Unleash your voice - Best Business Books online

It’s been an exciting launch, as 15 incredible ladies (and one gent) have come together to release the book – Unleash Your Voice – Powerful Public Speaking for Every Woman. Not only that, within days, we hit Amazon Best Selling Author Status! It’s so exciting to be part of this!! Thank you Lavinia Thanapathy and Joanne Flinn for inviting me to be on the team.

Thanks for the image Margie Warrell! One must include hearts anytime it’s relevant!!

What I see as the goal with this book?

To help women, all over the world, claim the stage, because we need as much equality on stage as we are asking for in the boardroom, and everywhere else. I’ve always said that everyone wins with equality, and to reach true parity, it needs to be present everywhere. The world’s stages are no different, but it’s never going to be given to us and neither should it.

Women must be in the driving seat, and that means we must be brave, and we definitely need to get outside our comfort zones. We’ve got to do things that make us squirm on the inside, because if we don’t, who will? Who will be the role models for our daughters and sons if we are not? Who will be the voice of change?

When I wrote the blog – When women step up, does it help more women step up? I reckon it might – it was after speaking at the Asia Professional Speakers Convention 2018 for the first time. However, it took me five years to apply to speak!

I always ask the question: why do women need to be pushed so hard to take our place on the stage? Kind of like needing to be 100% qualified to apply for a job versus men, who sit in the 60% of qualifications required….

Why so long?

Simple. I didn’t think my message was ready – it wasn’t perfect or 100% – that’s why! Familiar huh?

And since I did speak, I’ve often wondered, if I stepped up earlier, would it have made a big difference in the trajectory of my career?

I’ll never know the answers to this, and I’m certainly not unhappy with my trajectory, but it makes you think, right? When we wait, when we go for perfection, are we missing out when we should be flying?

The Asia Professional Speakers Convention is a great case study for speaking. Based on feedback from the 2018 Convention Chair Fredrik Haren, and the current 2019 Convention Chair, Cathy Johnson, more than 70 per cent of the applications to speak came from men!

LADIES we can change this stat simply by putting our hands up and our applications in!!

And we’ve got to put our hands up across all aspects of events. As MCs and of course, on panels, as another challenge that keeps coming up is manels. Every time I see a manel, I wonder:

Did the organizers not think about it? Possible
Did women just not apply to be on it? Possible too
Or are we making event organizers work too hard to secure our presence on stage?? YES WE ARE!! And in our busy world, that’s probably hurting us more than anything. We must make it easy for the organizers, not harder. So it’s a bit of a double-edged sword, right?

Check out another perspective from my pal Stephanie Krishnan in her blog: Sisters are maybe kinda not doing it for themselves in the Supply Chain? She’s right, huh? And not just for the supply chain.

Time to fly ladies

The critical missing piece is, women are just not putting their hands up nearly as willingly as the chaps are. And ladies, we must. Take that step forward. Get started. Get practising. We will perfect our presentations over time and then that will open up bigger stages. But we’ve got to start.

We must claim equality. There is no woman I know that wants to be rewarded for her gender. We all want to be rewarded because we deserve it. BUT we cannot complain about inequality, if we are not willing to make ourselves uncomfortable and claim this stage. Do you agree?

The book Unleash Your Voice – Powerful Public Speaking for Every Woman is designed to help ladies (and men) unleash their voice on the stage. It covers all aspects of speaking – whether you want to be a professional speaker or a professional who speaks – with chapters discussing experiences on the speaking journey, why it’s important to have equality on stage, how to be confident, the visual and design side, stage presence, the right mindset, storytelling, how to be authentic on the stage, how to get booked, the value of your network, negotiation and fees, building your profile on the digital stage first (of course 😊) and SO MUCH MORE.

It is truly awesome value, a fantastic collection of combined wisdom, and it’s an excellent buy for you (dear reader), although, of course, why not bulk-buy it for the ladies in your company? What a gift of knowledge that would be.

Here is the list of co-authors, who share our collective wisdom

Lavinia Thanapathy

Joanne Flinn

Mette Johansson

Drs. Joyce van Binsbergen

Fredrik Haren – the gent

Aurélie SAADA

I’m really proud to be part of this book. I’m proud we are tapping into a critical need in the equality debate – to get equal representation on the world’s stages. Men, women, and diversity are all critical.

Let’s make a commitment and do all we can to get to equality on stage and ladies, let’s take responsibility to do this for ourselves.

A worthy song to get stuck in your head today…

If you want to buy the book, here are the links I have so far: The US, The UK, and Germany.

You’ll be supporting amazing work

All money raised from this book is going towards KeyNote Women’s Speakers training program, which aims to help more women find their voice.

Cheers

Andrea

Want to claim your stage?

Check out our co-authored Best Selling Book – Unleash Your Voice – Powerful Public Speaking for Every Woman – that I’m proud to be part of!

Want proof social leadership transforms business and attracts customers?

Check out this case study with IBM Asia Pacific. Incredible results.

Want to be a super star online?

Don’t know where to start, check out my e-learning course How to build a rock star personal brand today.

I believe it’s time for all of us to embrace our voice and embrace the future. We do this by working and living out loud with meaning, intention and by being true to ourselves.