Ep 27: Communication is an Accelerant of Dreams with Brenden Kumarasamy

Transcript

Tips for Mastering the Art of Public Speaking
Brenden Kumarasamy: It's a great way of getting started, Martin. For me, the question has always been, communication is like juggling 18 balls at the same time. So one of those balls is eye contact. One of those balls is body language, storytelling, smiling, facial expressions, and the list can go on for a really long time. It gets really overwhelming for people. So for me, the question, Martin, has always been, what are the three easiest balls to juggle because if we can juggle those, then we can master communication a lot faster. Let me start with the first one. The first one is the random word exercise. Pick a random word like light bulb, like cup, like tissue box, like paper, like home, and create random presentations out of thin air and this serves two main purposes, Martin. The first one is it helps you deal with uncertainty. Life is filled with it. When you meet somebody new at a party, you have no idea how that conversation is going to go. And the second reason why it's effective is if you can make sense out of nonsense, you can make sense out of anything. So if you talk about avocados for 30 seconds, you can pretty much talk about anything for 30 seconds. So that's number one. Yeah, we'll go into two and three. I always take a pause in the middle so I don't ramble for too long. Number two is the question drill. So what is the question drill? A lot of us when we get asked questions in our life, Martin, at school, at work, in our passions, on a podcast with our family, most of us are reactive to those questions. We wait for the question to come up versus think proactively about them and guess them in advance. Let me give you an example with me. So a few years ago and I started guesting on podcasts, I was horrible and I probably still am, but I was a lot worse back then, really, really bad. I remember some guy asked me, hey, Brenden, where does the fear of communication come from? And I looked at the guy and I was like, I don't know, man, Los Angeles? New York? Like you tell me. So I wasn't really good at it. So what I do instead, every single day, Martin, for five minutes, I just answered one question that I thought the world would ask me about my expertise, my products or my services. So every single day, I would just answer one question about communication and people can do this with what they care about. But if you do this for a year, Martin, you'll have answered 365 questions about your industry and you'll be bulletproof. That's number two. And then finally number three is the video message. Just make a list of five people you love the most in your life. Could be a brother, a sister, a cousin a client, a podcast guest, a friend, and just send them a 20 second video message to say, hey, I'm thinking about you. I really love everything that you do in my life and I'm just really grateful for you. Hope you're having a fantastic week, that's it. Easy threes.

Advice to people seeking the ability to deeply connect with others through public speaking
Brenden Kumarasamy: Yeah, deeply connecting with others can fall under a few frames. One is the intimate one-on-one conversation, Martin, and then the other frame is more in a bigger group. So let's tackle both frames. So the first one is one-on-one. Here's all you have to do, Martin. It's really simple. Make a list. So obvious nobody has said this, actually. Make a list of the questions you wished other people asked you and just ask that to other people. So if you end up coming to someone, you meet me in person, you'll realize really quick, I'm not the kind of guy you ask how's the weather. Like, I really don't care, it doesn't really matter. But I'm the kind of person you ask, hey, what's your dream? What are you excited about building this year? What are you grateful for? What is really getting you jazzed up? Like, that's the kind of questions I want to answer personally, like in a one-on-one context. So what do I do? I just ask those questions to other people. What are you passionate about? What are you excited about? And what happens, because most people are lazy in conversation, is they'll just answer it and go, what about you? So you get to answer your own questions. So that's the killer advice there. And then the other advice is more in terms of groups. In terms of groups, it's about understanding three things. One is, how do we get people to listen to our ideas? That's the first piece. But there's two other pieces we fail to think about. The second one is how do we get people to take action on our ideas? And the third piece is how do we get people to share our ideas with others? What does that mean? Let's use a simple question or rather example. So let's say I got a cupcake recipe and I'm sharing this recipe with, let's say you and five other people. And I'm sharing this, I got this cupcake, there's 17 different ingredients. This is how you make it. And I leave, but next week, when I ask you and the five other people, the four other people. Hey, who actually did the cupcake recipe? They go, nobody. Oh, I didn't work on it. Why didn't you try it? Oh, there's too many ingredients. It was too complicated. You're too fast. I couldn't keep track of all the ingredients. And I don't have time because I'm a busy mother with seven kids and I don't have time for this. So notice what I'm doing is I'm listening to the audience, Martin. I'm realizing that my initial presentation, sure, might've been content heavy, but no one's taking action on my ideas. And definitely people aren't sharing my cupcake recipe with other people. So I go back to the drawing board and I make the presentation better, and I tell them how easy it is to make, how it only takes 10 minutes, there's actually five ingredients, not 17, and then people start enjoying delicious cupcakes.

