How to Conquer Public Speaking Anxiety with Tristan de Montebello

But it's curiosity as to where we are, what we are, that existence, the physical universe is basically playful. Welcome to the Curious Humans Podcast. I'm your host, Jonny Miller. Greetings curious humans. In this conversation I'm speaking with my good friend and co founder of Ultra Speaking, Tristan di Montebello. Tristan has an incredible story of training to become a finalist in the World Championship of Public Speaking in just seven months. In this conversation we explore his radical approach of focusing on impromptu speaking rather than scripted speeches and how this totally unlocked his capacity for self expression and why. The key starts with learning to speak before you think and towards the end he shares really one of the best concepts I've heard in years that he calls the butler in your subconscious. Okay, without further ado, please enjoy this superb conversation with public speaking polymath Tristan de Montebello. This episode is brought to you by the one and only Nervous System Mastery. This is my flagship five week course designed to equip you with evidence backed protocols to cultivate calm, rewire reactivity and build emotional regulation in 45 days. Our sixth cohort will be kicking off on October 7th and we're currently accepting new students. My sense is that if the conversations in this podcast resonate with you, then you'd likely be a really good fit for this upcoming training. The Nervous System Mastery curriculum represents my attempt to distill everything that I've learned in recent years about how to create the conditions for our nervous system flourishing. It's run in an intensive cohort based way since in my experience this is the most efficient way to not only learn the information, but also to embody the protocols into your everyday life. Previous students have shared how partaking not only improved their sleep and quality of relationships, but also tap into deeper states of joy, clarity and confidence in their lives.

I wish I would have found this 20 years ago. Almost like the small moments matter most.

I actually lean into it now with curiosity.

Holy.

Did I just say that? And the more you practice, the better you get.

The key for me is emotional fluidity, which I think really buys you more life. Interoception has been so helpful I didn't even realize all of the tightness internally that I had before.

At this point we've had over a thousand students complete Nervous System Mastery. Many have said that it's been the most impactful thing they've ever done for their personal growth. So if you're intrigued at all, you can find out more details and join our next cohort over@nsmastery.com that's nsmastery.com welcome to the Curious Humans podcast. Tristan.

Hey, Johnny. I was expecting a long introduction.

Can't be quite surprised. How are you feeling in three weeks? Words?

Excited, Curious, joyful, beautiful.

And to begin with, could you tell me a story about something that you were curious about as a child? Or do you, do you consider yourself to have been an exceptionally curious child?

I don't know if I was exceptionally curious. I do think I was curious. I think my curiosity started exploding because now I do believe I'm exceptionally curious and have led most of my life as an exceptionally curious human. I think my curiosity started exploding when I was a little bit older when I read the book the Art of Non Conformity by Chris Gilbo. And I remember that just absolutely blowing my mind. But one story does come to mind that I think exemplifies my curiosity or kind of who I was as a kid. We were playing tennis on a wall with one of my friends and he was leading a life that I didn't know was possible. When we were kids, we were like eight or nine years old and we're hitting balls and he's talking about how they have a problem with deer in his backyard and that his dad said, if you could find a way to get the deer to leave, I'll sponsor whatever you did. I'll turn it into a business. And so he was working on. And I don't remember the details now, but he, like, I, here's what I remember. I remember that if you walk down into his like little shed where he was working as a nine year old, there was like an alarm that he would, it would trigger some alarm that would like turn on the lights and turn on the music. This was a long time ago and he had created some system that was supposed to emit a certain frequency that would send the deer away. Unfortunately, it didn't work. But I remember in that moment like having my eyes just blown out of my mind and then he started singing the entrance to the Lion King. And I couldn't believe anybody could do that. And like it became my mission. I had to learn that thing. And like that I remember that blowing, like turning my mind on and just putting me on this road of I want to learn everything.

Beautiful. What was it about Chris's art of nonconformity that really struck a, struck a.

Chord, I think maybe similarly to the feeling I had when my friend was sharing everything he was sharing. I lived a incredible childhood in, in many, many ways, but there wasn't much, there was a lot that was very Standard in some sense. Like a lot of it was very normal. And I always felt like a draw to things that were more unconventional, more abnormal, more. I was an entrepreneur at heart. And that followed growing up. And I think when I remember the feeling of the Internet being like this portal to a universe, as if I didn't know that we were a planet in the middle of all of these galaxies. And suddenly, not only did I discover that, but I discovered that I had access to space travel and that there were people everywhere on all these other planets. And that's every time I would sit down in front of my computer, I like teaching myself how to code or whatever I was doing at the time, it was that feeling. And I remember the book the Art of Nonconformity kind of gave me that. It gave me that same feeling, except Chris was actually doing it and he was traveling the world, I think, at that time. And I traveled the world after I. The around the world trip that I think he went on as well. Or I used a similar technique to get a really cheap ticket, like points.

Point hacking type thing more than port hackings.

I had to fly from South Sudan and it cost like 5x less. We paid $2500 for a full year of traveling around the world in business class. It was, yeah, absolutely insane. And I, I was about to do it and I was scared to do it. And then I saw on Flyer News, I think it was the forum, Chris Gilbo had a post of like, hey, I just did it. It worked. And I was like, chris Gilbo, the real Chris. And boom. And I did the same thing because it was a whole. You had to do a bunch of things to get that to work. And they say that we had an impact on the actual currency there and they had to stop it because there were too many people coming in and buying that ticket. But what I can tell you is there are a few books like that where I can't finish them because I'll read two pages and then I'll stand up and start walking around and pacing and writing notes and thinking of a thousand things that I want to do. And I just get into this crazy inspired mode. And then. And that book kept doing that. Of there's so much that's possible. There's so much that's possible. This is the life I want to live.

Wow. Wow. So kind of going from, let's say, like that moment or the period after reading Art of Nonconformity with Chris to kind of fast forwarding to today, ultra speaking is a thing what was the arc of that journey between having your horizon of possibilities expanded to I guess, falling in love with learning and then finding public speaking. What was the arc of that experience?

