Erin Brady, Miss USA 2013, teaches entrepreneurs how to speak in public. She covers eye contact, breathing, pacing, and visualization, and shares how a nervous student named Luciano went from terrified to confident enough to present at Fashion Week in five to seven weeks.
Chapters
Okay, eye contact. So I know it's hard, obviously, in a room full of people, but there can be maybe 4 people, maybe it could be the hot guy in the front row, or somebody that you're comfortable with staring at, but it kind of connects you with the person, right? They get excited, they're like, oh my God, they're talking to me, you know? I'm feeling it right here in the front row. It's really, it goes a long way. It really does. I'm like, I'm excited, let's go have coffee tomorrow afternoon, sounds good. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you're asking these people to fork up a lot of money. So it's so important that you have, even if it's, I mean, it's a little nerve-wracking when you get that contact. You're like, oh my God, he's staring at me. I'm like starting to sweat a little bit. But it does go a long way because it really kind of connects you with somebody. I know for us where we were standing, you're up there and you have a couple rows of people in the front, and I kind of just scanned it. I kind of made sure that I was looking at everybody, even if it was for a few seconds, because that really lets people know that you want to Talk to them personally. Because it's difficult in a room with a lot of people, but the second you make that connection, even if it's for 2 seconds or 3 minutes like we just had, it does go a long way. So I have to say, eye contact is huge. Okay, and breathe. I often forget to do this. You can, you know, I talk fast, and especially when you're a little bit nervous. But even before, because everybody is standing over here before you have to go on, Did you guys learn breathing techniques with Gina? Yeah? I know we did. Yeah. Yeah. So that's huge, is because you're going to be so nervous, and there's so much adrenaline, and so much excitement, but taking those like 3 to 4 seconds before you're about to go out and literally just breathing, it goes so far. And being articulate, kind of talking slow, it really does help. It kind of lets you focus a little bit better. You don't get so cloudy with what you're trying to say. Breathing is extremely important from the beginning to the end. Also, you want to visualize yourself giving the presentation. You want to visualize yourself nailing the presentation. You're visualizing the audience standing up and giving you a standing ovation. That's what you want to visualize. By the end of you rehearsing and rehearsing, you want to be so comfortable that you can actually see yourself finishing your speech, finishing your pitch, getting ready to walk off the stage, and that's gonna give you that extra confidence that you need, is picturing yourself doing an amazing job, nailing it. I mean, what's great is you have, what, 70 friends here that are your biggest fans? I know we had a much smaller class, but everybody was so excited for us. We felt so proud to watch everybody get up there, deliver their presentation, and it was a roar of people in the back that were just like, yes! And that was like the coolest experience, because for what it's worth, we could have bombed it. already had like 30 people in the back that were going to cheer for us no matter whether we fell on our face or whether we nailed it. And that was great. So visualizing yourself like on stage nailing your presentation, it goes a long way. I have to share a quick story. We had, um, the first— did you guys have to pitch your ideas at the beginning very briefly? Yeah? No? Yeah. Okay. So in our class, we had this guy named Luciano, and he had this awesome technology where he wanted to create a shirt that if you sweat or if you it runs off, kind of like a duck. So the first day, he was from Brazil, and he comes up on stage, and he was so nervous to pitch his idea that he actually had to— he talked to us like this. He said, hi, I'm Luciano. Sorry, guys. And we felt so bad. We felt so bad for him because we were like, oh, man, this kid's got the coolest technology, but he can't even turn around and have a conversation with us. By the end of the 7 weeks, he rolled up on stage like, Hey everybody, I'm Luciano. And he got up there, he spilled wine on his shirt, he made a shirt for Tim, he called Tim up, he presented the shirt to Tim. And we felt so proud because literally he got invited to walk in the Fashion Week for Silicon Valley. It was the coolest thing. And that's kind of the whole purpose of this program, right, is to develop these relationships with people and to watch how much you grow over the course of 5 weeks or 7 weeks. And you're really proud of everybody and to see how far they've come and the confidence that they get by the end of the 7 weeks. It's pretty cool. You should probably buy one of his shirts too. He'd be happy. Thank you.
