WTF is wrong with you people?

When I was laid off as editor of my town's daily newspaper, I went silent on social media. I knew it was coming and had been quietly removing personal items each day, but the pain was intense.

I posted a day later. I didn't bad-mouth GateHouse Media but expressed my sadness at leaving the newspaper industry, pride in my accomplishments, and hope for success in another industry.

Normal job-loss response.

What do you recognize as abnormal?

The bullshit I’ve been reading from laid-off folks on LinkedIn.

If you're there, you know. Many Twitter or Facebook/Meta employees recently lost their jobs.

Well, many of them did not “lose their job,” actually. They were “impacted by the layoffs” at their former employer. I keep seeing that phrase.

Why don’t they want to actually say it? Why the euphemism?

Many are excited about the opportunities ahead. The jobless deny being sad.

They're ecstatic! They have big plans.

Hope so. Sincerely! Being laid off stinks, especially if, like me, your skills are obsolete. It's worse if, like me, you're too old to start a new career. Ageism exists despite denials.

Nowadays, professionalism seems to demand psychotic levels of fake optimism.

Why? Life is unpredictable. That's indisputable. You shouldn't constantly complain or cry in public, but you also shouldn't pretend everything's great.

It makes you look psychotic, not positive. It's like saying at work:

“I was impacted by the death of my spouse of 20 years this week, and many of you have reached out to me, expressing your sympathy. However, I’m choosing to remember the amazing things we shared. I feel confident that there is another marriage out there for me, and after taking a quiet weekend trip to reset myself, I’ll be out there looking for the next great marital adventure! #staypositive #available #opentolove

Also:

“Now looking for our next #dreamhome after our entire neighborhood was demolished by a wildfire last night. We feel so lucky to have lived near so many amazing and inspirational neighbors, all of whom we will miss as we go on our next housing adventure. The best house for us is yet to come! If you have a great neighborhood you’d recommend, please feel free to reach out and touch base with us! #newhouse #newneighborhood #newlife

Admit it. That’s creepy.

The constant optimism makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Viscerally.

I hate fakes.

Imagine a fake wood grain desk. Wouldn't it be better if the designer accepted that it's plastic and went with that?

Real is better but not always nice. When something isn't nice, you don't have to go into detail, but you also shouldn't pretend it's great.

How to announce your job loss to the world.

Do not pretend to be happy, but don't cry and drink vodka all afternoon.

Say you loved your job, and that you're looking for new opportunities.

Yes, if you'll miss your coworkers. Otherwise, don't badmouth. No bridge-burning!

Please specify the job you want. You may want to pivot.

Alternatively, try this.

You could always flame out.

If you've pushed yourself too far into toxic positivity, you may be ready to burn it all down. If so, make it worthwhile by writing something like this:

Well, I was shitcanned by the losers at #Acme today. That bitch Linda in HR threw me under the bus just because she saw that one of my “friends” tagged me in some beach pics on social media after I called in sick with Covid. The good thing is I will no longer have to watch my ass around that #asspincher Ron in accounting, but I’m sad that I will no longer have a cushy job with high pay or access to the primo office supplies I’ve been sneaking home for the last five years. (Those gel pens were the best!) I am going to be taking some time off to enjoy my unemployment and hammer down shots of Jägermeister but in about five months I’ll be looking for anything easy with high pay and great benefits. Reach out if you can help! #officesupplies #unemploymentrocks #drinkinglikeagirlboss #acmesucks

It beats the fake positivity.

Japan's startup challenge: 7 reasons

Every day, another Silicon Valley business is bought for a billion dollars, making its founders rich while growing the economy and improving consumers' lives.

Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Medium dominate our daily lives. Tesla automobiles and Moderna Covid vaccinations.

The startup movement started in Silicon Valley, California, but the rest of the world is catching up. Global startup buzz is rising. Except Japan.

644 of CB Insights' 1170 unicorns—successful firms valued at over $1 billion—are US-based. China follows with 302 and India third with 108.

Japan? 6!

1% of US startups succeed. The third-largest economy is tied with small Switzerland for startup success.

Mexico (8), Indonesia (12), and Brazil (12) have more successful startups than Japan (16). South Korea has 16. Yikes! Problem?

Why Don't Startups Exist in Japan More?