I think it was led by a fierce desire to follow things that were interesting to me to, to, to feed the beast inside of me that needed, I don't know that it needed that just wanted novelty and the potential for big. It was always, it's, it's the potential for big or the potential for a lot of feeling the potential like I would, I, I'm. I get excited and passionate about things and that's, that was my only compass. Even in moments where it was definitely not the right business move or the smart decision. So I think that was always the arc. And that led me to do all kinds of things from trying to organize a go karting race in the streets of Paris and starting our first company as a result of that and promoting electric vehicles, small electric vehicles in the way, way, way too early. And then I was working with my grandfather in law or my grandmother's second husband who's an incredible artist and trying to help him build his blog and build the. He built the biggest conference around drawing and I was helping him work with that because that was just very exciting to me. And then I joined a startup and same thing, I just got, I would just get excited by these things and I jump in and give all of my life, all of my being to that. And then I just kept moving on to the next thing. But what got me to ultra speaking, which was the last domino because I'm still in it and I still love it, is mostly luck. But it came from me following these different projects and understanding myself more and more as I was doing this, just trying to look back and think, okay, what's the common denominator here? And what I found out was what I liked was being the guinea pig. I liked being part of, part of the act of whatever it is that we were doing. And so I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn something and I wanted to be the one learning it. Not only teaching, I also wanted to be the person learning. And so I just decided I'm going to take on another learning project. And I mean, you can go as deep as you want into that story, but that led me to become the fastest competitor to make it to the finals of the world championships of public speaking in seven months and get into Scott Young's book Ultralearning, which became a bestseller, which meant that people started reaching out to me and Michael, who coached me during that project and started Ultra speaking because people were like, hey, whatever, teach me what you learned. And that was the first time where it felt like everything finally coalesced together and that it was all of my being, all of my skill sets pointing in one direction. Whereas as I'd been aiming, following this passion and following things all over, it was often like. It felt like a part of me is extremely fulfilled and a part of me is underutilized or not expressed. And this was the first time where it felt like, oh, everything I've been doing, every single thing I've done is serving me right now.

Yeah, beautiful. I think that listeners would hate me if I didn't ask you to elaborate on that story. But before you do, I have a curiosity myself in the sense that, you know, I see myself a lot in what you shared as well, and, like, being this perpetual guinea pig of life and constantly experimenting. But I think something that I struggled with, and I think a lot of listeners also struggle with, is that, like, when you're pursuing excitement and, like, novelty, there is a way in which you can kind of fall into, like, shiny object syndrome, where it's like, you try this and then it's really fun for like a week or a month, and then it kind of like peters out, and then you try something new and you're never really able to make progress. I think it's the difference between epistemic and diversive curiosity, where diversity curiosity is like, I'm interested in 1500 things and ADHD, you get pulled in different directions. Whereas epistemic is. There's this one thing that I just find fascinating that I could spend the rest of my life trying to solve. And so for me, that was kind of finding the nervous system work. And it seems like for you, it's finding public speaking. So I'm curious, like, what was that? What was that switch like for you? And how did you know that this was the particular, I guess, art form and craft that you wanted to go deep into?

No wonder we get along. Well, that's the epistemic versus, is it diversity, diversity, diversive diversity, diversity that basically defines my life. I was diversive all the way up until ultra speaking. And it's almost like you're. You're dating and exploring yourself in the world for that long, and then you find a partner, and the more time goes by, the more you're convinced that there's so much more richness in continuing to go deep, regardless of the difficulties and the obstacles. Because every time you pass one of those obstacles, or difficulties, your passion and your interest and your admiration for the pursuit and the process is deepened. And I think in the my previous life, what would happen is when things would get hard and I would get to the other side, it's like something chipped away. I was like, why am I even going through this much effort for this thing that seems elusive, that I'm still looking for something. And so I think to me, that's really the. I wasn't. I could not even go back in time and tell myself anything that would have allowed me to see. It's just when you encounter it, you recognize it.

I think the analogy to dating, though, is really spot on. It's like when you find the right person, it's like you are willing to go through that adversity and go through those conflicts and those challenges and find that depth on the other side. But maybe when it's not the right person, it doesn't feel like the effort, depth, reward ratio is quite there. Yeah, exactly.

And I think it's hard to imagine, at least for me, it's hard to project in a virtual world in your mind, what that would actually mean, because it's the nuance that is so interesting. And I know that that was the same thing that happened with Ultra speaking is as I started going deeper and deeper and deeper in this pursuit of developing this method with Michael and consistently being put in front of difficult situations, because for us, our journey was. I went through this crazy hero's journey arc that I never could have anticipated, that I fell into by accident, but that my life seemed to have prepared me for. And I come out of this arc a new person, as the hero's journey does. Right? You go back to your village transformed, and now people are coming to us and saying, I need help. But they're not saying, I need help to do exactly the thing you just did. They're coming to us and saying, hey, I've always had anxiety around speaking, solve it for me. And I'm like, I've never helped anybody solve this. I happened to have solved it for myself through this journey, and Michael solved it in his own journey. So. Okay, let's play. But what happened is, over time, the richness of the experience became more and more interesting to me in a way that I had rarely ever discovered except in my. My relationship with Gassian. So there's really is an analogy there of like, wow, things are. I would have thought that it was the novelty that was interesting. And when you talk about it, I even. I remember a conversation with my mom saying, like, I want to try everything in the world except for the. The drugs that are gonna. That could potentially kill me. I want to try it all. And she. She was like, whoa, careful there. But I no longer believe that because now I'm discovering that there's so much more to be gained by. By depth, by narrow depth. And just like with my wife, I think I'd been with someone prior. Like, two and a half years was my longest relationship, which is already pretty long. It seemed like a lifetime to me, but suddenly it was three and a half years or something. And I'm looking back and I'm like, oh, man, it still feels like the beginning. It feels. Still feels like we're only getting started. And it's been three and a half years, whereas it was petering out two years into that other one. And with ultra speaking, it was similar in that suddenly I'm three years in or two years in, I forget how long, and I'm like, man, I'm more excited and more interested and more curious now than I was even two years ago. Whereas usually this would be. I'm now in the hard part. So I'm not sure how to. How to bring this back, to answer your question exactly. But there's. The journey itself was so fulfilling in tapping into the level of nuance that I didn't even know existed. And I think that's what replaced my search for ecstasy and passion and novelty that was driving my life was always outside. Like, what's the next thing? I wasn't actively saying, what's the next thing? But something would present itself to me and it would become extremely interesting to me, and I couldn't resist the urge of going to it. But what I discovered through this pursuit is the slightest little detailed nuance in how I approach coaching or how a person reacts was giving me the same amount of ecstasy and joy on this. Like, I discovered a new layer of understanding of why it is that people feel what they feel or what it takes to overcome this. And that's truly beautiful. And that's what drives me to this day.

