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3 Must-Have Pillars to Building a Successful Speaking Business

Boom goes the dynamite.

At least that's what you want to have happen when you are building your speaking business. You want it to take off like a rocket. You want speaking inquiries to land in your inbox. You want to be making a difference to the people who need your message most and get paid for it.

How do you make that all happen? Good news! You don’t have to wander around in the dark to figure out how to build your speaking business.

There’s actually a fairly predictable process (not formula) to building a successful speaking business.

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Why do some Speaking Businesses Thrive?

I have been obsessed with a question for a very long time, and that question is, why do some speakers thrive while others barely survive?

Why does it feel like building your speaking career and your speaking business is such a struggle.                                            

What has become increasingly clear to me as I work with my clients, as I develop friendships with other speakers in the industry, is that successful speakers treat their speaking like a business.

The good news here is that there are three pillars that you should be building your speaking business around to gain momentum more quickly than trying to figure out where your next speaking gig is. Let's talk about these three pillars.

Pillar One – A Strategic Foundation

Pillar number one is having a strategic foundation for your speaking business. Any successful business and I don't care if it's speaking, consulting, building apps, they have a strategic foundation that they build upon. For speakers, their strategic foundation is divided into three different areas.                                         

The first piece of having a good strategy to support your speaking business is having a path to revenue. In season number one, I talked about the two ways speakers can get paid, either through paid speaking or client attraction speeches, or sometimes people like to do a mixture of both.

Knowing exactly how you're going to get paid for your speaking is the first step in building your speaking business.

The second part of this pillar is being able to answer the question, “Why should I hire you as a speaker?”

The answer to this question is not your story and how unique it is, or the perspective you take, or all of your years of experience and expertise.

Although that's important, it's not why people should hire you for being a speaker.

The why is what you can do for the audience, so how do you take that expertise, and experience, and your story and answer the question of, “What does this do for my audience?” Because that is the reason people should hire you.

The final part of this pillar is having a clear core message.

Back in the day, professional speakers were expected to have a menu of topics that they presented on. Pretty much if you read a book on it, you could be a speaker on it. They could speak on anything from time management to communication skills to leadership. It didn't matter. Anything. It was all about having a wide range of topics.

There's been a shift though in the speaking industry that now people are hiring experts who speak, and this means that you need to have a core message. I call this your big idea that positions your expertise and shows how you're different.

Once you have all three of these in place, you have a path to revenue, you know the answer to why should I hire you, and you have that big idea, you've got a firm foundation to build your speaking business, and you can move on to pillar number two which is the right signature talk.

Pillar Two – The Right Signature Talk

The right speech is the keystone to building your speaking business, and there's a lot of detail we can go into about how to build this speech. The reason why this is so important is threefold.

Number one, your signature talk is your best marketing tool. If you get up on stage and you blow it out of the water, you will get referrals and recommendations for additional speaking gigs. That's how you get inbound inquiries into your inbox, is you're out there speaking, someone sees you and recommends you to others.

The second reason is that this speech, it's the product you're selling. When you're on the phone negotiating for a speaking gig or negotiating your speaking fee, you're selling your speech. You are in a sales process, so your speech is the product you're selling.

Finally, this signature talk is how you leave your mark on your audience and your industry. It's how you change people and make a big impact and change your industry, so the signature talk is the keystone to building your speaking business.

Without that, the speaking business can crumble, so make it exceptional, and it will help you do the job of getting more speaking engagements.

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Pillar Three – Sexy Speaking Systems

The final pillar is what I like to call sexy speaking systems.

You've got a strategy, you've got a speech that you're going to sell. Now you need a system in place to make that happen, and systems just make our lives easier, because I hear from speakers all the time that the thing they struggle the most with is finding and landing speaking gigs. This becomes far easier if you've got a way to sell your speech.

Three systems that I help clients implement are number one, tactics for researching speaking opportunities, how to find them, and once you find them you need number two, which is a way to track them. It could be something simple like an Excel spreadsheet, or you could use project management software like Asana, or Trello, or even a CRM like Contactually to track your speaking gigs.  Finally, you need a pitch letter, and people start pitching before you think you're ready to pitch because pitching is everything.

If you want to learn how to write a really great pitch letter, sign-up for the five-day mini course available for free. You'll have your pitch letter in no time that you can start sending out for speaking opportunities.

What I love about systems is with the right system in place, you should be able to hand off this part of your speaking business.

The researching, the tracking, and the pitching to a VA, to a marketing assistant, to someone else that's not you, so you can focus on the sales process, and delivering that remarkable speech on stage.

Those are the three pillars that you should be building your booming speaking business around. Having a strategy, having the right signature talk that you can use to market your speech, and that sells itself, and having finally some sexy speaking systems in place to automate the sales process, and that you can hand off to someone else in your business.                                      

Next Steps to Build Your Speaking Business

If you're feeling a little stuck about what you need to do next in order to build your speaking business, I highly encourage you to apply for a Speak for Impact strategy session with me. We will create an action plan for you on how best to build your speaking business, and I will show you how I can help you along the way, click here to apply for a strategy session.

What I want you to remember from this episode is that yes, you're a speaker, and you love it, and you want to be doing more of it. In order to do more, it's time to start building that speaking business on your own terms so you can make the impact you want to make with your rebel message.