Leadership Therapy: Fear Of Public Speaking

I was deathly afraid of public speaking. I ran a company that did over $300 million a year at 430 employees. People are so deathly afraid of public speaking that when somebody's giving a eulogy, they would rather be in the casket behind them than giving the eulogy. There's just a lot of really talented people that you can hire or engage with that can help you. Two of the hardest things to do are boxing because it's just you and the opponent, and then stand up comedy. Like it's just you and a microphone. It cracks me up that I speak in front of audiences because I was deathly afraid of it. Like, it just cracks me up like I think it's funny.

Welcome to the Syndicate X Library where we train on leadership, effective leadership. We are helping people become much, much more valuable in the marketplace. And we have a community that comes with my new book, I Am Leader. So it's actually a book set you have. I am and then leader. When you get this book and if you don't have it, you're going to want to get it, you get a QR code that activates the book and makes you a part of the community and online training that we have. We're going live in there every couple weeks. But it's all about leadership and how can we become better leaders. It's really fun and there's, there's an incredible group in there. One of the things that, that I'm doing is I'm answering some of the questions in there. We have a thread going on now. This question today is about public speaking and I, I love the Jerry Seinfeld joke about how people are so deathly afraid of public speaking that when somebody's giving a eulogy, they would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy, which I've experienced in my life. I've felt that way before and I got over it and I'm going to kind of go through that. So this wasn't a question in the thread. Actually, my man Brian here and I were, were going back and forth in a DM and he said, thank you, sir, much appreciated. I've been a long time fan of your work. One of the subjects I find myself trying to tackle is public speaking and ways to improve on it. I know there are groups like Toastmaster and I've watched Eric Edamine's Ed means videos on YouTube but I'd be very curious on what you have found helpful or any resources you have to overcome this. Thanks in advance. The book is awesome. And I'm happy that this group exists. So, Brian, great question. And I think this will. This will be relevant to a lot of people. So just my personal journey is I was deathly afraid of public speaking. I ran a company that did over $300 million a year at 430 employees, somehow navigated never having to give speeches. I would send managers to do charity events and things like that. And if I did have to talk in front of a group, I would get sick every time. Like, it just was the worst. Like, I just. Yeah, I would rather be the one in the casket than the one giving the eulogy at that. At that time. And then, you know, jump ahead. I've done keynotes at big events in front of thousands of people and been paid.

Very well to do that, even to the point where, you know, the coordinators of events have said that, you know, my, my speech was the highlight of. Of the whole weekend or event that they were having. And, you know, I've gone through a journey with it for sure. And I'll try to kind of summarize that as much as I can for you. So the, the first thing that happened to me, what, what broke the, the glass, if, if you can say that, is I was in a Dan Kennedy mastermind.

If.

If you're not familiar with Dan Kennedy, you should look. Look him up. But he was instrumental in a lot of our development. A lot of entrepreneurs out there came from Dan Kennedy Mastermind and his trainings.

And so you have to embrace the idea of speed. You have to embrace it intellectually. You have to embrace it emotionally. What does that mean? Well, one is you have to convince yourself that it's possible. You have to be convinced of the possibility.

How do you convince yourself of the possible? Well, you need to somehow be around people who have phenomenon experiences.

Russell Brunson kind of bought that company, and he's helping revitalize Dan Kennedy. I remember Russell kind of and I talking about that once, and we were kind of guesstimating what it. What that would be like and what it would cost to do it. And he did it. And he's. He should be given an award and thanked for what he's doing, because Dan Kennedy made a huge difference in my development. And I was in a Dan Kennedy mastermind. And the, The. The.

Kind of structure of it was we would meet once a month and we'd go around the room, and there were like eight of us in the room. Everybody got their time, and everybody would help with your business. So, like, if you were struggling with something. There was somebody in the room that was a marketer. There was somebody in the room that understood financing or insurance. Like, it was a really well curated, diverse group. I was lucky to be invited to that. I don't. It. It was great, but. But one meeting, and maybe it was like the second or third meeting I went to, so I was kind of new to the group. That group existed for a while before I was invited in. The guy that would always sit across from me, who eventually became like, he's. He's my best friend in the world now, but at the time, I. I didn't know him very well. Everybody came in and was congratulating him at the top of the meeting for a speech that he'd given on tear sheets. And I asked him when everything had kind of calmed down and go, you were giving a speech on tear sheets? And he goes, yeah. And I go, oh, man. I go, why were you doing that? I. I thought you were in a different industry, you know. And he goes.

