The Community Strategy Podcast: The nexus where online community strategy meets intentionality

Episode 77: Create Your Signature Talk with Suzi Hunn

June 19, 2022 Deb Schell Season 1 Episode 77
The Community Strategy Podcast: The nexus where online community strategy meets intentionality
Episode 77: Create Your Signature Talk with Suzi Hunn
Show Notes Transcript

If you have a desire to share your message on podcasts, become a speaker, or build an audience on social media, this episode is for you! 

Stop Putting Yourself Out There. Start Leading Dialogue.

During a LIVE Interview, recorded on May 18th, FCH Community Member Suzi Hunn, Founder of Teach Your Thing, joined Deb Schell, Host of the Community Strategy podcast to share her new workshop titled: Create Your Signature Talk. 

Suzi’s mission is to help small businesses change lives by teaching what they know. Courses, workshops, and curricular materials are her jam.

She loved her 15 years as an educator at the Minnesota Historical Society. Since then, she’s developed engaging learning experiences for founders, authors, and corporate franchisees.

As a purpose-driven founder, how many times have you heard, “Put yourself out there!” The phrase implies a transaction, no relationship is required. 

But cultivating more meaning, impact, and profit means adopting the habit of leading dialogue. 


Suzi Hunn’s actionable talk will inspire you to take action on seeing marketing as a conversation:

  • Stop waiting till it’s all figured out and create consistently--blogs, social media, or newsletters.
  • Focus on the warm connections who know you and want to solve a problem you care about.
  • Attract higher-quality leads by turning your knowledge into a short webinar.


Quote: “If you can create a way to connect your people to each other using your content as a guide, that’s where your power often lies.”

For full show notes, click here.


Do you want to start your own podcast? Check out Buzzsprout


Need a way to organize your freelance clients? Try Bonsai! 


Curious about Mighty Networks? Join the FREE community for hosts! 


Did you love this episode? Say thanks with a cup of coffee


Do you want to find podcast guests or be a guest? Check out PodMatch



Support the show

The Community Strategy Podcast (CSP) offers interviews with online community leaders who share their community-building journey. Our podcast covers community concepts, community building, community strategy, community structure, community membership, and community management. We deep dive into the best ways to launch with platform reviews, give our thoughts on cultivating engagement, and the keys to identifying ideal members who will keep coming back and becoming super supporters.

Visit our Website Find Calm Here to learn more about working with Deb

Hello and welcome back to the community strategy podcast. I’m Deb Schell and today we have a very special interview, one of our Fine come here community members. Suzy is going to be talking to us about how she has done and how she helps people create a signature talk. A lot of people have been challenged with this maybe of identifying like how do I get my message out to the world, How do I communicate like in a really maybe skillful way or sometimes they mentioned uh like the elevator talk or something and so a lot of people are like, oh you know, and even in the recent, I’ll tell you personally in the recent last two years, I really have been working on my elevator pitch, so I’m excited to learn to improve all of the things I’ve been doing today with Susie before we get to Suzy, I’m just gonna welcome everybody who’s in our studio audience here, we’ve got Christie our community ambassador, Christy, Joan’s here, she’s been a community member for quite a while Caroline just newer to the fine come here community, but I met her in Memphis just recently at the Community Leaders Institute expo kelly and I have been good friends for quite a while.


We’ve been chatting as community consultants for quite a while on, he’s been in the community shoutout to Annie, you’ve been a member, amazingly giving your feedback and supporting all of our amazing community members, missy, amazing to have you here. So glad to see you Missy has been an active member as well, leading our book club inside the fun, calling her community, so shout out to all of our amazing community members here and I’m so excited, Susie, let’s go and let’s have you start to share a little bit about your journey with, you know, I know we’re gonna talk about signature talk, but I want to, I know you have a community, so I want to definitely talk about like how you got into community building first so we can set the stage for why we want to learn how to do a signature talk Well, hi everybody and thank you Deb Deb and I met through a forum about mighty Networks and so I’m so happy to be here, but I’ll start by saying who I am and how I came to my networks and why I believe in community so much so my name is Susie hon and I am an educator at heart.


