An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Deliver every presentation as if it’s your last one. When you are making a presentation, you are doing more than representing a company; you are representing yourself. Even if it’s your last day on the job, give a performance as if you are going to be in that position for the next 25 years, and leave no one the wiser.

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 Bridgett McGowen.

Have you ever experienced an energy that made you move to the edge of your seat or that had you stand to your feet? What about an excitement that stayed with you and had you talking about it long after an event ended? That is the best way to describe Bridgett McGowen, an award-winning author, an award-winning publisher, and an award-winning international professional speaker who is known to be both comical and memorable. She will not only energize you but will inspire you to not let anyone or anything get in the way of you being the most unforgettable person in the room.

Bridgett has been a professional speaker since 2001 and has spoken on programs alongside prominent figures such as former President Barack Obama, Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, Shonda Rhimes, Kim Coles, Amy Cuddy, Stacey Abrams, Dr. Mae Jemison, Common, Mel Robbins, and Katie Couric.

The prestigious University of Texas at Austin presented her with a Master Presenter Award; Canada-based One Woman presented her with two Fearless Woman Awards; and she has facilitated hundreds of presentations to thousands of go-getters positioned all around the globe.

Bridgett is a former Forbes Coaches Council contributor and a contributor for Medium and Entrepreneur online magazine. She has earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and has taught for Prairie View A&M University; Lone Star College System in Houston, Texas; and University of Phoenix. She is the author of multiple books to include the award-winning REAL TALK: What Other Experts Won’t Tell You About How to Make Presentations That Sizzle and Show Up and Show Out: 52 Communication Habits to Make Even More You Unforgettable. Her publishing company, BMcTALKS Press, won a 2021 Bronze Stevie® Award in the Startup of the Year — Business Services Industries category in the 18th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Bridgett resides with her family in the Phoenix, Arizona area and loves gorgeous sunsets.

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 as an only child in a genetically strange environment. What does that mean? I was adopted. No one around me looked, sounded, or acted like me, and to further complicate matters, I did not find out I was adopted until I was well into adulthood. Gotta love a good surprise, eh? So, after stumbling upon this revelation, it was no longer strange to me why I loved my role as Sunday school secretary where, at the Methodist church that was directly across the street from where I grew up, I had a captive audience — no matter how small it was! — to read the minutes or that during those times when we had to read aloud in elementary school, I was that child who would count the number of students ahead of me to determine which paragraph I’d read, then I’d silently practice it in an effort to execute a flawless delivery. I’d read that passage with all the necessary inflections, pauses, and drama to make the words sound is if they were jumping off the page!

As you can imagine, as a child, I absolutely loved words — and still do, of course! — and got involved in all sorts of activities that involved speaking or reading. One of my proudest moments was winning second place in a second-grade spelling bee, and I’ll never forget the word that tripped me up: achievement. How could I forget the second “e”?! In high school, I was in marching, concert, and jazz band. I was also on the track team for just one season. (That’s an interesting story there for another article!) And as a member of the journalism team in high school, I recall partnering with a classmate to write a column called “Shabba Says …” to give answers to students who’d anonymously submitted some of their most pressing concerns. I also completed in UIL, winning prose and headline writing competitions at regional and state levels. One of the most memorable pieces I read at a competition was a passage from the short story “Marigolds,” written by African American professor and writer Eugenia W. Collier. The story’s themes of poverty, maturity, and the relationship between innocence and compassion captivated me at the time and in a way that has stayed with me decades later.

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

My first career was teaching, but … I didn’t know a THING about teaching! I was always a great student and love love loved school, excelling in all subjects all throughout childhood and college, but to be on the other side of the desk and to be good at it was a foreign concept to me. So, what do good students do when they need to learn something? They go to school!

