with kristin thompsonwith kristin thompson . awesome possum! welcome to command any room session 03....

with Kristin Thompson

Awesome possum! Welcome to Command Any Room Session 03. This is “Craft It!” I’m Kristin Thompson, your kooky and fearless leader. This is where the rubber meets the road. We created your profit plan in week one. We talked about getting the gigs last week. Now what happens once you get the gig? You’ve got to have that perfect Rockin’ Talk – well, it does not need to be perfect, I should never have said that – but the perfect talk for you. Let’s put it that way. It needs to be structured and designed to sell.

Any questions on the content that we’re going through – bring your questions to the coaching calls. I’ve been trying to answer as many as I can on the Facebook forum, but the coaching calls are there for us to have a real live conversation.

If you were on Monday’s coaching call, it was pretty freaking hot. Great questions! Seriously. Sharp questions. If you missed it or thought, “Well, I don’t have any questions,” you missed out because there were some really good questions. You would have learned something. And to the people who showed up, they got their questions answered. A lot of the times, you’re going to

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Transcript by Lainie Cotell, www.MagiScript.com

learn new things just by hearing what other people are asking, and of course hearing our answers.

You had both me as well as Colleen, Suchecki, the Peak Performance Queen, on the line coaching you through on the strategy side, and then also the mindset and peak performance side of what’s going on as you’re moving through the program. Remember those calls and please make the most of them. I want to congratulate you because I thought they were awesome questions, as did Colleen. We chatted about it after the call.

If you have technology, billing, customer service issues, a handout doesn’t work or anything like that, just e-mail [email protected]. That gets you immediate help and that’s where you want to go.

Of course, all of your training and your bonuses are at www.members.CommandAnyRoom.com. By the way, have you checked out your powerful bonus resources lately? That sounded like a PBS special for a second there. Seriously, great stuff in there. And guess what? We’re not done! We’re going to be adding some stuff in there, as well.

Right now, you’ve got the Get More Gigs and Cash and Big Bonus. You’ve got Power Up Your Message, Marketing and Money Bonus. Someone was asking what the free thing was to give away if you want to list build when you’re giving talks, and this is an example of something that I’ve given away. That’s not why it’s in there, but just so you know.

“Power Up Your Message, Marketing, and Money” is something that I have given away at talks as a free bonus because it’s a great complement to the content we teach in Command Any Room. “Power Up Your Message, Marketing, and Money” gives you ideas on how to create really fun, catchy talk titles. A lot of you have been asking questions about that in the Facebook forum. Make sure you’ve listened to your bonus. “Power Up Your Message, Marketing, and Money” covers that. I give you talk takeaway, and I think even Talk Title templates in there. There’s lots of really fun ideas to help punch up all of your marketing. That will be really helpful to you.

“Power Up Your Voice” is an interview I did with a vocal specialist. This is not me educating you, but me asking the questions of a high level vocal coach from New York City. It might be a little out of the box for some of you, but if you’ve never done vocal warm-ups, it might sound like a strange thing to do when you’re just giving a teleclass, but it will change the variety in your voice, so instead of being very monotone, you have lots of different layers to your voice and dynamics and different colors. It also loosens you up. It’s annteresting call to listen to, for sure.

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mailto:[email protected]

http://www.members.commandanyroom.com/

You’ve got your Speaker Tracker training video that walks you through how to use your speaker tracker. There is also an interview with Mara Glazer on social media marketing, and your 50k Road Map. The last one I want to mention is your Rockin’ Talk Makeover Checklist. It’s definitely something to look at.

Something that we’re going to be adding in here is the ability for you to come to our live event in November. It’s called the Rise. I’m super excited and definitely want you all to come. It is not just a repeat of what you’re learning in this program, to be clear. Some of it is absolutely going to cross over because we’ll talk a little bit about putting your talks together.

We’re also going to be talking about how you uncover your unique brand, and your unique place in the market. How do you stand out in a crowded marketplace? We’re going to be talking about Rockin’ Your Talk and closing the room strategies. We’re going to be talking about rocking your business. All of this is great, but what are different business strategies and marketing funnels? How do you automate this so that it’s not always you giving you a live talk?

Giving a live talk is a critical part of building your business. It is the big engine of my business, absolutely. If we tracked my revenue, the huge pops in revenue and streams of business that come in, for me, come when I go speak live. However, I also have automated systems going on that are generating other pops of income throughout the year, and you do want to have both. That is how you create a truly leveraged business.

In the beginning all I did was teach live workshops. That was it. You either came to the one workshop on memory training, or you went away. That was all I had to offer. That is a one-legged stool because what if you get a strange, random case of vertigo? One morning you wake up and the room is spinning. Yes, that did happen –and it happened a day before I was supposed to teach a live workshop.

I had to figure out how to recover from vertigo in about 24 hours, because I had to lead my workshop. I couldn’t just hand everybody their money back. I wasn’t in a financial position to do that at that time, nor did I want to treat people that way.

Certainly that could still happen. There are times we have to fight through and stay healthy to deliver on what we’ve sold. My point is if your entire business is always hanging on you delivering every single piece live, it can really get you into trouble.

At the live event, it really goes much farther beyond Command Any Room, and it pulls you all the way through building an entire business around who you are and how you serve, so that you can profit in a really big way. We’ll add it to the bonus area, and I will give you an alert.

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That is coming as an additional gift for you. I would love to see all of you there! We can hang out and rock out your business in person. It’s super-duper exciting.

