Welcome to Module eight, this is going to be all about preparing for that first presentation. Everything from creating the presentation itself to the training, you need to be a rockstar on stage. Of course, most people in fact, I don't know anybody who isn't a little bit terrified of public speaking. In fact, it's frequently listed as a fear that is greater than the fear of dying. But for a thought leader keynote speaking can be incredibly important as a tool, both for impact but also it can be quite lucrative, and in fact it they have become one of my top revenue streams, but to ensure you are ready to handle the fear related to speaking, I'm going to go into deep detail on how to prepare for everything. Everything you need to think about to have successful speaking engagements.

And then in the next module, I'm going to talk about how to actually get on those stages. But you need to be prepared before you try. Now, thinking about the things that make a great presentation, well, you need to create create that actual presentation keynote, which includes everything from the storyline to the slides. Now, there are a lot of companies and consultants that can help you build that first presentation. And if you have, if you don't have a keynote already ready to go what's called a canned keynote. I would say this is a place to invest some money, right?

Whether it's 2000 or $10,000. You don't have to go all out and do something incredibly expensive. I made sure to invest money and time into this part of my thought leader foundation. Right? The very first one. It was helpful to have professionals working with me on this because I needed to condense a personal story of a, you know, a lifelong chronic disease with 43 hospitalizations, six major surgeries and three organs removed, and I needed to condense that into essentially 90 seconds.

Now, it's really easy to include way too many details. And that is what a professional is going to help you. Because those professionals, correct writers and designers, they can create that perfect package that takes the audience on an emotional journey. Without them feeling emotions, you don't want them to feel like pity or boredom, you do not want those two emotions coming out of your audience. Now, when you're preparing for a keynote, you want to think about the primary elements that can create a great presentation. Now making by making sure your talk has each one of the following elements I'm about ready to talk about, you're gonna set yourself up for success.

Now, if you ask me what my single biggest thing that propelled my career forward more than anything, and I would say it's infectious passion. All great salespeople and leaders possess infectious passion, their excitement and their energy is so strong and authentic. Others can't help but smile and want to be a part of what they're doing. All great actors and musicians have this as well. They have the ability to take you with them on an emotional journey, and even change your mood. The strength of their belief can wash over you and turn you into a believer to passion is key when it comes to keynotes.

When you speak, you're both a salesperson and a teacher. You're selling ideas, of course, not products and services. And you're communicating those ideas in a new way so that your listeners can understand them and remember them. This is a performance absolutely The packaging of the content into stories and the actual physical delivery are two of the most important parts to a keynote. So let's dive into first of all credibility and storytelling. Now this element includes why you are an expert, and why the audience should trust you and your content.

Your goal is to always connect to the audience, listing a bunch of credentials or your job title and educational background. Boring. This is not interesting or compelling. reading from a bio, don't do it. For information, anyone can read on LinkedIn. Let them read it, they're on stage.

The best way to establish credibility in a way that connects to the audience is through storytelling. Now this is one of the most important skills you can develop as a thought leader. And you can actually take courses in storytelling by The way now if you package your y into a narrative arc for the listener, you can leave other aspects of your credibility into that story to show the audience your passion for something. Now they I read about a study that was done in the neuro economics department at a Graduate University study, study center, which is I think Clermont, and they found a really interesting link between storytelling and empathy. During the experiment, researchers drew blood from participants and then showed those same participants a video of a person telling a story, and then they took their blood again. Well, it turns out, that second blood draw had more oxytocin than the first blood draw that was taken right before it.

Oxytocin is that hormone that the brain releases when someone feels a bond with somebody else. And the human brain also looks for patterns and a story of course, is the ultimate pattern. It has a beginning it has a middle, it has an end. There's a moral there's a logical ebb and flow. They start empathy in your audience and they make you seem wiser and more trustworthy. My first foray into storytelling was I was actually only nine years old.

And I was taking magic lessons. And they know all great magicians. Storytelling is part of the magic behind the illusion, though, I started learning this and actually having instructions on storytelling at that age, and they draw you in with that promise, right? And then they take you through a range of emotions, and they surprise you at the end, bringing the story to a very satisfying conclusion. You need to learn to do the same kind of thing that magicians do in your storytelling. They paint a picture of an entirely of an other worlds and other characters live sometimes.

