The introduction to this series on the diary of a whimpy cruise speaker gives the back ground to this series if you’re interested.
In this post I want to talk about where to start.
For me, it started with making a friend. His name is Rick Deutsch, aka Mr. Half Dome. Click on the link to learn more about him. Don’t worry. It’ll open up in a new page and you won’t forget you were reading this.
Rick has spoken on dozens of cruise ships, literally all over the world for more than a half dozen years.
“Bill, you know things. You like to travel. Why don’t you try the cruise ship speaking gig thing?”
“Um, not sure. Too busy, I reckon.”
Fast forward about three years and more of the same from Rick and the bug finally bit me.
Step 1 – Rick gave me his spiel. It took a couple of hours. I went home and put my head down and pounded out a bunch of topic ideas. A few exchanges with him and we had want we wanted.
Step 2 – Rick introduced me to his agents and a few of the cruise ship lines that he knew of. Another few hours later and I filled out the applications with all my topic ideas and hit send. Then hit send again, and again and again.
Step 3 – Emails started arriving.
“Mr. Belew. We really like your ideas for the topics you submitted to speak on our cruise lines.”
” …. ”
“Mr. Belew?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s great. What next?”
“We’d like to arrange a time to talk with you on the phone to get to know you and go over the particulars.”
Step 4 – A few email exchanges later and the dates were set … for the interview.
And that’s where I will pick up in the next post. The interview.
Point here – Find/make a friend who has been there/done that and pick his/her brain. Pay attention and follow directions. That’s where you start if you want to be a cruise ship speaker.