“Only the unprepared are overcome by pressure.” – Lou Holtz
When it comes to public speaking, not only can solid preparation help to calm your nerves and give you confidence, but if done well, it will be the one thing that sets you apart as a professional.
Why? Because a thorough preparation process shows the host how much you care, and is the only thing that will allow you to speak clearly and directly to the audience, help you get your message across, and impact the lives of each individual in the crowd.
In today’s episode – Part 2 our series on Public Speaking – we reveal a number of often overlooked, yet pivotal components to add to your preparation checklist, allowing you to create an unmatched experience for your audience. We dive into:
- The questions you need to ask about your audience to guide your content development
- Technological considerations to account for before you create your presentation
- How to make sure you’re delivering the specific message your audience needs to hear
- The little things that make a big difference – going above and beyond for your host and audience
Referenced Resources:
Our Pre-Speaking Questionnaire
Art of Coaching – Main website with all of our resources, products and services
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TRANSCRIPT
Brett Bartholomew
Welcome to the Art of coaching Podcast. I’m Brett Bartholomew, and at a young age poor communication nearly cost me my life. Now, I help others navigate the gray area of social interaction, power dynamics and communication so they can become more adaptable leaders regardless of their profession, age or situation. This podcast is for everybody who is fascinated with solving people problems. So if you’re in the no nonsense type who appreciates frank conversations, advice you can put to use immediately and learning how others navigate the messy realities of leadership. You’re in the right place. I’m glad that you’re joining us let’s dive in.
Only the unprepared are overcome by pressure. Pretty standard quote here, I think it was originally attributed to Lou Holtz and has a lot of applicability to many areas in life. With today’s episode, this is going to speak precisely to what it takes to get ready to give a keynote presentation, or even do an in service for that matter. This is part of our ongoing Speaker Series episode. If you don’t know, every year, twice a year, we run a speaker school workshop. And it is for anybody who wants to be a more effective speaker, it doesn’t matter if you’ve done a TED talk, if you have social anxiety, if you have no interest in having a speaking career whatsoever, but you want to be better at addressing your staff or anything, anything that allows you to be able to get your message across more clearly, while also honoring all of those involved. Right? That is a cornerstone of effective leadership. When you think about it, just a little bit of the intro here. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your ideas, or how helpful you think it is, if you’re one of those people that, doesn’t think you have any brilliant ideas. I know a lot of us struggle with ever feeling like, you know, anything we do is as good as we’d like it to be. But point being no matter how helpful or useful, or anything you think an idea is, if you cannot get that message across, effectively, it is going to be lost, it is never going to meet its potential. There are so many people out there that have unique perspective, all of you listening have unique perspective. But if you can’t get that point across, it gets lost. And it doesn’t make the impact, right. And that’s why people put a lot of pressure on themselves when it comes to communication. And it doesn’t always have to be that there are some simple things we can do on the front end, to mitigate any of those losses to ensure that we’re doing all we can to be as prepared as possible. The point isn’t to be perfect. Whenever you’re speaking or presenting in any capacity, it is to just try to reduce that baseline misunderstanding that so many of us start out with. So we want to do an episode, you have to forgive my voice. Getting over a little something my three year old gave me and also just coming off a speaking event myself. So I’m gonna go do my best to edit out any coughs I do have a cough drop in. I know that is not always awesome. But we have gotten nearly 300 episodes. Without missing a week actually, we’ve gone 300 episodes almost without missing a week ever. And I didn’t want to stop this now. So we’re gonna get right to the point, we’re going to talk about why preparation matters, how you can prepare how you can make sure that you lock in and get really some of the logistics that things that most people don’t think about. Right? So you can give your best effort when you’re giving a talk. Right?
