You can't harvest until you cultivate

We recently bought two blueberry bushes, and I'm ecstatic! I suddenly "discovered" blueberries about two years ago. Never liked them before, but I had some really delicious local organic berries and was sold.

Besides the one berry that was on the plant when we bought it, I have yet to harvest any blueberries. Why not? Well, the bush hasn't been planted yet. Why not? The ground hasn't been cultivated.

See, my husband is our gardener, and he has a lot of other plants to tend to, so he hasn't gotten around to getting the soil ready for the berry bushes. Once he does that, he'll plant the bushes, and then eventually we'll have blueberries!

How much time do you spend getting ready to get ready to get ready (as someone said to me on the phone today)? You don't harvest because you haven't planted. You don't plant because you haven't cultivated.

It's the same with speaking.

You know you need to add speaking to your marketing mix. You know that speaking is one of the best ways to get people to know, like and trust you. You know speaking is one of the best ways to grow your visibility and credibility, which results in more clients and customers -- aka your "harvest."

But you're not harvesting. You're not reaping the rewards of speaking because you haven't cultivated your skills and built your confidence.

What are you waiting for? Are you waiting to get a speaking engagement on your calendar, and THEN you'll start cultivating?

Too late.

If you want to master the art of speaking and using speaking to grow your business, or even if you want to stop dreading speaking enough to GET a speaking engagement on your calendar, you need to start cultivating. Now.

When that speaking engagement comes your way -- and it will -- you need to be ready. You don't want to start working on your skills and your confidence two weeks before the presentation, because you won't be ready, no matter what fantasies you have about being a quick study.

Start NOW, so that when the time comes, you have the skills and you have the confidence. So that when you get on stage in front of that group that has so much potential to hire you, buy your products and tell the world about you, you won't disappoint them with a mediocre and forgettable experience.

I would love for you to share in the comments: Are you getting ready to get ready to get ready? How will you break that cycle?

____________________________________________________
On The Everything Page you'll find everything you need to build visibility, credibility and influence through engaging presentations that move your participants into action: freebies, low-cost products and courses, and 1:1 coaching!