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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!
Is speaking at (or going to!) the conference worth it?
The other day as I was looking for an old handout from a talk I used to give, I stumbled across something I thought you’d find useful: a “calculator” to figure out whether speaking at an event is worth it or not. You could also use it to decide whether or not to attend a conference, […]
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How good is your opening shot?
Before you read any further: go and watch this video on the 10 greatest opening shots of all time. I wanted you to see how much the opening shot can do for a movie. How it can set the scene and open the story. How you literally can’t start the movie without it… just like you can’t start […]
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How do you serve two audiences at once?
One question kept coming up with my clients recently: “How do you ‘nest’ messages?” So, okay, that’s not how they actually framed the question. No, for them the questions were more like: What do I say to our leadership team to help them see how this benefits our members? I work with the C-suite, but the HR managers hire me… so […]
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How I build presentations in 5 steps
20 minutes. Two weeks. That’s what I had to develop this recently and the time I had to do it in. Except it wasn’t just any presentation, it was the opening keynote of StartupFestival Montreal. And it was going to be custom to them. Lest you be horrified at my procrastination, my prep for this […]
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What do you call that thing?!
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and then just. cannot. get. back. to. sleep? And 90% of the reason you can’t get back to sleep is because you’re worried about being awake in the first place? Ugh. It’s the worst. At least, it was, until I gave it a name. (Or rather, we, gave […]
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How do you organize your #swipefile?
If you’re a regular reader of my newsletter, you’re familiar with my #swipefile–a collection of articles, both helpful and absurd and everything in between–that I gather from around the internet and share with you. (Not a reader? Sign up to receive my newsletter here.) Recently, a friend asked me how I organize my #swipefile. And I had […]
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Don’t shoot the messenger!
Not one but TWO of my recent #swipefile items ended up in the new keynote I just debuted (“Getting the Green Light“). They were the one about “shooting the messenger” and the one about Game of Thrones and the coffee cup. Both had to do with something I’ve been talking about a lot here lately: not making your audience […]
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The 3 things your idea needs to succeed
I know you don’t want your ideas (or worse, you!) to fail… do you? No. And yet that success can feel crazy elusive. I mean you know your ideas (and you) have value. You know they can help people. So why don’t they know it, too? There’s lots of reasons, of course, and I can’t be precisely sure what’s going right […]
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What’s “right,” anyway?
My husband, Tom, recently re-shared a classic post on “The Hazards of Overconfidence” by the economist Daniel Kahneman. Fair warning, I loooooove me some Kahneman and consider his book Thinking Fast and Slow to be required reading for anyone who has, shares, or regularly makes the case for ideas. So, you know, everyone. As you may guess from […]
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Should you change beliefs or behavior?
The world was supposed to end in 1954. It didn’t, obviously. But that didn’t seem to matter much to the people who believed it would. Remember that. It’s important, especially if you want to change people’s opinions or behavior. Looking back at 1954, though, you might not be surprised that some folks thought we were facing […]
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