How To Become A Public Speaker [Ultimate 9-Step Guide]

This is the first step because if you don’t start off by getting crystal clear about what you're going to be known for speaking about, the rest of the steps are virtually impossible to do.

If you’re going to be a public speaker, then it only makes sense to speak about something you’re interested in, have valuable experience in, and are passionate about.

In fact, the more specific the topic you’re speaking about, the better. Don’t go down the path of being too generic when choosing a topic.

I talk to would-be public speakers sometimes, and they’ll say to me, “Devon, I wanna be a public speaker!”

My response to this is almost always, “Okay, great! What do you want to speak about?”

Often, they’ll answer with something ultra-generic like “health!” or “weight loss” or “personal development.”

My response is always the same; those topics are way too broad. If you want to stand out above the noise, then the first thing you need to do is be SPECIFIC about who you’re going to help.

As an example, if personal development was your chosen topic, you could try to niche it down a bit. A good way to get a proper “niched down” topic would be to ask yourself, ‘who specifically do I want to help with this?’

Years ago, when I first decided that I wanted to become a public speaker, I asked myself, ‘who do I want to speak to?’. I knew I wanted to speak on personal development, but I also knew that I had to get REALLY specific about who I was going to help and what I was going to help them with.

The ideal person - the really specific person that came to mind - was me at 27 years of age.

When I was in my 20s’ I struggled with my weight, I struggled with my self-image, and I had zero confidence around women,

So now, as opposed to having “personal development” as my topic, my SPECIFIC NICHE is: Self Improvement for young men between the ages of 18 and 30 who struggle with confidence around their self-image and women.

Do you see how much more specific that is?

Do you see how much more targeted the solutions I share with that audience are going to be than if my target market was just “personal development”?

As I said before, specificity is the first step. Once you find a crystal clear answer to the question of who you want your message to reach or help, the rest of the process becomes super easy.

So, in summary, step #1 get ultra-specific about the topic (niche) you want to speak on.

It might feel like you’re being ‘too specific’ or limiting yourself, but trust me…

The more specific you are with your niche, the more like an expert you’ll seem, and the more likely you’ll be to get invited to public speaking opportunities in your niche.

When someone mentions the word ‘platform’ in relation to public speaking, a few ideas naturally come to mind. Often when people hear the word “platform,” they think of a raised physical stage. However, ‘choosing a platform,’ in this case, refers to social media. You want to choose the best social media platform from which to share your message.

Jumping on every social media platform will only give you more ways to burn yourself out. Imagine having to post things regularly on Instagram right after posting on Twitter. Before moving to Facebook, and then to LinkedIn, before TikTok.

Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?

My suggestion to you is that you choose the two social media platforms where the audience that you want regularly hangs out.

Remember that tip #1 says, ‘be more specific about your niche’. If you have that figured out, your next question should be, ‘where does my target audience hang out?’

For example: If you're 20 years old and your chosen niche is related to dancing, then TikTok should likely be your go-to social media platform because that’s where 20-something-year-olds hang out and watch dance moves.

If photography, culture, or fashion is your niche, then Instagram or Pinterest might be the best platform for you.

But what if you're a middle-aged business executive, and your chosen niche is ‘business-y’ stuff?

Is TikTok or Instagram a suitable platform for you?

Nope.

If your audience is 45- 60 year old business people, then you you’ll find that LinkedIn is going to be a thousand times more suitable for you than TikTok.

In summary: Go to where your audience is.

I would pick the top two social media platforms where your audience is and start from there.

You want to be a ‘crraaazzzyy’ content poster.

The reason for this is that you want to constantly “be in people’s faces” with the message that you want to share.

The importance of this is that people believe what they see constantly.

And if one day I decide to have a seminar about dog training (or a friend of mine is looking for a dog training expert), then my brain will instantly go to YOU as the person I should reach out to because of your Instagram or YouTube channel has been showing me a zillion dog training nuggets for the past several months.

Make sense?

You MUST be in people’s faces with whatever your message is, and you MUST post content religiously.

Just write down all of the top questions people have about your specific niche, and take a day out to record/write your answers to all of the questions. In just ONE full day of writing and video recording, you’ll have created enough content to chop up and drip out to our social media for an entire month.

The point is that being consistent becomes 100 times easier when you set aside time to create your content in advance.

You should understand something about business as a whole:

It isn’t always about ‘beating the competition.’

Too many people go into business with thoughts like: “Mike has an audience in my industry. Mike is a guru, and I’m gonna try and take him down!”

Relax, Spartacus. Life isn’t a gladiator match.

If Mike has built the type of audience you'd like for yourself, then maybe what you need to do is become friends with Mike. If Mike has the people you want to talk to, then maybe the smarter play is to try to team up with him. Getting on Mike’s radar and having him recognize you as a fellow expert is one of the fastest and most effective ways for you to build your brand.

How do you do this?

A good method might be by providing value to him.

Here's a great example of how you can provide value to the big names in your industry:

Suppose you're in the race-car niche, trying to make headway in a community that already has its fair share of big race car experts.

