From Introvert to Public Speaking and Taking New Risks

All right, so let's get it going. So today I'm going to talk with Veronica about public speaking, and Veronica has a very successful public speaking bootcamp she runs for quite some time. And I want to hear from her how she does that. What is public speaking? How do people go from being introverts and afraid of talking in front of other people, how do they go from that stage to being a public speaker and even selling stuff online? So I had a very short conversation with Veronica before this, before we started the live, and it was super interesting. So I think you're going to have learned a lot from this one. So my name is Aurel. I'm the founder of Writestack, the number one tool for Substack creators. And Veronica, Introduce yourself.

Hi everyone. So this is Veronica. I'm the founder of the Lemon Tree Mindset, which is all about mindset and business strategies to grow your own creative business. And I also have the Spanish version of it, which is El Limonero. And as Isabel was saying, besides writing, I'm also a public speaker, but I'm an introvert public speaker. So I think that's an important mention there. And I only became a public speaker in my 40s after having been pretty much terrified my entire life of speaking. So I think, uh, Today we're definitely gonna talk about how to overcome those fears and those demons when it comes to going on stage or going live.

Yeah, that's interesting to learn from someone who was an introvert and became a public speaker like you. I think it's the best way to learn because you know all the fears that the introverts have, right? So, so yeah, tell us a little bit about the bootcamp that you're running and have been running for quite some time. And yeah, let's get into it a little bit. Uh, what do you teach there?

Yeah, sure. So, so let me, let me share a little bit about, about the journey. So now I've been speaking in public for 4 years, I would say, and 3 of, out of those 4 have been as a paid speaker. And I work with big organizations like Fortune 500, big banks like UBS, S&P Global, large retail organizations. I went really from zero. To these big clients. And it was really a journey. And the key thing, and one of the things that I talk about in my bootcamp as well, is first overcoming the mind roadblocks that we create ourselves because our biggest enemy when it comes to public speaking is really in your mind and is the stories that you create about yourself. Like, I'm not good enough, or I'm not a natural, or I'm an introvert, or I have an accent. And I know Because I used to have all those fears. And so the journey is that now I'm 4 years into this public speaking career, and I realized that besides doing the public speaking myself, I really wanted to empower other people to be able to go on stage, to go live like we're doing today and not feeling like, oh my God, I'm going to die, to be able to join a fireside chat without a script and feeling comfortable. This week, and I've done it multiple times, I went on a walk and talk Literally, I was on the track, no makeup, all sweaty, speaking in public to my community. And it's just an incredible feeling to feel confident to share your message without having all these demons and all these dark voices that are telling you that you can't do it or you're not good enough. And so that's why 4 years into this journey, I realized I want to pass the baton and I want to help other people conquer their fears and be able to do those things, not only for their business, but also for their own personal development. And so I came up with this idea, like I want to do this, but I didn't know how I was going to empower whoever wanted to join this public speaking journey with me. And so it was relatively recent in June. I decided that I was going to launch a bootcamp. Actually, I decided in May that I was going to do it in June. And so I first put it out there, hey, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to put together this bootcamp. It's really to help you do 3 things. Get started, all the infrastructure that you need to become a speaker, get traction, how you actually start to get people interested in what you're doing, how you start to have opportunities that at that point are free, and then the third step is how you get paid. It's really the monetization, how you talk to corporates, how you translate your topic into a benefit for an organization, and one of the things that was really cool, and I really wanted to talk about this, is selling this product before you actually create it. And I'm not just talking about public speaking, but this idea that you don't need to spend hours developing a product before you actually confirm that there is a demand. And so I went to my community and I said, this is what I want to do. This is the outline. This is my credibility. This is what I've achieved. Is this something that you'd be interested in? The moment I had the 3 or 4 people who said, yes, I'm in, I pay, That's how I started to, to develop it. So I'm going to pause here because I think I talked about quite a few things that we can drop.

That's crazy. I mean, the way that you started, um, is just sending a message, I assume, on the newsletter chat. Yeah. And just people—

Yeah. The newsletter chat and, uh, and also just a newsletter and anyone can do this. Like, think about a skill that you have. Let's say, for example, Obel, that you want to Create a course or a workshop that is how to go live on Substack, for example. And before you develop the whole thing and you spend hours and a bunch of time creating it, you go to your community and say, hey, this is Isabelle. I've done 50 live sessions. I feel confident. These are the results that I have. I would love to create this workshop to teach you how to go live, how to feel comfortable, what you do afterwards. And you actually sell the product, you sell the prototype. And if no one buys it, you're like, That's fine. I didn't develop, didn't spend a lot of hours on these.