Now the same is true with Things like science fiction. I read a ton of science fiction when I was growing up. It felt like I was watching a movie in my head because they were so good at diving into all of the different aspects. So what kind of stories can you put into your presentation? jot some things down if I have, if, if something has suddenly come to mind right now, write it down. always write things down.

And the more you can visualize your story, the better. Now you can study storytelling everyday by just looking for it. Learn how others tell stories to analyze, by analyzing your favorite fiction or your favorite movies. And use your personal experiences in your story so that the audience connects with you and your ideas. The overriding theme of my story, no matter whether it's the thought leader formula or the patient as CEO, is perseverance and success in the face of adversity. I could talk about my physician mom.

She died of cancer about 10 years ago. I could also talk about my struggle with a 13 year misdiagnosis or the sexual harassment and the gender bias, you know that I faced all of these things, are you no advert? They're definitely adversarial, right? But I don't use any of these hardships whatsoever as a crutch. And I use them instead as a catalyst and an opportunity to make a difference. There's an opportunity side to everything.

You just have to see it. It's usually right there in front of you. I know. So taking my These are three pretty big deal things right? My mom dying will now I am actually working on a company working on curing cancer. And if we are successful, we could potentially cure or treat more than 50% of all cancer.

My diagnosis of Crohn's disease is what oh, Ultimately drove me to set a life goal of impacting 100 million patients or more. And the gender bias that I faced in my career led me to turning myself into a professional speaker and now launching this platform based on my project plan, so that I can help other people become known for their brains and overcome any type of adversary that adversity. So any type of adversity that you are facing in your life. You can always use traumas and hardships as an opportunity and a catalyst to do massive good. Always engage listeners emotionally so they understand what the ideas sharing that you're sharing actually mean to you. And as I covered earlier on you, you really want to understand and know and share why you do what you do.

So think about the main theme of your story. Do you have a trauma or a hardship or some type of unfair situation equation you can turn around and turn into an opportunity. Whenever whenever one door closes, I always think that another door opens up, you just have to have the courage to step through that door and down the new path. That that is your personal story. Now, what can capture people's emotions and attentions, you want the audience to be able to root for you. So you need to know and understand your story arc, your two or three main points that you want the audience to take away and have a clear conclusion or summary.

Now you don't necessarily have to tell a personal story. You could tell a story of somebody else, as long as it connects to the audience emotionally. You could be studying say you're a psychologist or a psychiatrist. And maybe you get up on stage and you talk about a patient overcoming something, right? That is interesting and compelling. Now, always Make sure with your stories you have the setup, the confrontation, and the resolution.

Now, some basic storytelling formulas. Maybe you have a hero set off on a grand adventure to climb, say, you know, Mount Everest. And then you have to show the different troubles and the problems that that person faces along the way, which of course, is a lot. If you're going to go and cry, climb Mount Everest, you want to build that suspense and then show how each problem or the one problem was resolved that resolution. And that's one of the most common formulas for storytelling. And it works to both engage listeners and emotionally and to inspire them.

Now, if you're paying attention, you realize the common theme of all of these types of situations. inspiration, what have you Done, seen experienced, you even just know about or caused or reacted to or change that can serve as inspiration for others. Write it down if you can think of something right now. Now, whether you're on stage or in person, people are not necessarily going to remember what you say. But they will almost always remember how you beat them feel the best and the most compelling stories about are about overcoming that hardship or persevering or epiphany leading to behavior change. Maybe one day you dropped your ice cream and all of a sudden you had an epiphany about a whole new product that had to do with your company, right?

But is there a point in time or going through something traumatic and turning that trauma into something good? So let's talk about a few more storytelling formulas because there are quite a lot out there. This is mathematical and there are a lot of resources around this So let me mention a few more. Simon Sinek. Of course, if you haven't seen his talks, I would tell you, he's the one that start with why I would say go and watch one of his talks. It's the Golden Circle formula.

The key is to focus on the reason you are doing what you are doing. And you can use that formula to prepare for all of your presentations. You start by explaining why you chose what you do, what personal aspirations fueled your professional desires, and why you are working on the project that you're working on. Now. Once your incentives are clear, then you can describe how your brand fulfills those motives. And then, lastly, you talk through what your specific solutions are.

