5. Why SPEAKING should be your next marketing strategy

Does the thought of speaking on stages get your excited or make you want to hide? As an online entrepreneur, you want to position yourself as an authority and speaking on stages is one of the fastest ways to establish yourself. But which comes first? Authority so you get invited to speak, or speaking to be seen as an authority? Many business owners sit on the sidelines waiting for the right moment in their business to step into the spotlight… and that’s a mistake. Finding the courage to get on stage, can be scary. And that’s why today I’m sharing with you 7 ways to incorporate speaking into your business besides a keynote (aka big stage) presentation. Listen in to learn how you can establish your authority and make a big impact while growing your audience.

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Speaker 1 0:00

You're listening to finding your factor . Episode number five, building a personal brand and business is a beautiful thing, but to be wildly successful and serve the people you want to serve, you need to be visible and establish your authority. And that's hard, like scary, freaking hard. And it means putting yourself out there and being able to deliver your message and sell yourself in a way that's clear, that's captivating and influential. But if the thought of standing in front of an audience to deliver a presentation or showing up to Facebook lives makes you sweat in all of the places. Listen up. Today's episode is for you.

Speaker 2 0:45

Have you ever wondered how some people just seem to have a way with words? They have this spark that lights you up when you're near them. They have the it factor. And while most people think it's something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your super power to grow your business. It's about you bringing your brand to life by becoming the magnetic communicator in person and on camera, showing up with confidence, authenticity, and inspiration. Sell . Are you ready to become magnetic? I thought so. I'm Heather Sager and I'd like to welcome you to finding your it factor.

1:31

Well welcome back friends. We made it to another episode. Can you believe it? It's been over a month and here we are holding true together and uh , only appropriate. Today's topic is one that is so close to my heart. It's the reason why I built my business and that is speaking. Today we're going to talk about speaking as it relates to your business and before you go running to the hills and turn this off and say, Oh, I'm not a speaker. I hate public speaking. I don't want anything to do with being in front of an audience. Let me tell you, all of us, our speakers every single day, it's just whether or not we choose to accept that our audience in front of us, the person standing literally in front of us is our audience. We should see it as an opportunity to speak. But for some reason, the idea of being placed in front of a crowd and formally putting the words speaker on it or presentation just makes us all go a little fuddy duddy.

Speaker 1 2:27

So today we're going to demystify that. But more specifically we're going to talk about using, speaking as a strategy for your marketing. Now you're most likely a business owner if you're listening to this show, even if you're not, maybe you are trying to leverage better communication skills to grow your career. So I think much of what we talk about today will help you regardless of your goal. But specific today I'm talking to online entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their business and what they've been doing thus far in their isn't getting them the results that they want, that they want to grow faster. So if you're listening, maybe you're using strategies like , um , asking for referrals, which by the way, incredible stress strategy. It's hell. I've built an nearly six figure business in six months of being in business. Referrals are huge, is an important strategy for building your business. But going beyond that, when you think about scaling your business, there's a couple of things we have to consider. Maybe you're using social media, you're selling through building connections and direct messages. Maybe you build a lead magnet, like a downloadable PDF or a free video series or an online course, and maybe you're a little bit more advanced in your driving traffic to that lead generator through Facebook ads. Wherever you are today, you're listening because one, you want to get better at your communication skills, but I would bet that you're also unhappy with the volume of leads in your business and that you want to grow your audience even further. And a lot of times when I'm talking to entrepreneurs who are newer in their business, or maybe they're still straddling the line between their former corporate life or job that they're working now and they're , they're hesitant to, to make the leap into having a full time business. Uh, one of the things that I hear so often is when I talk about what I do, people dismiss the idea of speaking the sane . I'm not ready yet. I'm not an established authority. I haven't really nailed my niche yet. I don't really have my focus or I don't have my programs or products in place or it's just not the time for me to speak yet. And this week on Instagram, I saw a quote shared by one of the people that I follow online, Laura