How to Deliver a Great Speech

Hey, y'. All. I thought I'd shoot this video for you because I'm, as you can see, in a hotel right now. And I just got off stage about 30 minutes ago from speaking to 4,000 people at this conference. I was the keynote. And I am constantly asked, like, how does that feel? What do you think about it? What do you do? And honestly, I was in the elevator. On the way back, I ran into one of the attendees, and, like, you have to do, like, a YouTube episode on how do you think through this speech? Because, you know, it was super awesome. Got 4000 people up on their feet clapping and dancing. We'll put some video in here for you so you can see, and then a standing ovation. And I've been blessed to speak to, you know, the Bridgestone arena with 18,000 people, or, you know, the Superdome in New Orleans with, I think that was, like, 20,000 people, you know, And I'm on the road, and I speak to, in general, about 50,000 people live a year. So it's constant. And people ask me tons of questions about my career, how I do this, blah, blah, blah. So. So I thought I'd shoot this video. And I'm sorry, I'm jesting it on the fly here with you guys, because I just decided to shoot this, and I happened to have my camera with me here today. So how do you give a great speech? How do you think through it? What do you need to do? All these types of questions I get all the time. I thought I'd take a few shots at it first, let's talk about what makes a great speech. I think there are just a few very important elements that you need to know that make a great speech, and then you can prepare for it. Number one, a great speech is indicated by the number of life truths in the speech. You can have all the data and all the numbers and be super smart or be super funny or very entertaining or even empowering. But at the end of the day, it's. Are the life truths that you are sharing the wisdom that resonates in people's hearts and minds that helps them think about their day differently, their Monday differently, their family differently, their health differently, their mission differently? Are those life truths just powerful? And I'll say you only need, like, five life truths that just make people. Whoa, that's so true. And I shared, like, an example. I was talking about productivity today, and, you know, I was talking to 4,000 very advanced marketers, and I said, well, you know, the issue isn't always just getting More done, which most people think it is, because sometimes there's a big difference and you know in your heart between busy work and your life's work. And don't think that you're ever going to reach the next level just doing more busy work. That transition, that real fulfillment starts to come into your career and your life when you understand what your life's work is and you start making sure that 60% of your work week is going towards that. Because isn't that what matters the most? That is not that complex, but it's a life truth. Yeah, there is a difference between my busy work and my life's work. So you create phrases that are memorable around life truth. So if you ever see me speak, I probably got 30 or 40 of those in a 90 minute presentation that are just kind of like really resonant and that speak to people's hearts and minds. I'd say number two, enthusiasm. I mean, look at the video of me coming out on stage. Watch me interact with the audience, Watch me on any of my YouTube videos. Watch, listen to my podcast, HPX Podcast. It's like everything that I believe about HPX, which stands for the high performance experience, is about the enthusiasm and zest we must have for life or that we must generate and create. And so I'm just enthusiastic on stage, even if I'm scared, even if I'm worried, even if I'm concerned. And I mean, certainly walking out in front of thousands of people wasn't my original jam. I mean, I was that person who was not good at that, did not have skill in that and did not want to do that. But the reason that I became a good communicator and challenged myself to become a good communicator was because I realized if I couldn't communicate well, I couldn't make a good difference. If you don't teach yourself, train yourself, put yourself in those situations where you become a better speaker, a better communicator, a better leader, then how are you ever going to change the world? How are we ever going to do something that you feel is like significant and important? So I trained myself to do that. So I make sure that I'm enthusiastic for my topic and my mission and my purpose. When I go out on that stage, them, even if inside I feel anxiety, I feel like I don't know if I'm going to do a good job. Those things. Listen, when your fear becomes secondary to your enthusiasm for your purpose, that's when everything changes. That was a life truth, by the way. Number three. I would share that. You must explain well your struggles before you share your successes. A lot of people get up on stage and like, look at me and here's what I've achieved and what I've done. And oh, oh. And they share stats or numbers or show a check or some stupid stuff like that. And I'm like, listen, you want to resonate with an audience. Remember, they do not believe your successes if they don't feel your struggles. Right. If you get up there and talk about all your successes, they're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. You're lucky you were born this way. Or you just naturally, you know, now. No, but if you share the challenges and the story of the struggles that you faced in your life, and you don't have to do it