Name: How to Speak Confidently (When You're Shy) - Myke Macapinlac Interview
Uploaded: 2025-07-22T18:37:00.000Z
Duration: 34 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Future simple

Hey ambitious professionals, it's Linda Rayner of LindaRayner.com guiding you to a career and life you'll truly enjoy.

To-infinitive

And today's video is a very special one because we're going to be talking about how to speak and connect to others in a confident way especially when you're shy with my very special guest Mike McIpinlack.

Past simple

Mike McIpinlack was a shy immigrant who used to work a boring engineering job and became a talk show host, a social dynamics specialist and a lifestyle entrepreneur.

He now teaches shy guys to develop social confidence so they can succeed in their personal, romantic and professional lives.

His work has been featured on Breakfast Television, on Shaw TV and in the Huffington Post.

Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining me here on my channel.

So, a lot of people here on my channel may not know who you are and what you do so if you can just tell us a little bit about yourself, your story.

My name is Mike McIpinlack and I founded Social Confidence Mastery and our mission is to help shy guys improve their social confidence so they can succeed in their personal, romantic and professional lives.

So, basically, the company started out of my own personal interest to solve my struggle.

So, the whole thing started back when I was 16.

My family and I immigrated from the Philippines to Canada and the first few years of being an immigrant in a new country was a huge struggle due to a number of things.

Back then, I didn't speak English so I found it really hard to communicate with people.

Number two, I used to be massively overweight.

I was 200 pounds and I had a 36-inch waist and number three, I suffered from really bad social anxiety.

In fact, back in high school, I used to eat my lunch in a bathroom stall because I was just so shy, you know, to mingle with the other kids and yeah, you know, like I spent a lot of lonely nights at home playing video games, watching TV, you know, I was working a low-paying job.

My first job was at Subway, worked at McDonald's and I was just like, there's got to be more to life than this.

So, I started noticing that, you know, other people are, you know, my age, you know, back then too, they were cool, they were charismatic, you know, they had friends, they had pretty girls and, you know, when you're young and you're single, you know, like that's a huge pain point for you, right?

Like you want to be invited to parties, you want to be able to hang out with cool people and, you know, attract women and stuff.

So that's kind of what sparked my interest to learn more about social dynamics.

I read every book that I can get on, you know, how to be social, how to be confident, how to be charismatic and, you know, I had a career as an engineer that I pursued for about six years and yeah, I quit that six years ago actually and that's when I started my business full-time and I've been running it since then.

So I've worked with hundreds of men, transformed their lives, I've been to five weddings so far, which is amazing.

So you help shy guys with their social, sort of social abilities in terms of being able to connect with others, women in particular.

So it's interesting because even though the people on my channel here, they're not necessarily looking for a relationship, I mean, you may be, but at the same time, the focus has always been on careers and really building relationships at work so that you can get yourself promoted, so that you can have advancement opportunities, you can get the career that you actually want to do.

So what do you find are similarities between, just amongst people in general who tend to be shy, who tend to have issues with communicating, what are the things that you tend to notice?

So if you think about it, you know, like you go to school and you're educated, right?

A lot of my clients are professionals as well.

A lot of them are, they work in the STEM industry, so science, technology, engineering, math.

So I work with a lot of guys who are computer programmers, engineers, developers, you know, because if you think of their typical day, you know, they sit in front of a computer and the only interaction they have for the most part, right, would be some sort of a, you know, technically work-related question with their coworkers.

And, you know, when they went to school, you know, they learned the technical know-how to function properly in their career, but they were never taught how to, you know, think differently, right?

They never knew how to, you know, tell a good story.

They never knew how to give a great first impression.

They never knew how to dress well that's authentic to their personality.

They never knew how to make friends, you know?

So a lot of them, their issue stems from a knowledge gap.

So for example, let's say I bought you a car and it's a manual transmission and, you know, up to this point, you've only driven automatic.

You're going to sit in the car frustrated because you're like, oh my God, like I don't know how to drive this thing.

And now you're starting to, you know, like get mad at yourself.

I'm like, how come I don't know how to drive this thing, whatever.

And that's exactly what's happening with these guys from a social perspective, you know?

And again, what I teach guys is beyond dating.

Dating is the last thing we talk about, right?

The first, you know, we cover everything from having a positive self-image, nonverbal communication, you know, addressing in a way that conveys your true personality, managing your anxiety, telling good stories, you know, expressing yourself in a way that's authentic and true to yourself, but at the same time, interesting to other people too.

And I help them design their social life so that, you know, they're actually becoming better people.

They're doing things that they enjoy while they're meeting like-minded people along the way.

So the biggest thing you said is they just don't know how.

So if it's a knowledge gap, then that's something that we know we just have to learn and we have to start to implement it for ourselves.

So what is one of the biggest things that they currently don't know that they need to know?

What are people, yeah, what do people need to know?

Yeah, so the first thing that I tell my students when I work with them in my coaching program is we have to set a very clear goal about the kinds of people you want to meet, right?

That's where it starts because, you know, having a clear goal acts as your compass.

So like, it'll determine where you go, right?

If you're going out, it'll determine the types of stories you share with people.

It'll determine how you dress, you know, the amount of information you share about yourself, that kind of stuff, right?

We start with a defined goal about the kinds of people they want to meet.

And then the second thing is now we start talking about, well, what's good about yourself?

Because a lot of guys that I work with, they feel like they're not good enough, but they just haven't taken the time to assess their positive traits.

You know, it's easy to feel like you're not good enough if you don't know what's good about you.

So making a list of your positive traits, things you like about yourself, things that are going well in your life, right?

Which I'm sure everyone listening right now, you know, you've got a lot of good things going on for you.

And then the third thing that we'll work on would be your first impression.

Because here's the thing, people have made up their minds whether they like you or not in a matter of seconds, right?

So if you unknowingly give off the wrong first impression, you're going against the grain.

You know, like now the interaction is seeing you on a more negative light instead of a more favorable light.

So why not, you know, mitigate that from the very beginning?

You know, how you conduct yourself, right?

And then after that, you know, we work on managing your anxiety.

You know, what do you do when you're nervous, you're having panic attacks when you're out interacting with people?

Again, if you're someone who just doesn't have a lot of experience meeting people, then it's very uncomfortable to be in that space, right?

So I want to actually just start with that first piece where you said it's defining the exact person that you want to connect to.

Now, in a lot of the situations for people who are watching, they don't really have a choice.

When you go to work, you have certain co-workers that you have to work with because they're on your team.

You have their boss that you have to deal with.

And so you can't really pick and choose the type of personality that you want to connect to.

So how do you deal with it then when you're trying to figure out, okay, how do I make a connection with people at work?

I have to make friends or hopefully be friendly with these particular types of people.

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How to Speak Confidently (When You're Shy) - Myke Macapinlac Interview

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