Belgray, she's an incredible copywriter. Um , she was , uh , one of the contributor section . She was one of the creators of the copy cure Marie Forleo's course. Uh, Laura Belgray, by the way, shout out for her. She's amazing. You should definitely check out her website. She writes the most incredible emails. But here's the quote that she shared this week. You don't find your voice before you share it. You find it by sharing it, Laura, the space. So good. And I know in the context of things, this is written for copywriting and helping people start being more comfortable getting their voice out there through their copy. But this totally applies to you as it relates to sharing your thoughts through your , your vocal language, getting out there and speaking in front of people. Because if you want to become an authority in your business, it means that you actually have to, you have to speak. You actually have to speak up and speak your mind in the right rooms so people can hear you. You don't become an authority by sitting on your couch with your laptop and chatting in Facebook groups or curating that perfect caption for your Instagram feed or your Facebook like you have to actually get out there and establish yourself as an authority. To me, establish how I interpret that world word and how I've always used it for me and my career and now in my business, establish means I'm going to step up and take control. I'm going to set myself in motion. I'm going to put myself in play. That's actually one of my favorite phrases too , to give to newer entrepreneurs as they're leading into the space or they're trying to grow their business from where they're at right now into scale is you have to put yourself in play. You can't wait for other people to ask you for your opinion, for other people to invite you to speak up. You have to contribute by those opportunities. To start speaking, and today we're going to talk about speaking doesn't just have to be standing up on a huge stage with blinding spotlights that make you sweat. As I said before, in all of the places that doesn't have to be the speaking that you start with. I'm going to share with you seven ways that you can start using, speaking in your business to connect with your ideal audience that are not keynotes, so you actually get eight ways. The first way is doing a keynote presentation and all. Define that a little bit more later, but we're going to talk about seven, but before we do that, I want you to picture this because if you're still hesitant of going, Oh my God, there's no way I'm going to do speaking right now. I'm not ready yet. I don't know how. Every time I think about it, I get the shakes. I get the sweats we need to. We need to have a real conversation here. I want you to picture something for me. I want you to think about your business. Take yourself, take your customers, take all of your lists, your email list, your social media followings, whoever you would classify as the people in your business. And I want you to imagine drawing a fence around all of you. So you have this giant, let's say square and all the people in your world, your communities, your free groups, your pain groups, all of your customers and prospects are all in this fortress, let's call it. Okay? Okay, you got it. You're in. Maybe you're standing up the little tower on the edge of the fortress and a, you're standing there and your goal is to get more people into your fortress. I I , this is probably a really weird analogy, but just go with me. Evidently the word fortress was on my heart today and I just had to share it with you. So here we go. Evidently you are a queen of your fortress. We're committing to this analogy. You're standing up and you're a little tower and your hope is to grow your , your village. We're going for it. So you're growing your village. You want more people in it, which by the way, just to make sure we're clear on the parallel here, the village, the fortress within there, that's your business. That's how many customers and prospects you have in your business yet that, right? Okay, okay, let's keep going. You're up in your tower and you decide, okay, if we want to invite more people into our world, you're going to stand up there on the tower and you're going to shout. You're going to shout, Hey, it's so great over here. This is where the cool kids hang out. You're trying to get people to jump over the wall into your fortress and Hey, maybe if you're savvy, you've built some doors and some windows into your fortress and you open them and you invite people in. You welcome them as they're greeted at the door by you and your community and you're making them feel so excited to step into your fortress and maybe you're getting really savvy and you hire some messengers to leave the fortress and go out and find new people to talk about how amazing your community, how amazing your villages get them to come back over to you and meanwhile you're standing up and your tower and you're saying, it's so great here. Look what I have to offer and you're talking louder and louder and you just keep waving your hands trying to get people to come over. I'm a little exhausted just thinking about the scenario, but running an online business or even a like a physical location business. This is really what we do is we stay there and we like a puppet master or trying to do all of the