Unshakable Self-Confidence as a Speaker

Hello and welcome to The Speaker’s Edge podcast. This is the podcast designed to help you learn from some of the very best speakers and communicators in the world so that you can master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak.

In this episode we're going to talk about developing self-confidence. Now, they say that the fear of speaking is consistently voted as the number one fear for most people, don't they? There's a lot of people walking around with a lack of confidence when it comes to speaking. But believe it or not, overconfidence can also be a problem for a speaker.

See, the truth is: to keep developing and growing as a speaker and a communicator, you need just the right amount of confidence. Not too little, and not too much. Just the right amount.

So in this episode we're going to look at how anyone can overcome their fear of speaking — but not stop there. Keep going. Develop confidence, and even take it all the way to unshakable self-confidence as a speaker and a communicator, if that's what you want to do.

Now it's important to realize that wherever you're starting this journey from, that's perfect. You're in just the right place. You're going to move forwards from wherever you are right now.

Now, I have a roadmap for you to guide you through this process. And if you want to download a copy of the roadmap you can just go to MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge. And you'll see that step one of that roadmap is realizing that you need just the right amount of confidence to develop and grow as a speaker — to keep getting better and better. Not too little, or you'll think that you can't grow so you won't even bother. And not too much, where you'll think that you don't need to, and so you'll stop and you'll plateau.

So I'm excited to dig into this fascinating topic with you. But first of all let me say welcome. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us in this episode of The Speaker’s Edge podcast. I'm your host, Roddy Galbraith. And if you're a speaker, a coach, an author, or an entrepreneur, then congratulations — you have found your people here at The Speaker’s Edge podcast. You really have. Because we started this podcast with people just like you in mind.

Now if you're listening to this and you're thinking, “Well I don't really identify as a speaker,” maybe you're perfectly happy in your corporate career — well I think you're going to love it here too. Because we're going to give you the tools that you need to get that pay rise or that promotion or that new job in a new organization, or maybe just to define your leadership in your current organization by standing up and speaking with confidence and competence and charisma. Wouldn't that be nice?

Okay, so let's dive in then. And let's start with a question: what is a “natural speaker”?

When you think of a “natural speaker,” what do you think of? Are you thinking, “Yep, natural speaker, that's definitely me?” Or are you thinking, “Nope, that is definitely not me. Definitely not me.”

Well either way, I think the term can be problematic actually. What do we mean “natural,” anyway? Because if you think about it, there's actually nothing natural about standing up and speaking in front of other people, is there?

You couldn't stand up at all when you were first born, could you? No. You had to learn to do that. And you had to work very hard in order to learn to do that. You couldn't speak either, for that matter. You had to learn to do that too, and again, you had to work very hard to get there. You couldn't read or write or play the piano or swim or do martial arts or do calculus or do a thousand other things when you were first born that you've now learned to do.

Actually, let's scratch calculus. I'm not sure any of us really know how to do that, do we?

But all the other things — if you've learned how to do them, you've learned how to do them by consistently applying yourself over time.

Now let's look at one of the simplest of those. Let's say just signing your name.

If we put you on a big screen now and we asked you to sign your name with your favorite pen, you know what we'd say? “Ohhh. You make that look so easy. You make that look so effortless. You're really good at that. You know what you are? You're a natural signer.”

But you couldn't sign your name like that when you first picked up a pen, could you? No, of course not. When you first picked up a pen it was more like engraving right through the paper into the table underneath. Definitely not as effortless as you make it seem now. And if you want to be reminded of the process that you went through to get there, put the pen in the other hand and try signing your name in the other hand. And you'll soon see: you went through a lot to get to the point of effortlessness that you now enjoy.

See, the truth is: you have consistently developed and fine-tuned and finessed your ability to write over a reasonable period of time. It looks very natural now. But we know that it's far from natural, don't we?

If you've seen John Maxwell speak — he's a great speaker. I think he's the best speaker in the world. After he speaks, people often come up to him and say, “Oh, you make that look so easy, John. You make that look so easy.” And he always says the same thing: “Just remember — it only looks easy. It's not actually easy.”

