The SPEAK Framework Bonus — Lesson 4

Welcome back to the SPEAK Framework course. This is again, Grant Baldwin, founder of The Speaker Lab, and I am so excited that you are here continuing your journey to make an impact, make an income with your message. So we are continuing our series and today we have a. A acquiring paid speaking gigs.

Now again, before we get here, let’s zoom back out. Let’s look at the journey we’ve been on here. So we start with S selecting a problem to solve. Remember, you’re not trying to appeal to anybody and everybody you’re trying to solve one specific problem for one specific audience. The P we talked about preparing your talk.

Why they’re your talk is your most important marketing asset. He, we talked about establishing yourself as the expert while you need a website and why you need a demo video today, we’re gonna be talking about acquiring paid speaking gigs. And then in the next lesson, we’re going to be talking about knowing when to scale, how to share your message beyond the stage with a book or with coaching or consulting or a course or any number of things.

We’re going to be talking about that next. But today again, we’re going to be focusing on the, a acquiring paid speaking. Now, this is a picture of my oldest daughter who was running a lemonade stand a few years ago. Now, maybe for you, you’ve had a lemonade stand and building a business as a speaker is very much like having a lemonade stand.

There are a variety of factors that determine how successful eliminates standing. It will be, but there’s really one that stands out above the rest. And he guesses on that. I want you to ponder that. I’m going to tell you that in a second, there’s a few different keys here, right? Number one, you have to offer a product that people actually care about and are willing to spend money on.

Right? This comes back to that S selecting a problem to solve the right. Product and providing the right solution for the right group of people. The number two is to create a good quality solution, right? So whenever you’re creating lemonade, if the lemonade is too tart or too sweet people, aren’t going to buy it.

Number three is to have a clear way of telling people what you offer and how it can help them making sure that you’re setting up in the right place. And then number four is get the word out to people who need. You have, and this is the same thing. That’s true for being a speaker. This is the, again, the speaker success roadmap.

This is the, a acquiring paid speaking gigs. Now there’s two ways to get the word out. When we talk about how do you get the word out as a lemonade stand and how do you get the word out as a story? Two ways to go about doing that. Number one is you can do that passively, which this tends to be what a lot of speakers want to default to because it’s easier and it’s simpler.

 It’s social media, blog, posts, podcasts, video. You’re just kinda like putting something out there into the world. And that’s really just kind of like then waiting for someone to magically find out about you. But what we want you to do is not go the passive route, but go the proactive. I want you to go directly to decision makers.

Why? Because putting something out, passively waiting and wishing is not a strategy. Now, one of the things we’ve found is that the best potential clients are those who already booked speakers. Why? Because you’re filling a need that they already have. You’re not trying to convince them to hire a speaker.

They’re already planning on hiring a speaker. You’re just showing them why you are a good fit. Now, how do you find these best potential clients? There’s a lot of different ways, but let’s start with a simple free one, which is Google. Google is a free, simple tool to start finding opportunities. You can do this, right, Nana, finish the video, finished your homework first, but you can do this right now by, by using Google to find some of these opportunities.

And how do you do that? Well, what I want you to do as I want you to take the audience and or the topic keywords. So let’s say that you speak to veterinarians about customer service, or let’s say you speak to high school students about leadership. I want you to use some of those keywords. Combine that with words like conference or convention or association or group or club or event, you do that, you’re going to start to find a whole bunch of different opportunities that maybe you didn’t even realize existed.

Now, once you find opportunities, the next step is you want to contact the decision maker. And email is a really simple way to do that. Now, when you do that, it’s important to remember that this is a relationship business. Do not try to seal the deal on the first date. One mistake. We see so many speakers make.

Is, they send some like 98 paragraph email to a potential event planner saying here’s why I’m so amazing. Here’s all the different things that I talk about. Here’s all my different marketing assets. Here’s why you should hire me. If you got some 98 paragraph email from someone you didn’t know, what would you do?

You would delete that. So remember, this is relationship business. We’re trying to start a conversation whenever we reach out to potential clients. Now, in addition to Google, there’s a, there’s a whole bunch of different ways. Let me give you nine ways to find speaking gigs. So Google is. Online search, making sure that your website we talked about in the previous lesson, make sure that it’s SEO, optimized search engine optimization, meaning that when someone searches on Google and they’re looking for a specific type of speaker, and this is one way that event planners find speakers is they go to Google.

You want to make sure that your, your website shows up high in the rankings for those key words of what someone may be searching for. Uh, the next one is online advertising called PPC, which is pay per clicks on Google or Facebook. Making sure that again, when someone is searching for those key words, that you are showing up high in the rankings, and you can pay for this as well.

Speaker referrals, building relationships with other speakers who can introduce you and refer you to potential event planners, client referrals. So whenever you are working with a potential client that they can connect you with other clients that may be a good. Live presentations. I’ve booked a lot of business because someone in the audience is a, a event planner or know someone who is.

So again, the more you speak, the more it leads to other speaking opportunities. And this goes back to what we talked about, uh, and a couple of previous lessons on the P preparing your talk. This is why your talk is your more, most important marketing. Number seven is repeat business. So working with the same client on multiple occasions, eight is showcases.

This is going to be more common and sometimes in the corporate space, but also in the college market. And then last one is nine media and press. Now this would fall a little bit under that passive category where you’re mentioned in the media and press and someone may be coming across it. And then it kind of registers on their radar as someone that they may be able to hire for something in the field.

Let me introduce you to a couple of speakers that we’ve worked with. As some of our students, Judy said this, I sent out that quick question, emailed 18 organizations today within two hours, I had six replies of interest and already secured one event for may. Thanks so much for terrific guidance grant.

And then Andrew said, I emailed 38 inquiries since beginning booked two engagements, which will pay $2,000 per event paid for my investment. First two gigs using the system, just an inquiry with my website listed as the signature. If and when they book presenters and if I could assist in that process in any way, by being the speaker or helping them find the right person.

So email and Google works really, really, really well. Now in the next lesson, we’re going to be talking about the K about how to know when to scale. So your next step is. I want you to go back to the email that sent you here. I want you to complete your homework and I want you to get to that next lesson right away so that you don’t have to wait any longer for it.

Okay. And again, when you do your homework, I want you to do the homework. Don’t just try to breeze through it. I want you to do the work so that you can again, get your message out into the world by following this big framework. All right. Get your work done. We’ll see you in the next lesson.