As a business owner we are constantly presenting ourselves and for those of us who can take this a step further and become a speaker it can be game changing for your business.
After 10+ years of being a speaker and attending hundreds of events I know a thing or two about speaking.
Thats why in this episode of the Your Dream Business podcast, I dive into how speaking can help you stand out as an expert and grow your business.
I share the key do’s and don’ts I’ve learned along the way. We cover everything from understanding your audience and crafting attention-grabbing titles to using storytelling effectively and turning audience engagement into business opportunities. Whether you’re a seasoned speaker wanting to improve or just starting to explore public speaking for your business, this episode is packed with practical tips to help you succeed. I also highlight the power of authenticity and why less is often more when it comes to information overload.
I also share my massive bugbear when it comes to speaking – I hope you don’t do this one!
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Public Speaking Builds Authority – Speaking at events positions you as an expert in your field, helping you gain credibility and attract new business opportunities.
- Engagement Matters More Than Information Overload – It’s not about cramming in as much info as possible; it’s about connecting with your audience through storytelling and delivering value they can actually absorb.
- A Strong Talk Can Convert Into Business Growth – With the right strategy—like an enticing title, clear messaging, and an engaging delivery—you can turn audience interest into real business opportunities.
If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa’s email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
Transcript
THW – Ep 392_Final
Being a speaker isn’t just about standing on a stage, delivering a talk. It’s about positioning yourself as a go to expert and growing your business. It’s one of the most effective tools to make you stand out as the expert and to help you get in front of audiences and have audiences find you. And as a speaker for over 10 years, I know this to be true because this is a strategy I use in my business.
However, there are some major do’s and don’ts that can make or break your talk. From knowing your audience to crafting a title that actually gets people to show up, I am sharing everything I’ve learned from my very first speaking gigs where I would have my laptop and three people, through to speaking on ginormous stages.
So if you’ve ever wanted to use speaking to grow your business, then make sure you listen to this episode because I’m going to share with you all the things that you do not want to do and all the things that will help you deliver an excellent talk and [00:01:00] convert more people into your audience.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing today? Firstly, I want to thank you for taking the time to join me. I [00:02:00] know that your time is super, super valuable, and I really appreciate you taking the time to listen. And if you haven’t subscribed, because lots of people don’t subscribe, it’s a really interesting phenomenon if that’s That’s the right way to say it.
If you haven’t subscribed, please go ahead and hit subscribe. And if you’re feeling particularly generous, I would be so grateful to have you go and give me a lovely review on whatever platform you listen to. I have been getting so much good feedback from the episode I did with Julie Solomon a couple of weeks back.
So if you haven’t listened to that, then go back and listen. We’ll link to it in the show notes. But the reason I bring this up is because my aim is to make this podcast absolutely amazing for you. And my commitment is that I will bring on the best guests and I will have the best solo episodes with great content for you to take away to help you grow your online business.
And I really need your help to do that. I need you to share the podcast. I need you to [00:03:00] give me nice reviews of the podcast, and I need you to subscribe. So any of those things that you can do, honestly, I’m so, so very grateful. And then, like I said, my commitment to you is to bring you a, an amazing podcast that helps you grow your business.
Okay, on with today’s episode. Now, one of my aims this year is to get out to events. Now, you will know I’m a speaker and I speak at different events. However, I am trying to just go to events as well, which you won’t believe this is actually really out of my comfort zone. I love it when I’m a speaker at an event because I have a purpose.
I know what to do. I know what my reason for being there is. And when I’m not speaking, I actually get really I’m a bit of an introvert. I actually find it really difficult to go and connect with people and have conversations. So I tend to just kind of sit at the side of a room, keep my head down, keep myself in my own lane.
And I always worry that this makes me look rude and [00:04:00] I’m really trying not to be rude. That’s not my aim. My aim is, like I said, I’m just a bit of an introvert, which is so odd because I am so not an introvert at other points. Anyway. It’s my aim to get out to lots of events this year. And it occurred to me that one of the things that I talk about all the time is getting in front of other people’s audiences.
And one of the ways in which you can do this is speaking at events. And to give you a bit of a background, I started speaking at events. Really early on in my business and I started really small. There’s something in the UK called Biz Mums. I don’t know if it still exists, but it did when I started the business like 11 years ago.