So now, there are some things that you can do immediately to set yourself apart from any speaker. And I’m not saying that that’s the goal to go in and one up people. I’m talking about just being a professional. Being a professional seems to be something that is a lost art today. I mean, it is amazing whether you’re just talking about and pardon. I mean, I’m from the Midwest, so I am somebody that still thinks things like manners and preparation will get you places in life, that no amount of money, status or title ever will. That’s how I raised my son. We tried to work on it. It doesn’t mean that we’re the most pleasant, amiable people all the time. I have outbursts like anybody, I get frustrated, like anybody. But when it comes to manners, right, I try to make sure that those are always a cornerstone emphasis. It’s a part of our company core values. We call it Midwest warm. So I knew the minute I started speaking for other people, I wanted to make sure that I did a couple of things right out of the gate to ensure that they knew they were contracting, somebody that really cared somebody that wasn’t just coming for a pay day or anything like that because we do care. It is an honor and I know you care as well. So let’s talk about the very first thing you should do that most people never will. Whether you put it On your website, or you call the individual or you email them, you want to have a list of questions that you are able to ask the host before you go in. And this should coincide with not only things obvious things like the date of the talk, or how long the talk is. But you should ask very specific questions about the audience, their experience level, their perspective, we literally have these on a form on our website. So it doesn’t matter whether you go to brettbartholomew.net, or artofcoaching.com. When you navigate to the contact us about speaking or speaking events, or me as a speaker, you can see it and feel free to take it. Right. There’s no mystery in this, we just tried to ask questions of like, Hey, who’s your audience? What experience level do they have? What kind of talks have they enjoyed in the past? What kind of talks haven’t gone? Well, in the past? How long will I have? What’s the seating arrangement? What’s the room look like? Now, you know, you got to distill it a little bit. There’s a million questions I’d like to ask. But the point is that you just start having that conversation. Because what that room looks like, who is in that room, their perceptions and perspectives are going to shape how people receive your message. So we get a lot of those common questions of like, how do I create the best content? How do I structure my talk? How do I design slides, none of that matters. If you don’t know your audience, you have got to know your audience. This also aside from understanding their own expectations and their background, that helps you shape your key message, you may think your key message is one thing going into a talk. And it needs to be something completely different. I’ll give an example from the talk that I just gave. I went up and talked about social agility, which is our overarching construct, the master skill that we believe we have to be to not only be better people, but more effective leaders. And that’s really comprised of three things. Contextual competence, which is just a fancy way of saying, hey, you need to understand the dynamics of situations. So you can read the room and adapt your behavior, we all need to know, hey, is this the right time? To come in with a joke? Is this not? Should I just kind of sit back and observe here? Should I be a part of the party, if I’m going to a new country, I you need to be aware of their customs and everything that they’re doing, right? It’s, sitting back and observing How should I behave in this room. Communication proficiency is then how you wield your words, and all that to make sure that you’re speaking to that room. So if contextual competence is do as the Romans do, then communication proficiency is speak as the Roman speak, try to adapt your communication style, that doesn’t mean don’t be somebody you’re not just means to, hey, there’s a certain language in that room, there’s a certain flow to it, make sure that you’re not just going against that grain, depending on you know, the context, of course, and the final one is micro political literacy, I’m gonna get to the point that’s in a minute. And that is all about understanding the power dynamics in the room. So you don’t need me to tell you that there can be people out there that are good at reading the room. And they’re great communicators, subjectively, but they’re not really good at understanding how to play the game. And whether we want to play the game or not, there’s always a game to be played. That’s human nature, everybody’s got agendas and wants and needs. There’s other people that know how to play the game. But they’re not great communicators. So nobody really, you know, relates to them, or really likes them. Social agility is being able to have all three. So that’s what I was talking about in the context of leadership. And inevitably, many of the audience members come up afterwards. And they’re like, Man, I