I'm Not Buying It

This week one of my articles was published on Forbes. Why Women Say No to Public Speaking continues the conversation started with “Why Women Say ‘No’ to your speaking invitation” Bingo card, and other articles and interviews I have done on the topic.

I prefer to focus on the real circumstances that lead many women to turn down speaking invitations – and many of them come down to a simple “too busy”.

• Women are more likely to work part-time and it’s hard to escape the office for a day if you are only there two days a week to start.
• Women are more likely to still be responsible or home and family obligations.
• Many women who speak get asked to speak a lot – they get overbooked quickly.

I (purposely) ignored (for better or worse) the reasons that usually get cited:

• Women don’t self-promote
• Women don’t know what they can talk about
• Women don’t know how to get speaking engagements
• Women don’t want to be the center of attention
• Women don’t have the confidence needed to be speakers
• Women don’t like the way they look onstage
• Women don’t like to speak
• Women are shy, have stage-fright or get too nervous.
• Women don’t feel qualified.

So, why did I ignore this giant list? Because I talk to potential speakers every day and the majority of people that I speak to WANT to speak. (Granted, this isn't everyone.) We might get nervous (tell yourself you’re excited) but we still want to speak. We might be introverts (I am) but we still want to receive the benefits of speaking – enhanced career, more customers and partners, funding, board seats and more. We might not know how to self-promote, pick a topic, or write an abstract but there is this wonderful tool called Google we can use to figure out how.

I also purposely didn’t use these reasons (excuses) because I am tired of hearing them. I’m tired of buying into the stereotype.

Go.

Speak.

Bobbie Carlton is the founder of Innovation Women, an online speaker bureau.