Speaker TJ Walker emphasizes crafting engaging but not misleading titles to draw online audiences, and warns against relying on gimmicks or "magic pills" (specifically cautioning about beta blockers) for public speaking. The primary focus is on keeping the audience engaged—listening, understanding, and remembering—rather than simply calming the speaker. The excerpt ends with Walker briefly describing his coaching offerings (online courses, monthly NYC workshops, private/group trainings).
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This magic pill will cure you of your od, your oratorical dysfunction. Okay, what did I do there? I'm trying to be glib, catchy, trying to come up with a catchy title to draw you in and to sound like other clickbait types of email. I apologize for doing that if it seems too gimmicky, but I do it for a point. Really, for two main points. Number one, if you are going to be communicating on the Internet, you do need to give some real thought to a title that's interesting to people and yet not too misleading. And I hope I wasn't too misleading to you. You've got to draw people's attention because if they don't initially express some interest in you and click on you, you're not going to communicate any message. So you do need to give some thought to coming up with a title, whether it's a title of your speech, a title of your video, to draw people in. But the other reason I do this title is I want to have people focus on avoiding gimmicks. There is no magic pill. Now, there are beta blockers that will help you become less nervous when you speak. I do not recommend that you use them. In fact, I had someone on my YouTube channel just the other day say beta blockers ruined his life. I'm not going to guarantee that beta blockers will ruin your life, but a pill that calms you down. You may feel better when you're speaking, but to everyone else, you may look and sound like a zombie. Your goal when you're speaking is not for you to be calm. That's not the emotional state we should be worried about. The emotional state we need to worry about is your audience. We specifically don't want them bored. We specifically don't want them sleeping. We specifically don't want them tuning out, reading email. We want them listening to you, engaged, understanding you, and remembering your messages so that you can influence them to take some action. So get rid of the magic pills. They will not help. I'm TJ Walker. I help people speak more effectively because how you present your ideas is the number one factor in your success. If you want to become a better speaker, I'd love to work with you and help you. I've got online courses available that you can start learning right now from any time in the world. I have public workshops where anyone can come in New York City once a month. They're relatively inexpensive. You get on camera a dozen times in a day. And then I have private one on one trainings and group workshops all over the world. I come to you. If you're interested, give me a call or check out the website.
