Rapid Fire With Vishen: A Founder's Guide to Speak Better and Grow Your Authority

The most overrated speaking advice? Overpreparation. The best speeches are natural, including the occasional "mm, ah, smile," the occasional vulnerable moment where you forget a line. And the most underrated speaking advice? Preparation. Now, I don't mean preparation of every movement on the stage. I mean preparation of your key idea, your story, that bit of humor, that vulnerable moment, the insight and how you reveal the insight. That is the art form. Fastest way to lose a room is when you come on stage and you say, "Ah, sorry guys, I didn't have enough sleep," or, you know, "I don't know why they chose me," or, "I am nobody. I don't even know why you're here listening to my ideas." Stop belittling yourself. Just get on that stage and speak. For me, the speaking technique that had the biggest impact on me was very simple: humor. I use humor in my stories. I use humor in all of my talks. Humor diffuses an audience. It's vulnerability at its best because everybody loves to laugh. My ritual before a big talk is basically this. I learned this technique from a Mindvalley teacher called Jeffrey Allen. I observe the audience in secret. Sometimes I'm hiding behind a curtain and I close my eyes, I let myself relax, and I imagine this beam of love and energy from my heart radiating out to every single member of the audience, and I feel myself connected to that audience. That has really changed what happens when I get on stage. Here's the biggest lie about influence. The people who are popping on social media who say those one thing with absolute confidence and certainty, often they are the least qualified. This has actually been studied scientifically. The experts who are most confident in their prediction who pop on social media actually have the highest failure rate because real experts, real scientists, understand nuance. They don't say, this is the way. They say, well, a study shows that this could be the way, but we're also exploring this direction, and there's this counter study that suggests that direction. Real scientists and real experts speak like that. Unfortunately, social media doesn't make them pop. This is a problem in the world today, and it's why so much misinformation is going out, even on your favorite podcast. Now, there is a way where if you are a real scientist, you can still get your ideas out with humility, with scientific rigor, with thoughtfulness, and still go viral. A communication skill that AI can't replace: your face, you. I absolutely hate those AI-generated videos of influencers because I want to see a real human being. Instead of doing AI, study the art of communication. Study facial expressions. Study how to use your hands. Study body language. Body language. When you do that, you create a resonance that AI cannot replace. AI cannot fake a human soul. You know, great actors, they don't even blink randomly. A blink is deliberate. Great communicators, every little movement of the hand matters. The way you stand, the way you use your voice, your modulation, Even the best AI can't do that yet. Stop cloning yourself with AI. Use AI to research ideas. Yes. Don't try to fake yourself with AI. The quickest way to earn attention is to take an idea and understand how to present it in 3 seconds so that someone scrolling will be able to stop. That 3 seconds makes all the difference. It is called the hook. When you learn that, whether it's what happens when you get on stage, it's the first sentence you say, or on social media, or when you open a presentation, that is what makes all the difference. And most people skim past that. That should be 20 to 30% of all your planning. So if I could steal a speaking skill from anyone in history, it would definitely be Martin Luther King. This is what MLK did so well. He could take an idea that was emotional, that make you sad, thinking about injustice, thinking about things that you need to change about the world, and he could make you shift your focus and see a dream, a vision of how much better the world could be. And then he could lock that in your heart and make you a better human being because you now start to not just have hope, but you now start to give a damn and you rise beyond who you are and you want to actually go out there and do good in the world. MLK, probably the greatest speeches I've ever seen. Okay, the mistake that most people make on social media is you stop being yourself. We don't want imitators. You know, ask your friends, why do they hang out with you? If you don't have friends, that's another problem. But ask your friends, why do they hang out with you? Is it because you're real? Is it because you're vulnerable? Is it because you're funny? Is it because of the little jokes you make? Bring that to social media. Don't try to imitate everyone else out there. Be yourself. So I love making jokes. I bring humor to my social media. Those are the videos that for me actually take off the most. So what is it that your friends like about you? When you're on social media and you're speaking to your audience, be with them the way you are with your friends. Don't try to fake it or be someone else. You can imitate an influencer's hook. You can share an idea. But don't try to imitate the way a person shows up. Be you. So how does one go from creating content to amplifying impact? You need a flywheel. Okay, so an Instagram video leads to a YouTube channel. A YouTube channel leads to people signing up to your Substack or your email. Never underestimate email. Email leads to people following you, maybe in an online community or an online course. And you create a reason for them to follow you by not just teaching them, but by giving them a sense of identity and a sense of mission. I've used this to help take Mindvalley to hundreds of millions in revenue, to millions upon millions of students, 3 national bestselling books, including 2 New York Times bestsellers, all using this flywheel technique. When you're meeting someone for the first time, They judge you within the first few seconds. The way you walk into the room, the way you dress, the way you