Today I have the opportunity to bring you a special treat.  A guest post from my friend Rachel Youngson of UsePLR.com.  I have purchased her products and her training and she is amazing.    Thanks Rachel for the post

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The Shy Girls Tips for Public Speaking

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Hi There, my name is Rachel Youngson and I run UsePLR.com. I also run a Facebook group, do coaching calls, and hold weekly trainings for my community. As if this weren’t enough, I run a team to help me manage my products and I regularly take meetings when someone in my community needs me. Oh yes, and I should also mention that I am starting a podcast.

Wow, to see it all written out like that it sounds like I must be pretty darn confident in myself to accomplish it all doesn’t it? Honestly if I were to read this I would think that this lady has really got her stuff together. But honestly I don’t. I mean I do…but I don’t. I take my business really seriously and I love helping my community but owning who I was in this business took me a long time.

A Very Long Time

Things like reaching out to strangers, putting myself on camera, and coaching clients did not come easily or naturally for me. I wish it did, because I imagine I would be much further along in my business if I knew how to be confident with my voice from the start. But it is what it is and I am just thankful that I finally figured out how to be a voice for my business.

Be A Voice for YOUR business

My goal today is to help you be a voice for your business, and yourself, as well. But before I tell you what I did to get here I wanted to let you know a bit about my journey. People don’t know how to explain what I do for a living…and I don’t know how to explain it to them. On the surface it is as easy as ‘I have clients and I give them what they ask for’, but exactly how I go about that really depends on what is needed at that time. Because I didn’t know how to explain my business I was very shy about talking about my business. Even online I went by the name ‘Rachel Young’ when I was creating PLR and my Facebook page was a completely closed, completely personal page.

You see, I tried to keep my business and separate from who I was but the truth is that my business is part of who I am. And when my business coach pointed that out to me she asked me to do something that I was really nervous about…she asked me to use my legal name for my PLR site and broadcast who I was on Facebook. She said that she should be able to Google my name and see exactly who I am in business.

This terrified me. I thought people in my personal life would ask me questions…maybe even make comments on my social posts, I thought this would embarrass me in front of the audience. And because I went by a fake name on my PLR site I now had to get those audience members to connect with me and my real name (which I know doesn’t sound like much but it was to me).

Who I am Today

That person was a long way from who I am today. Today I proudly showcase all of my new products all through my social media. Today I show my face on camera multiple times a week and even lead meetings for entire groups of people. And believe it or not I am entirely comfortable with it.

So how did this transformation happen? How was I able to find my voice and help my business? Here are some of my tricks.

1. Do it on your terms. The more control you have of your speaking situation the more confident you will be. While I can easily jump on someone’s call and talk to their audience, I am much more confident when I schedule the meeting, I know what I want to say, and I am in my own Zoom room. When I lead a meeting I automatically have a bit more power than I do when I am not the meeting host, and that helps me to be more confident.
2. Find a buddy. The first time I ran a meeting I had NO idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to lead a meeting, how to get people into the meeting, how to share my screen, nothing. So the first meeting I spoke at was one that was hosted by someone I was JV’ing with at the time. She met with me before the meeting, we went over the technical stuff, and she helped me to know what to expect. During the meeting itself she handled all of the technical stuff and i was able to see how she was doing things. For the audience, they were none the wiser, they only knew we were both teaching and training on the meeting. But behind the scenes I was taking my cues from her and learning all I could. My second meeting was one that I hosted but had a guest on and then by the third meeting I was more than comfortable doing it all on my own.
3. Plan ahead. When I speak on my Power Hours I don’t make these elaborate Powerpoint slides to present but I do have topics to present, (unless we are doing a QnA). Before the meeting I will open a text file and make notes of everything that I want to talk about. I will also pull up any links that I want to share with the audience and take notes as the meeting is going on so that I can make show notes after the call. We also have a formula that my audience has grown accustomed to. The meeting starts with my intro, then we go into training, then questions, and we wrap up by sharing our wins. Because I know ahead of time what I am getting into for each call I am able to speak with more confidence to my audience.
4. Figure out your worst case scenario. This one took me a bit longer. For the longest time I was just plain afraid of doing certain things. For speaking, one of my biggest fears was that I would have someone ask me something that I couldn’t answer. Or even worse, that I would be speaking on something that my audience already knew everything about. This really held me back. So before I had to do something scary I started sitting down and thinking about what the absolute worst case scenario would be. And then I prepared for that scenario. Those ‘worst cases’ never happened but just being prepared for them seemed to make my confidence soar. For example, when I started doing my Power Hours I was really afraid of someone asking me something that I didn’t know the answer to. My plan for that was to get their email and let them know I would research their answer and get back to them. And it worked. I was able to get through those meetings, when I hit a bump I knew exactly what I was going to do, and my audience was more than happy that I was really going to bat for them instead of just dismissing their question.

There are my best tricks for public speaking, and they have totally changed the way that I do business. I hope they help you as well!

By the way, you can learn more about me at: UsePLR.com.

Rachel Youngson

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So you see folks, if Rachel can overcome all those problems to become a speaker, so can you.

Fran Watson

P.S.  You can pick up 100 Power Tips for Public Speaking by leaving a comment.

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