Spent my weekend walking the dog, washing the car, watching World Cup, and writing my final speaking notes for hosting CSFX next week in Ottawa.
Words I’m never at a loss for. But the right words take more work than some wanna-be witty weekend alliterations.
How many times have you written a presentation and halfway through giving it…..wished you had gone a different direction?
Carefully orchestrated slides suddenly seeming like they were sequenced by a teenager working the sub counter at your local food court.
Builds and special effects rendered useless by the realization that they are distracting your focus substantially more than they are engaging your audience.
Witty titles generating zero laughter and punch line copy eliciting genuine disinterest.
Thousands of dollars spent on Toastmasters, days spent studying Dale Carnegie, and hours obsessing over Tony Robbins videos suddenly wasted by the enormity of your failure.
There is no lonelier place in the world than the stage hosting the failing speech giver.
As comfortable as I am in this arena, I can tell you I’ve had my failures. My first, and only, IEG workshop I ran. Horrible! They’ve never asked me back. A dine-and-learn I did many years ago for a client in the trade show business? Way too long and far too theoretical. The worst? A conference hosted for the home birthing industry, who thought they had huge sponsorship potential. That’s when I realized it was time to stop saying yes to every invitation and perhaps read past the first sentence of the conference description, which I’m not sure we even got to in this case.
Thankfully, hopefully, the good presentations I’ve delivered significantly outnumber the bad. If they do, it’s because of a simple secret I learned along the journey of being presentation polygamist. It’s one I’m happy to share with you today. It’s one I hope I practice sufficiently next week at CSFX. If you’re there, you can let me know.
The secret is that a great speech isn’t about the speaker or their expertise or their learning or their research or their learnings.
A great speech is about you.
A great speech tells your story.
A great speech is the town crier of the audience.
No one wants to sit in a room and hear about someone else. They want to hear about themselves.
You may be quick to comment that this is an obvious piece of advice. Of course it is. Like many great words of wisdom, they are obvious. So are many great strategies whether they are for business, sport, or war.
But the hard part isn’t the strategy. The hard part is executing on the strategy. First with determining the creative theme, then determining relevant content, and finally packaging including the story arc. That’s the hard part.
But I also find it the easy part. Next week at CSFX I’m going to do a Top Ten moments from our ten years of staging the Canadian Sponsorship Forum, now known as CSFX. Since it wouldn’t sound professional of me to talk about my cage-dancing episode in Quebec City in 2009, none of these moments will be about me. All of them will be about you.
(Editor’s Note: there will be two that include reference to the author….who by the way is also the editor….therefore almost nullifying any genuine credibility nearly created by this entire “it’s about you” blog.)
Generating ten great Canadian Sponsorship Forum moments will only be challenging when it comes to whittling down the options. That’s what I did this weekend.
Thinking back over the past ten years had my juices flowing. A month ago I was panicked for ideas. Had some input from my Advisory Committee and then got stalled again. But now feel pretty good about it because I spent hours flipping through delegate lists of days gone by and remembering what experiences you had at Forum. That’s not to say I’ve nailed it shut. So if you have any input, let me know. There is still time for a new slide or two.
My Top Ten list is a tiny part of this year’s conference. If you’re coming to CSFX 2014 in Ottawa, partnered with the RBC Ottawa Bluesfest, I hope you are Ready to Rock. Because we’ve got so much going on: the return of our Ball Hockey Tournament; Dana White; live music every time you turn around; amazing delegates; Chris Overholt of the COC; a private stage-right party area for the Killers concert; surprise guests from TSN; the CMO of L’Oréal Canada; Jeff Craib of the Feldman Agency; the global CEO of iON America LLC; the second Most Valuable Property Study; Bell Media Quebec, RBC, MBNA, Kruger Products, Molson Coors Canada, SAP, PwC Canada, TELUS, The Coca-Cola Company, StubHub; Vanessa Thomas of Songza; an amazing evening of food, culture, and music with Ottawa Tourism; and probably the BEST Don Mayo presentation ever given by someone named Don Mayo. Right Don Mayo?
If you’re coming, hopefully you can already see yourself there! Let’s get Ready to Rock!