World of Speakers E.20: Natalie Forest | Adapting your talk

I think that's where I am now, so from the womb until today—that's pretty much it.

RF: I love the teaching aspect.

Both my parents were teachers that became administrators and principals, and then professors teaching teachers to be teachers. My sister is also a teacher.

I think that a core part of teaching is your ability to communicate what might be a boring history lesson into something that's engaging and exciting.

There's a real tie between a teacher's ability to impact and a teacher's ability to present the info.

Do you think that the presentation element of your natural desire to teach is a big reason for why you've been so effective in being a teacher?

NF: Absolutely.

It's funny, when students used to come to my classroom, they would always anticipate dates, names, and so forth, but that's not what it's about.

History is about people, and since I connect with people, that's really my drive when I teach. There are very good teachers, teachers who are better than I am.

It's interesting that you mentioned what your family did, because I did the same thing.

I created ascend of teaching and learning— I was mentoring teachers, I was teaching teachers.

Then, I went back to the classroom before I started the business, because I felt that in academia I couldn't reach as many people.

I think you really need to want to be a teacher and have that internal drive to be able to present and interact and engage with either the students or at an academic conference, or whatever.

You need to have that ability connected, and I think, unfortunately, not everybody has that, and it's not something that everybody can just learn.

RF: What are some of the elements of the presentation, the elements of speaking, the elements that you think are transferable or learnable?

I do agree there is some sort of an innate instinct to be able to maybe be a more natural communicator.

But for those people that maybe don't have that instinct or gene, what are some of the best ways that they can either get caught up, or develop their skill set outside of that?

NF: That is a good question.

I could give you a laundry list, but I think the first thing is that whoever wants to speak, needs to know that they are the expert and truly believe in their own potential in getting the message across.

And also doing it in a way that is natural to them.

What I mean by that is, we have a lot of people who would tell you, “You need to do this in the opening, and that in the middle, that there.”

That means you have a lot of people presenting the same talk over and over again, but to different audiences.

If you know you're an expert, if you know that you can reach and that your message is really, really important— then you really just have to be yourself.

Some people find that by going through a speaker training.

Maybe they are normally very shy or they're better at writing words instead of speaking them.

For those people, I think it's really important to go through some kind of speaker training to understand how you get the voice across, how you can use intonation the right way. Those are the mechanics.

What I believe people in the next step might want to look at, is really allowing themselves just to be, to really connect with the audience, with the participants.

I prefer to call people in an audience “participants”, because I always engage them. I think we need that feedback, if we're just up there standing, sometimes it feels like we're not reaching them.

I always suggest throwing some interactive things in there, even if it's just something simple like, "How you're doing today," and you don't want to do that all the time obviously.

Asking a question and then being OK with the silence.

If you are asking a question, "Don't you agree?" then you need to be in your own power and your own potential and wait a little bit.

Those are the things that you can absolutely practice. Even though you may not have that drive as a teacher where you know that you have to have all the different variables.

Once you really know who you are, and what your message is, and you stand in that— then it's just a matter of putting the mechanics together with your heart, and then delivering the message from the heart.

RF: I think that's a great way to look at it, to go to a speaker training to basically unlock your own potential.

You're saying that there are these tactical components, things you can learn, but part of that first discovery process is actually just learning to be yourself or be comfortable with where you're at.

I think that it's an interesting distinguishing tactic as opposed to just learning to be a better speaker.

You are saying, "Tap into who you are, and really refine your communication to what fits your personality" right?

NF: Absolutely.

I have a good friend who I was just talking to yesterday, and he asked me for some input and I'm trying to give him input, knowing in the back of my head how I would be doing it.

I'd be all over the stage, and I know he's animated, but not quite like that.

I had to give him just some pointers for words, words that came very naturally to him, that to me sounded analytical, and he speaks from the heart normally.

You do need to connect with yourself. For me, it's much more that you are delivering your message authentically, not in a canned way.

RF: One of the things I know is that your expertise is in helping people, individuals or teams businesses, corporations to be more productive.

I am curious to dig into some productivity hacks that speakers could use to improve their speaking or the preparation time or the research.

What patterns do you see within speakers that could be improved or could be modified so that they can feel like they are more productive?

NF: That is a tough question and it's one that I'm still working on as well, every day.

I think the first thing is, once you know your message, and of course, the audience, stick to it, but— which means I just negated everything I said, but also be open to other arenas.

As an example, I talk about leadership, but I don't just talk about leadership with corporations or other coaches, or with the “Women of Global Change”.

I can talk leadership on a different level when I talk to educational institutions and maybe even students.

