5 Ways That Live Video Will Turn You Into A Better Speaker

One of the best ways to get better at public speaking is to do it. But most people only practice when they are in front of a live audience (or are too terrified to get started). Wouldn't it be great if you could practice more often? Or find a low stakes way to build your confidence? Cue: live video.

Live video on social media is an unexpectedly useful tool for developing confidence and skill with public speaking. Not to mention video a fire strategy that connects you with your audience.

That is why in today’s episode I’m sharing with you the five ways that will help you redefine your leverage live video to become a magnetic speaker on any stage.

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Transcript

Well, hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode. I am so frickin stoked to dive in today's episode and let's just start out with a fun. Okay, fun, fun fun. Let's just get into it, my friend. I already recorded this podcast episode and I forgot to hit record. So I went like a 42 minute episode and nothing, nothing. So just, here's I'm telling you this because some days, y'all you are going to think you're on fire and be like, yeah, I got it, and then you looked down at it. It didn't record. it didn't record and I know what happened. I won't get into that right now. But anyways, I just wanted to giggle because if you ever have a moment in your business, where you make the dumbest mistake, you can either be super mad about it or you can laugh about it and say, wah, what an annoying thing and a beautiful opportunity. Oh my goodness, the things we don't have time to redo yet here we are. 

So welcome, welcome. We are rolling into the month of September here. The reason why I want to bring this up because hey, if you're listening to the show, I know you want to get better at how you communicate to your audience. So whether you're trying to get better of articulating yourself when you go live, or talking directly to clients, or you want to get better speaking on your webinars or in your workshops during your launches, or you want to get better at speaking on stages. I know a lot of the people who come around to me as a speaking coach, they're saying how do I speak on more stages, especially as the world is opening back up, seems to be, can you imagine like a movie trailer voice and the world opens back up. That's the thing. I have a voice for that because everyone's saying that. I don't know. I don't know. You know what I mean, right? Like, world itself is learning like a new normal, but conferences are starting to happen, right? So people are getting on stages. I hear a lot more business owners saying okay, I want to get on stages. Heather, we've been hearing you talk about getting on stages. Now is the frickin time.

4:05  

But one of the challenges that a lot of online entrepreneurs have is there's not a ton of opportunities to speak on stages. Before I was like, where do I speak? How do I book those gigs? What's that like? And I don't know if you noticed in my feed specifically, I've been getting a ton of ads from other speaking coaches, probably something that I clicked a few weeks ago, doing research for my upcoming program. We're launching, sidenote, we're launching The Speaker Society. It's our first program. It's a new enhancement, completely new program that we're launching at the end of September, so save the date doors open on the 26th of September. If you've been wanting to learn from me inside one of my programs, this is your chance. But I've been noticing a lot of people talking about like get paid to speak, launch your professional speaking career and I've even saw ads for people that will like book stages for you which I just giggle, So here's what I want to call out. 

5:00  

If you're listening to this show, you're a coach, you're a course creator, you are a service provider, and you're building an online brand with you primarily as the face. Chances are, your goal is not to become like the most sought after public speaker on the planet. And if that's you, that's cool. I'm probably not your speaking coach, the best person to learn from. My specialty is working for business owners who want to have control over their schedule and in their lives, and really be positioned as a thought leader. And what I mean by that, I'm not going to do the whole thing, like living the beach life, that freedom-flexible lifestyle, but I would imagine you're similar to me that you quit your job because you were sick of somebody else dictating your time. That was me. 

I loved my job, I had an incredible job. I got to travel all over the world. I got to do speaking, build online courses, like we had all these great things. I had an incredible, incredible job. But the one challenge I had was, I was chained to someone else telling me when to travel and when to work and the idea of going into office and spending 80 hours a week, getting ready for big programs and stuff was great but I just have this thought, like, do I need to do all of this? Could I do the same things, but on my own and pick my own schedule? And that was a little baby thoughts that led to me starting my business. 

But one of the most important things was I thought I wanted to become a public speaker but then I realized that I would then have a bunch of different bosses. And when you book speaking gigs and you're a professional speaker, many times you're booking speaking gigs a year to 18 months out. And the thought personally for me of saying on September nights of 2023, I have a keynote gig in, I don't know, Phoenix, that felt very constricting for me, and I did not want to build my schedule around a bunch of these different events. I wanted to have way more freedom and flexibility and say yes to speaking because I wanted to, but I didn't want that to be my main revenue stream, which is why I pivoted and said, how can I be a quote-unquote speaker, but do it at a bigger scale? How can I be speaking to audiences every single day? How can I teach people in a more sustainable way where they have flexibility in when they listen, how to listen? That's where I started venturing down the path to do digital courses and group coaching programs and do this podcast. So I get to do what I love doing which is speaking to people every single day but I do it on my terms. And what I teach people is how to become a really dynamic speaker and able to speak on those stages. 

