UnScripted: Authentic Leadership Podcast

Mastering Communication: The Art Of Public & Online Speaking Feat. Brenden Kumarasamy

June 13, 2021 John Lebrun & La'Fayette Lane Season 3 Episode 42
UnScripted: Authentic Leadership Podcast
Mastering Communication: The Art Of Public & Online Speaking Feat. Brenden Kumarasamy
UnScripted: Authentic Leadership Podcast
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Show Notes Transcript

🗣In this episode, John and La'Fayette are joined by special guest Brenden Kumarasamy of MasterTalk! Brenden is the founder of MasterTalk, a YouTube channel he started to help the world master the art of public speaking and communication. Brenden shares how communication begins not with the words we speak, but how we listen! Within the conversation, Brenden breaks down how we can effectively communicate with those that we don't get along with! We all have faced communication barriers where it feels as if were hitting a wall, but don't worry this episode will help you break down those communication barriers in your life! Hit that PLAY and SHARE button to hear more of this amazing conversation on how to master the art of public & online speaking and communication!

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Welcome to the Unscripted Authentic Leadership Podcast. A podcast where we are seeking to lead change while also seeking to understand. We are also here as a platform to provide leaders to come together to unite to develop, empower other leaders in the areas of business, family, faith and community. Today we are here to have another incredible conversation about how to speak effectively online to have that conversation. We are joined by our special guests today, Brenden from MasterTalk. Those of you that will watch this and listen. This put those clap emojis in the comment Section clap those hands up forour special guests Brendan from Master Talk. He is the founder of Master Talk which is a YouTube channel. He started to help the World master the art of public speaking and communication before we get a little further about knowing who Brendan is, we want to thank all of our audience are unscripted family there, those of you that are following us, our YouTube channel. Their unscripted authentic leadership on our various social media platforms. As you see on the screen from. Instagram or Instagram handles at unscripted leadership. LinkedIn unscripted authentic leadership. Those do that. Listen and download the podcast on all streaming platforms from Apple to Spotify. Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio and Stitcher. You can find our podcast there wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also connect and engage with us on our website unscripted-leadership.com, where you also can find our new merch that is available. You can get a 10% off merch promo code. By signing up for our unscripted club email group, you will receive a 10% off Merch Promo Co lead 10 when you connect with us there on unscripted dash leadership.com. At this time I want our special guest Brendan from Master Talk. Just give us a little background about who he is and what he does at this time, Brendan. Of course of course thanks so much. You too it's such a pleasure to be here and like you said you know my name is Brenda. I make YouTube videos like communication, public speaking and my mission in this world is to be the bridge between everyones ideas. You know. I think the next Elon Musk is probably a 7 year old girl in Cambodia. So my goal is to create resources that anyone can access and in addition to that I coach people also. Amazing, I've never heard anyone say be the bridge between others ideas. I think that is brilliant. That is amazing. Let's dig into that. And what you do as far as the effective speaking in the public speaking. Mastering the public speaking. How did you get a passion for doing that? Where did that stem from? Especially in this hybrid space that we're in that not only are people having to publicly speak in person, but having to connect with the audience through a screen? Or through a webcam with a ring light and there's nobody in the room. How do we effectively speak from that standpoint as speakers and leaders? Yeah, absolutely. So let's start with the first part of the question that I had around. How did I learn communication? What was the word of the passion come from? So in a nutshell, what happened was when I was in university I used to do these things called case competitions. Think of it like. Professional sports but for nerds so other guys my age were playing football or basketball. Some other scary thing. I wouldn't dare to get near. Instead I invested that same energy to presentations. That's what I did professionally for three to four years. Well, rather not, maybe not professionally more so competitively, and that's why I developed a gift for this and eventually later on I realized that the communication information out there that's available for free isn't really good. Your advice, like, oh, you should like, be yourself. Yeah, and follow your dreams. And do all these things and I just went where are we supposed to do with this info? So I started mastercut really in my mom's basement with the hope of helping some people out and it turned into a thing of it. So that's one piece and the other piece you asked about what virtual presentation. I think what I would say. Is it all starts? By really getting close to your audience. So what I would recommend for virtual is you want to get a phone call with at least one or two people before you jump