232: Trust the Process

Hey Movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney with Be Moved, and I help purpose-driven entrepreneurs like you create talks that move their audience and the world. Yes, that's right. And on the show today, we are talking about what happens when we do the daring and difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible thing and trust The process of talk creation. Hey movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney 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 you? Hey everybody, and welcome back to This Moved Me, the podcast of Be Moved. My name is Sally Koering Zimney Zimney, and I am your virtual speaker coach. And I'm so glad that you are here today because I want to share with you a little bit about what the journey for me has been around trusting the process of talk creation because, oh my gosh, it's for real. It's for real. The last few weeks we've been talking a little bit about, oh my gosh, resilience and mindset and preparing for our talks. And this is all in moving towards the Signature Talk Studio that goes live in June. And I'm so excited. I am so excited about this course and what it makes possible for so many people so that they can step out front really feeling confident in trusting this core message that you can use not just in that live signature talk that we dream about, but also in the hundreds of ways that we show up and get live or virtual with our audiences right now. So trusting the process for me has been quite a journey, and there's a moment that totally stands out for me in terms of epitomizing what trusting the process looks like. So when I was in grad school a long time ago, I went to grad school for a few different things, but this grad school experience was about studying persuasion, which, um, yes, that is a thing. And how it worked is we would go to this 10-day residency intensive experience where we would do this really incredible deep dive into the subject area, and we would go to classes and have these amazing conversations with professors who— and these mentors were like from just incredible schools from all over the country and would come and offer their guidance and insights and, and really challenge us in powerful ways. And in those 10 days, we would have to create our plan for the semester. It was super intense. Intense is the best word I have for it. And because I am an ideas person, like, I love the ideas, I love creating the plan. I'm just like, yes, oh my gosh, let's do this, and I could do this, and I could do this, and I should read this and this and this and this. And I would spend most of those 10 days, uh, well, like the first 5 of them exhilarated, and then the next 3 totally overwhelmed because I had so many ideas. And I would start down one path and then go down another path. And I was really, by about day 8, I was like, I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I don't know where I am or what I want to do. And every day I would show up to my mentor's office and I would say, I've got it. Okay, I'm going to focus on this and I'm going to do that. And then I would spend a day getting really inspired by that person and that discussion and that brilliant professor. And then I'd come back the next day and go, oh no, no, I've got— I'm gonna do this. And then I would be off in another direction. And at one point, I would just— I just kind of— I remember I, I was standing in her office and I was— I, I just felt so lost and overwhelmed. And I just said, I'm not gonna get there. I, I can't figure this out. And that is when my professor would say to me, Trust the process, and eventually I would figure it out. But man, there were those moments where you're just like, no, I'm not gonna get there. What am I doing? I am lost. I'm dumb. This is dumb. Everything is terrible. And then something would click. If I trusted the process and it would work. And it's not that different from when I was in theater and we'd be putting on shoes— we'd be— shoes. It's not that different from when I was in theater and we would be putting on shows and a few weeks from opening I would think, oh my gosh, we're never gonna get there, this is a mess, this is gonna be horrible. And my directors would say to me, "Trust the process." I mean, work hard, invest yourself, show up, but trust the process. And we would get there. I mean, some shows were better than others, but we would get there. So when I gave my dream TEDx talk, the talk I'd been wishing for and hoping for an opportunity to have and Oh my gosh, this was my moment. And I was about 10 days out from that talk where I thought, um, this is not good. This is the worst. I'm the worst. Do I even know what I'm talking about? Like, I am about to crash and burn in a talk as a speaker coach. This is not good. But I recognized this moment because I've seen it in myself before and in hundreds of other people. So I knew I needed to trust the process. And I kept at it and I moved through it and I got to a place where I was proud of what I had created. And believe me, I had to say to myself in some really low moments, trust the process, Sally, trust the process. Trust the process. Because, oh my gosh, process. Creating a talk is a process, and you cannot shortcut it. Well, you can shortcut it, but you're not going to get where you want to go. The process of creating a talk is a process of discovery, and gaining clarity only comes from working the process. Now, some people who have to create faster than the process allows, what might happen is they just show up with a talk that isn't clear yet, and that's okay. That happens. It's not the end of the world. And what that means is it's just not there yet, and that audience saw a version that isn't clear yet, but they probably did some really important learning in that experience. And that's That's not terrible, okay? What's totally awesome about the talk creation process is that it is circular. So even after you're there and you're like, "Yes, I've got it, I'm there," you still learn, grow, refine, adjust, improve, discover as you continue to do it. It doesn't really end. So when I was in my late 20s, I worked at an organization where we spoke to kids every day, hundreds of kids, 150, 200 kids in a gym. Talking about really big ideas like kindness, courage, respect, and it's really an amazing organization. I learned an incredible amount about speaking, but also coaching, because I became the coach for the 20+ speakers, and each speaker had between like 3 and sometimes even 7 talks, so it was really an incredible training ground for me as a speaker and a coach. It showed me how to