09: Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking and Find Your Voice with Cliff Townsend

Chad:               It’s free. It’s online, it’s online, it’s live. You’re going to have a conversation with me and we can learn together about these things. Go to arrowlight.TV/workshops/freeclass to register for that class. In today’s episode, I get to have a great conversation with Cliff Townsend. Cliff Townsend is a public speaking expert. He’s a communication expert and he’s going to give you some really, really great tips for how to communicate better, how to connect your way to your goals, and he’s going to. He’s going to give you some some strategies for overcoming the fear of public speaking as well, because here’s the thing, you don’t have to be a public speaker who’s speaking at events and everything else to need to gain that skill. Public speaking is relevant for any career because you’re always going to find yourself in a situation where you might be giving a presentation to your boss or to your coworkers or to a team if you want to excel in your career, especially if you want to climb up in leadership.

Chad:               You have to have public speaking skills, so definitely you’re going to enjoy what cliff has to share with us today regarding how to overcome our fears of getting our voice out there, of sharing our voice, of using our voice to find success. Because it is your voice that’s going to connect you to your goals. It’s your voice. It’s going to help you gain traction in your career, so cliff, he, he’s one of the founding partners of the Les Brown Institute before he joined the Les Brown Institute who was helping entrepreneurially minded individuals transition from their nine to five career to becoming their own boss and he was focusing a lot on developing that mindset of being your own boss and it’s less about what you do, but more about doing things in a certain way. He’s also a two time self published author and an award winning independent filmmaker and actor and director and that’s another reason why I love this guy because he is a.

Chad:               He is out there teaching people about communication, but he’s also a filmmaker. That’s me. That’s me. I’m a filmmaker. I love making movies. I love making videos in order to share my message and but I’m also a teacher and I love teaching communication in our conversation. He’s also going to discuss our self talk, that inner dialogue that affects our communication and affects our results. He’s going to give some techniques for overcoming fear and and, and he’s going to share his advice on, on how to better connect with people on how to build trust. He’s even going to drop a couple of key body language tips of what to pay attention to his reign conversation with people so that we can really, really listen and pick up on those key indicators that let us know whether somebody is trusting us or not. So cliff Townson, I welcome you to the show. Connect up.

Cliff:                 Thanks. I’ve been looking forward to talking to you.

Chad:               Yeah, me too. You, you teach communication skills, you teach public speaking and you wrote mindset into all of that. So I’m really excited to have you on the show to talk about how our communication and public speaking skills and those types of things affect our career success no matter what career we have, that it’s all about communication. It’s all about connection with people and how that ropes into our mindset and our ability to achieve our goals. And so tell us a little bit more about kind of what you do in your career. How did you get into that? What’s. What’s your story?

Cliff:                 Well, Chad, one of the things that I realized that this isn’t. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re in, we are in the people to people business. It doesn’t matter if you sell insurance, shoes, cars, you cannot do it unless you’re working with people and communicate with people, communicate to words. So this is why it doesn’t matter what your business is important. I got into this mainly. I’ve always been entrepreneurial. So many years ago when I started doing was what I want you to stay to myself. Always when I was working in a regular job, always wanting to figure out can I start my own business? And I found myself starting my own businesses, but then I’ll find myself going back to work, quitting the job, started my own business, going back to work and it became a cycle, right? And so I had to figure. I figured something else, you know? So once I figured out the business, I started helping others to do the same. So my, my business was an entrepreneurs. They want it to go from a nine to five to become their own boss and that’s really how I got started.

Chad:               Very cool. Thanks for sharing that. What else in this journey that you’ve been on so far, what have you discovered as the reason why communication skills are so vital to our success?

Cliff:                 Well, here’s the thing. When we communication is this, communication is not what we say. It is what our audience walks away with. So if I say something to you, Chad, and you take it the wrong way. Now, in business, in a corporation, in an office setting, this is so critical because from from employee to employee, from management to the employee, the wrong messages get delivered because because a lot of people don’t, don’t know how to communicate properly. Now based on the kind of people you’re talking to. There’s different ways of communication and you understand that when you communicate and the body language speaks more so than anything else and a lot of people don’t take those things into consideration and so therefore a lot of a lot of messages get misconstrued and taken the wrong way and that caused a lot of time. A lot of productivity.

Chad:               I love that. I love what you said about how it’s not about what we say. It’s about what the person takes away, so in other words, it’s not necessarily we think about communication. Sometimes we’re we’re getting so concerned with how we need to talk and what we need to say, but communication is when the message lands with somebody else, when the other person picks up the message and receives it and understands it, that’s when communication really happens. That I’m glad you. I’m glad you brought that up because I. I’ve. When I first kind of was trying to overcome my own communication weaknesses, I was focused so much on trying to develop my talking abilities because I didn’t know how to talk very well and I was so focused on how do I say this better, how do I talk better, and once I started taking my focus away from that and more towards listening, I was able to realize that my message was getting across to the other person when I was listening better, more than necessarily from my own talking. Do you have anything to say about that with with listening?

