[SERIES 0 to 100] Secret #4: How I made $10,000 from a 45min speaking engagement

Welcome back to my series "0 to 100: BTS Secrets of Building a 6 Figure Business in 1 Year"! 

Continuing this series with the fourth episode sharing how I made $10,000 from a 45 min speaking engagement. 

If anything resonates with you or if you have questions, feel free to DM me on IG!

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In case you missed it:

[SERIES: 0 to 100] Secret #3 - The Power of Investing (4 Science-Backed Reasons)

From Corporate to Coach: 5 Fears That Keep You Stuck (and How I Built A 6 Figure Business Anyway)

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Building Her podcast. I'm your host, Katia Lillian. If you've been loving this podcast, go ahead and rate the podcast five stars and DM me on Instagram when you do that because I want to connect and personally thank you. If you are new here, hit that subscribe button. It really helps the podcast grow, and that way you will never miss an episode. So let's dive in. Hey, my name is Katia Lillian, and I am obsessed with all things mindset, personal development, and helping you build the best version of yourself. I'm a women's life and mindset coach and an entrepreneur who started a fun hobby of posting #sweatyselfies, grew a successful side hustle, and now I run a six-figure coaching business. I teach you the secret of building a life that aligns with your deepest values and one that you wake up excited for. This podcast is designed to expand your mind and challenge the status quo. So get ready to uplevel your life and let's start building her. Welcome back to episode four of my series Zero to 100: Behind the Scenes Secrets of Building a Six-Figure Business in One Year. Today, I'm going to let you in on how I made $10,000 from a 45-minute speaking engagement. I will link some related episodes down in the show notes below, because all of this was from my speaking gig that I did almost nine months ago now in October 2025 on the other side of Florida. So I live on Instagram, as you know And I do 99% of my marketing there. It's just my platform of choice. I started there years ago, and now I, I really just like it. I like all the features, and I like the DM feature, and I like that we get to connect with each other. So I live on Instagram. And when I was first starting out in Chicago, I connected with people more from a wellness and fitness perspective because that's what I was heavily into. Not that that's changed, but my marketing has changed in terms of how much of that I share. Right now it's more business related. And from that time in Chicago, I connected with people in my DMs much more about that topic, and one in particular lived in Florida on the other coast. I'm in St. Petersburg. And we just talked and hit it off and genuinely started a relationship in the DMs. And I did that with a lot of people, but at that time in my business I didn't have anything to sell. I didn't... I wasn't a coach yet. I didn't offer one-on-one coaching. So long story short, I reconnected with a lot of people that I had originally met and talked with in Chicago, and one of them decided to become a one-on-one client of mine. We've been together now for a year and a half. And she was hosting her own women's conference, and she invited me to be one of the speakers. And I don't ever do speaking gigs. It's not something that I include in my business. Maybe down the line, sure, and maybe with this result I might need to consider more of them. But I, I just felt like it was such a good opportunity to pass up. It wasn't paid. It wasn't anything like that. But w- the bigger reason why I said yes is to support my client. I thought that was so cool that my client was doing her own women's conference, and so I wanted to go anyways and support her and be there, especially 'cause it's in state. It's a low lift for me. But then on top of that, the cherry on top was that she invited me to speak there. So not only go, but also be one of the presenters, the speakers there. So again, it wasn't paid, but it was exposure, and I didn't know who I would meet. It was a mixed bag of people, and all ages, and all, um, different types of careers. And so I didn't really know what I was, um, walking into in terms of the crowd. But knowing her, and it was a personal development conference, I was like, "Well, it's worth my time." So I took my husband and my daughter, and we road tripped it over to the other coast. It's Melbourne area, if you're familiar. And it was actually really easy. It was maybe a two-hour road trip across the state, which surprised me, because when we go to West Palm Beach or Fort Lauderdale, it's more like four hours. So something about north through Orlando, it was much shorter And so we got there, and I gave my speech. I think it was day two of the event. It was about three days total, and my speech was really just about my story and my timeline. That's the story that my client really wanted me to focus on. It wasn't a workshop. It wasn't how to, you know, build confidence or practice courage or thoughts and limiting beliefs. It wasn't anything like that. It was truly just, how did I do it? How did I build my own coaching business? How did I leave corporate? How did I go all in? And so I just shared my story, and people could hear the passion and the conviction in my voice when I spoke because I give a damn. I really love what I do, and on top of that, I'm really proud of what I've done, especially now as a new mom, because I am continuing the business, and I'm figuring it out. And so yeah, I just laid it all on the line and told everyone my story. I got 60 minutes, and then at the end, and this is the really important part that I want you to remember and, and lean into, is I had a call to action at the end. On the very last si- slide of my presentation, I had a QR code, and that QR code linked directly to my Instagram. Now, this is really important because when I was first creating this presentation deck and thinking about what should I talk about and all of that stuff, strategically I was thinking, "Well, how do I connect with people, or what could I sell, or what would people even want to buy from me?" And it was really hard because I knew just having a platform and a stage to speak on, well, you know, I wanna make the most of that. But at the time, I only had one-on-one coaching, and I wasn't in the middle of a launch, so I was like, "Well, you know what? Why not just I have people connect with me, and then should the time be right for both of us down the line and they wanna work with me, great." And so what I had