Bill Gove, another great speaker, he'd be told the same thing: “You make it look so easy, Bill.” And he'd say, “Well, you'd be surprised how hard I work to make it look this easy.”

See, if we take the time to look into it, there's an abundance of evidence to prove that the people we look at and see as “naturals,” they've worked really hard to get to that point. And actually, to just assume that they're a natural speaker when we haven't taken the time to look into it is just lazy thinking really, isn't it? It's just lazy.

Even the great Michelangelo said, “If people only knew how hard I worked to attain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”

But we don't very often take the trouble to look, do we? And if we don't see the work that someone's put into developing and cultivating a skill like speaking, it's so easy for us just to assume that they're just like that. They're just lucky. They're just naturals. Or whatever it is. But it's just not true. It's an illusion. It's an illusion.

See, at the end of the day, you are a natural — but you're not a natural writer, or a natural swimmer, or a natural speaker, or anything else. You're a natural learner. You are cut out for learning. You are cut out for developing and growing. And that never stops.

So step one of our roadmap: you need just the right amount of confidence in order to keep developing and growing.

Step two, then, is that you need to accept that you are a natural learner. In fact not just accept, but celebrate. Thank goodness you're a natural learner. You're extraordinary. You're cut out for life. You really are. And that means that no matter how good or bad you think you are right now, you can get better. You can get better, and you can get a lot better. You really can. You are extraordinary.

But keep in mind through this process — anything we do feels awkward at first if we haven't done it before, doesn't it? Anything new feels awkward at first. And I know you've experienced this many times already in your life. Just think about all of the things that you now do without thinking about, which once seemed like insurmountable obstacles.

I remember trying to roller-skate as a kid. I fell over so many times my mum put a cushion around my bum with a belt so I wouldn't hurt myself when I kept falling over. I thought I was never going to get it. Many of us experienced something similar riding a bike, didn't we?

If you drive a car, you know that there's a lot that you go through — you think you're never going to get there. Learning a language, a second language — all of these things felt impossible at first. But now look at you. You're amazing now. You do them without even thinking. It's really incredible when you think about it, isn't it?

So step one: just the right amount of confidence.
Step two: realize that you're a natural learner.
And then step three: realize that you can outgrow your current feeling.

You can outgrow whatever feelings you have now, whether that's fear (when we're talking about the fear of speaking), or anxiety, or pride, or any emotion. If it's keeping you stuck, accept that you can outgrow those feelings. You can adopt better feelings along the way.

But — spoiler alert — it's not going to happen by magic. It's not going to happen by luck. No one's going to do it for you. If it's going to happen, you need to do it.

If you think of weeds in a garden as an example: weeds don't remove themselves over time, do they? No. They get worse. They get worse. Our emotions don't remove themselves over time either. Our emotions don't say, “Oh, you're making good progress, I don't think you need me anymore, I'm just going to go and leave you in peace.” I wish! I wish. No, they don't do that. That would be like turkeys voting for an early Christmas or an early Thanksgiving. It's not going to happen, is it?

So it's possible — but you've got to do it. Change is possible, but you've got to take control. And actually, it's not just possible, it's probable if you stick at it for a reasonable period of time. In fact I'm going to say: if you stick at it, it's going to happen. But stick at it for a reasonable period of time.

Now I'm not going to lie — this can be a challenging process. It can be challenging. But what makes it challenging is not that you can't do it. What makes it challenging is that our feelings are so convincing. They're so convincing. Not that they're right, but they're convincing. And that means that most people won't try.

Just because they're convincing, it doesn't mean that they're a reflection of reality. Think about it: just because something feels dangerous to us, it doesn't mean that it is actually dangerous, does it?

I'll give you a simple example of this. This was years ago when we lived back in England. I'd been a professional speaker for just a year or two at this point. I was being picked up by a taxi driver to go into London for a speaking event. He knocked on the door. I opened the door. When I opened the door, I turned around to get my case and our two dogs ran out to see who was at the door.

Now this taxi driver was like 6'3". He was a big guy. And when he saw the dogs, he just crumbled like a child. He's like, “Get them away, please get them away!” I said, “Don't worry, they're fine, they won't hurt you. They won't hurt you. They're fine, they're friendly, they're friendly.” He's like, “Get them away! Get them away!” And he couldn't even look at them.

