MBA1458 Guest Teacher: Grant Baldwin – How To Find & Book Speaking Gigs

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Hey O welcome to the Hunter Dollar MBA Show. Bite sized business lessons delivered to you daily 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 Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a guest teacher. Episode today is a very very special guest teacher. Today we have Grant Baldwin from TheSpeakerLab.com and the author of the successful speaker that comes out February 18th. Grab your copy. Grant is a really really good friend of mine and an incredible public speaking coach. He's also an incredible public speaker. He's one of our speakers at our live event webinar Ninja Live and he's helped thousands of people get booked and paid to speak. And guess what? He's here today to do exactly that. He's gonna give you the five steps to find and Book Speaking gigs. If you've been wanting to become a public speake to be an industry leader or to help propel your personal brand or your business brand or earn a living, Grant Baldwin is here to show us how. Can't wait to get into this one. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Grant Baldwin is the founder of thespeakerlab.com I've known Grant for about seven years now and not only is he an incredible public speaker and public speaking coach, but he's a fantastic teacher. This is why I'm so excited to have him as a guest teacher on today's show. He's going to give you so much value. He's going to give you what you need to make sure you're successful as a speaker. Now, if you want to get the most out of today's lesson, take some notes. He's going to be dropping a lot of value. A quick story about Grant before I hand it over to him. I know Grant personally as a friend and I've seen him on stage keynote events in front of thousands of and even though he's a dynamic speaker on stage, he's hilarious. No, he's really funny actually. And incredibly valuable to the event. On a personal level, Grant is sort of an introvert. He's not extroverted by nature. So it goes to show you that you can be a great public speaker even if you're not extroverted. Grant embraces his introverted self and he doesn't change. And this is what I love about him, is that he's a skillful speaker, he's entertaining, but he doesn't feel compelled to be this bombastic character in real life. So without further ado, I'm going to pass it on to Grant Baldwin to teach you the five steps to find and book speaking gigs. Take it away, Grant.

