In this solo podcast episode, Sally Koering Zimney guides solopreneurs and purpose‑driven speakers on turning speaking into a strategic business engine. She recounts her own shift from speaking for organizations to building a speaking‑centric business, emphasizing the need for a signature talk anchored in clear intention. Zimney introduces the Story Diamond framework, positioning a speaker’s story at the center of an ecosystem that includes courses, coaching, books, events, and products. She outlines two primary funnel models: (1) speaking as a lead‑generation top‑of‑funnel tool that drives audience growth, email list building, and downstream offers; and (2) speaking as a revenue‑generation bottom‑of‑funnel tool where the speaking engagement itself is the paid product. By combining these, she proposes an “impact‑gen” model that simultaneously builds authority, generates leads, and creates direct speaking revenue. Throughout, she offers practical steps—crafting a signature talk, mapping the talk to business goals, and designing intentional funnels—to help speakers become the “boss of their speaking” rather than being controlled by ad‑hoc speaking gigs.
Chapters
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 Hello, hello, hello. We are talking about being the boss of your speaking business. Okay. And, and some simple things we can do to try and make sure that we are really leveraging speaking and we are not just speaking, not just kind of getting our butts kicked by our own speaking business. Now, Here's what I mean by that, and use me as an example. So for years, I kind of grew up speaking on behalf of another organization. I, I was doing tons of speaking. I learned a ton about how to do it. I learned how to coach in this role. So that's how I learned how to become a really powerful speaker. That's how I learned how to let go of my script and be present in the moment. It's how I learned how to tell an engaging, powerful story that moves your audience. But I didn't learn how to leverage speaking for myself on behalf of my business and on behalf of the people that I was working with. That's because it wasn't my business. But then when I went out on my own, I was like, I'm a really good speaker. I'm a really talented speaker. Like, let's go. Where's, where's, you know, come on everybody, come hire me. That's really great. Now, I did some speaking that way. People would come to me, we'd talk about what they needed, I would develop something, and they would love it, and that was great. I would get paid for that situation. No, I was not getting paid as much as I should have. And that, that's on me. I just didn't even know what was possible in terms of what you can get paid as a speaker. But I was growing my revenue a little bit. And year over year, I started realizing, wow, I can make a lot of money with my speaking. And also, I was taking in requests and getting busier and busier. And suddenly speaking was the boss of me. It was like, oh, I've got to build this thing. And, and I would create for every moment rather than creating from a signature talk that had intention that was placed in my business. Okay. So I just said a lot in that one sentence that I want to slow down. Okay. The first was that. I needed to create a signature talk. Now, I had given keynotes and I had done a bajillion workshops about training, about speaking, about storytelling, about all the things, but I hadn't yet started to orient myself around a few key ideas. Okay, so that's really step one is the intention, like, yes, okay, I'm going to create One, and then once you've got one, you could, you could have a few signature talks in your business, but we've, we're orienting our message around a few key ideas, which is really, really important. Okay. Then I was deciding the way in which I wanted to leverage that talk for leads and or revenue. Okay. So that's the second part is to leverage it. Okay. Now here's why this is going to help. If you do these two things, why it's going to help you be the boss of your speaking rather than speaking being the boss of you is that when you are leveraging your speaking, when you are putting it to work, you are saving a lot of time. And energy, and you're essentially dictating the way in which you want to build your business. You build, you build a business model around your speaking. So if any of you were at the Story Plus Impact event in October, okay, we talked about Harris III, who's my business coach. He talks about the Story Diamond. In the middle of the Story Diamond is your story, and then you've got a few other pieces. You have your signature talk right up here. You have an event, you have your coaching here, or you have, you might have a course over here, book. Okay, so you've got a handful of things that exist around your story. This is like the ecosystem of a solopreneur or an entrepreneur like many of us, a small business where the idea is coming from you. Okay. So once you know what this piece is, it can exist and manifest itself in lots of different ways. Okay. That's really, that's a business model that's really built on your message and your story. Okay. The signature talk is one of the tools. Now I like to think of, and that's a really powerful idea. I think it can be really exciting as somebody who has a message, who wants to get out there, who wants to build your model, your business model, as you as the solopreneur there. It's like, oh my gosh, there is so much you can do with your message that brings in revenue. But is a business. Okay? And I love my Purpose Driven Speakers. I love what you are doing. I love what you're all about. And we need to make sure that you are putting it in a model and really leveraging it. Okay? So I want you to think of speaking as something that can actually fill up and connect with all of those things as well. So it's not just one element of your speaking. You could think of speaking as the middle of your business and it can feed all these other parts of it. It can feed your course. It can feed into your coaching, right? It can feed into a book, right? And the book can, those two things can kind of work together, right? It can feed into a product, right? Or a, you know, an event is speaking in its own ways, right? So all of these things are connected, but I like to think of instead of just your story in the middle, it's like your story, if you're telling or sharing your story, that's Speaking. So I kind of just put speaking right in the middle there, but how we leverage it and utilize it is really, really important because we want to put it into a funnel that will help lead people to where you want them to go. So on a really high level, let me just draw this out for you. So for those of you who are listening to this on the podcast right now, I'm going to try and describe what I'm doing. But you've probably seen these visuals before. I've talked about this before. As we are shifting into like thinking about next year, like 2023, what's possible in 2023, the biggest message I'm