Getting Paid to Speak as an Author | Live Replay
Julie Broad walks through how authors can turn their books into paid speaking gigs. Map your chapter titles to talk topics, decide between keynotes or workshops, rehearse until it's polished like a script not improv, and build a demo reel from low-stakes practice events. You'll need professional photos and a speaker one-sheet to pitch yourself.
Chapters
All right. Hello. Happy Tuesday. It's Tuesday, right? Oh, yes, it's Live Tuesday and we missed last Live Tuesday. So it's been a month since we all hung out. So I'm really excited to have another great show. And, and we've got extra prizes because we missed the show two weeks ago. So we've got lots of giveaways and I'm actually going to start that way. Pretty much never do it that way. But I am going to start by giving away prizes to make up for the fact that I missed you guys two weeks ago. So if you're here, make sure you're saying hello. And then when Angela comes on, she will be helping me come up with prizes. For those of you who are here now, here we go. We've got the extra special newborn books mug. Got a whole bunch of names in here. So I am going to do the first two prizes for the YouTube commenters and then we're going to dive into today's topic, which is getting paid to speak as an author. I mean, raise your hands. Who wants to get paid to speak? I'm pretty sure all of your hands are raised. Right, Carmen, Vince, Kevin. Hey, Kevin. It's always lovely to see you here. Funny story for you. There's Kevin number two and he's watching but he said he won't comment because he doesn't want to compete with Kevin McGuire. So there you go. You are the Kevin and no other Kevin's want to even try. All right, cool. So here we go. Hey, Vince and Robert, welcome. Hello. Okay, so I'm just doing for all of you guys know this, I think, but for those of you who might be lurking when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win prizes. And we've got two main prizes most of the time and then sometimes we do some extras. We've got this fabulous mug and the oh so soft journal. So let me just go ahead and draw a name here and I'll put it over here. It's really full because there's so many names after all that time. Okay, so our first winner of today is Willie Fillmore. Actually, I think Willie was like a first time commenter. So Willie, email us team, let us know what we're sending you and where to send it. Mug or journal. All right, so awesome. Congratulations, Willie, and thanks for joining the fabulous community of book launchers. Okay, and then the second prize. Margaret. Hello, Abdi. Yay. Welcome, Ralph. Hey, new author. Congratulations. Okay, so just so you guys can see, but not me, let me just look at you guys and look me in the eye while I try and get one out of here. There we go. That one. All right, Patricia, Dana, Yay. Congratulations, Patricia. Also, I think a new commenter. So we have two new commenters winning right out of the gate. So Congratulations, Patricia. Email usamathbooklaunctures.com with whether you want the mug or the journal. All right, guys, let's dive into it. And all of you are already saying hello, so keep doing that because as you know, we also have prizes for those of you who join us live. And today, we're talking about getting paid to speak. So I have five main tips, but I might throw in some extras as we go along. If you have questions, just go ahead and ask them. It's always more fun when I'm not talking to myself, especially because people walk by and they just see me talking to a computer, so it kind of looks like I'm talking to myself. All right, so I'm a big fan of authors, and speaking goes together really, really well. And it's one of those things that's very complimentary. I mean, you can sell a lot of books by speaking, but you can also sell. You can also sell yourself because of your book. So the challenge, though, we run into this because our clients, when they get to book marketing, they work with Sarah, who is our book marketing manager, and her team. And Sarah spent 10 years as a speaker's booking agent, so she knows booking people to speak. And a lot of people think they're going to publish a book, and they get paid to speak with nothing in between. And if you have not been speaking to date, you're missing a bunch of things. So I wanted today to talk about those pieces in the middle before you're actually going to get paid to speak whether your book is done or not. And in fact, if your book isn't done, this is a great time to start doing these things in the hopes that you can get paid to speak once your book is out. So one of the very first things, and we talk about this, we've talked about this before, talking about chapter titles, but the first thing is think about your talk topics. And there is a difference between whether you're going to do workshops or do keynotes. And I think probably the best way for me to explain the difference between workshops and keynotes is to kind of say a keynote is really where you're going to go in and try to transform the way an audience is thinking. So you want to give them a new perspective. It's a lot more about thinking and ideas than it really is about tactics and tools. So if you're thinking keynote, you want to have an overall concept, something that's not trying to think of a