Cliff:                 Actually I’m glad you brought that up because when most people think about communication, right? I’ve been in sales for many years and there was no place where we use communication skills more so than in sales. When most people think about communication, most people think about talk and most people believe communication. Talking and doing the one that does the most talking. It greatest skill you can have or we can have in communication is your ability to listen to them. Most people are thinking about what to say while the other person is talking and therefore we’re not really listening because we in our minds and our thinking about, okay, am I going to respond to this and this happened, this by the way, there’s a difference between women and men and what we communicate and the way we think about a men mostly thinking about what is it that I’m that I’m going to say next?

Cliff:                 Women tend to have better listening abilities and skills were men are focusing on, okay, what’s this person saying? What am I going to say next? I’m not going to respond that. Then all of those things, so the ability to listen. That is truly a skill in itself. The ability to be able to listen and be present and be the present online. Then you know, be involved and be right there on focusing on what that person’s saying. That in itself is a skill that can be learned and that is one of the greatest skill that we have in communication. That’s really great. So what, what are a couple of tips that you have for how we can listen better? What helps you listen better? Well, the first thing, the first thing that I want to do is after I have an interest, if uh, if I’m not, if I truly have, don’t have an interest.

Cliff:                 That’s, that’s another thing about communication. A lot of times we have, we have passive are some passive ways of not dealing with people. If somebody is having a conversation with me. So for example, I’m in a network network marketing networking event and there is someone that I don’t want to talk to for whatever reason. I have no problem when they come up to me and maybe they want to sell me on, on a network marketing company that I have no interest in and I know that that’s what it is. And I have no problem telling him, listen, I appreciate it. Maybe it’s for you, but it’s not for me. I have no interest in. I have no interest in that because if you talk to me, I’m really, I’m going to tell you, if you talk to me, what I’m basically telling you, I’m not going to listen to you because I have no interest.

Cliff:                 So the first thing is this, be clear, be clear. When somebody is having a conversation with you and you have no interest in that conversation because it is clear that you’re not listening, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re turned away, you’re looking down, you’re doing all different things. So the biggest step two, it should be able to engage is to have an interest in the conversation and in the person and be present and even if it’s in a situation where you need to listen to, maybe it’s a boss, maybe it’s maybe it’s a spouse, then then you, you understand that it’s to your benefit to be there, so be present and not only that, you, you, you give to others what you want for yourself. So when you’re sharing your message, you want the others to be involved in being engaged and not be distracted. So you do this. Do for others what you want done to yourself. So the first thing is being be being trusted in that conversation. If you have a control and you’re not interested in conversation with, they’re saying, then don’t be a part of it. Walk away and let people know I’m not interested. Secondly, if it’s something you have no control over, maybe it’s this bizarre response. Then be engaged and show some interest in respect because you expect the same return. Wow. That, uh, I never before or how,

Chad:               uh, when you’re in a conversation with somebody, if you realize up front that you’re not interested, that it’s okay to kind of end the conversation and say, Hey, I’m not interested because it almost does a disservice to continue the conversation and pretend like you’re listening and then the other person thinks you’re listening and then you end up going away with a lot worse rapport and just bad energy because you’ve let that conversation go on longer than it needed to. And so that’s helpful for me because sometimes I’m always thinking like, oh, how can I make sure that I’m interested in this in this person? But sometimes there just isn’t an interest there. There’s not

Cliff:                 sometimes ended up so much happens at and I’ve been, I’ve been there where, you know, people are trying to sell me on their network marketing company. I’m using that as an example and I have absolutely no interest and the next. And it was the other thing too, that 10 minutes that I’m going to spend just listen to that person and that thing that I have no interest in. I would run to find something that I’m interested in and go spend my time, I’ll move on to spend my time. Time is this, time is the greatest asset that we have and I, and I and I and I respect and value my time and I respect and value the other person’s time. So I’m letting them know, listen, go and find someone who as well, maybe have more interest and you’ll get better results from them, but that person’s not me. So that’ll get my respect and my time and value my time and value. There’s also, they may not say it that way, but I’m actually doing them a favor.

Chad:               Wow, that’s fast. That’s significant. That’s a lot. I love seeing the link between time and communication and you just made a really crucial connection there that when we, when we end the conversation, because we’re not listening because we’re not interested, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re showing that person respect because we’re respecting their time and time is our most valuable asset and I’m really glad you made that connection, so thanks for. Thanks for like sharing those two things together because that’s really important to understand. I think. I think from what you just said, if I were to just kind of sum it up into a little golden nugget is that if you want to communicate effectively with somebody, just be interested in them and if we’re not interested then and the conversation respect their time and move on. That’s really helpful for me because I think I’ve stayed in too many conversations because I was like, oh, I need to be interested in them, but I really wasn’t. I’m like, I cannot find a connection point here. So, um, yeah, that’s, that’s really helpful.

