World of Speakers E.37: Angela Lussier | Gaining confidence to get on stage and get paid

AL: Speaker Sisterhood.

RF: Speaker Sisterhood. All right, well, we already know that you like to laugh, so that's cool, we can get past that.

How did you find yourself creating the sisterhood of speaking for the ladies?

AL: Well, it's probably the least likely story you'll ever hear, so hang on to your seat.

RF: Okay, I'm hanging on. Wait, wait, no, seriously, let me lock in because I can wiggle. Okay, we're in.

AL: Do you have a seat belt and a helmet?

RF: No, shoulder straps, it's a lot less intrusive.

AL: Okay, good.

Well, I was really shy growing up and I think that's because I was really tall. I don't know how tall you were when you were 12, but I was 6 feet tall.

I was way taller than the boys and taller than my friends and because of that, I was made fun of a lot and I was constantly called names like Hagar and Green Giant.

Boys did not want to dance with me at the dance and it was pretty uncomfortable. It was a huge struggle just trying to feel normal.

The best way to deal with that was to just kind of disappear, like become a wallflower and be invisible to avoid being made fun of. That worked really well throughout high school and college.

Then, when I got to my first job after I graduated, I started to notice this trend in my office and that was that all the leaders also had this one trait in common—they were all amazing communicators.

And not only that, they were really good public speakers. That was a terrifying day when I recognized that, because I had spent all my life trying to hide and I realized that if I wanted to move up in my career and be a leader, I'd have to be seen.

I had to make this decision, do I want to be shy forever and hope people notice me or do I want to build the skill set of public speaking so I can get up on stages and inspire people and lead them.

After about a year of thinking about it, I decided to try to learn public speaking and I joined Toastmasters. I spent 5 years going to meetings, learning how to speak, crying a lot, just trying to do everything I could to get over that fear.

Eventually I did, and I really started to enjoy public speaking. In 2009 I gave a TEDx Talk, I published my first book, I started my first business.

In 2010 I became a professional speaker. I started to speak around the country at conferences and colleges, and I started to notice that there were not a lot of women on stages.

There were a lot of conferences going on but not a lot of women up there kind of sharing their experiences and their voice.

A couple years ago I decided I wanted to help more women feel more confident in front of groups and I have founded the Speaker Sisterhood.

It's a network of public speaking clubs for women who want to find their voice and find their power through their words.

RF: Wow, that sounds like a very unlikely, a tall order to fill there.

Now, you asked about my height and I think that I was 6 feet when I was that young, but I was not, and I'm still trying to get there, so it's always been a mind over matter thing.

For me, in 6th grade, I crushed it on the volleyball, and then 7th grade everyone got taller, 8th grade everyone got taller, so I stopped crushing it.

And that's when I sort of pivoted from my height advantage of volleyball into other sports like goaltending for ice hockey. You can't be that tall, so that's cool.

Well, interesting, it's always fun to hear people's path and I am a fellow Toastmaster and I think that's great.

I probably didn't do as much crying, I did more sort of laughing, but it really taps into all those emotions.

I'm curious, within that 5 years, when did you start the Toastmasters’ process?

AL: When I was 25, I started speaking.

RF: And then you've got your icebreaker and then you've got the 10 different speeches and then you've got your events, and stuff like that.

Did you ever get into the competitions as well?

AL: Yeah, I did, I won a couple of competitions, I won the Humorous Speech Contest, I got all the way to the district level, and then I also won the Evaluation Contest in the International Speech Contest. I loved that.

RF: Yeah, it's a fun element of the speaking which kind of gamifies it, it makes it that much more serious because you've got something to compete for.

AL: Yeah, absolutely.

RF: Tell me about your TEDx Talk, what was the topic of that?

AL: That was called "Reinventing Work" and I gave that in Washington D.C. It was about the book I had just written called "The anti-resume Revolution."

It was about trying to find work that complements your creativity and your talents and how to do that in a way that was different from just submitting your resume and sitting back and waiting for your phone to ring.

RF: Was your consciousness of the Speaker Sisterhood sort of throughout all this process, or did you just have that epiphany moment?

How did that occur?

AL: It's kind of interesting, I was doing an accelerator program a couple years ago because I wanted to shift directions from business and career coaching to something a little bit more niche.

I was thinking like, "What am I good at?"

I started journaling and I came up with these 3 questions I asked myself,

• "What am I good at?"

• "Where have I been most successful?" and

• "What do people always ask me about?"

When I looked at all the lists I had made, there was only one thing that was consistent among all 3 lists and that was public speaking.

And when I noticed that I thought, "Okay, so what kinds of questions have people been asking me?"

