7 Lessons Learned From 24 Public Speaking Events in 2023

I have four jobs as the CEO of risk3sixty. One of those jobs is to tell the world about risk3sixty. And sometimes that involves public speaking. I am not an expert on public speaking. I have no formal training. Most of my advice on speaking was learned the hard way:

Trial and error.

I get a lot of nerves. I lose sleep the night before. My voice doesn't have much vocal range. I get choked up when I tell stories.

And I love it.

Those challenges are part of the reason I love public speaking. Speaking to an audience is an opportunity to hold myself accountable to better communication, to try to make a positive impact on the audience, and to be a good representative of our team at risk3sixty.

Over the years I have delivered 100s of talks, but 2023 was the first time I set a formal goal for public speaking. My goal is to do 24 public speaking events.

Here is what I have learned so far.

7 Lessons Learned Doing Speaking Events

1. Sustained Discipline Over Time

Back in January I did a workshop designed by Tucker Max . Tucker is a 4x NYT best selling author, notorious blogger, public speaker, and literally wrote the book on publishing books: The Scribe Method. He is famous for coaching famous personalities like David Goggins (88,000 reviews on Amazon!) and Dan Sullivan through their book writing process.

His workshop is so successful because Tucker understands human weakness. He knows that most authors and speakers will quit before they get traction. Authors focus too much on enthusiastic willpower and not enough on discipline.

You know how you set that ambitious resolution to lose 10lbs every New Year? You sign up for the gym. You buy new gym clothes. But soon all of that well intentioned enthusiasm disappears. You quit. What separates those who hit their goals and those that quit is the power of habit.

To combat against the urge to quit, Tucker's workshop focused a lot on daily habits that encourage content production. Here are three disciplines that I have adopted:

• Scheduled Time Blocks: I set time blocks every week to do writing and content creation. During these time blocks I turn off notifications, have a fresh cup of coffee ready, and throw on some good music.
• Deadlines: I set deadlines for myself and hit them. To make the deadlines real, I usually commit to a deliverable to my team at risk3sixty. Like a webinar or piece of marketing collateral.
• Accountability: I make my goals public to my team and often on social media. This helps hold me accountable to meeting the commitments I make.

2. Be Authentic

I think we are all afraid to be judged. At least I am. There's this fear that if you show the world who you are, if you are vulnerable, people will use it to beat you down. And maybe they're right. Maybe you will get beat down.

But let me tell you something:

It's better to be yourself and deal with the haters than to live in a self imposed prison by pretending to be someone you're not.

From my experience people appreciate authenticity. Especially when that authenticity comes from a good place. Here are a couple of things I do to sanity check how I am presenting myself to the world:

• Speak From the Heart: I try my best to speak from the heart. One way I do that is asking myself if I would say the same in front of my kids. I know that if I was in front of my kids I would be coming from a place of love, empathy, and patience. That helps me set the right tone for a talk.
• Ask: Do You Really Think That? It's really easy to fall in the trap of repeating a popular trope, regurgitating a talking point, or being cynical. At times I have found myself repeating talking points that I don't actually believe. That's when I ask myself a simple question: Do you really believe that?
• Embrace Your Imperfection: Sometimes a bit of imperfection can be endearing. First, take some time to self identify your flaws. Be humbled by them. Second, accept them and see if there are opportunities to use them as a strength.

3. Tips for Sourcing Speaking Events

When I set the goal of doing 24 speaking events I was not sure how I was going to find the opportunities. A few times a year someone asks me to do a speaking engagement, but not twice a month. So, I knew going into this year I would have to source events. Here are three things I've learned:

• Finding Events: I am sure there are more scientific ways to source events, but I started with Google. I made a list of all of the security events in America. There actually aren't that many. So I expanded to include tech and entrepreneur focused events too. There are a lot. I created an excel tracker and started submitting my talks. I also get help from my Marketing team at risk3sixty to submit and source events.
• Creating Talks You Can Re-Use: Before this year I had never delivered the same talk twice. But when you are trying to do 24 events, that is not sustainable. So I created three talks: "The Art of Service" (my signature talk) and two talks on Cybersecurity. One that is great for security experts, one that is good for a wider audience.
• Rejection: So far I have been rejected about 50% of the times I have submitted a talk to an audience. Over the last couple of months my acceptance rate has went up. I think this is because I am getting better at pitching my talk and finding relevant audiences. I have also been invited (without asking) to a few conferences after someone has seen me at a prior conference. My theory is that sourcing speaking events gets easier over time.

4. Tips for Creating a Keynote

Keynote presentations are different from a standard conference talk. Usually you are the "main attraction" and there is an expectation that you deliver a high quality talk that will anchor the conference. I have delivered a lot of conference talks, but I delivered my first opening keynote presentation "The Art of Service" back in March at ISACA Atlanta's Geek Week Conference. Here are a few things I learned:

• What Value Will You Offer The Audience: There's a famous quote from Steve Martin about story telling: "Have a Point". Why should the audience care about your talk? What is the specific value they are going to get out of it? These are important questions. When I am preparing a talk, I document (in writing) three things that I want the audience to get from my presentation. This becomes my commitment to the audience.
• How to Start a Speech: Keynote speaker Conor Neill says that you should avoid starting a keynote with an introduction. But that's what most people do. Instead, launch right into the presentation. Even better, start with a strong hook or story. How you start might be the most important part of your presentation. I highly recommend his lecture on starting speeches.
• Tell Stories: Speaking coach Eva Rose Daniel says that stories engage emotion. The best speakers are great story tellers. And they can be simple stories. For example, one of my favorite stories is about my son's challenges cleaning up his room to demonstrate a point about initiative in my talk "The Art of Service". It is a simple story, but always gets the audience's attention.

