Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens and I'm Jan Black. Most of us would love to be great public speakers, right? And most of us have read or heard advice about ways in which we can improve our

public speaking skills. So much of it sounds the same. But our guest on this episode, Michael

Gelb, has thoughts about public speaking that are very refreshingly different than what you may have

heard before. Michael is an executive coach who's worked with companies like Nike, Microsoft, Merck,

and DuPont over the past 40 years, giving presentations on creativity, innovation, and leadership.

He's written many books, including the international bestseller, How to Think Like Leonardo

DeVinci. His latest book is called Mastering the Art of Public Speaking,

Eight Secrets to Transform Fear and Supercharge Your Career. Michael, thank you so much for joining us.

It's wonderful to be with you. Thank you.

You say that most presentations are boring and ineffective. Why is that?

Sorry for laughing, but really, they are boring and they're ineffective.

And the main reason is it's the number one fear of the public.

The classic book of lists ranks public speaking as the number one fear.

Death is seventh on the list.

So in other words, most people would rather be dead and buried than have to give the speech. But if we put it to them that way, they'd probably be willing to get up to the front of the room.

Yeah, really. And you say that 74% of Americans suffer from glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, which is just such a huge number. Do most of those people just get

the typical butterflies? Or do they truly feel just paralyzed by fear? And are they amongst those

people that you say would rather be dead than have to speak? That's a great question because there's

some people who really are paralyzed and would rather die than have to speak. But for most people, it's just something, as you say, it's butterflies.

And we get the butterflies to fly in formation.

And the secret is to focus on making your presentation creative, entertaining, enjoyable, fun,

rather than doing what most people do.

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