How to become a professional speaker, using E-TTRACTION

blog 2015

23 Mar

I have a confession to make - I harbour a dream to become a professional speaker. There I said it out loud. Now it's real! A few months ago I thought this crazy idea of mine was just that, crazy. Now I am well on the way to making this idea a reality. How? Well I used a process I have been working on with my clients at Social Star called e-ttraction or digital attraction. How to get what you want using a few psychological techniques, a little NLP and smart use of digital media. I just completed my first speaking gig under my new e-ttraction banner and want to share this easy to implement six step process with you now in the hope it will assist others to chase their crazy dreams.

Andrew introducing e-ttraction to RMIT students

Being a professional speaker has been a dream of mine for awhile. I caught the bug when I was working for large IT corporations. I was fortunate enough to have a brilliant job traveling the world teaching marketing across Asia teams how to utilise digital to increase customer loyalty.

I presented dozens of times in different languages to large and small audiences in countries like India, Japan, Thailand, Korea and more. The ability to stand in front of a room and hold their attention for an hour, provide them useful content and enjoy it was a great challenge. I loved it.

Since those days I have given literally hundreds of presentations mostly on digital marketing, social media and personal branding through my company Social Star. So what's the difference now? The difference is I have been teaching 'how to' content in my presentations and now I want to inspire audiences with the 'way to'. During my journey I have discovered much about life, business, money, love and how to be completely fulfilled. Now I want to share this knowledge with others with the aim of giving back a little of the blessings I have received. Many of you would recognise some of the techniques in this process from other trainings, this is my way of consolidating all I have learnt from business school, books and my own applications.

Let me know share a summary of my 6 step process I used to make my dream of becoming a professional speaker a reality.

Andy's 6 Step E-TTRACTION Process

STEP 1 - INTENTION

Nothing happens without Intention. To start any activity your brain needs to be focused on what you want it to do. Simple really. So simple this process normally is unconscious. The power in this technique comes when you set a deliberate intention to do something or what I call conscious intention. So a question to you all - what is it that you really want? Think about it for a moment. Then I want you to write it down in as much clarity as possible. The more crystal your intention the more likely you will be able to e-ttract it.

My intention was to be asked and paid well to present at business conferences and off-sites as a motivational and inspirational speaker.

I was already getting asked to speak quite regularly for my business, I was even getting paid quite well to do it. Yet I wanted to change the tone of my message from brand and digital marketing teacher to more of an inspirational presenter so I set a firm and clear intention to do this.

STEP 2 - ATTENTION

The fascinating effect of setting your intention is that your mind will already start trying to make this real. It's a psychological fact that as soon as your mind has a job to do, it will try to find the solution to it. The brain doesn't filter between 'negative requests' and 'positive' ones so be careful what you wish for because you might just get it!

I see this effect all the time in my consulting work at Social Star, particularly in the job seeker division. Clients express, sometimes for the first time, that they don't like their job and want to leave their company. Then a few months later they end up getting retrenched! They set the intent to me, which crystallises their behaviour and soon it turns into results.

Attention is all about watching out for the small clues that setting your intention will bring. I set an intent to be a professional speaker and not long after I saw a Facebook post from a friend of mine, Trav Bell - The Bucket List Guy, running his first speaker training course. It was an exact match of wanted. However, unless I was paying attention I would glossed over it and not seen this opportunity. To go a step further, I would even suggest that I happen to see that post, amongst the hundreds I miss everyday, because I was 'meant to'.

STEP 3 - ACTION

Once you see the opportunities presented when you pay attention, you have to take action! Duh. But I see so many people who are paralysed at this stage because it makes their intent real. Sometimes getting what you really, really want is scary. If you don't get it you will feel awful so some people choose to focus on the easy things they don't really want so they will not be disappointed if it doesn't work out. Wrong! If you don't go for what you truly would love, you will always be disappointed! Plus if what you want is congruent with your values and mission in life you will ALWAYS succeed. That's the power of this process. It's guaranteed to work as long as you follow your intuition and take all the steps.

When I realised that Trav's course was perfect I knew I should do it. However it still took me a few days to reconcile my feelings becoming a professional speaker. What would be the ramifications if I was doing this as a living? Can I really do it? Would people like me? It's normal, even healthy to have these doubts. If you push on anyway, you know it's the right thing to do. I bought the course.

STEP 4 - REACTION

Once you take action you will notice that the laws of physics are true! Every action creates and equal and opposite reaction. If you buy the course you have to invest your money and time, but you get the knowledge. That's the balance. Do the work, get the reward. Follow your intuition and chase your dream will create an equal amount of opposite emotions or challenges. Doubts, pressures, failures - that's all part of the process. Don't take these as signs to give up, they are signs to double down! Listen to the feedback, adjust your effort accordingly and keep going.

For me, I had to juggle kids, work and other competing priorities to attend the speaker course. It was my birthday so I had plenty of events on and reasons to not attend. In fact at one stage I didn't think I would make it at all!

STEP 4 - ATTRACTION

Once you have completed the feedback loop of Action and Reaction a few times, you will find that Attraction starts to occur. This is flow. You will know what it feels like when you are in flow. Things just seem to appear in front of you when you need them, effortlessly and easily. This doesn't mean you don't work at it. Not at all, but the work seems effortless like you are paddling with the current, not against it.

With my speaker course once I committed in my mind to make it work a strange thing happened - it all just worked out. People helped me with the kids, work appointments fell into different days and my birthday plans were unaffected. In fact even after going out late for my birthday, I still made the 8:30am start the next day and was fresh - amazing!

