Stagecraft

If you’ve done what I’ve asked so far you should have five messages you should have stories for each one.

You should have one signature story that really spells out your biggest point and you should have a sense of how you can help people what the process is that you’ve done to help you overcome challenges and how other people can do it.

You should have all that.

Well now it’s time to give the speech now stage craft meaning how you look move sound on the stage even if you’re just in a small room at the same level of people is insanely important for a motivational speaker.

Now the reason for this is that so many motivational speeches have essentially the same message and that is I had a challenge I had problems I overcame it through x y and z working hard surrounding myself with this people being disciplined so so can you.

The message is so similar in many motivational speeches.

It’s the stagecraft that will differentiate you so it’s not enough to be competent.

It’s not enough to have your jacket buttoned and go through PowerPoint slides professionally.

No no no.

You’ve got to be compelling.

You’ve got to be interesting.

You’ve got to be dynamic.

How do you do that.

Well let’s start out slow.

Simply give your speech.

Videotape it and take a look and see what you think.

Because if you’re just standing there or for grabbing a lectern or you’re reading notes or you’re reading bullet points off of a PowerPoint it ain’t gonna work.

By the way they’ve using PowerPoint fine.

You better not be reading text off of your PowerPoint.

You have to be focused on your audience.

You’ve got to be looking at your audience at all times or at least 98 percent of the time.

And you need movement not pacing not fidgeting but you need to move around the stage and appear to be supremely comfortable confident relaxed.

I’ll give you more tips on your stagecraft.

But for now I want you to give a speech and it could be just in your own room or your bedroom your office and it can be just putting your cell phone on the wall capturing it or a friend doing it.

But I want us to do this first draft together and I want you to watch how you look and how you sound and grade yourself.

And after you’ve done that watch it again without the audio on.

And tell me what you think.