see this in my relationship. You talked about different communication styles. This is a conflict me and my wife, or me, and my partner, or me and my husband are having, or I’m having this issue connecting with my teens and my kids and my clients, and all these pieces. And it dawned on me, man, so much of our work isn’t just about leadership in the formal context, but it’s about leadership in your family as well. And leadership and whatever family dynamics mean to you, right? There’s so many different shapes a family can take a family unit can take. And so even that, I’m like, man, okay, we need to do more of this, because this has been two or three events now that people have really talked about the relationship side of it from their personal lives. So you might think that you know, what you’re going to speak on and it might even be directly what they requested. And then you get that feedback on the back end. But the goal is that you want it when you’re crafting your talk, the more you can know about your audience and their pain points. And all those things going in will be helpful, and there’s layers to this. We’ve had hosts, fill out our form, and then we do they think they want one thing. And then we’ll usually call them as it gets closer and say, hey, just following up, seeing if anything’s changed. I want to know if there’s anything else you’d adjust. This is how we’re thinking about attacking it. Let me know what you think. And then it’s kind of shifted. They’re like, Oh, I really liked that. I didn’t think about this. And you know what, now that we’re talking, yeah, that brings up this. So you’ve got to be flexible with that, too. You can’t be rigid. It’s like my friend, Matt Morrison. He has a saying Semper Gumby, you know, always flexible. But just remember, that’s going to change, but nothing beats knowing your audience. It’s just like, that’s the number one rule of communication. And it’s really going to allow you to clarify that key base message and take away
Another thing it’s gonna allow you to do. And in my book, conscious coaching, I talked about the three R framework, research, relate reframe. You want to use internal language, if you’re going to speak at Mount Sinai, or if you’re going to speak at Macbeth High School, there’s going to be internal language, there’s mantras there that people will want you to do. One high school I went to, they wanted me to speak to the concept of one team, that’s fine. But I need to know what that means. Because otherwise it can be ambiguous language. And what does one team mean? What could it mean to you? What could it mean, you know, to the coaches at that school, one team that like we’re all pushing in the same direction, but to a kid in high school, that they may not really get that a lot of these kids are still trying to find their way and their voice. And I remember talking to them, and I said, you know, let’s talk about some of these inspirational mantras, what are inspirational mantras that don’t connect with you? And a number of the kids were like, Why don’t like when we’re all being told that, you know, we have to be positive all the time. And we have to do this. So if we’re not positive, it’s looked like we’re not part of the team. And we really are, we’re just, you know, we’re trying to figure out our way. And I’m like, great, that’s a perfect example. Right? But it started with that kind of one team mindset, that at least gives me a chance to say, Okay, this is what this place says and does, how do I see how my content can fit with that. And there have been times I’ve done that better than others. Right? I am a tremendously imperfect speaker. That’s why I feel like I’m qualified to teach speaker school I’m still learning to. Now I’ve also gotten my 10,000 hours really early. I started speaking, probably in 2011. And these were presentations internally, for a company I worked for at the time. And then I was given the opportunity to go internationally and do more. And then going out on my own, I started speaking more and more in 2015, to the point where I traveled on average, 65 to 100,000 miles a year, doing this for about a lot of opportunities to make mistakes, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to learn. And but knowing that internal language, and that nomenclature is huge. Do they call it the mayo way? If you’re going to speak for a police department? Did they have internal mantras? So those are some other questions you want to ask? Are there internal mantras, or phrasing that you use that you want us to be sensitive to? I had the opportunity to speak at Apple, one of the greatest honors of my life loved it. They wanted me to really talk about positive intent. That was a key phrase, they wanted me to speak to because there were miscommunications internally with some things. So I said, Okay, let’s, center a talk around that. Let’s find how I can shake my content to the reality of what they’re facing there. So that’s huge. Another key piece, and something we probably didn’t ask soon enough, is understand, especially if you’re doing an in service almost primarily if you’re doing an in service. Is the audience required to be there? Or are they paying to be there?
