How to Learn a Keynote Without Memorizing a Script

Links:

https://www.laurenchapnick.com/

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In this episode of She’s Got the Mic, Lauren shares a powerful speaking lesson learned the hard way during a conference where she attempted to deliver a brand new talk after only two weeks of preparation. Instead of feeling grounded and connected, she found herself in her head, distracted by stage noises, lighting, and internal pressure to remember every word.

This experience sparked a deeper reflection on the difference between memorizing a talk and truly learning it. Lauren explores what happens when speakers rely on scripts instead of embodiment and how this can lead to moments of disconnection, anxiety, and even blanking on stage. She opens up about a real moment where she lost her place during a keynote and the surprising way she recovered, reinforcing that imperfect speaking experiences often become our greatest teachers.

Lauren introduces her current approach to talk preparation, a technique she calls the set list method. Rather than memorizing paragraphs of text, she practices using prompts and guiding questions that represent each moment of the story. This allows her to stay flexible, present, and responsive to audience energy while still delivering powerful content. The result is storytelling that feels authentic, dynamic, and alive rather than rehearsed and rigid.

Throughout the episode, Lauren discusses how speaking presence is deeply connected to being in the body rather than trapped in the mind. She shares how meditation, repetition, and speaking material out loud can help speakers develop muscle memory, strengthen confidence, and improve stage performance. Listeners will also hear examples of how stories evolve through practice and why the first written draft of a talk is rarely the final version delivered on stage.

This conversation is especially valuable for women speakers, coaches, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders who want to grow their visibility, deliver transformational keynotes, and connect emotionally with audiences. Whether you are preparing your first talk or refining an established keynote, this episode offers practical guidance for building talks that feel natural, memorable, and impactful.

Lauren also invites listeners to reflect on their own speaking experiences, including moments of forgetting lines, bombing, or feeling disconnected on stage. Instead of viewing these moments as failures, she reframes them as opportunities for growth, refinement, and deeper self trust.

By the end of the episode, listeners will walk away with a simple but powerful shift. Stop memorizing your talk and start learning it through repetition, embodiment, and structure that supports flow rather than rigidity.

If you are working on a keynote, workshop, or signature talk and want a preparation method that helps you stay present, connect with your audience, and deliver value without sounding scripted, this episode will resonate deeply.

Lauren's "Set List" of most recent story:

• Opening
• Where are you?
• What do you feel?
• What do you hear?
• What do you smell?
• What do you see?
• What are you thinking?
• Why are you here?
• Who speaks first?
• Sum it up in 3 words.
• Trip home.
• #1 rule
• Following year?
• What did Rob say?
• How did it feel in your body?
• Vision?
• What did you ask yourself?
• What did other people think?

To be played at opening of all SGTM episodes, this is a promo for the Speakers Collective.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Episode Focus
• 2:06 The Two-Week New Talk Mistake
• 4:22 Mind Vs Body On Stage
• 7:16 The Blank Moment And Recovery
• 9:54 Lesson: Don’t Rush New Material
• 11:37 Teaching Without Memorizing
• 13:47 Practice Out Loud, Not Word-For-Word
• 15:52 The Set List Technique
• 19:47 Sensory Prompts Drive Story Detail
• 21:30 Closing And Calls To Action

