into the details. If I have one minute, let me give you the high level. Okay, because the whole idea is that you want to entice someone to learn more. And so if you have three minutes, what can I share with you to entice you? There was a great, I think it was Malcolm Gladwell had a great, it was one of his books. He was talking about this idea that you want to give people a piece of candy before you serve them the meal. And so, you know, what are those little bits of candy that you can throw out when someone says, hey, I'm sorry, I know we were going to have 15 minutes but unfortunately I've only got five. And what kind of candy can you drop about your cause, your story, your organization that's going to peak them to want to sit down for the meal and learn more? Yeah. I love it. I think that's brilliant. And I think that's appropriate. The last thing that you share with us is overcoming stage fright. Tip number five, don't forget to smile. This was kind of not an expected thing. What does that mean? Well, it comes back to kind of the fact that we're all human beings and we all are social animals or social creatures. And so when I am looking at an audience or looking individual, they are mirroring back the energy that I am putting out. And so if I am enthusiastic, I am present, I am focused, it's more than likely you're going to get that type of energy back. And a smile is sort of the, it's a universal sort of power move to get people to connect with you and respond. And it's, I mean, it's, we say even with masks, I've found, you know, walking around, you'd be in the grocery store and you make eye contact with someone and whatever the situation is. And just the little kind of the shift in your eyes and your cheeks, like you see the other person respond. And so smiling is powerful. And I recommend everyone do that. And one last tip on that, we were talking about virtual meetings and many of us are still doing zoom calls and virtual meetings is you wanna be looking at your camera as though that is the other person that you're speaking to. I've watched far too many presentations or talks where the person is, you know, they're talking like this through the whole thing or they're looking at another screen. And so you're getting the side of my head. I am laser focused on the camera to the point where it's a little tough. I have to, both of you are in my periphery now because I wanna make sure I'm looking at the camera. One of the things I did, one of the things I did early on in the pandemic to remind myself of this is I actually had a little post-it note and I drew a smiley face on it and stuck it right next to the camera so that it reminded me to like look at the camera and smile, be present. And it's been a really helpful tool for me. So. That has been one of our tips as well with all of our guests, right? The other thing too that I've seen, Ashley, as we close up today's conversation is what I refer to as, I don't even know if this is appropriate but the Kilroy effect where it's like, you can only see here, you know? And it's like, lift, like switch, switch. Yeah. And so, you know, seeing that as well, there's so many things to consider and really, you know, your position be it on a camera screen, be it on a stage, be it in a board room, right? Your positioning is so important and that goes right along with smiling at your audience. I love it. Ashley, it's always such a wonderful thing to hear your perspective and literally, I did get these glasses when, because I did think of you. Oh, thank you. It's just hilarious, but I'm telling you, I love what you have to say. You always give us great information that's very achievable. And so, I really, really appreciate that. Ashley Bright, CEO of TheMessageFixer.com. Ashley, you've got some exciting things that I don't wanna let you go without addressing really quickly. What's cooking, my friend? Well, thank you for the opportunity. So, I had the pleasure last year of doing some work with the Alliance for Arizona Nonprofits and in doing so, I put together a six-part series of workshops for nonprofits. And the wonderful thing is that you can take all six of these and if you go through the process, you can create your own presentation, you can deal with a lot of the things we've just talked about, stage presence and stage fright and things like that and you can truly develop a powerful presentation that you can deliver in all sorts of situations. The other nice thing is that if you wanna just jump in to one of them or two of them, it's really flexible in that regard. And so, we're gonna be covering how to plan and prepare for a presentation, how to use story and emotion, how to integrate data and facts, how to have that stage presence, whether you're on video or whether you're physically present in the room. Also, the last one, we talk about adaptability. So, what happens when you go from having 10 minutes to having three minutes? Or what happens when you're expecting to be able to deliver your presentation? And then they're like, no, no, no, we just wanna ask you a bunch of questions. How do you adapt to that? And so, we're gonna be sort of rolling this out probably mid-April. And so, if anyone out there watching this at any time is interested, please just send me an email, Ashley at themessagefixer.com and just put in the subject line non-profit workshops. And I'm happy to follow up with you, so. Awesome, I might be one of those people, Ashley. Yeah. Wonderful. I hope you wear my glasses though. Oh yeah, well, sir, I gotta get the glasses back on because truly, they are fabulous. They are. I love it, I love it. They're a little kooky, but with you today, they work. Hey everybody, this has been amazing and we would not be here getting all of this wisdom from Ashley Bright without the support and the help of our sponsors. They have been amazing. As we move into our fourth year of broadcasting, actually I think happens next week or today. I'm not really sure where the date is. I have to look that up. But again, our thanks to Blumerang American Non-Profit Academy, your part-time controller, non-profit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, the non-profit nerd herself, and non-profit tech talk. These folks are with us day in and day out. And as we like to end every episode, we want to remind ourselves, our viewers, our listeners, our guests, our co-host, to stay well, so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Ashley, thank you so much.