What I Wish More Experts Knew About Being A “Good Speaker”

You probably are a good speaker.

You share helpful info.
You care about serving.
You’ve got stories, maybe even a little humor.

But what does good actually mean? That people liked it? That you hit all your points? That someone clapped?

The truth is — you’ve never been taught what “good” really is. Beyond vague feedback or a gut feeling… how are you supposed to know?

That ends today.

In this episode, I’m pulling a private training out of the vault — a breakdown of the 5 Levels of Speaking I teach my clients to help them see what effective really looks like.

I’m sharing:

• Why most entrepreneurs get stuck recycling the same dry info (and wonder why no one’s buying)
• The tiny but powerful shifts to stop being the ‘boring expert’ and start becoming the voice people quote back to others
• How to spot when you’re relying too much on info or entertainment, but missing real influence
• The sneaky mindset trap that keeps your message safe, small, and forgettable — and how to get over yourself (in the best way)

Remember that “good” is subjective. But resonant? Repeatable? Rebookable

That’s measurable — and learnable, so hit play and let’s start redefining what good means for your business.

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇
https://heathersager.com/episode246

PS..If this episode lit a fire under you, then this is your sign to take the next step.

The work we talk about here is exactly what we do inside my Signature Talk Accelerator. If you’re ready to build a message that truly connects and converts, this is for you. 👉Click here to learn more about the Signature Talk Accelerator!

Transcript

Heather (00:02)

Well, hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Ramble Refinery. I'm your host, Heather Seger, and today you're in for a shorty episode, but also a special episode. Quick context, I am recording this. ⁓ It is the night before this episode airs. I just put the little one down for bedtime, cleaned up the kitchen, cleaned up dinner, took the kids to ice cream, and now I'm sitting here recording this.

And just wanted to remind you that sometimes you can be really on top of it with your content. Other times you can feel a little left behind. But one of the recommendations I would have for you if you were someone like me who has a podcast or creates content, right, consistently in your business, have a backup plan. So a couple of things. So one, always a great idea to have a little bit of a content idea bank going. Some people do this in a really fancy way.

I'm not fancy. I am effective and efficient when it comes to this. And what I mean by that is I just keep a note stuck on my phone of running ideas when I have them. And number two, I always have a backup plan in the event that I am not able to record an episode because of life, or I'm not able to get ahead on top of things. I have a backup plan and that backup plan is twofold. Number one, the world's not gonna end if I don't release an episode. So sometimes it's okay to not release an episode. Number two is

I can leverage things that I already have in my content archive, which today is what we're doing. Now, before you spin away from this episode and maybe go, ⁓ recycled stuff. This is not recycled. What I'm actually going to share with you today is a recording from a training that was a paid training. So this is behind a paywall. This is something that was from a training series that I did.

a couple of years ago, it back in 2022. And I have never repeated this training, not because it wasn't good, it was actually amazing, but it was the last training series, it was called the Speaking Workshops, that I did when I launched my original program, Speak Up to Level Up. And right after this launch, I dissolved the program, and that's when I went and created the Speaker Society. So I had just never used this content again. But this week, my team and I were getting ready for enrollment coming up for...

the Signature Talk Accelerator, which is the most up-to-date version of my program where I help you get your ideas out of your head into your one unified message that really helps you become known as the expert in your thing for your ideal person. We're launching that. We're actually enrolling early bird right now enrolling for our fall cohort. And as we're going through the content and some of the ideas I realized, oh my gosh, I have this one very specific thing that I taught a few years ago and I have never taught it publicly.

or even privately since, and it was so freaking good. I'm like, why don't we just pull that out of the vault and use that on the podcast? So what you're about to hear is an 18 minute training. And don't worry, training, you don't need to be sitting down with a notebook unless you want to, right? This is, I just want to get your brain really thinking about where you stand on this scale that I'm about to be talking about. I'm gonna talk about the level of speaking and the context is,

I want you to really start thinking about how you're showing up and how the way you're showing up is impacting and influencing the results that you're getting. Whether those results are amazing, whether those results are lackluster, whether those results that you're getting right now is not the same that you were once getting maybe last year. I know right now I've seen the chat around conversations with launching around how there's so many heavy things going on in the world, how...

