113: Vincent Pierri - How to deal with Stage Fright before important talks

Summary

---

Product Tea with Leah: Episode 113

Guest: Vincent Pierry
Topic: How to Deal with Stage Fright Before Important Talks
Host: Leah Tharin
Date: July 21, 2025

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Leah Tharin sits down with Vincent Pierry—public speaking coach, "PowerPoint ninja," and LinkedIn personality—to demystify stage fright and share practical frameworks for delivering memorable talks. Drawing from his diverse background (including his non-tech roots as a full-time pastor), Vincent unpacks the myths around stage anxiety, techniques to structure engaging presentations, and real advice on how anyone—even nervous first-timers—can command a stage. The conversation is candid, actionable, and layered with both humor and honest confessions about the realities of public speaking.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth of Stage Fright

• Stage Fright Is Rare:
  Most people who claim stage fright suffer not from fear of being seen or heard, but lack of proper preparation or clarity in their talk structure ([00:00], [06:39]).

  • "Most people who think they have stage fright have just never learned how to set themselves up to write a great talk." — Vincent, [00:00]
  • "The reason we're nervous is not to be on stage speaking... The reason is you're going to forget what comes next." — Vincent, [06:39]

• Real Stage Fright:
  Only a small minority truly experience physiological fear merely from being on stage, not just from speaking.

2. Three Real Causes of Speaking Anxiety

Vincent identifies three main drivers of nerves:

1. Worry About Forgetting Content:
   Poor internal structure or lack of practice leads to anxiety about what comes next ([06:39]).
2. Uncertainty About Whether Ideas Will Land:
   Doubt about the audience's reaction because the material hasn't been tested ([10:45], [12:11]).
   • "A lot of them are like, 'This is what I'm going to say.' And I'm like, 'How do you feel about it?' 'I'm so nervous.' ...'I don't know if it's going to help people.'" — Vincent, [10:45]
3. Engagement Imbalance:
   Talks that are all abstract ideas or all tactics lose audiences; the mix matters ([16:00]).
   • "Most speakers do not use that full spectrum. And if they do, they are almost always vastly out of proportion to what's engaging to an audience." — Vincent, [16:00]

3. Frameworks for Building Compelling Talks

• Test Your Core Insights:
  Spar two or three key sections with people in your target audience before giving the talk. Don't just describe the content—present it, even just the opening five minutes ([12:07]).

  • "Talk to three people who are in the sort of target ICP... and just show them. This is what I'm going to say.” — Vincent, [12:11]
  • Leah amplifies: "Pretend like you're on stage right now. Shut up for five minutes. I'm going to just, like, do the beginning." — Leah, [12:49]

• Content Structure: The Ingredients Analogy
  Balance between ideas, stories, analogies, tactics, and examples—like pizza dough needs its elements in proportion ([15:47]-[16:00]).

  • "Having the right percentages of each of those ingredients is what really helps it resonate." — Vincent, [16:00]

• 2-Minute Rule for Content Types:
  Switch between content types (e.g., idea, story, analogy) at least every two minutes to maintain engagement ([21:56]).

  • "The rule I use for myself is 2 minutes per content type maximum..." — Vincent, [21:56]

• 3 Big Ideas Maximum:
  Limit the talk to one to three main insights; audiences won’t retain more.

• Mnemonics and Sticky Analogies:
  Attach new, complex concepts to memorable stories or comparisons to make them stick ([28:34]).

  • "That's what makes people actually start behaving and doing things differently is they'll remember the restaurant. They'll forget everything else, but they'll remember dab restaurant thing.” — Vincent, [27:42]
  • "Mnemonics are basically attaching a story to something really abstract that you're familiar with.” — Leah, [28:34]

4. Preparing vs. Performing

• Practice Out Loud:
  Don’t just read slides—practice speaking, record yourself, and listen back ([13:54]).

• Don’t Worry About Polished Performance:
  Beginners should focus on delivering the message, not on theatrics or performance hacks ([37:10]).

  • "Do not touch any of that performance stuff until you are, like, 50 talks deep." — Vincent, [37:59]
  • "If you have the attention span to just worry about one thing, then it should be about delivering the content." — Leah, [38:32]

• If You’re Nervous, Focus on Content First:
  Address anxiety by ensuring your talk is solid; relaxation techniques are secondary ([30:25]).

  • "The main drum I'm always beating is just spend. If you are feeling nervous, go back to the content before you do anything else to manage that anxiety." — Vincent, [30:25]

5. Tactical Anti-Anxiety Advice

• Serve, Don’t Perform:
  Imagine you’re helping one person in the audience, not performing for the crowd ([32:46]).
• Normalize Nerves:
  Accept nervousness as a natural, non-fatal part of speaking ([32:47], [33:17]).
• Be Vulnerable if Needed:
  It’s okay to acknowledge nerves on stage—audiences appreciate authenticity ([35:08]).
  • "Just be like, hey guys, I'm really nervous, but I'm super happy to be here. Both of these can be true." — Leah, [35:12]
  • "They can tell you're a human being speaking on stage, there's nothing wrong with that." — Vincent, [35:30]

6. Openings & Hooks: How to Start

• Skip Lengthy Intros:
  Don’t bore the audience with your résumé. If you must introduce yourself, one sentence max ([40:06]).

  • "Don't do an intro of yourself. And if you have to do one, then it should be really, really short.” — Leah, [40:18]

• Start with Pain Point, Problem, Promise (3Ps):
  Vincent’s intro framework:

  • Pain Point: A negative thing the audience genuinely feels
  • Problem: The deeper issue your talk will address
  • Promise: What they’ll gain, possibly with a unique "flavor" ([44:26])

  Example: "We don't have a research problem, we have a presentation problem." ([44:26]).

• Don’t Open with Vague Stories Unless Contextualized:
  TED-style dramatic stories often fall flat if the audience doesn’t know why to care ([44:26]).

7. Endings: Close With a Real Story

• Reinforce and Recap:
  Summarize the key points at the end, ideally with a story illustrating their impact ([48:31]).

  • "The best close is a story of somebody else who applied everything you just taught them." — Vincent, [48:31]

• Don’t Worry If Not Perfect:
  Running out of time or skipping a formal ending happens; don’t sweat it ([48:27]).

