How are your speaking and presenting skills? Have you thought about how being a good speaker might help your ability to lead? Our guest today is Carmen Sederino, who is an expert on public speaking.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Don’t underestimate the value of your speaking in your business.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- This episode is sponsored by: Zoho https://www.zoho.com/franchise/
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- You can visit our guest’s website: https://illuminatedstory.com/
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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Carmen Sederino is the founder of Illuminated Story and creator of the Illuminated Story Method. She combines 18+ years of corporate leadership, including managing a $300M portfolio at Reece, with a Bachelor of Performing Arts and a background in theatrical direction.
Carmen works with Fortune 500 executives, speakers, and bestselling authors, teaching that authentic presence requires technical mastery, not the absence of it. Based in Melbourne, Australia, she turns presentations into experiences that make audiences feel, not just inform.
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team.
Big Sky Franchise Team is consistently recognized as one of the best franchise consulting firms in the world, helping entrepreneurs franchise their businesses through a proven 3-Step franchise process rooted in ethical principles, hands-on guidance, and customized deliverables.
If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Tom DuFore: The most successful franchises share one thing in common. They’re never satisfied with where the business is today. They’re always thinking about the road ahead. That ambition is the fuel that drives growth, and Zoho’s business software is the engine that gets you there. With the right technology, your franchise won’t just run better. It’ll move faster. Candidates will progress through the development pipeline more quickly. New locations will open on schedule. Decisions will get made based on better data and better insights. Zoho gives every size and style of franchise the power to move faster without breaking what works.
Whether you’re a single-location operator building a portfolio, a multi-unit operator scaling across brands, or a regional franchise or growing into a national network, Zoho grows with you every step of the way. Built over 30 years, Zoho’s software ecosystem can be configured to match how your franchise actually works. CRM, operations, marketing, HR analytics, and more all designed to work together from the start. The more of your business that runs on Zoho, the more connected it gets. Head to zoho.com/franchise to learn more about what Zoho has to offer. That’s zoho.com/franchise. Now, back to the show.
[music]
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. As we open today, I’m wondering how are your speaking and presentation skills? Have you thought about how being a good speaker might help your ability to lead? Our guest today is Carmen Sederino, who’s an expert on public speaking. Now, Carmen is the founder of Illuminated Story and creator of the Illuminated Story Method.
She combines more than 18 years of corporate leadership, including managing a $300 million portfolio, with a Bachelor of Performing Arts and a background in theatrical direction. Carmen works with Fortune 500 executives, speakers, and best-selling authors, teaching that authentic practice requires technical mastery, not the absence of it. Based in Melbourne, Australia, she turns presentations into experiences that make audiences feel not just informed. You’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
[00:02:22] Carmen Sederino: Thank you for having me today. My name is Carmen Sederino. I am the director, founder of Illuminated Story, and I work with thought leaders and experts around the world to elevate their keynote to what I call a keynote show.
[00:02:38] Tom DuFore: I’m so honored and grateful to have you on the show to be talking about this idea of one, the Illuminated Story Method, and two, three shows we were talking about when you’re speaking, just don’t be another boring speaker. Let’s take a step back and how’d you get into this specific domain of expertise anyway?
[00:02:58] Carmen Sederino: I need to take it right back to when I was a little girl because, believe it or not, I was actually a very, very shy child. My mother happened to enroll me in calisthenics when I was about five years old, which I loved going to every week and practicing the dances. At concert time, she was worried about a couple of things. One that I wouldn’t get on the stage at all, and the other, if I did, that she’d have to be waiting in the wings to catch me as I ran off stage crying. Neither of those things happened. I got on stage and absolutely came to life.
Loved it under those lights. I was waving and smiling at the audience and having the time of my life. I ended up enrolling in a local theater company by the time I was about eight years old. Again, we would sometimes travel to schools, and one of those, of course, was my school. We would do a couple of productions a year, and my teachers would say to my parents, “Oh my goodness, I cannot believe that’s Carmen on stage. She is the shy child up the back of the classroom, but put her on stage, and she comes to life. She’s got this big voice; she’s playing these big characters. Who is this person?” [chuckles]
I went on and studied formally. I was in theater my whole life, but I did a Bachelor of Performing Arts at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, which is one of our major universities in our country. I ended up staying on after my degree and doing my honors year, where I wrote, produced, directed, acted in, cast my own show. The thesis report I wrote, I had to write about all the decisions I’d made. Why was the lighting that way at that moment? Why was the set design that way? Why did the characters do whatever they did, etc etc.?
