Nothing worthwhile is ever easy (Thank God )
Anything worthwhile is never easy, and although these words offer little comfort or encouragement during the early days of trying to establish your speaking career, the fact remains that if the above wasn’t true, few of us would ever enjoy the satisfaction, the deep feeling of achievement or the financial rewards that we all strive for every day of our lives.
The journey that we embark on when we decide to become professional speakers should be as much a journey of self discovery as it is building a business, as it will reveal to us our many strengths and weaknesses ।

I remember when I first became a life insurance salesman over twenty years ago and how I quickly discovered my strengths and weaknesses, the latter seemed to drastically outweigh the former ! Which left to their own devices would quickly threaten to destroy my career as quickly as it had begun, I would soon realise that amongst my many weaknesses that I had little or no confidence, self belief, I feared “important prospects”, I was absolutely terrified of rejection, and to add insult to a multitude of injuries I could never bring myself to ask for the order !.
Broadly speaking I was on the road to disaster, thankfully however I had a passion for the life insurance industry and a desire to help people which in turn fuelled a desire in me to not just survive in the business but to thrive and then excel .
This lead to a passion in personal development which would later propel me into the speaking industry, I devoured self help and sales literature, I attended conferences and conventions all over the world , and went to great pains to track down and contact the industry leaders so I could learn from and emulate their successes in my chosen field , I was investing a considerable amount of my time and income on developing myself (notice I said investing and not spending )and I was fortunate enough to be mentored by the worlds top life insurance salesmen, One of my mentors Joe Gandolfo used to personally sell more life insurance by himself than 1500 of the 1800 insurance companies in America ! Even so he was never to busy to take a phone call from me to help me progress to the next stage of my career, Surprisingly the most successful people in any field are the most likely people to hold out their hands and pull you up .
As a direct result of my desire , passion and perseverance , I qualified for the Top of the table which was a club within the Million dollar Round table which represents the top 1% of salespeople worldwide (Psa members Frank Furness and Brendan Power were also qualifying members) ।

So what’s my point ? I quickly found out upon entering the speaking profession that the principles of success in the speaking industry were pretty much the same as in insurance and that I would have to pay the price of study , seek mentors and quickly identify my strengths and weaknesses if I was to have any chance of emulating the success that I enjoyed during my time in the insurance industry.
There are no shortcuts to success in any field of endeavour, there is no magic pill and nobody gets to ride for free, but if you have a passion for changing peoples lives with the spoken or the written word you will in turn reap financial rewards that may have never been possible for you in any other profession !.
As the old adage says “when the student is ready the teacher will appear” and if you truly seek to change people lives for the better, and you seek with passion and enthusiasm then your answers will appear before you as quickly as you can internalise them,।
Mark Baker
http://www.markbakerint.com

whatdoesamandowhen..........

What does a man do when he comes to a point in his life where he starts to ask the difficult questions and finds that ...........

He has missed more opportunities than he has seized because he was afraid he would fail and then failed by default ?

He has put off doing things that can now never be achieved regardless of his wishes and irrespective of what he is prepared to do ?

Spent his life waiting for his life to get better only to find that his best days are now behind him !

His drive has diminished and the man who once expected to change the world is now nowhere to be seen !

The passion that once coarsed through his veins is now just a faint memory and getting fainter every day !His only freedom comes inbetween the numbess of the last glass of wine and the ensueing coma ।
What does a man do ......................... ?