How Professional Speakers Should Set Fees

on Sep 28 in Uncategorized

Setting fees can be difficult, especially if you are just starting your career in public speaking.

If you set a price too high, you may miss out on the booking; setting it low may not provide enough compensation. These are the most common issues in setting up your fees.

If you want others to pay for you to speak then you should believe that you can deliver what is needed. More often than not, speakers that are relatively new to the field undervalue their knowledge and expertise just to get an engagement. You should not do this because you are only hampering your financial and professional goals.

If you start with a reasonably high fee, there is no other way but up. So give yourself a nice head start. Be sure to give one hell of a performance and great service so you can have plenty of follow-ups with referrals. Public speaking is all about marketing, networking, and experience.

When trying to set up a fee, you should decide on a base rate. You can go around this rate and this will be your primary basis for your varying charges. Don’t sell yourself too thin. Have confidence on your ability!

Now, the things to consider:

1)    The Audience

Is it a large audience? Are they difficult to handle?

Obviously, an audience of hundreds is much more difficult to manage compared to 30 to 50 people. You also have to consider what type of audience you will have. An audience composed of unruly teens may be bit demanding compared to an audience composed of educated adults.

2)    The Topic

Is the topic or the theme completely new or something you have not really though about? Is the subject specialized in any way?

If the topic is somewhat alien to you or something you have not really done before, you may charge more because you have to put more research work on the subject. Specialized subjects are not that difficult but needs a little research than usual. Of course, you would only want to deliver a great speech.

3)    The Location

This is the most important thing to consider. The farther the location, the more you should increase your fee especially if it is from another timezone. The travel can be very taxing.

The best way to negotiate with your contact is to get them to make the arrangements in your travel and accommodations. Make them pay for these essentials. That way you don’t have to spend from your pocket initially. If they can’t do this, at least, ask for a 50 percent down payment for all your troubles.

4)    The Type of Engagement

Is the speaking engagement a one shot deal or is it a series of seminars or workshops?

You should consider this because each has its own pros and cons. Set your price accordingly.

These are the basic things to consider when setting up a speaking fee.

Sometimes, there are golden opportunities to speak in an event where you can build up your market. There also speaking opportunities that have a great chance of making a sale in your products and services. These types of engagements should be treated differently because it has great marketing value. You can then set a lower fee on these “gigs” depending on the marketing value they present.

How To Become A Good Speaker by Entertaining the Crowd

on Sep 28 in Uncategorized

There are a lot of tips online on how to become a good speaker. Very often, these tips will encourage you to be presentable, upbeat, they will advise you to always plan and practice your speech, modulate your voice well, you’ve heard the spiel.

I’ll set others aside for awhile and concentrate on the entertainment value of public speaking. After all, speakers are entertainers as well as motivators and informers but they can not achieve these goals if they fail to entertain the audience.

To entertain is to amuse, to catch interest, or to please. An entertained audience is more receptive to any stimulus. Their minds are open and the audience will take anything the speaker has in store for them. Therefore, entertainment is an essential element in speech delivery.

What does it take to entertain a crowd? Do you have to be funny? Do you have to be enthusiastic?

There is no definite manner on how to become entertaining. There can be a lot of ways but I’ll just give general pointers. These are not strict rules but rather  universal guidelines that may give you a broader understanding about entertaining the audience in your speeches. Each speaker has his own style. Explore your own approach because ultimately, your personal methods are still the best.

Stories the ancient art of entertainment

Everybody loves stories. No matter what age, ethnicity, or gender people with the capacity to hear and understand are fond of listening to stories.

The audience wants to hear stories because they can relate and may find lessons from them. Stories, especially true ones, are greatly appreciated by the listeners. Humans are naturally gossip-hungry. We are instinctively wired to seek knowledge either from factual events or from products of fiction. This is why we love to watch news and movies on TV.

