Overcoming the Challenges to Building a Sustainable Speaking Business with Arel Moodie - 311

Hello, you are watching and listening to Sarah Archer and episode 311 of The Speaking Club podcast. And I want to start this show with a quote from Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr. I don't know if I've said that right. Anyway, he originally wrote this in 1932 as the ending to another prayer. You might recognise it. God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I started this podcast for 2 reasons: because I want to help people recognise the power of stories and humour in speaking, and because I believe it's your message that counts, not the number of ums and ahs you use. There are some organisations that want to create robot speakers, They want you to sacrifice your personality in order to speak perfectly. But I want to let you know that you can be yourself and a sensational speaker. So, if you want to be a speaker that connects and engages authentically through stories, a speaker that gives value as well as a great performance, then welcome home. Hey, welcome to the show. How are you? It's the new year. We're seeing loads of posts about goals, and also the end of last year, there was loads of things about 2024. It can be overwhelming, a lot of this stuff, and it kind of makes you want to switch off. And we don't know what's on the horizon based on all the political changes that are going to happen this year. And yet, I feel 2025 is going to be A positive year, a great year. And I might be completely wrong, and we might look back at this and go, Sarah, you got that completely, uh, wrong. You ballsed up. It was so wide of the mark. Um, but what can I say? I'm sharing based on what my intuition is telling me. I accept what the landscape looks like, but I look at what I can control and what I'm moving towards, and I take the next step, and you know maybe that will resonate with you too. And I think, to be honest, it's kind of what the message is from the podcast that I'm going to be sharing today in relation to the perennial question of how can I make a sustainable living as a speaker? Because the reality is that the road to making a consistent. Decent income from speaking is littered with people who quit because the journey was just so much tougher than they ever expected. And, you know, there are a lot of people dangling the golden carrot of making thousands from speaking gigs, becoming a 6-figure speaker, and I'm not gonna say it's not possible. It absolutely is possible for you, but Those who make it are a fraction of those that start out. One of those who did make it is my guest today, Aril Moody. He is a bestselling author. He's a professional speaker. He's been speaking for, I think, nearly 17 years, I think. He's spoken in 48 states and 5 countries to over 750,000 people. And he is one of those rare speakers who's made it into an exclusive group within the National Speakers Association. Of those who've generated over 7 figures from a speaking business. And having started his speaking whilst he was in college, he has encountered the ups and the downs of a speaking career, and he's here to share some home truths about the industry alongside giving you the strategies that have worked for him to get him where he is today. He is also the founder of a piece of software called Talkadot, and it's the number one tool that's helping professional speakers land spin-off business by capturing leads and testimonials and all that good stuff from when they speak to audiences. So, if you want to generate an income, a more consistent income from speaking, then I will urge you to listen up because there is gold in this here interview. Welcome to Speaking Club, Aurel Moody.

Oh my gosh, this is, this is going to be fun. I'm super excited.

Yeah, me too. Me too. Now I heard about you via the, uh, president of the Global Speakers Federation, and she was bigging you up and the product that you've created, which we will come to in a little bit, and I'm absolutely thrilled. to get you onto the show. Now, let's start out, um, way back. Well, not that long ago because you're not that old. You're much younger than me. Um, you first started speaking at high schools and colleges. How did you get started and how did you decide what to speak about back then?

Well, I got interested in speaking because, um, I was interested in entrepreneurship. So, um, I got interested in wanting to start my own business. So I started an off-campus housing service for college students while I was a college student, university student. And I went to a lot of professional development because a mentor of mine said, you don't know anything. You've got to learn as much as you can. And every speaker was boring and bad. And I thought that's just what it was. And then one day, I saw a really, really good speaker. And I remember thinking to myself just very plainly, I don't know what that is, but I want to do that for the rest of my life. I just, I felt this immediate, like the way the person was on stage, the ahas that I felt, the light bulbs I saw going off in other people. There was this immediate, almost like, kind of like seeing your soulmate for the first time. And it wasn't until maybe a year later that I had spoke to a speaker who had come to my university to speak to us. And I told him that like, hey, in like 20 years, I want to do what you're doing. And he kind of very quickly and succinctly said to me, you know, the goal of a speaker is to help people who they know something about. When he learned about my background growing up in the inner city of New York City, overcoming a lot of challenges, getting into college, becoming an honor student and a student leader, he said, you've— you're the example of what high schools and colleges, universities want their students to do. So why don't you speak to students on how you approached school and did the things that you did? And you could speak to them from a big brother perspective instead of a father figure perspective. And I was like, well, if I can get started right now, like, that would be the bee's knees.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, I started when I was 22 years old speaking to students about how I approached school, how I looked at it, my mindset, the strategies on how I got good grades and all that stuff. And it was just— it was a joy to be able to You know, do something I thought I had to wait 20 years to do and to do it pretty much right away.

And I mean, looking back from today at the first speaker that inspired you versus the speakers that you saw up to that point, how would you define the difference between them?

Every other speaker was pretty much on a podium reading from notes, looking up at their PowerPoint. So they were sharing data that was good.

Mm-hmm.

But the speaker who lit up the stage was walking around the stage, was telling jokes, was making people laugh, was telling stories. And I was like, I could do— like, I could— it's almost like I could transpose my body and mind onto that character. Where previously, it's kind of like when I watch a, you know, like a professional athlete, I can't imagine myself doing those things. Like, they're significantly better, faster, stronger than I'll ever be. But when I saw this person on stage, it was like, no, I, I can do that. And I want to do everything I possibly can to, to be as good as I can. And it's, again, it's, it's like seeing your soulmate. It's just, you kind of just know it's something you want to do.

Mm-hmm.

And when you know you want to do it, not doing it Feels painful, whereas if you did it, it would be nice. That, that wasn't for me. It was if I wasn't doing it, I was yearning and wanting to figure out how to do it.

