Aug. 28, 2022

How to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking with Brendan from Master Talk

If you're feeling frustrated because you're not seeing the results you want, then this episode is for you! In this episode you will learn: 

1. Why do people struggle with public speaking? 

2. What is the best way for introverts to become more comfortable with public speaking? 

3. How can public speaking be used to lead a more fulfilling life?


Here's a breakdown of what is covered:

[00:00:00] - Welcome to the show.


[00:00:40] - Introducing Brendan from master talk.


[00:05:19] - The problem with public speaking.


[00:08:59] - Advice for introverts.


[00:10:42] - 3 things introverts do better in communication.


[00:14:01] - Presenting better online.


[00:15:27] - Eye contact and energy.


[00:19:00] - The said principle.


[00:34:42] - Recommended books for public speaking.


[00:36:19] - One last question.


[00:38:16] - Call to action.


"I believe the next Elon Musk is a seven year old girl who can't afford a communication coach, so it's my duty to help her succeed with free resources."


Brenden Kumarasamy is the founder of Master Talk, a YouTube channel and coaching service that helps ambitious executives and entrepreneurs become top 1% communicators in their industry. He is also a popular public speaker, and has given talks on communication and presentation skills at various events and conferences.


This is Brenden Kumarasamy's story...


I am an introvert who has a fear of public speaking. I have been told that I am a good listener and that I am better at pausing than extroverts. I have also been told that I am more accessible to people. I am trying to dream more about my communication and what it would be like to be an exceptional communicator.


In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. Why do people struggle with public speaking?

2. What is the best way for introverts to become more comfortable with public speaking?

3. How can public speaking be used to lead a more fulfilling life?



Resources:

https://www.rockstarcommunicator.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/MasterTalks


Connect with me:

https://www.instagram.com/motivategrindsucceed/

https://twitter.com/themgspodcast

https://www.motivategrindsucceed.com



Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/motivate-grind-succeed-the-podcast/donations

Thrive or Survive...you can't do both.

Transcript

[00:00:00]
Welcome, everybody. Welcome back to a brand new episode of the Motivate Grind six feed podcast. This show that gives you 100% fluff free, guaranteed practical and useful tips with every episode to get you going. No space am, no long intros, just pure information. If you're new to the show, welcome and you're going to get a ton of value from this episode if you return them.

[00:00:24]
Welcome back. I love you all. I missed you all. Welcome back, guys. And a quick city with anybody who is listening to us right now, new or returning.

[00:00:32]
If at any point in time to get some value for you episode, please. Sure. Which is one person. That's all I know is one person. Let's spread this show.

[00:00:38]
Let's spread this good information. And with all that housekeeping out of the way, let's get right into this week's episode. As you can see, we have a guest on the show, Brendan from Master Talk. Let me give a little intro to Brendan here, in case you all don't know. You all should know who this is, but in case you don't give you a little intro to them.

[00:00:55]
After many years of doing presentation case competitions, which if you don't know what that is, think like professional sports. But for the fellow nerds like myself and everything of the group at university, he developed a skill for helping others to communicate effectively. And through this, he founded Master Talk, through which he coaches ambitious executives and entrepreneurs to become top 1% communicators in their industry. He has a popular YouTube channel called Master Talk, and it has the goal of providing free it doesn't get much better than free. Okay, guys, definitely check it out.

[00:01:33]
Free access to communication tools that everyone can use in the world. And he had a quote that I'd have to ask you about while we're starting off. You said on your page when I was going to connect with you, you said, I believe the neck that Elon Musk is a seven year old girl who can't afford a communication coach, so it's my duty to help her succeed with free resources. Brandon, welcome to the show, man. I love that quote.

[00:01:59]
How are you doing? Good. Rosanne, how are you, man? Thanks for having me, man. I'm doing great, man.

[00:02:05]
Before we get started into everything, right, can you explain that quarterly just a little bit for us? What inspired you to make that quote? Because when I read it the first time, I was like, that is hilarious. I love that quote. What does that mean?

[00:02:21]
For sure, it's a bit more of a longer story. So hear me out for a few seconds here. So essentially, I was watching a TikTok the other day, and the TikTok was about Taylor Swift, and it was about her winning an award called Women of the Year given by a music company called Billboard. And it was 2014. So she stands up on that stage she looks at the grew and she says, your future Woman of the Year is eleven years old right now.

[00:02:47]
She's sitting in a choir, she's learning how to sing, and we need to take care of her. And then she walks off the stage. And then it's seven years later, the Tik tok kind of flips, and Billie Eilish becomes the youngest inductee in Billboard's history. The Woman of the Year at the age of 17. So she walks up on stage, she's got this big bulky jacket, she's got her big glasses.

[00:03:10]
She looks at the group and goes, what's up, everybody? It's so good to be here. I won this award. And then the last 10 seconds of her speech completely changed my life for Sean in a super meaningful way. She looked at the crowd and said, yeah.

[00:03:24]
When it was 2014, I watched Taylor Swift. She's so amazing. And Taylor is amazing. And I was eleven years old and I was learning how to sing, and I was in choir. And the only thing I have left to say, Billboard, is you took care of me, so thank you so much.

