Public Speaking Masterclass

Watching Joe Rogan freeze on stage I saw we all face this problem

It was the most bizarre thing.

An hour before he was riffing on stage like he owned it.

But now he was frozen like a deer, following the GOAT around.

This part of the show was unscripted and Rogan was unprepared.

Standing up there next to Dave Chappelle he looked like a tired kid at Disneyland needing to be carried.

He was out of lines, but worse, he was out of confidence.

While Chappelle, who’d just delivered a crushing set, was on fire, in his zone, freestyling, lighting up the stadium.

Seeing the whites of his eyes

It was pretty awkward, I have to say.

I felt so much for the guy.

He’s obviously a highly accomplished performer.

An hour earlier he’d captivated the huge crowd, but now he was pottering around unable to even blurt out a line, let alone a funny one.

It was difficult to watch, and from our front row seats a little too close for comfort.

You could see the bulging whites of his eyes.

Feel the trepidation in his body along with the awkward silence his words were supposed to fill.

Watching his frozen body, I could “hear” the gears stuck in his head.

Upgrade YOU 2.1. Just one more what?

I’m writing you on this one final time because you know it’s such an important step.

All three Modules of Upgrade YOU—Goals. Mind. Actions—are ridiculously powerful in driving what you want.

Yet this “what?” step is particularly crucial.

That’s because here you’re aligning the way you think and feel with going after your goals.

We all know how much this matters.

Yet it’s not always so easy to do, is it?

Especially coz nobody ever shows you exactly how!

Where are you pointing your magic wand?

See, again, the reason we keep hitting this is because it really matters!

Certainly, this IS happiness.

But especially in our context getting clear on what you’re changing in your mind is key to unlocking your top performance.

So, how clear have you gotten on what you might change?

Come back to the question we asked in this first video—how would you be different?

I mean, really?

Lining up the topics we discussed here, what remedial and generative changes might you make?

How might you invoke the first rule of mind control for optimizing how you think and feel?

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Upgrade YOU 2.1. The first rule of mind control for doing what you want

The brain screws you…

This remedies the #1 mistake in thinking.

It’s so fundamental.

So basic.

Yet it can be extremely “not easy” to do.

I won’t go into detail why.

We go into enough detail together in this video.

All I’ll say here is, so long as you’re thinking, why not be thinking about what you want?

Don’t want to drive to Kansas

OK.

Great.

So, where do you want to drive?

Waze doesn’t ask you for all the destinations you don’t want to go.

Only the one you do.

See my point?

All day every day many of our brains are thinking about what we don’t want.

Ugh, I hate my job.

Haven’t left the house in months.

It’s just so hard with the kids.

Certainly there’s many things in your life you don’t want.

So what do you want?

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Upgrade YOU 1.3. Conditioning your conditioning your goals

Meaning, I’m just repeating what I wrote in the last letter to you.

Just conditioning.

Repeating.

The same message.

For you repeating the same process for conditioning your goals.

Of course I’m playing around a bit here.

But I’m also being literal.

As we go into in this short video for conditioning your goals.

This is the most important step.

Knowing the why of your goals deeply matters to starting and finishing, as we covered here.

And of course so too does knowing what your goals are.

But it is this repetition.

Conditioning your goals over and over again.

That makes the hugest difference between thinking you have goals.

And literally living them.

Here’s the video again for conditioning your conditioning your goals 🙂

Upgrade YOU 1.1. Stand for nothing, or your bigger why

Ray McGuire is standing for something.

After a long career on Wall Street he’s stepping down as Citigroup’s vice chairman to join the race for NYC mayor.

It’s a crowded field.

In many ways the politics has turned against wealthy businessmen like former mayor Bloomberg.

Yet he’s still standing.

Perhaps it’s easy for him

He’s been making serious coin for decades.

Has strong relationships on Wall Street, in business, and the civic and political world too.

After a lifetime of it perhaps being a disadvantage, in these times his black skin might advantage him.

So perhaps all this is easy for him.

To leap from a prominent position on Wall Street.

Put time and money behind his campaign.

His reputation as a winner on the line.

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Biden Vs. Trump Debate 1: Video breakdown

Who won the first 2020 presidential debate?

That’s debatable!

If you want an unbiased opinion on that, you can look to CNN or Fox 🙂

But if you want to go deeper into 9 powerful examples of influence from the debate, look right here.

You might be interested to go deeper into how each of them influenced to win on this grand stage.

Or perhaps more importantly, to arm yourself with influence you can use to win more on your stage.

Winning with influence

All the world is a stage as I wrote about here.

And those who can influence are more likely to drive the results you want in every stage of your business and life.

You might know I see politics as a game of influence, as I wrote about plenty when I wrote this book on Trump crushing the GOP in 2016.

Winning in politics has little to do with policies, but how well you rally voters.

