In today’s article, we’ll be looking at phone number list the first of these questions: ‘WHY do I want to do this?’ Then, we’ll look at 5 practical ways public speaking can benefit your business when – and only when – it is positioned correctly within your business and marketing strategy.
But first…a scenario from my past that can help demonstrate what I want to say about this topic.
The Starving Artist Syndrome – Lessons from a Former Freelance Musician
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, I was a music tutor and freelance musician in Texas and Arizona. For two decades, my survival was dependent upon getting enough students and gigs to pay the bills. In terms of finding gigs, my easiest time was when I managed to get on the musician’s union rota through my orchestra. Because I had a good track record and they knew I was a good sight-reader, I got called many times a month to play gigs.
I didn’t need to find gigs; they found me.
During those years, I spent more time on the phone and sending out press kits trying to find the gigs than I actually spent playing music. And the results were wide-ranging in terms of what we gained from them. Sometimes we played at restaurants or nightclubs where we were paid in dinner and tips. Other times I landed us a gig at a music festival, where we might earn anywhere between $500 and $2,000. Some of our pay came from back-of-room cassette/CD sales (which, on a good day, could add several hundred dollars to the coffers). Sometimes, a member of the audience approach us to ask if they could hire us for a private party or business event.
During that decade, I was constantly in ‘survival mode’. I lived from month to month, always looking for the next gig. This is the classic ‘starving artist’ scenario – not setting clear boundaries, and accepting whatever happens to come along. As a result, things didn’t really progress until many years later in the 1990s, when I finally understood what it meant to have a ‘target audience’ and the importance of having a clear plan of what I wanted to gain from being a musician.