[00:03:37]
And she walks off the stage. And the reason that moved me so much, dude, is because I thought about the next Elon Musk when I heard that TikTok. When Elon was a 15 year old kid, nobody gave it to him. When he was a kid in South Africa, nobody helped him with speaking. And I thought about the next Elon right now is alive.

[00:03:53]
We don't know who she is or he is, and we don't know where they live. And I believe it's my duty to help that person master communication. That's my North Star. Absolutely. I love the background story because then I was actually going to get into how I usually invite all the guests in to talk from the start about giving the background story.

[00:04:09]
That was pretty good so far. Unless you have more that you wanted to add to that background story just so we can get a little bit of a better feel of who you are. Unless that pretty much encompasses most of it. If that's the case, we could go into the questions, but if you have any more you wanted to add, add to that, you can go on ahead. Yeah, for sure.

[00:04:25]
I mean, that's probably more Chapter 25, but I'd say chapter one was to your point. When I was in college, I went to business school and did these things called taste competitions, what I call professional sports for nerds. Other guys my age are playing rugby or basketball or some other dangerous thing that you wouldn't see me playing. And I did presentations competitively. That's how I learned how to speak.

[00:04:47]
But then as I got older, I started coaching a lot of the students, and I'd communicate ideas because I felt they didn't have a coach. Just help them get really good at sharing their ideas with the world and winning competitions, and that's what sparked the idea for the YouTube channel. But back then, it wasn't so sophisticated. Like, I think the next Elon is a seven year old girl. I was just a dude in my mom's basement making videos.

[00:05:06]
I never thought it would amount to anything, but here we are. Absolutely fantastic. I mean, hey, I'm just doing the basement as well, so we've got that in common already. But we're both working hard, making stuff happen, right? It's all that matters.

[00:05:19]
All right, so hopping into the questions and just some guiding questions that we have. So first of all, the first question I have for you is that public speaking? Just generally speaking, it is one of people's biggest fears, right? Why is it that people struggle with public speaking so much? And as a subject to that, is it the actual act of public speaking that is causing the fear, or is there something deeper than that?

[00:05:46]
Absolutely. Roshan so it's actually a simple answer to this question, I thought years ago, and I think this is the best explanation. Let's think about it for a second. Where do we learn how to speak? Rashawn the answer is school.

[00:05:59]
High school, elementary school. That's where we learn how to present. That's where we give our first presentations. But we got a problem. Rashawn all of those presentations have three things in common.

[00:06:09]
Number one is that they're all mandatory. We don't wake up one morning and say, hey, Richard, you want to get breakfast and present all day. Nobody says that. That's problem number one. Problem number two is they're all different.

[00:06:24]
So it's never, hey, what are you passionate about? Brandon? What are you passionate about? You like podcasting, you like motivation, like success. Yeah, that's not how it works.

[00:06:33]
You've got to talk about Shakespeare and poetry, and you got to live with it. I hated that. There you go. Right? That was the penny.

[00:06:42]
You got to talk about the Renaissance. Oh, my God. After that, you got to talk about the history of Missouri. Do I even live in Missouri? Why do I have to and this is your life, and you think, I'm done.

[00:06:53]
I'm not even done. Number three, the worst of all of it. Rashawn 12, 13, 14 year old kids giving presentations. Every presentation they deliver is tied to a bloody punishment. What in the world is going on here?

[00:07:07]
So every time you mess up, you'll get a pat on the back, you get a slap in the face, and 20% of your mark goes to zero. So what's the conclusion? The conclusion is we are learned, right? We are led to believe that communication is a chore and nobody wants to get better at doing the dishes. And that's my answer to the question.

[00:07:29]
Okay, that's a very interesting answer to the question, because when you first said that everybody learns to speak in school, at first I thought you were going to say something like, you learn at home where you start learning how to first formulate words, but taking into the aspect that you did, rather, and saying that that's how we learn in school. I know that's definitely where I did a lot of the speaking. I told you before we started the recording here that growing up, I was definitely put onto a lot of stages and podiums and everything, and I gave speeches before I even had a memory. So, I mean, I was able to recite those things well, everything, but I don't remember any of it. And then the only time that I do remember actually doing those things or those speeches, rather, is, like you said, when I'm giving a presentation in front of the class, and if I don't do well, then that's just a box right there on the grading rubric saying, okay, presentation three out of ten or something, and then you're losing March just because of that.

[00:08:25]
So that's what I think. I agree with that, too. Just having that associated with it. I almost think about it off the top of my head. I'm thinking about almost like, what is it called?

[00:08:34]
I think it's a pavlov dog, I think it was where pretty much you ring the bell and then the dog would associate that with food. After a while. It's kind of like that kind of a relationship I'm thinking about now, where it's like you associate the public speaking with if you don't do well at it, you're going to get some kind of punishment. So that's a very interesting way of putting it. So thank you for the answer to that question.

