5 Things I've Learned in My Public Speaking Career | Brian Tracy

Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and today I want to talk to you about the top five things I've learned in my public speaking career to help you stay humble. Always remember where you started, why you started, and what you're hoping to achieve. This will help you to grow your own successful speaking business. These are things I wish I had known because I started off all by myself in Edmonton, Alberta with no instruction, no guidance. I just went out and I ran an ad to get people to come and pay me to listen to me and nobody came. So I had to go out and knock on doors to get people to come. And it was a very hard way to learn because I had to learn everything from the bottom up. Since then, surprise, surprise. I have now given more than 5,000 talks in 84 countries to more than 5 million people. This did not happen easily and I've spoken to audiences as large as 25,000 people in a single stadium and I've spoken to hundreds and then thousands of people all over the world. So I've got a little bit of experience. Do you have a passion for public speaking? Do you want to share your knowledge with the world but you don't know where to start? Well, you've come to the right place because that's where I was. I'm excited today to share some of the most valuable lessons I have learned throughout my more than 30 year speaking career to help you to find success in public speaking as well. I hope these lessons act as a tool and as a guide to help you define success as a public speaker. More than anything else, these lessons will save you weeks and months and even years of hard work getting to the same size of audience and earning the same amount of money. One of the most important lessons I have learned is that you have to want to be a public speaker. To succeed, you have to be hungry. This passion and desire will be your biggest motivator throughout your journey and help drive you towards your goals and will help you to not quit. There's no way to fake the genuine interest of becoming a public speaker. It must be something that you truly enjoy and want to work for. Some may get drawn into the idea of public speaking by the money and the fame, which is what motivates everybody at the beginning. But this has never and will never lead to success. When you look at successful public speakers throughout history, you never hear their reason for starting being about the money of fame or attention. Those will come, but nobody starts off with those as their primary goal. Successful speakers seek to genuinely help others with their stories. And speeches that they present, the money and attention are simply byproducts. In the future, when you become a successful speaker, you will forget about all the money that you earned and all the congratulations that you received. And the only thing you remember is the positive impact that you had on other people. Your audience will notice if there is no authenticity as well. And your dreams of fame and money will not manifest if you don't have an audience returning to see you again and again. So make sure you pursue your goals of becoming a public speaker with genuine passion. Another very important lesson is to only speak about something that you know about, that you have experience with, and something that you're passionate about, nothing else. Every subject I have ever agreed to speak on was within my experience. When you speak about what you know and are passionate about, you speak with confidence, you speak with warmth. You actually forget yourself and only think about the audience. If you're a subject matter expert, your audience will trust what you say and truly absorb it and think about how to apply it. For example, when I was the sales manager of large organizations, I would be asked to speak on the subject of sales and leadership. At that point in my professional career, I had hired and fired and trained and deployed and worked with people for many years. I knew the subject matter of hiring and keeping the best people and then training and motivating them to make more sales because I had been a sales leader myself. So to help you find your best speaking topic, ask yourself, what are you experienced in doing? Become an expert in one area of your expertise, if you aren't already, and use it to capitalize on public speaking engagements with groups that are interested in learning about your specialty. By the way, people know within about three minutes, three to five minutes, whether you know your material or not, whether you're speaking from your heart about material that you've experienced or not. And so therefore, it's really important they say that you, if you want to write well, you have to know 10 words for every word that you write. If you want to speak well, you have to know 50. That's the amount of research and preparation it takes. I've spoken to professional speakers who've told me that they were asked to give a talk on an area of leadership that they weren't that familiar with, but they felt they could do it. And one of my friends told me it took him eight hours to do the research for a 20 minute talk. And that is not unusual, eight hours for a 20 minute talk. So it's really important that you speak about something that you know about. Speaking about what you know and have expertise in will enable you to feel more confident, prepared, and less nervous when it comes time for the actual speech. To build even more confidence and help you prepare for your speaking engagement, remember that practice makes perfect. It's just like that famous story of someone who stops a beatnik, a hippie, on the streets of New York and says, how do you get to Carnegie hall from here? And the beatnik says, practice, ma'. Am. Practice. The only way to get to Carnegie Hall. So becoming a great speaker takes time, energy and focus. You can't just expect to succeed if you try to wing every speech. Public speaking is a skill, after all. And all skills need to be practiced to develop and maintain them over time. Yes, some people may