Now, along with credibility and storytelling, think about how to build audience engagement into your presentation. potentially you could ask them questions like so what what do you Think? Or do you know how you feel when you get up out of bed in the morning and you're raring to go? And I've done those types of questions from from stage, and I can actually feel the emotions of the audience coming along with me because they all got excited when I said things like that, and you could feel it and you could see it and some of their hands went up in the air. Fantastic if you can actually feel the audience's emotions and that comes from allowing them to interact with you. If they can vocalize something, even if it's just a Yeah, or a whoohoo or something, or move or nod their head in agreement.

So they have to think about themselves and they have to put themselves into your story. Right, you're bringing them on that emotional journey. Now, Elon Musk, he uses a particular storytelling formula, usually in his particular keynotes. Now, what he does is he describes a problem that the average consumer might connects it to the listeners and then paints a picture of what the world would look like if the problem no longer existed. Now, this kind of technique can really awaken the listeners optimism. Then Ilan typically goes on to step out, talk about the challenges that stand in the way of a solution, which convinces people that he's not some type of hopeless, hopeless, you know, idealist.

Instead, he demonstrates that he's considered every aspect of the issue. He uses data Enix and explains step by step how his team came up with a way to solve that particular dilemma. So it that formula really allows yourself to put yourself in the audience's shoes and anticipate their responses. So here's the formula, a problem, a viewpoint of a non problem world challenges to eradicating that problem And data to resolve that problem, bam, bam, bam, bam. Another famous storyteller, Nancy Duarte, and if you haven't seen her speak, or you haven't heard of her, definitely someone to look up and watch some of her talks. She her company is here in the Bay Area.

And she does that full on script writing, and presentations for people. So she's one of those full service companies that actually will get this done for you. But she has quite a lot of talks out there. And what she does is she has a very simple but powerful formula. It's two parts, what is and what could be. So the the speaker toggles back and forth between what is and what could be, what is and what could be, and it keeps the audience engaged when reviewing a product or service, but you can also use it to share an idea.

Now you can describe the hardship of not having the benefit That comes from the idea. And then describe the convenience that the idea does provide. Don't get straight to a solution. As humans, we're often most engaged when we feel the problem or the pain first. Now talking about the drone on guy, this is not to be confused with the cool autonomous drones. And I think I've maybe mentioned this earlier.

There are those people that take way too long to tell a story. You know, like if you've ever interacted with an eight year old, you know what I mean? No story no matter how shocking or surprising or, or impactful or game changing? It is. It's no longer interesting. If you drone on with way too much detail.

Always do the forest, not the trees if you've heard that expression before. One of the biggest problems I see is that speakers or thoughts Leader potential thought leaders spending way too much time on their personal story. Yes, absolutely get it in there. But if you've noticed, I besides the beginning, haven't mentioned any of my personal story in terms of the bias I've faced. Now I am just imparting knowledge to you, but you understand my why and why I'm doing this. Now, most of the details from the personal story can actually be deleted, get it down to a back of a napkin, delete all repetitive words, ideas herping anything that sounds like complaining or would evoke pity in any way.

Delete every single word that does not directly prove your point. tangents and irrelevant, repetitive and unnecessary details are the worst killers of good stories. Alright, so Keno endings. The key is to essentially leave your audience In a way that they will remember you and what you shared. Now be careful of trying to hit too many subjects or having too many takeaways and things. My rule of thumb is, is that essentially a 20 minute presentation should have no more than three takeaways.

When I do 15 minute keynotes, I typically get two points across. And then the world of healthcare that's typically patients are empowered by technology, and healthcare is moving out of the clinic into the home. And then everything I talk about really supports those two main ideas. Now, by ending on a high note, you can close the keynote with like a vivid overview of what life is like when you actually use those takeaways. If you use this method, you can strive to paint an enticing picture one that's full of colorful phrases. And finally, consider inspiring your audience with a clear call to action at the end of your presence.

These are always the best call to action. Now, if you don't have one, the audience might say something like in their heads. Oh, that was fun. But I learned a couple of things. But now I have no idea how to implement what I learned. Give them action items to put your ideas into practice.

Okay, let's switch gears and talk about creating your first presentation deck and things to watch out for. And this is the type of information you're probably never, you would never be able to get otherwise I don't hear other people talking about a lot of this what I'm going to dive into right now, only because there are very few professional speakers who are also conference organizers. So I have a behind the scenes viewpoint of some of these things. So gold standard Microsoft PowerPoint. Now, of course, I am a huge Apple fan if that hasn't been readily apparent yet and I like to design my slides. Apple's keynote software.