I realized there was this trend, it was mostly women, mostly women who owned businesses and wanted to go out and speak at conferences and build up their public speaking skills because they were like the face of their company. They were asking me about public speaking and didn't feel satisfied with Toastmasters as the only option.

It was kind of in that moment that I realized, "If you want to learn public speaking, there really is only one place to go and that was where I went, but what if that's not a perfect fit for everybody?"

I thought, "Maybe I could build something a little bit different that specifically meets the needs of women".

What we do in Speaker Sisterhood is we do a lot of experiential teaching, like they get up and give their own speeches and we use public speaking as a tool for self-discovery, which has kind of a more interesting angle for women.

A lot of the exercises that I put in the curriculum help them to learn about themselves while giving speeches, which kind of like brings in my career counseling background.

RF: It's not just a hypothetical sort of virtual place, but you actually meet and you have a structure, and a curriculum, in the sort of throwback to Toastmasters-ish-ness?

AL: Yeah, absolutely.

There are 26 clubs right now and I'm building it through licensing, and they have a whole curriculum.

There's a whole structure to every meeting and they are going through a year-long curriculum to learn how to speak and to learn more about themselves.

We also have virtual clubs too.

RF: Wow, that's exciting.

So from the growth perspective of this Speaker Sisterhood, what's your vision of it?

Flash forward a couple years, 5 years, what do you want to see happen with it?

AL: Oh Ryan, hold onto your chair again.

RF: I am strapped in already. We're already past that.

AL: Well by the end of 2018, I want to have 100 clubs and in the next couple of years, probably in the next 5 years, I'd like to have 5,000 clubs globally.

As I said, I run a couple of the clubs myself and I watch the transformation taking place within these women. I realize that this training should actually be done by every woman, because it helps with so many different elements of her life.

Not just getting up to speak, but also to ask for more money in a job interview.

To go home and say to her spouse something that she has never said before.

To be able to tell her friends how she really feels and what she really wants.

These are all things that we're not really taught in school, but by going to Speaker Sisterhood they get that confidence and the courage to say what they want and that is life-changing.

RF: Yeah, very cool.

I mess around with people sometimes and I ask them—you know how you can ask questions and people sort of lean towards one of the answers?

I'll say it in a nonchalant way, "Are you a public speaker, is that something that you do?" I kind of set them up for it, but 9 out of 10 times people would just say, "Oh...no."

And I'll say, "Well congratulations, you are now, you just spoke in public. If you speak in public, you're a public speaker."

It's this idea of just the mentality of getting people into an environment where they can actually practice and get over that paradigm that it's not something they can do.

For Toastmasters, that's a big part of it, but you're almost up at that level because now you're doing this specifically for this sisterhood where everybody can kind of band together.

AL: Yeah, and the support piece is really important.

Just to be in a group of 15 women that you can trust and that you bond with, then it kind of ups the ante every time you give a speech, because now you want to share more and be even more vulnerable and more courageous, and you keep surprising yourself every time.

RF: Is the sisterhood only for sort of those who are a little bit older, more mature?

Do you have a fun window or wing where it gets into early exposure for young women and getting them sort of on that right path?

AL: The ages range from 20 to 70, our average age is 50.

We now have a young professionals group in the Boston area because we do want to get more younger women interested in it, but we're noticing that our members are 45-55, somewhere in that range.

RF: Interesting.

Before we get into the speaking tips and before we even get too much further, for somebody who's listening right now and they're like, "Oh my gosh, this is so cool."

Is it as simple as going to SpeakerSisterhood.com, what's the best way to point them to it?

AL: Yeah, go to SpeakerSisterhood .com, we have a club directory on there, you can see if there are any clubs in your area, and if not you can definitely join the virtual club.

There's a bunch of information on benefits of membership and kind of what else we have to offer.

RF: Excellent.

Okay, I want to pack some of the words you're using when describing the benefits of this sisterhood and that was everything from communicating to a friend about what it is that you want, to asking for more money in a job situation.

I want to dive in real quickly before we get into the tips about the different components of communication.

Sometimes we think of communication as public speaking, you have to be a speaker, you're a keynote, you're doing workshops.

But it seems like you're really breaking that mold and spreading it to something that is more applicable to way more than somebody who just wants to share a message up on stage.

I want to break down maybe if you have those different types, or what are the categories of communication that people can really focus on?

AL: Well, what happens is when you get up in front of a group of people and you give a speech, and you've been telling yourself your whole life that you can't give a speech, no one cares about what you have to say, you're not good enough, you're going to blank, you're not going to remember what to say.

Then you stand up there for five minutes and you deliver the speech and maybe it's not perfect, but you do it, and then you go back to your seat and you sit down.