I was set to follow an acting career, and at the same time, I was working for a large business in Australia, just serving, selling on their shop floor as a part-time job while I was at uni for money. When I finished my degree, my boss said, “Oh, can you work for us full-time?” I said, “No, I can’t. I need to keep my days free for auditions.” She said, “Well, I will do a deal with you. How about you work for us full-time, and if your agent gets you an audition, I’ll let you go. If you get some jobs along the way, that’ll be fine. Other than that, you’ll work for us full-time.”
I thought, well, that’s a pretty good deal. I said yes. I was there for the next 18 and a half years. I worked my way up through the business. I went into state roles, and then I went into national roles. I led teams of people, and by default, I ended up teaching them all public speaking, but it wasn’t the core of my role. I did study marketing along the way, and I became the brand manager of about a $300 million portfolio by the end of my career. Sorry, this is such a long story, but about eight years ago is when I founded Illuminated Story, and it’s really a culmination and blend of the business world and business acumen, communication, how you persuade, how you sell, and performance qualities come together to create the Illuminated Story Method.
[00:06:05] Tom DuFore: I relate. I did theater in high school and college. Although it wasn’t my major, it was something fun that I enjoyed, and had a lot of friends in the arts. My daughter’s in the arts, so I just saw her musical that she was just doing. Yes, it was fun.
[00:06:18] Carmen Sederino: What musical did she do?
[00:06:20] Tom DuFore: They just closed 9 to 5, Dolly Parton’s show. You go through this, and now you’ve created the Illuminated Story business, but I’d love for you to talk about your methodology because it’s not just coming out and starting the business, but also a whole process and a methodology. I’d love for you to talk about why this business. Your career and corporate career and what you were doing. Now, this is the thing you jumped into, and so why this thing versus anything else?
[00:06:52] Carmen Sederino: I guess I went back to what I absolutely love, and it was what was missing. I was able to climb the ladder. I got to a very successful part in my career. I was on a good salary. I had the car provided, the phone provided, all the things. Maybe I was a bit insane as well. It did feel like jumping off a cliff when I decided to leave and start my own business and literally start with nothing. I bootstrapped the business and built it from zero, but yes, it’s absolutely what I love. I haven’t looked back. That’s why I started it. I just had this burning desire that I had to. I had to go and leave and do something that I absolutely was just 100% passionate about.
In terms of the Illuminated Story method, it is really blending that business world and the performance world together, as I said. I have the pleasure now of working with incredible people who really do want to take the world stage. I know that’s not going to be all of your audience, so we can talk about the business conferences that maybe some of your audience will be speaking of because I’ve helped many executives move from the boardroom to the stage in the past.
Currently, the Illuminated Story Method, we really dig for stories. I’m sure that you’ve been told before that stories are a great way to get your message across, but it’s more than a laundry list. One of my clients, when he first started working with me, he was– he’s actually a ex-professional rugby player, now rugby coach in South Africa. He also was speaking at corporates on high-performance teams and team cohesion and topics like that, and he has an incredible story, but the stories were coming out like what I call a laundry list.
This happened, and that happened, and I did this, and I did this, and I did this. There was no emotional depth to what he was saying. It was really hard for the audience to feel his message. Even if you think about sales, people buy emotionally, and they justify logically. It’s the same with your presentations and speeches. You want the audience to feel your message, and there’s a much higher chance that they’re going to remember what you’re saying if you can do that.
[00:09:17] Tom DuFore: Let’s dig into that a little bit. How do you work with your clients and folks that you help guide through this? You know, what’s some of the processes or little tips they might be able to take away from this?
[00:09:27] Carmen Sederino: It’s a very different experience for the speaker to speak in your one-minute or 30-second stand-up at BNI. I did BNI when I very first started my business, so I understand that world. To doing a 45-minute keynote on a stage at your industry conference or event. You obviously have to hold the room for a lot longer when you’re speaking for 45 minutes. With the one minute or 30 seconds, it’s about being extremely succinct and making sure that in a creative and captivating way you can get your message across and be making sure that the people in the room understand who you’re looking for because you’re normally pitching to get referrals in that situation.