And so I got the dogs in and he jumped in the car, did the window up, locked the doors, and then for an hour drive all the way into London he wouldn't even talk to me. He was really freaked out.

Now we can hear a story like that, can't we, and we can think to ourselves, “Well, he probably had a bad experience with dogs in the past, did he? He probably had a bad experience with dogs as a child,” and we leave it at that.

But just think about this. Just think about what it means. The implications are huge. See, he's not looking at the dogs and seeing the dogs the way the dogs are. He's looking at the dogs and seeing the dogs the only way he can see them now — which is the way he is. Those past experiences, whatever it was, he's now dragging with him into the present. And he's projecting them onto our dogs and seeing them as dangerous when actually they're friendly. Because that's the only way he can see them.

And because fear can be a little bit sneaky, because he turns and runs — “Please get them away! Please get them away!” — he never actually finds out if the dogs are dangerous or not.

See, fear leads to avoidance. Fear leads to avoidance. Write that down. Put it on the mirror so you can see it every morning. Fear leads to avoidance. And so because we avoid the thing we're afraid of, then the fear becomes self-evident. And we feel like fear saved the day.

So step four is a big step in this process: unless we challenge the fear, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We never find out what the truth actually is because we put all of our faith in the fear. We believe it, we turn and run, and then we think to ourselves, “Thank goodness.”

Now I'm not saying that fear doesn't have a place. I'm not saying that fear doesn't help us at times. And this is a question I get asked a lot: “Doesn't fear have a purpose? Doesn't it help us?” Well yeah, it can do. It's a survival mechanism, isn't it? So of course it's valuable. But we've got to make sure that we keep it in check. We've got to make sure that we keep it in check. We can't have the tail wagging the dog, if you like.

Mark Twain said, “If a cat sits on a hot stove, it will not sit on a hot stove again. It won't sit on a cold stove either.” In fact, he said from that moment on, that cat is just done with stoves. Doesn't want anything more to do with stoves.

Now if that cat never goes near another stove again, will it stop it from getting burned by a stove? Yeah, of course it will. But we can see how clumsy that is as an approach for life, can't we?

I'll give you another example. Let's say you're scared of cars. Will that stop you getting run over on a busy road, if every time you see a car or hear a car you turn and run? Yeah, it probably will. But obviously there's a better way.

What if what you need or want is on the other side of the road and you have to cross the road? You don't actually need a fear of cars in order to cross a road safely, do you? To stay safe from cars, if you have an understanding, in fact that's enough. You don't need any emotion at all. You can cross a road safely with a reasonable degree of caution, a basic knowledge and awareness of cars, and common sense. That's all you need.

Now let's say that you've already developed a fear of cars, so you've already got this fear, and then you learn how to cross a road safely. What happens then? How do you feel then? Well, initially it's still going to feel wrong. Even if you just think about crossing the road, it's going to feel wrong. Even if you've developed the knowledge and the awareness of how you can do it safely, your emotional programming still sits there and it still demands to be expressed. It still demands to be felt.

But: you are not your feelings.

You are not your feelings. You have feelings, but you are not your feelings. You can still cross the road safely if you know how to, even though it feels wrong — even though you still have those feelings. It's possible.

Remember: those feelings are just the result of past learning processes. They're not a reflection of reality, and they're not a reflection of your potential. The feelings will change — but the feelings change last.

So step five is another big step in this process: your power to change comes from the realization that you are not your feelings. You have feelings, but you are not your feelings. And your feelings are not a reflection of your potential.

Now I'm really passionate about this, as you can probably tell. Facing your fears, overcoming your fears, is something I'm very passionate about because I spent so many years studying fear myself — out of necessity, really — because I was dealing with a lot of anxiety. I struggled with a lot of anxiety when I was younger.

See, after school I failed my exams. And at 19, when all my classmates went on to university, that wasn't really an option for me. And to be honest I wasn't even interested in going to university anyway, because we were having too much fun. It was me and a small group of friends. None of us had jobs. None of us went to college or university. We just kind of went out each day, each night. We'd go to the pub, we'd get into adventures, we'd have fun. And it was irresponsible, but we were only 19, 20 years old. We all lived with our parents so we didn't need to earn too much money. We'd get the odd dead-end job, save up some money, maybe go traveling, come back and carry on — and, you know, do the same thing over and over. Year after year. Year after year.

