Joseph McClendon III Of The Neuroencoding Institute On 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Identification: First, you need to observe and build connection with your audience because it fosters trust and this, in turn, causes people to open up and let you in. If there is something people can relate to, they will immediately identify with you.

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 Joseph McClendon III.

Joseph McClendon III has a Doctorate in Neuropsychology and is one of the most sought after Ultimate Performance Specialists in the industry. Having delivered hundreds of workshops to over 5 million people around the globe and coached celebrity actors, athletes, CEOs and even royalty, Joseph has perfected the ability to create rapid personal change that effectively moves people to take more consistent action with their personal and business achievements. At his core, Joseph is an expert in coaching business professionals to overcome behaviors and inner and outer obstacles that may impede their results and affect their bottom line, and now he licenses and certifies others to do the same, using his proprietary methodology and programs. Joseph’s just-launched legacy program now equips students of the Neuroencoding Institute with his cutting-edge methods, so anyone, anywhere in the world may become a licensed and certified Neuroencoding Specialist.

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?

I was born in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, on November 6, 1953, to my parents Joseph and Every McClendon. I’m the second of four children, all raised in Hickam Airforce Base, Oahu, Hawaii.

I was brought up to be responsible, honest, hard-working, and confident, all great qualities for an entrepreneur. For my father, it was extremely important that we had an education, as he didn’t grow up with one. We had to get good grades and stay in school. As a matter of fact, his saying was, “you’ve got to stay in school and keep a good job or you’ll be digging ditches.” My father grew up during the depression, so he stressed the importance of having an education for all my sisters and myself. I understood the deep need to grow, so I became a Doctor in Neuropsychology from The University of Lydon State.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

At the age of seventeen and a half years old, a devastating experience altered my entire state of being. I was just a kid, minding my own business, riding my motorcycle from Los Angeles to San Jose one day to visit my father and sister. Unfortunately, on that particular evening, I had neglected to tighten the rear chain on my bike and it came flying off the sprocket, leaving the bike out of control. Coasting to a stop, I pulled into a closed gas station nearby to make the necessary repairs. I had been there for about half an hour when an old Chevy pick up truck appeared with three grown men inside. For a split second I thought they had stopped to help me, but all I can remember now is them charging at me, all at once, kicking and punching me in the face and ribs with rage and hate. I felt hopeless, scared and furious at the same time. The experience devastated me. It took my pride and the values I had grown up with away from me. Quite honestly, the beating was bad, but the things that they said to me damaged my psyche. I know now that was where the most harm was done and, as a result, I became homeless. I ended up living in a cardboard box behind an old driving theater. Without knowing it back then, that was actually the genesis of my journey into resilience and personal growth.

What changed my life and what brought me to where I am right now was a random act of kindness from a random stranger. A kind individual who gave me a book called Think and Grow Rich. I read the book and, most importantly, I did the exercises, and it changed my life. Then I went back to the gentleman to thank him and asked him, “How do I repay you, because what you’ve done has changed my life.” What he said was, “Well, Joseph, you repay me by doing the same thing that I’ve done for you for as many people as you can, for the rest of your life.” Those words set me on the path of helping others and I found my calling. I went back to my education, started learning more about people, and I got the empowerment ‘bug,’ if you will.

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

The one that comes to mind is my very first therapy session. I had my formal education back then, and I also became certified in Hypnotherapy, Neurolinguistic Programming and Neuro-Associative Conditioning. I was so excited, I had such a fistful of tools, I learned and practiced all these skills, but I hadn’t really worked with anybody before. On the other hand, some of my other friends who went to school were already working full-time, seeing patients, and even had their own private practices open. I remember I would always tell them about this new process I had learned to cure phobias and things like that, and they would always respond to me saying that that was ‘pop psychology’ and that that stuff didn’t really work — at least, long term.

But, as we were talking about patients over lunch one day, one of my friends said , “Well, if those techniques you’ve learned work so well, then we’re going to give you somebody to work with.” So they did. They connected me to a patient who suffered from agoraphobia — which is the fear of open places and being around people. This young man — I think he was about 26 years old at the time — hadn’t left his house for seven years. He was completely incapacitated up to the extent where his own mother would have to come over and take care of him every day.

One afternoon, I went over to this young man’s house — because he obviously couldn’t come outside — and I talked to him through a slot, 6 inches big, with the chain across the door. It took me several minutes just to get him to show his face because he was hiding behind the door. The tricky thing with agoraphobia — as with other types of phobias and anxiety — is that the less you face your fears, the more they fester and get worse. Hence, the best way of overcoming fears and phobias is to face them head on — something my young patient had no knowledge of at the time.

