From | How To Get Money & Make Money Fast

This guest post is by Marcus Sheridan of The Sale Lion.

We’re all communicators. That’s what we do. Some of us love the feel of pen in hand. Others find joy as the fingers hit the key pad. But for me, the magic is in the communion that occurs in front of a live audience, a place where I feel more at home than any other.

Like you, I’m a blogger. I’m also a business owner. In fact, I own a swimming pool company. Ten years ago, I started the business with my two partners. The challenges of entrepreneurship were satisfying for the first seven years, but three years ago I knew my time of being a “pool guy” was coming to an end and the next phase of my life would soon begin.

Although I wasn’t exactly clear where I was headed, I knew I wanted to be a professional speaker, and I also knew I wanted to help as many people and businesses as possible to reach their potential.

But to be a professional speaker, it has to start somewhere. You can’t just say, “I’m a speaker” and then boom!—all of the sudden you’re booked up for months and months.

So that’s what I want to talk about today. I want to share my journey and it is my hope that you’ll find some lessons here that you might also apply to your life, and ultimately reach the goals you currently envision.

Phase 1: Kicking down the first door

Often times, the hardest step in professional speaking is getting the initial opportunity. In my case, being in the swimming pool industry, there was one main event held each year at the National Pool/Spa Convention in Las Vegas. But to speak there, I had a few cards stacked against me. The first of which was the fact that I was only 30 years old (meaning I’d be far and away the youngest speaker). The second was the fact that I had very few connections in the industry.

Notwithstanding my low chances of entry, I decided to find out who the head of the event was, and soon learned it was a lady named Tracy. Therefore, when the show came around a little over three years ago and I attended, I found out where Tracy’s office was and, tossing all fear aside, I decided to approach her. Walking straight into her office at the show, I had the following conversation with her:

Me: Hello, you must be Tracy.
Tracy: Yes, that’d be me. And who are you?
Me: My name is Marcus Sheridan, and I’m the best speaker you’ve never had. (With a big, big smile.)
Tracy: (laughing) Really now? And tell me Marcus, what can you speak about?
Me: I’ll speak on anything you want—Sales, Marketing, I’m ready.
Tracy: How about a hot tub sales class?
Me: I’ll give the best Hot tub sales class you’ve ever had. (Again, with a big smile.)
Tracy: Hmmm, and how can I be sure you’re good?
Me: I’ve got a DVD of some videos I’ve made for my company in the past. (I hand it to her.) I think if you watch them, you’ll see I’ll be a good fit.
Tracy: What’s your price?
Me: I’m just asking for a chance. That’s all. If I’m good, then we’ll talk price for next year when you bring me back. (Again, with a big smile.)
Tracy: Okay, I’ll let you know, Marcus.

About a week later, Tracy emailed me and let me know that she was inviting me to speak at the convention. Needless to say, I was thrilled. Since that time, I’ve spoken at all the events for the National Pool/Spa Conference, and I get paid well to do so.

Lesson one: Getting in your first door sometime takes guts. I approached Tracy the way I did because I knew the cards were stacked against me. So dare to be different. Be original. By so doing, you may be very surprised to hear that magic phrase: “You’re in!”

Phase 2: Pushing harder, building momentum

Just a little over two years ago, I started blogging about content and inbound marketing for business, as well as personal development principles on my blog, The Sales Lion. Knowing that I wanted to again break into the speaking realm of my new industry, I did two key things:

I produced helpful and powerful content at least two times a week, without fail, for over a year.
I took the video recordings of the events I’d done in the swimming pool industry and placed them on my site so others could see me in action.

Upon doing this, slowly folks in the blogging and marketing realm started seeing me as a fresh voice and also noticed from the videos that speaking was my passion.

Wanting badly to speak at an industry event, in January of last year, I submitted a speaking application to Blog World to speak at their New York event. As many of you might know, they get hundreds upon hundreds of applications, and have to turn away a very high majority of these applicants.

In my case, it was no different: Blog World turned me down. Instead of speaking, I hopped in the plane and went to listen instead.

