Mind What You Say

The furore over Jeremy Clarckson's remarks about executing strikers is a fine example of how people can react in different ways.

In my opinion his remarks were just a harmless joke and I am positive that is how he meant them. Some people will agree with me and others won't and that is OK.

My opinion, like everyone else's is coloured by my experience and as I wasn't one of the strikers I can't really say how any of them would feel. I do think that taking legal advice and asking for him to be sacked is a massive over reaction.

The other point here is about the platform he was using when he made his remarks. He would (probably) have got away with it on Top Gear, which is primarily a light entertainment show, but doing the same thing on The One Show, which borders on current affairs, is not quite so safe.

The lesson for Public Speakers is very clear. Make sure your message is right for the platform. It is OK, and desirable, to use humour but make sure you don't use material that will alienate any of your audience. As a speaker you are not just responsible for what you say, you are also responsible for how people receive it.

Speaking for Money

There are thousands upon thousands of quality speakers trying to make a living as professional speakers, but only a very few ever manage to do it.

The problem is very much one of perception.

There are quite a few speakers who get paid just to stand on stage and deliver their message. With very few exceptions these people are celebrities - politicians, entertainers, sports stars, adventurers, business moguls, etc. Because they are in the public eye people will pay to hear them.

Most speakers don't fit into this category and are therefore surprised to find, that despite having worthwhile information, no one is prepared to pay to hear them speak.

Despite this we hear lots of speakers claim to be making big money. The truth is that most of these people are not actually professional speakers. Speaking from the stage is just a tool that they use to sell their products and services.

This is the route to making big money and getting to speak in front of an audience. You need to look at the message you want to put to an audience and see whether you can develop a product and / or service to sell that is based on your message.

There is still a long way to go before you start making money, but shifting your perception from being a paid speaker, to being a speaker that uses the platform to sell products is the best starting point.

To Busy for Business?

I like my job – not a lot – but I do like it.  I like the people I work with and I like the clients (well most of them).  My salary is reasonable and my hours are OK.

The trouble is, like most employed people, I am never going to get rich doing this job.  Very few employed people will ever be truly wealthy.  Some will be comfortable; most will simply “get by”.

When you are employed you basically have to trade your time for money.  Your time is limited and finite.  As long as you remain employed your income is also limited and finite.
For most people the idea of running their own business is a rather daunting thought.  The risk factor is extremely high and very few people have enough spare funds to give up the day job and start their own venture.  There are plenty of success stories from people that have mortgaged their house and ploughed their life savings into a business, but most of us can’t accept this degree of risk.
So what to do? - Start a business part time.

This is not as difficult, or as time consuming as it sounds, it’s just a question of being organised.  Finding enough hours to run a business part time is easy.

 Let’s take a look at an average week.  Most employed people are now on the 9- 5 routine with an hour for lunch and at least 2 X 15 minute coffee breaks, add in some water cooler chat, a couple of sneaky peeks at Facebook and you tube, a few checks of your personal email on your mobile phone and most of us are not actually working more than a 30 hour week.

If you set aside 60 minutes each work evening and 15 minutes each work morning and 3 X 60 minute time slots on Saturday and Sunday.   This gives you 12 hours to work on your business which is 40% of the time you spend on your day job.  If you commute by train or bus you can extend this time even further.

Why not spend some time this weekend thinking about how your business idea would work with the above model. 

Keep checking back here for more hints and tips.  Also if your business involves selling coaching, mentoring or business services please check out www.superiorseminars.co.uk and see if we can help you sell your services and products from the stage.

tweet tweet

I have my business idea.
I have my website www.superiorseminars.co.uk
I have my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Superior-Seminars/163642547055530.
I have my twitter account Follow @jamesmcginty
Now I just need lots of visitors who are interested in my services (making money from public speaking).

Having listened to the "Gurus" I decided that twitter was the easiest way to build some traffic momentum. The idea is to find someone in the same niche and then follow their followers in the hope that they will follow you back. This sounds extremely simple, and it is. However there are a couple of little wrinkles that they fail to mention and I thought I would share these with you.

Twitter has limits.

I have still to investigate these limits fully but it seems that when you follow 2,000 people you need to balance your follower to followers ratio or you get blocked from following more accounts. Twitter don't publish the ratio but I am sure some serious web searching will uncover it.

This is a one way ratio. you can have as many followers as you like, which is fair. So basically you can't just go around following loads of people and hoping they will follow you back. you need to post lots of quality tweets and let your momentum build.

Auto followers

The other little wrinkle is that lots of accounts have set up auto follows. This sounds great, and on the surface looks like a good way to build your follower base. In practice it just means that you are probably adding yourself to a marketers database. Instead of building a list of like-minded followers, who will be interested in your services, you are simply adding to the twitter "churn" of useless tweets.

Strategy

By all means checkout the leaders in your market place and follow them and some of their followers. You should be subjected to interesting and beneficial information.

Only follow a few accounts each day and make sure they are interested in your niche.

Post good quality tweets on a regular basis. If you include links make sure they lead to quality content.

regularly check who you are following and keep focused on only following those you really want to and who are providing you with useful tweets.

Post some fun tweets and engage in conversations.

Above all don't SPAM your followers as, if you do, they will soon disappear.