5 Steps to Creating a Signature Talk - Masterclass with Eric Edmeades

welcome everybody welcome welcome I am so glad that you are here and I'd love for you to keep introducing yourself I've seen so many people saying hello in the chat from everywhere even from Dominican Republic Nicaragua Norway Canada the United States Isle of Man hey Janet so really really cool to see people coming in Egypt now from all over the world welcome welcome this is going to be a great deal of fun I want to give you a little bit of personal background just to give you a sense of why I'm here and why I'm doing this for you and that is that I was once absolutely terrified of public speaking like you cannot even begin to know how that was for me it was awful and and of course today I am so fortunate that I'm like getting to travel all over the world and I get to I get to speak for audiences in over 20 countries around the world and I get to live a really really incredible life because I overcame those things and it wasn't as simple as that for me one thing I had to do is overcome my nervousness but a big part of overcoming my nervousness was getting really good at presenting and constructing presentations and so one of the things I get asked the most about is how I put talks together how do i structure a talk so that I don't need to use any notes so that I am able to be flexible at the time so that I can deliver on a moment's notice and that is what we're really going to be here about and some of you are here because you want to be professional speakers some of you want to speak for example to support your existing business you you might want to you might want you might have a book you want to sell maybe you're in politics and you're you're looking to raise your platform and I think what we've all seen is how incredibly powerful talks can be how incredibly powerful it can be when somebody becomes effectively communicating and then gets that talk or gets that presentation out into the world what an incredible you know boost that can be to whatever project it is to focus on so if you would like to develop a talk that can absolutely sort of propel you forward or launch whatever project you're working on you're in the right place this is what developing a signature talk is all are about all about if you aren't really sure where to start don't worry you are at the right place for starting if you've been watching TED talks and you've noticed that some of them are really fantastic and some of they're not so much and you want to know how to make sure your your TED talk one day is truly fantastic definitely you're in the right place if you've ever written out a talk word-for-word and tried to memorize it and then deliver it I'm so glad you're here and and of course if you are an author or a business owner or anybody who wants to promote something other than yourself like your book or your business or you want to raise money or something you're definitely in the right place in fact I would say that many of you many of you are in a situation that means that you are truly one great presentation away from creating incredible transformation in your life in your business so you're definitely in the right place now we're going to cover some fantastic stuff today and it's going to help you to integrate the process that I use for creating a signature talk the master class will run for about 90 minutes and if you put your questions in the queue a feature you can you can there's a Q&A feature at the bottom of the screen if you put your questions in the Q&A area then my team is going to give those questions to at the end so I can answer as many of your questions as I can you should also make sure you've got your master class workbook with you and yes a replay of the master class will be sent out within 48 hours and also you want to make sure that you stay until the end you want to stay until the end to really there's going to be a very special opportunity to really understand even more about signature talks and how to build a career as a speaker or as somebody who wants to use speaking as a platform so what you're going to learn is in a sense a five-step process so you're gonna learn how to kind of get clear about what we call your strategic outcome or even more accurately your strategic outcomes because I believe that every time you say yes to a presentation every time you start designing a presentation and obviously every time you take the stage whether it's in front of a camera in front of an audience you should have a number of outcomes that you're seeking to achieve we're gonna learn how to determine what those are we're gonna also show you how to organize your stories in a very effective way so that it's super easy for you to memorize your talks you're gonna learn about something that we call the f-15 and fifteen is the powerful opening that you present with that you start with that you create your first impression with and we're gonna also learn about the L fifteen and that is how to land your talk or how to end with strength how to how to have an incredibly strong clothes at the end of your presentation and then of course in step five we're going to put the entire process together in what we call a speech map so that you never ever have to write out one of your talks again so are you excited about that so far anybody excited I'd love to see in the chat by the way I watched the chat so if you guys write in there a lot I'll see what's going on look at this even Estonia now they're from everywhere okay look at that I'm super glad to see you guys are excited I am too all right so let's talk about what a signature talk is going to be a signature talk is really a presentation that you have designed that achieve strategic objectives for you it is not a speech or a sales presentation per se it is a talk that you can become known for it's it's it's a talk where people could go wow they hire you or they book you or they request you because that talk was so compelling so why is that important well there's a number of issues the one is it allows you to get your message out consistently in other words it's not that you do the exact same talk every single time it's that every single time you do it you're learning and it's getting better and better but the core structure is consistent so your message is consistent the other thing is the signature talk makes you look professional even if you're not and so what it means is that when you finish a talk like that people come along and they'll walk up to and say can you do that talk for my organization because they they begin to think about the talk as a product of its own something that they themselves think is fascinating that you'd want to work with that they want to book it all so when you learn how to create a signature talk what's really great is that you learn that you can create signature level presentations on a moment's notice once you've got this system that means that you could be at an event and somebody says hey I need you to walk up on stage right now and if you're given like even five minutes you'll know the formula behind how you can create a really compelling talk one of the most popular talks that I've ever done was no kidding created in the hours before I went on stage to deliver it but that's because I had this formula that you're gonna have it also will show you how to be able to sell really effectively and buy sell what I mean is this influence so selling might be that you are attempting to convince people to buy something or invest in something or vote for you isn't that a form of sales so it's about being able to really consistently and accurately influence people it also helps you to get booked on interviews podcasts and media and and naturally it creates a platform for you to promote whatever it is that you're trying to do maybe you've got a business to promote a book to promote and a cause that you're supporting whatever that is the ability to live earn a really powerful signature presentation can completely set you apart and help you to achieve your goals and as I said before right now many of you are one talk away from everything it is that you've wanted to create and I'm gonna give you some evidence of that because at this point I imagine that many of you have heard of simon Sinek and what happened in simon Synnex case is that simon Sinek went off and did a TED talk and when he did his TED talk the TED talk guys I've lost the slides on my screen I'm just speaking of my team there for a minute I'm not sure why that is but anyway when he went off to do the TED talk that TED talk became really really popular it was all about start with why and the next thing you know it led to additional it led to additional bookings it led to if it led to being invited to do a book and he built an entire industry out of it now one really powerful talk created an entire now I'm not suggesting he didn't have a bunch of experience and life experience and so on but that talk ultimately created an industry in a sense some of you at this point are probably familiar also with brandy Brown she's recently released a special on Netflix and if you haven't seen it yet I really highly recommend that you check out that the Netflix special you will see some incredible storytelling really compelling presentation and it will it just it's really really a special but let's start let's start with this where did it begin it began with a TED talk and and by the way what's really funny is it began with a TED talk that she didn't but she even apparently tried to get turned off like she was like I don't I don't know that I really want to be doing that Ted like get it off because it's getting all this attention and the way she tells the story she's like you know she looked online and so oh look oh no five people have seen it and and what what bothered her about it is that the talk was different than the one she's normally done she she got out there and she started talking about vulnerability and all of a sudden wow how vulnerable was she said they took this talk on vulnerability and made it public and she's looking at it the way she tells the story she's like I was looking at it's like there were five people that saw it and then six people and then twelve people and then five million people and then seven million people and that has in turn launched an incredible career for her as well books and speaking gigs and so on in fact we tried years ago to get her to book her for one of the events that we were doing in Europe and when we went to go to Booker it was like almost impossible it never mind the fees that were incredible we're talking six-figure fees like the same with simon Sinek we were in a place where it was just schedule wise she was just simply picking and choosing the types of engagements you wanted and that's because she created such an incredible platform for herself so I just I want you to know that and and very often what happens here for people is that they feel like wow i I've got a message I've got a purpose I've got a product I want to promote I have a book I want to get out there but I just I don't really know how to do it and as I said to you before I think very very much the case is that you can be one talk away from incredible incredible results so let's talk about the way this masterclass is gonna work the first thing I would remind you is that you should have your master class workbook so we sent that up to you as a PDF you should have your master class workbook and you want to have that ready with you the other thing is is that you have but at this point you were given a homework assignment or given a link to go and watch my talk on the hindsight window that you can find on YouTube and the reason I wanted to you to take a look that talk is we're going to talk a little bit about how that talk was created and then I'm gonna give you just some points about that talk so that you can understand how the talk was created and and and why it worked the way it worked and how you can do those same things but there's one thing I want to say to you I really want you to hear me about this as well some of you probably watch a talk like that or simon Sinek or any number of incredible talks and you're like yeah but I couldn't be as good as them and I want you to know you're wrong you're really wrong I really want you to know that and I'm not the one usually a walk round and tell people they're wrong but about that if you feel that way you're wrong and what I mean is is that when you understand this formula that we're showing you today and you begin to practice it and use it effectively what you're gonna realize is that what audiences really want is you they just want the authentic you and if you think about it if you think about it the the speakers that really speak to your heart I'm not talking about the ones that hype you up and make you feel good that's great - it's good stuff but I'm talking about the ones that connect with you when you feel a sense of connection with them like if you saw them in an airport you'd feel compelled to walk up because you feel like you know them aren't they the ones that were just the most authentic aren't they the ones that felt like they were just talking to you personally and so really the way you want to be fabulous as a speaker is just simply being you and so for those of you who watched the hindsight window I want to give you a little bit of background on how that happened I had been invited by MindValley who is a large digital publisher of really great personal development content and an educational content around the world and they run an incredible annual event they asked me to come and speak there and I was a last-minute booking by the founder and so they didn't really have a lot of time to fit me into the schedule I flew out to this event in Mykonos Greece and I did my 20-minute presentation you know Ted a Ted Ted style time frame and I did my presentation and vision lucky on in the founder of all that came up to me at dinner that night he said wow our tribe just loved your presentation could you do another one now what he didn't know is up to that point in time that was the first time I'd ever agreed speak for 20 minutes in fact I had turned down every TED invite I ever had because I didn't tell man like preparing for a 20 minute talk I had this limiting belief even then as an established professional speaker I had this limiting belief that you know it would take me like a few hours to put together a two-hour presentation but it would take me weeks to put together a 20 min a presentation no there's that old Mark Twain you know that old Mark Twain reference said I'm sorry this letter is so long if I'd had more time it would have been shorter and and and very often that's how I felt about presentations but that night when Mission came out to me and II said hey could you do another one why I just said no problem and I used the formula and I'm gonna show you today and I used that formula in my hotel room and I designed the hindsight window talk so for those who watched it on YouTube I'm hoping many of you did I want you to understand I had never done it before I'd never practiced it I'd never even thought of it before I designed it that night now clearly the ideas are things I've given a lot of thought to clearly the ideas are things like the alarm clock dude but the talk was brand new designed the night before using the formula I'm going to show you and so there's a couple things that I want to highlight for you about that that each I want you to pay attention as we go through each of the steps and I want you to notice where you feel like those things happen in the hindsight window because it's put together exactly using the formula music and I want you to know that when you begin to get this stuff when you when you create these things and what is available to you is an entire audience because you see 15 or 20 years ago if you wanted to get out there into the world you needed somebody to say yes to you you needed some producer or editor or you needed some agent or somebody to agreed to get you in the media but today you just need to be amazing and and it's not