[00:08:57]
It definitely gave me some insight. Absolutely. So the next question that I have for you is for anybody who's more introverted, right? Because you got the extroverts, you got the introverts, and everybody in between. People who are more introverted are probably going to be listening to this episode, whether it be when it releases or whether it be two years from now, five years from now, decade.

[00:09:15]
I don't know when you're listening to this. But for anyone who is more introverted, brendan, what advice can you give to them on public speaking and how can they be able to get more comfortable with it? Absolutely. So I have introverts specific feedback, but one thing I want to shine a light on is the follow up to your last question around fear, which ties into your question around introversion, which is what is the cure? What's the medicine that we got to take to actually get rid of the fear?

[00:09:44]
And this will definitely help our introverts. And the answer to that question is dream. I know that sounds really weird, but hear me out a little bit, okay? We dream of our expensive vacations. We dream about the things we want to buy.

[00:09:57]
We dream about the dinners we want to go on. When was the last time we dreamed about a world in which we're a better communicator in it, and a lot of us don't dream at all for communication. I never even thought of the idea. That's why the question I always like to begin with is, how would your life change if you were an exceptional communicator? Because it affects every area of your life.

[00:10:17]
It's not just about giving a presentation. It's the way that you talk to your family. It's the way that you order food at a restaurant. It's the way that you meet strangers when you travel. It's every moment of your life.

[00:10:28]
And when you realize communication is about leading a more fulfilling life, that's when you start to focus on getting very excited about communication instead of being like, oh, my god, that's like a chore, and I have to do it right. Which brings me to the point around introversion. So now that our introverts are dreaming a little bit more about their communication, here's what I always like to say, ben, there's three things that introverts are actually exponentially better at than extroverts that they just don't know. So let's just cover that. Number one is listening, because they speak less.

[00:11:01]
On average, they listen more. Very easy for them to adapt their message to the people around them. That's why they're very good listeners. Whereas me, I'm an extra extrovert, so I was terrible at listening. I still need work, right?

[00:11:16]
So that's one. Number two is they're much better at pausing introverts because they're more comfortable with silence because they speak less. So it's easier for them to pause whenever they're in a presentation. It's the most important skill in communication, extroverts. We're at a bar, we're at a party, and there's a space.

[00:11:36]
You want to fill it up. What's your favorite color? You always want to fill up the space, and then the last piece now throw it back to you is accessibility. So what is accessibility mean? Insurance are actually a lot more accessible as communicators and experts.

[00:11:50]
Rashawn example, Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm a big fan of the guy. I have a lot of respect for him. But you either like the guy or you don't. This is fax.

[00:11:59]
That's the type of speaker I personally I'm with you. I love a big guy. I love Gary Vee. I love the way he speaks. He's just up with it and lets you know exactly how it is, which I prefer.

[00:12:08]
I don't like people who beat around the bush all the time. I'm like, tell me what I need to know, tell me what I'm doing wrong, and let's get on with it. Right? I appreciate it. Absolutely.

[00:12:17]
Yeah. Same. And that's all respect. Like, we both have that shared mutual respect for him, but not everybody likes them. So when you're more extroverted, you're more aggressive in your delivery.

[00:12:26]
There's a certain percentage of people go, this first is not for me, and then you have the introverts. Nobody has uttered the following words rashawn I hate Berna Brown. If you say that the FBI and the CIA and the SWAT team are going to come to your house and arrest you and all your family, that's all true taboo. You can't say that. Obviously, I'm a big fan of Brennan Brown's work, but the reason I say that is because introverts just don't get as much hate and they're more accessible to people.

[00:12:54]
So I understand your strengths and triple down. Okay, interesting. I know, because I know when I was thinking about some of these questions, I know on that scale of introvert to extrovert, I can play both roles, but I naturally gravitate more towards the introverted role. I kind of like to talk if I need to do speeches, even doing this podcast here, you can hear it comes across, and some people have told me that, forgot, you sound more extroverted, but in real life, you were just like, you're quiet, you're in the background. People don't really see you.

[00:13:23]
I'm like, yeah, because I can play both roles. Whatever I need to be able to play, I could play. But if I was left to my own devices, I'm just like, look, I'm definitely more on the introverted side. So for all the introverts out there, this question is also for me just as much as it is for you. So thank you, Brendan, for that.

[00:13:38]
Appreciate it. It definitely helps me to feel like, oh, man, I'm introverted. But I don't quite know if there's anything I can improve because, like I said, I'm a believer. No matter how good you are at something, there's always room for improvement, right? So that was part of the backing behind the question.

[00:13:53]
We might think we're good at public speaking or we're passable or anything like that. There's always room for improvement, right? So I want to pivot a little bit now with the next question to the current work environment that we all have today, right? I mean, even with my day job, right, I'm in the office two days a week, work from home three days a week. So we're in that some people are fully remote, some people are still in the office fully.

[00:14:19]
But what we're going to talk about people who are kind of more who have the ability to work more remote, right? Sometimes we're just not going to be in front of large groups of people, right? Sometimes we're not going to be in front of crowds or audiences. We're not going to have the Gary V audiences of the world. We're just yelling at them to do stuff and buy and flip stuff on ebay.