And they used to, there were mums in business who would meet up in a child friendly. like Playbarn or Softplay. Personally, even as a parent, when my daughter was young enough to go to these, I hated them. I didn’t like to take her. So as a business owner, going to these places to go and do a talk seemed very wildly out [00:05:00] of what I would want to do.
But I knew that getting in front of people, them getting to see who I was and getting to decide whether they liked me and my content was a really good way of growing my business. And what I thought I would do today is talk you through. Some of the do’s and don’ts of speaking because unless you have been trained to speak years and years and years ago, when I was employed, like, literally, gosh, I don’t even want to think how long ago now, I did do a presentation exercise course, but it was literally like a one day thing and it was for corporate.
And I’ve not really had much official training since then, but I guess the more you do, the more you know and the more comfortable you get. And I thought it’d be useful to go through some of the do’s and don’ts of speaking. So if you are thinking about going out there speaking as a method to grow you, your audience, your business, then this is definitely going to be an episode to listen to.
But also, even if you’re not thinking of speaking, but [00:06:00] you’re thinking of going on podcasts, you present for a living, there is definitely going to be some things that you can take from this episode. So if you’re thinking, I don’t want to stand on a stage, Teresa, that is fine. I still think there’s going to be loads of good stuff for you to take from this.
So like I said, I started speaking really early on in the business, and this is one of the things I’d recommend before I get into the do’s and don’ts. I would recommend personally, starting small and growing because in the early days it’s about honing your craft. It’s about finding how you best work and as we go through some of the do’s and don’ts, you’ll see that it’s not really based on necessarily how I like to present.
Hopefully they’re generic things but for instance, I don’t do verbatim what I’m going to say. I know someone who is a very good speaker who literally writes a script, records themselves. doing the script and then listens to the script and tries to do it verbatim on stage. If I tried that, [00:07:00] it would be an absolute disaster.
Like it honestly, that would be the furthest from my comfort zone ever. So I tend to go on stage and I joke that I wing it. I don’t really wing it, but I just have prompts and I talk around the prompts. So. In the early days, when you’re doing speaking in smaller places, smaller groups, and you’re having the ability to go, Oh, okay, I did that.
And that didn’t work. So I won’t do that again. The last thing you want to do is be given a big opportunity, get on that stage and you not be super confident. And the only way you’re going to get super confident is by practicing and doing it in real life. Also, the other thing I want to say is it’s not just about the big stages.
Now I have got, it’s not about speaking, but I’ve got a great example of this and a story to tell you where I reached out to, I was doing some outreach for podcasts for me to be a guest and I found this podcast and it was pretty new. It didn’t look like it was particularly massive. I had never heard [00:08:00] of it.
They didn’t have tons of followers. And I reached out to her and I said, are you looking for guests? Would you like me to be a guest? And she so very kindly came back and said, I would love you to be a guest. That would be amazing. And I went on her podcast and her downloads are low. Like she doesn’t have many or didn’t at the time have many downloads.
However, One thing I want to say is from that one podcast episode, I ended up bringing in just short of about twenty odd thousand pounds. Now, the way in which I did that wasn’t by selling something on the podcast. It was about someone, so actually the hosts themselves decided to work with me. And then they recommended me to someone else and they recommended me to someone else.
So I ended up getting three clients from one podcast. And if I had been that type of person, which I am totally not, when I’d gone, well, there’s not many downloads, or this isn’t a [00:09:00] very big audience, or I haven’t really got time for something so small. I didn’t, I reached out to her, you know, I was asking her if I could go on a podcast.
If I had never done that, I would never have a built the amazing relationship I’ve got with the host now who I adore to bits, but I wouldn’t have got that business and they wouldn’t have referred me to another client who then worked with me, who then referred me to another client. So I just want to make that really clear of like, I know the big stages are so, so attractive and don’t get me wrong.
I like speaking on the big stages, but it’s not always about that. And especially if you haven’t spoke already, or if you’re not proficient at it, then starting small is not a bad thing. Okay. Let’s jump in to the do’s and don’ts. I’m going to start off all positive with the do’s, although it’s not all negative with the don’ts.