Cliff:                 Very nice people. And most of them are other people’s sprinkles. We think he was feeling by just being honest and saying, listen, I really have no interest in that. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s simple like this, like the birth, and they just put it in a different perspective. They just say, women really have no issue with this because they’ve had a lot of practice, especially when it comes to dating and men and go out and so many men approaching them, they have no idea. I have problem saying, listen, I’ve learned tricks. I’m not interested in cutting it up. They’re not going to give you the time that are going to spend 10, 15 minutes wasting your time with if they have no interest. It’s the same thing. So we, because we want to be nice, we spend time and waste our time and listen, I’m not interested, you know, don’t waste your time, don’t waste mine. Let’s just move it on. Go find some of those students who was more interested in what you have to say, what you have to offer. That’s not me.

Chad:               Right, right. And, and, and with, the ironic thing is, is that if you, by trying to be nice by staying in the conversation, you’ll end up hurting them more because so say you say you stay in the conversation for 10, 15 minutes and now you finally muster up the courage to tell them they’re not interested and they’re like, oh great, I just wasted the last 15 minutes of my time traveling to you. So, so you’re trying to be nice by staying in the conversation, but really your being, you’ll be much more nicer and respectful to just end earlier on. So that

Cliff:                 yeah, the person will probably say, well, why didn’t you tell me that from the beginning?

Chad:               Right? Uh, you know, communication is the key. To be able to build trust in our relationships are what caused us to have the connections we need. What are some key things that you do that you think really helps you to be able to build trust with people

Cliff:                 There is a saying. I don’t remember exactly, but it’s not what you do in public. It’s what you do when no one’s watching. So it’s, it’s how I live my life. I, I live life with integrity and I’m very open and as a speaker and as a speaker trainer, one of the things that I’m very vulnerable, they’re vulnerable, you know, that I’m easily hurt. What I mean is I’m, I’m open, I’m, I share and I share things on stage and in front of an audience that people say when I get offstage, wow, I can’t believe you shared that. You know, so that’s one of the things that I do to make a connection because we have to make an emotional connection with our audience. And the way we do that the speakers is, is sometimes we are a voice. I look at myself as a speaker, a voice for the voiceless because there’s so many people gone through the situation that I’ve gone through and I can share with them strategies and techniques and auto comments that there’s somebody in the audience that is maybe that maybe that did not speak it out loud.

Cliff:                 Maybe that they haven’t said one word, but in her mind this, then, you know what? Yeah, I understand. I you know that that’s me. Yes, you’re, you’re, you’re speaking to me. So therefore being open and being honest is the biggest way that I know to get trust in people because people see they can pay you if you’re not being honest. If you’re not genuine, it can be seen. It can be felt and you know, people know when your words are not are not true. And they see, once again, we go back to body language because we can’t help but to communicate. We just gonna help it with, you know, we may be saying something, but our body is saying something else. You might be saying to me, listen, chatter, you know, I’m, I, I enjoy talking to you. But um, if I’m sitting at a table and I enjoyed talking to you, but you see my feet are turning that way, which, which is which is, which is a signal that I’m ready to leave and go to the insurance, you know, so we can’t help but communicate.

Cliff:                 So to me it’s being honest and being open and goes back to like what I just said, if I’m not interested in talking to you, I will tell you that and being open and that’s the kind of thing to to people. Not everybody’s going to like it, but I’m not there to please everybody. Whenever I go, I’m there to be honest and be me and be true to myself and I’m open to other people’s. I’m open to feedback by the way. And that’s what I always tell people. Listen, I don’t know it all. I’m open to youtube in disagreement if you disagree with me. That’s great. I’m hoping the feedback, because to me feedback is the breakfast of champion. I grow from that. I don’t take it personal. I grew up from that. But okay. If you’re telling me you don’t like me, okay, just don’t just tell me you don’t like me, tell me why you don’t like me and see if there’s something. Give me something that I can work with. So maybe something that I can change. Maybe something that I can prove. Maybe I don’t like you to because okay, now you’re giving me something, but understanding if I don’t like you and walk away because if nothing, you know, so that’s what it is for me.

