As mentioned earlier I am not doing weekly episodes of ProfessionalSpeaking any more. After 300 weekly episodes of sharing speaking tips – for free, and without selling anything – I decided to reduce the frequency a bit while I focus on some other projects. I hope you have found value from these free speaking tips, and appreciate the episodes when they do come.

In this episode of Professional Speaking I thought I would share some lessons about writing.

And for this episode I will not do a video, but instead communicate via text and I will not talk about speaking, I will instead write about writing.

While video has become much more important for speakers than it used to be, writing a book is still more or less essential. Not necessarily because people are buying a lot of books (they are not), or because it gives you credibility (it does, but not as much as it used to), but because writing a book is a great way to structure your thoughts and push you to do research.

So how do I look at book writing? As if it was baking. Let me explain.

1) Research (getting all the ingredients in order)
2) Work the text. (Kneed the dough)
3) Let the text rest (letting the dough rest)
4) Send it away (put it into the oven)

Let’s look at them one by one.

1) Research (getting all the ingredients in order)

Many people who have never written a book seem to think that writing a book starts with writing. It doesn’t. It starts with researching. The worst books (with some exceptions) are books where people just wrote down their thoughts on a subject.

Writing a book, if you ask me, is at lest 80% research and perhaps 20% writing.

Interview at least 100 people on the topic you are writing on. Have a folder on your computer (like Evernote) where you keep every article, text, video, information, quote, story etc about the topic you are writing on.

Only 10% or so of all the material you actually collect should be good enough to make it into the book. (And then just 10% of all that made it into the book makes it into the speech.)

A book takes 2-5 years for me to write. But the writing is usually less than 6 months. The rest is research, and me thinking about what I am going to write once I do.

Lesson: Do more research and collect more material than you think you need. Writing is not writing. Writing is research and thoughts on paper.

2) Work the text. (Kneed the dough)

There is no one way to write, but this is how I write: I re-write and re-write and re-write.

Some people make an amazing structure and stick to it.
Some writers write a rough draft, not caring about structure, and then go back and edit.

I start to write as soon as I have an idea of the kind of text I want to create and then, if I stumble on a sentence, I will sit and re-write that one sentence (or paragraph, or page) over and over again until I feel it has the flow I am looking for.

The “Delete” button is most likely the second most key on my keyboard after “Space”…

To me, writing is a joyful way of solving a puzzle, and you can feel it in your soul when the pieces (the words) have fallen into place in the correct order.

Lesson: Writing is not writing. Writing is re-writing. So re-write over and over again.

3) Let the text rest (letting the dough rest)

Writing a book for me takes time. Not because of the writing itself, but because I will let a text “rest” for months on end. When I do write, I write in chunks. I block off 1-2 weeks or more and do almost nothing but write all day. But after a while you get so sucked into the words that you cannot see what you have written. That’s when you need to distance yourself from the text. I can leave a text for months. When I come back to it, I read it as if it was written by someone else, not as if I know every word by heart (which is how it feels when I am in writing mode.)

When I re-visit a text after being away from it for a while it becomes much easier to separate the beautiful sentences from the ugly ones. The ugly ones are the ones that need editing.

Because no matter how much you have re-written a text while you were in writing mode, you can bet that large chunks of it needs to be re-written once you come back to it after giving it a rest. (Most books I re-write multiple times. For one book I did more than 20 edit rounds before sending it to the editor.

Lesson: Give yourself time to take a break from the text to be able to read it with fresh eyes.

4) Send it away (put it into the oven)

No matter how great of an writer you think you are, always send the script away to an external editor. I can not stress enough how important it is to get a professional editor to go through your text. Yes, it can hurt to get all that feedback, but better to get it before the book comes out than after…

Many first time writers will “save” on editor, but please do not do that.

Lesson: Get a professional editor.

Conclusion: As I am writing this I am actually working on 5 books at the same time. One is ready to be published, one is in the final editing stages, and three are in different stages of development. I do not recommend working on five books at the same time – it tends to drag out the time it takes to get them out – but that’s how my brain works…

But know this: never stress a book out. The process of writing a book is the most rewarding part, at least for me. Few things gives you so much satisfaction than to take a huge amount of mumbled up thoughts of yours and then structuring them into a book that clearly communicates those thoughts to other people in a way that gives them value.

Good luck with your book writing – and with your speaking!

Fredrik Haren – The Creativity Explorer and the man behind ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

The post How writing a book is like baking. ProfesionalSpeaking. Episode. 309 appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

Watch on YouTube and on LinkedIn.

Also: Do not miss the 5-hour long FREE online course on YouTube: Master the Keynote. (Totally free. All I ask is that you help spread the word for the course, if you find value in it, and that if you hear of anyone interested in booking a speaker on creativity you think of me

Become the best speaker you can be.

The post Creative Virtual Speaking Setups. (Professional Speaking. Episode 306) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

And it is probably the advice that beginner speakers ignore the most. They know they should be watching themselves speak. But they don’t.

But you should.

And not only film yourself once and watch it once.

But film yourself often. And watch yourself often.

After 25 years of speaking and more than 2000 speeches delivered, I still do.

