338: How a VA Can Help Your Speaking Business with Molly Rose

Hey movers, it's Sally Z with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're gonna 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 I'm so glad that we are here and that you are here and we are talking today with Molly Rose. I cannot wait to hear a little bit more from her because she's a systems expert. She works with VAs, she is a VA, she works with VAs, she helps people really scale their businesses. And she and I had a quick connect about the potential of speakers to use their VAs more effectively. I have to tell you, this is a conversation I've been having with some of you for a long time, and some of the speakers in my Lab Mastermind in particular, they are working really, really hard to make more money with their speaking and scale their business. And there's a lot to do. Around it. There's a lot to do and we need help. Most of us cannot do this by ourselves because speaking is one of the things that we do. It's not, not necessarily everything that we do. And so getting everything to work together is so important. And that is exactly what Molly does. So I'm gonna bring her in. We're gonna hear from her, ask her a few questions. This is short and sweet, team. So hello, Molly.

Welcome. I am so happy to be here and supporting your audience. I love public speakers of all genres.

Yeah, we're kind of a special bunch, aren't we? And creative, squirrely, squirrely. Well, it's probably makes your work so needed. Part of the reason we're doing what we're doing has nothing to do with logistics and systems and process and the stuff that is necessary, but not, at least for me, not in my wheelhouse. So we need help.

Yes.

So tell me about how you got into this work and are helping entrepreneurs and small business owners really scale their businesses. Yes, absolutely.

I always start by saying I used to be a corporate cubicle dweller, and then I, I realized that you could make money selling your services and skill sets to amazing people. So I created a virtual assistant business, not even realizing what I was doing. And my first client was a public speaker, very successful public speaker who was 90 days plus on his invoices, had so much stress around, is the contract signed? Is this happening? And, and I came in and just created a whole system and workflow and he got I mean, thousands of dollars came flying in just from the pure effort following up. So it just snowballed from there. So I've supported several public speakers since, and it's just been, it's been great. Much needed.

Yeah. I will say the, the nightmare of where are the invoices at? They're just sitting in there. The contracts, was the contract signed? Which contract did I send them? Where, like how many payments have been made? It's a detail nightmare. Just speaking for myself, it's a detail nightmare. And even bringing in help, right? So there's a place that we get to where we're like, I need help. We're waving the white flag of surrender. Ideally, we're not waiting until we are 90 days post-Sally Koering Zimney, right? So when do you, you know, if you were talking to a group of public speakers or aspiring public speakers, how do you, when's the time where they need to bring in help?

Yeah, I think this is a great question because if you're just getting started, I think it's an investment you might not want to make. So when you're getting started, really take a look at your system or your workflow, right? So when a lead comes in, I'm just going to walk you through this because I think, and this is something you can do or a virtual assistant can do on your behalf when you're ready, but an inquiry comes in, hopefully you have some form on your website and then you schedule a call with them, discovery call to learn more about what's going on. I do believe when someone else does this for you, they will sell you higher than you'll sell yourself. I see it happen all the time. You will negotiate yourself down. You'll, you'll, they'll, they'll wave their nonprofit flag or, oh, our budget. So that's a side note. And then from there, it's, you follow up with an email and Talk through what the discovery call laid out, the date, the time, the budget, the content, and they say yes or no. And then, well, initial invoice is sent, a contract is sent. Are they signed? Okay, we're moving forward. Then a marketing email should be sent with your headshot, your bio, your presentation intro, all the stuff that they're going to bombard you with, with 5 different emails. Just make it to 5, 1 email, and then you book your travel. If you're not, if you're, you know, within 60 days, they usually say. And then is invoice 2 due? Gotta send your second invoice to collect your balance on or before your speaking engagement. You show up, you speak, you send a thank you note, and then I usually send a, a request for a testimonial. I think that's something that's usually missed at the end. Now you— huge. You can do that. You can certainly do that and use a system. I use something called 17Hats, or there's Domsetta. There's all sorts of things.

Mm-hmm.

You can literally with clicks of buttons, you can just kind of go down the list or an assistant when you, when you get a little bit bigger can do this for you. And I always say to my clients, you just have to show up and speak. We're going to do everything else. The only thing they might have to do is have a content call if there's some questions about the thing.

That's it.

So, yeah, I think that's great.

So I think what I'm hearing you say, right, is from the very beginning, thinking about how it lives in the system rather than waiting for the request to come in where they're like, can we check in about this? And oh, can we get an intro? And can you send a headshot? Because you're right, it's like death by a thousand cuts once they're in your system. So setting that all up and setting out the process for that upfront, I think is so important. And you said something that I want to underline because it, to me, it's one of the most underutilized opportunities, and that is what happens after you speak. And that's the place where truthfully, for years, I, because I was just like, duh, that was fun, that went great, they loved it. And then I was just like, da da da, and move on to the next thing. And you're missing out on their feedback.

