Jhoanny Perez of Tín Marin Restaurant On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Trust yourself, remember that once you’re up there your nerves will die and you’ll be in your zone of genius.

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 Jhoanny Perez.

Jhoanny is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who teaches other immigrants the step by step formula to open their dream restaurants in order to create generational wealth and security for their families.

In 2012, Jhoanny and her family brought their dream to life. They built three 7-figure restaurant businesses in New York City Tin Marin Restaurant, Tilila Casa Pública & Cocina and Canave Cocina & Bar within nine years, each restaurant was completely built from the ground up. Since then, they have been featured in various media outlets for their success in accomplishing the American Dream as Latina immigrants. Some of these features include the New York Times, New York Post, The Riverdale Press, Riverdale Press #2, Edible Bronx Magazine, NYC CBS Local, Urban Matter and on The Patch.

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’m a proud 2nd generation immigrant, and I’m rooted in my Dominican heritage- thank you for asking to tell my story as it honors my ancestors.

Before arriving in the US, I lived in a rural town called Moca in the Dominican Republic. I was raised by two powerful women — My mother and grandmother. My father divorced my mom when I was born, remarried, and has another family now.

We were so poor that among the poor, we were still regarded as poor. I remember my grandmother telling me that the kind of toys she was privileged to have when she was young were carved out of trash. My favorite of her poverty stories has to be her taking leftover mango seeds then drawing eyes, a nose, and a mouth on them. At least she was creative with poverty.

My mother and grandmother made the sacrifice and migrated to the US without me in a bid to provide better lives for us. Our over limited finances won’t avail them the opportunity to take me along. I would later join them where seven of us will live in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx’s grand-concourse! Yes, I’m like Jenny from the Block (Jlo), or Cardi B, okurrr.

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

What brought me to the speaking career path was my humanitarian work and my willingness to facilitate on video or in person if it meant making a difference in my community.

I think what brought me here has been the ability to take detours in life. We plan, and we choose a degree in school but life takes us to different corners and it’s up to us to figure out why. Why did I land here? Should I take it as a sign? Sometimes it’s from rejections and closed doors that we decide to make opportunities for ourselves and that my friend is called a detour.

I took the detour and now I get to tell my story of resiliency and hard work to audiences that relate to me. I get to tell my story of how I connect my failures and challenges in life to the person I am today.

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

I started college at a four year university and because of health issues my gpa dropped and I was ordered to go to community college.

Community college was where the leader in me was born. I wanted to be part of a student club and I ended up reviving one, recruiting members and club officers and becoming the president of the club. From there on, I was invited to student leader conferences and meetings where we were trained on public speaking and elevator pitches.

Starting over again was the best thing that ever happened to me. This led me to doing field work in Haiti, South Africa, Ghana, Honduras, and Panama. It led me to being appointed Youth Representative in the UN and landed me other precious opportunities.

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?

The funniest mistake I’ve made was centering my social media video or lives on me. It’s a common mistake to think people are interested in learning about yourself when indeed what they are looking to hear is why they should listen to you. First list the reasons why they should listen to you, then you introduce yourself and your credentials.

Every speech or talk must begin with facts that support your topic and how you are about to give value to the person watching.

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’m especially grateful for my mother and grandmother, two single women who raised me. They came to this country unable to speak the language and brought me when I was two years old. My grandmother worked long hours at a factory and my mother endured abuse at a store she worked long hours in. Their braveness has inspired me to do something for those trying to achieve what we achieved: the American Dream.

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?

Sure, I have a few tips that will help keep you motivated:

1. Ask yourself what’s your end goal in this career? What’s the big picture? Envision that and write down how you want to feel when you get there.
2. Break down this end goal into smaller goals. What are the pieces that need to be pieced together for this to happen?
3. What if they day no? Make a plan for how you are going to make the best of each detour in your career.

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 son is the reason I get up everyday and do everything that I do. When I give a talk my main empowering message is the American Dream can be achieved, you define it and it’s your job to take steps towards it.

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?

Thank you for complimenting my work. I owe it to the public for supporting me and the women I help. I am working on creating a nonprofit organization that will host food entrepreneurship programs in nyc public schools and online nationwide for the summer every year.

I hope to inspire young people to start their own business right from middle school and high school. We will focus on creating simple food businesses that can be scaled as they learn and grow: hot dog stands, at home food service, and food trucks. There will be a fundraising and saving component to the program so youth learn to fund their project.

and have them at the same time intern and work at restaurants. Working at restaurants shows to be beneficial and enhance critical thinking skills and problem solving skills for youth.

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 “Start with what you have”.

For me, this life lesson quote eliminates any excuses we make for ourselves in order to start our passion projects. It means that you can start today the journey of a thousand steps with just taking the first one.

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.

Here are the 5 things You need to be a highly effective speaker:

1. The ability to hook your audience. Your talk needs to grab the attention of your audience. Make them curious and want to stay to listen to your entire talk. My Josh talk hook is How I went from being bullied to creating a restaurant empire with my family. My hook would make people who aren’t even interested in restaurants want to know how I accomplished that and what were my challenges that make my audience be able to relate!
2. That brings me to my second tip. As a public speaker you need to have the ability to tell your story in such a way that exemplifies your humanness and vulnerability so that your audience relates to you. In my talk, I describe how I’m an immigrant who came to the United States without knowing the language, and was raised by two single mothers. This is the story of many more immigrants in my audience. If they can relate to my upbringing, my talk then is able to motivate them further and say hey, if I made it, so can you!
3. You must be able to open your talk with facts and explain why someone should listen to you in the first place. After you listed that, then you can talk about who you are, your credentials and what makes you an expert in the topic
4. Your talk should be straight to the point, short, and engaging. My talk is 9 minutes long, it has an opening where I explain the benefits of opening a restaurant, then I go into the hardships we faced opening one, and then I tell my story, and end with motivating my audience to go after their dreams by embodying who they are and what they have been through to build their business.
5. Finally, as a speaker you must be willing to take constructive feedback and be able to implement it right away. To be a highly effective speaker you must be able to take pointers quickly without getting offended. Choose a mentor that will push you, and give you honest actionable feedback. When I was writing my talk, my mentor kept asking me to go back to the 90s and talk more about the days when I experienced pain and how that made me who I am today. Even if you don’t agree or like your mentor’s feedback, try it. It might actually push you out of your comfort zone.

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

Speaking in public will always be something you will feel nervous about. Here is some advice on how to cope with it:

1. Pretend you are speaking to one person. Focus on that one person and relay your message.
2. Record yourself practicing so that you can notice your tone, and increase your confidence.
3. Go back to your WHY. What’s the passion within you that brought you to that speaking stage? Try to express that excitement.
4. Trust yourself, remember that once you’re up there your nerves will die and you’ll be in your zone of genius.

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?

A movement to pay relations to BIPOC and Indigenous people in the form of food business ownership opportunities. I would educate people on how our cuisines have been erased and how we can talk about paying folks back with business ownership.

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 Barack Obama just to pick his brain on what he thinks he could have done better while in office.

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

People can find me on LinkedIn Linkedin and Instagram

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

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Jhoanny Perez of Tín Marin Restaurant On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.