How To Get Speaking Gigs Now With Leisa Reid

For this month’s training, we hear from Leisa Reid, a virtual speaker, podcaster, Founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now, and CEO of The International Speaker Network. She breaks down practical tips on how to secure speaking gigs that increase your brand visibility, book readership, and book-ability. Leisa explains why you should always be ready to speak even at a moment’s notice, identify your ideal speaking avatar, and find your very own speaker soulmate. She also presents some areas where potential speaking gigs can be found, from those around your neighborhood to those that will bring you to the international scene.

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How To Get Speaking Gigs Now With Leisa Reid

Before we get started, I want to tell you guys about a really exciting new product that I’m doing with Podetize. If you’ve ever heard of Fractional Ads, if you went out and tried to get an ad for your book now on major networks, it would be $7,000 a month. We are doing a fractional program with the Hazzards, and as part of that program, I was a part of it in 2024, when they used the AI, I actually watched my podcast go from about 2,000 listeners a week to between 20,000 and 22,000 a week.

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We’re going to be running that three-month program for your book for $1,500 for three months. We’re getting it down that finite, which sure beats $7,000 a month if you want that major media exposure. If that’s something that interests you, reach out, talk to me about it and we’ll get you going. I can tell you my own results were astounding and I’m putting my book on it now that I’ve seen the results.

With that said, my guest is Leisa Reid. If you guys don’t know Leisa, she’s so cute, you’re going to love her. Leisa is the do you want to be a speaker girl but you don’t know where to go and find gigs? As a founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now, Leisa trains entrepreneurs who want to use public speaking as a sole fulfilling marketing strategy.

Clients who work closely with her build their speaking skills and confidence through Speaker’s Training Academy, and they get their talks ready to rock and learn how to stay booked as speakers through an easy process she gives you to implement those. She’s going to talk about those. I’m super excited because every single one of you has a book. Leisa, take it away.

Thank you, Juliet. I’m so excited to be here. For those of you reading, I’m sure you’ll learn something about something to do with speaking because someone asked a great question that is also relevant to you. Who in here is already a speaker? I think speaking is one of the funnest and easiest ways to generate clients, develop business for yourself, especially if you have something to teach about or you have some value you can bring. If you’ve written a book, I’m guessing that you have value to bring.

A lot of times, after we’ve lived a certain amount of time, we also have a lot of value to bring. We have a lot of wisdom. Here’s what we’re going to cover in this episode. These are some of the issues that I see out there with entrepreneurs or people trying to get into speaking. They’re not sure how to get booked. They’re like, “I want to do this, but I don’t know how to actually get booked.” We’re going to talk about how to unlock your speaking book ability.

Oftentimes, they say, “How would I get that microphone in my hand?” We’ll talk about uncovering treasure, just literally sitting in your own backyard if you’re not aware of it. The method I use, the number one secret to a steady stream of speaking referrals. I’ve given over 600 talks at this point, and this has helped me really get those referrals without having to cold call.

I find that a lot of times that when we’re heart-centered or purpose-driven, entrepreneurs, business owners, professionals, we don’t really want to cold call. Does anyone like cold calling and outreach and DM-ing people? I don’t like it either. I’ve done it. I’m really good at it but I never enjoyed it. When I was starting speaking, I thought I’ve got to find a better way. I’m going to share that methodology with you because we don’t want to be doing more of that. We want to do what we love.

Sharing All About Yourself

A little bit about me. I am a mom. My daughter’s in grad school. I’m a wife as well. My husband’s a golf instructor. I do not play golf. I’ve never played golf, literally. On our very first date, I asked him, “Should I learn how to play golf?” He said, “No, don’t worry about it.” I just took him at his word and he’s never asked me to do it since.

I’m a dog mom as well. This is my director of operations here. I’m a podcast host, which actually, Juliet and Chris had been on because I host it with one of my childhood best friends. We grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska together. Neither of us live there now. We interview other best friends. The power of friendship. It is a really fun podcast. If that interests you, you’re welcome to reach out to me and be a guest.

I started speaking officially in 2013, and that first year, I booked 83 speaking engagements in my local area. I used it as a way to generate clients and to bring people into this workshop that I was representing a company and that’s what they would do. Remember I was telling you I was doing all that cold calling. That wasn’t super fun. I thought there’s got to be a better way. I started a networking group. Now it’s called the International Speaker Network. That’s been one of my secret weapons. I absolutely love our community.

