Use Your Words: What Works For Marketing Your Ministry

photo © 2011 Loren Javier | more info (via: Wylio)Every Tuesday at noon EST (when I’m not speaking!) I host a BlogTalkRadio show that is completely FREE to listen to! And if you can’t listen live, download it afterwards and listen at your leisure (as several hundred do already!).

Today we talked about What works–and what doesn’t work–when it comes to marketing your ministry. You can listen to the archive here.

Here’s a synopsis:

I started speaking because someone asked me to speak. It was as easy as that. It was someone who already knew me and knew I had an interest in speaking. That’s important to remember: your best leads will come from people you already know.

1. Make Use of Your Acquaintances

Make sure that people you already know also know that you want to start speaking! Get the word out. Occasionally post on Facebook something like, “Writing a new talk that would be great for a Christmas outreach!”, or “Looking for speaking engagements in Spokane”, or something relevant. Let them start thinking of you as a speaker.

Send an email blast when you’re ready to launch your ministry. Let your friends know that you speak. Give them an update on your topics and be as specific as possible in your email: “I’m looking to speak at women’s dinners, breakfasts, retreats, or outreaches at local churches. Can you spread the word for me?’

2. Speak Strategically

When just starting out, and when looking to get more bookings, I would rather speak at an event with 40 women present from 10 different churches than one with 500 women present from 1 church. The best opportunity for referrals is speaking someplace where lots of churches are represented. I write more about this here, but let’s look at specific places for this strategy to work:

a. Christian Women’s Clubs

Operated by Stonecroft Ministries, they’re numerous all over North America, and usually attract women from a variety of churches in the area. Most women are older, and you can’t give a typical “talk”, you can only give your testimony. Nevertheless, this is how I got started!

b. MOPS groups

Again, MOPS groups dot the landscape all over churches in North America, and frequently have attendees from a variety of churches. They meet a few times a month and are always looking for speakers.

Both Stonecroft and MOPS pay rather abysmally, but they’re great for getting practice and for getting your name out! Just Google them to find groups in your area.

c. Workshops at conferences

Denominational conferences, homeschooling conferences, ministry conferences, or camp conferences are other places to find women from a variety of places. While you may not be able to be the keynote speaker, workshops can provide you with a chance to build name recognition. I’ve written about the difference between inspirational speaking and delivering a workshop elsewhere, but suffice it to say that a workshop is something where you teach a specific skill. Approach the conference coordinator with 2-3 ideas for workshops, fleshed out in about a paragraph each, and see if you get any bites!

3. Allow for Follow-Up

Once people have heard you, they need to get in touch with you so they can hire you themselves! So make sure that when you do speak you pass out business cards or bookmarks with your website on it. And do have a website, especially one with video! But don’t just rely on others contacting you. Start an email newsletter that you send out to those who hear you speak. Collect email addresses whenever you speak, and then people will remember you.

What Doesn’t Work

1. Promotional Packages

In general, promotional packages sent to churches don’t reap great rewards. If you send a glossy package with a one-sheet, a CD, and a cover letter, it likely will cost you around $6. If you get paid $300 to do an engagement, you have to get 1/50 churches responding to just break even. And since the vast majority of speakers are hired by word of mouth, this rarely works.

2. Hiring a Publicist

Once you have great name recognition, there’s merit in hiring someone else to get your bookings. Until you have name recognition, though, a publicist will simply cost you a lot of money for relatively few leads. It’s hard for them to book you, and you could likely do a better job yourself.

The moral of the story? Set yourself up to generate word of mouth by speaking to as large an audience as you can, and then have a great website you’re directing people to afterwards. Don’t spend a lot of money on up front marketing. It’s not nearly as effective, and it breaks the bank!

That’s a synopsis, but you can listen to the whole show here!

And if you want more information on how to get better bookings, my audio download will help you learn how to turn these beginning engagements into leads that will pay!

7 Ways to Bore Your Audience

photo © 2005 Jason Scragz | more info (via: Wylio)
It’s every speaker’s worst nightmare. You’re speaking, and you look across the audience, and everybody’s looking dazed. Some are obviously texting. A few are nodding off. And a bunch are writing things down–but you’re pretty sure it doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re talking about. It’s probably a shopping list.

