Do you get nervous public speaking? (See also: "Are you human?")

Hey! 👏

Before Tim Walz took the stage at the DNC last Wednesday, the vibes were pure pageant. Signs everywhere screamed “COACH WALZ.”

A string of former football players stepped out on stage, their adult bodies sausaged into high school uniforms. They were there to honor their old coach. The crowd roared.

When all those old friends shuffled offstage, they walked right by Tim Walz. He could have thanked them. He could have smiled at them. But he didn’t.

He kept his gaze straight down at the floor, taking impossibly deep breaths. CBS News reported that he had been standing just like that throughout the entire introduction… staring down, breathing deeply.

And then he walked out on that stage and absolutely killed it.

Towards the end of his speech, with relief all over his face, he said, “You might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this. But I’ve given a lot of pep talks…”

A coach knows that people get scared when it's time to perform. Not some people… All of us.

It’s natural. It’s human. That’s the way we are designed.

20 million people watched that speech - the biggest moment in Tim Walz’s life.

Coach knew exactly how to prepare himself to meet his moment.

In this edition, I’m going to help you prepare to meet yours.

📣This week

• How to conquer your nerves and nail any public speaking gig

• Ready to create content? Here’s your first step

• TikTok Live Battles WTF?!

Let’s get into it…

😬Nervous when public speaking? Here’s how to kill it…

I have been directing actors for 28 years, and I’ve worked with television hosts just as long. About 15 years ago, as part of our work at Bright Red Pixels, I started helping corporate executives and professionals improve their performances on camera.

Now that I’m very old, I coach elementary and middle school students who perform at an international creative problem solving competition called Odyssey of the Mind.

Point being… I have a LOT of experience here.

I also know what it feels like myself. I have acted on stage, I have presented on camera, I’ve given speeches, and represented myself in courtrooms (that’s a story for another day).

I’m going to share with you how I help people manage stage fright so they can achieve their goals when speaking on camera or in public.

My framework is as simple as A, B, C.

You’re about to speak or get on camera, only minutes to go. You might feel nervous or anxious.

This could be physical - clammy palms, sweating, heart racing, shallow breathing, etc. Or it could be more mental - thoughts racing, unfocused, etc.

It could be severe- where you feel like you can’t go on, or it could be mild- something that kind of creeps up on you.

Regardless, the first step is to…

ACCEPT: Public speaking almost always triggers a flight, fight, or freeze reaction. This is your body trying to protect you. Instead of fighting the feeling and worrying that it will get worse, welcome it. You can’t address what you are trying to ignore.

BREATHE: Now that you are no longer nervous about being nervous, you can start to adjust your physical state. We do that through deep breathing, like Coach Walz. These are deep, no nonsense breaths. Deep inhale on a count of four, full exhale to a count of 6. On the inhale you are pushing your belly out to allow your lungs to expand down, but the key is all in the exhale. As you breathe out, feel your body sinking into the ground. Your posture stays straight, but you feel your shoulders, then your hips, knees, ankles, and finally your feet sinking into the floor. Keep breathing and pay attention to your body. Don’t worry about whether or not the nerves are leaving, focus on the nerves beginning to move around physically in your body. Feel waves wash over you with each exhale. Only stop when you have achieved a level of calm that works for you.

COMMIT: You are exactly where you are supposed to be. The audience wants to connect with you and you want to connect with them. But you can’t nail your performance by trying to nail it. Just like you can’t make a free throw by trying to make it. Instead, you have to commit fully to it. Silence the inner critic who will want to editorialize about every gesture you make, every stumble. Focus only on being present in the moment. You’ve prepared for this. You’re ready. Just go out there and commit fully to yourself and your audience.

My strategy is based on the polyvagal theory, which posits that our nervous system is always in one of three states:

Our goal in this process is to move your nervous system from where you are - in dorsal vagal (full stage fright) or sympathetic (nerves) to a place where you can connect and truly be spontaneous, ideally in the ventral vagal zone.

If you like my framework, and think maybe it can help you, download this mini-tool:

1. From this link, download the folder to your phone.

2. Tap on each individual gif and hit the share icon.

3. Save to your camera roll.

4. Create a photo album with just these for gifs in it, in order.

5. Just before you speak, when you’re backstage and feeling nervous, just click on the album and go through the ABCs!

⁉️The first step in making new content

To help build our community of people who create content for themselves or their business, I’m designing a free email course in five parts. Each part will give the reader a video prompt.

Make a video from all five prompts, and you should have a pretty good sense of how to move forward with your content.

Now, remember - if there is a hill I will die on, it’s that anyone who produces content needs to focus on their content pipeline more than any one piece of content itself. So this course is all about scooping out that initial content pipeline.

Today I’m sharing the first prompt with all of you. Here’s what you need to know to follow it:

1. The response to this prompt is a video. I don’t care how you make it or what you do with it, but you need to do something with it - that is, at the very least, record it and upload it somewhere or share it with someone.

2. Don’t overthink it, just do it.

Next week, we’ll talk about what you can take from this prompt.

But if you just can’t wait that long, reply to this email and send me a link to your video.

🤯Is anyone else weirded out by this?

TikTok Live is a place where I’ve been doing a bit of research lately. It’s an odd corner of the social net that you might never see if you aren’t looking for it.

But it’s generating huge money for the platform and increasing traction among users. I would describe it as half QVC, half twitch. Doesn’t exactly sound like fun to me, but welcome to my GenX life… too young to shop live, too old to watch someone else play video games.

But here’s what really caught my eye on the platform:

This, my friends, is called a “battle” or, in TikTok parlance, a “Live Match”. Essentially two people who are streaming on TikTok live together “battle” to see who can get the most gifts from their fans in a five minute period.

As far as I can tell, this format is unique to TikTok - based on a similar feature in Daoyin, its sister platform in China.

The gifts are real money, and can be anywhere from $1 to $1000. The battle is about how many, not how much.

You can see at the top, there is literally a meter that shows how many gifts each battler has received. Archie is killing Justina here but, in a TikTok battle, everybody wins except the audience. TikTok takes whatever they want off the top and then awards “diamonds” to both battlers that they can convert to cash.

As far as I can tell, there’s no value here whatsoever other than raising money. There are people who use battles to debate politics, and that’s cool. Other people use them to dance or perform. Plus there’s often a “punishment” for the loser that’s decided on in advance, so I guess that’s a little entertainment.

But regardless of what the battle entails, you’re not really being judged on how good your debate points are, or your dance moves are… you win simply because you get more of your audience to give you gifts. It’s basically a balls-weighing contest.

The whole thing totally has a carnival barker atmosphere to it. I can see lots of creepy applications for this but, for the life of me, I can’t think of one practical or productive application.

Can you? If so - please respond to this email and lemme know. Cause I am totally 🤔.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading🙏

Until next time…

Be Spontaneous, ae

☯️