A little tiny story can be really helpful in that situation, or maybe a statistic that’s really intriguing or interesting to the room, and then straight into who you actually are looking for. Okay. Now you’ve got to hold the whole room for let’s say 20 to 40 minutes, because I know a lot of keynotes are now [chuckles] getting shorter, probably because our attention spans are getting shorter as well, due to social media and the way we use technology. Again, I think the content– there’s a saying that what you say is not what you say; it’s how you say it. It is a famous quote.
I think that’s misunderstood sometimes because the way you say something can make a huge difference to how you come across. The order or syntax in which you put your talk together will make a big difference to whether you’re persuasive or not. Again, because I did sales for so long, if you think about selling, and a lot of your franchisees or owners would know about selling, you think about the customer first. You understand what their needs are, and then you build rapport with them before you eventually and you find out what they want, and then you start selling. Or that’s a really great sales process to do it that way.
If you think about your keynote, think about the same thing: you need to have understood who they are and what their needs are and maybe what their problem or pain points are before you start crafting your talk so that you can craft it for the audience. Everything is for the audience. Then when you’re up there, think about how can you build rapport with them straight away? How can you have them think, “Ooh, this is really interesting. I want to keep listening.”
One of the great ways to do that is obviously storytelling, or again, an interesting hook or statistic or case study that you want to dive into. Then the other part of it, once you’ve got your content right, then the other part of it is your delivery. Now, I would say in corporate world or business world, 95% to 99.9% of your time is normally spent building a slide deck, and the other 0.5% is used for practice. [chuckles] We need to really even up those–
[00:12:27] Tom DuFore: That’s never happened to me, by the way. I swear I’ve never done that. Obviously, done that plenty of times, right?
[00:12:35] Carmen Sederino: I remember being corporate and getting given a slide deck from our creative agency on the way to the airport, flying across Australia. From Melbourne to Perth, it’s about a four-hour flight. Having to learn the presentation on the plane and deliver it when I landed to a whole group of architects and designers. It’s an awful feeling because, well, for me, there was no way that I wanted to stand up there and read off slides. To have that short period of time to really learn something and be able to deliver it well is very stressful. You’re putting yourself under stress.
If you want to be amazing up on that stage and really blow people away and be remembered and have them come up to you and actually want to do business with you afterwards, then I don’t recommend that. Rehearsing. Now, some of your audience are probably thinking, and this probably sounds so basic what I’m saying as well at the moment, but honestly, people will say, I am better off the cuff. I am better if I don’t rehearse. I’d love to challenge that for a moment.
Let’s think about if you play golf. Some people start playing golf for fun at a certain point in their life, and they go every week, and maybe they’re pretty terrible to start with, and maybe they start getting better somewhere along the line. They’re like, “Oh, I’m not too bad at this. I’m getting better. Maybe I’ll get some golf lessons.” Then they go and get some golf lessons, and it feels awful because they’re being taught to stand differently and move differently and hold the club in a certain way. I don’t actually play golf, so excuse me if my golf example is not working for the golfers that are listening.
Anyway, you get taught to do things in a certain way, and for a period of time your game starts going backwards, and it feels awful. There’s two different types of people. The first type will think, “This is ridiculous. I was playing golf better my way. I’m just going to go back to that.” They go back to feeling comfortable and doing golf their way. Others will dig in and think, “No, if I can just learn this and make it feel good, then I’m going to get a whole lot better.” That’s exactly what happens. They push through and then their game soars because they’ve learned correct techniques, and they’ve made that their new normal, and they’ve elevated their game.
Rehearsal’s the same. If you only rehearse for a short period of time, of course, when you get up there, you’re going to feel awful because you’re going to be in your head and you’re going to be thinking about all the things you’re supposed to do that you thought you’d figured out in rehearsal. You’ve got to get over that bump and have rehearsed enough that that’s now integrated. It’s your new normal so that you are still authentic and in the moment when you’re up on stage and you can respond to the audience and things that might be happening in the room, knowing that you can get yourself back on track because you’re so well-rehearsed.
[00:15:23] Tom DuFore: I’m sure someone who’s listening in, might be thinking, “Okay, well, Carmen, that’s all well and good, but your example of getting the slide deck on the way to the airport and having to learn it on the way, hey, that’s me most of the time.” Are there maybe some best practices to help sort out a structure? You said going to the coach to maybe get some ideas that are maybe a little uncomfortable at first. How do you advise maybe some of your clients or folks that come to you that are saying, I like what you’re saying, but how can I maybe start to move in that direction?
