Bringing Your Message To More Audiences Through Speaking Engagements With Jackie Lapin

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FTC Jackie | Speaking Engagements

 

Finding an audience to bring your message to can be a time-consuming affair for speakers. Thankfully, there are now options that allow speakers greater reach towards audiences. In this episode, Mitch Russo interviews Jackie Lapin, the Founder of SpeakerTunity, about getting speakers to their target audiences. Jackie shares her techniques on getting people booked and why speaking engagements can be a great lead and revenue generation tool. Learn more about building successful businesses by tuning in.

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Bringing Your Message To More Audiences Through Speaking Engagements With Jackie Lapin

In this episode, I have something special for all my coaches in the audience. As a coach myself, I realized that I’d been spending about 30 minutes per session on admin because they had all these applications open all at the same time. One for note-taking, calendar, spreadsheet, browser and Zoom. All my past session history scattered over these two huge monitors on my desk just to do one session.

In the end, I then had to combine everything I had taken note of into a single email and then send it to my client. I decided to get some professional coaching software to help me, but I couldn’t find anything that was easy to use or inexpensive. In fact, some of it required hours of YouTube videos and I wasn’t interested. Others had some functionality that I needed but were hundreds of dollars a month.

I decided to do what all entrepreneurs should do and they find a problem that needs solving. We solve it and we create our own. That’s what I did. I built Clientfolio for you. All you got to do is go to GetClientfolio.com and check it out. It’s only $1 to get started and I promise you, you will love it. It will streamline your sessions. It will turn your time into money. Now onto my guest and her incredible story.

My guest focuses on one of my favorite topics, changing the world. She does this by helping authors, speakers and entrepreneurs clarify, then expand and share their message. An award-winning speaker and author herself, she learned the hard way how difficult it is to get visibility in a noisy world. She dedicated her life to helping others accomplish this through her company called SpeakerTunity, where she’s already helped over 200 thought leaders sell more books, create a true presence and get incredible exposure. With access to over 9,000 radio shows and podcasts, she knows how to get the word out and now she’s with us to help you do exactly that. Welcome, Jackie Lapin, to the show.

I’m delighted to be here, Mitch. Thank you so much for inviting me. I love what you do and I love to support your community.

Thank you so much, Jackie. A quick question, out of curiosity. How long do we know each other? Any idea?

I think it’s over ten years.

FTC Jackie | Speaking Engagements
The Art of Conscious Creation: How You Can Transform the World

Jackie and I have crossed paths many times. I’ve watched her from a distance and she’s done the same. Here we are now, readers just for you. How did this all get started for you?

It goes back to when I was four years old and my father had cancer. It was a terrifying time but he was wiped out and we moved to another part of the state. The whole environment was closed. They didn’t like outsiders at all. I was completely ostracized. I wanted something that I was passionate about that could carve me out. I felt that I was voiceless. I had been told I was worthless. I knew that was not true and I needed to have something of my very own. I married my favorite subjects, the LA Dodgers and writing. I said, “I’m going to be a sports writer.” I focused all of my intentions on that.

At 20, I was at the Detroit Free Press, at 21, I was at the Associated Press, on the front pages of the LA Times and at 22, I was at The Washington Post. I wanted to go on to have a PR agency that specialized in sports. At the time, all of the people who were in that business were men who saw this female coming. They dismissed me right away. I never succeed.

I ended up having one of the two largest sports special events cable TV agencies in America with world-class client lists. Everything from the National Hockey League, the Golf Channel, SHOWTIME, Top Rank Boxing and Toyota Motor Sports, I could go on and on. It was a blue-chip client list. The last thing I did was launch the Worldwide Poker Phenomenon with the World Poker Tour and drove that for a lot of years.

I played in the big sandbox and learned how to book people. That was my great skill. At the end of that period, I was called to write a couple of books on personal growth. One is called The Art of Conscious Creation: How You Can Transform The World and the second one is Practical Conscious Creation: Daily Techniques To Manifest Your Desires.

That book was the best spiritual book of the year at the International New Age Trade Show. Two things happened, the media was changing all the same time and it wasn’t any fun to work with those clients that I had worked for previously. It was hard to get publicity for people and it was all gone with social media. I said, “That’s not me.”

I realized that when I wrote these two books, my heart lay with the people who were making the world a better place, other leaders that were offering valued information that improved people’s lives. I said, “That’s who I want to serve.” I rebranded my company, Conscious Media Relations and then we started doing radio podcast tours, which is what I’ve been doing for several years.

