280 How to be Memorable on Stage - Part 2 - The Before

Today we are talking about the before, and this is really important because the moment before you begin is arguably the most important moment of your talk or your workshop or however you step out front. So what do we do with the before? 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? I got to fix my light because I don't like it. Hold please, I'll be right back. Hold please. Let's see. Better! Ah, so much better. Okay, it is part 2, part 2 of the How to Be Memorable on Stage series. This is important, okay, because if we show up out front and we've spent all this time perfecting our content, we've spent all this time time finding the opportunity, but we do not make an impression. We do not really leverage some of these powerful tactics so that people remember. They remember what we've worked hard on. They remember us as a leader and a thought leader and, uh, somebody with authority and something of value to offer them. They feel connected to us. If they don't, all of that effort will be for nothing, my friends. We're gonna avoid that. And so I am really excited to share with you this series, and you'll notice I call you movers. All right, my company, it's called Be Moved, and my belief is that if we want to move our audience That is our goal. My speakers, I want us focused on moving our audience. Then we ourselves have to be moved, which is the training and the coaching part. We are moved so that we can turn around and move our audience. Okay, I try and move you, you move your audience, right? That's how this works. So as soon as you step into my space, you're a mover to me. Just know that if you're like, why are you calling me a mover? I don't love to dance, Sally Koering Zimney. I don't know. And you do this dance party, are you a secret— is your secret love— do you secretly want to be a dancer? No, I don't. I don't. I promise. But I'm talking about the emotional moving. And that is particularly important for us today as we talk about being memorable. Isn't that the secret desire that we have way deep down is for us to have one of those moments that people never forget? They remember, they remember us, they remember a moment, they remember a story, and most importantly, they're like, that person right there, this is the person that I want to step in closer to. Hey, we don't want to be forgettable. Mm, no, no, no, no, no. Last week we talked about, we went over the overview of all 5 aspects that we're going to be talking about in this series. And this week we are talking about the before. Okay, this is really the first element. And then over the next few weeks, next week we'll talk about stories. The week after, after that, we're going to talk about the BET— beginnings, endings, transitions— and what happens in between. The BET and the between. And then the final week, we will talk about movement. And what I mean by that, I use that phrase a lot, what I mean by that is really about how, of course, how we move, how we use the stage, how we embody what we're talking about, but also the flow and the movement of your content. It has movement to it. It should not feel stagnant and flat. It should have movement. So these are, these are higher-level delivery techniques. Okay, so I'm pulling out kind of the, the high-level pieces that I go over in my programs, especially the Signature Talk Studio program, which maybe you've heard me talk about. And I know some of you are in and/or have done or are planning on doing it. So I'm giving you a little bit of a sneak peek here, and some of these are even slightly even more refined than what we're doing in STS. So there's kind of the whole scale of very beginning level things I'm talking about here and mastery-level pieces that we're gonna be talking about. And today is all about the before, because it is so, so important. That moment before makes all of the impression. Last week I was speaking at SoloCon, and I know some of you were there or checked it out. I hope you got a ton out of it. I was thrilled to be a part of this conference. Harris, uh, is a friend of mine and we've connected several years ago through his Story conference, which is a beautiful, amazing experience. And he's now developed SoloCon and tapped me on the shoulder and said, I would really love for you to come in and be the speaker coach. I want you to be the go-to speaker coach for SoloCon as well as for Story. And I was like, oh, that is so awesome. I'm so excited and so excited to be sharing the virtual stage with some truly incredible people, one of whom was Seth Godin. Now, I am— Seth Godin's a hero of mine. Read all the books, I get his emails every day. I'm just like, want to soak up his brilliance. He is such a leader. We talk about thought leadership. Seth Godin, right? Because he is shaping culture. He is shaping the way that we move forward. He's trying to chart a new way forward for people. And that's what I feel like our role as speakers needs to be as well. We're trying to shape a new way forward with our words and how we show up with our audiences. And I was really excited to hear what he had to say. Such a legend. Now, there are so many other amazing folks speaking up there as well. And typically, this is how the rhythm of that experience went. Now, if you saw this, if you were there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Harris, the producer of the event, would invite the speaker on screen because, of course, it was all virtual at this point. And they would chat for a moment, connect about what they were talking about. Harris would talk often like why they brought them in. So instead of Harris doing a more formal introduction, he would do a little bit of that and then bring them on. They would have a conversation and then there would be like this moment of, okay, are you ready? Let's dive in. And the speaker would be like, all right, I'm ready. Thanks, Harris. I'll go ahead and dive in. And it was this very, very conversational sort of handoff to the speaker. Okay. When we think about before This is the moment we're talking about, the handoff of what I call the con or the control. How do we as speakers, how do we take the con and what do we do with the con once we have it? Now, sometimes there would be this sort of awkwardness of like, do I have it? Do you have the con? Are you handing it to me? Am I taking it? I don't know. It was like this conversational sort of back and forth, which made the beginning Ah, sometimes a little bumpy, a little unsure. And then once the speaker had the con, there was this often what I call chit-chat. Thanks so much, Harris. I'm really excited to be here and to talk with all of you about, um, blah blah blah blah blah. And then they would go into it. Now this chit-chat is very standard. Okay, let me know right now if you are watching, even if you are here on the replay. Let me know in the comments if you recognize the chit-chat. We recognize the chit-chat because the chit-chat is standard fare. We are so used to the chit-chat. It's standard. But you know what else it is? It's boring. It's predictable. It's expected. And so importantly, it begs your audience to stop listening before you've even really begun. It tells them blah, blah, blah. When we think about the before, we're going to do something different. Okay, if you take nothing from this whole series, I want you to take this instead of the chitchat. You are going to pause and then begin with a story. We are nixing the chitchat, my friends. No more chitchat. You're gonna jump right in, like right in, into the story. You're gonna go right there. All right. No, thank you so much. No, I'm so happy to be here. No calling back to something the introducer said. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No telling us about what you're about to tell us. No, no, no. We start with story. And that before moment, the pause, is what makes everybody go and lean in. And wait and wonder. If you just kind of conversate your way in— is that a thing? I don't think that's a thing. If you chit-chat your way in, it is asking your audience to sit back and wait for you to say something that matters because they don't care. They don't care about the chit-chat. Now, most of the time when I push my speakers to do this, there is Resistance. And I get it, I get why they often approach it like really dubious. They're just like, Sally, nobody else does it like this, and I don't want to be rude, and I want to be kind of awkward, and it's so bold, it's like so bold. And I'm like, uh-huh, that's exactly Right. It is bold. And, and what are we doing if we are not going to be bold with the moment that we have? You want to be memorable? Don't do it like everybody else is doing it. It commands attention. And the person who can comfortably sit in that moment and own that moment, I look at that person and I say, this person is a leader. This person is a thought leader. This person is shaping a new direction. I am intrigued. I am pulled in. It matters. Seth Godin, of all the speakers who were headlining in SoloCon, he was the only one who did exactly that. And I watched really, really closely because I was curious how he was going to do it. Harris welcomed Seth, and then they had a bit of a conversation. Harris asked him a few questions. Harris talked about how much his work had meant to Harris, and then Harris cued Seth that he was about to begin. It wasn't totally clear, but here's what Seth did. He took that con, and he never looked back. Instead of chatting back and forth and saying, am I up? Are we ready? Should I go? He took the cue and without hesitating, he paused and dove right into a story. No chitchat, no happy to be here, nothing. He went right into the story. Now, if you are concerned about not thanking the person who just invited you on stage. If you feel like it is so out of context and so out of character that it will be more distracting than engaging, if you feel like you have to— okay, and I hate giving you an out on this— but if you feel like you have to do some kind of chitchat, then I will allow you to say, thank you so much, I'm so excited to be here. Pause. Then start with your story. So we need a moment where it is like, oh, we're starting. Oh, here we go. Okay, so you kind of press reset on it and then begin. What happened with Seth in that moment? It was powerful. It was intriguing and everyone was like, oh, he's starting. Oh, because everybody else had kind of like ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka and we like, they were talking about what they're going to be talking about. It was like talk, chit chat, chit chat, chit chat. And then finally it was like, okay, now we're into it. It is so much more work for you to come back after the chit chat and re-pull people back in rather than take— they are waiting. They're expected. They're wondering what's going to happen. Don't waste that moment. Do not waste the before. Seth Godin did not waste the before. So now if people are like, Sally, are you serious? Are you sure? Are you leading me astray on this? Am I going to look stupid? Is this crazy? I'm going to say Seth Godin did it. You can too. You can too. Movers. Do not waste the before. If you want to be memorable, don't do what everybody else is doing. Do the difficult and powerful thing of dropping right into your story from moment 1, not moment 12 or 7, not after some chitchat here, not because it's what everybody else is doing, so you just are going to follow along. No, no, no. If you have to recreate your own start, because there, there is a, an unknown factor in all of this, and that is how you'll be introduced. Sometimes the introduction is not what we expect. Sometimes it's a little, um, it doesn't set us up very well, but you get to recreate the start. Do not waste the before. Hold their attention. Hold that moment. Stand confidently in that space, in those few seconds where you are pulling people into you before you begin. I will say it takes some getting used to. So if you do it once and you're like, that felt awkward, that felt super weird, Sally, I can't believe you made me do that, or something like that, right? You might not sing it. If you have that feeling, It doesn't mean that it wasn't effective and powerful. It just means it's new to you. Now, I can say that because as a high school speech geek, and raise your hand if you are also a high school speech geek, holding for 2 seconds, that was nothing. In high school speech, we used to walk to the front of the room, stand there, and make eye contact with literally the entire room before we came back to center to begin. I don't want you— please don't do that. Please don't do that. I share that with you because I learned how to get comfortable with that, how to seek connection from the audience before I begin, and to hold that space Because if you can hold that space— 2 seconds, we're talking. 1, 2, go. If you can hold that space, it is powerful and memorable. That's what we are going for. This is something you can learn to get comfortable with, and once you do, you will notice the difference. Your audience will notice the difference. Do not waste your before, my movers. It is your moment, and I want you to stand powerfully in it. Now, coming up in the next few weeks, we are going to be talking about stories. Oh, team, stories are my jam. I love stories. They are the fuel to your talks. They are the source of creativity in your talks, and they're the source of empathy and connection for your audience. Now we're going to do these live on Thursdays at noon for the next few weeks. What I want to know is, what are your questions? Where are you at? If you have questions for me, I want you to put them in the comments. All right. And you can start it funny. It doesn't mean you have to start it like, whoa, I was in the vlog. You know, this is— it does not have to be dramatic. I want the start to be clear. Don't ease into it. Start, start strong with a strong vocal.