Grow Your Business by Learning How to Speak Confidently About It With Felicia Slattery

Our promise today is we are going to talk about, “What you should talk about.”  You know so much stuff in your head, and you know so many things in your business. We want you, at a moment’s notice, to be able to have a conversation with anyone who connects to your audience that you can benefit from, that you can build your list from, that you could make money from, very quickly and very easily.  That’s what I have to talk about.

Benefits of Being Able to Speak Confidently About Your Business

Obviously, there’s the tangible number of leads that you can get and the amount of cash that you can make.  That’s obvious.  To me, the biggest benefit is the confidence and the calm that comes with knowing that you know your stuff, and you’re going to know the answer.  You’re going to know what to say.

We hear all the time that public speaking is the #1 fear of a lot of people.  We don’t dig deep to find out why, and the biggest reason is that people aren’t sure what they are going to say or how they’re going to say it.  So, when you already know, in your head, what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it, you just have this confidence that is about you.  So, someone is in a pinch. A meeting planner is in a pinch, and you are at a meeting, and they’re like, “Oh, we thought someone was going to be here, and they’re not here.  What do we do?  Daniel, can you talk?”  You can be like, “Sure I can,” and you’re ready and good to go.

To be clear, I wrote a book called Kill the Elevator Speech: Stop Selling, Start Connecting.  So, what I don’t want you to do is I don’t want you to memorize an answer to, “What do you do?”  We need to know who we are, what the kind of work we do is, and the kind of people that we help, and what the results are. That’s kind of an easy no-brainer.  That’s another kind of conversation that, I’m meeting you for the first time, we’re shaking hands and saying hello.

Really, what we’re looking at is an opportunity for you to connect with a group of people, whether that is, a podcast situation, a video situation, a media situation, on stage, whatever that case may be. “Hey, I’m going to put you in front of some people.  Let’s talk.”  What are you going to say?  How are you going to say it?  Where are we going to go?

That’s where we are going with this, and to me, what we’re looking at is knowing, on a head level and actually at a heart level, what are you about?  What are your steps?  What are the pieces, or the parts, or the things that you can really offer, which #1 for you, make you stand out, and be different, and be unique, be interesting?  Number 2, what’s going to benefit the audience?  So, those are the big overlying principles that we’re looking at.  Those are the kinds of things that are going to make you look good, benefit you, and also provide value.

Sharing Two Sides of Your Business

There are two sides to what we want to share.  The first side is the personal side, the “who you are” stuff.  That’s how people connect with others.  The kind of businesses that we’re building are personality-based businesses, for the most part.  We’re authors, we’re speakers, we’re coaches, we’re consultants, we’re experts in some shape or form.  We’re sharing ourselves and the information that we share.  S

o, people want both of those.  They want to know, “Okay, so who is this person?”  The second side is the information that we sell.  That product, that service, whatever “that” is. Those are the two pieces, and that’s what I want you to be thinking about as we’re going through this process.  So, personal bits and professional bits.  Have these, both pieces, ready to go, and be able to share those kinds of things.

So, that’s where we’re going to start.  Let’s talk about the person first. That may sound like a weird place to start, but it’s actually not because, again, this is what’s going to make you stand out.  Why?  Well, are there other people in the world teaching what you’re teaching?  Here’s the actual answer, “I hope so because if there’s not, there’s probably not any money to be made in your area.”  I’m just saying.  Go into a market where it’s proven.

Now, what’s going to make you stand out from everyone else?  Is there a right way to do what you talk about? Probably.  Well then, there’s other people teaching the same kind of steps and the same kind of methods.  It’s not necessarily the professional content that’s going to make you stand out. 

For example, I teach people about speaking, and there’s a right way to start a speech and a really bad way to start a speech.  You know, there’s a handful of ways.  So, anybody that teaches this stuff knows the handful of ways.  There’s a right way to end a speech.  How am I going to stand out from somebody else?  I’m going to stand out over here with who I am and what I’m about.  And, that’s going to be the same for you.

