Jackie Lapin:
Getting Booked as a Speaker
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Jackie Lapin guides you and thousands of transformational leaders, authors, practitioners, speakers and messengers to their next followers. For the past 10 years, her internationally acclaimed Conscious Companies have been providing PR campaigns, radio media tours and speaking engagements to support the growth and revenue of change-makers. Her clients have included Don Miguel Ruiz, Dr. Joe Vitale, James Twyman, Denise Linn, Arielle Ford, Hay House and more. The success of her companies has been built on her detail-oriented, comprehensive proprietary one-of- a-kind data-driven lists—the information from which she is now sharing with the world!
More at https://speakertunity.com
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Here’s the Transcript
Hugh Ballou: Welcome to Orchestrating Success. This is Hugh Ballou. This episode is about getting in front of people. If you speak or if you want to speak, that is how you build your position of influence. On stages, large or small, in front of people, this is where leaders get themselves known. Build your sphere of influence. A lot of people think they want to speak. Very few people know how to make it happen. My guest on this podcast is a new friend who is really dynamic, and she’s got ten secrets to getting booked. If you want to get out there, this is the way to do it. My guest today is Jackie Lapin. Jackie, welcome.
Jackie Lapin: I am so happy to be here, Hugh, and excited to be able to impart something that I hope will help folks.
Hugh: It will help them if they do something.
Jackie: That’s one of the first things we’re going to talk about.
Hugh: Before we get into your content here, say a little bit about yourself. How did you develop this expertise that you share with so many people?
Jackie: Believe it or not, I started as one of the first women’s sports writers in America. I segued into having one of the largest sports special events and cable TV PR agencies in the country. You would know my client base. I had Toyota Motor Sports and the National Hockey League and the Los Angeles Marathon and Avon and cable networks. It goes on and on and on like that. The last thing that I did, and what everybody remembers me for, is I launched the worldwide poker phenomenon with the Worldwide Poker Tour. That might be on my epitaph.
From there, I wrote two books on personal growth and started to really decide that my heart was more in serving the consciousness of the world, the transformational leaders who were really making the world a better place through helping people individually and businesses grow and helping the planet be a better place. I completely switched my agency over to serving that community, and it really was what called my heart. I ended up working with such leaders as Don Miguel Ruiz, James Twyman, the Peace Troubadour, Joe Vitale, Denise Lynne, Arielle Ford, Hay House, etc. I was doing radio/media tours where I introduced them to 3,000 personal growth radios, 400 health and wellness radio shows, and 500 podcasts. I still do those actually all the time. Excuse me.
Hugh: It chokes me up, too. Those are really big names.
Jackie: Yeah, thank you. But I also work with first-time authors, people all over the map. Many of the folks came to me and said, “Can you book us for speaking engagements?” I thought about it for a little while and decided that we were better served by giving people direct contacts where they could book themselves. I started to develop a process to give people the information that would enable them to book themselves in speaking engagements, radio shows, podcasts, and virtual summits. And so was born SpeakerTunity.
I am the founder of SpeakerTunity. I will talk more about that later today. But one of the things that I noticed is that people really need to know a little bit more about what it is that a speaker booker is looking for. If you are trying to get on other people’s stages, you really want to be able to know what those opportunities are and what it is that is going to tune into their wavelength.
That is what I set out to do: not only give them the opportunities, but tell them a little bit about what they are going to need to know in order to get booked. That is what we’re going to do today.
I have been speaking myself. We were just talking about how I was on several stages in the past couple weeks. Women’s Prosperity Network and a number of others. I practice what I preach. I reach out to people to propose that I present to their communities, and that is what I am going to offer here.
Hugh: Ah. You and I, that’s really great. You and I connected on LinkedIn. I was out there finding people that had a sphere of influence, looking for podcasters. You said, I don’t have a podcast, but I have this. What got your attention about me?
Jackie: I’m looking for podcasters to tell my community about leading podcasters. You were a perfect match. We each had something that the other one was looking for. I believe that someone who has a message is holding back from the world if they are not delivering their message. You’re cheating the world of what you can offer. The more people that I can find like yourself so that people can deliver those messages, the more I can empower others to help make this world a better place. You were a beautiful grace and opportunity for people.
