CHAPTER 3
POSITIONING AND BECOMING AN OBJECT OF INTEREST
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TELL THEM WHAT THEY NEED TO KNOW, NOT EVERYTHING THAT YOU KNOW
BUYERS ARE drawn to expertise. That means that the smarts between your ears (your intellectual capital) must be manifest as a pragmatic means of improvement for others (intellectual property). The more you produce that unequivocally helps others over the long term, therefore, the more you are going to be sought by buyers. And when you’re sought by buyers because they find your intellectual property to be of value, you do not have to spend long hours on building relationships, and fees are not important (value is important).
Do I have your attention?
BEING AROUND A LONG TIME MAKES YOU OLDER, BUT NOT NECESSARILY BETTER
There is a tremendous debate among professional speakers as to how one should progress from part-time to full-time status. In fact, there are two deeply revered beliefs among veterans of the business, and like many deeply revered beliefs, they are egregiously false. As Oscar Wilde observed, a thing is not necessarily true just because someone dies for it.
• Deeply Revered Belief 1. You are not a professional—indeed, you haven’t “made it” in the business—unless you are engaged in it full-time.
• Deeply Revered Belief 2. The longer you have been at it, the better you are.
I recall attending my first speakers’ conference. All of the “big names” were there, and as I tended to my drink during the cocktail reception, a legend in his own mind walked over to introduce himself. Seeing my “newcomer” nametag, he gratuitously informed me that if I watched the veterans carefully, accessed them as mentors, and generally paid them the proper homage, I just might be as successful as they were someday, fates willing. At the time, I was making about a half-million dollars a year, wasn’t spilling my food on myself, and could utter comprehensible sentences. But his criteria for success were longevity and membership in the “in crowd.”
My criterion for success is pleasing people who can write checks that clear the bank. Peer recognition—if it is based on merit and not on slobbering adulation—is wonderful, but it doesn’t pay the mortgage, and it seldom impresses the buyer. Don’t tell me about the industry awards you’ve garnered and the strange initials after your name. Tell me about how you’ll improve my business.1
It doesn’t matter how often you speak because we’re all part-timers. No one is speaking 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year—at least, not for money. If your fee were $10,000 per speech and you spoke once a week, that would earn you a cool half million for getting out of bed just 20 percent of the time. Sound ridiculous? Well, $5,000 twice a week does the same thing, and even $1,000 twice a week will earn you $100,000 and leave you with 3 days plus the weekend. (Yeah, I know about marketing, preparation, networking, practice, and all that time investment. We’ll get to that. It’s not as bad as most people would like to make it.)
For most of my career, I’ve spoken about 30 times a year, which has been my average over the past 5 years. I did not pursue any of the engagements, and bureaus booked me for very few; the preponderance came from people calling me. If one’s average fee for these engagements is $7,000, that’s $350,000. (My lowest keynote fee is $15,000 at this writing.) Over the past decade, speaking revenues have moved from a quarter to a third of my total income (with consulting and coaching work representing about 60 percent and publishing about 10 percent).
I’m a part-time speaker. A lot of people could live nicely on those 30 days of income alone.
Speaking Up: It’s not how much you speak or how long you’ve been speaking that’s important. It’s how well you speak and how effectively you meet the buyer’s objectives. Oh, and it’s also a matter of charging for it.
We’ll discuss fees in the next chapter, but while we’re on the subject of the “full-time fallacy,” let’s debunk one more piece of horrid advice. There’s an industry rubric that states that you should raise your fees when demand exceeds supply. That’s roughly akin to saying that you should swim away from the beach until you can see land again. There’s an awful lot of water out there.
And there’s an awful lot of time in a year. In this case, is supply 5 days a week? Actually, you might be able to speak twice a day, and even on weekends. Maybe supply is 700 speeches a year? Supply and demand are commodity measures. They are not measures of value. Raise your fees—no matter how many times a year you speak—when your value to the buyer increases. And never forget that wealth is discretionary time; money is merely fuel. A lot of speakers work so hard earning money that they erode their wealth (never see their families or engage in leisure activities).
If full-time/part-time isn’t the indicator of speaking success, does that mean that one can (shudder) work at another job and also be a speaker? Of course it does. Let’s take the most extreme case. Suppose you’re holding down a conventional 40-hour, nine-to-five career. However, you’ve managed to secure local speaking opportunities in the evenings and on weekends (or during vacations). If you’re paid for them, you’re a professional speaker, and you might be quite happy with the arrangement.
The definition of professionalism isn’t your lifestyle or how you choose to spend your time. The point is whether you earn money for working on the platform. I know a dental hygienist named Denise who is married with children. She works full-time in her field. She also addresses dental groups, medical offices, conventions, and trade associations as her schedule permits. She’s funny, effective, and highly regarded. She chooses her assignments based upon the demands of her professional schedule and her family’s needs. Denise is an excellent professional speaker, a fine dental hygienist, a wonderful mother and wife . . . well, do you get my drift?