To cut a long story short, within an hour and a half — (I was slow in those days) — I had the young man out of his house and in the mall, of all places! You should have seen how ecstatic he was. He was running around the place and looked a bit odd to everyone there, but he didn’t care. He went from terrified to leave his house with crippling panic to being able to enjoy walks outdoors and even go to the mall. It was at that moment that I realized Neurolinguistic Programming was powerful. It is really powerful. It made me realize that NLP was something I wanted to become expert in, to help other people make empowering differences in their lives. Again, the ‘bug’ hit me even harder, and that’s why I decided to use Neuroenconding to help as many people as I possibly could.

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?

Well, it’s not precisely a mistake, but it’s a funny story indeed. To be honest, I came to be on stage quite by accident. I’d no intention of being on stage and becoming a speaker, but the opportunity came up where, interestingly enough, I was called upon to do a seminar when Tony Robbins couldn’t do it. This was back in 1984 and, in those days, a seminar was attended by thousands of people. The night before I went on stage, Tony called me up and said, “Can you do tomorrow’s seminar starting at 8 o’clock in the morning?” I said, “It’s midnight, I don’t even know the material!” And Tony said, “Well, you’ve seen it a bunch of times, so I’ll send it over to you by email and you just have to get it together.” So I stepped up and said I would do it. I stayed up all night, studied, and was ready to go.

However, the following morning, when I walked out on stage, there were thousands of people expecting Tony and I showed up instead. I said, “Hello, everybody. My name is Joseph McClendon III and I’ll be your host today,” and before I got that all out of my mouth, people were yelling at me, asking for Tony. They got up and started walking out, leaving the room. So I did what we call a pattern interrupt in Neurolinguistics. I said, “Stop! Hold it! Stop right where you are! I know what you’re thinking. You’re judging me. You showed up here expecting a 6 foot 7 white guy, and now you have to deal with a 5 foot 9 black guy. You’re confused and you’re looking at me thinking, ‘Look at him. He’s amazing! Oh my God, he’s handsome, he’s smart, I can’t wait to hear about this guy.’” That way, I got them laughing, I interrupted their pattern, and I got them to sit back down.

At that moment, I realized that was the way to impact people, so I started including NLP and Neurolinguistic exercises in my talks and seminars.

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?

Truthfully, I’ve had — and still have — hundreds of people I’m grateful for, and all of them have given me a piece of their lives, time and energy, but there are two that stick out the most: My original mentors, my mother and my father. I like to say that they were, unknowingly, the first Neuroencoders.

In fact, in my latest book, Dare to Be Magnificent, I wrote about my father and the five pillars that he stressed and taught us, which are the foundations of how I live. Number one is integrity, which means do what you say you are going to do. If you make a promise to anybody — and those promises go all the way down to “I’m going to be there at ten o’clock” — do what you say you’re going to do. Be an honest, good person and keep your word. Number two is tenacity. My father would always say that tenacity is a big word which means continue to do what you said you were going to do, no matter what. That includes your discipline and the promises you make everyday. Third thing is energy. Energy, in my father’s eyes, was health; taking care of yourself and your body so that you have the energy to go faster and stronger than anybody else. When challenges show up in your life, if you feel tired and don’t want to do something, most of the time it’s because you don’t have the mental and the physical energy to follow through. So energy is really important. The fourth thing is kindness, which is related to helping people to make a difference in their lives. Reach one and teach one. Be kind, empathetic and sympathetic to other people‘s plights and challenges. Help others as much as you can. And the last one is joy. Laugh, enjoy your life, and be a joyful person.

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?

I’ll start with this. I have come to do what I do right now by the will of both fortunate and unfortunate situations. Prior to the pandemic, you would find me speaking live, internationally, in front of 15 to 20 thousand people every month on how to take consistent action to trigger personal change. That’s how I make my living. Indeed, back in March 2020, my calendar was fully booked till the end of 2021 with seminars, at least, once or twice a month. Then Covid hit and those events started to drop off my calendar. One day — I remember the date perfectly, March 15th, 2020 — as I was sitting in my office, I got a phone call from one of my promoters — I think he was from Singapore — who said we had to cancel the rest of our upcoming events. I agreed because gigs had been canceling left and right up until then. However, that meant there were no more events for me, and my calendar got completely cleared.

To be honest, I paradoxically panicked for a moment. I got really fearful for a couple of seconds and I remember distinctly thinking to myself, “What am I going to do now?” I was terrified! Something came over me. BUT — because I encoded myself to automatically default to my best options, and my best behavior — I immediately ran into my bathroom, took a deep breath, put a smile on my face, looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Joseph, what do we get to do now?”

I went back to my office, sat down and made a list of things I could do. As a result, I wrote a new book, created the studio gear, started doing virtual events, and created the Neuroencoding Institute, which is my legacy project. All of those results came from encoding a resilient, optimistic default. What this means is — going back to Neuroencoding — to train yourself when a challenge happens to automatically default to your best thinking, feeling, and behavior. That’s a skill. When you do it once, then you don’t have to remind yourself again, it happens automatically. That’s the programming and encoding part.

