Okay, are you ready to not like me? I mean, seriously dislike me because you're not gonna like what I'm about to tell you. People always ask me, TJ, what's the number one way to really build confidence before any speech presentation talk anytime you have to communicate. And they're really hoping I'm going to say something like, Oh, just visualize your audience naked or in their underwear. or stand like Wonder Woman for 30 seconds. Those things are easy, quick gimmicks.

I wish they worked. But they don't. There's only one thing I know that really works. And that is evidence that you actually have something interesting to communicate and you're communicating it. Well. How do you get this evidence?

Put your hand in your pocket, and pull out your cell phone. What I want you to do is to practice whatever it is you're trying to communicate and recorded on a cell phone, I don't care if it is a marriage proposal, a solicitation for an investment in your startup, a request for a raise whatever it is, you're trying to communicate. I want you to practice it on video. Now, here's the thing. I know you're not gonna like doing it, you're not gonna want to do it. Too bad.

If I go to my doctor and say, Doctor, I'm overweight, I need to lose weight. I'm hoping he'll give me a magic pill. But instead she says, well, TJ you need to exercise more and eat less. Eat fewer fatty foods and ice cream. I don't want to hear that. Unfortunately.

It's true. It's good advice. And my advice for you is a little bit like that. It's not fun. It's not exciting and sexy. But it really does get the job done.

It's not hard. We just aren't comfortable with the idea of Recording ourselves and looking at ourselves people teach and like to hear my own voice. I don't like to look at myself. Too bad. As I mentioned in a previous lesson, nobody cares about you. You need to do it so that you actually have confidence you're coming across the way you want.

If you don't look at yourself on video, how do you know you're not doing this? Believe me, I could give you all the same advice in this course. But if I did this, lick my lips nervously the whole time. By the way, that was disgusting. It would disgust you. It would bother you it would annoy you But guess what?

I don't have to worry about the fact that I'm licking my lips too much while speaking to you. Because I've already checked everything I'm saying to you. Now. I've said before on video and I looked at it and this isn't that how I want to come across So the real key to confidence isn't just practicing. It's certainly not practicing in front of a mirror. It's practicing on video, looking at it, figuring out what you like, what you don't like.

And then doing it again, looking at again, redoing it, doing it again and again and again. People say, well, TJ, what's the magic number of rehearsals? Is many as it takes until you like it. He might do it in one take and think, okay, that's how I want to come across. That's fine. It might take you 50 might take you 150 I don't mean to sound callous, but I really don't care.

What I care about is will you be completely comfortable? When you have to communicate whatever it is you're communicating. What makes us uncomfortable is this fear of thinking? Oh, what if I look stupid? What if I sound stupid? What have I seen?

Awkward. What if I don't make sense? What if I'm speaking too softly or too quickly? Well guess what? All of those are completely legitimate concerns. The way to satisfy yourself that you're not making any of those mistakes is to practice.

On video. Most people the first time they practice they notice they're nervous and they're speaking too quickly. So just do it again, speak slower. Put in a pause or two. If your head is frozen, move your head. Keep doing it again.

Each time you practice, you get more comfortable with it. And that way, you actually know how you're coming across. That's what will give you confidence. think of anything else you do in life if you're a great tennis player, and you're confident that your forehand is going to go where you want and have good power and it goes in. It's typically Because you've actually seen yourself hit hundreds or thousands of other forehands, you don't just get up once and say, I've never once played tennis or I've never done a forehand. Let me just hope that the first one is perfect in a match.

It's not how you do anything else in life, you look for evidence. When you are writing an important document, an email to a loved one, even we typically run it through spellcheck, we look at it before using it and sending it to the person we're communicating with. It's the same principle with video. If you haven't seen yourself speak, then how do you know how you're coming across? Part of what makes us nervous when we communicate with whether we're giving a speech to 10,000 people or talking to one customer across from a table in a restaurant. Part of what makes us nervous is we just don't really know how the other person And seizes.

And when you practice on video, you now know you can actually see what the other person sees. You can hear the same voice that your audience will see. And if you keep practicing that way, you eliminate the unknown. We're fearful of the unknown. If you actually know how you're coming across, there's no reason to be fearful. People are nice enough to write in on all my other Udemy courses that I seem really natural.

And I like the way I come across. And I just seem so confident and comfortable. I say is nothing I'm doing that you don't do already. When you're talking to a friend or a family member. There's nothing I'm doing here. There's no skill I have that you can't develop really quickly in less than a day.

If you just practice. The reason I seem comfortable here and relaxed is I actually am comfortable. And relax because I know exactly how I'm coming across in my perfect now to some people not like my beady eyes or my hairline, church some people don't like, but there's nothing I can do about that. So I don't worry about that. And I know that this is how I want to convey my ideas. This is how I want to speak, because I've done 10,000 other videos, and I've looked at them, and I've gotten feedback from others.

So that's my challenge to you right now. And here's where you decide is this going to be a real course for you? Are you actually learn or is this just going to be kind of a sit back, relax, push buttons, do Facebook and email while having the video go by and pretend to learn. You want to get something out of this course. Here's where I need you to step up. You've already isolated a particular thing you want an audience, person, audience member to do when you're communicating with them.

You've isolated a few messages ideas, you've come up with a story. Now I want you to pull out your cell phone or your iPad or your webcam and record it, look at it, figure out what you like, what you don't like, and keep doing it. Don't just do it once, not look at it and upload it. I want you to keep doing it again and again. And again, before you show anyone. Try to eliminate things you don't like.

Make sure you get to the point where you think it's as good as you can currently do. Then I want you to upload it whether it's to YouTube or some video file sharing service and then put the URL in the discussion section of this course I will watch it and I will give you a personalized critique. A word of warning. Very few people do this. They don't get their money's worth out of this course that makes me feel bad but I can't reach through the screen and through the computer and force you to do this. So again, getting back to what I said earlier, so much of communication success is just initiating just showing up.

So much of communication skill improvement is just doing this one exercise. I guarantee you if you think it looks horrible, you can hit delete, no one has to see it, but if you don't start, you'll never make that first big step to improve yourself. So please record yourself now. redo it, keep looking at it till you're satisfied that upload it to YouTube any other file sharing service post the URL, I'm looking forward to seeing you