SYB-327-Webinar.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

SYB-327-Webinar.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Carol Cox:
More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses, running for office and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a political analyst, entrepreneur and speaker, I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is Speaking Your Brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience.

Carol Cox:
Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast. I'm your host, Carol Cox. This episode is the audio from a webinar that I just hosted all around How to go from expert to thought Leader. The three key strategies you need now to set yourself apart in our new AI driven world. So if you would like to watch the video recording so that you can see the slides that I go through, you can do that as well. There's a link right there in the show notes so that you can go and watch the video. You can still listen to it. I mean, the slides are always nice as a visual reinforcement, but you don't have to see the slides in order to get a lot of value from just listening to the audio. Now, let's jump you straight into the webinar.

Carol Cox:
This year so far here we are already at the beginning of May. Have you been pitching yourself for speaking engagements? So this can include submitting proposals at conferences when they have call for speakers open. It could be that you're reaching out to event organizers, local groups in the community, the city that you live in, seeing if they have any speaking opportunities available.

Carol Cox:
So have you been pitching? Let us know in the chat if you've been actively pitching yourself for speaking engagements. All right. We see we have some stellar scholars here, too, from people who've taken the speaker archetype quiz. So let me know if you've been pitching yourself for speaking engagements, because the reason I ask this is because speaking opportunities are increasing. As you will probably have seen, more and more conferences and events are coming back to in-person. Many of them are doing hybrid where they do have a virtual online streaming component. But as I'm seeing more and more, everyone is very excited to get back to being in person, to having that collaboration and that literally a face to face time with other people. And so those opportunities are increasing, which means there are lots of places that you can start pitching to speak at, whether it's conferences, events in your industry or those local groups, business groups, chambers of chambers of commerce and so on. So just know that there are lots of opportunities out there for you to be pitching to. And here's the reason why I want you to really double down on the public speaking. Obviously, before the pandemic, I know many of you were doing public speaking in person as as as I was as well. But then during the pandemic, you know, everything shifted to virtual. And we've been slowly getting back to in-person. And you may have found over the past few years that there's been just so much more content that gets generated and produced online, whether it's in our social media feeds, our email inboxes, even our podcasts.

Carol Cox:
And if you're a fan of the Speaking your Brand podcast, let me know in the chat. I so appreciate you taking the time to listen every week, but there's more and more content out there, which means that the people you're trying to reach, your audiences, those prospective clients, they're distracted. And also those algorithms are making it harder for them to see the content that you're putting out there. And so, yes, continues to do that because we need to reach people online. But there's such an incredible opportunity for you to be a public speaker because guess what? You have a captive and engaged audience who is literally right in front of you, obviously in person. They're sitting right in front of you. But even virtually online like today in this webinar, you all are hopefully rather engaged, maybe not quite captive, as captive as you would be if we were in a room together. But still, you're more likely to be paying attention. This is the opportunity you have to put your message out there to your audience is to be there in person in front of them. So now I have some poll questions for you. I frame this training today around this idea that in this age of AI that we're rapidly entering, how can we make sure that we are standing out and that we are resonating with our audiences and getting in front of them? So I have a couple of poll questions for you.

Carol Cox:
You look you should have a little poll area here, so let me see. You should see there's two questions there. Click on the little poll icon. One of the questions says, Have you used Chatgpt? You could answer yes all the time. Yes, You've tried it a few times or no. Then the other question is, how do you feel about AI right now? You can answer that. You're 5050, excited and terrified or mostly excited or mostly terrified for I mean, just in general, like for for the impact it's going to have on society as a whole. All right. So see you all are taking the polls, so go ahead and keep answering those. So we have lots of people have been using Chatgpt. Great. So we're almost about split, though, between those who've used it and those who haven't. How do you feel about AI? Well, we have most people are 50, 50 excited and terrified. I think I usually fall into that camp as well. And a lot of you, though, are mostly excited about AI. That's great. All right. And let us know in the chat if you know what it is that you're excited about. Related to that, I know that it's definitely been saving time for me to do kind of content ideation ideas for content to put out there outlines. So it's really useful for that. All right. So keep doing the polls there. Let's go back to the chat. So here, let's talk then today about how you can make this shift from experts to thought leader.

Carol Cox:
Because guess what? The AI is the ultimate expert. We can't beat it. It knows literally everything in a blink of an eye at its fingertips, or, as I say, at its bits. And so it knows all this information on the Internet and it can put give it back to us in a really nicely written way. So it knows lots of domain knowledge, including most likely your domain knowledge as well. But I'm going to show you here today how you can make sure that your leveraging these three key strategies so that you still stand out in this age of AI and you don't get stuck and what I call the expert trap, if you're new to speaking your brand, welcome. As I mentioned at the top, I'm Carol Cox, the founder and CEO. We've been around since 2015. I'm the host of the Weekly Speaking Your Brand podcast, which has over 325 episodes and counting if you want anything at all as far as public speaking, a thought leadership, you'll definitely will find an episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast. We also provide coaching and training. I'll tell you a little bit about our Thought Leader Academy, and we do in-person events, especially our annual speaking intensive workshop that we do. And I know we have some team members here in the chat. Diane Diaz, our lead speaking coach, and Selena Roberts, our client concierge, are here in the chat, so make sure to say hi to them.

