The Practice Effect

A speaker friend of mine was telling me how hard she worked to get booked at the NSA National Convention in July. “What did you speak on – the last 3 times you were booked?” I asked. Her response was not, unfortunately, unusual: “Teambuilding, leadership and work-life balance”. Three gigs – three topics. While this may seem ideal from some people’s viewpoints, it’s actually something of a disservice to the client. Why? Because the client wants a great speech delivered by someone who really knows their stuff. The very best way to know your stuff in speaking is to do it over and over and over. The worst way to know your stuff is to read a couple of books on the topic and then deliver a speech. There are countless ways you can mess up a speech on any topic – and you won’t find most of them practicing in front of a mirror or even a group of friends. There is an old Russian saying that “repetition is the mother of learning”. As speakers, we owe our audiences the quality that comes with learning our topic so that we can deliver it as no one else can.

My friend was having trouble getting booked because she has unwittingly become a “generic speaker”. She wants to speak so badly that she will speak on anything to anyone, and often ends up speaking on nothing to no one – because she has failed to take advantage of the practice effect. By contrast, another speaker I know does almost no work to get booked – her last three clients called her! Why? Because she speaks on the same topic over and over again, her audience knows who she is – and meeting planners consider themselves lucky to be able to book her. When I asked her how she does this, she told me “I write a ton of material on my topic and publish it anywhere I can. And whenever I am asked to do a speech, I ask myself – will I learn something from doing this speech that will benefit future audiences? If the answer is yes, I will do whatever it takes to book that speech. If the answer is no, I charge a stiff enough fee for the speech that I don’t mind if I get it – usually twice what I get otherwise.” It should come as no surprise that almost all of her bookings are on her topic of choice, and all of her articles, books and radio interviews reflect this, as well. This kind of focus is difficult – it can even mean passing up speaking opportunities - but it is the foundation of your reputation as an EXPERT speaker. The choices that lead to becoming and expert speaker are harder today, but will make it easier to succeed in the future, while becoming a generic speaker is easier today, but makes long-term success much more difficult. Do you make the kind of choices that will make you an expert speaker rather than a generic one?