Leisa Reid With Get Speaking Gigs Now

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Leisa Reid, who is with Get Speaking Gigs Now. Welcome, Lisa.

Leisa Reid: Hi, Lee.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your company. How you serving folks?

Leisa Reid: I serve entrepreneurs who have a deep calling to use public speaking as a way to attract their clients.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Leisa Reid: Well, I. My dad would say I probably started in preschool when I started teaching other kids how to speak English, when he wanted me to go to a Spanish speaking school and learn Spanish. But I started professionally speaking in In 2013, and my first year I booked 83 speaking engagements in my local area, brought in hundreds of clients to the company I was representing, and started an organization for speakers and network, and people started asking me for help all the time and I told them no until eventually one day I decided to tell them yes.

Lee Kantor: Now tell us about how that beginning started, where I guess you were working for someone and they said, you know what? As part of our marketing, we’re going to use speaking. And FYI, you’re the speaker. Like, how did that all kind of bubble up?

Leisa Reid: It was a company that has been around for decades and they’re still around. So they’ve probably been around over 40 years now. So they had started that model a long, long time ago. And it really worked. They do experiential work. And so it helped to give people an experience of the work. It was like a personal development model. And so that had worked for them for years. I loved the work that they did. And when they said, would you like to be a speaker for us? I said, yes, I actually have a bachelor’s and master’s degree in speech communication. So it wasn’t like a total 180 from what I love to do. I just hadn’t done that professionally.

Lee Kantor: So now if a person is kind of in a boat where maybe in a similar way where they’re thinking, hey, you know what, maybe I can be a speaker too. What are some of the, I would guess, foundational things you have to really get right before you can even attempt getting that first speaking gig?

Leisa Reid: Yeah, there are some things I call it getting our ducks in rows and we would want to what I call get your talk ready to rock. Meaning you need to have it decide what your talk is going to be called. What’s the title, what’s the description? What are the learning points for the audience, and what’s your call to action? Those are the key decisions that you want to make right out the gate. Because once you say that you’re a speaker, even if you’re at a barbecue or you are saying it on LinkedIn or wherever on your website, people are going to ask you, what do you speak about? So that would I would think that’s the first step. But you also want to consider who is going to be hearing that talk. Who would be best served by your knowledge. So there’s this thing that happens where both of those things need to happen somewhat simultaneously.

Lee Kantor: Now when you work with clients, are they coming to you as like, say, I’m an entrepreneur and, you know, maybe I’m an accountant and I’m like, you know what? I’m pretty good speaker. So I think I’m going to use speaking as a way to get my name out there and get the word out about what we do. Um, or are they coming to you with, hey, I’m want to be a speaker for a living. And that’s, you know, I think I can be the next Tony Robbins.

Leisa Reid: Uh, most of my clients are utilizing public speaking as a way to generate clients. So if they’re an accountant and they want to use speaking to get clients, or they’re an attorney or a doctor or a coach, a nutritional coach, a healer, those are different types of people that have I’ve worked with and they just have a desire to do it. They enjoy it, they think it’s fun. You got to do sales and marketing anyway. Might as well enjoy yourself doing it. When someone comes to me and they just want to be like, no, I only want to be a full time speaker, that’s it. I’ll typically refer them out if like, especially if they don’t have a program at all. It really depends. If they’re newer into speaking, then it’s actually a really good idea for us to work together so that they can start to get an idea of what they need to put together and how they would start to approach it, especially if they have something to offer. If they don’t have anything to offer, like they’re they’re just going to generate money through a speaker fee and nothing else. Then I usually refer them out to someone else.

Lee Kantor: That’s so interesting because in our business, we work with entrepreneurs and we tell them the same exact thing. If you want to be famous, um, you know, we can have the beginning steps, but that’s not what we do. We’re here to help an entrepreneur kind of leverage the platform to make more money in whatever they’re doing.

