296: How Speaking Can Grow Your Business

You're speaking, which is great, but it's not growing your business. And I know why. So let's fix that. Hey movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're going to talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved. This moved me. What is moving you? Hey everybody, welcome back to This Moved Me. My name is Sally Koering Zimney. I'm your speaker coach and I empower big-hearted entrepreneurs like you to leverage the power of speaking so that you can grow your authority, your impact, and and your revenue and finally escape the time suck and frustration of under-recognition. I'm going to help you step out front with more confidence and clarity and joy. Yes. All right. Now, today on the show, we are talking about a really important idea, and that is that speaking can actually grow your business. It's not just this fun thing that you get asked to do sometimes. And it can be more than just something that makes you money every once in a while. No, it can actually be an intentional part of your business, a part of a funnel. And that's pretty great. Now, as entrepreneurs, we have to be intentional about everything in our business more than other people because we are busy. We are doing all the things. There is a lot going on. And if we aren't intentional about our approaches, we can feel like a crazy person. Let's first make sure that you have grabbed the guidebook, the Get Started with Speaking guidebook, beemoved.com/gss. It is my new guidebook for you, and it's a map, and it lays out how to go from an idea about speaking, right? The message that you want to share, putting it together in a way that helps grow your impact and your authority and your revenue all the way to scaling that talk so that it is really part of the flow of your business and making you money, bringing you leads, doing all the things that we really want and need speaking to do for us. It's the map. You gotta grab it. Let's start here. Bemoved.com/gss. I haven't talked much about this, but this fall I've been taking a small group of these awesome entrepreneurs through this new program I created called the Movers Lab. Movers, if you didn't know, are my speakers. They are people who have stepped in to work with me in any way. They're following me on Instagram, or they are in my Emerging Speaker Society Facebook group that's free, and you should probably come join that. Or they're people who are doing STS with me. So FYI, I use that term a lot. And if you're new here, that's what that means. So the Movers Lab are STS or Signature Talk Studio alums who are focused on taking that talk and scaling it so that they can make more money with it. They are focused on making sure that they are intentionally leveraging this incredible asset that they now have for their business. And it's been awesome. It's a new program. I'm super jazzed about it. And the whole premise of this program is that we are placing speaking intentionally in our business. We're no longer willy-nilly about it. We're being intentional and focused and deliberate about it. There are 3 things that we are focused on that I want to share with you, because if you want to leverage speaking in your business, if you want to really use it as a tool, a funnel to help grow your impact and your authority and your revenue, there are 3 things that you have got to be thinking about. You need a signature talk. We've talked about this before. It will save you time. It is repeatable. In other words, you're not creating things willy-nilly. You're customizing content that you already have for the audience that you are about to speak to. Once you have your signature talk, then we're gonna think about how to really truly leverage it, how to be intentional with it. And the first thing I want you to be thinking about is what are you ultimately selling? Now, there might be some of you out here who all you want to sell is really the speaking and you want speaking to be your core offering. And that is awesome. You definitely need a signature talk. But for those of you who are using speaking or leveraging speaking, you're focused your speaking on ultimately bringing people in because you have something else you want them to do with you, like coaching or small group mastermind or one-on-one services, whatever it might be. You can use speaking to sell that, but you've gotta know what it is that you are ultimately selling, right? So we're thinking about a customer journey. So number one, what are you ultimately selling? The second thing that you have to understand and create for yourself is a funnel. Sometimes the role that speaking plays in our business is at the top of a funnel. I call that kind of speaking lead gen speaking. That might look like you're on a podcast or you're doing an online summit, or perhaps you're speaking at a conference. It may not be paying you money in that moment. The purpose of speaking in that moment is to bring people into you, to help them step in closer to you, which is awesome, but it doesn't do any good unless you know where you're taking them after that, that you have a funnel set up so that they come to you and they're like, oh my gosh, that was awesome. I'm gonna look her up on Instagram. She is fabulous. Click link. Or she told me to go sign up for this cool thing here, so I'm gonna do that. Or that's an awesome download. And that takes you to the next step in the customer journey. Ultimately, if it starts with speaking, it needs to end with that thing that you have decided you're ultimately selling. Or we flip that funnel, and instead of speaking being the very first thing that you do in the funnel, speaking is the last thing that you do in the funnel. There may be people out there who, uh, speaking is an arm of your business, And that is the thing that you are ultimately selling. I call this funnel revenue generation funnel. That's revenue generation speaking, or revgen. Revgen speaking, I do a lot of. That can be more like trainings or workshops or keynotes where your audience might be slightly different than the audience that you are speaking to. You're speaking to in a lead gen funnel. For instance, when I do lead gen speaking, I'm talking to entrepreneurs like you, and I'm inviting you in to come join me in my Emerging Speaker Society Facebook group. And then there you get lots of value around all kinds of things related to speaking, and you're like, oh, I want to learn more from Sally, and then you join one of my workshops, and then you're like, I, she's right, I really do need a signature talk. So then I joined the Signature Talk Studio and you join the studio with me