I didn’t start my company until after I started talking to all the speakers. They would always ask me for help. They’d say, “How do you get so many speaking gigs, Leisa? What are you doing?” It literally took me a few years. I just was like, “I don’t know. I’m just doing what I do.” What I thought was easy clearly wasn’t easy for everyone else. That’s literally why I called my company Get Speaking Gigs Now because that’s what people were asking me for. I’ll help people get their talk ready to rock. I’ve had medical doctors get their talks done. I’ve had holistic healers, I’ve had Christian leaders, accountants, all different types of people getting their talk ready to rock. We do that also through the Speaker’s Training Academy.

That’s a little bit about me. I will let you know, too, behind the scenes here, when you’re speaking, you want to do two things. This is a secret tip. You want to build rapport and build authority. Why would I show a picture of my dog? Why would I show a picture of my daughter? Why would I show a picture of my husband or my podcast? That doesn’t have to do with speaking?

It’s because we want to allow people a chance to go, who is this person? Do I like this person? Am I interested in this person? Are they my kind of person? We also want to say, “Why should I listen to them? Do they have something that I don’t have? Do they have some kind of expertise that I don’t have?” That’s where we want to build the authority.

You can do that in your bio slide. You can tell a story, and it can be with pictures. It doesn’t have to be exactly how I did mine, but do you get the idea? You want to give people a little bit of the highlights. It’s like the highlight reel, but you don’t want to be all braggadocious either. You do want to let people know, “I’ve done some work here and this is what I’m bringing to the table.” You guys get some little insider tips because you’re part of Juliet’s community. Not everyone knows these things. Sometimes we’ve seen a lot of speakers, but we don’t really realize what’s going on behind the scenes. That’s a behind the scene tip.

Get Your Talk Ready To Rock

We’re going to go on to our first tip. How do you unlock your speaking bookability? What I have found is that a lot of times, people want to be a speaker, but they’re not really sure how to get more bookings. I’ve met thousands of speakers in my day, and I know one thing that they all want is to get on more stages. That has not changed. The big tip is you need to be ready to say yes to whatever level you are at when it comes to speaking. What does that mean? You need to have those ducks in a row. I’m going to point out like three different things that I would highly recommend you do, at least, first of all, but then there might be some other things that you’ve been sitting on or procrastinating on, or just stuck on. Things you’re not sure how to do or know what’s on your to-do list. We’re going to use that time to share.

First thing I always say is get your talk ready to rock. That’s what I like to call it. I used to call it get your presentation ready. Whatever you need, get your signature talk done, however you want to phrase it. When you decide to be a speaker and you put it on your LinkedIn profile, you put it on your website, you announce it to the world, the first question people will ask is, “What do you speak about?” If you do not have that answer, it’s like you’re already failing before you get started.

It’s very important to me to have your talk ready to rock. In my world, what that means is you want to have an attractive title, you want to have compelling learning points, you want to have a short, sweet description that’s like attractive to the meeting planner. You got to figure out where you are in the sales cycle when it comes to your talk. Who’s going to be deciding if you’re going to be providing value to their audience?

The meeting planner, the person in charge, the leader of the community, the leader of the organization, whatever that is. They don’t want to read a novel. We need to make it short, sweet, compelling. It’s saying you’re going to deliver what you say you’re going to deliver. That’s usually pretty confusing for people, especially because have you ever heard of that metaphor of not being able to see the label from inside the bottle?

We get so close to our stuff, we know so much, we have so much to offer, decades of knowledge, how in the world are we going to narrow that down to a half an hour? Are you kidding me? That is usually where the problem lies. It’s like what pieces am I going to pull from my expertise to put in this capsule? Can anyone relate to this? Am I not the only one?

We can’t tell them everything. We got to decide what are we going to do. You can always create other talks. Usually when I am with someone working on that, I’ll say, “What you just shared with me is like four talks. We need to make a decision and we’re going to pick one first. You can always do the other ones later, but we have to like put our stake in the ground.”

Figure Out Your Ideal Speaking Avatar

The second thing is we need to figure out what is our ideal speaking avatar. What that means in my world is, are we speaking mostly in person? Are we speaking virtually? What types of groups are we speaking to? What types of audience would have our prospective clients in? Is it a paid speaking engagement? Is it speaking for free to develop business? What’s the methodology?

