3 Ways to Write Your Talk FASTER

Hello everybody, how are we doing today? Welcome to Movers Live. Every Thursday I'm coming in here with you for the next several weeks, bringing you a quick training on something every week that I think is gonna help us step into the place where we are ready with a signature talk that can transform your business. And today we are talking about 3 ways that we can write our talks faster, because I don't know about you, but, uh, Anytime I can shave a little time off a process, I'm all about it. Now, the key is we're gonna talk about 3 things you can do that will help you write your talk faster without sacrificing the important parts that we need to do in order to do something real and that moves our audience. They're not shortcuts, but they are gonna help you move through the process Faster. Okay, so who is here with me right now? Let me know in the comments. I would love to see. I've got this really cool program called Ecamm Live, and I'm still playing with it. I'm getting to know it. And for those of you who do things virtually, maybe you're familiar with Ecamm, and if you're not, I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's really cool. In fact, Today, this morning, they just released a beta version that allows me to do my interviews in Ecamm. Game changer. So excited about it. And yes, Kelly's here. Hi, Kelly. Great to see you. And of course, you guys, this experience gets put eventually over into my new Facebook group. I mean, not my Facebook group, the other thing. We're in my Facebook group right now. Hi, you're here. I'm— I mean, YouTube. It's going to be uploaded into YouTube. Hi, YouTube. So eventually some folks are going to be able to watch it over there. And if you haven't yet, if you have not yet joined me over in YouTube and hit subscribe and everything, I hope that you will because Uh, these are not the only things that are over there. Podcast conversations, interviews with people, some just fun videos that I've made are all over there. So I really hope that you will follow along with us over in YouTube and stick with me here after this short training. At the end, I will take questions. So as you're going along, if you think of something, throw it in the comments. I will see those. I may not take them right that moment. I may wait till the end before I can really take it, but I want to, and I love it. I love taking your questions. It's my favorite part. Unscripted, baby. That's what we're all about. Okay, so today we are talking about 3 things that you can do to move through the writing process a little bit Faster. And this feels really timely because some of my speakers are in the process of writing and moving towards our showcase that is next Thursday, a week from today. You'll see some stuff. I finally— I'm able to schedule it today because it's a week out, so you'll see some things in the group here. But next Thursday Evening, we are doing the STS, or that's short for Signature Talk Studio Showcase. And the STS Showcase is— oh, it's the first time doing it, but I'm really excited. We're going to be highlighting those students who joined me in the STS program this summer, and it's great timing because in a few weeks it opens up again. So if you have that little nagging feeling in the back of your head, if you want to leverage your speaking more for your business on behalf of a message or an idea, pretty soon you're gonna have the opportunity to join me in it. Um, it was a really special experience, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not just saying that because I'm in. I'm super biased, totally admit that, but It was a really incredible experience, and these people are amazing, and I cannot wait for you to hear from them. So that's next Thursday. And some of them, even though they've, they've been through the program, but of course, whenever you're facing a high-stakes deadline, it's like you're back into creation mode. Um, and some people got stuck in creation mode when we were in the program and in the process. And so I am helping them find a way through that. And so I've been thinking a lot about what can we be doing on the day-to-day so that we don't show up in that moment like, "Oh crap, I don't know exactly what I want to talk about. I don't, I just don't feel inspired." And all the things that are very typical. There's really no avoiding it. But there's a few things we can do to smooth that process out a little bit. And so I want to share that with you. Uh, so the first thing I want to share with you is really something that has to be done all the time. It's an everyday thing, and that is really embracing self-discovery and creative growth. And those two pieces really go hand in hand. You can't grow creatively and not be on a self-discovery journey or a self-improvement journey. They go hand in hand. And the truth is, if we waited until the moment we sat down to create for the brilliant ideas to come to us and for creativity to strike and for inspiration and to just have all of the amazing things that