My guest today is the Founder and Director of Behind The Mic, a speaker management and consulting agency in London. With over 15 years experience in the speaking industry, she has worked in both the US and UK markets. She has made a career out of helping inspirational, thought-leaders share their expertise on stages across the globe."

As CEO of Human First Ltd, Jaz Ampaw-Farr helps leaders who want to influence, inspire and motivate their teams with greater engagement in order to grow their businesses and leave a lifelong legacy. Jaz combines lessons learned from a challenging and often brutal childhood with those from her rise TV presenter, TEDx Speaker, stand-up comedian and Z-list reality TV star.  Her authentic honesty and humour consistently empower people to think differently about leading themselves and others.

Jaz has managed to go from a market where she is highly established and a bit of a rockstar into a brand new market, and that transition, is not easy. We'll find out exactly how she did that and how she has now become very successful in her new market.  Jaz will also share how she runs her business and what her products and services are.

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Intentional Storytelling

Steve Ashton is an expert in Executive Presence and Storytelling.  He became an expert in both of these disciplines through personal experience of being the sales and marketing director of a business that grew from £7m turnover to £68m in 3 years, through thousands of hours of live tv, radio, theatre acting, stand-up comedy and podcasting as well as more than 30 years working in Learning and Development.

He recently left a role as Chief Leaming officer for an international Division of American Express and has set up his own practice focussing his efforts on helping people increase their presence and ability to engage, connect and inspire people with storytelling.

Steve shares why storytelling is such a popular subject these days, why it's important to be a good storyteller and some top tips and tools to use for storytelling.

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How every speaker could benefit from having a manager.

Who better to be looking after your speaking career, than a manager used to dealing with bookers, promoters, and agents in one of the toughest of all businesses – the music business?

QJ is very familiar with the notorious rogues, the dodgy dealings and the pitfalls that we come across in the speaking business – to this day.

When he started out in the business, he was an artist, songwriter and producer signed to a couple of major record labels himself, but eventually ran his own record label, signing other artists, and dealing with the likes of record pluggers, radio DJs, in order to get publicity, exposure, and radio play for those he signed.

He says, ‘You really have to be pretty ruthless in the music business to get anywhere. So having honed my skills in that industry, I find that the challenges of making progress in speaking are not dissimilar, but a lot easier.’

QJ shares his passion for ‘other people’s talent’ and why he believes that a good manager can take your speaking career to the next level.

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Finding your 'True Funny' 

Paul Dornan has worked in the TV and film and comedy world for over two decades as a writer, producer, director, teacher and mentor. Specialising in character comedy and comedy-drama, he’s written and helped create sketch shows, sit-coms, series and films that have won awards, stormed the box office and sold around the world. Along the way he’s worked with a galaxy of stars – from Dame Edna to Mrs Merton aka Caroline Aherne from Boy George to Downton’s Hugh Bonneville, from Lenny Henry to the Spice Girls. A natural collaborator and team player, he’s acted as writing mentor for rising comedy talents and once co-wrote the massive Sunday Times No 1 bestseller ‘The A-Z OF Behaving Badly with Simon Nye – one of the biggest comedy books ever.

Away from page and screen, he has used his narrative skills in the business world too, helping a range of international brands with creative brainstorming and story.

He’s now the founder of a new venture – True Funny – a service offering creative consultancy and coaching to help professional speakers bring more humour, warmth and likeable storytelling to their work.

Paul shares how his work as a writer and director can help speakers make great main-stage speeches, what true funny is and why this is so important for professional speakers and whether making people laugh is a god given gift, a magic trick, or is this something anyone can learn.

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Owning your own story.

With a background in Public Relations, Lesley Woods has 20 years’ experience of curating and creating compelling stories.  Her career has taken her around the world, working with international partners to shine a light on the work of her military colleagues, from celebrating Christmas in Kandahar to delivering humanitarian aid to the Central African Republic.  

As a current serving senior Royal Air Force Reserve Media Officer, she shares unique perspectives gained from her operational experience.  Her mission is to get you out of the (communication) trenches and into new territory, to get you thinking differently about how you can emotionally engage your audiences.  