into a virtual chat with them. So when I started doing podcasts for the first time, I wouldn't be as comfortable speaking even if I miss Coach.'cause when I started I was like, well, I want to be next to you too. I want to speak to both of you and I couldn't. So what I did instead is a start getting on phone calls. People at the beginning. So you get to know them first. So that way when I got straight to the podcast I was a lot more focused and a lot more energized. So that would be my advice. Sure, I think that's great, and I think that what you are providing is absolutely necessary to just life in general. I mean everything that we do is based upon communication and there's a lot of misunderstandings. There's a lot of things that go awry based on a breakdown in communication, and I think that many people have an understanding of what they think communication is or what effective communication is. But I think that you can shed some more light on. How do we effectively communicate with people'cause you know the way that I communicate with John is is not going to be the same way that I communicate with you because we have two different communication styles are two different type of receptor cells of that communication style that spring brought forth. So what is effective communication to you? Absolutely. I think for me the first step I was like to begin with is a question. And that question is how would the world change if you became an exceptional communicator? I'll beat that again. How would the world change for you became an exceptional communicator? When I always says public speaking and effective communication starts with communicating effectively to one person? Which is you. And then once you figure out who you are, how to communicate effectively to yourself, and your ability to articulate thoughts and put him on a piece of paper, put him on a podcast, put him on a YouTube video. Whichever format you're comfortable with giving via blog, it improves your ability to communicate your own thoughts back to yourself. That's one piece the other piece. Is communicating effectively with the people we get along with. So that means the people that we just. Are attracted to energetically, the people were you just meet that person you say, whereas this person bit? Because when you look at communication that way because a lot more fun versus the way we currently look at communication, which is generally fear, anxiety, nerves stress. In some cases death, which is not what we want. So the focus is find the people that even if you made 100 mistakes with. They would still want to talk to you. Still have a conversation, and then the third piece of course is just a bit more harder is how do you have authentic conversations and how do you have detailed conversations, effective ones with people you might not get along with, which is a different phase for another time, but I will say that the first two points is definitely something most people don't think about and do. Sure, I I kind of if you don't mind if if we can go into that last element that you talked about. Yeah, I don't think the issue comes in with most people like effectively communicated with people that you get along with or you have a friendship with our debt. You have some type of tenure in that relationship with that person. I think the problem with communication or the breakdown of communication comes in when we're not on the same wavelength or we have different perspectives or we have some type of conflict. How do we then communicate with people that we necessarily don't get along with that they don't get along with us or we don't necessarily agree with them, but we have to communicate with them on the daily basis. Absolutely yeah. To build on your point left ahead. I actually think the communication is broken down to both key areas. The beautiful we get along with and the people we don't get along with'cause he bought the people we get along with. Think about your family. Think about your close friends. Do you really understand everything they say all the time? I was thinking about that with your spouse. That's great. Example is the first thing you said is communicate effectively with people you're close to an. I'm always working on trying to be better communicator with my wife who I've known for 20 years and I still am not always very good about it because sometimes we're just not on the same page. Sure, and we. Recognize that at times were like OK, we're obviously not seeing the same things. We're not on the same wavelength. We're not speaking the same language today, and so I could definitely see how that could be a possibility in something that would be critical to learn about, but I understand what Lafayette was, actually what he was getting too. Yeah, you probably make great points, and that's good. No, but but you're correct to Lafayette because the breakdown is especially significant when it's somebody we don't get along with absolutely right here. If you don't like the person, you don't even know why you like. How do you? How do you communicate with them? That's a challenge and I'm happy to talk about how to overcome them, but I would say for most people focus on the people around you. Look for me, it took me years to get my communication straight with my mom, not because we had a bad relationship because we hated each other. I lived with her right. It's because we grew up in very different value systems. She was born in Chilanga. I was born in Canada. It's a complete clash of values. One example of that is in American and Canadian culture. It's