Public speaker? Here are hard-learned lessons from Covid-19

I'm a professional public speaking. In fact, While trying to build a startup and support a charity, I have made my living out of keynotes, talks, and workshops in the past four years.

Many of us weren't prepared for this pandemic. Many of us said we would do an online course, offer webinars, and expand our services to the virtual realms, but many failed to realize that this scale crisis can happen. I have gathered some hard-learned lessons that might help you patch through this pandemic without losing your business.

1. It's obvious, but - enhance your online presence.

If, for some reason, you don't have a website yet, build one today. There are many simple options out there that do not require programming skills or paying a professional. I used skillshare for my website. Still, recently, I have discovered the beautiful Tilda.cc, there are many more like the famous Wix.

Those are free for limited facilities but cheap and straightforward monthly subscription fees.

2. Go live, Go online, go now.

Many of us don't like webinars; It's an old-fashioned way to create traction, leads, or gain new crowds. But in today's age, there are many ways to reinvent this old trick and make it your own.

You can pre-record it and give it for free to gain more members in your mailing lists or community; you can see very cheap tickets or use a distribution platform to make it happen, such as meetup.com or Eventbrite. You can also go live once a week on your social page with the most followers, just giving some value. It doesn't have to be your entire keynote, and it can be a 15 min topic-based talk, a discussion, or a Q&A.

3. Use clubhouse

This is probably the next big thing. Clubhouse is a different kind of social media too. It's a place to share, discuss and present an Idea. It is based on "rooms" in which like-minded people join together and record a voice message, creating a discussion or debate. You can make your own "room" based on an interest or topic, and it's a great way to increase your reputation and followers; grab it while it's hot!

4. Draft everything you can teach as an online course

 Everyone is home, and the online course websites are booming.

There are three times of those:

A.Ones who let you host your course for a monthly fee

B. Ones who sell your classes for a transaction or a commission fee

C. Ones who are like a course streaming service paying you per minute watched.

Unless your entire business is online and digital, I would skip the first option and decide by how long can you make a course:

If it's an hour or more - go Udemy and call it a master class.

If it's less than an hour or you have bute-sized fragmented ideas to teach - go skillshare.

You'll be surprised how much money and influence you can gain by establishing yourself as an online teacher/instructor. I have more than 20k students on Udemy teaching public speaking. And I'm now focusing on making mini coursed out of my workshops materials and post them on skillshare.

4. Start a youtube channel.

Yes, it's late in the game, the chances of making any money are slim, and it's challenging to get any views, but you must be there as a public speaker.

It gives you credibility, trust and since it's the second-largest search engine globally, it puts your name out there to be easily found.

Don't worry about losing your precious materials. If you have any archive materials of you speaking, teaching, interviewing, or such, put them up there. If not, grab the main topic you are already talking about in your keynotes, break it into 10 minutes mini-talks, and only shot. Don't worry about fancy equipment. Your phone will do accompanied by a simple light source and a simple mic.

5. Be on all social media platforms.

Yes, all, Even TikTok, even if you don't know what it means. Just start a profile, using the same handle name if possible, if they use your branding. If you are not branded set, use Fivver or Upwork to do so, I'll drop a recommendation here.

If you can't be persistent enough in posting, do what I did, and hire a highly professional, low-cost social media manager to do it for you, I use this wonderful guy.5. Agents are struggling too, don't rely only on them.

Even the best agent will struggle to sell right now. Be your ambassador. Ensure you do not depend solely on one lead source for your talks. I'm working on a platform to aggregate everything you'll need; stay tuned.

6. Consult

You are already an expert in your field; that's why you're a keynote speaker.

If you haven't done it socially by now, offer consults, one-on-one sessions, coaching, and everything else that can provide value to your enterprise or private clientele. Now it's not the time to be picky but on the other hand, never fake it. If you're confident enough around your subject, dig deeper, and find the way to adjust it to not only talks and workshops but to coaching sessions and consults. It might help you in return to become more prominent in your field.

7. And lastly: write.

I believe that if it's interesting enough to be on stage for an hour, it's interesting enough to be in a book, yes it's hard, but it's worth it. There are some fantastic resources there, such as the scribe school and my editor and choice, Rusti. But it doesn't have to be an entire book. You can quickly and in a matter of days publish a short, dedicated, focused ebook on amazon, making money but also helping to establish yourself as an expert. A full-blown book is possibly the best thing a public speaker can have, increasing your value, charging rate, and prominently. You can publish your ebook for free here and get a great SEO.

Use a medium/Linkedin to share your thoughts.

This website is lovely since it's perceived as a high-quality reading source.

You can create a publication on a topic of your choosing or expertise to share stories, but in any case, by joining the medium partner program, you can make money out of sharing what you love to share. Isn't it lovely?

I learned most of these lessons the hard way, being way too busy flying around, giving keynotes, ironically it almost led to my financial demise but learning all of that helped me be prominent. I followed each snd every section of my advice; it worked wonders. I hope it will help you as well.

P.S - I have put together everything I know in this best-selling Public speaking masterclass, feel free to check it out!