THE TALK MAKER

with Megan Hamilton of

ubu skills

Who am I?

I’m Megan Hamilton! I’m a speaking, visibility and confidence coach for women and non-binary folks.

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I help you figure out the root causes of your speaking fears and give you a solid system of tools and training so you know how to give a strong presentation (and recover if something goes off the rails). You’ll learn how to be visible and cultivate confidence as you are, and not as you think you “should” be.

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Also I wanna fuck up the patriarchy so making sure we hear from new voices is a foundational step to that end!

Who are YOU?

What do you do?

Where do you live?

Why did you show up today?

Let us know in the chat!

Rules for the workshop

• Post questions in the comments!
• You can ask questions in the comments during the writing periods.

Let’s get creative!

• Open up your computer doc, or grab your pen and paper
• Let go of expectations
• Commit to writing
• Don’t think of this as the be all end all (think of it as a chapter in your book!)
• Rules can be broken - after the structure is made
• Don’t censor yourself (you can edit later)
• No idea is a crap idea (at this point!)

Important!

• As my coach and now client Jerico Mandybur once said to me “It is your birthright to dream big.” (Catch her at TEDx Cecil St. this September!)�
• We have been conditioned to tampering down our big dreams and goals. All under the guise of protection and avoiding disappointment.�
• Today I want you to suspend your “protective” thoughts and allow yourself to dream big. Why NOT you for a TEDx or TED talk? Why NOT you to speak to a stadium of 20,000 people (if that’s something you’d love). Why NOT you to write a book and get asked to speak all over the world?

Times to consider

• The TEDx - 8-12 minutes, on a topic, all statements and conclusions need fact checking, signature talk for speakers, passion, storytelling, connecting with your audience.

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• The Wedding Speech - 2-4 minutes – (See my Instagram Live with Carrie-Ann Kloda about this! @ubuskills).�
• The Networking Event – 5-6 minutes all about you!�
• The Signature Talk – 30+ minutes on a topic you know a lot about, and that gets you fired up!

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• The Conference Talk - 10-50+ minutes - includes research and data, passion, excitement, sharing the fruit of your labour

Step One - Values

• 50-100 value statements (could be around facts) around the topic at hand. You can finish them later.�
• If you don’t have a specific topic, write about your personal values. Could look like “I admire curiosity.” “Intersectional feminism is the way to liberation and that’s a hill I’ll die on.” “No child should worry about where their meals are coming from.”�
• Don’t think too much, just write.

Step Two – Organize them into groups

• Find themes and begin to group your value statements under them�
• This could look like “feminism related”, “life lessons related”, “children”�
• Give each theme a title

Step Three – The Top 10/Top 3

• Pick your top 10 values. (Could be most important, could be most passionate to you, could be most aligned with this particular talk/event.)�
• Then pick the top 3. �
• Within the top 3, see if the other 7 can be sub-points. (This might be easier after the structure is built.)

Step Four – The 5 point structure

You may remember this as similar to the 5 paragraph essay from high school.

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1. Opening paragraph/section introducing 3 topics
2. Paragraph/Section 1 (2nd most important)
3. Paragraph/Section 2 (3rd most important)
4. Paragraph/Section 3 (most important)
5. Conclusion with summary of 2-4.

Pat yourself on the back

You now have a structure!

Step Five – Flesh it out

Each paragraph can be broken down into further paragraphs and sub-points. This is where you may want to add the 7 other points from your top 10. It can be helpful to have 2-3 paragraphs for each point, but remember, this changes depending on the parameters around each talk.

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Right now we’re focusing on the main points and less on the quality of the writing.

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Think of all of the things you’d like to say relating to this topic (you can edit stuff out later)

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Step Six – Let’s get personal

Include a personal story for each point. (You might delete some of this after, but this anchors you emotionally to your speech, and helps your audience connect with you and be interested.)

Step Seven – Ask questions

Find places where you can ask the audience questions. You can assess the room - asking them to raise their hands, or shout out simple answers.

Step Eight – Get precise

Time it and then pare it down to the time limit (or bulk it up if necessary, but we’re aiming to avoid fluff. To bulk it up, make another paragraph/section for one of your top 10 value statements.)

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Typically, a single page in Word, double spaced at an 11pt font runs about 2 minutes.

Step Nine – Get clear (know your audience)

Anywhere you’ve got language soup or academic jargon, how can you reframe it more simply and using language that the audience can easily digest.

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Read it aloud to a few people and have them give you feedback.

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The goal is to remove as many barriers to communication as possible, so that the audience retains a high percentage of your talk.

Step Ten – Use Action Verbs

Once you’ve written and semi-finalized your presentation, you’ll want to use the text mapping I talk about in part 4 of my 4 part speaking system found in my free public speaking guide (don’t worry, I’ll send you the link in the replay email.)

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One of the ways that you can help your performance as well as guide the audience into understanding is to include “I ______ you” statements as direction notes. The blank should be juicy and evocative action verbs to help remind you, and let the audience know, what you’re doing right now. “I entice you.” “I implore you.” “I encourage you.” Those are better than “I teach you.” or “I inform you.”

Stuff audiences LOVE

This stuff helps them feel connected to you/be on your side:�

• transformation
• overcoming adversity
• joy within pain
• solving a mystery
• feeling included
• relating to the baseline of a story

Important to remember…

• Connection - ask the audience questions. Tell them stories about yourself. Be vulnerable and authentic. Look them in the eye.�
• Passion - if you don’t give a fuck, neither do we. If you think we’ll think your topic is boring, we will. You have to help us understand why this stuff is exciting by showing us your enthusiasm. �
• Anti-professional - whatever old paradigms you think you need to adhere to, defenestrate them.

Important to remember continued…

• Use appropriate language. If this is an academic paper, use academic language but keep it as simple as possible. Nobody wants to have to translate everything continuously - it’s exhausting. And pompous. But if you have a killer word, use it if you love it.�
• Personal - if you want your audience to see you as a human, you have to include stories. We want to know how you feel about what you’re talking about - it helps us understand how to feel about it.

Important to remember finally…

• Don’t use old patriarchal techniques like sarcasm (unless it’s really appropriate and quite funny), gaslighting (ie trying to trick your audience into believing you while being slightly dishonest), charm (don’t ditch your natural charm! but don’t dial it up either – think of being authentic vs. how some politicians behave), seriousness (barf), persuasion (where instead of being honest, you’re using tactics to reel them in). I mean, you can. But it’s gross. And dishonest. And there are so many better ways of speaking. Or being a human for that matter.

Questions!