TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

Is prezi a scam? Folks, you may have heard of this software program, this platform called Prezi. Over the last few years, it gets a lot of nice buzz, a lot of good attention, and it is something that is supposed to replace PowerPoint and it has all sorts of swishes and ins and outs and colorful. Here's the problem I have with it. I just don't have any evidence that it actually helps people communicate more effectively. My big fear is that people are so focused on creating the little gizmos and the special effects, they don't do the one thing they should be doing, which is making sure they have an interesting speech and practicing on video. So I was struck when in the course of my preparations for you, I look at all newsletters, websites dealing with public speaking and I found a video posted of the founder of Prezi. And here's what was intriguing to me. His speech was a great speech. And I've linked to it@mediatrainingworldwide.com in the news section so you can see the link under today's program there. Judge for yourself. Now what you'll see is sort of a squeeze frame of him at the bottom and then all these little swishes and zoop de doops. But I would submit that his speech was great because he had some passion. He told stories, he gave examples, he had some emotion. That's what made it a great speech. I would also submit that for the typical business speaker who doesn't tell stories, who doesn't give examples, who doesn't speak with passion, Prezi isn't going to turn that into a great speech. So I'd like to know from some of you what your thoughts are on Prezi. I'm not a Luddite, folks. I'm all in favor of technology. Believe me, I'm using all kinds of technology right now to communicate with you. But what I don't want to do is use technology as a crutch to avoid the fundamental task of communication, which is do you really have an idea that is important and interesting to your audience and have you made it memorable and are you doing everything you can to come across well yourself? So that's my big debate with Prezi. I'm happy to hear from you. If you'd like to weigh in on this debate. Send me Communicate on Twitter's easiest, jwalker. You can also post a comment whether you're watching this on Facebook, on YouTube or at mediatrainingworldwide.com like to hear from you on that. Folks, this is, this show is Brought to you by Media Training Worldwide. If you would like a free, no obligation online public speaking or media training course, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and you can sign up today for a free seven day course. So please take advantage of that if you haven't done so yet. In our body language segment today, in every one of our shows we do have a segment on body language and you're going to learn some very specific tips on how to come across your very best. Anytime you're speaking in front of people now, you see what I'm doing now by looking up. If you're on a video camera and you're looking up, you are going to look uncertain of yourself. You're going to look nervous, uncomfortable, like I don't know what to say. Let me make up something. So the key is don't look up when you are on camera. If you're giving a speech, it's okay. The problem with a video camera is your eyes become the most noticeable thing on screen. The other problem is that it's completely normal to look up when you're thinking. But on TV, on video, on YouTube, it looks bad. It looks like you're just guessing, making up stuff. So here's the body language tip of the day. If you have to look away for a moment, look down. You look down for a second on video, you'll look thoughtful. If you look up, you look like you're just making up stuff. Behind the news segment, there was a story that came out earlier this week involving Virgin Airlines, an organization that typically is pretty savvy with its public relations and its reputation. But apparently there was a customer of theirs, a prominent Texas lawyer named Robert Abtai and forgive me, I couldn't find any pronunciation code for his name, he's not a public figure. But he was kicked off a flight coming back from the Caribbean into the United States. And it turns out that it was just because one of the, I guess stewards, one of the personnel from the airplane, didn't like that he called, cut them off, going into a revolving door and that was enough to get him banned. Folks, this is a bit of a black, a minor black guy for Virgin Airlines. I do think they handled it well after the fact. They apologized, gave the gentleman in question free tickets, free round trip tickets. But here's what really intrigued me. This Texas lawyer, Robert Abtahi, was extremely savvy. He said he accepted their apology. He didn't accuse them of racism. Apparently he is originally of Middle Eastern descent. He said he was on vacation, had not Shaven in several days, was asked, do you think you were discriminated against because you were profiled? He said, you know, it's always in the back of your mind, but I'm not going to jump to conclusions. I'm not going to assume the most negative. He really came across as a class act. The final thing he did is he was donated two tickets, round trip tickets anywhere, and he asked that Virgin Airlines donate those tickets to a favorite nonprofit charity of his choice. And he named the charity. You can read more about this in