Douglas Vermeeren

Doug Vermeeren : Imagine if there was a million dollars in a brief case for you on the other side of a field. The money is all yours all you have to do is go and pick it up. There is however one catch the field is filled with landmines and you don’t know where they are. Crossing this field will be a very challenging not to mention potentially explosive obstacle. However you have a few options to get across. Option 1 – Run like heck a hope you make it okay. Option 2 – Read a book about it and take it slowly and cautiously on your own. Option 3 – Have someone who has navigated the field once before tell you what to do from the sidelines. Option 4 – Have someone who has successfully navigated the field multiple times walk with you and point out the potential dangers and challenges. Which one would you pick? When it’ appears in the context it’s pretty obvious which choice is the one you should select to complete the objective of crossing the field. But when it comes to...

Secrets of Storytelling for Speakers According to  Douglas Vermeeren Storytelling is one of the most important skills a speaker can develop. Storytelling is the most important part of connection and engagement. It makes you real and relatable. It is what allows people to see your authenticity. Storytelling is also considered one of the most powerful skills you can have when selling form the stage. The power of storytelling cannot be underestimated. I love storytelling. (Can you tell?) One of the reasons I love story telling is I love stories. I love hearing them, writing them and watching them. I love them so much that’s actually what I studied in school. (Yes, that’s true I didn’t go to school to actually become a speaker.  Doug Vermeeren went to become a filmmaker and my studies focused on screenwriting. You’ve seen some of my work already in The Opus, The Gratitude Experiment and my latest movie The Treasure Map. I’ve written many other non-personal developmen...

Douglas Vermeeren rated as one of the top speaker trainers by Huffington Post Doug Vermeeren excited to have my company 10X Your Speaking Business and myself recognized by the Huffington Post as one of the top speaker training programs today. I must admit that we have worked very hard to become the best and our results are definitely speaking for themselves. We work very hard to make sure that our tools are leading the marketplace and helping speakers create profitable businesses. We look at training our speakers very different than others. We not only want you to have practical skills on stage, we believe that you need to understand how to be competitive in today’s marketplace. You need to understand the business models available to you in today’s market. You need to know how to get speaking gigs. You need to know how to create and host your own events. You need to know how to use social media. You need to know how to get attention and so many other important skills for...

For the last two decades I have been a public speaker. I have seen a lot of changes and most prominently I have seen many new speakers arrive on the scene with the intention to create a massive business sharing their expertise. More often than not they fail. This makes me ask: Is public speaking as a business dead or dying? As I have carefully considered this question and looked at the complete landscape of what is really going on in this highly saturated industry of speaking, coaching, mentoring and personal development in general I have an answer to this question: The old way of building this business is dying. While those who understand the nuances of today’s marketplace are not only thriving but building incredible 7 & 8 figure businesses. If I were summarize a few of the differences between the dying and thriving it would be as simple as this: The dying are relying on an old model of the speaking business. In other words they are focusing on creati...

One of the big mistakes I see speakers making today is that they don’t understand or they misuse the power of social media in growing their business. Most of them are not using it at all for their businesses. They are silent. Silent = invisible. You’d think that they would recognize that the biggest conversations are taking place in these forums now and to remain silent is to stay invisible. That is the worst you can be. At least doing things wrong or only part way well is not invisible. Even when you do things wrong there may be those who agree with you. But what I wonder is why there aren’t more people using social media to position themselves as experts. Why aren’t those who are supposed to be teachers using these platforms to share more about what they do and how they can help? Anyways, that is my challenge to you. Get out there and add value. Let people experience who you are. If you are a speaker, trainer or coach become more visible and let people ex...