Are we doing summits? Are we doing a combination of all these? I don’t know. Every single person I work with has a different amalgamation of that. It also has to do with what personality do you have? What kind of lifestyle do you want to have? Do you want to travel? Do you not want to travel? What’s your situation? Where do you live?

Do you live in a big city where there’s lots of opportunities just right next-door or do you need to be in a situation where you know you’re going to need to get on a plane? All these things come into play. There’s not like a wrong answer here. What I find is that we could get easily swayed, like thinking, “I have to take that opportunity. If I don’t take that opportunity, then there’ll never be another opportunity.” We say yes to things that we don’t actually want to do or don’t feel right about because we think we need to do it. When you’re really clear on your speaking avatar, then you’re coming from a place of grounded centerness like, “This is actually good for me. This is a good choice for my business. This makes sense.” That’s where we really want to be. You might do a combination of, of any of those methodologies that I just talked about.

Prepare A Clear Call To Action

The other thing we need to be ready on, and I am emphasizing this because I work a lot with people on this, the clear invitation to the next step, otherwise known as your CTA. Your call to action. This is another challenge for purpose-driven entrepreneurs, people who want to really give, because a lot of us are very heart-centered. We want to give a lot of value and then we can sometimes forget to give to our business or get unclear on that, or maybe have never had sales training. In fact, I’ve worked with different people from the medical industry, from the law industry. They don’t teach you sales and marketing in medical school.

They don’t teach you medical sales and marketing in law school. When you become an accountant, even as a Business major, you might not ever get a class in sales. You might get one on marketing. It’s tricky. We start our own business and then we’re like, “I have to do sales and marketing?” Has anyone ever felt that way where you’re like, “I didn’t sign up to be in sales. I want to help people. I want to serve people.” It’s part of the equation. How do we do it in a way that doesn’t feel creepy, salesy, pressury, icky? We need to put our stake in the ground and make a decision.

I’m going to show you some demonstrations of some calls to action as we go through the process. A couple of the things that I would consider as I’m going through this next story is what do you need to get ready to say yes? You might have those three things you might have like, “She touched on a couple of things. I do need to get those things done.” There might be something else. It might be like a speaker sheet or my speaker page or my bio done, my intros written, my testimonials or my photos. There’s like so many different things that could keep us from being ready.

I had one client who she was hosting these really powerful events. She still does. Her community loves her. They adore her. She was confessing to me, “I know everyone raves about my events, but no one is signing up. I’m not getting enough signups for this.” I was really honored that she was comfortable to share that with me because that’s hard when we’re leading something and we’re trying to put on a good face that it’s all working.

I’m here to have people confess to me stuff so that we can fix it. What we found out is that she wasn’t really putting herself in the spotlight. It was really uncomfortable for her. She was such a giver, she wanted to give to everybody else and wasn’t really letting herself shine because she felt icky about that. She felt like she didn’t want to take attention from everyone.

We realized where she was hiding in the process. We were able to get her talk ready to rock in a way that she felt authentic in selling. She started to realize, “This thing that I’m offering is really helpful for people and I can invite them into this process without selling them.” That was a huge shift for her. She, on her next event, then was able to generate $18,000 in sales, which was a huge difference from what she had been doing before.

Sometimes, it’s just a little degree difference that we don’t see. We’re like, “I don’t know. I’m doing everything I think I can do. I don’t know what’s wrong here.” We need to go, like, “Go in there and look and get another opinion.” Just another point that you want to have that call to action really clear.

How To Get Ready To Say Yes

What do you need to be ready to say yes? It might even be to like uplevel, maybe you’re like, “I’ve done some speaking, but I want to uplevel to this next tier.” What would you need to do to get ready? Does anyone else have anything else that they like, “This has been on my list. I need to get something.” Maybe make the connection, meaning like talk to the people who would have you speak. As we get honest with ourselves, I think of the scenario of like, if someone’s like, “Our speaker canceled. Can you speak tomorrow? We have a spot.”

Let’s say you’re available. I want you to be able to go, “Absolutely. I will be there with bells on. I’ve got everything dialed in. I’m ready.” That’s what I mean by being ready to say yes. If you’re like, “I’m not ready. I don’t have my slides. I don’t have my thing. I haven’t practiced. I don’t even know what I’m going to be talking about.” That’s not ready. I want you to be able to be speak in a boat with a goat, in a box with a fox, in a house with a mouse. All those things, I want you to be like, “Done. I can do this.” That’s what I mean by being ready to be ready.