Chad:               The truth comes out. The truth comes out regardless. And as in like, what were you’re saying? It’s like, yeah, we might be saying one thing, but our, our body language says another are our voice, our tone of voice says another and, and we can’t help but communicate. And uh, and that’s been a really important thing to remember that the truth gets out regardless. So even though they don’t nothing about us, they’re not reading our mind, but they’re picking up on the body language of picking up on the tone of voice. And so we might as well be honest so that we really can gain that trust. Uh, you brought up public speaking and how we’re communicating with an audience that, uh, you know, to build that trust, we need to be able to be confident in our voice and our body language and just be open and honest with them and that it’s all about the message they receive.

Chad:               A, tell us a little bit more about kind of, uh, your, your opinions on the importance of public speaking and maybe some tips for it because it’s, it’s public speaking is the most common fear of most people, right, and yet public speaking is one of those skills that is crucial to excel in any career. We have to. You don’t have to be a speaker on stage to what need to have that skill. You’re giving a presentation to people at your office. You’ve got to have public speaking skills so it’s relevant to have those skills in any career if you want to excel, especially grow as a leader. So share with us some tips on how we can overcome that fear with public speaking and what makes a great public speaker.

Cliff:                 I was on a zoom call this morning with a coaching client mine from England and she wanted to share us. She obviously wants to see her story and I asked her if he had been out speaking and she said she has not done that yet. She was waiting on to something to take place. Was waiting on her book to be finished. You’re right in her book and I says, well, why are you waiting? Why are you waiting to finish your book? You’re the one that’s right. You’re right, and your story in the book so you don’t need the book for this to be able to go out and share your it right now you’re putting your message in this story. Anyway. The reason I bring that up is because this is what I said to her. I said, a lot of people find reasons not to go out and speak and share that message because there’s a fear and the desire to share your message is not as strong as the fear because right now the fear is old and new stage from delivering your message so that fear is stronger than the desire to share the message.

Cliff:                 And I said to her, when you’re a desire to share, your message becomes stronger than the fear. Then you will go up and you’ll start finding you go out and start speaking to Michael. You’re going to have to do it in spite of the fear. When you say to yourself, I’m going to do it in spite of the fear because I have this message and I wanted to share it, then it’s going to impact and change people’s lives and I don’t care if I’m in fear, I’m going to do it. In spite of the fear, you will go out and do cause. Now your desire to share this message is higher right now. I said for the position she’s in right now, or a fear is stronger and then the message and that’s controlling that stuff in there from making should make an excuse. I got to do this, I got to finish that.

Cliff:                 I got to do this, but this thing to be right. Then wait for the ice to cross it. All of these things, mainly one excuses is to fear that strongly than the message. What’s what? What can we do to increase that desire? If it’s not strong enough, like what do you find helps people to increase the desire so it is above the fear. Okay, so there’s a your your reason, right? Your reason for doing anything. When, when you start something, if you write an Ebook, whatever it is you need to find out. So I’ll start with the end in mind. Modus. What is your, what is your outcome? What is your ultimate outcome for this? You know, so you have um, so you, your purpose and your action, but you know, what is, what is the reason for doing it, what is the reason? And then you know, what, what, what is your purpose and what’s your action you’re going to take.

Cliff:                 So I’ll find out the real reason for what you’re doing to find out if it’s really true. Passion for years is there’s this, there’s this, there’s a strategy that I call which is the seven layer, right? And if you think of as a stack of cake or whatever it is, just seven layers and most people don’t go through the stage. So to seven layer isn’t this and you can do it in any area of your life. Let’s just say you want to, I’ll just do a quick example. Let’s say you say to me, okay, you want to be speak. You want to deliver our message because you have this passion, and I say, Gee, Okay Chad, why do you want to become a public speaker? And he say to me, well, cliff, I want to become a public speaker because I’m passionate about helping young men out of foster homes.

Cliff:                 I’m just making stuff up. Okay? I’m helping young men, you know, make, you know, get an out of foster homes. Right? And I say to you, okay, so the first one was asking why? Why do you want to be a public figure? Now the second one is try to, why are you passionate about helping men out of helping young men get out of foster? And that’s it. That’s the second layer. And you say, well, because you know, I grew up in a foster home. You didn’t know this about me, but I grew up in a foster home and you know, I, I traveled from home to home to home and I saw it wasn’t a good thing and I saw many pieces, so many people in and you know, I feel it’s great for young men to have a steady and stable family. Okay. I understand that you grew up in a foster home and so why do you feel it’s important for young men to have a steady and stable family?

Cliff:                 That’s three. That’s the third layer. Will I feel it’s important because you know you don’t have that bond. You don’t have to. Sisters, you don’t have nobody to grow up with. It’s like you’re always on your own and you know, so what are the reasons? So then I go to for whatever it is, so you know, by the time. So I’ll ask whatever you, whatever you answer is, I’ll ask you why, why is that important to you? Why, why, why is that important and so, and why is that important to you? Most people just deal with things on a surface. By the time you get to four, it takes your minimum for Bison to get the four, five, six, and seven. You started getting the real reason why somebody wants to do something. So, back to your question, let me give you a quick. Let me give me, just give you a quick thing.