Boring people silly is awfully easy to do. In fact, all you have to do to bore people is follow these 7 steps:

1. Don’t Tell Anything About Yourself

If you want to bore your audience, keep the talk very impersonal. Don’t tell stories about yourself; just focus on the biblical text. In fact, don’t tell stories at all! If you’re talking about prayer, tell people how to pray, but above all, don’t give any illustrations of people who have prayed. Don’t tell anything inspirational; just lecture people on what they should be doing.

And if you do tell stories, make sure they’re not about you, because audiences actually enjoy hearing about the speaker. If you tell people about what you’ve gone through, it gives you credibility, and it makes people’s heads shoot up and listen to what you’re saying. So instead, steer clear of anything personal, and try to lecture, as if you are better than they are. Nothing glazes people’s eyes over more than that!

2. Read Your Whole Talk

If you have to read it to remember it, then people will realize that your talk is really very forgettable! So they won’t listen, either. I know that learning to give your talk without notes is tough, but at least when you get to the story part of the talk, try to do that without looking down.

Much of the emotion in a room is conveyed from body language–eye to eye contact. When you’re not making any eye-to-eye contact, they won’t pick up on the emotion, even if it’s a powerful story, and even if you’re being quite funny. They need to see your eyeballs.

When they don’t see your eyes, they’ll tune out and start thinking about other things. So reading verbatim is a great way to turn people off!

3. Teach People In-Depth

If the cure for boredom is engaging stories, then often the cause of boredom is too much lecturing! Yes, you may have a ton of knowledge that you want to impart, but if all you do is impart knowledge, telling them what they should be doing and how they should be doing, without offering any illustration of someone who did this and is now better off, or someone who didn’t do this and is now worse off, or even something completely different, like an illustration from nature, then you’ll bore them for sure.

People learn not by hearing what they should be doing; they learn by emotionally engaging with the speaker and the speaker’s stories, and then taking that emotion and combining it with the head knowledge  you’ve already given. That way they buy into the message! If you just give head knowledge, it likely won’t move to their hearts. And it’s also less likely to enter their ears, because they’ll realize “this isn’t really relevant for me”. And they’ll stop listening.

4. Use Too Many Points

Do you have six points? Seven points? Are you sharing the 8 Ps of Prayer? Or going into depth on every single one of the fruits of the spirit?

That’s too many subjects for people to focus on, and it will definitely result in boredom. Often speakers have the audience’s attention for the first two points, but they lose it when they keep saying, “next”, or “and another thing”. It’s better to take far longer on each point, and only have 1 or 2, then to have 13 or 14. People will realize, “I can’t remember all this, so why bother listening?” And they will stop. And they will be bored!

5. Speak in a Monotone

Have you ever been trying to make a toddler go to sleep by reading a story, like Goodnight Moon? How do you read it? Chances are you speak slowly, in a monotone, so that you don’t arouse any emotion in that child except perhaps that urge to close one’s eyes.

So if you want to bore people, pretend you’re tucking your grandson into bed! Talk in that monotone. Don’t change the speed, or the tone, or the pitch of your voice. Speak always equally fast, or equally slow. Be like background noise when someone’s trying to drift off, like a fan. You’ll lose them for sure!

On the other hand, if you speed up during your interesting stories, and then suddenly slow down when you’re making an important point, you’ll jerk them out of their stupor and they’ll start listening to you again. If you vary your pitch, making your voice lower when you’re making a point you want them to take home, and higher when you’re being funny, then they’ll have an easier time following you, and they won’t drift off!

6. Put all your main points and sub-points on PowerPoint

Put cute pictures of kittens up on Powerpoint, and people wake up. Use Powerpoint to show interesting illustrations or pictures, and people will start engaging in what you’re saying.

But if you want to bore them, write out all your main points on Powerpoint, complete with bullets and subpoints, so they can read along with you as you speak. Little bores people more, so this is a sure winner!

When you have all your subpoints on Powerpoint, then people know exactly what you’re about to say, and when they can read it in black and white, it quite frankly does not look all that interesting. By putting it up on a screen, you also subliminally give the message, “you won’t remember this just from my voice, since I’m not interesting enough, so I’m going to put everything up here so you can read it, too.” That way you give the impression that they really don’t need to listen to you. And they’ll plan their grocery shopping list in their heads instead!

7. Use Proof Texts for every second sentence

A final surefire way to turn off your audience: proof text everything you say. Sure, you may have a main Bible passage that you have read, and you may have one or two verses which illustrate it nicely. But if you want people to lose interest, the best thing is to find not one but five verses that say the same thing, and read them all. And everytime you make a statement, even if it’s relatively obvious, like “prayer is a good thing,” read a verse which says that, too.