It was almost vocational for you in a way, it sounds like. Excellent.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So having made that decision that you're gonna do it, how did you get gigs when you first started out? So that guy had given you— or girl, I don't know— had given you the confidence. To have a crack at it. What did you do to make it happen?

Well, at that point, it was just still a pipe dream. And then there was a company that existed in America. It doesn't exist anymore. It was called Making It Count. And they were basically a company that would travel into schools, and you would speak. So I applied to be a speaker for their company and organization. I applied. They said yes to my application, and I was just getting reps. You know, you got— we got paid like $100 at the time, so it wasn't like we were making a bunch of money. We were just doing it because it was cool. But I learned a wildly valuable thing from one of my clients, which opened up the entire speaking industry for me. So one of the schools that I spoke at, the lady who was my contact said, Have you ever spoken at a NODA conference before? And I was like, what's a NODA? Like, I don't know what that is. And she was like, oh, they've changed the acronym, but it used to stand for the National Orientation Directors Association. So basically every university has someone whose job is to bring in students and welcome them. And they have a conference. She's like, you'd be a great speaker. I'm on the board. Maybe I could get you to speak at one of our conferences. So I spoke at a conference in front of a room full of people who all represented different orientation programs at universities. And they were like, you would be an amazing welcome back speaker or fresh start speaker, which is basically like the first speaker a student sees when they start, you know, college, university. So once I discovered that, that was the light bulb moment, is that there are associations of your client getting together somewhere every single day, basically every single quarter, every single month. And you've just gotta figure out, one, what's the association? 2, when's their conference? And 3, what is the process for doing a request for proposals, request for speakers, an email? Who's on the board that I can build a relationship with so that I could either get a workshop or a keynote? And once I unlocked that, Then it just became speak at conferences where my clients are. People in the room will see me and want to work with me. And the best part about it is, and you know this very, very well, if you can speak and sell but not be salesy, you're going to win. And what I realized is a room full of people who need speakers, want to book speakers, and are not deciding who I should— if I should, they're deciding who I should book. I just need to present myself and make myself available and do a good job, obviously, and they will naturally want to work with me. And then I just started rinsing and repeating that, and then I started my own business and moved on from that because that was the unlock that I needed to be able to do it on my own.

Brilliant. That's really cool. And I think that's a really— I know it for people in America, this is for sure, there's stuff happening all the time. In the UK too, I think not so much on, on in the same scale, but there's definitely opportunities in the UK along those lines as well for people. That's brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. That's a really, uh, important golden nugget there for people. So over the years you've spoken on different topics, uh, from likability to human development theory. Can you share about the, the evolution of your speaking, or maybe you still do those sorts of topics? How did you know it was time to make a change?

Yeah. So what I think I've observed from professional speakers being in the industry for almost 2 decades now is we speak about what we're interested in. We speak about what we're knowledgeable about, right?

Yeah.

So for some speakers, I actually think it's rare that they speak on something like 15 years ago and they're still speaking on that same subject today. It happens for sure. But it's kind of like someone who works at the same job for 40 years and then retires and gets a gold watch. Like, it happens, but I don't actually think that's what happens is we as speakers are interested in something and become knowledgeable about something and then learn how to do something that other people don't know how to do. Then we go, well, this is the thing I'm interested in. So what happened is I was super interested in student success and how students succeed. Because that's the life experience I had. But then as I was building, you know, my online business, and then eventually I had an event planning business that organized events as well. You learn how to run a business and then you start going, well, I'm building all these skills to learn how to run this business, but I can't talk about that to, you know, high school students about student success. Like it just doesn't fit. So eventually what I believe happens is one, your natural interests will evolve. So you, if you follow your interests, then you're not, um, work is always fun. Like you look forward to talk, like, I can't wait to research. I can't wait to read. I can't wait to talk about stuff I'm interested in, care about, and I know about. Right.

Mm-hmm.

So that, that's, that's one of the evolution points. And then the second evolution point is you're looking for signals from the marketplace that, you know, something that is a pain other people have. And you typically get that signal when someone— when you talk about something in like, you know, a party or to a friend or to a business associate, whomever, and their eyes light up and they go, can you tell me more about that? Well, how did you do that? Like, they actually are super curious to the point that they want to know more. You know, if I talk to someone, I say, hey, I speak about how to make the best snow angels. And they're like, Okay. Well, good for you, buddy. And they don't care. But if you're like, yeah, I figured out how to get, um, you know, I had this employee who just would not, um, show up and was not motivated. And I really figured out how to get her excited without me being in the room. Oh my gosh. I have that problem. How did you do it? How did, like, what did you say? What did you? And then you start realizing, oh, other people have that same problem.

Mm-hmm.

So one, it's about following your interests, but two, it's about unlocking problems that are in the marketplace that other people have. that you can help get rid of because you have interest and experience in solving it.

Yeah, absolutely. I always think about this as like one of those Venn diagrams where you've got your passion on the one side and the marketplace on the other, and the place they intersect is perfect. But I do find, I don't know if you've noticed this, there are a lot of people that are jumping on hot topic bandwagons that they're not particularly interested in.

AI right now.

Yeah, AI and neurodiversity is another one. And it's just like, it doesn't, you know, if it doesn't float your boat, like if it feels inauthentic, it just feels like it's not gonna work is what I share with people. If you can find something that you're genuinely passionate about and ideally is one of those perennial topics as well that people look for.

There's always going to be a hot topic.

Always.

You know, in America we had DEI and then there was Uh, you know, the internet and, you know, now it's AI. There was Bitcoin, crypto was big at one point.

Yes.

And then AI. So what happens is, um, if you philosophically are like, well, this is what everyone's booking, let me jump on that bandwagon. The moment it's not— like, AI is hot right now, but the odds are it's not going to be hot forever. Um, at some point it's going to become normalized, um, and I believe AI will become like the internet. So like, imagine me being a speaker about the internet. No one's going to book that. It's going to become too ubiquitous unless I genuinely am like, I care so deeply about like net neutrality and the internet, you know, stuff like that maybe will have some legs. But if you, if you jump to what you consider I can get paid quickly to do this, you'll find that you're not as knowledgeable as someone who's been doing it for some time and cares. At best, you'll be surface level. And then if you jump to something else, if the— if there's not a natural— like, if I was a DEI speaker and now I'm an AI speaker, well, what's the jump there? And then I might lose credibility. So doing something you care about and ideally perennial leadership, sales, teamwork, those ain't going anywhere, I don't think, for a long time.

