Cultivating Confidence : Mastering Public Speaking and Personal Growth with Anne McKeown

Which comes first? needing to have the confidence or needing to have the idea of standing out. Confidence comes from seeing results and I think that getting the results is the first part. Choosing to put yourself in a really uncomfortable position. Organically let something grow and the results come in, then that gives us confidence.

Confidence, because we start to think, Oh gosh, that wasn’t as difficult as I thought. Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of biz bites proudly brought to you by CommTogether, the people behind podcasts done for you, because we’re all about exposing other people’s brilliance. Don’t forget to subscribe to Biz Bites and check out podcasts done for you as well in the show notes.

Now let’s get into it.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Biz Bites. And today my guest she’s written a book that maybe summarizes it all. I think it’s public speaking from stage fright. To spotlight. I had to look down to make sure I got that and we’ve known each other for a little while, but it’s so great to finally get you onto the podcast.

Welcome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It’s great to be here. I love what you do. And yeah, I think we, we both have similar outlook on being able to want to help other business owners. Absolutely. And it’s interesting. I’ll allow you to introduce yourself in a second, but I think what’s interesting about what you just said is that whilst you come at it from a speaking, public speaking point of view, I’m coming at it from a podcasting point of view.

But at the end of the day, they lead them, they lend themselves to one another. And it’s a similar kind of outcomes in this and a similar kind of idea. One’s just recorded and more and accessible in a different way to going to an event. But first of all, let’s get you to introduce yourself properly.

So why don’t you tell our audience a little bit more about who you are and what you do. Oh thank you. Look, I’ve been a coach, really a confidence coach for many years. I started off working with sales teams with BP oil, and I realized in doing that, that various things help people to be successful.

It’s the same things that hold them back. And a big one is our mindset. A big one is whether we believe that we can achieve something or not. Another is being able to speak up and ask for things. Another is being able to have someone say no and not feel rejected by that. Being able to accept no and move on.

And so when I worked with these teams, it was the same people that were successful all the time, regardless of what product. We were selling and it got me really interested in how the mind works, how our beliefs affect our outcomes, how routine plays such an important part in what we do and then a big part of that as well was being able to speak up.

So my tagline is for leaders and people in business to be able to step up, speak up and show up with confidence because I think there are three things that if we don’t, if we don’t step up and get out of our comfort zone, then we stay stuck. Thank you. If we don’t speak up, then we’re never heard, and we can’t share our message or our opinion.

And if we don’t show up with confidence, then people don’t have belief in us because it’s very obvious, either through what we say or our body language, that we don’t have confidence in ourselves. And so over the years I’ve worked with people to, to help draw those various ideas. gifts that are there because we actually, when we’re all born, we’re all confident.

It’s not until we’re told to sit down and be quiet that we lose our confidence or we’re told to wind our neck in or we’re told, who do you think you are when you go to school? And so that’s there. And, as a baby, we all cried out when we were hungry and we didn’t think twice about shouting for what we wanted.

And again, that was dulled. So it’s not about. Learning new things. We all actually have it within us. It’s just rediscovering how to tap into those resources and to use them to be successful, both in your personal life and your professional life. Because again, even with personal goals, we want to be able to step up and improve or, if you’re someone that wants to grow and change and learn and you’re into personal development in relationships, we need to be able to speak up and show up.

So yeah, so I’ve been working doing that for really the last 10 years here in Australia. I started my own business in my fifties when I myself had was at a crossroads in looking. For what would be the next stage in my own career. It’s amazing how those sort of things happen, isn’t it? They you find these opportunities and they just take off, right?

And lead you down a particular path. But I definitely want to explore some of those things that you’ve talked about, because confidence is an important Aspect of it, but which comes first needing to have the confidence or needing to have the idea of standing out, which is, it’s a bit of a, cat in the mouse approach.

Chicken and egg scenario, perhaps is a better way of describing it. Which way do you go first? We hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Bites podcast. Have you ever thought about having your own podcast? One for your business, where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world.

Come talk to us at Podcasts Done For You. That’s what we’re all about. We even offer a service where I’ll anchor the program for you. So all you have to do is show up for a conversation. But don’t worry about that. We will. Do everything to design a program that suits you from the strategy right through to publishing and of course helping you share it.

