Carol Cox: Hear why you don't want your audience to say
I learned a lot at your next keynote.
Instead, here are three must-haves to make
your keynote unforgettable,
on this episode of the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. More and more women are making an
impact by starting businesses,
running for office, and speaking up for what
matters. With my background as a TV political
analyst, entrepreneur,
and speaker, I interview and coach purpose
driven women to shape their brands,
grow their companies, and become recognized
as influencers in their field.
This is speaking your brand,
your place to learn how to persuasively
communicate your message to your audience.
Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your
Brand podcast. I'm your host,
Carol Cox. I hope you enjoyed the four part
series that we just finished up called Booked
Without Burnout.
There are short, actionable episodes to help
you book more speaking engagements with
outbound strategies, inbound strategies,
how to get paid to speak,
and even if you should ever pay to speak.
So definitely go back and check out that
series. Today, I'm taking you behind the
scenes of a keynote I recently gave at a
conference for their women's luncheon.
The title of my talk was From Invisible to
Influential how I Found My Voice and Why
Yours Matters More than Ever.
So yes, very much right up my alley.
It was a great event and as I reflected
afterwards, I realized that there were three
big strategies that can help you the next
time you're preparing a keynote.
Here's what women said to me afterwards.
They said it was inspiring.
They said it was phenomenal.
They said it was excellent.
They told me that they really resonated with
my story, even though they hadn't been in the
exact situation I had been in.
They understood what it felt like to use your
voice and then lose it and then regain it
again. A couple of women also like me,
said that they're introverts, and they were
really inspired that I shared how I was an
introvert, but I still found a way to use my
voice. And now they believed they could too.
Now here's what women in the audience didn't
say to me afterwards.
They didn't come up to me and say,
I learned a lot, or thank you for all of
those tips and tactical things that you
taught me. You do not want to hear that after
you deliver a keynote.
That is what I call being stuck in the expert
trap, especially when delivering a keynote.
Because in a keynote you don't want to
inform, you want to transform.
But I know that we're so used to giving
presentations, whether they're in person or
virtual, that we kind of get stuck in this
training and teaching mode,
where we just want to give them a whole bunch
of information, a list of things that they
can do to improve themselves.
But that's not what a keynote is for.
A keynote is to provide an experience for the
audience, to help them to see something
differently about themselves,
or their industry, or their world or all
three, and to have them believe that they can
do it. There are three strategies that you
can use to make this happen.
I love working with our clients on their
keynotes because I enjoy pulling out of them,
not only their ideas and the lessons they've
learned in their careers and in their
businesses, but also their stories and
connecting what's meaningful about their
story, about their journey to these lessons
that they want to share with their audience.
If you would like to work with us to create
your incredible keynote talk,
your Ted talk, or your lead generation
presentation, we can work with you on any of
those or all of those.
Go to speaking your Brand.com and schedule a
call with us. I always enjoy talking to
podcast listeners and I would love to hear
what your goals are, what you're working on,
and potentially how we could work together.
Now let's dive into these three strategies
that you can use to make your keynote not
only unforgettable, but also impactful for
your audience. Strategy number one is
storytelling at the core.
And I know if you've been listening to this
podcast, I talk quite a bit about the
importance of storytelling.
When you're giving a keynote, I know the
temptation is to fill it with tips,
tactics, and takeaways,
especially, like I mentioned, if you're used
to teaching workshops or giving trainings,
but your audience doesn't need more
information, especially if you're doing a
keynote. They want to sit back,
they want to relax, and they want to have an
experience. So I want you to focus on
creating connection and transformation.
And that happens through story.
In the keynote that I gave recently.
And I have shared this particular story in
other keynotes that I've delivered as well,
came from a time earlier in my career When I
was involved in politics for a while,
everything was great until it wasn't because
I became a woman with too much of a public
voice and a public presence,
and the people who had been my biggest
supporters and cheerleaders all of a sudden
were not. I was bullied,
I was undermined, and I really felt so alone
and so vulnerable that I ended up not running
for re-election as chairperson and not
eventually running for Congress.
And it was really devastating.
And I lost my voice for many years after
that. Now, this story does not make me feel
like the empowered woman that I imagined
myself that I was back then,
or that I like to think that I am now.
But the story is really real.
It happened to me.
And even though I know most of the time in
the audience, there aren't women who have had
that exact same experience.