[00:14:39]
We're not going to be able to do stuff like that. So what tips do you have for us that we can better present to people online? Because for me, personally, I feel like it's a little bit easier to present online because you don't have in terms of let me preface it with this. It's easier to present online in terms of not having a bunch of people looking at you because most people probably have their cameras off or something, or you can just have it on another monitor and just not look or at the same time. I think personally, just the way that when I talk to people, I think it also has the negative side of not being able to see people's reactions sometimes live.

[00:15:15]
And then you're able to judge how you're delivering based on that. So with all that preface out the way, my main question is what tips do you have for us to help present better online? Yeah, absolutely. Sean, great question. So I would say there's three main differences between online and offline, aka in person.

[00:15:33]
So let's cover them. Number one is eye contact. So when you're in an online setting, you always want to keep your eyes on the prize, which is one area, which is the camera. Whether you're speaking to one or 10,000 people, you just want to always look there. And I haven't really done a good job with that because I was like looking at your face and my face?

[00:15:53]
Yeah, but my camera is here and your face is up there. So it's like I'm trying to try I know YouTubers are really good at that. Like I said, I've seen your videos a couple I didn't mean to cut you off, but just real quick, but I know that I watched a couple of your videos before, before you came on the show. And I was like, man, this dude was like laser focused on the camera. I know me, I'd be focused on the screen to the camera adjacent, like over here, making sure I look good, make sure I'm looking at that.

[00:16:17]
But no, it's always focus on the camera lens. And I'm like, you nailed that. So good on you for that. Those are really good to see. And that's much easier with YouTube because you just got one.

[00:16:28]
It's like an actual camera, right, where you're just looking at the rest of me. It's a laptop mike, so I'm not a mic, but laptop. Thanks. I got your face in over there. I got the camera, so it makes it harder.

[00:16:39]
But yes, look at the camera. So you could do something like put a picture of your family next to the lens. And if you don't like your family too much, put a picture of your food next to the camera lens. Or if you want a more sarcastic one, you could put an arrow that points to it your lens and says, look here. Or else that's another one.

[00:16:57]
It's a bit more aggressive, so you just pick whatever you want. That's number one. Number two is energy. Let's face it, Rasha, at the end of the day, it's a lot easier to show up with energy when you're in person. And the reason is because there's more pressure to deliver.

[00:17:12]
Like any online meeting, you can be like, okay, well, I guess I don't have to really do laundry or shower. It's not like they're going to notice, whereas in person they're going to notice. They're going to know. So it's all about creating that pressure that creates more energy. And people, there's hugging, there's handshakes, you're talking to people, it's easier to bring them.

[00:17:32]
So what's the solution? The solution is can't be it in person. So what do you do is you bring more energy in person and you transfer as much of that energy as possible online. Which brings me to number three, accessibility. It's a lot easier to talk to your audience when you're in person, Sean.

[00:17:49]
If you want feedback from them, you just have lunch for them. They're right in front of you. Online is much harder because it's a lot more friction on the Zoom call. So instead, what you want to do is you want to get on phone calls with people of your audience and ideally with people that are closest to you. You can have those people jumping on another Zoom call prior to the real presentation and just you can do a test pilot with them over soon.

[00:18:11]
Interesting. Very interesting. I'm trying to think I don't think I've had any time where I've had to give a talk like that outside of my day job. I do have a big one coming up in a couple of months, though. I do have to give some presentations.

[00:18:29]
Those are going to be in person. So a lot of these tips are definitely going to definitely have to use that and just definitely try to bring that energy to people because it's going to be some kind of boring topic that people probably don't want to hear the most about. So it's up to the presenter usually to try to make it exciting, but come on, guys stuff and you got to bring that. Exactly. What do you got?

[00:18:50]
There you go. You got to bring that. Give those keynotes on geometry you already know. All right, that leads me to another question that I had for you as well. One of the quotes that I like to live by a lot is that there's nothing to it but to do it right.

[00:19:11]
I was in a one on one with my boss the other day, and then she was asking me, hey, do you want to take on some more of this responsibility at work? Or whenever you feel ready to be able to leave these meetings and do this and that, you can let me know. Is there anything that's holding you back from starting to do that? And I was like, not really, except me just not wanting to do it, but there's nothing to it but to do it. And so if we want to get better at public speaking, we need to get better by doing public speaking.

[00:19:38]
Right? It's the said principle. Have you heard of the said principle before? Okay, well, the said principle is an acronym. The word said.

[00:19:45]
It stands for a specific adaptations Imposed Demands. Some people call it specific adaptations, imposed specific demands. You usually hear about a lot more like the fitness base type of thing, where it's pretty much it's a general concept of if you want to get good at something, do that thing. If you want to get good at pushups, do push ups. If you want to get good at making omelets, you have to make omelets.

[00:20:05]
So pretty much that leads to the question of, since we need to do public speaking to get better at public speaking, what exercises or drills do you have for us to help better practice our communication before we get out onto the stage or before we get onto that zoom or webex call that we have to take? Absolutely, Roshan. I mean, it's so important, what you said. My version of your incredibly amazing framework is just the best way to speak is to speak. Right?