But you know what? conferences they all use PowerPoint. So if I do any of my designing and keynote, I make sure to switch it over to PowerPoint to get to the conference. And if I am using a designer, then I always have them designed in PowerPoint. So it's extremely compatible. Now the reason is because that is the software that almost all AV technician have on their computer.

It's pretty much Yeah, it's a guarantee that they have PowerPoint, and they're used to working with it. And they and it doesn't crash on them. This is something they're very practiced at. But in the event space, I have not seen yet. A lot of AV technicians use anything besides a PC with Microsoft. Now I as an event planner, I know how important a speaker's choice of a slide deck software is for a smooth and uninterrupted presentation.

Put yourself on stage. Do you want your keynote? your deck crashing? Do you want your deck to not sound good? Do you want your deck to distract from what you are seeing on stage. Now, at a major event, you need everything to run smoothly and there are a lot of moving pieces.

If a speaker were to come to Avi with a different format than PowerPoint, this could cause delays, and a worst case scenario, the computer could crash while you're on stage. And that actually happened to me with one of my earliest keynotes which is how I learned my lesson. Now I've seen speakers and AV teams actually work for an hour or more the night before or right before the speaker goes on stage, frantically, trying to get the presentation stable and running because the software isn't compatible, or the formatting goes off because they designed on a Mac and then all of a sudden, they Now have to run it on a PowerPoint. This is incredibly stressful for the event team, and especially stressful for you. Do you really want the hour leading up to your keynote to be fighting with software on a computer? No, no, anything other than PowerPoint is risky, unless the speaker instructions specifically lists other formats, which is pretty rare.

Now also, make sure you use a completely static deck. No animation, no sound, no videos. Those three elements or at least the animation may not as crash as much but sound and video. I have never seen them work correctly. And I have spoken at over 100 events and I have run hundreds of events myself. I have never seen video or sound actually work well.

Now the vast majority of the time even with a nickel Expensive high end professional AV team and I have been part of the event team of conferences that cost. I'm up into the seven figures over a million dollars to produce. We have high end AV teams in those cases. And videos are still problematic. In fact, that AV team I remember that year, so many of the presentations crashed because speakers were coming with things other than PowerPoint or tried to run a video. There are like hundreds of people in the audience and it's constantly going down.

It's not because the AV team isn't good. It's software compatibility issues. But then also with things like video. Not only are you going to waste a huge amount of time discussing it back and forth with the AV team before you even get to the event. Why waste your valuable time emailing back and forth to get a movie stable video stable before you even get to the event. But secondly, if you have a video on stage You're taking the attention away from yourself.

Why would you do that, especially for something that they the audience can see online, you can even just mention, hey, go ahead and Google this later. Secondly, the lighting while the lighting might be good for the speaker, the lighting for the slides may be horrific for videos. So you may not even be able to see the video very well from the audience. And thirdly, you are relying especially because most likely, if you have a video, their sound, you are now relying on extra hardware. You're not even worried about software compatibility. At that point, you're worried about the fact do they have speakers that you can hook this up to?

Right, so do they have Do they have the right equipment? Do they have the right connectors, because that alone is something that can dramatically go wrong. And when it hooks into the speakers, and I swear I must be about 100% of the time that you Hear static or it's too loud or it's too soft, the sound never works correctly during the presentation just doesn't. Do not interrupt your own amazing keynote, with technical issues that you are pretty much guaranteed to have if you have sound or video. You're the storyteller to be the most professional that you can be. Forget about doing anything fancy with your slides, your slides should be static, PowerPoint, simple, they should just be illustrating your point not making it for you.

Now, of course, some speakers don't actually use slides at all. But I would say if you're a new speaker and you're building a new platform, use slides. The reason is is because it provides structure when speakers don't have structure that leaves room for errors. down what you can't see off camera but you might have noticed is that I have notes off camera which is why I have Have a slide advancer so that I make sure I cover everything that I want to cover in this video module four, you know, I do know some speakers like Simon Sinek and john Hagel. They're fantastic was Tony Robbins speaking without structure, and this is called a narrative. But most speakers benefit from having a reference point, especially when they're getting started.

Those three speakers I just mentioned, they've been doing it for years and years and years. They are incredibly practiced, they're not brand new speakers. Now, I have over 100 different slide decks for healthcare alone, because every single talk I give I personalized that deck to the audience and the event. Usually it's just a tweak, or it's a change for length. But with just like with your content portfolio, once you have one foundational slide deck created, others become significantly easier to put together. First of all slide decks can serve as that reminder or a trigger for you for specific content, which is what I'm using it for right now, especially facts and figures.