Practical Public Speaking Tips & Tricks Someone Can Apply IMMEDIATELY and ADVANCED Public Speaking Tips People Can’t Get Anywhere Else
Brenden Kumarasamy: So let me start with this, which brings us back to our easy threes the random word exercise, pick a word like cup, like pistachio, like ceiling, create a random presentation out of thin air. The second one is the video message. Send video messages to people that you love, pretty simple. And the third one is the question drill. Ask one question for five minutes every single day until you have an answer for everything. But here's the problem. The problem, Martin, is a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are writing the tips down. They're going, wow, Martin, you brought on some cool guy named Brenden, he's sharing all these tips but they don't realize the most important tip, which is you don't learn speaking by listening to me and you speak, you learn speaking by speaking. That's why I encourage all of you listening to this podcast to book 15 minutes every single day to do all three of these exercises. It only takes 15 minutes. And for those of you who think they don't have 15 minutes, my only question to think about, Martin, is who showers every day? Really think about it. I'm assuming...Most people are listening, if not all, hopefully shower every day. You got 15 minutes in there. You're not doing anything. So just do the random word exercise. Do the question drill. Don't send video messages in the shower. Okay. That's illegal, but wait, wait until you're outside, but send some video messages. But that's the point I want to drive. It's not about resources or lack of resources like Tony Robbins says so well. It's a lack of resourcefulness. And that's the key and most people, and I can talk about advanced stuff too if you want me to, Martin, but you know my career, I've coached hundreds of people in a private basis and I'm probably going to coach thousands more throughout my life and none of them were doing all three of those things consistently until I yelled at them to start doing them. So even if you do all three, which are my first three balls, you do them consistently, you're going to be a pretty advanced speaker pretty quickly.

How a Master Public Speaker organizes their speeches
Brenden Kumarasamy: So let's start with the simple thing that people can implement right away, which is ball number five. So ball number four for people who are keeping traffic of that is the best way to speak is to speak. So just book time on your calendar to do the first three balls. So number five is called the jigsaw puzzle. Puzzles are toys we used to play as kids and some of us still do, right? It's like those thousand piece puzzles, kind of put them together. So the question now becomes, when you work on a puzzle, which pieces do you start with first? And the answer for most of us is the edges, because they're easier to find in the box, and they got the little edge piece to them. So you do the edges, then you work your way into the middle. Why am I bringing this up? Because in presentations, Martin, unfortunately, we do the opposite. We shove a bunch of content in the presentation. We get to the presentation. We ramble throughout the whole thing. And then the last slide sounds something like this. Uh, like, uh, thanks. Not the right approach. So instead what you want to do is practice like a jigsaw puzzle. The next time you're preparing for a presentation, Martin, just practice the edges first. Just practice the intro 20, 25 times. Not two times, do it 20 times. 20 seems like a big number, but it actually isn't. It only takes 45 minutes to do it 20 times, because your intro is two minutes. Same thing with the conclusion. What's a great movie with a terrible ending? Last time I checked, terrible movie. So same thing for the close, do it 20 times as well, then tackle the middle. And I'll give you kudos where it's due. You're a great example who actually applied that today because you really practiced your introduction. That's why it came out well. Like it took you time to come up with that, you know, the Emerson quote that I've ever heard before, by the way, so I need to steal that, right? When you went into that intro But most podcast hosts wouldn't take that time. That's why they don't get the results you do.