Social media can feel very draining. There's just a lot of chatter and I hear a lot of people complaining about things not working. And let me just hit you up with this truth right now. You know the go-to phrase, what you focus on grows. What you focus on grows. So if you continue to focus on,

what's not working, if you continue to fill your brain with people talking about how sales are down or complaining about people are being schmucky or complaining about this or that, which let's be honest, it's really easy to get swept up in that. And it's really easy to contribute to that. Even if you aren't actively saying those things, if you catch yourself,

you start noticing, start thinking some of those things, even if you don't believe them. Our brains are real sneaky a-holes sometimes. And so I just wanna call your attention to this. It's July 24th when this airs live. And I really want you owning how are you showing up right now and how are the thoughts that you're thinking.

they're contributing to your current reality right now. This is something I've been thinking a lot about over the last couple years as I've been digging through many, many things. But the reason why I'm bringing this episode up is I'm hearing from a lot of people that last week's episode, as you probably heard, if not I heard from many of you that you freaking loved my spicy take, especially the last five minutes of the episode. I'm hearing from a lot of people that they're cranking out content

with AI. I hear, I see a lot of people, especially those selling tools and systems around AI, everyone's bragging around how easy it is to create shit with AI. And I don't know, if you're using AI, that's great. I use it in different ways. I should do an episode to actually tell you how I do leverage AI. But here's what I'm noticing. The people who are using AI are going to continue to use AI, but the people who actually focus on their skills and actually creating great content and not just

substance, they're able to create connection, they're able to establish a presence and truly relate and resonate with people. I rambled on this a lot last week. Those are the people who are going to stand apart. But I have to be real harsh truth with you right now. We have a little bit of ⁓ a blinders around our own skills and abilities and we have this tendency to blame

our current situation on external factors or think that we are maybe better at things that we're actually not. And dancing around it, let me just say, I think a lot of people think that they're better speakers than they are. I think a lot of people think that they are more articulate and more clear and less rambly and more on point and less scattered or sporadic when they speak. And I don't say this to...

be a hater and try to dump on more shit and guilt on you right now. I'm saying this is because you have to recognize that you don't understand how to evaluate yourself when it comes to speaking. So this episode here, what I'm gonna do is give you a lens around how to actually evaluate how you're showing up right now. When it comes to your content, when it comes to your presentations.

what's actually going on and how can you show up differently in this episode or in this clip, this training that you're gonna hear, you're actually gonna understand what specific shift to make. And don't worry, it's not gonna create or it's not gonna, sorry, sorry, no, I just got a little scatterbrained here because.

I'm recording this at 8.30 at night and my husband literally just walked into our bedroom, which is door is like three feet from my desk. He's been in Portland literally all day and got caught in traffic. So he's home like an hour and a half later than he thought he was. But I was trying to get this done by the time he was home. But anyways, he just walked in and was staring at me and I'm staring at him, but I'm still trying to talk to you. And it was just a little awkward there. So I thought I held it together, but my brain just kerplunkered. Anyways, these are the real things.

you get when I'm recording at 8 30 at night anyways you're gonna love this episode so now it's a 30 minute episode enjoy it you're going to love it and hey when you get to the end of it if you are nodding your head screaming like my gosh that fifth level you're talking about so I know there are five levels that's what I'm about to teach you but that fifth level that magic that happens there that's the aspiration and that's exactly

what I do, what I teach, it's all around my methodology, around how to speak. I just, I know I say it all the time, but I'm gonna tell you again, if you've been listening to the podcast, if you listened to today's episode or any other episodes and you've been nodding your head saying, Heather, I really need to step up my game when it comes to speaking. This is the time where I really lean in to become the person who is known for my expertise. I finally want to own my story. I finally want to figure out what the hell my story is and how to.

it in a way that doesn't just sound me like me rambling a resume. Like if that is sitting in your head and heart right now, I do not want you to wait for some sign from me to invite you to work with me. I want you to literally reach out to me on Instagram and say, Heather, I don't know what that looks like, but I want to figure out how I can work with you. And we'll talk a little bit. I want to know about your career situation. I want to know what you're working on. I want to know, are you speaking on stages or are you

getting started on like social media, like where are you at in your speaking journey with your brand? And I'll shoot it to you straight and tell you, hey, here's what I would do. And if I have a resource or if I have a program or if I have a training, I'll point you in that direction. So please, please, please reach out. Let me know where you're at. Let me know how you're doing on your speaking journey. I always, always want to hear from you. So please don't be a fly on the wall and wait for a sign. Let this right here be the sign.

that it's time for you to reach out and take some action. I'm over on Instagram at the Heather Sager. Now let's dive into it. Let's walk into my training from the speaking workshops. Take it away Heather from three years ago.

So there are five levels. I'm gonna walk you through them. And these are the levels that we go through in presenting. And most of you are probably stuck at level two.

When we step into that role of I am the voice of my business, I am the magnet that can share a message so unique, it'll attract my ideal clients. What we have to start thinking about is our voice is not just here's what I know, our voice is actually a marketing strategy. Our voice is the, best marketing strategy, our best marketing aspect to get out in front of our ideal clients.