that difficult because it means being authentic because today you can upload a video and take a look here I mean we just yesterday I found out that this video has gone up to over 2 million views today you can simply be authentic and people can resonate with you you no longer need the gatekeepers permission you can be a publishing phenomenon of your own in whatever space you want to be and you're one talk away so and in what's really interesting about this is that as we got clearer and clearer about how this stuff worked we found that it translated into all kinds of different areas so the formula I'm going to use show you here actually works really well for any of you who are interested in talking for cameras or creating digital media product in fact at the mine belly Awards the ceremony this year in Los Angeles I won an award for the highest customer rated training program on their entire platform now I want you to think about this for a minute our program that when the award is called wild fit it's a health and nutrition program that's one of the hardest genres to get high ratings in I think you could agree there's lots of meditation programs and you know Jim quicks doing his memory there's some fabulous programs on there to get the highest rating on a topic like diet nutrition is incredibly challenging and the things you're gonna learn on this workshop here are going to show you how we made that happen so are you guys ready I hope you are let's get started make sure you've got your workbook with you that you're ready to go and and we'll get into the steps so you really get this stuff happen so one of the things that's really clear to me about everything in your life is intention this is probably not new to many of you I just want to say it again intention so I'll give you a small example of this these days if your phone rings why do you answer it well I I want to put to you that very often these days people's and their their strategic objective for answering the phone is to stop it from ringing or vibrating right it's ringing and answer it but one of the things that I think can be really amazing is what if you change that and the strategic objective becomes to let the person know that you really care about them so now what happens is the phone rings and your wife your husband your child your best friend somebody important is on there instead of it being about ending the ringing when you answer the phone what if your strategic objectives communicate love and communicate connection do you think that might change your tone of voice do you think it might change the energy with which you answer the phone just by shifting your attention a little bit and so now what I want you to about is at a higher level what if we do that in preparing our talks and so the exercise here is about determining what your strategic objectives are so if you look in the workbook you'll see his slide you'll see a page like this slide where you do an exercise to determine what your objectives are when you're on stage now this by the way will set you apart from almost any other presenters because frankly most people even highly paid professional speakers go on stage with one or two objectives to get paid to impress the audience maybe to make them laugh like to get through it to survive the presentation I've heard some pretty interesting ones what I want to suggest is then what we're gonna do is create for you the maximum opportunities to succeed by having a number of different strategic objectives so that when you are clear about your objectives it will help you to know which talks to agree to do how to structure your talk how to build a signature talk and also which stories to use and how to delivery and that's what your strategic objectives are about so you can see on the workshop here we decided divided your strategic objectives into into two categories primary objectives and secondary objectives so here's what I want you to think about and what I'd like to see in the chat right now is what are some of these strategic objectives that you might have getting on stage or standing in front of a camera and delivering a talk what are some of the strategic objectives you might have throw and throw them in the chat and I'm going to talk through some of the ideas so what I'm thinking about here in terms of how to help you get clear about what strategic objectives are is think about it this way wouldn't it be nice if this happened wouldn't it be nice if that happens so for example sometimes strategic objectives might be things like oh it would be really cool if vited me to do an interview on their podcast that's an interesting strategic how about another one is to get rebooked I wanted I want to get rebooked turkey to speak again that was one of my strategic objectives when I did the hindsight window and incidentally I have spoken at something like five of the last six or seven a festevents by Mind Ally because one of my objectives was to get rebooked another strategic strategic objective might be to get booked by others because there might be people in the audience that host events or organize corporate events or what-have-you and so you might want to get booked by them how about like how many of you have a book you want to write could one of your strategic objectives being to land a book dealer to get an agent right I see a lot of people saying have an impact have influence what I want you to do Nina that's excellent what I want you to do is solidify that what does it actually mean does it mean to actually pull in followers your Instagram account because I want you to be more specific of this treated you objective here's an example let's say you realize that one of your strategic objectives is to get followers for your Instagram account well if you know that that's one of your strategic objectives do you think that might affect the way you design your slides or the way you tell stories right because you might because you know you want to get Instagram followers then that might and that might influence you to drop in a quick little story about how you oh yeah I was on Instagram the other day and this crazy thing happened to me on the airplane and so I told this story I did this the other day funny enough and I told this really funny story on Instagram well now I'm telling you that and now you might go oh I should go follow Eric on Instagram so you see when you know the strategic objectives specifically it can begin to inform the type of stories you tell very important let's see I'm gonna look at some more of yours so Anders I love it that the audience loves you that's fantastic in this case what I want you to do is aim for actual objectives measurable things that you know if it really happened so in your case Anders what you say you want the audience to love you how could that show up in a tangible way in other words it doesn't mean that you attracted followers does it mean that lots of people wanted to come and get autographs and photographs with you I don't think of it in terms of a tangible way arena she says hey I want to become a leader in my field that's excellent that is a great strategic objective what it means is that you want to become like a key influencer in your industry that's excellent knowing that is going to influence the way you do your talk because if you want to become a key influencer you're gonna have to have statistics and information it's going to make you want to be really credible yes rusty definitely rebooked Tommy says I want to transform people's sex life well yes I think that's a great strategic objective it is and what I want you to think about is that might be in the theme of the overall presentation you're doing because you want to like transform their their sex life now in your presentation but is there an action you want them to take are you trying to get them to enroll in a program by a book or a retreat so always with your strategic objectives try to get to like a measurable thing that you when it happened you'd go yes I know that I achieved what it is that I meant to achieve and so once you've let's see couple more here okay now I see quite a lot of sort of let's call them a little bit more esoteric strategic objectives like I see one here from eager to offer new perspectives on personal development this is more of a theme and yes it can be your key objective what I'm after here is is like I said a specific and measurable thing that if they did this thing you've got this result and you knew it so if you try to get clearer about that when you get clear on the specificity it will help you to choose your structure a lot better so for example let's see here Naomi says ultimately to sell my course but along with that create a community of expert entrepreneurs who understand how to select the right marketing strategy for their business okay so what noemi's really saying is she wants to sell her course but she also wants to build community so then the question happens now has to be more specific well what does build community mean does it mean get followers does it mean get them to sign up for a membership site you know like what does it actually mean in a tangible sense beyond simply reputational all right so these are some growl you guys have some excellence hey marius morrow sir my release says to get them to download my ebook that's really important you put that in there as one of your strategic objectives because that will make sure to remind you to offer it or to integrate it into a slide here's the way I want you to think about this guys how many of you have ever gone to the grocery store without a list oh how about this even worse you've gone to the grocery store without a list while you were hungry right it's like you know first of all you end up with a whole lot of stuff you didn't need or and you end up with a whole lot of stuff that you didn't pick up that you meant to get and you get home and you're like ah only I took a list well your strategic objectives list is kind of like your shopping list for being on stage and so by getting really clear about what these items are you will cut down the number of times they walk offstage and go oh I wish I'd said that so that's what this is all about what I want you to do is take a look at creating your own strategic objectives list and then prioritizing them that means you have three primary objectives you are your main reasons for doing this presentation so if it's a sales presentation you if you you got to know that you're gonna have to have a good presentation and a good call to action to get them to take action and so you know that it's one of your primary objectives if one of your primary objectives is to get them to say download your ebook then you're definitely gonna want to make sure you have got a good story in there you've got a good slide you've got the URL is really clear you want to make it as easy for them as possible and integrate it right into your presentation but then you might have a series of secondary objectives and I'll give you a really great example so always have secondary active of getting invited for media interviews because I'm speaking in so many different countries around the world that I know that getting immediate invitation here and Sweden or then I'm in Florida now or I'm in wherever it's really useful to get those invitations so that's become one of my secondary objectives almost any time when I'm on stage well this is really important because what it means is and I've noticed a difference is that when I get on the stage when I get on the stage and I start talking about stuff well I will often drop in a story about this one time that I was in Stockholm and this woman wanted to do a podcast with me but I I was like so tight for time I could only give her 15 minutes and so I I gave her 15 minutes we did the podcast and it was so good it was so interesting it was so fascinating I mean I she was such a good interviewer I really wish that I could have done it for longer and that made me decide that from then on when I go and do events in a city I will always leave an extra day to do interviews for that sort of stuff and you know what was really great about that is only about two months later there that same woman found out that I was going to be speaking Italy she came there and I was able to have the hour-long interviewer there is really fantastic so I'll often you tell that story at some point in the presentation well what's going on anybody in the audience for the podcast or a blog or from mainstream media hears that they suddenly go oh Erick builds time for that stuff in and oh by the way he's approachable and so Ness what when I remember to include that story in my presentation in some way I get all the invites when I forget I get a lot less so getting your strategic objectives in there can be really really powerful now if you think about it from the hindsight window that you guys stuff a little bit took a look at in the hindsight window I had a number of strategic objectives there my primary two strategic objectives were to get rebooked and to get published on the mind valley platform how many of you guys would like to have a product that you could get published on a platform like mine now right they were two of my biggest strategic objectives so what ended up happening was I had to make sure that the talk was constructed in a way that would absolutely make them want to rebook me so it had to be entertaining make people laugh and give a ton of value so it informed the way I started I've structured that presentation but also I had to put the possibility into that talk that showed that I was good at facilitating transformation and so I designed to talk to be able to demonstrate that skill and as a consequence I got rebooked and got published on the platform so getting your strategic objectives clear before you even say yes to a presentation can absolutely transform everything about your business and I saw somebody asking there well shouldn't we do this for all talks there it is should we do this for all talks not just for signature propose Nations yes absolutely here's a difference with your signature presentation what you're gonna recognize is that you're gonna have a list of strategic objectives but they might change slightly each time you deliver to the top depending on who the audience is but yes this is something that I go through for every talk I created whether I'm planning to create an anchor signature talk or I'm just doing the one-off I still want to go through my strategic objectives great question all right once we've done our strategic objectives then well this is important you see stories are the key to everything stories are the primary programming language of the brain the single best way for humans to learn anything is to do stuff and the second best way for us to learn is to do stuff in our imagination in other words if you want to train a young hunter-gatherer child on hunting well when he's three or four or five years old not really big enough yet to go out on the hunting trip so you can't really teach him yet but around the fire you can because by the time that child is 11 or 12 years old and old enough to go on the first hunting trip that child has been hearing stories and stories and stories about hunting and so that child is already in an incredibly smart and experienced hunter having never been on a hunting trip stories are the primary way that our ancestors have been passing knowledge to each other for hundreds of thousands of years and so as a result of that our brain is particularly receptive to stories and that's why if you think back now to any of the teachers you had as a student that really made an impression on you that you still know their names that you'd love to go and have lunch with them and tell them what a great teacher they were if you really think about it I think you'll find they were storytellers and so I want to show you that you too can be a phenomenal storyteller and the way you do that is by recognizing that every event of your life that caused you to have an emotional response is a story you might not know the value of the story you might not know the value