things behind the scenes, but the reality is if you want more people to come into your fortress to , to get to know you, to build real connections with you and become raving fans, you have to leave your fortress and go find them. That's the way you can build a really meaningful business. I know this is kind of controversial cause I , I, I bet you can argue the opposite, but for me, I want real relationships with people, relations with people in line . I have some really incredible mentors that I follow that have very much transformed my business. But the people that I follow the most are the ones that I have seen in action. I've seen them speak at a conference. I , uh, ran into them in the hallway and they were kind to me. Uh, the people that, that I, I, that I met in a breakout in a session years ago. When you actually build relationships with real people and see that they're human and they're good and that they're, they're people that you want to have a beer with at happy hour, you have a different level of engagement with them and their brand. So back to your fortress. If you want to get more and more people into your community to the extent where you have to push the walls out because it's growing so fast, you have to get out of that tower and go out and meet the people, meet new people. Because here's the interesting thing about our world of online business. Every week we're sitting here creating new content. We're doing engagement on social media, we're doing the Instagram stories, we're building the Facebook groups, we're doing all of the things that they tell us we're supposed to do. Right. How much of these activities are really about building new audience members? How much of it is really expanding your walls of your fortress and inviting new people in versus how much of this is improving the quality of the relationships and the engagement of your existing audience? And this was a big shift for me because I thought when I first started that all of this activity was about getting new people in and then something clicked for me when I realized that this podcast, all of my engagement on my Instagram stories. Sure. The hope is that it will fall in the hands of more people, but I create it for my people, the people that are already inside the fortress who are looking to me as a leader to lead them towards better communication skills, to lead them towards more leads within their business, for them to have more dynamic relationships in all aspects of their business and in a lot of situations in their personal lives too. Or I have a responsibility to serve my people, but if I want to go out and find new people, I have to be really intentional with their strategies and that means I have to step outside of my normal fortress and go find new people. Okay, so hopefully you're seeing the parallel here into your business and while I think you're a queen or King and you've done an incredible job building the business you have today, the reality is if you want to grow to the level that you've pictured, you're going to have to get uncomfortable, which means if the thought of speaking makes you cringe, I say, hell yeah, it should. That means lean into it. If that is something that's making you so uncomfortable, that should be your, I'm going to tackle that fricking mountain. That is the thing you should be doing because if you can tackle that fear, you will become unstoppable. And here's the cool part. You don't have to be alone with that. I'm not encouraging you to step up on a stage sweating and shaking and unprepared. You know, I can help you with that and I have a ton of free content that will help you manage those nerves, structure your talk. And also I have some exciting stuff that I'll share with you here and today's episode about being able to help you navigate, navigate your speaking, and also I can help you create and deliver your talk. So let's pause here for a second because I have some pretty exciting news and I was going to wait to share this next week, but I really feel like I want to share with you today because it is so important. If you're sitting here going, okay, okay, it's on my heart. I know I need to start speaking, but I'm terrified. I want to push through the fear, but I need to know what to do. Like give me the checklist, give me the systems , give me the process, show me the roadmap. Do you know who you are? If you just lit up thinking about all of that or started laughing. We all love our checklists . Okay. Maybe not all of us, but many of us love our checklist . Okay. So I'm really thrilled because I've been working with one-on-one clients for the last of the last year . Helping them create and structure their signature talk and helping them learn the delivery skills, the body language, the stays presence, the vocal tone, that ability to deliver their genius on stages all over the world so they can establish themselves as an authority. And I've been doing this one on one and I've been thinking you don't, how do I, how do I have a bigger impact and help more people? Because there's so many people that have reached out and maybe they can't afford the one on one coaching or the timing wasn't quite right. And I wanted to create something a little different. So I have decided I am going to launch a group coaching program where I run 10 entrepreneurs through my signature program to help them not only