Make Your Vegan Activism POP!

One of our sessions in the Main Street Vegan Academy, “The Joy of Speaking”, focused on public speaking and working with the media. Victoria Moran’s presentation was excellent. I have done public speaking for years and I still learned a great deal.  Here are two great tips:

• Focus on three points
• Share personal stories that illustrate at least 50% of the points.

At the conclusion of the Academy we were asked to prepare a 10-minute presentation in which we share a personal area of expertise that could be helpful to our fellow coaches-in-training. I structured my presentation using suggestions from Victoria; I made three points and shared two personal stories/examples to illustrate the points.

I am sharing the presentation with you, with some modifications to focus on activism instead of coaching.  Though, now that I think about it, I do think of my new vegan lifestyle coaching practice as a logical extension of my activism. More on that another time…

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Three tips to make your vegan activism and education efforts POP!

What are you passionate about? What are your skills? Match them up!  I love vegan food and I am a writer. So I started writing about my newly discovered love for plant-based food and ultimately veganism in general.  In my case it was through this blog. I also began writing guest posts on other food and vegan blogs, and ultimately some pieces for vegan websites.  I was helping new vegans but realized that I wanted a more mainstream audience.

And that leads to my second tip. Outreach.

I decided to reach out to food sectors with my vegan approach. I volunteered to guest blog for my local paper, The Journal News, to offer restaurant week coverage. I pitched an “a vegan and an omnivore walk into a bar” angle because I am vegan and my husband is not.  I reviewed three restaurants with the vegan lens and they loved it. The food editor of The Journal News offered me a weekly online vegan column (which they have now published in the print edition!) I named my column “I Eat Plants” so that everyone might read it; however, the paper promotes my column with the word vegan. Win-win!  I also reached out to a non-vegetarian chef who made a wonderful meal for me in Pennsylvania last summer at a non-vegetarian restaurant.  I wrote a glowing review and the review challenged the chef to consider a vegan event.  Eight months later we hosted a 10-course, plant-based, fine dining event for 50 people (sold out!) and most in attendance were not vegan!

Taking my passion and skills, combining them with outreach, and I am ready to promote!

Promote yourself and your new business to the main street.  My byline in my paper will now state I’m a vegan lifestyle coach, which will be hyperlinked to my coaching page. In future restaurant events I’ll have my title on the promo materials that will land in the hands of the main street soon-to-be-vegan.  I will have my cards and business information at the event.

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I’m going to POP my vegan lifestyle coaching and education efforts next month!  In the meantime, how can you POP your vegan activism or education efforts?

1. What is a skill that you can link to your passion?
2. Where in your community (or universe!) can you do outreach to non-vegans to share a compassionate message?
3. How will you promote your efforts?

I would love for you to share your responses in the comments. Imagine how many great ideas could be generated right here to save animals and lead people to a compassionate diet and lifestyle!

Tags: food is activismi eat plantsmain street veganMain Street Vegan Academyvegan activismvegan lifestyle coach

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