of the story but the audience will and you will figure out what the value of that story is when you've got clear about your strategic objectives the key thing though is is not to simply rely on your memory you want to keep a story journal and so we've given you a template here of what the story journal looks like now I want you to know I already saw somebody asking hey can we do this online can we do with something like Evernote yes you can I highly recommend that you start with paper and get the system down in a proper journal and so you take out your journal you get your journal and you you keep each page for a story much like we've done here every story should have it right every story should have a title and and that's really great you just it just should be a catchy title so that you and you're thinking about putting your talk together you go oh I can add this story to that story to this story and you're just using the titles just a little short inventory you know name for that story then you write out the bullet points of the story just the bullet points you never actually write the story out unless you're writing a book or something that's a different issue but in terms of preparing to deliver a talk on line or on stage or something never write the stories out just the bullet points the key aspects of the story so for example when I took a look at telling you guys the story in there's a story in there and that I told about road rage you guys remember about road rage and this story in my story journal is called white van man now white van man is a reference that anybody from England would totally understand I lived in England for a long time and so I used that title because it reminds me of the story but the story is about a guy driving a truck you know with no company name on a no phone number to call and being abusive in traffic and those guys in England are called white van man and so the whole story if I if I'm putting in a story journal the title is white van man then the bullet points are I'm driving along in my convertible it's a sunny day in England I put a little asterisks there because if you're talking to English people and you know it's a sunny day in England you know there's a laugh to be had there because you know yeah it's about five years ago it was a sunny you probably remember it was a Thursday it was sunny because it's the only time it's been sunny in five years you know a little little you know it's a little bit of a joke you can put in there your little asterisks that you know you got a joke to tell there and then the next bullet point is the guy in the white truck pulled up beside me and then he said this and I said that and it's just kind of the bullet points of the story right and so then I put the duration in the top right-hand corner in other words how long does it tell me how long does it take me to tell that story well that story I can tell it in this short in about three or four minutes like I think it was an iSight window talk but if I'm using it as a training example there's about a 15 minute version of that story where I can really break it down step by step so we've got the title and the duration and the bullet points and then what I'll often do is also create a little story map a little like map of the story and we'll get to that more when we talk about speech maps now in the bottom of the page it's really important to have what I call topic tags and and what the topic tags are is single word or phrase references to what - what that stories about or how that story might be useful so in the case of white van man that story I might have the topic tags be traffic road rage let's see state management you know those kinds of things why because now when I've got my story journal laid out like that I can when I've got that story journal done like that what it means is is that I can now leap through the bottom of the pages and I can see all the story tags I can see all his story tags and it's it's like awesome it's just like I can put the talk together I go oh you know what I'd love to tell a story about how to manage your state of mind oh look oh I've got that story right here managing your state of mind oh the road rage story white van man boom off I go and so you fill your journal with all the different stories like this even listen to me even when you don't know how this story might be useful to you you guys will also know from the hindsight window my play arrow story the plyo story is about the time that ELISA and I came back from six months of touring on the road speaking all over the world building schools in Africa just having a fantastic six months but having almost all of our possessions with us and then having them all stolen from us on our way home the plyo story well here's what's really great about that story when it was happening I had no idea how you where that story would be useful and it's like it's a horrible event it was difficult and and then you know what I got through it and so on and the next thing you know that story has become an incredibly valuable way to teach the principles of state management or the principles of hindsight window and so in my story journal it says play our story bullet points the story been on tour got back all stuff stole and asked myself these questions got myself okay within ten minutes I was fine then I was able to help my wife go through the same thing and so on duration of that story I can tell about five minutes or there's like more like a thirty minute version of it if I'm doing like relationships or couples types seminar there's a different version in the story that I would tell same facts but slightly different version of the story and then the topic tags well in that case again state management hindsight window theft criminals all that kind of stuff in the references because now it makes it really really easy for me to remember the story in a heartbeat and it makes you a little easy for me to put stories together so that's how we populate a story journal it is really important for you to remember that your stories your stories might not seem so incredibly valuable to you but they will be to somebody else some of you might be familiar with one of my favorite mentors Jim Rohn Jim Rohn was also the guy who kind of inspired Tony Robbins in the early days Jim Rohn was a very very interesting guy and I remember hearing him say this one day he was on stage and he and he looked out at the body and said he says he goes um ladies and gentlemen I'm really glad to be here and he goes I just want you guys to know that I am well aware that every single one of you out there in the audience your life experience in your stories are every bit as valuable as mine and the only reason I'm up here is because this is my seminar and I know that I would absolutely be in treatment for all just be sitting in the audience listening to your life experience - and the first time I heard him say that I was probably 20 for 25 years and I thought oh that's catchy and I would get into my 30s before I realized it was sincere it was legitimately sincere and of course the more people that I've worked with in over 20 countries around the world I've realized every single person on earth has unbelievable valuable stories for me and for you and for everybody else what they need to do is find a way to tell them effectively and that's what this is all about you start off with your story journal if you had an event in your life and it caused an emotional response you were in a story write it in the journal even if right now you don't even know how it might be valuable because I'm telling you one day it'll be valuable incidentally I'll show you in a while as we go through here how you use your storage and will put your talk together I just want you to think about this how many of you have a book you'd like to write or another book you'd like to write don't you think would be really helpful to have an tired journal full of your stories think about that it's an incredibly powerful asset if this is the only thing you take away from this master class this master class has already been worth $5,000 to you I'm telling you from my own experience the story journal can absolutely transform your life now I want to touch very briefly on how you might do this electronically you what I suggest is you'll notice there's a circle in our template there's a circle in the bottom right hand corner what that circle is is an indicator of whether you've transferred it to your electronic brain or not so in my case I use Evernote you could use OneNote you can use Google Documents there's a lot of different ways you can do it I happen to like Evernote and what that means is that once I've put it in Evernote I just put a tick in that circle what that means is I know that it's been transferred over to Evernote so it's backed up in case I ever lose my journal or any that kind of stuff so it means that it's been transferred over I still like to record them in a paper journal but once I've transferred them to Evernote that I put them to tick there the great news about putting them in Evernote is really fabulous is that when you want to do a search on a topic you don't have to flick through your journal and look at the bottom tags you just go I want to tell a story about state management and all of the stories you've ever put in there about state management come up and now it's just like unbelievably easy to put your talks together so I hope that that has been useful for you please get your story journal out what we're gonna do next is maybe even more important than that and it's something that we call the f-15 or the launch of your talk the launch of your talk now the reason we call it the f-15 is it's a metaphor and it's a metaphor for the first 15% of your talk or the first 15 minutes depending on how long you're speaking and the metaphor is of course the f-15 fighter plane the f-15 fighter plane can use as on a short sortie on a short flight it can use as much of half of its petrol half of its jet fuel I should say to just get into liftoff half and then the other half to fly out and land and so I want you to think of that metaphor in that I would like you to think of this after we've created your signature presentation and you're getting ready to go out there in the world deliver what I want you to think about is if you were to put half of your effort into the launch how much easier would be with the rest of the presentation be here's something I'd be curious about in the comments how many of you had the experience were a little nervous you're a little unsure and then you walked onto stage and you and you just said the right things at the beginning and you triggered a bit of a laugh and you got people going and you felt better because of that how many of you had that experience right well let's not do that by accident let's do it intentionally right let's create an f-15 intentionally that is clinical that scientific that's tested and proven so that when you walk onto a stage you know exactly how you're gonna begin you know you're gonna trigger the beginning you want and it's gonna make the rest of your flight or your presentation really really easy because you've already got liftoff so here are some keys some strategies that you can employ in designing really good at 15 one that I recommend is having what we would call a funny little icebreaker a cute little talk a cute little joke a cute little yeah nice little what we would call an f-15 story you know I'll give you a favorite example of mine I use recently where I said I got to this event and it was on the beach and so on and and I go wow I was out on the beach this morning and um and I saw this couple coming down the beach and they had a dog with them and dog ran ahead of them and the dog ran up to me and my wife and it was barking he was like barking but it was weird and had this like it was like going it's like his voice box they were saying had laryngitis I've never heard of a dog with laryngitis before and when the old couple caught up to the dog and we were there we're like oh is this your dog such a sweet dog yeah yeah and we said what's wrong does he have a bit of a cold like I've never heard of a dog that and and the wife she's like she's like oh no we had him debarked what we had him debarked it's a surgery you know we could never train him to stop barking so he just had his voice box removed I was shocked I couldn't believe it I couldn't believe it I turned to the husband I go are you okay with this and he went I don't have and yen haha funny funny so but I use that as a little bit of an icebreaker at the front end of a presentation because it creates a funny little anecdote it's a bit of a giggle a little bit of a little bit of a laugh some of you will have heard me tell a story about Tony Robbins introducing me in an event and there is a translation issue and instead of telling people that I sold my business after nine years of owning it he told the entire audience that I started my first business when I was only nine years old right so I tell that story is a fun little icebreaker the idea is to have something cute and funny at the front end that kind of breaks the ice with people now you might be doing and talk in an environment where maybe humor isn't the most important thing it's still some kind of icebreaker to get people comfortable there are other exercises that you can do manole ike you've seen a speaker walk out and go okay everybody turn to your partner and tell them while you're here well even that can be a fun little icebreaker to break the tension in the room engaging questions can be really useful you can ask oh how many people have seen me speak before how many people have never seen me speak and you know that kind of stuff to try to get just get them interactive a little bit but if you if you have some real fun with it then you might you might do like my friend Bruce Muzik did he spoke at one of our one of our speaking Academy programs recently and he and he stood up and goes how many of you guys are here because you you're you're you know you really lost you want to know where to begin and how many of you want to be truly fantastic as a speaker and now maybe simply want to learn how not to suck when you hit up this is so funny and everybody busted out laughing it was a great little icebreaker only took ten seconds so funny engaging questions can be useful another key point of a nice of the f-15 I believe is doing something that we call the big fat claim and what this is is a recognition that your audience look they've taken a risk haven't they I mean they're sitting in the row they're sitting in the room they've invested their money maybe or maybe it's some kind of conference but they certainly they're investing your time and in fact I'd like a little quick impromptu poll in the chat how many of you have ever been to a conference or presentation and suddenly realize you were trapped in one of the middle seats and you're thinking oh my god I hope this next presentation isn't terrible how many of you been in that's situation right and so well yeah that happens and so what we want to do is recognize hey you know like there's people anything yeah I see a lot of you've been there and and and you know it's it's funny I've had so many people come up to me when they've never heard of me or what have you and they walk him go I was sitting there I was ready to bolt I was sitting on the aisle I was ready to leave but you kept me in the room right well that's what you want to do is you want to keep them the room well one of the ways yeah Danielle I know your type you sit at the back ready to escape my goal is to keep you from escaping and one of the ways that I'm gonna keep you from escaping is by making a big fat pig fat claim at the beginning of the presentation that tells you what you're gonna get by being here that assures you and gives you certainty that you're in the right place at the right time go back to the hindsight window talk guys watch how I did this I walked on stage and it was a very casual event I think I'm barefoot even I'm in shorts and I walk up on stage and I say this something