In this mini‑episode of the This Moved Me podcast, host Sally Koering Zimney explains how speakers can design talks that truly connect with a specific audience. She argues that the ultimate goal of any presentation is resonance—making the audience feel seen, heard, and understood—rather than merely showcasing the speaker’s credibility. To achieve this, Sally outlines four core questions that should guide audience preparation: (1) What do I want the audience to know? (2) What do I want the audience to believe? (3) What do I want the audience to do (behave) after the talk? and (4) How do I want the audience to feel? She illustrates each question with concrete examples, such as her TEDx talk about the “unspeaker” concept and a sales‑pitch scenario where the desired feeling was “valued.” Sally emphasizes that the fourth question—emotion—can reshape content strategy, citing Maya Angelou’s insight that people remember how they felt more than what was said. She invites listeners to share their own audience‑prep questions, directs them to a free audience‑prep worksheet on thismovedme.com, and encourages further engagement via social media and email.
Chapters
Hey everybody, and welcome to This Moved Me, a podcast about creating talks that move the world. With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking, because a good talk can move the world, and it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful. That's not a small task. I love your giggle. Wow. Oh my gosh, so we're waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Hey movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney and welcome to a mini Moved Me here on This Moved Me, kind of a tiny little version of the real thing. Where I get to interview speakers and share their insights on how to create more talks that move the world. And today you get to just hear a little bit of, hopefully, some insight from me on how, yeah, we can continue to create talks that move this world of ours. And today I want to talk with you about audience. How do we prepare our content for a particular audience? How do we, uh, do some research on that audience? How do we get into their mindset? How do we kind of find their world so that we can connect to it? Because if you're a mover, and I know you are, you are not just phoning this in, right? That's not what movers do. It means that you, uh, are preparing a talk for a particular audience. And I want to share with you some of the key questions that I ask myself so I can get into the right frame for an audience. Because what we're going for, of course, when you're thinking about your audience is resonance. Now my goal always in any talk is connection. That's the goal. It's not to build my credibility. It's not to impress people. It's not— it might be those things too, of course, but Ultimately, the goal is to create a connection, and resonance is how you do that, okay? Because our audience at its very core needs to believe that we know and understand them, that we get what they're going through, that they feel seen, they feel heard, without us being able to see and hear each one of them individually, right? We want We want them to know we get what you're struggling with. And then we, as speakers, need to have a really clear understanding for ourselves about how we in particular, like how you in particular, speaker, and how me, Sally Koering Zimney, in particular, can attend to something that they're struggling with. OK, so we're looking for that Venn diagram of audience and speaker, right? And that little place in the middle where they cross, that's where we connect. Now, I just want to make sure that there's no confusion here. What I am not talking about is how similar you need to be to your audience, okay? Being similar has nothing to do with resonance and connection. You do not have to have the same life experiences or even really understand their life experiences in the sense of you've walked in their shoes or been there, right? But we as speakers do need to have a deep sense of empathy and connection for the people that we are talking to. And if you can't, this is gonna be really hard. But of course we are— you can, because you're a mover, and empathy is a huge part of what we do as speakers in order to share our and other people's stories. So you got that, I know you do. Your job as a speaker is to create a bridge to your audience. And so there are 4 questions that I like to think about when I'm thinking about my audience, okay? And too often, there are some audience questions, hopefully if you're speaking at an event, you're hearing from the event planner about the audience, there might be some demographics that might be useful for you. And I think those are all great and important, but these questions, I think, dig a little bit deeper. And so I wanna share them with you, okay? The first question that I ask myself is, what do I want my audience to know? Okay, very simply, what do I want them to know? This is about high-level content, content-focused. So in my TEDx talk, I really wanted them to know that an unspeaker could be any of us. All we need to be an unspeaker is to be authentic, connected, and courageous. That's all, right? That's not a high bar. Just kidding. It sometimes can feel like a high bar, but it's a very different bar than what most people think is the reality for speaking, right? Most people think that, right, if they don't fit the category of speaker, then they can't do it or do it well. And I just think that's baloney, right? Because it keeps too many of us who have a story to share and something to say from really doing it. And so that's what I want them to know, that an unspeaker could be any of us, and all you need is to aim for authenticity, connection, and risk or courage. Okay, so for you, and you're thinking about your talk and this audience, what is the core message? What do you want them to to know? All right, don't get too bogged down in the details. Keep it