And our voice, when we show up, it has to balance two things. Some of you who are familiar with my trainings, you've seen this before, I want you to reevaluate yourself of where you are. Effectiveness and entertainment. Those are the two levers we get to pull to help us define how successful we are in becoming a magnet. So the first level of speaking, is level one.

And level one is when you design presentations to inform your audience. And this is what we learned primarily in any kind of speech class. It's what was reinforced when we had to give college presentations. It was what was reinforced when we need to give corporate presentations. Because the big question that we have, the reason why we're doing the presentation was, what do I need to tell them? If you were presenting a presentation for a staff meeting, well, what do they need to know from our department?

Here are the policies that are updated or here are the things where I'm going to teach people about diaphragmatic breath. Let's say that's a thing. Maybe you're a health coach and you teach people around that. What do need? I want you to tell them like, what are the important elements of diaphragmatic breathing? Like, why is this important? We think, what do we need to tell our audience? That's the basic piece of I am an expert. have information that needs to be shared. What do I tell them? So how that shows up when we think about this in context of effectiveness and

entertainment, I'll evaluate these a little bit more in a second, is we show up as the educator. That's the hat that we wear. We say, okay, I'm the expert. People are here because they want the information. Pause and say, how many of you are here because you want the info, you want to know, Heather, tell me what to do. Tell me what to say. Tell me what to show up or where to show up. Heather, help me become a magnetic speaker by telling me what to do. It's okay for you to your hand because that's why you're here. That's why you're here is you want those things.

And if I were to show up and just tell you, here is the exact recipe of do this, then that, then that, and then this, you're going to get a lot of those things all along the way, as you most likely already have some written down. The challenge is when we're an educator and we're focused, like, here's what you need to know. Here's what I need to tell you. You're assuming that that person actually believes that they can achieve the outcome and that they actually want it.

The assumption that we make when we show up just to inform is we assume that people will be smart and make a good decision. That's not necessarily

when you're an entrepreneur who has an important message that you want more people to hear so it can help them change their lives. So educator, it could be effective-ish in relaying information, but it's also lacks things like how do you keep people engaged? How do you have some better stories? Like how do we actually help people consume the content? So it's not as dry or boring. So if you're showing up and you're informing right now, bet most of you you're showing up. Are you informing your audience?

I would imagine so you probably have good content. Check the box level one, we have to have good content. We do need to give them good information. So it's not bad to inform, but we have to go deeper than that. Deeper than that is level two. So level two is where we entertain.

Now what we're thinking here is, now I've been giving people information, but I noticed people are checking their phones or I noticed like my presentation's not quite very interesting. So how can I spice it up? I heard about this thing from storytelling. Like how can I use stories? One time I had an accountant in my old company who decided to bring in props to try to make the financial update more exciting. Didn't make it more exciting, but that's the, that's the thing we're saying is how can I get them to pay attention?

We try to raise the entertainment factor because we're seeking engagement. We're seeking our audience to pay attention to our message because if we can get their attention, if we can be exciting and make it fun, well then they will believe in it, right? Then they'll make action. If I make perfection like so exciting and I use really hand gestures and I say, you don't need it, it's not going to work. Just because I make it more fun and exciting and all those things,

doesn't mean that's going to help you actually move past it, right? We had to do some other stuff on that. We actually had to explore some things, But just infusing stories, just infusing more dynamic delivery is not enough. What most people do for this is they approach it in two ways. They start getting more entertaining by someone goes, all right, I'm going to be the storyteller and the jokester. So the person who shows up like this typically is the MC

They love to have a lot of fun. This is probably not any of y'all cause you're here to speak for business, but you typically see somebody who's more the life of the party showing up as like the fun person at parties, but they actually are an expert in their topic. They don't actually know how to teach their expertise. That's not you. That's not why you're all here. But for those of you who are saying, I'm actually good in front of spotlight. Like I love it. I'm actually pretty good at it. You're probably showing up as the showstopper.

And that someone who has the education and they've started learning around how to leverage stories. Maybe they've started working on a little bit more dynamics in their voice. This is something that you see a lot of Toastmasters. How do you have a little bit more presence? How do we start thinking about what's the experience? We start thinking about, all right, it's not just as much as having good information. It's helping people stay engaged with that information. This is all still in level two.