You can do that. You can get there, but just little ducks in rows. We just got to get some ducks in rows. I find that a lot of times, if we’ve never done it before, we don’t really know. When I was started speaking in 2013, I have a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Speech Communication. I even taught at Cal State Fullerton when I was 22 years old. I taught Interpersonal Communication for two years. Fast forward, I’m hired to finally be a speaker decades later. I also had no idea. I had an offer because I was representing this company, but I had no idea how it all worked. I just figured it out.

Where To Find Speaking Opportunities

Now I’m here to be like, “You don’t need to figure it out by yourself and have callouses on your fingers from cold calling. Let’s make it easier. Make a path that’s easier.” Let’s go through some ways to actually find that treasure in your own backyard. One thing that’s cool when people start working with me is the blinders come off. All of a sudden, you’re like, “I’m super clear on where I can go then to go speak. I got it. I’ve got my direction.” I’m going to give you some ideas of where to start looking and help categorize it. We’re going to go geographical, but I want you to consider that geographically, it’s not just physical geography. It’s virtual geography. I like that. I think I just made that up. I’m writing that down.

Virtual geography, because we’re in a virtual world now with Zoom and everything, we’re able to expand what’s possible. If you think locally, it’s like you can even just start with where you’re living right now. What’s in a 50-mile radius? Is there anything in a 50-mile radius? Do you live in the middle of nowhere? Do you live in a community?

I live in Southern California. I live in Orange County, which is surrounded by San Diego. I’m right in the middle of San Diego, LA and what we call Inland Empire. I’ve got four counties all within driving distance, like 1 to 2 hours away. That’s a little bit more than 50 miles. You get what I’m saying. If you live in a really high dense community, you might not really have to look super hard. You might not have to get on a plane.

Things like Chambers. I’ll say Orange County as an example. They think there’s 34 cities in Orange County. That means probably 34 Chambers. If your potential clients are business owners, then Chambers would be a great way. They often have events that have speakers. Not every single one’s going to allow you to speak, but a lot of them will.

Business groups, there’s all kinds of like grassroots, like individual groups that someone just created, like in their hometown USA and they’re like, “Let’s get some business people together,” and create that group. A lot of times, because of COVID, people still meet virtually. I’ve spoken at business groups all over the country, even in Canada, virtually. You can be international speaker, just going virtually to local groups.

If you’re just getting started, there’s also service groups. This isn’t necessarily my target market, but service groups would mean like Kiwanis, Lions or Rotary, those types of groups. They have a speaker every single week. There are tens of thousands of chapters all throughout the world of those groups. It’s a great place to get started. Great people, friendly audience. You can get video, you could probably get testimonials, so a good way to practice. I do recommend not having your very first talk be in front of your ideal tippy, top best audience ever. Give yourself a little bit of warmup. If your ideal clients are in service groups, then that’s great too.

All right, so then let’s move on to national. Now we’re talking more associations, typically conferences, conventions. There’s thousands and thousands of these. The good news is there’s tons of speaking engagements. The bad news is there’s tons of speaking engagements. That’s why I say you want to be clear on your avatar because otherwise, you could Google yourself to death. You could rabbit hole down a million rabbit holes. There’s so many.

When you get really clear on like, “What’s my industry? Where am I going? What am I doing?” That’s going to be really helpful for you. I will even give you a little tip right now. Here’s the thing that people don’t realize about associations. I’m going to tell you a trick that I did back in the day. I’d hear about an association in Orange County because that’s like, “I’m right here. I don’t have to go very far.”

As soon as I spoke for that association, guess what? I was also going to get a referral. I was speaking at Orange County, I’m going to get a referral to LA, I’m going to get a referral to Inland Empire and I’m going to a referral to San Diego. I just turned 1 into 4, but So Cal’s also bigger than that. I can go right up the coast. I can go over to another state if I wanted to. You could actually turn that 1 association into 50 because not every state always has a chapter, but lots of states have multiple chapters. If you’re on the East Coast. States are smaller. You might be going like, “I’m going to carve out these states here.”

You can like, “I’ll do train over here,” or a short plane ride or a drive even, depending on where you’re living. Texas, also another big state. There’s one in Houston, one in Dallas. You don’t have to cover the entire world. You can just start going, “Let me start to get my expansion.” When you find the association that really fits your message and that can benefit from your audience, that’s where it starts to get good because then you go, “Let me find another like that association.”

