I have a question for you and for the Second Chance to Live community and family. During the past 5 years — since I created Second Chance to Live — yet I have had very few speaking opportunities, locally or otherwise.
I am not exactly sure why, as I have written 859 quality articles http://wp.me/P3atD-1H created 45 empowering You Tube video presentations http://wp.me/P3atD-3B3, have been published in journals and news letters both domestically and internationally http://wp.me/P3atD-oK, have been interviewed and appeared as a guest on various radio programs http://wp.me/P3atD-5f used as a educational resource for colleges and universities both domestically and internationally http://wp.me/p3atD-YH and http://wp.me/p3atD-Uv, have a 5 star rating and major presence on all the major search engines and have established myself as an expert in my field http://wp.me/P3atD-D.
Nevertheless, I am not sure why I am not being contacted and asked to be a speaker or presenter at conferences, conventions or for other venues. My focus is to encourage, motivate, empower and instill hope in the lives of individuals who have been faced with trauma, abuse or adversity during their life times. The message that I present is designed to benefit any audience http://wp.me/P3atD-3A.
If there is some one out there in the Second Chance to Live family or community that could help to hone whatever I need to hone to be of greater service as a speaker or presenter, please help me.
I am not sure what I need to do differently.
Thank you.
Craig
Craig J. Phillips MRC, BA
Second Chance to Live
secondchancetolive.org
Our circumstances are not meant to keep us down, but to build us up!
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I hope you find an answer to your question. I have joined local speaking groups and contacted colleges with no luck. I wish you the best of luck!
Hello My Friend,
Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. I received a couple of responses with information to help me in the process. I wanted to share that information with you my friend. I will include that here in this email. Let me know if that helps you. Thank you.
Have a pleasant and rewarding day and God bless both you and your family.
Craig
You asked for comments on why you are not being contacted to speak, despite your achievements and qualifications. I think it’s like the misconception about building a better mousetrap. The old saying is – if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.
Nothing could be more false. If you want to build (and sell) a better mousetrap, first you have to identify people who have mice and consider them a problem. Then, you will have to reach out to your prospects and sell one trap at a time by explaining how it works and demonstrating that it’s better. If you are an unknown inventor, it will help if you can get a well-known salesman to help you sell. Think Ron Popeil.
I am assuming that you want to sell your services as a speaker. I think you need to do some research on speaker bureaus and contact them. Find one that is comfortable with your topic and has connections to organizations or groups that might benefit from hearing you speak. Basically, you need a good agent.
I work as a photographer in the music business. It is virtually impossible for even a great, unknown band to get good bookings without a good agent. Talent buyers want to deal through reputable agents with whom they have built relationships. They don’t want to deal with individual acts. I think the same may be true for speakers.
When you contract with an agent, generally the agent gets a negotiated percentage of your fees, and is not paid up front. If he doesn’t get you bookings, he doesn’t get paid. What you will need to provide is a media kit that contains a biography, a photo, copies of some articles you have written, audio or video recordings of some of your previous presentations that are representative of what you have to offer, and some testimonials from other groups where you have spoken. You will need to put together at least some of this on your own, and the agent should guide you from there.
You could also do some market research. Assuming that you are aware of some of the prospective groups that could hire you to speak, try contacting them and ask if they would be willing to share information regarding who they normally work with to secure speakers. If you get some names, those folks would be worth contacting to see if they could represent you.
And there is Google. A cursory Google search of “speakers bureau” turned up the following links, and there are lots more.
http://www.apbspeakers.com/content/become-speaker
http://www.aeispeakers.com/srepresentation/application/
http://www.speaking.com/free_listing.php
http://www.speakersnetworkworldwide.com/index.aspx
http://www.speakersbureau.com/sonly.htm
The above links have info about what you would need to do to contact them about speaking.
http://www.nsaspeaker.org/Home (This has info about training for speakers who are starting out.)
Hope this helps. Good luck!
-John
Craig
Craig J. Phillips MRC, BA
Second Chance to Live
secondchancetolive.org
Our circumstances are not meant to keep us down, but to build us up.
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You Tube Presentations: http://www.youtube.com/user/2dogbull?feature=mhee