Theresa Miller on speaking up

Theresa Miller: It is absolutely common to feel nervous, and you can use that nervous energy to give you a bit of a push and almost like an adrenaline rush to give you some energy. It would be very rare to not have any nerves before a public speaking role. The good news is that it takes about a minute to settle into it and that the audience don’t notice.

Rachel: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make money. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives.

Lynne: I’m Lynne Testoni! I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

Rach, this week we’re going to talk about public speaking, and it is not an area we’ve covered a lot.

Rachel: My favourite.

Lynne: I know it’s not your favourite, but I think it can be a great way to find new clients and become more visible. What do you think?

Rachel: Look, it isn’t my favourite, but I totally agree. It’s a great way to be visible, get in front of people that don’t know you.

I’m being asked to do it a lot more.

Lynne: Yes.

Rachel: I’ve got two things coming up next month where I am talking to a panel of students and the other one, I am on a panel at a lunch, which I think you’re going to, Lynne.

Lynne: I am going to that one.

Rachel: I’ll be referring to you because you’re in the audience and I’ll be like, well, my co-host at the summit.  But it’s not my favourite thing, but the more you do it, the better you get, and I think it is really valuable.

Lynne:  I agree. I do think also that I worry that writers and they’re often introverts, overlook this opportunity as a way of raising their profile. They’re scared of it, but public speaking doesn’t have to be scary. I think your point is that the more you do it, the less scary it is. And our guest today, who’s a great friend at the pod, Theresa Miller, she’s written a new book on the topic and has some really wonderful, practical advice.

Rachel: Yes. We have had Theresa on the pod before talking about her work as a media trainer, so really good to have her back, and the new book is called Speak Up, which is all about how to be a successful presenter and media spokesperson. I’m in the midst of reading it and it is really inspiring. In fact, I need to finish it before I do my things next month.

Lynne: That’s a deadline. I’ve almost finished it. It’s such great read and really helpful and practical too.

Rachel: Okay, well let’s get Theresa into the hot seat. Welcome, Theresa, back to the pod!

Lynne: Welcome!

Theresa: Hello Rachel and Lynne. Thank you so much for having me back.

Rachel: It’s a great pleasure.

Lynne: Well, you’re a long-time friend of the podcast, so it is great to have you back. What inspired you to write the book?

Theresa: Well, in my role in media and presentations, I get to meet people from all walks of life or industries, whether they’re CEOs or NGOs, whether they’re academics or artists or entrepreneurs or even climate change campaigners. And I’m often blown away by how much knowledge and expertise and experience they have often with solutions to some of our most pressing problems, and yet we never, we often don’t hear their voices in mainstream media, or we don’t even see them on industry panels or podcasts like this or giving a presentation. And I think that’s a great shame. So, I am using my skills as a presenter and a journalist and a media trainer to give people really practical tools and tips.

It’s not just a pep talk on – well, be more confident and step up and get over yourself. It’s actually how to structure, how to think about tailoring your message and how to make it compelling and relevant for your audience.

I think it’s – especially in a time of fake news and AI fakery, now is the time when we need those people with knowledge and expertise and real insights to step up and combat a lot of the misinformed information that we’re being thrown. It’s been thrown at us.

Rachel:  I definitely agree that it’s the louder people that tend to get those opportunities and they’re not often the best people to give us the knowledge and stuff like that. It’s really sad, isn’t it, that the quieter ones who have done really deep, amazing research never actually get to tell us about it because they’re just shy or whatever.

Theresa: That’s right. My grandmother used to say, an empty vessel makes the most noise. And what she meant was we had a big rainwater tank in our backyard in Adelaide, and if you knocked on the side of it, if it was empty, you could hear that it was hollow and it made a loud noise. But when it was full and you knocked on it, it was muted. And that’s a little bit like empty headed fools are happy to natter and natter on.  But those whose heads are full of knowledge and experience and expertise, they’re often the ones who stay quiet and it could be for a number of reasons, but many of them say, well, that’s an egotistical thing to speak up and, and my work should just speak for itself.