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• "Most speakers get up on stage not knowing how their own song goes…You are not nervous to be on stage. You just did not do the work to even figure out how the internal logic of your talk flows well enough to get through it."
  — Vincent, [06:39]

• "You want to capture them within minute one or two."
  — Leah, on starting strong, [12:49]

• "If you have more than three [ideas], they're not going to remember any of them anyway."
  — Vincent, [24:02]

• "If the talk is good, if it's written in an engaging way, if it's clear in your mind, then maybe try some of that [breathing or mantra] stuff. But most people are trying to manage their anxiety without actually figuring out how to write a great talk."
  — Vincent, [30:25]

• "Don't touch any of that performance stuff until you are, like, 50 talks deep…Just get up there and be yourself."
  — Vincent, [37:59]

• "Think of this as, like, you're arguing, like, you're trying to persuade. It's not performance, it's persuasion."
  — Vincent, [39:27]

• "It cannot be about everything. It needs to be about a couple of things, and those need to land hard."
  — Leah, paraphrased, theme throughout

---

Segment Timestamps

• 00:00 - 06:39
  The reality of stage fright: Myth vs. preparation
• 09:36 - 16:00
  Main causes of anxiety, content structure as the solution
• 21:56 - 24:44
  Frameworks and practical rules: The 2-minute method and content types
• 28:34 - 33:17
  The power of mnemonics, analogies, and learning to ground yourself when nerves hit
• 35:08 - 39:42
  Mindset: It's ok to be nervous, focus on being helpful, not a performer
• 40:06 - 44:26
  Intros/hooks: mistakes, 3P framework (Pain, Problem, Promise), and how to avoid boring the audience
• 48:07 - end
  Endings, summary, and the value of illustrative closing stories

---

Resources & Contact

• Vincent Pierry: Best reached via LinkedIn (as he humorously admits, he is "low tech" and LinkedIn is his website) ([49:21]).
• Leah Tharin: More info at leahtarin.com

---

Tone & Language

The episode is unfiltered, approachable, and packed with humor as both host and guest share self-deprecating anecdotes and practical strategies for everyone from panicked CEOs to professional speakers.

---

For non-listeners:
This episode is a must for anyone dreading an upcoming talk or wanting to move from "just getting by" to delivering talks people remember. It provides a no-nonsense breakdown of what nerves actually are, how to work around them, and why great talks start with audience empathy rather than slides or performance tricks.

---

Transcript

[Vincent Pierry]

So a lot of people think they have stage fright. There is a tiny minority of people that have genuine stage fright. Like if they walked up on a stage and they just had to stand there, they would be nervous. There are some people, I'm saying you don't even have to speak. Like if someone said, can you walk up here and stand in this line? Some people would be nervous. There are people who are nervous to have a one on one conversation and those people are going to be nervous speaking. But most people who think they have stage fright have just never learned how to set themselves up to write a great talk. So when people walk up on stage to deliver a talk, at a conference, board meeting, whatever. I think maybe one other exception, if you're like doing a pitch and there's millions of dollars on the line, that's also going to come with a certain amount of anxiety. But most of the presentations that we do that we get so nervous about, in reality the stakes are not that high.

[Lea Tarin]

Welcome to the Product Tea with Lea. I am your host, Lea Tarin. And we are about to spill the tea with the best from tech about product growth and senior leadership topics. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the guy who's got more LinkedIn followers than most of us have. Business cards, 25,000. He is not just a talk coach, he is a PowerPoint ninja, a one liner wizard, and the only human who can make frameworks and acronyms sound like a superpower. Today he's here to roast our talks, to rebuild them from scratch and maybe, just maybe, teach us how to stop boring people when you are on stage and something is on the line. Spoiler alert. His $200 talk tune up might be the best therapy your career ever had. And from Google stages to TEDx crowds to audiences crying in a good way, his clients don't just speak, they conquer. So grab a snack, hide your filler words, and let's dive into how to turn your next presentation from meh to mic drop. Vincent Pierry. Good morning. How are you doing this morning?

[Vincent Pierry]

I'm doing great. Great to meet you or great not to meet you to see? I've met you before. I got thrown off. You said morning. It is not morning. You always say good morning no matter what time of day it is.

[Lea Tarin]

That is true. Yeah. I do that in boards, I do that in companies, I do that all everywhere. It's kind of like my thing. Yeah.

[Vincent Pierry]

So funny.

[Lea Tarin]

Well, it is very nice to see you, Vincent. You have been on this podcast already.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

Interviewing me. But now I think you're more prominent than me now. I think you have surpassed Michael Jordan in LinkedIn fame. Or Snoop Dogg. I think Snoop Dogg is also on LinkedIn. But in any case, it's very nice to see you again. We've recorded an episode about a year ago which was also about stage speaking. And I was the person who was being interviewed on, like, how to do that. And now I get to ask you. So that is great. Was this introduction a complete and correct description of your personality and career?

[Vincent Pierry]

It was perfect. Perfect.

[Lea Tarin]

Thank you.

[Vincent Pierry]

Was there any AI in there or you just bang that whole thing out right now?

[Lea Tarin]

No. So you can always say that. So about 60% of this was AI because you can actually say like when AI is writing something, it includes the word wizard. I don't know why, it's just a thing that it does. And I felt like it was so over the top that I just left it in. So in that case it's kind of fine. Vincent, what do people get wrong about you once they get to know you?

[Vincent Pierry]

Well, that's a good question. That's the one question I was supposed to prepare to answer over the last five minutes and I completely spaced out and didn't even think about it. But we've talked about this a little bit before. But a lot of people, probably the vast majority of my clients who work with me, do not know that I'm not from tech. I do not have a tech background. I'm actually a full time pastor of a church. I've talked with it a little bit more lately, but most people still do not know. So yeah, that's the whole. And we could talk maybe more about this later if it makes sense. But that was what got me started on the speaking thing, was having to do it every single week, write a different talk every week and deliver to the same people. So it's a real public speaking grind.

[Lea Tarin]

Well, that's fascinating. I mean, you know, there's two groups in the world, one of them that believes into a higher deity. And then there's also the religious people like you. And the first group is the ones in tech. Right. Because they believe in Elon Musk or something else. So caught you on the left field with this one. Okay. But in any case, it's very nice to have you. So I sometimes have clients as well that have to give important presentations. So can you maybe touch on a little bit? Like, do you feel like there's a big difference in terms of to whom you speak? If you are, let's say you go on a Stage or you have to go in front of a board or whether it's an all hands meeting of 150 people and, you know, one of these super CEOs or like C levels just doesn't know how to speak. Like, how do you kind of reconcile this? Like, what is your job? I think you're trying to coach people as well, like to give one good, important speech. But it's not about like becoming a fake influencer like us too, right?

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah, it's all very focused on speaking. I actually do do a little LinkedIn coaching now and then, but my main thing is speaking coaching and my main clients are people are speaking at maybe like their first big conference. So that is the main kind of coaching I do. When people go through some of the process that I take them through, they end up applying most of the frameworks to most of their speaking. So it all ends up bleeding into internal presentations, stakeholder presentations, pitches, all that sort of thing. So I use the frameworks that I teach, I use for my own. When I'm speaking to a large group, I use the exact same frameworks. If I have to give a presentation to my board, staff meeting, training, it's all the same frameworks all the time.