Leisa Reid: Exactly. And I think a lot of times people miss that. There’s a lot of misconceptions. I’m sure that you find this, too, Lee, in the speaker world, because that is how it used to be. It was like you are a speaker, period, and you don’t do anything else. But now it’s like, no, it’s a platform. You you can utilize the platform and leverage it to do the thing that you love. The other thing. So for me, it’s about like, well, can we make marketing and sales fun? And if you enjoy speaking then yes, you can. You can make it fun.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. That’s so interesting that a lot of people think that whatever the it doesn’t matter really, the platform is that their first inclination is I’m going to do it to become famous like that. It’s a path for me to become famous or, you know, make a viral video. Whatever the thing is, whatever the new platform is, they think it’s a means for them to be famous. But that’s such a lottery ticket effort to to be famous in doing anything.

Leisa Reid: I think that’s I can really relate to what you’re saying, Lee, because when someone comes, I don’t get that too often in my industry. But there is a couple of times I’ll get that where I get the sense that they just want to be like, I want to be on the biggest stages ever and be like, Tony Robbins or whatever. That’s not really my client. Um, and that’s there’s nothing wrong with those desires. That’s just not my area of focus. I definitely work with, and we’re probably aligned here. I work with people who want to make a difference. People who want to make an impact, people who have a purpose. They’re a little more heart centered, um minded, and they just really want to educate people because what they’re doing matters and they’re actually providing solutions for people, but they need to attract more people.

Lee Kantor: Right? Yeah. No, it’s just interesting that there were these parallels. I never connected the dots that you would have those same issues that we have that uh, sometimes, you know, like your lane sounds like our lane. Look, we’re here. We are very specific skills. And if you want to do this thing, we can help you. But if you want to do this other thing, uh, you know, we probably can give you some general advice, but you’re better served going somewhere else. And and that’s probably a good lesson for entrepreneurs at all. You got to know when to say yes and when to say no to anything.

Leisa Reid: I agree, like you’re creating your own path, your own, your own lane. What do you want that to look like? What do you enjoy versus what you think you might enjoy. And everyone has a different approach to that. And that’s totally okay.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with us for an aspiring speaker or sometimes these people have never spoken before, they just think they would be good at it.

Leisa Reid: I do have occasionally some people who’ve never actually spoken before. Usually they come to me and they already know they’re good at it. Maybe it was something they did a long time ago and they just really enjoyed it. Or they volunteer for things like that, or they get asked to speak because they’re really good in front of an audience, but they don’t have a strategy or a plan. It’s kind of been happenstance. It hasn’t really happened on purpose. There’s been no intention. It’s more reactionary. Um, occasionally I will get someone who’s never spoken like officially before. And depending on the skill sets they bring to the table, we’ll just start where they are. I was I gave up a long time ago, Lee, of thinking that everyone was going to come to me at exactly the same point. I have found that what we do, especially when we have, like our speaker readiness assessment call, I will say, okay, tell me what you’ve got. You know what, what holes are in the boat. What do we need to do to get you to the place that you want to be? And we start from there.

Lee Kantor: Now, are there certain things that are maybe, uh, indicators that you’d be good at it? Like if you’re if you’re the person they ask to do the sales presentations or you’re the person that they asked to go to networking meetings, like, are there certain kind of indicators that, hey, you probably can pull this off?

Leisa Reid: I think it’s really a personal, internal, personal desire. I because I don’t want to get into like, oh, you need you know, you need to be an extrovert or an introvert or whatever. I have had clients who fall along all those different spectrums. So it doesn’t mean that you aren’t shy potentially, but what? Or that you’re really outgoing. It could be any of those things. But what I have found, the commonality is when my clients come to me like before, they’re my clients. They will confess to me. I’ve always wanted to do this. Like, I look at that speaker when I’m. I’m in the audience and I think I could be up there like I should, I should be doing this. And they have talks that start occurring in their mind like they’re they’re crafting them. And they’ve always secretly wanted to do it and they just didn’t know the roadmap. So we take like whatever that desire is, whether they’ve done it before or not. How can we get them that clear roadmap so then they can go out and do that thing that they’ve been dreaming about for a long time.

Lee Kantor: So really at the heart of it is if there is a desire to do it, then you can give them a pretty good shot at at getting some momentum. And maybe that escape velocity needed to launch their career.

