[Quick Tip] The Author to Speaker Struggle is Real - Here’s How to Win - 317

Think of these quick tip episodes like a cold water swim. In just a few minutes, you can get some amazing benefits to support you on your speaking journey. And bonus, the only thing that's getting wet here is your appetite to try this stuff out. And if you have a question you want me to answer about anything related to speaking, storytelling, pitching, performance, or humour, then DM me on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Hello, and welcome to another quick tip episode of The Speaking Club Podcast. So today I want to talk to you about something that I see often. Now, I work a lot with authors, business book authors, nonfiction authors, and once they've published their book, they realise that they need to get the message out there because books don't sell themselves. And so often they want to use speaking to increase their impact, to get their message out to more people, and also to monetize their message. But it's often a big struggle to make that transition from book to stage. And in this episode, I want to share with you why it's such a struggle and what you can do to to make it easier to start getting your message out there and to get on stage successfully. So today it's the how to close the book-to-stage gaps, and I'm gonna tell you what they are in a minute, and to create a profitable talk. Now, the first thing that I see, the first issue, is that authors often think that their book is gonna translate seamlessly into a keynote, and then they get frustrated when the talk falls flat. And it's an easy mistake to make because, you know, a lot of people do it, but the truth is that what works on the page isn't going to translate in the same way in front of a live audience. And the reason that it doesn't is because of these gaps which I'm calling the book-to-stage gaps and that I want to take you through today. But it's such an important thing to be able to speak about your book in a way that resonates and connects with your audience because it's not just on stage that we're out promoting our book. You know, Shakespeare said, all the world's a stage, and it's never been truer because you've got, you've got your podcast interviews, You've got your webinars, you've got your YouTube, your social media videos, LinkedIn videos. You've got to be able to connect with your audience in, in, you know, quickly. You haven't got chapters to get their attention. We're going to talk more about that in a moment. So it's super important for you to be able to do this, and I don't want you to fall into the same traps that I see a lot of author-turned-speakers fall into. Okay? So, let's have a look at these gaps then. There are 3 of them. The first one is the knowledge gap. And the reason this is an issue is because when someone buys your book, the likelihood is that they have an inkling of what it's about, and They, they've made a decision to buy it, and you have the opportunity to layer on the learning throughout the book. And this also works for experts who want to turn their course or program into a keynote. These same gaps are going to apply for you as well. And so you, you, you know, you've got that luxury of pages and pages and pages to layer on the learning. When it comes to speaking, you've got a, likely a cold audience. They don't know your topic, and you have to meet them where they are. And the reason that this is such an issue is because we as experts have maybe even had the problem that we solve for people, but often it was a long time ago, and we've been on a journey since. And now we see things very differently. And often we're talking about what people need instead of what they actually want. Or, you know, and we're not able to connect with them in the way that does— works quickly and effectively. So that's the knowledge gap. Okay, so let's talk then about the time gap. Now, again, I don't know about you, when it comes to books, I give a book 100 pages, and if it does— if it doesn't grab me in that 100 pages, then I'll bin it off. But if it does, I will carry on reading. On stage, you haven't got 100 pages to grab your audience's attention. More like 3 minutes, right? So, you've got to get them leaning in super quickly. Okay, you haven't got again that luxury of time to win them over, to show them why this is relevant and important for them, and to get them sitting up paying attention. Okay, so that's the time gap. And then the last gap is called the engagement gap. And the, the reason this is an issue is again because the, the journey is different from someone reading a book to someone in listening and watching a talk. When you have a book, the journey is controlled by the reader and it's passive. They might pick it up, put it down. If they didn't quite get something, they might read the same passage over again, and they've got— they're in charge of that journey. But when it comes to the stage, you have got to manage the journey of your audience. Especially if you want to get them into action, you've got to take around that whole sort of buying journey, customer journey in one go. So, it's a completely different way of doing things. It's got to be dynamic. It's got to be experiential. You've got to show them, not tell them. Okay? And I know that we use stories in books, but you just, you You can't do it in the same way as a speaker as you can as an author. Okay? So, I call these gaps, first of all, for the knowledge one, the expert to beginner. We fall into this expert trap. It's something I've talked about on the podcast before. You know, we've got to get into a beginner's mindset and share about the issue from that perspective to make that connection. The time gap, this is about going from hours to minutes in terms of making that impact and getting people around the journey. You