really high level. And, and of course, know that, you know, you might set out with something that you want them to know, and by the end of the process, it might be totally different. Gosh, it's fun, isn't it? Creative process. Okay, so that's the first question. The second question is, what do you want your audience to believe? All right, so I wanted my, and I want my TEDx audience to believe that they can be an unspeaker, that we need more unspeakers in this world, right? So it's a value statement, it's emotive, the thing that they need to believe in order to do what you want them to do, which brings us to the third question, which is how do you want them to behave when they're done. All right, so this is very action-oriented, right? It can be really specific, like, I want them to go sign up for my course when this is done, maybe. Okay, but for me on my TEDx, it was that I wanted the audience to unspeak, to risk, to connect, to share their authentic selves, to do what it is that I'm talking about. All right, so hopefully it was an empowering and inspiring talk in that way. And knowing this really helped me to try and make it compelling in that way. Okay, now I will say TED Talks, TEDx Talks, and TED Talks aren't the best at actionable, right? They can be very much up in the head, but that's one of our challenges is to get into action. Right? And sometimes people take that too far, so there's a push and then a push too far. So the call to action part of like selling from the stage, I'm not a big fan of that, right? I kind of think that can be kind of salesy and gross, but let's not delude ourselves that all talks are asking for some kind of action, right? We are asking for some sort of shift in the way people are thinking or operating in the world, right? So, you know, I don't want to be too hoity-toity about the selling from the stage. To me, it's what are you selling and is it something that people need? And is there, you know, I don't know, we can have a whole other conversation sometime about selling from the stage. Should we do that? Let me know if you'd be interested in that. I'd love that. And fundraising asks are great for this way because the action, the call to action is so clear and everybody knows it, right? And so it's a really, that's a really unique talk form that I've done a lot of work on. And it's a great practice in getting comfortable with sending people out to action. Right, and doing it in a way that doesn't feel gross, okay. So yeah, there's something there, we can keep talking about it. Okay, so that was my third question, right. Let me just summarize really quick. What do I want my audience to know? The second question is, what do I want my audience to believe? Third question is, how do I want them to behave? Which leads us to the last question. How do you want your audience to feel? Now this is my favorite question to ask because it creates this wonderful emotive filter to use when thinking about your content development. I was at a client's the other day talking about doing— they're doing this big sales pitch and these are not typically my favorite talks to work on, right? Because I don't know, they're they're not about the stuff of life in the same way, and of course those are the kinds of talks I really enjoy, but once I asked this question, it sort of changed the way I felt about it. I asked them, "How do you want them to feel at the end of this?" And oftentimes the answer, especially in a sales pitch, is excited, jazzed, you know, curious, but what they said was, valued. We want them to feel valued. We want them to know that, for example, you know, that they may not be our biggest retailer, but they are really— they're important to us, and I don't think they know that yet. And so that's a big piece of how we want them to feel. Well, that changed everything for me in terms of my approach to this content. Now imagine for a second if they had said, "We want them really curious about what's coming in the spring." Well, I would approach that with, you know, some trying to build some anticipation, maybe a little bit of teasing, you know, I don't know, you could lean into some coy kind of charm, right? Sharing some of those interesting details that get people really curious and excited, but thinking about it as valued, right? They want them to feel valued. Now my job as coach is to find ways to share sincere appreciation, right, to make room in the content about— to share some of the story of, of how their partnership has grown, right. And, and the connection, the way we create connection in the room and the space is going to be really paramount to creating that feeling. To me, the fourth question can change everything. Those first 3 questions are really important and they're good to know. You gotta check off those boxes, but I want you to really sink in deeply to question number 4. How do you want them to feel? And aside from the fact that Maya Angelou so wisely said, "People will forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel," she was onto something. I think this is the critical orienting thing to keep in mind when you are developing your content. Okay, so my question for you is, what do you ask as you prep for a particular audience? How are the ways that you try and step into their world? What are the questions that you ask yourself? Reach out to me. I'm @thismovedme on all of the interwebs, all over the interwebs, or just send me an email. I'd love to hear from you. So right now, if you, if you want to dig into this a little bit more with me, head over to thismovedme.com. You can download on this episode a little audience prep freebie so you can customize your talk with an audience filter in mind, especially with that feeling filter. And I'd love to hear how does it change it. For you. It does. Cool. Okay, that's it for me. This is fun. Talk soon. This moved me. What's moving you? All right, here we go. It's movers! It's movers. I wish I drank coffee.
