From Podcaster to Pro Speaker at PodcampToronto 2011

Tomorrow, Saturday Feb. 26, I’ll share tips with Toronto’s leading multi-media, audio podcasters, vloggers, web show hosts and online content creators at podcamptoronto 2011. If you are in town, it’s a great event and I highly recommend it. Chris Brogan was one of the original founders of the event, and it is a true un-conference and a great learning fest for all concerned. Plus, I hear pub night is awesome. Registration is free, and you will find the networking is world class.

Today, I’m putting the finishing touches on the notes that I’ll share at Podcamp. To be honest, the notes are as much for me as they are for the audience. Since this is a special event, I will use the slides as ‘triggers’ or ‘prompts’ so I can figure out what I need to say or ‘riff’ on a topice until the next point or slide.

It also helps me to have the slides so I know what I’ve already covered and won’t miss key points or information that I’d really like to share. What I want to use the slides for is to avoid repeating myself, droning on about something that people don’t or won’t want to hear about, or have a public peri-menopausal ‘duh’ moment.

The slides will also help me remember stories that I think will help folks know what it’s like to get front of an audience, the kind of things they can expect, how to create good relationships with meeting or event planners, or ideas about topics or things they can do to start or kick-start their own speaking careers.

None of my ‘stories’ are ‘rehearsed.’ So if you heard me talk, I’d welcome your comments to tell me if they ‘flowed’ well into and out of the rest of the content.

If you want any more information or insights, or have suggestions for topics, please let me know.

Hopefully my talk will go as I hope it will, and everyone there will learn more about the world of professional speaking. If more people can become actively involved in charity, cause, event, educational, public and professional speaking with new, fresh, solid, thoughtful ideas, then all of us benefit in the long run.

And if folks can leave with more useful info than before they first walked into auditorium, and they enjoyed the time I’m ‘on,’ then that just makes my day.

Can We Please All People All the Time?

The greatest challenge for me when I speak to any group is that there are likely people in the room who may already know what I’m talking about. Or they’re hostile, passive-aggressive types who really don’t want to be there. Or they HAD to be there because their boss told them so.

Each of those is a topic unto itself, so let me start with the idea of speaking to people who may already know what I’m talking about and were expecting ‘more.’ Tomorrow I give a talk at PodCampToronto 2011, and there may likely be people in the room who have already been pro or semi-pro speakers. To be honest only a small percentage of what I have to say to them will be useful. But that small percentage could save them hours of research and even earn them thousands of dollars IF they have the patience to write down or follow-up on some of the resources I’ll be sharing.

For most of the people in the room, they may have wondered about what it takes to become a professional speaker, speech writer or visual content creator, and that’s the audience I hope will get the most from my talk.

And then there will be a few souls who were curious and realize that they may not be comfortable – at this time – speaking. But to them: never say never, and who knows what life will bring you in the way of opportunities. So be patient and see what you can learn.

What I hope is that everyone who comes into the room will get a chance to take something key away with them.

My greatest challenge as a speaker is to not give out so much information that I ‘lose’ the beginner speakers in the room. And to put in enough ‘gold’ so that the people who really want to add a new direction to their careers have enough info or a map they can follow to get to where they want to go.

It’s a fine balancing act. Last year at PodcampToronto 2010, most of the people told me they were happy with what I’d shared with them. But there were a few that thought my talk didn’t give them enough info. Actually it did, but those items were in my speaking notes. If they’d asked, they would have been given the info. C’est la vie!

I will usually err on the side of making sure the majority of the people in the room get the info that they came to get. And if the few hot shots in the room aren’t happy with that, then let them hire a professional speaking coach at a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per session.

If I didn’t address something that you’d hoped to learn, please ask me about it now.

You’re also welcome to give me comments and feedback so I can give you the right amount of info the next time.