If you want to get paid to speak, great. If you want to speak at conferences and be able to track leads into your business, great. We can do that. If you want to do better on your podcast or when you go live, all those things. I think a stage is simply a platform to share your message and the most important thing around all of this is in order for you to be a phenomenal speaker whenever and wherever and whoever you speak to, what we have to do is stop shifting, we just start shifting from this idea that there is a quote-unquote perfect way to speak, a perfect place to speak, a right kind of stage to be on, and what we have to shift into is this idea of speaking is a skill. It is a verb. We do it and then we do it again and we do it again and we do it again. It's actually a muscle we have to develop. 

5:07  

And the challenge, if you're an online entrepreneur and you want to get better at speaking wherever you want to speak, your biggest challenge is that you will not have enough opportunities to improve your skill at the speed you desire. I'll say that, again, if you're an online entrepreneur, your biggest challenge is you will not be able to develop that skill at the speed you desire because I know you. You see the ads, you see the messaging, you see all the big people who promise you these big, big things that if you just take my course, if you just do this thing, if this is the one thing that you're missing and then all the magic will happen. And I'm going to rip up the band-aid and tell you anybody teaching that crap, like, no, no, no, no. That's not just one thing. 

However, what I will tell you is if you lean into develop the skill of just one thing, over a sustained period of time, you will see phenomenal results, and I believe that that skill is speaking, because it is the articulation of your ideas out into the world. And if you have an information based business, that is a requirement for people to get your information, right? Sure you can do it in blogging, you can do it in a written form. But I would imagine if you're listening to my show, you are very interested in the spoken form because it adds the personality and the flair and the memorability and the differentiation that you just don't get from the written platforms. 

9:46  

So today what I want to talk about is how live video will actually accelerate the timeline for you becoming a better speaker because the chances are you're not going to speak very often as a guest speaker or on podcast, or on virtual. Granted, sidenote, I've talked about this before. If you have your own podcast, a few weeks ago was probably a month and a half ago, I talked about why I don't recommend batching your content, because of this exact thing I'm talking about today. So by the way, go back to the episode, where I talk about do not batch your content if you're trying to develop your skill of speaking. We'll link to that in the show notes. But what we're going to talk about today is the repetition of going live is going to be an advantage for you becoming a better speaker. 

10:29  

Now, I'm just going to hit this right before we begin. Most people think about going live as a tactic, as a marketing tactic to attract leads. And, well, it is a tactic just like doing reels, just like doing email, just like doing YouTube, whatever else. It is a tactic. But today, I want you to actually reframe how you look at going live, and then specifically, when I'm talking about going live, it's going live on Instagram, or on Facebook, or on LinkedIn or on YouTube, or if there's another platform that you're on, great. But going live, which is speaking to an audience being recorded and streamed in real time, being like speaking and streamed in real time, and the reason why it's important, I'll dig into that today. But that's specifically what I'm talking about is if you've never gone live before, you want to learn more about going live and using it more as a tactic. Go listen to in the show notes will link to a few podcast episodes. I had my friend, Melanie Dyan Howe on talking about live. I talked about different ways to repurpose your lives, how to leverage your lives, we have so many episodes dedicated to that, so please dig into that today. But or today, whenever put it on your playlist. However you want to do it. Your own person. 

11:37  

But today, what I specifically want to talk about is why I'm looking at live being more of a strategic move for your business because here's the thing, when you start developing the skill of going live, you start becoming more top of mind to people, yes, but, and we'll talk about that in way number five. Teaser. But what I really want to be thinking about is going live is, it's helping you fuel the muscle. You have the pressure to be you're on record. It's being streamed. It mimics what public speaking would be on a stage. That's what this is about is we're putting you into that pressure pot more often so that you can get a better outcome faster, and that better outcome is articulating your ideas with more clarity and more confidence with more conviction. That's what we're doing here because if you want other people to see you as a credible thought leader in your space, you have to get better at that articulation, and I think live is such a good gift for that. 

12:35  

So let's quickly go into the five ways that live video will turn you into a better speaker. Way number one, it will help you develop resilience for when crap happens, which friend, crap will happen. I did a whole episode dedicated to what to do when tech goes wrong. We'll link to that in the show notes too. But the reality is, is when you speak, there's always a chance that something's going to happen. You might have an audience that is very boring, you might have your microphone go out, the slides don't work, the clicker doesn't work, maybe the lights go out in the middle of your presentation, the tech person falls asleep, your heel falls through the stage between the risers. These are all things that have happened to me on my public speaking adventures. Yes, all of them even the heel one. That actually happened twice, which is why my team learned to duct tape the seams of the risers on stage. Fun, fun little tip for you, if you run events. But anyways, the fact is, something's gonna happen most likely at some point when you are a public speaker. And I think what happens is for most entrepreneurs, right, we identify as perfectionist, so we want to come across a certain way. We try to create the conditions that are ideal for whatever it is that we're doing. But the fact is when you move quickly and when you do things live, you can't control everything and stuff will happen. 