Too many speakers waste too much time trying to determine how to leave their present occupations and/or reduce their other time commitments so that they can spend more time on professional speaking, as if that were an end in itself. If speaking is to be your total calling, you’ll naturally gravitate there because the gratification, job offers, and involvement will result in that evolution. But you can’t force it.
People who pursue other interests or have additional careers (which I do, as a consultant, and Denise does, as a hygienist) are also speakers. They are not poor stepcousins of professional speakers; they are professional speakers, no less than someone who tries to speak every day and travels 95 percent of the time.
Fish swim. Speakers speak. No one challenges a fish at rest with, “I see you’re not swimming, so for the moment we’re not going to accept you as a fish.”
Don’t be awed by the size and scope of this industry. There are people who have been embraced by the bureaus, who have the connections, and who are most visible at industry conventions. But many of the newcomers I’ve seen are a lot better than the veterans who seem to rely on name recognition and a hackneyed “act” rather than trying to meet the business challenges of their contemporary customers.
There are approximately 10,000 or so trade associations, labor unions, professional societies, and technical groups that hold conferences each year, and many of them hold dozens of conferences annually.2 If we add over 120,000 businesses in the nation and their conferences and meetings, even eliminating those that have no need for external resources, we can realistically assume there are in excess of 100,000 meetings a year utilizing professional speakers. (After all, 2,000 per week is only 40 per state, or eight per state each day; there are probably hundreds every day in New York City alone.)
The meeting “industry” is in need of new talent. No executive investing in a meeting wants to present the “same old, same old.” Don’t make the mistake of assuming that you have to earn your merit badges through long apprenticeships and careful climbs to the top. If you want to climb the mountain, fine, but there are choppers available.
One of the worst fates for an actor is to be typecast, which means that people can credibly accept that actor only in a type of role that he or she has been identified with before. That’s a career-limiting dynamic. Some can escape this fate—Tom Hanks went on to diverse, award-winning roles after starring in a vacuous television sitcom. But Shelly Long has had a much tougher time post-Cheers. The jury is still out on James Gandolfini post-Sopranos. Similarly, veterans in the profession have often stumbled into a success trap, in which they were able to establish a niche but then fell victim to it. Speakers shouldn’t be typecast either. If you’re relatively new to the business, you have the advantage of being lighter on your feet and more versatile.
So disregard both of the deeply revered beliefs that we began with. It doesn’t matter how many speeches you make a year, and it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in the business. All that matters is that buyers hire you, you meet their objectives, and you’re paid for doing so. The degree and amount are up to you. But I know of no full-time speakers.
TRANSFORMING INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL INTO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
If speakers are sought because of their expertise, then it’s fairly important that you make your expertise manifest. That is, no one really knows what’s between your ears—and often, that includes you!
Just as we (incorrectly) expect that our prospects will appreciate our abilities, wit, and singing quality as much as our clients who know us well, we often assume that our prospects somehow, magically, can immediately sense all of our distinguishing assets and strengths.
That doesn’t happen. Consequently, you have to transform what’s in your head to what’s on the table. (If there’s not much going on inside your head, then thus far in this book you’ve probably been looking only at the pictures.)
Intellectual property is a marketing tool as much as a delivery mechanism. Here are just a few examples, from the ridiculous to the sublime:
You get the idea. The things you say, depict, explain, represent, and so forth are tangible expressions of your intellectual property. It’s never too soon or too late to improve and expand on these. You can protect them through trademarks, service marks, registration, and copyrights, which we’ll talk about later. You can find my intellectual property expressed in every single medium I’ve listed.
Speaking Up: Never fear disseminating your intellectual property. It’s better to run the risk of someone stealing it than to appear to have nothing to say.
I’m asked all the time why I produce so much of my intellectual capital in so many forms, so easily accessed. The reasons are threefold:
1. I want to appear as an object of interest to others through provocation, new ideas, and even controversy.
2. Intellectual property in any form is always a calling card for the engaging, informed, interactive speaker in front of a group.
3. I want to create zero barriers to entry, which means that there must be inexpensive, accessible routes for people to become involved with me.3
To create intellectual property, such as that described in the preceding lists, proceed through this sequence:
1. How can I help people improve (their performance, self-worth, productivity, leadership, strategy, teamwork, and so forth)?
2. What specific ideas (models, approaches, techniques, methodology) do I or can I provide to create that improvement?
3. What forms best convey those ideas (print, audio, video, experiential, periodic, interactive)?
4. Are these forms best used for marketing, delivery, or both?
Here’s an example. Let’s say that you improve teamwork by changing what is normally a committee structure, with competing interests, to a true self-directed group that “wins or loses” together.
Let’s decide that you can write an article for the trade press on the differences between a true team and a committee, you can create a checklist to audit the structures in your organization for marketing purposes, you can produce a keynote highlighting the differences and why they are crucial to performance, and you can design a workshop to transfer the skills.
Voilà! You now have two free marketing devices and two highly lucrative delivery mechanisms. It’s that easy.