Like everything in life, though, things happen for a reason, and I didn’t allow the rejection of my proposal to deter the enjoyment I had for the event, and my continued vision of what was still possible.

In March of last year, I finally got my first break. Within the course of two weeks, I was asked to speak at two industry events.

The first was the MarketingSherpa SEO conference in Atlanta, Georgia. They had heard my success story of using content marketing with my pool company and asked if I’d be willing to share my message. Just as had happened two years before, they could not pay me for the event, nor could they pay my plane ticket, but it was an opportunity, and I took it.

The other invitation was from another person who had noticed my blog and read about my success as a “pool guy.” His name was Joe Pulizzi, the founder of Junta42, and he was gathering speakers for his inaugural event—Content Marketing World.

Never having seen me speak, Joe told me he could give me 25 minutes to share my message. I knew it wasn’t much time, but it was better than nothing. Once again, I had to pay my way and all of my expenses.

Lesson two: Sometimes you’ve just got to get your foot in the door, even if it costs you money. If you’re good at speaking, it will be more than worth the time and investment, as you’ll now see.

Phase 3: The moment of truth

To make a long story short, the event at MarketingSherpa was a hit. My unique story and presentation style made quite an impression, and a few weeks later the event coordinator asked me to speak at their 2012 Email Marketing Summit in Las Vegas. This time, though, I would be paid, and would also be one of the keynotes, along with Brian Solis.

Although the Sherpa conference was great, Content Marketing World was even better. The event was this past September and I knew going in that many folks I highly, highly respect in the industry would be in attendance.

Just as with the MarketingSherpa presentation, my session went very, very well. In fact, as soon as I was done with speaking, I was immediately approached by Deb Ng, who coordinates all the speakers for Blog World. On the spot, she asked me if I’d be willing to present at their Los Angeles event this past November. As you might imagine, I happily accepted, and was speaking in LA a couple of months later.

But Deb wasn’t the only one who was in the audience listening. That same day, the founder of Social Media Examiner, Michael Stelzner, asked me to speak at his online small business summit in February of 2012. This also led to guest posts on his incredible site and loads of exposure I otherwise never would have received.

Furthermore, another gentleman in the audience who was listening asked me to speak at the MeshMarketing conference in Toronto a few months later, which wound up being the first time I’d ever done an event outside of the United States.

Literally, with these two events alone, my entire career started to snowball. Now, as I look ahead to all the events planned for 2012, I can only smile.

Lesson three: Carpe diem! When the moment arrives, seize it.

Endless possibilities

This year I’ll be speaking at both Blog Worlds, and Content Marketing World as a keynote, as well as multiple other summits and conventions.

That’s the thing about speaking—once the snowball gets rolling, it will roll very, very fast, as one event will open up the door to three or four others. Unfortunately, most folks simply don’t hang around long enough to watch this snowball grow and pick up speed.

I’m not here to say that becoming a professional speaker from your blog is easy. Without question, it’s going to require guts, persistence, and an iron will. But it is possible.

So if this is a dream you have, my suggestion is you go out there and get it. Don’t wait for it to pass on by. Will your future. Walk into the office of your target event and tell the person you’re awesome.

And then, when the moment of truth comes, give the best dang presentation you’ve ever given.

If you liked this article, you’ll love Marcus Sheridan’s site, The Sale Lion. And while there, don’t miss the opportunity to download his FREE, 230-page eBook: Inbound and Content Marketing Made Easy.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

From Small-time Blogger to Professional Paid Speaker: My Journey

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dML8Yu 300250 5 Lessons Bloggers Can Learn from Weight Loss

I’ve been working on losing weight for some time now and it has been quite a challenge. A lot of things have happened unexpected and I’m still adapting myself to some of those things right now. One thing, though, is that the journey has been quite adventurous and it is full of lots of great lessons.

Thinking about my weight loss experience brought some things to light about blogging success, and I’ll be sharing some of them with you below.

1. Plan Things from the Get Go

One major thing I realized with losing weight is that you have to plan things from the get go. You need to know what kind of results you want to get from your weight loss efforts and how to go about it. No, you don’t just wake up in the morning and start running today, then you wake up in the afternoon the following day and decide to do push-ups. What do you want to achieve, and what kind of plan will accelerate you towards achieving it?

