If you could ask me any question about speaking, what would you ask?

Hello, welcome to day— I think we're on day 13 of 30 days of a daily video. And day 13, same day as all days as far as you can always comment below. Lets me know you're here, lets me know you're watching, and I appreciate that. I love to connect with people and have conversations. So if I can see that you're leaving comments right there, then I'm able to respond to those comments. I'm able to highlight some of those comments, which Which is great. So when I go like there on my screen, it shows up right there next to me, like right there. So if you ever see my eyes go, that means somebody's posting and my eyes are catching that squirrel, right? So that's what that means. Uh, and that's not me actually being distracted. There's no one else in the room. There's nothing else. It means somebody's comments come up and I'm reading that comment because I want to be able to respond and answer. So those comments could simply be, hey, hello, hi, whatever you want to say, you can put in the comments. Then I'm able to see them right away, which is greatly, greatly appreciated. Today's theme was ask any question you have about speaking— public speaking, professional speaking, any question. It could be worst-case scenarios, nightmares, how do you overcome certain situations, how do you overcome certain nerves— whatever you would want me to answer, I will be happy to answer. All you've got to do is leave a comment below and And then I will answer that question. So this is a little risky because it means somebody would need to leave a comment below for this conversation to take place. So, uh, I'm just keeping my eye out to see if anybody leaves a comment. Uh, anything could be best case scenario, worst case scenario from stage, most challenging, most fun. Uh, you can ask any of those questions. While you're thinking of a question to ask me, in regards to speaking or speaking around the world, whatever it is, I am going to answer a question that I commonly get, and that is, Mike, do speakers ever get nervous about speaking? Like, are you just wired differently as a speaker than other people and that you don't get nervous around speaking? And the answer is yeah, we get nervous around speaking. It's just how much we get nervous probably depends greatly on the talk we're giving, who's in the audience. Let me give you a little secret. A speaker's most nerve-wracking audience, for many speakers, I'm not saying all, but for many, many speakers, is— what would you guess? What do you guess is a speaker's most nerve-wracking audience? You can put in the comments, put in the comments right below what you believe would be most speakers' most nerve-wracking audience. Like, who would be in that audience, or what would that audience demographic be? Who do you think that is? So I'll wait to see if somebody puts a comment on— if you guess on what audience do you think is somebody's— most speakers' most difficult nerve-wracking-wise. Not difficult as in knowledge, content, how they're going to give their talk, what they're going to say. Not that way. What it does to the nerves, their energies, the butterflies in the stomach. Who do you think that audience is that speakers get most nervous about? Now, while I'm asking that question, you may notice something different today than in some videos. I'm not squinting to read the comments. I'm also not wearing glasses because it's my first day of contacts. I figured out how to finally put them in yesterday. Tried it a year ago, bombed. I mean, awful. I could not figure it out. Left Walmart, took forever to do it with the professional, came home, could never figure it out again. This time around, had a little more patience, got them in last night, got them in today, so I can read comments. So Amy, I don't need my glasses on to see that you just said the correct answer, which is people you know. That is correct. It is the most nerve-wracking audience for most speakers. Amy could also be aware of that because it's also the most nerve-wracking for many performers. Entertainers, actors, singers, because we often fear being judged most by those we care the most about. Their opinions can have the heaviest weight on our shoulders. And so we want to wow them. And so the people, you know, so for speakers, it can be family. It could be fellow speakers. Now that doesn't mean we don't love having fellow speakers in the audience. It just means it could raise up the butterflies. As far as that goes. And that's what can happen. And by the way, Amy also said, or maybe teens. Now I will tell you, for me, I love speaking to preteens, teens. Love, love, love speaking to those audiences. I find they love having a conversation they're not normally allowed to have. And so the fact that somebody's creating a safe space for them to talk about something they're not normally allowed to talk about openly in a safe space, They're very appreciative. They're very engaging. They're so honest. They're so forthright. That's one of the things I love about our work, that we get to have conversations with teens that many aren't having with them. And I wish they were, don't get me wrong. I really, really wish they were because that would be wonderful for everybody, especially