They may have had something similar.
I took that story that I told relatively
early on in the keynote.
So this was in act one of our three act
framework. And then I drew three lessons from
that story that I shared with the audience.
So this is really key.
You don't just tell a story just for the sake
of telling a story.
You're sharing a story because there's
lessons that you're drawing from it that are
going to be helpful to the audience.
So your keynotes are still really helpful and
impactful, but they're not tips and tactics.
So when you're thinking about your next
keynote or that style of talk,
ask yourself, what's the story that you could
share? What's a moment in your life or your
career? When things shifted now,
they could have shifted in a way that you
didn't necessarily like at the time,
like what happened to me,
but you learned something from that.
So how can you share those learnings with
your audience? That is the core of
storytelling in your keynote.
So that brings us to strategy number two,
which is structure.
So now that you have decided which story is
the best fit for that keynote,
for that event, for that audience,
then you want to structure your keynote with
the rule of three. So now you are in act two
of our three act framework.
And so in that, act two is where you're kind
of getting into the meat of your talk.
So instead of just dumping a whole bunch of
information on your audience or a whole bunch
of just kind of random lessons,
you want to organize your talk around this
rule of three. So it could be three lessons,
three principles, three pillars,
or even three stages of a journey that people
go through as they learn the lessons that you
learned from your story.
So for my story that I shared,
I pulled out three lessons that the audience
could apply to their own lives.
And because it was three,
not seven or not ten, it was easy for them to
follow, remember, and then think of
afterwards. So in my case,
the three lessons that I shared were number
one to know your why and your goal.
So you, as the person who is using your voice
as the person who's communicating,
what is your North star?
What is it that matters to you?
Kind of your mission and your vision,
your bigger why and the goal that you have.
Because when I was telling that story about
what happened to me in politics,
I kind of forgot about my bigger why.
When I got it, when I got sucked into what
was going on, and I really felt so alone and
didn't know what to do.
And then the second lesson that I shared was,
okay, it's fine to know your why and your
goal, but you also have to know your
audience's why and their goal and what they
want from communication,
because kind of the larger umbrella topic of
this particular luncheon was about
communication. So I had what is it for you?
And then what is it for the person on the
other end, whether it's one person or a group
of people that you're talking to?
So that was a second lesson.
And then the third lesson was the importance
of sharing stories, because of course, that's
what I'm going to talk about is storytelling.
I took my very particular story,
but then I found these three universal
lessons to pull out of it.
So when you're working on your keynote,
resist the urge to say all the things or to
draw a whole bunch of different lessons from
it instead.
Think of three key things three lessons,
three principles, or three stages that you
can share with your audience.
Strategy number three.
And this is one I feel like a lot of keynote
speakers forget to do if it doesn't come
naturally to them, is humor and audience
participation.
If you're used to giving workshops,
you're probably used to having the audience
interact with you, especially if you're doing
workshops or maybe 20 or up to 50 people.
It makes it a little bit easier to have
audience participation because it's expected
with the keynote.
Audience participation is more unusual,
especially at a luncheon.
Fortunately, when I started my delivery,
they had already finished lunch.
They were kind of starting on dessert.
It's really hard to be a keynote speaker when
people are eating lunch,
like actually eating the main course.
If that is the situation you find that you
might be in. See if you can talk to the event
organizers about adjusting the timing so that
at least you're starting your talk when
they're kind of finishing clearing the main
plates, because otherwise you're competing
with, you know, clinking of the silverware on
the dishes. Okay, so they had finished their
main meal and they were kind of putting
having dessert. So when I started my talk,
I had an exercise, an audience participation
exercise right away where I divided the room
into two sides, one side on the right,
one side on the left.
And then I had them sing the song that I sing
along with them. Very well known children's
song. And then once I did one thing and one
side, then the other, I'm not going to spoil
it because you may see me speak one day in
the future, but it was a lot of fun and the
audience did it. And then I asked them
questions about how it felt to be on one side
versus the other.
And so it was a fun way to get them involved
right away, to kind of get them focused on me
in the front of the room instead of on the
food that they were eating.
And then at the very end of the talk,
I brought it back to what we had started with
at that, beginning with that exercise.
And so I had everyone stand up and do this
fun thing. Again, I'm not going to spoil it
here with what exactly it was,
but it was energetic.
It left the keynote on a high,
and it got the audience involved from the
very beginning until the end.