The same applies to blogging!

Bloggers need to learn to plan from the beginning, and I’m not talking about mind mapping your goal for the next few years. Instead, I’m talking about having a solid plan aided by a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound) goal system. By this, I mean you shouldn’t create plans about things you have no knowledge about or just based on assumptions.

When you see a lot of new bloggers today and ask them what their plans are for their new blog the first thing they will tell you is that they want to be making $ 20,000 a month from blogging in 6 months time. For God’s sake! Even though it is entirely possible to make money blogging, it is plans like these that burn people out and makes them give up, and as a result they end up believing blogging doesn’t work.

Planning is good, but you can’t plan what you know nothing about. Always be ready to plan as a blogger but make sure your plan is S.M.A.R.T.

2. Always be ready to evolve Your Plan

Like I said above, it is totally impossible for you to plan what you know nothing about, so while the above planning I’m referring to might be something basic you need to be ready to evolve it as your knowledge increases.

One other thing I learned from learning to lose weight is that the same trick that worked for someone else might not work for you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it either. Instead, include it in your plan, monitor it for a few weeks to see how it works and let your plan evolve accordingly. If something doesn’t work for you, don’t just follow it blindly. Let your plan evolve, keep on learning and trying new things and you will be on your way to success.

3. Early to Rise, Early to Bed

Just like Benjamin Franklin says in his book, The Way to Wealth; early to rise, early to bed makes a man wealthy, healthy and wise. This particular saying has been so helpful to me when trying to lose weight and I have also noticed it is completely applicable to blogging.

I have never seen someone interested in losing weight jugging or exercising in the afternoon, inside the hot sun, and I rarely see people planning to lose weight exercising in the evening either. Most bloggers live a very unhealthy lifestyle not because they eat junk food, but because they spend too much time sleeping and hardly make effective use of the most productive time of the day, the morning.

If you want to succeed as a blogger you need to make it a principle to rise early and you need to look for a way to get the best out of your morning, just exactly like someone losing weight will make use of the morning for most of his/her exercise.

4. Don’t EVER Give Up

Not for a single day…or even a minute.

If you’re trying to lose weight and you lose a day because it is not comfortable for you that might be spelling disaster for your plan. Comfort is what makes us lax, or even give up sometimes. Make sure you don’t give comfort a chance.

Yes, I know your reason for blogging is to be comfortable but you should also realize that there is time for everything. It can spell disaster for you if you give up now because missing a single day will lead you to missing the next…and before you know it your blogging will be on the verge of collapse.

Yes, blogging is difficult, but that is the fun of it. If it were so easy everyone will be doing it. Keep pushing harder, keep persevering and never give up…not even for a minute. You will have yourself to thank for it soon enough.

So you get an idea of what I mean, Problogger and six figure blogger, Darren Rowse, published at least a post on his Problogger blog every day for years, and even after commemorating his 5000th blog post on Problogger he said he has never missed a day, not one! That’s what it takes to succeed!

5. Invest, and take care of, Your Emotions

What weight loss also taught me is that success in every field requires both physical and emotional investments. In other words, marketing the hell out of your blog and writing a lot of good articles would do little to help if you are not emotionally invested in your blog.

Take a look at example of successful bloggers – such as Darren Rowse, Brian Clark and John Chow – and you will notice that one thing they all have in common is that they are passionate about their blogging. They believe in it, they have dreams about it and it is one of the few things they wake up to every day. In other words, they don’t just plan for success, they are committed to it.

Blogging when you don’t believe in blogging will only hurt you because you will always fail with that kind of mindset. The real key to success is to really believe in what you’re doing, be passionate about it and never give up, and you’ll be able to achieve success sooner than you expect.

Are You Doing These Things?

These are some great adventures in weight loss for me and while losing weight is a good thing, something even better is that I have learned some lessons to help my blogging. Do you think all these lessons are applicable? Share your thoughts below in the comments section!