14:01  

So what a lot of people do is they say, okay, I can't control the conditions, let me get the perfect talk. Let me get the perfect this. Let me get the perfect that, and they will typically procrastinate wait to get it on stage. But what I want you to think about is at the end of the day, if you can't control any of those crazy things that I mentioned, if you can't control them happening, what you can control is your reaction to them. And instead of putting you like throwing you into the deep end and saying, go speak on a giant stage right now and just see what happens. What I want you to do is start developing the resiliency for a little baby things potentially going wrong. So for example, you go live and your internet gets a little choppy for a second, or you get a weirdo in the comments with a bunch of eggplant emojis, or your dog starts barking in the middle of your talk, your kids come in and say, Mommy, make me a frickin sandwich. Whatever happens, all these things happen. We see them happen all the time. They probably happen to us when we go live. The question is, are you consciously using them as an opportunity to practice how you react in those situations?

15:01  

That's one of the most beautiful things that I love about going live is you start becoming almost indifferent and you roll with it, and you actually get really good at handling those little clips. I mean, just think about the last few years with so many of us working at home, with kids at home, with spouses at home, with all the things we become pretty resilient. Would you agree? Like we've gotten good at it. Now what I want you to do is transcend those skills over to a stage. I want you to think about this. If you have this freakin fear of looking dumb, forgetting what you're gonna talk about something going wrong in your presentation, I want you to think about this. All those scenarios that I talked about before around what could go wrong, it all happened to me. And in my 15 years of speaking on stages, I've spoken on thousand stages all over the world, never ever have I had somebody come up to me after and tell me that I was a dumb dumb for one of those things like, could you believe that light went out in your presentation, like you were terrible? Like no, they don't say that. What they say is something like, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe you fell in the middle of that stage. And the way that you handled it like a mother frickin boss, like oh my gosh, or oh, I can't believe your slides went out during that talk, but the way that you just carried right on, like, no notes and everything that was incredible, or the power went out whatever. I can go through all the scenarios, right? The scenarios don't really matter. The point on this is audiences love an underdog moment. 

16:29  

So here's the thing, you know, I've mentioned this before. Public speaking is the number one fear in the world. Is it above death, or it's more than death? There's a Jerry Seinfeld joke that more people would rather be in the coffin than delivering the eulogy at a funeral. Think about that, right? So if we have this common thing, whether or not you're terrified of speaking, if chances are that a majority of your audience is. So when they see you on stage, this is why when you see a nervous presenter, how you get really, really uncomfortable because you're uncomfortable for them because you're kind of sharing that weird, awkward emotion of how I would feel if I was terrible on the stage. Yeah, that sorry, that was a little aggressive. But that's what happens there. 

17:08  

So what happens is, when something goes wrong, there's a fraction of a second with your audience where they're like, oh, my gosh, what's gonna happen. And when you roll with it, when you either laugh it off, or just roll with it, or even kind of nod to it, make fun of it and keep moving. They are in awe of you, what's their kind of thinking, like, thank goodness, that wasn't me, but they're impressed. Their level of like, whoa, and how they then you everything else that comes out of your mouth, that actually skyrockets. They see you in an even better light. So sometimes that resilience muscle, you gotta roll with it, because it actually will serve as an advantage for you when you do get on some bigger stages. So I want you to start thinking about live video as resilience bootcamp, right? And even if nothing goes wrong, when you're live, I'm not saying don't pray for things to go bad or wrong in your live or on a stage. But what I'm saying is you got to be open and when it happens, roll with it. It's like improv comedy, make it an end. Go with it. Okay?

18:07  

Number two, the reason why I think live video is such an incredible way to become a more powerful speaker, is it trains you how to be better with engagement. Let me explain this one because this might, this actually might be a really interesting thing to think about as my number two. Most people when they think live video, they think that oh, live means there'll be people there live and then they get disappointed when no one shows up, or they do that awkward thing of going on hey, guys, I'm just gonna wait around until we get some people here. And anyone who watches the replay later is like, I'm not watching this. Like, I don't want to watch this replay of you waiting for people to join you, or anybody who did show up live, they're like, what am I, like chopped liver? Like, wh, what other people do you need here? I'm here. 