In public speaking, you should tell stories relevant to the theme. Your stories should be filled with lessons and should teach the audience something valuable. True stories are the best in this situation. If your stories are not appropriate, you can embellish a little bit. After all, the goal here is to prove your points through entertaining and engaging stories. No one has to know if it is true or not.

Laugh at yourself and the audience will laugh with you

Laughing at yourself sets a mood of acceptance of our weaknesses and inadequacies. It will also relieve the tension in the air and will give the audience the consent to be candid. If they realize that the speaker in front of them is just as human as they are, the audience tends to trust and listen more.
Have fun and be yourself

If you pressure yourself to become the most entertaining speaker the audience has ever come to witness, you will never become one. Even though the goal is to inform and entertain, never forget to relax and be yourself. Your self-imposed pressures may go against you. Just have fun with it and be natural.

Simple Graduation Speeches

on Sep 27 in Uncategorized

The prospect of delivering graduation speeches can fill anyone with fear. Speech making is generally thought of as being very difficult. Many people fear it more than anything else. I feel too that the fear element is high for any speaker. However if you follow some simple rules you will surely be able to deliver, and write, a very good speech. Firstly you do not need to write a speech which appeals to the audience and leaves them with the message you wish. Once you have a great speech you then need to do it justice and deliver it with some style.

I have studied graduation speakers a number of times. That includes people who are known to be good speakers. Some of those famous speakers like Winston Churchill and President Obama. Perhaps more relevant are those who are great speakers in our local area. They all seem to have a passion for the topic. Their speeches are well written, polished and they do flow well. They seem to deliver the speech as if they are passionate about their subject and that hooks the audience in. I think even a technically bad speaker can captivate an audience wit their passion for their subjects.

If passion is the key then no matter what your background is the topics for your graduation speeches should be ones that excite you and give you the opportunity to express yourself in a positive way. Of course the school have a set programme and may have to ask you to speak from a set of topics. However you should be talking to them to come to a compromise which gives you what you need too. Graduation speeches traditionally have certain topic types. That could be the benefits of goal setting, perseverance, the benefits of continuing education, opportunities in the future and saying goodbye. There are lots of other topics, however these ones are fairly typical. The idea then is to look into each topic and see if you can find something to be passionate about. For example you may have really struggled to make it through school but as graduation approached the benefits of perseverance really paid off. Your own story could be inspirational. You may be a guest speaker and have benefited by setting big goals in your life. You may now be enjoying the fruits of your labours. Also as a guest speaker your expertise and passion may be business. Your entrepreneurial spirit may give you amazing insight into the opportunities that exist. You may even be a student wishing to celebrate graduation but with an underlying theme that this is goodbye for many of you. You can passionately say what everyone has meant to you. You can contribute great ideas about keeping in touch. You can also inspire everyone to live their life in the best way possible.

Graduation speeches may fill you with fear that they can be a great opportunity to inspire people with your passion.

How to Change Your Accent – Let’s Talk About Vowels

on Sep 23 in Uncategorized

When looking to soften your accent, it is at first important to understand that it is no mean feat. The sounds you use to create your words and speech, are hard wired into your brain, when you speak, you are usually thinking about what you are saying, or trying to find the correct words to express yourself articulately, not about the sounds you are going to use to formulate the words.

When you decide you would like to soften your accent, you are embarking upon another kind of journey, that of putting new sounds into your head to make up old words, and so in order to use them, you now have to think before you speak, probably in a very different way from how you are used to!

One of the central features of changing your accent, is the vowel sounds, and this is because different languages have different vowel sounds, and it is the vowel sounds that are the building blocks of the words. Even if you have lived in England for twenty years, if you have never consciously or unconsciously learned the new vowel sounds, then you will be using your native languages vowel sounds, and so you will have retained an accent.

Each vowel sound requires a very specific physiological position. So if you are used to making a sound in your language, which is close, but not exactly the same as the English sound, then you will be likely to use it, instead of the accurate sound. Often these vowel sounds fall in between two of our English sounds, and this leads to confusion and misunderstanding. How annoying! If only all languages shared the same vowel systems, it would make life a whole lot easier!

