Speaking Your Brand: Public Speaking Tips and Strategies

Are you unintentionally overwhelming your audience with too much information? In this episode, I dive into one of the most common mistakes I see smart, experienced professionals make in their presentations: overloading them with information. I know...

Show Notes

Are you unintentionally overwhelming your audience with too much information?

In this episode, I dive into one of the most common mistakes I see smart, experienced professionals make in their presentations: overloading them with information.

I know it’s tempting - after all, we want to provide value. But here’s the truth: real impact doesn’t come from how much you teach, but from how much you transform.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why more information isn’t always better (and can actually be a disservice)

  • How to shift your content from info-dumping to insight-sharing

  • The key ingredients that create transformation in your talks

  • What I learned from TV shows like Succession and Inventing Anna about confidence, vision, and belief (yep, there’s a lesson in there!)

  • How focusing on transformation helps you position yourself as a thought leader and raise your speaking fees

I’ll also share examples from our Thought Leader Academy and client presentations to show you exactly how to make this shift.

If you want to create more meaningful and memorable presentations, this episode is for you.

This episode originally aired as episode 271 on April 5, 2022.

Links:

Show notes at https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/271

Download our FREE workbook on how to position yourself as a thought leader: https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/guide/. 

Join our Thought Leader Academy: https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/academy/ 

Schedule a consult call with us to talk about creating your signature talk and thought leadership platform: https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/contact. 

Connect with Carol on LinkedIn = https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolcox

Related Podcast Episodes:

 


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What is Speaking Your Brand: Public Speaking Tips and Strategies?

It's time to escape the expert trap and become an in-demand speaker and thought leader through compelling and memorable business presentations, keynotes, workshops, and TEDx talks. If you want to level up your public speaking to get more and better, including paid, speaking engagements, you've come to the right place! Thousands of entrepreneurs and leaders have learned from Speaking Your Brand and now you can too through our episodes that will help you with storytelling, audience engagement, building confidence, handling nerves, pitching to speak, getting paid, and more. Hosted by Carol Cox, entrepreneur, speaker, and TV political analyst. This is your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience.

Carol Cox:
Are you providing transformation or

information in your presentations in content

here while you want to increase the

transformation and decrease the information

in 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. The past few episodes have

showcased some of our recent graduates from

our Thought Leader Academy.

Last week we had on Christie Rocca,

and Christie and I talked about the hub and

spokes of your thought leadership message.

The week before that was with Nicole Edwards,

and we talked about creating a memorable bit

for a keynote talk.

That's a really fun one.

And then the week before that,

we had Kelly Carlstrom,

who's a pharmacist and our lead speaking

coach, Diane Diaz, and they talked about

working together to create Kelly's lead

generation signature talk.

So those are great episodes to listen to.

If you want to get a sense of what the women

in our Thought Leader Academy work on and how

they're using their thought leadership and

their signature talks.

Today, I want to talk about providing

information versus transformation in your

presentations, your keynotes and your content

in general. So there's a difference between

information and transformation.

I know that whenever I work on a presentation

like a training or even a keynote or the

agenda for the in-person client retreat we're

holding in April, my default,

my instinct is to think,

first of all, the information I want to

convey to the audience,

everything I want to teach,

all the tips, all the techniques,

all the strategies.

And you may be the same way,

but I want to challenge you like I challenge

myself to reduce the information and increase

the transformation.

And I know this may at first seem

counterintuitive because of course we want to

provide value to our audiences,

but I promise you there is more value in

transformation than there is an information.

And why is this? Because you'll have a bigger

impact on your audience when they can see

what's possible for themselves,

and also by providing more transformation

than information.

This is the way you get traction on your

thought leadership message, and this is how

you can increase your prices both for the

speaking fees that you charge and the pricing

for the services and programs that you offer.

So we're going to dive into that today.

I shared on LinkedIn recently that I'm a bit

obsessed with business TV shows like

Succession We Crash and Inventing Anna.

I'll share later in this episode the three

lessons I've taken from watching these real

and fictional characters.

Three positive lessons that we can take.

Because certainly if you've watched any of

these shows, you know that what they do,

what these main characters do is not always

what we would want to role models. So we're

going to take three positive lessons from

that. Now let's get on with the show.

I don't know about you,

but I feel inundated with information all of

the time, whether it's updates from the

people I follow on social media podcasts,

I listen to shows, I watch the news articles

that I read. It's just a lot of information

to consume day in and day out.

And of course, I enjoy it.

I enjoy the podcast, I listen to the TV shows

that I watch the LinkedIn post from people I

follow and so on.

But it's still a lot, and this is why I want

you to start thinking about transformation

and not so much information in your

presentations and content.

In times past, information was harder to get.

You had to go to the library to look up

something. You remember doing that back in

the day? I certainly do.

You had to buy a set of encyclopedias if you

wanted to have quicker access at home.

If you think about it, as a kid, we had a set

of encyclopedias. If we wanted to look up

something like information about a country or

something that had happened in history, and

now literally we can just put a search into

Google. How amazing is that?

