How To Become Better At Public Speaking Immediately

So I saw this video on YouTube that was the speech that made Barack Obama president, and I don't remember it. So I want to dig in and find out what exactly it was that put Barack Obama onto the scene. I do remember he kind of came out of nowhere. So I'm curious what it is and if I can give this speech, if I can be president in 16 minutes.

Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let's face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely.

Pause. Excellent pause. I love it already. I just got done watching Elon Musk, and this is a fantastic example of not feeling with or us just allowing that to happen. What he does do is he addresses different part of the audience with this pause. So check it out.

My presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya.

If you look, we talked about this. Two, three second roll, two to three seconds and. And he just pans back now. Is he actually able to focus in on an individual? Which is actually what I recommend. If you are speaking to a crowd, if you're in a boardroom or if you're in a classroom, it's helpful to find that one person in each section of the room that is actually engaged in looking at you and look them in the eye. I don't think he's able to. So he's probably just built this habit. Or maybe he is. Maybe he can actually see individual people. And just as a point of comparison, not to pick on him, but if you look at Elon Musk, he often ignores this advice and tends to look at the first floor during his presentations.

We did want to point this out and show that this actually does work. It's just not something that the average person could use effectively.

Through hard work and perseverance. My father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America.

Lot of palm showing. We see a lot of gentle palm showing. Friendly, inviting. You can see what's going on with his hands.

While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world in Kansas.

Good. Reacting to the audience, letting some of that in. That's important because this isn't like the speeches this year. This isn't just to a camera. This is in front of people. So hearing them, reacting to them, that's gonna cause them to give you back more. Something that you'll see in people who aren't as comfortable with public speaking is that they tend to ignore the audience and they'll focus instead on the speech in front of them or the lectern and the present, basically more than the audience.

Welcome to the cybertruck. Unveil.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America, your name is no barrier to success. They imagine. They imagine me going to the best schools.

And so the audience, obviously, here is America. And so he's giving the audience a fantastic reputation, right? He's saying, in a tolerant America, your name is no barrier to success. And here he is speaking at the dnc. So this kind of stuff that hypes the audience, right? You see rock stars do it. How we doing? Philadelphia? I love this city, right? He, whether it's on purpose or not, is definitely speaking to the audience in a way that makes them feel good about themselves.

We gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers or the power of our military or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise.

So this is good. This creates mystery even within a single sentence. We do this not because thing one, thing two, thing three. All right, so we've already created some. Some tension, some mystery. Well, what. What do we. You're taking up some time here. Why are we so great? And then he pauses.

Or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise.

What is it?

Summed up in a declaration made over 200 years ago.

Drags out a little bit.

We hold these truths to be self evident.

Okay?

Now we know that all men are created equal.

And right here, then we get that anticipation. Kind of like when you know that a good punchline is coming and you just want it to happen.

For the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that's moving to Mexico and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour. More to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering, so.

What he's doing with this repetition and why this is important. And sometimes you'll see me do it when I'm giving examples in my videos. Is he speaking to a broad, diverse audience? But he's giving specifics, very specifics, you know, seven bucks an hour who's competing for a job. But he needs to feel like he's hitting each of the bases, that somebody out there can find Something in one of these repetitions to identify with themselves. But and this is important, you can't just say for everybody because that doesn't matter. This is the difficulty between the specific and the universal. You want to give a list of specifics because people will find at least one of those to connect with. But if you just say we just have to do better for everybody, that doesn't create an image in people's heads. And what we need in order to feel moved are not abstract ideas simply. Right. Those are important, but it's also something to tie into, to latch onto. And that's why these specific examples that are sometimes kind of drawn out exist in this speech.

Now don't get me wrong. The people I meet in small towns and big cities and diners and office parks, it's everybody.

He's not saying the people I meet everywhere. It's the people I meet in small towns, big cities, diners. He's going to hit everybody. But he can't do it just by saying the people I meet everywhere, because that doesn't connect.

You know, a while back, a while back, I met a young man named Seamus in a VFW hall in East Moline, Illinois.

So here we go. Specific. And this is critical. I, I, I do this all the time, right? I'm speaking to you guys. I don't often speak in stories. Stories are so good for connecting with people. You just have to remember to tie it back to the universal. So let's see what he does.

He was a good looking kid, 6263-clear-eyed with an easy smile. He told me he joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to his him explain why he'd enlisted the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might ever hope for in a child. But then I asked myself, are we serving Seamus as well as he's serving us? I thought of the 900 men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors who won't be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I've met who were struggling to get by without a loved one's full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but still lacked long term health benefits because they were reservists. When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation to not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why.