But here is the “expert tip”: Watch the SAME speech over and over again.

Because every time you do you will see different aspects. (Just like watching a movie over and over again. Every time you rewatch a movie you notice new things.)

And when you have watched the same speech 10, 15, 20 times then you start to notice small subtle things that you do that you would never notice would you always insist on only watching each speech once or twice.

I have just spent last week re-watching a video of myself speak 4 more times. A speech that I have most likely already seen 50 times – at least.

And yet, every time I watched it this week I found new things to improve – or new things that I notice that I do well.

Because watching yourself speak is not ONLY about identifying things you could do better – which can be difficult for your ego. (And which is the reason that so many beginner speakers “cheat” on watching themselves – they are afraid to hurt that ego…)

But watching yourself over and over is also about identifying what you are doing WELL – and if you look at it that way it becomes easier to “convince yourself” to sit down and watch a speech of yourself speaking over and over again.

So now go and find that speech of yours and watch it again. And again. And again.

The post Speakers: Stalk yourselves. (About repeatedly rewatching ourselves speak) (Professional Speaking. Episode 278) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

That was the words I found myself saying to two of the other speakers of the conference I spoke at earlier this week. (The conference was LEAP – a great HR conference in Bucharest, Romania with enthusiastic 700+ attendees (www.LEAP.ro).)

I could, of course, have chosen anything to say to them, but I picked “Have fun”, and in this episode of Professional Speaking I want to share why I think that is the best advice to tell a speaker before going up on stage.

So why is that?

Enjoyment is contagious. (Now, in these COVID-19 times the term “contagious” is perhaps not immediately connected to “joy”(The Coronavirus is serious stuff), but “contagious” is still the best word I can think of. A person having fun at their job (be that a bus driver, a waiter or a speaker) will affect the mood of the people around that person.

Having fun makes you less nervous. And being less nervous makes you relaxed. A relaxed speaker creates a relaxed audience.

Having fun makes you less stuck up on yourself. And that means you focus less on yourself and the single best advice for being a great speaker is to focus more on the message and the audience than on yourself.

Having fun makes you improvise more. When you are having fun it’s easier to laugh at your own mistake, easier to see new things you could do in the spur of the moment, and makes you more creative. All things that make a speech better.

Audiences find it easier to connect with a speaker whom they can see is having fun. And connecting with an audience is so important.

I could go on. A speaker having fun will communicate a message better. And it is true for virtually all topics. Even the most serious ones. (Do a test at the next conference you attend. Rate all the speakers you hear during one day on who you thought was the best speaker of the day. And also rank who how fun you think they had on stage. I am pretty sure that you will see a very clear correlation.)

So, did I tell myself to “have fun” too? I did. Did it work? I think so. (Not only for me but also for the two speakers I gave the advice to.)

I personally especially remember one woman of the many people who came up to me after my speech at LEAP who said: “I loved your speech.” and then added: “You have a very special, positive aura around you.”

Those two sentences combined into one feedback to me is what triggered this post. They show a very clear relationship between a speaker having fun on stage and the audience enjoying the speech. Now, this might sound like almost native advice, but I am surprised about how often speakers go up on stage and their “joyometer” is turned way down.

So the next time you go up to deliver the speech – for 700 or for 70 people – tell yourself to “have fun” right before you go up on stage. Then smile a huge smile and walk up that stage.

The post The simple secret to a great speech: Have fun. (Professional Speaking. Episode 272) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

The last few days I have, for example:

a) gotten an email from a man from Mongolia (Ankhbayar Batbaatar) who wrote to me out of the blue – to tell me that he is “my big fan” since a friend gave him my book “The Idea Book”.

b) received a book by an American woman (Lousie Karch) with a copy of her book (Word Glue) and that she happily told me in a sweet note that she was inspired by my book.

c) gotten a photo sent to me from a man in India (Jugdish Ahuja) which shows me how he has a picture of me speaking on a big stage as his desktop picture on two screens (!) to inspire him to dream big about speaking.

Mongolia.

America

India.

As a Swede living in Singapore that is just so inspiring to me to hear I have been inspiring others.

It is my firm belief that people who do what they love and love what they do – inspire.

It is my firm belief that people on a mission to spread a message to as many people as they can – inspire.

It is my firm belief that people who are humble enough to focus on doing things that inspire them – will inspire others.

And that is why this post is a bit awkward to write, because I do not want it to look like I am bragging about being called inspiring.

I am not. On the “people who inspire list” I am humbly aware that I am not even near to being at the top. (If ever there was such a list)

I am instead writing this post to hopefully inspire more people to live their lives in a way so that they will inspire more people.

The world needs more positive, inspiring examples right now.

As speakers, a big part of our job is to spread a message in a way that inspires.

So how can we do that?

My amateur observation of what inspires inspiration is:

a) Mastery. (Someone doing something really well – be that playing the piano or jumping into a pair of pants.)

b) Positivity. (Doing what you do in a positive way – be that cleaning the street or flying a plane.)

c) Humble ambition. (An urge to become better without the urge to feel that you are special.)

d) An element of surprise. (Something done well in an at least slightly unusual way – like a footballer doing an unexpected dribble.)

