So I’ve been running my coaching business for over a year now. Whilst I’ve had always had decent success, success that has allowed me to stay away from the 9 to 5, it’s taken me a while to really feel liked I’ve gained some authority and credibility in my field.
I’d been doing all the usual stuff that the “gurus” tell you to do – posting on social media, creating downloadable freebies, I had a Facebook business page and a website, I was going to networking events…. All this stuff was “ok” but I still felt like a very small fish in a VERY big pond.
When I was writing out my goals for the year in January, I knew that one thing that that I missed doing from my previous business back in the UK was running workshops and doing public speaking.
This world is busy busy busy, so we need to be able to stand out from the rest of the pack, and I knew being in front of people would be a great opportunity to grow my business.
These days, I’m in a completely different industry from from the business I was running in the UK. So, whilst I’m very used to running workshops and public speaking I hadn’t done any for a while, and none in my “new” industry of coaching.
I was pretty nervous about it, which is probably why it didn’t figure in my strategy last year! I wasn’t sure what I could offer!
The thing that changed for me this year, was realising that although I felt like an imposter because I was so new in my business I also came to realise that the stuff I thought of as obvious to me, was definitely NOT obvious to most other people running businesses!
We can all get far too close to to what we do every day and start to underestimate the immense value that we can give to others through sharing our knowledge.
This was the wake up call I needed.
I started scouring Facebook groups, websites like Sourcebottle and I subscribed to “The Weekly Rocket” from The Audacious Agency for opportunities to speak, and when collaboration opportunities appeared, I offered my services as a speaker.
Very quickly I had one speaking slot a month booked in!
I developed a bit of a “signature talk” which was really easy for me to perfect and tweak each time I spoke and always got a really good response.
Public speaking works so well because when you're the one who is speaking in front of a room, everyone wants to come and speak to YOU afterwards. You're immediately the voice of authority and credibility.
It takes all of the awkwardness out of networking and having to be brave enough to go up and speak to people. (although obviously you need to be brave enough to stand at the front of a room and tell everybody what you know!)
And don’t forget to tell people on social media what you’re doing – and you must shout about it! That helps build your authority even when those people aren’t able to hear you speak because they are not local to the event. How amazing is that? People don’t even need to hear you speak to be able to build your authority through public speaking!
So as I say – this has been a real game-changer for my business this year. I’ve met new and inspiring people, it’s opened up some very exciting opportunities for me, more speaking gigs and is allowing me to step more fully into the business woman I want to be, so that I can inspire and support even more of YOU!
Is public speaking on your agenda? If not maybe you should think about it! What would you need to do to make it happen?