[00:15:55] Carmen Sederino: Okay. If we’re in that corporate scenario where you’ve been given the slide deck and it’s not long before you have to actually go and deliver, then I would spend all of your time practicing out loud. I used to say to my team when I was running the corporate teams, practice out loud, or you’ll scare yourself with your own voice. What happens is when we practice in our head, it can sound pretty good, and we think we know the timing.
Then you go to say it out loud in the actual moment, and it all sounds different. Then you think, “Oh, that’s not how it was supposed to sound. Oh, the story’s not coming out how I thought it would come out. I don’t know what’s next,” and you start putting yourself off with your own voice. Practice out loud because even though you’ll think, “Oh, I’ll just tell that story,” when you start telling that story, it often doesn’t come out the way you think it’s going to come out. The more you can say it out loud and sort of shape it, so you’re basically learning it verbally, you’re learning it out loud rather than learning it through reading.
The other thing I would say is avoid the notes. Read the note. Especially if you’ve been given a presentation that’s not yours, and maybe it’s about the history of the company and the strategy moving forward, let’s say. Really absorb the content and think about it from your own perspective, and think about are there any stories, any personal stories, or– when I say personal, I mean relevant to the message. Maybe stories that have happened to you in that business that you could bring to the message that you need to get across so that when you’re up there, you can tell your own stories as long as you’ve practiced out loud really well and without too much time in this sort of corporate setting that we’re talking about behind it. That is one thing I would say.
The other thing is practice it in lots of different ways. When I work with clients, I bring out their inner performer, and everyone has one. It doesn’t matter if you’re a shy person or an extrovert; everyone has one. What I mean by that is you have range within your voice and your body, and most people don’t use it, especially in a business context, because they put their presenter voice on. All of a sudden, it’s “Hi, I’m Carmen, and I’m here to talk to you about XYZ.” That is not how I talk.
Let’s just have a conversation with the audience. The way to do that is when you’re practicing your stories, imagine that you’re at your favorite sporting event and you’re really excited and you’re cheering and you’re yelling for the team. You’re going to use your big voice, and you’re going to use big arm gestures, and you’re going to tell it in a way like it’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever heard in your life.
Then you might imagine that you’re in a church service and you can’t raise your voice and you’ve got to speak a bit quieter, and maybe you’re speaking a little bit slower. Then integrate all of these things at the relevant times, obviously, into your talk so that you have some highs and lows, some what I call gear changes in your talk to hook the audience back in. Because whether you’re high energy or low energy, if you speak at the same rate the whole time, you are going to be one of those boring corporate speakers.
[00:19:21] Tom DuFore: That’s very, very helpful. One of the things you had mentioned earlier that I just want to bring up, I wrote down, you talked about the syntax that’s used in the presentation. I’d like for you maybe to talk a little bit more about what you meant by that for someone that ends up listening into this.
[00:19:39] Carmen Sederino: Yes. Especially in business, often you’re talking about solving a problem or a new direction, and if there’s a new direction, there should be a reason why you’re moving in that new direction. Paint the problem or the pain first. The dark before the light is what we need to do in those sorts of business presentations. Even if you feel like your audience already knows it, if they’re not feeling it in the moment, then your solution is not going to feel exciting to them and feel like something they want to keep listening to and then, of course, want to implement [chuckles] when they get back to the business.
When I say feel it, it needs to be from their perspective, not your perspective. The pain for you as the owner or the leader might be about profits, but the pain for them might be the time it takes to do a task every day, or how boring that task is because of the way they have to do it currently. You’re bringing this new system that’s going to make it faster. It’s going to save them time so they can put their energy into the things that they love doing every day. Make sure that you paint the dark before the light is one of the key things that I would say when it comes to your structure.
Remember that your opening and your closing are two of the most powerful parts of your presentation. Put a lot of time into them. The opening is all about building rapport with the audience and hooking them into your message. The closing is, of course, your call to action and making sure they’ve understood your key points, reiterating it. Closings, I think, are the most dangerous because most people in business will not really think about their ending. It’s probably their least rehearsed part, and a lot of endings finish like, “Yes, so that’s it.”[laughs] You shouldn’t need to tell the audience you’re finished. It should be clear it’s finished, and it should be powerful. [laughs]
[00:21:43] Tom DuFore: Oh, that’s great. Carmen, for someone who’s listening in, what’s the best way for them to get in touch or learn more about what you’re doing or find some of the resources you have available?
