Hey Greenblasters!

Another Thursday, another Greenblast.

Anything happen since last week? 😑

Regardless of how you feel about the election…

(Spoiler alert: I’m not thrilled, but you probably guessed that):

I want to put a smile on your face today.

By helping you with something a client of mine is paying me thousands of dollars for, FOR FREE:

How to CRUSH an upcoming speaking engagement!

I’m going to give you a step-by-step process that is pretty much guaranteed to improve:

1. The feedback scores you get from your audience

2. The happiness of the person who brought you in, and

3. The way you feel about how you did after.

So, let’s go.

First, the context:

My client is giving a:

• 45-minute workshop

• on Zoom

• at a virtual conference

• for no pay (more on that later)

• and in a sense auditioning for the in-person version of this conference

• because she’s building her speaking career, and is not yet established as a speaker on this topic

Part 1 of our work will be about CREATING her talk, and Part 2 will be about REHEARSING it.

Here’s the 6-step process for CREATING an awesome talk:

Step 1: Define your client’s objectives

What does the person who “hired” you want out of this? If you’re not sure, ask: “What does a successful workshop look like for you here?”

Ex: “I want high NPS scores." / “I want the audience to come back next year.”

My client’s client (lol) wants great feedback from the audience.

Step 2: Define your audience’s objectives

Who are these people? What’s the theme of this event, and why are they attending? What do they want help with?

Ex: “They’re entrepreneurs who want help growing their businesses./ They’re sales people who want more leads.”

Ask your client! They’ll want to help make your talk good.

Step 3: Define your objectives

What do YOU want out of this talk?

Ex: “Great feedback for future gigs.” / “Leads from the audience.” / “Content for my demo reel.” / “More confidence onstage.'“

Whatever it is, keep this front of mind, ESPECIALLY if you’re not getting paid, as this will make sure you’re benefiting from the time spent here.

With these 3 definitions in place, we can go to:

Step 4: Decide on your BIG IDEA

Your Big Idea should be both the title and main takeaway of your talk.

Yes, only one. I know, it’s hard!

Vincent Pierri had a great LinkedIn post today all about how to craft these effectively.

His client’s BIG IDEA example (for a conference about SEO):

“Forget conversions: how to build landing pages that drive sales.”

Perfect for this kind of conference!

After you have your big idea, on to:

Step 5: Create your outline

This is the 2nd most important step of the creation process, after Step 4: Big Idea.

Unfortunately, what outline structure you choose depends on so many factors, like how much time you have, how many sub-points you want to share, etc. but:

A structure I like to share is:

1. HOOK: strong opener that grabs their attention (story, statistic, statement, question, game, etc)

2. QUICK BACKSTORY: WHY you do what you do. I’ve written about this a lot, see here.

3. SHARE THE BIG IDEA: from Step 4.

4. SET THE AGENDA: for the rest of the talk (Ex: “I’m gonna share 3 ways to improve your company’s marketing strategy, and then we’ll have a Q&A).

5. DO THE AGENDA: whatever you said above!

6. Q&A: Let people ask their questions.

7. Call to Action: Where can people find you? What offers do you have for them?

And finally:

Step 6: Write a script

Yep. Even though you’re not going to memorize it.

You still should write out the ENTIRE TALK, as if you were going to memorize it.

This will help you create great soundbites, AND help with PART 2: REHEARSAL.

And I’ll save that for next week 😄 

That’s it for this week!

Please respond and tell me if you liked this, or if it was too much info??

Love you all. Stay sane. Greenblast, out 🚀