People are going to be attracted to you, and your message, and YOU.  Your person.  You’re the reason why people will buy that professional content, because of YOU.  So, let’s talk about your personal self and think about a couple of different things.  I like to put it in the context of storytelling.

Think about some of those stories, in your life, that you can, what I call, make a turn toward.  Something that happened in your life where people go, “Oh my gosh!  Really, that happened?  That’s interesting,” or “That’s cool,” or “That’s scary,” or whatever.  Then, they connect to that, and you go, “So, now that I’ve told this story, here’s why it matters to you.”

Professional Story

A great example is, back in 2008, I had been running my own business from home, and things were okay.  I had to learn to use the Internet in 2006 because I wanted to be home with my babies, who were 1 and 3 at the time.  So, I was doing okay and making a little bit of money, doing some coaching and that kind of thing, and then I went to my first internet marketing event.  I was sitting in the audience, and again, this was my first event so nobody knew who I was, and I didn’t really know any of these people.

I wasn’t really in the internet marketing world at the time, and I was sitting and taking all kinds of notes, and it was great.  And then, there came a portion of the event when there were a couple of speakers, both talking about Google.  One was talking about Google Adsense, and one was talking about Google AdWords, which are kind of two sides of the same coin.

But, they were having some technical difficulties, like the video wasn’t working or the audio wasn’t working, and they wanted to record the session.  They said, “We’re going to figure this out.  While we do that, we’ll bring up the speakers,” so all of the speakers were now standing on the stage.  Not just these two, but a bunch of people.  All of the speakers for the whole event are standing there, and they’re saying, “Hey, we’ll take your questions.”

I was like, “Ooh, this is really cool.”  I was ready to take notes and everything.  People are raising hands and asking questions.  Somebody raised their hand, and she said, “How can I be more credible on the Internet?”  And, I had been speaking because, again, that’s what I do.  I had been delivering a speech called “Credibility and Cash Flow” for the last year and a half.  I thought, “It’s going to be really interesting to hear what these really smart speakers are going to have to say about it at this event.”  As they spoke, I was like, “None of them really have the answer.”  Why?  Because credibility and cash flow wasn’t their thing.  So, they could answer it okay, but that was something that I knew.

It was informal, and they were still struggling with the tech stuff, and it was a small enough room, maybe with a couple of hundred people.  So, I felt kind of comfortable, like half sheepishly raising my hand. Nobody knows me at this point.  I said, “I could speak to that,” and they said, “Oh great!  Come on up,” and then somebody handed me a microphone.  “Well, hello!  Felicia has a microphone!  Look out!”  And, I gave about 2-3 minutes of my 30-minute signature speech, “Credibility and Cash Flow”.

People are taking notes, and everybody is on the edge of their seats like, “Wow!  This is really good stuff.”  And, at the end of that, I looked down the line, and maybe you remember the cartoons when we were growing up, when we were kids, and there would be one head over another over another in a doorway; that’s kind of what I saw when I looked down the line.  I had one microphone, and all of the speakers, I was standing up next to them at that point, and one of the other speakers, New York Times bestselling author, he goes, “And, who are you again?”  I was like, “I’m Felicia Slattery.”

So, what did I just do?  A couple of things.  Number 1, I shared with you a story about who I am and what I’m about.  At this point, you have no question in your mind that I’m not afraid to get on a stage, right?  So, now  you know a little bit about me, but I also shared (it’s kind of a share within a share) that I had content ready.  I had been delivering this speech, at that point, for over a year, which for me is forever.  That’s just a long time to be talking about the same thing.  By the way, 10 years later, I’m still talking about the same thing because people want to know.

