Transcript Ep #210: The Hidden Cost of Winging it with Presentations

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Everyone, and welcome back to another episode. I feel like today I’m recording in the middle of a circus. Do you ever have days like that, where you feel like, there’s so much chaos going on around you. But you have to get things done? Well, today is one of those days for me. And it’s actually I mean pretty perfect. On today’s topic, we’re talking about the hidden cost of winging it with your words, when giving presentation talks, even at podcast interviews, or even being on a panel, I think there’s this badge of honor that comes when you kind of have like a knack for, like being in prompt to kind of being good thinking on your feet. Being that charismatic person who can turn on the charm without a lot of prep. I can tell you for years, I identified with this kind of persona, I got really, really good. And still to this day, I’m very, very good at presenting on the fly on pretty much any topic within my skill set or business scope. And to be perfectly honest with you, I never saw this as a bad thing. In fact, I saw it as an amazing thing. And over the years of speaking on so many stages, and working with so many other business owners and trainers and speakers. I learned that having the identity of thinking on your feet of being a really good impromptu speaker, it’s just been so good live. It’s actually more focused on ego verse is service. And I’m going to break that down today and potentially poke the bear of your ego and your relationship with speaking on stage. But please know, this is a hard topic for me too. Because if you’re like me, and you enjoy speaking, and you are really good at prepping the night before or speaking off the cuff, that there is a time in place, my friend, but what I’m going to argue today is that your voice in your business as the face of your business as the leader in your business as the head of marketing in your business, most likely, or at least the person in charge of brand strategy and kind of the face to get your your stuff out there. It is absolutely critical that you have a plan that you understand the power of your words. And you also understand the hidden cost of cluttering your words or using the wrong words. And I’m not talking about getting cancelled for saying the wrong thing, although that is a very true reality. And honestly, that comes from winging it and not being thoughtful or careful with your communication. But today I’m talking about more of the legitimate cost to your business of what happens when you wing it with your sales message. What happens when you winging it with a big opportunity on a podcast or speaking on someone else’s stage? Even if you go in with a plan if you are left cramming the night before or stressing it out or reviewing your notes or writing scripts or anything up until the last minute

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it. If you’ve ever done that before, or you find that as a repeated pattern, this is the episode for you. And no, I’m not going to tell you that you need to be scripted. I hate scripts, I don’t use them. They make me sound like an idiot. And I would never expect anyone to use them. Who if they have the same relationship with scripts. But what I am saying is you can learn to use your superpower of being unscripted and impromptu you can use, learn how to use it in a really, really strategic way where you can be seemingly impromptu seemingly off the cuff of my friend every step of the way. You know what the hell you are saying when you’re saying it, why you’re saying it, for good reasons. So let’s go ahead and dive in.

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At the time of this recording, as I mentioned, little circus happening in my house little quick update here.

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We’re still home for summer break, and I am so envy for those of you who live in Arizona and the other regions who school is already going back into session. The quiet and peace that I crave. When the kids are in school credit, I love summertime because it’s like a real low. But summertime it’s difficult to do quiet focused activities and to take the advice that I’m sharing today around being more strategic and planning ahead. That is hard. So first of all, big reality check for those of you who are juggling a lot of balls in your business, like big ol balls, you emitters everywhere, right? If you were like, Ah, I literally do not have time to plan for things Heather like it is fly by the seat of my pants every single day. I feel you I totally feel you and I totally understand. And that is where I think in some ways in our business, we need to be very mindful of the commitments that we make. In fact, I highly recommend tuning until last week’s episode, where we talk about whether or not free speaking is a smart and strategic move for your business how and when to say yes to opportunities and more importantly, how to gracefully say no, should an opportunity not be aligned for you. So check out that one. If you find yourself constantly preparing last minute for talks. And you don’t have time to prepare, you have to ask the question, Are you truly the best person to serve the audience for that I want you to tune back into last week’s episode, Episode 209, where I talk about the harsh truth of you being the best person for the job if you really really can’t say yes, but you’re wanting to go back and listen to that message because that dovetails perfectly into today’s message. But let’s talk about the temptation of on preparedness. You see what I find so often with business owners,