[00:21:54] Carmen Sederino: You can go to illuminatedstory.com, and you’ll find everything on the website. All of my social media is on the website that you can click into. There’s a free masterclass on the website that talks about what a keynote show is. For someone that might be listening who just absolutely wants to kill it on stage, wants to elevate themselves above every other speaker, and potentially wants to travel globally to do that, then you should definitely listen to that masterclass. For everyone else, it might just give you some tips or some creativity on what you could do with your local event. That would be the best way to get in contact with me. There’s a contact form on the website too if you want to speak to me directly.
[00:22:37] Tom DuFore: This is a great time in the show, Carmen, and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. The first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
[00:22:49] Carmen Sederino: Yes, I’ve had lots of misses. I think as an entrepreneur, I call a miss a lost sales opportunity. [chuckles] There’s been far more misses than wins. I was thinking about this, and if I think about earlier in my career, when I was on that shop floor in the shop floor role that I started in, the large corporate that I worked for, the time when I wanted to progress within the company, I was being put forward for a role that didn’t really exist yet. It was going a bit slow; no one was making decisions, and a different role came up that was a training role.
I thought, “Oh, maybe I should go for that, but it doesn’t really excite me.” Then others started getting in my ears. Other people that worked in the shop said, “Are you going for that? You should go for that. No, definitely. Don’t wait for them to create this other role. You definitely have to go for that.” I thought, “Okay, I’m going to do it. I’m going to go for it.” I went for it for all the wrong reasons. I went through the whole interview process, and I didn’t get the job, and I was still devastated because I’m very competitive. [chuckles] I was still devastated that I didn’t get the job.
In hindsight, it accelerated the role that they were creating, and I did end up moving into that not long after. If I had have gotten that role, I would have been miserable. I would have been so bored in that role. For me at the time, it was a big miss because I’m so competitive and because I like to win anything that I go for, but in hindsight, sometimes there’s a better plan for you. Just continuing on and keeping your head up when you fail, or you feel like you’ve failed because you don’t know what’s next or what’s coming around the corner.
[00:24:45] Tom DuFore: Let’s look on the opposite side. Let’s take a look at a make or a win or a highlight.
[00:24:51] Carmen Sederino: A win for me– trusting my gut has been useful. Obviously, sometimes you need to do some numbers around that, but in Melbourne, Australia, during COVID, I think we were the most locked-down city in the world. For two years, we were heavily locked down; you could only go out for one hour a day for exercise and running a public speaking business– I was only 18 months into my business at that point in time, and I was doing zero online. [chuckles] Everything was in person. I was doing the BNI; I was doing the in-person networking. There was no online BNI back then. I think there is now.
I had to learn how to use LinkedIn at that stage. I signed up with this company. I really liked their philosophies, and I signed up initially for three months. Within three months, I got zero sales, but I just knew that it was right. I just knew they were coming. It was a lot of work every single day, and I hate spreadsheets and data. I was doing that task every single day because at that point, when everything had shut down, I couldn’t afford to hire anyone to do that task work for me.
Anyway, I decided to take a risk and sign on with them for another period of time, which they were actually even surprised about because they knew they hadn’t gotten the results for me. I said, “I just know they’re coming.” It was another couple of months later, having to do probably three hours of work every single day, boring work that I hated. Then all of these sales started coming in and hundreds of thousands of dollars followed. Sometimes I think trusting your gut and continuing to do the work, and then eventually the results can come.
[00:26:40] Tom DuFore: Just hearing you describe that story reminds me a lot of sometimes what our clients go through when they franchise our business, and they’re anxious to get a sale. It just takes time for many new franchise systems. Every once in a while, there’s one that takes off, but it just takes time for it to pass and figure things out. That’s a great story. The name of the show is Multiply Your Success. Have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally, professionally, or any organization you’ve run?
[00:27:10] Carmen Sederino: I would say in terms of multiplier for me, it’s just actually funny. As I said, very shy child, but loved acting in theater. Multiply for me is taking action before I’m ready or before things are perfect and being seen. When I joined this LinkedIn company I was talking about, and they do so much more than that, I shouldn’t call them that, at one stage they said, “Okay, Carmen, you got to start marketing yourself on LinkedIn. You should do videos.” I was like, “Oh, I don’t know if I can put a video out there.” They’re like, “What are you talking about? You teach people how to speak. You teach people how to be on stage or an actor. How can you not do a video?”
