A Note from Your President

How will you aim to make it Your Best Year Yet?

As we are a professional and supportive family of speakers, trainers, and consultants, I believe there is power in sharing our broad goals with each other. We can challenge and support each other, and help everyone achieve success in their own way.

“Share Don’t Compare” is a great motto I’ve heard and spoken a number of times. While being paid to speak is a core element of what we all do, our topics, methods, and value propositions are completely unique. We each need to become the best version of ourselves, and part of that process is learning from others and sharing with others what we have learned.

Thanks to our spectacular September Guest Speaker Mike Rayburn, CSP, CPAE (@MikeRayburn) – for sharing how he writes down his key goals EVERY MORNING. That, my friends, is a habit of winners – keeping what is important in the front of your mind.

Here are a couple of areas where I will personally aim to make it My Best Year Yet. And, while these are general in format, I know that writing them down on regular basis is a key step in the process to making them a reality.

• Improved online presence — to better reflect my value proposition and to better connect with those who need what I offer
• Stronger product offerings — to expand additional revenue streams
• More collaboration, delegation, and networking — to better leverage my time and energy

Meaningful time spent with family, friends, and colleagues — to further develop those relationships that are so important to healthy living

One element of many successful organizations is that they allow space for talking openly about dreams, goals and objectives. At NSA North Texas, let’s aim to do that in our ongoing interactions — in person, on the phone, and on social media. We have the opportunity to take our conversations deeper, and to me that’s a big part of the value of membership in the National Speakers Association.

Write it down, and put it out there!

September Meeting Shout-Outs

If you missed the September meeting, here are a couple of additional highlights:

• Unicorn Event – While it is a treat to have one NSA Cavett Award winner at our Chapter meeting, we had TWO and they are absolute gems of the speaking world:
  • Gary Rifkin, CSP, 2015 Cavett Award Winner (@GaryRifkin) – Let’s keep the love going for our local boy!
  • Thom Winninger, CSP, CPAE, 1995 Cavett Award Winner (@Winninger) – Thom will also be our Special Guest Speaker on Saturday, January 9th, 2016!

• Washington, D.C. Influence 2015 Breakout Sessions – Several of our Chapter members led content sessions. Thanks for contributing to a great event!
  • Christine Cashen, CSP, CPAE (@ChristineCashen)- Cavett Institute
  • Mike Dilbeck, CSP (@MikeDilbeck) – Cavett Institute
  • Past-President Tim Durkin, CSP (@TimDurkin) – How to Earn your CSP Designation
  • Past-President Michael Hoffman, CSP (@Hoffman_Mike)- Deconstructing YouTube
  • Sandi Leyva (@CPAAccelerator) – Start and Run a Profitable Membership Program
    Jim Pancero, CSP, CPAE (@JimPancero) – CPAE Business Meeting
  • Past-President Russ Riddle (@AnomalyAtLaw) – Corral your Ca$h Cow (Protect your I.P.)
  • Past-President Gary Rifkin, CSP (@GaryRifkin) – Surprise songs at “The Speaker Games”
  • Past-President Stu Schlackman, CSP (@Schlackman) – How to Sell your GIG!

Looking forward to a GREAT October!

To your continued Success and Happiness,

 

 

Chris Price (@ChrisPriceCDP)
President 2015-16
NSA North Texas (@NSANorthTexas)

Our Next Seminar October 10, 2015

Leveraging Your Thought Leadership

Neen James, CSP

Would you love to have others value your ideas and expertise?

Would you like to spend your working days doing what you love?

This program has helped over 1,000 people grow their thought leadership practice and sell their thoughts. This program helps you to capture, package and deliver your ideas for greater commercial success. The focus of this program will be to share how an infopreneur can successfully commercialize their thought leadership – running a practice that generates from $500K to $1.5M per year with one or two support staff.

