Communicate Your Message To The World

Hello and welcome. I'd like to start off with a quick win. Something that gives you a little value for your time. Since your time is valuable and I appreciate your attention, I want you to think of the single most common question somebody asks you about your business, your job, your service, what it is you do. Or if you're a student and you are going on job interviews, what's the number one thing they ask about you? Because you're probably used to saying it. You probably have something that you know, you say and it makes sense and it resonates. Here's the tip for you. Hold up your cell phone and record yourself answering this common question. I'm not asking you to become a YouTube star and do 50 million videos a day, but certainly if there's one question you get from clients, customers, prospects on a regular basis, have a nice, clear, focused, one minute answer. Put that on your LinkedIn page, your YouTube page, your Facebook page, other social media, put it on your website. You may even want to put it in the signature of your email. And this way you don't have to keep repeating yourself again and again and again and it will help you start to establish your reputation as an expert in your area. You probably already are if you've been working in a particular area for a number of years and answering the same question. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. This is a live stream where we're going to be answering your questions about any aspect of personal development. Many of you are my students in personal development courses, public speaking courses. So be talking about some public speaking tips, some personal development tips, and wanting to hear from you. So this is interactive. I'll be taking your questions, answering them in detail and I'll also be going through some items on my own agenda. Now the topic today, if you got advanced notice of that, is what is your message to clients, customers, community, industry and the world. I hit on that briefly with the opening tip. But here's what I found in working with people just like you all over the world. And that is if you're in an ideal situation, maybe your own office, you've been introduced to someone, it's a good warm prospect, there's no hurry, there's no rush, you're sitting down, you've got a nice cup of coffee or tea. When all those situations are just right, then you're really good at explaining what you do. But if you're in a business networking event, you feel cramped and rushed. You don't come across as well. If you're asked to deliver a so called formal pitch to a prospective company and you feel nervous, it's not as good. If you're asked to appear at some sort of cattle call where a lot of people are asked to showcase their experiences, you're not as good. So the whole challenge is to figure out how can you come across your very best anytime you're speaking anywhere, and then do that every single time. And the one thing I'd ask you to do is not just as I did the beginning answer a simple question, the most common question, but I want you to tell people what it is you do to help them. Someone comes to my website, they're going to see very quickly exactly how I help them become more effective speakers or media communicators. They'll click on whatever they want. They're not just going to read text, they're going to see me talking to them in detail. You don't have to be a media trainer to do that. All you have to do is be someone who can talk. Let's not forget, for years people thought that somehow you had to have special training to use a telephone or you had to have a license to be a radio broadcaster. Well, now anyone can just have a radio show with their own podcast. There's no need for regulation. You, you just have to do it. So I want you to think about how exactly you can communicate what it is you do in an effective way. And then you don't have to repeat yourself ten times a day. You can use that basic message to share with the world, your customers, your prospects, people in the industry and let them know. Just record it once on video. Here's the secret. Record it, look at it. If you don't like it, hit delete, do it again, do it another time, and another time. By the way, if you're joining us, please do a thumbs up or let me know where you're listening from today. JM is here. Jm, so good to see you joining us from Afghanistan today. Hope you're keeping safe in that part of the world and others as you join us. Just say hello, let us know where you're from and also if you have any particular questions. And by the way, if you're watching this on a replay, please keep in mind if you post a question here today or whenever you're watching this. If I don't answer it today, chances are I will answer it in the very next broadcast, which I hope to be doing very frequently. Vijay writes in from Bangalore, India. Glad you could join us. Bangalore, great city. I had the privilege of being there in at the emphasis campus about 10 years ago doing a training and I always loved going to India. Bangalore was especially a hotbed of technology and new, new development. I understand it's only gotten more intense since I was there. So Vidya, thanks for joining me. By the way, if you do have any questions about any aspect of personal development or communication, let me know and I'm here for you. I do want to hop in with some news that does relate to personal we're not talking political news or Brexit or impeachment or anything like that on this show, but I do want to talk about some news items that I think directly relate to personal development and communication. This story just breaking on Bloomberg today and it's about the obesity epidemic actually harming productivity around the world. So this is a story from the oecd, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It's a big international organization. The study comes from Paris and they have a lot of countries as members around the world. What they found is that half the people in 34 out of 36 countries they surveyed are now overweight and half of those people are suffering from obesity. Here's directly from the story and the release said childhood and morbid obesity have gone from quote, a rare event to a common occurrence. More morbid obesity is now a common occurrence not just in the United States. This is one area where we have been cutting edge. But obesity is now a massive, massive problem all over the world. According to the OECD, member countries are spending $311 billion per year treating overweight and weight related conditions. Now here's the thing that jumped out at me. According to this international organization, the percentage of overweight people is now reducing GDP gross domestic product by an average of 3.3% across the member states. This is a big, big problem. Now the figure is highest in the United States Whoppy we're number one, 14%. That's the percentage of what our country spends on health care. So it's an economic burden because of all the additional health related charges when it comes to obesity. Here's the communications challenge and I don't have the answer for this, but part of this live forum is a way for us to hash out ideas together and learn together. But there is a profound communications challenge in the world today in talking about the problems of obesity and being overweight. Because let's face it, in the past a lot of people were cruel, were vicious, were mean, were taunting, bullying people who were even the slightest bit overweight. But now we do have a situation where I think scientists, economists, serious people looking at macro societal problems, feel constrained because they feel that if they talk about the issue of obesity, it's somehow instantly going to be called fat shaming and it's instantly bullying. And I do believe there is such a thing as bullying. But I also think that there is such a thing as obesity that is causing massive, massive health. Health problems around the world is killing millions of people a year. There are certainly some studies that show it is, if not the number one killer in the world, certainly something that contributes to massive killing and premature deaths around the world. And we just don't know how to talk about it yet. We don't know effective ways of communicating. Certainly if you had a close loved one, a family member who drank five bottles of wine a day and was constantly drunk and came back from a doctor and said, it looks like you're going to have cirrhosis of the liver and die at age 30, you'd want to really help that person, perhaps stage an intervention. And yet we live in a world now where it's quite common for people to be 50, 100, sometimes 200 pounds overweight, possibly leading to a similar death at age 30. And there's no comfortable, acceptable way to talk about that problem. So that's a communications challenge I don't have the answer for yet, but I hope we can explore that together from time to time. I do want to welcome Malik. Thank you for joining me. And several others. Joanne has joined. If you have any suggestions on how to deal with this topic, it's in, say, thorny, thorny topic. I don't have the answer related to that. There's another story in the news today that caught my attention. This or this is a recent story in the New York Times and it's a study. I've linked to it in the show notes. By the way, everything I'm talking about today, I'm trying to be helpful. If you want additional information, it is linked below in the side in the show notes here. In this New York Times story, it says that kids should drink milk and water, not fruit juice, not soft drinks. We unfortunately live in an era where so many people erroneously believe that drinking apple juice, giving your child apple juice, fruit juice, is so much healthier than a Coke or a Pepsi. Turns out that's just not true. They both have massive, massive, massive amounts of sugar. They both elevate blood sugar and contribute to diabetes, obesity, all other sorts of problems. Now, this is a problem, an issue I face in my own life, because my daughter is six years old. We often go to parties, other events with kids. Everyone else is having juice. It seems a bit harsh to limit her. So our own answer to that is if it's a party, a special occasion, yes, she can have juice. But when it comes to home on a day to day basis, it is water. How do you deal with this? Because there's again a fundamental community. I'm always looking at things through the lens of communication as well as personal development. There is a communications problem because if you're the Pepsi company, you have billions of dollars to advertise Pepsi. If you're the local water company, you don't have billions of dollars to market drinking your water. And it's a huge problem. There's a communications imbalance. All day long we're bombarded with messages on our cell phone. Drink Pepsi, drink. Drink Coke, drink mountain dew, drink Dr. Pepper. Maybe not as many ads for Dr. Pepper, but we're constantly bombarded. Starbucks this, Latte frappuccino, mochacino with 10,000 calories. There's huge