February 1, 2011

'Fredrik Härén: being a great speaker'

Few days ago I attended a very interesting event here in Singapore, organized by Asia Professional Speakers Singapore. Among others, there was my friend Fredrik Härén, talking about how to make a million Singapore dollars a year, plus find two months to write a book. Very interesting talk, which was all about being a great speaker, even before the “money” part.

This is Fredrik’s advice: 1) Repeat yourself: do few speeches, and do them often, so you get great at them. 2) Don’t offer training, it’s better to be a speaker full time. 3) Don’t do a lot of (different) speeches, specialize. 4) Don’t sell yourself, have someone else sell you, or have word-of-mouth be your main way to obtain speaking engagements. 5) Do not (always) charge: sometimes, do free talks, but beware: work for free, but don’t look cheap. 6) Do not “work”, try to have fun as much as you can. 7) Don’t speak. Talk about what you love.

A nice quote from him: “A brand is for a speaker what a band is for a singer.”. Build your brand, from graphics to fonts to everything else. Great advice. Now I’m mumbling, trying to think how to apply this to the corporate world I’m part of.

Let me share with you this video of Fredrik: