Master Communication: TJ Walker's Live Q&A on Essential Skills

Hello and welcome. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. This is the TJ Walker Success Channel. This is the one place on the Internet where you can ask your questions about any aspect of communication skills, public speaking, giving presentations, speaking to the media, and get live answers. I try to come to you every single day, typically around 9am to noon each day. We're still experimenting with times and formats, working out some of the kinks in the technology, trying to get the cameras right, building out the set, things like that. So that's what we're all about. I'm here today without any huge agenda. I'm going to answer your questions about communication skills. I'm also going to continue a series I've been working on and that is answering common communication skills questions generated by Chat GPT. Because Chat GPT can do a great job of using artificial. Straighten my tie here a little bit. ChatGPT can use a great job, do a great job of using artificial intelligence to look at comments anywhere and everywhere on the Internet and synthesize those. So I'm hoping these questions are relevant. A couple of days ago I mentioned you. I just spit out about 60 questions produced by ChatGPT and I'm reading them out to you. I'm looking at it for the first time, so I haven't looked at it, studied it, come up with scripts. I'm reading it and giving you my response. Not just pulling things out of thin air, but based on my actual experiences of having trained more than 10,000 executives, people like you, face to face, in 45 countries or less for the last three, four decades. Also based on training a couple of million of you through my online courses. So that's what this is about. Let's dive right in. If you want to join me today live on screen, you're more than welcome to do so. All you have to do is go to the Community tab of my YouTube channel. You may be watching this on LinkedIn, Twitch or Facebook. If you can go to my YouTube channel. And that's just if you go to YouTube, type in TJ Walker Success. You'll find it. If you go to the Community tab, then the tab. The most recent tab has a link for the streamyard and that will allow you to click. If you've got a camera on your cell phone or webcam, you can join me right here on screen. So let's hop in with this question. How can I challenge negative self talk that contributes to my communication anxiety? And I see we've got some people who joined us this was impromptu. It was not planned. We're still working at the kinks of the production side. The last couple of days, I've been in the middle of talking to you and the camera froze. I think I've discovered a solution for this in working with Streamyard. But we don't know if you can see this and hear this clearly. And I see some of you are online now. Please leave a comment on whatever platform you're on. Just leave a comment in the chat section, comment section there. And I should see it pulled onto my screen from Streamyard. So again, the first question of the day is how can I challenge negative self talk that contributes to my communication anxiety? So let's take a look at that right now. And I'm going to record these in sort of different formats because we. We use these for edited video. So I'm just going to kind of show you behind the scenes. I'm going to my mixer now, pushing a button for record, and that way I'll have this if we want it. Okay, so now I'm going to switch to camera one. How can you challenge negative self talk that helps create more anxiety before? So one of the things we're doing here, by the way, is showing you the real process of how people create. Because when you look across YouTube, it seems like everyone is perfectly articulate, flawless every time. Well, no, they're just not showing you the flaws. So I'm creating videos here that are going to be edited and have nice graphics and music and cuts and all that. But I'm showing you the rough draft here. So occasionally I mess up. I try to do every video in one take, but I'm not always successful. The easiest way I find to edit is just hit delete and do over. That's usually the best way of doing it. So let me start that one over. So what do you do if negative self talk is actually creating anxiety for you before you speak or when you speak? Now, I'm a big fan of self talk, positive self talk, but in this case, I want to crowd out the self talk completely. What I want to do is fill your brain with something that's infinitely more helpful right before you speak, and that is giving yourself a role model of success. People talk about visualizing success. There's nothing easier to visualize than something you're staring at. And that's exactly what you like. That's why a lot of people, especially kids, enjoy a movie more than having to use their imagination. Reading. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but watching Something on a screen that's exactly what you want is powerful. So what do I mean by that when it comes to speaking and anxiety? Let's say you have a job interview and you really want the job, but you're a little nervous. What you don't want to do is just sit there and think, oh, I'm going to be great. This is going to be wonderful. I visualize being great. And then up on the other side of your brain pops this negative self talk of you're going to be lousy, you're going to be awful, you're going to be boring. Why would anyone want to interview you? I don't even want to get into that good, bad, that devil, saint thing. Instead, I want your brain to really focus, really focus on you already succeed. Now the way to do that is to practice the job interview and to keep practicing on video. Keep watching it until you can look at a video and say, wow, I would hire that