Mastering Your Critical Collateral for Success in 2026

In this episode of Experts Journey, hosts Brad Hauck and Dixie Carlton discuss the essential elements critical collateral for speakers and authors need to focus on to kickstart 2026 effectively. 

They discuss the importance of having a strong lead magnet, a well-developed landing page, and an updated speaker one-sheet. The discussion emphasizes the significance of evolving your branding while maintaining consistency, reviewing past strategies, and ensuring your marketing efforts are targeted and effective. 

They also touch on the importance of periodically reassessing your market and refining your niche to stay relevant and competitive.

The Expert’s Journey podcast is dedicated to empowering authors, content creators, experts and professional speakers worldwide.

Join hosts Brad Hauck, author of AI Powered Profits: Use AI to Automate & Accelerate Your Business in 90 Days, and Dixie Carlton, author of Start With the Draft: How to Easily Plan and Write a Non-Fiction Book, as they share practical insights to elevate your speaking career.

Each episode delivers actionable strategies to grow your audience, sharpen your skills, and increase your impact through speaking, publishing, and smart marketing.

Whether you're looking to boost your influence or explore new ways to share your expertise, The Expert’s Journey gives you the tools and direction to succeed.

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Brad Hauck Proficlix.com.au
Dixie Carlton Indieexpertspublishing.com