Hey, before we dive back into today’s episode, I’ve got something special for you. If you’re like me, you’re driven to understand a lot of the nuances of communication, leadership coaching, and the psychology that powers it all. And if you’ve ever wanted to connect with others who share those ambitions, please check out our mighty networks community, you can go to artofcoaching.com/community to get all the details. But here’s the skinny. Some of the benefits here are that you’re gonna get targeted learning. We don’t really do surface level chatter. Our community is a deep dive into topics like social agility, power dynamics, and truly effective communication. Think of it kind of as an ever growing resource library curated by people as dedicated as you and it’s stuff that I’m not going to say or share on social media, because we can’t guarantee that it actually gets to you and our community. It will. There’s a lot of high quality networking. This isn’t your run of the mill networking space. You can connect with fellow entrepreneurs, coaches and leaders, all of whom are vetted for their expertise, or at least their desire to contribute meaningfully. You’re gonna get expert insight from my team and I add accountability you ultimately will get out of it what you put into it, but if you’re budget conscious, you still want to learn you don’t want to have to worry about over committing to something but you want to dive deeper go to artofcoaching.com/community now and check it out. We have a great deal. Check it out for 30 days dive into the content, you’re not going to see this stuff anywhere else. That’s artofcoaching.com/community.
Is the audience required to be there? Are they paying to be there? There’s a big difference there in terms of skin in the game and attentiveness level. We have done in services where everybody there wants to be there, or they’re paying to be there, it doesn’t even necessarily need to be their own money, because we’ve worked with sports teams and organizations that, you know, it’s already covered by the organization, but everybody else wants to be there. So think about it more like this paying to be there can just be like, do they want to be there? Right? Are they willfully showing up and paying with their time or money, you know, versus required to be there, where it’s, mandated, because we’ve done in services, where somebody says, hey, you know, my staffs having a problem, I’m basically making them come to this, if somebody’s made to be there, or they’re required to be there, you’re gonna tend to face a little bit more of an uphill battle, they’re likely not going to have done their research, they may not know much about you, or what you’re speaking on, they’re gonna have a little incentive to learn about that. Because either way, we’ve talked about this before, there are three real results of trying to influence somebody’s commitment, compliance and resistance. If somebody is made to be there, they’re gonna either beyond that compliance or resistance into the spectrum. And that means by and large, they’re not fully committed, at least not yet. Now, you can win them over. And, that’s fine, right? And hopefully, well, but those that are paying to be there, they’re willfully being there, that’s more commitment, you’re gonna have their attention. And if you do stuff that’s very interactive, like we do, that makes all the difference in the world. Because otherwise, you’re just now not only trying to educate people in a limited amount of time, but now you’re trying to win them over. And that can be tough because they could come in with a lot of pre like preconceptions and defensiveness and the bad attitude they might have towards their boss. Making them go there will leak over into like, who are you? And one of the best individuals I know. And they’re just amazing, amazing people. Karolina and her husband, Almin. They were coming to a workshop of ours this before we knew them, they came to our Brand Builder workshop. I’ll never forget, she was so excited. She was going to learn more about business fundamentals, Almin who, I certainly consider a friend today came in and this guy just looked angry. And I’ll spare you long story short, he came up to us towards the end and was like, hey, my wife forced me to come to this, I didn’t know who you were, I wanted to leave midday, I did not want to be here at all, you know, all these things. And he’s like, I couldn’t have loved it more. This was incredible. And that was just, that’s always a huge turning point. For me, it makes me feel good to know, like, yes, you can certainly turn people that are resistant into people that are some of your biggest supporters. And they certainly are now. But again, it’s a little bit more of an uphill battle. So you got to discern who’s been made to come there by their boss, whether that’s their wife, in that example, or, you know, the larger organization that that plays a big role. So what are we talked about so far, getting some baseline questions now, whether it’s a form on your website, whether it’s a conversation, where you want somewhere where you can get data around, not only the date and the location, but you know, the expectations, the audience’s background, their experience level, and drill nomenclature? Are they required to be there paying to be there, all of that. And that really guides your research and your content development.