[Lea Tarin]

So let's say we're dealing with this entire situation in the sense of like, hey, there's something important coming up. So how do you approach this? Like, let's say, how do you start with this? Is this about getting over your fear or is this about like, hey, here's how you structure this thing and then we kind of practice together and how you're going to ace it. Like, tell me a little bit on how to get started. Like, let's say I had no clue in how to structure this. I also have a very guerrilla version of my own stuff, right? Like how I prepare you. Maybe remember that I don't do speaking notes at all, for instance. But how do you try to work this out with someone that might be not that comfortable in front of a bigger audience?

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah, yeah, totally. I have watched at least a couple of your talks. You're a great communicator. I love watching them 100%. And there might be some of the things we talked about today that you may end up considering and go, okay, that kind of makes sense. Or that kind of is helpful. So here are some of my core. You like that one, didn't you? People like, okay, like, did he just

[Lea Tarin]

say that I'm not perfect? Or like, what was he saying there? No, go ahead.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah, so here are some of my like core POV things on speaking. So first of all, I don't think that as a general category stage fright really exists. So a lot of people think they have stage fright. There is a tiny minority of people who are that have genuine stage fright. Like if they walked up on a stage and they just had to stand there, they would be nervous. There are some people, I'm saying you didn't even have to speak. Like if someone said, you walk up here and stand in this line, some people would be nervous. There are people who are nervous to have a one on one conversation and those people are going to be nervous speaking. But most people who think they have stage fright have just never learned how to set themselves up to write a great talk. So when people walk up on stage to deliver a talk at a conference, board meeting, whatever. I think maybe one other exception. If you're like doing a pitch and there's millions of dollars on the line, that's also going to come with a certain amount of anxiety. But most of the presentations that we do that we get so nervous about, in reality the stakes are not that high. The reason we're nervous is not to be on stage speaking. It is generally two things. One is that you're going to forget what comes next, right? You've written the Talk, you've got 100 slides or even 20 slides and you can't remember what comes next in your own talk. And you think you have stage fright. But what you really have is anxiety to forget what you're going to say next in front of a bunch of people. Like some of my background is I was a musician, I toured with different bands, did that whole thing for a while. I had zero anxiety to be on stage performing music. Unless if I did not know how to play one of the songs, which never really happened. But in theory it could, right? If I got up on stage in front of several hundred people or a thousand people, or 2,000, whatever, and I'm like, I have to play this song and I can't remember how it goes. I would be panicking. That's not stage fright, that's forgetting how the song goes. Most speakers get up on stage not knowing how their own song goes. They don't know how their own talk flows. And they go, oh my goodness, I'm so nervous to be on stage. I'm like, you are not nervous to be on stage. You just did not do the work to even figure out how the internal logic of your talk flows well enough to get through it. Like most speakers, I Don't know if this is you or not, Leah, but most speakers, if the deck died, if the projection system died, they would just walk off stage and go, thanks anyways. Because they can't remember what they're going to say. And if you can't remember what you're going to say, you are going to be terrified. That's not stage fright. That's just not knowing how to write a talk that's easy for you to remember. That is one of two secret sources of stage fright. Before I go to the second one, thoughts on that? Does that make sense to you?

[Lea Tarin]

It does to some degree, for sure. And I think I agree with that. This is a big insecurity that you can actually actively do something about and that is totally within your control, which is like to put the work in. I'm quite unstructured in how fast I do my talks. So to the complete panic and utter desolation of most people who are inviting me on stage. I usually finish my talks about 15 minutes before I go on stage or 30 minutes before, you know, like a couple of hours. Right. Even though they told me that I have to hand it in two weeks before. But I want to say to this just really quickly that I'm timing all my speeches right. Like, I don't do speaker notes, but I practice them. I know exactly what comes when, which jokes are kind of landing and so forth. And I usually can talk about it also without the slides, but this is just because I've been actually talking them through eight to nine times. It's not enough to just like, look at your slides and be like, oh, yeah, I think I got that section. No, speak it, record it, for instance, with the time and so forth. So I do think there's another element also to stage fright that you cannot combat with this. But I think just as far as this point so far, yes, this is within your control. And as with the music, this is just like you did not practice enough. That's what that is. Yeah.

[Vincent Pierry]

100%, yeah. And some of the remembering how your talk goes can be solved by practicing it more. But some of it is also writing the talk in a way that is easy to remember. And we can talk more about that later if you want. The other big source of stage fright, let's say you have it. You've learned how to write a talk that you can remember how the steps fit together. The other big problem, it's really three things. The second one is not knowing if the ideas themselves are going to land in the room. Like so many of my clients, they'll have a talk. Maybe they've done it before, they got to do it again, or they got to do it on a bigger stage, but a lot of them have never done it at all. Regardless of what led them to that moment, a lot of them are like, this is what I'm going to say. And I'm like, how do you feel about it? I'm so nervous. And I'm like, why? Like, I don't know if it's going to sound cliche. I don't know. It's really going to help people. I don't know if they already know this or if this is too far beyond their knowledge, ability. And so I'm nervous about that. And again, people label this as stage fright. It's not stage fright. It's just, I don't know if this talk is going to be very valuable to anyone. And again, it is the same solution. Not the exact same solution, but it's the same in the sense that it is solvable before you get on stage.

[Lea Tarin]

Okay, so how do we know whether a specific part of a talk works?

[Vincent Pierry]

It does take a little bit of homework, but, I mean, this is, like, so stupidly obvious. Maybe you already know where I'm going, but, like, talk to three people who are, like, in the sort of target ICP of that sort of event. They don't have to be. Literally, the people are going to attend, but generally, you know, somebody who would want to attend that sort of event, someone who fits the same career level, background, whatever, seniority, and you just show them. This is what I'm going to say, right? If they all go, I know that, then you go, okay, well, I'm not going to say that then. So, yeah, that's the other big piece.

