[Quick Tip] Every Day You Wait Someone Else Gets the Gig - [314]

Think of these quick tip episodes like a cold water swim. In just a few minutes, you can get some amazing benefits to support you on your speaking journey. And bonus, the only thing that's getting wet here is your appetite to try this stuff out. And if you have a question you want me to answer about anything related to speaking, storytelling, pitching, performance, or humour, then DM me on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter. @SarahArcher15. Hey, welcome to another quick tip episode of The Speaking Club Podcast. I'm Sarah Archer. It's lovely to be with you again, and thanks for choosing to either watch or listen to the show wherever you are doing that. Today, I wanna talk about something that I see stopping a lot of speakers from realizing their goals. Uh, whatever that is, whether it's using speaking as a marketing tool to grow their business, winning clients, or getting paid speaking gigs, whatever it is, I can see this getting in the way. And it's decision-making, or rather, let's be more specific, going all in. Now, I dunno about you, but there's lots of times where I either haven't made a decision or have half-assed it, as I call it. And there is a cost to not making a decision. You know, lots of time passing by without having your dream realised. Often, it can be lurking around your shoulders, that feeling of incongruence, of self-loathing, of knowing you're not being true to yourself. And then obviously, a sort of next level up from that is actual regrets. But there can also be a tangible cost to half-arsing it. And you might have known about Blockbuster rejecting Netflix offer, and so, and them not buying it. But I don't know if you realise there is another side to this story, which was that Blockbuster could have actually salvaged their streaming future when they eventually decided to do streaming, instead of going all in, they had one foot in the streaming and one foot still in their brick-and-mortar retail stores, which meant that they didn't invest or focus fully on streaming, whereas Netflix obviously did, and it ended up with Blockbuster falling by the wayside and going bankrupt. So there's a real, you know, tangible cost to it, and probably there is if we looked at, you know, decisions that we haven't made but we probably should. And I think the other thing to say here, and this is really important, every day you wait, someone else is getting the gig. Someone else is speaking on that stage, okay? So that's really a key thing to say. So today I wanna look at why we find it so challenging to make decisions, the results that I've seen When people have gone all in, and then some ideas for how you might accelerate your decision-making. So why is it so hard? I think first of all, and whether we do this consciously or unconsciously, when we make a decision, when we choose a path, we are shutting off all the other paths. We're closing all the other doors. And that can make us feel, you know, uncertain about the future, worried about what we're missing out on by choosing that path. You know, I, have you done it when you've gone shopping? There's been times where I've been buying stuff and I make a decision to buy something and then I see it, you know, I'm like, I don't actually want to see any more sales emails about the thing I just bought in case they're selling it cheaper. That's a small version. But it's like, oh, that's that fear of missing out. So, let's have a look at some of the aspects of this. If we have a lot of choice, then it can make it even more difficult to make a decision. You know, we can get that paralysis by analysis. I'm never sure which way around you're supposed to say that, but anyway, there's that. So, that's the first thing, and I've mentioned this, the fear of regret, like if we choose this path, this person to help us, or, you know, this, this software, whatever. Have we made the right decision? Are we missing out on something better? I don't want to regret it. Then there is that long-term versus short-term, and this shows up all the time when I'm trying to get fit and eat healthy. There's that, that, you know, our ego wants us to have the instant gratification. So, sometimes we'll prioritise or choose the short-term over the long-term when we know the long-term is going to have the biggest payoff. So, that's another reason why making a decision is so hard. And then there's the loss aversion we've talked about, like, am I going to miss out on something? And decision fatigue. It feels like often we are making a lot of decisions, and also time of day when you make a decision. You know, not for some of the big ones where you're thinking about it for weeks, but, you know, especially around healthy decision-making, I guess by the end of the day we get tired and it gets harder to make a decision at that point. Making decision, we don't do this in isolation. We are surrounded by other people. We watch social media, we see things on there, we have friends and family, and they have expectations of us as well. And that can also influence our decision-making. We don't prioritise ourselves sometimes and what we want. We put ourselves second to what other people want. This fear of uncertainty is another one. Taking a decision is a leap of faith. It is actually faith in yourself, I think, and sort of betting on yourself, but it is a leap of faith. And then we've got the perfectionism. You know, we're looking to be 100% right, for the decision to be 100% perfect, and it's never going to be 100% perfect. We can, you know, narrow down the options, look at all the reviews, the