How I Became An AMAZING Speaker [0:00:00]
So, I was that kid that sat at the back of the class because I didn’t want to get called
on, not because I didn’t know the answer. No, I was pretty smart, but because I was
scared I was petrified of getting called on. If I had to stand in front of the class, I
can’t imagine anything worse. And, I’d like to say I got better, but I didn’t.
I went to college, and guess what? I would do shots of whiskey before going on a giving
a presentation. That was the only way I could kind of loosen things up.
And, in Marine Corps, well, it just didn’t get any better even though I couldn’t drink,
but I still had to get these presentations. In fact, one of the reasons I joined the Marine
Corps was I wanted to put myself outside of my comfort zone. I could handle the physical,
no problem, but you know what I couldn’t deal with? Giving presentations, and in fact,
I really think that that’s one of the reasons I got rated many times as a below average
officer because I could not speak in front of a group.
Now, let’s fast forward to today. I own a conference. I speak in front of hundreds
of people. I speak at conferences around the world in front of thousands of people. I have
a YouTube channel with well over a thousand videos that has reached millions and millions
of people. So, what brought about this turnaround? Well, guys, in today’s video, I’m going
to talk about my transition my journey from being someone that was scared to get up on
stage as an introvert to somebody that I feel give me a couple of seconds’ notice and
I can speak to any size crowd. How to do it, guys? I talk about it in today’s
video. So, the first step to becoming a good speaker
is you’ve got to want it. You got to be able to put in the effort. You’ve got to
commit, do the work to becoming a good speaker. It’s not something anyone is born with.
You have to practice you have to put in the effort. And, believe me, not everyone needs
to be a great speaker. You can have great success in life and be a poor public speaker.
Look at someone like Gandhi, look at Churchill. These guys were not great public speakers.
Einstein was not a great public speaker, yet they had a huge impact on society and on the
world. So, you’ve got to ask yourself, okay, do I really want this? And if you do, let’s
go to step two. Step two. You’ve got to really know your
content. You need to know what you’re talking about because if you don’t know what you’re
talking about, then people are going to be able to pick up on it. Before I started creating
all these videos, I wrote over two hundred articles. I read easily over twenty books,
I designed over a thousand suits and shirts. So, when I did my first video talking about
menswear, guess what? I knew a lot. In fact, I was bursting at the seams with information.
I wanted to release this information and I found that the medium, video, was perfect
for me. And that’s the key, guys. If you got to
put in the work, you got to put in the effort. No one is an overnight success when it comes
to presentation especially when they get into the details. And when you know those details,
you can stand up from tons of other speakers. So, the next four, I’m going to put them
together; practice, review, adjust, repeat, and do this again and again and again. Very
simple, gentlemen, you’ve got to put in the reps, but you don’t want to just put
in the reps the wrong way. No, you want to actually look at this, you
want to review. That’s the great thing about video. What I am been so thankful for with
YouTube is I get to actually see myself improve and get better over time. You go watch some
of my old videos. I’m not saying that I didn’t know my information, but I feel I’ve
gotten a lot better I’ve improved because I watched those videos and then I adjust.
And, that’s key because if you’re just practicing, but you’re not adjusting you’re
not reviewing, then you’re going to practice the wrong thing again and again, and practice
does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
And that’s where you repeat, you’ve got to put in the rep. So, you go to the gym once,
so you’re going to look great? No. If you eat well once, you’re going to look great?
No. You’ve got to do it again and again and again.
I’ve put out well over probably thirteen, fourteen hundred videos. The point is, I’ve
put in the reps and honestly, I still think I am not even close to where I could be. So,
once you put in a hundred videos that you know and that takes me to the next point.
You’ve got to be willing to go through the suck. The suck is the time period in which
you’re going to be doing something and you are not good at it. When you get up first
time, you get up on stage you’re going to look back at this years from now and say,
“Oh, my gosh, I was pretty bad.” Going through that sucky phase, that is what everyone
– everyone pays this price to get good, to get great to get amazing.
Next up, you want to understand your tools, you body language tools. So, people make fun
of my hands going all over the place, and there are certain rules about staying within
a square. But, I will say that I understand that this is a tool.