18:54  

So what we want to be thinking about, I did a whole podcast episode specific to live, how like live, go for the replay effect. But what I want to call out here, the reason why I think live video turns you into a better speaker is at the end of the day, when you show up to a room, you do not know how your audience is going to engage, interact with you. Some groups are going to be super chatty, super vibrant, super engaging. Some people might be very, very, very quiet and reserved. And I'm a big believer that there are no bad audiences. There's only bad facilitation. So if you've, I'm gonna call you out here real quick and you might not like this. But if you've ever presented to a group and you're like, oh, they were like, ah, terrible. There are no bad audiences. There's only bad facilitation. So the chances are in that moment, I'm so sorry to call you out here, friend, but chances are high high, high, chances are that you were not so well, one, you were not set up for success, maybe the audience wasn't set up for success, but you were relying on having an engaged and excited audience so because you'd have that in the past, so when you got there and you didn't get that you became a little awkward for a hot minute and didn't quite know how to recover from that. It happens. It happened to me many, many times. 

20:08  

But what we have to do, one of the muscles that you have to develop to be a really powerful speaker is how you adapt to bring the audience along with you on the journey. You have to get good at engagement, even when you feel like you're getting any. One of the most important ways or the most important outcomes of a talk is conversion. You want the people to do something, whether that's going into your freebie, buying your program, or even taking the next step with like action items that you give them of like, Hey, you want to do X, Y, and Z go do this. You are converting them, getting their buy in to do something. In order for that to happen, like happen, you have to have something happened during your talk called the head-nod effect, which means you have to have these moments where they are agreeing with you. They're head nodding with you, they're on board with you, and even thinking like oh my gosh, you're in my head. She gets there are there a specific head-nod effect moment, and we take this what I do all the time. We jam out and talk about this with our students and clients. 

21:04  

But what I want you to start thinking about is, when you go live, how can you start making it feel more like a conversation and less of a presentation? Okay, and I know that might seem weird, because you're like, oh, it's just me behind a microphone or in front of a camera, how do I make it feel like a conversation? They're not talking back to me. Well, okay, I'm in a very, very meta example. What I just did, if you back that up to the 15 second backup moment, I just asked myself a question. As I did that, do you notice that? I just did it again, I just said, did you notice that? I've asked you a question and in your head? Like it or not, you answered yes or no. You thought, did I answer that? Did I do that? Like what? I'm asking myself questions as if you are asking me questions. I am creating these moments in this conversation, where it feels like we're interacting, even though obviously, I'm the only one communicating. So what I want you to think about is when it comes to live video, it gets you to practice, how am I pulling my audience into the conversation? How am I creating conversation by incorporating questions, leveraging the language they would use, putting myself in their shoes, calling out what some of the objections would be. These are all techniques that I teach inside my program. 

22:29  

But what I want you thinking about is engagement, how do you create engagement, knowing that you may or may not have people watching you live? This is a really important skill that really great public speakers do. They are so captivating because it feels like they're in sync with their audience, and yes, they can see their people's faces but they can do that even when they're staring at the lens of a camera. So this is a skill you can start practicing. So you can use a little technique I gave it a bonus last one today, asking yourself questions or saying you might be thinking. That's a really great way to turn it more into a conversation and listen to a presentation. 

23:09  

Number three ways to help you become a magnetic speaker to uplevel your speaking skills. Number three, live video is an incredible playground for you becoming a better speaker, testing playground, whatever you want to call it. I kind of interchangeably use both. What I mean by this is we get so focused around trying to get the talk right, trying to have the best message trying to have the best and only one way, whatever that, like no. What I want you thinking about is your next talk, your next live is just another opportunity for you to practice. Now forgive me for a moment because I'm having a little bit of in my head scenario, since I already record this entire episode. I'm like freaking out going. I want to use an example here. But I do not remember if I've already covered this with you or not because I already talked about it, but can't remember if it was in the first take or the second take, but it's so good. I'm gonna say it again. So I apologize if I already covered this in the beginning. And this is just a live, go and let me ,exemplifying for you in real time, this resiliency moment but here's the example I want to give you. 

Back when I was in corporate planning live events, I did a lot of corporate event planning. So we did small meetings, big meetings, I mean, multi million dollar meetings, little tiny baby meetings. All over at one point, our peak, we were doing 70 plus events a year. And every time we'd have an event, we'd have to figure out the menus for the event. Like, are we doing a dinner or breakfast? We'd always go through every hotel. We have a catering menu, we'd have a budget and then customize. We could try different things. So one event we did, it was in Phoenix. Actually, we did this a lot of times because it's a big hit. They were fire pits on this outside event. It's like a country western themed event. So they were fire pit, so we did smores. That was really great. Another huge event we did in Las Vegas, we brought in fire dancers and bands. We created this giant wall. It was a peg board. And there were doughnuts hanging on the pegs with a chocolate fondue fountain. It was frickin phenomenal. My favorite thing. 