How to Become a Speech Writer in Only Eight Minutes

My own road to becoming a speaker was not designed. I fell into it. Actually, I was dragged into it and was too embarrassed and scared to admit that I didn’t know what I was doing. The first time I was ever asked to write a speech was for the President and CEO of J. Walter Thompson (now JWT Canada), John J. (aka Jack) Cronin. I’d already been working for Jack for six months, and wrote most of his reports, letters and memos. A bunch of us were at a major industry dinner.

Ten minutes before he had to go on to give out some awards, my boss asked me if I could put together a few words for him. I hope I hid the terrified look in my eyes well. I had never written, let alone given, a speech in my adult life. I didn’t count what I’d done as required public school speaking.

My adrenaline kicked in, and I wrote – er scribbled – out Jack’s impending remarks. Thank goodness I’d only had one glass of wine at dinner!

Eight minutes later, the back of a menu, and two paper napkins were given to Jack for his assessment and review. He calmly read my scratchings and gave me two thumbs up. Later he hold me that I had all the makings of a speech writer. And according to Jack, a darn effective one. That was a pivotal moment for me in my life, and I didn’t know it.

That was a few decades ago. I’ve learned much and have still many things that I’d like to learn and try. The greatest thing that I learned is that speaking is about sharing my voice, time and energy with others. If I can do that well, everyone in the room will be happy.

If anyone had ever told me that I’d write speeches for even more CEO’s after that first outing, I’d have told you that that was a one off situation. In fact, I ended up writing and coaching many CEO’s and executives on their talks and presentations.

If anyone had ever told me that I’d speak in front of 10,000 people, give workshops to VP’s, or get on a plane because someone wanted me to speak in another country, I’d have though they had ingested too much coffee and chocolate.

And if anyone had ever told me that I’d make people laugh, cry in empathy, not commit suicide, try new things or tell me that they were so glad they came out to hear me speak even though they suffered from clinical exhaustion, I’d never have believed you. But all of this and so much more has happened to me because I decided to stand up and try to write, talk and share.

Here’s to your starting new things that relate to speaking in public: a new chapter in your life, new attitude, new speaking opportunities, or even carving out a new career and income stream.

And here’s to sharing your vision of the world with as many people as possible.

Happy speaking!
Julia

What’s Your Problem?

How you approach that moment when you stand up to give a speech depends a lot on why you are giving the presentation. Now we are not talking about the fact that you have to give the speech to pass your general education speech class in junior college or that your boss is making you give the speech because he is to darn lazy to do it. Instead to really give a good speech, you must know that the speech is designed to do. By identifying what the goal of the speech is and what you want the audience to experience from your presentation, that will give you a lot of information both on what kind of content to use but on your attitude and “approach” when you actually get ready to give the talk.

There are some very basic reasons that someone gives a speech. Those are to inform, to convince, to amuse or to cause action. Many speeches you hear are a combination of these motivations. A sermon is there to inspire which is a mixture of to convince and to cause action. A lecture in school is to inform and if you get lucky, the teacher will at least try to make the presentation also try to amuse you. So that is the first thing to ask yourself when you have your topic and your audience. Also there are variations on these themes. A speech intended to sell something is a variation on the “to convince” format.

A good question to ask when you are ready to put your presentation together is “What do I want my audience to do with this information?” If you want them to walk away with new information that makes them smarter people, you were speaking to inform. If you want them to laugh and have a great time, you were out to amuse. If you want them to go out and use your web site, to join your political party or stop hurting the ozone layer, the objective of your speech is to convince.

You will not necessarily announce when you start speaking what your objective is. Sometimes it’s obvious. If you are addressing your class at school, its obvious you are there to inform the students. But you may also be looking to convince them to live a certain way or to take some other action with the information you are giving. A speech to amuse is very often also a very softly worded sermon on behavior. Just watch any comedian and you will hear small snippets of philosophy such as “people, we are all the same, we just have to learn to live together” in the middle of the comedy set. That comic is actually out to convince you to change your outlook and behavior and using comedy as the tool to that end.