So come talk to us, podcastdoneforyou. com. au details in the show notes below. Now back to Biz Bites. Which way do you go first? Yeah, look, I think the confidence comes from seeing results, and I think the getting the results is the first part. So the stepping up is the first part where we’re choosing to, to make a change, choosing to back yourself and choosing to put yourself in a really uncomfortable position.

For most people, even deciding to go and see a coach can be quite challenging. I know with myself that in fitness, like the idea of having a coach, I cringe because I know they’re going to push me. I know they’re going to push me beyond what I sometimes physically want to do. And that’s what I do with people, but with their mindset.

We’re pushing their thinking beyond their limiting beliefs. And I think once people start to think, they give themselves permission. It’s all right to try this and fail. It’s all right to ask and be refused. It’s all right to put myself out there and. Nobody be interested and when we can let go of the result and just say we’re going to experiment with this new target new project, whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve and then.

Organically let something grow and the results come in, then that gives us confidence because we start to think, oh gosh, that wasn’t as difficult as I thought. Or that was really hard, but I did it anyway. Or I got great feedback from my partner or a client or, and then that we, that’s the building blocks of to start saying if I did that, I can do the next step.

Yeah. It’s it, and it’s a challenge, isn’t it, to. To get those results in the first place, that’s the hard part because it does take a little bit of confidence to be able to get that to have that understanding of who your audience is, what it’s about what’s going to make a difference to your audience so that you can deliver some of those things.

And then it starts to breed even more confidence, but you need a little bit of confidence that you’re connecting and you’re offering the right thing and that you can deliver something of meaning and that will deliver results. I think if you’re not, the market will tell you very quickly. I think people will tell you very quickly.

And if there’s crickets, then you know that you’re not on the right path. If you like, when I first started, I decided when I set up my business here in Australia, that I was going to work with teenage girls. And I thought I’ll mentor and I’ll coach teenage girls around confidence. And the first. Workshop that I organized.

A whole lot of mums that I knew said, Oh yeah, if you could help my daughter, that would be wonderful. And I’ll make sure she signs up. And when I ran this program and I put out leaflets and I hired a venue, I wrote a whole program. I was full of enthusiasm and had three girls sign up and I was like, Oh my god, and I immediately went into, I’m a failure, nobody wants this is a disaster, why did I think I could do this, and all that negative self talk.

And then one of the mums came back and she said to me, but Anne, you’ve organised it for a Saturday morning and they’ve all got sport. And I was like, duh, so it, so the market told me that what I was going for was wrong. And she said to me, if you did a whole day with these girls during the holiday time, parents will pay you five times what you’re charging because they want someone to look after their kids and build their confidence during the holidays while they’re at work.

And so that’s what I did. And they were right. Like I had 23 girls sign up. So I think you have to start somewhere and it’s. It’s again, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater and saying, I tried that and it was useless and I’m a failure and I’m never going to try again. It’s what can I learn from that?

And how can I use that to, to grow my business, grow my confidence. Yeah. And that would be an incredibly difficult market I imagine to work with because teenagers think they know everything already anyway, don’t they? There we go. But but I suppose that’s the interesting thing then.

So how do you graduate from working with teenagers to now having a a focus on, people that are people in business and wanting to become speakers? It’s a great question, actually, and it happened very organically for me, because as I started to coach these girls and they got changed and they were telling their mothers and then their mothers were saying can she coach me?

Cause a lot of these women were going through like the whole midlife thing and menopause and. I’m sure about what their future would hold and as a woman at that stage myself, they were then saying what did you do? And you probably find this in your industry as well, but I was shocked that everybody didn’t know what I already know because I had studied NLP neuro linguistic programming back in the nineties.

I did positive psychology all through the two thousands. I’m a mother, so I’m constantly looking after coaching my own kids. And so when I would share things with these other women, they were, I was shocked that they didn’t know some of the mindset techniques that I had known forever. And so when I would get the women in a group, they would say, I don’t want to share in front of everybody.

Can you help me one on one? And so they would just come to the house and we’d sort through their problems one on one. And as my business grew, Then I had women that run a business come and say to me how did you make money out of doing what you enjoy? So my target became female business owners.

Then I started to get opportunities in corporations doing talks for the likes of International Women’s Day. And Then those organizations would say we’ve actually got women in our organization that we would like to step up and become leaders. But they don’t believe in themselves or they’re not speaking up or they haven’t got the confidence.

Could you work with them? And so it was just one door opened another. And I’m making that sound like it happened overnight. It didn’t, it’s been a, 10 year journey, but over the 10 year journey, that’s how things have evolved and grown. And my own confidence has grown during that time.

