24 hour dancing barefoot on Lego or how one woman changed how she saw public speaking
Jo Marshall, a fantastic copywriter, wrote this lovely piece about me on LinkedIn....
“Ah…yep…writers usually find this the hardest.”
“Why’s that?” I said.
“Cause they’re used to something being word-perfect,” said John.
“So they think public speaking has to be the same.”
John Dawson is one of the best public speaking trainers I’ve ever come across.
In fact. I’d go as far as to say he’s a magician.
In the course of a single weekend, in April 2019, he took me from crying-in-front-of-the-group-stage (as in actually blubbing while trying to talk) to confidently standing up and sharing my thing (and genuinely enjoying it).
To put it into context:
Public speaking was something akin to a ‘24 hour dancing barefoot on Lego while being forced to listen to Coldplay’ event for me.
I’d stumbled through a couple of painful presentations at uni, where I hadn’t prepared properly, and my mind had gone to jelly, and my face had flared up like a furnace, and I’d contemplated legging it out the door.
And it had scarred me. Made me never want to speak in public. Ever. Again.
So I didn’t for 20 years.
And then in 2019 I did.
The reason for me finally tackling this irrational fear of speaking in front of more than one person wasn’t all the work opportunities I’d shied away from over the years.
Nor was it that I felt sick in my stomach about hiding away from something I saw other people seemingly do with such aplomb. (I did feel both things, but that wasn’t what pushed me to do it.)
I didn’t want to be a mute bride.
That was the catalyst for me.
Wanting to be able to talk at my own wedding and not let the experience ruin my day.
So I went to see John. And he sorted me out.
I spoke at our wedding in front of 250 of our friends and family. And actually enjoyed it (as you can probably tell from the pic).
And since then, I’ve started saying yes to more work-based ‘speaking gigs’, like podcasts ( - more on that soon).
As for how John did it, interestingly, loads of his techniques for tackling a fear of public speaking apply perfectly to writing on social media:
Speak to one person at a time
Tell stories
Don’t wait to become confident before doing it, become confident by doing it.
In short…
If you struggle with sharing your thing in front of a group, there is no better person I know of to help you than John.
If he can help a massive scaredy cat like me, I’m pretty sure he can help anyone get over their fear of public speaking!
How do you feel about speaking in front of a lot of people?