Onward and upward! This week is about crafting your talk, and specifically making sure that it’s structured to sell. This is really the place where you shift from just getting compliments to getting compliments and cash. It’s the number one place where people generally come to me. In other words, most people who want to work with me either don’t have a ton of experience, or they have experience giving talks and their talks are not generating any results.

I just had a conversation with a woman who is extremely talented. It’s someone who I have actually hired, so I know she’s extremely talented at what she does in a big way. Yet, what we uncovered when we were talking about serving her, was that she’s not converting anybody in her talks. She was getting a lot of invitations from big names and getting these great opportunities because she’s so good at how she serves people.

But then when she would get up in front of the room and give a talk, she wasn’t converting anybody. She is in a place right now of being really frustrated. From my side, I said, “You’ve got a gold mine! You’re talented, you’re sharp, you’re well put together, you’re well spoken. We just need to get you the talk that converts.” That’s what’s missing for her. It’s what’s missing for a lot of you. If you don’t have a ton of experience speaking to groups, this is what’s going to give you the big jump start.

Today is the turning point where we go from just getting compliments to getting compliments and cash in your bank account. We want to make sure that you have a good talk and we want to make sure that the pieces are in place for that talk to really build your business.

I know this because I know it really works from my own experience. My own one hour talks have allowed me – if you look at this year, we’ll go over $300,000 and I’m in my office Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I definitely do answer client e-mails on other days of the week, so I don’t want to make it sound like I don’t ever look at my business outside of those three days. But really, Monday, Wednesday, Friday are my office days. All the other days of the week, I’m answering questions on e-mail or Facebook. That’s it.

One hour talks that I’ve given or really under one hour talks, have generated huge, huge paydays that drive the force of my business – $30,000, $50,000, $60,000. What is possible for you? If we can turn this part of your talk or your business around and get you generating cash, it probably doesn’t for most of you even need to generate $30,000. If it did $3,000 or $10,000, would that make a difference in your monthly income? Absolutely.

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What is holding most of you back? We touched briefly in the preview webinar on the two styles of speakers. I’m not going to spend a ton of time on it, but you do want to anchor back to that and remember, wingers, your strengths are that you’re confident, fun, bold, and you know what you know. In other words, you know you’re an expert at what you do, and you have confidence around that. You know you can talk. If I said, “Hey, could you stand up right now and talk about financial planning,” or health and wellness, or whatever your topic is, you have a lot of confidence you can do that. Therefore, you like to wing it. You’re a little resistant, you’re a little rebellious – I am, too. It’s okay.

Sometimes, by the way, rebellion can be the greatest thing in the world. Leveraging how you are rebellious can really benefit you. Don’t blindly follow authority. That’s one of my rules. It doesn’t mean I don’t listen to authority. It means I do not blindly listen to authority. That’s a great rule to have if you want to be successful. Walk to the beat of your own drum. It’s a great quality to have.

But, when we’re resistant to something that’s really going to benefit us and serve us at a high level and we rebel against that, it can really slow our progress down. As a winger, the challenge is, your tendency, because you don’t have a real planned step-by-step talk, is you can confuse people.

A lot of times, the talk ends up accidentally getting very self-focused because you start telling long stories about yourself and your experiences, and you’re getting wrapped up in your enthusiasm, but it comes out being too self-focused versus audience-focused.

The lack of organization in your talk can overwhelm your audience. It becomes a little bit hard for them to follow, and it can feel like they’re shutting down and they’re not quite following you or understanding you.

You might end up missing points because of the lack of organization. Something that was really important to get conveyed – maybe even something that ultimately either makes the case for them to step further into your topic or not – if you forget to say it, that’s a major problem. Maybe you forget to say the bonus, not that I’ve ever done that – I have done that! If you forget a key point of your talk, big problem.

Ultimately, a lot of these things end up having you go over your time limit, particularly in a speak to sell format. In other words, you have 50 minutes on the stage, you get to make an offer and drive people to the back of the room or you’ve got a webinar that you’re leading

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that’s going to funnel people into another product or program, when you go over time, you sell less, period. Please jot that in your notes: over time equals less sales.

There’s going to be a rumble at the end of today between the wingers and the teachers! I am much more of a teacher than a winger, and most of my clients are, or are a little bit of a mix of the two, which is fine. Teachers seek to serve at a high level. That’s your strength. You enjoy teaching and mentoring people. That’s part of what you feel like your purpose is and what really drives you.

What can happen, though, as a result is sometimes we forget to inspire people. If you’re a teacher, sometimes you get so focused in delivering the stuff, the content, that it gets a little bit dry, gets a little boring, and we forget that there is a preach part to teaching. Our best teachers have a mix of both. Think back to your favorite teacher in school. It’s probably not the person who just read the content to you – that’s content delivery. It’s someone who engaged and inspired you in a way that another teacher didn’t. Remember that.

Teachers, you also can overwhelm your audience. Why? Because you teach and you teach, and then you teach a little more, then you cram a little more in there. Next thing you know, the audience is buried in content. That can cause it to feel hard, meaning the content – maybe even taking the next step and working with you – starts to feel intimidating. “If this is the free class, I don’t even want to know what the paid class is going to be like. I’m going to be crying on the floor.”

It would be like if you went to a personal trainer and they just killed you on your first workout, you might not want to go back. Think about that, and make sure that you’re not piling up or presenting your content in a way that ultimately makes it feel like it’s going to be too hard, and therefore they’re not going to want to dive in and do more work with you.

