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FRESH THREADS
NEW! The Freenoter Podcast!
There are lots of resources out there on how to become a paid speaker or keynoter, but what if you speak to build your business, as a FREEnoter? Each week, join me and Tom Webster as we cover all the angles of how to profit from speaking for free. If you are looking to grow your business from the stage--without "selling from the stage," this is the show for you. We will cover EVERY aspect of building your business through speaking, and even share a different craft cocktail recipe every week, just because. Subscribe now!
Need to make your message relevant? Give ’em what they need.
In times of crisis two things are true: Everything seems to be changing Some things never do When you’re the person responsible for figuring out how to make your message relevant in times like these, those two together represent both the problem and the solution.
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Are cognitive biases working for or against you message?
There’s one barrier every message has to get through for it to succeed: your audience’s brain. It’s why your message needs to be more than just relevant and remarkable, it needs to be resilient, too. It has to be strong enough to survive the beating the average brain is going to give it.
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Are you trapped in the persuader’s paradox?
There’s one thing getting the way of the vast majority of messaging: The Persuader’s Paradox. What is that, you ask? Well, it’s like the opposite of the Golden Rule. Instead of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” the Persuader’s Paradox goes something like, “do unto others what you’d never want done to you.” The result: in […]
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Why you need a “make sense machine” (and where to find it)
Sometimes what’s missing from a message is… just about everything you need to make sense of it. But how, and why, does that happen?
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Why a remarkable message never trumps a relevant one
While we’re in days that all seem to blur together, the things that are different are what stand out. It’s partly why, unlike in The Time Before, I try not to do ANY work on the weekends, and why my husband, Tom, and I have closely observed Cocktail Hour (and yes, these days it deserves Full Capitalization). As […]
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Short on space or time for your message? Do this.
“We must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough.” —Winston Churchill When creating content around messages, we usually focus on the “long” forms of it: the presentation, the book, the white paper, etc. And yes, in the words of Churchill, those long forms are tough.
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Presenting virtually? Here’s a checklist to make it great.
One of the things that’s most different about these past few weeks is how much we’ve had to meet, and present, virtually. While we may know, or sense, that the biggest enemy of virtual presentations is your multitasking (on the part of your audience), often our focus is on minimizing that multitasking, it helps to […]
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Need a strong conclusion? Do these two things.
Since I’m a relentlessly pattern-driven person, that’s what this week’s post and video are all about: helping your audience through pattern recognition. In the latest “What’s Missing From This Message” video, I talk about an important way to do that: with your conclusion. Your conclusion is your last opportunity to land your message. That […]
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Why story is the best structure for your message
If you want to keep your message simple (and you do!), then the structure needs to be simple, too. That may seem obvious, but it can be harder than it looks. That’s because it isn’t (just) about the number of points you make, it’s about the structure of them. Structure creates pattern, and pattern creates memorability. But […]
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How to give your message its strongest start
These are strange times, and it feels even stranger to be doing “normal” things like sending out this newsletter. But for me, sometimes doing normal things helps me feel normal. The best kind of normal things? Those that bring strength. I love how author and speaker Marcus Buckingham talks about this. He says: “A strength is an activity that strengthens you. […]
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