In this solo episode, Sally Koering Zimney (Sally Z) addresses speakers navigating the early COVID‑19 pandemic. She begins with empathy, sharing a wall‑mounted list of ways the pandemic can improve us (meditation, gratitude, creativity, etc.) and adds her own belief that speakers will emerge stronger by learning new virtual‑presenting skills. She recaps a recent webinar on virtual presenting, urging listeners to watch the replay or join the next live session on Crowdcast. Sally then outlines three immediate ways she is supporting the community: (1) directing listeners to the Crowdcast webinar replay and future live Q&A; (2) inviting speakers to DM or tag her on Instagram @bemovedspeaking with a brief bio so she can feature them in her #BeSupported stories; and (3) opening her Movers U learning platform on Mighty Networks, offering a free community tier alongside paid courses, with monthly live Q&As and resources. She emphasizes that live events will remain valuable while virtual events will grow, and promises a series of short episodes with five practical video‑message tips to boost confidence. Throughout, she reinforces that speakers’ voices are needed now more than ever and encourages collective resilience and creativity.
Chapters
Hey movers, it's Sally Z with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're going to talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved. This moved me. What is moving Oh my movers, how are you? I hope you are hanging in there. I am thinking of all of you so much right now and I know that, oh my gosh, I feel like the world is changing a lot and changing quickly and every day we kind of wake up to a slightly different reality for some people. It's more than slight. And so just know that I'm thinking about you and feeling for you. And of course, dealing with all of my own stuff too. It's a super intense time. And I just want to share with you, my husband put up on the wall, you know, we've got, because both of us, the work that we do, we use those giant 3M paper Things, you know, that you can stick on the wall, like it's a huge Post-it note. I love these things. They are all over our office and now it's our office because we're both here together. But he posted one that I discovered yesterday. So at some point he had just created it and it is sticking on the wall and it says, "Ways the pandemic will make us better. And I just want to share with you some of them that are on here because it was a really great reframe. It says, learn to meditate, learn to simplify, greener planet, lots of time with family, appreciating the small things, knowing we can manage hard things. Learn to focus on what really matters. So much practice at gratitude. More creativity. We'll learn to use naps and exercise. Our kids will be stronger. We will find unexpected partners. And I just want to add on to this. I haven't put my stuff up there officially on our wall, but I feel really strongly that this pandemic will make us as speakers better. It will. It will. We are, many of us, having to learn some new skills, being pushed and pulled and having to quickly figure things out that we haven't had to do before. And these are not skills that will go away. We will use them again in the future, so I think it will make us better. So last week, if you were there, I hope that you had a chance to come join me at the webinar about presenting virtually, speaking of things that we need to learn and embrace. And oh my goodness, thank you so much to all of you who showed up. It was a packed house and it meant the world to me. And so for those of you who were able to show up, I want you to know I heard you and clearly this was needed. And oh, it just, to be able to help right now feels really good because I want to ease some of your pain. I want to ease the way a little bit for you. And last night we were sitting around the dinner table and I asked my family, you know, what's one word that you would use right now to describe the last week? Because we've been home a little longer than a week, but it's been a week of really focused time at home and schooling at home. And my kids said things like weird and boring and the totally typical not one word quote, "I don't know," unquote, which I don't know, you guys, if you have tweeny and teeny young teen kids, that probably doesn't surprise you either. But my husband said his word was paradoxical. And he said never before has he been so forced to slow down and At the same time, he's never felt this sort of rush and this drive to do, do, do, to pivot, pivot, pivot, you know, like we're all hearing a lot about that. Also, we're finding time to meditate together as a family. You know, those teenagers I was just talking about aren't like jazzed about it, but that is how we are starting our day together, and that's been amazing. So we're finding quiet, and yet we are living under Mm, some enormous stress, the unknown and the uncertainty. We have had more social connections in the past week than we have had probably in the last 2 months, which I don't know what that says about us, but we have connected with tons of people, but it is virtual connection. So a new way, connected yet disconnected, together yet apart, focused and yet so overwhelmed by the world. We're hopeful about the possibilities, and yet it's scary. I am— we're feeling the whole spectrum, and I know that many of you are too. But here is what I want you to know today: your voice is still needed. Your message matters Now more than ever. Because your audience still needs you. And as disconnected as you feel from them, they might also feel from you. And you can do this. Not only will you get through, but this pandemic might make us better. I believe that we are going to discover new ways of connection, of creativity, of creating, and we're gonna discover new ways to impact our audience because of this. I mean, I'm not glad it's happening, but at all, but it is happening and It's helping us, I think. I want it to help us, all of us, focus on loving up our audience, to be there with them and for them. And we are going to embrace a new way of connecting and serving them. And tomorrow, so What I'm gonna do here, my friends, is I'm gonna be sharing today and tomorrow and the next day these shorter little episodes to help us in the now because