Leisa Reid: Yeah. And and not just the so there’s desire. But then now we’re talking about entrepreneurs. So it’s like we’ll have a very candid conversation. All right. What are your programs. What are your offerings. Does this make sense for you to do this? If you’re selling a book for 14.95 and that’s all you have on the shelf, you’re probably going to need to develop some programs first or some services or some products or something that you can offer because, uh, a lower ticket is going to be a little tricky if there’s no sales funnel behind that.

Lee Kantor: And then in order to have a sales funnel that sells an inexpensive item, you better have a lot of money behind that.

Leisa Reid: Yeah. Or what? Yeah. However, however, it’s going to look like I do work with a lot of coaches, which is usually pretty simple. Their programs are 1000, 3000, 5000, 10,000. Something along those lines. So even if they got one client from one talk. Usually they’re going to get their investment back pretty quickly.

Lee Kantor: Right. So now let’s talk about uh, you mentioned coaches. So a business coach comes to you. Says I’m in. What do I have to do? So what are can you walk me through kind of. The steps that you or the maybe that initial conversation you’re having with. That business coach in order to, um, build out their, uh, talk.

Leisa Reid: Yeah. We have a. Get your talk ready to rock session. And it’s a two hour deep dive where we decide their title, description, learning points and call to action. Not necessarily in that order, but that’s what they come out with. Then they can go and work on their slides, or we discuss what’s the what’s the next step for them and then start practicing it and refining it, shifting it, letting it evolve until it’s ready to until they feel like, okay, I am ready now to take this to the market. We’ll do that within the first 30 days of working together, because that is the catapult to all the other stuff. So once you have your talk decided, then you can start creating your speaker sheet. You can start adding it on to your website. You can start talking about on social media. You can start practicing it. Then you start all of a sudden you start getting booked and we figure out, like, where’s your ideal audience going to be? How would you field questions? How would you create the conversation in order to get booked? How do you start to develop your own comfortability with, um, those kind of conversations and tracking it all and really having a system to being a booked speaker.

Lee Kantor: Now, how long is a typical talk nowadays?

Leisa Reid: I create a 30 minute talk because in my opinion, and I don’t know if you agree with this, Lee, but it’s much easier to cut than or it’s much easier to expand than it is to cut. So if we created a 60 minute talk, the person would be like, oh my gosh, what do I cut? This is so hard. Everything’s so important. If we create a 30 minute talk, you can always add in more stories, more engagement, more exercises, more whatever. You know, depending on the person’s style. Um, it’s much easier to add than it is to, to cut. And I find I usually talk for 30 minutes is very standard 45 minutes an hour. Those are those are pretty standard.

Lee Kantor: Now, the speaking opportunities that will be presented to your clients or prospective clients, are they all paid or are they all not paid? Like how does the kind of the money work when it comes to speaking?

Leisa Reid: That’s a great question. And I get that, gosh, if I had a dollar for every time I had that question. So the how I look at it is what I call monetize your speaking. So if we have a plan that you can monetize your speaking regardless of the speaker fee, that’s what we want to do. Um, so that way that client could go for speaking engagements that have a fee or don’t have a fee, but know that, oh, I’m in the right room with the right offer, with the right talk. Um, probably going to have good odds of of receiving some clients or some traction there. So that way we can not limit ourselves on just the speaker fee alone, because sometimes that would be way less than it would be if you received a few clients out of the speaking engagement.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, where do they go for these speaking opportunities? Is there is it just locally or is the world your oyster?

Leisa Reid: Well, the world is our oyster right now, which is pretty exciting. Again, this this is really depends on the person. So it’s not a cookie cutter standard. This is the exact model for every single person. So what we do is we figure out okay, what’s your lifestyle? What’s your personality, what’s your desire? What are your business goals. And we put all those things into the the filter and figure out okay then this is the kind of engagements that you’re going to be going for. This is the kind of engagements you’re probably not going to want. So we figure that out. It’s different for every single person. But with zoom now when I used to speak in person. Nine. 99% of the time. Plus I also was, um, you know, selling to a local event. So there was a reason why I stayed close by. But once Covid hit, nearly all my speaking engagements are virtual now. So it depends on the on the client and where they live and what they’re trying to achieve.

