Hooks, Heart, and Humanity: What Every Leader Needs to Know About Speaking | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

In this episode, Matt Zaun sits down with Cody Hand, founder of Speakers Collaborative, to discuss what it really takes to become a dynamic speaker in the age of AI and short attention spans. Cody breaks down the myth that effective speaking is about memorization and instead reveals why authenticity, presence, and intentionality on stage matter more now than ever.

In addition, they talk about:

✅ How to structure a powerful “hook” that grabs your audience from the start

✅ The biggest mistake leaders make when emulating TEDx-style speeches

✅ Why soundbites matter more than ever in today’s scroll-happy world

… and much more!

BIOS:

Cody Hand is the founder of Speakers Collaborative, a cohort-based coaching experience for seasoned professionals who want to master the stage. Drawing on a background in law, politics, education, and performance, Cody helps speakers distill their unique stories, develop powerful stage presence, and walk away with compelling content to fuel their thought leadership.

Matt Zaun is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who shows business leaders how to inspire action and drive results through the power of strategic storytelling. With a track record of catalyzing significant sales growth for over 300 organizations across industries—from financial services to health and wellness—Matt’s approach has been proven to deliver measurable impact.

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

Today I'm joined by Cody Hand. He is the founder of Speakers Collaborative.

 

Cody Hand 

Welcome to Stories of Traction, Cody. Hey, thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

 

Matt Zaun 

I appreciate your time. I know you're incredibly busy, so I really appreciate you spending time with us today. And I want to dive right in.

Speakers Collaborative, some of the things that you do, what do you do for your clients?

 

Cody Hand 

Take us through a little bit of your day-to-day, what that looks like. Thanks. So the Speakers Collaborative at its core is an organization that is designed and developed for up-and-coming.

Speakers and authors, leaders to go through a very intensive six week process. And then at the end of that six week process, we put them on stage in front of a live audience in person and live stream audience.

That six week process covers everything from how to pick your topic, how to narrow your topic down. We cover everything from what to wear, how to be on stage.

And it's very intensive. And I will tell you, Matt, we don't take people who have stage fright, right? This is not therapy.

This is not somebody who has an idea that they might want to be a public speaker. These are people who have been on a stage before and want to do it more or have a book that they really want to get promoted.

Or, you know, a lot of your clients are CEOs. They are CEOs who have a tremendous wealth of knowledge that they would like to start sharing with a broader audience.

And so we take those amazing humans, five of them at Put them through that cohort process. And at the end of that, put them on stage with the professional crew and get all of the content they could ever hope for to market themselves.

But we also put them in front of a live audience so they can get the feel for an audience, the feedback from the audience, and build their own community while we're building the speakers collaborative community.

 

Matt Zaun 

Great. Thanks for sharing that. So one of the things I want to focus on is the stage dynamics of what it means to be a vibrant, captivating speaker.

One of the things that always fascinated me, especially as I would study politicians and different leaders and how they really command the attention of their audience, was rock stars.

I really like looking at different people on stage, how every step, every movement is purposeful, it's intentional. And three individuals that just stand out to me, Freddie Mercury, Beyonce, and Taylor, Taylor Swift.

And if you've ever watched them, regardless of anyone listening, if you like those... Musicians or don't like the musicians as relevant.

They were incredibly intentional with the way they held the microphone, with the way that they would move their body in ways to get responses from an audience.

And I've always found this fascinating because you could take someone that has a mediocre content in their speech, but if they're incredibly dynamic on stage and their delivery is incredible, you could take a subpar speech and make it exceptional based on their ability to capture the attention of their audience.

So a part of the six weeks is knowing how to handle yourself on stage part of it?

 

Cody Hand 

Absolutely. In fact, we have a guest coach that joins us during that process named Ty. And one of his most important points that took me a long way in my journey and has helped other clients is you talk to your audience as if you're talking to one person.

And I think those three are. The that you mentioned, one of the things they did was they made make everybody in the audience feel like they're singing directly to them.

