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Secrets of the Internet Stars

SOME OF your most important audiences are people you may never be in the same room with. They’re the potential fans, customers, and clients who hear you speak for the first time through the video on your website, or discover you in a YouTube clip on their phones. If you can send your energy, intelligence, and passion through the screen of your audience’s phones and devices, it’s possible to catch people’s attention, make them believe in you, and build an enormous following that wants to spend time with you, and buy what you’re selling.

Three of my students, Bethany Mota, Brendon Burchard, and Simon Sinek, have become some of the most influential people on the Internet, tapping into incredibly large—and very different—audiences by honing their presentation skills to take full advantage of the power of video and social media. I’d like to show you how each of them pours enthusiasm, relatability, confidence, and intelligence into what they create online, and how you can use the same skills to bring your own on-screen presence to life.

Bethany Mota: “I’m Your Best Friend”

Bethany is an energetic California girl who started making YouTube videos in her room by herself in 2009, when she was just thirteen. She became known for her “haul” videos, in which she’d bring shopping bags full of clothing home from the mall and pull out her purchases, item by item, showing them to viewers and talking about them as if she were sitting in her room with her best friend—“This is such a cute skater skirt!” “I love this crop top with the little foxes on it.”

Thousands, then millions of girls tuned in (at this writing, her YouTube channel has 10.3 million subscribers). Over time, she began talking about makeup, fashion, and food and offering do-it-yourself tips. Though she’s out of her teens now, she may get upwards of 14 million views for a video on how to get ready for school in the morning or a tour of her bedroom. She’s learned what her fans want, and she’s more than willing to give it to them with the goal of inspiring them, and having fun.

To say that her fans love her is a gross understatement. They see her as a role model, and if they can’t be just like her, they’ll take the second-best choice: claiming her as their best friend. She makes it easy to believe she’s speaking just to them.

What separated Bethany from so many other young women posting videos on YouTube? How did she rise so fast and far above the competition? I could talk about her business sense or her work ethic or her never-say-never attitude, all of which I’ve seen. But instead, I’ll focus on the one thing you should focus on too: her ability to be liked and to create a character people want to be friends with.

How Bethany Uses Happy and Grateful

Watch any of Bethany’s videos and you’ll see her expertly showcasing the two “start here” elements of presentation I introduced in the previous chapter: Happy and Grateful. By exuding happiness, you make the audience feel your joy and energy and let people know that you are delighted to be sharing.

To tap the sound of Happy, you need to have more volume than usual, and a lot more melody. (Listen again to audio 37 if you’d like a refresher.) Bethany uses both volume and melody all the time to infuse her content with enthusiasm. Also, pay close attention to her physiology, what she’s doing with her face. As she infuses her voice with Happy, her face lights up with a big smile that shows her teeth. Her cheeks are high, and her eyes are coming up at the corners because of it. Her whole face seems built around that smile. Notice also that when she gets a little more serious, mentioning any subject that might be less than fun, or something that didn’t turn out so perfectly, she still seems to be fighting to keep a partial smile, as if to say to her fans, “Things don’t always end up as you had hoped, but with a positive attitude, everything will still work out.”

Some of you may remember that I’ve said going too wide with the corners of the mouth can make you sound nasal. So, you may be wondering, won’t smiling send my voice to my nose? The quick answer: Yes, but it’s a minor problem for speakers, and there’s a quick fix. When singers’ mouths go too wide, their vowels get distorted and they sound less focused and less beautiful. But speakers can keep nasal sounds at bay by continuing to drop their jaws as they talk, so nasal sounds won’t take over. Smile, let your jaw drop naturally, and let the happiness flow to your listeners.

Bethany is also highly skilled at using her voice to convey to her audiences how grateful she is. She easily and naturally slips into the slower speech, lowered volume, and stretched-out words that comprise Grateful (compare what you see on Bethany’s video with audio 38’s Grateful demo). When she does that, and when you do it, audiences will feel as though you’re appreciating every second you spend with them. Notice how elongating words, specifically the vowels, creates the sense that Bethany is savoring her every moment on-screen, because she appreciates your time, your patience, and the positive energy you’re sending back to her.

Bethany is a breath of fresh air. She is not projecting any strong ego or overconfidence by suddenly getting very loud or reducing the amount of melody she normally uses. If she made either or both of those changes, people would think, “Wow, why is she mad? Who is she angry at?” By keeping her melody strong and varied, she keeps her listeners engaged.

