155: Becoming a Successful Speaker with Grant Baldwin

Hi, this is Charles Michael Davis. Toyotathon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year end deals on the cars, trucks and SUVs known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry, the Ready for anything RAV4 or check out a rough and rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more. Toyota let's go places.

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the Only Move that Matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast everybody. I am so happy to have my friend Grant Baldwin here today. We are talking about his brand new book, the Successful Speaker Simple Steps to Make a Living off your message and we had a kind of hilarious pre record. Grant's like, you sound flustered. Are you having one of those days? And I'll tell you more in a moment because yes I am because I'm on the road for a speaking gig. Before we get into that, a little more about Grant. He's the creator of the popular podcast the Speaker Lab, which I was a guest at one point talking about how to pivot your speaking career. I'll throw that in the show notes and he created the online course Booked and Paid to Speak through which he has trained more than 2,000 speakers. He's a popular keynote speaker and entrepreneur, lives near Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Sheila and their three daughters, and has just a great podcast and a great energy which is one of the things I love most about Grant. You can visit thespeakerlab.com for more information on what he's up to. And I also created a Speak Like a Pro course many years back where I interviewed 25 professional speakers about what it takes to prepare and pro tip and big Secret. Every single one of them said they still get a little nervous before they get on stage. So if you do two, you're not alone. It's normal. You can learn more about that course@pivotmethod.com speaklikeapro without further ado, Grant Baldwin, welcome to the show.

What is up Miss Jenny Blake? I'm excited to hear your story. I have. You're exactly right. We hopped on a few minutes ago. We're kind of catching up for a minute, and I have no idea what's going on, but I'm excited to hear.

Well, long story short, I'm preparing to speak at the IMF tomorrow. So I'm here in dc, which is really exciting, and sometimes gigs get booked after I already have things lined up in my schedule. So Wednesdays are my podcast recording day. So right before we got on the phone, I had just finished recording a solo episode, editing it, getting it ready to go, preparing for our interview, and I purposely booked this hotel room two days early because I needed to get in, be able to have all the calls today, prepare for the IMF tomorrow, have a few more meetings Friday, and come home. So you know what that's like, being on the road home away from home. I'm also taking some quiet space. There's no puppy at my feet running around or creating noise. So here I am doing my solo morning scramble, and it's perfect on a day where I get to talk to you and talk about how to become a successful speaker.

Perfect. I love it. I'm so excited. I appreciate you letting me hang out with you. This is going to be fun.

So you've earned in the course of your career more than $2 million in speaking fees. You've spoken to over half a million people. And the thing that I want to start with, and I gave you a heads up before we hit record, because you and I both use tripit Pro, which is every professional speakers must have app in your arsenal. It is worth every penny and then some. And I said, let's look at our travel stats because one of the most interesting and I think tricky to navigate parts of being a keynote speaker is navigating the travel aspect of it. So talk to me, Grant. What are your all time stats? I know you said you got trip in 2009.

Yes. All right, so we just pulled this up. I don't know that I've ever really looked at this, but now that I've got it pulled up, it is kind of fascinating. All right, so it gives you five stats here. Trips, days, distance, cities and countries.

Where do you want to start? Let's compare notes here.

Let's just go top to bottom. Mine. Everybody starts in 2011, which is when I left Google and actually launched my speaking part of my career full time. So. So might not have two less years, but same span of the career.

All right.

Yeah.

What do you got? Number of trips.

Okay, total trips is 183.

Oh, I got you there. I got 351.

Oh, yeah. But the thing is, I'm not a road warrior. I know that I can do max, like, two trips a month. That's kind of my goal, so. Oh, yeah, you're gonna. You're gonna just crush me on all of these? How many days on the road?

1,138.

So close. Mine's 1,101.

No way. That's awesome. Yeah.

That is crazy. I must stack my trips together. So fewer trips, more days on, like, equal days on the road.

Countries visited, countries visited. Eleven.

Okay. Mine's 25.

Okay. All right.

Cities visited.

This seems like a lot. 275.

Wow. Okay, I have 118. And total distance traveled.

660,581 miles.

Wow, wow, wow. Okay. Mine's 800. 2,742.

What, like a third of the trips, but you go 140, 150,000 miles more?

I guess so it says that's enough to circle the world 32.2 times.

That's amazing.

But are we guilty enough to check our combined carbon footprint?

I don't know that we should.

Okay, so talk to me. Now. Let's look at one year. So a year in the life. Now, you are working on a book. So 2019. And by the way, the last section of your book is when to scale and how to scale, because you can't just run around the globe all the time if you want to have a sustainable life and business. But let's look at 2019 and just give people a sense for each of our total. Days, trips, countries visited.

Yep.

Or Cities.

