From Stage To Screen: Mastering The Speaker Reel with Cam Beaudoin

Event planners don’t have time to watch your full TED talk. They need three minutes that prove who you serve, the problem you solve, and the transformation you deliver. We sit down with Cam Beaudoin, founder of The Frequent Speaker, to map the exact steps that turn a jumble of clips into a demo reel that books bigger rooms and better podcasts.

We start with intent: are you chasing large conference stages or thriving in virtual training? Cam explains how to align your reel with your goals, showing either stage craft—movement, energy, and crowd interaction—or virtual mastery with clean, close-up delivery and crisp audio. From there, we break down the story spine that converts: a seven-second hook that calls your audience by name, problem definition that cuts through noise, proof that you’re the guide they need, and a direct call to action. You’ll hear why planners want clarity over montage, how fee tiers dictate brand expectations, and what truly signals “bookable” within seconds.

Cam shares smart ways to create proof when you lack big-stage footage: rent a professional studio, capture a two-camera interview, and layer in podcasts, media hits, and focused B-roll that reinforces authority. We cover what to avoid—generic stock, celebrity name-drops that redirect attention, and “friends-and-family” crowds that feel staged. You’ll also learn when to refresh your reel, how much to invest as your fee grows, and how podcasters can use a guest reel to climb into premium shows by demonstrating specific value for listeners.

If you’re ready to stop sending long links and start sending proof that sells, this conversation gives you the blueprint. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s levelling up their speaking, and leave a review with the hook you’ll use in your next reel.

Chapters

• 0:04 Welcome And Show Focus
• 0:39 Meet Cam And His Mission
• 2:39 Brand, Visual Hooks, And Standing Out
• 4:45 Why Speaker Reels Matter
• 6:49 Pricing Tiers And Taking Speaking Seriously
• 11:52 What Buyers Want In A Three‑Minute Reel
• 14:40 Virtual vs Stage Footage Strategy
• 18:40 Creating Proof When You Lack Stages
• 23:59 Invest In Pros And Avoid DIY Traps
• 27:00 Structure Your Reel With Story

Transcript

Carl: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community, the Podcasters Podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern-day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news, updates, latest trends, and topics from this ever-evolving space. It's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. And my guest today is Cam Beaudoin. He's the founder of The Frequent Speaker, where he revolutionizes how speakers utilize their content. With a background in software development and technical consulting, Cam bridges the gap between technology and public speaking. His expertise lies in getting speakers on bigger stages. Very cool. I have to talk to him about that. So they can help transform bigger crowds by leveraging their existing content. He has been a podcast host. He is a sought-after podcast guest. We are so thrilled he's here today. Cam, welcome to the podcast. Hey, Carl, this is awesome.

Cam: 1:15

Thanks so much for having me on. You know, hats are my thing. I always feel like so. I'm in the deep world of brand. If you got to be known for something, you got to be known for something. And so every video that I put out there, I kind of wear a different hat. I've got a whole bunch of them. And I try and collect these kind of interesting and fun hats. So white and black hats got triangles all over it, dope on front of it. I don't know. It's kind of a cool hat. So I'm like, let me just get that. It's a good visual, you know, that uh what's it called? It stops people in their swiping, right? What's this guy doing wearing this? So anyway, that's the hat.

Carl: 1:43

A man that wears many hats. I like how you exactly as many of us entrepreneurs are, right? I wear many hats too, but it's usually to so I don't get sunburn, especially in the summer months, you know, because there's not a lot up here on the on the head, not in the head, on the head. So, anyways, my friend, I'm glad we're here. This is going to be uh interesting and I'll say well, well thought through. They're never well thought through. They're just well approached uh conversations to I've spent 25 years in broadcasting, I've been on stages, I've had the opportunity to speak on a TEDx stage, all these phenomenal opportunities. But one of the things I never really had when I was doing this, especially in my earlier years, was I never had a speaker reel. It wasn't until about, I don't know, year seven or eight, I had a speaker reel put together. And it was a game changer. And it wasn't even for a speaker reel per se. It was a business type reel for my website at the time. But even that has been a game changer. But I think it's relevant too in the podcasting space. So there's a lot of things I want to unbundle. I want to start at the beginning, though, say, what brought you to the podcasting space? What brought you here?

