You have big goals for your speaking business…
But do you have a clear pathway to get there?
This week, we’re going to check in with our two speakers who are part of our Year of Transformation experiment, Michelle and Dan.
If you recall, our goal is to see if I can help each of them – one a developing speaker and the other a plateaued veteran – to level up their speaking businesses.
Michelle wants to go from $10K to $150K in annual revenue with her first speech. Dan wants to break into the $600K bracket with more gigs earned from stageside leads and referrals.
Will they do it?
It all depends on how closely they can stick to the pathway for success.
Feeling the Yo-Yo… While Climbing the Mountain
Let’s start by imagining that possible pathway…
You’ll inevitably have some serious ups and downs in your speaking business. Sometimes you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world and nothing could go wrong.
You killed it on stage for your last performance…
You received an awesome testimonial from a respected client…
You finally landed your first $15K+ gig…
These wins make you feel like you’re walking on air with the world at your feet. Then, something happens to pull the carpet out from under you – and suddenly you’re lying on the floor, clutching your revenue projections like a Hallmark breakup letter.
You realized you have zero gigs scheduled for the next month…
Your stats sheet says you’re going to fall short of your annual revenue goal…
You mess up on stage and feel like the whole performance was ruined…
Ups and downs… ups and downs… just like a yo-yo.
Yes, your business is going to go through peaks and valleys, but that close-up view isn’t always an accurate indicator of your progress.
I want you to zoom out from the person playing with the yo-yo…
… up and down…
… up and down…
… and imagine that they are also walking up the side of the mountain.
That’s what I envisioned for both of our speakers this year. I want them (and you!) to make steady progress through constant iteration of the speech.
Small steps, every day.
So, what did I recently tell Dan? Did I prescribe an expensive mastermind? A custom speechwriting retreat in the Alps?
Nope…
Here’s what I told him during our call last week:
“The goal is that everyday there is improvement. I don’t care if it’s one slide… or one sentence. If there is improvement everyday, you’ll get something so much better in five days than if you just focus on one big change.
If you dedicate the time to hearing it, performing it, and seeing it start to come together, you’ll start to find the enthusiasm for it and you’ll start to see what changes are needed on your own.”
Some speakers have a hard time forcing themselves to make small, ongoing changes. Rather than embracing the yo-yo concept, they sling that metaphorical yo-yo string over a rock above them and attempt to climb the sheer side of the cliff.
The danger? They will make slower progress…
And possibly fall towards failure.
So, ask yourself…
With that, let’s look at our two speakers and see how their month has been.
Michelle Hits a Down Moment — But Keeps Climbing
Each month, Rachael does a monthly check-in with our speakers to see how they are feeling about their progress.
And it just so happened that she caught our developing speaker, Michelle Hutchings-Medina, on a day when she was experiencing a “down” on her yo-yo journey. Michelle shared,
“Little things just get in my way. I wish I had somebody that could just sit with me and just go through a lot of the techy stuff that I’m having difficulty with…. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, I think.”
Coming off a big week at the NSA Influence conference, Michelle is experiencing distractions right now in terms of running her business. Tasks like developing her PowerPoint slides, setting up her iCloud accounts, and managing her communications are taking her focus away from her speech.
While the conference provided inspiration, it also provided pressure for “all the things” that she feels like need to be done right away.
It’s a tough place to be in for sure. Newer speakers need to manage all of these issues on their own – without the help of knowledgeable team members who can take over smaller tasks.
That said, Michelle is still making steady progress on her speech. If you recall, she's talking to business leaders about how they can turn stress into a productive form of growth. Last month, she developed a full speech from scratch and gave it to a live audience in mid-July.
Now, it wasn’t perfect…
In fact, I gave Michelle some blunt criticism after reviewing her recording. Tomorrow, I’ll dive into what she did and didn’t do that would have helped her performance. They are mistakes that a LOT of newer speakers make on stage early in their careers.
We’ll also look into some brag-worthy wins Michelle has recently had…
(Hint: If you were at the NSA Influence Conference, you may have seen her on stage collecting an award!!)
Dan’s Month of Distractions (and One Big Revelation)
Our veteran speaker, Dan Gingiss, also had a great time at the NSA Influence conference. (Although he and Michelle never did manage to meet up… bummer!)
He had a bit of a revelation from one speaker who was on stage:
“He said, ‘The funny thing about this business is that we all work 80 hours a week so that we don't have to work 40 hours a week.’ And I thought that was a brilliant line, but what hit me was, I don't work 80 hours a week and I'm not sure I want to work 80 hours a week.
But it did start getting me to think about, am I really working enough? Am I pushing hard enough or am I skating by? And it is easy, especially when things are going well, it's easy to kind of skate.
That was part of why I came back with this sort of new found energy where I could be working harder and if I work harder, I'm going to do better.”
I love this newfound energy Dan has discovered. One of the biggest problems we experienced last month was that Dan wasn’t able to devote enough time to his speech. And honestly, the beginning of this month was more of the same.
Now, since he’s returned from the conference, Dan has been putting in more hours each week.
Dan also shared,
“I was absolutely shocked and impressed when I went to the NSA Influence at how many frickin people read this newsletter because they all came up to me. That was unexpected and good.”
Anyway, back to his month…
Despite the re-energizing, Dan has also been experiencing a bit of a tough month. Similar to Michelle’s issue, Dan is dealing with a lot of tasks that are suddenly on his plate. He just lost his operations manager, so he’s trying to backfill her role and manage his team.
Veteran speakers have the luxury of having more team members to help manage the business, but when someone leaves, the extra work often falls back onto you… the speaker.
As you may recall, our goal for Dan during this experiment was to help him with two main projects. One was an improvement on his existing customer experience speech. The second was to help him develop a brand new speech focused on the topic of leadership promotion.
To reach his revenue goals, I had hoped the following would occur:
- Dan would spend June and July iterating his current speech five minutes at a time until the content was stronger and more referral-worthy.
- At the same time, I wanted him to develop a session description (only) for his brand new speech, which he could use to start reaching out to potential clients in order to book some Fall 2025 gigs.
That was the pathway I laid out, but unfortunately, we strayed a bit along the way. Tomorrow, I’ll share more about Dan’s progress as he works on these two tasks. Plus, I’ll explain the recent “reboot” we discussed.
Want to See Their Real Progress This Month?
If you’re a Premium Member, check out the second part of this article, and we’ll look at the specific wins and losses of our two Transformation speakers during the past month.
Part two of this article covers:
- Some tough lessons Michelle learned after giving her new speech for the first time – they include mistakes many new speakers are tempted to make,
- The one thing Michelle is doing absolutely right (despite her tech problems) when it comes to rehearsal and iteration,
- The opportunity Dan discovered that was almost perfect for him,
- Dan’s revelation about how much time he needs to commit each week,
- And how to know if you are riding the yo-yo or trying to climb the cliff.
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Remember, the advice that got you here won’t get you there. It’s time for a massive move.
It’s time for a Monumental Shift.
On the boat in Newburyport, MA,
Andrew
