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Welcome to Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass. Jon is the founder and CEO of Image Group International, an award-winning image consulting and personal branding pioneer established in 1989. This podcast will bring you old-school wisdom, inspiring ideas, strategies, and hacks for the new tech world. Here, you will learn everything about personal branding: the system, the techniques, and the right mindset to have a successful personal brand, image, and reputation.

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Welcome back to the show. And I'm thrilled to have you here today before we get into it, let's connect on social media. You can find me on Twitter/X  as Jon_Michail, my LinkedIn is Jon Michail. And you can find his image Group International on Facebook.  So let's jump right in today's topic, Introduction to public speaking and authentic personal branding. So public speaking plays a critical role as we know for personal branding, because it's a powerful tool to convey your message, share expertise, your thought leadership and of course connect with the audience. But effective public speaking goes beyond the well rehearsed speech. It's about being authentic and true to your brand. But before we start, let's cover some public speaking myths. And I'll start off with number one, and there's quite a few of them here. But you know, I'll cover it throughout the programme. One of the myths is great public speakers are born not made. In reality. My experience shows that public speaking is really a skill that can be learned and developed with practice and dedication tellem vicious you want to be to get that right. So even renowned speaker started somewhere and improved over time through experience learning lessons and of course coaching. And other methods is you must memorise your speech word for word the reality is, well, knowing your material well is important memorising a speech word for word to make your sound robotic, and certainly less engaging. It's better to understand the key points that could be docked points and speak naturally. Another myth is public speaking is all about charisma, meaning you need charisma to get on stage and do that. Well. While the reality again in my experience shows the opposite. While charisma can help and effective, public speaking Examples could actually indicate that it really in reality relies more on preparation, definitely authenticity that we've noted before. And of course, the ability to connect with your audience. And remember, this Connect is the key here because if you cannot connect with the audience, one on one, or universal then you get a problem. So being genuine and well prepared, often Trump's natural charisma and another one for you to really take on board he is nervousness is always a bad thing. Well, the reality is, it's not because it's natural. feeling nervous before speaking is part of who you are, or certainly your way of being. If that's the case, well, it's okay. It's a natural feeling. And it's okay to just go with it. So harness this though into a positive energy. So many successful speakers, of course, use aspects of the nervousness to enhance their performance. And of course, turning this so called fear into enthusiasm and focus. One final one for this part of the programme, I'd say is the audience is waiting for you to fail. Now, this is certainly not true. The reality is most audiences want you to succeed in a supportive why they're spending all this time and energy to see you fall out. Don't think so unless, of course, they've got some sort of dark inside that they want to really reveal, but in you, but also possibly in themselves. So I'd say most people are on your side, they're interested in what you have to say. And I'm not focused on critiquing your every move people have got, you know, more important things to do than that. What matters though, is to connect authentically. So speak to that. Right now speaking authentically helps you create a genuine connection with your audience because people are drawn to speakers that are real and sincere authenticity. Of course, we know builds trust and credibility, making your mass your message impactful. To achieve this, you got to be clear about your values, of course, your beliefs and really what you stand for. 

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Your personal brand should reflect who you are and it should shine through in your public speaking. Next, let's focus on your speech content. If you haven't yet, check out our episode on content creation for deeper insights that we just published recently, your speech content should and while and your personal brand so share stories and experiences that highlight your journey and learning lessons of course, along the way, and of course include also clients success stories to inspire others to get out on the road. own comfort zones, you know, next one is use your speech to showcase your expertise and provide actionable value. It's not about what you say, but more importantly, how you say it. And you can relate to this in your, in your school days, where you get a professor on stage, you know, knowing everything that they were presenting perfectly, but in the communication delivery, it wasn't landing, and sort of put people at death. put people to sleep, I should say, suffer at some of them, maybe death as well down the track. But the delivery should be engaging, confident, of course, reflecting your brand's strengths. The next one is preparation. Of course, preparation is very important. We know this. And preparation is important for everything. Preparation is crucial, of course, for effective public speaking, practice your speech multiple times to become comfortable with the material, focus on the tone, the pacing, and the body language, you know, and get natural elements of that happening. So these particular elements are key to conveying your message authentically. And finally, dress the part and do it over and over again in front of the mirror. I can't stress to you how important that is. Remember, you know life is all a stage. And we're all actors playing our part. That's it, when you really understand that it becomes really powerful for you, and certainly empowering for future presentations, either one on one or universal. The next area I want to share with us audience engagement and again, relate to this one on one or universal but if we're going to take it to public speaking, engaging with the audience is essential. encourage interaction to make your speech a two way conversation. Of course, why would do that if I was running a podcast right now with a guest speaker in the same room as me, or of course on Zoom. But of course, if you're doing it on stage, it's the same thing. They're asking questions of the audience, getting the audience involved is essential here. And if you really want to study also stand up comedians that do a great job with this by getting the audience involved by asking him questions or even getting them to laugh. And that's also getting, you know, in the case of a stand up comedian, that's an essential form of two way conversation. The laugh is an indication that they the act is actually working, ask questions in by what I call his feed forward and not seen back. But feed forward. You want to get all your so called comments, to, you know, to basically move things forward Life is good enough negativity, the world has got so much dystopian concepts going on right now. You know, we want to we want to basically maximise the future as opposed to going into the negativity of the past and respond always to comments, do not leave the comments, sort of unresponded. So let's cover some more speaking myths to sort of cap off this particular section. There's another myth that you need to be perfect, but the reality is striving for perfection can lead to unnecessary pressure and stress. And this is a reality that, you know, the other thing I suggest you do is really embrace the power of the perfect imperfection. That's what your presentation is going to be. There's no such thing as perfect. And I really believe that anyone that strives for that is only heading into serious self esteem issues down the track. So audiences appreciate authenticity, including mistakes and imperfections along the way, as long as you can correct them apologise and move on. That's what human beings look for. So Ben Sherman makes you relatable and credible. Let's not ever forget that.

