In this candid and laughter-filled episode of Epic Begins With One Step Forward, Zander Sprague sits down with speaking coach and facilitator Marianne Hickman to unpack the real challenges of professional speaking—both on stage and in the virtual world. They tackle the sting (and value) of feedback, the art of reading a room you can’t see, and the mental gymnastics of staying engaged with “Zoom face” audiences. From cringe-worthy old footage to developing true camera connection, Marianne shares her journey with humility and humor. The conversation shifts into the power of curiosity to bridge divides, even in hot-button topics, and touches on AI’s role in the speaking world. Whether you’re a seasoned speaker or just starting out, this episode is packed with insight, heart, and EPIC truths.
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From Cringe Footage To Camera Confidence With Marianne Hickman
Welcome back to another exciting episode of the show. I’m so honored to be joined by Marianne Hickman. Marianne, tell us who you are and what you do.
Every time I get asked to do that, I come up with something different because we’re evolving beings. This is outside the home. I teach public speaking. I facilitate speakers who want to be more than speakers. They want to be facilitators. We craft their stories and build a business out of them. That’s super fun. That’s epic. I’m probably going to say that way too much. That comes second to being a wife and mom. You want to be a homesteader, you could say. Those two parts of my life create my favorite harmony and my favorite music.
That’s great. I could say, as a professional speaker myself for over 25 years, I appreciate people who want to help fellow speakers better craft their story because it’s not easy.
The Craft Of Public Speaking: Why Feedback Is Crucial
Here’s what I found. You’ve seen this in the industry. There are professional speakers who are all that in a bag of chips, and they believe it. They don’t want any critique. It’s hard for us to take feedback on our keynotes. It’s hard to look at ourselves in the mirror. It’s hard to watch our old cringe footage, as they say. That’s difficult. There are speakers who are like you and me. We’re going into every room. We put up our presentation and do our best, and then the first thing we say when we’re off stage is, “How did I do? What could I do better?” That’s the kind of people I love to work with.
You’re right. It is hard because what I want to hear is all the stuff I did well. I’m like, “What is one thing that I did that I can improve on?” and then the person is like, “I loved your story, but you could do this.” I’m like, “Wow.” I feel my gentle ego or big ego feels attacked. I heard one good thing and lots of stuff that I could improve, versus, “You did all this stuff well. This could be better. That story was great, but it was too long.” I’m like, “No problem. I love that feedback.”
It comes with this duality, doesn’t it? When we get off stage, we, as speakers, are hungry for feedback because we know we want to do better. We feel like we nailed it. There’s that portion of us that’s like, “I did the good that I was supposed to do. I served the people that I was supposed to serve. I want to do it better. I’m going to ask for feedback,” and then there are unsolicited givers of feedback.
Probably the hardest feedback to take is the feedback that we didn’t ask for. We have to put it through this filter of, “Does this feedback tell me that I’m moving in the right direction?” or, “Does this feedback sting a little bit? Is that something I maybe need to look at?” This unsolicited feedback can fall into both of those categories. If we didn’t ask for it, then we have to put it through, “Do I take this with a grain of salt, or am I on the right track?”
The unsolicited givers of feedback are probably the hardest feedback to take.
The mental health provider in me goes, “Now I’m curious to know why they gave me that feedback. Let me look at their motivation. Is it coming from a place of genuineness, like, ‘I want to help you improve,’ or is it someone who, for whatever reason, is jealous that I was the one on stage?” That does help. Feedback is certainly important. The days I get to speak are great days. I love being on stage. I joke all the time that that’s my hit or my fix when I get it.
I feel you on that. It is such a riot.
One thing I wanted to transition into, because I’m sure you’ve experienced it, is that I’m always honored to have the chance to present, but there is a big caveat here.
Call it the big fat but.
Now, people want to do stuff virtually. I’m always honored to be asked, but it is hard. I’ve been fortunate to be asked to do a couple of keynotes that I have to record ahead of time, with just me doing a keynote. Part of my juice is when I’m in front of an audience and I can see how they’re reacting. I’m still struggling. I put humor into what I’m talking about, but without the audience feedback, I don’t know how long to pause for.
