283. How to Find Your Signature Talk With Speaking Coach Jen Oliver

Are you someone who wants to give a TED Talk? The entire idea of that platform is ideas worth spreading. Maybe you want to be better on stage or understand what makes a speaker so compelling. There's something that makes people connect to us when we're on a screen or on a stage.

Sometimes, it works, and sometimes, it doesn't. How does the person's authentic, awesome, gooey-goodness self get up and deliver something that hits us in a way that is so compelling we can't look away?

Jen Oliver has devoted her life to becoming a speaking coach. As an executive producer, she's deeply connected to the entire TEDxCommunity. Jen coaches women to speak with impact and is highly effective at helping her clients show up REAL while leveraging their story, mission, and embodiment to exert a powerful influence.

To understand how Jen pulls people onto the stage to share her story, she begins with her own.

She recalls her second marriage—she rushed into it. She thought she'd restored the legacy for her children after her first marriage ended and herself as an upstanding woman. She was with a wonderful man but didn't belong in the marriage.

She wrestled with the truth of it. It was making her feel sick and ill at ease in her body.

She remembered what a relationship mediator told her, "It is so profoundly unkind to not tell the truth. You're torturing another person because you're they're dealing in the absence of communication. They are dealing with a fiction That's so far worse than the reality. Give them the dignity of the truth. Speak your truth."

Jen had to admit she didn’t belong in the marriage. 

"It's those little moments where we look at what is the dis ease? Where am I not showing up true? Where am I not saying what is honest? Like, where's that voice?" says Jen.

Jen says she's unconventional in her work as a speaking coach because she focuses on authenticity and sharing that truth as a means of connection beyond the typical tips of how to be persuasive, make eye contact, etc.

Helping people tell their truth puts energy behind their words, ideas, or coaching. Whether you're on stage in front of 4,000 people or in the boardroom, you have energy watching you, and if you don't meet that energy, it will bowl you over.

“Here's what happens and is the mistake: We don't partner with and see that energy there in service to us,” says Jen. “We instead take it as an indictment and an indicator that we're somehow inadequate for that task.”

Those feelings of fight or flight are normal because this is a higher-stakes situation than your average moment in the day. 

"Let's teach you to drop into your body, which is what I do with women is drop into your body, connect with that. Let's partner with it," says Jen. "I'm real, showing up like a real human as opposed to this perfectly polished, managed little automaton."

Jen says we need to pay attention to what we've grown numb to. Before her business took off, Jen needed to own the parts of herself she was ignoring so that she could help others. 

When you do that personal work, it really is the precursor to other things. You can, in fact, shake the nervousness off – it resets your nervous system. You can hold your truth and have your nervous system contain it. 

“It doesn't mean that when the contraction happens in that same week, because it's this ebb and flow, that something's wrong, or you're not making the progress. You are,” says Jen.

When Jen works with others to find their signature talk, she asks them to slow down.

"I believe that the body if you can slow down long enough and regulate and listen to it, is the voice of spirit and soul. It holds memories, it holds emotions, it holds so much wisdom and data points," says Jen.

She asks her clients to tap into their bodies instead of their minds—the mind can be a bully. If you want to give a TEDx Talk, start by connecting yourself to your deepest, truest wisdom. 

"Some of those people, their talk shifts a little bit, and the premise behind their talk, and their main tenets and talking points and the thing they ache to give their audience morphs and changes," says Jen. "It's their truer work."

Transform your idea into a signature talk: https://realjenoliver.myflodesk.com/free-download

Connect with Jen Oliver: https://REALjenoliver.com/ 

Other GoG episodes you might want to check out:

Power of Pause: Why Your Brain Cannot Solve the Problem

https://sarahwalton.com/take-pause/ 

3 Easy Tips for Your Sales Conversations

https://sarahwalton.com/sales-conversations/ 

You can check out our podcast interviews on YouTube, too! http://bit.ly/YouTubeSWalton

 

Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be so grateful if you could leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts by clicking here, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking "Write a review." Then, we'll get to inspire even more people!

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