All right. 2019. I had 22 trips, 82 days, 29,064 miles, 27 cities and three countries.

Amazing. Amazing. Okay, mine was 90,000 miles traveled, 135 days, 21 trips, six countries, 26 cities.

That's no joke. Okay, now, I'm going to give a caveat here.

Please do.

If I go back a few years, my busiest years speaking was would have been like 2016, 2017. Somewhere in there, I was doing around 60 or 70 gigs a year, whereas now I still speak, but not nearly as much. And so some of this, probably a decent amount of this, is our family is fairly addicted to travel. So a lot of these may be personal vacations, but nonetheless, butts in seats on planes.

I think you're similar to me in which sometimes we bring our family or we try to combine. In fact, I've been able to see my family. My family's kind of spread out on the west coast of the US And I always combine family visits with a speaking gig. So I get booked in Seattle, I go see my dad, I get booked in NorCal, it's my mom and brother and it's his wife when I get booked in SoCal. So yeah, I try to combine too. And by the way, we're not sharing these stats to be like, oh, look at me, look how fancy I am. It's more to give people an idea of how much we typically are on the road. And then also, I'm curious for you, Grant, what's your ideal at this point in your life, your family life and your career? What's your ideal number of gigs per month?

So, I mean, the business model definitely looks dramatically different than it did, you know, even five years ago. You know, five, six, seven years ago, like I was 90% of my business was speaking as a gun for hire. I would go speak, collect a check, go home, end of transaction. Now the business is much different where like you mentioned the book, you mentioned the speaker lab, which is our company where we teach and train how to find a book paid speaking gig. That's the core of what we do. I do a few gun for hire gigs now where I may go out and speak and do some type of keynote, but a lot of the speaking that I still do is going to be more around this topic of speaking and so just kind of the speaking about speaking type of thing. And so that's most of what we do. And also because speaking of family, like you mentioned, married to my high school sweetheart, we have three girls. As much as I enjoy speaking, I also don't, I don't always enjoy the travel, you understand, it's kind of the nature of the beast and parts of it are glamorous and parts of it are fun, but there's also a lot of non glamorous, non sexy parts to travel and speaking that nobody thinks about or talks about.

If I'm going to speak at a gig somewhere, I'm a lot more likely to try to do it locally. I live in Nashville and so I try to do as much possible here versus before I'd get on a plane and go anywhere to speak. I would say today the business model is just dramatically different where if I am going to be speaking, I'm just going to be. I'm a lot more selective about it than I used to be.

I love how you said somewhere in the book that now your fees are not just, oh, what's the value that I'm going to offer if I come speak, it's how Big does the fee need to be for me to leave my family?

Yeah, that's a joke we make with clients, and it's half joking, half serious. But you're not just paying for me to come speak, you're paying for me to leave my family. And that's expensive. But that's also thinking about it through the lens of when people think about. One of the biggest challenges for speakers at any level is figuring out how much should I charge, what should my speaking fee be? The reality is there's a lot of different variables that go into that, but one of the variables is the amount of time that is involved in that presentation. Just from a travel logistics standpoint, I think about, for me, what my time is worth. I know that, like I said, I live in Nashville. So if I'm going to do something that's in Downtown Nashville, that's 30 minutes away from me, that I can go do that. I can go speak at something and be home by lunchtime, that's just going to take significantly less time than if I go do the exact same keynote in Los Angeles. And it's going to take me a good chunk of a day to get out there and then a chunk of a day to get back. And I may be gone for two nights. And so it ends up being two, two and a half, three days for the exact same talk versus a couple hours gone here locally. That's a variable. That's a factor. I definitely have to. As speakers, we have to be aware of that. We have to consider that. But there's also the side of, like you mentioned, there's value in going to certain cities where either you want to visit, it's kind of a part work, part play, part vacation. But also if you have networking opportunities there, or like you mentioned, going to see friends or family, I know that.

You'Re still in New York, right?

I am, yeah.

Yeah. So my brother lives up there. So if I have a gig up there, like you mentioned, it's an excuse to go see him. So there's value in that. And so recognize that travel is part of. Can be part of the upside and downside of being a speaker. But it certainly is something that you have to factor in in terms of your time and where you're going, in terms of how you ultimately price yourself as a speaker.