And at first, you know, I was very confident that everything was going to be fine and I knew what I was doing. But it wasn't going to be fine. It wasn't going to be fine. I was heading for disaster. Honest. I didn't realize it at first but gradually it became more obvious.

My parents would say to me, “What are you doing? You've got to sort yourself out. You can't go on like this.” And I'd say, “Don't worry. Tomorrow it's all going to be fine. Tomorrow.” And it really wasn't going to be fine. It really wasn't. But as more time passed, year after year, it got more and more stressful. More and more anxiety-provoking.

Eventually, thank goodness, by the time I was 25 I got my first proper job — would you believe — in an office, thanks to a friend of mine who got me an interview and then got me into this big Swedish pensions fund company. And I worked hard because I was playing catch-up, you know? I was trying to make up for all of the lost years. But because of all that time I wasted, I had strong feelings of impostor syndrome. Really strong feelings of, “What am I doing here? Who am I to be doing this?”

And then shortly after that I got promoted. I got my first leadership role. And then the impostor syndrome got much, much worse. And it came to a head a few years after that, when I was about 28, and I was looking to get my next new job. The anxiety was getting worse and worse. I was randomly having more and more panic attacks.

And one day I said to myself, “This can't go on. Enough is enough. I've got to deal with this. I've got to deal with this.” And I remember it was a Monday morning and I phoned up work and said that I was sick. I said, “I'm not coming in.” And I sat there in front of the computer and I typed into the search engine — which was Yahoo, so it tells you how long ago it was, remember that, dating myself a bit — the Yahoo search engine, I typed in “panic attacks.”

And I had my finger hovering over the Enter key, and I was terrified to press it. I was terrified to press Enter and do the search, because it meant that then it was a real thing. If I pressed it, I'd be acknowledging that I had a problem. And then I'd have to face it, and I couldn't just kind of push it out of mind anymore. And it was so scary for me. It really was. It's difficult to explain, and it feels odd telling you about it now, but it was really very, very scary for me.

But if you think about it — I wasn't actually in any physical danger at all, was I? I was just pressing the Enter key. But the fear felt very real to me. And this is a really important part of the process to realize.

When we're facing a fear like the fear of speaking, it's not like climbing Everest, is it? Well, if you're climbing Everest, the fear and the danger are very closely aligned, so you need to be very careful there. Speaking is safe. Speaking is safe. There's no real danger for most of us, in most parts of the world. There's no danger in speaking.

And so step six: realizing it's safe to face your fear of speaking really can set you free. It's such an empowering realization that it's safe to step into the fear of speaking, even though it's, you know, it's a strong fear. It's a powerful fear.

So I sat there for the longest time, with my finger kind of hovering over the Enter key. “Do I press this? Do I press this?” And then eventually, I pressed it. And then up came like a string of different resources on anxiety and panic and stress and fear — this whole new world I never knew existed suddenly popped up. And so I spent the next two days going through all of these different resources, all of these different books that were there about exactly my problem. I couldn't believe it. The whole self-help / personal growth world — I didn't know anything about these. It was a whole new world for me.

I bought my first book, “From Panic to Power,” by Lucinda Bassett — which I still have out there in my office on the shelf all these years later. And everything I read, as I was going through these different articles, everything I read said: “Start with your doctor.” So I went to see my doctor. I told him what was going on. And he was very supportive actually. And he said, “Well, we'll get you in for some psychotherapy. I think you'll find that's really helpful, but it's going to take a little while for you to get an appointment. So I'm going to give you some pills to take in the meantime.”

And he prescribed me some beta blockers, just to kind of stop things from getting out of control. So I had these pills, propranolol, that I took with me everywhere. Carried them with me. Took them everywhere. And I took them every day. And it felt like the silver bullet I needed. The crutch I needed. And so I was good again. I was good. As long as I had my pills, I was good.