My mother was a teacher, my grandmother was a teacher and so I have teaching in my blood and I spent The 1st 25 years of my career doing education specifically 15 of those years, I was an educator at a major museum in Minnesota where I live. And that prepared me as I didn’t know this at the time, but my education experience prepared me for business ownership because I have since started my own business, it’s called teach your thing and I help small businesses take their knowledge and turn it into courses and workshops and so that’s why I’m here. I’m passionate about education as a tool for impact and I’ve always known that education is a powerful force for changing the world, but I’m newer to entrepreneurship as a way to change the world, and now my business combines the two and I just think education and entrepreneurship are powerful tools for navigating today’s creator economy, so I could say more but beautifully said, I was so glad to meet you through the mighty community and building a relationship and so glad you’ve connected.


You’ve been a guest on the community strategy podcast a couple of months back, but when you and I have been talking and I’ve been trying to build these courses, a K A guides inside, they find come here community and struggling to get clear on like what’s helpful inside my community for my members, as far as content goes, you and I have you really helped me kind of get clear on, like, well what’s really gonna be helpful here, So I feel like I want to just thank you for giving me your time and and just sharing with me some of that expertise of education, because totally valuable to learn about, you know, what’s the best before you go into this whole building a course or building a guide or something like what does that really mean? And that’s what you kind of helped me identify, like where I needed to prioritize my time, so it was really thankful for that. And yes, so let’s talk a little bit about what brought you to sharing about a signature message maybe How does that relate to community if it does? Yes, Well, first I want to respond to something you said, which is a, it’s a helpful, I think this can be useful for anyone on the call and when listening, which is to say when it comes to creating your content.


So many people have expertise that they can share and they think, oh I want to turn this into a course or a workshop and they just jump right in and rush in thinking that it’s all all their value comes from their content. But I always start by saying, let’s step back anytime I’m working with a client and really look at what are your goals and what is your unique value that you’re bringing and Deb in your case, you demonstrated a very common um learning, which is that often our greatest value doesn’t come from, strictly our content comes from our ability to create community. So, one learning to take away already is when you’re teaching something connecting people to you and your content is only part of where your differentiation can come if you can create a way to connect your people to each other using your content as a guy, that’s where your power often lies.


And especially in today’s economy, community as a differentiator. So that’s one thing else, and then beyond that, why do, why am I passionate about teaching this topic about creating a signature talk? It’s because in work with my clients and my clients are small business owners who have been around the block a time or two. So they have gained deep wisdom and have some kind of subject matter expertise. And what I say to them is, you know, and love your thing, but just because you know, and love your thing doesn’t necessarily mean, you know how to teach it. Although my clients often are educators so they’re pretty, they have a general sense for how to connect with their people because they know and love their people. So that’s awesome. But I hope them shape it and several of my client noticed a pattern. Several of my clients ended up using a small version of the greater curriculum we were creating and they would go out to different groups and deliver a signature talk.


Often they do it for free, but they were using it as a lead magnet to attract the right people into their group programs. And I, that’s something I also do. And so having a signature talk can be a great marketing tool, but you can also use it for other things. You can repurpose the slides from it if you do use slides to use in social media or you can create those, that same signature talk. You can deliver it as a paid program. So I just think that and in it, I’ll just back up for a second and talk about inbound marketing, inbound marketing is and there’s lots of other terms you could use, but basically it means you’re not marketing by trying to force your message to people who don’t want it, but it’s by having some, having an interesting dialogue and content to share and then attracting the right people to it is generally, and building a relationship with people, it’s a marketing tactic.


And having a signature talk is one tool you can use in your inbound marketing, well also genuinely helping people. So that’s why I love to help people create a signature talk, It’s so important and I have not heard one, the two things that I’ve heard in the last, let’s say, two months that all of these events that I’ve been showing up in person or online is community and building relationships. So I feel like it’s amazing that you’re bringing up this signature talk concept because I think it’s, it’s putting in a in a framework that people can really grasp onto and understand we might already be doing it. What are we, are we identifying with it as a specific talk or do you have a go to like if somebody impromptu ask you, hey, would you be willing to share about this is what happened just recently. I talked to a couple of people inside this community and said, hey, would you be willing to talk real quick about a topic? Um some of them had signature talks, some of them don’t, but like that is something that you can have on the tip of your hands if you’re in a networking situation and somebody’s talking about, oh, you know, it’d be really great if you know, we had somebody to talk about X and that’s something that you can talk about.


