Episode 30: Speakers and Presenters, Learn to Honor Time Constraints

Melissa Reaves, Host
Hello and welcome back to our episode of The Mind Movie Makers. I'm Melissa and we're going to talk about how to follow time constraints.

I personally love them when you are told you have X amount of time. Now, the shorter amount of time that you have, the more concise you need to be. But why is it important just overall to hit your time requests? It means that you, as a professional, are prepared and you are showing that you value this opportunity for you to speak.

I have had the opportunity to coach a lot of people doing speeches and keynotes and whatnot, and it's interesting because I have seen presenters get up on stage and they've been told you have a minute and half and they decide, you know what, I'm gonna speak from my heart. Well, you can speak to from your heart. I want you to speak from your heart, but I want you to do it in ninety seconds. And I've seen speakers throw that out the window and one

One person once took four and a half minutes to present the speaker who was only going to be speaking for 30 or three minutes. So, how is it okay that the presenter took longer than the actual honoree? That's what I want us to really think about. And I know, I know.

That time constraints can put stress on people, but the antidote to that is preparation, is actually knowing the words you're going to say and spending the time every single day before you're going to be on that stage prepping. Now

Melissa Reaves, Host (01:53.754)
If you don't have time because your schedule is so pulled, then I would recommend that your team has what you're going to say as a presenter so that your 90 seconds, even though you're reading it, is really concise and super vibrant in what you're saying, right? Because it's an honor to present an award to someone who's worked their whole life to get it.

But it's not okay, I'm gonna be honest about that. It's not okay for you to speak four and a half minutes when the speaker themselves, who everyone's really excited to hear about, speaks only for three minutes. Sh just send me a note where that would defend that, no, that's totally okay. I think we all know it's not. And why it's important for us to honor time constraints, there's there's a lot of reasons. One, it's professional.

It shows you heard, you listened, and you're taking that 90 seconds very seriously and you wanna you wanna put your best foot forward.

When you go up and you wing it, there are risks involved. And mostly what that could be is that you'd probably you're going to see meandering, which when I saw the gentleman who spoke for four and a half minutes, he was meandering, he was tangenting, he was moving all over the place, and the audience was literally like, What's going on?

You know, and that's not what we want. We want the presenter to be amazing, get everyone excited for the honoree to take their award, and then everyone is hitting their times. That's a joyous decision. Another reason why when you don't hit your your marks is it has a cause and effect. So in award shows in particular, there's a lot of moving

Melissa Reaves, Host (03:44.172)
pieces, right? There there's there's intros, there's videos, there's there's interviews happening, you know, there's just so much going on. But there are people on the production side who have literally plotted out minute by minute. It's amazing how incredible their detail attention is. And so you wanna honor that.

And not have things go over where suddenly someone has to get cut because so-and-so spoke for ten minutes when they were only supposed to speak for five. Right? The audience gets itchy. I had an I had I heard another one where a guy basically threw out everything that we had prepped. We had him ready for that 90 seconds. And just before he steps on, he leans over and says, I'm gonna speak from the heart. And I'm like, You were speaking from the heart. What does that mean?

mean you're gonna speak from the heart. You we we know that. We know that. What do you go? and he got up. And people said to me, he just was rambling. Like it made no sense. And that was really unfortunate because we had him ready. He was ready to go. It was gonna be beautiful. It was gonna be funny. It was gonna be great. And it ended up not even being an intro for the s the honoree. It ended up being a a

talk about him and his family member. That wasn't his job. Okay? So cut time constraints are really important to honor just on a business and technical level. Okay? So I'm I'm the one that's gonna say please honor your time. Now

But the beauty of AI, I mean, I use my Missy AI, and she has been amazing because when we're writing speeches that have times like that, we go and get the story, we get all the people that we want to acknowledge, we get it we're scripted out, and then we can use AI to say, okay, make this three minutes worthy. And the AI can tell you how many words you actually need. Okay? Now I would take it down even a few more words, take it down a little bit.

Melissa Reaves, Host (05:57.066)
Bit more because when you're doing your speech or doing your honoree or whatever it is that you're getting.

If you have enough, if you have less words than what's necessary, means you're giving yourself a padding of time. Where you can you can take your time when you're talking. You're not just going really fast because you want to hit the time and you've got so much to say. Say less, but say it slower and say it with more heart behind it, and that's when you're gonna wow the audience, right? That's when they're gonna be like, whoa, they're listening to you, you're telling them stories, it's great. And and sometimes it's a long story, sometimes it's a short story.

Story sometimes it's just a feeling that you had with the person that you have the honor of being able to present their award to. just something that's personal, right? Or you can talk about something similar in your life, but just know you only have 90 seconds. That's about 75 words, right? it might be a little bit more, we'll see. But just take your time, and that's where you can use AI. The other thing that you need to do is you need to.

practice. You need to like make sure you're saying it out loud. and then that way the more you know it, that if something happens like you know there's a large sound that happens in the room and everyone's attention gets a little distracted, you're still on point. You can handle it because you've practiced. You know the athletes that I work with, they practice their game. Well it's time for them to practice their public speaking even more. You gotta run some scrimmage there, man.

