Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Yasir Khan: Speak Like a CEO, a Masterclass on Effective Public Speaking | Human Behavior | E321
Mon, 09 Dec 2024
As a child, Yasir Khan would run to the bathroom when it was his turn to give a presentation in class. To help break him out of his shell, his parents sent him to Canada, but the change of environment didn’t help. Desperately lonely, Yasir Googled, 'how do I make friends?' And that’s how he discovered Toastmasters. Although his first time in front of an audience was nerve-racking, he went back week after week, practicing public speaking. Eventually, he won a public speaking contest. Months later, he had done 40 workshops and had become a TEDx speaker. Today, he coaches some of the biggest CEOs in the world. In today’s episode, Yasir will break down the key skills for becoming a more effective speaker, from pacing and volume to storytelling and body language. In this episode, Hala and Yasir will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (03:17) From Hiding in the Bathroom to CEO Coach (04:52) Your Voice Is Your Brand (06:29) Yasir’s Journey to Overcoming Fear (13:26) Conquering Speaking Anxiety (14:56) Steps to Sharpen Your Speaking Skills (27:24) Secrets to Keeping Audiences Engaged (32:20) Quick Tips for Effective Speaking (33:15) How to Sound Confident and Credible (41:00) Mastering the Art of Storytelling (52:22) Effective Networking Through Speaking (54:42) Yasir’s Advice for Aspiring Speakers Yasir Khan is a powerhouse public speaking coach and the founder of Speak Like a CEO, known for his ability to help top executives communicate effectively. Originally from Pakistan, Yasir fought through severe social anxiety to become a TEDx speaker, keynote speaker, and social media sensation. He has been hired by top leaders at Google, Apple, and Deloitte, and has built a thriving following of over 1.2 million followers on TikTok. With programs like his 10-Day Speaking Course and membership-based Speaking Academy, Yasir empowers his clients to enhance their communication skills, helping them present with confidence. Resources Mentioned: Yasir’s TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/yasir_ali_khan_how_to_get_along_with_anyone Top Tools and Products of the Month: https://youngandprofiting.com/deals/ Sponsored By: Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Mint Mobile - To get a new 3-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com/profiting Found - Try Found for FREE at https://found.com/profiting Working Genius - Get 20% off the $25 Working Genius assessment at www.workinggenius.com/ with code PROFITING at checkout Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new All Show Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Human Behavior & Psychology Psychology, Mindset, Habits, Positivity, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Human Nature, Human Psychology, Critical Thinking, Robert Greene, Chris Voss, Robert Cialdini
Chapter 1: Why is effective public speaking important for entrepreneurs?
Today's episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb, Open Phone, Shopify, Mercury, Built, Indeed, and Microsoft Teams. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals.
When you open your mouth, that is your brand. Because what you say is what is reflected about your business. Emotion creates devotion. And storytelling, that's what makes people feel something.
How do you infuse storytelling to get people emotionally attached to you?
There are three R's to be remembered. The first R is... So if you constantly need to practice your public speaking just to feel good about yourself, that's not a public speaking issue. That's a self-esteem issue. For a lot of people, the fear doesn't come from the speaking itself. It's how they perceive themselves.
How can you tell if people are engaged or not?
If you want to transport people somewhere in your story, one of the most powerful words you can use is...
Yeah, fam, welcome back to the show. And today we are focused on public speaking. Now, communication, in my opinion, is the backbone of entrepreneurship. Whether you are on stage, in the boardroom, or simply on a Zoom meeting, you really got to know how to communicate if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. So joining us today to talk about this is Yasser Khan.
He's a public speaking coach with years of experience in helping individuals and organizations improve their ability to connect, persuade, and influence. Yasser Khan is the founder of Speak Like a CEO, and he's going to give us a masterclass on how to be a more effective speaker. We're going to learn about pacing, volume, storytelling, body language, and so much more. I can't wait to dive into it.
So without further delay, my conversation with Yasser Khan starts now. Yasser, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
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Chapter 2: How did Yasir Khan overcome his fear of public speaking?
Thank you. So Yasser, you are an expert on public speaking, and this show is all for entrepreneurs. And in today's age, a lot of our communication is written. So we're writing in text, we're writing in emails, we're writing in DMs. Why is verbal communication still so important, especially for business owners now?
