Good morning. It is officially 8 o'.

Clock.

I am Tamsen Webster. This is Kelly Swanson.

Woo hoo.

Hello. Hello. All right. And you are here for the Speaking Edge. Everything you need to know about being awesome. But you know that already. So a little bit of context as we get started. Originally, as we were writing this and submitting for it, we were like, let's make it a split session because, you know, people need message and brand, people need story and speech.

And then the more we kept talking, the more we were like, we think the same thing. And how much what I do depends on how somebody like Kelly does what she does and vice versa. And if you're looking at us and going, I don't know who you two women are, don't worry, we will fill in that gap. But what we ultimately ended up deciding, and we want to include. Include you in this decision, is that based on our collective experience at influences and other things, what we want to turn this in is less of a presentation and more of a conversation among adults who speak professionally. Does that sound good? This is. It's going to be. If you know even a little bit about me, it's going to be a highly structured conversation.

So don't worry. We're hoping that we will.

And if you know anything about me, we will go off into the show. Shallow end of the pool.

And that's why I'm here.

Hey, to give us rednecks a translation on the other side of things.

I know, but see, I grew up. I spent the first like 15 years of my life in Virginia Beach. So you're gonna. There's a little. There's like a.

There's a lot of synergy between us.

That's right. So is that all right with you? That instead of being talked at for three hours, we actually have a structured conversation?

Can I say something?

Yeah.

I'm not supposed to because she. You used to facilitate a ramble, but I forget the rules. And I'm sure you'd say the same thing. Everything I would have told you. Not everything, but the points that I knew I wanted to make and leave with you here. I put in a workbook. I made a workbook just for you. So you could go home or back to your room and access it.

And I know that I'm sending you away with everything I would have given you. How had I decided to do it? In a lecture style. But agreeing with Tamsin that sometimes it's just nice to hear people hash this out in a conversation. Have you ever had a conversation with another speaker and thought, God, wish other people could hear us talk about this. Cause we're really getting to the root of it. So, surface stuff, surface stuff, templates. I want easy stuff that'll go home with you. We're going to have an elevated conversation.

That's right.

That's right.

We are going to have an elevated conversation. All right, so that's the plan. So we are going to introduce ourselves. We are going to operate essentially as like, six mini conversations is the plan. We'll see how it goes. But since one of the many things that unify both what Kelly and I do is story structure, we are actually going to structure the conversation across that arc. Meaning we're going to start our conversation today talking about what is it that we are all doing this for? What is it that. What are those big questions that are in your mind that you want to take this opportunity over the course of these three hours that we're spending together, to at least get some new insight on? So I want you to start thinking about that.

We want you to start kind of writing certain things down because we want to surface those questions and talk about it. Then in the next section, we're going to start to talk about the problems that we see given what we do. And again, we'll introduce you to what we do in just a minute about what do we think is going on behind what is making those questions so such persistent irritants and troublesome to answer. Then we're going to give you some truth, at least from our perspective. What?

I know you look shocked.

We want to hear it from you, too, because there's very good science. You're already getting an intro to me that shows that a collective group comes to better decisions and better resolutions than any single person alone. So Kelly and I may have done a lot, seen a lot, but we do not know everything. And we want to hear more from you. And I think you want to hear more from you. Then we're gonna talk about what to do.

Yeah. And tagging on what she just said. I'll be quiet. I'll be quiet.

You don't need to worry about it.

I'd love it if we had a few moments along the lines of what you're saying, of the. It just needs to be said. There's just some things that need to be said to break some myths and misconceptions that are holding a lot of us back. All right.