Cliff:                 I haven’t had a friend that and we’re really good friends and he died and of course unexpectedly, you know, he is. I live in Fort Lauderdale, so we’re on the beach. And he went out and won those kayaks and bought a brand new car and he was so excited and the love story short, he died. Um, it is brand new car. He turned over and he, I guess he couldn’t come back over, couldn’t flip themselves back over. And this is his name is George. And he used to tell me about all his dreams and desires and passions, all the things. And I knew about all the dreams that he had whenever. And we all have this thing in our life so we can all use what I’m about to share with you whenever I find myself in that situation, whenever there’s something I want to go to do.

Cliff:                 And I, and I realized that fear stuff for me. I say to myself, I asked myself the question, what will George do if George knew I did the day that he died, if he knew a week before, if we knew the day we die and what would he have done? What do you care what people are thinking? Because that is, that is one of the biggest fears that we have other people’s, you know, what other people are going to think about us. That’s why we don’t. That’s where most of us don’t do things. Criticism. We fear criticism from our friends, our neighbors, people we don’t even know. So ask myself what would do with George allowed us to stop it. Yeah. Yeah. What, what, what, what you said that really resonated

Chad:               with me is how, uh, when you get to the real root of your why, when you go those least four levels deep, then that’s when that desire now grows beyond that fear. And I can totally vouch to that because at first, you know, I had all these desires, but my fear was stronger. So it held me back from sharing my voice, sharing my message, doing videos online. Just getting out there in front of people, but then when I dug deep to like, why am I doing this, why am I really doing it? When I got through those different layers, mondesire then boom, went on top of my fear. It grew bigger than my fear and before you know what I was finally able to kind of unlock my voice in that way. And so it really does work what you just said. And so thanks. Thanks for sharing that with us and I think that’s really going to help people that want to do public speaking, but also just want to gain the skill since it is relevant to any career to be able to know how to do public speaking. Um, and so do you have any like, uh, like a, a final tip for public speaking and how to just be a great public speaker?

Cliff:                 My mentor and friend, Mr Les Brown says, one thing says is this, and if you’re really listening to it, didn’t take it. It changed when I, when I heard it, that change the way adolescent conversations, not just speakers, but conversations in general. Never make a point without a story and never tell a story without a point, so I’ll say it again. Never make a point, never to make a point without a story and never tell a story without a point. So many people are speaking and the way I interpret that is you have to be able to transition. You’re telling a story. If I’m telling a story about the computer and a laptop and then I start talking about basketball, there’s no connection there. What’s the point? You know, I’m at work. Where’s the story? Now I can talk about the computer and basketball, but have to be able to transition and make connect and make.

Cliff:                 Make. There’s, there’s, there’s, there’s a point there. The other thing is this is prepared. If you know you’re going to speak prepared, you know there’s nothing beats preparation. One of the biggest reason why people fear speaking is because they’re not prepared and they don’t know what to say to feel they will not. They don’t, they’re not. Now, it’s been a what if you study and you practice stuff and you know your stuff. You’re confident in that at least, so you want to be competent in at least one thing. And that is this. I don’t know if I’m a great speaker and layers. What I do know, I noticed material. I noticed nobody can’t tell me that. I don’t know this now. I may not be eloquent. I may not make, make people laugh. I mean, I do this, I mean, but I know the stuff that I’m going to talk to you about. Um, one, one, one great tip as far as, as far as public speaking, is this, don’t memorize your speech. Do not memorize your speech. You memorize your speech and something happens and you forget. Don’t memorize your speech word for word number, phrase that you memorize the speech word for word. And if you forget one word choice all. If somebody asks a question, if somebody does something that just gets your attention, then it’s all gone. So do not memorize your speech word for word. It is not a good technique. Very bad technique.

Chad:               Very helpful. Thanks so much. Yeah, cause it, uh, uh, something I talk about communication too, even just with an, a conversation with somebody is that if there are certain communication skills you’re trying to develop, it’s okay to practice and prepare and role play. I mean this is how you get good at communicating by practicing, by preparing. And I like how you said that with public speaking, you know, don’t memorize the speech. I’ve tried that before or I would try to memorize a speech and it totally tripped me up when I was like, forget a certain phrase or a word. I wasn’t connecting to the audience. Like you said, it’s giving a speech that doesn’t do anything if you’re not connecting to the audience. It’s that connection that creates a good speech, you know, but it’s like you are, you’re having a conversation with them and it’s okay that you prepare beforehand, you know, your material and it’s okay that you adjust along the way as you’re in tune with the audience and now you’re picking up messages from them and you’re kind of, you’re, you’re, you’re conforming your, you’re prepared material to what they need to hear and how they need to hear it.