Because as I’ve gone through each stage and failed and picked myself up and started again, I’ve been able to make a note of what I’ve learned. That’s something that’s happened the whole time. People say to me, but how did you do it? How did you do it? And sometimes a It was so organic. I didn’t, I don’t really know how I did it.

Things just evolved. But when I looked back, there was actually a bit of a pattern and I could start to see that some of that early teaching that I used to use with the sales teams, I was doing naturally in my own life and business. And those steps would be things like imagining it, like I would start by just what would my business look, what would it be like if I was able to go in and do presentations for corporations?

And I would just have a picture in my mind and a desire of what that could look like. And then it would be How could I make that happen? So I would start to plan it. And then, my goal setting would be so detailed. It wouldn’t just be a big picture goal. It would be like a five sheets of a four written down goal exactly which organizations I was going to target, how I was going to get in there, what I would talk about if I got in there, so just feeding my mind how I wanted things to unfold.

And then I was able to work backwards and put that in writing to share with others. And it is there’s a few things that you spoke about there. One, it made me reflect on it. I’ve mentioned this before on the program, a mentor of mine that we’ve had on the program Paul Dunn said, I remember him saying many years ago, your career is nothing more than a collection of selected pivotal moments.

And I think that those progression and things, they do happen. Yes. In the right way. And it’s often that, it isn’t until you reflect sometimes as to why one thing leads to another. I was only reflecting earlier today on a meeting that I had with someone happened because I met someone else.

Because of that’s a person before that, and along the way, I was going, where is this going and where I thought it was going initially is not where it’s going, where I realized that it’s going now. And I think that happens naturally in business as well. So you do, there is an, there is a degree of things that you have to allow to organically develop, even though sometimes you might be questioning, why am I doing this?

That’s right, being open to them and to, I know there’s been lots of times I’ve done things, I think, oh, I’m just wasting my time doing this, or I’m not earning enough money doing this, or I’m not, and I would put all these limits on it, and when I was able to let go of that and say, no, okay let’s almost see everything as an adventure because I don’t think we do get it.

Results as quickly as we would always like and there’s that saying that we can achieve more. in a week than we, no, in a year than we think we can and less than a week than we think we can. And we tend to make our goals too short. We don’t give ourselves enough time to really allow things to go through their natural process.

It’s like trying to get a flower to bud. When it’s not ready, you can’t speed it up. There’s a time for everything. Look, we all, I think we’re all guilty of that, aren’t we? I know I certainly, I was reflecting again earlier today on some things that I wanted to get done this week and I look at that, I looked at that list and as I was reading it aloud to my team, I went, yeah, we’re not getting all of that done this week.

That’s Four months worth of goals and to think that we’re gonna I’m gonna get it all done. This week is just not going to happen. I wanted to ask you as well about the whole idea of so there’s we talked, you talked about this. The initial bit of you’ve got confidence. You’ve got some standing out, but It’s also about isn’t it to understand what is your distinct bit of expertise?

What is it that separates you from others? Because often we all, many of us work in fields where there are direct competitors, but it’s your experiences and your insights based on those which make you unique. But how do you help people extract that? I think it’s exactly that.

You need someone else to help you extract that because we don’t see it in ourselves. Like most of us will say, Oh, there’s millions of coaches out there. Oh, there’s hundreds of podcasters out there. Oh, there’s tons of buyers agents out there. And how do I differentiate myself? Oh gosh, I don’t know. And part of that struggle is cause we all have our own blind spots.

There are things that we don’t see that others don’t see. And that’s where the whole coaching thing comes in, because someone else can draw that out of you. And it’s a bit like what you do with the podcasting, but you’ll ask questions to draw out a story or a line of, conversation in the same way.

That’s what a coach will do. We’ll ask questions and dig deeper than just the surface. So people will answer questions from the conscious mind and they, we want to sound smart and we’ve got all the answers and we know who we are, but it’s not until you start to dig a bit deeper and include the unconscious, the subconscious things that are there.

Both the positives and the negatives, because we have a lot of subconscious things that hold us back and when we can tap into that, and that’s Like the heart of who we are. That’s deeper than just who we think we are. If that makes sense, it’s like who we really are. And when we tie in, as you said, the skills, the experiences, playing to your strengths.

