There’s a secret to the speaking business. It’s not just speaking fees that count. It’s how you create multiple streams of income that allow you to earn while you’re “off the airplane�?. These nice little earners come from selling product from the back of the room after your speech or, better yet, from your website which will top up your bank account 7×24 – making money while you sleep! Guess what? You’ll also inoculate your business against the coming Avian Flu pandemic.

Pro-Track members heard from two very successful speakers who have supplemented their speaking fees with substantial earnings from product sales over the years.

Rebecca Morgan: Product Development for Speakers Part I

Rebecca, a member of the NSA National Board of Directors, took the whole morning to cover all the aspects of developing products. We’re all information peddlers. The same information that is spoken into the podium microphone can be repackaged into audio and printed product.

What products, and how to develop them, you ask?

First consider:

Next consider which of these vast array of product types works for your market:

A great example is classic Eight Ball Larry Winget who sells everything from books to bobble head dolls.

Another is Dr. Tony Allessandra who lists books, audio downloads and more. Check out the 4-page Platinum Self-Assessment product he sells for $8. This will give you a flavor of the type of product beginning speakers can easily create and charge for.

But wait, there’s more. Say you don’t have content of your own yet. What to do? Consider:

Some other tricks of the trade:

Consider that most people at your event have a $20 bill or three in their back pocket. Bundle 3 reports or whatever and sell them in $20 increments.

Take payments from customers using Paypal Mobile.

Bundle air with your products: Shrink wrap tapes and books at Kinko’s and include a certificate in the Cadillac version of your products. This is good for an hour of your consulting time (Value $200?) if people call before the expiry date. Experienced speakers know less than 5% will call, yet people flock to the deal.

Consider for each product you sell, what is the next product your customer will be led to when they purchase this one? Always include product lists at the back of each document.

Look for continuity programs. How can you get clients to subscribe to a series on a monthly basis?

When quoting a speech fee include 100 books in your price and offer the conference organizer a discount on buying enough for the rest of the audience. Often this will generate sales of hundreds before you even arrive at the event

Great example of best practices:

Check out the offerings of top speaker Robert Middleton. His Action Plan Marketing website has a teleclass, partner product sales, audio CDs with transcripts, books and manuals and more. It’s great stuff that’s designed to help the self-employed and independent owners small firms become better at marketing their services – something we all need!

Enough theory! How to put this into practice?

Rebecca had us start with a list of three things we know in our subject area that people would pay good money to learn. We later expanded this to a list of 10. Since blogging is an area that I’m investing an increasing amount of time into I thought the following list might form the basis of a laminate quick-start guide. What do you think? Would you pay $5.95 for a copy of this to have at hand by your computer? Let me know in the Comments section below.

Ian’s Handy-Dandy Ten Rules for Successful Blogging:

1. Write your blog regularly – at least once a week.
2. Find a sincere voice to write in.
3. Exercise your grammar and diction and spell check and proofread before publishing each post.
4. Welcome comments in your blog – open the conversation.
5. Be sure to include a photograph and your name in the blog – people like to know who is talking to them.
6. Include an ‘About Me’ link.
7. Use Google News ‘bots’ to capture topic ideas.
8. Link often to other blogs, websites and trackbacks to boost your “Google Juice�?
9. Use iStockphoto for beautiful graphic images.
10. Remember to get a life and unhook yourself from the keyboard to experience life!
11. Bonus: Get started!

If you need more help

Consider working with one of the experts in the field. Paulette Ensign is The Booklet Queen and her services range from consulting to help you create a Tips Booklet to promoting your finished product on her popular web site. She’s written booklets that have sold over a million copies.

Michael Lee: Product Development for Speakers Part II

If you thought my “top 10�? list above is too trivial, consider. Michael is one of the few professional speakers in the nation who makes more than $100,000 a year from product sales. And he started with a top 10 list for Realtors detailing ways they can justify their commission.

He’s expanded this list over the years to 122 tips that took him six months to collate, with variations for justifying commission to home sellers, home buyers, FISBOs and others. These sold for $9.95 each. He added real estate forms and upped the price to $19.95. A bundle of four sold at a discount $70. When he added a CD and workbook he had a manual for $99.95.

I won’t cover the details he shared on his costs to produce this material, but it’s pennies on the dollar.

It all started with a simple list.

And of course, clients are not gladly shelling out their money for the paper, but the countless hours of expertise Michael has invested to produce the material. Indeed, he offers an unconditional guarantee with all products and rarely has to offer a refund.

Michael delivered an expanded version of the NSA/NC presentation I attended back in May at his Danville home.

He stressed the need to raise the perceived value of the products you sell.

Some tips:

In conclusion: Don’ think of all the reasons you CAN NOT create products you can sell, think of all the reasons you CAN and JUST DO IT!

