GETTING IN FRONT OF PEOPLE

The dream of many small business owners is to have a private audience where they can share their personal and business stories and to tell about problems that exist and how their products or services can solve them. To have an audience that does not cost anything to gather and who will stay through an entire presentation, is priceless.  How much will your business grow if you have 20 to 50 people every week listening to you?

While I believe that the internet and social media are providing the small business owners with an important platform from which to tell their stories, it is still a very crowded medium and competition is very stiff. In my opinion, having a private audience is the very best foundation upon which to grow your business.

There are a few caveats to this ideal marketing system. First, you have to have a good presentation.  Your personal story and business story have to be sincere and captivating. The Pitch Deck session that can be found on your Biz Quack dashboard, under the education tab, is a good place to start. The second part is practice, practice, practice. It’s not good enough to know what you are going to present, it has to be presented in such a manner that it impacts the audience. The third tool is to have a compelling flyer or brochure with an overview of the talk and the problems that will be solved.

Now let’s work on getting an audience.

• Every civic organization such as Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, Optimist, (hundreds of clubs locally) meet every week and need a speaker for each meeting. That alone represents years of speaking opportunities.
• Business groups, professional associations, church groups, and chamber of commerce groups also have a need of speakers for their meetings.
• Many libraries offer free space and even promote an educational speaker in their facility.
• There is no shortage of speaking opportunities, however, you will have to do a little digging to get the names of the responsible person in each organization for booking the program.

Growing a business requires a lot of “getting out of your comfort zone”. It also includes devoting the time to build the necessary foundation so that growth can build upon itself.

“You have no idea if your idea matters until you share it.”
                                                 -Rands