Why TSL?
My message is really aimed towards corporations on how to make unemployment obsolete. My background is with economic and workforce development, I work with the most frightened, the most vulnerable, and the most deprived population and I give them hope.
As a career coach, I help find employment and what I discovered is that a lot of folks, especially here in New Jersey that are unemployed, would often tell me, Isaias, this is voluntary. I would rather be unemployed than work for that company ever again. I knew I wanted to get this message out to employers in order to help make a positive change in the workforce.
I joined The Speaker Lab to better understand how to run the business side of things. I feel confident in my ability on stage but I wanted the day-to-day ins and outs of running the business successfully.
WHAT WERE SOME A-HA’S AND TAKEAWAYS?
Hearing Grant talk about how as speakers we need to be the steakhouse and not the buffet. If we want to be successful and known in a specific area of expertise, we have to hone our message. This really helped me do that. I was able to look at my strengths and then package that into an offering for the right audience. Where if I tried to speak to everyone, my expertise, strengths, and my overall message would get lost. In the end, no one wins that way, so be the steakhouse!
The content and the coaching was invaluable. Having the coaching on a weekly basis either through one on one calls or group calls really has helped me to keep progressing. There is so much value there.
The content within the student dashboard has been so valuable. When I had my first event planner meeting, she asked for a proposal and I had it all set. It was great to confidently say, Yes, I’ll get that right over to you.
I loved having the proposals, contracts, emails, abstracts, etc. everything is right there. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. To make it even better, this is a proven system that works. This is not based on theory but on fact, that was a huge relief for me.
WHAT IS YOUR NEW NORMAL AS A PROFESSIONAL SPEAKER?
I keep progressing. I am focused on brand awareness using tools like YouTube, tweaking my website to keep it up to date, and I am rolling out new products.
For a while I was doing free gigs. I took the advice of my coach and I did gigs at the rotary, local library, and my local community college. To some they may think this is a waste of time, but I put my faith in my coach and I implemented the plan we created and I am happy to report because of all that hard work – FREE hard work – I just signed my first $10k gig.
WHO WOULD YOU RECOMMEND TO THE SPEAKER LAB?
I would recommend this for folks that are really serious about a public speaking business. Folks that really want to move their speaking careers forward. They want to either do this part-time or full-time, and they are ready to put in the level of commitment required to make it happen.
People that are serious will find working with The Speaker Lab very valuable. If anything, the coaching itself is worth it. The coach’s calls really helped me pivot in a way that I needed to move forward. I’m still learning and I am not the top speaker in the world just yet, but certainly I’m a lot better than I was two years ago.