In this episode of the Be Moved podcast, host Sally Z opens with a question she posed to attendees at the Story+Impact event: “What do you want to be known for?” She shares a series of vivid responses from speakers who describe their desired impact—ranging from succession planning for leaders to empowering women, improving provider‑patient experiences, and supporting family caregivers. Sally uses these examples to illustrate why speakers need crystal‑clear clarity about their personal brand and the specific idea they want the world to associate with them. She frames the journey from being an expert to becoming a “thought leader” or “mover” who moves audiences, emphasizing the alignment of three circles: the speaker’s purpose, the audience’s need, and the business model. The core of the episode is an actionable exercise called the “15‑Minute Post‑it Party.” Listeners are instructed to set a 15‑minute timer, gather Post‑its (or Staedtler notes), and rapidly write down everything that answers the question “What do I want to be known for?” without self‑editing. Variations of the prompt (passion, what pisses you off, what you’d risk for) are suggested to surface raw ideas. After the timer, participants review the notes, look for recurring themes, and identify their unique “zig” – the differentiating angle that will shape a signature talk that serves the audience, the speaker’s purpose, and the business. Sally stresses that the exercise is a quick, creative soil‑tilling step, not a final polished statement, and that the resulting themes can fuel future talks, videos, and business offerings. The episode ends with encouragement to schedule the exercise and use the insights to build a signature talk that moves the world.
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Hey movers, it's Sally Z with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're gonna 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 I'm loving you. Today we are talking about this great question, which is, what do you want to be known for? Okay, this is a question that I asked the crew who was at the Story+Impact event. We had some amazing answers, and I want to read some of them to you right now because I took pictures because I was so inspired. Inspired by what people were saying and how they were bringing a thoughtful, intentional approach to this question. So what do you want to be known for? Here's some of the things I heard. From Heidi, I teach seasoned leaders and entrepreneurs how to be passionate about succession and progression planning in their careers, companies, and personal lives. Encouraging multi-generational connections and vitality in life outside work. Ooh, I like it. Katie says, I'm a creative leader and I help women to overcome fear so that they can build big businesses and even bigger lives. Mm, yes. Love it. I wanna be known for communication skills. They are the The difference between excellent providers and good providers, it's not about technical skills. Yes, Catherine. Delisa, I hope I'm saying your name right. Delisa said, I am a hope giver or a storyteller, and I help women to know that they are not alone and to overcome the fear of fill in the blank so that they can Overcoming. Yes. Love, love, love. Kimberly said, I wanna be known for educating and sharing my experience with family caregivers to better care for their loved ones and thrive as a caregiver. I wanna be known for educating and sharing my experience. Okay. Catherine says, I wanna be known for improving the lives of providers and their patients. I wanna be known for helping people increase their joy in their lives and creativity and through their creating. Okay, I have 20 more messages like this. They were all beautiful, empowering. Yes, love it. I want to be known for, I want to be known for helping my speakers build a speaking business that brings the world more joy, that moves the world. I want us as speakers to embrace the journey of moving the world through our talks. That's what I wanna be known for. And that speaking can be joyful. Speaking can be joyful. Nobody ever thinks about it that way, but it's very true. And I will say nobody ever thinks about it that way because a lot of, a lot of my speakers, a lot of the people I work with come to me and they say, well, I'm here because I spoke and it just made me feel so good. It brought me so much joy. I was so excited, but now I don't know what to do from there, which is totally fair. Okay, so what we are going to do today is I wanna introduce you to a really fun activity that's gonna help you. Get a little bit closer to those things that you want to be known for. Okay? You've heard a lot of different things. Now, I wouldn't say that any of those are necessarily final products. Okay? As we were talking about in the event, it's really important that we think about our language in this arena. Our language in terms of how we ourselves want to show up, who you are as a speaker. If we want you to make an impact, if we want you to move your audience, okay, if we want you to have the level of impact that you can really have, then we need to make sure that you have some clarity around who you