Carol Cox:
All right.

Carol Cox:
Go back over here. So what are we covering today with thought? Leadership really means myths you may have internalized that are keeping you from the impact and the income that you want to make. Three key strategies you need now and some examples to guide you and to inspire you along the way. As I mentioned, we do have our thought Leader Academy. It is an open for enrollment right now. Our next start date is in one week. So it's Tuesday, May 9th. So it's coming up pretty soon. And I'll tell you more at the end about our Thought Leader Academy. I know we have some grads here in the chat who went through the Thought Leader Academy. And so I'll tell you at the end about that. You can also go to speaking your brand.com/academy if you want to take a look now. So these are the essential ingredients for thought leadership that I've identified after working with hundreds of you all over the past few years. Is that where where we tend to do as speakers is we share our expertise so we know our topic really well. We know the work that we do. And so we go and deliver presentations and we're sharing our area of expertise. There is value in that. However, what the danger in that is that you become then what I call a commodity speaker is that you are then very much replaceable and interchangeable with anyone else who also has that area of expertise.

Carol Cox:
So just pull one person or pull another person. They're pretty much going to provide that that level of training or that level of information. And guess what? As I said, the I can now do that even better than we can. So what we need to do for thought leadership and this goes for your speaking your presentations is we need to layer on next what is your big idea? What is that angle or perspective you have regarding your expertise? And we'll talk more about that in just a moment. Your personal story, which we'll also talk about, and then the emotional courage to really dig deep and to share your deepest truth, because that's how you're truly going to connect with your audience on a human level, which is, of course, the one thing that I cannot do, at least not yet, or at least not reasonably well yet. So here are the myths that I see from so many of the women that we have worked with and that we've talked to over the years. The first myth that we see and I and I have believed these things as well, which is why I can share them with you, is because I know that we all get stuck here. The first myth is that believing that you need to teach or to train to provide value to your audience, and this is because your identity is tied to you.

Carol Cox:
Seeing yourself as the expert with the answers and raise your hand or raise your figurative hand in the chat. Let me know in the chat if you can relate to this. This idea of being the expert. You have the degrees, you have the credentials, you have the work experience, you know your industry. You know the work that you do really, really well, as you should. And there's value to the clients that you work with and being the expert and being able to guide them. But as a public speaker, if you want to shift into thought leadership, it's no longer about being the expert with the answers. It's rather about thinking of the questions that your audience needs to be asking themselves in order to get to the next step in their own journey. So you don't need to always teach and train in your presentations to provide value. Instead, thought leadership and asking questions can be more powerful even than providing answers. So let me know in the chat if you resonate with that. The second myth that we hear very often is that women come to us and say that they don't have a story to share or that their story, if they can think of one, is kind of uninteresting or no one can relate to it, or it's just too uncommon. So no one's going to. No one's going to get it or understand it.

Carol Cox:
Let me know in the chat If you've ever thought this for your own presentations and your own content that you want to share. And here's the thing, and here's what we do in the Thought Leader Academy. So we help you decide which story, which stories are the ones that are going to resonate most with your audience and connect you to them. Because we all have stories to share. We all have experiences that have led us to what the work that we do today. What are those threads? Why does this matter to you? And that's what you want to share with your audience right now here, speaking your brand. We're doing an incredibly inspiring project with a group of faculty members who are taking their research and creating TEDx style talks around it for a for a general audience. So they're taking their, you know, the very specific, focused research that they're doing in history and sociology and economics. And we're helping them to create these TEDx style talks. Ten minutes they have to share the biggest impact of their research. But what we have told them are working with them on is how important their personal story, their personal journey is to their talk so their audience can relate to them. So this goes whatever your topic is, whether it's an academic topic or a business topic, your story is an important part of it. The third myth that we hear from a lot of the clients we work with is that your audience doesn't want to be sold to or that you can't make money from speaking.

Carol Cox:
And I'm here to tell you that both of those things are not true. I used to believe these as well. And so for so many years in my career and I've been I've been a public speaker really since high school, but for the past 20 years and the businesses that I've had, I've spoken at dozens of different technology and marketing and women's conferences audiences don't mind being sold to if what you're providing is a value to them. And also sometimes you give a presentation and then they wonder, Well, is that it? How can I do more? How can I work with this person? Or what does this person do in their business? How can I get more help from them? So your audience does need to know that information, which is what I'm modeling here today by talking about our Thought Leader Academy. The other thing is that you can absolutely make money from speaking. We work with clients who have gone from making $0, from speaking to making $5000 to $10,000 to even $25,000 for a speaking engagement. Just heard from a client last week, and that's what she got from a conference that she's going to be speaking at. It is entirely possible, but there are key things that you need to do in order to make that more likely to happen.

