Speak Up For Your Business

By Michelle Mazur

Do you love your business but don’t know how to talk about it with others?
Is the fear of public speaking keeping you from taking your business to the next level?
You know public speaking is a great way to establish your credibility, create buzz about your business, and attract your perfect client, but you have no idea what to talk about or why anyone should listen to you.
Or are there a million ideas swirling in your head but you don’t know the presentation secrets of crafting a message that resonates?
Do you fear that people won’t like you or want to do business with you because of something you said—or didn’t say?
Fear public speaking no more. Professional public speaking expert Michelle Mazur is here to help. With a Ph.D. in Communication and hundreds of speeches under her belt, Michelle knows exactly the presentations skills you need to engage your audience, persuade people to believe in your message, and ultimately, get the sale or business relationship you desire.
In Speak Up for Your Business, Michelle reveals how you can:
- Develop your presentation skills so that you persuade and motivate your audience
- Stop feeling sleazy about selling with this one presentation secret
- Create a strategy to cope with your fear of public speaking
- Embrace your Inner F-Bomb (it’s not what you think)
- Organize your presentation in a sexy way
- Give your audience real value
- Create an experience through story with four essential ingredients
- Begin your presentation with a win & close with a bang
- Adapt your presentation on the fly
- Handle those wing-nut questions that threaten to derail your speech
- Land more speaking gigs

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Author Incubator
• Release date: Apr 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781936984473

Michelle Mazur

As a Speech Designer and Idea Architect, Dr. Michelle Mazur guides introverted business professionals and entrepreneurs to ignite the smoldering fires within them so they can speak up, speak out, and make their impact—one compelling presentation at a time. Her passion is helping super smart people get their ideas communicated to the people who need to hear it most. Michelle earned a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Oklahoma, and as a professor, she inspired university students to find their voices and share their messages for more than ten years. She is the author of Speak Up for Your Business and contributing author to the Amazon Best Seller Ted:ology: Presentation Secrets of TED Talks and Master Presenter: Lessons from the World’s Top Experts on Becoming a More Influential Speaker. Her writing has appeared on 12 Most, PR Daily, Ragan.com, SOLD Magazine, PR Europe, and Business2Community. Her blog, Relationally Speaking, was listed at #11 of the 101 best online resources for public speaking. She resides in Seattle, Washington with her loving fiancé, two obsessive felines, and a huge collection of Duran Duran memorabilia.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

How Your Small Business

Prepares You to Speak

The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.

— John F. Kennedy

Did you know that all of the thinking you’ve done, the market research you’ve conducted, the strategies that you have to market, grow, and retain customers in your business—all are great preparation for public speaking?

Seriously, as an entrepreneur, whether you are just starting out or you’ve got your business running like a well-oiled Mini Cooper, you’re laying the groundwork simultaneously for a great presentation.

I discovered this because I’m writing a marketing plan. Riveting, eh?

Yes, I know—I’ve been running a business for about two years now with absolutely no marketing plan. Just like public speaking, it was time that I decided to stop winging it with my marketing. As I went through the exercise of refining my marketing strategies, developing a unique selling proposition, and becoming more laser-focused on those clients with whom I love doing business (and the realization that I have the most amazing clients ever), I concluded that running the business is the best preparation for speaking.

The similarities between writing a business plan and giving a jaw-dropping, full-out awesome presentation are striking. Your business does a great job preparing you to speak.

Target Market = Audience Research

You’ve got a target market in mind. You know what pains the people in that market, what challenges them, and what flabbergasts them. You understand the language they speak and how they talk about their challenges. You intimately know how they feel. In fact, you’ve gotten to know them so well you probably know what their favorite movies are and whom they want to see in concert this summer.

Now, you can use all of that intelligence to speak up for your business. Audience analysis should always be the first step in any successful presentation, but the good news is that you’ve done all of that research already. Market research is audience analysis!

Use what you know about your audience’s problems, emotions, and language, and put it into your presentation. You’ll make people feel like you are talking directly to them, and they’ll be shouting, I want what you’ve got! by the end.

Focused on creating value

What’s your unique selling proposition (USP)? A USP is effective (and crucial) for marketing efforts. You can use the essence of it for what I call the BIG IDEA statement. The BIG IDEA statement is a ten-word declarative sentence that guides your entire presentation. It answers the question, As a result of hearing my presentation, what should my audience know/feel/do?

Now, if you don’t have a USP and don’t know where to start with this BIG IDEA statement, I’ll be gently guiding you through a step-by-step process to develop yours.

As a business owner, you solve a problem and add value to your prospective clients’ lives when they hear you speak. When you are focused on a goal and serving the audience, you’ll be creating value. This ups your know, like, and trust factor and gets audiences to buy.

The key is always to be creating value because it transforms your audience and makes you the go to expert when it comes to the problem you uniquely solve.

The passion factor

If you own your own business, you love what you do. (If you don’t love what you do, sell your business and start again.) You’ve got the passion factor. Audiences get fired up when you unbridle your enthusiasm about your topic. Passion is about knowledge and belief in your topic.

Passion creates sparkle—that gleam in your eye that causes audiences to lean in and crowd around you after a winning presentation.

My friend, Rebecca, owns an interior design company, Rivalee Design. She’s not your average, Let’s pick a color, buy some drapes, and gut your bathroom type of a designer. She’s a designer who believes changing your physical environment can transform your life.

