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You Are Your Product

by Burt Dubin    

Much is written, most of it true, about the importance of developing your product line. For BOR sales. For your catalog. For passive income. Let's take a look at another aspect of product development. Let's look at the fundament. Let's probe the foundation of your product development. Let's look at you. At your core. At your essence. At your state of being. At your perspective. At your sense of your accountabilities.

You know that for a structure -- whether of steel and concrete or of wood and stucco -- to withstand the elements, a sturdy foundation is required. There must be a foundation that is solid, stable, rooted in the earth as it reaches toward the sky. Let's examine the structure of your speaking business for a moment:

I've been studying my fellow speakers for close to 20 years. With the eye of an anthropologist. With the approach of a research specialist. With heart. With empathy. With love.

A few of us are brilliant marketers. Look at the dazzling success of the luminous figures who come to your mind. On the other end of the scale, some of us produce nothing more than a demo tape.

You are your product. Let's look at the most important aspect of your product. Let's examine the keys to your impact on productivity and profits. (That's what decision-makers want, right?) Let's look at how you affect hopes and dreams, and possibilities. (They are what audience members want you to illuminate, right?) Let's look at your authenticity:

How real are you as you address your audiences? From what depth of know-how and caring do you speak? How much timeless wisdom is involved in your phrasings, your stories and examples? How deeply do you look into industry conditions, competitive considerations, and, if applicable, market-share concerns?

How many audience members and top executives do you interview as you prepare your program? How far do you probe beneath the surface of responses to your questions? To what degree do you balance the concerns and interests of the sponsors of your program, (They pay your fee), the decision-maker who hire you, (S/he wants to look good because of this choice,) and your audience members (whose concerns may be entirely different)?

You are your product. A few years ago, Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song. In it are these words: "Like a bridge over troubled waters, I will ease your mind..." These troubled waters are the world-wide social, economic and political chaos in which we all find ourselves.

You, with what Naomi Rhode, past-president of NSA, calls, "The privilege of the platform," have the opportunity to ease the minds of each of your constituencies. You can do this as you weave your verbal tapestry of education and insights, of stories and metaphors, of participation and involvement.

We're in this together, all of us on this earth. We have our lives to live, our children to raise, our significant other to love, or to find, our careers or businesses to grow. And we get to do all this in the center of a maelstrom surrounded by dizzying changes, tumult, threats, upheavals, and clashes of cultures and values. Terrible consequences and unprecedented disaster await us one trigger finger away, right around the corner. The potential bad guys are extremists with nothing to lose.

Even the crazy changes in world weather patterns contribute to the uncertainties and insecurities that have become symbols of our times. Surrounded by all this, we have our one chance to make of ourselves what we will.

You are your product. Your ability to sort out this unrest, this wild ferment, this ubiquitous agitation, is needed more than ever now. How do you bring order to the multiple interests of sponsors, decision-makers and audience members now? How do you guide them to make sense of their worlds? How are you to help them master their challenges today?

These people, all of them, find themselves on wild and stormy seas stuck on a ship they no longer can control. They perceive themselves to be far from any port. Compounding matters, they are not at all certain of their compass readings. And, they are even less sure of where their safe harbor may be.

They look to you for wisdom, guidance, hope, light -- and a bit of fun. I offer you no answers, only questions. And your attitudes, thoughts, words and actions, in response to these questions, are important. They're important now, more than ever. Because now, more than ever, you are your product.


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Burt Dubin, a 20 year veteran of the business of speaking, coaches and mentors speakers and wanna-be’s world-wide. Burt works with people who want to be speakers and with speakers who want to be masters. The words of his clients, the admiration and respec