[Lea Tarin]

I think this is also a very good tip in general. Like, if you really want to kind of get past this and if you don't want to have, like, the entire talk, like, you know, some people are also a little bit afraid of, like, hey, Vincent, you know, I want to kind of tell you my entire talk for 30 minutes, right? I think there's two ways that you can do this. Like, if you have a conversation with someone like this, at least show the first five minutes and not show in terms of like, oh, like, here's what I'm doing here. I'm going to talk about this here. I'm going to talk. No, no, pretend like you're on stage right now. Shut up for five minutes. I'm going to just, like, do the Beginning. The beginning is the most critical thing for you to kind of capture the audience. You don't want to capture them on minute 20. You want to capture them within minute one or two. And then you can also say, like, hey, you know what? This actually feels like a very good kind of introduction. And I think the other thing that I used to do, at least in the past a little bit, until I got much more confident, was just to record myself, record the entire talk, do it on VEED or, you know, like, just like record yourself on a camera and then you have the time. You can also see what actually works good and what does not work. Like, you trust yourself by listening to yourself, but don't imagine yourself speaking.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah, 100%. When you've got the right ideas and you've got to talk written in a way that's going to work and be easy for you to remember, then, yes, when you're working on delivery, the very best thing you can do is record yourself, watch the video back and see how it feels, or do the beginning for somebody as well. The thing I was trying to highlight was just generally there's three or four insights you're bringing in that talk. Now for someone like you, you are constantly testing your new insights on LinkedIn with clients, with people you're consulting. So there is less room for doubt about, like, is this going to land? But for a lot of people, they don't have the platform and they literally don't know if it's going to land. And they'll just try. They will discover whether or not the ideas are helpful on stage. Right. And that is the worst place to discover whether or not your ideas are going to help people is when you're telling them on stage. The last piece of, like, source of stage fright. Right. So some of it is, I can't remember how the talk goes. Two is I don't know if the ideas are that helpful. And then three, is it written in a way that it will actually be engaging? So, like, do you cook at all, bake at all, anything like that?

[Lea Tarin]

I try to avoid baking because I feel like it's good for developing diabetes. But other than that, I cook a lot. Yeah.

[Vincent Pierry]

What do you cook? What's one of your favorite meals?

[Lea Tarin]

I would say like some. Some traditional Swiss stuff that is, you know, like a specific type of bread or which would be baking again, so let's not mention that. But, you know, like something like a casserole or like specific pizzas or, you know, something like that.

[Vincent Pierry]

Great. You make the dough for the pizza?

[Lea Tarin]

Yeah.

[Vincent Pierry]

Great. So like, you're making the pizza dough. There's ingredients. Flour, what else? Butter.

[Lea Tarin]

There's flour, water. There's no butter. Come on, like, what are you, like, come on, Vincent.

[Vincent Pierry]

No butter.

[Lea Tarin]

No, there's not. But like, what are you Americans doing? Like, what are you doing to the food? Olive oil. Okay.

[Vincent Pierry]

Olive oil, yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

Okay. Anyway, we have flour, we have olive oil, we have water, we have a little bit of salt and we have. I think it's called yeast in English.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. Do all these ingredients, These are all good ingredients.

[Lea Tarin]

Exactly.

[Vincent Pierry]

But whether or not the dough tastes well, whether or not the pizza dough tastes good at the end of it matters very much how much of each ingredient you put in. And if you have way too much of one of them, you can all be good ingredients, but it does not come out tasting correctly. You know what I'm saying? So speaking works the same way. There are sort of a spectrum of ingredients from abstract to concrete. So at the high end of the spectrum, you have big concepts, new points of view, perspective shifts, that sort of thing. And then as you work down to the very bottom, at the very bottom, there's like tactics, literally, here's like what you go do in your job or in your day to day life. Action steps, call to action. In between, there are things that help ideas resonate on maybe an emotional or intuitive way. Storytelling, analogy. I'm not talking about like cheesy, like TED talk storytelling. I'm saying like case study type thing. I'm not a big fan of TED talks. We can talk about that if you want. But analogies, you know Gary, right? You're Gary. Gary still gets brought up all the time. There's all these different ingredients, ideas, analogies, storytelling, concrete examples. Most speakers do not use that full spectrum. And if they do, they are almost always vastly out of proportion to what's engaging to an audience. So most speakers in the tech world especially spend all their time at the very top and the very bottom. So they'll say, idea, idea, idea, and then go all the way down here. Explanation, here's how we do it. Idea, action, step, idea, tactic. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No matter who you are, you can be Tony Robbins, you can be the greatest speaker of all time. If your talk is ideas and frameworks and tactics for 35 minutes, people are zoning out because our minds do not work that way, that we can just hear idea, idea, idea, idea, idea. Now here's the dangerous part. No matter who you are, if you have something valuable to say 10% of the room will always come up to you afterwards and say, that was the greatest talk I've ever heard. Literally the best thing I've ever heard. And then there'll be 10 that just hate you no matter what. But the people that are actually in the middle will not tell you either way. So a lot of speakers get very stuck on doing things a certain way because they're like, I talked to a thousand people and there was a line of 100 people who wanted to talk to me afterwards. And I'm like, that does not tell you anything in terms of how it landed with the whole room. So having the right percentages of each of those ingredients is what really helps it resonate. So three things. If it's clear in your own mind so you're not worried about what comes next. If the ideas, you've pre tested them and you know they're going to be high value. And then if you put the right ingredients in the right proportions, you walk on stage a different person because you go, this is going to be a banger. Every single part of this talk is straight fire. I cannot wait to deliver it. And then you go, oh, my gosh. And I wasn't even nervous. Of course you weren't nervous, because you wrote the best talk you've ever given and now you can just go out there and be yourself.

[Lea Tarin]

Okay, so you know what's funny? Like, I'm trying to sort this right now a little bit in my head because we should also talk about, like, so you talk about the balance, right? So, like, how would you do out of one thing and to kind of balance it correctly. Let's go back to this in a second and like, how to figure out what is the correct balance? Because not everything can be done by feeling. Because that's what I do, right? Like I can have also through a talk, I kind of know whether I'm overstretching a specific meme. I sometimes also play with it when people are expecting Gary again and when it's starting to become like a little bit weird, I just do a switcheroo on them and then just introduce something completely different and so forth. But if you don't have a really good feeling for this, there needs to be also, like, you need to have a framework, but just. We'll go back to this in a second. Interestingly, I feel like you're getting really constructive, good criticism from people only when you have a really, really, really, really good talk. So the best talk that I've ever given, I would say has been in March at MTPcon. That's one that I'm proud of in the sense, you know, like, the delivery was clean. Like, the entire. The staff was absolutely amazing. You know, like, the recording came out nice. It was really good. And then one of the production guys, like a very, very senior TV producer, he told me that you need to pay more attention to this difference that you have between people who are in the audience right now with you, like, in the arena, and then those that are engaging with you on the screen afterwards. You were walking around so much that it was very difficult for people online to follow, but it was very engaging for those inside of the arena. So the camera dude was constantly, like, busy, you know, like, following me, like, left, to the right. He almost lost me out of the frame and all that kind of stuff. This was extremely helpful feedback because he meant it also in that way. But he was trying to critique me on the highest level because at the same time, he also said, like, hey, this was a really, really good talk. I'm not even from this particular industry. And I thought it was quite engaging. And this gave me so much because I was like, look, here's this dude that is not from tech. He found it interesting, and now he's giving me this really valuable perspective in a way that I've never thought about it. Yeah, that was interesting because if you're completely bombing on stage, nobody will tell you. Nobody will tell you, like, oh, that was shit. Everybody will tell you, like, yeah, it was good. You know, like, they're going, that's good. It's not nothing. Good job. Right? So, like, something like that, but not really like, oh, my God, more like, good job, you know? And, yeah, it's very hard for people. And I understand. I've also seen other CEOs completely bomb on stage because they were clearly not prepared. They kind of just signed up for it, and then they had so many calls that they did not prepare a lot for this particular speech. And then that happened.