But we live in a different era. It’s no longer remember those old ads, the quiet Australian, I think it was for BHP. Unfortunately, we now need to have the people who are the voice of reason, the authorities, the ones with the knowledge to step up and counter some of the very ill-informed, misinformation and disinformation and fake news.

Rachel: I know you and I have talked on the phone before when I was going to do something at a university and then it fell over because I was like terrified about doing it. And I’m one of many that you have talked to, and you’ve trained so many people as speakers and media spokespeople. Did the research for the book offer you new perspectives or did you find a lot of it was stuff you already knew that you were repackaging? How did all that work?

Theresa: I did the stories. In the book do follow an arc of the way I train, but also, I get the opportunity to tell a lot more stories and give a lot more examples. And then I was able to interview experts too, who pulled in new knowledge and the publisher said they wanted to really broaden this appeal and so make it about things like going for a job interview or pitching for grants or funding. And so, I interviewed on the job front, I interviewed Petra Buchanan, who I think you’ve also had on the podcast – talking about the ways you can talk about yourself at a job interview, and that was really useful. I hadn’t thought about that before, but in fact, it follows a lot of the same principles about what I teach put in a slightly different format, and I loved that she used an analogy that if you’re going for a job interview, give the panel or the people interviewing you a one word descriptor of yourself that will lodge in their minds. It’s almost like a headline. And it could be that you’re a communicator or a problem solver. Or a connector. Or in her case, she called herself a wild card, okay? Because her career hadn’t followed the usual trajectory. And then you can use that one-word descriptor – you can underpin it with a whole lot of stories, examples to back that up. So, of course, you’re not going to be able to tell your whole career but depending on who your audience is and what the job is, that could be a really useful way to stand out from the other candidates.

And then I interviewed people in reputation management, which is a big thing for organisations because everyone just in business hopes that nothing will go wrong. But just being in business, anything could go wrong. You could hire the wrong person. There could be someone doing some creative accounting that you don’t know about. There could be a warehouse fire. If you are an aged care facility, there could be a spread of a virus. The things can always go wrong and as we saw with Optus and a whole lot of corporations, even in Australia, when they’re not on the front foot and come out and apologise and say, look, we’re sorry, and then they’re completely transparent and this is what we’re doing about it. That’s when the public lose trust, even more trust and think, well, you guys don’t seem to care.

So, it was really good interviewing a whole lot of different people and getting even more knowledge, to make this book have a broader appeal for a wider audience.

Lynne: So interesting. Now, you are a confidence speaker. You were an amazing moderator too at The Content Byte Summit and you’ve got this background in TV journalism, so you are probably different, but you speak to a lot of regular people without that sort of background. Do they have some common fears that you find that you have to talk them through?

Theresa: Absolutely everyone. I get nervous too. I’ve even got a bit of a dry in my mouth now. It is absolutely common to feel nervous, and you can use that nervous energy to give you a bit of a push and almost like an adrenaline rush to give you some energy. It would be very rare to not have any nerves before a public speaking role.

The good news is that it takes about a minute to settle into it and that the audience don’t notice. They don’t know that you’ve got sweaty palms or a dry mouth or butterflies in your stomach. Or you know, all the other sensations that you have when you are nervous. They don’t perceive that. And in fact, the audience want you to succeed.

They don’t want you to feel embarrassed or awkward because it makes them feel embarrassed and awkward too. And I had the worst thing that the stuff of nightmares happens on stage once when I was giving a presentation and I survived.

When I was promoting my first book, Making Babies: Personal IVF Stories, I was speaking in front of about a hundred people, aspiring parents and IVF practitioners and I must’ve been gesticulating wildly because my wraparound dress started to rapidly unravel and I was seconds away from standing in front of the audience in my underwear.

Lynne: That’s a basic nightmare, isn’t it?

