Conversation is King: How To Make Your Keynote Description Shine

What can focusing on conversational language do to make a strong keynote description even stronger? That's what we're talking about on this episode of What's Missing from This Message with Jake Thompson's keynote description, Compete Every Day. So let's take a look at Jake's description. Now, great things that he's doing here. He's got a good title, Compete Every Day. It also has a great subtitle, 7 Things Leaders Do Differently to Win Their Work and Life. So it's got a lot of the things that people are looking for right out of the gate with a title, which is, does it give me something that I want via a means that I didn't expect? So he's satisfying the something that people want with winning in their work and life. And the Compete Every Day is a piece of what they're not gonna expect. And he goes on to explain that in the next piece of his description. Now, the first thing I wanna say is that this is a very strong description as written. There's a good idea in here, and it's presented right outta the gate at the front. And one of the first things that Jake does well is he starts with the goal of the audience. He starts with a question that the audience is already asking. And as you see here, he says, "What if our company was filled with empowered leaders who collaborated together while competing against their own previous best to raise the bar each day. Now, I love how that paints a vision for the future of what a company potentially could gain from learning the 7 things that leaders do differently that Jake's gonna talk about. There's the one thing I think that will make that even stronger, and that is to pay attention to how that question sounds conversationally. So you may have noticed when I read it out that it's a long sentence. And so even by thinking through how can we break up that sentence and really focus kind of in the order that people would normally focus on it when they're listening or talking to another human, that might change how Jake frames this and how it could be even more powerful. So one way to do that is to kind of start with what is something that the audience is potentially asking right now, which is, you know, how is it that we can get our businesses to raise the bar each day? How is it that we could potentially get people to collaborate with each other? And how is it, or what would happen if that— the way to do that was to get people not to compete against each other, but to compete against themselves, against their own previous best, and raise the bar each day? Now, doing that on the fly, so it's not as elegant as it possibly could be, but you see what I'm doing there is starting with something that the audience already knows they want, and then I'm building to the distinction that Jake is making in his keynote, which is a lot of times I think that people think that the way to win is to compete against other people, but he He is giving this unexpected piece of that the secret is really to compete against ourselves. So in the next piece, once you've introduced kind of the audience goal and then your unique perspective on what really needs to get solved, that's a great point, which Jake does here to introduce you and what you're going to do and why you're the right person to speak. So I like to call that authority and outcomes. I don't know how Jake always uses this description, so it's possible that this just sits on a site and so people already know who he is. I like to include a little bit more of a speaker's credentials in their descriptions, just in case, as so often happens, an organizer takes this description and just plants it in their materials. So it can be useful to weave in a little bit more of the bio there. So this is where I'd want to hear a little bit more about Jake, uh, and what pieces of his experience or background are particularly relevant here. So for instance, how long has he been in business? Is he a leadership consultant and coach. I mean, just something that tells me just a little bit more about why he's the right person to listen to here. So, um, this is where we can get into this idea of, okay, once we know that, then he gives these great outcomes of how can we integrate the traits and choices of successful teams in order to inject a positive mindset and can-do attitude into our organization. Now, the other interesting thing that's here is that there's a question that Jake can answer for himself about whether or not that positive mindset and can-do attitude is actually something that he may want to lead with. It really does seem like he wants to lead with this kind of winning work in life, kind of really being successful. I think that's the right choice. But whenever we have additional concepts like that, it's an opportunity to think about where else could they be in our description to make the case for this idea and this keynote even stronger. I also like how Jake finishes here with, your audience will learn how successful teams build accountability, positive attitude, and a culture of taking initiative in their personal and professional lives by learning how to compete every day. So the one thing that I want to say with— if Jake were to make none of the changes that I said so far, is that the compete every day doesn't really build yet around this competing against their own previous best. One thing that always makes some— your idea even stronger when it comes out is to make sure that there's a sharp contrast between what kind of the normal approach is. Without that, I would want to see a little bit more explanation throughout about what he means by competing every day, just to make sure that people get that this whole against the own previous best piece is really the significant piece and distinctive differentiated part of Jake's idea. Now, Jake does something else here that I really like, and I've actually never seen before, where he pulls out key lessons from the talk. What I like about that is that it kind of allows him to establish what are some of the key and ownable concepts that he's got and he's going to put out there. I'd love to see, and in, in addition, kind of some more specifics about what they'll be able to do with those concepts in, in, in addition to just knowing what they are so that we can go beyond knowing, okay, I'm going to understand these things, but I'd love to see him say, okay, what is that going to do? So for instance, if you're talking about escape complacency and comfort, says we're going to learn the lesson that a competitive spirit drives growth and change, even when the competition is only within yourself. So what does that mean for me as a potential attendee or as the organizer of this meeting that I'm going to get as a result? Like, what can I do as a result of learning that? There's also a thing to consider here, and you see this in my next comment, where the fact that some of these could also be embedded in the prose description, uh, either in addition to what he's done here or instead of what he's done here, because I think that there's some of these pieces that could, that could help build out the, the main part of the description, which frankly sometimes people don't skip to the key lessons. So we kind of want to make sure that some of that's up top. Uh, last piece I really want to comment here is the competitor mindset is a great piece. He's clearly introducing something that he wants to put out there as an ownable concept. I think it would be even stronger if we can see the contrast between how it's different from what Jake perceives there to be the most common mindset right now. So I don't know what that is for Jake, but the more that we can again draw that contrast between what most people do or what the conventional wisdom is and what he's presenting here, then you can get much, much sharper about why you are the right person to bring in for this particular keynote or why this message is an important one for an audience to hear. So all of that, as I said right at the beginning, starts with a perception and really listening to your description as another person would. So one thing to do with your own description if you're writing one is read it out loud or read it out to somebody else.. And even better, if you're reading out loud to somebody else, record yourself doing it because that's gonna help you capture what you naturally say when another person's in front of you that actually helps describe what you're talking about. And the more that your written keynote description sounds like one that you could say, by and large, the stronger it will be. So, so much thanks to Jake for sending me his keynote description. You can do so too at redthreadme@redthread.me. Tamsenwebster.com. This was What's Missing from This Message, and I want to see what's missing from your message next.