Heather Sager  00:03

Well, hey friend, welcome to another episode of the Heather Sager show. I'm Heather and I believe that people don't connect with marketing, they connect with other people. So if you want others to see you as a go to authority, you've got to start showing up using your voice and sharing your message with intention. So considering this show right here, your new playground to become an influential speaker, so that you can actually start making strides towards that dream on your vision board. Let's go. 

Well, Hey, friend, tech happens like oh my gosh, tech happens. You know how it works. You are on a zoom call. You are maybe you've gotten yourself on like a guest situation where you're showing up, doing a talk and things go wrong. Oh, my goodness! I'm not even gonna banter this. We're gonna dive right into today's conversation because today is filled with helping you manage how do you handle the inevitable tech stuff that comes up when you're speaking especially right now in this world where we're all doing things virtually. 

I mean, I've had clients who've started venturing out into the live world again, but even the version of live is super, super small groups or flying to somebody's studio to do a virtual conference, but like from a studio, we're going to be dealing with the tech stuff for a while.  

As we're getting more of our glitches and that kind of stuff down, I want you to know that, like techie-tech is gonna happen, and when I say like techie-tech, like that's my code word for like, holy crap tech stuff is gonna break.  What I want you thinking about is, today we're diving into how do you navigate the issues that will happen when you are speaking because if you're hanging around here, you're interested or you're already speaking on some kind of stages. 

02:01

Now some of you are going, oh man, Heather even pushed me. I'm getting myself out there, maybe you've done a little pitch to a podcast here or there. Others are going damn girl, I'm not ready yet, or some of you are going, Oh man, I got it. I've got the virtual stuff down. I am like hungry, hold my purse, hold me back because I want to get on this live stages.

Heather Sager  02:20

 I don't care what kind of stage you want to speak on, you will have tech issues. It happens. Today, I'm actually gonna share you some of the real issues that I've experienced in my career and I've heard from other people.I'm going to give you a three specific things I want you thinking about when it comes to handling these tech issues.  

Now, again, you can apply them to the virtual. You can also apply them to the live. But also I want to challenge you a bit because I'm teaching you a framework for how I want you thinking about shit that will go wrong, and you can apply this to tech but also I want you to use your imagination for a moment and think about, you could probably apply this to a lot of other areas of your business or even your life.  

So you know what, this is my gift for you. You use it however you decide to use it today. But I'm going to do it through the lens of tack and navigating those issues when you're speaking.  So here we go, I'm going to give you three specific things here, three steps, if you will. I'm going to just go ahead and deliver them to you, and then I'm going to break them down. We're going to make this episode short, and sweet and actionable because I don't want this being the thing to hold you back from putting yourself out there, and I know it happened. I know.  

I asked my clients and students all the time. What are the things that trip you up? Like why are you not speaking right now, or what are you afraid of, or what stresses you out or what frustrates you when it comes to speaking, particularly speaking virtually. 

In fact, I just did an Instagram Q&A here in the last couple weeks where I asked people to tell me what frustrates the most and things like, here are the comments. Things that frustrate me finding speaking opportunities, slow ass internet, lack of audience engagement, lack of control over what platforms to use, tech issues, lighting issues, delay, what's the etiquette, do you use your headphones, do you not, what happens when things goes wrong, the host interrupting like.  

All these things things are going to come up and I don't want you caught on your heels and then looking like a deer in headlights of what do I do? Because let me share you a little secret with your friend. Oh, Man, I'm talking really fast. I'm really fired up today. Can you tell?  Let me share this little secret with you. If you want to be seen as an authority in your niche, you have to act like an authority in like all facets. 

I'm not saying you to act like a pompous jerk of like you're better than everyone else.  You have to like, act like you belong and have this essence of I've got this because I want you to think about this. There are some studies that have been done. This is like a little bit of a side tangent here, but you know, I'm full of those, Sager side note at its finest. Here we go. There's studies that have been done that showcase that people who are more attractive, there's a correlation that we perceive them to be smarter.  I don't know what the study is, I'm sure you can Google it and figure it out. 

There's this thing that happens is somebody who has confidence and is seen as someone who knows what they're doing, we apply this like blanket assumption that of course, they knew all the things.  

For example, in my house, my husband is very confident in figuring things out. Even though there's some things that, let's not tell him this, but he does not know how to do but my children just assume that daddy knows how to do everything because he acts like he does.  I think you know what I'm saying here, ladies, like, there's just this overall blanket of knowingness that happens.  

