AP 0681: What Did You Learn from Michael Port’s Public Speaking Course?

AskPat 681 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody, and welcome to Episode 681 of AskPat, thank you so much for joining me today, as always I'm here to help you by answering your online business related questions five days a week.

We have an awesome question today from Aaron, but before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is DesignCrowd.com, which help entrepreneurs and small businesses outsource, or what they call crowdsource, custom graphics, logos, web designs from designers all around the world. So they have more than a half million designers from 100 different countries, ready to help you with any creative and design products that you might have. Check them out now at designcrowd.com/askpat and you'll get a special VIP offer just for you. That's designcrowd.com/askpat.

Sweet, now here's today's question from Aaron.

Aaron: Hi Pat, I'm Aaron, I run DiscardedAnxiety.com my question is, I know that you worked with Michael Port to help improve your speaking and I was wondering what your three main takeaways were from being involved in his heroic speaking program? Thank you so much for all that you do and I look forward to hearing your answer.

Pat Flynn: Hey Aaron, thank you so much for the question, I appreciate it. For those of you who are listening, heroic public speaking is an online course that I took, that is put on by Michael Port, who is an amazing person, best selling author. He wrote “Book Yourself Solid” and several other books, the most recent one called “Steal the Show” which is about how to really not just be a good public speaker but be a great communicator and really command the rooms that you are in, no matter if it's a small conversation among friends, or a large conference that you're speaking in front of. So when I took that course—you know I actually was given that course, full disclosure, I was given access to it for free, and I was promoting it as an affiliate, and I was happy to do so because I looked over the content and it was amazing, now there were a few, actually there are three things I want to mention and they are as follows.

First of all, I had already been speaking at the time, yet I still learned so much and I think this speaks highly to just what separates people from good to great. Great players, great athletes, great entrepreneurs, great business owners, great CEOs. They still continue to learn and know that they don't know everything, and that there are other people out there who may know more, and they always continue to educate and learn themselves. It's just like, I remember when Tiger Woods was golfing still, or golfing well at least, he was still getting swing coaching and so going into public speaking courses, I initially was like, “Oh, you know I don't know if I'm going to learn very much.” Well, I learned a ton. One of the things I learned from Michael and this course was just how great it is no matter what topic it is, to have other people in the community with you, doing and achieving and learning about the same thing.

How many times have we tried to go to the gym on our own? How many times have we tried to learn anything on our own? Because Heroic Public Speaking was a course that was launched and then it closed, and then people went in together and learned things and there was like homework to do and things to go and processes that we were supposed to do all together. It was great because we all communicated and the one thing I loved about his course and how it was structured was just the communication and the forums, and how everybody was very, very happy to be there, but not only that, sharing their wins along the way and everything they were learning. So the community behind it was extremely important.

Another thing I realize was just how important stage presence was, and that is, it's not just about the talk you give, and of course it's not just about the slides that you have, but it's about where you are on stage and where you are pausing when you present, and how you're standing, your posture and how deep you are in front of or in back of the stage you're addressing the entire audience. That stage presence, which you know Michael's incredibly great at, he's been on TV before and he's had professional training, I mean he's teaching these things to us for the purposes of delivering engaging speech so, that was another thing I learned.

Then finally, the other thing I learned was just how important exercise is, breathing exercise, every kind of exercise, really; obviously staying fit is really important and that's the one thing I've learned since, really focusing on my fitness was that all aspects of my business including public speaking, especially the podcasting it's just completely helped me with my focus, my endurance, but when I'm in exercises with this course, was the breathing exercises, and just getting your voice warmed up, because it can be very, very easy to lose that voice and you know if you're a speaker you kind of need your voice, so the warm ups, the breathing exercises, all the prep work that goes into the rehearsals that you do, all the prep work that goes in before you start performing on stage and I love, you know ever since I've taken that course I've always said public speaking is really a performance.

So I always say I performed at Podcast Movement last year or I performed at Fincon, you know I always try to say that, because that's the mindset I have going into a presentation and it's much more than just the presentation itself—it's a performance, an overall performance like I was saying earlier. So the breathing exercises, the prep work, it's like an athlete who stretches. You know you might see swimmers start to move their hands back and forth and start to beat their chests a little bit before they get on the edge of the pool to start their race, because they're just warming up their muscles, or getting things ready so that they know when it's time to perform and push themselves, they're going to be all stretched out and ready to go.

Those are just a few of the many things I learned Aaron, and I hope that's helpful to you, I don't know if that's something you're considering taking but there are a lot of public speaking type courses out there that are great. Heroic Public Speaking is one I have experience with too. Scoree, S-C-O-R-E-E, which is put on by Michael Hyatt and a few other of his colleagues, which is fantastic. Cliff Ravenscraft took that course, and I saw an immediate and massive difference in his public speaking abilities, and then there's things like Toastmasters, which are typically all around the world in different chapters, so you might want to find a Toastmaster chapter near you, where you can come in and learn and find other fellow speakers in person, to benefit from

So, Aaron, thanks so much I appreciate you and your question. I want to send you an ask Pat tee shirt for having your question featured here on the show. And for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much, I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day by John Wooden, he says. “Make each day your masterpiece.”

So do that, from this point forward right now, after the end of the show, make this day your masterpiece. Take care guys. Bye.