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Hooray! You’ve booked yourself on a podcast, virtual summit or other speaking event! Most likely you’re not collecting a fee for this work, instead hoping the visibility will pay off on the back end.
Today, I’m sharing three specific ways you can monetize (aka get paid) from that free speaking gig without feeling like a slimy sales schmuck.
Inside this episode you’ll learn:
- Getting more visible doesn’t necessarily equate with growing your audience
- Being an INTENTIONAL entrepreneur
- Three specific things on how you can monetize your free speaking (without selling from the stage) plus quick tips you can adopt for your business.
Episode Show Notes:
Getting more visible doesn’t necessarily equate with growing your audience
We know theoretically that the more we get visible, the more we get eyes on our business and with this whole case around us we kind of operate with this belief that if we get on stages, be guests on podcasts, if we do all of these—it is going to pay off, right?
Well, real talk, friend. That could be true, and that could be not true. I know of many examples of people who do barely any speaking or visibility efforts and their audience is growing like crazy! And then there’s people who do a ton of interviews but can’t seem to actually get traction on their business.
Being an INTENTIONAL entrepreneur (instead of the “ever present” entrepreneur)
This is a hard thing to really adopt in this online space when we’re on social media all the time and everything is glaring in our faces. The people that we admire seem to be everywhere so we feel like that we have to be everywhere too and be the “ever present” entrepreneur. That’s what we think we have to be and in order for us to get successful, we’re trying to accomplish all the things. But you have to get real present and remember that a lot of those people batch work and it’s their teams showing up on all those platforms.
But why not shift your focus? And instead of this pursuit of being omnipresent, think about being an intentional entrepreneur and go with the pursuit of making an impact and being profitable. The mission is not to be popular. It’s to be profitable.
Three specific things that you can do to monetize a free speaking gig (without selling from the stage)
1. Capture Emails and nurture into a promotion
If you’re talking about a freebie, how do you take them from the freebie into the paid promotion? Think through the logical sequence here. You can draw it out on a whiteboard then go from there. Remember that the goal is to capture emails and then nurture it into a promotion.
? Quick Tip:
On crafting an effective lead magnet, have something that is highly valuable and relevant as a whole and not generic.
For example, if you’re talking on a podcast about live streaming and how to get more comfortable around this and then you share this awesome freebie around five steps for getting started on speaking on stages to grow your audience and make an impact, yes, they go together but it’s a little bit of a stretch.
It needs to be specific that drives your audience to hell yes, give me that thing! So it would be better to have an opt-in that is relevant specifically to your talk topic, like an easy check list or the tools that you use when doing live streaming.
2. Spin off work (gigs / clients)
This is a huge part of how you can monetize free speaking because it’s very likely that you’ll have people in the audience reach out to you for a one on one work. Allow yourself the opportunity to go, it’s not just about list building and leads. It could be all about spinoff work with higher ticket clients. Start a conversation and typically that will lead to an organic conversation into a sale.
? Quick Tip:
Make a follow up with your audience when you do guest speakings. You can connect with them on Instagram and chat for a moment. Open up the path to get transparency around what they’re thinking
❗ Word of Caution: Do NOT sell from stages or be blatantly pitching people unless you have explicit permission from the event host. You need to know the game you’re playing in before you get on that stage.
3. Create collaboration / JV with host or host becomes client
Consider collaborations, affiliate, or joint venture partnership with the host. Use some follow up questions and talk about your expertise and pitching some kind of ideas to work together. It’s okay for you to pitch yourself to the host as long as it’s organic and it comes up naturally and you can do it with heart. There might be some really big, beautiful opportunities for you to work at a higher level with people who are in the audience or they might refer you to people they know in the audience.
? Quick Tip:
Do a “custom webinar” where you take your existing webinar and teach it inside their group and you do an affiliate relationship. If people joined your program, that person gets a cut since they’re giving you access to their audience for the specialized training with a captive audience of people who have opted in.
Previous episode mentioned:
Practice Makes Perfect? Think again. – Ep #115