The other feeling you can give people is sometimes it doesn’t end up feeling hard, but sometimes you’ve explained it so well and thoroughly, you accidentally give people a feeling of satiation or feeling filled up. “Okay, I got what I needed. I learned a lot about how to network. Cool! I’m going to go test that out,” and they don’t have any desire to take the next step with you.

Like the winger, you can end up going over time, and over time equals less sales. There is no other equation for that. Live it, know it, memorize it, and don’t do it.

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How do we create a hot rockin’ talk that sells?

At the most basic level, it’s got to solve a problem. If your talk and your topic solves a problem, people will want it. If you remember from Book It, it’s got to be a problem people want to solve.

• Inspire action

It needs to inspire action. Content is great, and we need it, and let’s just assume that we’re all going to deliver great content. That’s mandatory. But if that’s all you did, it would not be enough. Plenty of people can go read an encyclopedia or read a book on their own. If we just needed the information, we could all get it. At this point, between Google and whatever, we can assimilate information on our own. We can compile it and read it. That’s not actually what teaches people, and it’s not necessarily at all what helps people implement what you teach. But if you can inspire action, that will.

You need to educate through solving a problem, and you need to also keep an eye on inspiring action, and implementation.

• Entertain people

That doesn’t mean you have to turn into a cuckoo clown. You don’t have to wear a crazy costume. You don’t have to take on a personality that is not yours. Please, please hear me when I say that. You absolutely do not need to take on a personality that is not yours. You do need to bring your full personality forward.

There sort of is a secret…and there isn’t a secret. Part of it is your willingness to show people who you really are. I’m going to say that that probably comes in little layers – or big layers, but layers. It doesn’t always come all at once, and that’s okay. But if you are willing to continue to show people who you are and do that from a place of being detached about what they’re going to think about that, your talks are going to become much more interesting.

In the beginning, my talks were very buttoned up because I came from a corporate background, and the way that I was raised was to be professional and follow the rules. I had a very traditional, good upbringing, but the traditional part of it left me afraid to show all of my colors and all of my personality in certain situations.

When I would give talks, I was sticking to the content and the script, but not really being 100% me. What started to happen was I caught myself off guard. One day, I went and gave the talk,

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and I thought of some sort of sassy comeback to a guy in the audience who said something, or I thought of a story. I don’t remember specifically what I said, but I remember the emotional experience of something slipping out of my mouth that I would normally say in my normal life, but I would not normally say when I was giving a talk.

It was really my sense of my humor, and one that I was trying to keep tamped down when I was giving talks. You probably already know I have a little bit of a quirky and sometimes edgy sense of humor. It slipped out, and the room erupted into laughter, thank God. Not violence. They erupted into laughter and it lit up the room. They enjoyed the spontaneity of the moment, and they enjoyed seeing my personality.

Guess what? That’s what people want from you, too. What does that mean? It means be 100% you. What does that mean? It means be the person at the front of the room that you would be if you were hosting a dinner party. You’re with your very good friends. There’s five or eight of you in your living room all sitting around the couch, having some food or a glass of wine, or whatever you like to do – and you stand up to tell a story about something fun or amazing that happened to you that week, or hilariously funny or really scary, something big that happened to you in the last week. You stand up and you get way into telling the story.

However you would tell that story, is the person you want to start to learn how to show up as all the time in your social media, in your talks, on the phone. If you take things very seriously, then come full tilt that way. If you are curmudgeonly and a little bit abrasive and that’s your style, guess what? People have made millions of dollars being that way. If you’re silly and you like to tell jokes and you like to make people laugh, go for it. If you’re quiet, spiritual and soft, that’s okay, too. There is not one style or personality, but please bring it forward so that you entertain people. Think about, as you’re designing your talks, ways to integrate moments of fun as well.

• Interactive

We’ll talk a little bit about that as we go through this template, but please do not give a monologue. Get people to take notes, get people to raise their hands. Maybe have an exercise for people to do. We’ve got to look for moments of interaction. Activities you can have people do. It’s 100% necessary if you want to close people. You’re not going to be able to do it if all you did was talk at them for 60 minutes straight and then say, “Okay, now buy my stuff.” It’s not going to happen. If there’s an interplay, a dance happening all along, from beginning to end, it’s much easier to close the room.

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• A craving for more

The last thing that your talk needs to do is create a craving for more. That’s what people buy. That’s what sends people running to the back of the room. What people crave are results. Please write that down in your notes. You have to create a craving, and what people crave are results.

The content, the teaching, the preaching is really how you market and draw people in. When you close a room, it’s about really anchoring to results and selling people on, or showing or illustrating, the dream. That’s another way of saying it: the big dream that they want. They need to know that your product or pogrom offers them that dream. That’s how we create a craving for more. We’re going to walk through now what that looks like.

The bottom line is what we’re going talk about next is the roadmap that you want to be following. That roadmap needs to lead to an enticing offer. The offer is where people get the more – the thing that’s missing that they don’t have yet. “I learned A, B and C from you, but I don’t have D through Z yet, and I want it, and it’s my dream to have it, and the only way I get it is when I buy your product or program. That’s how I get to enjoy the results.” We’re following a roadmap that leads the entire audience to an enticing offer, and the offer is the big dream – the result that they really truly want to have in their life.

I’m going to go over a high level look at the different components of the talk, and then we’re going to go step by step through the handout. The template is something you can play with on your own as you’re playing around and filling in your content. For the purpose of this training, we’re going to go through the high level view, and then we’ll go through the handout that’s in the Members’ area.

