Jennifer Henczel: If you don't know how to get more speaking gigs, or your speaking gigs aren't making you any money, or you're not able to attract your ideal clients, or you're not speaking your true message and you need some help with that, our guest today is the solution. Lisa Reed is an author, speaker, and founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now. Welcome, Lisa!

Jennifer: Welcome, everyone, to the Women in Podcasting show. I'm your host, Jennifer Henczel, and today I have a very exciting guest for you. If you don't know how to get more speaking gigs, or if your speaking isn't making you any money, or if you're not able to attract your ideal clients effectively—if you feel like you're not attracting the right audience for your offer or for your show—and if you're not speaking your true message and you need help with that, our guest today is the solution. Lisa Reed is an author, speaker, and founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now. Welcome, Lisa!

Lisa Reed: Thank you so much, Jennifer! So excited to be here.

Jennifer: So, we met through a mutual friend at an event and I was so impressed and thrilled with connecting with you because what I was impressed with was how many speaking gigs you do in a year. So tell me how you got started with that and let our audience know how many speaking gigs you do because it's really impressive how you use that as a tool to attract your ideal audience.

Lisa: I love speaking, and for those of us who love that and just get such that beautiful, buzzy feeling from speaking, it's one of the best ways you can do marketing and sales for your business and have fun doing it. So I started speaking back in 2013, which was well over 10 years ago. I worked for a company and they said, "Go get clients and we have a talk that you can use and an offer and you just go give it and bring the clients in." I said, "Okay," and I booked 83 speaking engagements my very first year, which is crazy. Like, crazy town. But I didn't know that, I was just head down doing my work. And I started a network of speakers about halfway through that because I thought, "I could keep doing this cold calling thing and I could keep working really hard and doing this and get all the results, but I would love a more funner way, if I may use a grammatical joke—a definitely more effective and fun way to get booked." So I started a network which is now the International Speaker Network, and we still are going strong. And that's... I've come upon a way to get speaking gigs a lot easier, and I usually speak about 40 times a year, and all of that is without any cold outreach, which is the bane of most entrepreneurs' existence.

Jennifer: That is so amazing. And it really is an effective way to attract your ideal audience. And we have lots of opportunities in the Women in Podcasting group for people to connect, but without your strategies, it's not as effective. So tell us, how can people get more speaking gigs?

Lisa: Well, one of the first pieces that I think people miss is they don't have a talk that's really aligned with their business goals. And there's a lot of mistakes I'll see: sometimes we over-give information, sometimes we under-give information, a lot of times maybe we're not clear on our call to action. So one of the first steps I would suggest is: Get your talk ready to rock. And yes, that's a phrase that I use in my orbit, my world, because I help people with this one-on-one. I even have a boot camp around it, I have a chapter in my book called "Get Your Talk Ready to Rock." So I feel really strongly about it. And it's being very intentional about your message so that you're bringing massive value to the audience, but you're also bringing massive value to your business. And so each person's talk that they get ready to rock is different because that person is different: their personality is different, their business goals, their lifestyle... all those things are different. And so we want to make sure that you're madly in love with it and that you can't wait to share it with the world. And we want to really erase, as much as we can, any resistance, any residue that's there where you're questioning yourself or wondering if you're good enough or, you know, "good enough, smart enough, gosh darn it," all those things, so that you can really shine from stage. So that's... that's like step number one: Be ready to be ready.

Jennifer: Oh, that's incredible. And then also for those who—maybe they've started speaking or maybe they have a podcast, because your strategies really could be used by podcasters as well—how can they make money from their speaking?

Lisa: Oh, I love this topic, and I know you do too, Jennifer. I was just listening to your podcast about how to monetize your podcast. And I love the question "How do you monetize your speaking?" because a lot of times we think there's only one way and it's usually like the old-school way. And it's... and it still exists, don't get me wrong, and that's the paid keynote way. That is just only one way that you can monetize your message. You can monetize it using different stages, like a virtual stage, podcasting stage, in-person stages, speaking what we call "speaking for free" or "waive your speaker fee" stages. In fact, you can often... I'll tell you a secret: you can often make way more money doing it that way versus a paid keynote way, especially if you're newer. I even started my very first talk... I'll tell you this, was back again 2013. I did not have a PowerPoint. I didn't have a... I had no clients. It was my very first gig, so I'd have no speaking engagements under my belt. No email list. And there were 10 women in the room. Now, here's what I did have: I did have the right audience, I had an proven offer, and I had a proven talk that I had practiced and I had gotten coached on. Three out of those 10 women signed up for my offer—it was $300 approximately. They gave me their credit card right then and there, so I walk out with a $900. And then two of those women ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars with this company I was working for. So sometimes we overthink and we make it more complicated, but honestly, just like what you shared in your, you know, "getting your podcast ready," you have to like start. You have to like decide "This is my path, this is what I'm going to do, here's how it's going to help me fill my program, fill my mastermind, fill my coaching... offer my services," whatever that thing is that you're offering, and invite people into your world. And all of a sudden, people come in. They're just waiting for that invitation from you.

