Tell me about your vision.
Well, my vision, it's bold, it's a bit audacious,
is that there is no great idea anywhere in the world
that goes unheard or unacted upon
because people who have that idea
don't have the public speaking skills
in order to champion it.
Tell me more about that.
Over the years, and I've had more than 20 years experience
now, I found that people who have great ideas,
often these ideas never make it out of their shower
or their cubicle or a discussion with friends.
And the world has some problems.
We can use every great idea we can possibly get our hands on.
And I was one of those people actually myself,
which is what led me to get into this work
is I had great ideas, let's be frank,
they were pretty good,
but public speaking wasn't my comfort zone.
So I would put them all down in writing
and proposals and emails and documents and newsflash,
not everybody likes to read long documents.
And what I was finding is people who would be prepared
to get up and champion their ideas by speaking,
whether that's at the water cooler,
in a boardroom or in a team discussion,
their ideas were more likely to get accepted,
even if the content of their ideas wasn't as good.
So I thought, okay, I sulked about it for a little bit.
And then I thought, I've got to do something about it
to teach myself how to do this well,
because I'm a screaming introvert,
so it did not come naturally.
So I looked into the neuroscience
and the neuro economics of decision-making
and what makes people go from just hearing something
to really listening and then caring and then acting.
In essence, getting whoever your target audience is
to say yes to whatever it is,
whether it's a promotion, a sales, distribution agreement,
legislative reform, it doesn't really matter,
the principles are the same.
And so I started applying all this knowledge to myself,
and then people around me started to say,
could you help me do that?
And so I realized that there was a real need for this.
And I've now coached over 100 TEDx speakers,
I've coached authors and writers,
and I've coached business leaders and founders
and entrepreneurs and scientists and researchers,
you name it, all across the globe.
And the one thing that they consistently have
is they are brilliant subject matter experts
at whatever they know about,
but they really can't champion their ideas
in a way that needs to really amplify their work.
And so, that's my vision, that's my mission,
is to make sure that people who have
these truly brilliant ideas aren't afraid
to get them out in the world
because they're afraid to speak,
or alternatively, when they get up and speak,
they really do their ideas justice.
Because one of the things I say all the time
is that a bad presentation is the place
where good ideas go to die.
Yeah, it could be very well true
if you can't explain your idea
and people don't understand what you're saying
or don't realize it very well, you wouldn't see interest.
It might change the world,
it might freaking cure cancer one day,
but if you can't explain it, it won't work out.
Yes, that's absolutely true.
And a lot of the people I work with,
across the broad range of fields,
but sometimes it's that people don't realize
the value of their ideas.
Sometimes people have a little bit of self-doubt
or imposter syndrome.
Maybe they have a brilliant idea
that's based on 20 years of working in an industry,
but they didn't get their high school,
so they don't appreciate the value of what they have.
And other times, I'm working with people
who have been die-hard researchers.
So they've been in a cubicle or a lab almost 24-seven
for sometimes upwards of a decade.
And so communication hasn't really been a key part
of what they've needed to do.
They've just been focused on getting the outcomes.
And now all of a sudden you turn around
and someone will say, okay, great,
now champion that to the world.
And instead it just sits in a thesis or a document
or a strategic plan or a business proposal
on a shelf gathering dust,
and it doesn't actually get acted upon.
And that to me is a huge loss,
not only to that person,
but to all of us as a society and potentially the world,
if we don't have the opportunity to evaluate that idea
and put it into action.
Yeah, wow.
Thank you for sharing that with me.
What would you say Juanita is how you got started on this?
What led you to what you do today?
Well, I was working in a multinational at the time.
Over my career, I've worked a lot in business.
I had got to the point where I was the Director
of Global Marketing and Market Development
for one of the 20 fastest growing biotech firms
based out of the US.
And I was just consistently finding that
I couldn't articulate ideas in meetings.
I was anxious about it.
I didn't know how to have my voice heard when it mattered.
And so that's when I started doing the research.
I'm like, there has to be a way to do this.
And there has to be a smart way.
So I wasn't interested in things like,
what do you do with your hands?
Or what do you do with your vocal modulation?
That to me seemed really superficial.
And the people who I saw speak that resonated with me
and persuaded me,
it wasn't based on those kind of, hello this.
It was people who made really persuasive arguments.
So I did the research.
I went and, I'm a bit of a nerd.
So I went and found every research paper
and every study I could find on
how does the human brain decide what to listen to?
And once you'd listened, then actually take action.