(It is important to note that the vowels are only one component of changing your accent, there are two others. Consonants, are the second factor. And rhythm, stress and intonation in words and sentences, are the third. But in this article we will stick with vowels, more on the others later!)

As we mentioned, the vowels can be thought to be the building blocks of words. They contain the energy or the emotion of the word, as in a sense they come straight from the gut, say ahhh, and now say oooh can you see what I mean? Even on their own they express human emotions! All of them are expressed with an open mouth, the tongue and lips and jaw in a specific position. The consonants then, can be think of containing them in a sense, as all the consonants (apart from H) are made with contact somewhere in the mouth. So vowels are open sounds, and consonants make contact. Once you think of the vowels as containing the emotion of the word, you can begin to understand where actors get their power from, or how politicians use rhetoric and language to provoke emotion. Listen to Kenneth Brannagh doing a Shakespeare speech for example, his drawn out vowels are used specifically to create emotion in the listener. We love this one, on YouTube.

Now this brings us to another important feature of vowels. In Received Pronunciation (which is the official terminology for neutral English, or Queens English) we have twelve main vowel sounds, and these are divided into two groups, long vowels and short vowels. The long vowels must be made long enough, or else can easily get mixed up with their shorter neighbours. the sound Ahhh for example, is a long vowel sound. Its short neighbour, is Uh (as in hut). To make both these sounds, the jaw is dropped, and there is no smile, no width to the mouth. The “AHHH” is the sound you make if you go to the doctors and he wants to see your tongue. Try it in front of the mirror, you should be able to see your tongue! The “UH” sound is the same position, just that it is shorter so the jaw doesn’t actually need to drop quite as much. Make the two together “AHHH” “UH” “AHHH” “UH”. This should involve almost exactly the same position for both, and a nice open mouth, and flat tongue.

Good. Now let’s try it with words. “HEART, HUT, HEART, HUT” or “CALF, CUFF, CALF, CUFF”. “CALM, COME, CALM, COME”

It is important to get the length of the vowel, because that is the only factor which separates it from its neighbour in many words. Not just this, in the length of the vowel, lies the soul, or the aroma of the word. Make it too short, and the word feels empty. Hear the difference between the word hut and heart. Say heart with its full length, and it sounds beautiful and has the potential for poetry, “My heart is bursting”. Get it too short, and you’ve got a rather unromantic statement: “my hut is bursting”

Get the length, and this conveys to your listener that you understand the intricacies of English. Truly, it is a short cut to giving a sense to your listener that you really understand the language in all its complexities.

What you also might have noticed from the examples above, is that there are all kinds of spellings for the sounds. This is important, and often comes as a shock for the new student looking to change their accent. The spellings are not so helpful. In the word HEART, the letters E,A,R spells the sound AHHH. In the words CALF, and CALM, the AHHH sound is spelt with A,L. Similarly the UH sound is spelt sometimes with the letter “U” and other times with the letter “O”.

A little confusing, each sound does have a limited number of possible spellings. This can be helpful, but what the new student learns quite quickly, is that while spellings can act as a little bit of a guide, their ear, and listening skills are their new best friend.

In this article we hope to have shown you that the melody of English comes in great part from the vowel sounds, and that getting the vowel sounds accurate, is not just a dry process, but rather exciting. Reducing your accent can be a daunting process, but it can also be a key to unlock the subtleties and flavour of spoken English.

London Speech Workshop was founded by Emma Serlin, who after several years as a successful theatre director and producer, brought her skills into elocution and accent reduction. She has helped clients from across the globe soften their accents and improve their spoken English.

Celebrities as Motivational Speakers

on Sep 23 in Uncategorized

Organising a quality speaker is a must for the success of an event. It can be an informal social gathering or a formal corporate event. A good speaker can make the event engaging and effectively grab the attention of the audience. In the same case, companies and individuals tend to look for booking agencies that provide talented motivational speakers.