Lee Kantor: Now, are there different speaking mechanics? Um, when you’re doing something virtual as opposed to in person?

Leisa Reid: Oh, yeah. Yes, definitely. Slight. I call them like fraternal twins. You know, they a lot of things could be similar but could be similar. Excuse me, but I had to really adjust when I went back in person after the pandemic. Kind of lifted a little bit. I had forgotten all the things that I needed to to bring. I was like, oh yeah, I need a cord, and I need, I need a clicker, and I need to make sure my slides are, you know, going to be on the computer wherever I’m going. Did they receive them like just little things like that. Handouts for the tables. How many people are going to be there? Those things I used to do hundreds of times before the pandemic. But then I had a couple of years where everything was virtual and I had forgotten. Wait. All these things I need to remember. So, uh, there there’s pros and cons to both. But I would say for virtual, it’s pretty simple. You click, you know, as long as you have your links and everything ready to go in the chat, you have slides. If you’re using slides and you have a great microphone and a webcam, uh, you are good to go. When you’re speaking in person, you need to remember to bring some extra things.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, when you’re helping your clients get launched and maybe book that first, um, gig. Is there some do’s and don’ts or is there is there kind of places to look early on to get some just flight time.

Leisa Reid: Yeah, there’s definitely places to look. And again, it would depend. We still want to go for something that’s, um, you know, kind of an easy yes or somewhere you would feel comfortable. Oftentimes we’ll start with a warm, I call it start with your warm market. Who do you know? Who might you know, who knows someone who books speakers or who belongs to an organization that brings in outside speakers? So Warm Market is an easier place to go because you’re probably going to get an answer. You’re probably going to get someone on the, you know, on a on a zoom call to to talk or a phone call. Uh, they’ll be more apt to give you an opportunity if they’ve never heard of you. That type of a thing.

Lee Kantor: Now, if you’re doing, um, a talk to an organization, how do you kind of elegantly weave in some sort of offer to buy stuff? If everybody’s kind of an employee of a company?

Leisa Reid: Yeah. That’s different. So again, I love this question because speaking is like a deck of cards. There’s a lot of different games you can play, but you need to know what game you’re playing and how to win. Right? So we don’t want to offend or give an offer that seems awkward or outside of the scope of the event, because no one’s going to, you know, it’ll it’ll create a little awkwardness. It really depends on what you’ve discussed with the organizer and what our what’s the framework of you being there, for example, if gosh, that’s such a good question. I have so many thoughts because if you were there speaking to, let’s say, a lunch and learn and they’re an organization brings you in, they might pay you to deliver this lunch and learn to their employees and to provide value. You might be working on a contract with the with the organization to offer something for all their employees. So you’re not necessarily selling to the employees. You might be already sold, you may already have a contract tract created or you’re looking to create a contract. But if you’re if you’re saying, well, I’d like to reach these employees because there’s this, let’s say a nutritional coaching and you want to they they’re like, yeah, fine.

Lee Kantor: Right. Everybody eats. So everybody’s my prospect. Yeah.

Leisa Reid: So then, so then if it’s okay and and they say you can offer this thing that you’re doing whether it’s a free something to get on a mailing list or a free a low ticket offer to try something out or, or maybe it’s let’s have a conversation about coaching. So again, it will depend on the venue and the conversations and the purpose. All that needs to be nuanced. And I think that’s where speakers get stuck. They think, oh, just one offer for everything, and I’m going to just force it on every single audience I have. And I don’t agree with that. I think you should have a monetization menu, and you pick and choose depending on, on the venue that you’re at and the rules And because you don’t want to burn those bridges.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there, um, some best practices when it comes to the actual next, uh, the call to action you’d like when you’re having, uh, speak, uh, talk like I know you mentioned it depends whatever that call to action might be, but is there, like, is it better to have a free thing versus a paid thing or, um, you know, like there’s a whole menu of calls to action, right? It could be by my annual, um, coaching package. It could be, you know, here’s a PDF of the ten things you should do the next time you’re doing whatever I’m an expert in.