Not about money. Japanese firms invest in startups. To invest in startups, big Japanese firms create Silicon Valley offices instead of Tokyo.

Startups aren't the issue either. Local governments are competing to be Japan's Shirikon Tani, providing entrepreneurs financing, office space, and founder visas.

Startup accelerators like Plug and Play in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, the Startup Hub in Kobe, and Google for Startups are many.

Most of the companies I've encountered in Japan are either local offices of foreign firms aiming to expand into the Japanese market or small businesses offering local services rather than disrupting a staid industry with new ideas.

There must be a reason Japan can develop world-beating giant corporations like Toyota, Nintendo, Shiseido, and Suntory but not inventive startups.

Culture, obviously. Japanese culture excels in teamwork, craftsmanship, and quality, but it hates moving fast, making mistakes, and breaking things.

If you have a brilliant idea in Silicon Valley, quit your job, get money from friends and family, and build a prototype. To fund the business, you approach angel investors and VCs.

Most non-startup folks don't aware that venture capitalists don't want good, profitable enterprises. That's wonderful if you're developing a solid small business to consult, open shops, or make a specialty product. However, you must pay for it or borrow money. Venture capitalists want moon rockets. Silicon Valley is big or bust. Almost 90% will explode and crash. The few successes are remarkable enough to make up for the failures.

Silicon Valley's high-risk, high-reward attitude contrasts with Japan's incrementalism. Japan makes the best automobiles and cleanrooms, but it fails to produce new items that grow the economy.

Changeable? Absolutely. But, what makes huge manufacturing enterprises successful and what makes Japan a safe and comfortable place to live are inextricably connected with the lack of startups.

Barriers to Startup Development in Japan

These are the 7 biggest obstacles to Japanese startup success.

1. Unresponsive Employment Market

While the lifelong employment system in Japan is evolving, the average employee stays at their firm for 12 years (15 years for men at large organizations) compared to 4.3 years in the US. Seniority, not experience or aptitude, determines career routes, making it tough to quit a job to join a startup and then return to corporate work if it fails.

1. Conservative Buyers

Even if your product is buggy and undocumented, US customers will migrate to a cheaper, superior one. Japanese corporations demand perfection from their trusted suppliers and keep with them forever. Startups need income fast, yet product evaluation takes forever.

1. Failure intolerance

Japanese business failures harm lives. Failed forever. It hinders risk-taking. Silicon Valley embraces failure. Build another startup if your first fails. Build a third if that fails. Every setback is viewed as a learning opportunity for success.

4. No Corporate Purchases

Silicon Valley industrial giants will buy fast-growing startups for a lot of money. Many huge firms have stopped developing new goods and instead buy startups after the product is validated.

Japanese companies prefer in-house product development over startup acquisitions. No acquisitions mean no startup investment and no investor reward.

Startup investments can also be monetized through stock market listings. Public stock listings in Japan are risky because the Nikkei was stagnant for 35 years while the S&P rose 14x.

5. Social Unity Above Wealth

In Silicon Valley, everyone wants to be rich. That creates a competitive environment where everyone wants to succeed, but it also promotes fraud and societal problems.

Japan values communal harmony above individual success. Wealthy folks and overachievers are avoided. In Japan, renegades are nearly impossible.

6. Rote Learning Education System

Japanese high school graduates outperform most Americans. Nonetheless, Japanese education is known for its rote memorization. The American system, which fails too many kids, emphasizes creativity to create new products.

1. Immigration.

Immigrants start 55% of successful Silicon Valley firms. Some come for university, some to escape poverty and war, and some are recruited by Silicon Valley startups and stay to start their own.

Japan is difficult for immigrants to start a business due to language barriers, visa restrictions, and social isolation.

How Japan Can Promote Innovation

Patchwork solutions to deep-rooted cultural issues will not work. If customers don't buy things, immigration visas won't aid startups. Startups must have a chance of being acquired for a huge sum to attract investors. If risky startups fail, employees won't join.

Will Japan never have a startup culture?

Once a consensus is reached, Japan changes rapidly. A dwindling population and standard of living may lead to such consensus.

Toyota and Sony were firms with renowned founders who used technology to transform the world. Repeatable.