No, absolutely. That's cool. Now, one of the things that you've talked about in the past that I heard you talk about was the frustration that you went through trying to find a way to increase the consistency of your speaking pipeline. Now, you kind of unlocked one thing, but even doing that, it sounds like there was still these peaks and troughs. Can you share more about what you tried to level it out? And then I guess leading to where we're going next around what you did to control it. Yeah.

A lot of speakers will not admit what I'm about to say, right? But it's just the reality of the industry. It's a very feast and famine industry. There's months where you're killing it and there could be weeks or months where you are not. And it's a challenge because, you know, December and January historically have been the slowest months in my career. So what that means is you might do great in September, great in October, Decent in November, and then December and January, you got nothing. But you know what? Your bills don't stop in December. Your bills don't stop in January. So now you've got to make enough in September and October to cover the float of the bills of December and January if it is your primary income source. So what happens in our industry is we have seasonality, we have peaks, we have valleys, and it is, it is devastatingly frustrating. And then the other part of speaking, which is the reality that people don't truly get, is unless you have a system to make sure the people in your audience, whether that audience, whether that client paid you or not, if you have a system to turn that audience into more business, the moment you walk off stage, you are unemployed. You are starting from scratch, and you've got to go from a cold start, zero, right? So this is a very important thing, 'cause I think people don't understand this about our industry. And if it happens to them, they think there's something wrong with them versus being like, no, that's normal. I just need to figure out how to deal with it. So one of the ways that I tried to deal with it was to have different, um, uh, targeted audiences based on season. So for example, when I was doing the student market, I was like, all right, in the fall semester, which is August and September, that's going to be when I do orientation. I'm gonna put all my energy and focus on orientation. which again is like welcome back week and that. And then student leadership is in the spring. So I'm gonna now shift gears from being the orientation guy to the student leadership guy. And I'm gonna try to do that in the spring. And then in the summer, I'm gonna try to do the training orientation leaders so that I can train them in the summer. And then I could have the fall, the spring, and the summer, and I can try to figure that out. And then I started going, wow, man, that's not working. Well, maybe I can start, you know, then I started touching upon lots of different industries. Like I touched on Department of Education, which is a, government speaking, and then eventually got into associations and corporate speaking and trying to figure out like, when this is up, this one's down and how do I shift gears? And then I had like multiple websites to like position myself differently to different people and different brands. And it kind of became a little manic, um, trying to smooth out those, you know, in, in my perfect world, when this one was up and the other was down, I would shift over.

Mm-hmm.

And then when this one was down, I would shift back. But I tend to find ultimately that that's very difficult. It's very draining. It's very— you spread yourself thin. And though you think you're smoothing out the process, you're just actually adding more work to your overall workload.

Yeah, absolutely. So things have changed a little bit because you saw a problem that needed fixing. And you came up with a solution. Can you share how you identified what the solution was, what it is, and then where things are today?

One of my biggest pains, I had 2 huge pains as a speaker, is number one is no matter how long I've been speaking, because I'm not a celebrity, there's 2 types of speakers. It's important to understand there's content experts or subject matter experts and there's celebrities. Okay. A celebrity speaks and it doesn't matter what they say. It matters that they showed up.

Yeah.

A content expert or a subject matter expert, which is like you, I, probably everyone listening to this, what we say is significantly more important than who we are. But what happens when you're not a celebrity is that, um, okay, this is, this is important. I'm gonna do a train of thought, but I don't think people get this. So just follow me for just 2 minutes here. Singular decision makers almost never exist. There's typically a committee of people that select a speaker. It's very rare one person says, I want you, give me the contract, I sign it, and you're done. There's typically a group of people. So whenever you have a champion, which is the individual who actually wants to book you, your champion has to go back to the committee and convince the committee that you are the one that they should choose. I mean, a lot of people don't realize that this back and forth happens. Now, typically what happens in a committee is that multiple people bring in who their champion is.

Mm-hmm.

And then you're— they're kind of duking it out with who's the right content, who's the right price, who's the right person. And then, you know, maybe they land on you and maybe you lose it to someone else, which is very normal and very natural. So I hated that I needed to convince the committee that I was worth it because they may not have ever heard of me. Maybe someone in my audience saw me, says, oh my gosh, Aurel, we want to book you to speak, and they became my champion. That person was going to fight for me, but now they've got to convince the committee. So there's things like our websites, our speaker demo videos, our bios, our speaker descriptions. But what happens is there's no real apples-to-apples comparison of speakers. I'll jump on your website, I'll jump on her website, and then we'll figure it out. So the first pain point was I hated that I, I had no way of proving to this committee that I'd actually do a good job because they would ask questions like, well, what data do you have to back up that, you know, what you're saying is effective? And then I would like go into the song and dance of, well, here's my resume and here's all the places I've spoken to. Like, they trusted me. Like, isn't that good enough? And, you know, people kept asking for more evidence and, you know, I wanted to just— they want to justify your price. So one, that was a pain point of like, how do I actually get the committee to more easily say yes.

Mm-hmm.