really good example. It's got humor, it's got emotion, but ultimately you're giving people a new way to think about a situation or a problem versus a workshop where you're going to go in and probably solve a problem, give them tools, give them tactics. Typically a keynote speaker is going to get paid a lot more. Not always, but typically they're going to be. If you've gone to those multi stage conferences, they're on the big stage and then the workshop people are in the little rooms. I tend to be a workshop person. I am usually that person who's giving you those how to surprise. You guys are shocked. I know I'm the one that's giving you the how to, the steps and the tips and all of those kind of things. So as you're creating your talk titles, you want to think about what kind of a speaker you want to be. Where are you going to be best suited? And it's not that you can't be both, but your talk titles need to reflect what kind of a talk it's going to be. One of the things I love to recommend, especially doing workshops and things like that is that you think about. You can look at your book and your chapters can actually be talk titles in many cases. So I just pulled one of our clients books off our shelf that I know does speaking Michael Brenner, who wrote Might mean people suck. I took a look at his chapter titles and I did this two minutes before we jumped on just to find an example for you. Thankfully, Michael's book did not disappoint and I found several chapters that I thought would make. And I've lost the table of contents here. That would make a great talk. Where is his table of contents? Ah, there it is. Okay. And the first one that jumped out at me was chapter four, our customers know we suck, Disruption, the customer Journey and why customers don't care about brands. I could totally see that. That could almost be a keynote. Actually, our customers know we suck because you'd find a positive angle to this, obviously. But I think that that has a lot of potential as a talk title. So it's those kind of. He also has your company sucks, the Real Org chart, the Bullseye and the Larry's loss prediction. So think about that. So those would make your talk titles. All right. Oh, Vince says love Michael Brenner. I'm reading that book right now. Yay. Hey, Benny Latonia. I know you guys are in the mug. I saw your name go in there. Hey, Nicole. So lovely to have you here. I'm glad you caught us live. Okay, so that's tip number one. And the second part is the core of your presentation, rehearsed and ready. And I actually. I was at an event here in Los Angeles last week called Archange and Michael Port. Michael and Amy Port do a lot of professional speaker training. And I witnessed, actually, some of the people they've coached speak. And it was. It was phenomenal. And one of the things. Michael got up and stood on the stage and said, and I think this is really, really good. It's also a good example of a mindset shift versus just a tactic. He said. He said he asked the audience how many people had gone to see the Hamilton play on Broadway. And there was a few people who got. He was kind of like, how much did you pay for those tickets? And some people have paid $1,500, $500. So he said, okay. He said, so you go to Hamilton for 500 to $1,500 a ticket versus how many of you have been to an improv show? And how much did you pay for those? And it would be like five to $40 a ticket. He's like, okay, so do you want to be a Hamilton production, or do you want to be improv? And they're both professionals. And, you know, my husband does a lot of improv. I can tell you practice that goes into being improvised, improvisational, to doing improv is incredible. But the actual performance is not practiced and precise. Right. Whereas Hamilton is practiced and polished and precise in that professional way to get an emotion, to get in, to create a very specific experience. Whereas improv is on the fly. It's not precise. So as a speaker, when you're thinking about this, do you want to be Hamilton or do you want to be improv? And if you want to be Hamilton, you need to be rehearsing and have a talk that has a core message that you can deliver anytime. And one of the things is that opportunities that come up, and this happened for me, and I know this has happened for other people, is a lot of times you might have been like second or third choice, and somebody else got the spot, but then they get sick. Get sick. Or something else happens in their life, and they have to cancel last minute. And you're getting a call two days before an event or the day of an event, and they're saying hey listen, so and so cancel. Can you do it? Are you ready for that? Like that's something to think about and rehearsal, rehearse and be ready if you really want to be paid to speak. And I also have another point around that, which is if you're expecting to be paid but you've never spoken in front of an audience, you really should be practicing in front of low stakes audiences. So going to meetup groups or other smaller association meetings and practicing your material and looking people in the eye as you're delivering the message to see if it's having the impact that you want and talking to them afterwards to see if they actually got the message from your talk that you wanted them to take away. This is a really, really