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LATEST POSTS 📚

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

🎨 Inside Canva's Conversational & Agentic AI Era. An interview with Danny Wu, Head of AI Products at Canva.
🍒 The Perfect Onboarding In 7 Simple Steps. How to set your new members up for success from day one.
💪🏻 Metalab: The Agency That Helped Build the Internet. An interview with Luke Des Cotes, CEO at Metalab.

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• Simplify onboarding and reduce drop-off

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Learn how modern ACH helps drive up to 15% higher conversion and 40% fewer returns.

Every hiring pitch sounds the same: faster, smarter, cheaper, blah. I know, because I sat through most of them before deciding to just build the thing myself.

Athyna is smart hiring for teams that need the best talent now—not next quarter when the role’s gone cold. The difference is AI-assisted matching paired with proper human vetting, so you get people who fit the role and the team.

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HOUSEKEEPING 📨

Around a year ago, after a long stretch of being an extremely broke founder, I moved to having a little bit of free cash flow. Even more recently, say the last 3-6 months, I can finally say I’m doing well. With this change (having some money rather than none), I’ve all of a sudden pivoted hard into wanting to buy real-world assets.

I’m a firm believer that real estate won’t be the best bang-for-the-buck investment, but I hunger for the feeling of having a house paid off. I invest in a lot of funds, startups, etc., but with the world the way it is today, a quick WW3 could send them all to zero. I feel like real estate does give you that feeling of being quite unfuckwithable. A feeling I am motivated to get to before too long.

BUILDING IN PUBLIC 🔎

My Public Speaking Journey

An oration is defined as a ‘formal, dignified public speech given on a special occasion or about a serious topic.’ It often features an elevated style, careful planning, and a strong focus on persuasive or emotional appeal. Words, dear reader, are indeed power. Because of this, great orators have shaped public opinion across time.

Pericles, Cicero, and other names from antiquity come to mind. Frederick Douglass and Lincoln shaped thought through the emancipation of slaves in the U.S. Hitler and Churchill battled with words as much as with their militaries. Obama and even Trump, powerful orators, even if they wholly differ in style.

But that’s oration on the grandest scale. In the age of AI, speaking may be the last bastion of trust we have left. From the stage to the boardroom to the podcast studio, leaders need to command the room, whether it’s their team, investors, or the market.

A bit of backstory

For as long as I can remember, my relationship with public speaking has been tricky. I’m the guy that gets told—not asked—that I am MC of this wedding, or that event. At one of said weddings, I had to play the part of not only MC but also best man.

This is a great honor, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t come easily to me. I had a moderate to severe TBI (traumatic brain injury) a decade or so ago, and fought a largely losing fight to anxiety ever since.

In the past I’ve also been host of podcasts, something I get told often—even as recently as last week—that I need to start doing again, because a) I’d be good at it, and b) I have the voice (face for radio?) for it. Whatever that means.

The podcasting element hurts because I honestly love podcasting, and conversation in general, but I refrain from podcasting because of the anxiety. I also get asked to guest on podcasts often, and I say no to 99% of them. For the 1% I do say yes to, I usually cancel at the last minute. I think the only podcast I’ve actually made it through was a podcast with Cake sometime in mid 2024.

Because I’m now in a position to speak more—podcasts, events, panels, etc.—I wanted to spend some time getting more comfortable. I started with Ultraspeaking, a course I do almost every week (for ~90 mins x 3) to address some of this anxiety.

Today, I’m going to fill you in on my own speaking journey, sharing what I’ve learned with Ultraspeaking, a platform I use to hone my craft, as well as insights I’ve gained along the way.

1/ Comfort is downstream of reps

Whatever your chosen sport is, now or in the past, think back to the first time you ever did it. Your first basketball shot; when you jumped on a horse for the first time; the first time you tried to snatch a barbell; you likely sucked at it. Not only is it likely that you sucked at it, but you were also probably embarrassed to do it again.

The good news is that a 2014 Psychological Science study found that deliberate practice accounts for 26% of performance in games, 21% in music, and 18% in sports. What’s even more interesting is that education explained a paltry 4% of performance variance.

Famously, one of Ultraspeaking’s co-founders, Tristan de Montebello, went from total amateur to the World Championship of Public Speaking in about seven months. Tristan didn’t fluke this. He worked his butt off, doing rep after rep after painful rep.

2/ Memorizing = robot (in most cases)

Ultraspeaking says that "A script takes away the spontaneity from your speaking. It turns you into a performer rather than a conversationalist." Which is true. That is not to say that there is no room for memorization in a great speech. "Many of our best and most popular TED Talks have been memorized word for word," says Chris Anderson from TED. But for most of us, we don’t have months to hone our craft in preparation for a talk.

_{*See below my favorite TED talk in history. I actually had the chance to interview Kevin Briggs in his home in San Francisco, which was a huge honor.}

To overcome the burden of memorization, Ultraspeaking suggests using the Bow and Arrow technique, accompanied by their Accordion Method. For the Bow and Arrow, the arrow is your one core message, the bow is the stories and evidence that support it, and you prep by sharpening the arrow and filling the bow, never by memorizing.

The Accordion Method, on the other hand, rehearses the same talk at two minutes, then one minute, then 30 seconds, then 15. This is the compress, or the ‘squeeze’ of the accordion. When forced to compress your idea over and over, your brain is forced to pull out only the best parts of your story.