I had to admit to myself that when I do cross country trips, it's really a week of my time. And I know that might sound ridiculous, but I realized that on, let's say the gig is on Thursday. So Okay, I spend Monday packing and preparing. On Tuesday I travel and I have to go cross country and I want to be mindful of any delays, get in late at night, and then let's say maybe the gig's on Wednesday. Okay, so then I speak on Wednesday and I like to stay that night so I'm not rushing off the stage. And also just for my own sanity, so I stay Wednesday night, then I fly home all the way cross country. On Thursday, I'm exhausted. Friday I spent recovering and unpacking and just trying to get my head screwed back on straight. And now that I'm married, have a dog, I feel like there's some catch up to do in terms of just connecting again. And so when I realized, okay, this is a week of my time and I know I mentioned road warriors, there are some people that will fly in and out same day, day of that will go from gig to gig to gig and do five in a. It's just not me. And it's not too much of a wuss for that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have the energy. But yeah, it is a significant amount of time. And similar to you, I very early on realized, well, I can't just run around the country. And I've been so grateful that Pivot has been very successful and well received within companies. So I also started to create more scalable Pivot programs and train the trainer and licensing things where I can come in and do a kickoff keynote and some kind of sales sizzle event. And then companies are more empowered to continue that content even without me. Because I realized early on in my speaking career too, what if I get tired, you know, or what if, like, what if I want to have a family or take a maternity leave or I just took a two month puppy training leave? Pretty much what am I going to do? And I didn't want to rely or if I got sick or, I don't know, I just didn't want to rely on me having to get on planes, trains and automobiles constantly in order to just, you know, pay the rent. But it can provide a very healthy living and of course it's a lot of fun.

Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, Go ahead. No, no, you're good. Finish. I've got thoughts.

Okay, good. And I wanted to say shout out to Scott Stratton, who told me about Trip IT Pro for listeners. One of the reasons it's such a must have is that it will tell you first if the plane is going to be canceled. So you can redirect your flight.

The masses basically, which is really important. If you've committed and you're getting paid 10, 15, 20, $25,000 to be somewhere at a certain time, you got to know, you got to get there a hundred percent.

Yeah, that's part like, that's part of it. I remember, I remember several years ago a speaker who's kind of up and coming and they messaged me basically like, hey, I'm in certain city, I don't remember where I was and I'm trying to get to other city and flights are delayed and canceled and I'm just having all kinds of trouble. And I was like, dude, you better get a car and start driving. And it's like through the night, so many hours and yada, yada, yada. And it was like, yeah, you do whatever you have to do to get to the gig. You never miss a gig. As best as possible, it better be like, I did everything possible to get there. That's just part of it. Right? And so one of the things you touched on that reminded me of is early in my career I had a speaker friend tell me that speaking is a very high paying manual labor job in that we get paid way too well to stand on stage and run our mouths. But the nature of it is you do have to show up physically in that space to collect that check. So like you said, if you want to take a couple months off for maternity leave or puppy leave or whatever it may be, or you just like, I'm working on a book or I'm working on a project or I just want to travel or I just need a break or for health reasons I need to take a step back or whatever it may be, you can do that. But as soon as you are not on stage speaking, then there is a natural decline because you're not showing up. It's kind of like a surgeon, a surgeon who goes into the hospital and does a couple hour procedure. They get paid really, really, really well for those couple hours for that procedure. But the nature of it is they have to actually show up at the hospital. If they don't show up, they're not going to make an income. There's definitely a trade off there. One of the nice things about speaking is there's no right or wrong model like we were touching on earlier. If I go look back at my career, there's a few years ago where again, speaking was a very, very, very high percentage of my revenue and my personal income. But now it's a much smaller Piece. It's still a piece, but not nearly of what. And it's not that one is better or worse than the other. Jenny, you and I both know speakers who want to do 100 gigs a year and nothing else. Then we also know speakers who are like, I just want to do five gigs a year. That's fine. Again, it's not that one is better or worse than the other. Ultimately, you just have to decide for yourself what it is that you're trying to accomplish in business. And how does speaking fit into the midst of that.

It's really a puzzle that speaking can fit into, however, makes the most sense for you.

One thing I love about your book, the Successful speaker, is that you give people permission. You don't have to already be some world famous author or celebrity in order to have a speaking career. And you really make it accessible for people that first they need to select a problem to solve. And your angle on this was so interesting because most people try to come up with a topic and can you speak a little bit to why we shouldn't start with a topic but instead look for a problem to solve?

Yeah. Let me piggyback on the first thing that you mentioned there. In terms of people assume that in order to be a speaker that there's certain prerequisites. You have to have, you have to have.