You can be like, oh, you know what I have, I have a talk that relates exactly to this material and keeping it specific and demonstration of of your experience and understanding. I love that. So I think, yeah, tell us break down the is there a framework or a structure that you use to like a template to build a signature talk or how does that work? Well, I always start with taking a big step back and doing a close intake of the clients and so you’ll, you’ll be doing this in your own businesses, I’m sure. But I always like to start with an understanding of what is your market sweet spot. And by that, I mean, and I do have materials that talk about this, but what I mean is first get clear on what are the topics that are going to have the most impact that bring your uniqueness to this because you mentioned something really interesting Deb which is that many of us have multiple talks that we could give and I hang out with a lot of entrepreneurs and as a visionary myself, it’s common for us to have so many ideas that often the problem isn’t coming up with what is my talk going to be, but it’s narrowing down what to talk about and I will openly admit this is a challenge for me.


I have created at least six talks that I give regularly, so start and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s okay to have multiple signature talks that you draw from. But but if you’re going to take the time to formally create one or 2 or three, which I do recommend just like you’re saying Deb, you might, you might get requests. And even if you don’t get requests, having in your back pocket, they talk that you can say, here’s what I love sharing about and having it ready to go means you can adapt it to so many different types of situations. And so when I help clients create a signature talk, We do develop a slide show. But I say this talk can be distilled down to 10 minutes Or we can expand it into a 90 minute thing. For example. So I’m going to start by saying, figure out your market sweet spot, which is to say think about what are the things that you could talk about all day long.


That is often your cue that if you can talk about this all day and you just still feel let lit up and energized, pick that talk. But also it needs to intersect with what is your market need? What are people asking for? So as you mentioned, people ask you, oh, can you talk about this? Um so basically it’s a little more complicated, but basically start with those two things, what your market needs and what lights you up. That that can help you choose which talk you want to give over and over again, potentially. Then from there, I like to say that most of the time we have too much content and again, the issue is narrowing it down and I often say as a subject matter expert again, you’re choosing a topic, you can talk about all day, you want to cover this, but your learner in order for it to really impact them, They need this. Oh and for the people on the podcast, I am doing a hand signal going from if you put your hands way out wide, that’s what you start with.


But then narrow it down to like 1/5 of that, that’s what your learner needs. So, I’ve kind of given a lot there and I could tell more about how then to break it down, but I thought I’d pause and see if you have any questions or comments. I thought I wanted to ask too. I love the structure and the idea of you know something I could talk about. So community is something I could talk about all day, it lights me up as soon as I stay in the community, like I just get really excited about talking about it. My challenges is that I have a hard time staying on point with a specific focus. So sometimes I could go on rants of you know, my entire community journey or here’s an aspect that I feel like is really needed in the industry or I could talk about discovery and so I have a hard time like focusing in on a specific area, within a context of community being the overall context, but then focuses if I’m knowledgeable on a lot of things within the community topic, how do I decide what specifically is really going to be helpful for me to focus on, does that resonate or that is great.


I love that you answer that you asked that question because it leads me to give one of my philosophies, which is I love power points, I actually love slide chokes and I want to disrupt the idea that slides are boring because slides just like anything are a tool and you can abuse that tool or you can use the tool effectively and the reason I love slide shows is that they are one of my greatest tools, like if you, if someone came to me and said susie, you can’t ever use slide shows again, I would go into a state of panic because slide shows allow me to do exactly what you just said, which is focus, you might be able to already deduce that I’m someone who can do what you just said. I could easily go on and on and on and lose focus as I’m talking about something.


So when I create a signature talk, the slides are the perfect tool for forcing me to pick like, okay, we first, so so first I would say start with the number one. Use that you can envision using this talk for. So so in my case, the very first opportunity I had to start sharing some of my signature talks was an organization called Score. You may know it it’s a national organization that helps new business owners by putting them together with resources. Now I have developed a relationship with the twin city score chapter and I give multiple talks throughout the year for their users. But my very first signature talk I created for them. And so I had a box to put my top two and in that case it was a 90 minute talk. So now you’ve got parameters like okay, what am I going to talk about?