Even more importantly I started attracting presenting work, before even doing the course! The above photo is from my presentation to RMIT University entrepreneurship students just last week. I was invited to present by my colleague Lauren Rielly who runs the course there. Interestingly, she asked me to present not on my usual material but on my new stuff, without even knowing that I had new stuff! The new presentation I had in my mind I hadn't even written yet so how did she push me in that exact direction? That's flow. I stayed up all night at wrote it, love it.

STEP 5 - E-TTRACTION

The final step in this process is e-ttraciton or digital attraction. What I mean but this is automation of your attraction.

When you are in full flow, and have been attracting for awhile, you will not have to work as much or take as much action to get the attraction. Think for a moment of any high level business person you know. If they are at the top of the attraction cycle, they don't really work as much to get the opportunities they desire. Opportunities gravitate to them. You will also see that digital plays a major role in that attraction as they utilise their personal brands, websites and social media to communicate what they do and select who they want to work with. They are in control. It's a nice place to be and you can be there too if you follow this process.

Ten years ago I had a dream of owning my own business. I had a strong Intention to do it. I studied a Masters of Entrepreneurship to gain the knowledge, ran a few start ups which failed and networked with a lot of similar people. When it came time to take action and leave my full time job eight years later, I had all the tools needed to build my business. I had finance ready to invest. I had a strong brand and contact base in social media. Basically I was ready to go because I followed these six steps. I didn't know I was following them at the time. Only in hindsight did I see the way e-ttration worked. Now I embark on a new journey to be a professional speaker with the same process and it is working faster because I understand what is required.

My goal for you is that you take the first step and create an Intention for what you would truly love to do. Crystallise it and write it down. Review it daily and pay Attention to what opportunities arise. Take Action and adjust your strategy based on the Reactions you get. Enjoy the feeling of flow when you finally have Attraction and be patient as it takes time! Love the journey and one day you will have e-ttraction in your desired area. Once you do I would love to hear about it so please do comment and email me your story.

To watch me present my personal journey to e-ttraction see my presentation to RMIT entrepreneurship students on the topic click here (skip to 1 hour into the presentation to see my part).

Or to enquire about me speaking at your next business event or offsite me as a speaker for your next business event click the button below.

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Andrew Forde-ttraction

Andrew Ford

Marketing expert Andrew Ford, the founder of Social Star, has discovered the secret of ‘Powerful Branding’. With a fire for unleashing people’s inner brand and developing business models to generate profit from an individual’s passions, Andrew leverages ground-breaking digital and social media marketing techniques to create digital strategies for clients to attract maximum opportunities. Having established a strong name for himself in the field, Andrew blends traditional business techniques with now-necessary tools for entrepreneurs to achieve scale, quality, and influence in their niche. Andrew’s comprehensive business background and qualifications consist of a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) (RMIT 2003), a Graduate Certificate in Management (MBA Executive Program, University of Sydney 2005), and a Masters of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (Swinburne University 2011). Continually on the cutting edge of his own education, Andrew has tested his marketing theories in forums such as the BCG Business Strategy Competition, which he won in 2005 against all Victorian MBA schools, and the Venture Cup Business Plan Competition (Swinburne University 2003), which he won in the Masters category. With experience working at Hewlett-Packard, Sensis (Telstra) and IBM, Andrew also has mentored dozens of junior staffs to help them achieve their professional goals. Meeting and influencing high-profile public figures helped Andrew to realise just how many professionals require more understanding and control of their public brands or appearance, and need help with the skills to use the many amazing free tools at their disposal to generate success. At Social Star, Andrew consults with clients to uncover their personal brand – both where it is today and where it can be tomorrow – and refine and define how that should be displayed in social media in order to attract their perfect target audience. Andrew mentors his clients to rapidly grow their business’ audiences, resulting in larger potential client bases and higher revenue. Applying formulas that integrate over twenty years of Andrew’s business experience and fifteen years of formal business education, Social Star specialises in building clarity and velocity for clients’ brands using the ‘Understand, Build and Leverage’ methodology. ‘Having a Personal Business enables people to have an authentic, congruent connection with their valued clients and partners, using their brand as the bridge,’ says Andrew. ‘I’m highly driven to work with the new breed of entrepreneurs and small business owners – people who have a passion for making the world a better place. Traditional business models are stepping aside as people follow their innermost dreams and my role is to see them operate within their values while creating wealth. Some people think you have to sacrifice what you love to be successful in your business, yet it is actually the opposite. Follow your passion and success will come.’ Lecturing at Swinburne University from 2009 to 2011 on brand dynamics and digital marketing, presenting at numerous conferences, and consulting to hundreds of clients, Andrew has seen his philosophy work that if you follow your unique path, based on your skills, experience, values and goals, you will automatically attract the opportunities you desire and achieve the success you deserve. Living his mantra, Andrew has created a successful business and attracts high-profile clients including musicians, athletes, authors, models, entrepreneurs, professionals and small business owners, helping them find their ‘why’ in their business and fulfilment in their lives. Business for Andrew is more than work, it’s personal. Running a personal business means that he is able to fulfil all of his values rather than separating his life from work. It supports his two boys while providing social opportunities, educational development, fitness opportunities, spiritual fulfilment and many valuable friendships. Social Star has now become the vehicle for Andrew to crystallise his mission in the world, to help people love what they do, supporting his ‘why’, that if more people loved what they did, the world would be a better place.

http://www.andrewford.com.au/