25:14  

So planning menus and picking out foods, it was always fun because there was always the next event was like, let's try this. Oh, let's try that. Like, that's cool. But when I I got married while I was an event planner, corporate event planner, I got married and I'm like, oh man planning a wedding, like in comparison to a giant couple thousand person event in Vegas like piece of cake, right? When we sat down with our caterer to pick up the food, it was the hardest thing for me to do. Like it was also hard. Are we doing a buffet? Are we doing a sit down? Are we gonna do an appetizer buffet? Are we gonna do a formal buffet? Like what kind of food do we want to do? Do we want to like have independent little foods. We want to have things together like, oh my gosh, so many freaking choices and it became so hard. I was paralyzed trying to make decisions. And it just felt really, really heavy and it's because there was only this one, it was my wedding. I mean, fingers crossed, there's only one of those, right? And there was a difference between that one moment versus all the other events, so 70 plus we pick out a year, there was always the next event. 

26:16  

So I want you to think about this in the context of how you're treating content, but specifically, your speaking opportunities in your business, your webinars, your launches, you're going live, your podcasts, your anything else, how often are you treating them more like I treated my wedding where it's so precious, and you're like, ah, it has to be perfect and it has to be this way because it's going to be the thing that people know me for that. Or can we treat it more like a playground and say, yes, every event we do, ie every speaking event that we do, we want it to be phenomenal because it might be someone's first time they're meeting us, that's their first experience with us so it's going to be phenomenal, and we don't have to be so precious with it because there's always going to be more. Take the pressure off yourself. Your message doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to look a certain way, you don't have to be at your best , you're set doesn't have to be perfect, like it doesn't have to be your moment of brilliance, right? And even if you were to book a big giant speaking gig, like calm the frick down. Book, like some little ones in the front end of that, or practice going live more like this is why I love going live is it gives you a stage to consistently show up and get comfortable speaking on that platform, that comfortable testing your articulation skills and trying out different things like you get better as you go. 

So what I want you to think about, this is where I mentioned before, stop thinking about going live is such a important tactic, and trying to get results from it and look at it more as a strategy to get better at communicating with your audience. Notice I said communicating with your audience, that goes back to tip number two around engagement conversation. 

27:50  

Okay, wait, number five that, nope, way number four, that live speaking is will help you get better at speaking. Oh my gosh, that was that was so good. That was so good, such a word fumble, a messy pie. But number four, is it helps you become a better story teller and unlock which stories you should tell in your big stage moments. So similar to number three, most people really get freaked out by stories, or excited about stories, but they put all this pressure to get like the perfect story. Like what's the perfect origin story? What's the perfect metaphor here? What's the epic story to tell? What's the big lies, heavy story? And chances are the big stories, the ones that you really didn't go once I have to be told those can work. But what I find is the stories that resonate most with audiences are actually the little ones that you don't think much about, but you just flippantly tell them, and those seem to resonate. So what's important is you start testing out different stories. You start getting better at the skill of storytelling. How do you connect what happened to a perspective and a lesson. We talked about that last week in my interview with Mike Ganino around you can have one thing happen and have a bunch of different perspectives. Storytelling is an art form and live video gives the ability to articulate and tell different kinds of stories and start figuring out what sticks with your audience. 

One of the things I teach inside my programs is this idea that when you get on a big stage, use stories, but don't come up with new stories and test new stories on our audiences. There's a specific formula that I have around new stories versus proven tried and true stories that you want to make sure you're balancing because you want to know how your message is going to land with an audience. And so the great part about live video is you can actually test out new stories as you're testing around to figure out what you will put in your stage talks. So start thinking about how can you share interesting stories about your weekend? How can you start, this is my favorite activity. How can you talk about something that happened and connect the dots into a lesson? Can you start refining that skill? 

Sidenote, one of the Instagram accounts I started following a few months ago is the Tonic Shop, Jen Olmstead. I don't remember how to pronounce her last name. Anyways, she, we use show it for our new website for The Speaker Co, and we bought our template for our website off of the Tonic shop. And Jen's emails are, she's incredible storyteller. But lately on Instagram, if you're listening to this a time ago with live, it's nearing September of 2022. Recently on Instagram over the last few weeks, Jen has done a series around storytelling. And one of the things she did that people were going bananas over is her taking someone's seemingly uninteresting in story and connect the dots to their business niche. It's one of my favorite things that I do with my clients inside my storytelling, like modules and workshops, but it's an art and it's a skill of how you get better at connecting the dots between something that happened and a lesson coming from that, so going live allows you to test out that skill. You can turn any story into any, like connect the dots to any niche or any example or lesson in your business but you have to get better at doing that. So I want you to start thinking about how can you treat your lives as your opportunity to practice specific some skills in this one storytelling. 