identify what would be their signature talk, we're going to create it, we're going to develop their origin and their signature stories and help them structure their message into a compelling, inspiring and damn funny talk that they can use in front of their ideal audience and get booked to speak as an authority. So if that's something that you're like, Ooh, I'm interested in that. I'm very excited. So head on over to Instagram and I want you to send me a direct message and let's have a conversation around if that's something that might be a good fit for you, just shoot me a direct message and we'll talk about it. I'm not ready to open the doors. We're not quite close to that yet, but it will be coming in the month of October. So I want to make sure that if you are interested, you are on the waiting list to be the first to get information when it's available. Okay, let's jump back into the content. I was just so excited. I wanted to share that with you today. But talking about speaking in your business, speaking doesn't have to be you on that big stage with the spotlights in that keynote address spot . So first and foremost, if this is a new concept to you, let's talk about what a key note is. So I'm sure you have been to a conference at some point in your professional career. And typically when you go to a conference, they have a keynote speaker, which is the anchor speaker of the conference is the person that they promote. They have a a the stage time where everybody is in the giant ballroom or whatever the room is called. Uh , and everybody is there to watch that speaker. It's usually called what's during general session is what it's called. It's with all the attendees are gathered in one room. The spots that are given to speakers on that stage, it's called a key note , um, because what they're delivering is , uh , essential to the audience. Now those, sometimes there's only one keynote speaker at a conference and the other ones are guest speakers. Uh, sometimes there are events filled with keynote speakers. When I worked in event production with my old team , uh , we used to hire a keynote speakers to come to our large scale conferences and keynote speakers. Uh, with your hiring, a professional speaker can run you anywhere from $7,500 up to $100,000. And I've hired speakers all in between. Literally, I've hired $100,000 speaker before. He was not worth the money, but that's a conversation for another day. Uh , so I cannot speaker, typically keynote speakers are paid for their talent of speaking. And so I can understand why this might be a little intimidating and this idea of speaking because the people that you've seen speak might be professional speakers. I believe that you can deliver a, an amazing talk without being a professional speaker. And in fact, I think that if you have a business, you should be able to deliver a professional level talk. But without the goal being to be paid to speak, your goal is to expand your audience, to get people into your community so you can move them through your funnel. And pipeline, continue to serve them and identify whether or not they would be a really good fit for your paid products or programs. So speaking, you could use it to get paid to speak, which I've taught many people to do that. I am a paid speaker. I have done many , uh , paid for speaking engagements. But what I want you to start thinking about in your business is using, speaking as a marketing vehicle to get your message out, to expand your audience. So for today's conversation, let's just put it on the table that delivering a keynote should be a goal for you, but it might not be the first step you take when it comes to speaking. And I would encourage you maybe get some other types of speaking under your belt so it's a little less scary. But Hey, if you are like, man, let's do this and let's go big. What's that phrase? Go big or go home and you want to develop this. Um, honestly, I think my signature program will be very, very valuable for you. But just know keynote speaking is in option that you can build up to or you can attack head on. Um, that's all we're going to talk about with that. Let's talk about seven other ways that you can incorporate speaking as a marketing vehicle in your business. And I think you're going to be surprised by some of these. Okay. So we're going to call it number one was a keynote . So you actually have seven more. So number two. Number two is you can be a guest speaker at an event. Let me clarify this cause you just said hold on. Keynote speaker was becoming a guest speaker at events . So the difference between a keynote speaker at a conference and a guest speaker at a conference or an event is there's a little less pressure. Honestly, part of it is a perception difference. But being a guest speaker at an event could just mean that you get up and deliver a 10 minute or 15 minute presentation on a topic. You can , uh , you can just get up and give a really small presentation without it being a quote unquote formal talk. Um, so for example, this last weekend I was at the legendary event with , uh , Tarzan Kay and Sage Polaris for their program. And they had an opportunity where they allowed , uh , the attendees the opportunity to teach a session. Now, it wasn't really a, it wasn't communicated much in advance, so we had to think on our feet a bit to put her name in a hat to get