important thing. And I, when I think of this, I think of comedians because if you go to open mic nights around la, it's quite common that you will see a fairly big name, well known comedian name speaking doing a set on stage and they're doing it open mic, which is super cheap because they want to test their material, they want to see what's going to get a laugh. If they switch a few words around, do they get a better reaction? If they change up their timing, do they get a better action? They're going to rehearse it at low stakes before they go on stage at the Comedy Store or before they shoot their Netflix series. So they've got material that isn't brand new. If you want to be paid to speak, it's kind of funny to expect that you've never talked before and you're going to get up and get paid. So you really look at finding places to speak wherever. Which also by the way helps you create material for a demo reel, which is a must have if you want to be paid to speak. You can get other, other speaking engagements that a demo reel. But I've even. I don't have a demo reel for this business. I have one for my previous business and so they're not related. It shows I can talk, I can carry an audience and I can, you know, deliver a message, but it doesn't show that I can deliver messages in this space. So something I'll have to build out if we want to grow and do more speak if I want to grow and do that through more speaking. So to do that I probably would. Well, I have talks coming up so I should, should just be getting those professionally filmed using those because I'm speaking at PodFest and Podcast Movement and PodFest coming right up here right away. But Regardless, you want to speak in front of smaller audience, get them videotaped, build a demo reel, because if you are serious about getting paid, you will need that demo reel. Bookers are going to ask for a demo reel unless they've already seen you speak or. Or somebody they really, really trust has seen you speak and you get referred that way. So it's a must have. Okay, I have only one more point for you guys, so I'm just going to check in and see what you guys are chatting about over here. Oh, not much. You guys are quiet today. Juan, welcome. Glad to see you made it, guy. Welcome. I know your name's in this mug. I saw it go in there. And J, C, b, n, o, e, 5, o, 4. Now that's a handle. So make sure you said hello if you're online. And you'll be entered to win a prize, which I'll get Angela to start thinking about what we're going to do for that prize. Sometimes we do a skill testing question and sometimes we do a number. So we might do both today. And then we have a few more prizes here, which actually, now seems like a great time to do another draw. All right, drum roll. This is where I need sound effects. I've even misplaced the mic here. I was applying for an affiliate link to add to the book I'm writing. Do you have affiliates? No. We accept referrals, though. Yeah, we haven't used because everybody has to go through an interview process. So we just get people to say they were referred by, and that works really well because nobody's ever going to come straight to our site and sign up to work with us, because everybody has to go through an application interview process before we work with them just to make sure that we can actually help somebody write a great book and achieve their goals. And. All right, so let's see. Who did we pull out of here? Ooh, we pulled out Robert Bell. I think he lives far away. All right, Robert, let us know what you want and if we could send it somewhere local. All right, awesome. Congratulations, Robert. Okay. Okay, awesome. Thanks, Kevin. Hey, Brian. Welcome. I know your name is in here. Actually, I think you should be a prize winner no matter what. I'm pretty sure you were in here for every single video, so thank you so much for your support. Okay, one more, and then we're done with our YouTube commenters for the day. All right. Okay, here we go. Hey, Latonia, Congratulations. Have you won both already? I don't know. I feel like you've won a mug at least or a journal. But anyways, let us know. Mugger journal, email us at Team Yay. Congratulations. Okay folks, so the last tip I have for you on this and like I said, jump in with questions. I am just throwing a bunch of stuff at you and I am welcoming your input and comments. The last thing is professional photos and we have a video on the YouTube channel already about getting an author photo, which will work. Certainly will work. Bonus points to get professional photos of you actually on stage in front of an audience. That can go a long way in your marketing materials to have a picture of you on stage in front of an audience. So if you can get that, great. That will go a long way. At a minimum though, you need a great headshot, which you need as an author anyways. So I have a video on tips for getting a great headshot. So check that out and that should help. The other thing here is to also have a great author bio which will also be used in your speaker's kit. There's, you know, a few different things you might change up. Like for example, some credibility things around you might want to add. If you've been featured in media or if you've spoken in front of some major audiences, you might put those in your speaker's bio versus putting it