“Raising the Bar in Youth Drug Prevention Presentations: Engaging Strategies for Speakers”

Hey, welcome back to another episode of the party top podcast, where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention. I’m your host, Jake white, I am so excited for this episode, because as the co-founder and speaker at Vive 18, whenever I do a presentation, it is almost guaranteed, a student will talk to me afterwards and say, Jake, this was so fun. I gotta be honest with you, though. When I walked in here, I thought this was going to suck. Like, this was miles better than our other presentation, they’ll see things like that, which I’m like, oh, that’s kind of sad, you know, there’s not a high bar for presenters or speakers on the topic of drug prevention. But they’ll say like, you know, I thought that you were going to lecture us the whole time, or you were just going to share, like a story about how you almost died. And then we would all leave, feeling sad. Like, this was actually really fun. And I learned a lot. And to me, when I hear that, like, yes, that’s great. Go like, make it, it makes me feel good. My ego feels good, my heart feels good and knows that. You know, we’re doing something that’s helpful. But it also makes me sad, because I see how low the bar is for our industry, that when we talk to young people, about prevention, that we come off as judgmental, we come off as not engaging, not fun, not interactive. And that students, when we think about speakers, like a lot of people don’t bring in speakers, because they’ve, they’ve had people in front of their audience, and the students have sat on their phones, or they fallen asleep, or they didn’t get anything out of it, or they complained about it afterwards. And it’s to me, it’s like, “oh, it’s it’s so sad, the bar is that low, because then it gives us as drug prevention specialists, and school counselors and principals, and anybody who is going in to try to affect change with a group of students, they have this wall up that we have to break through, because everything before it has been so bad.” And so this episode, I want to share some simple things like you could take something from today and implement it tomorrow in front of a group of students. And you would immediately see a more effective approach, you would have more engagement, more fun and students learning in a more conducive atmosphere, because we’re not fighting them. We’re working with that. And so let’s dive into it right away. Let’s start with some some things to start avoiding. And let’s set the stage this is if you are speaking with a group of 30 students or more, 30 students or more, and let’s pretend you’re someone who is not with them every day, it’s not a classroom setting, like when they see you every day, you’re viewed of more of like a special guest. And so that’s probably, you know, if you’re a drug prevention specialist, if you’re part of a coalition, you’re part of a community organization that partners with the schools to provide different services and education. Around whatever topic it might be, you know, for me, it’s drug prevention, and substance use prevention, but it could be it could be anything, relationships, mental health, whatever that might be. So first of all, let’s take the first five minutes of your, your experience with this student audience. The biggest mistake I see people make is they start off by introducing themselves and thanking whoever brought them there. Listen, it’s great to thank people for allowing you to speak to their students, but don’t waste the entire audience’s time. By doing that, in the first part of your presentation, if it belongs in your presentation, it belongs at the end. Because the first thing students are wondering is yes, who are you, but to why are you here, and why should I care? And it sounds brutal. But that’s, that’s the fact that it is we all have this internal radio station, right? The wifm what’s in it for me? If that radio station is playing in our heads, you have to answer that question first. And in order to do that, you have to engage them. They’re expecting you to be boring. So you have to do what’s called a pattern interrupt where you do something not boring. “Don’t introduce yourself the way that everybody else does.” Instead, tell a joke, tell a story. Take them into an experience by asking them to do something with you that low risk Again, we’re not asking them to do something crazy that would, they would only do if they know you. But something simple. All these, these like little types of things, I’m not going to go through a lot of them. But little things where you can do something out of the ordinary. Don’t do something they expect. Do something that interrupts what they expect. The other thing I see a lot of people trying to do is to like, change who they are to relate to students. Listen. Young people know that when an adult is speaking to them, that we’re adults, that we have our own paths, we might be a decade removed, but they’re willing to listen, if we just are confident who we are. You don’t have to go out and buy a new pair of shoes that looks like theirs. You don’t have to wear the same clothes or use lingo that they use. Trust me, I, I know that I look young. But I don’t use the same words as students use today. I’m not saying lit fire bet. Like, that stuff’s not a part of my vocabulary. And I don’t say it on stage. And I don’t say it in my real life. But they love our presentations, because we just show up who we are, and confidently and putting them first putting the audience first. And that’s the third thing that will really help you is when you’re developing your materials. When you’re developing your posture to go on stage. Remember this before you take the gym floor or the theater stage, classroom, wherever it is, remember, you’re not there for you. It’s not for them to like you, you’re there for them. Meaning your main objective is to give them helpful information in an engaging manner. They don’t have to be a raving fan of you, they don’t have to say this was the best experience ever. All they have to happen is you need to give them information in an engaging way. If you do that, the upside is they will love you, they will have a great time they will become a fan of yours and they want you back. But the way you achieve that is forgetting all about yourself and focusing on the audience at hand and the experience you want to build for them. So with that said, your content. This is probably another thing that I see a lot of people doing wrong, is your content should use you. And we language more than I and me language. If you’re telling personal stories the whole time. And it’s not going on to the audience and helping them you are just up there bragging or are on a soapbox or just sharing stories, as students are going to be thinking, what is the point of this? Why did you bring me here? And not only will they not take something from the presentation, but they’ll think like, hey, that speaker was just like an arrogant person who just stole our time from us to brag about themselves or to share this thing. But it really had nothing to do with us. And that’s that’s like the worst, that’s the lowest bar I’ve seen is people saying I’m a speaker, or I’m a presenter, or I’m helping students. But in reality, it’s just like a story hour, where they’re just sharing things about themselves. Now, let’s talk about some tips. Like what are some things you should do in a presentation to make sure that it goes really, really well. And this was one of the speakers that I really look up to his name is Clint Poehler. And he told me that people want to see you have fun on stage, have fun in front of them. Because if you’re having fun, they’re more likely to have. So for me, that’s why I use the drum set. It’s really engaging for the audience, because I have fun playing it. And I make the crowd interact with me as I do it. It’s not just like a show, hey, watch me check this out. I’m having them yell and chant, do stuff as a team. And then it sets it up for later in the presentation when they get to compete with each other in this game show that we play, where they get to interact with the education. The, for you, I don’t know what that might be. But it could just be like, you bring a fun costume onstage. You goof off, you use accents you make things funny if you if you are a funny person. If you’re not a funny person, then yeah, that’s fine. Don’t try to be but maybe you geek out about PowerPoints and visuals and numbers. That’s great. geek out in front of them. Get excited in front of them about that they will find it endearing your personality. So be willing to show yourself you’ll be vulnerable, enjoy the things that you join onstage and they will enjoy the whole experience as well.