selected. But this was a really great example of being a guest speaker at the conference. We were able to lead, it was actually a breakout session. Um , but we were able to lead a talk that was about 45 minutes and there wasn't a lot of fuss. There wasn't a lot of nerves with it because it wasn't a big talk on the stage. Yup . They did have some guest speakers and uh , their guest speakers were amazing. There were three of them. And uh , they got up and delivered. It was almost like a pre, a keynote presentation, but I'm not going to call it a keynote because it was more of a, what I would call a guest presentation because it was super informal. They were delivering stories, but also really practical workshop style content. Uh , that was extremely valuable. So let me pause for a second because it might feel a little bit confusing between the difference between a keynote and being a guest speaker. And honestly, if we were splitting hairs here, this is where I'm going to tell you they're really not different in terms of them both being a guest speaker at a conference. But the reason why I'm carving these out as two separate strategies for you is a lot of people in their minds build up the idea of a keynote session as a very intimidating, scary thing because they've seen some very scary, very intimidating stages. And I want you to know that not all conferences have those big stages. Not all events are 5,000 people or 300 people. Sometime events could be only 11 people, eight people. So thinking about being a guest to speak at an event, sometimes just that shift in our thinking as you think about the , the imagery that that creates in your mind, it just feels a little bit more tangible, makes you a little less nervous. So I wanted to throw that out to you as an option because that definitely is something that you can tackle and you can find the right event that feels good for you and aligns with your target audience. Okay, let's move on to number three. Teach a breakout session. This one pretty much explains itself, but at an event or a conference that you have all the attendees come together in a group and then sometimes at some events they allow you to what's called a break out or literally the attendees break out into groups whether they are , uh , in tables around the room. It might be that they have separate rooms in the hotel or venue. Um , but a break out is a smaller group of people that get together for a session. And usually the beauty of a breakout is it's much less formal where you have the ability for more dialogue back and forth with your audience and it can just feel like you're talking with them versus you giving a sermon or a speech. Now, I would definitely encourage you that if you do a breakout session, you do want to treat it like a presentation and establish yourself as the authority in the room by the leading, leading the presentation. But you should elicit feedback. You should elicit engagement and activities from your audience. But a breakout is a really great way for you to test the waters on your speaking without the commitment of speaking on the big stage in front of all of the audience together. Okay, let's go to number four. Number four, you can host your own workshops. Now, for some people, this is more terrifying than a keynote, and for some people this feels really, really good. So you have to pay attention to what your , uh , your inner dialogue is saying, what your gut reaction to this is. But hosting your own workshop, this could take flight in a lot of ways. And I'll do a future episode on this specifically, but what I mean by this is let's, let's not go big and crazy and talk about hosting your big own event. We can build up to that. What I mean by hosting your own workshop is, this could be as simple. Let me actually, let me give you an example. I have a, I have a client who is going through a certification right now to be a coach and she's going through, I can't remember what the certification is, but it's similar to performance or performance coaching. I , I wish I remembered the name of the program, but really not important to today's conversation. Anyways, she's focusing on, I'm going to this certification. She's learning the content and she kept saying, Hey, I can't wait to do my first talk on this , uh, on this program and start getting clients. And uh , it was very much about the distant future and we had a discussion around her goals and what she was trying to accomplish. And we were in the middle of our discussion. I was like, pause, hold on just a second. What are you, what are you waiting for in terms of you delivering a quote unquote talk? And she's like, wow, I have to find the right audience. I got to find the right up man to speak at. And I told her, I was like, look, what if instead of waiting for the right moment or the right event, why don't you just get comfortable delivering this information? What if you were to host a wine and cheese night at your house and invited, not really your friends, but invited people that you knew would be benefit and and fit your fit, your ideal customer avatar mold? Maybe they won't become your clients, but there are people that would think like your future clients. What have you invited them over for a wine and cheese night and a free workshop? And she's like, Oh, can I do that? I was like, hell yeah, you can. Absolutely, you can. What