Life of a professional speaker

Sick leave vs leave sick.

By Fredrik Haren

Speaker war story about how to handle being sick when being a speaker.

I have been a little under the weather on and off for the last few months.. The funny thing is that it has been coming and going and always when I feel I am getting better, I became worse again. I guess it is a mixture of “airplane flu” from flying a lot and of “kindergarten flu” from having two kids bringing home all kinds of germs from their classmates

But generally it has not slowed me down. But a while back I was hit by something else.

I boarded the plane tofeeling a bit sick. On the plane I started to feel worse.

The first leg of my journey was an agonising 8 hours journey from hell with a blistering headaches that no migraine medicine had any effect on.

On the second leg I started to feel even worse.

I must have looked really sick as 5 (!) different crew members approached me to check if I was ok and one of them even came running with a thermometer – that happened to show that I had not only a bad migraine but also 38.7 C fever.

For the whole 15 hour duration of my trip (including transfers) from Singapore to Europe I must have slept 13 hours.

When I arrived t my destination the night before my speech the crew had prepared a wheel chair (!) for me as I exited the plane.

My male pride prevented my from accepting it – but after walking, what felt like 5 km of airport corridors I started to regret that choice.

When checked into my hotel room I went straight to bed and continued to sleep.

Then it got worse.

I woke up in the middle of the night by my bed being SOAKED in sweat (we are talking wet as in being dropped into a bathtub) And not only one side of the bed, but both sides of the queens size bed …

I got up and got some big towels to lie on to sleep on something dry.

A few hours later I had to get up again and get a new set of towels.

I was scheduled to speak at 9 am. and due to do a sound check at 7 am.

Amazingly, I woke up at 6.30 feeling 100% ready to go!

I got ready, did my sound check and delivered a speech that the audience and the client was very happy with.

How does that happen?

I still do not know.

Like i wrote in a recent blog post, it seems like the body is “aware” of when it can be sick – and when it has to function.
I am very happy it all worked out great yet again.

Lesson:

Being a professional speaker is a privileged profession. When we are not on stage our work is extremely flexible and we can choose to take off time in the middle of the day to pick up our kids from school, go see a lunch-time-movie – or go take a nap for a few hours because we are feeling tired.

But when we are scheduled to be on stage we better all fired up to perform.

That means we have to really learn to master the art of saving, channeling and focusing our energy.

I am very, very glad that I was able to do that on my recent trip to Europe. A trip that had me at 1% energy for 20 hours of travelling – and at 100% energy for that one hour I was on stage. (Then it went back to 10% energy again flying home…)

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How to become better as a speaker

Peer-feedback

By Fredrik Haren

If a stand-up comedian wants feedback on his or her routine he/she can ask people in the audience, or he can ask another comedian.

The feedback will be quite different.

If a musician asks an audience member for feedback, or a fellow musician, again the feedback will be quite different.

And if a movie director ask a bunch of movie goers about how to make a movie better he or she will get totally different feedback than if the question goes to fellow movie directors.

The feedback from the peers will be deeper, more specific and on a different level. Expert talking to expert will generate expert feedback.

That is why I am so surprised why not more speakers ask other speakers for feedback.

I try to do it as often as I can.

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Today I did it in Taipei, Taiwan where I was speaking at the he Asia Pacific Conference for the Association for Talent Development. A few days ago I found out that a speaker friend of mine, Coen Tan, was going to attend my speech and he wrote to on Facebook “I will get a front seat”. I thanked him but asked him to instead take a seat in the very BACK of the room. Because if you sit in the back of the room you can evaluate not only the speaker, but also the reactions of the audience.

I then asked Coen to observe my speech and take notes.

After the speech we sat down in a café and Coen gave his perspective on my content, my delivery and my message.

He had some very good ideas around how I could rephrase a few of my stories for more impact. Ideas that I definitely will implement.

Hearing his comments it was so clear how different feedback from a fellow speaker is from feedback from “normal” audience members.

