I had never thought about doing a teleseminar, actually quite frankly, I didn't know what the hell they were, but an email out of the blue changed all that.

You see, this inventor friend of mine, Rodney Payne, from Australia and I have been going back and forth on marketing ideas for years. Rodney has these cool innovations and he wants me to do a fast talking comedic commercial for them...the timing is just not right yet.

In the interim after one of our talks he gets an email from a friend and business associate named, Lyn Prowse-Bishop, who asked him if he knew of any comedians or motivational keynote speakers who would be willing to do their OIVAC Convention (Online International Virtual Assistants Convention). Rodney said he had someone that fit both those bills and recommended me.

Over the next few weeks I get emails from Lyn and the VA Day Coordinator, Janice Byer, explaining the procedure.

"...we run the IVAD event, as I mentioned above, on Friday, May 19th from 5:30pm EST to 7:30pm EST. During that time we will have a Master of Ceremonies who will introduce and announce each part of the event so we will need to get a short intro from you for that as well.

Generally, the speaker for the event has about 15-20 minutes to speak. If you think you will need more time, just let me know. We can also put up your homepage or other page of your site while you are speaking for everyone to see.

The only equipment you will need is a good headset with speaker. We will contact you before the event to let you become familiar with our technology."

The whole thing was pretty exciting...I've never given my "Dare to Do It" talk from my home...so this was a whole new adventure.

Prior to the event, several marketing strategies occurred; a massive email went out, press releases were sent, a webpage was set up, and even a blog tour event was done. (Another thing that I know nothing about but will tackle after I get this teleseminar under my belt.)

Since my son, Spencer had the headset that I needed, I was set.

The afternoon before the event, I went to test it out the equipment. I went into Spencer's room, and lo and behold there was the headset...broken.

My mind quickly flashed back to the play fight wrestling match that Spencer and his friend had in his room the other day...I'm sure the damaged headphone was a casualty of that.

With my essential piece of equipment that I needed broken, I needed to make an emergency pit stop to the store to get a replacement. I searched high and lo (on the shelves) and found a super duper dual purpose anti break headset that works with both Mac and PC...just in case.

With proper gear I was now ready to do a test run. Janice and I connected, she gave me a brief run through and it went off with out a hitch.

On Friday, May 18th at 5:20 (ten minutes before the event) I hooked up my headset, typed in the website and entered into the green room as instructed. I got a real kick out of the fact that the picture I was looking at was of a green room...I didn't know what I expected...but I just didn't expect to see a schematic drawing of a green room. It cracked me up...I loved it!

As I was admiring the furniture...a nice pleasant Australian voice comes over my computer, "Good day Fran...nice to have you aboard. Shall we practice the way the board works a bit?"
I smiled, "I'd love to."

So there I was in the green room getting instructions. I was almost tempted to draw in a stick figure of me sitting down on the couch. (Hey, that's what I do in the television station green rooms, why not make this as real as possible...as a matter of fact, I should draw in a makeup artist and some snacks...)

The tech guru, Rob's voice, brings me back to where I am. "Okay Fran as you can see when you are in the green room, the whole screen is just the green room. Once you switch over to the lecture room, the screen will then become divided in three sections". I was nodding along even though he couldn't see me.

He continued, "On the upper hand left side is a section where you could read people's comments. These comments will go on throughout your entire lecture. If you want to make a comment so everyone can read...just type in your text and then click the word, "Everyone"...if you want to write just to the moderator, click that person's name, "Janice" and the message will only be for her eyes."

"On the bottom left hand side are the names of the people that will be speaking. If you are talking your name will be in blue and a little cartoon like bubble will appear near your name. Try that for me now Fran."

I pressed the control key down, spoke and my voice was carried to Rob. I went to press it again, and apparently he and I were trying to speak at the same time. I let go of my button.

"Okay Fran remember, it's like a walkie talkie. To talk, you have to hold down the control key and press the microphone icon button. No one else can talk when you are holding the key down. Now this may get tiresome, so during your lecture just press the microphone button and click it and it will be on for the entire speech."

"Lastly on the right hand side you will soon see the lecture hall. Once the convention begins it will be replaced by your website. If you have a power point presentation you can control it from here."