These are all very valid adaptations on the basic forms of a speech. To make sure your talk reaches its primary talk, lay down the outline or the “skeleton” of the speech with your primary goal in mind. You might even “back into it” by writing the conclusion first. The conclusion might be, “And so ladies and gentlemen, I hope you can see that using mass transit will do a lot to help the ozone layer”. From there you can back up into the body of the speech and lay down, again at the skeleton layer what your three points of the body of your speech is. These are the things that must get done and that you will evaluate whether you were successful by whether you got those points across.

With that skeleton done, you can go back and start writing the speech from the beginning and use any or all of the public speaking approaches to layer that on top of the core reason for the talk. You can use humor, inspirational stories, urban myths or factoids from history to help your speech be fun, compelling and attention grabbing.

If by the end of your talk though, you can tell you hit that primary goal, then your speech was well constructed. And a well constructed speech is easier to give. It is also easier for your audience to hear so everybody wins.

When Things Don’t Go as Planned

One of the greatest fears we face when speak in front of a crowd is also one of it’s greatest rewards. Public speaking is a totally live event. And that means that anything can happen and just about anything could happen in the middle of your presentation. So to change your fear of the unexpected to another talent you have to handling interruptions, think ahead what you will do if things come up and how you will get the crowd back on track with your outline to take them to the conclusion you want them to reach.

Depending on how you conduct your presentation and the type of gathering, questions or objections from the audience could potentially take you off course. This is especially true if you really didn’t plan to have an open forum type of discussion. If you set out to do your talk as a speech, not a discussion and someone interrupts, the first thing to do is recognize the disrupter to assure the crowd you have the situation under control. Your audience comes to your talk with a confidence that you are in control of the room and its important you maintain that control.

Now if the disrupting speaker is being difficult and clearly wants to disrupt the meeting that is when the organizers of the meeting should know to step in and remove that person. But many times the interruption could be a very logical and politely put question or need for clarification. A rule of thumb is if one person asks a question, that means that four or five in the crowd had that question in mind but did not have the courage to interrupt you. Sometimes the disruption may not even be audible. If might be just a hand in the air or a facial expression that is clearly communicating the need to interact with you.

Again, the more you can maintain composure and recognize the question and either answer it or divert it from your outline, the more confidence the crowd will have in you. Many times the question will either be easily answered from your materials. Don’t be afraid to say, “That is an outstanding question which is right here on my outline. So I will be answering that in a moment”. When you do that, it gets a chuckle from the questioner and the crowd and you can continue on your path to finishing your talk just making sure you highlight the area of the outline that came up in the question.

Be prepared also for either a legitimate question that you do not have a ready answer for or for questions that don’t make any sense to what you are talking about at all. For both to simply recognize that the questions was a good question (even if it isn’t) and state that you will do some research and get back to them later with that background information. That will usually quiet the disruptor down and let you get on with your program.

Questions are not the only thing that can go wrong. Something could break either on stage or in the crowd. A person could fall out of his or her chair. A bird could fly in through a window. The list of things that might happen goes on and on. Again as you did with questions that you didn’t expect, maintaining composure and control is the key. The audience will actually key off of you as to whether to panic about the interruption or not. So if you keep your head and handle the disruption with humor and a sense of calm, that will put the audience in that mood too. The effects of the disruption will minimize immediately and because you communicated that you were in charge at all times, the audience will respond to your leadership and come back to you to hear the rest of what you have to say.

You can achieve a feeling of control and calm by thinking through how you will handle the unexpected before you even step up to give your talk. And because you actually expect the unexpected, you can capture strange things that happen to demonstrate your management of the time you have to speak to the crowd. If you do that, it will work to your advantage and you the end result will be an even better presentation than would have happened without the disruption.

Using Props in Your Professional Speaking Presentation

People learn and retain information in different ways. As a professional speaker, you must also learn to incorporate as many different ways of engaging your audience in order to reach as many people as possible. In fact, you have an obligation to use anything and everything it takes so that more people can relate your message to their life. This means at one point in your career, you’ll have to use props as part of your message.