Right. I love it, uh, by the way, which is a good way to go about trying to sell, uh, new things is if you're already doing something and you can monetize it, um, you don't have to build like, so let's say it's a bootcamp or a mastermind or, or, or a course or something like that. You don't have to build the slides. You don't have to know what you're going to talk about. You first need to Figure out if there are people who want, who even want it, who would pay for it, right? And then once you get people signing up and wanting to pay for it and even paying for it before you have anything ready, you'll be motivated enough to get it, to get it working, to start working on that bootcamp course, whatever you do, mastermind, and just make it as best as you can, right? And then You're going to learn from that. Like when you do it for the first time, it's probably not going to be, uh, super duper clean and, uh, good, right? In the beginning for you, how was, how was your first bootcamp?

So honestly, I treated it as a beta workshop or bootcamp, and I told people, I was very transparent. I said, hey, this is the first time I'm doing this. And, uh, because I was so open about it, I said, my goal is really to give you the best possible experience. So feel free. To give me feedback. I love to know how to make it better. It didn't feel like I was pretending to be something that I wasn't, and it felt that it was very honest and that I was able to get that feedback in the moment. Also, one thing that was great is that I started quite small, and you don't have to do something huge to be successful. That's another message that I think is important. In my case, the first one only had maybe 5 or 6 people. Which was the perfect number to be able to make it small enough so that I felt comfortable and I wasn't super intimidated, but it was big enough that it was quite financially viable because a bootcamp obviously has a much higher price than if it's a digital course, for example, or a subscription.

Yeah. Yeah. And I love it that you look for the feedback. I think that's probably the most important thing you need to learn. What worked and what didn't. And when you have a small group, and actually I'm running something similar right now, and you just got me thinking maybe I should limit it, the amount of people, because it's the first time that I run a workshop, a 90-minute workshop, and maybe I should limit the amount of people just to learn how it works, what I do good, what I do bad, and improve, and not just let everybody pile in. Um, for the first time. So, uh, yeah, I think I'm going to limit it for the workshop that I'm running. Um, so yeah. And how do you go about getting people right now? You said you've been running it through, uh, from May or June until now, right?

Yeah. So I did, uh, one in June and, uh, because the feedback was quite positive and I always try to have a community that is inclusive and being inclusive is very hard when you work with all the different time zones. So I then did the second one on the Europe/UK/Africa time zone. So I did the second one and in that one I got maybe 8 people or so. And then earlier this month I run, or last month in September, I run the third one, which was quite big. I had 10 people and I'm trying to put a max of 10 or 12 people because I want it to be boutique. I want it to be exclusive. Things don't have to be big to be great. And so now tomorrow I'm actually kicking off The 4th one. So it's going quite, I'm doing it quite frequently. And one of the things that I'm loving is that because people who have come through the program have started to see success, and by success, I mean starting to speak on podcasts. One of them got her first paid gig. Another one is participating on a big event here in Hong Kong where I'm also a speaker. So those people are naturally referring their friends And their connections to me. And so it's becoming a really nice way of growing this program organically. And I think it'll be the same for you if you do a workshop where people really get value from it and they feel, hey, this was money and time really well spent. They are actually proactively going to recommend it to their own connections.

Yeah. Yeah. Patricia here asks, how do you know when you are ready to scale? Because I feel too comfortable with few people and I need to avoid big groups. Uh, but financially I need it. But financially I need it. So I think like Veronica says, um, you don't have to, um, to get a big group to make it financially viable for you, right? If, if you're doing something good, let's say that you run some sort of a workshop every week or something or month, and you get good testimonials from people and people love what you do and they tell their friends about it. So the first thing that you can do is raise the price, right? Because if a lot of people want it and they love it, you can just raise the price to make it more financially viable for you and keep it small and boutique so everybody learns and gets the most out of it at the same time, right? Like Veronica does. And so that way it's a win-win situation. And then you can keep the groups very small and make it financially viable.