5. Tips for Preparation

I get nervous before big talks. Especially if they are on a stage. One of the way I conquer nerves is through preparation. Preparation is a nice little comfort blanket that I can fall back on if things go sideways. Here are three things I do for every keynote:

• Know Your Material: My number one suggestion when it comes to giving a good talk is to know your material. Know it front and back. Have multiple stories for each section of the presentation. Know the data. Have anecdotes. The better you know your material the more comfortable you will be delivering the presentation.
• Practicing: The way I like to practice my keynote is through low risk opportunities in front of a crowd. For example, we do lunch-n-learns every Thursday at risk3sixty . That is usually the first place I practice any new presentations. You can also practice in front of the mirror or consider recording yourself so you can watch it back. It feels awkward talking to no one, but after forcing myself to do it a few times I can promise that it works.
• Fallback Material: When I gave my first keynote presentation the laptop failed about 15 minutes into the presentation. I couldn't change slides and a tech had to come on stage and resolve the issue. Stuff like this happens all the time. You have to be prepared. The way I prepared is by two good tools in my back pocket. First, I have a few entertaining stories I can tell at any point the presentation. Second, I save a handful of questions I can ask the audience to encourage engagement. Both of these buy some time if I need it.

6. 18 Tips for Delivering Talks

In April, I wrote a LinkedIn post on public speaking. I think those tips are worth repeating here. Here are all 18 in rapid fire style:

• Launch right into the presentation. Do not start with an introduction or "good morning". Ask someone else to introduce you. It lends itself to credibility.
• Leverage cues to jog your memory in case you get lost (e.g., an image to remind you of the story you are supposed to tell)
• Pause frequently (3-5 seconds minimum, especially after you make a point)
• Build in audience engagement (ice breakers, questions, simple exercises)
• Take risks (it is only a risk to you, the audience won't even know)
• Be vulnerable to fast track trust
• Be confident. Even blindly confident if you have to.
• Bring up a bottle of water and don't be afraid to take a sip.
• If you freeze or get lost, just pause and collect yourself
• Know your setup (hand mic vs. lapel mic, stage or classroom, etc.)
• Know your audience and what they care about (e.g., execs vs. entry level)
• Do not memorize verbatim
• Do not worry about your hand movements
• Don't read from the slides
• Don't worry if the slide doesn't match up perfectly with what you are saying
• Do not say things like "I forgot what I was about to say" or "I'm nervous" or "I'm sorry" during your presentation
• Don't stress yourself out. Even if you bomb, people have very short memories.
• Don't compare yourself to some TED speaker. They are literally the best of the best. The bar is much lower than you think.

7. Tips for Handling Nerves

I got choked up at conference talk back in June. I almost couldn't continue. I kick off the talk with a story about my childhood and an inflection point when I had my daughter and started risk3sixty.

It is a story of going from "selfish-focus" to "serving-others-focused". It was the first time I had told the story in public and the combination emotion and nerves led to getting choked up.

Here are the four tools I used to recover:

• Long Pause: First, I just paused. Pauses during a presentation feel like a lifetime, but for the crowd it can add drama and even come across as authentic. I was definitely being authentic. The pause gave me time to gather myself and move forward.
• Box Breathing: Bill Crawford, Ph.D. taught me about the power of routing emotions in your brain. One way to do this is box breathing. Breath in 2 seconds, pause 2 seconds, breath out 2 seconds, pause 2 seconds. A coach told me that it helps calm the nerves. And it did.
• Embrace the Suck: Oh boy, it was uncomfortable up there. But I've been there before. So I reminded myself this was normal. In fact, these are the moments that make doing hard things worth while. The risk. So I tried to trick myself into enjoying the suck.
• Don't Apologize: Often, things are a lot more visible to the presenter than the audience. And we make the mistake of pointing it out. Did the audience realize I was getting choked up? Yes. Did they think I was on the verge of a panic attack? Probably not. Don't apologize. Keep moving forward.

I'll point you to one other resource. Phil Venables is the CISO at Google. He wrote a great post on public speaking and recommended four great tools for handling nerves. You should read his blog post.

What's Next: Keynotes, Conferences, Podcasts, and Vistage CEO Groups

Have you ever seen a comedy special on Netflix? They make it look so easy. They own the stage, they tell great stories, work the crowd. Those are some of the skills I want. So, I signed up for a stand-up comedy workshop at the Punchline Comedy Club in Atlanta with the legendary comedian Jeff Justice. This is a six week course that ends with an opportunity to do your set at a show.

(I have no expectations of my own Netflix special.)

I am doing more conference keynotes and podcasts too. I have about 10 events scheduled the back half of 2023. I have also expanded my audience a bit outside cybersecurity. My talks are all on entrepreneurship, leadership, and cybersecurity.

All topics I love.

If you are looking for a speaker, send me a note!