When you first start your speaking business, you might not have a huge budget to get things off the ground so you start bootstrapping. But once you get a couple of gigs, you have money to spend which will allow you to get more gigs…so where should you put that money?
What specific things will be the most beneficial when it comes to getting more speaking gigs?
Most professional speakers spend their money on the wrong things. In fact, most people who run a business don’t know where to spend their money.
Do you really know what you would do if someone gave you $10,000 to put towards your speaking business? Do you know where you would spend it? If you don’t know, then you need to figure it out soon because if you’re not sure now, then when?
If you’ve seen the show Shark Tank then you will see entrepreneurs who get on the show asking for money and when the investors ask “What will you do with the money”…you see some entrepreneurs give a deer in the headlights stare. You can see it in their fact…they have absolutely no idea what they would do with the money.
The second type of entrepreneurs you see are the ones who say things like, “We would get more inventory.” But then the investors find out that they haven’t even sold out of their current inventory.
The third type of entrepreneurs say they will get buildings, materials, etc but once again…this doesn’t solve their problem of why they’re in the Shark Tank to begin with. The problem is they have a lack of sales.
As a professional speaker, it’s important that you know how to spend your money when you start making it. There are a few ways to spend your money and the real answer depends on where you’re at in your speaking career.
If you’re just starting and your website isn’t great, then you need to spend money on a good website. Your website is a HUGE deciding factor when it comes to getting booked as a keynote speaker. Corporate event planners have a dilemma when hiring speakers…they need to know you’re good BEFORE they hire you, but they only know if you’re good AFTER they’ve already seen you. Your website helps them make a decision.
But lets say you have a great website.
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After your website, you want to make sure you have a great speaker demo. When my demo video was creating, my fees instantly jumped and I got more speaking gigs because it’s a professionally made demo.
Corporate event planners want to have the best speakers at their event so they need to take a look at your videos. If they see a speaker demo that looks like it was done by a child then they will instantly move on to the next speaker. But if they see that your demo is professionally made then they will know that you’re a pro and you do tons of speaking gigs.
After you have a good website and demo, the next thing you need is to hire a virtual assistant to be on your sales team (have them sell, not do small tasks).
Sales cures all.
If I could go back in time and do one thing differently, I would have hired someone from the very get-go. This person’s main job is to get you booked. They contact speaker bureaus, event planners, and anyone who is a potential client for you and they get you booked to speak on stages.
Most speakers talk about hiring a Virtual Assistant to do the small things like your social media, etc but you want to be super productive…not just productive. Super productivity means you cut out everything you don’t need to do and only focus on the things that get you booked.
Sure…you can have your VA do the little things but why not have them do your marketing for you? Not only are you marketing yourself but they’re marketing you at the same time. This means you can reach double the amount of event planners in half the time and get double the bookings because both of you are out looking for gigs.
After hiring a virtual assistant to do sales tasks, then you want to hire someone to do internet sales tasks.
It’s one thing to go to clients and ask to speak on their stage, it’s another to have them come to you and that’s what internet marketing can do for you.
The person who does your internet marketing needs to be really good at you really need to vet them out. They need to know how to do PPC and SEO because their job is to do your inbound marketing.
What do corporate event planners do when they’re looking for a motivational speaker, keynote speaker, etc? They search on Google. So if you’re the speaker who keeps showing up then you’re the speaker who will probably get hired…assuming you have a good website (if you have a horrible website then don’t do PPC until your website improves).
Your internet sales guy need to know how to set up Google Goals and Google Experiments so they track everything on your speaker website and you know that they’re producing results.
So…
Those are the four things you need to spend money on once you start getting speaking engagements.
- Website
- Speaker Demo
- Virtual Assitant
- Internet Marketing Guy
If you’re serious about building your speaking business then it’s important that your mind focuses on sales/marketing. Don’t pay attention to things that have very little to do with your business and take up too much of your time. Your goal is to get booked to speak (click here for the book on Getting Booked As A Speaker In The Corporate Market) so your main focus should be the stages…everything else is just background noise.
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