person if I could be half as good as that person. I'm going to blow away the other competitors. That's really the most effective way to fill your brain. So it's not certainly the negative self talk, it's not even the positive self talk. I want to go one step higher and give you something even more powerful. And that is having seen yourself already succeed, having seen yourself do exactly what you want to do, because that is what gives profound confidence. And if you've already been driving a million times, you've been driving for 10 years, you've kind of seen yourself driving, you know, you've got to the grocery store and back, you don't really get nervous driving to the grocery store anymore. It's exactly the same thing with speaking. If you've seen yourself give a great presentation, whether it's a practice job interview, whether it's a practice book report at school, whether it's a practice investor pitch trying to get that first $500,000 for your startup, if you seen yourself do a great job, that's what will fill you with confidence. And when you're confident, whether you're even aware of it or not, you're essentially giving yourself positive self talk that will not only calm your nerves, it will get you in a positive emotional state going into that presentation and, and that's what you want and need for success. Okay, so what did I really do there? I just tried. And by the way, none of that is scripted. Now. I believe all that that came, I think relatively fluently because I've thought about these issues. I've worked with people, thousands of people, for years and years and years. So I'm pulling up from inside, in depth experience and just sharing it in an impromptu way. Now, it's not spontaneous in the sense, I'm just thinking, oh, what am I saying now? Let me make up some bs. No, it's not bs this is grounded in experience. And Vyas says hello, Vaias, good to hear from you. Hey, before I go to the next question and let me scratch this one off so I don't duplicate it vias, I'm going to ask you if you have a question for me. I do very much appreciate you joining me live and you're watching on YouTube today. Thanks so much. Post your question while you do that. I'm going to do a short form version of what I just did. I'm going to switch to camera two. This is the one we use to sort of simulate things looking more like I'm at a convention speaking in front of a group of people. Because our research, the data shows when it comes to my YouTube channel, people seem to like that more. So I'm going to do this one without looking at the camera and looking down as if I were speaking to an audience. So what do you do to eliminate that negative chatter, that negative self talk before you give a presentation? The best thing is to not try to counter it with positive self talk, but counter it with an image. An image of you already being successful. I don't mean imagining a standing ovation, I mean practicing your presentation on video. Whether it's a job interview or an investment pitch, practicing on video until you like what you see. Once you do that, watch that loop again and again and again. That's what's going to give you massive confidence going into your presentation. Okay, that's probably still a little longer than I really want for a YouTube video. TikTok short. Now, it was under 60 seconds, but I have found that for me and my audience, people tend to like the 12 to 22nd range. That was maybe a little too long, but it can be edited down. Okay, let's just see what I appreciate. Vias posting comments. You were scrolling through YouTube, saw that you were live and I'm live and here you are. Great. Please share some tips on making a eye contact. I heard that we want to express our thoughts to make it simple as fifth graders can understand. Please share tips on that. Okay, so the question is about, oh, I need to hit stop. So I don't. Okay, so eye contact, eye contact is very, very important. When you're speaking, notice how I'm looking at you now. Or at least it appears I'm looking at you. I'm looking at a camera. Your comments are down here. If you were joining me on screen, I would be looking at you right here. But it would create a sense that I'm not really looking at you. As human beings, we're very much reciprocal. And I am going to go ahead and record this and go to camera one. We human beings are reciprocal. If someone smiles at us, chances are we smile back. If someone hits us, we want to defend ourselves by either doing this or hitting back. Well, it's exactly the same thing anytime you're giving a speech or presentation. When it comes to your eyes, the big mistake most speakers make is not that they say too many ums or uhs. It's not that their hands drift around and look awkward. It's not that their tie is crooked or anything else about their appearance. The biggest problem most speakers make is the eye contact. They're staring at notes or they're ignoring their audience completely and looking at PowerPoint slides behind them. That is awful. That's what the bottom 1% of speakers do. There's another range of speakers of 98.9%. They're looking at the audience, but they're always looking at the entire audience the whole time. You don't want to be like that because when you sense a speaker is never really looking directly at you, what happens is you feel anonymous. You feel like, well, this person can't really see me. I'm not being rude. If I quickly check my phone and I check messages. Oh, let me check text. Oh, I see. Buzz rescheduled a meeting for 8:30 tomorrow. That's what happens when you don't really look your audience in the eye. So what am I suggesting? That you have a stare down for five minutes with this person and then a stare down with another person? No, that's not what I'm suggesting. What I want you to do when you're