The Speaking Academy Pro - HUGE Updates for May

May is going to be a MONSTER month for The Speaking Academy Pro!

I’ve been taking in your feedback and working on making May a HUGE month for you.

If you haven’t popped into the community in a while, I get it, you’re busy!

Good news is: I’ve got a plan to get you started with minimal commitment!

-It’ll take less than 5 minutes a week,
-You can watch recordings of all the training you missed,
-And you can start with the speaking challenge without needing to attend any calls (More info on that below)

Even on your busiest day, you don’t forget to brush your teeth, right? …. right?!

Well, we’ll make sure you can still make time to improve your speaking skills.

Here’s what we’ve got in store for you (Everything included in your membership)

1- Guest Speakers in May

I’m on a quest to get you the most high profile guests. These are people who would normally be out of reach because of their hourly fee.

I have the privilege of having a large audience so I’m able to secure interviews with experts to answer your specific questions!

Here are the guests for May:

i- Author of the Book ‘Story Theatre Method’ - Doug Stevenson

Doug is a full-time keynote speaker who teaches Fortune 500 companies how to use storytelling in business. He is someone I have learned a lot about when it comes to incorporating stories into my workshops, and how to turn stories into a speaking career.

ii- Author of the Book ‘Storyworthy’ - Matthew Dicks

Matthew is a record 56-time Moth StorySLAM champion and 9-time GrandSLAM champion whose stories have been featured on their nationally. He now teaches organizations how to utilize storytelling in their everyday meetings and presentations.

We have MANY more high profile guests coming in the coming weeks that I’ll announce as we go.

(Hint: Many of which are based on your suggestions)

2- May Speaking Challenge (48 Hours)

Challenges are by FAR when we had the highest amount of activity in the group, so we’re bringing them back!

This will be a fun one.

I wanted to create a challenge that is fun,
easy to stay consistent with long-term,
not require you to attend the calls,
 
and one that requires minimal preparation.

Starting May 3rd (Friday) - We’ll be starting a new challenge.

It’s called ‘The 48 Hour Challenge’

It’ll take less than 90 seconds a day to do, and it’s only twice a week. (Not including our calls)

Here’s how it works,

Every Friday, and Monday,

You have to share a 90 second (or more if you would like) story only from the past 48 hours.

You can choose any topic of your liking.

The goal is to do only two things:

a) Tell a story
b) Make a point

Example: It can be a story about how you were late for an appointment and what lesson you learned from that

or how you had a lame workout at the gym, and what you took away from that.

During our calls on Thursdays, we’ll come with a similar 48 hour story to tell. If you can’t attend the calls, don’t sweat it! You’ll still be practicing twice a week.

This takes ‘prep work’ out of the way but gives you enough to work with each week.

This challenge will help with the following:

- Build the skill of being able to tell stories out of mundane life events
- Be able to find the message in every day stories
- Teach you to always ‘stay ready’ to tell stories
- Give you endless content so you always have something to say, no matter where you are.

The focus here is not to get feedback on these videos, but to post for accountability.

To avoid the daily barrage of videos being posted, I’ll be making a post on the ‘Share Practice Videos Group’ and members can post their videos in a comment under that post.

That way, it’s easier to find each of the videos, and also a lot more organized.

3- QnA Google Form

I’ve seen another community do this very effectively so I’d like to try this out.

I’ll be creating a Google form link for all the members. After your practice calls, or during the week, as you have questions about what to do about your personal speaking journey, you can ask them in the google form.

Then, I’ll answer all the questions throughout the week. This way, everyone gets specific targets for what they want to focus on as well.

4- Community Updates

In June, we’ll be opening enrolment to the community again (at double the price this time, yours remains the same as long as you’re a member!)

This will allow me to expand the community but also make some needed improvements:

a) I’m going to bring on an accountability manager - their sole job is going to be to make sure members feel welcome and stay accountable. If someone hasn’t shown up to the calls, or has been dormant, the accountability manager will make sure everyone’s on track.

b) I’ll be looking for some help with running the facilitation calls - these calls do not specifically require me to do them and I feel it’s a good opportunity for other members to hone in their facilitation skills. A lot of work and attention goes into facilitating these calls in the background, there’s a lot of nuance to it.

I’ll be focusing on bringing more and more high profile guests to the community, and to work on monthly challenges and engagement activities such as Open Mics etc. I didn’t realize how much time and effort it takes to reach out to these authors and their assistants, follow up, do a pre-screening meeting etc.

c) This is a BIG BIG lesson from me. We will be adding more FUN to this community.

I realized with the weekly calls that sometimes when we’re showing up to practice and making a ton of mistakes, then getting feedback on those mistakes,

Although the process valuable, it can also become ‘work'.

And it’s hard to voluntarily want to show up for ‘work.’

BUT … if we can make it fun each week, then there’s more incentive to naturally come and practice.

This is why our practice calls and challenges will focus on the fun element.

If you’re having more fun,
You will have more incentive to share your stories,
If you are sharing more stories, you will get more practice,
If you practice more, you will improve faster!

Thank YOU for shaping this community into what it’s becoming!

- I’m grateful for your trust in what we’re building together!

Yasir