Talking Webinars With Taki Moore

Taki Moore: Thanks.

Ezra: How are you doing, bro? You’re the Talkster, man.

Taki: I’ve been called Talkster since then. It’s awesome. Thank you.

Ezra: So I first met Taki in San Francisco at a coffee shop.

Taki: Pete’s Cafe.

Ezra: Yeah, I think we were eating eggs and talking about who knows what.

Taki: Yeah.

Ezra: Anyways, so we just finished both of our presentations here and you did a presentation on webinars that I thought was absolutely phenomenal. I run a lot of live events and I took more notes in that presentation than any of the other presentations here and I wanted to ask you if there are people who are running live events in their business, beginners, intermediate, advance people. What is one thing that you would say would improve everybody’s ability to run webinars in live events in their businesses?

Taki: Are we talking about a webinar to sell or…

Ezra: A webinar to sell.

Taki: Yeah. Cool. I think the big mistake that people make is they try to teach and then they try to sell and they treat them like two separate things. And so when they teach, they feel great. Their energy is good and they’re confident. And then when they sell, they get all clammy and their mouth dries up and it goes crappy. I think we talked-

Ezra: So they don’t feel good about selling. They don’t feel good about making an offer to their community?

Taki: Yeah. They feel like this is the cool bit and this is the evil part and we all want to feel good, we don’t want to feel evil, so that gets weird. So I think the mistake they make is they try to teach and then sell. And what . . . if you want to kind of up your level and be more comfortable with both, it’s about, we’re not going to teach and then sell, we’re going to teach and sell. So while you’re teaching, you’re teaching great stuff, you’re also teaching and sitting people what to wanting that’s going to come up in your offer. And even when you walk someone through your offer, you’re doing it in educational way so you’re coolness is high the whole way through.

Ezra: So you’re essentially teaching -, It’s what you said, teaching the people what to want. You’re taking them through the . . . you know what I think would be cool would be sharing how you segue between content and an offer because that would be really cool.

Taki: Yeah. So there is a bunch of ways to do it. I think the easiest way to do it is when you start your conversation, just say, I’m going to give you everything I can in the time we got and at the end, I will show you where to go to get more help if you want it. So you kind of made a promise at the start but then when it comes to you offer you could even say, hey, let me pitch you some stuff now, which is kind of creepy. Or you can just fulfill and keep the promise the promise that you made upfront so you can say, so I say I’ll give everything I could in the time we got and then I’ll show you where to go to get more help if you want it. So let me show you how to get more help around this stuff right now and then you’re just going to trade in the offer and it’s nice and smooth.

Ezra: And transitioning into an offer after engaging with a group of people is a really subtle art that a lot of people mess up, so that’s an awesome way to transition into an offer. One more thing is that I go to all of these events.

Taki: Yeah.

Ezra: I go to most events and I watch speakers and I watch how people present and engage with groups of people and you are phenomenally good at it for a couple reasons. Number one, you have extreme charisma, which is something that you have or you don’t. It’s not something you can really practice or learn, but you’re also polished and you have strategies and techniques and tactics so there’s a lot of folks who want to present content to groups of people. They might have a physical product business or a community of some kind or a services agency and they would like to engage with their community and they feel a little bit not particularly comfortable on camera. What are some things that people can do to feel a little better with communicating with groups of people?

Taki: I reckon you talked about charisma and style. I reckon that secret to being naturalist to lean on structure, not on style and I think you can get a good structure that you feel comfortable in and you can just be yourself. And honestly, it’s not about being kind of “rah rah” or whatever your style is. It’s just about being you amplified, you know.

Ezra: Right.

Taki: I’d say there’s got to be a structure that you can work with and there’s an easy one that has been around for ages and ages. It’s called format and it’s-, you know, we start with why it’s important and then we go to what you need to know and then how to do it and then finally what can I do now?

Ezra: Why, what, how, what now?

Taki: Yeah. What now? I think technically, it’s meant to be “what if” but I never understood what that meant so I just go with what now.

Ezra: Right. What’s next?

Taki: Yeah. So it’s like why is it important and you can talk about that and then what you need to know. You can tell them about the theory and approach and the mindset and then how to do it, the steps, and then, finally what now. I think just doing that will give you a good presentation, but if you want to kind of sexy it up a little bit and keep people engaged, the secret-, I reckon the little secret is every time you switch from one session to the next, like if you go why to what, and what to how, and how to now, every time you cross from one section to the next, you install some plan spontaneity. You do a little a bit of an interactive bit. So you got a why, here’s why I think this is a really great idea. But you know what, more important than why, I think it’s really important, I’d like to hear what you think. And then you get a paper to write it down because that’s safe and then talk to those next to them because that’s like the next level of scariness and then share it with the room.

Whereas, if you go, hey sir, why do you think this is important? And then no one-, they don’t know what to say so they feel a bit uncomfortable. So every time you make a transition from why to what, or what to how, or how to now, install a little bit of spontaneous magic.

Ezra: When we looked at all of the speakers, you had the crowd most engaged with you and it’s because you were calling them back between every transition.

Taki: Yeah.

Ezra: But the crowd was right with you.

Ezra: Which is the worst-, By the way, if you ever to speak at a gig, after lunch is the worst. People are asleep, they’re full, they’ve just eaten, they want to nap, they don’t want to listen to you.

Taki: Totally. So I got to work a little hotter, which is cool, right, so James put me in, thank you, I appreciate that.

Ezra: Well, he knew that.

Taki: He totally knew it. He knew I could do it. So I think the secret is lots of people do presentation at the front where it’s like me talk, you listen, you get bored, you fall asleep, you try to stay awake. So let’s make that a little bit more of a conversation and one of these, I enjoyed a lot about that session was that it felt like a two-way conversation rather a one-way.

Ezra: And conversations are what create action. If you’re just telling someone something, they may or may not want to hear it, but if you’re engaged with them in rapport, you have a much better chance of them engaging with your offer.

Taki: Totally right, exactly right. And frankly, it takes the pressure off you. The secret in running a great workshop is to make them work harder than you do and the best way to do that is to kind of stop the conversation and have them finish it.

Ezra: Totally. So this is Taki Moore, the Talkster. You got any other nicknames? Talkshop? He’ll come back on the blog or on the podcast to talk a little bit more in-depth about webinars. Thanks so much, man.

Taki: Thank you again.