Use the gigs you get to get the gigs you want. You spend a ton of time building your personal brand to generate more speaking opportunities. You write a blog, record podcasts, post on Instagram, and upload to YouTube. You refine your speaking website, work on that book, participate in Clubhouse, and comment on LinkedIn. You share your expertise and insight freely. All of that hard work might get you one gig. And, unfortunately, none of those things will guarantee you the next gig. But what if you became a referable speaker? In this ground-breaking guide to building a speaking career, New York Times bestselling author Michael Port, co-founder of Heroic Public Speaking, teams up with bestselling author and world-renowned keynote speaker Andrew Davis to show you the fastest, most practical way to increase your fee and generate more leads. Discover precisely how event organizers select their keynote speakers, what you can do to win them over, and even how to set your fee. Port and Davis show you why you need to stop investing in marketing yourself as a great speaker and start investing in your speech. Because, unless you're famous, event organizers won't buy you (or your personal brand). They'll buy your speech, then your idea, then you in that order. You'll learn exactly how 81 speakers built sustainable speaking revenues by evaluating the three F+E+E Factors and 10 sub-factors-factors that turn novice presenters into transformational keynote speakers. And you'll evaluate how to make the most meaningful impact through 58 professional speaker case studies based on six years of industry data. See how elegantly simple it is to make the leap from breakout rooms to the keynote stage. You'll leave with an entirely new, eye-opening, and refreshing understanding of how the speaking business really works and how you can make an impact fast. Do you have what it takes to become a referable speaker? You do. Go ahead, take a look inside!

Featuring a balance of practical advice and sound instruction, Speechwriting: A Rhetorical Guide provides readers with essential knowledge to prepare and deliver well-constructed and well-researched speeches appropriate for a variety of contexts. The first part of the book discusses traditional rhetorical theory in a way that is direct and easy for students to understand. The chapters cover such topics as audience and the rhetorical canons of invention, elocution or style, disposition or organization, delivery, and memory. Chapters in the second part then apply the rhetorical principles to four different types of speeches: inaugural addresses, commencement addresses, a variety of persuasive speeches, and a number of ceremonial ones. The text includes excerpts from actual speeches, illustrative speechwriting samples with commentary from a prospective speech writer, and a set of exercises that encourage readers to think about how the sample speech might be improved upon or modified if they were the one writing it. Speechwriting connects rhetorical theory to modern situations and settings to emphasize real-world application. The text is an exemplary resource for courses in speech and writing as found in departments of communication studies, English and composition, political science, education, and any other discipline in which people are frequently asked to speak or address an audience.