Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. Today I have Brandon. If you've seen the YouTube channel MasterTalk, he is the master behind MasterTalk. And before I go any further, help me welcome Brandon. Hi, Brandon. Hey everybody. Thanks so much for having me on. So kind. So good to have you here. I actually saw your YouTube channel long before we had this conversation. When did you get started with that? Yeah, I started the YouTube channel in 2019. So three years ago, and I started coaching six years ago.
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coaching before the YouTube channel? Oh yeah, so what happened was when I was in university, I used to do these things called business competitions, like case comps. Think of it like professional sports, but for nerds. So all the guys my age playing basketball or rugby, I was doing the presentation nerd version of that. So I did presentations competitively. That's how I learned how to speak. And then I started coaching people who were younger than me on how to communicate ideas. Cause we didn't have a communication coach growing up, three years of doing that, I was mostly doing it for free back then.
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I probably coached like 75 to a hundred people on how to speak. And that's what led to the YouTube channel master talk. Cause the three years that I spent coaching the kids on how to communicate, it wasn't available for free. So I started posting videos. Was that something you were asked to do or your own initiative? Honestly, it was the mix of both. No one's ever asked me that before. So what happened was I landed a great job at IBM as a consultant. Few months before I started working, I just went back to my students. I spent years coaching and honing and they all asked me a question that I didn't have an answer to. And the question was,
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how did you learn how to speak? And I always responded with, well, I don't really know. I didn't have money for a coach, figured it out on my own, made thousands of mistakes, literally. And they said, oh, well, you know, I look at YouTube videos. I read books, I do this. And I was like, why would you do any of that? But everyone kept saying the word YouTube. I was just curious, because I had three months to kill before working at IBM. So I said, okay, let me just go watch YouTube videos. So I opened YouTube and I just typed public speaking tips and I typed enter, and I just was horrified by the content available on the internet.
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I started watching all these videos and I was like, this is terrible. You have advice like be yourself or get up on stage. And I was like, this makes no sense. There's no practical. So I just got really frustrated after a few hours of that, that I started making my own videos. So you basically identified a gap in the market and you filled the gap. Yeah. Basically it was like everything that was in my head and what I believed about communication wasn't already on YouTube. So let's say, for example, you want to be a cook and you have this recipe on grilled cheese. There's a lot of great grilled cheese recipes. So there might be a unique edge to yours.
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But there's still a lot of great stuff out there. But in public speaking, I was horrified. I was like, this is terrible. And that's what led to my ascension. Sorry, master talk. I hear you, but I just want clarity with the part where you say, they say, be yourself. What do you have against that? Ooh, I like that question. Okay, now we're gonna get spicy here. Be yourself isn't advice. Okay, so somebody pays me thousands of dollars of coaching, they sit down, they go, what do I do, Brenda? I just go, be yourself. Wow, this is, let me just do the.
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Thank you so much. This is so worth $10,000. What? The reason I ask is usually when I coach people, I always say, take all the tips and the techniques I have shared with you, but don't act out a Tony Robbins persona on stage.
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Be branded with all the techniques incorporated into the speech. That's why I was wondering if you just meant to be, okay. Okay. That's fair. Okay. Cause you're giving much better feedback there. Like I was just hearing be yourself and there was no context. Have more energy, be yourself. I was like, wow, this is like life changing stuff. The delivery and everything else, which you're going to come to. That's how you started. And then how did you get started on the coaching business?
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Yes, so definitely when I started the YouTube channel, that was the first time in my life that I had money, by the way. So I grew up with, but relative to other Canadians in my country, I was definitely the lower percentile of income group. My parents were both minimum wage workers, pretty much. And for me, that was the first year I was making six figures. It was like completely life changing. So honestly, the first year of Mastertalk wasn't a business, Roberta. I was just enjoying life.
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I was traveling, I was working as a consultant, life was amazing. And I never wanted to turn this into a business. It was kind of like my fun side project that I was just making videos every week. You think that the dream, doing what you love and getting paid for it, it doesn't even feel like work. You're right. To be honest, the YouTube channel the first year, it felt like a lot of work. I actually didn't like the videos. I didn't like making them. And the reason is not the content itself. Obviously, I love making the content. The whole like taking a camera.