That’s that’s gonna fit into 90 minutes. And in that case I was able to use the filters that I mentioned before about what lights me up and what the users need because I was in conversation now with an actual audience and we did narrow down, I was like, I could talk about this, this, this or this, which interest do you? And they chose oh we think our users could really would benefit from this topic. So that’s so I would say use that filter of your market sweet spot first. Um and then from there you’re gonna have to choose scope and scope is one of the hardest parts of instructional design, but and again your purpose is gonna really help shape that. So I would say think about an actual audience use case and probably for each of you, you could think of at least one place where it’s like if I were going to give a talk, who would hear that talk? Think about that group and that might help you just choose and again, don’t try to not make it so precious.


This decision about Oh my gosh, I have 12 topics. How am I gonna choose the three that I wanted to focus on really be led by what lights you up and what your market needs. So then from there Now we only have so much time to cover. And the next thing I would say is I like to leave at least 50 of any talk I give open for the other people to talk. Don’t think if you have 90 minutes, don’t think of 90 minutes for you to feel content. Think of half that time and you can break it up in various ways. I like to talk a little bit about a learning objective and then engage people, talk a little bit engage people. Um so I would say from there now your time frame down to half and then now you’re going to choose learning objectives first of all, and learning objectives are the things that you want people to do, What actions are they’re going to take that are different after your talk.


Those are the learning objectives. Okay, I’m gonna stop, I’m gonna pause there and see if there are any questions because I can Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s are a few questions in the chat. I just wanted to comment real quick about a couple of takeaways that I really learned from. What you were just talking about is to be clear about your messages and really hone in on the product or the talk in the fit of marketing. And so identifying like for me example would be I could talk about discovery because I do discovery interviews as part of my services, so it connects back to what I do as a business, but also it’s something that people need to learn more about because there’s a lot of people in the community space who aren’t spending a lot of time on their ideal member interviews doing a lot of like market research to identify, you know, if there’s other, you know, people out there doing maybe what they’re thinking about doing. So I think that you’ve mentioned a little bit about like making sure that it resonates with the message that’s needed in the marketing space that you’re in and the focus that you’re in.


So I think that’s a really good perspective to have. So thank you for that. So I had in here Caroline, you had a question, sure I can. I’m just very froggy. Still sick all weekend. My question was a little bit tan genital based on what you were talking about. But I was curious to hear what has been the most unexpected way that a signature talk has positively impacted your business because I am like you said, I’m very familiar with using them for marketing for developing leads. I love doing that. I’d love to hear just like anecdotal fun story of a time that it’s been surprisingly beneficial for you. That is a great question. I will give an example from score. I gave a talk to score and when I say give a talk, it was an online virtual talk kind of like this. And after that talk, one, usually after I give a talk for score, there are probably anywhere from 3-5 people who participated in the talk who will reach out to me afterwards.


And one of these people I have since developed a relationship with and I love her and I’m one of her biggest fans now. So a surprising result that happened from that is both of us now are clients of each other. So first she became my clients, she joined my cohort program which is on mighty Networks and she was such an amazing contributor to the program. She was the right person. She was like that talk attracted the right person because she was engaged. She was at the right stage of her business. I believed in what she was creating and so did the other participants. She was awesome for my program. But then the funny thing was she was building her business. And as she was talking about building her business, I was thinking, I think I could become one of her clients, I need that. And so then I now work with her. I hired her and so we both benefited each other’s lives.


And that all became all that came from a signature talk. So thanks for asking that. Now missy, I see you’ve got a question. My question is if you are new to the speaking space, so maybe creating your first several signature talks, how would you recommend engaging with people to get yourself out there to do them? And would you recommend creating the signature talks first or finding people that need to talk and then backing into it that way. That’s a great question. And I would say Talk to People 1st. And in fact, that is how I started my business. I and there’s a thought leader in the creator economy space who I just adore and he says Before you create any one service for your business. Talk to 50 people go out and talk to people And I think he’s right and in fact I attempted to take his advice when I started a business, but I ended up not needing to talk to 50 people I talked to probably more like 20.