giving to people in these conversations is we want to make sure that you are placing speaking intentionally in your business. Okay, now there's two ways to think about this. There's really 3, but I want you to just, let's start with 2. Okay? And that is, we're speaking, and this is a, this is like a sales funnel. Think of this as a sales funnel. Speaking is at the top of a sales funnel. Okay? Where it's, it's at the top of the triangle. It's at the wide end of the triangle. And speaking is how people are introduced to you. And at the end of it, right at the end of some kind of journey that you take people on, that maybe for you, it starts with you speaking, but then they join your email list and then they get a follow-up and now they're being nurtured. And at the end of it, perhaps you are selling something else. You might be selling, invite them into a low-cost course or a group coaching program or something like that, right? So that is an opportunity that you may be getting paid for, but your goal in that moment is what we call a lead gen opportunity. Okay, your goal in that moment is to create more visibility for yourself, to make more connections, to network, to become an authority around an arena and to bring more people into you. And speaking is an amazing way to do that, of course. Now, you might also be getting paid in that moment, but you don't need to be in order to benefit from it, in order to ultimately make money from that moment. Now, a lot of times we have these opportunities, a lead gen. Opportunity where it's really the goal is about visibility, right? You're on a podcast. Have you thought about— that's a speaking moment. Have you thought about the, the funnel that you want to take people on in that moment? Are you intentional with where people are meeting you in this moment and how you can walk them into ultimately a relationship where they're like, I know you, I trust you, I like you. Yeah, here's my money. Keep helping me. Thank you so much. Right? You clear, you understand me. I feel connected to you, right? Speaking can do that in a particularly powerful way. Okay? So that's lead gen speaking. That is one way for you to really leverage your speaking and make sure that you are the boss of it. When you are not the boss of these moments, you're just showing up. You might be winging it a little bit. You might be talking to not your ideal audience. You might be talking about something that isn't going to lead people to where they want to continue a relationship with you. You might be creating something for a very specific thing, right? You have, your time is precious. Your energy is precious. Make sure that when you're spending time up here, you're leveraging it and intentionally moving people towards a moment where they are joining you for something. It doesn't have to be a course. It can be whatever. It can be buy my book. It can be join my coaching program, or even, even depending on what your goals are in your business in that moment, it could just be Let's connect on LinkedIn. And now you're building one strong one-on-one connections and relationships. Yes? Does that make sense? Okay. So one of the ways that you can do it is have speaking at the top of the funnel as a lead gen experience. But sometimes, right, the way that you want to leverage speaking is purely by seeing it as a revenue opportunity. Okay, then you're not thinking about what happens after you're speaking. Then speaking shows up at the bottom of your funnel down here, right? So it's still a sales funnel, but I like to think of it as speaking at the bottom of the funnel. Okay. And the reason I put the funnel like this and I flipped the triangle is because speaking is where you reach a lot of people. Okay. So just visually, it makes sense to me to have speaking at the wide part of the triangle at the bottom of the triangle. We flip the triangle, now speaking's at the bottom. And at the top, what you're doing is you're identifying the handful of people you need to walk through in order to take them through a sales process where ultimately you are speaking for an audience and you're getting paid in that moment. Okay. And other things fuel your opportunities to do that. So the same elements we were talking about in the ecosystem. Of speaking and your solopreneurship, like a book or a course or a coaching program, whatever those are, all opportunities that also fuel you as a speaker because they help establish you as an expert and an authority. Okay, so you can choose, you can choose the model. If you just are like, you know what, I just want to build up relationships. And connect with the right people so that ultimately I can speak for revenue. Great. Then you're not in, you're not then taking those people into all the opportunities that you could invite them to when they meet you in a speaking moment. Okay. But you could take these two triangles and mash them together. And this is what it looks like. Let's say you get hired by a company. To come in and do a one-time keynote about something. They pay you $10,000. Awesome. And as a bonus, you think, actually, I do have something that could be helpful for these folks down the line. So you give a keynote right here. You've sold a keynote. You've built all this authority up here based on your social media, based on a book that you have maybe, or a course or an expertise or a blog or just some experiences that you've had that people know about, right? And that you sell them on a keynote. They, you meet the company, meet all the people in the company in that moment. And you think there's actually something else I can offer you. Then speaking now at, in that same moment, you add on the second funnel right here. And the second funnel, then now speaking's at the top of that funnel, and you might be able to bring them down into your group coaching program. Look how cool would that be? I call this funnel, right, the top, the top triangle here is a revenue generating speaking funnel. Okay, that's important. We want those. Those are great. Those are awesome. Then you might be able to also take advantage of that moment and add on a lead gen moment. Okay. And when you put those two together, I call that impact gen model. Okay. That's ultimately where I'm trying to bring my speakers to a place where they're focused on those opportunities that can get them here, that they can then turn around and sell other things through. When you are doing that, that is like, now you are the boss of your speaking. It is not the boss of you. Anybody can do this. You just have to have the right intention. Gotta have the right message and know how you're gonna use it and then be thoughtful about how you are leveraging it and not just willy-nilly, not just wait and hope and cross your fingers, but to actually put it to work in a way that benefits your audience in a powerful way. And that also feeds you and feeds your business. You can do all three. All right. I hope this was helpful. Thanks so much, everybody. I will see you soon. Bye-bye.