I think being open to reaching out sometimes to other audiences that although initially don't seem to be “your arena”, because you never know what's going to happen there.

Still, of course, keeping your main message, so it's still about leadership, in my instance it's collaborative individualism.

I can deliver that to a broad range of audiences and there are so many people looking for speakers, and if you are able to tweak your general message a little bit, that can really open doors to unforeseen possibilities.

RF: Those unforeseen possibilities essentially help you take that message that you're sharing and make it more productive.

The same amount of utility that goes into the development of your leadership focus, you're then able to multiply that effort to different markets, correct?

NF: Yes, absolutely. Thank you for bringing that back up, because I don't think I've really addressed the productivity part.

By being able to reach out to more groups, more associations, more environments, you're able to spread your message more.

If you do that in an organized way— for example, I always prefer to have somebody reach out for me, and what I mean by that I can look at Speaker Match or SpeakerHub, there are lots of organizations out there who already bring together some of the speaking engagements.

I can look through that, but if I have an intern which is a great way to go, and intern or an admin assistant scout through that for me, and they know what I'm looking for, then we can look at it and then I still do it, which may not be very productive for some people, but I still put my hands on directly what am I submitting.

Whether it's scouting through Google or through an organization, or an online app that collects speaker opportunities, I think it’s great having somebody scout for you and make the first contact, call up an association and say, "Hey, who would we write this to? Who would we send this to?"

If you have somebody do that for you, it takes out some of the additional work and you can really focus on writing your proposal or doing your video for them in a much more sincere way.

RF: I think that sincerity ties back to the authenticity, which ties back to being a speaker who has your own person; you have control over that process, but you're not being bogged down by the process.

This idea of using other people around you for the scouting, and I've heard a lot of people talk about searching for speaking opportunities.

This word "scouting" is interesting. It plays in my mind almost like somebody's in a forest or they are sort of hunting and trying to get the binoculars to see what the threat is, what the opportunities are.

They are running back to you and you're on your horse you are like, "Okay, I will now go check this out." And then you invest your time into it.

NF: I never thought about it that way and of course, you had to bring up the forest and the horse.

For me, it's almost something that I think we learn in academia.

On one hand, we want to read every word in a book, but in academia, when you're a student, you have to just pick up on some words, you cannot read in one week 3 books and really get all the details.

That skimming or that scouting for the important words are beneficial. Then come back to me and tell me, "Okay, I think this, this and this can help you."

Yes, absolutely, I love that.

RF: I dig it. Almost sounds a little 80/20 principle to where you're really investing the high energy into those things that have a higher impact.

And then, the 80% of stuff which isn't super high impact, but still needs to get done you can outsource to other people.

NF: Absolutely. I think that's the only way to go if we want to be impactful.

RF: Totally.

I put out a call for questions to ask people all the time through Twitter and social media and one thing that pops up is, "How can I manage my stress as a speaker?"

I know reading through your profiles and whatnot, you talk about how with better teamwork and more productivity the teams become less stressed.

I'm curious if you have tips for speakers who are stressed or have anxiety because I admit that we all do.

I think somebody who says they don't get nervous before they speak is a liar or denial is the way they deal with it, which is just totally cool.

Personally, I like to process that energy, but what are some tips that you have for speakers to be less stressed or to find or to recognize patterns of why they're stressed?

NF: I wish that was an easy answer.

This brings me back to some of the presentations that I do at first responders on stress management.

First of all, there are the things that I call “A+B=C”.

First of all, there are the things that you can control and that is you. That is the most important aspect to focus on.

Secondly, which is "B" you have “all the things that you can't control”; and those things you need to learn to let go.

All of that, of course, equals "C", which is “the consequence”.

This means "B", “stuff you cannot control”, you walk into a hall where you're supposed to talk, and the lights don't work the right way, there are not as many people there as you thought. The person didn't tell you that you would not have the headset microphone, they thought you had a lapel— all those little things.

Those are the things we can't control, and I think that's where it helped me that I've been a teacher before, where hardly anything works!

Wherever I go into, there are all these things that are out of my hand, people might walk in and out of your presentation of the most important talk that they could ever hear….to make a phone call.

Once we learn how to let go of that, that brings us to "A" which is “you're in control of you”.

All that really means is number one: how do you prepare yourself for a big talk, a small talk.

What are your expectations and have you made them clear to yourself?

Very often, it seems to me that speakers get nervous because they want to reach a certain amount of people when they go on the stage, maybe they want to sell something while they are on the stage or after.

They have all these things going on in their heads that actually prevents them almost from being focused on the message.