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Another myth is visual aids will do the talking for you in our the visual aids like slides, for instance, and other type of props will actually make the biggest difference. Well, these can enhance your presentation, but they should never replace your message. So effective public speaking involves clear communication and engagement with visuals serving and of course as a supporting tools. Another myth is only extroverts can be good public speakers. Now I think that's nonsense. Introverts can be excellent public speakers, as well, and in my experience can even be more memorable. And I've had that success with many, many clients that were introverts including on the spectrum by the way, and what that really means is, you know, they just need the system and how to do that were extroverts you think all might naturally be like that it's not true at all. It's just a perception. So the tendency This is introverts to prepare thoroughly and reflect deeply, can lead to insightful and compelling presentations. And that's my experience. Public speaking skills, though, are not exclusive to any personality type. Type. There's a Another myth that says you should stick to a script, the reality is sticking rigidly to the script will limit your ability to engage with the audience and respond to their reactions. Now, of course, we know politicians that do this stick to a script. And of course, they will not go off it. And we know what that sounds like, what sounds really powerful from an oration point of view. But do you really trust that, and this is the key, and I'm not saying don't have a script, or certainly not points. But you got to allow yourself the freedom to sort of come out naturally, being flexible in all of this and adapting your speech based, of course on the audience feed forward, can make your presentation more dynamic and impactful. And one final myth just for today, I would say a lot of information, a lot of data equals a better speech. The reality is overloading your audience with too much information can be counter productive. And trust me, I've done this mistake in the past in workshops and seminars where you want to deliver a lot of value, but the attention span can only take on so much in a time allocated. So we all learn from that. And of course, get better, including myself. So focus on delivering that clear, concise message with key takeaways. Quality over quantity, of course, is crucial for effective communication. So addressing some of these myths along the way, can help demystify public speaking and of course, encourage more individuals to develop their skills, because that is one of the greatest fears for people and for some people, it's worse than death. That's certainly that's what research indicates. So understanding that effective public speaking is accessible to everyone with the right approach and mindset is key to overcome the fear. And of course, building a strong personal brand along the way. So finally, let's discuss the impact of public speaking on your personal brand. Each speaking opportunity reinforces your brand and expands your reach, whether on a conference, webinar, team meeting, or podcast, your aim should be to leave a lasting impression for people to remember you. So follow up with your audience, share additional resources, and continue the conversation to show your commitment to providing value and building relationships. I hope that sort of captured aids, the aspects of public speaking and of course, in correlation with your personal brand. Now, I'd like to share with you a client story. And the client's, obviously, in this case, was a male, large management consulting firm, many, many team members a large, large team, the initial challenge with this particular claim was to be successful in all aspects, but was afraid to speak publicly. And that was due to many reasons, including it felt like maybe he'd be showing off. And of course, in our Aussie culture that could be seen, like you're blowing your own horn, another myth. But also in case he made mistakes and said the wrong things. But what happened was the end result of that by continuing on that track, he missed many opportunities that also impacted his personal brand, and ultimately, his reputation. So although he was also on the board, and so on, there were more challenges from people taking him on as, of course, the leader, as opposed to if he also had the courage just to speak up and do more presentations, that would have made his life a lot easier. So our approach was to create the strategy. 

