Practice like a $10,000 Speaker: Episode 8

Rehearse Like a $10,000 Speaker: The 7-Step Process for Confident, Professional Talks

The episode explains how to rehearse like a “$10,000 speaker,” emphasizing that rehearsal effort should be consistent whether a talk is paid or free because every stage builds reputation, from small unpaid events and podcasts to larger engagements. 

Jenn discusses speaking fees as an ideal number and notes advice to avoid starting pricing conversations too early. On rehearsal frequency, she cites guidance ranging from at least 10 run-throughs to TED/TEDx’s often-quoted 100 practices, then shares her own approach: 

Rehearse until you can clearly begin, end, and deliver the full middle. 

Drawing from Heroic Public Speaking (Michael and Amy Port), she outlines a seven-step rehearsal process (including table read, content mapping, staging/blocking, improv and rewrite, plus several rounds of rehearsal), plus a modular talk structure that helps speakers stay on time and adapt when time is cut.

Resources mentioned: 

Mic Drop Moments program (enrollment open through May 30) https://calendly.com/jennchat

Video on 7 step rehearsal process from Amy Port https://youtu.be/vuUXrqfMSxE?si=m3d1v8H5q0s-XZ4p

Join Jenn at her next event: https://linktr.ee/jennspingo

00:00 Rehearse Like a Pro

00:17 Reputation Over Fees

01:06 Small Stages Matter

02:05 Pricing Talk Timing

02:50 How Much Rehearsal

04:28 Mic Drop Program Invite

05:30 TED Talk Rehearsal Myth

07:08 No Magic Number

07:30 Heroic Seven Steps

10:12 Internalize and Modularize

12:13 Comfortable Shoes Mindset

12:54 Seven Steps Breakdown

14:43 Memorize Key Parts

15:27 Craft a 10K Experience

15:38 Wrap Up and Subscribe

Have a question or suggestion for a future episode topic? Email me jenn@jennspingo.com.

Ready to deliver mic drop moments in your next presentation? Schedule a call to learn more about coaching www.calendly.com/jennchat

