It's not that Scary: A Beginner's Guide to Public Speaking

1. Preview: Hello. Do you want to get better at public speaking? If yes, you are in the right place. But even if not, stick around. Maybe you like it. Welcome to it's not that scared. A beginner's guide through public Speaking, as the name says, This course will serve as your guide through developing and improving your public speaking skills regardless, if you were a student who has to present at the university, if you speak in front of your colleagues at work often if you're an entrepreneur who has to pitch in for them investors. If your teacher ah, lawyer whoever you are in this course, you and I are going to be a team with one goal to make you better at speaking in front of people. So let me introduce myself. My name is Carlo. I'm a speaker, public speaking, coach and entrepreneur. I am the co founder of the Speechmaking Academy. Together with my partner Philip, I am the founder of Speech Faneuil and the author of the audiobook Joy of Speaking. Please mind that being a team means that we both have to do our share of work. Since this is a video course, I will do most of the talking. I'll tell you how to overcome stage fright. I'll show you how to effectively use your body. Use your voice so that it's not monotonous. I'll give your principles and structuring your speech. I'll show you some exercises. I'll give you tips and tricks, but all of this is going to be in vain if you don't do your share of work. What you need to do is listen carefully. Make notes if you need to try out the exercises, I show you. And most importantly, next time when you find yourself speaking in front of an audience, you have to give it a try and apply everything that would cover in this course. And don't worry, it sounds like a lot, but it's not that scary. It's not that difficult. And we'll also have some fun along the way. No matter how much experience you have or don't have. If you are willing to do this, this is a course for you. So welcome aboard 2. Introduction: Hello. Do you want to get better at public speaking? If yes, you are in the right place. But even if not, stick around. Maybe you like it. Welcome to it's not that scared. A beginner's guide through public Speaking, as the name says, This course will serve as your guide through developing and improving your public speaking skills. Regardless, if you were a student who has to present at the university, if you speak in front of your colleagues at work often if you're an entrepreneur who has to pitch in for them investors. If your teacher ah, lawyer whoever you are in this course, you and I are going to be a team with one goal to make you better at speaking in front of people. So let me introduce myself. My name is Carlo. I'm a speaker, public speaking, coach and entrepreneur. I am the co founder of the Speechmaking Academy. Together with my partner Philip, I am the founder of Speech Faneuil and the author of the audiobook Joy of Speaking. And then this course I combine all the theory that I know together with all my professional experience and the experience of the people I work with people from my workshops and my clients, all in order to create for you a complete guide through all aspects of public speaking. Please mind that being a team means that we both have to do our share of work. Since this is a video course, I will do most of the talking. I'll tell you how to overcome stage fright. I'll show you how to effectively use your body. Use your voice so that it's not monotonous. I'll give your principles and structuring your speech. I'll show you some exercises. I'll give you tips and tricks, but all of this is going to be in vain if you don't do your share of work. What you need to do is listen carefully. Make notes if you need to try out the exercises, I show you. And most importantly, next time when you find yourself speaking in front of an audience, you have to give it a try and apply everything that would cover in this course. And don't worry, it sounds like a lot, but it's not that scary. It's not that difficult, and we'll also have some fun along the way, no matter how much experience you have or don't have. If you are willing to do this, this is a course for you. So welcome aboard. The first thing that we have to do is define what public speaking is in the first place. Public speaking is every situation in which one person is giving a speech in front of an audience. On audience are people who are listening or at least are supposed to listen to this one person. Public speaking is a part of many professions, and it could be a key skill in asserting yourself in any kind of a professional environment . In addition, it can do wonders both for your professional development, both for your reputation and for your personal development, because getting better at public speaking also improves your confidence. It sounds very simple. You stand up and speak, but we know that in reality it's slightly more complicated than that. There's a lot of things that we have to think about, how we stand, how we move, what our body says, how our voice sounds. Is it monotonous, how we shape our message? How do we say what we're saying? And while doing all of this, we also often have to battle nervousness. The stage, right. This is why we will devote one part of the course to each one of these aspect and address them separately. It may seem like there is a long way ahead of us, but don't worry. If we work hard, step by step, you will make progress and you will become a much better speaker before you even notice it . It will be a pleasure to listen to you speak. 3. Nervous Scared Welcome to the club: when we have to speak in front of people, we instantly experience a failing off discomfort. We get to red in the face. We start breeding faster, our hands start trembling, our voice becomes a little shaky. Our heart starts beating faster. Everyone experiences it in the different weight. But what is almost universal is that almost everyone has it. This is called stage fright. Personally, when I was younger, I would get nervous every time when I had to talk to someone that I didn't know whether it was to talk to an assistant in a retail store, go to some kind of an office to file requests or even make a phone call. Just order a pizza. So what I would do that is I would prepare what I was going to say. I would rehearse it in my head and then go there or make the actual phone call. And to be quite honest, I still get a little nervous in these situations even today, and maybe you do as well. So it is no wonder that if we get nervous in these everyday situations, we get pretty nervous when we have to speak in front of a big number of people. The question, of course, is Why is this so? And the answer lies in our past, not yours or mine personally, but in our evolutionary past as the humankind you see back in the days of a previous story , can sisters, Everything was out there to kill you. Diseases, wild animals, wild nature and our survival depended on being a member of a group of people. If you were remembering off a group you had better access to. Resource is like food. You could defend yourself better, and you also had some kind of a social life which was important for your mental well being and for reproduction. So it was those people who belonged in groups that survived and had Children, and they would transfer their genes together with this need to belong to their Children. And this ultimately led to us today, here. Now, today an individual can survive on their own, Justus well, but we're still live in communities or in groups. I am sure that you personally are a member of certain groups, a member of your family of your group of friends, of your group of colleagues at work or at University, a member of a sports team, all kinds of groups. And every time when you interact with a group, you have a chance to slightly change your status in this group. Let's take an example. Let's say that you are with your friends and you tell a joke. Now, if it go, if this goes well and if they laughed, they will like you, even even better. However, if this doesn't go well, if it goes badly or even worse, if you defend someone, they will like you a little