And it's everything from how you look at your audience, the fact that you need to look at your audience, the language you use.

So instead of getting up on stage and addressing the crowd, you all are here tonight. You use singular language.

I'm here to talk to you about this issue because, Matt, when you hear I'm here to talk to you about this issue, what you hear is they're talking to me directly.

And so you're immediately more engaged with them, and you're immediately in tune with what they're saying. So, yes, part of what we discussed in the Speakers Collaborative, and we do this more than really the messaging itself, because, to your point, media or content with a very engaged speaker...

It suddenly becomes epic content. And so we focus as much on stage presence, how to talk to your audience, how to behave on stage as we do on the content itself.

 

Matt Zaun

Wow, that's great. One of the things that I continue to tell my audiences is that they need to be better speakers because of AI.

 

Cody Hand 

No one is really talking about this.

 

Matt Zaun 

But one of the things that I've experienced is this, and there's a major fraying of trust. And what I mean by that is it took me years to become what I would consider a competent writer.

Years and years and years of writing and writing and writing. And now that everyone has that ability with AI software, I've seen this time and time again where let's take a C-suite executive.

They'll utilize something like a chat GPT, they'll input information, and they'll spit out these incredibly engaging emails, blogs, articles, and I'll read something and I'll think, wow, this person really knows how to communicate.

They're really engaging. And then I'll meet. With them in real life, and they're a complete bore. They do not know how to connect, and there's a major fraying of trust, and a lot of teams are seeing this, where their leaders, it comes across like they know how to communicate, and then they'll get in a meeting situation with them, or let's talk about like a CEO presenting to the entire company, hundreds of people, and they're not engaging, they're not able to connect.

So with that said, what would be like a mistake, like a common mistake you would see a leader do that you would say, ooh, like that is definitely something that needs to change?

 

Cody Hand

What would be one of those mistakes that you've seen? The most common mistake is memorizing your talk. And I say that because when you memorize your talk, you remove your personality from a delivery.

And you remove the human imperfection that comes with giving a talk. And an audience, when you deliver a memorized conversation, your audience

Number one, knows your brain is not in this, and your emotions are not in it, and they feel it.

The second is when you deliver a talk flawlessly, and when I say flawlessly, I mean literally no stutters, no stammers, as if you are just reading it in your head.

They know that you aren't in it, and you aren't behind it. And more and more as people are exposed to AI-generated content, they know if you deliver it flawlessly.

If I deliver something that I had written from chat, GPT, and I didn't make any mistakes, everybody's going to know where it came from, right?

But if I deliver it, and occasionally I have to pause to remember where I am in my desired flow, if I have to correct myself, if I have one stammer, and I'm a big fan of getting rid of as many verbal ticks as you can, but if I don't have any in my talk,

It's not me. And that's the fastest way to lose your audience is to get up and just in your head, read what you've memorized.

 

Matt Zaun

Yeah, it's a really good point. Also, it's agonizing from a time perspective. I remember when I first started speaking, I would memorize every single word.

And when I practiced my talk, it was like a script.

 

Cody Hand 

It was every word. It took so much time until later on, I transitioned into certain bullet points, focusing on core concepts of that presentation.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I really appreciate you sharing that. Now, I want to backtrack a little bit. I want to talk about, let's say, you as a child, because what you do now is very interesting.

Very few people do it. There are people that do what you do, but very few on a global scale.

So I want to talk about how you transitioned into this. So take me back to 10-year-old Cody. When you think back to your childhood, what did you want to do?

What were you thinking about doing?

 

Cody Hand 

Take me there. It's funny, don't have a direct path, but 10-year-old Cody was raised on stage, was raised in front of crowds, mainly through music, choirs and singing and drama.

I am not very athletic, and so I had to pick an outlet that was not athletics because I was knock-kneed and I would trip when I ran, and so I just stopped running.

