Key insights from the conversation

Overcoming the Waiting Game

• Stop waiting to feel "ready": The biggest challenge people face is waiting too long to start sharing their story or speaking publicly

• Confidence comes after action, not before: You build confidence by doing the scary thing first, then telling yourself the right story about your capabilities

• The "ready" myth: You never feel ready before your first attempt - readiness comes from doing it and realizing you were capable all along

The Power of Storytelling

• Everyone's story matters: You don't need to be a famous speaker to have a valuable story worth sharing

• Stories are selfless acts: Sharing your journey helps others who are a few steps behind you learn from your experiences

• We are the stories we tell ourselves: The narrative you create about your life and talents becomes your reality

Mastering Virtual vs. In-Person Communication

• Energy amplification: Whether online or in-person, you need to be "yourself plus one" - 110-120% of your normal energy level

• Camera presence techniques: Show your hands on camera to build psychological trust, use intentional gestures, and avoid the "poker face"

• Creating connection without audience: Use conversation warm-ups, place photos near your camera, or even talk to stuffed animals to maintain conversational energy

Body Language and Authenticity

• Coherence is key: Your facial expressions, gestures, and words must align to avoid creating audience confusion

• Men and emotional expression: Many senior leaders have been conditioned to hide emotions, creating disconnect with their audience

• Trust through transparency: Showing genuine expressions and emotions makes you more relatable and trustworthy

The Art of Meaningful Conversation

• Five levels of active listening: Move beyond superficial listening to truly being present and reading what's not being said

• The conversation dance: Share something from your experience, then ask a follow-up question - avoid interrogation mode

• Curiosity over knowledge: When you don't know about someone's field, ask what excites them most about their work

Handling Speaking Anxiety

• The filmmaker metaphor: Don't let the "writer" and "director" in your head interrupt the "actor" who needs to perform

• Present-moment awareness: Train yourself to be 100% present instead of second-guessing every word

• Acknowledge your saboteur: Notice the critical voice, acknowledge it, but don't let it take control during your performance

Humor and Human Connection

• Humor isn't about jokes: It's about not taking yourself too seriously and creating lighthearted moments

• From lecture to conversation: Humor transforms presentations from boring lectures into engaging conversations

• Know when to be serious: Balance lightheartedness with appropriate gravity when the situation demands it

Practical Voice and Presence Tips

• Vocal warm-ups: Use "mmm" sounds and vowel progressions to prepare your voice before important conversations

• Enunciation exercises: Practice tongue twisters to improve clarity and articulation

• Energy calibration: Find your optimal energy level (usually a 6-7 out of 10) rather than trying to be at maximum intensity

Building Authority Through Consistency

• Start before you feel ready: Begin sharing your expertise and story now, not after achieving more milestones

• Iteration over perfection: Record yourself, get feedback, and continuously improve rather than waiting for the perfect setup

• Community and practice: Regular practice with a supportive audience accelerates improvement more than solo preparation

Full transcript

Here is the full conversation transcript, edited for clarity and conciseness. Here’s also the link to the conversation on LinkedIn live.

Roberto: Okay. All right. I think we are live. Yeah, we already have four people connected. I want to thank you. Thank you Nausheen and hi again.

Nausheen: Thanks so much, Roberto.

Roberto: I also see people here in the chat.

Hi Edoardo. I especially want to thank you because I know this is such an important week for you. You just launched the Confidence Accelerator and, I understand, you slept a little less than usual today, I want to thank you not only for this, but also for the commitment and all the care that you put into this event and the preparation and this, it's a pleasure for me.

It's an honor and I've been following you since the beginning of 2024 I learned so much. From you just by listening and watching your videos and following your content. you are also part of the inspiration that made me make the decision of doing virtual communication workshop myself.

So thank you for that.

Nausheen: I love that. Thank you so much, Roberto. This was such an exciting opportunity for me as well, it's so funny how social media works where we've both been following each other and never started a conversation till like two weeks ago. I came across your illustrations years ago, because everyone started sharing them,They just, they exploded. And I was like, wow, this Roberto was really talented. And then life happened and we just never really connected. But we were following each other and just occurred to me a few weeks ago that we should actually speak to each other.

We should have a conversation. thank you. You're just such a lovely person and it's been great. I love doing the carousel with you that's posted. If you guys wanna check it out, it's posted on our accounts and now here we are doing this live.

Roberto: Yeah. And also thank you, to the people who's connected because, we're investing one hour of our time, which is never going to get back, so we have to make absolutely the most of that. And I'm curious, I want to ask the first question for you. what's your story?

Nausheen: Ooh, what's my story? You know, that annoying kid who would always get up in front of the entire family and recite the most boring poem ever. I used to be that annoying kid I've been in love with, speaking to an audience, being a voice that people listen to for as long as I can remember. It's actually linked to how I was an only adopted child, so I was the youngest in the family by far.

