Last week, my wife (and former co-founder) responded to an opening of a speaking spot at a local event organized by French Tech Sofia. Full disclosure, I am a volunteer at FT Sofia, and no it's not that we offer advantages to family members to get a speaking spot, it's that she has been generously (and silently) supporting the new event format (2 keynote speakers followed with a networking) since its inception by providing the beautiful lightbox display and graphics. It was her first time speaking, so I decided to try with her a method I used for my first talks last year. I am sharing here what I learned through the process.

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In short

• Behind-The-Scene Doers : Unsung Heroes
• The Limits of Humility : A Hard Earned Lesson for Engineers
• Generosity The Antidote To Anxiety : It's Not About You, it's about them
• What I Did to Design My First Talk : A 2h "Signature Talk Masterclass" by Eric Edmeades, a white board and a marker.

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Behind-The-Scene Doers

When Zaza, my wife and former business partner, said about talking at an event on a one week notice "Let's do it!", I did not realize at that moment I will get invaluable insight on my own mission. I get energized from helping people who's job is to avoid catastrophes from happening. Literally one millions things can go wrong on a tradeshow, one millions things can go wrong on an aircraft ... oups bad timing ... on a car.

The nature of the job of the engineer, project manager, operations manager is making sure those problems don't happen in the first place. It's doing their job. And that's fine like that. Generally those people don't seek the light. They are responsible, professionals taking pride in their integrity of doing the right thing and doing the thing right.

Yes, no one applauds them when their high stake tradeshow went well "it was their job", I don't think those who applaud after landing do it for the engineers who made those planes safe.

It could get quite ugly sometimes behind the scene, and we may be tempted to think there nothing worth talking about when you know how the sausage is made 😆

I call all those people, and you can add : engineers who keep our energy supply available, those working behind the scene so we don't have a nuclear war, that fertility doctor who helped a couple who couldn't conceive a child, those people who work at ER of your city hospitals, ... Unsung Heroes.

We celebrated a few of them during Covid, but they are everywhere. And it even might be you.

But as an engineer when you become an entrepreneur, a business owner, you can't be too humble about the good your are doing.

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The Limits of Humility

Back in 2020, an Austrian business owner of an industrial plant in Plovdiv area (Bulgaria) told me during the pandemic that there was shortage of Ethanol, which was out of stock in almost every country for a while. He was willing to get it from "bad for business" countries if necessary it was so vital to his business. Only to discover, that a plant literally 2.5km up the road of his own plant, was producing ethanol in mad quantity and had enough stock to supply the whole country😆. He told me "Othmane, you need to talk to them, the world needs badly what they have and are willing to pay life changing above market price for it, if they just raise their hand 🙋🏻‍♂️ ... but they are afraid". There might be legit issue there I am unaware of, but still...

If we don't talk about our business, no body, even if they crave what we have to offer, will know that we exist.

It's our duty as responsible business owners to put the word out there, not for fame or glory, but in the service of those who need it most. For their sake.

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Generosity The Antidote To Anxiety

Now you decided to talk about your business, a friend convinced to take the mic at his event or you are invited at an industry event to speak. Now what ? I learned from Anton Lelios a member of the community "Engineers Can Talk" a lesson he got from "improv theater" classes, that when you shift your attention from yourself (how you look, how you sound, ...) to shift it towards others, our brain chemistry changes, our breathing becomes normal, and we become calmer as someone speaking in public.

I learned first hand this when I started to share my message the first time "Positioning Hacked" then "Engineers Can Talk : The one-liner Seminar", that when you reframe "you talking" into "you helping", or "you selling" to "you helping". It's an act of service, and even generosity. Where you share something that could be useful, sometime life changing for the other.

Reframing talking from an act of me, me, me ... to act of service to "THEM", "THEM", "THEM" was a game changer for me, and for the people I coached. Recently Zaza went through the process and spoke for the first time in her life ! And it was beautiful to watch !

And what's great about being generous with knowledge, is that unlike material stuff if I give you $20 I lose $20, when you give you knowledge, wisdom, ideas .... we both have knowledge, wisdom and ideas. Isn't that beautiful ?

So, what are you waiting for ?

What I Did to Design My First Talk

Here is exactly what I did, and thought other to do, to design and deliver your "first talk"

1. Watch the 2h masterclass below by Eric Edmeades (just the first hour might be enough) so valuable insights.
2. List 20+ stories with just a short name to reference + the point
3. Use the Speech Map to map the relevant stories as explained in the master class (adjust proportionally for your duration)
4. Record yourself doing the presentation in 20 min or 40 minute without any presentation just with the map
5. Adjust as needed the stories, and final outline
6. Build the slides in Canva (my favorite now) as it's great to find cool pictures without having to search

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