When You Know What You Stand For, Everything Gets Easier

Honestly, I had never given this concept much thought until my friend Dan Gingiss shared his “6 Key Elements of Successful Speakers.” 

As you may recall, Dan is part of our year-long transformation experiment where we try to help him level up to $600K revenue in the next year.

I love this idea of defining principles because every speaker needs some values that govern how their business should run.

Determining your own business principles will help you understand what you should and shouldn’t do when a tough decision comes along.  The choices become more automatic, and you don’t have to agonize over every opportunity.

So, with that… I’m going to share Dan’s six principles because I think they do a great job of illustrating why this idea is so powerful.

Just to be very clear, these are not necessarily MY principles.  In fact, tomorrow, I’m going to share my exercise of creating my own list.  Hopefully, this will help you kickstart your own principles.

Dan’s “6 Key Elements of Successful Speakers”

1. They are remarkable on stage.

This is a principle of primary value.  It states that your speech is the product, and everything else is really just expensive noise.

I think this is a great principle to guide your business. And, since it’s at the top of Dan’s list, I’m guessing it holds the most value for him as well.

2. They have a strong team behind them.

This principle of leverage is really important when you’re building an actual business. When I chat with newer speakers, like our other transformation subject, Michelle, I’m reminded of the long list of tasks that need attention from a speaker.

With this principle, you can build a real business that has people supporting you.  It will be directly impacted by your revenue ceiling.  A higher ceiling means you can afford to have more people helping you – which in turn, helps you raise the ceiling even higher.

3.  They have a solid sales system.

This is a key one that is basically a “principle of predictability.”  Consistency beats charisma in your business, and that’s what’s really important.  

These kinds of predictable systems you build create freedom, not constraints, and this will help you focus – which I think is smart.

4.  They sell more than just speeches.

This is the basic principle of sustainability.  And there’s actually a lot of debate around this particular idea.  In my world, I’d call it the diversification debate.

Can your business be really strong when it’s just selling speeches, or do you need to add in other products and services?  

Hmm…

Truthfully, this wouldn’t be on my own personal list, but that’s okay.  It’s not my list.  It’s Dan’s.  It’s a principle he wants to work on, and I think that’s great.