How to crush strages

Be the presenter that steals the show

Writing this in LAX on my way to do a presentation at WebinarCon. I’m feeling confident in the stage talk I prepared and ready to crush it. As I was driving to the airport I thought about some of the things I did to prepare for the presentation that would be useful to you. In this article, I’ll share some tips so if you find yourself needing to give a talk, this will help.

Dramatic Demonstrations

Speaking from a stage - an actual, in person event - is a special beast. It’s not great to the audience for learning in the traditional way… where you give a lot of step by step information. People forget most of what they hear as soon as they forget it. But they always remember how they feel. You can create the strong feelings in a physical room.

The best way to move an audience - to help and give them value and also to make them want to do business with you - is to create a deep, emotional impression.

If you’re speaking at an event with a lot of speakers - this becomes even more important. What happens at multi-speaker events is most of the speakers sound the same, deliver the same and make you feel the same.

Standing out in this environment then means doing something different. I call it a dramatic demonstration. How can you present in such a way that if they only remember one speaker - it’s you.

One way I’m doing this at WebinarCon is with the slides. I have a 60 minute slot but over 200 slides - most with animations. The pace of my speech is going to be BANG! BANG! BANG! I want the audience to struggle to keep up! But because the content is go good they will stay up, and hang on to every word. Barely. They’ll feel like they’re hit with a mack truck and think - no one else even came close to the value per minute that Fladlien did!

I will be surprised if anyone else shows up like this. Most speakers will have a few visuals and do a lot of droning on. Boring!

Subject matter aside - what can you do different to really set the impression on your audience?

Attitude

I am the GOAT of webinars. I spoke at this event two years ago and was the only speaker to get a standing ovation. This is the best event I could ever speak at. Usually I speak about webinars at events where most people don’t do them or aren’t even sure what they are. Here though, everyone is already sold on webinars and I have the most authority on webinars.

When prepping, my attitude was strong - I just felt 100% certain I’d crush this. As I was thinking about this, I realized - that should always be the attitude. If you came in with as much confident as you can muster, then you just create at a much higher level.

My attitude brought the best prep out of me. It didn’t feel difficult to work at this - because I am so certain of the outcome.

Now the thing about attitude - it’s like a thermostat. You can set it. Now the kids may get there and change the temp so you’ll have to re-set it from time to time. But attitude is a choice. If you take the attitude that you will do your best and show up your fullest then it makes everything else you do easier.

I’m going to just start taking this attitude with every talk. Why not?

Write 4x as much then subtract

60 minutes actually isn’t much. Plus, if you just vomit out your first draft, it’s easier to get going. What I do is put everything in I’d like to address, knowing full well it’s way too much. I sprint out the first draft at light speed, not even pausing to think. Just put it on paper. When it’s done I go back with a surgeon’s knife and just gut it. What I think is 4x as much ends up being about 8x as much!

But removing things is easy. You actually get a better idea of what is and isn’t good when you can see it on paper. As I pass through the first draft I see how to condense ideas, how to clarify points and really just trim out the fat. what’s last is all killer, no filler.

It looks natural. It ain’t. It’s the result of cutting, removing and combining good ideas into something greater.

Subtraction is easier than addition.

It helps to have assets

To write one great speech you need to write a bunch of bad ones. Because then you can take the ONE thing that was good from speech A, and grab it and improve it for the current speech. Repeat for speech B, C, and D.

I did create half NET NEW content for this speech. But the rest was derived from other content I had previously created. And when I imported it in, I made it even better. A lot of the bits of my talk are refinements of refinements of refinements of previous content. There are things here that I’ve made improvements on over the last 12 years.

It’s hard to best this. Natural talent can’t. Luck won’t. Small, continual improvements my friend - this is what success works like.

Results don’t matter

You leave it on the stage. You do your best. The audience may or may not receive it. Doesn’t matter. You can’t control most of the factors anyway. So focus on what you can. Be as prepared as you can be. Be as confident as you can. Know that whatever you do today will make whatever you do in the future better. Then show us to present… and be PRESENT.