This is the extent that most people end with. Some people aren't even here yet when they start their business, but they think this is what good presenting is. My friend, there's three additional levels we need to talk about. And as a business owner, you have to break through these next two levels in order for you to attract clients of your brand. If you want to build the audience, if you want people to join your programs without you chasing them, you have to break through beyond just informing

and educating or entertaining audiences. So let's talk about what those three levels are. Level three, and this one, it starts with influence. Now, influence is something that a lot of people have a negative connotation with, because they see its influence as coercion, right? To influence someone is to convince them. Convincing is not a thing, because convincing puts the, it's you saying, this is good for me, regardless of what's good for the other person. That's convincing.

Influence is sharing ideas and opinions in a way that other people can see themselves in. It's showing up in a way where other people pay attention and listen to your ideas. So someone with influence, the question we're asking is, how can I drive other people? How ⁓ can I influence to get decisions? Meaning, how can you think about things in a way to get other people taking action? Influence is when you step into the thinking of other people.

And I see some people who take classes on messaging. Maybe they download a couple documents and they start thinking about how do I tap into the language of my customer? We start going into influence here. The challenge that happens is when we're so focused on the scripts, we lose the conversation that needs to happen with an audience in order to gain buy-in. That's what influence is really about. So let's talk about what ⁓ the next level is. I'm going to do these three levels together and then we're going to talk about a few things to equip.

So once we have influence, which means buy in from our audience, then what we want to think about is inspiration. Now I know this is the, okay, let's just disclaimer. This sounds a little fluffy, right? inspiring my audience. Yeah, but what I really want to do is I want them to like take the thing, do the thing, buy the thing, whatever that is. Influence, inspiration, and the last one I'll share with you in a moment. These are the things that feel fluffy. These are the things that we complain about when other people have fluffy content.

But it's because we think that this is what those things are, but actually, influence and inspiration has meaty content behind it. Fluffy content that you've seen on webinars before where somebody goes for 45 minutes talking about themselves, talking about mindset work, that is not influence and inspiration. That is ⁓ a posturing of trying to show authority and expertise to coerce someone to buy. That was a very bold statement I just made, but I do believe that.

If somebody is talking about mindset, you have to change, you have to fix that and spending 45 minutes talking about themselves, they are posturing as the expert, they're not focused on their audience. We have to choose a different tactic and that's how do you influence with your words and how do you inspire people? The question we have to be asking ourselves is how can I get an audience to make my ideas their ideas? So here's what I want you to think about this, it's like a visual that I use.

Pretend this little beautiful, smelly tube of lotion here smells like roses. I want you to pretend that we are in a relay race. I run the first leg. I hand you the baton, pick up your hand and pick it up right now. I'm going to pass this idea to you. Thank you for those of who are doing that with me. I'm going to pass the baton to you and you are now carrying it. What inspiration and influence does? It changes the conversation was, oh, she's a great speaker too. Holy crap.

what she said made all the difference and changed everything for me. Holy crap, that was mind blowing. Holy crap, that like I've been missing that. ⁓ and they walk away from your presentation, taking ownership of your ideas. Not like the plagiarism kind of way, but what I mean is have you ever been to a presentation before where somebody said something and it sparked like a light bulb, 73 ideas out of your brain. You're like, ⁓ my gosh, yes. my gosh, that was the missing link. That's what I needed.

And I hope that's happening to you in today's presentation where the things that I'm seeing, it's sparking connection points for you that are already happening in your business. Ideas that you've already started having that you were maybe wondering whether or not you should execute them. The things that I'm talking about are helping you click things in your brain that you already had in there. What's happening with inspiration and influence, it's not about being the best speaker. It's not about you being the one with all the great ideas. It's about you.

Having the courage to bring your ideas in a way that give them to other people. And again, don't confuse me with what I'm saying is give them away as they're gonna steal your ideas. What I'm saying is they pass the baton and the audience takes that idea and does something with it. Are you following what I'm saying here? I'll tell you this, I joke about this before. I know this always with good intention, but you know what? After presentations, people tell you like, oh my gosh, that was wonderful, thanks.

I look for the feedback that's like says, my gosh, because you said this, I'm going to go do this. the story that you shared with me around your hearing loss, like, ⁓ my, somebody has this and I'm going to go have this conversation. Or I'm looking for the feedback where there's a light bulb moment. The feedback that says, ⁓ that was so good. Like, my gosh, it looked like you were having a lot of fun up there. Or wow, that was really interesting. Or.

Man, that session was so awesome. You were on fire. All those things. I say that with kind of a flat tone. All those things sound great and we do want that validation, but all those things make if we that's most of our feedback. It means we're making it about ourselves and we're not passing the baton to our audience. Do you say that you probably notice the difference with other speakers that you follow other people online where you watch that content you think? good for you. You're doing great.

versus you stop and you're like, have to listen to everything Mel Robbins says. Why is that? Is it because of the information they're providing or because Mel Robbins tells you to high five yourself in the mirror, makes you feel like a badass every single morning when you wake up. She sparks a fire in you. The question is, are you sparking a fire in your audience or not? Or is there like a gap between what you're saying and where your audience picks it up?

