Right now, audiences everywhere are exposed to so much public speaking every single day. You know, you’re driving to work, you’re driving to your office, you’re listening to a podcast. It’s public speaking. You come turn on your computer, you go to Facebook, “Oh, what did he do?” Public speaking. Then, you may go attend a live event, somebody’s on stage, somebody could be on live TV, somebody could be doing a live stream. We are surrounded by public speaking and as audience, we’re becoming really, really savvy about recognizing when somebody is fake, when somebody is not quite focused on us as their audience, and they’re full of themselves.

When they’re not authentic, when they’re trying to portray themselves as somebody else or they don’t actually have the knowledge that they’re trying to speak, the audiences are very savvy, and they can get their BS monitors up quite quickly and they can tell that you don’t know what your talking about.  The other point, too, is that we’re personally our own harshest critics. So quite often, people will say, “Oh, you’ve done such a great job. I really like what you’re doing.” And you go, “Oh, but I did this, I made that mistake. I didn’t say that word.”

Being genuine, being authentic, it’s very, very important. That’s number one, you start thinking about your audience, you focus on your audience, then you let go of any notions that you have of how a perfect public speaker is supposed to show up, because there is no perfect. If you try to show up as somebody else, they hear it. There is only for so long you can stay in character for. We’re not that great of actors. We can be in character for weeks and weeks and months and whatever. It’s much easier to come in as yourself and stay as yourself, because then you’re not focused again the whole time.

 If you’re thinking “I’m not a fraud,” but you’re thinking, “Okay, I’m going to sound exactly as that big influencer that everybody knows, and everybody loves. I’m going to use her words. I’m going to use her intonation. I’m just going to be like her, and then they’ll love me.” No, when you are focusing on that, again, you’re not versatile, you’re not serving your audience, because they need you. You are enough. We say it so often, “You’re enough, you’re enough,” and people kind of stop hearing it, but you really need to hear it. You’re enough means that what you know is enough, the way you have your experiences stacked up is enough. The way your life story has gone so far is enough, because the way you can explain, present and impact your audience, only you can do that.