Some caveats: make sure that you use solely your own intellectual property, and that anything you “borrow” you have permission to use and you duly attribute it. This is important not only for ethical reasons, but also for pragmatic ones: too many speakers use secondary sources (other speakers) and focus on patently false information. (The Chevrolet Nova didn’t sell in Mexico because “no va” means “no go” in Spanish. See Snoops.com for the bursting of such urban myths.) Also, there are too many of the same stories going around (“When I was watching the electric parade in Disneyland . . .” or “A boy found a sand dollar on the beach . . .”). Please.
For the record, anything you write that is originally yours is automatically copyrighted in your name. You may add, as most of us do, © Alan Weiss 2010 or Copyright Alan Weiss 2010 (you don’t need both the word and the symbol). The only reason to file with the commissioner of patents and copyrights—which is tedious, given all that we produce—is that if you ever sue someone for infringement, you can’t collect punitive damages if you haven’t thus filed. I’ve never bothered, but talk to your own trademark and copyright attorney to see what’s in your best interests.
A trademark (TM) and a service mark (SM) refer to protection for phrases, models, materials, techniques, and so forth. The registration mark (®) indicates that the protection is finalized after a period of 6 to 12 months without challenge. Do not use Web-based software to save money when you try to trademark your work. Use a good attorney who specializes in the field, not your uncle’s cousin Louie. The cost is almost always less than $1,000. (And you’d be surprised at the law. You can’t, for example, protect a book title.)
Produce and protect your intellectual property. No one else is going to do it for you.
ESTABLISHING VIRAL INTEREST
These days it’s easier than ever to create viral interest in your work. By this I mean that it’s highly productive to get people talking, but not always in the manner you think.
First, let me debunk social media platforms as effective viral marketing tools for speakers. (I told you, intellectual property is about causing controversy!)
This is an unscientific, undocumented, and probably unpopular analysis of what I’m learning as King of Social Media. (I’m reminded of a great review of a leading actor in King Lear by Eugene Field: “He played the king as though under momentary apprehension that someone else was about to play the ace.”)
Here are my anecdotal observations.
If people visit LinkedIn twice a day for 15 minutes each time, that’s 2.5 hours in a five-day week. (I’m discounting weekends, although I shouldn’t, because social media wandering is clearly a full-time avocation, but I want to be conservative here.)
If they visit Facebook four times a day for 10 minutes each, that’s roughly 3.3 hours.
If they Twitter six times a day for five minutes each time, that’s 2.5 hours. (Or 12 times at 2.5 minutes each—you get the idea.)
If they post on their blogs three times a week (it’s rather important to keep a blog active and interesting), and if the creation and posting of the item takes 30 minutes (and I think I’m really lowballing this one), that’s 2.5 hours. (Blogging can be very useful in moderation.)
And now I’m going to add just two hours to the week to accommodate reading others’ blogs, replying to commentary, following up social media stuff offline, updating profiles, uploading photos, and so on.
Drum roll, please: during a five-day week on a conventional 40-hour basis, we now have about 13 hours used to engage in what are somewhat inappropriately termed “social media.” I understand that those hours may well extend into evening or early morning time. On the basis of a 40-hour week, that’s 33 percent devoted to this stuff, but even on the basis of a 12-hour day, the percentage is 22 percent.
Speaking Up: If you want to find a conventional job, use the social media sites. If you want to find speaking assignments, find real buyers. Would YOU hire a speaker who was promoting on a social media platform?
If you were to devote less than half of those 13 hours, say 6 hours, to other professional marketing pursuits, I estimate that you could do any one of the following during that week:
• Write two or three chapters in a book.
• Create 10 to 12 position papers and post them on your Web site.
• Call, at a moderate pace with follow-up, 30 past clients and/or warm leads.
• Send out a dozen press releases.
• Engage in a full day of self-development or a workshop.
• Create three speeches or a complete multiday workshop.
• Create a new product to be sold on your Web site.
• Create, and develop a marketing plan for, a teleconference.
• Create and record three podcasts.
• Create and tape a video.
• Contact 30 prior clients for testimonials, referrals, or references.
• Attend two networking events.
• Create and distribute two newsletters.
• Complete at least half of a professional book proposal for an agent.
• Respond to 50 or more reporters’ inquiries on, say, PRLeads.com.
• Seek out two high-potential pro bono opportunities.
• Contact and follow up with five trade associations for speaking opportunities.
You get the idea. Don’t forget that, in my unscientific analysis, I’ve halved the number of hours that I think are really being invested in full-fledged social media activity based on an already conservative estimate of what they truly are. And I’m not even counting other networks or platforms, just the four I’ve mentioned.
And over the course of a couple of months, you can easily do ALL of the bullet points if you have a mind to do so. I’m allocating six hours a week, just over an hour a day.
My current evaluation is this: don’t confuse occupation with avocation. I’ve never said that social media are evil or that they will not help someone find a buyer somewhere at some time. Heck, I’ve become an avid blogger, and I visit Facebook and Twitter daily. Yet I can still do all of the bullet points listed earlier and work only 20 hours a week.