Maybe they have a regional conference. Maybe they have an annual national conference. You can just ease your way up there. You can probably see where I’m going here. We can go international. Here’s what you might decide maybe your business is one that’s suited for a retreat. You might want to create a retreat. You just love to travel. Maybe there’s a certain area that you’ve always wanted to go to. Why not make a speaking engagement out of it. If you have family there, like my husband’s family’s from Ireland, so if I wanted to speak in Ireland, that would be cool. We could make an event out of that.

Where can you start looking? Perhaps you’ve thought of some ideas just from these prompts. There are some places you’re like, “I never thought about that. I could look at associations in X, Y, Z industry. I could look for something near my house.” Go ahead and start. Put your ideas in the check because, like I said, there’s plenty of speaking engagements. If you thought of something, maybe it might be helpful for another person as well.

I had one client who was speaking pretty reluctantly every so often and really worried about doing it perfectly. There was a lot of us out there. She had hired a speaking coach a few years before she and I met and was trying to do it exactly how that person had taught her. It wasn’t working for her because it was hiding who she was. Once we were able to get her mindset around, “It’s okay, you’re fine who you are,” then she was able to actually just bring her silliness, humor and brilliance to her talks. Her anxiety went down and instead of speaking once a year, she was now speaking five times a month.

She was actively filling her programs. She actually even was a judge for a national speaking contest. Now she’s in that space of where if they say, “Could you speak tomorrow?” She’s like, “Absolutely, no problem.” She doesn’t have all that angst about it. It was a really powerful shift for her of being able to do that.

I wanted to share with you some more tips because I know we have just a limited time. This is free for everybody. It’s at getspeakinggigsnow.com/tips. If you can’t see the QR code, I’m just kidding. It’s like so big. I make that because sometimes, my phone has a hard time finding the QR code, so I’m like, “Let me just hold it up and see if I get that. Let me get that code.” If someone wants to tell me if that’s working, that’d be awesome.

That’s some free tips for all of you. Juliet has a really good tip here. She’s going on a business trip somewhere. She’s like, “Let me see if anyone wants a VIP date in that time.” That’s another way you can just really maximize your time. There’s something called NABO, National Association of Women Business Owners. They’re all over the country. Different chapters. There are local chapters, national. Newsflash, you couldn’t get booked even without a book.

You don’t have to wait until mess up your apple cart necessarily, but you could still speak and get more followers and get build up the email list to help promote the book launch. There’s all kinds of groups. Carol says, “Associations, how would I find them?” There are a couple ways. Of course you can Google search it, but that will give you a huge, big rabbit hole.

Finding Your Speaker Soulmate

I like to narrow it down of what pillar am I looking under and we can narrow it down there. There are different techniques you could use with ChatGPT. Again, we’re in the cold calling venue. Let’s move on to this next piece because this might really be helpful for you because I think we don’t necessarily want to always just do the cold calling route or the Google searching route.

How do you get a steady stream of speaking referrals? For me, I like to have a consistent trickle of business all the time versus doing a big launch. Why don’t we just have consistent business always. This is how I do it without cold calling and Google searching or lists. It’s what I call finding your speaker soulmate. It’s a concept that came to me naturally, organically and I was like, “This is really working. Let’s give it a name. How can I teach other people how to do this?”

You’re going to be looking for someone who speaks at a similar frequency as you, someone you know, like and trust. You don’t have to know them since kindergarten. Maybe you meet them at a Zoom room and you’re thinking, “I like that person. We seem to be on the same journey. Let’s see if we want to work together. I’m speaking, they’re speaking, I want to be speaking, they want to be speaking. Let’s combine our forces.”

The ideal scenario is that they speak to a similar audience as you, but they’re not your competition. Going back to that whole knowing you’re speaking avatar like, “I love speaking for virtual events. They do too. I speak for women entrepreneurs or women business owners. They do too. Cool.” Guess what? Now, let’s say if Diane’s speaking to a NABO chapter in San Francisco and her speaker soulmate would also be a good fit. Diane speaks in January. She’s like, “Actually, I’ve got a great speaker recommendation if you need a speaker for February.”

I’m sure they’re probably already booked for the next month but like later that year, then Diane’s speaker soulmate can get a spot there. Diane’s speaker soulmate, same thing. She’s speaking at groups that Diane’s not speaking for and then vice versa. It works out really well. When you have a few speaker soulmates, all of a sudden, your job just gets really easy because they’re just rolling out that red carpet for you. I want you to consider right now who might be your speaker soulmate. Do you have one? Do you know where one would be? I do. I know where they might be because I network with speakers all the time.

