- Speaking secret number three:
condition yourself before speaking.
Now what do I mean by conditioning yourself before speaking?
Does that mean you grab a dumbbell
and then you kinda do some curl?
That's not what I am talking about, right?
I mean before, so we're getting to the actual speaking
and presenting part, but very important
before you go on stage, how you condition yourself, right?
What do you do?
So, think about, how do highly successful people
are able to stay consistent
with their results?
Think about top athletes, top performers,
what do they do?
Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods,
so many top performers, high performers,
what do they do to stay consistent?
'Cause there are some days,
that they don't,
- They feel. - They're not at their best.
- They got the flu.
- That or they just don't feel like it
or they're not in the mood.
- They got some bad news
from someone. - Yeah, it's just
kinda under the weather a bit.
That happens to you, but when you're speaking,
again focusing on the audience,
you wanna be 100%, so, what do you do?
How do they condition themselves to perform at their best?
- They all did hypnosis, meditate, have strong rituals.
They have strong rituals.
Yes, definitely.
They all of strong rituals.
- Rich, it's a good question.
- Yup, Sifu, thanks for sharing these powerful insights.
Do you purposely try to interact with a few audience members
before the talk to gauge temperature
and build rapport with a few of the audience members?
- Yes, so,
two things.
I highly recommend
that before you go up onstage
that you actually interact
and establish some kind of rapport.
Especially, if it is a small audience that
if you have 10, 20, 50, 100 people.
"Hey, you know my name is Dan.
"I'll be presenting.
"I'll be the keynote speaker for today."
- Oh, really?
What's your name? - Oh, Desmond.
- Oh, what brought you here?
- I was curious to find out, learn more
about public speaking, and I heard that there's gonna be
several good speakers, and you're one of them.
- Oh thank you, thank you.
Yeah, in my speech I am gonna cover point A, B, C, and D.
- Okay, cool, I look forward to hearing it.
Okay, good luck up there. - Appreciate it,
appreciate it.
So, you can connect.
So now the audience, they feel a little bit warmer.
Versus, who is this person?
- Right.
- Sifu used to do that, now I actually can't do it,
not that I don't want, I can't do it
because when I do it, there will be no speech.
Right?
Now it's actually,
- You get mobbed.
- I get mobbed, and then I wanna be polite
you take photos.
Before you know it, that whole thing turns into
three-hour thing.
So, I naturally, because the brain,
I actually have to hide from people,
like I have to go use the back door,
- The green room. - The green room.
I have to deal with it because before I go onstage,
I don't wanna create a scene for people.
- actually get me to go out in the room,
talk to people, come back and report to him about
what's the temperature of the room.
- So, if you could do it, yeah, 100%, absolutely do it.
I just now get to the point, I actually can't do it.
- Everyone wants a piece of Sifu.
Okay, daily routines are prepared daily for the speech.
This is helpful.
Kanji, it'll get even more, find out, he'll explain how much
he prepares, over preparation.
- So definitely, do that.
So how do you do it?
The answer is simple.
They use what I call "Power Moves"
Say it with me, what is it?
Power Moves!
Power moves, right?
They leverage power moves
to get them into peak state.
And then they use that to perform the best.
So you look at Tiger Woods.
Sometimes he hits the ball and he's like "Yes" Right?
That's a power move right there.
And everyone has different power moves, right?
I remember one of my speaker friends
who is a professional speaker,
he calls it "the hulk"
So before he would go on stage, he would do like (grunts)
and he would imagine himself, like, turning green.
Being bigger.
That might work!
You seen maybe Tony Robbins, so if you seen his documentary,
you'll see, Tony does a few things.
First, he would jump on a trampoline.
You can see, he gets his blood flowing,
he would jump, jump.
You can see it from backstage.
All right, he would do this, and he would do this.
He would do this, right?
That's his power move, right?
And then he would do a turn, and then he would go onstage.
That's when he switch.
Gotta make that state change.
Whatever works for you.
But you gotta have something.
And it needs to be something very unique.
That when you do it, it becomes, kind of an on switch.
That power move, before you go onstage, maybe,
you're like, energy, remember, keep this in mind.
When you're speaking energy is very, very critical.
Not just what you say.
You need to learn how to manage the energy of the audience.
So, what I mean to say is this,
if you are five or six in terms of energy,
the audience will be three or four.
If you're a 10, they will probably be a five or six.
So you look at Tony, it's out of the ballpark.
He's like a energize bunny.
20, audience is 10.
It doesn't mean you have, Tony has got his own style, right?
Phenomenal, got his own style.
But you need to have definitely more energy.
So, if you're presenting,
I'm just gonna tone down my energy by 50%
So if I'm gonna teach you to speak,
I'm gonna spend two hours talking at this pace.
It's kind of like energy like this and it's okay
but you will probably fall asleep.
Especially for those who are tuning in
from a different time zone.
And now it's late at night, yes.
- Sleepy, LOL, Zs, night night.
- That's like a two or three.
So I need to up my energy, right?
So that you stay awake.
So you're paying attention.
So you don't do the power moves.
So tell me what could be your power move?
What could be your power move?
Makes sense?
Give me something.
Chain punching!
That's cool, that's fine.
- Hard smack!
- Smack, yeah!
Like could be that?
- Shout, like a super saiyan power!
Sifu, do you have a super saiyan power?
- Saiyan power, yeah.
- Scream, "I deserve this!"
Slap yourself, wall flip.
- Wall flip, just don't hurt yourself before you go onstage.
Wouldn't be good.
You'd break your neck before you go up onstage.
- Make a tight fist and slam my chest, okay.
- Yeah, superhero pose!
Yeah, that's okay!