"Power Point! I'm going to be challenged just keeping the control buttons straight!" I said. "I'll do power point next time...I'm going to consider this like a radio show and leave it to their imagination."

With instructions done, Rob tried to get me to go into the lecture room. I wasn't stage shy...but for some reason I kept entering the wrong address and I kept getting kicked out. Rob had to call me on a landline to talk me through it.

Finally at 5:40 I was in. I saw a whole bunch of names listed from all over the world. It was as if I came in after the house was packed and I peaked out the curtain. The only difference was, everyone knew the second I walked in.

The emcee, Sharon Williams (aka the 24 hour secretary) welcomed me. Since we were running a tad late (hey nothing like being fashionably late)...she read my introduction pronto.

As I'm listening to my introduction being read, I see a sudden flurry of written comments being entered on the upper left hand side.

I wasn't sure if I should be answering the comments or not.
After all, if I was onstage doing a presentation and saw people talking in the audience, I wouldn't eavesdrop and start commenting.

Anyway... the comments were amusing:
"Wow, she's done a lot...it would be easier to say what she hasn't done."
"My God, I've done nothing with my life."
"Do you sleep Fran? Incredible."

The stand up comic in me wanted to comment so badly...but I figured let me first say my hello's to the audience then I could go into my unconventional style of talk.

I hear Sharon's closing comment..."Here she is to present her "Dare to Do it – Challenge yourself to Greatness" talk...please welcome...
Fran Capo.

I held down the control button and started to talk. The comments were still flying.
People wrote things like, "Clap, clap" , "Yeah Fran" etc.

I smiled. Reading and talking was a little hard getting used to. Finally I realized I should just click the microphone button, shut my eyes and do my talk.

Well I did that, and apparently for some reason...there was about a minute where I couldn't' be heard. When I opened my eyes I saw tons of comments on the screen.

"I don't think she realizes we can't hear her."
"She definitely doesn't realize."
"Maybe she's talking so fast we can't hear her."

Damn...Where in my story did I lose them?
I took the hold button off the microphone icon, asked them where I lost them and then went back to holding the control button manually, it was a good workout on the finger, but at least we were back on track.

For the duration of my 20-minute talk, I held the control key down with my finger, told my stories and read comments like, "LOL", "Wow how do they measure your fast talking?" and "very inspiring" etc.

It was like getting an instant report card from a teacher.

At the end of the talk, the remarks were wonderful...I had a fantastic time...and then of course like mad started answering all the questions I had seen earlier while I was talking. I sent them to my websites and upcoming seminar links like mindmoneybodyandsoul.com and successmadesimpleseminar.com. I could tell they were checking it out by the comments.

After my keynote, an awards ceremony for the winner of the blog tour was up, I made a note to ask Sharon how that whole thing works, stayed a while to listen and chat with the audience without being rude...finally I had to leave.

I sent a private email to Janice.

18:54:02 [Fran Capo] Janice, i gotta run...Thanks to you and Sharon so much. Is there a way I can get a copy of the messages that people were writing? I think it would be fun to include in my blog.

18:54:16 [Janice Byer] by all means...

18:54:23 [Fran Capo] thanks so much!

18:54:25 [Janice Byer] we will send it to you

18:54:49 [Janice Byer] thanks again Fran... it was awesome!

18:55:04 [Fran Capo] thanks glad you enjoyed it

18:55:14 [Janice Byer] will be recommending you to EVERYONE!

18:55:33 [Fran Capo] wow...that would be wonderful....

18:55:47 [Janice Byer] you bet

18:55:54 [Janice Byer] you are an inspiration

I thanked her and clicked out of the site. I sat back for a second and looked at my computer screen, it was back to my desktop with the giant polar bear and tons of project folders.

I took my headphones off and smiled, "Wow that was cool. The audience was great, and I just participated in a whole new arena where I got to present my talk to people around the world and didn't even have to leave my office!"

I looked down at my jeans, T-shirt and sneakers and laughed..."Geez Capo for a corporate convention...you are a tad underdressed." Then I corrected myself, "A corporate TELESEMINAR convention...and for that my dear, you are dressed just fine..."
"Why thank you, Capo."
"You're welcome."

Progress...you gotta love it...that and all my new friends.