“It doesn’t have to be hard.”
I uttered these words at least half a dozen times to the women who participated in my The Spotlight MasterTreat last weekend. From designing a profitable speaking funnel to integrating one’s stories with her “idea worth spreading” to crafting her speaking pitches, the 19 women did some divine work as they reprogrammed their mindset and developed the skillset to build and scale their speaking careers.
But whenever we would go into reviews of speaking content or promotional material, one problem consistently emerged. Many of the women kept getting in their own way by making their message or their plans too convoluted.
One of the chief areas where I see newbie and seasoned speakers sabotage their success is by making the process of getting booked to speak unnecessarily complicated. From waiting to pitch until they have created a speaking media kit (rather than speaking to organically produce the materials for such a kit) to stuffing pitches and submissions with too much information and unintentionally confusing event organizers, conference planners or corporate bookers, my bright, well intentioned women often substitute working smart with working hard.
To combat this habit (that to be sure I’ve struggled with myself), I designed an activity where each woman pitched herself to the hypothetical decision maker at a desired speaking engagement. When her partner stepped into the role of said decision maker, she was instructed to ask her partner, over and over again, “So what does that mean for my people?”
Through the pitching role play exercise, my MasterTreat gals discovered that when pitching yourself to speak, NOTHING matters as much as clearly communicating to a decision maker the specific impact your message will have on their audience.
I adore showing speakers simple and effective strategies for getting booked to speak. And next week I’ve decided to host a FREE MASTER CLASS on how to Get Booked to Speak.
During the Master Class, I’ll share:
- Over 1 dozen proven strategies for booking plum speaking gigs at professional associations, industry conferences, corporations, women’s lifestyle events and on college campuses.
- How to craft pitches and submissions that make event organizers and bookers take notice (even if you are industry unknown).
- When to create a speaking media kit – and what to include in it when it’s time.
- My feedback on real speaking pitches. (3 lucky winners will be chosen for LIVE SPEAKING PITCH REVIEWS during the master class. Details for the reviews will be shared after signing up.)
>>>Sign-up for my Get Booked to Speak master class here <<<
As I shared with you last month, one of my favorite speaking engagements was returning to my alma mater in February as a distinguished alumna and talking about the value of a single-sex, Sacred Heart education. You can check out my speech here.
As a result of the positive response to the fundraising speech, the senior class requested me as their commencement speaker. (When I graduated from Forest Ridge we picked Melinda Gates to address our class.) This most recent ask definitely forced me to address an upper-limit I felt myself bumping up against when I realized the magnitude of the request, and it took me several days to catch my breath and return to my usual solid sense of worthiness. I’m very much looking forward to this follow-up opportunity at the school which laid the foundation for so much of the work that I do in the world – and sharing with you my inspirational speech for the Class of 2016.
