Well what an interesting day. I have been called upon as a down to earth bookkeeper (I wear brightly coloured doc martens to most meetings!) to stand up in front of around 20 people and give them advice on setting up as self employed! Eek!
Now usually you can't shut me up for longer than 2 minutes and even that's a struggle, but now I've been told it's a 10 minute slot with Q&A afterwards, I've gone completely blank! I'll be having nightmares like when I was at school and used to have nightmares about turning up in my pyjamas!
So, any advice on what to say? a list if tips? How to get through it all without forgetting my name or why I'm there? I try all the usual, imagine them all naked (no thanks!) and it doesn't work (it has to have been a man talking to women who came up with that one!)
The talk is on 23rd November, so just over a week to prepare. Please help!
They say that talking before a mirror helps. You could try perform your speech before a mirror and analyse your body language while speaking. Try to radiate confidence so that when time comes people will believe you know what you're talking about. It also takes time to develop your confidence so practice a lot. You could also try asking a friend to listen to you rambling about business, bookkeeping, etc. Actually "giving advice" is a lot easier than doing the thing. I'm horrible when I'm before audience but people seem to find me amusing out of x/n times.
Well, you could go with the Roger Smith approach....
Your all going to fail.
Your freinds and family have been lieing to you.
Alternatively its a case of know your audience. You say that they are setting up as self employed but have no idea of their background so its difficult to know the level to pitch at. i.e. do you think of them as four year olds and give the equivalent of Peter and Jane do commerce. Or, do you go for the opposit end of the spectrum?
You almost need to have two seperate speeches preped and ready to go and only when you see the audience do you decide which option to take.
General advice is smile, don't fidget, sound confident and ensure that you have something to give them early in the speech that they did not know. What they can do to reduce their tax liability always helps, maybe also cover business start dates and throw the double taxation whammy in there to make them take notice.
Consider why they are there. They don't care about record keeping, they care about getting their busiensses off the ground. What can you say to make that initial flight easier for them?
Maybe throw in some statistics about profitable businesses going belly up because of cashflow, not because they were not viable.
Make sure that you have lots of professional business cards with you to give out on the night.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Thanks for the replies. Richard I will give the talking in front of a mirror a try, Fingers crossed!
Shamus, you have a point, I have no idea what kind of people they are, hopefully they do have some idea about life in general, but you may be right, best to go in there with two speeches. Don't want to come across as patronising or go way over their heads!
Hopefully, I will get some business out of it, but that's not why I'm doing it, I'd just like to be able to help. (yeah yeah, what can I say, I'm just a nice person!) I know I wouldn't have been able to make it this far (1 year this month!) without a great network of friends helping me along the way. And this forum of course!
As someone who frequently gets called on to talk expenses to a bunch or hardened business owners at 4N...
Don't be afraid to get it wrong! You're only human.
And take hand-outs, even if they never read them, I find that a hand-out at the right time can get you past any amount of 'forgot my notes' moments!
Subjects for the hand-outs... mileage is a favourite, how to cost up working from home a close second. Since cash flow is likely to be an issue for most of your audience, something on budget basics and price setting wouldn't go amiss.
Ooh love that idea of handouts, good thinking! Everyone loves a good handout. Great idea about topics too, mileage always seems to be one that catches people out. Thank you for the ideas Theresa.
Just thought I'd update you all. I survived the talk! it was to around 20 Eastern Europeans, I was very nervous but the handouts definitely helped. There were a few interesting questions but nothing too strenuous. I'm not entirely sure our laws went down too well with them. They are all joining a direct selling scheme and weren't too impressed with still having to register as self employed and possibly lose their benefits. I did point out that if they're earning the money then they won't need the benefits as well as one should offset the other.
Anyway, not in a hurry to do it again, but your advice certainly helped! Thanks guys.