We introduced authors and leaders to 9,000 radio shows and podcasts at the same time with a minimum guarantee of 30 interviews. They started coming to me and saying, “Can you book me for speaking gigs?” I’m going, “The universe is trying to tell me something but I don’t want to do that.” Why don’t I tell them where those opportunities are because I know where they are? That’s how SpeakerTunity was born.

If you give people choices, you have a better success rate of getting booked. Click To Tweet

The Speaker and Leader Resource Center was a company where we give leaders contacts where they can book themselves for speaking engagements and the training on how to get booked for their speaking engagements. All the tools like speaker one sheets and podcast sheets are going to get them booked. I don’t teach people how to speak. That’s what other people do. I help people get booked. I became a leader in helping people get booked and that’s on multiple platforms, not on virtual live speaking. We’re talking about podcasts, radio shows, virtual summits, TEDx and virtual networking.

I was going to ask you this question and I’m rethinking whether I should or not, but I will anyway. I know for me if we go back to the early 2020 and late 2019, the pandemic put a kibosh on most of what my clients were doing, which was speaking from the stage. My business at first took a downturn until I pivoted. I started helping people build powerful lead generation systems via podcasts and now my business has taken off again. What happened to your business during the pandemic?

We realized we were going to introduce regional speaker lead directories with up to 2,000 speaking leads in any one market. We had a few of those markets ready to go. We were starting to market them and we realized nobody was going to buy a directory of speaking gigs when none of the meetings were happening. We switched and pivoted over to focusing on the radio tours. We’ve had several record years in a row, but we realized that we could use this time to build those regional speaker lead directories.

Now, we have 75 of them across the US and Canada. The next thing we realized was that maybe somebody didn’t need all of those different categories. On the regional directories, we include business, service groups, all the places you speak to the consumer directly and also spiritual centers. What if they only wanted one sector?

They only want one niche. Repurpose and now we have another product called SpeakerTunity Speaker Specialties, where you can order a directory for all your niche all across North America. If you want women’s business meetings, real estate people, spiritual centers, moms’ groups, parenting, authors or coaches, we can get those for you.

FTC Jackie | Speaking Engagements
Practical Conscious Creation: Daily Techniques to Manifest Your Desires

Clearly, you offer a lot of tools, guides and directories. What we want to do now is transition into what I call the master’s series where you are the master, but you get to teach us, our readers and me, exactly what it is we should do with all this great material that you offer. Let’s say that I get a directory, whether from you or somebody else and I now want to utilize that to get on stages or get on the podcast or radios. Where do I start? What do I do?

I’m going to talk about each of the different resources and pathways. One is live and virtual speaking. By the way, all of our directories include virtual speaking. It’s not just live. Let’s assume that you want to get online and virtual stages. The first thing that you’re going to do is you’re going to want to create a speaker one sheet because that’s going to showcase what a powerful leader that you are and when you’re writing your proposal letter, it can’t be more than about 5, 6, 7 paragraphs. You can’t stuff everything into it. What you want to do is attach the speaker one sheet that showcases you.

What goes into a speaker one sheet? The first thing is it has a headline and a bio that speaks to the problem you solve. This is the most important message that anybody booking themselves needs to know because what you have to tell the booker is that you know that their audience has a particular issue, problem, whatever or you wouldn’t be speaking to that audience. You want to define what that problem is and that you have the solution to that problem. Your speaker one sheet has to speak to that. That implied promise of the promised land that you’re going to take that audience to when they’ve heard you speak.

I wanted to add one small detail here, which has been useful for me. When I work with clients on stuff, not quite what you do, but similar to this, one of the first things I do is bring them out of confusion as to who their exact target client is. I think a lot of people reading who are getting started and aren’t quite there yet, need to figure this out in a detailed way. Who is my ideal client?

I might have three and some people will say, “Everybody’s my ideal client. I sell this.” We both know that when everybody is your ideal client, no one is your ideal client. Once you get down to truly understanding your ideal client, then you’ve got to go and specialize even deeper and say, “Out of my three targets, which is the one that would be most interested in exactly what I do?” You go to Jackie’s site and order the directory. Is that right for that person?

That’s correct. What I will be interested in is what will pay me for what I do. You can be passionate about teaching high school girls, but they’re not going to pay you for something. It’s got to be the marketplace that is going to empty up their credit cards.

Once you now understand your ideal market and you have these directories in place, what do I send them? First of all, you get one sheet. I know you got the one sheet.

