Steve Little is a Real Estate Agent and Auctioneer in Coffs Harbour NSW and he shared with me a remarkable story of how he overcame his fear of public speaking. Here is the transcript of the interview:

“I always wanted to be an auctioneer but I never had the confidence to stand up and do it and I was working with an auctioneer who one day, just out of the blue, came on to the stage and said “Ladies and gentlemen my name is ___ and I’m the auctioneer tonight for these properties and I would like to introduce you to Steve Little who is the principal of XYZ real estate“.

I thought “Oh, oh I’ve got to stand!” I stood up there and I shook and I spoke. The ratbag did that about 10 times over the course of the year and eventually convinced me that I should go and learn to be an auctioneer which I did.

Some years later I was on the Board of Directors of the local PCYC group and I had this fund raising idea. We needed to raise about $50,000 or $60,000 towards renovations of the club. I had this crazy idea that because Russell Crowe is a resident of Coffs Harbour that we should try and get him along to support the club.

He had a new movie coming out so I thought we can have a Premiere of the movie in our local cinema and maybe we could buy the seats for $5 each and sell them for $25 and give people a glass of wine and a few cheese and biscuits and so on.

So I put it to the Board and they all said that the idea would never fly. “It would be easier to fly to the moon than get Russell Crowe. Why would Russell Crowe do that?”

Well that’s the worst thing you can tell me – “you can’t do something“.

I got the opportunity to meet up with Russell’s brother, who I’ve known for some years just by coincidence. I didn’t realise he was Russell’s brother for some years. He arranged for Russell to ring me and I had a talk to him and I shared the idea I had with him and he very graciously agreed to do it. Later he rang me back and told me that I was aiming too low with a goal of $5000. “I will not get out of bed for that“, he said. So he convinced me to go for $40,000. I couldn’t believe what he was saying and he shared with me his vision and how he wanted to do it which involved ringing up all his friends in the movie world and the sports world and getting a whole lot of memorabilia that we could auction on the stage. And he said “After all you’re an auctioneer here and you can stand up and do it“.

As you can imagine I just freaked. You know working on stage with Russell, how would I do that? I’ve got my hands full just trying to pull the night together.

Russell, true his word, put his team in place and we pulled the night together.

We actually filled two theatres, not one. The night went off fantastic – red carpet,limos. We had Jack Thompson there and lots of other celebrities. It was amazing. I got up on the stage and I was very very nervous for the first 5 or 7 minutes and Glenn Aylward who is another auctioneer here in town (and a very good chatels auctioneer) assisted me. After 5 minutes Russell just made me feel so calm and collected and we worked together.

We raised $40,000 on the night, for the kids. It was brilliant and from that night to this day I can just stand up and work publicly and it doesn’t worry me.

I would have no trouble standing up in front of 20,000 people and doing an auction.

So a big thanks to Russell who has cured me of my stage fright.”

Additional Reading:

How to overcome your fear of public speaking.

Public Speaking Fear

What Public Speaking Without Fear Looks Like

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