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yet to meet a business owner who has a hard time talking about their expertise. Now let me qualify that by saying pretty much a lot of business owners all of them I talked to have a hard time talking about their expertise in a way that drives sales, or in a way that makes them sound like the authority like they’re trying to talk about it in a certain way. But in everyday conversation, there’s no shyness no bashfulness. It’s like we can talk all the time. And in fact, I giggle all the time because I meet so many entrepreneurs that are like give me the mic, give me my own television show, give me whatever I will yada yada, yada all frickin day long. And I hear you. I’m not surprisingly, I am not a huge talker in my personal life, I am a little bit more of a reserved person. I am not a huge fan of meeting and talking to strangers about random things. That might not be a surprise for you. Listen to the show, I talk about how I don’t like small talk. Not only is it hard for me with a hearing loss, I wear hearing aids but it’s just exhausted with my own energetic personality. So I am not one of those people that can talk all the freakin time. But when I am lit up about something and I am on a mission around a specific topic. I’m really good at it. And I love it and it brings me joy and it brings me energy. Now, the thing is, is if you’re a business owner, the chances are you’ve had a lot of experience with a variety of things. Even as you’ve launched your business, you’ve learned about email marketing, you’ve learned about the tech side of that maybe like me, you’ve recently built your own website on a new platform. And now you’re a pseudo designer expert. Courage sorry all designers in the world I do not consider myself good at it by any means. Thank goodness for templates. Anyways, we wear a lot of hats. And I see this I see this little phenomenon that’s happened a lot in the online marketing space. You may have seen this too. This may have been you and that’s okay. It kind of was me

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You started the online space with a certain level of expertise. And then as you get down the road into programs meeting a lot of other online business owners or other entrepreneurs who sell information products or other similar things, there’s a tendency for people to go, Oh, I’ve learned a lot about this. So now, I actually want to teach more of this online business thing. It’s like, the more that you learn, the more you want to teach the thing that you learn. And there’s no problem with that when I started in the online space, I thought I was going to work with people in corporate, which was my background. But I’d been working with entrepreneurs, as I was in corporate working with entrepreneurs for years. So me pivoting over to working with entrepreneurs wasn’t a surprise to me. But it was very interesting in how quickly I developed a skill set in the online space, and then wanted to make that my ideal that my perfect customer that was the people I was attracting. But the challenge with this, coming back to the unpreparedness is oftentimes as entrepreneurs, we are so limited for time, we don’t have a lot of space or capacity in our day, because our schedules are slammed with one on one work or trying to catch up on a program we’re in or serve our existing clients or write the next email where the next blog or keep our kids from jumping in into the fireplace. I don’t know. I mean, it’s a very real thing, probably for some people. Probably for me this winter, since we have an actual fireplace with fire in it. That’ll be fun with a newborn baby. So more to come on that one. But there is a tendency that because we know and have had experience in a variety of things, that it’s fairly easy to talk about, there is a temptation to get away with the talk about whatever comes up in your mind. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to have a fairly short attention span. I also have a tendency to talk about the things that are most pressing now. So here’s the challenge that comes with unpreparedness. And honestly, this was one of the biggest signals that I learned around Oh crap. This winging it thing might not be serving my audience or my business. And that is when you wing it, when you speak off the cuff, you are far more likely to talk about things that are pressing now about recent experiences, recent conversations, which you might be thinking, well, Heather, isn’t that good. You want to bring in stories and reason stuff. Yes. But the challenge of this is because of the infatuation of the recent, the sexy of the new, what happens is we often forget to include the cornerstone content that’s necessary to meet our audience where they are. Because what happens is a lot of times the newness what’s top of mind for us what’s exciting for us, us being the business owner in the niche, who’s well advanced, maybe talking to people that are a little bit more advanced, maybe graduates to your program clients who’ve been with you, while people who get the lingo get the language and rd end of the transformation. And the challenge is when you’re constantly speaking about things that are familiar and top of mind for you as the entrepreneur, we juggle a lot of hats, where a lot of things, the likelihood that the content and substance of your message really meets your audience where they are, is hit or miss.

