I remember I used to look at other motivational speaker’s websites and wonder who they were getting their gigs…especially if the website sucked.
I would study all these other speakers, see how they’re marketing themselves, look at their speaking videos, all kinds of stuff, and ask the question of, “How are these guys getting speaking gigs?”
I felt like I should be getting more gigs and charging more but it wasn’t happening so I studied these guys like crazy. The problem was that no matter how hard I looked at their website and tried to study them, there was one big problem…
The way most speakers get hired is invisible to the outside world.
Unless you’re actually working with that speaker and you know how they’re running their business, you can’t reverse engineer how they’re actually getting hired.
If you go to another speaker’s website like Tony Robbins or John Maxwell or Brian Tracy, then maybe you think their website is good or it sucks, but the fact is, they’re still getting paid top dollar to speak on stages…and in this video I’m going to talk about what they’re doing differently than other speakers.
And when you realize this difference, you’ll have this ‘aha’ moment…the same moment that I had…which allowed me to get more speaking gigs for higher prices.
So the first thing you have to understand is this…
The things you do to start your business and the things you do to run your business are two different things.
A lot of speakers who look at other speakers to see what they’re doing and try to reverse engineer it are doing it all wrong. They’re looking at other speakers who already have a best gay hookup apps 2022, they’re looking to see what these speakers are doing, and they’re trying to copy it.
The problem is that the speaker who’s just starting out can’t copy the speaker who’s already established.
Lets say that Tony Robbins wants to speak at a huge conference like the CES event in Las Vegas that attracts all kinds of top business people. All Tony Robbins has to do is contact the person in charge and ask to be a speaker at the event. And what’s going to happen? Well he has a 90% chance that they’re going to say yes.
But what if you’re a new speaker and you have the contact information of the person in charge of the CES event in Vegas. What do you think would happen if you called to speak at their event? Well you would have a .0001% chance of speaking at the event.
So even though you copied Tony Robbins’ exact tactic to speak on a stage, you won’t get the same result because he’s in a different place.
That’s one of the biggest things I see speakers doing wrong. And it was something I did wrong for a long time.
I would look at these speakers who were speaking on all these stages and I was trying to copy what they were doing but I wasn’t getting the right results. And what made it worse is that you hear from these speakers and they say that all you need is their blueprint and then you can get the same results as them.
And at the time, it makes sense. You think, “Well if they’re making $100 million in their speaking business then if I get their blueprint, I’ll make $100 million.” It makes sense.
But what speakers don’t realize is that the things they have to do to start and grow their business are completely different than the things they have to do to run their business.
The speaker who’s making a billion dollars is running his speaking business. He can afford to hire all kinds of people to do things and train them and all that stuff. He has the marketing materials, the video footage, the website, the network, he has everything.
But the speaker who’s just starting, he doesn’t have the elite dating app cost, he doesn’t have the network, he doesn’t have the video footage. And that means the things he’s going to be doing will be completely different.
On top of that, the opportunities available to every person are different.
When I coach someone, I figure out how to get them to build their speaking business as fast as possible by focusing on opportunities that only they can take advantage of.
If someone is best friends with Bill Gates, then you’re damn right I’ll tell them to use that contact to grow their speaking business. If someone has some talent like juggling in their arsenal as a speaker, then of course I’ll have them use that to get publicity and grow their speaking business.
So it’s important that you realize the difference between building your speaking business and running it because the things you’re going to do every day will be different.
The way most speakers get booked is through what I call ‘invisible promotion.’
Invisible promotion is like an iceberg…
People can only see a small portion of what you’re doing but the real profits come from what people don’t see and can’t see because they’re not in your business.
Most speakers like Les Brown, John Maxwell, and others, they get booked off referrals. I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve built what I call a Loop System that allows me to get multiple gigs just from one gig. So when I get hired at one gig, I get several spinoff and referral gigs. And that’s how most speakers get hired…especially when you don’t leave it to accident and you know how to do it.
But if you’re just starting your speaking business then you can’t depend on word of mouth to begin with because there’s no word of mouth in the first place.
In the beginning, you might be doing some internet marketing techniques and using other lead generation methods which we talk about in the SpeakPro Academy.
Let me give you an example of the invisible promotion and what really happens in the speaking industry.
Lets say you’re a speaker and you want to get into the seminar market and sell products on stage, do joint ventures with other speakers, and that type of stuff because you hear stories about how these speakers are making millions.
First, very few speakers are making millions in the seminar industry.
Second, the way it works is if you have a product for sell, then you have to give 50% of your sales to the promoter. So if you sell $20,000 worth of products, your take is $10,000. On top of that, they have to pay for their flight, hotel, all the expenses, plus the time it takes them to fly out there, speak, ship products, that sort of stuff. Then, there’s always the refunds.
So 30% of the people have buyers remorse and refund the product so they amount they made is even lower.
But what happens when you ask a speaker how much they made?
They don’t tell you they you how they took home and went into their pocket. They just say, “We did $20,000 in sales.” And you think, “Damn…$20,000 in just 60 minutes.” What you don’t realize is that they’re lucky to walk away with $5,000 and a lot of their time has been wasted.
Or another example from corporate keynote speakers is…
When someone asked me how I book my gigs because he wants to do the same thing.
He realized that I didn’t have a book, I wasn’t making blog posts, none of that stuff, but I was getting booked on stages and he wanted to know what I was doing.
I asked him how many gigs he has lined up and he said none…which is why he wants to do what I’m doing. Makes sense.
But what he didn’t realize is that what I’m doing is actually marketing at the gig itself.
When someone hires me for an event, I do certain things on the stage that increase the likelihood that someone’s going to hire me for their event. Then I grab testimonial videos in a certain way to get people to give me information about their event. Then I follow up a certain way.
So even when I told this speaker exactly what I do, what I say, he couldn’t duplicate it.
The question he should have asked was how could he build his speaking business.
So from now on, don’t look at other speakers and try to copy their speaking business.
Yes, there are marketing techniques you need to build your speaking business but your situation is different from another speaker’s situation.
Some speakers built their speaking business by writing a best selling book and their speaking business exploded. But there are a million other speakers out there who have books and they’re struggling to get gigs for just $1,000. Their situation is different so you have to look at where you are and figure out the things that will get YOU to where you want to be.
Most speakers have an invisible promotion method that you’re not seeing and you’ll never see because you don’t have access to how they’re really running their business.
So figure out the top activities that will build YOUR speaking business and only do those things.