The closest cousin in age to me was 11 years older, and everyone else was older and older. So I was the person who no one listened to. I was the kid who had to sit in the corner and read her books, but. I found myself to be more and more of an extrovert. I wanted that interaction. I realized very early on that being on a stage gives you that power. People started listening to me, people hushed, and they were like, oh no, she's performing something. Let's listen to her. It was this magical power I had unlocked, and since that time, I've been in love with speaking to big audiences. one of the first jobs I ever had was a radio show host, and I was doing this radio show for the entire country of millions of people.

And then since then, I've just spoken on every single stage I could find not for money just because I had such deep passion for speaking and learning this craft. I became a filmmaker at one point. Left the corporate world. I was at Proctor and Gamble for many years doing communication skills, training among other things. Left that world. Became an entrepreneur for the first time. That was about 10 years ago. I was a filmmaker, but that wasn't my dream. My ex was into filmmaking and I said, why not? During that time, I remember the thing I enjoyed the most was directing and coaching people to be on camera.

And very often I found myself working with what we called non-professional talent, which is a nice way of saying people that aren't actors. CEOs, founders who were speaking on camera for the first time sharing their story. We would actually create these crowdfunding videos, for example, or these pitch videos for startup founders, and you put them in front of a camera and they would just become these pale robots. They lost all sense of personality. They just did not realize that they were not doing justice to the way that they were.

And that was the first time I realized, wow, this is not natural. It doesn't come naturally to people. a few years ago, I took all that passion for speaking on stages. All the experience I had with coaching CEOs to speak on camera. I was also an improviser. At one point, I was a trained improv coach. I took all of that and created a public speaking coaching system that I then used to coach entrepreneurs, execs. I've coached people now at Google, at Amazon, at IBM, at SAP, I've had the honor of coaching, a number of thought leaders and influencers like Lara Acosta Ruben Hassid, Jasmin Aliç it's my passion

it's the love that I have for being able to communicate to an audience and I just wanna keep sharing that.

Roberto: Yeah. And I hear from you this excitement of taking the best out of the people that they already have, and they then transform into this robot, as you said, on stage. I'm very curious because, by the way, I invite the people, who are already connected here Hi.

Hi, Amir. Hi Khi. Hi. Visit. I invite you to ask question to hin because we are going to, to interact. We're, we're having the conversation, but also we are going to check the chat. please ask whatever you want to hear from Na. Want to curious. And what I'm curious from, from your story is that looks like there is a value for everyone in, sharing the story.

How would you. Invite the people listening to share their story and what's the value for them, for the non-professionals, because we all are except you.

Nausheen: Very often people stay silent. because they feel that their story isn't worth sharing, I know because I thought about posting on LinkedIn for many years before I actually started. I kept thinking about it and I, I would always shy away thinking that I need to accomplish more things before I can build a personal brand or who would actually be interested in hearing about my story.

Turns out a lot of people. A lot of people wanna know what you've done, how you got to where you are. You don't need to be Simon Sinek or Alex Hormozi to share your story. You just have to be you. When you share your story, it's powerful because you are not keeping the lessons you've learned to yourself.

It's actually a selfless act because you're sharing with people, the hard life lessons that I've learned. Maybe this is gonna help someone. This is how I got from A to B. Maybe you wanna get to B and you're somewhere in the middle. This is how you can get there. This is one way may not be the only way, but let's say that you hear 10 different stories.

Now you have 10 different ways of getting to point B.

Roberto: Yeah.

Nausheen: You're richer after having heard that story.

Roberto: Absolutely. I think there are also two sides. There's one side is the beauty of seeing someone who is just a few steps ahead of you even if you say, oh no, not yet. I will do three more things before I share. Maybe there's someone who is just a little bit behind you in a sense of experience, and they be inspired by that.

And then I would add one thing, because you said it's a selfless act and I agree. And at the same time there is something very personal because when you share your story, you really, think that if you believe it or not. So you are clear about who you are and what you want because you're sharing that in public.

Nausheen: Yeah, this is so true. there was a point where, a wise friend told me that we are just stories we tell

ourselves. This was a time when I felt very low. I was actually talking about being a filmmaker. I was telling this friend, I just feel like such a failure.

I don't feel like a visionary. filmmakers are like Tarantino people that have vision and they bring it to life. what am I even doing with my life? They said, you have to think of the story you want to tell yourself about your life and your talent. the story I told myself was, I didn't tap into what I was really passionate about. that story is the real story. We make up these stories to tell ourselves and we start believing them. I have no talent for this. Yeah, maybe you don't, you have talent for this other thing.

Why aren't you looking at that? this is too scary. Yeah, it is scary. Is there gonna be a big return at the end of it? That's the story you should be telling yourself, this is gonna be worth it. That's the story. Stories are so powerful.

Roberto: Yeah, absolutely. And now that you say this, there is a question that I think connects with this, and which, I also want to ask the people, in the audience, what's the biggest challenge that you, are facing in public, speaking in, sharing your story?

I'm curious about your experience because you coach hundreds of people. What's the most common challenge in your view, of all these people that you met and coached?