social proof, or whatever it is, um, but it'll never be 100% right. And even down to like outreach and stuff like that, when we're reaching out to people, we're looking for the perfect way of doing it. Sometimes Yes, there are some good ways to reach out to people and stuff like that, but there's not like, the perfect way doesn't exist. And if we're, perfection gets in the way of us moving forward. You know, I suffer from it myself. Just today I said to myself, done is better than none. And we've got to keep that in mind. Yes, we want to try and set ourselves up the best way for success in speaking, you know, get a great talk. You know, get our assets lined up, all of that stuff. But, you know, there's no replacement for taking action. So, those are the sort of problems that I see and that we, we have in terms of decision-making and moving forward. But the possibilities, if we push through that, take that leap of faith, you know, trust ourselves, trust the universe, when we make that decision, when we go all in, the possibilities are amazing. Suddenly everything feels like it's conspiring to help. You know, there's a lot of talk about manifestation, and, you know, I love— I, I, you know, practice manifestation. But if, you know, a big part of that is the universe helping you to co-create something, but if you can't make a decision, if you're still stuck between many different things, if you don't go all in, the universe is not going to help you because it won't give you what you want because it doesn't know what you want. It's not clear. But funnily enough, when you do make a decision, things do have a way of falling into place. Yes, you're focused on it, and they do say whatever you focus on, you get more of. So without that split of your energy, keeping one foot in multiple places, committing and shifting forward and saying, this is it, I want to be a speaker, I want to get paid speaking gigs, I want to do everything that it takes to move forward, you know, and if that's working on yourself, on your mindset, on anxiety, everything is doable. I have seen people who are scared of saying their name at a networking event completely 360, absolutely fall in love with speaking. If you're scared, you can get there, but don't let that be an excuse that robs you from your future, from realizing your dreams. So everything conspires to help you when you say, this is it, I am in. I've talked about focus. You know, I've seen this time and time again. I'm going to share some stories of people that I've worked with when they've made that decision, even almost against the odds, they have got amazing results. When we start, when we focus, when we go all in, we start to make momentum. You know, it's this— when you start pushing a boulder, it's the hardest thing to do, but once it starts to get going, that momentum kicks in and things become even easier. So, that's the other thing that happens when we go all in, when we start saying to people, I am a speaker, I'm a professional speaker. You know, there's that be-do-have model. I want to be it, then I'm going to do things that are associated with what, you know, being that thing is, and then the results happen. So, we tell people, suddenly start— opportunities start coming our way, momentum kicks in, and so on. And I know that when you do go all in, when you do pursue your dreams, when you're persistent and consistent, then you can achieve so much. I want to tell you about Ken. He has been working with me for the last 5 months, just, just into 5 months. He has gone from zero. He hasn't really done much speaking. He wrote a book and he wanted to turn that book into a talk, and actually, we, we, he pivoted a little bit when we started working together, but in that 5 months, he's created his talk, a different talk to what he thought he was gonna create. He's actually just about to start creating his second talk on a slightly different, slightly different angle, different audience, but he's already got paid for 2 speaking gigs. He's got them booked. When he went all in. And this guy, he's gone down a route which is not the obvious choice if you want to get into paid speaking, because it's working with entrepreneurs and individuals more than employees within a corporate environment. But he's already got 2 gigs, and he knows it's going to be tough. He said, this is what I'm passionate about, this is what I'm going to do, I am going to make this work. And the more that people say it's not going to, the more determined I am, the more focused I am. And this guy is getting results. So chuffed for him. And then there's Jackie. Jackie's been a guest on the show before, Jackie Brennan, and she has been wanting to get a TEDx talk, and she's been sort of playing with the idea for the last, you know, maybe a year, 18 months. This year she said, I want to, this is my goal, my speaking goal for 2025 is to get a TEDx talk. I am all in on this. And she basically discovered a TEDx A new TEDx in her hometown, which is in a different country to where she's living, and she couldn't find anywhere to apply. And she actually said, "Right, I'm going to pick up the phone, call this guy." She spoke to the organizer. All the places were taken, but they had a competition to get a space at the TEDx, which is in June. If you won a competition that they were putting on, a Pecha Kucha competition. Now, Pecha Kucha is like a tiny. Presentation is 20 slides, 20 seconds on each slide. So, the first thing they needed was a 2-minute video about her idea. She worked on that. She submitted that. She won her place in the live final. And then she worked on her Pecha Kucha. She, you know, put