Carol Cox:
And here's what happens, though, when you've internalized these three myths that I just went over feeling like your audience only wants teaching training content, that your personal story doesn't matter, or it's not that interesting and that you can't make money from speaking is that you're stuck in what I call this expert trap. And that's what we want to get out of. So this is the shift you make when you go through our Thought Leader Academy. We take you from this expert presenter into a story speaker and into a thought leader. Here's my definition of a thought leader, and there's lots of definitions floating around there on the Internet. But this is the one that I like because I feel like this is most accessible for us. I know sometimes we think thought leaders are like these people on a pedestal or these people who have done TED talks like Brené Brown with, you know, tens of millions of views on them or thought leaders or ones who have big publishing deals for their books or what have you. I believe that each of us can be a thought leader within our space, within our industry, within our community. And actually we should be because we should be pushing on that status quo, trying to make positive change for more people and making sure that the. So the quote unquote, so-called best practices that may have been in place for way too long and are not serving everyone get changed.

Carol Cox:
So for thought leadership, I like to think of thought leaders as someone who has an interesting idea, especially one that hasn't been talked about a lot in their circle of influence. Thought leaders challenge the status quo in our assumptions. They communicate with boldness. They inspire people to take action. And they also cause people to be self-reflective and to learn more about themselves and how they see the world. Hopefully, I did a little bit of this today by showing you those three myths that you may have internalized so that you maybe you can understand a little bit more about where you're coming from and how you can make this identity shift as well. So let me know in the chat if you resonate with this idea of being a thought leader of this definition of being a thought leader, and if this seems accessible to you, something that you can do because you absolutely can, and this is the result of getting out of this expert trap and stepping into thought leadership is that you attract opportunities, recognition and clients. I've been featured in Forbes two times with different articles that the contributors have written about me. I've also been named as one of Orlando's Women of the Year in 2021, and this directly came from thought leadership. Here's another example.

Carol Cox:
One of our thought leader Academy grads, Jackie Roby. She went through the Thought Leader Academy way back in the fall of 2020 and graduated in early 2021, so over two years ago now. And since then, she has been, you see, on the cover of a magazine, she's been she's been nominated for and received awards. She also got the opportunity to speak at a conference in Dubai two years in a row and was flown a business class by the event there. I mean, how amazing is that? That is definitely the way to go if you're going to go halfway around the world. This is Doctor Christina madison, who's also one of our clients. When the pandemic started back in March of 2020. She's a public health pharmacist and she was asked to go on her local TV stations in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she lives, to talk about public health and talk about the pandemic. And Christina, the she. Covid 19 was just as new to her as it was to everyone else. Yet she still said yes. She went on TV to talk about public health, to talk about whatever it was that was the current knowledge at the time. And since then, she's been on TV over 200 times. She's been invited to the White House and she did a TED Talk last year. You can see the picture there on the right hand side, a TED. Talk about the experience that she's had working in public health, especially during the pandemic.

Carol Cox:
So this is what happens when you step into thought leadership and you say yes to these opportunities. So here are the three key strategies that we're going to walk through today and have some questions to give you so that you can start thinking of these right now for yourself. Because I want this time that we have here together to be useful and valuable and actionable for you. So let's go through the first one. Actually, let me go back here. So we're going to talk about having an interesting perspective, intellectual property and personal storytelling. Now, I was trying to go for an alliteration because if you've been around speaking your brand for a while, you know, we love acronyms and alliterations. The best that I could do was the P's for prospective property and Personal couldn't quite get it. I know Diane is in the chat. She probably can figure out an alliteration for these three things, but this is what I got for right now. So we got perspective, kind of intellectual property and personal storytelling. All right. So let me give you a kind of an example of why this is so important, these strategies and the actual result of what happens. I I've been since the beginning of well, really since December when Chatgpt came out. And I have a technology background. The first two businesses that I owned were in technology software development.

Carol Cox:
We built huge technology project for Fortune 500 companies. We also developed political software that was the first in the nation to do everything that that it did at the time. This was back in 2005, 2006. So it's been a long time. So I had this technology background as well. And when Chatgpt came out in December, I was all over it. I love this idea of AI and how it can help us be more creative and help us to ideate and collaborate with another intelligence. So I've been starting to pitch myself at AI related conferences, just like you all pitch yourself for conferences. I do the same thing. So I had a position myself in a way, though, that combined these different strengths that I had in technology and marketing and also in brand voice, since that's what we do here at Speaking. Your brand is obviously around public speaking and brand voice and thought leadership. So I started to put together my speaking proposals and I'm excited that I was selected to speak at Macon, which is the industry's leading event for marketing and AI. This is coming up in July. And so the topic that I'm speaking on is called Maintain Your Brand Voice with AI, Personalization and Storytelling. So again, I knew I had to find that interesting angle for the speaking proposal, but also that would leverage my strengths in marketing and branding and technology.

