Seek Out Every Possible Speaking Opportunity

World class stand up comedians perform. They perform regularly. They perform often. Some of them perform five times a night, five nights a week, sometimes seven nights a week. The more they perform, the better they get. That's true in a lot of skills. Great cooks tend to cook daily. They don't cook once a year. They don't cook a meal once every four months. They cook regularly, typically daily. If you want to be a great speaker, my advice is seek out every single opportunity you can to speak. Every time you speak, you have at least an opportunity to get better. You have an opportunity to get more comfortable. You have an opportunity to practice various techniques and an opportunity to fail, which is a good thing. These days. It has never been easier to find opportunities to speak. For starters, just pull out your cell phone, record a video, post it on YouTube. Maybe 5,000 people watch, maybe 5 million, maybe just 5. Five people is better than none. I speak. I'm not asking you to be me, but I speak seven days a week. Now. I often record in batches. I might record typically eight of my main podcast shows in one day. I've taped as many as 100 video segments in a day. But it's rare that I go a week without speaking to either a live audience in person through a live Skype video format, on a webinar, certainly on YouTube videos, if not every day, certainly the total number averages daily. And that's one reason why you might not think I'm a great speaker, you might not love me, but I'm pretty comfortable at this. I'm pretty confident at this. A number of people do think that I'm articulate and a good speaker, even though not everybody loves me. It's not because of any natural inborn talent. In fact, I wish I had videos of my first TV commentaries that I did back in, I believe, 1983, when I was a student at Duke University. I was stiff, wooden, monotone, low energy, all of it awful. But I've done more than 10,000 videos since then. So it's like anything else. The more you do it, the better you get. I'm not saying you have to say yes to five different Rotary Club and Kiwanis speeches every day and drive around crazy looking for three people to speak to. But if you want to get better, seek out opportunities. Make yourself available as a speaker, as a presenter, as a panelist, as a moderator. And certainly you can make yourself available to your own social media network by posting videos and audios, have your own podcast, have your own show on YouTube, Facebook, live video. There's so many different formats. Pick one that you like, that you're comfortable with, and do it on a regular basis. Now, I go to the extreme of I'm walking down the street and I see a TV crew. I always ask, what's the topic? And I'll do an interview on the subject. And this sometimes annoys my family because we can be at a park or a parking lot. In the grocery store, I see a TV camera and I'm doing an interview. Now, typically, it doesn't last for more than three minutes, but every interview I do is another type of speech that makes it easier to do the next one. It's a basic philosophy. The more you do it, the easier it gets, the more comfortable you get. So that's my tip of the day. You want to be a great speaker? Speak often anywhere you can.