Hugh: Well, I do have a following, and I’m happy to share this really good information. I can’t wait. Let’s get into the content. We’ve tempted people with it; let’s give them the hard content now. I’m going to take notes, so if you hear clicking, I’m taking notes.
Jackie: These are the ten secrets successful speakers use to keep their calendar booked year-round. I am going to do them in order. We are going to do a countdown. We are going to do number ten first.
Number ten is you have to actually commit time to booking. I recommend that you spend three hours every week on your booking process. If you can’t do the time, you can’t earn the dime.
Hugh: Ooh, good.
Jackie: Part of that is you also have to be smart with your selection. You don’t want to go for mega speaking engagements when you are in the beginning of your journey. You want to go for the low-hanging fruit, the kinds of opportunities you know you can get. You want to go for local opportunities initially or within your industry, things where you know that people are actually likely to put you on the stage.
Another reason that you want to do that is because you want to start developing your signature speech and you want to test it. If you’re not really yet to the point when it’s doing what it should, you don’t want to do that on a big stage. You want to do that on smaller stages, so you can see what works and what doesn’t work; then you can work on it.
The best thing- Most speakers know that you have to focus on the market where you can actually start getting opportunities. That is secret number one.
Secret number two is that you don’t want to turn your nose up at speaking engagements that are considered unpaid rather than paid. Most people want to think, Oh, I want to go out and speak and get paid. There are a lot of issues with that. They are few and far between. Those are much tougher to get. You want to take advantage of the opportunities of what people would call unpaid, but you can actually look at them as speak-to-enroll, where you are speaking in front of a group and trying to enroll them in something you are doing. You want their opt-in to your list. You want to sell them something. You want to get them to come to another workshop. I call it speak-to-enroll. You could also call them fee-waived speaking engagements because you say, Okay, this is my normal fee, but I am going to waive it for you because I want to speak to your organization. You establish that you are a professional speaker and that you earn money, but you are willing to speak to them because you really want this audience. That is an important definition.
What you will really find is that people who are using speaking to fill their clientele or to grow their business or to change more lives, you can actually make more money doing speak-to-enroll than you can on a paid engagement. If you do the numbers, and most professional speakers will tell you this, even people that get paid, they would actually prefer to be on a speak-to-enroll stage because the number they can make is much greater in the outcome. If you know how to sell, and there are lots of wonderful speaker-teachers, in fact, on SpeakerTunity, we have a great resource page where we provide speaker trainers and people like yourself can have colleagues that you would recommend. You can speak to sell, if you are good at it, if you are matched to the right audience, if you have a price point that is matched to that audience. The upside is unlimited.
But when you talk about a paid engagement, you are looking at a set amount of money, and a lot of times, they will not let you engage with the audience after the fact so you lose all the benefit of having all of those people there and getting them to follow you. They also limit your ability to sell from the stage most of the time. It’s your one and done.
There are other factors involved, one of which is getting those paid engagements is a very high barrier. You really have to be very good. You have to have had a track record. When they are evaluating who they are putting on their paid stages, they want to see who you have spoken to before, they want to know you have had good success, and they are going to expect a high level of performance out of you. If you are not yet at that stage, a couple things can happen. If you keep trying for the high-paid events and you don’t get them, it will discourage you. Frankly, you don’t want to get out when you are starting to speak and feel you are getting a lot of rejections. My goal here is for you to get a lot of acceptances early on, build your confidence, and then go on from there. If you are getting deflated each time, you are just going to walk away.
Another factor is you would rather be on somebody’s stage who you can wow instead of getting on a big stage where they have lots of people and not be at the top of your game yet. That isn’t going to serve you well going forward.
Hugh: This is really good stuff. Part of what I bring to people who are developing their business is my skill as a musical conductor, as you know. One of the things that musicians do generally is we rehearse. Speakers need to do the same thing. What’s coming to mind is Zig Ziglar said he had to give a speech a thousand times before it was any good. He is the best of the best. That is very telling. I find that as I do more of these, I get into rhythm, I get better, I fine-tune, and my confidence is up. I did four presentations in ten days a week ago, and I just felt like I was in a rhythm there. There is a whole piece of this rehearsal that is part of my leadership principles. The third one is rehearse for success. That is so key, Jackie. You get better, and then you move up to higher engagements. I just want to punctuate that is a key piece for me.