we want to share and say and do right at our— just to come forth from within. It's just creativity doesn't work that way. It does not work on our timelines. And so this is something we have to be focused on all the time. So if you are not currently working on a talk, I want you to think about being on the process of it all the time. And when we do that, we become much more attuned to all the amazing resources, ideas, genius moments, the ahas, all the stories that strike us as we are moving along. We begin to see connections everywhere to that idea, right? Even if it's a very general idea. And so that's why I'm amazing speakers often are prolific readers and/or prolific podcast listeners and are finding creative, beautiful things. I mean, I get to spend time scrolling the internet and Instagram and stories and watch videos, and that's part of my job because I really need to answer the question What's moving me right now and why? And what does that remind me of? And what is the analysis? What do I have to say about it? And capturing those in some way. So we really have to embrace that the process of creating a talk is a process of self-discovery and creative growth, and there's no specific timeline for that. It happens all the time. We can't control when the genius hits us, when the genius gets to join us in the room. Yes. And it really— so let's say we're doing that. We are really embracing self-discovery, we're embracing creative growth, and we're really being attuned and paying attention to all the amazing things that's happening. Well, what we also have to do then is have a place where we are capturing these genius things, and specifically capturing stories, really having a sense of what those stories are that you can dig into. Yes, from your own life, but also interesting stories that you read about or see or hear. Or, um, yeah, I mean, stories can happen in the very everyday moments. So that's part one of this, is we've gotta have a place where we dump all of that so that when we sit down, when we're like, oh gosh, I've got to write a talk about leadership, you can go to your story vault, your library, and, and know that you've got good stuff in there, that you don't have to be holding it in this little space. For that moment. It's like your library is there, you've captured these ideas. Now importantly, you can have a library, but if they're just— because I, for years, I just had like a long list of stories, of moments from my life, or memories, or funny creative things that I read about or saw about or whatever. I had a whole list of them That didn't help me that much because when you sit down to write, you're like, oh, what's that story again? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you have to kind of rehash each one of them as you're assessing whether or not it will work for this particular moment or this top talk or whatever you're trying to do with this moment. If when you add a story into your library, you think about the ways in which it could be used, you index it essentially. If you can do that, then it becomes so much easier to pull the right story into your talk in the right moment. So for instance, I have a story that I love to tell about scuba diving. I went scuba diving on my honeymoon. This is a long time ago. I've been married a long time. And truth be told, my husband was the one who really wanted to do scuba diving. Scuba diving. I'm having trouble today, you guys, and yesterday too. I think it's because I'm wearing these headphones and there's like a slight delay, so I can't totally hear myself. Anyway, my husband loves scuba diving, turns out, or was really excited about, super excited about going scuba diving. I was willing, but it really felt like my first sacrifice as a wife. I was like, you are really invested in scuba diving? Awesome. I will support you in that and go with you. But I was not, we were not evolved enough for me to go, hey, Good for you. I'm gonna go to the spa. Okay, you go scuba diving, I'm gonna go to the spa. Now that's probably what I do. But back then I was like, okay, let's do this together. And I'm a really good swimmer. I taught swimming lessons for a long time. I'm a very good swimmer, so I trust myself. But it's just the ocean. The ocean is scary in my mind. It's like space but underneath us. Is anybody else freaked out by the ocean? I'm kind of freaked out by the ocean. And the more I think about it, the more freaked out I get. So, you know, I live in Minnesota. I live nowhere near the ocean. Lakes, give me a lake. Even a murky lake, I'll take it. Over the ocean. So we are heading out to where we are going to be scuba diving, and it turns out everybody else we were diving with had done it before, and Andy and I were the only new ones to this whole experience. And he asked me if I was an experienced swimmer. I said yes, and I think he took— our instructor took that to mean She's gonna be fine. So truly the only instruction that we got on how to do this was like on a flip chart on the way to our dive spot in this really