Many professional services run seminars as a way to enlighten their clients and potential clients on legal and financial obligations in all manner of areas.  This is an excellent way to raise the profile of the business in a ‘soft-sell’ approach.  As this is a high-profile marketing opportunity, it’s really important to ensure that your speakers are adequately trained in public speaking and that someone will warm up the audience and introduce the speakers. 

As a trainer and coach in public speaking, it is always my advice to clients that they make sure that they do not have to introduce themselves.  Many people in our culture do not like to boast about their experience and qualifications and will probably under-sell themselves or even feel uncomfortable about doing so.  In any case, my view is that the speaker/s should concentrate on the key messages that they wish to impart rather than having to spend time singing their own praises. 

I offer a service to clients who have received training or one-to-one coaching with me whereby I warm up the audience, introduce the speaker or speakers in glowing terms and then facilitate the questions at the end of the session.  One such event took place at the Orchid Hotel in Bournemouth on 18 February 2009 and was hosted by Move on Rentals Letting Agency.  There was an audience of around 70 people and as a professional speaker, it was quite easy for me to settle the audience down and prepare them to want to listen to the first speaker.  Facilitating the questions at the end of the session enabled those answering the questions to concentrate on doing just that, rather than having to decide whose question will be answered next.

So if you run or will be running seminars to promote your business, do seriously consider both training in public speaking and having someone to introduce the speakers.  You won’t regret it.

I have recently been talking to a number of hotels in the Bournemouth and New Forest areas about the wedding business.  Despite the current economic circumstances not to mention the number of divorces, getting married is still, apparently, very popular.  One hotelier said that, although would be married couples were sometimes reducing the amount they spend on their wedding, the number of people getting married was around the same as before.  I was pleasantly surprised, as no doubt they are. 

Weddings are undoubtedly big business for many - hotels and other venues, wedding planners, florists, bridal wear outlets, cake makers, photographers, jewellers, musicians and others I may have forgotten.  People getting married want their day to be memorable, for the right reasons, and therefore the quality of all these goods and services is very important.

However, there is one area which people may not consider as seriously as they ought.  It’s the wedding speeches.  How many grooms, fathers of the bride and best men tremble at the thought of this task?  What if your wedding was perfect in every way, except for the speeches?  Despite all the time, money and effort put into the planning and execution of your day, it could be ruined by this one oversight.  That would be totally tragic and yet completely unavoidable.  For a modest investment, you could be safe in the knowledge that your speech-makers would do you proud on your special day.  This would give you and them peace of mind.  Watch Out World offers wedding speech coaching and confidence-building.  For more information, please go to: http://www.watchoutworld.co.uk/pages/wedding_speeches.html.

If you read any personal development or, for that matter, spiritual book, they all say the same thing - your thoughts create your reality.  Why is that?  Because our thoughts are energy and our thoughts are therefore creative.  If we think only thoughts pertaining to what we desire, we will attract what we want to us.  However, if we think about what we don’t want, we will attract that too. 

The challenge is that we have been conditioned to think differently.  We’ve been brought up to think about our problems and be realistic.  This means that we are focusing on the effects of our previous thinking, rather than focusing on what we would like.  We live in a world of cause and effect.  Every action creates a reaction and since every action is preceded by a thought, if the thought is negative, it will create a negative action and therefore a negative reaction or result. 

If we look at what is occurring at the present time – i.e. the so-called credit crunch, this is created, maintained and increased by people talking about it, giving it more and more power.  If everybody stopped talking about the credit crunch, it would fizzle out.  Now I realise that this is a challenging statement for some people, so, if you haven’t yet read the book or seen the dvd, do check out The Secret – www.thesecret.tv.