Join other thought leaders to understand the systematic, methodology to grow your practice based on diversifying modes of delivery and taking the appropriate steps at each revenue level.
Infopreneurs become recognized as thought leaders when they clearly define a unique perspective or offering to the market based around the subject they are an expert in. When they have built on the thinking in their domain, added to the knowledge in their area and challenged and extended the status quo.

If you know something, its one thing; becoming known for it is another. It’s all about how you leverage your ideas and sell your thoughts. Discover how you can create a Thought Leaders Practice working 50-200 days with one or two support staff.

About the Speaker

Neen James, MBA, CSP is an Australian leadership expert focused on productivity who delivers engaging keynotes that have educated, and entertained audiences with real-world strategies that apply in at work and home. As a partner in Thought Leaders Global, Neen also provides one-on-one mentoring and helps people become commercially smart. Hear the secrets she shared when she spoke for the Million Dollar Speakers Group at the NSA convention.

Website

Mark your calendar and make your reservation now!

Saturday, October 10,  8:00 am – 12:30 pm
Hilton Garden Inn Dallas / Richardson

 

 

NSA-NT Labs begin in October at Hackberry Country Club, Irving, TX

Bring your Laptops and roll up your sleeves for a hands-on workshop on Social Media.

Dates/Time: Thursday, October 15th, 6:30-9:30 pm with a 15 minute break

Topic: Social Media

Presenters: Amy Kinnaird, Doug Petersen and Michael Hoffman

• Create a simple social media planning calendar
• Group discussion on content sources, graphics, hashtags
• Facebook, Twitter – basics, lists, how-to and why they are important
• YouTube / Videos

Dates/Time: Tuesday, Oct 27, 6:30-9:30 pm with a 15 minute break

Topic: Social Media
Presenters: (Doug Petersen, and others TBD)

• Email Marketing – why, what, differences between providers, Opt in box, “pink spoon” concept
• Periscope, Blab
• LinkedIn – how to make it work for you
• More info as presenters are identified

More detailed information will be coming soon on: www.speaker.org

 you, the speaker - Write your way to jobs

by Dave Lieber, CSP

Somebody contacts you for a job. You get to make your two-minute pitch on the phone about how great you are and how you can help them. But how do you get in front of the other decision makers, the committee?

Write your way to that job.

Here’s one secret: under the guise of a thank-you note, pitch your passion for their industry.

How: merge a thank-you note with several paragraphs of passion about their industry that ought to prove irresistible to the committee when it’s passed around. Include a web link to your speaker demo video.

Write a great thank you

I’ve shared with you before the perfect thank you note. I credit it to Paul Salos, a Frank Sinatra tribute singer. He’s my role model:

“Hello, Jenny. It was very nice talking with you this morning. I have attached a few flyers and two music demos for your information. As you can see, I’m an International Artist.

“I would be delighted to work with you to help make your project a huge success. Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.

“Paul Salos, Dallas, Texas.”

Adding the passion

How do you add paragraphs of passion? Some ideas: invoke the industry’s glorious past; show the need that you can fill; show that you understand.

Here’s a written pitch I did recently for a group of electric co-ops in the Deep South:

“As a co-op customer in Texas, I have a strong sense of nostalgia about electric co-ops because of their role in American culture. In a world of deregulated electricity retail sales, many don’t understand why others get to shop for power, but co-op customers in Texas do not. The answer is history.

“I recall a young up-and-coming politician named Lyndon Johnson who worked his tail off to help string wires through rural Texas during the closing years of the Great Depression. To think that many Americans didn’t have electricity well into the 20th century, and that co-ops were that ones that brought it – that’s a true legacy worth honoring.

“If you’re interested in having someone who can show your members how to tell your story in powerful and emotional ways …”

Bam! Got the job. Plus, the above is the opening for my keynote.

Note: As an alternative to writing your way to a job, you can record your thank-you/powerful pitch and send the video to decision makers, using the unlisted setting in YouTube.

* * *

Since 2008 @DaveLieber, CSP, has been writing a monthly column about all things NSA-North Texas. He’s The Watchdog investigative columnist for The Dallas Morning News. DaveLieber.org