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10 things to let go of to enhance your Speaking career

There is no substitution for time and the experiences gathered during it.

Anthony Robbins said "If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want, copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results." which is fantastic advice. There is something to bear in mind, though - even successful people can get it wrong sometimes!

With that in mind, here are my personal suggestions for '10 things to let go of to enhance your speaking career' - and I really do speak from experience!

• Ending your presentation with Heather Small or anything by 'M People'
  I have found my hero inside and I have a list a mile long of things I have done today to make me feel proud.
• Cheesy ten year old photographs
  Grow old gracefully and admit to having less hair than you had when you started out.
• Sending your information to bureaus and agents
  and sitting back waiting for them to call you. They won't. They don’t want you until you don't need them.
• Marketing leaflets that you cleverly knocked up using 'Microsoft Publisher'
  If you want a client to cough up more than a grand for your time, send them something that cost you more than ten pence to produce.
• Crappy 'free' email addresses
  (See No. 4)
• Trying to be funny if you are just not funny
  Remember what Gene Wilder said. "If the thing you are doing is genuinely funny you don't have to act funny to do it."
• Starting a sentence with "We (or I) specialise in..."
  and following it with a list a mile long. 'Specialising' in ten things is an oxymoron.
• Selling old products at discounted prices just to get your money back
  If your product doesn't represent who you are or what you do now it doesn't represent you at your best. Let it go...
• Thinking that working abroad is the 'be-all' and 'end-all'
  Three days paid work in Dubai takes at least five days out of your diary. Having said that, it is a beautiful place...I should know I have been there nineteen times in two years to work.
• Saying ridiculous things like "I won’t leave the house for less than three grand a day!"
  (yes someone said it to me!) Dave Thomas and I used to risk our lives as fire-fighters for a grand a month. £750 a day is a lot of money!