jumpy, bumpy catamaran. And I, I started freaking out. I was like, um, How are we going to breathe and how does this work? And you have to pass this test. And oh my gosh, I will never forget the moment where you're lowering down into the water and I've got, you know, I've got my oxygen tank and I will not let go of this thing. I'm just holding it with both hands and the water is just coming up and I'm hyperventilating. I was so scared. It turned out it was fine. I think maybe I have permanent hearing damage from that whole experience, but anyway, it's a whole thing. But when I tell the story, I've got a short version, I've got a long version. That was just kind of, that was mostly the short version. And there's a lot of things I can do with that story. I could apply that story to a situation where I am, I'm talking about fear, or I'm talking about leadership, I'm talking about using your voice, I could be talking about marriage and relationships, and I mean, there's a lot of different categories I could put that story in if I were to index it. Now, I've indexed my stories so that instead of just looking through the stories, I look through the index. And I say, I need a story about leadership, then I can look down and say, oh, there's this one. Oh, there's this one. Oh, there's this one. So it's worth doing that in the everyday as you go along when those stories just come to you and you're like, oh my gosh, I forgot about that story. 'Cause we forget about the beautiful, amazing stories all the time. And so when you think of it, I want you to not just put it in the library, I want you to index it. What topics could this story relate to? And to be generous with it, you don't have to be, you know, like, let it apply to a bunch of things if you want. Topics that you are likely to speak to yourself. Yes? Does that all make sense? Okay, that's a really important one. Because it's gonna save you a ton of time in the moment, right? Okay. Now the third piece that I wanna share with you is a tool that I use with my speakers called a 5-point outline. Now I think starting with structure will get you farther faster than starting with just a free write. And I know this goes against the amazing, brilliant Anne Lamott, who I think is amazing and brilliant. She's a different kind of writer. She is writing long-form, short-form things, but really she's writing to explore. Writing as exploration is useful for us as speakers, but we tend to, in my observation, in my experience, again and again and again, the people who start just by writing find themselves a little lost, find themselves in new places that they didn't intend to necessarily go. And it's not that that maybe isn't useful for another time. It might be. There's a time and a place for writing for exploration, but I think it is more beneficial to start with a structure. Don't commit to the structure, don't fall in love with the structure, but if you start with a structure, you are more likely to get to a draft that then you can pull apart and, and rearrange and adapt and free write within that structure all you want. Okay, so I want to offer up to you what I think a great structure is and the structure that I recommend to my students to start out with, and that is called the 5-point outline. It's not, uh, rocket science, and it's definitely not new. It's a very classic structure. It's an introduction, 3 points, and a close. I use it all the time. I use it all the time. I use it, uh, in these. I use it in some of my lives. It can kind of expand and contract as needed based on your, uh, timeline and the structure that maybe you've been given for a particular thing. But when I start with structure, when I start with some limitations, actually within that, I feel freer. I don't feel paralyzed by all of the possibilities, okay? And how we begin with our 5-point structure is really by just taking a stab at something. So before you even write, it's like you're deciding the potential places where you wanna go. So you might say, okay, I'm doing this leadership talk, I'm making up this leadership talk, okay? Okay, so what story might I start with for this leadership talk? Well, maybe I'll tell the scuba diving story. So scuba diving story, and the point I want to make with that scuba diving story is to use your voice and to listen to your gut when your gut is screaming at you, right? That the gut, the gut can be a leader for us. Whoo! I'm gonna write a little TED Talk right here with you guys, okay? So we listen to our gut. Then I'm gonna make 3 points that are related to how powerful the gut is for us, especially as women, right? Like inner knowing. I don't know. This isn't a real talk, so I don't know. Help me out. What do you think? Let me know in the comments if you can think of a few other things that I could say about leadership as your gut as a leadership source. Right? Yes, maybe something about women in particular, and then maybe something about like the logic-emotion balance. Okay. All my Enneagram coaches are like, "Talk about the