National Speakers Associati0n Northern California: Day of the Divas

Today was “The Day of the Divas” at the meeting of the Northern California National Speakers Association. Three high-energy women, with three different approaches to speaking, shared trade secrets with an appreciative audience.

Susan Keane Baker, CSP: Own the Topic, Own the Room – A Step-by- Step Guide to Developing Outstanding Content

Susan is a professional speaker with 20+ years experience in the healthcare field. She has developed a wide range of topics for her target market and mastered techniques to generate content to fill each speech. She speaks on:

Susan asked us — Are you content with your content? Do you want to make your keynote even fresher and more interesting? Or do you need to create a new talk for clients who want you back?

Her step-by-step guide to developing outstanding content was an awesome list of thirty (count ‘em) tips.

She started out by recommending two books:

How To Get Ideas by Jack Foster
Don’t Let The Funny Stuff Get Away, by Jeanne Robertson

She detailed a number of practical ways to use the internet to generate content including Google News Alerts, SpeakerNet News, Newslink.org, National Business Journals, and signing up for PR Leads. If you don’t yet know all of these techniques, check ‘em out.

Her creative ideas include asking visitors to your web site for suggestions; asking friends and relatives to clip and mail you articles; reading fiction (and if you want fiction related to your topic this can help); reading unrelated media; listening to NPR (better, IMHO, would be the BBC which archives a full week’s worth of programs); studying historical facts ,or, if you prefer historical fiction check out:

What Historical Novel Do I Read Next?, by Daniel Burt; attending other speakers’ presentations; checking out client web sites; keeping current with movies, TV and advertisements; reading professional and trade journals; enlisting professional librarians to do research for you and, finally, reading the Baldridge Awards for best practices.

She offered a well-thought out guide to creating a speech from scratch. (To which I’d add that the worksheet on p.85 of this book can bring your project to completion). Susan believes in self-assessment forms for program participants (which is useful as a fall-back if you need to expand your speech by a minute or an hour). She often sends a letter to attendees before she speaks to assess their needs, and, coincidentally, create anticipation for her program.

Her best suggestions were to use Marcia Yudkin’s Business Name and Tagline Generator to create a great title for your speech; to use metaphors to help the audience understand and remember your speech; to investigate the origin of idioms that you can use; to build up a library of case studies and, last but not least, tell meaningful stories.

About the only way I know of to gather content that Susan did not cover is to subscribe to blogs in your area of interest and use an RSS aggregator like Bloglines to build your own ‘morning newspaper’ from diverse sources, something for which I’ve just written a handy-dandy guide.

Nicole Schapiro: How to Use Your Personal Stories to Solve Your Clients’ Problems – and Grow Your Business!

Nicole took up where Susan left off – using stories to connect to your audience.

She showed us how to turn a personal story into a valuable business tool we can use in a keynote or training. How to prepare our stories to fit the climate, culture and mission of the audience without losing the spirit of our message.

Very few have personal stories to rival Nicole’s, whose life reads like the plot of a Jerzy Kosinski novel.

Hidden from the Nazi’s in a Convent for 9 years, found by her mother after the war when the crazed school-teacher no-one spoke to remembered the red-haired girl the nuns had sheltered. At age 15 she fled alone from Communist Hungary to the United States. Captured by the Russians she faked death in front of the firing squad – her first successful negotiation having been to persuade the youngest soldier to aim high. Speaking no English, she lived as a “homeless” person in New York City for one year. Through her persistent negotiating she received a scholarship to the University of Chicago, earning a BS in Psychology, and later a MA in Industrial Psychology from NYU. Before the age of 30 she became the first woman senior vice-president of Sales and Marketing at Citicorp in New York. (This a factual account of her life – not a fictional story!)

Her speech topics include:

Needless to say, part of her challenge was to convince the rest of us that we had stories anyone would find of interest.

Nicole suggested we list stories from different times in our life (school, college, graduation, marriage, travel), determine what messages are in each story and list the clients we have who might find that topic of interest. No matter how dry the audience, how straight-laced the professionals, a personal story will:

She suggests telling your story with authenticity and passion, then stay silent. Ask the audience how your story relates to challenges they face. Then bridge your story to their challenges. Use stories not just to entertain, but to make a difference in the lives of your audience.

Nicole made a difference today in the life of everyone in the room.

Mikki Williams, CSP: Speak Loudly and Carry a Big Schtick! ™

They kept Mikki until last. There was a reason. Mikki has so much energy…she makes coffee nervous.

She speaks as an inspirational humorist who shared tips on presenting and promotion and how to differentiate ourselves from the competition.

Her tagline:

“Be outrageous, it’s the only place that isn’t crowded!”

Mikki never uses PowerPoint – she is the visual aid. In her words:

I have big hair! That doesn’t make me a bad person or a poor choice to keynote a meeting. Although, I am amazed that meeting planners will judge credibility on this criteria. I wear bright colors, flamboyant clothes, big jewelry and I am a “recovering New Yorker”. My A-V requirements are minimal, I am my own visual, my “multi-media” presentation involves such high tech’ props as Play-doh, purple rubber bands and plastic hand clappers. My handouts are not four color, silk screened graphic designed masterpieces. I will however, do my pre-presentation preparation, mix and mingle with your attendees and deliver a message that will touch their hearts, enliven their senses and impact their personal and professional lives.

She shared four suggestions on developing a Shtick:

NOUN: Slang 1. A characteristic attribute, talent, or trait that is helpful in securing recognition or attention 2. An entertainment routine or gimmick. Yiddish shtik, piece, routine, (The American Heritage Dictionary)

[1] Be a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) – don’t pre-judge your audience and try and be something you are not. Be authentic, the same on the platform as you are off.

[2] Take risks

[3] Use an anchor – find a way to develop a repeatable signature. Make this something uniquely, identifiably your own.

Be comfortable. Be known for your eccentricity, be it accent, attitude or approach.

[4] Use all of the five senses in your presentation:

Sight – List the keywords in your speech and then tour the hardware store, toy store or candy store to bring items to the podium that reinforce your key points. If you say something “does not amount to a hill of beans”, produce a can of baked beans and slam them onto the lectern.

Taste - Distribute candy bars or other treats during the speech or as people leave.

Touch - Hand out a laminated wallet sized card with your key points for the audience to carry home with them. Or give away an elastic band and a marble to illustrate that when you are losing your marbles you need to stay flexible.

Sound – Use signature music for your intro or outro. Bells, whistles, horns and the clap of your hand can all produce sounds to supplement the sound of your own voice.

Smell – a tough one. But companies like this can spritz the audience with aromas to match the mood of your speech. Check with meeting planners first!

The Day of the Divas

The word Diva is Gujarati for Day. The Day of the Day. In Italian Diva means Goddess, from the Latin divus meaning divine one. Time Magazine once defined Diva as “a rampaging female ego redeemed only in part by a lovely voice.”

In order to qualify as a Diva there must be one, or both, of two dominant traits present: a broad and expansive voice and/or a thoroughly captivating and commanding stage presence.

By this measure Saturday was a Day of Days. A Diva Day. A Divine Day.