are and how you show up. So this is all a part of that journey, making sure that you have a sense of really what grounds you and your purpose. It's really important because then we're, we're, we're on this journey from shifting you away from just being an expert who knows things to being more of what I like to call a thought leader, or in my language, a mover, okay? A speaker that moves your audience. A speaker that moves your audience. To do that, you have to really show up grounded in your authentic body in who you are, in your point of view, really learning from the wisdom of your own experiences, paying attention to what's happening in this life so that you can bring all of that with you in those big moments that you have out in front, on stage, going live, all of the different places that we show up. To serve. So it starts with you. So it's a worthwhile question. What do you want to be known for? And this is not— I'm going to share with you an activity, an approach that is just a fun way to get the juices flowing around this and to get some categories figured out for you that will ultimately help you shape a signature talk. Now, however experienced you are in your speaking, everybody needs a signature talk. That's the deal. Even if you're like, I don't necessarily want to become a professional speaker. Great. You're an entrepreneur who wants to leverage speaking. You need a signature talk. Obviously, if you want to turn up the dial on the revenue that you're bringing in as a speaker, you need a signature talk. Talk. The signature talk helps you become known around an idea, but what idea do you want to become known for? So we are not just in the realm of getting clear on who you are, we're also in the realm of getting absolutely crystal clear on what your topic is about. That's right. So even if right now you have a talk, but you're in a phase of mussing, adjusting, evolving, iterating, AKA we're always all in this phase. This is a great chance for you to do a little self-check on this process. Does my talk reflect what I really wanna be known for? Or has my life and work evolved a little bit and I need to take that back? Into the talk and refine and adjust it so that it's really serving you and your audience and your business. All three of those things. Okay. Do you remember from the event we had that Venn diagram? You, your audience, and your business or your purpose. Okay. I like to think of that last little one there. Okay. And this is that business, your purpose. This is what the world needs. Okay. And, and it is the, the manifestation of that need is your business. I just felt like that was a whole bunch of big heavy things. All right. Well, let's get to the activity. It's really fun. It is called the 15 Minute Post-it Party. If you have done a workshop with me or a webinar with me in the past, maybe you've done this activity with me before. It's super fun. We're not gonna do the whole thing right now. I'm gonna talk you through the process so that you can go and do this on your own. Uh, after you listen to this, I want you to just set aside some time. Okay? Put some time into your calendar. And what's beautiful about this is I don't want you to take more than 15 minutes. Okay? If you take more than 15 minutes, it starts to turn into kind of mushy navel gazing. Nope, we're not going to do that. What I want you to do is see this as a short and sweet deep dive. Okay? So you're going to mark some time on the calendar, 15 minutes. And once you arrive at that time, all you need are a bunch of Post-it notes, a pen, a writing utensil of some kind, markers, whatever. If you have— I used to have sitting around here, but everything's a little discombobulated here in my office right now. But if you've heard of Staedtler's— Staedtler's? I think they're called Staedtler's. Yes, Staedtler's. Okay. Staedtler's notes. These are so cool because they're kind of like Post-it notes. They look like a Post-it note, but they're not sticky. They— but they do stick. What you can't see if you're listening on the podcast is I just put it on my wall, but you can move it around. It's so cool. Staedtler's Notes. Slide decide is what it says. Okay, I love it. So you can throw those up there. I want you to, yep, grab your Post-it notes or your Staedtler's, grab some pens. You've got your markers and your pens, and literally all you're going to do is with your, your Post-it note or your staties or whatever. You're going to set the timer for 15 minutes, get you— turn on some fun, like, energizing music is what I would recommend for 15 minutes. And you're going to, without editing yourself, without stopping, you're going to continually answer the question, what do I want to be known What am I passionate about? And don't worry if you're like, I don't know how this fits in with my business, or I don't know how to make this make sense with this or that or whatever. Like, you can talk yourself out of a lot in this moment. That is not the exercise. The exercise is to get all of the ideas out of your head and, and in front of you visually. That's the important part. Okay. And what I love about the staties, if you have them, is eventually, after