I love this. And to build on Patricia's question, because I think it is a really, really valid question that very often there's this pressure of How do we scale? And we always think that scale is about more people and more things. And sometimes it's just about going deeper with what you have. So, Obel's point is really good on, you can, yes, you can increase the prices. In my case, one thing that works really well is inside that small cohort, which for me is the perfect number. I don't want something huge because I love personalization and customization, and I love knowing the name of the participants and what they do. And I can tell you exactly who is joining tomorrow. What is their area of expertise? What is their genius zone that I call? And so another way that you have to scale is to give people options. You can have, and this is my case, I have basic option is only the bootcamp, the 3 sessions of the bootcamp. Then you have a more advanced option, which is the bootcamp and a digital course that I have on the very same topic on public speaking that is already published on Gumroad. So that is just bringing passive revenue, and I add that one more layer to my offer. And then the next one is, if you want a personalized session with me on public speaking, then you pay another fee. So you have many different ways of scaling. And one of the things that I love is that in my case, now that I've run this program 3 times, it feels very almost on autopilot in the sense that I exactly know the content. I know it so well that it doesn't require a lot of preparation. I still do preparation to customize it because I really want it to feel boutique and high touch, but the scale is there. The scale is in doing one program that you can rinse and repeat, have a bit of tweaks so that it really feels like it's personalized and it's much less work than having to do a different workshop on a different topic every single month.

Yeah. And to build on top of that, I love it that you talked about having several offers, right? Because Um, when you have several offers, you can give people more. If they like what you do, you can give them more, um, or just offer them different things because different people have different needs. And so if you have a lot of different, um, uh, types of content that you can sell or, or, uh, courses or things that you build or different, um, workshops, you can cater to, to many types of people, right? And then first you can make more money. And then make it financially viable for you. And like we said, still keep it small, but then you also give more to more people. The Medical Poet says topic, question mark. What do you mean? Hey, so I started doing the same for Writestack. So Writestack started stalling and there's a difference between building a SaaS business, a tool to running workshops and bootcamps because bootcamps are, you don't need to scale them to hundreds of people to make them viable, but with SaaS tools, you do need that. So what I did is since Writes That Grow stalled, I started thinking of more ways to get, first to get more signups, second to give people more offers to get things from me, from the knowledge that I have. That's why I run these workshop on the 21st, and I also added something that I hope will work well, and I created an AI, a specialized AI in WritesTech that has a lot of playbooks and data that I fed it, and so it's very smart, and I added on top of that, and it will be released soon, a plugin store. So essentially, I'm going to talk to big creators and get playbooks from them so they, so people can go into Writesduck, get this playbook, plug it into the AI, and it can help them with whatever it is, creating notes, growing paid subscribers, maybe even public speaking, right? And everything will be there. So, um, more offers, um, more offers will usually, uh, get you more people through the door. Yeah. Uh, Patricia says, thank you. In my case, the ICP, uh, needs a small price, so the suggestion from Veronica could work.

Um, yeah, one more thing. Yeah, there's, uh, there's one thing that I think it's very interesting as, uh, as creative entrepreneurs to consider. And is, for example, in the case of Patricia, you might have a new workshop or in your case, Isabel, that you're going to put together. That content of the workshop is actually this incredible raw material that you can use afterwards for creating a digital product. So let's say that you create a workshop on whatever topic that can actually become a digital course afterwards, a video course. It can become an e-guide, but another way of scaling is taking the product that you already have and turning it into a guide. And I do these all the time. I love serialization content, for example. So now I'm about to create another series that is on public speaking, on the actual skill of public speaking, how you use the mind, the body, the voice, and the text to be able to be comfortable speaking in public. I'm gonna do 4 live sessions on Substack, and then when I finish this, I want to pack the whole thing, elevate it, putting into a nice package with exercises and turn it into a course on Gumroad, which is the platform that I love using for everything that does digital products. So scaling is not only about huge things and more people, it's also about being creative and finding different ways of reaching different people Through different channels.

Yeah, I love that. That's accurate. And so yeah, for Patricia, just do more and more stuff. And by the way, you said that you're going to do 4 lives. So I have 2 questions about it. First, do you run them solo or with Sarah?

So these ones, yes, I do both. Sometimes I do them like today with someone else. When it's a series, I usually do them by myself because I want to make sure that it's very targeted. So the live sessions, I think they have to be intentional and they don't all serve the same purpose. Today is more a conversational one. We want to bring our audiences together talking about the topic of public speaking. However, when I want to use them as my own product, then I want to make sure that it's very targeted. And as I was saying, I'm not just going to go live to talk about the beauty of public speaking. It's very strategic. The first one is on The mindset, how you conquer your fears. The second one is going to be the body, how you use your body and your presence to own the room. Then I go into the voice, how the voice helps you have more composure and stay more calm and send your message. And then I go into the text. So you can do it however you want. I do recommend that when people are starting, going with someone else is better because in a way it's kind of, we're sharing the fear. But once you feel more comfortable, I think Going solo, it really allows you to go deeper into your topic of expertise and really have a much more strategic content to, for your audience.

Yeah. And the second thing that I wanted to ask you is, uh, tell us a little bit about, uh, what, what you, what you teach. Um, you said that you first, uh, need to control your body, um, and then control your fears and then you move on. So if you can give us a little taste of what, what it is.

