I sat on the floor. The carpet-free, rug-free, furniture-free floor of my recently renovated home office. It was 9 degrees in Johannesburg, so the cold was coming right through the tiles, and rapidly chilling my… you know…
But I sat there for 118 minutes. Happily.
And I jotted down 1107 words of notes.
There were, as one of the evening’s two speakers, Moses Nalocca, explained, “diamonds and pearls” to be acquired. And they were worth the chill on my… you know…
To warm up, the attendees of July’s PSASA Virtual Chapter gathering, led by Carol Nyamwaya Mwazi as MC and Ian Hatton on tech, enjoyed a small-group icebreaker and the heartfelt glow of Ndjideka Chika Orji’s short intro.
Then Charlotte Kemp, Immediate Past President of PSASA and current Vice-President of the Global Speakers Federation, unpacked the must-know considerations for any speaker who’s wanting to position, market, and build demand for their offering.
Charlotte’s diamonds and pearls
- There are various ways to consider what kind of speaker you want to be. But don’t obsess over the language; rather find out what the client wants and needs, regardless of the prevailing lingo.
- When it comes to revenue, be aware of income streams – beyond the speaking fee! – that you may not have considered or prioritised, like:
- Creating training courses, workshops & webinars*
- Facilitating your own or others’ programmes
- Coaching clients*
- Consulting to clients*
- MCing*
- Selling books and physical products
- Producing content*
- Promoting relevant assessments and/or quizzes
- Building membership sites & communities*
- Licensing your material to others
- Getting sponsorships or retainers from corporates
* I’m 6 for 11.
- The more you speak, the more you get to speak. I learned this from Max Moyo at the 2022 Annual Convention, but Charlotte expressed it beautifully: A freebie or “showcase” speech should always come with a detailed “100% discount invoice” that clearly indicates the value being given, even if it’s given away.
Moses’s 3 major gap-closers
Moses Nalocca, our next presenter, is an international speaker, high-performance coach and prolific representative of Tony Robbins and Success Resources, so the following warning was issued with considerable charisma:
If you don’t engage your audience in the first few minutes, you run the risk of being muted, ignored or having the webinar window silently closed on you!
There are three ways to mitigate these risks:
1. Disrupt: Ask a lot of questions early on, in a short space of time. Say something random – “strawberry milkshake!” – and unexpected to shatter complacency, seize attention, and grab awareness. It’s healthy to create a bit of doubt and wonder.
2. Dispute: Challenge the audience. They’ll love you, judge you, or disconnect from you, but you can nudge them into acceptance, towards action, and through assessment. Moses acknowledged that the phrase, “You can only manage what you measure”, is an absolute cliché, but clichés are clichés for a reason!
3. Inspire: It you want to truly inspire your audience, you’ll need authenticity. Only then, once you’ve authored your own contribution, can you help clients, customers and audiences to become authorities in their own right. That’s where the magic is.
For goodies like these, I’d gladly sit on the floor again. But next time, I hope it’s summer.