I love that. And it makes me think of almost like. Like a polyamorous relationship to creativity that then suddenly you find the one and it becomes like, oh, it doesn't even feel like you'd be sacrificing anything because there's so much richness and nuance, like you were saying. Yeah, I really love that answer. I have a ton of questions for you, but I also would love to hear the kind of abridged version of how did you end up at the Public Speaking World Championships? Like. Like what, what the hell? How did that happen?

The short story is I was teaching people how to play, how to learn guitar, teaching adults how to learn guitar online, and I was getting bored. Exactly. We're talking about. I was bored of teaching guitar because I, I like guitar. I love playing my guitar and singing and I liked teaching it, but I couldn't see myself becoming the guitar guy. And it was always my. I remember I was following Ramit Sethi's courses and emails and anytime, and he often send an email saying, hey, if you have a problem, if you're stuck with anything, send me an email and I'll choose a few people and I'll answer them live. And I just, I have multiple emails of me saying, I don't want to become the guitar guy. How do I solve this? And he never picked me, so I never got an answer. But my solution was, well, this is kind of on autopilot. So now I'm going to go learn another instrument. Coming back to the guinea pig, I'll just put myself back in the guinea pig. I loved creating it. I didn't like maintaining it. So I'm going to go learn another instrument. And the short version of that is I was convinced that piano was not a good idea, that I should do something more, more impressive, more insane, and something that could impact my life more. Because I was in contact with Scott Young, who was at the time already starting to flesh out ultra learning and was looking for case studies. And I was looking for accountability and pressure and something big. Because my idea was, my whole idea was me learning this thing will be the very thing that markets it. So I just got insanely lucky that I had met Scott many years prior because he did a meetup in France. And so I was already in contact with him. He already knew me. And so I jump into this thing and I didn't know how to measure. How do you measure? Getting better at public speaking. That's a very difficult thing to measure. And I discovered the World Championships of public speaking. I had no idea it existed, but there's 30,000 people from 140 countries every year who participate in that. This led by Toastmasters. And I thought, this is perfect, let me sign up for this, it'll add pressure. And I just kept winning. I kept winning. Michael. I met Michael at the very beginning and he helped me and we worked together a lot. He was my coach the whole way. And the first three months, which led me to qualify for the semifinals, was Me iterating on a speech, on a single speech, on a script, and then overacting it on stage, because that's the Toastmasters way. And then the second three. The second phase was three months to the. To prepare the speech for the finals. So I had no experience public speaking three months prior, and I had to write a speech that could beat the best speakers in the world. And that broke my brain because it's impossible to do. And so I panicked. I had a lot of anxiety and fear and struggle there was. But my strategy became going in front of audiences and unprepared, testing out things, doing the exact opposite. That what I did for the three months prior was I knew every. Every word, every time. I knew everything by heart. I'd spent hours on the treadmill memorizing. And in this case, I'd have a joke and more or less of an idea of where I wanted to go. And I had to pretend I had a script and just speak it out. And in doing so, the goal was to find out, like, what's my brain going to come up with on the spot that I couldn't have thought of in a brainstorming session and of our ideas, which ones work and which ones don't. And I had a virtual assistant book me a speech every single day in front of a new audience. And I knew nobody. And I just look at my calendar, go to the next place and test it out, test it out, test it out. So, like, kind of like a standup comedian preps their special, and there's a crazy story in the semifinals because I had to throw my speech away six days before the semifinals and rewrite the whole thing. And, yeah, that was very, very insane. Even more scary. But all of my training up to there served me, and I managed to win the semifinals with a speech that I started working on five days before, which was crazy. That was my big win. That was when I won that I thought, to me, I had already won everything. I'd gone leagues beyond what I thought I could do. But, yeah, and then the story was crazy enough that it got into Scott's book, and that's what led to Ultra speaking.

Wow. So, I mean, that's an incredible story. What are, like, some of the things that. That you learned during that period that kind of fly in the face of traditional public speaking advice? Because just for listeners, I've taken one of the Ultra speaking trainings, one of the cohorts, and the way that you guys talk about and teach public speaking, I think is just so different to anything Else I come across, and I really want to get across the philosophy behind, like, what you teach and from there, why it's so effective.