A great way to make your way into the 'inner circle' and gain recognition with the biggest names in your industry is to create a blog or Instagram post of some kind, with content along the lines of "Here are the top 5 influencers to follow in the race-car industry".

List and tag Mike, Mary, Bobby, Susie, and any of the other race car industry experts whose audience you want exposure to in your post.

When Mike gets tagged in your blog post, he's bound to get curious as to what you said about him. If you listed him as one of the top experts to follow in the industry, then you’ll be feeding his ego (and people love a good ego boost).

Once Mike’s ego is boosted, he’s bound to check you out. When he does, he’ll no doubt see all of the content you’ve been religiously posting now, VOILA! You’re on his radar.

If what you posted about Mike was positive, then The Law of Reciprocity might kick in, and Mike may leave you a comment or a shout-out and might even follow you back.

This idea of raising your own clout and growing your reach by adding value to the top people in your industry isn’t new. If you want more information on this strategy, then Google: “The Dream 100”. This strategy helps you find your top 100 places to get in front of your ideal audience and share what you have to offer with them.

These places can be anything from podcasts, blogs, newsletters, Facebook groups, YouTube channels, or anything else in your market. 

But... Isn’t the whole point of becoming a public speaker about making a living? What’s this about guest speaking for free?

Hear me out.

If you offer to guest speak for free (whether in person or on a podcast or wherever), the main thing you get out of it is…

YOU GET TO BE ON A STAGE!

In other words, you get a chance to be seen and heard by the audience you want to be in front of.

Especially at first, it doesn't matter how big the stage is. The point is that you just want to be on stage as much as possible!

It is perfectly fine to seek out people with smaller podcasts who already have your audience. Because 9 out of 10 times, these people are looking for interviews. You can seek them out and seize that opportunity to be in front of their audience.

Again, the great thing is that you’re now on stage.

If you’re speaking on a physical stage (in person), the audience won’t even know that you’re there for free. They’ll just see you as an expert who is speaking from a place of authority. And if your content is fantastic, then speaking for free will help create an instant uptick in the number of people who are following you.

So, again, it’s perfectly fine to offer to speak for free.

Find as many podcasts and stages as you can, and make sure that they’re all recorded. And in return for speaking for free, you get a stage and, therefore, exposure to the audience you want.

Remember, when we talk about “the stage,” we’re not only talking about a physical, in-person stage. We’re talking about any platform when you’re the expert, and an audience is consuming your message.

So when I say to “get recordings of yourself on stage,” I’m saying to get a video of yourself on the physical stage, on podcasts, as a guest on an Instagram show… wherever!

It really doesn't matter as long as you’re the one speaking or being viewed as the expert.

The point is to get as many recordings of yourself as you can get. Because these recordings will serve as ‘social proof.’

‘Social proof,’ if you’re unfamiliar with the term, is the idea that if one person has endorsed you as “the expert,” then other people will see you in that same light.

These social proof pictures and recordings of you on stage are some of the things that people will see on your social media. When people see these pictures and videos, they‘ll see you as an expert in your field. When they see you as an expert in your field, you’ll get invited to speak more often.

A quick tip... (the following is something I used to do all the time as a beginner when I needed more footage of myself on stage.)

Let’s say you’re invited to speak at a one-day event.

What you can do in this instance (depending on how many times you’ll be on stage) is:

Change into these outfits throughout the day, and make sure the person recording you captures you from different angles in all of your different outfits.

When you get the footage back, you’ll have doubled or tripled the amount of content you have as social proof and made it seem like you were on stage multiple times or even on multiple different stages.

Make sense?

The point is that you want as many recordings as possible. And remember, always chop any social proof of yourself up into smaller chunks. This way, you can spread them out on our social media over time.

Meaning, that if I have 3 pictures of myself in 3 different outfits on the same stage, then I don’t have to post all three pictures of myself at the same time. I can instead spread all three pictures out over the course of an entire month.

Because the more times people see you on stage, the deeper your message sinks into their minds, and the more you make them believe that you’re the one they need to call when they need a public speaker.

So… you have taken all the steps above seriously. You’ve chosen a specific niche, picked the top 1 or 2 social media platforms where your audience is, and have now begun to post content religiously.

Good for you! Now, let’s level this up.

What you’ll want to do now is you’ll want to sprinkle in images/videos of you “on stage” amongst all the regular content you post.

For example: If the last three social media posts you made were of content or helpful tips to your audience, then maybe the next one you do will be a picture of you on stage or being interviewed on a podcast.

What does doing this achieve?

I’m glad you asked.

Side note: It is perfectly fine to reuse content.

If, for example, you post a particular video or image of yourself on stage today… you can probably post that same image again 3 or 4 months later, and people following you on social media will go, “OMG, you were on stage again!? That is amazing!”

So, don’t be afraid to re-use content. You can absolutely get away with it if there’s enough time in between postings. To your viewers, it’ll just be another image added to their memory bank of you being in a position of authority.