So I got on stage, and I spent most of my childhood and my teenage years performing on stage, and so I really got to the point, Matt, where I related to people better when I was talking to a crowd from a stage as opposed to one-on-one conversations, which I actually had to work on those one-on-one conversations more than I've had to work on being on stage.

And so 10-year-old Cody knew he wanted to do something in front of people. Now, when I was in high school, I grew up in a very poor community.

And, you know, all I wanted to do was escape that very poor community. And so my trajectory stopped being more making money, being on stage to how can I go into business and become a business person who makes a ton of money.

And it was all about money, which is a terrible thing to do. But went to college, got an academic scholarship, went to a very small college, had a great education, great experience, got to go overseas, fell in love with the concept of international business.

And my major in college was international business while I was in college. And I'm breezing through all of this right now.

But while I was in college, got the political book and started to volunteer on political campaigns and decided that I want my trajectory continue to be international business, but I wanted to add a component.

To give me some more options, perhaps to run for office, perhaps to have some influence politically. So I applied to law school and got into law school.

Between college and law school, I went and taught English in Belgium, and that was rewarding. I recommend everybody do that.

But it, put me in front of a classroom, which, as we were talking earlier, it put me in that more me-on-many conversation as opposed to one-on-one work.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow. I do want to unpack elements of the political involvement that you had. So I've been involved in politics for quite some time, over a decade, and I have three young kids.

I have an 11-year-old, a 9-year-old, and a 6-year-old, and all of them had been, all of them in some capacity have been involved in a campaign.

I've actually taken them door-to-door with me just so they can face and experience rejection. I, all my kids, one of the

Things that I want them to do is continue to have political involvement and also do some type of retail job at some point in their life because I want them to experience rejection.

I want them to get involved in sales. I want them to get beat up a little bit in life regarding that rejection piece.

And in politics, especially when you're going door to door, you're getting doors slammed in your face. You're getting people say all kinds of mean things, right?

So it really exposes them to a different world than they might not be used to. So tell us a little bit about your political involvement, how that positioned you to do what you do today.

 

Cody Hand 

Great question. So my political involvement was everything from volunteering to go door to door in the campaigns. And, you know, I did everything well in law school.

I actually attended bar in law school, too. I think it's very important, to your point, to put your kids in situations that are not easy and where they do face rejection.

My political background was... was... You know, it started classically, volunteering in campaigns and becoming kind of the go-to person in each campaign for advancing before the candidate got there.

So I'd set up the press conferences. I'd interface with the press. I would write things for the candidate. I would also make coffee for the campaign.

I would put out yard signs, and I would go door to door. And I did it all. And this was in college and in law school.

I did the same, but at a higher level because I was a college graduate, and I had managerial experience.

And so I rose into more of a managerial role. But in campaign world in the early 2000s, that still meant making coffee, and that still meant putting out yard signs or driving three hours to pick up the yard signs and driving them back and putting them out.

So there was a lot of what I saw schlepping at the same time as there was writing a really good speech for the candidate to get at the press conference that you were.

We're seeing for that work, the fundraiser.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah. Well, I'm sure that writing of those speeches helped you with where you are now.

 

Cody Hand 

Yeah, and it really got to learn the art of writing concisely so that somebody who's delivering it, it was their voice, but also it was not something that they had to then explain off the cuff.

So it's writing concisely, writing thoroughly enough to convey the point and not put them in a position where they can't defend what they just said.

 

Matt Zaun 

Interesting.

 

Cody Hand 

Interesting.

 

Matt Zaun 

And how did being on stage at 10 help you get in the head of these politicians? Were you so good at understanding the dynamics of people and how to connect with people that you can kind of put yourself, almost as if you're playing like an actor, you're in their head, understanding like they need to say this in order to prompt this responsibility.

Was that very helpful from your early childhood being on stage?

 

Cody Hand

It was. That's helpful because, you know, a lot of time on stage is acting. It is taking on the role of something else, especially when you're a kid.

I'm either taking on the role of the character that I'm playing, or I'm taking on the role of, in the choral production that I'm in, I'm taking on the role of, you know, the bass section of the tenor section, whatever.