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And this is why it’s so important for you as a speaker, as an educator, as a trainer

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to understand the importance of clear messaging. Now, I don’t specifically mean sales messaging. Well, that is important too. But any kind of clear message when you speak every time you open your mouth to speak, you should have a really clear idea of what’s my goal here. What am I trying to talk about? What is the core message that I’m trying to come across and the challenge for most speakers who winging it is they have to word vomit all of this language just to get to their mother freaking point. Guilty. I am so guilty. I am an external verbal processor. I have to warn my team that I am just thinking out loud. Please do not take action of anything that’s about to fall out of my mouth until we get to the good stuff. The thing is, a lot of times those who are good at winging it are really just good at processing their thoughts in real time. And the challenge of that is if you are processing your ideas

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us. You’re burying the lede, if you’ve ever heard of that same before, what’s happening here is when other people are listening to your message. They’re now having to sift through all of the extra stuff you’re bringing to the party. To understand which point is important. What should I remember? What should I take action on? And if you’ve ever had the situation before, where your audience was like, wow, that was action packed. Wow, that was so informational. Wow, that was so awesome. That was so much. I’m so inspired yet. They still don’t take the action that you desire, like jumping on your email list or purchasing your programs, your book need to speak in another event. If you’re not getting the business results you’re after, it’s probably because your message is getting muddy.

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Yeah, no, that’s, that’s really, really hard to take in. Back when I was in college, one of my professors, like the second day of school, we played this game. And she brought in this tray that had all of these objects on it. And I’m fairly sure they were candy themed, like candy bars, bags of candy, different snacks, different sweets and stuff. So she brought in this tray. And I never remember the point of this activity, I just remember doing the activity. So she brought in the tray, and we would walk around the room, we had to look at it. We didn’t memorize the tray. And then they would remove an object from the tray, shuffle things around. And then we had to remember what’s missing. And then we would go through that a couple different times. Again, I don’t remember the point of the activity, there was something around it was it was a marketing class. So definitely had some to do with marketing. The the point of the story that I’m going to make for you is this, asking your audience to remember the objects of your talk. And then to remember which ones are critical. is kind of a wild ask my friend. So there’s a thing in our brains that I’m not going to use the complex language. Let’s just make this very plain spoken here. We have we all have these, this area of our brain that tells us is this relevant to me or not? In the learning and development space, they call this wi I fm what’s in it for me. I always cringed and rolled my eyes at that box. I was like stop at old people with your trainer hats and trying to sound cool. That sounds so dumb. Now here I am as an old person trainer, here I am and I still sound so uncool and dumb, but we’re going to run into

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so this channel that everybody operates on what’s in it for me.

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People have this when they are listening to you speak, whether it’s an inspirational talk, a tangible workshop, whatever that looks at the training inside your program, they have this the censor where they’re constantly filtering out what you say. And the more stuff aka the more extra the more impromptu rambles and external processes to get to your point, the more side tangents and side rows and extra fun that you’re bringing the party, the more you’re forcing their antenna to say, Is this relevant? Is it not relevant? Is it relevant? Is it not relevant and you’re relying on their antenna to make those decisions. And the difficulty when you wing it in presentations typically winging it presentations lack the structure necessary to help the audience make an educated decision around next steps. Hello, fired. Say that I hope you’re with me right now. What I just said is when you winging it, your presentations lack the structure necessary to help your audience get to the point where they can make an educated decision of where to go next.

