Key takeaway: Jess Ekstrom, founder of Mic Drop Workshop and bestselling author of Chasing the Bright Side, says fewer than 30% of paid speaking spots go to women, a gap she attributes less to qualification than to permission. Her core reframe is the shift from what she calls a spotlight speaker, who asks "What does everyone think of me?", to a lighthouse speaker, who asks "What does everyone need from me?" And her method for finding something to say is “Moment to Meaning”: take one specific moment from your life, then extract what it means for people who will never live it.
The experience you don’t count as expertise
Most women are sitting on a body of knowledge they'd never call knowledge: forty years in a field, a diagnosis nobody caught until they pushed, a body figured out the slow way. In this week's Studio Session, Jess Ekstrom, founder of Headbands of Hope and Mic Drop Workshop, made the case that the gap between having that knowledge and saying it out loud is not a confidence problem but a framing problem. And it has a fix.
Ekstrom's central distinction is between two kinds of speakers:
A spotlight speaker is concerned with perception. They’re scanning the room for approval, asking "How do I look? How do I sound?"
A lighthouse speaker turns the light around. "If a spotlight asks, what does everyone think of me, then a lighthouse asks, what does everyone need from me?" Ekstrom said.
The reason to make this swap in how you approach speaking opportunities isn't only that it calms the nerves, it's that the question produces a better talk: "It's not about achieving perfection. It's about helping someone arrive at a solution."
For finding the thing to say, Ekstrom teaches a framework she calls Moment to Meaning. Take one snapshot from your own life and extract what it means for someone who will never live it. A stranger pays for your coffee in the drive-through: that's the moment. The meaning is that kindness doesn't need to be applauded to count.
Where women lose the thread, she said, is in assuming the audience looks like them. "Most of the time, the people that need your message are not like you." Deciding "I'm a wellness speaker, I need to speak to other wellness experts" is, in Ekstrom's words, one of the most limiting things you can do for your message.
"Most of the time, the people that need your message are not like you."
She also doesn’t think we need to get over imposter syndrome if we have it. Ekstrom's advice is to demote it instead: "I will always have imposter syndrome. But now it lives in the back seat. It's not in the driver's seat with me."
The single action item she left the room with was smaller than expected: put the word "speaker" in your LinkedIn and Instagram bio, and start saying it out loud. "People can't book you to speak if they don't know you're a speaker."
In the full session, Ekstrom also walks through her "tree exercise" for finding the one topic that's an umbrella for all your others, how to tell whether a hard personal story is ready to be told, and a practical toolkit for the first two minutes on stage, when nerves peak.
Note: You must be a member of the Livelong Women’s Circle™ to view this replay. If you aren’t a member of the Livelong Women’s Circle yet, you can sign up for a free account here. Replays will be available for 7 days from today to general Circle members. Inner Circle members have forever access to all Studio Session replays.
Want to work with Jess? Jess’s upcoming Big Idea Bootcamp starts on September 18th. Learn more and sign up here.
Join us for an upcoming Studio Session
📍 Chronic Disease Isn't Inevitable: What Root-Cause Medicine Can Actually Do — with Dr. Robin Berzin, Columbia-trained physician and founder and CEO of Parsley Health. Wednesday, September 9, 2:00–2:45 PM ET. Free and open to everyone; Circle membership required for the replay.
📍 The Truth About Aging With Clarity, Dignity, and Purpose — with Rosanne M. Leipzig, MD, PhD, Ritter Professor and Vice Chair, Emerita of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Mount Sinai. Wednesday, September 16, 11:00–11:45 AM ET.
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