speaking to a live audience in person is I want you to look at one person and just talk for a couple of sentences. One thought. It's only about five seconds. Then go to another person in the room, look at that person strategically do that in a random way throughout the room. It's not just. You don't want to seem like a really slow water sprinkler. That's going it in a mechanical way. You want it to seem natural. Front row here, back row there, middle here. You want to randomize it. That is the most effective way to Use eye contact. Now, when you're looking at people, you want to look carefully at what you're seeing. Because if they're like, if you can tell they seem confused, you can stop and say, you know, I think I may be less than completely clear. Let me try that again. Give another description of the point you were just making. You don't want to say, hey, you look confused. You must not be smart enough to follow me. No, you never want to put down the audience, but you do want to look at what they are saying with their eyes and their body. You can't do that if you're fixated on a script. Now, those of you who are regulars here know I often say, don't read from a script unless you're a leader of a country or a head of a Federal Reserve because it destroys your ability to really have a two way conversation with your audience and it destroys your ability to get valuable data from your audience. You want to see what they're doing, but not only their eyes, their face, are they kind of slumped overboard? Are they on the edge of their seat? This is valuable research for you, and you can only get it if your eyes are open and looking at them. This also means you've got to be comfortable enough with your material to actually be focusing on them. Because if all you're doing is looking out, but you're thinking, here's the next page of the teleprompter in my brain, you'll be looking inward and people can sense that you need to really be comfortable enough with what you're saying so that you can focus on them. And that is the best way to use eye contact when you're giving a presentation. Okay, so I've talked about a lot of those things before, but obviously it is an important issue and a lot of people do ask questions about this from time to time. So Vias also says that I heard that if you want to express your thoughts, we have to make it as simple as a fifth grader can understand. This is a really important point. I do want to address this in more detail because there's a lot of confusion about this. By the way, if you're joining us live, I'm TJ Walker and I'm here to answer your questions today about any aspect of communication, whether it's one on one communication, talking to large groups, small groups, the media, a family member or friend. If you've got any questions about communication, you can post them right here. You can also join me live because I've posted the link to our Streamyard right in the Community tab of my YouTube page. So if you go to, if you're not watching this on YouTube, go to YouTube and type in TJ Walker Success. You'll see my channel. Go to the Community tab, click that and right at the top it'll just say join me live and there'll be a link. You click that and you can show right up. You can ask your question to me in person. We can see you on video and hear you, or if you don't want to show your face, you can just talk and we can hear you. And if you don't want to do either of those things, you can post your questions here. Tammy Swain says. Hi, Tammy, thanks so much for joining us. Tammy, how did you find out about this live today? Because I didn't promote it anywhere. We're still in sort of a beta testing mode. We're trying to work out the kinks with the camera, the lights, the backdrop. I'm trying to figure out how to get this light to stop changing green. So this is still very much a work in progress, but I figured it's better to show you in real time what I'm doing because I know some of you are trying to figure out how do you create more content online, how do you produce video? Oh, and Vayas says his name is Mative. Matvev is the first. So mad apologies. You mentioned that to me before and I forgot. So it's good to hear from you. All right, so let me answer your question about the dumbing things down, essentially. And I'm going to do a long version and a short version of this so that when we edit these later, we'll have choices. You've probably heard the expression that if you really want to communicate, you got to dumb things down for your audience. You have to speak like you're talking to a fifth grader. Is this really true? Well, no, that is a myth. But the other side is also a myth that you need to come across as intelligent and smart by using big words, being extra complicated and showing 189 bullet points per slide to make sure no one accuses you of leaving something out. That's the bigger danger. So there's gotta be something between these two extremes. Trying to be the professor leading a graduate studies course at Harvard University versus the condescending, patronizing speaker who talks to you like you're an idiot. You shouldn't have to choose between those two. Here's the real challenge you need to ask yourself, is the person I'm speaking To whether it's an audience of one in a job interview or it's an audience of 1,000 people at a conference. Are they understanding me, following me, processing what I'm saying and remembering my ideas so that they can act upon them? That is the test. And the number one problem most speakers have is they just try to convey too many facts, bullet point after bullet point, number after number, fact after fact. And it's overwhelming to the audience. It's not that the audience is stupid, it's just that's not how human beings really process information. So the goal