Knowledge is only 50% of the story when it comes to speaking success. The other big part of the success equation is your individual brand. How you represent yourself and conduct your ‘business’ determines who, and how many people interact with you. Both personally and professionally, you owe it to yourself to project a consistently high brand standard.
Defining the Indefinable
Have someone in mind you admire in your industry or profession. It might be someone who has been a previous or current inspiration, a mentor, or just someone who you think is successful. What is it that makes them so different to everyone else? What characteristics do they display that contribute to their success? Chances are they have a very clear message and are known for it. The first step to becoming a world-class speaker is to understand ‘you’ better. When you can appreciate and sell yourself as your own unique brand proposition, you’ll get buy-in from people before, during and after the impact created by you speaking.
Defining Your Authentic Self
Every one of us comes into this world with certain things about us pre-defined. We are born with a certain identity already imprinted upon us. We are who we are. Yes, we can learn and grow and change certain things about ourselves, but in many instances we are swimming upstream when we desire to become something we are not.
Apply this to your speaking career. Your most freeing times as a speaker are realized when you stop fighting against who you are as a speaker – trying to be someone else because they currently address bigger audiences with more exposure. They didn’t start that way and will continue to evolve their message and change their persona as they develop. Everyone has something to learn, even highly successful speakers, so it’s important to remember you don’t need to be good at everything to be successful. Know what your passions are and clearly articulate your messaging around it. Pursue only those, as there will always be people wanting to learn from you if you have the capacity to speak with conviction.
Traps that Drag Us Away from Our Authentic Self It is easy to get way off track. There are a lot of traps out there luring us away from our authentic speakerr-self including:
- Doing What Others Want Us to Do
Those with influence are often the culprit in this trap. They have preconceived notions of who we are and what we need to be doing. Usually they believe a certain path will deliver the best results. Either way, they impose their desires upon us. We fall into the trap of living, or at least trying to live someone else’s vision.
- Doing What We Think We Should Do
Often we are sold the “only way to success”. These are the methods we should do because they are safe, practical and in-demand. Is this truly living your authentic and best speaker career path for you? Doing what one should do rarely leads to discovering the real you.
- Doing What Is Popular
Following the crowd is not a path to your authentic self. Of course, there is a lot of pressure to do whatever is popular at the moment. It is easy to start comparing yourself to others and feeling compulsion to modify your methods to fit certain fads or fashions. Don’t do it! It is best to blaze your own trail. Resisting this pressure to conform is very difficult. However, it is essential to avoid a trap that will lead us further from our authentic self.
- Doing What We’ve Always Done – Doing Nothing, Doing the Easy Thing
It’s always appealing to not “rock the boat”, especially in times when people can be so easily offended through merely presenting a viewpoint that doesn’t suit their own. Sometimes what we have to say can be softened by how we say it. Being brave enough on stage to challenge and poke well-held conventions is part of the speaker journey, and we look . Don’t let fear of not fitting in stop you from doing new things – Does anyone find themselves doing the same thing from one year to the next – experiencing their own version of Groundhog Day? The easy thing to do is to live your life from one day to the next and one year to the next, but pretty soon, you may be questioning what you’ve accomplished in your life and whether or not you are where you thought you’d be by this point in your life.
Take a bit of time to re-evaluate your message and what you stand for. Your ‘brand’ – who you are and what you do – will be the thing that attracts people to you. You’ll need to be clear, adaptable and open to feedback, but once you’re confident on your brand, you’ll find yourself coaching, networking and sharing from a complete point of confidence. When that happens, success is nothing but a natural progression.