If you’re serious about corporate consulting and coaching, and my blog IS located at contrarianconsulting.com, then I’ll continue to advise you that you’re not going to find those buyers on social platforms. Is it impossible? No. Have some people done it? They claim so. But if you’re engaged in social browsing at the EXPENSE of those bullet points, then that’s not a good disposition or apportionment of your time. If you can do both, and still live a balanced and fulfilling life by your terms, then go for it.
I post intellectual property—for free, of course—on Twitter, just as I do here. I do find that these platforms are a great way to pay back, to contribute, and to share. You have to be judicious in your selections, however, since some people just want “airtime,” and you only have so much air.
If you want to engage in viral marketing, use my bullet points and not the social media platforms, which are too often reminiscent of a bad bar just before closing, when everyone is surly and hard to comprehend.
NINE BEST PRACTICES TO INCREASE YOUR BUSINESS
Here, then, is a brief discussion of nine best practices for the novice or the established speaker who wants to increase business dramatically and take an easier way to the top of the mountain.
1. Never Respond to the Question, “What Do You Speak About?”
Your orientation should always be on what you accomplish for the client. Don’t focus on what you do; focus on how the customer benefits. Don’t talk about why you’re good; talk about what the buyer needs. Above all, don’t prematurely and arbitrarily narrow your appeal, which a “topic list” will invariably do.
2. Prepare Well, but Not Fanatically
It’s as important not to be perfect as it is to be well prepared. No speech that you or I will ever make will mark the turning point of modern civilization. With luck, your speeches might mean a bit of improvement in a person’s professional and/or personal life. The difference—to the customer—between your being 90 percent prepared and 100 percent prepared (whatever that is) is infinitesimal. It is not perceived. But the energy expended in moving from 90 percent to 100 percent is immense, much more than that required to move from 75 percent to 95 percent.
Heresy? I know. But it’s time we took apart the fantasy of perfection in this business, along with its attendant fanatical preparation. We are not building the space shuttle. We’re not even trying to build a Toyota. There’s just no need for frenzied anticipation. At 90 percent, your slides are rehearsed and placed correctly, you have a backup plan if the projector fails, your examples have been adjusted for the audience, and you can alter your timing given the progress of those before you. Enough.
I once heard a very well-known speaker tell a crowd that he gave the same speech about 100 times a year and that he never failed to practice it every time prior to delivering it. The speech was three hours long, and he spent three hours practicing the same speech every time. He claimed that this was the path to success.
I call that a learning disability. My immediate reaction was that either he was deliberately lying to create false standards of preparation for others or he was the slowest learner I had ever encountered. The Gettysburg Address was written on the back of an envelope.
One of the best ways to prepare is to record your speech a week or so earlier and then listen to it a few times. Practice some current humor to throw in each time, think about how you’ll manage the visual aids during each segment, and work on making smooth transitions. When you’re tired of listening to it, you’re done practicing.
3. Adhere to Basic Adult Learning Needs
There are those who will tell you that there is a formula to a speech: you open with a humorous story, make a point, tell an anecdote, repeat your point, and close with a deeply personal revelation. That might help you deliver a speech in a choreographed manner, but I think you can see it coming a mile away.
Adult learning generally occurs in the sequence depicted in Figure 3-1. This sequence shouldn’t be a lockstep formula, but it does reflect what we know about human learning. We are presented with potentially useful information, practice with it to explore its utility, receive feedback on our use or performance, and then apply it in real life. Without the final step, all else is academic.
The discussion aspect can include humor, audience participation, and a host of other devices. It needn’t be simply a “talking head” (although that’s what it usually was in school). The practice element can include exercises, role-plays, games, and simulations, or it can be as simple as focusing someone on how a concept might be applied. The feedback constitutes the need to provide insights for the practice, and it can be self-feedback, feedback from colleagues, or feedback from the speaker. Application means that the audience has done something more than merely sit through your presentation.
Figure 3-1 An Adult Learning Sequence
These steps apply more to a workshop than to a keynote, but they have applicability for all adult learning. Even in a brief keynote, you want to present ideas and instill action in the participants. (This is why keynotes require different skills and can sometimes be more difficult to craft than much longer presentations.)
4. Understand Your Role as a “Motivational Speaker”
There is a difference between motivation and inspiration. To be inspired is to be spiritually moved, emotionally involved, and uplifted, and to take solace in words themselves. Its derivation is from theology. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired, but it’s usually a temporary, euphoric feeling, not a long-term focus on action.
Motivation is intrinsic. It comes from within. It is a willingness to act based upon a belief that the actions are important and will be gratifying. I cannot motivate you; you can only motivate yourself. However, I might be able to help establish an environment and atmosphere that are conducive to your becoming motivated. (Which is why motivation in the workplace is most directly a function of the immediate leadership and environment. It’s plain silly to have a speaker try to motivate an audience that will then be returning to a gulag.)