Nausheen: I would say the number one challenge is waiting too long. Waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel confident, waiting till you have the perfect lighting, the perfect camera, the perfect system to create videos or waiting till you have the perfect speech or the perfect experience to showcase before you even pitch to an event to speak at. The waiting means you're essentially losing out on building your brand, building your reputation, building your authority in that entire time, and speaking opportunities come. A lot of my clients, before they started working with me, they would just say no, and they would come to me and say, I've just been saying no to these podcasts, to these events because I don't feel ready. The idea really is you don't feel ready. You neverfeel ready before your first You have to first do it and then realize. I guess I was ready after all. 'cause I did do it. And then of course you have to, you can't just stop there because I did a lot of, deep dive and research into what confidence really is.

One of my TEDx talkswas on what comes first, confidence or action. Because on the other end there is this myth that, okay, if you just do it, you'll build confidence. But that's not true. Doing it, doing the scary thing is one part of it, but that's only half of it. The other half is that story that we were talking about.

What do you tell yourself after you do the scary thing? Are you telling yourself that was just pure luck. it was a fluke. It's not gonna be the same next time. Or are you telling yourself, I did that was cool. That was me. That means I can do the next scary thing and the scary thing after that because I am capable. That's what really builds confidence.

Roberto: I love that. if you have the mindset of playing to win, you always win. Because if it goes well, I say, wow, I did it. Next time I will do it even better. And if it goes bad, you say, okay, I did it and next time it'll be even better I could overcome this and not make this mistake again.

I remember actually the first time that I did this kind of lives, it was terrifying. The moment that I play it live, let's go live, oh, well will it work? Will it work? Will it get hanged? So exactly like that. And then. It's so much resonate what you say because in the end I was like, wow, it was amazing.

the first live I did was with PJ Milani. If you don't follow it with the people who was not following is amazing creator and the first one was with him. And yeah, it was very crappy, the quality of the video. But we have so much fun.

Nausheen: Yeah. this is one of the hard lessons I learned from my filmmaking days. When you're on a film set, anything and everything that can go wrong will go wrong. And so it's about figuring out how do you deal with it in the moment. I was just speaking at London Tech Week a month ago, and my laptop wasn't connected to electricity, I forgot to plug in my charger.

And I realized this halfway through my presentation, when, you know how this screen just goes blank, it goes into power saving mode. So every few seconds I had to go and touch my computer physically. At one point, I didn't have a clicker. The clicker refused to work because Mac. so I was constantly going from where I was on stage, back to my laptop, tapping it, coming back, back to my laptop, tapping it, and I used it as an example in that workshop, because people were asking me, well, what do you do when things go wrong? And I was like, did you notice how many things went wrong? Did you still have a good time? And everyone was like, yeah, it was great. And I said it's about how you deal with the stuff going wrong.

Roberto: Yeah. And that's also the story that we tell ourselves. when something goes wrong, I see it's more human. No one wants to see a perfect robot on stage with everything figured out, perfect motion, synchronized with the music, this is not real on stage, and this is not real in our private meetings

So this is what it is. Yes. Thank you.

Nausheen: It is more important to be human now. More important than ever.

Roberto: Absolutely. And speaking of human, let's check if you have some question in the chat, because I see a lot of question, a lot of chat. So let, let go through from the beginning. Hi Jose. Question, most people are hesitant to initiate conversation or in some case they even try to do that.

They're stuck after initial starters. How to improve on that and move to toward being noticed. So it's how to start a conversation.

What would you say?

Nausheen: how to start a conversation

Roberto: I guess what Parker is saying is that, after the starters, how to have a meaningful conversation with someone and not just be stuck on the, okay, how are you doing?

Nausheen: How's blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So there are two strategies for this. One is becoming an excellent listener, and I really mean an excellent listener. I had a coach very early on, Mike Frank. I recommend following him 'cause he's a great presence and he taught me the five levels. There are apparently five levels of active listening. Very often we throw around the term active listening, but people don't actually know what that means. There is the superficial level, right, where you're going through the motion, but in your head you're like, what am I having for dinner? Whose email do I need to reply to? So that's a superficial level. There's another level where you learn to silence those other voices and you.

Learn to be a thousand percent present in the moment. That level is very intentional. You don't just get there by fluke. You get there because you train yourself to be an excellent listener. There's another level beyond that, where you're really present and you're listening. And the level beyond that is listening to what's not being said. Looking at body language expressions is someone constantly looking at the door. Of course, looking at the watch is a very simple thing.

People learn to notice. But looking at the door, if someone's looking at the door, that means they really need to go.

If someone is touching themselves a lot, this is a sign that not very comfortable. They're if they're just always fidgeting. So learning to understand signals like that, microexpressions like that, it really. Elevates the level of listening that you're at, how good you are at being tuned into the other person. ' cause this part prepares you for part two. 'cause I said there were two parts. The second part is learning how to ask and engage in meaningful ways and inserting yourself into the conversation. Have you been in those weird conversations where it's like an interrogation, Where someone's just like, Hey, Roberto, what do you do? Oh, okay. so how did you get there? okay. Are you married? How many children do you have? Oh, what does your wife do? And you're like, I did not sign up for a media interview.

What is happening? that is the person trying to get to know you without inserting themselves into the conversation in a meaningful way. It's not about taking over the conversation because that's the other extreme if someone just keeps talking about themselves, it's about figuring out, for example, if you're telling me about LinkedIn and I say, oh yeah, I'm on LinkedIn too.

