My step-by-step process for creating a new keynote (or updating an old one)

During the pandemic, I was approached by a very large media conglomerate that hired me to give an online keynote about “A new skill set for a digital transformation” - which was my bestselling keynote by then.?

The speech was very successful, and it impacted a number of leaders that were in the “virtual” audience, including the CFO (don’t forget that your audience is the 2nd biggest generator of leads, according to a 2022 Speakerflow survey that showed that so-called “spinoffs”, namely leads that come from audience that liked your speech, only lose to Referrals as main new business source for speakers).

The CFO then approached me with a special request: “Andrea, can you please speak to my team about “How to create trust in remote work settings”?. At first, I was tempted to say “No”, simply because this was a topic I hadn't developed yet. But after I put more thought into it, the truth is that I suddenly understood two things: first, that nobody likely had that topic developed, since the pandemics had recently happened and everybody was learning about how to create trust in remote settings (which therefore would give me a competitive advantage if I were to launch that topic first); and second, that even though I hadn’t developed the topic yet, I could follow my step-by-step process of keynote creation to quickly have it ready.?

Yes, the truth is that over the last years I developed a step-by-step method that helps me today to be much faster than any other creator at crafting new high quality keynotes - which provides a competitive advantage, exactly because you get the right timing: I managed to surf the “Metaverse” wave, now the “AI” wave, and others too, by always creating new topics - to the point that now many of my current customers get back to me with special requests for new events of theirs. And it is this method that I am going to share in this article with you. PS: it does not only apply to new keynotes by the way, but to old ones that need to be updated because, truth be told, a lecture is never truly finished; it's always in a state of continual refinement.

For the purpose of this article, let’s say for instance, that I get a request from a client for a new keynote, and in this case, the topic is “culture of error”.?What is the right step by step?

1 - “PRODUCTIZATION”: The first crucial step is formulating the objective of the keynote. What does this entail? I contemplate what I want to convey. What's the theory I want to transmit? For example, with this lecture, the primary premise would be that not all mistakes are harmful, and there can even be beneficial mistakes. Therefore, I'd devise a classification with three types of errors: avoidable, unavoidable, and intelligent. This is the 'productization' of your message, namely structuring the main message in a way that is easy to convey.

Also, creating alternative names for your topic is part of this productization step. What different label can I assign to the culture of error? In my case, I used the word “Antifragility”. Antifragile organizations, people, or entities strengthen through error - which is the opposite of fragile ones. For instance, I decided on the title for my talk as: "Antifragility and the Culture of Error." This piques interest and makes the concept more memorable.

2 - STRUCTURE: Once you've productized your talk, you need to structure it. Begin with an engaging introduction, delve into the problem or 'pain point', promise a solution, and then introduce the concepts. Each concept can be subdivided into an anecdote, theory, product, reflection, question, and so on. But we construct a progression of subtopics to set the pace, and we follow the same process for each concept. Bear in mind: you can't have more than 5-6 concepts per lecture, or else it gets too dense to remember! Over time, I've found that two, three, or at most, four concepts are sufficient. Then, we work on our closing, where I recommend to follow the sequence introspection, reminder, summary, and call to action.

3 - SLIDES DESIGN: From there, we design the slides by hand: one by one, we create the structure of the lecture from the blocks identified above. I personally draft by hand on my iPad, and I find this step is crucial to visualize the lecture's structure. Give it a shot yourself! Use only the keywords for each slide, and consider this a first raw draft.

4 - WRITE DOWN THE SCRIPT: After we have the structure in place, comes the most mundane yet most critical part of all: writing down the whole keynote. Word by word, you transcribe each block of your structure. Pay attention to the punctuation – commas, parentheses, quotation marks, as if you're narrating. It'll aid in refining your speech quality, estimating duration, and rehearsing more efficiently. This also helps you maintain the right pace and timing because it's not the slides but your speech in general that determines the duration of the talk. Running out of time can delay the whole event schedule and affect the other speakers. You need to be in full control of your speech and know precisely what you're talking about.

5 - SET UP YOUR POWERPOINT SLIDES: Next, we transform our sketches into a PowerPoint presentation. It's vital to have a template ready. I use large images as a background and overlay them with low transparency to ensure contrast and readability of the text. I use transitions for instance that first showcases the image and then shifts to the text as I speak. It's very visual and has minimal text.

6 - ADD THE SCRIPT TO THE POWERPOINT: In the subsequent step, you add text to your PowerPoint: how do you go about this? You take the text that you've just written down, and place it in the Notes area of each slide. This way, you can even gauge the time you spend on each slide. You can track where it begins and ends, accurately. This means you never have to glance back and read the slide during the lecture, because you know precisely what you're discussing at every moment.

7 - REHEARSE: Finally, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse! Read through the text numerous times, then film yourself rehearsing without reading the text, then try this at smaller, less formal events. You should know the opening and closing by heart. The rest you can improvise more, but the opening and closing are critical. Remember, a talk is never 100% complete. It always needs to grow and improve. Think like a stand-up comedian, try new routines, test yourself on smartphone, track where you've improved or regressed, and observe the audience's reaction. Each keynote requires minor tweaks according to the brief. So every talk should have a structure, but also room for edits. Keep updating your lectures as new “hot topics” come up.?

The catch-22 of having a truly outstanding keynote is that sometimes it stays the same... because it's so good! However, it can sometimes feel a tad outdated.

Here, I want to leave you with one final concept to round off this article: as speakers, we ought to perceive ourselves more as artists, than as educators. And what does an artist do? They face the challenge of always being relevant with the content they create. They maintain their relevance by always releasing new works or remixing their older creations. I believe that as speakers, we shouldn't stress too much about growing year after year, but rather focus on staying relevant, even if we're in a prominent position and already earning a significant income from the lucrative speaker business. Gear up, because it's exactly the business aspect of keynotes that we are going to explore in our next articles.