Generate Leads with Public Speaking
How to use the stage as gravity.
What happens when you get on stage? Do your knees knock? Your stomach knot? Do you begin to sweat?
A Forbes survey found that while 70% of working professionals rank public speaking as the most important skill for success, 20% said they would do almost anything to avoid speaking in public, up to and including faking being sick! 🤢
What happens when you talk about something you really care about? Maybe your heart races a bit. You smile. You’re engaged with those listening. You gesticulate passionately and modulate your energy according to the emotion you are hoping to evoke.
This seemingly small difference can make massive waves for your business. We are entrepreneurs because we believe in something — it excites us, gets us out of bed in the morning, keeps us going even when building a business seems exhausting.
It was this change in perspective that finally brought me comfort on stage. I used to belong to the first group — I couldn’t understand why anyone would put themselves in front of an audience. I expected to fall flat on my face and look the idiot.
Until I spoke on topics that mattered to me. Not what I thought they wanted to hear (or what I’d been assigned in school).
Then emerged a speaker to whom one had to give a time limit. I could talk for hours about anthropology, socioeconomics, and business scaling. I get excited about the potential for business to unlock new wealth for minority groups, and am frustrated when ‘tech bros’ try to gatekeep scaling for startups and pigeonhole it for marketing.
The key to a compelling speech, workshop, or interview that creates leads for your business is in your passion.
Let’s toy with this concept a bit. What is something you’re passionate enough about to throw a party for? For me, it’s any World Cup game that Croatia is competing in. I’ll get out the projector and invite everyone I know, whether or not they’re Croatian, to help cheer the team and celebrate the win (because, seriously, those guys rarely lose).
This is the exact concept I use with my students to teach them to sell. We change the language from selling to making an invitation.