Resources:

General Session

Lola Gillebaard

Proving that there’s no upper age limit to a successful career in professional speaking, Lola spoke on Surviving the Coming of Age: Discovering the Magic and Fun of Growing Older. This 76-year-old beauty skated close to the edge of good taste in the ways that only Americans with Southern accents (and us Brits) can get away with. Her jokes contained innuendoes about teenage masturbation, incest (sleeping with relatives) and more. We loved both her spunk and her style.

She’s the sage of age. Spicy feisty Lola accentuates bold over old. She explodes the fun of activist aging.

Phillip Van Hooser

The author of the must-read You’re Joe’s Boy, Ain’t Ya? and Willie’s Way spoke on ABRACADABRA or SYLACAUGA: Magnifying the Magic of Our Mission.

He commented on the spooky fact about the conference that had struck me – the audiences watches people doing what we do. And they try and become better at what they do as a result.

He discussed his own early love of public speaking, instilled in him by his snuff-totin’ Grandmother in them there Kentucky Hills.

He observed that the almost instantaneous standing ovations each speaker was gifted is not reality. Most audiences sit on their butts and applaud. However, he strove to become so good that even staid business audiences would give him a standing ovation. In fact, he got to the point as a presenter that they would often come to the front of the room after the meeting and hug him. Men and women. This meant his wife came to accept that when Phil returned from business trips he’d often have mascara on his suit lapels. As Dale Irvin later commented, not many men are smooth enough to establish that level of trust with their spouse!

Phil showed us that real magic in the speaking profession often occurs in those unplanned, unscripted moments that offer the speaker and the audience member an opportunity to pause and connect.

Doug Stevenson

This accomplished actor spoke on Defining and Developing Your Signature Story. Doug is the creator of the Story Theater Method and author of Never Be Boring Again – Make Your Business Presentations Capture Attention, Inspire Action and Produce Results, the how-to book that teaches the Story Theater Method for strategic storytelling in business.

A signature story is a highly developed, brilliantly performed story that brands you. It contains emotional triggers of comedy and/or drama, as well as a solid point. Doug explained in compelling detail how to tell stories in present-time. He explained how a story is the emotional fast lane to the brain allowing the audience to feel genuine emotion. Deep learning takes place when the audience experiences the lesson and stories create emotional triggers so the listener feels emotion.

Doug’s nine steps to create a story structure are:

1. Set the scene
2. Introduce the characters
3. Begin the journey (from the known to the unknown)
4. Encounter the obstacle (the block that creates dramatic tension)
5. Overcome the obstacle (this is the “How To” part of the story
6. Resolve the story (Tie up loose ends)
7. Main the point (One story, one clear and simple point)
8. Ask the question (“So, how about you? Anything like this ever happen in your world?”)
9. Repeat the point

He covered the technique of stepping IN and OUT of your persona when on stage telling a story where actions, reactions and interactions convey emotion.

This was, without doubt, the single most valuable hour I spent in Orlando. Thank you Doug.

Kim Snider

This accomplished businesswoman wakes up each weekday and walks her dog to keep herself gorgeous and slender. Her next task is to sit at the computer for an hour-and-a-half and walk her fingers on the keyboard to keep her three blogs in shape. She does this each and every morning. The written results are equally appealing.

Her presentation to an audience of around 100 people was titled Blogging for Speakers: What, Why, When, Where, How?.

She covered both the nuts and bolts of setting up a blog (she uses Typepad) as well as making a clear case for the importance of most speakers taking the time and effort to blog.

The audience was covered the spectrum. Some had never read a blog, ever. Others like Bert Decker introduced themselves as active bloggers. Still others wondered if this was a fad like CB Radio in the 1970’s and would blogs last? I was frankly amazed at this lack of awareness. Perhaps it was a self-selecting factor where Convention attendees who knew nothing whatsoever about a topic decided to attend (gosh, perhaps there are 1,685 who really are prepared for a flu pandemic!). But I doubt it. I think this crowd was the best the NSA currently has to offer.

Kim dealt with the Luddites and Neanderthals with kindness and understanding. She pointed out that CEO’s blog. That her blog is read is read by Nobel Prize winners in Economics and so, no, Virginia, blogs were probably not a flash in the pan. It reminded me of a 3rd Grade teacher patiently explaining gravity or magnetism to her class.

Her compelling vision is of a critical mass of NSA members posting regular blogs.

This is a brilliant idea.

It would take the energy of Orlando and transform it into a vast network of links creating real Magic among the Community of Speakers, year-round. These interlinked blogs would open a window that allowed light to shine on the currently isolate and separate worlds of those on the pro-speaker circuit. Allowing us to post insights and share thoughts from the airline clubs and hotel rooms where many idle hours are spent. Topics that would make compelling reading include anything that other speakers, and the audience, would like to hear. Such as:

These blogs could capture the real spirit of life on the road. Of the joys and sorrows of the speakers world. NSA members who wrote and tracked-back to other blogs would offer a real sense of year-round dialog. Heck, all that would be missing would be a new Blogging Professional Expert Group (PEG) to support people getting into the program and share best practices as we grow together. And how difficult would it be to start that?