Carol Cox:
So that's the way that I did it. So if I had just come out with a speaking proposal that was just about marketing, say, taking my marketing background, it wouldn't have had quite the same appeal because I really needed to combine all of those areas together. And by doing so, getting selected to speak, there is obviously a huge win. So that's why this having these strategies really does work. So let's take a look at the first one, which is having an interesting perspective. So if we look back at this one here, the title that I came up with, Maintain Your brand voice with AI, personalization and storytelling. So first the title had to be very short. Those were the maximum number of characters that was allowed for this particular speaking submission. So it is short, but I got in there this interesting perspective, which is sure you can use these AI tools, but how can we use these tools in a better way? Number one, to solve the problem of brand voice? Because the content that comes back from Chatgpt is a little is generic. It's kind of like, sounds like everyone else. So how can we make it sound more like what you want to sound like, what your brand sounds like? So that's where this idea of AI personalization and storytelling comes in. So I'm bringing this unique perspective into AI by talking about brand voice and storytelling and personalization.

Carol Cox:
So that's what I want you to think about for your own topics, your speaking topics and how you're positioning yourself is what is an interesting perspective that you can bring to your topic to the industry that you're speaking in. And this is why this is so important, because I believe that this that there are ideas and stories that are out there kind of floating in the ether. And I read this in Elizabeth Gilbert's nonfiction book, Big Magic, which I highly recommend. It's a fantastic book. And she talks about how ideas are kind of out there. And then they come in and have it a person, and then it's up to that person to decide, are they going to activate that idea? And if they sit too long and the idea is laying dormant, that idea will probably leave that person and go find someone else. And that could be a shame because perhaps it was you that that idea was meant for. But that you didn't activate it. And I know sometimes it can feel scary. You get imposter syndrome. We're afraid of rejection to put ourselves out there for speaking opportunities. We're afraid of embarrassment. Maybe we go and speak and something we mess up. Here's a side note your audience does not know you're messing up, by the way. They are very kind to you, so don't worry about that. But we do have these doubts that creep in.

Carol Cox:
But the reason that I know you're here on this webinar, watching this and listening to this is that, you know, you have a message, an important message to share with the people that you want to share it with. Those ideas have come to you for a reason. The stories that you have, the experiences that you've gone through, those hard won life lessons. You've gone through them for a reason, and now it's your time to share them with others so that they can take those lessons and apply them to yours, to themselves. I don't know about you, but I know when I sit down to work on a presentation, a talk that I'm going to give as I have all of these ideas and examples and stories and content elements that I want to include, and they're like these long winding branches of an oak tree where the ideas just build and build and build upon each other. And I know that we have here in the webinar, we have a bunch of people from Tiffany Hawks. Audience Tiffany Hawk is a book coach and she's very kindly sent out an email letting people know about this training here today. So if you're from Tiffany Hawks audience, let me know in the chat here because I would love to say hi. I know she said a bunch of people here, but you all I know are working on your book proposals and your books.

Carol Cox:
And for a book you can have all of these long winding branches because you have so much room in a book. I mean, obviously your book still needs to be focused, but you have a lot more room in your book to go off in these different directions for for the reader. However, in a presentation or that your presentation is 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour or even that ten minute TED talk, you have a very much shorter amount of time. So you need to be really focused. Otherwise your audience will get confused and overwhelmed. And because, again, we are the experts. We know so much about our topic, it's easy for us to want to literally brain dump everything we know from the past ten, 20 plus years of our life onto an audience and 35 to 45 minutes. And that's just not possible. So instead, we have to pick out what are those key elements that the audience most needs to hear that's going to help them. So I want you to think of when you're you're thinking about your interesting perspective. Is this through line, this idea of a really strong trunk, a really strong spine, that everything you talk about in your presentation needs to hang off of. Now, you can have multiple presentations if you want to focus on different things, but you need to have that central throughline to hang off of.

Carol Cox:
And this is what's going to help you keep your content organized and help your audience. So how can you think about finding that angle, finding that interesting perspective for yourself? This is literally a mind map that someone did. This was probably about five years ago. 5 or 6 years ago, I was chatting with them and they're like, okay, Carol, so tell me all the things that, you know, you talk about or you teach or that are interesting to you. So these are the things that came out, women, politics. I've been a political analyst on TV news since 2005. Communication. At the time, I was doing a little bit more with social media that I am now culture. So I have a master's degree in history, right? Technology. So like all of these things kind of kind of come together. But where can you find those interesting intersections? How can you bring it's like almost like a recipe of ingredients. How can you combine some ingredients in a kind of a new way or an unusual way that's going to help you stand out compared to other speakers who are talking about similar things, similar topics? If you already know what your kind of angle is or your perspective like you can put in here, like for the that marketing conference, my interesting angle was AI technology, kind of plus brand voice plus storytelling. So if you know what your angle is, go ahead and you can put it in the chat.