The Body Reinforces the Message

Bethany makes people feel comfortable in subtle ways with her use of her body. She speaks directly to the camera and looks relaxed and comfortable. Part of that has to do with the position of her head. Bethany seems to have zero tension as she tilts it left, right, and forward, her hair bouncing in rhythm with her movements. Many of us create tension in our neck and stomach areas. So when we watch someone who seems to have less tension there, because of the ease of her movements, we sense less pain and nervousness, and it makes us emotionally and physically relax a bit as well.

You can drain the tension from your neck by trying this: Let your head fall to your left shoulder, now your right one, then let it fall backward, then all the way forward. At each spot, hold yourself there for five to eight seconds before you move to the next position. Then try some very slow head rolls. Move counterclockwise for a few rotations and then clockwise. That will help relieve a bit of the pressure if done regularly. And as I’ve mentioned, you can relax your stomach by making sure that as you exhale you don’t tighten the very top part of the stomach area where the ribs come close together. You need to exhale and keep that part moving in slowly and gently. If you are pushing that area out, and a lot of you probably are, that’s the specific place you need to focus on: Allow it to come freely back in as the air and sound come out.

Now look at Bethany’s hands and the way they seem to move freely, accentuating the words and sounds coming out of her mouth. She rarely uses parallel gestures, which look stiff and a little robotic. Instead, she mixes it up, with one hand moving this way, the other moving that way, in harmony with the rest of her body. You should be videoing yourself constantly to be sure you haven’t fallen prey to the parallel-gesture monster. I know you’ve seen politicians and TV folks doing it, but you’ll need to be more fluid to succeed as part of the new generation that comes across on the small screen as real, not fake or calculating.

Be careful about using too much movement if you’re being videoed and watched on small screens; you want to stay within the area the camera lens can take in. I’ve seen too many people wander in and out of the frame, looking more like ponies on a carousel than Internet media stars. Stay right where the camera can see you, and don’t move too far left or right. As you fill your defined space, you can still create excitement with sound and body movements. Look at the camera and keep your gestures close to your body. Don’t extend your arms so far from your body that your hands go out of the camera frame. You’ll often see Bethany bounce on her bed, seeming full of energy she can hardly contain.

A note on equipment: If you have a video camera, great. If not, feel free to use the camera built into your computer as you’re starting out. Just be sure that the camera is no lower than your eye level. The view of your face is less flattering from a lower angle, making it look as though you have a double chin even when you don’t. You’ll need at least one good light. (Check out the Diva Ring Light. It’s a good one.) And invest in an external USB mike so your sound is clear. Bethany is a pro at showcasing herself as an average kid with both joy and the feeling of being comfortable in her own skin, not trying to be a supermodel or a know-it-all. She laughs at her own mistakes and even edits in video clips where she messes up. All of that makes her more relatable. People don’t follow those who lead from ego. Viewers want to follow those who lead from the heart, and Bethany is a master at that.

Her believability—the result of the way she uses her voice and body—has propelled her to Internet superstardom in just six years. Ever enthusiastic about the clothes she showed viewers, Bethany got the attention of clothing brands and signed a deal with the company Aeropostale to design a clothing line, which dramatically exceeded all sales expectations the first year. In 2014–2016 Bethany was voted the number one female Web Star at the Teen Choice Awards. Now she’s singing, and the first song we worked on together went straight to number one on the Billboard charts.

That’s where great presentation skills can lead.

Brendon Burchard: “I’m Just Like You. If I Could Do It, You Can Too.”

Brendon Burchard, another client who’s an Internet sensation, is one of the top ten most-watched people on the Web. Unlike Bethany, who’s about half his age, Brendon is not trying to attract or engage millions of teens. His audience is an older group of men and women looking to achieve financial success and self-fulfillment by learning to market themselves and their unique abilities to the public.

Brendon’s clients are entrepreneurs, presenters, and influencers—doctors who want to write books and become best-selling authors, or fitness experts who want to bring new exercise and health techniques to a mass market. Some of the people he attracts want to be motivational speakers or high-performance coaches, so he teaches them how to corner that particular part of the business world.

While Bethany is looking to help teens choose the right eye shadow for that night’s date, Brendon is trying to help people sell books, products, and seminars, enrich their own lives, and, if possible, make the world a better place. His motto is Live, Love & Matter. He believes that if you embrace your passions, love intensely, and have a positive effect on the people around you, you’ll be fulfilled financially and emotionally. With that much difference between Bethany and Brendon’s branding and messaging, and the very different ages and interests of their viewers, you might assume they would need completely different voices, personality traits, and presentational styles. But you’d be wrong. Brendon and Bethany have a great deal in common, and it starts with the learned and practiced ability to engage people and to make them feel something.