So do know who you’re talking to. One of the things I teach in my visibility stuff within my course, Grow, Launch, Sell, is how to come up with three possible talk [00:10:00] titles. And within those three talk titles, you come up with the descriptions and the outcomes, all that various stuff. I give them a framework.
But basically, what three areas could you talk about with absolute ease? The idea of getting them to do that is so when they pitch, they have something they can talk about. However, Sometimes you still need to tweak it based on the audience you’re talking to. I was. pitch to go out to Greece to go and do some training.
I’d already spoken for this company and they said to me, we want you to do a whole day of training on content. I had already got some, a presentation put together and I was like, yeah, absolutely fine. This is what I’m going to talk about. This is what I’ll cover. And it was about, I don’t know, a few weeks before the event.
And I was feeling very happy and very confident because I’d done this stuff before. And. I contacted them or they contacted me and somehow it kind of come out of like, do you want a list of who’s in the room? And I was like, oh yeah, that would be really helpful. See, I think they [00:11:00] asked me. I don’t even think I asked them.
So I’m literally giving you all my mistakes so you don’t have to make them. So they came to me and said, would you like a list? And I said, yes, please. Thank God I said yes, please. Because the content in my presentation, because mostly who I speak to are small businesses. And the content in my presentation was aimed at small businesses.
So my examples were small businesses. One of the examples was me as a small business. Anyway, they sent me a list of who was in the room and it was Greece’s number one telecom company, FedEx, and like, basically massive businesses. And the minute I saw that, I thought, Oh no, this is not right. This presentation is going to fall completely flat.
It wasn’t the concept or the strategies. It was my examples. My examples weren’t going to hit. And therefore the examples weren’t going to confirm the strategy that I was telling them to use. So I ended up having to go and get Big examples. So like I chose Dove as a company and a couple of other tech firms because I knew [00:12:00] we’d got some tech people in there.
And I created the same presentation, but I tweaked it for that audience. So do know the audience and if possible, and if you need to then tweak your presentation to match. And sometimes that tweak literally looks like some of the words I say on stage. It’s not even necessarily a full presentation review.
It’s just, okay, I’m talking to these types of people. I’ll slightly change that how I’m speaking. Do number two, have a sexy title. Okay. I know this sounds weird. Your title is first of all, it’s got to work really hard. The first thing it’s got to do is attract. the event organizers to want you to speak in the first place.
And then it’s got to attract the audience to want to listen to what you’ve got to say. So when I say sexy title, what do I mean? I mean, it’s something that is either super intriguing. Maybe slightly controversial, although, you know, I’m not that controversial. So I would err on the side of [00:13:00] caution from that or something that like bucks the trend or something that addresses a problem directly.
So for instance, one of mine is the importance of visibility for business growth, becoming the go to expert in your industry. Now, knowing the people that I. to give that presentation to that would make them go. Yes. I want to be the go to expert. Another one is unlocking business potential. How Chris Hemsworth can help you master your mindset.
Again, intriguing. What like, what is she talking about? So make sure that you have a sexy. I mean, I say that laughingly title, but a title that is going to attract your audience and attract the, when you’re pitching the actual event organizers to go, this sounds really good. Another do is tell stories where possible.
Now, as I’ve gone through this episode, a little bit on purpose, but generally because I like to storytell, I love a story. I’ve already told you a few stories about, you know, where [00:14:00] I first started off, about how I best started. speak about someone that does it verbatim, and those will be the things that you remember.
People remember stories, and it helps to really solidify a concept or a strategy or an idea. So where possible, I want you to include stories into your speaking, and If you have a theme or a story that runs through the entire talk, awesome. Let’s not get too hung up with that, but I’m just, you know, just be aware that telling stories is a really nice, useful way in order to get people’s attention and it will keep and hold their attention better.
So where possible, add in stories. Another do, have a lead magnet. The whole idea of you getting in front of someone else’s audience is for them to become your audience. And one of the ways in which you’re going to do that is get them on your email list. Therefore, offering them a lead magnet is really, really good way to do this.