Or we had to ask an expert who might know the

answer. Information in the past was at a

premium. If you knew a lot and you could

share a lot, you were highly valued.

Now, however, since information is ubiquitous

and answers to questions can literally be

found with a quick search on our phones,

or by asking Alexa or Siri having and sharing

a lot of information, isn't that valuable?

It's like a commodity where if you have a lot

of a commodity, the price goes down.

Will the same thing with information. There

is so much information that it's not as

valuable anymore.

And we think though that our audiences want a

lot of information.

This is the expert trap that I talked about

last year in episode 241 of this podcast.

And I believe though if you pack your

presentations with a lot of information,

you're doing your audience a disservice.

You think you're providing value to them, but

really you're providing a disservice to them.

What? Your audience needs from you is

curation, discernment and wisdom rather than

a lot of information. So they need curation,

discernment and wisdom.

Let me give you a few examples.

Imagine that you're interviewing some website

developers to create your new website.

You talk to web developer A and she gives you

a lot of specific details,

a lot of information when you talk to her all

about WordPress and the plug ins that she

recommends, how many megabytes of storage

there'll be, how many words and images she'll

put on the pages, how she'll hook up your

calendar and your payment system and so on.

Whew. That is a lot.

Is your brain feeling full just for me

running off that list?

If it is, you're also less likely to make a

decision and move forward.

So this is also could be hampering your sales

if you're providing way too much information,

way too many of these types of details in

your sales conversation.

Now, this information is useful.

There are some clients of web developers who

want these specifics, so put it in a proposal

document and send it to them.

Now let's look at a different approach,

Web Developer B and what she does.

When you talk to her about your new website,

she asks you what you want your new website

to do for you and your business,

what your current site is doing as far as

generating leads, how you want to be

perceived, how you want people to feel,

and what you want people to think when they

come to your site.

That's transformation.

It's about goals, it's about identity,

and it's about vision of what's possible.

Let's take a look at another example,

an executive leadership coach.

Now, let's imagine Coach A,

you're talking to her because you want to

hire an executive leadership coach and she

talks about all of the features of working

with her. You get six coaching calls that are

an hour each and you get lots of worksheets

to fill out and then she'll review the

worksheets and she'll give you feedback.

So she's running through all of these

details, which is all information,

but does that really help you to make a

decision about whether to move forward?

Now let's look at Coach B.

When you have a conversation with her,

she asks you questions like,

What do you want to accomplish?

Where are you feeling stuck?

What does success look like to you?

That's transformation again,

goals, identity, vision of what's possible.

And we do this ourselves in our sales and

marketing for our Thought Leader Academy.

We talk about how in our Thought Leader

Academy you evolve from being an expert

presenter to a thought leader so that you

could have a bigger impact with your message

on your audiences.

So you can get bigger opportunities in in

speaking and in the media and so that you can

grow your income.

And again, that's transformation,

your goals, your identity as a thought leader

and a vision of what's possible for you and

your business. So those are examples from

business offerings. So let's take a look at a

presentation example.

Last year we did a training on business

storytelling for a very large multinational

corporation. As I was creating the

presentation content, I could have packed it

full of information like the history of

telling stories, why businesses traditionally

suck at storytelling, why businesses need to

use storytelling, and what a bunch of

different people have taught about

storytelling, their different approaches and

their different frameworks. So I could have

just packed this presentation content full of

all this information and research.

But what's wrong with this approach?

First off, it's a lot for the attendees to

absorb in just an hour.

Even if it was several hours long,

that would still be a lot for them to absorb.

The second thing is that it's not curated

content as the speaker,

as the facilitator.

It's my job to learn about storytelling and

then decide what are the pieces I need to

share that are going to be the most useful to

that particular audience.

I need to curate the content for them.

The third thing that's wrong with this

content approach full of information is that

it doesn't walk the talk.

After all, if you're going to teach about

storytelling, you better tell stories in it.

There's also no vision in it,

no vision for the attendees and what's

possible for them.

And there's no applied learning as well.

So here's what I did when I created the

training. First I opened with a fun story and

use the storytelling elements I was going to

teach them. So I use the what I call our

ideal story ingredients ideal as an acronym.

I talk about this in episode 137 of this

podcast. I used humor,

I use suspense, and I used a prop in the

story that I opened with.

And then at the end I book ended the

presentation where I came back to that story

and gave the ending of the story.

So that was I left them in suspense during

that hour. The second thing that I did is

around empathy.

I understood that the attendees were leaders

in this company and they wanted to learn how

to use storytelling to better pitch their

ideas and get buy in from the leaders above

them. So I acknowledge this in the

presentation, acknowledged that they were

leaders who needed to learn how to pitch,

that they could get their ideas out there.

I also practice curation.

I determine the best storytelling framework

to teach them, one that I created based on

everything I've learned about storytelling.

So I took all these different approaches and

frameworks and all the research I have done

and then created a storytelling framework

that would work for them.