you get everything out and out on the wall in front of you or out on a mirror or wherever you decide to stick them, then you can organize them afterwards. But for now, all it is is just trusting your gut. Listen, listen to what your body is telling you. Listen to what is coming up for you. Don't question it. Just let it all come up. Okay. Write it down. Stick it on the wall. Write it down. Stick it on the wall. Write it down. Stick it on the wall. I want you to do this for 15 minutes. Okay. If you get stuck, right after, like, what do I want to be known for? Okay. You start to ask yourself other versions of that question. Okay. What am I passionate about? What am I willing to I want to be loud about? What pisses me off? Okay. What is needed right now? Okay. So you can ask yourself all these different versions. It's getting at the same idea essentially. What are the things that you're willing to move through risk in order to stand up and be known for? It's not just what I wanna be known for. Really it's like, What am I willing to stand up and speak about? Okay. If you've done this work from a branding perspective already, chances are your brain is already primed in a certain direction. That's okay, but don't ignore the random stuff that pops up. And I say that because once you're looking at everything and you're looking at all of the Post-it notes and they're all over the place and you're trying to make sense of them, The ones that feel random, don't discard them completely because they, those pieces may provide what I call a zig in your messaging. Like the thing that makes you slightly different from other people. Okay? Because, you know, if you looked at my Post-it notes and my statis when I do this, it's a lot around, of course, storytelling and authenticity. These are all things that are related to each other. And the, the piece that makes me me is this idea of rejecting the notion of doing this perfectly. Because of course, if, if you're going to bring your full self into the moment, if I really believe, and I do, that that's what moves people is, uh, is this feeling of, oh, this is a real life human being. They get my life. I, I get their life. We are having a human experience together and they just happen to be talking about it, right? If that's what I'm passionate about and want to be known for, then I have to bring my zing into this. It can't just be the same language and approach that other people use. Okay? There's a lot of other people focused on speaking and storytelling. I do it a little bit differently. And we, we really wanna hold those things close. So that's why I don't want you to censor yourself at all. Let it all come out. Don't worry about making sense of it yet, but once you're done with that 15 minutes, you're gonna look at it and go, hmm, okay, what are the themes? You start to pull things together a little bit by theme. Your— can keep it up there for you for a while. Okay. Your goal is to not look at that and say, oh, I have the exact perfect language now, or I know how to pull all this together, it's really like you're tilling the soil that you're gonna come back to and plant some seeds in for yourself. And my hope is that a theme does become clear for you, and it can be a really powerful source of not just creative brainstorming for you as you're building your talk, your signature talk, or your new live that you're doing, or you've got to do a video on this or that. You've got all of this stuff that you want to orient your business and work around. Okay, then you go through the work of saying, okay, how can I intentionally bring this to life? How can I be intentional with making sure that it isn't— it's laying the groundwork, not just for a great beautiful, powerful talk, but a talk that serves my business, that serves my audience, and that feel— feels grounded in who I am and how I in particular show up in the world. Okay? So quick review, 15-minute post-it party, not 20, 15 minutes. Grab your Post-its, grab your markers, grab your staddies, whatever you got. Start the timer, pour yourself a glass of wine or cup of tea or some kombucha or whatever helps you just relax and feel in the flow. Press go on your timer and answer yourself the question, what do I want to be known for? What am I passionate about? What do I care about? What about what pisses me off? What gets me jazzed? What would I be willing to risk for? What, what gets me up in the morning? Don't try and make sense of it. Just let it all out there. Okay. Once your 15 minutes is done, then you can try and step back and look at it and see if you can see some connections, some theme. And, and where you zig. Where you zig, where others maybe zag, or you zag and others zig. All right. I hope this was helpful. It's all part of the journey to help you move around that moving speaker's roadmap. That was fun, and I hope you take some time to do that. I know lots of people who have done it, and it has been a very fruitful exercise for them, and it has fed their content for a long time. So I hope that, that it does the same for you. All right, great to see you all. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye!