Chad:               So the message really lands and so that’s. No, that’s, that’s really helpful. Thanks for giving us a few tips on public speaking. Something that we love to talk about in this show is how to connect our way to our goals and what our relationships have to do with our ability to find career success. So in your experience, um, how has your relationships influenced your career progress in your career success?

Cliff:                 Well listen, I just mentioned to you that I had an opportunity to work with, you know, the greatest motivational speaker, a Mr Les Brown, so that, that, that relationship has definitely influenced me because I’ve been around him and work with them on a, on a day to day basis, just having a conversation with it. It, this is the man who has 40 years of mastery, so just having a regular conversation with them, you can help but learn, you know, just just, just, just regular conversation is, is, is like being in the classroom. And he said, you know, he talks about it all the time and he says, you know what fear fear held me back for 14 years. Even at 73 years old when he goes back to is this. He says, if, if I had not allowed fear to stop me for those 14 years, how many more millions of people could have helped put in those 14 years?

Cliff:                 That’s big in France. One Judge Brennan’s Shaw, I’m the Great Irish playwright, one of his, one of his phrases, what I love his phrase is it says, most people blame their circumstances. He says, I don’t believe in circumstances that people get on in this are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, they make them, and for years now I’ve used that because as speakers and building a business or whatever it is, that’s what we’re trying to build a business entrepreneurs. A lot of times it is, it is. We’re looking for people to help us and we’re looking for people to come and put this into place and a lot of times it’s just not coming. So if you look, if you are the creative, if you want to have a circumstances, create it yourself, which is exactly what you’re doing.

Cliff:                 Chat. I mean you, you overcame the fear and there’s a reason why you’re doing the show. You’re creating something. You’re not waiting for people to give you a platform to go and speak, you know, waiting for people to talk and give you a platform. Say, listen, come over here and talking about communication. No, you creating your own. You know, you’re not waiting for the circumstances, right? You’re creating your own circumstances. I’m Jim Rohn says that failure, the recipe for failure, this is a few errors in judgment repeated every day and the recipe for success is a few simple disciplines practice everyday and you know, if we make an error and we continue to do the error everyday, that’s, that’s failure. We going down that road, you know, if we, if there’s a few simple disciplines that were practiced every day, you know, waking up, maybe walk, maybe walk a block, maybe the next day he walked two blocks and was a simple disciplines that are practice everyday. Eventually you’ll be able to run a marathon or you know, go, you know. So those are the simple disciplines. Practice everyday. And I am simple disciplines that I practice every day.

Chad:               Simple. Those small, simple things that we do every single day consistently over time is often overlooked. We want to, we’re always trying to search for what’s this dramatic thing that I can do that’s going to instantly get this dramatic result. And really it’s so true that when we just stick to those simple things each morning, each day, oh, it might not seem like it’s doing a lot, but over time it is absolutely building something that is significant and is going to bring that result that you’re looking for when you, when you really stick to that.

Cliff:                 Yeah. He wrote a book called the compound effect. And so yeah, that’s what I believe in. It’s not just about money and interest rate is a combined effect and anything at all layers that life is the compound effect I believe in that

Chad:               definitely coming, uh, uh, kinda going over to like the idea of connection have, do you feel that your, your ability, your ability to connect with certain people has influenced, you know, getting speaking gigs and finding coaching clients, how have you been able to create those opportunities through connecting with people?

Cliff:                 It’s natural to me that, that I, I make a natural. I’m able to make a natural connection at walk in a room and I know I know certain things out to get people to like me out to get people to, you know, so because I do certain things, I carry myself a certain way and on social media, you know, what is what it is. The reason why I get that is because I truly believe that in every interaction with someone, what are you meeting someone on the streets or in a networking event or whether it’s just one person or onto people, it doesn’t matter. Every interaction you have with someone, you should leave that person better off than how you left them. That, that’s my personal belief. So I’m always, I’m always trying to give something. I’m not asking, I’m giving something. I’m always given.

Cliff:                 I’m always trying to get some value. I listened, you know, and, and that’s the, that we go back to listening and I listened and I can, you know, and I don’t have to sit there for 10 minutes. I can talk to you for a few seconds and I can hear certain things about you. Maybe. You know what? Because there’s things we know, Jim Rohn says, we all want something you know, so, so I listened and I give value. You want to make more money? Add more value, give, give, add more value to more people’s lives. You want to make less money, less value to less people, simple threaten

Chad:               and add more value. Not always expecting that you will get immediate money from that either because it sounds like, like you just gave us a diamond takeaway from today’s conversation on how the show is called connect up and what you just said is key to connecting up to our goals is that with every connection we make, always leave that person at a better and higher state than they were before you met them because you lifted them up. You offered them value. Whether it was just because of what you shared with them, whether the advice you gave them, whether the way that you boosted them up and made them feel better about themselves. You go about your networking in that way where you are constantly be having the objective, I’m, I’m gonna. I’m going to leave every connection. I’m going to leave every person in a higher state than they were when I first before I met them. Then that is how you connect up to where you want to be. That’s how you connect up to the, the type of relationships that are going to give you that happiness and also help fuel your goals and everything else. So.