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pressing records, sitting on a couch. Behind the scenes stuff. Obviously now my team handles it for me, which is like a godsend, but like the first year, I had no intention of making this a business. What happened was nine months into MasterTalk, the YouTube channel, I went to a personal development conference called Summit of Greatness. It's an event in Columbus, Ohio, hosted by a guy named Louis Howes. So he's the host. I know him, I've seen his YouTube interviews, yes. He interviews some really great people.
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Lewis is amazing. He's definitely a hero of mine. But the key was I went to Lewis's conference. I've been following him since I was 20. Like I listened to hundreds of episodes of his podcast. A lot of Mike growth was because of him. So, you know, I wanted to go see what his event was like. Maybe I could meet him and talk to him. So I, so I took a flight there and I met my business partner there. And he's the one who was like, Hey, you got a gold mine here. You're like one of the most talented kids I've ever seen in communication. Why don't you just coach me for free and I'll coach you.
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So we started coaching each other and I realized really quickly that what I had was a lot more than just some YouTube channel I wasn't paying much attention to. I had an opportunity to change millions of lives' destiny and that's what he helped me realize. Hey Brendan, you're the youngest communication coach in the world. If you actually take this seriously, you could be the next Dale Carnegie and help billions of people in the world.
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So I had a much bigger mission with it. And then what happened, how this turned to a business officially. So Bombsie was my first kind of help for, he helped me get my first clients. So most of my clients are executives today. That's where I found a niche in technology executives. And that's how I was able to grow the business. Cause obviously in communication coaching, if you're really good at what you do, you get people results, they'll naturally. And they'll testify for you and find even more clients for you. Correct. So it's a great business to be in. So I scaled really quickly and I quit IBM.
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It only took a year and a half and I was gone. And speaking of tech executives, as I was saying earlier, that even my first job back in the 90s, I worked with engineers and I realized that in the tech industry, usually that's one of the skills that's not emphasized on because as a society, we box nerds into, oh, you're just socially awkward. You're just good with computers and you sit there quietly and do your brilliant work. And so some of them, they do embrace the personality. And as they go up the ladder, the communication part becomes.
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How do you find that when working with them, what are some of the things you can share with us? I mean, you probably know just as much as I do, Roberta, so it's humbling that you're asking me that. But yes, I mean, you're absolutely spot on. So what happens with these engineers, people in STEM, tech, science and technology, they do really well early in their careers, right? So their salary increases really, really rapidly. The tasks that they do increases rapidly. Their deliveries are exceptional. Most of them are talented. And then at some point they block because they realize at some point in their career,
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that everything they did before, they can no longer do if they want to get promoted. Because if you want to become a vice president of engineering, you want to become a VP of software, you want to become a VP of infra, well, if you want to get to that level, most of your job is people management now. You have to talk to people you think- You're a project manager, you no longer do the project work.
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Exactly. And at that point, what's great about that niche, I tried a bunch of different niches, but to your point, that's the one that worked for me as well. And because they also got money, their companies want to invest in them because they want them to be leaders because there's a huge lack of talent, especially that's why my business scaled up so rapidly because all of those technical guys, when you make them a better communicator, it completely changes the ethos of their existence. Like it changes their life, it's not just about their career, the relationship with their wives, their husbands gets better, the relationship with their kids, the loyalty they
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they'll refer their entire families. And the same way you do it with your incredible clients, I'm sure. Enthusiastic. Thank you, Brandon. Have you heard of the statistic more people are afraid of public speaking than they are of death? I have. That's one of the things I don't like about the industry, but sure, I'll give you the question. When you hear that, what comes to mind? Here's what comes to mind. If we as communication coaches, as communication professionals want to help people communicate better, the worst thing that we can do is start our speeches by going, hey, by the way, after death, it's communication.
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How is that helping people? I see so many, this is what frustrated me about it. Not you, Roberta, you're awesome. Oh, you see, thank you, Brandon. A lot of people in the industry, of course, my pleasure, you're awesome. A lot of people in the industry, and they do too, I'm sure, if you're a communication professional and you have a PhD in communication and your goal is to help people communicate better, why are we starting every speech like that? Is that really gonna help people? Like, it just makes it- Isn't that a selling point? I know most of you are suffering from this and I have the solution.
