How to Fill Your Speaking Pipeline

Professional speakers are always speaking.  That’s advice coming from professional speaker Mike Jaffe who says that what he does provides a Human Wakeup Call.  As a business and personal coach, Mike provides an important jumpstart for his clients to help them reach their goals.  That’s because Mike himself experienced a huge wakeup call quite a few years ago that put him on the path he’s on now.  You can read his story of what happened to him by visiting his site http://www.HumanWakeupCall.com.

Have you seen the white board you can take anywhere: Whiteyboard

I interviewed Mike Jaffe recently on my television show FROM THE SOAPBOX TO THE STAGE (http://StartaSpeakingBusiness.com) and asked him for a few tips for aspiring speakers or for those who need a jump start for their speaking business.  During the interview Mike made it clear that professional speakers are always speaking, even during downtime and in between the higher paying gigs.  He reminds us that there are many organizations seeking speakers for their meetings, such as Rotary.  Here’s the clip of that interview:

I love it when someone contacting me about my availability tells me that they heard about me from another source.  This proves the point that the more you get out there and speak, the more you get seen and heard AND recommended.  You certainly have to have good speaking skills to showcase, but if you’re not putting yourself out there, what’s the point.  We all want to get paid for our work, but speaking for free should always be an option to help clients and to showcase your skills.

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Speaking for free doesn’t mean you can’t gain something from doing it.  Your first gain is that you’re giving something to someone and helping them.  At the same time, new people are meeting you and experiencing your skills.  It’s been my policy that I think first about how I can help someone, and look for a benefit for me second.  At free events I’ve sold books, had the organization video tape my presentation for me, publicize the event to get more people in seats, and the best result… having people come up to me afterward and ask for my business card.

My friend Mike Jaffe says speak, speak and speak some more.  During your slow seasons it’s great to be creating content, working the phones to generate more work, and networking.  But it’s equally important that you’re speaking where ever you can find an audience interested in hearing what you have to say.  

ASSIGNMENT:  Leave a reply to tell me about a free (or low-paid) gig that turned into something big for you.

Why Start a Speaking Business?

Image courtesy of Master isolated images
and www.freedigitalphotos.net

I asked myself this very question many times and I came up with two basic answers. The first answer is so I could stop existing as someone else’s employee. There’s nothing wrong with working for someone else. There’s just something very fulfilling about being able to take care of yourself and your family doing something that you love to do. The second answer is because it allows me to live a more fulfilling life by using my passion and gifts to help others live a better life. 

Now, if you already love what you do then perhaps you’re already on the right track and just have to make a slight switch at the next ‘junction.’ Maybe it’s time to change from working in the trenches to helping all those people that are in the trenches with you.

The reality is that too many people feel trapped in a job they hate going to everyday. Just look around you the next time you’re at the grocery store, the coffee shop or at the mall. Sometimes it feels like you’re living in a zombie movie surrounded by the walking dead. 

So many people doing the same thing day after day, existing for the sole purpose of producing for someone or something else, and once those widgets have been produced, they get their reward of returning home to the sofa and their television or computer each night. They sit there, remote control or mouse in hand feeling unfulfilled and empty, ready to give up the idea of searching for a more meaningful way of living. 

In the early 1980’s I began my journey as one of the walking dead. I was just out of the US Air Force and my grandmother told me I should go into the field of data processing because it promised good pay and good benefits. My grandparents were hard-working immigrants who came to this country as children. They did whatever it took to pay the bills and they did it well. But, they also complained about their employers, their jobs, the neighbors, and pretty much everything else. They weren't fulfilled and happy. Still, I had great respect for my grandmother so I took her advice.

Within a few months I found myself working for a bank, mounting magnetic reels on tape drives and loading and unloading giant reams of green and white striped paper called green-bar into humongous printers. I spent my days punching cards and bursting forms until I eventually moved into programming and from there onto management. 
I’m not telling you this to fault my grandmother; she was only doing what she had been programmed to do too. 

Besides, I was making good money and had good benefits. I’m telling you this because back then, I didn't know it was okay to dream of being all that I was meant to be in this life. I didn't have any idea that I had a passion for speaking about families and parenting just waiting to be found. 

Maybe you've been living your parent’s dream, someone else’s dream, or you've become a member of the ‘walking dead’. If this sounds like you, then this is the perfect time to discover new dreams or to reconnect with dreams you've been denying all along. Right now is the perfect time to reach deep inside yourself to discover and remind yourself of all the ideas that light your soul on fire. 

What do you love to talk about so much that when you talk about it, you feel alive? What have you discovered in your life that you’d like to share with others so that they can start living a better life too? What guilty pleasures would you love to bring out into the open? 

Are there things that you know how to do really well? Do you have natural talents that others would love to hear about, or that you could teach? What have you learned ‘the hard way’? What insight or knowledge do you possess that you could talk about right now rather than waiting until it’s time for your last lecture?