Stop Copying Great Speakers. Do This Instead. (HOW TO BE YOURSELF)

Ever watch a great speaker and think, "I wish I could sound like that"? Here's the problem: copying great speakers makes you worse, not better.

In this episode, I break down Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech—not to teach you his style, but to reveal his process. The speech wasn't planned. It was a "rhetorical scrapbook" of material he'd been testing for years. When Mahalia Jackson yelled "Tell them about the dream, Martin," he had the mental library to improvise 4 minutes that changed history.

You'll learn:

• Why MLK's authority came from his context (and how to find yours)
• The "Stitch & Deliver" method for building your own speaking library
• How to prepare so you can improvise in high-stakes moments
• What to study from great speakers (and what to ignore)

Great communication isn't about being MLK. It's about being you with better tools.

Start your rhetorical scrapbook today.

Transcript

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0:00

Have you ever watched a great speaker, maybe in person or online and you thought to yourself, I really wish I could sound like that.

I really wish I could do what they did.

Well, this episode is for you because I've recognized a fiction, a lie, something that's hurting us, it's costing us rather than serving us.

0:17

And it's this belief that we won't be able to do what they just did.

This episode is going to share with you research backed tips that put together a system that I believe the best speakers use yet not many people talk about.

And it came to me this past week whenever I was doing a very deep dive over Martin Luther King.

0:34

And I'm just now to the point to where I feel like I can share it with you.

So this is going to be helpful.

I'm hoping for you to be able to share the core ideas that are central to you, rather than having to copy someone else.

All right, core concept number one.

0:52

Authority is contextual.

Many social scientists talk about status, which is the amount of respect or prestige you demand from other people.

Status is weird.

No matter where you go, there's always status hierarchies.

They're invisible, yet they're inevitable.

1:07

When you're on the basketball court, the best basketball player typically is at the top of the status hierarchy.

People talk to him more than they talk to the person who's the worst.

There's some exceptions.

When you go to the doctor's office, the doctors typically at the top of the status hierarchies.

You have the nurse, you have the assistants, you have the patient.

1:25

You could be at the top of one status hierarchy.

Then later in the day you're at the bottom of another status hierarchy.

Something that is a extra component in all of this is that us as individuals all have different things we bring to these hierarchies.

And it's very contextual.

1:41

And I'm going to give you an example of what I mean by this.

Martin Luther King Junior was born in Atlanta, GA, to a father who was a pastor, a grandfather who was a pastor, a great grandfather who was a pastor.

So growing up, he saw the power of the spoken word.

1:57

Ministry is one of the talking trades.

It relies on people's ability to wrap words around ideas, complex ideas about religion or faith.

It also requires people to be very cognizant and aware of interpersonal communication because being a pastor means you have to shepherd your flock.

2:14

You really have to care for your people.

That takes a lot of talking.

So growing up, he saw this, He was aware of this.

He was also aware of the power of the church, the power of relationships.

He was aware that God viewed people as no different than one another due to race, and also that they are made in the image of God, so they had an inherent value.

2:36

By the age of 18, he was licensed to preach and he already had an undergraduate degree.

By 22, he already had a divinity degree.

He already gone through seminary.

At 23, he meets his wife.

He's in PhD school or doctorate school for systematic theology in Boston.

2:54

He meets his wife in Boston 24.

Whenever he is one year away from getting his doctorate, he gets invited to lead a church in Montgomery, AL which is a historic Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL down the street.

3:10

Well, I guess not down the street, but on the other side of the country in Kansas the same year is Brown versus Board of Education, which was a flashpoint in the civil rights movement where all public schools were mandated to no longer be segregated.

You got to bring everybody together and there was backlash.

3:28

There was a lot of terrible things that were done around the country.

People got killed and it was a terrible moment, but it gave light to things happening in the world.

And Doctor King saw all of this.

And next year, the year he gets his doctorate in systematic theology down the street from him in Montgomery, AL, Rosa Parks says, no, I won't move to the back of the bus.

3:53

She then gets arrested and it starts a year nonviolent boycott to the Montgomery public bus system.

Guess who led that boycott?

Well, a really well known pastor down the street in Montgomery, AL who's known as a doctor 'cause he has a doctorate in systematic theology.

4:10

You guessed it, Doctor Martin Luther King leads this nonviolent protest. 2 years later he starts the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

He gets so big that he leaves his church because he doesn't have time to shepherd his flock.

Becomes an assistant pastor at his dad's church.

4:28

Starts traveling the country talking about all of the things he's seeing in his own unique way.

And ultimately he gets the invite to speak at the March for Justice August 1963, where he delivers his I Have a Dream speech.

4:45

OK, so why did I share that super long biography about Doctor Martin Luther King?

Well, I shared it to you to show you he's the only person who could have given the I Have a Dream speech.

If you really think about all of the context, everything he was exposed to, all of the experiences, that speech came from him.

5:03

It couldn't have come from anybody else.

It is a perfect, perfect example of how your authority, whenever it comes to speaking is contextual.

And he leaned into that context.

Your authority is based on the proximity to your experiences and your ability to talk about them, your ability to talk about the emotion that came through those experiences.

