Become a Guest on The Business of Speaking

When I left my job in February of 2020, I was committed to turning my occasional speaking into a business and my main career. Right after I returned from giving a keynote in Cancun in early March, COVID-19 hit and all my foreseeable events had been cancelled or postponed.

This led me to helping co-produce SpeakAid 2020 with Dan Pontefract, where I heard from 40 speakers about how this pandemic was impacting their business. It was fascinating to me that with all the books, courses and podcasts I had listened to about becoming a speaker, many didn’t discuss the different business models and products/services that go along with speaking. It gave me an idea that if others weren’t sharing this information, and I was looking for it, others would be too. 

It reminded me of when I started My Community Manager, for much the same reason years ago, and spurred the idea to start a community of speakers to learn, share and grow their businesses. I launched this website  and decided to do what I love, which is record live video conversations with professional speakers and learn about their business to be able to share with others who may be looking to get into speaking or have been in speaking but are realizing how they need to diversify their business. 

The style of the conversation will be just that, conversational. I start with a question of what your speaking business looks like today and then how you got started speaking speaking, and then see where it leads. So far, I haven’t heard two of the same stories and not one person had planned on being a speaker from the beginning. I don’t believe in Q&A as it is too prepared and doesn’t allow for the real and raw moments that provide the best lessons for others, and sometimes for the speaker herself.

Each video will be on recorded live on Zoom and then uploaded to YouTube. Additional clips and portions may be edited to include in blog posts or for use on social media but the full recording will stay unedited.

The audio portion will be used on a podcast that will be coming soon and will be edited slightly with an intro and any areas that detract from the overall listening experience being removed.

I will ask each guest to join me 5 minutes early, before we begin broadcasting and to plan on recording for 20-30 minutes. After the main show is over, we keep recording so I can ask an additional question that will be used to send exclusively to email subscribers but will not be posted on the YouTube channel. Total time commitment will be about 30-35 minutes on the day of recording and about 5-15 minutes of prep and follow up with promotional materials including bio, headshot, links, etc. 

In addition to the video, podcast and blog, I am considering turning the information I learn into a book if there are enough unique perspectives. 

If you are a professional speaker and interested, you can schedule a time to record on Zoom with me here:

https://calendly.com/timamcdonald/go-live-and-record-a-video-conversation-on-speakin