MBA1200 Q&A Wednesday: How do I improve my public speaking skills?

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If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar mba.net Today's question is from Ricardo and Ricardo asks, how do I improve my public speaking skills? Ricardo writes in and says, hi Omar, I love the way you talk and communicate your ideas or opinions. I'm a beginner so I'm looking for ways to improve my oral communication skills. What techniques do you use? What courses or books do you recommend? How do you prepare to talk in public? What's your secret sauce? Great job and thanks in advance Ricardo. Well thanks Ricardo for writing in and submitting your question for Q and A Wednesday. I'll be answering it in today's episode. I want to begin by saying that my communication skills, my public speaking skills, these are things I've been working on for a very long time. I started to seriously work on my communication skills at the age of 22, that's about 17 years ago. And I started to work on these skills because I was a teacher and I was really, really frightened to speak in public. And I had to speak in public five times a day, every day of the week. I had to get over it. I had to learn how to communicate my ideas clearly, concisely, in a way that people could comprehend. And then when I transitioned from teaching into entrepreneurship, I had to learn a whole different skill set when it comes to public speaking. Speaking on stage for a conference or an event, or for a video or for a webinar is totally different than a classroom environment. The same goes with communicating on a show like this, a podcast. So in today's episode, I'm going to share with you the how I built the skills I have, how I continue to try to work on these skills. This is a work in progress. I'm nowhere near perfect. I'm going to share with you some of the resources I highly recommend and where to invest to get better. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I firmly believe that as an entrepreneur, the one skill you really need to work on is your communication skills. So this is a great question from Ricardo. Why? Because as an entrepreneur, you have ideas that you want to convey. Your product, your service. If you can't communicate those ideas, why it's beneficial for other people, why they should buy it, how it's going to improve their life or their business, then the idea is worthless. If people can't understand you, then it's really not going to make an effect on them. It's like me reading a sales page in Japanese. It's a different language. I don't understand what it says, so therefore it's not going to communicate anything to me. Now that's an extreme example, but you get the point. The same thing goes when it comes to speaking in public or on video or on stage, or whatever it is, even a one on one conversation at a meetup. If you can't clearly and concisely answer a simple question like what do you do? Tell me about your business, then you're really selling yourself short. You're selling your business short. When you start building your business, you're going to start building a team. You're going to start managing a team, leading a team. If you can't communicate the vision of the company, why you're doing what you're doing, then, then it's gonna be really hard to have people that Are dedicated, motivated and enthusiastic about working for you. So communication is so important. So how do we get better at it? Well, most people say, hey, you need to practice. You need to try to get on stages and speak in public and get out there and really just put in the time and the reps. I don't totally disagree with this, but I do believe that you have to have some sort of direction. You can't just go out there and practice. Back in the day when I used to play basketball, my basketball coach used to say, practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. If you practice the wrong things, you're just going to build bad habits. Let me give you a perfect example. When I first started to work on my public speaking skills, I had a bad habit. I used to not make eye contact with the people in the audience. I used to kind of look above their heads or kind of look down. I used to do that because it used to make me nervous when I made eye contact or when I looked at them because that means they're looking at me. And I felt like, oh man, I hope I don't screw up. So if I had that habit and every time I got on stage, I continued to not make eye contact with the crowd, it doesn't matter how many times I get on stage, I'm still doing the wrong thing. So I needed help, I needed a way to overcome that so I can learn how to break that habit and practice perfect instead of just practice wrong things. So ideally, the best thing you can do is invest in a coach, invest in a public speaking class. My first public speaking class was actually just something I found on meetup.com it was really inexpensive. It was something like $50 or something for a two part or a four hour workshop. And in that workshop I actually was able to solve that problem with not making eye contact. The trainer at that workshop wasn't world famous, didn't win any kind of awards, or wasn't delivering, you know, keynote speeches for $50,000 a pop. But he had experience with public speaking and gave me enough advice, enough instruction to take me to that next level, to take me past where I was. You don't need the best of the best to train you. Sometimes you just need someone who's a little bit ahead of you. And if you're wondering, the technique that he gave me was instead of trying to look at a sea of people and make eye contact with a hundred people as you're speaking and going through your speech, go around the room and choose one person to look at. It's a lot easier to make eye contact with just one person. Briefly when you make one point in your speech. That's a natural type of conversation, one on one. You know, you talk to people one on one all the time, at work, at school, at the office, whatever. So it kind of put the pressure down and I didn't have to look at everybody. I could just look at one person at a time. And by the end of my speech, pretty much the whole room felt like I was speaking to them directly. Great piece of advice. Got me over the hump and I was practicing the right things when I got on stage. When I got another opportunity to speak in public, you have to kind of get out of your shell sometimes and sign up for something like a workshop like that. I like the idea of just signing up for something that's low cost. It's not really a big commitment. It's not like a six month program and it's local. It's easy for you to just to get your feet wet. Second, when it comes to books or resources, I'm a huge Michael Port fan. Michael Port is my mentor when it comes to public speaking. He's also a great friend. I love him and Amy, his partner in life, partner in business. They do a great job at their business called Heroic Public Speaking. They transform speakers into world renowned speakers. People that feel confident, that do amazing things on stage. If you want a glimpse at what Michael Poor and Amy do at Herald Public Speaking, they have a great book, Michael has a great book