Why TSL?
I help businesses and their key leaders build and articulate their systems, processes, and purpose. I joined the Virtual VIP because I needed the same for my speaking business. I know that I love to speak and have been told I have a gift, I don’t want to neglect that. I also know that when I speak it’s our number one lead generation. However, it wasn’t like I had people throwing stages at me, so I knew I needed a process to get booked.
The Speaker Lab was a no-brainer once I saw it wasn’t promising a “magic bullet”. You were clear that I was going to have to work my rear end off and I would need to continue to keep working my rear end off. There were no false promises and I liked that. I said let’s roll – let’s do this!
What were some of your A-ha’s and takeaways?
I think the biggest aha is the reality that there is no silver bullet, there’s just not, it doesn’t exist. The challenge of today is we’re all promised it over and over and over again. One of the things we did in today’s training with our leaders is grit training. We are literally training people on grit now because of the environment that we’re in. We all have to grind and to this day I still send out five emails and five follow-up calls per day.
I’ve got my system in my CRM going and there’ve been some neat successes, but there’s also been a lot of silence. You just have to get over it and wake up the next day and go again.
Another a-ha is Erick tends to keep it so simple and precise yet it’s such a great system. The nice thing about Erick is he’s drawing the majority of his income off of speaking so you’re watching a guy who’s actively doing it. I’ll go back to my training from today. We talked to the leaders about the “T” in grit… Trail a mentor. You have to follow somebody who’s ahead of you on the trail.
Erick is that for me. He is far ahead of me on the trail. Having access to him on Voxer has helped me in the moment make smart moves and important tweaks to my process. I’ll Voxer him every couple of weeks and let him know where I’m at and he’ll respond with – “Hey, try this, or this, tweak this, look at this”. Those little tweaks on the trail are what’s extraordinarily helpful.
My first-ever manager said repetition is the mother of all learning. And he would always say it three times back to back. The thing is, while each of our calls with Erick had a different focus, there was a repeated theme of going back to the basics.
Like football, we’re tackling, we’re blocking, we’re running, we’re throwing, we’re catching. We can come up with great game plans but if we are not doing the basics we are not going to score the stages we want.
What is your new normal as a professional speaker?
I loved when Erick had taught us about reaching out to warm leads. You think that you have that covered until you actually do as Erick tells you. It’s amazing how people respond. I spoke to one friend, who I hadn’t spoken to in months. Within minutes he had me pencil in May 19th, 2022 for a speaking event. In addition, he mentioned a few other peers he would like to introduce me to. One single phone call created over 5 connections. It’s a spiderweb of warmer leads. I still have to work them, there is no magic here.
I also think it’s important to be aware of how people love to hear what we are up to, as we do them. They want to help and be a part of your success. We think people will feel as though we are pitching to them, but people, especially those who know us, actually celebrate the fact that we’re speaking and want to share it with those who will benefit.
If I had to boil the whole program down and what I now make my new normal is perfecting the skill of speaking, the systems of speaking and the strategy. I simply rinse and repeat those three things.
Who would you recommend to The Virtual VIP program?
I would recommend business owners whose primary aspect of their business development or brand development and getting their message out is through the communication of other people. So for instance, if you’re a small business owner and you want to grow your business to $2 million in a locale service-based business you probably don’t need to do this.
However, if you’re a business owner that has built your business to a healthy scale, not that crazy throw a bunch of money at it, sort of scale. I’m talking about a healthy, repetitive scale, this is a great opportunity and a great way to do it.
Now, it’s open to a lot of different people who have a message and want to share it with the world. From my vantage point of business owners who want healthy scale and need human connection to make that happen, speaking is an excellent way to accomplish that, and Erick’s processes and systems are a must to make it happen.