Now secondly, they can give the audience a photo or an illustration behind you or graph or some key points. And the audience can take a photo of you and the slide and then bonus, they can share it on social media. Now unless you are a designer, you have a lot of experience working with your slides slide design, I am telling you hire a designer to get your deck to that professional level. Focus on your strengths. I'm in fact I just sent a new deck It was like 2020 slides to my designer on Upwork and he's charging me $300 $300 to design the slides. It's probably going to take him four or five hours, maybe four hours.

It would take me more along the lines of like 15 hours because I am not a designer by any stretch of the means. So he can do in just a few hours, what I what would take me days to do and it's only $300 when I'm investing in this as a business, I understand that's not worth my time. So what a good designer can do is if they can choose a color scheme for you, that relates to your brand because you're thinking like a branding department and you're turning yourself into a brand. So of course, you can think about things like logo and color schemes. Now when I use that first high end designer because I hired a script and designer company for about $10,000. Back then he came up with a black background and as my differentiator and blue as the main font color and I still use them today.

Now if you build your storyline and deck as almost self contained sections of five to 15 minutes per section, it can make it really easy. quick and fast to build a deck of any length of time, because the more flexible you are with presentation length, the easier it is for organizers to work with you and fit you into their conference agenda. That means you're going to have more opportunities than you might otherwise have. You had a rigid length, oh, I can only give 20 minute talks, or I can only give 15 minute talks. Well, maybe someone's going to need you to do 25 minute talk or a 45 minute talk or an hour long talk. So my keynotes in the world of healthcare range from six minutes I can do a really fast bullet one if if there's a specific theme to the event.

And I can go over to two, two and a half hours. I am now a guest faculty at Stanford for one of their courses. And now twice this year. I've given a two hour lecture on exponential technology in healthcare. Now, because I know how long each one of my modules or sections I have my my two hour two and a half hour keynote that I break down. If an event asked me for a 38 minute keynote, I could easily put a deck together in minutes just by pasting sections together.

Oh, you know what, if you want 38 minutes, I'm going to cover cloud computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and genomics and the microbiome, or something like that, and I can put them together. Now I have 12 different sections for my healthcare talks. And each each section can actually be increased or decreased by just deleting one or two slides right. Now, here is how I break down that to our healthcare presentation for the beginning for the intro and credibility section, which includes Of course, my why that takes me two to five minutes to talk about, and I can do lower end or higher end depending on how long that keynote is. I can do an explanation on exponential versus linear That takes me 10 to 12 minutes the shift on healthcare delivery out of the clinics and to where the patient exists through telemedicine and point of care diagnostics that can take me 10 to 15 minutes to tell those stories in there.

I can talk about drones for five to seven minutes, genomics in the microbiome for five to 10 minutes, cloud storage and computing for four to 10 minutes, artificial intelligence seven to 20, or even 20 minutes or even longer sensors, anywhere from six to 15 minutes, VR three to 10 minutes. 3d printing takes me five to 10 minutes to talk about health coaching, that one can be really fast at two minutes or all the way up to seven or eight minutes. self care can take me five to 15 minutes to talk about. And my conclusion which I've got a lot of tricks for the conclusion coming up by the way, can take me two to 10 minutes. So all of those add it together. If it's at the very extreme end of have the most time I would spend on anything section that is about two and a half hours of content.

But I can get it down to any length talk that you would like. Now, practice time. Once you have the slides and the storyline perfected, right, you've either done it yourself or you've hired a designer or you've hired a script writer or a company that does all of the above. Now it's time to practice. And when I say practice, I do not mean running through the deck a couple of times. This means putting hardcore time and effort until you can essentially recite your keynote in your sleep.

You're trying to be a professional here, you're not trying to just give a couple of keynotes, you want to be a thought leader, you would not be investing all this time into taking this course. If you did not want to be a speaker and one that looks professional on stage. If you are not willing to put the work into rehearsing and refining your talk, you are not going to come across as professional or experienced, the less experienced you seem on stage with things like M or all or delays, the harder it is, it's going to be for you to get booked. For other speaking engagements. Your goal is to say the word m zero times. Now you need to know your content inside and out.