That's something I started doing a few years ago. When did you start? I'm showing you. I listened to what you said.

I put a little bit of myself in there and then asked you a follow-up question this technique works every time with everything. Just think about what the person is saying. Think about something that you can connect with your life, your experience, your point of view, express that, and then ask a follow up question.

Roberto: That's beautiful. And I love how you blend not your own experience, the other person. So it's not, it's a dance. It is not okay, my turn, your turn, blah, blah, blah. And that would add one thing that even if you don't know anything, maybe we can find something that we are curious about. And so if we ask, what's the thing that excites you the most?

Any project you're very interested in, and then the person will automatically share because it's something that excites, him or her at that point. So even if you don't know anything, if it's genuinely interesting for you, you can ask follow up question. And this is not an interrogation, but it's more like it's a one way because they're the expert and you're listening.

So, usually I did this with very interesting people, and I say, wow, how many things I learned today? that was a great question and thank you for sharing this perspective. This is interesting. How do you help the people synchronize body and mining communication?

I think you, you mentioned something in the previous, question about probably the, the coherence between your, thought and your words and your body language. But can you expand a little bit on that?

Nausheen: Yes. Very often, especially when people are on one specific medium. Let's say you have someone used to talking in person, and they're not used to speaking on camera. They might forget body language. They might not know how to tap into their energy. Very often you see people just like this, and they're not using their hands.

They're just talking with their faces and look how less impactful this is and weird, right? Versus me just using my hands naturally. In fact, if you use your hands on camera, you're doing a lot of favors to yourself because showing your hands psychologically signals trust. It's weird. But there is actually a part of our brain that is tuned into that because at one point we were cavemen and we would meet new people.

And if someone had their hands behind their back and you couldn't see them, that meant they could be hiding something and they're gonna kill you. But if you meet a stranger and you can see their hands immediately, you feel like, oh, I can trust this person. They're not hiding anything.

So this simple act of actually using gestures on camera, builds that trust. Of course, in real life, people can see your hands. So this is specifically for camera, where you have to be very intentional about showing your hands and showing your gestures. And then something else that happens with clients very often is they have a poker face. And somehow I see this more in men, not saying that's always the case.

Roberto: They play more.

Nausheen: Men sometimes. people have told me. A lot of senior leaders have told me that as men, they have been trained to hide their feelings. It's literally a conditioning that they've gone through.

And that means not being expressive with their face. If you're not expressive with your face, there is that disconnect, between what you're saying and what your face is saying. And because we as humans pick up on body language that means you're creating dissonance for the audience. They're more distracted by that disconnection, then they're actually tuned into your message. So you're actually shooting yourself in the foot.

The best way to do it is to really be in coherence too. Very intentionally bring expressions and emotions into whatever you're saying. And there are always expressions and emotions to bring in.

Even in the driest of talks and the driest of industries, you will always have emotion because we are emotional people. You will have passion, curiosities, surprise. So it's always possible and it's absolutely something that you should be looking at.

Roberto: Absolutely. to what you said about, men not showing their emotion, I 100% agree. And actually this is something that I, I worked with my. My coach before being a coach myself. And even after that, because we never, and learning and yes, that's, and you make a disservice to yourself because people will not trust you if they cannot read, your emotion?

And then you mentioned another thing about the virtual and in person, now I'm curious, I want to ask you a follow up question of my own and what's the things that you would say change between in person and virtual what can be a suggestion for people to have better online meetings?

Because we had a lot of online meetings, especially after COVID, We are so used to that.

Nausheen: best way to think about it is what is the goal, and I will venture to say that the goal. In almost every single case, if not every case, is to connect with the audience. And this is true whether you are a startup founder doing a pitch for investors, whether you are a CEO talking in a boardroom, whether you are an entrepreneur, creating a video, doing a LinkedIn live in every single instance, the idea is to connect with your audience. So the goal remains the same regardless of whether you're speaking in person or online. then it's about, what are the differences? How do you connect with the audience in person? How do you connect with them online? And that's where the differences.

Personally, I feel that it's much easier and a lot of people that are used to doing in-person presentations seem to agree that it's easier reading the audience when they're right in front of you.

You can see who's engaged. Who's on their phone, who's nodding and smiling at you, who's frowning, who is leaving the room, and all of that gives you cues as the speaker, am I interesting? Am I engaging? Do I need to change gears? Do I need to engage them more, ask more questions. it's this exchange of energy between you and the audience that's there in person much easier. But sadly, a lot of people don't do that. They don't bother engaging, and that's a huge missed opportunity when it comes to speaking on camera. There isn't necessarily an audience in front of you, and a lot of people get phased by that. They lose energy, they lose that connection, especially when they can't see.

Roberto: Oh yeah.

Nausheen: And there are a number of ways to work around it. One, simply, if you're on a meeting, if you're on a webinar, if you have an audience and they're not turning on their cameras, it's perfectly fine to ask at the beginning, Hey, I just wanna see all of you. I wanna connect with you. Do you mind turning your cameras on? At least 50 to 60% of the people will turn their cameras on. So don't be shy of doing that as the speaker. if you're doing a presentation or a webinar, what if there's no audience? So a number of clients, have this challenge, where they come to me and say, Nausheen, I have to make videos, but there's no one there.