Here’s the high-level view of the Rockin’ Talk Template:

Introduction

The very first thing you do in your talk is your introduction. I’m sure that all of you have seen it or been in the audience at a talk where the person used their introduction as a warm-up. What I mean is somebody steps to the front of the stage, and they’re using the beginning as revving their engines. They’re shuffling their pages, and they’re saying, “Um, okay, let’s see, hang on. I’ve got the notes here and…okay,” and that’s how they start their talk.

You might be rolling your eyes like, “I would never do that.” I don’t know, maybe you would or wouldn’t, but I’ve seen an awful lot of talks start that way.

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If you’re leading a training with a group and you meet with them every week or every month, and you start out and say, “Okay…” that’s fine, it’s not that you can never have a real moment in your life. But if you’re stepping on a stage, or you’re leading a teleclass or webinar that’s going to feed into an offer, you’ve got to start sharp. Don’t start on “ums,” and “ahs” and “I’m not really sure where I’m leading, and hopefully in five minutes I’ll be warmed up and then it’s all going to click in.” Why? Because people make decisions about you in seconds. Not even on a conscious level. On an unconscious level, people have made decisions about you in seconds. I’ve seen it. It’s the worst.

What happens when we do that is we’re already losing sales. It’s not on a conscious level. It’s not that people are haters that are sitting in the office saying, “Patty just stumbled her first five words, so I’m not going to buy from her later.” That’s not how it happens. It’s that impression that we make where I say, “Wow, that Patty Marman is pretty amazing. Okay, this is going to be good. I am paying attention,” or “Wow, Matt is awesome. Now I’m going to get my pen ready.” It’s either that or “Oh brother…” and we eye roll in our heads to ourselves.

If you start your talk slow, you could still catch up. You could still grab people. It’s not irreversible. But man, you don’t want to have to spend the first part of your talk reversing a big block that you just put between you and your audience. Start strong. I’ll tell you exactly how to do that as we go deeper through this template.

Rule number one that you want to jot down in your notes is do not use your introduction as a warm-up. The point of your introduction is to really answer the questions that are going on in people’s heads: who, why, why? “Who are you? Why should I listen to this topic? Why should I listen to you talk about this topic?”

Your introduction is building a case. I like watching a lot of crime and law shows. I really can get into that. You’re building a case for this talk and for you giving this talk. “Here’s why. I’ve got all this proof I’m going to show you, and I’ll tell you how to walk through this.” We want to build a strong case so people unarguably get it. They say, “Okay, she’s an expert in this field. Why? I have this big fat problem, and why her? Because she knows how to solve this problem.” Let’s roll!

The next thing you’re going to do is share your personal story. This is one of those pieces that people get hung up on. It’s little bit like, “I can’t figure out what topic to choose,” but it’s “I can’t figure out what personal story to share.” Much like the topic, it’s much less arbitrary than you might imagine. It’s not just pulling anything that’s ever happened to you, ever. That is overwhelming, and that’s why it feels overwhelming. I don’t want to have to do that either.

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We’ve all led interesting, exciting lives with adventures and tragedies and laugh out loud moments and heartfelt moments, so how can you possibly choose?

The truth is that the personal story you want to share is one of transformation directly related to the topic of your talk, and the topic of your talk we already know is directly related to your offer. It’s all one thing.

If my offer is going to be Command Any Room or my offer is going to be the Rock Your Talk Group Coaching Circle – whatever the offer is – you need to say, “Okay, therefore the topic is X, and if my topic is how to give a talk that can transform your business, then the story I need to tell has to be tied to the importance of how giving talks can grow your business, and why that’s so critical.” Think about how I’ve modeled that for you throughout this program.

This program is Command Any Room. You’re learning how to turn your message into a talk that creates leads and clients and builds your business. That’s where I’m leading people. The webinar that sold into it was based on that. It gave you tips and tricks from each step that I am giving you in this program.

The story that I told at the beginning of that webinar was the story from my life – my personal transformation of how giving talks and building a business by giving talks changed my life. That’s the story about having a really high-risk pregnancy and being left terribly in debt during the times when the economy was tanking, and really desperately needing a way out, and how having the ability to give talks and teach people and feed people into workshops gave me a way to make money that allowed me to then build the business that I have now, which has really transformed my whole life.

That’s the point of this program. That’s the point of my coaching programs. The people in my Rise Mastermind or the people in the Rock Your Talk Group Coaching Circle all want to build leveraged businesses around teaching workshops and creating audio programs and having coaching clients and VIP Days. That’s how they want to build their business. I have to share that story of how I experienced the before and after – before I understood how to do that, and after I understood how to do that.

Look at a personal story that shows how you have transformed before you were an expert in your field, after you were an expert in your field; before you understood how to lose 20 pounds and not regain it a hundred times, and then after and how that transformed your life. The story is the story that represents the transformation your program provides.

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It creates connection between you and your audience. That’s the point of your story: it creates connection.

Gathering Question

The gathering question is a question that you want to ask at the beginning of your talk, and it eliminates a silent objection in the room. It gets everybody on the same bus, and its purpose is that it creates interaction in the room, right at the opening of your talk.

What will happen a lot of times is someone will give a talk and they’ll be talking and talking and talking, and it’s very monologue-y. All of a sudden at the end, they want interaction. They want hand raises, and it’s too late. You really have to set that tone right at the beginning of your talk. A secondary effect of creating interaction is it also positions you as a leader. When you’re the one leading the room – “Raise your hand, jot this note,” – you’ve got the room with you. You’re exhibiting leadership qualities. That’s something that people are attracted to. I’ll explain the gathering question as we go deeper into it. I want to keep plugging along.