What’s also on the one sheet are a couple of powerful testimonials about how great you are and then on the backside, you want to have more than one presentation because if you only have one arrow in your quiver, it’s better to be a bulls-eye. If you give people a choice, then, in fact, you have a better success rate of getting booked. You need to give them three different presentations. Some are related topics in your expertise area that may be designed for different sectors of that audience that you’re speaking to. You want to put that together and then you want to have a proposal letter that’s 5 to 6 paragraphs long.

Now in that proposal letter, you will be able to speak to what it is that you’re bringing to the table and why you want to be speaking to this group? You want to state what you know about this group, which is helpful, that you know that they’re suffering from this or they’ve had these speakers in the past and why you fit in. You will be saying, “I’m including my speaker one sheet.” You want to say, “Here is a little bit of video of me.” You want 3 to 5 minutes of video. Don’t give them your whole presentation. Just a little YouTube cutaway of how great you are.

When you make follow-ups, use the rule of three. It should be one phone call and two emails or two emails and one phone call. Click To Tweet

In the old days, when we could all speak on stages, that’s the preferred version of this but if the only thing you have is speaking to a group digitally and you’re presenting to an organization, you can also use that. You can cut that down. The request to meet with them, to discuss with them, see how you might understand a little bit what they’re looking for and how you can make this work for them. That’s what goes into that proposal letter and then you’re going to have to do follow-up phone calls.

When you do the follow-up phone calls, I have a rule of three. It should be 1 phone call and 2 emails or 2 emails and 1 phone call. If they don’t respond, then you can go to LinkedIn or you go to Facebook Messenger. If you have not gotten a response after those five contacts, they’re not interested, but don’t hound them. Don’t rag on them.

Don’t say, “Why haven’t you called me back?” Move on to the next, because you want to leave the door open for sending something to them in the future, and you don’t want to alienate them. Sometimes it takes a long time for them to respond. You could send it now and, in several months, they say, “I have an opening. Would you be available?”

Now let’s talk about podcasts, radio shows and videocasts because these days, podcasts, about half of them or more, are some versions of a video. When you’re pitching yourself for that, you have two choices and possibly a combination. The first is a comprehensive, maybe one page or one and a half pages pitch letter that goes into more detail than a speaker proposal would, as to why you would be a great guest. It goes into three sections. The first section is the problem you solved, your great human interest story, the hook, what’s timely, interesting and why they should put you on the air right then.

The next part of that should be your credentials. Why you? What makes you the expert that you are? What is the reason that they would bring you in to speak on their podcast rather than somebody else? The third category is what are you going to talk about? That last part of the letter gives them a little bit about what the topic is that you’re planning to speak on and then 3 to 5 bullet point takeaways of what the audience is going to hear. The audience will learn. Give them what they’re going to get by the end of the interview. That is your proposal pitch. Your pitch letter is for radio, podcasts and videocasts.

You can use that alone or you can use a podcast introduction sheet, which is much like a speaker sheet but instead of being two pages, it’s one page. It showcases you and makes you look fantastic. You can use that with a shorter cover letter saying, “Here’s what I speak on. These are some of the topics. Would you consider me for your podcast?” What I encourage people to do is combine the two. You do the pitch letter and then you add the podcast sheet because it makes you look slick, professional and accomplished. You can do it either/or with. That’s what you’re going to use to get on a podcast.

I get probably a dozen pitch letters a day sometimes from everybody who wants to appear on my show. I frankly regard them as junk mail and here’s why. I think this could be instructive. Here’s why I regard them as junk mail when these come in. The reason is that it’s like they have filled the shotgun and sprayed out hundreds of these things all over the universe hoping that something will stick.

FTC Jackie | Speaking Engagements
Speaking Engagements: Combining the pitch letter and the podcast sheet will make you look slick, professional, and accomplished. That’s what you’re going to use to get on a podcast.

 

What I prefer is that someone says to me, “I listened to your show, Your First Thousand Clients and I know what you’re looking for are business owners that have had at least 1,000 clients. By the way, I have an incredible candidate for you or I am an incredible candidate for your show.” I never get emails like that. Tell me why? Are people just not doing the research? Should we have a VA who does that for us? Because those, I will pay attention to, but the others are garbage. What do you say to that?

I think that a lot of people don’t spend the extra time to do that and personalize it. I would agree, but I do also agree that’s an important step that you should do, especially if you have a couple of shows that are meaningful to you and you want to get on, that is the right way to do it.