If you are an NSA Member and would like to support the formation of a Blogging PEG either send me an email or, better, leave a comment below.

In Conclusion

It’s taken me a whole day to write up what happened on Day 3 and Day 4 in Orlando. I did not cover everything. There was a black tie dinner on the last evening and a whole bunch of people were recognized for their contribution to NSA and the profession. Then the people drifted off to the bar or to dance. Then the hotel staff and the roadies came and started stacking the tables and chairs.

Now the seats are all empty
Let the roadies take the stage
Pack it up and tear it down
They’re the first to come and last to leave
Working for that minimum wage
.
.
But the bands on the bus
And they’re waiting to go
We’ve got to drive all night and do a show in Chicago
Or Detroit, I don’t know
We do so many shows in a row
And these towns all look the same
We just pass the time in our hotel rooms
And wander round backstage
Till those lights come up and we hear that crowd
And we remember why we came
.
.
People stay just a little bit longer
We want to play — just a little bit longer

Jackson Browne

Next year the NSA Convention is in San Diego. The Cigar PEG folks are already scouting down by the docks where the sailors all come in for the right kind of raunchy dive. More respectable members are planning the Agenda and other good stuff.

Thanks to everyone who put on this years conference and made it one of the most rewarding five days of the year for me.

I deeply appreciate it.

This is the third in a series of chronological reports on the NSA 2006 Conference in Orlando, Florida, July 22-25. Previous chronological posts are here and here.

I intend that these posts will give you an accurate a picture of an NSA Convention as possible. But there’s simply no way one single person can cover a convention the size of NSA’s. Check out postings from other attendees who blogged — Bert Decker and Michael Benidt and Sheryl Kay.

Anyone (NSA member or not) can review the whole of the Conference Agenda where handout materials will soon be available for download. In addition, anyone (NSA member or not) can purchase audio or video of every single presentation. These are high quality recordings and well worth investing in if there’s a topic that interests you. It’s also a pretty good guarantee that my blog is an honest summary of the event – I can’t very well fictionalize content that’s available for public review, can I?

Monday General Session

Shep Hyken

Shep kicked off the morning General Session with his speech Moments of Magic™: Strategies to Get and Keep Clients.

What’s with it with guys who shave their heads? They seem to fall into two groups. On the on hand there’s the Bulldogs who work construction jobs, drive pick-up trucks, and whose drug of choice is probably nicotine or meth. On the other hand there’s these scary-smart professional speakers with charisma to burn. People like Shep, Randy Gage, Willie Jolley and Lewis Harrison. They are either aggressively drug free or have a fondness for iced Stoli. They’re intelligent, but you can’t call them Eggheads, they’ve more chutzpa than that. I see them in pool-halls hustling up a million or two with a soft smile for the unsuspecting marks. So let’s call them Eight Balls: testosterone-filled, smooth as silk and hard as nails.

Shep reminded us that a hustler’s job is not just giving the speech, it’s getting the speech. We have to spend all day every day marketing. We have to multiply the bottom-line – think of ways to increase your income not by a factor of one or two but 10-fold. Leverage what you do best and outsource the best: hire an administrator if you need one, hire sales assistants if that’s your weak spot. Join NSA, attend workshops, look to organizations like The Young Entrepreneurs for great ideas. Take speech content such as your Signature Story and turn it into articles and a book. If you have a website or blog, repurpose the content into a subscription newsletter.

Don’t be ordinary, be extraordinary. What differentiates you? Amp this up. Be so customer-centric that the persons relatives don’t treat them as well. Shep told of an unforgettable taxi-driver who supplied everything this side of intimate massages to his passengers, followed-up with a Holiday card every year, and showed how to turn a commodity product (be it a cab ride or a 45-minutes motivational keynote) into something special.

Ask clients this important question to juxtapose your current program with perceived future benefits and position yourself for repeat bookings :

If we got together one year after the program, what would have to happen for this to be the best speaker engagement you’ve ever had?

Analyze your important clients and try and duplicate what you do with them across more people. Strive to make each speech so great that you cheat the audience you spoke to the day before.

PS. There’s much more to Shep. Shep is a blogger so you can deepen your understanding of his message anytime, anywhere.

Jeff Tobe

Jeff is the antithesis of the man-in-the-grey-flannel-suit-corporate-presenter. He relishes the rebel in us all. His talk, Coloring Outside the Lines—How to Look at You from Their Perspective, exploded the stereotype of the speaker as the reinforcer of an audience’s prejudices (Baptists only preaching in Christian Churches; Sun Microsystems executives only speaking to Java Programmers and Unix administers; the late George Wallace only speaking to residents of Southern trailer parks).