And once you know your content down cold, you can go on to autopilot on stage when it comes to the words and focus on connecting with the audience instead, how you're moving on even your delivery speed. Everybody gets nervous and has some degree of stage fright for their first talk. The easiest way to become completely paralyzed is by forgetting your words. This is why you need to be overly prepared. Steve Jobs he spent months preparing for his keynotes and practice them even more relentlessly than I do. For every minute he was on stage.

He spent hours rehearsing Behind the scenes, he was intensely involved with every aspect of creating his keynote. And his presentations are what helped propel Apple to be the marketing powerhouse that it actually became. His formula for success boiled down to three things, storytelling, emotional connection, and effective preparation. Now, jobs passion for what he was talking about came through with every movement and every single word. People who seem to speak effortlessly, just like he does. Only do so because they spend a massive amount of time and effort preparing beforehand.

And preparation equals confidence. The more prepared you are, the more confident you're going to be. Now I could practice my keynote 40 times the very first one I ever gave. I made sure to practice it 40 times now. For the first 10 to 15 rehearsals, you're going to see where you want to change something around or you want to change up some phrasing, things are going to you're going to make still making tweaks with those because this is new to you. And you're going to forget things like facts and figures and you're going to have to look them up.

This is the reality. The next five to 10 rehearsals after that are when you have the presentation down perfectly. You've got it worded well, and it's arranged exactly the way you want. At that point, you should be able to do it at least three times in a row without pausing or making any mistakes before you feel like you are fully practiced. That first perfect run through does not mean you are ready. knew that perfect run through needs to be repeatable, just like in science, expect experiments, if it's not repeatable, right, needs to be repeated at least twice more, if not three, or four or five times more.

And then That's when you're ready. So for my first 25 minute long talk I mentioned I practiced 40 times, I hired a speaker coach who recorded me and showed me small things that I could tweak, freezing or how I hold my arms because I'm very small. And so she told me to take up more space. I watched that video. For over every single day for over a month. I had it playing in the background while I was doing other tasks.

I wasn't concerned with watching myself, I was concerned with listening to myself. And to this day, I practice every keynote at least twice, if not five to 10 times before I give it back last fall, I gave a 60 minute keynote with some new material about 15 minutes of the material was new, and the audience was 2700 Medical Office Groups. It was a full pay five figure keynote through my speaker Bureau. So I was extra cognizant of wanting to give a flawless performance. So I practice that keynote 10 times. Even with my extensive stage stage experience, not came up to 10 straight hours of me just repeating the keynote, and 45 minutes of that content by the way I had already given on stage in many, many times before.

It takes a lot of hard work and time to look effortless onstage. That's the interesting thing about practice. Some people say, Oh, I don't want to appear overly practiced and scripted. Well, in fact, it's those speakers who don't want to practice enough that come out wooden, as if they were reading from a script because they haven't fully mastered their keynote. Once you master it perfectly, it will sound effortless, conversational, and even natural onstage. Now, of course, there is some resistance that comes with practicing the same content over and over again.

Anyone who needs to practice something over and over again, whether it's for a competition or for performance knows this. Everybody wants to skip or a day or a week, it's easy, so easy to justify saying, You know what? I'm good enough. I can stop there. But what separates the, the achievers from the super achievers? Is that super achievers go the extra mile, even when it's difficult, boring, repetitive and exhausting.

They see that bigger picture and they understand it's the repetitive hard work that will propel them to success. Now, for that first keynote, I mentioned that practice 40 times we tell you I was tired of doing it over and over again by about the 20th run through through. I was only halfway there to my goal. By the 30th. It was torture. I was dreading it.

I was like, Do I really have to practice Okay, it's 2pm I should probably get it done before dinnertime and I made sure I was doing it every single day. In my head, I'd be like, No, I don't want to do it again. But by practice run through number 35, the delivery and storyline were perfect. And I was incredibly happy I made that effort. I only had five more run throughs to go to get to my goal, and I was marking him down. And I was able to practice the last two on the actual stage where I was going to be giving the keynote I got in the night before and I practice it on that stage.

To this day, I am so happy I made that effort. Alright, so let me give you some tips and tricks when you're learning your content. First of all, you can hire someone to transcribe one of your video talks. So you can give it as a you know, in front of a video, and then someone can transcribe it for you so that you have a full on written script if you don't already have a written script. And that way you have something to refer back to right before you get on stage or I would use that I actually I would get some of my talks recorded on stage or that conference recorded them. And I would send it to someone on Upwork or TaskRabbit to transcribe for me.