Silicon Valley is flawed too. Many people struggle due to wealth disparities, job churn and layoffs, and the tremendous ups and downs of the economy caused by stock market fluctuations.

The founders of the 10% successful startups are heroes. The 90% that fail and return to good-paying jobs with benefits are never mentioned.

Silicon Valley startup culture and Japanese corporate culture are opposites. Each have pros and cons. Big Japanese corporations make the most reliable, dependable, high-quality products yet move too slowly. That's good for creating cars, not social networking apps.

Can innovation and success be encouraged without eroding social cohesion? That can motivate software firms to move fast and break things while recognizing the beauty and precision of expert craftsmen? A hybrid culture where Japan can make the world's best and most original items. Hopefully.

Google announced 6% layoffs recently (or 12,000 people). This aligns it with most tech companies. A publicly contrite CEO explained that they had overhired during the COVID-19 pandemic boom and had to address it, but they were sorry and took full responsibility. I thought this was "bullshit" too. Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others must feel similarly. I spent 10 years at Google, and these things don't reflect well on the company's leaders.

All publicly listed companies have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their shareholders. Dodge vs. Ford Motor Company established this (1919). Henry Ford wanted to reduce shareholder payments to offer cheaper cars and better wages. Ford stated.

My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.

The Dodge brothers, who owned 10% of Ford, opposed this and sued Ford for the payments to start their own company. They won, preventing Ford from raising prices or salaries. If you have a vocal group of shareholders with the resources to sue you, you must prove you are acting in their best interests. Companies prioritize shareholders. Giving activist investors a stick to threaten you almost enshrines short-term profit over long-term thinking.

This underpins Google's current issues. Institutional investors who can sue Google see it as a wasteful company they can exploit. That doesn't mean you have to maximize profits (thanks to those who pointed out my ignorance of US corporate law in the comments and on HN), but it allows pressure. I feel for those navigating this. This is about unrestrained capitalism.

When Google went public, Larry Page and Sergey Brin knew the risks and worked hard to keep control. In their Founders' Letter to investors, they tried to set expectations for the company's operations.

Our long-term focus as a private company has paid off. Public companies do the same. We believe outside pressures lead companies to sacrifice long-term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations.

The company has transformed since that letter. The company has nearly 200,000 full-time employees and a trillion-dollar market cap. Large investors have bought company stock because it has been a good long-term bet. Why are they restless now?

Other big tech companies emerged and fought for top talent. This has caused rising compensation packages. Google has also grown rapidly (roughly 22,000 people hired to the end of 2022). At $300,000 median compensation, those 22,000 people added $6.6 billion in salary overheads in 2022. Exorbitant. If the company still makes $16 billion every quarter, maybe not. Investors wonder if this value has returned.

Investors are right. Google uses people wastefully. However, by bluntly reducing headcount, they're not addressing the root causes and hurting themselves. No studies show that downsizing this way boosts productivity. There is plenty of evidence that they'll lose out because people will be risk-averse and distrust their leadership.

The company's approach also stinks. Finding out that you no longer have a job because you can’t log in anymore (sometimes in cases where someone is on call for protecting your production systems) is no way to fire anyone. Being with a narcissistic sociopath is like being abused. First, you receive praise and fancy perks for making the cut. You're fired by text and ghosted. You're told to appreciate the generous severance package. This firing will devastate managers and teams. This type of firing will take years to recover self-esteem. Senior management contributed to this. They chose the expedient answer, possibly by convincing themselves they were managing risk and taking the Macbeth approach of “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly”.

Recap. Google's leadership did a stupid thing—mass firing—in a stupid way. How do we get rid of enough people to make investors happier? and "have 6% less people." Empathetic leaders should not emulate Elon Musk. There is no humane way to fire 12,000 people, but there are better ways. Why is Google so wasteful?

Ambition answers this. There aren't enough VP positions for a group of highly motivated, ambitious, and (increasingly) ruthless people. I’ve loitered around the edges of this world and a large part of my value was to insulate my teams from ever having to experience it. It’s like Game of Thrones played out through email and calendar and over video call.

Your company must look a certain way to be promoted to director or higher. You need the right people at the right levels under you. Long-term, growing your people will naturally happen if you're working on important things. This takes time, and you're never more than 6–18 months from a reorg that could start you over. Ambitious people also tend to be impatient. So, what do you do?