Master Public Speaker’s pre-speech ritual that is conducted before every engagement
Brenden Kumarasamy: Sort of. So I do, but I don't recommend my routine to other people because everyone's got such a different routine, kind of like with athletes. All of their pre-game routines are very different besides the obvious working out. And so for me, what I'll say is don't, don't do mine. That's one. The second piece is I don't do it all the time. I only do it when the presentation is what I call quote unquote high risk. So high risk just means if it's a really, really massive opportunity, like when I have tomorrow, actually, so I'm going to practice my routine tomorrow. Then another one is if I'm giving a big speech. So I'll tell you the routine. Essentially what it is I wake up fairly early in the morning and I don't say anything to anyone for most of the day. So actually stay quiet, which is very weird for me to do because I'm an extravert. So I stay quiet. I put, I obviously shower, get dressed, put something nice on. I usually put a suit when I'm giving a pretty big presentation but I don't always have to. And then what I'll do is I'll just sit there in silence and listen to meditative music for like an hour or 30 minutes or 45 minutes. And then when I get on that big appearance or that big opportunity, I spew all of my energy onto that opportunity for the day and then I empty the gas tank basically. I warn people ahead of time. So they're not going to freak out too much. They still freak out, but they don't freak out as much because I tell them.

On public speaking being a force multiplier and magnifying one’s ability to do almost everything else
Brenden Kumarasamy: Let me start with this. For me, communication isn't just about speaking on a stage. It's one part of it. So that's the way I always like to say it, is communication is an accelerant of dreams. Doesn't matter what you want in your life, it improves the quality of your life. Example. Communication helps us raise our children better. Communication helps us get along with our family. Communication helps us make new friends, helps us order food at a restaurant, make the waiter feel really special about their life. For me, communication is every area of our life, Martin. It doesn't matter what we want, because there's always somebody who has what we want and is a much better communicator than us. And often the people who have what we want are really good speakers. If we want to be a big executive in corporate America, most of those executives, speak really well. If we want to build a big business, most of the time, not always, but most of the time, the person who has that bigger business that we're trying to build in our life is a pretty good communicator. If we want to be a better father or mother, often the people have pretty good kids, they're pretty good communicators. They're probably not yelling 80% of the time at their kids. They're probably really good at conflict resolution. They know how to make people feel special and all that stuff. And they definitely send video messages. And that's really the idea is it doesn't really matter what we aspire to want in our life, whether it be big or small, communication is a vehicle that I believe just improves the quality of how one lives life.

Personal story about doing presentations in a language he did not know
Brenden Kumarasamy: You nailed that. So you're right, I grew up in Montreal, Canada. I'm still based there. And for those who don't know, like Martin explained so well, French is the language that you need to know to speak in the city, or else you can't really do much here. You need to know the language. Except I didn't want to learn it because I was really scared about learning. Because remember, you're sitting there in a classroom, you have no idea what the teacher is saying and you're just skedaddling and hopefully you're hoping to survive. So every time I would grow up I, or as I grew up, I was literally giving presentations in the language I didn't know. And then coupled with that, I have a crooked left arm. So because of that, when people would look at me as a kid, and still to this day, they'd always look at my arm, they wouldn't look at my face when I was presenting. And then even when I got to university, I studied in accounting, which is literally the opposite of what I do today. So yeah, I'm a big believer in if I could figure this out, my goodness, I'm pretty sure everyone listening this could figure it out. I was born upside down. So based on what I understand anyways, I was born upside down. So when that happens, the doctor has kind of two options. One is to cut the mother's stomach open, which risks the mother's life. And the second version is to pull me out in a vacuum. So they want the vacuum. There was a mistake in the vacuum. That's how my left, kind of left side of my body kind of dislocated. It's not that bad though. Like I still have movement in my left arm. I still use it, but yeah, it's crooked.

Example when bad communication hindered friendships and work environment
Brenden Kumarasamy: Excellent question. I've actually never been asked that before, so I'm glad you did. So here's a thought that comes to mind, which is more in relationships in general. We say this all the time whenever in a relationship with somebody. It's a five-letter word, a five-letter sentence rather. And the sentence is, I need more alone time. I need more alone time. But what's interesting about the sentence, Martin, is it can be misconstrued in a hundred different ways. Because I need more alone time could mean, hey, I just need an hour in the morning to read my book. It could mean I need two weeks in a cave, don't text me. It could mean I need to take out the dogs for a walk for like 15 minutes just to get some fresh air and I just need that alone time where I'm listening to music for 15 minutes. But if we don't specify what alone time means, it can get interpreted as this person doesn't love me. This person doesn't care about me. This person doesn't want to be around me. So notice in that small example, I need more alone time. Seems like a really innocent sentence can destroy relationships around you. So that's why we need to shift the conversation, the language from, I need more alone time to, hey babe, I would love 15 minutes in the morning to just read my book in my own space because it allows me to show up better from our family. Is that okay with you? And notice how when we do that, very specific, no feelings get hurt. And it's why I've been able to live with my mother and my sister and not get into a single argument in the last 10 years.

