Jimmy Smith 🇦🇺

Ten million people have watched a Stanford lecturer accidentally destroy the entire public speaking coaching industry. He filmed the lecture once in October 2014 and it has been on YouTube ever since. Speaking coaches charge two thousand dollars a session to teach a third of what he covered in one hour for free. His name is Matt Abrahams. He is a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the coach who has trained thousands of Silicon Valley founders on how to answer questions live. Every year at Stanford's Alumni Weekend, he gives the same lecture called "Think Fast, Talk Smart." His entire framework fits on a napkin. Anxiety is not a bug. Greet it. Do not perform. Have a conversation. Never open with an apology. Use What, So What, Now What when your brain freezes. Problem, Solution, Benefit for a pitch. Never end with "any questions?" That last rule alone has probably cost the pitch coaching industry a hundred million dollars. "Ninety percent of the words that will decide your career are not written down in advance." That is the actual opening line of the lecture. Abrahams built the entire Stanford elective on the sentence. Founders spend $50,000 on pitch coaches and freeze the moment the investor asks a follow-up question. Engineers walk into performance reviews having rehearsed every accomplishment and blank on the one behavioral question that decides the promotion. The lecture is free on Stanford's YouTube channel. Abrahams's book "Think Faster, Talk Smarter" is under twenty dollars. Abrahams still teaches at Stanford. Almost none of the ten million viewers have used the three-step frame when put on the spot. The frame is free. The willingness to actually use it the next time someone puts you on the spot is the entire edge.