chronological, like, from birth till now, but if you share the significant struggles and hurdles that you face to get to be on that stage, to get to do what you get to do, to serve your mission, they hear that and they go, yeah, I get that. I can understand that. I know where this person's coming from. And so it's really important to share that. I share the story of, you know, how I grew up. I share the story of how. How I went broke. I shared the story of how I had to rely on other people, how I dedicated myself to so much personal development psychology, to self mastery and all the struggles that went along with it from starting my business and failing to later on succeeding. But notice it was later on succeeding. I don't start with the successes. I build towards successes. Number four, create unique interactions with the audience. And it's everything. Meaning. I don't mean your interactions with them. You can do that too, by creating callbacks and things like that. A callback is where you have them shout a phrase. Like you shout a phrase, they shout a phrase back. That's called a callback. Or when you've ever seen, if you've ever seen a speaker go, yes, that's a call to call back, right? They're getting people to respond. I go in, I gauge it with everything I got. With what? Everything I got. Make sure you're doing that. But also have them interact with each other. Like, have them turn to each other, Give each other a high five. Have them turn to each other. Give them a hug. Have them turn to each other. Say something. Have them turn to each other, shake each other's shoulders. 5 Celebration Friday. Big hugs. Like, when they interact, that's important. So if you've ever been on my longer seminars, we get people standing up in groups of five and talking for 20, 30, 40, 50 minutes an hour, sharing their stories, their struggles, their challenges, their breakthroughs. And it's in those small groups or in that conversation that the audience has with each other that makes just as much magic as you yapping at them the whole time. I would share the last piece is all about the physical conditioning and the preparation of your mind and your body to hit that stage. As you know, I am just a complete zealot about high performance. I am always saying that, you know, the, the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates energy. And just like that, we have to learn to generate the energy in which we want to serve. And so here I am on the road right now and I'm going to go speak to. So I spoke to 4,000 people today. I go in 48 hours, I was probably another 7,000 and then another 700 and then I get a break and then we have all our seminars. This year I do eight live seminars, all of them four or five days long. There's very few people on this planet, except maybe me and Tony Robbins who put this number of hours on a stage at our own events with curriculum based training. It's just not, it's not a lot of people doing this at this level because they hire multi speakers. And it's usually me. And so at my own events, I mean, it's usually me, my own events. So I got to condition myself and train myself. And it's so hard, especially on the road because, you know, I want to go get a pizza or something right now, after I finish my big speech. I'm not going to do that. I'll probably have like kale. But I think it's about taking care of your own health. I said to the audience today, I said, you know, very few people would go to the house next door to them and vandalize it and break the windows and throw a bunch of garbage into the home. And yet so many people every single day spoil and vandalize and throw garbage into the temple that God has given them. And listen, if you feel like you've had a dream or a mission sown into your heart, and I mean part of your mission and purpose then has to be taking care of your heart, taking care of your physical body, right? That mind body connection is real. So I do all the warm up stuff that's so important. You know, I get up in the morning, I'll do a cardio based routine every morning of every speech, then I'll do about 20 minutes of yoga and stretching out. Then I'll do about 10 minutes of vocal warmups. Good morning. Good morning. Then when I'm backstage, ever seen backstage, I'm standing, bouncing in place, taking 10 deep breaths. I'm doing Chigarh strong movements with my body to keep the energy circulating. And that's all like just before I get on stage, no matter what time I'm on stage, I'll do all of that. And if you ever see me backstage, I'm literally the 15, 20 minutes before the stage. I'm constantly bouncing and moving and breathing to open up that lung capacity to get the body ready to go do the workout that it's going to be to speak. Because if you stand behind a podium and just like I'm telling you what you're missing, your chance for impact, you need to move. And you know, most stages are anywhere between, you know, the bigger stages, between 30 and 50 or 60ft. And I worked that entire stage, the entire time, non stop. And I literally got the stage. I was drenched. People were like taking selfies with me back. I'm drenched. Because if you're not sweating from a speech or a keynote, you didn't leave it all out there. You didn't even try. You stayed safe. That's what I believe. I guess the last thing is to understand influence. You know, influence. If you read my book High Performance Habits, there's a whole chapter on how the highest performing people in the world develop influence with people. And it basically comes down to three things. Number one, if you have great influence with