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This is important as you can imagine, when you’re a business owner, using your voice and showing up on a stage, whether it’s a literal stage, a virtual stage, a, like a podcast, or even alive or even hell even like an Instagram real, it’s not gonna go that route because I am not a social media person. But every time you grab the mic, you are an ambassador for your brand, you have the opportunity to, to dial in your message to connect with your ideal client to further along your business and help them with their transformation is an opportunity for you to educate, to entertain to connect with your audience. And when your message is unclear. You were making it more difficult for your ideal customer to follow you along in this journey to want to work with you. So when you don’t prepare, and I’m not I’m gonna we’re gonna address what prepper like preparation is here in just a moment because it might not be what you think. I’m not talking about like overly scripted and overly planned out. Hell you don’t even have to have slides who said it? So that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I am saying

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as being more thoughtful and intentional with what you bring to the party and training yourself to declutter how you speak, and the way you speak, it makes an impact on your business’s bottom line. Because when your message is more potent, more compelling, more captivating, more effective, you make more sales, you drive more leads, people remember your message, they talk about you, when others bring up, hey, I need somebody to help me in this XYZ area, they think of you.

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So it makes business sense for us to put our egos aside and say, All right, we might be good. But how much better would we be if we put a little training behind it and learned how to be less rambly? Less off the cuff, and more intentional with our words. Now you might be thinking, all right, but Heather, I really hate it when I’m sitting in a presentation and someone is like, overly prepared. Like, it’s just boring. And let me address that for a moment because I have to talk about that authenticity. And being present in the moment is not the same as being boring and scripted. I’m so sorry. I said boring and scripted. But yeah, here’s the problem. What you’re comparing it to is you’re making the idea of being scripted or being prepared as being row Bodek as reading as trying to remember what they were trying to say. That is not a an issue with preparedness, that is an issue with perfectionism. They’re trying to memorize a script versus make a point. It’s also an issue of delivery. Case in point, let’s talk about good and bad acting, my friend. We all know the great Hollywood actors who we could, like, just gobble up all day long. Because they make you cry. They make you laugh, they make you feel all the emotions. And then we all know cringy bad acting. We do. It’s just like what is happening here. Hello, Hallmark Channel Christmas time. Which I laugh because we love if you haven’t been with me for Christmas yet we love the Hallmark Channel Christmas time in our house. And then I just all the cheesy Christmas movies like they are so warming and familiar and we love them and the acting is fricking terrible. The difference? Honestly, it’s not even the cheesy script. It’s the axiom, there is a level of believability and presence. When words come out of your mouth, and the body language that goes with it. You know whether or not you believe and feel what someone is saying. And if you’re thinking I have to be impromptu, I can’t overly plan because I lose my mojo. It’s because you’ve never practiced bringing your mojo to the party, when you have a plan and my friend, that’s just, that’s just a skill that you haven’t yet mastered. So I want you to separate out this idea of scripted or preparedness, it really has nothing to do with presence and authenticity. what you love about yourself on stage when you’re at your best is that you’re fully present, that you’re charismatic, that you are charming that you are jiving with your audience. That’s the persona that you want to duplicate. It isn’t about you thinking on your feet, it’s the carefree presence that you bring to the party. That’s what makes it electrifying for you and others in your audience. So we need to release this idea that that delivery, that captivation has to come at a sacrifice to planning content, there are two different things. And if you want to be a very effective speaker, if you want to ensure that your opportunities, create more opportunities, and drive leads and sales into your business, if you want to be the kind of person that gets recognized, remembered and referred, every time you speak, you have to learn not just the language to use not just the content to use, you have to learn how to deliver. And that is something I’m super passionate about. We have a lot of episodes on that delivery piece. But the the presence comes from place of knowing what you’re talking about. So let’s talk about crafting compelling presentations. You’re like, Alright, what’s the content? I’m curious. I’m like picking out picking up what you’re putting down here, Heather. So crafting compelling presentations. There is a structure to it. Now this is the structure that I teach inside my program, the signature talk accelerator. It’s not just about a signature talk. It’s building a damn good talk that

