humor in the workplace, or wellness and
motivation. With Williams, audiences don’t
get a canned speech and PowerPoint® presentation. Instead, she tailors each speech
to the attendees and the industry, punctuates them with her own stories, and
delights audiences with unique audio-visual
aids, such as her signature Play-Doh, PIES
cards, or customized goal band to make
her programs memorable and fun.
Williams does her homework by
researching each industry and client, preinterviewing the attendees, using industry
jargon and customizing each presentation
to provide the most value. She makes it
a point to arrive early to personally meet
and greet attendees so she can incorporate
their names and interesting information
about them into her program to make it
more relevant to the audience.
Not surprisingly, one of her signature
speeches is “Speak Loudly and Carry a Big
Shtick™.” Not only does she make her
point, she makes listeners hungry for more
information.
DANCE AND FOOD FOR
THOUGHT
In her Speaker Schools, Williams relies on
her experiences in dancing and cooking
to string anecdotes together that teach her
attendees how to structure a speech.
“You choreograph a speech the same
way you prepare a meal. Your appetizer
is your opening, your salad ingredients
are your objectives, your main course is
the body of your speech and your smashing dessert is your close. You flavor the
meal with salt and pepper by sprinkling in
your quotes, humor, statistics and shtick,”
Williams says.
MAINTAINING A
BUSINESS FOCUS
Despite her varied enterprises, Williams insists
she is a businessperson, first and foremost,
and a dancer, caterer or speaker second.
She extends this advice to other
speakers and encourages them to establish products and services that feed one
another. “You must be a businessperson
to be successful in whatever you’re doing.
Get over the ‘shiny object syndrome.’
Create revenue streams that will endure,”
she says.
Williams co-authored a book on customer service; compiled a book of her
favorite quotations called Mikki Mouth:
Quotations I Wish I’d Said and Some I
Did Say!; and produced DVDs, CDs and
videos. She is finishing a book based on her
life story, We Interrupt This Life to Bring
You: Life Lessons from an Outrageous
Woman. In fact, she has received offers to
make her inspirational life story into a TV
movie and a feature film. But, perhaps one
of her most proud accomplishments was
being chosen as one of the best speakers by
Meetings and Convention Magazine (July
2010 issue), along with Zig Ziglar, CSP,
CPAE, Tony Robbins, Bill Gates, Rudy
Giuliani, Colin Powell and other notables.
NETWORKING NETS
VALUABLE CONTACTS
Where does she get her energy?
Perhaps being born on the Fourth of
July, combined with a positive, can-do
attitude, explains this firecracker’s
drive. Williams celebrates her 25th
anniversary as an NSA member this
year, and thanks to her top-notch networking skills, she has traveled all over
the world and met top government
officials. She has spoken on every continent except Antarctica, at President
Nelson Mandela’s home in South
Africa after apartheid, and twice at the
White House.
“I spoke at the White House under
President Bush and under President
Clinton,” says Williams. “My audi-
ences always laughed when I said I
spoke ‘under Clinton,’ so I carefully
reworded that phrase.”
For Williams, networking is a
natural talent and a way of life. She
encourages other speakers to keep
networking to create new business
opportunities and maintain relation-
ships. “If that doesn’t work,” she says,
“Just ‘Slip ‘em a Mikki.’”
Barbara Parus is Speaker magazine editor in chief. She admires chutzpah and couldn’t get the tune “Hey, Mikki” out of
her head while writing this story.