a lot of effort crafting the content, rehearsing, practising. She did that Pecha Kucha last Thursday. She won the competition. I'm so proud. She's done so well. It was such a great presentation, a great talk. She's won her spot on the TEDx. She was absolutely zeroed in on this goal and she's achieved it in February. So, this is the difference between thinking about it, dreaming about it, talking about it versus taking action, being focused, being all in. And like me, I tell you about me, I've been wanting to learn Spanish for years. My grandpa was Spanish. I have relatives in Spain. I visit Spain regularly. I have not been able to learn Spanish. I tried a few times with books and tapes and whatnot, but always ended up giving up. And so this year I put it on my goals for 2025. I wanted to learn Spanish, but I set a big goal. My aim, maybe not this year, but this is the aim, is to do a keynote in Spanish. And the other thing that's worked for me and what I realised is setting a big goal and also for me, getting a coach to help me. So, I'm having Spanish lessons every week now, we've hired a coach, and that is going to happen this year. I have focused on it, I've taken action, I've set a big goal, this is what I want, and it's happening. So, I can't do very much at the moment, but I'm on the journey, and I can feel myself already, you know, looking to the future and seeing what's possible because I've made that decision. So, if you're procrastinating, if you're not quite all in, here's some things. If you haven't made a decision yet, set a timeframe for that decision. Put your— give a deadline. You know, that's gonna help you focus. Mel Robbins has got the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, make a decision. But set a deadline. Either you're doing it or you're not. And that opens— if you're not doing it, that opens other doors, you know? So, but make the decision. Don't stay in that limbo. Don't stay stuck. And then if you do make the decision, then go all in. Setting a big goal can be great. Maybe 5 paid speaking gigs by the end of the year. Maybe they're not all $10K, $20K gigs, but paid speaking gig is a paid speaking gig. You're on the journey. Or strategic gigs, whatever it is, set a goal that feels a little bit uncomfortable, that feels like it's gonna be a stretch for you, um, and go all in. Accept that no choice is perfect. Okay? There's not gonna be the perfect, like, beam of light from, from the heavens to say, yes, you've done right. This is for you. Like, just trust yourself. If you've got the idea, if you've got the desire, then it is for you because we don't get desires unless it's something that we're meant to be doing. Okay? So, it's there for a reason. Don't keep denying it. Don't push it away. Don't prioritize other stuff. For taking the easy, easy path. You know, follow your intuition, take that leap of faith, bet on yourself, and go all in. And then the other thing that I would say is have one project focus at a time, or even if you break up the goal into mini projects. But like, there's this thing that I was sharing, you know, I got taught it myself and now I share it with the people that I work with. You know, there's a— if someone asked you Okay, so imagine you're in a football stadium, a soccer stadium, whatever your preference is, and I say to you, okay, look, there's a competition. There's 6 soccer balls laying on the pitch, and I— the person who kicks the ball the furthest is going to win. Now, there are 2 different approaches to this. A lot of people will go in and try and kick 6 balls and try and kick one further than everyone else. But the smart person kicks one ball six times, and that's the other thing. When you go all in, focus on it. Keep kicking the ball, even if there's a bit of a delay between kicks. Like kick that ball. Don't shiny penny it and find other things. Kick that ball. Go all in. So that's all that I've got for you in this quick tip episode. Don't half-ass it. Don't be blockbuster. Go all in on your speaking. Take, make the decision. Be what you want to be. Take the actions in accordance to being that thing and make it happen. It is, if it's in you, it's for you. And so go all in and I promise you, you will be so surprised at the results and how things start to line up for you. All the best with that. Let me know if this helps you make a decision. And what that decision is, I'd love to know. You can message me on, you can put, if you're watching on YouTube, bung a comment below. If you are listening, then come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, send me a message. Love to know how you get on with this, if you had any ahas. But yeah, make this the year you go all in on your speaking, because, you know, you've got a big message to share. You wouldn't have it if people didn't need to hear it. And just the possibilities on the other side of going all in are amazing. Good luck with that. All the best. Like and subscribe to the show if you're on YouTube, and also subscribe if you're listening. And if you could leave a rating or review at ratethispodcast.com/tsc, that would be amazing. Until next time, I've been Sarah Archer. You've been absolutely fabulous. You know what I'm going to say. Don't forget to go out, grab your life by the nuts, and get cracking. Bye-bye. It's a nightmare. You're an expert with so much to say, but now that you've been booked to speak, you're struggling to know exactly what to talk about. You want a talk that engages the audience and wins you new clients without you losing your personality or anyone feeling pitched to. 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