Jeff encouraged us to see the world with fresh eyes, to look at things differently. Get the messages by renting Harvey on Netflix where Jimmy Stewart sees the invisible as an opportunity, not a limitation. Read Blue Ocean Strategy and break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant.

At 9:30am we filed out of the General Session to the first of a dozen different concurrent Break-Out sessions. My blog will only report on the Break-outs I attended. Other blogs might cover the rest. Again, you can review the Agenda online to see what I missed and order the tapes of any that interest you.

Warren Evans

There was an unexpected bonus to the first break-out I attended. Warren had assembled a Panel to discuss
Building a Genuine International Speaking Business. Panelists were:

David Price from Australia
Paul Bridle from the UK
W. Mitchell from the USA
Paul Du Toit from South Africa
Randy Gage from the USA

Recommendations from these trans-national express road warriors were:

The panel was divided on the all-important question of cultural sensitivity. American’s should certainly avoid introducing themselves to attractive ladies in London pubs with the phrase “Hi, I’m Randy” or suggesting people look for their “roots” in Australia. However, when people hire an American speaker they want someone with clearly identifiable characteristics. Don’t try for uchi (insider) status in Japan when your soto (outsider) status will get you much further (i.e. people usually think foreigners are cute and should be honored).

It’s been my experience that many American’s love to listen to a person with a pronounced British accent – and find even their use of expletives quite charming.

Lunch-time General Session

Back in the main ballroom, 1,700 hungry delegates gave the traditional twirling napkin welcome to the events professional summarizer:

Dale Irvin

Dale is one of the funniest guys in NSA. He makes his living summarizing meetings. Really. His ad-hoc comedy is wicked-funny. Many of his jokes have that “but you had to be there” quality and so I won’t try and list them. However, if you want someone to use humor to drive home the message at a business convention, Dale is your man.

I skipped the awards ceremony hosted by Al Walker.

Robert L. Cox, MD

Kicking off the afternoon was a sobering reality check from this expert in infectious diseases who gave a talk titled Don’t be an Ostrich: Vaccinate your business against Avian Flu. This was one of nine concurrent sessions on offer to 1,700 delegates and 15 people deemed it important enough to attend. The others had their heads firmly planted in the sand. Maybe it was the filet of chicken served at lunch that made people avoid the topic.

As with seismic threats on the West Coast or the planetary-wide denial of the inevitability of Climate Change, Avian Flu in one topic that sends many people on a mental trip up that Egyptian river. They are in denial and prefer not to think about the consequences. So stop a minute. Think. What’s the chance that a professional speaker will have the income potential they have today when (not if) a pandemic hits. Instead of this:

This:

Instead of the departure lounges you experience today, this:

An avian flu pandemic will positively, absolutely shut down any gathering of people in crowds. The audiences will stay home. Period.

So, 15 people out of 1,700 thought this worth finding out about. Bob Cox patiently explained the relentless spread of the disease in birds worldwide (migrating flocks will arrive in North America soon). The 231 human cases reported to date resulted from the transfer of the disease to domestic fowl and pets. When (remember, not if) the virus is “blended” with seasonal flu then the resulting virus will have the characteristics of both “parent” virus: the easy transmissibility via coughs and sneezes from Seasonal flu and the mortality rate of Avian Flu. Quite what the potency of each aspect of these will be in TBD. Meanwhile, we have a window of opportunity to prepare families and businesses for impact.

It’s worth downloading Bob’s handout and presentation and buying the audio of his talk. Read about the 1918 pandemic as reported by survivors here and here.

Investigate ways to safeguard your income from sources that don’t require an audience:

Think about opportunities outside the speaking industry:

Think about financial opportunities and challenges:

On the audio listen out for the comments from audience member Maurice Ramirez, MD. His realm of specialization includes knowledge of classified CDC documents on the contingency plans to deal with the disposal of the millions of dead. If your family members are among them, don’t expect Forest Lawn style services and a dignified end.

Expect this:

Other resources:

Checklists at www.pandemicflu.gov and Emergency Supplies.

Of course, I realize not everyone shares the opinion that Avian Flu is a threat. Heck, there are even those who doubt Global Warming is a threat either (although the entire population of Northern California was getting an object lesson in climate change while we sported in Orlando). So, the next break out session I attended was tailor made for communicating to Doubting Thomas’s.

Shelle Rose Charvet

The author of the excellent Words that Change Minds shared her insights on Presenting Ideas to Skeptical People.

She impressed on us the ways to present ideas to audiences who don’t share the same priorities. The golden rule is to start by meeting them at the place they are and take them on a journey to where you want them to be. Identify and honor their objections. Identify common experiences. Do NOT answer their objections or attempt to argue them out of their point of view. Make a credible case and use the language of suggestion.

