Herman School of Business
Busy Doesn't Always Mean Progress...
It’s amazing to me how many smart, hard working people take on more jobs than they can accomplish in an effort to get a short cut to success. If you are in workshops, attending motivational talks, participating in webinars, listening to tele-seminars, and hitting up your life coach for advice…when do you find time to actually work?
While I advocate getting advice to help cut corners, some people fall off the cliff forgetting to focus on their real job. You see it in employees as well as entrepreneurs. Sort of like procrastinators, they are “work focus avoiders” because by doing all these other “feel good” things they are avoiding the one that matters…the real job that gets you over the finish line.
Be sure you need to do all those exercises, or all that research…after you do something required by the job at hand. I am now marketing myself as a Speaker. The easiest way to say what I should be doing every day is booking appointments to speak at events. So, I joined the National Speakers Association a few weeks ago. And now I have been challenged by tapes, emails, and newsletters that offer me ways to be a better speaker, ways to set up my office, books to read to improve my skills, life coaches to hire who can encourage me, places to find jokes to punch up some humor, and even places to link to so I can get cheaper tickets on my way to my speech.
I can’t find a list of people who actually hire speakers though.
To me that would be the simplest thing to get me started…who knew I needed all that other help. I contacted several people who are successful speakers and that was the best thing I have done. One told me to “forget it…start at Toastmasters…and please understand that almost no one makes a living as a speaker.” That email writer claimed he was being honest…he should have admitted he was just being arrogant. But, another speaker has been extremely helpful…and she makes a very nice living as a speaker…and assured me I could as well.
When you want to do something please write down what the most obvious thing is that will get you there. I can take all the courses to improve my skill set, hire people to punch up my marketing piece, get some jokes from a comedian, pay someone to find me more internet traffic, attend meetings to improve my looks and my presentation and practice my speech a thousand times…but if I don’t find a list of people who actually hire speakers and start communicating with them all that other stuff means nothing.
Now that today’s blog posting is finished I plan on finding ten people today who actually hire speakers and start a relationship that might actually get me hired as a speaker.
- Posted: 16 June 2008
- Comments: 0
- Category: Running a business
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