Looking to book a speaker for your corporate or association event on topics including leadership and communication? View my programs at www.jennspingo.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do you know how to rehearse like a$10,000 speaker? In today's episode, we're going to learn how to do better rehearsals regardless of what you're charging as a speaking fee and how to take your rehearsal process up to that next level. Join me on Mic Drop Mindset. First of all, let's talk about the importance of getting paid a high speaking fee in terms of how much effort and attention you put into rehearsing your speech. Stop. It's not about what you're getting paid to speak. You are coming up to deliver a program that ties to your reputation. Do you think it's worthwhile to put the same amount of energy into a free speech as it is to put into a paid speech? Well, yeah, because you're a speaker and you treat yourself and your business like a professional. So it doesn't matter whether you're getting paid a speaking fee or not, you should treat every single presentation you deliver on stage, whether it's by invitation or by you doing the cold, hard research out there, as if it is a paid program. The reason for this is because you have to build your reputation up as somebody who gains those bigger stages. And those smaller stages speak to each other. So when I say small stages, this could be everything from your local rotary or chamber event to a networking group to a Toastmasters event. These are small stages, even podcast guest spots, which I do a lot of those things. I love podcasts, obviously. Those might be your smaller stages. And the reason why they're smaller is because often they're unpaid. You might also run your own events, and those are also smaller stages in the sense that you're probably not getting thousands of people to your types of presentations. I've been running master classes on Eventbrite for over three years now, and I will say that some days I get lots of folks in my room and some days I don't, but I still rehearse and prep prepare the same way as I would for any other presentation I'm doing, regardless of what fee is assigned to that presentation. Also, as you're building your speaking business, I think it's important to identify that what you put as your speaking fee is an ideal number. And there might be times when you accept a speaking engagement for less than your ideal fee that you list on your website. If you're not currently listing a fee on your website, that's also okay. There are other ways to share your pricing. In fact, I was speaking with one of my clients the other day. He's a regional sales director, so he knows his stuff, right? He's been doing sales for a long time. And he said, you know what, Jen, don't start the pricing conversation before they start the pricing conversation. So if my sales guy can say things like that, I do think there's some value in waiting to start that conversation around fees. Now that we've got that out of the way, knowing that rehearsal is important, how long should you rehearse for? Now, this is an interesting thing because I Googled, I looked up some evidence around this because again, fraud investigator here, I have to look at the evidence. I have to know where I fit amongst what other people are saying. And here's what I noticed. Some professional speakers, some of whom also are speaker coaches, they are saying things like, rehearse your presentation at least ten times. Ten times? Okay. Well, that doesn't sound too crazy. That doesn't sound out of the question unless you're speaking every other day and you have very limited time on your hands. Maybe you've got a team who helps you so you can focus on the rehearsal piece of it. Ten times. I would say that's a bare minimum. I would say I've been delivering presentations for over ten years, and some of those presentations I delivered for multiple years at a time to various audiences. One of my podcast hosts once asked me, she said, Jen, well, how many times have you spoken? And I'm like, I don't know. That's not something I count. It's like asking how many times I eat or something like that. That's not something I track. I do know how many clients I've had, I do know how many stages I've approximately been on per year because tax time you pay attention to those things. It's less about the number and it's more about leveraging. So, like, where those stages leverage experiences or not. But what I will say is over time you learn what rehearsal frequency allows you to shine. Are you ready for your own mic drop moments? In this program, we meet weekly to deliver your mic drop moments. I've been coaching folks one-to-one many years as a speaker coach, but I felt it's important to come together as a group and rehearse our presentations in a way that only professional speakers can rehearse. You'll get feedback from me as your speaker coach. I'll be looking at your unique strengths as a speaker. I'll be sharing feedback on how you can make it bolder, bigger, and more powerful than ever before through this weekly rehearsal program. We're gonna run March through August. Come to the group Tuesday mornings in a safe and supportive environment of other speakers, how you can deliver your mic drop moments. This is a program that I've been wanting to create for years. If you want to learn more, be a message, Jen at genspingo.com. Let's do this together. Now, what are some other folks saying in terms of rehearsal? There might be something you're aware of called TED or TEDx. You might have heard of that before, the big red dot. You might be surprised to hear that some of those folks who are not getting paid to present, in fact, they are strictly forbidden from promoting anything, whether it's a book, a program, or anything like that. I've heard from some of my friends who are part of TED experiences and even organized TED experiences, that sometimes, and this is not this is something people don't talk about a lot, but sometimes people who are in the coaching world are discouraged from producing a TED talk because they're afraid that you're gonna promote and pitch slap them, unfortunately. But what do TED talkers, what are they encouraged to do? Now, TED is the bigger platform, the international platform that you might have seen talks from Amy Cuddy, Julian Treasure, and then there's the small locally organized TEDx. Overall, I've seen it quoted that they recommend that you practice your TED talk regardless of what level you're at, local, international, a hundred times. When is the last time you practiced anything? One hundred times. That seems like a lot for a presentation that you spent months applying for, months practicing for. I mean, some people take two years to get accepted for a TUD talk, and then to do 100 rehearsals. This is awesome. So somewhere between 10 and 100 is a number. If you're looking for a number, right? Tell me the number, Jen. How many times do I need to rehearse? What I will say is what works for me. Let's say what would Jen do, WWJ D. Jen rehearses until she knows how to begin, how to end, and everything that needs to be included within the middle. So that's not a number. I hope I'm not frustrating you, but here's what that could look like. One of the best experiences I had, and the most mind-blowing experience I had in terms of advice around rehearsals, was when I attended Heroic Public Speaking back in 2016. I know that was over 10 years ago. It was led by Michael and Amy Port, who no longer lead this experience. They turned it into an ongoing virtual cohort. They also hosted curriculum out of their location in Lambertville, Pennsylvania. I was there before it turned into this bigger program. So it was a live three-day experience in Philadelphia, my very first time to Philadelphia. And I saw a lot of different workshops at that event. I saw live coaching on stage from Michael himself, where experienced