31:13  

Okay, rounding out our list way number five, that I believe that live video will turn you into a better speaker. It helps you stay top of mind for your audience. Now, let me back up here for just a second. Back before or back when I started booking professional speakers for my corporate events, it was 2009, 2010, booking speakers for events at the time, I mean, Instagram, I don't think Instagram exist. I don't think so. Facebook, sure that existed a couple years in. But public speakers really what would happen is they would speak in front of an audience and they would, their call to action would essentially be like, reach out to me on email, or here's my website, or here's my book, and you sticking with that person, it'd be like that. But most public speakers, what would happen is they made their living from book sales, speaking gigs, that was kind of the end of it. But now in this new information land that you and I live in, where there's information products online, and we can sell our expertise through ebooks and digital courses and group coaching programs and have podcasts like this that we may or may not monetize, like there's so many different ways to do it. 

What we have to be thinking about is we're leveraging speaking as a way to get in front of our audiences. And it can't be a wham bam, thank you, ma'am, one nightstand. What we have to be thinking about is how do we get in front of them and start building relationships and stay top of mind. Because chances are their readiness or need for our product right now in this moment is going to be a very small subsection of those people, but if we can stay top of mind, they might think of us, refer us come back to us for any and all I mean types of things. So what we want to think about is how can we leverage and fold in speaking as a way to stay top of mind for our ideal customers and our audience. 

32:57  

Now what a beautiful things about going live, I don't know if you know this, but on Instagram, when you log into Instagram, and you are on your home feed page, you know, up at the top, across the top where all the Instagram stories are when someone that you follow goes live, it automatically shows to the left in front of all of the Instagram stories. Most people these times are spending kind of plowing through the first or the ten people on Instagram stories, like that's usually the first thing people check before going to feed, and if you see someone goes live up there, their names are up there. Now, before you go like, phew! Who clicks on that? Personally speaking, I don't click on that. I don't ever click on the lives unless there's an accident and I'm like, oh shit, and then I close out of it. But what I want you thinking about is the name recognition. 

33:41  

Okay, this is one of those things earlier that you know how people get all swept up in tactics and tactics, getting effective results. This is where I'm gonna lean into more of a strategy versus a tactic kind of conversation. So instead of going like when I go live, how do I get people to click or buy or all those things like that, you could do that right? And make sure that when you are going live, be persuasive. Use my magnetic phrases so that you're really attracting your audience, which sidenote, if you want to grab my 19 magnetic phrases that will help you get your buyer running to your email list. Go to the speaker co.com/magnet, we'll also link it in the show notes. But by the way, when I talked earlier about playground, playground on live videos is an excellent way to practice those frickin phrases so you can get better at using them because the first time you probably use them, you're probably gonna sound awkward and fumbly. Let's just call it what it is. Don't use that as your like, oh, I'm bad and terrible. No, practice it again and again and again. That's what I'm talking about with having to be a testing playground but back to this. When you're going live, it isn't just about converting people or to have them actually hear your message. 

Let me step outside of live for a minute to give you an example. Emails. I am not a person who opens up emails from people. I look at the subject line, I kind of maybe skim the preview, maybe I open it into a short skim and then market back as unread and never go back to it. But when people, when I hear the advice from someone around like scrubbing your list and deleting people who don’t open your emails, I kinda cringe. And while I understand why people say that, yes I know I’m going off on a total tangent here but track with me. Okay? When people say that I cringe because I think about my own reading personality as an email. Take this, I subscribe to Gabby Bernstein’s email. Gabby Bernstein, she’s a meditation slash she’s an author. I don’t know how to describe Gabby but you probably knew who Gabby Bernstein is. I joined her membership, six or seven months ago. I sometimes use it, sometime not. I got her emails, most of her email probably every week. But her Sunday email comes through with her meditation practice for the week and I see it. I always have it in my radar, like oh yeah, oh yeah, I will,  but I never ope it. 

But here’s the thing, Gabby stays top of mind because I consistently see her emails come through, consistent. And I know that when I need it, I’ll go into her membership and do a little practice but I’m not to follow someone’s whatever membership like every week. That’s not just my style. But  I’m so type of mind, I just think about, let’s say for a moment that, I know it’s a paid product but let’s just say Gabby’s email newsletter, and she decided to go through her list, scrub and delete. Gabby’s email no longer be in my inbox every week. She would fall off my radar. It would be months until I thought about her again, months, maybe years. I mean I'm sure like over once a while if I come across like oh yeah Gabby, right. But she would no longer be top of mind. And why I bring that up is I do not need to be reading her email to know that Gabby is the meditation person. Gabby is the person I need to read when I need to reconnect back with my soul and my universe when I need to get fired up in a deep way. She's that person for me. I don't need to read her emails every week to like know that about her. I already been at her content. I already already read one of her books. I'm already kind of a believer in the Gabby. So let me apply this back over to you and live video, and you can probably apply that to yourself with email but we're not going down that rabbit hole. 

