How to Develop Your Personal Brand Through Speaking with Sima Dahl.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. I'm Peter George, public speaking trainer, speaker, and award-winning author of The Captivating Public Speaker. My guest this week is Sima Dahl. Sima is a branding visionary who revolutionizes the way audiences think about generating demand. Her early career as an award-winning marketer paved the way for Sway Factor, her groundbreaking model of modern influence that explores personal branding and its impact on traditional business and employer brands. Sima has traveled from Boston to Budapest showing sales, marketing, and HR leaders how to drive sales, attract top talent, and increase retention by leveraging this unorthodox branding trifecta. She's a certified speaking professional, a distinguished Toastmaster, and a self-proclaimed live music junkie. Known for her bold candor, unfiltered honesty, and charismatic style, here's my chat with Sima Dahl.

How Sima Got Started

Peter: I know you have 20 years as a B2B corporate marketer behind you, and then about 10 years on your own. When you first got started, where did your leads come from?

Sima: As it turns out, I made my name as a high-tech marketer. My early business was marketing consulting, and I had naturally attracted a lot of high-tech clients in the Chicagoland area. It was someone I knew through those connections who invited me to give a presentation on guerrilla marketing for high-tech companies. It was a free speech, done purely for fun — to share what I knew with fellow business owners and marketers. I got bit by the bug, and I started telling people that I was a speaker. Initially, and quite a few still to this day, all my leads came by way of referral.

The CSP Designation

Peter: You're not just a speaker. You're a certified speaking professional. Can you explain what that means and how you actually achieve that certification?

Sima: The CSP, as we call it, is a certification awarded by the National Speakers Association to any member of the global speaking community who achieves a certain amount of business — by volume, by dollar amount, by audience size — year over year for a minimum of five years, along with video reviewed by your peers, client testimonials, and a lot of other hoops you have to jump through. It's a rigorous process, but a rewarding one. I'm now one of roughly 15% of speakers worldwide who have earned the designation. It tells the world that we as a CSP have a commitment to the craft. Your first year you're a candidate, and then you have to demonstrate five years of legitimate business operations. I earned it in 2017.

Why Speaking Skills Matter for Everyone

Peter: As a speaker and personal branding expert, you know firsthand how beneficial public speaking can be — not just for speakers, but for just about any profession. How does knowing how to deliver concise, compelling, engaging messages help one's personal brand?

Sima: A lot of people think confident speaking and competent communication is just for a professional speaker. But increasingly, speaking skills are a big part of how you're perceived as having executive presence, management potential, leader potential. Organizations bring me in to teach these very skills to their high-potential leaders and young managers because it is so critical to express your knowledge quickly and succinctly — to lean into a conversation that's moving fast, interrupt gently, share your thoughts. Even responding to a random question in the hallway from a supervisor. The ability to put your words into an organized fashion and quickly share what you know — that's money right there.

I often see people who work on their personal brand focusing on the visual things. They have the right car, the right suit, the right watch. But they don't take how they speak seriously. That often undermines everything they're trying to achieve. We've all been in meetings where someone meanders off into a personal story and comes back to the question — and by that point your eyes have rolled back into your head. Poor delivery undermines your ability to convey your intelligence.

Practice vs. Preparation

Peter: A lot of people don't see the need for preparation. "I know what I'm talking about, and I have the guts to get up there." How do you see preparation, and how important is it?

Sima: Practice can take on a couple of different forms. One is Toastmasters — a safe, fun environment to organize your thoughts, practice extemporaneous speaking, and give prepared speeches. Some large organizations have their own clubs. You can also just record yourself. I like to set up my iPhone and record my whole body so I can see my gestures and catch any nervous tics that have crept back in. Preparation, on the other hand, is about knowing your material, creating a solid outline, and then being willing to let it go in the moment. A lot of people overprepare to the point where they know every word in order — and the moment they lose their place, they're completely lost. Preparation is really about knowing your material and giving yourself the freedom within that outline to be present and extemporaneous.

To this day, if I need to share a statistic or a lengthy quote, I'll pull out an index card. I don't have the kind of mind that remembers statistics. You have to know where you excel and where you need support — and be a little kind to yourself. Nobody's flawless, not even the best.

Confidence on Stage

Peter: I believe one of the things that allows an audience to relax and get into your message is you demonstrating confidence as a speaker. What's your take on that?

Sima: I do agree. And confidence is interesting.

We put a lot of pressure on people to be flawless and poised. The truth is, it's the opposite. What we want is a real, passionate, well-organized speaker who's willing to stumble and fumble a bit but keep the conversation going. I do an exercise with emerging leaders around confidence. I have them write down the top three things they fear will happen in the room. And 99% of it is noise in our heads. We go through worst-case scenarios, and the conclusion is always the same: the likelihood is very low, and even if it happens, you can handle it. We fear these horrific outcomes, but the odds are almost never what we imagine.

Eye Contact

Peter: One of the things I maintain is that you'll have confidence when you walk out there and look someone in the eye and they're listening and engaged — it just keeps building.

Sima: Absolutely. A little hack I use is telling people to look at the bridge of someone's nose. It appears as if you're looking them in the eye. With a larger audience, you're not looking at a single person — you're looking at a center of the room, a corner of the room. And you have to practice holding that gaze until it feels a tiny bit awkward. When you look at somebody and bounce away too quickly, they miss the fact that eye contact was made. Hold it a little longer than you would in casual conversation, and people feel acknowledged — like they're the center of your attention. And they believe you know what you're talking about.

Message vs. Delivery

Peter: Many people say it's the message that's most important. Others say that without engaging delivery, you can't deliver the message. Do you see one as more important than the other?

Sima: I come at it a whole different way. When I'm hired to speak, I ask the client: what is it you want the audience to know or do? How should they feel differently after spending an hour with me? What do you want them to stop, start, or continue doing? Then I back up and create a program that serves that purpose. So it's part message — they have to be able to understand the ask of them — but it's also a big part delivery. Are you sharing the information in a way that can be absorbed, processed, and acted upon? For me, it's neither one above the other. It's both.

Customizing for Every Audience

Peter: Some people go out with the same message no matter who the audience is. I can't do that. If I'm speaking about delivering a concise, compelling message to college students, it can't be the same presentation as when I'm speaking to C-suite executives.

Sima: It can be the same message, but not the same presentation. I have a growing archive of signature stories that help me articulate a point or demonstrate a behavior I'm trying to teach. Those stories surface in different presentations at different times. How I motivate an audience to sit up and listen absolutely depends on the people in the room. The message may not change much — but how I connect them to it always does.

Advice for Speakers

Peter: Can you give one more piece of advice for potential or accomplished speakers they can take with them?

Sima: A few things. First, keep practicing your craft — even if speaking is just a marketing funnel for your accounting or real estate practice. Take the stage with confidence that you've spent time honing your skills. Even the most accomplished speakers continue to practice as they create new material. Second, start telling the people you know that you are a speaker. There's no "I'm thinking about it" or "I might someday." There's only: I'm a speaker, and I help people learn or do this specific thing. Your network becomes an extension of your sales force the moment you start owning that space — on LinkedIn, in your email signature, in every conversation. Don't live behind your official job title. Give yourself the title of speaker, own it, and start letting others in on it.

That's the essence of Sway Factor: the degree to which you behave in a way that generates demand for who you are and what you do. You can't get from the universe what you're not willing to ask for.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. To learn more about Sima Dahl and her Sway Factor model, visit simadahl.com. Are you ready to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then visit petergeorgepublicspeaking.com and let's make it happen. I'll see you next time.