Carol Cox: If you've ever been tempted to add just a bit
more content to your presentation or your
talk, this episode is for you.
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.
Welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast.
I'm your host, Carol Cox.
One of the most common mistakes I see
speakers make is trying to deliver what
should be a six week course,
or a full length book and a 45 minute talk or
presentation.
Perhaps you've seen this yourself,
being in the audience where you left a
keynote or even a conference session feeling
impressed but also completely overwhelmed.
And when this happens,
it's not because the speaker isn't good,
it's because the message doesn't fit the
medium. And in this episode,
I'm going to share with you the different
mediums that exist, such as lead generation,
presentations, keynotes,
talks, Ted style talks,
even courses, coaching books,
and so on. But how?
The message that you're delivering has to fit
that particular medium.
And I have a really handy graphic,
a grid that I created that you can get on the
show notes page at Speaking Your Brand.
458 so again, that's speaking your brand.
458 you can see the visual there.
Now, when this happens,
and if you are the one who is speaking,
you might feel like your talk isn't landing,
that you're not getting the results that
you're looking for.
And those results could be leads and clients
from your presentation could be other
speaking invitations.
It could be the audience taking action on
whatever it is that you're sharing with them.
So you may think that the reason your talk
isn't landing because you need better slides
or better design slides,
or you need more content,
or you needed more time,
you only have 30 minutes.
And if only you had 45 minutes or 60 minutes,
then that would have made the difference.
But usually that's not what the issue is.
It's because you're using the wrong type of
content for the format,
and we've been trained to believe that value
equals more information.
But in speaking, value equals transformation.
And this is why your role as a speaker is so
important. But the problem we run into is
because as experts, we feel responsible for
teaching our audiences everything.
We feel like if we could just only take
everything that's in our head and kind of
transport it into the audience's brains,
then they would know everything and then they
would be able to take action.
And as high achieving women,
we sometimes especially feel the pressure to
prove our competence.
And a lot of times we prove this by giving
more and more information.
But this leads to overload instead of impact.
And that's what I call it, the expert trap,
where we confuse being helpful with being
transformational.
So that's why we have to understand how the
medium shapes the message.
You can have the same thought leadership
message, but the medium that you're using
lead gen, presentation,
keynote, a book, a course,
coaching, etc.
is going to lead to a different strategy
because each format has a job to do.
And when you mismatch the message in the
medium, that's when things fall apart.
That's when things don't have the impact that
you want them to have.
So let me walk you through these different
mediums that are most likely the ones that
you're going to be using,
and then how to think about the type of
content that goes into each one.
So first let's think about lead generation
talks when you're doing a talk for lead
generation. So you want someone to be
interested in working with you.
So you're doing a conference breakout session
or you're doing a lunch and learn at a
business group.
And so what you're doing with a lead
Generation talk is that you want to generate
awareness, awareness of what you do in your
business. So you're helping people identify
what their real problem is,
and then how you offer a solution to that
through, say, a framework or a process that
you have. And so you're creating this
awareness, this open loop that then the
audience wants to have closed.
And ideally by working with you.
And you can see an excellent example of this
with one of our clients,
Danielle Hayden, on episode 362,
where we talk about how we completely
re-engineered her lead generation talk to
have the clients become aware of what they
wanted, and then have this desire to want to
work with her. And what a huge difference in
made in increasing the leads and clients that
she got from her talks.
Now, lead generation talks do tend to be more
tactical. So you are doing a little bit of
teaching. You are sharing a little bit of how
the audience can achieve what it is that they
want to achieve. You're most likely sharing a
framework with them.
So some type of framework or process that you
use with your clients and your business to
get them from point A to point Z,
to get them the results that they want.
So that framework could be an acronym or a
visual process or say even an alliteration.
Alliteration. But you also want to make sure
that you're getting your audience to think
differently about the problem that they have
and the challenges that they have and the
potential solution to them.
Would a lead generation talk should not be
doing is providing a lot of detailed
information. You don't really have the time
for it. Plus it's overwhelming the audience.
And it's really also not about implementation
and skill practice. If you have a talk that's
30 minutes or even 45 minutes,
you really are just setting the stage for the
audience to get them to think differently.
Now let's contrast that with another medium,
which is a workshop or a training.
And this could be virtual or in person.
And for a workshop or training,
I'm generally thinking of ones that are at
least two hours could be four hours or even a
full day workshop.
So in a workshop in training,
you really are sharing tactical how to steps.
That is the purpose of a of a training to
share the how to steps.
In this case you are giving more detailed
information. Not too much to overwhelm the
audience, but you do have more time and more
space than say in a lead generation talk or
other type of talk to give more detailed
information. You're still providing your
strategic frameworks because you need to have
a container for what you're teaching and what
the audience is learning.
This is also where that implementation and
skill practice come in,
because you most likely have time for
activities where the attendees can implement
what they're learning, and you're still doing
that mindset shift.
You're still getting the audience to think
differently about what it is that they want
and how to get there.
So you can see with the lead gen talk,
it's not about all the detailed information
and it's not about implementation.
It's really about the strategic frameworks
and getting the audience to think
differently. Now let's take a look at a third
medium which is keynotes.