less. And if this was to happen often, maybe they wouldn't want to hang out with you anymore. Now, of course, no sane person would kick you out of a group because of one bad joke. But this is a principle. Now let's take this principle and applied to public speaking. Let's say that you are going to give a presentation at your workplace. You're going to give a presentation about the results off the last few months and your plan for the upcoming months. You are most likely a little nervous. Why? Because you know that your membership in the group is going to be evaluated on a subconscious level. If you do this well, your colleagues and your boss will think highly of you and they will. They will think that you are very competent and maybe you even get promoted on the other side. If this goes badly, maybe they will avoid you. They will think that you're incompetent. And who put you in this position in the first place? Who knows? Maybe you even get fired. So it is natural that you are nervous. If you are nervous before something important, it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you. It means that you care. This brings us to the most important question. What can we do about this? Well, I have for you one piece of bad news and two pieces of good news. So I suggest Let's get the bad news behind this first. The bad news is the nervousness never really goes away. Personally, I make speeches in front of different audiences on almost a weekly basis, and every time I am still a little nervous. But when I say this to people, they don't believe me. They say that they didn't notice that I was nervous, but that's the secret to it. And that's the first piece of good news. It never really goes away, but you learn how to handle it. So I will give you my four finest tips on how to handle nervousness. But before we get to it, let me warn you, there is no magical tip that can just make the nervousness just vanish. Go away. Can happen. You have to develop a certain mindset first, a certain attitude and that is you have to realize that it is okay and it is natural to be nervous. Don't run away from nervousness. Accept it. You can imagine it as a person as this mean looking guy. Mr. Nervousness, who's standing right next to you and what I need you to do is you need to acknowledge this , Mr Nervousness. And you have to tell him so to say that you're fine with him being there. It is okay for you. If he wants to stay, he can stay. But you will go on and do your speech nonetheless. So there is a quote that says sometimes the fear won't go away. So you will have to do it afraid And that is the attitude that I need you to have. Say that it is okay to be nervous. Be nervous all you want, but pushed through and do your speech. And in 30 seconds or 60 seconds, it will go away. By the end of the speech, you won't even remember that you were nervous. And now, as I promised, my four finest tips on overcoming nervousness number one, the leading and the biggest cause of nervousness is uncertainty. We wouldn't be nervous if we knew that everything was going to go perfectly fine. But we don't know that there are millions of ways everything can go wrong. However, what we can do is minimize the chances of things going wrong. How do we do that by preparation? If you learn your speech and rehearse it well at home, then you don't have to go there and hope that everything is going to go well and you won't have to improvise. But you will simply be performing what you already can. What? You already practiced at home. So you have things under control and this will make you significantly less nervous. So dip number one, prepare Well, tip number to warm up when I say, warm up. I don't mean that you should do 100 push ups before your speech, but that you should warm up your social skills. Giving a speech is an act of communication, and you can be communicated at the push of a button you have tow warm up. So don't spend all day at home alone, not talking to a living human. But come there earlier and talk to your colleagues. Have a little chat, have some small talk or, if this is not possible, give someone a Cole on the phone, and this will get you into the mood of communication. And then it will be more natural. And it won't feel so weird being there on the stage and giving a speech. So tip number to warm up Number three. And this is my favorite. Their nervousness into excitement. We already talked about what nervousness feels like, But let me ask you, what does excitement feel like? Well, we started breeding faster. We get the rush of energy. Our heart beats a little faster. That's the same like nervousness, isn't it? But what is the difference? The difference are our expectations. When we keep thinking about the things that could go wrong. Then we get nervous. But when we think about what good we might get out of this situation, if it goes well, then we start looking forward to it, and then we get excited. So how do we turn nervousness into excitement? It's simple. Have you ever heard of auto suggestion? All the suggestions stands basically for convincing yourself, and research has shown that people who just said I am excited performed better under pressure. And this is a very simple thing that you can do. Just give it a try before in on important speech or a big day at work on aural exam. Tell yourself I am excited and this will automatically shift your focus from the things that could go wrong under the things that could go well. And this will make you excited, and this will help you look forward to it. That's making you less nervous. Finally, number four focused on your audience. When I ask people at my workshops what helps them overcome nervousness, they often give me this answer. I remember that this is not only about me, but also about the audience, and that is very true, your speech could inspire someone. It could teach someone something. It could help change the way they thinker. Who knows? Maybe it could change their life. This is why it is important that you do your speech even in spite of your nervousness, when we think this way, we get, ah, higher meaning. Our speech gets a higher purpose. And this helps us shift the focus from worrying onto what actually matters. Doing it right. And this, in turn, relieves us of some of the nervousness. So deep number four focus on the audience. So those were four tips against nervousness. Number one, prepare well. Number to warm up. Number three. Turn nervousness into excitement and number four, focus on the audience. Now, if you remember, I promised you two pieces of good news. And here's the 2nd 1 Nervousness is actually good. This guy, Mr Nervousness, he is actually your friend. Why? Because if we were nervous, we wouldn't care much about it, and then we wouldn't prepare much and we wouldn't do a very good job. Probably So, Mr Nervousness, he makes us do our work and he makes us shine. And in addition to this, it is the nervousness, this fear in the overcoming and the effort that we have to put into it. It is this that makes public speaking feel so extraordinary, Good when we're good at it. And this is also why people look up to those who can speak well because they have also met Mr Nervousness and they know how scary he is. But when they see how well you handle him, then they will look up to you. So just remember the quote. Sometimes the fear won't go away, so you'll have to do it afraid. 