This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today's caller is a coach who'd like to do more paid speaking. Where can she find these opportunities? That's what we're looking at today. Welcome to Seidl School. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
We have an amazing community of listeners all over the world doing all sorts of interesting things, many of whom are trying to increase their income. And they're not necessarily trying to be full-time entrepreneurs, although many of them are or many of them aspire to be. But a lot of people are happy with their job. They just want to, as I said, make extra money, create more security for themselves, pursue a creative passion, maybe just do something kind of different. And you'll hear about some of those goals or ideas, values from today's caller who, as I said, is trying to make a bit of a transition.
So when it comes to paid speaking, like a lot of things from the outside, it seems like a mysterious process, but there is in fact a process to it that can be decoded like anything else, okay? So let's see if we can help her as well as anyone else who likes the idea of getting paid to give a talk. Detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Cheryl from Austin and I'm a long-time listener, first-time question asker. After years of working as a coach, I'm ready to take my message to the stage.
I recently spoke at a women's leadership event at my church and I got a standing ovation. So I like to do this more often and maybe even for money. How can I land paid speaking gigs? Thanks for any advice you can share with me. [Music]
Hey Cheryl, congratulations.
Good job on the speech and the standing ovation that you received. So a few steps here, a couple things. You wanna get a video. Hopefully you had a video made of that talk. Hopefully there's some other talks you can give even if they're for free.
You wanna make a highlights reel from that video. It just kind of shows you in action basically. You wanna create a few titles and descriptions of proposed talks. What is your most compelling message? Kind of package that, distill it down, give them strong titles and a few bullet points.
You wanna create a page that includes this info on your site. So hopefully you have some kind of website. Make a page front and center that's all about your speaking. Make a form on that page that interested parties can fill out. Try to make it as easy as possible, make it look as good and as professional as possible.
After every single talk that you do, whether it's free or paid, whatever the situation, try to get a testimonial from the event organizer or whoever hosted you. Put those testimonials on your page. And what we're doing here is over time, building platform, building profile, showing that you are a speaker that's in demand and would be a great speaker for, you know, whatever groups you're trying to target. Now, eventually you may wanna talk to speakers bureaus to get listed. Those groups will take a commission, but the idea is that they bring you business.
Just be aware that that second part doesn't always happen. It's not that difficult to get listed with a speaker's bureau, but it can be difficult to actually get them to bring you business. So that's why I say you wanna do that eventually. Don't rely on them. Good friend of mine, John Akoff, he's got one of the best pages I've seen for this.
If you look at his website, akoff.me, you should be able to see, you know, a speaking page that includes a lot of these elements I've talked about. I think that's a good model to borrow from. And mostly you just wanna keep building. You know, do a lot of talks, go wherever you can. Don't worry about the money at first, work up to that.
And also do it because you want to do it. I think passion goes a long, long way in speaking. So be passionate and hopefully it's gonna lead to those paid gigs. Good luck, Cheryl, good luck everyone else out there. If you've got a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
We will continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from listeners as they launch their projects. That's it for today, but thank you so much for tuning in. Hope you come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