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You can use on repeat every time you speak. My whole philosophy is let’s build a damn good talk once and then rinse, repeat and refine, then let’s add additional talks to your business. I think every business owner should have an ecosystem of talks, three, four talks that are their go to presentations. It’s what they’ve niched down to, they want to be that well known authority expert on, but you have to start with one damn good talk. So going into a compelling presentation, what we have to think about is what is our audience? What do they know right now? Where are they pushing back? What do they want? What do they not want? We really have to start by exploring where our audience is, when we meet them on the stage. That is point blank, number one. And you might be thinking, well, Heather, that sounds really friggin simple. And it is. The challenge is, when we are winging it, the majority of entrepreneurs, experts, trainers that I work with, where they focus, first and foremost is what they’re comfortable with and what they know. So they share tips, tactics, strategies, recent ideas, recent things going on. They want that newness, that novelty, that that tactical, intangible, the stuff they eat for breakfast, that’s what they want to geek out and talk about. And, and the challenge that we have here. The reason why this is really a hidden cost is because as entrepreneurs, we want that in our speakers, we want the tangible we want the media, we don’t want the waste of time. But the disconnect that happens here is the issue is what we’re in the audience is the lack of knowledge. It isn’t a gap, and we don’t know what to do. It is a bonus don’t water, or we haven’t prioritized it yet, or we don’t believe that we actually can. Oh, that’s a good one. The gap is we forget that when we jump on stage, especially when we’re experts, and we’re good at winging it, we jump on and we think we’re going to make our case and we’re going to wow them by what we know that we will somehow be the person that make them make the change. But the challenge is referring about the psychology of the audience and just human behavior in general. So crafting a compelling presentation is more than just about your method. It’s more than just about your interesting taken perspective. It’s about understanding how to unpack your message in a way that meets your audience where they want or where they are, addresses their true limiting beliefs and objections about themselves and the content and what’s possible, and then weave them into an action plan that’s actually freaking doable, and relevant. That’s what’s creating compelling presentations are about it’s part psychology. And I don’t mean like Jedi mind trick psychology where you’ve ever been a presentation before. And they’re trying these like sketchy tactics on you and you’re like, bro, don’t even it’s not about that. It’s making an and helping your audience feel seen, feel heard, feel valued, feel truly understood. In fact, one of my absolute favorite things about being a really good wordsmith, being really good at presentations being really good at this compelling presentation piece, is my favorite compliment is when somebody tells me whether you finally put language to something I’ve been struggling with for years. You finally you put language, that’s exactly what’s going on with me, you pegged me, that is the absolute best compliment, you know, followed by with either very excited about the action plan, right, but helping other people feel seen, feel understood and feel valued. That is a huge part of your role on stage. And oftentimes when you’re winging it, your orientation tends to be more on your own knowledge. And again, more of the recent experiences you’ve had, right before getting on stage. So your audience in order for you to be more compelling, more compassionate. There’s a lot of C’s compelling, compassionate, conviction conversion, we can do like a whole lineup of C’s in business. In fact, I have them there’s nine I teach in the sector to accelerator.

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But what your audience really needs from you is that presence is they need to feel heard and seen and valued. Because how often are you in a big audience where you just feel like you’re one of the 1000s, right? They’re saying like, Hey, you guys, you all they’re talking about 1000s of people and we’re in a program that is hundreds or 1000s and it’s easy to slink back. But when someone’s really sees you, when somebody gets where you are, you lean forward in your chair and you feel far more

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are liberated and excited to take action. Because you then see that it’s not just generic advice. It’s actually advice for you, it could work for you. flipping that around. As the facilitator on that stage, it’s your responsibility to create that feeling.

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Which speaks to my next point, is trust and credibility. When you are a speaker on stage, and you know your shit, like the back of your hand, you’re talking about systems and methods, you’re talking about client experiences, you’re talking about the language that makes the audience feel really seen, heard and understood, you’re really, really present. It’s very apparent that you’ve been doing this for a long time, it’s very apparent that you’ve carefully crafted a message for just them. Even if it’s the 100th time you’ve said the same damn talk. When your audience feels that you are well prepared, and you know your shit. They trust you so much more. I mean, think about it. Have you ever been to a presentation before? Where it’s the opposite with the speaker? Where are they kind of seem flighty? And they’ve misplaced their notes? Or they keep saying I don’t know, or I’ll have to check with you. And not to say that you should like you. There’s going to be times when people ask you questions, and you don’t know the answer, you don’t lie. But if they’re constantly just like shifting gears, or or contradicting themselves, or forgetting their line of behavior have this, actually I just did it, I started a sentence and then halfway through with a different path, right? If they continually re shift the directions or go inside tangents, constantly, never making their way back to their original point. That’s a sign of winning, and your audience while they might be captivated in the moment, there’s this undercurrent of,

