When folks ask me what I do for a living, I answer, “I help people eliminate public speaking fear.” It is always fun to watch the looks on their faces when they process what I said. Inevitably, I will typically get a response like, “You do what?” or “How do you do that?”

The process is really simple. In fact, anyone can reduce public speaking anxiety if they follow this process. Over the last 20 years, our great public speaking class instructors have perfected the best ways to reduce anxiety symptoms. And we have organized the process into three simple steps. The process works every single time!

In this session, we explain this simple process. However, if you looking for public speaking tips, see 10 Ways to Eliminate the Fear of Public Speaking. In that episode, we show you how to lower your heart rate, take deep breaths, and eight other ways to calm speech anxiety. This session is a little different, though. We are not going to give you a bunch of tips about how to reduce stage fright. Instead, we will show you how to become a good public speaker, so the nervousness goes away altogether.

Show Notes: Eliminate Public Speaking Fear in 3 Easy Steps (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/eliminate-public-speaking-fear-in-three-easy-steps)

This week, I'm going to cover how to make that mental shift to where you begin to see yourself as the expert when you present. Just so you know, one of the major sources of nervousness and fear comes from people standing up to speak and fearing that the audience is going to figure out that they are not the real expert or that they are not as much of an expert as their boss or coworkers or other people who do what they do. Once you realize that if you are the person speaking, it is because you have information that the audience needs to know it helps boost confidence immensely.

You Are the Undisputed Expert. So, Now Prove It

Regardless of what industry you are in or what expertise you have, you are the expert. The knowledge that you have is valuable to someone.

When I was 14 years old, my dad owned a home remodeling company. Every winter, I crawled under houses helping him repair frozen pipes that had burst. After a couple of winters, I had so much experience doing this that I could do it in my sleep. So as a teenager, I was an expert at repairing ruptured PVC pipes.

After I graduated from college, my first real job was working for an oil company doing title work for mineral rights. Before long, I had not only gotten pretty good at it, but I had also trained a number of new people.

In my third year in the training industry, I generated a half-million dollars worth of sales for the first time. That same year, I also received a couple of awards for outstanding instruction.

It took me five years as an entrepreneur to attain my first million dollars. However, it only took about eight more months to generate my second million.

With each of these accomplishments, I became an expert at that thing. I had information that the general public didn’t have (even when my expertise was just repairing frozen pipes).

Don’t underestimate your knowledge. Your experience has made you the expert.

One of my friends in college was going to school to be an elementary school teacher, and she absolutely hated math. However, once she graduated, she found out that in the State of Texas, Math and Science teachers got paid an extra fee. This was because teachers with this expertise were in high demand. So, she decided to be a fourth-grade math teacher.

Those of us who knew her pretty well were laughing when we asked her about her career choice. For the three or four years that we had known her, she complained over and over about her math classes. These classes were her nemesis. After a little teasing from us, she replied by saying, “In order to teach fourth-grade math, I just have to be an expert at fifth-grade math.” That day, I learned a prophetic life lesson…

In order to be an expert at something, you just need to have a little more knowledge than your audience.
For instance, let’s say that you are a restaurant manager who turned around a struggling location. How many other managers are there in the world who would want to hear how you did it? You’d be the expert at restaurant turnarounds (especially if you were able to do it a second or third time). Or, if you are a dentist who is really good at getting your patients to show up for every sixth-month check-up, then other dentists would pay dearly to figure out how you do it. Whatever you do on a day-to-day basis makes you the expert at that activity.

Show Notes: You Are the Undisputed Expert (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/you-are-the-undisputed-expert-so-now-prove-it/)

I was shocked at the huge list of dumb exercises to improve presentation skills on the internet. When I say “dumb,” I mean don’t try those tips. They will not work. In fact, they will likely make you even more nervous. So in this episode, I’m going to dispel some of the worst exercises and give you a few really simple things that you can do to become a better public speaker. So get rid of the tongue twisters and vocal warm-ups. Stay tuned for a few way more effective ways to become a good public speaker!

Before I begin, though, there is an important point that you really have to understand. Developing public speaking skills takes time. If you have a presentation tomorrow morning and you are just now looking for exercises to improve public speaking skills, guess what? You are probably too late.