I know this stuff inside and out, so when someone raised their hand and said, “Well, hey, I need to know this.”  I knew I could provide value.  From that, my entire business changed.  From just being willing to raise my hand and go, “Hey, I can speak to that,” within three weeks I was on the #1 internet marketing podcast in the country at the time.  I was invited to be on stages all across the country.  I was invited to do guest blog posts, which was a huge thing at the time.  It was like, suddenly all of this changed.  My list grew exponentially, I started making all kinds of money, I had people wanting to be my affiliate, and I was like, “What’s an affiliate program?”  I didn’t even know.  “I’ll get one of those, I guess.”

It was so fun. What I’m asking you to do is think about, “What kind of story can you tell?”  Now, I want you to break your stories into two pieces.  That, for me, that was a professional story I just told.  You want an example of you, showing who you are as a work person, like I just shared.  The other story that I want you to have in mind, that you’re going to share with people, is a personal story.  Again, it can be anything, but you want it to be something that you can then, kind of doing what I’m doing here.  Unpack a little bit for the audience and say, “Why did we just tell that story?  What’s that about?”  And, I’ll demonstrate because sometimes that’s a little bit easier.

Personal Story

It was just about four years ago that I was diagnosed with non-smoking related lung cancer.  I’m here.  I’m doing great.  Yay!  And totally healthy and fantastic, and I’d like to talk about how I experienced a miracle during that time.  What happened was, I was diagnosed with a particular kind of lung cancer.  There are three kinds, if you don’t know about this.  I know way more than I ever wanted to know.  There’s large cell, small cell, and then this weird third kind that no one has ever heard of.  I was diagnosed with small cell non-smoking related lung cancer from a biopsy.  They had tissue, and because I had been doing what I do…I speak and do podcasts, and webinars, and all kinds of stuff all of the time, I had built up a sizable list and following between social media and my lists.

So, the night before my surgery, I sent out an email and I said, “If you’re the praying kind, please pray.  If you’re the visualizing kind, please visualize.  If you’re the energy kind, I need all of the good vibes I can get.  Whatever… please send it.  I’ll take it.  I’m having this surgery tomorrow, and I’m scared.”  The next day I had surgery, and when I got out of the surgery, my doctor said, “I know we had seen what we saw.  It was the small cell.  But when we were in there, and we got a bigger piece… We got the rest of everything out, it was this weird third kind…” This weird third kind is called mucoepidermoid, a weird medical name, and Harvard University, over 20 years, had only had 12 cases of this.  Of the 12 documented cases, it never spread, it never came back, and nobody ever died.  And, that’s the miracle that I experienced in my life.

It was a scary time.  I mean, I couldn’t speak.  Ha ha… That’s a whole other story.  I couldn’t speak for three months. They had to remove a big chunk of my lung.  My brain was looking for that chunk of my lung and saying, “Oh, we don’t see it. Ah, you can’t breathe.”  So, my breath would stop because my brain didn’t think that I could breath.  There were three months when I was like, “If I can’t speak… [gasp]… what am I going to do for a… [gasp]… living?  Do I need to find a new… [gasp]… line of work?”  They’re like, “It’ll be fine.”  Darn it, if it wasn’t cardio exercise that got me back.  My husband was like, “I told you so.”  He’s a personal trainer.

So, anyway… What was that?  That was a personal story.  Now, I’m going to tie that personal story back into work.  How did I get to experience that miracle?  Well, I experienced that miracle, number 1, because of my faith.  That’s my personal piece, but also because I had built up this community of people who were listening to what I had to say, who were reading my emails, who were reading my social media posts, and they liked me.  Remember, we talked about this at the beginning.  You’ve got your personal, and you’ve got your professional.

If all I was about all of the time was doing public speaking and that was it, and didn’t connect with people, I don’t know what the outcome would have been.  But, what I do know is that I received email replies from literally around the world, and in multiple languages and in broken English [saying], “I’m praying for you, and I hope you’re okay.”  And, it was amazing.  That was because I had taken that time.

