Coronavirus Action Plan For Public Speakers

As you’ll learn in this article, this isn’t really a coronavirus action plan, it’s an everyday action plan, but the coronavirus pandemic makes the lesson much more clear.

A SWOT analysis is a tool for working on your business versus working in it.

Some of you have built very high-paying jobs, but you have not built a business because if you can’t go out and work, there’s no money coming in.

Or, as Michael Gerber states in his book The E Myth, “you don’t own a business, you own a job.”

I really encourage you to read that book if you run a “business” that does not generate revenue unless you go out and work.

The Coronavirus Has Changed Nothing

It’s just shined some light on things that were there all along.

For public speakers, coaches, trainers, etc., everything in this SWOT analysis is exactly the same as it was prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

I didn’t need to put the coronavirus in the Threat quadrant because it’s already covered by the “loss of client to competitors who use video marketing” threat.

Yes, you’re losing income to cancelled events because of the coronavirus, but going forward, as your clients adapt to conducting business in a world with coronavirus, you will start losing clients to competitors who can service your clients with video solutions.

Losing clients that way was already a threat, whether you previously acknowledged it or not.

Video is 80% of internet traffic.

If your business delivers 0% of that video content, you were already losing clients to competitors who offer video content. It just wasn’t as obvious as it will be during this pandemic.

Opportunity Quadrant

These are all opportunities that exist to grow your business, every single day.

But, unlike the Threat quadrant, these opportunities will not just happen by themselves. You have to make them happen.

That means making whatever investment is required (money, time, etc) to turn those opportunities into revenue.

Failing to invest in the Opportunity quadrant will eventually come back to haunt you.

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Some of you are experiencing that right now.

This coronavirus pandemic is a real world example of the costs to public speakers of not investing in the Opportunity quadrant.

Threat Quadrant

That threat quadrant is far more dangerous to your business than you may realize.

Hopefully, this pandemic has opened your eyes and created the awareness you need to be successful in the future.

You don’t have to do anything at all for something in the Threat quadrant to destroy your business.

The Opportunity quadrant requires you to take action for anything to happen, but the Threat quadrant can mess up your life all on its own.

Ignore it at your peril.

This Is Not An Academic Exercise

The SWOT analysis I’ve presented here is going to determine who wins and who loses big during this pandemic.

To be successful as a business owner, you have to use tools like the SWOT analysis to guide you through normal times, as well as through crisis times like we’re in right now.

Public speakers and coaches and trainers with a video strategy are able to still service clients and make money during this pandemic.

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They’re able to keep some of their engagements on the calendar by presenting virtually, instead of in person.

One of my clients did exactly that for a presentation she was supposed to fly to Europe to deliver. Instead, she delivered it from the comfort of her home and kept her payday instead of losing it to coronavirus cancellation.

There Will Be Winners and Losers From This Crisis

In any crisis, there is a redistribution of wealth.

Public speakers with a video strategy are going to gain clients from this crisis because the world keeps turning and business has to go on and customers will find service providers who can still solve their problems, despite the crisis.

Whomever hired you to train their employees, still needs to get that training done.

If you can’t do it, they’ll find somebody else who can.

You can be one of the service providers who gains business during this crisis, or you can be one of the service providers who loses business.

The difference between the two is investment in the Opportunity quadrant.