Paul Krismer On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

If you want to be paid as a public speaker, you need to be in a business frame of mind, not expecting people to come and seek you out. Discipled action and a clear business plan are essential for long run success.

At some point in our lives, many of us will have to give a talk to a large group of people. What does it take to be a highly effective public speaker? How can you improve your public speaking skills? How can you overcome a fear of speaking in public? What does it take to give a very interesting and engaging public talk? In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker” we are talking to successful and effective public speakers to share insights and stories from their experience. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Paul Krismer.

Keynote speaker Paul Krismer teaches the practical application of positive emotions to achieve corporate and personal excellence to audiences around the world. As an employee engagement public speaker and expert, Paul delivers strategies to attain healthier workforces and increased profits- these are the scientifically proven results of highly engaged teams.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

I grew up in a prairie, small farm town in central Canada. I was the youngest of six kids living in a single- parent household.

It was chaotic. People were coming and going, lots of activity, sports, music lessons, neighborhood fun, and I relished the sheer volume of activity. I had a best friend that lived next door.

Frankly, I think my mom was so busy and stressed out by her responsibilities that I was left to my own devices a lot. And overall, that was a lot of fun and afforded me the opportunity to explore and grow as a child in a way that had enough safety and yet enough risk.

To this very day, I like to be playful and take risks.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

All my life, even in elementary school, I found myself frequently on a stage. I often played parts in theatrical productions. I ran for class President in grade six. And somehow, it seemed natural that when I began my early career, I found myself doing public consultation exercises where often I was explaining complicated law and policy to audiences of laypeople.

It was always fun for me.

And then, in 2016, I opened my consulting practice and have found myself giving a speech somewhere nearly every week and sometimes multiple times in the same week.

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Well, I’m a Canadian who presently lives most of the year in Las Vegas. But before I had my visa that allowed me to live legally in the United States, I was frequently crossing the border from Canada, going in to meet with a client in the U.S., and I had to get a particular type of visa that a customs officer granted. Anybody who’s ever crossed the border knows that U.S. customs border officers are not exactly warm and friendly types. They are stern, and they’re mostly looking for reasons why they can say “no”. So, on one particular occasion before the pandemic, I was en route to Montana to give a speech in Great Falls, and the U.S. Customs officer, completely at his own discretion, decided I didn’t qualify for the same visa that many times previously I had been allowed into the country for.

And so, with less than 12 hours to go before the event, I frantically had to call the client and say that I’m being denied entry into the U.S., and it felt like we turned on a dime to facilitate me speaking to a large audience via a Zoom call. Of course, nowadays, since the pandemic, virtual events are easy and we all know how to do them. But at that time, it was sheer panic for both me and the event planner.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Well, the funniest mistake I ever made while giving a speech was having a staff member of mine come into the public consultation session and whisper in my ear that my wife was going into labor. The audience could tell something important had been said to me, but I didn’t know how to react. And so, I was looking back at the staff member, and I said to her loud enough that the audience could hear, well, what should I do? And she laughed at me and said, go home. And I explained to the audience what was happening. And they laughed with me, and kind of in a loud, collective way, they said, yes, go home.

So I did. And of course, my very capable staff finished the presentation for me.

And the lesson, perhaps, is to be real with your audience. You’re not coming in as a movie star in a make-believe fictional story. You’re coming in to share what learning you’ve acquired from your real life. And being real — being authentic — is much more important than crafting some perfect but fictional message.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I felt like a competent public speaker before I decided to make a living doing this in my own business — mostly from prior business experience of having to speak in front of audiences. So, my biggest challenge was actually learning how to make a business from my speaking.

A woman — IJ McIntyre — who belonged to the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers, of which there’s an equivalent in the United States called the National Speakers Association, encouraged me to attend one of the annual conventions. She told me that this would be a game-changer to understand the business.

I was unsure. I was reluctant, but I agreed to follow her advice. And in 2016, I attended my first CAPS annual convention.

Learning from other professional speakers how to make a living as a professional speaker is a basic, tried-and-true path to success.

You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging and intimidating. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?

I think the most important thing is to know your why. Why do you want to be a public speaker? If you think it will be an overnight lucrative and fun, glamorous lifestyle, think again.

The people who succeed in the long run have a burning desire to share an important message.

And they have the fortitude to do the developmental work to get established in the business. It’s not easy.

Even talented, hardworking people will need several years before they’ve got a breakthrough and the money will follow. To get through this hard period, you must have a compelling answer to the question; “why do I speak?”

