If you followed my channel for any length of time, then you know that I’m a trainer, speaker, author and storyteller. But how do I do those things when I have speaking events, when I have engagements, when I’ve got gigs, – how do I prep for them? What do I do?
Well in this video, I’m going to share with you FIVE things that I do to prep for any virtual gigs, any speaking engagements that I have. Want to hear about it? Here we go.
Listen, I love doing what I do and I’ve been doing it for a little while. I would say, I’ve been an official speaker for about four, five years or so, maybe a little bit longer than that. But as I learn a little bit more about the industry, I’ve got the set of steps that I go through and I’m learning how to systemize, tweak, and automate so that I’m even more prepped and on top of it for events.
As a matter of fact today, I did this session and the person that hired me was a little bit surprised about how many different things that I did and considered as I put the event together. So I can’t do all of that without a set of steps that I walk through. I can’t do all of that without preparing.
So I’m going to share with you a few things that I do to prepare for those events. But before I do that, I just kind of want to share with you some of the recent things that I’ve done just this week alone. I’ve emceed an event, I’ve done a bunch of trainings, just finished doing some webinars with a buddy, and it’s been really awesome to do that.
So how do I prepare? How do I make sure that I’m on track and that I’m giving the client exactly what they need? Well, let me share with you five things that I do.
#1: Prep Call
Number one is: I have a prep call with the client.
I’ve got a prep with the client and on that call we really discuss:
- What are the takeaways that we want them to have?
- Who’s going to be there?
- Who are the people that are going to be in the audience so that I can speak to the different groups, the different audience members, the different roles that they have – all of the different things that they want.
And I’ve got to know that stuff in advance, so I do that. So that’s number one.
#2: Figure Out The ONE BIG THING/TAKEAWAY
Number two is I figure out the one big thing that I want my audience to know.
I figure out the one big thing that I want my audience to know. I figure that out based on what I get from the person that I spoke with. And that’s that’s the reason that I really have that call with them because I want to find out what success looks like for them.
When I speak, when I share with them my talk, my program, I want to make sure that at the end of this session that they got exactly what they wanted, what they asked for, and so that’s what I do. I figure out what’s the one big thing, what’s the one big takeaway that they have.
#3: Create Slides and Assets
Okay, so the third thing that I do after I figure out the one big thing is, I then create slides and and assets around it. I create slides and assets around that one big thing, that one main idea.
What are the visuals? What are the text? What is the information that I can put together easily and cleanly to most clearly get that point, drive that point home for the audience.
#4: Figure Out Engagement Strategies
And then after I do that, I figure out engagement strategies.
So when I talk about engagement strategies, what am I talking about exactly? I’m talking about what are the connecting points? What are the things that I do to connect with the audience because there’s nothing worse than a speaker or a trainer who just stands there and talks the entire time, right? You want someone that is going to do something that engages, that really is interactive, that allows the people to to be a part of that session.
So what are the times? What are the moments? What are the activities that I have that I can that make either in person or virtual? What are the activities that I have that I can use to really pull the audience into what I’m sharing?
And then, after I figure out those things, I try to –
#5: Figure Out The Tech
I try to figure out the tech. When I’m online, is it going to be zoom? Am I going to be using Prezi video? I’m going to be using PowerPoint? Am I going to be using Keynote? Am I going to be using Microsoft Teams? Am I going to be incorporating polls and different games? Am I going to gamify this? Am I going to use poll everywhere? Am I going to use Kahoot?
I’m listing all of these different things – and I probably need to do a video where we can deep dive into some of these different things – but what are the technologies? What are the platforms? What are the pieces of software that I need to use because, especially if I’m doing some of these events by myself, it takes a lot of coordination to make it happen.
What are the things that I need to do in order to really understand and do the dry runs and the practices to make sure that I don’t have fails during the event. What are my background systems if something goes down? How do I get back up quickly?
Those are five things that I do – and I do a lot more. I’ve got some checklists that i follow, but I think if you really understand the virtual world or you want to be a part of that virtual world, especially as a speaker as a trainer, then these five steps are some really key things that are going to help you move towards that.
That’s all I wanted to share with you on this episode today. Today is day three of the vlogmas – that that’s all I got so join me tomorrow.
Join me tomorrow day four just tune in and make sure that if you haven’t done so yet I’ve shared a couple of videos or little things here, smash that SUBSCRIBE button and hit the notification thingy and you’ll get notified every time.
I’ll see y’all next time, as we do this again.