Jennifer: Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, I love what you said that there's different kinds of stages. And I've found that too. At one point I did a specific kind of workshop—I did it every month for five years straight.

Lisa: Wow.

Jennifer: And it was the same workshop, but some people would come back seven times—I had one woman come back seven times—and then I had some people that would just... they'd buy my other services by attending the workshop. And so there's all kinds of opportunities that you can create for yourself and get involved in other people's speaking opportunities. And so that's a great reminder because there's so many different kinds of opportunities. So if you haven't been finding something in one particular niche or one particular method, try some of the other ways. And definitely, I make more from those free speaking stages than the speaking retainer or, you know, a speaking fee for sure. So that's a really good point too. So... and just a little thing about attracting ideal audience, if we could just back up to that a little bit: What do you recommend that people can build into their talk or build into their... really it starts with the title, doesn't it? And so what... what can people do to attract the ideal audience with their talk?

Lisa: I think it really depends on... it's identifying what's your ideal audience. And that's one of the questions we ask all the time in our International Speaker Network meetings. It's like, "Who's your... what's your talk title? Who's your ideal audience? What kind of stage do you want to have?" If you know that, you're going to probably get referred to that particular thing. If you're like... if you say, "Oh, I speak about anything to anyone, anywhere," that's not going to really get you those referrals. I had someone post on our Facebook page, she said, "I want to be an international speaker," and I'm like, "Well, great! What country do you want to speak in?" I mean, let's start there. And what do you speak about? Okay, who do you speak to? Like, we need to know these things so we can get you to the right spot. So how do you find your ideal client is figuring out where... where are they hanging out? And a lot of times people don't realize there's associations. And, you know, if you were never really in a professional association, why would you know that? There is an association for everything. So, for example, one of my clients is a former accountant. Then she became a life coach, which isn't your usual path, but you know, that's what she did. Guess who she speaks to? She speaks to accountants and CPAs. Guess where they are? At association meetings. Guess who meets once a month and who has special programs and education for those members? Accounting, CPA associations, payroll associations. So that's one example of how you can take maybe a former niche that you used to be in or career that you had, or even... it might be a current one, and speak to those people if they could be your ideal clients. For her it works because she knows their troubles, their stresses, their frustrations, and she really gets it. That she doesn't need... she understands their language. But now she's coming at them from a different approach. So it's about getting really clear on who your audience is. Like, if your audience is female entrepreneurs—like, for example, like probably for you—that would be a great audience. Where are they meeting? They're meeting all over. So do you want to speak internationally? Canada, US, beyond? Do you have a different language that you speak? Great, you might want to branch out into that country or those areas that speak that language. It might be by industry, it might be religion. So there's all different ways that we can cater your audience.

Jennifer: Oh, yeah, that's so brilliant because, you know, a lot of people don't realize all those extra opportunities to find your ideal audience. And another one I thought of when you were mentioning conferences is trade shows too. It's a whole different animal when we've spoken at trade shows. Sometimes you're kind of speaking into the void at the trade show, but it's not just about filling that sort of seating area when you're at a trade show. Sometimes the vendors are hearing you, and it's just having your name there, and it's really the conversations that happen in the hallway where you can meet other people, get more speaking gigs through that. So I love everything you offer. It's... it's perfect for podcasters as well, all of your strategies work for podcasters because a lot of podcasters come into podcasting and they have the impression, just like speakers think that, oh, just speaking gigs is the only way—or paid speaking gigs is the only way—podcasters come in and they think sponsors are the only way. But of course there's other ways to monetize. And so everything you offer is just wonderful. I love your website. Can you let people know where they can connect with you and how you can help them?

Lisa: Absolutely. Yeah, I have a great offer for your listeners. It's "Five Top Tips to Get More Speaking Gigs Now" because obviously we didn't cover everything in 15 minutes. So it's at getspeakinggigsnow.com/tips, and you'll just get those right away, and I have some bonus tips in there for you too.

Jennifer: Oh, that's wonderful. Well, I'll put that link in the show notes so everybody can find that at womenpodcasters.com and you can find our show notes there. And I'll put that link right on the page with the video and the audio and every way to connect with you. So thank you so much for being here, Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you, Jennifer!

Jennifer: See you next time.