The second pain point, which is the, the huge pain point, is why I love the work that you do with the Green Room, by the way, and how you help people get ready for speaking. I, I love it because the biggest pain point that I had was I would speak, but how do I actually capture all the leads that are in the room? How do I know who wants to book me? How do I not have that weird, icky transition moment where I've been serving my audience for 90% of the time, but I know I need to get business So I go into like, you know, the salesman version of me and I hated it. I hated like trying to sell. I hated trying to, you know, put things in the back of the room. I had some clients get upset at me because they felt like I was like, they were like, hey, we paid you. Like, why are you pitching from the stage? And then I was like, ah, like, but I knew that if I didn't do that, I would be unemployed and start from zero. So I hated the, um, those 2 problems. And that's where Talkadot came about because I realized that there was actually a way to solve both of those, um, and we can do it really, really simply. So we created a tool where speakers can ask for feedback, um, scans a QR code, leads to a very, very quick survey. Um, that's designed— we have, we've had almost a million people fill it out and we have a 99% completion rate because we're like very maniacal about how we've designed it and the flow of it and all that kind of stuff. But what the important thing is, the audience will fill it out. Now, um, if anyone collects data, They normally don't do anything with the data. Our tool automatically crunches it. It creates charts, it creates images. We now have AI summaries of what the biggest takeaways are from your audience and the outcomes. So you now can, to each client, show with numbers, quantitative and qualitatively, your impact. But it also pulls out leads, but only to the people who are interested in working with you, not with the people who are not interested. So meaning if I'm in my, if I'm in the audience, And how I answer the questions indicates I'm not interested in potentially working with you, I don't get any sales questions. However, if how I answer the questions does indicate, I then get sales and qualifying questions. And if I want to work with you, like if I want to get into the green room, I want to get into the green room. Like, I want you to help me. But if I don't, I don't want you to sell me. So it takes out any of the, like, nasty feeling friction. Friction. And then when you're done, you've got this beautiful report that you can share with your client or potential clients, and you have all of your leads organized. And we actually use AI to verify if they're a qualified lead or not, a hot lead or not a hot lead. And now all you've gotta do is just connect with the people who raised their hand. It just simplifies the whole process. And it's, it's the pain I had. And, and we built it with such a nuanced build because I'm like, well, no one's gonna like that. everyone's gonna hate this, people will love this. So it's built for speakers. So it's not a generic survey tool. It's really built for our industry.

Perfect. That's really cool. And first question I wanted to ask is, how challenging was it for you to get the idea off the ground to start off with?

Oh, man, it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do professionally, ever. Running a service-based business, like being a speaker or being a coach, Totally different than running a tech company. So, you know, we, we are running a tech company. We have an incredible team. I have 2 co-founders. There's no way I've done this myself. Um, we have incredible, uh, employees. There's no way I could build this on my own. Um, but it is one of the biggest challenges is you've got to build something, put it out to the marketplace, and then the marketplace will tell you if it's good. Now here's the big thing that I've learned that's different But between being a thought leader or a service-based business and running a tech business. In a service-based business, you are the expert and people hire you to present your expertise. In a tech-based business, you build something and the market will then tell you if it is good or bad. So you build it and you, you have hypotheses and assumptions that it's good, but you actually don't know. So you're constantly kind of You know, I'm constantly talking to our users. I'm constantly asking, oh, you don't wanna renew? Why don't you wanna renew? What was missing? Oh, you didn't know how to set up your tool exactly. Why didn't you know how to set it up? Where was the— So we're constantly, constantly, constantly asking questions and trying to improve and iterating and iterating, iterating, iterating, iterating. Versus when you're a speaker, you're kind of baked. and you come out and you share your expertise and people go, oh my gosh, like, thank you. Where on this side, you're constantly going, what's wrong? How do we fix it? What's wrong? How do we fix it? What's wrong? How do we fix it? So it's a much different iterative cycle, which is just nothing that, it feels very different for 1,000 reasons.

Yeah, I mean, I've heard you talking about how you're, you know, it sounds like, you know, you're constantly looking from the, speakers' user experience to make it better. I've also heard you talking about how you really zero in on the response rate from the audience to make that as simple as possible to get to that 99% completion rate. Have you reached the level now? Are you still looking at making it better or is 99%—

You literally will never stop. It will never stop. So there's 3 audiences that we serve. So we're very clear of this, right? We have to serve the speaker, we have to serve the people in the audience, and we have to send, uh, serve the event organizers, right? So we got to make sure the data is actually something that's valuable to them. We got to make sure that the data is actually useful to them. We got to make sure that they actually are easily to share that. We got to make the audience experience. So we're constantly tracking. And what's different about our tool versus like if someone's like, oh, I want to build it on a SurveyMonkey— if you build something on a SurveyMonkey You're guessing what you think is how it all should be. We literally have hundreds of thousands of data points constantly coming in that tell us we should go in this direction. Oh, we made this change, it was bad, let's, let's change this. So it's actually a never-ending— like, it's never baked. There's a reason why, like, the iPhone constantly keeps coming out with new versions and new features, and it's why, you know, Facebook constantly changes the feed and Why things are constantly changing. It's because the moment you get stale, you become MySpace, where you were cool and you're not. You become BlackBerry, where you were awesome and now you're not. So it's actually this— I don't think that iterative process ever ends. So you're constantly a detective trying to figure out, is it working well? Is it going well? Is it not? Well, what changed? What in the industry changed? What happened? Like, it's so Bonkers. Let me tell you this, Sarah. This is how bonkers my brain has become rewired that I was leaving my gym this morning and I noticed that there— so there's 2 entry points into the gym. On the left side, the bar was faded on the outside of the window. So there's 2 doors, but on the other side, the bar was faded on the inside. I said, oh, it's faded because that's where people are putting their hands to open the door. And I said, okay, but wait, wait, why is that door faded on the outside and this door faded on the inside? If their entry point to the same point. And then I realized it's because people are opening the door with their left hand. If they're opening the door with their left hand, why are they opening— why does everyone open the door with their left hand? Oh, it's because when people leave the gym, they have their phone in their right hand because they're checking their messages since they finished the gym. So they reach— so literally I'm paying attention to stuff like that that has no business in my brain I should care about. But I'm trying to understand, like, why does it happen that way? Why is it— Why is this going the way that is? Because that's what you have to do in this world to iterate. So it's very exciting, but it's also like I'm paying attention to door handles going into the gym now.