a good tendency to leave the house very early. It's normal, you know you kind of graduate, you leave. Rise and in our home country you never do that until you get married. That's one piece already. That's a big difference. I preferred staying anyway, so we didn't. We didn't really argue there but, but that's just one microcosm. One small idea of explaining much bigger picture. So we disagree on so many things culturally. But it's our ability to come together even if we already get along. But to .3, how do you do it in a way that, well, the people you just can't you just don't like him? So what do you do? I think for me the trick and you already know this is effective listening, right? It's how do you listen 1st and more specifically more specific that a little bit more granularity there you know you're a good listener when you respond with questions, not statements. Can you repeat that again? You know you're a good listener when you respond with questions, not statements, so let's hit me in Lafayette or in an argument which will probably never happen.'cause seems like a pretty cool dude, so let's say we're getting to this big fight and he's giving us POV and he's like you know what bread to the people I get along with. We have pretty good communication. I know what you're talking about. I'm just kidding. I'm sure you wouldn't say that, but let's just assume so instead of me saying, hey Mr, this is what I think this is what I think is so I think I have to pause. Hang up, let's work on your perspective a bit more.'cause I wanna understand it. Why do you believe what you believe? Can you talk about the relationships around you? Why is it that 100% of the relationships you get along with so well? Maybe I can learn something from that. Maybe there's something you're doing in relation. It's probably true that I should be doing more so I don't have this problem. But so because I'm focusing on your perspective and not mine, that shows him a really good listener. But instead and this happens in every argument, every fight all the time, whether it's politics and all everything, it's a little statement statement statement Statement Raz, the really good people go statement question, question, question, question, question, and the conversations over and everyones hiking and eating pizza. That's really cool, because that's actually how Lafayette at night. Came to a mutual respect early on our friendship. Remember that bro. Absolutely we began talking about critical discussions going on in the United States without getting too deep right here we both. It was just questions about things going on in the news and things that are important. Or you know, maybe we were talking about the Black Lives Matter movement or different things like that and it was us. At me asking him questions him, asking mine with nobody trying to argue each trying to understand the perspective. Because we realized that I realized myself that I'm like OK, I'm missing something here. Explain to me your perspective and then he would come back. He would explain his perspective and then ask me and then what we realized which is really cool, which is why we started the podcast. As we both wanted the same results, we just we just grew up with slightly different. They weren't way different perspectives. We had the same heart. We just realized that we had like 2 degrees difference. That was it in perspective of a circumstance. And so once we listen to the other perspective. That's where our respect group for each other, and we still don't always agree 100% in every single little piece. But we're always kind of slowly navigating closer on the same spot as we grow and friendship because we just keep understanding each others perspectives, which does change how I view things. It probably changes how he views things over time, so it's really cool how you said that. Yeah, I, I think that's so powerful because I think we were talking about effective communication and mastering your talk in public speaking. And I think that many times, or at least for me, when I think of communication, we always through think of it through the lens or view it through the lens of speaking and what you just said that the first step to effective communication is actually not saying anything, it's listening and so to be that effective communicator or that effective public speaker. It really doesn't start what saying a word. It starts by list by you, listening with both your ears. It's kind of like what my father always told me that God gave us two ears and one mouth. Twice as much listening than talking. Yeah, right? And so I want to get into this piece. I know John probably has some questions as well, but. I notice in your your brand is master talk. And so we're talking about this whole public speaking IBM. This effective communication and speaking effectively online and in person. How do we become masters? At our craft. For me as a preacher, I know one of the things that you know, knowing your audience, knowing who you're talking to when you're speaking and having those effective cues and knowing who you're talking to, that they'll kind of give you the cues that you need to effectively communicate with them. But how do we continue to sharpen our communication skills? You gave us one there about the listening, but how do we get to the place to where we are? Master communicators? Absolutely, you know, my perspective is always been my definition of mastery. Is the following someone? Who understands that they know very little about anything? I know that sounds counter intuitive, but even