The other thing in my experience is that people don’t [00:15:00] like you to sell from stage. Personally, I absolutely do not like selling from stage. And therefore the only real conversion you’re going to be able to get is to encourage them to download a lead magnet. I have done lots of different lead magnets.
I’ve done workbooks for the presentation I’m giving for them to do at home. I’ve done my slides that they get, although when I get to some of the don’ts, you’ll see why maybe that isn’t as useful. I’ve done just a lead magnet that goes along with it. I’ve done lots of different things. But definitely have something that encourages them to get on your email list.
And then my final do before we move on to the don’ts is be authentic to you. Now, I have seen this where people have got on stage and they’re trying to put on a persona and I, I get it. I really do like, you know, it is a performance. However, you need it to be. You performing as you, not you trying to perform as someone else.
And what happens is when someone gets on stage and tries to be someone else, [00:16:00] it’s not authentic. And being authentic is one of the best things that someone can do when they’re speaking on stage. Not everyone will like you, and that is fine, we need to be okay with that. In my time I’ve done lots of different events, and some people get on stage, and some people do not like their vibe, how they speak, what they do, and some people get on stage and they love them, and you don’t know whether you’ll be on the loved or the not loved.
But at the end of the day, you need to be as authentic as possible to you so that they can make a decision. If you are not for them, then that’s fine. But if you get on stage trying to be someone else and they think, Oh, actually they might be for me. And then you can’t keep that up forever. it’s not going to work.
The other thing I want you to think about with being authentically you is use it as your superpower. Now I did a speaking gig years ago before lockdown and it was [00:17:00] for a marketing, he’s called like the godfather of marketing, his name’s Philip Kotler. I’ve spoke about him before but basically he wrote the book on marketing when I did my degree and I got invited, I’m laughing because This is a funny story, but I got invited to speak at his event and genuinely, a little bit rudely, I thought he had died because like he was old when I did my degree and that now it was over 20 years ago.
So I thought, Oh my God, there’s this guy still alive. Anyway, he was still alive. Good to hear because he was doing an event and I got invited to go and speak, which obviously for me was a massive honor because it’s like, first off, like I’m being invited to speak at an event, which I’m always very honored about.
But second off, this is the guy I learned marketing from in university. And now I’m speaking on his stage. I get there. Everyone was an academic. Everyone was professor so and so. And I was the only one who wasn’t an academic. Not only was I not an academic, but I was [00:18:00] such a different speaker to all of the others.
And, well, it was just completely different. Imagine a load of academics speaking and then imagine me. And it was, I was wildly different and I got there and I was thinking, God, this is awful. I am going to stand out like a sore thumb. I am going to, like, what are they going to think? What’s everyone going to think about, you know, I’m not a professor.
I don’t have their education. And then I realized that actually. Me being different was my superpower. I could give real experience of real business, running my own business, and I had my own take to give while I was on that stage. So, I fully embraced me, I fully embraced how I show up. I was exactly how I am normally.
And hopefully, I think it went down okay, but If some people didn’t like it, then that’s fine. I wasn’t for them. So, be your authentic self, don’t try and be someone else, and don’t try and [00:19:00] be like, oh, I’m the most professional, the most, don’t, like, some people look at people like Gary Vee or Mel Robbins and think I’ve got to be them, and it’s like, no, you can’t.
They’re them, we’re not them. You’re you. Okay. Let’s do the don’ts. Don’t have too many words on a slide. This is a big one for me, because when this, this hails back to the academic stuff, when you are speaking on a stage, the idea is you are speaking and You will use slides either for visual reference for you or the audience or to help demonstrate something or explain something.
Personally, when I use slides, I use them to prompt me. So often, and you will see this in webinars that I do in masterclass, I do cause I’m the same. In every presenting thing that I do, my slides tend to be a number of words, like literally a sentence, maybe a paragraph. And the idea is that they prompt me to what I’m [00:20:00] going to talk about next.
What I don’t do, and what I highly recommend you don’t do, is have your content, all your content on the slide. Sometimes if I’ve got points that I want to hit, as in, let’s say I was giving three things that help you grow your email list faster, then I would, instead of having those three things on one slide, I might have one on each slide.
