Lecturers deliver information; speakers deliver transformation.
You may talk about finance, artificial intelligence, or real estate—and that information may be valuable—but if you just want to share data, a printed article is faster to consume and your audience can take it home with them.
Start crafting your talk by clarifying the transformation.
How do you want your audience to be able to think, feel, and act differently after they’ve seen your presentation?
What will they be able to do that they couldn’t do before?
What possibilities will be open to them that they weren’t previously aware of?
How will you change their hearts, minds, and fortunes?
So often, we take the logical approach:
We start with a topic, break that down into steps, stages, or components, and deliver instructions on how to understand it, build it, or bypass it.
Focus on the value you’ll give to your audience. How will they all be better—more aware, more productive, more confident—than they were before you spoke to them?
Share your information in the context of a well-defined transformation.
From there, you can reverse-engineer your steps or sections or processes to point to that destination.