37:21  

Think about with live video. When I see someone pop up at the top of my Instagram that they're live, I don't need to read or listen or watch their live to go like Oh, they're on my mind. I see someone's going live. I'm like, Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Like, I wonder how they're doing, like they are in my mind which makes me more likely that if I see some of their content, or if I go, Oh, I want to go check out their page. When that readiness scale tips to I'm interested in what they're doing, I'm more curious. or something's triggered up in my life like, I'll just keep using Gabby's an example. Let's say, let's say that I read something somewhere where it's like, really gets my fire going around really launching a meditation practice. Okay, so let's say somebody else's content. And I'm like, yeah, I really do. You know what, I'm going to open up this email from Gabby. I'll see Gabby went live, I'm gonna watch and I'm gonna get reengaged because she was already somebody that I trusted in that realm even when somebody else tipped me off to get back into it. I'm going to go back to Gabby. 

38:21  

Now, I know, this is a really weird example but the reason why I want to bring this up for you is one of the reasons why I think live video will turn you into becoming a better speaker is what happens is I think a lot of people put this pressure on themselves that they think that they have to be such a brilliant speaker that somebody hears them one time and it's like, Genie wishes that oh, my gosh, they were so good. I'm gonna have them for life. It doesn't work that way. I have witnessed some of the most brilliant speakers on the planet, and I remember thinking that this is the most brilliant person ever on a stage, Holy crap. I remember having the thought, and I will tell you this with absolute conviction. I do not remember who was on stage when I had that thought. I've had that thought many times in my career. Again, I've hired speakers. I've been to a crap ton of conferences. I remember having that thought this is the most brilliant speaker ever and I cannot tell you who the people were on stage. I can't. So the question is, do you want to be the most brilliant speaker on stage ever or do you want to be remembered and known and build relationships in a way that actually can help people beyond the stage?

39:38  

I'm imagining that if you're here, you're on the ladder. And what going live does is it helps you become a better speaker because you can have more opportunities to get in front of those people. It also takes the pressure off of for your one talk to be the most magical life changing, like life changing thing ever. When you go live there's a compound effect. Every talk can be good and you get better over time and a compounding effect of their perception of you is that you're consistent. You're always good. You always have something valuable to say. You're always there and that compounding effect builds trust and that trust builds even more credibility and the likelihood of them wanting to refer you to other people or throw their money at you increases, right? Ensure you have to learn how to speak in a persuasive way. You have to make sure that you're talking about the right topics and that you're moving people into action. We help you with that at The speaker Co. That's what we're so excited about doing with my new company. But here's the thing like, if you are unwilling to show up consistently, how can you expect yourself to get better at communicating to your audience in a more persuasive way. 

40:43  

So I hope today I have made a strong argument to help you get re inspired to going live. I know for me, I certainly have. This is another gray area that I don't know if I said this at the top of the episode or the last time we recorded it, which actually wasn't recorded, but it bears repeating. So here we go. I know for me over the last few months with the kids being home on a summertime schedule and doing a heck a lot of vacation. I very much enjoyed it. But I also have done the bare minimum in my business. I haven't gone live. I've been consistent with my email while we're building a brand new company. We launched The Speaker Co on August 8, myself and my business partner Emily Hall. Like we've done a lot of things. But what I haven't done is really made sure that I'm overly communicating with my audience around what it is that we're building, showing up and serving them in the best way possible. I've been obviously I do that on the podcast every single week. But beyond that I've been very, very lackluster with social media, and I know that those touch points matter. And I like going through today's content, I was like yeah, why haven't I been going live? Like, why did I stopped doing that? That was dumb, Heather like, oh, we need to start doing it more. So I'm hoping I'm having that kick in the pants effect for you because you'll see this in real time for me over the next few months, as I get back at going live on Instagram specifically is where I'm going to focus my time and energy. 

42:01  

But here's why, I'm gonna go through the five things again and give you my perspective on what I'm going to be thinking about. So we talked about how social media stages are low stakes, and this will help you become a more I guess, magnetic speaker. So number one resilience for me. Okay, let me just be great right example here I'm stumbling on a few things during today's episode, you hear me like making little fumbling mistakes. I'm sure you notice them. But I also am confident that you're not thinking like how Heather is a family speaker person? She's terrible. She's dumb. No, I'm sure you're thinking like, she's real. Like, wow. It's interesting like she fumbles and keeps going like, you're probably not thinking much of it or if you are thinking of it, you're thinking about in a positive way, so that's me building resilience. 