Jackie: I agree with you. When I did my last book, which was the best spiritual book of the year at the International New Age Trade Show, it’s called Practical Conscious Creation. I did 100 interviews by phone on that, and I went out to do my first live in-person interview. I was so much better because I had done it so many times on the telephone that when I presented in person, it just flowed. Yes, rehearsal is absolutely a key factor in the performance. No question. Good point. Thank you.
So, we are on to secret number three. That is having killer assets. One of the first things that happens when a speaker booker goes to book you is they will look at your website. If you have a ten-year-old website, you are going to shoot yourself in the foot. You need to have a contemporary website in the horizontal design with large photos and limited text in the current contemporary style. Of course, you can send people onto your back pages for more information. But it has to look sexy. You should also have a speaker page on your website as well with great video where they see you presenting. Maybe your speaker one-sheet will talk about that in a second. You really need to have a powerful website. That is number one.
Number two, you have to have a speaker one-sheet, which is a one-page or back-to-front document that defines who you are and why you’re so fabulous and what you’re saying that is going to serve the audience. What problem are you solving for the audience? In fact, I think we will talk about that in a minute. You need to have a great speaker one-sheet.
Related to that is you need contemporary photos. I know we are all a little vain. We don’t want to see all this gray hair or wrinkles on our face, but truth be told, if you walk into that room and you don’t look like your website or your speaker one-sheet, you have just told the audience that you are inauthentic. You really need to walk in authentically as to who you really are right now. This is not to say that you can’t touch up those photos a little bit, but they need to reflect who you are now. That is a really important factor.
Video, we just talked about video. It’s important that you have video of you engaging and speaking with the audience, not just you talking to your community on your computer. They need to see how you present. It could be a sizzle reel, but three to five minutes of actual video of you presenting is good. It should be good quality video. It should not be something that is taken on your cell phone with bad sound and bad lighting. There are lots of ways to get that video. But you really need to look at spending the money or getting somebody to do it for you that you know.
Another thing is when we are talking about this, you need to have a great opt-in lure, something that is going to get people to opt into your website. There are lots of ways to get them to do that. We will talk about that. One of the ways you can do it is the contemporary things that you’re using like getting people to text. Once they text in, you respond back with whatever it is that you’re giving them. Now you have them on your list. You can also do contests on site. You can hand out forms on-site for them to enter a contest. There are lots of different ways. You want to have something that is a great opt-in before you ever walk into your speaking engagements.
Another thing is if you happen to have a book and you are promoting it, you want to make sure that you have enough copies because a lot of times, I see people who all of a sudden the host will say, “You know, we have this audience of 50 people. Do you have enough books?” The person says, “I didn’t order enough!” With print on demand these days, you don’t have to have them in hand. If you are going to do a speaking engagement and you have a pretty sure idea of what the audience is going to be, make sure that you also have enough books on hand.
Don’t get caught without any of these things and then have the speaker booker say to you, “Well, you mean you don’t have those things?” Be ready. You want to engender trust by having the right assets and being well prepared before you ever get on their stages. That was secret number three.
Hugh: The problem with common sense is it’s not very common. This is the checklist. I speak to a lot of people building businesses who want to be speakers, but they haven’t defined stuff yet. They don’t have this stuff. We show up, and people that book you are going to put you aside and go to the next person. This is essential information. Thank you. Let’s move on. I don’t want to interrupt you.
Jackie: Number seven are testimonials. It’s all well and good if you have client testimonials. But what a speaker booker is going to look for is testimonials from other bookers. They want to see other people who you have spoken for who are raving about you. It’s great if you have a number of them, but it’s even better if you have them in their genre. If you are speaking at Unity churches and you want more Unities, make sure that you have testimonials from Unity ministers because they listen to each other. They look to see who else liked you. If you’re in the corporate world, then you want to do corporate. If you’re doing associations, you want to have association meeting planners. Any of those kinds of things.
