“Adaptability is being able to adjust to any situation at any given time.” – John Wooden

You all know I have been a public speaker for some decades and, in 2007, I turned this hobby of mine into a business, DiBartolomeo Consulting International (DCI), Inc. to help technical professionals reduce presentation preparation time in half, get their point across the first time, and present with comfort and ease.

As so often happens, there are common traits between different businesses. As a business owner, I am also an entrepreneur. Outstanding Entrepreneurship can indeed make us better speakers. There are similarities between excellent entrepreneurship and great speaking.

Three of these similarities are adaptability, persistence, and hard work.

Adaptability

Entrepreneurship is very similar to presentation preparation. There is a fair amount of trial and error before you get “traction” in a business.

Great entrepreneurs adapt by exploiting the changes in their industry as opportunities, not obstacles.

Think about the changes you have to deal with as a speaker. Your laptop is not working at your next presentation. The audio system has decided to add sixty cycle hum to the sound. You have misread the demographics of your audience.

You can turn lemons into lemonade. You just have to be positive, creative, and adaptive.

Excellent entrepreneurs have the discipline to perform a task they know they should do even though the motivation for the task is non-existent.

How many times have you been working on a presentation and you “hit a wall?” Your “creative juices” are at a low ebb. You are finding it hard to concentrate. Yet, this is the very time you should be looking at ways to adapt your presentation.

There are three periods of your speaking: presentation preparation, delivery, and follow-up. All of these require you to be adaptable.

During presentation preparation, you may have to adjust your three main points several times to get the right mix for your presentation.

You may get a question you have never encountered before during your delivery. You must be adaptive to answer it. You may not know the answer. In this case, the best thing to do is simply say you do not know the answer, but you will get back to the questioner by tomorrow.

As a speaking entrepreneur, I know that my work does not end when I answer the last question at the end of my presentation. There is a follow-up with the event planner and the attendees who contact you via e-mail. Don’t forget to put a recurring task to reconnect with the specific event planner.

Adaptability is a crucial trait for you as a speaking entrepreneur, but it is not enough to succeed. Your ability to persist in working on and in your business is also key to your speaking business success.

Persistence

Another essential trait of entrepreneurship that directly applies to the speaking professional is persistence. Unfortunately, the vast majority of others do not persist.

The life of a speaking entrepreneur has its ups and downs. There will be days when you want to quit and return to your day job.

However, your reluctance to not want to work on your speaking business is the very sign that you need to persist until you accomplish your goal.

Create and implement a plan for how you want your business to succeed. Make sure your plan is SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bounded.

Work this plan, but dare to change parts of it or the whole plan if circumstances warrant it. At the same time, make sure you are working on your plan and not changing it whenever a challenge presents itself. First, analyze the challenge and then decide whether to change your plan.

Have faith in yourself; you know your business better than anyone. Then, use the knowledge of your business to point the way to improvements that have a considerable return on investment of your time and money.

Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before discovering the filament material that would not be consumed by fire in a vacuum. Yet, even though he failed 10,000 times before inventing the incandescent light bulb, he also brought us the phonograph, the movie camera, the alkaline storage battery, and many more inventions we take for granted today. How’s that for adaptability and persistence?

Adaptability and persistence are key traits of a successful speaking entrepreneur, but they are still not enough to succeed as a speaking professional. Your ability to work hard until you succeed is the third trait of a successful entrepreneur that directly applies to your speaking.

Hard Work

My former next-door neighbor Jack worked for an IT company with an information technology (IT) contract with a German company. This German company was having difficulty sorting out its IT needs and their implementation. The German company executives asked Jack how they would solve their IT mess. Jack told them they would solve the IT challenges the same way you eat an elephant – one bite at a time.

Back in the US a couple of months later, a large stone elephant was delivered to Jack’s residence next door with the following note from the German company executives: “Thanks for solving our “unsolvable” IT mess!”

There are no universal rules to our personal and professional lives. However, there is one that comes close to being universal – anything worth doing will take a good amount of effort to accomplish.

Think of the things you have enjoyed in life, and you’ll find they are the things that were difficult to accomplish.

What is the lesson here? First, nurture your ability to work hard in and on your business – very hard.

Running a successful speaking business is hard work. You are faced with a myriad of challenges.

Most professional speakers would rather work in their speaking business instead of on their speaking business.

Working in your business means speaking at various engagements. It also means working on future presentations. This is the “fun stuff” in your speaking business. It is why you went into the speaking business in the first place.

Working on your business means marketing, sales, prospecting for customers, and a whole lot more that has nothing to do with developing and delivering presentations.

The bottom line is that your speaking business will not last long if you don’t bring in more money at the end of the month than your expenses. But, of course, this depends on how much hard work you do on your business.

A successful business is 90% working on the company and 10% working in the business. Never forget this!

Hard work is essential, but working hard at the wrong tasks in your speaking business is a waste of time and a de-motivator for you. So you need to determine your speaking business’s most essential tasks, prioritize them, and then proceed to do them.

Ask yourself the following question: “What is the most valuable use of my time right now? Notice I did not say, “What is the most valuable use of my time tomorrow or next week, or next month?” Instead, I said, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?”

Realize you can only work on one task at any instant in time. You can certainly move between tasks, but you will find yourself not completing any tasks if you do this.

Adaptability, persistence, and hard work are critical traits of a successful entrepreneur. Think of a three-legged stool with the legs being adaptability, persistence, and hard work. If you short-change any of these, the stool will fall, and so will your speaking business.

Your ability to be adaptable, persist, and work hard in and on your business will make you and your speaking business successful!

Call to Action

• Be adaptable in your presentations – always have backup plans when things “go south”

• There are no traffic jams on the extra mile – persist in and on your business when you don’t want to do what you know you should do

• Work hard on and in your business – hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but lack of hard work does guarantee failure

Frank DiBartolomeo is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and award-winning speaker, presentation and interview skills coach, and Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. He was awarded Toastmasters International’s highest individual award, Distinguished Toastmaster, in 2002 because of his outstanding work in public speaking and leadership.

Frank formed DiBartolomeo Consulting International (DCI), LLC (www.speakleadandsucceed.com) in 2007. The mission of DCI is to help technical professionals to inspire, motivate, and influence their colleagues and other technical professionals through improving their presentation skills, communication, and personal presence. Frank can be reached at frank@speakleadandsucceed.com and (703) 509-4424.

Don’t miss Frank DiBartolomeo’s latest book!

“Speak Well and Prosper: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Better Presentations”

Available now at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com