The first thing you're thinking is, "Oh my God, I did it, I can't believe I did it. I didn't think I could do that."

And then you start to build confidence in yourself because you realize that you actually have what it takes to do the things that you thought you couldn't do.

When you do that enough times, you start to feel like you're more capable and you have more value, and more worth.

And when you truly believe those things about yourself, having those conversations like asking for more money in a job interview feels really easy because you already filled up that well inside of yourself that has that confidence that you need in order to just ask a question like that.

The public speaking becomes the tool for building communication skills in other areas of your life without actually focusing on those areas in the training.

RF: Gotcha.

It all goes downhill essentially, so you're at the top of the waterfall getting people comfortable to sort of jump in wherever that confidence in current— I'm coming up with this right now: The Confidence Current, right?

First of all, you've got to be brave enough to go from the base of whatever rock or cliff or waterfall that's coming, you've got to invest the time and the energy and the effort to climb up that hill, whether there's a rope thrown down by the Speaker Sisterhood or there are people that you are standing on their shoulders, or you're just sort of crawling and scraping.

To get to the top is one thing and when you're there, it's like: good, you feel great. But now you've actually got to open your mouth, you've got to speak, you've got to take that jump.

And granted that you can hold your breath for a long time and get past that initial sort of jitters and fear and you come up, you gasp for air, and that's when you sit down in your chair, it's like you now have this.

I'm visualizing this current of confidence, you're floating in all the way down the river to wherever you end up.

AL: Yeah, exactly.

RF: I like it.

Okay, so in order to get people up on the top of this waterfall, so that they can speak, and yell as they jump off, and then ride the confidence in a current...

Now, let's dig into what the fundamentals are, the mediumamentals are and the advancedamentals are— I just made up the last two, by the way.

AL: Okay, I was like, "...I don't know those."

RF: I am such a covenant speaker, I'll just make up stuff as I am saying it.

I'll hear it come out of my mouth and be like, "That's interesting, it's not in the dictionary….yet, but maybe it will be."

Let's do the basics, and let's do some mediums, and let's do some advances.

What are some of the core things that people can take away?

And all of you men out there—you can listen to this too, we're focused on the ladies today, but I'm assuming a lot of this is applicable to communication for humans.

Let's break it down, what are some of the foundational stuff that people are going to learn that they wouldn't have maybe thought about?

Like this crazy advice that is so in front of people's faces, but they just don't do it because somebody like you isn't sharing it with them?

AL: Well, being a successful speaker or a communicator is about three basic things—it's about your body, it's about your mind, and it's about your spirit.

I want to talk about all three.

When I talk about body, people think, "Communication that's about voice, that's about putting together thoughts, that's about organizing your ideas."

And yeah, that is a huge part of it, but also, you have to have that confidence and poise and energy that matches your words because only 10% of communication is what you're actually saying.

If you're standing in front of a group of people and your shoulders are raised up to your ears and you're a nervous wreck and you're breathing and panting like a dog, no one's really listening to anything you're saying.

They're feeling bad for you, they're feeling tense and wondering when it's going to end, they're having a hard time following you, they're distracted.

Your body has to be relaxed in order to get your message across.

A couple of ways to do that is to practice these really simple little techniques before you start speaking and when speaking engagements or interviews aren't even on the horizon so that you can get your body prepared for when that game time comes. It'll just know what to do.

One thing to do is breathing exercises and these are things that I've learned in yoga, which I've taken off the mat, and I have used before conferences, before giving keynotes, and it helps so much.

If you're in the middle of a sentence and you've run out of air, it can be really hard to get back on track because now you're trying to gasp for air and your audience is kind of gasping for air too, because they're empathizing with you.

One thing that you can do is practice the 4,8,7 technique and that means you breathe in for 4 seconds, you hold your breath for 8 seconds and then you breathe out for 7 seconds.

You do that 10 times in a row and what it does is it kind of resets your breathing pattern, so you're not doing those short, shallow breaths and it helps to relax your nervous system and it relaxes your mind.

Instead of having that hamster wheel of thoughts of, "What if this goes wrong?...What if I forget?...What if they don't like me?" you kind of get away from that and you just start counting and it calms your mind, so everything is centered and more relaxed and at ease.

Do you want to practice that for a second?

RF: Yeah, okay, let's do this. Step me through this, so it's 4, 8, 7.

AL: Yes. 4, 8, 7, you breathe in for 4 seconds, you hold your breath for 8 seconds and then you breathe out for 7 seconds. I can count for you and we could do it twice.

RF: Yeah, I was going to say let's do that, you count, you be the cue, because just like chewing gum and breathing are hard.