And in those conversations I started to see enough patterns that I was able to to take my business and run with it and get started. So I would say if you’re just getting started or if you have two men way, way, way too many ideas and you’re not sure where to start talk to people and but it’s not just any people. So often people want to talk to their close friends which may or may not help you. Instead, what I like to say is start dialogues with aligned people. So look for warm connections and what. And I’m gonna back up even further and say I recommend starting with what I call a compelling question. And what a compelling question is. It’s a term I made up, but it’s a term I used to refer to ask one really interesting deep question about your market sweet spot. And then you’ll use that question as a lens to choose.


Who am I going to talk to about my business? And that’s in fact how I started my business. So in my case, the compelling question I came up with was how can someone with the skills of a museum educator that was me help disrupt help small businesses thrive, because that was I was fascinated by entrepreneurship. So, my compelling question, combined education and and entrepreneurship, which I was interested in to help disrupt today’s today’s world of work, because that’s something I’m passionate about. So to me, that’s a really interesting question. How can someone with the skills of a museum educator, help small businesses thrive and disrupt today’s world of work come up with something like that, that if you’re talking to the right people aligned people, they’re gonna care only pick people who care about that question, and you can tell that they care about it because they’re doing work that’s related or, you know, from their conversations and that will tell you really quickly and easily whether you’re wasting, you’re wasting your time, whether you’re using your time valuably by initiating a conversation and just, I just sat down and I was like, and then I came up with, I had related questions and I had a whole spreadsheet, but I systematically talked to people with that question and then I recorded their answers and looked for patterns and that’s how I started my business, wow.


So great, such good feedback. I wanted to clarify a couple of things that I wanted to just pull out. It doesn’t have to be super Suzy gets a lot into the weeds of stuff. So I wanna, I feel like I have to give a shout out to people who are listening to B like it’s okay if you don’t have all of those steps, you don’t have to do all of them or in a specific order. It’s more about just talking to people building relationships. Part of the reason I was, I talked in Berlin Germany last week by the way and it was my first public virtual talk and I was asked to speak about community consulting because over the past two years I’ve built relationships with people in the community industry and now they know Deb is a consultant and so Deb would you come and somebody tagged me in a slack channel and said, hey Deb, would you speak at this event? I was like sure, what do you, you know? And then I said, what’s the focus of the topic? And they said, well, you know, here are some things we’re thinking about and I said, well I can talk about specifically how do you start a consulting business, what does that look like?


How did I get into it? I can talk about how I started managing my clients and the workflows that I created in the standard operating procedures that I’ve been building out to get a systemized way as an entrepreneur because of all the things. The other, the other thing I’ll say is that I’m going in a week, I’m going to do a signature talk, it’s five minutes and it’s going to be a podcast and I am super nervous about it. But I have simply, I pitched to podcast. I was on a zoom call. I pitched to them. They said, hey, if anybody wants to be a speaker for this special Talk then send us your pitch. I sent them a pitch about what I’ve been talking about for two years about how to build an online community. They accepted my pitch and now in, in a week and a half, I’ll be talking about it on a stage in front of 80 people. It will be my first public in person event that as a speaker, I just had the, the experience in the background to speak about this. There’s other people talking about community at that Event.


The convention is a four day convention, but nobody’s gonna be talking about it in the way I’m going to be talking about it. So I feel like that’s the difference between having a signature talk and talking with somebody. Like having a talk of just like topic subject matter. You could talk all day about community building or social media, but having a specific talk where you give examples and even better client experiences that connect to the message. I think that’s the way storytelling is a really great way to cultivate a quick and easy talk, kelly has her hand up. So I’m gonna pop over to kelly. Sure, my question is that for those of us that have multiple. I’m an idea. Factory and at my age and stage of life, Susie, I’ve got a lot of I don’t call myself an expert at anything, but I have been on a journey that has taken me down a lot of paths and given me a lot of areas of knowledge, a body of work.


A do you help people kind of figure out what is the best place to start with, figuring out that signature talk And if not, do you have any ideas or advice or suggestions for how to hone in on that first signature talk first of all, I do do that and that I love doing because I do think one of my skills is being able to really hear what people are saying in a way that they often don’t see themselves. Plus I just think it’s fun. And I’ve also created a methodology that helps them. So I do. But tips. I’m gonna answer that question and respond to something that Deb said because they’re related. So Deb I love how you said, it doesn’t have to be as complicated as Susie’s making it sound so thank you for being the sounding board that pointed that out. You’re right. And so one thing I would say that’s gonna sound opposite to what I just said, which is yes, you can be systematic and obsessive like I was but also remember you have more inside of you than you even give yourself credit for.