preteens and teens. So I don't find them to be, to be difficult at all. My teen said that— oh, I love that. I love, Amy, that your teen said that teens could be the most difficult audience. And here's why I think your teen said that, because I'm going to guess that if your teen has ever had a general assembly at school go wrong, it can feel like teenagers are the roughest audience in the world. And I will tell you, amongst the speaking industry, people will tell you that if— just because you can be an amazing speaker in front of a corporate audience, adults, does not mean you could survive a high school audience, and they'll tell you that that is true. Uh, I will tell you why for me that's not true. It's just my approach to speaking is based on question and answer, and the audience's— the audience's response drives where I go. So it's not about me coming in and just dumping all this content information or storytelling with stories that don't relate to teens, relate to adults, but maybe they relate to teens but not adults. I'm not based on that. I'm based on asking questions, having a conversation, and then driving it where it goes. So for that reason, teens are not, are not intimidating, are not uncomfortable for me. I don't have to— this is a big mistake people make— I don't have to be a 50-year-old trying to act like an 18-year-old. I don't have to be that because I'm just asking questions and driving the conversation. So a teen will often say teens are the most difficult because they've seen situations go horribly wrong in school assemblies. And usually that's because the assembly speaker expected the teens to love their program, adore and agree with everything they said. And suddenly when they don't, they don't know how to handle what they consider to be an uncomfortable, or they call it a rough crowd. I don't call that a rough crowd. I call that a bored crowd. And that's my job as a speaker to make sure that never happens. That's not on the audience's job to like you, agree with you, or approve with you. It's on you, the speaker's job, to find a way to engage, to break through the barriers, to break through the walls, bring them down so that everybody can be engaged in that conversation. So thank you, Amy, because those were great answers. It took us in lots of different directions there. So that is awesome. So I really appreciate you asking that question. So I'll see any other questions anybody has about public speaking. So that was our first one. What do you think is the most difficult audiences as far as butterflies go? Not as far as content goes, creating the butterflies. And the right answer was people we know usually that can create the most butterflies. So absolutely true. So I was going to take one other question. Maybe Amy has one, maybe somebody else has one. Any question around speaking? And maybe it's, uh, do we get nervous is where this started. So let me answer that question. I'll go there. Do speakers get nervous? And I said yes, we do. I said not necessarily about content or information, but usually who's in the audience will make us nervous. Here's what I believe. I believe that if you're watching right now and you're passionate about a topic, you're actually not afraid to be a public speaker. What happens is people mistakenly think that when I was in speech class in high school and I was given a topic and I had to go talk about that topic and it was an assignment, I got very nervous and I wasn't comfortable talking in front of people. Therefore, they now have been traumatized at some level of being humiliated, embarrassed, or uncomfortable in front of a crowd, and they think public speaking means nervousness, uncomfortableness in front of a crowd, awkwardness. What they don't realize is they public speak every day. Every day. The— some of the time, if you're a teacher, you public speak every day. If you're in a job and you talk to others on the job, you public speak every day. The difference was in the homework assignment, often we were focused on being judged. We were focused on being graded. We were focused at a time in our lives where we were very susceptible to public opinion. And that can be throughout our lives, but at a time where that's really coming forward with what our peers were going to think, all of that was dominating the conversation. What was probably not dominating the conversation is Look, I'm just—I'm sharing stuff I know. And if you take it that way, public speaking is not scary. It's not scary. I can prove this. I'll pull somebody up on stage who says, "I'm not good at public speaking." I say, "Could you just come up for a second?" And I'll say, "What's something you love?" If they say sports, I'll say, "Who's your favorite team?" And they'll name the team. I say, "Great. Who do you like on the team?" And they'll spout off who they love on the team. They have no problem having these conversations. Publicly in front of a crowd. Why? Because they know what they know, and they're comfortable when they know what they know talking about what they know what they know. That's why it's so important to talk about what you know. I'll tell you how speakers fail. They look around and they go, ooh, what's a topic I should speak on that I can make money off of, that people will