like this I don't remember the word forward but I say something like this I'm really glad you're here for this presentation because I'm pretty sure this is a talk that you're going to remember for years to come oh that that like that does not make me sound nervous does it it makes the audience go WOW now there are some people in the audience who might go that's a bit arrogant but they're still in and a lot of them mostly going wow that sounds interesting I've been gauged I've got their attention I also like to acknowledge them I like to acknowledge the audience and I'm not so into thanking the audience for being there but I like to acknowledge them and by the way I particularly like doing those people like Danielle or people who like Thomas who books himself in the aisle seats right I like to acknowledge those people in the way I'll often do that as I'll say you know what I really appreciate that you guys are here and I want you to know that I am myself of many times been sitting in the audience and I have been just like you are nervous about whether this presentation was going to be great or not in fact I know that many of you are sitting in the aisle right now or at the back row ready to make your escape but I'm telling you here now you won't want to escape you're gonna be glad you were here and the weirdest thing is when you say that you can actually see the audience really relaxed because the it's like honestly guys its I've never kind of explained it this way before but think about it imagine if you got on the plane right and the airline attendant gets on the plane and they're all like well I'm a bit nervous about this I'm hoping the flights gonna work out okay oh they go up there and they talk with certainty and that relaxes the audience and that's exactly what you want to do is go up there acknowledge that they met they acknowledge that they're in jeopardy and acknowledge that they've invested their time and money and then make the big fat claim to let them know that you're gonna deliver for them and then of course interactive warm-up exercises can be fantastic like I mentioned turn to your partner say hello why are you guys here all that kind of stuff can really really help a great deal with putting a good f-15 together so those are some strategies for building a good f-15 just to recap a funny little icebreaker by the way in your story journal when something cute and funny happens or you hear a funny joke or what have you you put in the story journal and in the tags you write f15 now it doesn't mean you only use it in the f15 but it means that when you're getting ready to create in a 15 you can look through your journal or search through Evernote and immediately find any of your stories that qualify as a cute and funny f15 story so you want a little funny icebreaker you want to have engaging questions maybe to get them started with you depending on the environment you want to do a big fat claim to calm them give them some acknowledgment and and maybe potentially put some kind of interactive warm-up exercise just to get the room going again this depends a little bit on the context if you are doing a TED talk I'm not such a big fan of using too many engaging questions and interactive exercises in a TED talk you only have 20 minutes but you can figure out which features you want to include in your f15 all right so once you've got a good f15 you're going to be able to fly and after you've been flying for a while you're gonna need to land and that's what we call the L 15 now it's really important that you know where to land think about it you're in a plane is it important to know where you're gonna land I think so and also how to land now how many of you have ever seen a how many of you have ever seen a speaker go Oh like over time really awkwardly over time if any I've seen this you know so yes I mean it disgusting is a little strong I happen to agree with you I think going over time is one of the most disrespectful things that a speaker can do it is disrespectful to the promoter it's disrespectful to the audience and it's also even more than any of the others disrespectful to the other speakers and so it's absolutely not a good idea yes I doesn't mean I know you were looking for disrespectful so close to discussing very close so the point though is is that one of the reasons that people often go over time is that they didn't have an L 15 they didn't really know how they were gonna end and so they got toward the ending and they're like oh I don't really know how to end an a and it starts getting clumsy and they start circling the airport because they don't know which runway they're on and so on and so by you getting really clear about how you're going to land you land on time and effectively and achieve your strategic outcomes it's so valuable to put effort into knowing your ending before you begin all right this is an incredibly important feature so some strategies that you might want to use in constructing a good L 15 one is you could use a really powerful story this is gorgeous this is a gorgeous way to have an L 15 you have a story that ends exactly the way you want to end the entire presentation one of the reasons I like using this strategy is that you know how long it takes to tell the story you've told it so you told it it turns out it takes three and a half minutes so that means that when you get the five minute warning that you're at the end of your talk you know you have to start your story within a min and a half and you're you now you know you're gonna end on time there's no doubt in your mind your scent of confidence never fades it absolutely feels good to know that you're ending that way the other thing is you could have a memorable quote you could have like a quote that you want to end on you could put the quote up on the screen and then you've got this quote and it kind of just like wraps your whole presentation up and locks it down you can do that you can also have a clear call to action this is really important if your talk is desired to inspire some sort of immediate action mmm for example if you want them to go and buy your book then you need them a clear call to action the books are at the back of the room go over there I'll be at the table you really tell them where it is and when to go and give them a clear call to action and that can end your talk really profoundly yes this is what to do next equally if you're running from off a running running for office for example if you're if you're running for office then you want to do the same thing there is that you want to get clear about what's the next action you want them to take maybe you're doing a talk that's simply inspired inspiring people to vote not even necessarily for you you just want them to exercise the right of citizens to vote so then you would say no listen your next call of action is to go to make sure that you're registered with the electoral qahal and get out and vote and given that clear call to action so that's another way another version is to do a summary of your talk you can do okay so you've done your talking I can say so as a reminder these are the things that we discussed during the presentation we discussed that you should have a story journal it's very we discussed that you should have your City objectives that you should have a story journal they should do a great f-fifteen and that you should then have an L 15 so by recapping what you've done you can you can end on the summary and then also you might develop like a solid closing sentence even a catch phrase that you might want to use right now I'm at my very good friend Topher Morrison's office and in Tampa and for years and years he would sign off a talk or a presentation or a video he's doing he would just say at the end of his talk he would say take care dare to dream and make each day an epic adventure and it became kind of a catchphrase so that people knew when he said that it was over at market and remember it's not that you can that you only need to use one or two or three of these things you can use them in combination and and so these strategies if you if you really give thought to your l15 and construct them you you in the middle of your presentation you'll just have a sense of calm because you know how you're landing the plane I like this metaphor a lot because imagine what it must be like to be up in a plane and not be sure where the runway is not be sure what the wind direction is right now what we're saying is by getting your l15 locked in you know exactly where the runway is you know which way the wind is blowing in from and you know when to go and begin your approach and then you're gonna end with a sense of confidence you're gonna end with a sense of solidity yes so when you so so again if I'm funny enough to recap we've talked about your shooting objectives we've talked about your your your story journal your a 15 here l 15 so now the key thing for us to do is to take a look at how do we put all this stuff together all this stuff together in your signature presentation okay so there's a couple of things that I want to be clear about I'm curious how many of you how many of you are in the habit of writing out your presentations before you go up to do deliver them so you're getting ready to do a speech the night before you've written the speech out does anybody do that okay so it looks like sometimes yes no yes no and I recognize a lot of the names there of people that are saying no as students of mine and I know that there was a yes before it was an over a lot of them all right so here's some advice I have for you and you might want to write this down you probably don't need to it's only two words but if you've been writing out your talks I've got some very important advice for you stop it okay stop it right now don't write your talks out anymore I'm going to show you how to do this with your signature talk in a way that is so much better than writing out your talks but I want to share with you why not to do that I want to share with you why not to write it out the reason you know there's a few reasons one of them is the two primary ones the one is that it'll change your tone of voice something happens when we write out text and I can tell when I see a speaker on stage that's written out of their presentation because all of a sudden they start speaking in complete sentences they talk the way they wrote it because they've been memorizing it that way and so they talk in constructed sentences complete with proper punctuation and you can hear it you can hear it in their voice it's treads inducing and it's not authentic and it's difficult it's difficult for the audience the second reason not to write out your talks is that when you write out your talks you engage a part of the brain that is not useful for professional speakers and that is linear memory you engage a part of your brain where in you you start memorizing the words of your presentation and the order of those words and the order of those sentences and what that means is is that you are trying to use an unbelievable amount of memory because if you're going to be speaking for 20 minutes that's a lot of words to remember and they have to order them you have to remember them there I order and here's where it gets really tricky is you begin to recognize that it's not that you're just memorizing them but you're also anchoring the memories what I mean is is that this sentence leads to this sentence and leads to that sentence which means that if you forget one of the sentences well there's a technical term for it but if you forget one of the sentences it means you're screwed that's the technical term you're here what are you gonna do you forgot the sentence and that means it was the anchor to the next sentence and so you've got a problem and so that's a real challenge and so what we want to do is we want to move away from writing out the speeches and we use something that we have been teaching for many years called a speech map a speech map now some of you will have been familiar with mind mapping and I'm mapping is a great system for you know setting goals and planning things in life and what have you and all we've done is created a bit of a formula for using mind mapping as a way of planning your speeches so you've got a template in your workbook there have a look at that and what you'll see is there's space for you to have your f15 and then their space at the end for your l15 those are the big circles because that's where you got to put them you if you design a phenomenal f15 and a really great l15 and you got nothing in the middle you'll make it work I know that sounds a little scary and I'm not encouraging that you do that but if you have a really strong start and you know you're ending it's really easy to fill in the blanks in the middle that said the way your speech map is going to work is you're you're going to take a look at your overall strategic objectives and and then you're going to select stories from your story journal that help you to achieve the strategic objectives okay so let's take a look at the hindsight window in hindsight window I had a number of strategic objectives the one was to introduce or debut the hindsight window for the public for the very first time it's something I'd been thinking about writing about for a long time that I'd never had never taught it to anybody and the other one was is - for me it was my own internal sturdy objective and that was to prove to myself that I was capable of designing truly compelling twenty minute talks something I had had a bit of a block about before that I'd always felt like he'd give me an hour and I can win over any audience but 20 minutes wow it's tough so that was one of my strategic objectives was to learn and grow from that another strategic objective as I told you before is to get rebooked another one was to get published on the mind valley platform another one was to get media coverage and invites I had a number of strategic actives and and and so the the street he objected that that sort of informed the structure of the talk the most was that I wanted people to understand the hindsight window and and be able to use it this was not a 20 minute talk that I was doing where I'm gonna do the 20 minute talk and then they have to come to a retreat and I can teach the minds that we don't know I wanted them in 20 minutes to understand the hindsight window so that they could really do it and by the way by way of measure that talk was something like two years ago I still get messages from people on Facebook telling me that they're using the principles in their life right now that they'd like I had recently had this woman write to me she goes it's a weirdest thing I watched your video on YouTube this morning in my office and came downstairs from my office and my car had been broken into and my first reaction was anger and rage and then suddenly I smile and remembered nine site window and I went through the steps and realized everything was going to be okay and if I'd not watched your video that morning my car being broken into that day and my things being stolen would have ruined the next two weeks of my life instead it didn't even ruin 20 minutes wow that's the power of a really great presentation that's what I wanted to deliver I knew that I wanted to create that result that meant that I was going to have to take stories that really taught the principles does that make sense to you guys all right so what are some of the stories I chose well I know that what I wanted to show people was that the hindsight window works whether you're talking about the past the present or the future in other words that you could use the hindsight window to clean up your past you could use the principles of hindsight window to inoculate yourself against the future events but most importantly you could use the hindsight window to handle things as they're happening right now in the present because frankly that's where life happens life didn't happen it life doesn't happen in your past life doesn't happen in your future life happens in the right now in fact even right now when you let the past get in the way what you're doing is