People — myself included — are faced with challenges, big and small, every single day. When we have that automatic ability I mentioned before, challenges become the trigger to cause us to be better people. Then life moves further faster, we help other people, and make a bigger difference in the world.

What drives you to get up everyday and give your talks? What is the main empowering message that you aim to share with the world?

First of all, I would say there are several things that stop us from stepping up to our best selves and achieving success: procrastination, hesitation, impostor syndrome, self-doubt, self-loathing, fear of failure and even fear of success. These inhibitions run rampant in most people and are actually the thieves of our dreams.

In this light, what I would then say that actually drives me to get up everyday and give my talks is the fact that those inhibitions are just limiting beliefs and impostor syndrome, and I want to help people to interrupt those unresourceful patterns and overcome their inhibitions so that they can be their best selves. I want to pass along the wisdom on how to program your mind, your nervous system, to automatically default to your best options and behaviors. Let me also remind you that you can engage in massive action-taking to increase your chances of a favorable outcome, but that doesn’t make you immune to challenges or failure. In fact, failure and challenges get a bad rap, but facing setbacks and problems is indeed a sign of progress, because that’s how you learn.

So, the message I aim to share with the world is that ”The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is right now.” Wherever you are on your success voyage, you still have plenty of time and there’s always time to make it. History is replete with examples of people who make things happen at any given time of their lives. In fact, there are only three kinds of people: those who choose who you want to be of those three.

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?

At the moment, I am planning my very first Neuroencoding live event in Las Vegas. In April last year, I launched my legacy project, The Neuroencoding Institute, and this year we’re hosting the first live event ever, which I love and I’m very excited about.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” As long as you teach others to interrupt their unresourceful patterns and encode, program or condition their minds to default to finding opportunities, you provide them with the tools they need to change their own lives.

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.

The 5 things you need to master to be a highly effective public speaker are the 5 steps of what I call the ILASA Method, which actually makes up the anatomy of a great presentation:

1. Identification: First, you need to observe and build connection with your audience because it fosters trust and this, in turn, causes people to open up and let you in. If there is something people can relate to, they will immediately identify with you.
2. Logic/Reason: Tell your audience things everybody agrees with or things they know. People like people like themselves. Establish rapport and create something in common to get your audience to connect with you.
3. Attack and Confess: Challenge your audience. Attack them and retrieve the connection you established before. An undisturbed audience will lose interest in you if you speak all the time and never challenge their thoughts and opinions. You need to emotionally wound your audience to cause them to move in your direction.
4. Solution: Provide a solution. The solution is the have-way.
5. Assume the Action: Don’t ask, but rather get your audience to do something physically (stand up, write something down, etc). By doing this, you get them to respond to your commands and you’re anchoring them to your voice. You’ve given them that emotional rollercoaster that ends up with them saying they are connected to you.

As you know, many people are terrified of speaking in public. Can you give some of your advice about how to overcome this fear?

Preparation is key. Never walk on a stage, into an audition, anywhere, without mental and emotional preparation. What this means is quelling that demon in your head that is making you afraid, interrupting that pattern, and planting within your mind and soul that you are the best person for the job right now.

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?

This question is precisely the reason why I created the Neuroencoding Institute. You see, inspiration is great. But influence and empowerment are even better. Inspiration means you feel good in that moment for that moment. On the other hand, influence means you are impacted into doing something, and taking some action. To be empowered means you have your own internal pull. You don’t rely upon anything else, it’s something inside of you. Drive is great, but pull is better. Would you rather be dragged, kicking and screaming from your past or genuinely pulled into the future by your own needs and desires?

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!

Well, yes, there are. Though I don’t know if I can choose just one. Let me pre-frame this answer by saying this: I’m at a stage in my career — which is the reason I created Neuroencoding — that I want to pass on the steel to as many people as I possibly can. I see there are a few people who are influential already and are already magnificent at what they do — Steve Harvey, Will Smith and Kevin Hart — so I’d love to give this to them. Of course, there are more people, but these are just the ones that come to my mind right now. These people are entrenched in inspiring others and giving them hope and advice. However, my foundational belief is this: everyone loves quotes, sayings and inspirational stories, and everybody will agree with the advice that is given as the foundation of that quote. Yet many people may not know how to put the advice from those quotes into practice. They may be lacking in certain attributes — such as courage or tenacity — or they might just be afraid. So, what I’m saying is, let’s tell people how to put motivation into practice as well. It’s a topic I’d love to discuss alongside a meal with those three gentlemen, and share what I have with them.

Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?

You can go to www.josephmcclendon.com to learn more about who I am and what I do. In terms of social media, I’m most interactive on Instagram @iamjosephmcclendon and also on Twitter @JosephMcClendon. All of the details of my recently launched legacy program, The Neuroencoding Institute, can be found at www.neuroencoding.com. It’s a fully-resourced, expertly sourced program (and it’s truly made for everyone!) so please check it out and feel free to contact me on social media.

This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!