me today with the I guess, quote unquote success. Whatever you guys want to call it that I have today? I still don't consider myself the best communicator out there. I'd really don't. I'm always focused on what is the next level of growth and that is the only commonality amongst the masters of every field, whether that field is biology, whether that feels chemistry that feels communication is the people at the top understand that they'll never actually get there, so they need to make the world or their world their teacher. I'll give you an example. When I started coaching C-Suite executives, I think I was like 22 or 23. C-Suite means that just means like CEOs of companies. I was doing well for myself course but. I I wasn't seeing the same growth and improvement so my my business partner said why don't you just start coaching kits and that really scared me. I say kids, he's like yeah Coach 6 year olds and how to be great communicators? And it freaked me out. I think I don't want to do that like what and it was the best lesson. It was the best and I still do it today and the reason has nothing to do with the money. That is everything to do to your point. To keep myself sharp with my communication.'cause that's the hardest thing you can do is coaching kids absolutely so. Anyways, the principle is that I would say from a more tactical perspective on what people can do to sharpen their skills so many different things. But I'd say the biggest thing is definitely accountability. You need to have someone to do a lot of the drills I teach in my videos with each other. That means joining a Toastmasters club. If you don't have a budget for a speech coach. That means working together as a team of friends and working through these exercises, but it means doing it on a consistent basis and constantly giving each other feedback. Even if you're not coaches, doesn't matter. That's really the focus and in terms of like techniques, you can do one. I love that I always preach is the random word exercise super simple? Pick a random word right? Lightbulb, shirt, basement and just make a presentation out of thin air. Do it five times a day, 5 minutes total. And you have done the exercise 2000 times, almost in a year. Wow this. It sounds simple, but. That will take us as communicators a very long way, just taking in adamant objects and trying to make a presentation around that. That that's great, that is, that is amazing. John, you have something bro? I'm sorry you had mentioned something about early on about. When you began your podcast, you were afraid to talk. I don't know if you said afraid, nervous, maybe apprehensive. Fill in the blank to talk to the individual that you were going to interview or be interviewed by so you would get on the phone with them to get more comfortable. Now that comes after I'm assuming you've spent several years of. Learning to speak effectively, getting rid of my hardest thing is my arms and OS, so I have to slow myself down when talking. I'm from the West Coast is where I grew up and we talk fast so I'm learning to not talk so quick'cause everybody thinks I mumble but anyways, but that what you had mentioned was you had to get on the phone with them to get to know them better. That I'm assuming that means that there must have been some fear when it comes to speaking in public. In front of somebody in front of a camera, which is definitely kind of weird, but I've certainly gotten used to it. How do you overcome that? Because I have to assume that a lot of the listeners. Must have that deep fear of speaking in public because I understand it could be a self image struggle. It could is my guess of a lot of it, but can you speak to that? Because obviously that's something you had to overcome. And how do you become an effective communicator with more than two people? If you have that fear of communicating in front of somebody. Absolutely. So I think what I would say is let's start with the principle and the principle is the following. Fear is always going to be there. Just because you're going skydiving the second time doesn't mean it's less scarier or not scary at all. Rather, I think that's a better term. There's always going to be fear in anything that you do. The thing that I like to preach,'cause anything. Anyone who tells you they're not scared else is definitely lying in my opinion. It's what is the fear compared to the weight of the message. So for me, if the message is more important than the fear, the fear loses. Good analogy elections, which is odd since I'm no sports guy is a boxing match. Let's on one side of the ring. You got your fear and the other side of the room you got your message. Fear is always going to be in the corner, but as long as your message gets the knockout punch. Right, if you're always loses in the end, and I think that's the difference between the best communicators on the planet versus everyone else is the best communicators on the planet believe so much in their message that they're willing to crush their fear. I'm the best example of this. Yeah, sure, I sound like some great communicator now. However you want to find me, but. When I started coaching CEOs when I was 22, that wasn't fun. Yeah, it wasn't fun. The first couple of months'cause I'm speaking to people who literally have worked at their companies longer than I've been alive. It's literally groups. Are you overcome that? Well, you overcome it by understanding that yeah, this person, this woman, this man. They have a lot of experience, nothing to discount. They have a lot of experience in the field. They've