Evan Carmichael walks through how to become a paid speaker: start with one clear sentence about what makes you unique, then speak everywhere for free—libraries, charities, community centers—to practice. Build visibility through YouTube videos, become a media expert by pitching yourself to reporters, and keep going until bigger gigs come.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers, Molly, who wrote to me at 4 in the morning. She decided she wanted to change her life and stop being a dream wisher and actually go out and create her own future. And wanted my advice on how to do it. She said she enjoys helping people and wanted to be a speaker on stage delivering a key message that was really providing value for people, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it, wanted my advice on what to do. So Molly, congrats on making that change in your life. Hopefully what you can do is something every day to keep that momentum going. Often people get that energy at the beginning to start a business and then it quickly fizzles out as You let life get back in the way. So keep trying to do something every day to help you grow that business. So congrats on taking that initial first step and writing in as well for advice. In terms of being a speaker and being on stage and helping people and delivering your message and having people kind of interact with that, the first thing to figure out is what is your message. So you didn't kind of include that in your email, and you might still be figuring that out, and that's fine. Figure out what it is that you want to say. So what's uniquely you? Where do you think you can help people? And think back to where you have been able to give a lot of help to people and give a lot of value. You in, make people think about what you're saying, and how can you tailor that to be your message that you deliver to a bigger audience. So step 1 is figuring out what that message is and make sure it's something that you can quickly deliver even in one sentence so that people can quickly grasp what it is that you do. So, "Oh, that's Molly and she talks about XYZ and she's fantastic." So figuring out your message is number 1. From there, in terms of being able to be a speaker and be on stage and get paid to do what you're doing, You gotta start at the beginning. So you start small, you start doing small events. It could be at the library or local charities or local events, and you might not get paid at the beginning to do it. You're just practicing your craft. And what that will do is help hone your message and also make you more comfortable out there speaking in front of people and getting used to the types of questions that will come at you, and it will make your presentation better and better and better and better and better. When I first started doing public speaking It wasn't with a goal to be a public speaker. It was more just to help entrepreneurs. So I sold my business and I thought, you know, I want to give back, want to help other entrepreneurs, and I created a series to help entrepreneurs learn from the lessons that I had gone through. And I just did it, you know, through my local YMCA at the beginning, and I think the first seminar I did had 3 or 4 people in it, so really tiny. And then, you know, we just continued doing it and continued growing and built up momentum behind that. Eventually partnered up with a bank and hosted their event and then grew too big for that. So we partnered up with our bookstores and held huge events. We had lots of people coming out to the seminars and it was a lot of fun for me to be able to give back, offer value to entrepreneurs, and it also made me better. My first presentations, the content was good, but how I delivered it wasn't great. It gets better every time you practice. Just like doing these videos, I get better and better every time we do the videos. If you go back and watch the first videos, the content was still pretty good, but maybe the delivery wasn't fantastic. So as you do more and more, you get better. So people start to recognize you, people start to give you referrals, people start to say, oh, you should be speaking at here, or I want you to come speak at my company, or whatever it is. So you have to be able to practice, practice, practice, and eventually you'll get better and people will recognize you. The other thing I would do is try to become a media expert. So whatever your message is, there are going to be stories written about it in the media, and the media are always looking for experts to comment on whatever that story is. And why shouldn't you be that expert? So you want to make a list of reporters who follow your industry or write about interesting stories for you, and whenever they do write an article, comment on it and give them feedback and let them know who you are and give your perspective. It's not just being promotional and saying you know, I'm Molly, here's what I do. You want to give them something extra. You want to show that you are really an expert so that they're gonna want to contact you if they have another story. I also use a service called PR Leads, which is $100 a month, where reporters will give you stories. So they'll tell you the stories they're working on and they're looking for experts. You can just email them and say, you know, here's— I'm an expert and here's why, and you give them feedback on the story that they're working on. So I find that helpful. So start speaking, try to be a media expert. The last thing I would do is if you're trying to get a public speaking gig, try working on your YouTube videos as well. I don't know if you've done YouTube at all, but it's a great way to get your message out. And if you're a speaker, you should try to speak as much as you can. Now, you know, when you're doing a YouTube video, you're speaking to the camera instead of speaking to an audience, but you just kind of have to pretend that there's a huge audience in front of you and not just you in a room speaking. But it's a great way to get your message out, for you to also practice your craft, and for people to see how good you are. So most of my speaking now is from reader questions, just like this one, the question you asked. But I'll also do others from profiles of successful entrepreneurs and lessons you can learn. For you, you might not have people asking you questions yet, but you can just go to forums that are related to your topic and see what people are writing about and say that you're going to create a video reply. And when you create your video, say I'm creating this video in response to whoever who asks a question about XYZ that relates to your topic. So I try to get consistent on creating these videos, building up a following, getting people to see you, and it makes you better, hones your message even more, and you'll get gigs. So from what I was doing, just from those public speaking things that I'd set up here in my city, I then got invited eventually to go speak at various events around the world, flying to as far away as Brunei, Taiwan, to speak at different events. And it comes from starting at that small scale at the beginning. Now, I never had that vision to want to go on and be a speaker. It just kind of happened. But for you, if you have a clear plan, you know, you got to practice as much as you can, get as many gigs as you can free just to get your message honed and to get people to know you and continue building on that. Try to be a media expert and try to create some YouTube videos again to practice your craft and be seen as the expert. And you're on your way to be able to be a speaker to hopefully get paid and have a really fulfilling career. So Molly, I hope that helps. For those watching, if you guys have something else to add, please leave a comment below. I'd love to hear how you've gotten some speaking gigs, or if you have another question or any suggestions for Molly, please leave a comment. And if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up. I love making these videos to help you guys out and always appreciate those thumbs ups coming in. Makes me know that you guys like the videos and I'll keep making more. So thank you for your support, and we'll see you on the next episode.