[Vincent Pierry]

But, yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that. Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

So going back to that point now, so how can you find the correct balance? Do you feel like for anything that you write in that sense?

[Vincent Pierry]

So this is where it's very difficult to prove things in a scientific way. Right. Maybe somebody could study this and compare a thousand talks with some AI tool and say, this is like the magic thing. The rule I use for myself is 2 minutes per content type maximum. So if you have an idea, a new idea, like something about PLG that people are thinking about incorrectly, you Say the idea, ideally in a sticky way. You write a one liner that's very punchy and memorable and tweetable. You do that sort of thing, right? You say that idea and you unpack it. And you got to be done unpacking it within 90 seconds to two minutes, absolute max. Now then you have to go to something else that helps drive that idea home. You're not changing topics, but you're changing content types. So you go to an analogy for that idea, or a story that shows that idea, or a framework that unpacks that idea. And then when you get to that next piece, you're on that piece, two minutes max before you change up the content type again. Now you're still building out one point and you can swing this the wrong way, where you're changing points every two minutes. That's not the idea. But within driving a point home, you have to change up the content type. 2 minutes max on each content type. That's what I teach my clients, that's what I do myself as well. And it's generally fairly easy to plan for in your deck or notes or whatever.

[Lea Tarin]

So when we're talking about the notes and the deck, right. So like the overall structure, is this something where you feel like, let's say you have a 30 minute talk. I think the way that I'm writing stuff is, is that I write down my bigger points first and then I kind of fill them and then they're too big and then I kind of shorten them down again to be like to fit into my speaking slot, which not always works. So that is one of the weaknesses that I have sometimes. Or is it, do you feel like it's better to kind of come up with individual points and then you line up that many that you are filling the time? You know, like here's a 2 minute, another 4, 2 minute, another 4, 2minute until we are at the 20 minutes that we have for the speaking.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah, the order of creation for me is always what are the one to three high value ideas that you're going to get out? Because if you have more than three, they're not going to remember any of them anyway. So my perspective is find those few ideas, get them on paper and construct everything to support those three ideas from the very top to the very back. Do you do this? Do you, like, as I was giving you, that spectrum of abstract concept, analogies, stories, tactics, examples, do you do it that way or no? Have you ever thought about it before in terms of the types of content you're using? To build out a point.

[Lea Tarin]

No. But I don't think that I need a framework in it. I mean, I may be doing it in terms of more subconscious in the sense of, hey, here's what constitutes a good story, because I feel like I have a good feeling. Feeling for that, but it is not. It is less of a rational kind of framework. It's more like, hey, this feels good. And I've been doing it so much that I kind of have the experience to kind of do it on the go.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

Which is a really cool skill to have, I feel like. And I'm not saying that I'm the best, of course. And I do. I also do think that if I do not prepare at all for a talk, then it's, you know, the quality also for me goes down. Of course.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

But I think, you know, I think I can just, like, I can come up with a lot of bullshit out of nothing, to be honest, as long as I want to drive, like, a very specific ideal. Now, to your point that you cannot do, like, I think it's a very good point that you should not describe more than three ideas, because in our head, we're like, oh, my God, this is too basic. I think I need to add more stuff, and I need more stuff. You have to remember that for people who are hearing something for the very first time, they need to also process the stuff while you are talking about it and then compare it with existing experiences and so forth. So what that means usually is that you need to give them room to breathe. And you can do that not by taking breaks. So you're not just, like, stopping to speak for five minutes. But if you repeat the same concept over again, it becomes like a repetition. It's almost like, oh, I'm learning a new word. And people, I think, overestimate highly how much people can retain and also process, even in an. Like, I've spoken today again, to some founders with a fantastic product, but they've never done product, like, growth. And a lot of the things that I talk about to me are very basic, you know, like, yeah, take a specific differentiator, put it into freemium, that kind of stuff. For them, this was completely new information. These were not beginners. These are very, very seasoned sales professionals who've worked at a very big scale. And this is why I'm thinking that if you really want to talk about something new, make sure that it can shine and give it repetition. So I think what you said is exactly true.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yep. Did you give them an analogy today?

[Lea Tarin]

I love giving Analogies.

[Vincent Pierry]

What was your analogy for the, like, process of, like, freemium, you know, first paid, whatever it was.

[Lea Tarin]

I always give metaphors that we all, like, understand. So, for instance, a lot of companies make the mistake that they're putting stuff into a freemium that is not indicative of the full experience. And we know how that feels if we would go to a restaurant that is specialized in something, right? So I always bring this experiment, like, this example of a Chinese specialty restaurant. So, you know, like, oh, there's a restaurant, you know, like the Peking Duck or whatever it's called, and they have this really special food. If now this restaurant is handing out, you know, like, appetizers that have nothing to do with the full plate that you're getting, then it's kind of. It feels stupid, right? Like, I mean, why would you hand out water just because it's free?

[Vincent Pierry]

Y.

[Lea Tarin]

When you want to attract people who pay for Chinese speciality food?

[Vincent Pierry]

That's great.

[Lea Tarin]

But companies are doing this all the time, right? So pulling it kind of back into real life metaphors is very powerful, and you have to simplify on stage.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah, I love that. What you just described is one of my big, like, soapboxes. I think you are. And maybe it's obvious because you do this all the time and you. It's like part of your career. But it is rare to find conference speakers in the tech world who are doing that at the amount that I would say you need to. To keep the light bulbs going off. To me, anytime you've got a new idea or just an idea you're trying to get across, it should come paired with something like that restaurant thing, because that's actually what makes it stick in people's minds. Far more than a beautiful graphic, far more than a memorable way to say it is the actual analogy for the idea. That's what makes people actually start behaving and doing things differently is they'll remember the restaurant. They'll forget everything else, but they'll remember dab restaurant thing.

