BRING THE BIG (SPEAKING) ROCKS IN

Oh My God! I have the opportunity to speak! I’m going to be in front of a room full of people who are my perfect audience, my ideal clients, and I can’t wait for the opportunity to make an impact!

These are statements I hear in my world almost every single day. And then I watch as incredibly clever people get caught in prepping for the delivery, in ensuring they can squeeze value and knowledge into every single moment. And in the midst of wanting to squeeze every single moment, I watch these fabulously clever people descend into the detail and lose sight of what is most important.

The Big (Speaking) Rocks.

The Big (Speaking) Rocks are where your delivery is made or lost.

The Big (Speaking) Rocks are where you craft the ability to suspend reality for your audience for a moment in time.

The Big (Speaking) Rocks are the elements which take you from simply connecting with an audience to shifting them to where you want them to be.

The Big (Speaking) Rocks are:

1. Your single, clear message.

2. The gift to your audience – what it is, and why it is important to them.

3. The stories which you will use to move them in beside you, to trust you, which are shaped on purpose.

4. The takeaways and key actions the audience can use to change their world immediately should they choose to.

And you need to work on these as chunks.

1. Get the message and the gift to your audience absolutely crystal clear.

2. Choose the stories and shape them to ignite all the senses, speaking clearly to your message, your purpose.

3. Identify the key takeaways and building in actionable steps your audience can use straight away.

But what I consistently see with people just like you is you will nail the first big chunk. Usually the first story. And then, before you have even started working the second story through, you get caught in how to do the transition, the segue, between them, losing sight of the stories still to be captured and shaped to bring strength to your message.

You know you want your audience to get immense value, so you get clear on the first major takeaway. And then caught in the detail of how to move from the first to the second, to the third, before even fully fleshing out what those key takeaways are.

You are getting so caught in the detail, you forget the magic is in the big rocks.

1. Do the big rocks first.

2. Then sequence them.

3. Then do the transitions, the segues, and the closes – once you can see the magic and the segues open.

The same as an Executive Summary is written after the business report is done, the transitions, the segues, and the closes can only become clear and powerful after the big rocks have been brought to life, in full.