Turn Your Passion Into Profits Every Time You Speak

To turn your passion into profits, speak about what you love. Passion translates to others. They can see it. We’ve all heard speakers who don’t have passion about their topic. We wonder why they are speaking at all. There was a student of mine who sold energy drinks and was very lackadaisical in his speech. I said, “Look you’re selling energy drinks. You should have more energy than anybody else in the room!” Let your PASSION show.

P is for Persistence

Persistence in the dictionary means “a continued existence or occurrence.” When you speak you need to be persistent. You can’t just do it once and say, “that doesn’t work,” or just do it once in awhile. If you want to turn your passion into profits, you need to speak publicly on a consistent basis. You’re goal is to get 200 speeches under your belt before you move on to selling from the platform.

Let everybody know that you exist. One of my mentors told me that you have to be everywhere people look. Every time they turn on their computer, they see you. Every time they go on a website they see a testimonial about you. If there is a speaking engagement you have to be there speaking. Remember you have to be visible to sell in today’s economy.

P is also for Perseverance

This means “to persist in spite of difficulty, obstacles or discouragement.” There are so many times that speakers will get out there and get discouraged. It’s too hard or they can’t work it into their schedule. But if you want to turn your passion into profits, you must persevere, and get out there and speak.

I haven’t had a day off in four weeks because my speaking engagements are often on weekends.  Usually I reserve Sundays for my God and my man, but I had an event on Sunday, I had to drive two hours to get there. I could have easily gotten out of it, but something told me to go. Someone needed to hear my message. So I went joyfully, delivered my 30-minute talk and drove back. I met one gentleman in particular whom I had met through his company in 2004! We reconnected, and I probably will be doing work with his company. You never know who you’re going to meet.

Listen to your intuition. Listen to the messages that come to you. And then do it! Persevere! It was well worth it for me to drive out there. Persist no matter what. I don’t care how long the drive is.  Don’t get discouraged. Oftentimes, adversity changes things; it can motivate you to try harder. Just persevere!

A is for Audience

In order to turn passion into profits we have to have an audience. We have to have the right audience. If I was speaking to a group of senior citizens that wouldn’t be the right audience for me, and I wouldn’t get any profit; but for some people that serve that market it would be a great audience. So don’t just get in front of any audience. Find and zero in on your ideal audience. Remember when you do, just having an audience is not enough either. You need to make sure that you speak to them as if they were you. Don’t speak at them. Talk to them as if they’re your best friend or best customer. Talk to them like you care.  And always give them an experience.

In the 70s, we would give lectures. We can no longer lecture. Our audiences have changed. We’ve changed. We don’t want to be lectured to anymore. No one will come. Years past we used to do presentations, and then that didn’t work anymore. Then we started having conversations, but that has changed.

People today want an experience. How do you give them an experience–by adding more audience participation techniques–exercises, break out sessions, things to get them up and moving to change their state. Stories will change their internal state and make them cry, laugh, reminisce, or whatever it is. Give your audience an experience.

S is for Stories

Always use stories. You can’t turn your passion into profits without stories.  Why? Stories are like invisible selling tools. There are three types you must have in your presentation: your personal story, a testimonial, and an emotional story.

Your personal story earns you the right to be up there speaking, your own personal journey of how you got to be where you are. There is something very exciting about those millionaire stories where they made it, then lost it, and then made it again. It gives the audience hope. “If you can do it, I can do it, too!”

And, of course, emotional stories will move people to action. Make them feel alive.

Here is an example of a humorous story: A little boy at church is looking at a row of black and white pictures of men in the hallway. The minister comes up and says, “Young man, do you know those men all died in the service.” The little boy says, “Would that be the 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock service?”

I often share the story about my brother. It’s a story about not waiting too long. My brother called up and said, “Sis, I have lymphoma and you probably won’t recognize me when you see me.” He was right. I did not recognize him. He used to have long blond hair and a mustache, but he had no hair. He had blown up like a balloon because of the chemo. I felt really helpless. What could I do?

At the same time I had hired a trainer to get into shape. He wanted me to run the LA Marathon. I said that’s ridiculous! It’s 26.2 miles! One day we came across Team in Training, an organization that will help you prepare for the marathon in exchange for raising funds for lymphoma and leukemia. How cool is that? I joined Team in Training, helped my brother, trained for six months and ran the marathon. That year, our Team in Training raised over a million dollars!