I’ve said something that I know is funny. People are going to laugh, so then I’m like, “If I don’t pause long enough, people are still laughing and don’t hear what I’m saying,” or, “If I pause too long, they think something happened, like I had a stroke or I had a technical issue, or whatever.” You don’t get that feedback that you and I are talking about, like how the crowd is reacting. It’s like, “They’re into what I’m doing. That’s awesome.” In the first part of your speech, you’re like, “I don’t know if I have the audience. Now, let me flip this. Let me do this. Let me tweak this.” You don’t have that virtually. If you get to do a Zoom meeting, there are 60 people, and they’re all sitting there with what I call Zoom face.
It’s like an AI-generated face.
I was giving one, and I was like, “Folks, please smile. Do something. Everyone is slack-faced. It’s hard.”
Mastering The Lens: Building A Relationship With The Camera
One of the hardest presentations to do, especially for experienced speakers, is when nobody is in the digital room. It’s a prerecorded thing. That’s one of the most challenging things. You feel like you’re narrating an audiobook in one way. One of the things that beat this into or out of me is that I went through the Military training version of this. I started recording YouTube videos. That was a few years ago. I forgot how old my channel is because I took a break for a while.
One of the hardest presentations for experienced speakers is a pre-recorded thing when nobody is in the digital room. That’s it.
When I was recording YouTube videos, that was so hard. I had the luxury of having a director in the room, but my director wasn’t even engaged with me. He was disengaged. At first, he was checking lights, sound, and audio, and making sure all the technical pieces were there. I would watch him disengage and swipe on his phone. We would finish that video, and he was like, “You’re done? Let’s go to the next one.” That should have been a clue to me that I was very boring because I couldn’t even engage the person who was in the same room as me.
That helped me develop, through a lot of reps, a relationship with the camera. I’m not going to say I’m an expert because I can always improve. I’m a student of it. I’m a student of everything. The relationship with the camera is when you can engage the invisible person on the other side, this is expert storytelling. You’re right. There are a lot of parts of the audience interaction that we can assume. There’s a laugh track here because this one has historically proven to be funny, and then there’s a moment of pause here to contemplate. Maxwell says, “Let the internal voice do the talking.”
When you’re prerecorded, we lose some of those luxuries. We lose the luxury of the power pause in many cases. We’d lose the luxury of, “Type one in the chat,” or, “Raise your hand on camera,” or whatever. We have to assume the audience is with us. This is the hardest part when we do this. I have the biggest piece of feedback for myself when I watch my old stuff, especially the prerecorded stuff. I’m thinking of what you said.
I try to be funny. I look back on those videos, and I look like a drill sergeant. I’m so unfunny. I’m embarrassed by my own previous work. I need to do reaction videos to my old stuff because it’s so bad. I’m glad I got the reps in because when I record a podcast episode, which is a solo episode, and it’s just me and the camera, I can have a lot more fun with it than I used to, although I still have stuff to work on.
The “Backstage Pass”: Speaker’s Perspective On Fellow Presenters
I started another podcast a while ago. It’s a great podcast. I haven’t done anything with it yet, but it’s still up there. Every month, I see the bill come, and I’m like, “It’s a good podcast. There’s good content. I’ll keep it up.” I was starting off, and I was doing it myself. Even though I can talk for hours on end, it is so much harder when it’s just you, the mic, the camera, and no interaction. That’s why I love doing this show. I have someone to vibe with and have a conversation. If I had someone on, we would be talking for half an hour. It was only me. I was struggling for fifteen minutes.
I am a speaker because I love being in front of people. I love that interaction. I know my speech. I know what I’m going to say, but I tweak every single one. They’re not the same. They’re the same story here or whatever. Sometimes, you have the audience, and they’re so into what you’re saying. You get amped up. Your energy goes up. Other times, you’re like, “I am losing the people and stuff.”
Here’s another question. I will admit it’s not a good habit. You’re sitting in the audience and you see a not-so-good speaker. Does it become so distracting when you’re like, “Oh my gosh,” and you’re pacing around like a caged animal? There are 52 points on your PowerPoint. You’re like, “Oh my God.” I don’t want to do it, but I stop listening to what they’re saying and pay attention to all of the stuff that is, unfortunately, not going as well for that person. It’s not a good thing to say, but as a professional speaker, I’m like, “Please stop pacing around.”