So many people try and succeed by using someone else’s template. They did it this way. And if it worked for them, it will work for me. And there are so many people out there at the moment teaching you, this is the way to become whatever it is you want to become. And there can be steps, but I believe that everybody, to really be successful, you need to find your way and a way that’s sustainable and maintainable.

So that over time, You feel you’re still being true to yourself and authentic, but still also being energized. If we are trying to achieve something based on someone else’s agenda, we very quickly get tired. Absolutely. And I think particularly in service based businesses and that, and when I say service based where service is a component of the business, it may not be the end product, but service is part of the of a large part of the business.

That’s where you’re going to have different. Opportunities to draw upon different stories, because that’s what’s going to make your your own expertise and your own take on things quite different because of the things that have happened to you along the way, because of the way people have asked you questions along the way of what you’ve done, it’s why, personally, when I do this podcast, I don’t like to overprepare because I find that if I overprepare and I have a whole series of questions when I go down, then you’re not listening in and opening yourself up to avenues and opportunities of where things might be able to go.

It’s not that I have no idea about where it’s going to go. It’s not that I don’t do any research. It’s just that sitting there and going, I’m going to ask all of these questions. It’s nice to have a prompt to make sure that you do cover something, but it doesn’t, it can blindside you as to where it can go.

And it’s all about, that’s the bit that we share in common is all about uncovering people’s areas of genius and being able to expose that. Yeah, and it’s the same with public speaking that if someone gets up and they’re concerned about sticking to the script. It’s the worst thing for public speaking because the minute they go off script and they get anxious because they’ve lost their place and then it all becomes about rustling through the notes, they then feel that they’ve got it wrong.

When if you’re the only person speaking, how can it be wrong? It’s your talk. And so I totally agree with you there. It’s about allowing things to be a bit more organic and a bit more free flow. But you do have to have the three things you want the audience to take away. You do want to have some repetition so that they get your message.

You do have to have a clear beginning, middle and end. So that there is, but within that structure, the free flow is where the gold lies. Absolutely. Which reminds me what we should do in talking about repetition and doing things is saying to people, the book, which is coming out soon, public, or in fact, it’s out now, as I should say, as we’re talking, it’s about to come out by the time we’re releasing this podcast.

It is well and truly out. So public speaking from stage fright to spotlight is one thing. And the other thing is too, for everyone that is listening in now We are going to have a bit of bonus content at the end. You need to click on the link in the show notes to be able to access that. We’re going to talk about heart goals, not just smart goals.

So there, that’s something to look forward to as well. So tell me, what is it that You are you looking for, are you helping identify people when they come to you and say, is this person, am I going to be able to help them be a good speaker or is everyone potentially a good speaker? It depends what they want to do.

Like it’s very different. I work with storytellers as well. So I’m part of events where people come and they just share their personal story. That’s quite a different. audience and a different skill to someone that’s doing a technical presentation to a large corporation. And so I think the first thing is to have a desire to tell a tale.

And either it’s because you have a story you want to share or You’re at work and you’ve been told you have to do a presentation, and even though there’s a have to in there, which is maybe not a desire, you want to be able to overcome that barrier so that you can be promoted and, we all know public speaking, get your message out there.

It’s a great springboard professionally and personally. And most people that come looking for help have made the decision that they want to do it. It’s then about saying, you want to do it, but on a scale of one to 10, how confident are you? And some people will say, look, I don’t mind standing on the stage.

I just really worry. I’m going to forget what I’ve got to say. Someone else will say, I can’t stand on a stage. If I’m just on a podcast and talking with one, I’m fine. But the minute you elevate me, like literally physically elevate me. I feel sick. Someone else will say, if there’s 10 people in the room, I’m fine, but don’t put me in a room with 500.

So it’s first of all a bit to say, discovering what the fear is, because we see everybody is a fear of public speaking, but it can manifest itself quite differently for different people. As in, it creates a picture in the mind for different people. Mainly. People don’t want to be judged, they don’t want to be rejected and they don’t want to make mistakes.

And so if we can let go of the ego, then the judgment will be gone. And what I say is if you, and if you’ve got that fear and you’re like a deer in headlights with a spotlight on you, then what we want to do is we want to turn that spotlight, spotlight around and we put the spotlight on the audience.

Because if we make it all about them, that takes the pressure off us. And then we’re being of service, which is really what public speaking is about. It’s not about the speaker at all. The speaker is just the carrier of a message. And when you’re getting that message across that can change minds, change hearts, start movements and have a positive impact.