5:24

Another person I've seen a lot of lately is Zoran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City.

He was a rapper back in the day.

A lot of politicians, a lot of people who are like, oh, I'm going to do politics now, would try and hide that I was a rapper, right?

They'd be like, oh, I'm not taking you seriously.

5:40

But rapping gave him a prowess of the spoken word.

Rappers are really good at figuring out the spoken word.

They have to figure out how to make it work, how to cram it into a place where it more of likely wouldn't have been cramed into.

Like there's this funny video of Eminem rapping a whole bunch of different words with the word orange, right?

5:59

It's a, it's a feat, it's a skill.

So now whenever you watch Zoran Mamdani speak, you see this melody, you see this rhythm and it helps him clock for 30 minutes and crowds are still engaged because he can use this rhythm that he would use with rapping.

He's not wrapping the speech, but he has that skill.

6:16

So he's leaning into his context.

That's his competitive edge.

And all of you can do this, but many of us don't really recognize we're like, hey, I didn't lead a year long boycott against the Montgomery public bus system where I don't have a doctorate in systematic geology.

6:32

That's true.

Most of us don't, but we do have something that others don't.

We do have something that's unique to us.

There have been experiences that you've been exposed to, that you've gone through skills that you have that other people don't have, that you can lean into.

You can be closer to those experiences.

6:49

So a little bit later, I'll tell you a few of mine, but I actually wrote some of these down.

I'll give you a framework to do that core concept #2 the I Have a Dream speech was not planned.

No, it wasn't.

It is a rhetorical scrapbook.

It is essentially the greatest hits that Martin Luther King has.

7:08

Let me tell you what I mean by this.

So Martin Luther King was actually slated as the 16th speaker of 18 speakers for the March of Justice.

And guess what?

He gave the speech 1963.

7:23

But for years prior, he had been talking about dreams a lot.

He had been juxtaposing the American dream with what's actually happening.

And to use this dream concept as a great way to get his points across, I think it's really cool.

7:38

Like the dream principle is very key to him.

A lot of people tried to copy it after that.

I looked it up and some people say that he copied the I have a dream from somebody else, from a gospel singer.

And then he just kept working on it and working on it.

7:54

But in 1960, this is what's known.

This is what's in history.

There's got to be so many more than this.

And I've actually been very close to this.

If you listen.

In 1960, he spoke to the NAACP, where he gave a speech discussing the gap between the American dream and reality.

8:16

He said that the overt white supremacists have violated the dream and our federal government has also scarred the dream through its apathy and hypocrisy, hypocrisy, its betrayal of the cause of justice.

So he's talking about the dream multiple years before he gives the I Have a Dream speech.

8:35

In 1961.

He spoke of the civil rights movement dream of equality.

The American dream is yet unfulfilled in several national speeches and statements. 1962 he gives a speech in Rocky Mount, NC where he talks about.

8:53

He gives the identical I have a Dream refrain word for word in the I have a dream speech that everybody sees as the most iconic speech in public, the most iconic public address in American history in the 20th century.

9:09

He says word for word.

The main part everybody knows a year prior to this, so he's been workshopping this 1962 was also he went to Wake Forest, my grad school at Wake Chapel and he gave a speech where he used the same ending that he would use in his I have a dream speech.

9:30

He was the first black person invited to speak at Wake Chapel. 1963 before he gives his I have a dream speech, He speaks in Detroit before 25,000 people and he gives that exact same I have a dream refrain, and then he gives multiple points that he's ultimately going to reuse in his I have a dream speech.

9:58

All right, so what's my whole point with saying all this?

He didn't show up and make a whole new speech.

He just used his greatest hits.

He used his rhetorical scrapbook.

We all need to come up with a rhetorical scrapbook, and our ability to do that greatly hinges on our ability to think about our experiences, to think about stories we have key to us, to think about messages we want to get across.

10:24

I thought about different stories that are key to me.

One was, well, that's really true.

And dear to me right now is learning that my mom had cancer.

And it gives me insight about the pain and pressure that puts on a family, and also how hard it is for someone to talk about a cancer diagnosis and also how unexpected and how crippling and helpless that can feel.

10:45

That helps me connect with people.

It helps me talk about something differently.

I grew up in a family that had addiction, and that showed me what adversity looks like, and it showed me the power of recovery, which gives me principles and concepts and frames to think through.

11:03

My relationship with my brother was kind of rough and it made me upset about the state of mental health in our country and the criminal justice system and people going from the jail to the hospital to the mental psych ward to the streets back to the jail.

11:23

It made me feel like, hey, something needs to happen here and it brought me into groups and around places and gives me ways to talk about certain things.

I was ARA in college and I was required to be friends with people on my floor, many of which came from all around the world.

11:41

And that opened my eyes to a lot of different cultural practices.

It opened my eyes to the migrant, to the traveler, to how things are different.

That helps me, that gives me something to bring to the table.

I traveled a lot for work and I saw first hand the effects of loneliness, of being taken away from your community, of walking around a grocery store where families are shopping for their daily stuff.