[Lea Tarin]

So there's a name for this, actually. So I learned this when I was getting into Japanese, and it's called mnemonics. So the way that you write it is like mnem, you know, and then the rest, as you would say, so like mnemonics. So the problem is, is when you hear for the first time a complex idea that is completely foreign to your new. Like, for instance, a kanji, like a. A sign of language you've never seen before, then you can try to memorize it, right? But like, things like memorizing new stuff like this is extremely hard if you kind of connect it to something, something else you already know. But by connecting complex frameworks to already existing solutions or, sorry, experiences that we already have, it becomes much easier. So you're absolutely right. You might not be able to recall what I exactly said, but by remembering the restaurant metaphor, you can then kind of construct again what I said and then be like, oh, that's what she meant. Right. Because he said like, oh, because they're doing this in the restaurant as well. We should also not doing it. So in the B2B context, it's also about highlighting what you have as a whole experience. And I think mnemonics are basically attaching a story to something really abstract that you're familiar with. So for the Japanese language, it would be like, hey, this sign looks like a little dog carrying something around. And then you can, oh, okay, this is the little dog. And it means this and that, right?

[Vincent Pierry]

Yep. Totally.

[Lea Tarin]

Very powerful.

[Vincent Pierry]

Very powerful. Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

So, like, let's say you have someone that is coming to you and you're talking about, like, you know, like a more, I think, structured approach. Because I'm not the best one in also teaching this, because a lot of this stuff also comes natural to me, which I feel like is quite dangerous because I then don't. I don't think I would be a good speech coach because I don't know how to kind of teach a lot of these things.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

Do you have any hacks or things that you feel like usually work for people? Like, let's say someone is getting nervous anyways, or like, hey, here's a couple of things that you should always do in preparation or anything that might not be that obvious.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah. Maybe nothing brand new more than what we've already said. I can give you answer that a little more directly in a second. But the main drum I'm always beating is just spend. If you are feeling nervous, go back to the content before you do anything else to manage that anxiety. Like, don't. Because there's so many public speaking coaches who are like, here are the breathing techniques you can do to lower anxiety. Here are the mantras you can say to yourself. Here's like this meditation technique to lower your anxiety before you go on stage. I'm like, that stuff's all fine. If you sort of get the foundational stuff in place. If the talk is good, if it's written in an engaging way, if it's clear in your mind, then maybe try some of that stuff. But most people are trying to Manage their anxiety without actually figuring out how to write a great talk. So I say, write a great talk. Write a great talk. And so much of it takes care of itself. If you get to that point and you're still nervous. A couple things that I tell people, and this is like assuming you've practiced and everything, like in the moment, walking up on stage. And I'm not the first person to say this sort of thing, but these are some of the things I use for myself and I tell clients as well. One is try to imagine that you are talking to a friend one on one. Try to imagine that you're talking to somebody who you care about, who sort of fits this target goal of the talk, and just get up there and say, I'm here to help one person, one person in this room, and I'm going to pretend I'm off stage just helping somebody. That can be very powerful to try to get your mind out of performance mode and into just like serving mode, like, I'm here to serve this group of people. Another thing you can do is just to say, it's okay if I'm nervous, right? Because you get nervous and then you get nervous about being nervous. And the more you're nervous about being nervous, it just becomes a downward spiral. So sometimes you can kind of stop the spiral by saying, sometimes speakers are nervous and nobody dies. The audience doesn't die, right? I don't die. They don't die. No one's going to come hunt me down with the machete afterward and kill me because they could tell I was nervous on stage. And if the ideas are really powerful, what'd you say?

[Lea Tarin]

I hope not. Yeah, go on.

[Vincent Pierry]

You hope not. You never know, but you hope not, you know, to say if you've really tested the ideas, this is still going to be able to help people. Even if I am a little nervous, right? It's okay to be nervous. And then if you need to go there, you can say, it's okay if I bomb, right? It's okay if this is horrible. Not that that's the goal, but again, if you've done all the work, sort of just embracing the worst case scenario in your own mind can sometimes lower the stress a little bit.

[Lea Tarin]

I think this is exactly right. I learned this in the context of performance sports a little bit. Because there you also have the real implication that when you do start to get nervous, you start to make mistakes. And so therefore you also become more nervous and so forth. And a good kind of thing. I was talking about this with someone else. Also on the podcast, relatively recently was like this concept of there are when you have to perform on a very specific, like on a given date, and let's say you cannot just cancel it anymore because it is a stage talk that has been arranged or like, it's an important all hands or whatever. There are always two types of thoughts in how you see the situation and actions that you can do. And they can either be helpful or they can be unhelpful. So, for instance, an unhelpful thing to say is that, oh my God, I'm going to bomb. I'm totally nervous. This is the worst thing that I've ever been in. And then an unhelpful action would be, is that, like, until I go, like, I hope I just die right now. Right. Like, I don't want to go on stage and I'm just going to suffer through this right now. So it doesn't matter whether it's true or not because that's a different kind of topic as well. But, like, they're both unhelpful. So, like, the analysis is unhelpful because it doesn't help you to perform because the goal is to perform and the action is also unhelpful. So the next best thing is to have a helpful assessment. But an unhelpful action, a helpful assessment would be like, yeah, you know, I'm nervous, I'm on stage, but that's normal, right? That is normal for a speaker to be a little bit nervous because there's a lot of it hanging into it. But then you say, like, oh, but now I'm going to just suffer through. That's an unhelpful action. So a helpful thing there would be to just say, like, trying to ground myself. Let's just take, like, I'm just going to try to nail the next minute and then I take the next minute and so forth. Right. So, like, how can I ground myself? Maybe I'm just going to breathe on stage as well. I mean, to be honest, I also seen this happen and it also happened to me at some point where I just had to say, like, guys, I just need like five seconds. And it's just, you know, I know it's uncomfortable to say that in front of an audience. You would say that on stage. I would do that.

[Vincent Pierry]

Because you were nervous.

[Lea Tarin]

Yeah, I think that happened. I mean, it was at the beginning.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

When I wasn't doing it that much, but I was like, yeah. And I was also honest. I think, like, sometimes you can also be vulnerable. I think, honestly, you can also, like, don't take yourself too serious. I think that's another mistake that people do. Like, just be like, hey, guys, I'm really nervous, but I'm super happy to be here. Both of these can be true.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

And that's okay. That's totally fine.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah. I agree with everything you said. I think people do not expect you to be perfect. And when they can tell you're a human being speaking on stage, there's nothing wrong with that. I see this with a lot of clients where they're like, I am planning on walking up and telling everybody, this is my first time. And I'm nervous. And I'm like, don't do that if you don't have to do that. Because then everyone can start caring more about you than your content because they feel the empathy. Right. I think it can be helpful. If it's obvious you are kind of nervous, then you can just name it and then everybody's anxiety goes down. But if you lead with that now that's how you're framing the talk. I'm only saying that because so many of my clients, like, instinctually want to do that. And I'm like, don't do that if you don't have to do it. But yeah, if you make a mistake or if you forget a slide or you say something, it doesn't make sense. You can just be like, I forgot a slide, or that didn't really make sense. Or let me explain that again.