4. What Does Your Body Say: communication is in most cases, exchange of information. We do this by languages and languages like English or German have words that have one or more meanings, and we use this words to convey or receive information. However, there are communication systems or languages that don't use words but still exchange information. And one of such languages is the body language. How do we communicate using her body? It is true postures of the body through hand gestures, facial expressions, head movements or eye movements. All of these symbols carry meanings just like words. Now, please know that when I say meaning or information, I don't mean it's strictly in a technical sense. Basically, anything can be information. For instance, if you are smiling, you are sending an information that you are happy and people around you will react to this . In public speaking body language is one of the central aspects and giving a good presentation or a good speech because you can have the best content in the world or what you're saying can be very useful or very important for the people. But if you just stand there like a statue, no one is going to listen to you. So in this chapter we will discuss different effects that you can achieve with body language and how to make the most out of body language to become a great speaker. Although some speeches air given while sitting on a chair, we give most speeches and presentations while standing on a stage or in front of an audience. Now, the moment when you come and stand in front of people, you will most likely feel a little nervous in this situation. Our body produces energy. This is the result off a fight or flight mechanism, and it is a lot more energy than we actually need. So what we intuitively do here and subconsciously, is something that immediately kills our credibility. And that is, we start shifting our weight left and right, we start moving in place. This is something that most people are not aware that they do. So the best thing to do would be to have yourself recorded while making a speech or ask for feedback from someone. If you find that you do it, don't worry, it is not a big problem. Simply next time when you are giving a speech, give yourself the task not to do it. Go into the speech with full concentration and awareness, and every once in a while, checking yourself during the speech. Ask yourself and my rocking left and right, and if so, then stop doing it. So after a few speeches when you do this, the problem will go away. Trust me. Now that we are standing firmly on the stage, let's talk about what a confident and neutral posture would look like. Stand with your legs slightly apart and with your feet in the width of your shoulders, they should be in line with your shoulders. Your feet should be pointing forward or slightly outwards. Make sure that your feet are not too close to each other because this will make you unstable, and it will also make you seem shy. On the other hand, they shouldn't be too far away from each other eater, because this will make you look like a cowboy that's making you seem arrogant. Do not lock your knees. Relaxed. Knees will make your whole body be more relaxed and will also make your breathing deeper. As for the posture, make sure that you are not bent, but don't stick out your chest too much eater, so find a position that feels comfortable for you. As for hands and arms, let's just keep them hanging on the sides for now, and we'll come back to them later. As we said, this would be the neutral way to stand. But you don't have to stand like this the whole time. You can easily modify this posture but shifting your weight in one side, thus making the position as symmetrical and more dynamic but still keeping it open. To do this, you can simply move your hips in one side, lock your knee and put the other foot forward, and you can even pointed slightly diagonally. Personally, this is one of my favorite positions. But just make sure not to keep switching from left to right, because then we're back to fidgeting, and now we come to hands. Does it ever happen to you that sometimes you're simply you simply don't know what to do with your hands? Well, this is normal, and sometimes you get saved because you get to hold something in them, for instance, a microphone or clicker or your notes. But if you don't have any of those you are left with only your hands, so let's see what we can do with it. The first thing that we have to do is find a starting position. A starting position could look like this, like this or my personal favorite. This this position is meant to be a base for your hands, and from this base they go to gesture and then they come back. So when you're explaining something, your gesture, you show something on the board or the flip chart, and then your hands come back here with when you don't feel like gesturing anymore. So the first thing that you have to do is go ahead and try out different positions and see which one feels the most comfortable. Which one is the most convenient? And also which one looks the best, and you can do this by looking at yourself in the mirror. So go ahead and give it a try. Now that we have a starting position, we can start gesturing. Gesturing is very important because it helps both the speaker and the audience. It helps the speaker express themselves better, and it also supports what they're saying on the other side. It helps the audience because it is easier for them to follow you and to understand you. Here's the thing. Most people are very visual, and if you're on Lee speaking and the audience is listening, at some point it will become difficult to follow you. But if you are also gesturing and you can imagine gesturing as painting what you're saying , you're illustrating your point with your hands. Then the audience receives the message, both by hearing and by seeing that's making it easier to remember and easier to follow. So since it is so important, let's get down to first and foremost, we have to distinguish open and close gestures. This is an example of an open gesture. This is an example of a close gesture. Now please note that there is no good body language or bad body language, but every gesture has a certain effect, and it sends a certain message. This gesture has the effect of saying, I am not feeling comfortable and I don't want to be here. And if this is what you're trying to achieve and there are situations when you want to convey that for instance in storytelling, then feel free to use this gesture. However, if you're trying to communicate openness and transparency, if you're trying to leave a good impression, teach someone, then you should use open gestures when it comes to hands. Open means that the audience can see your palms. Now this doesn't mean that you should be like a crazy street performer discovering on invisible box around yourself, but that your hands should have this tendency. This is again on evolutionary principle, because back in the days of our ancestors, you could hide the little dagger in your hand and attack someone. So now, subconsciously, when we can see someone's pumps, we think that they are hiding something. So let's take some sentence examples. Try saying this. On the one side, we have students who always seem to think that there is too much homework. And on the other side, we have professors who believe that there should be more homework. Here's another one. Ladies and gentlemen, for me, this was a great discovery, and that's why I would like to teach you what I learned in both of these examples. We used open gestures. You could see my palms, and we also illustrated what we were explaining. So on the one side and the other side for me, I would like to teach you. And in this way the audience understands it better, and it is easier to follow because it is visual now. Don't get me wrong. You shouldn't have a gesture For every word in your speech, however, gesturing is something else. Gesturing is not sign Ling, which, because the gestures are not symbols for words, they are an extension of that. The question that I often get is how much you should gesture. There are people who do it less and those who do it more. There are people who don't do it at all, and there are people who do it way too much, but both doing too little and doing too much can hurt your presentation. So here's a tool that will help you find the perfect balance. It is called the gesture frame, and it is on imaginary frame that has its upper end in the height of your chin. Its sides are a little wider than your shoulders, and its lower end is in the height of your hips, and inside of this frame is where most of your gestures should take place. So if you tend to do it too little, make sure from time to time that something is happening in this frame and you can also go outside of the frame the gesture. But make sure not to do it way too much, because then this will make you seem eccentric, Which is okay if that is the impression you're going for. What also matters is that you