All right, so we've just turned this podcast into an active breathing somewhat a throwback to meditation, yoga namaste-ness.

AL: Yes, so you want to close your eyes, and if anyone listening wants to do it with us, please feel free, unless you're driving, in that case keep your eyes open.

Breathe in for 4 seconds, 1...2...3...4
Hold for 8: 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8,  

Out for 7: 1...2...3...4...5...6...7

Breathe in for 4 seconds, 1...2...3...4
Hold for 8: 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8,  

Out for 7: 1...2...3...4...5...6...7

Now imagine doing that 10 times in a row. Do you feel any different right now?

RF: I have a couple of comments.

Your seconds were pretty on spot but a little fast and so for some reason while you were counting I'm pretty sure my heart beat at the same beat, like all of a sudden there was a match so I found this weird internal rhythm and I'm glad I wasn't counting, because that would have been trouble.

But yes, I feel that the hamster slowed down on the wheel, it didn't stop, but it slowed down I think after 8 more times the hamster would have left the wheel.

AL: Yeah, the hamster leaves the building after about 5 or 6, everything starts to feel really like quiet. Then you can enter the space feeling like you're more grounded.

And when you're more grounded, your audience can attach to your ideas more easily because they're not consumed or distracted by any nervous energy or lack of breathing you're doing on stage.

So, that's one piece, that's one way you can prep your body, and another way you can prep your body is by preparing your face!

A lot of people hold a lot of stress and tension in their jaw, and in their neck, and if you're speaking you're using your jaw a lot, and if your jaw is kind of locked because it's so tense, it's harder to enunciate and be clear with your words.

If you're mumbling or not speaking clearly, you're not doing a service to your audience.

So one way that you can help to relax your jaw is something I learned from a voice coach Elissa Weinzimmer who works with actors in theatre, and she has them do this before they get on stage all the time .

RF: Is it the Aaaa, is that one?

AL: It's kind of like that, but you do with your lips instead, it's [making sound with lips]

RF: And then also, you double that with the like you're sort of shaking your own hand and then, you know I'm strapped in my chair, so it's tough to get the movement going, but like you just shake your hands and [making shaking sounds] that happens as well. Loose jaw.

AL: Yeah, you can do that too.

When you're doing this noise [lips sound] you want to be hanging upside down like not hanging upside, but like have your head kind of down by your feet, flopped over with your arms hanging on the floor because that helps release a lot of that tension in your neck and your shoulders and your face too.

You do that for maybe 30 seconds or so, a couple minutes before your speech, and if you're in a busy area and you can't just do that in the middle of an event space, you can always go to the bathroom and just make that noise and it really helps to relax your face.

It's also funny, it makes you laugh, and when you laugh you relieve stress too and you tend to take yourself a little less seriously, you kind of remember like,

"Okay, I'm allowed to have fun, this can be enjoyable, this doesn't have to be complete stress and tension."

RF: Right, right.

Okay, so we've got the breathing, we got the [lip sound]

You really have got to focus, I am not getting the ripple effect.

I would bend over but I'm strapped in my chair so that's not fair.

What about the pickle face, like the scrunch face and then the scream face, do you do those ever?

AL: I don't do those, but I think those could work just as well.

It's a lot about moving your face right, just being able to get some kind of flexibility in there, in moving the muscles warming them up, so I think all of those work the same way.

RF: Do you have any favorite tongue twisters to get the audio and tonality to tune in correctly?

AL: No, but I love saying the words "fallopian tube".

RF: Okay, I like that.

That's good, I haven't done that one too often but yeah. So "toy boat" is one of my favorites, try to say "toy boat" 3 times, you don't have to go fast, just 3 times try.

AL: Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat.

RF: You're pretty good but this is making sense because you're a pro.

Anybody else, I want you to try and say "toy boat" 3 times, and you can't get past, it's like toy boat, toy boat, toy... Yes, Then there is like, "You know you need unique new York" all that kind of stuff to get your face scrunch.

AL: Yeah.

RF: But this is good.

What I love about this, and I can imagine all of the sisters in the sisterhood like breed-ing together and buu-ing together and doing all this stuff.

Are these fundamentals that you teach in the groups?

AL: Yeah, we do them in our warm-ups before people give speeches, we do power posing.

We talk about how to stand so that you have a good foundation, and you don't fall over or feel off balance while you're speaking.

Yeah, we do have breathing exercises, a lot of meditation, because it's a lot about just getting that silence, that quiet before you jump in there and feel totally chaotic.

RF: What a nice ninja tool when it comes to speaking.

I was talking with somebody the other day and there's this fear, yes, it's fear and it's overplayed, but people keep saying it because it's true. That fear is always there, if I get up on stage in front of 2 to 100 people to 1000, there still is some sort of fear, it's human nature, but you're having these tools that counteract that and I want to think of them as like bravery tools.