And so, despite the best of intentions, I ended my day at the Cigar PEG where the party animals listened to the uncensored Dale Irvin and mixed it up on the dance floor until the small hours. I won’t blog on that. As the man says: What happens in Orlando, stays in Orlando.

A hall of mirrors concept kept me awake last night. I’m attending a Convention where Professional Speakers are speaking about speaking – they give presentations on ways to present.

This reminded me of my days as a rebellious sociology student in the early 1970’s when, with a sense of wicked delight, I discovered there was a branch of sociology (the scientific study of human societies) that studied other sociologists – it was, naturally, called the sociology of sociology, or reflexive sociology. Amazing! I could torment my professors by analyzing them with the same tools they were teaching me. The bible of this movement in 1972 was Sociology as a Skin Trade which I bought on the strength of the title alone and read with delight. Reflexive sociologists claimed that

sociologists are like goldfish swimming in a bowl, confidently analyzing other goldfish, without having ever stopped to recognize the bowl and the water they have in common with the fish they study

I never attended a convention of reflexive sociologists, but the meeting rooms at the NSA Orlando Convention are filled with many fish who swim in the same waters as the presenters on stage before them.

Perhaps there are other meetings where I could experience this sense of infinite reflection? Where there are moments of expertise in a profession being used to assist the development of members of that profession:

• When the call goes out for a doctor in the house to administer to the presenter who just suffered a heart attack during his talk on myocardial infarctions at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology
• When Hotel Maintenance closes the mens room to unblock the drains at the American Society of Plumbing Engineers Convention.
• When the towtruck arrives to jumpstart the car of the guy who accidentally left his lights on all night in the parking lot of the Society of Automotive Engineers Meeting.
• And what sort of pressure does the hotel kitchen staff feel when they prepare conference lunches at the National Association for Catering and Events?

Who polices the policemen and spies on the spies? Who stares at the ceiling at 3am considering these questions but a speechwriter at the NSA Orlando Convention?

Al Gore’s new movie opened in this week in Hollywood. I watched it today in a theatre at Sunset and Vine while LA County freeways throbbed with the ceaseless roar of SUV’s, convertibles, sedans and hybrid vehicles. Steeper gas prices have not put a dent in the Southern California lifestyle, any more than they’ve changed American’s driving habits in any of the other 49 states.

Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth aims to change some of these very truths that American’s hold self-evident: the inalienable rights to execute tight right turns on red in a set of wheels that gets the lowest average mileage of any nation on earth.

No matter if you voted for Gore (which the majority of us did) or for the current President (which slightly fewer did, but enough in the right parts of Florida) you owe it to your children to see this movie. It convinced me. And one of the reasons it is convincing is that Gore gives quite simply the best executive presentation I’ve ever seen.

One reason might be is that he knows his content.

He’s delivered the same presentation over 1,000 times – in most American cities and many places overseas. He has seen what works with audiences, and where he saw the need for more compelling content he created it.

One highlight of his stagecraft is when he shows how increased CO2 emissions are literally “off the chart” by ascending 20 feet above the podium on a hydraulic lift to reach the high-point on his graphic where recent increases in pollution have spiked in comparison to the 650,000 year-old records we have (core samples from the polar ice don’t lie).

Time and again a relaxed, tanned, slightly overweight Gore uses compelling images and animations onscreen to support his argument. I did not see one bullet point in the whole thing. What I did see were:

Pictures worth a thousand words

Beautifully executed animations that support the speaker but don’t distract

A little humor

Simple, elegant charts with graphs that explain, not obfuscate

The graphics are simple, compelling, effective. Time and again we see Gore the road-warrior as he jets around the world delivering his speech (shades of do as I say not as I do in terms of his own beefy carbon footprint on the planet this travel schedule must have imposed – but I guess he can be forgiven given the message he carries. At all times he has his trusty Apple (whose Board is he on) laptop open, tweaking a slide or three.

Garr points out that it’s not a “PowerPoint” presentation – he used Apple’s more elegant product, Keynote.

Perhaps Steve Jobs the master of effective presentations schooled him. Someone did. This is not the Al Gore who used t’joke about he being the wooden one in the roomful of Secret Service agents (a joke that itself was so wooden, so scripted, as to be a parody of an effective speaker).

Agree or disagree with Al, if you’re a professional speaker or speechwriter, ya gotta see this film.

Garr Reynolds recently remarked that stand-up comedy is the most terrifying presentation skill to master. Very few of us want to try doing a set at the local comedy club, no business person really needs that experience on their resume. But knowing the right and wrong way to work humor into a business presentation is a valuable skill for both speechwriter and/or speaker to master.

But surely no mere mortal is funny enough to make audiences laugh in the way Seinfeld, Woody Allen or the talk-show hosts make ’em laugh? Many speaking coaches warn that attempts at humor in a business speech are doomed to embarrassment and failure. Audiences want the facts, just the facts, ma’am. Fun has no place in the business world, damn it! This might be true…in Germany. But in many countries, a little humor goes a long way to connect with an audience. But what to do – if you don’t have the talent or courage? Are there any sure-fire techniques to build a laugh machine to turn ’em on?

