This week, Brittany Richmond sat down with Alex Demczak, Speaker, Author, and CEO of Streamline Books, to talk about his speaking journey, how books and speaking go hand in hand, and what Streamline Books do for their clients.
Alex shared so many great tidbits that you should check out the episode here.
In the meantime, here is what Alex did to scale up his speaking business in the last few years.
“I would say the reason I’ve been able to grow my speaking business the way I have is because I’ve had the mentality to scoop up the gigs.
What I mean by that when I say, like, scoop up the gigs is I know there’s a lot of speakers out there who, and I think there is something to standing strong in your fees. I do agree with that. At some point, you do need to say, hey, if I’m going to leave my family, get on the plane, this is what I charge. But I, in the past few years, as I’ve scaled my speaking business, absolutely take on gigs when they’re going to get books for everyone in the audience, making it reasonable for myself; I’ll do it at a lower fee at times.
I think many speakers approach it as I only charge x amount, and I’m not going to do anything under that. Well, I get that, but if your message is, hey, I want to make an impact, I wrestle with that at times.
So my advice for a speaker is that they’re like, hey, I only charge this amount. That’s great if you can do that. All of us probably can to a certain extent, but when it’s a gig that’s within what I would call a local gig, is within 5 hours of driving distance. Yeah, air quote local, it’s like, I’m going to try to scoop that thing up if I have the date available, and it works out for my family, all those things, I take it.
When I look at the Jon Gordons of the world, who have just one of the top keynote speakers in America, his first 20 gigs were probably free that he ever did. He’s adding value. Adding value. Adding value. Well, then, what happens? Well, then Jack del Rio, who is the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, gets the copy of The Energy Bus, and brings him in. Now, all of a sudden, his client, he has an NFL client. He spoke to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and then from there, boom, he keeps going.
So I think being mentored by Jon, I’ve just tried to take that approach. How can I scoop up as many gigs as possible within my limit?”
Good stuff, huh? Well, there’s lots more where that came from. Check out Alex’s whole podcast episode here.
