Summary:
Modesty has its place in life. But in business, you have to speak up to sell yourself. A surefire way to turbocharge your career is to establish yourself as a public speaker. Modesty or nervousness might be keeping you from sharing your expertise with those who would greatly benefit from it – and maybe even bring your business to the next level.
I can guarantee you that presenting your field of knowledge at events is one of the single most powerful tools you can leverage in your quest to become financially independent. My career before I began speaking publically looks very different from the opportunities that I have available today. If I can do it – so can you.
I know that it can be daunting when you are first starting out. That is why I am sharing with you some of the lessons I have learned from my own experience in launching a career in public speaking.
Transcript:
Modesty has its place in life. But in business, you have to speak up to sell yourself. A surefire way to turbocharge your career is to establish yourself as a public speaker. Modesty or nervousness might be keeping you from sharing your expertise with those who would greatly benefit from it – and maybe even bring your business to the next level.
I can guarantee you that presenting your field of knowledge at events is one of the single most powerful tools you can leverage in your quest to become financially independent. My career before I began speaking publically looked very different from the opportunities that I have available today. If I can do it – so can you.
I know that it can be daunting when you are first starting out. That is why I am sharing with you some of the lessons I have learned from my own experience in launching a career in public speaking.
Find Your Niche
Generalists have many advantages in life, especially in small businesses when they are called upon to wear many hats. But in making your mark as an expert and invited guest, you will supercharge the amount of interest you get by carving out a niche for yourself.
Figure out what qualities help set you apart from the crowd. It will give you a competitive advantage and prevent too many others from absorbing all of the oxygen in your given area of expertise.
There are plenty of speakers out there talking about entrepreneurship. But how many in your area are presenting about entrepreneurship in the dry cleaning industry or in data analytics? The more that you can narrow your focus to a stable of core topics, the more you can focus on the highest impact engagements and make the most of your limited time.
Trust Social Media
Social Media is your friend. You may be skeptical of over-sharing or overexposure to your associates, but social media is a major game changer that you can’t afford to ignore. Today you don’t need to rely upon the gate keepers of local media or the classifieds – you can promote yourself, in an ongoing conversation with your customers and peers. Contributing value through substantive content on an ongoing basis through multiple communications platforms takes time and effort – but it ultimately will help lead prospective customers to you, rather than you having to chase down every lead yourself. In the past, it was difficult to break into the game on a professional level without representation by a professional speakers bureau. The explosion of social media and the steady growth of the Internet upended that old order forever.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs In… Just Yet
Especially when you are starting out, you may find yourself needing to accept some engagements for free – and when you do get paid, it may be a pittance compared to your other business.
Don’t despair. The power of leveraging multiple income streams is that they don’t all need to be roaring rivers at once – if you have enough trickles going, they can ultimately all flow together, to generate gushing returns.
So don’t neglect your other work as you launch your public speaking initiatives. Think of speaking as just one more leg for your foundation to rest on – and look for those opportunity areas of convergence.
If you’re a writer, use your speeches as an opportunity to draw in readers. If you record a podcast, guide your listeners toward events you will be presenting at. If you sell CDs or DVDs, you better never give a set of remarks without several copies handy for audience members who approach you after.
By drawing upon a full array of income generation ideas, you can create something truly special – and continue to make strides to financial independence.
Build A Stable of Ideas
Make sure that you have put the time in to generate a significant supply of content that you can utilize in your remarks and across all of your enterprises. This will mean doing a lot of writing and a lot of thinking.
The good news is that the more material you have developed, the simpler it will be to cross-pollinate across all of your communications tools. It doesn’t mean being lazy or recycling – it means building up a foundation of your ideas that you can expand upon. For example, your speech might give you some ideas for podcasts or blog posts following up on the same themes.
Proactively Seek Opportunities
Let’s face it, it’s rare to see a help wanted advertisement for a compelling public speaker. If you sit around waiting for the phone to ring or hoping that someone recognizes your talent from word of mouth, you may find yourself waiting a long time.
Opportunity comes to those who hustle for it. So spend just as much time generating new leads as you do preparing for your speaking engagements. This means employing every method available – attend conferences and networking events, organize informational meetings with colleagues who have succeeded as public speakers, and directly cold-call organizations yourself. Be sure to have your elevator pitch down pat – here is what you do, here is what you know, and here is why you would be an invaluable person for an organization to hear from. Don’t let the rejections and dead ends dissuade you – if you persist and hang in there, the opportunities are ripe for plucking.
Work Together
You might see other speakers as your competitors. After all, they are searching for opportunities to present, right? Doesn’t their success come at your cost? It is all how you think about it.
Public speaking does not need to be a zero-sum game. If you want to really amplify your efforts, team up with a contact in the same or similar field. By merging your networks and working as a team, you may find yourself invited to far more events than you would if you were isolated on your own as an individual.
Take Small Steps At First
Launching a new career is similar to getting into a swimming pool – some of us may like to dive in all at once. But many more of us are comfortable slowly wading in and getting a feel for the temperature. So don’t feel the pressure to overextend yourself at first.
This means starting out at venues that you feel comfortable with. An obvious way to start is to present at organizations that you are already a member of or have many contacts within. You can also generate some easy and quick wins by focusing on opportunities in your local area. The odds are good that local groups will be happy to host a local speaker, allowing you to build up your experience and speaking credentials that you can then take to tackle larger clients in bigger or more distant cities.
I cannot stress to you how many successful people I have met across many disciplines who have allowed their careers and opportunities to be limited by one fatal flaw – they are terrified of public speaking. These are people who do amazing things routinely and yet they have found this seemingly simple skill to be a deal breaker. Don’t allow nerves to prevent you from all of the opportunities available to those who are willing to speak up and stand out from the crowd.
What advice have you found to be valuable in your world that you can turn into a public speaking fortune?