Won an Olympic gold medal or you have to have conquered cancer, you have to have hiked or climbed Mount Everest in your shorts, blindfolded, some of these crazy things. The reality is, yeah, there's certainly a lot of speakers who check the boxes on some of those things. But Jenny, I don't know about you, but I'm a pretty normal person. I'm a white male from the Midwest who's had a pretty normal average middle class life. There's nothing on paper that would qualify to me to be a speaker. I've never climbed Mount Everest. I've never broken a bone. I've never competed in the Olympics. I've never had cancer. My life was pretty normal. I get along with my parents and my siblings. I've never really been that sick. Again, there's nothing on paper that you think, oh, okay, therefore you should be a speaker. But the point of it being, even though you don't have to have all these prerequisites, the one thing that you do need to have, like you said, is you have to solve a problem. You have to solve a problem. One specific problem for one specific audience. Now the challenge is for a lot of speakers, we just love speaking. Jenny, you and I both, we just enjoy speaking. We enjoy being in front of an audience. We enjoy helping and serving and trying to make some type of impact from the stage. Because of that, it makes us want to speak to anybody and everybody. But that's a horrible way to approach it. For some speakers, when you ask them, who do you speak to? They're like, I speak to humans. I speak to people. My message is for everybody. Okay, but that doesn't work in the same way that if you were to ask a speaker, what do you speak about? What's the problem that you solve? They say, well, what do you want me to speak about? I can speak about anything. It's like, no, you can't. You have to be really, really specific about what it is that you do. One of the things that we talk about and an analogy that we use is the idea that you want to be the steakhouse and not the buffet. Be the steakhouse and not the buffet. And what we mean by that is, if we were going to go grab. If we're going to grab a bite to eat, we're looking for a good steak. You have a choice. You can go to a buffet where steak is one of a hundred different things that they. And they're all mediocre, or you could go to a steakhouse where they do one thing, but they do that one thing really, really well. They don't do lasagna, they don't do pizza, they don't do spaghetti, they don't do tacos, they don't do any of those things, but they do steak really, really well because of that. Because they're really clear on, we do this and that's it. Then it attracts the right kind of guest to the restaurant, but it also repels the wrong type of guest. If you're looking for Italian, you're not going to be going to the steakhouse. Because they do this one thing for a speaker who says, well, I want to speak to anybody and everybo. I can talk about a whole bunch of different things. You end up being the buffet that's for everybody and nobody at the same time. Nobody likes going to a buffet you want to go to. I want this one specific thing where they are really good at that versus trying to be all things for all people. Now, again, this is counterintuitive because we assume that the more audiences I can speak to, the more people I can talk to, the more topics I can cover, the more opportunities I can have. But event planners don't want to hire that speaker. They don't want someone that's for everyone. They want someone that's right for their audience. Again, we understand this with a restaurant. We understand this in other ways that this is true. If, God forbid, you had to have brain surgery, you want to go to the brain surgeon, not to just a normal doctor who they're a doctor, they have the same fancy letters before and after their name. They went to medical school, probably know more about brains and surgery than you or I, but I want to go to the brain surgeon that like this is all they do day in and day out. They work on brains like that's the person that you want to go to. And so the same thing is true with speakers is you want to be the specialist and not the generalist.

Well, using the restaurant analogy, a big mistake a lot of newer speakers make, and I did this a little bit myself, is just have this really long menu of keynote topics or a very different menu of topics so I can do this and this and this and they're all unrelated. And I think a lot of people don't realize you only need one keynote max. Two, maybe two. And for me, for example, with pivot, it's pivot for individuals. Map your growth for the year ahead or pivot for managers on having one on one career conversations. I didn't necessarily know, oh, I only need two. But over and over, that's what companies hire me for. And even my first book, life after College, the way I came up with my keynote was I did this thought exercise. If I was going to be on the Today show, what would be my segment? What would they want to bring me on? And I knew it would have to be timely and counter to the status quo or it wouldn't be interesting to them. And so career in the age of the app was my think of your career like a smartphone, not a ladder. It was this little thought exercise I did that one speech, carried me five years, earned me tens of thousands of dollars. One speech. And I think people don't realize the extent to which we're all sort of iterating on this one deck presentation slides for like five years at a time. And that's one of the things you say is does your idea, not only do you enjoy talking about it, are others interested, but does it pass the five year test?

Yeah. Meaning like because there's, I think that again, a mistake that some speakers make especially early on is we're just looking for opportunities. You know, what do other speakers speak about and who's hiring speakers and where can I get paid? The Most, and we pursue, use that as our criteria, which is horrible criteria. If ultimately you're like, okay, it led me to a topic in an industry that I don't really care about or I don't really know much about, I'm not really interested in. I just feel like there's an opportunity here which is just, again, not just in speaking, but just in business and in life. It's just a horrible way to approach it. I would rather make less from a speech, but be deeply passionate about the topic and the audience that I'm speaking to versus being paid more. But I don't understand this. I don't care about it. I'm not passionate about it. I'm not interested in the audience. That's just a horrible way to approach it. Yeah, you want to think through.