I want you to own a piece of that with authenticity when you're in front of an audience, let me bring this back to the tech thing.  When you are in front of a group, and you're sitting there going, I don't know how to do this, I don't know how this works, or I don't know this or like, Oh my God help me. It does not do much for giving you credibility as an authority.  

Now, I'm not saying you should be up there pretending like you know what you're doing. But I don't want you to get undermined by your lack of knowledge with tech. Now, I'm going to say this very carefully here because I also don't want you to go like damn, I don't know about the tech stuff like now I'm screwed. That is not what I'm saying at all.  What I want you thinking about is how do you handle the tech? Not that you know all the things but how do you handle the issues that come up, or the missteps or any of those things? That is going to be the secret we're going to talk about today.  

There is a famous quote, I don't know who says it, I don't remember exactly what it is, but it's some like, life is 10% what happens and no, yeah, it's such a good quote. It's like I'm terrible at this. I started so strong today but like, we're just gonna go for it. Life is 10% what happens and 90% how you react to it. I think the same is true when it comes to tech issues that happen when you're speaking live or virtually, how you react to those issues that matters so let's dive into it.  

Three specific things I want you thinking about, as you're saying yes to speaking opportunities and showing up for the ones that you've already booked. The three things are prepare, two: anticipate, three: ride the highs of glitches, okay, I'm going to break these down for you because I want you to be really clear around what we're talking about here.  

Now, let me walk you through actually a couple of the issues that I saw come up with questions. Imagine this. You prepare for a let's say you go asked to speak on a panel. You prepare yourself for like the weeks leading up to, or the days leading up to whatever time you have and you show up. You're ready for the panel. A panel is you sitting with other people getting asked questions, right? You show up and the emcee hand the microphone for your 20 minute presentation. Oh, what do you do? Oh my goodness. 

This actually happened to one of my students. He shared me about it with me last week. On the controverse, imagine you put all of this controverse on the opposite end of it, other end of the echelon, is that a word? Echelon, echelon? Oh my gosh, I am like on fire today. Hopefully this makes you like connect with even more or this tells you that I am kind of a crazy person who rambles and I don't have everything perfect. If that's what you're here looking for, you found the wrong show so you can just say sayonara friend, let's just keep moving.  

Other end of the spectrum, I had a client who prepared. Imagine this, you prepare for a presentation, you get your signature talk nailed and then you show up and discover it's a Q&A, and the show host of a virtual summit talks over you and keeps stealing your time putting their narrative, their spin on it, and barely gives you any airtime. Oh, my goodness.  

Now in both situations, you went in with an expectation. It was not what you thought. Both of these things can be avoided. I want you to think about this. Neither of those were tech issues, but they were unexpected things that happen that could throw you for a loop and make you show up as not your best.  

I want you to remember this. When you show up to speak in an event your content has to be good, right? Your content, that's a non negotiable. You have to have good content. You have to have a level of presence about you that elevates your brand. It's got to get people to connect to it. If you have poor delivery, it doesn't matter how good your content is, people are going to be like, they're not going to remember it. They're not going to be engaged. You're not going to hold their attention. Your delivery has to be there, but your adaptability that is important to.  Adaptability, how do you manage the tech issues? How do you manage the unexpected? How do you manage the questions? How do you manage the low energy? Your ability to adapt, those things all coming together, people are experiencing your brand.  

Guys, your speaking is your brand. Every single touch point that you have in your business with your consumer, your audience, whatever you want to call it, that is your brand. If you're not treating these speaking opportunities and your reaction to the issues as opportunities to deliver your brand, you are missing a huge opportunity.  

Today, if anything, let me help you be reminded that every time you show up, you're on. Every time you engage with someone on social media, on a video, in a chat room, who uses chat rooms anymore, Facebook groups, I don't know. You know what I mean, right?  Every time you show up on a stage, offstage, you are representation of your brand and you're most likely you are your brand, so every moment matters. 

You have to know, am I going to be frazzled, or flustered or annoyed or whatever else? You got to know how do you control it because you're going to be remembered by probably your least flattering brand quality, so you better bring the best possible brand qualities to the party, because when you're on stage, they are looking.  