Cam: 2:47

Well, I kind of love the sound of my own voice. No, I mean, don't we all like I think that the creative space is so cool, right? Doesn't matter, like YouTube, podcasting, if you're going in speaking, if you're an actor, if you're a comedian, you know, it's showbiz. It's showbiz, baby. And I tell a lot of my clients too. And I think that just allowing yourself to kind of do whatever you want, to give yourself permission to get out there and kind of perform and whatever platform that you choose to, because I think that's what even what we're doing right now is, you know, we are creating a space for people to talk about a certain topic. It's fun. Like this is all just fun to me to get out there and uh like learn about more people and learn about more things in the world too. It that's kind of what gravitated me towards this. I love storytelling. I think that like storytelling is this hobby that I have of learning more about how do you tell a good story about a person? Biographies have always been super fascinating to me. How do people translate like a lifetime worth of experiences down to like a book or a one-hour Netflix special? Like, how do you do that? Like, how do you do that? So, like, how do you pick out the best parts of your life to be able to be able to do that? So now I'm here trying to condense that even further down from like a speaker who has years of experience and kind of like how do I shrink that down even further into a real clever like brand message or focus, something like that.

Carl: 3:58

And we're going to explain why this is relevant to podcasters as well, because this is something we were just chatting about before we turned the microphones on and record that there is some relevance to the speaker reel for podcasters, but let's approach it from the speakers' perspective because I've been in the speaking world, you've been in the speaking world. How many speakers, and it's not a numeric, it's more of I guess a you know an estimate of percentage. How many speakers are out there and don't have either proper or even a speaker reel at all?

Cam: 4:32

So what 99.99% people don't have it. And that's the world of speaking as probably one of the lowest barriers to entry to into this as your side gig as anything. Now, what I see in the industry is there's a lot of people who have like very definite sticking points that people have in their speaking career. You can get gigs up to about $2,500. I don't want to say pretty easily, but that's your kind of newbie speaker. Once you're up past the $2,500, there seems to be this mental shift of all right, am I doing this for real? Is this a hobby? Is this something I want to turn into a business? Is this, or do I just want to stay kind of like at this kind of level? So that's when people start to take their brand seriously. They're like the opportunities that they want to get out there. They want to start to only speak at certain types of events and they start to like niche down a little bit more focus, the breakout phase, I call it. So somewhere in that range of 2,500, 5,000 up to about 10,000. You're still not taking speaking quote unquote seriously. After 10K, you gotta have these speaking, like no longer, you can't just have a website that you built by yourself, you know, like home coding. You gotta have someone who has a bit more, like you gotta pick your brand colors, you gotta pick your fonts properly. You can same thing with your a demo reel. You gotta have something that when a big conference who wants to bring you in says, send me your speaker reel, send me your all your assets. You gotta have that ready to go. It can't be, oh, let me send it to you in six weeks while I go and rush around and try and find some editor just to kind of uh slap a bunch of content together. So these are the different stages of how serious am I taking my speaking career? How serious am I taking my speaking business? And like, where do I want to take that? So there's a lot of intent that kind of goes in as your price range kind of goes up.

Carl: 6:11

That's interesting. I knew that there was a range, obviously, for speaker fees, and then there's the opposite of that where people actually invest to speak on stages, which is another conversation on the goal.

Cam: 6:22

I'm gonna say that's a pretty weird one.

Carl: 6:23

But you still need some credibility and the reels or whatever it is, certainly helps to get you there. And I didn't realize the price point or the barrier of entry, so to speak, was that low that two, three, four thousand still got you in pretty much without much work to get those those gigs. How important is it then to have a speaker reel to be able to get these gigs? How crucial is it?