Theresa: Absolute nightmare. It’s a real twist on the, imagine the audience, naked and then fortunately, my IVF doctor sitting in the front row said, Theresa, stop. There’s no need to undress. I’ve already examined you – and I just quickly tied up my dress and laughed with the audience and kept going. And what I learned from that is that nobody wants you to fail.  In fact, it was such a great icebreaker that I think because IVF is such a heavy topic that it kind of made the rest of the speech more palatable. People kind of warmed to me thought, well, she’s human. She’s a vibe being almost naked on stage, so, I think that the audience are far more forgiving than we imagined they are.

Rachel: There was something on LinkedIn yesterday or this week where Carly Leon, she’s been on our podcast as well, and she gave a speech but said her shoe got stuck in the stage and she was, did you guys see that post? And she was trying to get it out, but that really reminded me of what you were just saying, that these things happen and we have to have some kind of way of dealing with them in the moment. And you can get really embarrassed and awkward or you can turn it into a joke and make everybody laugh with you. And it’s those sorts of things that can not derail it, I guess. 

Lynne: And Theresa’s point is that the audience wants you to do well.  I think we forget that. We often think that they’re silently judging us and that’s not really the case at all.

Rachel: Yes.

Theresa: No, because people aren’t going along to a talk to say, oh I wonder, how nervous Rachel is or how nervous Lynne is. I want to see how nervous they are. They want to go because they think you might have something useful to tell them.

Rachel: It’s the same thing as like being on a podcast. I remember I was on Kim Curtin’s podcast and very nervous because she had this whole onboarding thing and it was this big way more than what we do. And she said, just remember that people aren’t listening to you, waiting for you to muck up or waiting for you to say something silly we worry about, they’re just looking for nuggets of gold that they can apply to their businesses, and that’s basically what you have to remember. They’re not going to remember the other stuff. It’s just you remember that.

Theresa: So true.

Rachel: You’ve published previous books before this one, so what was the path to publishing like for this one? Was it easier because of the other books, or how did it come about? Was it a different publisher?

Theresa: It was a different publisher. So, the first book Making Babies was published by Scribe. The second one, I ended up self-publishing. That was a novel. And this one I was determined to not self-publish again, I wanted a traditional publisher.

I did approach Scribe first of all, and they said, no, it’s not for us. And then I approached, New South Books because one of my clients is UNSW, and they’re affiliated and Elsbeth Menzies, who heads up New South Books, she immediately saw the appeal, and she also got me to think about having it as a broader appeal. So not just for people who are going to be media spokespeople, but those who are presenting at work, or they’re pitching to a client or trying to get a grant, or they’re going for a job interview. Or they’re on a panel or a podcast.

So, making it broader and making it for everyone. It got me to think about it in a slightly different way, and she just said she also can see at work that there are people who are hiding their light under a bushel. You know that they’re not shining a light on the good things they do because they’re too shy or not competent enough or don’t have the skills to speak up. And the thing to remember is that good speakers are made, not born. You can learn these skills, you can master them, and every time it does get a little bit easier. You are right. I don’t always love it either, you know? But someone said to me once when I was being trained to be a trainer, is that hiding the information, the expertise, the insights you have, especially after a long career, hiding that and keeping it all to yourself is in some way a selfish act.

Because you might have some solutions to help someone. See it as a service to others. I think in Australia we are particularly still prone after all these years to the tall poppy syndrome. We don’t want to put our hand out because we don’t want to be open to criticism, but instead think, I’m going to do this because I actually do think that after twenty odd years, or in my case, double that just about, I think I’ve got some knowledge that might be able to help someone. So, it’s seeing it as a service rather than something that’s an egotistical, it’s not feeding yourself, it’s feeding others.

Lynne: So interesting. I think one of the things in your book that I noticed was that it’s about keeping the audience in mind all the time. What do they want? What are they going to get out of it? Not what you need to tell them, but what they need to hear and that’s a really important thing. That sort of takes us to one of the things you mentioned was about nailing your pitch when it comes to speaking. Because often people are a bit waffly and they don’t really get that nugget. So how do people nail that pitch?

Theresa: You’re spot on, Lynne. It is about knowing your audience. It’s about researching your audience. So, if you are going into pitch to some want to be clients or collaborators, investors, maybe someone that’s going to give you a grant, you’ve got to really understand them and know, understand their business inside out. What are their pain points, what motivates them? Even the personality types, if you can get down, dig that deep and what is it that would benefit them?