the New York Times. I've linked to the story in the show Notes today, which you can read@mediatrainingworldwide.com in the news section. Okay, we're starting another segment in the program that you'll be hearing from time to time, and I call it just the Bad Advice segment of the day. When it comes to public speaking training, media training, anybody can call themselves an expert. There's no certification that's meaningful. There's no accreditation that is in any way meaningful. So here's one of my pet peeves. I see it all the time and I hear it from people who I otherwise respect. But here's the advice that you're supposed to visualize success with your speech or visualize success with your media interview. Here's my problem with this advice. Imagine I said to you, okay, you've come to me to be your driving instructor. I'm a driver's ed teacher. Let's get in the car. Let's start driving. Now close your eyes and visualize yourself navigating down the streets and stopping in the right place and avoiding traffic. How'd that make you feel about me as a driver's ed instructor? I think you'd probably say, this guy TJ is crazy. He's insane. He's going to get somebody killed. There's no need to visualize yourself driving. You can just open your eyes and see where the car's going. If you don't like that analogy, think of it this way. You are about to put on makeup. And I realize some of you men might not be able to relate to this quite as much. But for you people who do wear makeup regularly, imagine that someone said to you, okay, go home, find a room with no mirrors. Put your makeup on just by feeling it. And now visualize yourself looking beautiful. Would you trust the advice of that person? I think you would say, that's crazy. I'm going to look in a mirror so I can actually see. Do I have powder here, rouge here, lipstick here? You would actually want to see it. And you wouldn't want to leave the house until you could see your face with the makeup as you wanted it. Well, here's the analogy with public speaking. Rather than try to close your eyes and use your imagination to visualize yourself giving a great speech, why not just give a great speech, video, record it and watch it? Now, when I started this business 30 years ago, you had a good excuse. Video cameras were rare, expensive, time consuming, cumbersome. But these days, we all have video cameras. We're surrounded by by video cameras. Every smartphone is a video camera. So I actually think it is a horrific waste of time, energy and effort to visualize your speech. Visualize your speech doing well when you've got the ultimate visualization tool, just watching a video of yourself. So forget all this visualizing the great speech and how you're going to do it. Actually, just practice your speech on video. Watch it. That's the ultimate visual tool, watching yourself do it well. So that's what I consider horrifically bad advice. So please don't let anyone talk you into that. The ultimate visualization tool. Watch yourself, give a great speech. Now, I also want to put a spotlight on good advice. I came across an article from the Accidental Communicator, who's a very savvy expert on communication issues. I've linked to the article on my blog at Media Training Worldwide and it is entitled Bouncing Back from a really Bad Speech. All of us have bad days. I've had speeches where I've been booed off the stage. The key is you've got to learn from it. You've got to figure out what could you do better? How could you have improved? What did you do wrong that you really shouldn't have done wrong? How could you have read the audience better? So this particular article is full of great advice. The biggest advice, of course, is don't let that scar you and never speak again. All of us had some paper or article we wrote at some point in school where the teacher was critical and said, this is poorly written. We didn't say, well, I'll never write again as long as I. I'll never write an email again. No, you have to learn and get better. It's exactly the same thing with speaking. So take a look at this article@theaccidentalcommunicator.com and again, I've linked to it from my website. By the way, folks, if you want to get better at your public speaking, then I urge you, go to Media Training Worldwide and just sign up for the free online public speaking course. It's available at no obligation and you can learn on your own time anywhere, anytime. Now it's time for our segment on questions from viewers. I had a question. This is from Mike. He's asking me, TJ, should I change my accent? I have a strong regional accent. This is a question I get fairly often. There is a whole industry of accent specialist accent reduction experts. Here's my advice. Focus your energy on having something interesting to say and say it in a memorable way. That's a far rarer thing to have. There are plenty of people who have accents that sound like the perfect blended in inoffensive accent and they're horrible communicators because they're boring. They don't say anything interesting or memorable. So I don't really think audiences give a lot of credit just because they're hearing an accent that's familiar to them. Whereas I know audiences give credit to speakers who are interesting and memorable because that's rare. Folks, our time on this earth is limited. It's finite. So that's why I recommend use your time where it's most wisely