ad budgets designed to communicate with us through massive repetition to fill our bodies with lots of sugar and excess calories. But the bottom line is it's destroying our health and it's destroying children's health. And we're seeing massive, massive epidemics of childhood, not just obesity, but being overweight. And it's a huge communication problem. So if you see that in your I've not been to Pakistan, been to India, not been to Pakistan. Are you seeing a high rate of obesity among adults and children? I would love to hear from you, so feel free to share. I see we've been joined by a few more. I hadn't said hello to you yet, do a thumbs up or do any other emoji you want. By the way, special present for those of you joining me live. The first five people who post a question, I'm going to send you a copy of my book Secret to Foolproof Presentations, the PDF. So the first five people today who post a question, not just a comment or hello, and I do appreciate you saying hello, but the first five who post an actual question, I will send you a PDF version of my book Secret to Foolproof Presentations. By the way, the floor is open for questions and comments today. This is engaging two ways. This isn't just me lecturing to you now. I love to talk, but it's more fun if I can have a conversation. And that's what I want to do. A couple of tech notes. I'm not wearing a microphone today. So you may hear a little tinniness. I'm hoping to work all those details out. I've been working feverishly behind the scenes trying to upgrade my equipment, microphone. This should be the last day you see me coming to you with a webcam. I'll instead have a much, much higher broadcast quality camera for future live streams here on YouTube. Excuse me, here on Facebook and as well as YouTube, today I am just live on Facebook. But pretty soon, within the next week, I plan on going live on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and about 30 other platforms. So if there's a particular platform you would like to see me broadcasting on live, please let me know. Post it in the chat right here. Would love to hear from you if you have any suggestions on places. One of the ones I'm hearing a lot about these days is TikTok. It's a Chinese based company. It traditionally is about kids in music, but now everyone is there. Gary Vaynerchuk, the social media guru, is very high on it, so I'm going to be trying it out. Part of my belief when it comes to communication and sharing your message to the world is you have to take risks sometimes you can try a new platform, maybe it doesn't work out. I'm on about 60 platforms around the world sharing my online courses and there are some online instructors who say no, no, just say no to all of them. You only make money on one or two. The thing is, you never know what the next big hit will be. So I prefer to hedge my bets and put my courses on almost every single platform and also communicate with you on other platforms. Facebook has been around and I've been using it for 10 years. Perhaps you have too. But before Facebook there was MySpace and before that there was, that was the globe. That's really dating myself back to the 1990s. So there's always going to be a new technology to help people communicate. That is going to change constantly. The willingness to put yourself out there, to experiment, to take a risk, even if no one shows or no one listens to you, that I think is something you have control over. You don't have control over whether MySpace goes out of business, but you do have control over deciding you are going to communicate and put positive messages out to the world. I think in today's world, the ability to create, the ability to share your creations is really the most important skill when it comes to your livelihood, your career and in some ways even your happiness. So that's why on these live streams we're doing, I want to put a Spotlight on people, I think who are doing a particularly good job. Someone who grabbed my eye, this was profiled just recently in the New York Times was a six year old South Korean. This is a child named Boreham Borum, lives in a trendier part of Seoul. Borum got in the news because she just bought her family an $8 million apartment. That's right, you heard it. A six year old child bought her family an $8 million apartment. How did she do that, you might ask? Well, she did it by creating. She did it with what I'm doing right now. Only she's a lot funnier and cuter and more entertaining. She does YouTube videos where she demonstrates toys, does funny little skits. Now she obviously hasn't been doing it for a decade, she's only six years old. But here's what's fascinating and I've put a link in the show notes for you so you can check her out. You can read the New York Times story and you can also look at her YouTube channel. But the billions of views she has, when I see that I'm in part motivated and inspired and also in part, I feel like a lazy, pathetic failure. Here's this six year old getting billions of views. And I've been making videos on YouTube since a few months after it started, more than a month, way more than 15 years ago I guess. And I've been making videos for more than 30 years now. I've learned a thing or two and I may be a step or two ahead of a lot of people. But what's fascinating and exciting about this world is here we have a six year old child and she's making tens of millions of dollars a year sharing her creations. Her family's helping her and working with her too. But here's someone doesn't speak English, not in a particularly large country. Although South Korea's economy is a strong economy. But only six. Obviously not a college or high school education, not speaking the dominant language of the world in business, not speaking these in English. And yet she's wildly successful. If she can do it, what's your excuse? What's my excuse? Now, I realize you might not want to be an entertainer. I'm not an entertainer. I'm not trying to crack jokes here. But we all have something we care about. We all have something we've devoted our lives to. Even people who sit at home and just watch Jerry Springer have devoted their lives to watching Jerry Springer. Can't imagine why anyone would want to. But everybody has something that they are focusing their life on. So why not share that? And you know who couldn't use an extra $8 million for an apartment here and there if this 6 year old girl could do it. Really, why not the rest of us? Now let me see. I've got to get used to looking at you, but also checking the chat. And I see Vida is with us. Milam is with us. Jm Vidya, if you have any questions. Vijay, you've posted a link. I'm gonna have to click on that later because I don't want to leave this page and accidentally disconnect. JM says, what type of question can we ask? Really? JM for you, you can ask any question. Preferably it's something to do with personal development issues or communications issues. Because those are the two topics I've devoted my life to. You could certainly ask me who I think is going to win the World cup in soccer. But since I know absolutely nothing about soccer and I don't even know what year it's played, I probably wouldn't be much help. Although jm since you mentioned that I was once on a live political talk show, I was guest hosting a show in the New York area and all of a sudden we went to live calls and someone did in fact start asking me about how I thought the New York Knicks, the professional basketball team, was doing it. Let's just say it was an awkward 10 minutes. It will not go down in broadcast history, that's for sure. Yes. What is our excuse? It really got me. So jm JM is one of my top students on several of my online courses. And JM to his credit, speaking out, creating videos on a regular basis, posting them for other people to look at. And JM could say like a lot of people do, oh, I don't have a standard American accent or maybe English isn't my first language or maybe I don't have a perfect backdrop. But jm, I commend you. You don't let any of that stop you. You just start, you speak, you put it out there, you get feedback from me and from others and you're getting better and better and better. And that really is the secret. That's my secret. I didn't start off a great communicator. I was awful. I was shy, nervous. As a speaker, as a kid. I was the worst kid in my entire Cub Scout troop when it came to selling door to door peanut brittle. But I learned the skill. This is a learned skill. This is a skill absolutely anyone can learn. So again, I will take your questions. Anyone has Questions, Post the question and JM I think you already have this book, but I'm going to go ahead and send you another one as well. Anyone else has questions? The first five people who post questions, I'll give you the PDF version of my Secret to Foolproof Presentations book. I wanted to take a moment in our time together to sort of reach off my bookshelf and share with you the sorts of things I read and learn from. The first thing I want to look at is a classic. This is a so it's not a new book but it's a classic. A relatively modern classic in the pantheon of self help. And I'm talking about Tim Ferriss the Four Hour Work Week. This is something that has been a huge, huge international bestseller. I want to read just a small segment for you because I think it had such an impact on people. This is just in his first chapter. This book is not about finding your dream job. I will take it as a given that for most people, somewhere between 6 and 7 billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time. The vast majority of people will never find a job that could be an unending source of fulfillment. So that is not the goal here. To free time and automate income is. Now this was, this was radical 10 years ago. Now it's become a part of conventional wisdom. But this was completely different from most self help books when it came out because so many self help books, personal development books are all about find your passion, find what makes you jump out of bed, figure out what it is you would do for free and then do it. That is the traditional advice. And I do think there is a lot of good advice in in that if you With a number of caveats. But Tim Ferriss was the first one to really say no, you don't have to find your big purpose in life. You can focus instead on living your life the way you want to in your career. Let's figure out the simplest, easiest way of doing this to fund the lifestyle you want. Now here's what I want to share with you that's interesting to me about this book. When this book came out 10 years ago I hated it and some of you are big Tim Ferriss fans. Hold on, I'm gonna It's a surprise ending here, but I hated this book. I thought it was essentially career porn because when I looked at it it just seemed like it was saying step one create an Internet company that kicks off 50,000 a year. Step two move to South America and dance full time and just Work in a hammock on a beach for an hour a week. And I'm like, wait, wait a minute. How do you create an Internet