stopping you. And the beautiful part about that is it's a good opportunity for her to practice. It's pretty low risk because it's mostly people that she knows, but it's in the comfort of her home and she gets to start actually teaching her content. So when I say host your own workshop, I don't mean you need to go out and get a ballroom at a hotel. I don't mean that you need to go sign a contract at a venue and then run a huge marketing strategy to drive leads locally into your workshop. Let me just tell you real quick. I tried that when I first started my business and it is hard. It is so hard to get people to commit to dates or travel across country or just getting the stars aligned. Work up to that. Live workshops are an incredible tool for your business, but you don't have to go all out from the beginning. You can easily host a small evening session or a morning session. It could be free or you can charge a registration fee, whatever you're comfortable with. A workshop is this interactive , uh , course essentially this live teaching where you can help people work through activities to put into action what you're teaching them, so it's not a lecture. It's definitely hands-on. There's activities in there. They're putting real application into your teachings. I love workshops because they're not formal. You do not have to deliver a big presentation. You can chunk it down into smaller stories and smaller lessons to teach. But it really is interactive. There's questions and discussions all throughout and you, you get to really know your customer, your potential customer well. So I really encourage you, this is a great place to start even if just locally with friends and families so you can start practicing getting more comfortable. Okay. Number five, this is where we're going to take things from the physical, real life environment. And we're going to take things virtually because speaking does it have to be physically in person on stage? But this whole strategy, these eight strategies for incorporating, speaking into your business, that the goal remember, is to get out of your fortress and into the rest of the world to invite people back in. So these next few strategies , um , they're related to the virtual realm. So number five, be a guest on other people's podcasts. Actively find podcasts that have your ideal customers as their audience and pitch yourself to become a guest. This is a really great way to practice speaking because you have to practice your message, you have to practice your teaching. And think about it from the lens of how do you create value for their audience, but also make people hungry enough to want to jump over and start following you and join your community. So becoming a guest on a podcast is a really, really great way to do that. Depending on who the host is for the show, you might be able to, and you probably should develop a free resource for their audience and make it specific to them. Don't just have you be your general lead magnet if that's possible. So could you develop a specific lead magnet page that's direct to their audience? So for example, let's say you a , your ideal audience is online entrepreneurs and you have a topic that fits within the realm of what I teach, communication, helping people with their marketing by getting better at speaking and their words ironic. I teach people that. And that whole sentence did not sound very great, but you're with me, right? But let's say that you want to become a guest on my podcast, which by the way, let me just give a shout out. If you want to be a guest on my podcast and you feel like my audience would really benefit your message, send me a direct message on Facebook or Instagram. I'd love to talk to you because I want more guests on the show. So side note , if you want to practice this one pitch to me. Let me hear what you got and let's, ah , let's make it happen. Going back to it, let's say that you did want to become a guest on my show and we determined that it was a really great fit. Well, we can talk about, okay, do you have a resource that would be incredible, that would help my audience achieve whatever goal they're chasing? Well, if that's the case, we can talk about it on the show and we can drive people to your lead magnet and right now it would drive leads to you. It's a pretty powerful thing. Now if you become a guest on larger shows, let's say you land a a guest spot on Amy Porterfield's online marketing made easy, you're not going to be able to drive a lead magnet on her show because she captures her leads . She has a really large audience and she's got a ton of authority. So she uses the lead magnets on her page. You can develop a lead magnet, your name could be on it, you're going to collaborate together, but she's going to host it on her site. However, even though those opportunities, you might not get the direct traffic from the lead, you are going to get exposure to your name and people will come follow you online and online. You can share with them what you do and then get them onto your list ideally that way. So beta podcast guests , this is something that you should be doing if you're trying to expand your reach and your business. And if this is something that you were uncomfortable with , uh , follow along on a future episode. I will talk about this one. So if this is an area that is a pain point for you or