Is this the type of topic that I feel like I can speak about and I'm passionate about and I'm interested in that I can be around for the next few years versus, like, yeah, I don't know, I'll do this for a few months, and then if something else better comes along, I'll shift over there and go over there. And ultimately you end up just kind of like bouncing from thing to thing to thing. So one kind of litmus test to think about is if you're a speaker, if you're an entrepreneur of any kind, is if you were to ask your friends, family, colleagues, and ask them, hey, what do I speak about? Or if someone were to ask you, what does Jenny speak about? What would you say to them? So if they're like, oh, Jenny speaks about pivot and how to build your career and think of your career as an app and not a ladder. And if they have a real quick answer that's a really good thing, versus if they were like.

I think they. Well, let's see, they speak about this and then they do a little. Well, they do the career thing. Are they still doing the career thing or are they doing this thing now? Almost like this flavor of the month type of answer. I hope for us, for example, that we're really specific on we help speakers. I hope people are like, oh, Grant's the speaker guy. You need to go talk to Grant. If you need help finding a booking gigs, he's who you need to talk to. Versus, like, I think he does that, but I think he also does this and this and this and all these other things. So, for example, like I mentioned, the name of our company is the Speaker Lab, and I had someone message us the other day, and we're asking questions about writing a book and publishing and that sort of thing. And they're like, you should create the author lab. Part of me is, yeah, that's kind of cool. And part of me is like, nope, it's a real easy thing of like, I don't want to get watered down. And you know, we help speakers and we help authors and we help consultants and we help coaches and we help da da da da da da da. On and on and on it goes versus saying no, no, we serve one specific audience and helping them solve one specific problem instead of trying to be all things for all people.

And by the way, all of this advice is exactly relevant for people who want to write a book. The book itself needs to follow these same principles. You don't want to be everything to everybody. And it's funny because even when I was writing Pivot It, I knew I wanted it to be for kind of innovative tech savvy people and companies like people who are sort of on the cutting edge entrepreneurial spirit. And I knew I didn't like for me, I didn't want to segment so much to only entrepreneurs or only to companies. I wanted to make sure it was relevant to both. And sure enough, the first gigs that I booked were for Google, Microsoft, south by Southwest, all tech. And I was so happy and it worked. And that was my intention. That's the energy I put into the book. And then of course the speaking follows, or vice versa. And another thing, when I was writing Pivot, spirituality was my Trojan horse. It's the thing I snuck in to a business book, but I really specifically did not want it to be categorized as self help. I knew for sure that I wanted to write a business and career book. And you say even in the speaking sense that the Trojan Horse method is what to do when people don't care about the topic that you want to speak about. Tell us about the Trojan Horse method.

Yeah. So I'll give you an example from my own personal experience. Early in my speaking career, I did a lot in the education space. I did a lot speaking to high schools and colleges.

I was really passionate about personal finance. My wife and I were in the process early on of getting out of debt and paying off credit card debt and student loans and that sort of thing. I was like, man, this is really important for students. If high school and college students can get this, this makes a huge difference in their life for years to come.

I started trying to book talks at schools for speaking on this topic of personal finance. Everyone would tell you oh, yeah, Helping teenagers and college students with finances is really important. That's a big deal. But I was having a really difficult time getting them to book me for it. What's the disconnect here? They all say it's important, but nobody's hired me to talk about it. But one of the things that I found is that a lot of schools, especially in high schools, were interested in me helping them teach their students about making a smooth transition from high school into college in the real world. We started developing a talk around that, and I started getting booked a lot about that. I'm doing these talks regularly on helping students prepare for making the transition from high school into college in the real world. Within that, one of the topics that we talked about and covered was personal finance. Again, it was a way to say, okay, here's the thing that I want to talk about. What's the thing that they're actually hiring for and what's the overlap? Not in terms of a bait and switch, of like, oh, you hired me to talk about this, but I don't even care. I'm going to talk about that. This thing that I'm more interested in, I wouldn't recommend that. But how do you position it? And how do you wrap it in paper that makes sense for what it is that they're looking for, but still checks the box of what it is that you're interested in? I'll give you another example. There was a speaker that came to us recently and said, hey, I really want to speak to attorneys about.

What was the topic? I think something about stress and helping attorneys deal with stress.

What I told her was, if you think about, think about.

The owners or the managers or the CEOs of law practices and law firms.

What'S the challenges that they are thinking about when they're lying in bed at night, Are they thinking about, man, if we could help our attorneys be less stressed, that would be really, really good. That would be really helpful. Probably not, but they are thinking about how do we improve employee morale? How do we decrease turnover? How do we help people feel more engaged? One of the you can do with that is talk about stress. And so think about what's the topic that they're interested in? What's the problem that you can actually solve for them? And then how can you use your piece as the thing that is, again, kind of a gateway into talking about the thing that you're passionate about and interested in?

You also say that a good talk will answer two questions. So what? And now what? Which I love because in pivotal, the whole central question of pivot is what's next? And I loved how you differentiated that. The difference between a keynote speaker and a workshop facilitator is that keynote speakers are actually hired to perform. So the focus is a little bit more on the so what? It's the big idea, it's the performance. And a big part of performance is humor.

