How do you manage your time and energy before, during, and after a conference as a speaker?

My preparation process keeps me ready all the time. I interview creative professionals and successful entrepreneurs regularly. And, document good examples, case studies, and insights with relevant tags. This tagging system helps me a lot. Just with a few clicks, I can access concepts and insights for my presentation. So I deliberately procrastinate on my final presentation. I go through my 'tag treasure' and connect these ideas with the questions in the audience's mind. After a while, things jumble up: a human story, hidden insights, unmet needs, statistics and emerging trends. I don't use slides. So no more preparation is needed. And if I decide to include some images and videos, it takes me about an hour to be ready!

I rarely share a brand new message so that I don’t have to do all of this planning. I have a cannon of about three messages that I rotate for different audiences so I know them like the back of my hand, backwards, forwards, it doesn’t matter. I focus on tailoring it for the audience. Because I may have two or three opportunities in a week. Prepping brand new messages can be tedious and is really unnecessary if you are actually doing this for a living and run a practice day to day as I do. Keep it simple… and don’t get married to slides. I can share with or without them to the same impact.

We learn in sports that you will play how you practice! No practice, no play! I listen to my speeches like it’s music. I know that mistakes happen, so I give myself grace but I do my best to practice so that those mistakes are limited. Practice how you want to play so when you get into the game, ITS GO TIME!

I go early. And attend earlier talks. I absorb the energy in the hall, and get in rapport with the people in the audience. This helps me join the ongoing conversation in the conference. Sometimes I change my opening, include a new case study, to add more insights and value to what other speakers presented.

Yes. Engaging fully and authentically with your audience is vital. Always remember you’re there to serve them and deliver some motivation or inspiration or information that will change their lives. I remind myself, the entire effort of prepping for and delivering a speech is about them, not me. When I focus all my energy, effort, and attention on the audience, that’s when I can be at my best in serving them. ????—Matt

This is a nice thought, perhaps after you’ve wrapped a string of them. If there is only one… perhaps toast yourself, but you probably need to raise your visibility a bit and get more gigs so you won’t have that much time off the platform to take an entire vacation after one keynote.

Performing at a high level requires a lot of mental and physical energy on stage. I get an Uber or driver to all live gigs, so that I’m mentally focused (don’t have to worry about parking or traffic). Many times coming down from a big stage adrenaline rush hits 30 minutes to an hour after I’m done and can sneak up on you. Unless you are “mailing it in”, make sure rest post-talk is baked into your calendar.