company that kicks off $50,000 a year? Because I'd been trying that for the previous 10 years and had done nothing but lose money. So I thought the book was kind of pie in the sky, kind of selling a fake fantasy that simply people couldn't relate to. Because Tim Ferriss I do think is incredibly smart, very savvy, hard working, he works a lot more than four hours a day. That's more of a metaphor. But most people just are not born as smart and as hard working and have an Ivy League degree like he does. So I didn't think he was practical. Well, I went back and reread this book in the last few months and I realized I am kind of living this life because 10 years ago I had an office and staff and overhead and I had to be working all the time. And it was only a few months ago. Earlier this year I took a month off in China, sightseeing every day with my family. And I was able to work not four hours a week, but about an hour a day and still make a very nice income through my online courses to fund my vacation and life and everything else. And it occurred to me I kind of drew in to what he's talking about. He was the first one to really talk about you got to live the life you want to live and be smart about how you use your time to make money and don't just do the job that everyone else does. So you can have the car that everyone else has, the apartment everyone else has. Question how you spend money? Maybe you need a lot less money than you think. Now he of course is fabulously wealthy too, as best selling authors often are who sell tens of millions of books. Plus he's an investor at Uber and many other successful startups, so he's well taken care of. But this book has gone from one where I frankly did not recommend it to people to now it's one that I do recommend. So this is a classic. I say about 10 years old. I've provided a link in the show notes and I'm not selling anything to you from affiliates today. I'm not an affiliate of Amazon, I probably shouldn't be, but if you want an easy way of getting there, you can. So that's from my bookshelf of a classic. I do try to read a new personal development book or some book every single day. I don't always read the Biggest books. Sometimes I read Kindle short books, but I try to stay up on this so I can give you the very best information by reading a new book every day. So this is a brand new book. It's called they ask, you answer. And this is by Marcus Sherry. He was a guy who sold fiberglass pools and he gives a fascinating story about how he completely took his business from almost going bankrupt to being wildly successful and the most successful company in his town in that space, to then advising other companies all over the world on how they can market themselves. And for him, it all comes down to listen to every single question your customer has and then answer. Answer it on your website, answer it other places answered in video. So many people, and I'm guilty of this, occasionally don't answer questions of their customers. He says their customers ask you who your competitors are. You should tell them. Your customers want to go on your website, find out your prices. You should tell them. In business so often we keep everything so close to our vest, we think, oh, if anyone finds out, were ruined. The biggest problem most of us have is that people can't find us. They don't know anything about us. It's not that they know too much information, it's that they know too little. So this book is just out published by Wiley, one of the more reputable business publishers. They published books of mine before too. And it really drives home this concept of how we live in a modern era. You can't just create ads and buy success anymore in market share. It's just not how the world is working anymore. It's far more effective to be highly responsive one at a time to prospects and customers. That's the way you build strong relationships. Which is frankly what I'm doing here with you today too. Because I've had advertising before, websites, YouTube channels, advertising, trade publications, speeches. But what I have found that really works best is just engaging directly with people, answering their questions, whether it's live like this or on demand. JM writes in with a comment As I know you travel a lot. What is the best preparation of traveling, especially in speaking in dress code and getting most out of it. I always try to ask people, what is the dress code of the audience? What is the audience going to be wearing? Because I have found as a speaker generally, and I've changed my theory on this slightly, but my standard rule of thumb was I want to dress a little bit above my audience and that can mean different things at different places. So if I'm speaking to a high tech audience and everyone is fabulously wealthy and some of the people are billionaires. No one in the audience is going to have a suit and tie on. So I cannot have a suit and tie on. If it's an insurance organization, a financial organization that people are going to be in suits and ties. So I will have tailored suit and tie on. The main thing, when it comes to your dress, you don't want to offend anybody, but you also don't want to confuse anyone. They need to know who you are and not be thinking, well, he's this, but he's dressed like that or she's this or that. If you're an artist, if you're an avant garde modern artist, you don't want to be in a conservative business suit. Now, since my career has gone more towards personal development arena in the last year, I have frankly changed how I dress. I typically always wore suit and tight tailored shirt, suit, French cuffs because I was going after the high end business image. Well, now that I'm in personal development space, I do happen to believe that perhaps the number one personal development issue facing the globe right now get personal, not environmental or societal, is this problem of obesity. So the reason I'm wearing a tight fitting sports shirt is because I want to show to you I can practice what I preach. I have lost about 40 pounds in the last year or so and I want to show you I can't just talk about how to be healthier and how to have healthy daily habits. I can live them too, because right now I'm at the exact weight I want to be. You don't care how much I weigh. The point is I'm wearing this because you can't hide if you're really out of shape in a simple sports shirt, you're wearing a suit and tie. It conceals a great deal. JM thanks for that question. Penfat writes in what advice can you give for someone lacking confidence in the workplace? I'm afraid of speaking out in meetings. Well, in fact, you are not alone. This is the number one fear most people have. If you want to get more confident about speaking up in the workplace, here's what I'd recommend. You know you have a meeting at 10am At 9am, excuse yourself, go out of the parking lot, go in your car, go to the bathroom and then pull out your cell phone and ask a question. Record it. Record it on video preferably, but at least record it on audio. Practice asking a question, listen to it, get comfortable with it. Do it two or three times. You can ask a question, listen to it and do that three or four times in under four minutes, so it doesn't take long. This gets you used to talking. It helps the words form the grooves in your mouth. Your tongue doesn't get tangled. It's just easier to say anything the third or fourth time than it is the first time. So when you get into the meeting, if it's still appropriate to ask that question, you'll have a lot more confidence. You will have practice, you will have rehearsed. Now maybe you've got to tweak the question a little. That's okay. But the sheer fact that you have practiced speaking and you've heard your voice is going to make everything less scary. So I do hope you try that. When it comes to confidence with speaking, there is one very, very easy solution, and that is practice any speech you do on video just using your cell phone and look at keep doing. Here's the hard part everyone forgets no one listens to. You have to keep practicing on video until you love what you see. When you do that, it fills you with confidence. It's real confidence. It's not confidence based on visualizing a standing ovation or drinking some nice green tea. This tastes good, but that's not what's going to give me confidence. The reason I'm confident here, speaking to you today is because there's virtually nothing I've said today that I haven't said before on video and seen it. So I know exactly how I'm coming across. I know what my hands are doing, I know what my hair looks like. And I know this is the best I could come across. So that's why I have confidence and you can have confidence in too. But then that stay tuned because in the next probably three weeks, I am going to have a new online course out that is just about confidence. Now, all of my online courses deal with confidence at some level. How to speak, how to have more confidence. When you're giving a speech, a presentation, speaking to the media, going through life, they all deal with confidence. But this one is specifically going to be about confidence. So thanks so much for that. Alexander has joined us. Alex, thanks for stopping by. If you have any questions, would love to hear from you. And meanwhile, there are a couple of other things I wanted to share with you today that I did plan a little bit more of a technology. As I mentioned to you, I don't have a microphone on today, so I do apologize for the audio sounding tinny. I also have a little background music on. I'm trying to set the stage that this isn't just a news show because I'm not going to be talking about political events and current events unless it's a story that relates to personal development. So that's why I have on a little background meditation sounding music. If you find it distracting, let me know and I'll change it. If you like it, let me know. I'll keep it. If you can't hear it, then please post a comment and let me know. Then I'll adjust the volume accordingly. Part of being a good communicator, I believe, is constantly experimenting. And that's what I'm doing here with you as well, by the way. I'm inviting you here into my living room today. I thought it'd be nice to get out of the studio. Many of you had seen videos where it's just a pure white backdrop and it's, it's technically, it's better in the studio. It is better control of lighting, cameras better. But I thought it might be just a little more inviting being here in my home and you can see it and we can make this just, you know, a slightly more intimate event and get together. But let me know if you think it even matters, if you prefer this. If I get a better camera and mic, which is what I think I'll be doing, I'll probably just use this room, the great room in our house, rather than being cooped up in the little studio. So the technology is going to improve and get better. But as you can see behind me, there's a window behind me that's getting direct sunlight. I have the blinds down, but that does mess up the lighting. So I'm going to move