Verbal communication is how you show up to the world. When you open your mouth, that is your brand. And you'll be shocked, Hala. In fact, you probably won't be shocked with the amount of people you talk to. How many people are not careful of the words that come out of their mouth? Because what you say is what is reflected about your business.
So if you knew that, wouldn't you be a lot more careful of what came out of your mouth, what you said, what you wrote? That's why just having that finesse on your words, making sure when you're on stage, people remember you, It's more important than it's ever been.
And aside from speaking on stage, because entrepreneurs, not all of us are really going to be on stage, but there's transferable skills when it comes to public speaking. Can you talk to us about that?
Yeah, the definition of public speaking isn't just being on stage. It's talking to someone at some time. If you are talking to someone, which I imagine if your listeners are listening, they're talking to people, right? Unless they're locked in a basement somewhere. You are going to do public speaking. And every single time you do that, you are representing yourself and your brand.
What do you want people to interpret about you? How do you want them to perceive you? How do you want them to perceive your company? All of that is public speaking. So you want to treat the stage as your entire life. Every single place you go, you're performing. So wouldn't you want to put up the best performance wherever you go? I think the answer is yes.
I was really surprised to find out because you come across very confident. I was very surprised to find out that as a child, even as a young adult, you were really introverted. You were really shy. You really struggled making connections and relationships. And it wasn't until your adulthood that you actually cracked the code when it came to public speaking.
So talk to us about how public speaking is not something you're necessarily born with and share your story about how you became a public speaker.
Yeah, I was the least likely person to become a public speaker. In fact, if you were in my classroom when I was in third grade, you would have seen me run to the bathroom right before my presentation and you wouldn't see me come back out. And that was the thing. People knew, hey, Yasser's turn, he's not going to show up. And I started failing. So it was really affecting my education.
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Chapter 3: What are the key elements of storytelling in public speaking?
Chapter 4: How can you keep your audience engaged during a presentation?
I came here to make... No, no, no, no. Public speaking, that's not my... I took the fastest U-turn you've ever seen in your life. But then before I could leave, the woman who was hosting the club, her name was Karen Knight, she saw me. And she said, hey, we've got a new guest. Come on up and introduce yourself. So there I am, new country. I don't know anyone.
And you would have seen me sweating, walking all the way to the front of the stage. To this day, I don't know what I said. I blurt out four words. I sat back down and I said, Yasmin, this is why you never leave the house. This is why you should just get yourself a PlayStation. And that's it. That's your personality.
But then Karen came back to the stage and she looked at me and said, Yasir, you're in a new country. You don't know anyone. This is the first time you've spoken in front of an audience. Congratulations. And then everyone started clapping. Now I'm new. So I'm thinking, is this a Canadian thing? I've heard these people are nice, but did they listen to what I said? Because that was pretty bad.
And afterwards, I'm still beating myself up over it. And I'm going to walk out the room, never coming back. And she just catches me right before I do. And she says, Yasser, are you coming back? And what do we say when we don't want to say yes? We also don't want to say no. We're always in the middle. I'll think about it. I'll let you know.
I'll check my horoscope, ask my grandma, check if the universe is perfectly aligned. So I said all those things. And she said, Yasser, when I was your age, I was the exact same. I was really afraid of public speaking, too. But if you come back next week, I think one step at a time, it might change your life. Now, I didn't have friends, Hala. So I said, okay, you're my only friend. I'll come back.
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Chapter 5: What are quick tips for speaking with confidence?
Why not? So I came back the week, the next week, the next week. And eventually she says, Yasser, you're making progress. You want to try out that public speaking contest? Contest? Are you trying to kill me here? I'm just here to make friends. And I won the contest. Wow. And that's where it clicked, Hala, that this is not my personality. It's a skill that I did not have.
Months later, I had done 40 workshops. I became a TEDx speaker. 10 years from that moment, now I'm coaching some of the biggest CEOs in the world. So how did all this happen? Complete accident.
And you just shared how awesome your storytelling capabilities are because I was thoroughly engaged in that story. So we're gonna pick your brain on that later on. So something I just wanted to talk about is the importance of somebody's voice, right? I am dating right now. And there's literally people where I'll hear their voice and I'm like, I just can't deal with that.
You know, their voice is not something I'm attracted to. So talk to us about how people can actually be attracted to one's voice.