Okay, so what we’ve talked about so far is just a lot of really that pre planning stage. And that’s kind of how you can break this down. The pre planning stages, always understanding those demographics, pain points, expectations, all that background, that helps you set objectives, and then that helps you select your topics. So you should have a wide range of topics, we probably have, like 10 different topics that we can speak on, grows more every year. So now that I have that information that guides the content development, what case study, should I talk about relevant material, pros and cons of all those kinds of things? Is this gonna hit? Is it not, you’re not always going to know, you’re not always going to know. And that’s why only some of this can be scripted. There’s also just no substitute for knowing your stuff. And that’s why it’s speaker school, we really try to narrow down what is your take home message, and most people just never get the time, the heads down time or the hands on guidance they need to do that. That’s why you know one more for give me a brief out here. If you want to grow in this, no matter when you’re listening to this, just go to artofcoaching.com/events and look at when Speaker school is or go to artofcoaching.com/speaker and you can join the waitlist because that’s something is all very, very, very critically important. So, other things you want to think about just logistics. This is another piece just aside from crafting your talk, because we’ve done other podcasts on that, make sure you have the things that you need. We always talked about logistical preparations. Aside from travel, tech check within those questions, you also want to just ask them, am I presenting off a projector? am I presenting off the TV seems like a little deal. It is not. If you’re presenting off of a projector, and you have audio on your slides. Man, a lot of these times, it’s just going to play through your computer. And you’re not going to have the audio capacity that you need. For those videos to work. They got to the point where I started traveling with a Bluetooth speaker. Because even if they said that was, you know, going to speak off of a screen, you’d get there and they’d be like, Oh, now we’re using a projector. I test all the tech. I tried to go there the morning before, which is a huge thing we advocate the morning before your talk anytime before you talk to a tech check. Even if they tell you. We’re good. We’ve done it before. No, it never works the way that you think it does. And we’ve ran it and lo and behold, it’s playing through the computer audio. Then you change your settings. Now it’s through the projector audio. No, no, no, no, no. So you have to play on pre mortem like on all of that audio visual stuff going wrong. So I literally bought this is another golden. This is a golden tip here that anybody could miss very easily. I literally bought like a shower bag, you know, or like a dopp kit a lot of times are called. And in it. This is where normally people would put their toiletries when they travel. in it. I have dongles I have USB C I have USB lightning cables, USB C to USB C HDMI to QVC. I’m making that last one up, right but I’ve every HDMI USB dongle, spare batteries, everything you need. I have literally gone places before where, you know, we’re having a technical issue or we lost this dongle, I pull out the dopp kit have exactly what they need, good to go. I’ve gone places before where you watch a presenter, their clicker gives out. Next thing you know, they didn’t check, they didn’t have the batteries in it or their batteries died. So for a while, I would keep two triple A batteries in my pocket. And I’ve only ever had to use that once. But you’ve want to make sure that you have those things. Because when I was making this podcast, I was like, Alright, if they know nothing else, and we’re not gonna give it all away. I mean, at the end of the day, I’m still a businessman. And I say that, you know, smiling at you, I’m gonna give you tips. But of course, we’re gonna give you all this stuff at speaker school and, and all of our other resources, but we’re only allowed to hear if there’s two things that you need to know it’s your audience, and then you’ve got to have all of your tech stuff figured out. Everything will always go wrong. I present off of a MacBook Pro. There’s even times where sometimes the screen won’t project. And I’ll be like, Okay, I’ll switch the power cable from one of the USB C ports in the Mac and the HDMI into another one. And it works just fine. So sometimes somebody thinks it’s the computer. No, it’s the TV. No, it’s this nope, sometimes it’s just in the wrong port. Even though there’s two USB C ports, one works better with the dongle than the other one does. At our facilitator course, where we teach people who come and teach for us they go through part of our let’s just call it a certification program for for just ease of understanding. We have a whole module, we put them in situations like alright, this is what’s called gone wrong, you have two minutes to troubleshoot it. Your talk starts in two minutes. And they’ve got to figure out okay, crap, how do I get this going on the screen and we’ll mess up all the settings for him. So that