spent. And trying to sand off rough edges on an accent I don't really find to be a high value proposition. Plus look at all the wildly successful people who have non standard accents, at least for the North American audience I'm addressing mostly here. Deepak Chopra has a strong Indian accent, a lot more successful than I am. Arianna Huffington, strong Greek accent, a lot richer and more successful than I am. So keep in mind if you're going to focus energy on improving your communication, focus on being interesting and memorable and practicing on video. Don't go down this rabbit hole, this major time suck of trying to eliminate a regional accent. I really don't think that's a wise use of time. Now time for Question of the Day from me to you. I would like to know who is your favorite business leader as a speaker today. Someone who is active, alive and currently in a position of power. So not Steve Jobs. He's not with us anymore. And not Jack Welch. He's no longer still alive, but he's not the CEO of General Electric. I'd like to know who you think is the best public speaker around today. Post your comments, Send me a tweet jwalker or post your comments whether you're watching this on Facebook, YouTube or any other platform. Now I wanted to delve into sort of the inside behind the scenes of the media. Training, presentation, training, craft. And a story caught my eye. This is coming From England, a member of Parliament, a junior health minister. I believe it's even in a local government, it might not even be. Parliament was offended that he was never offered media training and some of his fellow colleagues were. And it was a county council, I'm sorry, not the member, not a member of Parliament, but a county council in Great Britain. And it turns out they had spent 4,000 pounds, a little less than $7,000 US hiring. Not me, but somebody like me, a media trainer. And this was a little bit of a controversy, folks. I see this from time to time. And excuse me for appearing self interested, but I think this is ludicrous. Anytime organizations and people in the media and political observers criticize politicians for getting media training, Government, democratic government doesn't work without consent of the governed, without an understanding of the public from the governed. Political reporters, reporters in general go to school every day. Sometimes four years, they get masters, sometimes six years on how to ask tough questions, how to put together a story. And yet most politicians receive zero training on how to communicate with the public on what they are trying to do to advance public policy to benefit people. So, so there's a huge imbalance. Six years of training versus zero days of training. So when a politician wants to learn how to communicate more effectively, it's not about how to lie and spin and obfuscate. It's about how to communicate to the public why their policies are justified, why it can be helpful. So I have to applaud it. And those who condemn it, I think are highly, highly short sighted. Those of. You know, occasionally from time to time on this program, we like to put a spotlight on the good folks at Toastmasters because of any organization in the world, this is the group that I believe most selflessly helps people with their communication skills and is an organization just devoted to celebrating good communication and helping people learn more. So a little bit of a shout out to the Killeen, Texas Toastmasters. They're celebrating their 90th anniversary. 90 years is a heck of a long time, ladies and gentlemen, and this is a town. Forgive me if I'm not even pronouncing the name of the town correctly, but it's a small town in Texas and their Toastmasters group has been around for 90 years. That is a fantastic accomplishment. Keep up the good work and continue to service the community of people who actually care about public speaking and want to get better and better. We also have a community spotlight here in the program. I wanted to bring your attention to one of my colleagues in the profession. Nick Morgan does a fantastic job. He writes at Forbes and other places. He has an article on what the body language mysteries of the presidential campaign 2016 are so far. And I thought he had just had an excellent analysis of all the presidential candidates, the strengths, the weaknesses. Now, I've been doing that, too, but he caught some details that I didn't. For example, he noticed that Ted Cruz has sort of a lopsided look on his face that appears to be a snarl, which makes him come across as angry. Well, for those who are genuinely angry at the political system, who hate the insiders, who want change, this is a huge plus. This makes Ted Cruz more appealing to them. But to a lot of other voters who aren't angry, it can be a big turnoff and it can be a little bit scary. So amazingly sophisticated analysis from Nick Morgan, which is what we expect from him. I'll link to the story on my site@mediatrainingworldwide.com Take a look at it. I think you'll find it quite intriguing. So thanks for joining me today. Again, this program is brought to you by mediatrainingworldwide.com for all of your media presentation training, whether it's online, on demand, in person training, private workshops. That's what we do. Give me a call anytime at 212-764-4955. I'm T.J. walker, and I hope all of your speaking opportunities in life are a huge success.