people, the way that you got that is you taught them how to think. You exposed the life truth. You shared a valuable lesson. You shared some values or wisdom that they resonated with. But you got them to think differently about their life, their family, their relationship, their mission, their cause at this stage of their life. Number two, you challenged them. If you've been in any of my audiences, that's what I'm most famous for. I'm the guy that comes in and while I'm enthusiastic, I'm funny. I hope I'm handsome. No. But I try so hard to make sure that I challenge that audience. I challenge that audience in every area of their life. They don't know I'm challenging, but I often say as simple as, like, hey, listen, this is an important area, right? I teach them what to do. It's important you do that, right? Yeah, it is for your family. Because you can do better for your family. Raise your hand if it's true. That was a challenge. You can do better. For your family. Raise your hand if that's true. That's a simple challenge cue. But you can challenge people on how they think about themselves, how they think about the world, how they think about their mission, how they think about their kids. You can challenge not just how they think, but give them something to do. I challenge you to go do this in the next 10 days, or I challenge you right now. Write these things down. I challenge you to confront this truth. But if you challenge, well, man, that changes everything. And I'll share that last thing is be the role model. Be the role model. You know, when I hit a stage, by the time I hit that stage, even if they don't know who I am, I demonstrate everything I believe on that stage. I demonstrate excellence. I demonstrate presence. I demonstrate intention. I demonstrate joy. I demonstrate, like, everything I believe about high performance. I put it out there, and I think that's what's really important. So I know this is kind of off the cuff. It was last. Someone just asked me in the hallway. I was like, and obviously, I mean, look at this terrible lighting. What was happening here, right? I just turned the camera on and turned a lamp on. I thought I'd talk with you guys and share that insights. I also want to take an opportunity while I happen to be out on the road to share with you and thank you for your support of my new HPX podcast. HPX podcast is something I'm doing with my wife, Denise. She's in the podcast with me. It's our podcast together. And I think people are tired of me yapping on the Brendon show, which is my podcast, which you guys have kept top 20 in our category for six years, unbroken each year. That's because of you all. So I appreciate you on all that, but I think people are really interested to hear Denise's perspective. The woman and the sunshine behind me, if you ever see me happier, joyous, because I have an amazing woman who believes in me, supported me when I was broke and I had nothing before I began speaking, before I. Now I'm one of the. I think I'm the third highest paid keynote speaker on the planet. And that came from her believing in me. I didn't have a career speaking before I met her, and when I went broke trying to do it, trying to write my first book, trying to speak, she cheered me on and it changed everything. And so I hope you'll listen to the podcast just because she's on it, frankly. But I also want to take this moment to thank you guys because rolling out this podcast was kind of scary. I didn't know how it would go. And I really want to do good because Denise is in it. And I wanted her to feel that joy because she's been such an incredible mentor to so many people, and she's always believed in me, but also somebody of her team. She used to own exercise studios, and she built those up to like, 30 employees, sold them successfully. And now that she's removed from having that place, that box, the exercise studio, I feel. We just felt it was more safe to have her be part of the show and communicate because, you know, sometimes people seek her out. And it was just now that she's not in the exercise studio, it's easier for us to have privacy. And so I hope that you will support it because it's not easy to start speaking and teaching, and she hadn't done it before. And now she's speaking on the podcast, and now you see her on my Instagram lives with me. And so having the reception you have given, I can never thank you enough to imagine her jumping in with me, having all these fans and views, but then all of a sudden, you guys receiving her well, and cheering her on. I just want to say thank you. I also want to ask you to support the podcast. It's hpx. HPX stands for High Performance Experience. So it's HPX Podcast. I would love it if you subscribe, download all the episodes and just, I mean, binge listen to these things while you're, you know, working out or something. Anyway, I hope this video served you a little bit. I just got the question. I was like, I've never recorded. I should just knock this thing out. And I'm doing it on a new camera in a hotel room with no lighting. So, I mean, best we could do. I appreciate each and every one of you. I really actually hope to see you out in the road someday. I hope someday you're sitting in my audience and you see me live these things. It's my just true joy, but also part of my purpose to be out there, meeting you, helping you and empowering you in any way I can to help you live a more positive and vibrant and connected and fulfilling life. So. So I thank you every single day for giving me this opportunity to do it right here. Thanks, guys. I love you.