I think a lot of what we do is counter to the traditional way. And I think a large part of that is because. Or it's influenced by the fact that three months in, I qualify for the semifinals. So at that time, if Scott had wrote me in, at that point, I would have felt like an imposter. Because although I was a finalist. Not a finalist, a semifinalist in the world championships of public speaking, the reason why I chose public speaking, which was the true reason, there was the kind of two reasons. One of them was I want to become better at giving presentations. Because I'd given presentations. Some, not many. And I always felt like I sucked. And I. And I just. I wanted. I wanted to be so much better. I did, you know, tell jokes and nobody would laugh, and I'd be super stressed. And I just. I felt like I wanted to get better. But the thing I secretly wanted more than anything was I. I wanted to feel. I wanted to stop blushing. Basically, when people would, you know, I'm in a group of friends, and some. Somehow the attention would be driven towards me. Like, I would. I would lose. I would just freeze up, start blushing, freak out that I'm blushing, and go, no, everybody can tell that I'm blushing. And then I'd tell myself, okay, you have to smile so it looks like you're cool. You're like. You're. Like you're okay. And then I try to smile, and I don't know how to smile anymore. And, like, my muscles are not working. And then I. That makes me blush even more because, like, oh, now they can tell that I'm. That I know when I'm comp. Anyways, it would send me down this thing, and I. So I constantly had this anxiety. It's like trauma from those situations of. Of. Of blushing in a group. And that's what I wanted to get rid of. I wanted to be able to be asked to give a toast and be okay with it and do a good job. And the process I went through of writing a script and spending. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent working that script, showing it to people, analyzing, storytelling, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting, and then learning it by heart to act it out had zero transfer to impromptu speaking. But the reality is, the vast majority of all of our speaking is unprepared. Every once in a while, you get a presentation, and it's great to have an amazing framework to do that, but most of the time, you're not. So in that moment, I felt horrible because everybody was like, oh, Mr. Speaker. And I was just 10 times more terrified because now the expectations were this high, and I still felt super shitty at that part. So my biggest fear was blanking in front of an audience, right? I only knew how to learn something by heart and act it out on stage. And I started getting really, really good at that. But now Michael's saying, go out there. Let's find out what your brain comes up with on the spot. And I'm thinking, what. How that's terrifying. Well, the first speech I gave, I blanked for 14 seconds. So my absolute and total worst nightmare happened. I said, and the silent killer is. And I couldn't remember what the silent killer was. And I'm on stage with my microphone, pacing, you know, slowly walking the stage. What I knew how to do already was convey confidence, because I already had done 30 speeches at least within these three months, if not more, probably 50. And so there was a lot that I did know how to do. I know I knew how to be on stage. I knew how to have that presence. I knew how to stay in character and not show that I was struggling to find out what to say next. Just walking on the stage, outwardly looking very confident, inwardly looking for exits and wanting to die. And then I remembered the word of what the silent killer was. And I don't know what it was. Let's say comfort. And I say the word comfort. But then I'm so rattled that I still don't have anything to say. And I have another seven seconds of silence as I walk the stage. And then finally, I'm like, I have to say something. So I open my mouth, I start saying words, any words. I'm just. I need to speak. And I start talking, and I. I manage to grab onto a thread, and I finish. And at the end of that, we go around the. I asked for feedback from everybody, which was part of my process. And the first person to give me feedback says, before I say anything on the speech, I gotta say, that pause in the middle was the most powerful pause I've ever seen in my life. And that was the beginning of my life being changed, because I realized I may be feeling like death inside and fumbling and struggling and not finding my bearings. But to the outside, as long as I don't show that, it actually looks like I'm confident and I'm doing this on purpose. And having experienced my worst nightmare on day One meant that everything else was just not as scary. And so I started looking for that feeling of like, okay, what more? What more? And then there were more and more moments where I didn't know what to say and I just speak and something interesting would come out. And oftentimes it was something fascinating would come out to me and I'd think, whoa, that was really interesting. Or that was really well put, that was really well said to the point where I'd go back to the recording and try to see like, what did I say? Because that felt so good when it came out. And I noticed the audience reacting in a certain way. And the process of going through that, of consistently exploring, going out there and exploring things out loud and pushing myself to perform under pressure and learning frameworks in which I could deliver a full seven or seven and a half minute speech with no script and no preparation, that changed my life completely. Suddenly I was confident that, okay, you could ask me anything at any time in any environment, I'm going to be able to come up with something. And probably something that's going to be at least okay, probably pretty good, likely good and sometimes great. That's what was my new reality. And so when we started teaching people ultra speaking, when people came to us, so when people would come to us and ask for help, the last thing I would teach them was the, the old way of like, well, let's learn how to write a great script and get a perfect story and learn all the frameworks and I'm going to then teach you how to perform it in a way that looks good. And that's going to do. No, that's going to have no internal impact. There's no way I'm doing that because that, that was the worst experience for me. So instead we almost over indexed on the other side at first where it was like, let's just focus on getting you to feel confidence speaking with no preparation. And literally the first thing we would do with people is they would stand in front of us in my backyard and we'd say, I'm going to say a word and you just have to start speaking. And so we'd say like horses. And people would be like, you know, and they think, no, no, no, no, no, he don't understand, I'm going to say horses. And within less than a second you have to start speaking. And basically what we taught people to do was stop relying on their thinking brain to be their protector and instead trust that if they start speaking and tap into a state of flow as quickly as possible. That that's how their best content is going to come out. So it became a game of learning to trust yourself in your ability to access a state in which all of your content is there for you. And in some sense the before is deer in the headlights, I'm grasping for straws, I don't know what to say. And the after is there's so much in my mind. How do I choose what to say? And that's the starting point. So our whole philosophy was like, first we fix the root, let's find, let's first get a person to a place where they have the problem of now I have too much to say. And I feel like I could go in all the directions. Okay, now let's learn how to set a strong direction for you. Now let's apply all of the other learnings we had, but until we got the fundamentals right, that was the only thing we focused on.

Yeah. So that's fantastic. And I think the immediate question that comes up for me, and probably listeners as well, is like, how do you help someone to get out of their own way? Because that sounds great in theory, but at the same time, if I imagine trying to give an impromptu speech to a bunch of people on stage, there is that immediate, almost limbic brain kind of freeze response. And also. Yeah, just the sense of like, but what if? Nothing, nothing comes up. And just for. I also wanted to mention that I've, I've also had the experience of freezing on stage during a Ted Talk. I had like a 20. I say it was like 20 to 25 second pause at the end of this like poem that I read. I couldn't remember what I, what I had scripted to say next. And very similar to you. I just stood there and I was absolutely terrified. I had like no idea what I was going to say. Just staring at these like bright spotlights and like 500 plus people in the audience. And the next word came and at the end had a similar thing like people like that, that pause in the middle, like, holy shit, that was good. That got me. Yeah.

And that's why this is a slightly an aside. But that's why we refuse for anybody we work with to have a script. Because what happened is you just said, I read the poem. But then you're not reading your speech and it's a completely different side of your brain that's activated when you're reading. So suddenly you have to go from this reading mode back to where am I?

I had memorized the poem. Like that was coming from my, oh.

So you weren't reading it.

But I wasn't. I was, like, reading.