Cam: 6:51

Let me put this in perspective. If you are at all looking for representation in the world of speaking, speaking agent or uh speaker bureau, if that's kind of the goal out of this, if you just want to get and speak and not really run the business side of things, minimum requirement now to participate in that community is a demo reel. Okay, like if they don't ask for any, like, you know, maybe a website too and stuff like that, but you must have a demo reel to be a part of uh like to get representation, first off. Because you know, nobody is gonna watch a TED talk anymore. Like if you are going, nobody. What I mean by that is someone who's looking to hire you to speak, they don't have the time to watch a 10-minute demo reel. Could you imagine at a large conference where they're looking to pay for a keynote? You know, if they've got 70 applicants, are they really going to watch 70 10 minute long, 20-minute long TED talks? No, they're not. Like nobody is spending the time to do that anymore. So they want to know who you are, what you can offer, what problems that you solve, some like what's the takeaways, what's the transformation that you're gonna take their audience through? How do you interact upon stage with the audience? There's a lot there that kind of goes into this tight three-minute video. So if you want to play in the world of the speaker circuit, you've got to get out there and start to think of okay, what does my brand represent? Like who am I out there? Who am I called to serve? Who do I want to help and fix? Who do I want to, what kind of problems do I want to get out there and solve? So these are the types of things that, well, first off, I work through with the with my clients, but also these are the things you have to start thinking about, not only with a demo reel, but with your entire brand, right? Like this is showbiz, right? Like I said before.

Carl: 8:16

So we're in a virtual world now, more than we ever more than we ever have been. I think that's thanks to a global pandemic. How relevant is what you've done virtually to include in that speaker reel? And let me qualify this because I've spoken on many stages, but in the last four and a half years, thanks to COVID and thanks to a shift in my business, most of my space has been virtual. So does that have some relevance to the speaker reel, or is that something completely different? That's your hey, you should have two now. Paint that picture for me.

Cam: 8:47

I want to know if you and I were speaking about that. As I said, like, what's your intent? Is your intent to keep doing on stage or is your intent to stay on virtual? If the intent is to stay virtual, which I know a lot of speakers making a lot of money just just doing virtual talks, they love it because maybe they're a little bit more informational speakers, maybe they're a little bit more technical speakers, and that work super well. Because if you're training a team of software developers, can you imagine trying to get a group of software developers together these days in like a room? Like forget it. Like I've got friends who can barely get like get their teams to show up one day per week. Like there's riots that happen in the software developing world. So if you're a technical speaker, then virtual is perfect. You're giving lunch and learns, you're giving virtual trainings, and that's amazing. It works really, really well. So that's your goal. If your goal is to keep doing that, create a demo reel primarily using virtual conferences. Totally cool. But if your goal is to get up there on stages, if your goal is to get up there on bigger stages, if you want to be the center of attention with that big, beautiful screen behind you showing your face in like, you know, like four stories tall and and uh lights and 3,000 faces looking at you, you got to have some stage up there. So it doesn't mean you can't create with what you've got. And I always tell people, I say, use what you've got. Like, you know, if you only have one stage performance and it's at your local chamber of commerce, then there's no way, don't fall into the trap of thinking that you're going to qualify for a 10,000 person stage. Like you got to work with what you've got, but you know, somewhere and you got to use what you have. So use it all.

Carl: 10:18

What if you don't have a stage? What if you're at the starting gate or you've been on you were at that low point entry-level point? Just starting out, yeah. Just starting out. But now, you know, you've done your you've worked in the trenches, you've gotten past that point, you're ready to do a speaker reel, but you don't have a stage. Uh, can you create your own? Is it is it possible to uh you know host your own event, even if it's just for the purpose of getting some bumps and seats and giving some content to create that speaker reel?