A “prop” is any object that is handled or used while you are on stage. Props can be many different things such as flip charts, demonstrations, overhead projections – images, photos, and videos, and even other people. These props enhance the message you are trying to convey to your audience and can also help people connect with your ideas.

Props help your audience to get engaged in your presentation. They help to warm your audience and draws attention to the points your making in your presentation. They are visual illustrations that often are better able to convey the message than your spoken word can. It’s one thing to hear a new idea, but when people see your idea visually, they can develop a mental image in their mind and become visually oriented with what you are trying to say. Visual presentations often make your points interesting and it breaks up the monotony of only hearing you speak. For this reason, props can be used to add variety to your presentation.

Prizes and giveaways make excellent opening props. Often done with large audience presentations such as in large arenas, props are a great way to open your audience. It fires up your audience bringing excitement and anticipation for what you are going to speak about. The prizes may or may not be related to your message. You can use them as icebreakers or even as a way to draw excitement and attention to your support material sales at the back of the room.

Props can often be used as the “impromptu” portion of your presentation. When used correctly, your props can have your audience sitting on the edge of their chair as they strive to see what you are doing at the front of the room. As you talk about your props, your audience won’t feel like you are reading a speech, which brings us to the next point. They can also be a substitute for notes since they automatically prompt you to describe the reason for introducing the prop in the first place. You can essentially go through an entire presentation just using props!

Props have a valuable role in your presentation. Visual images are more easily remembered than the words you speak. On top of that, showing your audience the points you are trying to make can say more than telling your audience those same points. You know the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words! Props can also help to invoke excitement and rev up your audience as you warm them up for your presentation! Begin to use props in your presentations and see how engaged your audience becomes!

Where to Look When You Speak

When you are giving a presentation or speech, your body language and how you hold yourself in front of a crowd speaks to them as much as your words do. And part of not begin nervous in front of people when you are doing public speaking is not “acting” nervous. If you have complete control over your body, your face and your hands, you can perform relaxation in front of people and you will actually accept the idea that you are relaxed and begin to feel more at ease as you do your speech.

One problem that you often see in public speakers who is the use of the eyes. It’s extremely easy as a public speaker to want to look at your outline or your written out speech throughout your presentation so you never get lost or have that terrifying feeling of not knowing what you are going to say next. That is why many people who do not become skilled at talking in front of crowds write out their speeches word for word and just read it to the group.

The problem with that approach is you have been asked to give a speech, not a reading. And many adults take offense at being read to. An audience wants to hear “from” you, not just hear you read. If that was the only value of a public presentation, you could just hand out your speech as a white paper and let them read it and not have to get in front of people at all. But that is not as effective as public speaking, particularly if the purpose of your speech is to convince or to sell.

So the question comes up of where to actually look as you give your speech. Many speakers look at a spot at the back of the room because looking at the faces makes them nervous. This is better than staring down at your papers the whole time. For one thing, projection is a big part of getting your message out there. And even if you are using a microphone, if you speak “out” into the crowd rather than down, your voice will be clearer and you will naturally use your diaphragm to do well at enunciating each word.

The other value of looking at the back wall is that it will help you project your voice, particularly if you are not using amplification. The old actor’s motto of “performing to the last row” applies here because it means you consider everyone in that hall to be your audience, not just the people on the first row. So there is some value to that approach.

However, one of the most valuable ways you can really connect with your audience and get your message across is to make eye contact with the audience. Eye contact is commonly used by sales people to create a bond with the customer and that bond helps close the sale. But even if your presentation is not necessarily a sales situation, eye contact will get your message across. And that is what you got up there to do in the first place.