this a little closer so I can block that a little and that, that should help just slightly. So I wanted to give you. The next segment is a public speaking tip of the day. Now, I've already given you several, but I do want to give you a specific segment every single time we get together. So you know, certain things are coming. A lot of it will be spontaneous. A lot of it will be answering questions. But I do want to give you at least one specific solid public speaking tip every time we get together. Here's the tip. Let people ask questions. Anytime you're giving a presentation, don't say, hold all questions till the end. Hold questions till the end of my presentation. That makes you sound arrogant and it makes it seem like you think this is your presentation. Anytime you're giving a speech or a presentation, it's never your presentation, it's the audience's presentation. Don't lose sight of that. Of course, there are exceptions. If you are giving a speech because you're inaugurated as the new president of a country. Yeah. You can't take questions. Then if you're at a financial conference and you're given a strict 10 minute time limit and you're trying to raise tens of millions of dollars, yes, you can't stop in the middle of it or your clock will run out. But for most of us, in business situations, political situations, civic organizations speaking, you're far better off letting someone interrupt the speech and ask their question and you answer it. Because when you're answering someone's question, then you know you have something interesting to them. Which is what I'm going to try to practice right now. Finn says, by the way, I'll be waiting. Thanks for the advice, tj. You're welcome. JM says. Will you have a course about self esteem? Yes. And let me get you a little advice from you, JM and some feedback. Certainly there's the self esteem that people get because they know how to project themselves and know how to come across their very best. That's, that's really where I have the greatest amount of expertise. There's also the part of self esteem that's just about how you feel about yourself. I mean, if you grew up in a family where your parents told you you were worthless from a young age, there may be some huge psychological scars there that someone might even need professional treatment. I do have to stress I am not certified counselor. I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist. I'm an expert on communication. And as that relates to personal development, it does solve some problems. It doesn't with others. What I have found in my own life is your self esteem goes up when you demonstrate competence. And there are very, very specific things you can do to demonstrate competence. I feel confident speaking to you today in part because I have done at this point probably 10,000 videos and I have spoken so often that has affected my self esteem. It's given me a sense of confidence. The biggest problem so many people have is they're afraid to jump in and start anything when they aren't completely confident it's going well. Now I could have. Everybody has doubts. I had doubts about this today. I'm waiting for a part from Amazon to allow me to connect to my high quality camera and my mic. But I said, you know what, I already told you that I was going to speak today live. So I just did it with a laptop and no mic. But I could have second guessed myself and doubted and held back. And then the next day I could have won another part. The next day I could say, well the sun isn't right. So that's the big problem for so many people with low self esteem is it prevents them from ever starting and ever testing. I believe you build self esteem by testing things, figuring out what works so you can do more of it, what doesn't work so you can figure out how to fix it, change it or stop doing it. That is how I find is at a fundamental level the best way to really work on self esteem and help it get better and better. JM points out audio and video. Okay, great. And it should be a lot better the next time we are together. But jm, I do appreciate your comments on that. So today's public speaking tip is brought to you by a sponsor. Now, I don't have Coca Cola as a sponsor and frankly, if I ever do get Coca Cola as a sponsor and you hear me promoting them, I I want you to call me out on it. I want you to reference what I said today about this study that Coke and soft drinks are especially harmful for kids and is dramatically increasing the rate of obesity and overweight problems for kids and adults. So I really hope that I never even have to face that challenge. Of course, if you're on YouTube or somewhere, ads can automatically go in. I can't control that. But as far as me doing a testimonial begging you to drink Coke, I really hope you call me on that because that would, I think, be the opposite of everything I really stand for when it comes to trying to make people healthy and live better, stronger lives. So our sponsor today is actually Selfie Speak Boot Camp. The Selfie Speak Boot Camp that is my own online training system. It's the highest end online course. I have to dramatically help people in their public speaking skills. So there's a link into it in the notes section of the course. Today it's just selfiespeak.com please check that out. We'll be having some upcoming webinars there in the next month too. But if you want to go ahead and start learning and really get feedback and attention from me, then that is the best place to go. But I think all of my courses are fine and I appreciate those of you giving me the thumbs up and some of the students from that are already in there. So other things I wanted to put a spotlight on today. I do have a new course on creativity. My newest course, it's only been live for a couple of Days, it's normally a couple hundred bucks and right now there's a special discount. It's only going to be good for a couple of days. So there's a link right here. You can get the course for under $10. And I believe if you are in other parts of the world, it might even be $5 or less. So if you're at all interested in boosting your creativity, then I would highly recommend you check out that course. And there's a ton of videos in the course that you can look at for free. So if you want to go now, click on it. You're not going to be charged like that. You can go and look at a number of the courses previewed again. It's all there in the link for you, so check that out. I wanted to also be a little more personal in our time together here and share with you some of the things I do in my own personal development. I use a system called selfie speak programming where I tell myself exactly what I want to do, the habits I want to do on a daily basis, and then I hold myself accountable. So I specifically have a note in my memo, the notes memo section of my cell phone. So I'm listening in the morning to programming. It's basically a podcast just for me, telling me how I want to live my life. But then I have to hold myself accountable. So one of the things that I do and it relates to creativity and this is one of things mentioned in the creativity course, but I think it's a good practice for anyone is I have a specific to do item. For two minutes every day, I have to write down as many big bad ideas possible. And this is where you're. Excuse the cliche, but this is where you're trying to think outside the box. So often we're gearing our whole lives or focus of let's be conservative, let's be narrow, let's make an inch improvement. Sometimes it's helpful to just say, what can I do? If I could do anything, what can I do that's crazy? What can I do that might bankrupt me? Write it down. Now I'm only spending at most two minutes a day, but it's a habit. And what I have found is things that seem like crazy ideas two months earlier Now I'm actually doing them on a daily basis and if nothing else, it forces you to kind of think big and then maybe you do a different version. That's 10% of it. I do think it helps make me more creative about what I do on a daily Basis, basis in fact, what we're doing right here is a perfect example. I started thinking about doing live broadcast on a weekly basis. I think, well, maybe I should do a 10 minute show once a week. And then I wrote down as an example of what I thought was a horrible idea, a big bad idea, why don't I just do a daily three hour show? Now I'm not doing a three hour show yet, but I do think I'm going to be doing a lot more than once a week for 10 minutes because this way I can engage with you, create a stronger relationship with a lot of people all over the world. And I appreciate those of you coming in today joining us from Bangalore and from Pakistan and others because I know it's really late there. So I very much appreciate your time. And jm, thanks for the shout out that you love the selfie speak course and we appreciate having you. Christopher, thanks for joining. Christopher Carnes is with us and Jan saying hello to other people. Thanks. That is one of the things I do like about the various communities I have on Facebook for different courses of mine. And this page right here is a lot of times I'm not even needed. I can sort of step back and individuals here start helping each other. They post their videos for critique and others start doing it. Which by the way is a great way of learning to be a better speaker yourself. Simply giving other people advice forces you to think more clearly about your own speaking, your own presentations. It also helps you when you are practicing on video, to look at your own video objectively. One of the big problems that many people have when it comes to their speaking skills, they may start off pretty good, let's say a B plus on an A to F scale or an 8 on a 1 to 10 scale. But they watch themselves speak and then all of a sudden they hate something and they psych the themselves out. That can be a huge, huge problem. So when you are watching other people, quite often it's easier to focus on the positive, to be a little reassuring. And then if there's something in particular people need to change, you can be highly specific and pinpoint it and not just psych yourself out, say, oh, that's awful. The number is I look at thousands of people's speeches all over the world every single month typically, and I often only have to look for about 5, 6 seconds now, often watch the whole video, but often I only have to watch for five or six seconds because I can instantly tell the person is doing a handful of things. Well, they may have good volume. They may have good animation, they may have good inflection, but they're speaking too quickly. If you speak too quickly and you're not pausing, nobody can understand you. Especially if you are speaking in a language that isn't your first language or your audience is listening in a language that isn't their first language. So I do think it's helpful to critique others because then you can get more comfortable critiquing yourself when you're nervous. Quite often you lose all perspective on how quickly or slowly you're speaking. And by far the biggest