What drives you to get up everyday and give your talks? What is the main empowering message that you aim to share with the world?

My topic is happiness! That is pretty fun. I teach happiness specifically as a mechanism to get more success from one’s own life. This not only motivates me greatly in my own life, but the ability to share the science of happiness with audiences for personal, professional and organizational success is deeply rewarding. It is true to my mission in the world.

I know it sounds over-the-top, but I feel like this is what I am on Earth to do. And so, making the world a little happier is more than enough motivation to get me up and going every day.

You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?

I have a particularly interesting client that I’ve just begun working with more profoundly. Without revealing their identity, they are an arm of the U.S. military services. They have very young leaders with tremendous responsibility for their soldiers’ lives, both personal and professional. I’m developing leadership retreats that will help these young leaders see their role differently. They will see their role beyond accomplishing a military mission; rather that their big-picture mission is to aid in the wellbeing of the people they command.

There is a tragic reality of U.S. armed forces personnel too often having broken lives, sometimes resulting in suicide. Our intention is to generally improve the well-being of the men and women who serve their country.

I am super excited to be a part of this project.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite “Life Lesson Quote” is from Gandhi:

Your beliefs become your thoughts

your thoughts become your words

your words become your actions

your actions become your habits

your habits become your values

your values become your destiny

This quote is meaningful to me because I feel a lot of my own work is to get my thoughts tracking correctly every day so that my behaviors line up with my intentions of where I want my work and my life to go.

And similarly, I want the same for my clients to get them in a positive, action-oriented frame of mind so that they get the lives that they want.

Ok, thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker?” Please share a story or example for each.

The first thing is to genuinely have something to say. If you want to be a public speaker because you think it’s glamorous or lucrative, the world doesn’t need you. But if you have something that you know you can share that people need, if you’ve got a message that will make a difference, then start there. Because you don’t have to be famous, and you don’t have to be the most accomplished speaker on stage. If your message is good enough and important, there’s an audience wanting to hear from you.

Second, if you want to be paid as a public speaker, you need to be in a business frame of mind, not expecting people to come and seek you out. Discipled action and a clear business plan are essential for long run success.

Third, be a bit funny. There’s an expression in the industry that says you don’t have to be funny to be a speaker. But if you want to make money, you need to be funny. Be light-hearted. Be passionate about your topic. Show your genuine humility. Usually poking fun at your own self is the best way to make the audience feel connected with you.

Fourth, a good talk is filled with stories that leave an emotional impact. People can learn only so much from the reciting of important and relevant facts. And, of course, it’s essential that you have some factual underpinning to the message you want to share. However, to move people into action, they need to feel deeply that the stories you share reach them in their hearts and in their gut, beyond their minds.

Fifth, prioritize your audience for every speech. If you think you have one canned talk that you can say in exactly the same way everywhere you go, then you are too self-centered to be genuinely of service to the people you’re speaking to. Each audience has a unique language, unique challenges, and a unique perspective to why they want to hear you speak. And if you can’t adapt your talk to speak specifically to that audience then ultimately you won’t get the accolades that are necessary for a long career in this business.

As you know, many people are terrified of speaking in public. Can you give some of your advice about how to overcome this fear?

Of course, people are terrified to speak. They should be the same as when they first get in a car and learn to drive. The only way you get over being scared to be the driver of a car is to log enough hours driving a car so that it becomes second nature. And that is true for speakers as well. If you want to be a speaker, get in front of audiences and speak over and over and over again.

Even if you have to speak for free over and over again, get in front of audiences until you are totally comfortable, and the fear shifts from deeply frightening to merely exciting and wanting the moment to be important for both you and the audience alike. And once you’ve made that transition, you’re a race car driver in an exhilarating contest and not a scared 16-year-old hoping you don’t crash your dad’s car.

You are a person of huge influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

The movement I would love to inspire is for people to prioritize their personal happiness.

There is so much science behind how we’re more successful and contribute our greatest gifts to the world when we have abundant positive emotions. People who deprioritize their happiness so they can accomplish and acquire things are sadly unaware how accomplishments and acquisitions are, in fact, much easier to get when we start from a place of happiness. And after all, the only reason why we want to accomplish and acquire things is so that we can be happy.

So, we need to reverse the cycle — get happy first, by investing in our personal well-being, so that we can give our gifts needed in the world.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!

I would love to have lunch with the Dalai Lama. I, of course would be starstruck and probably unable to say much of anything. But his gentle, playful, powerful contribution to the world inspires me and I’d love to meet him.

Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?

Readers can find me via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkrismer/

This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!