This weekend I gave my 1st keynote!
I couldn’t have been more proud to share with my alma mater, my parents, and my beautiful wife.
And I learned so much about audiences, myself, and my work on this planet. (In no particular order):
1: The power of story.
In preparing my story, I learned so much about my childhood and what made little six-year-old Matthew tick, and about what makes me authentically me.
2: It’s fun to get paid doing what you love to do.
3: Not having your shoes on helps tremendously. Grounding and being in my legs was so valuable. I asked the audience before I began if it was cool for me to take my shoes off. It created and bridge of trust and casual-ness between us.
4: Teaching grounding exercises helped to connect me and the audience to each other, and to ourselves.
5: Having the audience and myself go through multiple state changes got us fully engaged.
6: Being deeply passionate about the content AND the audiences experience was everything… I built the experience for them, while allowing myself to get lost in my experience during other portions of the keynote.
It allowed for them to fully feel and experience me, while not only being able to add their voice to the story but also viscerally learn from the experience.
7: It’s an energetic give and take with the audience. If I give of myself, the audience with respond by pouring energy back into me.
That was the most FILLING experience of my career…
Time for more keynote goodness…