The bravery breathing tool…. and the bravery buu-ing tools.

It's like if you're going to go to battle, it's like the more equipped you are and the ready you are—a professional athlete doesn't just go run the sprint without ever stretching, but we just don't think of speaking as this physical physicality, but it's your face that's being physical, so you've got to work it out too.

AL: Yes, exactly.

I love how you come up with all these things on the spot.

You should work in advertising.

RF: I kind of do but not really, I help people advertise themselves by building their own brands.

Because it's one thing to give a speech on a topic, it's another thing to talk about yourself and that's something that I'm excited about, because people I feel are terrible at describing themselves.

Let's go to maybe a medium, so we're all warmed up, our faces ready to dance, and we're on stage.

What about some tactical pieces of advice for speaking when you're giving that talk?

What are some of the common mistakes or some advice that can help move the needle for people when they just hear it come out of your mouth?

AL: Well, first off, you have to recognize there are people sitting in front of you.

You may have practiced your speech hundreds of times by yourself at home and had the whole thing mapped out, but you have to read your audience and recognize whether or not your content is falling the right way.

You'll notice if they're laughing at your jokes, you'll notice if they're yawning or if they're looking at their phones or looking at the clock.

You'll notice if people are raising their hands when you ask for a show of hands.

If people don't seem engaged, you have to do something to change the environment, to change the momentum or lack of momentum in the talk in order to get them interested.

For example, I had to give a morning talk, it was like 7:30 in the morning at a Chamber breakfast and they typically meet at that time of day, but it was the day after a big snowstorm, everyone was really tired, they were just kind of like... there. Probably because they had to be.

I could tell that the energy was really low in the room, so I couldn't just give a straight presentation, I had to do something that would help get them be energized and awake and involved and make the best use of the time.

I shifted the whole presentation into an interactive workshop and I pulled 3 or 4 different exercises I had done in the past.

I instead just had them do exercises, and then we discussed what we learned, and then we did another exercise, and then more discussion.

And everyone was laughing and they were really engaged, they were having fun and that was a really good use of everyone's time, because it just came down to me noticing that this group does not want to sit and stare at PowerPoint for the next 45 minutes they just don't, like you can see on their faces, they don't even have to say it.

So as the presenter, it's my job to be the architect of the experience and if I'm not paying attention to my audience, I can't be a good architect.

I think that awareness is what makes the best speakers the best, because they know that they're doing the best thing for their audience by paying attention to them and creating something that matches their energy levels.

RF: What I hear about that is that there is this feedback loop which makes it so that you just don't go up on stage and do a broadcast.

A speech is essentially an interaction. There's this two-way street and you've got attention and you've got your talk, but the ability to sort of adjust on the fly by being aware of who your audience is, that's key.

I've had many people who do not read the signs that the crowd will be just put to death by a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation.

That's good, this actual awareness feedback.

I am always curious about people, how they start off the show.

You realized that you needed to change your whole program.

Do you have any advice for really cool intros or the flip side which is really cool exits, anything that you help people with, or something that's worked for you?

AL: Yeah, my greatest weakness is the first two minutes of my talk!

That transition from sitting in the audience or backstage and then getting up on stage to start talking is the scariest for me, because I know that it's going to be fine, but my stomach is in knots, and my heart is racing, and I feel like I need to get into the groove, and it's going to take me a little bit of time.

I have stopped trying to just walk up on stage and give a speech.

Instead, I get everybody out of their seats and we play a game right away. We do an icebreaker like in the first 2 minutes.

I do a lot of games from improv that usually lasts anywhere from 3 to 15 minutes depending on the size of the crowd and what I'm trying to teach.

Since I teach public speaking, I pull some of the principles from improv which is about how to trust yourself, how to trust your audience, and I use the game as a teaching tool about public speaking.

RF: That is definitely a way to cover up your weakness. I like that.

There's nothing wrong with that, right, but I think people are scared just in general, but it's sometimes more frightening to be that person who's up on stage being like,

"Alright, get up out of your chairs," and you've been in the audience and you know, "Oh my gosh, what are they going to make us do?"

What's one example of something, because not everybody is into improv, not everybody has had that opportunity, not everybody has the goal and the bravery to do that.

What is one simple example, maybe towards the shorter time frame of audience engagement, that could technically work more times than not?

AL: I do a game called “Snap! Stomp! Clap!” and it takes about 7 or 8 minutes and it requires that you find a partner, so what I tell everyone first off is,

"Look for someone you don't know, and you don't have to get up on stage with this person, you don't have to give a speech, but you're going to get a chance to get to know them over the next couple of minutes."