Another question that your expertise and help would certainly be interesting to have here is I have interviewed over 300 people. I’ve had 300 published episodes and I’m still not able to get Elon Musk on my show. What do I get to do to get Elon to say, “Yes, Mitch. I’d love to be on your show?”

I wouldn’t begin to be able to tell you that.

Anybody who’s reading this blog, you get me Elon Musk and not only will I be super appreciative but I will have something incredibly special for you. I guarantee you all of that. Celebrities require a different treatment. First of all, here’s how I’ve gotten the celebrities I have had on my show. It’s always through a personal introduction first. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

Let’s say there is nobody I know that is a personal friend of Elon Musk. Would it make sense to hire an agency that specializes in that if that was my goal?

You could but also reach out to his PR agency and make a case for why this would be a valuable interview for him. That’s usually the people that are the gatekeepers, a lot of times with somebody of his stature.

What we’re talking about here are the nuanced elements of how to secure these bookings and you could flood the world with emails based on the guides that are available. I think what I’m hearing from you is if you spend the time and get to know exactly who it is you’re sending these releases to and why you want to be on each of these shows in each of these categories, my belief is that the odds will increase for you getting on those shows. I know that you offer some services and you sell guides, but tell me more about the company SpeakerTunity.

At SpeakerTunity, we have these directories and we have two that do radio and podcast. One that gives you life-enhancing radio shows and podcasts. Every month, we give you 40 of them. Another product is called SpeakerTunity Radio Insider for Business, where we give you 40 B2B radio shows every month so that you can cut to the chase and get to that audience easily.

The biggest thing that holds people back from going out and getting their speaking gigs is they don't have time to do it themselves. Click To Tweet

We also have a product where we give you virt summits that are looking for guests, presenters and giveaways looking for partners. Those are great ways to get new people into your opt-in list and to reconnect with these communities of people that you can introduce your products, your clients and your resources too.

For speaker lead directories, we talked about the regional speaker leader directories and the specialties directories, but we also have a TEDx directory. If you want to get on TEDxes, we have 350 TEDxes that we’ve identified and we sorted them by date, state or province so you can find out what’s near you and also what’s virtual and live.

We updated it in June 2021 and we’ll update it in December 2021. We do speaker one sheets and podcasts introductory sheets. You can pick from a template, select your colors, including your brand colors and then fill in the form. We tell you exactly what to give us and then in a couple of days, we’ll get them back to you. That gets you started there.

We also have training programs that teach you how to book yourself for speaking engagements and how to book yourself a radio and podcasts. We’ve got an exciting new program called The Corporate Playbook that teaches you how to book yourself in the corporate marketplace, which is a hot thing. That is exciting and then if you don’t want to do all this outreach yourself, now that you’ve got our directories, we have a new strategic partnership with a group called Book For You Virtual Assistants. They will take our directories and you can retain them for either 20, 40 or 80 hours a month to go out and get those speaking gigs for you, so you don’t have to be the one doing it.

The biggest thing that holds people back from going out and getting their speaking gigs some of the time is they don’t have time to do it themselves. We decided to solve that problem by this alliance with Book For You Virtual Assistants. If you go to SpeakerTunity, all of our resources are right there on our homepage and it makes it easy.

FTC Jackie | Speaking Engagements
Speaking Engagements: You can’t stuff everything into a proposal letter. What you want to do is attach the speaker one-sheet that showcases you.

 

We also have a virtual networking directory. If you’re prospecting on virtual networking opportunities and you want to have a great list of them, we’ve identified 200, 50 of which are for women. About every 2 or 3 months, they send out an update and add the new ones for folks so that they can get on top of them. It’s a full array of stories. We call ourselves the ultimate speaker toolbox and you’re going to find everything you need here to get on any stage that’s going to help you generate revenue.

I want to make it clear. Jackie has been doing this for a long time. I’ve been doing this in a haphazard way for a long time as well, but if you’re getting started right now, do not be discouraged by not having a ton of people say yes, right away. This is a numbers game and if you’re careful, as we had talked about before with your pitches and you know who you’re pitching and why you’re pitching, you will succeed if you’re willing to put in the time and make it happen.

Before we transition to the next part of the show, I want to ask you about something I’ve never dug deep into and that’s TEDx. I never quite got why I would want to do a TEDx talk. It doesn’t seem like a great lead gen tool. It is mostly a branding tool unless you tell me otherwise. What do you think about TEDx?

