We’ve spiraled into a new year without the benefit of all those parties we used to go to in person, and without the benefit of lots of face-to-face speaking opportunities to look forward to, at least in the next several months.  We can still hope for the middle of the year, and Q3, but for now speakers are reduced to virtual keynotes and webinars – and working on your chops in preparation for better times ahead.

So given the current enforced idleness, what can a passionate, expert, engaged public speaker like you do to keep the devils of indolence and despair from the door? I’ll cast my suggestions in terms of new year’s resolutions.

1.First, I resolve not to waste the pandemic. I’m going to rip my current speech apart and re-create it from the pieces as a virtual presentation.  Perhaps you have already begun this process, or quickly revised an existing speech to give as a virtual presentation.  But now is the time to re-think it entirely.  You need to make the virtual version interactive from the start.  You need to break it down into 10-minute chapters and mix up the style and method of delivery every 10 minutes.  You need to think about using video sections so that you can bring in other settings and images to keep the audience, used to movies and television, engaged.  Now is the time for a complete re-think.

2.Second, I resolve to put my brand under a microscope, update it for the virtual conditions we have now, and prepare it for a return to a hybrid world post-vaccine. Looking at speaker websites, I’m surprised by how many of them are still running with the video, pictures, and language of pre-pandemic.  They look creepy now – all that hugging and high-fiving – and maskless.  I sat down and had a thorough look at publicwords.com over the break and realized that I had work to do.  Stay tuned – we’ll be updating our site soon.  And even as we all update our own sites for the pandemic we never hoped to live through, we should also be preparing for a post-pandemic world.  How will people look at speakers differently?  How will they buy keynotes differently?  How and how soon will the world embrace conferences and meetings in person again?  Find your own POV on these tricky future scenarios and get ready for them.  Here’s hoping you guess right!

3.Third, I resolve to reach out to a school or a non-profit that needs my help and give them some free webinar opportunities. It may seem like a hard thing to do when your income is most likely down, but the fastest way to feel less like a victim is to offer to help someone else.  You’ll be surprised at how much helping others helps yourself feel better.

4.Fourth, I resolve to partner with a fellow speaker in order to work on our chops together. Partnering with someone will give you a chance to test your new virtual speech and the good-old-face-to-face one on fresh eyes.  Preferably someone who is expert in something related to your topic but distant enough that you won’t worry about inadvertently stealing each other’s best lines.  Or if you do, at least give credit so that it isn’t stealing, but rather homage.

5.Finally, I resolve to dive back into the research in my field in order to use this period of relative idleness to re-charge my expertise. The shelf life of expertise is getting shorter and shorter as the world creates and devours fields of knowledge faster than ever.  I was reading a book on NLP over the holidays, and I was struck by how quaint it all seemed in light of the explosion of knowledge in neuroscience of the past decade.  That’s just one example, but if you’re a speaker on NLP or related subjects, now is the time to jump back into the research and get a new spin on the old stuff.

Here’s to a return to a recognizable public speaking world sometime in 2021.  And here’s to using our time well until that delightful future finally arrives .