Though Brendon is older, he’s still filled with a childlike wonder and energy. Watching him is like seeing a kid open presents on Christmas morning. He has a wide-eyed joy and happiness that are both uplifting and infectious. How does he create that childlike, positive personality? He starts from the same place Bethany does: by delivering Happy and Grateful.

Brendon makes sure that his volume is strong to showcase how happy he really is, and that his melody takes a very specific “upturn” when he gets to commas or periods. This helps viewers stay connected and positive. At each pause, Brendon consciously makes his voice rise in pitch. I often talk about my distaste for the way kids learn the English language in school, specifically how they learn cadence and phrasing. We are taught that when we get to a comma or a period, we should make the last syllable go lower and softer.

The problem with this use of sound (audio 42 on the website) is that it sends a subconscious signal to the viewer or listener that the speaker is done after each pause. The voice goes down, it gets softer, and, essentially, it waves goodbye. If you were listening to an orchestra and the sound trailed off every five seconds or so, then jumped back to life and blasted out more music for another five to eight seconds, you would get up and leave. It would be hard to endure even the most exquisite sonata if the flow were broken and the energy drained away at annoyingly frequent intervals. Yet we’re taught that it’s fine to do something quite comparable when we give a talk or read aloud. Let me just say this: Don’t do it. You’re pushing your audience away.

Instead, use the commas and periods to put more melody into your voice and make people feel happy. It sounds like this (audio 43) when you use Brendon’s technique and raise the pitch of your voice, or stay on the same note, when you get to a comma, a period, or the last part of a word.

This technique will keep your viewers excited, looking forward to your next words. You have to master this tip if you want people to think you are happy. And believe me, you DO want that. It’s the best way to start communicating with someone you don’t know yet. Brendon always leads with Happy.

But it’s worth noting that the sounds of Happy for Brendon and Bethany are necessarily a bit different. Bethany can use a lot of extra melody, going high like a flute and jumping all over the melody scale. She is young and fun, and her viewers are wild and spirited, the kinds of kids who might suddenly get up and dance on a bed or eat a gallon of ice cream and squirt whipped cream from the can right into their mouths. That type of exuberance is filled with abandon—and it feels amazing. Bethany’s audience knows that feeling, and they can handle much more melody from Bethany than Brendon’s viewers want from him.

His fans are older, with more responsibilities. Brendon’s peeps do get out of their chairs at his seminars, when he pumps up the music and runs around the stage, leading them in a brisk few minutes of clapping and jumping. But other than that, most of those people don’t have a lot of that kind of action in their daily routines. If Brendon pumped up the happiness in his voice with the kind of vocal swoops Bethany makes, his audience would probably think he sounded fake or phony, or as though he were pretending to be someone he’s not, at an age that he’s not. So Happy for him needs to involve smaller melody jumps and less dramatic volume changes. His Happy needs to be real, and a good deal more subtle than Bethany’s.

Listen to audio 44 on the website to hear what it might sound like if Brendon used Bethany’s style of Happy, and get a sample of how I’d advise him to scale it down.

After Happy, Brendon moves into Grateful, sounds that are very similar to Bethany’s. He, too, gets slower and softer and stretches out his words. The sounds of Grateful are less defined by age-appropriateness or attention than Happy is. I think that’s because the whole concept of being grateful comes from a more adult perspective. A child is first happy to have a new toy, lost in the joy of playing with it. The idea of gratitude tends to come in only when a parent or gift-giver says, “Do you know how lucky you are to be the first one on your block with that toy?” or, “You’d better thank Nana right now for giving you such an awesome present.”

In my mind, gratitude is a more mature concept, filled with self-awareness and perhaps a greater awareness of the outside world. So when Bethany sounds grateful, she sounds a little older, and when Brendon sounds grateful, he sounds his age. Do you follow?

Watch any of Brendon’s videos and you will also see an impressive display of how to use your body properly. Brendon is the poster child for the word energetic. His arms, legs, and head are fluidly moving to accentuate every sound he speaks. When he gets serious and his pitch shifts to lower notes, his body comes to a noticeable halt. He might move only one arm, in a slow way that makes you feel how deliberate that gesture is.

When Brendon does that, shifting from big to smaller movements to denote seriousness, his face changes as well. His eyebrows come down from the Happy spot on his face, and he focuses his eyes very intently on one person at a time, as if to say, “Now I’m really talking to YOU alone, now I am coaching only YOU, and you are going to get my A material, the insights that will actually change your life.”