When I first started recording my podcast, I first started speaking on stages, my tolerance for me kind of fumbling around was much lower. Now it's much higher, because I know that the value of the message that I'm articulating way over trumps  the imperfections and actually the imperfections, actually are, I think a good thing, right? Because it makes me this is gonna sound very meta and weird for me to say this out loud. It makes me more relatable. I know in the way that I speak, I know that I'm really freaking good. And if I'm so polished, it actually becomes unattainable for my audience where they start questioning themselves thinking like, but can I really like Heather, she's so freaking good at it, like I don't think I can ever get on on that level and I know that sounds so douchey for me to say that but I know this because I've heard this from so many of you. So for me, I do not delete the fumbling mistakes, because I want you to hear that I am in perfect. But also from a branding perspective, it serves me well because if I don't have any of those in, it puts me into a quote unquote, like different playing field and it makes it harder for my audience to see themselves in what I do. This aspirational. So for me going live, it's that resilience piece. It's actually continuing to show up in an imperfect way, because I know that works well for my brand. You have a version of that with your people. 

44:01  

Way number two was getting good at engagement, getting good at engagement. As a speaker, your biggest responsibility is to turn the presentation into a conversation. And this skill that you have to practice and going live will help you get better in that. For me, I want to have more conversations with my community, and I'm fortunate that my audience has started growing over the last few years. So when I go live, I do get literal engagement from people but that's not always the case. If you join my live for the next few months, you'll probably notice that it might be like one to three people on it. And that's fine and you're going to see in real time you demonstrating how you show up fully even when you might be the only one in the room. You still can show up and as a skill to practice. 

44:42  

Number three we talked about using live as a testing or a playground to get better with different ways that you communicate whether that's getting better with your voice, getting better with number four stories, getting better at articulating your message working on your persuasion, working on your call to actions, working on your vocal mechanics like I am right now. I need to start tightening up my hooks on video. So you know that is my specific thing that I'm going to be testing and playground on. Testing and playgrounding on? Yeah, that's the thing I just made. So we all have different things, use lives to test out and get better at those things. And then number five, staying top of mind. I know for me going live, especially now as we've launched a new brand. There's questions around I've gotten these questions. Well, so is Heather Sager coaching brand still a thing? Or is everything now on The Speaker Co? Like, what are those? I have some opportunity to clearly communicate to my audiences what's going on? What is The Speaker Co? What are the offers we have? How will Emily work with students inside the program? Is it a new program? Heather, are you launching Sulu again? Are you not launching Sulu? I'm getting these questions. So I know I need to stay top of mind for my audience and start talking about these things to ensure that it's clear that I am staying top of mind for you beyond just the podcast and hopefully be a little bit more discoverable for more people. That's an added benefit. Anyways, I say this because I'm doing these things in real time and I invite you to do the same. Back to school, it's events season. Conferences are happening. This is a really great time for you to really get in the game to up level your speaking skills. And I think going live would be a really great way for you to get started with that right now. Like I said, going live super low stakes. It's less pressure because your audience has low expectations and it really is a great place for you to make speaking like a playground. 

46:33  

Okay, I've reached the end of my vocabulary for the day because clearly I'm getting more fumbly as this episode goes on. So we're going to call this one good. But if you want to learn how to become a more magnetic speaker, if you want to learn how to not just speak right on camera, but also get on to stages, actually create a talk that's bookable to get paid to speak or to leverage speaking as a way to attract clients on a stage and actually have your name associated with some pretty significant events, more importantly events that your ideal customer is at. If you want to learn how to do that we are launching the Speaker Society it is our new program here at The Speaker Co. What we're going to be focused on is how to like teaching you how to tell the right stories, how to craft a talk so magnetic your ideal customer is an instant yes. We're going to teach you how to do that. We're going to be running some webinars in September but the doors open to the Speaker Society on September 26. If you want to be the first one to know about it and grab my free podcasting guide, you can head on over to the show notes for where you can join the waitlist on that the website to get on the waitlist. I had to look it up here real quick. I don't remember exactly off the top of my head what that is. So if you head over to the show notes or the Speakerco.com If you scroll a bit down you can see the waitlist and or depending on when you listen to this, you can actually join us inside the Speaker Society or on one of our free trainings coming up. 

All right, friend, I hope you've had an incredible summer. If like me, you're getting back into the fall season with a more consistent schedule. Let us praise for having a little bit more time on our calendars. It's protected without little ones running around at home. Cheers to that friend and I'll see you again on the next episode.