The May meeting of the vibrant (and growing!) NSA/NC Chapter was the place to be Saturday to see two masters of the comedic arts share their trade secrets.

We leaned about “The Rule of Three”; “The Call Back”; “The Topper” as well as a bunch of funny lines and plain zany ideas to plant in your next script to wow your audience. These were not the idle suggestions of amateur funny men – they were practical, tried and tested techniques to get any business audience laughing.

David Glickman – ‘Be More Funny, Make More Money’

David is a superb stand-up comic in the tradition of the best of the Borscht Belt. His tips for creating great humor include:

David shared other great insider tips. Such as using a graphics professional to create a glue-on cover that parodies a well known book with a new title the specific audience will find funny – Harry Potter and the Mystery of Hotel Banquet Pricing for a speech to a Meeting Planners Convention.

Business audiences love jokes that are customized for them. Poke fun at the competition, mention product names, use corporate lingo. They’ll love being in on the ‘Inside Joke’.

All this and more in his excellent book.

Brad Montgomery – Got Mirth? Milking Your Material For All The Humor It’s Worth

Wow! A stand-up comic who started in the business when he was 16, is a magician and he has his own blog! What’s not to like!

Brad took an analytic approach to generating mirth in front of the mike. He spent time putting our fears to rest by sharing some groundrules:

Brad gave us great tips for livening up business audiences.

Let the audience see you are having a good time.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, fail and they’ll let you die.

The Fourth meeting of the Pro-Track training sponsored by the National Speakers Association, Northern California, took place on April 22. This month’s focus was on choosing a topic to speak on.

Webster defines a topic as:

Etymology: Latin Topica Topics (work by Aristotle), from Greek Topika, from topika, neuter plural of topikos of a place, of a topos, from topos place, topos
1 a : one of the general forms of argument employed in probable reasoning b : ARGUMENT, REASON
2 a : a heading in an outlined argument or exposition b : the subject of a discourse or of a section of a discourse

The bottom line for professional speakers is that your topic must appeal to audiences willing to pay to hear you speak. We heard from two consummate professionals who had picked topics that packed ’em in.

Adrian Pearson

Ms. Pearson (I state her sex since the British mostly expect Adrian’s to be men – Adrian Mole, Adrian Cockcroft, ‘Adrian’s Wall…) is a market research expert who highlighted the importance of measuring the interest people have in a particular topic before writing the speech. Why choose to develop a topic that will be difficult to sell?

Simply ask a small sample of people to rate your subject on a scale of 1-9. Anything that scores a 6 or higher deserves your attention. Otherwise, fuggedabout it!

My homework – finding what specific topics in the area of international business and doing business overseas people are willing to pay good money to hear about.

Craig Harrison

This craigslist of ways to find your topic included:

– Ask yourself what gives you most pleasure as a communicator (shocking audiences? storytelling? inspiring them?)
– Examine what qualifies you as an expert on your topic – where does your credibility come from?
– Find out what audiences value enough to pay for – what are the hot topics they are interested in?

We then spent time developing an elevator pitch to showcase our uniqueness. He coached us to think in terms of the listener, clearly stating the benefits of what we do and inviting them to connect further with us.

At the end of the day I had the following rough draft for my elevator pitch:

I speak on the secrets of success in international business. I’m Ian Griffin and I’ve experienced first hand how to survive and thrive in foreign lands. If you want to feel at home anywhere in the world I can teach you 35 tips for productive overseas trips. Are you ready to do business, worldwide? Call me.

I’m sure I will modify and refine this over time. And at some point I might actually develop 35 tips that people will pay to hear. Meanwhile, on a scale of 1 to 9 (1 = terrible, 9 = fantastic) tell me how you rate my elevator pitch?

Speechwriters, Public Relations and other communications professionals need facts at their fingertips. These references have proved useful. See how they work for you.