Hiring and vanity projects. To shape your company, you hire at the right levels. You value vanity metrics like active users over product utility. Your promo candidates get through by subverting the promotion process. In your quest for growth, you avoid performance managing people out. You avoid confronting toxic peers because you need their support for promotion. Your cargo cult gets you there.

Its ease makes Google wasteful. Since they don't face market forces, the employees don't see it as a business. Why would you do when the ads business is so profitable? Complacency causes senior leaders to prioritize their own interests. Empires collapse. Personal ambition often trumped doing the right thing for users, the business, or employees. Leadership's ambition over business is the root cause. Vanity metrics, mass hiring, and vague promises have promoted people to VP. Google goes above and beyond to protect senior leaders.

The decision-makers and beneficiaries are not the layoffees. Stock price increase beneficiaries. The people who will post on LinkedIn how it is about misjudging the market and how they’re so sorry and take full responsibility. While accumulating wealth, the dark room dwellers decide who stays and who goes. The billionaire investors. Google should start by addressing its bloated senior management, but — as they say — turkeys don't vote for Christmas. It should examine its wastefulness and make tough choices to fix it. A 6% cut is a blunt tool that admits you're not running your business properly. why aren’t the people running the business the ones shortly to be entering the job market?

This won't fix Google's wastefulness. The executives may never regain trust after their approach. Suppressed creativity. Business won't improve. Google will have lost its founding vision and us all. Large investors know they can force Google's CEO to yield. The rich will get richer and rationalize leaving 12,000 people behind. Cycles repeat.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In 2013, Nintendo's CEO said he wouldn't fire anyone for shareholders. Switch debuted in 2017. Nintendo's stock has increased by nearly five times, or 19% a year (including the drop most of the stock market experienced last year). Google wasted 12,000 talented people. To please rich people.

Calendars are great unpaid employees.

After using Notion to organize my next three months' goals, my days were a mess.

I grew very chaotic afterward. I was overwhelmed, unsure of what to do, and wasting time attempting to plan the day after it had started.

Imagine if our skeletons were on the outside. Doesn’t work.

The goals were too big; I needed to break them into smaller chunks. But how?

Enters Google Calendar

RescueTime’s recommendations took me seven hours to make a daily planner. This epic narrative begins with a sheet of paper and concludes with a daily calendar that helps me focus and achieve more goals. Ain’t nobody got time for “what’s next?” all day.

Onward!

Return to the Paleolithic Era

Plan in writing.

Not on the list, but it helped me plan my day. Physical writing boosts creativity and recall.

Find My Heart

i.e. prioritize

RescueTime suggested I prioritize before planning. Personal and business goals were proposed.

My top priorities are to exercise, eat healthily, spend time in nature, and avoid stress.

Priorities include writing and publishing Medium articles, conducting more freelance editing and Medium outreach, and writing/editing sci-fi books.

These eight things will help me feel accomplished every day.

Make a baby calendar.

Create daily calendar templates.

Make family, pleasure, etc. calendars.

Google Calendar instructions:

• Other calendars

• Press the “+” button

• Create a new calendar

• Create recurring events for each day

My calendar, without the template:

Empty, so I can fill it with vital tasks.

With the template:

My daily skeleton corresponds with my priorities. I've been overwhelmed for years because I lack daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly structure.

Google Calendars helps me reach my goals and focus my energy.

Get your colored pencils ready

Time-block color-coding.

Color labeling lets me quickly see what's happening. Maybe you are too.

Google Calendar instructions:

• Determine which colors correspond to each time block.

• When establishing new events, select a color.

• Save

My calendar is color-coded as follows:

• Yellow — passive income or other future-related activities

• Red — important activities, like my monthly breast exam

• Flamingo — shallow work, like emails, Twitter, etc.

• Blue — all my favorite activities, like walking, watching comedy, napping, and sleeping. Oh, and eating.

• Green — money-related events required for this adulting thing

• Purple — writing-related stuff

Associating a time block with a color helps me stay focused. Less distractions mean faster work.

Open My Email

aka receive a daily email from Google Calendar.

Google Calendar sends a daily email feed of your calendars. I sent myself the template calendar in this email.