And part of the reason I asked all those questions when I was starting my business is I really hadn’t owned my own confidence yet. I’ve gotten a lot better at that now. So for you, kelly, the my thought would be if you were to just close your eyes and just if someone said to you, what do you want of all the things you’ve learned and talked about, what do you want to tell about right now? And like if you could just only tell that one thing over and over, what would it be like? Just pick the thing that feels most fun. That’s something that I didn’t recognize when I started my journey as a business owner. I was trying to be really serious and find the right thing, but often the right thing is the thing that’s most fun and not just fun, but as Deb said, something else really important, which is stories because often the thing that can create our most strengthen our brand and in our business is the life we’ve lived and like you said kelly, you’ve been through some things and so what is a story that makes you unique and makes your service is unique?


And so I would say combine the content with a story that you’ll tell and that can kind of help you choose as well. So does that answer your question or you have more specifics? No, I, I think I definitely think you did answer my question and one of the things that that I guess I’ve been sort of the word creative is a really important word to me and my business partner in my community, is she and I connected at a retreat years ago that lisa Sonora, she’s the author of the creative entrepreneur. I know I have that book. I love that book. Yeah, it’s it’s sitting right here and Joy and I connected there and we have been sort of coached by other people, you know that word creative, It’s kind of scary for people. The other day, Joy and I were talking and we both went we’re not afraid of the word creative. That’s exactly. And we and it kind of lit us up and we both started going like this as we were talking about it.


And so what you just said now is we have to we’re going to just say everyone’s creative a and we are a home for people who are who want to be creative, our creative creative women crave connection. And that’s what I get. That’s what lights me up. And that’s the phrase that keeps coming back to me, Susie is and that’s when we talk about things that light us up. That’s when people wanted to listen to us. Right? Yes. Okay. So yeah, that was a really good example of our moment for Joy. And I when we were like, stop being afraid of using that damn word. That’s what I was going to say, actually. I love what you said, what I resonated with the most was when you connected creativity and fear because that is powerful, that’s disruptive. And I even like how you said, I’m not going to be afraid of that damn word anymore. Like I actually think you have something there in terms of there’s a signature talk in there for sure.


That’s a really yeah, it’s a good message. Is something that resonates with people and uh something that you could talk about. So I think that’s a great one for you kelly And that’s a great compelling question. Like how fun would it be now if you said I’m gonna put it come together, come up with a list of 10 people who care about the question who is afraid of creativity and what can we do to change that in this war in today’s in today’s lonely disconnected world, something like that. Like think about who You could come up with a list of 10 people right away and talk to them about that. Ask that question and then I can’t wait to hear what comes from it. I think that will lead you to some specific things you can teach around that topic and ideas and groups right away. We’re going to wrap up shortly but we’re going to do Christine has got a question and then Christie’s got a question I’m going to read and then we’ll wrap up.


So Christina if you wanted to um you know, and just share a thought that you had a question. So my question is I guess most of my speaking that I’ve done has been either in academic or corporate settings. And when you gave that number of leaving half your time for other people to speak, I mean if you’re in a classroom or in a meeting, it’s it’s radio silence. Sometimes when you’re talking, it’s it’s cricket. So do you think that do you account for that, or or are you just kind of more selective about choosing audiences who are actually engaged in the conversation? Like, like this audiences? Well, I think there’s two parts to my answer and one is I believe that I’m gonna give you one of my um maybe unpopular opinions, but the two, the two groups that you mentioned, corporate and academia, I think are often operating in a very traditional old school hierarchical model that must be disrupted.


So I think a lot of that silence is coming because the participants are part of a system that they know deep down does not truly value them. So that’s my own editorial that you could certainly agree or disagree. But I think that’s that is absolutely affecting things. But what you can do, even if you’re up whether you’re operating within that system or whether you choose to exit that system, you as a facilitator, get to create your own culture and so your job, if you’re leading the talk is to create a culture of inclusion to create a culture of messiness to care about the people more than you care about the content. And so you can do that build into your design ways to let and maybe you have to tell people that like if I were operating in one of those systems, I might say, you know what, I don’t know something I’d say out loud, it’s okay, I’m asking you these questions because I really want to hear from you.