Carol Cox:
Just add put those pluses together with those keywords. The other thing we're thinking about, your interesting perspective is being willing to be bold with it. It the being a thought leader means that you're going to be saying some things that some people may not like or may not agree with or may not resonate with. And that's okay. This is Jodi Flynn. She went through our Thought Leader Academy and she graduated about a year ago. She has a fantastic podcast called Women Taking the Lead. And so she when she went through the Thought Leader Academy, the reason she decided to join was because she felt she was very much in that expert trap and wanted to shift into thought leadership as we work together in the academy and helped her to her to focus and identify her thought leadership message and create her signature talk. She ended up deciding if she figured out that the message that she needed to share with her audiences was a bold message. It was about how the reason why there's not more women in leadership positions within companies, that it's not the fault of the women, it's the fault of the organization. And she had to be willing to say that to the organizations. And she did. And now she sees the benefits of doing so because she's putting herself out there and she's getting these speaking opportunities and she's getting clients because because she's willing to talk about the things that people already know in their head.

Carol Cox:
But no one's saying out loud. So say those things out loud. Like, say the quiet parts out loud as appropriate, of course. So in the day that you get in the Thought Leader Academy, we work with you to create your signature talk. You can see I'm working with one of our clients, Tania Smith. And so as this is a three hour day on Zoom and we work together to create your talk from beginning to end, so we make sense of all of your ideas, finding what that interesting perspective is, finding that angle for you, finding those intersections, and then laying it all out for you in our framework. So it's a fun process. All right, let's keep going. So here's what I want you to ask yourself for. This section about your interesting perspective is what is your unique viewpoint for your industry, for your topic area? Where do you do or believe that's different or challenges the status quo and where can you be bold and the message that you're putting out there? Great. So think about that and let me know in the chat if you know what you're interested. Interesting perspective. What are those pluses in there? All right, let's keep going. So let's talk about key strategy number two, which is all around intellectual property.

Carol Cox:
Now, you may think this is kind of odd, like here I'm talking about public speaking and thought leadership. Where does intellectual property come in? It is so incredibly important because this is what helps you to stand out again, to make that shift from being an expert presenter to a thought leader and all the results that come from that. You may recognize these two people here from their very well known TED talks or TED talks. Their frameworks literally built their careers, their intellectual property built their careers. Mel Robbins, she came up with her five second rule from her TED talk that has now become a book. And she's a very highly regarded keynote speaker. Of course, Simon Sinek, he had his start with Y The Golden Circle. The Y. How? What? This was back. Oh, it's like 2008. 2009. So a long time ago now. Of course, built his career, built his consulting company, the books that he's written. Again, a very highly paid and highly in-demand keynote speaker. That is the power of having intellectual property of developing your own framework. So here you go back. So here at Speaking your brand, we have our signature talk canvas framework. This is something that I developed years ago after working with our clients because I figured out and you may probably have realized this too, as if you work with your clients, that you keep doing the same things over and over to get them the results that they need.

Carol Cox:
You maybe have certain steps that you go through, certain information you gather from them, certain things that you end up generating for them. So this is what happens. So we created our signature talk canvas framework with this based on the three act story structure and then infusing marketing and sales techniques throughout it. So this is what you saw on that colorful board with all the Post-it notes on it that was that framework on that board. So because we have this framework, it is now our intellectual property. So not only do we have it to use with our clients, I've talked about it on the podcast, but also we can train others on it. Now here's the best thing is that Chatgpt actually knows who speaking your brand is. They know who Chatgpt knows who I am and Chatgpt knows who the or what the signature talk canvas framework is. So this is just the other day I put in this is a little video of Chatgpt. I said, Who created the signature talk canvas? It was created by Carol Cox, the founder of Speaking Your Brand. And then I asked it, What makes the signature talk canvas better than other public speaking frameworks? And it nailed it like it knew. Customized approach, audience centric storytelling structure, organization, call to action, audience engagement, all of those things. Because this intellectual property has been out on the Internet on speaking your brand website, on our blog post, on the podcast in podcast transcripts accept now knows what it is.

Carol Cox:
So now there are so many things that we can do to leverage AI with the framework. This is what's going to set you apart from other experts out there, from other public speakers if you have discoverable and usable intellectual property. So start developing that IP and start putting it out there. Here's an example of using our signature talk canvas framework. Why frameworks are so powerful is because here's an example of a client that I worked with years ago. This was her original slide deck. Now again, she's brilliant. The company that she runs does amazing work with healthcare companies and defense contractors, so, so big clients. And so she has a lot of, again, expert knowledge, a lot of domain knowledge. But it was getting lost in the weeds of the presentations that she was delivering. She was doing these presentations for lead generation to try to get clients. But as you can see from the sample of these slides, lots of text, very dense people in the audience are not going to want to read all of this. They're certainly not going to want the the presenter to read the slides to them. And there was no structure to it. There was no flow to it, there was no narrative arc to it.