problem so many people have is that they speak too quickly because they're nervous and their subconscious is saying, I don't know if this is any good. If I speak really quickly, I can get out of here. The problem is the audience. Just see someone who looks nervous and looks scared. That's a problem. And it's harder for the audience to understand you. And if it's a live audience, you're in the room and they're not in the first row. If I don't understand you and think about yourself. When you don't understand someone and you're at some big conference or convention or event and the speaker can't see you, what do you do? What's Plan B? I know what Plan B is. It's let's go to Facebook or let's go to Instagram or let's check the sports scores. Everyone today has a Plan B when it comes to their attention. That's why it's critically important that when you speak, you have something that's interesting to say and you can say it in a way that is compelling. You know that you're coming across your best. We are coming down to the top. We're getting close to the top of the hour, and I don't want to take you all day and all night long. From some of you, Bethan writes in. Thanks, T.J. thank you, Bethan, for joining me. Do you have any questions or comments while you're thinking of your questions? I do have a few questions for some of you and really for all of you. Is there any platform that you think would be a good platform for me to share personal development information? I plan on doing a lot more of these on a regular basis here on Facebook. This will also be put on YouTube. Some of you may be watching this on YouTube on the replay. There are the obvious places like LinkedIn and Twitter, but there are other places like TikTok, you heard me mention. Are there any other websites that you think would be A good place to share information and to have more of a community talking about personal development issues. I would love your suggestions. Also, if you could do me one favor. Right now, while you're watching this, you should be able to see somewhere on your panel a button for sharing this feed. It helps me a lot, helps more people become aware of sort of tingles, the algorithms of Facebook that this is valuable programming. So if you haven't done so already, I would really appreciate it if you could hit like on this broadcast, on this live stream, on this post, and also share it just to your own page. That. That way more people can see it and they can see it on demand. Are you currently interested in podcast confession? I did a podcast every single day for 365 days about three years ago and frankly didn't find an audience for it. I was narrowly focused on public speaking communication issues. Now I'm much more broadly focused on bigger personal development issues. So I'm thinking of doing a show that's primarily video like this, where I can see you, you can see me, but then posting the audio on a podcast and distributing it as a podcast as well. Do you think that's a good idea or do you think that that is diluting things and what's good video isn't good audio? And I don't want to do a podcast. I should just do a podcast. I don't think I want to do one that is guest focused because there's so many great podcasts out there that have guests, and a lot of times you hear the same great guest and they can be wonderful guests, but there are only so many times you need to hear the same person promoting the same book. So I do want a show, and I'm planning on doing a show that is more just a conversation between me and you and your questions and putting a spotlight on top personal development issues of the day, rather than hosting and having different guests on. But I would like to know your opinion. If you do like podcasts, what are your favorite personal development podcasters? Because there are a lot of good ones out there. Part of what I will be doing on this show in the future is putting a daily spotlight on someone I think is delivering an excellent podcast, and that will become a regular feature. I'm also planning on putting a spotlight on what I think is the best tech talk of the day, the best new personal development book of the day, as well as reaching back into the bookshelf of the archives for classics like this. But if you have any suggestions on what you think would make for an interesting show. What would actually make you want to spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes, a half an hour or more a day learning more about personal development, something that's new and fresh. Because look, I love Brendon Burchard and I love Anthony Robert Robbins and I love all of them. But when it comes to wanting new information on a daily basis, especially where you can really interact with people and talk about it, I'm not sure really where to go. So that's one reason why I am starting this show and ideally doing it on a regular basis. Now I'm seeing a bunch of you are putting thumbs up and hearts. I appreciate that. But tell me what specifically you like about that. What do you think is missing in the marketplace? Because there are a lot of personal development books. There's tens of thousands of them. There are a lot of personal development podcasts and even blogs. What do you think is missing and what do you think you would like more analysis of and a spotlight on? And if it doesn't go to think about it, you could always write to me. You can post comments here at any time, even after we're no longer live. You can also frankly just email me tj Walker.com you can reach out to me. I'm pretty accessible and forgive me if I don't get back to every single email or message I do find. By the way, we're on Facebook. A lot of people, if they friended me, I tend to say yes. If I friended you on Facebook and you landed yourself here, I would ask that you please this page, this is my professional business page, my public figure page. And this is where I plan on doing this show and other professional things every so often. And I don't know if this is a good strategy or not, but I'm just being transparent and sharing with you every so often. I sort of just say yes to every single person who wants to be my Facebook friend. And then six months go by and I'm like, I don't know any of these people. I've never met them face to face. I've never had a meal with them. I tend to keep my personal page, just my TJ Walker page, as people I know personally. And I've either had a meal with or had a phone conversation with or met with in the last five years. So if you ever say for some reason you thought you were my friend, you're not, please don't take it personally. I want us to continue to communicate and have a relationship right here on this page or any of my other pages that support the courses. So I don't know how any of you like to differentiate between your personal Facebook page friends and people you know. Purely through your professional efforts. I do appreciate all of you for reaching out to me. Perhaps you saw one of my courses somewhere, you read something about me and you just went to Facebook and typed in my name that may have taken you to my page and you thought you were here. So I understand that completely. But try to like this page would be very much appreciated. Let's see if we have any more comments. JM says Gab free speech app. I'm not familiar with that. And JM if you could send a link to that, I don't know if you're talking about or how I would access that. I take the attitude of I don't have to be the number one star of every platform I'm on. If I can reach even one person, if I can set it up once and not have extra calls foster time. Why not take the attitude of the more the barrier, the more people I can reach and chat with and build relationships with and help helps them. And at some level it does help me so we can all win. JM you're saying the video is great. I don't know if you mean the video is great on Gab free speech or what you're seeing today. Mazha, thanks for joining us. I appreciate your time. Ben, thanks for saying hello. Good to see you. And Bethan writes common pitfalls when addressing larger groups and delivering content reaching to majority audiences. What are all different strategies? But the most common problem, Bethan, is people think, oh, I'm giving a speech to a big crowd today. It's going to be scary. I'm going to be nervous. So you know what, Let me be cautious, Let me be careful. Let me play it safe. So what people do when they think they're playing it safe is they write out their whole speech and okay, today, thank you for inviting me today what I'd like to talk about. And they read. So they think that that is the safest thing to do because they correctly realize when you're in front of a whole bunch of people and you're feeling scared and nervous, your memory doesn't work as well. You'll forget. That is true. But sometimes the solution is worse than the problem. If you are reading note, I've instantly destroyed my eye contact. I've stopped moving my face. I've destroyed all my body language. My voice becomes flat, my voice sounds monotone, the speed becomes consistent, the pauses are the same. I've destroyed everything about how I communicate when reading. So that is far and away the number one problem people have when speaking to a large group related to that is they think, oh, I better have a PowerPoint. That way I don't have to remember everything and they create a PowerPoint. PowerPoint is not the problem. The problem with PowerPoint is that it's an awful, boring data dump of a PowerPoint has lots of numbers and bullet points on it. That's the problem. I like PowerPoint, I use it all the time. But I don't use PowerPoint when I'm live with a group in the same room. I don't use any text or any bullet points because I don't find it effective. The effective way to use PowerPoint is to use one image at a time. And the other big problem most people have is they don't rehearse. If you're giving a speech to a thousand people and you've never given a speech to more than 50 people, you're going to be nervous. So the easy thing to do is practice on video in advance. Practice so many times you're kind of bored with it. Now here's a technique I used. Just the other day I had a speech. It wasn't necessarily to a large group, it was only a couple hundred people, but it was a different type of speech. It was a type of marketing speech I had to do that was outside of my comfort zone. And it was a very structured speech. I wasn't going to be reading it, but it was a different type of speech. So I practiced the whole thing out loud and recorded on video, looked at it, but then I did just an audio version so I could listen to it. I was going to be spending some time going into New York City and out on trains, had a lot of walking time. So I listened to the 40 minute speech probably 10 times in the day before I had to give it. So by the time I gave the speech, guess what? Wasn't nervous at all. I was completely comfortable with it, completely relaxed with it. Now I don't do that for every speech. That was a particularly different style. One for me is why I had to