Google Calendar instructions:

• Access settings

• Select the calendar that you want to send (left side)

• Go down the page to see more alerts

• Under the daily agenda area, click Email.

Get in Touch With Your Red Bull Wings — Naturally

aka audit your energy levels.

My daily planner has arrows. These indicate how much energy each activity requires or how much I have.

Rightward arrow denotes medium energy.

I do my Medium and professional editing in the morning because it's energy-intensive.

Niharikaa Sodhi recommends morning Medium editing.

I’m a morning person. As long as I go to bed at a reasonable time, 5 a.m. is super wild GO-TIME. It’s like the world was just born, and I marvel at its wonderfulness.

Freelance editing lets me do what I want. An afternoon snooze will help me finish on time.

Ditch Schedule View

aka focus on the weekly view.

RescueTime advocated utilizing the weekly view of Google Calendar, so I switched.

When you launch the phone app or desktop calendar, a red line shows where you are in the day.

I'll follow the red line's instructions. My digital supervisor is easy to follow.

In the image above, it's almost 3 p.m., therefore the red line implies it's time to snooze.

I won't forget this block ;).

Reduce the Lighting

aka dim previous days.

This is another Google Calendar feature I didn't know about. Once the allotted time passes, the time block dims. This keeps me present.

Google Calendar instructions:

• Access settings

• remaining general

• To view choices, click.

• Check Diminish the glare of the past.

Bonus

Two additional RescueTimes hacks:

Maintain a space between tasks

I left 15 minutes between each time block to transition smoothly. This relates to my goal of less stress. If I set strict start and end times, I'll be stressed.

With a buffer, I can breathe, stroll around, and start the following time block fresh.

Find a time is related to the buffer.

This option allows you conclude small meetings five minutes early and longer ones ten. Before the next meeting, relax or go wild.

Decide on a backup day.

This productivity technique is amazing.

Spend this excess day catching up on work. It helps reduce tension and clutter.

That's all I can say about Google Calendar's functionality.

Here's the fastest way to validate company concepts.

I squandered a year after dropping out of Stanford designing a product nobody wanted.

But today, I’m at 100k!

Differences:

I was designing a consumer product when I dropped out.

I coded MVP, got 1k users, and got YC interview.

Nice, huh?

WRONG!

Still coding and getting users 12 months later

WOULD PEOPLE PAY FOR IT? was the riskiest assumption I hadn't tested.

When asked why I didn't verify payment, I said,

Not-ready products. Now, nobody cares. The website needs work. Include this. Increase usage…

I feared people would say no.

After 1 year of pushing it off, my team told me they were really worried about the Business Model. Then I asked my audience if they'd buy my product.

So?

No, overwhelmingly.

I felt like I wasted a year building a product no one would buy.

Founders Cafe was the opposite.

Before building anything, I requested payment.

40 founders were interviewed.

Then we emailed Stanford, YC, and other top founders, asking them to join our community.

BOOM! 10/12 paid!

Without building anything, in 1 day I validated my startup's riskiest assumption. NOT 1 year.

Asking people to pay is one of the scariest things.

I understand.

I asked Stanford queer women to pay before joining my gay sorority.

I was afraid I'd turn them off or no one would pay.

Gay women, like those founders, were in such excruciating pain that they were willing to pay me upfront to help.

You can ask for payment (before you build) to see if people have the burning pain. Then they'll pay!

Examples from Founders Cafe members:

😮 Using a fake landing page, a college dropout tested a product. Paying! He built it and made $3m!

😮 YC solo founder faked a Powerpoint demo. 5 Enterprise paid LOIs. $1.5m raised, built, and in YC!

😮 A Harvard founder can convert Figma to React. 1 day, 10 customers. Built a tool to automate Figma -> React after manually fulfilling requests. 1m+

Bad example:

😭 Stanford Dropout Spends 1 Year Building Product Without Payment Validation

Some people build for a year and then get paying customers.

What I'm sharing is my experience and what Founders Cafe members have told me about validating startup ideas.

Don't waste a year like I did.

After my first startup failed, I planned to re-enroll at Stanford/work at Facebook.

After people paid, I quit for good.

I've hit $100k!