So I had that perfectly written script that I could refer to the next time I gave that keynote. Now, another trick is to listen to a video of your talk one to two times a day. Just have it playing in the background when you're getting ready for work, or you're cooking dinner. Having your content memorized is helpful for QA as well, because you're going to be doing a lot of interviews and you're going to be doing q&a on stage. So think about questions people might ask you prepare your answers to them before you even get on stage. You can have somebody help you with this.

Experts appear as experts on stage during QA because they prepare or they've spent years saying that same phrasing over and over again. So their answers come out. immediately and eloquently. So after you come up with questions, have someone quiz you. Be sure that you can answer those questions thoroughly and repeatedly. Now, being a guest on podcast is another fantastic way to really hone your QA.

And it's a less stressful environment than a live in person audience. Obviously, if you have prepared answers, then the phrasing is going to come out very smoothly. And you're going to get to a point where you have fantastic phrasing for almost any questions someone can throw at you, even under pressure. Now let's switch gears and talk a little bit about your voice and investing in your voice. Without outside feedback, you're going to be good but you're not going to be great. So you need to invest the time and the money to be great.

So there are different types of coaches. You So maybe just make a note when I'm going through which one might be appropriate for you, or maybe all of them. So the first thing I hear from newbie speakers is do they need a voice coach? Let me tell you, the best speakers Annunciation every single world clearly and use voice inflection to drive points home. So, if you could use practice in either one of those areas, definitely invest in a voice coach. And it could be just for a few sessions by the way.

Now, if you have a heavy American regional accent, for instance, like if you're from I'm from the east coast, right, we have a little bit of an accent, the South Texas, New York, all different areas of the country have different types of accents if yours is quite heavy, or if English is a second language for you and you have a heavy accent, or if you're a rapid talker. My problem And your words merge into each other. A voice coach can really help you pronounce your words and sentences in a way that are more universally understood, both in the US and internationally. Because many of your speaking engagements may have even if all of them are here in the United States, and all of them are in your region, say you live in the south and you are only planning on speaking in the south, you're still going to have a number of non native English speakers in the audience.

And you might have an accent that they're not used to hearing, which means they're not going to understand a significant amount of what you're saying. Now I am personally a huge fan of accents. I love domestic debt accents. I love regional accents. I love foreign accents. I love listening to them.

And in fact, a lot of people find accents to be very charming and interesting. But when you speak on chain on screen Nobody can ask you to clarify if they miss something, they didn't understand a sentence that you mentioned. And once watched a very interesting speaker on stage. The content was amazing. But I missed a lot of his words and concepts because I spent a lot of my time trying to translate in my head, what he was seeing because of his accent, and the melody of his voice was different than what you would normally hear in English. So I missed a lot.

By the time I figured out one of his sentences, he'd already be on two or three ahead of me have to be able to speak clearly and concisely. You can of course, revert, revert back to your normal accent offstage and I definitely especially if you're talking to me, I love accents. But onstage you need to adjust so your entire audience really understands your main message. Now if you're a A native born English speaker, you might have been thinking yourself when I'm talking about this all doesn't apply to me. But consider the fact that many actors and actresses hire voice coaches. They understand their voice as a major tool in their career and can help you get across your message in the best way possible.

Annunciation, slow down, speed up, keep your voice up, lighten it, focus on inflection, pauses or even more. One frequent mistake I see people make is ending the sentence their sentences on a high note, as if it were a question as if it were a question. A voice coach can help you retrain your speech so that you always end your sentence on a deeper note, unless it is an actual question. Now, my stage voice is very different from my socializing voice. And in fact, I think here on these videos, my voice is lower than I normally would have it in a social situation. And I try to enunciate every single word whereas in a social situation I might speak more rapidly.

Now, remember, it's not just what you say is, but it's how you say it. Alright, so let's talk about speaker coaches, whether or not you get a voice coach, I would recommend at least one session if not a couple with a speaker coach. Now a speaker coach is going to look at that whole presentation and help you work on the body movement or your stance or your overall storyline, arc or different phrasing. What they do is they take you from that 90% there to the next level. Now, even one session would be fantastic. I hire two different ones for one session each and only took a couple hours of my time.