Cliff:                 Oh yeah, definitely. And like you said, it doesn’t have to come from the person you can give it to, you know, just, just, just no, like, like it’s, it’s, it’s like the law is the law of gravity. What goes up must come down and so, you know, if I give something to you, it doesn’t have to necessarily come back from you, but it will come. It will come from somewhere. Somebody must’ve. It’s the law.

Chad:               Yeah, definitely. Sometimes that connection maybe leads you to another person that ends up, you know, maybe giving you money for your service or whatever. But yeah, it comes back in some way and as long as we’re just, we have that kind of selfless attitude towards the way we’re connecting with people, then yeah, you’ll be taken care of. You’ll be able to achieve your goals to um, as we, as we kind of close up this, this conversation, I want to discuss a one more thing. What, how it, how does the way that we talk to ourselves influence our ability to achieve our goals because we have, you know, we talked to people when we’re meeting them, but we’re also talking to ourselves all day long. We have this inner dialog. We have these stories that we tell ourself. We have this self talk going on inside of our head. How does that inner dialogue, those inner conversations effect either keep us stuck or allow us to move forward towards our goals?

Cliff:                 We talk, we talk a lot about, especially on the speaking arena and motivation. We talked a lot about surrounding yourself, not surround yourself with negative people and people who put you down. And however, the biggest negative talk that we have is not from outside, is from within. If these negative thoughts that we have, they say that it takes approximately if someone comes to you and says something negative, I think they say it takes 17 or approximately 17 positive, um, responses to equal that one. You know, so if you think about it, we watch tv, we have social media, we have our phones, we go out, we see the news, there’s so much negativity in the world and we’re bombarded with all this negativity when we wake up, when we sleep it. Most people, you know, when you go to work, they come home to turn on the TV, they read the newspaper and it’s all this negativity.

Cliff:                 It may not be conscious, but we surrounded with all of this negativity, you know, how do we overcome that? Because if it takes, it takes 17 response. If it takes 17 positive responses to overcome one negative and we watch an hour of TV, you know, this is so many. I mean, in one hour, MTV news, I mean it’s countless, countless numbers. So therefore, once we have to do is we have to become aware of our thoughts and then the things we say to ourselves, you know, there’s a thing that says that I use tfr. TFA are, and we can guide our thoughts because the states that they stands for thoughts. The F stands for feelings, the a stands for action and the stands for result. Our thoughts lead to our feelings, our feelings lead to actions, actions lead to our results, our thoughts, you know, I’ll come, come and words come from our thoughts.

Cliff:                 Well, what is it that we think is so all of this negativity that we’ve taken in on a daily basis, those things help build our thoughts. So what I would recommend is cut out all if not most of that. I, I watch TV. Like right now it’s the World Cup. So I’m a big soccer fan. What’s your broke up? However I choose to watch certain things. I don’t just turn on TV and expect to be entertained by the TV, which is what most people do. They’ll come on, they get up the remote and turn it on. And this going. I mean, it’s amazing. I went to my friend’s house the other day and she as I dunno towards you and 5,300 channels and I’m amazed when she said to me, if there’s nothing to watch on the TV, what you mean you have 300 channels? What do you mean there’s nothing on TV?

Cliff:                 And she just flipped. Basically what she said to me is that, and one thing I’m going to come in and basically what she’s saying to me subconsciously that I’m looking to be entertained, I’m looking for the TV to entertain me. I come home and I want to be entertained. I don’t want to think about what went on at work. I’m looking for something and I think whereas I don’t have to use my brain and it just, you know, some reality show, whatever it is, something to entertain me and that’s what it is. I don’t do that. I’m aware. I choose my time. Once again, my time is most valuable. I have, how do I spend my time do all and watch it on TV being detained or do I want to, you know, choose to do something. So that’s what it is. We have to cut out a lot of things that just doesn’t. That doesn’t help us. It doesn’t help us grow.

Chad:               Yeah. You bring up a good point about with the TV, because in our modern world we are receiving so much input from, from social media, from the Internet, from the TV of everything going on in the world and so we have more voices in our head than ever before and that can. And so we ended up having even a higher chance of having this negative dialogue going on in her head of all this different input and stuff. And so it’s important that we become aware of those thoughts so that we can filter through that noise and, and find our voice in it so that we can make more confident decisions so we don’t get lost in all the negativity. And so that’s really, that’s really helpful that you shared with us how you look to the different sources of input that you’re getting in and shut some of them off that maybe getting in your head and influencing your, that, that inner dialogue, that self talk.