damaging the present with your past and when you let the future get in a way you're damaging your present with the future is it true so the biggest one was the future so I started thinking about I went through my story journal I started thinking about times in my life when I've used the hindsight window to clean up the past and so I had a really great story about how I'd use the hindsight window to clean up the past and it was a story of an event that I went through as a child at Christmas of 1977 or 78 and it was an event that I went through and I I put Christmas 77 I put that story in that story becomes the hindsight window relative to the past then I wanted to show people how I used the hindsight window to inoculate myself against events coming the future I had a problem with road rage and I knew in advance that I had a problem throat rage so what did I do I used the principle of the hindsight window and I told this story about road rage they'd been talking about and then I wanted to find a way that I could really show that the hindsight window was incredibly powerful for the present and immediately it came to me the plyo story the plyo story came to me that will demonstrate to people how this works in the present so if you see what's going on is that I'm saying I want it then my point is it can work in the in the it can work for the past it can work for the for the future and it can work for the present those are the core points that I want to make and as a result of that I'm then going to choose stories accordingly and so when I choose those stories as you've seen might might you know what I have to do is my I've got to describe what the hindsight window is I did define it you guys have watched the video I don't need to find it again now so I define it then the point that I want to make is you can use the principles to inoculate yourself from the past so that's the point I want to make and and so having made that point I then can start looking through my journal and saying hey well what stories might make that point really well okay the next point that I want to make is oh the hindsight window can be used to inoculate you against things that happen in the future okay then I can go my story general go oh here's some examples okay good I've got a story and then I want to go hey Einstein we know works even better when you use it in the present so you don't have to clean up your past right and so then I thought what's the best story for that story journal boom player Oh story so it starts with knowing what points that I want to make and then being able to flow through and pick the stories that I have that will tell those stories best when I'm done with that I want you to think about what I have and the single sheet of paper and on that single sheet of paper I have a map then achieves the strategic outcomes that I already designed it has an f15 so I know I'm gonna launch really well the f-15 might have a little icebreaker story it might have a big fat claim and so on it then has the different stories that I want to make and the different points that they make and then it's got the l15 so I know I'm gonna land really well which means that I'm in a position to simply drop in and deliver that talk it is that simple it's that powerful when you put all these principles together you can put a talk together in ten minute and walk on stage and deliberate which means you can be that speaker that if you happen to be an event like I'm going to an event in Austin Texas in a couple of days they want to book me for next year by the time I met the organizers it was too late to book me for this year but they said but listen if you're gonna be there would you be prepared to be a backup speaker because we often have like gaps that we want to fill yeah no problem don't you want to be able to do that no problem I can walk up and just do it and so that you can use this system for creating a full-on powerful signature presentation you can also use this system for being able to create a presentation and heartbeat when you need to so remember that step one is to develop your strategic outcomes this step two is to have already been working on organizing your stories in a story journal every time you're having a life experience that's creating an emotion for you then you are in a story a couple of weeks ago I'm in a Newark Airport and and no kidding the guy won't take my bag on the connecting flight my wife it's her birthday it's New Years Eve we're headed to San Diego and he won't take my bag and it was awful she was already on the plane the captain was holding the plane for us but this obstructive little guy would not take my bag on the plane just because he was being difficult and I was angry and I was frustrated and I was getting help from these people and in the middle of it all I suddenly realized oh my god I'm in a story and I am in a story and I now use that story and some of our workshops to teach state management again and so remember to organize your stories remember that you need a powerful f-15 launch effectively you need your l15 so that you know with confidence how you're going to land and achieve your ultimate strategic objectives in that l50 and then of course if you put all these things together in a speech map you're in an incredibly powerful position because with that speech map you don't need to memorize anything remember by the way I'll tell you I've cheated occasionally I've taken my speech map and taped it on the floor on the stage in front of me so if ever I just even glance down and see where I'm at it's right there it's so simple and so easy in fact the very first event I ever did with Tony I was in Fiji and I was and I hadn't been onstage guys get this I hadn't been onstage for three years I've been running a movie studio in Northern California I hadn't been onstage for three I'm okay when I say I'd been onstage let me be very accurate I'd spoken at The Odd Film Festival but not inspiration motivation type stuff more like 3d you know 3d film and you know like the business stuff and I'd done maybe three or four of those so in three years I really hadn't probably been on stage so I did and I'm now gonna be on stage for three hours and so I grabbed my speech maps I draw them out on big like you know flipchart paper and I walk up to Tony's people and I'm a bit embarrassed about it and I say would you guys mind taping these down on the stage for me and they looked at me like it was a totally normal request I expected them to kinda go what who is this loser who needs his notes on the stage right and and then they looked at me like it was a totally normal thing and so we walk up go up the stairs onto the stage this is my first time on Tony Robbins stage imagine and then I look down and like my maps are already there only they're not there they're in the hands of the person who and I look it's not my maps it's Tony's Maps he's the exact same maps I mean it was the same marker same color and like if I hadn't if I hadn't looked at them in detail I was just glanced down and seen my own maps down there and so yes absolutely you can take your maps and you can move them down onto the stage and you know what's crazy you won't even look at them they're like a security blanket you once you've created these maps a picture's worth a thousand words and you're now memorizing the pictures not a thousand words you remember you're remembering five things instead of having to remember five thousand words you're remembering five things and you will now be able to walk on stage in a any situation so here's my question for you can you see the possibility of this can you see the application of this I'd love to hear from you where could you if with this skill where could you be able to use something like this bear in mind you are I really know this about you how many of you feel like you are one truly great talk away from greatness one truly great talk away from achieving what it is that you want to achieve in your business and your speaking life or what have you you know one of the things that I'm we were talking about Simon Singh earlier in October 2011 you can see on the slide simon Sinek speaking fees were twenty five thousand dollars april 20 1901 presentation how many of you feel like you might be one talk away from real greatness and and and yeah let me I'd love to know I see some of you having some great areas where you might be able to use these things and I'd love to you I you know I want you to tap in for a minute you know you see um rainy Brown she's so special today she really is she's a phenomenal woman she's a great storyteller but before all that she was just like you and me she's just doing her thing and now you know she's on Oprah she's her speaking fees are phenomenal you'd be amazed at the power of what we call the stage effect when you can stand up in front of an audience and you can authentically deliver compelling and information it can completely transform the world for you so right now I would say to you that you're one great talk away from a lot of the things that you want your life you're one talk away from financial freedom any of you you're one talk away from a best-selling book you're one talk away from the media that you that you want to create you're one talk away from the you know wanting the the number of followers that you have on on social media you're what can it do for you to put that one really great talk up because I'll tell you what it did for me and I put that hindsight window talk up I was already doing some speaking here there and it's not like that it's that window went massively viral I think it's maybe had eighty or ninety thousand views I've got other videos that have a lot more but the difference at that talk is the people who watch that thought they wants the whole thing they go right into it it's deep and and it's created so many opportunities for me so many interviews so many speaking bookings and it did what I wanted it to do it got me rebooked to speak at my mental events again and again again I spoken a ton of a festevents I spoken at every mine value reunion I'm now often speaking at the mind valley summits in Europe for my Valley Russia in that one really well delivered talk landed me many two bookings with the same person and even more indirect bookings it also managed to achieve the second objective and that second objective was to get published on the Mayan dolly platform today wild fit has reached thousands and thousands of people in over 20 countries around the world and is the highest rated program on the MindValley platform because of one talk so I really want to be clear about what you are one talk away from really get clear about that what are you well I really want to know what are you one talk away from if you if you had that powerful signature talk created and you delivered it well on the right stage or in front of the right camera or on YouTube and it really did what it was supposed to do what are you one presentation away from now in the meantime you might be asking yourself another question and the other question is okay but like do I have what it takes you know do I have to be like some you know massive extrovert to do this know I am not the least bit extroverted I may be one of the least extroverted people like you could have a chance to meet I'm not I you know he walks up to stranger and he says hello and he knows everybody and he's a pretty bloody extroverted introvert and that's because he learned this skill set right he pushes himself through it I'm the last person I go to a networking event I'm not something I'm shy I'm just not extroverted being a great speaker does not require being extroverted that way at all and also hang on here - okay there's there's a couple of other things is that you you might feel like you might feel like that you know you compared yourself you might look at a brainy Brown talk or you might look at a sign make a cynic sock and yes I mean simon Sinek or my talk or something like that you go yeah but these people you know look at them you know who they were right before their one talk they were those people over there that you'd never heard of but you see invoking the power of the stage effect and putting together a really dark made it fun for them and so what you what you really need to do is be clear about what it is that you want to achieve you want you have to have a sense of passion and perseverance for what to create you know uh you you you you you you need to be able to overcome things as they come up either before the bookings are after the booking so when somebody says to you hey your talk is going to be thirty minutes and all of a sudden they go well we only have 15 minutes for you you need to be okay to go no problem and have a positive outlook about that the easier you are to work with the more often you get booked you also need to have the courage the courage to step outside your comfort zones the courage to to operate from a position of taking some chances here and there walking up in front of an audience takes courage standing in front you know I had to go and do you know a little a couple of weeks ago I was also here in Florida and I was down in Orlando why well because I was recording a bunch of health segments for the Golf Channel I have to tell you something guys I mean I wasn't nervous about it or anything but it's a different level of courage to go and record in an NBC studio for something that they're going to be playing over and over and over again you got it you got to have a sense of that courage and also here's something else I want you now I want to know how many of you guys really have this a sense of what it would be like for your audience if they don't get your message because that's kind of what happens to me sometimes as I'm staying there and one of the reasons that I am able to deliver the way I deliver flying all around the world forgetting about jetlag and just stepping onstage the heart every single time is that before I walk on state I imagine the I imagine the audience if I do my job really well and then I imagine them if I don't and I'm not prepared to let them down and if you've got that inside you even a little bit of it you've got what it takes to make this work so what's key to me is that all of those things the perseverance the passion the connection with the audience it's all those things are great but I absolutely could never have achieved what I've achieved in the speaking space without the right peers without the right mentors without the right people around me to stimulate me in fact I'm sitting in here in Topher Morrison's office some of you I saw in the comments no Topher Topher was one of my original influence is the very first speaking tour I ever did was with Topher he was doing a speaking tour around the UK and I was the opening speaker for him having somebody like Topher at that stage of my career was an incredibly valuable thing having somebody who could guide me answer my questions allow me avoid some of the mistakes I might otherwise have made it was incredibly valuable having my good friend Karl Piersol the organizer and the original founder of the yes group in London they gave me my first platforms they they gave me my first opportunities to speak having somebody like the Toastmasters environment around me those led to being able to attract an even like wider group of mentors Jack handful you can see in the photograph here is very very good friend of mine I like this particular picture because the author of the book that I'm holding up I got that picture for her as a favor because she's one of my speaking students and she now sends many of her employees to come to our programs on a regular basis so I went had this photograph of her book taken with Jack and had Jack sign and so on of course Tony Robbins has been a huge influence on the but I want you to know you don't have to know Tony for him to be a good influence on you if you're interested in his style of speaking Wow there's tons of YouTube videos there's his seminars and so on and then I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go on tour with him for year and a half and have him personally