So sometimes I have like a hundred slides for a presentation and people get a bit scared because they’re like, you do know you’re only talking for X amount of time, but. I don’t necessarily have like all the bullet puts on one, on one slide. I have them on multiple ones. The reasons I want you to keep your content on your slides to a minimum is one, the audience will sit and read them if you’re, if you’ve written a load of stuff, which means they’re not paying attention to you.
And two, Sometimes they can’t read them and that is so frustrating. So when you’re watching someone and they’ve got lots of content on their slides, and you’re trying to read and you’re like, I don’t know what that [00:21:00] says because, and again, you never quite know this when you’re speaking and especially if, well, in the early days you don’t know where you’re going to be speaking or whether it’s going to be like a big stage or not.
But you don’t know what the room’s like. Sometimes the lighting means that you can’t read the text properly. There are all these little nuances which are frustrating. But. It will be helped by having just a few words on a slide and having those words quite big and use them as your prompts, not as you reading it.
Okay. Don’t worry about saying, or in my case, so I often start a sentence. So sometimes in the podcast, I either edit it as I’m going, or I’m working very hard. Like I am right now, not to say it, or I just let it ride. That is just one of those things you do and if you are on stage worrying about how many times you might be saying or so, you’re not focusing, and I’m just using them as two examples, whatever your thing is, you’re not necessarily focusing on how you’re [00:22:00] delivering or the content you’re delivering because your brain is so fixed on don’t say that word, don’t say that word, and you’re not going to show up properly.
In the early days, don’t worry about it. Yes, you want to get to a point where you’re not saying every other word. I definitely know there are some people that I’ve seen speak or go live, and they literally use it as every other word. And I know this is awful, but that’s the only thing you can hone in on.
On the whole, though, as a speaker, once you get into your flow, you’ll realise you drop those words, because they’re filler words where we’re panicking of like, we’re not even necessarily panicking, we’re just, I use it as a way into a new sentence, and when I write, I write the word so as well, and then I go back and delete the word so.
I was about to say it again, see? But it tends to be for me, as like I said, a bit of a pause and a move into the next thing. I don’t beat myself up about it and I don’t want you to either. Yes, you want to improve and you definitely don’t want to be saying it over and over and over, but the more [00:23:00] you know that whole saying of where your attention, you know, where your focus goes, energy flows or something.
So the more you’re noticing it, probably the more you’re doing it. Whereas if you just let it go, then hopefully you won’t be bothered. So don’t, so see, said it again. And now you’re going to I’m going to have to be really careful. Don’t. worry about saying the filler words, the, uh, the ums, the sos, or whatever it might be, because it will paralyze you.
Next, don’t, don’t give them too many ideas. Now we’re going to get on to timings of how long your talk might be and, and a couple of points I’ve got on that. However, One thing that people often do, which they do in lots of different ways because we are nice people and we want to give really good value is we end up putting so much content.
I can get away with that. So it was meant to put in so much content in their presentation that it’s like a educational whiplash. It’s [00:24:00] like having a fire hose in your face. It’s not about how much. you’re giving them. For me, a talk, and actually, this is something I look out for in my podcast, people who I interview.
It’s about the quality of what you’re giving me and the actionableness or the strategy. Now, also, I know lots of people want to be. the Mel Robbins of this world, the inspirational talks, the, the kind of, you know, stand on stage and have everyone go, Oh my God, that was such an inspiration. And so do I, I’m not even going to pretend otherwise.
However, that is actually really hard to do. And to try and start building a speaking career just on that could be really tough. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m just saying. It could be hard to do. That’s why, actually for me, most of my talks are strategic. Most of my talks are, you have this problem, try this thing, this thing, this thing.
The example I’ve written down for me [00:25:00] talking to you is, I try and stick with one main problem, and then I try and give them three ways in which they can solve it, or three angles. It just helps me split it up. Again, if I’m doing a webinar, I do the same thing. I’m doing a webinar in a few weeks time, which I think this episode would have already gone.
Sorry, this episode won’t be out. So the masterclass would have already happened. But the art, the thing is three things. Like, I have three main points that I’m going to hit. Off the back of this one, I’ve got a little bonus don’t. When you’re doing examples of maybe someone who’s done something well, or when it’s not gone so well, I only ever use me as the don’t do it this way.