Today in these three simple steps, I'm going to teach you how to prepare, anticipate and ride the high glitches so that people remember you for your content and your charming your charisma and you being the right person to help them in your area of expertise. That's how you want to be remembered not as the crazy gal who went off on the tech person because they couldn't figure out the camera. Not say that's ever happened before. I've seen it but I want to set you up in the best light possible because you showing up that is the brand, friend. So let's break it down.  

Number one, prepare. Before any speaking opportunity under the sun, you need to have an element of preparation. Now I know, I know you, I know you. Most likely, if you're anything like me, or my clients and students, you've probably done speaking opportunities before and the majority of my audience when doing speaking opportunity in the past, there's an element of winging it.  

Where even if you put together an outline or some slides, like the level of preparation is probably not to the desire you had, meaning that you wish you would have prepared more or that you wish that if you would have spent a little bit more more time preparing, you could have had a better outcome, right?  

Even if you got great feedback, even if it's a killer presentation, there's probably an element of going I could have been a little more intentional prepared. We're not talkingabout preparation for content here, so that is a conversation for another day that yes, you know, I teach you how to be more intentional and more prepared by developing a signature talk so you know, what you're talking about actually connects to what you want your audience to do within your business.  

But what I'm talking about is, like preparing for the tech. You should never, almost never, go into a speaking opportunity without knowing the setup. What do I mean by that?  If you're doing a virtual speaking opportunity, you should not be waiting until the night before to find out what kind of tech they're using. Is it a StreamYard situation versus a Zoom? Is it on a webinar like on Demio? Are they using some virtual summit fancy-schmancy software that I don't even know about? Like, what is the actual tech setup? If you're on zoom? Are you in a zoom meeting? Are you in a zoom webinar? Are people gonna have cameras on are people not gonna have cameras off.  

There's so many different things, right? Do you need to have a headset? Do you need to have a microphone? One time I was speaking for some corporations last year. I was a contracted speaker for a company where I'm teaching their content and they booked me a bunch of speaking gigs.  There were specific rules by this one company. It was like training magazine or something very, very specific. They required that I showed up with a headset that had an attached microphone. I'm like, I don't have that. I don't  have a headset.  

First of all, if you're new around here, you don't know this. I wear hearing aids, so I physically do not wear headsets, headphones, any of those things like I can't, because I have hearing aids inside my ears and I stream things into my hearing aids. I'm like, ah, but I knew all of that in advance so I could work it out with the person. Here's the thing. 

A lot of times people will have requirements of those really specific things and the reason why show hosts or event hosts, the reason why they have those specs is typically because there was a situation in the past where they didn't have them and they got screwed, meaning somebody showed up, didn't know how to mute their microphone, there was feedback, or I don't know, whatever else. Their solution was this one company particular I'm assuming, what solution was everybody should have headsets with a headphone because they'll minimize the feedback and all those other things.  

Again, I'm going off on a side note here, but what I want you thinking about, coming back to it. Preparation. I want you to think, what are some questions you could ask the event organizer before you ever get on? You should never be surprised. Do you need a microphone? Do you need a webcam? I'm gonna just tell you right now. Yes, you need both those things, so handle that in advance. What is the software? Do you need to download the software in advance?  

For example, corporations, so this isn't happened much in the entrepreneurial world, but corporations, some of them use some specific webinar and medium platforms like goto meeting or I don't know, whatever the Microsoft one is, I can't even remember. But like, there's an app you have to download. I mean, you don't want to be downloading that 30 seconds before the time you're supposed to be a guest.  What questions can you ask an advance about you? I want you think technical. What do you need to know? And then also, what about the audience? Do they have the ability to chat? Will you have the ability to chat? Can you see the audience or their cameras off, on?

 I'm laying these out as not, you need to have this whole list written down. But what I want you considering is, what do you need to know to be prepared and what do you need to know to create the best experience for your audience?  

I want to emphasize this what do you need to know to create the best experience for your audience? Let me tell you this subtle shift here, because if you go to an event organizer or a podcast host, and you come up at them with 20 questions, it's going to be very clear like, okay, you're a novice, or like you're a prima donna, let me count out all the green m&ms for you and have them in your room. You guys know that, right? You've heard of that Mariah Carey how she has like separated m&m colors, funny things about green rooms with celebrities.  

