No Notes
My wife and I love to watch the show called New Girl. It was one episode where Nick was writing his first book. Schmidt, one of his best friends, is usually very critical. However, when Nick submitted the book to him this one time, he didn’t give any feedback . No feedback, basically means no notes. No notes, basically means it is good.
Nick totally freaked out, he could not handle the fact that Schmidt didn’t have no notes for him. Nothing that he could correct, and nothing that he could have made better. He sent it to a few other friends, and they came up with the same conclusion. No notes.
I always laugh at that episode, until I found myself in a similar predicament. I have been working on my speaking in an empty room in downtown Los Angeles, California. I brought on a coach to help me go to a new level of thinking as an entrepreneur. But not only that to be a better speaker. I really needed some hard criticism, someone that would help me get me to the place where I am ready . The first week as expected, there was a lot of correction, the second week came in and I watched the playback and took the notes from the second week and took it to the third week. The process was the same. I was watching the playback, so that I could be better and take the notes that I was given to get to a place that I could be proud of.
The fourth week came, and I felt like it was my best speech. My coach had a ton of notes that week, which was to my surprise. He also told me that although it was good, I needed to be myself in the speech. At this point, I am thriving on making the speech better, I was determined to be the best version of myself. I showed up at the fifth week, ready to be myself, and to take the bullet points to present my speech.
The week prior I was very confident in my delivery, but I was missing passion and I am full of passion when I’m talking about something that I believe in. This week, I gave it all I got, but I was looking for the critiques to come rolling in. I get on the phone with my coach, and he tells me, this is good, matter fact it was pretty amazing. I was like thank you. I pause for a moment because I was waiting on the critiques. He basically told me no notes. I immediately went back to the episode with Nick, and saw how he began to freak out. I didn’t freak out, but I did say this to myself. This is good to get started, you have all that you need. I said to myself, Henry, you can only get better from here, so take the no notes as a sign that it’s time to really launch your speaking career.