somebody that you're just not quite sure, how do I get more comfortable speaking in front of another person, especially if it's in a Q and a interview, send me a DM and let me know because I want to know if this is an area that you'd like me to explore further because I will 100% do a podcast episode dedicated to this if it's something that's of interest to you. Okay, let's move into number six. Very similar to number five on number six, become a guest on someone else's Facebook live show. Okay. What I mean by this is oftentimes you have people who are hosting Facebook lives on their pages or in their Facebook groups , um, as often as daily, sometimes weekly, sometimes every now and then, but they have a show dedicated to this and they're similar to a podcast looking for guests. I won't go into much detail on this because just pretty much copy and paste what we just talked about with podcasts . But the difference with Facebook live is now you have that video element. So you can start putting it into practice, your delivery skills with your hand gestures, your posture, your facial expressions, put that all into play to get better and better with your communication . So I just did this a my first guest appearance on a Facebook live back in August and it was super fun. It was not my ideal audience. So honestly it was really safe because I got to practice , uh , practice by pitch, practice my messaging, practice how I talked about things. And it was pretty low risk. So for podcasting or Facebook lives, this is a really great way for you to practice your messaging. So I would encourage you, get yourself out there on a lot of other shows and start with really, really small shows. Don't try to go for the big ones because use the small ones as stepping stones for you to get better and better and better with your messaging. So that way when you do get to the point of being on larger platforms, you're really polished and prepared and you can be that magnet for your ideal audience to come chasing after you. Okay. We're running out with the last to a another way to incorporate speaking into your business. I love this one and I am going to chase this one heavily in 2020 and that is guest teach in others courses. So what I mean by this is a, you're probably in a network where you would know a lot of people who are building online courses. If your expertise aligns with another, can you collaborate? Okay. So let's go back as an example. My guest Melanie who was on episode number three with me talking about style and as it relates to your confidence in your personal brand, let's say I'm building out a course around helping people get stage ready and I think it would be really, really valuable for my audience to to get prepared like physically with what they wear on stage. So maybe I invite Melanie, which Melanie, if you're listening, I think this actually would be a wonderful idea. Maybe I invite Melanie to teach a masterclass to my group about styling themselves for event conferences in this stage. And she comes in and teaches a 60 minute private masterclass just to my audience. And it helps them really develop their style as it relates to making them more confident for getting on stage networking at events and she has a great hour with them, does a, delivers your content, does really great Q and a and then people fall in love with her and if they want to go deeper they can go follow Melanie and in her programs and her, excuse me, her online community. So bringing Melanie over into my course as a bonus or an extra feature or even as part of my content is a really great way for me to expand my course with a little bit wider pool of content I can share, but it doesn't put me on the hook to teach it. I'm going to stay on my line doing, I'm going to stay in my lane doing what I do best, which is teaching people how to craft their message, tell really, really good stories and deliver it in a charismatic way so that their audience falls in love with them, falls in love with them and wants to learn from them. I could teach people makeup by , could teach people how to style themselves, but I don't want to, cause that's not what I'm best at. So I can invite other people in to talk about those things. So think about from that perspective is if you have something that could be a really great compliment to other authorities, could you pitch yourself to help them further their message with their customers? It's a really great way to go out . So either it's a similar, I'll use again, Amy Porterfield, she has some other people come in and teach about Instagram or Facebook ads or other things within her digital course Academy, like a copywriting . She has her guest copywriter come in and teach a model module. She probably could teach these things, but she's like, why would I do that? I should just leverage some of my friends and colleagues so we get to know those people. And then, well their names are familiar to us and we're much more likely to go follow them online. Actually, I started the show talking about Laura Belgray a year ago. I had no idea who she was, but I knew her as a face teaching within Marie Forleo's course, the copy cure and eight months later I found Laura through a Facebook ad, I think clicked on it and now I'm on her daily email and it's amazing and I love her. And here I am talking about her on my podcast twice. It all started