“I find that people who are the best public speakers, with one or two very rare exceptions, most of them are not just public speakers. They are authors. They have their own businesses because that’s what makes you interesting new experiences in life and doing interesting things makes you a better public speaker as well. And when I look at my friends who are successful public speakers and my business connections who are public speakers, they all still have their own businesses. Majority of them are authors as well.”
“I think probably Andy Preston is the only person I know, and Chris Moon [that are not authors]. And they are just purely public speakers. They’re brilliant at what they do. But again, it took them years. We’re talking like at least five years to get to where they are. And I think people need to understand, because there’s so much stuff on the internet these days about how, you know, lose weight by eating as much as you want and turning your business around in three months and getting six figures. That rarely happens.”
Niraj relays his own difficulties in becoming a public speaker and how even he doesn’t rely on this as a sole income:
“I know people who’ve done six figures within two years of a business, which is incredible. That’s very rare. Majority of the time, it’s going to take you at least it took me three years to earn what I would call proper money in public speaking. You know, 2022 was the best year of my career. I spoke in Barcelona. I was flown over to Croatia, I was flown over to Europe, I was flown over to Portugal. That was an amazing experience. I did six talks to America. Okay? It was all on zoom. And I did seven talks in London, face to face. That was outstanding. But 2023, it’s been very quiet for me. The Q1 was amazing. Q2 completely dead. So you have to put those things in mind. That’s why public speaking is a big part of what I do. But at the same time, it’s my one to one coaching and it’s my LinkedIn training that’s the fuel for my business.”
“My advice is, don’t just focus on public speaking. I mean, focus on it and work at it, but make sure you’re not doing that at the detriment of learning other new skills elsewhere as well.”
Rob: “So do you think there’s a benefit to sort of having your own book? Do you think it’s like the new business card? Does it give you sort of that extra credibility, you know, for your personal brand?”
“It helped, I think a few years ago, it was a good thing to do as an extension of your business card. It did give you that extra bit of credibility. The problem is, every man and his dog now is writing a book. And Amazon made it so easy that there’s no quality control. That’s a big problem you have, especially with self published books. There’s no quality control. Anybody can write a book, upload it, publish it and say they’re an author. And I’ve read hundreds of self published books and about 90% stink. I mean, they reek because what most authors do is they go, oh my God, this is great. I can bypass a publisher, I can bypass an agent. They often do the design themselves, they do the editing themselves, they do the indexing themselves. And you read these books going, yep, I can tell you did it all by yourself because it’s just not very good. For my third book, I spent over £3000 on an editor, a deputy editor, an indexer, a cover design. It costs money to do anything well. And so my third book, again, you hold my third book in your hand, it looks so different. It looks like a professional book. There’s no way in a million years you could tell it’s self published ever, because it looks that good and that’s what you want to do. And also for me as an author, it was only after my second book people started noticing me. And it’s only come my third book, people have started to pay attention. So my advice is, if you’re going to write a book, think of writing three books. Don’t just write one. Unless your book happens to be Start with Why by Simon Sinek, which again, very few people can do. Most people, it takes at least two or three books to get recognized. […]. So my advice to you, Rob, is please don’t think of one book, think of three books. And also, if the book’s going to be on marketing, please make it interesting because most marketing books are really dull.”
