New Book Review: "Million Dollar Speaking"
New book review for Million Dollar Speaking: The Professional's Guide to Building Your Platform, by Alan Weiss, Ph.D., McGraw-Hill, 2011, reposted here:
As Alan Weiss states in his preface, this book was written for the professional career speaker (one who gets paid to speak), even though "amateur" speaking is also a worthwhile endeavor and an activity that the author recommends pursuing. After discussing the trade, the author discusses marketing, fee rates, and career management, followed by numerous topics associated with career growth and career challenges. If you have read other texts written by Weiss, you will find the same high degree of practical advice offered in this work. Some of the advice provided easily applies to areas of the consulting profession on which the author has written extensively in other books, but bear in mind that this book concentrates on professional speaking.
As always, a review in such a small amount of space is difficult for a work such as this, since Weiss covers a lot of ground and there is very little of the filler content that many business books seem to possess these days. This reviewer especially appreciated chapters entitled "Establishing Your Market", "Establishing Fees", "Lean and Mean", and "Yawn: Passive Income". In addition to the practical advice that Weiss offers, the other qualities to which this reviewer is attracted is his humor and occasional sarcasm, together with his originality. In the opinion of this reviewer, it is the many succinct lists and original line diagrams the author provides that especially demonstrates this originality, and always provide value to the reader seeking to understand the material rather than simply going through the motions of learning.
For example, in the first chapter referenced, which asks questions such as "Who are the members of your audience?", "Whose actions and behaviors do you wish to improve?", "Who are your buyers?", and "Whose condition can you improve by appearing in front of those audiences?", the author does not just talk about the three elements that are required to speak successfully, he draws lines representing market need, competency, and passion, and asks "Where do these paths intersect?". And in the second chapter referenced, Weiss visually shows how fees can surpass value as reputation or brand increase after remarking that "I once thought that as value increased, fees could increase. I was incalculably wrong. The lines actually cross as trust and a brand are developed, because people expect to get what they pay for!"
List favorites of this reviewer include "40 Ways to Increase Your Fees", "Five Facts to Challenge Your Assumptions About Bureaus", "Techniques for Professional, Honest Feedback", "The Six Rules and Eight Steps for Creating a Speech", "15 Conditions that Support Raising Fees", and "20 Great Ways to Engage Almost Any Audience". Read this book alongside texts in this genre by other authors to get a balanced view. This reviewer also recommends the following books by the same author: "Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional's Guide to Growing a Practice", "Life Balance: How to Convert Professional Success into Personal Happiness", and "How to Establish a Unique Brand in the Consulting Profession: Powerful Techniques for the Successful Practitioner" (see my reviews).