“Practical Tips for Engaging and Impactful Talks”

This next thing comes from a training I did with Josh Ship. He’s a phenomenal communicator speaker, and he has a training program called Youth Speaker University. And it’s so it’s like the foundation of everything I learned. But basically he uses this, this model of me, we, you. And so anytime you make a point, you have a me, which is probably a story, right? People love stories, personal things, they get to know us a little bit they can relate to us. As humans, we really, really love stories. So you have the me, then you talk about we this is the data, the you know, the when I was like supporting documents, quotes, anecdotes, metaphors, how the world works. It’s like, hey, as a collective, this supports the story I told or something about me. This is more evidence, and then you, which has put it on the audience, how does this apply to your life right now? What am I asking you to do, because you now have this new piece of information. And you can follow that format throughout your entire speech, to build a really, really engaging one. And if you want to be stand out, as you go through that framework, ask yourself, How can I have the audience experience this, instead of me just helping them this? For me, this is the key of having a drumset onstage with me is because at the beginning, I’m going to play the drums. At the end, I’m going to teach the drums. So they’re going to learn, I can actually develop a skill set in a short amount of time. And when I tell them, hey, imagine a lifetime of building skill sets, instead of taking shortcuts. Instead of relying on a drug, you know, a substance to get what you want short term by could potentially cut your life short. That’s why it’s called the shortcut is what if he developed his skill set like this playing the drums, while you learn how to cope with life stresses, you will learn real social skills, then I bet you could build that future that you told me you wanted at the beginning of this presentation. And so moments like that, will stick with them, because they remember you as Oh, that’s the person who taught me how to play the drums. Like I can do that. You know, like I didn’t even need anything I did with all my classmates, it was a really, really cool experience. So if you want to really stand out, ask yourself, How can I help students experience this lesson, instead of just hearing it or seeing the final thing is for anybody to use, it’s, it’s not high level, it’s just like presenting 101 is test all your equipment beforehand, to get there early, so you can test it at the site. And then three, know your introductions, transitions and conclusion really, really well. Because what marks you know, a poor speech from a great one is a great speech has an amazing introduction and close. And then the transitions are seamless, it feels like the it was just one flowing thing. And it’s it’s because all the different pieces that they they introduced to you and that you experienced, it was seamless how they moved from one to the other. So you end up going on this roller coaster of an experience. But it felt like one whole key hook like cohesive tour, or one cohesive movement that you just got to experience. And so if you want to really, really step up your game, and you know, educating students, and having this experience where you bring your presentation to them is that would be my biggest biggest advice that anyone can do is that that advice of practicing your transitions, your opening and your closing the most. And the content, you know, the stories, the activities, the involvement, the back and forth, that can kind of flow and and be what it is. They won’t they won’t care if it’s not perfect. But when you’re close is they will remember that. And that will be a great ending to your experience where they’ll say, Hey, that was fun. When can we have them back again. And for those of us involved in prevention work, that’s what we want. We want the schools to say, hey, my students have a great time. They loved the experience. They learned a lot. And it gives us talking points to reinforce throughout the year. And now they’re inviting you back and you you develop a real relationship with those organizations. And to me that’s, that’s best case scenario. And I want that for all of you. I will say this. We just scratched the surface today. There’s a lot more to learn. Again, I learned everything from you speaker University by Josh Shipp, and then also true speaking success by Earl moody. And they’re both just phenomenal, phenomenal speakers and communicators. And she’s very, very smart. So check them out. And in the future, I will be developing a course for youth workers, people who specifically work for youth in drug prevention and mental health. And so, if you think that’s something you might be interested in checking out in the future, just go to viveeighteen.com/intro. That’s v i v, e, one eight.com/intro. Fill out that form so that I have your information. And then when that rolls out, you’ll be the first to know. But until then, keep impacting students in your area. Keep up the great work. If you have any questions, you know, reach out to us we can hop on a zoom call to support you. But I appreciate all you do for the students in your community. We’ll see you next Monday for another episode of the Party Talk Podcast.