Well, shortly after this — I like to keep fit — and so I was going for a run. And it was a six-mile run, and it was three miles there and three miles back. And I set off and immediately it was, you know, a bit of a struggle. Two miles, I was really struggling. I got to the halfway point where I turned around to come back again, so I still had to do the last three miles. I was really struggling. By the time I got back I was absolutely exhausted, just about made it into the house, went into the kitchen, collapsed on the floor, slumped against the leg of the table, and I'm just kind of trying to get back to normal.

And above me on the table, underneath a glass cover, is this big chocolate cake. And so I reach up, drag the cover off, and I start grabbing handfuls of this chocolate cake. And I'm just eating them, slumped against the table leg. Ate the whole cake. Just trying to get back to some kind of normal. It was really bad. Really, really bad. Very, very difficult. I didn't know where it had come from or what was going on.

So I went back to the doctor, because this was, you know, very scary. And I told him what had happened. And he looked at me and he's like, “Don't take the beta blockers when you're exercising. What, are you nuts?” I'm like, “What do you mean? Why not?” “You don't want to take them when you're exercising because your heart won't be able to keep up with your body.” Well that would have been good information had you told me that before!

So I loved having this security of the pills, but the clash with the exercise was a big deal for me — it really was. And so I knew that this wasn't really going to be an option for me. I had to find something else. And so I stopped taking the pills every day, but I carried them with me. And I found that just having them in my pocket was enough. I could take them if I needed to — but I never needed to. So just knowing they were there was the perfect crutch, if you like. It was like Dumbo's magic feather.

Shortly after this, I got a new job. And it was a big job in one of the biggest financial banks in the world. I had a team of about 10 people. It was my first day in my new job. I went into work and I was being introduced to my team in this big open-plan office. And my boss is introducing me to my first member of my team. And just as, like, a comfort gesture, I put my hand up and tapped my inside jacket pocket just to touch my pills. And the pocket was empty.

And then my mind went back to brushing my teeth in the morning, where I'd put the pills on the countertop next to my toothbrush while I brushed my teeth — and they were still there. This little smoky brown pot of beta blockers, my magic feather, I'd left at home.

And so what do I do? I'm like, “Well, I've not really got any choice, so carry on.” And it was, you know, it was a great day. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed meeting the team. It was very exciting. It was a great company to work for. And I realized: Dumbo didn't need his magic feather after all.

So I stopped carrying the pills completely after that point. Stopped taking them and just kind of moved on. But I only got to that point because I had no other options. If I had them with me, I'd probably still be carrying them today. Because I wouldn't have chosen to cut myself off from them and cut myself adrift — it's because I had no other option. I could see that I could still fly without the magic feather, just to continue that analogy.

Because for all of us, I think it's not until we challenge our fears by stepping forward into the fear — that's when we see them for what they really are. A trickster. It's a trickster. And we can't trust our feelings.

So back to our roadmap then, of self-confidence. Step seven: taking action sets you free. It really does. Taking action sets you free — as long as you're stepping into the fear and not running away from it. If you run from it, then it makes it worse. It doesn't set you free.

Now, I think it's important to note here that when we do think about doing something challenging, our mind is very crafty and it's going to offer us an escape hatch. It's going to offer us an escape hatch so that we can kind of abandon the challenge and take the escape hatch. Don't take the escape hatch. You've got to find a way to step forward into the growth. Don't take the escape hatch — that's going to make it worse. Stepping forward into the growth is the only way out. Through the fear is the only way out.

Now, I don't know about you — I'd never tried psychotherapy before. I'd never done any kind of therapy. And so it was all new to me. But I have to say, I absolutely loved it. I loved the process of psychotherapy. Having someone help me work on me. I had a therapist called Reinhardt, and he gave me some relaxation exercises, some breathing exercises, some coping strategies. And I became fascinated with the whole process. I became fascinated about finding out everything about me and about the mind. And that was really the beginning of a 30-year love affair with personal growth.

So I looked into all kinds of different things. I saw a hypnotherapist, which worked really, really well actually. It was very effective for me. And so I found that useful, but I found the process absolutely fascinating. And so I studied hypnosis and hypnotherapy and spent three years, in the end, qualifying as a cognitive behavioral hypnotherapist — which was particularly effective for the treatment of phobias and fears and anxiety, which I didn't realize at the time but has been so useful for me in helping people over the years with their fears of speaking.