Yeah, no, I am. He goes, I was just practicing public speaking. And I go.

I go, I'm deathly afraid of public speaking. Like, that's crazy that you're doing that or whatever. And he turned to me and looked me straight in the eye, like a father would to a son. And he said, well, you better get over that, because I don't know anybody who's successful in any meaningful way that isn't good at getting up in front of a room and telling a story, and you better, like, change it. And in that moment, I was like, he's right. He's right. Like, there isn't anybody that's been successful that isn't good at this. And so I'm going to get over myself and I'm going to get good at this. And so then my journey begins, right? Because I'm still afraid of it. I'm. You know, I have all kinds of ways that I've psyched myself out and stories that I've told myself, and I've built a city around my. My fear of speaking. One of the gentlemen in that room gave me a course by Joel Bauer.

Life is not about being liked. It's about being effective. My card is die cut. My card is foil stamped. My card is embossed crowds guaranteed. You're kidding. My card, instead of telling you that I'm a CEO because who cares about my title, tells you about the result I generate. I build crowds. Guarantee.

What do you do? Guaranteed.

I don't know what I learned from that. Joel Bauer was He's. He's still around, and he's an incredible orator. But he would go to, like, county fairs and he could sell, like, a couple million dollars of pots and pans. And, you know, people were walking by. The rumor was that the character in Glengarry Glen Ross that Alec Baldwin plays was based on Joel Bauer. I have no idea if that's true, but you could see the resemblance. Let's talk about something important. Put that coffee down. I think the thing that I took away from that class more than anything else is just how much he planned and how confident and kind of forceful he was with what he was doing in the interaction with the audience. But it certainly wasn't my. It wasn't my style whatsoever. So then the next thing that I kind of landed on is Nancy Duarte's books. And Nancy Duarte has some. Some online training also. I think that her way of creating a speech or a keynote is a really, really good structure. And so I. I studied that. I've taken her online stuff. I've actually had people here in our company for a while. We would have them take that when they would. They would come in. But Nancy's, like, online thing changed, and for some reason, we kind of went away from it. Nancy Duarte stuff is really, really good. I've also had the privilege of going up to her offices in the Bay Area. She's kind of, I think, closer to San Jose, but she was at the time on the Apple campus. A lot of people out there that are celebrities or politicians or athletes or, you know, whatever they are that end up needing a keynote are going to darte and they're creating that keynote for them. She's her team. And what they do is incredible. Now, Nancy worked with Steve Jobs, and so there's videos online. Her talking about.

The. The very first iPhone launch speech that Steve did. She put some of those up against, like, Martin Luther King speeches. She's just, you know, incredible, incredible human being. But her training is really, really good. Also.

When you're kind of new at that, people tend to use PowerPoint and put a million words and a million bullets in. In a PowerPoint presentation. Her training is exactly the opposite. You're using PowerPoint more for mood. Kind of like in my book here, where I'm using images to reinforce the words. You're reinforcing what the PowerPoint. The PowerPoint isn't. Isn't the presentation, because what happens is people are just reading what's on the screen and they're not listening to you. And so her stuff is great. Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet.

And learning kind of how to tell a story.

I think was the next thing that I tackled. And I got to work with James Bonnet. He's one of those guys here in Hollywood that in his prime.