Sure, if you use a lot of Bible verses it shows people that you know your Bible well, and that you’re only saying things which God already said. But you also tell people something else. You say: I’m nervous about my talk, and I need to prove to you that I have authority to say this.

Everybody wants to hear a talk grounded in the Bible, but they also are here for your interpretation. That, after all, is why you were asked to speak. If you need to take a walk through every book of the Bible to show something fairly rudimentary, then you’ll cause people to drift off for sure. They’ll think you have nothing new to say. You have nothing relevant to our culture to say. You have nothing authoritative to say. A speaker who keeps their audience engaged keeps coming back to the main passage they use over and over to reinforce that passage. But a speaker who wants to bore his or her audience jumps around like crazy to add gravitas, and it almost always backfires.

So there you go: a 7-fold plan to bore audiences! There are times when cynically I must admit I think they teach these things in school, because I hear people following every single one of these rules. If you want to bore your audience, by all means, do so. But if you want an engaged audience, who listens to what you say, thinks about you say, and then applies what you say, you’d do best to run in the opposite direction!

This summer I’m thinking of running some webinars on helping people perfect their anecdotes–those little illustrations we use when we speak. Would you be interested in that? Then be sure to sign up here for information when we start!

Don’t Settle on a Niche Too Early

photo © 2010 Jason Meredith | more info (via: Wylio)
I get the emails almost everyday: “I feel called to speak to women about depression.” “I feel called to speak to women about surviving abuse.” “I feel called to speak to college women about deciding on God’s will.” Or whatever it may be.

And it’s a wonderful thing to think that you have a very specific message for people! I would, however, warn you that this is not the most ideal way to start a speaking ministry–and could easily backfire.

Let me explain. In general, in the Christian church today, when you are hired to speak, you are hired to speak to general audiences. You aren’t hired to speak to just single aged college women, or to just abuse survivors, or to just those suffering from depression. You are hired to speak at a spring outreach for ALL the women in the church, or at the launch of their fall women’s Bible study, or at their monthly dinner. Such events are frequent, and often have a budget for speakers. That’s where you will begin your ministry.

Thus, you must remember these things:

1. If you are called to be a speaker, you need a message that is timeless that resonates with everyone.

Maybe God has specifically talked to you in the areas of abuse, or purity, or depression, or anger, but you must find a way to take that key message of your life and make it something that all can relate to. For instance, if you’re talking about abuse, you can use that as an illustration, or one of your points, but your whole message should be about how God is close to the brokenhearted, or how God helps you through getting over hurts. If you’re message is on purity, your whole talk could be about the blessing of holiness, and how God wants us to live holy lives, and that could be one subpoint.

Take your subject and look at what part of this appeals to EVERYONE–and then turn it into that talk.

2. Speaking is Not Therapy

I don’t mean to be harsh here, but I fear sometimes in talking to new speakers that they feel called to speak because God has done something so amazing in one corner of their lives that they want to share it. That’s wonderful, and we should all be sharing our testimony. But speaking can’t be used as a way to further healing–or at least not that primarily. I believe that speaking does enhance healing, but you have to speak first and foremost because God has called you to be a teacher, not just because God has called you to share a message.

If God has called you to be a teacher, then you should be able to teach a wide range of people, not only people specifically like you. If you can only teach people specifically like  you, then it’s unlikely you’ll be able to grow your ministry, and you could be too emotionally enmeshed in your topic that it becomes difficult to give the talk the objectivity it needs to teach it well.

Yes, some people have amazing testimonies, and they become speakers based on what seems to be their testimonies alone. But that is really few and far between. If you want to become known and get hired, you need to be able to speak to a generic audience, and that means that you have to have some flexibility.

3. Speaking Starts with the Audience, not with You

When you are designing a talk, you have to ask yourself, “what does my audience struggle with?” “What are the issues my audience faces?” “What are they going through?” It is the audience that you start with; not  you. You have to think to yourself, what message will most resonate with them? Sometimes when we have a great testimony, we want to only share that, because we feel that it is so powerful. But it is powerful because it happened to us; that does not mean that other people will see it in the same way. Who you speak to must be your starting point.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying don’t share your testimony. Every time I speak I share about childhood rejection and I share about my son dying. But I frame it around generic issues: how we women try to control our lives so that nothing bad happens. How we live in fear that things we love may be taken away from us. I start from their issues, and then I use my own as illustrations. I don’t start with me.

