The SPEAK Framework Bonus — Lesson 2

Welcome back to the SPEAK framework course. This is Grant Baldwin from The Speaker Lab, and again, I’m here to help you make an impact and income with your message. Now, today, we’re going to be continuing, uh, in the next part of our series in the speak framework. We’re going to be talking about the P to Prepare Your Talk.

Now, before we dig in there. Let’s zoom back out. Let’s look at the overall process that we’re going to be walking through the speaker success roadmap. So in the last lesson, we talked about how important it is to select a problem to solve. If you haven’t completed that, haven’t done your homework. Make sure you go back and check that out today.

We’re going to be talking about how to prepare your talk. You need to give you some specific ideas and things that you need to be doing when creating your talk, the E we’re going to talk about how to establish yourself as the expert, the AI. We’re going to talk about how to acquire paid speaking gigs on a consistent basis, not just sitting and waiting and wishing and hoping.

We’re going to talk about exactly what you need to be doing. And then the K is know when to scale, how to spread and share your message beyond the stage and beyond just speaking. But today again, we’re going to be focusing on preparing your talk. Now it’s really important that you understand your best marketing is a great talk.

Your best marketing is a great talk. This is a big key linchpin idea that I want you to get from today’s lesson. Let me give you an example of this. I live in the, uh, the Nashville area in Tennessee, and one of my favorite places to eat as a little hole in the wall place called Baja burrito. Look it up.

It’s phenomenal. They’re a, these are some actual pictures of this place now. Baja. Always pack. There’s always a line out the door. There’s hardly any parking. The decor is crazy. I don’t know if you can tell from the picture here, the chairs are a bunch of plastic, outdoor furniture, patio chairs, but you know why the place is always busy.

It’s because the food is so good. Like when someone comes to town to visit you locally, wherever you’re at, and they say, Hey, what’s a good restaurant recommendation. What’s the place that you recommend right away. And you recommend that place. Not because the menu is beautiful or because the font on the, on the sign is pretty or because the colors that they chose, no, oftentimes it’s because the food is so amazing because the overall experience is so great.

And when you think about when you experience a great product or service, what is your natural. Reaction, whether you see a, a TV show or a movie or music or a restaurant or a resort, or somewhere that you experienced something amazing. What is your natural reaction? You want to tell anybody and everybody about it?

In fact, let me ask you, what’s an amazing product or service that you have told others about. You probably told them again, not because their marketing was amazing, but because the product was so good. And again, this goes back to why it’s so important that you have an amazing talk and that you understand.

That your talk is your best marketing. Now in creating a talk, understand that there’s no one way to create a presentation, right? There’s a lot of different kinds of choose your own adventure ways to create that. But let me give you just a really, really, really basic, simple speech structure. So you give an introduction, you give the book.

You have the closing again, super, super simple here, but let’s kind of walk through some specifics of what this could look like. So the introduction we’re going to introduce the problem that your talk is going to solve and ultimately start to capture the audience’s attention. One thing that’s important to remember is there’s a difference between an audience that wants to be there and an audience that has to be there.

You may have been introduced, you get up on stage and there one immediately wondering. Who are you? Why should I pay attention? Why does this matter? What am I supposed to do with this information? Can I trust you? And so this introduction is so important. So I recommend that you give your intro a spark and we use a little creative spelling here, but the S is a surprising statistic or a picture or an anecdote or a realistic story, or a, you want to give something out of the gate that gives people reason to pay attention that hooks them in and immediately, sorry.

Giving them a reason to engage with you and where you’re going with this presentation. The next part of the process is we are going to go to the main body. This is where we provide the solution to the problem and the action items that transform the audience. Now, when you’re presenting a takeaway, you want to use star again, this is going to be another acronym.

Which is for a specific, tangible, actionable, and realistic. You want to give something that the audience can leave with knowing, okay, I know exactly what to do now. I know how to implement this. I know how to apply this. So you want to make it specific, tangible, actionable. And realistic, not something that’s just vague or squishy, but something that they can actually understand.

Something that’s crunchy, something that they can do something with. And then the last part of the process is the closing. The purpose of the closing is to transition the audience to your main call to action. And audience is always asking themselves two questions. So what, and now. So what, and now it’s, so why should I, Matt?

Why should this matter? Why should I pay attention? Why should I care about this? And then now, what, what am I supposed to do as a result of this? And this is where your closing comes in. Your closing is so important because the audience will remember what they learned and heard from you in the final minutes of your talk.

So here you want to summarize your T your takeaways, summarize your main ideas, perhaps maybe do a Q and a depending on the event, depending on the audience and the nature of. Presentation and then deliver that closing statement of, Hey, here’s the main idea that I want you to get. Here’s the next action item that I want you to take?

Let me give you an example of why this matters. I want you to meet Karen. Karen is a, a student of ours here at the speaker lab. She’s a storytelling coach who speaks on how to use stories to build leaders and shape cultures. And. She said a reminder that the grant Baldwins process works. I gave it to keynote two years ago.

People who attended that remembered me and my talk. They found me through my name and had me come and talk to their company today. The best business development. Look at this circle, this underline this in your head. The best business development is a good talk. Use your name so people can find you. This is a long game in a relationship business, and you never know when you were planting seeds that will germinate years later and then check this out.

Uh, another one of our students share this right after words, seconded from a call this morning that the potential client, uh, told the speaker. I saw you speak at a marketing conference a while back. And when my company said they were planning an event, I Googled your name to find you. So again, look at the key idea here.

Best business development, your best marketing asset is a good talk. Your talk is your product. Now in the next lesson, we’re going to be talking about the E how to establish yourself as the expert. Two key marketing tools that every speaker including you need and how to create those and get those up and running.

Now, next step is I want you to go back to the email that sent you here. I want you to complete today’s homework, and I want you to get that next lesson right away. Keep moving forward. In your speaking journey. So again that you can continue to get out there to share your message with the world to make the impact and the income that you desire.