know, you've, a keynote is probably 45, 60 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes. I'm doing a main stage keynote at an international sales conference, and it's just 20 minutes. And it's actually harder to get your message across in a shorter period of time, as you might, might know. So, you've got minutes instead of hours. And lastly, with the engagement gap, it— we're going from a passive journey consumption to dynamic. Okay? So, those are the 3 gaps. And it can be super frustrating when you don't get the results that you want when you speak. And I know all about that because back in 2010, I left the corporate world to start up my own company, and I'd been doing stand-up comedy and performing for about 10 years at that point. Well, I've always sort of performed, but telling stories, doing stand-up comedy for about 10 years, sort of, you know, professionally, if you like. And I thought it was going to be an absolute breeze for me to bring people into my world, grow my business using speaking because I had those skills and I could, you know, engage people. Unfortunately, what I found was that I was getting crickets. And here you— if you're watching on the YouTube video, you'll see a picture of me and my daughter here when she was little and me doing stand-up comedy. And one of the big drivers that I had for leaving was that I wasn't spending enough time with my daughter. And I knew that I didn't want to be an HR director. I kind of got to the top and thought, is this it? And then that's why I started my company. So, I was expecting to use speaking and convert people really easily, but actually, although I got lots of compliments and I could captivate them, I wasn't getting the conversions. And so, I ended up going back into the corporate world with my tail between my legs, but like, I believe in failing forward. And there is no such thing as failure, really. There's only feedback. That's an NLP thing. If you haven't heard it before, it's a really super useful thing to bear in mind. There's no failure, there's only feedback. So, the feedback I got was, you need to sort yourself out, Sarah. You need to learn what you've done wrong and get out there and fix it. So, I realized that the issues I had were probably around sales, marketing, and influencing. So, I set off on a 5-year odyssey. So, I was working, and alongside, I was doing sales, marketing, and influencing training. I was reading all the books. I went to the best direct marketing gurus in the world to find out exactly what I'd been doing wrong. And what I discovered was a new definition of marketing that I'd not heard before. And it was this: marketing is changing beliefs with the intent to sell. And I was like, oh, hold the phone. Actually, that applies to speakers too, because speakers have to change beliefs, and they are selling, even if it's only an idea. Like, if we're getting paid to speak, we still want our audience to come on board with the idea and get into action. And so, I said, well, for me, I'm gonna use that definition for speaking. Speaking is about changing beliefs with the intent to sell. And often we're not just selling ideas. We're using speaking to get us booked for more gigs. So, we're selling ourselves as a speaker and the value that we can bring as a speaker. We're also selling potentially people into our programs. We're Or we want some spinoff business from the organization and so on. So, we are absolutely wanting people to get into action. And so, I learned all about the psychological triggers for attention and for action. I learned how to proactively dismantle objections. And instead of just consuming this stuff, I probably said before somewhere on the podcast that I spent about 3 to 4 years doing copywriting on Fiverr to actually implement the learning. And, and so that's why I don't just teach speaking, I teach marketing as well, because I think the two are intrinsically linked. I call it sparketing, if you haven't heard me say that before. So why is this relevant for you as an author becoming a speaker? And I think because what I created as a result of everything that I learned on that journey will help you close the gaps and is what I used to create what I call my Profitable Talk model for keynotes that are able to convert a cold audience. Okay? And what I want to do now is take you through the underlying principles of this Profitable Talk model, So that you can use the same principles when you're creating your keynote content from your book. Okay. So, um, and what I did was I didn't just take all the stuff that I learned. I wrapped in the storytelling and the comedy and the performance stuff into the model that I teach and use today called The Profitable Talk. And in terms of the results that this you know, model that I'm going to sort of take you through the key principles of, in terms of the results that it gets. Well, for me, it's been a game changer. You know, I use the same model when I'm doing podcast episodes. And that's, you know, we've got a top 1% podcast now. I've got so many conversion sales into my courses and programs when I've used this model. And it's not just me though, it's my clients too. And if you're, you know, if you're watching, you'll see the slide, but effectively one of my clients, he's a professor, Professor Monda Ram, he's been on the show, talks internationally, and a talk he did at a big launch event for a huge report that he was involved with, his talk opening, the, what I call the lightning bolt opening, got the headline in the Times newspaper. So talk about making an impact, it really, you know, it's good stuff. Kyla is a copywriter. She has also been on the show. She's one of my clients. The first time she used this Profitable Talk model, uh, in her signature keynote, she converted 40% of the audience, uh, and they became members of her Copy Cafe