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How to Become a Successful Speaker in 2023
I often get asked about the path to success for a professional speaker. When you’re just starting out, you naturally want to know how others achieved their success before you. You want to know what you should focus on in order to get to that coveted spot on the keynote stage faster. And if you are really thinking hard, you’ll want to know the biggest pitfalls — the common traps that everyone else falls into — so that you can dodge around them. Here’s my short list of the most important things to think about early on in your career.
1.Don’t get paid before you are ready. This idea is counterintuitive, and of course a little frustrating. Naturally, if your goal is to become a paid professional, then you’ll want to get paid as soon as possible. But when you start speaking, all eyes will be upon you, especially the eyes of the meeting planners, the speaker bureaus, the coaches, the event companies — and all of them are likely only to give you one look. If their judgment is that you are not ready for prime time, then they will forever assign you to the B-list in their minds and that will make it very hard for you to develop a steady business on ever-more-glorious stages. The speaking world is a surprisingly small one, and an impatient one. And there’s a lot of competition. Your debut needs to be smashing. Practice in a safe place.
