In my special report, What I Know For Sure: Lessons Learned in 10 Years of Business, I list 75 topic areas that I have bumped into over ten years. Throughout October, I will randomly choose one of the 75 and expound on it. So here’s today’s:
#40 Public speaking is truly the best, most leverageable marketing strategy for service professionals. Trust issues, resistance and skepticism melt away when we see someone in person (for the most part). Nothing else does this like being in the room with your prospects. Get out and speak!
Okay, it’s kind of laughable for me to stuff my opinion on this subject into a single blog post. 
For those of you who don’t know me, I specialize in teaching a very cutting-edge public speaking training, and for 5 years, have been teaching entrepreneurs to “Speak Free and Profit.” (See ebook to the right of this page and archived posts to learn even more.)
So what *can* I say about this in a paragraph or two? Well, how about this: some things never change in a wildly changing world. The internet has lulled us into believing we can connect with others through our monitors and iPhones–but the truth is, we still need to experience each other in a live setting. We still crave the connection that is born out of face-to-face, in-person communication. It is not dead, any more than the delicious joy of holding a book in our hands and reading from paper pages is dead. Communing with others live is a delicious joy, too, and as entrepreneurs dedicated to effecting change, we must elevate speaking to the top of our marketing to-do list because it is our job to do what works. Getting people in the room to influence them to act on our world-changing idea, or to purchase something, is just plain being business smart. MUCH smarter than sitting around, waiting for dollars to come out of our Facebook pages.
Speaking is far more “Brain-Sticky” than any other kind of marketing, period. When you speak to a room of people, you have an unprecedented opportunity to remove resistance and doubt and replace it with powerful and long-lasting (if you know what you’re doing) trust and affinity. If you’re a keen observer of human dynamics, you know that an energetic circuit evolves in a room, and a master knows how to use that energy to lift the room to heights of inspiration, hope and empowerment–driving action–-and once that has occurred, you have a dozen or thousand new fans who will want more of that experience…in you.
You can’t create this kind of circuit anywhere else. As such a master of live event energy, I’ve tried! You need to get them in the room with you. And they want to be there still, though it’s a tougher task to get them there than it used to be. But as humans, they want to feel the electricity that occurs in the presence of like-minded cohorts, and they want to see you up close and personal.
I always say, “Inspiration sells.” But inspiration gets transmitted best through the energy of live human beings, looking in each other’s eyes, touching each other’s arms, hearing each other’s laughs…and watching you in your grand sincerity and brilliance. Public speaking is, hands down, the most leveragable of all marketing strategies ever conceived. Some things just never change.
Get all 75 tips PLUS much more here! http://inspiredleadershiptraining.com/10Years/report/
And watch for the TOP 10 to be revealed on Halloween…and for great specials to be announced Friday on my birthday!!
Richard Branson
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