Wow Demo

Your wow demo is an attention grabber. This is at the beginning of your talk. Before you’ve gotten in your main points, you want to grab people’s attention. Why? It builds energy in the room, and it builds your case. I sometimes call it the face slapper. It’s like you want grab somebody by the collar and smack them across the face (not really, not literally). But through your talk. You want to grab people: “Sit up! This is no joke. If you don’t learn this, your business is going to fail,” or whatever it is. “80% of coaches make less than $20,000 a year. Do you want to be one of those people? Well, then sit up, take notes, and let’s dive in!” We want to grab people’s attention.

“The average keynote speaker makes $3,000 a year. That’s a statistic from the National Speaker’s Association. Yet my free talks have generated $30,000 in an hour. Which would you rather do?” That’s an attention getter. You’ve got to have that in the beginning of your talk. Shake up the room, get some energy going, and really solidify the case that your topic and your talk is going to be worth listening to.

Points

Then you can go into your main points. That’s obviously where you’re teaching, you’re serving, you’re giving people strategy and content. You’re also showing them what they need and what they’ve been missing. A really important part of your teaching is showing them what they need.

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Turnaround

We’re going to talk about what that is. This is where we’re rounding out of our main points and turning the corner to our close. It’s about what they got from your talk – from everything you just gave them in your talk – and what they still need. That’s how we create craving.

We’ve got to show them what they’ve got. That’s the very traditional tell them what you just told them, you’ve got to tell them what they just got, and then we need to show them what they still need, and that’s what creates the craving for more.

That slides you right into your offer. Your offer is an enticing opportunity for them to get the results that they’ve always wanted, and it feels like you building the dream, showing them the dream they’ve always wanted, and showing them that there’s a way to get there.

You must give specific instructions on how to enroll. You cannot just make an offer and say, “I’ve got a workshop. It’s coming up on Saturday and the tickets are $200. Thank you very much.” That does not get people to enroll in your program. You need to have an order form. You need to walk people through step by step how to enroll, and it needs to feel simple and easy.

The minute something feels heavy, complicated, too many steps, too much paperwork – bonk! Gone go your sales. Make sure your form and the way you describe how to enroll. You probably want to practice that a few times. It should sound simple, easy, step by step, easy-peasy to say yes to.

The way we end our talk is not on that note. It’s really tempting – and I made this mistake in the beginning – to end on this note of, “Fill out this form, etc.” It ends on this weird practical note which is not really the tone we want people left with. One of the things I teach in Rock Your Talk with Memory Power is people naturally will remember the first and the last thing that they hear. You don’t have to do anything for that to happen. That’s just how our brains work.

If your mind remembers the first and last thing that it hears, the feeling that we get left with is usually the first and last experience we have with you. That’s why starting strong is really important and finishing your talk strong is really important. That is what people remember.

Don’t end on the practical note. You’ve got to rally the room. Inspire action. Anchor back to the inspiration piece right at the end of your talk. Re-energize the room after you’ve given your instructions. You’ve got to fire up the troops again, and then march them off to buy your

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products and programs, or they can march off and apply what they’ve learned and not sign up for your program, but we absolutely have to inspire the room.

I want to go back through that more slowly. That’s the psychology of what we’re doing, but I want to talk about how you actually do it.

I put the handout in the membership area. I encourage you to print it out and take notes on it. This is literally how you do everything I was just describing to you.

The best way to start every talk, every teleclass, every webinar, is with what I like to call your expert statement. It’s very simple. It’s who you are, which would include your title. It includes “I am the founder of _____.” It’s your name and title (founder of, or your title, or owner of, creator of).

“Featured in _____” could also go there. If you’re somebody who does TV or magazine stuff, you could say “featured in.” Those are all great ways to start your talk. You also want to share your time and topic.

Your expert statement is who you are and what you call yourself. I call myself a speaker and coach. Then you want to add on you’re the “Founder of” or “Creator of,” and if you’re someone who does TV or things like that, “Featured in.”

It sounds like this: “Hi everyone, I’m Kristin Thompson. I’m a speaker and coach. I’m the founder of www.SpeakServeGrow.com, and creator of several popular programs you might know, like Command Any Room, Rock Your Talk with Memory Power, and Event Profit Machine.” Done!

When you do this for yourself, you will feel good inside. I didn’t do this in the beginning. I would just start to talk: “I am Kristin Thompson with Thompson Professional Development and today I’m going to talk about…” Give yourself the stamp of a title and you’re the founder of. I say the founder of my website, because I would prefer people remember my website over anything else.

“Creator of…” is any programs you’ve created. If you’re thinking, “Kristin, I haven’t created any programs,” yes you have. You’ve created a talk. What’s the name of your talk? If the talk you’re giving that day is “Lose Weight, Feel Great,” and it’s going to feed into the Lose Weight, Feel Great workshop, you could say, “I am the creator of the Lose Weight, Feel Great program.” Always look for the way to do something, not the ways you can’t do something. Remember

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http://www.speakservegrow.com/

that, always. That’s your expert statement, and that’s how you want to open every talk. It’s how people really come to know you and remember you.

The second piece right in the beginning of your talk is to share the time and topic, which means how long you’re talking for and about what, in very broad strokes. “For the next 30 minutes, I’m going to be talking about how you can grow your business faster than ever by giving rockin’ talks that profit big.”

Your expert status would come next, if it’s not established in your introduction. The Biostack in the member area is a biography-creator. By stacking different pieces together, you can create a great bio or a talk introduction.