Carol Cox:
So we worked together to revise the entire presentation from beginning to end. And then this is what her new slide deck looked like. So you can see not only just better slide design, So getting rid of all of that small text and bullet points instead of having large font, the graphics look much better. She had a graphic designer work on them, but not just the the overall aesthetics, but the content is much more focused. It takes the audience on a journey. There's a clear call to action and her thought leadership is integrated into it. It's no longer just an information dump. Instead, it's taking the audience on a journey. Here is the other reason to have your own framework, your own intellectual property is that you can keep building on it for so many things that you do. You can take your your framework. You can create an online course from it, a program from it. You can use it as the basis of your book. You can use it for podcast episodes, for blog articles that you're writing. This is one of my clients, Amber de La Garza. She's also the host of the Productivity Straight Talk Podcast, a fantastic podcast that I've been on a couple times. She's been on the Speaking Your Brand podcast a couple of times, including as recently as last fall, where she talked about all the ways that she's leveraging the framework that we worked on together back in 20, I think it was 2018.

Carol Cox:
And so since 2018, she's used it in a number of ways in her business, more ways than she even had anticipated in the beginning. So I want you to think about and you can let us know in the chat. Do you have a framework or other intellectual property that you're putting out into the public? So it can it can be through presentations, could be through podcasts, blog articles, social media, content, what have you. And I really want you to start thinking about how you can start creating this intellectual property as you go through the Thought Leader Academy. One of the things that you work on is your own framework, because that will most likely inform a good chunk of the content of the signature talk that you're working on because you want to take that audience through kind of a step by step or a process of what it is that you're helping with them. So definitely, if you don't already have a framework or maybe you have a partial framework, but you're not sure how to to strengthen it, that is something that we do together in the Thought Leader Academy. So that was our second strategy, intellectual property. Let's talk about the third one, which is personal storytelling. Story is created our world from, you know, thousands and thousands, not millions of years ago, but thousands of years ago.

Carol Cox:
We, you know, told stories around the campfire. And we did that to pass information from one person to another, to pass information from one generation to another, and also to understand ourselves, to understand ourselves as humans, relationships, understanding the world. Stories still create our world. The stories that we're telling today about our society, about our politics, about our economy, about the impact that AI is going to have. All of those stories matter. And guess what? I want to make sure that women are a part of creating and telling those stories as well. One of the challenges with AI. Large language models like Chatgpt is that of course they basically have trained on the entire Internet, so they sucked up as much of the Internet as they could get access to, including all the books, published books that they've had access to over the past, you know, 100 plus years. All blog articles, media articles, news articles, Wikipedia, YouTube videos, comments, social media posts, everything. And the the challenge with that is that so many, so much of that content was written by and written about men. And I want to make sure that as women we recognize that we need a seat at the table, especially with something like AI. It's going to be transforming our world sooner than we probably think, but also making sure that the stories we tell about what matters to us are stories that we are telling and telling, whether it's on podcasts, in the media or on stages.

Carol Cox:
So you play a vital role in doing that. If you go back to this essential ingredients for thought leadership, that story there is the one that oftentimes can be the hardest. Because again, we feel like we either don't have that great of a story or a story is too uncommon. No one can relate to it. But trust me, you do have a story to share. And we we that's what we work on in the Thought Leader Academy is making sure that we find the one that's best suited to you and best suited to your content and your audience. This is a quote that I absolutely love from the author, Sue Monk Kidd. She said that the deeper we go into our own experience, the more we'll hit the universal experience. And by this she means that when we tell our stories in a detailed way and a specific way, we don't smooth out the edges. We don't go into vagueness or generalizations to try to think that we're going to relate to the audience more. If it's the more generalized the story is, rather, the more specific we are to drop the audience into that scene, into that moment, into the emotions that we were feeling, into what was what we were thinking, what we were saying to the other person, what was going on around us.

Carol Cox:
That's what we're going to truly connect with our audiences. And yet I know it's scary to be vulnerable. It's scary to put ourselves out there. It's scary to put ourselves out there sometimes just talking about expertise, content, much less putting our stories out there. But every time I have done this, particularly on the podcast, but also in speaking engagements, every time I've been willing to dig deep and to share things, even share things that I wasn't really sure that, that I felt. I mean, I felt comfortable with it, but yet there was still that little bit of doubt. We call it vulnerability hangovers, a little bit of like, oh, should I say this or not? And every time I did. The response has been incredible. People come up to me after the speaking engagement or email me later or listen to the podcast and then email me and say, Carol, thank you so much for saying the hard things. Thank you so much for sharing that heartfelt story because it shows that you're not perfect and it shows that you understand what I'm going through because I've had a similar experience or whatever it happens to be. That's the power of vulnerability. Vulnerability opens up your audience to be able to receive more of your message, and it also transforms you as a person because the better you understand yourself. Here's the penultimate example of the power of vulnerability.