How a failure, or apparent failure, set Brenden up for later success and a favorite failure
Brenden Kumarasamy: A favorite failure storyI'm trying to pick between my collection of so many different failures. I mean, I think one big one was, let me see, I mean, there was one where I botched a speech. Oh, no, I'll give you the 50,000 email. So when I was getting started with MasterTalk, I had a brilliant idea. And I'm being very sarcastic here, by the way, for people who didn't catch that of sending 50,000 emails to university professors. So here was the logic. My logic at the time was, this is back when I wasn't even producing my videos. I had like 300 subscribers or something. And I was thinking to myself, if I send my YouTube videos to a bunch of people, right, university professors, and they like my videos, because that's why I started the channel in the first place. We didn't have those resources. That, hey, the students can, I mean, the teachers can just share it with all the students. And since the students change, but the teacher doesn't, the teacher kid just keeps sharing it with the new groups of students every year. It sounds like a brilliant idea on paper. Except university professors hated my guts for the most part. Whenever I'd email them, they'd be like, first of all, I don't know you, so don't send me an email. They were like really rude, like really annoying too. But the problem, the reason it was a failure. I sent 500 emails because I didn't know how to automate these things. I still don't, by the way. So I sent 500 emails every single day for 100 days straight. And I was stubborn. I thought it was going to work. Instead of just realizing, hey, I sent 2000 emails and nobody gives an F about what I'm doing. So I should probably email podcast hosts because podcast hosts are looking for great guests. They want to share cool and new innovative ideas and novel ideas that nobody else is sharing on their show so that they increase the value of the downloads. And they have a personal selfish interest in knowing about communication because they're a podcast host. They want to be better at speaking so they can attract a bigger audience. But I wasn't that smart back then. And so I should have just said, is there a better way to approach this or a better target audience? Figured it out later, but, it goes back to what Ben Horowitz says, It's not about finding the silver bullet, it's about throwing a bunch of lead bullets, and I clearly was too stubborn with that one, that's for sure.

2-3 books and listening techniques Brenden has learned the most from and recommends to people
Brenden Kumarasamy: Absolutely Martin so what I'll do is I'll give you one book in one listening technique the reason I recommend one is because usually what I recommend a lot of books people don't order them. So what I'll do is I'll give you one that you need to order and then I'll give one listening technique. So one is the book the book is called Thirst by Scott Harrison Scott Harrison is the CEO and founder of Charity Water which is a non-profit he started to help the world gain access to clean water. The reason I love the book is for multiple reasons number one he's a fantastic storyteller. The way this guy tells the story of Charity Water is really, really impressive. I love it, love the way he does it. So I learned a lot from Scott's ability to tell stories. The second piece is that he's a great reminder that anyone in the world can make an impact. Like this guy went from being a nightclub promoter in New York City, Martin, to building America's largest water charity that raised like a hundred million dollars in the last 12 months alone. So it's absolutely wild. And the third piece is a quote from the book that I'll never forget for the rest of my life. And the quote is, the goal is not to live forever, but rather create something that will. And that would be my favorite book recommendation. In terms of listening, here's what I'll say. So a lot of people say you need to get better at listening. You got two ears and one mouth for a reason. You gotta listen twice as much as we speak, which I'm not doing that great of a job of today because I'm the podcast guest, so I gotta yap today. In the context of listening, what I feel is missing in the space is, how do I actually get better at this? How do I actually improve my listening skills? So it's actually an easy technique. I teach clients that people can easily implement tomorrow. And you're doing this in part because you're a podcast host, but obviously most of us aren't podcasts hosts, including me. So there has to be a workaround. So here's the workaround. I call it the goals call. Here's what you do. You message your best friend like your growth friend, somebody who likes growing, somebody who's listening to this podcast with you, essentially, somebody who likes the stuff, who's listening to all these fun things, always wants to get better. And here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna book a 45 minute one-on-one call with them, and you're gonna ask them their top three goals for this year and why those goals are important to them. So what that person's gonna do for the next two minutes, Martin, is they're going to write down what their goals are, why they're important, they're gonna tell you. But there's two rules to that call. Okay, the first rule is that you are not allowed to give advice. You're not allowed to give advice to that person on the call. The second rule is you're allowed to restate. So let's say you tell me your goals. I can say something like, okay, Martin, what I heard were this is your goals, this is your goals, this is why it's important. Did I get that correctly? And they go, yes, and you missed this. And then I type it out. And then the third thing, which is the third rule, is I'm only allowed to ask clarifying questions. So let's say one of your goals is to grow your podcast. So a follow up question that I ask you is, by how many downloads? How many downloads are you doing right now? Okay, gotcha. What does success look like to you? Where do you see the podcast in the next three to five years? So what this does is it forces the person for the entire 45 minutes to just listen to the other person because you're not allowed giving advice, you're not allowed giving your thoughts. You're only allowed restating what that person said. Okay, that's what I heard. And you're allowed to ask clarifying questions. That's it. It drastically improves your ability to communicate and listen to other people.

