When They Have Had Enough

I am crystal clear when I am working with people in our live events or in our more intensive mentoring programs that there are usually 5 reasons people want to improve their speaking skills, including:

1. You realise to take the next step in your career or business you must strengthen your ability to speak, pitch and present
2. Because of what you do you have been asked to speak and it hasn’t gone quite as you wanted – in fact, there is a possibility you actually ‘bombed’.
3. You have discovered and want to pursue a career as a paid professional speaker
4. You want to cement expert positioning, as a professional who is paid to speak; or (sometimes and)
5. You want to strengthen your ability to speak, pitch and present as a focussed business build strategy

And it is reasons 1 and 5 where realising your Audience ‘has had enough’ creates a very real danger zone.  

In several conversations recently I have had exasperated clients quite literally tearing their hair out, almost crying with frustration, for one reason.

They are delivering exceptional speeches and presentations, securing phenomenal feedback and engagement every single time they speak.

And yet their audience members simply take their work and implement it themselves, and rarely acknowledge that it came from them (the person speaking), and most definitely don’t come back asking them to do the work – or to do any work.

Which if you are looking to expand your career or business can look like an impending death sentence.

So firstly the most important thing for you to remember is this.

The ONLY way you know you are a successful speaker is when someone takes action as a result of hearing what you have to say.

And then you must remember this.

Whether or not they ever acknowledge you is IRRELEVANT.  Tough to hear, but oh so true.  Your one job as a speaker is to shift someone’s perspective of reality, and in the process activate them.  Acknowledgement is what we crave, and yet should never be our motivator.

Because what I need you to know is this.

Every time you have an opportunity to speak, it should be the best of you but not all of you. 

The common misconception played out when my clients are drowning in frustration – which usually shows up as ‘The audience loved me, they implemented all of my work, and I have not secured a single bit of work out of it’ – is the sense that if you keep the speech or presentation super tight on just one piece of information, then you don’t risk giving everything away in the speech.

Instead, in one of the cruellest paradoxes that exist in speaking, the opposite happens.  That is, because you keep it so tightly focussed on one single idea, strategy, process, or element the audience has more than enough to implement it themselves – and they don’t need you because they have no idea that you know more.

They have no idea that this one single element is simply part of an overarching methodology, or just one single thread in your experience, or just a glimpse of the knowledge you hold and the impact you can make.

Which is why they delightedly go and implement your work – and never come back wanting more.

Quite simply – you have given them enough.

So How Do You Shift This?

Firstly, choose a structure that helps you filter all of your knowledge and ensure you are delivering the best of you – the best of what you know, how you work, the way that you think.

Then give them the entire overview; so everything that goes into the what you do and why you do it – at a high level.

And choose one element which allows you to deep-dive the HOW on just one; this becomes your gift to the audience, something they can take away and use immediately, even if you never see them again.

By giving them the best of what you do, and why you do it, when they have implemented the how on just one small element, they will remember you had more – and they will come back to you.