This is a topic very personal to me, Hala, because a big reason why I got into public speaking was all the rejection that I got in my dating life. I still remember I went on this one date. And first of all, it was extremely hard for me to get a match at all on Tinder. It was just, I could not get. So when I finally got it, I was like, hey, she has two eyes and a mouth and ears. I'll take it.
So I showed up on the date. I'll never forget. She met me. She looked at me up and down and we sat down. Within the first two minutes, she looked at me and said... yeah, this is not really working. Listen, I'm just going to go.
Wow.
Can you imagine being lonely, not getting any validation and just being hit with that? I was just sitting there by myself the entire day, sinking in on just hating myself, loathing myself the entire time. And I couldn't figure out what it was. And after I got on a lot of the other days, they said, Some of the days I even asked for feedback, believe it or not.
I said, hey, out of curiosity, why don't you want to... Yasser, you sound like you're trying too hard. You sound way too eager. You talk too much. You're trying to impress me with your stories and it's just too much information too fast. Just slow it down a little bit. And when you were talking with the voice, sometimes what happens with people is they're so eager to impress that they talk a lot.
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Chapter 6: How does body language affect communication?
Chapter 7: What role does voice play in effective public speaking?
How can you tell if people are engaged or not?
If you want to transport people somewhere in your story, one of the most powerful words you can use is...
Yeah, fam, welcome back to the show. And today we are focused on public speaking. Now, communication, in my opinion, is the backbone of entrepreneurship. Whether you are on stage, in the boardroom, or simply on a Zoom meeting, you really got to know how to communicate if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. So joining us today to talk about this is Yasser Khan.
He's a public speaking coach with years of experience in helping individuals and organizations improve their ability to connect, persuade, and influence. Yasser Khan is the founder of Speak Like a CEO, and he's going to give us a masterclass on how to be a more effective speaker. We're going to learn about pacing, volume, storytelling, body language, and so much more. I can't wait to dive into it.
So without further delay, my conversation with Yasser Khan starts now. Yasser, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
I'm really excited to be here, Hala. And you might not know how I met you the first time or how I found out about you. It wasn't about LinkedIn. I was looking up how to start a podcast and I stumbled on a speech of yours from MIT from years ago. And I thought it was going to be about how to start a podcast, but it ended up being about your personal story. I watched the entire hour of it.
Oh my God.
And then I found you on LinkedIn. And I still remember you had a quote in there. You said something like, At the time, I wasn't young and profiting. I was young and pissed. And it just made me laugh in the moment. And there was a connection I felt. That's why I went and looked you up on LinkedIn. So it's a pleasure to be here.
Oh, wow. What a compliment. I mean, from somebody who's such a great public speaker, the fact that you listened to a whole hour of my speech, that's amazing. That was one of my first speaking things that I ever really did in front of a lot of people.
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Chapter 8: How can you turn public speaking into a skill rather than an innate talent?
That's all you charge? She was skeptical of me because of my price. I have never in my life heard that. After we worked together, she said, Yasir, I would have paid you $25,000 for the work we did together. What the heck are you doing? I said, listen, I'm a public speaking coach. There's a million of them out there. Why would you pay me 25 grand? She said, you know what made my brand successful?
I have the only full body deodorant in the world. Everyone else has just the deodorant for the armpits. The reason my brand was successful is because I wasn't trying to be better. I was trying to be different. So Yasser, be better at being different. Be better at being different. That's why I went to working just with CEOs. I bought the domain Speak Like a CEO. All of my clients are just CEOs.
That's how I profited in life. So be better at being different.
Yeah, so you dropped so many gems. I feel like everyone learned so much. Thank you for your time today. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
Speaklikeaceo.com. And if you want to find me on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, it's speakingwithyasa.
Amazing. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Well, Yap Gang, I hope you gained some valuable insights into the art of public speaking from my guest today, Yasir Khan. Like he said, verbal communication is literally how you show up to the world. The words that come out of your mouth reflect on you and your brand every day and can have a profound impact on your success.
Yasser shared some great practical strategies that can transform not just only how you communicate, but also how you connect with your audience, whether that's in a boardroom or on a stage. Here were some of my favorite pointers. First, varying your volume and pace is essential for capturing and maintaining your audience's attention.
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