program. And if you struggle with copywriting, definitely worth checking that out. And then Deb Mashek, uh, also has been on the show. She's a collaboration expert, has written a great book called Collabohate. When she used the Profitable Talk model for her keynote, she got 3 gig booking leads on the back of that talk. So, this is the thing. We want to get a talk that will have impact to convert our audience and get us more speaking gigs. So, I'm gonna take you through it now. So, there are 3 underpinning principles or jobs to be done. In the profitable talk. Okay? The first one is that we want to get the attention of our audience and keep the attention of our audience. Nothing new there, maybe. Second thing we need to do in our talk is we need to shift beliefs. Okay? So, I'm going to double-click into these in a little bit, in a moment. And then the third thing we want to do is get them into action. Because for me, it's not enough to inspire. It's not enough to, you know, captivate, because that's what I did before, but I couldn't get them to actually get into action, or not enough of them. So these are the 3 things we want to do. We want to get attention, we want to shift beliefs, we want to get our audience into action. So let's double-click into the first one. So as I said, in terms of getting attention, We've gotta do that at the start of our talk, and we've gotta keep people hooked all the way through. So, there are these psychological triggers that you need to tap into in your talk, and they are curiosity, fear, and desire. Okay? So, you've gotta find some way of connecting with how your audience, you know, feels in relation to the problem, and consider those 3 triggers: desire, curiosity, and fear. All right. The next thing you've got to do is absolutely make it relevant and relatable to them. If it's— if this goes back to that expert mindset, you've got to be able to quickly get the problem that you solve across to your audience in a way that they can get super quick, super easy. You know, you haven't got the time for, you know, technical frameworks and Jargon, you've got to get them straight away. Okay? And as I said, these things don't just apply at the start of your talk. You've got to keep hooking them and engaging them all the way through. So, that's attention. Let's talk about belief now. Before I go into the sort of underpinning things around this, I just want to share one of the key things around belief. I'm going to ask you a question. Have you Ever fallen in love with something, maybe it's a product or a hobby or a new idea, but you've not got the reaction that you want, especially when you share it with friends and family? They've not— not only have they not been excited, but probably they've started finding fault. Does that happen to you? Yes. They rain on your parade. That's happened to me loads, and I didn't understand Why that happened until I did that 5-year, you know, sales, marketing, and physics odyssey. And now I do. And I'm going to illustrate to you why this happens by way of the story of me getting into paddleboarding. If you are watching on YouTube, you will see some lovely pictures of paddleboarders. If you're listening, you can use your imagination. I'm going to paint the picture for you. So, I want to take you back to 2020. It was COVID. It was quite a stressful time for everyone. I was quite stressed, obviously. I have a speaking business. It was a little bit testing for me at that time, but we were allowed out, and I'm so lucky that I live by the coast. So, when I was out on my walk, I was walking by the beach. It was balmy, it was summer, it was in the evening, it was dusk. And the sea was like a lake. It was just like a pond. And all of a sudden, I noticed this woman on a paddleboard. And I'm going to use the word gliding. She would look like she was gliding across this water, looking serene, looking happy, but— and she was also having exercise. And I love it when you combine stuff with exercise. And I was like, oh my goodness, that looks amazing. Oh, I quite fancy that. And what happened, right? And this happens to us, you know, when you buy a new car or something, suddenly you start seeing all the same cars. Our RAS filters kick in, and that's because whatever we pay attention to, we get more of. Suddenly I started seeing paddleboarders everywhere, you know, in these beautiful locations on TV, in magazines, you know, by the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, everywhere. And I was like, oh my goodness. That is it. I want to do that. I want to be a paddleboarder. And at that point, I bought in emotionally. Okay? And then what I did next was go and look at the magazines, go and look at all the jargon, look at the equipment, and I bought in at that point logically. So, first emotionally, then logically. And what happened next was? That was the point that I went out and started telling people about it. And this is the mistake that we make. We tell people about stuff when we've logically bought in and we've got a bit of knowledge about the thing. This is where the expert mindset comes in. And we start using this stuff called technobabble, which is the number one sales killer. And our audience often looks like they've been slapped in the face with a wet fish. And if you're watching on YouTube, you will see what that looks like. So, the reason that we fail, and often, you know, especially when we're an author moving to— from book to stage, is that we try and sell people on the logical benefits. We miss out the emotional part first. So, and we cannot tell people to get that emotional buy-in. We have to lead them To see it for themselves. And the way that we do that is through stories. So let's double-click into this model again. On the belief side, we want to create that aha moment for our audience where they buy in emotionally. We