speakers of 30 years were on stage and being coached by Michael as they were going through their talk, which I learned a lot because the speaker on stage was amazing. I didn't think he had a lot to improve upon, so that was a lesson for me. But one of the best workshops I took away from that event was the seven-step rehearsal process. It doesn't matter how often you rehearse if you're rehearsing the wrong way. I'm gonna repeat that. It doesn't matter how often you rehearse if you're not rehearsing the right way. What does the right way look like as a professional speaker? What I learned at Heroic is there's a seven-step rehearsal process. And to give you a little context, Michael and Amy Port were trained actors. They were on TV, they were in movies, so this comes from the entertainment world. And I feel it is something important. These are lessons we can all learn because we're all on stage just doing it in our own way. So the seven-step rehearsal process includes the scripting, the table read, the oral walkthrough. So this is where you might record yourself on voice memos. It includes a group setting where you bring people in, you ask them for feedback. It also includes going back and revising with all of those stages of rehearsal to make it even finer, and then address rehearsal. I will make sure to include it in the show notes so that you have it at a glance in front of you. The seven-stage rehearsal process is next level. If you do that at least 10 times before your next presentation, I guarantee you you will feel calm, you will feel connected, and you will know exactly what you're doing without any notes. No teleprompter in front of you telling you exactly what you need to know next. You don't need any of those things because you've rehearsed in such a way where you've internalized your message. So when I'm working with clients, what we do is we go through the process of how do you internalize your message, right? Because you have your intro, you have your conclusion, somewhere along the way you've seeded your call to action. So what do you do with all of those segments in between, right? That's the meaty middle. How do you make sure you address those things without forgetting anything? I'm a middle-aged lady, I forget things all the time. And I can't say that I've always said exactly what I need to say when I need to say it. But I always say exactly what I need to say when I need to say it because I follow this process. So when you look at your speech content, there are modules. Usually there's three audience takeaways within a 60-minute presentation. Each one of those takeaways is a module. About 15 minutes long, maybe 10 minutes as you're rehearsing so that you don't go over time. The most important thing you'll learn as a professional is to always end on time and sometimes cut it even shorter. One time I was presenting a virtual program for a new client. I didn't know her, I didn't know her community. She gave me 10 minutes on stage. Well, it's much harder to deliver a 10-minute presentation than it is to deliver a 60-minute presentation. But I was up to the task, I did my rehearsal, I was feeling good. I had my notes because it was virtual, so I had notes by my computer. And around minute six or seven, she sent me a direct message on Zoom. She said, Jen, you need to end within the next minute. Suddenly my 10-minute presentation became an eight-minute presentation. I was like, oh my gosh, okay, and I had to do this impromptu off the cuff. No problem. I ended on time. She was able to continue the program. I was not the only speaker. Once you do this modular process of going through your main audience takeaways, you know exactly what to say, you follow a simple process, a format, and then you can add or remove as you're delivering the program. Now, if that sounds overwhelming to you, good. It probably means you need to rehearse a few more times before it feels comfortable. And like a comfortable pair of shoes. Your speech should feel like a comfortable pair of shoes, right? The one that's in your closet that you bust out anytime you're gonna spend all day walking in a Disney World. That's what your speech should feel like. Comfortable, it moves with you, you know how you're gonna feel, it creates the best experience for your day. That's how you want your audience to feel. That's how you want to feel when you get up on that stage. Side note, ladies, don't wear new shoes when you're going on stage for the first time. Your feet are gonna kill you, and that's gonna translate into how you deliver your program. Okay, so what is that intense rehearsal process, the seven-stage rehearsal process? We went through that. The table read is literally where you just read your script. If you're only using PowerPoint slides, then you might read your slides. If you're the person who's putting bullet points on your slides and it's literally like a textbook, you might need to revisit those slides. But the table read could be could be going over the slides if you don't script yourself. I personally do not script myself. Then you need to go through the voice. We write differently than we speak. So if you haven't fine-tuned it according to how it sounds, that's part of your rehearsal process. And then we look at, okay, the group experience, inviting people into that experience with you and getting their feedback. Now, these are average people. They may not be your intended audience, they may be your friends and family, don't let it be your teddy bear, we've done enough of those. Don't let it be the mirror, we've done enough of those. This is remember, 10k rehearsal. Then you want to make sure you take all that, you incorporate it, you do a dress rehearsal, you do it with movement, blocking and staging. Now, you're not an actor, you may not know what that word means. It just means that how you place yourself on the stage or the area in which you can move within. As a virtual speaker, I didn't have an area. My area was this. But I've discovered that tech checks are when you look at your stage and you look at the spacing, you look at the cameras, what the cameras are looking at, and you're like, okay, this is my space, and I can work within this space. So there are defined places you stand, defined places you lean in, define places you go back. That's blocking and staging. Theater folks know exactly what I'm talking about. And then you know the dress rehearsal. What are you going to be wearing? Does it allow you to move? Does it make noise? Does it disturb the program and what people are receiving from the program? Those are part of the elements of the rehearsal process. And last, in terms of your speech, the only parts that you need to memorize, your introduction, you want to start with that punch, the conclusion, because that's the last thing people will hear from you, how you're seeding your call to action, which could be an entire podcast episode. If you want to hear more about how to seed your call to action, and maybe even what your call to action should be, then let me know in the comments, and I'm happy to do an episode on that entirely, because that's a hard and tricky one. And everything in between is modular. You have 10 to 15 minutes. What stories are you going to include? What elements are you going to include? Where are you going to remove? What is not necessary to that, so that you can wear your speech like a comfortable pair of shoes and never have to worry about forgetting something. At the end of the day, you're crafting an experience, and you deserve to craft a$10,000 experience instead of just something you made up as you were on stage. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. I'll see you on stage. Thank you for tuning in to Mic Drop Mindset. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to leave a review on Spotify, Apple, or share a comment over on YouTube. Don't forget to visit my website, Jenwith2NspinGo.com