I cannot talk to myself. there are workarounds. It depends on what works for you. the idea is to experiment and iterate. The idea is how do you bring about that sense of human interaction without human interaction? One way is to have a conversation with someone right before you're recording.

So you're already in conversation mode.

For others, it's seeing a picture of someone, so a picture of a client or a friend or a partner, and just having that on top of your camera somewhere.

I've even had people tell me that they've rehearsed their talks with stuffed animals sitting on a couch looking at them, and that gives them an audience, All I can guarantee is something will work. Because the idea is you have to figure out what is that thing that's stopping you from bringing that energy and having that connection and then solve that problem.

Roberto: Oh wow. I love it. And I will do it by the way.

I have a lot of figurines. I will talk to Iron Man next time and see.

Nausheen: Yeah, that's great. Absolutely. So it's like putting yourself into one state of mind that you are in a conversation. yeah.

Roberto: And you can do it as many times as you want so you can experiment and see what works.

You try once, try talking to Iron Man, doesn't work. You try another thing. wow. Thank you so much.

One thing I would like to add. at least for me, not looking at myself. If I look at myself, it look like I'm talking to a mirror and it loses all the human, but I don't talk to myself in the mirror usually.

Nausheen: And also in the meetings, taking our first side view lets us be much more connected with the people. Yeah, that's a great one. This is actually exactly the reason why I tell people they shouldn't practice in a mirror. You know the age old advice, which I'm completely against. Just look into a mirror and practice your speech or talk. No, it doesn't work. It just makes you feel self-conscious.

Roberto: Now, I'm curious, what's the most common aha moment that you see in your coaching clients when they say, oh, wow, now I get it.

Nausheen: the amplification of themselves now. I always tell people this, and it seems very theoretical till they actually do it. When you're on stage, when you're on camera, anytime that you're talking to a group of people, you need to be yourself plus one.

You need to be yourself multiplied by x percent, whatever that is. So 110% of yourself, 120% of yourself. What that essentially means is let's look at what happens in the other 80% of your life when you're not on stage or 90% of your life when you're on the couch talking to your partner. When you're talking to your team, when you're having regular interactions with a friend, how are you showing up?

Hey, Robert. What's up? What's going on? Are we good? Yeah. All right. I wanna get some pizza. You see that the energy is lower, it's more relaxed, and that's totally fine. But when you're on stage or on camera, you are the energy floor and the energy ceiling for your audience, which means they're either gonna sink to your lack of energy or they're gonna try to match your energy. you have responsibility. You need to show up with 110% of yourself. So I'm not asking you to go and fake.

And that's the number one myth where people think, I don't wanna act, I don't wanna be inauthentic. That's not it at all. It's actually finding the kind of persona that you want to show multiplying it, multiplying your energy.

Very often I ask my clients, on a scale of one to 10, with one being the least energetic and 10 being the most energetic. Where are you? And typically they'll tell me, maybe like a four. And then I say, what does a six look like? I don't want you to be a 10. I don't want you to be Tony Robbins, where we're like, let's go.

Let's go. Everyone. That also turns people off, so don't be a 10, but be a six. Be a seven. Really bring more of yourself to the interaction and people will reciprocate.

Roberto: It's like turning up the volume. It's not faking something, it's something that you already have. I just put no machine at volume 6, 7, 8, or 10 if you want 10. And then you choose which volume you also want to put. It's not like I always have to be 10, as you said, but again, as you said before, not being monotone and changing.

So it may be with a moment you can be a 10 and then you can go down and guide the people with you in your talk and in the meeting. Thank you.

Let's check if we have some more question. I see here.

Nausheen: yes.

Roberto: I thank you. SI invite everyone who doesn't care about my story to ignore it. That's a spirit. Exactly. Tell your story and if you don't like it, you can ignore it. That's a beautiful point. And thank you for that because I want to introduce one thing which, because I also, appreciate a lot your style.

You use a lot of humour. what's the importance of humor in public speaking?

Nausheen: This is a great topic because it's very misunderstood. People think humor and they think knock, knock jokes. That's not it. I don't want any of my clients to become standup comedians unless that's what they want. Most of them don't want that. Humor is simply not taking yourself too seriously.

If you're taking yourself too seriously, you're putting too much pressure on yourself. You're not letting yourself be human. You're not relating to other people. You said at the beginning, no one wants to see a robot. We wanna see other people. And part of that is sometimes poking fun at yourself at the situation. Just making things lighthearted because. when you're delivering a talk or a presentation or doing a podcast, you don't wanna lecture people. No one wants to relive your, school days where you had these boring lecturers who just went on and on for hours and all you had to show at the end of that class was doodles.

That's boring. To start a conversation with people, it all goes back to that connection that you want with the audience. Humor is a great tool and it just means lightheartedness not taking yourself too seriously. And of course there's a time for seriousness.

