When I was 7 months pregnant, one of my friends and colleagues sent me an email with details on an upcoming virtual program on how to plan and execute a successful online launch. I had been harboring the idea of creating an online TED-style talk development program (what ultimately became Your Spotlight Talk) for years, but I had dozens of excuses for why it “just wasn’t the right time.”
I have too much “stuff” on my plate.
My newsletter list isn’t big enough.
There are other public speaking coaches who have more name recognition.
I’m pregnant!
And the biggest excuse, the one that successfully kept me paralyzed and playing small, I don’t have the tech skills to do it.
Now, to be fair, all of these reasons were real. If you read my musings from a couple of weeks ago, you know I’m miserable at scheduling appropriate down time. Up until this year, my newsletter list was under 1000. While I’ve garnered glowing testimonials from clients and significant media mentions, I’ve been less adept at leveraging this feedback for online marketing and tribe building. Pregnancy and postpartum are perhaps not the most choice moments to begin a new project. And circling back to my tech skills (or lack thereof), I honestly used to spend half a day online, tinkering, anytime I wanted to update website content prior to hiring people to manage my techie needs.
Nevertheless, I hopped on a webinar with Nathalie Lussier. I signed up for her virtual program. Less than 10 months after having my daughter, I created my first multiple 5-figure launch. And now, approximately 18 months since I first signed up for that webinar, I have acquired a rock star mentor, champion, coach and treasured friend who has helped me build a business where I am 100 percent on purpose, partnering with more people than I ever have before, and integrating online wizardry with what I love and excel at leading offline.
While mentorship gets a lot of airtime, it’s easy to think that a coach is the same thing as a mentor. Or that a mentor is the same thing as a champion. And while some people, like Nathalie, can serve multiple roles in our lives, if we want to dial-up our impact and really play to our edge, we need to know who and what we most need in our current season to choose the right people accordingly.
Do you need a mentor, someone who has achieved a high level of success in your industry, who can help you navigate “up” more quickly?
Do you need a coach, someone who is masterful at bringing out your best performance, to stretch you into higher performance?
Or do you need a champion, someone who sees your brilliance and shares it with other influencers and decision makers, and by doing so connects you with bigger opportunities?
Over the last few years I built mutually beneficial relationships with some heart-centered, visionary corporate female leaders. They were instrumental as mentors and champions in showing me how to up my game and connect to new opportunities as a speaker, trainer, and leader of Influencer Academy.
But they were not the right people for helping me enter a new season, one where I was competent and comfortable dancing in the online space.
Where might you be clinging to people, resources and habits that made you successful in one arena—without recognizing that to succeed in a new season you need a different kind of support?
One of the many things I love about Nathalie, irrespective of whatever role she is serving in, is her ability to give nuanced feedback, identify your blind spots, and provide step-by-step instructions in the areas (for me that’s always tech!) that can undermine an otherwise successful plan.
Nathalie and I have had the opportunity to play together in a few different ways over the last year. I participated in her Daring Business Cultivator. She participated in my MasterTreat on public speaking. And now, we’re teaming up for a webinar that marries both of our sweet spots—webinars.
If you are interested in launching an online program, live event or book and are eager to use public speaking online to court prospective clients or customers, I hope you will join Nathalie and me on Thursday, June 25th at 12pm Pacific (3pm Eastern) for our FREE Google Hangout, Launch “IT” with Webinars.
During our conversation, you will learn how:
- To be a dynamic public speaker online
- To select the right content for a promotional webinar
- To let people really see you and trust you as their expert
- To make a clear, time-sensitive, heart-centered offer
- To avoid the mistakes that can wreck an otherwise pitch perfect webinar
If you want to use webinars to elegantly and effectively convert your prospects into customers and clients during your first or next launch, and if you want to lead webinars without feeling like you have to abandon your natural speaking style or get weird and salesy, sign-up because you are going to have a blast with Nathalie and me.
Two introverts. Two different speaking and storytelling styles. Two different business models, each driven by webinars.
And whether your need a mentor to enable you to realize your speaking career goals, a champion to connect you to funding for your start-up, or a coach to expand your performance in a particular area, once you get clear on “who” you need, begin to court your prospective people. Make a commitment to yourself that you will get that support. This season.
And if you suspect I may be your person, before I close-up speaking mentorship for 2015, reach out and we’ll explore your speaking possibilities together.
