Almost twenty years ago, I was lucky enough to be in attendance of a performance from a world-renowned motivational speaker in downtown Chicago. This person genuinely delivered a life-changing speech that ultimately helped me decide to follow in his footsteps, and to this day I still think about it from time to time.
Honestly, I can’t remember more than a few lines from his entire speech, but I can still tell you about the main takeaway because of a clever little trick I learned that night. You see, the speaker handed out these little keychains that were shaped like an hourglass, but the inside only had maybe 50 tiny grains of sand. Once you flipped it over, the sand drained out in less than 3 seconds.
His message was about being able to change your entire destiny before that hourglass ran out, just by making a mental decision to strive for more in life. And you know what? I probably wouldn’t even remember anything from that speech from 19 years ago if it wasn’t for that silly hourglass.
That’s why we should always give our audience something to take home with them, and that item should be a direct reminder of our main message. It doesn’t have to be a big dollar item either; just something small and inexpensive that carries a lot of meaning. In fact, I’ve even seen speakers have the audience write something down on their drink napkins and believe it or not, the vast majority ended up taking them home with them to show others.
So what’s the takeaway here? Always give the audience something to take home and remember you by. It’s also a great idea to add your branding to that item as well- specifically your website address.