I do find myself doing this. I put a name to it. It’s the backstage pass to events when you put yourself in the green room. I’m not saying physically. Don’t invade any green rooms uninvited. Mentally, we’re there. I watched a school group that I was in. It was the moderator of the group saying, “When I show my students and I’m teaching my students, I’ve decided that I want to show them examples of what to do or wonderful examples of a website that I admire.” My brain went to a different spot.
I’m going to take you on this train, but I promise I’ll loop back. I’m a huge documentary nerd. If there’s a documentary, I’ll watch it. I was watching a documentary on counterfeit currency, like the dollar bills and stuff. What they do for people who they’re training to spot counterfeits is they don’t show them counterfeit currency. They don’t say, “This is a counterfeit. This is how you can tell.” They don’t do that. They sit them down with the authentic, real stuff. They can get the feel for the cloth and the cotton. They can feel the imprinting and so forth. I was over at NSA down in Arizona. It was an incredible event.
I’m a member of the NSA.
You know the people. Were you there in Arizona?
No, I wasn’t. Was that the national convention?
Yeah, the Influence Convention.
I’ve been to that. It is awesome and intimidating.
That’s perfectly put. We’re in a room with our peers, whom we know. We’re all sitting in this audience. Subconsciously, we all know that the backstage pass is turned on, and we are critiquing each other.
It’s much like you want to be a speaker on the stage, but you’re like, “I also don’t want to be in front of 2,000 of my peers who all know every mistake I make.”
We’ve all trained. We’ve all practiced this. We’ve all looked for the filler words, the stage pacing, the notes, and the eye contact.
The modulation of the story, the energy up, and the energy down.
The audience interaction and all of these points. That gets back to the psychology of speaking. Regardless of whether you’ve trained in this or not, or whether you’re in a room of speakers or you’re not, we’re all human beings, all of us. Back to the basic level, we are all exposed to human psychology. All behaviors are predictable.
We’re all human beings, exposed to human psychology. Our behaviors are basically predictable.
When you and I are in the audience and we’re watching a speaker on stage, it is hard not to be distracted by things that we have worked so hard to train out of ourselves because that’s what we do. We spotted that in ourselves, and now we see it in someone else. That’s where we take out the admission pass or the audience pass.
Am I in my audience seat? Can I learn? Am I in my backstage pass? Am I switching back and forth during the keynote of, “I liked how they did that. Maybe I want to take a page from their book,” or, “Maybe this didn’t work for them, but what can I learn?” I’m not always at my best, but when I am at my best and I see the ums, the uhs, and all of these things, I consciously say, “Let me put the backstage pass down for a second and say, ‘Is there something in their content that I can learn? Is there something in their content that, unless I could teach it, I need to learn more about it?’”
You and I have seen the ones that you can’t put down the backstage pass because you’re trying to. I used to work in high tech. There are unbelievably brilliant people. Sometimes, public speaking was not in their wheelhouse, but they had to get up and do stuff. You’re like, “That’s challenging.”
That didn’t land.
It is something I am always working on, going, “I am an audience member. I’m here to listen and support.” Like anything, if you are working on your expertise in something, it’s like if you are a nurse and you’re watching a movie or a medical show. You’re like, “I’m distracted because that’s not how you would do that.”
You should see my husband watching NCIS. He’s a digital forensic analyst. Every time Abby pulls something up on the computer, he’s like, “That’s not how that works.”
I know. You don’t want to do it. I’ll give some grace, but that only goes so far sometimes, where you’re like, “This is so bad. I want to listen to the content, but I can’t.”
The Power Of Curiosity: Navigating Difficult Conversations
I was watching a politician. There’s a popular video. It was from the early 2000s. I can’t remember exactly when. It was a politician who was at a rally and trying to garner votes, as politicians do. Against my own counsel of only showing the best to my students, I showed this as a contrast. I pulled up this video. With this politician, I turned off the sound, and I had my members look at the body language. There was a lot of scowling, a lot of anger, and a lot of aggressive body language. Without the sound, I asked my students, “What do you think he’s talking about? Would you want to follow him? Would you want to vote for him?” which is his ultimate call to action, and so forth.
I then turned on the sound, turned off the video, and pulled the transcript. The tone and the words, I separated them. I had the transcript, and then I had the tone. I pulled up the transcript, and he was delivering this amazing quote by Albert Einstein about the times that try men’s souls. It could have been delivered so eloquently.