Everyone chills out a little bit because when you tell them to get out of their seats, you're right, they do start to wonder, "Am I going to have to speak, am I going to have to do something embarrassing?"

In the game you count to 3 with your partner like you go back and forth and you each take turns doing it, you go 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, and then in the next round use substitute the 1 for a clap and you do clap, 2, 3, clap, 2, 3.

And then you substitute the 2 for a snap, so you do clap, snap, 3, clap, snap, 3 and you're going through the game and you start to add in this new element of like you and your partner say, "Yay!" together any time you make a mistake.

You start to kind of change the way that people are making mistakes and at the end of the game you take them back to the first round of just saying 1, 2, 3 back and forth with their partner.

So they feel like total pros because they've now just done this really difficult part and they're going back to the easy part.

The way that I relate that to public speaking is that public speaking is a skill, it's something you learn through practice and by trusting your audience and not taking failure too seriously.

They have just done that over the last 5 minutes so it's really easy to say all that because they just went through it.

RF: That's excellent, the first word though out of your mouth might have been a slip, you like are, "Alright, there is this game I call Slap" and I was like, "Wait a minute, we're going to slap each other?"

You're getting them to physically speak in public together and then convincing them that they are already halfway there, because admitting is probably half the battle, right?

AL: Yeah, definitely.

RF: For those people that are in the Sisterhood, outside of the Sisterhood but they're getting prepared and they're wanting to use their communication skills to get their message out there.

What do you have to say about the process of monetizing that message?

Is that something also that you help people navigate through in the Speaker Sisterhood?

AL: Yeah, actually I have a separate course called "A Speaking School For Women" and it's a 6-week online course where I teach women how to become paid speakers.

What I learned is most important when you're setting out to monetize your speaking is the answer to these two questions.

The first question is, "Who is in my audience and who is my target audience?"

Not just their age or the job they do or the industry they work in, but what are their fears, what are their needs, what are their challenges, what are their goals, their dreams.

If you can answer those questions and really get inside their heads and understand what they're sitting in the audience to learn, then you will build something of value for them.

The second question you have to ask is, "What problem am I solving for them."

Because you could find out that they have hundreds of challenges in their work or in their life, but you need to pick one, and become an expert on it.

Once you pick your target audience and you pick your problem to solve, you can create content until the end of time and become a thought leader in that area because you're so specific, and you've got your clear niche, and now you're helping this group to really become successful at the thing that you're known for.

The problem people run into all the time is that they're afraid of picking one of each.

They want to help women, and they want to help dogs, and they want to help CEOs and they want to help high school teachers….

RF: Naturally.

AL: And then, as far as the problems they want to solve, they want to help you be the best cake baker in the world, the best basketball player, make the most money, be the most confident...and those things just water down the message. It makes it hard for people to find you and makes it hard for people to remember you.

I spend a lot of my time trying to teach people to just get the message down to one clear thing and then they can build out from there.

The more specific you get, the deeper you can go into what that's all about and you can spend a whole lifetime exploring it.

RF: Right.

Okay, and let's spend a little bit of our lifetimes exploring this, because I agree with those two things.

Sometimes people think I come across rude when they first meet me but I will go straight up saying, "Before we get into this conversation, let's just get a baseline,"

I kind of set them up, "I don't know you, I don't care what you do, and don't take that the wrong way, but nobody cares what you do, they only care about the problem that you solve."

I say, "Why don't we try this new little game here, tell me the problem that you solve without telling me what you do."

It's unbelievably miserable how many people will just tell me what they do, and not the problem that they solve.

It's what keeps me going and I've got this 3x3 method to solve it but this is the core of it: "I don't care what you do, I only care about the problem that you solve and I am really, really interested if I have that problem."

I love this as one of the main two and the target market: there's nothing more important than that and it comes down to sort of picking that lane.

I want to pick your brain about how you have people help pick their lane, and how you help them pick their problem?

AL: Well, there are the three questions that I mentioned earlier, that I ask myself when I was discovering that I wanted to help women with public speaking.

The questions were, "What am I good at," "Where have I been most successful," and, "What do people always ask me about."

Those 3 questions can become the basis of helping other people figure out the answers to these problems, because there's a lot of insight in those answers.

The question, "Where have I been most successful"  points at what you're good at, what it is that people are willing to pay you for.

And that's important to know, because if you decide you want to solve the problem of accounting for small business owners, but you suck at math, is that something you really want to spend your time on?

RF: No.

AL: Right, it sounds funny, but some people do that. They focus on something they are not even good at and I have to remind them,

"You know you're going to spend all day, every day talking about this? You might want to make sure it's something that you really are passionate about and that you're really good at."