is not for you to show people how smart you are. At least it shouldn't be the goal. The goal is to figure out how to communicate. And let's step back a minute. What is communication? It's when an idea goes from your head, comes out, and an audience can understand what you're saying, can remember what you're saying, so they can then make a decision on whether to act on what you're saying. That is how I define communication. So if you're just putting out fact after fact after fact, especially if the facts are abstract, chances are people are not following you even if they have PhDs in your subject matter, because they probably aren't writing it all down. They didn't do advanced reading for your presentation unless you are a graduate school professor. So rather than think of this as dumbing things down, what I really want you to think about is using your intellect. Think of it as an intellectual challenge. Out of the hundred things you could say on this subject, the easy, lazy thing to do is just to say all hundred things. Get it all out there. There, I said everything I know. The far more intellectually challenging thing is to say, out of these hundred things, let me put every single message, fact number in priority, from most important to least important. Now let me eliminate anything that didn't make the top five. That requires discretion, that requires judgment, that requires intellectual. You've got to put your messages in priority. Now, whether you have five minutes or an hour or two hours. My recommendation is to focus on making just those five ideas more interesting, more memorable by giving more examples, telling more case studies, and telling more stories. That is the most effective way, really communicating. So it's not about, oh, I got to talk to them like they're fifth graders. So I've got to give references to Taylor Swift and cartoons on TikTok. Now that's condescending. Instead, you've got to really look at it through the lens of what's interesting to them, what's useful to them. Here's the ultimate test. If you're giving a presentation Thursday to 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 important colleagues or clients, don't just guess whether you've got it at the right grade level. Fifth grade, 12th grade, graduate school. Do some testing, do some actual research. And you can do it this way. Find one or two people who are going to be in your audience, or at least have a mindset that's similar to your audience, and practice your speech to stay on them. When you're done, don't just say, well, how'd I do? They'll say, oh, great, good job, fantastic, worthless information. Instead, what I want you to do is go to them and say, tell me what I said. What do you remember? Tell me every message you remember. That's where you know if you communicated. If they remembered all 89 of your facts, great. I don't think they're going to do it. But if they remembered everything you know, you communicated. What I have found in doing this test all over the globe, in every kind of culture, in every industry, is nobody ever remembers more than five key ideas. Often it's 3, 2, 1 or 0. So less is more in that sense. Fewer messages, but spending more time making them memorable, because that's the key. Without getting your audience to remember, you didn't accomplish anything. So that's the challenge I want you to think of. Not about have I dumbed it down, but have I made it memorable for this audience. How you speak to PhD candidates at a major university on a particular subject that they've studied for years and years and years may be different than how you speak about a hobby to people who are hearing about it for the first time. But the way you speak really shouldn't change because you can be interesting and memorable or boring and unmemorable. Those are the big decisions you have to make. So speak in a way that's interesting. Also, you don't really need to use big, fancy words. So mitigate words like mitigate. Just say lessen or reduce. No one is offended, no matter how smart they are. If you use the simplest, smallest words and don't try to use big words or jargon to impress. Okay, so that's. I'm going to stop that one, that recording, because that is very much an issue a lot of people can relate to. So, Matt, I'm glad that you asked that question very much, and I want to do just a short version and I apologize. I realize some of this is redundant. I'm going to try to do A short version of what I just did that can be used for a YouTube short, a TikTok, various social media. So I'm hoping to do this certainly in less than 30 seconds. The minimum is, or the maximum length is 60 seconds. So I'm going to try to do that one. Now. I'm going to record this, by the way. You're seeing this earpiece. I use this. So when you do call me, I'm hearing it through this rather than have it come through speakers and cause distortion. Okay. When you're giving a presentation, should you talk to people like they're in the fifth grade? That's common advice, right? Well, no, that's awful advice. All you have to do is think regardless of the audience. Am I saying something that is interesting, understandable and memorable? If your audience can remember what you said, you got it just right. Okay, so that is sort of. Obviously I lost some of the nuance there. You can't say everything in 30 seconds or 20 seconds the way you can in five minutes or 10 minutes. But I tried to still boil it down to a point that would in fact work and be relevant to people. Okay. Tame says I'm facing a lot of anxiety when I talk with people. I can't communicate properly when I feel resistance. Well, Tamay, so many people feel exactly the way you do. I don't want you to feel like you are in any way worse than others. It's human nature to feel a little uncomfortable when