[00:20:34]
It's like, you got to talk. If you want to get better at talking, you got to learn how to talk. So how do we do this one other thing that will jump into the drills? Communication is like juggling 18 balls at the same time. One of those balls is smiling.

[00:20:47]
One of those balls is eye contact. One of those balls is body language, hairstyle, storytelling, and the list goes on. So the question to figure out now is, what are the three easiest balls that we can juggle that can give us momentum? So let's go through what I call my EC. Three S O.

[00:21:04]
Number one is the random word exercise. Pick a random word like mousetrap, like house, like brick, like a roof, and create random presentations out of thin air. Think of it like this. If you could make sense out of nonsense, rash, sean, you could make sense out of anything. And what I recommend people do, especially people who have kids, is do this with their family so that they become your accountability system.

[00:21:29]
And that's exercise number one of three. And then number two is the question drill. So the question drill is essentially this rashawn. We get asked questions all the time in our life on a podcast, on a show, on TV, actually, not really on TV. How some of us might have been on TV now at school, at work.

[00:21:49]
I say if you have been at. Like, subtle flat, okay, no, I actually have it, but yes, there you go. It's not really sure. So we always get asked questions all the time, but a lot of us are reactive to those questions. We wait for the question to appear, and then we get caught off guard.

[00:22:09]
I remember a few years ago when I started guessing on podcasts, I was garbage. I was terrible. I didn't even have a mic. I didn't know how these things went. And somebody asked me the funniest question on one of these podcasts, where does the fear of communication come from?

[00:22:21]
And I looked at the guy and I said, I don't know, man. Los Angeles? San Diego? You tell me. I just wasn't ready, right?

[00:22:32]
So I got caught off guard. So what I did after that is every day for five minutes, I would answer one question, one question that I thought somebody was going to ask me about communication. One question a day for five minutes a day keeps the doctor away. In other words, what? I mean, if you do this for a year with only five minutes a day, you'll have answered 365 questions about your industry.

[00:22:59]
You'll be bulletproof. And that's number two. Finally, number three, the final one. It's so easy that nobody does it. Make a list of the people that you love, your friends, your family, clients, the person who hired you for your speaking engagement, and people around you, and ask ourselves this question when was the last time we sent any of these people?

[00:23:22]
Not a 20 minutes, not a 20 hours, but a 22nd video message to just say, hey, Rashan, really love what you're doing with the podcast. You're doing incredible work. Keep up the amazing interviews that you're doing and have yourself a wonderful week. Simple, but nobody does it, so I encourage you to do it. That's good.

[00:23:43]
I'm definitely going to have to try out for that first one, because I know when I was in high school, I was part of my Speech team. I'm not wearing my Speech Team shirt right now, but I was part of a speech team. And one of the events at that speech team was impromptu speaking, or improv, rather. One of the tough guy was exactly called, but I didn't take part of it. I was original oratory and humorous to it, acting.

[00:24:07]
But I had someone else who was into that one. And since I know I did what it was, I asked them, and I was like, hey, man, how does this work? Right? How does this work? Me, I have to create a speech from scratch and then recite it from memory for between eight to ten minutes.

[00:24:23]
You are literally prepared nothing. And you go into a room and you speak. What are you speaking on? And he said, literally, the topic they give you. I was like, do you know the topic ahead of time or do you know?

[00:24:35]
He said, we know general ideas of what it's going to be about. Like, for example, it might get an idea like pop culture. They just know the genre is pop culture. That's it. They don't know what part of pop culture.

[00:24:47]
They don't know what movies, what people, what anything. They just know pop culture. That is it. So when they get in there, they have a total of eight minutes. They have two minutes to prepare a.

[00:24:56]
Speech and then six minutes to give one, and that was it. I was like, Man, I don't know if I could do that. I don't have the knowledge base for that, buddy. But it was very impressive when I was finished with mine to go in and see them. They would go in, they would have their note cards, of course, writing frantically and everything.

[00:25:14]
And it was amazing to see that they were able to come up with a four to six minute speech in two minutes about something they were given literally two minutes ago. And I was always amazed and impressed. I was like, wow, that is an absolute boss amount of skill. And then when you came up with the whole thing with the saying, take a random word and then do the same thing, literally, I can see that skill, as you say right here, that is exactly what they were doing. And I can guarantee you I haven't done it.

[00:25:47]
But just seeing, but practicing what you said and then seeing how those people were in those events, doing stuff like that, that is going to make you miles better than all the competition. Because no matter what you could like said, you can pick whatever word, whatever topic you want, and as long as you're able to create something from that. And then my mind is going like a mile a minute right now. But they're like, you can take so much from just that and then not only apply that to public speaking and apply that to public speaking engagement or speaking on the Internet or anything, you can apply that even to just day to day conversations because that will help you to think much faster on your feet. Someone tells you something that you weren't thinking about a left field, the skills that you were talking about, you're able to take that and then just say, oh, they gave me something.

