The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Working for Yourself with Jeffrey Shaw

The Speaker Lab Podcast

The Speaker Lab

Authors, Public Speakers, Public Speaking, How To, Marketing, Smallbusiness, Coaching, Education, Entrepreneurship, Speaking, Business, Side Gig

4.8 • 575 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Often, one of the hardest parts of the learning curve of launching a speaking business is being self employed. Many would-be entrepreneurs have longed for a textbook that explains how working for yourself actually works. Fortunately, Jeffrey Shaw, speaker, author, and expert in the unconventional art of being self-employed, has written a book about just that. For Episode 438 of The Speaker Lab podcast, he spoke with TSL founder Grant Baldwin about honing in on your expertise and managing your own business. He also shares his time-tested strategies for mastering the art of storytelling, one of the most important skills in any speaker’s toolkit.

Many speakers overextend themselves trying to reach too many audiences. Getting in front of the group who values what you have to offer can be a long process. Jeffrey has done the hard work for you–he cycled through a variety of audiences before finding the place where his expertise could deliver the most value. While it’s not bad to try different things with different people, narrowing your audience helps you focus on your very best content, delivery, and presentation for the people who appreciate it most.

Jeffrey’s very first successful business venture was in portrait photography, which as you can imagine lent itself to a great talent for storytelling. His secret? He actually catalogs the stories he thinks will be useful for speaking as they happen to him. We’re big fans of creating and establishing systems within your speaking business, so this is a really important part of the conversation!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Jeffrey has a lot to say about the good, the bad, and the ugly of working for yourself specifically as a speaker. Constantly traveling, managing the ebb and flow of engagements, and running all the logistical aspects of a business is no joke! Fortunately, Jeffrey really is the expert–he’s never worked for anybody but himself–-and he offers constructive encouragement to those in the trenches.

You’ll also hear all about:

Why it’s normal for the iterations of your entrepreneurial career to be nonlinear.
Which people in your life are well-positioned to help you find your expertise.
How to decide if expanding to a particular audience is financially wise.
How to deal with feeling like your business barely survives day-to-day.
The “trust mantra” that can help you remain resilient in moments of self-doubt.
How using stories can make the same talk appealing to wildly different audiences.
…and so much more!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, friend, are you looking for ways to book more paid speaking gigs?
0:03.7	Well, of course you are.
0:04.4	Maybe you're just starting out as a speaker. You're trying to figure out what to prioritize in order to get booked and paid as quickly as possible. Listen, if that's you, I want you to join us for a free live training where you're going to learn how to create the number one marketing asset that you need to consistently book more paid gigs. This is a tool that one speaker on our team used to book over $36,000 in paid gigs before he even had a website.
0:27.2	This training is free.
0:28.1	It's live and we offered a few times a week so you can find a time that works best for you.
0:32.5	All you got to do is head over to thespeakerlab.com slash get booked.
0:36.3	That's all one word.
0:37.2	Thespeakelab.com slash get booked. That's all one word, the speakerlap.com slash get booked
0:39.3	and register right now. We look forward to seeing you on the live training.
0:50.8	Hey, what's up? My friend's Granbaldon here. I'm so excited to have you here with us today
0:53.7	for episode 438 of the speaker lab podcast. Today I'm joined by Jeffrey Shaw, who's a author, speaker who really truly epitomizes the entrepreneurial journey. Now, among other things, he's an expert at being self-employed, has written a book about how to create, maintain sustainable success as an entrepreneur. And so today we're going to be talking about some of the really fundamental skills for being a successful speaker. We're going to talk about
1:15.0	establishing your expertise, storytelling, handling the mental and emotional rollercoaster of
1:19.7	being a professional speaker. Establishing your expertise is so important that it's actually
1:24.0	step number three in our speak framework for launching your speaking business.
1:28.1	But it is a long, long process that can take many iterations. And sometimes at the beginning of the
1:32.6	journey, you might even not know where your best areas of expertise lie. And so Jeffrey's going
1:37.7	to give you some amazing strategies for identifying and developing your expertise and how to
1:42.1	communicate it with your audience.
1:48.6	Now, Jeffrey started out his entrepreneurial journey as a photographer, so he is also an expert at capturing stories.
1:50.2	And storytelling is a core part of preparing and delivering your message in a way that sticks
1:53.8	with your audience.
1:55.0	So Jeffrey's going to be showing us some ways that you can really recognize and remember
	...

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