Jeanne Robertson is a professional humorist who just delivered the best keynote to kick off a conference that I’ve ever seen. And, when you’re speaking at National Speakers Association National Convention, you’d better really nail it! Jeanne has been getting paid to speak for 47 years. Can you imagine that? Jeanne is a career speaker for sure!

I wasn’t timing it, but I think her speech was a little under and hour and she mainly covered just three points. If you want to grow yor career as a professionl speaker, you need to do three things, including:

1. Partipate in NSA (National Speakers Association) beyond just the attendee level. Get involved as a volunteer, an officer, a leader, a trainer. It doesn’t really matter where you help, just start helping. Here’s a link to our NSA Colorado chapter and here’s a link to NSA National to find a chapter near you.

2. Use current stories to create content for your speaking. Stop relying on an experience you had 10 years ago and use stories that have happened recently to illustrate your points. I can think of at least 4 stories just from my plane trip to use in my talk on Tuesday on the last day of the NSA convention. Thanks Jeanne!

3. Embrace social media by choosing which systems you want to be a part of…but embrace social media somehow. It was awesome when she had 20% of the room make a tweet all at the same time about how hillarious she was! Jeanne is 68 and she attributes her participation in social media for keeping her speaking momentum flowing.

Great job to Jeanne Robertson and thank you so much for speaking at NSA. Maybe someday you’ll come present in Colorado. I’d like to introduce you to some people who keep resisting social media and have you change their minds.

Post Author: Marty Dickinson