[00:26:34]
I've been practicing this drill for days, weeks, months, however long you've been practicing it for, and then say, okay, now I can throw this one right back at them. And then you seem just like a person has all this principle and all this charm. You just know how to respond to anything. People call you a good communicator and all this kind of good stuff. And it seems like that would just be a worthwhile skill just to have and just to be able to do.

[00:26:55]
So if anything, I'm going to start doing that one. I'm just going to implement just one it's okay, because if I start taking on too many, I'm going to end up not doing any of them. So I'm just going to start with the one, and I'm just going to find a random word, and I'm just going to pretty much give like a five minute improv commercial, I guess is what I'll probably call it, and just have to tell myself I'll probably record myself. I got my phone right here, so I can just take it, record myself, and then just see how it sounds and just practice it day in and day out. And I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get pretty good at it after a while.

[00:27:32]
Yeah. And to make your life easier, Rochelle, it doesn't have to be five minutes either. I don't like rules, so it could be like, 30 seconds, it could be 90 seconds. And I love that you're taking action. It's just about doing a ton of words, and you'll just get really confident with it in a very short period of time.

[00:27:46]
And also, side note, you have to tell me what the speech cup is about. I need to research this. Maybe I can learn it and get a couple of techniques I can teach my clients or make videos. Yeah, sure. Did you want information now or did you want some, like, after the call?

[00:28:00]
Yeah, sure, whatever. Now you're putting me on the spot with improv two stuff now. There was a few years back, this was you could do it after. I could try to give you some now and then afterwards, I have you online, so I can also send you some stuff too. But in general, for you and for anybody who's listening, these speech teams were kind of like how you said.

[00:28:20]
I guess they're probably if they're the same as what you were doing with these case competitions. They're kind of like that. Again, from my version for original oratory what would happen is they would tell you the rules where you have eight to ten minutes to create a speech on whatever you want, and it will be an introduction. You'd have zero, 1.2.3, and you'd have your conclusion. So mine was on the I think it was a long time ago.

[00:28:44]
I think mine was on the importance of Stem and the role it has into the future of how it's going to impact jobs and all kinds of things like that. So I pretty much came on and was talking about the importance of Stem and how Stem is going to be the future in terms of robotics and how a lot of jobs are going towards direction of engineering, like computer science, I mean, my degree in biomedical engineering, like all kinds of engineers. That's what it's going to go into. And in the future of engineering and how engineering is going to be able to, for lack of a better word, infiltrate everything. Right?

[00:29:18]
Because everything is going to require some kind of engineering. I mean, nowadays you have insert Word and you have an engineer, software engineer, audio engineer, graphic design engineer, engineers popping up every single day. Right. For me, when I did that, it was pretty much just like I said, I would come up with the topic of I'm going to talk about this, and I would go out and do some research. I would go and find different research find different articles and publications and people essentially proving what I'm trying to say who also have a similar kind of mindset.

[00:29:47]
I would take that, and it's essentially writing like a two, three page paper, essentially, and then committing that to memory and then giving that kind of a presentation in front of an audience. And three judges, and those three judges would give you a score, I think it was one to ten or so, and they would give you a score overall, like one to ten, how good you did, and they would give you some pros, what you did well, like whether you spoke well. Did you remember to walk to different parts, because you did have to do that too, so they know what point you're on. So the intro you'd start, you get to your intro of call to Action, of what you're doing, me talking about you take a step forward. Point one, you'd walk over to the left.

[00:30:24]
.2, you'd go into the middle. .3, you'd walk over to the right. And then when you get to the conclusion, you come back to the middle. This whole thing, right? So they would judge you even on that.

[00:30:33]
Like, how smooth was the walk or how fluid was it? Did you look like stiff as a board? Did you look nervous? How well did the words flow? Did you enunciate your words properly or did you pronounce things properly?

[00:30:48]
Was the information that you were giving coherent? They would judge you on all these kind of things. I was going to do a little bit more research on all this stuff and get some more information back to you. But just going based off of my memory, those are the kind of things that we talked about and that we were judged on, and that's pretty much how it went. So that's what I did for a couple of years, a couple of years in high school.

[00:31:10]
So I would say if you have the opportunity to. I would highly recommend that if you can join some kind of speech team. Some kind of speech club. Public speaking. Betterment class of any kind of sort.

[00:31:22]
Because it's going to pay dividends in the long run. As it will help you to get over that fear of getting in front of people and being able to give something original. And then another one that I did as well, because I know we're starting to get up on our time limit here was humorous, do it acting. This one was a little bit quicker. This one was more just you didn't make anything off the top of your head.

[00:31:40]
You just had a script given to you, and you and a person would be as dumb as humanly possible while acting out this script. And so the one that I had with my partner at the time was one where it was two guys in a diner, and they saw this really hot girl on the side, and my partner was the one who was trying to hit on her, and then I was the guy who was saying, like, well, if you want to go ahead and do it, bro. And he was already trying to do all kinds of dumb stuff, like trying to slide the number, trying to move chairs closer to her, and everywhere she moved, he was moving around. And I'm just sitting here on my phone, twig on my thumbs, just like he would come back in failure and be like, oh, it didn't work. I told you so.

