Customizing a keynote (Pt 1)
This week marks the beginning of the fall keynote season, and event planners are constantly asking me "How can you customize your keynote for our audience?"
Can you spot all the ways I customized my keynote opener that led to a standing ovation?
One way I do this is with a warm opener.
In stand-up comedy, a warm opener is the very first part of a comedian’s set that’s designed to quickly build rapport with the audience, set the tone, and “warm up” the room before diving into riskier or more complex material.
Similarly, for this opening keynote, I'm aiming for the following key traits of a warm opener:
🤷🏽♂️Self-deprecating and Relatable: The jokes I'm making are to intentionally lower my status instead of elevating it. I'm not looking to impress anyone in the room with how smart I am, because smart isn't relatable.
🔗Connect me to the audience: Instantly one of them because well, tbh, I was a member 20 years ago!
😍Admiration without ass-kissing: A week before the conference, Christine and I were walking along the New West Quay and she was beaming about how amazing the BCRPA group was. I integrate her sentiment by starting with "I've been warned!" to drive curiosity, followed by a quick "You're energetic" and "You're bringing good vibes!"
🎉Set the Stage: I'm looking to set up my self-introduction and honor the conference's theme "Building the Future", while also establishing energy, timing, and style.
Regardless of the key traits, it comes down to this first principle:
I try to figure out why I'm as passionate about them and their industry as they are.
In this age of AI slop, I believe that imperfect and PASSIONATE stories resonate more than anything else.
Passion allows me to SERVE each audience by sharing deeply personal stories that connect me directly to them.
Passion creates a UNIQUE segment that I will likely never use again, because it will never be contextually relevant again.
And I'm passionately okay with that :)
JQ