And I know that humor can be intimidating and. And it's. So it's one of those things where not everybody thinks of themselves as hilarious and not everybody is that hilarious. But humor inevitably helps cut some of the tension for the speaker and the audience. It can help even serious messages get across. And I know for myself, I've sometimes stumbled into funny things that I say off the cuff. And just like a standup would, write down those jokes you say in the book. Keep nothing notes after you talk. If you say something off the cuff, write it down. Keep practicing that little bit. And it's true that I've sort of recycled bits like that and worked it into the speech later on, but it can be intimidating. So how can a speaker infuse some humor into their talk without making it too cheesy?

Yeah. So let's take one of the things that you just touched on there. And this ties into something you mentioned earlier, that whenever you are speaking, if you're someone who wants to do this on a regular, consistent basis, you know, you want to do 10, 20, 30 plus gigs a year, then like Jenny mentioned earlier, you don't want to have like every time I'm speaking, I'm giving a brand new presentation from scratch. Do not do that. That's way too much work. That's way too complicated. What you want to do is, like Jenny said, you have one or two talks that you do, and those are the ones that you give every single time, more or less. Right now, there may be some little tweaks and modifications, but for the most part, like 80, 90% of the talk from talk to talk to talk is going to be the same. Now because of that, you have to view the talk as kind of this living, breathing organism that you are evolving and improving over time. So the first time you give the talk, talk, whenever you are creating the talk, whenever you're standing on stage delivering, you're making an educated guess. I think this is funny. I think this will resonate. I think this will work. I think this makes sense. But I don't really know until I get in front of the audience. And then you get that immediate real time feedback of what works and what doesn't. So the first time you give a talk, you give that best guess, and then the next time you get that immediate feedback, and the next time, you know, like, okay, this worked. That didn't work. That was funny. I anticipated that to be funny, and then it wasn't funny. So I'm going to make all these tweaks and modifications. And so each time you give that same talk, you're getting that feedback, making those tweaks, and it makes the talk better. What happens is, like you mentioned, some of the humor is going to be some scripted, planned stuff that, you know, like, okay, I'm going to deliver the story this way, and here's the punchline and here's how they should respond. And it goes off the way you anticipate it. Sometimes maybe just something random happens or you just kind of say something off the cuff and it gets a great reaction. And I have found, for me personally, I'm guessing you have too, that some of my best material, some of my best humor and jokes have been that stuff where I just said something in the moment and it got a great reaction. And I like, mental note, I got to do that again next time. So that's one thing is just paying attention to those things that each time you give, whatever works in terms of humor works with one audience. A lot of times it will work with other audiences, sometimes to varying degrees, but you want to make sure that you make note of those things. The other thing I would say is that humor can work really well for just breaking tension.

For an audience for a speaker. But don't feel like if you are not a comedian, that you have to be a comedian. That's not the case. Humor works really, really well and really, really effective. But again, like, a lot of people either don't feel like they're funny or they don't feel comfortable using a lot of humor. One other idea for speakers who feel like, okay, what if I'm not funny? Or I'm not sure how to use humor. If you're someone that uses slides and we can kind of get into the pros and cons of slides, I get strong feelings there, and we cover this in the book. But if you're going to use slides, then slides can work really well for humor. So let's say that you show a funny picture or a meme or gif or a short video or something like that that's funny that you didn't have to create, you didn't have to come up with, maybe just resonated Online or something that's kind of circulating or just a funny picture or whatever, and that creates the humor. I'll give you a quick example of this. A few years ago, I was speaking at a conference, and a buddy of mine was doing the keynote. And then right afterwards, I was doing a workshop on the topic of speaking. He was a very good speaker, Very funny speaker. One of the things he did in the middle of the talk was he played this funny video. And it's like this one minute video or something. He didn't create it. It. It had circulated online. A lot of people in the audience have probably already seen it, but it was a very funny video that makes the rounds on the Internet. And so in my workshop, right after his keynote, we're talking about it, and I said, okay, how many of you thought that that previous keynote speaker was funny? And everyone's like, oh, yeah, he was hilarious. It was awesome. And so then I asked, what was the funniest part of his talk? And they all said, the video. Now, again, very funny speaker. But the funniest part was the video. And remember, keep in mind that they associated him with being a funny speaker because he played that. He didn't even create. His job for creating this humor was to push play. That's it. So recognize and realize that sometimes one of the best things that you can do is that you don't have to create the humor. You can borrow humor from, again, pictures or memes or whatever it may be, and that can help generate humor and break up a talk.

I've started doing that with the Ross Couch Friends pivot scene.

Yes.

Oh, you got it.

