I came across a public speaking tip by Heidi Miller over at Talk It Up! blog. It works well as a sort of follow on from my last blog post. Heidi talks about seminar presentations. Here’s a quick extract from that article:

Public Speaking Tip #6

“Here’s the thing. For most seminar presentations at conference, you have an hour. You are not going to be able to change our lives in an hour. You are not going to be able to give us 10 things we are going to be able to absorb and implement in an hour. You are not going to be able to change our entire way of thinking about something in an hour…”

She’s absoutely right of course.  Of the speakers I’ve seen who don’t have any specific training other than being in a managerial position, most do exactly this.

They try to cram in a lot of infomation, without sparing a thought for us listeners who might not even know where to begin to implement any suggestions. Or even to understand the exact take away value from what they are telling us.

I certainly learnt something from Heidi’s article.

To read the full article click here.

We’ve all heard about how people’s number fear is public speaking. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld had this to say on the fear of public speaking:

“The number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Number two. That means most people would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy”.

Although the line is funny,  to me it just doesn’t seem right. People’s number one fear is still public speaking.

So I decided to come up with a few tips that might help people conquer the public speaking fear. Here’s my Top 7 Tips that I’ve put together in order to help reduce that top spot ranking: Read the rest of this entry

I’ve recently read an article on the Erik Stafford’s blog about a technique called the Entrepreneurial Time System.

In case you don’t know who he’s known as “The Faster Webmaster” and he’s the creator of a product of the same name as well as the one that I recently purchased: 7 minute websites.

I don’t want to get into talking about Internet marketing right now and detract from what I want to talk about.

But the aritcle that he’s written on his blog definitely applies to becoming a professional speaker and entreprenuer.

A lot of the comments he makes not only resonate with me and what I’m in the process of doing right now, but it really applies to anyone following a similar entrepreneurial path.

I was originally going to just re-post it here, but I’ve decided to re-post bits of it instead and add my own thoughts on how I can implement the techniques.

At the moment I work too many hours. My working day usually finishes around 10pm. This includes working a day job and working on my business in the evenings. The worst it’s been was working on Christmas Day 2006! Not good.

My problem is i just try to do everything at once.

As Erik says on his blog “the Entrepreneurial Time System breaks the work week down into the following types of days”:

“Free Days: Free Days are 24 hours, from midnight to midnight… completely unplugged. No email, no work, no phone”.

This is always a challenge for me as I often sneek in a bit of work on Sundays. “I just need to check one email”, I say to my girlfriend. Then four hours later I’m up to my armpitts in something else. So I’ll give it a shot seeing as it’s required and when better than on a Sunday.

“Buffer Days: includes blogging, myspace and social bookmarking stuff, emails, etc”.

Okay, so I need to take specific days to deal with this sort of thing, I generally start my evenings this way, so then it takes me forever to get to do any actualy work.

Focus Days: involve things directly affect my bottom line and the growth of my business. For instance, setting up partnerships and joint venture opportunities.

For me this would currently include contacting web design companies to find someone to update my main website, following up with the people I met at the Business Startup Exhibition, developing speeches and so on.

For me I think I’m going to break my week down into four focus days, two buffer days and one free day. I’ll try to get that implmented as soon as I can and then re-evaluate in about a month’s time.

Cheers for that Erik.

PS, if you want to know motre about Erik Stafford’s work check out: 7 minute websites it’s an absolute steal at $7.

I had the opportunity to attend a business exhibition at the Olympia centre in London past weekend. The exhibition was specifically about dealing with business startups and further information can be found here on their website BStartup.

I’d been once before a couple of years ago, but I didn’t really have as clear an idea of what my business was back then.

It was a worthwhile experience as I managed to make contact with some business people who were interested in the consultancy side of my business.

I figured it was better to offer that side of my business at such an exhibition, as opposed to trying to get them to hire me as a speaker to talk about whatever.

I also made contact with some web desgin companies who I might hire to re-vamp my main website. So I need to clarify how many that site is going to now need.

I also spoke to the Business Link people who have put me in touch with my local department who might be able to help me sort out some finanicing. I’ve made contact with them and now have a initial meeting booked for later this month. That will hopefully allow me to stop temping in office jobs and provide me the freedom to pursue my business.

All in all this business exhibition was a very good and valuable experience. I even got to breifly meet Levi Roots, a guy who received investment from the British TV show Dragon’s Den.

He gave an insipirational 30 minute speech, which wasn’t brilliantly structured, but did contain 100% personality and passion. So he didn’t really need any help with that side of his business.

I also picked up a couple of bottles of his “Reggae Reggae Sauce” and a new one, “Love Apple Sauce”, and i’ve been using them a lot since.

Not sure about putting them on my cornflakes…