Someone called our 800 number last week looking for help with an upcoming presentation. I asked him, “How long have you known about this fear?”

He replied, “Well, I guess all my life.”

So he knew he needed help a long time ago but waited until just a few weeks before his biggest presentation to try to do something about it. That would be like a teenager just starting to learn to drive a week before taking the driver’s test. You can probably do it. However, the teen would do much better if he or she practices an hour or two every week for an entire year. If you practice the public speaking tips below a little at a time on a regular basis, you will slowly become a great public speaker. If you try to do it in a week, you probably won’t improve a lot.

Show Notes: Exercises to Improve Presentation Skills

Want to calm down before a presentation? Even if you don’t regularly experience the fear of public speaking, just before you start a speech, it is easy to feel anxious. This initial nervous energy can cause a speaker to have a shaky voice, dry mouth, or sweaty palms just before a presentation. The good news is that this experience is very common. Most of the time, if you start your presentation well, the level of nervousness will drop very quickly.

However, sometimes when people feel that stage fright, they panic. When you panic in front of an audience, you will most likely experience even more nervous feelings.

So, what do you do to calm down before the presentation and calm those nerves? Below are 5 Simple Ways to Calm Your Nerves Before and During a Speech.

1. Create a Simple Presentation with Just a Few Key Bullet Points and Practice It with a Person.
2. Find a Quiet Place to Be Alone and Perform a Short Series of Exercises.
3. Interact and Network with Your Audience to Calm Your Nerves Before a Presentation.
4. Just Before Your Start Your Presentation, Take a Steady and Deep Breath.
5. Start Your Presentation with a Personal Story to Calm Your Nerves Almost Instantly.

This episode covers each of these tips in more detail. For full show notes, visit How to Calm Down Before a Presentation

https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-calm-down-before-a-presentation-5-simple-ways-to-calm-your-nerves/

Are you a nervous public speaker? A majority of the population has some type of fear of public speaking. Ironically, a great deal of this nervousness or anxiety comes from well-meaning friends or coworkers who are just trying to help.

When we see a friend struggling, we naturally want to help. So, we might offer a little constructive criticism as a way to help a new presenter improve his/her public speaking. However, these “helpful” pieces of advice can actually have an extremely negative effect.

This session shows how constructive criticism can actually cause public speaking fear. We’ll also cover a few ways to reduce this nervousness when we coach or mentor a nervous speaker.

Public Speaking Fear is Normal.

Public speaking is not unlike any other new skill we try to develop. When we try to speak in front of a group for the first time, every one of us will be nervous. The first time you rode a bicycle, you probably felt a little anxiety. You probably were also a little timid when you operated a computer for the first time. Remember the first time you drove a car on the freeway? You probably felt very nervous.

Each of these experiences has a risk of danger. So, the first time that we try them, we experience fear. Speaking in front of a group is no different. The first time that we do it, there is a risk of failure or embarrassment. The good news, though, is that with experience and a series of successes, your nervousness in each of these areas went down. Your fear of public speaking will also decrease if you follow the guide below.

Show Notes: How to Scare the Gooey Out of a Nervous Public Speaker (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-scare-the-gooey-out-of-a-new-public-speaker/)

This week, I'm going to show you how you can make your audiences pay attention to your entire speech. If you use this strategy, you'll get the audience on your side right away and avoid situations where the audience tries to test you or put you on the spot. The strategy will also save you a TON of time and make delivering your presentation much easier as well.

Make Your Presentation Audience Focused

Face it, most people hate meetings. They don’t want to sit through boring presentations, either. The best way to get your audience to listen and care about what you’re saying is to focus on them. You have to make your presentation “Audience Focused.” Focus on what the audience wants to hear, not what you want to tell them.

Designing your presentations with the audience in mind engages them and draws a more concentrated focus on your presentation as a whole. Using an audience-focused approach is like proactive market research. Thinking from your diverse audience’s point of view to drive your design.

I call this strategy the “Breadcrumb Approach.” Basically, we are throwing out a breadcrumb one at a time to try to get the audience to move toward us. Most presenters use a “Push” strategy. They push their ideas and content onto the audicne (whether the audience wants it or not.)