Hey, what's up everybody? This is Grant Baldwin, founder of the Speaker Lab, host of the Speaker Lab podcast, and author of the new book the successful five steps for booking gigs, getting paid and building your platform. So today I will be teaching you through the Speaker Success roadmap. All right, so let's get down to business. So the Speaker Success roadmap is going to make the acronym SPEAK S P E A K. This is a five step process for finding and booking gigs. Alright, so the first one s is select a problem to solve. Select a problem to solve. This is where you need to answer a couple key questions. Number one is who it is that you want to speak to. Who it is that you want to speak to. You cannot try to speak to everyone. This is a mistake that a lot of speakers and entrepreneurs make is that we think like we can just speak to anybody. That just doesn't work. So if I were to ask you, who do you speak to? You don't want to say who do you want me to speak to? Or I speak to humans or I speak to people. Like that doesn't work. You have to be very specific and clear about who it is that you want to speak to. Now, even if you said, well, Grant, I speak to women, okay, that's awesome, but that's still like half of the world's population. So you really want to be narrow and clear about who it is that you speak to. The second part of the equation is, what is the problem that you solve for that audience? What's the problem that you solve for that audience? One of the things you have to remember is that as a speaker, you are in the problem solving business. Business. Just because you care about a problem, just because you think it should matter to other people, doesn't necessarily make it so. So just because you're interested in it doesn't mean organizations or groups actually hire speakers to talk about that. So there has to be this overlap between what you're interested in, what you're passionate about, and what organizations actually book speakers to come in and speak about, and what's the problem that they can solve for that audience. So again, remember, you are in the problem solving business. Now, one of the things we tell our speakers, our students all the time, is that you want to be positioned as a steakhouse and not a buff. Be a steakhouse and not a buffet. And here's what I mean by that. So imagine if, if you and I were going to go grab lunch later, go. Go grab dinner or bite to eat, and we were looking for a really good steak. We have a choice. We could go to a buffet where steak is one of a hundred different things that they offer. Or we could go to a steakhouse where steak is all that they do and they are the best at it, right? They don't do lasagna, they don't do pizza, they don't do tacos, they don't do anything else there but steak. And they are really, really good at steak. That's the type of place that we want to go to. That's the type of place that you, as a speaker. Here's another way to think about this. Let's imagine that God forbid that you had to have brain surgery. Okay? Let's hope that you don't, but let's say that you did. You got a choice. You can go to your local family doctor where they are a doctor, they went to medical school, they probably took a class on surgery. They probably know a little bit more about the brain than you and I do. They're a smart person, they're an educated person. But I Don't know that they've done brain surgery. Or you could go to the person that is a brain surgeon. That's all they do. Day in and day out, all they do is brain surgery. If you break your arm, I'm not your person. If. If you have a cough, I'm not your doctor. If you have asthma attack, I'm not the person to go to. But if you have brain issue, I am the best. Now, it's counterintuitive because we feel like in order to get the most possible gigs, we need to spread the net as far and wide as possible. The more people I could speak to, the more audiences I can talk to, the more problems I can solve, the more topics I can speak about, the more potential opportunities that I have. But the opposite is actually the case. The more narrow, the more specific, the more clear, the more focused you are, the easier it is to find and book gigs. So remember here, you want to be the steakhouse and not the buffet. You want to be the steakhouse, not the buffet. You want to solve a specific problem for a specific audience and not try to do all things for all people. If I ask you, who do you speak to? And you say, well, I speak to humans and say, huh? Okay, what do you speak about? Well, what do you want me to talk about? I can talk about anything. Like that doesn't work. Remember, the first step here is select a problem to solve. All right? The second part of the process is you need to prepare your talk. Prepare your talk. You know what the problem is. Now let's talk about the solution. What's the solution that you're going to bring to the table as a speaker for this problem? Now, this could be in the form of a keynote. It could be a workshop, it could be a seminar, it could be a breakout. But you need to begin to think through what the talk is going to be about and how you're going to solve this. Now, one of the best tips I can give you whenever you're working on your presentation is use stories. Lots and lots and lots of stories. If I said right now, okay, I want to tell you a quick story. You immediately, as a human, are drawn in. You have no idea where this story is going to go. Is this going to be funny? Is this going to be sad? Is this going to be entertaining? Is this going to be interesting? Is this going to be boring? No clue. But we are drawn to stories. We want to know where a story is going to go. So one of your best weapons, one of the simplest things that you can do is to tell a lot of stories. I'll tell you a story. I don't want to leave you hanging. I've noticed this Whenever I pick up my daughter, I take her every Wednesday night to our local church's youth group. And so whenever I pick her up after church and we're driving home, and as a good dad, I'm trying to ask her, like, hey, what did you guys talk about tonight? What did the youth pastor talk about? What'd you learn? And oftentimes, even though she just left, she just heard him speak. She'll say, I think he talked about, you know, friendship or talked about, you know, forgiveness or something like that. She'll talk about, like, these, like, one word, kind of. Which part of it may be just a teenage girl thing. But the other thing that I've noticed is she'll say, oh, he told this story. Oh, he told this story about da da da da. And she can recite the whole story, but she. You can't remember all the other little things that may have been discussed. So people also remember stories. We remember what they talk about because, again, humans relate to stories. So we have select a problem to solve. We have prepare your talk. The E is establish yourself as the expert. Establish yourself as the expert. Now, to do this, you need two key marketing tools. Number one is you need a website. Now, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, if you don't have a website, you. You don't exist. People won't take you seriously. You have to have a website. A website. Also, as a personal brand, I recommend that you use your name as the domain. So I have Grantbaldwin.com. if people are interested in hiring Grant, they come to GrantBaldwin.com. in fact, having your name as a domain is so important that I actually purchased the domain for my wife and all three of my daughters, and now I'm squatting on those until they need them someday, and then I'm going to sell it back to them at an exorbitant rate. So I'm pretty excited about that. So you have to have a website. The second thing you need to have is you need a demo video. You need a demo video. Now, what exactly is a demo video? So think of this like a movie trailer. A movie is, you know, let's say 90 minutes long, two hours long. They take that, they boil it down to two or three minutes, and within those two or three minutes, you have an idea of the plot, the theme, the characters, all of that, and the point of the demo video. And the point of the movie trailer is, is to make you want to see more. Make you want to see more. So you need to have that demo video. Because if you want someone to take you seriously, if you want someone to put their. Their name on the line and put their reputation on the line and hire you, then they need to see something. They don't need to see the entire talk, but they need to see something that gives them comfort and confidence when booking you, that they've done their due diligence, that they know that you are a good fit for their event. So you need a website, you need a demo video. Fourth step. A. Acquire paid speaking gigs. Acquire paid speaking gigs. Now, you may be listening and going, grant Omar, I thought. Wait a minute. I thought this was the whole point. Like, I want to book speaking gigs, right? But again, I want. Let's go all the way back here. You need to do these sequentially. Do you understand now why you need to do these in order? So if you say, hey, I just want to book gigs, awesome. Who do you speak to? I just talk to anybody and everybody. Okay. What do you speak about? Oh, I can speak about anything. All right, that's not going to work. That's not going to work as a speaker. That's not going to work as an entrepreneur. So once you're clear on who you speak to, and then once you're clear on what you speak about, what's the problem that you solve? You have your talk ready, you've prepared your message. Once you have your marketing materials in place, your website, your demo video, then is the part where you start marketing. Now, again, this is the part where you're just getting started. You're starting to take some action here. Because what the mistake is that a lot of speakers make is, all right, I got my website, I got my video, and now I just sit back and I wait for the phone to ring. That doesn't work. Don't make that mistake. You want to continue to move the ball forward. Now, let's point something out here. One of the best ways to book gigs is to connect with organizations and groups that are already hiring speakers. The best potential clients are those who already hire speakers. So conferences, associations, trade shows, events, churches, schools, all of them are already looking for speakers. You don't have to think about whatever conference you attended in the past six months or a year, right? Whatever conference that was, whatever speakers there were, they didn't. Nobody had to convince that organization to hire speakers. They were already planning on hiring speakers. You can just show them why you are a good fit. So reaching out just honestly just googling and emailing potential events can work well. Works well to also connect with other speakers who are speaking at events that you might want to speak at or refer events between one another. Another thing that you can do is to look for opportunities that you can speak at locally. Speaking leads to more speaking so the more you speak, the more you speak. Speaking is very momentum business so you can also start to build word of mouth and referrals from other events that you have spoke at in the past. And then finally, last one is K Know when to scale. Those that are interested in speaking are also probably interested in writing a book or doing a course or doing a podcast or doing any number of other things. And so what I want you to recognize is something's going to come first, something's going to come last. There's no right or wrong amount of speaking to do. Some people want to be a full time speaker and speak 100 plus times a year. Other people say hey, I've got a full time coaching consulting service based business but I would love to speak five times a year. Both are fine, but you got to think through and figure out which one makes the most sense for you. All right guys, this is Grant Baldwin from the SpeakerLab. If you want to continue learning about all things speaking, definitely check out our new book the Successful five steps for booking Gigs, Getting paid and building your platform. You can learn more@thespeakerlab.com book. Also, if you enjoy this podcast then you might enjoy our podcast Och Omar has been a guest on. You can find that over at the Speaker Lab Podcast. Again, that is the Speaker Lab Podcast. All right, thanks for hanging out with us my friends. Thanks for joining me today.