[00:32:21]
We'd make it as funny as possible. So that's what we did for a couple of years, and it was pretty fun. We definitely had a good time, and I definitely learned a lot. If we got over any of that fear of getting in front of an audience and that's not to say it's completely gone, because it never really goes, at least for me. I don't know about you, Brendan, but for me, it never goes away, right?

[00:32:42]
You always have that little something before you get on stage. It just doesn't go away. But you just learn to be like, this is just what happens. I have to do what I have to do. People are here to hear this information or to see this performance or whatever it is, and that's what they're here for.

[00:32:57]
Can't let them down.

[00:33:00]
I love that rachael. And thanks for sharing that, man. Really interesting circuit. It's very different from what I did in university. But in terms of the fear, though, I agree.

[00:33:10]
For me, it's never left either. I honestly think that trying to remove the fear of communication is a losers game. And I'll tell you why. Because there's always a level in which we're all fearful of something. Imagine we're having lunch for Sean, and Elon Musk calls me and he goes, hey, Brendan, sorry to call you out of the blue.

[00:33:27]
I saw your YouTube channel is really nice. Can you coach me tomorrow? I'll pay you a million dollars. What if my pants? Yeah.

[00:33:34]
Yeah, I would even if I've coached a lot of successful people, I would still coach them. I'd still fly up. I'd be shaking up my pants, probably peeing a little bit as I'm taking the flight. So, yes. I don't think the goal is to remove the fear.

[00:33:49]
I think it's to see fear. Like a boxing match. One side of the ring is the message, one side of the ring is the fear. And the goal is not for the fear to lead the ring, but rather make sure that when your fear and your message, why it's important, why you should deliver it, when you meet in the middle of that boxing match, you better make sure your message wins the match. That your message gets the knockout punch.

[00:34:10]
And that's how you overcome it. Not by overcoming it, but make sure your message is a little bit more important than the fear that it comes with. Very good analogy. I like that analogy a lot. Definitely good.

[00:34:22]
And I know if Elon definitely contacted me about wanting to be on the show, I would be very surprised myself. Like, whoa, how did you hear about this kind of a show? You want to be on the show? Sure, come on. This show.

[00:34:33]
Why not, buddy? Sure, come on in. Come on, we'll have a nice, great talk. Won't be like the journey already now, but we'll still have a great talk. And so one more question that I have for you because I know we are getting up on time if we have a hard stop for people out there who will be similar to me as well, who are pretty avid book readers, right?

[00:34:51]
Every time you get a moment or a free time, your nose is in a book or in a Kindle or some sort. What book recommendations do you have for some people out there that they can read to be able to improve on their public speaking capabilities? Yeah, for sure. Richard. I would say thirst by Scott Harrison.

[00:35:10]
So thirst by Scott Harrison. Scott's, the sea of charity water to nonprofit. He started to help people gain access to clean water. And the reason I bring up his book is because the guy is a master storyteller. And he went from being a nightclub promoter in his 20s in New York City to raising hundreds of millions of dollars for this cause and building the largest water charity in America.

[00:35:32]
His success story is amazing, and he did it primarily through communication and storytelling. He's a guy who doesn't just talk about storytelling. He applied it with a great result. There's a great quote that I just love to share for the book. And the quote is, the goal is not to live forever, but rather create something that will.

[00:35:52]
And that always inspired me to create something like master that hopefully lives forever. That is a fantastic, fantastic quote. Definitely when I'm going through and editing this, I'm definitely going to write that down. Probably put it up on my wall somewhere right there because that is definitely something to live by. I have a lot of quotes just kind of floating around up here in my brain, but that was going to live, as they say on the Internet, that was going to live.

[00:36:15]
Brent free, for sure. So, Brendan, I know we're coming up on time here, so we're going to have to cut the episode here, man. But before you go, man, I always have to ask every single guest before, like, one more question. Ask them all the same kind of question before they end the show, right? So let's say somebody just woke up, right?

[00:36:38]
They just went through this 37 minutes that we've been sitting here talking together, right? They just woke up and talking drool on the side of the face. They just woke up, and they're just like, I have no idea. I don't want to go back and watch this 37 minutes, even though you should. I don't want to go back and watch the 37 minutes.

[00:36:53]
Like, what? Give us one piece of advice that if people just have no idea what we're talking about for this entire time, what's one piece of advice that you could give somebody that they can just walk away with and be able to just take action on it right now once the episode ends? Absolutely. Rashawn and it's just a question, how would your life change if you're an exceptional communicator? You know, a lot of the times when I say that question, we don't take it seriously because that question is cute.

[00:37:25]
It's cool, but a lot of people don't actually take the time to reflect on that question. So I would encourage you to do that, because once you find an answer to that question, for all of us, it's different. Some of us want to be great communicators, to be better mothers for our children. Other people want to be great communicators to get their next promotion and press their boss. And other people want to get better at communication, to create a movement and change the world.

[00:37:50]
All of us are different, but all of us have a reason inside of us as to why we want to be great communicators. So my ask for everyone who is listening to this, even the one who just woke up, is to just answer the bloody question, and it will unlock your excitement for communication for the first time in your life. Absolutely fantastic. Thank you for that piece of advice, even though you've been dropping advice and knowledge bomb this entire episode. Thank you for that.