There’s a lot of entrepreneurs who gather every month and we actually have activities around that. It’s like the International Speaker Network. This is my story. I was cold calling. I was getting a lot of results but working really hard. I would rather get results while not working super hard. I found three speaker soulmates and now I’m consistently booked without cold calling.

I will tell you a secret. I’ve been consistently booked without cold calling for over ten years. I don’t cold call for speaking engagements because of this methodology. It’s super worth it. I have deeper relationships, you don’t have to know everyone in the whole wide world, but when you connect with those key people, that can change your business tremendously. How we do that is at the International Speaker Network, we literally have speaker referral activities there.

If this is something you’re really wanting to pursue, I highly recommend you give us a shot here. You get exposure and visibility. We do speaker-focused topics. Not every networking group really talks about speaking. It’s not for everyone, but for the people who really want to use speaking, it’s amazing. You start to, all of a sudden, make really cool connections. You’re on podcasts with people. You’re around other authors as well. It’s really beautiful. I wanted to give everyone a free ticket because I like to be Oprah and give free stuff away. If you want to attend, you can get a free ticket here. We meet the first Tuesday of the month and it’s at getspeakinggigsnow.com/freeticket.

Let’s just do a quick recap here. We’re talking about unlocking the bookability, we’re talking about finding treasure. Hopefully, we’ve found some treasure here. You’re getting some ideas like where you could start looking and then start looking for that speaker soulmate because you really want to be like, “How can I pull those people?”

In 2025, can you find 2 or 3 people who want to play that game with you. All of a sudden, you’re all three putting your efforts together and exponentially increasing your results. If you are someone who’s like, “I really want to do all these things but I am a little stuck, I’m not sure where to go,” you’d like that fast track to the stage. You don’t want to try to figure it out on your own. This is linked to have a call with me and we’ll talk about what holes are in the boat and how I can support you if I can support you. That’s at getspeakinggigsnow.com/chat.

Audience Questions For Leisa

Leisa, I wanted to mention, I don’t call mine speaker soulmates. I love that. I always love anything with alliteration, but I have a few that I would consider that and you’d be amazed the calls you get. One of my friends will be on a show, they’ll ask her, “Do you know somebody?” All of a sudden, they’re making introduction, reaching out, and I’m getting booked without doing anything.

You’re really good at developing relationships and I think that’s people don’t really realize the power of that. We think like, “I’ve got to find everybody and do all that.” It doesn’t have to be that hard. I love that.

It not only doesn’t need to be hard. We’re of the age where we grew up communicating that way. It’s harder with that younger generation. It’s a little frustrating sometimes for people our age and that the differences. You have to build those relationships and they will learn at some point that they have to too.

I think there’s still like these natural connectors, like that’s one of the things I always am. Who’s the connector in the room? Whether it’s a virtual room or the real room. That’s still a natural thing and I totally get what you’re saying, Juliet. We all have differences in in how we’re raised and all that, but there are still are some connectors out there that are in the younger generation. I get this one gal, she refers to me all the time. She’s amazing. Thanks for letting me pop into your group.

No problem. Do you guys have questions? Do you have questions for Leisa?

Yeah, Leisa. Thanks for all the great information. I talk about health and wellness, chronic pain relief, stress relief and a lot of other things because I’ve done a lot of different kinds of life coaching as well. I hate to use the word joint venture because I know Juliet doesn’t like that word, but what do you think of venturing into churches, large churches to run wellness programs to help improve the health of the parishioners there and do to some revenue sharing with the clergy. What do you think of that as a strategy?

Yeah, again, it depends on what your whole business model is. I had another doctor. Ironically, he was a medical doctor and his wife is a psychologist who’s also a doctor. The two of them do these seminars on marriage and staying married they’re actually Jewish but they would go to Christian churches and communities because for them, they were really passionate about people staying married and having a healthy relationship. For them, the money wasn’t really the top tier. It was their passion. They would donate a lot of the resources back to the church. I think it just depends on what’s important to you and why you’re doing it.

I’ve led from the stage to thousands of people. The largest group is around a few hundred at a time and teaching people what they need to know and what they need to do to become their own healers and they get the work done in terms of chronic pain relief and stress relief. However, revenue generation is important to me. That’s why I would approach the pastors or whoever the clergy are and say, “This is what I can do. I deliver this. I’ve got clinical research data showing that these groups are really effective. Are you interested?” That would be a cold call.