Sure. So the very first thing that I talk about, the first session is actually on controlling the mindset. And a very important thing is the exercise of reframing. And very often we already have a story that we have created in our mind that works against us. For example, I used to think that because I'm an introvert, public speaking wasn't for me, or because I have an accent and English is not my first language, I would never be able to be a good public speaker. So every one of us has different things that holds them back. For some people, it might be the appearance or the voice, or they feel that they don't have anything interesting to say. They're not expert enough. So I talk a lot about how you can reframe that story. Then I also talk a lot about just being nervous. So many people, and it used to be me as well, were terrified Before speaking in public and you have these nerves and this adrenaline, and it's almost like you feel this out-of-body experience. And I talk about how you can really control it, how you can really focus on, I'm not nervous, I'm actually excited. I am very focused. This adrenaline actually works in my favor because I mean, it means that I have extra energy to be 100% here. So I talk a lot about these things. I talk also about visualization. I'm a triathlete. And for me, visualizing the end goal and what success looks like is really, really important. And so before I go into any session, I ask myself, what do I want to get out of these? And before I go into this session, for example, I was like, oh, I hope that people get something really actionable from these. But also I hope that Obella and I have a really great experience because I'm doing this for myself as well, because I want to have fun and I want to keep improving as a public speaker and as a creator. So these are some of the topics that I talk about when it comes to the mind. And then I do the same about the body and the voice. And my goal is to make it very, very practical. So that is not just abstract concepts, but I really tell people, like, for example, when I'm talking about preparing before the live session, I always say, hey, make sure you have water and you hydrate beforehand. And actually warm water is better because it's going to help you like really moisten the vocal cords much more than cold water.

Yeah, that's crazy. I've been to China. I want to share a story about how powerful reframing is. But in China, they give you hot water. If you ask for water, they give you hot water. You have to ask specifically for cold water. So it was very weird to me at first. But yeah, I have a story about reframing and how powerful it is and how I learned it. So when I was in China, we were in 2 amusement parks. One of them is Universal Studios, and the other is Disneyland, right? And so I'm afraid of scary roller coasters, and we didn't go on the scariest one on the Universal, but we did go— because I was scared, I didn't want to do it, I was shaking, all right? And when we went to Disneyland, I was so excited about Disneyland first, but they had this scary roller coaster which is sort of like a bike. You sit on a bike on the roller coaster. It's not sitting normally. And it looked so good. Amazing lights, blue lights everywhere. And I was so excited for it. I just wanted to try it, even though it was scary and my fiancée was shaking. She didn't want to do it, but I wanted, so she came with me. She's a hero. Um, and then it was scary. The roller coaster was super scary, but I had so much fun. It was probably one of the favorite things I did. In China. And after that, all I wanted to do was try more scary roller coasters and try to change the reframing. Because when I went to it as, I'm excited, it's going to be awesome, let's do it. It was, like I said, probably the top 3 things that I did in China. But when I was scared, I didn't want to do it. And it was just horrifying to me just to look at other people do it. So reframing and changing your mindset before you're going to do something that looks scary into it's going to be exciting, because usually it's the same feeling, these butterflies in the stomach and maybe even getting a little shaky if you're very scared and terrified like me. So changing it from I'm scared into I'm looking forward to it, it's going to be exciting, can be crazy helpful and change your entire feeling about the experience afterwards.

Totally. And to build on that, I love that example. It's quite funny actually, but I wouldn't go on those rides. I'm too scared. The positive self-talk, I also talk about that a lot because it really helps so much when you tell yourself, for example, instead of saying, oh my God, I don't know all the answers and what if it's not perfect? Now I tell myself it doesn't have to be perfect. If the 28 people who are now here, they're able to get one thing that is useful from this session, that's success already. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to have the perfect word in every single sentence. And that really helps you like to, oh my God, put all this pressure off and say, I don't need to have all the answers and I don't need to come across as perfect. You know, I always think of myself like how to make it functional rather than perfect. And I find that this type of reframing with the language also helps a lot. So for those of you who are listening today, if you're on the edge and you want a little push. So tell yourself it doesn't have to be perfect. Like these 2 people are doing it and they're having a good time going live. I can do it too. And you can do it too.

Yeah. You know, maybe we can try something, something like crazy right now. Maybe we can get someone who's scared or fear of going live. Maybe we can get them on stage right now. What do you think about it? If somebody wants to participate right now, we can add, I think, one people to this call and Talk to them. Um, and for now we'll just go over, uh, the messages. So Patricia says, uh, another challenge I find for introverts is selling and marketing. It's great that Veronica includes the monetization, uh, side, but today without those, it's a big— Yeah, I think it's always been a big blocker. If you, if you never market yourself, uh, nobody's going to know you. And if nobody knows you, then they won't buy from you or work with you. So, It's very important. Um, so yeah, I think, um, we have no volunteers right now. I think, uh, everybody wants to volunteer. That's okay.

Someone will put, uh, will put their hand up. I would love to build on Patricia's point because I think it's quite similar in a way, this idea of putting yourself out there, whether it's with public speaking or whether it's with selling. And again, finding the way that works for you. In my case, people laugh because I actually hate selling, but I stopped looking at it as selling. And I really think about helping others and serving my community. And instead of thinking, oh, I have to sell this to an audience, I'm thinking I'm going to help my community. And so it becomes so much easier because when I'm talking to someone, so I'm going to give an example, Rosemary, who is here. Hi, Rosemary. She's one of my founding members. It's really easy for me to go to someone that I've already met and say, hey, I think this program is great for you because of these and these and that reason. And instead of thinking of, me and my program and what I'm selling. I'm actually focusing on the other person and how they can benefit from it. And so that's why selling has become something that used to be very uncomfortable, but now it becomes very natural because it's the outcome. When you build that trust, when you've really nurtured that relationship with your community, and I've been doing this for more than 3 years, that sale is almost the outcome of everything else. So don't lead with a sale. Really think about helping and and serving and adding value to others. And then the result is that very often someone comes to you after a live session like today and they might say, hey, Obel, I love your story about the roller coaster. You know, I'd love to chat with you about how to overcome fears. Or they might come to me, hey, Veronica, I'm also an introvert. I'd love to see if you can help me with public speaking. And so it just becomes something that's very, very natural that it doesn't feel like this add-on that you put at the end, like, oh, now I have to add the CTA and have a call to action.

You know, the funny thing is I think that stories convert better than marketing emails. Like if you just share your story and how it helped you without even leaving a, uh, CTA at the end, it works so much better than writing a marketing email. And I, I myself really need to get this into my mind because I always think about creating a marketing email instead of just telling my story and that's it, which is far better. Um, it makes people connect to you. And if they're on the stage where they need your help, they'll know to connect you and ask you, how can you help me? Exactly. So that, um, and I wanted to ask you, uh, what do you think about, all right, so you say that you need to feel comfortable, you need to, to feel better about going, uh, live and you don't need to pressure yourself, but the pressure is still there no matter what, right? At least in the first times, um, you'll be stressed before you do anything, any public speaking. Right. So you do need to force yourself to do those uncomfortable things. So how do you suggest people to do it? Like just go at it? Because I personally, I'm quite different. What I do is I tell myself that I have to do it and then I go into some sort of a robot mode that I call it and I just do that thing. I don't care, whatever happens happens. Like if I need to send a scary message, I'll just hit the send and go away. I don't care. Right.

Yeah, it's so true. And one thing that's very true, sorry, I have the phone going on. One thing that's very true is that one way or the other, we're always nervous. And I think it was Roosevelt maybe that said that there are 2 types of speakers, the nervous and the liars. So that tells you everything that you need to know. So there's always that little hint of nervousness before doing something in public, not only speaking, actually doing anything in public because you expose yourself. I'm totally on board with what you said of it's gonna be hard and so you're gonna have to do it, but you don't have to do the 500-people presentation the first time. And so what you can do is really lower the bar. Is that in my case as a triathlete, I've done the Ironman, which is the biggest triathlon that there is out there, but it took me 2 years to get there. I started with the smallest possible triathlon, which is called a sprint. And then you start to work on those building blocks. And it's really the same with public speaking. What is something that is hard and is going to take you a little bit out of your comfort zone without making you die in the moment? And that could be, in my case, that small step was a prerecorded podcast. So there was no one, it was only me, and I was still nervous. I was doing this from my garage in Australia. That was my first experience with public speaking. It was not public at all, super private, but to me, It was a big thing to record something and then send it in public. And then the next step was to do a prerecorded podcast with another businesswoman. And then from there, I started to go a little bit bigger and I did my first live session and I did my first workshop that was only for my paid community. So you just go one step, one step, one step at a time. And every time you just get a little bit out of your comfort zone. And this approach is really what helped me to go from I'm terrified of pre-recording a podcast in my garage solo to speaking to more than 600 people in some of the keynotes that I do for corporate and feeling still nervous, but in control.

