Hey Greenblasters!

Do you ever feel like when you speak about your work:

Other people don’t get as excited as you want them to?

Maybe you’re at a dinner party, and the energy at the table fizzles out when you explain your business.

Maybe you’re at a networking event, and your elevator pitch is received with a half-hearted: “Huh, cool.”

Or worse, you’re on a big sales call, and you’re just not feeling the enthusiasm from the other side.

This is deflating. A bad example of this can make you question whether you should even be an entrepreneur, or if you should just give up and get a real job.

That’s the problem I wanna tackle today (and really, every day, this is kinda the main problem I’m focused on).

“Are you not entertained?!”

The reason people don’t get excited when you talk about your business generally comes down to 3 things:

1. They don’t understand

2. They don’t care

3. They don’t trust you

There are lots of ways to fix Understand, Care, & Trust (UTC) separately:

• You can spend time clarifying and rehearsing your message (U)

• You can do vocal exercises to make sure you’re “loud and clear” (U)

• You can tell personal, vulnerable stories (T)

• You can make sure your message is tailored to your audience (C)

These are all great things to do, and I recommend working on all of them.

(If you need guidance on this, you can sign up for the Speaking Heroes Q&A next week).

But if you want to achieve UTC (sorry for the annoying business acronym, but it’ll help you remember), there’s a single exercise you can do to improve ALL 3 AT ONCE.

I call it:

“Best teacher ever”

Like a lot of my public speaking exercises, this requires memory and imitation.

Answer the question (do it now, if you can):

“Who is the best teacher I ever had?”

Ideally, this will be someone from high school or later (I’ll explain why below).

Next, ask:

“WHY were they so good?” Whatever comes to mind is good.

Finally, it’s time to IMITATE them.

Do this right now, out loud to yourself (I’ll wait).

…

Or if that feels too stupid, do it the next time you’re rehearsing for a presentation or sales call (which you should definitely be doing btw).

The point of this exercise is to help you tap into the way that teacher who made an impact on you SPOKE in front of the class.

I’m willing to bet, whether they were loud or soft…

Spoke quickly or slowly…

And were physically animated or more still….

You chose them as your “best teacher ever” because they made you:

• understand at least a bit of the subject matter

• care enough about it to listen to them, and:

• trust them

And the way they were able to do this is the way they SPOKE.

(BTW, this is why it’s important to pick a high school teacher or college professor; you don’t wanna imitate a kindergarten teacher talking to children!)

By thinking about them and trying to capture their essence, you’ll instantly become a better speaker yourself; I’ve seen this exercise transform 100s of students on the spot.

NOTE:

I’m not suggesting that you talk like this teacher forever now. I’m suggesting REHEARSING like them, to give yourself a sense of the power they had, and then finding a way to integrate that into YOUR way of speaking. And that just takes practice!

That’s IT for this week!

I hope it was helpful. Please forward this email if so, and reply HUMAN if it resonated with you!

Greenblast… out 🚀

P.S. There are still a few spots available for the launch event of Speaking Heroes, my new free community. Book here if you wanna join, it’ll be a Q&A / Ask Me Anything!