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And the strategy was to outline specifically how to address some of these challenges. Some of these challenges included, of course, coaching around public speaking,
you know, how to frame a particular a story, how to create an outline, and of course, the key messaging required in that particular presentation. And the components of that presentation would have been, depending what it was because we did numerous but certainly authenticity, trust, and created, what we call his thought leadership content. So then that can also be spread internally. They're the team and of course, externally to clients, et cetera. And part of that was also to great audience engagement on their blog, and of course, aspects of the comms. The implementation of this was step by step. And what happened was, we incorporated the preparation of the speech, of course, we did coaching sessions around that, and a lot of the coaching sessions, remember, incorporate confidence building because public speaking is a big one around confidence. So, you know, you have to do things prior to even getting on stage just to sort of get into the zone and rehearsals, you know, and the process of that included, how to dress for impact. The key actions we took was to really first of all understand authenticity, a lot of people People, you know, really don't understand authenticity at all, okay, because they think you gotta be real at every single moment of your life, including, you know, airing your dirty laundry. And that's far from authenticity. So we work with a client to identify their own authenticity around core values, beliefs, and unique qualities and of course, match them to be in correlation with the company's messaging. And you can do that contrary to what people think, because although the company might have, you know, one set of values, you have another set of core values, from a personal perspective, our job is to correlate both. So developing a personal brand statement that resonated with our authentic self was also part of that project. All of our content creation is about thought leadership, you know, so it's helping the client craft compelling speech content. And of course, that was aligned with that personal brand. And that included storytelling elements and personal experience to make the content relatable. The also, the delivery of our coaching was conducted through multiple practice sessions, that focus on tone, pacing, body language, and of course, the look. Because the look is also important. Because when you look in the mirror and feel good, somehow your confidence increases, and you start to communicate more confidently as well. If you don't believe me, try it. And you might want to try it as a dishevelled person, as well and see the comparison, I promise you, there will be a difference. 

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So we also provided fade forward, and techniques to enhance his delivery, and stage presence. And by that also, there's a concept called anchoring, where we anchored, you know, different concepts, in his mind, okay to certainly when he's presenting to feel definitely more empowered. The audience engagement aspect, we taught the client methods to engage the audience. So asking questions that, as I've noted before, and encouraging interaction, including warmup exercise, if you're going to do a workshop, seminar, or so on, but certainly that was part of the, the project that we covered with this particular client, and we emphasise the importance of follow up and continue that conversation post speech. Now, this is very important because it keeps the relationship going. And a lot of people really want do a presentation, don't worry about the after effect. It's like, it's like selling a concept to a client and not following them up. It's easy for me, it's just dumb business, you know, the end result was this enhanced visibility. And the public speaking engagements increased dramatically, of course, didn't mean he had to take them all. And of course, travel engagements around the world, because he was also noted as an authority within the industry. So that equals a lot of aspects. When you do that improve credibility, definitely, because his perceived credibility and trustworthiness went up opportunities for growth, you could have speaking invitations, they came up partnerships, and of course, career advancement. And that also resulted in an enhanced personal brand that also resulted in being invited to also join other company boards in non competing companies, and the clients testimonial to myself for working with him. And of course, parts of our team that also help was this. He said, this, you have impacted my life in ways I never imagined. Your encouragement to lead with chutzpah was challenging at first, but ultimately, it increased my confidence and the ability to communicate with greater clarity. Thank you, John, for your care, and persistence. And of course, when you get testimonials like that you do feel good about yourself, because obviously, the work we do is working with human beings. It's not transactional, it's very personal. And when you get some sort of response like that, a feed forward response, you definitely feel good, and you feel like you know, what you're doing at least has value. So to wrap up, public speaking is a powerful tool for enhancing your authentic personal brand. speak authentically. Craft compelling content, prepare thoroughly and engage with your audience, you know, leverage every speaking opportunity to significantly enhance your brand and influence because your confidence will go through the roof. And I haven't met anybody in all my 35 years of coaching to tell me that they don't want any more conference and conference of course, and chutzpah, what beautifully well together. So that's all for today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed our chat. Please rate us on Apple podcasts and subscribe for more valuable content for personalised help and similar coaching pub Speaking etc. Please contact patricia.bosa@imagegroup.com.au.  I want to thank you for tuning in. Remember, your words have the power to shape your personal brand and inspire others. And until next time, cheerio.

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Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass Podcast is sponsored by Image Group International, a global team of practical, digitally savvy personal brand and image strategists based in Australia, committed to maximizing your impact, influence, and authority in the business world. To learn more and apply for personal coaching, seminars, and group workshops, please visit imagegroup.com.au or call 1800 631 311.