One Question Friday: What Does It Take To Be An Ace Public Speaker?

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How To Make Money With What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. It talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's podcast network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales.
You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.

**Shaan Puri** (1:09)
All right, it's One Question Friday, where we answer one question from one of the listeners. If you want to submit your question, go to mfmpod.com, is it.com? mfmpod.com, and click the little microphone to submit your question. This one came in through text message. Somebody said, hey, dude, I'm giving my first talk at a conference. I got invited to speak at this conference. I'm giving my first talk.
I'm excited about it, but a little bit nervous. He's like, I know it's gonna be fine, but I just don't want it to be lame. He's like, you and Sam are really good at doing these kinds of public speaking things.
You know, what's the trick? You know, what do I do to make this good? What do I do to make this not just the same old, same old? So I thought we could give maybe our take on what we do to make public speaking fun slash interesting. What do you got?

**Sam Parr** (1:55)
Well, I would say first, public speaking is a skill. So a lot of people think, well, I speak all the time and I speak in public, therefore, I'm probably gonna be decent at public speaking. That doesn't really work that way. So public speaking, some people are talented and they are just better. Gary Vaynerchuk's like that. I think he's just better than everyone else.
But for most people, it's a skill. So I highly recommend reading a book on it or Googling how to be better at this. It's a skill set. And so there are tricks. I don't think that this is the best time for us just to say what all the tactics are, but a few of them are just on storytelling. And it's very similar to stand-up comedy, which again, some people are just born better, but a lot of people, you just have to learn and try.
And so buy a book on it. And I think that's actually the easiest first step.

**Shaan Puri** (2:36)
Is there a book you'd recommend on it or just not on the top of your head?

**Sam Parr** (2:40)
Yeah, I think what's the one that you and I were reading on storytelling by the guy who won all the Muse Cup?

**Shaan Puri** (2:45)
Story Worthy, I think.

**Sam Parr** (2:47)
Yeah, I think Story Worthy was awesome. I had a bunch of takeaways from that. And then speak like a Ted Talk or something like that. It's called the Ted Talk Speakers Guide or something like that. That's quite good. But the Story Worthy, I actually thought was pretty phenomenal.

**Shaan Puri** (3:00)
So I'm gonna tell you what I told him.
I said, and by the way, he had also said he's like, I wanna bring that showmanship that you guys talked about. So I think he was picking up on what we talked about. So I said, all right, three things.
I said, number one, be in peak state. It's very easy when you're nervous to go kind of like inward, you're kind of low energy, your mouth's a little dry, your shoulders hunched over.
Like fundamentally, as soon as you walk out there, people are gonna read your body language. They're gonna read your energy and they'll start to respond to it. When somebody comes out and they're electric, you can feel that they're excited, that they got like a bounce in their step. You're paying attention because you wanna know what they're all about. I said, so just make sure before you go out there, do some pushups, go run a wind sprint, do some jumping jacks, do whatever you gotta do physically to literally just get blood flowing and be in a like more like high performance state. I said, think about it, an athlete doesn't go on the field until they're warmed up, until they're ready. A singer or a dancer or a performer, they're not gonna go on the stage until they're warmed up and they're feeling loose and warm. It's the same thing if you're gonna go talk. You wanna feel loose and warm, both in your voice, but also your body. So that's the first thing. Just do the physical, get the physical part right. The second is, remember, this is the first of many. You'll do this 500 more times. So this might feel like a big deal now, but a year from now, this will be an afterthought. You won't even really remember how it went.