But you were. Oh, yeah. But you were memorizing it. Yeah, yeah. Memory is horrible because memory is a chain link. If you're memorizing a speech, it's one word that comes after the next one. And if you lose the chain, one breaks, then there's no more chain. The anchor is at the bottom of the ocean, and it's not recoverable. So you. So there's. You want to create a much more resilient way in which to. In which to speak. You had a question. You said that that was your aside, but you. Was there a question before that? I forget.

So the que. Yeah, the question really, like. I mean, this is like, how do you. The entire curriculum, but, like, how the hell do you get out of your own way? Like, how do you go from having nothing to having, like, 10 ideas or directions to go to?

The short answer is you have to prove it to yourself. And by prove it, I mean literally prove it through stacking up the reps. There's no. There's no other way.

You.

You have to be put in a position where you're kind of the deer in the spotlight. I throw you a topic, I throw you a speech. I put you. I give you a challenge that might make you freeze, and you find a way out of it. And I do that with very, very low stakes in a very fun way. First. Right. Most of what we do is very gamified because it has to be fun, and you have to get tons and tons and tons and tons of rep. So you do that. You apply it. You think, whoa, that actually worked. I didn't believe it would work beforehand. And then the people in the audience or the people you're working with will say, hey, that was actually really awesome. I actually really love the content. And so you think to yourself, wait, that's not. Is that really. Is this a fluke or is this real? Then you go again, and you test it out again, and you just go over and over and over. And it's. The absolute key here, is you need so many reps that you're literally overwhelming or overtaking the fear response. And I had an interview with Scott Young for his new book where he studied this in depth. And this is actually exactly what happens. This was always our image of it, but what happens is the fear response. That doubt doesn't leave. The circuitry is still there. You just create another one that becomes more powerful than it and basically overtakes it. So as long as this one's stronger and more real then you, you skip the, the fear response that you're usually in. So for this to work and you, for you to have trust, not only does it need, do you need to be able to speak and say something that every time but you all you also need it to be really good because if it's not good then you're going to think, okay, I can speak on anything, but it's shitty. That's not worth much. So there are strategies, there are techniques that you can apply and there's, you can get better at speaking aside from the, the, the principles of the speak before you think and getting things out. So that's why we have coaches and we have curriculum so that you consistently get a little dose of feedback. Okay, now, now try a little bit of this. Now end strong because you, you kind of tapered out at the end. Now add a pause in, do this and that. Those things when you apply them, if you have a big enough stack of proof, that's when then you can go navigate the world with confidence.

That's amazing. So I really want to double click on the kind of game based learning approach that you guys have because this for me was I took your course both as someone who wanted to improve my public speaking and ability to kind of riff spontaneously, but also the kind of the learning experience that you guys designed was just outrageously fun. Like it was the most enjoyable thing that I'd ever learned. And I'd love to hear how did some of the games, what was the inception for them and how did you choose certain games over others? Did you kind of deconstruct? These are the five, six, seven core things which go towards powerful impromptu speaking. Or here are the kind of five, six barriers that people get in the way. And then you crafted a game around that. Or what was the inception and iteration process behind some of the. Your most popular and favorite games?

Trial and error. It's not the, I think it's not the answer that a lot of people want. People want. You know, I studied XYZ and broke it down retroactively and did this and that. And the reality is we just kept what we became really good at. And I think this is the, this is, this was our secret is both Michael and I through our own transformative journeys had a very keen understanding of what it felt like to be us, what it felt like to have that ability because that was Michael's superpower. He was really. His superpower was impromptu speaking. And that's why I chose him. As my coach, because when I saw him give an impromptu speech where I actually saw someone ask him a question he'd never heard, and then saw him give a two minute speech, and I genuinely could not believe that it was possible for a human being to do what he did. I was asking the person next to me, like, do you promise me this is not prepared? I couldn't believe it. So it was really his. And he had found, you know, he likes freestyle rapping, he'd been exploring improv. So there's a lot of. As I was saying in the beginning of the podcast, everything that I was, was serving me in this. And it was similar for Michael. And I think both of our past, our whole life was serving us in this direction. And what would happen was we would look at somebody and we would see how they were and we would crave something else. We would crave them to tune into something. And what we were really in tune with was that craving. So somebody would be so crisp in their ability to explain something, but they'd be so monotonous. And it was, it was weird. And we were like, man, I just, I just feel like I want more right now. Like, ah, give me energy. And in my previous training, people would have said, look, you, you look frustrated. Show it to me. Like, make a face that makes you look frustrated. And I hated that. I know, and I know. And I, I. That hasn't. That is completely decorrelated from becoming free, which is all that I care about. Free in your, in your expression. So what we did was I just stood in front of the person and said, okay, like, give me more energy. And they wouldn't give me more energy. And I said, okay, I'm gonna put my hand out. And when my hand goes up, you have. Your energy has to go up with my hand. And if I bring it down, you have to go down, okay, and say okay. And then they start speaking and I bring my hand up and maybe it goes up a little bit more. And then I go higher, higher, higher, and then lower, lower, lower. And I just, we just kept playing with that and it started working really well. And then people would be amazed. We would be amazed. And they started suddenly sounding natural, even though I was making them go to these super highs and super lows. And to them it sounded crazy to me. I just finally felt like I had a free, normal, expressed human speaking to me. And that's the short of how it worked. We had a very clear image of where we wanted to bring a person. We became really, really good within Minutes at first, it took us a long time. And then it could become compressed of, okay, I see how you are, I see how you express yourself, I see how you move in your body, I see how you speak. This is what you're capable of. And then it just becomes a game of like, let me go this way. Oh, that didn't work as well as I thought it would. Let me go this way. Whoa, that worked really well. Let me go more that direction. Okay, we're at the end of that one now. Let's go this way. And it's just a game of like following this until I get as close as possible to this potential that I have identified. And as we were doing that, we tried everything under the sun we could think of. And over time we just started noticing the things that kept working. And so we just kept doing the things that were working. And after a while we realized we were. Holy shit. I think we have a, I think we created a board game or something because we'd go, we'd like round through these four, five, six, seven different tools and games over and over and over. And then we built a card game from it and then now it's turned into like online games and the whole training. But that was the, that's the inception point and I think that's where, that's what made it very special.