And I don't want to get too granular because I'm sure that there's things that people can go and look at to get some of this info. But this is a big one, I think, Aurel, which is a lot of the gold when you speak is in the leads that you capture. Using something like this tool. And if you're switched on as a speaker and hopefully people recognize the importance of email lists and stuff like that, those leads that captured via Talkadot, they're your leads to keep to put in your CRM. Is that right?

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. The whole point of our, what's cool about our business is if you use us and your business grows, well, you're gonna keep using us. So we have everything we do, is to try to make our users more money. Like, Yeah. we have an internal philosophy, which is we call pill to six-pack abs. The closer we can get our product to, if I pop a pill in my mouth and now I have six-pack abs, that's what we all kind of want. So we're constantly trying to figure out how do we do things for you? How do we make it easier? What do you want us to do and what do you not want us to do? Um, so the leads are a big part of it. Um, and now like with our tool, you can get more speaking leads, you can get coaching leads, you can get like, if you sell solar panels, you can get solar panel leads. And we organize those leads and we create follow-up sequence, um, the ability for you to send them into a follow-up sequence or follow up from our tool. So, you know, knowing that, um, what we discovered, which is fascinating data point, um, many of our users, when we first started it, we just collected the leads for them. Mm-hmm. Um, and then we kept getting this feedback of, oh, I collected leads and it's been 6 months and I haven't reached out to them. What should I do? Oh, so people are collecting leads, but they're not following up with them. So we're like, well, we've gotta make that process easier.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so what we'll find is getting leads is super important, but we discovered so many people were just sitting on their leads because they were like, maybe I don't know how to, or I feel uncomfortable. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So I'm not— so I do nothing. And then it's like, well, you know, leads have what we call an interest period where, you know, if I'm interested in buying a car, I'm really interested, but the moment I buy a car, Mm-hmm. I don't care about your ads anymore, you know? So you gotta get people in their interest period. So, um, it, it's a very fascinating, um, psychological observation of user behavior. Um, and then we've gotta figure out like, well, well, what problems can we solve for our users and what problems are like, I can't help you have good content. Like that's a problem we can't solve.

Mm-hmm.

But if you really have good content and you can have people who wanna work with you, we can help you collect them, follow up with them, and hopefully, you know, convert them. And then it's your job to, deliver the services and do all the stuff you do.

Yeah, that's cool. And I think one of the things, well, I've heard again, listening to you speak in other places, 2 of the best ways for audience, for speakers to encourage and incentivize people to complete the form and get all of this, you know, get all the data and leads and stuff are either slides or something that is the next step. Is that still true based on what you know?

Absolutely. So there's 2 categories that we've discovered will get someone to want a thing that you have, right? Is a summary of what you just talked about, which in this case is the slides, or now that you have this information, here's the very next step you should be taking because of this information. Those are the 2 categories that we've discovered. So one of the things that our tool does is when someone gives you feedback as a thank you for their feedback, when they're done. The final screen is a button for them to get the thing that you created, and then we email it to 'em as well. So as a speaker, I could talk about like, hey, here are the, um, 5 best ways for you to get ready to turn your book into a speaking engagement. Here's the 5 ways to get your book ready and turn it into a speech, and I'm gonna help you do that. And I teach you how to do that. And then I go, would you like a copy of everything that we just talked about here? Well, of course I'd like that. Well, I'd like to know what you thought about this presentation. As a thank you, I'll give you access to it. Or, hey, I taught you the 5 ways to turn your book into a speech. Hey, you know what? Would you like to know how to pitch potential organizations so that they can book you to speak and buy your books? Would you like that? Well, if you give me your feedback, as a thank you for taking your time to give me your feedback, I'm gonna give you my pitch deck on how to do that. So I'm like, okay, now that I know this, I wanna make sure I don't lose it. Or now that I know this, I wanna do something with it. And that's one of the reasons, because it's not just survey for the sake of survey or survey for maybe I could win a $500 gift card or a £500 or euro. I'm trying to convert my American brain over to my folks in the UK, right? It's not for the chance. It's like everyone gets something. And if you make it a digital product, then it doesn't cost you anything, but it's of value to your audience.

Yeah, and it's also value. And it's not— as I say, it's value to the organizers as well because there's no way they could view that as you know, a pitch, you're literally delivering something that's relevant for that audience and is related to the talk.

Cool.

Now, thank you for sharing that. Now, we might have covered this, I'm not sure, but I'm gonna ask the question anyway. Another thing I've heard you talk about is the land and expand strategy for speakers to book more talks. Can you share a bit more about that?

For me, I believe it is best strategy for booking speaking engagements and getting rebooked and getting word of mouth and all that. It's called land and expand. So here's how it works. What a lot of speakers do is they kind of just throw spaghetti on a wall. I hope someone books me. I don't care who books me. I'll, I'll speak to bankers, I'll speak to lawyers, I'll speak to, uh, you know, everyone in between, right? And what happens is they try to market everyone and then it's just a watered-down message. What I found is, um, there's something we call Verticals, which is a group of people that know each other, are similar, go to the same conferences. So for example, here's some different verticals that I've worked with. And what I do is I land one and then I expand within that vertical once I've— if I discover it's fertile soil. So here's an example. Um, there's, um, a group of groups called— so hold on, let me All right. I am feeling super American right now and I apologize. I'm going to—

No worries. That's fine. I can always transpose if you say.

Yeah, we'll transport. Right. So are there credit unions in— is that a thing?

Yes.

There's banks, but then in America there's also credit unions. Credit unions are a little bit different than, than a bank. A credit union is typically, um, you know, it's more for the people. It's not about profit. It's about the people. So it's kind of like a nonprofit versus a business, if you will.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so credit unions all know each other and they all go to associations. So you could say, hey, I'm going to speak at a credit union conference. And if someone books you, you land that one. Now, instead of just going out wherever, I'm now purposely reaching out to other credit unions with, I've spoken at this credit union or, or bank, and I'd like to come speak at your bank because you probably have the same problems. And here's the data of how effective it was. Or you speak at a college, a university college, right? Hey, I spoke at the orientation. I'm now going to speak to all orientation at all different universities. So I'm going to land one and expand. Or, you know, there was a group that I used to work with in America called Community Action Agencies. They're funded by the government to help people who are dealing with challenges and poverty and things like that, but they get funding to do their great services. And again, they're part of a network.