have control over your gestures. This means that every gesture should have a beginning and an end, and that they flow from one gesture to the other. And not that you just throw your hands around. Please note that when I say controlled, I do not exclude spontaneous. It is highly desirable that your gestures come spontaneously to you. It would be crazy to practice every gesturing advance, but you have to have control over them because otherwise this will be annoying for the audience and difficult to follow. The part of the body that is the most expressive and the easiest to interpret is the face, the language of the faces very rich. But here we will focus on only one aspect and the most important one and that is I contact . Eye contact is the foundation of any kind of communication, and especially of making a good speech. If you're going to step on the stage and look at your notes at the ground and a ceiling or wherever, but not at your audience, you're going toe waste both yours and their time. Now I can perfectly understand if it is difficult for you to look at the faces of people that you're talking to. We get nervous and we see all their eyes staring at us. Those expectations. So, yes, this does feel a little scary. But once we get past that initial fear, it opens for us as speakers, a whole new world, because the whole experience becomes a lot more authentic, and you can see how people are reacting to what you're saying and you can adapt your speech to their reactions. So since this is so important, if you belong to those people who have it a little difficult to look at the people while they're on the stage, let me give you a little tricked. How you convey bypass this, and this is instead of looking at people's eyes, you can look at the top of their heads just right here. The secret is in the following. There's a lot of people there and they won't notice that you are actually looking at their heads. But for them it will look like you're just looking at them looking at their eyes, and this will reduce the fear for you, and it will be virtually the same for them. Once you get past the fear. Here is another strategy that you can use that will make you feel better and also help your presentation in every part of the audience. Look at people's faces and inevitably you will find some people that are more enthusiastic dirt than others. Some people who are smiling at you, some people who are nodding their head as you are speaking some people that will give you a boost of confidence every time when you look at it and then I want you to remember sort of where these people are sitting in the audience and every once in a while, give that person a quick glance. This will make you feel better. This will give you a little push in your presentation and it will also make the whole group of people sitting next to this person feel spoken to, and this is another important point. Make sure that every person in the audience feels spoken to, no matter if there are five people or 50 people. If there are five people, it is easier because you can give a glance to each person every once in a what if you have a big audience in front of you, you can divide it into groups. Let's say lower left a lower right upper right and upper lift, and then make sure that your gaze eyes on one part and the other part the third part of four part. You can even come up with a pattern. But make sure that no one feels left out a situation in which many people failed to make eye contact as when they're using notes, notes air here to relieve our memory so that we don't have to learn everything by heart. But what often happens is that when we don't know what the next point is, we make a pause, look at the notes and then keep talking, Which is okay if it happens once or twice. But if it happens all the time, it becomes a little irritating. It becomes cut up. So instead of doing that, what you can do is before you run out of the things to say, you take a look at the notes and see what the next point is and simply keep talking this way. You don't have to make a pause, and this makes the whole presentation much more fluent. You may be feeling confident standing on the stage, but we don't want your confident presence to be there like a statue. So let's get you moving. The most common way of moving on the stage is simply moving left or right. This doesn't mean, however, that you say a few sentences and then move and then keep talking because, as you can see, that looks quite robotic. Know what these men here is that, while you're speaking, is simply decide to make a few steps in one direction? It's like taking miniature short walk. This may feel a little weird and awkward the first time when you do it, but it is important to do this in public speaking, especially when you're in a big stage, because people have the tendency to wonder away in their thoughts. They will pay you full attention at the beginning of her speech. But when you get into the topic, they will start thinking about other things, no matter how good or bad your presentation is. Luckily, we're hardwired to pay attention to moving objects, and if you move left or right from time to time, they will follow you with their eyes, thus automatically paying attention to what you're saying. Make sure not to overdo it, however, because if you keep racing left and right, it will be pretty chaotic and, honestly, a little annoying. Another thing that you can play with here is eye contact, of course, for most of the time we look at our audience while we're speaking, but when moving, you can look at the ground. You can look in front of yourself, especially with your hands behind your back, and this will give you a somewhat philosophical impression. You will seem very deeply immersed into the topic, but make sure not to overdo it either, because it will make it seem this interested in the audience. Another option is moving forward as well as moving backwards, moving forward to get closer to the audience could be a very effective tool. It creates a sense of intimacy and the connection with the audience. So you can use this when stating something very important, or combine it with a lower voice to create the sense that you are telling them something personal or a secret. I also get nervous. You know, it is understandable that when we move forward, we also have to go backwards. This doesn't leave that good oven impression. So this is why it is best to use it when making a point that this eater not that important or neutral when moving backwards, just make sure that you don't hit your back against the wall. Another thing that is very interesting and a lot of fun is instead of moving when you don't have enough place to move on the stage, you can make the intention of moving with. I mean by that is, instead of making a fool step forward, you can make half of a step and slightly lean forward. This will create the same impression, the same personal atmosphere without physically moving. You can of course, do this also on one side and the other side also diagonally to achieve the very same effect . This was all about body language. Of course, this is a huge topic and there is much more to say and much more to discover. But these fundamentals will give you a strong basis to develop your public speaking skills , as we've seen by the language is a system of communication. And it is supposed to support and illustrate what we're saying. Do not be afraid to experiment and try out different things because this is what public speaking is all about trying something out, seeing how it works and then finding what works the best for you and this is the path towards developing your own style that people will remember you for. 5. Carpe Vox Use Your Voice: Maybe you have a beautiful voice. Maybe you have a deep, manly voice. Maybe you have a deep, manly voice, although your female, maybe it's a little too high. Maybe it's a little too deep. But whatever the case, maybe it doesn't matter what kind of a voice you have, because you can change it. What matters is how you use your voice. Your voice carries words, and they have a verbal function. However, our voice also has a par verbal quality, and that is not only what we say but how we