I’m like, “I know, but I don’t really share myself personally.” I’m one of those old Facebook users who doesn’t actually put anything on Facebook, but I’m just on Facebook. [laughs] Anyway, I filmed my first video. I think I did about 1000 takes. I sent it to them, and I’m like, “Do you think this is going to be okay?” They’re like, “Yes. Oh my goodness, it’s so good. Just put it out there.” Eventually I put it out there, and it went really well. I got great comments and interaction and engagement, and then I started doing it every week.
In the end, content went out every day, and every single time I had a sales call with someone that came off the LinkedIn platform, they would say, “I’ve watched your videos, and I like this, that, or the other.” They would feed it back to me. Even though, from a vanity metrics point of view, I wouldn’t always get the most amount of impressions or likes or whatever, it was like a billboard. It’s like a billboard, not everyone’s in the market to buy what you’re selling at the time, but they start seeing you, and they see you often so when they are in the market to buy, they think, “Ooh, I might say yes and have a meeting with Carmen,” and you’ve built trust by then. I found that to be an incredible multiplier for my business.
[00:29:11] Tom DuFore: The final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
[00:29:16] Carmen Sederino: I’m very commercially driven, so success definitely means profits [laughs] for me. If I think more deeply about that, it’s time. Being able to run a business that gives me the finances that I want to run my life the way I want to run it, and time to be able to spend with my children, to allow them to have the life they want to have. There’s a lot of sport that happens [chuckles] at the moment in my house because I’ve got two boys, and freedom of choice. Being able to choose how I want to live, how I want to do, how I want to run my life.
I love now that I can exercise every day and go to the gym. There were things that I really struggled to fit in back when I was in my corporate roles. Back then, I’d have to also say that the world hadn’t gone through COVID, and so flexibility wasn’t really a thing, whereas I know things can be a lot more flexible now. Choice, freedom, time, and money all of those mean success to me. Then the most successful thing I think is that I get to run a business that I love working in every day. Of course, there are challenges. We don’t love every challenge, but I would never change it for the world, and I get to get paid for it. That is success to me.
[00:30:42] Tom DuFore: As we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
[00:30:48] Carmen Sederino: I would just say don’t underestimate the value of your speaking in business. It absolutely makes a difference, even just maybe little team huddles that you might be running with your team in your shop during the day. If you are the person that does have an expertise and you are invited to speak at the industry conference, say yes. I’ve had so many clients I’ve worked with in the past that had been saying no. Then we did work together, and they started saying yes, and it makes a huge difference to your career, your personal brand, and you can do it. This is a skill that you can learn. Don’t underestimate yourself. You can do it. If you want to put the time and the effort in, you can learn how to do this. It’s not magic. You’re not born a great speaker.
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[00:31:39] Tom DuFore: Carmen, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. Let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when she was talking about it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it, in reference to being a speaker. She said, when you do a keynote, you need to understand the pain of the audience. She said, Have something interesting to discuss, a statistic, a study, or a story. She said, when you’re getting prepared for this presentation, very often you spend most of your time building your slide deck.
Takeaway number two is when you have your slide deck completed, she said you need to practice. She said, spend your time practicing out loud, not just reading the slide deck or reading the script. Learn out loud so that you can hear how you sound when you’re telling stories or how something might sound or resonate to your audience, and practice it in lots of different ways using different pacing, speeds, and tones. Takeaway number three, I like when she said at the multiplier, taking action before she was ready or things were perfect or being seen. I really like that. It’s just the idea of taking action before you’re ready. I really, really thought that was a good little nugget. Now it’s time for today’s win-win.
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Today’s win-win came from when she said, don’t underestimate the value of your speaking in business. This is a skill you can learn, and no one’s born a great speaker. This is something you learn and develop over time. I thought that’s a great win-win because if you can develop this skill and be better at speaking, you’ll be a better leader, and being a better leader will provide a better person for your team to follow. That’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. Remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise your business or take their franchise company to the next level, please contact us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com, where you can schedule your free, no-obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
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[00:34:07] [END OF AUDIO]