I remember in one of the lectures, one of the professors said, “When you're struggling with something in some area, you can either focus on why you're like this and where it came from and really obsess in trying to find out where it came from — or,” he said, “you can just turn around and focus on being something else. Focus on becoming something else and move forwards towards that.” And that made so much more sense to me.

So I never really found out where the panic attacks came from or why. Never seemed important after that. Originally I was obsessed with trying to find out, “Where did it go wrong? What's wrong with me?” But when he said that I thought, “Oh yeah. Just outgrow it. Who cares where it came from? Just outgrow it.”

So step eight, another important step: move towards what you want. Don't move away from what you don't want. Face forwards and march towards what you want. Don't kind of drag away from what you don't want, because otherwise you just unwittingly drag it with you where you're going. So turn, outgrow it, and move forwards. Such great advice.

So over the next 10 years I was still obsessed with personal growth. I changed jobs a number of times. I spent a lot of time getting good at the interviewing process. And I made up for a lot of the time that I lost in my early 20s. And as I managed bigger and bigger teams at work, I realized that the more I studied myself, the better I understood myself, the better I understood people — but also the better I understood my team. And the better I understood them, the more I could help them. And so I spent a lot of time helping them with their fears and anxiety.

We did speaking retreats, speaker workshops in the office every week. Everyone had to present, and they all protested, but we all made progress together. And we became a team of communicators.

During that time I would run speaker training workshops at work, but then I would also do off-site retreats. Our house in England is an old farm, and so there's several outbuildings. One of them is this huge old cow shed. And so I transformed it into a studio and a theater and we'd do off-site retreats there. And then other departments would see what we were doing and they'd ask me to run off-site speaker retreats for them too. So it was great fun. It was a great time.

And we found that nothing beats practice when it comes to working on your speaking. I'm often asked for the techniques for fear, techniques for memorizing things — what do you do when you're struggling to remember, what do you do when you forget? Nothing beats practice. Nothing beats speaking out loud. And then if you video yourself and watch it back, that works best of all. That really shows people the progress that they're making. When you see it with your own eyes, it's very difficult to dispute that, to not be convinced by that.

And actually this is another key point. One of the key principles of my work with cognitive behavioral approaches to change is to dispute unhealthy beliefs that underpin the unhealthy emotions that we experience. So: dispute the validity of unhealthy beliefs.

And I realized one day, when sitting down with someone who had just spoken and reviewing it on the video on their phone, so that they could see themselves in action — it's incredibly effective at that process of disputing those cherished unhealthy beliefs. “I can't do this. Who am I to do this?” When you see yourself actually doing it, despite how you feel, it's very, very persuasive.

So step nine, another important step: collect evidence to dispute your fear of speaking, and prove that it is lying to you. Prove it to yourself. Prove that you can't trust your fear.

So after 15 years, anyway, my last job in the City of London was for a huge South African financial group. I had a team of about 150 people, a budget of about 25 million pounds a year. And it was a good company to work for. I had lots of autonomy. I enjoyed it. But I realized I really enjoyed the coaching and the speaking and the training more than anything else.

And so quite quickly I decided that, you know, really I needed to leave. I wanted to start my own business. I wanted to be a speaker. And I wanted to have my own coaching business. And so one day I said to my boss, “I want to go off and do something else.” And he said, “Well, like what?” And so I said, “I want to be a speaker. I want my own coaching business.” And he said, “Well, I think that's a terrible idea.” I said, “Well, I thought you'd say that. But, you know, it's something that's really important to me.”

And we talked about it for a while and he said, “Well look, if I can't change your mind, if you're serious about this, don't just leave. Don't resign. Don't just drop everything in my lap.” He said, “You find a successor. You hand over everything to them. And then you convince me that everything is going to be fine. And then you can go off and do whatever you want, and we'll look after you and we'll support you. And, you know, we'll even be your first client.”

So I thought, perfect. Right, you're on. And so that's what I did. For the next 18 months I was handing over everything as quickly as I could. Getting rid of everything. And I had a lot of free time for training and bringing in different speakers, going off on different courses. And one particular course — a professional speaking course that I went on — it was a five-day course. It was very expensive. And because it was so much money, I spent a lot of time preparing, like three months, like over-preparing like crazy for this training course.