Yeah.

So I speak at one of those, I land one, and then I start reaching out to every other one that's in a different city, in a different town, but referencing my success with the previous one. But then I get 2. So now I take those 2 and I reach out and say, hey, here's the success I had with these 2 organizations. I'd love to bring it to yours. So you land one group and then you expand to similar organizations. And then what will eventually happen, and this is the key, if you do well, let's say you speak to banks just for easy explanation. Those bank professionals probably are on the same listservs. They're probably on the same Facebook groups. They're probably on the same email newsletters. They're probably reading the same periodicals and blogs and those kinds of stuff. So when people start referencing you and talking about you, Your clients are gonna go, oh, I've heard of this person before. Let me know. Oh, they worked with this person. Oh, I know Joe and they work with Joe. So now it becomes easier to get the flywheel going.

Yeah.

Versus if I speak to a bank and then I reach out to a lawyer and then I reach out to an ice cream shop owner and then I reach out to a dairy farmer. And then, you know, these people are gonna be like, you don't know our people. So the goal is to actually find a vertical, land one, And then try to expand. And if others are open to your expansion, meaning they book you, then that's fertile soil. And then you get 2, and then you get 3, then you get 4. But it's in that same niche. And then you either run that niche until you can't run it no more, and then you move on to another one. Or you just keep running it and it never runs out and you just do it forever.

Yeah, yeah, cool. Sounds a bit like— so I used to do stand-up comedy and There's a similar thing. You find some stand-up comedians doing the same circuit every year because they got those gigs booked, you know. So, uh, yeah, it sounds, sounds, uh, really, really cool. So definite, um, opportunity there for people to, to look at that.

Do people ever like ask you to tell jokes once you say that? Like when you say you just—

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you— what do you— what's your response? Are you like, no? Or are you like, knock knock? Like, what do you do with people like, hey, funny lady? Tell me about it.

I, I will probably, I will ask them what they do for a living and then, uh, ask them if they can do that for me first. I just like, are you a lawyer?

Write me a legal document right now.

Exactly. Exactly. You know, fair dues. Let's have a little swap here. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's exactly right. But, uh, okay, cool. That's, that's a brilliant strategy. Thank you for sharing. That's excellent. Now, I don't know about you, like, I think we talked about, um, how Talkadot can help you get gigs. And also I think we've covered, um, that it can help you land, um, new clients, uh, and customers for your products and services as well. In your experience, just wanted to check in with you on this. How many professional speakers do you know that aren't supplementing their speaking, paid speaking fees with other things that they're doing?

That's a great question. You know, there's 2 types of speakers. You know, there's keynoters and you just, I get paid, I speak and that's it. And then there's people who are building businesses. So those are kind of 2 different things, right? Because this is the, I don't know, the harsh reality of it is keynote speaking is just a highly paid job. It's not a business because you're only making money if you're trading your time for services. And it's just the reality of it. Now, it's wonderful. I've been a speaker for 18 years, uh, 19 years now. Um, I love it. I, I will never not want to do it. But if all you do is speak, then you can never, ever, ever stop speaking unless you can charge, you know, a bajillion dollars per talk. And nest egg something so big that you'll always do it, right? So, um, I'm part of a group called the National Speakers Association. Um, they're part of the Global Speakers Federation, which is this big kind of international collection of speakers. Within the National Speakers Association, I'm part of this smaller group that's called the Million Dollar Speaker Group. So folks who generate a million dollars in a business come together and we talk. My observation of the highest earners is like 97% of them are not just speakers. They have something else that speaking brings in, because speaking is hands down by far the, um, the best mechanism for getting clients. Like, there's no— to go from an— to go from a complete stranger over here, an hour with someone, and then they want to work with you as because you're their person Nothing is faster than speaking, in my humble opinion, to make that true speed of trust, if you will. So a lot of folks will have, you know, some type of backend, some type of consulting, coaching, a book, a course, or, you know, bigger, you know, one guy does like data analysis for companies and he speaks on the power of data. And then companies hire him to look at all the data in their company and to do some type of other business.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, it really depends on what you find find fun and enjoyable. Um, but it seems like the natural evolution of the speaker, uh, is you speak, then you write a book, then you get a course, then you get some coaching, then you get some consulting. Um, that's like the very natural, and some people, you know, are weirdos and they start tech companies, but, uh, normally there's, there's some evolution that comes from the speaking because you just can't build a business trading time. You just can't.

No, absolutely. I wouldn't say it was a weird— I would say that was a super smart move to get that recurring revenue model that allows you to then pick and choose whether you speak or not or travel or not or do all that stuff. And yeah, it's graft at the start, but it sounds like you're developing something that's gonna be, you know, an absolute key tool for speakers if they wanna really make a career out of speaking. So that's brilliant. Now, having talked besides talk a lot, for the speakers that you've seen that are the top speakers, what are the other factors that you believe are necessary for them to build a professional speaking career?

You solve organizational problems, not individual problems. This is a really big distinction. I see a lot of speakers who have knowledge on how to solve like an individual problem. Like, I want to show you how to like create a vision for yourself, um, and create like a vision board or something like that. Or like, I want to show you how to, you know, become self-actualized as an individual, or, you know, something that is to an individual. And they're like, more people need this, I need to go out and speak. Well, organizations hire speakers, businesses hire speakers. individuals hire consultants, coaches, courses, and those kind of things. So where I see a lot of people struggle and conversely a lot of people succeed is the people who succeed are solving problems that businesses or organizations have that are made up of people. And people who struggle solve people individual problems who happen to be a part of an organization. And the other— the latter is Is, is, is, it's a tough, tough uphill drive. But when you can solve problems that are like, you know, customer service related, customer experience related, leadership related, team related, then organizations will hire you. But when you solve things like, I'm gonna show you how to do like a vision board, that's great, but that's more for the individual, not for the organization.

