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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!
Focus on the TRUTH: The Difference Between “Understandable” and “Inevitable” – EP055
The Idea Behind the Idea Great ideas aren’t just found, they’re built piece by piece. To make that idea irresistible to someone else, we have to do the same thing: build that idea piece by piece in their mind. This week, we’re looking at the idea behind the Idea, the thing that makes the Problem […]
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Focus on the PROBLEM: Why Your Audience Needs Both Context and Contrast – EP054
Unlocking Perspective We want to put an intractable problem in front of an irresistible goal for our audience because it creates context. It makes the goal more valuable because the audience feels like they need to work harder for it, and it creates urgency because they really want to solve that problem. The difficulty, however, […]
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Just as good in half the time
When I was in high school, my senior English teacher was a granite pylon of a woman. Bat Masterson. I don’t remember her real first name. But in a brilliant end-run around potentially (usually) cruel high schoolers, she started calling herself “Bat” long before any in my class knew her. She had stuffed animal and […]
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Focus on the GOAL: Why Your Audience Needs an “Irresistible Outcome” – EP053
Focus on the Audience’s Goal To celebrate a year of Find the Red Thread, we’re going to get back to basics and spend each of the next five episodes focusing on one piece of the Red Thread. This week, we’re looking at the Goal. When we’re trying to share our irresistible idea with someone, we […]
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How to Use “Old” Ways of Thinking to Find New Ways Through Difficult Times – EP052
Reframe a New Problem in an “Old” Way “This makes sense. I am my own safe place. My only way out is through.” Tamsen relied on this mantra to help her overcome a panic disorder she had lived with for 17 years. She didn’t know it at the time, but it was her version of […]
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TraPIT – An Easy Way to Keep Your Audience With You – EP051
Transition, Point, Illustration, and Takeaway We all need certain landmarks in our messages to help point our audience in the right direction, but are you telling your audience how those landmarks string together? Our audience can only follow us where we lead them, so you need to help them understand why they’re there, what’s important […]
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What got you “here” will get you “there”
“I’m tired.” That was was my older son, stuck halfway up a rock wall. “Then come back down.” That was me, on the ground below, watching him. “But I want to get to the top!” Me, too, son. Me, too. It’s funny how one thing can suddenly help you see another more clearly…which brings me […]
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Why Your Messages Break When You Say Them Out Loud (And How to Fix Them) – EP050
Dialogic Processing Sometimes when we get up to give a big talk or presentation, the speech that sounded great on paper suddenly falls flat when we say it out loud. Why does this happen? It has to do with how we process language, which we do by taking in information from other people. This ability […]
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How to Make What You Do Unmistakably You – EP049
How to Be Recognizable We covered the origin of the Red Thread in Episode 3 with the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, but there’s another story that comes from Goethe. According to him, all the rope the British Navy uses, from the largest to the smallest, is made with a red thread woven […]
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What is the Shape of Your Story? – EP048
The Three Story Shapes Kurt Vonnegut had this idea that stories have shapes. Here’s how it would work: if you could map a story with the horizontal axis representing time and the vertical axis representing our characters’ fortunes, you could see how it’s structured over time. While it sounds like an interesting theory, nobody had […]
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