It is a branding tool and I also think it gets you more speaking gigs. If you’re trying to get on stage and you send somebody your TEDx in your proposal letter, that is going to put you in a good spot. I see that as a gate opener in lots of different ways for leaders. Some people want it for the prestige that it gives them. I know people that use that to catapult their own platforms by making them look that they are way more established than they may be. There’s real value in it for the right person, but no, it is not a sales opportunity and you should never look at it for that purpose.

The most famous TEDx that has catapulted a human being into the stratosphere is Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. That is a classic TEDx that’s up to 100 million views or something at this point. Before that, he was a college professor. After that, he’s a $50,000 per stage speaker. He’s happy to not teach at college and just speak on stages at $50,000 a shot.

There's real value in TEDx Talks for the right person, but no, it is not a sales opportunity, and you should never look at it for that purpose. Click To Tweet

I’ve seen his performances if you want to call them that, he’s very good and people love what he has to say. Jackie, we’re going to transition here to a different part of the show, which is where we get to know you a little bit better. This is the first question and it helps us understand what you value. Here’s the question. Who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch or an intense conversation with?

It would be Oprah Winfrey because the woman has married two of my loves, one, which is entrepreneurial-ism. She’s built in an incredible empire and two because she’s in service to humanity. She cares. She is compassionate. She is loving. She provides light everywhere. I love the marriage of those two things.

I like to think in some ways that I emulate that, but in small ways, not to her status. I know that I could learn a great deal from her. I do just by watching her and listening to her. I think that she is a great role model for women who are looking to keep a balance in their life between commerce, being good human beings and creating impact in the world.

I have a great story about her from someone who I trust. They were sitting next to her at a Tony Robbins event. One of the things that Tony does at every one of his events is he gets you to create a life wheel and rate yourself in seven areas of your life. This person is sitting next to Oprah Winfrey and he’s watching her as she rates herself. She rated herself with 2s and 3s, with one exception. I think it was in her love and marriage, which she rated herself quite highly.

It was shocking to see someone smart, successful and powerful with such humility that they rated themselves lower, probably the most people in the room. She is an incredible individual. She’s much more than a TV show and money. Even though that’s what people associate with her, she is a gift to humanity and I’m glad you brought her up. This is the grand finale that changed the world question. What is it that you were doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?

The work that we do at SpeakerTunity is exciting, but that’s not all. My two book also has a real impact on people and how they manage their personal frequency in the world. Whenever I have a chance, I still also occasionally teach on that and I believe that those books will ultimately carry on long beyond after me. I am excited to have them now permanently printed on demand. God forbid something happens to me, people will still be able to access that useful information. It won’t be a book sitting in my garage that disappears into the end of the trash heap somewhere.

What is the name of your books?

The first one is The Art of Conscious Creation: How You Can Transform The World. The second one is called Practical Conscious Creation: Daily Techniques To Manifest Your Desires. These give you a real grounding in how energy works in your life and how you can change the trajectory of your life by managing your own personal frequency.

FTC Jackie | Speaking Engagements
Speaking Engagements: When you’re on a stage, a podcast, or a virtual summit, you will often have the opportunity to offer a lead generation magnet. So you have to be ready.

 

Jackie also has a seduction guide that she is going to share with us. Tell us more about that.

It’s not the seduction you think, Mitch. It’s a seduction of your clients or prospective clients because when you’re on a stage, a podcast or a virtual summit, many times you’re going to have the opportunity to offer a lead generation magnet. Not all stages will let you sell to those stages. You have to have this ready and frankly, when I do a presentation, I give this away along with my full offer so I can capture those people that aren’t necessarily buying from the offer, but they still might get my freebie.

If you think that eBook or a free consultation is about all you can give away and then get people into your community, you are dead wrong because I’ve got 44 ways to seduce your next client from stages, podcasts, radio shows, virtual summits and virtual networking. By the way, you can pop these in the original networking chat rooms too. When you go to get this, I’m going to give you all these different 44 ways to create those lead magnets that are irresistible and the way to get that is SpeakerTunity.com/Seduce.

Jackie, this was fantastic. I learned much from you. Thank you so much. I’m excited to start working with that other company Book For You, through your introduction. Readers, I would recommend you do the same. Go over to SpeakerTunity.com and check out what Jackie’s offering. Maybe it would be time for you to up-level your game by being on more shows. I’ll throw this out as a short pitch. If anyone out there knows someone who’s built and run a successful company that has had 1,000 clients or more, put them in touch with me. I’d love to interview them. Jackie, thank you again for your time. I can’t wait until we get a chance to talk again soon.

Wonderful, Mitch. Thank you so much. I wish everybody all the stages that are going to make them happy, impactful and wealthy.

 

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