As I wrote here, it‘s clear to me this election would come down to how Biden and Trump stacked up on the stage.

Overall I’d say it was favorable for Joe.

The risk was he’d get blown up by Trump, but he well stood his ground.

And landed plenty of shots too.

That said, the only people who decide the winner of these debates, and indeed the election, are voters.

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He’s right, Trump is on course to win…

Combating Trump

Just shut up, Geoff…

That’s what I think when my brain tells me to write on this topic.

It’s gotten me into enough trouble with fans on both sides of the aisle, when I only care about winning.

What leads to more winning for America?

And what will lead Biden or Trump to win this election?

Watch the polls, listen to the narrative, and once again, it’s obvious Trump will lose.

Apparently Nancy Pelosi suggested canceling the presidential debates.

It was a good move if the Dems could pull it off.

That’s the way they’re most likely to get beat again by Trump.

I’m not one to talk about whether Biden is punching at his best, but this is where Trump does.

How he won 2016

Trump’s hardest part to winning 2016 was mowing down 16 top GOP candidates.

Starting from scratch, building momentum from nowhere, keep in mind that the mainstream saw him as a joke.

The Huffington Post called his campaign a sideshow, and covered it not as politics, but entertainment.

He said so many outlandish and offensive things, including saying John McCain wasn’t a war hero.

Yet, still, “somehow” he thrashed the GOP, and then beat Hillary.

Can Ambitious Leaders Afford So-So At This?

There are lots of ways leaders quickly fall.

When you’re standing on the pedestal it’s easy to lose your footing.

People are constantly analyzing you.

Looking for cracks, figuring out if you’re really who you stand to be.

All Eyes On You

In the presidential debates just one question can end a candidate.

And the stakes can often be this high in business too.

A CEO speaking poorly on a shareholder call.

Failing communicating to the Board.

Delivering the wrong message to employees.

Sometimes leaders mess up badly and fail quickly.

But most the time we fail by leaving opportunities on the table.

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Public Speaking Natural FAST?

Why learn any other way?

Public speaking unnaturally SLOW, anyone?

If public speaking is a fear worse than death…

Slow Painful Death, Anyone?

How many years do people live with the fear of public speaking?

Fear all their way to the stage?

Terrifyingly “trying” to memorize their lines?

Walking up there hoping for the best, fearing the worst?

Or perhaps worse…

Avoiding public speaking altogether…

Or even worse…

Wasting years of their life doing their little Toastmasters, fake audience fake cheering them on?

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Would You Rather Be Dead or Public Speak?

Do you know it’s true?

Apparently we have a greater fear of public speaking than death…

It was once pretty close to that for me.

I can’t say that if you held a gun to my head and made me choose, I’d eat a bullet.

But public speaking, and even having a public website, was once a near-death experience.

What About You?

How comfortable are you speaking in public?

Not just this formal thing we call “public speaking,” but how comfortable are you standing and speaking to a group?

Even socially, do you need the lubricant just to feel more at ease?

In business, do you hold yourself back in meetings or other forums because it’s uncomfortable for you?

Or perhaps worse, diminish your credibility by doing it poorly?

You Know What’s So Bizarre In All This?

We’ve been speaking in public most of our lives!

And that’s the crux of this public speaking dilemma.

Because we see public speaking as a “special-type” of speaking, we think it requires all sorts of unnatural ways of doing it.

Suddenly we can’t just speak the way we always do.

We need a script. To memorize it. Practice over and over. Imagine the audience naked…

How To Learn A New Skill—And Actually Master It

A lack of necessary skills is almost always the gap between idea and execution.

You’ve surely experienced the frustration that happens when you see an opportunity in your life, but lack the knowledge to act on it. We all have. You know you deserve to make more money, but you don’t know how to negotiate. You have a genius idea for a business, but you don’t know how to sell.

If you’ve ever tried to research and learn a new skill, you’ve run into two schools of thought:

The 10,000 hour rule. This is the old school belief that to master a skill, you need to dedicate 10,000 hours to learning and perfecting it.

The “Just Enough” method. This is particularly popular with online coaches. The idea is that you don’t have to be an expert, you have to learn “just enough” to be functional.

Both these schools have their merits, but neither are a complete solution.

If you try to gain 10,000 hours of negotiating experience before asking them to show you the money, you’ll be a decade older with nothing to show for it.

If you learn just enough to negotiate a slight raise now, you might get what you’re looking for in the short-term, but at every level you’ll still fail to earn what you’re worth.

I teach my clients a system for building skills that enables them to rapidly—within days or weeks —reach a high level of competence (relying on the 80/20 Principle), while at the same time taking the daily actions that build to mastery over time.

How do you get enough skill to be dangerous and get what you want now, and keep becoming more dangerous over time?

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