If you don’t have those yet, don’t go without them. Use some of the ones that you might happen to have from your clientele. But as soon as you can replace them with the ones from speaker bookers, that is really something that you should do. The risk there is that if somebody thinks they are the first one booking you, they may not take a chance on you. Good testimonials really make a big difference for you.
Hugh: I never thought of that, Jackie. Never occurred to me. I do this all the time. Go on. I’m writing notes here fast and furious.
Jackie: The next one I’m sure you’re familiar with. That is present yourself as an authority. You want to trade on your authority. I know most of us have been told all our lives don’t talk about yourself. It’s not nice to promote yourself and boast. But this isn’t the time to be humble. When you are booking yourself, you need to really present yourself as an authority, as an expert even if you may not feel like one. It’s kind of act as if. Position yourself as if you are the ultimate expert in whatever it is that you’re doing. When you’re doing that booking, you want to use really powerful words. Adjectives like powerful, acclaimed, insightful, highly regarded, a breakthrough. Those kinds of words. When I write speaker one-sheets or media kits for people, I am always injecting adjectives that elevate them, and that is what you need to do with yourself.
Hugh: Absolutely. When I work with clients, I help people build their position of influence. We attract people to us because we are an expert in something. I learned a long time ago people that hire speakers don’t hire speakers—they hire experts who speak. Is that true?
Jackie: Absolutely. You bet. Most of the people that I think may be listening to this are people who are trying to fill a clientele to attract more business to change more lives. You are not necessarily a keynote professional speaker. You’re somebody who is imparting information from your position of expertise to make people want to come to you because they want more of what you’re offering. You need to give them a taste. Really what speaking is all about is giving so much value in your presentation rather than holding back that they want to come to you. That doesn’t mean you give everything away because you want to make sure they do come to you, but it is the value that is going to bring them to you in the first place. I am not one of those believers who believe in webinars and presentations where they give you two little tidbits filled with a lot of fluff and then think you are going to come running after them. That is not the way to build the trust and a clientele that really is going to follow you, want what you have, buy from you. You really need to show them up front that the investment is worth it.
Hugh: Sure. You are really demonstrating competency. If you demonstrate competency, you don’t have to sell yourself. People will say they want more of it.
Jackie: Exactly. Yep. Absolutely right. One of the other ways that you can position yourself as an expert is if you do have a book, all you have to do when you are writing your speaker one-sheet or talking in your letter to the speaker booker is say, “I am the author of,” and that in itself makes you an expert. Whatever your book is about, if it’s clear what the book is, or you might have to add, “I am an author on the book of such and such,” or “My body of knowledge in this book.” Being an author also helps position you as an authority.
Secret number five: Dare to be different. Speaker bookers get so many solicitations and half of them look the same. I can’t tell you how many times I listen to wellness people say, “I help people remove their blocks,” or “I help people get out of pain,” or whatever it is. It has got to be far more defined than that. What is the specific unique selling proposition, your specific positioning that you are bringing to the table that is different than everybody else’s? There is some ways to do that. Obviously, content is one of them. What is the content that is different?
Another is how you appear. For example, when I do speaking engagements, I always dress in what you would call goddesswear. Long dresses to the floor, beaded and fun, beautiful jackets. People remember me because I work in the transformational space, in miracles. It’s my signature look. But there is also Patch Adams, the fellow who Robin Williams made the movie about, the brilliant iconoclastic doctor who works with children all across the world, but he really comes across as a medical iconoclast. He dresses in Hawaiian shirts and wacky things with all kinds of funky art on them. I saw him on an airplane at one point. He looked just like he does in his speaking engagements. That sets him apart. I have seen people dress in all kinds of unusual garb. Doctors come in with their scrubs. There are lots of different ways to make yourself distinctive on stage.
Hugh: If you are the goddess, you want to show up as the goddess. Jackie is. I guess you have seen my pictures. I show up with my tails. That is my differentiator.
Jackie: There you go. Absolutely. Perfect example.