In her civilian ‘day job’ role she leads campaigns in the UK Ministry of Defence Communications Directorate, a team that aims to ‘give a voice to the men and women who serve so that their stories can be heard’.  

To help the UK Armed Forces reach new audiences she has led collaborations with films, TV series and documentaries, from influencer events with Disney to a PR partnership with the producers of James Bond.  She once lost half an eyebrow evacuating a TV documentary crew from a burning toilet tent in Afghanistan....whilst wearing ballistic pants.  

Lesley shares the importance of using your OWN story along with tips on the concept of bullet-proof storytelling.  For those speakers that are interviewed, Lesley has lots of advice from her media training background.   And if you ever fancied climbing a tree for Tom Cruise, well Lesley can tell you how.

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How Santa, chocolate, questions and acronyms help you be a better speaker

George Nagle might be best described as a breakthrough thinker.

He is a former executive director for multi-billion-dollar organisations and launched 19 products in 14 months at one point.

George is also a bit of a nerd with a MS and MBA but also multiple certifications in different innovations.

Currently he is a leading creative innovator as a consultant but also as a speaker.

We are going to get a peek into how his creative approaches.

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Ditch perfection and create connection with Lisa Braithwaite

Do you seek a more human connection with your in-person and remote audiences? Do you feel like you're holding yourself back from fully expressing yourself onstage? Do you hope to make a powerful impact and move your participants into action? If you answered yes to any of these questions, Lisa Braithwaite is here for you! Lisa Braithwaite is a speaking coach, trainer and author who started her speaking career more than 40 years ago at high school speech tournaments, presenting her controversial topic of “Brown Bag Lunches.”  More recent achievements include publishing her first course on LinkedIn Learning and discovering that her speaker superpower is instantly and magically recovering from presentation mishaps.

When she’s not working with her coaching and training clients, she can be found cooking, eating, reading about cooking and eating, or managing her cats’ Instagram account. (See show notes!) Lisa shares her tips for ditching perfection and creating connection.

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How to license your content to grow your speaking business.

David Lim is best known for leading the 1st Singapore Everest Expedition in 1998.

He delivers unforgettable presentations on leadership and bouncing back from setbacks. As a leadership coach, he delivers solutions in negotiation and creative teambuilding for groups of up to 12,000 at a time. 

For over a decade, he was on the adjunct faculty for INSEAD business school’s programmes, engaging leaders on self and team leadership. He excels in helping people believe they can be more than just ordinary.

Often speakers are stuck when they're trying to scale their speaking business.  If they cannot be in two places at once, how do they grow their business?  David shares his tips about how to bring in revenue to your speaking business without you actually being there.

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How to beat stress and avoid burnout.

Carole Spiers is a leading international Business Stress Consultant who shows senior executives how to thrive under pressure. She has published books such as "Managing Stress in the Workplace" and "Show Stress Who's Boss!"  Carole is also frequently invited to comment on stress-related issues on TV and radio   She has a background in psychology, and  over 25 years of experience as an industry expert. She serves as CEO of the Carole Spiers Group, an international stress management and wellbeing consultancy.

As an international Motivational Speaker, she has provided keynote addresses at international conferences in the UK, Europe, and Middle East.    Carole is Chair of the International Stress Management AssociationUK.  On their behalf, she founded Stress Awareness Day in 1998 and to recognise its anniversary in 2018, established International Stress Awareness Week.   Carole is a Fellow and past President of the Professional Speaking Association. 

Learn the difference between stress and pressure, the causes of stress, the signs and symptoms of stress and how to live and work in stressful environments.

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How to grow your (speaking) business

Donnie Boivin is an entrepreneur and serves as CEO and Founder of Success Champions and Success Champion Networking. He is considered one of the leading global minds on sales, business development and business growth.

He is described as the first person to make sales and business development relatable and human. A community builder at heart — he builds champions. Today he helps small business owners leverage sales and business development to grow then scale their businesses.

In addition to running multiple businesses, he runs a full working farm with goats, chickens ,ducks, turkeys and geese.

His podcast ‘Growth Mode’ ranks among the top podcasts globally. He is a five-time Best Selling Author and a highly sought-after public speaker.

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