I have heard way too many horror stories and I’ve actually been witness to a couple of them where someone on stage has basically gone here is a company that’s doing it terribly and it is blown up in their face, even when you pick a massive [00:26:00] company, I actually know of an event where a woman was on stage and she took an example from a horror story.
Thank you. international huge brand that most people know basically said what they were doing wrong. And there just happened to be someone from that company in the audience and they were livid to say the least. And they nearly like, try to sue her. So just avoid, like, use great examples where people have done it right and show off about other people and be like, this company’s great, this person’s brilliant.
When it comes to don’t do these things or these are bad examples, I tend to only use myself. I find a time when I did that and go, don’t do that. I did it at this point. Don’t do that. Okay, where are we up to another thing on the content, another don’t, and it kind of goes into hand in hand with like being authentic or whatever, but don’t read from a script again.
I’ve been at a couple of talks where they [00:27:00] literally held a piece of paper and read from it, and that just does not make a very engaging talk. The other thing it does, which is not necessarily true, is it makes you think they don’t know what they’re talking about. And And they’re not very confident. And neither of those things could be true.
Maybe, you know, it might be that they are confident, and they very much know what they’re talking about. But in an ideal world, don’t have a script that you read from. Don’t have a piece of paper where it’s written. And that’s why I don’t have lots of things on slides, because if I have lots of things on slides, I’ll want to try and read it, and then that’s not very engaging, because someone can read that for themselves.
So where possible, don’t have a script and don’t read from it. The next don’t, which is kind of a, yeah, I would say it’s a don’t, but this is more of a personal for me. Don’t sell from stage. Again, in my experience, as I’ve already said, when I talked about lead magnets, lots of events will not allow you to do this.
And Again, [00:28:00] because I have been to many, many, many events in my many years, some people just straight up ignore it, which is a bit rude, but it doesn’t feel nice. And especially if the event is saying it’s a no pitch event and with no pitch events, they will normally allow you to do a lead magnet, which is awesome.
But if it says no pitch, don’t pitch, that is a surefire way of you never coming back again. And you don’t want to have a reputation for not doing as you’re told when someone is invited you to speak at their event. Also, unless you’re a really good salesperson from stage, again, I would just be dreadful and it would be horrible and would make me feel very icky.
So I just wouldn’t do it. And in most cases, they won’t allow it. Okay. Where am I up to? Okay. I think I’ve got my last one, which is my personal bugbear. Okay. I’m going to try really hard not to get on my soapbox about this. The last don’t is don’t run over. I’m going to caveat this. [00:29:00] Don’t run over your time slot knowingly.
There is a big difference between accidentally running over by a few minutes and knowing you are running over and carrying on regardless. My job as a speaker is to know, is to show up to give them a great talk, but to know when you want me on stage and when you want me off stage and to be able to manipulate my talk regardless.
I know. that when I’m speaking, I can either speed it up or slow it down. I can either fill or I can either remove bits and I can do that. fairly proficiently from stage without having to give it too much thought. And again, I would put that a lot down to my experience and how much speaking I’ve done. But I have been at more events than I care to tell you where someone has knowingly gone over.
In fact, I was at an event when I was on after someone. And [00:30:00] again, I’ve got numerous examples of this, which is why it drives me crazy where this person actually said, I know I’m going over, but I don’t care. So rude, so, so rude, not just rude for the person who’s coming on after you, but rude for the audience, rude for the organisers, do you know, there you go, I’m getting on my soapbox now, like how much work goes into running an event with speakers, so much work, the timings, the schedule, and when someone blatantly ignores a timing, it messes everything up for that, or for the organizer.
And it’s just not on. One thing I will say is, like I said, I’m talking about knowingly running over. So there’s a couple of things I want to mention here. First off, you might not be given a timer. I, again, the huge places and teeny tiny places will vary wildly depending on what they [00:31:00] give you. Sometimes in my best possible experience and hopefully in all the speaking I do, what I really love from stage is down on the floor in front of me, I like a timer that tells me how much time I’ve got left.