But the cost can vary all over the world all over the board can be a couple hundred dollars for an hour with a speaker coach but it can Also be I spent 1500 dollars an hour for each one of mine. I got some high end ones, because I know sometimes you get what you pay for and I had them come highly recommended. Now, to find one use different resources at your disposal. post on social media that you're looking for one and anyone have any suggestions, especially LinkedIn or Facebook, ask people to tag other people or comment on good coaches. Your best bet is always to find people like this through your network. Now when you see that speaker coach makes sure that you have your presentation finished and prepared so that you can practice you should view them as people that are putting the icing on the cake.

They aren't there at the beginning to brainstorm with you. That's what your script writers and your designer will help you with. Now, the speaker coach will video record you they'll analyze different aspects of your overall presentation even Things like your facial expression and your eye contact. And they'll give you feedback on how they think the audience might perceive you. I was I was told things like, slow down my speech open my arms wide. And they also caught a couple of sentences in my keynote that they had me rephrase, for clarity and for impact.

This kind of feedback is invaluable and you only need a couple of sessions potentially. Now, in addition to potentially having the voice coach or the speaker coach, improv, I mentioned it earlier, but I am telling you this is an incredibly valuable class to take. Whether you are in business or you are a speaker helps you think quickly and helps you get used to being in front of a crowd in a low stress environment. Because it's just the other people in the class. It forces you to think about your overall body language, your voice and your words as one complete item. Now, I took classes with Robert Strong.

He's here in the Bay Area, the comedy magician. He's this fantastic MC moderator magician and improv guy. So if you're in the Bay Area, I'd recommend him but if you're not, there are lots of other people know it. It can be great for anyone in business because it helps you hone communication skills, reaction, timing, teamwork, and even active listening. Now, if you're a beginner speaker, improv classes are really fantastic to get you comfortable in your own skin and see how other people react to you. All right, acting coaches and consultants.

Now while acting coaches you would think are for actors playing a role. They absolutely can help you too. Because great stage actors portray emotion in their voice. They use things like silent pauses, and they leverage body language to tell the story. This is going to be be different than what your improv or your speaker coach is going to teach you. Now, if you're not normally an expressive person, an acting lesson or two can go a long way.

You're not trying to be an actor, but you do need to prepare your own version of a one person play, take acting lessons in a group or simply just hire an acting coach for a few sessions in your home. Because speaking on stage is a performance to performance period. You can also hire consultant or just take private lessons with small group classes. If you happen to know someone you want to learn from, go ahead and try and hire them. Right just like I did for that Stanford professor. It never occurred to her to be a private tutor for three people.

Ask someone who you might know who's a theatre actor or something like that or director and ask them to sit down with you for an hour or two. And you can offer them whatever you know, hundred dollars to $2,000 an hour or more depends on who that person is and their experience. Know, you can find Of course consultants to platforms and your personal connections. Now once you get practice speaking and moving in front of a safe group in a safe environment that will ultimately help you on stage. in whichever class you choose, you can totally screw up it's totally it's very safe and do whatever feels right for you. Because you're at a learning stage.

All right. Here are your action items. What key points will establish your credibility? Write them down and pick one or two storytelling formulas you think you might want to work with. This is your why packaged up into you know, essentially Also your your maybe potential few minutes introduction. Now also write down what potential questions could you ask the audience for audience engagement?

And how can you get them emotionally involved in responding. Next, write down two to three points. A takeaways of what you think your audience should leave with, like what do you want those takeaways to be? Now, next steps, hire a presentation or a script writer to help you create that first storyline. This is optional, but I would say this is a place where getting help is going to make your life so much better and it's going to have you come across as a professional from day one. You can spend 10 minutes right now searching Upwork or TaskRabbit or ask your friends for recommended recommendations or use one of the companies.

I'm going to have a list on my website of people that I have used, or that I know about. And then create a checklist for practicing your keynote. That way you can write down how many times you actually practice it and keep track. You don't have to go for 40. But I would say you need to get up there. And then also choose right now, which coaches and classes you might want to pursue to improve your stage presence and your presentation delivery.

So do you want to hire a voice coach, a speaker, coach, take improv classes. acting coach can find options through Google or LinkedIn search. And good luck with that I it's going to be so much fun for you. If you do a couple of those things. It's actually going to be fun. So that's it for now.

The next module I am going to dive into how you get those stages and who pays for what in turn the world of conferences do later