Cam: 10:44

So, in the eyes of an event planner, this is kind of what they look for when they want to book you for a big stage. Okay, so they're looking in a demo reel. Number one, have you been on stage before? And have you interacted with an audience? Because a lot of people out there who have uh, but you know, you record from the back of the room, you tell your friends and say, just record with your phone. And like that's okay. But people uh event planners want to see that you've been on stage. And of course, if multi-camera, that's amazing as well. But interacting with the audience is a really big indicator that somebody else has trusted you to speak with their audience, right? So that's number one, like top the best kind of video you can do. Next level down from that is gonna be media appearances, actually. Any kind of social proof you have, even if you've been on a podcast before, live is better. But you know, if you've video shaking hands or or being on the news or being featured in a in a something, right? Like in a on a panel or something like that, that's gonna be number two. That's gonna be a really good piece of audio. In fact, I have speakers who've moved from the TV world, right, because they've been a TV personality and they're moving into speaking. And it's really easy to craft something for them because they have high quality video and it's really easy to do that. Now, those are kind of exclusive though. You know, you need other people. There's gatekeepers involved in both of those scenarios. What we do is we say, get an interview. Go and hire a videographer, go find someone who has a good camera and go find a really nice space. Now, don't cheap out on this. I'm not talking about you go to your living room and you've got the plants behind you, and you've got like that's not what you want to stage. You want to stage something nicely. Go and find, we were just talking pre-show about there's lots of studios nowadays out there. Go find something on a website called Peerspace. I love Peerspace. I'm not sure if you've ever used Peerspace before, but it's Peerspace. It's like the Airbnb for conference and and professional spaces. Go find a location, go find a studio, get a two-camera setup, and go record yourself answering some interview questions. That looks really good. And you can really create the backbone of your demo reel from that. And then you can pepper in podcasts that you've been on, webinars that you've hosted, shows that you've participated in, things like that, like social media content. I know a lot of speakers out there who are motivational speakers, they do a quick, you know, motivational talk every single morning. You could throw that in there too, because that's huge. A demo reel is the purpose of it is to pre-sell you to an event coordinator. So the more you can bring of yourself in there, showing who you are kind of behind the scenes, amazing. Go and do it. The world has structure to it that you should follow. But yeah, if you don't have that big stage, go and be creative in other ways. I want to get back to the question that you just asked about can you create your own stage? Yes, you absolutely can. But what I've found is that it looks staged because if you get, if you do that all yourself and you don't understand kind of what goes behind producing a big on stage performance, it kind of looks like your friends and family are in the audience. So you would need to make it like a let me get a bunch of podcasters, let me get a bunch of other speakers together. You'd have to make an event with more than just you standing up at your local library, you know, with a bunch of uh people in in chairs in front of you. Just you lose a bit of the magic. It looks like something that was a an amateur production.

Carl: 13:33

I know that when I've hosted live events, that I always not always, when I started out, I didn't have a stage. It was more just the front of the room with 20 chairs or whatever in the room. And then I got smart and I realized that as my events are getting bigger, well, so does the visual. So it's almost like as you're leveling up, so does what you're putting there have to level up. So if you are creating a stage, or as you said, creating an event, rent a stage or rent a studio that has the stage with proper microphones, with proper cameras. As you said, get a videographer for two or three hours. It's going to be worth the investment to do that, to have the footage that you can carve through later or comb through later to put that speaker reel together that will make you pop.