be inherently confident and good in front of a crowd, but even they must continuously practice to keep up with their skills. To learn how to present information in a logical and motivational sense or methodology. By practicing, you will gain confidence and learn how to prepare for anything that happens, especially the unexpected. Quick story One of my best friends, one of the top speakers in America, was invited to give a one hour talk for a large organization, Big talk, important talk, which he did. And he practiced the talk. He wrote it out, and he would walk around the neighborhood one hour every day for 30 days, 30 times before he actually gave the talk. And he only gave the talk once the talk was recorded. And to this day, people still talk about that speech. People still listen to the recorded version because of the preparation that he put in. And he only gave the talk once. That also happened to me in my career and it had a life changing effect. There's nothing, there's a rule basically that there is no such word as over prepare in the world of professional speaking. You cannot prepare too much. The next big lesson I learned early in my public speaking speaking career that you may find helpful is to follow the rule of starting your public speaking career by simply giving 300 speeches. By the way, 300 was the number of the soldiers at Marathon who fought against the Persians. There were 300 and it was one of the greatest battles in history. And so you may be asking, how in the world is it possible to give 300 talks? Where do you give 300 talks? While 300 may seem like a scary number, you can reach it if you set your mind to it, set it as a goal, resolve to give 300 free talks and watch how much confidence and traction you will gain as a public speaker. They can be in person, online, over the phone, zoom calls, or even on social media. To give you an idea of where to give these speeches, consider looking for opportunities with Rotary Clubs, Lions Club, nonprofit association meetings, Automobile club meetings, and every other kind of business organization meeting under the sun. Pick a subject that they all want is how to increase your sales and profits rapidly in today's busy market. Great topic. I've given that subject speech many, many times. Everybody wants to know how to increase their sales and profitability. And then do your 50 hours of preparation for your 20 minute talk. And each time you give the talk, you'll get better and better and better and people will start to fly you around the country and even around the world to give the talk to more and more people. I can almost guarantee you that every single one of these groups is looking for a speaker for their next meeting. In fact, the estimate is that there are 2 million speeches given every year in America and your job is just to be one of them. It could be you. When giving these 300 speeches though, it's critical to be in the know and knowledgeable about your subject. My next piece of advice is to follow current events, especially when they reference the topic you're talking about. Staying up to date and incorporating recent events in your speeches is the key to thriving within the world of public speaking. It allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level, showing them that you have have the knowledge and care to tailor your messages to something important happening that affects them. This will help you to establish yourself as a true thought leader. A good friend of mine, who I think is a wonderful speaker arrives one day early to give a speech and he gets the local newspaper and he reads it from COVID to cover and takes notes. And then when he stands up and talks, the first thing he talks about is the local team and how much he likes the team and follows the team and admires the team and keeps track of the team and so on. Everybody in the room who is sports oriented likes him from the get go. And then he talks about the local economy and he talks about things that have happened that other people have read about and heard on television and so on. By the time he has spoken for five minutes, he has the audience in the palm of his hand. They, they all like him and they all want to book him again and again. Another thing a true thought leader does, and the final public speaking lesson I'd like to share with you today is to remain humble and grateful. Big or small audiences, you never know who's going to be there listening to your speech. For example, I once gave a small low cost speech to the folks at Caterpillar in Corporation Incorporated, a very successful division. And little did I know, but someone from IBM was sitting in the audience. That person eventually went on to lead me into breaking open my public speaking career. He went back to his office, he phoned the senior executives at IBM and they said, you've got to get this guy speaking for us. And I did. For three years I gave 300, I gave sort of more than 30 talks around the country to teach people a variety of subjects. And it all came from one person sitting in the audience on a weekend seminar and there were only 30 people there. So never assume anything. You know what the word what assume means. So to help you stay humble, always, always remember where you started, why you started, and what you're hoping to achieve. If you're looking for more helpful tools and tricks to becoming a six figure speaker, join my webinar and learn about my four step process to joining the world of high paid professional speaking. Now I'd love to hear from you. So my question today is what would you speak about as a public speaker? What would you love to talk about? Something that you could speak about, well, that would really help other people to improve their life and work. Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action. And take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable in teaching you about public speaking, subscribe to my channel like this video and share this video with your friends. Don't forget to click the button on the screen for a free gift. Thanks again for watching.