Every good speaker is a motivational speaker because he or she helps people to take action. Motivation and self-esteem are intertwined, and self-esteem is heightened when someone receives tangible skills that, when used, will add to the person’s success, encouraging him or her to apply those skills repeatedly (see the adult learning sequence in the previous section). In essence, the more successful I am, the better I feel about myself, and the better I feel about myself, the more successful I am. But that’s a tautology. The key to influencing that circle is to provide discrete skills that I can rely on for success.
To the extent that we impart those skills to others, we are all motivational speakers. I’ve never known how to reply when someone asks, “Well, are you one of those ‘motivational’ speakers?” I guess I’d better be.
Motivational speaking has developed a bad name because it’s sometimes delivered as an empty, quasi-inspirational talk filled with platitudes, bromides, and the bathos of personal struggles, delivered by an empty suit. “You can’t take away my best friend, myself,” and “You can knock me, but you can’t reach me” are cute phrases, but they are hard to apply in the workplace the next day. On the other hand, learning a technique to resolve conflict with a coworker or learning how to influence the boss’s delegation style can help me tangibly and immediately.
Figure 3-2 The Motivation Circle
What’s more motivational: being told that I’m my own best friend or being able to eliminate some of the stress in my life?
5. Self-Disclose Only if You Have a Point
Among professional speakers, the personal revelations known as self-disclosure have moved from a minor technique to the main attraction. When we involve ourselves and our experiences on the platform, we’ve too often moved from modest litotes to egocentric hyperbole. Here’s a satire I use with my mentees to make the point:
The astronaut had traveled to the moon with only a tenth of an inch of metal between him and the void. He had landed a quarter of a million miles away and walked tentatively but triumphantly on the cratered surface. Now, he was to return home in the final, tiny stage of his rocket that awaited him.
But something went terribly wrong. Instead of heading for Earth, he tumbled out of control in the direction of deep space. All attempts to correct his errant capsule failed, and he sailed, helplessly, into the abyss.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am that astronaut . . .
Believe me, it’s not so far-fetched. I’ve seen speakers break down in tears on stage (always in the same spot, night after night, as sincerely as you can imagine, trying to regain control for exactly 46 seconds), speakers invite parents that they hadn’t spoken to in 10 years to join them on stage, and speakers reveal more about their personal lives, struggles with disease and loss, and intimate problems than I’d ever want to know. I’ve heard more from speakers 60 feet away on a stage than I’ve heard in the privacy of my own living room. It’s not a pretty sight.
Self-disclosure works if there’s a point that the audience members can use to improve their condition. Telling me that you were born poor and now you’re not (presumably because you’re making money telling me this story) does not help me unless I can relate to the techniques you used to make that transition. Sharing your heartbreak, disease, loss, or vicissitudes with me may help you unburden yourself weekly, but it doesn’t help me unless I can translate it to my condition and my life.
I always face an audience with the belief that its members are not damaged. All of us, of course, have experienced the vagaries of fate. We all have had tragic times as well as wonderful times. But that’s simply a condition of human existence. There’s no need to turn yourself inside out or violate my privacy by violating your privacy unless there’s a pragmatic set of skills that results.
There usually isn’t. While I’m happy with your reunion or conquest of adversity or recovery, I’m a lot better off longer term with something that I can use tomorrow to close more sales, better manage my time, communicate better with others, or lead teams more adroitly.
Some “experts” actually claim that the speaker’s relationship with the audience is a function of the audience’s need for help and the speaker’s need for approval. That sounds like a bad case of codependency to me. I believe that the speaker-audience relationship is based upon shared values (we’d like to improve), trust (the speaker is factual), pragmatism (these are useful techniques), and relevance (this applies to us). If, as a speaker, you need approval, see a therapist.
Speaking Up: If you’re lonely, get a dog. If you want to practice, get a volunteer audience. Only if you think you can improve an individual’s and/or an organization’s well-being, however, should you try to get a client.
6. Have Something to Say before You Write, Then Write Often
I once heard a speaker advise others, “If you have a speech, you have a book.” Well, you might have a very, very brief book.
Don’t use secondary sources because they’re often actually farther removed than that and can be highly misleading. Find your own sources. More important, form your own opinions. Look around in awareness and digest what you see. Are people more stressed when they work at home? Are decisions actually of poorer quality when they are made participatively? Does most training accomplish next to nothing six months later?
Don’t be afraid to be contrarian, but be scared out of your mind to be trite. It’s better to stand out in a crowd through controversy than to blend into the wallpaper through blandness. Your favorite color shouldn’t be plaid.
Writing will enable you to express your thoughts, examine your cognitive processes, and anneal your concepts. It doesn’t matter whether you get published, although your odds are strikingly higher if you have written something as compared to having written nothing. Writing and speaking are synergistic and symbiotic. John Updike once explained that to understand how people speak—to be able to write dialogue—you have to understand how they think. I believe that to speak to people, you have to understand how you think.
7. Develop and Use Only Personal Anecdotes and Stories
Everyone is sick to death of the boy who throws the sand dollar back into the ocean.4 The naval ship that keeps requesting the lighthouse keeper to move to avoid a collision is about as old. These stories were poignant and funny once. So were silent films.