do that. But if you're not routinely giving speeches to large audiences, it's not enough to say act natural because it's natural to be nervous, to be scared when you're in front of a larger group and larger for you may be 10 people. If you've never spoken to more than two people, then speaking to 10 people is all of A sudden outside your comfort zone. So you need to realize that it is normal to be uncomfortable when you're speaking to larger groups. You should anticipate it and plan accordingly. And that's why you've got to practice and practice on video. Bethany I do think that that will solve virtually all of your problems. Ben writes in tj, your gimme course has been so practical. Keep up the great work. Loving it. Especially the storytelling parts. Well, Ben, thanks so much, Ben. I had to do a quick test. What story? If you've heard a bunch of my courses, what story do you remember? If you. Just a couple of words summary of it. One of my big theses in life when it comes to communication is that it's very hard when you're speaking to someone to get them to remember numbers, facts, bullet points, lots of messages. The easiest thing to get people to remember is a story. So if you're trying to tell something and get somebody to remember your idea, you cannot go wrong by packaging it with a story, by telling a story to make them visualize the idea. So if I just tell people I was a nervous, shy kid, that's abstract. They don't remember that. If I say I was the shyest kid in my Cub Scout troupe and I had to go around knocking door to door to sell peanut brittle and I was shy and scared and I sold less peanut brittle than anyone else, that's more memorable. It's not a brilliant story. It's not a funny story, but it's true, it's real. It's nothing I'm ashamed, I'm not proud of. I'm not ashamed of it. It's just who I am. But it only takes another 30 seconds to tell that story. But it makes the point come alive. So, Ben, and if you're still with us, sorry to put you on the spot, but it's really putting myself on the spot. I want to see if there's any particular story that stands out to you in my storytelling class or any other class of mine that you thought was particularly useful and helpful. Because, by the way, this is something I want you to do. Anytime someone gives you a compliment after a speech or presentation, if you're talking to more than 10 people, typically someone will come up to you afterwards and say, oh, good job. That a good speech, good presentation. The normal thing to do is say, oh, thanks a lot. Glad you enjoyed it. Complete wasted opportunity. It's far more effective. You're far better off saying, thank you. Tell me, what do you remember? What stands out? What message is how would you describe what I talked about to a colleague who wasn't here? That's what I always ask people when they come up to me after a speech in person and I'm doing it virtually here today. I ask them, what do they remember? If they say, well, tj, just everything about you was wonderful and fantastic, fantastic, and you're so professional and charismatic and great movement. If that's what they tell me, then I know my speech was a complete, utter failure. If the only thing people can do is tell me about me and my style means nothing stuck. It means no ideas really went to them, that helped them. I don't want people just commenting on my style now. If I ask them later, after we've gone through the messages and they want to say something, that's fine. But your goal as a communicator is to really get people to understand and remember your ideas so they can put them into action. That's where the real power is as a communicator. And one of the things I have to stress when you test yourself, certainly when you ask questions of an audience, there is a risk you could get an answer you weren't expecting. You get. You could get no answer, which is what I just got. I asked Ben the question, Sorry to put you on the spot, Ben, but I didn't get an answer. But you know what? I'm okay with the possibility of there not being an answer, which case I failed this time. But I hope I prove the larger coin, which is you do always want to ask questions of your audience when you can engage, when there is time for it. And since we didn't put a strict, strict time limit on today, then that's why I did want to give you that chance, an opportunity. Valencia writes. Hi, dj. Glad to be here. Well, Valencia, thank you for joining. Where are you from today? If you could just type in what country you're from. I do have students from virtually every country in the world, to my knowledge, other than I don't think we have any in North Korea. I don't think I have any from the Vatican, although there are a few folks there who might be able to use some of these skills. But virtually every single country in the world now, I mean, we're all connected on the Internet, obviously, and people connect through Facebook, people connect through my online courses, whether it's through selfiespeak.com my own platform, or on other platforms all over the world. So it is nice to have such an international audience. It seems almost like science fiction. When I was a kid or in high school, if you told me, TJ, you're going to wake up in the morning, have coffee and wake up, and you will see messages from people from literally every continent in the world thanking you for something you did for them, giving you money for your courses and engaging you somehow. When I say every continent, believe it or not, I do have at least one student in Antarctica who has used my courses before to help her give scientific presentations to other explorers there. So I have not been there. I've trained in 35 countries around the world and spoken in 35 countries, but I haven't been to every continent yet. I'm working on that. So, Valencia, thank you for joining. If you do care to share with us where you're from, we'd love to know. Okay. Ben does write in and this does kind of warm my heart because this is one of my so called signature stories, the Gun in the Radio Station. So at one point early in my career, I had a talk show host pull a gun on me. If you want to know more about that, we'll save that for the next time. I've gone a little longer than I hoped for today. But Ben, I'm glad you remember that story. And also if you want to know more about that story, you can find out about it@the selfiespeak.com but that's one reason why I don't get nervous about speaking to any of you in a situation like this today. Because I know you can't pull a gun on me. You could show a video or an image, and I'm not currently that. But that was one of the best things that ever happened to me is having a host pull a gun on me. He didn't shoot me, thankfully. You know what? Every talk show, every interview I've ever done since has been a piece of cake. And I've been live on cnn, Fox, msnbc, the BBC, Al Jazeera, you name it. I've been on virtually every major English speaking news network in the world at some point and they're all relaxing. Even if people are yelling and screaming at me because I have something to compare it to. I have these bad, these bad situations where people pulled a gun on me. So that's why I do think this isn't just a communications issue. It's a personal development issue. You have to look at the bad things in life and as long as it didn't kill you, learn to chuck them about it. Because here's the thing. I don't think I told you, Ben, in That gun story is friends of mine were listening and they recorded it. And sometimes even 10 years after that incident, when I went over to their house, they would play the recording and be on the floor laughing because they could tell how scared I was. And this guy was yelling and screaming and virtually cursing at me and humiliating me. And my friends just thought it was hysterical and couldn't stop laughing. They kept the recording. They may still be playing it as far as I know. So, Ben, thanks for remembering that and we will perhaps share that the next time we're together. So I want to thank all of you. This has been a pleasant, pleasant time for me because I see we have about as many people now as when we started. So I appreciate you spending time with me. If you have thoughts on how frequently you would like us to get together, because I do think that live media is the future of the Internet. Video is the future. It's a more powerful way of connecting. So I am committed to doing live events with you on a regular basis. Now, I'm not saying that's five hours a day, seven days a week, and I don't think it's going to be two minutes once a month either. It's going to be something in between that those two extremes. But if you have a thought on how frequent would be a good frequency, let me know. Again, I would love to hear from you on other topics of a personal development niche or a communications niche. And those two are interrelated, obviously. Other topics you would like me to cover in future live streams right here. Also, questions you'd like me to answer just post them right here. Or you can just post them, really, anywhere in the discussion section of my main Facebook page. And my main Facebook page is just facebook.com TJwalkerspeaktoinfluence you can always reach me there. I check it every day. I try to respond to every single comment Ben says out loud. Lol. Understandable. But saying the story showed vulnerability. That's the other thing about stories. A lot of times people tell stories, but they always make themselves out to be the hero of the story. That gets tedious. It can make you sound arrogant and obnoxious. So it's a good idea to tell people stories about situations where you made a mistake and learn from it. I mean, every great heroic movie, the people don't start off great. They learn, they develop, they grow over time. They overcome challenges. So when I'm giving keynote speeches or even talking to you right here, I try to mix it up. Sometimes it's a story where things worked out and I was able to help someone. But sometimes it's a story where I messed up. One of my other signature stories, and I tell a story about one time, quarter century ago, where I was a press secretary for a politician in Washington. I did a media interview and I said a quote, had a quote that got used and I got fired. Now, I'd already done professional media training before that, so I wasn't brand new, fresh off the boat, but I still screwed up, I still made a mistake, I failed and I got fired. So that's a story I tell all of my clients now because it reassures them that this is a learned skill. You don't have to be a natural at it. I wasn't a natural. It's not a skill you're born with. It is a skill that you can acquire. It is a skill that you can learn. So that's why it's quite often much more powerful to tell stories about your failures because it does make you more relatable. One caveat, you have to make a judgment about the credibility level you have with your audience. Because I did tell that story once 20 years ago and not that much time had passed between me being fired and giving a training in front of a