on the back of your book. It's not as relevant for that. The other thing I would say is if you haven't done this already and you really are focusing on paid speaking engagements. Again, this is different than there's a bunch of new people that have joined in. So Hello. Hi Mike. Welcome. This is different than just speaking and selling books. This is really intentional becoming a paid speaker. So the tips are a little different. I still recommend all these things if you're serious about using speaking to grow your business, you know, sell books. But this is more serious than selling books through meetup groups and other kind of local groups associations, which works incredibly well to move a volume of books. But I'm really talking about this from that paid perspective. So those little things that you need to do for the professional touch. And with that tangent, I kind of lost the point. What I was going to make author bio speaker the speaker one sheet which I'll be putting a video out probably in March with some examples of the speakers one sheets that we put together for clients. And. Oh yeah, the journal is soft as a baby's bottom. That got me giggling. Good one. It is really. It's a really craz soft. It's really, really crazy soft. I don't know what it's made of, but it is soft. Okay, I'll ask. Answer this question and hopefully my point will come back because it's, it's funny. I was going down the point of the speaker, the author's photos, and then it just, I got myself distracted. Okay, what's the best way to advertise speaking events? So this depends on what you're trying to do. So if you're trying to add. Oh, and my point just came back. That's where I was going. So if you mean if you get a speaking engagement, generally, it will help you a lot. If you're promoting that on social media to let people know that you're speaking, it also could potentially lead to other speaking engagements. If you're trying to advertise yourself as a speaker, that's a little trickier. You really have to just start seeking events and doing pitches to get yourself. And most major events have speaker submission forms, and a lot of times you can find those at the bottom and they'll accept submissions. A lot of events don't even do that. They're actually either working through speakers agents or it's only on a referral basis. They don't take submissions because they don't need to. Some events are just so coveted that, you know, they, that's how they curate their speakers or they approach. They figure out what they want somebody to talk about and they approach their speakers. So the tip I was going to mention, if you want to be paid to speak, putting a page in your book. And I don't know if Michael did this in his or not. I don't think he did. Ryan Berman might have. Anyways, putting a page inside of your book, letting people know that you're available to be hired as a speaker, and some of your talk topics, that certainly can go a long way. Making sure you have contact information in your book, period, can help. And I've talked before about having a page dedicated to bulk buys as well. All those things can really help you. I'm just going to check one book over here. One second. I will return in a moment. Okay. And I've got one here I'm going to check. Todd might have this too, just to kind of give you guys an example. And then we'll do one more prize. So, Angela, have you thought about how we're going to do the prize for the folks that are here live? Let me know what you're thinking. And I'm just checking a couple of these books here because I know somebody has this. Just don't know it off the top of my head. No, it doesn't look like Ryan has it. One of these speaker pages. And that'll give Angela a chance to come up with something. Additional courses, additional books, acknowledgements, bonus content. Yeah, so Todd doesn't have a specific thing to speaking, but he has bonus content. And then he has one other page here that talks about getting about his courses. Nice, clean, just simple page right there. Courses by Todd. Okay, I think answering a question. Okay, but what question? Angela? All right, I'm going to make this. I've got a question. So what was the name of the speaker trainer I mentioned that gave the Hamilton vs. Improv example? This is that. Were you paying attention? Kind of question. Let's see who is paying attention and then we'll do our typical number. So if you haven't already said hello, make sure you say hello. And if nobody was paying attention, then I think I get the prize, right? Maybe I don't. If you guys aren't paying attention, then I probably shouldn't get a prize. Okay, well, Vince doesn't know the answer. And if you're watching in the replay. Replay. You could cheat, though. But if you're legit watching in the replay and you know, and you know without cheating, go ahead and post it in the comments below. And you know I'll be watching. I'll make sure I give you a shout out for that. Oh, Drema Drudge. She wasn't paying attention. Angela has a backup question, which is good. I'll give you guys a second. Kevin knows the answer, but he's not answering because he has everything already. Which is true. He does. He is the official Book Launcher's bestie. And that's why I said that there's a Kevin number two that is watching that won't even compete with you, Kevin. So