I also painted a picture,

a vision of what's possible with

storytelling. I had an example from President

John F Kennedy. I had an example from Malala

in her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

So I played those video clips of how

important storytelling is to paint a vision.

And then I also included hands on activities

to get them involved so that they could

practice storytelling as well.

So you see the difference there between just

a bunch of information versus transformation,

that vision and that curation.

Here's how to think in terms of

transformation versus information.

Number one, empathy.

Get into your audience's heads as you're

working on your content.

What do they want for themselves?

What are their goals and their dreams?

What's getting in their way?

What's keeping them stuck?

And how do they talk about what they want?

So that's number one, empathy.

Number two is vision paint,

a vision of what's possible for them as

individuals and as a whole.

So whether it's a team that you're talking

to, a company, an organization or society or

a community as a whole paint a vision of

what's possible for them,

both as individuals and as a whole.

And number three stories do this through

stories, your own stories and your client

stories and other people's stories. And even

have the attendees themselves share stories.

That's how you're going to get to

transformation. So that's empathy,

vision and stories.

Now, as I mentioned in the intro,

I'm a bit obsessed with shows like Succession

We Crash and Inventing Anna Succession is a

show, a fictional show on HBO that is modeled

after the Murdoch family.

They are in the the news media business.

So it's a patriarch of the family and then

his children who are fighting over control of

the company as he gets older.

And so that succession we crashed is a new

show on Apple Tv+, which is about the

founding of We Work the CO Working Company.

And then Inventing Anna is a show on Netflix

about a real woman named Anna Dalvi.

And basically she's a con artist and she

pretended to be this German heiress and ended

up getting money from bankers and all sorts

of high society people in New York City.

Fascinating shows.

Here's what I see that these main characters,

whether they're real or fictional, have in

common. They have a big vision and they share

it with others.

Confidence sells.

They are uber confident about their vision

and who they are and how they can make it

happen. And then the other lesson that I took

from this is that people want to believe in

something, in someone.

So even though there are red flags,

even though a lot of these characters are

frankly just not that nice,

and we definitely don't want to model the

that behavior.

But really, people want to believe in

something, in someone.

So what I take from watching these shows is

that belief in our vision and the confidence

to put it out into the world in a big way can

make a huge difference.

Your audience wants to believe in the vision

you paint for them. They want something

better. And as a speaker and a thought

leader, that's your role.

Your audience can get the information.

They can get it somewhere out there.

They can even get it from you in your course,

your book, your podcast,

your video series, other documents that you

provide to them.

But in your talks, whether it's a keynote or

a lead generation signature talk,

you're helping them see what the information

can do for them by showing the transformation

that's possible.

Speaking of vision and of course,

we have to walk our talk to you as Speaking

Your Brand. Our vision is to have more women,

thought leaders and more prominent women

speakers. When I do a Google search right now

for thought leaders, what comes up is a bunch

of men, a bunch of white men.

And I am here to change that.

Our entire team is speaking.

Your brand is here to change that because we

know that women's stories,

women's voices, women's experiences,

women talking about the issues that matter is

what's going to challenge the status quo and

change our world for the better.

But we need more prominent women speakers,

women with more prominent voices,

and women as thought leaders to make that

happen. That's why we provide the coaching,

the support and the community in our Thought

Leader Academy and in our Catalyst Collective

program, so that you as a woman have that

support to build the confidence,

to put yourself out there in a bigger way.

And this is what we help you to do in our

Thought Leader Academy as you work on your

thought, leadership idea and platform,

your. Signature talks and your visibility and

revenue plan. We have our next start date

coming up in May.

I encourage you to apply today.

Go to Speaking Your Brand, IMG Academy to get

all of the details and to submit your

application again. That's Speaking Your Brand

academy. In our Thought Leader Academy,

we work together in both the group calls and

one on one coaching calls and our five step

process to help you get clear on your

compelling idea and your thought leadership

message and uncover and connect your core

story, your personal journey to your thought

leadership idea that is so important.

We help you craft your signature talk one for

lead generation in another one that's a story

driven keynote style talk.

You create your visibility plan.

You identify the best monetization methods

for your speaking, including setting your

speaking fees and usually higher than what

you probably would think.

And we also work on delivery for impact and

income while we hear from women who've gone

through the academy is that I gave them not

only these tangible outcomes but confidence

in themselves and a community women who share

the same desires.

The first step is to submit an application.

We then have a zoom call with you so we can

talk through your goals and make sure that

the Thought Leader Academy is the best fit

for you. Again, get all the details,

including pricing and submit your application

by going to Speaking Your Brand academy.

The next episode of this podcast,

I'm going to be talking about the business

case for thought leadership and if your

business is not run around volume.

So in other words, you're not looking for

thousands of clients, which most likely

you're not. You definitely need to listen to

this next episode about the business case for

thought leadership. Then the episode after

that will be the takeaways from our in-person

client retreat. Cannot wait to share those

with you until next time.

Thanks for listening.