I started attended conferences, workshops, symposia — anything I could get my hands on to learn how to teach college students enrolled in transitional courses. And, as I was attending these professional development events, watching speakers at the fronts of rooms, teaching peers their best practices, I started thinking, and I said to myself “I can do that!! I can do better than that!” And that’s where it started.

I began submitting proposals to conferences, and they were getting accepted; but better yet, I was developing something of a following! At a conference in College Station, Texas, I recall overhearing a gentleman say to another conference-goer just before the start of my session “I don’t know what she’s presenting, but I saw her present once before; so, when I saw her name in the program at this conference, I knew I was coming to her session.” True story! And that’s all I needed to hear. Granted, I had made presentations prior to starting to teach in 2002, and I’d read attendees’ positive reviews after participating in my sessions; but it was something about hearing that testimonial that made it was official.

I had been bitten by the speaker bug!

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

OMG! Have you ever put your hat in the ring for what you know will be a sure-fire win only for it to backfire on you? Yes! That happened to me when I submitted a proposal to speak at a local conference, and not only did I receive my rejection letter, but the feeling was compounded by the fact that I’d submitted practically the same proposal — I’m talking about virtually VERBATIM!!! — to speak at the international conference that was being put on by this same organization the next spring.

So, of course, as you can imagine, I’m feeling doubly disappointed, thinking “If I’m not good enough for the state chapter, then the international committee that’s already confirmed President Barack Obama as one of its speakers is literally going to laugh at my proposal!”

But … I was wrong!

A few months after receiving the local conference’s “no, thank you,” I received my confirmation email that my proposal for the international conference had been accepted, and I was on my way to San Diego to speak on the same program with 44 himself! With that, I learned sometimes a rejection is not meant to be a dejection but is meant to be a redirection.

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?

It happened at a conference I presented at in San Antonio while I was working on a PhD in juvenile justice. I thought my outfit was amazing, sporting my favorite purple pantsuit perfectly paired with a gold top and gold pumps to properly represent my alma mater’s colors. And one added touch was a gold pen that I felt the need to keep in my hand the ENTIRE time I was presenting. With every gesture, every move, and every word, that pen was right there with me! It wasn’t until one of the professors who’d accompanied us to the conference told me how great the presentation, that everything was terrific with the exception of … that pen! I was mortified! What if the audience remembered nothing of what I said and only remembered that bouncing pen?!

The lesson? I learned to practice every single move of my presentation from start to finish at least three times so I know what the audience sees and avoid manufacturing distractions that can take away from my message. (And I have also adopted a practice of wearing black as opposed to colorful outfits when I present so the audience pays more attention to what I’m saying than what I’m wearing.)

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?

Both Simone E. Morris and Dr. Sheila Pope see what I can’t see and believe in me when all I have are questions and doubts. When I finally decided to write my award-winning book, REAL TALK: What Other Experts Won’t Tell You About How to Make Presentations That Sizzle, it was Sheila who told me I needed to think bigger with where my book would be sold, that I needed to make it more widely available so it could reach people all over the world. And it was Simone who told me to take extra copies of it with me to the first conference that had it available for sale in its bookstore. I responded to Sheila with “Girl, please. I can just keep a few on hand in my office and sell them on my website as needed.” And to Simone, I said, “Give me a break. I don’t want to be bothered with lugging around extra books that no one’s going to buy!” Well, what do you know? The book sold out at the conference bookstore, and when people came to me with the news, I sold the few copies I had on hand, eventually running out, and I was beaming as I told people the book was available for purchase online wherever they prefer to buy books!

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?

You won’t know if you’re a success or a failure unless you try, and you do not want to look back years from now and say “I wonder what if ….” Just do it. Avoid getting consumed by what you see on social media. Those posts mostly show only the wins, not revealing that it may have taken ten losses to get to that one win. Give it your best, know there will be stumbles along the way, get up when you fall, and have no regrets.

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

You hear “no,” “you’re wrong,” and “you can’t do that” more times than you care to count. And it can be hard to push through and believe you will eventually hear a “yes,” “you’re right,” or “let’s do this!”