done really good work, but in this one vertical. This message this one thing about communication I might know a bit more. I might know a bit more, so let me hone in on that message. Let me lean into that and make sure that that message beats the fear every single day. So your focus then on the value that you're about to provide. Over the fear that may stop you from overcoming giving that value. Absolutely, that's one piece, and then the other piece really quickly as I can't blame everyone. Think about it. I mean, I can't blame anyone. Most of us are supposed to be scared of communication. And the reason is simple. We weren't taught it correctly. Think about it. Every presentation you gave was in. Choir class power play. OK, alright is it is is class where you walk in the teacher goes. What's up you too you wanna talk about podcasting? Let's do a presentation on podcasting. I like a world map. Do you like history? No, that's not how it works. OK, you two boys. I need you to do a presentation on you. Do the Renaissance you do, uh, why don't you do Shakespeare? So just looking at it like OK, so that's 1/2. You're never giving 1 presentation to semester, you're giving like 10,000. So you got your history presentation, your science presentation, French presentation, right group English one, so you're like surviving. It's kind of like you're in this battle zone, you know, kind of jumping from 1 camp to the other, you just trying to survive. Is that the best way to learn? Then you have teachers. Teachers are amazing. Got a lot of respect for teachers. Teachers just don't have the time to coach you'cause they grew up in the same system you did. So there's 50 kids, so you don't really have time to go. Hey Jimmy, let me coach you for two hours. There's no time. So no wonder all scared of communication. Instead, our focus should be present. One thing you actually like. You don't need to do it for a living. You actually like you to this. The recommendation is some free advice. Make a presentation on your own podcast. What's it for? What's the mission? Why does it matter who should listen to it and go presented at your local universities, communities, churches go wherever you want and present that sucker over and over and over and over again. You'll get people. Listen to your show and you'll have fun. Practicing communication and better yet, you're two people. You'll give feedback to each other, no excuses. Get it done. I'm gonna go with challenge and accountability. Yeah, that's that's a good point, because when as you said that I thought came to mind that I believe most people, but when they're learning to do presentations, not just communicate effectively with presentations. Which is, I think, how most people view communication in this sort of setting. Well, they're more focused on memorizing the content. Then the rest which makes you nervous. That's why they write it down. That's why they read from the paper and so forth. Versus if you're actually presenting on something you enjoy and know, you can now focus on delivering value to the audience versus all the bullets of well, as you said Shakespeare, which I don't even know anything on. But I'd be nervous on that too. Yeah, go ahead, Lafayette. No, that was that was a great point you made. I kind of want to go back to something that you said that I said was interesting in the beginning you talked about, I believe you said your purpose of your goal was to help people connect ideas. What do you mean by that and unpack that? What does that mean? Connecting ideas from various people? Absolutely great question. Great question. Not not many people like to push him on the vision, so I appreciate it. So the way that I think about this. Is I firmly believe that the best ideas in the world currently are not being shared. Like in this moment of time as me and you and or like all three of us are having this conversation, the best ideas in the world exists, but aren't being shared. Why? Because the people who hold those ideas are too scared to share in a public way. Right through YouTube video through a podcast through just conversation with their friends because they don't have the skill set of communication which is wrong 'cause everyone has the skill set of communication. But it's the fear right there. The nerves. So my old grand mission is if I made the whole world exceptional communicators and nobody was afraid to share their stories in their ideas, well that means by definition that all of the best ideas would get shared. And if all of the best ideas get known, all of the best ideas would get implemented. And if all of the best ideas get implemented, the human race would advance a lot faster and we would get a lot faster to fighting a lot less and working a lot more together so we can actually get some important things done while we're alive. That that's amazing. It reminds me of a quote by Myles Munroe. He said that the wealthiest place on the planet is just down the road. It's the cemetery because the cemetery is the place where it is buried. The greatest treasure of untapped potential. So people live their life. You talked about the fear element and not being able to communicate that gifting those ideas that you said that's in their head that lives in their heart and so they die with that and the world is missing elements of greatness because we were held back by fear or by untapped potential. You talked about those connecting ideas. I think that's that's amazing. Now you talked about a little bit about you and your business partner. What is exactly? What do you do with