So just because you're delivering a keynote,
just because you're delivering a keynote at a
luncheon, just because you're delivering a
keynote to a large room does not mean you
can't have audience participation.
You can. Now, the next part of this third
strategy is humor.
Humor is so important for every talk that you
give, especially for keynotes,
because again, keynotes are not about
trainings. They're not about a whole bunch of
tactical things that you're giving people.
They're about an experience.
And the way that audiences remember things is
through emotion.
Emotion could be wistfulness.
It could be nostalgia.
It could be a little bit of not not.
You don't necessarily want to make your
audience sad, but you could have a story
that's a little bit heavier.
And then especially you have to make sure
that you lighten the tension with humor.
Usually I will naturally say something funny
just in the course of delivering my talk,
but I don't leave that up to chance.
What I do is, after I've created the outline
for my keynote using our signature Talk
Canvas framework, and then I start working on
the slides, then I go back through the
slides, and I find places where I can
intentionally add humor,
because if I don't, I may forget it.
Or I just may kind of just say something as
an aside, but it doesn't really have the
impact as actually seeing something on a
slide, like a funny GIF or a funny image or a
funny video clip.
So I go back through my slides and I try to
find at least two, if not three places where
I can add slides that have something humorous
on them. So in this case,
I had a couple of funny memes.
Funny GIFs and funny memes are a great way to
easily add humor to your talk.
Now for the humor. You're not making fun of
the audience. You're not making fun of their
industry or the work that they do at all,
unless you are one of them.
If you are also, say, a physician and you're
talking to a room full of physicians,
yes, use appropriate humor that they would
find funny. Now, if I'm talking to a room
full of physicians and I,
clearly I am not, I would not make a joke
about physicians because I don't I don't
really think that's appropriate,
and they probably wouldn't find it that
funny. Instead, I like to use
self-deprecating humor because that makes me
more relatable to the audience,
but not self-deprecating humor that harms my
credibility. We did a whole episode about
this earlier this year.
I'll put a link in the show notes about how
to use self-deprecating humor appropriately,
but that is really effective.
And of course, you never want to make fun of
someone, so I never do that.
I really do it in kind of pulling aspects of
my story or the lessons that I learn and
using that self-deprecating humor.
In that way, when you use humor and audience
participation, it shifts the energy.
It creates connection between you and the
audience and the audience with each other.
And it really does make your talk so much
more memorable and impactful.
So as you start working on your keynote,
use our signature Talk Canvas framework.
I'm going to put a link in the show notes to
an episode that I did,
where I explained the entire framework so you
can use it. Put storytelling at the core.
Think of that story that really impacted you,
that shaped you, that would be relevant to
the audience and to the topic that you're
talking about. Use a clear structure,
that rule of three. So three lessons,
principles or stages and intentionally add
humor and audience participation into your
keynote. That's what's going to leave your
audience transformed.
Creating and delivering a keynote is not only
an incredible opportunity,
It's also a responsibility.
You want to deliver an impactful and
memorable experience for the audience,
and of course, have the event organizers look
great. I love working on keynote talks with
our clients because I serve as your thought
partner and your creative partner.
We have sessions on zoom where we map out
your talk using our unique and proven
signature Talk Canvas framework.
We've used this framework for hundreds of our
clients talks as well as our own.
So I'm asking you questions about your
stories, about your thought leadership,
ideas about the conversations that you want
to contribute to that are going on in your
industry, in your topic area.
And then I map out with you your entire talk
from beginning to end,
that compelling opening with the closing that
ties it all together, and then taking the
audience on that journey of the lessons,
the principles or the stages that you want to
share with them.
It truly is a co-creative partnership between
me and you.
We find places to add humor and audience
participation so that you have a keynote talk
that you love, that you're confident
delivering, and that truly feels like the
message that you want to share.
Whether you've been asked to deliver a
keynote already in the date is on the
calendar, or you know you want to be a
keynote speaker, that you have a message that
you would like to share with more audiences.
I would love to talk with you about working
together. The best thing to do is to schedule
a consultation call with me.
You can do that by going to speaking your
consultation. Again that's speaking.
We'll spend about 30 minutes together on zoom
so I can get to know what you do,
what your topic is, what you need the most
help with and how we can work together.
Again, go to speaking. Com to schedule that
consultation call.
Until next time.
Thanks for listening.