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do they really, are they really present? Do they really know that trust and credibility comes from you demonstrating your competence and not just competence on your expertise, but competence, understanding the people in the room, it is so important for you to understand my friend, your competence source. When you have a well organized message. It also shifts the perception your audience they see you a lot more confidently, they see you more competent, their trust skyrockets in you.

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Now, one of the things that I noticed that happens a lot with this idea of impromptu speaking is there is a false confidence that comes in I gotta I gotta talk to you like real time confessions, my friend.

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People know that I am a confident speaker. This is no no qualms. No hiding it. I am a full I’m, I’m a speaker, I’m full time teaching other people how to speak. This is what I do. Being on a microphone. I’ve been on a microphone for 20 years. I am very, very competent and really good at it.

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But what is surprise you if I tell you that for the last 15 years, maybe a little little more than that, or little less than that? Anyways, not to say the majority of that time, even though I was exceptionally confident on stage.

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What happened after I got off stage was a quiet

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struggle that no one else saw. And no one would ever guess. And if you’re listening to this episode, I would bet that you have fought with the same internal struggle, demon, whatever you want to call it, you name it, my friend. And what happens is when you’re really good at being on stage, or hell, even if you’re kind of good, or you just have a presentation where you’re like yeah, rocked it, and you leave you have that high. And that high might last for a moment when people are smiling, clapping, giving praise, that was so awesome. Usually the awesome is pretty generic. You’re amazing. That was awesome. I just loved it. It was shot or Jetix. Just generic words that still kind right? But but just praise. And then what happens is when you leave the room or you take your seat or you sign out from zoom,

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the real audience critic jumps in and that one is you. It’s the inner voice of going.

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You forgot to use the case study. Or I can’t believe you’ve said that word. Again. We talked about this. We agreed you weren’t going to say that word again. It makes you sound stupid. But there you go. Or that inner voice says I can’t believe you fumbled on the ask. Like Frick

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Got a look of that part of all the things you like What the frick? Or whatever other little nagging, bitchy voice that comes in for you? It might comment is okay, that felt fun, but like Did they like it? That that resume? Did that work? Wait, I haven’t gotten any emails yet. Or Oh, I wonder what the host thought that will that was helpful like, Yay, gray. They said good, but I don’t know anything else.

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This on knowing of how it went this immediate jump to judgment that happens when you’re uh, winging it, Wanda, when you’re a winging it off the cuff, whatever you want to call it.

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The biggest struggle, the the biggest hiding cost is that the time that inner critic comes in and drags you down, I should have planned for I should have prepared more, I should have said this I shouldn’t have done that I should have should have should have all of that nagging come in. And I’m saying this, and I didn’t even think about this, I’m having a little bit of this moment now going live, they are thinking that everyone, this happens to everyone. But what I have found in my experience, both personally and those with my clients, the people who seem the most confident on stage are the ones who have the loudest, bitchiest aftermath voice once the curtain comes down.

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And the only way that I have found to quiet that voice to finally put a muzzle on it is for me to get my shit together, and actually listen to the truth in it. For what it was, it wasn’t about making me feel like crap. That voice was advocate actually advocating for the people in that room. Because my ego was saying, how about the pair up if I can do this at four o’clock in the morning, the night before I’ve done presentations, where I have finished it at 4:30am to deliver it at 8am. And I’ve rocked it. And afterwards, the high we’re off to the I can’t believe I did it again.