in your business? Tell us more about what you do in your business. Yeah, absolutely so. So I essentially do coaching, so I coach two different types of people. One is ambitious executives and coaches who really want to be world class at communication. So that's where most of my revenue comes from. And then my my other piece of the business. That's more of a gift back is their kids. I also coached their kids on communication, generally speaking and ambition. An ambitious executives's kid is really sharp, so it's really fun to work with these amazing kids. Some of them are like 6 years old, so it's a lot of fun to see them in action. See, that's that's the that's what I do, mostly on the business side and on the mission side, which is also the business as well. Is then using those resources to make the YouTube videos even better and also giving me the opportunity to show up for these podcasts? Right? Since since my clients are, you know, funding my lifestyle gives me more time to just show up on shows like this and add and contribute then. And actually. Yeah, and we definitely appreciate that now you talked about that you Coach C level executives, CEOs. But then on the other spectrum, you Coach 6 year old kids in communication. That's correct. The quantum leap between a CEO and a 6 year old kid. We've talked about some principles of communications and practical things that you can do. But how do you? I don't wanna say dumb yourself down, but how do you make that that sharp adjustment

that you know at 12:

00 o'clock? I'm on the phone call coaching CEOs, but at three o'clock I'm talking to six year olds. How do you communicate on both ends of the spectrum effectively like that? That's such a good question. I'd love to have never been asked that before. Love. The curiosity is really good show anyways, so the way that I think about this game, so let's break one myth really quick and I don't think you meant this, but it's good. It's good to emphasize for the audience. Listening kids are way better than my sweet clients. I'll tell it to their face, their kids are way better than they are, and let me explain why. There's a great study you guys can look up called the marshmallow study. Essentially what it is is the marshmallow studies is this? Experiment where you have a bunch of marshmallows in a bunch of spaghetti sticks with not cooked, and the goal is to create the biggest tower so they get all these different people. These different felt like MBA students like master degree people, engineer people and you know it performed the best in that exercise. The kids kids. The kids squash look. It's not even like. Ametric look, it's literally so the question is what? The reason is because the kids weren't afraid to reinvent themselves over and over again.'cause they're young. So if they go, oh, this doesn't work well. Let's try something else. Oh well, this doesn't work. Read the NBA streams like no, this is the work. This is the structure these rules society. Unfortunately. Hits out the creativity out of us, but kind of wipes out all of our creativity. Makes us follow rules and structures and all these things. And I think in many ways there's a good thing that structure it helps us cooperate and collaborate with each other. But the the issue with that, which is my pet peeve, is it prevents us from being creative. It prevents us from doing something important or less 'cause. Let's face it, the people who do something really amazing with their lives are often not normal people, right? The the crazy folks like is, like you know, the people we admire. Think about your favorite actress. If you're an actor. These people are not normal people. Like they're they're crazy in their own ways. So I think that's that's something kids know in their essence. And then unfortunately, society kind of tricks them into not following that essence. And that is the reason why kids just do demonstrably better. And that's also why, by the way. It is mandatory for all of my C-Suite clients, not even an option for them. They have to attend my last session with the kids and they have to watch the whole thing where they watched the last like today was actually that ironically, were side coached the execs in the morning. I said. So I'd like advice bow tie out. It's like it's like a fun. We keep it fun. And then after I was like, OK, now you're going to stay on this call for another hour and you're going to take notes on the kids. And you're going to tell me what you learn from them and their mind is just blown away. They're just like wait, my son is like presenting 10 times better than me. And I'm triple his age. In some cases, there's one in particular. One of my clients is in their 40s and their son is 6 years old. So, so she so she's probably 7 times older, six times older than he is. She's like, man, I gotta step up my game by sons like ripping me apart. So yeah, that's so the lesson here left. I had great question. By the way, is. We need to 1st understand here that it's not really a difference in communication. I think it's more of a mindset approach where we tend to put adults on pedestals, refik. Most adults don't really know what they're talking about, which is interesting. Or as the kids are often our greatest teachers, we need to hone in on that and then the other piece which is more tactical is of course I'm a lot more fun with the kids. I'm a lot more easier on them. I let them like one of them played piano in one of my classes. Like I there's a lot less rules and we have to manage them in that way. That's cool, so my quick story. I, my