Building Credibility and Establishing Trust

Do you struggle with fear, doubt and worry in your public speaking? Do you find it difficult to connect with your audience and deliver presentations that leave a lasting, positive, unforgettable impact? If yes, then let's dive in the world of public speaking and presentation skills with your host, Eric Edmeads. Welcome to the Unforgettable podcast.

Building credibility and establishing trust. Very, very important. As a speaker, I can tell you right now, if you don't have those things, you will not get booked. And if you do have them, you'll get booked time and time and time again. The bad news is, is that it takes a long time to build a great reputation. And the even worse news is, is that you can shatter it in a moment. So the job of building credibility and establishing trust is not a one time job. It's an ongoing job to establish it and then to maintain it. So there are some steps you can take early on in the process to create, create the right first impression. You can have a good website with good copy and excellent photographs, maybe some video clips of you sharing some real value with the world. You can have some testimonials on there from some of the people that you've helped that will lend to your credibility and trust. You can have the same types of things on your social media channels to really demonstrate that you are there for people, that you are there to give, give and give. Those are some great first steps you can take. But let's talk about the stage. Let's talk about what you do when you're actually facing an audience. You recognize that every word you say and everything you're sharing and the way you showed up and what you're wearing, all of those things are going to establish credibility and trust. If you are speaking at a huge financial planner's workshop and you show up and cut off jeans and a terrible T shirt, you've broken credibility and trust. I'm not saying you can't do it. I'm saying that you take some points away so you, your appearance is gonna matter and what you're. So your appearance is gonna matter. But what you say matters too. And so what you wanna do, in my opinion, is recognize, is that there's a spectrum. The spectrum starts with interest. You've said enough, you've shared enough, you've shown enough that they have interest. That means that they'll stay engaged with you. They might even tune back in. But if you can use that interest to deliver so much value, so much value that they want to come back again and again, you've now become Credible. Now they're quoting you to their friends. Maybe they're sharing your posts. You are a credible resource of information. And if you can use that frequency of credibility and give them so much information that you've actually had an impact on their life, where you've actually changed something for you, where they're thinking, wow, I lost all this weight, or I've got this fantastic relationship, or I've earned so much money, or I've built this fantastic business, their life has been measurably changed by you. Then you will move to the next strata, which is called a authority. Authority. And when you've established yourself as authority, you have tremendous influence. And I want you to think about that. Imagine you have a social cause that you're trying to spread around the world, or you're running for political office, you're raising money for your company, you're trying to sell something. How powerful is it to have that sense of authority? Now, I also want you to remember that this matters with the producers and agents that you work with. And a really great example of it is this. Now, never go over time, not ever. Because here's what happens when you go over time. You make the entire event suffer. And more than that, from your own perspective, you have lost credibility and trust. One of the reputations that I've built for myself as a speaker out there is I land on time by landing on time every single time. The producers know they can trust me. They know they can put me where they want me. They can tell me it's 20 minutes, and they know it's going to be 20 minutes. Every single time I do that, I reinforce my reputation. And I never want to break it because I don't want to put a dent in it. Be authentic, give lots of value, establish credibility, establish trust, and keep it.

So that's it for today's episode of Unforgettable. Head on over to itunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on itunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a private $25,000 VIP day with Eric Edmeads himself. Be sure to head on over to Unforgettable show and pick up a free copy of Eric's gift and join us on the next episod.