First of all, but, but their testimonials, their love for you, their referrals, like asking for referrals.

Who else do you know who might love this? Like, thank you so much for your feedback and insight. You know, who else can I work with? Because that is going to get you in so much faster than any cold pitches or reachouts. So it's, it's the part you could still automate so much of that, but If we don't include that in the process, we're, we're making it harder. Yeah.

9 times out of 10, I'd say it doesn't happen. Yeah.

So what in your experience, what else are we missing as speakers? Like when you step into our business and you're looking at this, it's like, what are the glaring things that you're like, oh my gosh, besides something like a follow-up like this, what, what are we not thinking of? What are we missing? What are the opportunities for us to make things easier? Ourselves at scale.

So what I always, this might not necessarily be a system thing, but what I always remind my speakers of is, and again, the role that they should have is, is very minimal. Show up, speak. But when you're there, you should be working that room. Like every single person there is a potential client to hire you next. So I think 9 times out of 10, my speakers get rebooked by someone that saw them in the audience. So don't be the speaker that's gonna come in, speak for an hour, and bolt. Like, you're there, and I, I tell that when I tell my speakers, I'm like, they're not just gonna leave. You know those, those types of speakers. They're gonna hang out, perfect. No. And that's you just adding value. And by doing that, they'll refer you or, or you'll, they'll go up to the person that booked you and say, hey, can I get their information? Or they'll find you online. Yeah, all the time.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's smart for you for so many reasons to do this because not only does it warm up an audience to you so that by the time you're on stage, they're, they already have a sense that you are invested in what's going on, who they are, what they're struggling with. You've made some warm, actual warm connections with people who are sitting out there watching you, but it also is. Like an investment in the event itself and the event organizer. And it doesn't feel like just an exchange of goods. It's a relationship.

Yep.

Absolutely. That is when, when all we have to do is show up and speak and be in relationship with people, it's like, sign me up for that.

I know. The best part about it is public speakers in general, want, they're extroverts, they want to go work the room and meet everyone and say, hey, you know, where admins like me are like, okay, I'm going to be over here in my introvert corner. So it should lend well to you anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. It's true. But I think we are often so overwhelmed with all the other stuff that we end up shortchanging those pieces, which are absolutely critical. You mentioned you use 17 Hats.

Yes, I love it.

I used 17hats for a long time and switched to HoneyBook.

So I knew it's a HoneyBook.

Yeah, same thing. Same thing. I just happened to be working with someone who was helping me think through the systems in a HoneyBook way. And it's been, it's been great. They're very, very similar. And Dubsado, very, very similar. So what is when both, if people have not haven't found a system for themselves like that and they're just doing it all by hand and kind of following the process through by hand, what should they be looking for in a system?

So you want to find workflows, right? So all, all these systems we just mentioned have workflows, which means there are pieces of layers of this process that I just mentioned, the, the sending of the first invoice, the sending of the contract, the sending of the second invoice as an example. I listed probably 10 things, but each of those become a part of the workflow and they're either pre-scheduled, determined by a date, or that you'll get a message prompting you to take action on this and either check the box that travel's been confirmed. And then once you check the box, it'll trigger the next thing. So it, it just does it without thinking. And this is where you could remove the admin piece if you needed to.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Cause some of that can happen really automatically, but even with HoneyBook, I'm tapping into my VA a lot being like, oh, can you check on this? And oh, like, cause I just can't keep track. I just can't keep track. So the system doesn't necessarily replace the idea of a VA and it, they can work together and just that person can be the expert of the system rather than Because I'm not an expert in this system. No, no.

And I, I just want to echo that there really is a place where you can be in your business where you literally show up and speak. You get on the plane, you show up and speak, and everything else someone else does in a very automated way. Like, that's reality. So, ugh, sounds so dreamy.

Yeah, I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. So you mentioned somebody else doing your qualification call or discovery call or lots of different names for it. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah, so certainly you want to find the right person and get them very comfortable with you. When I work with speakers, I watch as much footage as I can of their presentations, hopefully get the chance to come see them speak live and just, I always say, kind of enroll in their messaging, enroll in their, um, and then they'll sell you better than you'll sell themselves. And it. And again, where I see this work the most is when they're warm leads, they're coming into your lead funnel, not someone that's going out trying to book you. That's very, very challenging, especially as a new speaker. They are the first line of defense to do that discovery call and just learn, ask questions. You can coach them if there's something you, you're good at doing, you know, teach them how you would sell or the, the probing, interesting questions to ask to get them really in. All of that and I'll get it.

And then love it. Yeah. I mean, uh, there are other parts of my business where I've handed stuff like that off, but I've always operated under the belief. It's interesting to hear you say that cuz I've always operated under the belief that we, we sell ourselves. Mm-hmm.

Best.