Cliff:                 Yeah. And what do you need to change the input, you know, instead of, instead of watching all these tv, you know, I listened, I listened to audiobooks, I write, I read, and if I’m, if I’m going to be on Youtube, I’m looking for something that’s gonna help with the, it’s going to be beneficial for me. I’m not looking to be entertained, I’m looking to learn and I’m looking to grow. So change the input that comes in and that’s how we cut out the negative thought. We have to change the inputs.

Chad:               Yeah. Yeah. And, and anyone who’s listening and watching this show right now, you’re receiving good, positive input that’s going to help you advance in your life as opposed to the stuff that’s going to distract you.

Cliff:                 Yeah, definitely.

Chad:               Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Can you leave us with just one quick body language tip on how to read somebody else’s body language? When you’re in a conversation? One thing we can pay attention to

Cliff:                 is this thing. A lot of people, when you’re speaking, what are you going for a job interview when he talking to you boss, a lot of people say you need to have eye contact and that is true. However, I can. I contact works both ways. If, if, if, if some people have been told that, hey, listen, you know you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re kind of aggressive or whatever, and they don’t know why. If you look at somebody, it’s the eye contact. However you don’t get my contact for more than seven seconds rule is approximately five, six, seven seconds. Then after that, you need to break eye contact because if you keep constant eye contact for 10 seconds or more than that person that you’ve given you, I contacted now without breaking. If you look at him, look at them directly in the eye for about 10 seconds.

Cliff:                 Now they look at, they look at it as being aggressive. Now imagine if this is a situation where you’re in a job interview and you’re going for a job and you look at that, that perspective employee and you look at him for 10, 11, 12 seconds, they’re looking at you, they’re not saying it, but they’re looking at it thinking, wow, this person is, is is an aggressive person, so they take it as, as, as a form of attack. So the simple thing that we can do, we’ve been told all our lives that we need to look people in the ICS, but don’t look people in the York more than seven seconds without breaking because people take us as an aggressive move and and you will lose behind your back. They’re like, Hey, I and I am that person. That person is aggressive and somebody tells you I’m aggressive and you’re like, I don’t know what it was about that person, but I just didn’t feel right. They feel aggressive. I don’t know what it is. His eye contact is a big part of it.

Chad:               That’s helpful. Thanks so much for that advice. That’s a really important thing to pay attention to that. Yeah, that we do think we’re just supposed to have that eye contact, but it can actually scare somebody away if we don’t break it. So thanks for sharing that. Um, cliff, you, you brought us a really great just library of advice today and tools that we can use to up our communication and, and I hope that everyone listening and watching that you had some, you took away some really great golden nuggets about how when you open your voice you can be a voice for the voiceless and that you apply what would cliff has taught us about public speaking and about how to connect with the audience and about when you’re connecting with people, how to, how to build trust and truly listen and that when you’re listening you’re able to actually make that connection.

Chad:               You’re able to build that trust. And I’m, and we learned a lot about just, uh, how to manage the, those voices in our head so that we can, we can be clear about what we want. You know, cliff told us some really great things about overcoming fear. And one thing that I want to kind of just a sum up is just what he told us about how, if our desire is not above our fear, that we’re not going to get out there and do we want to do. And so discover your why. Dig through those different seven levels so that you can figure out the root of your why and you do that. You will now have a stronger desire than it is your fear and that desire will take over the fear and you’ll be able to get out there and accomplish what you want to accomplish. And so thank you for, for being on this show. And cliff were can, where can my audience find out more about you and learn more from you and connect with you?

Cliff:                 Well listen, I have, I have a gift that I love to give your audience and it’s, it’s, it’s 21 tips for overcoming fear of public speaking it’s a free video course that I’m given and my website which is speakingmasteryacademy.com. So that’s speakingmasteryacademy.com. And of course, you know, they can follow me also at Cliff townsend on facebook and um, yeah, so if they can go to speak and mastery academy, that Tab, they can always get that benefit of having a conversation questions that they want to reach out to me. They can reach me on facebook once again Cliff Townsend or they can reach me@cliffatspeakingmasteryacademy.com, my email.

Chad:               Well thank you so much for being willing to share that gift with us. So I’m just go to the show notes, whoever’s listening and watching a on Arrowlight.tv/connectup and you can go to his episode and in there we will provide the links that he just gave us so that you can learn more from him and get more value from him. And thanks so much for being on our show. You brought a lot of value for this audience, you, you really helped us to understand what it means to connect our way to our goals. And so hope to have you here again.

Cliff:                 Hey, thanks man. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate talking to you.