You know, you hear about building your list. Well, I think of my list as individual human being people, and that’s how I like to talk to them, and that’s how I treat them.  That’s, then, how they treated me, and they helped me have a miracle.

Now, there’s my story.  That was a personal story.  I had cancer; that’s a personal story.  I related it to work, and I’m going to relate it to you.  If you’re not building your list, and building your tribe, and sharing who you are, you’re making a huge mistake in your business.  Why?  Because there are business reasons to do that, and there are going to be personal reasons, that you don’t even know of, later.  You don’t even know.

I have multiple stories I could go on about, but like, all kinds of reasons why you want to be sharing who you are with your people.  So, a personal story and a professional story that rolls off of your tongue, the way that I just shared those stories with you.  It’s clear that I’ve told them before.  I want you to practice your stories, your personal stories, your professional stories, so that you can connect with people also.

Using Stories to Build Your Business 

What you want to do is think of a way, “How can I tie this personal stuff into this work stuff?”  So, for me, I tie my personal stuff into my work stuff by saying, “Okay so, how did I connect with people?  How did I build my list?  How did that miracle happen in my life?  Well, it was through speaking.  It was through connecting with people from the stage.  I’m going to show you how.  Here are some ways that you can connect with people from the stage,” and then I would share some content about connecting from the stage.  You tie your personal in with your professional, and then share some steps about exactly how to do that.

When you’re thinking about, “What are the kinds of steps that I should share,” these should be things that you’re going to know off the top of your head because you say them all the time.  Maybe, think about the most frequently asked questions that you get in your business.  When you say, “I am a…” or “I do this,” or “I have a book called that,” or “I have a training that does this,” and they want to know stuff.  What are those three, maybe four, and no more than five, most frequently asked questions that you get, that you can then speak to right away?

I’m telling you now, from years of experience doing interviews like this, and podcasts, and being on stage, and even media interviews.  There’s not a question that somebody’s going to come up with when they are first meeting you, first introducing you, that you’re going to be stumped by, if you’ve thought through these 3-5 frequently asked questions.  Because, everyone wants to know the same thing, so they’re going to ask you that.  Know your answers.  It’s pretty simple.

When I share that story about being able to jump up on stage with that group of people, and actually the miracle story because what I talk about spoke to a lot of audiences and that’s how I did it… One of the things that people say all of the time is, “Oh my gosh!  I’m so scared to speak.  I don’t think I could ever do that.”

How does someone get past being scared to speak?  Ding!  There’s my question.  How does someone get past being scared to speak?  I know the answer to that, and so, I [say], “You know, there’s three things that you can do…”  Practice and visualize, those are the two biggest things.  The third is “expect it”.  Know you’re going to be nervous and deal with it.

Then, I have steps.  “Well, how do you do that?”  How do you visualize, and what does that look like?  How do you practice, and what does that look like?  If I have 30 seconds, I’m going to say, “Visualize, practice, and expect that it’s coming and deal with it.”  If I have three hours, I’m going to spend an hour on each one of those.  See?  Easy.

So, if you break things into numbers that you know… three things… two things… the #1 secret of… five things… Don’t go above five because it starts to get hard to remember.  Unless they are very specific steps that you could totally do in your sleep, anything above five, that’s okay.  But, otherwise you’ll be like, “I don’t remember the sixth one.  What was it again?”  That does the opposite; you don’t want that.

So, no more than five.  Three is an easy number.  And then, sometimes it helps to have the #1 secret, or the #1 tip, or whatever, like that because people will ask you.  Here’s another one that you’ll get asked a lot.  What’s your favorite quotation?  If you don’t have a favorite quotation already, then think of one that you like and have that in your head, whatever it happens to be.  I love lots of quotations, so I will use a different quotation for different reasons, depending on what they happen to be.