So that did help. What really helped, though, and I think this is how the speakers collaborative is different, is I spent time with the candidate.

I got to know them and know their voice and the way they spoke and the way they behaved, so that when I wrote for them, and when I put speakers on stage, I'm doing it as them.

I'm on their persona as opposed to mine.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, that's a really good point. know, one of the things that I see so many leaders do that it's just so bad is the watch.

There's really no other way to say it. It's just, it's just bad. The watch of TEDx. Or they'll go on YouTube and they'll see someone speak and they'll say, wow, that's a really good speaker.

I need to be exactly like them. And they don't take into account their audience, what their audience needs, how their audience responds.

And they start saying different things that that person says, and they may actually alienate their audience.

 

Cody Hand 

Don't we just speak about that? Cause you said spending time with that candidate, spending time with that politician.

 

Matt Zaun 

So have you also seen this in your work where someone will, they'll just take something somewhere and they'll say, I need to be like that.

And though they might, maybe it might help their, their speaking ability, but it has nothing to do with their audience and it's actually doing themselves a disservice.

 

Cody Hand 

Yeah. I see it all the time. And when you see Simon sign up, he, he gives a great talk.

We don't need another one of him. Right. He, he knows himself. He knows his speaking style. He's not emulating anybody else.

We don't need any more of him. We need the CEO who wants to give a talk to show up as himself.

It goes back to your comment on AI. When you are not showing up fully as you, your audience knows and they can feel the inauthenticity and they immediately find a way to tune you out.

So when we spend time with people in the Speakers Collaborative, first and foremost, we don't do any template talks.

There are many speaking programs who will give you a template. So on the bank here, this is your talk.

We don't do that because I want our speakers to talk from their heart and their mind and not worry about, did I hit points A, B, and C that were in the template that Cody gave me.

So we start with getting to know them and their passions and their desires and their stories. And we work with them on making that the core of their talk.

Because at the end of the day, what we're looking for is to produce. Use a product that these talented people can use to get on future stages.

And when you send your conversation, I can't edit it enough to take out the lack of personality. I can't edit it enough to take out the fact that you are a carbon copy of the speaker that you really want to be.

And most people want to be that speaker because they have a huge audience, right? And they're getting viral videos out of their content.

You can be that by being yourself. Those speakers that you are trying to attain their status started where you're starting.

And you've got to put in the time and work and energy that they put in. You can't cheat by copying them.

You'll never get there.

 

Matt Zaun

So you mentioned heart and mind. I want to focus in on the heart piece because I think a lot of times a leader will hear that and they'll think, feel like...

You? Yeah. You? Thank I need to be logical. I need to focus on metrics. I need to focus on different patterns in business.

What does heart play from a speaking perspective?

 

Cody Hand 

I say 50-50. This is not the 80s anymore. You don't have a boss who doesn't share his personality. You have an entire generation of people who want to buy from humans, and they want to hear from a human about their experience.

Yes, they want to hear your logical leadership counsel. They want to hear your business advice on how you built your business.

But they don't want to sit through a 45-minute conversation with bullet points of the steps that you took. They want to hear about your experience.

They want to hear about how it impacted your life. And they also wanted to hear that you had a life in addition to the 25 business points that built the most amazing business you've got.

 

Matt Zaun 

Thank you. Thank you. You That's a really good point. I want to talk about maybe changes in speaking because you had mentioned this isn't the 80s anymore.

And speaking of that, it was interesting because years and years ago when you had, let's say, political speech writing as an example, it was written according to sitcoms, right?

So as sitcoms were emerging, if we take, let's say, a Seinfeld-type show, there would be certain stories, and then it would pivot and shift to a different story.

So you had to recognize, right, if a lot of people, a lot of your audience members are watching sitcoms, this is where their attention span is, this is where we need to insert a story here.

And then social media came, and that changed the game, and now the game has been changed again with AI.

And even with the social media piece, you have shorts, and you have Instagram reels, and people scan, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe.