You can also find a unique approach to a familiar topic. When I wrote my Practical Conscious Creation book, there are tons of books on manifesting out there. Because I wrote a book about practical strategies to actually raise your personal frequency, and I didn’t say, “I am going to teach you how to manifest. I am going to teach you how to be a better manifester by doing this,” people were willing to book me like crazy. It was a time that The Secret was out. Everybody was talking about manifesting. But because I took a very different approach, everybody was interested.
Another is to have a great human interest story. Some of the ones that I can think of right off the top of my head: There is a gal named Jen Bricker who was born without any legs. She had a passion. Her parents gave her up for adoption because they couldn’t provide for her. She was adopted in a wonderful family. But she had this passion for gymnastics. This remarkable woman became a significant gymnast in her state with no legs. But she had this affinity, this passion for Dominique Moceanu, the great Olympic gymnast. She was her idol. When Jen actually went looking for her birth parents, she discovered that they were the parents of Dominique Moceanu. Is that a remarkable story? It was actually her sister. They both had a passion for gymnastics. Anyway, she is a brilliant speaker.
Another one that I can think of is my friend Rhonda Briton, who you might have seen on television.
Hugh: I know Rhonda.
Jackie: Rhonda watched her father murder her mother. That is how her story began. She basically became homeless as a teenager and lived on people’s couches and in her car and scraped to survive that. Her tremendous story of survival and thrival is an amazing one that she tells in front of the stage.
Then there is Neil Donna Walsh, Conversations with God, who was homeless in his car until he started talking to God.
These are all great personal human interest stories. Most of us who are doing something in the personal growth space have one of those. I myself had one. Wanting to be a sports writer as a child, people were saying, “You’re not going to be a sports writer. Girls aren’t sports writers.” I am happy to say that I was at the Detroit Free Press, on the front pages of the LA Times by 21, and the Washington Post at 22. Everybody has their story in this space of coming from a place of oppression, adversity, etc., and coming forward and being able to help others. You want to tell that story. That is also a memorable way to get a booker to want to have you on stage.
Hugh: Love it. I had to learn to include stories. It was content, content, content. I find that when I include stories, I can see a difference in the audience. Then I go from the story into why did I tell that and move into my point. The right stories in the right place told with the right rhythm and interest, that is great.
One of my trainers that I hired to coach me was a drama professor where I lived. We talked about where to come in, where to stand, and where to pause. There is an art to presenting. Around the story piece, don’t just tell a story. Tell the story. That is a big deal for me. I had to work on that. A lot of speakers don’t think of that. Thank you. That is great.
Jackie: Certainly when I am on stage that is the first story I tell. I want people to really want to identify with me because once they know my heart, then they will want my information because they know I care about them. That is a key to a speaker’s presentation. Being able to somewhere weed your story in as you said. Absolutely.
Hugh: When you talked about starting, this is another big death I see over and over, even with accomplished speakers. Your first 30 seconds, how you show up, and how you grab the audience. I hate when people have notes and they shuffle them around and mess with the projector. Thanks for having me here today. I prepared this. By then, I am going to sleep.
I’ll send you one of my keynote clips, but at the very beginning, I come out and engage the audience with no words. I have them sing or tap rhythm. I do things and they respond. Then I say, “You knew exactly what to do, and I never told you. That is leadership.” People talk about that forever. “You know what he did? He had us come out and sing, and he never said a word.” That is another version of what you’re talking about. It’s not a story, but how do we reach out and make an impression on our audience? Ever since I have been speaking, that is how I engage people. That is another piece where you start with a story and I start with an interactive piece. That is so key. Where you place the story, people are going to say, “You got to hire this guy because he grabs an audience.” Your points are good, Jackie.
Jackie: The best way to get started for somebody who is looking for a way in is to ask the audience a question and get them to raise their hands. If you say, “Have you experienced…” or “Would you like more…” get them engaged, and that is a great way to start and get into your speech.
Hugh: Absolutely.
Jackie: We are onto secret number four: It’s not about you! When you are pitching a speaker booker, it’s all about the audience, what you are doing for the audience, how they are going to change, how they are going to be motivated. How are they going to take action? What is it that you are doing that is going to shift them from where they are to where they need to be? What you need to establish when you are pitching yourself to a speaker booker is that WIIFM, What’s In It for Me? The radio station WIIfM. If you can establish what’s in it for the audience, that‘s really the key trick to getting them to say yes to you. You have to show in your materials that this is going to solve a problem that the audience is experiencing. That is critical.