is a huge piece. So aside from all the obvious things, just to recap, again, of what to when do arrive, what to do upon arrival, coordinating with the event organizers and technicians all that make sure you got your tech stuff, make sure you got backups or backups. Make sure that you know how to export your slides to PowerPoint and PDF, whatever you need. If you are presenting somewhere where they make you send in the slides and you’re presenting off somebody else’s computer, that’s fine. But just know that some of your custom fonts are gonna get screwed up. That’s another huge piece. There were times where all you have to present off our computer. We’d say well, we have custom fonts for our branding. Well, it’ll be fine. I go there for tech check. It’s not fine. The words are off the screen. Next thing you know I have an hour before I speak. I had done all my prep because they really didn’t listen ahead of time. Now I’m sitting in the audience with my laptop out, trying to change all of our fonts so it fits on the screen. And then you just feel like you’re being disrespectful to other presenters and all that even though you did your best, and it was outside of your control, all that’s going to happen, it’s all going to happen. So you can either benefit from the more than 10 years that I’ve had doing this, where it’s not just the amount of years, but the density in these years where I’ve already made these mistakes. I’ve already had these embarrassments. I’ve already solved some of these problems. Or you can ignore all this and still think it’s just about the design of your slides. As a matter of fact, if there’s one thing I’ve gotten less and less worried about, as I’ve gotten into this, it’s the design of my slides, I still put a tremendous amount of time into them. And I’ll tweak things like this and that, but not as much as I used to. We want ours to be distinct, of course, engaging, of course, but there’s a limit to how much that matters. If you don’t have this other stuff figured out. There is there’s a limit to how much that matters if you don’t have that other stuff figured out. And I’ve seen people use everything they’ve used, you know, Prezi, we’ve used beautiful.ai, Google Slides, PowerPoint, all that. But I mean, there were times where there were things on the market that would make oh my god, your slideshow is like watching a rocket launch. But if the message isn’t clear, and the engagement isn’t right, and the language isn’t right, and the relatability isn’t right, it doesn’t matter. Alright.
So we’ve talked about audience factors, logistical factors, pre planning, stage factors. Emotion, psychological prep, we’ll save that for another conversation. Right now, I just want to focus more on some of the really big pains in the butt things that can go on, obviously, get your travel squared away, just inside tips. If you’re not, if you don’t have an airline program points thing set up, get them set up, get them all set up. Another piece of advice is make sure you apply for a credit card. And yes, I know what people like Dave Ramsey, and all that say about credit, right? I’m talking about if you’re somebody that’s going to pay your card off every month, okay, I’m not gonna get into a credit card debate on this. But if you have the chance to get a credit card that gets you an airport, like a lounge access, do it. Because if you’re anything like me, you know, oftentimes we have a ton of stuff leading up to every event, you’re never going to have enough time to fully prepare. So the ability to go to an airport lounge, have some quiet, have a place where you know, you can get a charging cable and slot in get warm food and you’re not paying $20 for airport food or just crushing beef jerky and Quest bars and everything like I had to do on this last trip. Because there’s a bit of a mess. You can’t put a price on that stuff. You just can’t. It pays, certain things are worth it. And I’m trying to tell you big things, I’m trying to tell you small things, all those pieces in between.
Alright, so think about these questions. Think about what you want to ask that person. Think about one of the most important questions is, what can I do to make this go Great? What can I do to make it a miserable failure. And you’ll be surprised I remember one time, it was just something simple. Somebody said, Hey, we have people streaming. And nobody wants his looked at the streaming cameras. So anybody that streaming is just seeing the side of that presenter. So there were times where I was on stage, and I was speaking to Around 400 people. And I would just turn to the right turn away from those 400 people and look right at the camera and talk to them periodically for two to three minutes. And I met a communicated that on the front end, when I came on stage to the main audience and thing that was weird. I just said, Hey, thank you to the hosts, thank you to all of you. By the way. There’s gonna be periods of time where you see me turn to the right, I’m talking to the people at home, just like I want all of you to feel involved. I want them to feel involved. So forgive me if that’s a little awkward. I’m just trying to be respectful to everybody and give them a great experience. That stuff goes a long way, folks.