say something. We can say the same sentence in different ways so that it sounds differently and sends a different message. You can say the sentence. Oh, that's great in a way that it sounds excited like, Oh, that's great. Or you can say it in a way that it sounds sarcastic like, Oh, that's great. Para verbal communication effects the audience on a subconscious level. It effects the way they perceive the speaker. And it could be one of the deciding factors on whether a day will pay attention to what the speaker is saying or if they will zone out. We have all been true presentations where the speaker just spoke the same way for the whole time and all of the words became just a jumble of monotonous sounds. And no matter how hard you try to pay attention to them, you just kept being distracted and kept thinking about something different. This is what happens when a speaker doesn't utilize the full potential of their voice. So let's make sure that you do. The first thing that we have to focus on is breathing. Breathing is a basis for a full, rich and stable voice. Now, of course, we are old breeding all the time. If you weren't breathing, you probably wouldn't be watching this. But they're different ways of reading, and here we will focus on two most common ones, and those are Thor ASIC breathing and diaphragmatic breathing for simplicity. We will call them chest breathing and belly breathing. Chest breathing puts to focus on their lungs, and when we breathe in this way, our chest seems to grow bigger and our shoulders race. You can do this by taking one quick breath through your mouth. It will look something like this. This kind of breathing is shallow, and it allows us to quickly fill our body with air. We breathe this way when we are in stressful situations, and for people who are often under stress, this becomes the usual way of breathing. The other kind of breathing puts the focus on the diaphragm. The diaphragm is a muscle in our abdominal cavity, so to say in our belly, what happens is that the diaphragm lowers and the belly expanse so it looks something like this. This way of breathing is deeper, and it gives us more air toe work with. And then it is easier to play with the qualities of our voice like volume speed. It makes the voice richer and more stable. So this is the kind of breathing that we want to use on easy way. You can check your breathing and see if you're doing it right. Is the following exercise. It's very simple, and you can do it without even having to stand up from your chair to do it. Simply put your hands on your tour so right underneath your ribs, right where your ribs and make sure that your middle fingers slightly touch and then breathe in. If your fingers separate when breathing in great success. That's the breeding we want. If not, we have a little bit of work to do. But nowhere is it's not a big deal. The way you can practice belly breathing is you. Simply put one hand above your belly, but just a few fingers above your belly button. And then when breathing out, you press you slightly pressed the belly inwards, and then when breathing in, you gradually relieve the pressure. It will look something like this. This is a splendid exercise because you can do it anywhere, and it is. Especially good to do is when you go to bed when you're lying in bed. Just do this for 7 to 10 breaths, and after a few days this will become automatic to you this way of breathing. And it will also help you fall asleep easier, because it will make you relaxed. Now that we have some air, let's play with the voice, and first thing that we will discuss is volume of all the ways that you can begin a presentation. Do not ever start by saying, Can everybody hear me? If you can hear me, please just raise your hand and then l speak louder. This leaves a very chaotic and unprofessional impression, and often people are shy. So even if they can hear you, they're not going to say anything. So all your effort is going to be in vain. Instead of doing this, let's spare both the audience and you d inconvenience. Let's make sure that everyone can hear you like a true professional. First we have to distinguish loudness and volume. They're often mistaken, but they are two very different things, and they also are connected to breathing. Loudness is produced when we breathed in a shallow man. When we speak loudly, our voice becomes a little shakier and higher than usual. It doesn't sound very good, and we have the feeling that we're speaking from our throat, and after a while of this we get we got a sore throat. Volume, on the other hand, is produced when we breathe deeply. This makes her voice sound somewhat deeper. It comes across, is full, rich and stable, while people can hear us equally well and we get the feeling that we're speaking from our belly. Naturally, the biggest question is, how do you produce volume? Here's another very simple exercise that you can do with home. But for this one you will need one thing. And that is that powerful tool that you have called imagination. You will have to visualize your voice. Now. What we do is we will stand and on the one side of the room, facing the wall on the opposite side of it and we will take one sentence, it could be. My name is Carlo, and I'm a public speaking coach. Of course you will say your name and what you do, but it is important that you have one sentence or some kind of a text that you can speak. Now you start saying it and start speaking. But while you're speaking, imagine your voice. Visualize it as an arrow, a narrow coming out of your mouth, making an ark and reaching the wall on the opposite side of the room. This arrow can be in any any shape that you wish it could be of any color that you wish. Make sure it's a color you like your favorite color and imagine this arrow coming out of your mouth and spreading, going diagonally, going forward, going upwards and reaching every corner of the room, every wall of the room and painting all walls of the room with that beautiful color of your beautiful voice. Imagining this visualizing her voice will make your voice sound richer and more stable and will also give you more volume. If you wish to take this step further, you can imagine that your voice is coming not from your mouth but from the back of your head, making an arc above you and then reaching the opposite wall. This may sound weird, but it will make your sound. Make your voice sound even better and trust me, it is really worth a try. When you do this, you will notice a change in your voice. It will seem like it is coming from a lower point in your body. In addition, this visualization not only helps you gain more volume, but it helps you find the optimal volume for the room that you're in. So next time when you are speaking in front of people, especially in a big room or a big hole, used this visualization while you're speaking and imagine that your voice is reaching the walls, reaching the people in the audience and giving everyone in the audience a pleasant hug. And this will automatically adapt your voice to the size and the shape off the room that you are in. And it won't have to worry if everyone can hear you. This volume is going to be your default value. It's like in body language where we have a starting position for your hands, from which they leave to gesture and then come back here. But if you did the same gesture the whole time, this would become quite monotonous and the same happens with the voice. So now we have this default volume, this vocal basis. But if we speak the same with the same volume the whole time, it will be monotonous. So what we will do is we will variety. We will sometimes speak higher. Sometimes people over. We will alter the pace and under qualities off the voice, and we do all of this in order to keep the audience's attention to keep them alive. What people often do when they speak is they have a certain pattern that they repeat over and over again, and this can be pleasant in some cases. But sometimes it is impossible to listen to let me demonstrate There is something called lucid dreaming Lucid dreaming is asleep phenomenon where you are sleep, you're dreaming. But you know that your dream. As a result, you can control your