Yeah and each church is going to operate a little differently and the decision maker’s going to be a little different. Maybe if you find one entry point, then test it out.

I’m trying to raise money all the time. If you bring them a viable, helpful revenue generation strategy, maybe they’ll be interested in it. I’m not sure yet, but I’ll figure it out.

Leisa, should you give your speaker soulmates your speaker sheet? By the way, everybody on here who’s a speaker, if you have a book, you should have a book one sheet as well. Would you give those two so they can readily share those assets?

Yeah, I have a speaker sheet and I help my clients create their speaker sheet. Nowadays, I don’t use it as often. There’s a link on the site that should have your speaker information as well. What I do is I have my speaker soulmates create an intro for me like, “How do you want me to introduce you to the meeting planner or the person?” “You’ve got to write it as if I wrote it. You’ve got to like help me out here.” The idea is to make things really easy for other people to refer you and make that introduction.

When you add too much and all their accomplishments, it’s feels a little less authentic because it’s like, “I know you didn’t write that.” It’s funny like almost a less is more model so that it doesn’t feel salesy. I’d say like, “Juliet, you’re always looking for guests on your show or your events. I met Diane Faulkner or I want to introduce you to Diane Faulkner. She does X, Y, Z.” Maybe here’s her LinkedIn profile. “I think she’d be really good and here’s why because your audience likes this and she does that.” Something a little more humaney.

The other question I had is somebody that I work closely with told me that every time he sends his book with his one sheet out to somewhere where you have to send a hard query, he almost 100% of the time gets it because other people don’t send the book.

Yeah, you could do that.

The book opens the door to do you have an educational budget where you can buy books and bring them into the event? There’s an opportunity to sell books in addition to the other things you’re doing.

Absolutely. It’s like how do you ratchet up, whether it’s the speaker fee, the expenses, the book purchase.

Anybody else have questions?

I was wondering how often, Leisa, do you pay your own expenses if you were to go to the mid part of the country?

I don’t. My model’s a little different. Again, I have my own speaking avatar. I don’t love to travel to speak. That’s just not part of my model. Here’s the answer that I’ll tell you that you’ve probably never heard anyone say before. I run everything through a resentment filter. It’s funny. You’ve got to keep it real. How upset would I be if I paid for this, this and that, flew out there, did all this thing and got zero result? How upset would I be? How resentful would I be? I’m a human, I get resentful too. It’s not like I want it, it’s not pretty, but it happens.

For example, I did a trip to Reno because my sister lives in Reno. I was like, “I’m going up there anyway. It’ll be great because I’ll get to see her. If I have zero results, I’m totally cool with that because the most important thing to me was seeing my sister.” That’s my yes or no type of thing. I say that because a lot of times, I find myself jumping in front of bullets for my clients because there’s a lot out there. They’re going through LinkedIn, they’re going to find you, they’re emailing you like, “We have this great opportunity. We’re going to put you on this thing,” and a bunch of hooey is what it is.

You need to do your d due diligence. I’ll have clients say, “I got asked to speak,” and they’re promising me this and that. They send me the link and so I’m going to look through it. Do you have any red flaggy feeling or, “You know what, this is like I would be right in the sea of my potential clients or contacts or this would really like catapult me to this other place.” Now we’re going to talk about, “Yeah, this might be worth it.” It really depends.

Leisa, can I add too? There’s no reason why you can’t add a speaker or why you can’t ask a host, “Who else has spoken on your stage?” I had a situation where I was invited to speak on a stage and it was going to cost me $10,000. It was a where I could go and sell. It was a sell stage and it was someone big. I picked up the phone and I called a couple of people that I knew.

I’m going to quote someone, “Don’t go there. She will rape and pillage the stage and the people and take the money in the room before you ever set foot on the stage.” I didn’t do it. Don’t feel bad. If you’re iffy, if you got that pit of your stomach feeling, pick up the phone and find out who else and it was it worth it for you. Especially if it’s a stage where you’re going to pay to be there to be sponsored.