So if we as speakers and authors (as spreaders of messages) aim to spread our message:

a) As well as we possibly can

b) In a positive and/or funny way

c) while fully understanding that the message is not about us but about the audience

d) and do that in a way that at least slightly surprises the audience

Then we have a big chance of inspiring inspiration.

And the best part of doing that is that it is such an inspiring job to have. I am walking on feather light feet knowing that my book and speeches are inspiring people from Mongolia to America to India this week – so much that they take the time to sit and write me an email to tell me about it.

What are you going to do that will send waves of inspiration around the world?

The post Do Not Just Aim for Being Inspired. Aim for Being Inspiring. (Professional Speaking: Episode 271) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

I am a strong believer of writing speeches that works on people from all over the world. The reason for this is, as a global speaker, I speak all over the world (I spoke in 24 countries last year alone). But also because many speaking assignments for professional speakers will be for international/global audiences (meaning people in the audience will be from many different countries).

The post One Important Aspect of Writing A Universally Human Speech (Professional Speaking: Episode 270) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

Yes, all the seats are facing each other, not the stage.

That makes it harder for the speaker to connect.

But the really unusual set up is that the boss has a chair facing the OPPOSITE way.

There is a big LED TV so he can see the slides, but to see the speaker (and for the speaker to see him) he has to decide to turn around…

So how to deal with this as a speaker?

I saw this set up the night before my speech and considered having them change the layout of the room, but it was not an option.

To make the room work better I decided to:

1) Keep the energy up from the start to get the chairman to turn his chair around to see what was happening

2) Walk into the room a few times during the speech to create a better human connection with the room.

3) Network with the senior leaders (the ones that would be sitting in the blue chairs) during the dinner to have a personal rapport with them.

Lesson: You can not always change the room to how you want it so then work with what you got.

What is the most intimidating set-up you have ever spoken at? How did you resolve it? Email me at fredrik@fredrikharen.com

The post The most intimidating stage for a speaker. And how to handle it (Professional Speaking. Episode 267.) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

“Call for approach” means that you – during the speech, and preferably close to the end – give the audience a reason to come up to you after the speech.

You could say things like: “I am writing a book on xxx and would love to hear your examples, please approach me after my speech if you have a good story”, or “If you want more examples do not be afraid to approach me after the speech.”

The reason for the “call for approach” is that many audience members are afraid to approach a speaker. They might be shy, introverted, intimidated or even star struck. By giving them permission to approach you you encourage them to come up – giving you valuable opportunities to connect, network and research.

I promise you you will get more people coming up to you after your speech, and by people approaching you you will get more stories you can use, more connections you can nurture and more leads you can use.

** Special announcement: After 5 years of giving free advise on Professional Speaking but saying “no” to all requests for mentoring I have decided to take on a FEW mentees to help them build a global speaking career. If you are interested in knowing more send me an email fredrik@fredrikharen.com **

The post A super trick for building connections after a speech: “The call for approach” (Professional Speaking. Episode 266.) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

Industry conferences
Internal events
Client events
Today let’s talk about Client events.

Remember:

a) You are talking to strangers

When you speak to an audience where not everyone knows everyone you have to pay more attention to build rapport with the group and within the group.

b) They are there as guests – treat them like guests

A client event is a gift. Clients are there to feel special. That means you need to have a more positive message, have to be more entertaining and have a less “teaching approach” than when you speak at an internal conference.

c) They are there for a purpose and that purpose is not you.

Remember companies invite clients to sell something. That means that clients will very much appreciate if you incorporate some of the sales pitch into your speech. It looks so credible if the external speaker – in a believable way – pushes the clients products to the audience. And they love that. Or, if you can not do that, help by expressing what an amazing company the company is. Anything to help sell the client to his client.

Remember: Your speech is there to sell the client.

The post How to speaking at client events is different. (Professional Speaking. Episode 265.) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

In 2019 I was invited to speak in 24 countries on 5 continents. From top Swiss bankers meeting in a private hotel in the Swiss alps (my first speech of 2019) to all the top leaders of the TATA companies in India (my last speech of the year). From speaking to business people in North Korea to an HR conference in the Maldives and so many more amazing speaking opportunities.

I envisioned a global speaking year 2019. And it happened.

In 2020 envision a year of learning more about human creativity on a both deeper and broader level.

I am telling you this for three reasons:

a) To exemplify that when I share on how to build a global speaking career on ProfessionalSpeaking.com I am actually “walking the talk” – ie you really do get to learn from a speaker who actually speaks globally. (In total I have spoken in 69 countries over a 20+ year speaking career.)

b) To remind you that what we envision will happen.

What do you envision for your professional speaking career for 2020? What are you going to do to make it happen?

c) To remember that as important vision boards are for the future, “hindsight boards” (ie stopping to evaluate your year in a visual way to remind you of all the things you have done is equally important. It builds confidence, appreciation and helps you see who you are.

So do not just do a vision board for 2020. Make a “hindsight board” for 2019 too.

The post Look back to look forward. (Professional Speaking. Episode 263.) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.