You don't want to go at someone with like a bajillion questions when they're self serving questions.But if you position it like, hey, let me pretend your name is Susie. Hey, Susie, I'm super excited to speak to your group here next week. Would it be okay if we just jumped on the phone for 10 minutes and we can run through just a few questions? I want to make sure I create the best experience possible, so I want to learn a little bit more about about the tech and about some other things just to make sure that we're on the same page so that I can keep your audience engaged and make sure that they get what they're coming for. 

I don't know that wasn't perfect, but you follow what I'm saying? Right? Notice everything that I said, hit the like 32nd back thingy and listen to it again if you need to. Everything I said was from the lens of how can I create a better experience for your audience. How do I help them accomplish their goals? Secret strategy is what I really need to know is how does the chat work, hat's the thing work, what's the situation? I need to know those things so that I can show up for them. But don't you go at the event host going, what kind of microphone jack? What kind of this? What kind of that? That's my demanding voice. 

If you just go into it, like when all these tech questions, they're going to be like, Whoa. They might be like, Wow, she's really prepared. But if you go from the lens of I have some tech questions just to make sure we're on the same page, so that there's no kinks and I could create the best experience for your audience like that's what's important here. It just leads to a different like a better conversation, so number one step. Prepare.  

Now if you want some help with some questions on that, if you haven't gotten it already, it's been out for a while now. I do have a freebie on this so if you were like scrambling notes on that one. Let me help you with that. 

I have this thing called the Ultimate Planning Guide to nail your next talk and it's 10 must ask Questions, particularly ones that you probably never even consider that you should be asking that walk you through questions to ask before a speaking gig so you can turn that speaking opportunity into a lead generator for your business.  

If you can go down that over at heathersager.com/10questions, that's heathersager.com/10questions. You can grab out there, that'll help you with the planning face. Okay, so don't worry about having like all of the questions under the sun, just think about what are the kinds of questions that you need for you, ie minimum, what is the technology platform? Will other people be on camera or not? What's the chat situation? And then also you want to find out like, what's the next step thing?  

Sometimes I'll even ask depending on the kind of event we might even do what's called a tech check where we schedule time in advance to test out the system. No, I only do that for like large scale speaking opportunities where I'm speaking to like a guest speaker in groups of hundreds, not if I was doing like a guest lecture inside, like a virtual summit or inside somebody masterclass.  

Also, just side note, let me give you a little bonus here. I do not do like okay, so podcast hosts. Let's say I book a podcast as a guest for someone show. I do not do those little interviews. I'm so sorry if I offend anyone here. Here's the thing, if somebody asks me to fill out a 43 page survey, just becoming a guess on the show, I'm not interested. 

If somebody requires that I do a one hour meet and greet just to get on their show, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing a like a pre-show conversation to do an actual show.  Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but for me and my time, I'm not interested. I don't need to do a little chitchat thing. If I apply for someone show where they come to me and say, hey, I want to be on the show. I trust they've done their due diligence. I have enough content online, they can figure out I know what I'm talking about.  But I don't waste my time with that on pre-podcast banters. 

That might be valuable to you, if you're just starting speaking, you're just starting it on podcasts, those actually might be really good ways to help you become more comfortable so you know what to expect.  

All of this come back to say, when it comes to prep, I don't want you to think that you have to take somebody else's list of questions and make those a requirement. You have to understand your style, like what makes you feel comfortable on a virtual stage and then you ask those questions, like come up with your go to, but don't make it an overwhelming thing. Wow, I just went off on a really big tangent around prep, but I think most of the tech things can be avoided if we ask some pointed questions in advance. 

Let's move on to step number two, and that is anticipate what could happen.  All right, we're gonna get a little morbid for a second and play a little worst case-itis. Ah, my husband hates this game. I have talked about this before. My husband thinks I'm a little crazy because, haha, oh my god my poor husband on today's episode. It's fine, that's why he gets married to me.  

My husband makes fun of me because I have a tendency to jump to the worst conclusions possible. I've now since learned that I think it's just a woman thing especially moms we have a tendency to like, Oh my gosh, something happened in the world. It is ending which honestly quite frankly right now I feel like it. 

I am based out of Oregon. 2020 has been like a crazy, crazy year but especially right now our state is on fire and there's been evacs everywhere if you've been following my Instagram, you know, we'd been on evac status, like a level one evacuation status, which means we've been at our house but been kind of on standby for I don't know, five days. It just got reduced. We're going well. 