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That voice made me feel like crap. But when I stripped away the emotion out of it and really stared the feedback it gave me in the face, what I realized was

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I have trained myself to be this was at the time and 11th hour person, a last minute person. And wow, that was fun for me to own at the time, it actually wasn’t the best experience for my audience. Because even though the content was fly, even though that it was so engaging, and so captivating, I could have used better examples. I could have had more strategic pauses, I could have had had some data points added I could have asked some better engaging questions. Now notice I said I could have I’m not saying I should have I’m not crapping on my performance. But when my goal on a stage is to serve my audience, well achieving my strategic goals, aka leads and growth in my business, I had a responsibility to look critically at every element of my business, including myself as the speaker and face of the brand. And ask some tough questions and saying, Am I bringing it my best. And the truth was, I wasn’t. And the truth, I think is the same for you. When you operate on this last minute planning, relying on your charismatic capabilities, you are robbing your audience of the best experience with you. Now let me say this, I get it my friend, you are not going to be like, all the way prepared for every presentation. In fact, I never feel fully prepared for any presentations, there is an element of like, alright, let’s just forget to do it. However, when you learn how to plan in a way that works for you, and it serves the socks off your audience. The Mojo you bring to that party. It is truly magnetic. When you not only know your shit, but you bring the shit with you. I’ve used it a good way. But like when you bring it with you to the stage and you know it holy crap. Like people throw their money at you in metaphorically speaking well, sometimes literally. I had somebody wants to actually throw their credit card and take it already.

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Many times. But even if you’re not like selling from the stage, right? It’s more of this idea that when you prepare the confidence and swagger that you bring that you don’t even realize, right and well you you know you

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You know, you’ve had situations before where you have rocked it. And you know, you earned that rocket, you knew it wasn’t luck you knew wasn’t winging it, you worked your ass off to make that moment count. And boy, did you do it. Those feel so good, that earned it that earned that pride, to earn that confidence to earn that moment where you’re shining, there is nothing like it.

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And that’s my ask for you today, my friend is when you think about all of these opportunities you have for you to use your voice. Are you bringing the fire?

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That’s the question. Now, I want to be really mindful here. You cannot use this as an excuse to hide, you can’t use this as an excuse to now go, Well, now I need to plan, I need to cancel all my gigs. I need to not pitch myself because Heather says I need to plan more. So I need to go back and know the plan. Let me be clear here. With my clients, we talk about planning intentionally. But the goal is for us to have a plan good enough, we call it the shitty rough draft to get to the stage. The goal is to get a really well structured talk that serves a Sox of your audience to help them feel seen, heard, valued understood, we have to have a version of that, that you’re going to feel is like a piece of crap, but it’s going to be really good, I promise, you got to get to that first version and start testing it on stage to build your confidence. And to refine it with feedback for how it’s landed. That is a process. But if you live within this expectation that okay, Heather now says I need to plan more. Therefore, I need to jump into a Google Doc and type everything out, which is not what I said. But if you go there, then you’re going to live in that and you’re going to hide and you’re going to make your voice smaller, you’re gonna make your presence smaller. And that for sure is not serving your audience. So what I’m telling you is, this is a moment where we’re going to build the plane as we fly. And maybe you’ve been building the plane as you fly for this long in your business where you’ve been guest speaking or, or doing interviews and you’re prepping a little bit, but you’re like, I don’t actually know what makes a really effective message. So I’m just kind of winging it, winging it with a plane. That really worked. And that whole analogy here. Anyways, what we’re saying is we’re not going to land the plane and start over what we’re going to do is build upon what you’re already doing. So I’m not asking you to stop or slow down. But I am asking you to actually yes, slow down a little bit be a little bit more thoughtful the next time that you show up and speak. Can we ask ourselves some fairly intentional questions about our audience. Now side note, if you want to turn these speaking opportunities into moneymakers for your business, you can check out my latest free guide. That job last week the profitable and purposeful speaking guide, where I’m going to teach you seven strategies for how to turn free or unpaid or low paid speaking opportunities into money in the bank. So you can go check that out, we will drop the link in the show notes. So that is one way to get started. If you want to learn how to build a more effective message, definitely jump on the waitlist, my friend for the next round of the signature talk accelerator will also include that link in the show notes. These are things you can start working on. But let’s talk right now let me give you a couple tangible things that you can do today. So number one, I want you to really visit yourself, what makes you feel the most confident when you show up on stage. I talked about how there’s this

