Hi, I’m Kolarele, back with another video on communication skills, and in this video I’m
going to be sharing with you my number tip to help you overcome your fear of public speaking.
Now if you’re one of those people that really struggle with public speaking and
get super super nervous about it, don’t over worry because you are certainly not alone.
There have been loads of studies and surveys done that show that humankind‘s greatest fear
is public speaking. It’s higher than heights, higher than financial worries,
higher than fear of insects, even higher than death In the list of humankind’s greatest fears.
Now I will be doing a separate video on the neuro psychological reasons why people get scared of
public speaking. But in this video I want to focus on a really straightforward technique to help you
deal with your public speaking fear so that you go into your next speech or presentation
excited rather than super nervous. It’s a method that I like to ‘Oprah’s Car’.
So on the 13th September 2004 on the opening episode of the 19th season of
the Oprah Winfrey show, Oprah came out and did something that basically became
the stuff of TV legend because she gave a car away every member of her
audience. if you’ve seen it on YouTube or watched it back then, it’s the famous episode where
she goes ‘and you get a car and you get a car, and you get a car’ and she gives a car away to
every member of her audience, 276 people. They were super excited as you can imagine.
So the question I want you to think about and what I want you to consider
is imagine you were Oprah Winfrey at the moment just before she went out on stage,
and you know that you are about to give a car away to 276 people.
At that moment just before you go out on stage, how do you feel? Are you scared or excited?
Come on, you know it, you are going to be super excited. You are going to be pumped. You are going
to be eager to get out there because you know you are going to be changing people’s lives.
You’ll be thinking about: who is going to really benefit from this? And
how am I going to reveal the great moment? And what am I going to say afterwards?
What you won’t be thinking about is: am I gonna forget my words? And what am I gonna do with my
hands? And all the other things that people typically ask me about when they think about
public speaking because they’re so scared of it. And there’s one reason for that, because if you
knew that you were about to go out and give a car to every member of your audience, you
would be super pumped because you knew you were about to share something of incomparable value.
Now, we are not all as wealthy as Oprah, and in fact it turns
out that have the car away at all, it was the car company that donated them.
So you can’t go out giving cars away to every member of your audience of course.
But what you can do is to swap and substitute the idea of giving a car away
with giving something of great incomparable value. Something that your audience when they hear it
is going to say ‘Wow that was amazing! That was truly outstanding!’ And if you can figure out how
to have a great incomparable valuable message to share, I promise you you will go into any speech,
presentation, client pitch, business presentation before hostile managers super excited,
super pumped to deliver rather than nervous, and unable to speak and forgetting your words.
The key is to make sure that you can answer the question ‘Where is my car?’
‘Dude where’s my car? Where’s your car, dude? Dude, where is my car? Where is your car, dude?
So what is the idea or the piece of information that you are going to
share with your audience that is something of incomparable value. When you find that thing,
you will be super excited to share your message. And instead of being
scared and letting your nerves defeat you, you will use those same nerves as fuel to
deliver your message with energy and passion and that will really connect with your audience.
Now of course there are ways to work out a valuable message, I do a lot of work with
my clients on that kind of thing. If you want a little bit more help with it, just download the
valuable message checklist you’ll see somewhere in the link with this video.
I’m sure it will help. Of course if you want to really start working on your communication skills,
just reach out to me and we’ll take it from there. I’ll see you on the next video.