If that's the case, they never will. How can we expect our audience to take action after our presentations if they're not taking ownership of the ideas that they have during your presentation? That's what this is about. We have to stop trying to make our ideas align perfectly in the world of our audience. Case in point, how many of you have ever taught something to an audience and then your students or clients go and execute it, not as you intended?

How many of you have ever, if you had an digital course, had somebody go through it and they didn't actually finish the course? Have you ever kicked yourself and be like, just do it exactly this way? Or like, I want you to follow this step by step. Do we think that because we want to control how someone experiences our content or our process? Is it a control thing? Or what would happen if we actually allowed other people to have ownership in our content?

Case in point, my program Speak Up to Level Up, it was originally designed to teach people how to deliver a signature talk on stages. So how do you take your signature talk and get out on stages, get more visibility in your business? And what was funny is I noticed the first few rounds I ran it, people were not getting on stages. And in fact, the whole world shut down. There were no more live events. Holy crap, what do we do? Well, people started using it on their live streams. They started using it on podcasting.

I'm like, no, no, no, I don't, I don't know anything about podcasts. You didn't just started mine. I don't teach people about testing. I don't teach people selling from the stage. I don't teach people live video. Like that's not my thing. I speak on stages, but everybody started using everything. I taught them on all those kinds of stages. And at some point I had to say, Oh, if I were so controlled around how what I teach it's implemented. If I'm focused on that, I'm ignoring this really big, beautiful opportunity, which is allowing people to get their own transformation.

whatever that looks like for them. So I'm just curious. I don't know if that resonates with any of y'all, but do you ever feel like maybe you're so focused on people following exactly what you say that maybe that is repelling your ideal clients because what we think the clear picture can be is so tight, it doesn't give any wiggle room for their imperfection, which as we know exists. We have to start thinking about influence and inspiration as we have to be less in control of making everything perfect and more

how do we bring a message that inspires them to start taking action, which takes us to our fifth level. And that level is all around how do we show up more magnetically. Level five, here we go. Level five, I call it ignite. And specifically it's igniting action. How can I light a fire under your butt so hot that you have no choice but to take action from the message that I'm bringing in this moment? That's what it's about. It's not just about inspiring you of that's nice, but it's now how do I move you into

action. When we get to this level of being able to influence and inspire audiences and move them into action, that's when business starts becoming fun. It starts, it's not easier. It's definitely not, I don't know. It's, it feels a little bit more at ease because we are no longer pushing a boulder up the hill. We're now enjoying the benefit of our message when we show up in all these different ways. It's not an overnight thing. It's not, do one podcast episode and the droves of people come in. It's going to take.

months or years sometimes for people to be really circling back and taking action on things. But it doesn't mean that we get to skip this step of showing up and inspiring them to take action now. So what does that look like? How do we actually drive that ignition to get them into action? Well, going back to these personas I was mentioning around the educator, the showstopper, the life of the party, the through line that we have to think about if we want to be more entertaining,

and effective, that's how we ignite our audience. We have to start thinking about how do we push ourselves in that way? What specifically is it that allows us to be the right mix of entertaining and effective? And that through line is really letting go of our own need to get things perfect. Funny, we're coming back to that a lot today. letting go of our own comfort, our own control of what we think the condom needs to be and focusing on

What does our audience actually need from us in this moment? The secret for a magnetic message is having an acute understanding of your audience. And I'm not just talking about surveying your audience and getting that insight. I'm talking about mapping your message to specific language that your audience uses and then how to put that in action.

But when you're able to focus the audience at the center, i.e. little things like let go of your need for feedback, If I were like, is this resonating? Do they like me? Like, OK, is this good? They're going to still hear me if I was staring at your faces. What just happened when I start looking down the screen? You lost connection, right? I mean, you can still see me, but there's a difference when I'm looking straight in that camera.

Me putting your experience above my own, my need for feedback, my need to know that validation that you're listening, my need for tech or whatever else. Just that little nuance, very, very specific example here, just that little nuance of me looking at the camera and prioritizing you over my comfort, that's more magnetic. Those are the kinds of tactics that you can choose.

Okay, how do I make the experience better for my audience? Less focus on myself over and over again. And when you start summing up those little experiences, well, you can start putting those things together and become more magnetic. So that's what I talk about as the magnetic speaker. For those of you who've been around, you know, this is my jam. I talk, how do we get more magnetic when we show up wherever we show up? Focus on your audience.