All around our personal lives revolve stories, incidents, circumstances, and travails of family, friends, and strangers. Jot them down, record them on tape, or create reminders for yourself (I keep an “anecdote file”). Go through them periodically to select those that have the potential to prove a point or highlight a concept. Feel free to embellish—after all, it’s your story, and the key is the audience’s improved condition, not personal historical veracity.
Never discard an anecdote. Even those that seem to hold no promise may emerge as brilliant departure points as you mature, your speeches evolve, your clients change, and society diversifies. In the worst case, the anecdote takes up some space, but if you discard it, you lose it forever.
Personal stories immunize you from being copied and keep you unique no matter who else is on an agenda. No one can tell your stories as well as you can, and no one has your personal history and experiences. Collect and nurture the stories of your life. They are your continually renewing resource.
8. Subordinate Your Ego
Stop trying to be the center of attention every time. I was invited to speak in Atlanta once, and the group’s officers hosted a dinner for me the night before, presumably to meet me on more intimate terms and to learn what they might. However, the association’s president waltzed in, and she promptly dominated the discussion. When one of the group raised a basket-ball question, she even had some irrelevancies to insert about a game that she had never played and didn’t care to watch.
That woman was incapable of sitting quietly and listening because she judged her success by how often she opened her mouth. Our success is actually a function of communication, which, the last time I checked, is a dialogue. If you’re not on the platform, don’t feel that you have to be the center of attention (and even if you are on the platform, you’re only a conduit and shouldn’t be a hero).
You might have a better story than the one that was just told. Save it for another time, rather than practicing one-upmanship. You might have visited more places, earned higher fees, worked with tougher audiences, and had a more harrowing travel experience. So what? Allow others their moments in the light of their friends’ attention.
The best speakers I’ve ever seen are terrific listeners. They don’t need to be on center stage when they’re not on the stage. They don’t have to continually tell you what they’ve done because their accomplishments speak for themselves.
I love the airline pilot who, with superb talent and comprehensive experience, has just landed a $400 million 747 filled with 500 people after a transoceanic flight and comes on the public address system to say, “Thank you for flying with us. We really appreciate your business and hope you’ll choose us again.” That’s humility. It’s a rare trait.
9. Understand that Sometimes It’s the Audience, and Get On with Your Life
I’ve had a few speeches that I wish I’d never accepted. Both the client and I had acted in good faith, but conditions (or client judgment) deteriorated. For example, I’ve faced audiences who have just arrived from a two-hour open bar; who have been awarded prizes and trophies after grueling competition and pressure; who have had terrible news presented to them (deaths, layoffs, divestitures—I kid you not); who have been exposed to too many speakers or activities, some of which were dreadful and dull; and who were just plain ornery for no good reason at all.
I don’t hold it against the client, and I certainly don’t hold it against myself; I do the best I can, and I leave. That’s all that I can do, and I’d propose that there’s little more that you can do.
If you haven’t prepared, blow your lines, are hung over, or become insulting, you’re at fault, and you should return the client’s money. But if you’ve done everything you can to the best of your ability, go home to work another day. The money has been earned much more than when you’re hot and having a great time for yourself. Some audiences can’t be pleased, no matter what you do. All you can do is your best.
No speaker I know of who has been successful in turning around a very difficult crowd ever went to the buyer and said, “That was much tougher than I expected, but I turned them around, so I want you to pay twice my fee.” Conversely, no buyer should say to you, “You did your best, but they were tough and you didn’t make any head-way, so I want my money back.”
Occasionally, what you have carefully prepared doesn’t work. The only real downside to this is if you allow it to affect you in the future. The longer you’re in this profession, the more of these immovable obstacles you’ll hit. I hit one every year or two, bounce off, spend the money, and move on. This business is not about somebody else’s idea of perfection or arbitrary credential. It’s about preparing well and doing your best. Just think about what a world this would be if everyone, with every client, prepared well and did his or her best every time.
IF YOU DON’T BLOW YOUR OWN HORN, THERE IS NO MUSIC
This section of the chapter is for those of you who are relatively new to the profession or who seem to be stalled at a low level of activity. Once you’re moving with some headway, it’s relatively easy to change direction. But as long as you’re becalmed, you’re helpless to follow a course.
There are many options available to create your own power. They include
• Working for a seminar training firm
• Obtaining sponsorship
• Securing another speaker’s cast-off business
• Volunteering your services in return for exposure
• Broadening your scope
• Serving as a backup
Working for a Seminar Training Firm
These firms include organizations such as Vistage and Fred Pryor Seminars. Quite a few very successful speakers began with these companies. They offer very inexpensive seminars (typically $39 to $99) and/or meetings for owners of small firms, for a limited duration, around the country, drawing from a cadre of speakers and trainers who make up the “faculty.”
