In this quick‑tip episode of The Speaking Club podcast, host Sarah Archer spotlights the persistent 70/30 gender imbalance in speaker bookings that resurfaces each year around International Women’s Day. She observes that women are often only booked for that single week, sometimes for free, while men dominate the rest of the calendar. To raise awareness without a dry lecture, Sarah introduces the "rant and reverse" comedy technique – first ranting about a problem, then immediately flipping perspective to praise it, exposing absurdities through satire. She walks listeners through a step‑by‑step exercise: identify the grievance, record a passionate rant, then record a reverse version that pretends to love the situation, uncovering comedic material and a persuasive message. Sarah argues this method makes the critique memorable, engages audiences, and can be adapted to any contentious topic. The episode closes with a call for feedback, a reminder to rate the show, and a promotion for her upcoming masterclass on crafting signature talks that convert listeners into action takers, with a link to her website.
Chapters
Hello, I'm Sarah Archer and welcome to episode 259 of the Speaking Club podcast. This is another quick tip episode. Now the last episode I did, the quick tip one, was on comic timing and to be honest I hadn't really intended to do another sort of comedy humour one so quickly but something came up and I thought why not, it's perfect for this. So let me tell you the sort of context of this It's International Women's Day this week, and every year I see the same thing happening, and it proper winds me up. And what it is is this, that in the normal course of events, there's still a sort of 70/30 discrepancy between the number of men speakers booked versus the number of women speakers booked. And, you know, there's lots of stats about this, and the last time we sort of got any meaningful stats because of pandemic was in 2019. So this is an issue, but what happens at this time of the year, this week particularly on March the 8th, is that a load of women speakers who normally get overlooked are suddenly booked to speak to organisations, but quite often they're booked and expected to speak for free, which is a whole other issue. Anyway, I wanted to point this out. It's something that, you know, I've thought about in the past but never got around to doing it. So I thought this is the year I'm gonna do a video to point this issue out. Now, we don't really want to just go on a video or on a podcast or on stage and really sort of just vomit up everything that, that makes us cross about something because it won't engage our audience and, you know, who wants to hear just someone going off and ranting? However, there is a great comedy technique that you can use called rant and reverse, which actually gets across the points you want to make about the thing that you find is wrong with a situation, um, but it makes it funny, and it also points out the absurdities of that situation. So I thought rant and reverse would be a great thing for me to do with this particular issue.
People around the globe are waiting with bated breath for the magical transformation that takes place this week around March the 8th. Just like in Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day when Phil the Groundhog has something useful to say about the weather, rather than just talking about nuts, so it is with women speakers around this magical date. We all know that for 51 weeks of the year, women have nothing valuable to say to people in your organisation, well, unless they want to know about periods, netball, or making jam. But in this week, a magical transformation takes place and women are able to talk on such subjects as high performance, innovation, collaboration, marketing, economics, sales, mental toughness, and so much more, just as effectively as men, who are obviously able to add value for the whole of the year. So I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to those organisations and who have booked one or more women speakers to talk to your organization this week. And a special thank you to those who couldn't get anyone for March the 8th and are just keeping fingers crossed that the magic spills over into the other days of the week. We women salute you.
Essentially what I did was look at this issue and what particularly wound me up about it. And this is how you use this technique. So you, you find the thing that you have an issue with and you take maybe a minute or as long as you sort of can do it for really, and you can record yourself, just audio or video as well, you know, talking about this and everything that's wrong with it and what winds you up and so on and so forth. Now, the next part of this is where the magic happens because what I want you to do is do the same exercise but actually speak about that thing as if you really loved it and find all the reasons why it's good. So it really requires you to take a completely different perspective and when you do that, often you find comedy gold comes up. This is an exercise I used to do with the people that I taught to do comedy. It's a great way to find material and it's a great way to get your point across whilst making people laugh. So the first part of it is doing the actual rant. The second part of it is actually looking at it from the completely different perspective. And it's amazing, you know, this is a great exercise to do for lots of other things as well, to put yourself on the other side of the argument and have a look at it and see what comes up. So that's what I did for this video. You know, I looked at, you know, the issue and, and the absurdities of it, and, and it actually has had a really good response. So rant and reverse, it's a really great technique. You can use it in your talks. You know, if there's a situation which, you know, the problem that you solve or, you know, the situation that you find absurd, you know, speak about it as if you love it and that satire will come through and the audience will see it from your perspective and see the absurdities of it. So that's my quick tip for today: rant in reverse great tool for you to use to see the other side of the argument and to make that, uh, find out, you know, point out the peculiarities, the absurdities of the thing that you're poking fun at. It will enable people to see things from your perspective even though you're on the other side of the argument, and it'll be fun for you and fun for them. It's a great little technique you can use in all sorts of different ways. So that's my gift to you today, the rant and reverse comedy technique. Go out, have a play with it, record yourself, and then, you know, and then you can sort of work on it. Let me know how you get on. Thanks so much as ever for joining me here on The Speaking Club. If you really enjoy the show, then do go and leave a rating or review. I do really love to get the feedback, you know, even an honest one. And if there's things you think we can improve, that's, that's great too. And tell people about it. Be old-fashioned. Do it the old-fashioned way. Also, if you want to get better at your speaking, if you're not getting the results that you want, then also do check out my upcoming masterclass where I'll be taking you through the ingredients of a signature talk that doesn't just engage and entertain and inspire, but actually gets people into action. Because it's no good just having a talk that gets compliments but no conversions. And yes, even if you're doing a paid keynote, this structure is a great way to show people the gap that your services fill or your book fills, whatever, without being overly commercial, without losing or compromising your values and also losing your personality. So that masterclass is coming up soon. You'll love it. It's interactive. We get to actually apply those ingredients to your topic, your thing, and you can book your space on that over at saraharcher.co.uk/masterclass. So thanks again for joining me. As I said, have a great rest of your week. In the meantime, you know what I'm going to say— go out, grab your life by the nuts, and get cracking.