I recently watched Rebecca give a presentation to a networking group about her business and what she does. By any standards, the presentation was a good one. Well-organized, clear message, great visuals, and well-delivered. However, this was a great presentation. What transformed this presentation from a good presentation to a great one?

Sparkle. Rebecca just sparkled as she gave her speech. She glowed. She shined. Whatever you want to call it, she was clearly sharing her joy and passion. As I looked around at the audience, everyone was entranced by her presentation. People connected to her, to the stories of her clients, and to her mission. I’d bet one of my cats that everyone left that room pumped up to recommend Rebecca’s business.

At this point, you might think, Great, your friend sparkles in a non-vampire kind of way. What does that have to do with me? Everything.

We can all sparkle.

Passion, excitement, and enthusiasm are what an audience really, really wants from you in a presentation. As a small business owner, you have the opportunity to talk about the business you gave birth to! Let your enthusiasm shine through.

Understanding your audience, creating value through your big idea statement, and exhibiting overflowing passion for your topic puts you leaps and bounds ahead of other speakers out there.

Public speaking is one of the best ways to market your business. Guess what? You are already nearly prepared to speak out for your small business.

This book is a step-by-step process of teaching you how to speak up for your business whether you’re in a boardroom, at a networking event, teaching a workshop, or on a stage in front of 100 (or even 10,000) of your new BFFs.

This book is for you if you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, or coach of any kind who wants to attract more clients or customers to your business.

By following the advice in this book, you’ll establish a winning presentation strategy that doesn’t just sell to your audience members—it transform them. Following is the path we’ll take through this book to do just that.

In Part I, you’ll learn how to speak up for your business mindset. The early chapters of this section focus on mindset. All of the things that get in the way of you getting out there and talking about your business more.

First, in the next chapter, I will declare the end of sleazy selling. Instead of spewing information from an influential stage followed by a sales pitch, it’s time to create enormous value for your audience and give your best stuff away for free—no strings attached.

The biggest roadblock to speaking up for your business is fear. In Chapter 3, you’ll find out why fear happens and how to tame the fear monster before embarking on any opportunity to talk up your business.

Chapter 4 focuses on mistakes, foibles, failure, and flaws. You’ll learn exactly how to embrace those F-bombs as merely characteristics that make you unique as a speaker. Plus, you’ll learn how your prospective clients can grow by learning from your failures. Mistakes are presentation magic.

Chapter 5 conquers all the crappy stuff we tell ourselves before walking on stage or going into networking events—those self-limiting beliefs that hold us back. It’s time to get out of your head and speak with your heart to capture your audience’s attention and imagination.

Once you’ve got the Speak Up mindset down, it’s time to start using all that hard-fought market research.

In Part II, you’ll learn how to craft your Transformational Talk. Now that you’ve got your mind in the game—tamed the fear, the self-limiting beliefs, and the foibles—it’s time to get crazy-obsessive, not about yourself, but about your audience—those people you want to serve.

As a businessperson, you’ve got all kinds of strategies (or at least I hope you do): a strategy for customer retention, a marketing strategy, a customer retention strategy, and perhaps even a social media strategy. The one strategy you’re missing? A presentation strategy. Chapter 6 gives you an overview of how to define your presentation strategy so you can a give presentation that sells, tells, and compels (and gets you mo’ clients, mo’ cash).

Once you understand what your strategy entails—it’s time to get crazy obsessive with one group of people—the people who are in your audience giving you their undivided attention. In Chapter 7, find out the questions you need to ask in order to connect with their needs, challenges, and pinpoints. This chapter is key to crafting an offer that creates value for your audience and shows your value so people clamor to do business with you!

Chapter 8 illuminates how to discover what you want to speak about in a Transformational Talk in case you don’t know where to begin. Chapter 9 will focus on how not to overlook anything in giving that Transformational Talk.

Chapters 10-13 are the nuts and bolts of writing your Transformational Talk. In Chapter 10, we start with the end of your speech and craft your call to action and help you understand what value and action you’re giving to the audience. Chapter 11 will teach you how to plan for where your speech is going. Chapter 12 discusses how to organize the meat of your Transformational Talk and Chapter 13 examines the opening and closing of your talk. Finally, Chapter 14 is dedicated to a simple sentence that transforms your talk from a speaking mess to being polished and well prepped.

The final chapter in this section discusses how to prepare for the all-important question and answer section, including how to get the audience members involved early in your presentation so they interact with you throughout your Transformational Talk.

Part III elucidates why and how to use storytelling in your presentation. Chapter 16 explains why storytelling is so important for making your business standout from the competition and how it engages the brains of your potential clients and customers. Chapter 17 reviews the nuts and bolts of storytelling while illuminating the process of how to craft a compelling and engaging story. Then, Chapter 18 covers the three stories that every entrepreneur needs to have in his or her back pocket, whether it’s for speaking, networking, or the about page of your website.

Finally, Part IV describes how to give your Transformational Talk. Chapter 19 talks about the importance of delivery and why delivery skills are the delicious icing on the presentation cupcake. Chapter 20 illuminates the importance of feedback in improving both the content and delivery of your Transformational Talk. Chapter 21 gives unique techniques for improving your delivery, and Chapter 22 explains the BEST way to practice your presentation.

Despite your attention to strategy, preparation, and practice, sometimes presentations don’t go as you would have hoped. Chapter 23 covers how to keep your audience near and how to fix the relationship with your audience if you feel like your presentation is going down in flames. Chapter 24 goes through how to process presentation flops in a way that sets you up for future speaking