And when I got there, and we all had to present, almost nobody else had done any preparation at all. So I think I really stood out. Because I'd done so much preparation that they said to me at the end, “Well look, it seems like you really get this business. And so we're starting a global business, and we'd love you to be a part of it in some way.” And so it seemed like perfect timing for me, as I was moving out of the corporate world into this new exciting world of being an entrepreneur and a speaker and a coach.

And so now I've been a professional speaker and speaker trainer for about 18 years. And over that time I've had the opportunity to work with some of the very best speakers in the world — some big names, people like Les Brown, Nick Vujicic, Wayne Dyer, Bob Proctor, John Maxwell of course. And I've had the opportunity to write speaking curriculums for some of them as well.

I also had the opportunity to work very closely with John Maxwell since 2010 on the Maxwell Method of Speaking — which really takes half a century, 50 years, of John's very intentional growth as a speaker and turns it into a system that anyone can follow.

I've also had the opportunity to speak to big audiences — thousands and thousands of people myself — spoken in about 15 different countries around the world. And so I've had the opportunity to see, from everything I've learned from some of the best speakers, what works for me in my own speaking.

So for many years now I've been in this very unique position where I've had the opportunity to learn from some of the very best speakers in the world, some of the very best communicators in the world — see what they do and how they do it, and then try that out for myself and see what works in my own speaking. But then I've also had the opportunity to work one-to-one with thousands of different speakers — over 12,000 speakers — on their individual stories and keynotes and signature stories. And so I've been able to see, of everything that the world's best speakers do, what works for most people most of the time.

And let me tell you: we've really learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. And of course we're going to go through this in detail in future episodes. But I want to just say to you now, at the beginning of this exciting journey together: when it comes to developing self-confidence as a speaker — if that's what you want to do — and even unshakable self-confidence, I can tell you without any hesitation whatsoever: this is absolutely something that you can do.

Isn't it nice to know that there's no real limit? John is still getting better as a speaker after all these years. And so can we.

We've seen so many different examples of this. People transforming their speaking from all different walks of life, all different professions, all different levels of confidence, different levels of skill, different levels of speaking ability, different levels of speaking experience. Countless examples of professional speakers, pastors, teachers, trainers, coaches — the list goes on. Entrepreneurs. CEOs. Sales managers. Politicians. Students. People who are retired. Job seekers. Managers from practically every different profession. So many different examples.

People who thought that they were already great speakers and found out that perhaps they weren't quite as good as they thought. People who thought they were hopeless cases — they'd never be able to do it — and found out that they were wrong about that and they could.

Everyone — everyone — that goes through the process makes great progress.

We've also put (must be) around a thousand people on big stages in front of thousands and thousands of people, and watched every single one of them shine. Every single time. We have a 100% success record of putting people on stage and no one bombs. Everyone does a great job. That's pretty incredible — really is.

So in this episode then, we've looked at overcoming fear and developing authentic self-confidence, and how you can keep building on that and develop all the way to unshakable self-confidence.

In the next episode, we're going to look at the most important aspect of effective communication — of any kind, really — and that's understanding the audience. Researching, understanding, connecting, communicating, influencing your audience. Influencing your audience in an ethical way.

Now before we move on from this episode, I want to say that if you're really struggling with fear, then go and see your doctor. Start with your doctor. There's no shame in asking for help. And you may find, like me, that it's a very enjoyable process.

Don't forget to download your copy of the roadmap. Just go to MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge.

Thanks for joining us in this episode. You really can master your message and inspire your audience. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode of The Speaker’s Edge.

Ep. 001 — Unshakable Self-Confidence as a Speaker

Hosted by Roddy GalbraithA Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge — a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

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Full Transcript (Ep. 001 — Unshakable Self-Confidence as a Speaker)Released: March 4, 2025

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The Speakers Edge

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge, a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communiate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

3 FREE videos to walk you through your message makeover!

Hosted by Roddy Galbraith
A Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

Full Transcript (Ep. 001 — Unshakable Self-Confidence as a Speaker)
Released: March 4, 2025