[00:38:16]
So before putting your head out of here, I want to give you the platform. Do you have any call to actions after they listen to this episode? Now, for the people who weren't asleep the entire time, thank you. But for those people who were, what's the call to action? Really want people to go after this to find out more information about you?

[00:38:31]
Maybe they're now intrigued and say, I want to find out more about Brenda, I want to find out more about Master Talk, or I want those free resources. You said free. F-R-E-E. That spells be right there. So if they want to go get some of those, where can they find you on these fascinating worldwide interwebs we got going on?

[00:38:49]
For sure. Rocha so, two ways to keep in touch. This is a great episode by the. Thanks for having me. So the first one is the YouTube channel.

[00:38:56]
Just go to Master talk. In one word, you'll have access to hundreds of free videos on how to communicate ideas effectively. And number two, attend one of my free trainings. I do a free training over Zoom every three weeks. It's free.

[00:39:09]
It's live. It's interactive, it's not some boring webinar. And I facilitate the call myself and I coach people on it. So if you want to come to that, go to Rockstarcommunicator. I appreciate that because the amount of webinars that I've been to that are pre recorded, and then you can see they're pre recorded, I'm just like, man, I always told myself if I were to ever do webinars, I swear, if they're going to be prerecorded, I'm going to let you know off bat that they're prerecorded.

[00:39:33]
But my preference would be to do them live because the amount of times I was sick and tired of getting prerecorded webinars, they sign up for my free training, my free webinar, and at the end they sell you something, which is fine. That's what happens at the end of it. I mean, they're a business. At the end of the day, that's whatever, but just then being pre recorded but coming off as if it's not, I hated that. So that's why I gave you the thumbs up, because I appreciate you doing live webinars.

[00:39:57]
So guys, who's listening, live, actual live webinars, he's actually there. Actually, I'll have to sign up for one of those, definitely to see how those work. You said every three weeks, right? And we don't pitch it yet. Man, you're my best friend now.

[00:40:13]
You're my best friend. Love it. That's why a lot of people come to them. I can see why. And like I said before, there's always something to learn.

[00:40:21]
So I'm definitely going to sign for one of those. And what time are they actually? If you don't mind me asking, too. I think the next one is August 12:00 PM. Eastern Standard Time.

[00:40:32]
Okay, August 12. So we're probably going to be at work at that time. Unfortunately. It'S only for committed.

[00:40:45]
On work that day or something.

[00:40:49]
You're not ready for it. Just kidding. We always do it on Friday because the weekday last day and it works for all the time zones. Like PSD is 09:00 a.m. Europe, it's 05:00 p.m.

[00:40:59]
In India as well. A lot of them from India. Come on in. It's like 1030, so got you. But I'll definitely make it a point to try to attend one of those for sure, even though they're always on Fridays.

[00:41:08]
I don't have much going on on Friday, so I'll probably see if I can attend one of those. But this isn't for me, it's for all the listeners. Thank you, Brendan, so much for coming on this show. I appreciate it. Definitely would want to have you on again because this was a wealth of knowledge and I know a bunch of people are going to get a vast amount of assistance from this because public speaking is a big fear for a lot of people.

[00:41:29]
And being able to have some tools and tips and being able to have all this information to be able to get better at that, absolutely fantastic. So thank you so much, Brendan, for coming onto the show. And guys, with that, I'm going to have to bring this week's episode to a close. Thank you so much for attending this week, guys. And oh, wait, guys, don't close out yet.

[00:41:51]
Don't close out yet. Before you go, you see Brandon Jigging over there. I have three quick requests for you don't like. Subscribe to those channels if you found it useful and be able to look out for new episodes every single week. We drop fresh content every single week, guys.

[00:42:06]
Number two, let me know what you thought about this episode. Let me know what you liked, what you didn't like. I'm always using that feedback to grow and improve the show. And lastly, follow me on social media. Also follow Brendan on social media.

[00:42:18]
I'm going to leave those links in the description. If you're watching on YouTube or whatever you're watching and listening, take care of yourselves.

Brenden KumarasamyProfile Photo

Brenden Kumarasamy

Communication Coach & YouTuber (MasterTalk)

"I believe the next Elon Musk is a 7 year old girl who can't afford a communication coach, so it's my duty to help her succeed with my free resources." - Brenden K.

Brenden is the founder of MasterTalk, he coaches ambitious executives & entrepreneurs to become top 1% communicators in their industry. He also has a popular YouTube channel called MasterTalk, with the goal of providing free access to communication tools for everyone in the world.

After many years of doing presentation case competitions (think professional sports for nerds) in university, he accidentally developed a skill in helping others communicate effectively and started the YouTube channel MasterTalk because he realized that everything he was teaching them wasn't available for FREE on the Internet.

He heard a ton of advice that didn't make much sense like "be yourself" or "get up on stage" or better "imagine everyone in their underpants". He pressed record on his phone, started filming videos on communication in his mom's basement and now the goal is to help everyone master this important skill!