I spent the summer before my sophomore year in college as a summer missionary in Galveston, Texas. Each week my team visited a different church in the area and led vacation Bible school. It was fun, rewarding work.

In addition, I was assigned to a local church where I lived with the pastor, his wife, and their two children. They were both in their fifties and made me feel right at home.

The great acting teacher Sanford Meisner defined acting as “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” But for many of us who communicate before an audience, whether as pastors, executives, educators, or lawyers, the temptation is to do the opposite, to act imaginarily under truthful circumstances.

Fueled by a legitimate desire to deliver a powerful message, we craft our words, our presentation, and our delivery to such an extent that the drive to do our best can actually rob us of sharing a genuine moment with an audience.

In my previous post, I wrote about how I revamped my Speaking page. I thought I would document the process here, in the event that you are thinking about “going pro.” This is the second of two posts.

If you are an author—or want to be one—I highly recommend that you consider public speaking as part of building your platform. It is a great way to raise your visibility, promote your products, and develop credibility with your audience.

Now that public speaking has become my primary focus, I thought it was time I revamped my Speaking page. I thought I would document the process here, in the event that you are thinking about “going pro.” This is the first of two posts.

If you are an author—or want to be one—I highly recommend that you consider public speaking as part of building your platform. It is a great way to raise your visibility, promote your products, and develop credibility with your audience.

As you may know, I stepped aside from my role as the CEO of Thomas Nelson in April. Though I still remain the company’s Chairman, I am now pursuing speaking and writing full-time.

So far, it has been like starting a new business. I am busier than ever before. I am traveling weekly, speaking for corporations, colleges, conferences, non-profits, and churches. I am having a blast!

When I was twenty-years-old, I participated in a summer missions trip in Galveston, Texas. I was assigned to assist the pastor of a small Baptist church. I thought I would mostly be helping with the youth program.

About two weeks into this project, the pastor announced that he would be out-of-town the next Sunday. He asked me to preach on his behalf. I was thunderstruck.

A few weeks ago, Gail and I attended the Dynamic Communicators Workshop (DCW) at the WinShape Retreat Center in Mt. Berry, Georgia. Even though I have been speaking publicly for 30 years, I was ready to take my speaking to the next level. I wasn’t disappointed.

DCW was one of the best learning experiences I have ever had. My friend, Ken Davis, along with a world-class faculty presented extraordinary content. That alone would have been worth the tuition. But the most helpful sessions were with our small groups. In these sessions, we each had to prepare and deliver three speeches. We were then video-taped, critiqued, and individually coached.

I have been using Evernote for a couple of years now. I use it to manage meeting notes, store blogging ideas, and file interesting articles I read on the Web. It has basically become my electronic brain. However, unlike my aging brain, Evernote provides near-instant recall.

Recently, I started using it to manage the raw components of my speeches. I have seen a lot of different systems for this. One of my authors, who is also a popular public speaker, once showed me his system. It contained literally thousands of 4″ x 6″ cards, arranged alphabetically by topic.

Last week, I spoke at the Re:create 2011 Conference in Franklin, Tennessee. This is an annual conference for Christian “creatives” (e.g., worship leaders, recording artists, book authors, actors, etc.). I talked about the #1 challenge these creatives face: becoming bitter over unwarranted criticism.

A few days after the conference, my friend Ken Davis, who was also a speaker at the conference, gave me some valuable feedback on my speech. In addition to being an enormously gifted speaker himself, Ken is a speech coach. He also hosts the Dynamic Communicators Summit and the Professional Communicators Summit, two conferences designed for professional speakers.

I have spoken publicly about a dozen times in the last three weeks. Because this is more than usual, I have begun to notice a pattern in my own psychological state as I go through the speaking cycle.

It has been helpful to identify the components of this cycle, so I am not so surprised when they occur. So far, I have identified ten stages I go through in preparing to speak. (This assumes that I have never delivered this exact speech before.)

Andy Stanley is the founder and senior pastor of Northpoint Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also one of the best communicators I have ever heard. His “Leadership Podcast” is designed “to help leaders go further faster.” I can attest to the fact that it delivers on its promise.

The TED Conference is one of the most prestigious in the world. In case you haven’t heard of it, TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design.” It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds.

Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged by TED to give “the talk of their lives.” Each speaker is given just 18 minutes to do so. Talk about pressure!

I usually make three to four major presentations a month. In January, for example, I made presentations at our Quarterly Business Review Meeting, our All Employee Meeting, and The Thomas Nelson Way session. In February, I will make four presentations.

I don’t know about you, but our business runs on PowerPoint, and, to a lesser extent, Keynote presentation software.