want to use stories to show, not tell. And if we can identify the thing that's gonna create that aha for them, What that does is enables us, it signposts us to the exact content we need to include from our book in our talk. Because often we can feel overwhelmed, and I've heard this so many times. Just this week I was speaking to an author and she said, when I heard you talk about, you know, all of this stuff, it resonated because I know I'm using too much detail and I'm overwhelming people. So we've gotta be ruthless in identifying just the content that we need to include in the talk to take people on the journey. And this helps you do it. And then action. One of the things that happens, right? When, even if we get our audience to go, oh, that sounds amazing. I can see that that would work for me. What happens is that doubts surface. And if you're a regular listener, you might've heard me talk about this before. And what, what it is, is that people have objections. But the thing with objections, right, is that they are just stories that we've told ourselves often. They're based on beliefs, and beliefs are based on stories that we've told ourselves often. Okay? So, that's what objections are. And I wanna illustrate how easy and quickly you can remove an objection By way of telling another story about me. And again, you might've heard this if you're a regular listener, but it won't hurt for you to hear it again. Now, my daughter, Isabel, she's 24 now. A few years back, she wanted to start climbing, and I thought, oh, I quite fancy that. Back to the paddleboarding. Me and exercise, I love exercise. And if I can combine exercise with other stuff, that's, that's a win for me. And I thought, oh yeah, maybe if I go climbing with her, we can social, you know, we can have more time together. She was getting older. But I was coming up for 50, and I thought, maybe I'm a bit old for it. And then I gave my mum a call, and she was— my mum, I love my mum, but sometimes she could be not quite as supportive. Maybe because I was trying to, you know, do the logical thing, but she said, I think you're a bit old for climbing, Sarah. You need to be careful. And so, I thought I'll put it in the I'm a bit past it bin. But then, not long after, I was scrolling on the internet, and I came across a lady called Greta. Oh, Greta. And if you're watching on YouTube, you will see Greta. Greta is a 99-year-old lady who started climbing when she was 99. And like, in an instant, my belief that I was too old to start climbing was absolutely shattered. And that is as quickly as you can do it. If you can find the right story, you can absolutely smash someone's objection. Quickly. And I've got a picture of me climbing now. Greta probably looks more better at climbing than I do, but anyway, I have a go and I enjoy it and I get to spend time with my daughter because I shattered that belief. So, let's double-click into action. We want to proactively remove friction, and I don't see enough speakers doing this. I don't hear many speaking coaches teaching people how to do it. Maybe because they haven't got the marketing element, I don't know, but it's super important if you want to get your audience into action. The other thing that's really important, and again, it's another trap that I see speakers fall into, not just authors, this is speakers generally, is not having content in their talks aimed at decision makers. We need to have content for the practitioners. That's your tools, your tips, your tactics. But we've also got to have content for the decision makers. And this is what I teach in the talk structure that I give people. But this is about how to think content, all right? Because we want to get booked. We want people to say, I'd love to bring this speaker into my organization. And if you've only got tools, tips, tactics, that won't happen. And the other thing that we've got to do even though we want to get people into action, is do it in a way that is not salesy or sleazy. We've got to sell without selling. It's so important to be authentic. And, you know, this is something I— it matters to me. I do not want it to feel like it's awkward for my audience or uncomfortable, or awkward or uncomfortable for me. I don't want people feeling pitched to. So the way— there's a way you can get people into action. If you show value, create a gap, that does it really classily. So those are the things that you need to do. That's the— what the principles for the model that I created. Now, from here, what should you do? Well, you've got to close that knowledge gap. You've got to meet the audience where they are so that you can connect deeply and authentically. All right. Next, you've got to close the time gap. You've got to identify the big idea and select the best content from your book that is going to get your cold audience to buy in. And lastly, you've got to close the engagement gap. You've got to create exciting hooks and strategic stories that grab and keep attention and get your audience into action. Okay, so the thing I want you to be mindful of though is there are some traps, uh, even knowing what you need to do. First of all, you can't see the label from inside the jar. I have a coach for my messaging and content because even though I teach people this stuff, because I'm so close to it, I sometimes fall into that expert trap just like the people that I work with. So it's useful to get some external perspective on this. I also see people struggling because their own beliefs can get in the way. So, the way that they feel that they should be presenting themselves. I talked about the triggers for attention and action. Often the people that— well, most of the people that I work with are mission-driven, heart-centered, and they want to change the world. And they are good people that want to be positive, but sometimes we