Speaking Your Brand: Public Speaking Tips and Strategies

What trends are on the horizon that you can capitalize on to get better speaking engagements and to get better results from them? How can you improve your presentations so the audience raves about you and you get invited to do more (including paid speaking)? How can you be memorable as a speaker? In this episode, you’ll learn 3 trends you can apply to your presentation content and delivery that ca...

Do you feel like you have too much content in your presentations? Too many good things you can share with your audiences and you’re not sure how to select what to include? Most of us feel this way - and it’s our job as speakers to identify the most essential elements and convey them in a way the audience can understand and apply. One way to do this is to thread a story throughout your talk, where...

This is a secret bonus episode - my podcast editor doesn’t know about it, neither does my assistant (shhh!). I had originally planned to do a “year in review” episode, but as early December became mid-December and the holidays were upon us, I got busy and decided to skip it. But, I’ve found myself enjoying listening to other podcasters talk about their year and what worked for them.  So, here’s my...

Remember the VH1 series from the late 1990s called “Where are they now?”  The show would look back at artists, bands, and actors (mostly from the 1980s) and see what happened to them. It was captivating television because we’re curious to see what happens to people, especially famous people, after they’ve had their big success. My guests today, Teresa McCloy and Anne Torrez, aren’t 80s pop stars a...

What stage do you dream to be standing on, looking out at the audience, sharing your message? What kind of speaker do you want to be? This month on the podcast, we’re talking about goals and planning, so I thought it would be fun to bring on some women entrepreneurs and have them share with us what their big speaking dreams are. Hopefully, they will inspire you as much as they’ve inspired me. Appe...

Do you have being a guest on podcasts as one of your goals for 2020? It’s a fantastic way to reach new audiences, build relationships with podcast hosts, and hone your message. But, there’s definitely a *right* way and a *wrong* way to pitch podcast hosts. As a podcaster, I get email pitches every day. And I delete 99% of them. The few I’ve kept have been from my guest on this episode, Angie Trueb...

Before you ask yourself *what* goals you want to achieve as a speaker, ask yourself *who* do you want to *be* as a speaker and then what do you need to do to become that? Taking on that identity is what will make the goals real to you. This has been so helpful to me because traditional goal setting has never worked that well. I’d make a goal, like guesting on 2 podcasts a month or doing 1 speaking...

Ideas that come from innovation and creativity seem like they come out of nowhere, a flash of inspiration that hits you all of a sudden. This can certainly happen, but in a business, innovation and creativity can - and should - be harnessed regularly to understand your customers, create new products, and find new market opportunities. My guest is Sura Al-Naimi, who is a former Disney Global Innova...

We’re continuing our series on Frameworks with a deep dive into how my guest and her business partner created their framework, from idea to testing with clients to writing a book. My guest is Danya Shea, who is the co-founder of FervorWorks, a think tank that helps companies achieve exponential growth and scalability. How do they help companies do this? With what they call Radical Customer Empathy...

In last week’s episode, you learned why having a framework in your business and for your presentations and workshops is incredibly powerful and the many ways you can use it.  In today’s episode, you’ll hear an on-air coaching call where I help my guest find her framework. My guest is Cha’Lea Stafford, who is the founder to a non-traditional leadership development firm that partners with purpose-dr...

When you hear “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” does a shape come to mind? How about “sales funnel?” These are both examples of frameworks. Having a framework is a tremendous asset for your business - you can use it for sales conversations, on your website and marketing materials, and of course for your presentations. Frameworks help us to organize information, visualize a process, and remember it. A...

We’re continuing our podcast series on Leadership: what does it mean to be a leader for your audience, your clients, your community, and yourself. In this episode, I share key lessons I’ve learned, including around a recent business decision. To me, being a leader means helping others navigate change, to move from initial resistance and discomfort to understanding, acceptance, and enthusiasm to ta...