You wanna do a superhero pose, and, like that, right?
- [Deadpool] She's gonna do a superhero landing.
Wait for it!
(dramatic music)
Woo, superhero landing!
You know that's really hard on your knees.
- Before you go out on stage,
before you step foot on a stage,
now just before the power move,
you might have other rituals, which I'm gonna talk about.
Right, you might have other things.
- You've got the music.
- I've got the music.
There's a certain piece of music
I listen to before
I go out on stage. - Sifu will tell us
not to have anyone disturb him
so that I can prepare the green room.
He has certain drinks.
So that nobody talks to him during that time.
- There is a certain piece of music that I listen to,
right, there are certain power moves that I do.
Right, and I also always do a visualization exercise.
So you would see, usually I do attitude, gratitude.
So my routine is this, attitude, gratitude.
So when I do the attitude, gratitude.
So I just kind of walk you through it.
I'm gonna close my eyes, I'm listening to my own audio.
With the music, attitude, gratitude.
Which you've listened to as well, right?
Then I would do something like this.
And I wanna stand tall, I wanna open myself up
because I find that's, I'm gonna open up myself
to the audience, right?
So I don't wanna be closed like that
So I'm listening, listening to attitude, gratitude.
Like 12, 15 minutes.
I'm doing this usually like that.
Relax.
And what I do is, I would picture this a little spiritual
but actually I find this works for me,
and you can try it on.
I would imagine like,
a white light.
Beaming from the universe to here.
And then from here, I would visualize.
Let's say, I would have saw the room ahead of the time.
And this light gets, it's like me
getting brighter and brighter.
It's like a super bright light ball.
And I visualize it.
And it brightens the entire room.
It brightens the entire room.
While I'm listening to my attitude, gratitude.
Okay, and I would do that.
And what I notice when I do that, my energy shifts.
My focus is no longer on myself, it's on the audience.
Because sometimes when you're speaking,
when you're teaching, things come to you.
Things come to me all of the time
it's as if, it's not my script, it's not my,
what I was planning to say.
Just thoughts come to me.
So I wanna be able to be open,
be able to kind of download the wisdom from here.
Brightens the room.
Share with the audience
and give everything I've got.
And you can see just a few minutes of that
you can see my eyes change.
You can see, right?
It changes.
It gives you more clarity.
Then from there, I listen to my piece of music.
My piece of music.
I'm walking around, sometimes I jump, I move, right?
Deep breath, right?
And then from there, put down the piece of music.
I do my power move, and then boom!
Right then I go onstage.
Every single time, over the years,
I've conditioned myself to do this, right?
So there are days when I feel like (groans)
I don't feel I'm on.
I do that.
Listen to music.
I do my power move.
And boom, guess what?
I'm fucking on.
Every single time.
So that's my routine.
- Yes, even all of the best speakers I've experienced,
even musicians, those that are the very best,
they do this, they have a ritual
in the green room that they do.
And the best motivational speakers, they all have this.
They set a good intention, they do these different things.
Sifu, how about also when you, my personal question,
I've always watched you and Jenny travel,
you guys have an amazing relationship,
there's a whole playlist on YouTube about your relationship,
but there must have been times
where you guys are driving the car
or going to an event,
do you guys predetermine that?
Like, hey look, I'm speaking today.
Let's not get into a fight.
Let's not argue.
Let's not do anything to upset that.
- We don't argue that much, so that rarely rarely happens.
Most of the time, Jenny is just focusing on
that I'm taken care of.
That I have what I need.
Like I have the water, I have the stuff that I--
- She's coordinating with me.
- Yeah, like she's coordinating with the team.
Again, over the years, back then,
when it was just Jenny and me, same thing.
Jenny has always just been very very awesome.
Just helping me out.
- So if you have a spouse or partner that's not supportive,
don't involve them in the process.
Like, if you do, then it's good, right?
You're lucky with that.
- Yeah, Patrick, you can definitely warm up your voice.
- Yeah, how do you do that?
- So you see I'm still recovering from my little cough.
But you can warm up your voice by actually speaking.
And you can do some vocal thing where you can like
(humming)
You can do a lot of vocal different things.
You can do that, right?
But for most people, don't get too,
don't make it too complicated.
Drink, by the way, you wanna drink lots of water.
two hours, three hours before
to hydrate your vocal chords.
When you are speaking, when you're drinking
hydrating doesn't help.
What helps is the two, three hours before.
- Got it.
- You need to drink lots of water, hydrate yourself,
go to the washroom before you go on stage,
but that's how you hydrate your vocal chords.
That I actually learned from a vocal coach.
- I learned a really weird one, Sifu--
- Oh yeah, don't drink cold water.
Yes, don't drink cold water.
Because you wanna warm up your vocal chords.
- What about the thing where I heard the,
I've seen it in green rooms,
the Lay's potato chips?
Apparently the oils from that help, you know,
- Some people, they would do that.
Sometimes they, olive oil. - Olive oil.
- Olive oil, yeah, everybody's got different things.
Right, I don't.
It doesn't work for me, myself.
But I know it works very well for some people.
- Yes. - Right.
- So what if it's an impromptu speech?
I saw this earlier on.
How do you condition yourself if it's happened
to me sometimes?
- So if it's an impromptu speech
that maybe you're at a wedding,
you're at something where you have to,
or your friend kind of put you on the spot,
and you have to do something, quickly,
you don't have time to do the ritual and all of that.
Just make a mental switch.
- Focus on the--
Just focus and boom.
Hey, there's a wedding it's my brother-in-law, right?
Focus, not on me, not how cool I look.
I wanna make people laugh.
Boom.
And just focus on other people and I can make that switch.