Secret number three. It’s relevance, relevance, relevance: how your topic is relevant to that specific audience, what they need, what they want, and what you’re offering that helps them advance, learn, or heal. If you can’t show that very quickly, you risk getting immediate rejection. It’s really important to that.
I am now going to give you five questions that are going to help you tell them how relevant you are. The first question is: Is it the right demographic, age, or gender match? If you are talking to a group of seniors and your topic really has an appeal for millennials, you won’t resonate. They won’t book you. Same thing goes for ethnicity and gender differences. If your audience topic skews to women and it is a strong male audience, it won’t work. You have to make sure the booker you are pitching has the right demographic match.
The next thing is: Is your story their story? If you can establish that what you have been through and your experience and your expertise matches what they’ve been through and what they’re experiencing, such as PTSD or violence and abuse or all of those kinds of things, or business failure, if you are telling a dramatic story, they have experienced it, that is a good match.
The next thing: Is it the right skill level and match for the audience, what they need to know and learn at this point? If your topic is an elementary topic but your audience is more advanced, you will lose them. It’s exactly the same if your topic is too advanced for an elementary audience. They will be off in La La Land. That has to be a good consideration.
The next: Do you fill a gap or match a theme that this booker is looking for? A lot of times, a booker will have a series of different topics over a course, and you can look and say, “They haven’t touched on my topic.” That is a good time to go in and say, “I noticed that you haven’t gotten to this yet. Would this be a good match?” Podcasts and speaking engagements and conferences often have a theme. If your theme is right for what they are looking for, then that is going to get you a lot closer to getting yes for a booking.
Another thing is: Is it hot? Is it a topic everybody is looking to learn about? For example, Facebook Live. Many people are trying to figure out how to master Facebook Live. It’s a hot topic. If you have something that is hot and trendy and everybody wants it, that is also going to put you in really good steed.
When you are looking to get yourself booked, you need to see if in fact you can really take advantage of these kinds of matching factors that are going to get you on those stages.
Hugh: Never thought about that. Usually a booker discusses they want something. Delving into what do you want them to walk away having learned or experienced, what are the objectives, that is great. Good stuff, Jackie.
Jackie: Thank you. Secret number two is pretty simple. Sparkling writing. If you are going to be presenting submission materials, everything has to be really powerfully written. Poorly written, badly constructed, boring, indistinguishable prose will lose the booker’s interest in under 30 seconds. You really have to have-
There are seven real key factors for strong writing when you are presenting your materials. It has to have a great subject line when you are sending that initial pitch. It needs to have a great headline that points to what it is that you are going to be offering and how it solves that problem. It needs a great lead paragraph, great storytelling, which we were just talking about, if you are going to tell your story in your document.
Hugh: What was that last one?
Jackie: Great storytelling. How you tell your story in a few words. The next thing is great relatability, those things we were just talking about. Is their story your story? The simple one is correct grammar.
Hugh: Oh my.
Jackie: Yeah, that one is a tougher one. And conciseness. It needs to be really put together tight in a selling manner.
It needs to be well-written, exciting, enticing, informative, validating, and captivating. It doesn’t have to be award-winning. It just needs to be good. So you really want to rewrite, spellcheck, and give it to other people to look at to see if it’s something that makes sense for them.
Hugh: On the correctness piece, if you are submitting stuff in a cover letter, make sure you got the person’s name spelled correctly.
Jackie: Here is a little hint. In that subject line, you also want to put the person’s name in the subject line.
Hugh: Really?
Jackie: Yeah.
Hugh: Give us an example.
Jackie: “Susan, please consider me for such and such.” “Susan, how would you like a speaker on whatever?”
Hugh: This is your subject line of your email.
Jackie: Yes. So they know it’s not an e-blast.
Hugh: Oh. Got it.