Cam: 14:17

Exactly. You know, the biggest objection that I hear speakers have. Okay. So number one is what we already just addressed is that I don't have enough content. Well, go and create content. I think there's there's a lot of opportunities and ways to do that. Number two is I don't know, like I'm I'm not technical, right? And if I got a nickel for every single time that I heard both of those from speakers, in fact, it's crazy. You can hire, you can pay somebody to do that work for you, and you can find people who are experts in those fields who will take that burden off you. Go call a videographer and go find somebody who can work with you. And don't go hire your cousin who has a really good camera. I mean, that unless they're like a professional videographer, you need somebody who has tripods and two cameras and a lav mic, you get that hooked up to you, good lighting, a space or studio that they know. I'm not sure you've probably had professional headshots done before, right? Absolutely. Yep. So getting a professional photography session compared to just somebody with a good camera, it's night and day. It's really night and day what you get out of it. Like I know people who have really good DSLRs. They spent $8,000 on it because they're a wildlife photographer. They don't know how to frame a shot. They don't because that's not what their expertise is. So go and find the people out there who can help you with that. It's really to me that that's been a no-brainer. How much are you willing to invest in your business? How much are you willing to invest in this, in this path, this journey that you're on right now?

Carl: 15:31

My first headshots, we're talking like a couple of years ago, more than a couple years ago. You know, SLR camera in my house, wearing a jacket. I still have them, but again, I had zero budget. I didn't even have the $50 to go and go go cheap, cheap, cheap on headshots. I had zero dollars. But I quickly realized as I was leveling up my business, leveling up my branding that, oh yeah, you need to go and spend 600 or 1,000 or whatever it is to have them done professionally. And my business coach even said, not just in a studio. It used to be go in the studio, get your headshots done there. Now she's like, no, you know, you need some casual, some nature. Obviously, it depends on the type of uh headshot you're going for. But a lot of things in business now are the more casual approach to headshots, and people want to see a real person wearing, and this is not me personally, but ripped jeans. And like, okay, I'll buy a pair of ripped jeans if that makes me feel more human. But the point is, is that you've hired that professional to capture you. And I say the same thing for videographers and the same piece that comes by my desk as well as you've said, it's the tech side. People say, I don't know how to do this tech. I'll say, you don't need to know the tech. That's what we do. We I run a full service podcast agency. That's what we do is the tech. Just get your content to me. That's what I want. So in this case, it's you know, making sure that you again hire the professional to get it as to get what it is you need to put the best version of yourself out there. Okay, I've hired the professional, I've done a video shoot. Now what?