Leisa Reid: Yeah, it depends on how the person’s business model is set up. Like if, for example, I have one client who, um, she she’s just getting her slides together right now. She wants to sell her course that she’s creating, um, versus doing more coaching for people. So she’s kind of not necessarily interested in jumping on a phone call with them. She’d rather them just go to this thing, purchase the course and be done with it. And that’s where she is in her business, where I have another client who has a mastermind and uses a phone call, a free phone call to generate clients to join her mastermind. But she wants to have a conversation with them first, because she wants to make sure that you know, she’s protecting who else is in the mastermind and needs to interview them. So it really depends. Um, another client I had, she wasn’t. She was in between business, like she was selling one of her businesses and moving into another one, but wanted to really boost her Instagram and her email list so she would use those as her calls to action. Since she didn’t, she was still kind of baking her new business idea. Um, behind the scenes.

Lee Kantor: Now, is this a reason? I mean, because it sounds like a compelling reason, just as it is to work with you or somebody on your team. Because if you can help me get that right, I’m just leaps and bounds ahead of somebody who’s just throwing stuff against the wall and hoping it works and then seeing, you know, oh, well, that didn’t work. Let me try this other thing. But by having an expert by my side, I’m probably closer to the bull’s eye than I would be if I’m just throwing the dart. Um, you know, on my own.

Leisa Reid: Absolutely. And I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is they spend all the time when they’re speaking at the beginning. They spend all their time on this content and trying to whittle down all their expertise into, you know, 30 minutes and they then forget to do the call to action. They haven’t even thought of what the call to action is going to be. And then it’s like this afterthought, and they will forget to do it completely run out of time. Or it’s really clunky. It doesn’t, it doesn’t. It’s not consistent throughout the whole thing and it gets people off guard. So there’s all these different mistakes that I’ll see people make when it comes to the call to action, then it’s usually because they’ve never had sales experience, which is fine. It’s not taught in most college courses and which I don’t know why that that is astounding to me.

Lee Kantor: That should be an elementary school skill. I know.

Leisa Reid: I don’t know, especially in elementary school. They’re so primed they they have no problem bugging you over and.

Lee Kantor: Over, right. To buy, uh, wrapping paper or popcorn or cookies like they.

Leisa Reid: Yeah. Well, if any any parent, I mean, any parent can definitely agree that kids can be persistent as all get out so they’re primed and ready to go to be salespeople. I don’t know why they don’t teach that in elementary school and high school and college, but they don’t. So.

Lee Kantor: So it’s your job now. Now, I guess you’ve taken on the charge here.

Leisa Reid: Yeah. They don’t teach it in medical school or law school either. So sometimes I’ll have a medical doctor or a or, you know, PhD, uh, client or an attorney who’s like, why, why is this not working? And I’m like, well, you’re not. Have you ever sold before?

Lee Kantor: Right? Like.

Leisa Reid: You know.

Lee Kantor: You got to ask them to buy something at some point. Yeah.

Leisa Reid: So it’s a different animal.

Lee Kantor: So, um, so what’s the, uh, for anybody listening here? And they’re contemplating speaking. So what’s the path for them to, you know, what’s your call to action to get them, uh, at least into your funnel and into kind of your, uh, speaking universe?

Leisa Reid: There are a couple ways, uh, one, you can get five top tips to get more speaking gigs now. So that’s further information than what we’ve talked about today. If you’re like, oh man, I really do want to be a speaker. I don’t want to think about that. I want I could use that. And that’s easy. You can just go to get speaking gigs. Now.com it’s right there for you. And if you are thinking, I need to talk to her like yesterday, and I want to start getting booked on stages quicker, and I and I need to figure out this roadmap so that I can catapult my business and really use speaking to attract my clients. Then you can go. You can. We can have a conversation at the get speaking gigs now.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well congratulations on all the success. And I know you have an academy also, right?

Leisa Reid: We do. Yeah, we have the speakers training Academy, and that’s for people who are like really serious about. Yep. I want to get I want to get to the front of the line, get me closer to the target. So I’m not trying to figure this out on my own.

Lee Kantor: Well, again, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Leisa Reid: Thank you. Lee.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.