[Lea Tarin]

And yeah, you can make a lot of fun about yourself also on stage, for sure. I think that is true. And I think another good thing to like that is important to remember is if you're a CEO or a founder or like a product manager that has been just schlepped to one of these events where you have to give a presentation, I think unless you are a professional doing this day in and day out on stage, then you don't have to perform like someone that does it day in and day out. Right. It's good if you practice them this. Cause coming back to your original point, if you've put in the work, then you have the maximum going for you anyways. And if you're not a professional stage speaker, then you also don't have to perform like one. So that's the great thing. Right. They're not coming to watch a performance of a rock star.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yes. I tell us similar, because along those lines, when people start to feel the pressure to be like a polished public speaker, but they've never done it before, sometimes they flip into, like, high school theater mode or, like, valedictorian mode, you know, and they'll be like, good afternoon, everyone. I am so happy. And, like, they saw some, like, reel on LinkedIn that was like, how to use your hands while you're on stage. And they're trying to do all these things. And I'm like, do not touch any of that performance stuff until you are, like, 50 talks deep. You know what I mean? Just get up there and be yourself. There's that Vin dude who's like, really a big public speaking coach, and he's like, use your voice like an instrument and go bring your energy up and then bring it down. Have you seen that guy?

[Lea Tarin]

Yeah, I think I do. Yeah, I think I know.

[Vincent Pierry]

And I'm like, dude, you are so right if you are talking to, like, people that have done a hundred talks. But to be the average exec starting their speaking journey should not be paying attention to, like, am I varying my pitch enough in this section? You know what I mean? Like, that's just psycho to me. I do that some of that stuff now because I'm gonna talk, like, 600 or something. But that would have gotten me so in my head for the first year or two.

[Lea Tarin]

I think that's a very good point, because now that you're talking about it, I'm also realizing that the number one thing that you should consider or, like, concern yourself with, if you have the attention span to just worry about one thing, then it should be about delivering the content. Anything else that comes afterwards is bonus. But if you try to make that, like, the major thing, then your other stuff will start to fail. I think I told you this also last time on the interview, and I think I'm going to tell the story again. I had one of these devices on my back that made me stand upright. Right. So I cannot remember the name of it right now on stage. And it was reminding me to stand up on stage because this is the feedback that I got. You know, look at him slumped and,

[Vincent Pierry]

you know, so distracting.

[Lea Tarin]

Exactly. And it was so distracting that it actually, I was standing straight, but I was constantly getting out of my talk. So, you know, get your priorities right. And I think what you just said is very true. Focus on what matters.

[Vincent Pierry]

I literally tell them, do not think of this as a performance.

[Lea Tarin]

Yeah.

[Vincent Pierry]

Think of this as, like, you're arguing, like, you're trying to persuade. It's not performance, it's persuasion. Like, a lawyer doesn't say, what am I going to do with my hands? A lawyer is focused on Argument like, you're a lawyer, you're not a, you know, actor.

[Lea Tarin]

Yeah. You know, it's a little bit like the restaurant again, Right. As long as the food tastes good, the presentation can be a little bit off, but it cannot be the other way around. Yeah, that's just what it is. So what else is there to say?

[Vincent Pierry]

I know we're probably wrapping up, but I'd love to hear your take. And I can check all these two unhooking people at the beginning, because I think this is another big place people mess up is the intro section.

[Lea Tarin]

So, funnily, I do not introduce myself at all in the beginning. I don't do that anymore. I have not done this in a long time because I feel like telling people who you are before they know what you do is not interesting at all.

[Vincent Pierry]

What's your hook now? What's your framework for unhook?

[Lea Tarin]

So the most important thing is, is that it is not my personality, right? It's not. I'm not going to tell them for five minutes. This is the worst thing that you can do. Like, why am I on stage? And then I was with. And then I worked for lotus notes in 1998, and then I did this and that. Fuck off. I don't want to hear about it. So don't do an intro of yourself. And if you have to do one, then it should be really, really short. You can just like, hey, my name is Leah. You know, I talk about B2B product, like, growth. And I want to tell you more about this today. You can, but, you know, this is equivalent to having someone having a YouTube video where they explain to you for 10 minutes, hi, welcome to my video. Thank you very much for coming. And you're just like, get to the fucking point, man.

[Vincent Pierry]

Right.

[Lea Tarin]

So the hook is you want to make a statement that is sort of. I don't want to say clickbaity. That's not what I mean. But, like, you need to say something that is believable if there is data following afterwards. So, for instance, you could say that AI is making go to market extremely difficult. But also it changes the jobs of product managers fundamentally. There's no reasoning in that particular statement. Like, I did not say why this is the case or what the data is for it or whatever. But the point of the presentation is to kind of prove these two points, and I will reference them constantly over the talk. So rather than building up to your kind of argument, you already kind of spill the beans in the beginning. It's almost like, hey, you know like, here's a murder movie movie, and it starts with, and the gardener killed the baroness. Right. Like, that's the first sentence. Let me show you how it happened. Right. And I feel like on stage, when you're trying to present an idea, that is what you're doing. You're not solving a murder mystery. And then the big woof is coming at the end. It's more about, let me tell you how it looks like at the end. And then I'm explaining to you how I got there. And I feel like that is usually a quite foolproof strategy. Keep it simple. Keep the idea simple. Keep complex ideas also simple. I always spend, like five to 10 minutes, maybe more. Five minutes to explain terms in the way that I talk about them. You know the joke about three people that get together and talk about God, and those are three different deities. Right. Because everybody thinks they're talking about the same thing, but they're not. That is specifically in tech, where we have a lot of jargonism, it's very important to kind of establish that we're talking about the same thing. And then the other thing is just like, you know, I don't take myself that serious. So I'm starting, like, with my grandeur. I'm coming in with my executive slides, and then I make jokes about it, like, look at me. I must be important because I have a pyramid slide that is always lining really well with people. And I think it also gives you some credit, you know, like, with the audience in general, because you're just. You're not coming off that kind of serious. But I feel like the hook is your presentation in a way. Right. It needs to be something I've never, like, my presentation is never about Gary the sales guy. That is not a presentation.

[Vincent Pierry]

Right.