dreams. You can do almost anything You can fly, have a shoot out with enemies, you can create worlds. You can even have six. It is said that everyone can achieve this state, but it has to be practiced. Did you know this? A certain rhythm there all the time. We spoke like this to do. Did you doodle doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo? And having a pattern like this can be good if you are talking about the very complex topic , so it may be easier to follow. But in most cases, this is very off putting and monotonous. And this makes the audience zone out and wonder away in their thoughts. So what we do to prevent this is we add some vocal variety, as the name says. This refers to a variety in the qualities of a voice like volume like pace, rhythm and pauses. So let's see what the same example would sound like with some variety. There is something called lucid dreaming. Lucid. Dreaming is asleep phenomenon where you are asleep, you're dreaming, but you know that you are dreaming. As a result, you can control your dreams, and you could do almost anything. You can fly. You can create worlds. You can have a shootout when your enemies even have six. It is said that everyone can achieve this state, but it has to be practiced now. Wasn't this much more pleasant to listen to? It's because we broke the rhythm here. We didn't put. Pause is always at the same place. We sometimes spoke slower, sometimes faster. Sometimes we spoke more quietly and sometimes louder. Now let's take each of these aspect and analyze them and see how we can use them to make our speeches better, more exciting and more interesting. The first aspect are pauses. A speech is like music and music consists of notes, but not only of notes but also off pauses, Pauses. Add great power to your speech. They make it more understandable and easier to follow and also make it more dramatic. A speech without pauses is very difficult to listen to because the audience doesn't have time to comprehend what is being said. We used pauses not only at the end of sentences and where we write comus, but also after parts that are dense with information. If there is a lot of information one sentence, we give the audience 1/2 a second or a second. To think for this information to sink in and for them to process this information, let's take an example sentence. In basketball, there is something called shot clock. Shot clock means that a team has a limited time to attack the opponents basket. That is 24 seconds here in this sentence, we introduced a term from basketball shot clock and then we made a short pause for the audience to remember this term for this term to sink in. Then we had the sentence where we had a lot of information limited time to attack the opponents basket. We made a short pause again for this information to be processed, and then we said that is 24 seconds. So always remember to do this, and especially when you're talking about a complex topic. Also, when you get nervous, you might tend to start speaking faster. But remember to make pauses because this will help both you and the audience to understand what you're saying better on the other side. Be careful not to go into the extreme. There are people who make too many pauses. And one of those people is, for instance, my dad. He makes long pauses and way too many of them. And what happens then is the opposite, because three audience has too much time to think. And not much is actually said. And then the listening becomes difficult, the audience gets bored and you just can wait for the whole thing to be over. So the message is used, pauses, but used them in a smart way. Use them strategically when you when you want to make a speech more dramatic, and also after sentences that are packed with information to give your audience some time to think. The next thing is the pace of speaking or the speed. And, of course, some people tend to speak faster. Some people tend to speak slower. Some people speak a little too slow, and some people speak way too fast. You can know because the audience people always have different preferences. Someone likes to listen toe speaker who speaks slower. Someone likes to listen to people who speak faster. What you can do is you can ask your friends or people around you whether you speak too slow or too fast. And when you're giving a speech, you can ask for feedback afterwards to see if your pace was appropriate. But once you have a default speed, a basic speed that you believe is neither too fast or too slow, then it's time to play with it and do variety speed to make a speech more exciting. But let me be honest with you. You could make a perfectly decent speech by speaking at the same pays the whole time. There's nothing wrong with it. But if you're watching this, it means that you have some interest in public speaking and that you want to become a better speaker. And if you want to go for a decent speech, that's OK. But you shouldn't You should go for a great speech. And if you want to make a great speech, then at some point you start speaking a little faster because when you start speaking faster, didn't you seem very excited and you seem very enthusiastic and this is why it's so interesting to listen to you. But if you speak so fast for the whole time, then it becomes a little chaotic. So what you want to do is then, at some point you're start speaking a little slower, and then when you start speaking slower, you seem like you're saying something very important. And then the audience pays even more attention to you. So the advice is play with the pace. Look for the parts in your speech, where you can speaks somewhat slower and someone faster, and this will add some great dynamics to your speech. And it will take your public speaking to the next level. Once you've mastered variety, the pace Brian The volume is not that big of a challenge because one often follows theater , but it is still important to practice this. People pay attention both when you speak louder than usually, that is to say with more volume, and when you speak more quietly than usually it is. The fact is that when we speak louder, we become much more expressive and much more intense, and everyone is looking at you. Everyone is listening to what you're saying, because apparently something important is going down. But if you then shift into speaking quietly, that's when you get there real attention, because now it seems that you mean business. Now it seems that you're saying something very important, and people also have to lean in to hear you better. And that's when they automatically engage with what you are saying. Much more simple, isn't it? So playing with volume in this way, and especially if you combine it with pauses and variations in pace and open up numerous possibilities for you, you can use it to achieve a comical effect. You can use it in motivational speaking in all kinds of storytelling, the possibilities are endless. What you have to do is experiment. Play with it, try different bases, try different volume in Always look for places in your speech that you can pronounce differently, and after a while of actively doing this, you won't even have to consciously think about it. What can I say with more volume? What can I say? Faster and slower, but you will start doing its intuitively and automatically, and trust me, this will make your speech is remarkable and memorable, and your audiences are going to respect that. There is one last point that we should address here, and it's a sentence that many of us said. Maybe you have even said it yourself. And it is. I hate my voice. It is normal that when you see yourself on recording, we all cringe, and it's very unpleasant to hear your own voice. It sounds horrible, and there is a reason behind this. And trust me, that reason is not that your voice is horrible. Here's that. Here's the thing. When you speak, your voice travels in two ways. It travels out of your mouth through the air and reaches under people's here and the camera's microphone, and it also reaches your own here. But at the same time, it also travels through the head. You speak, and it travels through the tissue of the head to reach your inner here. So what you hear is the