TJ Walker opens a beginner-focused public speaking course by normalizing nervousness and promising practical tips to appear comfortable and confident on stage. He emphasizes that everyone—regardless of status—gets nervous, cites over 30 years of training high-profile leaders to establish credibility, and frames the course goal as teaching techniques to "fool" an audience into perceiving confidence.
Chapters
Let me let you in on a little secret. If you are a beginner public speaker, as I assume you are, because you've signed up for this course, you're going to be nervous, you're going to be uncomfortable. That's okay. Everybody is nervous when it comes to public speaking. For more than 30 years, I've trained presidents of countries, prime ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners, US Senators, members of parliament, you name it. Everybody gets nervous before they speak, so don't worry about it. This course is going to help you get to the point where maybe you're not completely relaxed, but you'll know how to fool the audience into thinking you're completely comfortable. So much of what makes us worried when we speak is we're thinking, oh, they're laughing at me. They think I'm a beginner at public speaking, and they're right, and they can tell how scared I am. Perfectly rational thought. But if you know in advance how to look comfortable, confident, come across relaxed, and you know you're fooling your audience, it actually becomes extremely difficult to be nervous when you're speaking. So that's what this course is going to do, give you more and more tips on how to come across comfortable, confident and relaxed.