called Seal the Show. You could buy it on Amazon. It's about, you know, $10 or $15. And it's a great book on how to be a better communicator in your daily life. Whether it's in an interview, whether it's a one on one conversation, a first date, whatever it is. And it's a book about performance, showing up in this world, showing up in life and being your best self. So that's a great book on how to wrap your head around how to get started. It's called Seal the Show. Now if you're looking for a course, I know they sell an online course as well@ heroicpublicspeaking.com you can check it out over there. But most of their work is done at their headquarters in Pennsylvania where they actually do one on one coaching, group coaching that really take people to that level where they're getting paid to speak, where really people are paying thousands of dollars to speak at their event. But if you're looking for something to start With I would check out the book Steal the Show as well as their course on heropublicspeaking.com I also find that stand up comedians are a great resource to learn how to deliver some presence on stage, how to be comfortable in your own skin, how to storytell. Comedians are great at telling stories, and telling stories is a part of giving a good speech. Of course they're great with humor and punchlines, and you want to incorporate that in your talk. But most importantly, they're really good at emphasizing the fact that you gotta craft your own style, you gotta be your own speaker. Now, when it comes to recorded content, videos, podcasts, things like this, don't be fooled. What I'm delivering to you right now is not just off the top of my head, okay? I have outlined every episode on the $100 NBA show. Much of what I deliver has some sort of loose script. And that's the advantage of having recorded content. You can deliver a great piece of content that's concise, that's to the point, because I had the chance to prepare it, to write it all out, and to edit it. So one of the best ways to improve your oral skills is to write. Writing forces you to be economical with your language as well as the fact that you get to the point, you cut out all the filler as well as all the ums and ahs. So if you ever listen to a podcast that's, you know, really, really good, well produced, you hear the host, you hear the conversation, you hear the story of the storytelling podcast, and you're like, wow, this is so well done. They're all well spoken, right? Know that most of those are very, very scripted and there's nothing wrong with that. They're doing the listener a favor by making sure that they're economical and they're really delivering a great production. And if you do that enough, if you continue to deliver that, even if you're reading a script, even if you're reading an allen, if you continue to do that over and over, it becomes natural to you. It becomes part of your speech. You're more aware of it. I mean, after doing 1200 episodes, today is episode 1200, I can tell you that this process has improved my daily communication. Another tip I would give you is that if you are going to speak in public, on stage, if you're being interviewed on a podcast or a video show, make sure you listen back. Listen back to that recording, watch that video again, and critique yourself. Where are you filling in the gaps with ums and ahs or Likes and about and actuallys. If it's a video, what is your body language like? How are you expressing yourself? Are you, you know, facing the audience or are you looking at your slides? Critique your performance.

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To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday's question from Ricardo. How do I improve my public speaking and overall communication skills? You have people out there in the world that are better than you at certain things. The shortcut to get better is to learn from them, is to take on what they have already learned the hard way. It's not a shortcut because you still have to do the work, but it's going to speed up the process. It's going to leverage your efforts. It's going to really compound the benefits that you're going to get from your efforts. So grab resources like steal the show. Check out hero public speaking, check out your local meetups, check out your local programs in your area, in your city. Invest in a course. Hey, I've invested in courses that just didn't work out. They weren't the best, but I learned one or two things and it was worth it. And at the very least, it gets you out of your comfort zone and gets you to stand up and speak in front of people. When you're in these courses, critique yourself, review what you actually have done. Every time I speak in public, I record it with my phone or I ask the organizer if I can have a copy of the recording so I can critique myself so I can improve. I've gone a long way, but I have a whole long way to go. And lastly, if you could do something that's consistent, that is a part of your life, part of your schedule, that can improve your communication skills, that is going to help you tremendously. Just like I have a podcast, I am recording lots and lots of episodes every week. This allows me to, you know, really build my communication muscles every single week, every single day in my life. So over time, you know, we've been running this show for four and a half years now, since August of 2014. All those efforts start to combine and start to compound, I should say, and become part of your speaking skillset. Thank you so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. And don't forget, if you have a question you want to ask, email me at Omar at 1000. We've been getting a lot of questions as of late, so don't worry. Just send us an email and we'll get to it. We will publish the answer to your question here on the show on Wednesdays. And if you love the show, leave us an iTunes rating and review. It's the best compliment you can ever do. We read Every single review allows us to know what you love about the show. Your favorite episode is what your favorite takeaway is. It also allows other people to hear what you think of the show so they can hit subscribe too. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I do want to say there is a differentiation between communication in general and public speaking. You can communicate, you know, and feel comfortable one on one on video, on a podcast. But when you get on stage, it may be killer for you. It might be nerve wracking for you. And if you don't enjoy that, that's something that really rips up your guts inside. You don't get any enjoyment out of it, then maybe it's not your thing. It's okay. You can continue to be a great communicator on a one on one scale, on a video scale, on a podcast scale, through written communication. That's totally fine for me. When I started to speak in public, you know, it was difficult. There are parts of it I didn't enjoy. I felt embarrassed, but part of me did enjoy it. It was exciting. I saw the impact I was making on people and I wanted to get better so I can enjoy even more. So know the difference. Okay. Alright, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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