speaking to people. You can argue we are biologically evolutionary, culturally programmed that way because for most of human history, if you talk to someone and they weren't in your tribe, you're instantly worried they may kill you or enslave you. That is the history of human beings. So we're all still programmed that way. So it's fine for me to say that, but what good is that if you're actually feeling anxiety and you want to get better? So let me give you some tips because it is something everybody faces from time to time. And those of you just joining us, this is just a live Q and A session we have here today and we have for parts of every day. I'm trying to come to you every day from 9am to noon eastern time here in the United States. And we're happy to have people watching from all over the globe. I'm taking your questions plus answering questions from ChatGPT about communication. So you mentioned when you feel resistance. Now, it's always nice to talk to someone who is leaning forward, nodding, giving you 100% eye contact and giving you affirmations. Yes, yes, right. That's the easiest. I mean, that's why we like talking to friends, because quite often we do get that sort of feedback. But you might not get that on a job interview or an audition or you're pitching new business. So part of what I think is important is to go into any presentation, whether it's talking to a friend or family member or a job interviewer or a prospective investor with the idea of. I've got some ideas that I like that I think are good, and I'm happy to convey them in my style. And I realize not everyone's going to love me. I've got a new business pitch that's going to happen in about 37 minutes with a significant international client. And I'm pretty comfortable now. I'm comfortable not because I know they're going to hire me. I'm comfortable because I know I'm going to come across the way I want. They're going to understand me. I'm going to talk the way I want to. And whether they are like this saying, that's great. Can we hire you right now at double your normal fee, or whether they just sit there and say, okay, well, we're talking to a whole bunch of people. Don't call us, we'll call you. Could go either one of those ways. I'm going to do it the very same way now. I'm going to be listening to them, looking for cues. Certainly, if they stop with a question, I will stop and then follow their lead by answering a question. But it's not really going to change my perception of how I feel at the moment. So part of this, to me is you've got to realize we can't control other people. And we're going to delve into sort of more personal development issues here than communication issues. But at some point, almost every great personal development guru, philosopher of the human state comes to the same conclusion, which is, you can't control other people. All you can do is control yourself. You can't control, force other people to improve. All you can do is try to improve yourself. And this applies to family members, colleagues, employees, and everyone else. So the focus should be on how can you improve? How can you be more interesting? So if it's. If you're talking about just chatting with people friendly at the bus stop or on a plane or in a restaurant, part of it is just do it more often. If you only talk to a stranger once a year, because the rest of the year you're A hermit and you're completely roped off from society. It's going to be anxiety inducing every time because it's going to seem like a strange alien thing. If you talk to people three times a day, every day, all of a sudden it's going to seem like breathing. If I told you right now, get nervous about breathing, it's going to be hard to do because you breathe all day long. It's a natural thing. So the more you talk to people, the easier it is to talk to people. My 10,000th new business pitch is easier than my first business pitch. Your 30th job interview is generally going to be easier than the very first job interview you do. So one of the things I'd really recommend is just try to talk to people more often and do it in low pressure situations. Now, it's been a long time since I've been single, but I do know a lot of single people and certainly did in the past. And they put so much pressure on themselves because they're like, oh, I have to talk to the absolute best looking person at this restaurant or this club and it's going to be nerve wracking. You know, what if she doesn't like me or he doesn't like me, they put all this pressure on themselves. Far better to just say, I'm going to talk to everyone. You might be single and it might be a single scene. Talk to an old married couple, talk to children. The more you talk to people, the easier it is to get to talk comfortably with everyone else. Plus, there's the whole issue of social proof. When people you want to talk to see you talking to people of varying ages with seemingly no agenda, it makes you seem a lot more credible. They're going to give you less resistance and they're going to think, oh, this person wants to talk to me. They're being friendly, they're talking to everyone. Now let me be clear here. This channel is not about giving people dating advice or pickup advice. So I don't even want to get close to that range. But at some level, talking to human beings in one situation is like any other. So I would urge you look for ways to talk to people, more people on a regular basis. And I don't mean take advantage of people, but certainly if you're getting coffee and the person says, you know, how are you? Don't just say fine. Just say, I'm especially great considering this is the first warm day we've had and now I can go biking or rollerblading. What are you going to do today. Just something like that. That's friendly, that's quick. You're not