MBA1401 How to Start Getting on Stages

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It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits bring. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey O welcome to the Hundred Dollar NBA show. The business workout. Your business needs to get into shape every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn how to start getting on stages. Today's episode is all about getting started. This is not about creating a career in public speaking where you're getting paid thousands of dollars. This is about you using conferences and stages to build your brand, your brand awareness and a way to network and to grow your audience in person. Many of us have been building businesses for some time but haven't leveraged this vertical, haven't really focused on getting on stages at conferences, being a speaker so we can network with other great minds, other speakers and attendees. I know it can be hard to get started. Like how do you become a speaker at these conferences? How do you get invited to these conferences? What does it entail? And that's what I'm gonna break down in today's lesson. I've been there. I'm gonna give you the step by step instructions you need so you can become a speaker in your space, a thought leader and somebody that will Be called upon to speak at an industry conference in your market. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. When you are a speaker at a conference at an event, it amplifies your experience times 10. Okay? It makes it a whole lot easier for you to meet people, to meet the attendees, to network with other speakers and possibly collaborate with them in the future. When you're a speaker at a conference, it's like you're the guest of honor at a dinner. This is actually a great thing if you're introverted, because you might find it hard to approach people. So you don't need to worry about it because people will approach you. They'll see you as one of the speakers at the event, they'll see you on stage, and at the very least, they'll come up to you and say, loved your speech, thank you for sharing your knowledge. And they might have some questions. And it's a great conversation starter. It opens up all kinds of opportunities for you and your business as well. Well, as you just simply getting better at talking about what you do. But how do you get started? How do you actually get on these stages and get invited or get accepted to speak at these conferences? The first thing I want to mention is that most industry conferences, for the most part, will not pay you as a speaker. The better conferences that are well organized have been around for years. They will pay for your expenses, your flights, your accommodation. They'll even, you know, take you out to dinner, invite you to speak or dinner kind of gatherings. So they'll do that. But for most industry conferences, these larger conferences dealing with the topic in your area of expertise, whether it's marketing or sales or fitness or health, this is kind of the setup Some of the other conferences, especially if you're not a keynoter or a headliner, you're a breakout speaker or workshop leader, they will not cover your expenses even. They might just comp your ticket, meaning that you can go to conference for free. Now, I start with this because you might be asking yourself, is it worth going if I'm not getting paid? And is it worth going if I have to pay, you know, hotel flights to make this conference and take time away from my schedule? My answer is, if the conference attracts your target market in your business, the people you're trying to attract, then it is worth it because you're going to get to know people that will be your customers one day. The speakers at these conferences are most likely going to be potential partners where you can partner up and do some cross Promotion or some sort of collaboration or even integration if you're a software company. So in my opinion, it is worth it. And usually it takes some time. And you have to be well known as a speaker in your space to be in that category where they'll pay your expenses and you'd be keynoting the conference or something like that. So just keep that in mind. You might have to pay to play at the start. Now, having said that, if you've never spoken on a stage at a conference, getting accepted as a speaker is not very straightforward because they don't really have much evidence that you can deliver for them that you're actually a good speaker, that you have something of value or you have some expertise that you can share with their audience at the conference. And remember, these conferences are a business. They're getting speakers so they can sell tickets. So it obviously helps if you're known in the space, if you have a following on social, you have an audience, whether it's an email list or a podcast or a YouTube channel or all this is leverage for you because it allows them to say, hey, look at this person. You know this person, she's very well known. Come and see her live at our conference. But one of the things that can really help you is some sort of evidence that, hey, I could deliver for you. And this is called a speaker reel, a video of you speaking. And this could be a video of one speech you've done, or a montage of speeches, or a playlist of speeches. And you don't have to go full all out and have a whole website dedicated to your speaking career. You could literally just have a section in your about page. Hey, want to book so and so for your next conference? Here are some videos of, you know, so and so on stage. And when you apply to speak at conferences, you can reference this page so they can see you in action. So I mentioned the word apply. And many of these industry conferences have a call for speakers, which means that you have the opportunity to apply to be a speaker at this conference. So I mentioned applying. So many of these industry conferences will have an opportunity for you to apply to be a speaker. A call for speakers, what they call it, and it's about, you know, between nine and six months out before the conference. So you gotta keep your eye out on the conferences in your industry and, you know, kind of remind yourself to check out their websites when the call for speakers is open so you can start applying to become a speaker. This process is very, very popular for larger conferences, conferences that have Many tracks and, you know, a few days, three, four, five days, if you go to the speaker page of their past event, we're talking about, you know, 30, 40, 50 plus speakers at the event. Smaller industry