this is where we're at and we could all just use a little more support and love. So tomorrow I'm gonna be sharing 5 really simple tips for your video messages. So that you can confidently embrace and step into that more virtual art form. I just want you to know live events are never gonna go away. They are too special, and, and I think what might come out of this is a greater appreciation for them. But I think this is time when we're gonna learn and realize the power of virtual events, and they're not gonna go away either. They may grow, they may become more popular after this. Their virtual events are more economical, they're more viral, they're faster and easier to pull off, they're— it's much easier to engage people from all over the world, to bring speakers in from all over the world. So these skills are not just about serving you now, they are about building on your skills for the future. And I am here to empower and support you, my friends. So I'm gonna be reminding you of these 3 things. I'm really focused on these 3 ways that I'm gonna be supporting you right now, and I'm using that hashtag #BeSupported, and I'd love for you to join in with me on this. So 3 things that I'm doing right now to help you be supported, and I want you to take advantage of these resources because I'm creating them for you to help, and from what I'm hearing, they are. So please don't— I know you're probably listening to this on your walk right now, probably not on your commute, but maybe. Most people I know are home and you're listening to this. Take action on these, okay? So number 1, if you weren't able to join the webinar, I want you to— you can go watch the replay. Of last week's webinar, or you can come to the next live one, which I'm doing a week from Thursday. So you can find all of that up on my Crowdcast channel. Now if you guys aren't familiar with Crowdcast, this could be a really cool platform for you to play with in this new virtual world. So go check out my Crowdcast and you can kind of see what it's all about, and if you follow me, then you'll know when I go live. And once a month I do a live Q&A on there that is free and open to the public for anybody, but you'll also see on there the replay of last week's webinar and, um, or you could sign up for the next live one. So go to Crowdcast and search for Sally Koering Zimney. All right, and you will find me and, um, press follow so that you don't miss anything coming up there. Okay, so that's the first thing. You're gonna go to Crowdcast and you're gonna check out the webinar about virtual presenting, okay? Because I think it's good info. I've gotten some great feedback and there was a lot of response from it. Okay, the second thing I'm doing is I'm going to be sharing you. You, my movers and my speakers, whether you Are doing a ton of speaking right now, or you want to, or you are leading an organization or a movement. You have a message to share, and I want to help share that message. Okay, right now when we're feeling so disconnected from our audiences, this is a really simple, easy thing that we can all do to support each other. Okay, so here's how it's gonna work. You're gonna reach out, you're gonna find me on Instagram, @bemovedspeaking is the handle, and you're gonna DM me a photo of you, or you could post it, I suppose, whatever works, info about you and info about what you speak about. Okay, keep it short and sweet because we'll put these into stories. And then my hope is that all of you out there, if you're following along with me or you just follow along the hashtag #besupported, you will find all of these movers that I'm sharing and share it out with your network as well. Because it's so easy to just reshare, you know, to add it to your own story. So let's do this for each other. It's such a simple, easy thing to do, and it absolutely gets me inspired to, to do this. And to those of you who've already sent me your things, thank you. My goal is to do 1 or 2 a day, and I'm just got to keep up with it. Okay, so, but please, I'd rather have them pile up And we'll keep it going for a long time. Okay, so that's number 2. I'm gonna share you Be Moved Speaking on Instagram. Okay. And the 3rd thing, and this is huge and this is super exciting and I'm really jazzed about it and I want more of you in here, is I am opening up Movers U, which is my learning platform, to the public and the community side of it is free. My friends, this is such an awesome resource. I had initially created this, you know, typical small private group for my students and speakers over on Facebook, but honestly, you know, people were just like jumping ship over on Facebook and it was really hard to create community and connection on there because there were some people who were just not on Facebook. So, and I get it, I get the choices there. So I decided to move my private group over to this new amazing platform, Mighty Networks. Have you heard of this? I've mentioned a few resources here. I've mentioned Crowdcast and Mighty Networks. These are all things that maybe you want to be doing with your audiences too. Mighty Networks is amazing and it has opened up so many possibilities for how I can work with you. And one of them is that I can offer a free community alongside paid courses. Okay, so I've got my paid courses are in there. I've got other kind of resources and coaching and other, other options in there for those who choose to do that. But the, the community side of it is free. The connection, the networking, the— there's going to be tons of resources that I am sharing in that, in that free group. I'm doing a live Q&A once a month. I'll be sharing resources and we'll be having conversations and sharing each other in a really important and powerful way. So please, please come join me over there. You can go over to the show notes and find the link there as well. Your voice is still needed. Your message matters now more than ever, and you can do this. We are gonna get stronger through this. We're gonna discover new ways of connection, creation, and impact because of this. And I'm with you the whole way along. Alright, movers, that is it for me, and I will be back here tomorrow with some tips on embracing video and how to make a Step into video with a little more confidence. 5 things you can do. I'll see you there.