Acronyma:
– Entries for over 450,000 acronyms and abbreviations.
Amazon.com:
– I really like the ‘Search Inside this Book’ feature that let’s you read a good amount of many books they sell.
Business Name and Tag Line Generator:
– When you want to sex up that speech title or key phrase.
Case Studies Library:
– A wonderful source of material for stories. Such as this gem:
Mark Bridges pondered his position as manager of his family’s business in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. His duties included calming a family of campers, whose campsite had just been ransacked by a mischievous black bear… There are a dozen ways to open a speech with this story alone.
Comparitech: deep web search engines for academic and scholarly research:
– A comprehensive guide to searching the 95% of the web not indexed by Google
Cutter Consortium:
– REGISTRATION REQUIRED. These materials give you “Access to the Experts” – internationally recognized experts committed to delivering top-level, critical, and objective advice from Cutter’s 10 Practice Areas.
Directory of Open Access Journals:
– This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 2090 journals in the directory. Currently, 567 journals are searchable at article level. As of today, 90686 articles are included in the DOAJ service.
Factiva:
– REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Superior online searching of hundreds of newspapers, journals, etc. Gives access to subscription-only services such as Financial Times and WSJ.
Google News Alerts:
– Sign up for custom searches in the daily news. Hint: Grab output as an RSS feed into bloglines.com or feedster.com.
Hoovers:
– SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED. Access complete company information. Check out Hoover’s Business Boneyard.
Highwire Press:
– Stanford University hosts the largest repository of free, full-text, peer-reviewed content, with 919 journals and 1,213,881 free, full-text articles online. With our partner publishers, we produce 73 of the 200 most-frequently-cited journals.
Idioms:
– Investigate the origins of idioms — for all you Doubting Thomas’s.
102 Idioms:
102 Common English Idioms with meaning and examples.
Knovel Library:
– Hardcore science facts. Where else would you find the ‘RFID Handbook’?
LibrarySpot.com:
– Links to lots of stuff. The Ask An Expert service looks interesting.
National Business Journals:
– The national bizjournals site features local business news from around the nation, updated throughout the day, top business stories from American City’s print editions, industry-specific news from more than 40 industries, advice columns, and a full menu of tools to help business owners and operators manage their businesses more successfully. There’s also easy navigation to each of the 42 local business sites. Characterized among the “Best of the Web” by Forbes magazine, bizjournals’ archives contain more than 750,000 business news articles published since 1996. E-mail offerings include daily local business updates from any bizjournals market, as well as weekly updates of industry news from throughout the country.
Newslink.org:
– Another way to keep your eyes on breaking news from Silicon Valley to the Sahara.
New Words:
– A Sampling of 100 new words added to Webster’s Dictionary in 2005: amuse-bouche, bikini wax…and more.
NoodleTools:
– How to correctly cite all this great stuff you’ve dug up.
OEDILF:
– The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form. 24,000+ limericks and going strong. Here’s one:
When writing a speech to impress,
Don’t bungle and leave off an “s.”
You’ll learn what “harass” is
With talk about asses
When that’s not what you meant to assess.
Online University – Directory of Scholarly Journals:
A list that contains resources that are available online, in part or in full, though some do require payment for downloads. “Open” journals aim to provide all their resources online and may be a great place for some research, though more professionally minded assignments should start with more critically acclaimed publications.
Refdesk:
– Since 1995, Refdesk is a free and family-friendly web site that indexes and reviews quality, credible, and current web-based resources.
How to Cite Online Sources:
– The correct way to cite online sources.
Storytelling:
– Audiences always connect with stories that fit the climate, culture and mission of your business issue without losing the spirit of the message.
WayBackMachine:
– Images, Audio and Text. Browse through 55 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
Wikipedia:
– Best source of information on the web. Check out Shakespeare or Roy Harper or Bill Gates to prove it.
If you know of any other useful reference material please leave a comment below!

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:

– Managing Patient Expectations
– Getting to 99: Achieving a Culture of Service Excellence
– Yes! You Can Soothe, Smooth and Improve Difficult People
– One Great Leadership Skill: Knowing How to Inspire Discretionary Effort
– Instant Rapport: How To Inspire Trust and Confidence When You Have Too Little Time and Too Many Patients
– Taking Service Quality To the Next Level: 60 Ideas in 60 Minutes
– The World is Full of Cactus, but We Don’t Have to Sit on It

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:

– Negotiating for Your Life
– The Dance of Negotiation
– Negotiating Strategies for a Changing, Competitive Business World
– Negotiating for Your Life in Business and at Home
– Smart Negotiating Strategies in a Competitive Business World
– Negotiation Strategies to Create the Breakthrough Competitive Advantage
– Negotiation and Business Strategies for Women – Gaining a Competitive Edge
– Striking A Deal – Keys to Successful Negotiation
– Influencing Your Future – the Promise, the Passion and the Pride
– Managing the Challenge of Change and Uncertainty in the (your organization’s) Industry
– Moving into the 21st Century
– Bridging the Future – The Challenge of Change
– Managing Change Magnificently
– Riding the Waves of Economic Change
– Shift Happens – Successful Transition Management for the New Economy

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:

– build trust with the audience
– establish similarities
– make you come across as human
– distinguish you from other speakers
– expand your horizons as a presenter

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

– Physical risks: sing , dance or juggle on the podium
– Intellectual risks: include a poem or a new word in your next speech
– Emotional risks: be vulnerable, share a part of yourself, go outside your comfort zone
– Spiritual risks: take the risks you can’t see, open your heart to another, rise above the noise

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

– Mikki asked the audience for a New York “Yo” when they agreed with her
– Scott “Q” Marcus got an “Arrrr” of sympathy that he’d travelled six hours to attend the meeting
– Tony Robbins thumps his chest to reverberate the levolor mic he wears
– Rosita Perez wears flowers in her hair
– Fripp has a hat on at all times

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.