Three Things a Master Communicator is grateful for
Brenden Kumarasamy: Three things that I'm grateful for. You wouldn't believe I've done the gratitude exercise probably like five times in the last week, because my coach always forces me to do gratitude. I'll say that there are three things that I'm grateful for. The first one is my own failures. Like the last couple of weeks, except today I had a great day, but the last two weeks I've had a rut, man. Like I hadn't closed a client I got on so many strategy calls and I was just feeling down in the dumps. And the reason I'm grateful for that is because the 10 year old version of me, 10 years from now, I mean, will look back because his life is way easier than the one I have now, because he's already done everything and he's just chilling and enjoying life and he would just be laughing because it's like, wow, like it's at 36 life is too easy. Whereas now at this life, it's like, Oh, can I make it? Should I mean, I'm going to make it by more like can I make it this year? Can I do it? There's like that more, that challenge. So I'm grateful in that failure. That's number one. The second thing that I'm really grateful for is the freedom to do what I get to do every single day. You know, 19, if you had told me that, hey, Brenden, you're going to not only get your dream job at IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers, you're going to quit all these jobs that you think you're not going to get in the first place and you're going to start a business and you're going to make YouTube videos on communication. I would've thought that person was out of the wazoo and I get to do everything I can. I mean, isn't this so cool? Like I get to spend my hour just talking with you instead of being in a corporate meeting. Like it's nuts. So I'm really grateful for freedom. And then the third thing that I'm really grateful for is direction, Direction and purpose. I've found what my North star is really early in life and a lot of people never find it. And I'm really grateful that I found mine. I have reason for living and doing what I get to do every single day. Those are three. And obviously there's family and all this stuff, but yes for three, so I'll give you three.

How does starting an executive communication tips and coaching YouTube channel at age 22, Brad Pitt, Justin Bieber, dancing in his room, living with his mother and not driving the car he owns all make sense
33:35 Brenden Kumarasamy: Be insane or be the same. If you want to be like everyone else, that's totally fine. But if you want to do something important with your life, something meaningful, you need to realize that the people who have done those meaningful things are often insane. Don't you find it odd, Martin, that you're having a conversation with a guy who at the age of 22 started a YouTube channel not on pranks, not on music, not on being a rapper, but on executive communication tips? And then he went on to coach all of these executives for money. He built a super successful business, yet he still lives in his mother's basement because I can take care of her that way, he has a nice car outside, I mean, it's like a Toyota Camry 2014. So it's nice compared to what I had. Yes, humble. But he's too scared to drive it. So his sister drives it for him. He dances alone an hour in that basement an hour a day. And he's in the top 1% of all listeners on Spotify for Justin Bieber. How does any of this make any sense at all, Martin? And that, my friend, is the point. When every decision in your life makes sense to the only person that it should which is you, you're probably making the right decisions. So be insane or be the same would be my quote.