So, it’s no use you going in and going, oh, I’ve got this great new product, or this great new service, or I’m really excited about this new course I’m offering. But if you really research them and a lot of people on this podcast are journalists or ex-journalist. They know how to research so, stalk them on LinkedIn, look at their websites, read their books and their blogs, and listen to them on a TEDx Talk. Talk to other people who know them and go, okay, what makes this person tick? Especially the, the decision makers. And then really couch it in terms. And use examples that will light them up and they’ll think, oh wow, she’s really done her research on us. She really understands us and people like to feel acknowledged. They like to feel that, oh, you understand me. Then they’re more likely to lean in and listen. Then you can say, and I know that you’ve been having this problem in this area, and I believe that this product or this service that I’m offering you could solve that problem.

Then they are really leaning in to listen because otherwise it’s hit or miss as to whether they’ll like what you’ve got. Otherwise, they’re sitting back going, oh, well you know, what’s in it for me? Like really? That’s what most people are tuned into what’s in it for me.

Rachel: That’s interesting because I don’t think that a lot of people would consider how important the research is before pitching. They would think, I’m going to write this pitch and it’s going to be about this topic but they’re not looking to who they’re actually wanting to engage with. So that’s such a good point. And I liked what you said before about how we get these nerves and you can use that adrenaline to like kind of propel you onto the stage and get going.

For me, I think the adrenaline comes after – when you finished and you’re like, wow, okay, that went better than I thought. Whatever. Is that one of the most, some of the most surprising things you’ve heard from public speakers, things they experience. That they get that buzz afterwards or was there anything else that people you’ve trained have told you about that surprise them?

Theresa: Definitely. And when we are doing media training or presentation skills training, we record people. I interview them for media training. We record it with a professional camera, or when they’re doing a presentation, we also record it and we play it back during the session. And I say, okay, this is what you did well, and this is an idea for next time.

They usually hate that part and they put their hands, over their eyes and go, I can’t look. And okay, okay, well, okay then just listen to it if you can’t look. Or we’ll turn the sound down and just watch it and we’ll build up to it. But actually, often they say, oh. It’s not as bad as I thought. Actually, that bit’s quite good. So, they get to see for themselves what they’re doing well, and then they also notice that there are things they could improve on. I always say like, or um, or uh, or absolutely, or I jiggle up and down on my, I’ll play with my hair or play with my clothes, or whatever.

There are little things that you can iron out. But there’s also, I teach a lot of structures, and many people find that very useful. I think there’s freedom in structure, strangely enough, and there’s about four different structures I give in the book. Plus, if you have an opportunity on a longer interview or podcast or presentation, you could tell a story too about the hero’s journey, about where your business started, how you started it. What were the challenges along the way, who were the mentors, those who helped you, what was your greatest, the worst period and then how you met that challenge and now what have you learned and you’re going to give to others.

So that’s the typical hero’s journey. Having a structure, having a attention, grabbing openness at the beginning and having a clear call to action at the end, specific and dated, if possible, then it’s not just about, oh, people think, oh, that was a nice talk, and they go off and have a cup of coffee and forget what you said. It’s that you now say to them, okay, buy my course by the end of the week, or give me some feedback by the end of the day. Or, I don’t know, it could be vote for me, or whatever it is. But there’s got to be a specific and ideally dated call to action. Otherwise, it just won’t happen. Or sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you a free book or something.

It doesn’t have to be slimy in a salesy kind of way. It has to be that it’s a natural progression from what you’ve been saying to the point of difference. And hopefully it marries with what they want already. So, you’re solving a problem for people.

Lynne: Tell us a little bit, I mean, you’ve talked to us in your pitch to us about how speaking gigs can really help a freelancer. What can a speaking gig do for a freelance career?