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myth that authenticity means that you cannot be planned. That’s completely bogus. But I want you to really feel what’s the most confident for you? Do you feel more competent? When you do have a plan? Do you tend to lean more into scripts? And if you do, do you have a tendency to get all up in your head trying to remember the script and kind of forget the point I want you to explore for yourself. I’m gonna ask you to do a journal exercise, which I know might sound super cheesy, but you’re gonna friggin love it. I want you to write down for yourself. How do I show up when I’m at my best? What level of preparation have I put in when I have showed up at my best? What could I do moving forward in a simple way to bring the best when I show up and speak.

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Secondly, if you are a scripter or even if you not I want you to adopt this phrase, memorize the transitions, familiarize the content. Okay, what do I mean by this? This is my my number one thing that I coach on with my private clients and students inside my programs where people get all up in their head and they lose all of their mojo is they’re trying to remember what to say. And I want you to remember it’s not about exactly the words you’re using. It’s the point you’re trying to get across. Now where most people get stuck where most winging it. Ramblers kind of fall into the ditch is in between the meat and potatoes, their talk, it’s in the transitions. It’s when you’re going from your opening story into your here’s what we’re going to talk about today is when you’re going from point number one to point number two or from

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Your educational content into q&a or from q&a, Andy your pitch or your close your ask. It’s trying to figure out how to land a frickin plane at the end of the talk. Those are all transitions. And the challenge is you’re creating more confusion and clutter in your talks by not having a plan for those transitionary moments. So this is my juicy nugget of today’s episode. If you take nothing away, hopefully you took a lot of things away. But more importantly, you’re fired up to start being a little more intentional with your message. But I want you to start thinking about how can you be more intentional with those transition moments? Those are when the filler words come in. Those are when the random side tangents come in, as within rambles the convoluted random extra. How can you tighten up your transitions so that you bring your focus more to your central points of your talk?

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Okay, I cannot wait to hear how this message today landed. i This is a topic that I’ve spoken a lot about in webinars or in some of my content in the past. But I’ve never done a podcast episode around it. And I realized he didn’t having this conversation. And after outlining today’s episode, I am super freakin passionate. Never did I think I would be the person to make my whole business focus helping people build really strategic and effective presentations. I know that might surprise you. But I never thought that would be as i i was always like, I’m gonna help with the delivery, I can help it be more effective. But building talks from scratch that was not. That wasn’t what I had set out to do. But what I realized was it was exactly what I needed, and exactly what those that I serve best needed to make the impact that they wanted to make in the world. And I think you’re one of those people, my friend, I think that you have a vision in your mind of the impact that you want to have. You have this vision around how what you know, and what you’ve done up until this point, you know, it’ll help more people. But where you’re potentially getting caught up is how do you do that at scale? How to get people to listen to you? How do you not sound like a rambling dummy?

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I mean, not you but this is something that I hear all the time. It’s that in between. And I hope that this show for you this episode and all of the episodes that I bring to you on how to hustle. I hope this is serving as a true masterclass for communication for how you think and how you show up more confidently and competently in this world. Because your expertise, it needs to be heard. And I am just so grateful for you giving me a little bit of a slice of helping you share it with with more people. So if this landed great for you today, and you know that there’ll be others who’d love it too. Please take a screenshot send it to a friend posted on your Instagram Stories, whatever your feeling is your fancy helped me get this message out because I think more of these people who have big messages like us they need help getting it out into the world. So if you know someone who would benefit from today, please please share. I’m wishing you all the luck this week navigating the end of summer or if you have kids back to school or if you whatever it is in your life or business right now I am cheering you on. My personal update is I started this episode talking about the circus that is my life. Funny enough. I actually booked tickets last night to the circus this weekend and I’m surprising my kids by taking them to a real life circus. So I’ll keep you posted on that next week. Alright friends talk to you soon