have to shift into the negative. And I've seen this hold people back. So, you've just got to be mindful of your own beliefs getting in the way of of you getting your message across to the audience in the way that it needs to land. And then your darlings. You've written a book. There's amazing content in that book, but not all of it needs to go in your talk. And I see this often, like it's, I must share this. This is really important. It's your darling, but you can sometimes be afraid to kill those darlings. Sometimes they aren't Useful in getting your message across to an audience when you're speaking. And then lastly, even though we know what we've got to do, we've got to close those gaps, you know, get people around the journey, we can procrastinate. So just be mindful of those things. And today, right, what I want to do in this podcast is to make you an offer. You don't have to go it alone. I've got a very special thing that I am sharing with people at the moment. It's called The Profitable Talk. It is the model that I created, that I've used, and I am going to be doing 2 live implementation trainings on The Profitable Talk. Okay? And that Profitable Talk takes people on this journey. It enables them to connect with their problem and pain. It shows them the transformation that's possible. It removes friction. It delivers value and builds trust, and it gets your audience into action. And so the— this is, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see the Profitable Talk model. We've got 6 steps to it. We've got a lightning bolt. That's where we grab attention. We've got the big idea that we need to get them to see. We remove objections. We give value, deliver practical stuff. Tell another story to reinforce the value of what we're sharing, and then we leave them with a memorable lightning bolt close. And in the Profitable Talk training that I'm going to be doing, I'm going to walk you through that model step by step. We're going to apply it to your book or to your topic and get you an outline of your talk by the end of that session. There is another live session that that you can, you know, once you've had a go at implementing some of the stuff, you can come back and ask questions. This is then gonna be put into a library for you. You'll have it forever. Then I'm gonna give you access to my Storytelling Mastery mini-course, which will help you with the transformational stories and the short stories, using those in your talk, and it will really level them up. I'm also gonna be sharing hot seat examples of where I've worked with other people, in the past on this stuff, and you will, it will help you implement your stuff. Sometimes we get the aha when we're watching other people struggle with their own stuff and break through, and that's when it happens for us. And then lastly, you also get a one-to-one call with me so we can look what other obstacles might be getting in the way of your speaking success. And after this special offer, this is going to be a £500 product. But for the moment, uh, you can get it for just £100, and that's until the 31st of March. So if you're listening to this episode after the 31st of March, we will put a link in the show notes for where you can grab that at the higher price. It is still absolutely worth it. As I said, myself and my clients have used this model to convert audiences and make thousands in sales and speaking gigs on the back of using this model. Hopefully, it'll be a no-brainer for you, and you'll absolutely make your investment back if you put the work in and follow the Profitable Talk model. So, that's all I have for you today. I hope that it's been useful. You know, I've given you hopefully what the traps that you're falling into, how to close those traps, and what you should do next. And if you do want to work with me to close those gaps, then do have a look at the Profitable Talk training, and that is available. We'll put the link in the show notes until the 31st of March at the lower price. All that's left for me to say is have a wonderful rest of your week. Thank you so much for choosing to listen to The Speaking Club. I hope you've got value from today, and if you have and you haven't yet subscribed, Then do, do that. And if you are watching on YouTube, then also subscribe to the channel. If you're listening and you haven't left a rating or review, then that would be amazing. You can do that at ratethispodcast.com/tsc. Uh, in the meantime, you know what I'm gonna say. Don't forget to go out, grab your life by the nuts, and get cracking. Take care. Bye-bye. It's a nightmare. You're an expert with so much to say, but now that you've been booked to speak, you're struggling to know exactly what to talk about. You want a talk that engages the audience and wins you new clients without you losing your personality or anyone feeling pitched to. But what happens when you sit down to create that talk is that you end up staring at a blank page for ages, or worse, surrounded by hundreds of sticky notes with content that you could include. With so much material, you just don't know where to start or finish. Don't worry, because many experts like you face exactly the same challenge, and that's why I created the Blank Page to Stage Guide. In just 50 minutes, this breakthrough resource is going to help you identify the big idea of your message, make it relatable for the audience that you're speaking to, and convey it all in a way that gets the audience inspired and on board with your idea. And it works even if you have tons of material or your subject feels less than exciting. If you want to cut through swathes of content and get a talk that you're excited to share, your audience loves, And wins you new clients, then grab your Blank Page to Stage Guide from saraharcher.co.uk/newguide-tsc. Oh, I forgot to say, it's completely free. Enjoy!