decided to do instead of an email, instead of business cards, instead of leading people to my website, I was like, "Well, you know what? Just have them go directly to my Instagram." Ideally, they would follow me, and then later that weekend, or it was the following Monday when we got back home, I opened my Instagram account and I saw new followers, and I would say 90% of them I recognized because I had just met them in person at this event. So then When I received these new followers, I sent them all a DM, and they were all pretty similar because it was the same reason of why I'm reaching out, right? So I reached out and I said, "Hey, it was so great meeting with you at the conference. I am so excited to connect. What was your biggest takeaway from the entire conference?" And that's really important to always end with a question because it continues the conversation. Had I just said, "Hey, it was great meeting you at this weekend's conference. Hope all is well," they could have easily just hearted it, right? Or they say, "Oh, thanks. You too." Right? It kind of kills the conversation. And so you want to have a question that allows them to respond and continue a conversation, and that's exactly what I did. Now, some people responded right away, some people didn't, and some I got into good conversations. But the point of all of those conversations was then to get them onto a consultation call. All of the DMs, the entire DM strategy is for that purpose. The end goal, of course, is to sign a client, but from the DMs, it's to book a call because the more conversations you have, the higher the likelihood is of you actually getting someone to say yes. So I had maybe three or four calls from those DM conversations, and then one didn't respond to my text immediately, but she had started following me And so, and, and again, this was last October, so then you think October, you think November, you think December. That is her, any time she logs onto Instagram, consuming now my content. So she met me at the conference, and she perhaps liked what I said on stage or there were certain points that resonated with her. Whatever her reasoning was, she decided to follow, and now she's in my world. And so for three months, she's seeing my stories, she's seeing my reels, she's reading my captions, she's seeing what other people are commenting on, and that helps build trust. Now that, the talk that I gave and her meeting me in person obviously sped up the timeline of building trust because you meet me in person, you feel my heart, you feel my energy, you feel like I'm a human, I'm a real person, I'm not an AI, I'm not a robot, right? In the digital landscape that we're in. So that sped it up, for sure. But then seeing my content for three months just helps build that trust because maybe October didn't feel right for her or, you know, November, December are the holidays and she wasn't really thinking about her business. And so come January, I posted a story about something and I put a poll up and I said, "Whoever is ready to..." Uh, what was it? Whoever is ready to make the most of their life or something like that, um, tap the sticker. And the sticker was the little emoji where she's raising her hand. And one of the women that had raised their hand was one of the women that was at the conference. And so that started, restarted another conversation in the DMs, and then that led to a call, and then that led to her becoming a client. And she signed up for my premium one-on-one $10,000 coaching package. So that is how I made $10,000 from a 45-minute speaking engagement, which I think is pretty good. So you do have to factor in the travel time and gas money and hotel because this wasn't paid. Everything was significantly discounted from a conference perspective because I was one of the speakers, but I wasn't paid for this. But think the, the ROI on that event, right? So I'm paying gas money and a $200 hotel bill, and then I'm making $10,000. Like, that's a pretty good ROI from that type of investment when you think of financial investment and you think of time investment because my husband went, my daughter went, and it was an entire weekend. And so when you're a business owner, you always have to think your management of time and what is worth your time. So this takes me away for a weekend, and so if I didn't think it was worth it, well, then that's a weekend of me connecting in my local neighborhood. That's a weekend of creating more content. That's a weekend of sending out more DMs. I mean, you would just have to think of, um, activities from a business perspective and a business lens. But I felt this was necessary because, again, I wanted to support my one-on-one client, and you have to think of every client as a relationship. And so of course, I want to build upon that relationship and hope that we can continue our relationship for years to come. And so there's that, so more so of, um Uh, retaining customers in that way, but then also opening myself up to new customers with the exposure, and especially because she invited me as a speaker. So yeah, that's how I made $10,000 from a 45-minute speaking gig. And when you have that type of result, you definitely start to consider more speaking engagements if that's what it leads to. And I think that was a really good strategy and approach from me in terms of the QR code, getting people to scan the QR code as you're still on stage, and hitting that follow button so that I could continue the conversation later on, and it's all then on me. I don't have to send- give them a business card and hope and wait and rely on them to, what, call me, text me, email me, find me on Instagram, whatever information I provide on the business card. I think business cards are very archaic. And so even on business cards, if you have them, they usually have QR codes now leading to some kind of digital platform that you have. Um, and so I think that was a really smart way to identify leads and have those conversations and then invite them onto calls. So that's how I did it. We're going to keep this one short and sweet, but that is the last episode of my series, Zero to 100: Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of Building a Six-Figure Business in One Year. If you liked any of these episodes, please let me know which one resonated with you the most in my DMs on Instagram. And if you missed any of the other episodes from my series, I'll link them down below in addition to some of the other episodes, one in particular that was my actual speech from, uh, this conference that I was talking about. So thank you so much for tuning in, and we will talk next week.