Lastly, because I’m going to save some of these things for Speaker school, I just am we really believe in handwritten notes. Somebody is paying you to go do a job. Somebody who’s paying you to go do a job, they’re taking a risk on you. They’re taking and they might say it’s not a risk. I know you’re great, but they’re taking a chance on you. Money doesn’t come easy for anybody, okay? And they’re showing their faith and their trust in you. It’s my belief that you and I’m speaking to me and my team too. You owe them more than just showing up and doing your job. Okay? You owe them a sense of respect and appreciation. And that is why everywhere we go, we do our best to have a handwritten note with a wax sealed stamp, an actual wax sealed stamp that we wax seal. That is our little thing that doesn’t need to be what you do. Okay, that doesn’t need to be what you do, but you need to find one thing that you can do to really make it special. One thing you need to do to go above and beyond for them because it matters tremendously. Take some photos posts on their behalf. I went to an event this weekend, spoke I took pictures of other presenters and I tagged them I took pictures of the hosts and I tag them people really appreciate that they do. You know, because we’re not sitting here taking pictures of ourselves and whatever all the time. And we don’t always, you know, remember to do these things and just like, and nobody else is going to take pictures of them, it makes them know that you’re, you know, like it shows them that you’re listening and that you’re grateful to be there and that you’re a part of it. You’re not just a mercenary. And I know that because we’ve hired speakers to you know, some of them come in come out, they kind of act like mercenaries, some of them come in, and they’re really a part of it. They’re really a part of it, and they’re glad to be a part of it. And it’s more than just giving up their talk, and leaving. And sometimes, listen, sometimes that’s gonna be your reality, I get it. Like, I’ve had to have events where I dip in and dip out, I’ve got a family, I’ve got to get back. But I never make them feel like that. Okay, even if that’s the case, and I’ve got to get in and get out. I make sure they know how, grateful I am for those things. So whether it’s verifying your technological or your technical, well, both technical and technological kind of requirements for the talk, the audience, the contexts, thinking about microphones, projectors, clickers, think about the nature of the venue, trying to do a practice run at the venue, if you can, just a soundcheck. That’s something that we always do audience analysis, setting those objectives, these are some things that 99% of your competition is not going to think about. Okay, they’re not going to think about those things. And that’s where you need to spend a large percentage of your time on the front end. Now, if you’re interested more on how to present, you know, in different types of rooms, table setups, because there is very big differences between, you know, an auditorium, a U shaped setup, kind of half moon setup, typical classroom setup, how to manage nerves, how to kind of get your best content out there, get out of your own head, all those things, check out our other resources. Again, you can go to, or you can always just go to artofcoaching.com as a main reference, you can go to artofcoaching.com/speaker. And even if it’s sold out, you can join the waitlist for the next one. We always keep these very small. We want it to be in depth, we want it to be helpful. And hear what I said again, this is going to be the end of it. We are not looking for perfect people and perfect speakers. We are looking for people that are just humble enough to say, hey, I want to improve. I want to be better at this. I don’t mind being vulnerable, teach me and let’s talk about it. And let’s work together. That is what art of coaching is about imperfect people, guiding other imperfect people on how to make a bigger difference through more meaningful connections. We hope you can join our family. And we hope that you resonate with that message. Because to us, there’s nothing more important than how all of us communicate and connect.
Alright, until next time, this is Brett, for the rest of my team. If you liked this, please send it to other people. If you notice somebody aspiring to be a speaker themselves, send it to other people. If they’re having confidence issues, send it to other people. If it’s giving you value rate it in the podcast that we’re grateful for all that stuff. Thank you again and I appreciate you putting up with my voice. Me being sick on this episode. I’ll talk to you next time.
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