Podcast Transcription:

Daniel Amanya: Learn, Earn, Grow, feat. Mr. Hassan Siddiqi.

Podcast Host [Mr. Daniel Amanya]: Hey, Hassan. How are you? My name is Daniel, and welcome to the show.

Podcast Guest [Mr. Hassan Siddiqi]: Thank you, Daniel. It's my pleasure to be here.

Daniel Amanya: So, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Hassan Siddiqi: Well, I'm a public speaking coach. I work with people—professionals as well as students—in enhancing their public speaking capabilities. I do a pre-assessment of where they stand, and then I help them go to the next level.

Daniel Amanya: Tell us about Toastmasters, what it's about, and how it helps people.

Hassan Siddiqi: Toastmasters is a global organization. It's been around since the 1920s. I've been a member of Toastmasters since 2016. It has helped me a lot. It's an organization that helps people become better public speakers, better communicators, and better leaders.

One of the things that makes Toastmasters so good is that there are chapters all over the world. If you are in any part of the world, you're likely to find a Toastmasters Club in your country or even in the city in which you are.

That's the good thing about Toastmasters. It's a nonprofit organization. The cost to join is not prohibitively high. Once you become a member, you can start practicing because public speaking is all about practicing and getting better by being evaluated.

So there's a system. Toastmasters has a curriculum that allows you to go step by step and improve your public speaking in a structured way.

If I were to talk about the pros and cons of Toastmasters, one of the advantages is that there is a curriculum, a structure that you can follow. And you join a club where you have mentors and evaluators, people who evaluate your speeches and give you feedback.

If you are a brand-new speaker just getting started, Toastmasters is fantastic because it helps you overcome shyness. There are people who will support you. It's considered to be a safe space for practicing public speaking.

However, if you were to look at some of the drawbacks, well, a typical Toastmaster meeting runs for about two hours. Some of the clubs have meetings once a week. Some of them have it twice a month, so biweekly, which means that if you are willing to invest the time for these meetings and prepare for these speeches, you're good. But a lot of people don't have the time to invest two hours for each meeting on a regular basis. They might do it once or twice, but then they drop off.

So Toastmasters is, the more you put in it, the more you get out of it. A lot of people do not have the time investment needed to invest in Toastmasters.

The other thing is that maybe you may not get—after a while, let's say you're part of a club and you're presenting your speeches, your projects, to them on a regular basis; if you're presenting to the same people over and over and over again, you become comfortable with that audience. And once you become comfortable with that audience, then you feel like you're getting better—and you might be getting better—but the real challenge, if you want to go to that next level, is that you want to present to new audiences.

So that is another area that people, even though in Toastmasters, it is possible to visit other clubs and present and you can build a network. But a lot of people don't do that. They don't take advantage of that. They're still stuck with the same club. So these are some of the areas.

Now, the other thing is, Toastmasters is open to people aged 18 and above. If you're under the age of 18, you may attend a couple of workshops, but you'll have to wait until you're 18 to join. Also, Toastmasters has its own curriculum and its own structure, which people have to follow. If you feel like you don't need to follow the whole structure and there are some specific areas that you want to work on, it might be better to invest in a coach who can help you in those specific areas only. It might be a faster way to get to where you're looking to go as opposed to going through an entire curriculum. That is another area that people consider when they're thinking about joining Toastmasters.

Daniel Amanya: Let's talk a little bit about public speaking. What are the qualities of a good public speaker, and what separates a good public speaker from a bad public speaker?

Hassan Siddiqi: That's a great question. I think that there are certain—if you were to think of great public speakers and you look at how they speak, one of the things that makes them stand out is, number 1, they understand their audience. That's their first and foremost objective. They understand their audience. What is the audience expecting from them? What is the message that they're going to deliver? Is it resonating with the audience? If not, they would tailor that message and make it resonate with the audience.

Number 1: knowing your audience is a huge advantage that great public speakers have over public speakers that are not that effective.

Second, great public speakers practice repeatedly. If you looked at any successful public speaker, you would see that public speaking is simply a muscle. Just as we learn martial arts and swimming, the more you practice, the better you will become at public speaking. If you want to become a great public speaker, you need to speak in front of as many people as possible and develop that muscle. Just the comfort level of standing in front of a crowd and delivering no matter what the challenge, because there are a number of challenges that can come up.

You remember with Obama, when he was doing a speech? One of his mics fell off, and he didn't get flustered or embarrassed. He was comfortable with the audience around him, and he knew how to handle the situation. That comes with practice. If you keep doing it 100,000 times, whatever happens, you're cool. So public speakers keep their cool because of the constant practice that they do.

Another thing that separates great public speakers from public speakers who are not that great is their continuous investment in themselves. They're constantly improving their craft. There are different levels to public speaking. On one level you might be good, but there are so many different levels. For example, the way you craft the content of your speech, right? What are the elements of rhetoric that you're taking into account? When you look at your body language, how is the body language working? Can you make it better? When you look at your sound, what kind of sound variations can you have for higher emphasis and higher impact? When you look at your movement across the stage, the way you move, and the way you carry yourself, that's another element.

So there are so many different levels where you can improve, and the best public speakers know how to make the best out of each of those elements. So these are some of the things that separate great public speakers from not-so-great public speakers.

Daniel Amanya: Thank you so much for that. If someone were to get started with public speaking, how would they go about it? Say I wanted to become a public speaker, and I want to get started. How do I dip my toe in the water?