4. Realize that God will open doors when you are ready

Maybe I’m depressing you, because you really do feel called to speak to college-aged women, or to depressed women, or to abuse survivors. But let me assure you: I am not saying that you never will. I am just saying that “niche” events, that occur just for a certain subset of women, are very rare. They tend to be workshops at conferences, or regional conferences that attract only that group of women. They’re few and far between. So to get your name known to be hired where you eventually want to be, you need to get experience speaking first. And that experience will likely be with generic events.

Once you have some of those under your belt, and you get better known, you can approach some conferences and offer to do workshops. But often these niche markets don’t really pay, and it can be harder to make a living at it.

Maybe you dream of speaking in front of hundreds of women who are just in your niche, but think about this realistically. How often do hundreds of women in that niche get together to listen to a speaker? Likely it’s not very often. But how often do those same women mingle with others and get together for outreach events? Likely quite frequently.

So find a way to make your talk generic, and you can touch these women where they already are in big events. Don’t label yourself as a speaker to “abuse survivors”. Simply say that you are an inspirational speaker who talks about how God can help us overcome past hurts. Do you see the difference? Then your ministry is bigger, more effective, and more likely to take off!

If you’re having a problem seeing how you could make your story generic, my audio download, “Crafting a Life-Changing Signature Talk“, can help. It takes you through the process of figuring out what God’s main message is to you, and then looks at how to incorporate your life story in a way that people of all backgrounds can relate to it! Look at it here.

Don’t Give Up!

I wrote a post earlier this week about what to when you feel like giving up. I wrote it in the context of one who is overburdened and tired of the effort.

But there is another aspect to feeling like giving up; there is also the one who does not feel like they are ever good enough. You try, but you just don’t arrive.

Do you ever feel like that? You feel called to speak; you feel as if God has gifted you; but then you hear other speakers and you think, “I could never do that.” You look around and there are other women younger than you, who haven’t been speaking as long, and they have much bigger bookings than you do. Should you really keep going? Are you just kidding yourself?

I came across an article by an artist recently where she quotes artist Ira Glass, explaining why so many people quit after trying their hand at something creative for a time. He writes,

Isn’t that smart?

The reason that you are so critical of yourself is that you have actually thought about what goes into speaking. You know what you want to sound like. You know what kind of response you’re looking for.

And so you see, ever so vividly, when you don’t live up to your own expectations.

That is not the time to give up. That is the time to think about these things:

1. God is the only One who should tell me to give up.

If you’re wondering if you should quit, ask for release. If you don’t feel that release, then go with your initial calling. And this brings up another point: when you do feel called to speak, when you feel a message from God, write it down in great detail. Write it down so that when you second guess yourself, you can go back and see it and remember.

2. You are only called to be yourself.

Don’t compare yourself to others. We all speak in different ways and have different messages. I may have one way of delivering a talk that I think is effective; another way may work for you.

God may be calling some people to one type of ministry; He may be calling you to ministry, but in a different way. You only have to be yourself.

3. Seeing where you can improve is a good thing

When you see areas for growth, that is good! That doesn’t mean you’re lousy at what you do; it just means that you’re turning in enough to what makes a good speaker that you can identify areas where you need to improve. That means you’re closer to your goal, not farther away from it.

So don’t give up! Clarify your calling, and then persevere in it. I know it can be lonely and disheartening sometimes. That’s why we’re building this online community! But keep at it, and God will bless you in His calling.

When You Feel Like Giving Up

I wrote this post while speaking at a weekend retreat recently.

It is a Saturday afternoon as I write this, and I am sitting on a dock in eastern Ontario, watching six geese fight it out on a lake. The air is filled with the sounds of birds, and the crystal clear lake seems to be smiling at me. All is peaceful.

And yet my heart was not peaceful for the last week. I know I have written about this before, but I struggle so much between the two extremes of wanting to rest and wanting to work. At times I go on a working jag, and I spend all my free time writing and fixing my blog or setting up Facebook or planning my next speaking campaign.

Other days I just want nothing more than to knit and think up new things to put in my crockpot.

I was having some of those latter days last week. I have been traveling so much this spring that it is wearing on me, and I found myself saying to God, “Can’t I just stay home? Can’t you let me off the hook sometimes?”