That's crazy. Speaking to 600 people is insane. Um, yeah. And, and what, uh, one more question that I had about it is you said that you contact people personally, right? So you go, you, you create a list and then you Uh, learn what you can about this person and you send them a direct message that's, uh, uh, personal for them. And by the way, do you use any AI for that?

No, I don't use AI for my writing. I hate AI for my writing. I use it for process. I use it for the boring stuff that I don't like. For the things that I love, writing, creating, it's really my voice. It's really me. It's really my messages. And so to give you a very real example, and it's just very timely, one of my bootcampers just happened to join. She's Sophie Guénon, which I see her name. Hello, Sophie. And she is actually one of the people, and she can confirm this herself, that I sent a personal message and I said, hey, Sophie, I'm going to host this bootcamp. It's for public speaking. I know that you're very big into your nutrition and your wellbeing. And I honestly think that public speaking is something that is really going to help you boost your profile and reach more people and eventually grow your business. And it wasn't a conversation about my bootcamp. It was a conversation about how Sophie, Can really benefit from joining a program that is going to be good for her business and even good for her life as a mom who is talking about nutrition, who is really trying to grow that part of her business. So it was amazing because she was super receptive and she really felt like I wasn't talking to— I wasn't AI. It was Veronica talking to Sophie and Veronica knew Sophie. And that's why this sale didn't feel like a sale. And here she is saying, yes, you did, because It was really a human-to-human conversation. And that's how I love doing sales because it doesn't feel like sales.

Yeah, it's amazing. Um, and did you know Sophie beforehand? Did you have a call or something?

We didn't have a call, but Sophie has been in my community for a long time. She was already a premium member and, uh, my community is relatively big now. I have more than 11,000 people. So of course I can't have that level of connection with everyone, but I do have a pretty deep level of connection with my premium members because I make, I make that effort. I make sure that I send them a personalized message that is Veronica, is not, is not AI. I look at what they do. I recommend them. I really want to know a little bit about them. So it takes a lot of work to get to the point where you go to a person like Sophie, knowing exactly what she does and why your product is going to be good for them. And that's a strategy. Yes, it takes more work, but it's work that I love doing. It's more high touch and it feels much more personalized, and I think people appreciate it.

Yeah, people do appreciate a personal touch. People, I think one of the, the favorite, most favorite thing people love about, uh, Writestack is the fact that I reply to all support tickets, right? Although I have AI to reply to, uh, simple stuff just to make sure people don't wait for me. I reply to everybody and even if AI replied to them and gave them an answer, I'll still say, hi, how was the AI? Let me know so I can improve it or something like that. Just that personal touch, especially in today's world, really leaves a mark on people and really makes them appreciate you even more and what you do, right? So I'm all in for personal touch and doing these things, sending personalized direct messages. And in fact, I'm going to do that right now. After this live and start looking for people who might be interested in my, um, workshop and send them a personalized direct message.

Love it. Love it. Yes. All for the high touch and the personalization.

Right. Great. So, uh, let's try it one more time. If anybody's interested, um, in going live and having a few minutes conversation, um, right now, uh, you can do it.

I'm gonna challenge Sophie because she joined the public speaking bootcamp. So Sophie, are you okay? Although she might be working, I don't know. She's in Australia. Um, but yeah, it'd be, it'll be great. I know that Patricia's saying yes, but she's in a car, so it might be a bit tricky. Oh, Patricia's saying yes. Okay.

Let's see. Let's see, Patricia.

Hmm. And, uh, for the, the rest who's joining us today, feel free to put your questions in the chat, or if you want to share your experience about public speaking, this is really an open conversation, so we're very happy to take it in. Whatever direction you want us to go.

Yeah. All right. So it's a little bit slow here. There you are. Okay. Send one invite. Let's see. Patricia, I sent you an invitation. Do you know Patricia, by the way?

No, I've just, I've just met, uh, I've just met Patricia, so I'm very excited to have a, a third, uh, co-host here.

It's the first time I do it, by the way.

Yeah. And I think that's really cool as well to try things on the go. None of us has ever done this, but you go, you put yourself out there, see if it works, see if it doesn't. And there we go.

All right, we have Patricia. Hello.

Hi.

Hi, how are you doing?

I'm doing well, but yeah, I was not prepared at all.

Okay, that's fine. That's great. Yeah, I'm happy that you're not prepared actually. It's much better this way. Um, do you do lives, by the way?

If I like lives? Is that the question?

No, do you run them yourself?

If I run what? Uh, the car, you mean?

No, the lives. Do you do lives?

No, no, this is the first time I'm live in Superstock.

Wow.