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Is it a marketing ploy? It could be. I mean, we could guess all day. For me personally, it doesn't rub well. That's why I'm so passionate about this industry and why I've gotten the success I have is because I really care. What I think of is a question. How would our lives change if we were an exceptional community?
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How would the world change if we were an exceptional communicator? Most of communication is around fear, it's around anxiety, it's around stress. So many of us, Roberta, we dream about our vacations. We dream about the incredible things we want to buy, the Christmas gifts that we want to get for our children, our nephews, our nieces, our families. But how many of us dream about our communication skills and start to dream? Do we even talk about that with our friends in our social circles? We don't, right? So that's probably the best way to get better is to start imagining ourselves becoming. Why is it important to us?
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Communication is so much more than getting a job promotion. It's the way we talk to our families, it's the strangers that we meet at a park. It's the way that we order ice cream at a restaurant. It's every little interaction of our lives. Communication makes our life more fulfilling, not just our paychecks. And once we figure out that internal reason, we get excited about communication, which the statistics that you brought forth doesn't help us achieve.
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I actually prefer that way. Future where your communication skills are top-notch versus scaring you with stats that are just going to make you feel worse than you already do about public speaking. Absolutely. Like think of the fear of communication. We both know the medical term for classophobia. I've never said that word once on my YouTube channel. Not even once. Because you don't focus on the fear, focus on the solution. In summary, what are some of the things you can share with people? Those who say...
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Brandon, I've never spoken in front of any crowd before, not even in front of my family. What is the first thing that somebody needs to look into if they say, I wanna start improving my communication skills? Absolutely. So since your podcast is really related to communication specifically, I can imagine there's a lot of communication nerds who are listening to this right now. So I'm gonna give three very specific tips that are uniquely from me. So let me share those things, because that'll help. So then other communication, but we'll show the other stuff.
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So the first thing is an understanding as to why the fear of communication exists. Not a lot of people cover this. Let's think about this, Roberta. Where do we give most of our presentations growing up as a kid? Because that's where we learn the habits of presenting to begin with. And the answer is, as you probably guessed, school. Of course. Elementary school, high school. But the challenge, Roberta, is all of those presentations have three main quote problems. The first one is 100% of all of those presentations are mandatory.
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We don't wake up one morning and say, hey, Robert, do you want to get breakfast to present all day? Says nobody. Nobody does that. When something's forced, what every single thing is forced, somebody doesn't want to do it. Number two, every presentation is different. You're always presentation switching. This is what I call it. And you never get to pick the topic too. So let's dive into that. History class, math class, science class, French class, English class, you're always switching presentations. You're obviously not going to get better.
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And the other piece is you never get to pick the topic to your point. The book reports the Shakespearean, like, cool my shaking. I don't know. I still ask my English. She said, Mrs. Why doesn't he speak proper English like we do? She would just look at me, shake her head and tell me to go sit on my desk. I love how you're relating to love. This is so much fun because most people are like, they just nod at the end. They go, that makes sense. But you're like relating to it. So I love it. And then there's number three, Roberta. Number three is the most important. Every presentation is tied to a punishment.
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So it's never, oh, is Roberta excited about this bridge that she has in her background? Let's clap as she delivers this presentation and celebrate her. No, that's not how it works at school. Every presentation is 30% of her grade, 20% of her grade. If you don't do a great job. Oh, if you don't do the report at all, get zero and then you're gonna get an F at the end of the semester and all that. And then all these communications professionals, they're going, oh yeah, the fear of communication is closer to death, really?
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The point I want to drive is a lot of people in the industry, they go like the fear is closer to death. Whereas my opinion is like, well, isn't it no wonder that people are scared of communication? If you did something like basketball and somebody hit you on the head every time you missed a basket, would you like basketball? Like, no. First, no, it's tied to punishment. What? Like I coach kids. I don't do that for money. It's kind of just a small group. I get results for 100% of them, not like 90% of them, 100% of them.
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because I just change those rules. I just let them pick the presentation. I let them give feedback to each other and I only have them present one presentation. So they're not stressed out about giving it. They're excited and there's no great. Even in the psyche public speaking is not associated with pain. Exactly.