What drives me to get up every day and give my talks — formally and informally, one-on-one or one-to-many — is I may be that one person who gives someone a “yes!” I may be that one person who finally has someone believing in her/himself.

In my presentations, audiences are reminded that they are valued and that they are valuable. They are reminded that in those moments when they simply want to retreat and take cover that they can be resilient and truly confident. I’m driven to give my talks because my voice may be the voice that someone has been needing to hear and to remain silent is an injustice to that someone.

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?

The most exciting project on the horizon is my work with a go-getter in Missouri to not only publish her book on her birthday in March 2023 but to also position her to use her book as a foundation for confirming paid speaking engagements! My team and I have done this time after time again for me, and I’ve supported others in locating speaking engagements as well as getting their books published; but to fully mesh the two worlds is something I’ve never done before for someone else, and I’m beyond thrilled about this project!

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

“The most powerful person in the room is not the one who’s the loudest one in the room. It’s the one who knows how to command a room without saying a word.” — Bridgett McGowen

Don’t feel the need to always have your life or yourself on display. Don’t search for approval. Don’t follow the crowd. Don’t worry about what everyone else has going on. Lean into who you are, how you uplift those around you, how you want to show up in the world, and how you want to be remembered. Those who embrace your message and your magic will circle around you and find value in what you bring to the table.

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.

1. Remember it’s not about you; it’s about the audience. Somewhere around 2011 or so, a colleague and I were making simultaneous presentations in different parts of a building to groups of faculty members in California. During a break, I scurried over to the colleague and asked him if he was getting a weird vibe from the professors in his room. He was indeed. “Okay. Good.” Not “good” as in I was glad he was getting the stink eye, too, but “good” as in I was glad I wasn’t alone, that perhaps it was not 100% my fault that the audience wasn’t loving everything I was saying.

We later found out that before our presentations, during the 8:00am plenary session, the faculty had been told there was a ton of new policies being put in place for the new term; they needed to enforce the policies and comply, as applicable; and raises for the new year were in jeopardy. “And with that, ladies and gentlemen, please go forth, and soak in everything the presenters have to give you!” REALLY?! The feelings weren’t personal. They were real. The audience had been slammed with all kinds of new information that required time to process, but everyone was expected to immediately shift into gear and participate with full engagement and a happy face. Yeh, right.

As a presenter, keep your game face on, don’t worry about what you cannot control (e.g., audience attitudes). Deliver a presentation that has them moving, thinking, writing ad feeling. Give them a presentation that shines the light on how amazing they are. Give them an experience like they’ve never had before so once your presentation has long ended, all they can remember is what a good time they had.

2. Omit insignificant details, especially those that do not cast you in the brightest of lights. Imagine presenting an afternoon webinar, zipping off to the airport, flying three hours to the east, hardly sleeping, presenting a two-hour workshop, sprinting to your hotel room to moderate another webinar, then dashing off to the airport to fly to another city to facilitate that live workshop again the next day. That sounds extreme and ridiculous, right? I’ve done it. But here’s the deal: your options are tell everyone how tired you are and even look and perform in a fatigued way OR show up; give it 100%; and knock the audience’s socks off, knowing you can sleep another time. For which do you want to be remembered?

Audience members want to know how you can help them be more powerful, more productive, better professionals, incredibly outstanding in all facets of their lives. It matters not to the audience what YOU know or what you do until you show them how you can take what you know or what you do to help them with what THEY do!