I then turned on the audio, and it was so aggressive. There was yelling and screaming. I asked my students, “What is the purpose of his message?” It was obvious that it was to try to garner votes and get followers. I said the bomb dropping question, which was, “Was this effective? Did he accomplish what he came here to do?” They said, “Absolutely not, because none of this matched.”
It’s hard when you see a speaker on stage and you know the delivery doesn’t match the intention. My first thought is, “What do I do about this? Do I say nothing?” Maybe that’s the appropriate answer. Do I go up to some and say, “How do you think that went? Tell me about your speech. What was your intention for the delivery? Tell me how you thought it went,” and see how it goes from there. I always like to enter with curiosity if I’m offering a critique because we, as human beings, tend to defend our ego and throw up walls. If I’m ever offering a critique, it comes with curiosity first of, “How do you think that went?”
As human beings, we tend to defend the ego and throw up walls. So, if I’m ever offering a critique, it comes with curiosity.
I get curious. If there’s something I don’t understand and I want to understand, but I’m aware that asking the question could get someone defensive, I start off with, “I am getting curious.” I’m hoping that what that says is, “I am not coming in with battle armor on. I’m not attacking you. I am curious.” I tell that to my mental health patients that I work with when they’re having an issue.
They’re coming to me because there’s some challenge that they’re facing. I go, “Get curious about that. Think about why that is. Why is this person reacting this way? How are you reacting to them?” I go, “Use the word curious because it can sound like you are attacking. Say, ‘I’m curious. I’m going to ask questions because I want to understand. They still may get defensive because they’re protecting their ego. Pay attention to all of that.”
In this day and age, sadly, and I’m going to sound like an old man here, which I am, with people younger than me and probably younger than you, with the advent of all the cell phones, the texting, one-second interactions, and stuff, that art of interpersonal communication, understanding nonverbal cues, and all of that is sadly getting lost. That makes it harder.
When I was growing up, if I wanted to say something mean to you, I had to say it to your face, or I might write a note, but you’d know it was from me. I might make a phone call, but you’d know it was me. Now, I could send you a text, an email, or whatever, and go, “You can’t speak to save your life.” I could say something horribly mean and destructive, and I don’t see the reaction. I don’t see how that lands with you. I have no skin in that game other than to throw something out there. I did my internship in a high school and a middle school.
That’s a tough crowd.
They were a very tough crowd, especially to get them to talk about their feelings and stuff like that. However, I noticed this inability to have interpersonal interactions. I talked about nonverbal cues. We are so highly evolved. We can see how someone is reacting to what we’re saying. Are they smiling? Are they scowling? Are they burning a hole through your head with their eyes?
The Fading Art: Interpersonal Communication In The Digital Age
It’s so true. It reminds me of this experience I had on Instagram. With social media, we hide behind our keyboards. It’s easy to do. I approached it with this curiosity. I tend to be a little bit outspoken when it comes to what I believe and my truth, but I also don’t want to be a butthole about it. Someone called me a podpastor, and I was like, “I like that. I will take that and wear it. That’s cute.”
I was on a political post, and Simon Sinek kept running through my head about what you said about curiosity. What would happen if we were curious? I made a comment on a post. I didn’t wear any kitten gloves or anything. I put it out there. Someone came back at me aggressively, which was no surprise. Instead of fighting back at them and saying, “It’s this way,” we were talking about the existence of God, of all things.
I started to ask them questions. I said, “You said this. Tell me about this.” It went into the realm of like, “If you said we come from nothing and go back into nothing, is that the same or different from we came from God, so we go back to God? Help me understand your perspective on this.” We went on for probably five days, commenting back and forth. I’m sure the post owner loved our interaction.
It came to this point at the very end, where I wasn’t curious just to look curious. I wanted to know where this person was coming from. I wanted to understand. By the end of it, the walls had gone down. I’ve never met this person before in my life. By the end of this back and forth, he was saying, “Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for the opportunity for me to look into some self-discovery. I’m going to have to read this article that you said.” He sent me some articles, and I said the same thing.
It even went so far as to include other strangers on the internet who read our back and forth. I’m getting goosebumps. There were strangers that we don’t know who were commenting on our conversation on this random post and said, “Thank you for showing humanity that we can love, be curious, disagree amicably, and come together.” This was a conversation that “restored my faith in humanity.” As speakers, back to your point of the audience interaction, that’s what we crave most. It’s this back-and-forth dialogue where we want to know each other.