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It's associated with pleasure. That's the way I think about it. So yes, I think that's why I'm such a big belief. This is one of my ethos, my legacy is I think every human being can be an exceptional communicator once they understand that piece of why the fear of communication even exists. Yes. Back to the debate teams. Are they effective at all? Great question. So the way I think about debate is, so let's say we compare that to case competition, which is similar. So case competition is more like a business gives you a problem and you solve the problem.
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has the best solution wins the case competition. Whereas in debate, it's more like you're opposing situation. What I found from experience is most people who do debate are almost all exceptional communicators, like they become exceptional. And the reason is simple, it's not because of the format, it's because it's optional and it creates a sense of competition. People, like for example, take me, the reason I got really good as a speaker is not because of my raw talent, it's because I'm competitive. I really wanted to win these case competitions. So I worked on my game.
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Same thing with debate, even if people don't like debate, as long as it's optional, they choose to opt in like they wanna do it. So that's why I would say almost all of the people I've known in debate have went on to become really good speakers. So you must want it. And if you have a competitive nature, you're obviously gonna constantly improve and excel. Correct, or you create that incentive. What are some of the things that makes you connect with your audience when you're on stage? I would say for me, it's all about having dinner with them.
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So what do I mean by this? Cause a lot of people ask me, how do you engage your audience? I always ask simple question like how much free or foreign? And so it's very little. I just say to my clients and I'll quote that is the good communicators, good speakers know their audience, but exceptional communicators understand their audience more than they understand themselves. So let me say that again. Good communicators understand their audience as well, but exceptional communicators, world-class communicators, top-notch communicators understand their audiences more than they understand themselves.
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So what's the difference? It's very big. So when you're an exceptional communicator, you're not just delivering a presentation. Your whole presentation is the entire atmosphere you're creating. It's the conversations you have after the presentation is over. So I've had long dinners with a lot of my friends still to this day, where I ask them questions about public speaking, get their pain points. But because I'm spending those hours, I'm getting to know them. Getting to know the personality, who they are, what do they dream about, what do they care about? So I'm able to message my presentation better to the audience.
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But I think about this podcast right now, I usually don't talk about where the fear of communication comes from, but since I know intellectually that if this is a communication podcast, there's a lot of nerds who are listening to this right now. I wanna go into levels of detail that they would be fascinated that no other professional would talk about on a show. So that's an example. But I think the key is have dinner with your audience. It's simple, but not easy. Nobody does it. What else when presenting, when on stage, what are some of the ways you can get them involved?
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so that they don't just sit there for 45 minutes and then start reaching on their phones. Well, one of my mentors, Andy Enriquez, he calls this WIIFM radio, What's In It For Me? Right, What's In It For Me? This is a strategy I use. I re-communicate the thoughts that are in my audience's heads back to them. So I'll give you an example. Once I'm giving a keynote, I might say something like this. I'm sure all of you are looking at me and probably thinking, well, Brendan's a great communicator, but I can never do that. I can never get on a stage. I can never share an idea.
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But let me tell you, when I got started as a kid and then I started, so notice how I'm communicating my audience's thoughts out loud. So they go, Oh, that's exactly what I was thinking. It's just like a mind read. Yeah. Remember when we were talking earlier about online coaching and I said, you are required to speak their language. So by then they engaged, they throw away their phones. They really want to hear what you have to say. Exactly. And that's why the dinner is so important. What else can you do to get them involved? I would say that's the big one. That's the easiest one.
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The other one is don't be shy to take risks. I'm a big believer in testing with small audiences before you try bigger ones. So what do I mean by this? When you prep a speech and let's say you have a keynote to 500 people, I wouldn't test anything to 500 people. I would just gather a group of five to 10 people and try just a bunch of strategies. And they'll tell me, my honest friends will tell me this works, this doesn't, this sucks. I'm just always testing new ideas. And then when I see something works, I use it.
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I stick with it. So for example, one strategy I use that I like is questions. So for example, whenever I do a keynote, I always go, let's all take out your phones, your piece of paper, something to write down. I just want everyone to reflect for two minutes right now. How would the world change if you're an exceptional communicator? Go ahead and take two minutes and just think about that right now. So this is an example. So I like asking questions. That's the way I do it. Second one is voicing thoughts out loud. And if I had to give a third one.
