Hi friend - Week 4 - and we keep going 💪!
By now you know the drill - I still send this update only to a handful of people
All of whom I have spoken to about my goal over the last 4 weeks AND
Who have expressed their unabridged support, interest and enthusiasm about my goal.
Thank YOU for being one of them.
Please don't hesitate to respond, share your thoughts or just say hi 🙌 - I respond EXCITEDLY to every single response I receive, even just an emoji from you warms my ❤️ & keeps me going.
The purpose of this 100-day challenge 🚀 is to get me to say “I speak for a living, I am a professional speaker” by Dec 20, 2024.
Let’s go!
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😃 The Good #1: I Got Myself Listed
I’ve been an Airbnb host on and off for the past 8 years.
It’s such a straight-forward way to make money (if you have a place you can list, of course).
📷 You create the listing, take some nice pictures, write a description and you and lock’n’loaded, ready to go 🏁.
💸 Demand is generated by the platform, leads are self-converting and auto-booking your place.
😎 You have 0 marketing effort to do.
For most other businesses, speaking included, you need to HUSTLE to GENERATE THE LEADS.
And while I am getting better in doing that I realized I might as well put my name somewhere where people come looking for what I can do:
Thank you Nadine, Mel, Helen, Elena (my 1st!) & Peter for submitting reviews on the both platforms that reflect your experience seeing me speak & perform.
If you would be up to submitting Thumbtack and/or eSpeakers review for me, please let me know 👋!
😃The Good #2: I Got Myself Out There
This was the #1 priority on my this week’s plan and it did make me wake up on Monday morning in cold sweats 😰.
“I know the public pressure I put myself here will likely make me crank 5 pieces up… But how time consuming will it end up being? Or will I just procrastinate and then post tweets on Friday noon… ?!”
But that’s not what happened.
I became PROLIFIC. I. Kid. You. Not.
First day was not easy but I pushed through.
Each day became progressively easier.
I did 15 Tweets and 2 of them even made it to my Linkedin.
I am still mindful of not “overposting on LinkedIn” but the engagement I got from that has been great.
Old friends from across the globe reaching out, I even got a random party invite!
“Ship 30 in 30’s ultimate guide has been a great inspiration & trigger (I didn’t pay for the program, the article is FREE) - if you are on the fence, THIS IS YOUR SIGN, jump with me on the Sharing Your Thoughts Online Bandwagon 🚂!”
And I use Typeshare.co to compose my content (And I have another 7 unposted tweets/ post drafts there 🤪).
Best part is that I enjoy SO MUCH formulating and sharing my thoughts.
And it gets easier the more I do it - who would have thought 💁♀️?!
😃The Good #3: I Got a 20 Min Keynote Draft
Did I say writing begets more writing?
On Wednesday I just put together a 20 min speech draft 👇.
I picked this as the illustration for the one pager of “Love That Inner Underdog”
Is that what will become the key part of my signature speech? Unlikely.
But it paves the way for another speech draft, doubling down on what I post about.
💡 Bad #1: I won’t become Linkedin Top Voice, I didn’t update my bio nor banner Trust the process, as long as you are progressing
Linkedin discontinues the Top Voice badges as of next week. Too little too late, Katka 🤷♀️.
Also I had hoped I will finally write a good, first-person voice bio: Something that ✅ humanizes you, makes you ✅ likeable, ✅memorable and ✅trust-worthy in YOUR line of work.
Hopefully next week. Don’t forget the banner too📝.
💡 Bad #2: This speaker hasn’t done any speech this week You have a single-focus mind and this week we did writing online
Some of you know that I have the hyperactive presentation of ADHD.
I’ve been diagnosed as a child but as long as this girl was doing well at school, no one would pay too much attention to it…
…1990s was not exactly an era of mental health enlightenment in Slovakia.
A few years ago, I enlisted professionals to help me deal with it more effectively.
And one thing I just need to 1) remind myself constantly and 2) accept about myself is that FOCUS SWITCH is something that is for me very, very hard to do.
“I can be heads-down writing or all-in performing but oh boy, I cannot do both, definitely not on the same day. Or sometimes the same week 😅. “
It is what it is.
So it’s about the time to
✅ PLAN my work AROUND IT
❌ NOT endlessly TRYING to MAKE MYSELF more like the other people.
***
🏃🏼♀️ Next Steps (for the coming week)
📰 Keep the writing & publishing streak going! Every day for the next 7 days (weekend including, Twitter or LinkedIn)
“once I formulate my thoughts, putting it into a presentation will be a piece of 🍰” - this hypothesis from last week is definitely proving
📕Feed the “thought engine” - read the 3 books you identified this week on connections and building social capital (more on this soon) + decide on the next 3 for the week after
✍️ Do another writing push: resulting ideally in another ~20min of personally relevant speech on why
Everything else is optional. A bonus. Speaking of which…
💥 EXTRA:
Wow, if you made it here - you deserve something special - Throw Back 15 years ago…:
xoxo, Katka
PS: If you want to refer back to any of my previous updates, I put them online here 👇 (you need to be on my list to see the whole updates, this is still in a closed beta 🤐).