12:05

And you've never been there in your life and you know you're about to go to a hotel room by yourself and ultimately try and feel good.

It's hard.

But those are just different experiences that I can think about, roll around and make it a part of my rhetorical scrapbook.

12:23

I can go to them.

This is what rappers do when they get invited to freestyle.

Yeah, sometimes they are freestyling, but most of the times they're giving you bits and pieces.

The I Have a Dream speech was Martin Luther King's greatest hits.

It was it was his bits.

So I want you to think about that, Build your library, test and refine these things, talk about them different places.

12:44

If you get responses to them, kind of note it down.

And then when a high stake moment comes up, rather than freaking out, just start stitching things together.

Stitch and deliver.

For concept #3 your ability to speak off the cuff to improv is greatly determined by how well you've prepared.

13:02

And I know that sounds paradoxical because most people think improvisational speaking is whenever you're speaking without a script, whenever you haven't prepared in the moment, you may not be sure of what you're saying, but since you've prepared, you have something to say.

What's the best example of this that I've been thinking about recently is the I Have a dream section.

13:22

In his speech he wasn't planning on saying rather he was only supposed to speak for 4 minutes.

His speech ended up being 17 minutes.

He broke the rules to give the speech he ended up giving.

While he was speaking, Mahalia Jackson, who was a gospel singer, a really well known gospel singer, told him tell them about the dream Martin because she was at a speech the year before where he used the I have a Dream speech word for word or the I have a dream refrain word for word.

13:54

He then goes to give you the I have a dream speech.

So here's what I want you to know.

Here's what I want to want you to take away from this.

You do not need to have a perfect script.

Rather, you need to have a library of different bits that you can stitch in.

14:11

One of the speech writers that helped Martin Luther King draft the I Have a Dream speech has a quote where he said Martin didn't know what he was going to talk about 12 hours before the speech because the March was consuming all of our thought getting the logistics down for this March.

He didn't know what he was going to say.

14:27

There are multiple drafts of this speech out there titled The Battle Against Normalcy or something like that.

Normalcy Never Again, and little of this ended up in the final draft.

Even so, what do you need to know?

14:43

You can speak improv if you've prepared and you're off time so that you're on time can be as good as it can be, so that you can have a library of tests and material and walk up and go boom.

Got it.

The stitch and deliver method.

14:59

This is key concept #4 we're wrapping it up together.

I want you to audit your authority.

So what does that mean?

That means going through what others have gone through, but what you've gone through that others haven't gone through.

That's a better way to say that.

15:15

I want you to walk through topics that you can speak on with first hand knowledge.

I want you to build your library, study the great speakers.

Don't try and copy everything they do, but extract the principles.

Here's a great principle for you.

The I have a dream refrain where he says I have a dream 8 different times.

15:32

The brilliance of that isn't the fact that he's having repetition, that he's saying the same thing over and over again.

That's not it.

He he uses an anaphara, which is repetition at the beginning of sentences.

I have a dream.

I have a dream, I have a dream.

There's an epiphora, which is repetition at the end of sentences.

15:50

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

When I was a child, I felt like a child.

I spoke like a child.

I reasoned like a child.

This repetition's helpful, but what's brilliant about his speech That I have a dream moment isn't the repetition, it's what comes in between the repetition.

16:05

It's the structure.

I have a dream.

Then he gives a mental image.

He always uses some narrative dense language.

For instance, I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of impression of oppression, will be transformed into an Oasis of Freedom and Justice.

16:27

So he always gives a mental image, and then he ends with a moral claim, a moral position, Freedom and Justice.

What's the next line?

What does it end with?

Content of their character.

What does the next line end with?

Join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

16:44

There's a moral frame at the end.

So that line, I have a dream.

The first one I gave a state.

Sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression.

That's actually Shakespearean.

It's inspired by a Shakespearean line.

I could tell you word for word, but I don't have it with me.

17:03

He had a lot of different sources and inspirations.

Go in and study the speeches, study the principles, study that structure the repetition, but don't try and copy performances.

This is where people get burnt.

They're like, oh, I'm going to be just like M, OK, yes, you can have repetition.

17:20

You can have concrete imagery, You can build things to a climax, but you won't be able to do what he did because only he can do that.

And guess what?

MLK wouldn't have been able to speak like you because only you can, if you truly learn, lean into your experiences in your competitive edge, and then you get to put together some type of rhetorical scrapbook.

17:42

Some people will take this more seriously than others.

Some people will literally write down stories.

The literally write down principles key to them.

Whenever they study speakers, they'll write down here's what I like, here's what they did that stuck with me, and then they can go back and they can look at it.

If this is helpful for you, I'd love for you to share it with someone who's preparing for a big talk or a speech or an interview.

18:03

Let them know that they have what it takes to be a influential, persuasive speaker if they can lean into their competitive edge, if they can lean into what it means to them.

And I also hope this helps you whenever you hear that next speaker that wows you, whenever you hear that next speaker that makes you go, Dang, I want to do what they just did.

18:23

Remember to like, subscribe.

Be sure to leave five stars no matter where you're listening to.

As always, life is better when you talk to people.

New episode next Tuesday.

I'll see you next time.