Movies have trailers. Athletes have highlight reels, and creatives have portfolios. Serious professionals looking to make money doing what they do have a ready-to-deliver tool in their kit to show off their body of work. Any aspiring or seasoned speaker will tell you that when you approach decision makers about hiring you to speak, they'll want to see a video of you speaking. Some people send footage of an entire presentation that was shot by their friend on a smartphone, and others might send Twitter clips that were posted by audience members during their most recent talk. While both of these methods fulfill the request by the decision maker to see a video of you speaking, I wanted to use this request as an opportunity to show off. Conference organizers and decision makers are very busy and likely receive hundreds of requests from potential speakers. Before approaching them, it's important to have a strategy in place on how you're going to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd.
My speaker video does just that: serve as one of those things that makes me different from everyone else pitching to get the gig. It's great that I can articulate over the phone and via email how engaging I am and how much my audiences love me. But if can prove it, why not?
A video of my entire presentation is good, but taking the time to pull out the best parts of that presentation and stitching them together to create a brief highlight video is better. I knew before I began editing my video that I wanted it to show off 4 things:
Show me speaking
Show my personality
Show customer/client/audience testimonials
Show how to learn more
My philosophy in life has always been:
I can show you better than I can tell you.
Essentially, my speaker video is another component of my marketing strategy. While a video doesn't guarantee gigs, it is another way for me to show off my value as a speaker.