So you may need to give a disclaimer or explain why you well, first of all you need to build trust. If people don’t trust you, they’re not going to open up. So whatever it takes to tell people or share something vulnerable or build a different type of culture, you need to build a culture of trust, first of all, but that is possible and you can do it and I think all leaders should be doing that. So I could go on my soapbox, I just did I know, thank you, thank you, Susie. Great question, Christina, we are running quite short on time. So I want to just keep moving and Christy had a question that I was going to read here. Um she had a couple of questions actually, is there a standard structure that you recommend or introduction that you have? Yes. So when it comes to the introduction, engage people in the 1st 30 seconds, so have a hook that tell that talks to them.


So, first of all, know your audience and ask something really interesting at the beginning, address them in some way, say something in the very beginning that’s gonna get them engaged. Maybe ask an interesting question. So, yes. So in your introduction, this is like the very first 32nd hook, then after that as soon as possible, talk to them directly, So know enough about your audience that you can mention something about them and name them. However, that means to you um in that audience. And then and then from there, set the expectations. So that’s my short answer about intros. And then she said about takeaway messages, You have a structured way that you give takeaway messages, like why it’s important. And then do you do a call to action? Yes, all the above. So, the takeaway message is the short, My short answer is you define learning objectives and key messages are two different things.


Learning objectives are what are the nexus everything in your talk gets centered around your learning objectives, but those are the things that you’re going to teach That will cause a different course of action after your talk key messages and you’ll you’ll come up, with say in a talk, you might have 3-5 learning objectives Key messages is it’s like one or 2 things that’s that you’ll say repeatedly to support that, that you don’t necessarily have to teach the key message, but you’re going to say that key message every time you talk about a learning objective to reinforce it. So I could give an example, but I may not have time, but that’s my shorter answer and call to action. Yes. When I start, when you create a signature talk, ultimately, you want to have a call to action at the end. So for me, as a business owner, I have um courses and programs that I’m promoting and I try to have the call to action just be like the last five minutes, because the whole talk is not about me promoting my programs, the whole talk is helping me is me helping people.


But at the end, well, I have I have an offer for you if this is useful. So I know what your call to action is at the beginning and make sure that all of your learning objectives support that. And that’s something I didn’t do in my first several years as a business owner because I wasn’t confident, I would say, or I shouldn’t say I wasn’t confident, but I didn’t believe it was okay for me to be selling. I thought that was bad. So I would not have a call to action at the end and I was sort of like, oh, maybe people will come to my website just because they feel like it. So I’ve learned now to own that it’s okay to have something that you’re offering people, but a call to action doesn’t have to just be an offer but yes included great answers, great answers. Susie. Um I wanted to just comment quickly on a couple of things here and then we’ll wrap up. But basically when I was taking a course about two years ago to learn how to speak two stages, one of the things that I talked about earlier was storytelling, but one of the key things that they talked about was bringing people into that moment.


So the key moment that you had a major breakthrough problem, challenge in your life or a client that had a major challenge or breakthrough in your life that you can bring them in the room and say I was crying in the bathroom stall of my corporate job feeling miserable about my life. That was how I started out my original signature talk because it was about how I left my corporate job and became an entrepreneur but having an emotional hook which you said relating and bringing them into the present into this moment that you’re going to tell them about is really impactful and then they will be hanging on your every word after that, they’ll be like what happened then and how did you do this? And what was going on? So then when you get to the you know the Q and A or if there’s and also I want to just point out not everybody allows you to do a call to action or a pitch. So you’ve got to make sure you’re clear when you’re talking to people. You know, if you’re pitching to an organization or a company or or on a stage or whether it’s in person or virtual, you wanna make sure what they deem appropriate for the message.