coach me on how to really create deeper engagement to the audience how to keep energy high on the stage and so on and so it's been really valuable for me to have like a mix of mentors Ivan Meisner some of you all know in the in the picture here is I'm one of my dearest friends and the founder of BNI and just you know having great mentors around you is incredibly incredibly valuable now in one sense I don't like showing those particular pictures cause I can't well we don't have those mentors no neither did I I worked my way up to those mentors but I also recognized something I was learning from all three of them before I ever got to meet them Jack Canfield was an influence on me for over a decade before I ever met him before he and I became friends Tony Robbins was an influence on me since I was 17 18 years old so you know remember that your mentors don't always have to be in there with you face-to-face they're people that you get a chance to learn from and and one of the is one of the biggest gifts that I love to give back to the world right now is helping people find their voice helping them do exactly this like you have stories inside you you have compelling life experience it's really valuable other people and maybe you don't have that network of people around you to really help make all that stuff happen and that's ultimately why I created our speaker and authors mastermind group is to help people figure that out to be around like-minded people that we're going to be able to you know support each other in moving themselves forward but at the same time also get really really solid educational content so the the speaking kind of mastermind is a and so a membership where every single month we have calls that we do together and with either with me or with specialists and what have you that talked about all the Veii all the the key aspects of becoming a really compelling speaker whether you want to do that from the perspective of being a professional speaker or whether it's just that you want to speak to support your business it's about becoming effective as a storyteller and effective speaker about how to get booked where to get your practice and how to how to cultivate your stories and also how to tell stories really effectively and so on so if you are the least bit interested in building a brand or a business around speaking or adding speaking on you know like if you're a business owner and you want to use speaking to increase your influence and increase your brand then that's also a really great platform if you want to learn the basics of building a really solid presence on social media so that you create engaging content that people wanted to follow and you know then absolutely the same program is a good hit for you and and also understanding that if you really understand the value of building community like if you really get that here's one of my great examples of this is that I remember in the early days of watching Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer I really liked watch something magical happen there there's a lot of people didn't really notice but the two of them always told stories about each other the the the the two of them always told stories about each other in other words they were constantly building each other out this is something Topher and I have done each other each other for years it's something Carl and I have done for each other for years is something that my friend Roland toko and Estonia and I had done each other for years is that we are always building each other up listen if you say a lot of great stuff about you how much credibility does that have but if somebody else says a lot of great stuff about you Wow it has power and so by having a really powerful community around you they can support you is that's really powerful and and clearly if you're at a level where you're kind of willing to move past the wouldn't it be nice if I could be good at this and you're actually like ready to get your story out in the world I loved I loved loved loved to see you become a member of our Sam program because we can really take you to another another level inter not just one time but over the space of months and years to really help you transform your abilities as speaker and your and your reach in the market especially if you're interested in in getting out more internationally because our members are from all over the world so what this means is that every single month you'll have access to live virtual training workshops so we have like this we have these like deep detailed training workshops every single month on various aspects sometimes it's about speaking itself sometimes it's about the business of speaking sometimes it has to do with other things like writing books and so forth it's everything that's needed to have a really great platform as a speaker so there's all kinds of diff topics that are largely driven by what the members are looking for and if I'm not the expert on that topic then we bring it in to somebody else if if so it's either me or a top level presenter helping with that stuff you can see here's an example of some of the different topics we have how to get free PR and podcast interviews how to make sure your LinkedIn profile is set up really well as a speaker and so on so there's some really really good curriculum every single month to incrementally help you establish and improve your brand every step of the way it's in an incredibly it's an incredibly powerful format and a great structure for you in essence you know our thought process here or our mission of what we want to achieve for you is to create you know to to give you the skills and the network and the resources that you need to to really achieve what you want with your platform with your with your speaking and when you get you know speaking can often feel a little bit lonely like you know it doesn't mean travel a lot of times don't worry as you get better at it that travels at the front of the plane that's the very good news I mean I'll tell you something I love flying in business class but my favorite thing about flying business class is when somebody else was paying for the business class ticket that's my favorite thing so so the the this this entire program is about helping you to create what you need to create as a speaker the good thing about it is is that you know yes of course we have live training programs that you can come to and they're there live with me directly all in there they're obviously you know there's some cost considers as those what we've done with Sam has made it incredibly convenient there's no travel it's all done with zoom every call is recorded so if you miss one you still get it and we've made it incredibly affordable for people there's a great sense of community and accountability which means that not only you have me and our staff that's sort of supporting you and helping you through it you've got each other we created this mastermind so that you can support each other help each other get speaking gigs when you learn a new hack about how to work and do they do this or do that it's something that the team shares with each other and then of course super professional training from me and other total industry leaders that can really help you to achieve what you want Sam is an incredibly powerful process I empower an incredibly powerful program to help you to get where it is that you want to go the key thing also is if you can get if you've gotten to know me at all one of the things you'll know about me is I am all about fun and that's a big aspect of what happens in in Sam is that we make that we really try to work fun into everything that we're doing because the truth is the minute something isn't fun anymore you may as well stop and I'm not saying it has to be fun every moment there are there are days or I'm on planes to find somewhere and going okay this flights a little longer than I want I wish we had this out of the runway for two hours but overall the fun and enjoyment and fulfillment that I get from really sharing this stuff all around the world and running these masterminds and helping people find their voice just completely juices me so my question for you is are you are you ready at this stage to like invest in yourself and your future as a speaker are you are you in the interest are you like I'm mildly curious or I am ready to move forward because if you're ready move forward then I want to encourage you to join our Sam program and let's get started on your speaking career let's get started with taking what you you now have a skill set from this master class you now know the formula for building a signature talk let's take that signature talk and let's turn it into a really powerful compelling career taking wherever you are now and taking you even further the Sam program is incredibly affordable it's only 247 per month it gives you immediately immediate access to the entire program and all the calls that have taken place since we started Sam have been recorded so you get access to everything that's happened in the past as well so it's not just what's coming you also get the things that we've taught in the past as a sort of in a sense as a bonus and the other thing that we have here is we have a price lock guarantee and the way the price lock guarantee works is this is that as Sam increases in price and obviously as the back catalog of content gets deeper and deeper it becomes a more valuable proposition as the network grows and has more people in it it has a higher value proposition but we have a price lock guarantee and that is that whenever you join Sam that's your price for as long as you're a member of the mastermind and so it's 247 per month right now obviously that will not be case in the future but you are locked in at 247 your price will never go up we just you know again this isn't primarily obviously this is a business but primarily it's around building a really solid community of people that are committed to getting their stories out into the world we also have some sort of I guess a bonuses like some things that we know that you need that we want to make sure you get so you get a social media quick tips list in other words a guide to some of the key things as a speaker that you want to create in social media in other words while we do have specific master classes on Facebook and on LinkedIn and so on there's a little bit of a you know cheat sheet if you will on some of the key principles you want to pay attention to in social media we also have a document folder full of done for you template speaker agreements contracts all that stuff so that you don't have to go and figure that stuff out we also have a sample of an introduction script because every speaker should have their own introduction script so we have a formula for helping you create your own introduction strip an introduction script so that is this is a script that somebody reads before you go on stage and it's really important that it's well-constructed and well-written and that they deliver it correctly we also have the presentation checklist and what this is basically it's like your shopping list for what you need to make sure is ready for your for your presentation and and the beautiful thing about this I recommend is that you you you know take a look at it and modify it as you will but then you send it out to the producers before you ever get to the event so all of your things are already taken care of so you'll find that when I go to an event there's always six bottles glass bottles of water on the stage with me the particular markers that I like and so on and you'll also get sample emails for price negotiation and communication with promoters and that kind of stuff to kind of help you to figure out how to have those conversations and also you get as a member of Sam you get 50% off a ticket to our speaking Academy five-day intensive program when you're ready to do that one day in the future as well as a member of sanity or 50% off that is a massive massive savings off the normal cost set program so that's a big benefit and again I'll tell you why that is um the reason we do that is that the business freedom speaking Academy is a highly intensive super-powerful really effective personal transformation process that brings out the authentic and really shows you how to tell stories in a valuable and and powerful way it's it may I mean it is by far and away our highest-rated live event and our live events are all among the highest-rated in the industry but it is by far and away our highest-rated event it's in it's super fun really powerful super transformative and the reason that we give Sam members such a deep discount on the program is that we like working with people in other words it's one thing to have you come and spend the five days it's another thing that you've spent the five days and now we get to work with you month on month on month on month helping you build upon the things you learn there or in the other version if you've spent a year in the same program before you're ready to do the speedy Atome you've got so much of the foundation so that when you go to the speaking Academy it just allows you to launch to a whole nother level and so that's why we give that discount to our to our Sam members if for those of you are curious about the speaking Academy we have two left this year Oslo there are four places left June 11th to the 15th in Oslo the venue there is really beautiful it's a we take over the whole resort for ourselves it's a beautiful resort it's actually outside Oslo by about 40 minutes or so and it's up in the mountains it's like and in the Hills there's farm country around and beautiful views of lakes and such then we take over the whole resort so it's really like summer camp super super fun place to be there's only four places left for that one and then we're doing it in pula croatia and june 23rd to 27th and that's part of mine Valley University and there are only 17 spots left for that and mine Valley has just started their marketing campaigns the event was almost sold out before any of us started marketing it from last year and they're just about to start their marketing campaign for that so if you're curious about either of those programs definitely get in touch and book a discovery call with Ryan and our team who can help you to figure out if this is the right here for you to do that so that's the the end remember as a member of Sam you get a 50% discount off that program so definitely that is a good step for you to take now you might be asking yourself a really important question one that I asked myself before I went - I yeah you you know listen I was not a natural-born speaker like not at all I was terrified of it I was clumsy with storytelling I spoke at a million miles an hour I know I still talk a little quickly but it's better penta but I was I was by no means a natural-born speaker and I attended over $100,000 worth of courses on speaking I read every book I could find and I had watched videos all the time on how to dissect them and so on and so if you're asking yourself this question of like you know Kenna speaker training really be effective can it really teach me things I want you to know that I am really good at what I do in this space any of you have done wild fit already know this you already know that I'm incredibly good at creating lasting transformation for people and it's no less special in the way we do is speaking and so you know wherever you are on the sphere spectrum if you are anywhere if you are anywhere on the fear spectrum like anything from modeling and nervous to abject terrified I can absolutely help you to transform that and if fear isn't an issue for you at all it's really just about skills transfer like you're just trying to figure out how do I really tell my stories effectively in an engaging way you know you we are absolutely gonna get you there through Sam through the speaking Academy or through some combination of both over time if you do both there there's no question that speaking training can work and particularly again I I happen to be you know what I've got a real passion for transformation