Yeah.

And organizations don't typically spend a lot of money or hire often on individual problem Yeah, that's a brilliant distinction.

And I think if that is what you do, you're listening to this and that is what you do, solve individual problems, then using speaking as a talk, as a marketing asset to bring people into your business, then that is a perfectly reasonable way to generate, you know, it's still speaking-driven income. You're still a professional speaker. You're just bringing stuff in in a different way.

So you gotta have a backend. That's the key. That's— this is the big thing. When you're a keynote speaker, you have a front end, which is your keynote fee. If you do individual problems, this is a very important distinction you just made. So I'm so glad you said it. You've got to have a back end because on the front end, people aren't going to pay you $15,000 to come in and do a vision board party. But you can go in and speak to an organization for free or, you know, they call it pro bono or low bono, like low fee or free. Yeah. But then you can have people say like, hey, I want to bring you into my like you know, 12-week program, or I want to bring you into my, like, you know, and then you work with those individuals. That's the business model for individual folks. But it's not going to be the front end. It's going to be the back end.

Thank you so much. Now I want to— we're going to come on to where people can find out more about Talkadot, find out more about booking you, wherever, in a little bit. I have some standard questions to ask before we wrap up, if that's okay. First question is, what's the best thing that speaking has done for you?

Traveling. I get to go to places that I never, ever, ever, ever, ever would travel to on my own, and I've gotten to see the country, my country, and the world because of speaking. And as a kid who grew up in the inner city, to sometimes see the places that I've seen and experience it, it's— there's no other way I would ever have done that.

That's amazing. Love that answer. Brilliant. Thank you. Next question is, has there been A gig, maybe it was early on, maybe it wasn't, I don't know, that you just, it went, it went wrong. You just like, well, I don't wanna think about that ever again. I put it in the back of my mind. Has that happened to you, Aril?

Yeah, University of Chicago engineers. I remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was probably like 15 years ago. I spoke to a room full of engineering students and engineering graduate students, and I just bombed. I bombed so hard because I was speaking in a way that just ruffled their feathers. I was very animated and big, and I was jumping on tables and jumping on chairs. And, you know, and this crowd was just like, nah, we just want data. Just give us— tell us what we need to do. You ain't got to do all these theatrics. And I will never forget the University of Chicago Engineering School because that was a huge, huge fail. But I learned. But man, it was a fail. It was such a fail.

But you failed forward, and that is the most important thing.

Yeah, I do really well with engineers now. I do really well with engineers now. But man, I had to— I sucked at that one back in the day.

Cool. Okay, our next question is, what's the book that's had most impact on your life and why?

Business or personal?

Well, that's the— that's up to you.

Oh, okay. Oh, man. There's so many. Gosh, it's such a— it's like saying, like, what's your favorite song? It's like, there's so many good books. So I'll say, I'll say a book. And I don't know if I would— like, I might edit this in my brain later and be like, man, this was a great book. But there's probably a, you know, another book, but, um, there's a, a book called The E-Myth, which—

Oh yeah.

Um, Michael Gerber wrote, and I got to meet Michael Gerber. And if anyone's not heard of it, it's basically a book about, um, which is kind of introduced the idea of like, just cuz you wanna do something and you're good at it, like just cuz you're a good baker doesn't mean you can run a bakery business. And it was a huge mental opener for me and it made me think like, just cuz you're good at a skill. Doesn't mean you have the skill of running a business. You have to learn how to run a business as if that was a skill. And I think philosophically, um, that's been, um, uh, functionally changed my life. And then personally, uh, the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, um, was the book that I read, was the first book I read that made me interested in personal development. And I've read, you know, I don't know, dozens, maybe even hundreds of personal development books since. But that was the first book I actually read that made me want to keep reading versus like, I can't wait to finish the book just to be done with it. So for 2 different reasons, those books mean something to me, one professional, one personal.

Yeah, I love those. They're kind of like a rite of passage, I think. And, you know, they've had an impact on so many people's lives.

Everyone reads Think and Grow Rich, Rich Dad Poor Dad, How to Win Friends and Influence Others. It's like, you must read these books.

And Tim Ferriss, 4-Hour Workweek.

4-Hour Workweek. These are like, you know, you gotta do it. You gotta do it.

Exactly. Cool. What's the best bit of business advice you've had and why?

Don't look for opportunities. Solve problems. Look for problems. Problems will be your opportunity. If you look for opportunity, you will ultimately fail. If you look for problems and you figure out how to solve those problems, you will ultimately succeed.

Brilliant. Lovely nugget there. Excellent. And also, yeah, for speakers, that is particularly appropriate. So if we've not jammed that home enough in this episode, that is something you need to be taking away. Last question. If you could have one mentor and they could be alive or dead, fictional or non-fictional, who would you choose and why?

Kobe Bryant. Hands down. That's my favorite. I've watched more videos from one man. I've read every book on him. I've got an autographed basketball of him to the right of my office. I've got his cards. I believe that he had the best story arc in terms of starting out as the innocent kid, to the villain, to the expert, to the achiever. And then post his career, he figured out how to create an incredible media company. So in terms of like story arc, work ethic, amazing father, amazing husband, someone who messed up and recovered from it, I just— I'm a huge Kobe fan.

You know what? I don't know much about Kobe. I know what he did.

Basketball player.

But I don't know much. You've made me intrigued now. So I will go—

If you go to YouTube, and you type in Kobe Bryant and motivation, just those 3 keywords, he has some of the most insightful, simple, yet wildly effective videos of interviews and stuff he has done. So I could not recommend him more highly.