Theresa: Well, it definitely gives you more visibility. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s going to be a fantastic income stream in Australia. There are very few people who can make that on the speaker’s circuit. It’s usually that they’ve already got a very high profile and if you do go for it, there are a number of speaker bureaus that you can sign up for, and they need more women because we are not seeing enough women step up and we need people from diverse backgrounds and from all sorts of diversity. So, but you’ve got to have a subject that you are absolutely au fait with, and you understand it inside out. And then you’ve got to picture it in a way to people who want to know and want to hear that subject. But you can boost your visibility, you can celebrate your hard work. You might be able to use it to influence people, maybe even influence policy makers decisions to change something, change regulations so that your industry is now freed up or is able to thrive better.

Sometimes policy makers don’t even know that what they’re doing is an obstruction. If you could just say, well, if you just change, tweaked this, we could unlock all this potential or whatever it is. Or it could be that you want to inspire the next generation of people to join your industry or to take up your cause.

There are many reasons to do it, and you’ve got to have a clear objective. It’s not just, oh, I want to get up there and have a talk and maybe earn some money. No, it’s got to be with a very clear objective, and it’s got to align with what people want.

Rachel: What are some ways that, because there’d be lots of freelancers listening right now, what are some ways that they can start to get into speaking? What would be your advice to get started?

Theresa: Okay, so for an example, I know that Lynne works a lot in design and architecture. If you knew that there was a conference coming up in that area, you could offer yourself as an expert on a panel. So that would be a way to ease into it. Then you’re not the only person on stage, but you are one of maybe four or five people on a panel.

So, you are then getting in front of people who go, oh, Lynne, she writes about that. Oh, okay. That sounds interesting. I’d like to talk to her. It’s about finding where your audience is and introducing yourself to them, softly, I guess. There are speaker’s bureaus you could inquire about, do you need anyone in this area? This is where I specialise. Write yourself for little blurb. Get a professional photo taken. Have a little pitch. You might record yourself giving a smaller presentation and send that off. It depends on your objectives really, but softly, softly. I would start maybe with the industry panel or the podcast.

Podcasts are fantastic way and get in front of the people who want you because you’ve got a problem that you can solve.

Rachel: Obviously podcasts though wouldn’t be paid speaking gigs as such. Good practice though but not paid. Should you go for unpaid gigs when you’re starting out and what kind of speaking opportunities are paid?

Theresa: Definitely. I would definitely, I mean, I do lots of unpaid speaking gigs and, I’m doing one at the Waverly Library on May 7^th – plug for my book – and I’ll get maybe $300 for that. So, it’s not a huge amount, but I get to sell some books. I get to tell people about the services that I offer, about my online course, about my in-person training. I do think there is definitely evidence to show there’s a rise in popularity for in-person speaking events.

We are seeing more writers’ festivals coming up, talk festivals, ideas festivals, even in regional and rural areas. And I spoke to someone from the State Library about that, who said that they tried it as an idea, why don’t we do some in-person speaking events and it’s just going off and the idea was maybe it’s because people could no longer trust social media. There are so many AI fakes out there that they want to actually see and hear a person in the flesh, a subject matter expert and authority, and then ask them a question and be surrounded by other like-minded people. Because the AI fakes are becoming more prevalent and harder to detect.

There was something a couple of weeks ago with the ABC finance reporter, Alan Kohler who was in a fake video. He was interviewing, looked like he was interviewing the head of the CBA bank and it looked like they were having a heated discussion and that the other speaker tore off his microphone and stormed out of the seven thirty studio and then the real Alan Kohler, well, I hope it was real – got on social media and said, social media is dead, we can no longer believe it. This was not me. So that is worrying, and I think as a result people want, maybe it’ll go back to the days where we stand on a box in speaker’s corner and spruick our wares, because at least you know that that’s a real person. AI can’t do that yet.

Lynne: Yes.