big, huge, major government agency in Washington D.C. and one piece of feedback can from an audience member to the organizer. So why do we hire this guy to teach us how to speak to the media? He got fired himself. So there's always a possibility you won't please everyone and that it could backfire. So you need to look at the context and the perception people have of your credibility. Now when I'm speaking about media training, I'm very confident in my credibility because I've had a 35 year career and I've had number one best selling books. Someone goes to YouTube and types in media training. Typically I have the number one video. So I have all these sort of credential things. So I don't worry about making myself look vulnerable. If you're 22, you may have to be careful about that because you might not have professional reputation as solidified yet. Bellencida writes, that's heavy. Certain people learn from failures, not from succeeding. Failure can be a great way of teaching. Certainly I have learned many, many things from failure. But I also like learning from success and learning from victories too. I think it goes hand in hand. And the reason I want to stress the success is quite often when I'm working with people, a one on one workshop, group workshop for personal development, public speaking, Presentation skills. People record or about to watch it and they always want me to rip them apart. They want me to tell them they're failures and I refuse to do it. And I refuse to let them focus on their failures when they see themselves speaking. The first thing I do is I say, I want you to tell me everything you like about your presentation, your media interview. Let's build the strengths first, because I find that's just a better way of learning. People think they learn by pinpointing failures. I don't find that to be true. Your 2 year old stands up and walks for the first time. You don't say haha, you failed down after you fell down after three seconds. No, you cheer and applaud getting up and walking the first two seconds. And even though you and I are not two year olds, I think the basic principle applies. It's just easier to stay motivated, it's easier to stay focused and to look forward to trying things when you're headed in a positive direction. So when someone is working with me for an in person workshop, I force them to illustrate and to pinpoint what they liked about their presentation. And sometimes people say, well, I don't like anything. We go around the room and their colleagues will point out things they like. I don't even have to. It's easy to spot one or two things you don't like, but if you fixate on that, quite often you'll ignore the good stuff and you'll bury the good stuff and that'll get lost the next time. So my basic approach with public speaking training, media training, is we record you, we look at it, illustrate everything you're doing well. Then and only then, we focus on just one thing we want to change to make it better and then we do it again. We try to do all 10 or 12 things you're doing well again without changing it and focus on just one improvement in one area. Quite often that's enough to make a dramatic improvement. But even if it's not, if you just focus on, on one change at a time, you can break it down because that's how you learn. Kids don't learn math. They learn addition of small numbers and then big numbers and then they learn subtraction, then multiplication. Then you don't learn everything at once. And you don't learn to be a perfect person or be great at goal setting, or be great at creativity or great at public speaking all at once. You learn one step at a time. So that's my basic approach. There we are, coming up on the end of our scheduled time together. I do want to thank everyone for being with me. If you have any more questions, I'm having a blast. I love this. That's one reason I might not have the most natural born speaking skills in the world, but the fact that I like it makes it easier. Monday morning I'm hopping out of bed because I have fun. I enjoy helping people improve their own personal development skills, their communication skills. I enjoy doing it. And there are very few boring moments in this, so that's what makes me excited about it. So that's why it's hard for me to say goodbye and hit the end live button. So I am interested in hearing a little more from you. What else do you think would make for good regular segments on a show like this? Whether it's weekly, twice a week or daily? What do you think would be good for regular segments? Because you can essentially be my co producer. The show can't be for me, it has to be for you. All over the world, people who are interested in developing themselves personally, making their careers, their personal lives more successful, becoming better speakers, communicators, presenters, the course show has to be for you. So that's why I want to listen to you. And that's what I think is special and unique about this time we're in. Because it's never been easier to be live with people rather than because if I just record something and then you post a comment a week later and I look at it a week later kind of loses the impact. You can forget or I can forget and it can all run together. But when it's live, you can hear me, I can hear you. Everything has a more powerful impact. I hope I've had some powerful impact in a positive way on you, some skill. You have something in your life. But I want you to have a powerful impact on me too. That's why I'm listening to you. Ben says I'd love to see more info on public speaking on live videos and videos in the future. Ben, I definitely will talk some every day when we do this about public speaking, but here's what I found. I have been doing public speaking videos on YouTube since, I guess, 2005 whenever I joined, and in the past I've done as many as 10 a day. I've had a few go viral and maybe hit 90,000, but nothing really went viral and it's been very, very hard to build a sizable sustainable regular audience. I could do some videos that are great public speaking tips that people love in an online course, but on YouTube. Nothing goes past 90 views. But here's the thing. I've looked at all my competitors and they kind of have the same problem. Whether it's a really big company, a Dale Carnegie, a smaller company, anyone who just talks about public speaking and presentation skills typically has a very small audience in the online world. Here's what I have found. People who are great speakers who talk about personal development, whether it was Zig Ziglar back when he was alive, whether it's Anthony Robbins, Brendan Burchard, people who talk about all aspects of personal development and then one out of every 20 or 30 videos talk about the importance of public speaking. They can have huge audiences. They can have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, the Gary Vaynerchuk's of the world, sometimes they have millions of views where they touch on aspects of how to communicate effectively. Tips on Public Speaking so I'm being very candid and transparent with you. That's a part of why I'm in this space now is I have found if you are so narrow that you're only talking about public speaking and it's not connected to larger life goals people just aren't interested in. If you talk about bigger picture issues of how people can be more successful, more productive, reach their goals, have better habits, live healthier lives and achieve career goals, and in part do that by having stronger communication skills, well then you can have a much bigger audience and everyone benefits. So that's kind of why we're here today. But here's another quick public speaking tip. When you are speaking, don't wait until your throat is completely dry. Take a sip of water anytime you want. Some of the best, most highly paid stand up comedians in the world, when you watch their Netflix special, you see them take their bottle of water because you certainly don't want to dry out and start choking and you don't want to feel like you're losing your voice. Your vocal cords are very important when you are speaking. Obviously you have to take care of them. And when you're speaking even like that, right now I'm only about three feet, maybe two and a half feet away from the camera and about the same distance from the built in microphone. But I'm still projecting my voice more than if I were just having a conversation on the phone. And when you project your voice, you're pushing a lot more air over your vocal cords. You're also banging your vocal cords together more. You're drying out your vocal cords. You do that long enough, you could lose your voice. Now in a field like mine. That can cost a lot of money if I have to start can canceling dates. Fortunately, I've only lost my voice once in my life. It was about 15 years ago and it was a confluence of events where I had a cold, I was taking cold medicine, I was doing six days in a row of day long trainings and I was on airplanes where the air was dry and it just turned my vocal cords into sawdust basically. And I learned, I did every kind of research, then started using a certain throat spray, used a wireless speaker and microphone every time I spoke after that and still do for the most part. And really learned to never ever abuse my voice and even on a plane drinking extra amounts of water so as to not let the vocal cords get dried up. I am seeing a few more comments here. Bethann says she'd like to watch Bi Weekly. That would be great. Would certainly love to have you Ben says Talk about Business Storytelling the best businesses all have a story behind them. You know, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook had an entire movie made about him and how he created this. We all know the story about Steve Jobs being the college dropout, being the art class cool guy starting Apple in his garage. We know about Bill Gates quitting Harvard, going out west, starting the company when it was a real risk. We know these founders stories and that's quite often what people have heard. The story of Howard Schultz going to Milan, Italy on a vacation and becoming enamored with a real honest to goodness coffee shop where they were making coffee and grinding it and people were there talking and he got motivated to start Starbucks. So great business leaders always tell a story. There has to be a story as to why you started a business. And even if it's not a business you started, there has to be a a story about what its purpose is. But the easiest way to tell a story in business is just talk about how your company, you, your product, your service helped a real customer. Make sure the customer is okay with you mentioning their name or change their name and don't identify it. But if you tell a new prospect a story about someone just like him or her, how your product or service helped them, they're going to be able to see it, they're going to be able to relate to it and it's going to be much, much more effective, Ben says. Very interesting. Appreciate it. Makes sense. Thank you Ben and thank you for your contributions. One