Hope this inspires you to request upfront payment! It'll change your life

How to overcome public speaking fear and give a killer presentation

"Public speaking is people's biggest fear, according to studies. Death's second. The average person is better off in the casket than delivering the eulogy."  — American comedian, actor, writer, and producer Jerry Seinfeld

People fear public speaking, according to research. Public speaking can be intimidating.

Most professions require public speaking, whether to 5, 50, 500, or 5,000 people. Your career will require many presentations. In a small meeting, company update, or industry conference.

You can improve your public speaking skills. You can reduce your anxiety, improve your performance, and feel more comfortable speaking in public.

“If I returned to college, I'd focus on writing and public speaking. Effective communication is everything.” — 38th president Gerald R. Ford

You can deliver a great presentation despite your fear of public speaking. There are ways to stay calm while speaking and become a more effective public speaker.

Seven tips to improve your public speaking today. Let's help you overcome your fear (no pun intended).

Know your audience.

"You're not being judged; the audience is." — Entrepreneur, author, and speaker Seth Godin

Understand your audience before speaking publicly. Before preparing a presentation, know your audience. Learn what they care about and find useful.

Your presentation may depend on where you're speaking. A classroom is different from a company meeting.

Determine your audience before developing your main messages. Learn everything about them. Knowing your audience helps you choose the right words, information (thought leadership vs. technical), and motivational message.

2. Be Observant

Observe others' speeches to improve your own. Watching free TED Talks on education, business, science, technology, and creativity can teach you a lot about public speaking.

What worked and what didn't?

• What would you change?

• Their strengths

• How interesting or dull was the topic?

Note their techniques to learn more. Studying the best public speakers will amaze you.

Learn how their stage presence helped them communicate and captivated their audience. Please note their pauses, humor, and pacing.

3. Practice

"A speaker should prepare based on what he wants to learn, not say." — Author, speaker, and pastor Tod Stocker

Practice makes perfect when it comes to public speaking. By repeating your presentation, you can find your comfort zone.

When you've practiced your presentation many times, you'll feel natural and confident giving it. Preparation helps overcome fear and anxiety. Review notes and important messages.

When you know the material well, you can explain it better. Your presentation preparation starts before you go on stage.

Keep a notebook or journal of ideas, quotes, and examples. More content means better audience-targeting.

4. Self-record

Videotape your speeches. Check yourself. Body language, hands, pacing, and vocabulary should be reviewed.

Best public speakers evaluate their performance to improve.

Write down what you did best, what you could improve and what you should stop doing after watching a recording of yourself. Seeing yourself can be unsettling. This is how you improve.

5. Remove text from slides

"Humans can't read and comprehend screen text while listening to a speaker. Therefore, lots of text and long, complete sentences are bad, bad, bad.” —Communications expert Garr Reynolds

Presentation slides shouldn't have too much text. 100-slide presentations bore the audience. Your slides should preview what you'll say to the audience.

Use slides to emphasize your main point visually.

If you add text, use at least 40-point font. Your slides shouldn't require squinting to read. You want people to watch you, not your slides.

6. Body language

"Body language is powerful." We had body language before speech, and 80% of a conversation is read through the body, not the words." — Dancer, writer, and broadcaster Deborah Bull

Nonverbal communication dominates. Our bodies speak louder than words. Don't fidget, rock, lean, or pace.

Relax your body to communicate clearly and without distraction through nonverbal cues. Public speaking anxiety can cause tense body language.

Maintain posture and eye contact. Don’t put your hand in your pockets, cross your arms, or stare at your notes. Make purposeful hand gestures that match what you're saying.

7. Beginning/ending Strong

Beginning and end are memorable. Your presentation must start strong and end strongly. To engage your audience, don't sound robotic.

Begin with a story, stat, or quote. Conclude with a summary of key points. Focus on how you will start and end your speech.

You should memorize your presentation's opening and closing. Memorize something naturally. Excellent presentations start and end strong because people won't remember the middle.

Bringing It All Together

Seven simple yet powerful ways to improve public speaking. Know your audience, study others, prepare and rehearse, record yourself, remove as much text as possible from slides, and start and end strong.

Follow these tips to improve your speaking and audience communication. Prepare, practice, and learn from great speakers to reduce your fear of public speaking.

"Speaking to one person or a thousand is public speaking." — Vocal coach Roger Love