Cam: 16:59

Now what? Well, are you familiar with the hero's journey? The storytelling framework structure that's been around since the dawn of time, right? So for anyone who's listening who doesn't know, okay, so you have a hero, right? Who encounters a problem. There's something that goes on, right? So, and then you meet a guide, a guide who has a plan. That guide with a plan can help you go through these troubles and aspects to it, depending on how deep you want to go intimately. In the end, you're either a victor and you come back with the elixir, you come back to your town, your village, your the people, and you bring the elixir and you heal them, or you continue down that journey and you grow from it, right? You encounter uh problems and pains, and you yourself grow and you come to another realization through it. Like ring a bell, like you how many stories can we match who uh who that's happened to? You know, it doesn't matter if it's Lord of the Rings or or Harry Potter or, you know, these stories are as old as time, right? Star Wars, this is just kind of how humans know stories. That structure works really well for a demo reel as well. Just so you know. Just so you know. So here's how a lot of people structure the demo reels. And I look backtrack a little bit. When I started doing this, we do calibration calls every single day with our team. And we've watched over 270 demo reels now. And it's amazing now, there's a huge difference that we see because I truly believe that the only way to grow and learn is to go and look at other people who have done things better than you and go learn from them and their mistakes. And now, you know, there's a distinction between people who have DIY'd it, DIY it with no structure. Because I think a lot of us are pretty good now with cap cut and a lot of like short-form content editors. So we just mishmash a bunch of clips together and it's like, this is great. We put the stock audio on there, and it looks like a mishmash eclipse. Okay. So the best thing I can suggest is that you have to start with a really good hook. You have to hook the audience within the first seven seconds. So that means you start with a big data point, you start with an intriguing question and not, you know, like who here wants to make more money? That's not really an intriguing question. It would be more like if you can call it your audience in that first seven seconds, or if you can make something really interesting, like start with a really interesting story, like that's how I was able to hike Mount Everest with half a lung, right? Like you're like, okay, now I got to hear this guy, what's that's all about? Then you want to kind of build in some mystery in that. You want to really highlight the problem and build some intrigue. So, not enough speakers, podcasters, like people like that, people who are interested in getting on the call and getting booked for events like this. We don't spend enough time defining the problem, right? Are you really just another wellness coach? Great. There's about a million wellness coaches out there. What's the problem that you help solve? Are you solving problems for women leaders in tech who are experiencing burnout? Wow, that's a really good problem. Like you're defining that problem. You're really highlighting it really well. And that's where the interview really comes in handy because you can start to clarify that problem really well. So you want the problem in your demo reel as well. Move on to the next step. Now you're talking about yourself. Okay, now is when you can introduce yourself because you are not the hero of this story. It's actually the person who's listening. It's the audience member who's the hero. You get up on stage, and if all you're doing is talking about, I did this, I did this, I did this, well, that's kind of going to be a really bland talk, right? Because it's like, okay, I don't even know you, and here you are just talking about your story. It doesn't really matter. So look, you're about two-thirds of the way through, and it's only at that point where you start to identify yourself and say, here I am, here's my expertise, here's my credentials and all the good stuff I've talked about. And then you talk about the transformation that you can bring people through. So, how does that line up with what I just said? The person in the audience is the hero. There's a problem that they know of, right? You've hooked them, there's a problem, something called to action. You've introduced the problem. Now you're here as the guide to come to help them solve a problem. And then you have a call to action at the end saying, book me for your next event, call me, because you want to lead people into the next steps. So there's a very high level on how it all works. If you can at least remember a little bit about that structure, then your content, your demo reel is just going to flow so much better, so much more interesting to watch, and it's going to get you called, called, gonna get you more callbacks.

Carl: 20:45

I love it. I mean, great information there. The one question I have is this maybe is the novice thinking they can do it themselves, which we don't want people to do it themselves. If they've invested in a videographer and gotten the footage and all of that stuff, we want to make sure that they're investing in the person to put it together afterwards, too, right? But what about B-roll? What things shouldn't be in B-roll? Let me ask it that way.

Cam: 21:11

Sure. So what I like to advise people is who's the person that you're speaking to? So what I like to say is that we really have two audiences in the speaking world, the podcast world so much, but you know, if anyone who's booking somebody else, imagine it's like a realtor, okay? Two realtors are, you know, you're they're trying to negotiate a house sale between two parties, but they themselves are not the people who are buying the house. Does that make sense with me so far? Okay. So the event planner is kind of in the same situation. The event planner has their interests in mind, which is I want to put on the best event. And if I don't, my boss is gonna fire me. And no joke, these big events, if someone's paying $25,000 for a speaker, if they book the wrong speaker, if they're not aligned with like they get canned. Like that's a $25,000 mistake, which some organizations, some conferences, they can't handle that. So when you're thinking of B-roll, you got to remember who is that person in the audience that I'm speaking to. So let's go back to that health and wellness person. So you're probably gonna want to add B-roll in there, health and wellness. You don't want those cheesy AI kind of generated images. It doesn't land. And if it looks like everything else, then you're kind of lumped into that big group of it's everything else. B-roll should be used sparingly. Try and add yourself in there as much as possible because you're the hero. One thing I want to add as well is try not to reference other people too much as well. I've had speakers who say, I've got this really great from Brene Brown, of course, million-dollar speaker. Why are you referencing her inside your talk? Because people are going to say, man, that let's go find out about Brene Brown. Maybe she's available right now. Or I've seen demo reels before they do, they have like a whole highlight on somebody as part of their talk. You don't need stuff like that in there. What you really want is to highlight you. So only use b-roll that enhances your your message, enhances your story that's in the role as well.