work with all kinds of people and, and especially to become an expert storyteller and how to bring ideas to life in a tangible, creative, compelling, interesting way. Because young people, you know, their audience, uh, attention span is a little bit different than us as adults, and they do not put up with fake baloney. They want to know who you are. So it was an amazing training ground for me. But what was so fabulous about this training ground is that it was a masterclass in talk creation because we would give the same talk over and over and over and over. We would finesse, we would tweak, we'd get immediate feedback from coworkers and from kids who love them, are not all that filtered. You know where you stand with kids as an audience. And because I worked with this amazing team of people who were really open to learning and growing, each day out together was a powerful talk coaching session. We were working the process not just over a few weeks but over, for some people, years together. Oh my gosh, amazing. And at the end of several years, I had learned the art of the 20-minute talk. Not just the art of delivering it, but of creating it, coaching it, finessing it, editing it, making it matter, making moments that were magical and transformative. And I fell in love. With the 20-minute talk. Now the skills that I learned in that experience, I use with my speakers every day. Creative storytelling, editing, refining your message, developing a core message structure, memory chunking, how to make it sticky and memorable, delivery, connection with your audience, moving through your doubts and fears, and helping the content really land in the hearts and minds of your audience. It is a process. There's no other way to explain how you become better than just moving through a process. Oh my gosh, I have learned to trust the process because I've watched so many people move through it in all kinds of different ways. But essentially, most people's process looks a little something like this. You create, you refine, you share. You create, you refine, you share. Then you go through a real nasty bout of self-hate, doubt, fear, questioning. But then you create and you refine. And you share. At some pom— at some moment in that create, refine, share process, you will have a moment, what we call illumination. And what that means is that you— something magical has happened and that you are ready enough to take it public. Right? Now, you may have taken it public at some point before in the create, refine, share, create, refine, share, and that's okay. That's okay. There's some really powerful learning that happens in there. I think most of us at that organization were sharing before we felt really ready, and that's okay. There's great learning that can happen there. But when you have that moment of illumination, you're like, "Ah, this is what the talk is about." This is how it lives in me. This is what it feels like. This is— I really mean it now. That content has moved into your body in such a powerful way. And you only get there by create, refine, share, create, refine, share, working that process. And what it requires is for us to experience doubts, questioning, um, really some tough moments of feeling like, uh, the content sucks, you suck, everything is horrible. But we move through that and we create again. We wade through those fears, and then eventually we experience that beloved moment of illumination, clarity, those ahas. My gosh, it's so awesome. But we cannot get to illumination without the process. So as you bring your talk to life in any context, virtual, live, in-person, a webinar, a keynote, a podcast conversation, you must first go through the process. And when you're in that moment of doubt, questioning everything, questioning your own ability to do this thing that you in other contexts are considered an expert from other people, but you yourself are like, what, do I know anything? In that moment, I want you to say to yourself, trust the process and get back into the create mode. Get back in there, work through, create, refine, and share. Oh my gosh. So here's what I want to offer you that I think can be a huge help in starting this process of create, refine, share. And that is a free webinar. Oh, let's try that again. And that is a free webinar. So let me— I'm backing up again. So in order to help you step into this mode of creation, of trusting the process of create, refine, share, I'm super excited to share with you a new masterclass that I have coming out in the next week, and I would love to see you over there. It's called the TED Worthy Talk Map, and in it I share with you this 5-step framework that will help you go from draft— no, in this masterclass, I share with you the 5-step framework that will help you go from idea all the way to a draft so that you can start moving through this process. So I'm going to share with you the way in which I help other people move through their creative process and bring their talks to life. And I'm super excited about this webinar. We've already got people signing up for it, and there's 4 different dates that you can sign up for it, so plenty of time. And I would really love to see you there. You can sign up over at bmove.com/tedworthymasterclass and, um, grab your spot. If you can't make it live, that's okay. You can always catch the replay. But if you are there live, I can take your questions, and that is my all-time favorite part of webinars. I've been going live weekly probably for the last 2 or 3 months, and they are such a delight for me over on Crowdcast. I love it. I love answering people's questions live. Sometimes I pull them up on screen with me, and maybe I'll do that with you too, uh, because it's always fun to see people and hear words out of their mouth. And so if you have a question and you have that little dream inside of you that like, oh gosh, I've always wanted to bring this, I've always wanted to do a TED Talk, I really want to get out there more, I really— you're tired of sitting in the audience and even virtually going, I could be up there, I have something I want to share with people, and you're ready to take that next leap in your speaking, my hope is that you can join me for this masterclass because I think it will give you a really powerful framework to finally pull together that signature talk that you can use in all kinds of different contexts. So, bemove.com/tedworthymasterclass. And I will see you there. Starts June 11th is the first one, June 12th, June 15th, June 18th. Check your calendar, grab your spot. I'll see you there. Thanks, friends. This moved me. What is moving you today? Let me know.