I wanted to test. So yeah, I said, okay, like I'm also introvert, right? But I realized that after doing this kind of things, right, I feel, I feel well because I helped, as Veronica was saying. So now I'm trying to put myself there, right? Um, try to do that step, right, that I never did. Um, and test. It's like, for me, everything is an experiment right now. So yeah, thank you for this opportunity because I was looking for this experience as well.

That's amazing. Wow. This is exciting. Yeah. Uh, what, what are you writing about?

So I write about leadership in the AI era, right? And The skills that you need, uh, for thriving, which in my opinion are emotional intelligence and AI. I started 2 years ago and I follow both of you since then. So I'm a subscriber.

Yeah.

Can I, can I just say, I think it's absolutely amazing that a woman who was scared until this very moment to go live just decides to go. Without a script. I can tell that you have a Spanish accent just like I do. So extra kudos for that. And just say, hey, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna step out of my comfort zone. So honestly, thank you so much because you're inspiring me. And now I'm thinking, what can I do to really get, put myself out there, something, do something that's really challenging because I think that's really how we grow.

Thank you. Yeah. Um, what I would like is to help as well. So. I want, I want to try this direction and you are also inspiring, Veronica, and also, yeah, like, thank you for doing this. That's amazing.

Yeah, that's amazing.

You answered a lot of questions that I have been asking to multiple people, right? And it's the first time that someone really answered me because maybe it was the first time I was talking with another introvert and you understood my question, right? So

yeah. Yeah. Totally. So where do we go from here? Do we have more questions from the other— actually, um, Patricia, since we have you, did you have any questions that you wanted to ask live now that we have you here?

You already asked— answered all of my questions, but, um, yeah, maybe about lives in Substack. Uh, how do you recommend to start doing lives in Substack, which is public speaking as well?

Yeah, I'm happy to go and then Obel can go from there. I can share how my first one was and what I was very afraid in the first one was first the technology, like something's going to go wrong. And so the first thing is being comfortable with what you're going to do and knowing the steps. But one thing that gave me a lot of reassurance was to have not a script, but I had a bit of a plan because I was afraid that I was just going to get nervous and lose my direction. And so what I did, And this is just one of the many ways that you have to start. I wrote down 8 questions that people often ask me. And so I didn't have a script, but I had a direction and I had a path. And, uh, if people had additional questions like you had today, that's great. But if people didn't have any questions, then I knew that I had my next bullet point. So having a little bit of a structure really helps. And when I talk about public speaking, I talk about these 4 different elements. I talk about the mind, I talk about the nonverbal language, the voice, and the text. When I talk about the text, one of the key messages really of that section is on how important it is to have clarity. If you're gonna talk about whatever topic, how are you gonna divide it? Very often I talk first about the why, the what, and the how, or you might talk about before, now, and after. But when you have like that clear message of what you want to achieve, then it makes it much easier because otherwise you start to ramble and you end up going in all these different directions and you don't know where you're going, so your audience doesn't know where they're going either.

That's a really good answer, right? It reminds me how I prepare, uh, meetings, right? With leaders, you prepare a list of questions, but more for knowing how to answer and feeling more relaxed, right? But it's the same, but for instead you will be saying the questions. Okay. Really nice tip.

And I do practically the same. I prepare a few questions and as the live goes on, I also write questions that I have so later on I can ask them. And I'm not, I mean, Veronica is super prepared. I'm not even close to that. I really need to work on a few things that I say, but I'm learning. And hey, like you say, I mean, I have so many things that I want to improve on my lives and the way that I speak and how I share who I am and what I do. And so I still do these lives because that's how you improve. You keep doing, you keep trying, you learn from it. And I also have a note, I mean, like a trans— transcriber, like Whisper that transcribes this call. Then later I go over it with AI to learn how I can improve. Um, so yeah, that's, that's just how, how you go. You try and try and you improve.

Perfect. Thank you.

You're welcome. Um, by the way, um, uh, if you have something that you want to share that you're doing a bootcamp course, feel free. Okay.

Yeah, I'm doing a cohort, right? Where I help people learn AI, um, in a team. So, and I put, it's kind of a bootcamp and it's with me. I'm kind of the coach and I lead the roadmap and I make sure that we launch for the date that we target. And if we don't do it right. While, while, while we do the course, right, we execute with Amazon good best practices because I have been working at Amazon for 10 years, right? And if we don't do it by the date that we put, we run a COE, which is correction of error that we do at Amazon as well when we cannot launch or when something happens, right? And yeah, so at the end everyone learns. We do it AI natively with AI agents, with agents TikTok and so on. So it's an amazing course and I'm looking for people right now as well. Thank you for asking. I'm looking for engineers. I, I, uh, a complete pod if you want to bring your team, right? And yeah, you will be with me there. I'm very nervous right now.

