A conversational interview between TJ Walker and Lisa about fast strategies to grow a professional speaking business. Key points: prioritize relationship-based networking over cold outreach, create a clear "product on the shelf" (a defined talk with title, learning points, call to action) to start booking, and choose niche/audience based on background and passions. The speakers contrast more "masculine" outbound tactics (cold email/searching) with more relational/feminine approaches (deep peer networks, International Speaker Network) and offer practical first-30-day steps for novices.
Chapters
I had a client asked me that, she was like, I don't know how to like organize my day now that I'm an entrepreneur. Too much white space. We do nothing. So it is important to have, okay, these are the activities I'm going to do on a daily basis or these are going to. I'm going to do on a weekly basis. This is what's going to help me with getting clients. What's going to help me get clients? Oh, going and speaking those kind of things. Now I'm going to share something with you that I don't know if you're going to believe me or not, but I haven't cold called her speaking in nine years. Okay. Because I hang around other speakers and I create deep relationships with other speakers and those deep, just a few relationships have saved me from cold calling for years and I still speak 50 times a year. Ish. You know, like it's range.
Well, I definitely believe you that you don't cold call because I don't even receive cold calls anymore.
Yeah, we don't.
I can't imagine how anyone could do it because I mean there's still people doing it.
There's still people.
My phone, I don't think it's even possible for someone to cold call me because my, I've got a spam filter for calls. It just instantly goes to voicemail.
Well, I mean like cold email or, or like let's say Google searching. Like say you go Google search down a rabbit hole, right? You put in I want to. Where can I go speak, right? And you just start Google searching in rabbit hole, rabbit hole, rabbit hole. You're there for two hours, you've got nothing. You, you maybe found an application that you read through for 20 minutes and filled it out and then never heard back. That is not usually a very. That's what I call a soul sucking activity. As a person who loves to speak and gets excited about being, you know, transforming people's lives, that you'll give up real quick after a few of those, right. That's just not an ideal why we get into this business. So when I. That's one of the reasons we created the international speaker network is like hang out with other people who are trying to do something similar to you and create relationships so that you can build each other up. And I think it's a little bit more of a. Here you had said give you, give you a different opinion. If we were to compare, it's a little bit more of a feminine approach. A lot of the examples you said are more masculine approaches. They're not wrong neither. There's not a wrong or right approach, but it's a, it's just a different way. And I work with a lot of really soul filling type, purpose driven women. I work with men too, but usually there's, it's just a little bit more heart centered than like likes and clicks and this and that. And so it's a little bit of a different approach.
Right. I mean, I would point out a lot of the role models I'm thinking of on who are huge YouTube stars are, are women. I mean, certainly there's bias in the world. I'm not suggesting there's not not sexual bias in the world. But there are a tremendous number of women who have millions, tens of millions. Maybe not Mr. Beast, but tens of millions of followers and subscribers who then have big speaking businesses around it as well. So let me. It brings up a tough issue. We live in a world where there are no gatekeepers. Anyone can be a TV network, anyone can start a podcast and be a radio. Anyone can be an author. These days you don't have to spend two years banging on doors of HarperCollins and major publishers. But because of that, because there's no gatekeepers, it's very hard for most people to figure out a strategy because you could spend 22 hours a day following up on LinkedIn and polishing a new demo video and reaching out to all your prospects, starting a new newsletter. There's, there's almost an infinite number of ways you can market yourself as a speaker, do things that arguably are productive and six months later maybe you've made zero dollars. How do you help people really figure out a strategy when they don't necessarily have a strong base yet?
Yeah, again, it's. Sometimes you might have to do a little cold calling in the beginning if you don't have a strong network these days. I know, I remember, I don't know how many years ago, 15, 20 years ago you'd say like, oh, most people know 300 people. Well now with our social media accounts we know way more than three or access way more than 300 people typically. And most adults are on some social media networks. So we have a network. I think what happens is that people don't know how to utilize their network. Some people are naturally gifted at seeing those opportunities and some people just really have, they're like, I don't know, what, what do I do? Just spam everybody or like email? No. So what we'll do is we'll figure out how do you Work with what you have, when you have it, and then you just build upon the strategy after that. So say you have zero speaking engagement. Like me, I started with ground zero. Okay, what's my first step? What's the thing that's going to help me the most? When I work with people? In the first 30 days, we do the get your talk ready to rock session. In that session, they have their call to action, their learning points, their description of their talk, and the title of the talk so they know what they're going to be doing. And I call that a product on the shelf. Because now you can say really proudly and shout it from the rooftops. I'm a speaker and I speak on X, right. I speak on this thing. And that can help you all of a sudden get booked, even when you don't even have one slide created. Like, they don't need to know that you can create the slides. I mean, be good if you had it all ready to go, but, you know, you don't need that to get booked. And then another speaking engagement can happen from that speaking engagement. So it's that domino effect. But how do you start to figure out where you're going to be speaking? That's unique as well. What's your history? What's your background? What's your personality? What. What kind of speaking avatar do you want to have? Like, I have a client who speaks English and Spanish, and he is very passionate about Hispanic business. So he was like, let's look at that angle. So he speaks to universities and organizations for business, but also for Hispanic business. And he's spoken internationally and all up and down the coast for Hispanic business owners and business associations because he's like, that's something he's excited about. So that's one avenue that. That's an example of how you can get really specific on where you're looking.
Lisa, When I was at the active International Speakers Association New York chapter, I mean, here we are in New York City. A lot of successful media personalities, authors. Arguably there's more highly paid professional speakers in New York City than any place in the world. But they tended to be, you know, if you're an anchor on cn, if you're Anderson Cooper, you make a lot of money speaking. Yeah, but that's 1/100th of what you think about in a typical month, because you're so busy with other things, you got a speaker bureau to handle all that details for you. These were not the workaday speakers. What I found was in an organization like the National Speakers Associate and There's good. There's pros too. So many people who came and said they are professional speaker, once I talk to them, they don't actually give speeches. They are therapists or consultants or salespeople who want to be speaking. So everyone is trying to pick each other's brain, trying to get leads, and no one had actually done any speaking. So I'm wondering, how do you judge when you're meeting with someone and people in your speaker's network? How do you. Not in a snobby way, obviously, but how do you really figure out who has enough here to add value where they've done it versus just people in the aspirational mode? And there's nothing wrong with being aspirational, but if everyone is there in the aspirational mode, it's very hard for people to bring each other up.
I think of it as kids on the playground, like at recess, right? And you don't need to play with every kid on the playground, but you need to have a couple good friends. So why not put yourself in a situation where there's a bunch of people that you might potentially play with and you just find your couple. I think a lot of times people think you need to know everyone and do all the things and give out, you know, give your. And we were trained like that a long time ago, you know, like, give all your cards to everybody and get everyone's information and all that. And I think it's different now. I think you utilize your intuition again of like, who? Like, say you're in a virtual meeting and you can see all the little boxes on the zoom, right? Who do you feel like you would really want to connect with? Who are. Who's floating your boat? What are they saying? That sounds like it would be really helpful for you. And like, for example, in the international speaker network, we talk a lot about your ideal audience. Who's your ideal audience? What's your topic? What's your speaking avatar? Are you speaking virtually? Are you speaking in person? Are you doing paid? Are you doing waving your feet? Are you pay to play? Are you going for summits, podcasts?