3. Give everyone a reason to listen, and provide a call to action. Picture it. Early May 2018. San Diego, California. The convention center. It was almost 1:00pm when I was on my way to the speaker ready room to make some final changes to my slide deck in preparation to facilitate my presentation at 3:00pm when I read a unique and incredibly familiar name on a conference-goer’s name badge. There were 10,000+ people in attendance at this conference; the odds of me running into this person and then even engaging in a conversation with him were one in billion … make that one in a trillion. I will not go into details, but do know that the encounter and the huge secret that was revealed during the course of our conversation caused both of us to become totally shaken. Totally. In my mind, I was thinking “How in the world am I going to get through this presentation NOW?!” But I also had to tell myself “Suck it up, buttercup.” I had a presentation in just over two hours; 400–500 people were going to be in the room, and cancelling or finding a replacement was not an option whatsoever. I showed up and did what I had to do. Period.

Sometimes that’s what you have to do. Start your presentation by telling everyone what they will know or be able to do by the end of your presentation. Do not start with your bio. Do not start with long story about the wild encounter you had just hours before the session. Let them know how their time will be spent, then deliver the goods. After you present, give a call to action that moves the audience to extend its thinking and its engagement. Take your audience members from listening to acting, and when you do that, you inspire your listeners to do more, to be more, and to realize how incredibly dynamic they are.

4. Deliver every presentation as if it’s your last one. When you are making a presentation, you are doing more than representing a company; you are representing yourself. Even if it’s your last day on the job, give a performance as if you are going to be in that position for the next 25 years, and leave no one the wiser. (I’ve been here. Seattle … April 7, 2016 … I’d received notice on April 5 that my last day with the company was April 15; however, the trip to Seattle has been planned and was still ago. I went in there and gave a performance of a lifetime; you would have thought I was going to be selling the product on which I was presenting for the next 50 years!)

The degrees of separation are getting smaller and smaller; as such, you never know when paths will cross again, and you do not want to be remembered as that one person who made a presentation and obviously didn’t give a care. This is one where you remember the bigger picture — your career, your reputation, your future — and you show up and show out!

5. Never let them see you sweat. It doesn’t matter if …

you got lost while trying to find the place…

technology fails …

your slides do not show correctly …

an activity seems to flop …

you lose your train of thought …

you got ahead of yourself with a point …

anything goes wrong.

I have had all of those happen to me. And what you do is you smile, and make it clear that all is right, you are having the time of your life, and that there is absolutely nowhere else you’d rather be or nothing else you’d rather be doing than spending time right here right now with the people gathered before you.

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

Make everything you say a presentation. Keep your shoulders back, your head up, and your eyes laser-focused; adopt these practices with your body language every single time you speak no matter where you are — the grocery store, the bank, the post office — and no matter to whom you speak. Eliminate the “uh’s” and “um’s” otherwise known as filler words. Make statements that sound firm, not flimsy. For instance, say, “I know,” not “I think.” Eliminate high-rising terminals or uptalk so every statement you make does not sound like a question. Consistently sound like a confident and powerful speaker in your day-to-day life, so when you’re on a physical stage with a microphone and it’s time to deliver, sounding confident is habit, and it feels totally natural to own the microphone.

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?

Let’s stop searching for explanations due to someone showing up in the world just a touch different from how you show up. Let’s quit insisting people put their lives on full display before we can fully empathize with them. Let’s not question who people are or why they are the way they are. Instead, for those whom we know are doing no harm and are doing the best they can with the lives they’ve been given, let’s lean into them, learn from them, and lift them up regardless of how much or how little we know of their story.

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!

Oprah! First, I want to have lunch with her simply because she’s freaking awesome. But second, I want to discuss with her how to teach a lesson from a deeply painful and personal story, how to push past the barrier of shame or self-doubt to publicly share that story and the accompanying lesson with the goal of impacting others, and what’s the greatest lesson she believes she has taught or that she has yet to teach.

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

Yes! I cannot wait to connect! Readers can visit www.connectwithb.com to get all my social media handles plus links to articles I’ve penned for Forbes, Entrepreneur, Medium, and other outlets as well as links to my podcast, my blog, and online retailers that carry my books.

This was so informative. Thank you so much! We wish you continued success!


Bridgett McGowen On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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