son, is a kid that's in class. That's super smart, but the teacher likes him but can't stand him at the same time because he can't sit still. He talks too much. He's very inquisitive. He makes the lesson go longer than it should do. Those types of things, and so he's he's transitioned to virtual classrooms, which has been better for him but revert, rewind a little bit a summer ago. We went to this church across the street from my house and we were inside. There just happened that on this. At this event they had somebody advertising for something called Lego League. And what it was is kids that are about. We're about two years older than him. Had this big huge box and they had to do competitions. Wayward, as in this particular one, they had designed a truck that would move on its own or device and it would move pieces into certain sections. So what they did is they had a car and had a bumper and it would pick things up and put it in their places, but it had to finish by going up a ramp and parking problem was the bumper was too long. So if you picture that as it went got to the ramp thing, do this in the camera. You got to the ramp. The bumper would stop it before the wheels could get to the ramp for the car to ascend to the top. If that makes sense. Essentially the bumper was too long, but if they shortened it then it would not be able to pick up all the pieces. So the teacher is talking about how they're trying to work through this. They don't. They're not sure what to do. They've been working on it for a couple weeks and haven't found a result and my son Andrew looked at it. He looked at them, he goes. Why don't you just have it go up the hill backwards? Like reverse? Hey guys. I think that might work, problem solved, it just goes to the fact that I think the teacher as good as his intentions were was basically without knowing it trying to lead the kids in the direction how to think to solve the problem. But they couldn't solve it and my son, who has no bias towards anything at this project said. Why don't you just reverse up the hill and there you go? Problem was done and you know he had he had no. There was no box of thinking that he had to fit the problem into. So it's just fun story as I share about my kids. Lafayette drive time for question. Oh yeah, absolutely. So we're talking about communicating online. A little bit was sort of the early on early on. Presence I guess, or how we kind of preface the conversation. Is there anything different and we talked about a lot of great? Key things about just communicating affectively in general, which I love. All of it. I've got a whole page of notes here. But speaking online versus an in person environment, is there anything different that the audience or any of us need to know? Like what is the difference there? Are there any nuances that have we have to adjust for? Because I don't think we're going to be talking on line a lot less as we move forward, I think it'll be pretty much the same group as we are now or or more more. Yeah, absolutely. I think for me. Well, a couple of things. First thing I would say, I definitely think we're going to speak online a lot less than what we did last year, that's for sure. Since Covid's coming to an end, which is a good thing. And the reason that's a good thing. And I'll be honest, online presentations are way harder than in person ones. And the reason is very simple. It's hard to bring up this energy obviously. Now I do it 'cause you know, I do this for a living, but for most people would just be like, well, these two are not here and I'm just alone here. Just yelling at people and it's on a screen. So it's a lot harder to bring out that energy. I would say that's a big difference, but in terms of the principle, the principle is the same, which is that technique I gave you to earlier about do the same presentation over and over again. Make it on the podcast that applies with the online world except now. Because you've done it in person, you've met the people you see the impact that presentation does when you go back online, you're presenting it virtually. You have that in your mind. And you say? I see, I know this has a lot of impact and with those people in your frame of mind, then you present with that energy. So I would say that's a that's a big one is I usually recommend people, specially now that COVID sending and in the cases are starting to default like take a basically it's over now. Now we're in that position. So I definitely recommend people to present something offline first before they presented online because it will be much easier for them to pull energy. That's probably the biggest difference I see. The second one is around eye contact, where you'll notice probably 80% of the time. Even I wasn't perfect, you know, and in person you obviously look at people's eyes directly, but you know you should never do that online.'cause if I looked at you directly, it just looks really awkward for people who are watching me right now online, but I have to keep looking at you directly, even if that's not actually the case. But what is interesting about online is even if there's 100 people in a room online, I can look in once. Area, and it looks it feels like I'm looking at all of you at the same time, which would never happen in person. In person. I still do 123, so that's interesting as well. That's an advantage I see with online, but for the most part it's definitely harder in this format. What about engaging your audience on line? Is there anything that you could recommend as far as that? Like engaging the