Tips for Speaking Success

Hey everybody, it’s Pat Mussieux here. I’m coming to you from a conference that I am speaking at this week, and as I thought about my experience here, and for one tip in particular, I decided I wanted to hop on Facebook Live and share some of these with you to enhance your experience as a speaker, to enhance the experience for the organization, and the overall good of the event.

As a speaker – and I’m the opening keynote – there are a few things I do in advance of the event. First of all, I arrive early. I’m always early, and then I track down the event organizer because they are always happy to see the whites of your eyes. So I make sure that I make contact with them, first by email or by text, but certainly, if it’s possible, to find them in-person and let them know I’m here, all is well, and we’re good to go.

The second thing I do is scope out the meeting room. I always like to get a vision or visual of where I’m going to be speaking. What’s the room set up like? This room, in particular, is a bit dark, so I wore bright, cheery colors today, and I just wanted to get a feel for the room. Where are the steps leading up to the stage? What kind of steps are there? Is there a lectern firmly planted on the stage, which is usually taller than me? And so I check all of those things out.

Then I go and find the AV guys first chance I get and introduce myself to them, and let them know that I’m speaking, when I’m speaking, and whether or not I have PowerPoint or props, or whatever the case might be, and then find out what kind of mic they have for me, whether it’s lapel, Countryman, handheld, whatever. Then we talk about how we’re going to handle that at the time before my presentation.

Once that’s done, then the other piece that I do, and I do this in advance, is I arrange for hair and makeup. Always, always, always get the professional look for when you’re speaking. Always. So I do that.

Now, here’s one last tip for you, and I want to share this. I could actually keep it close to my heart, but this is important and a good opportunity for all of you. For the last two conferences, including this one that I’m speaking at, a situation has come up where one of the speakers, and a key speaker in the program, and in this case here, the closing keynote, illness has influenced the situation. The keynote speaker can’t make it because of illness, and so that slot was open, and last June when I was speaking at an event, an opportunity came up because one of the speakers couldn’t make it because of a car accident with a family member.

My point to you is this, and a big ah-ha for me. I always make myself available for other presentations because I always have something ready to go, and I let the organizer know that; that yes, I’m here to do this, but I can also do that on the drop of a dime.

What I learned from this is that I’m going to be contacting organizations now who I know are having conferences scheduled this week, next week, in the moment, and I’m going to reach out to them and say, “Look, I know you’ve got your program nailed down, but in the instance that one of the speakers can’t show up, I am available.” And typically, I’m talking geographically here. So that’s a tip for all of you.

Don’t assume because everything’s been nailed down in a program that there’s not opportunity. There is, and as Oprah Winfrey always says, “It’s better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.”

So, it’s Pat Mussieux coming live from a conference right here in the beautiful Maritimes, and I wanted to share those tips with you. They’re relevant, they’re easily applied, and they work.

All right. Gotta go get mic’d up again for my breakout session. Have a good one. Leave your comments below. Bye.