NSA Virginia

08/05/2025

Calling all speakers who want to grow not just on stage—but in business.

Join us on Friday, August 8, 2025, for a virtual event that could change everything!

You can’t just speak your way to a successful speaking business. You have to build it.

Join TED coach, marketing strategist, and international speaker Cathey Armillas for an energizing, no-fluff session that helps you do exactly that.

What you’ll learn:
✅ Tools and IP that open doors
✅ How to price with confidence
✅ Why clients shouldn’t pay for your practice
✅ How to drill like a pro so you can crush it on stage

If you’re ready to level up both your speaking and your business, this virtual session is for you. ✨

Open to NSA members and guests!

Register here: https://www.nsavirginia.org/events/cathey-armillas-the-speakers-hustle

02/23/2025

NSA Virginia members had a great time attending an excellent online keynote and workshop session by Allie Pleiter on February 14th where she presented on how to Improve Your Storytelling with Secrets from the Fiction World.

We learned how to:
- Utilize fiction skills such as dialogue, foreshadowing, and description to enrich our speech
- Identify the best place to start a story so you capture your audience's attention
- Tell a highly emotional story effectively

A little bit more about Allie:
- NSA Chapter Leadership Committee Chair-Elect
- Bestselling and award-winning author of over 60 published titles
- 1.8 million books sold around the world
- Northwestern University-trained actor
- Author of The Chunky Method Handbook, How to WRITE When Everything Goes WRONG, and Writer Crisis Hotline

Thank you for a great learning time, Allie! We loved having you.

01/16/2025

Keynotes can shift participant mindsets and plant the seed for new ideas, but deeper dive training is often needed to change behavior. If you want to provide clients with greater results and see their transformation through (while creating a more consistent revenue stream for yourself) it may be time to expand your one-hour brilliance into a training series that lengthens your relationship with paying clients.

This is exactly what the worldclass speaker Cara Silletto, MBA, CSP promised to NSA Virginia members and delivered it last Friday beautifully talking about "How to Expand into Training - Extending Client Relationships to Earn More Money!"

Thank you, Cara, for enlightening us on:
- Where to start when expanding from keynotes to workshops;
- How to build a multi-month training package for longer-term client contracts;
- Ways to offer more value to clients to increase revenue;
- How to duplicate your talent and build a team of contracted trainers.

01/03/2025

NSA Virginia had a great time hosting a Social Event at Gather Co-Working Space in Short Pump, VA on December 12th. This was a perfect opportunity for members and guests to catch up, share stories, win raffle prizes, and celebrate the holiday season together. Thank you to everyone that came that evening!

12/12/2024

Hey RVA,

Tonight from 6:30 to 8:30 PM, we’re hosting another NSA Virginia Festive Evening Social at Gather Co-Working Space in Short Pump, VA. This is a perfect opportunity for members and guests to catch up, share stories, and celebrate the holiday season together!

We’re also extending a warm invitation to friends, colleagues, and anyone interested in learning more about the NSA Virginia Chapter. Whether you’re a seasoned professional speaker or just curious about what we do, come and join us for an evening filled with great conversation and insights about the speaking industry and how we can become better speakers and build better businesses!

We can’t wait to see you! RSVP here: https://www.nsavirginia.org/events/festive-evening-social.

Mark your calendars for a special evening of holiday connection and community!

11/24/2024

NSA Virginia nonprofit board and chapter members had a fabulous time attending a keynote presentation by Shawna Suckow, CSP on November 8th that gave a masterclass on how to create an impactful Marketing Mosaic© that truly stands out to help you win clients and create greater impact. Thank you so much, Shawna!

Shawna Suckow, CSP is a best-selling author and speaker who loves to help fellow speakers gain new insights and new business. She’s also a proud Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) who spent 15 years as a corporate planner before crossing over to The Dark Best Side! When she’s not on stage, she coaches speakers of all experience levels on strengthening their brands, session descriptions, and prospecting methods to capture the attention of planners and book more business.

11/06/2024

Today’s prospects require a new type of approach. We need to build a bigger, richer personal brand that not only gets noticed when we do our outreach, but attracts inbound sales, as well. Picture a tile mosaic. Every piece plays an important part in the big picture. Each marketing message you share with prospects is like its own unique, standalone tile, but together with your other strategic messages, it forms a magnetic, differentiated, authentic Marketing Mosaic©. Done well, you’ll easily get the attention of your prospects, get more inbound leads, and have easier outbound success.

Sounds overwhelming? It’s not! Once you know the strategy and have the blueprint, you can not only prospect much easier, but also foster fierce client loyalty that drives referrals. This Friday Shawna Suckow, CSP will show us how to do it. Hurry up and RSVP while seats last!

https://www.nsavirginia.org/events/shawna-suckow-csp-the-marketing-mosaic-c-for-speakers-stand-out-build-trust-and-fill-your-pipeline.

10/18/2024

NSA Virginia had another great event for its members last Friday morning. We hosted an excellent international-level speaker Steve Bollar, CSP® who is the owner of Stand Tall Enterprises. Our Chapter President Emilie Anne Davis and Technology & Social Media Advisor Andrey V. Karpov had dinner with Steve the evening before the event.

At the event, Steve shared with us his passion for K-12 public speaking, explained how he got into it originally being a teacher, and went into the details of how he is growing the business consisting of multiple well-established brands by managing the whole enterprise as a "Speaker CEO" with the help of other great team members, advisors, and trusted business partners!

Steve explained that being a successful entrepreneur in the public speaking space or any other space for that matter does not mean that you have to do it all alone. Delegation and trust are the key, but it all starts with the right Vision, Mission, & Values which form a true Agile mindset, as I would add, laying the groundwork for success!