You're talking to your board about how the profit margins are running thin. You don't wanna make a joke. There is a time and a place if you're. Creating an atmosphere of fun for, let's say, new hires and you're onboarding them. Yeah. Maybe that's a great time to insert humor. Of course, we're a serious company.

We wanna show you the rules and all that, but here's something fun that you can do. For example, just adding in that lightheartedness elevates the entire interaction from a lecture to a conversation.

Roberto: Yeah, absolutely. And also I would add that the speaker has more fun if you like this, because we also want to have fun. We don't want to listen to a lecture and I would also add that we don't want to give a lecture because for that you have chat GPT, you ask and you put the voice now with notebook M or whatever, and you put the podcast, and I say generate a postcard between Roberto and Nausheen talking about how to be from invisible to influential and will be great, but that will be zero human and not fun.

Thank you Nausheen. And thank you for bringing up this. Let's see if you have. More question.

Yeah, don't use the mirror. Exactly. There is a question from here I usually zone out when speaking publicly. Somehow the expression of people catch my eye and I start thinking what they're thinking. They forget my parting stage. Oh, that's a great question and thank you for sharing that because I'm sure that more than one people in the audience, and even myself and amid, I've been through that.

So what's your take on this?

Nausheen: You have to develop a way to be a thousand percent present in the moment. We don't work like that in our regular conversations. When you're talking to someone, when you're in a meeting, you're thinking about all those things that we talked about. Your brain is just going into overdrive and multi-processing.

Well, guess what? Research has shown multi-processing. just doesn't work. Multitasking is not a thing. Your brain just becomes more and more frazzled, more and more broken up into pieces. It is entirely possible to develop that sense of intentionally being all there, really all there silencing the other voices. I actually use a filmmaking metaphor here. Imagine that you're on a film set and you have the actor, you have the writer who's written the script, and you have the director The actor needs to act, right? But imagine that the writer keeps running up to the actor and says, no, no, no. say this instead.

Oh, no, no, no. I rewrote. Change this. And the director keeps yelling, cut. No, no, no. Do it again. Stop. Can the actor actually deliver a good performance?

No. That's what you're doing to your brain. The more that you are second guessing yourself and telling yourself, that was awful.

Say that differently. Ah, stop it. Just, oh, no, no, no. That's something else that I'm wanting to say. The more that you're rethinking, changing things around, you're just putting yourself under undue pressure. You're inviting the writer and the director to come to the camera, and you're not gonna make a film that way. the idea is the writer does their job. The way that your brain is articulating the thoughts, passes that on to the mouth, and then. Let it be. Let yourself be in the moment and trust that you've come up with the right things to say. They may not be the right things to say. Reflect on them afterwards. Be your director, but afterwards, watch yourself.

Look at where you can improve next time and what you did well, and that's the best way to improve every single time that you speak. Being a hundred percent present in the moment.

Roberto: Wow, that's beautiful. And this connects so well with one of my coaching training, which is the voice of the saboteur in which we personify our saboteur. We all have our saboteurs, I have my saboto, multiple saboto probably, and they come out when we stretch ourself a little bit. So you can also approve or give yourself credit, because when this voice of the saboteur, director or writer comes out, it's because you're doing something that stretches you.

So you can give yourself a kudos. I'm doing something hard. Something, to conquer the fear. So you can put yourself in the, okay, I'm doing this, I'm doing brave. And then one other thing will be, as you said, when you notice. And you train yourself to notice it gets easier because then you can say, okay, I hear this.

I will listen to you saboteur later. Now I'm going to do my speech and do whatever. But I hear you. I don't ignore you. So I would also add, don't ignore completely the saboteur. Don't try to shout them out, because if you do, then they shout until you hear them. So you notice. Okay, I saw here saboteur. Hello. Now I go to keep talking and then I will talk to you later.

Nausheen: Great question. Thank you. And let's see. Oh, that's great. We have a lot of questions Thank you so much. great questions.

Roberto: and also every question connects to the other one. Thank you so much for all these questions. I have a question from Eduardo.

How do you find your own voice and style, the energy level that's best for you, the style that works best for you, the pauses, the volume, et cetera? Beautiful question. Thank you.

Nausheen: I can be very cheeky here and say that's what a public speaking coach is for because it's true. That's exactly what I work with clients on. you can absolutely do this yourself, but if you have someone who a has experience, who knows what great speakers. Are like, and what tools they use. First is about learning the art. So I liken this very often to learning to paint. For example, when you go to art school, the first thing you do is learn what the masters can teach you. You don't just start doing things yourself unless you're a child prodigy.

But in general, you first learn the rules.

You learn what is abstract art, what is expressionism, surrealism, all the different types of art. You learn how to do them based on how the greats have done them. Then once you reach a certain level of competence, you start playing with things, you start breaking the rules, you start mixing things up. Pretty much the same as learning any craft if you learn how to cook, if you're learning how to play music, it's exactly the same with public speaking. First, learn the so-called rules. Now, public speaking as a craft, I would say is less regimented versus something like art or cooking.

But there are definitely tools that the best speakers in the world use. I have distilled this into my voice, energy, body language system. Different coaches, different trainers use different ways, but it's all essentially the same. How do you play with your voice? How are you showing up with your energy?

