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Chapter 23. JOIN THE CALLS BEFORE YOUR BOSS The goal is to get the confidence going by speaking soon. Hey, so what's the hardest thing in your work that challenges your stutter, or that challenges your speaking because it's just a hard thing? "Probably client meetings trip me up. I'm still newer to the client meetings, the client-facing, and I have my boss there, so he talks for 95 percent of the meeting, but I still get a little shaken up." So here's my best advice, alright? Don, here's my best advice that I've never told you, because this is a new challenge. You gotta start the call. You gotta start your talking with the client before you sit down. The way that I know now is, I can't bring my confidence 50 minutes into the meeting, or 10 minutes in. I gotta start. When we walk in the room, I gotta say something. Here's what I learned from someone wise. No one gets mad if you throw them a question. So instead of a statement, if you have a question, it could be something super casual, spontaneous. A great thing is you can play off what they say. But the point is, before we sit down and start, I want to try to say something always. I want to joke. I want to use my voice. I'm building momentum for me. It really has nothing to do with speech. Speech becomes a byproduct. "Whenever I don't start off the meeting hot, with just a few words or a sentence or 2, and the meeting goes by, I just kind of shut down and get tired." Tell the truth. You're probably living in your head. That's my guess. So that means, as the meeting goes on, would you walk me through what's in your head? "Mainly, I haven't said anything yet. How am I going to... what am I going to say? Well, they're all virtual meetings. They're all through Teams." So here's my tip. Join the calls before your boss. Let me give you a trick of all tricks, my friend. It's not pretty, but it works. So the powerful person, the client, joins the call. I join 6 minutes early, 5 minutes early. Then when they join, you can start talking right as they first join, before they're ready. It's not super professional, but what it can do is take the pressure away from you. You want them to talk. You want to take the pressure away from you. So for example, as the guy gets settled, he's going to move his camera. You can be like, hey, you know, saw the rainstorm in Texas. If you know where they are, look up the weather and just say, man, it looks beautiful. It's just something to break the ice and get things flowing. But it's really a disguised question. You want them to talk. You want to take the pressure away from you. "No, I know. I mean, the question really doesn't have to matter. It's just to literally say words." Yeah, exactly. It's to get you talking, to get the confidence, to get you feeling great. My notes are about the guys personally. So here's what I'm doing, and I'm doing this for my speech. For all the calls I'm taking, my notes are about the guys personally. He went out west to a ranch. Great, I'm writing that down. Next time I talk to him, I'm going to bring that up. It gives you personalized things to ask about the next time, so you can start the call strong. Because the moment you talk to the client and it goes well, your confidence is high. Write down the kids' names. Next time you get a moment, maybe say, oh, you know, last time you mentioned your daughter. Your boss does it subconsciously. Look up all of your clients before the call. Look up for something newsworthy about them, and if you feel comfortable, bring it up in a nice way. Congratulations on the sale of your business. Again, it's all small talk. The goal is to get the confidence going by speaking soon. It was 7 town halls over 2 days. Same panel. Of course, I felt that before I had to do work calls with people around. I had already been good at speech, but now I'm like, f*ck, there's 7 people around in a small office, this f*cking sucks. There's no one who told me to play music to feel better. This is just what worked for me, because I was going across the country. I was scared. I was very nervous to have to talk to new colleagues. Flying across the country from Florida, and going to a big thing with a lot of people. Well, I had to feel better, because it was a lot. Let me give you a small example from my own life, back in the day. I was doing a panel at work. I worked for a company, we won't say who, and I was doing this process improvement. Then one day the COO says, hey, you 3 are gonna be presenting at the Town Hall next Thursday. So we had 4 days. But here was the sh*tter, my friends. It was not one. It was 7 town halls over 2 days. Same panel. Had to speak at them all, 7, and f*cking recorded, which I never knew. F*cking recorded. So long story short, of course I did well, but I was very nervous. I worked really hard in all my prep, because it was one thing to do it once, but to do it again? Here's where the emotional state comes in. Here's what I did. When the panel is done, there's 5 minutes between town halls. So I went to the bathroom most of the time, and I played my pump-up song. I did it in the midst of chaos. I did it for me. No one knew. So the point of that is that I took time for myself in my own big moments. To play with my emotional state.