Of course, God just smiled, because it wasn’t Him who overcommitted me to so many engagements this spring; that was my own folly and my own pride.

And last Friday I pulled up my bootstraps and got myself in my car as I drove two hours to a retreat where 150 women were awaiting me, excited.

As soon as I arrived I felt convicted. These women were so excited to be together, and for me it seemed like more time away from my family, when I just wanted to knit. And to top it all off, I had forgotten one of the four knitting needles necessary to knit the pair of socks I’m working on at home. So I couldn’t even knit in my downtime to relax.

But the first thing that happened as I arrived was we were each asked to take a “blessing”–an inspirational thought printed out. I chose one, and it said,

I have given each of you a gift, for you to use to bless others. Go and bless those I give to you.

I smiled. I had been saying to God, “is it necessary for me to speak? Do I really make a difference? Is this really what you want me to spend my time on?” And He said a big, loud, “Yes!”

I had a wonderful feedback from the weekend, and the idyllic setting helped me to just quiet my heart. I spoke Friday night, and Saturday morning, and Saturday night, and Sunday morning, yet I had all Saturday afternoon to rest and think and pray and type.

It’s Saturday now, though this post won’t be up until later. And again I am struck by God talking to me about purpose. I told the women this morning, as I have mentioned on my personal blog before, that the two big lies that our culture believes are, “You deserve to be happy“, and “you would be happy if you just tried a little harder.” And even though I know these things are lies, I tend to fall into them. I tend to think that the purpose of life is for me to relax and have fun, and hence work interferes with my purpose.

But work is our purpose. I am not saying that we all need to be superwomen, but there is a balance, isn’t there? Our lives should mean something. We are put on this earth to get to know God, to learn to serve Him, and to introduce others to Him. There is great joy in that. Everything else is secondary. Part of getting to know God, of course, is also learning to abide in His rest, to appreciate quiet moments, to find joy in solitude. It is not that we need to be super busy all the time. And yet getting to know God also involves finding what we were created to do.

For whatever reason, and I don’t mean this in a proud way, I was created to communicate truths about God to people. I feel hopelessly inadequate for the task. I do not spend two hours in contemplation everyday. There are days when my prayer life is rather abysmal. And yet God still pushes me out there, and He still does wonderful things through me–or perhaps I should say despite me.

Most of you reading this blog also feel called to speak. You know that God has given you a message, and has gifted you to deliver that message.

Don’t take that for granted. Don’t think “I’m only doing this until retirement,” and then I can rest, or “I’m only going to be this busy until the kids grow, and then I can calm down.” Perhaps your life will be less busy, but don’t ever let it be less meaningful.

I think we believe too much that we work hard now in order to rest–as if resting is the goal of life. We would be happier and more at peace, I think, if we took periodic rest now so that we could know God, feel God, and thus be energized to live for Him, not just now, but forever. We are not to work ourselves out of work; we are to rest enough that we can focus on God and continue to work, in whatever capacity He calls us, until we go home.

So I will keep asking God to make more more excited about work, and to help me take the rest I need when the opportunity presents itself. And I will stop telling myself that my goal in life is to have limitless time to go on vacation and knit. Knitting is wonderful, but I can do that while I work. If only I remember my needles.

A version of this post was first published on my personal blog, To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

How to Create a Platform for Your Ministry

photo © 2008 daretoeatapeach | more info (via: Wylio)

Platform. It’s a word we hear all the time in the speaking/writing business, but what does it really mean?

Today on my Use Your Words BlogTalkRadio show I talked about platform: the best ways to build one, and what’s really important. Listen in to that show here! Tons of great information.

But let me sum up.

A platform is usually defined as:

The number of people who interact with you; it’s usually expressed as a number, and it encompasses the number of people who hear you speak each year; the number of people who visit your website every week; the number of followers you have on your Facebook account/Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.; the number of people who watch you on TV or listen to you on the radio; and the number of people on your email list.

That sounds daunting I know, but add all those things up and you can get a number. That’s the number that publishers, for instance, want to see in any book proposal.

The problem is: if you are starting out, where do you concentrate on building your platform? Are there some that are more useful than others?

Definitely. In fact, I would prefer that people defined platform more like this:

The number of people who visit you regularly and who interact with you and who are interested in what you have to say.