other thing about the water, the hardest type of speaking for most people, believe it or not, is not speaking in front of 10,000 or 100,000 people. It is doing a webinar where you can't see anyone and you don't necessarily have a chat box. All of you have been nice enough to have a conversation here. So I can read pause. It could be more like a conversation, but when many times people are giving a business presentation and it's just their voice and their going through slides that the marketing department has created, there's this sense of, oh, I better not stop. I don't want an awkward pause or awkward silence. Well, guess what? There's nothing wrong with pausing. There's nothing wrong with silence. Now, I'm not going to get up, leave for three minutes and leave you wondering and leave silence for three minutes. But a second or two pause. A pause is punctuation. You listen to any two people having a fantastic conversation. There's all kinds of pauses. There's stops and goes, there's gaps, there's repetition. That's what makes an interesting conversation. And when people are doing a webinar and they have a set script in front of them, that's when they start going faster and faster. And then their voice is getting dry and they oh, I can't possibly stop, but I want some water. You can stop. You should not be in physical pain. The key to water is don't look embarrassed, don't ask permission, don't try to be sneaky about it. Don't try to be fiddling, taking the tops off. Have the top off. If you're using a bottle, it's frankly easier to drink from a glass where there's a wide open than a little bottle with the top. You should not be in any kind of pain or agony when you're speaking. You should be comfortable. That's what I want you to do. Ben says, interesting. Appreciate it. Thanks. Makes sense. Thank you, Ben, for your comments. If you have any other questions or comments, please let me know. I want to make sure I am interacting properly with this chat box here because I'm getting one message saying there's more messages in certain places. Just want to make sure that I'm getting it all. Valencia has written and I've just seen those comments, thinking about best methods to teach people by YouTube and so on. Most people watch videos and next five minutes they forgot almost everything. Stories are great, but imagine a tech webinar. There's not much space for them. Well, yes and no. And Valencia, you're right that a lot of people do watch YouTube just for entertainment, but sometimes it's the beginning of something. You may be entertained by someone that might make you want to go to their website. The website might make you want to sign up for their newsletter, and after six months of newsletter, that might make them want to call you. So you never know the entry point. I have had many clients come to me over the years because they first saw a YouTube video of mine on media. The complete media training video. If you google it, if you go to YouTube and type in media training, you'll probably see it. It's an hour long. It's a plain vanilla video. It's just simple talking. There's no graphics, there's no music. I don't even have any background music like today. And it's an hour long. The average watch time is 15 minutes, which is a pretty long time on YouTube. And yet it's gotten me clients. Now, the vast majority of people who go, remember it. No. To the vast majority of people who call me, who watch it, call me and become a client. No. But that's the beauty of the Internet. It's so scalable. If at this point, at least 50,000 people have watched it. So such a tiny, tiny, tiny 0.1% need to really have it resonate for it to be great for me. Because if I said to you, I'm going to get five of your best prospects in the whole world in a room that listen to you, wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be valuable? I think you'd be excited about that. But on the Internet, you can have five people watching you. It just may be that 5,000 people watching also, only paying attention with one eye and one ear. Meanwhile, they've got another screen looking at cartoons and they're doing Facebook and they do forget you two minutes later. That's a part of the deal. But it's never been easier to reach an audience worldwide if you have a product or a service that is of interest to people around the world. It's never been easier. That's what excites me so much. I mean, 30 years ago, in fact, probably 30 years ago this month, I had an idea of syndicating a political talk show. I had done a pilot and I had to physically drive to every TV station in Florida, knock on doors, be in waiting rooms, basically stalk general managers until I talked a different station in every market to carry my show. It was incredibly difficult, time consuming, wasteful, but that's what I had to do to be able to get access, to communicate not even to the whole world, but to about 10 million people who lived in Florida. Now you can do it with a push of one button on your phone or your laptop or your computer. That's what's so exciting about now. Balencia also writes Thinking about best methods to teach people by YouTube. Oh, that part I read. Excuse me. So, the stories. Oh, I wanted to address your concern about stories for technology. Steve Jobs was a technology guy, head of the biggest technology company in the world. He told stories, and he was a great simplifier. You know, when he's introducing the ipod, he says, you know, imagine reaching in your pocket, there's a thousand songs in your pocket. It's elements of the story. You can see one person, you can see action. He didn't say. He didn't talk about megabits and gigahertz and storage. It was this story of how you could be this really cool guy or cool gal, not walking around with his giant suitcase of CDs the way people used to have all this music in your pocket. That's a story that's very powerful. And I believe that great technology people understand that and they're using that. They're always looking for stories. Let's not overcomplicate things. A story is nothing but a conversation. You retelling a conversation you had with one real customer, one client, one prospect about something that happened to them, problem, how it was resolved, and how you felt. People think a story doesn't have to be as dramatic as someone pulling a gun on you. As I told earlier, a story is just a more concrete example of how something you did affected somebody. That's all a story is. All of us as human beings tell stories day long. It's Monday morning and you go to the office and someone says, how did your weekend go? You typically don't say, well, at 6:01 on Saturday, the alarm went off. At 6:02, I got up. At 6:03, I got coffee. At 6:04, I went to the vet. That's not how we answer the question. How was your weekend? Typically, most people would start off with a story. Oh, we went to the game Saturday night, and my friend got so drunk, he was yelling and screaming, and it was embarrassing. We tell stories. Could be good stories, could be bad stories. But we as human beings are hardwired to tell stories about our experiences in life. The difference when it comes to technology is we tell ourselves, oh, I have to cover every little fact in detail and number and data point. Well, no, you don't. So, Valencia, I'll ask you the same question. I ask every one of my technology clients, and I work with some of the biggest technology companies in the world. Think of the best speaker you've ever seen in your field in the last year, last five years. Now, tell me every technical data point you remember from that speech. In all the years I've asked that question, no one's ever remembered more than five ideas. And yet, typically, when someone stands up to give a technical speech, it's got 23 bullet points on the first slide and 17 on the second and five complex charts on the third. And it just goes on and on and on. There's hundreds of data points, and no one remembers them. So I ask people to think of this as a technical problem. You're trying to come up with a technical solution. You're trying to communicate ideas. You have to do what works, you know, if you test properly. Simply conveying lots of technical information while speaking is not a very effective way of communicating. If you create a new piece of software and you beta test it and everybody gives up on it and doesn't use it, well, you know it doesn't work. Don't keep selling it, Change it. It's the same with a technical speech. If you're giving a presentation with lots of technical information to 40 clients or prospects on Thursday, my technical advice to you is practice that speech to two or three colleagues. Tuesday at lunchtime, when you're done, ask them to tell you every message they remember, every technical data point they remember from that speech, any technical detail they can't remember. You now have proof that the way you communicated it didn't work. You fail. And if they did remember it, you now have evidence it worked. So do more of that. So I'm a big believer, frankly, there's no such thing as a technical speech or a financial speech or a PowerPoint speech. There's only two types of speeches in the entire world. You know what they are. It's either good or it's bad. From the audience's standpoint, the easiest way to make a speech good is by telling interesting, relevant stories. So if you're launching some new SD card with better storage, might not have anything to do with the time you were in summer camp 20 years ago, I wouldn't tell that story. You need to tell a story about someone who had something positive happen to them as it relates to your SD card or some problem that your SD card saw, that's the story that will work and will be appropriate. And Valencia writes, sure, I've seen seen some of my courses. Thank you. And Ben's just sort of sharing with Valencia and endorsing my storytelling course. Ben, thanks so much for that. I do want to thank all of you and I very much appreciate you sharing your time with me. I will be back, I hope in this very same format but with better production, better video quality. I hope as soon as next week. So please take a look at Facebook and if I can email you I will. Again, I would love to hear from you. Any suggestions you have for segments you'd like me to cover, topics you'd like me to cover, any thoughts on other platforms where you would like me to be, either post them here or feel free to message me through Facebook or one of the online platforms. Or you can always just email me tjwalker.com and if you haven't already liked the page, it would be helpful because it'd be easier for me to continue communicate with you so that you can hear about the next one of these. And if you wouldn't mind sharing this video, I'm going to have this video. It will be on demand in just a few minutes. If you could share it now and also share it once you see it on demand, then more people could see it and we could attract even more of a community. So I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for spending a little time with me. I hope all of your communications in life are great.