8 Ways to Scale the Stage

Speaking on stage is a privilege. But being a road warrior can be a nightmare. And giving one keynote speech after another is not a sustainable business model whether you are a professional speaker or want to be one.

Keynote speaking is not a business. It’s one revenue source. When you build a business exclusively with keynote speaking, you are the business. You only have 24 hours a day and that puts a cap on income potential. It’s also economy dependent. When the economy is slow, meetings and conventions get cut. Without another source of income, a professional speaker can go broke. In a good economy, it means you are constantly on the road which can lead to burnout. If you burnout, your ability to generate income will be compromised.

There’s a better solution. By scaling your business you’ll have additional streams of income, which will give you more time to enjoy your life and you’ll ultimately have peace of mind during an economic downturn.

Allison Mason, author of Scale or Fail, identified five stages of scaling:

1. The Seeker

2. The Pioneer

3. The Ringleader

4. The Co-Creator

5. The Visionary.

Once you decide to expand beyond keynote speaking, there are a number of ways to add revenue streams to your business. Here are 8 ways to scale the stage:

Digital products-A digital product can be an Ebook or audio file that customers can purchase from your website.

Online classes-These classes are usually a series of videos and require some back office technology. A quicker and easier alternative is to offer videos on an existing portal that sells online learning.

Membership Programs-This requires building a community. Customers pay a monthly charge and meet with you on a weekly or monthly basis to learn from your expertise and to share knowledge and feedback with their peers. It requires an all-in-one platform that can create email funnels, create pdf or audio files and track the database.

Licensing-A speaker can sell programs to a company and then train them to do it in-house for a fee. The company pays to use the intellectual property.

Certification-A speaker or expert can train others in their process. Let’s say a keynote speaker wants to learn coaching skills. They can pay you for your knowledge and they’ll receive a certificate. They’ll then be able to start coaching their own clients with their newly acquired skills.

Subcontracting-Here is where the speaker can duplicate themselves by hiring other trainers to deliver their programs. The speaker who owns the program pays each subcontractor and takes a percentage of the fee.

Sponsorship-A speaker may offer a public program where other experts would love to have access to the audience. The speaker can then charge the experts to give a commercial or buy an ad.

Franchising-When a professional speaker has a robust, growing business complete with employees and replicable systems. it may be time to consider a second location by offering a franchise. This allows for expansion nationally and internationally.

The time to start scaling is now. By scaling the stage you’ll have additional revenue sources and greater opportunities to grow.

How will you scale?

911 for Presentations and Public Speakers

Today marks the eleven year anniversary of 911. I remember it like yesterday. It was the nicest day of the year. There was a noticeable stillness in the air. I headed off to JP Morgan where I was speaking to a group of relationship managers in the private bank. The seminar was on sales presentation skills. We began at 8:00 a.m. A participant arrived late and told me the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. Thinking this was a fabrication for his lateness I was a bit skeptical. When someone else confirmed his story, I called a break and we all marched out to the lobby in search of a television. For the next few minutes we sat in stunned silence as we watched the towers collapse. I asked the manager if she wanted me to continue the seminar and she said no. We cancelled the seminar and I left to find a hotel since certain areas were on lock down and traveling home was probably not an option.

While this is an extreme case of speaking disasters, public speakers need to be prepared for the worst. The best advice for any public speaker is to have a recovery strategy. You never know when your presentation will be impacted by an unforeseen event.

Take the case of the man who was giving a motivational keynote speech to a large audience and suddenly there was a fire in the hotel. The hotel was evacuated and all the audience members were herded into the parking lot. Did that end the speech? Oh, no. This savvy professional speaker jumped on top of a car and continued to give his keynote speech in the parking lot. He believed the show must go on.

I remember when I attended a National Speakers Association conference. There were 2000 people listening to the keynote speaker on the big stage. All of a sudden, an audience member had an epileptic seizure. The audience was now riveted on the disturbance and she realized she had lost their attention. There is always that moment when you question what is the right protocol. She called out and said "Should I stop?" She paused for a bit and when they removed the man she continued her speech. Again, these are extreme examples but they do happen to public speakers.

It's more likely that when you give a presentation you'll encounter less dramatic mishaps. The most common speaking disaster is when technology fails. The recovery strategy for technology failure is to have a back-up. Put your PowerPoint presentation on a flash drive, send an email copy to the meeting planner, and print a hard copy.

What if it's an embarrassing speaking situation? One woman was giving a speech on a stage behind a podium. The elastic band on her half slip (undergarment) snapped and her slip fell to her ankles. She calmly stepped out of the slip and continued her presentation. This would have been a good moment for some humor.

Which brings us to the best public speaking recovery strategy. Take a line from Rod Stewart's song "Her ad lib lines were well rehearsed." In other words, plan some extender lines. Let's say the lights go off. You could say, "Next time I'll pay my electric bill." But what if they continue to flicker and go off again? If you have a few lines you can extend the humor by adding a new "ad lib." One professional speaker had a technology meltdown. He had five extender lines which he used. He later confessed that he was glad that the problem was fixed after the fifth attempt because he had no more humorous one-liners.

Anticipate what could go wrong in your every day presentations. I've spilled coffee, knocked over a flip chart, and hit the wrong button on the video playback. I even lost my train-of-thought when presenting on a panel. I knew what I wanted to say but couldn't retrieve the word. My brain froze. So I simply asked the audience, "What is the word I'm looking for?" They gave it to me and that was the end of it.  When it comes to public speaking or any kind of presentation, the audience will not fault you for flubbing if you recover with grace.

Back in 2001 when my seminar was cancelled, we did recover with grace. We rescheduled the presentation a month later and the attendees performed well. They recovered emotionally and that was the best recovery strategy.

What were your worst public speaking disasters and how did you recover? What advice do you have for other public speakers and presenters?