But it's a really interesting point and something to think about of like, you're right. How many times have I? Just in the moment been like, yeah, they don't have the budget that I was thinking they did. I'm, I bet I can make this work. And I negotiate myself down versus you coming in and you don't have this, the stake is there's a minimum buy rate product that you're gonna stick to. And I'm not responsible for setting that. Barrier.

Yes.

Yes.

And, and there is always wiggle room, right? We always kind of can work that, but you'll still do it way differently. But yeah, I think that's interesting. And so another workaround for that that I've seen is if, if you, the speaker, takes the initial discovery call, just don't touch— if you're not good at this, don't touch money. Just say, hey, my booking manager is going to call you to follow up and she'll give you all the details. Deflect it, you can certainly do that.

I also, while we're on this topic, and this was really interesting, one of my speakers was talking about how, yeah, she doesn't do any emails about money. She doesn't call up about money. She doesn't, there's no negotiating about money. She just, that happens through her VA or she'll just say, you know, my, yeah, I like booking agent. I think that's great too, right? Because that's essentially what you're doing and that's essentially who you are. Activities to the potential audience, you know, event planner, conference organizer, whoever it is. So I think that's a really interesting, fun tip.

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. What else are you thinking about that you're like, ooh, I really want speakers to know this? Is there anything that we are— obvious that we are leaving on the table here that we wanna pick up?

Yeah, you might've already covered this, but something that's helped me that I didn't put in place until probably a few years ago with some of my speakers is a website, a webpage that holds all the assets, media meeting planner pages. You probably talk about this. That was a game changer because it, again, my goal always is to eliminate the back and forth and the email. I hate email, as I'm sure most people do.

Yeah.

Uh, thinking of ways to get ahead of that, making things easily accessible to people before they even ask for it.

That's— love it.

That was big. Yeah.

Yeah. Sometimes I call it a media kit. Page, right? I like the meeting planner kit, you know, putting all those resources in one place. That's brilliant. Your bios, all your photos, high-res, low-res, any rider things. If you're, if you have some specific expectations, I mean, none of my speakers, I'm like, let's be easy to work with. And there may be a few things that you want to request and ask for and Bios, introductions. I include on my media kit, I include some coaching around how to introduce me because I have some requests around how to be introduced because what I, what I don't want to happen is I get introduced and then they want to chat beforehand. Like, if you want to chat, let's chat after. Versus beforehand, because I want to control the start, which is so important. So there's a few things like that. If you, especially to personalize that experience, hold their hand as much as possible. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And avoid the email.

And avoid email. And one other thing I want to bring up, because I think this might come into play if you're a new speaker, you're like, how would I pay for someone? How do I validate this? Certainly if you bring a virtual assistant in and they're doing other things for you, running other aspects of your business, it's probably easy to roll this into their hourly rate. But also you could tie the fee to the, the price of the speaking engagement. So give them a commission or a set rate, whatever it is. I use commission.

It's great.

It's really rewarding. It's motivating. You know, it's a fraction of what you're going to make, so it's not a big deal.

Brilliant. Brilliant. And that's okay with you? You like that model?

Love it.

Love it. Motivating. It's, yeah, it's great.

As long as that's all we're doing, doing the speaking stuff. Yeah, it's great. Right, right.

Okay. So where can, if people are curious and they're like, oh yes, I so desperately need more of this in my speaking life, where can we find out more about you?

Yeah, so I'm Molly Rose Speed on all social channels. My website's mollyrosespeed.com, and if you're ever looking to hire a virtual assistant, I own a placement company. Called virtualassistantmanagement.com.

Nice. You're doing all the things.

All the things.

Way to go. I love it. Well, Molly, it's so fun to connect with you, to meet you, to bring some of your expertise to our speakers here. And I'm so excited. Let's say we're going to do the— we got to do this again. We're going to do this again. Thanks. I might bring you into my Movers Lab group. I was just like, hmm, let's check her out again. We'll talk. We'll go even deeper. We'll go even further. Awesome. Okay. Well, thank you, Molly. We are done here today, team. Thanks for joining us for this week's training. We'll be back again next week. We are getting ready for our October 6th event. I mean, this event, I cannot wait. This event is going to be so amazing. It's called Story Impact. It's a half-day virtual event. It's free. And I want to see all of you there. If you have not yet registered for it, don't worry. There's plenty of room and plenty of time, but I want you to come join us and you can join us at bmoove.com/storyimpact. So bmoove.com/storyimpact. Come join us. And what we're doing at this half-day virtual event is we're going to be moving you around the roadmap of becoming a moving speaker. And of course, it starts with your story. So we're gonna help you get a little clear on what that story is and then put it into a structure that you can then use in all parts of your business, in your big stage keynote moments, every day showing up on social. That story is the heart of your business. And so getting clear on that and getting confident so that you can really get courageous with it is what it is all about. So I hope to see you there. Thanks for joining us again here on the show. Thanks again, Molly. See you all soon.