The best way to learn and master anything

Study and Copy

Is to obsessively STUDY and COPY your role models - the people you want to become.

This is how I learned public speaking:

• Watch hundreds of Ted Talk

• Identify that I love Simon Sinek’s style the most

• Watch every video of Simon Sinek that I can find on the Internet

• Read all of his 3 books

• Practice explaining Simon’s ideas to other people using HIS language and style (intonation, pace, body language, whiteboard…)

• Keep imitating while paying attention to what I don’t like

• Drop the features I didn’t enjoy copying

• All the while, be open to learning from other speakers.

Over 8 years of finessing my public speaking craft, I have taken influences from Simon Sinek, Matt Abrahams, Ingrid Byerly, Tim Urban, Kevin Hart, Trevor Noah, Sir Ken Robinson, and so many other public speakers on the Internet. Each of them taught me at least a thing or two. Some of them taught me a whole lot.

But here’s the thing, 17 million people watched Simon Sinek’s 2009 Ted talk, 22 million watched Ken Robinson’s, and 53 million people watched Tim Urban’s. Access to these resources is NOT what distinguishes me from so many people who watched the same videos but cannot figure out how to do public speaking.

What distinguishes me (and some top performers) from a lot of mediocre speakers,
is my obsession with STUDYING and IMITATING.

Of all the people who watched Tim Urban’s talk, how many RE-WATCH it more than 10 times, just to analyze the delivery of each punchline and draw an emotion graph of the talk, then 3 years later, try to imitate the same arc in their first Ted talk?

I would guess very very few. I did.

It is not your access to quality content that will limit you. Most quality content is already free on the Internet. And I’ll tell you this, more and more quality content will become free or close to free in the future.

What will limit you is the effort you’re willing to make to study and imitate the role models available to you. They are not bounded by your physical location. They are all over the Internet.

• Find them.

• Track their digital footprint.

• Study everything they have ever put out (books they’ve published, blogs they’ve written, podcasts they’ve been on…)

• Copy to Mastery.

• Your unique ideas and style will come out of that process.

“I have watched that video/ read that book/ listened to that podcast” barely means anything.

“I have re-watched that video, watched 10 other videos of that speaker, and wrote a 5-page breakdown of his style.” That means you’re on the right track to mastery.

What limits you isn’t access to content.
What limits you is your level of obsession with mastery.