and so really helping people get to the other side and get to the place where they're being authentic and they're really delivering well it's important to me when we first started speaker training we only did it because our clients demanded it and my wife Elise who's kind of like our quality assurance offer officer was a little bit reluctant she said look what you do in business is world-class what you do with my outfit is world-class I've never seen you teach anybody speaking except for a few friends for advice or what happened and she was are you really sure you want to do this like you know if you do this and it doesn't go really well it's gonna turn us the brand and I said listen I am absolutely certain we've got about 25 people coming to this first workshop and and here's what I told her I said five of them will have life altering transformations and become phenomenal speakers another 15 of them will be transformed really well and become really good speakers and the balance the average seminar creates results for something like 3% of in the audience right so if I could achieve that she'd be pretty pretty breast and instead what happened was we launched the program and we had something like 20 of the 25 people tell us afterward that it was one of the most deeply transformative programs they'd ever done in their life and completely transformed their abilities as speakers and the fight the other five said basically the same thing so like it completely in fact won the kind of show Dave's an accountant with not a great deal of external personality per se and went on to win a number of Comedy Championships at Toastmasters after doing the program so yes absolutely training works it absolutely does I think they've shown you the slides here's some testimonies from people around the world that have worked with us either in the sand program or the speaking Academy and so forth rusty by the way rusty you're here I saw you in the chat earlier here's a rusty set I saw her I'm commenting in the chat absolutely matter-of-fact rusty go ahead and write in the comments if you want to head to this be cute but anyway she says absolutely worth every penny art seems amazing I happily give my time to volunteer with a group just to witness from the outside the transformations that take place I do mark my life by before working with Eric and everything that is happening now thank you very much you know and and so yes training absolutely does works when you've got a trainer that you feel like you connect connect with and a look that might be me and it might be a number of other people I'm just saying definitely investing in yourself as a speaker works I attended over $100,000 worth of speaker training oh by the way what does that mean for you it means you get to learn a whole lot of stuff for me that I went out and paid good money to learn so and and by the way most of you know I'm a little bit crazy about the way I offer guarantees on stuff because frankly I don't want to take your money if I can't get the result and so the guarantee that we offer for the same part for the same program is that if after your first year in the same program you have not made at least twice as much money as you have invested we will give your money back like where else are you getting a hundred percent garud percent return guarantee we're saying if you don't get at least a hundred percent return on your investment we will just give your money back and and look I know not all of you it's about the money and so I'll let you measure it however you want if it's if you're a politician for example and you don't feel like it solutely was valuable to you in terms of translating into votes in terms of translating and following or donations which is a form of money then you know that's fine what I'm saying to you is if you don't feel like you got at least a hundred percent return on your investment after a year of participation in the program we'll simply give your money back because as I said we are really more interested in results than we are in having your money the key thing here is making sure that you get the results that you need to get so I want to implore you to one way or the other if you were on this call right now it's because you're curious about communication whether you want to speak in front of an audience or in front of a camera or in front of the media or media or all of those things it's because you want to get out there and make some kind of difference for you your family your business or whatever they are all of those things the question really comes up is like are you in a position are you ready to start investing your time your effort energy your money and really becoming phenomenally good at this it's absolutely one of the single best investments I met you can make I'll remind you it is in the same program is really low entry point it's as easy as it can be free to get into it's 247 per month again it gives you all of this stuff that you all of the sessions that we've recorded since we launched and before become yours immediately in the library and of course the live calls every month you get it you you get access to the Facebook group with all the other Sam members you get the speaker's toolkit as a bonus plus you get 50% off the speaking Academy training when you're ready to go and as we said when you register now you lock that price in for life so when the price goes up like when we launched Sam it was actually less money so the members that were in the beginning pay a little less in this when we raise the price next year you'll be locked in at this price and so when our goal is to work with you to get you to where you want to be with your speaking career so my question for you is how would you take action like you know it is taking action for you at this point going alright that was a good webinar I've I've learned I'm gonna go somewhere or is thinking actually being you know what may is the month that I begin may is the month that I begin to take everything to the next level whether you're starting your career right now or whether you're in your career and you want to move another level and I want to share a funny story with you about four or five years ago I did a webinar a bit like this and I emailed it out to to our database and I said hey guys I'm doing a webinar on speaking disowning my clients have been asking about how I do what I do on stage and so on and and and I sent the email out personally to the database and so a lot of people wrote back and I had a bunch of people write to me no kidding and this is what they wrote I'm already professional speaker so I don't need to be there thank you very much I'll tell you money I got you hey I think I'm back I don't know what happened to our internet here I think I'm back but what I was saying is is that an hour you know one of the key things is is my glass is never full I am learning all the time I'll tell you that when I sat down with Tony Robbins I knew I was fairly good at what I was doing and we sat down ELISA and I sat down with Tony and sage and had lunch and for like thirty minutes at the beginning of lunch Tony Robbins did this he was Eric I loved your presentation I loved the way you started it like this and then you went like this and you did this and and he went on for 30 minutes about the different stories that he liked and how he liked this and like that and you know it was really it got so overwhelming to me and eventually I said Tony I so appreciate hearing this from you from you particularly but I'll tell you what I really want to know what I really want to know is how can I make it even better and his eyes lit up and he then went into coaching on this can be better and this can be better and so on and so I want you to know that I have never ever stopped learning never never stopped pushing to become better and better and better and so yes I know that way I know it sounded a little Tony Robbins like my wife has a bit of a crush on Tony Robbins so I've learned that I can perfect the voice for her so in any event um go out and get yourself registered and what I want you to think about is this I really want you to think about this what if you really are one talk away one talk away from business class travel on somebody else's time like one talk away from a book deal and one talk away from getting the TV specialty you want to create like many of you are truly one talk away from everything it is if you want to create and so this webinar has already given you an a huge amount of value for how you can build that one talk there's no question right you know you start there and if you're really committed to taking that one talk far and developing more than just one talk then just take a moment and think about that what does it create for you what does it create for your family what does it create for your community and what does it create for your larger audience that you want to reach I think some of you have audiences that might be even global in nature what does it take for you to be you know how does it feel to you to be able to get out there and really achieve SF and so I want to do a little poll here assuming you had that really like awesome one talk that achieved that you knew was making it happen for you how does that feel to you what's the one word that describes how it feels to be confident about the structure we talked about freedom blessed empowering peace empowerment free and satisfied these are some really really good words these are some really good words everything yeah that's really good and let me ask you something else who is helped by you doing this who is helped by you having a really powerful way of getting your message out into the world who has helped by that everyone around you teenagers angry people family the planet everyone who hears you community and family yourself a lock I hope I said that right you're right you that's a great one everyone yeah that's exactly right thank you guys that's that's powerful stuff I really believe that um you know some people like I oh I'm just here for the audience and other people like frankly and I how many of you have ever seen that speaker is just there for themselves right you know what I think the balance is you've got to be there for yourself you got to put your oxygen mask on if you're not having fun if it's not fulfilling if it's not helping you live a fantastic lifestyle that's a problem but equally if that's all it's doing it's empty it's got to be about the larger community and the larger planet and the larger impact that you're having and so that's that's super that's super inspiring what you guys are answering and I believe that we are going to move to QA are you guys up for a little Q&A I love to do QA because this is where I make sure that I actually answer your questions and and that's really great what I want to make sure you do though is I want to be clear go right now to business freedom dot-com slash Sam and get your application completed and get yourself applied in for Sam get it done let's start with May and let's start to transform your biz your life your speaking career and so on and with that business freedom back home / Sam and let's jump into the QA and I guess you guys on my team you're gonna curate QA for me hello hey Eric its Jackie how are you hey good good okay so we're gonna start with the questions and we're gonna start with the first one from Amy I have a lot of stories how can I identify which are the right ones to be in my signature talk yeah okay so did you say Laurie that was Amy Oh Amy Amy hey Amy okay so the clue the first answer is when you've got a really good list of strategic outcomes it's really gonna help you to know which store to choose so let's say for example you you want to make the point that always be kind let's say you just have this point you want to make about always be kind so then you look through your story journal and you see you've got like six stories in there that are tagged for kindness right so the question is which of those stories do you want to use and so what you're gonna do to choose that story is you're gonna think about who the audience is you're gonna think about your strategic objectives and you're gonna think about other stories you might want to tell and between those three things you're gonna find that one of the stories you've highlighted slots in really nicely what's really amazing about this though Amy is that you have a let's say you've got your signature talk put together and you've got this story about you know kindness but it takes like 18 minutes to tell that story but suddenly the producer comes along and says we have to cut 10 minutes off your presentation you're now in a position to go back to your story journal and look for other stories on kindness and you look oh look I've got a 6 minute story on kindness and you can swap the story in so that that's the beauty of the way this structure works is it's modular it's like it's it's it's modular and it's systemic so you're gonna choose by knowing your strategic outcomes here's an example as well in strategic outcomes like for example the example I already used let's say I wanna one of my strategic outcomes is you know do I want to sorry I want to tell some stories about kindness and and then also one of my strategic outcomes happens to be to get media interviews so then what happens is I go you know I am I was in Stockholm and I got this request from this woman who wanted to do a podcast interview with me and I really didn't have time to do it but her email was really nice and we looked at her branding and stuff and she just was doing such a great job in doing such work we really wanted to support her and you know and I'm really of the opinion of where you know when in doubt you got to go with kindness you got to do the best you can and so the best that I could do is offer her 15 minutes and I and the team made it clear to her that I only have the 15 minutes she was so sweet and she didn't try to push one more time it was really really excellent but she was so touched by the fact that we made that 15 minutes for her that she then tracked me down in Italy a couple of weeks later to do the full one-hour interview with me so now here's the thing Amy imagine that I have another story about kindness that I could tell but if my strategic objective is to get bookings with podcast interviews then I'm gonna choose that story because it achieves one of my strategic objectives another version might be that I'm telling two different stories about you know about oh that's a good example I might be telling do two different stories about how to use the hindsight window in the present right and the one story I could use is the Clio story where everything got stolen and the other story could be the time that I was in a casino in the Bahamas when four men this is no kidding a true story four men walked in with automatic assault rifles and started shooting up the casino they're both great stories for how you use the hindsight window in the present but if one of my strategic objectives is that I want to get an agent to write a book then I'm gonna use the one with the play arrow why because in that story I talked about how I've been writing this book about the hindsight window and my unpacked up copy is on the laptop that was just stolen so now everybody audience knows there's a book I'm writing so that's you're gonna your strategic protector is gonna help you to choose that's a great question Amy thank you so much I hope answer answer house okay the next question is from Deborah and Deborah is wondering how much time will the Sam training take each month ah how long will the salmon training take each months well the calls are about two hours eighty minutes to two hours and then there's some assignments that we give you after which you know on your own time they might be to record a video or to do some research or what have you so probably you're sort of minimum investment is about three hours per month and then of course if you're really gung-ho you're gonna having any given month that calls themselves are about two hours and and they're recorded so if you have to miss part