While a good speaker is an asset for an event, a celebrity speaker can substantially increase the audiences interest in the event.

Why go for celebrity speakers? The Pros and Cons

Celebrities already enjoy a public face. They are recognised and already loved by their audience. This helps the celebrity speakers to connect more quickly and easily with their audience. Their fan following helps the event to be successful with a larger gathering and attracting more people to the event. For the general public, it is generally a matter of excitement to be in the presence of celebrities.

In Australia, people love sports and consider the personalities from the sports world as their heroes. This is why sports speakers attract an impressive public response in Australia at large. Every word spoken by them is heard more attentively.

The con of booking a celebrity or sports speakers is that they can be quite expense.

However, with Sports Bureau Promotions, booking a celebrity speaker or a sports personality as a speaker is not that expensive. Visit www.sportsbureau.com.au and find out what options and speakers they have.

Public Speaking: Make It Move to Make It Memorable

on Sep 22 in Uncategorized

While I cannot take credit for the title of this article, those words have haunted me since I discovered them a few months ago in which the writer was discussing animating your PowerPoint presentations, certainly good advice. I was fascinated by those words because movement in public speaking is vital if you want to keep the attention of your audience on you. What is fascinating about public speaking is that if you don’t move, then your listeners will.

The question is: do you want your audience moving, checking their iPods, their watches, or even their email, or do you want their attention on you?

The answer is obvious: you want their attention on you.

Part of the secret in keeping your audience riveted to their seats is not only in the vocal variety of your voice, as well as your facial expression and body language, but also in the movement of your entire body. What this means is moving, walking, or changing your stance.

If you stand perfectly still either at a lectern or generally on a stage, then your rigidity will come through in your delivery. That is one of the reasons some audiences become fidgety. My advice is that you change positions with your body weight from one leg to the other if indeed you are at a lectern. If you choose not to use a lectern, which is most likely the case in a true presentation, you should walk, you should move, you should use your body to help express what you are saying.

By no means does this mean continual movement and it certainly doesn’t mean to pace. You may walk towards one side of the stage, for instance, stop, speak for a bit and then move to another area. There is no hard and fast rule.

The easiest way to accomplish good movement is to treat your audience as if you were having a conversation in your living room. If you were sitting in a room filled with people, you would be turning your body from one direction to another in order to acknowledge all those in attendance. Were you standing in a like situation, again you might step back at one point or you might step forward or to the side. In normal conversation, we all do this but we don’t think about.

It is important to understand in good public speaking that if you don’t move, your audience will. Treat your audience as if you were in conversation, use your body to help express what you are saying, and ‘make it move to make it memorable.’

How To Get Over Stage Fright

on Sep 22 in Uncategorized

Many of us have experienced shaky legs, jittery hands and quivering lips while being on stage. In fact many of us don’t participate in any stage activities because of fear of embarrassment.

But this isn’t the right way to deal with stage fright. Fear is in our mind and the moment we face it head-on it will vanish. The first step in dealing with stage fright is developing a positive outlook.

It’s important that we keep resonating positive phrases in our minds as this will not just help in finishing our act well but will also help in getting rid of fear.

If the job at hand is to play a role, then make sure that you have rehearsed your lines by-heart. If the ambience and the people get to you in the last minute then make sure that your last few practice sessions take place in the venue itself.

This will give you a real picture of how the ambience is going to look on the d-day and you will also know how your audience will be seated.

It will also help if you put on the micro-phones and practice. Most of the times what happens during live performances is that due to some technical errors people don’t get to hear the dialogues well.

This can cause confusion among audience which in turn can divert your attention and badly affect your performance. Make sure to check your dress-fittings, make-up and all other details twice before the final act.

All this will increase your confidence and you will be more than happy to appear on stage. Few hours before the act stop practicing.

1. Relax and enjoy the experience. This will show in your act and the applause will be worthwhile.