Make Marketing Suck Less

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You’ve got this big, audacious vision for your speaking.

You see your inbox overflowing with speaking invitations. Maybe you see yourself standing in the center in the red dot of the TED stage or you’re on the dais at the premiere event of your industry.

You definitely see yourself getting paid one way or the other for what you do on the stage.

You’re on an epic speaking journey.

And that journey can be frustrating. You see the end in your mind, but you can’t see all the steps you need to take to get there (or even the next step).

You think, “I want to be speaking, so I’ll find speaking gigs to pitch!”

While that seems like a perfectly logical move, it might not be your BEST next step in closing the gap between where you are NOW and where you want to go.

Years ago I interviewed for a market research role at Nintendo. In the first interview, the interviewer tossed me an object and said, “sell this to me.”

The problem: I had NO CLUE what I was holding. NONE. I’d never seen an object like this before in my life (later I found out it was some weird Japanese toy).

Have you ever tried to sell something and you didn’t know what it was?

You couldn’t grok why it existed, what problem it solved, or why anyone one would need to use it.

It’s freaking hard (and I totally bombed that part of the interview).

Back to you, rebel speaker: you want to sell a speech (that’s what you do to get booked), but you might not have created or even made a plan for that talk you’re going to be pitching.

Now, you’re just like me at that ill-fated Nintendo interviewing struggle to pitch something that you’re not familiar with.

Sure, you’ve got ideas about what you could talk about – the stories you could tell, the points you want to make, all of your expertise.

But you’ve yet to package it in a way that makes it compelling for someone to say “Yes! That speech is exactly what my organization needs. Book ‘em Dano!” (Bonus points if you got that reference!)

And that’s why:

You need a signature talk before you pitch yourself for a gig

The first step to closing the gap between where you are now and being the sought-after speaker you know you can be is THE speech.

It can’t be any speech. It’s got to be thoughtfully crafted. Creates value (transformation) for the audience. It can’t be a “practice speech.”

Nilofer Merchant said it best when she stated, “No one will pay you to practice.” #truth

This speech is an asset to your business. One that you will sell to organizations again.

Crafting the signature talk  that becomes the vehicle that gets you to the stage you want to be on is the key. It’s the fun Mini Cooper or the savvy BMW that drives you in style to the stage where you most want to be.

With no speech, you’re speaking career will be stalled out on the side of the road.

Your next step is to craft and polish that speech so that you get that gig. And I know that it takes time to do that, but the good news is that you can come up with a plan for your signature so you can be more effective at pitching it.

This is where I come in. Join me for a free 5-day challenge where you'll plan and create a pitch for your signature talk.