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Big Moves to Build Your Speaking Career in the Next Year

What do you want to achieve with your speaking career?

Take a moment, grab a pen and a pad of paper.

Write down what you want to achieve with your speaking.

What kind of impact do you want to make?

What business are you building?

This is the time of year where my coaching practice gets full of people who are envisioning what their next year will look like.  And how speaking fits into that year in order to take their message to a wider audience and get paid to do it.

They all are curious about how I can help them get to their next stage of speaking.

I love, love, love these conversations; whether the speaker is up and coming and just starting out or it's a speaker who has been in the business for years. Because I love hearing about their vision and what they feel is really getting in the way of moving them forward to that vision.

What I have found, time and time again is that there are specific moves that speakers need to make to take their speaking career to the next phase.

Here are my top five big moves that you should make to drive your speaking career forward into the next year so that you can achieve the vision that you're dreaming up right now.

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Move #1: Pick a Niche

Throughout the six years that I have been running Communication Rebel, the speakers I have worked with get the best results when they consistently choose a very specific niche for their speaking business.

I understand there is a lot of resistance to this at first because, as a speaker, you're starting with the end in mind.

You would like to see yourself become a Simon Sinek or a Sally Hogshead or a Mel Robbins, or even a Simon T. Bailey.  

We see those speakers on big stages. Their message is reaching the masses. That means their message has to be for everybody.

That is okay when you are a big famous speaker with bestselling books, but that is not where you start when you're just starting out as a speaker, or even if you have been a speaker and you've been struggling a while.

You start by dominating one niche market, and then you can expand into other markets. This is how you actually get known for your message. You want to start in a smaller pond rather than trying to be that big pond speaker for everyone.

For instance, one of my clients speaks to safety professionals. That is her audience.  They have a lot of meetings and gatherings and conferences. Those are the people she serves, and she keeps herself consistently booked out.

Another one of my clients decided on educators as her target market because she had contacts within that niche. She was able to book two paid speaking gigs within the first month of our work together, so that was super impressive.

Your Action Item:

Figure out the niche you want to dominate, and then take steps to get known in that niche.

Move #2: Claim Your Expertise

Answer the question: What do you want to be known for?

Since we're talking about scary decisions like picking a niche, another decision speakers don't want to make is claiming their expertise and packaging that up in a sentence as long as a tweet, 140-character tweet, none of that 280 BS.

Or even better yet, packaging it into a hashtag.

Having a message that is easily remembered and easily spread by your audience is what you have to do to get known.

Think about those professional speakers I talked about. Simon Sinek is known for why. Sally Hogshead is known for fascinate. Mel Robbins is known for the five-second rule. Simon Bailey is known for shift your brilliance.

The question is, what is it that you want to be known for? When I talk to speakers, I know that this is where they get stuck.

You get up in your head, you start thinking about all of the possibilities, and you just spin out. It's difficult to boil your message down into a tweet or even a hashtag.

When I first start working with clients, I ask them a lot of questions and let them talk.

I'm getting to know their message, but more importantly, I am looking for a turn of phrase that I know is going to be valuable to the audience, the niche that they serve.

Over the summer I was working with a speaker named Michelle. We were talking about what she wants to be known for, and she was in the middle of a massive monologue about what she does and how she serves and how she's different.

In one very long run-on sentence she said, there was just this turn of phrase that was absolutely beautiful that I wrote down. When she paused, I said, “Hey, I think I know what you want to be known for.” I was able to give that back to her, to reflect it back and show the value that it would create for her audience.

When you know what you want to be known for and can say it in a compelling way, you'll find it is easier to book speaking gigs and to get paid and to really make the difference that you want to make.

Your action item:

Find out what you want to be known for. If you can't figure it out on your own, it's really time that you talk to me, because this is what I'm a genius at, listening for the message and positioning it so that it books you speaking gigs.

Move #3: Set Your Dang Prices Already!

Your third move is to set your dang prices already.

If you want to get paid to speak, not having a fee schedule is what is holding you back.

A while back I had a strategy session with an up and coming speaker who wanted to get paid to speak, so I asked him, “What do you charge per speech?” He told me that he didn't charge anything because the people he speaks to can't pay him.

So, two big problems here, right? Number one is he's targeting a niche that doesn't have money to pay him.

When you target your niche and making sure that it's a niche you want to commit to, you've got to make sure that they have money to pay speakers.

But the bigger problem here is he didn't know what to charge.

Even if he was having a conversation about being a speaker at an event, he couldn't say to them, “Yeah, so my usual fee for something like this is $5,000 for a keynote,” or whatever that fees are, because he didn't have a fee schedule.

I don't care if you've never been paid to speak in your life. Create your speaking fees now.

Because that speaking fee is what you are building towards in your future, and if you lowball yourself, if you don't have a fee, you are not going to get paid.

And, if you already have your fee schedule set, good, congratulations, go you.

But now is a really good time to review that price along with the results that you've been getting for your audience and see if you need to up your fee just a little bit.

Your action item:

Set your dang prices already. If you want to get paid, you have to know what to charge.

Move #4: Create Your Own Damn Stage

A couple of years ago I read the book Choose Yourself by James Altucher. His argument is that we no longer have to wait for the gatekeepers to choose us for a speaking gig or a book deal, or anything else that we want to create.

We can start choosing ourselves right now.

You have a stage available to you right now. It's called Facebook Live, or Periscope if you're more of a Twitter person. You should start using it.

I had a conversation in the Rebel Speaker Facebook group not too long ago with a speaker named Sean.

He was sharing with me how he was going live on Facebook to share his message.

He was getting feedback about what was resonating for the audience that he was sharing it with and it gave him a lot of confidence and it inspired him.

You have a stage right now. Facebook Live is so powerful for getting your face out there and your name out there and your message out there.

Create your own damn stage. Just go live, share your message, and get traction that way. You don't have to wait to be chosen for a speaking gig.

[Tweet “You don't have to wait to be chosen for a speaking gig”]

Move #5: Don’t Stop Asking

Ask your ass off.

This is straight from my client success file. Because my clients who are successful are making a lot of asks.

I think of my client Jen who I had a consult with and gave her one strategy.  She asked and was able to secure a speaking gig.

When you start asking your ass off, you start telling everyone that you know about your speaking.

Remember that message that you want to be known for? You insert it when you say, “Hey, I'm a speaker and I speak on X.” That's where you input the message you want to be known for.

Tell everyone you know about your speaking. See who they can introduce you to.

Start pitching, start researching, start spying on your “competition” to find speaking gigs, and then develop your consistent asking plan.

Work backward from whatever your goals are for 2018.

If in 2018 you want to get 12 speaking gigs, think about how many asks you have to make a week in order to make that happen.

In 2018, I want you to start right by defining your niche, claiming what you want to be known for, setting your fees already, creating your own damn stage and platform to share your message, and finally asking your ass off.

Why don't you start 2018 with me in your corner to help you go bigger with your message and get paid for speaking?

I'd love to know what you want to achieve with your speaking and create a plan for you to accomplish it in the next year.

You can take advantage of this by applying for a Speak For Impact strategy session with me. It's super simple. You go to drmichellemazur.com/speak, fill out a short application.

If you're a good fit, and I think that I can really help you during our call, I'll send you a link to my schedule. You schedule, we have a conversation, and if we're a good fit we can move on from there.

Make a big move this next year. Build your speaking business so that you make more of an impact in the year ahead and for years to come.