Austin Iuliano On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Regret & fear. Regret for all the people in the world who haven’t heard my message yet. Fear that I’ll die one day not being able to create the most change that is possible. My main message is that anyone can with applied effort, focus, and tenacity create a better life for themselves.
At some point in our lives, many of us will have to give a talk to a large group of people. What does it take to be a highly effective public speaker? How can you improve your public speaking skills? How can you overcome a fear of speaking in public? What does it take to give a very interesting and engaging public talk? In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker” we are talking to successful and effective public speakers to share insights and stories from their experience. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Austin Iuliano.
Austin Iuliano is a revolutionary marketing expert who went from homeless to being seen on Forbes, Business Insider, Influencive, and Social Media Today for his unique social media expertise.
Austin helps public figures build their personal brands using his unique methodology of personal branding and social media marketing disruption.
Austin knows what it takes to disrupt the marketplace and generate attention. Austin has live-streamed to an extended audience of over 1 million followers with over 30,000 concurrent viewers. Austin has created viral content on almost all social media platforms and even before social media was big. Austin hit the front page of his local paper snowboarding down a mountain in nothing but a leopard printed thong when he was 18.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
Growing up in upstate New York, there wasn’t much to do. As a scrawny insecure kid, I was picked on relentlessly to the point where I almost committed suicide. I was standing in my bathroom with a knife to my chest ready to take the plunge and decided to try something different first. I decided that despite how much I hated myself, I was going to “lie” to myself until the lie became true. Every morning, and every night I would repeat to myself the same phrase. “You are handsome, you are confident, everyone loves you.” It took years but eventually, this lie became my truth.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
I never expected to be a public speaker. Instead, I focused my efforts on creating social media content and learning everything I could about building a business online. But like many others who’ve followed this path, I had massive failures. I lost everything and with no money, opportunities, or prospects I decided to drive down to NYC to invoke “Santra’s Law” If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. While I was in New York City, I jumped into a new social media platform called Live Streaming and my first live stream had over 3000 people watching me. This fundamentally changed the way I was approaching social media and life. Leading me to where I am today.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I’ve always been on the cutting edge of social media, it’s a fundamental truth that being early on new platforms helps you gain massive exposure. Before Tiktok acquired musical.ly I jumped on that platform and started making content. Seeing that the far majority of the content creators were young kids, and I was a relatively old man, I decided to do something a bit different. I dressed up in a giant purple unicorn costume and started dancing around to music while live streaming, just to have a bit of fun. This went viral, like crazy viral and I had over 35,000 people watching me and talking to me. With any massive audience like that, you’ll get a lot of trolls and haters. Knowing that the majority of these negative comments were coming from young kids, I decided to kill them with kindness.
Teaching that those who say mean things online are saying it because they are hurting and don’t know how to express their feelings. Using the metaphor that all the water in the ocean can’t sink a ship if the water is on the outside of the ship, I started teaching these kids how to be more mentally resilient.
As this trend continued I received hundreds of messages from kids saying how they didn’t kill themselves because of what I taught. Everything I’ve ever accomplished in life is meaningless to those few messages.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I’ve made so many mistakes in my life it’s not even funny. But the master has failed more times than the apprentice has even tried. Most of my mistakes come in the form of trying to “growth hack” my way to success. Getting caught up in the metrics and seeing how I can grow faster. From printing out hundreds of Snapchat QR codes and handing out free stickers to get more people to join my tribe, to trying all the latest trends and tricks.
What I’ve learned from all of them is that the most important thing to focus on is the content you are creating and the community you are building. Nothing is a better growth mechanism than those two things.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Two people who have helped me the most in life. The first one is a friend of mine, Emelina Spinelli, she has the most incredible work ethic I’ve ever seen. I think I have an incredible work ethic and drive, but when I stand next to her it’s like trying to have a foot race against Usain Bolt. I’m incredibly appreciative of this though because surrounding yourself with others who outperform you is the only way to be the best.
The second is the members of my local Toastmasters group. Professionally speaking, through constructive criticism and guidance, I was able to grow massively as a speaker. My first time speaking on stage, I almost passed out in fright, but through their guidance and 4 years of hard work, I was able to speak on the world stage.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging and intimidating. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?
Embrace failure, it is like Thanos…inevitable. The only way to be successful is to fail. Failure is how we grow, it’s how we learn. That doesn’t mean failure has to hurt. You can take baby steps so that way when you fall it’s not a big deal, but success only comes from pushing yourself into the unknown.
At 16 years old I became a snowboard instructor, and one of the core concepts we always taught is that you’re going to fall and fail. That is the price you pay for mastery. Just learn how to fall without getting hurt.
What drives you to get up every day and give your talks? What is the main empowering message that you aim to share with the world?
Regret & fear. Regret for all the people in the world who haven’t heard my message yet. Fear that I’ll die one day not being able to create the most change that is possible. My main message is that anyone can with applied effort, focus, and tenacity create a better life for themselves.
You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?
One major project I’m undertaking is working with Skillshare to create a course on how to use social media to build your brand. Sharing my 15+ years of experience and creating an easy-to-follow system for anyone to use.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
When I was a kid my mother told me a phrase that stuck with me. Take the good and leave the bad with everyone you meet. I like to believe that every single person has something good inside of them that you can learn from them. Even that person you despise at your work is in your life to teach you a lesson. Take the good that they have, and leave the baggage behind. Work on yourself to become the best version of yourself every day.
Ok, thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker?” Please share a story or example for each.
https://youtu.be/Ib-WjNOxzCc
The 5 things you need to be an effective public speaker are:
- To be an expert.
- Have a powerful story.
- That shares an empowering message.
- That you share with massive amounts of passion.
- And you’ve practiced and refined.
One of the most famous speeches is Eric Thomas’s “How Bad Do You Want It?” speech that has over 7 million views on Youtube and launched his career. Eric has shared what he had to sacrifice to achieve his dreams. Being homeless, sleeping in his office, and working every day on that dream. He is an expert when it comes to motivation and tenacity.
In the video, the story he shares is massively powerful. A kid finds a master to teach him how to be successful, the master brings him into the ocean and shoves the kid’s head underwater. Holding him down until he is about to drown when the kid finally comes up for air the master asks him what he wanted at that moment. The kid says to breathe. The master says when you want to be successful as bad as you want to breathe then you’ll be successful.
Which is one powerful message. While it may not seem like it, reading a summary of a 15-minute speech. Eric has practiced and refined that speech thousands of times. To culminate into a powerful message he shares with deep amounts of passion.
As you know, many people are terrified of speaking in public. Can you give some of your advice about how to overcome this fear?
The only way to overcome your fear of public speaking is to get up on stage and speak. The easiest way to achieve this is to join an organization like Toastmasters.
You are a person of huge influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
If I could inspire a movement, it would be for every single person on earth to create financial stability through creating a personal brand. The far majority of the problems we encounter daily are through a lack of financial security. Reducing this stress will help the majority of people and create a better world overall.
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
Oh, I have a long list. I’d love to grab lunch with Eric Thomas or Tony Robbins. Two massive inspirations in my life. But there is one person I think is a very achievable goal. I’d love to grab lunch with you Yizi and see how this project has changed your life.
Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?
My handle is @austiniuliano on every social media platform. The latest platform that I’m focused on growing is my Youtube channel. Where I share public speaking tips, personal branding tips, and social media tips.
This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