Excellent. Well, I will just bung a link in the show notes to that as well for people. I will put what I find. That is amazing. I really appreciate you being so generous with everything that you've shared here today. There's this absolute treasure trove of speaking tips. And if people want to find out more about Talkadot to help them grow their speaking business, where's the best place for them to go?

Yeah, so just go to talkadot.com. We have an incredible community. So one of the benefits of signing up, we have free version of our tool, you get access to our community with the free version. So you go to Talkadot. If you put in Sarah Archer as how you heard about us, or if you, if you put a, uh, we'll, we'll make sure we have your link in the show notes that, um, if people do want to get an account free or paid through you, they'll get access to, um, our cool community where we do trainings for speakers. We do post questions and answers. We try to be supportive as, as we possibly can for, for our users. Because if you succeed, you do well. You know, we are not a coaching program, so I want to be very clear. Like, we don't do coaching. We support, we do training, and we help. But, you know, getting support and help from someone like Sarah in the green room will get you where you need to go. But having tools like Talkadot and going to talkadot.com, getting yourself a free account, getting into our community through that free account, you're going to see tons and tons of valuable, really easy to apply no matter where you live in the country, world. We have users from all over the world that use our tool. So it's going to hopefully get better and better. And we can make sure to put in the British way of spelling the word color and make sure center is spelled the way you want it spelled. We got all that stuff taken care of now for you.

Perfect. Perfect. That's excellent. And what about if someone wants to book you to speak, Arel?

Yeah. So Arel Moody is my name. If you Google it, you will spell it wrong most likely. Um, and Google will autocorrect it. And I'm the only Aurel Moody in the whole world. So it's wild and easy to find me. Well, there you go. So aurelmoody.com is my speaking website. Um, if you put Aurel Moody into LinkedIn, I actually prefer LinkedIn. So if you're on LinkedIn and you're listening to this, please send me a request. I actually will accept it unless you're like, I'm going to show you how to build an app, which I get a lot of those messages on LinkedIn. Um, I don't need an app. So thank you if you build apps, but I don't need one. But if you just want to connect and you're interested in speaking, Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Orel Moody. Would love to just be in your world.

Smashing. It's been an absolute delight, Orel. Thank you so much again, and best of luck with Talkadot. I shall be using it myself and encouraging other people to do so as well.

Awesome. And if you're watching this video, I just want to acknowledge the incredible sloth art that Sarah has in the back. If you're only listening to the audio, find the video.

Malcolm, it's over there. Yeah.

Yeah, the incredible— I've been looking at your sloth this whole time just going, I love that guy. And if you've not seen it, find this on YouTube just for the sloth, if for no other reason.

Yeah, his name is Malcolm. He's very cool. Excellent. Thank you for that. Cool. Take care, Aral. Have a wonderful festive season, and hopefully our paths will cross again not too, not too long in the future.

I look forward to it.

Okay. That was cool, wasn't it? What was your biggest takeaway from the show? Were there any strategies that you discovered today that you're going to put into play in 2025? I just, I love the way that Aril positioned that, you know, going deep into a vertical. He calls it his land and expand strategy. It's a lovely simple way of capturing it as a strategy and also a simple way for you to build momentum for your speaking career once you land that first gig. So, it's a great thing. And I'm also going to be looking at incorporating Talkadot. Into my speaking this year to support the growth of my business. That might be something that you want to look at too. And if you had a revelation or you got something practical to implement, then do go and let Arul know. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. He's on LinkedIn and other places on social media. The links are in the show notes. And do also go and check out his websites. Go and check out Talkadot. The link to have a look at that piece of software is also in the show notes. All that's left for me to do is to say thank you so much again for choosing to watch or listen to The Speaking Club Podcast. If you have a question or you, you know, you've got an answer to one of the questions that I just posed about your biggest takeaway and you're watching, bung it in the comments below. Don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel. And if you're listening, it'd be amazing if you can subscribe to the podcast if you're not already subscribed. Wherever you're listening, we're all over the place. Spotify, Amazon, as you probably know, or wherever you're listening on your podcast app. And I would be so grateful if you could take just a couple of minutes to leave a rating or review. Um, and you can do that over at, uh, ratethispodcast.com/tsc. That would be amazing. I love to have the feedback, good or bad, just honest feedback. You know, there may be some things that you think we can improve in the show, things you might want to know. Or you might just want to give some really positive feedback, which is always welcome. You know, I'm doing this standing here on my own talking to my computer, and I know it's reaching you because I get lots of lovely responses back, but it's always great to have that, uh, on the podcast review spaces wherever, and it also helps other people to find the show. And don't also, like, let's not discount the old school telling people about it. If you get value from the Speaking Club, if you know someone who is wanting to do something with their speaking this year, there are 300+ episodes, which I think are pretty good, got valuable stuff for people that will help them accelerate their journey, you know, avoid some obstacles and challenges, um, by listening to this. So grateful if you could recommend it too. But that's all from me. Have a wonderful rest of your week. And as ever, you know what I'm gonna say. Don't forget to go out, grab your life by the nuts, and get cracking. Bye-bye. It's a nightmare. You're an expert with so much to say, but now that you've been booked to speak, you're struggling to know exactly what to talk about. You want a talk that engages the audience and wins you new clients without you losing your personality or anyone feeling pitched to. But what happens when you sit down to create that talk is that you end up staring at a blank page for ages, or worse, surrounded by hundreds of sticky notes with content that you could include. With so much material, you just don't know where to start or finish. Don't worry, because many experts experts like you face exactly the same challenge, and that's why I created the Blank Page to Stage Guide. In just 50 minutes, this breakthrough resource is going to help you identify the big idea of your message, make it relatable for the audience that you're speaking to, and convey it all in a way that gets the audience inspired and on board with your idea. And it works even if you have tons of material, or your subject feels less than exciting. If you want to cut through swathes of content and get a talk that you're excited to share, your audience loves, and wins you new clients, then grab your Blank Page to Stage guide from saraharcher.co.uk/newguide-tsc. Oh, I forgot to say, it's completely free. Enjoy!