It is my experience that non-speaker-feedback tends to be very positive (“Oh, it was amazing!) or focused on something negative: “You said X, and did not like that” or “You do Y and it annoyed me.”.

It is my experience that speaker feedback is more focused on small improvements and suggestions on how to tweak and change the speech, the stories or the delivery to make it even better.

A non-speaker comes from the perspective: “I as an audience like/did not like X.”

A fellow speaker comes from the perspective: “If this was my speech I would do X.”

That makes speaker feedback more constructive.

Lesson: So the next time you get a chance to have a fellow speaker in the audience, grab him or her and ask them to help you make your speech better.

Feed on feedback.

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The business of speaking, Uncategorized

The writing is on the big (projector) wall: The Market for Asian Conferences (and speakers) is booming.

By Fredrik Haren

In the speaker industry there seems to always be a big focus on making it BIG by going to the USA.

That is were the BIG conferences are, where the BIG audiences are, where the big money in speaking is.

And yes, that is true. The US is the place to be for being a speaker right now.

But if you are playing the long game, then Asia is the place to focus on as a speaker.

Asia has 60% of the worlds population.

Asia’s share of global GDP is already around 40% (USA’s share is well below 20%…)

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And Asia is where the growth is happening.

Yet, very, very few professional speakers have chosen to focus on Asia.

And yes, it is true that the speaking and conference market in Asia has not been as developed as other industries, but it is quickly changing.

I moved to Asia more than 10 years ago, after having had 10 years of success as a speaker in Sweden/Scandinavia. I moved because I saw potential in the Asian speaking market.

When I arrived there were very few Asian Conferences since the people in the different Asian countries could not speak good enough English which meant there were really no reasons to have a conference since the delegates could not speak to each other. (I remember a conference I did in China in 2007 for a client who had invited their Asian clients where they had 20 (!) translators translating the sessions into different Asian languages.)

But the quality of english in Asia has drastically improved.

And now more and more Asian conferences are taking place with people flying in from all over Asia.

And these conferences are growing and growing every year.

I can see it on the size of the audiences – and on the size of the projector screens…

When arrived in Asia ten year ago you would be happy if you got a well lit screen. Over the years the quality of the screens (and everything else around the organisation of a conference) has improved and now I have seen some of the most professionally put together conference I have ever seen happen in Asia.

The conference I spoke at today is a perfect example of this trend. Today I was the (only) keynote speaker at the EY Asia/Pacific Tax Symposium.
968 delegates from 363 companies and 36 countries attended the conference at the gigantic Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre.
EY has organised this event for ten years, and this year was the largest so far.

And the computer screens were just gigantic!

I measured it and got it to be a total of 22 meter wide (and about 4-6 meters high). All high definition computer screens (not projectors).

If the quality of the conferences, the number of delegates, the budget for organising these conferences in Asia is increasing every year than where will the Asia speaking industry be in five years time? In then years time? It is just going to be huge.

And what speakers outside Asia do not understand is that Asian audiences do NOT want someone who just flew in from Europe or America to tell his (or hers) western examples and western stories!

They want someone who understands, knows and connects with Asia – and with the rest of the world. They want speakers who have a GLOBAL mindset (not a western – or an Asian – mindset.)

As a global speaker who comes from the West, has lived in Asia for over ten years – and who spoke in 24 different countries on 4 continents in just in the last 12 month alone, I have built an Asia based, global speaking business not around what the speaking world looks like today – but what it will look like tomorrow.

And many of my assignments this year have been Asian conferences or global conferences held in Asia (or Global conferences held elsewhere where they wanted a speaker who had knowledge of both east and west.)

As a matter of fact in 2016 I did 24 different global or international conferences like that. around the world.

I am amazed that not more speakers have built their long term strategy around where the growth of the business world – and speaking industry – is most likely to happen.

The focus of commerce, business and power is shifting to the East. So is the speaking industry.

If you want to be a global speaker you have to understand, know – and speak in – Asia.

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