Pivot going up the stairs.

Yeah. So I should have done that from day one, but now that I added it, I've added it in now because once Friends went on Netflix and younger generations started binging it, because sometimes I'm careful not to have things that become dated or culturally. If half the room doesn't get it and didn't see it the first time around, it's awkward. But what you said about memes is so good. And sometimes I notice. When do I laugh? When I'm attending a speech. And for example, my friend Julie was giving a workshop on careers, and she used this line that she found a meme that, what is a resume? A resume is nothing more than a list of things we don't want to do anymore. And the whole room laughed. And I felt this sigh of relief. And everybody thought, oh, my God, that is what a resume is. It's just a list of stuff you don't want to do anymore. And so now I've worked it into my speech when it's relevant. And I always credit Julie, you know, or I'll say as my friend Julie, you know, or I found this me, and I heard a meme recently. You talk about integrity. So I always try to source where things come from. I don't steal jokes, but I like to give credit where it's due. And so just being observant in your own life about what makes you laugh. And you're absolutely right. Sometimes just showing a meme image or a comic gets it done, you know, and just infuses some lightness. So I want to pivot our conversation now to going back to the business side of speaking. Speaking. One difference that you and I have is that I have never reached out to event organizers proactively. It's just not my personality type. And I found with speaking, it's better if they think it's their idea and they come to me. So I've always put all my efforts into writing my two books, and then that attracts jobs to me, and that works for me. I don't do even paid Facebook marketing or anything. I just am so big on, like, word of mouth and serendipity and all that, these things. However, you have some really solid ideas for how to reach out to event organizers and even how to follow up without being obnoxious for somebody who is just getting started. So I would love to hear those. And if you could also address the eternal question of when to speak for free, because it can be so tricky for a newer speaker to understand, when should I say yes for free? And I'll share my thoughts on this after you. But when should I say yes for free and to get the exposure? And then when do I put my foot down and actually charge what I'm worth?

Yeah, great. Okay. So this is again, a big challenge for speakers who say, okay, I decided I want to be a speaker. I'm putting my I'm drawing the line in the sand. I'm planting my flag, and I'm all in on being a speaker. I've created a website. I've got a demo video. I've talked about it on social media. I think that the mistake then for some speakers is just like, okay, now I just sit back and I weight. And some of this also depends on how much speaking you want to be doing. So if I look back, whenever I was speaking full time and I was doing again, 60, 70 gigs a year, there were absolutely a lot of organic Things that would come my way. But I knew that that alone wasn't enough for what I wanted to be doing. I knew that I needed to be very proactive in continually getting out and getting gigs. Because one of the things you touched on is that speaking is very much a momentum business, that speaking leads to more speaking. You mentioned there's several serendipit opportunities that may come your way. I can think of. One of my first big breaks was I was speaking at this random small little state conference that a speaker friend had referred to me. They had a budget of $500. They couldn't cover any travel, so it was basically breaking even or losing money on the gig. But I go speak there. A lady comes up to me afterwards and she said, hey, my husband is the national executive director for this association and you did an awesome job. I'm going to tell him that he needs to hire you. She reaches out to him, and sure enough, a week or two later, he reaches out, hires me to do several of their big national conferences. Now, again, that's something that I can't plan on. I can't predict, I can't reverse engineer. And anytime I get books, say, hey, who else going to be in the audience? And is the wife of any important people going to be there that may hire me? Like, you can't plan on that. But the more you speak, the more those type of opportunities happen. Whether that comes through referral, through word of mouth, through repeat business, through word of mouth from someone within the audience, but also word of mouth from the event planner that you know, hey, we just worked with Jenny, or we just worked with Grant, and they were a great speaker and you need have them come to your event. So you have to do something to get the ball in motion and to keep the ball in motion. So one thing I would do is one, make sure that everybody in your sphere of influence, your friends, family, colleagues, all know that you're a speaker, and they're really clear on what it is that you speak about. Now, the point of doing this is you may be thinking, but why does that even matter? Like, my mom's not hiring speakers. Yeah, my mom's not hiring speakers either, but she may know of someone who is. Or someone may come to her and say, hey, we're looking for a speaker for this thing. Do you happen to know anyone? Yeah, actually, let me connect with such and such. Therefore, you want to again, make sure everyone in your sphere of influence knows that you're a speaker. The other thing that you can then do, like you kind of touched on, especially if you're speaking of associations or groups that have some type of annual or consistent conference or event is a lot of those groups are already planning on hiring speakers. You don't have to try to convince them to hire speakers.

They're already looking for a speaker. So.

If you and I go speak at some.

Accountants conference.

