Episode #458

How to Use Your Story to Make an Impact

With Bruce Van Horn

As a speaker, it’s often hard to find the balance between telling your story, building your personal brand, and serving your audience. No matter what your story is, you have to connect it to solving your audience’s problems. Otherwise, you’re just talking about yourself – and that’s a surefire strategy for failure if your goal is making an impact. On Episode 458 of The Speaker Lab podcast, Grant Baldwin invited Bruce Van Horn, a speaker with a pretty extraordinary story, to help you walk that very fine line.

Before Bruce was a speaker, he was a creative writing major who pivoted to a successful career in the software business. If you’re struggling to connect the dots between what you studied, where you work, and what you want to speak about, his path will inspire you to think outside the box and buck expectations.

Bucking expectations is a big part of Bruce’s mission. On top of being a speaker, he is also a life coach, author, and podcast host. Through his various efforts to promote positive change using words, he helps other people experience radical mindset shifts and get unstuck from negative patterns in their life.  On the show, he shares some of those strategies and a sneak peek into what he calls his “victory routines.” His podcast, Life Is A Marathon, invokes a powerful experience of self-reflection and mindset shift he had while training for a marathon during a series of tragic life events.

You’ll also learn all about:

  • The drawbacks of basing your career choices entirely on money.
  • How Zig Ziglar inspired Bruce to kick his victimhood mindset.
  • What we can learn about from marathon training.
  • How to leverage a podcast to get you more speaking gigs.
  • The difference between passion and enthusiasm.
  • How to pick the parts of your story that will connect with your audience.
  • …and so much more!

Want to know exactly how to find and book more paid speaking gigs?

Download our 18-page guide to the 6 proven steps you can use to book more paid speaking gigs in 2024!

About Bruce Van Horn

Bruce Van Horn is a bestselling author, speaker, thought leader, transformational life coach, business and leadership coach, marathon runner, and cancer conqueror. Bruce hosts the “Life Is A Marathon” podcast, which has millions of listeners in over 205 countries around the world. Bruce is passionate about sharing his life experiences and respected insight to help people overcome their negative thinking and limiting beliefs, and develop a winning mindset. Bruce loves coaching people to become the fullest expression of who they were created to be. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.

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