I was listening to the April edition of Voices of Experience (an industry audio magazine for the speaking industry you can download the free app here:),and heard Jim Cathcart , the host ask a room of legendary speakers: “What Does It Take To Succeed In Speaking?”
These people are past NSA Presidents, Board Members, Cavett Winners and CPAE’s. I loved the answers so much I had them transcribed for you here:
I’d say Rule #1 is do a great job on the platform. That’s got to be our first and foremost focus, because if you’re going to have staying power and be in this business for decades, you’ve got to underpromise and overdeliver.
For any business success, it’s just two things. 1. Be really, really, really good. 2. Ask lots and lots of people to buy. If your business is not working, you’re failing on one or the other or both of those sides of the equation.
I agree about being really, really good, but what happens when you’re getting started if you’re not nearly as good as you’re going to be? So you have to be willing to make a lot of calls and get yourself booked. So even if you currently aren’t great, the only way you’re going to get great is to speak a lot. The only way you’re going to speak a lot is if you do a lot of sales and marketing and business development work. Just make sure that you’re really, really good relative to the fee that you’re currently charging so you can continue to get really, really great by being on the platform a lot.
Here’s a line that I like to use, “The job isn’t doing the speech, it’s getting the speech.” That’s your real job. You need to spend 8-10 hours a day at your business and don’t be confused that doing a speech is really part of that business. You need to actually define what your numbers need to be to survive, how many speeches you need to get there, and then work and do what it takes to make that happen.
Every single day we have an opportunity to learn more and more about our particular expertise. Personally, I use Google Alerts and I use keywords to topics that I’m interested in and on a daily basis can look at literally dozens of articles by other subject matter experts. The goal is not to regurgitate that information, but to interpret it, personalize it, and put my personal spin on it.
You need to be consistent, disciplined, listen to your clients and in all aspects of your business, be reliable, repeatable and responsible. Dr. Kenneth McFarland, that we held up as the dean of American speakers said, “Say something of interest to you and your audience. Say it well and stop, and when you have finished they should know what you know and how you know it”. For those of us in the room with many years of experience we always have to look at ways and experiences that help us fall in love with the profession and what we do and that’s how it stays fresh.
Most people stop with the Google search. So unless you have an ongoing, consistent, relentless marketing program that can be inexpensive at the beginning of your career with YouTube and blogging and developing a website because the world is not looking for us. They look at my office, how many years have I been in business with thousands of clients and the first question is, “May I ask how are you calling, were you referred or am I the end of a Google search?” It is amazing that probably 90% is a Google search. So as good as your presentation has to be, you have to make it easy for the world to find you, especially I have built my business trying to get the phone to ring and I’ve never had anyone make outgoing calls.
I think there are three questions you can use to build out any speaking career, whether you’re just beginning or you’ve been in it for awhile. The first question is, “What is my message?” and that is what is unique to you, not what do you talk about because that’s a topic. People want to know what you know, what you’ve experienced, what you bring to the party. The second question is, “Who will pay me to hear it?” That’s your target audience. I’ve been told by people that their message is universally applicable and while that may be true at some kind of philosophical level, there’s a much smaller universe of people who are willing to pay you for what you have to say. You need to know who they are. The third question, which is a marketing question, is “How will they find out about you?” Because if you have a target market that will pay you and a good message, but they don’t know about it, then you’ve got a marketing problem. So I concur with my colleagues being good on the platform is paramount, but you’ve also got to have a unique message as well as an audience that is willing to pay for it.
For me, I decided I wanted to be an entertainer and a speaker, but I needed to learn to be the very best speaker I possibly could before you pay me. So how do you do that? For me, I went to as many NSA conventions as I could and I’d just watch and I’d just listen and I liked you and I didn’t like her, and I liked him and I didn’t like them and I took the very best and thought that’s really good, I could do that. I watched talk show hosts, I watched their guests, who worked, who didn’t. I watched many preachers on Sunday mornings, who had energy in their voice, who had passion and commitment, who was just reading scripture and who was really living it. I spoke anywhere I possibly could, whether I was good or bad I was learning to be good and then at some point I decided I think I can charge money for this.
Like many of my colleagues here, I had the fortune to enter the speaking business through the world of entertainment. I cut my teeth on doing performances, variety shows, comedy shows, using acrobatics and some of the other physical skills that I do and at a very early age developed those rudimentary skills of how to hold an audience, how to capture an audience, how to feel the pulse of a room and those types of things. How do you get that, how do you understand that? I think that it’s much easier for entertainers who have developed those skills to segue way into a world of speaking than it is for people who are content experts to say how do I become a master performer, but it’s certainly possible and there are other ways to do that. I would suggest that you enroll in some acting classes, improv classes, get involved in doing any type of performance and study entertainers as well as studying other speakers. You can learn just as much or more from people who are experts in the world of entertainment that will be applicable to this business.
I think that’s a process that’s twofold it’s deepening your own content and your understanding, your writing and your authority but also developing the confidence that says, I am the messenger and I’m capable and I’m worthy of delivering this message in a powerful way. So that segue way of going from entertainer with a bit of a message to being a speaker who also happens to have powerful entertainment value is one that takes time.
We are motivational performers and coming from showmanship it’s easy to wow the audience with our amazing skills. But in the beginning I think my message is we are very surface-level but over time became more and more meaningful, more powerful, more content-driven. Think to yourself how do you want the audience to be different at the end of your program.
Elbert Hubbard, a great speaker from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, he said a great speaker is inspired by many, but a copy of none.
I love Malcom Gladwell’s definition of mastery because if you look around the room you got mastery in a wide variety of areas and it’s either 10,000 hours or ten years and that’s what you have to put in to get to the top level.
I think there’s a conundrum sometimes involved with this, and that is to be a better speaker we have to focus on our self, but to book more speeches we have to focus on others. My speaking career grew when I started asking two questions. 1. What pain can I solve for them, how can I help them as opposed to financial needs and how many I need to book? So that type of focus. The second question came a little bit later on in my career and I wish I would have asked it sooner, which is, why would someone book me as opposed to the other alternatives? It’s not just that we have to be the best speaker; we have to provide some kind of something that is not out there in the marketplace. Now early in your career it’s because you’re cheaper, you have a lower fee, but unless there is some compelling reason for the customer to choose you over someone else. There’s no reason for them to choose you and so I tried to find ways to make what I provided to be an advantage in the marketplace.
What would you add to their brilliant advice?