I know people with thousands upon thousands of followers on Twitter, but they aren’t targeted followers. They aren’t specifically in their niche, and so they do little for them. It’s better to have people who are excited about you! So let’s look at platform building from the two different sides: Authors and Speakers.

How Authors should Build Platforms

While speaking definitely builds platform, it does it in a limited way. First, it tends to be limited by geography; we tend to start speaking closer to home because that’s where we’re known. It’s hard to get known across the country speaking when your’e just starting out.

So for authors working on a platform, the place to really concentrate is on building an online community, which can reach anyone, and building for radio and television appearances.

Online, remember that Facebook and Twitter and blogs all work together. Twitter sends people to your blog. Blogs provide the content. And people talk about that blog on Facebook! I find Twitter a good place to meet new people in my niche, but in the end, Facebook sends way more people to my blog than Twitter does. It’s much more effective. So work on getting a Facebook Page set up, and make sure to link it to your blog.

And on your blog, write quality content that is specific to your niche. If you’re writing about parenting, don’t go off on politics. Stick to your defined category, so that people know who you are and what to expect. That keeps people coming back for more!

This seems like a lot of work, and if the idea of starting a blog or a Facebook Page sounds daunting, and you don’t know what Twitter is, my audio download “Build Your Online Community” can help. I also have a much more in-depth e-course on how to Build Your Online Community, which is 4 modules long and ends with how to throw an online party for your book (mine brought in $1000 in sales in one day).

How a Speaker Builds a Platform

For speakers, online communities are not quite as important. You’re not trying to sell a book; you’re trying to get speaking engagements. For you, then, the emphasis is different.

Nevertheless, you still need a website! As we talked about last week, before anyone hires you they will look at your website. So have a place where you list your topics and post any videos.

The next best thing you can do to build your platform is simply to network. It is much easier to get hired to speak if people know who you are. So go out to the fundraisers for Christian radio or TV in your area. Get to know these people! Join community-wide committees for Christian ministries. Form a group of ministry leaders that goes out to breakfast once a month. Attend writers or speakers conferences. The best networking I have done is at our annual writers’ conference, where I met my current agent, and the guy who books my speaking engagements, and lots of TV personalities.

Whether you’re a speaker or a writer, having people who you’re engaged with on a regular basis will help you grow your ministry! So keep track of key people. Send out email newsletters. And make sure your website is top notch! That will help you get better known, and help people remember your name when they’re standing in a bookstore, or when they’re thinking of who to hire for their Christmas outreach!

If you want to hear more about this subject, don’t forget to listen in to the show, where I go much more in-depth!

And if you have other things you want me to talk about it in Use Your Words, leave some ideas in the comments! I’m here to help you!

Use Your Words: How Do Churches Find Speakers?

This week on Use Your Words I spoke with Julie Chandler about how she finds speakers for her group!

Julie knows speaking from both sides. She’s a Christian speaker herself, but she’s also responsible for finding female speakers on a monthly basis for her professional women’s group. So we talked this week about how she makes those decisions! Listen in to the recording here.

And now for some highlights:

1. You need a great website!

The first thing Julie does when she gets  a name for a potential speaker, or she gets a note or email from someone wanting to speak, is to check the website. She doesn’t call. She doesn’t email. She doesn’t ask anyone else. She Googles them or checks them out directly.

And that initial look at the website will make or break a potential speaking engagement! What does she look for?

• Topics
• Evidence that the person has spoken before
• Evidence that they know what they’re talking about
• Clues that they might be interesting/fun to listen to!

2. Post Endorsements on your Website

If you have testimonials from people you’ve spoken for, make sure they’re prominently all over your website, in standout boxes, so that people can’t miss them.

3. Post Video Clips, if  you have them

These aren’t make it or break it. Few speakers have them up yet. But that will soon change; video is becoming the norm. So get a video done!

And remember: quality isn’t too important. The main thing is to demonstrate that your delivery is interesting and easy to listen to. And ensure that you’re dressed appropriately on that video!

4. Ask Questions

When you’re asked to speak, if you want to make the best impression, ask questions! Who will be there? What are the demographics? How long should I speak for? What sort of talk is the group used to? When you ask questions, you show that you care about the event being a success–and that puts organizers at ease.

If you missed the show, listen in to it now for more tips! And don’t forget to join me every Tuesday for Use Your Words!

And if  you want more information on how to launch your ministry well and get better bookings, check out my audio downloads!