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Excerpt
Sean:
You have done over 900 talks; presentations. And you need to keep on improving daily, right? So 10 hours of podcasts a week, aside from that, what are things that you do daily that affects your improvement in how you deliver talks and in how you craft them? Do you do something every day that just hones you as an individual, as a public speaker? What is it?
Brenden:
Yeah, of course. There’s a lot of daily stuff that we can talk about. Here’s an easy one that people can implement right after this call. It’s called the random word exercise. For the audience’s sake, Sean, why don’t you just give me a random word?
Sean:
Augmented.
Brenden:
Augmented. Is that what you said? Okay. You like giving me a complex word.
So what I have to do with this word is I have to create a presentation out of thin air. So here I go.
We always think about getting to the next level, whether it’s our business, our lives, our health, our relationships, and the best way to think about that next level is not just about the status quo because the status quo gets us nowhere. But rather how do we augment our lives to a new reality, to a reality that is not like any other. And by augmenting that experience, we’ll be able to create the lives that we want, whether it’s our public speaking skills, our income and our businesses. Or to the relationships that we care about. And that’s exactly why in this week’s presentation, I’m going to be showing you some of the ways that I’ve augmented my life so that you can augment yours.
So notice how I just made that up out of thin air. First thing I want to point out for people right before Sean starts clapping and saying I’m a great speaker is I’ve done this a thousand times. I literally do this on every podcast I guest in. So I’m forced to practice. So the advice for you is all I’m asking for is five minutes every day, five words, one minute each. Go to your house, wherever you already live and just go “lamp, wife that doesn’t like me, laundry, teapot, door – do one minute each”.
And if you’re in a public setting, you don’t need to do the exercise, but at least think about it mentally. If I’m walking and I see a building, obviously I’m not going to present it, but if I was doing the exercise, what would I say for 60 seconds? And over time, if you do this five times a day, five minutes, a one minute each you do this for the year. That’s over 1,800 times that you’re doing the exercise. And if you can present something that you have no idea, like I’ve done this with hippo, like, how am I supposed to do that? I don’t know anything about hippos. If I can do that. If you can do that with subjects you have no clue, no understanding, no expertise in, imagine what you can do with something you actually know something in.
Sean:
Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard about that exercise. I’m going to be trying it out. So that is something that you do daily. Definitely looks like it has helped you tons. And you could do it with the word. By the way, that’s just top of mind. I don’t know why I said that word, but that’s top of mind right now. So, that daily routine helps Brenden to improve his daily craft.
Maybe you want to start with one word. Maybe you want to start with two. That’s fine. But if you can go to five words, definitely would fast forward and would help you to catalyze your growth as a public speaker