Ideally, you would create a nice “speaker introduction” – a couple short paragraphs that somebody could read to introduce you to the stage. You really want to do that. You should craft that yourself and send that to the person who is your host ahead of time, so they can familiarize themselves with it and request that’s what they read.

The person who introduces you sets the tone and the energy of the room because they’re the thing that happened right before you come on stage. A crappy introduction will ruin the energy in the room. It doesn’t mean your talk is ruined; it just means you have to jump in and save the day. Know that and be a little bolder in your open, and take control back. That’s why in parentheses it says, “Solidify your expert status if not established in your introduction.”

I’ve had this happen to me. It was very interesting. I taught a workshop and handed somebody I trusted, who was a fellow coach and colleague in the area my introduction. It was well written to establish my expertise and all that we want an introduction to do. I highlighted my big results and all of that.

She took the introduction, got to the front of the room, and said, “I’m not going to read this. I know Kristin so well, I’m just going to talk from my heart.” Then she literally unintentionally gave this really bland, boring, stammering introduction that sucked all of the energy out of the room. I had to take it back. She didn’t say my big wins and she didn’t really solidify my expertise. It will happen by accident. Not everybody is really in a position to know how to handle that, and that’s okay. But then you’ve got to take the power back.

So spend a little extra time, if you get a poor introduction or someone who chucks the written introduction out the window and they don’t hit on your expert status strongly enough, just take it back in the intro. Just say, “I want to spend a quick minute. I know Bob introduced me, but for those of you who I haven’t met before, I have been trained in ______, I have a record award-

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winning career.” For me, I was in media sales. I worked for CBS and NBC. I won new business development awards at every top rated station I worked at.” Those are things that I want said. Or “My one hour talks create $30,000, $50,000, $60,000.” Those are credibility building pieces that need to get said. If your introducer leaves it out, you’ve got to put it back in.

In your introduction, you want to cover the problem you solve and the transformation you offer. You want to tell your story. We talked earlier about how you want to choose your story (that’s in your introduction). Then ask your gathering question.

Your gathering question is a question that, when you ask it of your audience, it gathers up pretty much 100% of the room. If I was going to give a talk about ice cream, I might say, “How many of you like vanilla ice cream, just by a quick show of hands?” Then you get a hand raise. “How many of you like chocolate ice cream, by a quick show of hands?” That gets pretty much the rest of the room.

“Great! Well, you’re all going to love today’s talk because it’s about how to make homemade ice cream that’s additive free, and costs less money than the ice cream that you buy at the store.” We essentially have gathered the whole room.

When I give a memory talk, I say, “I’m kind of curious (which is a great way to get into a question, by the way). How many of you feel like you have a really good memory already?” Do you see what I’m doing with that question? I’m eliminating the objection that, “I don’t need to listen because I have a good memory so I don’t need to listen to this girl talk about memory.”

The second half of the question was, “How many of you feel like you’re struggling a little bit with your memory?” That essentially gets everybody – people who think they have a great memory, people who don’t think they a great memory. We’re all getting on the same bus. “Guess what? Either way, you’re going to learn secrets and strategies for memorizing critical information, memorizing your presentation so you can give it forwards, backwards, in and out of order. Let’s go.” Everybody’s on the same bus moving forward. That’s your gathering question.

Please do the world a favor and do not ask questions like, “How many of you would like to make more money?” Please don’t do that. It really irritates people unless you do it tongue in cheek. People don’t appreciate being patronized, so ask real questions that get everybody on the same bus together. “How many of you like black? How many of you like white? Great! We’re going to talk about how to make black and white movies.”

How do you transition to your main points? 16


Your wow demo. What’s a wow demo? In the truest form, that language comes from infomercials. A true wow demo is like when the Ginsu knife cuts the can. Those of you who are young don’t know what I’m talking about. That’s fine.

Back in the day, there was the Crazy Glue ad where they would use Crazy Glue to glue the construction hat to the beam on the building that was way, way up, and a crane brought the guy up there, and he would hold onto the hat and be dangling from mid-air because the Crazy Glue was never going to come unglued. That’s a wow demo.

Unless you sell a hard product, you’re not going to do a demo like that, but you could demonstrate how something works. If you do time management, there’s a pretty famous demo you can find online with Stephen Covey taking somebody through how to prioritize. He has three glass jars, and she’s got sand, pebbles and rocks, and she has to figure out how to get them all in the jar.

When she puts the sand in first, and then the pebbles and then the rocks, it doesn’t all fit, because you don’t put the minutiae into your schedule first. You put the rocks in first. That’s his point. But the way he makes that point dramatically is through this demonstration.

Your wow demo could be a startling picture. It could be a quote. It could be a shocking statistic. It could be an optical illusion, a mental game or puzzle. You really want to grab people’s attention in the beginning. A picture, a quote, an exercise. Your wow demo grabs people’s attention. We do that right before we go into the main points, so that people are sitting up and taking this seriously.

You’ve got their attention. Now you go into the main points of your talk. I have here bullets on the handout that show you exactly how to walk through your main points so that you’re not over teaching, and you’re not not teaching. That’s the balance. We want to absolutely serve people and give content. If you give them that feeling of satiation – of feeling full and they feel like they got it – they’re not going to buy from you. How do we do that?

If you’re giving an hour talk, it’s really hard to fit in more than five points. If you go back to the preview webinar for Command Any Room, I go through the five steps. There’s really five main points. I’m ripping and rocking when I do that talk in an hour.

