Welcome to another Three Things Thursday.
This week we passed the 150 subscriber mark. It’s great to have so many of you along for the journey.
If you’re new here or reading through substack…join us on the march towards 200.
What a week. I started Building a Second Brain and Effortless Roam. The journey with Roam has been amazing so far and I feel like I’m well on my way to fully embracing a note-taking system with this tool. It’s getting easier and I find myself using it more frequently even just to write out tweets, website articles, and notes for Performative Speaking.
A cool thing I’ll be doing tomorrow is talking with the speechwriter for General Petraeus and General Mattis. This all came about because of Twitter. Honestly, it’s pretty amazing. I remember being in college at Haverford College and sitting in my dorm room watching The West Wing. I would sit there and think, I would love to be a speechwriter for the President one day. How crazy that I get to talk to a guy who was writing at that level? One day, maybe, I’ll be looking back the same way.
One last note before we get into three things, next week will be the official launch of the Performative Speaking online course. The format will be 5 weeks with 3 live sessions each week. There will be video review, speech review, and overall a whole lot of fun, community building, and growth when it comes to public speaking. I’ll be taking all the lessons I learned as a trial lawyer with 102 jury trials and combining those with all the lessons I learned teaching persuasive speaking at SMU Law School and combining those with all the lessons I learned writing speeches for local politicians and my performance coaching to teach professionals how to become better public speakers.
If you have questions please reach out. The start date will be October 19, but the course will be capped and I expect us to reach that limit. Stay tuned for more information on my twitter and in this newsletter next week. Feel free to share with friends too.
Now for Three Things.
The community of Performative Speaking
I decided to talk about community 30 seconds before I pressed record. I didn’t prepare. I didn’t practice. This is first take, no prep, no edits, and no redos.
I’ve been thinking about community a lot with online courses. The right community feels like the college you wanted to attend. At least the college I wanted to attend. Supportive, ambitious, intelligent, talented, and selfless.
When I first started thinking about a Performative Speaking course, I thought it would look more like a product. I thought something like Jack Butcher’s courses. While I do think I can create a valuable product for people to purchase down the line, I wanted to focus on the live course with a built-in community. After taking Write of Passage I realized the power of this community.
If the community works for a writing course, I know it will be even more powerful when it comes to public speaking. After all, a critical part of getting better at public speaking is to actually speak in public. So now I prepare to release the course next week for registration.
I honestly don’t know if there will be 20 signups or 100 signups. I know that this cohort 1 will get something special because I am ready to deliver it. So next week you will learn more and if you want to join the course waitlist just reply back to this email and I will add you.
This tweet from Producemore
What more can I really add? JFK nailed this one.
“It is not fear that grips him. Only a heightened sense of things.” Dilios in 300
This week I want to highlight a book I’m re-reading. Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield is my all-time favorite book. I have a signed first edition by him and its one of my most prized possessions. I talk about this book often because it’s such an incredible job of storytelling.
The book tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae. Yes, you’ve seen the story in the movie 300 (which I also love) but this is a very different take. The story is told from the eyes of a survivor of the Spartan army. He’s not a Spartan but instead was a slave who worked his way up into a position where he joined in the battle. I love the book because of the lessons but also how it tells the story. I highly suggest reading this book.
Thanks for reading as always. See you next week for another Three Things Thursday.
Find me on twitter: Robbiecrab
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