I think everybody that was a writer on TV or movies, they were going through his classes. And the book is great, too. And it's, you know, there's the Campbell hero's journey. That's good. There's quite a few people out there like that. Unfortunately, James Bonnet never really created an online course. I wish he would have because he was older and he wouldn't have the energy to do it, but, man, such. Such a unique perspective on things. I bought this book. It's Power Cues by Nick Morgan, and it's the subtle science of leading groups, persuading others, and maximizing your personal impact. It's funny, I pulled this off the shelf here in the library, and I was looking back at some of my notes in here and what I. What I highlighted. I was so blown away with this book that I got a hold of Nick. I flew out to Boston. And the thing that I learned from Nick, which might be the most important thing that I think nobody tells you, I don't know who is. Who has helped write more TED Talks, Nick or Nancy Duarte. I have no concept of that, but they both are very effective. He will guarantee a standing ovation. You have to have, like, a stomach for it because you have to kick the audience down the road a little bit in the beginning. And I don't want to give away his. His system. Let's just go back a little bit and talk about getting over your nerves to go up and speak in front of an audience. Like, so when. When my buddy Mike told me that fatherly thing of, you got to get over this, and I decided I'm going to get over. Didn't. I had the want to get over it, and I was determined to get over it, but I wasn't over it. I still would get physically ill and nervous when I. When I had to spe. What I realized is in situations where I was an expert on a subject and I really had a passion for conveying that message to people in a small group of like, say, 20 people in a conference room. I wasn't nervous at all. I was nervous when I went up in front of hundreds of people in, you know, in a theater, and I would have to speak. And for some reason, those two were different. But what I found for myself, my little. My Little hack was I realized that the. The difference, like what I was worrying about in the theater, speaking in front of people, was how I appeared, how I sounded. All of that in a workshop setting of 20 people in a conference room. I wasn't worried about that because I knew the content so well, and I was more focused on helping them learn whatever it is I'm teaching them over caring about what they thought about me.

And so I started kind of paying attention to that, that, like, game in my mind of, well, over here, when I'm doing this, it's still 20 people. You know, maybe this is 200 people and that's more people, but it's people. And I don't know them or them. Like, I'm not familiar with either one. I'm walking into a room, meeting strangers and then speaking and teaching them something. And so the. The thing that I realized about the workshop was that I was focused on them and teaching them something. And it had very little to do with me. It wasn't about me or how I looked. It was all about them. I wanted to make sure that they understood the thing that I was there to teach them.

And that's all I cared about. I didn't care about what the perception was, and they would end up liking me anyways because I had taught them something they didn't know before. And there's a, you know, there's a reciprocation that happens in an equity with a group when you give them something that they didn't have previously in a. In a way that they can understand it and digest it. And so I just kind of made this flip. I'm like, well, maybe what I need to do when I'm speaking in front of a bigger group is I need to be more prepared and I need to focus on them, not me. And that. That realization changed everything for me. Like, I don't. You could put 10,000 people in front of me right now, and if I'm speaking on something that I. That I know about, I'm not. I'm not nervous at all. I'm excited to share the information with them. Like, that's what's, you know, invigorating. Where before it was all, you know, an outcome of insecurity, clearly. Like, I was insecure and worried about what they were going to think about me or the judgment or, you know, my. My appearance, I guess whatever it is that. That thing that, you know, basically paralyzes you or paralyzed me. So giving to them and making it about them was way more useful for Me than imagining them naked or any of that weird stuff that you learn when you're reading books on public speaking like that. Never.

That never worked for me.

Being prepared and having a message and, you know, speaking to them from a context of. I'm a teacher, not a preacher. Now there's, there's plenty of, of orators out there that are preachers. They can get people fired up, and they're really, really good at that. That's not me. I'm a teacher. I'm not. I, I.

I want people to walk away, like, understanding something they didn't understand before.

That's my goal. Not getting them fired up and not getting them to like me. Like, I don't, I don't care that they worship or idolize me from what I'm doing. In fact, that's actually really uncomfortable because it changes the dynamic from a conversation to a hierarchy that, that I don't personally need. I know it exists, but I, I personally don't need it or, or seek it. It's not my thing. My thing is, can I, can I, with my experience and what I know or what I've studied, can I give them some tools and an insight that they didn't have before? Right. So I'm going to do a little more research on the audience before I get up there. I'm going to work really hard on, on what, what I'm laying out. One, one person, too, that helped me a lot was Craig Clemens. I got to sit with him a couple times, and he would go up and do speeches in different environments, kind of practicing, and he had some keynotes that were really, really well done, and he was really good at delivering them. I still have it recorded. He drew out for me what a system was. Helped me a lot. Like, he's a really, really smart guy. Now back to power cues. And what, what Nick taught me that, that made everything easier for me is when you're speaking in front of an audience.

The tendency is to shuck shock with the audience when you go up there. So, like, let's say I'm, I'm talking in an event in Austin, Texas. So I would walk up to the microphone and I would be like, oh, my God, it's humid and hot here in Austin, but the tequila is good. Or, oh, my God, it's so great to be here with the Plumbing association of America. Just the other day, we had a toilet backed up at the off. You know, some sort of, like, commonality with the audience.

