I’ve been getting a lot of questions on public speaking and how to become a better speaker. And maybe you’re a little bit nervous. And maybe you have an upcoming meeting, or conference, or seminar, or something, or a presentation where you need to present in front of a group of people. So how do you not get nervous speaking in front of a large group of audience? Now back then when I just first learn about public speaking and I joined toastmasters. I was nervous as fuck, okay. Even speaking to a group of like 10 people, I would have sweaty palms, and my heart would be like (beating) Like I was so nervous. And I don’t know why. But it turns out because I still had a lot of these memories of when I first came to Canada. When I couldn’t speak a word of English and getting a laugh at, right? Getting criticized and that just destroys my confidence. And now is speaking in front of people, have you ever felt this way where you are speaking in front of people it just feels very naked, right? You feel very uncomfortable. You’re so afraid of being judged. So how do you overcome that? I wanna give you three very powerful strategies today in my Bently on exactly how do you do that. Number one chances are if you are nervous speaking to a group of people it’s because of lack of practice.
Lack of preparation. So let’s say if you know you gonna do a presentation or speech for 15 minutes and if all, in front of people, and all you put into it is one hour of practice. You’re gonna get nervous. Because you don’t know if you’re fully ready or if you need to just, like say at a wedding, or something, or sometimes just stand up somewhere where you need to do something on the spot, where it’s totally unprepared, of course you get nervous cause you’re like, what am I gonna say, how am I gonna say it? I’m not so sure. It’s all of the lack of preparation. So if you have the opportunity, if you know that you’re gonna be presenting a month from now, two months from now, three weeks from now if you over-prepare so that 15 minutes of speech, if you spend five hours, 10 hours preparing, practicing in front of mirror, record yourself, watch yourself, it’s way better than just spend an hour. So when you over prepare you to know. Okay, I know exactly what I’m gonna say. I know exactly how I’m gonna say it. I rehearse many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. Guess what then you into less nervous. So that nervousness comes from lack of preparation.
So tip number one is over-prepare. You believe if you think you need an hour’s preparation just times that by three. Times that by four. Over prepare so when you’re on stage, boom you’re ready to go. Because I believe stage time is wealth time.
Stage time is wealth time. You need to cherish that opportunity being on stage. I cannot tell you how many doors opened for me. How many powerful relationships that I am able to develop because I cherish those opportunities. And I was on stage and someone somewhere saw me on stage and they, later on, came up to me and talked to me. And that opens up so many doors.
So stage time is wealth time. I don’t care if it’s one minute on stage, 10 minutes on stage, 10 hours on stage, you got to give your 100%. Number two, I used to get nervous when I walk up to the stage when all I could focus on is me. I was so concerned about what people think. What do I, do I sound professional?
(Deep breath) Would they understand my accent? Make sure I cover every point I wanna cover. Am I telling the story perfectly?
Do I sound smart? Do I look good? Whenever you are in front of an audience and you focus on yourself, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, how people perceive you, you will get nervous. Because you are afraid of being judged.
When I shift the focus from do I sound smart? Do I look good? Do I sound good? When I just forget all that shit and throw that out the window and I 100% focus on my audience. How could I change their life? How can I impact them? How can I make sure they walk away with value? (snaps) The minute I do that. Not focusing on myself, but focusing on them, the nervousness disappears. It’s gone very, very simple. Because it’s all about them. It’s is my hand in my pocket? I am not standing in the right space? Am I walking back and forth? Am I doing the right gesture? Forget all the shit. When you forget all that shit you can connect. And when you connect with the audience you’re not nervous. Because all your care, it’s about them. You don’t care about how you look anymore. You don’t care about if you sound so smart. No, you just focus on them. No more nervousness, very powerful. Third thing is everything is energy. So when I’m speaking, since I’m making it about them how do I create energy? I always want to create what I call participation energy. Participation energy. Meaning I want them to participate. So imagine if I’m on stage and I’m just talking and talking and talking and talking and lecturing, right, and preaching about certain concepts. Well, it’s easy to get nervous because you’re always worried about if I’m saying the right thing. But if I have participation energy going on, learning energy, fun energy going on, for example, I would always ask them, hey how many of you believe in this? How many agree with that? How many ever experienced this? I get them to put up their hands. I get them to yell back the answer. I get them to fill in the blank. I get them to the discussion, talking with each other. When I create that kinda safe energy, celebration energy, learning energy, guess what?
You get less nervous. Cause you’re not worried about am I saying the right word every single time at the right space? You’re like I don’t care. I was just doing my event, Closers in Black, for my Inner Circle students, a thousand students from all over the world. It was day three and was following my agenda, right? These are the PowerPoint. This is what I’m gonna teach. Halfway into the PowerPoint, there was a particular student of mine and he needs some help. So I have two choices. I could either say, you know what let me follow my agenda. Let me just kinda keep that going and finish my PowerPoint, my agenda. Or, what did I do? I say you know what, guys, I just stopped. I said I have this agenda, I could go through a PowerPoint but that’s not what we need at the moment. So I throw away my agenda, I said to my student, Dave, I said come up. I helped him right there on the sage in front of a thousand people to create a breakthrough experience for him. Now not many speakers to do that. Because they’re so afraid. I need to stick to every minute of my agenda versus you know what that’s not what we need. That’s not what the group needs at the moment. I throw that out, this is what you need, being present, being connected with the audience. And I say that’s what we gonna do. Now not many people can do that. It’s actually very nerve-wracking if you think about it because as a speaker now you’re jumping off the, playing without a parachute, right? You don’t know what gonna happen. You know you don’t know if it’s gonna work. I believe it’s gonna work, right? I believe in what we can do as an audience. There’s a higher level. Then to me, you’re no longer just a speaker. You’re more a facilitator. And a facilitator you want to create certain outcomes. You want to create a certain emotion. You want to help them achieve a certain goal, your audience achieves a certain goal. When you focus on that, you don’t get nervous. Because even if you don’t do it perfectly, but it’s all about them. When make it all about them, you’re not nervous. So knowing everything is energy, have that celebration energy, over-prepare, over, over, over prepare every single time. And then make it all about them. Don’t make it about you. And try that out. And see if next time when you present in front of a group do you get less nervous.
