Build Confidence Through Volume

Ultimize. Let's talk about confidence because this is where almost everyone gets it backwards. People think confidence comes first. They think, oh well, once I feel confident, then I'll start speaking more, doing more motivational gigs. Never happens. Confidence comes from volume, from doing something often enough that it stops feeling unusual. Let me give you a very real-life scenario. You record your first video, you watch it, and your immediate reaction is, that doesn't look like me, that doesn't sound like me. So what do you do? Most people just stop. Now compare that to someone who records 20 videos, especially if it's 20 videos in one day. They'll still notice things they want to improve, but the reaction's very different. They're not shocked anymore. They're not adjusting. That's the shift from discomfort to familiarity, to confidence. Let me show you the contrast. There's the low-volume speaker. Every time they speak, it feels like a big event. Maybe it's once every 6 months, maybe it's only once a month, but it's high pressure, high stakes. They overthink everything. Then there's the high-volume speaker. Speaking is just something they do, almost like breathing, almost like eating. They've done it so many times. That one more time doesn't feel significant or scary, and that changes everything. Here's another practical example. You record one video this week, then nothing for 7 days, then another one. Every time you come back, it feels new again. You have to kind of get motivated yourself to do it. Now compare that to this: you record one video a day for 10 days. By day 5, Something shifts. You stop thinking about the camera as much. You start focusing on what you're actually saying. That's confidence being built, not through thinking, through repetition. Here's another pattern I see. People record a video, then they spend an hour analyzing it, trying to fix every little thing, trying to perfect it. That's not efficient because your improvement doesn't come from overanalyzing any one performance. It comes from doing The next one, just a tiny little bit, 1% better. Let me show you the difference. There's the bad approach: one video, endless analysis, and with that, paralysis. The better approach: many videos, small adjustments. That's how progress compounds. Now here's the key point: confidence is not the absence of mistakes. It's comfort continuing even when things aren't perfect. Perfect. You say something slightly off, you keep going. You lose your place for a second, eh, you recover. That only comes from volume. Here's the idea to install: the more I speak, the more natural it becomes. Not overnight, but steadily. And once speaking feels natural, confidence is no longer something you're chasing. It's something you've built. So if you want confidence, Stop waiting for it. Create it through repetition, through volume, because every time you speak, you're making the next time a little bit easier. And that's how confidence is actually built. One other really important distinction: if you want to be a great platform speaker, a great motivational speaker, part of what makes it scary is you're up there, there's no time for edits, there's no redos, everyone's looking at you because it's live. They can see you. You hear me recommend speak on video, speak on video daily, but I recommend that ideally you go live and then that live video is captured and you can share it everywhere with social media. But even if you don't go live, record it once as if it were live, fully intending to never do any editing. If you want to put a little intro or an outro or a graphic, fine. But I want you to get into the habit of knowing that when you speak, you're putting it out there in the final form. Because if you get into the habit of doing 29 takes for every paragraph, then when you are on a stage doing motivational speaking in front of live audiences and they're in the room, you're going to feel really nervous thinking, uh-oh, I can't stop and do 29 takes. I can't edit out an um, or err, or that second one, I forgot what to say. So I'm highly recommending, again, you either go live daily on video, do live streaming, or record videos in one take and put it out there. Now, if it's a complete disaster or your dog runs in and messes up everything and you spill coffee all over yourself, okay, fine. Edit that out or delete that. But otherwise, get into the habit of speaking, recording it live, no editing, because that's the closest to what you'll be experiencing in real life. And it builds a muscle in you to be able to think and talk at the same time. That's what all great motivational speakers can do.