It’s hard to get through five points. Three or four are much easier in an hour, so just be aware. It doesn’t mean change your signature system. It just means maybe only share the first three or four if you have seven steps to your signature system.

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Here’s how you’re going to walk through it:

You’re going to share the problem, myth or misconception that is holding people back on this point. Let’s take step two in the preview talk for Command Any Room. We would say, “Step two that you want to jot down is Book It.” That would be the step that you would have everybody write down. I’d say, “That’s about getting the gigs and getting them on the calendar. But there’s a couple of problems or misconceptions that are likely holding you back from getting these gigs, and here’s what they are: hiding behind technology, outsourcing to other experts.” I’d point out what is likely stumbling you and keeping you from success in this area.

Then I can highlight what if they don’t turn it around? This can be a sentence or two. You don’t have to write a whole long book on each of these. Just cover it. “If you don’t turn this around, guess what? You’re not going to make money speaking if you don’t have gigs.” I think I even said that in the webinar and made a joke about it. “Look, I don’t know how else to say it. You can’t make money sharing your message if you don’t have gigs. You’ve got to get the gigs.”

What happens if they don’t turn that around?

“If you don’t start getting the gigs, you’re going to get frustrated. If you don’t understand how to do it the right way, you might think that your topic or your talk isn’t good, when in reality it’s just that you haven’t learned how to get the bookings properly.” That’s what happens if they don’t turn it around. They could get discouraged. The lack of the results could drive them to make decisions that are actually incorrect, when in reality the problem is that they don’t know how to get the gigs.

Then we’re going to share a tip, idea or strategy:

“Now I’m going to help you start to turn the ship around. We’re not going to turn the whole ship around and give you the entire wham, zing, zing makeover, head to toe, new dental veneers, a nose job, a wig, a spray tan. We don’t have time for all that. But we’re going to get you started. How can we get you started back on the right road?” We’re going to give them one tip.

If we stay on the “Book It” example, we gave you the myth or misconception, we told you what happens if you don’t turn it around. Here’s the big tip: “Pick up the phone! You’ve got to pick up the phone, and when you do, don’t say, ‘I want to speak for your group.’ Don’t be self-centered in that conversation. Be audience-centered. Be seeking to serve and solve a problem.”

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We talked about what to do, a little bit about how to do it, but not nearly as in depth as we were able to go to in the hour long call.

Be aware that it’s not every tip, idea and strategy that you have in your arsenal. It’s one. Make it a good one. Don’t make it a lame duck tip. Make it a real, actionable tip. What I generally suggest is that it’s a juicy tip, but it’s bite-sized. It’s something that when they hang up from the phone call or they walk away from the talk that they could actually do.

I wouldn’t say your tip is, “Write your talk.” It would be, “Pick your talk topic and then look for ways to make the title really punchy.” That’s something small enough. Or pick the date of the talk. Little decisions that have a big impact can go a long way, but make it a real tip or idea.

Then you can give an example or story of what this looks like in action:

We could say, “When my friend Patty came through Command Any Room, she was already an established speaker and really confident in front of the room. She just didn’t really have a great plan or a set of specific goals around her speaking, how much money she wanted to generate, and she didn’t quite know how to get the gigs. Once we walked her through this process, she instantly went from not having a ton of gigs at all to having two speaking gigs every week of the month for three months straight. She had two speaking gigs every week for three months straight. It completely catapulted her income and her business.” That’s a quick story of results when we apply this step properly.

The last thing that we do is seed where they can learn more. I also like to call it dropping bread crumbs. We want to point out, not in an overt, heavy-handed way, but in a soft way how there’s still more to learn on this topic.

Playing along with our example, I might say, “There’s a lot more we could talk about in terms of getting the gigs. We could talk about your tone of voice when the person answers the phone. We could talk about how to warm up a cold call. We could talk about the full script or the talk one-sheet in depth, and how to really power up the talk takeaways on the one-sheet and how those can help your conversation. We go much deeper in Command Any Room, but what I want you to take away from what we just covered in this training is that it’s got to start with a personal phone call focused on solving a problem.”

I showed you what you still need to learn – but not in an obnoxious way. We don’t want to get crazy. Just allude: “When we work together, we would go much deeper into this, and that, and this other place that we need to go. But for right now, let’s just get started with step one. Okay? Sound good? Awesome.” Then you go onto your next point.

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Your Close

Let’s talk about your close. We’re going to go much deeper into your close in “Cashing In and Repeating It,” but I just want to quickly go through before we wrap up what this looks like.

You’ve finished your main points. Now we need to suggest a next step. The way I like to slide into this comfortably is what I like to call the “Phew Review,” which I coined from listening to so many experts. It’s a little tongue in cheek. So many experts would say, “Phew! I’m out of breath” – which is true. If you’re like me, you really, legitimately are out of breath, and it’s not an act. “Phew, wow! I’ve been rocking and rolling in this talk. Let’s pause for a moment and review what we’ve covered so far.”

What you’re going to at that moment is a quick rundown of everything you just taught them – the highlights, the big stuff. “We started out talking about the importance of _____. In point one, I pointed out how you want to do this and not that.” You just do the quick highlights version of your talk. That’s the Phew Review. That’s where you’re pointing out what you just taught them or told them, what they have.

Then you’re going to point out what happens if nothing changes:

“I just gave you all of that, and if we stop here, nothing is going to change.” Let’s say you’re a health coach. “We talked about vegetables and exercise, but if that’s all we do, you’re not going to lose a single pound. We have got to get into action.” You’ve got to point out what happens if nothing changes, what they still need for a full transformation, and what’s still missing.