That's awesome. And this is, this is kind of exactly what I really wanted to speak to you about, which is I remember after taking the training I created like the one of the Trojan horse memes where like at the gate of the whatever the Roman city they were invading, it was like public speaking training. But then inside the Trojan horse is this deep self development, authentic expression piece, which to me is I think what you're actually training and what you were just describing there with kind of going up. And I see that as you as someone deeply experienced in authentic expression, could almost see the way in which they were kinked or the block that was in the way, or the way in which, to use my terminology, there was a lack of emotional fluidity. And you were able to point at that and give them an activity to chip away at whatever that block is. And I think just one that's so fascinating. And also it makes sense that a compelling, engaging, charismatic public speaker is someone that is free. And I think of someone like maybe not anymore actually, but like Mark Zuckerberg is someone who like you see him give a speech maybe four or five years ago and he was like a friggin reptile robot, right? Just like this. So stiff and still and forced and something in you cringes when you see that. As opposed to really adept, let's say like freestyle rappers, where there's just, there's this flow and there is this freedom. And to me, that, that is almost like one of the most motivating pieces to really practice this is because it is about freedom. It's about realizing the ways in which we have this conditioning from our parents or society or whatever the stories are, which actually inhibit some part of our expression. And that leads to a feeling of constrictional tension, which, yeah, is a way of not being free. I mean, that was a bit of a word salad for me. But could you speak to that, like, in your experience and how you've refined the art of noticing and then, you know, in the same way that Joe Hudson does with his, with his kind of hot seat coaching of like, there's the way that you're stuck, here's the precise thing and maybe even mirroring it. And then like, and here's a key, here's a way out that you can kind of free yourself.

I think what we have in common with Joe Hudson is our only true interest is in the root. So rather than focusing on like, for, for us, the, the old way of public speaking is, oh, if somebody has filler words, let's count the filler words, let's bring awareness to the filler words and let's, you know, reinforce, like, find a way to get rid of those. Or if somebody. It's all band aid solutions. So we have that in common. And the other thing we have in common is once we have our finger on the pulse, on the root, we force the person in front of us to do something about it, but we don't bring the solution. I can't. And this is, I think is the key in this whole ultra speaking journey is I can't fix it for you. I can help. I can help by creating the system and the environment in which you're going to thrive. I can help by keeping you on the road because we all want to dodge the hard part. It's very natural, right. If it's a little icky, I'm going to go to the right, to the left, up around it, anything but through. So I'm going to help you go through. But the reality is all I can do is set it all up for you and then you have to explore it. So let's. This is blocked. And I may put words on it and I sometimes I may not put Words on really depends the environment. Sometimes you don't even need to say it. You just have them go again and you say, try a little bit more of this. And as a coach, when you see it, you want to say it. Sometimes all you need is, now try with this. And they do it. And you say, what was different? And their mind's exploding because internally it came from a very different place. How did I get attuned to that is a very difficult question for me to answer. I think I genuinely believe this is something that I've developed all along my life. I think part of it was I was thrust into a very hostile environment as a kid. When I moved from the US to France when I was 10 years old, I was a very normal kid. Not with the cool kids or the weird kids. I was just in the middle. I was a very normal kid living a very easy life in many ways. And suddenly I went from that to being thrust in France in a huge, intense, super conservative private school with an American accent, a wholly different culture. And suddenly people made fun of me. And suddenly people were seeing me as if I were a super weird person when I knew I wasn't. I'm like, hey, I know I'm not supposed to be in the cool group. I've never been.

You guys have action.

Why?

This is how. This is how you're meant to speak.

I'm like, no, I'm normal. Why can't you see? It was the weird thing. And it took some years to get through that for them to recognize me. I was convinced they eventually would recognize me. I'm very grateful and lucky that that was my own experience. But what it. What it did is it allowed me to see. So I would look. I was just genuinely curious why. And I'm looking and I'm taught I'm seeing these people interact with me as if, like I had a mask on or as if I was in a. In a. Wearing somebody else's suit. And I'm thinking, what are they seeing? Where is this coming from? And I think that was the beginning of me developing some kind of a sixth sense, some kind of a deep attunement to what is creating the behavior, what is creating the words? Because it's not the words. Because I knew the words were wrong. So there has to be something underneath that this was coming from. And that's what the game is in coaching, ultra speaking. And so I think that helped a lot. And then we trained in pure coaching. At first, when I finished the world Championships, Michael was getting into life Coaching and was studying life coaching, and he got me into that. And so I got really into that. And the whole principle behind the. The method that we were learning was that it's the client that has the answer. And it's all about being completely present and in tune and listening to what you're feeling and recognizing the truth in that so that you can reflect it back. And we used. That's what we used in speaking. Whereas a lot of people who go to communication training, the coaches come from a very different place. They were, you know, executives, and they did a lot of presentations and say, okay, this is what a great presentation looks like. I'm going to break that down and teach you that. We came from life coaching and our life experience and my experience in the world championship, and we said, hey, we can teach you that other part too. That's the easy part. But let me focus on this thing and let me feel what I'm feeling. So it was very much a game of feeling. And I think the secret sauce for us is that it was two of us. And I think there is no way in the world I could have done that alone. What happened was we would coach as a duo, and so I would sometimes be in the background watching and analyzing and thinking like, whoa, Michael's taking him in this direction. That's really interesting. I wonder where this coming. Where this is coming from. Sometimes it'd be, I wonder where this is coming from. Sometimes it'd be, whoa. Of course. Yes, absolutely. I can't believe I didn't see that. Remember to recognize this pattern. And sometimes I would disagree vehemently with what was happening. And I'm like, no, no, no, this is the opposite of what we should be doing. And then I would jump in and take over. And then we'd go back and forth like that. And after every session, we'd spent 10 to two hours, 10 minutes to two hours or days debriefing and thinking about, like, I love when you did that, or what were you seeing when you did this? And that's what really, really honed it, is that I. I consistently had not only a sparring partner to help me see what I was doing wrong, but also to explain what they were seeing. And so I could be in their shoes, they could be in my shoes. And in doing so, the ultra speaking is truly the. The connection point between Michael and I. He's like the yin to my yang. And so there's. There's something there that. That created this. This attunement.