Sometimes you get asked that question at weird, random times.  For me, I didn’t even expect that it was coming… Back when Twitter was a brand new thing, I would do like 50 quotations a day, just tweeting out stuff. Motivational stuff, because it was fun and I loved it, and it was copy and paste, so I mean, how hard was that?  That’s how you build your following is, you give people what they were interested in, and my people were interested in that.

So, I would have like 15 come to mind, and all of them try to get out of my mouth at the same time.  It didn’t work; so now I’ve got a couple that I fall back on, depending on what the circumstances are.  Think about that for yourself as well.  That’s like a little bonus tip.  What could be a famous quotation that you could share?

Call to Action

You know, I think the final step is that you’ve got to tell people what you want them to do next.  You’ve got to have a call to action.  Now they know you, now they know your stuff, so now what?  What do you want them to do?  Do you want them to go to a website?  Do you want them to read a blog post?  Maybe you’ve got a re-targeting campaign set up?  So, anyone that hit your blog post, that you’ve got out there for free, you’re going to be re-targeting them for the next 180 days.  Hallelujah!  Thank you Facebook!  They don’t even have to opt in.  You’re just going to follow them around.  Not that I know anything about that… Or, maybe you do want them to opt into something.

Maybe you want them to go buy your book, or maybe you want them to download your free Kindle book.  Maybe you want them to subscribe to your podcast.  Maybe you want them to subscribe to your YouTube channel. Whatever you’re working on at the moment. By the way, your call to action can change depending on what you’re working on at the moment.  It doesn’t matter what your call to action is, it just has to be something.  You just want them to go somewhere because if they liked you, and they thought your stuff was good, now give them more.  What’s next?

Give people their marching orders.  That’s another thing.  In the business world, people want a leader.  They want to follow a leader because they don’t have the time to figure out a lot of this good stuff themselves.  They are busy doing what they’re doing.  If they identify you as an authentic leader, someone that’s genuine and somebody that they trust, such as when you do make a call to action, when you do have them do something, or ask that they do something, not all of them are going to do it. However, there’s going to be a percentage of those people who resonate with you and your story that will actually take the action.  Those are the cream of the crop people.  Those are the people who you really want to be doing business with anyway.

Why are those the people who you want to be doing business with anyway?  It’s because, 1), they made a decision, and 2) they took an action.  So, they didn’t just decide, “This is good stuff, I’m going to have to go get that later.”  They did it right now.  You know this, if you’ve worked with anybody.  The greatest joy they get is when they come to us and say, “What should I do,” and then they go do it and get their results.  They’re like, “Hallelujah!”  Then, they go off and do their thing.  We want those people who have made that commitment and taken that action, however small it may be.  It doesn’t necessarily have to have purchased a product.  Just going to like the Real Fast Results podcast would be an action they could take.

Connecting with Felicia

If you like the idea of trying to figure out what you want to say and having it ready to go, and you liked the story about how I was just able to jump up on stage, that would mean that you’d want to have a signature speech ready to go.  So, go to SignatureSpeechSecrets.com, and  you can opt-in there and get something for free.  Learn about how to do the signature speech, and if you think the beginning stuff sounds great, I have a whole training that you can sign up for after that.  If you think the beginning sounds good enough and you can run with that, awesome!  I have plenty of other stuff coming your way that will help you.  It starts with having your signature speech ready to go at a moment’s notice, knowing what you’re going to say, knowing how you’re going to say it, and feeling that confidence.  That’s SignatureSpeechSecrets.com.

Resources

Felicia’s Book: Kill the Elevator Speech: Stop Selling, Start Connecting

Real Fast Results Community

If you are diggin’ on this stuff and really love what we’re doing here at Real Fast Results, would you please do me a favor? Head on over to iTunes, and make sure that you subscribe to this show, download it, and rate & review it. That would be an awesome thing.

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As always, go make results happen!

Filed in: Cool Tools • list building • Marketing Strategies
Tagged with: Felicia Slattery • grow your business • growing your list • how to speak confidently • list building • sharing your business • speak confidently • speaking