The true seminar companies either create or purchase their course content independently; the instructor doesn’t need to bring his or her own material (in fact, they prefer that you don’t). You learn the content, practice teaching with a veteran, and you’re off and running. You’ll be asked to commit to a basic number of days—say, 10 per month—in return for that guarantee from the company. The pay is dreadfully low, generally about $300 per program at this writing, although there are some exceptions for high performers and commissions on book and tape sales. (The firms that organize “management meetings” often forbid you to market to the participants! I’ve met people in the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame who take on this low-paying work; such are the struggles of some careers.)
The advantages include exposure all over the country, accolades for your press kit (“Lou was the highest rated CareerTrack trainer for two years in a row!”), experience dealing with diverse audiences, a guaranteed cash flow, learning new concepts (you can teach several different programs), and at least half of your time free to market yourself as a professional speaker.
The disadvantages include a demand on half your time (reducing your flexibility), considerable travel (which is part of our business anyway, however), very low pay, constraints on what you can and can’t do in the seminars, and continual monitoring—these firms are paranoid about instructors developing their own prospects during the courses, and with good reason.
All things considered, these arrangements are quite helpful if you see them as temporary bridges to the next step in your career growth. As a permanent job, they’re roughly equivalent to the rowers in the Roman galleys. No matter how hard you work or how well you row, they’re going to kill you.
Obtaining Sponsorship
Some organizations will pay a speaker to appear on their behalf. For example, Apple Computer might hire someone to address school groups on the best uses of technology in the classroom, a communications company might hire someone to address police and fire departments about crisis management, or a health maintenance organization might employ someone to address community groups on the benefits of early screenings for certain illnesses.
These are not sales pitches. They are informative presentations whose sponsors want to increase their profile, goodwill, and long-term business through their support of such efforts. Utilizing a professional speaker rather than a company spokesperson creates much less of a sales environment and much more of a professional presentation.
The advantages include guaranteed work, exposure, the ability to use your own concepts and techniques in support of your sponsor’s needs (the sponsor might ask you to help design the session), and a firm client to cite. Depending on the nature of the organization, the pay could be menial or meaningful. The disadvantages include a probable lack of buyers for your future speaking in your audiences and the potential of being cast in a narrow niche (she’s a health-care specialist).
Sponsorships virtually never seek you out. Your best bet is to find a firm that is using such tactics (or that could benefit if it did) and present your case to the buyer. Relatively few people do this aggressively, and you could have their undivided attention if you make a strong case, again, toward their objectives.
Merck placed me several times as the keynote speaker at various medical and hospital conventions. The firm was simply listed as the sponsor of my appearance. Enough said.
Securing Another Speaker’s Cast-Off Business
All of us who have arrived at certain levels of success receive inquiries about business that we don’t want to pursue. This is usually because the client can’t afford the fee, it’s in an area in which we’re not sufficiently relevant, it calls for travel that isn’t attractive, and/or it conflicts with other professional or personal activities. It happens to me at least several times a year, so it’s happening out there every day as you read this.
Reach out to speakers who are in this situation. I don’t mean that you should call them once a week and ask for a handout, because that’s what it would be if there’s no quid pro quo. Develop a relationship as you would with a client, bureau, or banker. Can you do some research for the speaker in return for the first call on appropriate business that he or she can’t handle? Does the speaker need some office help, some temporary staffing, some computer work? Can you walk the dog and wash the car? (All right, I’m kidding, but not by much.)
Establish that kind of relationship with three or four busy speakers, and you might get their castoffs on a regular basis. If you’re good, you’ll be able to address the topic and earn credibility with the audience (which won’t always be the case in these situations). Your fee will be no problem, since you’ll be a bargain compared to the original, and you’ll probably receive a higher fee than you would if you had been contacted directly.
The advantages are in the association with proven pros, the ability to work with firms that otherwise would never have called, and the opportunity to “test the envelope” in terms of your versatility and appeal. There are few disadvantages if you are able to establish a truly trusting relationship, and you’re not simply around for legwork and as a “hanger on.” One person who took on castoffs from me was able to work at a fee twice what she otherwise would have demanded, put days into preparation, and blew the client’s socks off. He told me that, no offense, he really didn’t see how anyone (meaning me) could have been better for him.
He was probably right.
Volunteering Your Services in Return for Exposure
Every service organization, community group, social club, youth group, and local professional society can use speakers, especially if they’re for free! The key to volunteering for these roles is that you want to do it for groups that will have potential customers in the audience. The ironclad rule for addressing these groups is simple: always bring a lot of business cards and handout collateral.
The Rotary, for example, typically has both owners of small businesses and managers from larger organizations, as well as community leaders. Civic organizations will have, by design, top people from large businesses on their boards and committees (e.g., the Greater Peoria Business Improvement Coalition). Occasionally, these entities will pay at least an honorarium. But it’s more important to achieve the exposure to the people in the group than it is to make small change.
Once, I spoke pro bono for the board of a shelter for battered women, helping it to define the organization’s strategy and goals. One of the board members was the chief of police of the second largest force in the state, and he immediately hired me to do the same session for all of his senior officers—he had a federal grant! These things happen all the time. But they can’t happen if you’re not in front of these groups.