Yeah, I love that. And the other thing that kind of came to mind is that at least my experience was that both you and Michael and the other coaches you've trained have a way in which the way that you show up puts other people at ease. And it makes me think of this idea of co regulation and how in say a therapeutic context, the therapist will literally lend nervous system capacity to their clients so that they can kind of be with more intense sensations. And I'm imagining that especially if there's two of you, there's like twice as much kind of capacity that is being given to whoever you're coaching so that if they were just on their own, maybe it would be too overwhelming for them to be with the anxiety or the sensations. But because you're both there and kind of you're giving conscious and unconscious signals that like, this is okay, you're safe, no one's going to die, no one's going to explode. That, that also entrains that like you were saying earlier, like the new circuitry in the brain, in the nervous system, that actually this is safe. And that when there's a sense of like this is safe, then there's more kind of self expression that can come through 100%.

And I don't know how I know I was not consciously thinking of the word co regulation because I learned that from you last year, but we were very consciously doing that. The. And it took us, it took us a lot of time to be able to do it quickly. It would, there were sessions at first where we would spend more than an hour, sometimes two hours, just sitting down and speaking with the person, just having a conversation, asking them about their life, asking them what created the anxiety that they're trying to overcome. And just almost like life coaching, but just like deep questions. And underneath that, the goal really was putting them at ease, helping them feel comfortable in this, in this safe container. And I think that's also why we made it into games, like little games and topics that didn't matter because you need to build up that confidence. And yeah, I think both of us were very. We also, you know, through the world championships this. I spent seven months in Toastmasters. Michael had spent two years of seeing people with a lot of anxiety around speaking, you know, every day. And so you, you kind of learn as well, like, what's the container that. That's the most, that feels the most safe, which is. We're not looking for total, we're looking for safety, but we're also looking for I need to push you, so I need you to feel Safe, but at the edge of your comfort zone. So there's a.

The sweet sort of flow, I guess. Like, that's literally where flow is safety, but also kind of on. On the edge. Like on the edge of your capacity.

Yeah, I think so. That's where I want the person to be. But for the. The facilitator, what we embody and what we teach our coaches, there is a. There. You need some. You need to set direction strongly. You need to give instructions and you need to say no. Now you're like, you need to do this. Now I'm going to. You can do this and you're going to do this. Like, you might ask for permission before. Can I push you a little bit more here? Because I think there's more. But then once they say yes, it's like, okay, now I'm going to. I'm pushing you. Here we go. Let's go on for the ride. And I. There's. There's. There's a. It's a. It's a beautiful dance. There is a. There's an. An art to it. And at first it takes. It took us a lot of time to compress it. To be able to be just in the same way as all of the practice I was saying, but to be able to have confidence that, okay, I can jump into this direction with certainty because I know I've done it enough times that, yeah, this is very likely to pay off.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I think there's a real gift in that as well that a lot of people are actually craving of, like receiving, loving, pointed, but like direct feedback in all areas of life. But, you know, particularly in this. And it kind of goes against the kind of, I guess, like passive receptivity that a lot of these relationships can kind of digress into. And that's beautiful in some contexts, but I think particularly for this, having permission and asking for permission, like, hey, can I give you really direct feedback on this thing because I love you and I want you to be better. I think that's a really powerful gift. So I have, you know, a bunch of other curiosities. Could we switch into a few rapid fire questions and then, you know, maybe we'll do a part two at some point because in some ways I feel like we're just getting started.

So I'd love to. This is an awesome conversation. Yeah.

Great. So what is one experiment that listeners might try after listening to this conversation that could improve their impromptu public speaking capacity?

Raise your hand before you know the answer. So does anybody have A thought on this. Who has a question, hand up immediately before you know, and then just trust that something's going to come up.

I love that. And then that, that makes me want to ask as a follow up, who is the butler?

Well, the butler, my friend, the butler. So speaking is a subconscious process, right? What we're doing, it's a game of access. We're tapping into all of our consciousness and our being to try and get the idea right. Just like creativity, we want to channel the genius. In my experience of speaking, of being up on that stage without knowing what to say over and over and over and just hoping that something will be there for me, my image in my mind is that I have a butler. And we all have a butler, our personal butler, who is within our subconscious. And if we are willing to listen, willing to slow down and let the dust settle while as we speak, the butler will show up. And the butler always had. The butler, has never failed me, always has the perfect idea, the next step, the next insight for you right there, ready for you to pick. It's always there at any given time. It's the coalescence of the universe into this perfect moment of all of your being in your experience. And all you have to do to access the butler is stop speaking. And then you suddenly go inside and the butler's there and you have the idea. When you get really good at it, you can even slow down and the butler will appear. And you're able to pick out those ideas from the butler even without, like, completely stopping speaking. But if you're able to slow down and relax yourself completely, like, genuinely forget what you're thinking about and focus on just relaxing your body. It's like you were shaking the snow globe and the snow settles. You're going to see what's behind the snow. And that's the butler with your next best idea.

I fucking love that so much. It's like, it's one of my favorite ideas that I've come across in recent years. As you were saying that I almost like, I want to get like a. I don't know, like a 3D printed snow globe with a butler inside and just like, put it on my desk, like when I'm having podcast conversations. Like, see the butler. Oh, yeah, right. It's okay. I can pause. I can wait for the thing to arise. Dude, you should send your students 3D printed. 3D print.

We're thinking about what to send our students right now. Sending a 3D printed snow globe. Oh, I love it.

You can find someone to make that, that'd be so good.

I'm gonna look around.

Well, that was beautiful. Okay, question number three, or maybe number four. What, if anything, have your kids taught you about public speaking or authentic self expression?