Show Notes: Make Your Presentations Really Audience Focused – Get People to Want to Listen to Your Presentation (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/podcast-make-presentation-audience-focused/)

This week, I'm going to show you how you can begin to develop your public speaking skills in low-risk public speaking venues. These are the tips I give to people after they come through my presentation classes if they want more practice.

As I give you these venues, though, I have organized them in a step-by-step process. For instance, last week, I gave you a list of online venues that I ordered from least risky to most challenging.

If you go through the earlier virtual venues first, you'll be able to build your skill and confidence without having severe negative consequences.

This week,  we'll cover venues where actual people are meeting in person and how you can be asked to speak in these venues to get practice and gain skill in public speaking.

Like last week, I start with the least risky and end with the most challenging. So, save the last ideas until you have built up your confidence.

Show Notes: How to Find Great Public Speaking Venues to Practice Your Presentations. https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/podcast-15-how-find-great-venues-practice-your-presentations/

I often get a common question after people attend our 2-day presentation class. “Now that I feel more confident, where do I go to practice to continue to get better as a speaker?” “How can I continue to grow as a great speaker?”

The best way to continue to grow is with continued and consistent use of your presentation skills. If you take a public speaking class and then don’t present again for a year, your new skills wither away.

In fact, one of the reasons why people come to a public speaking class is to get practice very quickly. A class lets them develop these presentation skills in a controlled environment. In a small group setting like this, presenters get instant feedback and direction from a public speaking expert.

With all the positives, though, it would be impractical to go to a presentation class two or three times a year. So, where do you go to get additional practice? In this session, I share a few ways to find speaking venues that are always looking for good speakers. We’ll also cover how to build a solid reputation as a good speaker, so your reputation grows. (That way, you have meeting organizers reaching out to you to be a speaker at their meeting as well!)

*** Before a get started, though, here is a quick word of caution. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. So, make sure that you develop a good presentation first. Then, also work on your poise and confidence when you present. Do these two things before you start to practice. If you practice a poor presentation, you’ll get really good at delivering a terrible presentation. Also, if you practice bad habits over and over, you will have more difficulty later correcting these habits. ***

Show Notes: Find Great Venues to Practice Your Presentations (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/podcast-15-how-find-great-venues-practice-your-presentations/)

Congratulations! You’ve been invited to give a TED talk. This non-profit talk series is the gold standard of speeches, so you should be honored to be on the event’s roster. Not to mention how great it will look on your resume and website. You’ve undoubtedly been chosen because you’re an expert in your field, be it medicine, literature, pop culture, gerontology, or careers, but it’s not the topic that will have your audience hanging onto your every word. No, it’s more than that. Attendees will be there to learn, but they will remember you for your stage presence and personality. Think about your favorite TED talk speakers. They may speak on a variety of subjects, but they all have something in common. Each speaker has an amazing stage presence.

The most powerful talks all use similar tactics to engage their audience and present well. Today, we discuss five strategies for creating Ted talks to help you create that stage presence and make your Ted talk go viral!

Show Notes: 5 Strategies for Creating TED Talks (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/make-your-ted-talk-go-viral/)

It is a great honor for me to have Grant Baldwin of The Speaker Lab on the show today. Grant helps people break into the professional speaking industry and shows them how to find clients and get paid when they speak.

Grant founded The Speaker Lab years ago and is also the host of The Speaker Lab podcast. His specialty is helping presenters create speeches that help their audiences solve problems. In the interview, he actually throws me for a loop a little. Since he has a hit podcast, I assumed that hosting a podcast might be a good way to generate new clients.

His answer, though, will likely surprise you. Grant gives five things that you can do as a speaker that will help you generate revenue more quickly. His goal is to help speakers find customers in a more active way.

The episode is full of great tips whether you want to be a professional speaker or not, though. Grant's incite will help you create better presentations that solve problems for your audience.

For more details about Grant and his team, the Speaker Lab Website is at https://thespeakerlab.com/.

You can also find Grant's book on Amazon at The Successful Speaker: Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid, and Building Your Platform. (https://amzn.to/3B6vD2p)

Full Show Notes at How to Find Public Speaking Gigs and Get Paid to Speak (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-find-public-speaking-gigs-and-get-paid-to-speak-with-grant-baldwin/)