At the beginning of November, messages started coming in from my LinkedIn connections congratulating me about At the Podium’s four year anniversary. Wow! From a business perspective, four years is good. But, like every other business, ATP has had its share of goals, wins and growing pains during the past four years.
What’s really interesting to me is the way my niche has whittled down since starting this journey. When I started ATP, my primary goal was to create opportunities for any speaker, new or aspiring, to connect directly with events and event planners. Through my networking, I continued to meet business professionals interested in using speaking as a way to grow their business. After a while, I realized that they had a bigger problem that I could help them with: how to get started as a speaker. They were all experts when it came to what they would talk about, they just didn’t know the right way to approach people about speaking, how to market themselves as a speaker, or the long-term value of creating a signature presentation.
The process I went through to narrow my niche is actually similar to the process a speaker goes through too. It’s about narrowing down our content so it speaks directly from our expertise, to the specific needs of our audience.
As business professionals, we all have products and services that would be of benefit to just about everybody and anybody, but it’s precious time, life, and energy wasted when we don’t focus on getting in front of the people who could benefit from the best of what we have to offer.
Yes, niching feels scary—like you’re suddenly going to start ignoring a whole group of potential clients and customers—but the truth is that a huge majority of those people aren’t going to be interested in what you have to offer anyway. Better to find the people who are ready to hear what you have to say. Put that together with the right signature presentation, and you’ll be in a much better position to inspire the people in your audience not just to take action, but to take action with you and your offer.
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And speaking of offers! Now that ATP is more focused, I’ve decided it’s time to start something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. What helped me make the decision to move forward was the success the Signature Presentation Workshop series that I, Coach Monica Leggitt, and Speaker Tanya Detrik co-presented during this past October. It was an awesome experience from our presenter’s perspective, and based on the feedback we received, a worthwhile experience for our students too.
One of our take-a-ways was that there wasn’t enough time to take a deep enough dive into many of the topics we talked about. That was a good thing to realize. Not just that we could go deeper into what it takes to be successful as a speaker, but that it was something the people in our workshops wanted too.
That’s when I knew the time was right for me to start a Mastermind group for speakers. The group is called “The Podium Process,” and our first meeting is going to be held on January 12th 2019. (There are more details about the group below.)
I’m very excited about this mastermind group and about what we’ll accomplish in it. It wouldn’t have been possible four years ago when I was trying to serve too big of an audience. If someone had told me back then that I needed to narrow my niche, I don’t know if I would have believed them. But I’m a believer now.
Four years is a great start, and I have you to thank for being such an integral part of my journey. What a great way to start a 5th year!!
‘Til we speak again,
~ Beth