In this video, you’ll learn how to overcome the 3 fears holding you back from public speaking.
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Video Transcript:
This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
In this video, you’re going to learn to overcome one of the biggest fears you have in business. Public speaking. Public speaking is one of the most effective prospecting tools you could leverage, but it’s hard to take advantage of if you’re too afraid to take the stage. Hi, my name is Andy Neary, founder and CEO of Complete Game Consulting, where we help insurance professionals build online credibility so they can turn reach and relevancy into revenue.
And in this video, I am sharing a clip from a recent workshop I hosted on Public Speaking to help you overcome your fear of it. Now, before we dive in the video, please go down. Click the subscribe button so you can make sure you get all of our latest content here on YouTube when it goes live. But in this clip, you’re going to learn the three fears that are keeping you back from taking the stage.
And if you can overcome these fears, public speaking can become the best prospecting weapon you have, and it can open doors to opportunities you did not know existed. So let’s dive in. Let’s get ready to help you overcome those fears so you can start making more money by leveraging the public speaking stage. All right, let’s dive in. We are talking about public speaking and the power of public speaking.
So let’s talk about the fact why don’t more people speak in public? Why don’t more people use this as an opportunity to grow their business? Well, number one, people fear because they are afraid to fail. One thing most advisors live with today, guys, is fear. There’s three fears you deal with the most fear of failure, fear of comparison, and fear of judgment.
So people have this really weird fear of giving a public presentation because they actually believe the audience is there to watch you screw up. Does anybody ever had that thought of like, oh my God, people are going to laugh if I screw up? Here’s the reality. If somebody is going to attend a presentation you’re giving, they’re actually they need you to win.
Selfishly, they need you to win. Because if you do, well, guess what they learn. So the first thing I want to talk about with giving a public presentation is you have to realize that the people in that audience are not there to watch you screw up. They’re actually there to cheer you on because they need you to win in order for them to walk away with value.
That’s number one. The other one is the imposter syndrome. A lot of people have this fear that I’m going to stand in front of a roomful of people, and I’m going to look stupid because they’re going to they’re going to actually realize, I don’t know that much who’s ever had that fear, who’s ever had the fear of imposter syndrome in this industry?
Well, let me ask you a question. Whether you sell commercial insurance, you sell benefits. Do you know more about what you sell than your prospects? Can you confidently say, yes, I know more about what I sell than my prospects. Yeah, she never have imposter syndrome. Then one of the things I love about insurance, especially when I was selling benefits, you could take a CFO who went to one of the best finance schools in America, Wharton at Penn, and you could put me in front of him or her.
I know more about benefits than they do. That’s guys you have to remember. You’re the reason you have imposter syndrome is because you’re comparing yourself to your peers and I hate to tell you, there is always going to be somebody smarter than you in this industry. But when you get in front of a prospect, you know more about what you sell than anybody else.
So if you are in front of a roomful of HR directors, a roomful of CFOs, you know your topic better than them. That should give you confidence. Now, here’s the problem with public speaking in the insurance industry. number one, most speakers are really bad. Why? Because they’re not prepared. You get hired to speak at a conference, or maybe you host your own event.
And I’ll be honest, you don’t practice, you don’t get prepared. You just stand up and you wing it. That’s number one. Guys, don’t be winging. Speaking is a craft. If you want it to grow your business, you got to put in the work. And then you rely on the power point. Has anybody ever been at a presentation where a guy, man or woman stands up at the front?
It’s at a conference in a breakout room like, hey guys, super excited for you to be here today. I know I’m at the end of the day and I’m the thing holding you back from happy hour. all right, should we get at it? And then they turn and they start clicking. I’m like, sit down. I’ll just read the PowerPoint slides.
When you put a presentation together, it should never be about the PowerPoints. It should be you. The focus should be on you. People are coming to see you. Speak not you. Read a bunch of slides. Public speaking is one of the biggest opportunities you will ever have in the world of business development. There is not another strategy, maybe outside of referrals, that will take a cold suspect and make them a hot prospect.
As fast as public speaking, you can go into a room and talk to a bunch of prospects, and these folks could walk in saying, I have no idea who this person, and by the time you’re done speaking, they could say, we need to talk to them. Nothing in the world of prospecting can do it faster. All right. Now you know what the three fears are and you know how to overcome them.
My goal for you in watching this video is to ensure you no longer let the fear of judgment, comparison, and failure keep you from taking the stage. There is not a more effective prospecting weapon than public speaking. Nothing can take a cold suspect and turn them into a hot prospect as fast as public speaking, and nothing can open doors to opportunities you thought unimaginable as efficiently as public speaking.
But you can’t leverage it if you’re too afraid to take the stage. So my advice for you is just to get over those fears. Take the stage. Know that your prospects want you to win, and use public speaking to grow your business faster than you ever have before. All right, in next week’s video, I’m going to share my epiphany on what public speaking can do for you. When I realized that I opened the door to a fortune 50 company. So stay tuned. We’ll see you next week.
Business is no longer about who you know. Business is about who knows you. In a noisy industry like we’re in gang, you got to get people to know who you are.