Transcript

Lauren Chapnick: 0:47

Welcome to She's Got the Mic, the show for women speakers and entrepreneurs using their voice to grow their business. I'm your host, Lauren Chapman. Let's go. Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of She's Got the Mike. This is the place where we talk about all things entrepreneurialism, speaking, and using your voice to share your story and grow your business. I want to talk today about a technique that I have been using to learn my talks. And I say learn instead of memorize because we've all made that mistake where we tried to memorize something because we had something coming up and we just drilled, drilled, drilled the script, the material, the talk into our brain to deliver something quickly. This happened to me in November. So a few months back, I had a speaking gig and I had two weeks. And instead of doing something that I was already familiar with that was in my body, I created something from scratch because I had had this idea and I wanted the material. I wanted the footage rather, because I knew this conference was being recorded. And when I tell you, I was memorizing it up until the point where I was driving there in my car, still forgetting things, and just saying, I hope on a wing and a prayer that this goes well. It was not my typical style. I usually have my talks in my body. I've done them so many times, just practicing at home, doing them in front of whoever will listen to me. And it does change a little bit every time I do it. But with this particular talk, and it's happened to me in other circumstances too, where I've had brain farts. Have you ever been on stage and you are just in and out of being in your head versus really settling down into your body and being fully present? I know when I'm meditating more regularly and I go on stage, I am so much better because I have that practice in me of just being in the present moment. What happened to me at this conference that I'm about to tell you about was I was not at all grounded in my body. I was more nervous than usual because it was a new talk. And I was so in my head from the minute I walked onto the stage. And this was an elevated stage, and it squeaked a little bit when you walked. So that was in my head because I move around a lot when I talk. And I was just thinking, is this gonna squeak? Is everybody gonna be thinking about the squeak? Are they gonna be looking at my shoes? And that was tripping me up. Then I started off just fine. The first few minutes were were great. And I was saying in my mind, you know, you're gonna do this, you're gonna get through, it's gonna be awesome. And then I started thinking about other things like wow, these lights are crazy bright, and my hair is falling in my face, and all this stupid stuff that I should not be thinking about. I should be thinking about nothing, I should just be doing the talk and just being in the moment and trying to connect with the audience and read their cues and give them the value that I've promised them. And I would not say at all that I bombed. I didn't bomb for me. It was just not my finest performance. And I had a moment where I went completely blank, and it wasn't obvious. I recovered well enough that I kept going. But I'm telling you, there was a pause, and hopefully it just looked like I was deep in thought and pausing for a dramatic effect, but my brain was going, oh shit, I have no idea what's next. And what came out of my mouth after that was an out-of-body experience. I have no idea what I said or how I segued into the next part, how I recovered. I literally just pulled something out of thin air. You know, it was related to the topic. It was about intuition, but it was not at all what I had planned to say. But we got through it. It was okay, but it taught me so much. It taught me do not do a new talk to that you've only been preparing for two weeks. That was insane. That was like trying to take the SATs and you know, thinking you could just study two weeks before. I don't know where that analogy came from, but it was not smart, is the point. And I was speaking to somebody today, and we were talking about being in your body versus being out of your body when you're giving a talk. And you know the difference, you know how it feels when you get up to do your keynote or your workshop, and you are just in it, and you are not watching yourself do it, you are simply doing it. You're feeding off the energy of the audience, they're with you. It's been in your muscle memory, and it is a good experience for everybody. Now, listen, we are all going to have those total just bombs where you just mess up, you trip, you fall, and those are the stories that we share that are just great and they make us all feel human. And that's sort of what this talk was. I'm gonna play for you the moment where my brain left my body, and you tell me what you think. Could you tell? Did I recover okay? What do you think? I'm just gonna show you that little part. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00: 8:00

My gut was right, I just didn't listen. And sometimes ignoring your intuition will cost you everything. By show of hands, how many of you can think of a time you ignored your intuition and it came back to bite you later? What is intuition? Some people think it's random it's guesswork or even some mystical superpower, but it's not. It's actually your brain processing information faster than your conscious mind can name it.