Jackie: And I actually have a training program called The Get Booked Training Program, where I teach you all the materials you need to write to get you booked: your speaker one-sheet, your radio/TV pitch letter. The correspondence and the speaker one-sheet to the speaker booker that we are talking about here. Your media kit, and how to get virtual summit ready so that you can slay those virtual summit hosts. In that process, that is one of the secrets I teach: putting the speaker booker’s name in the subject line. There is a ton of valuable information in that program. It’s called the Get Booked Training program. If anybody is interested, we can talk about that later.
Hugh: I want to capture those leads before we quit. I heard you say on the sparkling writing, there were eight tips. I got seven.
Jackie: Seven.
Hugh: Thank you.
Jackie: We got ‘em all.
Secret number one is an elevated attitude that builds relationships. The first thing you should know is that bookers really do talk amongst themselves. I think you’d probably rather be the subject of great buzz than a bad rap. Make sure that you use gentle persistence. You don’t want to harangue a speaker booker to get on their stages because you’re just going to create ill will. The proper amount of contact is three. The rule of three. It’s either two emails and a phone call, or one email and two phone calls. If they have not responded back by that time, let it go, and leave the door open for future opportunities where you might have something that is more suitable for what they want. Don’t burn that bridge by getting irritated or trying to get them to give you that time.
Hugh: It’s hard. I temper that. There are people that never tell you whether you got it or not and they won’t respond.
Jackie: Exactly. You just have to let go and move on to somebody else at that point.
One of the things is you need to be flexible, too. Let’s say you get somebody to say yes. They want you, but they’re going to put you at the last person of the conference or on a stage that you’re not thrilled about. Build that relationship. Do it. Don’t complain. Make it work. Accommodate their needs, whatever it might be. Make that first engagement a win for both of you, and then you can start working your way up the ladder and encouraging them to give you better opportunities in the future.
Hugh: Jackie, I spoke for a professional association last week on Friday. I was the closing speaker of the conference. I thought that was great positioning. In that case, it worked to my benefit. Their way to go was the last gig. My interpretation, my humble interpretation, is they save the best for last.
Jackie: Absolutely. Especially if you have a strong close. But some of the reasons that some people don’t want to be on last is a lot of times people have left the conference. Another factor is that if everybody is selling something, they have already had buying fatigue. That impacts some people, and they think it’s not the best place to be. But if you are a strong closer and you have something nobody else is offering and it absolutely suits the situation, then closing is good, especially if it’s not on a Sunday afternoon, if it’s somewhere during the weekdays. That’s really a good way to go.
Those are the ten speaker secrets, but now you have all this information. Now you know what you’re doing when you’re going in there to try to pitch yourself. The question is: Where do you pitch yourself? What happens with most people is they don’t do this because they don’t have the time, it’s too much work, they don’t know where to look for speaking engagements, they get tied up in their daily work, and they don’t have the opportunity to go out and look. We tried to create something to make it easy, inexpensive, and time-saving for transformational leaders, anybody with a message of empowerment, of heart-based business building skills, spirituality, personal growth, anything in that whole spectrum. We set out to create SpeakerTunity as a resource that saves folks the opportunity and the time to spend the time doing what they’re good at, which is getting booked, getting in front of audiences, and building their clientele, and changing more lives.
We have three different subscription products. The one that really applies here to what we have been talking about is SpeakerTunity Speaker Leads, which gives people direct contacts where they can book themselves for speaking engagements all over North America. These are a wide variety of speaking opportunities where we give you names, phone numbers, emails, and submission links. These are everything from local meetings at all kinds of organizations—women’s, networking, chambers of commerce, holistic chambers of commerce, civic organizations, health and wellness organizations, human resource organizations, job search organizations, things like the Near-Death Experience Group, or the Institute of Noetic Sciences. These are great for people that are authors. Anybody that is a coach and looking for entrepreneur organizations. We have tons of them in every issue. Then we have conferences and conventions and lifestyle events and multi-speaker events where there are lots of people on stage over the course of a day or a weekend, and the coordinator is offering people an opportunity to be on that stage. Or stage swaps, you be on my stage and I’ll be on yours. We put those in as well. Then we have associations. Then we also have centers for spiritual living and Unities. If you have a message that appeals to that group, there are four of those in every issue. If you have a book, we have presentation-friendly bookstores. We have retreats, resort centers, and a holistic center and lifestyle places that welcome speakers. We bundled all of this up. We always feature an organization in every issue. We say, “Here’s what this organization does. It could be seniors. One of my favorites is a group in the South called Women on a Mission to Earn a Commission. I love that name. Whatever the organization is, we feature it. In every issue, we try to cover stuff in every region of the US and Canada.