Enneagram!" Totally, right? Okay. Then you— so you just are brainstorming 3 things that you could say. Don't overthink it, just 3 points. Then you think of a close, if there's a quote that you love or a final statement. And the close, you can, you can wait on a little bit more if you, if you need to, okay? Because, uh, it, it, it's— it writes itself in a lot of ways. We usually write the close all throughout the talk and we end up having to go back and find it and pull it and just like put it at the end. Okay. So you have a 5-point outline and you've got just something jotted down for each of those stopping places. Then you sit down to write. And what it does is it, it, it constrains you just enough so that we get to clarity a little bit faster. Now you're still going to explore in your writing. You're still going to discover new things. And you might even say, actually, I thought it was about this, but I think it's really about this because this is what I keep saying. And, um, I have got 2 points here in this 1 point and I can stretch those out or whatever. There's all kinds of things that happen in the process. But when we start with a 5-point outline, I think we get to a draft faster and with so much less pain and stress. Yes? Okay, so these are my 3 points for you today to help you get there a little faster. We are going to make sure that we are embracing self-discovery and creative growth all the time, not just when we sit down to write, but all the time, then we're going to make sure we capture those things. And when we capture our stories, we're going to index them. It's number 2. And then the last piece is utilizing— before you sit down to write, write out a quick outline or structure of some kind. Use any structure you want. Don't— there's lots of different ways to do it. But start with a very, very 20,000-foot view on what you might say and start there before you dive in. I think that's super powerful and it makes a big difference. Okay, I'm here for questions if you have them, and if not, That's okay too. It's such a gorgeous day today, you guys. Are you getting outside? Are you there? Okay. While we're chatting, see if questions come in because I know I'm a little behind or I'm ahead, you're behind. I don't know. There's a little bit of a delay. So I'll pause here and wait and see if any more questions come in. But I want to make sure of a few things. I mentioned them at the top and I want to come back to them here. I'll be doing this weekly, so please come join us live. It's super fun. I love seeing you here, and especially because it's a chance for you to ask questions. On October 12th— wait, one more thing before that. Next week, the Signature Talk Studio Showcase goes live Thursday night. It will be broadcast into the Be Moved Speaking Facebook page, so not this group. It'll be on the Facebook page, and I will probably restream it into here if you want to catch it that way as well, because I want to share it as many places as we can, because these people are brilliant and they've been working really hard, and I can't wait for you to be inspired by their bravery and learn something too, because they're brilliant. Okay, so that's Thursday. Then the following Monday, we start our 5-day challenge, and this is a tiny little peek into that challenge. It's 5 days to take you from, I want to speak, but I'm not quite sure what about, to, okay, I've got my talk topic, I've got my building blocks, I am ready to do this thing. And then I will be inviting you into the Signature Talk Studio. You don't have to join the studio to be in the challenge. I just want you to come join me in the challenge because I want to get more people out sharing their voice with the world. So that is my hope, is that you will join us for that. If you are in the group, you're going to see the challenge, but I want to make sure that I have your email address And not just because a lot of you are on my list already, but I want to know that you want in on the challenge because there's specific communication that needs to go out about the challenge. So I'll be bugging you guys about that over the next week, but I want to make sure that you get signed up into the challenge specifically. Okay, um, we're gonna be doing giveaways. I'm planning some of that giveaway stuff today. There's a lot to do. There's a lot to do. I'm really excited about it. Oh my gosh, um, giveaways. I'll be doing— going live every morning at 9 AM Central Time. I know that's not a great time for everybody, but it's, it's, um, it, it gets most people in the morning before they go off into their day, so that by the end of the day you're coming back and you're posting your challenge activity. So every day you'll have a specific thing that you need to do, and you'll come back, and, and people who do it every day get something fun. I'm still dividing— deciding exactly what that's gonna be. Aha! All right, uh, all right, I think that's it for me. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. Yes? All right, my friends, let's do this. Oh, hmm, here we go. Bye!