If most people stared as intently as Brendon does, they might come across as angry, but because he softens his body movements, slows them down, and reins them in, viewers don’t feel physically threatened. He also makes sure that his voice never loses its melody, because once you take melody out, people immediately think you are getting mad at them, and then they only want to avoid that feeling and YOU.

Both Bethany and Brendon use their voices and physiology to make you want to spend more time with them, learn from them, be friends with them, and feel good when you are watching them. Both make you feel as though you could be better, smarter, and more popular and successful, and could get more out of the life that is available to you right now.

When Brendon lowers his volume, tempers the melody, and slows his speech and movement—saying, “I’m just like you, and I built this big business, so you can do it too”—people believe him. When Bethany raises her volume, goes higher in pitch, speaks faster, and smiles more—saying, “I just made it to the finals of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, and I don’t even dance that well, so you can do anything YOU want to do”—her fans believe her as well. The voice needs to match the message. You’re not credible when your sounds don’t match your words.

Positioning Yourself as an Expert

Bethany’s and Brendon’s love of sharing information and enthusiasm with their audiences created the kind of connection that’s a foundation for selling products without being “salesy.” Bethany’s love for a pair of Forever 21 sweater shorts could send fans running to the store, and now she’s bringing her own fashion line to them. And Brendon, who is selling ideas, has built a supremely successful business by enticing people to buy products, attend live events, and purchase services based on those ideas.

It takes an added skill set to do that: You have to know how to present yourself as an Expert.

Experts share insights about life, business, and strategies, and Brendon is a master at that, as well as being a motivator who makes people feel as though they can do anything they set their minds to. He doesn’t come across as a teacher who is angry and demands respect. He’s more like your best friend, who sees where you’re missing the boat and then helps put you back on course.

So after Grateful, how does Brendon change his voice to get to Expert? First he gets louder again. Remember how Happy had volume and Grateful got a little softer? Well, Expert ranks just softer than the louder volume of Happy. Think about it. If you had just won the lottery, you would have moments of uncontrollable volume as joy poured in. But an Expert’s volume is based on consistency, timelessness, confidence, and a solid background and foundation. It has to sound like trust.

So the Expert’s volume is stable and even throughout each sentence, without sudden volume changes that catch listeners or viewers off guard. The goal is to make them feel comfortable with you, but also to make them see that you are a strong teacher who has their best interests at heart and is powerful enough to calm their fears.

Once an Expert has connected with an audience using Happy and Grateful, he or she needs to use melodies that make small jumps from low notes to highs. I call this Stair-Step Melody. On the stair steps, you are either walking up (going from low notes to higher ones), walking down (going from high notes to lower), or staying on the landing (making the same note repeatedly).

The Expert cannot miss any steps. He or she has to move deliberately from one small step to the next without trying to leap over any. This gradual movement of melody is what keeps the listener attentive and focused on you, without being pulled toward distractions like email messages or texts that pop up on their phones. Hear an example of this Stair-Step Melody on audio 45.

In my work with presentation students—and sometimes on the stages I share with Brendon—I teach not just Happy, Grateful, and the other emotions I’ve shown you, but a whole range of combinations of sound that help people emphasize the particular identity they want people to perceive. Practicing the sounds of the Expert can give you a taste of the way you can match your voice to your message and identity to reach through the screen and get an audience to respond.

The Sound of the TED Talk Guru

I’d like to give you one last example of what an Expert sounds like. Meet Simon Sinek, a very smart guy with a very fast brain. Simon is a leadership guru who was trained as an ethnographer, is on the staff of the RAND Corporation think tank, and teaches at Columbia University. One measure of his reach and influence: His 2009 TED Talk, “How great leaders inspire action,” has been viewed more than 28 million times.

Simon’s passion is teaching people and organizations how to inspire action so the world will have more fulfilled, effective people in it. Though he needs to connect with his audience on the same level of likability that Bethany and Brendon do, he also needs to establish himself as an expert whose credibility, effectiveness, and belief people will trust (as does Brendon). At the center of his message is that everyone needs to “start with their why,” and communicate, from the very first moment, the “purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to do what you do.”

I got my first glimpse of Simon’s intelligence when I heard him deliver a presentation at Zappos, where both of us had been asked to speak. I’d watched a video of him beforehand to familiarize myself with his work, and I realized as I saw him live that he was one of those rare people who can fully memorize every phrase, cadence, and comma of what they’re going to say. That was all the more impressive because it’s extremely difficult to deliver a memorized speech with empowered passion that feels alive in the room. Even the most practiced speakers can sound rote and distanced when they’ve memorized their material.