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Gas snacks, tolls this trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood.

What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got 1 line of 5D for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top text and data detour to Metro.

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The past 180 days.

What an amazing guest teacher lesson by Grant Baldwin. If you loved today's lesson, there is a lot more where that came from. Mark your calendars. February 18th is when Grant's new book the Successful speaker comes out. Better yet, go to Amazon right now and pre order the book now. If you want a real life example of everything Grant taught today implemented on a website, head on over to omarzenholm.com that's O M a r Z E n h o m.com I've implemented everything that Grant has mentioned in today's lesson on my own website, on my own speaker page. I got my video. I speak specifically about certain things in business. I put into play everything in the speake formula that Grant taught us today. Thanks again Grant Baldwin for the great lesson. That wraps up today's lesson. Make sure you hit subscribe right now and whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Subscribing is absolutely free and it allows you to have access to all of our archive episodes. Over 1400 business lessons. You can subscribe using any podcast app. We're on them all. Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Overcast, Himalaya, you name it, we're on it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Public speaking has opened so many doors for me, I can't even enumerate them. Yes, it's helped my business and brand and allowed me to make sales, but also has opened so many opportunities for me. I've met incredible people at these conferences, other speakers that I have always admired. I shared stages with them and spoke with them on panel discussions and got to get to know and become friends with. I've gotten to learn so much about what makes a great live event so I could do the same with my own business. I've had opportunities to be introduced to incredible thought leaders and people in the media, all because I decided I gotta get better as a speaker. I gotta put something together so that I can be able to offer my expertise on stage. And I followed everything that Grant has taught today. Luckily, I've been a friend of his for years and been following his work, so he's been a tremendous amount of help. So apply what you learned today and reap the benefits really soon. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

Gas, snacks, tolls.

This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood.

What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxt and data detour to Metro.

Get that more for your money feeling.

Only at Metro by T Mobile.

Just bring your number. $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available if with Metro or.

T Mobile in the past 180 days.