Hassan Siddiqi: If you are just getting started, Toastmasters International is a great platform, and it's a great organization that you can join. If you go to toastmasters.org, you can join one of their clubs. That's one of the fastest ways to start the process of becoming a great public speaker.

Now, that's not the only process. You can sign up with a public speaking coach who can coach you and help you get up to speed and become better. Another way of doing that is also just having the courage to step onto a stage and start speaking. So find events and opportunities to speak.

It could be at a church. It could be at an event. It could be at a wedding. It could be at any place where you may need a public speaker. Sometimes you need to volunteer. You have open mic nights for standout comics. A lot of people practice their craft by going to open mic nights. And you can practice the same for your public speaking skills on open mic nights. These are some of the ways in which you can practice.

Remember, you need two things to become a better public speaker. Number 1, you need to speak. Number 2, you need to get evaluated, which means you need feedback.

Now, in order to get feedback, you can either have someone observe you, take notes, and give you feedback, and/or you can record the way you speak and then share that recording with somebody, and they can give you feedback. When I say somebody, I mean somebody who is better at public speaking, someone who understands public speaking, who can guide you and mentor you.

I always record my speeches every single time for self-evaluation as well as evaluation by somebody else. And also, there is an app called Yoodli, which is an AI app, an artificial intelligence app called Yoodli.

If you go on this app and you upload a video of your speech, it's going to give you an evaluation report that shares how many filler words you used, whether you paused, how many smiles you shared with the camera, and the pace of your speech—were you too fast, or were you too slow? What was the variation in the speech? You've got to have variation in your pace. Some people talk too fast, and then they go too slow. You want to have a variation, like a cycle, to keep people interested.

So that is a great way to get evaluated. And yes, the content is not evaluated because it's only measuring the measurable elements. Are you keeping eye contact with the camera? Are you in the right zone in your positioning?

So all these things, it measures and gives you a great evaluation that you can, you know, take back home and improve on.

These are some of the ways you can get started. Speak and get evaluated. These are the two things you want to do.

Daniel Amanya: Wow. Thank you. That is very interesting, especially that app. You guys just celebrated Black History Month in Canada. Can you share one famous Black personality that has inspired you with regard to public speaking?

Hassan Siddiqi: We just celebrated Black History Month in Canada. I'm from Toronto. February is officially Black History Month. We were looking at the different Black speakers that have inspired us, and one of my favorite speakers is Malcolm X. And the reason why is if you look at Malcolm X's story, he was in prison. He was a petty thief, and he started leading from the prison library. He found a mentor who basically inspired him by saying, "You need to get out of the prison and prison of your mind." And that was a huge catalyst that transformed this petty thief into a leader.

So he copied the dictionary by hand, and he started reading library books, philosophy, and history, and by the time he got out of prison, which was seven years, he had read a lot of books because he had all the time in the world. And he debated. There was a debate club in the prison. So he started debating.

Once he got out, he became a formidable public speaker. And he started speaking at mosques and other places, wherever people would listen, to attract people to his organization. By the time he was 39—he died very young. He was assassinated at the age of 39. But if you look at his interviews and his speeches, one of his last speeches was at Oxford Union. The people who get invited to the Oxford Union are supposed to be some of the most accomplished speakers and performers. He was invited there. He spoke at the Oxford Union, and it's a very eloquent speech, brilliant in his content and the way he set.

There are so many techniques that he uses that make a high impact on people. For me, if somebody were to say, who is one of your favorite, inspiring speakers, period, I would pick MalcomX.

Daniel Amanya: Wow. Thank you so much for that. That's a very inspiring story. Do you have any last remarks? Do you want to share any stories from yourself of public speaking which inspired you or it was a setback and you learnt something from it? Any stories like that or success stories of Toastmasters? Anything like that, anything basically.

Hassan Siddiqi: I just want to say that anyone who's interested in public speaking needs to understand that it is a life-long journey. You don't just become a great public speaker without constantly improving. It's a life-long process. And for me, when I joined Toastmasters, there was a point where I competed in their International Speech Contest. I reached a certain level, and then I was so competitive. I was thinking about winning and not failing.

But what I've realized over time is that the idea is not just to win but to get better.

"The idea is not just to win but to get better."

So there's a difference. You have to get better. Now, I take it more in the spirit of learning. We're doing the 2023 international speech context as we speak. I have won the area 36 speech contest, International Speech, Table Topics and evaluation, which is great. I'm very happy. But I remember being very conscious and deliberate about it, which is that I'm not going to go into this contest with the idea that I have to win and I have to do whatever it takes to win. Of course, you have to try your best and you have to do the best you can, but the spirit was I need to learn. I need to take my game to the next level. Maybe I can even get better and would give me an opportunity to meet a lot of people that I normally don't get to meet.

Contest season is very exciting because you get to learn and you get to meet people. That shift in attitude was something that I really benefited from, and that comes with experience.

So my advice to anyone who is interested in public speaking, start speaking, but don't get disheartened or disappointed with setbacks. Take it as a learning opportunity and continue the process of learning and speaking and getting evaluated. And that journey is gonna make you into a better speaker.

Daniel Amanya: Awesome! Well, Hassan, thank you so much for joining us. It was real nice and real insightful hearing from you and learning from you about public speaking. If people want to reach out to you and get in touch with you, how can they do it?

Hassan Siddiqi: My biggest channel is LinkedIn. So if you type my name, Hassan Siddiqi, on LinkedIn, you'll find me on LinkedIn. And I'm starting a TikTok channel very soon, so hopefully you'll see me there as well.

Daniel Amanya: Awesome! Thank you and have a good day.

Hassan Siddiqi: Thank you very much.