That’s right. It’s time for you to let the Star you really are shine, shine shine!

You are invited to the premiere of "Become the Star You Are" — a weekly, drop-in TeleClinic where you can get the tools and support you need to speak or perform in public with confidence, ease and your own kind of creative charisma.

THIS IS WHERE you get your questions answered and your concerns addressed.

To find out more and to register, go here.

Do you want to know how to engage with your audience and make an authentic connection?

Do you want to know why you sing better in your car than you do when you’re on stage?

Or maybe you just want to be able to tell a joke at a dinner party without feeling like a nervous wreck.

What’s up for you relative to speaking or performing in public? Well, that’s what we’ll work with during the call.

Oh, you can’t make the call at that time? No sweat. All the TeleClinics will be recorded for your listening pleasure, so register now and start shining!

This blog is teaching me more about fearless self-expresson than I thought it would.

I recently posted an extensive entry on MY RESPONSE to a newsletter I received from Lee Glickstein, a man I respect greatly, who is the founder and spark of Speaking Circles International.

I received some great comments on the entry arguing with me, which I loved, but I could also FEEL how hard it is to put one’s thoughts and feelings out there and have people just not like them. Especially people you respect and like!

Lee felt I had misquoted him. I noticed the fear rise up in me. Had I misquoted him? Had I really messed up? I went over my words and his words in a slight panic.

It’s no wonder we all keep our thoughts and ideas to ourselves.
It’s no wonder that so many of us are afraid to even open our mouths and speak to ANYONE much less to a group of people.

It really is hard to stand up and stand out and speak one’s heart and mind.
People don’t like it sometimes.
People will argue with you.
People may not like you, even though you really like them.

Yep, that’s all true. I’m really feeling that right now. And I’ll be honest with you. It doesn’t feel that good. It rubs up against that old need to be liked even if that means I have to shrink and shut up.

This fear of being rejected and thought ill of is at the core of people’s fear and anxiety of speaking in public. It runs deep. It keeps us small and scared. It constricts us in ways we aren’t even aware of until the pain becomes unbearable.

Maybe this is why I admire Dennis Rodman so much. He just doesn’t give a fig for what you may think of anything he does or says.

As another one of my teachers once said (by the way, Lee was one of my primary teachers in my quest to liberate people from the fear of full-out self-expression), “You can’t give a rip what anyone else thinks.” I wrote an article about this a while back. I’ll post it again.

To be honest with you, this experience has only encouraged me to speak out more.
As I feel this knee-jerk reaction of fear and “oh, no! They don’t like me!” rise up, I recognize it for what it is. A habit. An old way of thinking that has never served me or anyone else. And I have to smile and sing softly, “You’re not the boss of me now. You’re not the boss of me.”

Listen. The people who like you will like you. But even those people may not like everything you say or do. Can that be all right with you?

And there will be people who don’t like you no matter what you say or do.
That has to be all right with you, too. That is, if you want the joy and freedom of be free and fully self-expressed.

You gotta give it to Mark Victor Hansen. He knows how to put on a show.

As many of you know, I attended the “How to Build Your Mega Speaking Empire” in Los Angeles, CA, on November 4-6, created and hosted by Mark Victor Hansen. You know, the guy who wrote and made a mega-empire out of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book series. Mark’s Mega events (Mega Book Marketing, Mega Marketing, and Mega Speaking Empire) provide a platform for some diverse and exceptional experts in the field of marketing, multiple streams of income, and information marketing. And hypnosis. But more on that later.

I was excited to attend this event because I wanted to gather some gems for you on how to be the most amazing public speaker you can possibly be. But once I saw the line up of experts who would be presenting and what they would be talking about, I knew that I was going to get a lot of Mega Marketing without a lot of Mega Meaty Material. Luckily, I was wrong.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My mission with this very long post is to give you a review of the whole three days in a way that will give you a glimpse of each of the presenters (I missed two presenters due to information overload and a desperate need to hide away in my room to remember who I was) as well as some of the very fun people I met during lunch.

For example, Selena and Alberto Hoyos, whom I met and fell in love with immediately. They are an adorable couple who do life coaching through ballroom dance. And what amazing dancers they are. On the last day they got to dance on the conference stage and they were intoxicating, inspiring and passionate. Here are some photos.

Day One: November 4, 2005
8:20 am
I perused the 17 or so exhibitor tables that lined the lobby of the Grand Ballroom as I waited for the doors to the ballroom to open. These exhibitors were selling all kinds of information products, from “How to Write a Book in Five Days” to Conference Recording Services.

