Podcast: Karen Schmidt on being a professional speaker and author

Podcast: Download (Duration: 33:20 — 7.6MB)

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Karen Schmidt is an award winning speaker, workshop leader and author living in Brisbane, Australia.

Karen has been recognised as a Certified Speaking Professional and also as the winner of the National Speakers Association of Australia QLD 2006 “Speaker of the Year” award. You can find Karen at http://www.letsgrow.com.au

In this podcast Karen explains how being a speaker can enable you to sell more books and build your profile as an author and as an expert.

Show Notes

·         How Karen came up with the idea for her book

·         How she wrote the book by organising the chapter headings and filling in the blanks

·         How a self-published book can be professional and sell in bookshops as well as being sold “at the back of the room”

·         Why authors need to be speakers as well as just writers

·         The difference between Toastmasters and National Speakers Association and how they can help you develop your speaking ability

·         3 tips for promoting your book while speaking without directly pitching it to the audience

·         How speaking is a competency, and like any other skill, takes time to master. Reference Malcolm Gladwell “Outliers” for the 10,000 hours it takes.

·         How consistent and long term networking in person can create contacts and relationships that develop into business and media opportunities

·         Why authors and other small business people need multiple streams of income and can use a book as a marketing tool to generate more business

You can find Karen's book “How to feel FRESH at work every day” at her website here. You can also find details of Karen's speaking availability.