Then if you come at it from that point of view, just takes the pressure off yourself. Now, if you’re doing a presentation where it’s all about figures and numbers and it’s got to be correct and you’re going to be judged from a company point of view, if you get the figures wrong it could be a disaster for the whole launch of the company or something.

That’s a different, that’s a different, scenario in a different pressure, what needs to happen there then is practice and more practice. And one of the great things with having a coach is that you can do role play and get feedback and do that practice. So I, one, one size doesn’t fit all.

From the kind of coaching that I do. Um, there’s generic things that people should do for public speaking, but then it comes down to the individual. And I think you hit on an important point about being able to rehearse and do these things. I think when you know, the ultimate. Um, great speakers to me.

People like stand up comedians, the really top notch stand up comedians. And you look at a at a Jerry Seinfeld, for example. And when you listen to him talk about how he gets to his. Show his big shows that he puts on or his specials and he’s bigger tours. He’s practiced those jokes hundreds of times in small audiences and he’s refined it.

He’s changed little things, put emphasis on different things. It’s an art form to be able to do that. And it’s not, some people can walk out on stage and can just nail anything. They’re few and far between. Most people who you think. I just nailing it well, they’ve practiced. I still remember I go back to them this I go back to the old days of television in Australia and people like Graham Kennedy and Burt Newton used to be fond of saying, where are we?

We’re out the back practicing our ad libs because, they made it seem seamless and and they made the ability to speak like that be appeared to be very easy, but it was incredibly, rehearsed. And I think that’s part of it as well is that it’s not easy to rehearse in front of a mirror or in front of your family who don’t necessarily know your audience either.

So it’s you do need someone to be able to deliver to. Yes, for sure. And equally, it’s not just the person that’s lacking confidence because you can get people who think they’re great on stage and they get up and they waffle and they don’t know when to stop and they don’t read the audience and the audience’s body language is Oh, when’s this guy going to shut up and get off.

So we also be able to work with those people to say, your message is great. It just needs to be more concise and more punchy. And you need to. You can say the same message but with less words and so it’s the, people Have that feel confident getting onto the stage. It’s that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a great speaker.

So you know it works both ways. Yes, absolutely. There are definitely people who are incredibly confident. But then you sit there and you listen to the speaker. I’m speaking and you think there’s not really much there is there they’re just they’re confident and they’re giving a really good presentation of themselves, but you want the substance there and equally you can find it the other way.

So it’s hard to find that balance. What are, without giving too much away, give us some tips and tricks for people who may be sitting there listening, going, Yes, it’s me. I’ve got to make a speech in a couple of days time. There’s no time for any coaching. What are the tips and tricks that people need to think of when they’re going into a situation where they are speaking?

So I think the first thing is what do you want the audience to come away with. And how do you want the audience to feel? Don’t make it all about you, make it about them. And there’s that great saying that they won’t, people won’t remember what you said, they’ll remember how you made them feel. And a great speaker leaves an audience feeling that they were part of the conversation.

Even if they said nothing, they felt that they were involved in the whole presentation. I think. What I said earlier about taking the spotlight off yourself and putting it on the audience and being of service. One of the biggest things is people feel nervous. And so we can use the body to calm the mind and we can use the mind to calm the body.

And there’s two ways of doing that. So when we use the body to calm the mind, the main tool is breathing. It’s why yoga and all these gurus teach deep breathing. And there’s a breathing exercise called box breathing. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, Anthony. So we use the body to calm the mind and When we breathe in for four and imagine one side of the box and then we breathe out very slowly for four and imagine another side of the box and then we breathe in for four again and then out for four again.

And so the mind is focused on the picture of the box and the body is, the message is sent to the body that you can slow down when we slow down our breathing. That way you’re not going on to stage all hyper and your voice is high and your energy is high. So the breathing is one thing. Then we can use the mind to calm the body, which is the opposite way around.

And one of the things I suggest is having anchors. So an anchor is something that, that triggers a thought within us. And I like to use shoes. This might sound a bit silly, but when you put on your slippers. You’re letting your body and mind know it’s time to relax, you’re at home, you’re gonna take it easy.

When you put on your runners, you’re letting your mind and body know it’s time to exercise, you’re gonna get out there and you’re gonna hit the ground. When you put on your high heeled sandals for the ladies or your, you’re going out Saturday shoes, it’s time to party and have a few glasses of wine with your friends and whatever.