Lauren Chapnick: 8:49

So there it is. Eh, it happened, right? And we learn and we move on. When I used to speak to nursing students, some of you may know I had a whole span of my speaking career where I would speak just to nursing students. I would go into classrooms and speak at orientations and different things like that. And I never had an experience like the one you just heard because I never memorized. It was never a memorization thing, it was a bullet point kind of list of ideas. And I used slides, but I didn't read off the slides. I just had, you know, set concepts that I was in there teaching them. And it was about mindset, it was about burnout and stress and different tips and techniques of how to navigate nursing school, how to get your head in the game for exams and things like that. And since I've kind of pivoted and now I speak to mostly women and women entrepreneurs about intuition and purpose and fear, I have to remember what it was like to speak to those nursing students. How did that feel? And I know the difference. The part that I just showed you is a classic example of what not to do. So let's talk about memorization a little bit. Because when you are working on a new talk or a new story in your talk, a new moment, it is so crucial to say it out loud so many times. I now have a habit where in the morning when I'm driving to work, I work as a school nurse, I work on whatever talk I'm doing next. I say it and I practice it over and over again. That's not memorizing to me. I mean, it is, but it does adapt and change a little bit. I'm not thinking of the words, I'm thinking of each moment and what I want to get across in that moment, in that section of the talk. What's the point? What's the idea? And the more and more you say it out loud and get it in your body, new ideas come. Whatever that first draft that I wrote, it's now evolved so much because I've said it out loud so much. But that's not the only thing that I've been doing. And I want to share this technique with you. And maybe some of you do the same thing. I would love to hear what some of you do to learn your talks. But instead of holding a paper with my script typed out on it, which is what I did for that event that I just played for you. Total mistake. Now, what I do is I have a set list, if you will, of ideas, of questions that when I look at that, I know what part of the talk I'm talking about. So I'm just gonna give you the next little chunk of a story that I'm working on. And if you're coming to one of my upcoming events for the speakers collective, you'll hear it. But this is what I'm talking about. And I'll I'll put this little list in the show notes so you can see, and maybe this technique will work for you. So the first thing I have is opening. The opening of your talk, you know what you're going to say first. You know that opening line that you're gonna say, that first sentence that's gonna hopefully reel in your audience. So I have opening pizza saved my marriage. Next, I have where are you? So instead of reading the script, I'm reading this list of prompts, these questions. So opening, where are you? Pizza saved my marriage. I'm wedged in the back middle seat of our Toyota Forerunner, my four-month-old daughter on one side, and about three-quarters of everything we own on the other, piled to the ceiling. Next, what do you feel? The legs of her awkwardly folded pack and play clock me in the back of the head every time we go over a bump or my husband hits the brakes, which I swear he's doing on purpose as payback for making him go on this trip. Next bullet point, what do you hear? My daughter is screaming at the soul piercing. I have tried everything kind. ACDC is blasting in a loop from the front because that's how my husband processes his feelings. Next, what do you smell? So, guys, I'm just looking at this list and then I say the next part. So I'm not memorizing, I'm simply going chunk by chunk by chunk based on what's on my set list. What do you smell? And that smell that I could not quite identify as we were packing up, I've just now realized is crusted baby vomit on my nursing bra. What do you see? The stop and go traffic suddenly becomes a sea of red brake lights. What are you thinking? And at this point, I'm starting to question if this trip was really such a good idea. Why are you here? But it's Thanksgiving. This is what people do. Okay, so you get the point. It's these questions. I'm gonna read you the rest of the list a little bit. Okay, what why are you here? What happens next? Who speaks first? What do you say? Three words. Do you make it? How was it? Trip home. How did you look? Feel what happened the following year, and so on and so on. Because as I'm looking at this list and I'm saying the different parts of the story, I'm feeling it in my body, I'm remembering it. Therefore, I deliver it differently every time. And you have to be used to doing that because when you're in front of a new audience, every audience is gonna feel different. And it is so easy to get thrown. I have been thrown before, and I was able to keep going, but especially when you're working out new material, you're going to get laughs in places you never thought you would get a laugh, and you're not going to get laughs in places where you expected to get a laugh. So that can really throw you. It's very easy to get in your head, and you can feel very much out of your body watching yourself speak versus feeling lit up, feeling electric, and feeling in your body and grounded and present with your two feet on the ground in that moment, connecting with that audience, giving them the value that they deserve from you. You are not spattering off a list of things that you memorized verbatim. You are going from a set list to a flow to an outline of ideas. And it will change and it will adapt. What you really want to do is take out the juiciest, most valuable pieces of your talk and make those the shiniest, hardest hitting moments. Because when your audience goes home, you want them to remember what you shared with them. You want to change life in some way. And you're not gonna do that by rattling off a script and getting up there and delivering it like you're a professor or whatever. I don't know where I got professor from, but you know what I mean. You have to be your authentic self, and you cannot be your authentic self if you have memorized a talk. So I am glad that I had that experience because I now know I will never write and deliver a talk within a two-week span. I just won't do it again. I have material that I've been working on for well over a year now that I can draw from, and I will continue to constantly develop new material as I make my keynotes sharper and better and more valuable. But this technique of a set list, this is what I'm this is what I'm doing now, and it's really working. What has worked for you? What moments have you had where you learned, where you bombed, quote unquote, where you messed up, where you forgot what you were going to say, and what can you do differently the next time? Was that talk, was that speech really in your body? Or did you kind of think you knew it? And when you got up there, you realized it was not quite part of you. I hope for all of us that we can continue to work together and build these incredibly moving, life-altering, transformational keynote talks, and workshops that we are all working on in our businesses to quite literally make the world a better place. Until next time, make today awesome. Trust your gut, get off your butt, stop memorizing, and I'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to She's Got the Mic. 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