Carl: 22:49

And like you say, b-roll of you, shaking hands with somebody, b-roll of you speaking at another event, whatever it is that's something that's relevant to your speaking as opposed to something that's not relevant to you, or moreover, not relevant to you, but not relevant to your audience that you'll be speaking to.

Cam: 23:07

Exactly. Walking up on stage is a really good one if you just want to do some home stuff for B-roll. So for anyone who doesn't know, right, B-roll is just that extra content that you see. There's a little bit of a voice over there that could happen. It's it's all the stuff, your lips pretty much matching what you're saying. You doing a virtual conference, right? So you standing in front of a camera, just like kind of like how I'm set up right now. If I had my friend or my wife recording me, she can just take her cell phone and do a bit of slow-mo shots. And even if I'm not really presenting to anyone, go on Google, go look up Zoom gallery, and you'll get that kind of image of a bunch of people on Zoom. You can just have that picture up on the screen and you'd kind of be presenting it like that. So that's a really good visual touch to uh that you can add in. You walking with a laptop is a really good one. So, going back to the whole idea of finding spaces to go and record this, I've had a lot of really successful reels recorded at uh peer spaces. Sorry, not peer spaces, um, like the collaboration spaces. You know, Regis is a big one here in in Canada where you can go and there's other people walking around, and nobody knows in that two seconds you're gonna use a b-roll that that was recorded at a collab space. It doesn't matter. You walking around with your laptop and you having someone follow you around with a camera, that's all you need. Like that's really all you need to grab some of these good shots.

Carl: 24:16

All right. So I've done my speaker reel, I'm happy with it, it's out there, I'm getting speaking gigs. At what point should I refresh or revise my speaker reel?

Cam: 24:29

So now, speaker bureaus say you should refresh every six months, which to me that sounds like at a different category. Like depending how frequently you're speaking, if you're out there and you're, you know, if you've got one a month, if you're on stage just once a month, you know, you might time to reinvest in it. So I know a lot of speakers who are out there like all the time, like this is their main thing. Until it becomes your main thing. I would say that you want to spend one full talk's worth per year on your demo reel. Okay. So if you're a $500 speaker, you go out there and find someone who can do this for $500. If you're a $5,000 speaker, it's time to go and start to really invest in your brand. Go and spend that once a year on there. Once you start to get to that $15,000, $20,000, $30,000, you know, you're in a total different category. You probably have a team who's helping you find stuff. You probably have a videographer on staff. I know speakers who have somebody permanently who just follows them around recording stuff like that. So I think it's at least at a minimum every six to 12 months. But also if you do a major shift. So back in the middle of COVID, what were we speaking about? What were the hot topics? Work from home, burnout. Obviously, how do you deal with uh with the stresses of like these four walls closing in? Like there was certain DEI was really big over COVID as well. Now things have shifted a little bit. If you all of a sudden are going from DEI to more just AI, right? Well, that's a huge shift in what you talk about. So you're probably gonna want to refresh because you've got a couple talks now that you've changed uh topics on. So anytime that you feel that your career has kind of taken a step up or that you've said, okay, I'm shifting something now, you want to kind of get that refresh because messaging is so key. Clarity in messaging is just so key to you want uh someone who's watching the reel to understand. Like if someone watches a two-minute video and they go, uh they're not gonna call you back. They don't even know what's what's going on. So if you go and say if you're talking about, you know, work from home and you've only got virtual uh presentations and you're applying for uh on stage and you've got three or four on stages as well, hey, time to refresh. Go and contact the person who created your reel, get a refresh. It's time.

Carl: 26:26

And here's a question for you because I'm in the podcasting space, so I'm going to throw this little monkey wrench out there just to see what you have to say about this. Speaker reels for podcasters.

