I’ve always wondered what’s the difference between the speakers who succeed in this business and the speakers who don’t. Some speakers just seem to get it and others just have a hard time getting on stages no matter what.
So I took a good look at the speakers who really build a speaking business and I realized they all have these three traits that make them a little different.
First, they do whatever it takes.
If you’re willing to do whatever it takes then you’re basically guaranteed to grow your speaking business.
Lets say that you don’t have enough money to hire a web designer to build out your website and you don’t know anything about web design. Well…if you’re seriously the type of person who will do whatever it takes then you will figure out how to design websites yourself and make a good one for your speaking business.
This ‘do whatever it takes’ mentality is important because there are tons of things you don’t know…especially when you’re starting out. There are tons of things you have to do and it’s going to suck. On top of that, you’re going to have to do it nonstop…day in and day out.
It’s like fitness.
The people who lose weight or become body builders are the ones who push through the pain rather than give into it. They do whatever it takes.
Yea, you want that ice cream and you want that pizza but because you’re dead serious about fitness, you eat salad instead; or egg whites if you’re a body builder. It might suck that you have to do cardio for 45 minutes…but you do it anyways.
The same goes for your speaking business. The speakers who do whatever it takes always go further and build a bigger speaking business because they’re not afraid to learn new skills. They’re not afraid of the work because they know it’s going to suck, they know it’s going to be hard, they know they’re going to feel uncomfortable, but they do it anyways.
The next trait that I noticed is that the top speakers have something different about them and they emphasize it in their marketing. They figured out there little niche and they blow it up.
I don’t want to say it’s a USP, it’s just that they realized there’s something different that they can do which other speakers either don’t do as well or just can’t do at all.
One of the things that I do is mind reading shows and I incorporate that into my speaking. Just doing that alone has allowed me to charge more, get more gigs, and build a better business. Not too many speakers can read minds from the stage so it’s very different.
There’s another speaker who calls himself the world’s worst motivational speaker and he’s more of a comedian but he found that thing that’s different about him and he emphasizes it.
And once again, I don’t really mean a USP.
Look at a speaker like Les Brown. Les Brown is very successful but what makes him stand out? He doesn’t do mind reading, he isn’t a comedian, he can’t juggle…so why is he still one of the top speakers?
Les Brown is a great story teller.
He took that skill and got so good at it that he obviously made a name for himself. There are tons of speakers who tell stories but they’re not as good as Les Brown.
Whenever I talk with speakers and they want business advice or presentation advice, I always look for something different that they can do. Can they sing? Can they juggle? What do they do that very few people do?
And when that’s combined with speaking, it makes them build a bigger business.
Then the last successful trait when it comes to building a speaking business is the most important one…it’s your ability to have an insane amount of focus.
Your focus literally creates your reality.
Think about something you worked on that you finished. Maybe you wrote a book, or even just a blog post, whatever it is, think about a project you finished.
Now think about what would have happened if you didn’t have the focus to finish that project?
Lets say you wrote a book and it took you a year.
Think about the amount of focus you had each time you sat down to write that book. You might have written for an hour or two, then went about your day to do other things.
Now think about how much faster you could have written that book if that’s the only thing you did all day, every day. I mean, you literally woke up, ate some food, and just started writing nonstop until nighttime.
Not only would you have gotten the book done faster but it would be a hundred times better because when you’re seriously focused you get in the zone. You’ve seen athletes who are in the zone, they’re just insanely focused and everything seems to go right. You might have been in the zone with a few things too…but think about what would happen if you lived your life like that.
For most people, getting in the zone is something rare. But what if you lived your life to a point where getting out of the zone is rare.
And I’m not talking about feeling good during the day. When you’re in the zone, you’re not thinking about that…you’re just focused because you have this tunnel vision.
Speakers who are in the zone with this insane focus will work on their business all day. They don’t mess around and it even gets to a point where the people around them start to say things like, “You should take a break, you’re working too hard.”
The second you hear people saying that, that’s an indicator that you’re getting in your zone. Eventually, people will stop saying that because they’ll realize that it’s just how you are…and when you’re out of the zone, people will start saying things like, “Wow, I’m surprised you’re not working.”
So those are the three successful traits of speakers who grow their business.
They do whatever it takes, no matter how hard it is. They have something that’s different about them. And they have an insane focus that literally creates their reality.