Transcript

0:14

Welcome to the Experts Journey podcast, where we're all about creating your path to impact. Join your hosts, Dixie, Mary Carlton from Indie Experts Publishing, and Mr. Web Marketing, Brad Howe, as we look at how you can grow your business and influence by leveraging your knowledge for profit. Welcome back to the Experts Journey, where Dixie and I are welcoming you back to 2026. It's a new year, lots of new things happening and lots of amazing things to talk about this year. So welcome Dixie. Hello, Brad. I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year and everything's sizzling already for you as 2026 kicks off. Yeah, things are going really well. Sizzling, yes. We've got a lot of fires on, that's for sure. But also, in business, things are looking really good. The new products that I'm launching are really doing well, and people are really getting some great value out of them. Yes, excellent. So how's yourself? Fantastic. Doing some fun, interesting planning and kicking off some new things for the year as well, including some group coaching projects and a mastermind group. So that's fun. And I love this time of the year when you can just get things mapped out, planned, do your dream setting, your goal setting, and look at what things have changed since a year ago. And that is something that I like to do at this time of the year. Good. Yeah, always good. It's good to have a little bit of time when it's peaceful before everything ramps up again to get back into things. So today you wanted to talk about critical collateral. Now, that's a hard word to say, or hard two words to say, actually in a row. But what are we referring to when we're talking about critical collateral? Well, critical collateral, yeah, it is a hard word to say, but I think it's a really cool concept. So critical collateral is the intersection of the three critical things that we need to make sure that we have paid attention to as we are getting ourselves ready for the new year. So critical collateral includes your lead magnet, it includes your landing page for your website where you send people to go to, and of course, your speaker one sheet, if you're speaking as well as being an author, whether you're doing workshops or keynotes, et cetera, you've gotta have these three things really well mapped out for the coming year. And I'm telling my authors and clients at the moment that the one thing they really need to focus on is. Is getting clear on what goes into their speaker one sheet, because that forces the issue of how do I look at or refresh what I'm doing with regards to my keynote. How do I look at where people go when they look on my website to see what it is that I'm doing and how it is all coming together? And of course, a lead magnet that makes sure that when you are reaching out to people or you are marketing to people, that you've got something that gives you the ability to put your best foot forward and sample some of what you do to your market. So I call that the critical collab Collateral. Exactly. Look, there's always collateral that needs to be made or information that we need to rewrite. And look, that ties in exactly with what I'm doing with people now developing their brand stories. So interview them, get all the information and produce a report that actually gives them the words to use so that people understand what it is they do, so that I sell more and we take that and then we help rewrite the content of the website and everything else. And so I'm a strong believer in reviewing that collateral because things change from what you were talking about last year to this year as your ideas change or as the information in the world changes. As a thought leader, you've got to be evolving. So, yeah, look, there's going to be some speeches that you always do, but there's going to be some new stuff coming through and that needs to be reflected in your collateral. And many people do take this time to it's not a rebrand, but it's an update of their brand and what they're putting out there to the world to say, hey, this is me. This is how I can help you. This is the value that I bring from a speaker, author, whatever sort of angle from business. Well, I agree and I just want to pick up on one thing you just said. This is about an update of your branding. Now I have a somewhat famous quote that I'm quite well known for, and that is that if your branding is strong, then your marketing will work a lot harder to ensure your advertising is more effective. So what that means is that your branding should always be something that's evolving. It's always growing and developing. But you don't want to rebrand completely if you've got yourself already on the right track with that. So this is in addition to what you do. So say, for example, you are well known as being a speaker about leadership and also AI in relation to products and resources you can develop and share with regards to how leaders work and how leaders function in the marketplace. So you also have as part of your brand the fact that you are a firefighter and that you talk about things like running towards the flames and critical change and how to deal with those things. So that's not necessarily going to change for you because that is your brand. So everything you do comes in under that branding. If you were suddenly going to turn around and say, you know what, I'm going to give up firefighting and now I'm going to become a online gamer and talk about leadership from that perspective and that was going to be a new branding point for you. I would be saying to you, don't rush to do that. Because if you are thinking, oh, I had a great year last year and whatever your subject matter is, this is applicable. I had a great year last year, but I think I could do more. And I think if I went from being someone talking about, let's say social media into videography, you've got to look at where the parallels are, where the linkage is. Because you don't want to confuse your market by suddenly doing something brand new. Because when you confuse your market, then your marketing stops being effective for you. Right. Branding is really critical to maintain, but perhaps evolve. For example, one of the things that I'll be doing this year, which we're doing at the moment, is we're updating our website and we will be refreshing some of the colors. We'll still be using the green, the hot raspberry pink and the orange, but we might make them just a little bit more flashy or bold