Hugh: I want to give people links. Speakertunity.com. It’s a really smart-looking site. This is a gold mine. Go ahead, Jackie. I want to make sure we capture that.
Jackie: People who actually subscribe to SpeakerTunity also get a private Facebook group where I am putting in hot current calls for speakers. Whenever I am learning about something, I am putting it in there. That’s the timely stuff. This is coming up right away. Jump on it.
Here is the good part about that. All of this is only $35 a month. That’s it. What would your time cost you to go looking for this kind of stuff? Certainly a lot more than $35 a month.
Hugh: If people come from this podcast, do you have any free stuff to offer them? Can you talk about a resource you wanted to share with people?
Jackie: Absolutely. If they actually sign up immediately and then email me, and you have to email me as well at Jackie@speakertunity.com, I will give them a list of all the Ted Xs in North America in the first half of 2018.
Hugh: As you know, we are recording this in 2017, but it might be 2018 when people are listening to this. I want to make it ongoing so people can still email you. The website is speakertunity.com. It’s Jackie@speakertunity.com.
By the way, you are a lot more lovely in person than the picture on your website. When you update your picture, you look better in person. That was the whole point there. As a conductor, I work with lots of concert artists. They would have pictures 10-20-30 years old, and they’d show up and I’d say, “There is a picture of somebody impersonating you.” People show up and there is a picture that looks really sharp, and you show up as an old guy. It’s that moment where they are glad to see you, and it’s a better impression than what they expected. All of these things, Jackie, people ought to know this, but we don’t, and we don’t do it.
Jackie: That’s true. Hugh, I even have a couple of other things people should know about. SpeakerTunity has two other subscriptions. One is where we will give you direct contacts for radio shows and podcasts. There are at least four business podcasts in every single issue and one health podcast, and 10 or 12 radio shows. You get 25 new contacts every month. That also is $35 a month.
Then we have SpeakerTunity Summits. You know those virtual summits that always show up on your desk? Gee, I should have been a part of this, but it’s too late. I’m already booked. We tell you in advance summits that actually have open guest presenter seats so that you can get on them. Nobody is doing that. That is also $35 a month. If anybody is interested in the whole bundle, all three of them, you get a nice $20 savings a month at $85.
Hugh: Is it Speakertunitysummits.com?
Jackie: Yes. SpeakerTunity has them all. If you go to the main website, you can see each one of them.
Hugh: Got it. SpeakerTunity, Speaker Opportunity. It’s a play on words like SynerVision. Jackie, this is priceless material. I hope people know why I wanted you here. We certainly let people send to the websites for the people I interviewed because we don’t interview anybody that doesn’t have really good stuff to offer. While our main purpose is not to sell people things, I think that’s really selling. It’s a no-brainer. I am going to go on there now. I just need to know all of these places to be and get in front of people.
No matter what kind of business we have, we need to be in front of people, we need to be doing our shtick, and we need to be doing it really well.
As we wrap up here at the end, any closing thoughts you want to leave in people’s minds?
Jackie: Don’t hide under a bushel. Go out and shine your light. Go out and deliver the message that is in your heart. The more visibility you have, the better you’ll feel and the better those people who are receiving it and acting on it will experience life.
Hugh: Thank you, Jackie. This is Orchestrating Success. This is how you do it. You want to convert your passion, which is all that gift you have, to profit that will feed you and let you do more of it. Jackie, thank you so much for sharing today.
Jackie: I am so delighted to be here, Hugh. It’s a joy and a pleasure. Thank you for giving me this beautiful opportunity to share this hour with you.
Check out my Unbound Leader program to learn the process for success at the UnboundLeader.com
I’ve called that program, “Unbound Leader: Unlocking Your Inner Potential for Success.”
It’s time to do something different.
Look at my short video to see if this program is a fit for you
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Hugh Ballou
The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM
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