How many times have you delivered a talk or presentation and felt underprepared, and said to yourself, I’ll make sure I don’t end up in that situation again, that was stressful!!
Let’s talk about procrastination.
Putting off doing the work required to build a great talk is the biggest issue that leads to a speaker being uncomfortable on stage is (And let’s face it not having a coach won’t help either)
I understand that it’s difficult to commit the time to do something that is far off in the distance.
We’re all busy and preoccupied with more urgent and pressing matters that need our attention now.
It’s also difficult to get into the right frame of mind to focus.
And let’s be honest, It’s easier to avoid something that makes you feel uncomfortable, why worry about something that makes you feel anxious now, when you can worry about it way closer to the time.
The problem with procrastination is it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, you worry that it won’t go well and your procrastination creates the inevitable outcome.
We deliver a below average presentation, that leaves us feeling Blaaaa.
And we always know it could have been better.
We could do so much more if only we put in the time required to make it amazing.
We would feel great, the audience would love it and by default love us and our brand.
We would reap the rewards of all our hard work!
So what can we do about it??
There is no shortcut to success here, early action is what’s going to lead to confidence.
Developing and delivering a talk that people want to listen to, requires time and commitment.
Take Lilia Tarawa for example, she was invited to do a TED Talk about her experience growing up in Gloriavale.
She had just released her book and when we started working together she had a goal of reaching 3 million views.
A lofty goal by any means.
We only had ten weeks to get her talk right to reach her goal.
We met at least once a week for a few hours at a time where I coached her on her scripting.
She then had to spend countless hours in-between our sessions editing the material and adding stories.
All that work paid off and she surpassed her goal by becoming one of the most viewed TED Talks in New Zealand and the fifth most viewed on the planet.
It did so well that it captured TED’s attention and her talk was uploaded on the official TED platform where it’s been transcribed into six different languages which has helped her reach over 11 million viewers.
All of your effort spent on preparation converts into quality, so commit yourself to spending time on your talk as soon as you know you’ll be delivering one.
The more time you spend on fine tuning your messaging, engaging your audience, and developing your confidence in your delivery will lead you to delivering a talk worth raving about.
To give you a rough idea of how much time you need, the golden rule for script development is based on the concept that for every minute of content you will need at least an hour of preparation.
So a 5-minute talk for example, will require 5 hours focused just on script preparation and development.
I know that sounds like a lot, but don’t be fooled into thinking that shorter talks are easier because the shorter the talk, the harder it actually is to prepare.
Now, If you find you’re procrastinating because you don’t know how to prepare, then maybe some coaching is what you need.
If thats the case, get in touch and we can tackle it together.