RF: So, they are working against themselves by having expectations that they are setting, and if you are resetting those expectations, you can control elements of that.

If you have expectations about the technology that's going to be there or the audience size, those are expectations that you're kind of setting yourself up for failure, because you don't have control over them.

NF: Right. The nutshell version really is what I said earlier— you have to know you are the expert and that everybody who is in the room is there for a reason.

All you have to do is go out there, present your message the best way you can, and knowing it's the best way you can, plus every day is different.

If you present it the best way you can, you're trying to connect with the audience, you're doing it from the heart, then everything happens the way it needs to.

You might not get a client out of it, right now. Okay, maybe later.

There may only be 20 people in the room, but how many people did you reach?

What I've learned is that if I reach one person in a room full of 20, 40, 200, 1000— if I reach one person, and this always calms me down personally, that one person is going to have a better life, or is saved, or can change their lives.

How many people in the world can say that they helped one person be happy?

RF: Yes, so it's quality over quantity, and managing that expectation.

My mom always used to say, "It only takes one person Ryan, as long as there's one person in front of you, it's worthwhile."

I think that as a tactic of lowering your stress, setting not only achievable goals, but goals that mean something that you can actually take away from.

It's not just a checkbox, but it's a checkbox with an emotional component that you actually are impacting someone, which helps to sort of justify the angst in the first place.

NF: Absolutely. I think that's such a huge piece of speaking and it goes back to the very simple question of, "Why do you speak?" 

Are you speaking to impact lives?

Are you speaking to be in the limelight?

Are you speaking to make money?

If you're speaking to change lives, then you will even take a speaking engagement that you might not get paid for, but you can, later on, reach out to people via email where you know you're going to make a difference.

There are so many variables, I always talk with my clients about, "What is your idea of success?"

And a lot of people, of course, are, "I want to make a million dollars, two million."

And yeah, that's fine, that's great— but then what?

Defining success for me is much more about the impact I'm having and people nowadays call it legacy.

I want to be able for my six-year-old daughter to look at me and be happy and proud that I'm her mother. That's all that matters to me.

And if I do that by speaking in front of thousands of people, great. If I do that by taking her out bike riding, then that's it.

I'm making an impact and of course, as a mom, I'm making an even greater impact every day, but really, sitting down and figuring out why are you doing that. I call it “purpose passion” and then, of course, potential.

What is your purpose?

How does your purpose translate into your passion?

Are you passionate when you're delivering your message?

If you are not passionate, then why are you doing it? Maybe you just need to switch it or maybe you're better in the background somewhere.

You have to understand your purpose and then you become passionate, and then you connect with your potential, and it just opens up the universe for what you consider success.

RF: I love that.

You've got your purpose which leads to your passion, which taps into your potential and it goes from there.

Let's transition from these amazing insights on how to lower stress as a speaker, be more productive as a speaker and find that authentic voice to put out there in the world.

For those people that want to whether make a million dollars or make an impact, the process of monetizing a message is a part of that.

If you are able to get paid to travel and speak, you can reach a larger audience, that's further.

Whether or not you're getting $500 or a $20,000 honorarium, there's still some of those core concepts of getting paid in the first place or finding your rhythm in what to say and what to ask.

With your clients or just from your own experience, what are some of the ways that you found most effective to start that process of monetizing the message and grow your ability to increase that fee, increase the size of the events, the prestige of the event?

For somebody whose goal is to monetize their message, what are some of the things you'd step them through?

NF: Well, first of all, and this is way at the beginning, you need to obviously create your brand, and you need to be your brand.

Once you have the brand, I recommend for most people, not for all, but for most people to indeed do what most people will tell you which is— write a book.

I will also, however, tell you that if you don't like to write, then maybe don't write a book, but you want to somehow become known as the expert.

One thing that I have learned that works really well once the brand and everything is in place, and I've learned that from my mentor, so kudos to her, is that press releases do a whole lot.

Press releases don't necessarily work that well if they follow the same scheme, so you need to bring something new to it. But press releases can do a lot because they introduce you to different audiences.

If you write them well, and you write them from the perspective of, "What am I providing and who's benefiting from this?" instead of, "Doctor Natalie Forest has a new book out, go buy it."

People are tired of that.

Let people get to know you by the work that you do, and the best way to do that is:

• a book;
• obviously a press release
• interviews (like the one you're doing with me.)

Be in interviews. I always tell my clients that when I first talk with them I say, "What kind of interviews have you done? What magazines have you been mentioned in?"