At 8:30 am, the doors to the Grand Ballroom were flung open and we were blasted loud, pulsing, pump-you-up music. You know, the kind they would play before a hockey game or some other beat-‘em-to-a-pulp event. The room was dimly lit except for the fifty yards of theatrical lighting that was hitting the stage with colored swirling lights and throwing fast moving spotlights throughout the room. On stage there was a huge, white, standing backdrop with the words “MEGA” on it.

Keep reading for a photo and the complete review.
Read more →

Here I am in L.A. at the Westin near the airport. My room is great. I have a view of Century Blvd. and just outside my window there is a big billboard displaying a huge photo of Kevin Bacon. He looks good.
The "Building Your Mega Speaking Empire" conference begins in full fiery force tomorrow morning, 9:00 am and it’s pretty much non-stop until 6:00 pm on Sunday, November 6. I just picked up my heavy binder of material and my name tag, which I have to wear to get in anywhere, and I’m looking through the program schedule.
It’s as I suspected. It’s all about money. The focus of this convention is how to make millions as a speaker, which is not a bad thing. I was just hoping there would be more on creating speeches or presentations that rock and roll, presentations that have people on their feet screaming and applauding and asking for more. I was hoping for creativity as well as millions of dollars.
The good news is that I will get to see these professionals, these Mega Speaking Empire professionals, do their thing, and they should really know how to do their million-dollar thing.
I’m looking forward to seeing Harv Eker, who wrote "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind" and gives workshops on the same subject. I heard him on a teleclass once, and he was wild! On Saturday, he’s speaking about Accelerated Learning Techniques: Secrets to Having Your Audience Learn Faster, Remember More, and have Ten Times the Fun.
My friend Victor tells me that Les Brown is great as well. He’s speaking on Saturday as well. His topic is "Step Into Your Greatness as a Platform Speaker: Effective Strategies That Impact Every Audience You Speak To. My mom would hate the grammer of that title.
Mark Victor Hansen, the Main Man, kicks off the morning sessions with Your Future as a Speaking Superstar: Building the 7 Pillars of Your Speaking Empire.
Oh, and there’s so much more. I’ll fill you in as it happens. But now, it’s time to order room service and watch a movie. Man, I love hotels!
Check back tomorrow for the First Day Review!

Last weekend was my nephew Peter’s wedding in Reno.
My husband and I drove up and over and stayed at the funky Atlantis Resort. Resort? That’s really stretching the meaning of the word. Hey, it’s a casino with decent rooms and a pretty cool elevator.
My sister-in-law, Peter’s mom, had asked me to sing a song at the rehearsal dinner. No problem! A little acapella tune for an intimate family gathering at her house.
Or so I thought.
We get to the rehearsal dinner and there’s 72 people there, most of whom I didn’t know at all. And I started thinking, "Oh, this will just be stupid if I get up and sing for all these people. It will feel too…odd." And I started talking myself out of the deal.
But my sister-in-law, Ann, whom I adore, was insistent. As I tried to tell her why it would be a bad idea, I could tell it meant a lot to her. So, I agreed. She introduced me, and I stood up on her back deck and sang "At Last" to my nephew and his soon-to-be wife, Ginean. I sang with all my heart.
In the middle of the song, Ginean started crying. Then I saw that Peter was crying! I was so surprised and taken off guard. When I finished, as I hugged them both, it was obvious that the song had touched them deeply, and I was blown out of my self-involved snit of "oh, I don’t know if I should…" and into the truth:
It’s not about me.
Here I was getting all snarly and resistant about singing because I thought the environment wasn’t right, that it would feel odd. To me! But it’s wasn’t about any of that. It was about Peter and Ginean. And Ann and her husband Tersh. I forgot that I was singing for them.
Then my husband told me how Ann and her husband Tersh had been crying, too. And so many people came up to me to tell me how THEY were crying. What I thought would be odd and uncomfortable ended up being a heart-opening moment for a lot of people.
It was such a sweet reminder that all too often we get so wrapped up in our performance being "right," in everything going just so, but that’s not where the juice is. That’s not what it’s all about. It’s about being with the people who are there and giving them what you got in that moment, with all your heart. It’s  about being real and available no matter what the circumstances, no matter what anyone else thinks, OR even what YOU think sometimes.
Thanks, Peter and Ginean, for the reminder. I needed that.