speaker is the mixture off these two voices, so to say, and then when you look at yourself on the phone or in a recording, you on Lee here, the air carrot, part of the voice, and it's a matter of a habit because you've been listening to your voice in this in this way the whole time for the whole life. And then you hear yourself on the recording and you've never heard this part of your voice before. So it's just a matter of a habit. It's new and weird because you are not used to it. But when you look at yourself often on recordings, it becomes perfectly normal. So trust me, your voice is not horrible. Love your voice because it is an extension of you, of your will and your personality. So use your voice in the best way possible. Celebrate your voice and let your voice celebrate you. 6. Cold Hard Content: every speech or every act of communication for that matter has how and what? How you say something and what you say. You can use all kinds of tricks and method to make a NIF ec tive and entertaining speech, but not actually say anything. There are people who do this, but no one really likes these people. To be a truly great speaker, you have to master both the art of delivery and the art of content. And the ladder is what we will focus on here. We will now discuss how to structure your speech, how to come up with a catcher beginning how to explain concepts and structure the main part . How to have a powerful ending and, of course, much more just like a book on S a a movie or any kind of a story. A speed should have a certain structure. What? There's a structure. It is the way in which parts are put together to form something. And the most common structure that humanity has been using probably since the day developed the ability to communicate is introduction main part conclusion. Since this structure is so deeply rooted in our consciousness, this has become a common language, a consensus between the speaker and the audience. So the audience can follow the speaker more easily and make sense of what they're saying. There are people who speak without the structure and jump from topic to topic. But what they do is they provide a lot of information. Since this information is not organized well, the audience can make sense of it and ends up very confused. You can think of a speech as of a journey and you are the tour leader now. You don't want your travelers to go around with blindfolds. You want them to know where you are and where you're going. And having a structure is a way of showing them that it is like if you gave them a map of where you are and where you're going. Hence the introduction, the main part and the conclusion we will start with the introduction. Of course. Imagine if Martin Luther King started his famous speech. Not by saying I have a dream, but by saying hello, everyone. My name is Martin Luther King, and today I would like to tell you about my dream. Do you think that the speech would be nearly as powerful as it is today. Probably not. Technically, if you're one of the people who start their talked in presentations by saying this, there's nothing wrong with it. It tells the audience who you are and what you're going to talk about, but it is also completely unoriginal and utterly boring. What it really tells your audience is that you're just another random person talking about another random topic. But Martin Luther King wasn't another random person, and I don't think that you should be. The first few sentences of your speech are your first impression. It is at this very moment that you have your audience is full attention, and at this moment they subconsciously decide whether they like you and whether they are curious to hear more of what you have to say or if they're just going to quit. Just going to think, Oh, just make it quick. So a good introduction should either be funny or spark curiosity, and in the best case it does both. So let's see how you can do this. The most important aspect of a good introduction is originality. What can you say that no one else is likely to say, Once I had to present myself in a six minute long speech and this was my introduction, a new speaker comes onto the stage, has to introduce himself, and now the question is, who am I? Well, I'm afraid that I don't really know the answer, but I can share with you what 23 years of my research showed When I said this there, the audience saw that I wasn't going to just tell facts about myself, but that I would take an unusual perspective and this already said a lot about about me. And then after this, they were very curious to see what I was going to say next. Another approach that is very effective is if you start with a story or a very vivid example of what you're going to be talking about. This makes the topic much more tangible instantly, and you can often find this in Ted talks. Once I watched the talk where the speaker was talking about gender roles and this was her introduction, I'd say we are all familiar with the classic image of an attractive woman. She's slim, wears high heels, elegant, maybe a little mysterious. Sounds familiar. Well, times are changing. In 2013 Rhonda Rousey, a UFC fighter, a woman who, to put it mildly, punches people in the face for a living, was ranked 29th on the list of 100 sexiest women. This is only one change that we are seeing in what we call gender roles. The idea here is not announcing your topic or your hypothesis right away, but in telling a story or an example of something different that might even make the audience wonder. What does this have to do with everything and then reveal the connection and reveal your topic. This makes the speech much more exciting. It makes it feel like a journey, and that is something that you should strive for. So these were just two examples. You can take them and adapted to your topic. You can do something similar or something completely different, but what they are ultimately meant to do is to give you further ideas. So go out there and tell a joke. Tell a story of fun. Fact. Bring props to the stage. Just do something out of the ordinary, something original right at the beginning of your speech to really grab your audience attention and nail that first impression and then the audience will want to hear more from you. So we come to the main part, and this is what it's all about. In order to help you shape your talks and speeches and the best way possible, I will give you three principles of a great speech. The first principle is clearly define your topic and limited to three most important points . No matter whether you're pitching your company, whether you're giving a toast or giving a presentation about the ancient Egypt, always define your topic in terms of three arguments. Three sub topics. Three points because you can never tell everything that you would like to. And it is also proven that people can focus and can remember more than three big points. If you're, for instance, giving a persuasive speech, you want to convince someone off something. You will be more successful if you take three arguments, three reasons and elaborate each one of them. Well, then, if you take a whole lot of arguments and don't go deeply into either one, because you will end up with a list of arguments and not an actual argumentation, So the first principle is clearly define your topic and limit your topic to three most important points principle number to speak the language off your audience, which is a flash. Your way of saying talk in the terms that your audience is familiar with learning is not Onley acquiring new information, but also a process of integrating new information into the knowledge that we already have. According to this, you shouldn't speak the same way. If you are talking to preschool kids, business people bother builders and chemical engineers. You always have to adapt to the knowledge and the terms that they are familiar with. Let's take an example. Let's say you're a philosophy teacher in the class with a lot of boys who are into sports. You can tell them to following. Socrates is like Michael Jordan of philosophy. What you do by saying this is the following. They have a knowledge and an understanding of the world of sports, and you use this