To jump back quickly to doing the virtual keynotes, one of the things that I don’t get there is I don’t get the applause at the end. I don’t get to come off stage and have people go, “That’s good.” Maybe afterwards, there’s a discussion or something so people can write, but it’s not the same. They’re so much harder because part of why we do it is that interaction. How is the audience interacting with what I’m saying?
In a virtual keynote, I can’t adapt. Maybe I’m losing the audience. If I were live, I’d be able to maybe pull them back. Maybe they’re loving what I’m doing. I’ll say, “I’m going to throw out one more super quick story. Since you liked that story, I’ll throw this one in.” I do agree. It’s a curiosity. Politics and religion are the two things that you shouldn’t discuss, but you should be able to amicably disagree respectfully.
Like you, I get curious. I’m like, “I don’t understand that position, but I want to because it helps me become a better person. It helps me become more tolerant and go, ‘I didn’t understand that.’” It’s human nature. We get scared of things that we don’t know as the world changes. I’ll bring up something that has been a challenging point for both sides. That is the added number of personal identifications that we have out in the world.
The alphabet.
Understanding New Identities: Learning And Empathy
Exactly. I have worked with teenagers who were struggling with identity, as many teenagers do, who were like, “How do I see myself? How do I want to define myself?” I remember talking with one client who identified as pansexual. If people don’t know what that means, that simply means someone who loves another person for who they are, no matter how that person identifies. That means that I could identify as bisexual, and this other person identifies as gender neutral, gender fluid, or whatever, but I love this person for who they are, no matter what label they put on themselves. That’s a great thing.
The client of mine was like, “I’m so tired of having to constantly describe exactly what this is.” I said, “That is the burden when you introduce something new. People get scared of what they don’t know. With all of these new labels that are out there, I think that’s great. However, people don’t know what it means.”
That client’s mom called me and said, “I’m supportive, but can you help me understand exactly what this is?” I seem to have a knack for taking something complex and putting it into a relatable term. I said, “There are nuances here. Think of it this way. There’s 60% dark cocoa and 82% dark cocoa chocolate. You know they’re different, but you would be hard-pressed to say what the differences were, like this one’s a little more bitter, and this one’s smoother. You know there’s a difference, but if you were asked, “What’s the difference between them?” You might be hard-pressed to come up with a reasonable explanation,” if that makes sense.
Excluding the percentages, I would say, “This one’s 60 and this one’s 80.” If I had to not use numbers in describing the flavor, the mouth feel is an experience.
Intellectually, you know that it’s different. That’s where we are. You know there’s a difference, but there are these subtleties in these new terms. I got curious because I didn’t know. I’m old enough that I’m like, “I don’t know what that is. How is that different from this?” I had the opportunity to get curious. I said to my client, “I’m curious. I want to know. I want to help you. I understand a little, but I want to understand more.” Any new concept people get, we’re scared to change. It makes sense. It’s a survival thing. We’re like, “Is that dangerous?”
That’s the question on everybody’s mind. It’s like, “With this new term or this unknown whatever it is, is this a threat? Am I in danger? Is it dangerous? What is this? What does this mean for our interactions?”
AI In The Spotlight: Threat Or Tool For Speakers?
Look at AI. Let’s take something a little less charged than personal identification. AI, is it good or is it the beginning of the Terminator? Who knows? I’m curious, so I want to learn more. I want to learn how AI can make my life a little better. I am using it because there’s stuff that’s good. With our show, I’ll have AI generate some episode titles. I’m like, “Give me an episode description,” versus me trying to come up with something.
Speaking of AI, I was talking to my husband Richard as we were on the way to the gym. I said, “There’s something that AI will never ever be able to do.” It’s not public speaking because there is a public speaker that I found who is an AI robot. She’s on tour. The robot has its own Instagram account and all of this crazy stuff. I was like, “A robot is now replacing motivational speakers or is getting asked to speak.”
AI will never ever be able to be a human. It will be able to intake data, export data, left, right, and center. It can play soccer or whatever it is, but an AI will never ever be able to be human. Let’s take a broader perspective, not just speaking. This is for all businesses. There’s an undercurrent, which is becoming a top current, of people who are disappointed when they feel duped. They’re like, “I didn’t want to talk to an AI. I wanted to talk to a real person. An AI wrote this article for a magazine. It’s not valuable to me because a human didn’t do it. I could have done it through AI.” There’s this perception around this new thing of where it is valuable, where it belongs, and where it is not valuable.