Alternatively, some of those opportunities are really good. I have clients who love the pay to play model because they’re like, “I know that the room is going to be qualified,” and they found a person that they trust who’s going to bring in their ideal clients and then they do well in that scenario. You have to have a proven method. You have to have high degree of sales. I think that’s probably the biggest mistake I see newer speakers make is they think, “They promised me all this stuff and all I have to do is pay.” No. If you don’t have a good track record with sales yet from the stage, I would say no.

Remember those pay to play too. Usually that host takes a piece of it. You have to work the numbers out by the time you travel, by the time you pay the sponsorship, by the time you pay a piece of whatever you sell, is it going to be profitable for you?

Yes, you filter all those things through and try as much as you can to not make an emotional decision or be pressured into making a decision. That’s another thing you know they’re really good at. There’s a lot of people who are really great at sales and they’ll say, “We only have one spot. You need to tell me today,” or whatever. Just use your intuition and decide.

Get In Touch With Leisa And Episode Wrap-Up

Leisa, thank you so much again. The promo cast that I talked about at the beginning, if that’s something that interests you, go jump on my calendar, ChatWithJuliet.com. Next is Tracy Hazzard. You can go sign up for it now at BAMagTraining.com. She’s going to be talking about podcast guesting for authors and how to turn those listeners into readers. Once again, if you’re looking to get booked and make some money and sell some books, these are the kinds of things you need to step into. Any last words?

I just have one quick question. You mentioned something about a book sheet. I have not heard that before. What is a book sheet?

A book one sheet is a synopsis of your book. A lot of times, I’ll send it along with the speaker sheet and it will have your book categories on it, what your book’s about, maybe a little bit about why you wrote the book, a testimonial about the book. Those categories are important and the contact information where they can find you.

They’re just like a speaker sheet only it’s talking about your book. It is very helpful because even though you don’t have to have a book, if they know you have the book and you don’t want to mail it, let’s say you’re sending it through the internet, you just attach it and then they know, “Leisa has a book,” which Leisa does have a book. I might want to book her over someone who doesn’t.

That’s why I was talking about that. At that point too, when they choose you, ask the host if there is an educational budget because a lot of them, they’ll have a slush fund and you might ask them. I ship books out to San Francisco. One of my authors does this regularly and part of his paid speaking is that he gets to sign books there and we drop ship them at the event for him to sell while he’s speaking or the person will pick up the budget. In this particular case, the place that he was speaking paid the bill, paid the invoice for the books to be shipped. You can’t carry your books in a suitcase anymore, guys. You have to come up with a plan B to get them there.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

I wanted to say this presentation was interesting and very informative. Thank you so much.

You’re welcome. My pleasure.

Thank you, Leisa.

I got cut off for a second so I missed out on a little bit, but I mentioned that I could be on regional television shows. I’ve been on these same regional television shows talking about my upcoming book. I just feel like I should have the book in my hands the next time or does it matter?

Yeah, I don’t think it matters, but it might not hurt to mock one up. You have an agent, right?

Yes.

You can’t get an ARC, an Advanced Reader Copy. If I were you, I would go over to like Ingram or I know I can do it in Lightning Source because I’m a publisher. Go in, put your book in but put it on private. Don’t mark the distribution. You can have a print only account and just upload it all if it’s ready, get it formatted, cover, upload it and then print yourself a copy because then you can take it.

Okay, I can do that on Ingram?

I don’t know if you can do it on Ingram, but I can do it on Lightning Source. Lightning Source is a division of Ingram, so I’m assuming that they have the same thing. You can do a distributed book or you can do a print only book. You want to do that print only and then send yourself a copy.

Okay, thank you. I will look that up.

Welcome. Anybody else? Alright guys, thank you. I guess we’ll see you next time.

Thank you, Leisa.

Thank you. You’re welcome.

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About Leisa Reid

Do you want to be a speaker, but aren’t sure what to talk about, where to go to find gigs, or how to offer your services from stage? As the Founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now, Leisa trains professionals who want to use public speaking to grow their business. Clients who work closely with her build their speaking skills and confidence through the Speaker’s Training Academy. They get their “Talks Ready to Rock,” and learn how to STAY booked as speakers through easy to implement strategies. As a speaker herself, Leisa has successfully booked and delivered over 600 speaking engagements. She is the CEO of the International Speaker Network, a community of heart centered speakers who value collaboration, relationships, results and fun. In her book, Get Speaking Gigs Now, she shares her 7 Step System to Getting Booked, Staying Booked & Attracting Your Ideal Clients Through Speaking.

To learn more visit: https://GetSpeakingGigsNow.com

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