asking to monopolize the barista's attention for the next two hours, but it's just a little more than fine, great. Which is what most people too. So look for opportunities there where you can just talk to people on a more regular basis. And regarding your concern about resistance, the more you talk to people, the more you will occasionally get yeses to whatever you're asking for. Whether it is investment capital, whether it's a new job, whether it's approval for how you want capital allocated in your company or inviting someone to a social occasion, the more you put out there, the more eventually will come back to you and that will build your confidence. So good luck there. All right. Tame says thanks. Mata says, I'm 20 years old. Is it possible that I can become the world's greatest public speaker and what it takes to be one? Okay, well, I like your ambition. Let's. Let's dive a little deeper here because there's a lot to unpack there. I think it's fantastic you want to be a great speaker, and I especially think it's great that you're aiming high at age 20. But world's greatest speaker, what does that mean? There's certainly no definition. There's not a clear cut ranking system the way there is for the world's greatest tennis player or the world's greatest taekwondo expert. I'm not a taekwondo expert, but you get my drift. There's certain things where there are competitions, it's regimented, there are playoffs. And there's one person recognized certainly in the role of sports because they beat everyone else in a tournament that attracts the best. There's simply nothing like that in the world of speaking. And I want to say hello to Yvette, who has just joined us too. And Yvette, if you have any questions, please post them, because even if I can't reach them now, because we're going to have to stop in about 15 minutes. I'll be coming back to you in about an hour and a half and we'll be resuming this and having more fun today. And we're also going to be making more Amazon Influencer video product review ads. So I know some of you are interested in that and trying to figure out how to start that. So, Matta, back to your question. Here's my bigger challenge to you. What is it you really want to accomplish that you think is going to use the greatest talents you have, married with the strongest interest you have married to the purpose you have that can help the most people in the world. Because to be a speaker, just to be a speaker, that doesn't really mean much. It's sort of speaking is just a tool. The question is, what do you want to use this tool to accomplish? This is a tool. But if I never have any ambition whatsoever to write a note or write anything, it's kind of useless. In fact, it's dangerous. Someone could bump into it, you could poke an eyeball at it, could even be a weapon. Speaking is just a tool. So I would ask you, especially at this age, let's really go deeper and figure out what do you want to accomplish. I can think of one person who was not a natural born speaker, was very uncomfortable even late in his career. One of his speeches consisted of him hunched over, rocking back and forth in a chair. And even though he's become a very good speaker, he's still not widely recognized as a great speaker. I'm talking about Bill Gates. Bill Gates, at various points in the last 30 years, the richest man in the world. And I'm not saying that's what makes someone great, but he's clearly changed the world. And through his philanthropy, through the billions of dollars from his Microsoft earnings and profits, he's plowed into philanthropy. He's doing a lot of things all over the world to change mankind. And he's someone who has had to give thousands and thousands of speeches. And his speeches, especially early in his career, resulted in investments, resulted in a lot of clients, resulted him creating something that has generated trillions of dollars of wealth over time. Is he the world's greatest speaker? I don't think most people would put him on their list of world's greatest speaker. Steve Jobs was known as someone very introverted, someone who was frankly mean and nasty to a lot of employees. But when he had to stand up on stage to speak to unveil a new iPhone or iPad or. Seems like a walking billboard, but I'm not. He was a great speaker. Was he the best speaker of all time? I don't think so, but he clearly was a very good speaker. But he used his speaking skills to create a trillion dollar company. Now again, I don't want to make it sound like I'm saying money is the barometer of what success is. You may have a political leader you really admire and respect. You may respect Mahatma Gandhi, for example. It's not because he generated the most wealth, and it's not because he was classically considered a wonderful oratorical speaker, but he did speak a lot and he accomplished a lot. Same with Martin Luther King Jr. He didn't create vast wealth, he wasn't trying to create wealth. But here in the United States, he was trying to channel the same techniques of Mahatma Gandhi, nonviolent protest, and to change society. And certainly he makes the list of most people's greatest speakers of the 20th century. So, Madhav, that's what I really want you to think about is what do you want to accomplish? What can you do that will generally really transform people's lives? That's the ultimate power of a speaker, because there's plenty of speakers out there and I know a lot of them, and it's not any negative against them, where they could get up and give a really amusing after dinner speech, talk about things, make everyone in the crowd feel really comfortable and warm, and they're just doing everything really well. They're not on anyone's list of the world's greatest speaker. But I'm very happy that you're trying to get good at it, because when