If it’s just sharing value specifically, that’s it, connect with me on linkedin if you want to look go further, that’s one option. They typically will let you just, You know, share your website or something, but you wouldn’t be talking about a specific program or offer versus if you are there to talk about something specifically a topic and then at the you do have an opportunity to say if you want to work with me, this is how I work with clients or this is what I’m doing in this new program that’s kicking off on July one or whatever. And then just giving them a really one line, simple. If you want to contact me, here’s how one thing this is the biggest mistake I’ve made is like you can connect with me and they did, you can go to the fine come here website. You can find like don’t give people lots of waves because then they’ll forget. But if you give them one thing to do one action to take. Uh and typically I’ve even switched it from that to a discovery call because I know from my history that once I get people on a discovery call, I can really get to know the person build a relationship and by the end of that call I’ll know whether it’s a good fit for us to work together.


And then that gives me the sense of things. So really and it’s a free discovery call. I was thinking initially about charging for that long story just to say that I really want to provide value. I’ve learned how to ask people the right questions in a way that then I can pivot by saying, I hear what you’re saying is you’re really struggling with this whole concept of community building and this one thing I could help you with and here’s how I could work with you and help you. And here’s the outcome very clear and specific the more complex your offers are this has happened a lot with clients. In fact, one I’m working with right now, the more complex your offer is, the more complicated it’s gonna be for people to understand. The easier it is for them to grasp is an eight week course it starts on july 1st or whatever specific date time. Here’s what we’re doing. The clear you are with your message when you are pitching something, the better it’s going to be received. Those are my tips. Thank you, Susie. Please now go and tell us where we can find to work with you if they are interested, I’m sharing everything.


Deb just said yes yes to all of that. And if you would like to connect with me further, teach your thing is my home, it’s my business and it’s teach your thing dot com. I just put a lot of heart install into re I’ve just updated it in the last few months. Not so anyway, find me at teacher thing dot com. I hope you’ll see there’s a lot of love and care there even from the website and there’s a contact page on there. So I would love to connect with you guys more if you have more you want a dialogue about around this stuff. I made a face when you were talking Deb because in my case when I was crying as an employee I had a stairwell that I would go to that wasn’t it? Mostly empty stairwell. So I really resonated with your story and bringing that in. You can picture being in the bathroom stall with me. That that that’s a great picture, but just to say that they could connect the crying in the stall with them in personally and in the same way with you or if you’re in a stairwell describe that.


Yeah, um thank you so much for sharing your message. There are most of the people in the call here are in the fine come here community. So as community members, of course, Susie’s in there, so reach out to her inside the fine, come here community, I’m gonna challenge everybody who’s a fine calm here community member to share what their idea would be. A rather a signature talk and put it in the fine come here community and ask Susie what she thinks of the of the topic. I love it. I think that’d be fun because we all have wisdom to share. And as you come up with it, think about your personal and professional life and put it together because you as a human have wisdom, it’s not just about your credentials. Think about that. And I can’t wait to hear. And that’s the magic, the magic of community, right? Is we all bring together this shared wisdom in this unique virtual or in person space. So thanks for everybody for listening in. If you are listening to this is on the committee strategy podcast we’re airing, we’re recording this in May but will probably come out in like june or so.


So I would like to just let you know that we are going to still be doing more live interviews coming up in the next few months. Please check the fine calm here dot com website in our blog area for upcoming live interviews and I’m excited to be it podcast. So by the time this airs I will have already gone and been to podcast and I’ll let you know how my signature talk is. The five minutes that I have. I’m currently writing them out on a google doc that my plan is to print them out and put them onto cards because it’s an in person thing. And the style of the presentation is actually called Petra cou tre, which is a japanese style of storytelling. And what happens is I have to have slides that are gonna flip every 20 seconds and and the slides, I have to have a talk that goes along with that for five minutes. I’ve been told that it’s one of the hardest ways to do public speaking, but that if you can do that, you can do any kind of public speaking.


So Deb is the person who decides to like try the most, I try to climb out Everest instead of like going out to the hill next door, but I know it’s gonna be great, So thank you for all your support Christina is our new owner. Fine calm here team, she’s our content writer and she’s going to be joining us at podcast as well. I’m super excited for that. So excited to continue talking with you all inside the Fine come here community. If you’re listening, please share this episode with a friend that you think might be, might find value from it, connect with me on linkedin like I said, or please hit me up on the website, You can set the book, a free discovery call with me if you want to learn more about what I do. Thanks all for joining. Have a great rest of your day, take care until the next time. Hope you’re finding calm in this day, evening, morning, afternoon, wherever it is. Find call, Take care and see you later,

Podcasts we love