Vanessa Van Edwards documents a speaking trip, from morning chaos with her kids to keynote delivery. She converted an in-person talk to virtual in 24 hours due to a blizzard, and her MasterClass hit the top 10, moving her to tears. She shares her pre-show ritual of power posing and the joy of audience aha moments.
I have a crazy, cool, weird job and I thought I'd give you a little sneak peek into a typical travel day for me where I'm speaking to a big group. Here we go. I always try to fit in movement sometime in the morning and then it's all about the kiddos. Breakfast, teeth, brush and drop off.
As teachers and coaches, we. You're stealing my lesson plan.
I don't actually think of myself as a speaker. I think of myself as a teacher. And the most important thing about being a teacher is flexibility.
Cancel the flights because of the blizzard. So Harbor's also cancelled. Going to rewrite it for virtual. Yes, you have to do two days of virtual keynote. Okay, I'm going to just rewrite that outline. That's been 24 hours. That makes up. Good job.
Rolling with the punches is part of the job.
I am Jim Harper.
Child care, child care, snowstorms, tech breaks. I've seen it all. The clients in Vegas wants red. So I listen to whatever the client says. And luckily I like red. My daughter loves to leave me really sweet notes just from my 7 year old. I always changed the airport because I got to be comfy. So so much more comfy. Or as my daughters would say, comfy wumpy. I got the best news on the plane. I found out that my master class is in the top 10 of all Master classes. Last year this was just a life career highlight and I almost cried landing in Vegas. One of the best parts about speaking is getting to travel to really cool places and meet so many of my students. I'm always so excited when my business partner, husband, best friend can travel with me. We work together, we brainstorm together and making time for each other. Especially when we get to a little date night bright and early the next morning. Walking over to the arena. It is so important to have a pre show ritual. I do all kinds of things right before I get on stage. I power pose, I breathe.
I am prepping, looking at my slides and making sure I have my timing right. I have a tight time today. Usually I sleep for 45 60. Today I have 35.
I try to think of good things. I remind myself it's all about my student tech check. Very important part of the day and also when my new nerves start to truly ramp up. Once I hit the stage, it gets so much better. This was such a cool crowd. They laughed at all my jokes and most importantly, they got aha moments. I saw so many people taking pictures of the slides and writing notes. We're done. Back to the room. No rest for the weary. Okay, this does not usually happen. I do not usually get picked up in a phantom post plane hike way. I keep my energy up. Sauna and red light at the end of the day. Ugh. This was an early one 5:30am Getting ready for my Harvard class.
