
How do you become a public speaker? You go to Craig Zablocki's boot camp! I met Craig in Denver when I was up there speaking at one of Stephen McGhee's fabulous workshops. Craig is a dynamic public speaker (and a rather effective improvisational blues singer!)
I sang with him, laughed with him and connected to his passion and magic. I went to his website and saw clips of him speaking, and he's great. And funny. And always booked solid. His website is www.craigzablocki.com.
And now he's putting on a boot camp for people who want to become public speakers, and please check it out here: http://www.craigzablocki.com/boot_camp_2009.htm.
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I was reading a book (and I remember avidly, voraciously) and I was reading a book by Napoleon Hill. And inside it he said, "I wanted to be a public speaker--I didn't know how to start, so I decided to give some free talks, and I had a friend that had a restaurant that was struggling and I said, I will help your restaurant by giving free talks at your restaurant that will attract people in there to hear me."
The friend said, "Sure what do we have to lose, of course you can do that," and so Napoleon Hill, every Wednesday night (or whenever it was) would come to this little restaurant and would stand up there and give a free talk and people started coming to it, and he had a following and it got bigger and bigger and this restaurant started to thrive. The talk was free. Everybody wins.
So I thought, well, that sounds great. That would be a way to start, and so I came to a company and said, "You've got this big meeting room here, and it's not being used in the evening, and what if I gave a free talk every Tuesday night? Could I use the meeting room, and could I bring people in here?" And they said, "Well, sure why not". "I'll promote your company, I'll hand out brochures about your company when they come in, and tell them what happens inside this building, so it'll be a win for you." And they thought, "What do we have to lose-we have nothing to lose-so sure you can do that."
So I began to pass out flyers and let people know-Tuesday night-goal achievement meeting. Bring your goals, we'll talk about how to achieve them. Free-it won't cost you anything. So, the first Tuesday night meeting, two people show up and there I am in front of the room and there are two people. And I'm talking and passing out little sheets that I made, six months later, the place is packed. It's overrun with people.
The word got out, and I got better, and now people started asking, "What do you charge to come into a company to do this?" And I began to give free talks at Rotary and free talks here… Now that's not the way to do it-there are other ways to do it-there are probably about a thousand different ways to do it, but once I really wanted to and once I had the desire to do it, then I just found that way in the Napoleon Hill book and I did it that way. You can do it any way, once your desire is strong enough.
I've had people say, "I just can't lose weight…I keep trying and I can't". And I know that if I said to them, "What if I gave you a million dollars if you lost the weight you wanted to lose this year? Do you think you could do it?" "Well, yeah, of course I'd do it. A million dollars? Yeah." "Well, what would you do? How do you know you'd lose that weight?" "Well, I'd put a chart up on the wall, I'd have a weight trainer, I'd have a nutritionist that I'd talk to, I'd measure my calories-I'd make sure I lost the weight."
People don't understand that what I've done when I tell them 'what if I gave you a million dollars to do it', is they change their desire level in their mind when I do that, and they elevate it. The company I told you about earlier in this series, who came to me and said, "We cannot recruit good people, people don't want to work here, it's hard to get good people" and none of that was true, because they were trying to tell me, "we don't know how to bring good people in to work here. We don't know how to do it." And I asked them to show me in their day planner the time they had booked to recruit and do this. "Well, there's no time, we don't know how to do it" and so what was really missing was the want to.
They didn't really want to create a great team. "Of course, we want to. Why wouldn't we want to?" "Well, you don't want to because you're not doing it-you're not devoting any time to it." So once they really got that, they found all kinds of unorthodox how to's. There's no one right how to in recruiting your great team, do it your way.
Anytime you want something to happen, and you find yourself telling yourself and other people, "I don't know how to. I don't know how to get clients. I wouldn't know how to do that." That's never true.
Don't fall for that. Don't allow yourself to be pulled into that pathetic position of telling yourself you would love to do it, but you don't know how. "I'd love to do that but I don't know how. I'd love to have a profitable business, but I don't know how."
That's never true.
What's true is you don't want to yet. And it doesn't really reflect badly that you don't want to yet. You can't want everything in life. You've got to decide. What do I really want? In other words people say, "Oh, no, does that mean I don't have a deep down desire to succeed? Does that mean something's wrong with me, if I don't really want to run the business, or if I don't really want to get good clients, or new clients? Does that mean there's something wrong with me?" No. It means you haven't chosen that yet. It's a choice. Your desire level. The level of want to, in any area, is a choice-you're not born with it. It's not a character defect. It's always a conscious choice.
It's always a conscious choice.
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Two new reviews on AMAZON for The Woman Who Attracted Money:

"A suspenseful page turner!
I could not put this book down! It is a great pager turner with philosophical purpose. A novel with romance and intellect."
~By Rohini Ross (Los Angeles, CA)
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"Richly Woven Mystery meets Personal Development.
Steve Chandler has mastered the art of storytelling in this book. Not only does he tell a compelling story, but through the dialogue he delivers stellar coaching that readers can apply in their own life. Choosing an ex-cop turned personal coach as the main character was a brilliant move! The story unfolds with all the suspense of the best mystery novels, told in a conversational style that causes the reader to think of their own life. As a coach myself, I found nuggets in the book that served as training for situations that arise in my practice. The characters are interesting and lovable, and the story has just enough twists to make it difficult to put down. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good story and is interested in growing as a person."
~Charrise McCrorey
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