Because that's what I was interested in, neuroeconomics,
which is the study of neuroscience
as it relates to decision-making.
And so I just nerded out
and read everything I could get my hands on.
And then said, okay, here are some strategies
I should apply and I could try.
And I tried them on myself.
I've made myself my own guinea pig for years.
And I worked out what worked and what didn't.
And eventually I found a process
that could work for extroverts,
but it also worked for introverts like me.
And it works for people who have lots of speaking
or no speaking.
And at its basic core, it's about persuasion.
So I'm not the slightest bit interested really.
You wouldn't come to me if you just wanted to learn how
to give a great wedding toast.
I mean, that's not my kind of public speaking.
That's great and it has a purpose unto itself.
But my entire focus is on persuasive speaking.
So speaking for purpose.
Speaking when there's an objective at the end
and you want somebody in the audience,
or multiple somebody's,
whoever your target is to say yes to something.
And so I got into it to answer your question,
because I needed to.
I wanted to have my voice heard.
I had ideas I believed in.
And I recognized that if I wanted to champion them,
if I truly believed in those ideas,
then I had to suck it up and learn how to do this.
Because in the real world,
you have to be able to champion your ideas
and do them justice.
Yeah, wow, that's a great story.
Where would you say that now that you're here,
is where does this journey lead you?
Where do you think you're going with your vision?
Oh, that's a great question.
I think I see success every day
and the success of the people I work with.
Their success stories are the reason I do what I do.
So I will see, you know, TED is a great example.
I work with TEDx speakers.
I run TEDx Brisbane.
So I will work with Selecting Us speakers
and I'm working with them on the speech writing,
the script editing, and the actual speaker coaching
for months, the lead up to the event.
For us, you know, TEDx is better than Christmas.
And on that day, you'll see between 16 and 20 people
that you've worked with for months get up
and they will champion and explain their great idea
in a way that is its best possible shortest,
most succinct, most powerful, most persuasive form.
And I'll just be standing, you know,
in the side stage wings, just, you know,
so proud and so excited and so fulfilled that,
okay, I'm doing exactly what I should be doing in the world.
They're not my ideas, they're other people's ideas,
but my purpose, the thing I've been put on the planet to do,
if you believe in that type of thing,
is to help other people amplify their ideas
and champion them to the world.
And that's how I'm gonna make a difference.
The world is being made a better place
by these people's ideas, because they're amazing.
And I'm just helping them to get to the point
where the world knows about them.
Thank you for sharing that.
That's very powerful.
I have one more question for you for today
before we end today's segment.
And that question is,
what held you back all those years as leaders?
We wanna learn from our mistakes,
and we wanna learn from all the bad things
and good things we do.
But a smart person and a great leader
is who can learn from other people's mistakes.
So through your area of expertise,
what were some of the things that held you back
through your journey?
There were several.
So I think the first thing is that I thought the world
should work in the way that I wanted it to.
So I thought if I put a really compelling argument together
and I put it in my preferred medium or channel of writing,
then that should be good enough and everyone should read it,
rather than accepting this is how the world is
and I need to work out how to speak persuasively
and get over being an introvert.
So that was my biggest thing that held me back
the longest time, which was a ridiculous concept
that the world should change itself to my preferred mode.
I think the other things were the things I see commonly
in all of my speaking clients, which is self doubt
about whether or not I was good enough,
like who was I to get up and make these assertions.
And this is even, I still have those moments occasionally
and I've got three master's degrees
and 20 years of experience.
None of those things necessarily impact
how confident you feel about your ability to speak
to a room of your own.
Your ability to speak to a room of people.
I think I also, so self doubt is a big thing.
I think I'm a recovering perfectionist.
So for me, one of my biggest challenges is that I think
if it's not perfect, I don't wanna do it.
So I will delay and delay and delay
for fear of it not being perfect.
And one of the things that I've come to accept
and I teach my clients now is that
if you aim for 100% perfection in your speaking gigs,
you've failed before you even start
because you're not a robot, you're a human.
So if you wanna aim really, really high,
then the absolute top bar should be 80% perfection
and 20% authentic human moments.
So your 20% authentic human is the things
that my former judge yourself would have called mistakes,
but really just in the day, in modern times,
like now where people really care
about having an authentic connection
and an authentic relationship with a person
who's championing an idea,
that 20% authentic human moments where you forget a line
or you get a bit teary or you get choked up,
that can be where the magic is.
Don't be afraid, so afraid that you won't achieve perfection
that you don't start.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.