Speaking as Negotiating

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Annual Meeting of the Women Lawyers of South Carolina last week, a more dynamic and women's-issue focused group of women lawyers than you're likely to find anywhere in this country.  

I love speaking to women, particularly about negotiating their market value and shattering the glass ceiling one at a time and with one another's support.  

I never intended to make speaking part of my career.  For four years I simply used it as a marketing tool to engage my market and prove my market value.  But when you do something long enough and work at it hard enough, eventually you'll want to monetize it.  So it was that I was sitting at lunch in South Carolina listening to Deb Sofield (left) give her fifteen rules for ruling the room and ensuring that the audience had a good time under her benevolent dictatorship.

Still, I was thinking, OMG!!! Deb's listing at least half the things I do badly!!  How am I expected to follow this????  And for the first time in years I had actual stage fright.

Here's the happy end to this story and the reason I want you to go to Deb's website right now and hire her, follow her, read her newsletter, and do whatever she says to do because my performance as a speaker immediately following her talking points improved a full 100%. And speakership is leadership and leadership is the brass ring. You need it to enter and stay in the executive suite; to "make rain" and retain clients; and to make anything you want to happen, happen, even if it's just getting the kids to bed on time (Deb's rule:  short sentences, big ideas).  Build a school in Africa or bring medical care to South Central Los Angeles.  Run for office (one of Deb's specialties).  Make the world a better place.  That's how powerful speaking can be after you've spent 20 minutes with Deb.

So go to Deb's website now.  Invite her to speak to your group of women and pay her very very well because she is one of the few women on the speaker's circuit today who can literally, spontaneously and instantaneously transform the quality of your life.

Then I'll tell you why speaking is negotiating.

(cross-posted at the Negotiation Law Blog)