Eye contact makes the audience look at you. It keeps them attentive. To use eye contact to its maximum value, move your eyes from audience member to audience remember and speak to that individual directly. That eye contact will actually be felt by everyone around that individual and it rivets the listener to you. Don’t linger on one person because you don’t want to stare but by becoming skilled at using eye contact as you speak to a crowd, you are taking control of the presentation to make it do what you want it to do. And having control is a big key to success in public speaking.

Why It’s Worth Fighting Your Dragons And Start Public Speaking!

Everyone hears about being nervous when speaking, and when you overcome it, you become confident and very successful.

What you don’t hear from successful speakers is about the journey itself.

For example, when I started in the field of speaking, I was a corporate employee.

As a project engineer, I had to develop concepts and designs to solve problems within the plant.

I was good at this and yet my career progress was slow because I simply couldn’t speak well,
and I needed to present my proposals to obtain funding.

I would become nervous, tongue tied and confused.

So when I started my public speaking career I was so scared and terrified, that even the
thought of being in front of a group of people, made me feel physically sick, and would
make my heart race so much, I thought I was having a heart attack.

Clearly, I didn’t want to go through my life like that so I did some training and got ready
for my Maiden speech.

With this speech I was competing for a prestigious Silver Cup and I was excited because
I thought I was going to win it.

I walked out onto the stage in front of 200 people and arrived at the podium.
Suddenly my legs started to shake so much I thought I was going to fall down.
So I grabbed the lectern, which also began to shake, and then, at that moment, the butterflies
in my stomach turned into dive-bombers and I started to feel sick.

While shaking the lectern so much, I watched with horror, as my notes slid onto the floor.

In total confusion now, I decide to start my speech without picking up the notes.

My voice quavered as I stated my name, and then my mind went completely blank.

After what seemed an eternity, I grabbed my notes from the floor and fled the stage.

All I achieved that day was to let people know who I was and that I was one pathetic speaker.

Needless to say , I didn’t get the prize or even a polite or sympathetic applause from the audience.

It was such a horrifying experience that I had to make a decision to quit or do something about it.
(I was unable to get into the witness protection program to lose my identity!)

Well I studied, practised and used everything that I write about in my book and then some
12 months later, I had to give a speech on behalf of my company.
Now this was a seriously major important speech for the company and me.

If I didn’t do a brilliant job, my career would finish, the company would suffer and I reckon
I would have been out of a job.

That would mean, a massive change in lifestyle for my family, changing schools, changing
houses and even putting my food supply at risk..

So as I walked to the Podium this time I could feel this huge pressure bearing down on me.

And do you know?

I was confident, created humour and had them laughing, created pathos so they could feel
sad, lifted them with excitement, spoke a very clear message, had them in the palm of my hand
and when I finished ,they stood up to applaud.

Pretty good eh?

Oh yes, I got promoted and realised that day, that being a great public speaker helps you make
more money, no matter what your job is.

So what made the difference?

What transformed me from bumbling idiot to charismatic speaker?

And could anybody do the same?

Clearly, the answer is yes, if they went through all the stuff they I had.

Why am I qualified to say this?

Because it is based upon my learnings, my studies, my experiments, good and bad, and
most importantly, on my real life, in the fire, under the hammer, experience.

And then I even wrote my own book on how to overcome the Fear of Public Speaking!

As Chairman of the Public Speaking Group at the Australian Institute of Management I have
coached and helped many people who at the beginning of the year , could not even say their
name, and by the end of the year, had become articulate and confident speakers.

So overcoming the fear and building the skills, step by step, not only transforms your
presentation skills, it builds your confidence in all parts of your life.

And isn’t that a good enough reason to start!

Recording a Professional Speaker Presentation

Here’s a demonstration of the Cartoni tripod and why it’s a very useful tool in your presentation recording.

Things you need to record a professional presentation live:

1. High-Quality Camera: In this video a presentation a Sony HD Video Camera was used.

2. Microphones: They’re using Sennheiser Wireless Mics.

3. Good Lighting Setup.

4. Cartoni Focus Tripod

Secrets to Speaker Success

RobinCreaseman.com

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