Kicking off in a TV spirit - 45/100 the show must go on…
Hi friend!
I keep marching on🚶♀️➡️. Thank you for all the kind, supportive words, emojis, texts, hugs. Boy, am I tired.
This is still 100% valid: I still send this update only to a handful of people
All of whom I have spoken to about my goal over the last month or so AND
Who have expressed their unabridged support, interest and enthusiasm about my goal.
Thank YOU for being one of them.
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.
***
My husband Peter showed me this picture earlier this week, when I was sitting/ lying face down at/on the kitchen table.
It does feel like work now. Money from speaking hit my LLC’s account, it feels real.
It also starts making sense - let me share my math with you:
for my Columbia alumni group I have led sold-out workshops on topics such as confidence or other “soft skills“ for up to 20 people
where private individuals paid $20-$25 per ticket,
bringing in revenue ~$400 per event
with super happy attendees, asking for more events like that.
This has already been happening over the past 2 years.
I had to dig up these old collages to remind myself of what I have already done outside of my “employed“ work.
Therefore, even if
I only formalized that and packaged it into an offering for companies
as a combination of an engaging speech & an interactive workshop and
offered it as programming for Lunch & Learns or similar employee morale boosting activities
keeping the price at $400 per session (60-90 minutes)
and thanks for keeping the price so low and providing a fantastic experience leading to plenty of referrals,
I’d manage to book on average 1 event like this every working day
I’d be making 8k/month pre-tax. Throw-in a few comedy shows and it’s an equivalent of 6-digit top-line.
A far-cry from a cushy tech job but this is a realistic, albeit extremely humble living - ASSUMING no improvement (= ability to charge more) on my end, just doing a lot more of what I have already done.
Let’s say some of those folks who’ve been to my program would want me for a full day or to present to a bigger audience, pricing it at $2-5k+ and the upside starts slowly making more sense.
Tonight is the first time, this no longer feels like a “dream“ and more like a doable yet just-getting-started yet reasonable business in its first months.
Holy cow!
Why, oh why, did it take me almost 7 weeks to realize this?!
It all checks out.
Actually I had all these facts in front of me for more than a year now.
I just thought of this quote and the wisdom of it rings absolutely palpable to me right now..
🤯 Mindset breakthrough. Thanks for riding with me this 🎢.
But it’s time for some real updates, too!
***
✅ #1: Finally more progress on my thesis on Building Social Capital!
I attended 3 events with 100+ attendees in the past 6 days (mental note - I do need to get better about broadcasting this on social media esp. Linkedin!).
🍷 Winery event in Monterrey organized by my alma mater alum on Sunday
🏆 Business award ceremony by the SF Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday
🇬🇧 Annual reunion from a business school in London where I spent one semester last night - Thursday.
I kept jotting down observations, thoughts, challenges, ideas and meshing it up with my previous experiences, what has worked for me and what has not. A lot of it is raw or half-baked at best but I love thinking about it and I can’t wait to start sharing more!
I wish this process of “thought crystallization” would be faster but… it is what it is.
For now I have many pages of notes that need to be re-read and re-edited and I plan to dive into it head first next week.
✅ #2:🍽️ +💡I did my 1st Lunch & Learn (with an immediate lead for another one)
I’ll repeat this sentence from the last week: the “firsts” are often weird.
It just happened so that my dear friend Scott wanted to inspire his colleagues and he decided to organize a showcase Toastmasters meeting in his office. He asked me if I could help him out and lead the section where people take turns, answering impromptu, casual questions. Nothing too extraordinary.
Next day, however, at Bricks Embarcadero (remember that gig?) a big group of young, white collar professionals arrives and takes a seat along a few tables at the plaza.
I start chatting with their leader-apparent who gets very excited about Toastmasters and explains the group is doing their monthly Wednesday team-building activity.
And now the kicker.
It turns out these folks do the same structural engineering as the folks in Scott’s company, something I had learned about just a few days prior.
When I casually drop that I was doing Lunch & Learn there just the day ago, the lifelong-Toastmasters-fan lady (their HR / Office Manager) wants to exchange contacts and see if we could do something similar for their future Wednesday team-building.
Let’s see where this leads but…pretty random, right?!
✅ Update #3: I can be a producer AND host for that local TV!
I saved the best for the last! The best as in most immediately exciting & satisfying.
Meet Katka, now trained and onboarded to be a TV host and producer with BAVC Media.
I kid you not. It still sounds a little weird when I say it out loud!
I had 2 hour in-studio crash course on everything from the software to the equipment! And yes, I can start checking out the pro equipment for my in-field filming!
Remember that Talking Tree story? That’s how this all started!
I tried all different setups with my buddy senior producer Javan - more onboarding sessions coming next week! See how uncomfortable and starstruck I look there!
And as soon as next month (YES, November!) I could have my show in their programming live.
After the time in studio I did feel like my head was about to explode 💥 - with everything I just learned and all ideas and possibilities that are opening in front of me for my programming!!!
Ahhh, can’t wait, I need to go back to working on it!!!
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 🤐).