Even if it's just a teeny tiny one, I ask them to write it all down so we can put it on their website because people want to see this, even if it's just a 5- minute segment, you have been on the radio, you can utilize that in a variety of ways.

The next thing I usually recommend, and again, it depends on how comfortable you are with certain mediums, but I recommend using YouTube or Vimeo doing occasional videos.

They don't have to be 20 minutes, or whatever long, because people don't pay that much attention anymore, but short segments on whatever your topic is.

Put them out there for free, put them on all your social media so that people get to understand a little bit of who you are.

The next thing that I think is really important— don't make it all about you. Remember you may be the expert, but you are focused on helping others.

Even if you are delivering a message because you're getting a lot of money, you're still trying to help somebody, so make it about the others instead of, "I'm the biggest speaker on the block." 

There might be somebody else who has a little bit of a different twist on it, who can actually be very insightful as well.

I think it's really crucial that even though we're the experts, we're also open enough to hear that we might not always be the best fit for a certain speaking engagement.

RF: Right, the “Me-Me Disease” where it's all about you, you, you, me, me, me, versus this audience-centric.

There's been a couple of guests who have talked about how there's a value in catering your branding message not as much to the audience to which you usually speak, but more so to the event organizers that have the audience to which you want to speak.

I am curious about your thoughts on that.

From a branding perspective, are you helping advise people to create a brand that speaks to the audience, as you want to be in front of, or to the organizers who have the audiences?

I think that's an interesting differentiation, and I am sure there's a combination between the two, but what your thoughts on that?

NF:  I would say because I'm a revolutionary, I say create the brand that is you 150%, 200% first and the message that goes with it.

Then, I'm going to use the term tweak, then tweak it so that people pay attention, which is where press releases come in, where radio programs come in.

You have your brand, which is steadfast, and you're telling people, "This is my message, ‘The Hidden Power of Patterns,’ whatever, collaborative individualism, better teamwork."

An event organizer just by hearing that still doesn't know exactly what you're talking about.

That's when you connect with the event organizer and say, "Okay,  this is what I'm delivering and I need to get some details from you to make it 200% fitting for your people."

That's really usually a connection in my experience with the event organizer where they're saying, "Okay, so you are not going to deliver just something, you are actually going to use examples from our company or our association in there?"

I think that's what I call tweaking and that's how you really connect with the event organizers.

RF: You've got your brand that is focused independently on your message and what you can share with the world.

When approaching a conference or a school or an event, you're basically saying, you hopefully have a strong enough brand to get their attention.

Then, based on information from whom you're trying to speak with or have them engage you, you're finding the pain points that they have or the deliverables or outcomes that they want to see from that audience. And then, you tweak it to create a messaging where they see that direct connection?

NF: Absolutely, and I think that's really crucial, just like you follow up with event organizers whether they picked you or they didn't pick you.

Yeah, I'll follow up with the event organizer and say, "Hey, I'm glad you found a great speaker for your event, I wish you all the best luck maybe in the future we can work together." 

It's much more about you being steadfast and knowing who you are, and then conversing with the event organizers, with whoever else may be in charge, because sometimes it's really the managers upstairs saying, "I want this, this or that." 

You tell them, "This is my presentation on leadership, these are the 5 takeaways and in addition to that, I want to make it tangible." This means you must have read what the organizer actually wants.

“In order to make it more tangible, I would need information on ‘ABC’ from you, because these are some of the topics that I have seen in your description.”

RF: What really catches my ear on that concept is the follow up regardless of whether you get the gig or not.

I think a lot of people probably miss that step, but this idea of being steadfast, you're a steadfast with your brand and with your positioning, I can imagine a lot of event organizers would respect that.

That would make you stand out more and really increase the chances of them consider you for the following year.

I think that's a small, simple step that maybe people aren't doing.

NF: Yeah, and I think often it is because maybe you put your effort into it, and you're really disappointed and again, that way we create a little bit of stress.

You have to understand that the event organizer may have looked at 20, 30, 40 different ones, that one person may not have made the ultimate decision.

They decided on somebody who looks really great, probably is really great, and is going to deliver exactly what that organization needs at that point in time.

Your turn is going to come to deliver your message the way it needs to be delivered to the audience it needs to get to as well. So just don't doubt that.

RF: I think that the element of lower amounts of doubt comes within the preparation beforehand of solidifying where your brand is.

It sounds like you're suggesting a path saying, "This is what I have, take it or leave it," based on, "Here's what I can deliver based on what you need". 

