So the title of this course is how to be a professional speaker. And this may confuse some of you and you may want your money back right now. And that's fine. I'm happy to give it back to you. I don't believe your goal should be to be a professional speaker. What I believe is that your goal should be to have true deep expertise in something and to be able to share it to the world.

It has many possible ways as you can, through books, through blogs, through audios through Radio appearances, TV appearances, YouTube channels, and yes, through speaking in front of live audiences. Now there was a time way back when I'm talking in the 40s 50s and 60s, when there were people who just were professional speakers because more and more associations were having conventions and they didn't know what to do. So this person gave a speech and someone said, Hey, we need a speaker. I saw bill Gove speak last week. Let's get him. And Bill go.

A former mentor of mine was one of the first professional speakers that made a very nice living, really just delivering a keynote for the most part. Those days are gone. The idea that you could just sort of sit back, watch an Anthony Robbins video, go to a Les Brown event. look at a couple of other motivational speakers on YouTube and say, You know what, I can do that. Let me put my own spin on it. And announcer I'm a speaker, that cannot be done anymore.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me just say right now you are wasting your time. If you think you can just sort of watch a few, blend it together, have your own spin and come out. It's much much harder than that because there's so much competition. You doubt me. Go to Google and type in professional speaking or professional speakers or keynote speakers. It'll break you Internet, there'll be so many hundreds of millions of websites coming.

There's tremendous competition, you have to differentiate yourself. So I think the first thing you have to really decide is not whether I want to be a professional speaker how to make myself a professional speaker. The first thing you've really got to define is what is your core area of expertise? What's the thing you know so much about? that people want to hear you talk about it. Now, I play tennis.

I played tennis my whole life. I want a tournament or two in 1977. I play tennis now I have a tennis court. Now I play a couple times a week. I like to talk about tennis. But you know what?

You'd have to be insane to pay me to lecture about tennis. Because my knowledge level is very, very common. It's low on a one to 10 scale with a tennis rating of probably a two I am a hack player. I barely know who's in the top 10. So it would be virtually impossible for me to sell my self as a speaker about tennis. Because my knowledge base is so low I haven't written about I haven't studied, I haven't thought about it.

So it's not enough to have a mere passing an interest in tennis. I played with the guys every Monday night in the league, but that doesn't make me qualified to speak about tennis. So the first thing you've got to do is figure out what is the number one thing that you like that you care about that you're interested in, that you could speak about. But what would you be talking about if no one even paid you? Too many people go into this idea of I want to be a professional speaker, because they went to some positive speaking rally or some Peter Lowe thing and it was speaker after speaker and it seemed glamorous. Hear these people selling their information products and they're all making $50,000 a day I want to be up on the stage.

I might not be a good singer to be a rock star. I might not have enough talent to be on Broadway. But I could get up and talk and be in front of us big stage full of people. That's not the had to have, but you will never get there if that is your motivation. So for starters, you got to figure out what is it that you're good at? I would suggest actually getting a Venn diagram and try to plot out for example, everything that you're good at.

So if here's a diagram of every single thing, a circle of all the things you like stuff you like to do. Here's a list of things that people already pay for. So you may like to collect seashells. But there's not a huge demand for people who like to collect seashells of getting paid for that. You got to look at the marketplace. What does the public want?

What corporations pay for? And what is it you're good at? So for example, I love talking about politics. I love getting my analysis on current affairs. But guess what? That's an interest of mine.

Aren't any corporations willing to pay for that, unless you're really really famous and you worked at the White House, then maybe you can get a gig at Fox or MSNBC or CNN. Other than that, you can't get it. Public is not paying for political analysis. They get it for free on every website, every blog, and on TV. So that's an example of this being over here, in this part of the Venn diagram complete, utterly useless. You have to find something that's in this intersection.

All three circles. So for me, I have had a lifelong interest in public speaking. And in media and politics helping people communicate effectively. Well, is that a good topic corporations, hire people to do that all the time corporate communications departments, hire people to speak on that and to train on that. Individuals, buy books on that, and hire trainers for that. So that was my sweet spot, something I like to do something I'm good at corporations pay for it, and individuals pay for it too.

That's my sweet spot. And that's ultimately a lot more important than having the best voice in the world or the best stage presence because you can have, you can frankly, teach a monkey to have good stage presence. If they're just giving the same old motivational spiel of have goals, focus on your goals and so See with people already success, you're not gonna be able to differentiate yourself, you're not going to get booked and you're not going to get paid. So here's the first bit of homework for you if you could only talk about one thing. And I'll give you 10 words, but I would really prefer five words or less. What is that subject matter?

What is the topic? It can't be I help people with sales, customer service, negotiation, speaking skills, and blah, blah, blah, blah. You might be good at all those things but there's no way you're going to be able to market yourself to the world. As good enough to speak on those topics. You're far better off focusing on one thing, one thing only. Then build out the others if you can get there are exceptions to these rules.

Alan Weiss. You should read his book on million dollar speaker. He who knows what he does, but he gets speaks all the time and he says, Don't position yourself. I think that works for Alan Weiss and it works for people who've been in the business for 2535 50 years. I don't think it works for anyone today. It's so hard to get any momentum to get yourself established and well known by anyone and to have a following.

You're going to confuse the marketplace if you try to be good at five things or to speak on five things. Pick one thing. That's your homework right now. In one sentence, 10 words or less, preferably five. Tell me what is it you do to help people in the world write that down now.