you become a great speaker, that's a superpower for anything else you want to do in your career. It is a way of supercharging your expertise and what you want to do and what you want to reach. Because if you do want to become a leader of an organization, doesn't have to be a business, could be a nonprofit, could be a government agency. You're going to spend most of your time speaking, you're not going to spend most of your time drawing or writing if you're going to become the leader of an organization. Now, if you want to be a full time writer, there's nothing wrong with spending most of your time. Stephen King spends most of his time in front of the typewriter and in front of his computer keyboard. That's what he wants to do and he's very good at it and he's been very successful. But if you want to be a leader in a larger institution, you're going to have to spend your time speaking. So my recommendation is continue learning, I hope, here in other places, how to improve your communication skills. But spend most of your time trying to build expertise that will really help people in some aspect of their life. Good luck. Okay, let's see. Vaya says, I'm a computer science student. I want to make a software company. Okay. So you can be a software company startup founder and not be a very good speaker. Certainly. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs when he was young, Bill Gates when he was young, were not Good speakers, they still were successful. But if you've got a good startup idea, you've got some good engineering skills and you're a good speaker, you put that together and it is an even more powerful mix that will help you rise even faster. So wish you a lot of luck there. By the way, without sounding too self serving, I continue to have startup ideas of my own that require software skills that help people use the power of computing and artificial intelligence to become a better speaker. So drop me a line and I'll. I'll send you a business plan. Maybe we can figure out a way of working together and marrying your causes. So Madhav, just drop me a line and you can find my emails on my websites in the About Us section or contact me on any social media. Let me know how to reach you. Okay, let's go to Yvette. I'm very expressive and do not have any problems talking to people one on one. Having said that, my biggest hesitation is being on camera. What is your advice on beating the hesitation on camera? Okay, so again, you're not unusual or uncommon. A lot of people I know, great speakers, hate the camera. Why is that? I'm going to hit record because this is something I think a lot of people can relate to. What do you do if you're a good speaker but you hate, hate, hate the idea of speaking in front of one of those. A camera. What's the source of this? The problem is most of us are used to looking at ourselves in a mirror. And when we see ourselves on video, it just looks different. We hear our own voice. We don't like the sound of our own voice. We don't like some aspect of our face. I can look at my face. Oh, tj, you're getting a double chin. Your eyes are beady. Where'd that hair go? We all have things we don't like. So somehow it feels like we're more vulnerable if we're showing the whole world ourselves in front of a video camera. Because it's not incorrect to assume once you're on video, it could go everywhere. Big, billions of people could see it. If you're comfortable speaking to five people or 10 or even 50, there's that comfort of knowing, okay, I see these people see me. But this is a relatively small group. Maybe I'm comfortable with them. Maybe I like them. I know they like me. This is a safe, warm environment. But a video camera? Well, the whole world could see it. So it's not a completely irrational fear. Let's step back. What's causing that. Part of it is we all have some element of vanity. I have vanity. I've got makeup on right now. I took the time to put on what I hope you think is a nice suit. I took the time to create some backdrop and special lighting for you. So all of us naturally want to look our best and sound our best. But yet so many of us, when it comes to actually pushing that button to record when we're in front of a video camera, we can't do it or we don't do it. I shouldn't say we can't do it. We don't do it because it's taking us out of our comfort zone. My recommendation is let's lower the standards. Let's lower the expectations before we even start. My recommendation is just pick up your cell phone, hit record, and talk to yourself with the idea that you're never, ever, ever going to show it to anyone. What I want you to do is record yourself. I don't care what you say, but just talk. Can be for 15 seconds, but then I want you to look at it. Now, here's the hard part that you're not going to like. I want you to watch 15 seconds of yourself. Don't show it to anyone else. And I want you to just focus on what you like. Try to isolate something you like. Maybe you like your voice. Maybe you like the expressiveness of your face. Everyone, and I mean everyone, does something right. You may think it's awful or boring, but maybe your volume is okay. Maybe you're bringing your eyebrows up and they're expressive. Those are good things. Now, this is hard to do when you're not with a coach or a trainer, which is one of the reasons why people hire someone like me to give that dispassionate feedback to tell you what you're doing well, but you can do it, too. Then do another one. Just 10 seconds. Watch it again, and see if you make even one tiny improvement. Then do it again. Focus on trying to change one thing. Don't look at yourself and say, well, I said too many ums, my head was crooked, I spoke too quickly, I seemed nervous, and I need more hand motion. So I'm going to change all that in the next