You gotta get it, you gotta get it going. So I just really think that time constraints need to be honored, but I also believe that they force the speaker to edit, to be concise, to say things once, not four different ways, to stay with a story, not tell two or three stories at once. All of these things can happen when you're ill-prepared. And when you go over your time.

Melissa Reaves, Host (08:05.439)
It's not really fair to everybody else. Okay. So time constraints are great because they they make you really have to think it through. Now, if you have a 45 minute talk, that's awesome. That's great. But now you have more stories that you need to be able to tell. And within so let's say you have 45 minutes, and let's just for easy math say that you have three stories that are going to be tied to the point of your talk. Each story will have

Some teaching. So you'll tell the story, and then you'll have some some like, and this is what I did, and here are my five points, and the teaching part of why you're talking about this subject. The story itself that you're gonna tell is probably three minutes, maybe five, okay.

And you need to know that because now you have 10 minutes where you're going to be doing the teaching. You're going to be pulling your charts and your graphs, and then maybe at the end of that 15-minute chunk, you bring something back from your opening story. That's putting heart behind the chart. Okay? And then the next story, and if this is a presentation where you have slides, we're gonna have transition slides that will show the audience: change gears now, I'm moving into my second story. Okay? And the story again is what opens it.

It's vivid, we can see it, we know your characters, you're saying things beautifully and concisely, and you've practiced and you've got all the elements of what makes a mind movie up that if you're curious about that.

Definitely listen to other of the podcasts on this channel, as well as you can get my book, The Storyteller's Mind movie, where I walk you through how to create great compelling stories that you can tell over and over and over again. But most of the stories that you tell in business, and that could be your personal founder story, customer success story, a hard lesson learned story, you know, those are all amazing stories to have.

Melissa Reaves, Host (10:10.375)
In your story library. But all of them can be sold in two to three minutes. If your story's going on for eight, that's too long. That's too long. That means you got some, as I say in the book, you got some weed whacking to do. You gotta edit. You know, we want to see your garden. We don't want to see all the weeds all over the place. And the weeds are repetitive phrases, vague phrases, two stories at once, as I said earlier.

Th there's a lot that can happen that can turn a two to three minute story into a very long story. But when you've got a two or three minute story that's rich in detail, the speaker has used very clear, concise choices. They are connected through all of it to their audience. That is magic. That is magic. And more people can do that than they even know or believe.

But I can tell you that in my entire career, and remember, for the last eight years of my life, I have been coaching people on how to be very powerful presenters. I have been successful with every single one.

Except when someone's resistance is up. And when their resistance is up, meaning they don't want to do it, the negative voice is going off in their heads, they're not preparing, they're not doing all those things, that's so unfortunate for them. Okay? Because

Sometimes they just don't have total belief in what they're saying. They don't want to do it. They're more concerned with what everyone's thinking about them. They've got the chatterbox going. I talk about that in other episodes. it just gets in the way. And you know what? Your stories and your career are unique to you. And no one can tell a story.

Melissa Reaves, Host (12:16.001)
From your perspective, except for you.

So think about those moments in your life that mattered because they could be crafted into really amazing lessons that you can teach other people. Have them in your own personal story library, and then know that whenever you're asked to speak publicly, you've got them. And they're all like two to three minutes. Maybe there you have five-minute versions of them as well, but they're there. And so now that time-consuming

That you get is far less stressful. Right? It's far less stressful. It's not like, what am I gonna talk about? You're gonna be like, which which story do I wanna choose? You know? Which story do I want to choose? That is a power place when you have done the work. And here's the other thing: building your story library is so much fun.

And knowing that you can tell a story long and or short is fantastic. So that's all I wanted to say this week about time constraints. They they they need to be honored, and that that comes from preparation, that comes from doing your homework, and that comes from doing an ongoing story library build-out of your key moments in your life. All right.

Like, comment, share. Let me know what you think.

Melissa Reaves, Host (13:45.896)
have you ever seen someone on stage that went on forever and ever and ever? What'd you think? And have you ever seen anyone tell something really quick but you can't stop thinking about it because of what images and feelings they were able to put inside your mind? They were using their own speaking magic to really touch your heart. And that's ultimately what we want. We don't want to say, hey, here's Jim. Here's he's gonna get an award, isn't that great? No.

We want to know a little bit about Jim. You're the primer. You're the one that's gonna get it ready. What can you tell about Jim to this audience that makes them go, my goodness, I can't wait to hear from him. Cause in that case, Jim's the star. You're the support. All right. So professionalism is required. Okay. Thanks everyone. I really love the comments I'm getting from you.

Many of you are reaching out and it makes me feel great. Also watch that for our podcast. We're gonna be moving into a studio soon. So I'm excited about that myself. And if there's a topic that you want me to talk about when it comes to storytelling, presentations, executive presence, story libraries for your company, reach out to me because that helps me build the content for you. Okay? Have a great week.

And we will see you soon.