Anyways, my worst case-itis is like, Oh my god, the world's going on fire. I want you to go down that road for a hot minute, not because I want you to stress yourself out but I want you to learn how to better anticipate what could happen.  What do I mean here?

Okay. If you are doing a webinar, if you are doing a guest inside someone's program on a new piece of technology, you could sit down and go, Hmm, what could go wrong? And then say okay, three things that could go wrong, my microphone could not work. Three things could go wrong, the link could not work. Three things that could go wrong. Oh my God, my slides might not work.  I want you in your head to anticipate there's going to be like, you don't need to go everything under the sun, but three to five things that could go wrong.

I don't want you to end there. I want you to then say okay, so if I go live in StreamYarrd, and I cannot share screen, what do I do? If I show up and my microphone stops working, what do I do? If I am presenting and I lose internet connection, what do I do? If I mid presentation and the power goes out, what do I do? If I show up, and it's actually not a presentation instead it's a Q&A, what do I do?  

You don't have to go down all these roads, but let me tell you how freeing it is. If you work through these situations in your head - good, bad, indifferent - like whatever those things are, if you can do it in your head, you've already lived it. Therefore, if it happens, you will not be thrown up.  

You will be like, I was born with this. Oh my god, that was the freakiest voice ever. I so apologize, but like I was trying to do something there. I don't know if it worked. But like, I want you to have that inner thing of, oh my goodness, like, I'm ready for this. Like, most people get flustered because they are caught off guard. I don't want you to get caught off guard.  

For example, you're in the middle of a podcast and all of a sudden your child comes in screaming, Mom, look at my penis. That may have happened during the time of this recording, but you just roll with it and I did edit that piece out. I don't want you, I mean that would have happened during a virtual summit, like I would have just had to roll with it.  

And let me tell you, friend, it takes a lot to throw me off these days because I've already run through these scenarios, not only in my head, but like any tech issue or crazy issue that you can imagine it's probably happened for me either virtually or one of my live events like all of the things. 

This is gonna sound terrible and like super tragic for a moment but I've had somebody had a heart attack at one of my events, like crisis management things going wrong, like I've trained for this, but I want you to know, you don't have to wait for something to happen to anticipate what you would do.  

Now, here's a tip. What I want you to do is create your What if sheet. Start a Google doc and go Okay, let's talk about tech issues or interruption issues that might happen. Write them down and then write the what if, and if something were to come up that isn't on your list, I think you'll be better prepared because you've already thought through how to react to navigate those kinds of things, but also I want you after those things to happen add that to your list. Hence the me adding, what if your child comes in screaming mommy look at my penis.  It's on my list now, so the whole secret to anticipating what can happen, the whole secret to showing up as the best version of you, even when things go wrong is to anticipate it. 

Friend, you know, microphones can go out, cameras can go out, slide decks could go out like. All those things you know to be true, what are you gonna do?  For me, I know if my Yeti goes out which happened, my Yeti is my microphone. It happens a lot. I know to unplug it and switch straight to my webcam recording. I know where that button is on my computer to make the switch on Zoom. Easy, done.  If my webcam goes out, which unfortunately, if I have shoddy internet, it happens. I know I can use my crappy camera that's on my laptop. I don't love to do it but I would rather have that than nothing. I know how to make the switch. Use a little camera icon on the bottom of zoom.  If every presentation I do that has slides, I print slides. Every presentation, I don't care if it's a 47, I don't know, 93 page deck, ie on a webinar. I print it out, you know, why? Not because I necessarily need it for my notes, although that's helpful. 

I want to make sure that should something happen, I have my slides. So even if I'm just direct camera, even if I'm just audio, I have my notes and I trust that I can get through it regardless of whether or not they see it.  

I want you to anticipate what are those go-to issues that you're afraid of, or you've seen happen, or you're like, oh! If you can anticipate them, you can navigate them. I'm confident in that. But you have to dream a little bit in your head and don't just say, Oh my god, what could happen?  

I want you to say when this happens or if this happens, what do I do? Map it out. You're smart, you can figure it out. Even if you don't know how to I trust that you could figure it out, the more problem solving you can do anticipating the challenges, the better problem solving you'll do in the moment.  Oh, that's a good one, right? Oh my gosh, I love that one. It's my favorite. It's also been the reason why I think I've been able to adapt so well on the fly during live events. 