Cam: 26:38

Yeah, I love this idea. So a couple of people have asked me about this before. It's such an interesting concept. So just like speaking at a big event, the bigger podcast that you want to get on, there are guests who are clamoring to get on these podcasts, right? You know, people want to share their story. Just before the show, we were talking about Diary of a CEO and Modern Wisdom is another one that I really like. Those huge production values. And so if you don't have a book, basically if you don't know the host, then you're you're not getting on the show because you keep hearing them say, Oh, I just knew you from this, whatever, and I contacted you and we we got in touch. But if you're looking to get on these bigger podcasts, why wouldn't you leverage the fact that you've been on bigger podcasts and you give some kind of highlights real? Like, why wouldn't you leverage that? And it's actually not that hard because podcast being a primarily audio medium, right? There are lots of tools out there that you can use, leverage AI, to kind of to build that for you. So if you're DIYing it, you can use something like I like to use Descript or Minvo. Those are two really great tools out there. They're pretty cheap as well. They can cut up content. And then you still got to follow that storyline though. You still have to present the problem. Like, what's the problem that you are able to solve while speaking to a host, right? So they're gonna ask you a bunch of questions. If they're not clear on what you do, what you can help to help their audience solve, the transformation that you've brought people through, then the likelihood of you being called back to even be on a on a show is gonna be much lower, right?

Carl: 27:57

Wow. So much information here. We you and I could talk forever and a day, but we won't because we want to be respectful of the listener's time. But Cam, this has been uh amazing information today. If people want more information, what's the best way for them to connect with you? Because I know you're not just about supporting the individuals one-on-one. You're all about also building a community of experts and professionals and people who are all in this together. So how can they connect?

Cam: 28:22

Thanks for that. The biggest pain point that speakers feel right now, and I've done lots of surveys out there, is they feel invisible, right? That's truly what it all comes down to. I don't know how, and I feel invisible. So I don't want to leave speakers who really at the core, I feel that many speakers they're mission-driven. They want to go and change the world for a small group of people or a large group of people. Like it doesn't matter. That's kind of what the power of voice has sharing stories. So if you go to the frequentspeaker.com, there's a community tab on top. Or if you go to hub.thefrequentspeaker.com, you'll go right to my link where you can uh join the community. But yeah, I'm growing a community of just like-minded speakers who want to learn more about the sales and marketing aspects of speaking. If there's no stagecraft on there, but go there is the best place to find me, or you know, any of the socials, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, all that kind of good stuff.

Carl: 29:07

Wow, all great stuff, Cam. I'm so glad we connected today. Cam Beaudoin has been my guest today. Cam, before I turn you loose to put together some more speaker reels or help folks do that, I'll give you the final thought, my friend.

Cam: 29:19

All right. My final thought, one of my favorite books right now is Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. And um, in the very first quote, I'm gonna read you this quote. Yeah, I found it just for you. So, customers don't generally care about your story, they care about their own. Your customer should be the hero of the story, not your brand. So I want people to think about that because it's really not about you when you're up on stage, it's about the people and the audience. What's the transformation you're bringing them through?

Carl: 29:42

Great place to leave it. Cam Beaudoin, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Cam: 29:47

Carl, thanks for having me.

Carl: 29:48

And hey, thank you for being a part of the show today. So glad you could join us. Believe it or not, I can't work this magic by myself. So, thanks to my amazing team, our audio engineer, Dom Carillo, our Sonic Branding Genius Kenton Dobrowolski and the person who works the arms, all of our arms actually, our project manager and my trusty assistant Julovell Tiongco, known to us here simply as July. If you like what you heard today, let us know. You can leave us a comment or review or even send us a voice note. And if you really liked it, we hope you'll share it with your friends and your colleagues. If you don't like what you heard today, well, please feel free to share it with your enemies. And if you know of someone who would make a great guest on the show, let us know about it. You can get in touch with us by going to our show notes where all of our connection points are there, including the links to our website, LinkedIn, and Facebook as well. And if you're ready to be a guest on podcasts or even start your own show, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space and rock it. Because, after all, we're Podcast Solutions Made Simple. Catch you again next time.