Do you remember when I talked to you about the puzzle pieces? This is that part of the talk. “Here are the puzzle pieces I gave you. Here are the puzzle pieces still in the bag.” Guess who’s holding the bag? Me. I’m taking it to my live workshop, and if you want them, you need to come with me. That’s how we really show people what they have and what they still need. How they can get it of course is by enrolling in the next step with you.

How we do that is offer an invitation for those people. This is the language I typically use, because you don’t need to sell everybody in the room. And guess what? You don’t want everybody in the room. You want the best people in the room to enroll in your products and programs. You want people who actually need what you offer and who are going to implement and use it to change their lives. That’s who you are talking to in this moment – not to everybody.

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We’re going to go into a lot of detail in week five on closing the room, but just to answer some of your initial questions on how to do that, you’re going to invite people:

“For those of you who are excited and committed to taking the next step, you absolutely want to take what you learned in Command Any Room and get it off the page and into action. You absolutely want to build a six-figure business around your message, and around your personality and brand, then absolutely join us for the Rock Your Talk Group Coaching Circle. That’s where we take all of these steps and we build a business around it.”

I made that up off the top of my head, but do you see what I’m saying? You’re inviting the people who are excited and committed to take the next step with you – not everybody.

You’re going to build the value up of your program. Go through the components of your program and build the value up. “Week one is worth $500. Week two is worth $500. All five weeks is worth $2,500, but it doesn’t cost that. It costs $800!” Boom! We just did a price juxtaposition. You want to build the value and say, “I’m not going to charge you that; I’m only going to charge you this.”

You can state your guarantee, if you have a guarantee for your product or program, and what results they might get from applying it in their business. You obviously usually cannot guarantee results, but you can guarantee that if they apply what they learn, that something is going to shift in their business.

Then you can price drop if you do price drops, not everybody does. “For those of you who enroll while I’m here, it’s not $800. It’s three payments of $200.” You can drop the price. That would be the last step of making your offer in terms of going through pricing.

Then you give your specific instructions. “Here’s how you can get your free gift. That’s for everyone. Here’s how to enroll in the workshop. Here’s where you’re going to bring that enrollment.” You need to tell people: “Bring it to the back of the room,” or “Bring it to the front of the room. If you’re going to ask for referrals you want to mention that as well. We’ll talk about that in Session 05.

We don’t end there. We’ve got to go a little further. We want to rally and inspire the room. I’ve given you some phrasing. It’s really about painting a picture of what happens from here if they step forward with you. “Imagine if I wave a magic wand and you finally know how to do this, and you’re no longer struggling with that.” We want to really paint the picture of the dream for people. You want to share why you want it to happen for them and what you see for them in their future.

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It’s a rally cry for the room. You want to champion them into action. This is the part where you’re Yoda and they’re Luke Skywalker, and you’re sending them off on their mission. You’ve got to rally the room. This is the preach part of what you do. You can’t just teach, teach, teach. You also have to have a little bit of preach in you as well, in a way that makes you comfortable.

What are your next steps?

1. Build up your offer

Take this handout and the offer where you know you’re leading people and play around with the steps. Know what you want to charge people. Know the full value of it. Know what kind of discount you might want to offer when people say yes right there in the room. Think about if you want to have some nice bonuses to add in, to make it really enticing. Build the components of your offer first, because that’s always where we’re leading people. That’s the first thing we want to have clarity on.

2. Choose your story

Your story is your own personal transformation having applied the steps that you’re going to teach people. That is not the only story, but it’s the best story that you could tell.

3. Come up with a really fun Wow Demo

The possibilities for wow demos are limitless when your mind is being creative. Really have fun with your wow demo. Shake people up. Get the room thinking about how important this topic is, and why it needs to be addressed so importantly and so urgently in this talk and in your program.

Those are the first three things. Once you have that, mapping out your core points is really pretty easy because that’s the stuff that you know and teach, and that is right in the pocket of what you do. If you know your offer, you know your personal transformation story and you know your wow demo, it’s easy to plug all that in with your main points and have a great rockin’ talk. You can do that by using the template that’s in there. That can help you map out your thoughts and ideas.

I’ve had people for wow demos do on little business card sized printouts that you can make. You’ve seen them on Facebook where it says count the number of Os in this sentence, and there’s something about that specific sentence that always makes you not count it correctly. That could be an exercise for a wow demo for saying what you think is true is not always true.

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Let’s say that’s the main point you need to drive home in your talk: what you think is true is not always true. That would be a good exercise for that.

I’ve done wow demos that are optical illusions with colors that play off each other and you say, “Count the colors in this picture,” and people almost always get it wrong. It’s made to mess with your head. I have everybody write down how many colors, and most of them are wrong. I say, “Yeah, because the color surrounding this picture actually distorts how you see the colors.”

That is a good demo to prove the point that what you surround yourself with colors your world. This was for a program that was about mindset and goal setting and all of that. That color demo was fun and it got the room going. People were shocked, “What do you mean there’s not five colors of red and green?”

“Sorry, there’s only two, and here’s what I want you to write in your notes: the colors and the people and the places that you surround yourself with color your world, so be cautious about who you spend time with.” It was a great way to make that point.

I could talk about this all day. Please go out there and make it a great day. Speak your mission and message, serve your purpose, and grow your business. Talk to you soon.

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with kristin thompsonwith kristin thompson . awesome possum! welcome to command any room session 03....

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