They are going so imagine this if he had just said from the start, when we send our young men and women in, we can't do this. It doesn't connect. But because we have a guy, Seamus, who is six two, good looking kid, who's all these wonderful things, of course we can't let Seamus down like that. And so when we can come back to those individual stories, that is what people remember, that is what makes people motivated and persuaded. And Obama did a fantastic job in this speech of bouncing back and forth.

South side of Chicago, who can't read. That matters to me. Even if it's not my child, if there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparents.

Yep, the choice of I right here is really good. And I think this is when they talk about this making him president, this stuff is now sticking to him. He's the one that cares about these people. So if you're actually interested in taking this from something that you see Obama doing to something that you feel more comfortable doing, there's obviously a lot of pieces you have to have the confidence to do this. But also there's technique, storytelling technique, gestures. And so the best thing that I know of for actually turning this from theory into something that you practice in your life is a course that I made called Charisma university. It's a 30 day program. It's all about taking tiny actions to start to make these sorts of things, habits so that you feel a deep level of confidence, but that you're also nailing the specific techniques. And we cover a whole lot of them with regards to storytelling. So if you want to check that course out, you can do so with the link below. Like I said, it's the best thing that I know of to actually start installing charisma, making it a habit. And quite frankly, it might help you turn your next speech or next conversation into something that goes far better than you've ever seen before.

Now, even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us. The spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politic.

The enemy. The classic enemy. Who will the enemy be? Who's the bad guy? Now, in almost every story there's going to be an enemy, right? If people are going to band together and they need to feel like there's an outside force, this is kind of the plot and I don't want to spoil it. Spoilers. If you don't want to hear it of Watchmen, right? That in order for humanity to band together, that Ozymandias has to come up with this extraterrestrial threat to get everyone to join forces against an enemy that we can unite against. Now, the question is, if you're running for President of the United States, who is your enemy? You do not want to make it the other party. This was a huge gaffe by Hillary with that whole box of deplorables. You know, she said that half of Trump voters were a box of deplorables. You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Not a good look, because people identify as Trump voters, or at least did at that part of the election cycle. But who identifies as a spin master, right? Who's going to identify? Oh, I'm the bad guy. I'm the spin master. And since I picked on him, this is actually something that Elon does pretty well. He definitely makes other car companies the enemies in some of his speeches, and that actually turns the fanboys to become more die hard for Tesla.

So it's actually hard to tell. It's hard to tell which which is which really took the brands off. We took the brands off. But Todd kill which is which is which? With brands off, they'll pretty much look the same. We need something different and we need sustainable energy. Now.

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope? John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism here. The almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it. Or health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

So what he has really done, and I think why people say that this is what made him president, is that this speech has. Has woven the American story. In his story, and it's like his is the next chapter. This is what it was set up for, is kind of what this speech Is, is not heavily implying, but intimating in a certain way. And it's, I mean, I'm buying it.

You know, America tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do, if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, I didn't.

Know that he did this, but this is a direct homage to MLK's I have a Dream speech.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia, let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee, from Washington to Maine. The people will rise up in November and John Kerry will be sworn in as president and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice president. And this country will reclaim its promise. And out of this long political darkness, a brighter day will come. Thank you very much, everybody.

Honestly, the weakest part of this whole speech is the fact that he had to work John Kerry and John Edwards into it, right? I mean, he told it really. This is his speech. This is the speech for him to be president. And quite frankly, upon watching it, I think it, I think it probably is what catapulted him. I'd have to look at the historical timeline, but makes a lot of sense. He is a fantastic speaker. I did a video on him a long time ago. It's lower production quality, but even at the time I check it out, he's, he's very, very good at galvanizing a room and creating a sort of common, a unity. Right. We are, we are in this together and this is where we are headed. And he addresses the concerns of the different factions inside there, makes everyone feel included and, and switches effortlessly between the singular and the whole. Right. It's not. One is not sacrifice for the other. It's just really, really, really good at what he does. And like I said before, if you see Obama or you see any of the people that we've covered on this channel and you feel like you would like to be more consistent in your own charisma so that you're coming across that confident, you might want to check out our course, Charisma University. Like I said, 30 day program. Best thing that I've ever created with regards to learning charisma personally. And you can check that out, everything that it includes by clicking the link in the description below. So I hope that you've enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one that.