When I started my own business years ago, I had no idea how to make money.  I started writing for trade publications and ended up working way too hard for too little.  Since I’d learned so much about the speaking industry as founder of the Atlantic branch of CAPS, when I returned to Toronto I took on my first speaking client who insisted I write his speech and then complained because it wasn’t in his voice! 

I would like to thank him for being my wake up call.  I realized that I didn’t leave a steady paycheck just to get caught in another trap.  I resolved only to do things that fuel me and avoid what’s draining.  As Henry David Thoreau said “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”  And that, of course, is non-renewable.

And now I love my ‘work’ especially when my clients have that ‘aha’ moment. And I love knowing that I’m living a life without a ceiling, that there’s no limit to the learning or to the stretching I’m required to do. The stretching that’s required these days of all of us is like a spiritual form of yoga, expanding both minds and capabilities. 

How about you?  What traps are you caught in?  What can you let go of?  If you’re too driven or rigidly focused on goals, you’ll miss great opportunities that are lurking just beneath the surface.  You’ll have a much more rewarding career in every aspect by taking a deep breath and just relaxing into doing what you love most.

You can’t change the circumstances you find yourself in but you CAN adapt to them and create your own destiny.  Seriously, there’s a solution to every problem, no matter how insurmountable it may seem.  The economy is bouncing back as you’re reading it yet there are those who are mired in a consciousness of scarcity and don’t see the rebound just as they didn’t see the downturn coming.  

If you’re a professional speaker, you’re in the business of speaking.  And being in business, much like a good novel, has lots of twists and turns that you need to navigate with great expertise.  If you’re flexible and the versatile, you’ll do very well, as long as you don’t succumb to fear.

I remember Roxanne Emmerich, speaker and consultant to bankers, mentioning that her business as a consultant and speaker in the banking industry was hugely affected by events on September 11, 2001.  She had some large signed contracts that were instantly invalid.  Of course, that was not the first thing on her mind after the event.  She also knew, though, that now was the time that bankers needed her expertise most. 

What she did over the next couple of years was look at how needs had changed in the banking and financial world and then change her business model to meet those needs.  Before long her business was expanding like crazy.  She not only figured out, but really cared about what the bankers needed at the time, i.e., shorter and less pricey programs which she then created and delivered in spades.  Her programs also helped devastated industry get through a very difficult period. 

There was one year, a few years back, when I had to work to fill my all-day seminar on marketing your speaking career.   So I decided to change my plan and offered a two hour seminar from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. so it wasn’t either a huge time or financial commitment for my prospects. 

I charged half the fee but got twice the number of attendees – and I was finished in just two hours!  I see a lot of professional speakers being equally creative by finding new ways to reach their audiences, i.e., by offering boot camps, retreats, mastermind groups and group consulting sessions. 

No matter what the economy is doing, when you meet the needs of your clients and deliver on a great promise, your business will thrive.  When you learn to love this rollercoaster ride for the creative opportunities it spurs, you will do really well and you’ll be a leader in your field.

Exceed your own goals and expectations!

The speaking market is highly competitive and the only way to make your mark as a sought-after professional speaker is to offer stand out value. 

The whole idea in marketing yourself as a speaker is to make yourself and your material so compelling that people beat a path to your doorway. 

Difficult?  Sure – but it can be done.  It’s well worth the time.  And it’s ultimately much more effective than the ‘push’ approach to marketing which often sends the buyer running in the opposite direction. 

Marketing is nothing more or less than a strategy – it is communicating the value of what you have to offer to those who can benefit from it. 

And the buyer is often not as price-driven as you think.  He or she will pay whatever it takes if they’re convinced of the value of your services. In fact, low fees can work against you.

The first step is to position yourself not only as an expert but as THE expert.   You do this by developing a personal logo or tagline that defines your branding and sets you apart from your competition. 

 The logo or tagline I’ve developed to set me apart from Speakers Bureaus is ‘Speakers Gold: The Proactive Bureau’.  As a consultant, my tagline is ‘Speakers - Make More Money Doing What You Love’.

Your logo needs to focus on what your strength is as a speaker.  Make it memorable so that people remember who you are and what you stand for. 

To make it memorable, you need to use powerful yet simple words.  What you don’t want is to make anyone have to stop and think about what you mean. 

Buying decisions are initially made from the impulse part of the brain and they’re then justified by the logical part.  If you don’t attract the impulse part, you may well lose them.

Which speakers do you admire most?  What are their taglines?  What sums up exactly what your mission is in just a few words?  What has your best keywords in it?  

It’s worth spending time on your tagline – it’s your mini advertisement that can go out into the world over and over again.  It will become a category or a branding statement that you own.

Use it in your email signature as well as when you submit articles to directories.  Also incorporate it – perhaps as a top banner – in your one page promo sheet.  

Recent research shows that the final decision maker authorizing the hiring of a speaker varies widely but the most common decision makers are these: 

1. The head of the organization (25.8%), especially when the organization is small to medium sized
2. A board or volunteer committee (20.2%)
3. VP or director of meetings (15.3%)
4. Education/Professional Development department (13.5%)
5. Staff committee (8.6%)
6. Other (16.6%)

Often the decision is made by some combination of the above. We’ve had organizations come to us with a certain budget looking for a speaker and then the director has gone over that person’s head and hired a high profile speaker at triple the amount that they originally quoted. In most cases, a member of the search committee or a corporate meeting planner makes a recommendation to the decision maker who is usually the top person in that organization.

(Data compiled from a report compiled by www.tagoras.com and www.velvetchainsaw.com)

If you have a powerful message, you’ll want to expand your reach by creating products as well as by being the keynote speaker.  After all, noteveryone will remember every word you said on the platform.

That’s why a book, a DVD or a program for participants to take home can help to reinforce your main message.

These days, we all have the tools to do this fairly easily. This means that many others are creating products and not all of them are worthwhile. So make sure your product contains serious content rather than just fluff and that way, you’ll guarantee yourself not only repeat sales but repeat speaking engagements.  It’s so important to provide real value to your buyers.

While I don’t recommend pitching from the platform during a paid speaking engagement, some speakers do make it a condition of their agreement to be allowed to sell their materials at the back of the room. They hire someone to handle the orders and make a discrete pitch during their speech.

Others pre sell their books or DVD’s in bulk at a discount to the meeting planner who’s hired them. Still others put on events open to the public and sell their programs and products there.

The products you can create are only limited by your imagination. What would you yourself buy?  When you have the answer to that question, you have the concept of the product you’ll find easiest to sell.  Some of the possibilities are DVD’s, books, e-books, online programs, manuals and so on.

You’ll note that it will be the most successful people in your audience who will purchase the products.

You need to have a merchant credit card account which is fairly easy to set up. Talk to your bank about this. As long as you keep the dollar number low, you should be approved quickly. Merchants would go out of business if they could no longer depend on the impulse buy. You need to take advantage of that impulse as well.  It will significantly increase your income.

If you sell from your website, you’ll need to have e-commerce set up there.

From something as simple as a recorded phone call, you can have MP3 and CD’s made and packaged on demand at the website www.kunaki.com and later sell them to your audience.

For some speakers, product sales represent a major part of their income.  What products will you create? How will you position and sell them? Who will benefit from them?

Start with something simple and once that’s become successful, move on to a higher priced product or program.

It’s great insurance for a rainy day!