Also, I move around in the video. A lot of videographers a lot of YouTubers that you
watch, they leverage the tool of positioning. Also, you know taking a step back getting
a bit closer and you feel more intimate. You start to understand you can leverage this
in your presentation. And then, let’s talk about the next tool
you want to understand, your voice, the way that you talk from the tone to your lexicon,
what words you bring in. You can even bring in swear words if you want to grab someone’s
attention. You can talk about stories. Stories basically fire a different part of
the brain and when you realized, okay, I’m giving a lot of charts a lot of presentations,
but you understand in your toolset you’ve got – you can bring in a great story which
you’ve practiced. It’s a story that takes fifteen to twenty seconds and it’s really
good and it’s connected to what you just talked about, boom, you’re able to connect
with that audience and maintain their attention. [0:05:03]
Now, back in high school I played football. Pretty much any kid in West Texas plays football.
And, we had this great sign, it was, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” I remember
we walk under this all the time and that is key with presentations. People see a guy get
up on stage, oh, he’s a natural, he was able to talk for an hour.
No one is natural. What you don’t see are the hundreds of hours that this guy has put
in to prepare. And, there’s a great picture of an iceberg and it shows people see the
top, they see that success, but what they don’t see underneath is everything that’s
there. 90% of the iceberg is hidden. People don’t see all the nights. They don’t see
you going through practicing, taping yourself, talking in front of your friends.
I remember watching my friend, Matt Kimberley, he was about to give a presentation at the
Youpreneur Summit in London. And, he simply calls me back and he practices in front of
me for forty five minutes in the morning before his presentation adjusting things, still changing
things, getting ready really wanting to make sure that he understood his audience.
And that’s the next thing is understand who you’re speaking to, do research on them.
Because if you’ve got professionals and they’re all let’s say realtors, then you
want to speak to realtors not talk to them like they’re high schoolers.
Nothing wrong with speaking to high schoolers in the way that they need to be spoken to.
But, when you speak to certain high schools, okay, understand what are they into, what
are their sports, what’s going to grab their attention because otherwise you’re going
to talk about something or talk about in a way that they’re not interested in.
And, when it comes to feedback, you got to listen to the right people. So, I love the
YouTube comments. And let me know if you like this video. I’m not going to make as nearly
edits as normally do. I want to hear from you guys down in the comments.
But, here’s the thing is YouTube comments, I don’t rely on them for self-esteem and
I don’t rely on them always for the best advice. So, if you want to become a better
presenter, then go out there and hire a presentation coach.
I have done this. I have people that are amazing presenters. I find out how did you get good
at this, who did you train with, who did you pay to actually give you the advice and the
information. Sometimes, they didn’t have to pay anyone, you can go to toastmasters.
But, oftentimes these people, yeah, they did go hire a coach, they worked with someone
that knows this and focused in on what needed to be focused on because if you just listen
to anyone, you’re not going to please anyone. Makes sense?
Next up, let’s talk about passion and let’s talk about love. So, passion for something
is actually developed through mastery. So, don’t really worry too much if you’re
talking if you’re presenting and you don’t feel like you’re passionate about it. You
may become passionate about things that were really good at. When I talk to people they
said, wow, you talk so -- you actually can present ideas. And, I’m like, yeah, I guess
I’ve put in the time I’ve put in the reps. But, passion comes from mastery.
Now, love. Love is important and love is different than passion. Love is actually there is something
big about what you’re doing here. You believe in this deeper mission which is another point,
have a bigger mission. But, love is going to help you go from good to great because
if you don’t really love what you’re talking about, you’re never going to be able to
hit it with the energy with the passion with the consistency that you can when you truly
love something and you care about that bigger mission.
The point being here is when you have a big mission, you know clothing, you guys know
I don’t care about – I mean I do care about clothing, I like watches. I’m actually
really fascinated right now with fragrances. But, the point is I do this because I care
about the men that I serve. I care about helping you become a better man because the world
needs better men. I do believe my son is going to watch these
videos, and I hope that he takes the bigger meaning which is simply clothing is a tool
simply to use it to be able to get across your point to be able to go in there and start
that nonprofit, to be able to get somebody to actually for her to notice you for the
first time. That’s what I’m passionate about. That’s
what I love. That’s my bigger mission is to help men like you become the man you know
yourself to be. And, when you’ve got that bigger mission, guys, you’re going to be
able to just go up there on stage. And that takes me to the next thing is we
all have the fear. We’re nervous. Not really you’re nervous, you’re anxious, you’re
excited and that’s what you want to reframe it. Because you want to leverage that energy,
you want to get out there and just hit it. Because here’s the thing is my next point
is don’t let the fear of failure hold you back because there’s a greater fear out
there and that fear should be that you never tried.
