I was to give a talk on my business at Seattle Executives, sat down at my table, and the person next to me started a conversation, which went like this:
Her – “Are you nervous (about presenting)?”
Me – “No.”
Her – “I always get nervous. Why aren’t you?”
Me – “Because I know what I’m talking about.”
Several of us were recently involved with doing testimonial videos for a foundation that supports my Rotary project. One person had a hard time doing it and we finally figured out it was because instead of pausing between subjects he would babble on. Of course, the babbling threw him off topic and we had to redo it. Lessons from the above two things include:
- Don’t overthink things, it only gets you in trouble.
- Word quantity doesn’t count, word quality does.
- Act like an expert, which you are, for your area of expertise.
Good lessons for speaking, in sales, for running a business, and much more in life. FYI, my abovementioned talk was nothing but stories. It goes with my bonus marketing tip when I taught a class on growing an advisory business at the Seattle SBA office, which was, “Stories sell.”
“Seriousness – and morality, and indeed sanity – cannot exist without humor.” Martin Amis