because she was a guest speaker, a collaborator on Marie Forleo's online course, which is pretty fricking cool. Okay, let's run it out to the last way you can put yourself out there, speaking in front of your ideal customers, and I think you're going to be surprised by this one because it's not you preparing any formal presentation or pitching yourself. It's you attending events. Yeah, just attending events, attending conferences and it's you being there and 100% committing to speaking up and engaging with other attendees, like asking really good questions in breakout sessions, contributing to table discussions, getting uncomfortable and not retreat in your hotel room to nap at lunchtime, but instead planting yourself by the coffee pot and stimulating conversations with other people, stirring up conversations, asking questions, getting comfortable at answering the question yourself. What do you do? Practicing your pitch and I don't mean your sales pitch, I mean your pitch, like what do you do? Why do people want to know you at the conference? So just getting out there and talking to people is an incredible way for you to get more comfortable talking to people because like I said, when we started this show today, I believe that we are all already speakers, every single one of us. It's just whether or not we choose to accept that what we're doing is speaking. I mean right now I'm speaking to you. I am a speaker. I also happened to speak on stages with 2000 people in the audience. I also sit at the kitchen table speaking to my husband. At the end of the day, all of us are speakers, but it's our perception of how we see ourselves. That's what changes things. That's what makes us nervous to think about who we're speaking to. So attending a conference and just having great conversations with people that has really great practice speaking especially if the conference has your ideal customers at it. Okay. I have thrown a lot of thoughts at you today a lot of times , but I hope that I've started to convince you a little bit that maybe speaking should be a strategy in your marketing plan either at the end of this year or definitely as part of your plan in 2020 and the thing that I want to leave you with is if there was anything that you took away from today, it's this message of put yourself in play. If you want more people to hear your message, you have to talk to more people, like actually talk to them. Don't just hide behind Facebook ads or hide behind social media posts or your emails. Those are all good things and they're essential in building an online business, but also you have to show your face. You have to look people in the eye and listened to them, hear from them. You have to see their body language and their and the reactions. When you talk about your business and you talk about the things that you do because that's how you get better. That's how you learned to react from your audience is how you become a little bit more charismatic. It's how you can see if your passion resonates with other people. So speaking doesn't have to be a scary thing. It actually believe it or not can be really fricking fun and my hope is that one day you'll embrace that with open arms. But I get that maybe today is not that day, but I just want to encourage you one last time. If you do take this seriously and you want to do speak in your business and you would like to be one of the first people in my new program, now let me just tell you, this is a beta program. I am not opening up to very many people. I'm limiting it to only 10 spots and it's a very special opportunity. I'm starting in the month of October and we'll run it for the next couple of months and then I will open the doors for the formal program in 2020. Uh , but the prices going to go up significantly between now and then. So if you want first access to work with me and a group of other amazing entrepreneurs who have similar goals to you should reach out to me directly. Send me a message on Instagram or Facebook. I would love to hear from you, but as always, I just want to hear from you in general. So if you liked what you heard today, take a screenshot, tell me about it, post it to all your friends. Remember I said referrals is the big one around how people learn a little bit more about your business. And the same holds true for me. So please tell your friends it was a pleasure. I hope speaking is something you're excited about and I'm looking forward to seeing you next week .

Speaker 2 42:06

[inaudible] guys, thanks so much for listening to finding your it factor and Hey, if you have a talk coming up, you have to check out my free resource. It's called nail your next Hawk 10 must ask questions before taking the stage so you can show up as an authority and turn that talk into future business. These are the questions that I use myself to prepare for my life talks, and they're going to help you ask the right questions of the person who booked you for the event. So the meeting planner or the client, and it's going to help you serve your audience to the best way possible. It's going to help you anticipate potential tech or Ady snags. Turn the Q and a time into a strategic place for content and make this speaking opportunity, a lead generator for your business. So go get it now. What are you waiting for? It's over@heathersager.com forward slash 10 questions [inaudible] .