How to Entertain Audiences, Even If You're Not An Entertainer (Tips for Speakers and Presenters)
Description: Explore effective strategies for leaders and experts to captivate audiences through meaningful engagement in presentations, emphasizing authentic connections over mere entertainment, and offering practical insights for impactful, substance-driven public speaking.
“I’ll never be as engaging as you. I’m not an entertainer.”
They're a renowned expert in their field, with a book that’s been translated in over 10 languages, a top 1% podcast, and a TEDx talk with over half a million views.
This is a person with more experience and expertise than I'll ever have, and yet I can see doubt all over their face.
And doubt is dangerous. It can undermine the success of your presentation and make it less likely that you'll get rebooked and referred, or at least much more difficult.
There's some good news, however: it's common, and it's fixable with nothing but a mindset shift.
So if you're a speaker and feel like you'll never be "as entertaining" as those magicians, comedians, storytellers, and high energy over-the-top Tony Robbins types...
This article is for you.
You're not an imposter, you're just you
At Clarity Up we work with experts and leaders who want to clarify their communicate, earn buy-in from the people who matter most, and drive action on their big ideas.
And if there's one thing I've found after years of being in this world, it's this: everyone feels like an imposter.
Like they're not good enough, smart enough, qualified enough, funny enough, entertaining enough to be on that stage, in front of that audience.
Guess what? That's how I felt, too.
When I transitioned into speaking I was a career comedy magician. Suddenly I found myself getting booked to speak as an "expert" on human connection.
I didn't have any credentials, degrees, or letters after my name. I wasn't a researcher or academic. I felt like a little kid in my dad's shoes, pretending to be something I wasn't.
So I tried to get magic out of my marketing, and out of my presentations. I'm not a magician, I don't do magic tricks, I don't tell jokes. Now I'm a serious speaker.
Just like my clients who think they need to be an entertainer to be engaging, I thought I was too entertaining to be taken seriously.
Neither is true.
Only once I accepted who I was and leaned into my magic background did my presentations truly become extraordinary. Not because I used magic tricks, but because I was engaging the audience in a way that was authentic to me.
What kind of engagement is authentic to you?
If you're not a magician or comedian, don't try to be!
Engagement IS entertainment. Your goal should be to present your expertise in the most engaging way possible. And there are SO many ways to be engaging.
You can...
Articulate your audience's problem better than they can (feels like mind reading)
Learn the art of storytelling (feels like the campfire)
Use interactive tech (polls, games, self-assessments)
Incorporate workshop elements (small group discussion, try-it-out, pairs discussions, stand-and-share, etc)
Simplify your presentation until it's impossible not to follow (because confusion is the opposite of engagement)
Use specific questions with ambiguous answers (stokes imagination and curiosity)
Leverage dynamics (soft vs loud, slow vs fast, back-and-white vs color)
Incorporate gifs and videos (think of these as 'commercial breaks')
...and on and on.
I recently put this theory to the test
Last weekend I gave a 15 min talk in front of 1500 college students from 300 schools across America that produced nearly 20 direct leads for speaking engagements this fall, including an Ivy League graduate program.
Here's the crazy bit...
I wrote that talk 2 days earlier in 1 hour, rehearsed it just 8 times while driving for 9 hours to the event, and delivered it by memory including 3 stories I've never told before.
With NO magic tricks, and an entire 5 minute segment that didn't get a single laugh.
I'm not going to lie, it was pretty scary. But as Kurt Vonnegut once said, "We must continually leap off cliffs and grow wings on the way down."
The result?
"We must continually leap off cliffs and grow wings on the way down."
- Kurt Vonnegut
Less magic tricks created more more magic moments
Typically after a showcase presentation like this I am flooded with students asking to see magic tricks.
But not this time.
Instead I spent 3 hours answers questions like,
“When people don’t respond the way I hope, how do I avoid a negative spiral?”
“How do you find motivation to keep going when you’ve lost hope?”
“I’m shy, how do I develop the confidence to speak up?”
“How do you go on stage without fear?”
“In a relationship, how do you avoid getting impatient with your partner?”
I'd call that engagement, wouldn't you?
I'll say it again: engagement IS entertaining. If you're not an entertainer, don't try to be. Just focus on being engaging and watch your presentations move the audience to action.
Want to know how I did it?
I asked the members of The SpeakerPath™ Community Group if they'd like me to schedule a live masterclass where I break down my entire process from that showcase experience, from ideation to final delivery.
The result was a resounding YES.
We're working to schedule that free masterclass live on Zoom later this month. If you want an invitation, be sure to join us in the Facebook group and watch out for the masterclass announcement in the next few weeks.
The group is free and fun, with weekly tips for speakers and behind-the-scenes advice on how to build YOUR speaker path.
Yes, you can be engaging without being an entertainer
Remember my client who said, "I'll never be as engaging as you"?
Well, they delivered their presentation just 5 days after our meeting, with a new mindset around what entertaining really means and how to focus on engagement, using a handful of the techniques I listed above.
Guess what happened?
"It went REALLY well," they told me.
The client called it 'brilliant' and already scheduled a follow-up meeting to discuss future work within the organization.
So if you're not an entertainer, that's okay. Focus on turning your experience into expertise, and your expertise into engagement.
Go make a dent in the universe.
