How do you develop a Keynote speech? ... and is it worth the fee?

This is the most frequently asked question, especially from people who want to be speakers.

Some people want to be a speaker and then find their material afterwards. Some people have an experience or a message that they feel needs sharing and develop their speaking skills afterwards.

As a multi award-winning business owner, I was a what people in the industry call a speaker/trainer. Having first been asked to speak for a fee back in 2003, my subjects were "Phone Genius the art of non visual communication" and "Monkey Marketing" how to be outrageous with a tiny budget, and so on. Some people know me for my most requested keynote "The Magnificence of Humanity." which relates to me being caught in the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004. But I didn't speak about it, for a decade. Why?

People who saw my Keynote at Inspire UK last year may remember that I said a story is just the wrapping paper. The gift is the lessons inside.

Those gifts are the messages, the thoughts you leave people with and the actions they will take as a consequence. For me, my experience was a story, a harrowing one at that and why that experience was going to be valuable to others had not been distilled. In fact the trauma was still too raw.

Then in 2011 I represented Stratford WI Lite by entering a creative writing piece for the annual show. The guide was that it had to be 1,000 words only and the title was "The Garden." My short time as a refugee was spent in Jimmy Lal's garden in Sri Lanka, with a whole bunch of us and this is where I learned some of the most valuable lessons of my life. I felt a calling to write it and so I did. To my amazement it won the coveted Corunna Cup.

My story was judged by some best selling authors and was then critiqued by Prue Leith, who had presented me with the award. Not many people know that she is a celebrated fictional author in addition to her non fiction work.

Some years later I was a regular speaker at the Great British Business Shows for Alec, Allison and Julie delivering workshops and keynotes. Since developing my expertise into human behaviour and becoming a Master Practitioner, my talks were now in this field.

It was a pre show talk over dinner with friend and Radio Presenter Mary Flavelle where she told me in no uncertain terms that I was doing people a dis-service by NOT talking about my experiences. I fought that vehemently, telling her that I didn't want to be seen as potentially profiting from a horrendous incident that took the lives of more people than any other natural disaster in our living history. It took me a while to realise that it was still grief and pain talking, and that I had been speaking about my experiences indirectly.

What I had learned about motivation, performance, collaboration, core values and communication were all significantly enhanced during that pivotal time in Jimmy's garden.

I crafted my keynote and started delivering it. I joined the Professional Speaking Association in 2015 and started to understand the difference between being a professional speaker and someone who speaks. I had to practise until I didn't cry at certain points in my presentation, because when I cry my voice goes really high pitched and I can't be heard! I've had support from a wonderful tribe, too many to mention without inevitably leaving someone out but especial those who encouraged me at the start, John Hotowka, Warren Cass, Jeremy Nicholas, Mark Lee, Marc Amerigo you have all become dear friends.

I had spent years peeling back the layers to get to the core of what I had witnessed in that time. I discovered, distilled and developed the lessons. I worked at creating the analogies, such as Kinstugi (representing human beings being more beautiful and more useful for the cracks that they bear) the Barbershop overtone (Showing that we can create more than the sum of our parts when we collaborate.) and other such examples. I had outgrown the analysis tools that I had been using, so I spent a year creating and crafting my own analysis tools that capture exactly what I had learned. Now, I have scientific evidence! A few months ago amongst my speaking gigs, I got to be the penultimate speaker at my own Associations annual conference. I received a standing ovation and it meant the WORLD to me. 

My keynotes now are about Collaboration, Core Values, Motivation and Increasing performance.

My answer to the question, "How do you create a keynote?" is don't try to force it. Don't try to make it fit. My keynote is my life's work and it took 15 years for it to come together. Make sure that the lessons lead it, that it's not just a story and that your audience have things to take away and action to take as a result of your talk.

If you get that right, then you have the answer to the question "Is it worth the fee?" What is it worth to you if your organisation collaborates more effectively? What is it worth to you if you release your People Potential or increase performance? But don't take my word for it, there are over 500 un-coerced, heartfelt, handwritten testimonials on my LinkedIn page from a host of different talks that I have done. If people felt compelled to do that for me after my talk, then YES! is the only answer.