We all have blindspots.  As leaders, entrepreneurs, and speakers, we should want to find out what they are and then work to minimize or improve in those areas. How do you know what your blindspots are?  My guest is Rhonda Peterson, who works with business owners and executive teams on leadership and delegation, to help them bridge the gap between the leader they currently are and the leader they w...

As we continue our series on Leadership, how can you position your brand, both as a speaker and as an entrepreneur, for growth? When you’re seen as a leader in your industry, you’re going to attract premium clients and speaking engagements. My guest is Lisa Princic, who was my first business coach in 2015 and who helps business owners develop their business models and value proposition. In this ep...

We’re kicking off a new podcast series on Leadership: what does it mean to be a leader for your audience, your clients, your community, and yourself. You’re going to love the stories and strategies that my guest, Nicole Tisdale, shares. Her story of literally running down a Congressman to ask him for a job is incredible - and shows the power of an “elevator pitch” (or, in this case, the Capitol Hi...

What can we learn from political speeches to apply to our own presentations? Quite a bit! For this episode, we watched speeches given by former First Lady Michelle Obama, Senator and Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (known as AOC). I’m joined by one of our speaking coaches Diane Diaz as we talk about the similarities and differences in their speec...

We're continuing our series on storytelling with this on-air coaching call episode about what stories you should select to include in your signature talk, whether it's a business presentation, a conference session, or, in this case, a keynote. My guest is Marie Fiebach, who is a speaker and a regular contributor on her local TV station. Marie is part of our Master Your Speaking online group coachi...

If you're sharing something personal in a presentation or a talk, you know that you should make it a story and include stories in your presentations in general. What about if you're presenting on topics that are more data-driven or research-based? You should definitely include stories as well. My guest in this episode is Karen Corbin, PhD, RD, who's a scientist herself and has a company with a gre...

We’ve all heard to use stories in our presentations. Stories make our content more interesting and memorable for the audience and can aid in learning. What I’ve seen is that we’re good at providing a *summary* of the story. But, what we’re not doing is *telling* a story. What’s the difference? 5 key ingredients that will spice up your stories. How do you go about telling a good story? Make it an I...

How can you increase leads and sales at your presentations? By asking for them! Having a feedback form that the audience fills out is one of the best ways to generate leads, especially if you don’t feel comfortable making a hard sales pitch in your presentation or if the place you’re speaking at forbids “selling from the stage.” Since I first started talking about the feedback form on this podcast...

For the past few episodes, we’ve talked about how you can monetize your speaking, whether it’s by getting paid a fee or generating leads and sales. Have you thought about putting on your own live, in-person event as another way to monetize your speaking and business? Notice that the title of this episode is “profits” (plural). That’s because, as you’ll hear, there are multiple benefits for you of...

How can you approach an uncomfortable or difficult topic with your audience, so that they open up and you can facilitate a productive conversation, learning, and action taking? For many companies, the gender pay gap is one of those issues that they want to be seen as making progress on, yet having real conversations around it, that lead to action, can be challenging. This is the situation that my...

When we’re doing unpaid speaking engagements, the expectation is that, because it’s free, we can use it for building brand awareness and for lead generation. However, many conferences and groups explicitly forbid “selling from the stage.” I’ve never liked that phrase because it conjures up images of a pitchman on stage hawking their wares like on an infomercial. It’s a turn off to the audience and...

As we gain more experience as speakers and build our platforms, many of us want to get paid to speak. But, we don't know where to start - or we're asking to be paid and hearing "it's not in our budget." In this episode, I’m joined by one of our speaking coaches Diane Diaz to talk about 7 reasons why you aren’t getting paid to speak - and what to do to change it. A few of the reasons may seem obvio...

Have you held back from pitching yourself for bigger speaking engagements? Or have you not raised your speaking fees even after you’ve been speaking for a while? Or have you not asked to be paid at all? Just like in our businesses, we need to develop confidence in the value, expertise, and experience we provide as speakers at an event. And sometimes having an outside perspective, like a coach, can...