But, the story doesn’t end there, because the story’s about not waiting; not waiting to get out there and speak. My brother can’t go out in public because his blood count is so low he can’t be around crowds. He could get sick and die. We never know what’s going to happen around the corner. We procrastinate. That’s the demonstration of a story that moves people emotionally. You need those kinds of emotional stories in your speech.

S is for Speak From Your Soul

Speak your inner most self, thoughts, wisdom and gifts. Speak from your soul. The best way you can do that is to be honest with yourself and your audience. Be vulnerable. Share yourself. I share myself all the time because you can learn from my experiences. Never be afraid of showing too much. You want to show truth. Be real with your audience. Get rid of the bologna and talk straight.

I speak about my time in Egypt in terms of being scared to death to be on a camel, and about being scared to death going into a hole in the pyramid and scared to death when I went into the hot air balloon and it wouldn’t go up. I was scared to death!  But I persevered. I show people things that I’ve been afraid of and how I’ve conquered them. Don’t be afraid to share yourself with your audience.

I is for Integrity

Always speak from integrity. Integrity will get you more money.  Integrity will get you to close more sales. Integrity will attract the ideal client to you. You must have integrity. That includes your offer. Believe in your worth or the worth of your product. Share what the price is. I heard a speaker who lowered his price because of the economy. That’s great. But let us know if you’re lowering the price and why you’re lowering the price. Speak from integrity. Let us know you believe in it, and we’ll buy.

O is for Overwhelming Value

You need to give and deliver overwhelming value. Never be afraid of giving too much, because you have much more to give. If you can give one or two things of value that are easy or free, great. I teach people how to get business cards from everyone in the room. People experience it in my workshop and I have it on YouTube, so it’s free information anyway. So why not share it in my speaking events? Find something that is a how-to that isn’t your secret formula that you can give your audience so they feel like they really have something. So many times people just give away fluff, or nothing.

I went to a networking group and the speaker never once got to the benefits of his business. I see this mistake over and over. He starts out saying where he’s located (who cares) and what kind of equipment he works on (who cares), and then he puts up his price sheet. It’s not a good close. He never positioned himself as an expert. He never told any success stories of people whom he’d helped. Afterwards, I watched to see if he got any business cards or made any contacts. He didn’t. All this guy needed to do was to learn my system and he could have walked away with half the room. He didn’t give any value, much less overwhelming value. Make sure that you do!

N is for Navigate Now!

Navigate your audience to take action today. Navigate them toward that sale, toward that appointment, that free session, that free workout, or that free strategy session; whatever that next step is for you to get them in your pipeline so that you can turn them into a client and turn it into profit.

Remember turning passion into profits is not about separating people from their money; but about offering them true value, and then extending an invitation so that they can take the next step with you which will, in turn, create transformation in their lives or their business, or their financial life, or their spiritual life which happens over time and leads to permanent change in their life. You can not help someone if you don’t sell.

Don’t shrug it off that you didn’t get any leads. You won’t have a next time. The people in the room are in that room for that time only. You can never get that time back. There are no do-overs in life. There is only NOW.

Practice your close so that you can deliver it to attract the people who are suffering and need your help. That is your duty as a speaker and a leader.  If you don’t think you can sell, get more training, more coaching, more mentoring, or more help. People are suffering and maybe their business is dying because you haven’t learned how to do it right. That’s how important this is. Use your passion to bring about change!

Now you have the 7 steps to turning your PASSION into profits!

Arvee Robinson is a Master speaker trainer, international speaker, and author. She teaches business owners, service professionals, and entrepreneurs how to use public speaking as a marketing strategy so they can attract more clients, generate unlimited leads and grow their businesses, effortlessly. She teaches a proven speaker system for delivering persuasive presentations, and easy formulas for creating killer elevator speeches and magnetic self-introductions. Arvee has helped hundreds of individuals to win clients and close more sales every time they speak. As a high-energy motivational speaker, Arvee has shared the stage with speaking giants such as Mark Victor Hansen, Joel Bauer, Loral Langemeier, Chris Howard, Dave Lakhani, and many more. Arvee offers private coaching, workshops, home study courses and weekly tele-classes. Her persuasive speaker training programs transform ordinary business owners into superstars in their industry.

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