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To involve the audience, I would probably throw mics down their way. Be like, okay, can I get a volunteer to do something or to reflect on what they're hearing so far? Let's play the third thing. But I think the point I want to drive here is don't get lost in the tactics where people are listening. Pick one and run with it. Don't just go, oh, I could do this. Don't look at the restaurant menu. I like the questions and actually getting them to answer them or write them on a piece of paper. Because if you just say, imagine if you're an exceptional communicator and then you carry on. You know, some speakers do that.
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They don't even say, close your eyes and imagine the day when you stand in front of it. All right. Now let's get back to slide number four. What more do you want to share with our listeners today? I can end with a book recommendation that I don't think a lot of communication professionals talk about, and the book is called thirst by Scott Harrison. First by Scott Harrison. So Scott Harrison is the CEO of charity water. He's raised half a billion dollars in funding for his nonprofit.
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gets people access to clean water, he does incredible work with charity water. And what I really like about his style is he's the practical version of storytelling communication. He doesn't just talk about storytelling, he's applied it to raise half a billion dollars in money to help people. And I think it's a great, a practical example of how somebody leveraged a lot of the principles we talked about for real tangible results. So yeah, I highly recommend people check out that book.
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almost closed without the storytelling part because we talk about storytelling and its impact a lot. Give us a two-minute dissertation on storytelling. You know my dissertation is actually really short you'll be surprised Roberta. I think for most people who are listening to this call right now storytelling is not the priority and I'll tell you why. Okay I'm very controversial. You have such revolutionary ideas this is interesting. I mean that's why I got into the business right because I felt I had a lot to say in this field and let me tell you why not because storytelling is bad.
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but because storytelling is vague for beginners. Think of public speaking like this, Robert. It's like juggling 18 balls at the same time. Eye contact, vocal tone variety, pacing. There's a lot of things you have to keep in mind, right? Storytelling's super vague. What does being a great storyteller even mean? Right, sure, some people have great frameworks on it. I'm a big fan of Donald Miller's work. Sure, he's got StoryBrand, all that stuff, but like, it doesn't always apply copy paste. You can't just copy paste the story. Or are you watching Disney movies? Anyways, it's very confusing for someone who's a beginner.
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I would say the number one priority is work on your foundations. Okay. If you haven't like the range of word exercise and exercise, I recommend my most popular YouTube channel video, excuse me. The exercise is you pick a random word and you just present it. Like if you haven't done that a hundred times, don't even think about storytelling. Because if you do like this, once upon a time, there was like an eagle and this happened. Like if you got terrible technique.
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Who cares about your story? It's going to be shit. Yeah. I only teach storytelling to my clients when they've perfected technique. Like once I'm happy with everything, pacing, vocal tone, like I checked everything, body language. Once everything is right, then I give them the opportunity to learn. But until then I say, guys, it's not worth your time. You're not ready. It has a moment in the journey of you learning how to speak, where you can fit it, but it's not just something everybody must just dive into. It's like the last level, not the first one.
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Brandon, the master talk creator. Now tell us where to find you besides your master talk YouTube channel. Of course, it was such a pleasure to speak with you. What a great conversation. I really have fun with this, yeah. Likewise. For those of you who are interested in coaching, come to my free training. So I do a free training on effective communication over Zoom for a few weeks. It's live, it's facilitated by me. It's not a webinar, it's literally a live Zoom on coaching people on the spot for free. So if you want to register for that, it's rockstarcommunicator.
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Free training for how long Brandon? It's 90 minutes. Just one session is free. Oh, but we, oh, no, no, no, no. That's actually recurring free. So you can keep coming back to it. So we do it every three weeks. You're welcome as many times. That's our give back to the community. And obviously you have a different topics and different ideas on public speaking. So the free training is actually the same three topics every single time. But a lot of people come to the free training five, six times because they just want to digest it. Of course. Yeah. You're not going to get it all the first time.
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That's amazing. Rockstarcommunicator.com. That's for the free training. Your YouTube channel is MasterTalk. Anything else? That's it. If you want to be an exceptional communicator, not just at work, but in all spheres of your life, please find Brandon on rockstarcommunicator.com for those free trainings and always watch his YouTube channel, MasterTalk. Thank you so much, Brandon. This has been so much fun. Likewise. You asked a lot of great questions. Love that. My pleasure.
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Be insane or be the same.