style your hair, all of this matters. But there's something beyond just what they see. It is an energy, a confidence, a frame, a belief system that people feel intuitively or through the soul. You got to get your energy and your frame right. I've seen this. When I worked with salespeople. Salespeople who truly believed in themselves, they closed more sales. There was a study on this. Salespeople who are optimistic, 55% better rate at closing. There is such a thing about our belief system that transforms how people perceive us. There was another study on men and cologne. So they had women watch men on a TV screen, okay? And the women had to judge these men on attractiveness. Now here's the interesting thing. A few of those men would walk straight in front of the camera. Other men, before they got on camera, a scientist would come up to them and go, "Hey, this is a really amazing cologne. It, you know, it just smells so good. I want to spray some on you. May I?" And they would just spray the cologne on these men and then send these men to the camera. Now here's the interesting thing. The men who had the cologne sprayed on them, something shifted how they saw themselves. Maybe they felt they smell better, maybe they bought into the advertising of the cologne and the imagery they saw in those ads. But the men who had the cologne sprayed on them, they were the ones rated most attractive by the women. It wasn't necessarily their face, it was a belief that shifted in them when they put on the cologne. So whether it's cologne or it's how you dress or it's a ritual you do before going to a meeting, all of that, if it shapes your belief in some way, it's going to impact how people perceive you. Are the skills for speaking on stage different from being a content creator? Absolutely. When you're on stage, you have real human beings in the audience. It's not just the opening line. It's not just the editing. All of that is becoming mass marketed. It's stuff that millions of content creators do. On stage, that's a rarer gift. You have to let your personality, your wisdom, your charisma, your entire way of being permeate a room. That is more than just your speaking style. It is your soul, it is your consciousness, it is what is going on in your head. Human beings are incredibly good at detecting how another human being is feeling. We sense this, we're all deeply connected. So when you get on stage, there's a whole different art form for resonating with the audience. So this is the hardest question. If I lost everything tomorrow, how would I rebuild influence from zero? Well, actually, this is what I did in 2008 to build my influence. It's a technique I created called the Bloodhound Technique, and thousands of entrepreneurs have followed it. And it looks like this. Before you gain credibility, you need to first become a bloodhound to find the experts who are credible in your field and release them to the audience. Now I'm going to spend a little bit more time on this question because it's really powerful, and I may do a longer YouTube video on this, so follow this channel. The bloodhound technique looks like this. Let's say you are really, really, really into fiber, okay? And you want to create a channel on fiber, but you are not a medical doctor, you're not a scientist. Don't fake it. Become a bloodhound. A bloodhound is a dog that seeks out things. Become the person who is in the same position as your audience. Maybe you have a gut issue, maybe you're trying to lose weight and you heard that fiber matters. You go and you find the best experts on gut science, okay? People like Naveen Jain, people like Nora Cavani, the scientists and medical doctors, the engineers who are building companies that help people with gut fiber. You share their quotes, you share their writings, you share their research papers. You might add your own spin to it. And your promise to your audience is, follow me because I'm compiling all of the best information on fiber for you. Now, here's something really interesting. I found that many people who are interested in fiber, they don't just want to follow the expert. They want to follow the person like them who shares the passion because the person like them is in the same reality. So I did this with a very niche feel.. And very rapidly, I ended up with a list bigger than any scientist in that field. Once I had that list, I went to the actual scientists and researchers and I got them on for interviews. I became the interviewer. This was wild. I would do an interview with them and the turnout in that interview would be like the biggest turnout they ever got. These interviews were all done online on my blog way back in 2008. I was a bloodhound. Now, as I started interviewing all of those scientists, many years later, I started developing my own methodologies, my own theories. I put that together. It was now 2015. I wrote a book on mindset. That book hit number 1 in the world. It was called The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. Could you pass me the book, please? It's just over there on the shelf. Thank you, Qilin. Okay. The book is called The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. It hit number 1 in the world on Amazon. It took me 7 years to get there, but I started out, I wasn't the expert, but I was so hungry to learn. I sought the experts, I interviewed them, I was the bloodhound. So think about it this way. Sometimes an audience wants to learn from a scientist or an expert, but sometimes the person sitting at home doubting themselves, just starting out, you know, exploring something new, they want to connect with a fellow human being who is just like them. Hungry, curious, starting at the basics. And this is why if you are starting out, the Bloodhound Technique is so effective. Now, if you like this, comment below this video and I'll actually break down the entire technique and I'll show you how using this technique I got my blog, I kid you not, to $1 million in revenue in 18 months using this technique in a hyper niche field. Also, random ad, Check out this book. It is amazing. Okay, now do I get to finish my yogurt? All right, thank you. Bye-bye.