And how do you use your body language first, understanding what those tools mean? What does it mean to play with your voice? What does it mean to vary your pitch? When should you do that? Should you elongate your words? When should you shorten them? When should you go faster? When should you enunciate more?

When should you add pauses? Learning the rules and then figuring out, okay. How do I use them? What do I sound like when I am higher energy and talking faster and using more gestures and changing up the stories or adding more stories. What does that sound like? Does that sound like me? So that's all part of the process where you iterate, you record yourself, you go on podcasts, you get the reps in, and then you look at what are you doing well and what can you do better?

So that's essentially what you would get with public speaking coaching. And yes, you can replicate it yourself, but having that extra pair of eyes, just like a coach for athletes, a coach for high performers, that is absolutely essential. it really, really helps accelerate.

Roberto: Yeah, that's great. now that you said this is exactly what you do, I'm curious, and I'm sure many people are also curious about your confidence accelerator, which you just launched this week. Can you talk a little bit about that and why you're so excited about that now?

Nausheen: So this is an entire system that I've created after many months of research and iteration and having a lot of beta testers is an entire system that I've created to really boost your confidence through making sure that you're getting life coaching and feedback. So that's where the coach comes in, where you get that external point of view on how are you speaking, how are you showing up, what kind of stories are you telling or not telling? So there's the life coaching aspect. There is the aspect of a curriculum. So there is an entire course that I've created, and for those of you who may not know, I create courses regularly for LinkedIn learning. I actually did LinkedIn learning's first ever course on AI and public speaking. I can look that up on LinkedIn learning, but this course it beats all the other courses I've ever done.

It's 55 lessons and it takes you from building confidence to figuring out what works well in a presentation, to voice delivery, body language, improvisation, handling tricky questions, practicing all of these tools. there's a course component that you can learn by yourself, and then there's masterclasses that I, where I bring in guest experts and, and have you learn from them how to become a paid speaker, how to make sure that you are showing up with different kinds of stories from a storytelling coach.

I'm really excited about this. I'm hoping to also get Obama's ex speech writer,I had a conversation with him a few weeks ago. We recorded a podcast together and he's just the nicest person. we talked about how Obama developed confidence in his speeches and his way of showing up and speaking. And so there's a lot that we can learn from him. So there's, there's all these life master classes and of course the community aspect. in a way it's More interesting than my one-on-one coaching, which costs about 80 times more than the confidence accelerator. The one-on-one coaching is great for senior leaders, for CEOs who want customization, but there's no built-in audience.

Public speaking is about speaking to public, and so here we have a community. We have a built in audience that serves as a safe environment for anyone that wants to come and practice a talk improvisation practice.

The next webinar, the next podcast, the next interview they're gonna do, and that is this invaluable aspect that I'm building together I'm really working on building this culture of collaboration and support and curiosity within the confidence accelerator.

Roberto: Wow, thank you. I can definitely feel all the passion, that you have put into this. it looks like it's the concentrated version of everything that you learned so far and put it in the very compressed version. And also with this accountability and this community that's part of it.

So maybe we can drop the link in the chat, if you have it in hand.

Nausheen: sure. I can share that.

Cody is saying, I took your LinkedIn course. Valuable insights and tactical skills. Thank you. Now I'm curious, what would be your biggest challenge? depends on, are we talking business wise or authority wise?

Roberto: in this, that we're discussing until now, showing up and we talk about our own, voices of the saboteurs, and I also have that, what would be the thing that maybe sometime you say, okay, this can be a challenge and what we can learn from that also.

Nausheen: I think of my challenges as missions, I have very clear defined missions that I have for, for the business, for my personal brand. And they're, they're not super surprising. You wouldn't be surprised. So, for example, one of my missions is to publish a book next year. I have been writing it. Then I put it on pause and I need to get back to it. I'm developing what it really needs to be around, and something that's coming to the surface is this idea of. Turning yourself on of being that 110% and how do you create that mode for yourself and how do you figure out how to flip that switch?

Because the best speakers, can really flip that switch. just like actors, the person, going from the wings of the theater, from the backstage, right up to the stage, they just blossom, They assume that role. The best speakers do that.

Roberto: You can be talking to them one second, and then they go on stage and become this amplified version of themselves. They don't change, but they turn on a switch. So that's the mission on the book. Another mission is getting a PhD. I have a master's and the next step is a PhD. That was, one of my childhood dreams I've always been a nerd. That's good.

Nausheen: the time I was. the curiosity that you said. Yeah.

Maybe, I think when I was maybe 13 or something, I told myself like, I need to have a PhD one day. So that is a mission. I would love to be Dr. Chen one day. and it's absolutely gonna be in communication, in the psychology of communication. There is research that has been done on that, but not as much as you would think. There isn't as much research on, for example, how does poor communication affect your success in

Roberto: Oh.

Nausheen: How does showing up with more clarity improve morale for the business if you are in a position of power? There are so many links that we know exist. There isn't enough research as far as I know. So that's the next mission. And then a third mission is YouTube.