And then the other question, 'What do people always ask you about," that's such an important question because it tells you that other people have noticed something about you and they actually took time out of their day to ask you about it.

People don't typically do that unless they see something in you that they want to know about.

I didn't realize for years while I was giving speeches how many people asked me about public speaking because I wasn't focused on public speaking, I was using public speaking as a vehicle to promote my business and career coaching.

When those questions would come up I would just think, "Oh, these are just side questions because I'm a speaker, so they want to know," but it never even crossed my mind that, "Oh, I could actually teach people about public speaking."

It seemed so simple now looking back on it, but I never stopped and asked myself the question, "What do people always ask me about".

Just doing this kind of reflection and downtime with a journal and just writing and emptying your brain, and thinking about all of the different interactions you've had, and the experiences you've had, it will help you to put all these pieces of information together.

Then look for the consistencies and you might see something that's been there all along, but that you never even saw.

RF: I dig it.

So basically, finding the magic 3 questions which are “What you're good at?” “What you've been successful at…”— wait, let me clarify, is it “What you're good at?”, “What you're successful at”... “What people are asking you questions?”  that's it, right?

What's the difference between what you're good at and what you're successful at?

AL: What people have paid you to do.

RF: Okay.

AL: I know that I'm really good at cooking, but no one has ever paid me for it.

RF: Alright, so you want to find that intersection to where something that you are good at that also is something that maybe is a litmus test of somebody having paid you?

AL:  Yeah.

RF: Okay. So what are your feelings about the monetization process?

Just kind of from a cultural standpoint out there, are there any mishaps when it comes to the perception of speaking to make money?

Do you find that people think it's a lot easier than it is?

Do you feel like there's a realistic expectation, are people just scared of it?

What are you feeling because I'm sure there are a lot of individuals in the Speaker Sisterhood, some who want to find success through speaking and some who just want to better communicate with friends.

But what do you think is the current state of the union when it comes to the perception of getting paid to speak?

AL: Well, I think that there are a lot of opportunities to speak out there.

You could speak at Breakfast Mixers, Lunch and Learns, Afterwork Cocktail Parties...there are constantly events going on where people can speak.

But, in order to get paid to speak, you have to build a platform for yourself. I find that the common belief is that you decide you want to become a speaker and then you set array and then you go out and get paid to speak.

I don't see very many people do that, especially if you don't have a platform and a following and an established thought leadership in some field.

The steps are, figure out what you're going to talk about, start building content around it, build a blog, build a podcast, build the following.

Then go out and do a bunch of free speaking gigs for a year and just start to understand what your content is that works in front of other people.

Start to build your brand as a speaker and then get paid to speak.

People don't want to do that much work.

I haven't met many people who are committed enough to that process that they will go out and give maybe 100 free talks.

Because they want the instant gratification, they see the people who are making $10,000 from speaking and they think, "I can do that," and it just doesn't really work like that.

I think this is really an industry where you have to pay your dues and you have to really be networked and you have to be on those stages, in the programs, so people start to see your name, they get familiar with your work, and you become more of a player in the field and not just this person who shows up demanding money.

I think that's just not how this industry operates.

RF: I think that's a good state of the speaking union for sure, and actually, you should come up with the state of the speaking union speech like quarterly or yearly and that's another thought leadership piece for you.

I want to talk about this platform thing because it's ambiguous enough to where maybe people don't understand or they take it more literally and before that, I have a question for you—have you ever jumped out of a plane?

AL: Yes.

RF: Okay, so when you did, did you choose the round parachute or the rectangular parachute?

AL: I didn't get a choice, I was just given one.

RF: Okay, well if you had a choice and you get to jump out of it again or for the tenth time would you choose a round one or a rectangular one?

AL: Rectangular.

RF: Okay, and why is that?

AL: I think you can control it a little bit easier.

RF: Yeah, you don't end up in a tree or in a river, on a lake, wire or something like that.

But it's funny, when I ask people that question, more times than not they'll say circular, it's just kind of what they know.

I try to equate that decision between a round or rectangular parachute, I tell people,

"Imagine the word that you're using and it's on a parachute, and if it's on a circular parachute it's a very general word and nobody knows where to take it, you have no idea where it's just going to land in someone's brain."

I think platform is one of those words where it's tied on to a circular parachute and all of the listeners right now, it's like sort of landing somewhere uniquely, so let's switch the parachute out to a rectangular and drive that home.

When you say platform, what does that mean and how can people find that?

AL: What platform means to me is the different places that you show up.

I speak at a lot of women's conferences, so these are my platforms, these are the places I show up and get in front of an audience and I present my ideas.

