What Is a Short Self-Promotion Business Speech?

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Short Self-Promotion Business Speech Introduction

How Patricia Ann Bath Decided to Use Public Speaking as a Business Promotion and Publicity Strategy 

Patricia 

What happened was that I had had some surgery and I hadn’t been able to work for awhile and things were very bad in the economy.  That was in the late 80s and the early 90s and there weren’t many jobs available in my field.  So I decided I had to have my own office since I would then have control over it. 

What I did then was I decided that I needed to have a plan and so I developed a business plan. Part of a business plan is a marketing plan and my marketing plan said that I needed to have additional clients and one way to do that is by speaking. So I went to the public library because I didn’t have a big budget.

George:
You had no budget right?

Patricia:
I had no budget basically because I had no income.  We were living on my husband’s salary which was kind of a nice thing to have to fall back on but that wasn’t really enough to support us. 

George: 

What inspired you to think of speaking as a way of marketing, because most people don’t normally think of that? They’ll think of brochures and sales letters. They’ll think of maybe networking breakfasts and other things like that-- and referrals of course.  What motivated you to use speaking, where did that idea come from?

Patricia: 

Well I found that the fear of hunger is a great motivator.  I really had no other means of getting the income.

There’s this really great scene in Gone with the Wind.  It’s after the war and Scarlett and her sisters are living in the house, there on the plantation and she has gone out into the fields looking for sweet potatoes because the Yankees didn’t know what sweet potatoes were and they didn’t know to look for them because they are a root and they’re buried in the ground.  She’s out there with her bare hands grubbing in the dirt and she stands up with this gorgeous sunset behind her and raises her hands over her head and says “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.” 

I have developed a situation now where I am not dependent upon anybody else for my income and I will never be hungry again.

George: 

But once upon a time, that was you.

Patricia: 

That was me

George:
And speaking to these groups that we’re talking about today has helped take you out of the realm. 

Patricia: 

That is true.  George, things were so bad that I was very glad to speak for the groups that had the chicken dinners because then I didn’t have to pay for a meal for myself.

George: 

It’s a free meal.

Patricia: 

It was a free meal.

George: 

Now you said you were an attorney and still are as a matter of fact.  We should tell people what level you’ve risen to because when you were starting out, you were basically an individual practitioner and had nothing going for you.

Patricia: 

Yes I had several years experience at that time George but I had been out of work for a while, out of practice for awhile.  I’d had cancer surgery and had to have some time to recover from that. 

The fact of the matter is I started in my back bedroom and we set up a desk back there.  Computers had just become popular for homes and we purchased one of those and after awhile I needed more space so I actually moved into our living room and just turned that into an office.  Eventually I had to have an office.  I ended up having in my practice, two lawyers and a staff of total of ten.  Now I’m with a big downtown law firm.

Next page: Choosing a Business Speech Topic

Topics: What is a Short Self-Promotion Business Speech?  Targeting an Audience for Your Business Speech, Researching the Market for Your Business Speech, Writing and Developing Your Business Speech, Promoting and Publicizing Your Business Speech, Making Your Speech Funny, Making Your Speech Informative, Should Your Business Speech Be a Sales Pitch?, Audience Interaction in Your Business Speech, Overcoming Stage Fright in Your Business Speech, Conclusion.