Fundamental to every professional speaker is the topic they speak on, about which they are informed, articulate, passionate. It’s one of their eight competencies. Good speakers are on fire with a passion for their topic. As The Buddha said:

The ear is on fire; sounds are on fire; . . . the nose is on fire; odors are on fire; . . . the tongue is on fire; tastes are on fire; . . . the body is on fire; things tangible are on fire; . . . the mind is on fire; ideas are on fire; . . . mind-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the mind are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, that also is on fire.

And with what are these on fire?

With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.

Saturday found 30 of us wanna-be pro speakers kindling the first flames this passion at the second NSA/NC sponsored Pro-Track training. Before the day was over we had been give the opportunity to choose our topic; outline it; make it interesting; market it and deliver it with style and panache. We were directed in this by two awesome ladies whose passions burned, as they say, as bright as a thousand sun’s.

Francine Ward: Topic Development

Francine Ward, has a topic that grabs you and won’t let go. An ex-hooker, junkie and high-school drop-out who walked through her fear and came out on the other side. Now a Georgetown educated lawyer, successful entrepreneur, twice published author, philanthropist, and loving wife. She speaks left-brained topics: trademark and contract law, where she’s a resource to the best speakers in the NSA. She speaks on right-brained topics: motivational speeches based on her unique biography.

We were given the benefit of her experience. She mapped a clear set of guidelines on how to develop a topic. It’s a journey that starts with an evaluation of what cements you as a credible, marketable expert who people would pay to listen to. She took us through in-depth considerations about ways to research our topic (my fave: ask the audience what they want to hear you speak on!). She ended with a slew of practical tips n’ tricks on marketing our expertise. We heard what works for her. We learned how she turns her knowledge into products. Check out her web site. Have your credit card ready.

Angela DeFinis: Presentation Skills

I wonder how many in the room felt a pang of regret for not having taken Pro-Track last year? Those who did were lucky enough have had Angela as a classmate. She’s been coaching Silicon Valley executives in delivery skills for over twenty years. She stands out in the somewhat crowded field of speech coaching for one very simple reason – she delivers results. We saw this in the brief time she was able to work with the Pro-Trackers who gave their showcase presentations. She worked miracles.

Her litany of things an effective public speaker needs to be mindful of include eye contact, posture, facial expression, purposeful movement, inflection, enunciation and rate of speech. The goal: to become unconsciously competent in the key areas of visual image, vocal and verbal skills.

Most speakers overlook the fact that only 7% of a message is conveyed by the words they use; 55% of the message is conveyed by their face and body signals and 38% by their vocal characteristics. The good news for those of us who are paid the big bucks to write those words and create the content for corporate speeches is that most executives are clueless about this. They focus on content almost exclusively. The bad news is that most executives are clueless about this. The audience listens as the audience does: looking more, hearing less.

There’s little point in blogging about Angela’s class. It has to be experienced. If you think you need a speech coach, hire her. If you don’t think you need a speech coach, get a clue.

Her parting gift was an awesome booklist to sink our teeth into:

7 Steps to Fearless Speaking by Lilyan Wilder
Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action by Nick Morgan
Grammar Smart by Princeton Review
How to Prepare, Stage, & Deliver Winning Presentations by Thomas Leech
Improving Your Storytelling by Doug Lipman
Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: How to Do Business in Sixty Countries by Terri Morrison, Wayne A. Conaway, George A. Borden
Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction by Mark L. Knapp, Judith A. Hall
Nonverbal Communication by Albert Mehrabian
Power Talk: Using Language to Build Authority and Influence by Sarah Myers McGinty
Powerful Communication Skills: How to Communicate With Confidence by Colleen McKenna
Presentations That Persuade and Motivate by Harvard Business School Press
Say It Right: A Guide To Effective Oral Business Presentations by Garth A. Hanson
Silent Messages by Albert Mehrabian
Speaking Skills for Business Careers by Dennis Becker, Paula Borkum Becker
The New Talkpower: The Mind Body Way to Speak Without Fear by Natalie Rogers
The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling by Annette Simmons
Toastmaster’s International Guide to Successful Speaking: Overcoming Your Fears, Winning over Your Audience, Building Your Business & Career by Jeff Slutsky, Michael Aun, Toastmasters International
Working the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking by Nick Morgan
Women Seen and Heard: Lessons Learned from Successful Speakers by Lois, Ph.D. Phillips, Anita Perez Ferguson

On leaving the meeting I walked out into the February evening. The wind crossed the brown land, unheard. I spoke neither loud nor long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear the rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.