But Simon had mastered that art. His content was interesting, his presentation was genuine and entertaining, and he sounded as smart as he is. When I spoke to his head of operations afterward, praising what I’d seen, she said, “Really? He was all over the place today, taking chunks and moving them around.” She sounded as though that had been a problem, but actually it’s an effective way to stay in the moment. Even with every piece memorized, Simon still left room for his mind to jump to whatever he thought of next, just as people like me do when we speak from notes or an outline.

While I don’t recommend that the vast majority of us try to memorize our presentations, Simon is proof that you can do it in a way that’s so connected to the moment that you stay fully engaged in your own story, as though you’re telling it for the first time—and that’s what listeners hear.

Every teacher and Expert has to master the art of presenting very familiar material with the same excitement he or she wants his or her students and listeners to feel when they discover it. People often tell me, “You must have the patience of a saint to teach the same lessons, all these scales and warm-ups, day after day.” But this is what I tell them:

Each time I’m in front of a new student or audience, I tell myself this is the first time I’ve ever been in this moment with you today, doing exactly this. It’s a brand-new situation, and who knows what can happen?

The exercises become new information, and if you’re my student, I’m listening to you, doing this for the first time. You are different, unique, and I have to think about what I’m hearing and watch for how you’re responding so I’ll know what I need to say next. Coming from that place, there’s no such thing as rote or tedious. And I was very aware that Simon had found a way to let this attitude and approach shine through even a presentation he was delivering word for word, perhaps for the hundredth, or thousandth, time. That’s the mind-set of the Expert. We did a lesson afterward, and as often happens when I work with a superstar singer or presenter, I wondered if I’d listen closely to what he was doing with his voice and wind up saying, “You know, I’ll be honest: You’re perfect and I have nothing to teach you.” But the truth is, that never happens. Because there’s always a way to make a voice and presentation run in a healthier, more powerful way. Even when someone’s at the top of his or her game, we can raise the quality and take that person to a new peak. The people at the top know this, and they’re the ones who always seem to work the hardest when they’re with me.

It’s OK to Sound Vulnerable, Even When You’re the Expert

As we worked together, we realized that Simon was a tenor and had a high male voice. Yet every sound he made when he spoke was coming from the lower part of his chest voice. My theory about why he’d chosen to hang out in that range was that he’d been presenting material from his latest book, Why Leaders Eat Last, to a lot of heads of corporations. The lessons in that book were drawn from his work with officers in the Marines, and the stories seemed to call forth a low, “manly” voice.

One thing I pointed out to Simon, though, was that when I’d worked in the past with officers in the military, it always struck me that the highest-ranking generals were not the ones with the loudest, lowest voices. At those top levels, officers thought of themselves as strategists who led with compassion, organizational skills, and theories, not with brute force. It surprised me to see that many of them had high, airy voices.

Nothing in Simon’s talk, and no point he was trying to make about leadership, was stopping him from also showing the higher parts of his voice, I told him. Just like the leaders he was describing, he needed to showcase a more vulnerable and gentle side of who he is. We worked on the whole top part of his voice, putting more middle voice into some of it to add another layer of compassion, and to let audiences experience a part of his personality and character that the generals expressed instinctively, and that he’d never allowed himself to show.

The Expert often thinks that he or she needs to be invulnerable, but the sound of leadership that an Expert wants to express is also the sound of compassion.

I’d noticed that Simon didn’t have a lot of volume changes in his presentation. That, I guessed, probably had to do with the kind of seeking, introspective content he’d made his name explaining. He was an Expert in the “whys” of selling and motivation, and there’s an almost meditative quality to looking inside yourself and your company to find the “why” at its core.

There is a calmness to this sort of inward-looking content, which so many Experts share. Yet they need to convey the excitement of discovering the content they’re delivering. In Simon’s case, that centered on pinpointing the purpose behind what you do—because that “why” inspires people to fall in love with what you do. It’s compelling content, but there was another level of excitement he could bring to audiences by changing the volume of his voice, raising it to show excitement, then going softer to get listeners to lean in and listen harder. If he could go bigger with his voice after drawing listeners in, they’d feel more connected and feel as though they’d been on a journey with him. When Simon started soft and stayed there, he was muting the power of his material, but he quickly saw how playing with volume amplified the level of energy he could bring to his audiences.

That’s a key tool for Experts. Your content is important. But the way you sound is what brings your audience to it and makes them want to stay. Practice and master the sounds of emotion. It’s worked tremendously well for Bethany, Brendon, and Simon—and it will work for you, too.