YouTube, that's gonna be a mission for 2026. I have not paid as much attention to YouTube as I should have because I've been really busy with LinkedIn. this year I worked a lot on Instagram and have grown there. Nothing compared to LinkedIn, but yeah, if you wanna, if you any, if you wanna check me out, there are videos on Instagram that I don't post on LinkedIn. So there is value in following me separately on Instagram, Instagram growth is slow and I'm constantly discovering new things about it. YouTube is the next challenge.

For 2026, it's something I cannot run away from anymore. a new platform, new algorithm, new ways to go down rabbit holes and obsess over things, but it's gotta be done.

I have those three missions.

Roberto: Thank you Nausheen for the transparency I love the reframe from challenge to mission. I also want to share my mission, which sounds a little bit weird. for me, the challenge is too many things at the same time, I see a lot of myself in what you said, I want to do the workshop, and now I'm doing the vibe coding so many interesting things that if you follow them all, you will go nowhere.

So the challenge, as you probably are doing now, you're focusing on one thing. And that's sometime when you're very excited about something, you want to do it all you say. Okay. Pause that time and then if it's so important, it will still be there in one year and then you decide, okay, this year is the year of whatever the PhD or the book, which by the way, I see people saying, put me on the waiting list for the book.

Thank you. I appreciate that a lot.

And time flies. We are almost in the end of the hour, so I want to check one more if you have some more question that we missed because, i, I also want to thank the people here, we have 48 people now connected. it's definitely, a great, sign that the, you gave a lot of value and Oh, that's great question, Javier.

what voice exercise can you do to prepare to speak to an audience? I would add in general, because maybe we think to speaking to an audience, we don't speak to an audience all the time, but we speak to people and we have meeting, we have important meeting and I probably think it's exactly the same.

You have to prepare to be your best, as you said, the volume that it's not like, okay. Hello.

Nausheen: Yeah.

Roberto: I'm curious to hear your view.

Nausheen: Yeah, you can actually do two different types of exercises. there are two that I can teach you. One is how to warm up the vocal cords. Very often, if you've been working all day, you haven't talked to anyone and you need to be on a meeting, the first thing you're gonna do is clear your throat or you might be coughing. All of that can damage your vocal cords. So warming up your voice. Very similar to how singers do it, you can use exactly the same vocal warmups, the simplest one is you just create an mmm sound and hold it for about 10 to 15 seconds. another version is you start with an and then you open it up into different vowel sounds. So it starts with a, hmm, Then o and e and the different vowels. that's a vocal warmup you can try. And there are thousands of others if you just go on YouTube and look up vocal warmups, the second type is, vocal exercises that work on your enunciation. one really easy way of doing that is using tongue twisters. You take a tongue twister, like I have a few here that I work with clients on all the time. for example, can I cook a proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee pot?

Can I cook a proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee pot? And you say it faster and faster. The idea is to still be able to hear all the words separately without them being like, and if you try that right before you need to speak, you are training your brain to enunciate better.

Enunciation is the difference between speaking like this where you're not really enunciating everything and you're just mumbling and speaking like this, where you're enunciating every single word. Those are two vocal exercises that you can try any day.

Roberto: Yeah, and I would add try tomorrow.

Nausheen: Yeah.

Roberto: you gave us so many ideas, so many things, and I invite the people to put them into practice starting from tomorrow. we're almost in the close. We could go for two hours. We could keep asking question probably but then of course, I have one last question for you, which would be, what would you like to see more and less in your world?

Nausheen: In my world, always less cynicism.

This is something I run away from as a person. I can't stand cynics. It just gives me the sense of hopelessness. I don't believe in a lot of things, So for me, I need to have hope in humanity.

I really cannot live in a world where I'm surrounded by people who say, ah, we're just doomed and everything's gonna end, and everyone is evil and everyone's out to get you.

I can't be around people like that. So cynicism and a general sense of negativity about the world, please, we can have less of that. more concern and genuineness. I believe that we are just trained and conditioned to be fake, which is really sad. Put on a brief smile. Fake interest in someone, even if you're not interested. Fake telling people, oh, it's nice when it's not nice, or it's going okay when it's not okay. Just the freedom to be more of yourself, which I know is very idealistic. Potentially if you're having a terrible day, you may not be able to just tell everyone about it because you're bringing everyone down or it's too personal.

But just feeling like you have the freedom to be yourself. If we can have more of that, that would be an amazing world.

Roberto: Yeah, I subscribe 100% to that. And I will also add that you are a living example of this genuineness especially during this hour because we all saw that. thank you for being how you are and for sharing with us all the things you have. Thank you.

Nausheen: Thank you so much, Roberto. This was one of the best conversations I've had in a long time, so thank you. for the energy that you brought and the curiosity, it's been lovely chatting with you. Every single interaction that we've had has been really great, so thank you.

Roberto: I will also extend this to the audience because there was amazing question, very good connection. I am sure many people are going to take things from tomorrow and that's the beauty of the impact

Nausheen: Thank you everyone.

Roberto: Bye-bye.

Nausheen: thanks. Bye.

Where to find Nausheen and her work

• LinkedIn

• Instagram

• the Confidence Accelerator