Prompt Playbook: Profitable Workshops PART 5

We HATE the idea of being up on stage in front of other humans.

With them paying attention to us. Watching our every move. Listening to every word.

Horrors!

In this Part I’ll cover how to deal with this and deliver your workshop with confidence.

Let’s get started

Delivery without fear

I’m naturally an introvert. Public speaking does not come easily to me.

Even now, after a large event I need to go sit alone in a dark room!

After this event last week I was a write-off for the rest of the day

Here’s a really useful insight though that helped me a lot.

When you start a workshop you have the goodwill of the audience.

They are there to learn and want you to succeed. They don’t want to sit through a bad workshop so actively hope you do a good job. They support you.

You job is to maintain that goodwill. Focus on doing this.

Maintaining the goodwill come from

• delivering concrete value

• keeping the energy up

Both of these should be covered by the fact we started with learning outcomes (concrete value) and we’ve built in lots of format switches (energy boosting). Also we’re going for small gigs first and then building confidence by steadily increasing the number of people we’re talking to. All of this is built into the Playbook structure in the last Parts.

Let’s cover some more tips to really cement this and make you more confident in your delivery.

Nail the intro

If we want to maintain goodwill then the intro is super important.

The audience has goodwill for you and the workshop already. In the first few minutes you need to show them that their trust is well founded.

I personally do this with a 1-2 punch of humour and value.

I’ll always start by getting people to laugh. It’s literally the thing I spend the most time on in preparation - what silly jokes can I tell at the beginning?

Genuinely not joking here.

It’s a very quick way to put people at ease and get them to like you. Humour is a superpower here.

As soon as I get a couple of laughs I’ll dive straight into something valuable. A quick preview of what we’ll be covering but immediately something that makes people perk up and think “ok, ok, this is going to be good”.

Then and only then will I introduce myself.

Most workshops will start with a “who am I” intro slide. No-one cares. They probably know who you are already or have a pretty good idea you know what you are talking about by the fact they are listening to you.

So don’t front and centre talking about yourself. Nudge it back in the intro to after you’ve given them something juicy to chew on.

My intros are generally

• jokes to put people at ease and bump goodwill (1 minute)

• valuable nugget of information (2 minute)

• who am I (1 min)

• why we’re here today (1 minute)

And then straight into the first learning objective.

If you can nail the intro you’ll start the core content feeling confident. Generally nerves settle down once you get into the swing of delivery so knowing your intro inside-out is a very high value use of your preparation time.

Get away from the computer

There is a tendency for workshop facilitator to stay at their computer.

They may not be reading the slides (good lord don’t do that!) but they may be relying on presenter notes.

By all means have some notes added to the slides using the Presenter Notes feature but don’t use them as your script.

In fact: get away from the computer altogether.

Invest in a clicker (they are $10 or so) so you can change slide from anywhere in the room.

And during your presentation step in front of the computer. Don’t hide behind the podium but use the full space.

This mean you can focus all your attention and energy on the audience without the physical block of a screen between you.

It’s scary because you can’t constantly use your presenter notes. But liberating because you are free of the podium and can better interact with the participants.

This immediately gives you the largest charisma boost. Super simple but most workshop presenters don’t do it.

Putting in the reps

Ultimately this is about practice. The more you practice speaking the better you’ll be.

Ideally you want to be practicing in front of an audience as that gives the most exposure.

But there are ways to get the practice even between workshops and talks.

The first is doing video content. Specifically though: do video content as targeted practice.

I strive to do my video in one take. No edits.

Why? It most simulates the experience of public speaking.

Over the last 6 week or so I’ve forced myself to do one-take videos. It was hard at first. Then got easier. I’m still improving of course. But know that if I keep putting in the reps I’ll just get better.

When public speaking you can’t edit your sentences together. And it’s one take.

So the more fluid you get at one-shot delivery of your ideas the better you’ll be able talk publicly too.

Here’s a video (in one take!) about this

View referenced TikTok post

A step up from this recorded video is doing Live video. This even better replicates public speaking because you are in a live situation - just like a real event!

I’ve done a whole Prompt Playbook on going live which you can find in the archive or the Vault.

Going live is also a great place to straight up practice your workshop. Just go live and start delivering. For your own practice more than anything else!

Of course nothing beats actually doing live workshops in person. But these methods can help you to build confidence in between and used as a supplement.

Pulling it all together

In this Prompt Playbook we’ve looked at why and how to add workshops to your product mix. Not just for the revenue but also the reputation that comes from delivering workshops.

Hopefully this guide has given you the basic step by steps to add workshop in your business.

As a reminder we covered

• Part 1: Why workshops?

• Part 2: What your workshop will be about

• Part 3: Building your workshop the right way

• Part 4: Securing bookings

• Part 5: Delivery without fear

Now your only job is to get that first workshop together and out into the world!

Keep prompting,

Kyle