Nick said, never, ever, ever, ever do that. It's Any.

He.

He played me videos of people doing that over and over again. He played like. And I was like, okay. And he goes, this is what you do. And then he plays me a video of somebody who just walks up to the microphone and starts telling a story. That's it. Like, if you have a story that you know really well and you've practiced that story in different situations, and you just walk up to the microphone and start tell, you've got everybody. It's magic. Like, it is like. And if you watch it, if you watch a lot of the TED talks, they're starting with the story. They walk up and they start talking about this little girl, that something, something. But it's. You know, it's some sort of a story.

Another person that kind of made a big difference in. In my storytelling was Larry Wingate.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night. Whatever time it is when you're listening to this, good on you.

I went to a couple things that Larry did. Larry kind of told me that you only need, like, two or three stories to get by. Like, if. If you're doing keynotes or you're speaking a lot or, you know, let's just say you're a leader and you are constantly trying to promote your company or you're constantly trying to fire up your troops, you really only need a couple stories about the mission that you're trying to accomplish. And maybe one of them is, in an abstract sense, a little different than just the normal, hey, here's why we exist. But you only need a few stories. And if. If you're going out and pitching or you're, you know, talking to your team all the time, in a lot of situations, really good leaders are telling the same story everywhere they go. Like, they just are. Like.

A great kind of example of that is to watch the documentary War Room about Stephanopoulos and Carville getting Bill Clinton elected against a sitting president.

Why can't we attack George Bush?

It was just about the economy. Everything about what they were doing was about the. The economy. They knew that the economy was the. The thing on everybody's mind. And they would ask Clinton about Jennifer Flowers. And you go, you know, they want. The Republicans want you to ask me that because they don't want to talk about. And then it was about the economy. It was about the economy. The last shot in that documentary is a dry erase board, and it says, like, volunteer of the week. And then it's the economy, stupid. Like, they were telling the same story. And I think we. We, like, think, oh, because We've told the story, everybody's heard it. But you can tell the same story forever. Trust me. It, it works. Like I, I have a couple stories that kill every time and even if people have seen those stories on the Internet, on YouTube, they love it every time I do it. Sometimes people request the stories. You got to work on telling stories. So Larry Winget introduced me to Lou Heckler and I flew out to Lou Heckler in Florida and, and we literally designed stories. Like I would tell a story and then he would help me fix it. So it worked more in a, in a keynote situation. And Lou Heckler is incredible also and so smart. You can just tell by, by me explaining all this that there's just a lot of really talented people that you can, you can hire or engage with that can help you. Now one other thing, just, just a little flip. A lot of people would tell you as advice and they're not wrong, but it wasn't. My path is they would tell you to go do stand up comedy. During the pandemic, we, we had somebody come and coach our coaches here internally on stand up comedy. Andrew. He was great. Our coaches all did two minutes of standup as, as a performance. People will do, will do that. And it's probably the quickest way to get over your fear of public speaking just in it. You know, there's probably two of the hardest things to do are boxing because it's just you and the opponent. Like boxing or mma, like some sort of hand to hand combat and then stand up comedy. Like it's just you and a microphone. You don't, you don't have a safety net. And so that is a way to get over it is go take some stand up classes and they're available. Improv classes are great. I've done improv. We've had improv come in and do. We would do it with everybody in the office every week for, for a set amount of time. The other one is, and they have a great YouTube channel is the Moth M O T H. They have stuff on how to tell a story that's pretty, that's pretty good. Also to summarize everything really is that it is you kind of deciding that you want to be good at it and going on a journey and it won't be one thing that gets you there. It's a series of things. But if, if you're, if you want it and you're willing to invest in yourself and work hard and practice over time you'll, you'll get good. Like it cracks me up that I speak in front of audiences because I was deathly afraid of it. Like, it just cracks me up. Like, I think it's funny, and I'm not afraid. Like, I care. Care less about myself in those situations. Like, I'm so excited to share the information with the audience and make friends with them. I'm not thinking about myself at all. Like, I. I don't. I don't get afraid. I'm excited to do it, you know, and so it's possible. But hopefully, my. My journey and giving you some of those highlights just helps you kind of understand that it's just work, you know, telling yourself the truth and working at it, and that's what you got.