It's okay.

No, you're doing, you're doing amazing. And honestly, the more you do of these, the more you start to normalize them. And also, one of the things that I wanted to say about public speaking is that even if you don't want to be a public speaker, because not everyone wants to do that, it helps you so much with your writing. I honestly think that that combination of writing and speaking is like this super powerful combo because it really helps you reach more people in different formats. And so right now, just because you went live, you have all these new people who learned about your cohort. So it's really like this This extra weapon that builds on top of your riding skills. So well done.

Right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Patricia. Uh, thank you very much for coming on this live.

Thank you. I don't know how to leave. All right.

So I'll, I'll help you. I'll help you. Thank you. Have a great day. Bye.

Bye.

This was awesome.

So cool.

By the way, if you have a few minutes, I have a few minutes right now. I have until, uh, 5 minutes to 11. We can get also Sophie on the call.

Oh, that'd be amazing. Sophie, are you ready? We're gonna have you a couple of minutes and you can tell us about your experience with public speaking. She said that she could. Let's just bring her in.

All right, let's do it. This is amazing. I love that. First time I do it and it's, it's, it's good.

Okay everyone, so we're gonna have Sophie joining live from Sydney.

All right, Sophie, I sent you an invitation.

And by the way, those who are listening, this is also our first time doing this, but this could be a really cool initiative for you to try with your own community. Have a couple of people and then just take a random participant from the audience. Right. It makes it very spontaneous.

Yeah, it's amazing. Um, Sophie, I sent you a mail. Oh, hold on. Maybe it didn't send. Yeah. All right. Now I sent you.

Any more questions on public speaking for the, uh, those of you who are there? Hi, Sophie.

Hi, Sophie.

Oh, hello. I don't know if you can hear me. I can't hear you as well as earlier.

I can hear you. Oh yeah, now I can see you. So Sophie, you are live. You're on the spotlight. What's happening with your public speaking? Where were you a couple of months ago and where are you now?

Um, well, I'm, uh, launching, well, I'm not launching anymore. I'm in the middle of, uh, running a group Coaching, so not really public speaking, but a little bit. And I have planned to host a live Substack as well with someone from the UK. We've been trying to organize that since July, so hopefully we'll get there. And yeah, I keep trying to get into business. Corporate wellness workshops. So I haven't got any yet, but still working on it.

But it's brilliant. It's brilliant that you're doing your first workshop because that's really how you go into corporate. First, you host your own with your own community. And then once you have business proof and you have marketing, you can start to target corporate. So you're definitely on the right track.

Yeah, thank you. But yeah, your bootcamp was, uh, was really amazing. So that's really helpful.

It's almost like we staged this. We didn't.

I know, I know. It was not staged at all. I'm just waiting for my son. He's, uh, having his lesson right now. So that was really not, uh, not planned. I actually just found your Substack Live. I didn't know you were live. I don't even know, um, what the original topic was, if it was only public speaking or if you talked about other things. I joined in the middle.

We did a bit of a mix, a bit of public speaking and also how to use public speaking to then create your own program. So we've been evolving from, from the public speaking.

Right.

Excellent. Thank you. And nice to meet you, Aurel, as well.

Nice to meet you too, Sophie. Thank you for coming on the call.

Thank you.

See ya. See ya. Bye-bye. Okay. That was amazing. I loved that. All right. So, uh, if anybody has any more questions, um, you can write them in the chat. Um, and if not, I think, uh, we'll wrap it up.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you, Patricia. Thank you, Sophie, for being these trailblazers and, uh, getting out of your comfort zone. It was super inspiring, and we hope that the rest of the audience feels as inspired as we were. To see people just, you know, go and take the risk.

It really is inspiring. It's amazing. Cool. It's super scary, but they still did it. And yeah, like you said, kudos to them and amazing. All right, so it seems like we don't have any more questions. Um, so yeah, thank you. Thank you very much, Veronica, for, uh, taking— I just sent, by the way, I just sent Veronica a message. She replied super quick and she was super friendly and we just scheduled that, uh, live in the same conversation, like as soon as we, uh, started this, uh, the DMing, uh, like a week ago or something. So, uh, thank you. Thank you for—

No, not even a week ago. And so that, that's maybe a nice final message to wrap up. Don't overdo it. Connect with someone that, uh, you click with and say, hey, should we go do a live session? It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be super complicated and you don't need 2 months to plan it. So do Something, schedule it today, do it this week or next week and just make it happen.

Right, right. Super simple and it's amazing. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye. Take care.