Accompany this with the expand side, or the ‘pull,’ if you will, by going back to your 30-second, followed by one minute and the two-minute versions. A few rounds of the accordion and you’ll find your brain learns to navigate the content live instead of reciting it after memorization.

Takeaway: It’s totally fine to memorize every word of a speech, but you’d better be certain you know it inside and out. For most of us, though, the best approach is to learn the core, practice and refine like an accordion, then go in there and wing it.

3/ Speak before you think

The next piece of advice might sound crazy, but you'll also want to speak before you think. I know, right? We have all been told to think before we speak. But that’s actually going to lead to more problems than you might imagine because, as per Ultraspeaking, “When you wait too long, doubt will creep in. So trust your gut and start speaking."

This can also be backed up by the data. The original study on choking under pressure in 2001 showed that overthinking a well-learned action or decision disrupts fluent execution and degrades performance under pressure. A real-world example is that expert golfers putt worse the moment you make them think about the mechanics of their stroke.

It sounds insane, but it works. Ultraspeaking train it with games like Conviction Prompts and Rapid Fire, where you're forced to start talking before your inner critic boots up. Their tactic for it: start a sentence with a prompt (‘What I want you to remember is...’) and, in their words, "your brain will help you out by naturally filling in the blank." Which leads nicely into my next takeaway.

4/ Summarize often

If you speak before you think, you may suffer from a similar issue to mine: rambling. You can often be brought off track during a semi-impromptu speech. I will often start a speech about company culture and end up talking about the history of the Stark kings of old, but summarizing can help get you back on track.

An example is: every 60 seconds or so, try to pull yourself back to the core of the message (the arrow) with a summary prompt. ‘I guess what I am trying to say is…’ If it sounds repetitive, it’s not, and the audience won’t actually even notice. Here are a few examples…

These are but a few of the options you have at your disposal. The bonus of using these summary prompts is that they not only allow you to take a breath and get back on track, but they do the same for the audience. Most people remember the opening and closing of a speech; this gives them more to hold on to throughout the messy middle.

5/ Always look up

This next point is somewhat obvious, but important: never look down. Looking down gives the impression of defeat; your audience feels that. Conversely, what do superheroes do? They stand in a power pose, with their chest out and chin up.

The trick here is to take a pause. When we lack confidence, which is very natural when speaking in front of others, we tend to avert our gaze towards the ground to buy time, falling back on filler words like uh, ahh, and the like. The baller move here is to do the opposite.

When you feel like you need to buy time, or have forgotten your train of thought, simply stop speaking, look up, and pause. Pausing signals to the audience that you aren’t in a rush and makes you look like a deep thinker.

_{*See below: Elon Musk pausing for somewhere between nine and 12 seconds after being asked a difficult question.}

Striking a slightly up and to the right gaze, even when internally having a panic attack, will allow you the time to gather your thoughts, and if you're lucky, it may even add a sense of anticipation for what you are about to say next.

6/ Land the plane with confidence

My final learning to share today is the one I have struggled with most during my studies at Ultraspeaking: the skill of ending strong. One trick is to employ both of the previous tricks, pausing and summarizing when coming in to land, but more so than that, you just need to act like you did land it no matter if you did or didn’t. Fake it ‘til you make it, homie.

Uptalk, or the intonation used when proposing a question, is good for signaling you are willing to work with others; not so good for signaling strength. Downtalk, the sound you should use when closing out a passage or phrase, tells the listener you are confident in your closing statement.

Doubt creeps in toward the end of speaking. Pay it no mind. The stronger you can land the plane, and the better you can keep a poker face, the more positively the whole endeavor lands. This is where practice makes perfect.

A final shout out

This whole piece is not designed to be a Krispy Kreme level of glazing for the team at Ultraspeaking. It’s really not. But I am a man who likes to give credit where credit is due, and I actually love this product. I am on my fourth course with them, with no plans to slow down.

Summary (we are all orators)

If you want to succeed in this world, there is a very high chance you need to have at least a little orator in you. You need to wield your words like a sword to be able to build trust and persuade people to your side; be that investors, employees, constituents, or community members.

_{*Note: My personal favorite speech of all time is Aragorn at the Black Gate of Mordor. I’d ride into that battle.}

Speaking, and by way of it, your ability to change minds, is the whole shooting match. And as AI sloppifies every other medium, it’s only going to get more important from here.

Fun facts

• People can hear you smile: Smiling changes the shape of your vocal tract, so listeners catch it down a phone line, no video needed.

• The original ultra-speaker had a stutter: Demosthenes trained by talking with pebbles in his mouth and shouting over the waves. Weird reps, world-class results.

• Warren Buffett's favorite diploma isn't academic: He keeps his Dale Carnegie public speaking certificate on his office wall, not his Columbia degree. Terror, reframed.

• ‘Um’ is universal: Every language has its own filler sound; French has ‘euh,’ Japanese has ‘eto.’ They aren't mistakes; they help listeners keep up.

• Speaking is feared more than death: That line traces back to a 1973 survey and is actually a myth. The real number: about a quarter of people fear public speaking.

Extra reading

• The Ultimate Founder Mental Health Stack - August, 2024

• Open Sourcing My Content Diet - October, 2024

• How (This & Other) Newsletters Make Money - November, 2024

And that's it! You can follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, and also don’t forget to check out Athyna while you’re at it.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

TWEETS OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE RECOMMEND 🛠️

Every week, we highlight tools we like and those we actually use inside our business and give them an honest review. Today, we are highlighting BILL—Your AI-powered financial operations platform.

See the full set of tools we use inside Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

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