"Yours are the only emails I actually open and read" - a regular reply in my inbox since 2009...and I'll bet in yours, too, once you subscribe and learn by pure, lazy osmosis to become the most compelling writer around. That said, no promises on improving your moral character.
Don’t look down
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It’s official, Reader: I’m now big in the UK. Hello from a city called Newcastle, where I was the opening keynote speaker at Atomicon yesterday. I’m pleasantly foggy, recovering from a mix of jetlag, missed meals, hardcore peopling, pre-speaking stress, post-speaking euphoria, and a desperate Uber Eats dinner after midnight (when everything was closed) from a place called “Pizza Daddy.” Before a Shrimper named Jeanet came to see me at a book event and said she’d be recommending me to speak at Atomicon, I’d never heard of it. Well, let me tell you. It is a THING. Andrew and Pete, the event organizers, had told me there were 1500 attendees, but that didn’t really sink in until I walked through the venue yesterday morning with my friend and fellow speaker Sun Yi…and into the main auditorium for tech check.
Not gonna lie, I may have crapped my pants a tiny bit. I knew I was a keynote speaker, but I hadn’t realized I was THE keynote speaker. I hadn’t pictured THIS.
And thank god for that. I’m apprehensive before any speaking gig and always regret saying yes up until I’m on the stage. I tell everyone, my favorite part of speaking is getting un-mic’d when I step off the stage. If I’d known the magnitude of this talk, I would have developed a tremor and serious case of acid reflux months ago. It’s like when you’re about to jump out of a plane (not that I’d know, not on my bucket list) and they tell you, “Don’t look down.” I had started getting a little extra nervous at dinner two nights earlier, when Andrew and Pete asked me how long I typically spent rehearsing. They practiced their talk an hour a day for months, they told me. I had really only run through my slides a few times. Hmm. I could hear my friend Mike Ganino saying, “Great speakers don’t ‘wing it’.” They also asked what I was doing for my big open and close. I dunno, say hi and bye? Fun, right? That’s when I decided to revise the opening and start practicing in my room. Thank god I did. That paid off — unlike the panicking. By all accounts, it went great. People didn’t stop coming up to me to tell me how much they loved it. I’ve spent hours reposting the Instagram stories I asked them to tag me in. “Story this talk and I’ll story you back,” I said on stage, not realizing hundreds of them actually would. “Win-win.” A team member told me this morning, “Yeah, I wondered what you were thinking!”
In Monday’s email, I promised I’d tell you in today’s about getting here (got a shady Uber story for you), but that’ll have to wait till Friday. For now, let me know if you’d like to attend a virtual encore of the hit talk I gave on Emails that sell. I won’t be wearing a striped skirt and heels, but I’ll bring the big-stage energy. Yes! I want in on this epic talk! Here’s to not looking down. xoLaura PS - Did you grab my Make Your Point Story-to-Sale Workshop? It includes my bizarrely effective AI tool, The Point Finder — to help you find the meaning of any story and connect it seamlessly to a CTA, or to reverse-engineer a story from an offer you want to sell. Psst! Since you're signed up to get my emails on a weekly basis, here's what you missed this week!
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Thank you for reading and sharing, |
Laura Belgray (Talking Shrimp)
"Yours are the only emails I actually open and read" - a regular reply in my inbox since 2009...and I'll bet in yours, too, once you subscribe and learn by pure, lazy osmosis to become the most compelling writer around. That said, no promises on improving your moral character.
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