So you've got your business model, you've got your area of expertise, you're creating content, what's the best way of marketing yourself as a speaker? Well, this is the question that people grapple with. It's the question of the ages for professional speakers and aspiring professional speakers. And the fact is, it changes there was a time when you could buy mailing list, get your demo tape, do a lot of mass mailing, send out DVDs. And if the timing was right, your subject was you could really catch fire that did work. Those days are over.

The best way to market yourself is to define your niche. And when someone goes to Google and has never heard of you, and types in sales guru, they find you if you're the sales guru, if they want to know change management, they're looking for expertise in that they find you first. How do you get to be number one in Google for your search term? Well, you need to be creating great content every year. Single Day and have people talking about it, linking it, retweeting it. And you're probably going to need a search engine optimization company as well, which means you're gonna need money.

And that's why we talked about the business model. So that's why you need to be consulting and keeping your day job, you need money for those things. You need to really establish yourself so that if someone types in your phrase on Google, they find you if they go to YouTube and type in the phrase, they see your video, they go to Amazon, type in the phrase and the first three books are all written by you. That's the number one way to market yourself. As a speaker, you want to just bombard people, you want to have people saying, My God, I see you everywhere. If they follow your particular niche, and your particular industry, that's the number one way of marketing yourself.

That can't be done overnight. You can't simply hire a speaker marketer who's going to put together that demo tape and send it out. And boy, you can start cashing the checks. And getting the first class tickets to Hawaii to speak at that dental conference just doesn't work that way anymore. So my advice is you've got to focus on creating great content. Create a tribe of people who care about you, and let them constantly see you speaking.

That's why you had to do videos, it also means you have to speak in front of real audiences as often as possible, even if it's free for now. Because that way, you can get more video of yourself which by the way, even a so called free speech is never free because you're going to be selling your online courses, your books, your video, your consultant, you're using that as promotion. The rule of thumb I have for free speaking is if it's in my town, and they don't have any problem with me marketing, other things I'm doing then I may do it if it fits my schedule. I'm not going to travel the world I recommend you travel anywhere where you're speaking for free. The other option for speaking these days is through Skype video, I give speeches all over the web, given a speech to business groups in in New Zealand, I'm getting ready to give a speech in Iran, believe it or not, without having to leave home.

I speak through Skype. So one of the things you should have is not a fancy expensive studio, but for example, what I have here, this is just a TV screen. It's an old TV, it's not even a big TV and TV screens these days practically cost practically nothing here. See I'm turning it off. Now I'm turning it back on. It's very, very simple thing.

You can see the TV. I do have an old closet that I've turned into a TV studio, a couple of lights and a broadcast quality camera. And that's really all there is to it. And now because I turned that off You'll see what's going on to the backdrop. So it's a very simple production. These are some of the things you need, if you really want to be taken seriously, as a professional speaker.

So I want you to focus on that. Right now think of all the different areas where you can speak. Think of how you can monetize it. And think of how you can let people know when people say this is great. You're fantastic. Where can I get more of you?

Let them know, Hey, I give professional speeches. Let me know if your organization needs a speaker.