You’re right. I know it is, to some, perceived as a threat. For a lot of my kids’ teachers, it is perceived as a threat. They say, “Don’t use it.” This stemmed from a conversation, which was the one I was having with my husband, from an Instagram reel that said, “This new thing, if we allow it and then push ourselves, it can make us better.” It goes back to your curiosity.
Here’s what the teacher said. She said, “Teachers, if you’re in this world and you’re not using AI, you’re making a mistake because your students are using it. Do you know what a student can’t do? They can’t tell the AI to deliver their presentation for them. They have to get up there, and they have to orate. They have to speak.” It brought me so much happiness to my soul that no matter how brilliant and intellectual AI gets, it will never do what a person can.
I’ve used ChatGPT to do all kinds of cool things. I wanted to understand monetizing my YouTube channel and what that might look like. I asked about some big speakers and what they might be making and stuff. Honestly, in ten minutes, I had more information that would’ve taken me weeks of trying to pull from this source and this source and parse it together. It is cool what AI can help you do. It is a productivity tool. My time is valuable. I want to spend my time speaking, doing this show, and doing my TV show. If there are things that can be done by AI, that will help me. I don’t want AI sending out emails on my behalf.
You’re going to embark on too many journeys.
I say, “Write it and give it to me as a draft. I’ll decide whether I want to do that.” That’s no problem. I’ve written three books, but I’m a talker, not a typer. I’m not having AI write my books, but if I’m like, “Here’s how I write. Can you write something for me?” I can then go in and put my own thing. Talking about teachers, AI, and not liking it, I sit on the board of the high school I went to.
The board was having a discussion about the use of AI and what to do about it. An English teacher goes, “A student can try and use AI, but I know what their voice is. I know how they write. AI cannot write exactly like a human. No matter how many samples you give them, there are those things that I, as a human, will look and go, ‘That wasn’t written by that person.’”
It’s almost like an instinct.
It’s your own voice. AI could duplicate my voice and have me say bad things. That’s where AI scares me. There are instances where AI has taken, “Here’s this public figure.” All of a sudden, they’ve said something bad, and the person’s like, “That wasn’t me.”
It has done that and worse. You want to go into the image world. These poor public figures are having AI images distributed of them that are horrific. It’s theft of almost your identity. For every audience member, including us when we are in the audience, the point of any learning whatsoever is to learn to think for yourself and learn to judge for yourself.
Any learning whatsoever is to learn to think and judge for yourself.
Even if you’re not dealing with AI content or you’re dealing with someone who’s on the stage, a speaker, and they are on a pedestal, they are in the limelight, and they have all these accreditations or whatever, that doesn’t mean everything that they say is gospel. Even if it is true, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily applicable to you at that point in your timeline.
Personal discernment is essential to develop. It comes through a lot of trial and error. I believe in hiring mentors and so forth. I 100% believe in that. Maybe this is revealing my issue with authority figures and so forth, but I am best served when I intake information, I ask about it, and I dissect it. I ask about the original source, I try it on, and I see what works, regardless of where it comes from.
Clearly, you and I could talk more. This could be a four-hour episode. There’s still more. Hold on. I got one more thing.
Let’s do it.
I want to thank you so much. This was truly an epic conversation.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for joining me. How can people find you?
I like it when people text me. I’m all over social media, but I keep my phone in my pocket. My phone number is (801) 509-5195. Let’s talk person to person. If you have questions or you want to get curious, introduce yourself. If you like the vibe, let’s be friends, and let’s start talking.
I want to thank you so much for joining me. I want to remind everyone that if you are ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. Remember that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
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About Marianne Hickman
Marianne Hickman is an international speaker, speaker trainer, and personal mentor who has graced over 2,000 stages worldwide. She’s not just a speaker—she’s a powerhouse in helping industry experts monetize their message and turn their speaking into a profitable business.
From being a single mom on food stamps to running a thriving business with her husband and raising six incredible children, Marianne knows firsthand the power of crafting a message that moves people to action.
Through her programs, Marianne equips her clients with the tools to own the stage, deliver unforgettable presentations, and turn those moments into measurable results.