one. Don't get greedy. Don't try to change five or 10 things. Focus on making just one improvement in your next take. Do it again and just spend five minutes of this a day. Because if you're doing it for 10 seconds, 15 seconds, watching it, thinking, doing another one. I mean, you can do at least 10 of these in five minutes and have time left over. So I'm asking for five minutes a day. Do that for a week, and I guarantee you, you will be more comfortable speaking in front of a camera. And just do things like when you're talking to friends and family, if you have FaceTime or WhatsApp, put the video on. You're probably already doing that and you're focused on talking to a family member or friend. Get used to speaking in front of video and use that to build your confidence. Because if you use WhatsApp to talk to a friend and the video camera was on, that's only a small step away from speaking on Zoom. In a business meeting, a lot of people like to hide behind turning that camera off. Well, listen, I may even ask a question, I may turn my microphone on, but I don't want to turn the camera on. Get over it. If you are in a business meeting on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, any of those platforms, turn your camera on. Even if you're not going to speak, it will build confidence in you. Because you're now used to appearing on camera, you can think about things like how to look your best, how to sit, how to come across as more confidence. The more time you spend on camera, the easier it is to be comfortable on camera, whether you are speaking or not. So that's what I want you to focus on for the next week. Give me five minutes a day you don't have to show anyone else. Then gradually work your way up whether it's appearing live on Zoom. Then maybe you take the next step and you just share with family and friends on Facebook. Make a video just for your family and friends where you talk about some hobby or some vacation, something you've done that you think would be of interest to other people. Share that and you can build your confidence. And before you know it, you might be a media hog like me and live streaming three hours a day and putting out a hundred videos a month. Now, you don't have to do that much, but these things do build on each other. So please give it a try. Okay, so I'm going to hit stop there and back to camera three. So I just wanted to make sure I responded to Yvette's comments. And so that's that you're asking really, is that the way? How do you beat your hesitation on camera? You've got to look for ways that aren't scary. If you literally know no one else will ever see it and you can record it and look at it and it's just for you. And you can hit delete. It's not scary. It's like very few people would be comfortable walking completely naked through Times Square. I wouldn't be comfortable. But most people can stand in front of a mirror in their bathroom after they get out of the shower or bath. And it's not that scary because, you know, there's no one else in the room. I can see it. No one else will. I want you to think of it in those terms that you're that comfortable. Okay, I am going to have to sign off now, but we will. I will try to come back to you at 11:00am Eastern Time. I have to sort of put my own skills into use. I'll be giving a new business pitch in a pitch meeting on Zoom at the top of the hour. So I'm going to have to sign off. And Madhav says, I'm working on my startup and also do some small philanthropy. Well, that's great. And Madhav, having your own startup is a fantastic opportunity to build presentation skills because there are thousands and thousands of conferences all over the world, many of them online, that want entrepreneurs to give pitches for their business in front of investors. So you could be giving eight speeches a day if you wanted to. It's a great way of learning. And you say you're a learning machine. Oh, I'm a learning machine. Learning and AI, I guess that's your expertise. So that's fantastic. Yvette says, oh my gosh, yes, I'm hoping that was helpful. And she says, thank you. Faith says, hi, I'm from Turkey. I've learned a lot from your videos on Udemy. Well, that's nice to hear. Can you tell me which course you're in on Udemy? And by the way, if you're watching this for the first time and you don't know who I am or you've never heard of Udemy, I have done training of presidents and prime ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners around the world for 40 years. For the last 10 years, in addition to doing that, I've conducted a couple hundred courses on Udemy and have a couple million students. So it sounds like Faith is a part of that. So, yeah, Faith, let me know. According to my view, please make short lists with background sounds and your original video. Just like a podcast, it will go viral. Well, Matt, if I do continue to experiment and my editing team continues to experiment, we'll try that. And we're constantly looking for new ways of reaching more people. And Faith says she's in the fear of public speaking course. So I hope that was helpful. And I. Look, not everyone gets to the point where they absolutely love, love, love speaking and would love to give a speech in front of 10,000 people twice a day. But you can get to the point where you realize it's a tool like anything else. You might not love going to the grocery store, but if you need groceries, you don't fear going to the grocery store. You just hop in the car, you walk to it, and you go. I want you to feel that you can be just as proficient in your speaking skills as any other important skill in life. Hey, come back. And I appreciate all of you joining me for this live session. I have to hop off now, but I'll try to come back in about an hour and 12 minutes. Thanks. See you then.