Carol Cox:
Our client, Tammy Lally, delivered this TEDx Orlando talk in 2017. She talked about money, shame, and she could have gotten up on that TEDx stage and shared tips for budgeting, tips for saving money, tips for spending less. After all, she's a financial planning professional and a money coach. But she knew that wasn't going to have the impact she wanted to have, just sharing her expertise, the tips and tricks. So when we work together on her talk, she knew she needed to tell the story about her family. She knew it was going to be incredibly hard to do so, but she knew she had no choice. Those ideas and that story had come to her and she was now the messenger for this message. And I, for one, am so grateful that she had the courage to do that. Her talk has been viewed now over 2 million times. It has transformed the people who have watched it. It's also transformed Tammy. It has increased her coaching business, and she's now a highly paid, in-demand public speaker because of this. That is the power of integrating your personal story into your talk. So if you're wondering what kinds of stories to think about sharing in your presentations, these are good ones to think about and to consider. The first would be anything related to childhood or family. When you were growing up, experiences you had that shaped your behavior, your beliefs, your interests.

Carol Cox:
Did you have any childhood or family stories that really stand out that have led you to where you are today? Another type of story is crisis of confidence. So did you have something, an experience that kind of shook your faith in yourself? You can also think about your dark, dark night of the soul. I talk about this on the podcast and some speaking engagements I did last year. This professional experience that I had in local politics and how everything was great until it wasn't. And that was definitely a crisis of confidence could be a change in belief system story. So you had a paradigm shift, a mental model change because of something that occurred and all of a sudden you saw the world in a different way than you had before. Another type of story is compelled to take action. So an experience you had that led you to do something new or different in your life or your career or your business. So those are some good stories to think about. And these are this is what we work on in the Thought Leader Academy is we have different types of stories, story prompts, and then you work on which ones best fit, again, your experiences and your content, and then working with you to integrate those in that virtual VIP day when we work together on your signature talk. Here's Chandra Shanta. Wilkinson is a consultant, trainer and speaker, and she went through the Thought Leader Academy in 2021.

Carol Cox:
And the reason that she joined is because she recognized that her presentations and trainings were a bit too sterile. And so she wanted to definitely uplevel them and make them more memorable. And so when she went to the Thought Leader Academy, we encouraged her to add some personal stories into not only the lead generation presentations that she was giving, giving to get clients, but also into the actual trainings that she was doing for the organizations. And they loved it. They related so much more to Shanta. Shanta had so much more fun delivering the presentations because she was able to put more of herself into them, and initially she was hesitant to do so. But once she did it and she realized the response that she was having, she saw what a difference it made. So now I want you to think about for yourself, what's a personal story that you can share in your presentations? And then how can you go even deeper into the story? And then, of course, how can you frame the story to align with your overall message? And again, this is the work we do together in the Thought Leader Academy. So the time now is to get prepared to make this shift from just being an expert into thought leadership. So with these three key strategies, really nailing down what is that interesting perspective? What's that angle you're going to share with the intellectual property that you're developing and particularly, say, a framework that you're developing that you can use not only in your signature talk, in your presentations, but in other places out in the world, and then also integrating those personal stories, the personal storytelling and learning how to tell great stories when you're sharing your content, your presentations, because really we want you to escape the expert trap, really want to see more women being seen as thought leaders, being named, as thought leaders, being on those lists of thought, leaders being on stages, on panels in the media.

Carol Cox:
And yes, absolutely, you can be one of them. It also will increase your income. This is Angela Hosking, one of our clients as well. We worked with her back in 2019 and when 2020 came around she had eight paid speaking engagements and she was able to five x her speaking fee even when they all went virtual, even during the first year of the pandemic. Five x her speaking fees because of what she learned from working with us and understanding how to position herself as a paid speaker and what to charge. That's one of the things I know we hear a lot like you don't know what to charge, where to start, you feel uncomfortable with what to charge. And so that's what we work on in the Thought Leader Academy is we share with you what our industry standards for speaking, speaking rates and workshop rates, and then help you to put together your speaking proposals for that.

Carol Cox:
So again, we want to help you shift from this idea of expert presenter to thought leader. And by doing so, you definitely will get more leads. This is Monica Young. She was she graduated from the Thought Leader Academy last year and she did we did an on air coaching call together last August episode 290, which was a lot of fun. And she said she told us that after we did this on our coaching call, she went back, integrated some of the things that we had talked about and then delivered a 15 minute lead generation talk. So not that long at all, but got three leads right away just from that one talk. So that's the power of putting in thought leadership and personal stories. As I mentioned at the top, our Thought Leader Academy is currently open for enrollment. Our next start date is coming up next week, on Tuesday, May 9th. This is the start date that we're going to have until probably the end of August. So this is the next this is the one to join. Otherwise, you'll have to wait into the fall. You don't want to do that because conferences and events are booking their speakers now for this fall 2023 and into early 2024. So you definitely want to make sure that you're getting on the roster.