or reflective, for example, rather than flat toned. Things like that is about evolving your brand. We've always done bespoke one on one VIP services for authors. We are now going to start developing more into some more DIY options and some more group coaching programs or programs that are rolled out in support of that. But also for people that don't want to necessarily have the entire hand holding experience with indie experts, but they're clearly paralleled with what we've always been doing. And I think that's a really important point to make because I come across a lot of people who say, oh, I'm going to do a complete rebrand, I'm going to completely refresh my website and I'm going to stop speaking about this and I'm going to start speaking about that or I'm going to write a book about something that's completely different now because, hey, I'm bored with my topic and. And we know we all get bored with our own topics. Absolutely, I've done it. Look, I've absolutely done this and I'm Glad I did it. But I'm sad that I did as well in that it really throws you out as far as your marketing and your whole focus on your business goes. You head down different tracks, which is. That's fine. That's part of growing. You learn the hard way sometimes. But on the other hand, people often need to understand what they do better. And that's one thing I've been discovering during these interviews is when you interview people and you ask them questions, you get them their answers, and then you go through those answers and you look at what they're saying, they're often not saying that in their collateral. And that's the key thing that I've discovered with this new service that I'm doing, is that people have this fantastic amount of knowledge and information and they say these key things over and over, but it's not anywhere in their branding, it's not anywhere in their content. And it's a real shame because that's what really sets them apart. You know, when you bring those elements in and you stick to them, it's congruent with actually what you are doing, what you are saying, what you are writing. But it brings it to the forefront. And really I've discovered this and I was like, really blown away with people I've known for many years and the fact that they didn't realize they weren't saying these things. Sitting down and going through your collateral, looking at your landing pages and your one sheets and your lead magnets, and making sure you're bringing you into them as you review that with that. Branding, to me sometimes is more about color and all those elements, but everybody has slightly different interpretations. But I think it's really important and you need to go back and start reviewing things like looking through books. I know we talked about making sure, clear calls of actions and breadcrumbs through the books and all those sorts of things, they're really important. And most people just don't take time to do that. Absolutely. And yes, breadcrumbing your calls to action through your books are very important ways to make sure that your books start working harder for you. And just in relation to branding, you also just touched on something that I've spoken a lot about over the years. In fact, I wrote a book called Advertising, branding and marketing 101, which was specifically designed to help people understand what is the difference between those and your brand is not your logo, it's not your colors, it's all of the intangible things as well. You know, who you are, what you Stand for what your brand values are. It's a really good little book if you want to grab yourself a copy anytime. It's been around for a long time and updated regularly. And I did an updated version last year that has a whole chapter on how to use AI with regards to developing and evolving your brand. So advertising, branding and marketing 101 is for sale, available, and here's a little pitch that I've just done for that. But it's really important for you to understand what a brand is. So as you are looking at your lead magnets, as you're looking at your call to action, your website page, your landing pages, all of those things, yes, they have to be congruent. You have to use fonts and colors that reflect what it is that you're trying to do. So, for example, some colors are more indicative of trust, for example, some colors are rather specific to communication or being on fire. Boldness, luxury. There are all kinds of ways you can use colors and fonts. One thing that some people make a big mistake of is using too many of those things and actually confusing or hurting the eyeballs of the person looking at your brand. All right, so that's again why, when your branding is strong, your marketing is a lot more effective. When you understand that all of these things have to be congruent, you also, as you said before, you need to make sure that you are bringing your core message to the front of your marketing. So your critical collab, keep going to say collaboration, your critical collateral, is something that you need to say. Is this congruent across all of these, Have I got my keynote or my workshop material reflected effectively across each of those? If I'm doing a lead magnet, does that point to the fact that I'm someone who does great workshops on whatever my topic is? Does it also highlight the fact that I speak internationally or specifically for rural organizations or for large companies, small companies, women's companies, whatever. How well am I positioning myself through the use of my lead magnet? Is my lead magnet also taking people back to a very well developed landing page that says, hey, if you like, this is what you can get more of. I can speak for you, I can run workshops for you, I can be your coach, I can be your collaborator. I'm looking for people to write case studies about in a particular way this year. Whatever it is that you want people to know sends them to a page that tells them exactly what you want them to take action on. And then thirdly, does your speaker one page also collaborate and spin out to make sure. That all of that makes sense together. So those are the critical collateral pieces. There's only three, but they are so dynamically important. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also while you're going through those things, sometimes it's a good opportunity to pare down what you're doing, because we tend to add things all the time and not think about can we really support that service or can we really do this or whatever. And what actually happens is, as you said, you water down your brand or you water down your offerings, and people don't know where to start with you or what you really do. And so sometimes it's a chance to also look at how much stuff you've got in those and go, okay, what are my key things? What does I really want to do? What do I want people to do? What's my entry point? You know, for me, most times it's SEO. There's a key element. People come to me for help ranking up online. And from that I've realized that it's all very well to rank up, but if your website's not selling because there's bad messaging, then it doesn't work. I've developed this new program that I've just been talking about. So it's key that you look at those things and make sure that they're clear on your collateral as well, so that you're not driving people to a hundred places. You drive them into your funnel and work them to where you want them to be to give them the best value, the best help that you can give them. Yes, absolutely. One of the things that I think is also important is to make sure you have identified who is your key market. And again, we need to sometimes go back and look at this at the beginning of each year and say, am I still looking for women in business? Am I still looking to speak to medium sized companies or large companies? Am I looking for people aged between 45 and 55? Or am I still really looking for people? Let's say, for example, in the fitness industry, am I looking to coach or personal train people who are maybe anything over 30? Well, newsflash, you're probably not looking for anyone over 30, regardless of how much you think that. And a subject as wide as fitness and health that might apply to anyone over 30, you're going to have a much easier time of marketing yourself too, in that instance, for example, a very specific group of people. And you can go as wide as you like, but you are always going to come back down to the fact that 20% or more of your work probably comes from, sorry, 80% of your work probably comes from 20% of the people that you think are in your market. So going back over that every year is really important. I was looking at someone's business marketing plan information the other day, part of a group that I'm in, that this person was asking for feedback. And she had developed things like a unique selling proposition, her vision, her mission, how she delivers, how her and her company delivers and what they do, all of those wonderful things. And she had some fantastic jargon in there. We work within licensed people who really want to change things up. Those kind of phrases were endemic throughout the whole document. And the document looked beautiful. It was brilliantly well laid out. She spent a lot of time on that. And I went back to her and I said, well, if you still want that feedback, then maybe just even a little bit more niching identifying exactly what kind of industry leaders you want to work with, who want to change things up. Do you want to work with financial, educational, medical? What kind of people, what kind of industry are you looking for to work with? Because that's going to be easier for you to market this to. And her response was, unfortunately, even when I said, maybe even just a couple of testimonials with where those people have come from or what kind of industry backgrounds they have, if it's construction, tell everyone that you've got great testimonials for people in the construction industry. Who is your best strengths. Unfortunately, she had decided that this was not going to be something that would be for marketing purposes. She was just doing this as an internal document. And my response to that, and for anyone listening, is, you may think that you're doing this kind of planning, this kind of business and marketing planning for something that's just internal, but you still have to come back to identifying where you are working at your strongest. Who is it that you best serve? Absolutely. And look, that's something that I've been looking at. One of the key reasons I run these reports for people is because it actually identifies what makes them unique. And that's the biggest problem in the market today is that people are looking for something unique. They're not looking for the same as everyone else. So when you say you appeal to entrepreneurs, it's so generic that it doesn't really work. It might be entrepreneurs over 40, it might be entrepreneurs over 50, it might be male, female, whatever. But the point is, as you said, even if it's an internal document that bleeds out into everything else, because it's inside your head so rather than saying narrowing it down the niche, as we always say, instead of narrowing it down, your own head is saying, I'm looking for everybody. And that's not what you're really doing. And that's why you do need to review these things. And even if it's you narrow down just a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more, within five years, you're going to be really on target. It might not happen today, but the point is it's growth. You're changing as you go, and I think people need to understand that. All your best branding experts in the world will tell you that you need to pick a specific audience. Yeah, you can grow out from there. You can do all those things, but until you're in one audience, let's face it, if you chose accountants, there is no way you could keep up with the amount of work that you could do. Full stop. There are so many accountants and people go, well, but I don't want to talk to everybody, well, bread and butter. And then expand. I just had a car drive past my office window a few minutes ago while we were talking, and the sign writing on the side of their vehicle was oil changes. Now, in the mechanical industry, that's all they do. They don't do wiring for fitness, they don't do repairs and maintenance, they don't do anything. They just do oil. Changing in vehicles are very niched. I think too, we lose sight of the fact that it does become something that we grow into. Like I recall for many years myself thinking, well, I was confused by the fact that I was both in marketing and publishing and small business, and I couldn't really define just how tight that or how they all fitted together. Now, of course, and as you say, it's taken years for me to finally work out where the congruency lies within each of those areas of my expertise in relation to one very specific market. So my very specific