[Lea Tarin]

Sales guy is a tool to kind of explain what product LED growth is and why it is so difficult to kind of integrate product LED growth into a sales LED organization. But that sounds very dry. But with Gary, it's fun because everybody knows a Gary.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

And it becomes relatable, you know?

[Vincent Pierry]

Yep.

[Lea Tarin]

Yeah. Not sure whether that's a good framework. See, I don't think this is a good framework that you can follow, but I think it's. That's how I'm doing it.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah, that makes sense. I think there's similarity to that, to what I encourage people to do a lot of the stuff I loved. You were saying one is not doing the whole resume, your whole bio. I always talk people out of that. Another common mistake on that end of, like, giving too Much context is when you give them, like, the table of contents of your talk. I'm going to talk about this. And I'm talking about this. I'm talking about this. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's too much. You're already boring people on the other end. And I don't think you're saying this, but the something. Sometimes people will have watched a couple TED talks and they will go, oh, I've learned a thing or two about public speaking. And then they'll apply some of that stuff and they'll walk up on stage and they'll be like, I'll never forget July 10, 2025, when I was walking home. And they'll launch straight into a story, you know what I'm talking about. With, like, no context.

[Lea Tarin]

It was a warm summer day and my. And my left ass cheek was twitching. I'm sorry.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah. And I'm like, they think that's like a good intro because it's really attention grabbing. And I'm like, it is attention grabbing. People are listening, but they don't know why they're listening. And it's very theatrical. It's very, like, silly feeling. But a ton of people do that, and I don't tell them not to do that. The framework I love is three Ps, pain points, problem, promise. So pain point has to be a negative thing they already feel. So this is where all you're trying to do is get everybody nodding their head. So I had like one client who is in uxr, you know, UX research, you're familiar with this, but like, he is speaking to a room full of UXR people on how to present better to their stakeholders. It's a little metal. It's like a presentation on presentations. Right. But his whole presentation was on how to, like, captivate your stakeholders and give better presentations. He didn't start by saying, you guys all suck at presenting. Right? Because that's the problem. But that's not the pain point. They feel. They think they're great. So he starts with the pain point that they do feel. And I always encourage people to go, no matter how technical the environment, go as human as you can in the first 60 seconds. Well, he started by saying it is one of the worst feelings and we all feel it regularly to feel like you put a ton of work into something and nobody cares and nobody listen. And you put hours into this, the research and the presentation, you feel like it just gets overlooked. Very human. Very pain point, very empathy and rapport building. Right. So that'd be something maybe you could noodle on. It's like, okay, even if they like the idea, have I gotten it to a pain point that affects them on a human level? Because if you can get them there, you got them, you've got them for 40 minutes, you've got them for an hour. Because if it's a personal pain point, not just an interesting idea, they'll love you forever. And they'll be like, leia is my mom. So pain point. And then the deeper problem that your talk is actually going to solve because you're not actually going to give them a counseling session, I'm like, let me help you feel better that no one listens to you. So his next thing, and this is sort of the sticky statement part, he said, we don't have a research problem, we have a presentation problem. Now, the one thing I would maybe push back on that you said a little bit, is he does not give away the solution. In the intro, I think you're trying to create tension. You're trying to say somebody died, but we don't know who did it. But I'm going to tell you who did it. You don't want to give it away all up front. You want to say, here's the problem we're going to solve for the next 35 minutes. That's what I recommend. Right? So he said, yeah, we don't have a research problem, we have a presentation problem. So pain point. We all don't like not getting listened to problem. We have to get better at presenting. And then the promise, I'm going to take you through a process to get better at this, and this is where you can have another sort of mini hook. So for him, he used to be a detective, like law enforcement, and he applied all he learned as a detective to UX research. So he's researching crimes. And then he applied the same things to researching, you know, customer or you know what I mean, like users of an app or whatever. So in that promise, you can give a little extra spice of, like, the angle you're going to take as you give them the solution to the problem. It's kind of like symptom diagnosis medicine. The symptom they feel, the diagnosis they may not know. And then here's the medicine that's coming your way and it's going to taste good.

[Lea Tarin]

Yeah, that's true. I guess that's a good point. And I think in order to conclude on the talk as well, I think you should still find some kind of ways to reinforce it at the end and kind of do a summary that it's kind of containing at least again, like the full story in an even more abbreviated format. That's maybe the only thing that I suck at a little bit because I sometimes run out of time.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah.

[Lea Tarin]

Despite all the preparation. But, you know, like, that can also happen, so.

[Vincent Pierry]

Yeah. Yeah. I think. I think the best close is a story of somebody else who applied everything you just taught them. You know, tell the story of somebody who ran the play you just taught them and the difference it made because then it fully cemented and you get to end with a story and everybody loves the story.

[Lea Tarin]

Well, isn't that wonderful? This is how we get to have people to love us. By performing nice on stage. That I think that's a wonderful thing. No, I love stage talking and I think it's a. I don't want to call it a hobby, but I think it's an interesting interest to have on the side to kind of manage and master as well.

[Vincent Pierry]

100%.

[Lea Tarin]

Well, Winston, thank you very much for coming today and spilling all these beans. How should people get in touch with you? You almost have the entire world following you on LinkedIn, but in case someone doesn't, they can follow you on LinkedIn. Is there any other place where they should go to or do you want to hear from people?

[Vincent Pierry]

I do not really care. No, I'm just kidding. I'd love to hear from anybody.

[Lea Tarin]

Anybody.

[Vincent Pierry]

I'm. I'm around. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm low tech. I got no email at subscribers. I got no Instagram, I got no substack, I got no website. I got LinkedIn.

[Lea Tarin]

What a boomer. Maybe you should do that. Maybe you should go on lovable and just like vibe code one of your websites.

[Vincent Pierry]

Well, that's actually what I do.

[Lea Tarin]

No, but you have a website. It's called your LinkedIn profile. And that works.

[Vincent Pierry]

That is it. I got to keep things very streamlined with still having a day job. So I'm just. Simple, simple, simple. LinkedIn. Find me on LinkedIn, I'm there.

[Lea Tarin]

Well, I'm going to be excited to see where you're going to end up in the next year or two. Maybe you're going to expand to other planets, but until then, I'm really glad that we've spoken and yeah, that's that for this episode.

[Vincent Pierry]

Thank you so much for having me. Truly so grateful. Kaboom.

[Lea Tarin]

Thank you so much for listening to the product. Tea with Lea. If you don't have enough yet, you can subscribe to my podcast right now and Apple podcasts or Spotify. Or you can head to my website, LeahTarin.com, which is Leah H T-H-A-R-I-N.com where you can find much more of my material or just want to work with me.