You'Re not trying to convince them to hire a speaker, they're already planning on hiring a speaker. You're just showing them why you're a good fit. So there's nothing wrong with reaching out to them and starting that conversation with them and showing them why you would be a good fit for their event again as a way to start some of that momentum and to get the ball rolling. Now let's get to the other part of the question on should you speak for free? Now, I think there's a big misconception that speaking for free is a really bad thing. So what I would say is just kind of an overarching idea is if you're going to speak for free, you need to know why you're doing it. Don't just speak for free out of the goodness of your heart. You are providing value and so you need to get value in return. Now ideally, the value that you're getting in return for your message for your speaking comes in the form of a check. But think about other ways that you can get value that don't come in the form of a check. So for, for example, let's imagine that again, you're going to speak at an event and you know, not because the event planner told you, but you know that there's going to be a lot of other potential event planners or other potential people who may be looking for a speaker. So I know if I go speak at the right event and I can book 2, 3, 4 gigs out of that, then I may be willing to do it for a reduced or free amount because I know it's going to lead to significantly more of a business. Other reasons may be we touched on travel earlier. So I have a buddy who, who recently spoke at something in, I think Spain, somewhere in Europe and they had a lower budget. But they said, hey, we have a several kind of line item for budget where we can bring your wife over as well and we'll give you several extra nights at the hotel. So he's like, I got a European vacation out of it for my wife and I that I didn't have to pay for. So it may make sense to provide the service in the form of speaking because he's getting value in other ways. If you have some type of product or service, Jenny, you and I may be like, I'm willing to go speak for free or a discounted rate if you're going to buy a whole bunch of books or if I know that I'm going to pick up additional coaching or consulting clients that may be significantly valuable to me. All that to say, don't just say, I just want to speak, because I just love speaking and I just want to go speak for free. Remember, you are running a business and so you have to treat it as such. It reminds me in the book E Myth by Michael Gerber, he talks about the difference between being a basic and running a bakery, being a baker and running a bakery. And just because you make amazing pies, just because you're a phenomenal baker, doesn't mean that you're good at running a bakery. You have to understand that you may be phenomenal on stage. You may love being on stage, you may love baking pies, but you also have to realize you're running a bakery. If you just give away pies to everyone for free just because I want you to experience my pie, it's my pies are the best. Maybe they are. But you're also running a bakery, and if you give away the pies to everyone, no longer will you be in business. You have to say, I'm providing value and I have to get value in return for what it is that I'm bringing to the table sometimes. Most of the time, ideally that's a check, but sometimes it may make sense for you to not get a check but still receive value in other ways.

So. Well said. The two other exceptions I would add are sometimes it's a charitable organization, goes without saying. If you feel in your heart that you want to help out and contribute or you connect to the mission of the organization, sometimes I'll say yes to that, and then the other time is when I need to boost that momentum again. So I did a slew of things that were free in Q4, being on panels, free webinar. Like, I don't normally do that, but I made an exception because I wanted to get my name and pivot out there again because it had been a couple years. So we gotta wrap up. Grant, this has been so helpful. I want to recap because there's a lot of. There's been a lot of resources that we've mentioned, so I just want to recap for everybody. You can get all the show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com 155 and I'll also offer you as a freebie the Speak Like a Pro virtual conference show notes and key takeaways. So there will be a form at the top. Just fill it out and you'll get that big PDF of notes on some best practices. Pivotmethod.com 155 Grant interviewed me on Pivoting your speaking career at the speaker lab. So visit thespeakerlab.com jenny-blake for an entry point into Grant's awesome podcast, which is the Speaker Lab. I also want to give it a resource. My friend and Momentum member Leanne Hughes launched her podcast last year. First time facilitator, she already has almost a hundred episodes, if not more. So if you're just getting going and want in the room facilitation tips, that's a great one. And I also geeked out on all my best travel tips, tools and apps in episode 77. So pivotmethod.com 77 for all the travel tips since we didn't go too far into those. And last but not least, you can either hire grant@thespeakerlab.com and his team or check out his brand new book the Successful Simple Steps to Make a Living off your message. Grant, it's been so awesome to jam with you. Is there anything else you want to add or one piece of homework for listeners before we close out?

No. This has been so much fun. Jenny. Thanks for letting me hang out with you. I so appreciate it. The biggest thing I would say is that everything we talked about in terms of building your speaking career and finding and booking speaking gigs is simple. Simple, but it's not easy. Simple, but it's not easy. Meaning that it's kind of like if you wanted to lose five pounds. It is simple, but it's not easy. You need to do two things. You need to pay attention to a cheat and you need to exercise. That's it. Simple but not easy. So you can do this, but it does require work. It does require effort. I'd encourage you to definitely pick up the book the Successful speaker and follow the steps in there to be a successful speaker and to find and book gigs.

Amazing. Thank you so much Grant and congrats on your book lunch.

Thanks Jenny.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'M reading, reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.