I have seen a lot of keynotes in my day,
and unfortunately many of them tend to lean
too much into the tactics and how to's and
the detailed information.
And that is not the purpose of a keynote, a
keynote. As a keynote speaker,
you're there to inspire the audience,
to get them to think differently,
to encourage them, to motivate them a little
bit of entertainment most of the time for
keynotes, they are happening when a
conference kicks off. So you're the opening
keynote or maybe a luncheon keynote or the
closing keynote.
So you're setting the stage for the event,
and you're also getting the people excited
about what it is that they're going to learn,
or excited about what they just learned at
that particular conference or event.
So you're a keynote talk is not supposed to
be a bunch of dense information,
save that for the workshop or training.
Save that for a course that you offer or save
that for the book.
Maybe that you provide to the attendees.
The number one goal is to get the audience to
think differently than they have before.
And whatever the topic area is that you are
that you're the expert in,
go back and listen to episode 422 with my
client, Julia Cohen, on how we created a ten
out of ten keynote that left her audiences in
awe. Again, that link is in the show notes.
Keynotes are also very much about emotional
connection and story, so storytelling really
is the undercurrent through an entire keynote
and a keynote talk is about inspiration and
helping the audience to understand who they
are, where they fit in the world.
And the world could be the industry or the
community, or even the bigger,
the bigger world where they fit in the world
and understanding their place in it,
that is the role of a keynote,
not a whole bunch of detailed information
that the audience is struggling to understand
or struggling to keep up with.
Now, let's take a look at mediums where you
can provide more detailed information.
So for example, a course that you provide,
maybe this is a self-paced course that
clients can go through.
So in that case you are providing the how to
steps more detailed information for them.
It's still the container are your strategic
frameworks to help the students to help your
your clients, your users to go through that
course to understand the big picture.
It is also implementation and skill practice
as well, so that in that sense is very hands
on and it's very tactical.
So save the detailed information and the the
how to steps for your course.
Same thing with a workbook.
A lot of times you'll have a workbook that
you provide, maybe in a workshop or in your
course say the detailed information for that.
Now another medium that requires a different
strategy is a book.
A book is where you can go into much more
depth. You can provide context and nuance.
You can go into more explanation,
you can explore complexity,
and you can build long term authority.
And this is why books matter so much,
especially for thought leaders and for
speakers. I have a great episode with my book
coach Tiffany Hawk back in episode 257.
I'll include a link to all of these episodes
that I'm mentioning in the show notes,
because that's a great episode to talk about.
Why writing a book gives your ideas depth,
and longevity, and that's why I'm excited
that the next few episodes will feature
authors, because books do give us a
completely different way to share ideas,
and they reinforce our talks and allow our
audiences to go deeper with our content.
So save that deeper content for a book or a
course or a workshop and training.
And here's the big reframe that I want you to
take from this. The goal in your talks and
presentations isn't to say more.
The goal is to move people more.
Lead generation presentations are meant to
create interest.
Interest in working with you.
Keynotes create clarity and desire.
Desire for something different.
Workshops create capability.
Courses create mastery,
books create depth and coaching creates the
transformation.
So have you ever thought,
well, I just need more content in my
presentation or I'm not providing my audience
enough in my talks.
This is your permission slip to do less and
instead create more impact because thought
leaders don't overwhelm,
instead, they illuminate.
You don't need to prove how much you know.
Your audience already assumes that because
you're there as a speaker,
what they need is your perspective and your
curation. Curation is really powerful.
When we work with our clients in the one on
one VIP days, which is a three hour zoom
session where we map out their signature
message and their signature talk from
beginning to end.
I am that I am helping them curate and edit
everything they have in their head,
from all of their years of experience and
expertise into what is most important to
their audience. I tell them that I have three
jobs during that VIP day.
The first job is to be that collaborative
thought. Partner with them to bounce ideas
off of each other, to pull on threads and to
say, okay, well, what about this? Or let's
think about where this could go and helping
helping to devise whatever that main
framework or those lessons or those stages or
those principles are for the audience.
My other job is to sit in the seat of the
audience. So I'm thinking,
okay, if I were listening to this talk,
what else would I need to know?
What is confusing?
What is too much?
What is kind of bearing,
or what is too noisy that is preventing me
from understanding the key thing that I need
to understand as the audience.
And then the third job I have in that VIP day
is as event organizers,
because you want to make sure that event
organizers are interested in hiring you.
So I sit in that seat and think,
so as an event organizer,
what would make this interesting for my
audience? Where would the value be and the
value was not more information.
Trust me on this. It's not more information.
It is that transformation.
The next time you're building a talk,
ask yourself what is the transformation this
format is meant to create,
not how much more information I can put in
here, but could.
But how can I help my audience better get to
where they want to be?
If you would like to have a one on one VIP
day with us to map out your signature message
and talk, which really is the foundation for
your marketing and visibility,
we can do that as a standalone VIP day within
our coaching or within our online Thought
Leader Academy program.
You can get all of the details on our Thought
Leader Academy and our coaching at speaking
your brand, and the best thing to do is to
schedule a consultation call with us.
We'll learn about your goals,
what you need the most help with,
and then we can talk through what would be
the best option for you.
And you can schedule that call by going to
speaking your brand.
Again, that's speaking your brand. Until next
time. Thanks for listening.