knowledge to help them understand another world, the world of philosophy. You draw a parallel between these two, and this helps them understand the status that Socrates has in the world of philosophy much better. This not only makes it easier for them to remember this and understand it, but also makes it much more interesting to them. The take away is always look for metaphors. Always look for analogies and parallels that you can draw. Always look for any kind of connections between what you are telling and what the audience already knows. This is, in a way creating a bridge between the new and the old knowledge in the mind off the audience, and this will help both the audience and help yourself. So principle number to speak the language of your audience. The third principle is don't speak, but communicate with your audience. Speaking is a one way process. I speak you listen and no matter how you react, if you're excited, enthusiastic or if you're falling asleep, I keep speaking the same way. But communication is a two way process. It is an exchange, So I speak. I watch for your reactions, and if you're bored, not interested, then I change something. I adapt my style of presenting to you so that I make it more interesting to you. It's like the difference between good teachers and bad teachers, bad teachers. They speak the same way. If there's five or 50 students in the classroom, if they're looking at their phones or if there curiously listening. But good teachers, they adapt to their audience. They acknowledge their audience and interact with their audience. That is their students. So be present and acknowledge your audience, and you can do this in many ways. For instance, ask your audience questions. Don't let them only ask you questions if they don't understand something. But go ahead and ask them questions during your presentation. This will make the whole thing interactive, and it will turn your listeners into participants, which is much better. Then use a bit of humor. Don't worry. You don't have to be cracking the funniest jokes they've ever heard. But the funny remark here and there will make the whole thing much more exciting will keep them interested in will keep the audience alive. Finally, you can, for instance, used this method, which I very much like, and this is used the word you mawr than the word I. When I use the word, I I'm just talking about myself. But when I use the word you. It might be the same sentence. Just this one word is the difference, but you feel directly spoken to It's like when you're with friends and you know, you start thinking about something else while they keep talking. But then someone mentions your name and your right back there with him. You pay attention and the same thing happens when you use the word you when speaking to an audience. So these air some ways in which you can adapt your audience, ask them questions, use humor and use the word you more than the word I. At some point, you will come to the end of your speech, the conclusion. And here you simply have to close the deal. If you've done everything right so far, this shouldn't be difficult. But you have to invest some time into it. In conclusion, you create the feeling that the audience will walk away with what message? Or what feeling is it that you will send them home with In the conclusion is where everything that you spoke about comes together and in this part you should make a summary off everything that you spoke about and add something extra. Add another layer onto it. But what I'm talking here is not that you add some new information but that you add a personal touch to it. Speak about why the whole thing is even relevant. Why it is so interesting to you have a cold toe action if you're pitching something. If you're giving a motivational speech in the conclusion, you have to give them one final push so that people will walk away with the feeling Yes, I can really do this. So in the conclusion, don't just leave it be. Go one extra mile to really round up the speech to add this final touch this cherry on the top and really earn that beautiful applause while you're doing it. Be careful, toe. Formulate your last sentence, Justus. Well, as the 1st 1 many people, when they're finishing a speech, they don't know what to say anymore. So then they say something like and, um, yeah, And then there's a moment of awkward silence. And then the audience gives an applause. You have to let your audience know and feel that the speech is coming to an end and one of the best ways and most simple ways which you can end. The speech is simply by saying Thank you, saying thank you is appropriate in almost any context, any situation. It is very polite. It shows that you don't take your audience for granted, and it's just a sophisticated way of ending any kind of a speech. Thank you. That was it about shaping the content of your speech. Apply these principles and you will easily stand out as a speaker, not only as a speaker but also as a person that people in your community look up to. And when you hear that beautiful, thundering applause at the end of your speech, enjoy it because you earned it. 7. Summary: congratulations. You made it to the end of this course. I hope you liked it, and I hope that you enjoyed our time together. Let's quickly go through the most important things that we covered in this course. First we talked about stage fright. And remember, it is normal to be nervous if you are nervous before something important a presentation or speech. Tell yourself that it is okay to be nervous and pushed through. Do your speech. Even in spite of this unpleasant feeling, four Most important tips on overcoming stage fright are prepare well, Warm up your social skills. Turn nervousness into excitement and focus on your audience. Then we'll discuss body language. Remember, use open postures and open gestures. If you want to create the bond and a relationship of trust between you and your audience, you can imagine gesturing as a way of painting with your hands painting what you're saying . Find a default position for your hands, which feels comfortable and also looks good. And from this position, your hands can leave to gesture to demonstrate what you're saying and then come back. Remember to move on the stage. If you have enough space, keep her body language variety and lively. But don't overdo it because it will be a little chaotic. We also covered the use of voice. It doesn't matter what kind of a voice you have. What matters is how you use it. Belly breathing is a basis for a stable, rich and full voice, and it will allow you to produce volume as opposed to loudness. You can produce volume by using the exercise in which you visualize your voice. And once you have a vocal basis, remember to add some vocal variety to it. That is variety volume. The pace and use pauses creatively to make your voice interesting to listen to and not monotonous. In the last part, we talked about shaping the content of your speech. The classic structure of a speech is introduction main part conclusion. It is very important to make an original introduction because this will be your first impression, and the good introduction is either funny or arouses curiosity. In the best case, it does both. In the main part of the speech followed the Three principles of a Great speech Number one. Limit your topic to three most important points number to speak the language of your audience and number three communicate in the conclusion. It is also important to work hard on this part because this will be the feeling that your audience will walk away with. So, my friend, that was it. We've made it. Thank you for your time and effort. Thank you for your trust. And thank you for coming onto this ride with me. I am looking forward to hearing your feedback. I would love to hear what you liked about the course so that I can keep doing it and also what I could have done better so I can improve it in the next course. If you like the course, I would really appreciate a positive review from you. My name is Carla because knowledge in the name of the Speechmaking Academy on my partner Filippo FMA thank you very much. And we wish you all the best in everything you do. Goodbye