6 Ways to Grow Your Public Speaking Business Internationally renowned keynote speaker Adam Smiley Poswolsky shares his advice on growing a public speaking profile.

As a keynote speaker, I spend a great deal of time talking with people about what it takes to run a speaking business. It's incredibly meaningful to connect with people at different companies, nonprofits and schools, but sustaining a speaking business requires a lot more time and energy than the 60 minutes I spend on a stage. Speaking, like any other profession requires a ton of work behind the scenes. I spend months working on my presentations, hours on calls with event organizers and new leads, and have done several hundred speeches over the past 20 years for free to pay my dues, fine tune my craft and give back to the community. Now that public speaking is my full-time job, I love brainstorming with other speakers, especially aspiring speakers, who have a story to tell and want to get out there and share it.

I asked my friend, Adam Smiley Poswolsky, to share his favorite pieces of advice to help you on your journey. Smiley is a millennial workplace expert, internationally renowned keynote speaker, and bestselling author of The Quarter-Life Breakthrough (Penguin Random House), and The Breakthrough Speaker. Side note: I read The Breakthrough Speaker in small increments of time because with a newborn, and launching a book of my own, I didn't have much free time. I suddenly loved pumping because that became my reading window. So whether you're a sleep-deprived parent, working several jobs or in a career funk, you don't have to overwhelmed by your idea to speak for a living. You can just take things one step at a time. While Smiley helps companies attract, retain, and empower millennial talent, he's inspired thousands of professionals to be more engaged at work, through speaking at companies like Unilever, IDEO and Salesforce. You'll see in the video, he's passionate about you getting out there, too. He even started the Women Speaker Initiative to help women and underrepresented speakers book more gigs and get paid as much as male speakers. I hope between his book, and this video, you feel empowered to make your speaking platform a reality this year or take your current keynote to the next level.