But as soon as you start to sort of squabble or they say, "That's not what we're looking for," and then you flip over and be like, "Well, I could do it for here or maybe I could do it for less, or maybe I could change it—"

That to me sounds like the wrong way to go about it, maybe even makes you look desperate, versus this, "Nope, here's what it is, I believe I can deliver the value with it. If you don't want it, totally cool, good luck, great let's be in touch and maybe see you next year."

NF: Yeah, absolutely.

I think that means you're authentic, you're not trying to wiggle around. I often say, "This is what I deliver and for your audience, I would probably add key points of this part to it." 

I will tell them, "Yes, I'm flexible, but I'm flexible within the let's say 3 or 4 keynotes that I have to put it together and it makes sense for them."

RF: Yeah, and like a flexible frisbee you can tweak it, bend it, but at the end of the day, it goes back to its original shape, so that you can take flight the way you want to take flight in the direction you want to go, depending on how hard you want to get thrown.

NF: Absolutely, yeah, that's a good one.

RF: It makes me think of getting a whole bunch of frisbees and using that as schwag, and up on stage to be like, "Here's my card".

NF: There you go.

RF: Wow, this is all great information, everything from just reinforcing people that it's not as much about the actual skills to be learned, it's about first learning what you are as a person and the type of message that you want to deliver.

Then, building a brand around that first and catering it towards audiences who you can actually help, but understanding that a) there are things you control, b) there are things you don't have control over, and c) the outcome is a combination of both of those.

If you focus on the “a” part and manage your expectations, so that even a smaller crowd you still know that afterwards, you get one person that's affected by what you say, and the whole thing is worth it, and you're on cloud nine, and you're moving on to the next. I love it.

NF:  I think it's a pretty simple approach to everything.

RF: Right, but do you think people try to overcomplicate things?

NF: Yes.

RF: Okay, I agree with that.

I think so many people are looking for hacks, looking for this looking for information that's like not there already, because the stuff that's there is obvious and it's like, "Do this." 

How often do people skip over those basics before realizing they have to go back and get them?

NF: Well, it's the same thing.

Everybody, or a lot of people ask, "What's my purpose, what is my purpose?" It's not that difficult.

The universe doesn't make our purposes very difficult, the main purpose that we all have is to be ourselves. It's pretty simple!

And now you take being yourself into another realm.

There's just been so much other social conditioning going on that most people don't know who they are and therefore, unfortunately, they don't know their purpose. Then, even speakers or teachers or auto mechanics, they're doing what they're doing and they're not even sure why they are doing it.

RF: Everybody just ends up looking and sounding the same, and it creates less differentiation.

And then, those 50, 60 speaker applications all look the same and people are guessing why they don't stand out, because they're not taking maybe that unique path.

Well, for everybody out there, if you're lost in the forest of speakers and feel like you're just one other tree, listen to what Natalie Forest has to say.

She is on her horse, with her scouts out in front doing the legwork so that she can deliver her true self on the stage, that delivers what she wants for her purpose, which is identifying patterns, helping people be more productive, be less stressful.

One thing I heard you say in one of your videos was, "Leading your life your way." 

And that really I think sums up what you're helping people do so speakers can lead their life or speak their life in their way, because it's really up to them.

NF: Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more, that was a great summary.

RF: All right, we are now at the end of our show, but this is just the beginning, if you liked what you heard today, reach out to Natalie.

Natalie, where do they find you, where the best way to get you online?

NF: Probably my website or any kind of social media.

It's very simple because it's all my name, it's always Natalie Forest.

RF: Excellent, and that makes it easy for everyone and definitely hit both Natalie and me up on Twitter if you liked one of these comments, or you want to share with us in a tweet the way you tweak what you do so that you can speak more.

Let's tweet about your tweak to help you speak. I think there's a good tweet in there.

NF: That was great.

RF: #Tweak. Not to be confused with twerk or tweet, but tweak.

Well, hey, this was a lot of fun and I'll definitely look forward to seeing you more online.

Maybe we'll share the stage some time together and I'm going to go gobble up all of your videos and do some more research.

It all starts with finding your purpose, which leads to your passion, which is the potential that you all have. Fun stuff Natalie, I'll see you in the forest.

Everybody else, listen to past episodes, listen to future episodes here on the World of Speakers, I'm having fun I hope you are too.

Natalie, we're going to shut the show down as soon as you say, "Goodbye".

NF: Thank you and goodbye.

RF: All right, we'll see you, everybody.

 

A bit about World of Speakers

World of Speakers is  a weekly podcast that helps people find their own voice, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.

We cover topics like: what works versus what doesn't, ideas on how to give memorable presentations, speaking tips, and ideas on how to build a speaking business.

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