hire me for? It's not what they know. So now they're They are not knowledgeable. They're getting up in front of a room, more likely to fail because you don't know the content and you're less confident in your abilities because you don't know the content, or you're faking it. Really unhealthy. All right, so when you talk about what you know, you're in a comfort zone. And if you realize that you're just talking, you know, to somebody in the front row, you're in a comfort zone. Talk about what you know. Find your comfort zone, right? I don't get hired to talk on all topics. No way. When people hire me, it's for a few specific, absolutely areas of expertise they want. That's what they hire me for. I don't get hired for, for instance, I'm not getting hired for higher increased production. I'm not getting hired for sales. That's not what people hire me for. They're hiring me to transform culture, talk about a culture of consent, a culture of respect. They're hiring me to reduce sexual violence. They're hiring me to create mutually amazing relationships. Those are my areas, right? That's what they're bringing me in for. And the other one is to teach others how to do what I do, like how to do the speaking skills, how to implement speaking skills, what strategies, all that. Haley, I see your question here, so I want to make sure I answer it. How do you keep people engaged when you continue to share the same message? Awesome question. So thank you for that, Haley. Uh, and Haley's out there doing the work. Haley works for our— is our Active member in the U.S. military, working to reduce sexual violence. So, Haley, you know how much I appreciate you. Thank you for all you do, and I want to make sure I answer your question. How do you keep people engaged when you continue to share the same message? The same message is different than the same words. The same message is different than the same stories. The same message is different than the same lessons. So, from this one message. For instance, the message of ask first, respect the answer—a big message in what I do. Right? Ask first, respect the answer. I've been saying that for for twenty thirty years now. Right? How I tell it, how I can share the stories around it, how I can share the lessons that relate to it can be different every day depending on who I'm talking to. I might talk to parents about ask first, respect the answer, and I could speak for thirty minutes. And never say the same words I said to the students earlier that day in that school. I could then go over to the local military installation, have a conversation, ask, and it's possible in 30 minutes I won't say any of the words I said to either of those 2 groups because I'm sharing different stories, I'm sharing different examples, they're in different scenarios that I'm applying it to their world. Their worlds are different than the last 2 worlds I just referenced. So what you want to be able to do is you want in your head think What are all the different examples that I can share, that I can give to others that can help them with this message? Here's another great technique, Haley, and we'll be teaching this in our course. So Haley's in the course that starts in 2 weeks from today, by the way, 2020 Transformational Training. Yep. I'm plugging it because we are so excited about this. It's going to be a 12-module course over 17 weeks. On becoming more effective as a trainer, more powerful as a presenter. And we're going to be diving into these conversations, right? And so, how to engage, you want to know what to do, right? So, you're going to need more techniques, more strategies, all of which we're going to teach in that course. So, Haley, you're going to get the details and what I just referred to, how to do that, right? The specific strategies of how to do that, we're going to teach in the 2020 Transformational Training Course. And if you're watching right now going, well, how do I find out about the 2020 Transformational Course? Go to cfronlinetraining.com/2020. CFR, I'm the Center for Respect. cfronlinetraining.com/2020, or go to centerforrespect.com right there. Whoops, right there. centerforrespect.com, and you'll see the online training being advertised there too. So awesome. I see we've got someone, some, I wanna make sure I pronounce correctly, Thiago. I hope I said that right. Thiago, hello to you too. So thank you, thank you for joining me. Some of you might be noticing out there that Thiago appears to have a YouTube comment. That's correct, because when I do a live feed, I live feed it to both Facebook and YouTube at the same time. Now I have to admit, Thiago has just sent me a message that I wish I knew other languages. I don't, and it's in a different language, so I apologize, Thiago. I'm not able to read that comment. I'll, I'll try to translate it after this live feed. So that I can absolutely be able to respond. I want to do that for you. So thank you, Thiago. I appreciate that. And this is what we want. We want to create an atmosphere where you can ask questions, you can engage. Haley did that. Amy did that. This is what the live feeds are for. I want to thank you for joining me on today's live feed, and I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's. Take care. Have a great one. Bye.