BUSINESS: The Lessons I Learned Doing My 1st Professional Speech

Very recently I had to “pause” the other parts of my business to do a professional speech about Marketing and its Fusion with Artificial Intelligence in the 1st edition of an event that gathered top influencers from Brazil. And I’m not talking about marketing influencers. This event gathered leaders like the Consul of India and other very important people in one of the best Business Schools we have in Latin America, the Fundacao Dom Cabral.

It was high-level people and we all did 20-minute speeches.

But this event gave me some powerful insights to master public speaking, and since I realized that I outsmarted many of the other speakers I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned that I believe you should absorb.

LESSON #1: Time of speech is one of the most important indicators that you know how to deliver your message professionally
I’m part of a great organization called Toastmasters.org which Napoleon Hill himself was part of. In Toastmasters, we’re trained to deliver our speech in a determined amount of time with the same power and influence as if we were “free”, meaning, without time restrictions.

I know I know….you’re probably thinking: “Time restriction? That’s it?!?!”. Although this sounds pretty easy, it is really quite the opposite because you have to:

• RESTRAIN YOURSELF — You have to watch yourself to not make any commentary or put any additional sentences while on stage that will take precious seconds of your very limited time. Shut your mouth and speak only what you prepared to speak. A reality that may seem exaggerated for some but when you’re on stage, it becomes a pretty obvious thing to worry about because you KNOW that around the 12-minute mark, you should be speaking about THIS and THAT. You have memorized the sentences and topics and the amount of time used so far. Therefore, if you’re not hitting the right time marks, you’ll start to get desperate and worry about not delivering the message in time.
• DELIVER A POWERFUL CONTENT — You have to fit a complete, concise, smart and powerful piece of content within just 20 minutes that will allow people to feel you worth the price of the event. That’s key because the audience is made of….CUSTOMERS. Period. Therefore, you MUST deliver. The event I just did had a cost between $197-$385. Sounds like a lot of money? To some it is. Which is why your delivery is a big part of your speech, but the delivery itself is not a big deal, but instead the ability to fit the whole message in a short time frame. Why do you think Tony Robbins said TIME RESTRICTION was a challenge for him on a Ted event?

Nonetheless, the ability to deliver what you want and what people want on a strict time frame proves how professional you really are. So pay attention to this.

LESSON #2: Rehearsing your speech for at least 7 days is mandatory
Synchronizing your sentences with the moments the slides are coming is something that differs a lot from a 5-minute to a 20-minute speech. You see, speaking is just like acting. No joke. You’ll have to do a performance, control your body language, make facial expressions to emphasize something, and truly ENGAGE your audience while putting them into a permanent high-attention state.

To do such things really well, you’ll have to put effort and embrace a lot of practice hours.

Talent helps, but that’s not enough. Skills are also not enough. You already know that I sell coaching programs but even I had to train my whole speech for at least 7 days before putting myself on stage. I built the draft with my iPhone voice recorder app, first by recording pieces for every topic and then I put all pieces together in one big final draft. Then I massively rehearsed that single draft for days.

No great speech was ever done without practice. None. Work is always involved here. Putting 7 days into it worked really well. So well — I’m not arrogant or anything — that it was pretty obvious that my speech was the best of that event. People were asking questions far more than I expected and they truly engaged by asking very smart and profound questions. That’s what happened.

Am I super special?

Well, maybe. But the truth is that I WORK to deliver things.

So after 7 days repeating for hours and hours my 20-minute speech it became almost second nature to speak on stage what I prepared. The result of all my practice surprised myself because I noticed that when you practice your speech, your memory links the environment to the sentences that you’re speaking to make the brain work less.

Yep, lazy brain we have. Therefore, you must REALLY memorize your speech to address all subtopics in any given order, in order to truly DOMINATE the stage.

LESSON #3: The Show is now yours. D-O-M-I-N-A-T-E The Stage.
This is an incredibly powerful mindset and a principle I use not only for myself, but for coaching customers as well. By the moment I started speaking my very first word, my mind was thinking exactly this:

I set the frame. I build my reality. The consequence? This puts you in a state where you become a LION on stage. No voice nor noise can alter your performance and you become someone with pure confidence. An animal on stage DOMINATING people’s attention and space. You DOMINATE. Period. Nothing can change the delivery you’re about to make nor sabotage your whole hard work now.

But there’s a catch: can you see why this is lesson #3? Well, because it comes AFTER preparation. After. This “domination mindset” can only be attained IF you’re prepared. Forget this rule, and the mindset alone won’t be able to sustain yourself as much as if you were 100% ready.

Be prepared. Then dominate.

LESSON #4: Great Q&A afterwards means you made the right delivery
A natural consequence of a very professional, concise and powerful speech is a great and deep Q&A session. If people are asking you questions, profound questions, that involve making a BIG next move or something that by your answer alone may compromise their future in business, then you’ve done your job right.

“Wait…..compromise? Is the goal here to give advice that may compromise others?” No, don’t worry. Because in the end people will still think for themselves, no matter who they are. But you can bet that they’ll consider your words nonetheless. Therefore, the goal is to make them ASK for very important advice as a consequence of your speech.

Now let me make things a bit clearer so you don’t worry in the future if you face situations where you expect certain levels of engagement.

#1: Does that mean that you’ll always get tons of questions? Not quite. Can you guess why? Because we have shy/insecure people in the audience and the greater the audience, the bigger the fear of asking something stupid in front of everyone else.

#2: Does that mean that you’ll always get profound questions? Negative. Why? Because people are on different levels of expertise, remember that. Someone may ask you a very basic question (happened to me) that you cannot believe someone asked that, but IN HIS HEAD, you’re laying a good part of the foundation of his business mindset. This is what I meant by “compromising advice”, see? Give the wrong advice and you may push others towards a business abyss.

Those are the 2 points to remember. Yes, you’ll have lots of shy/insecure people who will be afraid of asking you for advice fearing the crowd, and you’ll get those basic questions but that to the person asking, is a very profound one.

FINAL LESSON: Always push a strong CALL-TO-ACTION in your final minute
I didn’t do this myself, but not because I missed or forgot to do it but instead because I just knew that my audience was not B2B. They’re all B2C. Besides, since I’m now targeting CEOs, high-end people and big companies this was even more obvious to notice.

Nonetheless, you need to PUSH people at the end of your speech with something like this:

• “you should send me a direct email if you have any more doubts”
• “those who buy my products within the next hour will get ONE FREE 3-hour call with me”
• “those who want tailored business advice for 1 hour will have to write a review about my speech on my Business Facebook Page”

I must say that although I didn’t pitch anyone for marketing/coaching/business projects I did miss the chance to boost my Facebook Page with something as simple as the last example. But this is where experience starts to become an asset. You have great ideas AFTER you go through something new. Lesson learned.

CONCLUSION: You can really DOMINATE the stage and do a great speech in your 1st shot
Truth be told: you can master the experience from Day One. You can. Everybody can. Sure, having the personal development background I do helps because you know how to “control” the environment and all social interactions with more ease, but in the end it is still a different experience in which you have to train your brain to master.

But the good news?

Wanna bet? Just follow these teachings and you’ll see what happens. Then come back here.

Take care.