But let's get into step number three. Ride the highs of the glitches.  We've prepared. We've anticipated. Now we're going to ride the highs of the glitches. I mentioned this, but I want you to really hear it from me, your attitude, and how you maneuver a glitch is how people will remember you - good, bad or indifferent.  

Ask yourself now, how do you want to be known? How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be known as the lady who lost her shit on the tech guy? Or do you want to be the person who like clammed up and freeze and just had to wait? Or do you want to be the frickin beast who's like oh my god, how did she get better after that? I would have lost my shit.  

You want people in the audience thinking that like, you want them thinking like, Oh my god, I can't believe she navigated that. I would have freaked, right, because a few months ago, you would have been there same seat too, but you've prepared you've anticipated and now you're rocking it. You beast, you like beautiful beasts, like, you know, that's just like a term of calling you about us, right? Making sure we're on the same page.  

Here's what I want you to think about. I welcome glitches. No, of course, I don't want them but I welcome them. Even to the point where I'm like, if I didn't have integrity and I was a total schmuck, I would probably planned glitches in my content because here's why. I don't, by the way. It's very clear I do not plan those nor should you like, don't be schmucky and be unintentional. We're all about authenticity around here. 

Here's here's the thing, when things go wrong, and you navigate it well and you rise above it. You push through it, like you get better because you become more likeable. Audiences love a good underdog Story and when they see one unfold in front of them in real time, here's the narrative that happens. 

Your audience is like, Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, God, her microphone went out. Oh, I wonder if she knows her microphones out. Oh, this is awkward. Oh my god, I feel so sorry for her. Oh my god, I feel so bad for all Oh, oh, oh, oh, and we're back.  There's this moment where they feeling sorry for you and when you just all the sudden, like handle it and go, they're like, Oh, I could never do that. 

They have this level of admiration for you that they want to be like you and they want to learn from you because clearly you've got something going on that they want a part of.  Okay, that might be like a crazy exaggeration. But I want you to think like this in your head. How can you demonstrate leadership, competency, a positive attitude? How can you exhibit that on stage? I like doing that through those things. 

For example, a couple of weeks ago, maybe it was like a month ago. I had a guest speaker, Mel Abraham, he's amazing if you don't know him. He's incredible. He teaches frameworks and how to really position yourself as an expert in your industry, very complimentary in things with what I do.

I asked Mel to come inside. I'm like, Hey, could you come in and teach my group around how to nail your value articulator statement? This is something that he teaches. How do you really nail like who you are, what you teach, who you teach for, like this one singular jam packed phrase. Can you come into my group and teach him? He's like, sure.  He came in. I brought him in.I use a streaming tool called StreamYard. 

He came in and he's teaching where he's showing slides, showing his face. I've removed myself from the window, and about, I don't know 25 minutes into his teaching, his workshop, all of a sudden he freezes and he's gone. He is like mid, talk about cliffhanger. The part he was just talking about was so juicy, it's the middle framework, it was so good and he's gone.  I have a couple dozen people in the chat room or in Facebook, in our Facebook group, they're like, ah! 

In that moment, he was gone. I am left. I have to make a decision like what do I do? Order of events, what do I do first? Do I text Mel? What do I do?  Autopilot kicks in. I immediately put my camera on the frame. I lose his frozen frame from there. 

And I'm like, Hey, guys, looks like we're having some tech issue. Let's hope that Mel can get back in but here's a couple things that I want you guys thinking about? I think I made that, I was like, well, it's such a cliffhanger juicy part like don't worry, we're going to be right back to it.  

Then what I did is I on the fly started recapping what he was talking about and then sharing with them around what he was talking about, how it applied to them, how it connected to what we've been talking about the program. I ended up having to talk for, I don't know eight-10 minutes while Mel evidently his computer something has happened and he had to reboot his computer, reboot everything and then join the things back in which was a big glitch. Let me tell you this like for me as the host, I had to think on my feet, which I'm really good at that. I do it all the time, but also for the speaker to get back in the groove. 

Mel is a very seasoned speaker, so he was able to go like Could you imagine you're speaking everything goes black and you've lost it. You're the guest speaker and your whole group is gone like you're gone. You've been into a black hole you go and like you come back.  