of it or god forbid all of one because you have got something else going on you'll still have access to the recording great and I'll just roll off that anonymous asked if they get access to the past video recordings and the answer is yes you'll get all the past video recordings so the next question is from William how do you design your talk to be both entertaining and informative at the same time William that's such a great question and I'm gonna challenge you and I'm gonna say this if it's not entertaining it's not informative I know that might sound a little weird but you know I was at this talk in Bali couple years ago maybe earlier last year and there was a guy speaking about health in some way and and he stood up and he said I've got 27 strategies for improving your longevity or something and in the space of 30 minutes he went through the twenty-seven strategies and he just it was so informative informative informative informative informative informative informative and for I don't remember a single one of the 27 and neither does anyone else from the audience who didn't take notes if you weren't there taking pictures of every slide if you weren't there taking notes no memory got created because there was no entertainment the fact is is that is that emotions are the glue that cause information and this emotions are the glue that cause memories to happen and so if you aren't engaging if you aren't entertaining then it can be as informative as you like but no information will be retained by the audience and so I believe that you should use what we call in our speaking Academy and we teach in Samm something called I PMS they are impacts per minute that is how many emotional impacts are you generating permanent you're speaking it doesn't mean every minute has to have an emotional impact but it means you want to know what your average emotional impact is over the space of your 20-minute talk or you want our talk I'll give you a hint if your eye PM is at least one then you are giving what could be considered to be a professional grade presentation I have seen many TED talks and frankly I'm a big fan of Ted I'm just only a fan of about 10% of the talks frankly and one of the reasons is is that many of the TED Talks deliver very few IP ends so in other words you're wanting to talk and you have to pull the content from the talk the content isn't being pushed into your consciousness people have watched my hindsight window talk and come up to me three years later and tell me the stories because it was engaging and informative so I don't want there to be a choice and to answer your question on how well how storytelling telling compelling stories not reporting from above the story's not going while I was doing this in the summer and then I did this in the fall you go no it was a hot summer day I threw the roof back on my car and I was just loving the tunes as I drove down the freeway and then I came not the freeway the road and I came to this set of traffic lights and this Neanderthal looking dude pulled up beside me he's such a traffic bully you just know the kind of guy and you drop into the story that's how you do it great question another great question from Deborah how long do you suggest it takes to be talk ready so we're ready to deliver your talk after joining the sound program well I think there's a question of talk ready versus audience so for example when Tony Robbins office called me that time and said would you come teach marketing and business at Tony Robbins seminar I was not talking I hadn't been onstage for three years luckily I had hours under my belt from before but I knew this was a one-off opportunity that I absolutely had to take advantage of and so I wasn't taught ready and I did it anyway I don't recommend that for most people if you got asked to do a TED talk and you don't feel ready to do it then what you really need is an advisor who can tell you're ready to it because frankly most people will almost never feel ready to do it so my view is this you will be talked ready immediately from this webinar take what we did designed to talk and go and practice it at somewhere like Toastmasters and your talk right everybody has talked ready for Toastmasters they're ready that's where you start but that's like starting with the go-carts right you start with a go-kart and then you move up to the you know to the to the gas-powered go-kart and then you move up to like the smaller race cars and then one day you can race f1 and what I'm saying is you'll be ready for immediately and over every single month we'll be upgrading the level of the engine that you're capable of driving I hope that answers your question okay next question is from Gavin when you prepare your signature talk do you first think of who your audience is and adapt to it or do keep the talk the same absolutely you adapt to the audience absolutely you adapt to the audience um not only do you adapt to the audience but you may also adapt to the speakers that were at the event before you I am a big fan of making sure that you watch the speakers that were there before you because it allows you to learn more about the audience it allows you to learn more about the energy of the room and so yes I think it's important that you consider who the audience is great example great great example is the icebreaker story that you tell in your f15 if I'm doing a talk in a personal development environment where I know there's a lot of safe fans of Tony Robbins there then I am almost always going to use my lost in translation story where instead of telling the audience that I sold my business after nine years is that I started my first because it's really funny the way the way it happened was is that I was supposed to be introduced by a Chinese emcee because the event was for largely Chinese people and and so Tony was supposed to walk up and say I'm so excited about this next speaker he started his first business and sold at nine years later but instead he goes something he goes I'm so excited about this next speaker I just met him in the hallway we had a fantastic talk he started his first business nine years old right like super funny here's the kicker if I'm doing that talk and I'm doing that talk and I know that there's a an audience there that's personal development theme or that talk that that Tony Robbins would be popular I'm gonna tell that version whereas if I'm doing a talk and I'm you know in you know somewhere where there's lots of pet lovers I might tell that other one that I joked with you guys about earlier so definitely I might craft the talks in fact there's an exercise we do at one of our intensive retreats where we have people develop their speech map on points only and then hand their speech map to the next person at the retreat and have them put their stories on the speech map you begin to realize how flexible you can be as a speaker when you realize that you can change you can use your existing speech map but alter the story subtly for the specific audience great question Gavin if we have a question in regards and I can answer this really quickly for you Eric the next Sam call is on May 21st so that's when the next sound call will be and as soon as you register you actually get a downloadable PDF with all the Sam call dates and times you'll be all set to go so the next question is from Sheree or Sheree or Shelly one or the other it's Bri do you tell the story first then make a point or the other way around or sometimes both such a good question such a such a good question all right so sometimes you tell a point you go look you need it to be like this and then you tell a story to prove your case right then another way you do it is you tell a story and you want the audience to arrive at the point on their own and then you point it out to them afterward this is a really important principle because often if you do the first one can be useful in many cases but sometimes the point is so subtle that if the audience doesn't realize it on their own they'll never internalize it in fact if any of you are doing any coaching work or psychotherapy work or what have you we all know that we can be talking to a client know what the problem is but if we tell them the problem it won't heal anything but if we let them wake up to the problem on their own it has a huge transformative effect and so sometimes you tell the story so that the point is subtly interlaced in the story and so they realize it on their own many of you will have heard me tell a story about barefoot running you know like going hunting with the Bushmen in Africa and learning of and the point of the story that everybody gets is maybe they should consider using barefoot running shoes from time to time but I don't say that this story says it and then I might say it at the end but then there's the third version and the third version is where you tell the longer story and it's got points embedded throughout it this is harder to demonstrate in the short time we've got here but I'll give you an example that when I first when I was terrified of speaking my father asked me to come and speak at an AAA meeting he wanted me to present him his cake for you know so many years of sobriety and what-have-you I'm not a member of a so I don't didn't feel like I could speak at a meeting you know because you have to start off by saying hi my name is Eric and I'm an alcoholic and I'm not so I didn't I was all like in my head and scared and I didn't want to be there and so I'm telling the story to people but I'm using this story to teach important principles of speaking so I go so I went up on the stage and I was so scared I was holding onto the podium and I'm supposed to introduce myself but every single person is introducing himself with hi uh my name is and I'm an alcoholic and I'm not I don't know what to do and suddenly I got this idea in my head of like the old courtroom dramas you know and I standing there and I said hi my name is Eric and my father's the alcoholic and and all room busted out laughing and then I drop out of the store to go and the point of that is is it if you can learn to trigger a quick laugh at the beginning of your talk you calm yourself at the entire audience down and you open the door to taking additional humor risks because you've made them laugh okay in any event so then my dad came up you know so you know what I'm doing is I'm telling a story nailing a point hammering the point in and then continuing this story until the next teaching moment great question okay we only have time for three more quick questions I this one I can answer really quickly someone just wanted more information on the five-day speaking Academy you can find that at business freedom com slash BFS and when you actually register for the sound program you'll you'll be sent to a page that gives you your special link to get your 50% off offer so all the details you'll be finding are on there and Eric the next question that came in was in regards to Sam will we also learn and this is from Nina we also learned strategies and tactics for the corporate world for example panel discussions and hosting events absolutely I mean it first of all I want to tell you something about panel discussions right now don't do them now I'm kidding but now that you know the reason I say that is because panels are highly unpredictable and difficult and we will absolutely be covering that stuff repeatedly during Sam because it comes up all the time but I'm going to give you one piece of advice about panels I really want you to get long before the panel takes place you go and you have a conversation with the emcee but that with the moderator and with the other panelists you get to know them a little bit really get to know them and then you say this to them guys I've been on panels before or if you haven't been on them I've watched panels before and what I've often seen is that everybody is like trying to maximize their own time at the microphone what I would like to know is what are your guys's specialties because if somebody asks me a question I want to hand the microphone off to you sometimes because I think if they see us operating as a team then the panel will look so much better so go and have that conversation with the moderator and with the other panelists before the panel begins and you're suddenly gonna have a world-class panel experience other than just walking up and sitting in the chair like most people do and yes we absolutely will talk about speaking in corporate environments there's also lauded that many of the sessions are straight q and A's with me like I can't remember when the next one is but there's like a two-hour straight Q&A session with me and I've done just about every kind of speaking there is out there so I'm we will definitely be covering that topic no question about it great question Nina okay the last question so sorry we're not able to answer all the questions but the last one is from Tatiana I really like this one can we mix different f15 and l15 strategies or should we stick to one for each oh no you could mix them for sure here's a good example I talked about acknowledgments and big fat claims I will often integrate them together so I'll say hey I'm so glad that you guys are here I know that many of you have flown how many of you guys came from at least 5,000 miles away or at least I'll do some engagement acknowledging them and then I'll say and I know that some of you flew here because you knew you're gonna get a lot of value but I know some of you are sitting on the back row or on the aisle in case you feel like you need to escape and so what I want you to know is you're not going to want to escape because this presentation is going to share with you strategies that you will remember and put in use immediately in fact if you do want to try to escape from this program it's only because you're going to go and I go take action on things I'm sharing with you so you see what's happened there's I've acknowledged them and also done the big fat claim so yes you can definitely kind of mix and match the strategies together Jackie Eric that's time all right guys thank you all very much it's been a real pleasure sharing these things with you I do want to remind you of something one of the challenge sense of self belief is that it seems like we can only ever push our belief out just further than where we are right now and I've got this exercise I want to offer you I would love for you to think about your highest level of belief like what do you believe is really possible for you and I want you to know that more than that is but it's hard to see right away and so what I'm going to ask you to do is right now I'm going to ask you to amass perfectly anywhere blue achieve highest goals at the moment like what would be a great goal for you achieve as a speaker as an author but and then the exercise I want you to do is I want you to recognize that if you achieve those things do you think you'd have bigger goals right like if you suddenly had a best-seller and you didn't have a best-seller before do you think that having that bestseller would cause you to have bigger goals and so here's the way I want you to set some goals around being a speaker and then I want you to absolutely sign up and it works like this imagine achieving three or four of your biggest business or speaking or writing goals relative to this topic then set goals from that imagination if you want to speed up your manifestation velocity this is one of the most important things that I can teach you is push yourself push your imagine a imagination out to achieving some of the things that are at the limit of your sense of self belief right now and then get in that moment and set the next set of goals business freedom calm Sam and I'll see you on the make all it's been an absolute pleasure and a treat to share this with you all thank you very much have a fantastic weekend goodbye you

Channel: Business Freedom Academy

Views: 44,085

Keywords: Eric Edmeades, Business Freedom, Speaking, On Stage, Signature Talk, Creating your signature talk

Id: -YovAVg_Rlo

Length: 124min 6sec (7446 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2019