Theresa: And we do need to lean into what it means to be human. That’s not me as an original saying that’s lots of people. What’s his name? Yuval Noah Harari an incredible Israeli academic who says, we have to lean into what it means to be human, especially in this era of AI and that means doing things with your heart, your hands, and your head. So, with your head, analysing, critical thinking, discerning and with your hands, making things. I wish I could make things, but I can’t. My daughter makes jewellery, but people that can make things lean into that. And with your heart really connecting intentionally with people to communicate. So that means listening as well and then speaking in a way that is authentic and that actually meets that person where they are not just trying to tell them something that you want to tell them and telling those funny stories and telling those human – personal human stories. There’s a great quote from a psychologist, Elliot Aronson, who said, people want to hear one clear, vivid personal example rather than an abundance of statistics. And yes, statistics are important, but also the personal stories because that’s something that AI can’t provide.

AI can’t tell you a story about when its dress unravelled on stage because AI hasn’t got a body yet and didn’t have that experience. Whereas a human can and that human, those human stories are what we remember.

There’s also another great quote I love from the activist and author Maya Angelo, who said, well, people will forget what you said, they may forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. And we will forget a lot of AI slop, but we won’t forget the real stories people tell us that really touch us.

I’m thinking about that a lot because I went to a memorial service yesterday for a neighbour who passed away sadly. And it was a celebration of her life. It was the stories that people got up to tell about how wonderful she was that was so touching. Don’t make me cry but you know that you couldn’t have written a speech by AI that wouldn’t have touched people.

Lynne: So interesting.

Rachel: True.

Lynne: It’s interesting because you’re, I guess what I’m hearing and what I’ve heard generally is it’s hard to get paid speaking gigs in Australia, certainly of any substance. But you can turn, there’s some creative ways that a freelancer can turn speaking into other opportunities like talks or courses or corporate work. Is that what you find? It’s like a marketing tool really.

Theresa: Absolutely. You can talk; you can speak at your local public library. You can offer yourself as an associate with another group that’s offering us something similar but not exactly the same as you and say, look, I’d love to join your conference and have a talk. Maybe you do that for free or a small fee at least to cover your travel costs. That can be a way to get the ball rolling and then you make contacts and then you are in front of an audience who normally wouldn’t have known about you.

It could be really useful. In fact, that’s why I loved The Content Byte Summit. That’s why I’d love to see it come back. I met so many interesting people and saw interesting people speak. I think it’s a really, it’s the now and I think it’s the future.

We don’t really want online courses anymore. I think it’s got really a lot of COVID vibes about it. A young person said to me the other day, um, and she said, no, I want you to come and talk to my group in person. I said, okay and she was very young. She was in her twenties. She actually wanted, it made me laugh because I said, what can I, my generation teach you? And she said, well, we know a lot about social media. In fact, they were social media influencer managers, but she wanted us to come, she wanted me to come and teach her small team about how to pitch to these old executive advertising executives who were in their forties, and I went, wow. Forties. Wow. Okay. That’s old.

Lynne: Okay.

Rachel: Oh, to be in your forties.

Theresa: And so, I did, and she said, we learned so much. She said, I feel that we hide behind our text messages, our DMs and our emails, and we don’t get out enough to talk to people, but that’s actually what gets cut through.

Rachel: I kind of agree with you. I think that people are craving those, in-person connections and do you think now, more than ever this is a really exciting time for events and for in-person connections and for setting up talks and going for that podcast and all that sort of stuff.

Theresa: I want to say it’s an exciting time. I feel like it’s a very challenging time we’re going through, but definitely in-person events are having their moment.  I think it’s an antidote to some of the feelings we’re having about the world being quite heavy and us not being in control and worrying, and that when we get together with other people and not just like-minded people, people with other ideas and exchange ideas. It’s very, very healthy.  It’s very good for our mental health. It’s very good for democracy. It’s very good for business. It’s an antidote to certainly doom scrolling, that’s for sure. 

Rachel: Love it.

Lynne: Wow. So, Theresa, we end the podcast with our new fast three questions. Are you ready?

Theresa: Yes. Okay.

Rachel: Okay. First question. Favourite tools of the trade you can’t live without.

Theresa: Okay. My daughter has introduced me to NotebookLM, and I am playing with that to take my client feedback and feed it into that and then hope it will help me write my feedback reports faster, although I’m still much of a control freak, so I still need to oversee that, but that, that is helping. And then someone the other day told me that OpusAI was helping to break up even podcasts into sizable chunks for social media. So, I’m going to try that too.