So I encourage people to have speaker shoes. And your speaker shoes are the shoes that when you slip into them, you take on the speaker persona. You stand tall, you love these shoes, you feel really confident in these shoes. As soon as you put these on, your shoulders go back, your chin lifts up, smile goes across your face, and it’s, and you just feel at one.

as a speaker. And the more that you practice and do speaking, wearing those shoes, the more they become your speaker shoes. And you can do it with anything, like it could be a bracelet, it could be a special watch that you put on. It’s just a trigger for the mind to say okay. I’m in the zone now. It puts you in this, in the right state, both mentally and physically.

It’s interesting you say that because I know some, I know someone who is, tells the story of the fact that when he goes to work, he puts on a pair of glasses. He doesn’t actually need glasses, so they don’t actually have proper lenses in them, but it’s more the act of taking them off when he gets home that is the bigger thing because it’s the right now is time for, whatever it is, daddy time, relationship time, whatever it is.

It’s not work time. So the glasses go off. Those of us that need glasses full time.

But I get the idea of the trigger is certainly an important one. It’s interesting to me that you talked about the breathing and the slowing down and not trying to be too hyper. You do see a lot of people that come on to stage and they almost do try and get the audience hyper as well.

Don’t they? They, there’s that let’s come and have a huge amount of energy and get people excited. And is that, does that have to be a very natural thing for people? Or is that a good thing to do? Do you know, I think it depends on your, one, your topic and two, your personality.

If you’re going out there to be an inspirational speaker, just having a lot of energy doesn’t make you inspirational. What you say, the story that you share, that’s what should be inspiring. And if you don’t, if you’re not naturally an inspiring kind of person, then it’s not going to come across as being very congruent.

Because even if you can, okay, come on, let’s get out there. And we all try and do a Tony Robbins. If it’s not natural. And if in your head, you’re going, Oh my God, I’m really trying to stir the audience and get them on my side. And they’ll feel that energy and they’ll see it in your body language. That what you’re thinking, what you’re saying and what you’re doing, they all have to be in alignment.

Otherwise people will pick up. That it’s not authentic, and sometimes when we slow things right down, people actually pay more attention. Isn’t that interesting? And you know where my mind went back to then was school a long time ago when I was in school. But we’ve all been in classes when we were kids, where the kids were all rowdy and teachers have different approaches to it.

And I’ll never forget. There was one particular teacher. I won’t name him, but one particular teacher whose approach from day one was to do exactly what you just said. And he would just stand there and eventually people would be looking, why is he just standing there? And he’d say something very calm. And and he would always maintain that.

I don’t recall. Ever hearing him lose his temper or get, it was always very measured on the other hand as well. I also worked with someone for many years who was would come into and this was this was, I don’t mind saying it was Brian Burey that I used to work with.

And for those that are listening out there that remember Brian I was lucky enough to work with him for a number of years. And this was in the days when he was doing the weather on Channel 10, and Brian was always very flamboyant. He in the way he dressed, he wore braces and colorful bow ties and things, and he was known for that over the years and being very over the top.

And a newsroom is a very stressful environment, particularly when it’s getting close to the time when the news is going to air. And You could feel the whole atmosphere change when he walked in the building because he had that energy about him, but equally, I heard him in very rarely in an occasion where he I wouldn’t say lost it.

That would be putting it on in two stronger terms, but where he got a lot of people. Intense or upset or whatever it might be for a particular situation, people paid attention because it didn’t happen very often. So that’s the other value of speaking slowly and calmly is if you do want to say something and you do raise your voice and you do make something a little bit more defiant in the way that you deliver it, people take even more notice.

That’s right. And I think that would come naturally. I think if you try to be too prescriptive before you go out and you, I’m going to do this with the audience and get that reaction. What if you don’t get that reaction? Then is your whole speech ruined? I think being in the moment and almost seeing it as It’s a sharing, it’s a sharing of ideas.

And if you look out at the audience and they’re all sitting with their arms folded and falling asleep and stuff then it’s up to you to change your tune. So maybe then you do need to lift it. And, and be able to read the nuances with, within the room. And you don’t want to, and I think, to your point as well, I’ve seen plenty of people when they’re doing it, doing a speech and it doesn’t matter what the audience is and they’ve.