market is industry experts from a variety of backgrounds, but they all have one thing in common, the authors, the speakers, or the coaches or combination of those. And they are effectively a small market, they're a small business, and they are all having similar needs around marketing, publishing and small business expertise. But it was finding who the market is that helped make sense of what areas I wanted to be involved in. So sometimes you have to wait, look back and go at it from the back to front end of things or using hindsight. Absolutely. In my market, I like to think that I can work with anybody, but the truth is that 90% of the people that that work with me are over the age of 45, they've been in business longer than five years, they're relatively successful. So they have a good strong business and they're time poor and they need help with their digital marketing to make it work so they get more clients. And I can talk to people younger than that, I can help people younger than that. But the people that I work with best are experienced business people. They know what they want, they know what they need and they're willing to hand over to me and say what do I need to do? And I can tell them, give them the advice and they say that sounds good, let's do that. And we get results because there's that trust between us. Exactly. And they are probably also similar in that none of them are top level C suite executives. There might be one or two. Most of them are geographically perhaps all over the place, but they also specifically some will be work from home, some will be work from an office, but they will have a similar size of business. Yeah, that's right. You've got to know these things. Taking all that information in, it's really important to review and look at what you're doing. And is what you're doing working well enough? We come back to numbers. For example, are you tracking your results? How many posts did you do last year? How many likes did your posts get? Are you reaching an audience at all? Do you just need to throw that profile away and start a fresh profile? Talking to my daughter who's $0.01 socials, she sometimes will actually kill someone's social profile and start a fresh one because that one's damaged. Now that might sound strange to somebody, but the fact of the matter is it works to actually start a new profile because of the history of the social media that's on there that's been around for a long time. Do you need to do that? Do you need to start fresh in some areas and rebuild? Because they're all important things and they're not necessarily things. So you need to do a bit of research, you need to talk to your experts and get some advice on what you should do that's really important these days. So coming back to our critical collateral, if we are going to make the most out of this time of the year with regards to reviewing our primary marketing objectives, we need to be focusing critically on those points. Landing pages, speaker one sheets and of. Course. What was the third one? Lead maintenance. Of course. I was just seeing if you were paying attention. Sounds really important. But what I think most of us overlook is that if we think it's too much, if we think it's too complicated, we will just allow overwhelm to put us into procrastination mode. If we bring it down to something simple. One week I'm going to focus on lead magnets. The next week I'm going to focus on my calls to action and my landing page. And then I'm going to focus on my speaker one page because that way I've got control and I'm not feeling overwhelmed. But I am getting things done and I'm starting with what is the most important parts first. Absolutely. And I mean, if you would look at them in any sort of order, I would actually say homepage because it's really the landing page for everybody that comes in. Most times I then look at my lead magnets and I'd look at my one sheet because in order, people are going to follow, they're finally going to come to your website, they're going to get your lead magnet, hopefully, and then they might look at booking you. So if you need to start, that's a good place to start. It doesn't need to be a full makeover again. Sometimes it's just as simple as changing the headline and the subtitle on your homepage to catch people's attention and say, hey, you're in the right place. Yes, absolutely. You're so right. We've got it sussed. We're all going to be so well organized for the rest of this year. Well, to the listeners, it's definitely something that's worth doing. And I know it's annoying because every year you go, oh, here we go again. But the point is that yes, every year we do need to go again, unless we're walking away from our businesses. There's always an opportunity to improve. And if I can say anything, I would say say do a bit of a review yourself, but then get with some other people and talk and run some ideas past them because when you live in a bubble, the bubble will talk back and the bubble can be wrong. Think about that. Get some feedback as well. It's really important. Now, I love that you've said about feedback and I do want to wrap this now because I think we've covered this really well. But also want to advise the listeners that our next episode is also going to follow along from this because we're going to talk about what are the three most critical things you can do for your book. If your book is not necessarily working hard enough for you and you need to review that. So I want you to definitely come back for the next episode because we're going to dive even further on what are the critical points for this. And so I think we'll draw this to a close for now and go away and have a look at what you have currently got in your critical collateral set. Absolutely. So look, thanks for tuning into the Experts Journey. If you've picked up some useful tips today, please take a moment to subscribe because otherwise you'll miss the next episode. And share this episode with other speakers and experts that you know in your network to help us reach other people and help them do better. And don't forget to check out our books on Amazon. Dixie's Books Start with a Draft, how to Easily Plan and Write a Nonfiction Book, how to Supporting and Helping New Authors and my book Microcourse Profits Build a Seven Figure Income with Microlearning Courses. Both are packed with practical ideas to help you grow your business faster. We'll see you in the next episode. Thanks, Brad. See you soon.