A checklist for professional speakers covering six essentials: your performance strength, your core message, the specific problem you solve, what clients actually expect, how your talk helps the audience, and how you'll make money from it.
So we've gone through a whole lot of ideas. I hope you've worked through the checklist and ticked off some of the things that you need to explore or want to get more clarity on in terms of your own speaking career. But we want to get clear on a few particular issues before you get started. So here's kind of a shortlist of this. First of all, be clear on your performance strength. Are you great in front of a big audience or are you better in smaller engagements? There's no value here in pretending to be something you're not. You will get the best results by working where your performance strength really shows up. The next thing we want to be very clear on is our message. What are we talking about? People are not interested in speakers who can talk about anything, and we can, but when we have a particular message that we're trying to share, that is when the value of what we are creating for the client and for the audience really comes into play. So what is the message we have? What is the— how will somebody else be able to define what it is that we do? Be very clear on that. Make sure that people can articulate what your message is. Then be very clear on the problem that you solve. The problem that you solve could be that the client needs somebody to emcee the event and keep it going well and engage the audience and make things happen smoothly. That's a great solution. To offer them. But it could be something else. It could be that they've got a marketing problem or a teamwork problem, and that is the problem that you're going to solve for the client. When you're clear on how what you speak about helps the client to solve their problem, that is when they're going to be interested in looking at you as a speaker. Be very clear, and I know I've said this a dozen times, be very clear on your client's expectations. What are they actually asking you for? Forget about the words that they've used and be very clear on what they actually expect you to do on the day that you pitch up. If you get that wrong, it will just— even if you've done a fantastic job, it will just leave that kind of sour taste that you didn't do what they expected and they're not quite happy. And then be very clear on your audience's needs. You do need to satisfy your client's requirements, but if your audience is in a particular place, you need to make sure that you can take care of them and not put any undue distress on an audience that may be going through some other kind of challenges at the moment. You want to leave your audience better off by the time you finish speaking. And then, because we are professional speakers, be very clear on how will you make money. Where does the money come from in your whole picture of your speaking and your content creation and the value and the message that you're sharing and how you want to change the world? Where does the money come from? You don't have to earn money, but if you are a professional speaker and you're setting up a professional speaking business, then this is a requirement. There's no reason why your world-changing message cannot be financially compensated if you set up a really good speaking business around your topic.
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