I want you to imagine. You're like computers off. Holy shit! What happened? Oh my god, what do I do? Oh my god. Oh my god there oh my god, that group is like relying on me. Computer fire up, oh my god. Why is it taking so long like the stress level that happened when you're screaming at your computer when it only will go as fast as it'll go?   

Imagine that heart beating, the sweat starts coming in and then the you enter back into the room. You can't enter back in the room with a level of frenzy and like apology and like all of this drama. You have to be like, Oh my gosh, I don't know what happened. Holy cow like Heather, thanks so much for throwing it down. Like, where were we like let's pick it back up and keep going.  That's exactly what Mel did. He did amazing. We bantered for a minute, then they jump right back in. 

But I wanted to bring that example to you because sometimes thinking on your feet, sometimes like navigating the glitches, it actually works out in your favor. Because what I can tell you my room was full of people who wanted to do, who still want to do what Mel does. Do guest speaking opportunities in other people's courses. 

They all probably fear something like that happening to them. But they, in real time, got to see two pros, navigate through the tech and show up over deliver. We even went longer than we promised, like over deliver and showcase an exceptional experience for them. We modeled that in real time. That's pretty freakin incredible.  

But I wanted to share that with you because sometimes the glitches make you more likeable. They make you more memorable, they make you more relatable, all of those things. What I want you to think about is don't fear the glitches, fear a lack of preparation for the glitches. That is your worst enemy on this. And I mean, that sounded pretty good, right?  

I want you to really think about that is most of us we fear the unknown, so make it known. You know the tech you work with, you know there's categories, the types of things that could happen so spend some time, prepare, anticipate, prepare, and anticipate.  

And then when you show up, I want you to show up as the kind of speaker you want them to remember. How do you want them remembering you and your brand and your content? How are you going to leave an impression that's going to have them go ha, I love how she showed up even more. I loved how she handled herself through pressure. She's the kind of person that I would want on my team. She's the kind of person I would want my corner. She's the kind of leader I wouldn't want to work for. That is what this is all about. 

Your decision to rock a presentation, it's totally your choice. No bad tech or anything else that like happens on the interrupted, none of that can dampen a speaker who's confident, and clear and connected to her audience. I want you to train for that.  

Be an influential speaker, it is not by chance. What I do, this fact like, I want you to pay attention. You guys know this by now. I don't show up here and try to be perfect for you. I tried to bring you the real conversation that you'll have a tangible, valuable information that help you keep moving forward, but I don't show up and try to pretend that I'm perfect. I had so many word flubs on this episode. I don't even care.  

I don't want you to try to be perfect. I want you to be present and real and just show up like don't fear the unknowns. Anticipate them. Prepare for them, and then when you're there, just be present. That's the difference between those speakers that leave you going like, oh, hot damn, and the ones that leave you bored or cringing because you feel sorry for them.  You don't want to be in those latter categories. 

You want to be in that category of like significant presence and be memorable. If you want to be known, you have to put in the work and start training to become the kind of speaker that's intentional with her audience. That's what this is all about.  Okay, so if you do want some of those questions that I was talking about, remember, you can grab that Ultimate Planning Guide Nail your next talk is the 10 must ask questions you might not even know you should be asking before taking the stage. 

You can find that over at heather sager.com/10questions.  And Hey, friend, you know, my style might be a little different than other speaking coaches. I'm real, I keep it real. I am authentic with you, and I show you that it's okay to show up as authentically you. You got to do it on purpose. 

I want you to really start thinking about how you show up, and if you know other business owners that might benefit from this show. They're kind of weird and quirky like us, but want to show up and make a bigger impact. Would you please share the show with a friend? 
Take a screenshot of this. Post on Instagram tag me @theheathersager.  

If you're feeling super generous, and today's episode was really helpful, could you leave a review on iTunes? It would mean the world like an actual, like review with words. Give a little hype on the show. Share other people why you enjoy it. It is the best way for other people to understand that this is a show that's either for them or not for them.  Leave your honest review it would mean the world and we will see you back here next week for another episode.  
Let me just tell you a spoiler. I am interviewing my friend RJ Connell. She is an expert around helping entrepreneurs package up and position what they sell to corporate companies. If you have a program or if you're thinking about speaking to corporate companies, you're trying to figure out like how do I take what I do and actually sell it to a corporate audience? 

Ooh, buckle up baby because next week is gonna be Oh, so good. I can't wait to meet RJ. I will see you back here next week. Bye