and then we're BFFs forever. That's my lead gen funnel. My rev gen funnel is the opposite. My rev gen funnel is for a slightly different audience. Typically my rev gen funnel, I'm working with an event planner or I'm working with a corporate trainer or an ERG inside a company, which is employee resource group. Once I'm talking to that interested party, the speaking is the ultimate result. So I'm trying to sell them on my speaking because I can make a lot of money with that speaking. It's a slightly different audience and it's a slightly different customer journey. Each funnel that you create, you might be selling something slightly different. So you've got to be really clear on what it is that you're selling and the customer journey that your people take in order to get there. Whether you are selling the speaking or you're selling your services, they belong in different types of funnels and they're gonna be different types of journeys. Now, if you want, uh, a visual on these funnels, if you wanna learn a little bit more about this whole process, I really do think it's a good idea for you to go grab the guidebook because It explains it in a little more detail. And if you really want to take it deeper, you can join the Insider Mini Course that I created that goes much more in depth on the how to put your speaking into a funnel. Now, the third thing that we really want to do to help speaking grow our business is we want to, of course, then find opportunities. That's a lot easier said than done, but it's also a lot easier than we you tend to think. When you are focused on the approach of finding opportunities for yourself, what I want you to thinking about are what are the contacts that you have and are you leveraging them? Who can you reach out to? I think of them as low-hanging fruit. It's always good to start there. Start with your low-hanging fruit. Then I want you to think about, have you made it clear to the world? Have you declared to the world that you actually are a speaker? Because most of the time We haven't. People sometimes just don't even know that you want to do this or that you are doing it. A really simple way to do that is just add speaker to your titles in all of your social media handles. Piece of cake. Now, obviously there is a lot more to finding opportunities and getting the gig and making sure that you are really scaling your talk. It's more than we can get into in a podcast episode. But I will say that the guidebook and the Insider system has a ton of information there that can help you in the process of really scaling your speaking. So it's worth grabbing. Now, the bottom line is this: it doesn't just automatically happen. There's a rare bird out there that just gets plopped into the speaking world. As entrepreneurs, We have to be intentional about how we leverage speaking. Otherwise, it can be a huge time suck and a waste of our energy and exhausting and kind of panic-inducing. And we don't ultimately get anything out of it that is the most beneficial to us and our business. Speaking in and of itself, it's joyful, it's fun, it's connecting. And hey, If you just want to speak more because you love it, I say awesome, keep going. I was there forever. Like, I just enjoy it and I want to do more of it. And then I realized I am really wasting this opportunity and I'm not leveraging it to bring people into my business. I was thinking of it as two totally different things, but they're not. One can be a tool for you in your business if you are intentional about it. It can help you grow your business. Now, Movers, if you want to learn more about not just stepping into speaking and placing speaking intentionally in your business, but really how to double your business with speaking. Yes, I said it, double, because that's what happened with me. And I want you the same thing to happen for you. I want you to come join us for this awesome video series that essentially launches speaking as an intentional part of your business. It will help you take speaking to the next level, not just to be an awesome speaker, but to be the go-to in your industry. It's gonna help you totally rock it. This series opens in a few weeks, and it's all a part of our Intentional Step into the launch of the Signature Talk Studio. So come and join us for this awesome series that's going to help you launch yourself as not just a speaker, but a speaker who is leveraging speaking on behalf of your business or your idea. It's going to help you place it intentionally in your business and take your speaking and your business to the next level. So come join us at bemoved.com/videos. Now, if you're wondering, Sally, should I do the guidebook or should I do the videos? What I would tell you is you should probably do both. The guidebook is just a handy resource for you. It's free. Go grab it. This video series is also free. There's some really important mindset shifts in the video series. That are essential if you want to take the next step. All right, everybody, thanks again for joining me here on This Moved Me. I am truly so grateful that you are here and we are a few weeks away from 300 episodes. I can't even wrap my head around it. It's, it's amazing. And here's what I've decided over the last few weeks. I've been asking for your input, like, what should we do? And I want to hear from you, but I need you to head over to my podcast page on Be Moved. Go to bemoved.com/podcast, and there's a little speak pipe app thing that's kind of embedded on that website. There's a word for it. I can't think of it. Anyway, once you go there, click the button and you can leave me a voicemail. I would love to hear from you, and I want to highlight all of you on the show. So tell me a little bit about yourself, tell me what your connection is to the show and why you listen, and then tell me about a favorite aha that you have, a favorite show that you remember, a favorite guest, whatever it is that you want to share with the fellow movers. Then we'll include some links back to those shows so that we can all re-enjoy them. It'll be a fun look back, and I cannot wait to hear from you. I can't wait to hear your voices, honestly. So jazzed. And my huge thanks to those of you who have hopped over to Apple Podcasts and left a positive rating and review. Every one of them means the world to me. Sharing these episodes with my community over the last few years has been a labor of love and joy and frustration and challenge and all of the things. And it means so much to me that we've done it. Together. All right, our movement starts with you. This moved me. What is moving you, my friends? I'd love to hear. See you next week.