Rachel: There are a few tools that do that. I think that was in our ‘12 Tools’ download, wasn’t it, Lynne?

Lynne: Yes.

Rachel: Which plug for our ‘12 Tools’ download. That’s a mouthful. If you sign up to our newsletter, you get this download, which is amazing and has 12 tools from our guests.  The tools they love. I’m sure that was one of them though.

Theresa: Oh good.

Lynne: So, question two is one habit that genuinely saves you time.

Theresa: I am such a time waster, so that’s a bad question for me but the NotebookLM is something that is definitely, it is saving me time because I spend a lot of time doing client feedback. Once I get the hang of it, I think that will definitely help me help save time. 

Rachel: Well, you’ve had such an interesting career. I’m really interested in your answer to our final question, which is one thing you wish you’d done sooner in your career.

Theresa: Well, this touches me, touches a nerve for me because I really wish I’d started my business, TM Media a long time ago. I was in, let’s say, a slightly abusive work relationship and a lot of friends were telling me to get out and start up my own business, but I was too scared and then anyway once I finally did it, actually it was a workplace lawyer who looked at a contract I was about to sign and said, don’t touch that with a barge pole, and you really need to set up your own business.

Rachel: Wow.

Theresa: He pushed me to do it, and then I did and I got some really good contracts and now it’s just building momentum and I’m now kicking myself for not having done it a whole lot earlier.

Rachel: So funny how you sometimes need that push. I needed two redundancies to push me into freelancing. Taking the leap is so much harder.

Lynne: It is. But you never regret it, do you?

Rachel: No, that’s true. Never.

Lynne: Isn’t the whole thing, you only regret the things you didn’t do, never the things you did.

Rachel: Yes, exactly. So true.

Lynne:  Well, Theresa, thank you so much for your time today. It was so inspiring. It was great to hear, and I think it will make people think differently about speaking actually. I think it’s got a few people out there excited.

Rachel: Absolutely. Thanks Theresa. I mean, we’re going to, ‘

Theresa: I hope so.

Rachel: Tell us where to find you and where to find your book and all of that, and we will pop it in the show notes.

Theresa: Okay, so my website is Theresa, T-H-E-R-E-S-A miller.com au, and I’ve got my online course on there. My book is also on there under the About section. It’s also published by New South Books, if you want to look it up. There’s an audio version available on Audible and all the other audiobook platforms.

If you are in Sydney, May 7th, I’m giving a free talk at Waverly Library at six-thirty about how to nail your presentation at work. And I’m on Instagram – TM_ MediaTrainer. And I’m also on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn, I’m a bigvfan of LinkedIn.

Rachel: Yes. Did you do the audio for your book?

Theresa: I did. Which is really hard work. Much harder work than I thought and now I take my hat off to Stephen Fry for having done all those Harry Potter books, which entertained my children on many a road trip. I just, and he did all the voices and, I mean, that’s a huge effort. My book took three days of three hours at a time, and then I had to come back and do some pickups. But it was, and even now when I listen back to it, I’m quite critical. I think if I’d had more time and more money, I might have spent longer on it, but I was paying by the hour, so I was a bit stingy. So, I thought, I have to get through this. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s me, just who I am and that’s okay too. You can’t be perfect. That’s another lesson in public speaking. You’re not going to be perfect. You’re going to be human.

Rachel: Yes. Love it.

Lynne: Such a great note to end it on too. Thank you. Absolutely. That’s it for this week, so don’t forget to leave a review or a check out Theresa and where to find her and we’ll be back next week.

Credits:

To buy her book https://www.theresamiller.com.au/books 

Her online course: https://www.theresamiller.com.au/online-course

Ten tips to nail your media interview https://www.theresamiller.com.au/media-interview-tips

Eight-attention grabbing openers for presentations https://www.theresamiller.com.au/openers

Or connect with her on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresa-miller-tm-media/

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au

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Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co