And they’re not comedians and they’ve decided they’re going to tell a joke and you can almost tell where they’ve left a little bit in their speech that says, wait for laughter to die down or applause to finish. And there’s nothing very awkward and it’s, but which also I wanted to ask you the question in regards to speaking is that difference between reading notes.

And doing it all off the cuff. Is there a balance? Is there a way that you know, how important is that to have as much of it down path that you’re not having to read things you don’t because you don’t mean I’m of the belief that you don’t want things to scripted. I know there are techniques that people have that so they are hitting marks and they do remember everything.

It’s a balance, isn’t it? And the opposite, when you’re sitting, when you watch someone and they’re just reading cue cards the entire time, or they’re reading off an auto cue, it’s, you can tell, and there’s a, but it’s a difficult thing to manage. There’s a disjoint because they’re then not speaking to the audience, they’re speaking to the paper or the cards.

That’s where their attention is going, that’s where their eyes are going, instead of their eyes looking out. Scanning the audience, like a lighthouse light, making sure that they’re having connection with everybody. Because that’s what public speaking is about. It’s about connection.

It’s about, connection with the people in the audience. And then, and if you’re constantly looking down, then you’re breaking that connection. And I do understand that people worry about memorizing things. One thing that I used to do is I would just put some bullet points on the palm of my hand.

I’d actually, with an ink pen, I would just write, the few things that which is no good if your hands get sweaty, of course, but that, that, or even just one slight, a tiny piece of paper on the side where you glance over and, you have a glance and you say, oh, yes, it’s that next, but I love to use like an acronym of some sort.

So say I was going to do on public speaking and I had the word impact in my mind. And so the I would be for my introduction. The M would be, I’m going to tell them about messaging. The A would be audience engagement. The C would be connection with the audience, or crafting your compelling content, or, something that the C and then the T go right.

Timed, I’ve got to stay within a certain, I’ll talk to them about timing. If you lose track, you can come back and go, Oh, where was I? Oh, I’ve just told them about the audience thing. Okay. I N P A C. Oh, next it’s content. Okay, and it just, the other way is to see your story as a picture or a movie playing out in your mind, so it’s not actually words, because then we have to read the words and think about the words and Let the audience digest the words.

If we see it as a movie playing in our mind, we know what the story is we want to share, but what scene are you at? Are you still at the beginning of the introduction of the story, or are you in the middle and maybe there are two or three scenes in the middle? Which one did you just tell? It’s just more fluid.

And I think I’ve seen some great speakers where They almost give the audience the opportunity where you say, listen, we’ve started doing this or I’ve seen this just before we can. I can continue on with what I was going to deliver, but there’s an opportunity here to explore something else. Are you with me or where do you want to go?

And there’s always that opportunity to bring the audience along for the ride and allow that variation makes the audience feel special. Sometimes I think they’re probably pre planned and they know exactly what they were going to do beforehand, but it makes the audience feel engaged along the way.

We could talk about this for a long time because there’s so much to cover, which is why you offer all the coaching and everything, but tell me a little bit about the book. So again, give you the, giving everyone the title public speaking from stage fright to spotlight. Tell me a little bit about what it’s about and the inspiration for it and what people will get from it.

Oh, thanks, Anthony. It came out of doing the coaching with storytellers and I’d run a couple of workshops and at the end, my girlfriend that runs a storytelling events, she said to me, do you have something that you could give people to take away? And we’d worked through some questionnaires and things, but not much written down.

A lot of it was very active. And so I said, oh, I don’t know that I do really because a lot of it’s in my head and she said to me it would be great if you could put it down and she videoed some of the stuff, which was great because then I was able to go back and watch the content. Oh yeah, I said that and I said that because when it’s in your head, it’s hard to it.

It’s just naturally there. Now, if people asked me questions, things would come out I wouldn’t have thought to write. And so I started to put together the notes for her and then I divided it up into different sort of topics which became almost chapters. And I started it with the anxiety thing because I know that the fear is, the biggest hurdle and so and started with the whole mindset thing and then it was about finding your voice and how do you find your voice and how do you use your voice and then it was about creating the content you know what is your and then I realized well a technical presentation is very different to an inspirational talk so that would be two separate And before I knew it, I had so much information that I thought, actually, it could be a book.

And I asked around and I said to people, would you be interested in a book on public speaking? And I was blown away by the interest. It is such a big topic for so many people. And I actually, I would love for people to truly believe that public speaking is liberating. and can actually be really good fun.