So how do you say, what would you say to where we are now, even verse where we were a few years ago about engagement and

Capturing people's attention.

 

Cody Hand 

How has that changed the way people, especially leaders, need to speak today? Yeah. So first and foremost, it's all about the hook.

You've got to start with a bang and get their attention immediately. Second, you've got to know that people's attention spans are even shorter than when they were watching Seinfeld.

So in the early 80s, a 45-minute conversation was the norm, and I would sit in a keynote for 45 minutes because that's what I did.

In the 90s and early 2000s, when you had the Seinfeld sitcom-style attention span, I could give you 25 to 30 minutes, but you had to be engaging the whole time, and you had to be able to jump back and forth.

These days, people are watching 15-second TikTok reels. They're watching a minute and a half on Instagram. They might tune into YouTube for the full 30 minutes, but they probably won't watch all 30 minutes without anything else on.

That may be the background, and they may watch it five times, but they'll absorb five minutes of it. So point number three is we're really condensing the length of most talks to 15 to 18 minutes because that is the attention span of your audience these days.

Now, much like political writing in the 90s, the one thing that I would say continues to weave through all of these conversations about length and content is speaking in soundbites.

You've got to be able to convey your point in a soundbite because whatever you put out on social media will be chopped up, and you don't want your main point to be chopped up in half.

And you don't want it to be used out of context. And so we were very deliberate about when we're on stage, if you've got a point that is really important.

We do a slight pause before we make the point and we do a slight pause after. And that gives your audience, when you do the pause, your audience, whatever they're doing, will stop and redirect their attention to you.

And then when you pause afterwards, they'll know that's the point that you want me to hear.

 

Matt Zaun 

So you mentioned hooks, right? It's all about the hooks. Let's talk a little bit about hooks because I see a lot of leaders will get up and they'll say, it's good to be here.

Good morning. All the usual stuff. They get their slide deck prepared, not engaging in any way, shape, or form.

So it would be some minor tweaks someone listening to this episode can make to have a more captivating hook.

 

Cody Hand 

I'm glad you mentioned slides. I really was hoping that you would ask about that. Don't do them, first of all.

People don't have that attention span anymore. If you've got charts and content that you want them to see at the end of your talk, throw up a QR code and let them visit that later.

You want them to focus for the very short amount of time on you. You also want to lead with what I call a flashbang sentence, either a flashbang sentence or start telling your story.

And you can introduce yourself and your expertise after that. So you can start with the conclusion that you want to end with.

For me as a lawyer, it's much like legal writing. There's a bunch of theories about how you should structure your writing in law.

And I'm a big fan of starting with the conclusion and then working your way through the argument. And I'm the same way with talking.

Start with conclusion, then introduce yourself, and then finish your talk.

 

Matt Zaun 

I love it. That's awesome. Thank you for your time today. really appreciate your time. And there are three specific things I'm going to take away from our conversation.

The first is you said talk to your audience as if you're talking to one person. I think that's wise on so many different fronts, especially from...

And as an anxiety perspective, if people are so focused on the hundreds of people out in front of them, it could be very anxiety inducing.

So I really like that point that you had mentioned. The second piece is the mistake of memorizing your talk word for word.

You said it removes your personality from your delivery. That is so powerful. I really appreciate you mentioning that. And then the third and final piece is it's all about the hook, recognizing that the few seconds of you sharing something needs to be captivating.

needs to pull your audience in. think there's a lot of wisdom in what you said. Cody, if anyone wants to get more information on what you do, they want to get more information on Speakers Collaborative, they want to become part of what you do, where's the best place they can go to get that information?

 

Cody Hand

Two places. First is thespeakerscollaborative.com. So it is the Speakers Collaborative on the website. And then the second is my LinkedIn, which is CodyR and is my LinkedIn profile.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. I will include that in the show notes. People just click and go from there. Again, thank you. Thank much for your time today.

 

Cody Hand 

Awesome. Thanks, Matt.