conferences might have, you know, half a dozen speakers, maybe even less, maybe, you know, 10 speakers. Usually those kind of conferences, those conferences will reach out to certain speakers themselves and there will be a closed application. There's no real application. It's more of a reference thing. They recommend each other or they know who they're looking for. Right. So the larger conferences are actually easier to get to and easier to get on a stage there. At that conference. For example, if you're in the Internet marketing space, you know, Social media Marketing World is a huge conference that Michael Selzner throws off every year. There's, you know, thousands upon thousands of people and there's so many speakers, there's about 90 speakers or something like that. So your chances of leading a workshop or getting on stage are higher. And they have an application process that you can go through. So if you're new at this, this is where you want to kind of focus on the larger conferences. Keep an eye out when you can apply, and you're going to apply to be a speaker and this application is the information they're going to use the basis, decision on. So make sure you sell yourself. Make sure you give enough information about, you know, what you want to speak about, give them examples of, you know, the points you want to cover, and make it as valuable as possible. Again, referencing any videos of you speaking is going to help. Now you might be saying, well, I don't have any videos of me speaking on stage. I've never spoken on stage before. Omar. No problem. We're going to make sure we sort that out. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to speak at a local meetup. Okay? You don't have to go to a conference. You can speak at a local meetup with, you know, 10, 20 people at a co working space. Check out the local meetups in your area, in your niche. Find out when the next one is. Reach out to the organizer and say, hey, I would love to offer a workshop or a speech or a keynote or whatever in this space, in this group, on this topic. One of the easiest ways to get a yes is to sponsor that meetup. Okay? If you have 20 people that usually go to this meetup, great pizzas and drinks for everybody, it's Gonna cost you 100, 150 bucks. And you sponsor the event, you're getting on Stage and you're gonna have a chance to speak and get it recorded. You can hire a freelance videographer to shoot it for you for an hour. It's like one hour, two hours, get them to edit it for you. Or you can do it yourself if you like. If you have some editing sk, just make sure your camera is on a tripod and you're mic'd up so you're getting your audio. Even if you just mic yourself up and put your iPhone or your smartphone on a tripod and shoot that video, it's gonna be great and good enough for a speaker reel, for a video to show you speaking on stage and showing that you can add value to an audience. And you can take that video, pop it on your about page, pop out on your, you know, area where you talk about, you can offer your services as a speaker, and you're good to go. Now, a word of caution. When you're getting started and you're trying to get on stage and you're applying for these conferences, it's a numbers game, okay? You're not going to get a yes automatically. Sometimes you're going to get some rejections. You're most likely going to get a no reply. And people just don't reply sometimes. Don't be discouraged. Keep on trying. I had to do that when I got started. I applied to conferences and they never replied to me. I just kept on applying, I kept on trying, and eventually I got on a stage. And what happens is that once you get on a stage, once you actually have the opportunity to speak at a conference, you focus on delivering amazing value. Do a great job on stage, because word of mouth is powerful. If you can again, video that performance, that speech on stage, so you can add it to your speaker reels, you can add it as one of the videos they can watch in your playlist of videos, and you continue to do that. I remember one year I dedicated to myself, I said, hey, I need more reps. I need to get on stage more. I need to kind of grow my reputation as a good speaker on stage. I'm going to dedicate this year to getting as many stages. And on that year, I got on 10 stages. I was traveling every month, but I had tons of material. I have tons of video footage, and it set me up for the future and all the years after that. So if this is something that you want to work on, just dedicate a year to getting on as many stages as possible. And it could be local, it doesn't have to be international or anywhere else. This is an exercise for you to get better on stage and to build your reputation as a great speaker, not to get in front of thousands of people.

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To wrap up today's lesson, getting outstages can help you and your business and your brand really grow. It's a long term investment. It's not something that you're going to see immediate results. You might, you might see people signing up for your service or your product right at the conference. What we're trying to do is become an industry leader and a thought leader in your niche. And the more you're associated with these conferences and these organizations and other speakers that are thought leaders, the more that's going to be true. Getting started might be a little bumpy, a little slow at the start, but I gave you a nice plan, some nice steps you could take so you can get the ball rolling. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you love what you hear, let us know in an iTunes rating and review. Would love to hear from you. Every review I read it. I love reading reviews and knowing what you love about the show. Also, if you leave us an itunes rating and review, you enter our weekly random draw we call free ride Friday. Every Friday, we do a random draw to see who's going to win a lifetime membership to one of our programs, like our course easy course that retails for $500. Somebody wins it for free every Friday. Just leave us a review on itunes. Listen in on Friday. It's that simple. It's our way to say thanks for leaving us love on itunes. All right, before I go, I want to leave you with this. If getting on stage is something that you're not interested in, it doesn't make you feel good. It's not one of your goals. It's okay. You don't have to. It's a strategy. It's a tactic. There are many others that you can take on for your business. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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