I, I hate that we have this, it has this aura of fear around it and perfection and judgment and rejection and all those things I mentioned at the beginning. It really doesn’t have to be that way. And if you are in an audience, And you share something that really from your heart, whether it’s a professional story or a personal story, the feeling when you’re done and you’ve done a good job and you feel you’ve really had a positive impact on people.

There’s nothing to beat it. It’s I completely share what you’re what you’re saying there. And it’s why, we’ve spoken off air about it as well. I podcasting goes so hand in hand with speaking because the great thing about. Having a podcast is that it allows you that opportunity to continuously share your stories and get better and better at how you speak and present yourself, and then you can take the best of that and deliver it on stage in a speaking environment.

They work beautifully together and impressively. I always say if you’re a speaker and you don’t have a podcast, you’re missing a beat as well, because it’s people are on people here for a limited time on stage, and they want more and they may not be able to be ready to work with you in whatever you offer.

The great thing about a podcast is the free thing that you can give people. To get more of you and to enable them to choose when they want to engage with you further, which is what it’s all about. At the end of the day, that’s part of the motivation for doing speaking, isn’t it? Because you want to build your credibility, you want people coming to you when they’re ready, They trust you because they’ve heard you speak yet.

Totally. Totally. Now one final or two final questions that I need to ask you before we finish the main part of the podcast. And then we go on to have bonus bit of content about heart calls, not just smart calls. I’d be remiss of me not to ask you about your background in terms of when you got to Australia, because clearly you don’t have an Australian accent.

Give me that. Give me the background. Whereabouts are you? Whereabouts did you grow up? And what brought the move to Australia? So I’m originally from Glasgow in Scotland youngest of a very large family, and I’ve lived in London, I’ve lived in Spain, and my husband was offered a job in Australia in 2007, and we decided to come for a couple of years just for an experience.

And his company put us up in an apartment right on Manly Beach. And within the first three weeks, we were like, we ain’t ever going back. And we’ve just loved it. And our kids have gone through school here and everything. And, but I found it difficult, as I said earlier, like I had my career in the UK and starting again here and having no family support, young kids, my husband traveling a lot and hitting that whole midlife thing.

I really struggled. I thought, what on earth am I going to do? And it was actually a coach, a life coach who said to me you’ve got all this experience. Why don’t you help other women who are in your situation? And I just thought who’s going to listen to me. And then it, over time I realized that people.

Did find my help valuable and that built my confidence in my skills and it’s grown from there. I love it. And by the way, I do love, I haven’t been to Glasgow. It is one of those places that I do want to get to, but a year ago, I was in in Scotland and and In the northern part of Scotland, which I absolutely loved, but not another place to get to explore more off.

I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure the weather’s conducive to want to stay all year round when we were there, we were watching someone being interviewed on TV that was from Scotland and someone from overseas was interviewing him and and said, Oh, what was the summer like? And he said last year it was on a Wednesday.

Yeah, that would sum up. Yeah. So the last question that I wanted to ask you before we wrap things up, which I like to finish on with everyone. What is the aha moment that clients have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew about in advance? I’d like to ask everyone this question.

What is the aha moment that clients have with you that you wish more people would know about in advance so they would come to knocking on your door? I give clients confidence. I believe in them and I help them believe in themselves. And I think so many of us try to do business, public speaking, life on our own.

We don’t have anyone that really listens. We don’t have anyone that can help reflect back and help us work on, work with our strengths and help us really believe in ourselves and give ourselves permission to step outside our comfort zone and go and enjoy life. And a lot of my clients will say to me they come off a call just feeling they can do it.

They come off and they say, okay, I’m going to do it. And I’ll say, I’ll walk alongside you and I’m not going to give up on you and I’m not going to let you give up on yourself. And yeah I love to see other people succeed and their success is my success. And so it’s a win. I love it. What a perfect way to end the program.

I hope that people have got plenty of confidence out of listening to it and a few tips. I know I certainly did as well. And we’ll include all the links in the show notes, of course, to where you can get a hold of the book and where you can get a hold of Anne in general. And a final reminder. Heart goals, not smart goals.

We’re going to have a chat about that in a bonus bit of content. Again, you’ve got to follow the links in the show notes to be able to access that. But for now, as part of the Biz Bites program, and thank you so much for being an amazing guest. Thank you, Anthony. It’s been a pleasure. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites.

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