audience, getting them to engage back versus early on when COVID first hit, and we would be in online rooms and so forth. Your typic pretty much just listening to somebody talk. It's incredibly boring, but as you move forward, I've noticed some people are trying to ask questions but put something in the chat. Things like that. Any recommendations on how to engage the audience on line? It's tough. I have challenges with that too. I think it really depends on the audience size and it starts with the perfect presentation. Like if you if you do like a really amazing presentation at the end of the day people will be engaged throughout. That means you're really good, but it's like tactically depends if there's less than 15 people on a call. One strategy that is the best one in my book, so I'm not super creative. It's maybe something need to work on is. I call peoples names at all the time. John Lafayette, Billy Justin all these like did you get it? Did you get it just like I'm always picking on people when it when? It's a small group? If it's more than 50 people? You can't do that obviously. So what I would do in that case I was, I would ask a lot of questions and have them post in the chat, but I do differently than most speakers as I read the chat. So I would say something like this. What do you think about this topic? What are some of the words I see Laura saying fear? I see John saying Charisma bobble. You know I'm just saying random things, but the point is is like I make the chat box come alive. That's another trick. So it makes people feel seen and heard and then another piece of that as well is Q&A. I make the Q&A. Longer towards the end, so that way it's more interactive and I can get more questions in and interact with people as many as I can in the limited time I have. Sure sure is. Is there anything else that you want to leave our unscripted audience on? Something that was on your heart that you think that will be effective or beneficial to them? Yeah, absolutely, since this topics about leadership, I'm happy to chime in on that. So I think what I would say is all in with the book recommendation. Some life advice, a book recommendation. I was like to give a shout out for it'cause it is. It is my. It is the reason I became the person I am today. It's thirst by Scott Harrison. I think Scott is prolific. In storytelling is the Sea of charity water, so non profit. He started telling people gain access to clean water. Think the guys have savant when it comes to marketing. I think there's a lot we can learn from him in the way that he leads a lot of amazing people recommended his book. I personally have two copies of it at home. Definitely check it out in terms of light thirst. Yeah you got it. Yeah by Scott Harrison. You got it, that's it. You got it so, so that's that would be the book recommend in terms of life advice. What I would say, especially for those of you who have made it to the end. What is it? 42 minutes. You probably someone really cares about your personal development. Probably someone who who really cares about making a difference. So here's my real piece of advice that has nothing to do with communication. The advice is be insane or be the same. Do you want to be like everyone else? That's totally fine, but if you want to make a difference in the world you want to do something important with your life, the only path forward is the path of insanity. Every person who's done something important, their life is very bizarre by nature. Don't you find it odd? That is certainly YouTube channel, not on pranks, not on blogs, not even on music. That's what normal people do. I didn't. I started YouTube channel on communication and public speaking tips and I have an executive coaching practice. But I also live in my mom's basement. I'm literally talking to you on a mattress I sleep on. I don't own a car and I love Justin Bieber, especially his old stuff. How does any of this make any sense at all? And that my friends. It's the point when everything in your life makes sense to the only person it should, which is you. You're probably doing the right thing. Incredible. We want our unscripted family, our audience, to continue to connect with Brendan from Master Talk. You can do that on his various social media platforms. Follow his YouTube channel. As he's mentioned several times there, you can get more gems there, or his YouTube channel is master talk that is master talk in his Instagram handle is at master. Your talk that is at master your talk. This has been an incredible conversation and again, thank you Brendan for coming on. Speaking to our audience, there's been so much wisdom that you have dropped throughout this episode that I'm sure that our audience will definitely enjoy. It will benefit them even beyond their communication, but I, as a leader as as a leader into in their entire T, and so we again we say thank you to our audience on YouTube, channel. Their unscripted, authentic leadership. You can find this episode dropping next week on Monday. You can see us there. You can connect with us on our social media platforms. On Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn you can also stream this episode on our various anywhere you get your podcast platforms and again connect with us there on our website unscripted-leadership.com. Check out our merge sign up for email club and get that merch promo code there lead 10 when you sign up. As always, we pray that you be the leader that God has called you to be. We're here to build bridges and not walls. Bridges connect and walls divide Until next time.