On your deathbed you’re going to look back and say, well, I could have been this, I could
have been that. I mean I’ve heard the saying that hell is meeting on your deathbed the
man you could have been. And, I want you to go out there and leave nothing on the table.
If you want to get in the politics, if you want to just be a great teacher to be able
to go in there and inspire through your language through your speaking and the fact that you
were introvert, you will not let that hold you back because you realize at the flip of
a switch, yes, it’s going to take more energy, but you can do this. You can go out there
and you can speak with the best of them. And, let’s talk about the danger of slides,
of props, of costumes. Now, I think that those can work to your advantage, but be very careful
if you are reliant on slides because here’s the deal is that technology fails. You may
have a video that was key to your presentation, guess what? That video is not going to play
that day, so you need to be ready for it to go.
[0:10:09] My friend, Pat Flynn, I remember he was giving
a presentation and it fail like he had no AV support. Well, guess what? He just kept
going because he had put in the effort, he had put in the time. He was not reliant on
those slides. No, he was ready to go and he just got down there and he engaged the audience.
He leveraged movement he leveraged tone. He knew people.
And that’s another thing is to make sure whenever you’re giving a presentation, you’ve
got a cheerleader. Now, you can’t always do this, but he point being is have somebody
out there that’s rooting for you, somebody out there that you know.
I, in my presentations, this year in Menfluential which is the last year by the way - if you
haven’t grab the ticket, grab it. I will link to it down in the description – I’m
bringing my family. I know personally more than half the people out there in the audience.
The other half, I’m excited to meet and I’m going to meet during the entire presentation
or during my conference. Point being is when you got somebody out there
that’s rooting for you that’s got your back that you can throw a so – they’ll
throw you a soft ball question and you can knock it out of the park, that’s what you
need and that helps give you so much more confidence.
Keep it short. Keep it simple. Always respect your audience. People try to over complicate
things. They want to add in all of these bells all of these whistles. They want to go on
and on. Believe me if they give you forty minutes for your presentation, you don’t
have to go forty minutes. You can keep it short. You can keep it simpler. You can focus
in on one, two, three things. If you start to go beyond three things, that’s probably
too much. People only take usually one or two things
from the presentation. Remember, it’s oftentimes more about the emotional connection and getting
them to actually want to go out there and take action. And that comes down to respect
for your audience. Don’t talk down to them. Don’t talk to them like they’re not important.
Don’t ever insult your audience. You’re lucky that you’ve got those people there.
And, I thank you for being part of my audience for being someone out there that watches my
videos especially you guys that watch my videos just the first few hours it goes live. You
know what? I appreciate that because at least somebody is there to support me. And those
are my cheerleaders, those are the guys that I really appreciate.
So, again, guys, I appreciate when you comment. I appreciate when you like the video. I appreciate
when you interact because I appreciate you. I’ve met so many of you guys in person.
I’ve travelled whether it’d be in Los Angeles whether it’d be meet-ups we’re
having down in Texas, I try to make room I’m trying to make time for you as the audience
because you guys are important to me. And, that takes me to being humble. Guys,
it’s not about you being the best speaker in the world. That’s very unlikely. It’s
about you being the best speaker you can be. Better than you were a week ago. Better than
definitely you were a decade ago. You’re still going to make mistakes, you’re going
to go out there and fail. But, one thing I try to do with my channel
and every time I watch people, I try to learn from all types of other speakers out there
whether they’re talking in front of five people whether they’re talking in front
of five thousand, whether it’s a small YouTuber, a large YouTuber, a YouTuber in a totally
different space, I try to go out there and say what can I learn from this person, how
can I become better. There is always something you can take from
anyone even if it’s just simply they’re an idiot, and it’s patience that you’re
going to learn through interacting with this person. But, understand you can learn something
from anyone and be humble. And, of course, you got to master the eye
contact. How to master eye contact? Well, gentlemen, I’ve got you covered. In this
video right here, I talk about mistakes that men make when it comes to eye contact. And,
I also talk about the rules how much eye contact you should have in a group of people with
individuals. Believe me, there are percentages out there. It’s research-backed, so check
out this video, guys, right here. I will link to it down in the description.
[0:13:35] End of audio