I think two things. One is kids are phenomenal at the speak before you think part of speaking. And this is genuinely. We have a game called speak before you think that this was the foundation of what we were talking earlier on. And it takes a lot of work for some people to take off the filters and the mask that we've set ourselves, that we've created as we went through all these little traumas across our life and that as a protector. And I'm going to be a certain person in a certain environment because that's what I feel people want from me. It's very different and very vulnerable to say, no, I'm just going to speak and I'm going to trust that what comes out is the right thing. When I play with kids and when we hear about ultra speaking students who play with their kids, everybody's sharing, man, are they good at this part? So that, that's a really interesting one. It showed me how or it reinforced the idea that this is something that we create this. We create this problem for ourselves. And it's like, you know, just like rust building up. If you're not actively doing something about it as you go through your teenage years and your young adult life, you're just building all of this rust and all of these kinks that are going to take work to get away. But the other piece is also. There definitely is a big nature versus nurture part. Nature plays a big role. When I look at my daughter and I look at my son, Max experiences speaking in public, he has tons of nerves and all of that, but it's exciting. He loves it. He likes talking about it. He's looking forward to the next thing. He. Yeah, he's already. He's already on the path. And Margot has much, much, much more nerves. Much more. When I, when she was this broke my heart watching this. I think she was three years old or four years old, and she said something like she was. She met somebody at the park and we were with Max that they'd seen the other day, and they played with. And this person said, hey, Margo, you know, hey, Max. And Max came and they was talking to him and they said, hey, Margo, how are you doing? You want to play with us? And Margot was like kind of frozen. And she looked at me and she said. I forget exactly how she said it, but she said something like, dad, why don't I know how to speak anymore? Or why. Why don't I know how to be anymore? And, you know, and I'm like, man, she's so young and she's already feeling this feeling of, I just don't know what natural means to myself. Which is the whole philosophy, the whole purpose of ultra speaking is like, let me allow you. Let me give you the road, a journey that's going to get you back to feeling natural in those moments where you lose your naturalness. But for whatever reason, growing up, the experiences she had already, at three or four years old, she already is more introverted and had this experience. So, yeah, we're not. We're not dealt the same cards for sure. That doesn't mean that she won't be an extraordinary, natural, authentic, beautiful speaker as she grows up. Because there are many ways. It's just a skill like anything else, but it's definitely a more. It's more intense emotionally for her, and it will be to go through that.

Yeah, beautiful. So the last question this kind of ties in really nicely is what is your greatest aspiration for the work that you and the team are doing at Ultraspeaking?

There's a part of me that has always wanted the methods that we've discovered or uncovered to become ubiquitous, to be dissociated from a company. When we were. When we were. When it was just Michael and I, I was. Every day I was telling him, we need to get this out of our brain. We've uncovered something so powerful, so beautiful, that if everybody knew what we knew, if everybody could experience this man, the world would be so much. The individual experience of every person on earth would be so much better because we experienced that. And so how do we get this out of our brain? And step one was when we got the speak before you think game. We have a card game that's amazing. We can give it away. But it wasn't enough. But then we learned, oh, we can teach coaches, we can teach people how to teach the games. And that kind of gave us enough of a foundation, having the games and the tools that we felt confident. Yeah, I can teach people how to. With this framework, with this foundation, to teach it. But what I want is, my aspiration is that this just becomes normal. Just like it's normal to do X, Y or Z. Of course you're. When you're going through school or when you. Of course you learn to speak before impromptu. Of course it's part of all the curriculums. Of course you Don't. When you give a speech, you don't write out every word and learn it by heart because that's not a great way to, to speak. I believe that I, Michael and I uncovered something that is true, that is part of nature that has always been. And it just turns out that the best way to share that with the world right now is through capitalism. It's through a business that is self sustaining because as we help people, we get money that we can reinvest into the company that makes us, that allows us to keep self sustaining this, this thing and growing it. But eventually I would love for this to go back into the world in a completely decentralized way. We're already very hands off in some ways with a lot of our coaches. Once we trust them, we don't tell them how to coach anymore. We help them grow. But if they want to bring their own twists to it, I'm totally with it. So my dream is that one day this is taught in every school, or one day it's so easy and so cheap to be able to practice Ultra Speaking with other people that in some ways we've made ourselves obsolete because there are no more 35 year olds, new managers or execs who are freaking out because they've all done this as kids and the problem is solved. That's my delirious, joyful image of the future that I hold in my mind.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, man, this has been such a pleasure. Really, really enjoyed this. For curious listeners and I imagine there are many. Where would be the best place on the interwebs for them to learn more about Ultra Speaking? Maybe to follow you, get in touch, learn about the kind of upcoming courses and stuff that you guys are doing. What's the best place to go?

I think the number one place to go. We just finished putting together the Ultra speaking playbook. It's a free email course where we hit on a lot of the fundamentals of Ultra speaking and it's focused on helping you get better at pitches, presentations, confidence. And that's@ultraspeaking.com curious special link for you. And yeah, you can find me on Twitter ontebello. Yes. M O N T E D E L L O and we're doubling down on our YouTube. We want to produce a lot more content and really dig deep into that. So that's also a place where I suspect that there's going to be a lot more exciting content to come out. And that's just ultra speaking on YouTube.

Amazing. Beautiful. Well, I like to close with this line from the Parik Vilkay he says, try to love the questions themselves and live them now, and perhaps one day you will then gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer. And so, with that in mind, what is the question that is most alive in your consciousness? And what question might you leave our listeners with?

What matters? My experience in life is going from clarity to confusion. Consistently, every time I think I have something figured out in life, a few years later, a few months later, a few weeks later, a decade later, I'm confused again. And I think, wait, what really matters here? What's the purpose of life? What should I be doing? What should we all be doing? Do the things that I've been pursuing actually matter? What matters is big on my mind right now. And then for your listeners, what would your life look like if you felt completely free and fully expressed? If you felt like yourself everywhere you went, what would your life feel like then?

Beautiful. Well Tristan, we will wrap the show with that. Thank you so much.

My pleasure, Johnny. Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation. It would mean a lot to me if you could take a few seconds to open up your podcast app and give Curious Humans a shiny five star rating. This not only helps more people to find it, but it will help me to get more awesome guests in the future. And if you're not already subscribed, then the Q and A Curious Humans newsletter is where I share monthly morsels of interestingness and podcast updates. You can sign up for that at Jonny Life. That's J O N Y Life. Thanks for listening.

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