he is not even gonna comment because he doesn't want to compete with the Book Launcher's bestie. Original Vince is asking for the answer. All right, Angela, I think you're going to have to use your question. My question was too hard. Hey, Darlene. I don't think I said hello to you. Reading the comments. And Mike missed that. Yeah, he wasn't in yet. Latonia loves the Journal. I knew you'd won something. John and his wife. Good guess, but that wasn't it. What was the first tip Julie gave today? Oh, another one to see if they were paying attention. Good one. Okay, tip number one. What was tip number one? All right, in the meantime, let's do a number. I'm gonna pick a number let's go. Number 33. So let's go from the top. Number 33. Angela, who is our winner? The speaker one sheet was not first. No. Oh, by the way, the answer was Michael Port. I'm giving you guys the answer now because that's. Nobody was getting it. Michael Port was the answer. And oops, I just scrolled right past tip number one. Where did I have it? I had my notes. I don't even remember you guys. I don't know how you're going to remember. Oh, yeah, now I do. I remember. I'll give you guys a hint. That was the one. I pulled out Michael Brenner's. Michael Brenner's book as an example. I gave you guys an example from Michael Brenner's book. Does that help? Izzy? Is that Dale's cat name? You guys know Dale's cat's name? I could test you guys to see if you know my son's name. I don't know if I talk about him by name very often. Okay, so use chapter to have content prepared. Not quite. This is tough. Now, you guys know, in the future, you better take notes. You guys weren't taking notes, and that is why you haven't got the answer. I think Angela's Busy counting to 33 over there. All right, so the answer to tip number one. Oh, Brian K. Morris, I think you've won everything, too. All right, so if you have not won everything, let us know if you want it. If you have won anything, I tell you what, you can pick somebody from today other than Kevin McGuire because he has won everything that you would like to give this to. And yeah, kind of. Robert. So it was talk titles. So that's what it was. Tip number one was getting choosing your talk titles and thinking about, do you want to be a keynote speaker or a workshop speaker and choosing the titles accordingly to what you want to be paid for. So there you go. There's a recap of number one. Don't really think we had a winner, but we're going to have a number 33 as a winner, and then we'll wrap up. And we're going to be back here again in two weeks. So you guys let me know, what should we talk about in two weeks? I am open to your topics. I want this show to be for you, to help you, or as my videos say, for you. Right. I was in the studio today while I'm waiting for Angela to tell me the number. I don't know if she got lost out there or what you can have the mug if you want. Brian, I leave this totally up to you. No pressure. Now that I've put you on the spot, right, you can get the mug. I mean, the mug is legendary. And yes, email topics that come to your mind@teamoklaunchers.com. angela, are you counting? I hope you're counting. We're looking for 33 from the top and. Oh, yeah. So today I was in the video studio, and I did a wrap, if you follow me, on Instagram. I reposted my husband, who's my videographer and producer of my videos. He took a little video of me doing it. I didn't know he'd done that, and he posted it on his Instagram. So if you want to go follow or check out Julie Broad on Instagram, I reposted a little snippet of what was actually a fairly long rap. I'm not a rapper. I'm so nerdy. I'm so not cool like that. Oh, it was Brian K. Morris. I thought that was something else. I don't know what I thought you were doing, Angela. I'm sorry. Oh, my goodness. Okay. I was in the video studio all morning. Please forgive me. My brain has dedicated a lot of. A lot of its energy to those videos this morning. All right, so, Brian, you can have the mug. It is such an important thing. But you do need to email us@teamokmonsters.com with your mailing address, because we don't save those things. I don't think we do. So please do that and just remind us that we're sending you the mug. Everybody else make sure you email us that won prizes today. Angela keeps track, you guys. She's more dedicated to bookkeeping than I am. You could have before Angela was doing this with me. You could have told me you won and I would have sent you something, but karma would have got you for that one, so. Nobody did that, though, I don't think. But Angela does keep track, and Angela's also the one that ships it out to you. So email us. Thank you so much for being here. Do let me know what you want us to talk about on a future video. You can post that in the comments below after the replay is live, or email us again@teamoklaunchers.com as always, it was such a pleasure to have all of you here today. Thank you so much for sharing a bit of your day with me. And I will see you on Friday. We have a video coming out. Don't remember what it's about. Actually, off the top of my head. I'll probably post a comment asking for you guys to choose between two and let me know what I should be uploading. All right, have a fantastic day, you guys. Bye.
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