So it counts down from my 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever it is. So that’s the one thing I like. And I like a comfort monitor and what a comfort monitor tends to be is a monitor. And again, in best case scenario, it’s the slide you’re on and the next slide so that I know what’s coming up next.
And that is like the ideal perfect scenario as a speaker for me, anyway. Timer that counts down and a comfort monitor that shows me the slide I’m on and the slide I’ve got next. So I don’t have to turn and look behind me and I can keep looking forward other than glancing down just to see. What’s happening.
You won’t always have a timer. I only that only tends to happen at the bigger places, but there are absolute options that you can do. [00:32:00] Again, I have been at events where they’ve done this and people have blatantly ignored it. They can hold up like a five minute to go thing. a time’s up thing. Or you could say to them, if they haven’t got that, could you just like wave at me when I’ve got like 10 minutes to go or when I’m halfway through or something that indicates the timing.
The last thing you could do, which I don’t love because I would really struggle with, but that doesn’t mean that you. We’ll struggle with is have a timer yourself. So when you get on stage, take your phone. And again, if it’s not a massive event, then by all means do this. And I’d even go, do you know what?
Just to make sure I don’t run over, I’m going to set a timer. I’d be really honest about it. I like have a timer on your phone and have that there so that you can keep an eye on the time. I, as I’ve already said, I don’t do the whole thing verbatim. So from a timing point of view, I am actually weirdly not that good at putting together a presentation that I know exactly hits the time because [00:33:00] I know I can pull it in and extend it as needed.
If you are not sure, then do that. Create a presentation where you know you’ve practiced it a few times and the timings are right. And there is a wildly massive difference from a 20 minute presentation to 40 minutes. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but there is. And like I said, I can extend as needed and I can pull in as needed.
But if you don’t think you can do that, then. I want you to then go, okay, I’m going to rehearse this and I’m going to practice this. But the key thing is if you know you’re running over, then you need to speed up, or you need to wrap it up, or you need to go, and how to do this professionally is a really tricky one because ideally you don’t want to look like you know you’re running over.
And again, that’s where I would perhaps rather than, you know, the slide might prompt me and I know I’m going to say three things on that prompt, I would only say one and move on, because they have no idea what I’m saying or what I’m going to say. Okay. I really hope all that helps. Like I said, I’m sorry for getting on my high horse about the [00:34:00] last one, but it really upsets me when I hear someone going, I know I’m running over and I don’t care.
And like I said, it’s happened way more than I can tell you. And to some really good speakers or people who are, should know better. It’s just rude. It’s so rude for everyone. Anyway, I’m going to get down from my high horse. I’m going to encourage you to consider speaking, even if you’re not. in, like, desperation to get on big stages and want to do those big things.
Presenting and showing yourself is really, really good. And if you’re looking at stages and thinking, there is not a version of me on that stage, i. e. you, not me, then maybe you need to be that person. Maybe you need to be the person to show other people like you that it’s okay. I’m gonna finish on one story that I’ve told before, but I think it’s so important.
One of the, it wasn’t the first time I’d met Amy Porterfield. It was, I’d met her a few times, but it was the first time I’d gone out for a coffee with her. And Amy used to live in a [00:35:00] larger body, and Amy and I were talking, and she was telling me about speaking, and that someone had said to her, someone needs to see someone like you.
speak on a stage so they have permission to do it themselves. And she said these words, and I got goosebumps. And I said to her, that was me. I needed to see you, Amy, living in a larger body, on stage, to know that it was okay for women who live in a larger body to be on stage. Because up until that point, most of the women I’d seen on stage were really slim and really stunning, and didn’t look like me.
And I needed someone to show me that that was okay, and Amy was that person for me. And the fact that she told the story, and I was able to go, I was that person who needed to see it, and now I’m speaking on stages, was just, like I said, a real kind of goosebump moment for us. If you are looking, thinking there’s no [00:36:00] one as old as me, as young as me, as big as me, as small as me, as grey haired as me, as whatever it might be, with a voice like mine, whatever it might be, if you’re looking and thinking there’s no one like that, maybe it needs to be you.
Okay, I’m going to leave that with you. I’ll be back next week with an interview. Have the most amazing week. Go out there and apply for that thing. Get on that stage, be amazing. And I will see you then.