Broadening Your Scope
Try to look at your skills on a much wider basis. As a speaker, you can be a panel moderator, an emcee, a visiting college lecturer, a spokesperson, a mediator, a facilitator—just about anyone of whom communication skills and stage presence might be required.
One day, flying home from San Francisco, I returned a message from my wife from the airplane.
“What are you wearing?” she asked.
“Maria, not here,” I whispered.
“Knock it off. Are you wearing a suit?”
“Well, no. You know I travel casually.”
“Okay, listen. As soon as you land, rush home, put on a suit, and meet me at the public television station outside of Providence.”
“Why? Is there a benefit or a fund-raiser?”
“No. You’re hosting tonight’s debate for the League of Women Voters.”
It seems that the local television anchor who usually emceed the event was sick, and the backup was on vacation. My wife, a committee member, confidently volunteered me. When I arrived 30 minutes prior to airtime, the director was nearing meltdown. But when he realized that I could walk, talk, and follow stage signals, he recuperated. (The host from the League refused to introduce me as a consultant, because she said that if she did, everyone would assume that I was out of work! She introduced me as a “business executive.”)
The show went flawlessly, and I was subsequently hired to do a local awards banquet as the after-dinner speaker at full fee. I never considered that I couldn’t host that show. You can do a variety of things if you let people know. They might not all be perfectly consistent with your speaker’s image, but they will provide opportunities for you to shine in front of people who will require that image later.
Serving as a Backup
Here’s a technique that most new speakers miss. Provide your name, credentials, and abilities (it’s always about relationships) to organizations that can be seriously hurt if they have a no-show. (In areas hit with hard winters, this is particularly relevant.) Provide your name to local speakers’ bureaus, hotel banquet managers, company meeting planners, service organizations, newspaper columnists, talk-show hosts, visitors’ bureaus, and anyone else who might hire, or influence the hiring of, outside speakers.
You will be competing with no one else, in my experience. Tell people that you’re not expecting them to hire you for the gig, but that having a backup is always prudent, and that you’ll work for the original speaker’s fee if you’re called upon at the last moment.
I appear on radio all the time. Locally, I’m interviewed in the studio. One day, the host of a talk show I had appeared on twice told me that she was going on vacation. “You’re really good on the air,” she said, “so how about pinch-hitting for one day?”
Thus, I became a talk-show host for three hours. The producer kept whispering through the earpiece, “Don’t forget to promote your latest book.”
Yeah, I think I can do that.
FISH SWIM, BUT DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS
There is no single way to make it in this business. Bertrand Russell once said, “Don’t ever be absolutely sure of anything—not even if I tell you.”
Professional speakers help people and organizations improve their condition. They do it in a wide variety of ways, employing a vast array of talents. You have to decide what your “playing field” is and what kinds of plays make sense once you’re on it. Ignore the stentorian, dire pronouncements of those who, with fingers pointed skyward, proclaim that you must specialize, you must speak only for a fee, you must speak full-time, you must work with bureaus, you must have a demo video, you must eat bran every day.
The only “must” is to be flexible and not rule out options that may be useful to you as you advance your career. And we are all trying to advance our careers every day, newcomer and veteran, high profile or low. Some of us are simply less part-time than others.
Speaking Up: Nothing succeeds like success. Don’t listen to vacuous directives. Instead, watch what a variety of successful people have done. Then do that.
Observe what people whom you respect have done. (Don’t just listen to advice because it’s too easy to give it.) And watch a wide variety of people. Adapt those techniques that seem most relevant to you, and perhaps a few that will help you to stretch. Through this exploration, you can determine your true value to the client, and that will help you establish your fees, commensurate with that value.
Someone once asked me why I didn’t farm out all of my administrative work, such as sending out invoices.
“Are you mad?” I raved. “That’s one of the truly great pleasures of the profession, setting up that invoice and sending it to the client. That’s the apotheosis of the work, the tangible evidence that you’re providing so much value that the client deems it a worthwhile return on the investment.”
You can’t help others until you effectively help yourself. So let’s turn now to the chapter that most of you may have already begun with: how do you establish fees?
SUMMARY
“Thought leadership” is the latest trendy phrase to describe an immutable condition: people are drawn to objects of interest, to expertise, and to power. No matter where you are in your career, you have the ability to create this kind of repute.
One primary requisite is to be concise. Tell people what they need to know, not everything that you know. You are a professional speaker in business environments, not a raconteur in a salon. A speaker who tells the same tired stories and uses shopworn examples year after year may land some jobs, but he or she won’t build a career.
Your greatest asset is between your ears: intellectual capital. You must instantiate this so that it is manifest as intellectual property. IP takes many forms, speaking merely being one (and most speeches aren’t immediately copyrighted unless you provide some written transcription, which is rare).
You can increase your business in diverse ways, and you should follow the best practices for doing this, not attempt to reinvent cold beer. That increase will add to your reputation as a thought leader, which enhances viral marketing and mention. In this technological age, that is easier than ever, though not on some of the most touted platforms (social media).
At the end of the day, however, if you haven’t blown your own horn, there probably hasn’t been much music.