Creating a home business comes with a number of benefits. You get to set your own hours, decide your own rates, and when important decisions need to be made, you’re the one who gets to make them, having the ultimate authority over where your company goes.
However, sometimes working entirely at home can be a little too solitary. The four walls start to close in, making you lonely for some outside stimulation.
One way to create a business that offers the benefits of working at home while still interacting with the outside world is to build a profitable speaking business. Here’s how.
1. Claim Your Expertise
If you’re not sure what to talk about, the first step is to come up with all of the things you could speak to an audience about based on your education and past experiences. Admittedly, this trips a lot of people up because they don’t feel like they know enough about a particular topic to stand in front of a group of people and tell them what to do.
However, keep in mind that the definition of expert is “one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject.” Notice that it doesn’t say that you have to know everything. In other words, as long as you know more than the average person, you’re considered an expert.
So, think back to things you’ve done in your career, experiences you’ve had personally, or any trainings you’ve participated in that have increased your knowledge and skillset. Which ones do you feel confident enough to share with others? Most importantly, which ones would be in high enough demand to make others want to pay you to talk about them?
2. Niche Your Topic
To help differentiate yourself from other speakers, you’ll want to niche or narrow your speech offerings as much as possible. This clarifies not only what type of information you intend to provide your audience, but this also tells the decision makers—the people responsible for hiring speakers—whether you’re the right speaker for them.
For instance, say that your topic is about “How to Get Ahead Today”. It’s much different than speaking about “The 5 Steps I’ve Used to Help Other Small Businesses Increase Their Profits 10 Percent Per Year.” The second is way more descriptive, and way more enticing.
Still not sure what your niche should be? APSS (Asia Professional Speakers Singapore) suggests that one way to figure that out is to look at other speakers who talk professionally about the same types of topics you want to cover.
Are there segments of the population who are not being served by them? If so, how can you gear your speeches toward them?
3. Build Your Platform
As a speaker, your platform is extremely important as the more people you have following you, the more enticing you are to those who hire speakers because you’re seen as an influencer in your field.
Just look at the Twitter page of T. Harv, a speaker known for helping others learn how to achieve a higher level of financial freedom with the help of his “Teach and Get Rich” classes. He has more than 131,000 followers on that social media platform alone, in addition to his hundreds of thousands of other followers on Facebook and Instagram.
In the end, the bigger and stronger your platform, the more enticing you are to those who could potentially hire you. And the more you can charge.
Claiming your expertise, niching your topic, and building your platform are three foundational steps necessary to creating a profitable speaking business. A business which can get you out of the house and bring in more money at the same time.