Carol Cox:
So let me tell you about the Thought Leader Academy. These are the things that we work on. Your big idea, your thought leadership idea and your story. Of course, we help you create your signature talk, your visibility strategy, monetization methods. So again, how to charge, what to charge for speaking and of course, your delivery as well. You get eight weeks of group Zoom call. So we meet once a week for an hour. They are recorded in case you aren't able to attend live on some of them. Plus you also get that one on one virtual VIP day where we work together to create your signature talk. So again, this is the process here that we go through and is truly magical because you get all those ideas out of your head. And once you see them on these Post-it notes and the Post-it note, colors represent different things. It's like you, you, you're every client is amazed that this is what came out of their head. And so you can see how happy Tania is because you all have this incredible wisdom within you. And so what we do, what our expertise is, is we like pull it out of you and put it all organized into this format so you have it all in one place and you're able to use your talk and then repurpose that talk and lots of different ways.

Carol Cox:
All right.

Carol Cox:
Go here. So there's two options for the thought Leader Academy. There's an option to coach with me for the virtual VIP day or to coach with our lead speaking coach, Diane Diaz, and our virtual VIP day. So you still get the eight weeks of group calls with Diane and myself and Selena Roberts, our client concierge, are on those weekly group calls. We provide mini trainings, lots of personalized feedback, lots of time for you to ask questions and to work on the different aspects that we have. You work on week by week, so there's two tiers for you. For the Thought Leader Academy, you can see all the pricing details here on the screen. Also about speaking your brand.com/academy. You can find them there as well. You also get some bonuses. We have our storytelling for Speakers workshop that we've delivered, so you get the recording and resources from that that will help you to pinpoint 11 key stories for your presentations and content. You also get our business of speaking, workshop, recording and resources which will help you to frame your speaking proposals, your speaking fees, your speaking contracts and so on. You get our LinkedIn for Speakers Masterclass so you can optimize your LinkedIn profile to get those inbound speaking opportunities. So you have event organizers reaching out to you. I just had one about two weeks ago. Someone found me on LinkedIn and reached out. So we're really does work to optimize your LinkedIn profile to be found as a speaker.

Carol Cox:
And then also as you achieve the program milestones and the Thought Leader Academy, you may get invited to be a guest on the Speaking Your Brand podcast and or on one of our LinkedIn live shows. So great opportunity for visibility and exposure as well as to practice sharing your thought leadership message. So why enroll now? As I mentioned before, events are booking their speakers for this fall and next spring. You definitely want to make sure that you are clear and confident about your topics and what you're speaking on. Also, don't leave money on the table. Know what to charge for your speaking fees. We have saved so many clients from under charging from clients who wanted to charge, say, $500 to $1500 for something, and we have gotten them to up it from 3500 to $5000. So we're talking about a 2 to 3 X And and their clients ended up saying yes without skipping a beat. So the money is there. It's just helping you develop the confidence and the validation, knowing that you can charge for that. So differentiating yourself and your business, the clarity of your message and thought leadership will set you apart. Being an expert in your space is no longer enough. You have to be willing to be a thought leader. And to put your perspective, your angle, your story and your boldness out there. So I would love for you to join us in the Thought Leader Academy.

Carol Cox:
You can go to speaking your brand.com/academy to get all of the details. You can either enroll directly so if you know you're good, you're excited, you're ready to go, you can enroll directly or you can schedule a call with me. I'm happy to have a Zoom call with you this week to talk about the Thought Leader Academy, make sure it's a good fit for you, Answer your questions, talk about your goals, all of that. Happy to do that as well. And Diane's putting in the chat, the links there. So we have the link to the Thought Leader Academy. And so if you go there, you'll see at the top of the page it's an enroll now button. If you click there, that will go to the enrollment page. And on that enrollment page is also a link to schedule a call. So again, happy to do that with you. All right. Now, I know there's been so many chat messages and I haven't really had a chance to see that many of them. Thank you, Diane, for putting the links in there. So I want to know I'm now going to open it up to questions. Any questions that have come up? Let me see if there's questions. Let me scroll back through the chat here and see what we have. Let's see. I know we have some people. Okay. So Miriam asked about trademarking ideas like Simon Sinek's.

Carol Cox:
Yes, you would definitely want to talk to an intellectual property attorney about how to protect your frameworks and other things that you're doing. I'm not an attorney and certainly not an attorney, so I, you know, you would definitely need to talk to them. But for example, on the framework that we have created called the Signature Talk Canvas framework, I trademarked the phrase signature talk canvas. That's why it has the little ah, registration mark after it. I've also trademarked Speaking your brand, the phrase speaking your brand. So you definitely want to talk to an attorney about that. All right, let's see. We have? Yes. Tiffany is here. Hi, Tiffany. Tiffany is brilliant. She says Amy is brilliant. Nice to see you. All right, Any questions? Anything come up. Thank you, Diane, for putting those links in there. All right. Well, let me see. Let me scroll through. Hi, Lauren. Hi. Salem. Hi, Cynthia. Nice to see you. Hi, Ambreen. All right, great. Well, thank you all so much for your time here together today. I've enjoyed sharing this with you. And if you have any questions about the Thought Leader Academy or about working with us, please don't hesitate to reach out. Don't forget to. If you haven't already subscribed to the Speaking Your Brand podcast and your favorite podcast app. Also take our free quiz to discover your speaker archetype speaking your brand.com/quiz. And until next time, thanks for listening.

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