Other platforms are social media networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram, those are other platforms.

These are kind of like physical platforms that you can picture in your mind where you show up and you have people who are paying attention to you, but you kind of want to think of them all as one and think about like the influence you have when you're kind of picturing your whole business or your whole kind of vision for what you're doing like you're building a platform.

Every time you show up somewhere you want to make sure you're in front of the right people and that you're talking about the thing that really matters to you.

Otherwise, it is kind of like a circular parachute, because you're all over the place and yeah, you've got a platform, but your platform isn't really focused and it's not going in a path, it's just a random smattering of showing up at places.

RF: That's interesting, because when I asked that, I wasn't really sure where it landed and I was just thinking social media platforms are like a blog platform, but you describe it being just a genre that you have an audience that you speak to and so that really brought it out as a wider base.

This platform per your terms is the physical locations to the online atmosphere to your audience, is that really your target market, the people around that platform?

AL: Yeah, I'm always creating content with them in mind so they're the ones who are resonating and following me and commenting and wanting to be a part of it.

Every so often I get outliers but the idea is to build things for this one particular group of people and then hopefully they'll be the ones who keep showing up.

RF: And I like the word influence you used as well, so it's almost like a platform that lets you showcase your influence, so it's like a show...plat...influence...case.

Maybe like a influence form...—we're going to have to work on that one.

AL: I hope you are making your own dictionary, I really do.

RF: Now I will, now I will. I do enjoy smashing words together and seeing what comes out.

Well this is great, I can't believe it's already been sort of as much time as it has been, but we've been sucked into this vortex of the sisterhood, which is a great thing.

Any kind of closing comments, and I want you to maybe particularly talk about the importance of women finding their voice and their ability to be confident to jump off the waterfall and have that confidence current carry them throughout what they're doing.

If you had to convince somebody that they are a public speaker without snapping, clapping or stomping—why is it so important what you're doing with this platform that you have and what would you say to all the sisters out there to join your Speaker Sisterhood?

AL: Everyone has something to say, everyone has a message.

It doesn't have to be a message of “how to cure cancer” or “how to get to the moon”, but the message is about your experiences and it's about your love and your passion and your story, and that's important for people to hear.

It helps to connect everyone's experiences and make us feel like we are more together than we are separate.

There aren't a lot of things in life that give us that same feeling, so the sharing of stories is really important and when we do these things we stand up in front of the world and we say, "This is who I am and this is what I care about," we start to see ourselves differently.

When we see ourselves differently, we start to see more possibilities and we start to see a different future for ourselves.

When we start to see that we can have more in our lives, it starts to give other people that same message and we start to become role models for them.

And then they start to become role models for others, so it's really important work to do even if you think you don't want to be a public speaker because it really starts to show you that there's a whole secret life inside of you that you otherwise wouldn't have found.

RF: Go find your secret by sharing your stories to discover and hold a mirror to yourself so that you can be the mirror for others.

AL: Yeah.

RF: I dig it.

Well hey, this has been refreshing and though I am not a lady, I love what you're doing and I think that supporting more women to get excited about jumping off of cliffs so that they can have more confidence as they float down the confidence stream, lifts all boats.

I think that's great. Where do people get in touch with you?

I know there's SpeakerSisterhood.com, but if somebody was going to reach out to you and learn more, connect or whatnot, how do they best get in touch or do we funnel them all through the sisterhood?

AL: Yeah, through the Sisterhood is great, you can also go to my website Angela Lussier I have some of my speaking stuff up there and some TED Talks are on there and you can learn more about my books.

RF: Sweet.

All right, well this has been a pleasure and if you see some ginger in an odd-looking wig and she has a deep voice it's probably me crashing one of your meetings.

AL: Okay. Sounds good.

RF: Alright, well thank you so much and everybody, join the Sisterhood whether you're a sister or not and sister brotherhood of speakers unite because the more we can figure out what we can do to get up on stage and share our stories we're only going to inspire other people and create change hopefully for the positive in the World of Speakers.

All right, Angela, I'm going to unbuckle here and get on with the rest of my day, but I had to sit down for this one and strap in, so tons of fun, and I am glad to have you with us.

AL: Yeah, thanks for having me, Ryan.

RF: Everybody, we'll see you around, don't forget, if you liked this show and other episodes make sure to leave us a review and thanks to all of our sponsors including SpeakerHub.

Let's continue to keep ourselves going up on stage don't forget to breathe before you go there and stretch out your face.

On the count of 3 let's end with a lip thing. 1, 2, 3— All right, see you next time, bye bye.

 

A bit about World of Speakers

World of Speakers is a bi-monthly 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.

Connect with Angela Lussier:

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